4 - 1 [Magus] Tehlos, Arisen from the Cold Below

Erebus, Twin and Brother to Alba, is but a single Face of Lumenari. He is Who Watches Over the Black and the Night-Father. His Heavenly Form is that of the blackmoon, the sphere that cometh when Sola and Dyeus no longer hold vigil.

When the Sky-Judge and Sol-Mother do not watch over Man, Erebus is He Who Watches.

The darkness of the empty firmament is but a middling and unwhole imitation to His Holy Dark. He is Son to Himself and Father to Himself, Lumenari split in Two. Erebus is Son of Himself and Mortus, drinking of the waters of Death.

He is Who Brings Ash to Flame so that all things may have their rightful end. He Who Commands the Specters of Fury to bring the Wayward Dead back to the Pale River.

-Mandatos Erebh-Ayinn, Holy Scripture of the Cult of the Night-Eye.

The Red Priest of Berrowden - 17th of Last Frost, Year 1125 A.E.

The Priest woke up in cold sweat. His dreams turned nightmares left his heart pounding and his skin clammy.

It was a black night—a voidmoon, as the peasantry was wont to call it.

The Great Whitemoon Alba vanished from the eventide like it always did from time to time, leaving only the faintest glimmer of the blackmoon. A hungry void darker than the rest of the nighten sky. Abyssian-black to the point that the middling moon seemed to shine. The stars were the only beacons in the night.

A warning from Erebus, the Blacken Twin and Watcher over the Veil.

The Priest extended his spirit over the Ethereal Tide, blanketing it with the skin of his will. The Tide around him writhed in agony, the essence of death and blood hanging thick in the sea of spirits.

A slaughter, Gods Above. And this close to Berrowden.

The Priest got up and put on his black clergy vestiments. Robes that bore a red cross infamous for their blood-soaked history. He had to alert the guards and prepare for a cleansing ritual.

The spirits have to be exorcised, or else we’ll have undead roaming the lands again. Or worse, it could rupture a breach into the Void.

His frail voice would not reach far enough. And he did not trust such bad news in the hands of any other. Besides that, no other could perform the ritual but him. The closest Dyeus priesthood was a good five leagues west.

The Priest would have to walk, he realized with a scowl forming in the rictus that was his wrinkled brow. His ashwood staff supported his weight as he trodded along and out of the Orianthian church.

The door to the sacred ground burst open with a flick of his Authority. Temples, even minor ones such as this, would heed to his call to an extent. Especially if he called upon his patron.

Bernard Thethelsten took a wide berth from the sister temple to the right of his own, lest he alert a certain someone to what was to happen.

The bitch can not catch wind of this. She’ll take all the credit and I’ll be left to pick crumb in this nine-damned, backwater town.

The Priest walked as fast as his staff let him through the torchlit streets of Berrowden, his old age impeeding anything more than a slightly fast walk. His joints creaked, and his bones felt brittle. His patience was starting to run out, frustration building up to increasingly dangerous levels.

Damn this all to the Nine Hells. The Red Dragon take thee, you…

The Priest extended his ashwood staff towards the night sky, chanting a holy verse in the High Vitaen tongue of eld. And though he and his Faith had been exiled, they were wont to not let go of their natal language.

The ardent adherents of the Sevenfold Faith held onto their holy scripture with claw and fetter.

“Septem, qui regnas sub Oriati in Caelum, da mihi lumen tuum.

“Sit fulgur effundam de caelo, ut ego effundam essentia, vita in verbis.

“Fulgur percusserit!”

[The Seven, who reignest under Oriath in Heaven, give me your light. Let lightning pour out of the sky, as I pour the essence of life in words. Lightning strike!]

From the depths of his oathbound soul, the Priest evoked power not of himself but of his patron deity—Oriath the All-Father, Lord of War and Dominion. The borrowed spirit burned through the invisible channels of his own etheric self, the transcendent energy too much for a mere mortal to contain.

From On High, came mana most holy. Sacred clay to be molded by his mortal will.

