[center][h2][u][b]Empire of Lynn-Naraksh[/b][/u][/h2]

[b]Strakhte Cathedral, the Imperial Demesne[/b][/center]

Lurid, misshapen shadows and shreds of mangled light danced from torches affixed behind casings of cunningly wrought stained glass. Inhuman effigies and fragmented emblems were brought to flickering life, manifold eyes flaring up with a forgotten cruel intent for brief moments before being left once more to shadow. Their gaze, as hasty as their life was transient, ran over tremendously old, yet unblemished stone walls, adorned with exquisitely etched yet grotesque and repellent reliefs. Eikons of monstrous divines of times past leapt through the luminous tatters, and behind them a blur of scenes of grim worship by faceless congregations and armoured figures standing in triumph amid desolate vistas, interrupted by the recurrence of the eyes upon the columns in the room’s walls. Having the fires lit at that time would have seemed strange even in lands as blighted as Naraksh, but it was not so in the pale rays that filtered through the tall, narrow windows, grey and dusky despite it being high noon.

Between the contrasting lights, around a long wooden table strewn with thick volumes, scrolls and other, more curious items, sat and crouched a circle of hooded shades not unlike those depicted in the carvings. The colours of their robes were those of the Order of the Divines, and the clerical heraldry upon them showed that none was lower in rank than an Episcope. Indeed, almost all of the priests gathered there bore the mark of the Eyes enclosed in a triangle of spiralling threads on their vestments, with the exception of five, whose ample and intricate patterns of symbology surpassed even the ornaments of their fellows. Of those there could not have been more, for they were the mark of the Exarchs themselves. Though these were the only variations in their insignias, the cut of their raiment was not identical – the group of bog-folk squatting at one end of the table, whose bodies were unfit to wear clothing woven for men, were covered in hanging drapes and strips of fabric, and had no masks to conceal their bestial countenances.

Behind them, in the unlighted far end of the chamber, shadow reigned, broken only by the glimmer of a pair of burning red eyes.

One of the high clerics was speaking, his body bent forward as though he were about to rise from his seat. With one hand he leaned on the table, while the other pressed upon one of the larger, older tomes. Alone among his fellows, sanguine lights akin to those that observed from the darkness shimmered under his hood.

“…that it is the mark of the One interred in ash, and a sign of wrath. Those blades point against the rot in our midst, and its hunger for death is that of a living host. The power of the Great Ones stirs, and they sent the heralds of their displeasure to warn us. Heed them! or their anger shall turn against you when they rise!”

“Their testament has no words on inner rot, and you know this all too well.” Another of the adorned priests, seated opposite the one who had spoken first, replied. “Do I need to repeat how tired we are of this?” “No.” Someone interjected. “Or how insistence does you no good, Raziemir? You lost a cause to it once, and your words will not align with the Ones’ will any better because you repeat them. How is an army a sign of wrath when it does not march to raze the enemy? Had we angered the Divines, I would not be speaking now.”

He seemed to be about to continue, but the second decorated shape on Raziemir’s side of the table interrupted him with a sharp gesture. “Unlike you, the Divines have a breadth of wisdom. Would they smite the loyal, though inept, when they could warn them instead? Sow death instead of fear? You have good memory for your admonishments, it seems, but not for the Dictates. Second book…” The speaker seized upon one of the tomes and began to hastily leaf through it. Before he could find whatever citation he was seeking, however, the second Exarch spoke up again.

“I remember the Dictates without reading, and this is what they say. ‘Those who are as worms or writhe as worms, and struggle and sting against the reaching hand, are taken and unmade in cinder’. Had we been this verminous rot you gibber of, and had the Divines arisen, this would have happened, but has it then? No!”

