by Ty Arthur
The cowards had fled, leaving him and his doomed family to die along with the rest of the city. Cracking down on the spinal cord and ripping viciously out with his unhinged jaw, the whole of Casterly's body and mind were focused on one thought: he would find them, and they would atone for their sins.
34 (The Shattered Tower, Aurora)
Consciousness was a fickle mistress, as likely to bring pain and sorrow as relief and joy. The sensation of sudden movement sent sharp pains wracking across his side. The world tilted and a new explosion of pain rang through his head as he hit the floor, the chair he was securely tied to upended and now lying sidewise. This was how his jailers had chosen to wake him the last three nights – or perhaps days, with no way to see the outside world he'd lost track of time. He vowed not to let exhaustion overtake him tonight, but he knew it was only a matter of time and eventually his body would give out against his wishes.
The preceding days were a blur, beginning from the moment he'd been unceremoniously dropped back onto the broken tower, now filled to the brim with soldiers, officers, priests, and more. They had set to work quickly, preparing him for removal of what they termed “the vessel.” The specifics fled from his mind when he sought them out, only catching painful flashes of the process. He recalled being strapped down, and a crank being turned as both blood and long strings of ethereal essence were culled from his body.
The more he thought of the mixing of magic and insane surgery, the quicker it slipped away into darkness, followed by night after night of pain as the torturers sought to draw even more from Myrr. A flash of dizziness ran through his body as his captor grabbed the chair and lifted him upright again. A rotten stench filled his nostrils and sent him into full wakefulness as one of the tormentors came face to face with him and barked a new string of questions.
Was an assault coming? How many men? Were any of the Farwalker's priests among them? Why did he insist on forestalling the inevitable and accepting Drungomet's truth? What had the druid revealed to him? Did he want them to have to begin the beatings again?
He only vaguely understood half the questions, and the rest he'd never answer, maintaining a passive face, knowing his refusal to speak would bring the fists raining down again, and possibly worse. Last night they'd brought out the more potent instruments to loosen men's tongues: the pokers, the blades, the flame. He realized now that he'd passed out some time ago and not merely succumbed to the call of sleep as his body gave out.
There was another one in the room now, sighing heavily and wondering aloud why they couldn't just slice open the prisoner's throat and be done with it. The unexpected second presence was worrisome: was it just another scare tactic, or had they grown tired of the silence and decided to finally cut their losses and be done with this game that went nowhere?
A wicked smile crossed the first one's face as a knife was drawn and trailed lazily through the air. There were no more questions forthcoming, and no storm of fists and boots to show displeasure at the lack of answers. The knife – a large serrated piece for cutting meat and not a fine instrument for inflicting pain – inched closer and he could feel the end nearing. It pressed against the bare skin of his chest first and then gently, almost lovingly, began its way up towards his throat, pressed down just hard enough to draw a bead of blood in its wake.
The blade firmly placed against the edge of his throat, the captive knew that with all patience lost his tormentor had decided to finally end it. He closed his eyes and thought of all that had led to this moment, all the life ahead that would be denied him, and the woman who would be safe without him. With hands tied, weapons out of reach, and no source of power to draw upon, he had no means to stop the end from rapidly approaching.
After days alternating between only silence or ragged screams when the pain became too great, mustering up his voice was a painful affair, but he finally managed to whisper “Goodbye.”
His captors chuckled and made jokes to themselves about his last word, not realizing the farewell wasn't meant for them. The pressure began to build against his throat...
… and then suddenly stopped as a deafening explosion rang out and the room rocked sideways. His eyes shot open and all the air burst forth from his lungs when he struck the ground with enough force to shatter the back of the chair. All sound was gone save for a dull ringing at the back of his skull, growing in intensity.
One of the guards was out of the room in an instant, rushing towards the cause of the massive shockwave, while the other stood in stunned silence, looking back and forth between captive and door. When the ringing finally subsided he could hear panicked shouts from above and the sound of many boots striking stone floor at a rapid pace. Finally deciding on a course of action, the man who had beaten and cut him for days slipped out the door, leaving the captive to fend for himself.
Knowing there would never be another opportunity, he began frantically trying to extricate himself from the tangle of knots and shattered wood, dragging his bruised and broken skin through the loops until he could finally stand and pitch forward awkwardly on legs that hadn't been used in days. The slanted nature of the floors in the broken tower made the stone path even more difficult to follow. He slowly stumbled out into the hallway, expecting his jailers to be on him any moment and dragging him back into the cell.
Ignoring the calls from other living captives dragged from the burning wreckage of Cestia, he pressed on toward the stone staircase they'd dragged him down while only half-conscious days before. Shouting echoed down as some altercation brewed. After a moment there was another massive burst of sound and the already-uncertain foundation shook as violently as before, knocking his wobbly legs out from under him. A new round of shouts came from above, then suddenly cut off all at once.