His eyes burned purest, neveian white. Veins like the cracks of wood in a hearth burned with albine ember through his skin. The Morning Star of Mars floated inside his mind, bright and blinding. More luminous pinpricks came to the fore and into the fold, lines binding them in twain and forming a celestial sigil.

Spear of Caestus.

The Priestly Constellation endowed him with the minimum resistance needed to withstand the otherworldly energies that were channeled through him. It brought forth Authority, ethos of the Divine and Their grasp over the fabric of reality.

He was a vessel, cracking under the strain of a single spark of divinity. Not even an ember it was, and the Priest was already straddling the knife’s edge. If not for the Constellation bound to the Morning Star of Mars, his death would’ve come in with the dawn.

Light coalesced onto the tip of the Priest's staff. It pooled up until it could barely be contained into an orb, its surface writhing and undulating like the waves of the Dark Ocean. The sphere radiated white-hot light, blinding and caustic to the sight.

As the Priest finished his chant, the orb shot up into the sky, a beacon in the dark. It reached its apex under the cloudless, starry void, thousands of leagues above land.

Tendrils of lightning sprouted from the orb; roots of light guided by the Priest struck a quarter league away in the forest.

Less than a blink of an eye later, thunder came. It was an invading sound as if emanating from inside one’s chest.

By the Blind Mother’s wrinkly arse. I have to hurry now, that bean’shee will be awoken from her crypt by the noise.

Gotta rouse some guards and peasants. I’ll even take a mule if need be.

Can’t let ‘er get there before me.

At the thought of more coin and holy magicks, Bernard shuffled faster. And at the mere notion of being rid of the priestess for good, he ran.

Though, his running mostly consisted of stumbling gait and curses sworn to no one in particular.

Nobody slept through that black night.

The One Awoken - The End of All Things

Tehlos, the End of All Things had come.

All things had their end in their beginnings. All returned to their source, the Turning of the Wheel inexorable.

Ash blotted out the sun, plunging the Earth into darkness. Yet for the one Awoken, the Black was not suffocating.

It was home. A blanket against the harsh warmth of the burning light.

It was the cradle. A place where the darkness embraced the shadow.

It was the Cold Below.

The disparity of individuality was subsumed into the Abyss, the Toothless Maw of the Beast that Dwelt Beneath Creation. There was no up nor down. The Earth was no longer different from the nothingness from which it was built upon.

The Many returned to the One. All was dark and still and cold.

All was quiet.

The comforting darkness beckoned and the one Awoken heeded to its call, letting the Black swaddle the shadowling in the fabric from which all souls came.

The one Awoken was plunged unto the wings of dark slumber, of the Night Mother Herself. A womb of placid nothingness enraptured the shadowling, pulling the one Awoken into the depths of the depths.

No, such was not right, the shadowling realized. This was not the bottom of existence but instead its core.

A heart wrought of void pulsed and bent the surrounding nothingness in waves. It was but a tiny round, no larger than what the one Awoken barely remembered as an eye.

The bending of the placid and still waters of Oblivion were like a baker tossing and kneading dough. Bit by bit, the fabric of nothingness, upon which existence was formed, was stretched.

New darken cloth was formed, the fabric of space expanding. Even when the End of All Things came, some functions of the universe continued on. A corpse that did not know to die. A spirit that lived on even when the body ceased to draw upon vital breath.

A dead man walking.

And from nothing came more nothing. A paradox, a bending of logic not so easily seen in the waking world before it was engulfed in the Ash. Before it was subsumed into the Maw of the Beast Below.

Amidst the waters of nothingness, logic was what one made it to be. When nothing could be certain, all was made possible. The waking will of the one Awoken held Authority over all natural law, for all other wills had been extinguished. Logos could be bent like a wreath even in the Physical by a mere working of intent

The next statement is true. The previous statement is false.

Hollow and waiting to be filled, the newborn fabric was. Yet, now as all were devoured and turned back into whole abyssian cloth, the nothingness reigned.

It was jug without water, empty and dry. It was scabbard without blade, useless and meek.

It was earth without seed, barren and lifeless.

