Chapter 9: Chapter 6: Ohros

I had dreams, the days and weeks following that bloody night in Gazmere. My waking mind struggled to comprehend the things that I had done. The things that had been done to me. So, it was in sleep that my mind took chance to ruminate.

I don’t know how to describe them. Some dreams defy all description, experienced by senses not known to the waking. Sometimes, the events rehearsed in my head with their cast of dead and dying actors. The men, torn like conquered prey. My blade, glinting cruelly in the light of dim lanterns. My flesh, ripped and torn beneath Gazmere’s scourge. Sometimes, I saw myself as a monster—a mass of flesh and thrashing limbs, skin surging and writhing with the faces of the dead. And some nights, maybe worst of all, I was alone with my father. He would see the damnable thing I was. The distance would grow between us, like it never had before. I saw the pain I’d brought to him, the only person who had ever loved me. And that agony cut deeper than any slash or scourge.

I remember Azareth telling me that our sleeping minds are our truest selves. We see every want and fear and longing lain before us. In a dream, we tread closer to the Veil. We cannot lie and we cannot hide. Awake, we may temper our thoughts and guide our actions. But it is beneath thought and intention that true experience lies.

I am the Undying. I know, firsthand, how it feels to touch the Veil, to stare into the infinite Void that awaits us at the end. I have communed with the dead and cleansed the undead. I know how things tend to linger. Stains on the world. How lives lived, blood shed, love given, anger held… they can infect the people around us. They can endure, long after our paths split or we forget the things that made us who we are.

But a part of us never forgets. Even if, in time, things grow numb… there is a fire in every heart that will not be so easily quenched.

I knew those seven men. Their vengeful, undying fire.

It set my dreams ablaze. Every night, I felt their fury anew.

* * *

I slept little during our trip to Orloth. Days passed, and we exchanged the dense southern forests for the fertile foothills of the west. The roads grew more solid underfoot, evolving from weathered dirt to clacking cobblestone. We passed through more and more villages where Azareth would drop a silver or iron to spend the night indoors. I was grateful for the shelter, even if it meant hiding my less human-like features. We continued northward, and villages grew into towns, small farms into rolling fields of grain. We passed far more travelers on the road, and I spent far more time with my horns hidden in my scarf, tail hidden in my cloak.

After the first night, Azareth seemed content to travel in silence. He made little effort to talk, though I felt his eyes upon me, constantly watching. It unnerved me at first, but I became accustomed to his surveillance. Besides, I was making a few observations of my own.

The man was particular about nearly everything, from the cleanliness of his clothes to the neatness of his hair. I didn’t think it was from vanity, but more from compulsion. Perhaps he needed everything to be straight and rigid and right, and a single speck of dirt would nag at him like a pebble in his shoe. He also seemed reluctant to get his hands dirty, having me conduct nearly all of the manual labor. He had the soft, slender body of a man who has had little need to do hard physical work.

I found that he had three kinds of smiles. The first was the most common—smiles that he put on like donning a mask. They were superficial and deliberate, completely divorced from the things in his heart. His straight row of teeth would gleam, dimples crinkling, but his eyes would remain cold. Most people, I think, were not alarmed by it. That, or they simply knew better than to question a necromage. Regardless, I found that while this smile was a disguise, it was easily seen through.

His second smile was rare. It was the one given in humor and contentment, and often followed a question of mine. It seemed that he enjoyed telling me of his order, and of the undead. But when I asked about direlings or Khaldara, I got a grin of the first sort.

His third smile was rarer still. It was the one I’d seen that night in Gazmere. It was the opposite of the first. He wore it in the moments where, it seemed, he laid bare his innermost self, his intent. It was piercing and predatory, empty of empathy. I did not see it on our journey, but it was nevertheless hard to forget.

It took us a little less than two weeks to reach Orloth. I first saw it as an immeasurable mass on the horizon. The distant shapes almost looked like a forest, but they lacked the soft edges of a tree with all its leaves. Rather, there were tall, pointed spires, poking the sky like a thousand barren branches. There were walls higher than the hills, running the entire perimeter. There were steady streams of people migrating north and south, east and west, moving like opposite currents in a great and heaving river. Sprawling fields of barley stretched in every direction, peppered by the occasional dots of farmhouses and homesteads. The whole valley seemed to glisten in the sunlight as wind pushed gentle waves over the earthy yellow-green of grain.

