8 - 1 [Magus] Dance the Danse Macabre with The Godlings of the Pale River

Dyeus judges in life and Mortus in death. Sola watches Man during day and Lumenari during night. Alba holds vigil over the Veil and Oriath over All Things.

Who then, watches when no other God does?

Who then, when all others are asleep, holds constant vigil forevermore?

She Who Remembers knows Their Names and has struck Them from the record of breath and word written.

They are the Forefathers. They are the precursors to the Gods Themselves, Their thrones usurped by Their Sons Most Holy.

The Forefathers are enemies of Man and all life that walks upon Terra Mundus.

They Who Shall Not Be Named were here before the Empty Firmament was split in twain to form Heavens and Earth. Before disparity was set upon the Fabric that Bore the World.

And They shall be here in the End of All Things.

-Mandatos Mannah-Daath, Holy Scripture of the Cult of the Soothsayer.

The Blue Priestess of Berrowden - 1st of Evening Star, Year 1125 A.E.

Gods, I need some teh. Even the piss-poor stock from Kiervo would be good enough.

Emiliar found it quaint how the sellsword followed her so easily with no bickering nor daggering—a welcome reprieve from foolhardy young lads that thought they could cow her.

The Kedweni South was none too kind to women with the rise of a cabal of nine-damned priests in the last century that preached propriety and other falsehoods.

By the Crone’s Ken, Elaria is a goddess of passion and lust. Yet they spew their diatribes of proper clothing and the covering of the skin.

All of Her Holy Idols are bare-skinned beauties bereft of cloth and with breast borne to the world. And if that weren’t enough, Her Divine Name means whore in the Akaen tongue—Helaria, a comforter of beds.

With but a middling shake of her head, the Priestess dispelled her wayward thoughts. She could do no more as her neck felt stiff and cramped from her lack of rest.

The two came out from the infirmaria, the well-balanced doors closing themselves with barely a groan or moan. Emilia made a turn two span later as the healing room was close to the bend of the halls, a ninety-degree angle of stone bricks dressed with tapestries of whiten cloth, their surfaces embroidered with azure thread—the common schema for Mahna, the Soothsayer of the Seven, known commonly as the Heavenly Crone.

A few span later, at the middle of the hall beyond the bend, Emilia stopped at a door and gestured with her staff, the chimes and loops ringing against each other melodically. Within such sound contained kennen most arkane, the stuff of the inner workings of reality itself.

Therein lay the Song of Star and Gossamer, bound in twain forevermore by the arkana of the witch-god Herself.

“This here shall be your room for a time.” She said, her voice heavy with gravitas and growing fuller with the pause.

Emilia hoped such would convey the importance of the would-be blade that hung over the sellsword before her.

King’s Kedwen was no place for a mage unfettered.

“The Inquisition takes none too kindly to unsanctioned magicking. Yet, as far as those nine-damned red-coats are concerned, they will not prod at ye here.

“Magickers, even without a proper Academy seal or unsworn of oath, are not hunted down in holy ground.

“You’re now under me wing and considered part of the Mahnaenic Order; for so long as you stay in town.”

Her eyes sharpened, favoring him with all the edge of a blade pressed to the throat.

“No impregnatin’ lasses, ye hear me? I’ll have none of that, ‘ere.

“Understood?”

Though her question was aired as such, the lad knew damn well that it wasn’t one where anything but a single ‘aye’ could answer.

That is, without her hitting him upside the bell with that staff o’ hers.

He favored her with a nod in response; she laughed a hearty laugh equal parts cough and mirth.

“Oh gods, it’s easy to get ye in a twist. No need to be so serious, boyyo.

“I care not if the apprentices sleep around. We got potions and druggae of all kinds to avoid any of ‘em being with child.

“So long as ye’all keep it quiet from the town; it’d be a scandal otherwise. Down ‘ere, in these parts, propriety has become… fashionable as the plague, shall we say.

“Besides, the bodies are theirs, are they not? Who am I to play the petty tyrant over the wise women.

“Now, go on git. Sola’s Grace is a wastin’.”

The lad’s face was bemused as all Limbus, tilted to the side and eyebrows high. He shook his head, dismissing his confusion for now as he went inside and closed the door to change.

It amused Emilia to no end the lad’s need for privacy. Not that she begrudged him the right. No, such came from a place of motherly ken.

She had seen all of his body when healing him; a mediker worth their salt could not simply heal the apparent. A subtle wound could be not seen with cursory glance, such as a bruise indicative of internal bleeding.

Hells, she had seen parts of him even more intimate.

She had peeked into his spirit and soul; neither were found wanting.

To know a person truly, down to the marrow of their bones and core of their core, was impossible. But Man made due with the little scraps available.

The next best thing was to know what a person was like to do when in a position of power over another. When no chains bound, true colors were revealed and whatnot.

Yet, though the Priestess Emilia had her need for inquisition, it was a thing borne of caution. She needed to know to better protect those under her wing. She would not so easily give power lest it be abused and hoarded over those without.

