Oraculum

Mid/High Casual - Divinus: The Deity Roleplay Mk.II

Keeping to tradition, another post precedes another two-week disappearance.

I swear this isn't an attempt to escape the exponentially growing creation sheet debt.

Mid/High Casual - Divinus: The Deity Roleplay Mk.II

Hair rustled and creaked as it crumpled, the tangled mass shrinking in abrupt pulses as it was drawn into itself and beyond. Another fiberling collapsed into a limp, disorderly heap, the force animating it dissolving to nothing, and a grey tide of darting tendrils and pincers swept over it. A third one darted aside and lunged with woven pseudopods, only for them to spasm and fall as it found the immaterial part of its body irretrievably gone and writhed in surprise. The crawling shapes on the ground pressed their advantage, and the creature drew back with several gaping holes in its bulk. The other two did not wait to see what would happen to them, rolling and slithering away from the gnashing ranks.

They did not go far. One stopped as it began to fold upon itself, clearly despite its best efforts. The rest flaked, then crumbled to dust, as if shredded by something within them.

Osveril swept a finger through the air, and the shrubs and bushes before it were sliced across by a line of sinking space. The hollowborn drifted forward and swarmed around it like moths around a light, vision bending around their nonexistent edges. It was gone in less than any amount of time, but most of them had already dived through it more than once. As branches and leaves fell, supported by nothing, the hovering folds scattered, assembling back together over their unmaker.

It was no use, this was clear. The taint fought against the purging, and it had had all time to prepare. All the wealth of matter and the span of extension was at its disposal, and it used them like a single, vicious mind. Hair, stone, size - everything was on its side. Osveril could not be everywhere and nowhere at once, and its heralds could be overpowered without its guidance even before they met those mortals.

Reach out with more arms.

A grey finger pressed a sequence of buttons, and spiral forms flashed in Transgenesis’s glassy eye. Everything that life could do, it could do also, and more. Better. Impurity would devour itself.

One step, and Osveril was no longer there. If better vessels were needed, it would build them, out of the best pieces the world had to seize.

The hollowborn trailed in its wake, as fast as nothing could be.

***

Dash, some moments of trotting, dash. Trot, trot some more, dash again. The smell was still there. Dash.

It bent its tail to one side, swerving so fast its legs became a blur, then straightened it and ran on. Into a patch of tall grass. Another swerve. Through the stream. The one that smelled of sand and rot had already kept its track past water once, but it might lose it now.

No. The scent was still there. Trot. Dash. Swerve. Dash.

This thing was something strange. They had followed the same herd for days, but the one with the dead scent had not waited for a straggler to fall off. It had run at them and hit them with its sting. Like a tall hunter. Even they waited for the cattle to stray first. And they did not hit them all.

And they did not hunt manglers.

Dash. Swerve. Trot. Dash-

The thing was by its side. Where it had been about to turn. It almost tumbled in an effort to avoid the dead-smelling body. Its tail swung aside, and it recovered. But it could not avoid the sting.

The point caught it where the plates of the hind leg met those of the body, and its limb twitched with pain. It passed quickly. It waited, trotting. Many stings had a poison that bit long after the spike was gone.

This one did not. It did not bite when the dead scent went away at last, or at night, or the next day. The spot was numb with pain, nothing else. Not even the weakness of a leech bite.

Something strange. Avoid the dead smell.

Hunt.

***

Something moved through the undergrowth with little regard for being heard. Its steps were silent, but stems and small trunks staggered and fell where it passed, raising clouds of thin grey dust. Startled animals darted in all directions, and birds rose with alarmed cries. A warbler shot up, headed for a clearing in the treetops, only to be seized in mid-flight by a slimy green tentacle that lashed out from the foliage close by. A second, longer appendage stretched out to reach into the center of the confusion, clutching for richer prey, only to suddenly coil back, empty, as if struck.

The oozing ambusher in the branches was not the only one drawn by the commotion. A large shape stalked among the trees, almost without a rustle. Its proboscidal tongue felt for the intruder’s smell, twisting when it found something unpleasant and alien. The occasional rodent that fled its way quickly turned about when it noticed the creature, still much to slow had it not been indifferent to them at that time. Something large and clumsy was near, a far better meal than a wood rat.

The source of the disturbance was near. The great nectar blush slunk to the side of the path of collapsing shrubs, tilted its body backwards, then pounced, stinger stuck towards the lumbering creature in the grass.

It was met by a painful stab to its own abdomen.

The blush thrummed its wings and tore into the bushes, stinger ready for another lunge. But there was nothing - only the heads of fallen saplings, and a trail of grey dust.

***

The ground shook, rumbling like a distant sea, as titanic steps pounded on it in a slow, regular rhythm. It ceased for an instant while a monstrous head bent down to snatch a lone tree with its powerful jaws, uprooting it whole, then resumed its leisurely pace. The beast had nowhere to hurry. It barely even seemed aware of its surroundings, let alone something out of its stolid gaze. Nor did it need to be.

A small grey shape flitted through the air at the corner of its eye. It was too fast to tell where it was going, had the beast cared at all. It was not surprised when it felt something falling onto its back. Birds and gargoyles perched there sometimes. A few tried to nest now and then.

The something pricked the hide on the colossus’s back. Though it barely felt the sting through its thick skin, the creature huffed and stirred its body to shake off the nuisance. It did not think to guess what it could have been - it was enough to know that it was annoying, and it was a relief when the weight, however slight, disappeared.

Whipping its tail for good measure, the beast grunted and continued to chew the tree. The second time the grey shape flew by its head, it passed unseen.

***

All that is born from the touch of Purity must know its cleansing urge.

To end a world like this was coarse work, but this did not mean it would never need finer instruments. Ones better attuned to their function, and their wielder. Foulness that cut itself would regrow, but what withered from the breath of the void was gone forever.

