Shadows & Sorcery #171
This edition’s theme is “what is the worst possible outcome to these particular ideas?”, including such nightmarish realities as “death cults disagreeing on who dies best” and “what happens when a skeleton starts looking for skin?”
Now, last week, we had the 31st chapter of the serial novel, The Path of Poison, where our boy Sepp had a bad time and we edged even closer to finally arriving at Farhaven!
And if you missed it, or just got here, or can’t remember a damn thing, check out the last S&S in which there’s a wizard and also part two of the ongoing Candorick & Rudge story which concludes below!
Lastly, please leave a like when you’re done—let the stories (and me) know you enjoyed them!
This week, we witness the frightful War of the Deep, we feel the Fires of the Undead, and Candorick and Rudge come face to face with the Saint of Magic…
War of the Deep
In those days the Fire raged and consumed with abandon, casting forth Suns to hold in check the ravenous Maggots which evangelized their Rot with a nigh unmatched zeal. There was nary a body in the lands without a hint of decay or flash of embers upon them—even those who bound themselves to the Void or the Abyss. In truth, the struggle for souls came to such a furore that lives were given to deaths unchosen and undesired. Suns burned endlessly, and not even the chaos and madness bred by the Maggots of Rot could outpace the righteous fury.
Ever eager to spread their visions of a return to the hot, festering slime, or of total purification, the Rot and the Fire clamoured for a popularity neither the Abyss nor the Void sought, for the nature of the Maw was a calling home, and the Lord of the Threshold bid only wilful passage into nothingness. Seen as cults for the melancholy, the over-erudite, and those who just plain gave up, their secret was that they required not initiates and devotees to be spread. The Void simply was, and things sunk into the Abyss without any aid. Some of these faithful considered Fire and Rot a little too eager for destruction, and not as any kind of final homecoming or promise of rest. The two broad schools of thought butt heads, naturally, but not as much as Fire and Rot did with each other.
It was clear as day that the immolating hordes which set whole towns ablaze with their incessant marches were going to win what had slowly been creeping and escalating to a true war. And then they really did begin to win. Maggots died in their droves, and Rot faithful fled to the safety of Abyss and Void enclaves—both the great capitals of Umber and Zenith, among others, were inundated with Rot faithful, an irony lost on no one. Their waves of arrivals were met with demands for adherence to heavy strictures, and even forced conversion in some places. Indeed, the civil unrest, governing mergers, assimilations, and silencing of Maggot manifestations following these migrations is a chronicle unto itself. Meanwhile, whole spans of countryside knew the cleansing kiss of Fire, whose baleful radiance could be seen for leagues, lighting the horizon even when Suns had finally spent their wrath.
In this latter age, they who communed with the Lord of the Threshold learned that it could only do so much without inciting wholesale destruction—such was the nature of the stoic and distant numb nothingness that was the Void. But the Maw sat not idly. It was for their right to embrace the death they desired that the Abyss disgorged its uttermost depths.
The Void followers used black and imposing burial towers, the Rot and its Maggots instructed in the use of massive fester pits where one might experience a microcosm of the world to come, and the Fire cultists used the quite common ritual pyres, of which there were so many they resembled a grotesque mirror of the stars above, themselves believed to be suns or pinpricks into the void. But they who sought the Maw, the Abyss which was its fullness, employed burial grounds for the internment of the faithful. The burial grounds were believed to be close to or intimately connected to the Maw—Maws in miniature as it were. The Abyss faithful believed all things could, or would, one day sink down, deeper underground, into the embrace of the Maw, and into the cold, dark, serene, immane Abyss.
And so it was from the burial grounds did it emerge suddenly and without warning. Whether it was an autonomous reaction, a shifting of nebulous forces, a cosmic rebalancing, or an overt and wilful answer to a desperate summons, many had their interpretations and inclinations. In the days leading up to it, violence had broken out between great bands of Fire cultists and the enclaves, searing hot suns descended from above, scorching the world with an immeasurable heat. But then, there was darkness, and from the burial grounds there emerged a seeping ocean of half-solid shadow, choking mire, and stark silence.
