[center][h2]Outskirts of Göl Kasabi[/h2]
Ostrob - 300 AWH
[i]Collab by Oraculum and Grijs[/i][/center]


The fog lay heavy upon the island, coiling up from the sea to flood streets and smother palaces, houses and shacks. It was not thick, not for the southern seas, at least, and would soon be gone in the morning; yet, under the dark night sky, dimly lit by the nearby red star gleaming over Uudhin, it appeared as impenetrable as a tide of quicksand that had suddenly descended upon the slumbering city. Had anyone walking through one of Kasabi's myriad passageways lifted their eyes, they would have been unable to see the very wall a few steps to their left, and the lights above were but a faint memory  save for that single red spark overhead, glistening malevolently through the fog like a distant, yet watchful eye. But those that were abroad at such a time had no business looking at the sky, or else found themselves fully at home in the shadows.

Under the pale shroud, the city stretched far inland, from the ominously murmuring sea to the heart of the island, harsh, but not as forbidding as what lay beyond the waves. Along the shore ran rows of docks and wharves, by which stood, nodding slightly in tact with the rippling waters, the wooden, sail-draped pillars of Kasabi's power. It was not uncommon for many of the docks to be empty, but now, with part of the fleet having sailed to Ouroborasia, the absence was all the more palpable.

Yet there were places where the differences would not have been felt had every ship abandoned the island all of a sudden. Places where the wharves were rotted and crumbling, where no shapes hurried here and there across the embankment and no torches burned through the enveloping darkness. Where the buildings themselves, cramped and misshapen, bent towards the earth and the black waters under the weight of age and the secrets they concealed. Where mazes of narrow, winding streets crawled in perpetual shadow through grime and filth, and the air was poisoned by wafts of untraceable stench.

There, in foul corners, by malodorous rivulets of strange fluids, over puddles and pits, there moved vague, indistinct shadows. These were not the industrious inhabitants of the docks: their movements were wary and sluggish, their backs stooping, their voices unheard. They shuffled among the dirt and foetor, casting quick glances at the dark awning windows as they passed or staring stolidly before themselves. Some muttered to themeselves as they went, others were deathly silent. In these far, forgotten reaches, the blood of Kasabi was thick, rotten and touched by strange diseases that have no name.

Deep in this labyrinth, at a crossroads of twisted paths surrounded by faceless walls of stained stone, three cultists stand in heated theological debate.

''The doctrines of the Salt Prince are crude and dubious. Doth he not seek the usurp the Celestial Plane? Be he truly a Red God, or another Justinian?''
Speaks a female cleric donning the robes and emblem of Ephemem.
''Bite your tongue, whore. For instead you bite the hand of the host that feeds you. Were it not for Yitizer's Mercy, your lands would have been naught but reduced to slavery to the New Pantheon.'' A cultist wearing a horned mask and wearing grey robes depicting the emblem of Axohaan, responds indignantly.

''You are one of Soghba's muppets, yes? Than surely you understand this 'alliance' is on paper alone. We know you Uudhinites are little better than the New Pantheonists. You're a heretic.'' She replies.
''Heretic? Please; flattery will get you nowhere.'' The Axohar cleric replies with a vicious smirk.
The third cultist only nods awkwardly. The cultists of other Red Pantheonist sects pay little heed to him and his fellows. Because his robes depict a much obscurer and less esteemed, perhaps even insignificant faith. Insignificant in so far that few enough people recognise the logo, and it does not rouse theological debates or swollen historical slights in contrast to the deeply notorious and stigmatized logo of the Salt Prince.
The sign emboidered on the earthen-brown robe under his ragged, worn cloak, a raiment unseemly for a cleric even in the lands of the Red Pantheon, was akin neither to the angular emblems of Axohaan nor the cryptically abstract devices of other southern deities. Instead, his garb was emblazoned with a curious and sinister figure of deformity: the body of a horrid being, at once a monstrous crab and a face distorted by a fiendish grin, surmounted by a second inhuman head with a snarling, fanged mouth. Gnarled limbs radiated from the entity's form, and the whole was surrounded by the likeness of a dusky halo or a black sun.

