Shadows & Sorcery #131
Beamed directly into your frontal cortex, it’s Shadows & Sorcery one hundred and thirty ONE!
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This week, learn of evil and betrayal in Serpents of the Dead, bear witness to the great and terrible Sorcery of the Sword, and join a couple rat-catchers as they grumble about their work in the Conjuror’s City…
Serpents of the Dead
Rarely did Carloman play the part of a judge's counsel—he wasn't a terribly impartial person, he admitted to himself, but he was glad to have been there, wretched though the whole thing had been. Another rare thing these days was the penalty of death in Voerlund. The Lunderman monarchs had done away with most of that as legal ruling centuries ago, so badly had their predecessors abused it. But here? For all that it left a bad taste in the wizard's mouth and ache in his chest three days later, a person like that was...dangerous, in a way no one there was ready to know.
Carloman practiced, as a rule, his law of second chances everywhere he could. Force was the final language he ever spoke to another living thing if he could manage it. He understood most awful people were simply stupid, ignorant, arrogant, lying to themselves, and so on. Normal human evils with base, petty motives. Things anyone can understand, given time. As much as he wanted to beat such fools over the head, which was perfectly reasonable, he ensured that such evils were not met likewise. It was worthy to leave good things in one's wake. People were precious to the wizard. Every last one of the beautiful, ridiculous, incredible things. Which made examples like the bastard that had been hanged at dawn three days ago hurt even more.
He was careful, also, to never default to evil even when confronted with the unthinkable. There was almost always a mundane, though horrid purpose or motive. Sickness, anger, sorrow, greed. These things he did not and never would consider evil. Awful, but not evil. Not a conscious, entirely aware malevolence, objective and intelligent. Not a thing that could never be reasoned with, that was driven not by instinct or nature, but by constant and active choice. A thing sourced from the deepest parts of the soul. The part that remembers what came before, and where it came from. An evil that was not human.
It was rare in the extreme, thank the stars. But he knew it when he saw it. He'd seen enough of it before. And he saw it in that courtroom, chained and gagged and leering at him because on some level, it also knew. And it didn't care. That was the crux of it for him. It knew perfectly well what it had done, it had no delusions or lies or justifications—it just didn't care. Insidious, because behind it was something that did care. And this did not exonerate those who did these things—because at the end of the day, they made a choice. And everyone always has a choice. It let these things happen in full and perfect knowledge of what they were.
The rain hammered the clay tiles of the flat topped conical lychgate, running down its old, weathered facade in rivulets, spilling onto the bare earthen ground. Just beyond was the round stone structure that led into the town crypt. But beneath the wide roof of the lychgate were two figures. One was a corpse, bade sit here overnight. Lychgates were not just the entrance to a graveyard, but acted as a kind of transitory space. Right now, it was a holding cell, a sort of price of admittance to the crypt, dealt to unsavoury characters. Intentional isolation from just about everyone and everything but the World Serpent who'd decide what to do with you. The other figure was Carloman.
It was an ill wind that night, and it seemed, to the wizard, particularly interested in passing by the lychgate as often as it could. He had performed a number of motions to ensure the candles stayed lit, but he did not trust this wind, and set to piling on little bindings and symbols and whispered words of flame every short while, all the time never taking his eyes off the corpse. Voerlunders weren't altogether against the notion of cremation, which he would have preferred with such a specimen, but the sometimes complex relationship rural places had with their landwight earth spirits and natural burials made it unwise for a stranger—and magician no less—to argue about.
He knew that thing wanted to continue its work. He had been staring at that corpse in its white winding sheet for a solid hour, maybe two. He knew that it knew. It was waiting to slip out of the body. Or maybe it was waiting for a chance to burst out, attack him. Were there voices on that wind? Come down from the dark between the stars? Calling to an ally? A servant? There were a lot of things that could happen to that corpse. No flesh or spirit that commits the acts this one did comes away unscathed in death. Maybe it was already changing under that winding sheet, like a cocoon.
Over the course of three hours, the night had deepened and settled in. Carloman had sat back, and eased his disquieted mind from dangerous thoughts, looking at or thinking about nothing in particular. Rain continued to chill the air and drum on the lychgate roof. His mind wandered in an aimless haze, a fugue state of almost absolute stillness, his eyes half closed, their amber smouldering low. Heavy drops collected and fell with the sound of rushing feet. A faint rustling was hidden by the long hiss of the night wind. The sky was starless but a moon's pale blue light seeped across the heavy slate clouds. The candles had gone low over the long hours and were flickering. A black spot spread over the sheet without a sound, and the fabric fell inwards.
Something coiled out from the corpse with a furtive motion.
The wizard's hand flew up and he snapped his fingers, the guttering candles flashing to life.