Not a single chronicle of those days does not mention the surreal divine phantasmagoria which smothered the lands in their entirety. They speak of suns in profusion hurtling down from above only for their blistering radiance to be swallowed up by the all-consuming haze of a crepuscular vastness. These eclipses flooded the pyre-strewn countryside with an eerie, lifeless pallor that persisted in the dreams of those who saw it until they finally passed from life. There was no day, there was no night, the air was stilled and frigid, and a primal serenity quelled the surging battle lines into trembling tranquility.
There had been one particular concentration of Abyssal burial grounds from which the exudation was, according to a certain mystic, said to be the greatest, the darkest, the deepest. It was an ancient burial ground, a place where the world seemed distant somehow. And if the world felt distant then, it was in the times that would become known as the War of the Deep that one might almost think it ceased to be when in the midst of that place, which had become nothing less than an aspect of the Maw itself. The only tale of this comes from a lone wanderer who did not survive much longer after the encounter, who was believed to have been spared long enough to speak of what was seen.
The Fire cultists had, in the face of overwhelming odds, begun to flee en masse from their embittered battlegrounds, casting themselves all across the lands to the high places where they beseeched the final suns, the rest of which expended their power, to consume them in one last glorious blaze. Instead, waves of darkness lapped against the twilit mountain peaks to finally drown the last sun and its despairing adherents as the ocean of shadow was, as before, without sign or warning, swallowed back into the Abyss.
Those who slumber now in graveyards as part of their personal devotions recall and pass on visions from their sleep, of the cold, lonely passage of a black star in the fathomless deeps.
Flames of the Undead
Needed more soon. The new rags were already drying out. The old ones were worse, and beginning to harden despite the fresh applications of sacrificial offerings. Could feel—no, not feel, not yet, could sense the ligaments beginning to strain in the legs, and the back. Feel soon. Yet, the fire burns. Embers danced and flickered within the sticky, sloshing gore in the brainpan from which came dim thoughts, and the impression of sight and sense. Embers that burn and send burns down the bones wrapped in red, pulled by strings that snap, and new ones slither forth from the red. Need more red soon, or no more strings, no more thoughts, and fire eats and dies. Cannot let the fire die, if it does—damnation.
They screamed at first, then fled, though it was their passion which let fly the fire into the red pit. The heights of ecstasy, the edge of death, the deepest agony, the shock of pleasure, these were what it meant to live. To feel and sense and experience, these were to live, and to live was to worship. Passion, ecstasy, suffering, they burn in holy fire that is the height of life, and the gods care not why it burns, just that it burns. But some sensations are so strong stray tongues lick the redness of sacrifice, those cast over the edge of living, and the abhorred of death begin to move again.
And they cry inside their heads, "Grant us flesh!"
Gods grant life. This the red knows. Thrumming veins, pulsing flesh, quickened breath, it knows whence it came. Even the scraps of it staining the rags and wrappings know. And they are pulled towards the source, almost if the grace of the gods was a guide for those worthy of attaining life once more. But there were tests, such as what came now.
On a long, verdant slope of lush, swaying grasses through which a wind from a slate sky sighed, a stone path bordered by countless jutting, fire-topped monoliths snaked its way upward to the squat, sprawling form of an ancient temple of life. It took the form of a broad arch of black stone. Columns of smoke leapt from its apertures, as did voices, bells, and drums, wafting on the fingers of the breeze which caressed the red. It promised flesh, and hastened doom. But there was more to gain, if it could be taken and offered. Three shapes ran forward now, their supple muscle knotting and bulging as they flung high hammers and cleavers against the abhorred bonewalker.