Hesitantly, he made his way up the spiraling stairs, every sense on alert in anticipation of a file of armed men waiting to greet him. The scene at the top of the staircase made no sense, and he had to stare for a few moments before his mind registered what his eyes insisted was there. A jagged, gaping hole stood where the wall should have, and giant blocks of mortared stone were strewn across the room.
The newly-freed captive prepared to jump down and make a run into the surrounding hills when the light above caught his eye. Closer than ever before, the Wanderer burned brightly in the sky, larger even than the sun, but now rent with a series of jagged black scars, fluctuating along their edges like darkened smoke. Thoughts of flight faded and became hollow nothingness as the words of the serpentine creature rang in his mind. He'd completed a task. Done what was asked. Served the darkness in the very heart of the light.
Turning away from a world outside offering as little chance at salvation as the brutal soldiers within, a new scene of horror in the side hallway filled Myrr's vision. The remains of his former captors and what appeared to be a full contingent of soldiers armed for a skirmish littered the length and breadth of the hall; eviscerated from a thousand angles, torn to pieces with a completeness that would have taken a man with a knife hours of visceral effort, but which must have somehow occurred in a brief whirlwind.
One of them, unmercifully still alive despite missing several appendages, coughed and sputtered in a last few fleeting seconds of life as the fountains of red continued to spurt across the wall. The eyes were the worst, pleading without saying a word, just as Casterly had. He turned his head away from those desperate eyes and reached down to pick up a weapon before stepping over the first body. Looking down he wasn't surprised to see the very same knife that had nearly ended him before the tables had suddenly turned. He knew this was how it was meant to be.
Rather than turning back he continued onward, some morbid desire to understand what could have possibly done this drawing him on when he should be seeking safety instead. Reaching the end of the hall and turning down the next corner, his need for knowledge pulled him into further carnage. The walls and floors were blackened with soot, as though some great conflagration had passed through, despite the lack of m
aterial to burn. The row of charred bodies told him whatever was doing this was a far bigger danger than his former captors.
As though the thought had summoned her forth, the source all of this devastation and death appeared at the end of the hall, her feet suspended inches above the floor as she floated forward without any visible means of locomotion. Behind the floating form could be seen the barest outlines of skittering, awful things not fully of this world. The blade nearly dropped from his fingers when he saw her face in the parting shadows. He knew he had nothing to fear from her, but the same could not be said for anyone else still alive in the tower.
Seeing the winged things of blinding light flickering around her hovering form, hearing the insane whispers calling from her mind to his, he immediately understood what she’d done, and it shook him to the core. He couldn't have known that he would be the catalyst to let out those things always trying to come through their chosen vessel.
Thinking back to when she'd found him, shattered and broken in the Briar, he wished she had left him to die instead. He'd rather it had ended back in the mud of Cestia then he be allowed to continue living and be the reason this abomination stood before him, overtaking the only other person in the whole wretched world who was worth a damn.
What would he do without her, the real her? What good was life with this awful thing taking her place, even though she had brought it all about just to save him?
Their eyes caught and he knew he had her full attention. There was no time for hesitation, it was now or never. He could never fulfill his promise to end her, but he could finally do what was just and set something right.
In a mirror reflection of his plight just earlier that evening, he pressed the point of the blade back into his neck, exactly where a now-dead guard had placed it when the world still made sense and there was something to live for.
“I'm sorry,” he whispered, plunging the knife in as deep as he could and dragging it across his throat as everything went black.
35 (The Lambent Chapel, True Night)
The missionary gasped when he was shunted out of the light of heaven and back into the sad, fallen world he had originally been born into. Passing through the reformed mirror felt like knives scraping across every inch of his body, and the darkness of physical being was oppressive after spending so long in the infinite expanse of god's light.
The stabbing sensation wasn't half as agonizing as what had occurred at his god's feet, when the darkness from that apostate tore through him, crushing and searing all at once, rending his form asunder in heaven itself where all pain should have been cast aside. But the light was merciful, and had chosen to rid him of such impurity. For what had seemed an eternity, and may well have been, the flowing form of god himself had broken the priest's body and then continuously reformed it, again and again until all that was unpure was filtered out like dross.
Both the agony of purity and the dulling sensation of a physical reality were burdens he would happily bear however, now filled with the knowledge of the Farwalker's plans for this world and its people. He'd paid heavy prices before, and there would be even steeper tolls to pay before his holy mission was completed.
Now an apostle direct from the one true god and not of any limited mortal religion, Erret strode forward confidently despite his lack of eyes to see inside the ancient chapel. Burned away by god's searing radiance, those physical orbs of sight would have been no use to him any longer. With a stable portal opened through the woman who had tried to escape her fate, cherub and seraphim would herald his passing and set him on the right path. He walked by faith alone now, and intended to see that faith spread far and wide before he returned to heaven.
