In the beginning, the demon was not the scourge we now know him to be. He was evil, but his evil was the evil of mankind, of mortals. In those days, to escape the guardians who hunted him, he took refuge in dark places, caves deep beneath the ground. In one such cave he found a garden, lit and nourished by beams of sun shining through cracks in the ceiling. Tending the garden was an old man.
Overcome by curiosity, the demon approached the old man. He asked: “Elder, why do you dwell here so far beneath the surface?”
“There is nothing left for me in the outside world,” the old man replied, honest, open, as we all should be to our brother. “I get enough sun here, and nothing bothers me from without.” The demon nodded, for he understood the purity of solitude. But he bristled: Did not this old man desire to subject the world to his anger as well?
“But Elder,” the demon asked, “why do you hide from the world when you could fight against it? Can you not protect your way of life on the surface?”
The old man shook his head and replied once again: “I have given my past much thought,” he said–for we all must practice introspection, must seek to understand and grow from our mistakes. “I believe that I chose a life that was evil. Perhaps I could defend it perhaps not, but I believe that I should not.”
Seeing an opportunity to spread doubt, the demon inquired further: “Elder, if you believe yourself wicked, why do you persist here? Why not take your life in atonement for your wrongs?”
“It is because,” the old man said, “the virtuous man who does wrong seeks instead to do right in the future. If I end my life, I will cut short all of my potential, and my life will have been in the service of evil.” The demon scoffed, for the old man had fallen into his trap.
“If you seek to do good, then why do you remain down here?” he asked. “What good can you bring about here in this cave?”
“I have found purpose in my exile,” the old man replied with a smile. “I sought to hide myself in the dark corners of the world, for that is where evil things hide, and I had made of myself an evil thing. But I realized I was not alone. I found yet more evil here, and I resolved that I would redeem myself by ensuring it should never escape this place.”
“Elder,” the demon said. “Would you take me to this evil, that I might see it, that I might help you defend it from those who would do harm with it?”
So the old man led the demon deeper into the cave, to a chamber where a knife lay on the ground. Though it appeared to be an ordinary tool, the demon could see that the knife was enchanted with a great darkness. At that moment, he revealed his intentions to the old man, attempting to overpower him with claws of stone, but the old man was vigilant, ready for the demon’s betrayal, for though he believed in the good of all, he made sure to ration his trust to those who, like the demon, had not earned it. The old man deflected the demon’s assault with gusts of wind, pelted him with fire, and summoned a great stream of water that carried the demon from that place.
The demon, in awe of the old man’s hidden strength, knew that he could not outwit or overpower him, so for nearly a year, he waited, keeping to the cave’s upper reaches, out of the old man’s sight. Though the old man was wise and of remarkable skill, he was very frail. One night, he passed peacefully in his sleep, and the demon descended once again, claimed the knife, and imbibed its darkness, becoming the monster we now see in the world. The old man’s negligence would thus doom thousands.
You see, the old man practiced virtue, as all of us must. He was ever vigilant, truly wary of evil as the Nose and the Whiskers must be. His claws were sharp, and he was prepared to fight evil at a moment’s notice, just as the Tooth is. But from his failure, we chosen of the Barabadoon may learn: If we are to pursue justice, not even death can be allowed to stand in the way.
This is a little rough. Where the Sevenfold Gyre is (among other things) a pretty in-depth exploration of the interior of a particular entity in the world of Rale. This is a much quicker, dirtier explanation of the same entity’s external influence. I don’t know that this will make it to the final collection in its current format, mostly because I find it too explicit. More likely that I’ll break up its “sub-episodes” and make reference to them in other pieces, but for those of you who have been reading closely, you’ll likely recognize a couple of them even now.
A storm is a wide thing, whorled, variable, separated from peace by the same dialectic line that cuts light from darkness. But still it carries stillness at its center, like a heart sustaining it with a lifeblood of abstract potential, a reminder to the gyre that there is always yet a reverie to be broken. Sometimes the eye of the storm is a great gulf, a tranquil window to the infinite chaos without. Sometimes it fits on the point of a knife.
The knife in question was not special. Its handle was gnarled, rough, its iron impure, forged hurriedly and without care that it might carve pine and cut fruit and do very little else of consequence, but chance placed it in the hands of a craftsman who traded not in wood or nourishment but in smiles. His art was not, as it were, in the evocation of grin or mirth. It was a matter of use. A smile can open a door, turn foe to friend, instill ease, provoke horror. For good or ill, a smile is a lie, and this craftsman was a liar, exceeded only by a legend, a face in the clouds. For many years, he studied that Man of the Clouds, and then, when he had learned enough, he plunged his mundane blade into the sky. Where the knife pierced, a stillness remained, and around that stillness, his self, his sins, and the violent gale of Untruth itself began to whirl.
Like a hailstone, the knife plummeted from the sky, crashed against a mountainside, tumbled deep within the earth where a fugitive happened upon it. The fugitive, exiled, called a demon by his people, grasped the blade, recognized immediately the storm it anchored, and attempted, starving, slavering, to devour it. And it made a storm of him. He who had been called demon became then truly demonic. He emerged from his cave and tore for an age across the land, surrounded always by a hell of grit and dust. But even a demon cannot stomach a storm forever. His people hunted him, grudge undulled by time, even sharpened, perhaps, by the grit blown in that gyre he dared to swallow. They cornered him, imprisoned him, and at last he retched: The knife tumbled into the world yet again.