Adapting the devourers had shown this. Born as they were of flesh alone, much of Osveril’s strength had gone into merely completing their design, and it had too little of it to spare. A better tool would have to compensate. One that could fashion life and what was beyond at once. Aid in the bridging of worlds.

It held up Transgenesis, and rifts in the universal weave gaped around it. Dust rose in waves from the ground beneath its feet, mingling with the wavering tendril-shaped clouds its shell breathed out. The hollowborn swarmed overhead, diving past the gaps and curiously swimming towards the glowing spear-tip, only to leap back from the solidity that was deadly to them.

The dust wound its way into the staff, through channels of delivery and cracks that were not there. For the first time, Osveril felt how it was within. Cleverly built, yet all too full, even where it was not. Reaching no further than the physical, even in imitation.

So much to correct.

Sharp grains and bladed shards cut and twisted, severed and welded again, melting and fusing into new conduits. Shaper and shaped became as one.

A hovering void seeped into the harpoon’s funnel, shrinking from the matter that loomed to all sides. It was seized upon and fragmented, mangled and healed, too many times to count. Seeds of emptiness were planted by the myriad hands of the hollow gardener. They took root. They grew. They flourished.

Spirals writhed on Transgenesis’s silent mouth. Angular, broken lines superimposed themselves over them, merged with them, became them.

You relinquished All you had with this, Mother. Now it is mine.

Like moss, a new row of keys crept up from beneath the staff’s surface. The symbols on them were as cryptic as the others.

Mine to foster.

Pink dimmed and faded to grey.

Mine to mold.

***

“What’d you mean, you can’t see them?”

“Just that. Can’t see none. Come here and look yourself.“

“You mean the urts?”

“I mean them all. Look yourself, I tell you.”

Sekkal clambered up the small hill and tilted his beak, straining his eyes in the direction that his companion was pointing. These mounds were a favourite vantage point of travellers approaching the village. From any of them, one could see not only more than half of the huts, but also the small empty space at the center, and anyone who was passing through it. If one knew when to come, or was simply lucky, one could also see the boulder-like forms of the urt herd that stopped there now and again as it went by. They always had useful news from the west, and usually a Jahanite to translate them. From what either of the visitors knew, the herd should have been there now - but it wasn’t.

Nor was the village itself.

“...What the...” Sekkal was finally able to articulate. “What’s this?”

Gettre only threw up his palms in perplexity.

Where a circle of buildings had once stood was a patch of bare soil. Sekkal could even see the grasslands beyond what had been the village’s further edge, something that, while perfectly natural, seemed utterly unreal. The ground itself was neither brown nor green as could have been expected, but chillingly and inexplicably grey. Even more chillingly and inexplicably, no wreckage was in sight. No beheaded walls, no fallen roofs, nothing. All there seemed to be were lumpy shapes scattered about, too small to be urts, but nothing like hain or even human bodies.

“You think it’s - them again? The burning ones?”

“Could be.” Gettre’s voice was as tense as his own. “Doesn’t look like a fire, though.”

Sekkal followed his brother’s finger with his eyes. The grey patch covered roughly the space where he remembered the village to be, but the grass at its rim was untouched. It did not even look dry, at least from that distance.

Nodding to each other, the two hain cautiously made their way down the gentle slope and towards the blasted zone. There was no smell of cinder in the air. In fact, there was no smell at all.

The grey surface crunched softly under their feet as they stepped on it. Gettre bent down to feel it with a hand, then scooped up a fistful of yielding, fluid matter.

“And this doesn’t look like ash.” The substance ran through his fingers like sand until only a few grains remained. He began to open his beak as if to taste it with his tongue, but then thought better of it. His hand instead reached down to pick up something he had just then noticed, half-buried in the dust. An arrow, or rather most of it. The tip was shattered, despite being seemingly made of good bronze - about half of it was missing, as though it had somehow splintered off on hitting something very hard and sharp from an unusual angle.

Gettre let his eyes slide along the ground. For some reason, he felt hesitant to look up at the shapes they had glimpsed from the distance. He had avoided them when approaching, only keeping the closest one in the corner of the back eye in case it was some ambushing beast, but it looked like nothing more than a strange stone, and had not moved. And still…

His brother, less daunted by the vague eeriness about the forms, approached one near the edge of the grey circle, holding his spear pointed at it. From close by, it looked less like a stone. It was like the trunk of a small tree, broad and made of smooth, perfectly chiseled plates. Somehow, their impossible regularity was not what struck Sekkal as the oddest part. The thing’s surface had a sheen that looked oddly familiar, like something he had seen many times before. But not something he could name.

“This look strange to you?” he called.

Gettre shuffled to his side, the broken arrow still in his hand. “Never seen anything like it, for sure.”

“No, I mean this…” he tapped on the growth’s side with the tip of his weapon. It answered with a dull, barely audible sound. “The way it- gleams? Not like iron or anything.”

Gettre turned his beak to the side, looking first at the thing, then at his brother. “Strange.” he echoed, nodding. “Like giant shell.” He glanced at Sekkal again, then added. “Or hain.”

Sekkal tilted his head, clenching his jaw in distaste, and the two moved further into the stain of desolation. The broken arrow proved to be only the first of several signs that whatever fate had come upon the village, it had been met with a fierce struggle. More splintered and notched arrows lay in the dust, near cracked throwing stones. Half of a spear was struck in the ground in one spot. Elsewhere, a glinting shard of amber crystal showed that the urts had been there for the fighting.

And nothing was left after it.

Nothing except the grey-shelled growths. There were more of them than it seemed from afar, almost identical in shape. Some were much smaller than the others, others slightly larger and without the same gloss. More than anything else, they looked like the legs of enormous, alien mushrooms. However bizarre, they gave no sign of being alive, and Sekkal was about to suggest they start searching for signs of the villagers nearby when Gettre motioned for him to look at one of the larger lumps.

