Shadows & Sorcery #116
Coming to you live and pulsating from the east coast, it’s Shadows & Sorcery one hundred and sixteen!
It’s all gone a bit M.R. James this week, as ancient things have been unearthed, and they are OUT THERE. Haunted churches, theological debates, and evil powers abound! Crank up the organ music and get reading.
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This week, we confront our fears in Nightmare of the Altar, we discover just what dwells within the Sepulchre Ruins, and we follow the grim path of the Blighted Iron…
Nightmare of the Altar
High Theolator Venec awoke with a choked gasp. The familiar sights of his bedchamber took a second to peer out of the gloom to reassure him. He let out a shuddering breath as he clutched his bedsheets, his hands shaking. He blinked slowly to steady himself, and the images came flooding back, still fresh in his mind.
He was standing right within the great arched gates of the Basiliqua of Noderes Nobis, peering down the full length of the temple. It was shrouded in a heavy, thick darkness more like fog than shadow, and the half-dome apse at the far end had tendrils of uneven light that snaked in ways that made no sense. He was, for some reason, far from the altar, trying and failing to speak the words of the Benefit, the mild rite of reverence to the heavens who gave their Gift freely. But in that shattered glass vision, yet so far away, he could see clearly the altar sitting askew.
From where it ought to be, a large shape rose from the ground, and out of the entire black lump of it, all he could discern were two piercing white eyes, with a terrible clarity that made them seem as if they were much closer to him than they possibly could be. Though he stood just within the gateway, he couldn't turn fast enough to escape, and felt compelled to keep looking back to see it gain upon him with frightful swiftness.
Venec had been having this dream for months, and had always awoken before the thing could reach him. This time it had come far closer than ever before.
He turned to his bedside table and with an uneasy hand struck a firestone, holding it up to his ten-hour glass. The fallen sand determined that it was still two hours before dawn. He couldn't take this anymore. Weeks of sleepless, haunted nights, retiring to bed with the fear in his heart that tonight he would see it again. Instead he rose, performed some ablutions, donned his cassock, and decided he would go to the Basiliqua and confront his vision.
The dark morning was chilly enough to warrant his cloak and cap, a low, wide-brimmed thing typical of his divine vocation. Though truth be told, his kind were now more scholar-instructor than priest. Still, academia held some notions of sacred pursuit. He wondered how many of the others in the Basiliqua close that surrounded the temple were having the same nightmare as him. Certainly a kind of frailty and pallor had spread among the people—not the kind that spoke to disease or miasma, but something of the spirit. Heavenly beneficence was a confirmed fact, it was no longer shrouded in fearsome, esoteric rites, but it was as if the Gift was, well, no longer reaching the people. Or the priests, for that matter.
A few hours from now, sage and scholar would be at each other's throats again over interpretative differences, while fewer and fewer faithful would come to receive the Gift. Venec had embraced the reforms, but nearly five years later, as changes had begun to settle in the church, so had doubts begun to settle in his heart. The passion with which he had professed theological truths to the faithful, now uplifted from worshippers to students, had been spent, for there was naught else to teach them, and, he especially regretted, few seemed willing to engage in open discussion or at the very least perform the old rites themselves. Not all, of course, he relished the rash youngsters and guarded elders, but they would, in time, move on, either to other towns, or the world to come.
Come morning, the great wooden gates, inlaid with beautiful wrought iron fittings, would be thrown open to the draughty air and sounds of town life. For now, Venec unsealed a minor entrance set within these two great gates that could admit folk should the main doors need to remain closed. He was perfectly free to come and go as he pleased, day or night, but all the same, it felt secretive in a way he didn't like. He looked over his shoulder before slipping through the small doorway. He wasn't sure why.
Darkness always distorts the dimensions of any space, making it appear larger than it may be, yet the temple really was as vast as the shadows made it seem. But terribly empty. Not too long ago, eight great walls, or screens, ran the length of the broad nave, through which processions would be led in intricate rituals to the chancel space around the altar, where the gods would be beseeched for the Gift by conjuror-like priests laying blessings upon the faithful and their devotional icons like sorcerous enchantments. Those old walls had been torn town three years ago, precious little of the venerable wood preserved in the zealous casting away of the old age's exclusionary symbolism. Venec remembered that day and still felt a pang of guilt.
Now people sat in bare benches while a sage lectured them on divine metaphors of "spiritual warfare" and the constancy of the Gift. No more begging for mercy and power from our knees, that was what had stoked the fires in the beginning. But now there was nothing—Venec couldn't believe he was thinking this way. He shook his head to stop himself. These nightmares, no doubt symbolic representations of his doubts, were weighing on him. He must see to the place in these lonesome hours. Feel that it was all still there.
