by Ty Arthur
Always planning every step from first planting to final bloom, he'd been prepared for this eventuality. His time seeing to the liberation and conversion of Cestia, or its burning to the ground to be purified and rebuilt anew on the ashes, was not coming to an end just yet. As knights with manacles poured out of the hallways, he was already enacting what he knew would be necessary one day in the quest to spread god's light.
The comforting sound of the screams, the white-hot flame of the burning city, the smell of the dying infidels, it all inundated his senses in a moment as his body was flushed with the warmth of the one true god. Ever since the guards had brazenly mocked his faith, he'd been keeping the sacred vision in the back of his mind, prepared to unleash at a moment's notice. He'd never had to channel it so quickly before, or with so much need, but the Farwalker always provided for those who were faithful and true.
8 (Western Ward, Late Gloaming)
The cart striking a loose stone roused Casterly into a groggy consciousness, the blackness receding into painful light. Every ragged breath was agonizing as a searing pain ran up and down from ribs to temple. Reaching down he was shocked to discover his side wrapped in thick bandages, with some kind of damp poultice applied underneath.
While wondering at the point behind binding his wounds when they surely meant to execute him shortly, the cart struck a hole in the ground, sending him jolting upright against the black metal bars lining his traveling cage. Patches of straw underneath were all stained a dark brownish red, poorly performing their intended purpose of soaking up blood and worse from captives past.
Seeing his mother and siblings huddled against the opposite corner of the mobile prison, Casterly felt a flash of regret at leaving the cellar behind, as they now found themselves in exactly the same situation. Except that everything had changed. He'd seen something truly rare in Cestia: a miracle.
“Mother,” he croaked, finding his voice and discovering that speech brought on further pain from both his previous head wound and the new cracks in his ribs.
Little Shan took to his feet and stumbled across the cart to embrace his older brother, eliciting a gasp of pain Casterly fought through to embrace the youngest of his siblings. Kina continued holding fast to their mother, clutching tight for dear life, while poor Ara did all she'd done since the night the soldiers had raided their home. She clutched her knees against her chest and swayed back and forth, whispering softly of things best left unheard.
His mother remained the rock the family was based around, staring off into the distance and absently stoking Kina's hair. Only one member remained absent. Tammin, his father, forever lost but not forgotten, and soon to be avenged. Casterly's hands began their familiar pattern of clenching and relaxing reflexively as he considered what was soon to come.
It was then that he saw the dead eyes staring out from his mother's face, eyes devoid of all hope and purpose. Did she not behold the miracle only hours ago, before they were captured fleeing the alleyway?
“We don't have to despair any longer, mother. Did you bear witness? Myrr is going to kill every last one of these men. We are going to be free again!”
She didn't move at all, staring out at the city around them as the cart traveled across the ward, idly stroking her youngest daughter's head. After a moment she finally spoke, but the words made no sense to her son.
“That man is an abomination, worse than the soldier who killed your father. We would have been better off dying in our home along with him.”
Casterly pushed Kina gently away and struggled to his feet to respond, only to finally notice the two soldiers mounted on dark roans flanking the front and back sides of the prison cart. The one to left swung his spear around, jabbing it into the cart a hands-breadth from Casterly's newly-bound wound.
“Back on the floor, worm! You are wanted alive, but I don't mind bringing you in bleeding!”
The sudden barked orders had Casterly back onto the patch of straw again, examining his surroundings. Another cart followed behind to the left and through the thick bars he could make out part of a third riding ahead and to the right. All seemed filled with captives who hadn't been immediately slaughtered in the street for reasons unknown.
He didn't mind obeying the soldier and remaining off his feet. He could use the momentary respite, and Casterly knew it was only a short time before the bastards would be begging forgiveness for their transgressions. The newly devout captive couldn't grasp why the woman who bore him, normally so full of wisdom, didn't see the truth of the situation.
“Mother, some god out there still remembers us, and has sent Myrr to begin our liberation. He burned those animals to less than ash with a flick of his finger. He is going to be our savior!”
He sputtered and began clenching his hands harder when she remained silent and didn't bother to respond.
“You think that deranged criminal from the safe house is going to bring down the Knighthood? That blow to your head did more damage than you realize.”
The voice came from the side, startling Casterly as he noticed a face he'd seen before in the caravan's rear cart. One of the rebels who had been hiding with them before departing to undertake some secret mission was leaning against the bars only a few feet away, weighted down by manacles and a thick iron chain.
While less damaged than his own, the swollen, bruised face, and noticeably missing companions, spoke of a man who did not accept captivity quietly or easily. Somehow the man managed to cough out a laugh, as though their situation deserved levity, when he said, “They were waiting for us. They knew exactly where we were going and how we were going to strike.”
He laughed louder then, as though describing some joke that all the world needed to hear, before shouting, “Someone sold us out. That light-damned priest!”