“Elthys’s Jewel,” Azareth said. “The beating heart of her empire.”

I kept silent, double-checking that my tail was invisible within my cloak. I adjusted my scarf to hide the points of my horns, then nudged my horse into motion.

The first thing that struck me about Orloth was its enormity. Words hardly exist that can describe something on that scale. It was a seemingly infinite sprawl of rooves and city streets, crammed together like so many corpses in a shallow grave. Standing on those reeking streets, it was impossible to glimpse the wilderness beyond. It was a jungle of stone, thatch, and mortar, a world separate from the open sky I knew. Buildings pressed together so tightly that the sun didn’t reach the streets. The lower districts were a city of shadows, where darkness hid the pale and sickly, the beggars and thieves, while the sun readily shone on those places higher on the hill.

The city’s next section had its own walls, complete with double the guards keeping their eyes on traffic. We pushed through the crowd and emerged into an area more open than the lower district’s festering quarters. The buildings here were taller, sturdier, brick walls painting a burnt-red scene in lieu of colorless stone. The buildings were less oppressive, less suffocating, but I still longed for the open air.

“Our destination stands at the summit of the hill, in the upper district,” Azareth said, nearly shouting over the noise of the crowd. “It is a place that requires some decorum. Please, keep quiet and follow me closely behind.”

He didn’t have to tell me twice. Together, we passed through squares and walked along busy roads, but as we ventured deeper into the city’s heart, the crowds began to thin. Orloth’s final walls loomed ahead, blocking vision of what lay beyond. The gatehouse was different, decorated with banners, more intricate architecture. The guards, standing at attention, had different attire, trading chainmail for gleaming plate. Silky cloth draped down their chests, emblazoned with the symbols of the Rising Sun—an eagle brandishing a blessed blade. The men thumped their decorative halberds as Azareth passed, then again when I followed.

The upper quarter was spacious, and while it still had the city stink, I felt that I could breathe again. Buildings of marble and polished wood glistened in the sun. There were mansions and gardens—-not grown to put food on the table, but for the sake of beauty. It was a strange thing, I thought, seeing tulips and orchids cultivated so carefully instead of tomatoes and squash. Just one of those houses was likely big enough to house the entire population of Gazmere. I was struck by the excess of it all, but could not deny that it was beautiful.

Though this was beauty of a different kind than I was used to. It was meticulous and intentional, like a noblewoman having painted her face. It lacked the effortless serenity of the sky at dusk, or a brook carving its path under the melancholy droop of a willow tree. It lacked the personable charm that lingered in flaws, the markings of the maker. I thought about the cottage my father had built with his own two hands, and found myself preferring the honesty of weathered wood.

I remembered the few tales my father had told me of Orloth. I figured I was walking the same ground he had, decades before. Only where he had been a paladin, partner to the Divine, I trod the debtor’s path. A criminal, with blood on my hands and dark clouds on the horizon. I swallowed my breath, not because of how far I’d fallen, but because of the ruin I’d brought to my only family.

We plodded along, past enough of those giant houses that they started to look the same. Eventually, we stood in the shadows of the great temple to Elthys, where the Divine herself resided. Some even said that the Mother lived within those walls when she wasn’t wandering the world and bringing miracles to the faithful. It was there, I supposed, that my father had lived when he’d been a paladin. Its pearly white walls never seemed to end, vanishing out of sight behind adjacent city blocks. The golden spires climbed high, as if to touch the sun.

There was another temple standing in its shadow. Its pediment was simple, bearing a stained-glass image of the Order’s half-sun-half-moon. It looked to be built of equal parts white limestone and black, glassy marble. The dark parts seemed out of place in this blindingly-white section of the city, but the building was no less beautiful for it.

Azareth dismounted and dusted his robe. “The temple of Black and White,” he said, straightening his hair. “But you only see half of it. Much of it is underground.”

Together, we walked to the western part of the temple grounds. “The Grandmasters await us,” Azareth said, as we approached the stable. We left our horses with a young boy who wore robes nearly identical to Azareth’s, though threaded with a deep scarlet rather than silver. “Let us make haste.”

We walked down colonnades, and through tall, vaulted halls. There was a surprising amount of children roaming the temple, all of them wearing the same black-and-red robes as the stable boy. The youngest among them looked to be five years old, though they were most often accompanied by men and women that appeared to be closer to my own age. These wore robes with white trim and thread, and each one of them bowed or waved at Azareth as he passed.

