Chapter 35: 35. Barograd - Church Town

Pietr, High Priest of Kraal, stood a full head taller than either of the priests flanking him, perhaps eight feet tall counting the antlers. In the manner of all beastmen, his eyes had a wild gleam and his face had taken on a feral quality, pointed teeth and ears, wolfish features. Pietr’s long beard tapered to a point above the great holy symbol of Kraal hanging from his neck.

Vella looked up in alarm. She locked eyes with Pietr, but he wasn’t looking at her.

He was looking into the eyes of the little bird on her shoulder. Into Redmane’s eyes.

“Come,” said Pietr.

The High Priest of Kraal extended his hand, and Redmane found himself fluttering toward it.

He’d taken command of his bird.

Redmane landed on the priest’s outstretched finger, and Pietr gestured broadly for his congregation to take heed.

“He comes in a dissembling guise. He comes to us without surety of purpose, for he remembers not his own nature. Ah… But he comes to us all the same. For he is drawn by an all-consuming hunger. Like a moth to the flame he comes, at last, to his loyal flock.”

Then Pietr smiled a paternal smile at the bird. “And he has but one commandment. Eat, or be eaten.”

Then he ate the bird.

Redmane’s eyes snapped open, the connection suddenly severed.

Irina and Radovid looked down at him, startled by the shocked expression on his face.

He spared an instant to say, “Your comrade is in danger,” before taking off at a full run toward the church.

His pulse was already speeding, heartbeat pounding.

If someone could take command of his spawn so easily…

Who was this man? And why did he speak as if he knew Redmane?

Redmane could hear Radovid and Irina hustling to keep up with him, but they wouldn’t have beaten him in a foot race under normal circumstances. Certainly not now, while he gave it his all.

He didn’t know what he was going to do when he found himself face to face with this priest. Demand answers perhaps. Perhaps claw his head off.

He didn’t even know what he was going to do about the small army of beastmen inside that church. Not until he’d blown through the doors and found himself amongst them.

Fear Aura

Gnosis: 160

Hundreds of beastmen, a thousand perhaps, suddenly shrank away from him.

He strode down the center aisle of the church toward Pietr and his acolytes, and the throng of cowering beastmen melted away from him as he walked past.

“I thought that might get your attention,” said Pietr.

“That was my flesh,” said Redmane, with a growl from deep in his gut.

“Oh I know. I know much about you. More than you know about yourself, I suspect.”

“Speak then,” said Redmane, letting the growl come forth from the depths of his gut. “And your death may be a quick one.”

The High Priest of Kraal smiled.

Enimakia’s Joining

He held out his finger, pointed at Redmane, and a mote of brilliant white light shone at his fingertip. Redmane snarled and lunged. But he couldn’t close the distance before the Skill took effect.

A flash blinded him.

And the world around him dissolved away.

When his vision began to clear, he found himself gazing up at a sky the color of a vivid sunset, or a wall of flame. There was no sun, nor moons, but he thought he saw things floating up there, boulders the size of castles with trails of rocks floating behind them.

The ground under his feet felt spongy. Sticky. He looked down and his eyebrows rose.

He stood on a pile of corpses.

And it wasn’t only the spot he stood upon. All the ground, as far as he could see in any direction, was covered in dismembered body parts, slick with blood such a bright red that it must all have been fresh. Or kept fresh, somehow. There were humans, beasts, Monsters, all sorts of creatures.

“Do you yet feel a sense of familiarity?”

It was Pietr. He stood behind and to the left of Redmane. He’d been too busy taking in the strange scene to notice him.

The sight of him made Redmane bare his teeth.

“What have you done.”

The Priest of Kraal smiled. He gestured at their surroundings and said, “You commanded me to speak. I thought it best to show you, rather than tell you.”

“You didn’t answer the question,” said Redmane.

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“I have partaken of your flesh,” said Pietr. “And now our minds are joined as well. This allows me to take certain liberties. Show you things you would not have been able to see otherwise. Shall we?”

Pietr gestured toward his right. Off in the distance, the gory terrain grew hilly, a steep incline and escarpment concealed what lay beyond it. Redmane’s gaze followed his gesture, but he didn’t move.

The priest smiled again and turned to walk in the direction he’d indicated, trusting Redmane to follow.

Redmane took stock of the situation.

He knew nothing about this man’s deity, Kraal. Only things he’d witnessed and overheard in the last few days. No one in Häerz Castle had ever spoken of it, that he could remember.

And the priest hadn’t attacked him. Not yet. If this were a trap of some kind, it was needlessly complex. Perhaps he truly did want to show him something.

When Redmane arrived at that thought, he followed after Pietr.

They walked in silence. In a short while the terrain grew difficult. At times they had to climb with their hands. But after their ascent, they stood upon a ridge overlooking a circular chasm, a valley of gore that could have been made by the impact of a meteor.

Except in the center of the meteor, at the point of impact, there was a castle.

Most of a castle, anyway. There was an immense bite mark across its western side, suggesting that there once existed a creature even larger than said structure. But even this leftover portion of it was larger than Häerz Castle by half. The castle sat slanted, its gates angled upward, smaller buildings inside its yard were cracked in half or lying on their sides. Only the keep stood mostly upright, slightly canted to the left.

Redmane stared at it. “Where are we?” he asked.

“In the belly of the beast,” said Pietr.

“I don’t understand.”

Pietr grinned and beckoned, and he began to walk down the slope of the crater. “Come. I will explain all that I can.”

