3 - 1 [Fool] Awakened, Blessed from a Curse

The anger of the Gods is the recompense of the just; those who take heed of Scripture and kennen sacren.

All things have balance under Heavens and Earth, for Dyeus watches over Man. He is Who Arbitrates and Giveth Just Deserts. He is the Watcher of the Twin Firmaments of Sea and Sky.

He is the Judge of Man and holds the kennen sacren of transgression.

Thou art judged for every act, great or middling. And thou shalt have thy sentence in the waters of the River Pallus.

For each sin upon the soul, the deeper thou shalt sink in the cold River of the Dead. Beware the possession of unholy taint, that which makes Man further from the Gods.

Should the heart be black as coal and undeserving of the washing that comes from the Pale, the spirit of the unworthy shall fall to the dark depths where even the light of the Gods does not reach.

Beware sin, for it shall bring thee to the Nine Hells.

-Mandatos Dyeosi, Holy Scripture of the Cult of the Sky-Judge

The Exorcist - 2nd of Mead’s Tap, Year 1125 A.E.

The Exorcist had tracked down the leech all the way from three towns over, but he was too late.

Thoughts shifted through the sieve of his mind. Things he could’ve and should have purged along with his mortal constitution, at least according to the views held by his guild at the time of his enlistment.

You can’t always get there in time, and you can’t save everyone. Even just one soul is enough. If you can at least save one person, you’ve done it… but did I save this boy? Is he really going to be better off alive after the slaughter of his friends?

He doesn't have any kin left among living, my oaths tether him to only himself. Lost and alone.

The Exorcist relocated the boy from where he fainted into another one of the tunnels. He couldn’t let him wake up near the corpses of his friends and of the monster that murdered them.

The clean up after the job was always messy. Though not strictly physically so, more emotionally unpleasant really.

The monstrosities an exorcist dealt with were forever born from humanity or a distant cousin thereof. The children that were slaughtered had to be cremated or else could rise again, twisted and corrupted. Parts of the spirit could live on, and even base parts of the soul could continue to persist after death. But they were broken, shattered, and splintered in ways that only left the ugliest parts of the psyche intact. The aspects that were envious, angry, or resentful. The primal and dark sides that ushered in destruction.

Darkness was almost always at the core of it all. For everywhere that light had reached, it had gotten there late. The core of the soul was dark and alien—eldritch and eldricht.

Not of this world but instead of where worlds were born.

The Exorcist put the two children’s bodies next to each other. One was mostly a pile of viscera and the other a dried husk. But this wasn’t the worst part of cleaning up. While the bodies could be burned with a flash of evoked fire, the spirits had to be cleansed more gently. Their tether to the physical plane had to be cut off first, so they had to be burned. If even a single grain of dust from their bones was left behind, they would linger and suffer for longer than they deserved.

Di inferni. No one deserves this.

With a focusing of his will, the Exorcist surged fire from his spirit, setting their bodies aflame in smokeless pyre. The burning tongues were colored azure-blue—Ignis Fatus—fate-flame, the most conductive sort of essence for the fatalistic wizardry he and his branch of the Order practiced.

Once a pile of ash was all that were left of them, the Exorcist bound the remnant spirits by Oath. His words turned to invisible lashings of spirit, wrapping around and guiding them into the High Aether.

His incantations were spoken in the High Vitaen tongue of eld, yet his meaning came to the fore and into the fold—echoes of spirit. In between the utterance of lips, Kedweni speech came in twain as the exorcism drew upon the threads that bound all.

To bind any by Oath, and to wrap them fully in the woven web of the Three Fates, the caster had to convey meaning—As Above, So Below. The First Law of Sympathy—Accord—was a simple yet unbreakable natural rule.

To bind any one person or entity’s fate, an exorcist had to make them understand the oaths being sworn. Without meaning to link both, no karmic thread could take hold.