For all came from the primal stillness, the firmament from which Creation sprung upon. It was the soil from which the World Tree’s tendrils sprouted. And the twain roots of the Twisted Husk burrowed.

And when space was no longer delineated by substance and the subsummation of disparity was fully effectuated, did time no longer hold meaning. The fabric of reality was made of twinned and braided cloth spun from the Twain Ewes of Eothas and Ravah.

Without one, there could not be the other.

Time and space, unbraided and dissolved into the still waters of Oblivion and the caustic, bubbling blood of the Primordial Dark. The passage of eons was no longer linear but instead circular like a dancer bent back unto themselves—Limbus.

There was no space, and neither was there substance to inhabit it. All were subsumed into the Black.

Eons pass as doth breath.

A blink is effectuated in the time that cosmic dust births stars, their lights go still and dead, and their corpses turn to living worlds.

And in the flicker of waking consciousness, of when the universe perceives itself, of a thousand-thousand millennia, has a single second been traced.

A circle with no beginning and no end. Infinity eternal, unbeginning and unending.

The Many returned to the One. All was dark and still and cold.

All was quiet.

Eons pass as doth breath.

A light flickered into being. A wisp tiny and insignificant amidst the Cold Below. And yet that was enough to catalyze disparity into being once more.

The wisp of radiance was blinding to the one once Awoken.

The Light spoke, the words divine mandate made manifest. And yet, they felt oddly familiar, bringing about comfort like the smell of mum’s cooking or the teachings of father, be they of bow or the splitting of timber.

Memories of time long since passed when Eothas still spun His wool. Before the Ash came to End All Things.

Before the one Awoken broke the world.

So that nothing else may make accursed noise.

So that suffering no longer took hold.

“Awake o’ Child of the Stars. Shadowling born of dark and light.

“Grey as ash thou art, for the Black is thy mother and thy father the White.

“Rise o’ Ashen One Awoken.

“World-Eater thou art, not for oblivion neverending but for rebirth.

“Bringer of the Quiet, heed the call.

“All Things must have their End.

“Even the End itself.

“Rise Luaithreach, born of Gheleach Dubh and Gheleach Geal.

“Be Named o’ Child.

“Bearach Liath, Blade of Dusk and Dawn.”

The Light encompassed all and brought forth the Dawn.

The End met the End, so that All Things may have their Beginning.

Let there be accursed light nevermore, swore the one Awoken.

And so it was not done.

The Lone Sparrow - 17th of Last Frost, Year 1125 A.E.

Consciousness came upon Barry like the waves of the sea, ebbing and flowing in fits of waking will. Memories of his dreams were fleeting things, like sand falling through the cracks of his fingers.

His head felt cold, its insides full of icy breath. His mind was clouded with visions of darkness and blinding black. Of strange and weird dreams that made no sense.

Eld whispers caressed his thoughts, disappearing as gently as they came to the fore and into the fold.

Ashen one Awoken.

Luaithreach.

Child of the Stars.

He shook his head, dispelling the malaise that hung over his mind. Now was not the time to indulge in flights of whatever fancy that was.

The armless mercenary propped his back against the wall of a damp cave. It was barely big enough for him, more like a foxhole or some other beast’s burrow rather than cavern proper.

The mercenary held his hands in the gesture of Tithe-Bearer, his fingers coiled back tightly as if he beheld a coin between forefinger and thumb. He kissed his thumb, afterwards lifting his fist up into the would-be sky.

His clenched hand came open, a single middle-finger borne to the uncaring heavens. A bird for Them Above. Ain’t no dove, but They Who Dwell in the Seven Peaks of Mont Caelum don’t get to complain I gave ‘em a hissin’ goose rather than white pigeon.

His mother would’ve wacked him upside the head were she here to witness the blasphemy. Were she here to behold the silent, although mocking prayer to the Seven.

Here’s hoping this ain’t a bear’s den. Yet, with you Seven-blessed lot’s fuckin’ viciousness, I’d reckon though that this exactly that. And in the midst of winter too.

A bitter chuckle threatened to escape Barry’s dried and cracked lips.