“The Order was, contrary to popular belief, founded by Elthys herself many years ago,” Azareth told me as we walked along. “Our records say it was just after she created the first Divine, when she decided that it was time she allowed mankind to govern itself.”

“But the Rising Sun hates necromages,” I replied, thinking of my father.

“They have little patience for us, yes. But Elthys herself knew that our work would be impossible if we forever tread in the light. She was quite fond of the Dead God, you know.” He paused for a pensive moment. “In the time since her disappearance, that seems to have been forgotten. You’ll find that the Rising Sun can be quite forgetful.”

“I thought Elthys herself spoke to the Divine.”

He smiled, in humor. “You soon may learn that Elthys is not the creature her people think her to be. She has… more in common with Gilgaroth than you may expect.”

I wondered what my father would’ve thought of that. I drummed my fingers along Elegy’s hilt, and remembered his haunted face as he told me of his past.

Maybe… he already knew.

I lost the thought as I nearly stumbled over one of the red-robed children. A little girl looked up at me with fascination in her eyes. She tugged on the hem of my cloak, even as her companions passed us by.

“I saw your tail,” she giggled, before turning and skipping to catch up with her fellows. I watched her go, then lifted my tail to better hide it in my cloak’s folds.

That was not the sort of reaction I usually got from children. I turned to Azareth, questions in my eyes, and he seemed to be amused.

“We are not the rabble, not even the children,” he said, gesturing for us to walk again. “Necromages are trained, almost from birth, to be in tune with the workings of the dead. We see things differently than the common man because of this. We know things that peasants, lords, even priestesses do not. We see your people for what they are.”

“And what is that?” I asked.

“You are not demons, nor defilers. You are men and women who… have a certain link to the Dead God, just as we hornless folk know Elthys. And, even if it were a curse to know Gilgaroth’s shadow… the dark is as important as the light.”

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I considered his words. I remembered conversations with my father, where he’d said similar things but unto a different end. Anyone, he’d said, could tread in Elthys light.

Even something like me.

My heart burned, missing him. I knew that his faith was what made him who he was. I knew that it was a part of his identity, and lacking Elthys’s light, he would have been a different man. I knew how his faith was malleable, and how it had a direling-shaped hole around which everything revolved. That didn’t mean he never alienated me. But when it mattered, he had been my father, first, and a supplicant, second.

Even so, I thought for the first time that this life Azareth was laying before me may not be so horrible. That… perhaps, the world had more in store for me than a little cottage and a couple goats.

“This temple was my home,” Azareth said, drawing me from my thoughts, “but it is an academy, first and foremost. Most often, we recruit children, mostly orphans or those from impoverished homes. When we determine they have some degree of natural ability, they take on the red. It stands for blood. The first and most basic piece of life—essential, but mercurial, much like inborn talent.”

We stepped into another hall, and this one was less populated. There were a few figures clad in the black-and-white robes I’d seen earlier, mostly poring over books or scrolls. “The white stands for bone,” Azareth said. “It is what gives us form and function. It takes the blood and gives it shape, just as the advanced students begin applying what they’ve learned. A great many fail their tests and never take on the white.”

He didn’t speak for a while. I looked at his robe, with its shimmering, silver trim.

“And the silver?” I asked.

He smiled rather contentedly. “They are the few worthy of the title of necromage. After years of study and practice, one may demonstrate their skills to the Grandmasters. They are given permission to work on behalf of the Order, to be sent on missions throughout Elthysia, or to become teachers and tutors. The silver stands for the soul—the eternal piece of us that persists when bone and blood are no more.”

“Something tells me I’m too old to take on the red,” I muttered, and Azareth’s smile widened.

“Perhaps. But you may be an asset unlike any necromage we’ve had.” We stepped into another room, this one lit by torchlight rather than the sun. Azareth shut the door behind us, and I blinked as my eyes adjusted to the darkness.

“The Grandmasters exist in the depths of the earth,” Azareth began as he took a torch from its sconce. As the firelight passed over the walls, I saw that they were different. Where most had been rather plain and unadorned, these bore images and reliefs unlike any I had seen. “This place… it may bring us closer to the Veil.”

I touched one of the reliefs. Many were too weathered to make sense of, but this one bore a snarling, vulgar face. There were limbs, contorted in unnatural angles, grinning skulls, desiccated bodies standing on cloven hooves.

“The Veil…” I said, though I found it hard to breach the silence. It was heavy, unsettling, suffocating. “What is it?”