An exorcist could not swear Oath without mutual understanding just as much as a mortal man could tie a knot without hands. Then again, the Exorcist had seen his fair share of kirkos freaks that could make a sailor’s lashing with just their tongues, so perhaps such was not the best metaphor.

“Ab Uno factum est in Multis.”

From One came the Many.

“Et Multi revertetur ad Unum.”

And the Many shall return to the One.

“Per Viverra Pallidus,”

By the Pull of the Pale,

“Per Vocationem Mortis,”

By the Call of the Grave,

“Et per Gravitas in Gurgite,”

And by the Lure of the Maelstrom,

“Accipere ad Proximum Verto Cursus Spiritus.”

Take to the Next Turn of the Wheel.

“Verbum meum est, tuum Fatum,”

My word is thy Fate,

“Et tua Fata est acceptio.”

And thy Fate is acceptance.

“Fatum obligare te."

Fate bind thee.

The Exorcist chanted a prayer. It was not to the gods, not to Oriath or any other deity Kedweni. Or even Vitaen, for that matter.

It was to them: children barely adults whose lives were snuffed out prematurely. And though one of them was at least twenty or so years old, to the Exorcist, he was barely a tyke.

For one who had seen empires fall and kingdoms crumble to the passage of centuries, any and all, even those with crow’s feet upon their eyes, were but children. Ashen hair and frail bodies, age claiming its due, were still newborn to the existence that beheld the changing of time with ageless patience.

Waiting for the end of all monsters in sorrowful and powerless wrath.

The prayer was a form of exorcism that left their spirits in peace instead of anguish, cleansing and clearing away traumas. And then sent their tripartite souls onto the next Turn of the Wheel, their next life.

The tripartite soul was called as such because it was wrought of three: animus, noesis, and psykosis. And when the tethers that bound were severed, the Three Principles separated in sympathy.

Their animus—blazing life-force—would be delivered unto the Aether and returned to the Source. Their noesis—the accumulated essence of knowledge and memory—would be swaddled in the remnants of their psyche—the binding psykosis, the consciousness, the observer behind the veil—and sent unto the Next. Recycled into the Grand Loom of Fate so that the world may continue.

The sight of the bodies of innocents being turned to ash were forever burned unto the Exorcist’s mind. Even if the reason for doing so was justified. Even if it was for the best.

It put weight upon the heart and made the chest ache in fits of sobbing sorrow. Even though the Exorcist did not have an internal human anatomy, he felt the effects nevertheless.

A body may lose its flesh, but the spirit doth not. The soul remembers all with scars of unending and unbeginning eternity.

A serpent that eats its own tail, relishing the texture of each monstrum scale. Afraid of losing a single memory, no matter how much it hurts to relieve the trauma once more.

No different than a druggae addict.

Only in death is the cycle of remembrance broken, although barely. No matter how much one removes the weed by root and stem, it is inevitable that the weed grows back.

The soul is a pest, forever adapting to the universe’s attempts of bringing it to heel. To return to the true order of still nothingness.

Traumatic deaths left the ethereal body in a state similar to biological fight or flight. Spirits being highly adaptable as they were, that plasticity left them susceptible to their environment. They were left yearning for the power to fight what destroyed their host bodies, that which tethered them to the Physical.

The closest thing to power they knew was what ended their corporeal forms, and as such, they mimicked it. Even though some strains of vampirism and undeath were not actually contagious in the formal sense, they still spread through a twisted resonance.

Innocents killed by a monster gazed into the abyss in search of power. It took notice and gave them their wish. They, in turn, became monsters, and the twisted cycle started anew.

Exorcists worked to stop the vicious cycle that left innocents as semblances of their murderers, guiding them towards the light. But then again, that light was not true peace. It was instead a storm of daggers that waited to tear away the precious memories of a lost soul.

It was the Maelstrom.

It was waiting for their souls as the Exorcist prayed, chittering in impatient anticipation for the end of all lives. Hungry for the noesis of unbound psyches floating in the Grand Loch between realities.