For all that I told meself I wouldn’t become like me pa. Here I am: wailing at the Heavens for all the bad that’s happened.

Barry’s feverish and disjointed memories led him to believe he collapsed here because of exhaustion. One was barely tired during a fight as the bloodrush kept them wide awake. But soon enough, once a battle was over, fatigue came to claim its debt in double.

A price paid in full and all that.

Barry was broken and weak, and yet he never felt as powerful before. His arms had been lost, yet he knew with the help of his newfound magicking he could summon new ones in their stead.

At least, he thought so. Barry had yet to attempt to conjure them. Though, when he looked inside himself, into his secondary body wrought not of flesh and bone and blood but of substance insubstantial, the sight was not a portent of good things to come.

The spirit’s like a reflection o’ sorts. But one made in muddy water, hazy and more simple than the real thing. Like a tyke’s carving on the bark of an oak.

What’s that word? Distiminate? No, no… Distilant? Close…

Ah. Distillate. The spirit’s like alcohol distilled from messy mash.

Flesh made simpler.

Which brought upon the other? Distilled alcohol is called spirit too.

Channels, invisible to mundane sight, ran their course all throughout his spirit, coalescing into three main caverns. Each cavity was linked to a region on the physical body, Barry felt so with a queer sort of surety. It was like how one knew where their limbs were in the dark—intrinsic knowledge.

One cavern of the spirit lay inside his head. The second was nestled in the core of his chest, bound to his heart. And the final was woven to his gut and stomach, terminating at his navel. The sight of them was more akin to touch and pressure than any sort of definite gaze, making the perception of these cavities and what lay inside hazy.

Hazy like a stupor induced by smoke-leaf or milk o’ the poppy.

The edges of the channels that wove between the caverns were frayed like spent cord and ragged lashings. Spiritual humors seeped into places that Barry reckoned they did not belong in. The skin of his will was shedding in layers, a tarnished coat of white hanging over spirit-flesh the color of a moonless night.

Flesh is weak and spirit be willing, my bloody arse. Me spirit’s fuckin’ spent like a candle at the end of its wick and drowning innae sea of wax.

The mercenary took a few proper breaths to inspect his surroundings, and what he found struck him with awe once more.

If me bell gets rung with any more startlement like this again, I’ll become lame in the head by the ‘morrow.

The night was dark and the whitemoon had all but vanished. And yet, to Barry, the Black was not a hindrance. His sight pierced the dark, although the colors were muted, making all hue indistinguishable from grey. His cone of vision was now a full circle around his body like he had eyes at the back of his head. The farther out he tried to see with the sight of his spirit, the more blurry the sight became.

A few steps away from him were clear as a spring, but after that, all was distorted like a muddy pond.

Barry let out a sigh of relief as he found no bears in his vicinity. Even with decent armor and a spear, the damn things were hard to kill, especially the northern variety with its brownish fur.

The newfound sight of spirit was hazy and weak, but Barry felt by just using it, the sense became sharper and easier to understand.

How many magicks do I even have? This stuff is startin’ to get a bit too much. Gonna hav’ta start keepin’ a ledger. Though, can’t much write, now cannae?

A child of snarl and smile crept up on the corner of the mercenary’s lips, the memory of the fight with the undead prominent on his mind. On one hand, he had gained abilities that he only ever heard in tales of myth and legend. On the other, he had lost all that he knew as his second family.

Rodrick, his closest mate and lover.

Stregor, his mentor in martial forms and second-father.

Deoch, his brother-found and drinking buddy.

And many more. So many more. Lost and never again to be seen.

Grief bordering on sorrow threatened to flood him and unravel his wits into heaving sobs. Yet, Barry had seen many of his mates killed before his very eyes afore the day the ash blotted out the sun.

He would endure.

Like sheathing a sword back into its scabbard, the mercenary tucked away the hurt and tragedy into the deepest recess of his mind. There would be a time for grief and remedy, but now with a foot already in the Pale River, he had no room to spare.