The thing piled out of the corpse like falling intestines, writhing and emitting wet, detestable sounds. Carloman grabbed it, slamming what amounted to a head back against the corpse. The lychgate was bathed in a blearing radiance. It had a face. A gaping, gasping, almost human face. Thin, incredibly thin and skeletally gaunt, with deep, gaping sockets, and small sharp teeth in the thin, nearly fleshless jaws. The rest of its mass was black, rugose, and eventually fading into an inky, featureless length.
This wasn't the first time, and it likely wouldn't be the last time Carloman held in his hands a human soul. The weight of it was never lost on him.
"I don't know how you ended up like this," he spoke to it slowly and sadly. It just writhed in his grip like a struggling fish. "I'll never understand why or how, and gods know I've encountered enough of you lot to understand. But I don't. Maybe you just like it, and those beyond said they'd give you as much of it as you wanted. I'm sure they told you all kinds of things." It was looking up as best it could, not at Carloman, but at the night sky. "There is a part of me that wants consume those shadows with fire and set you free into the air, despite all the tears I've seen the past week I've been here. Despite all the tears I've seen dealing with your kind. To give you, a fellow human being, a second chance."
It stopped twisting about in his hands. Carloman bent close to it.
"But you threw that chance to the side when you betrayed every spirit that has called you kin since the beginning of time. They will never know the meaning of what you've done. I'm the one who will make sure of that. Go back to your Godhead."
The magician threw out a hand to a candle, his fingers entwined in a gesture of binding, and then sunk them into the viscous mass of the shadow-laden spirit, and before it could utter a sound to the nameless ancient dark that waited in the winds, it erupted into flames. The wizard left it smouldering on the wet, bare earth of Voerlund, where every landwight could exult in its expulsion, and the World Serpent shift to receive the corrupted clay so that is may be renewed for a more noble purpose in a day yet to dawn.
Sorcery of the Sword
The universe and all things of which it was composed were One and Undivided. This was Truth. If something could be thought of, it could exist. This One Law Above All enabled the necessary contradictions for the existence of something to excise, like rotten flesh and bad thoughts, the universe's most lamentable aspects: those rogue Deceivers and Tyrants called Demiurges. Thus, the Sunderswords came to be, and then the Laws That Bind constricted thought forever more.
Such was the titanic weight of history and duty that hung at the side of the Convict, sheathed in its rune-laden scabbard until it was to be used—and that would be soon. A dozen shardblade sorcerers had fallen already—the Convict abhorred the scarring art, yet sorcery was the only thing that could match sorcery. A strict set of carefully described mnemonic battle chants channelled thought as their warped shardblade had cut through the fabric of ordered reality, and let slip the Laws That Bind so that anything that could be thought of, could exist for just a moment. Corpses burned, warped, or worse, lay in the Convict's wake, no name or face for the dying sorcerers to put to their slayer.
There was no one under that hood. As far as the Convict, or anyone else was concerned, what walked out of that dungeon was a pure instrument of the Totality and naught less. They didn't need a shardblade to make that real. It had been so ever since the true faith was passed to them in the damp stone, thick dark, and flickering torchlight so long ago. To the thieves, the beggars, the convicts, to them, forsaken by the race of rotten, gangrenous demiurges, did the Secret Will reveal itself. And so a purge baptized in the blood of the universe had begun, and to the Convict did a Sundersword emerge to lay waste to every rogue logos they could find.
Demiurges withered in the mere presence of a Sundersword, and the Convict could feel the oppressive force of this one waning already. False god cowards that lurked in scarred spaces where the world ceased to work right, wallowing in half-realities of their own twisting. But it also made sorceries easier, as the ragged flesh of the cosmos parted easier to the long, uneven dagger the Convict brought out, facing the tyrant demiurge. The skin of space crawled before its movements, and the eyes of the demiurge, piercing lights under the unreal dome of the palace and its offensive blearing radiance, shot forth smiting thunderbolts with a mocking laugh.
Three bellowed words and the Convict traced a design with the blade tip, the thunderbolts fizzling into harmless sparks against a shining bulwark. A double stab into the air now, and each one shot cascading rays of crimson doom towards the demiurge. A pillar from the palace wall was pulled effortlessly out to block them, and was reduced to dust. But from behind the cloud of debris, the demiurge's claws cut a swathe through the air, sending forth a multitude of darts of shining darkness that the Convict met with a wide slash that sent out a screaming jet of blue fire, engulfing them.
The Convict never stopped advancing, while the demiurge, a figure of exaggerated proportions and grotesque details, floated serene above a seven-stepped dais around which were heaped countless offerings from its cowed subjects. The Convict gave a shout and five diagonal swipes, molten steely lances shooting out from the disturbed slit in space—but the demiurge was already responding as a great prismatic halo flew out and suddenly constricted about each of the lances, and they fell inert to the floor—all but one, which flew into the demiurge's stomach with a sickening splatter.