The Tunnel Rat - 3rd of Mead’s Tap, Year 1125 A.E.

Delirium and nightmares. The blighted, feverish reality felt like an eternity, yet went by like the blink of an eye. It was the same repeated haunt. A brown-haired boy, no more than five winters, stood in the darkness surrounded by blood that was not his. Coal-dark claws fused with his finger-tips, his face contorting in an insane smile. Iron dust twisted around him like serpents flying on invisible winds.

Scarlet flames, red as blood, burned in the hellscape that beheld the boy. From the fell fires poured smoke black as sin, just its sight enough to choke a man to death and condemn his soul to eternal damnation.

Behind the boy, lay the Red Dragon. The Devil Herself of the Nine Hells. The One Lacquered in Chains that would bring down and bind by fetter all sinners with Herself. Or so Orianthy the Sevenfold Faith sayeth.

The iron dust transformed into chains. Serpentine dust became denser until it was solid, surrounding the brown-haired child in iron links and fetters. He was a chained hound waiting to be released. He wanted nothing more than to rend flesh from bone, burn everything to cinders, and start again. A dark phoenix waiting to be reborn not from his, but from the ashes of others.

To whet his maw and jowls in vibrant red.

He felt a tug on his consciousness, and he was happy to follow it. Anything to get out of this nightmare. Anything.

"Wake up," said an old and fierce voice, "Boy, wake up."

Eiden sat up, slowly blinking his eyes and looking around for the voice. He was still in the tunnels underneath Arvenpyre, but not in his home.

No, he would never be home again.

White marble and black shadows flickered beneath a floating ball of light. In front of Eiden sat a grey-haired man with a will o’wisp hovering over his shoulder. The man was well-built yet wiry, his frame having no fat, only lean muscle. The old man had the look of an itinerant: scruffy beard, unkempt greying hair, and fierce eyes. He had a long black coat made of leather, looking lavish and expensive with a strange metal container at his side. The peculiar contraption looked like a bucket with a lid, having metal clamps locking whatever contents that laid within.

"Your kith and kin are dead." Said the stranger in a somber yet unwavering voice, "And so is the monster. It won't bring them back, but it is dead and never again able to harm another.”

The man had practice. The only emotion present came from his voice. His face was expressionless as if everything that had happened was commonplace. It was like someone just threw a boulder into a calm pond, and its surface continued to be placid with only the barest hint of change.

Eiden's world came crumbling down.

In the dark corners of Eiden’s mind, sorrow festered, burrowing deeper and deeper. As he stared at the hovering ball of light, his heart thrummed as his chest tightened. He wasn't sure if it was grief, sorrow, or anger. Or all of them together. He felt overwhelmed and numb at the same time.

Hells take me. Take me!

Anything but this.

I'm going insane, aren't I?

This can't be happening.

No. Lisa and Bert. No. No. No…

His breath hitched and his lungs heaved. His hands twitched as his shoulders shook. There was no greater torture than that of a mind crumbling upon itself. Stone by stone, it fell. And only when the dust settled, did Eiden breathe in a full yet shuddering breath.

Yet that breath felt like sulfur, burning and wrong. Rotten as sin. Brimstone of the Nine Hells rather than the air of Terra.

"How… how'd you kill it?"

Eiden was surprised by his own speech, not expecting to have said anything at all. His voice broke a little but was otherwise monotone and infused with an eerie calm.

The stranger nodded to his right, where a sword laid against the cold wall.

It was the most beautiful blade Eiden ever saw. Its length was a good two-and-a-half span long.

What did they call it again? A bastard sword?

It had a silvery edge that met with a darker middle section. Runes, indecipherable to Eiden, were etched on the dark center. The scratches made upon its surface were simple yet elegant, flowing in elegant script. Black leather wrapped around the handle, which met with a crossguard made of twisted metal that looked like the roots of an old oak forged from steel. Towards the end of the sword was a simple round pommel with more scrollwork etched on its surface.