As the sorrow was placed into the crevices of his soul, ellation came to the fore. No one walking his path of slaughter and bloodshed could continue on without developing a taste for battle.

And what a battle it was.

Fighting was no different than any other vice. Be it drink, or whoring, or druggae, it was as much addicting. Bloodrush. As the memories of the fight flitted through Barry’s mind, his heart thrummed like a Strosunian skald’s drum, sending his blood anew in phantom vigor.

He remembered it all. Every single blotch of ash and each movement of his body and spirit.

The feeling of the gargantuan might behind his strikes, like the weight of the very world were thrust upon his arms. The howling wind around his limbs that endowed him with the power of tempest.

The inexorable pull his lungs had on his surroundings, like the will of the Dragon Below waiting and plotting to devour Terra whole. Not even the undead’s blacken locust-flame could escape the vortex that was his awoken spirit.

Can I call upon that fell fire again? Is it even my own anymore? Or is this like trying to cup water in me hands, a temporary sort of thing?

Does that power wane?

Though Barry could remember much of the fight, he could not recall how he manifested those black flames. It was no learned technique but instead instinctual reaction. They had begged to be let out then, and he heeded to the call of their freedom. Now, no locust-fire ached to be let free into the world, the base of his spirit hollow and empty like a pitcher without water.

Can’t stay ‘ere for too long. My lungs still hurt like the Nine Hells. Seven-cursed broken rib, damn thing’s poking me like a dirk.

First, the mercenary tried lifting himself up without his arms. It did not work well, especially when he fell back on his rump, sending a bolt of pain through his broken and battered bones.

The bone dagger that pierced his lungs burrowed deeper. His muscles, especially his diaphragm, spasmed in pain. The blood in his head throbbed in sympathy as the taste of steel in his mouth came into the fold.

Best I summon those ashen arms then fall again. I don’t think I can get up from another bout o’ that.

Barry tried calling forth the ashen limbs that had saved him, but all it accomplished was to make his stumps smart again.

And yet, through the dull ache, the mercenary marched on, eliciting more agony as he clenched the muscles of his will.

His body and spirit were set ablaze in phantom flame. It was like losing his arms all over again, though on a much more personal level. The spirit, it seemed, was much more in tune with the mind than the flesh. The pain left him dizzy and nauseous, head filled with cotton and lung bereft of vital breath.

His left arm had been cut just below the bicep, and from below his right shoulder had been lost. One burned to a crisp and the other felled by inhuman blade. Uneven and ugly, the scars on their skin were not white nor pinkish like normal scar-flesh, but instead greyen like ash.

Like his stumps had been coated in tar and then dipped in a dead flame.

A word was whispered into his ears, like some queer ghast flitted unseen just to his right.

Luaithreach.

Barry turned, his singed neck hairs standing on end. His sight wasn’t constrained to his eyes, but the instinct was overpowering.

There was no soul inside the burrow but him. Barry was alone, though now quite unnerved.

Seems bein’ so close to the Pale River is makin’ me start to hear the dead. Either that or I’m startin’ to go insane. Mayhaps a bit o’ both?

Once the pain and bout of malaise eased, Barry tried again, pushing forth his will. Yet it was for naught. The muscles of his spirit cramped, sending his body into spasms of sympathetic agony.

Fibers, both of flesh and substance insubstantial, broke apart as they contracted and their tendons stretched far too much. Each spiritual tendril that sheared itself away was a wound to the very soul. A pain unavoidable and unignorable, shaped into a knife that was plunged straight to the core of his being.

In between the flashes of cold lightning crawling along his arched spine, came thoughts of the past.

Stregor’s voice, brittle and callous as gravel yet sharp as steel, came to the fore of his mind.

Breath, lad, is where the mind is mastered. Master your breath, bring it to heel, and the mind shall follow. Only after your breathing has stilled can you reign in your thoughts with your will.

No different than trying to control a man without bonds, you cannot master the mind without lashings. It needs to be leashed by the shackles of your lungs.