The demon’s captor collected it, gifted it to his lord who saw nothing in it, who used it to butter his bread. But winds blow, and the world turns, and the lies and stories come round again: The lord saw not, for he did not need to see. The storm did not transform him, for the lord was already a demon, had already crafted his murky hell, had harvested thousands, waged war on the world that spurned him, and carved his name into its writhing husk. So when the vengeful came for him, none recognized the storm that bore them. Though it still raged, the world had somehow forgotten it.
From the corpse of the fallen lord, the knife was collected by a rebel, a taker of skulls who saw in it power–but not its power. Instead, he saw echoes of a god of blood and glory, a reversal of the world’s descent, a road to his deity’s return. Precisely; appropriately: He saw a lie. A lie within a storm of lies, a face of god in a cloud which was, itself, godlike. So it was not by his intent, but the knife’s, the storm’s, that he roamed the earth, proclaiming his god’s rebirth, spreading his falsehood like rain for centuries until the right mind received it.
That mind belonged to a warrior, the greatest of his time but outcast, nonetheless, for his hideous visage. In the way of the god of blood, the warrior slew the rebel, claiming the knife as his salvation, for unlike the rebel, the warrior would put action to his gospel. He searched the shrinking, dried corners of the world to find the Blood God’s twice-blessed seat of power, and there he attempted ritual spoken to his dreams by the storm, attempted to soak the ground in blood, that a tree, a ladder to the heavens, might rise and grant his god descent.
He fought a great battle but was overwhelmed by those who would not acquiesce to his vision. His body fell to the dirt, the knife with it, and it lay there for some time. In its somnolence, the knife was not hidden, and a number of curious souls gleaned its secrets as it held in stillness in the flickering cavern where it fell. But they did not intervene. They saw the storm, they saw its eye, and in that peaceful center, they saw, shining, lifelike, the Smile that had never ceased to rain blood from the heavens. Unsettled, they, for that moment, let it lie.
Apologies for the wait. This is by far the longest in the series so far, though it’s a bit of a departure in terms of style. That may hold out in editing, we’ll see. For now, I think it frames this particular character better than the streams of consciousness in previous entries.
Interlude 3
A damp haze looms in the sky. It is not so dark as smoke, not so ominous. It does not billow. It only seeps. For the men and women working the fields outside the fortress, this is little comfort. They have heard the stories, they know what approaches under that cloud, oozing like mud, skittering like vermin. Some know that they are about to die. Others have not grasped it yet, but all are afraid–should death come, it will be horrific.
An army has arrived at the fortress today. They are the personal force of Lord Martin, whose keep fell three days ago. Their numbers are thinned, some are wounded, and they have come here to the domain of Lord Thom to determine their fate. Will they run? Will they make their last stand here? The last of the Riverlands’ great powers stand together now, but though they still stand, they clearly tremble.
The two lords hold council with their officers in the courtyard. A crowd gathers. Perhaps before the peasants would have allowed the soldiers and their commanders to settle these matters, but this war is unlike anything they have seen. This is no longer a matter of to whom they pay their tribute. They face extinction, that the whole of the Riverlands be swallowed by the Bloodfish and the roaches. Perhaps it will be more than the Riverlands. Perhaps the whole world will face a tithe of bones and tongues and teeth.
“Welcome,” Thom says, somber. Martin nods.
“We appreciate your hospitality,” he replies, “but I don’t know that we have time for it.”
“You’ve seen them, then? What can you share?” Martin exhales, weary.
“All the stories are true,” he says. “They’re bones and mud, monsters, they’re faster than us, they’re inhumanly vicious, they’re immune to pain–in that they sense anything at all–and they outnumber us here five to one, with thousands more pouring out of Bloodhull every fucking day!” Thom’s eyes widen, but he holds his expression otherwise.
“Can you think of any–”
“Godhusk, Thom!” Martin interrupts. “We can’t fight them! I saw these things swallow half my men, and we couldn’t take a single one of them in return!”
“They are a distillation of mankind’s malice,” a voice from the crowd says, quiet but unmistakably clear. “They are pure in their purpose. Of course you cannot defeat them head-on.” The two lords turn, unsettled enough to temper their annoyance at the disruption. The speaker steps forward, a young man, dark skin, a white cloak, eyes dulled to fear but seething with determination. Strapped to his back is a wooden box, long enough, perhaps, to be a child’s coffin, but considerably flatter.
“But you are wrong, Lord Martin,” he continues. “They can certainly be defeated.”
“Who on earth…” Thom begins, shaking his head. “You speak as if you know these creatures, vagrant. Explain yourself.” The young man unshoulders his box, setting it gently on the ground beside him.
“I will answer obliquely, if you’ll permit,” he replies after a moment. “I have seen the roaches and the Sadist who leads them. I do not doubt that you have seen them too, but I suspect your vision is clouded, both of you.”
“For fucks sake,” Martin mutters. “I’m about done.”
“Do you respect Ka, Lord Martin?” the vagabond asks. Lord Martin snorts.
“The Mudfish? Of course I don’t. He’s scum and needs to be put down.”
“That is the problem, then,” the vagabond replies. “You must accept that you are losing, that by virtue of whatever hideous power he found, Ka has become superior to you.” Lord Martin pales.