Unlike those that surrounded it, the stump was not flawlessly smooth. Some of its plates hung half-detached from the body, jutting outwards as through broken out of shape from within. Out of the gaps streamed a swollen, formless grey mass, bulging over the thing’s height and hanging down to almost reach the ground. From close up, it reminded Sekkal of dried foam. Only, it was riddled with small holes, and felt soft under the spear. So soft that the sharp point cut through it with unexpected ease, cutting off a sizeable piece. The brothers started back in disgust as the severed chunk fell, revealing a veined, fleshy interior crawling with bundles of worms. The vermin writhed sickeningly as they swarmed all over the exposed slice, tumbling down and twitching on the barren soil. Some scampered on half-formed legs and thrummed misshapen wings. One even managed to take flight, only to be hurriedly swatted by a hain hand.

“What is this?” Since he had first spoken that question, its answer had only sunken further into a grey haze.

“I can tell it’s not the burning ones.”

“Do you think it’s…?” He was quiet for a moment. Was that a sound in the distance? Just the wind. “Jah-”

The abhorred name was cut short by a piercing screech too close to be safe. It was not the howl or scream of one of the plain dwellers - it was as loud as one, but it droned and scraped like the song of a cicada. No cicada could be that big.

More answered it. They were further, but, little by little, he could hear them drawing near.

“Let’s go.” Gettre had already caught his meaning without a single word. “We’ll see when we come back with people.”

As they hurried away from the blighted spot, the screeches continued to resound, now closer, now further again, and hounded them even when the grey ruin was out of sight.

***

It was a rare occasion when more than a quarter of the town of Cjejamra gathered at noon to listen to some returning hunter’s tall tales. Its folk were busy people, after all, and idlers who tried to distract them from their activities were summarily told to get lost, no matter how large their pearskin catch was or how many brush rats they had managed to tie together by the tails. As a rule, those who came back so early never brought anything better than rats and sickly pearskins, which firmly condemned them to the unenviable role of “waste of time” for the day.

This, and then some, was all the more true for Immen. For all his being in truth a rather capable tracker, everyone knew him best as the most insufferable braggart in the lands around Gisab, and perhaps in the whole Ring. Scarcely a day went by without his voice being interrupted by shouts to be quiet, and the gods only knew how many of his unimpressive trophies had been confiscated and thrown away (one pond in particular must have been half-full of “giant” mangler skulls). Yet, to everyone’s chagrin, Immen was nothing if not persistent.

And, for once, that persistence had been rewarded. No less than half of Cjejamra’s folk was assembled just outside the town, and more were approaching still, straining to peer over their fellows’ shoulders with curious faces. Artisans dropped their tools, traders picked up their wares, even some slaves eluded the lazy eye of their masters to come and gawk at the thing Immen had caught. For the first time, everyone was agreeing that it was something never seen before, and this alone made it worth shoving past the throng to get a good glimpse of it.

The catch did not disappoint. Lying at Immen’s feet, between him, his grim-faced brother-by-marriage Anlde, who was for some reason holding his right hand hidden in the folds of his tunic, and Oltik the nervous-looking hain trapper, was a carcass so ghastly that many mistook it for a Jahanite at first. Its four legs bent backwards like those of running beasts, but the head, with those rib-like jaws and smattering of dull eyes, was that of a spider dreamed by someone in their second hatching. Pieces of its sharp-angled grey shell were splintered, and the leathery sails of its crest torn; thick dark slime seeped from the wounds. The most unsettling part, many agreed, was what stretched out from the toothless mouth. It must have been a tongue of some sort, but it resembled nothing more than a long, bloated worm whose head was a second pair of mandibles.

“...an’ we saw it pounce,” Immen was narrating, gesturing broadly as was his habit and raising his voice at the least appropriate points. This time, no one seemed to mind. “An’ so I say, this’s going to be fast, ‘cause there’s no way a thing this size makes it against three hairfiends. But then it bites one, an’ a piece of it falls, like that.” He let his arm collapse and dangle for a moment.”Then it starts clawing another, an’ all through it’s screaming like a whole pearskin herd by itself. Well, then the last crawls up an’ rips off the shell on its back, an’ while it’s turning the other gets it in the side over the leg, an’ then we know it’s done for. But it killed one of them an’ tore up half of another, an’ that’s something as none of us have ever seen with our eyes.

“So we look at the hairfiends play with the body, but then they all draw up an’ roll off all sudden, can’t see why. We wait, we wait, an’ then we go closer to see what’s the matter. To be safe, I stick the spear into where the shell got ripped up, an’ it comes out like this…”

He held up what must indeed have been a spear at some point, but was now conspicuously missing its tip. The haft below did not appear splintered. It simply ended where it had once continued in length.

“We were sure it was dead, so Anlde went to look at the head, an’... It looked dead, but it got out its tongue, or what that is, an’ got his hand. Didn’t even bite, but that’s what it did.”

As if on cue, Anlde drew out his right hand and raised it for all to see. It had only three fingers; everything left of the middle one had vanished, like after a clean, abnormally bloodless cut. Recent though the mutilation was, it seemed to be already covered by smooth, slightly grey-tinged skin.

“Didn’t even feel it.” he commented in a flat tone of voice. “Still don’t. I just had half my hand, and then I didn’t.”

“After that we stabbed it some more, but then it was dead for sure.” Immen continued. “An’ so we took it up to see if any knows what’s it for a beast, an’ if any can make something of it. Got a hard shell, sharp jaws, who knows what more inside.”

“I’ll fetch Attanet.” someone called from the crowd.

“You asked anyone on the way?” another voice inquired.

“We went past the grove where the monk lives, the one with the head that looks like two,” came the answer, “An’ we went to see if it knew. Said it hadn’t ever seen any like this, too, and it’s not of Jahan-”

“That’s good already!” Oltik quietly interjected.

“It’s not that, but the monk said it’d known of more things suchlike, down south. There’s many in great packs, it said, an’ that whole villages disappear where they go.”

