by Unknown
“They’re searching for Cervis,” said Rian, the aloof individual beside Sully, his long black hair tied back in a frazzled knot, his face covered in dirt.
“Rian,” Phillipe spoke, his voice remaining calm, “perhaps you need to pass the church and find András. We need to leave town immediately.”
“András will find us,” Rian assured Phillipe, wiping a single strand of long hair away from his face before leaning against the wall inside, crossing his arms.
Clicking the door open slightly, Röark peered outside.
“What are you doing!?” cried Sully, her voice shaky, an expression of horror across her face.
“Quiet!” ordered Phillipe, to Sully. In the tiny crack offered by the opening of the door, Röark watched what appeared to be the local villagers, faces lit up by the flame torches held aloft while parading along the path outside, through the dense pines, screaming and yelling. The night sky danced a mixture of orange and yellow. Among them, Röark spotted the fisherman Pascal.
“It’s Pascal!” Röark muttered, desperately swinging open the door, attempting to leave. Rian sprung forward from his resting place, pulling on Röark’s clothing. Stumbling backwards, Röark wailed slightly, and Sully closed the door firmly.
“They’re not the people they once were,” Rian said, his piercing green eyes locked on Röark. “They’re not your friends anymore.”
Röark glared at him, his eyes consumed with naivety. “But that can’t be.”
Paused in the centre of the room, the lone candle flickered, casting devious shadows across the slimy yellow walls. None of them spoke. The screams outside continued, bellowing Cervis’s name, crying out in a threatening rage. Others began singing a sombre chant, their baritone hymn chillingly demonic. The sounds were haunting, terrifying. It was like a bad dream.
“It’s Cervis they’re looking for, not me,” Röark said finally, breaking the uncomfortable silence, turning to Phillipe. In reply, Phillipe shook his head, pushing his glasses up against his face. Curling his lip, Röark stamped his foot, turning to his oldest friend, eyes locked with rage.
“What did you steal from the church?” Röark asked Cervis, latching hold of Cervis’ collar. “What have you done Cervis?”
“I did what I had too,” Cervis replied, desperately.
“You had to?” Röark scoffed, almost offended, “you stole something from Father Hugal! This is it Cervis, the villagers are not going to forgive you for this one. You need to give whatever you took back!”
“No, he cannot do that,” Phillipe intervened, “if he does that, then Aevum will win.”
“I can’t stay here,” Röark said, shaking his head, baffled by his conscience, “I can’t. My mother needs me. I can’t stay here. I will find Mihaela, I will talk with Father Hugal and I will find out what has happened to these people.”
“You cannot leave,” Rian insisted, stepping closer to Röark, turning to Phillipe for back up, “can you not hear what’s going on out there?”
“I’m not going to find answers hiding in this clock tower. And I cannot go into that pit,” Röark replied, nudging Rian away, backing towards the doorway, “I don’t know what you did this time Cervis, but you have really made a mess of it.”
Röark shoved open the door, and disappeared out into the darkness.
---
“Greed is a funny thing. It consumes us, eats us, and ravishes our soul until there’s nothing left but a shell.”
The man’s voice was deep, menacing and prognostic. He spoke as though every word was as important as the last. Standing in the empty corridors of the catacombs below the church, he gently drew his right hand across the bumps on the wall, pausing as he reached each skull, a smile forming on his wicked face. Across his palms and forearms were hundreds of old lacerations now molded into scars.
“These men, they were all excessively greedy. They died defending their greed. Tortured and burned, all for the sake of greed. The teachings of Aevum would have saved them.”
“Why are you doing this to me?” Mihaela cried, grasping the bars of her prison. Woozy with agonising distress, she desperately wanted to escape, to be outside, with her friends and her father. They must be sick with worry of her whereabouts. They would be searching for her.