“And in cinder you will be unmade if you persevere!” Raziemir seethed. “What do you think is the reaching hand? The stone-host is its shadow, and it stretches over heretics like you and your fellow the butcher! Struggle on, then, and-“

“The butcher our fellow! The Great Ones never made invective their weapon.” The third Exarch seemed to have a taste for cutting into the speech of his peers. “Save for in your warped mythos, they struck fast and true, and what they willed was open and manifest. To condemn with an omen as oblique as that host in not their mark. Their displeasure with us-“

“Second book, first proclamation!” The fourth speaker had finally – and abruptly – emerged from the worn pages of his tome. “’The screecher that culls the herd without need will needs raven and waste, for it withers the spring of blood it drinks’. By your words, the Divines would have acted as this animal, or as the gutterblooded yard-kings of the east. Or the [i]north[/i].” He added in a venomous tone. 

The eyes in shadow seemed to flinch with a touch of irritation.

“You take up the knife by the blade, and cut your hand with it.” The third Exarch raised a hand in a triumphant gesture. “If the herd is not culled [i]without need[/i], then, since we are not culled, there would not be any need to, would it? That is, if your legless creed were true at all.”

“The fumes of your alembics have eaten your wit, clearly, for this is the truth of the matter: there is need to cull you, and I know what it is, though you have forgotten everything that is not written in your profane signs. Will I tell you?”

“Tell us!” Raziemir’s ally rejoindered.

“Tell us.” Came a dripping echo from the further end of the table. The Kuraxxi Exarch had remained silent until then, but the Southerner’s provocation, obvious as it was to anyone with the least eye for politic, had drawn the curiosity of the bog-dweller.

The other two prelates did not answer, but rustled their defiant wordless assent.

“This it is, then. That prime relic of their magnificence, something that depraved necrophages like you should revere above all by your own gnarled doctrine, that is the highest blood coursing on this forsaken soil these days, you have instigated to be tainted with foreign grime! Look here at this.” One of the Episcopes seated next to Raziemir proffered him a bundle of small embroidered banners. “Nor even with what could have been masked, weakly, as worthy ichor, no! With the sludge of some grime-dwelling slattern, home of bog fleas and all other pox and filth! Your blasphemy could not have been more grievous if you tried to make it! Look here.”

He unfolded one of the banners, holding it by the upper end. It could be seen that an entire scene was woven upon it, with a skilful, if somewhat rigid hand. Two figures were depicted on what seemed to be the bank of a body of water. One, with a distinctive head of dark red hair and apparently disrobed below the waist, crouched near the edge, while a larger, oddly grey-hued shape loomed over it.

“This is her!” Raziemir spat. “A maggot grovelling in the dirt, before this… ape, this animal that they have up there! A harlot to beasts and a laughing-stock to slaves! This all comes from the north, you know.”

A chorus of amused scraping rose from the group of bog-folk clerics. The Exarch was already lifting a second banner.

“Weak and a coward!”

This scene portrayed the same red-headed figure as in the first one precipitously fleeing before an imposing warrior clad in black armour, wielding a spear tipped with some colourful stain. The former’s expression was such that some of the Episcopes on the side of Raziemir’s opponents could not restrain subdued chuckles, upon which their superiors shook their heads, growling something under their breath.

“A vessel of godlike potential, this? Turning heel before a raving wreck armed with a dishrag dug out of some gravepit? This box of wurm food,” he pointed at the knight, “terrorised the wretches who would now conquer the land from shore to shore, led by one who runs fastest. When she can run at all…”

Another cloth was unfurled, and again at least one of the rival prelates could barely stifle a chortle. This time, the protagonist of the portrait was limping out of a shadowed doorway, her form smattered with red and her features seemingly more entertaining yet to the Narakshi than the previous rendition. One of the bog-folk, who had been craning their entire frightfully flexible torsos to better see the embroideries from their position, abruptly pulled back and quietly sibilated something to its compatriots, who shuddered in silent spasms of hilarity.

“The introduction of blood trials in Matathran.” The Exarch proclaimed with mock solemnity. “You see how well their taskmasters fare. And one who crawls out of a desiccated kennel as a pile of rubble on two legs would be an equal for steel molded by the Ashen Crypt and the path of ascension?”

A voice like grinding stone issued from the darkness behind the Kuraxxi party, and even the high priest’s jeering abated for a moment in its wake.