[hider=The mark of a shadowy power.]
[img]https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/originals/04/3d/5d/043d5d394a55c25418f9aa66d50e8be9.jpg[/img]
[/hider]

As the cultist shuffled in place, his fingers intertwined while his fellows argued the merits of their respective patrons, one could have noticed something hanging around his neck and swaying along with his motions like a large pendant. However, had even his cloak not been enough to fully conceal it, the mist and darkness hovering in the nook were too thick for it to be discernible. Indeed, little of what was under his mantle was visible at all; his face was a vague inky blotch between the drapings of a cowl.

Soft, yet audible steps sounded from behind him, and three other indistinct figures emerged from the fog some steps away. Either hearing their approach or detecting it by some other means - someone observing him closely would have noticed he had begun to move his head an instant before the shuffling sounds preceding the newcomers had come - the adept turned to exchange a glance with them, then motioned shortly with his hand, and the shapes withdrew back out of sight. With a slight nod, he returned his attention to the discussion before him, and spoke.

"Let us not descend into discord, my friends." his voice was low and slightly grating, as though his throat were dry and parched. He continued, raising his bent, bony fingers, unpleasantly similar to the legs of the crab on his emblem, "Our strength lies in our unity, do not forget it. The forces of false gods would fain prey on us like worms, and only if we hold onto each other in a strong bundle will we be safe from their vexations."

''You, new man, can't delude me into thinking that the Red Pantheon is anything but solitary. Our cause is not yours -- or even 'hers'.'' The Axohar nods towards the Ephemite. ''So who are you even? Garments as yours have been recurring in this district of late. Which faceless deity has you ensnared?'' spoke the devil-masked cleric to the vexed browncloak.

"I?" A whistling sound, like a low tatter of laughter, came from under the cowl. "I serve no one god. I am but a keeper of a universal force, as old as the world. A force that has always sought to bring together what was divided, and mend what was broken."

The hooded cleric drew his cloak slightly apart, revealing the sigil underneath. "This seal you see embodies life, strength, vigour, all the things our time so sorely lacks. Things we must work to restore."

The Axohar grunts. ''Your tone is the same as that of the Old Man. Gibberish over universal power. Some minds must have been slowly warped by the proximity of Azagôde. There's something foul in the air of these suburbs. I have no interest in any of these delusional prophecies.''

"Power and unity are one and the same. But come," the figure gestured broadly towards the mist where his companions had vanished. "I see you, as many others, are not convinced by words alone. And it is well you should not be. Come with me, then, and I will show you that which is worth more than words."

''Clever. I see we've learned our tricks from the same old book. That much we have in common. I recall telling a witless tourist or another that I would escort her to a holy site, which I did. But more specifically it was a sacrificial altar!'' He says, following with nonchalant laughter.
''I am not your fool, but I appreciate the gesture all the same.'' 

The cloaked priest nodded. "In times and places as those, it is well to be wary. But your mistrust strikes blindly at the hand that reaches out to support you. See then..."

With a swift motion, he produced from the folds of his robe a long, recurve knife with a strangely jagged blade. Drawing back the edge of his garment to expose the back of his right hand. Holding the dagger in the left, he drew a long, thin line across his skin, and blood was not slow to well from under it. 

"By the power I serve and the flesh I thus mar, nor I nor my kin shall spill your blood, tonight or evermore." His voice was unchanged, as rasping and even as before. He lifted his dripping fingers in a beckoning gesture.

The devil-masked cleric turns to silence. His face might be amused, or unsettled, or with a raised eyebrow to this cultist. He gives reply with a shrug. ''Such vows are sacred. I won't get much divine inspiration hearing the Old Man's murmuring. So I might as well give ear to yours, instead. It is all the same -- so grant me insight to the universal power you claim to herald.''