END
The Trade
Part 1 - Searching
The hazy shape of the cabin was finally taking form off in the distance through the ceaseless drifting of broad, white flakes. They didn’t fall fast, but they fell without respite, and trudging through the drifts was getting harder each day. Not that there was much point in leaving the cabin anymore, as every trek out into the snowy landscape had ended the same way: empty-handed and without answers.
The snow started falling a week ago and hadn’t let up since, and in all that time the hunter of men hadn’t seen another living soul. The solitude had been a welcome surprise at first after the constant bustle of the capital city, and it meant he didn’t have to come up with a new set of lies to tell while searching for his quarry.
False reasons, false plans, false names. Names in particular were no longer important. He’d taken dozens during the course of his murderous career, and no doubt there would be more as he took on new identities to hunt down those deemed unworthy of continued life by the church of the Farwalker.
The heavy skins required to survive in such climes were burdensome and slowed him down, as well as potentially revealing his presence with their dark coloring against the stark white landscape. For the first few days the hunter had layered them over his lean frame each morning, but as time wore on with no contact from the locals, he finally set them aside and chose to call on his inner fire for warmth. Focusing on the heat within, he chanted a mantra softly until it began to spread, and soon the flakes of snow sizzled and evaporated when they struck his skin.
It was a useful skill to have, learned by surreptitiously observing the priests in the inner chambers of the capitol’s church, although they insisted their powers were granted only to those of the true faith. The telltale hazy red glow it created around the hunter was a dead giveaway, but with no one to see him it seemed worth the risk.
This new assignment, bestowed by the cardinal himself, led out to the fringes of society to a people who were known for being fiercely independent, and didn’t take kindly to those from the cities intruding on their affairs. Still, they were a superstitious lot, and working for the church could have its advantages. He could pass as a priest-errant if necessary, pretending to be one of those servants of the Farwalker who traveled to the farthest reaches of civilization. Those wandering missionaries sought out lost relics of the faith and meted out justice to those who rejected the teachings of the church. It wasn’t far from the truth anyway.
While wary of the outside world and unwelcoming to strangers, the people of this tucked-away valley far from the continent’s main cities were not known for being completely reclusive, and their continued absence was worrying. If some disaster had occurred that forced everyone in the area to leave he could be searching empty stretches of backwoods for months before catching sign of his prey.
The hunter’s new mark was some heretic or blasphemer who’d supposedly used proscribed black powers to ensorcell and kill the faithful. Whether his quarry truly had or hadn’t committed the crime was no concern of his. The hunter had killed far more men than any of his targets could boast, a source of irony always lost on those who employed him. His handiwork had seen the morticians back in the capital busy with a steady stream of work, in those instances when the contracts had called for bodies to be found. Flayed apart and publicly displayed as a warning, neck snapped and body placed at the bottom of a set of long stone steps in an apparent accident, or just simply quietly removed from the streets to never be seen again; it made no difference to the hunter.
Leaving the white landscape behind after yet another failed venture, the hunter pulled closed the heavy cabin door against the cold and began stacking wood in the fireplace. Continuously using his inner fire was taxing, and would be of no use when he fell asleep, so a traditional blaze was best indoors. While sparking the fire he glanced at the shovel in the corner, worrying that if the snow continued at this pace he’d have to dig his way out in the morning.
With a small blaze crackling, the hunter began his routine pacing across the length of the cabin, considering his next course of action. Returning home empty-handed wasn’t a viable option. Although the heretic was likely frozen to death somewhere out in the woods, or had fled to lands far away from the reach of the church of the Farwalker, he
wouldn’t be satisfied until the contract was fulfilled. A matter of pride in his work was only part of it. If the cardinal or his priests used their rumored powers of scrying to discover one marked for death still lived, the hunter himself would no doubt be the next victim of an unfortunate accident.
While trying to decide where to pick up his search in the morning, the coarse hide-bound book unearthed just the previous day caught the hunter’s eye. It was still lying undisturbed where he’d left it on the roughly constructed oak table, the sole piece of furniture in the whole cabin. The book was the only thing he’d managed to find so far, and it was quite the oddity for a region where many had no ability to read or write the local tongue.
A long leather strip wrapped around its metal clasp, acting as both lock and bookmark. After a moment’s thought he unwound the strip and flipped through to the page he’d been reading the night before.
It was cold out when June died. It hasn’t stopped being cold since. I feel responsible for that.
The phrase remained as strange as it had the first time he’d read the words, searching through the journal for some clue as to the owner’s whereabouts or the reason for the disappearance of the locals. The hunter thought back to his discovery of the book the day before while searching the now-dead fields behind the cabin. The top of a shovel had meekly poked above the ever-deepening layer of white across the ground, and digging down through the snow revealed recently turned soil.