Venec found himself standing in the middle of the great gaping corridor that was the nave, the hollow body of the temple. To his sides were the two short wings of the transept, where the faithful would perform ritual cleansing before they passed the fourth screen. They had been dry for years. Ahead of him, his footsteps issued back from the darkness, like something coming to meet him that he could not see. Further ahead now did he go, passing on his left the pitiful stump of the old font where Venec had himself once purified his hands before attaining the eighth screen and the altar. It had been ripped from the stone only a few months ago.
The altar was just ahead. He noticed that starlight came in quite naturally from the high, thin windows that lined the upper tier of the temple. That set his heart beating somewhat easier.
Until he saw the altar.
It had been knocked aside.
His mouth went dry. His hands began to shake again. He forced his feet to take a single step forward into the diffused, murky starlight, to see the yawning void over which the altar had been set. A pool of formless black, so thick it might have been a fathomless ocean deep. Any thoughts of it being merely a depression into which the large stone slab had sat were cast away by his own scream when something began to emerge from the darkness. They were, for all the world, fingers. Each one was about as long as his own arms, and they tested the stone lightly, like a spider might try a surface. He was close enough to have looked for just an instant down before falling back. There had been two white eyes like cataracts peering from far, far below.
A warm, yellow sun rose above the Basiliqua close. Everyone had risen just a little late that day, but none begrudged themselves, or each other, for it. Spouses and family members muttered amongst themselves that, by heaven, that the best sleep they'd had in weeks, if not months. The body of High Theolators rushed from their chambers to the temple to throw open its gates, and asked, as they amassed on the steps, where Venec had gotten to, for he had not been found in his rooms, nor was he now running to join them.
He fell out of the temple when they pulled the gates open. He had been all but plastered to them, and was babbling under his breath—wide, mad eyes shooting around his fellow scholars, but all the while gibbering to himself, and no amount of shaking him about could stop him. One of the Theolators got close and listened. The old words of the Benefit. He was repeating them over and over.
Some few minutes later, the temple gates were shut, and a Theolator posted outside to explain to any faithful that terribly sorry, but a minor matter has come up, and the temple would be open for devotion and Benefit perhaps later on today.
Sepulchre Ruins
The second the pick went through the stone, the Oracle's heart sank. Murmurs passed through the workmen, who began backing away. Heads turned in the church with worried faces. Every astrosophical cleric shrunk into themselves in hushed debate. Finally, someone was appointed to go and take a look while church patrons were quietly ushered outside under the pretense of delicate work taking place. A lone labourer took faltering steps, lantern in hand, and peered into the dusty void their picks had revealed.
"A martyr's grave, a reliquary, an old basement—anything else, please," thought the Oracle to herself as the workman knelt and bent down into the crooked aperture.
He merely put his hand in, recoiled with a restrained gasp, rose, and with wild eyes nodded in confirmation. It was a sepulchre. The foreman called for them to leave as the astrosophers held their fists against their heads and chests in divine invocation. Church services would have to be cancelled. Restoration would have to be put on hold indefinitely. The place would have to be sealed off. For the next few nights, material must be gathered from the local chapter library, and from as many towns as possible, and quickly.
Before the corpse in the sepulchre began to wander.
The best guess anyone ever had was that they were remains of an ancient race, long vanished, whose ruins mankind inhabited, their dead left behind. The idea was that their customs involved forgetting their dead, as no sepulchre was particularly large, though they were deep, no grave goods had ever been spied, and no indication that they existed was ever stumbled upon. It was possible sepulchre corpses were criminals, or exiles, or sacrifices. They weren't human, that much was clear. Mostly they were bound within voluminous shrouds which had rotted away in sections to reveal desiccated, emaciated forms, naught but dry parchment skin over very strange bones, broken in places to reveal withered black flesh. Maybe an arm was visible, ending in two curled tendrils, or the shroud curiously eaten away around the mouth, showing two rows of misshapen fangs.
The dread that came from their appearance was one every church official was intimately aware of. In a faith which had no enemy, no host of demons or bad spirits, and not even really ghosts, these things fit that niche. Ample astral invocation for the layfolk, dutiful study for the astrosophers. The Oracle paced the chapter library looking for something, anything which had bearing on sepulchres. They really ought to keep this stuff handy, she thought. But then again, no one ever thinks they'll be the one to crack open a tomb and awaken a thing left to the darkness before man had risen from the clay.