Without answering or acknowledging her, the man continued to pace along the wall adjacent to her cell, digging his fingers into the eye sockets of the skulls that lay fortified in the giant stone wall. He had only appeared a moment ago - the same man who had tried to convince Mihaela he was the pastor of the church. But he no longer wore Father Hugal’s black pastor uniform, instead donning a silky, impressive orange gown, flowing behind him like a king’s coronation gown. No longer was there an unfounded feeling of trust and assurance when confronted by this man, instead replaced by a sickening and dastardly sense of fear. Mihaela noticed a haunting array of cuts strewn across his face, cuts not visible when they had previously spoken upstairs.
“Aevum saved me,” he said, his back to her, “I too was sickly, petty and weak like you.”
“Please,” she whimpered, “please, my-“
“I too was blind to the teachings. I too never understood that life was guided by the complexities of others. That is, until you discover what I have discovered, you will never truly be free,” and he snapped, his sudden rise in anger catching Mihaela off guard, causing her to flinch in terror, “greed, power, envy, desperation, it makes your heart black. Ripe for the blessing.”
The prisoner in the cell next door had said nothing, Mihaela assuming him dead. But then she heard him speak softly.
“Your governing faith, your farce that is Aevum, it will die with you,” the man croaked feebly, his voice tainted with an air of pain and anguish, “the faith will burn in the depths of hell where it belongs. The people will see through your perjury. It will not rise again. The madness of Hyclid and Asag Ovrai will not rise again.”
This comment seemed to dumbfound the cloaked man, who immediately stopped where he was. He bore his teeth in a rabid way, his eyes plundering into darkness. Mihaela was covered in gooseflesh, the air now dense with unbreathable metallic moisture. Her throat burned from every breath.
“I am Arkayis de Risu,” the man growled as a stern reminder, his voice now rumbling. “Member of the Holy Trinity, born from the blessed and servant to the ancient faith of Aevum and its founder, Hyclid the Anointed. You are nothing but a common thief, one who will be purged at the hands of the colossal army of Aevum - a sacrifice made by so many of the non-willing. Your impudent words will not stain our infallible rise.”
“You’re just as blind as your faith. The resistance will ransack you,” the dying prisoner interjected straight away, confiding with the last of his energy, “torturing children, tricking peasant farmers, locking people away until they turn insane - doing the sick things you do, it’s not right. The resistance will come for you.”
“The resistance?” mocked Arkayis, a heated laugh reverberating throughout the corridors, “I assume you’re speaking of the Censu? If there were such a thing, they too would see the beauty of Aevum. But I expect by resistance, you refer to the trifling cluster of foolhardy thieves accompanying you, the ones that stole from me. I will find them and they will die too. And the world will succumb to Aevum. We all will, except you András.”
Arkayis opened the rusted rectangular doorway to András’ tiny enclosure, taking a single step inside. His footstep echoed eerily, landing in a puddle of blood. He leaned close to András, whose weak body shivered, holding on to what little life remained.
“Listen to me András, listen to my words carefully while you die alone amongst your own filth and blood. What you and that boy stole from me will be returned. And afterwards, when I find them, I will slowly gauge their eyes out. I will force them to brutally cut each other in sadistic and vicious ways, mutilating each other over and over with iron scythes. I will peel their skin off with hot coals, and only then will I put them through the hell’s co
nfinements. Afterwards, when I am entirely satisfied they are truly broken, I will tear off each of their limbs, one by one, and feast on their insides.”
Benumbed in paralysing fear, Mihaela felt tears roll down her cheek, and she leaned forward to watch Arkayis’s daunting movements in the next cell. His callous words and cold-hearted taunts terrified her. He wasn’t a man – no man could be this way. Mihaela’s father always told her that her happy-go-lucky outlook would result in her falling victim to the untrue men of this world. Her trusting nature was well sought after by the untrustworthy of this land he would say. His protective words were ringing through her head. She longed to hear his voice.
But not even her father could have known a man like this existed – an evil, explicitly heartless individual who had acted as an imposter and locked her up.
And she still didn’t know why.
