by Scott Hale
Supporters, god said, so Felix said, “Supporters.”
“That’s a shame.” The Demagogue bowed and stepped aside. “Nothing like a little gossip to warm up a city.”
Felix smiled the fakest smile he could manage and started up the steps. The Demagogue; his real name was Joseph Cleon, but if you called him that, he’d throw a temper tantrum. What a freak. Why Justine continued to use him, he didn’t understand. And she seemed to like him, too. He caught them flirting every once in a while. It made him jealous.
Felix and his guards stopped at the top of the stairs, where several nurses stood, eyes shining and happy to see him. He nodded at them and turned around to greet those who now stood below him, two hundred strong.
“It’s freezing out here,” Felix started, a big grin on his face.
Penance, below him laughed. They nodded and nudged one another, but never broke their gaze from his.
“Thank you for coming here to show your support for our soldiers. These brave men have endured unspeakable horrors, but their faith remains unshaken. God has a plan, but expectations, as well. I know that you want to know what we are going to do about Eldrus, but before we make a decision, we need all the information we can get. God expects us to learn, to make use of these minds given to us. God has all the answers, but sometimes, we have to find them for ourselves. We must be patient. We must be diligent. We mustn’t become what we once were, what led us out here to the edge of everything.”
Applause broke out through the crowd. In the snow-covered city of Penance, all sound was dampened, so each clapping hand was like the crack of a snare, the thump of a drum.
But Felix could see that some of the people weren’t pleased with his speech. Winnowers, probably, or people with close ties to the blabbermouths of Pyra.
So he added: “There are whispers that Eldrus has abandoned god for a false idol. There are whispers that King Edgar has formed a new religion, the Disciples of the Deep, with an imposter holy child. God has spoken to me, and god has said that anyone who pledges allegiance to this new heresy will be cast out from the flock, from god’s light. Remember—”
The Demagogue nodded at Felix. He was practically rubbing his hands in excitement. In that moment, he knew he had screwed up.
“Remember this,” Felix said, voice cracking. He turned on Penance and headed inside.
I’m in trouble, he thought, as he, Avery, and Mackenzie followed the nurses from outside through Saint Priscilla’s. I shouldn’t have said that. They might not even know about that new religion. Crap. They turned down several corners, the doctors that lined the halls forcing patients back into their rooms. Crap, crap, crap.
“They are through here, your holiness,” one of the nurses said.
She and her sisters took the lead and pushed open the double doors at the end of the hall. Prayers from the patients they had left behind echoed around them.
“Mother Abbess requested that you meet with them alone,” Avery said as they filed into the infectious disease ward of the hospital.
“They are still somewhat sedated,” another nurse said. She led them past the front desk, down a hall, to a large metal door, with a peephole at the top of it. “And restrained.”
“Restrained?” Felix looked at Avery and Mackenzie. “Why?”
“The Mother Abbess said that if you were going to meet with them alone, they should be restrained. For your safety.”
“Do they know I’m here to see them?”
The nurse shook her head. “They went mute after the Mother Abbess visited yesterday.”
“We’re out here, okay?” Avery drew his sword.
Mackenzie did the same. “Leave the door unlocked,” she said to the nurse. “Your holiness, if you feel threatened, don’t hesitate to run.”
“I’ll be fine.” Felix turned to the nurse. “I have god on my side.”
The nurse nodded. She took out a keyring that was positively overflowing with keys and, somehow, immediately picked out the right one. She unlocked the door, smiled, and mouthed something that looked like “Be careful.”
Felix opened the door and went through. The room on the other side didn’t have much going on. Just two beds and the two men on them, haggard as heck and not having much fun with the chains around their wrists and ankles.
The man on the left looked almost feral. His hair and beard had, more or less, taken over his face. But what scared Felix the most about him was his eyes. They had a strange, green sheen to them, like the back of a bug.