''Umm.. Right.'' The Ephemite says, putting up an effort to conceal her discomfort. ''As the only representative of the Goddess of Witches, I must glean intel to your new cult and its practises, likewise.''

Without as much as another word, the hooded man turned towards one of the streets running into the thick of the slanted houses and walked forth into the mist, leading the way through the twists and turns. After but a few steps, the group was joined by the three acolytes who had briefly appeared earlier, and seemingly stood waiting in a nearby nook. Up close, they seemed even more similar to the one that had spoken. They wore the same old cloaks, watched from the shadows of the same cowls, strode with the same slightly shuffling gait. More so - it might have been a trick of the faint reverberations between the overhanging walls, but they sounded as though all the four of them were walking precisely in tact with each other.

They moved on, delving into the penumbra under the old buildings, street by street. It seemed already that they had come quite far, but nothing in their surroundings hinted at this. The walls, pavement, windows, air were equally dim and worn. If anything, the stench was growing faintly stronger, and the houses more hoary and battered by time. Stone gave way to putrid wood, and the puddles became rarer, but denser and wider.

At last, the leading cultist stopped before a door in no way different from the dozens they had passed before, set in a wall as foul and ungainly as any other. He cast a rapid glance to both sides, then scraped the panels with his nails, unafraid of any splinters or insects that might be caught under them. There was a moment of silence, then, from the other side, echoed a similar scratching, and the door creaked open. Beyond the threshold, nothing was visible but looming, almost solid darkness.

The three silent adherents were the first to file into it without making a sound. The one with the wounded hand took a step, then stopped in the doorway to motion for his companions to follow, and disappeared as well.

''Why the secrecy? Surely you understand there is religious freedom in Göl Kasabi. What practises could be ill and so depraved enough that your kin are compelled to hide them from common eyes?'' The Ephemite speaks up after a long and eerie quiet, her hushed voice disrupting the smothering silence and darkness inside the building.

From the dark interior ahead came a response in a voice somewhat alike, yet unmistakeably different from that of the first priest. It clearly belonged to another person, yet it was veined with the same low, hoarse tones.

"Our mysteries are such that they must be held in the deep, near the heart of the world and far from the light and the sky. Come, and you shall see why it is so."
The three of them tread further, though for those unfamiliar with the Cult the decision came only after a moment of hesitation. Under their feet, they could feel hard, though roughly chiselled stone stairs, leading downwards. Somewhere far, far below, a point of red-brownish light flickered faintly, appearing and vanishing at intervals. Behind them, the door slammed shut, and only that spot remained visible in the pitch blackness. Shuffling steps moving away indicated that the guide was descending into the unseen abyss.

The way down could not have been long, yet it seemed that their progress between unseen walls of humid, breathing earth was excruciatingly slow. Ages could have passed in the silent blackness that surrounded them like the depths of a stygian ocean, and the distant light, a lone island in the smothering shadow, did not seem to draw any closer. While the night they had come from had itself been dark, this subterranean realm was another world altogether - a world of cold stillness and unspoken menace lurking close by.

Yet, strangely deep though it might have been, the bottom of the pit approached. The point of light grew larger and larger, reaching first the size and strength of a torch, then a brazier, then a bonfire, until it pushed back the encroaching dark. Through the subterranean quiet came faint echoes of far-off sounds, soon becoming whispers and rustling motions. Then, the steps gave way to even, hard ground, and, following the now visible guide into the luminescence, they saw.

Beyond the stairs lay a large vaulted chamber dug out of the soil. Its converging walls were slightly crumbling here and there, yet oddly smooth, as though whoever had carved them had been a master of their craft. Most astounding, however, was the fact that it was not lit by torches or braziers, but by large stains of glowing, living matter spread over the earthen surfaces. It was akin to some of the curious efflorescences spotted by daring seafarers who reached the far shores in the east, yet, at the same time, any who had seen both would have known these growths were different. It was nothing that could be seen, or even felt; but their lurid, charnel light spoke in accents not hoary and mystical, but dim and feral.