Another soldier cantered his mount to the other side of the cart, slamming the side of his spear against the bars and nodding towards Casterly before barking out, “Whoever did that to your face left the job unfinished. Remain silent or I'll finish the task on the other side.”
As the carts neared their destination, he held Shan tight against him, gritting his teeth through the pain and whispering soothing words of the coming liberation.
9 (Brimstone Briar, Twilight)
Amidst a riot of trees and vines run through with splashes of crumbling obsidian, the would-be savior of Cestia struggled for breath. Consciousness had come and gone in his mad flight from the alleyway and all the heinous death he'd unleashed on those men. They may have deserved to die, but not like that. He'd never believed men actually had eternal souls, but if they existed, he was certain he had snuffed them out forever.
Getting his bearings as his gasping breaths became measured and even, Myrr noticed he was on his back, sludgy earth beneath him much like it had been in the rebel's hiding space. Looking up through the trees it was apparent true night had nearly fallen. The stars were out in force, which would have been a beautiful sight in any other city, along with a newcomer glowing more brightly than its celestial neighbors.
It didn't so much sparkle as blink, like a baleful eye looking back down at those bound to the earth below, and he reached up involuntarily, gasping out a wordless question to be sure he wasn't still hallucinating.
The woman holding his head in her lap spoke then, startling him with further realizations of his surroundings as the mania faded. He couldn't even tell what color the ragged mass of her hair had originally been. Peering closer in the shadowy illumination, he began to catch a hint of a slightly darker complexion, with wideness to her eyes that spoke of exotic origins far from Cestia.
She spoke through obvious pain, a bruise spread across half her face and a swollen, split lip marring her words. “I was born under that star. I think it's why they're getting louder, so the star will hear them.”
The laugh that came next seemed forced and out of place, as though the woman was at war with her own feelings. There was a sudden ferocity to her voice when she next looked down at Myrr an
d asked, “Why don't they scream when you look at me?”
He'd heard this sort of talk before from the broken citizens whose minds had died while their bodies lived on during the dragging occupation. A madwoman held him, with hands crusted over by dirt and torn clothing barely shielding her body from the elements.
He thought back to his own screaming fit not long ago, coupled with his current appearance after days in a cellar, and realized he had no room to judge. While the words coming from her mouth were nonsense, her eyes told a different story to the still-recovering fugitive. They weren't like that broken girl rocking herself away from reality, or like that religious fanatic who had put him up in the cellar to begin with. She was in control of her faculties.
He was doing it again, but this time there was no Casterly to console him in the darkness. Words were necessary, but he had none to match her question. Myrr furthered the silence for a time, contemplating his own internal companion and responding in a way that was certain to make her regard him as equally mad.
“Your screams, do they hurt you when you try not to think of them? Do they make you say words you don't understand?”
The woman's eyes shot from the star to Myrr's face as a slow but fierce trembling set in. “If you had them too you would have been raised with us. How do you know?”
A mad sort of clarity was settling into her words, but Myrr was too exhausted to battle against his chance to finally connect with another living human being who seemed to understand his possession in some small way. He shook his head, as he didn't understand what she was saying, but something resonated within him when she spoke of her inner screams.
“It found me the night of the riot in the eastern ward. Whatever it is that the Knighthood wants, it found me and now it won't leave.”
Saying it out loud made it real and the quiet sobs began then, unable to hold them back despite a desire to not appear weak before this stranger. The responding tear that dropped from above was clearly meant for him when she whispered, “No, it won't.”
The finality of the proclamation tore through Myrr stronger than any sensation ever delivered by that Stygian pilgrim hiding within. Silence again reigned then as the two considered their situation, and nothing seemed left to be said. Either they were both driven mad by the living hell of Cestia, or they were cursed by things beyond their understanding that would never give them rest.
It was Tala who broke the quiet stillness first, pointing to a tree off in the distance. “I buried my son over there this evening. Just before I saw you and the voices went away.”
Life in a cellar and death from a soldier's spear was not the greatest of indignities the city had to offer after all. He was up then, cradling her as she had soothed him, the mad comforting the mad in a city filled to the brim with the dead and the desperate. The blackness in his soul – and he was beginning to worry that souls existed after all – stirred and brought up a sensation of mockery and shame, but it was faint and fading, as though it hadn't recovered from slaughtering the soldiers.
“It's still inside. It didn't leave me like they left you.”
Tala's arm slipped around his waist and they stared into the darkness of Brimstone Briar. After a moment she quietly responded with steel in her voice born of harsh experience, “Its better that way. Even if it pretends to go away, it will always come back.”
Myrr waited for her to resume speaking, beginning to understand more of her madness now. The stilted explanations, the sudden bursts, the deliberate words and looks: she had some kind of internal war going on before every thought or action.