The next morning, record books from other towns arrived. It was a hasty collection of older chronicles pilfered from at least a dozen other books, some roughly bound manuscripts, and a few rather handsome volumes. The Oracle and two astrosophers spent the afternoon reading and discussing, waiting for reports of visitations to filter in, though thank the stars none did. Mostly the books were details of events that, for the most part, had very little practical value, and served only to set them on edge. But buried in their depths, in accounts from later centuries, were sparse details of prehistoric burial rites scavenged from ruins thousands of years old. This was what they were looking for.
It would take some days find the solution. Many different regional practices from many different areas to cobble together and perform. And all the while, the thing in the sepulchre would begin to wander.
First thing the Oracle was met with the next morning was news of a death. The messenger did not give details, but the way the girl spoke betrayed the reality of it. My stars, it was already about, the Oracle thought. She and the astrosophers had to enter the nave to try rites on the corpse while well-paid workmen began constructing a new floor over its grave. Assurances came in a constant flow that they would be quite safe during the day, probably it was that it came out under starlight as a kind of blasphemy or show of power.
The constant replacement of workers was beginning to be a problem over a week in, and five more people had turned up dead in the streets. All eyes were on the temple, and throughout the night couriers brought books and specialists in from afar to help the situation. Those couriers saw things in the night, apparently. A tall, formless thing striding through the streets, tapping at low bedroom windows, sliding its serpentine arms through whatever cracks it could find. Or sometimes crouched over a corpse in an alleyway. Some couriers didn't even take their pay, they dumped the books on the church doorstep and ran.
It took twelve corpses and numerous threats of physical violence before the correct rite was happened upon. One bright, breezy afternoon, the Oracle led a small procession past praying workmen, and with oil and censer, the half-shrouded horror, which in its slumbering daylight hours seemed hunched, ready to spring, suddenly and visibly sunk back into its grave. It was done within minutes. The next day the floor was finished, and people flooded into the temple until sundown.
The Oracle kept watch on that floor for a few nights after while penning a manual that sits in just about every church in the world to this day.
Blighted Iron
Its source is believed to be from a chain of small islands in the far south. Old accounts dating back some three hundred years, during occupation from the Evald Empire, record the discovery of a great wealth of iron in an expansive cave system on one of the islands. It is regrettable the identity of that island shall remain forever lost. Nevertheless, the book describes, in short, the experiences of the miners who complained of a continuous, fervent knocking as if from afar. It unsettled them to such a degree that triple pay and rations were offered to those who would remain and extract the iron ore. It veritably caked the walls, after all. But in those days superstition abounded, and very little was actually heaved to the surface. Just as well, as knocking in deep places is known these days to be a most dire omen.
Ferried from island to island, and finally across stretches of the mainland, the iron from those caves found itself being used to forge numerous spearheads for the imperial army regiment of the province. It was only some days after the final spear had been finished and sent off for fitting did the smith make complaints to the quartermaster. It was the forge. The blades that came from its fires were warped things, nothing of his own invention. Offerings were fed to the forge fires and no more was said on the matter, but it wasn't long until its flames were put out forever.
Those spearheads passed across countless battlefields in their time, arms in that era being owned, supplied, and maintained by the empire. They went from one hand to the other, their wicked points biting through shield and maille, scouring the flesh within. Eventually, after a humiliating defeat in a provincial region, the spearheads were ceremoniously broken from their shafts and melted down into simple nails. The small houses which those nails helped hold together were haunted by coldness and foul odours. Some years later, conquest trod through the region and every possible source of metal was stripped from every building and tool, to be reforged into fortresses and weapons.
The Evald Empire was a mouldering corpus of clashing ideologies and religions, and one faith that gained much prominence in the exhausted latter days was a pacifist cult who found all forms of bloodshed for any reason abhorrent, and so once again took spears, axes, and swords from the battle wastes and remade them into peaceable structures. The iron from the south found itself entirely committed to the fittings of a church door. For twenty years that door stood, and on certain nights, it was said a horrible figure was seen to stand in the open doorway, silhouetted by no earthly light.
The church was burned down and its finely wrought fittings scattered and repurposed across the lands.
And yet, though the iron was spread far, it had a habit of returning together as calamity befell wherever they were set, and came from whatever they were used for. Even now, daggers, hammer heads, nails, cart wheel studs, and more continue to pass each other with eerily regularity, coming together, scattering, and so on into eternity.
The enlightened religion of the modern day holds that caves in the earth are veins, holding iron just as living human veins hold some small measure of iron themselves. The veins are of the gods who gave themselves to make the world...or those who died during the war for its creation.
And from no righteous deity was that iron torn and hauled into the light of day.