And so, the Maiden of the Crone did the opposite. She made the lone mercenary as uncomfortable as he could be. As vulnerable and powerless as possible, within reason.

Instead of laying his sleeping body atop a bed in proper quarters with a crackling hearth, she left him to dry out in the cold and atop a rough-hewn table of the infirmaria; the healing room.

Window shutters were open wide as can be, inviting the chill with the promise of worthwhile feast, to inhabit the flesh and bring to heel the unruly heat.

What’s a banquet without ambiance? She herself jested, as though the words would make her acts any less conniving. Any less like the scheming swit of a priest that made home of Berrowden along with her.

Serpent-in-holyman’s-dress thou art, you right prick.

The Maiden of the Crone lit the oldest and most odorous of incense, reserved for punishment and breaking of virtue in the Room Without Windows.

Crone’s Ever-Seeing Eyes, that’s vile. Amitarium myrrh is downright miasmic.

She dressed the man in only a cloth herself, to guard at least his loins from winter—for though her ministrations were as cold as gust that came from without, Emilia was no spawn of Kalagadra, no bean’shee.

The Maiden of the Crone did what she did for necessity; she bore her sins with the grim rictus of a woman particular to the ken of lesser evils.

Manipulation aside, better a bit of discomfort for a stranger, than a warlock let loose among a henhouse of pacifistic monks. At the thought, Emilia’s wrinkly face constricted into a biting smile, all teeth and taunt.

Not that all here are simple livestock.

As the highest ranking clergyman in this Mahnaeanic temple, she possessed the most amount of divine Ethos. A single working of her will spread far and wide, deep and inexorable.

Were she to ask the very flagstones beneath her feet to lift and hover like a hummingbird, they would. Were she to tell another to die, they would keel over on the spot and breathe their last breath.

Her words, Mandatum Most Holy.

For, within the confines of the holy ground, Emilia Forentes was the Arbiter of the Heavenly Sage Herself. And she would be damned to the Nine were a single hair of the wise women therein be harmed.

Better a bit of discomfort for a stranger, she told herself, trying in vain to soothe worries that could not be quieted temporarily. The cries of an unwanted babe could only be stopped by more permanent means.

Yet such was a price Emilia was unwilling to pay. She wished not to become one of the Stillwaters; priests and sworn mages alike that had abused their magick for dastardly deeds and were, thusly and justly less often than not, hollowed out by a ritual so named—left emotionless and without individual will and conscience, but puppets to the sway of another’s hand.

With a shiver and a shake, the Priestess went back to her inquisition.

Emilia had to give order this time, for though her spirit was a thing of might, her body was well and truly frail. She wished not to waste any magicking for such mundane labor; the apprentices dragged reliquary from the vault and anything else of value they could find into the infirmaria.

With the stick so came the carrot.

Let us see, when stuck between the rock of nakedness and hard place of bounty, what shall you do, the Maiden thought as she observed the man, her presence veiled by a thick and cloying spiritual cloth equal parts shadow and wind.

A simple working of magick, not grand nor complex enough to be a spell proper, but neither a true technique with such middling execution. One would not call walking a skill, and neither would the Priestess crown such a minor act of magicking as anything more than it was.

Though, that did not mean the Maiden of the Crone was without her tricks and mastery.

Emilia stalked the sellsword with the senses of her spirit, subtly imposing her influence upon the mental realm. By the touch of her will, she felt the way the man’s psyche bent the planar fabric, sensing his emotions and glancing into his superficial ruminations.

‘Reading Drops of Dew’ Her working was called—a proper magicking technique if there ever was one.

She heard no words, her skill not so sublime as to piece together the tangled thread of thought into whole cloth. Emotions, concepts, images, and sensory qualia bled into the Plane of Dreams, her mind working vigorously to make some sense to it all.

It was not perfect, but it was enough. Like sating thirst from droplets of dew.

He awoke; she watched.

The Priestess had daggered the lad as one with mundane greed, looking upon those holy artifacts and metal-laden statuettes with such naked lust. Yet, the sellsword saw them not with the want of would-be coin, but of knowledge-to-be-found.

He desired not the substance evident before him but the essence behind it, his sight scouring the reliquary with curiosity-approaching-hunger; it practically burned in those baleful eyes of green of his, all want and need for kennen.

And then, upon looking at the likeness of Mortus, his gaze had all but died, snuffed out like a candle by fingers wet with tears of sorrow. Hurt, raw and inflamed, lay just beneath his face.

A long, suffering sigh came from his lips, breath hissing like a snake barring fang.

He looked so hollow, so lost, so vacant. Pulled by the fetters of past unresolved, dragged the other way by a future unsure, and anchored to present worries.

And then he chuckled, brushing away all the tension in the rictus of his brow like he were some woman sweeping the dust away from the threshold of her home. Simple and slick, like all that hurt could be so easily forgotten and turned inane.

‘Why worry?’ Those eyes said, voice of the soul like the foolish innocence of a child and the deathless bravado of a young man thinking himself invincible.

‘What is, has been and what will be, shall.’ That forced smile whispered.