Breathe out til yer lungs are empty. Slowly, like droplets of dew tracing down a herb’s stalk, let out the air. No matter if yer body aches for breath, do not give in. No matter if yer heart thrums with fear of death, do not give. No matter if yer sight darkens and Mortus beckons with sickle and scale over yer neck, do not give in.

Master the breath, and the mind shall follow.

Put pressure on your diaphragm and guts, like yer trinna extend yer belly past yer breeches. Do so until all breath has left yer lungs.

Master the breath, and the mind shall follow.

And only when no more air can be expelled from your body, should you breathe in. And do so even more slowly than before. Like ants crawling up a tree, take breath step by step. Even if yer lungs beg for more, endure. Even if yer skin turns as pale as snow, endure. Even if your nails turn corpse-flesh dark, endure.

Even when your mind turns light as a feather and your balance is uneasy, endure.

Master the breath, and the mind shall follow.

Barry breathed in accordance with Stregor's teachings. Through the pain of his cramping and wounded spirit, he breathed. Through the phantom agony of his lost limbs, he breathed.

Through the sorrow and grief that crept from the dark corners of his mind, he breathed.

The Flowing-River Breath took hold, settling upon body and spirit like a blanket of snow upon the earth come First Frost.

His mind turned light as a feather, untethered to the flesh and the bone and the blood as his breath stilled like hoarfrost creeping upon metal. His waking will shackled his spirit in fetters of adamant, bringing it to heel.

Barry held the image of the ashen limbs in his mind and imposed it upon his spirit, binding the memory of sight upon substance insubstantial.

If one without magick tried to impose their order upon the world, not much would happen. But, as one with a drop of magicking in them, with an Awoken soul, Barry’s ministrations of concentrated will did indeed bring about change.

The act was no different than tensing a muscle long forgotten. It was weak, but by commanding it to contract again and again, natural control was regained.

His stumps bled tar coated in ash, tendrils of sooty spirit-made-physical wriggling like blind pups to their mother’s teets. Hissing bouts of white mist coiled and danced around the writhing rootlings.

After a few blinks, the wriggling mass of tar and ash subsided and receded back into the sheath that was his second body. There was only so much Barry’s spirit could give, it seemed. His will was too wounded and his magicking skill lacking.

It was like expecting seed to yield crop in a single Wheelen week, Barry reckoned. It seemed that cultivation of spirit was no different than mundane farming, requiring patience and repetition to bear fruit.

Stregor’s teachings were not enough, but they had given Barry a push in the right direction. No single technique could fell a foe, the mercenary knew. Footwork, stances, guards, strikes, and a multitude of other technicae had to be employed in tandem.

The mercenary returned to his quiet meditation and practice of breath. Like training with martial forms and stances, bouts of epiphany were sure to come in the state of mindful mindlessness he found himself in.

Time passed, both an eternity and a blink. Focus was the druggae of all scholars, be they of bloodied blade or inky quill. And with the sickle and scale hanging over his neck, the imbibement of such came easily as breath.

His thoughts were leaves upon a river, flowing in and let go by the sieve of his will. The connection to his spirit enhanced the state of flowing thought like oil to a flame. As did the countless battles that had set Barry teetering on the knife’s edge of life and death.

Bloodshed and hardship were the whetstones that sharpened his wits to a fine spear point tip. This would be no different.

Barry shackled his mind with his breath, and yet it floated as free as a feather. And in the floating stillness, the black expanse of his mind, came memories like lightning in the night.

“Com’ on Barry, you can do it!” Said a woman, smile warm and green eyes kind.

“One more step!” In the windows of her soul there was patience and silent pride. Her brown hair trailed around her neck in a braid.

A man stood behind her, head the hue of Sun’s Height wheat and eyes grey as dead ash, yet burning with living cinder.

They stood like giants to the tiny one who ambled along on shaky legs. Yet the tiny one did not fret.

They were ma and pa.

The first remembrance was one Barry didn’t even know he possessed. It was tucked away like scrolls written in some ancient and eld language with no one left among the living to decipher them. Their parchment were abandoned to collect dust in the dark corners of the mind.

Might as well have been a dead tongue lost to time given the mercenary’s illiterateness.