A circle in the likeness of a snake eating its own tail. A glyph lay inside the serpentine etching, wound in the manner of a ribbon.

The strangest part of the blade was the ominous feeling that washed over Eiden. It felt, inexplicably, alive. Eiden felt a part of himself reach for the sword, though this was not a physical sort of interaction. It was more of a mental questing than anything else, hands of spirit rather than flesh.

Things of import, things that sparked curiosity, were always so alluring. Be they beast or man, feline or lad, the pull of some things were inexorable.

His awareness carefully caressed the artifact just barely, feeling it pulsing in waves and hearing the voice of its spirit. It had a singing quality, like some queer type of bell, the sound radiating outwards in a ringing fashion.

Bash-Teh-El, the sword whispered in the voice of a sorrowful woman. One that had seen suffering untold and unspeakable, yet still continued to march in her quest for restoration and retribution.

"An oathbinder." Said the stranger, taking Eiden out of his enchanted state. The neophytian connection between the boy and the sword was severed as the fickle shears of attention demanded him to look towards the old man.

"Beautiful ain't it? It's what every exorcist has in their arsenal. A hand-and-a-half sword with a steel core and meteorite-silver edge.

“Though, I just call her Bastille."

Eiden stared back at the sword, extending his awareness once more. Lashings of invisible spirit spread out over the object, touching it fully. Once the skin of his will grazed the edge of the oathbinder, it pulled back quickly in alarm.

Eiden looked down at his finger in dumbstruck awe. It had been nicked, a drop of blood welling on the tip of his digit. A fat round of vibrant red twinkled in the light of the will o’wisp.

It's beautiful but also dangerous. That thing could cut me from over there.

"Yes. It's beautiful, but..." Said Eiden. "Is it, uh... I don't know how to ask this, but is it alive?"

The Exorcist lifted up a brow, eyes narrowing in intrigue. A smile crept up on the corners of his mouth.

"Yes. In a way, it is," Said the Exorcist.

Eiden felt a tug at his being, invisible pressure abounding before the skin of his spirit. The hairs on his neck stood on end as shiver crawled along his spine, the feeling of being watched washing over him in waves of chittering insects. The world itself seemed to have grown eyes that looked over him in the manner that a beast observed its prey and licked its jowls in anticipation.

In an instinctive reaction, Eiden quested along and through the pressure, following it like an errant thread of a roughspun tunic.

It led back to the stranger and exorcist.

The feeling of eyes chittering along the skin of his spirit increased tenfold; Eiden squirmed backwards from the greyen-haired man and away from the influence. The Exorcist's eyes lit up with baleful pity. It was like the stranger saw into his soul, his sight piercing through tangible flesh and into the recesses of the mind.

He saw the crawling insanity that wove itself into the dreams that befell Eiden. He saw the festering maggots upon his soul.

"Awakened. Blessed from a curse." Said the Exorcist in a sorrowful tone as the foreign pressure subsided and relented. Contained within that short sentence was the same timeless and eternal quality that the living sword possessed.

Of someone who had seen far too much suffering to be contained in the span of natural and mortal life.

"Wha-what do you mean?" Asked Eiden.

"Boy, you're a mage now." Said the Exorcist matter-a-factly.

The statement was met with a confused expression.

The Exorcist lifted his right hand, and the will o’wisp darted towards it. Eiden almost forgot about the magickal light as the sword had whisked away all of his attention—a living blade, possessing a conscious spirit was much more alluring than some magickal firefly. The color emanating from the orb changed from warm orange into a piercing blue. Eiden squinted, his eyes overwhelmed by the light.

"With enough practice, you could do this," Said the Exorcist with a wry grin, "and much more. So much more."

The Exorcist got up from the ground he was sitting on and extended a hand to Eiden.

"The name's Fin. You're my apprentice now. Get up, young exorcist.”