Gathered in the dungeon were about a score of acolytes, all draped in worn cloaks and brown robes. When the group emerged from the shadows of the stairway, they interrupted their hushed conversations and turned upon the newcomers their unnervingly faceless stares. Each of them donned under their cowl a mask that concealed their features. Among that crowd, there were crude, nondescript veils of stitched cloth mingled with more elaborate wooden visages and even some animal skulls; no two of them were alike. The guide threw a backwards glance at his guests, revealing that he as well had covered what little was visible of his head with a visor of hardened leather.

Presently, a low, metallic sound, akin to the strike of a gong, came from the further end of the chamber, and the masked figures' gazes swung thither. Across the circle of the floor, a tunnel opened into the room directly opposite the end of the stairs, gaping in the dimly lit wall like the mouth of a tremendous worm. Before it, there stood a low stone altar, almost crude in its simplicity. Upon the altar rested something that appeared to be a large square tablet of black rock, but the etchings on it could not be distinguished from that distance.

A wave of whispers coursed over the acolytes, and a large form issued from the mouth of the tunnel. It was another of the cloaked priests, but as unlike the others as they were different from the followers of other gods. The figure's cloak was quite clearly a funereal shroud, frayed at the edges and covered in patches of mold; yet the robes under it were clean and opulent, adorned with what might have been either jewels or sparse pieces of ceremonial armour. Its hands were covered in some sort of bizarre claw-like gauntlets, and the mask under its cowl was not of cloth or wood, but metal exquisitely fashined into the likeness of the head of an insect, with dully glittering gemstones as its eyes.

At the sight of this apparition, the assembled cultists bowed down as one, then rose in similar unison. The high priest, if such it was, stopped behind the altar, then abruptly raised both hands. All fell silent. The insect-headed figure lifted the tablet from the altar, held it up high, and intoned a chant. Its voice was only rasping and hissing; it could not even be said whether it was a man or a woman.

The two visitors, all the while, had not spoken a word. The both of them were unnerved, while normally they shouldn't be. They are certainly familiar with rites as these, or even more extravagant and sinister. Yet despite it the Axohar and Ephemite still felt not in their element. The best they could do was keep up a smug facade that this shoddy ritual was insufficient to have any self-respecting, veteran Red Pantheonist impressed.

The chant rose still, growing in intensity. It was not formed of any discernible words, or even what could have been sounds of another language, but a medley of clicks, screeches and snaps that barely seemed to come from a human mouth. For all its chaotic discordancy, there distinctly was a rhythm to it. The bestial cacophony wove itself into cadenced patterns, the same snaps and clacks recurring at the end of what might have been abhorrent verses.

The moment in which the other acolytes joined the litany was so rapid that anyone not expecting it would have failed to notice it. Many voices rose as one in perfect synchrony, welling up to the vaulted ceiling and carrying the monstrous hymn as an overflowing river. The impression was not that of a choir, however large, chanting in unison; it seemed as though a single monstrous being were droning out its unnatural song without a mouth. A forest of gnarled hands rose from the gathered crowd towards the tablet, and their limbs did not appear to be hands at all.

The high priest lowered the stone upon the altar and fell silent, though this could barely be noticed amid the cultists' uninterrupted chanting. They continued even as their leader stepped aside from the entrance of the tunnel, revealing a group of three figures that had approached unheard and stood waiting for an unknown time. Two of them were masked priests, faces concealed by metallic visors; the third, held between them, was little more than a bundle of rags loosely wrapped around a starved, battered body. Their head was covered with a sack, and their whole frame seemed to tremble slightly, only ceasing for a moment upon being roughly prodded by one of the masked guards.

