Part III: The Mark of Cerebel

By Nevena Dals, Scribe Curate

Every time I close my eyes, I see Kirinibbi. I see the tumorous growths that inched across the ground in every crevice and I see the faces of everyone there. I see Hlavora with her beak-nose and crooked grin and Dagoth Milos with his perpetual scowl, but it’s more than just seeing it. I can smell it. I can smell the pungent odor of the Lost and I can hear their pained moans, but it’s not real, at least, I don’t think it’s real. I hope it’s not real. I saw Kirinibbi disappear. I saw it all just—stop. It’s gone. It’s gone—it has to be gone.

But it’s not really gone. It’s gone in the way that a bowl of saltrice soup is gone after you’ve eaten it. Certainly, the saltrice soup doesn’t physically exist anymore, but you ate it. You experienced it. You experienced the gritty texture of the rice against the silky guar stock and the way it burned just a little as you put it into your mouth too quickly, but you swallowed it fast and you felt it burn all the way down. The soup itself may be gone, but it was real and it still is real, even if it’s only real in the fact that you didn’t just imagine it; you experienced it. I just wish Kirinibbi wasn’t real. I wish I had just imagined it, but I didn’t. I didn’t imagine Kirinibbi. It was real and I know it.

The thing though that bothers me most about Kirinibbi was not the atrocities I was witness to. It was not the fact that we herded the Lost from place to place so we could dine upon their flesh without the mercy of granting them death or even knowing that I stood in one of the most profane of all places. What haunts me from Kirinibbi is that I miss it. I felt safe. I felt loved. I felt protected. I miss the sanctuary I found in Kirinibbi because my entire life has been a search for those things and I thought I had found it when I swore my vows to the Three, but nothing compares to what I found there. To who I found there. To be taken as Dagoth Cerebel’s pupil is perhaps the best and worst thing that has ever happened to me and I’m troubled about it.

I knew my life before Dagoth Cerebel: I was a Temple Priestess sworn into the Order of Lore. Now? I don’t even know who I am anymore. I once saw through a million eyes and felt the beat of half as many hearts and that was through Cerebel. He gave me the gift of perspective and now I am wracked with agony over that newfound perspective. I am so alone. So very alone here. I do not feel the heartbeats of my fellow priests or of the laity, but I have felt the heartbeat of the Lost and I know their pain and I have gazed upon the brilliance of minds like Dagoth Milos. I have been touched by a creature that defies understanding and now I stand here changed—marked—and I do not know how much longer I can bear this shell of an existence, but there is one thing I stand certain of. I will find you, Cerebel, wherever you have gone, I will find you. I swear that oath before both the Anticipations and the Tribunal: I will find you.

-Nevena Dals