The man on the right, however, was different. Felix felt bad for that man. He looked hurt. Not a recent kind of hurt, but the kind of hurt someone carries with them a long, long time. This man didn’t have much of a beard, and no hair. One of his eyes was bright blue, while the other was clouded over, as if he were blind in it. He was covered in scars, too, all over his face and body.
“Nobody said the Holy Child was coming to see us,” the man on the left said. He sounded like a jerk.
“It is an honor, your holiness,” the man on the right said, lowering his head.
“I’m sorry about the restraints.” Felix closed the door behind him, stepped further into the room. “I didn’t know.”
“We understand, your holiness,” the hurt man said.
The jerk nodded. “It’s kind of you to grace us with your presence, my… your holiness.” He smirked at the hurt man and rolled his eyes.
“Please, forgive him, your holiness,” the hurt man said. “He is without his medicine. And we have seen many things to trouble our minds.”
“I’ve come today to help you unburden yourselves.” Felix started counting the scars on the hurt man. When the hurt man noticed this, he stopped… stopped at fifty-three. “I’m sorry to ask you to relive what happened in Geharra, but it may save even more lives if you…”
Felix stopped speaking, the word of god lifting from his tongue. His eyes darted back and forth between the two men. Something clicked in his mind. Words he’d heard hours before now made sense. Two men are coming, Vrana had told him. So he stared at these two men, who had come from so far, and wondered: Are these them? Would it hurt to ask?
If they did know who Vrana was, then they would know she was a Night Terror. That would make Felix look bad, but it would make them look suspicious, too. He was the Holy Child, though. If he had to play that card to get himself out of a bad situation, he would.
Maybe they know her. Maybe they met her on their way back. Justine did say Night Terrors were killed along with Geharra, too.
“Is everything okay, your holiness?” the hurt man asked.
“Do you know…” He hesitated, looked at the Corruption on these men’s arms. It was faded, pinkish, like most children’s looked; like his did.
The jerk cleared his throat. “We told the Mother Abbess everything, your holiness.”
Felix shook his head and forced himself to say it. “Do you know someone named Vrana?”
The hurt man’s mouth dropped open slightly.
The jerk started to laugh. He cocked his head and said, “Uh, what?”
“Vrana,” Felix repeated. “Do you know her?” But he already knew they did. He had caught them off-guard.
The jerk said, “No, sorry, we—”
“Yes,” the hurt man interrupted. “She saved your life.”
Felix checked the door, to make sure it was shut. His face got hot and his heart started to pound. This was a mistake. Crap, crap, crap—
“She saved your life,” the hurt man continued. He leaned forward. “The Exemplar of Restraint had taken you. She found you accidentally and killed him. She took you to Cadence, where Penance finally found you. We know her, because we are looking for her.”
“She came to me… she came to me.” Felix pulled down on his face and fell against the wall. “She visits me—” He lowered his voice to a whisper. “—Visits me in my dreams.”
The jerk gasped. “Deimos, she is dead.”
“No,” Deimos said. “T
hat doesn’t mean anything.” He turned to Felix. “Your holiness, we must find a way to help her. She has something, and someone terrible is using her for it.”
“I saw that someone,” Felix said. “She was… awful. Who is she? No, no, who are you?”
“Night Terrors,” Deimos said. “This is—”
The jerk shouted, “No, stop, idiot!”
“—Is Lucan. We know that you are kind, your holiness, and that you are wise beyond your years. We did not come here to cause trouble, but to stop another Worm from laying ruin to the Earth.”
“You went to the wrong city,” Felix said, praying to god no one could hear them. “Eldrus started this!”
“Vrana is a dear friend. We received correspondence that something may have happened to her. There are people here in Penance, in Pyra, that are changing because of her.”
“Changing how? The cult?”
“Cult? I don’t know. But if you are in contact with her—”
Someone knocked on the door.
Felix jumped so high, he almost went through the roof.
“Your holiness, it’s time to return,” Mackenzie said.