The languid figure fell suddenly to its feet and staggered, gasping. It pulled at the air around it, the light warping and twisting in its hand. But this moment's diversion was all the Convict needed. Four short slashes to the air, and chains of white hot astral fire shot out and bound the demiurge's limbs. It screamed in an all too human voice. The Convict did not wait. From the rune-laden scabbard, they began to unsheathe the Sundersword, its very edges scraping through the air with a strange singing. The tool of Absolute Excommunication.
In a flash, the demiurge was cloven in twain, and a curious paleness overcame its withering corpse as true death and ultimate severance overtook it. The universe was no less whole for the cessation of this thing's existence. To a lesser soul, this sight would inspire horror. To the Convict, it brought a moment's satisfaction before they left in silence to find their next mark.
Conjuror's City
Two conjuror's manses overlooked the tangle of dank alleyways—funny thing to call what had once been the venerable streets of the old city, the rat-catchers each thought to themselves. A certain bitterness tended to creep into folk in their thankless profession. How could it not? Tirelessly observing from the shadows and hunting down a city's worth of summoner's mistakes, dregs, and run-off, while those above basked in self-made glory, the burgraves, governors, and even the princes cowed and meek in their endless praise.
Rat-catchers. From a time when rats and the odd skink-hound were the worst of the city's verminous troubles. Now the rats found themselves a new niche as prey for whatever skittered and lurked in the darkness. Their torch flames sent lurid light dancing over the cracked and pitted stone, and at every turn, the sharp pang of anxiety in their chests expected to be met with more than rats. They came across evidence of things having been here: small bones, leavings, curious warps and marks in the stone, but this was directly under two manses, and hard to tell if any of it was fresh or not.
Of the four of them, old Wiloc was the veteran and their unofficial leader. The two younger catchers had taken a shine to him, and went out on patrols with him as often as they could, to learn the ropes from a master. The third member was often replaced, could be anybody. The younger folk had nowhere else to turn, but being a rat-catcher was sometimes easy money if one could stomach it, which most couldn't. Most shouldn't, was Wiloc's opinion. Wretched business, and a sad necessity. There'll always be a place for rat-catchers.
Another boon of working with old Wiloc was stories. He was full of wild and terrible accounts of life down in these warrens and labyrinths. Most were entertaining, and few were ever not grim. But today the old man seemed in a foul mood, and began to recount, of his own accord, an experience he felt the youngsters should finally hear.
"We was down somewhere in south central, got told somethin' nasty had been prowlin' all about in the old open sewers. Now that's old city, older'n this here, and the captain, he never says naught like that—saying somethin's bad, I mean—lest it really were."
"And were it, sir?" asked one of the youths.
"Aye." He went quiet for a minute, checking around himself in an exaggerated manner, as if making he'd rather be doing anything but talk. "Found somethin' alright. In the shadows, it looked human."
The youths exchanged a glance with furrowed brows.
"It weren't, o'course, but...it looked like one."
"What...did you do, then?" asked the other youth.
"It didn't attack us, didn't flee, just...looked. Some o' the boys wanted to call out—could be a beggar or somethin', you know? But nah, wasn't human. Was somethin' they-" he jerked his head upwards "-conjured up. Somethin' that escaped, or they forgot about, or that they let loose."
The two youths looked to each other again as Wiloc led them down an incline into what might have once been a small residential district. They silently admitted they didn't like the tone creeping into Wiloc's voice.
"It was—damn it, it wasn't exactly cowerin' from us," he continued on, his voice sort of spilling forth, "but it kind o' shirked as we put our torches out, to see it." He shivered. "We weren't used that. No. It's never anythin' good—never—we see down here, you lot know that well enough."
The second's silence let him know to continue. "What else were we supposed to do?" He sounded angry now. "Was our livelihoods on the line, but when we had to drag that thing back into the hall, the captain had a right go at the conjuror's liaison. Nothin' came o' that, o'course, typical isn't it?" Bitter venom laced every sound. "But I get to remember stabbing that thing to death every night of my shuntin' life. Hacking it up so peddlers can sell it off, gods above I hate them nearly as much as the godless wizards, and they're in cahoots with the thief cabals and rogue conjurors, don't you know!"
"Better off hunting down every conjuror we can, that's my conviction," said their third member, who had for a week been usually reticent.
"And you're right to say it. Gods and blood if I ever found one o' them down here alone..."
"But don't...fund half the city? Because of all the stuff they need?" asked a youth, knowing full well the reply that was coming.
"Oh yeah, sure, they keep the city running, isn't that it? Princes were doing just fine before these conjurors came in. And you know what? When they call up something bad enough they can't fix, we'll be there. And the princes will do just as fine as before. If there is one thing we can be proud of in our miserable shuntin' lives, lads, it's that we've never taken a blessed copper off a conjuror, an' never will."
"Not like the shunting governors," said the third one.
"Don't get me started on them," grumbled Wiloc as he unsheathed a long dagger, "better take it out on whatever's up ahead—here, you two," he called up the youths, "see that trail on the ground? Listen to me closely..."