A square-headed mallet came whistling down, but hard fingers caught the arm in a struggle, sending pointed tips into tensed flesh, and making red run down the bones. Another skeletal arm flew out, axe of burnished bronze in hand, sent into the side three times, each one eliciting a garbled cry and agony. This was the edge of death—the height of life—a sacred time and space, and it was the bonewalker's doing. Look upon me, gods of life. No time to stop, though. Another hammer found its mark in the axe-arm, and though it did not snap, the cleaver of the third assailant threatened to find purchase. The bronze axe fell to the ground. Ducking and scrabbling away, the bones lunged in flecks of flying red, sinking thin teeth into a bared neck. Red down the jaws, wetting the strands, renewing the waning vigor, keep biting down. The scream was stopped, the grasping hands went limp. Tear it out, and anoint thyself before the temple.
The last shape with the cleaver stared with bulging eyes upon the gore-drenched bonewalker which squeezed a retrieved heart over its leering skeletal visage. Strands of red tendon and muscle slithered and snapped and ran down its form as it strode forth, axe back in its steaming, dripping, thin hand, throbbing with pure life taken from the edge of death. As the axe found its mark a dozen times over upon the still-living offering, red rained down in torrents, sending waves of sensation across the serpentine twists of muscle and tendon. A blessing, a taste of what was sure to come. The flame within quivered in anticipation.
Saint of Magic
Beyond the city of Pillarment, the land rose higher and higher into cold, thin air. The world beyond the Last City was composed almost entirely of long ranges of stark, beetling peaks whose sheer heights neither Candorick nor Rudge could quite believe existed, the highest of the strange mesas and plateaus of their dusty homeland dwarfed in comparison. The nature in the rising landscape was sparse, rugged, and tough. Some of it was knee high sprawls of swishing grass, some of it was thick carpets of seeping moss, the rest were spans of bare, dark earth, high crags, and spires of jutting rock at odd angles, as if an almighty cataclysm once shook this entire vastness in an age undreamed of.
There was a thin but steady trickle of pilgrim traffic out beyond this last point. Guaranteed there were a number of the usual ascetic, hermit, and outcast hovels out here, but if whispers were true, they all belong now to the new saint. There was also a distinct lack of wagons or even lone boars going into the high wilds, it was all pilgrims and devotees on foot, and each of them were carrying bundles of parchment, wax paper, and vellum. Could it have been a local custom? Some minor Communion thing neither of them were aware of? It was possible. But a feeling that had been building up made them think it wasn't quite that. They didn't speak much at all on the walk out there, but traded looks that said enough when one or both of them noticed some detail about the pilgrims, like the fact the ones bearing writing material were all going in the same direction, those without were returning empty-handed (if they were, of course, returning at all), and that they all looked drawn from a vast array of different cults. Many Communion members were represented, and some ancillary ones, too. A few they didn't even recognize passed by them, unblinking.
They wandered through a smattering of huts then, which, in each one, held furtive shapes huddled over piles of scrolls and books, lit by a profusion of paper lanterns and candles. Some were alone, but, they noticed with some surprise, most weren't, there were at least three or more in most of the huts in a state of intense study and discussion, none of which they could hear, and felt was wiser to let alone, at least for now. Best be fresh. Observe first. Some were arriving, a few were leaving with bundles of papers and tomes themselves. Neither Candorick nor Rudge could deny that there was an energy to it all, a nervous and nigh on palpable excitement and sense of motion. The fact it didn't even exist in the town was the real shock. Thus there came to their terse chatter, as they walked, potential hints of hostility. New faith, new vision, change, the people could be unsure, they could feel threatened—or the priesthoods could, Rudge reminded his friend. Or they could be weird enough to make the Communion faithful keep them at a distance. All the more reason to just observe for now. They still had their blackfire seals, no matter how distasteful even the thought of their usage was.