“You’re Night Terrors?” Felix didn’t know how the prophets of old did it. All these revelations would be the death of him. “No, you’re sick. That’s why you’re in here. It’s a sin to lie to the Holy Child.”
Lucan sneezed onto his bedsheets. “If we were lying, we’d lie about something that wouldn’t get us killed immediately.”
“We can help you, help you help her,” Deimos said. “But you have to get us out of here. She’s coming to you in your dreams? Your holiness, you are not safe. Have you told anyone else?”
“No, I haven’t, I—”
Another knock. This time, Avery: “Is everything okay in there, your holiness? We’re coming in.”
“She saved you, kid,” Lucan grumbled. “Everyone in Cadence is dead because they found you there. Do the right thing.”
Deimos spat at Lucan to shut him up. “Your holiness,” he said. “Do not trust anyone with eyes like—”
The door swung back. Avery and Mackenzie poured through, the nurses flanking them.
“What happened?” Avery asked, looking like he was ready to cut off Deimos’ and Lucan’s heads.
“Nothing,” Felix said. He pushed past his guards, past the nurses, his mind burning so hot it surely scorched them. “Take me back.”
CHAPTER V
Knowledge is a sickness borne by right. What we learn, we believe we are entitled to share. We do this to enlighten, or we do it to burden. But not all minds accept knowledge equally. Some reject it, the same way a body may reject an infection. Some minds become fevered and irrational, offended and confrontational. While others harbor the knowledge and let it fester inside them, where it either changes them, or destroys them.
I, Victor Mors, have traveled the Membrane in-between, and there a sickness fell over me. I am contagious, you see, and though I know it to be false, only by sharing my sickness can I be free.
The Worms of the Earth. It is a name of my own creation, and yet I expect it has always been their name. They exist in a place parallel to our world, but as far as I can tell, they exist only because we do. Perhaps Parasites of the Earth would have been a more fitting name, but I am not yet convinced they are without merit.
But to truly begin, I must go back to the beginning, where on one dark night here in Eldrus, I found myself searching through the Archivist’s relics. I was not looking for anything in particular, until, by happenstance, Deacon Wake’s black chalice was in my hands. The research I had been conducting on the causes of the Trauma were leading nowhere. I had ideas. I had interpretations. But so did the gutter rats that clog the streets outside Ghostgrave. Ideas and interpretations weren’t enough, and there wasn’t enough evidence left on this earth, it seemed, to ascertain the truth of the matter. But then, on that dark night here in Eldrus, without trying, I stumbled upon the first ghoul’s black chalice, the object by which he visited a place ostracized occultists have deemed the Membrane. We know this world was once densely packed with advancements and technologies beyond our current comprehension. For most of it to disappear, off the earth and from our minds, in such a haphazard fashion, led me to believe it had not vanished, but been moved elsewhere. And what better place for these things to have been relocated than a place of seemingly infinite space that runs alongside our own? Perhaps it makes me a deviant, but I smile when think that heaven may be there, and it is overflowing with all our ruin.
Using the black chalice was easier than I expected. Beneath it, there was a very small piece of parchment that had the instructions for its activation. This was too convenient to have been anything but deliberate, but I value my life too much to make accusations as to who may have been responsible for its placement there. After gathering the necessary ingredients, which took several days and several raids on the Archivist’s stash, I retired to my chambers, locked the doors and windows, and proceeded to do the devil’s work.
It took one hour of chanting and guzzling the contents of the black chalice. As the last drop of that infernal concoction touched my lips, the room began to spin. In a drunken haze, I fell to the ground. When I awoke, a portal loomed over me, the sinewy tendrils of light that wreathed it writhing and tasting the air. As I stumbled to my feet, I considered that it may close behind me, and that I would be trapped. I considered this, and then I went in, anyways.