At a gesture from the leader, the two dragged their weakly stumbling captive before the altar and withdrew to its two sides, leaving their charge to collapse to its knees. No one saw how they were produced, but suddenly the insect-headed prelate was holding two recurve daggers like the one with which the first cultist had sealed his oath in its hands. Then, with preternatural agility, it plunged the blades into the prisoner's chest from two sides, as though they had been the extremities of a pincer. The violence of the strikes was such that the victim's entire body was lifted from the ground and flung onto the altar, steel crushing bone with a sickening sound. The dying gurgling from under the sack was drowned out by the hymn, which rose higher than ever as the carnifex screeched out some unintelligible words in an altered voice. The rag-draped limbs twitched a few times, then fell still.

The high priest tore out the daggers from the body, and once again its strength was such that the corpse was cast to the ground as the serrated edges turned its ribcage into bloody tatters. A dark, thick pool covered the altar; yet, inexplicably, it was growing smaller and smaller, though little of it dripped to the ground. A sharper look revealed the astounding cause of this marvel: the blood appeared to be seeping into the dark stone of the tablet, which drank it in hungrily as though it were alive.

Suddenly, the chanting ebbed and ceased, and the chamber feel eerily silent. There had been no visible signal, yet every cultist had stopped intoning the strange words at once, even as they had begun. The leader cast away the bloodied daggers and motioned with a hand, and four of the cloaked figures stepped forward. The first withdrew the folds of their clothing from one of their arms, and the wrist was revealed to be a handless stump; the other three stopped behind their comrade's back.

The insect mask nodded, then a gauntleted hand darted forward, and a brief burst of sharp, scrreching words rang through the air. A shadow seemed to pass over the dim light of the subterranean growths, engulfing all in the room for an invisible fragment of an instant. It was certain no time had passed, and, indeed, there had truly been no darknening; yet, when the guests regained their bearings, the scene before them had become unrecognisable.

Five figures still stood at the center of the chamber, but a nameless change had come over them. The high priest appeared to stand as tall and immobile as before, but the body under their robe seemed to have unnaturally swollen and struck by spasms. Something pulsing and amorphous beat beneath the clothing around the figure's stomach, and occasionally the outline of a sharp edge or spike could be seen through the fabric. Two of the supplicants who had stood behind were now on their knees, where they remained motionless. The third was nowhere to be seen, but a small cloud of yellow-grey smoke coiled and hovered where they had stood. One could have sworn that now and then the dim outlines of [i]something[/i] much too large to be hidden by that fog emerged from it.

Yet the gazes of all were gathered upon the one who had held forward the mutilated wrist. The figure was now standing in its former place, and seemed slightly taller than before. It slowly turned away from the center and towards the stairs, as though it knew the visitors were there, and held up what had been a flat stump.

Now it was no more. Up until the wrist, the arm was that of a human; yet upwards from it began something hideous. A hairy, viciously sharp pincer had appeared in the stead of the missing appendage. It was covered in some sort of foul-seeming carapace, and black ichor oozed from it. But worst of all, it clearly was alive. It twitched and snapped at the air, gnashing and grinding with a horrid noise. Its bearer kept it aloft for a few moments, then lowered it and stepped aside without a sound.

The gathering seemed to be finished. The insect-priest and the cultists with the iron masks disappeared into the tunnel, and the others began to file away up the stairs, the one healed by that abominable miracle among them, without exchanging as much as a word. The strange cloud and the uncertain shapes within it had vanished. 

Last of his kin left in the chamber, the acolyte who had guided the Axohar and Ephememite into this den of horrors looked at his guests through his inexpressive wooden visage, as though he were expecting something due to him.
The Axohar gives prompt reply:
''That was fun.''

''...What exactly were we just witness to?''

"The heart of the world has beaten" came the voice from behind the mask.

The cloaked figure turned in silence and was gone in the shadows of the stairway.