“You speak out of turn.”
“The victorious general adjusts his strategy when he is losing,” the vagabond continues, pushing past Martin’s rage. “And it is my intent that you should be victorious. That we should be victorious.” The deference is only token, but it is enough. Lord Martin is scared–the entire fortress is scared, and this stranger is a glimmer of stupid hope.
“What do you propose, then?” Thom asks.
“We leave this place. Take everyone and everything we can. Head for the Bloodwood. It is likely out of range for the roaches the Sadist has with him now.”
“You want us to run away?”
“Oh, no,” the vagabond says. “Once we have evaded them, we will return their malice sevenfold. We will devour Ka’s outposts, spirit his people away, and when the fish is starved and desperate, we’ll bait him, trap him, gut him. He has spread a dissonance in this land. We will return harmony.”
The two lords stare, silent, unnerved by the stranger’s sudden fervor. Whispers begin to spread through the crowd around them. At last, it is Martin who relents.
“We will support this harmony,” he says. “Do you have a name?” The vagabond speaks, gaze burning through Martin, through the crowd, through the vicious reality closing in around them:
“My name is Matze Matsua.”
Part IV – Catherine
She stood at the gates of Greypass for a moment, troubled, too lost in thought to signal her arrival. This was a familiar ritual. She had repeated it annually for the two decades since she had been knighted, but every year the foreboding grew. Her predecessor hadn’t had this problem. He came to this place an emissary of something real, something to be feared. The Knights of Kol were impressive in themselves, of course, but back then, to defy one of them was to defy the Blood God, a gesture separated only by words from a beautiful and violent death. But Catherine came here in a time when that threat, while perhaps still real, was far less credible.
That was the first decade anyway. The ten years since the Blood God disappeared outright brought even more unease. Kol had fallen, and though Catherine was formidable enough to command authority at her outpost, that authority was her own, the tenuous, human variety. If they defied her–a costly choice, but eminently executable–there would be no god to descend upon the wretches of Greypass in vengeance.
And now, her thoughts returned to that reality, set ever more firmly by her futile pilgrimage to Kol’s ruins. Every year she traveled back to Free Magic’s former seat of power, to the city where she was raised, hoping desperately that someone would be there waiting. The Blood God; the Magni, returned from their exile; even citizens rebuilding, steadfast; but she was always disappointed. The ruins of Kol were just ruins, and the starving masses she’d heard fled its walls en masse seemed to consider their exodus permanent. And every year, she returned to Greypass and pondered her mortality at its gates, considering whether this year might finally be the year she abandoned her post, made a life for herself in the countryside, disavowed her knighthood forever.
At long last she sighed, defeated again. This would not be that year. She called the guard to open the gate.
***
“Lady Catherine,” Zacharus said, sipping from a goblet. “I was pleased to hear of your safe return.” The room–Zacharus’ audience hall–had acquired a number of expensive furnishings in the month Catherine had been away. She contemplated breaking one. Zacharus was far too comfortable in her presence. She settled instead for a cold stare.
“What has happened in my absence, Captain?”
Zacharus was not a captain anymore, not really, but the title was still the basis of their relationship. Soon after she had come to Greypass, he had climbed to the top of the ranks among the town guard, making him her primary contact for enforcing order upon the place. He was an abject coward, but it worked well for them: He did what she told him, kept the town fed and riot-free, and made a tidy profit skimming from their taxes, and as long as he kept to his role, Catherine had no objections. It seemed, though, that he had begun to deal in more than stolen cash. The opulence of the room where they now conversed hinted at influence beginning to be parlayed at a higher level. No doubt he had his own interpretation of the fall of Kol; perhaps he was beginning to fancy himself the true ruler of Greypass. He would have to die soon, Catherine mused. She wondered how many of his thugs would stay loyal, watching him bleed out through his eyes. The image brought a thin smile to her face, though she was not at all happy with the news he was at that moment relaying.
“The harvest was poor this year, as you predicted, my Lady. We’ve had to tighten our belts, alas…” Catherine suppressed a sneer. She doubted his belt had been tightened in years. “Alas,” he continued, “some have not taken so well to the ascetic spirit. Our men have had to work hard in making sure our just taxes have been paid. Four delinquents have been imprisoned so far.”
“Hmm,” Catherine merely grunted. She had little doubt Zacharus was well aware of her stance on the matter. She was actually fairly certain of every word yet to be spoken in this conversation. It would be a difficult one for the verminous little shit.
“My Lady?”
“I do not approve,” she remarked. “What of Amelia? Has she prepared my chambers?” Zacharus nodded and took another sip. Alarm had yet to set in.
“Ah yes,” he said. “Unfortunately, with the guard being so busy, we’ve needed extra hands at the barracks. I had her reassigned to aid in that capacity.” Catherine unstrapped her wristguard from her right arm as he spoke, revealing a crosshatched pattern of shallow scars running up to her elbow.
“I recall leaving explicit instructions regarding Amelia,” she said, approaching Zacharus’ makeshift throne. “You were to keep her far away from those degenerates you employ. That is what I remember.” She wanted him to hurt, she wanted him to bleed. She felt the hate dancing through her veins, vibrating beneath the scars in her arm, hardening, sharpening, slicing through her skin and dripping down, dying her knuckles a glistening crimson.