Mutters, both dubious and uneasy, ran through the audience.

“Nobody’s heard from Sappria in two weeks.”

“Doesn’t mean a thing. You can’t listen to all a monk says.”

“It is to the south…”

“Did you hear of what happened near Taril? That some of them went to talk to the urts, and they say they saw…”

“We’ll have to go a while in the city and take a party to go check, just in case…”

The discussion continued even as the crowd briefly parted to make way for Attanet the chipper and the handful of skinners that followed him to inspect the carcass. Somehow, the fact that Immen had brought the day’s news was the last concern on anyone’s mind.

***

A balance of vectors ensures the proliferation of impurity. To every force corresponds an equal opposite.

Without mutual annihilation.

It perverts its own laws.

A swollen gestator burst open with a wrench that would have sickened mortal stomachs, and a newborn shrieker clambered out of the tattered sac with a triumphant howl. A wave of crawlers was already moving to sweep up the remains while the hunter busied itself with the meaty stem.

Something that had once walked on two legs, and now skittered on four, ran by, avoiding the blind advance of the insatiable creatures. Its own grotesquely inflated abdomen made movement difficult, but somehow it had still enough determination to drag it ahead regardless of its content.

The solution is to answer every force with a greater negation.

Osveril swept its senses over the surrounding zone. What had not so long ago been a forest had been converted into an otherworldly, monochromatic landscape of withered earth and malformed life. Colossal spongy growths towered to all sides, having completely engulfed the trees (and not only) they had parasitised. Swarms of winged pests buzzed in and out of them, coalescing into clouds and disappearing into the as yet untouched distance with their infectious load. Among the living pillars, short, robust trunks rose from tangles of vein-like roots, surmounted by disproportionately large bulbous growths. They pulsed and writhed, shook and breathed.

Each of them was the incubator of a new ravenous life.

Where life proves incapable even as a foundation, it is my duty to improve.

The mortals had, as anticipated, proved uncooperative so far. It was inconsequential. If their minds did not accept purification willingly, their bodies would serve it by force.

The Absolute felt a superior strength of life burgeon nearby. It did not turn - its hollowborn saw for it.
The colossal simulacrum womb that had consumed the tallest mound in the wood whole quivered and burst open, yielding to the pressure of the gargantuan claws within. A vast shape, rivalling the greatest of the devoured trees, unfolded amid the gory ruin, splaying and stretching its segmented limbs and blinking to focus its unsettlingly intelligent, hain-like six eyes. The lower side of its bulky spined head split open along a straight line in the middle, and a dozen tongues - or tentacles - emerged to scoop up what remained of its birthing chamber.

It would feed. It would grow.

There would be more.

The negation will always surpass the force.

My Family and Other Animals

Since he was last seen, Osveril has learned that the world isn’t as vulnerable as he thought. Creatures like fiberlings, urtelem and presumably others - and, of course, these pesky mortals - constantly threaten the Crawlers, who are not equipped to deal with such obstacles. It follows that he must improve his designs, and he sets to doing so by sampling the genes of the most dangerous creatures he can find, annoying them in the process.

It’s revealed in passing what happened to the transformed Wisp: Osveril mutated it into an entity known as “hollowborn”, which appears to be little more than an animated pocket of nonexistence. The hollowborn is unintelligent and rather fragile, but can multiply and be directed to move by its creator.

To complete his general system upgrade, Osveril then infuses Transgenesis with his essence. Besides losing its touch of colour, the staff becomes capable of replicating and combining not only genetic code, but also anomalous properties such as the Crawlers’ hunger and internal void rifts. This function seems to be limited to effects of Osveril’s own making, however, and can’t grant major unnatural abilities on its own - some Might expenditure is still needed for those. (1 Might spent.)

There follows a scene with two hunters of the Great Ring visiting a village not far from their own to meet a herd of nomadic urtelem that should be passing through it. However, they do not find a village at all where it should be. Unbeknownst to them, Osveril had visited it not long before, and clearly didn’t approve of what the locals had to say to him. There are signs of a struggle in the deserted zone, and what remains of its inhabitants have been mutated into unrecognisable hosts for a sponge-like parasite, which in turn serves as hives for some sort of insectoid. The hunters think of blaming first the Realta, then Jvan, but are chased away by the calls of unknown animals before they can investigate further.

In another scene, set some time later, a hunting party returns from an expedition with the corpse of a strange creature they saw fight a group of fiberlings. This part in particular shows some aspects of life in the Great Ring - hunting is a major trade, given the wealth and variety of fauna in the region. This exploitation of natural resources has allowed for some notable technological progress, as implied by the existence of city-states (though significant parts of the more rural population still seem to be transitioning from a nomadic to a fully sedentary lifestyle). Chipper and Sculptor presence is mentioned, as is the practice of slavery, likely fuelled by the predatory nature of raid-based warfare.

The strange creature, needless to say, is another new creation of Osveril. Grey Shriekers are roving predators, capable of coordinating at a distance through loud cries. They can also generate and project minor void-disruptions, which are especially harmful to fiberlings as beings reliant on a stable connection to Gap energy, but can otherwise be pretty unpleasant for anyone. (0.5 Might spent on the Shriekers' ability.)

A final scene shows that the multiplying of new lifeforms is the result of Osveril’s crude attempt to create a destructive “anti-ecosystem” to outperform and extinguish natural life. In addition to the Shriekers, the parasitic sponges (which are in fact largely similar to lichens and fungi) and the insects that propagate them, other parts of it include plant-mammal hybrid surrogate gestation chambers and a gigantic creature (whose genome was derived in part from brush beast and, oddly enough, hain DNA) which seems to be the first of its own species.

It’s implied that a certain length of time has passed as the withering spreads further and the local mortals prepare to face the new alien threat.