“This already has my blessing, Exarch Raziemir. Tread carefully.”

Raziemir muttered something unintelligible under his mask and did away with the banner. The next one he produced, however, caused more commotion than the other three together. Several Episcopes exhaled loudly through their noses, others ground their teeth in an effort to keep their mouths closed, and even one of the Exarchs could not contain an audible “Ghrm!” One of the Kuraxxi went so far as to point at the cloth with a claw and scrape out something doubtless not very flattering.

“You have quite the collection.” The more restrained of the two adversaries remarked in a forcedly even tone.

“Crumbs from your table.” Raziemir deflected off-handedly. “And a shadow of what you can find across the border. Would a worthy claimant to the least sliver of ancestral might allow this? A worthy bearer of what you have the arrogance to prophesy as a living god? Where in this do you see a semblance of anything worthwhile – I do not say for sacred aims, but even for your heretical enchantments? Tell me. Do you not see [i]all of it[/i] here?” A vicious smile could virtually be heard creeping into his words. “And you wonder that the Great Ones should have raised an army of damnation against your blunders? The wonder is that it does not already stand at your gates! It is well for you that they are above your twisting of their words, or your impudence would already have its reward!”

“[i]Impudence[/i] aside…” the second Exarch demonstratively waved away the still upheld banner from before himself, “…if the Great Ones have indeed arisen, and are wroth with us as you recklessly claim, would they not have bared it before us, rather than hiding it away in the south?”

“An Exarch should know better than to question the wisdom of his greaters – and such greaters.” The prelate to Raziemir’s left interposed sardonically.

His opponent was undeterred. “And you who cling to their ways better than to demean it. The Divines have never spoken in obscure warnings, and their only word against those who displeased them was the call of execution. Do you say that deathly sleep has changed them so? Where is their voice that shatters the earth, where the shadow of their breath?” He half-rose himself, bending towards the Southerner’s head and meeting his burning eyes with a narrowed gaze of his own. “[i]Is this their work at all?[/i]”

Neither did Raziemir relent. “And who else?” he scoffed. “The mark of ash and iron is clear upon its ranks, and no other force could have wrought such a marvel in so little time. Do you now think that your ‘new gods’ can appear without you even conjuring them?”

“I ask you again, since your mind is buried away in a sarcophagus of the Crypts. Is this the work of the Divines alive?”

“Not dead, certainly! Unto gods is godly death, and no abyss can be deeper than that. Either they rise from it in force, or not at all.”

“And this is their force?! A veiled oracle worthy of that mound of putrid coals? No. But do you put it beyond them to have preordained this portent to happen now? Now that our machinations call for a token of the old power? An army is a sign of strength, and as strength we must receive it. Did you not say yourself that even the most stray filth are rallying around the ancient words?”

“Laughable subterfuge!” Raziemir threw his head back as if to burst into cachinnations. His hood did not even threaten to slide off. “They rally, yes, to the true teachings of rebirth, not your blasphemous delusions. This thought is as inane as your hollow promises of divine successors. Do you compare the Great Ones to a waft of mortal smoke? You who spoke against roundabout signs!”

“What that scum claimed she could do, a true divine could have done thousandfold. What is roundabout about the shadow of a legion at the very time and place it would be found? You could not yourself name a clearer sign that our endeavour will bear a mighty fruit.”

Derisive snorts came from the red-eyed Exarch’s entourage.

“I could not name a clearer sign that your wretched sect is built on lunacy. If I had heard this from a parochian, I would-”

Raziemir’s tirade was interrupted by the entry of a procession of masked attendants bearing fresh ammunition for the doctrinal feud in the guise of several other ponderous, ancient leather-bound texts. The clerics fell upon them with little short of hunger, some almost snatching the manuscripts out of each other’s hands while others began to shout out half-remembered quotes as they fumbled for the conclusions. The Kuraxxi observed the scene silently – whether in amusement or tedium, it was difficult to say.

Behind them, twin thoughtfully narrowed red sparks were briefly blotted out by a wide, wavering outline.