Again Redmane followed. Under his feet he felt the crunch and squish of bones cracking and tissues compressing. The ground was slick with blood, yet he didn’t feel unsteady. At no point did he feel as if he were about to slip.

“When the Stalhmen came to Volos, they came as conquerors,” said Pietr, as they walked. “Their mission was to ‘civilize the barbarians,’ unite them under the banner of their King, Sencis Karalis. Does that name hold any significance to you?”

Redmane shook his head. “No. Should it?”

Pietr smirked. “Over the course of generations, the native folk of Volos were most cruelly subjugated and abused by the Stahlmen. Those who would not convert to their gods, to their way of life, would count themselves lucky to meet a swift death. The fate of most dissenters was much worse.”

“What does this have to do with anything,” said Redmane.

Pietr gestured at the castle they were approaching. It loomed over them now, as they entered the edge of its long shadow.

“The natives would have their vengeance, ultimately. A work of deceit. A curse. A path to annihilation for all, both the torturer and the victim, so that the suffering of a whole people could finally find its end. But of course it did not. As ever, the cycle of suffering continues.”

Something on the ground caught Redmane’s eye. He stopped, looked closely. It resembled a portion of Lord Abrahm Morholt’s face, still smiling contemptuously as its one empty eye gazed up at the orange sky. A quarter of that face was gone, struck clean off by a downward blow from his own axe.

Redmane remembered, because he’d been the one to strike the blow.

“That’s…”

Pietr stopped and looked as well, let out a low chuckle.

“Ah yes, our great Lord. At last he’s where he belongs.”

Redmane glared. “Where are we? What is this place?”

Pietr’s grin widened.

He gestured at the castle. “Shall we go in? Have a look about?”

And before Redmane could say yes or no, Pietr walked through its skewed gates.

Redmane followed without hesitation.

Now he was looking across the ground carefully, in search of more familiar faces. He thought he saw some. But perhaps this was all some sort of hallucination brought on by Pietr’s spell. Perhaps he stood in the church still, frozen in place, helpless.

If that were the case, he supposed he wouldn’t have much to worry about in a few moments. But it had already been longer than that. If they were going to kill him, why wait?

Pietr strolled across the endless carpet of body parts between the gate and what remained of the keep, and Redmane followed him. Once inside, he took Redmane into its massive banquet hall.

The place looked as if it had been in an earthquake. Its long central table was broken apart, overturned, dented platters and pitchers and silverware scattered everywhere amongst the splintered remains of chairs. And, like everywhere else in this bizarre world so far, the place was covered in gore, festooned with entrails and viscera hanging off the portraits on the walls and between the chandeliers overhead.

“Do you now find yourself in familiar environs?” asked Pietr.

Redmane raised an eyebrow, shook his head. He opened his mouth to begin to say, ‘No,’ but before he did, his brows drew together thoughtfully.

He looked around again.

Yes. This was a bit familiar.

He’d had a dream about this room, or a vision. There was a feast here. The main course was something special. Something they had been told about by an old wise woman.

Pietr watched the expression on Redmane’s face, looking pleased. “Good… Good. Our bond helps you push back against your restraints. You’re seeing it.”

“What am I supposed to be seeing,” said Redmane.

“What they took from you,” said Pietr.

Redmane glared at Pietr again, but the priest’s smile did not waver.

While Redmane watched him, his pulse speeding up, a knot of tension forming in his chest, Pietr calmly walked over to the head of the table, took the great oaken chair which lay on its side, and righted it.

“This was your seat,” he said.

The seat at the head of table. Which would have belonged to…

“Sencis Karalis was deceived by his own advisor,” said Pietr. “The witch Nasiene. She sent him into that forest, where he would find a slumbering incarnation of the Lord of Hunger. She bid him slay it, sow his fields with its blood, and serve its meat for supper.”

There was an old woman at Häerz Castle the night he broke free.

She spoke with him. Placed a seed in his hand. Told him to sow it with his blood.

Pietr watched Redmane’s expression carefully. He waited a moment before speaking again.

“That’s when the curse of hunger befell you again. That’s when you became Kraal the Devourer.”

Redmane felt like the priest had reached in and scooped out his guts. He stared blankly. Unable to remember any of this. But all the same, he surely felt something, even if it were a sense of profound emptiness where there ought to be memories.

“That can’t be,” said Redmane. “I was a pri—“

“Yes, you were a prisoner. Held at Häerz Castle, I do believe. We were too weak to set you free. We’ve been waiting for a very long time. So long most of us believed it was a lost cause. Our numbers dwindled, down through the generations, until there were almost none left. A scant few true believers.”

Pietr stepped around the chair, approached Redmane with a smile on his wolfish face. “But the Blight changed all that. The Cult of Kraal has found its strength. And so, it seems, has Kraal himself.”

“I don’t remember any of this.”

“Of course you don’t. They scoured the memories from your mind, and then they sealed away your power, leaving only the immortal flesh. ”

Redmane opened his mouth, but he lacked words. Pietr smirked again.

“Yes, you are immortal. But there are fates worse than death, aren’t there? Like being imprisoned for so long that you likely lost track of the concept of time. Or being tortured, only to regenerate, never strong enough to fight back against your abusers, but always fresh for the next beating.”

“How do you…”

“We are in your Soulspace,” said Pietr. “A hidden corner of your mind. We are joined now, you and I. Like brothers. Unified in thought and in flesh. You would never have been able to see this place without me. But since the Ritual of Sealing does not bind me, I am free to bring you here.”

“The Ritual of what?”

Pietr laughed. “Ahh, the lesson continues.”