Running for his private seeing room, the sweat was dripping in droves down the side of his face, obscuring his vision. Yet he moved on with a great fervor, like the gates of hell were bearing down behind him. As one of the few who were granted the honor of communicating directly with the great goddess Eset, there weren’t many things that could shake him, yet the calm visage he had usually shown outwardly was no longer present in his face. Instead, all that showed on his face was true and udder panic. What could cause him to show such fear was unknown, but as he made his way down the hall moving past the honorary guards without so much as a second look.
Stumbling for a second, he quickly recovers his footing and continues down the corridor until he reached a large gold encrusted door. Quickly swinging it open he stumbles into his room. If he had been any calmer of mind, he might have noticed that the guards that he passed earlier were strangely stationary, and the guards that usually were at either side of the door were also suspiciously missing. Or maybe he might have noticed how dark this room was, almost like the vibrancy of this richly decorated room was directly sucked out, leaving it in simple greyscale. But he was in a panic, and as such managed to notice none of this.
The more he thought about the cause of his panic, the more he continued to panic. See, at first it wasn’t his own panic. The Deacon of Eset was psychically linked to her, and as such would sometimes receive holy direction in the form of visions and sometimes direct feelings. In the middle of one of his sermons he received a highly disturbing one of these messages. It was just a feeling, but it was an intense feeling of fear, a feeling of dread so strong that the longer he felt it, the more he felt like these alien feelings were that of his own.
Soon this feeling of fear and dread had led to a feeling of panic, one that had caused him to run out of his own sermon and rush to his seeing room to scry into the Void between this world and the god’s plane to see if his goddess had left any instructions for him there.
Trembling, the deacon cast off the ceremonial curtains adorning the mirror. Channeling some of his consciousness into the mirror, he began exploring the web of “tunnels” existing within this mindscape. Usually, this Void between worlds was a dull black, in that it was a dark hellscape, but his mind would always cast enough light to see.
But now, it was a hungry darkness, the Void seemed to be alive eating any light that was cast into it. Not being able to sense anything the deacon began to shiver, and shake, not daring to venture away from the very entrance of this space. Two horrifying truths had realized him in an instant, one he couldn’t go back through the mirror, in fact he couldn’t even find where his body was, it was almost like his body had never existed in the first place. The second was something he hadn’t noticed quickly, but once he had noticed it, he couldn’t unsee it. Before the Void was a dull black, almost like a hallway.
Now, it was too dark to see the “walls”, but this endless darkness seemed to be alive, almost as if this silky blackness was moving.
The deacon wanted to open his mouth and scream, but he was trapped within this Void, nothing but an ever-shrinking light in this sea of void.
He didn’t know how long he sat there unmoving within this endless expanse, just floating there, too scared to move. At some point he felt something brush up against him. It was strangely warm, but it seemed almost slimy, sticking to him. Shivering, he tried his best not to recoil away from the touch.
But it was too late, whatever was out there noticed him, if it wasn’t already aware of his pitiful existence.
It had awakened, no that wasn’t right. It had always been awake; it had finally just noticed him. The Void lit up, revealing a massive eye whose sole focus was him. It was then two truths were realized, one was everyone was already dead, no worse then dead. They had been erased, never to exist again, even his goddess, the one who he had looked to no matter the strife was washed away in a river of blood, never again to be seen again. The second, most important truth was that he was granted a brief respite. He knew that there was no escaping this, for this was the one truth, the one that had always existed and one that will always exist… the Void will take us all.
But it had spoken to him, it had given him a chance, a choice. One that he would be stupid to refuse. It didn’t speak, but he knew what was expected of him.
The imperial guards were first alerted to this smaller sect because there seemed to be a small river of clear liquid flowing from the entrance of the Temple to Eset. It was clear and colorless, almost like water, but it stunk to high heaven.
Two initiate guardsmen were called to question the temple about this, but what greeted them was a horror no mere mortal should have to witness. The first thing strange was the smell, it was an awful smell, they were barely eighteen, unseasoned, and unable to tell what that smell was. If they had been just a little bit older, maybe a little bit more experienced, it might have saved them from witnessing what they did once they opened that door. For that smell was the smell of excrement, excrement and blood mixed.
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The first guardsmen notice he had accidentally stepped into the liquid and was trying to scrape it off his boot as it seemed to be quite sticky. With a quick word, the second guardsmen opened the door and stepped into the grand entrance.