Arkayis carefully rested a hand on András’ back, a display of false tenderness. Then, with a powerful yet precipitated swing of his arm, he dug his clawed fist into András’s chest, accompanied by a screeching howl of pain from the already fatally wounded victim. His hand entered András’s flesh with delicate ease, as if it were putty. The sickening pop of his ribcage, followed by bloodcurdling cries filled the empty recesses throughout the corridors of the catacombs. The wailing prisoners in the other cells all fell silent, listening to the fate of one of their own.
Gripping András’s face, Arkayis tore at the gash across his throat, chanting a monotonous and malevolent rhyme. He chanted it over and over as the sickening cries slowly dissipated, the life slipping from András’s face, his eyes rolling backwards.
With a quick lurch Arkayis retracted his arm, releasing his grip of András who fell to the floor, lifeless. Gripped by queasiness, Mihaela whimpered in panic, retreating to the back of her cell. Her back slammed against the rocky wall, skulls surrounding her. With uncontrollable force her body shook, her face ghostly white with dismay. As panic took hold, she glanced up and saw the shadow of the demonic man from the cell next door. Arkayis was holding András’s heart in his blood soaked hands, moving it towards his mouth to feed on it while chanting in a deep, maniacal way.
CHAPTER 6.
Röark raced behind the lumberjack’s cottage, through the pastures of the golden meadow. Ivan’s usual steadfast pile of chopped logs blocked his path, a serrated steel axe embedded in one. Across the distance the mountains were barely visible, a portentous mist carpeting the air. Darkness had quickly swamped the sky, thousands of stars twinkling above.
He found himself limping as he followed the line of Ivan’s cottage. He wasn’t physically injured, more a reaction to the burden of being expelled from his home and the grief that his mother had not been herself. He found himself contemplating where he had left the rucksack with the seeds in it. He was not able to offer them to the statue of Lughnasadh, and now their harvest would surely wither before the leaves on the beech trees turn red. His mother will be furious.
Seeking refuge behind a giant boulder, he glanced both ways making sure no one was nearby. The path towards his farm was dark, no light from the moon nor nearby cottages to guide him. The giant hay bales behind his house all but blocked it, along with the fir trees along the outskirts. They swished calmly in the summer breeze.
Röark crept towards the farm, his feet crunching the dirt with every step. Ahead, he spotted the cellar door, the tiny entrance jarred shut with steel. Easing past the hay bales, he inhaled deeply and fumbled with the door’s lock. Although he’d been here in the darkness all his life, this time felt different. He couldn’t think straight, his mind misty. Sliding his fingers behind the length of steel across the door, he lurched it up. A noxious screech indicated its release, and Röark clenched the steel bar for safety, his knuckles white.
He had to make sure his mother was safe.
He longed to have her scold him, to have everything back to normal, to acknowledge that all of this was a huge misunderstanding. Yet it seemed Cervis didn’t think the same way. Those people he was harbouring inside the old clock tower, what had they convinced him to do?
Passing through the tiny cellar, Röark wedged open the kitchen door and paused. The house seemed remarkably silent, absent the usual impatient yelling, pots clanging or brooms sweeping.
Braving a few steps inside, Röark felt a chill. Dust gathered on the windowsills, moss on the roof beams. Ahead of him the open fire crackled, his mother’s cushioned chairs neatly straightened next to it. On the windowsill furthest away propped a single tall-candle burned an ominous blue flame.
A cough resounded from over in the corner of the house, beside his mother’s old bookcase.
Röark spun, backing against the wall, steel rod still gripped in his right hand. A tall, slim, well-dressed man rested on the old stool in the corner, face down, a small book open across his lap. A black cane rested against the wall beside him, a grey bowler hat now perched on Röark’s father’s hat-stand. An impressive pendant locked in a silver chain around the man’s neck began to glow a calming deep purple, resting on his black cravat.
“Who are you?” Röark asked, trying to sound pertinent, yet feeble and terrified.
Interrupted from his reading, the man calmly diverted his attention from the book to Röark, and a curious grin crossed his pale, skeletal face. “Well, hello there,” the man smirked equivocally, “may I help you? Perhaps you’re lost?”