This was not the first time the sellsword had stared Death in the face. Not the first time Black Crow had cawed the Call of the Grave and been left unanswered. He had danced the danse macabre with the godlings of the Pale River, and come out with fire in his eyes. The cold waters did nothing to douse his spirits.

What gave him the resolve to laugh at the looming shadow of the doom-god?

Where did he hide all that hurt away?

Though Emilia could not answer either of those questions, she knew the response to the next.

When would he break?

When he is safe, she answered herself.

Steel did not rust with battle. Only when left in the scabbard and without need for oil did the blade itself fall prey to decay. White Gull’s song was an insidious and subtle influence, more like the dragging of the sea’s currents than the violent cawing of Black Crow, hence ‘Pull of the Pale.’

The seirene song that shall drag all to Where Dead Ships Dwell.

Emilia’s ruminations were cut short and abrupt as she witnessed the sellsword’s magicking.

His presence, the weight of his psyche upon the mental realm, doubled as arms wrought of shifting shadow coalesced from thin air.

Noachtiel wept, that’s… that’s ethos. And not the bound and leased kind, but pure and virginal—his own, and no one else’s. Unmarked by either oath or another’s taint.

Virtue borne only from himself; scepter and crown over the Writs of the Wheel.

Beyond the unmistakable scent of burgeoning quality, the magicking itself was both possessing of breadth and depth, skillful and raw of power. Nothing so subtle as what most apprentice or even journeyman magickers were capable of evoking, but instead apparent.

When Emilia compared the man’s use of the mana of Shadows to her own, she found herself wanting. Her own paltry magicking was only mental, barely enough to manifest physically as a deepening of the dark creases of her robes.

Magick, true and unfettered by mortal bounds lay before her. Substance insubstantial so concentrated that it was made physical. The juice of existence transmuted back into whole fruit—elixir.

How in the Nine did he get his grubby mitts on a royal alchemist’s stock?

After a span, the lad tried to hop off the table, the cloth binding his legs ever-just-so, enough to make slip and fall head first unto the hard stone. Yet before she could even gather her Power to bear, the sellsword was swaddled in a blanket of darkness and deposited on his two feet.

The skin of his spirit—his aura—was unremarkable beforehand, a thing of mundane composition for his ilk. A bit of blood here and there from all the death and killing, a few blotches of verdant green due to his time in the wilds, and reeking o’ the scent of steel. But, otherwise? Lacking of luster.

Even as Emilia and her closest disciples were hands deep in his chest cavity, setting rib bone and mending torn muscle, they had not felt anything amiss.

The realization that she had been so close to that made cold sweat drip down the nape of her neck. Starry talons clutched her staff tight, the tar-covered wood protesting such ministrations with a few dry creaks and groans.

Seven forfend, she swore and prayed in twain.

As the sellsword was swaddled in darkness, his aura molted its mudanity like a snake shed its skin, bearing something decidedly other beneath.

The spiritual scent was pungent like old sweat yet, at the same, tasting of spring water—contradictory to the senses and paradoxical to the mind.

His unveiled spirit was a thing of fleeting and furtive shadow at the edges of one’s vision on a moonless night, turned to stone in direct sight yet visible when looked at askance; in one word, elusive.

In a second word, terrifying.

Therein, deep inside the base of his spirit, a beast baleful and great lay in wait at the depths of a black lake, all patience and anticipation to sate.

Waiting in blind joy for the End of All Things. To bring about this world’s inexorable fate.

And then, in a snap, the white of sheep was put back over his dark spirit. Had Emilia’s own influence not bathed this place for so long as to make it her domain, she would not have stolen a glance at what lay beneath the compelling veneer of humanity.

Hells, were it not that her Patron be the Crone whose Eyes were Ever-Seeing, the Priestess may as well have seen not a single thing.

And she saw not a single thing more either, as the sellsword’s spirit once again turned mundane.

The wool was laid upon the eyes of her soul, stopping the Priestess from looking deeper within. But still, she had gotten a peek. Beneath the surface of that man was darkness that stared back; shadow made substantial.

Yet, Emilia did not fret. Inside that darkness, she saw not a tinge of devilish taint. For though his spirit was soaked in the Black, it held not any sulfuric fume of the Nine.

Eld but not infernal; abyssal but not unholy. Carrying with it the Omen of Doom, yet not Arisen. Hailing from the Void, but not bound to the Inverted Spire of Baator.

She beheld the trace of something older even than her gods. Older, perhaps, even than Their Forefathers.

Within the sight of her soul, she saw divinity before divine.

She saw a sorcerer Da’ath, trueborn and all.

Blind Mother’s Lumpy Tits. A primordial’s spawn, in the flesh.

Her smile widened crookedly as her claws tightened further their death-clutch upon the tar-covered and bronze-tipped staff. Distantly, the Priestess felt a few varicose veins on the back of her hand burst under the strain.

She now knew how the man laughed at the looming shadow of the doom-god.

He laughed with the good humor of a man looking out his window and seeing that his brother had come to visit.

They were kin.