Her showmanship had not gone unnoticed. Zacharus had set down his goblet, clenched the arms of chair. He stared at the blood dripping from her fingers, blood that dripped but did not fall, that instead flowed into a mass of glass-like tendrils that slithered back up her arm, hungrily waiting for a victim. He had seen her work before, he knew what he was being threatened with.
It was unfortunate, Catherine thought. She had hoped he would have some of his lackeys in the room to witness his embarrassment, to remember–since he apparently did not–that she was not to be fucked with.
“My…Lady…” he said, leaning back as she grabbed his throat, her animate streams of blood wrapping around his face, sharpening as they very slowly dug in at his temples, his mouth, his eyes.
“You subverted me, Zacharus.” He whimpered, the beginning of a shallow scream, and she couldn’t help but grin, perversely satisfied with his insubordination and its lovely consequences. She wouldn’t kill him, no. In spite of his traitorous leanings, she knew him too well. He was predictable, and in that he was safe. But she would hurt him, scar him perhaps, let him cry out just a little more. She would have liked to, anyway.
“I am sorry to interrupt,” a dry voice echoed across the room. “But you must be Lady Catherine.” She turned to see a man in a dark green habit, middle aged, hair far greyer than the lines on his face might suggest.
“My name is Rom,” he said. He gestured to Zacharus. “The lord indicated you would arrive today.”
***
“I’m very glad you are back with us, my Lady,” Amelia said, handing Catherine a bowl of thin soup. Catherine leaned back, sipping the scalding broth as Amelia moved about the room, arranging and tidying. The girl was pretty, she observed, her twenties had been kind to her, to the point that Zacharus’ guards might have been giving her more trouble than they ought. She took another gulp. It was worrying, something she would have to monitor.
“I’m afraid I must apologize,” she said. “I anticipated that Zacharus would ignore my instructions for you.” Amelia looked up from her work and laughed, shaking her head.
“Oh, please don’t worry! I can handle myself around them.” Her voice was bright, sonorous. Catherine smiled in spite of herself. She was fond of the girl. Fonder, she admitted, than a simple preference in company, though she couldn’t say why. Perhaps it was simply that in all the years she had been here, Amelia was the only one who had shown any fondness for her. Because of Amelia, however minor, however limited to these evenings of casual conversation, Catherine had a place in Greypass. It was a scarce comfort, and she was grateful for it.
“That is good to hear,” she said. “Still, I am not pleased with him. I ordered him to free the ones he arrested over taxes.”
“The town is surely thankful, my Lady.” Catherine set her bowl down, troubled.
“It won’t be enough,” she added. Amelia’s pleasant smile faded. She crossed the room, placing a reassuring hand on her friend’s arm as she picked up the bowl. “Zacharus’ actions can be dealt with. I am concerned that he will not stop attempting them.” She glanced up at Amelia. “I don’t think I can leave again.”
“Please, my Lady,” Amelia said, giving Catherine’s arm a gentle squeeze before stepping away. “We will manage. Your work is important.” Catherine snorted. She had shared a number of her feelings and opinions with Amelia, but she had yet to confide her reasons for the annual return to Kol, her unwillingness to let the gone stay gone. She quelled the dismissive gesture. It was not fair to Amelia, and besides, her freedom was not the only thing on her mind.
“What do you make of the Khetite?” she asked. Amelia had begun pouring water for tea, but she paused.
“Is that what he is?” she asked, twisting to look back at Catherine. “I thought Khet fell years ago.”
“It did. But you saw his skin? Looks like a ghost, doesn’t he?” She reached out, accepting a teacup from Amelia. The girl nodded. “That’s magic,” Catherine continued. “The Magni Kolai believed it was passive imagery projected by excess shadow mana. The scrolls say it made the shadowmen resemble dreams or ghosts, even when they weren’t actively channeling.”
“So he is one of them?” Amelia asked. “A shadowman?” Catherine shrugged, sipping her tea. It burned her palate, but the pain seemed to help. It focused her. She shook her head.
“I don’t know,” she said. “Could be, but he’s definitely a mage. Smelled like…” She sniffed the air. “Murder. I think he will need to leave soon too.” Amelia stared, obviously upset.
“What does he want?” she asked.
“He wasn’t very forthcoming,” Catherine mused, eyes wandering to the ceiling. “Kept deflecting. I suppose that will be tomorrow’s business.”
***
That night, Amelia’s scream woke her. Catherine sat up as her friend slammed open her chamber door.
“My Lady!” she yelled. “Please, they think you–” There was a thump, and in the shadows Catherine heard the spatter of blood against stone, caught the pinpricks of violent joy dancing up from it, felt, with heart shattered and sunken, the crumple of Amelia’s body hitting the floor. She didn’t think. She couldn’t think. She could only howl, as every capillary in her body burst, sending spikes of blood through her skin. Barely willed, her body tore out of bed, through the door, into the hall, where a crossbow bolt caught her in the stomach, tearing through skin but little else as her blood, roiling, seething with mana, spat it back out.
It was dark, but she didn’t need her eyes. She could feel the heartbeats around her, three of them, more approaching. She could feel their adrenaline, their excitement, their murderous intent, and in that moment, images of their death, their bloody, vivid dismemberment, were everything she saw. She sprinted toward the one who shot her, batting a spear from the darkness out of her way. The man tried to block her swing with his crossbow, but she shattered the thing with a backhand swipe and grabbed him by the face, forcing channels of mana through his eye sockets and dragging blood and brain matter messily back out.