“I’m not lost,” Röark assured him, scanning the inside of the house, “this is my house. Where is my mother? Is she still in the orchard?”
“Your house?” the intruder quipped, looking around apathetically, “I must insist, you’re horribly mistaken boy, because this is my house. But I suppose...might I be correct in presuming you’re another orphan?”
“An orphan?” Röark questioned with confusion, “No, I am not. This is my father’s farmhouse, my mother and I live here. It’s time for you to leave.” His words felt rushed.
“My boy,” the slim man tutted, staring intently at Röark while he rose to his feet, “this is not the behaviour of a saint.” His boots hit the wooden floor with a clonk, and he brushed down his pants with a proud flutter.
“Where is my mother?” Röark asked, turning back towards the front doorway.
“You’re fortunate that Father Arkayis is assisting orphans over by the church,” the man explained, standing firmly where he was still gripping the book, “you’re not the first to arrive in town, and I dare say not the last. Let me take you there, to Father Arkayis. You will need a roof over your head and he can help.”
“Where’s my mother!?” Röark yelled angrily, his voice loud, filled with anxiety. Grief overwhelmed him, he desperately feared for his mother’s safety. With his teeth gritted, he raised the steel bar. The man did not react well to Röark’s flustered demeanour.
“Now you listen to me,” the well-dressed man replied, a frown materialising across his ugly, gaunt face, “you will not speak to me like that in my own home. I ought to hand you over to the guards.” The pendant around the man’s neck, a once vibrant soft purple, now flashed a deep red. “Father Arkayis is the village pastor. He is a man of virtue, of compassion and reprieve. He won’t take to well to your recalcitrance, but the blessings of Saint Aevum teaches us redemption. We can all be forgiven for our damnation.”
Searching the room, Röark realised his mother’s possessions were missing; her jewellery chest, the crystal trinklets, the collection of rare stones, the ticca dolls, all missing.
“Aevum will guide you, for their blessings are the only passage into the afterlife. Your answer lies at the temple atop the hill, with Father Arkayis,” the man offered, “your mother realised that, and now she has been chosen for the High Church.”
“B…” Röark stuttered, eyes welling, “but you said you didn’t know about my mother. That I was an orphan. You’re a liar.”
“My boy,” the man smiled, “that was no word of a lie, for as of now you are an orphan.”
&nb
sp; Röark swung the steel bar at the man, losing grip of it immediately. It clattered against the brick behind the man, who swiftly moved aside to dodge the projectile. He grunted in rage, the scowl on his face deepening. The pendant around his neck flashed red and green in an ominous panic.
Backing out the kitchen door towards the cellar, Röark kept his eyes on the man. There was only one other person he could trust. He dashed through the cellar, out the back, towards Mihaela’s house.
---
Inside the clock tower they waited, eager to receive word on their colleague’s fate. Cervis paced back and forth anxiously, his expression liquored with concern. He wished Röark hadn’t left. A sense of guilt swept crossed him and he turned to Phillipe, face dimly lit by the candle.
“I want to know more,” Cervis demanded, his wimpy demeanour offering little in the way of confrontation. He still knew little of these people he held company with, besides their chosen vocations as thieves. They had easily convinced Cervis he would be doing a noble thing if he were to seek out the mysterious pendant buried within the church. Initially it had been the frail cloak-wearing Phillipe who had persuaded Cervis to go, but it was the more brazen Rian who had assured him it was a courageous thing to do. And, of course, there would be a handsome monetary reward.
It was evident they had tricked him, exploiting his exploratory desires. Cervis certainly felt the fool, regretting the whole turn of events. He pressed his hands against his forehead, trying to make sense of the thoughts running through his head.
How could one lucid act of larceny turn the village against him? Why did they even care?
There was no doubt he was misguided, brash and untrustworthy. The village knew it, and grew accepting. He’d been caught stealing many times before, usually let off with a simple slap on the wrist by the guards. So what was different now?