The dwellings began to peter out, and the lone pilgrims become lesser and lesser, until it was just they who wandered now into the cold high wilds, wreathed in an omnipresent thin mist. There was a path though, trampled by some several hundred feet, easily, but none of them were here now, and the world had become quiet. Neither man wanted to say it, but the odd glance spoke of concerns about deeper wells of knowledge they'd learned somewhat against their knowledge. Could it be that they were reaching those truly distant places where it was written that the world ceased to work as once envisioned? Those fog-ridden places of grey maybe? Would there come a point out here where they would step from the world and into the space where faith held no sway, for there was no vision to believe in? In any case, they were more thankful than they had ever been for Jerican's panoply of blessings and gifts. At this point, they, the medium bones, and their own invocations were the only things keeping them going. Courage had crept away a while ago.
After what seemed like a silent age of wandering through a landscape that rose higher and higher, the mist's tendrils thicker and thicker, its waves falling in greater profusion down the rugged slopes and spires, something appeared. Someone. Surrounded by mounds of discarded stone tablets, open books, and some several hundred scrolls and loose leaves of parchment. It was an old woman, just standing there, arrayed in a sort of formless pile of dark purple robes, and none too new, either, if the tattered trims and edges said anything. But it was her face that aroused the most curiosity. She had bronzed skin, the kind of which one might find commonly in their own native Anchorhold or Congregation to the west, or on Rudge, but it had about it a distinct sheen, a metallic sheen. Not too noticeable, and not grime or grease. Her features were deeply lined, but she held herself in a way that didn't give any sense that slowness had crept into her limbs. She had, too, a great frizzy mane of hair, of a kind of auburn not too dissimilar from her skin, but more red, or more brown, it was hard to tell. She didn't smile, but her mouth and her cloudy eyes were held in a mildly sardonic way that made it seem like she knew something. Then, she spoke, and it froze both men in place.
"You have something of worth, to bring, yes?" Her rasping voice was suffused with the same restrained sardonicism as her features.
They were thinking offerings, but the stuff around them didn't seem like offerings.
"Are you-" Candorick began to ask.
"No. But I do need to know if you have brought anything, of worth."
Rudge held out his medium’s bone. The old woman half glanced towards the ground beside her. Rudge was somewhat unnerved to see multiple bones scattered around her feet. Worth. He turned to Candorick.
"Yeah, I'm thinking the same," said he, looking forward.
They both stepped forward and held out their blackfire seals. She held her head up, looking down on them in appraisal.
"The Saint of Magic awaits you."
And before they could say or do anything, the old woman waved her hand in some swift motion, and Candorick and Rudge were enveloped in a dense, clinging fog more like a burial shroud than anything else.
For what may have been mere seconds or several minutes, they were held by the fog, until in a sudden parting they stumbled from the almost solid veil that had consumed them, and the two men reached out to each other for composure.
If Pillarment, City of the West, had taken their breath away, and the high wilds had staggered their very minds, what they now stood in was utterly inconceivable. It dwarfed even the most exaggerated stories of foreign cathedrals and palaces. It could probably hold its own in sheer breadth against one of the mountains they'd seen. It was a prismatic, sky-flung expanse of intricate geometrical design, pyramidal in vague outline as it rose higher and higher yet never did it dim or vanish from sight, though the eye got lost in its immense intricacy. Blocks and shafts climbed in complex patterns from the ground to the apex of the structure, all of it composed of warm brown, silvery-white, dark gold, and reds and purples in some places, all of it veined marble, or what approached it. Galleries ran like spider-webs far above for level after level, thin walkways leading to and coming from who knew where. It was lit, they saw then, not by windows, by the free floating spheres of a faintly golden light. The place had no windows, indeed, it had no apertures leading to the outside of any kind they could see, unless they were above. This cathedral, for it could be naught else, did have a focus, though. Quite plainly, this structure led every which way to a central dais of similar make to the rest of the cathedral. And upon it, surrounded by stacks of books, chests, bound loose pages, and scrolls, they knew in their hearts, was the saint.