The spearmen pursued her. Before he could raise his weapon, she caught him with a haymaker that collapsed his chest cavity, impaling him on bloody spikes as the remaining guard fired on her with his own crossbow. Again, her magic stopped the bolt from going past her skin, and she sprinted back toward him, as he frantically tried to reload his weapon. He wouldn’t get to. His reinforcements were too far away, his hands too slow, and by the time anyone intervened, Catherine would have collected his spine.
But somehow, someone did intervene. Mere paces away from the men fumbling their bolts, Catherine felt a shooting pain through her calf, and, through the pain, a sudden immobilization. It took precious instants for it to sink in: She had been stabbed. No, that wasn’t possible, she thought, whirling, snapping the spear pinning her leg to the floor. She had listened. There were only three heartbeats.
Before her, suddenly clear to all of her senses, was another guard, reeling backward from his splintered weapon. Why didn’t she hear him? What was going on? She lunged for him, but was stopped by another spear, this time through her side, as another heartbeat suddenly became apparent. Her insides wretched. She opened her mouth to howl again, and blood poured from it. She was getting dizzy, but she drew even more mana, wrapping it around her newest assailant. The guard staggered backward, hands clapped to his throat, his whole body beginning to swell. She felt the blood welling in his face, at his extremities, but she kept it forced inside him. He would bleed soon.
At that moment, the man with the crossbow, finished finally with his task, fired again, hitting her face, shattering her jaw and her concentration. Their swollen comrade exploded, covering the corridor and its occupants in blood and bits of flesh. Catherine, fell to her knees as the two remaining guards scrambled away, whimpering.
Her world was getting hazy. Magic alone, now, was keeping enough blood circulating within her to keep her alive, but it was only doing so much. She heard more footsteps approach. She winced as the guards drove a spear through her heart, bound her hands and feet.
“She’s a blood knight–she’ll take forever to bleed out. Drag her to the dungeon.”
There was dragging, pain, oceans of nausea, bone scraping against damp, moldering rock, then darkness, as the guards trudged off. And then a voice cut through the haze.
“I think it unlikely you would have acquiesced to my designs,” Rom said. He was in her cell, leaning against the wall. She could not respond to him, she could not look at him. She could barely even hear him over the pain. “But I’ll offer you an explanation. Not as an olive branch, but perhaps to soothe a final disappointment: That you were murdered and never understood why.”
“They attacked you tonight,” he continued, “because they believed you had killed me, and Zacharus felt this would finally serve as justification to have you removed. They required no additional push in this respect, but acceptance of the Deep begins with acceptance of a single drop of alternative reality, and I mean to make these people understand it all.”
“Perhaps, though…” His laughter was soft. “Perhaps you will be the first of them. Certainly you understand now that reality can change fundamentally in mere moments. Things, people, they disappear, others, heartbeats, fade into existence like gathering mist.” Catherine’s eyes widened. “The water is cold, at first, you cannot breathe, but you are amidst so much more than you have ever known.”
As he spoke, his voice seemed to drift to the cell door–though Catherine heard no footsteps–becoming fainter with each syllable until it was muffled by the rotting wood between them, and all trace of Rom had vanished. She wanted to scream after him, in defiance of her injuries, of the blood, coagulated in metallic crust holding together what remained of her teeth, but she knew that even that effort would kill her.
She needed to hang on, to survive, because if she didn’t, she would never get the chance to make that bastard understand her reality, understand agony, the brutal death of self that she was now enduring. And it did test her. She felt the spear still embedded in her chest, splintering, rotting inside her, screaming like fire as she twitched. She felt her world ache as her strength drained, her organs failed, the blood she held fast in her veins, churning through her impaled, no longer beating heart, began to drip away from her.
It tested her, but she persisted.
It was a long time, impossibly long, perhaps days or weeks, before she heard footsteps against the dungeon stone, the musty creak of the cell door swinging open, a sigh of disgust from a voice she didn’t recognize. Then its owner grasped the shaft of the spear in her chest and pulled, and after all her endurance, then she screamed and writhed as one who was truly dying.
“Get up,” the voice snapped. She realized the spear had come free, that the pain was fading faster than it should, that she was not bleeding. With sudden command over her magic, she severed the bonds that held her hands and feet and reached to her face. Her teeth were there, her jaw uninjured. She looked to the figure in the doorway, head cocked to the side, face in shadow, holding the spear he’d taken from her body.
“What did you do?” she asked, grim suspicion replacing her trauma. The man sighed again. He slapped the flat of the spear against the wall. He didn’t seem angry, and the gesture, Catherine realized, didn’t seem to be directed at her–the man simply seemed bored.
“You want to kill them, right?” he said, not waiting for a reaction. “Let’s go.” He turned and headed into the hallway as Catherine’s memory slowly reignited.
Oh, yes. Zacharus. The guards. They attacked her, left her to die, impaled and disfigured in the dungeon. She resented it, would repay them in kind, but she was a knight. It was part of her trade. No, what burned now, what would make their deaths hellish was what they had done to Amelia. They killed the girl, her only friend, the one glimmer of good in this bleak, useless, pile of stone and flesh and avarice. She had not fought. She only screamed, and for her warning, they killed her. Scrabbling to her feet, she tore from the room, scars opening once again, blood writhing with wicked intent. The stranger, the man who’d freed her, was gone, no trace, no heartbeat, but Catherine remembered Rom’s lesson, and though she bristled, she understood reality better for it.