“It happened once before, when the soldiers first came. When that black tower fell out of the sky. The day after the tower stopped moving, they came back. It was even worse than if they'd never been gone at all.”
She looked across at him, letting her eyes finally break from the shrouded grave in the distance. “When you unleashed the thing inside you, they didn't just leave. They fled. They get angry and they get impatient, but they never get scared. I could feel it, the moment just before they were gone. They were terrified.”
Myrr could offer no comfort that the voices inside her would remain gone. He suspected if the blackness that overcame him ever went dormant, it would only be to return with renewed strength later. Just as he was defenseless against his passenger, he felt woefully inadequate in the face of another possessed such as he, and in the face of another everyday horror of the city: a dead son buried too early. The thought sent him bolting upright.
“My companions, the one with the destroyed face and his family; a mother, two girls, and a boy. What happened to them?”
She stood then as well, shivering as the night progressed and the downpour continued, turning the Briar into a muck pit. “I didn't see anyone else with you. I followed you here. To here, of all the places in this awful city. The ward was rioting again earlier. If they didn't hide somewhere fast, they'll be dead or rounded up by now.”
A lifetime ago such a casual dismissal of five human lives would have been a grave offense, but now it was just common sense. Morbidity overcame Myrr then, to the stirring annoyance of the blackness within, as he searched for the sight of freshly dug earth and wished he could join the boy there. “What can we even do now? And what's the point of going on after all of this?”
Her voice was harsh when it came out, filled with equal parts regret and contempt, as though she knew the direction of his thoughts. “We find a place to hide. Or you can do what I've never had the courage to. You can put that thing inside you to use, and we can leave this forsaken city far behind.”
The words cut through Myrr as he wondered if he'd been wrong to assume nothing good could come of that void he'd discovered in the attic while men and women were slaughtered by the dozens below. The force channeling through him had felt worse than the cold embrace of death, but if it could be put to use as a means of escape...
Remaining in the Briar would be just as much of a slow death as hiding in the rebel safe house, but with a higher risk of being rounded up by a patrol of knights. Unsteady on his feet after his brush with insanity, Myrr leaned on the equally-mad woman and hobbled away from the treeline.
Neither gave a look back at what was being left behind, missing sight of the damp section of freshly dug earth rumbling and rising as something sharp and angular reached out into the frigid night air.
10 (Western Ward, Twilight)
Obstinate disbelievers continued to throw stumbling blocks across the path of his holy pilgrimage, but Father Erret wasn't ready to concede defeat yet. On the contrary, knowing that night was always darkest before the dawn and that all deeds worth doing would require sacrifice, the missionary was certain he was on the cusp of finally inciting true revolution.
Striking against the Overlord himself in the Knighthood's own cathedral at the heart of the high ward had been unplanned, but perhaps exactly the catalyst needed to finally tip the scales just far enough. It would make further plans more difficult of course, as he'd now have to remain hidden and work away from the sight of the heretics.
The torches were just beginning to be lit across the city's main thoroughfares, but for now the darkness would aid his flight through the emptying wards. He held his hand to the bleeding wound in his stomach, but immediately discounted it as nothing of import. It would run red until he could see to stitching or burning it closed, but the spear thrust hadn't hit anything vital before he'd sent those infidels screaming. A vision of what the light truly heralded was all it required, burning away the impure and blinding the lost.
Still, the trail he was almost certainly leaving was of more concern, prompting him to stop and remove his cloak, tearing a strip away to hold against the flow of crimson seeping out onto the cobblestones below. Something glinted off the splatter of blood on the ground, prompting the apostle to turn his gaze heavenward, and then hold his hands high and let out a cry of praise despite his attempts at stealth.
A most prodigious sign indeed look down: th
e Wanderer, a star holy to the Farwalker coming again into view after a long absence. Its appearance was rare and always auspicious, marking the end of great journeys and the beginning of long marches to come. He hadn't seen it clearly in the night sky in three decades, and now it watched over the sinners and faithful of Cestia alike.
The star's appearance was not just a sign, but a message, as clear as though the sky opened up and uttered god's words directly. Erret knew then he wasn't just on the right path, but that he had to pick up the pace as the Farwalker now lit the way directly. A plan that had been gestating for months would have to be enacted immediately. There could be no time to allow passions to cool. It would have to be tonight, now in fact, as soon as he could round up the proper vessels to be put to use.
Another cursed road block to success was thrown up immediately, obviously as a test of the missionary's faith. The first baying howls from behind sent the normally composed priest from a silent trot to a full-speed sprint. The Overlord's abominable hounds had been loosed, and he'd be unable to bring anyone to the light if he got caught up in those wicked jaws. If only that darkness-worshiping cretin hadn't had his back turned, the city would be leaderless, instead of mobilized to hunt him down.