“It is what divides the living from the dead. Our world… from the Void.”

Azareth seemed to be watching me very closely from behind his torch. I stepped away from the relief, and saw similar patterns on every inch of stone.

“What does that mean?” I asked.

“That is a question my order has long explored. A question… that our language is woefully ill-equipped to answer.” He waved me forward. “Come.”

I followed him, barely able to see by the fickle light. Ahead of us yawned a great tunnel, bearing steeply into the earth, Even as we drew closer, as the torch illuminated its vast entrance, the darkness beyond seemed infinite.

More images were carved into the colorless stone. Images of the ancient demons, images of death. I watched them, curious at first, but they grew more and more disturbing the deeper we trod. I felt the weight, the cold, the burden of the darkness settling around us, and while something about it felt oddly familiar, I found it difficult to keep myself from panicking.

“The Void,” Azareth said, his quiet voice abrupt enough to startle my racing heart. “It is the infinite darkness from which all is borne… to which all returns. It… draws near. You can feel it.”

I wiped the cold sweat from my brow. Azareth smiled, thin and predatory.

“Good.”

I kept my head down, dragging my tail as we proceeded. The air only grew colder, heavier, and I breathed a sigh of relief when finally, we stopped.

We stood before two tall, broad doors. They looked to be made of brass, though long ago turned green by corrosion. Each door had a grim, snarling knocker set at eye height, with more grotesque images covering their panels. I thought I heard something on the other side of the doors, like human voices. But something about them… didn’t feel quite the same.

Azareth rested one of his hands on a knocker. He lifted it, metal squeaking against metal, and I did my best to swallow my fear. He slammed the ring down once, then again, then again. Each time, a thunderous echo shook the whole underground, vibrating through the rock.

For a moment, it was eerily silent. The flames of Azareth’s torch went out, snuffed in an instant. We were left, alone, in an impenetrable dark, then the doors shrieked as they opened of their own accord.

I felt compelled to walk inside. The doors shut behind me, slamming with grim finality. The room was black as pitch. Not even a mote of light. Yet, as I looked, I saw… no, I felt the shapes of structures and furniture, like memories recalled to my inner eye.

There were human shapes, but they wore no faces. Three at the end of the chamber, one by my side. I willed myself forward, and my legs responded in kind. Still, I felt detached from my body, somehow, as if I observed my own actions from within a dream. I saw myself in third-person, another vague imprint, as murky as the others but changeable to my will.

A voice prodded my mind, words known, rather than heard. “This is the one of whom your missive spoke?” It felt feminine, tired, and old.

“Yes,” came a reply. I recognized it as Azareth, but not from the sound of his voice. Rather, that simple word carried a depth of feeling, of experience, that seemed to capture his whole essence, from his calculated grin to his confident poise.

“She is afraid.” This one felt younger, but with an immovable gravitas.

“But not unwilling,” Azareth replied. I felt his smile as if it spanned my own face. “Cautious, maybe even apprehensive… but not unwilling.”

“Yes… Common for one who has danced with death.”

“And a direling, too,” the feminine voice said.

“Her proximity to Gilgaroth is… enviable.”

“Yet I sense the radiance of Elthys as well.”

“Perhaps because of the paladin who raised her?”

“No, nothing so superficial. It runs… deeper.”

“Masters,” Azareth said, “I sensed it also, but this is hardly the time to make guesses.”

There was a moment of silence, then the younger voice spoke. “Acolyte, you would do well to learn patience. Though… you are right. We are hardly being polite.”

“You found this one near Gazmere?” a fourth voice asked, though it was so flat and stoic that I could hardly infer anything about its owner.

“Yes. The local lord hired me to remove a griever. She helped me cleanse it, since it had been spawned by her father’s actions many years before.”

“Perhaps that explains her apparent calm. She has touched the Void… and, I sense, the Void has touched her. Though… there are other stains, written in her flesh.”

“She slew seven men that night. It was… a horrible misunderstanding.”

A moment’s pause. Then the feminine voice spoke again. “The burden upon her ought not be given lightly.”

“Nor did I give it lightly.”

“Do you intend to cleanse it?”

“In time.”

I felt the stoic voice sigh, as if the breath had come from my own lips. “There is something dark. At her very core. Not as Gilgaroth, but… something more sinister.”

I could feel Azareth’s hesitation. “That, I believe, is the burn of demon-fire.”