Quickly, she ascended to the main floor, clawing through five guards on her way, sprinting to the audience hall, bare, blood-drenched feet slapping on stone as she entered to find Zacharus with seven of his guards.
“Lady…Catherine,” he uttered, face pale, but she ignored him. He didn’t deserve any more words. She just grinned, wild-eyed, staring down the first of his guards, a young one, hefting his spear in a pitiful attempt at intimidation. She looked to the next as the young guard collapsed, crimson spikes jutting from his mouth and ears and eyes. The rest ran, Zacharus among them, but Catherine lashed out with her magic again, and his right leg twisted with enough force to break bone. He tripped and fell, scrambling to face her, pushing himself back as fast as he could, calling for his guards to help.
She slowed, looming over him, reaching down, gently cradling his jaw as, once again, streams of blood wound around him, slithering into his ears, his nostrils, his mouth, his eyes, gouging into him until his own blood began to run.
“You killed her, Zacharus,” she whispered, dragging him upright, pulling his face close to her own. “You killed Amelia.” He hacked out a crying, burbling scream, but beneath his pathetic din, she heard another voice. Shivering. Behind her.
“Did he, though?”
Tensing her grip, she crushed Zacharus skull, dropped him, spun to face the source. It was Amelia, drenched in blood, bolt still embedded in her temple, surrounded by the tendrils of blood magic.
“If you never returned,” she said, her voice tinny tormented. “If you just ran, like you wanted, like we all wanted, I would never have been hurt.”
“Amelia…” Catherine gasped, but the girl just shrieked and flung herself forward, raking the air where Catherine’s face had been. She tripped backward, knowing the girl would follow, would kill her. Amelia was justified, and Catherine didn’t have the heart to stop her. But in that moment, Amelia vanished with the sound of spurt of blood, and Catherine turned to see Rom, not ten feet from her, with a spear through his shoulder.
“What the…?” the Khetite muttered, glancing at Cathering as another spear from the entryway caught him in the stomach. He doubled over, groaning in pain.
“I’ve been looking for you.” The speaker stepped into the room, another spear slung over his shoulder against a hook-like tool. By his posture, Catherine immediately recognized her rescuer from the dungeon. Rom looked up as well, clearly in agony, but instead of shock, it was ecstasy that seemed to take over his face.
“Daniel,” he breathed. “You’re back…it’s begun. He did it.” Whipping the hook forward, Daniel flung his last spear across the room, impaling Rom’s unwounded shoulder, stretching him back against the ground on a gruesome tripod.
“It’s about to end,” Daniel muttered. Striding to the edge of the room, he took a crossbow from a rack and loaded it.
“No, no,” Rom wheezed. “You are there, we are there. The Deep. Your world…” Daniel took the crossbow over to Rom and placed it on his chest, the bolt just below his chin.
“Your world has changed…and it will keep getting smaller…” Daniel glanced at Catherine.
“You wanna do the honors?” he asked. She nodded, climbing to her feet.
“The heavens smile down on you, Catherine,” Rom said, grinning, a single trail of blood seeping from the corner of his mouth. She looked the Khetite in the eyes, pulled the trigger, and soaked in the cascade of joy as his head splattered the wall behind him.
“Lovely,” Daniel said, after a moment. “Now come on, we have somewhere to be.” Catherine turned to him, defiant.
“Who are you?” she asked. “What do you mean?” He spat, pulling a spear from Rom’s corpse.
“I mean there’s a cycle to complete. You got your revenge, now someone else has got to get theirs, and the old man’s gotta get everyone’s.” Catherine stared at him through narrow eyes. He stared back. “You don’t have a choice,” he said, and–she realized–he was right. She knew she was going to leave with him, that it had been preordained, that she had no will that could fight that truth on its terms.
And so as he turned to leave, and she followed, she felt an unsettling pang, a realization that Rom had never been deluded, had not been a madman. His ravings, that something had begun, that her world had changed, were precisely and completely true.
Top Image: God, by Quinn Milton, commissioned for War Torn/Rale
From A History of the Wars Fought-Under-Shadow, by Romesse of Khet:
Even before the Iron Queen championed the Prophecy to the intelligentsia of Spar, the Diarchian view of magic’s scholarship was already curiously close-minded. The University had come of institutional age soon after the destruction of Thago, when the attentions of the Diarchs and their generals were fixed upon the applications of organized fire and water magics for future war efforts. This, intentionally or not, seemed to form the basis of the scholars’ narrative, pairing political expediency with an already-prevalent explanation that mana was an expression of the earth’s natural, elemental energies.
The practice of magic, even then, was hardly limited to the four elements the University recognized, but it was geographically convenient to anchor its study there. Spar itself had a social comfort with fire magic, and its neighbors in the Riverlands to the west, as well as the Endless Dunes to the south, had strong traditions of water and earth magic, respectively. Alternatives were scarce or much farther afield: The Lie-magic of Khet was separated from the Diarchy by nigh-impassable mountains, and the arts of manipulating blood and plants were squirreled away in the countryside, the trade of hedge mages and medicine women. Of course, the University was aware of these. It did not dismiss their existence. It merely rebranded it.