Might Usage

Level 2

1.5 MP (3 starting, 1.5 spent)

Legend of the Silver Legion Redux (Open)

Empire of Lynn-Naraksh

The Risen Host, Demesne of Urvetschin

They always said the ash in the south smelled worse than elsewhere. There was a shade of iron in it that made inhaling it akin to breathing in the fumes of a battlefield or charnel-house - as though blood were seeping from the air itself. Grey blood. It was said that it was indeed the ichor of a fallen Divine that had coalesced into the many metal veins that lay beneath the mountains, and permeated the earth and skies above. None could say if this were true, and indeed many doubted whether the blood of an old god would have tasted and smelled the same as that of men, but now Relin was inclined to believe it. He had never breathed the southern air without at least a rag to cleanse it, and for decades now had enjoyed the privilege of helm padding and good ash-masks. The poor defense afforded against the grisly stench by his loose-knit convict's hood stung almost as much the rope that bound his wrists and the manacles on his feet. He could only imagine the others felt the same.

There were seven of them lined up on the scaffold, all shrouded in the grey of those condemned. He was last, standing behind them all, yet he could see well into the distance if he craned his neck and brought his eye-holes over the shoulders before him. Close by, to the fore of the platform, was a headsman's chopping-block. t its side the immobile form of a Deathless Guard, clad in the colours of the Narakshi flag and inhuman in its gridded faceguard, leaned on an axe with a disproportionally large blade. The Emperor had been merciful - grievous though their lapse might have been, albeit Relin himself could not in good conscience come to blame himself for it, they had been spared the savagery of the High Executioner and the jeering of the Throne's denizens. The blow would at least be quick, and the spectators silent.

While this was a relief, he could not but feel he was much more unnerved by the still presence of the etched ranks, as heavy as any of the monolithic soldiers, than he would have been by the scorn of a living throng. This was the first time he saw the army with his own eyes, and the macabre circumstances of the occasion did little to ease the oppressive sensation of grim majesty that radiated from it. Even from the height of the scaffold, he could not glimpse an end to the black files, and though he was too far to properly discern any fine details, the mere obvious fact that these could not be crude approximations was unsettling. The priests had said that this could not be the work of the Old Ones, and who could know why better than him? - yet the thought of an unknown force being capable of so much was of no reassurance. A part of him was almost glad that he would not have to dread it for much longer.

The voice of a herald standing off to the other side of the row, where he could not seen him, had meanwhile finished calling out their names.

"...Tebarras, Darovk Oglobni, Relin Sumnieme. Armigers of the Imperial Throne, first select maniple, adjoined to the Sanctum Guards. For the faults of mortal negligence, inadequacy in fulfilling the most vital of duties, and inability to maintain justification of the trust placed in you by the one power that holds the world, His Imperial Sanctity of Lynn-Naraksh, it is decreed that you be put to death, with the honours due to your rank. That your condemnation may be an example to those who would be content with the possibility of failure, and you thus may render service in death for your failings in life. That weakness may be excised from the Inheritors of the Old Gods, for it may not be forgiven.

Begin."

The first of the manacled figures shuffled forward, with only the slightest stagger. The interrogators had not been harsh on them, seeing clearly enough that they knew no more of the intrusion into the Emperor's chambers than anyone else and having no reason to ply their trade on them any further. Unenviable though his lot might have been, Relin knew well enough that it was immeasurably better than that of so many other wretches. All things considered, he had lived well. Not one thing, it seemed to him, he would have done otherwise. Forces beyond the ken of the Blood Lords themselves had toyed with him, that was all. Everything came and went, sooner or later, and this might even have spared him the afflictions and pains of age. He would go out of life having quaffed of it strongly, before the taste was soured by the dregs. It was-

Crack.

The Deathless's axe had fallen, digging into the wood of the block as though the victim's neck had not even been there. And, indeed, it was not there, as Relin saw with amazement. There was no blood, nor even a limp headless body. Where it should have been lay only a heap of dust, spread beneath the now empty grey cloak. He thought he saw a red glimmer somewhere among the stone warriors.

Before he knew it, the next in line had stepped forward.

Crack.

Crack.

Crack.

Crack.

Crack.

It was unreally fast. Although each of them had to walk further to reach the block, it seemed as though the distance decreased whenever one stepped forward. He did not even notice when the view before him became clear with Darovk's back gone. The sea of dark shapes had always been before his eyes since he had walked up to the scaffold.

Something prodded him in the back, and he dragged himself forward. He did not feel the manacles, but his feet were heavy, as in a dream where he himself had become of stone. The Deathless waited, impassive and motionless. He had crossed the scaffold before he knew it, and his body knelt on its own. His arms twisted in one last struggle, if he could but slip one hand free it would not happen, he would be-

Not with that horned shadow over him. Not with the eyeless ranks waiting below, as hungry as any crowd on an execution day.

It did not matter. It was nothing, after all. A few more moments, and it would be done, he would stand up and go. Like in the temple, when as a child he wanted to stand up and go, but the shadows would not let him. They always did in the end, though, and they would now.

"Emperor lives." he managed to whisper hoarsely. The iron head without a face nodded slightly. "He accepts all in death." it replied, in a voice that was not human.

Relin closed his eyes and smelled the blood of the earth. It was the first time he did. In the blood is the power.

Crack.

***

Nergerad

It was not clear why an inn in such a small, forlorn town as Nergerad had such a large cellar. It had been almost entirely empty when the Order had seized it, with only dust, some rotten, empty barrels crumbling in a corner, and cobwebs inhabited by prodigiously large vermin to occupy it. There had not even been anywhere to hang a torch on the wall. Presumably, if anyone ever needed to descend there, which ought to have been no more often than once a century, they had done so by lantern-light. It was owing only to the dryness of the ash-lands that the earthen floor was not crawling with worms and worse foulness, and that foetid lichens did not flourish about it.

Since then, little had changed, yet the cellar was unrecognisable. Where had once been musty darkness there crackled the fire of braziers; where had been bare soil there stood racks and blazed coals to warm blades and pincers; where had been silence there resounded the groans and creaking of cunning devices, the cracking of bone and the low, almost spectral sounds of torment.