“Is that so? Then my next question is all the more important: what is the sway of her heart?”

“Perhaps she should answer that question herself.”

Expectant silence filled my thoughts, as though the whole room held its breath. I turned my attention toward each apparition, and while I opened my mouth, I found myself unable to speak.

“Regular speech does not pierce the Veil,” the young voice said. “Rather, open your mind, your memories, your essence. Over time, you could hone it, sharpen it, and manifest your thoughts as words. But until then, simply… give us a silent tour.”

I tried to focus on the forms but found it impossible. Instead, I withdrew into my own mind and felt a faint itch in my brain, like four flecks of dust had found their way into its folds.

“Show us your truth,” the feminine one said. “Let the river of dreams run through your waking mind, to lay bare each dark and secret corner.”

I shuddered as they prodded. I knew resistance would get me nowhere, so I let go of my inhibitions. I let everything flow and mix, emotions and memories jumbled in my heart and head. The horror surrounding what I’d inflicted. The homesickness already eating at my gut. The fear that I’d never see my father again, and that I’d robbed him of the life he’d deserved.

These things and more ran before their spectral eyes. It would be impossible to mention everything they saw. But by the end, I was tense and emotional, vulnerable and raw. My whole body was coiled, even as tears wept from my shut eyes.

I could feel a deliberation, though it came in a jumbled mess. Eventually, my waking mind regained control. It shut memory’s floodgates, and allowed me to relax. Rather than manifesting trauma and regret, I knew the comforting quiet of our farm approaching dusk. The sights and smells of the day's labor, the warm must of livestock and my father. I waited for the silent conversation to reach its head, wiping my eyes as the feminine voice shushed the others before turning its attention to me.

“You are strong of heart,” it said, the voice carrying a solemn tone. “You are sensitive to the workings of the living and the dead. You well know how actions can stain our world… how those stains can spread. I believe you will suit our purpose.”

I wanted to ask them what they meant. I wanted to make clear my confusion. But my tongue, as ever, was useless. Even then, it seemed my desire was communication enough. The three grandmasters spoke to each other, then the younger voice touched my mind.

“As you well know, we sit in the heart of Elthys’s empire. She was our founder, and we were created to operate within this half of the world. But that was centuries ago. Time has long marched, and with it, the Veil has stretched thin. The powers of Elthys and Gilgaroth have been fading, and we fear that calamity will befall this world if we do not restore them.”

The feminine voice. “Confined though we are to Elthysia, we have a number of operatives in Khaldara. A year ago, one confirmed the presence of something deep in Khaldara’s eastern mountains. An object powerful enough to stall, or even avert the shattering of the Veil. All attempted extractions have ended in mystery or death, perhaps due to the nature of our target.”

Then, the flat voice. “We have reasoned that this duty could only befall someone more attuned to Khaldara, to the Dead God. Because this object is inextricably tied to Gilgaroth, and… perhaps it denies anyone who isn’t his child.”

Tension budded in my head. I didn’t understand. They were talking in riddles.

But Azareth’s presence cut in, like a knife. I felt his knowing smile, his haughty demeanor. “Valhera,” he began, “we wish to reclaim the Father of Direlings himself. We seek his remains—his undying heart.”

I gritted my teeth, hundreds of questions coursing through my head. I tried to focus on the apparitions, to ask, but couldn’t see anything in the black. My second-senses seemed to be dwindling, and I nearly lost my balance.

“She is not accustomed to crossing the Veil,” one of the voices observed. My spinning mind couldn’t quite identify it. “Her body is insisting she return aboveground.”

“Then we ought to reach our decision quickly.”

“I am confident.”

“As am I.”

“Strong of heart, strong of mind, strong of blood… this was well done, faithful acolyte.”

A sensation similar to sleep crept into my eyes. I fought it off, yearning to ask more from these figures, to know more. But numbness pulsed through my limbs, and I couldn’t move anymore. My legs went limp beneath me, and I smelled the very physical must of a long-abandoned cavern floor.

“Your orders are clear. Escort this daughter of the Dead God into Khaldara and bring about the heart’s retrieval.”

“But be cautious, young acolyte. The Veil grows thin. Beware your predecessors’ fate.”

My eyes lolled up into my skull, and I felt drool pouring off my tongue. My consciousness slipped, but I still felt the voices like whispers, skirting my dreams.

“For Eventide.”

Three sensations, together. “For Eventide.”

Then all was silent and dark.