It was as though I had walked through a door. On one side, my chambers, and on the other, the vertical sprawl of the Membrane. It felt as though I had shrunken down and wandered into the intestinal tract of some gargantuan creature. I could see the other side of the tunnel from the narrow ledge on which I stood, but the gaping pit between that point and mine prevented any attempt to cross. If there was a beginning or end to the place, I did not see it. Above and below, there was only darkness.
With nowhere to go but back, I turned around, thinking that a second ritual may place me somewhere else, where I could access additional parts of the Membrane. But that’s when I saw it, something which may or may not have been there before. Behind the portal, a passageway had been carved out of the thick, tongue-like material of which the walls were comprised. In Deacon Wake’s writings, he mentioned that his greatest mistake had been exiting this section of the Membrane, for this section was the barrier itself, and it was by this barrier he was safest. I knew that if I were to leave here, I would be exposing myself to that infectious knowledge I had spoken of earlier. But at the time, I considered myself inoculated by intelligence, so I went to that passageway, whose insides were made of roots and bones, and walked it.
First there was cold heat, followed by dark light, and then the passageway opened up to a pale desert that shimmered and shook beneath a sunless sky. I had come here alone, but when my feet touched the sand, I saw that I was expected. Humans, I thought at first, seeing the familiar and comforting shape of my fellow man dotting a nearby dune. Fellow travelers, I figured, watching as the shapes slinked down the dunes, their forms warped by mirage. But they were not humans, nor fellow travelers, I realized as they drew near, but something else, something empty, something hungry.
I tried to flee, but the sands held my feet. The creatures, the shadows, they swarmed over me in a black wave of silver fangs and burning eyes. At that moment, I expected death, and thought that I even deserved it. But much to my surprise, the shadows did not put me in the ground, but raised me from it. And on their midnight hands, emotionally vacant, I let them carry me across the sands, to that dune from whence they had emerged.
Up close, the dune was mountainous, and not entirely comprised of sand. As the bone-white grains shivered down the sides of it, I saw an architecture within. It seemed like something our species would be capable of. In that moment, then, the alien desert that surrounded me suddenly became recognizable. I could not make sense of it, nor had I any memories to give credence to the claim, but like the word on the tip of
one’s tongue, it was simultaneously familiar and unfamiliar. Known and unknown.
The shadows set me down, and when they did, I had a chance to consider them. Like dark shapes cast by light upon a wall, they were truly their name. The only difference was that they were not two dimensional, but three. They had a hazy transparency, and yet there was a weight to their actions, a strength in their voided forms. Looking at them, I became convinced they were truly human at some point. I still do not know what terrible thing they had endured to reduce to them to such a desolate state. But, at the time, I assumed they had brought me here to experience their fate.
The dune began to rumble, and the sands that covered the front of it began to part. A howling wind that sounded like sharpening knives sliced through my tenuous will. More shadows appeared at the crest of the dune. When the rumbling stopped, the sands had thinned away to a point where I could see a doorway beyond their ashen vale. I expected to be forced in against my will, but instead, the shadows merely outstretched their hands and pointed forwards. It was then that I realized I had been spared not to suffer, but to give witness to something secret inside.
I thought about running, but every step I took brought me closer to the dune, until, with sand having fallen into my eye, I stood upon that stony threshold. Beyond it, a steep staircase led downward into the desert, the light that illuminated it dim, its source invisible. This is what I wanted, I told myself, doubt setting in as I stared into that yawning abyss. I did not know at the time if I would find the answers I sought at the end of the staircase. But I knew I would have answers, even if they were answers to questions that had yet to be asked, let alone conceived.
I walked for what seemed like hours down those ancient steps, until, at last, my feet found earth. The soil was wet and ruddy, and the stones that sat in it were pricks of light, like distant, dying stars. In that cavernous landing, I became convinced I had left the desert. Somewhere along the staircase, I had crossed another barrier—I felt this transition in my very bones—so where I stood now, mouth agape, goalless and grief-filled, I did not know. Despite the light around me, the shadows had stayed topside. I suspect each of them had seen this place once, and then never again.