The theory was this: The earth’s mana could be drawn to a number of ends, but the elements were channels it flowed to most naturally. With limited access to anomalous data, the scholars at first concluded that mana directed toward “impure” magics–for they classified the non-elements as combinations thereof–simply would not flow as readily, weakening the magic’s effect. However, as tensions between Spar and Khet escalated, and knowledge of Khet’s shadowmen became more common throughout the Diarchy, the consensus shifted: Non-elemental magic was not weaker, per se. Rather, it was more prone to “distortion”, a vague sort of misfiring or unintended disaster. Still, though the University concurred on a value judgment for this debatably imaginary phenomenon, scholars could hardly agree on a quantification for the risk it posed.
In effect, the Iron Queen provided a resolution to this dispute. After the Decree of Magic, the fear, the nature of the distortion, had been linked to the Prophecy, to an existential threat. It was concrete, and needed no further debate…
Top Image: Prophecy, by Quinn Milton, commissioned for War Torn/Rale
I’ve mentioned this before, but I continue to get questions on it. So far, all of the fiction I have posted to this blog has been in the world of War Torn/Rale. This, for some, has been pretty confusing. The events of those stories span thousands of years of fictional time, and I’ve been telling them in an order that does not remotely resemble a chronology.
Enamored as I am with the Dark Souls style of relating fantasy via primary sources, I will only do so much to help you all with this, but while it will be an exercise for the reader to fit the pieces of the puzzle together, I will give you frame to work with.
In the beginning were the Old Times. In the end were the End Times. The intervening periods had more descriptive names. The chronology is this:
The Rise of the Great Cities
The Era of Spar
The Reign of the Blood God and Free Magic
The Dereliction of the Blood God
The Era of Heroes and Horrors
The War of the Roaches
The Era of Scavengers and False Gods
The Desiccation and Era of Grit
The Mud Wars, culminating in…
The War of Fallen Trees
The War of the Freaks
The Destruction of Haven
This is not really the way the world died–that is something more nuanced–but the terminology will hopefully give you some anchor for the events of the various stories.
The boy was raised to be clean. His father was heir to the largest domain in the Riverlands, bastion of the Pure, and in his grandfather’s house, all chose: They would be made clean, or they would be expelled. Grandfather taught him to vomit all but the barest taste of his food from his guts, taught him to scrub the grease from his skin until it bled. He was taught that his body was sacred, that it must not be contaminated with the grime and gluttony of lesser folk. When he failed–and he failed often–Grandfather broke his bones and seared his back with hot iron.
The boy was raised to be resilient. When he was ten, his mother and father departed to lead the Bloodfish’s armies in the war. Grandfather would not hear a word otherwise. Lord Ka had brought the ways of the Pure out of a great, lost darkness, mustering the strength to force upon the wretched the cleanliness they were too weak to maintain in themselves, and Lo Markhan, the hero of the Riverlands–Grandfather–would help him realize that revolution at any cost. The boy was alone, bereft of any shield from the marquis’ ferric discipline. He learned to hide his pain, bind his wounds invisibly, make himself seem a model of Purity, for to be expelled was to join the roaches and Lo Markhan’s other creations of mud and bile.
The boy was raised to be strong. Grandfather had studied the fey-magics of the Feathermen in the Bloodwood, and his house was filled with death-infused creations. Some of these were for the boy, like the dish he was made to vomit in, the gown he was given for dress, the bandages wrapped around his seared skin. They lapped at his suffering, hungry, as if one day, finally sated, they would wake, but of course they never did. Instead that suffering flowed into the house, accumulating in foreboding presences that loomed when Grandfather was away.
Other objects, the boy was never to touch. There were shackles in the cellar that slowly gnawed the flesh of whomever they held, spools of thread, gifts from the Dragon of the West, that wormed into any skin unfortunate enough to be nearby. These were meant for Grandfather’s guests-of-low-regard–prisoners, perhaps, or idle, sadistic diversions–but there were still other oddities whose cruelty was not quite so direct. The boy’s favorite was a painting in the sitting room near where he slept. It was an arid, hilly landscape, unremarkable as a work of art, but fascinating in the way its pigments and smudges danced and drifted across the surface. Birds flew in the painted sky, dust blew, and branches swayed. It confused him, even as it filled him with wonder: How could this expression of beauty be at home amidst Grandfather’s other trinkets? The boy understood these creations to be fueled by suffering, maiming, the pursuit of Purity, but that darkness did not seem to be there in the painting.
It was a visiting emissary of the Dune Men, a tall, intense man with yellow eyes, intrigued by the child’s interest, who finally revealed the answer: The painting was a prison. Years ago, Lo Markhan had assisted in the subdual of the Saraa Sa’een, a terrible, wandering monster responsible for centuries of destruction. This painting was possibly his greatest creation, a cage of color and fiction that would keep the demon bound forever. That was it, the boy realized. This beauty was still of death, but death was not confined to the ugly austerity Grandfather so revered. His bewilderment was gone, but wonder remained.