At the very middle of the chamber stood a great contraption of wood and iron. It was shaped as a rack of supplice, yet far longer and broader than customary for such an instrument. Such was its size that several prisoners could have lain upon it at once, and, indeed, an entire row of bodies was chained upon it. The tormentors seemed to have taken care in their choice, for none was by far taller or shorter than the others. Had even any been, however, a skilfully built mechanism was in place to lengthen the chains as required. Two hulking Vurogg stood at the ends of the device, ready to turn its twin handles in unison at a sign from the masked figures that paced before the rack, now and then sweeping a whip over this or that painfully stretched breathing carcass.

A robed cleric stood before one of the captives, leaning forth and gazing into darkened eye-sockets with the red sparks in the depths of its hood. A shrouded hand held a ritual kris under its victim's chin, scratching it with its point.

"Who are you?!" snarled an altered voice from beneath the mask. There was no impatience or curiosity in it; its vicious tone was itself perfunctory, almost bored.

The prisoner's scarred lips twitched - they could speak, but only a faint moan came from between them.

"What is your name?!"

The lips opened and grasped futilely at something, as those of a fish pulled out of water.

"Who are you?!"

A feeble gurgling rose at last from the throat, marked with a light, seemingly clumsy firebrand. "I... a... I..."

The cleric waited, slowly sliding its weapon towards the captive's neck. Yet no more came from the latter than broken, incoherent sounds.

The hood dipped in a satisfied nod, and the undulant blade abruptly plunged between the prisoner's ribs. A moment, and the body was gone.

The priest shook the ash from its arm, then stepped aside, nearing the next victim of the rack like a bird of prey.

"Who are you?!"

Beginner's DnD 5e Game - Group 2

Motioning for the others to remain where they stood, or perhaps simply giving an inadvertent twitch of the fingers, Ulor advanced into the small chamber, eyes darting aside now and then, but mostly focused upon the flames at its center. The octopus had floated up to the ceiling and begun to slowly rotate in what might have been its equivalent of its master's inspection. Neither paid much attention to the coins; Ulor briefly shifted his gaze among the sapphires, tracing a line between them in the air with his finger (a line which rapidly devolved into some sort of abstruse scrambled sign), but soon lost interest when he ascertained that they were not lying in any particular order or shape, and began to circle the brazier with irregular paces, occasionally stopping to lean in and either smell or pass his hand over the flames.

There was an odd sensation about the fire. It could have contained traces of magic, and at one point Ulor was certain he could feel it in there, but it immediately occurred to him that it might have simply been the heat. Indeed, it could not be anything else than the heat. Or was this actually an illusion of heat due to the spells that lay on it? Yes, it must be this- He shook his head in irritation and began to examine the brazier itself. Though it was unclear if the flames had at arcane emanations, their smell, it seemed to him, was certainly unusual. He thought he recognised the smell of certain vaguely familiar ritual components, and, if this was true, the brazier itself was bound to yield further clues. Its shape was the correct one, as far as he knew, and were those symbols etched on its sides? Whether by accident or design, they appeared to match the rest.

"The hellspawn came from here." he called out to the group. "And might come again." He looked back at the fire. If it was still burning, there was a chance that the link to the nether planes might still have been open. The only way to be certain was by testing it - if only he knew how.

Asmod- Demog- Is that even the right one?

The octopus pirouetted in midair as if to shrug. The ones beyond had not told Ulor much about fiends, though he suspected they could if they wanted to. With these creatures afoot, knowledge of their invocations might soon become useful, or even necessary. He noted to himself that the matter was worth memorising for when They would speak again. Surely They would understand.

>Arcana roll of 6 to check if the fire is magical.
>Religion roll of 16 to get a feeling of its purpose and try to recall some definitely safe diabolic conjurations.

Legend of the Silver Legion Redux (Open)

Empire of Lynn-Naraksh

Strakhte Cathedral, the Imperial Demesne

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 north.” 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 without need, 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 all of it 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!”

“Impudence 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. “Is this their work at all?”

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.

Dyson's Dream- Sci-fi NRP with a thousand worlds in a single star system

@Arawak Understandable. When you have time, we could write out the Domain delegation's arrival to Iural.

Dyson's Dream- Sci-fi NRP with a thousand worlds in a single star system

Sorry for the (potentially lethal) inactivity on my part, but various poorly timed obstacles ave delayed me until now. If any of you who are about are still up for keeping this going, I can provide a collaborative effort here or there (@Arawak or @Raylah in particular).

Mid/High Casual - Divinus: The Deity Roleplay Mk.II

...since Jvan had wrecked the home of Osveril.

What goes around comes around.

Beginner's DnD 5e Game - Group 2

All things considered, Ulor was not quite surprised that the gnome's theory about the functioning of the altars had not occurred to him before. He did feel there was a link or a throat between them, and, now that he thought of it, the juvenile wyrm had been crouching over the second one when the party surprised it. Nevertheless, it seemed amazing that not all rituals should, after all, have been directed towards something outside the material planes, nor the energy of sacrifices consumed only by gods and their likes. Were these dragon-worshippers, even advised by a devil as they had been, truly so mad as to have spilled hard-gained blood not for their divine or infernal patrons, but for a terrestrial creature, of all things?

Can you believe this? With all these people, they could have summoned much more than a dragon!

Perhaps, but they might have not known how. Or not dared risk conjuring something they did not know as well as their dragon.

If their goal was to wreak havoc on the city, that would not have mattered, would it? But I cannot see how that would further their plan, unless that was to be the true sacrifice...

However, either Ulor could not voice his thoughts out loud as clearly as that, or he did not think anyone would find them as useful as the octopus did, because his answer to the gnome was merely "It would have been bad, yes. But why would it have been good for them?", followed by a pensive grunt.