At first the guardsmen didn’t know how to react. What met his gaze was too much for his mind to process, in the center of the hallway was the mangled bodies of the congregation, a twist of bodies and flesh. But it wasn’t their whole bodies, instead it looked like a bag of flesh, and when the guard glanced away, he soon found out why. Sitting just a way away from this amalgamation of flesh was a pile of bones, the spines of the congregation, which seemed to have been torn straight from their flesh. It was from this second pile that this river cascaded from. Realization dawned onto the second guardsmen, the liquid was from the spinal fluid of these corpses, but how many spines were needed for a literal river of fluid to be created. Vomit quickly started to rise in this guardsmen’s throat as he rushed as quickly as he could out the door. Running into his partner, he couldn’t hold it in any longer, a stream of bile leaving his mouth and splattering all over his partner.
The Droungarios was given the daily report of the fortress as always. The only difference was this time his aide seemed nervous, and on top of the pile of reports was a large envelope sealed with an official royal seal. Whatever was inside this package was important, and it had the power of the imperial family backing it. Glaring his aide out with a glare, the Droungarios smoothly sliced off the royal seal with the dagger he always kept in his boot. With shaking hands, he peered into the envelope. Strangly all that was in it was two pieces of paper. Pulling out the paper, he began to carefully read it.
By Imperial Decree: All imperial seers are to cease communications through the imperial netway, secondarily all vassals are to monitor the lesser cults, and to report any oddities through carrier pigeons. Anyone who attempts to tap into the netway will be excommunicated and them and the summary execution of them and anyone who knows them by at least one layer. You are to announce this to your holdings, disobey at your own risk. By his holy will, may you fit into his eternal plan.
Sweat dripping down his face, the Droungarios tapped the bell on his deck twice, with a ring the assistant walked into the room, almost as if they had been waiting with their ear to the door this whole time. Handing the first paper to them, understanding dawned on the assistants face when they say the words “Imperial Decree”, with a bow they hurriedly rushed out of the room, almost as if the very gates of hell were burning at their feet.
Turning away from the door, the Droungarios turned to the second document found within the packet. It was a report, with the heading of “The Eset Incident”
Scanning through the report, the Droungarios’ face only grew more and more pale, the blood seeming to leak straight out of it.
Case: #11967
Incident: The Eset Cullings
Details of the Event:
All around the empire, every single Eset temple was hit be an attack, most likely psionic. All seers within the temple committed an attack on the congregation, the temple guards all seemed to have been mind wiped by a psionic attack of an unknown origin.
The congregation were all killed due to blood loss resulting from the swift removal of their spines. It seems that before their spines were removed, they tied themselves into a human knot, brutally breaking limbs and joints to conjoin into a mass of flesh. Then, without fail, every single one of their spines was removed from their back, all the way to the base of the skull. There is very little damage to the surrounding tissue, almost as if the flesh surrounding the spine parted to allow for the easy removal of the spine. The spines were then neatly stacked to the side of this human pile. The only people who escaped this fate were the temple guards, which while still alive, showed no remaining signs of mental function. An autopsy of a living guard revealed that they demonstrated no aversion to pain, if they even still felt it. The probing of the brain resulted in the appropriate responses from the body, but a psionic probing of the mind resulted in almost no contact. In the one subject in which we were able to establish a mental bridge, the seer in charge of the bridge succumbed to the same fate as the guard, complete termination of all higher brain functions.
The seers that were located at the temple were all found in either a personal seeing room or a communal one. If there was only one seer located within the temple, then they would be found in their seeing room with their stomachs cut open and the letters “YHWH” lettered out with their intestines. There is no mention of the meaning of these words, and imperial scholars are currently looking to the link with this. If there is more then one seer stationed at the temple, or if there was more then one seer within the room then each of the seers would write a part of this lettering out with their organs, with the totality still spelling out a single “YHWH”. Any seer who attempted to bridge with the mirror succumbed to the same fate. We have not yet attempted this with any tier two seers, as the fear of losing these assets is too much. New test subjects are needed, preferably those with the latent ability to become a seer.
Final note, the state of the deity designated “Eset” is still unknown, but it is more likely that they were the ones who precipitated these events to occur, thus the unofficial designation of “The Eset Cullings”
With the end of the report, sweat was dripping down the Droungarios’ face, and he once again run a bell. This one was different, a bright red bell, and when this one was rung no sound was let out.
Stepping out of the shadows behind the Droungarios, a cloaked individual simple bowed and waited for their orders.
In a quiet whimper, “Contact my house’s level four seer, and attempt to deliver this report to them. If they are willing, let them examine it and get back to me with their opinion”. Strangely, with the way he spoke the cloaked individual couldn’t tell if he was more worried wither bothering the tier four, or if he was terrified with the events of the report. But that didn’t matter to them, with a wave of their hand they disappeared back into the shadows, leaving not a trace of them nor the report that used to be in the Droungarios’ hand.
Shaking all over, the Droungarios slumped back into his chair and contemplated taking up bristleweed smoking again.