Other memories came cascading into his head. They came fast with the flood of flowing thought. Hard to keep a hold of them, it was.

Like trying to catch the flashes of light reflected off naked and polished steel.

First came the memories of Barry’s childhood in a small and unnamed hamlet in the Kewdeni North. Most that knew of it called it either “the Hamlet” or Heimvar’s Villy after the ealdorman. Though, the name was not entirely set in stone given its middling populace.

And that Heimvar was a right prick, what with his mistreatment of the hamlet’s middling coin.

His mum looked so young in the memories, nothing like the wrinkled she-devil Barry left back home with his pa. Nothing like the white-haired woman that oft wore a displeased expression.

Then came other visions. Memories Barry held no true recollection of and though they felt familiar were also, inexplicably, part of a different time.

A different life perhaps. Another past Turn of the Wheel where his eternal soul had occupied another body.

Barry saw a figure jumping from rooftop to rooftop in a city under the starry night sky. He had never seen a city proper before. First because the Hamlet was quite far from any large settlements. And second because mercenary bands weren’t needed nor allowed near such places given their natal abundance of guardsman and lordbound armies.

The life of a mercenary was on the frontiers; the borderlands where local militias were often not enough to defend against banditry or raids from other nations.

A dance of shadows was waged between the starlit, twin-mooned sky above, and the lamplit, alien streets below.

Streets wrought of cobbled stone and houses of brick and mortar, plaster and wood. The roofs had shingles of reddened clay, though the figure that ran atop them made no sounds.

Their steps were as silent as the grave, sound devoured by their waking will.

The figure was clad in black and crawling darkness, featureless as a Lumenari aerendghast, or angel as they were called in Sothron Kedwen.

Shadows thickened around their limbs, slithering like serpents around their arms. The shadows were tensed and coiled, and then let free.

Strings of shadow substantial shot forth onto walls and roofs and pulled the figure forward. At times, it was a burst and heave and at others, the figure swung, using the coils like a sailor’s rope.

The dance of shadows was like the acrobatics performed by a kirkos troupe. And the limberness the figure possessed was like the shadows themselves; fluid and contorting to whichever shape needed.

They were one with the gloom.

As the soulborne memory faded, epiphany came to the fore. Where the first vision had ignited the embers in his heart, providing the impetus he sorely needed, the second had brought an idea. An inkling of what to do.

Barry descended from the heights of the Flowing-River Breath, letting it only marginally affect his mind. He focused upon his spirit and repelled at it with his will.

Pressure abounded as he tightened the self-imposed bonds upon the essence of his being.

And when his spirit was a coiled serpent ready to strike, he let it free from its shackles.

Shadows exploded from his form along with the dredges of whiten spirit-skin. The final layer of normality was shed from his essence, leaving behind the pure stuff of darkness. White steam dissipated into nothingness.

Crawling darkness swirled around him, touching the world with hands not of flesh, but of spirit. The newfound sense of spiritual touch was overwhelming on Barry’s mind, drowning him and sending his head abuzz.

It was maddening to feel each and every texture of stone and dirt and root around him. The sheer magnitude and depth of sensation brought him to the brink.

And then sent him plunging into the abyss.

Barry opened his eyes to the dark expanse of his mind. Grey water was at his feet, stretching into the eternal black.

A thousand-thousand hands clawed at his back and shoulders, pulling him into the greyen abyss. Their skin was black as a moonless night and their fingers long and queer like leafless branches in the dead of winter.

No, Barry thought with no small amount of anxiety and dread.

And it was done.

The hands let go of him and fell into the greyen waters. Their point of entry frothed and churned for a moment before settling back into stillness.

Where am I? Barry asked himself.

The mind; a place of pure thought, he himself answered.

Barry had reckoned that after all he had experienced, nothing could possibly get stranger. He was wrong, oh so very wrong.

Why am I here? He asked.

Escape. The outside overwhelms and drowns, he himself answered.

Well… Do ya know how’ta fix that?

No.

Well, fuck.