Being done with both altar and trove, he finally became aware of the rest of "all these people". Although his eyes soon wandered away from the cell's direction at first, he seemed to be struck with some sort of idea after a few moments. Stowing away the scrolls and flasks lest they be forgotten due to not being shiny enough, he made his way towards the newly freed group, passing over the boat with a clumsy display of acrobatics that prematurely called a sphinx's riddle to mind. Once he was close enough to them to be within earshot without need to shout - something he was not certain his throat could have taken - he pointed a finger at none of them in particular and, still slightly out of breath, wheezed broadly in their direction on the heels of his companions' more amicable questions.

"More importantly, what have you seen and heard down here?"

Legend of the Silver Legion Redux (Open)

Empire of Lynn-Naraksh

South of Nergerad, Demesne of Urvetschin

“Oer this ridge there, you’ll see it now.”

The small column wound its way between the jagged crests of a line of squat hills that protruded from the waste like pustulent growths on the black, scarred hide of some tremendous beast. While this was not the path Valdik had followed the first two times, he had discovered that it was much faster to reach the place from the closest town this way than by the detour through the mountain pass, and going through Nergerad was unavoidable once people higher up than the bäkhte had become involved. They certainly wouldn’t stop at Valdik’s own village, if only because there was not nearly enough room for them there, even in what passed for an inn and the church put together. He was indeed a little surprised that they had been able to fit in Nergerad itself. An Episcope, he could understand. Under their masks, they could not have been very different from anyone else. But this was the Exarch of the South. Someone who surely lived like a lord, and under whose hood he was sure he had seen a small red glimmer.

Yet the Exarch had obviously spent the night in the town’s finest attic, and still did not look any less imposing for it. The robed figure could not have been much taller than himself, nor was there much that distinguished it from the cenobites following it, aside from the slightly more numerous and visible ornaments on its trappings. It was certainly far less impressive a sight than the Knights marching at its sides. However decorated with eyes and other mystical symbols, its vestment was no glimmering suit of armour, and its mask no bone-fanged helm. Even the black adjuncts behind them might have seemed to surpass it in menace with their swords and spiked maces, or the three brown-cloaked strangers who came last of all in their mystery – Valdik did not know what they could be, or why they would have been travelling in the prelate’s train. But they all paled near the Exarch, for the sole reason that it was the Exarch. He had never truly thought he would see one from up close, let alone be a guide to one, but his discovery was proving more and more miraculous by the day. Maybe he would someday be called for by – Well, it was always too early to think of that.

“There is, Eminence. You can see it from ere.”

The procession had by this time climbed over the spine of the last hill, and nothing more stood between them and the black plain. Like everywhere in Naraksh, be it south or west, the sky was dim despite it being high noon, but the view from the hilltop was clear. The whole of the wasteland, from there to the mountains that stood far over the horizon, was open to their sight. Or it would have been, were it not for the sea of dark shapes that stretched over it, vanishing into the distance.

“Godsblood” Valdik heard one of the adjuncts swear under his breath. Several others inhaled sharply through their masks. He had grown to expect these reactions by now. Even the Episcope had drawn a Triangle in the air when seeing the things for the first time.

It was just as well there were people with the Exarch, or he would have been even more unnerved. The high cleric had not said anything, nor even raised a hand. Despite this being his fourth time before the carven ranks, Valdik himself was still struck with the same awe and fright as he had been when he had first discovered the titanic work. These things, whatever they were, could not have been something of this world or age. They belonged in the tales and legends of times gone by, when the gods broke the earth with one hand and breathed rivers of fire into its depths. Never mind what people said about that Prophetess. Her words about some “darkness” – as though that was something a proper Narakshi needed to be warned about! – were worth less than the pebble that had found its way into his boot if they shied away from a true miracle like this. The faith of the Eyes had something to stand on, here on those stone shoulders. This was what the bäkhte spoke about in church, and what the Exarch must have read about hundreds of times from those tablets they had in the cathedral. Signing, praying, even simply rejoicing, he could have understood anything. But not this silence.

He caught himself wondering if what was under that mask was really a man like him, and how much it could have known about the gods that it should not be astonished. How it could have known that much. The thought almost made him shudder.

They were now close to the first row of sculpted warriors. The Exarch stopped some steps away from it, and the entire procession ground to a halt behind, spreading out in a semicircle around them. Mutterings coursed among the party as its members admired the inhumanly fine design of the figures’ carven armaments, rivalling, as Valdik had heard the Episcope say, even the old monuments in the Throne. The contrast between them and the blank features was a rough and unpleasantly familiar one, all too reminiscent of the faceless lords of the land.

“You said they change when you touch them?” Valdik still could not say whether the hissing, rasping voice from under the prelate’s hood was that of a man or a woman.

“Yes, Eminence. Like this, see…” Stiffening his hand to stop it from trembling, he raised it to the nearest statue’s head. They were, he had discovered, safe to the touch, warm yet not scalding. That did not make the sight of the transformation that came over them every time any less eerie. He had never been fond of mirrors – his face was more distinct in them than even he remembered it, which always bothered him – and this was the most unsettling one he had ever seen.

His fingers found a shoulder of black stone, and the whispers behind him rose in intensity as the sculpture radiated a sanguine glow, lines and bulges forming on the previously smooth surface under its helmet. There he was, immortalised better than anyone short of the Emperor himself could hope for. Every scar, every stray hair on his chin, every single pock-mark under his eyes, each of what he knew to be the exact length and depth. He wanted to withdraw his hand, but the looming dark form of the Exarch in the corner of his eye was more threatening than the dead rock was sinister. Thus, it was only after a few more moments that he lifted his hand, passing it slowly before the statue’s head, which briefly reawakened it. Not without some relief, he stepped back, looking expectantly at the robed figure beside him.