They seemed to be alone here. The air was hushed, although some impression of movement without sound seemed to come every so often. The saint beckoned them with a gesture. There sat one of true vision, of greater will, that rare breed for whom existence itself is a wellspring. It was, all at once, humbling, exciting, anxiety-inducing, terrifying, and fascinating—they ran the gamut of these over and over again in their heads and hearts as they came forward. They had seen saints before, but only things like sword cult saints, of which there was a new one every so often. They were nothing like this. Not even Rudge could quite conceal what he was feeling. What was before them, looking slightly down from their place on the dais, was an almost shapeless heap of robes and veils, and when it began to speak, the voice which issued forth, soft and articulate, didn't help.
"I am an idealized form, a pure eye, a lens for vision. Come now and wonder. Think. Cogitate. Learn the new vision." There was truly something different about them, their bearing was distant, half-preoccupied, but charged—the sheer potency of their might could be felt from that distance. "A vision in knowledge that is beyond faith is the new order—in always-knowing."
What in the world were they even supposed to say?
"How...came you," Rudge's voice shook, but he held it, "to see this?"
"It came first, seeker, as inspired from the temple in the sky, from the words in the stone, and the vision of a world spoken into being."
Well, that was the cult of Dwimmerstone. The great crumbling temple lost to the heavens, its bits and fragments hoarded by magisters who study a divine tongue whose simple utterance could conjure whatever was spoken...if one could even read and understand it, which precious few could. It actually made perfect sense.
"But see, the mind balks at the tide of information. Bear witness now to a new mind: the endless leaves of the Grand Grimoire." The Saint held up, balanced on fingertips, what they hadn't seen was right there on their lap: a colossal book whose girth must have exceeded that of a human head by several fingers in width, with great swirling oaken plates for covers and black iron bindings. "Its pages, as many as their need be, will hold all knowings and their wisdom, all that is now faith shall become learning, and the Grand Grimoire shall be the seal of all forevermore."
"You mean to gain admission to the Communion, is it?" Candorick felt, in that moment, like he could not possibly have asked a more profoundly stupid question.
"I am too a seeker of knowledge outside the strictures of mouldering dogma, but I have found, and I will share. Thus the world can be reborn, but there is much to be learned, and to be gathered, and be judged for worth."
It was as clear an answer as they'd get.
"Come now, add to it, and be of it."
A new Communion. More than a Communion, its own thing, one thing, all things, all-encompassing...all-devouring. The saint let them process the information. Maybe they had hit upon something, maybe Jerican's zeal was justified. Maybe that dragon priest's disquietude back in the city was justified, too. They could see how dangerous something like this saint's vision could be. The Communion held vast responsibility, and power, and its highest echelons held great prestige and privilege, as well as public affection and devotion. Nothing given up or undone so easily. Not without a fight. They assumed this saint knew so, considering it, allegedly, sought Pillarment as its own domain. It made them idly wonder where they were actually standing right now.
The saint held out a hand, wrapped loosely but profusely in cream coloured wrappings that had the scent of incense about them. They'd best not mess this up. Jerican would want to hear the whole thing. They brought out their blackfire seals and handed them over without a second thought. The saint took them both with a kind of light gasp. Between two fingers were the seals examined, and the Saint cocked their head in a manner the two men accepted as a smile.
"Go back out into the world now, remade as minds, and learn, be as a vehicle of knowledge. Soon the seal of the grimoire shall be known to the race of a reborn world."
And with that, just as they had been transported in, they were back in the high wilds. At least they had the time to get straight in their heads what just happened, and just what it might mean, and just what Jerican's reaction could be.
Sean, I read the first two parts of this exciting, vibrant and terrifying story. Your excellent writing reminds me of Clive Barker at his horrifying best. Agony and ecstasy blend in a cacophony of unbearable rapture.