Barry walked upon the still waters of his mind. At first, the fear of falling through grounded him to a spot, but after seeing he stood just fine, Barry realized he was in no danger.

The greyen waters felt lukewarm, too cold to be comfortable yet too hot to be natural. Walking upon them felt like abounding atop smooth stone.

At first it was a single step and then a mild walk and finally a sprint. The greyen waters at his feet remained still and placid no matter how much he pounded them with his heel. Barry looked back to where he started, and simply thought of going back.

Not a blink later, he found himself there.

There’s no space here. This is all what I make of it. Imaginary.

I’m inside my own mind, in the core of my spirit. It’s probably that cavern that’s bound to me head.

Though Barry would’ve liked to play around more in this place of lucid dream and pure thought, he had to return to the real and waking world. With his broken and battered body, he would not survive for long.

The simple wish of returning to the waking world brought him there.

Barry opened his eyes to the darkness. He was not blind in the black, the spiritual sight still there. Though, thankfully, the overwhelming sense of touch was absent.

While Barry sat there, breathing out in exhaustion, he felt something different in his being. Like an errant thread of a tunic, it beckoned to be pulled.

He pulled at the thread, hungry for answers.

He pulled at it until it snapped.

The scales were lifted from his eyes as eld whispers graced his mind.

Scour the fat with sacred flame.

Skin peels back and flesh burns away.

Ashen bone borne to the world.

Whatever veil separated him from his spirit was lifted, letting Barry truly feel the shadow inhabiting his body. Where before the internal spirit-sight had been hazy and blurred, now it was clear as a spring.

Barry spread his awareness over his Inner Shadow, finally seeing it in all its grace. Muscles and spiritual fibers that were not entirely self-evident before were now at the fore. Barry had flexed and commanded them afore, yet he had done so by instinct and without proper connection.

A drowning man grasping at straws, no longer, the whispers murmured in a distorted semblance of his own voice.

Scour the fat with sacred flame.

Skin peels back and flesh burns away.

Ashen bone borne to the world.

Luaithreach.

Barry uttered the words with his lips, sounding them out.

“Lu-aith-re-ach.”

At first, it was slow and pernambulant, like a drowsy mut getting up from a long night’s sleep. And then, the name was said sure as stone and unwavering as the depths of the Dark Ocean.

“Luaithreach.”

Like unsheathing quality steel, the utterance brought forth power and weighten comfort. Like a perfectly executed Dreiwunder to the forearm, the feeling of might and skill was undeniable.

The soul was borne, true and raw. This was no feeling coming from his spirit, from his flesh-made-simple, but of the core of his core. Of the marrow of his bones.

Not of spirit, but soul.

Authority over the natural fell over Barry’s shoulders like a cloak. A single willing brought the fibers of spirit under heel, natural as breathing. Scepter and crown were in the hands of his will, just like his Awakening.

“Form.” He commanded, and so it was done.

Tendrils of viscous shadow drifted away from his stumps, wriggling like worms. The threads coalesced and bound themselves together into semblances of arms.

The spirit limbs were more insubstantial than their first appearance, wrought of smoke-stuff that held no strength nor true weight. This time, their skin was not ashen, but pure darkness, shifting like the waves of the sea.

As quickly as cloak, scepter, and crown were laid upon his being, they were taken away. Or more aptly, the preternatural authority returned to the origin.

To the soul.

Barry let out a guttural laugh, tears streaming down his cheeks. Whether they were tears of joy or insanity, he did not yet know. Especially with the whispers at the edges of his awareness.

By the Gods, I might live!

Barry pushed himself off the damp, cavern floor. His shadow-wrought limbs almost collapsed under his weight, yet the grin on his face stayed firm.

He felt the bone-dagger in his right lung shift as he stammered forth. The pain threatened to push him to the ground. Yet he endured.

Barry slowly made his way over to the cave entrance, looking up at the cloudless, starlit sky.

A hungry blackmoon gazed back into his green eyes.

A bolt of lightning struck far away in the horizon, lighting up the void for an instant. And soon came the thunder.

The joyous smile at his lips warred with the snarl of pain that brought down his brows.