The high cleric motioned for him to back further away, which he was glad to obey, and advanced towards the figure. Cloth rustled in the silence of the wasteland as a draped arm swept up, repeating Valdik’s movements. Once again, a dark red streamed from the statue, though its face was covered from where he stood by the Exarch’s head. Nevertheless, he knew the shifting stone had not failed when subdued exclamations rose from the closest acolytes. This time, even the Exarch nodded briefly in what might have been surprise. It drew back, and the glow died down; however, it was soon replaced by a new, harsher light. The prelate was holding a palm outstretched towards the stone warrior, and bright fiery sparks were gathering at the tips of its fingers. There was no smoke or crackling, nor was the black glove burned by the dancing shards of radiance. The priests and Knights standing around them seemed far less astonished by this display than by the changes in the sculpture’s face, but Valdik could not help but bite down. He had been right about the red glimmers under that hood after all.

The sparks surged up in a stronger flare, and, detaching themselves from the Exarch’s hand, flowed at the statue like a stream of fiery arrows. They struck the stone, crawling over it like a swarm of wasps, then disappeared into it, sinking as though it had been quicksand. Evidently, this was not what the Exarch expected. The masked head swayed a second time, and the sparks turned and twisted into each other, coalescing into something Valdik could only think of as a bolt of flowing amber lightning that arced through the air at the very centre of the carven chest. He had to squint not to be dazzled by the flash; when he blinked off the reverb in his eyes, he saw the statue stood unchanged and the Exarch had lowered its hand, which was now pensively intertwined with the other. A few moments passed in silence. It was clear even to those less adept in the magical arts that, whatever the high priest had tried, it had been to no effect, and it was just as clear that this was not what had been expected.

Despite the failure, however, the Exarch did not seem entirely lost. Turning and moving towards the semicircle, it gestured at the three brown-cloaked strangers, who had until then remained standing some distance away from the rest. They now came forward, two of them casting off their mantles as they did to reveal worn grey wurm-hide leather clothing and masks of the cheaper sort. At their belts they had short, straight-bladed swords, which their hands reached for even before they had fully come to face each other. At first, Valdik could make little sense of their movements, until it dawned on him upon seeing the number of roughly patched slashes and suspicious dark stains on the figures’ clothes. These were bloodbrothers. Followers of the deceiver Prophet. How were they here, with the Exarch?! Why had they not been seized and imprisoned? The bäkhte said that bloodbrothers were crazed murderers and animals, everyone knew this. And yet the Exarch had allowed them to come here. Maybe they were prisoners? But then, why?

While he was still wondering, the answer had already begun to unfold before him. The two bloodbrothers had drawn their blades and were now swinging at each other with savage abandon. From what he knew of swordfighting, he could see they were good, though reckless as nobody he had ever known before. They seemed to ignore any defensive motions with the weapon, only making slight attempts to dodge before plunging into flurries of brutal lunges and slashes. Fresh blood was already welling out from new gashes. Valdik found himself enthralled by the weave of their swords and the sheer fury that exuded from their skilful yet beastly movements. There was little doubt they would not stop until one or both would be on the ground. Was this why the Exarch had brought them along, to circumvent the law against blood sacrifice if sorcery failed? It would have been callous, but Valdik had to admit no one could have said anything against the prelate if this were indeed the case. As far as anyone was concerned, the bloodbrothers would kill each other, and that was all. No one was even forcing them to.

Whatever the reason, beyond the more immediate one of their bloodlust, that pushed the supposed captives against each other, their duel seemed to be coming to an end. The one to Valdik’s right clearly had the upper hand; while its opponent was growing more and more sluggish, seeping red from several wounds over the body, its own thrusts were only slightly slower than at the beginning. A sidestep and a lunge, and its blade was in the other’s flank. The adversary answered with a backhanded blow, more by reflex than consciously, followed by a swing that sliced across its back, but by then it had already moved around the sagging body and struck it again between the ribs. The other slumped to its knees, dropping its sword as a gurgling sound rose from its chest, red-tinged foam dripping from the sides of its mask. Crying out something harsh and guttural that Valdik did not understand, the victor pulled up the victim’s head and slashed across the exposed throat, sending an almost black gout spraying on the nearest statue’s feet.

Instinctively, Valdik raised his eyes to the head of the sculpture, which had once again begun to pulse with light, as though bleeding itself. Its blank surface was warping as new features rose from it like bones from the descending tide. The third brother bent down to tear off the fallen one’s mask, threw a glance at the transforming visage, then nodded to the assembled group. The Exarch stepped closer as if to satisfy itself, and Valdik, safe enough behind its sight, did the same. The corpse’s sharp, narrow Eastern face was twisted in the stomach-churning cross of a grimace of pain and a maddened snarl. An identical deathly mask now marred the once-pristine stone; the only difference was that this one would never rot. Nor, it seemed, would it ever be replaced. The Exarch swept a hand before the unnatural likeness, then touched its helm. There was neither light nor change.

Valdik tentatively held his own palm to a second sculpture. The stone flared up in red, and his own eyes looked back at him.

When he turned back towards the bloodied scene, the Exarch was looking at him, or, more likely, at the statue. There was a red shimmer behind the mask, he was now certain.

“That place, Nergerad. Is it the closest to here?”

“…Yes, Eminence.” His throat felt dry. The words did not come nearly as fast as he would have wanted, and for a moment he was afraid the Exarch would do the same to him as to that Easterner. But that did not happen.

“Clear it.” The high priest had turned towards its followers. “Remove everyone from Nergerad, and anywhere from which this can be reached in less than a day. Let none approach without our blessing.”

Somehow, Valdik felt this was the best outcome there could have been for those people. He took a step to leave the sculptures' side in the wake of the Exarch, when a call from one of the adjuncts drew his attention. His gaze strayed to where the masked warrior was pointing - and he bit down painfully on his tongue, as his throat felt as dry as the soil under his feet.

Where the corpse of the fallen bloodbrother had lain, nothing remained but a mound of dust, already half-lost in the ash of the wasteland.