As he grew into his teenage years, the boy was allowed to travel beyond the house’s boundaries, down to the villages of Grandfather’s domain. There, the customs of the Pure were merely one of many superstitions, and the darkness that watched him always seemed to abate. He walked among the villagers, queer but unobtrusive in his gown, absent the regalia and symbols of Ka or his manor. Among them, he found companionship, a sense of commonality in survival–even flourishing–in a world the boy felt so acutely to be immersed in death. On his days of escape from Grandfather’s house, he joined them in their goings-on, he learned their sayings, he ate their food, he even fell in love.
One day, he and a peasant boy caught a rabbit in the woods. The cooked it over a fire and shared it. Overcome by an affection the boy had never known under his grandfather’s roof, he kissed his companion, and the peasant boy kissed back. The two made love into the evening until the responsibilities of reality set back in, and, flush and delighted, they parted ways. But that delight soon soured–the boy had not been attentive to the time. He would arrive home after dark, and Grandfather would certainly notice. Suddenly welling with dread and acutely aware of the rabbit fat still flecking his lips, he made his way back to the manor. He needed to find his dish. He needed to vomit.
But when he arrived, Grandfather was waiting. He tore the boy’s gown from his body, struck him with knuckles like horn, raped him until he bled, and again, and again.
“Is this how you like it?” he asked, his breath hot against the boy’s ear.
The boy did not eat for days. He did not walk for weeks, and even then, he needed a cane. He did not return to the villages for some time, and he never saw the peasant boy again.
But he wasn’t broken. He simply understood: He was raised to be strong. He began to grasp at the death he felt writhing in his broken body, in the house, in Grandfather’s demented trinkets. He found he could speak to it, and it would make things change. Perhaps it was his startling memory of first love in the forest, perhaps it was simple coincidence, but he found it easiest with plants. He could make them grow, flower, entangle constrict. He practiced first with the vines growing on the manor walls, snatching insects from the air, crushing them, savoring the odor of their pain. Then he embedded those vines in the lungs of a manor worker malingering in the shade on a hot day. He watched the man claw at his throat, eyes wide, gasping as the leaves emerged from his mouth. In that moment, he understood his grandfather’s cruelty, and he understood his strength.
He was raised to be resilient. As the war grew more fierce, Grandfather’s attentions became ever more drawn to it. The boy began to look for a particular opportunity, a pretext for removing the marquis from his sorcerous bastion and separating him from his lieutenants. For a single day, he slipped away, finding the commander of the Bloodfish’s enemies in a remote village. He made the man a proposal: Attack the domain of the Dragon. Lo Markhan would marshal his forces to defend his ally, and the boy would ensure the marquis would never arrive to the battlefield.
The commander did as the boy proposed, and when Lo Markhan departed to join his troops, the boy met him in the forest at the edge of his domain and entangled him in thorny branches. He planted a briar in his grandfather’s throat, and it grew rapidly, bursting through the skin of his face and chest. In his final moments, Grandfather could not speak, but he did not need to. The boy knew he was meeting the old man’s expectations.
He was raised to be clean. When the soldiers returned to the manor months later, they found a new marquis there, decadent, flamboyant, everything his grandfather had not been, save for cruel. The new marquis had found a diversion in the torture of his subjects, and he had begun to tax the villages of his domain for meat and wine and able-bodied men to satisfy him. Some of the soldiers rebelled against Le Markhan, the sickening She-Lord of Ka, but they were defeated, tortured and executed in the village squares by the marquis’ thorns. Those that survived left without a backward glance, but to Le Markhan, it did not matter. He did not much care for Ka or his war.
He ruled there for many more years, leeching the despicable world and its despicable people for all they were worth. He, himself, was despicable–he knew that. But he had been taught that cruelty somewhere.
Working on a couple of larger pieces right now, but posting is going to be dead for the next few days due to travel. The following was originally written as an introduction to the War Torn/Rale rulebook. That is unlikely to be its final use, but I want to share it here as good perspective on that world, looking to the beginning from the end. Overall the history on which Mefit is commenting is not really a story of humanity at its worst, but it is nonetheless deeply pessimistic. Death here is inexorable, and if humanity at its highly variable average cannot stop it, then hope certainly is difficult to hold.
To whomever reads this: I pray dearly that your hope is not lost. My own fled me long ago, but perhaps you may yet find a use for these pages. You see, I paid for them, with the years of my life, my blood, my sweat, even the integrity of my mind; everything I’ve ever built, indeed everything I’ve ever been, I’ve scrawled onto this parchment and bound in this leather in hope that it might serve as a lens through which one might see the way to save us.
I see no such way. I have found no such map to salvation in what you hold in your hands. I have found only a grim chronicle of the way the world has died. And how is that? Even now I cannot be sure whether it was our arrogance or our cowardice; our strength or our weakness, but I know one thing without a doubt: We are to blame. It was man and woman, just like you or I–indeed you and I–who tore the essence of life from our kin and used it to grind to dust every last thing that was good. Some of us were as dark gods; others simple murderers, rapists, and thieves; still others called themselves heroes. Some called themselves nothing at all. Not one of them–not one of us–was innocent.
Now the ground we stand on is torn asunder, and there is no lot left us but to fall. Grow wings if you can. Else, read on and abandon hope.
-Mefit Il-Hazeen
Note: Mefit Il-Hazeen–though perhaps he did not use that name then–is also the narrator of The Dragon’s Thesis. You’re welcome to sort out the chronology yourselves.
Top Image: Mefit Il-Hazeen, concept sketches by Rae Johnson
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