Deathly Oracles
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‘ware! thou art never safe, for our kin lie eternal, waiting’ ~ Words I V
"To the unchanging eternity of the One shall all return, to the silence of the inky blackness of death, all shall find their rest" ~Canticle I, The Abharavastra
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In the shadows, under the purple hued evening sky, as the rain fell on the leaves of the tamarinds, the guardsmen sat silently, waiting. They were here on a rumour of screams and dark happenings in the hope that perhaps it would explain a spate of disappearances. Tiagho was a large city where a man could get lost and never be seen again by civilised men, their life or death being known only by the court of thieves and Chaxtil chewing beggars hungering for the cast-offs from the marketplace who scurried in the dark alleyways and sat in tattered rags under the eaves of the humblest of shops and greatest of temples alike, while a thousand feet passed by indifferent and a thousand eyes looked by to necessity or pleasure or salvation tarrying not on the way to gaze upon the least of men. Yet even though a man might vanish like a gust of wind in the city, the sudden spate of disappearances all at once was foreboding and worrisome and had been noticed, with word reaching upon the whispered pleas of the commons the ears of the palace and some say even of the King.
So it was that Sharaxas found himself in the rain under the tamarind trees. Some of the missing, thought Sharaxas to whom charge of this group had been given were young girls, the same age as his own daughter, who loved to sing by the west canal. Others were old men, old women, soldiers, grocers and young boys who one day were playing with hoops in the street and the next were remembered only by the lamentations of their mothers. Now Tiagho was a large city where a man could get lost and never be seen again by civilised men, their life or death being known only by the court of thieves and beggars who scurried in the dark alleyways and sat in tattered rags under the eaves of shops and temples alike. But even here the sudden spate of disappearances was foreboding and had been noticed. Perhaps this day whatever evil had been creeping through the city would be ended, time would soon tell.
“Tatzin”
Sharaxas inclined his head to his subordinate officer in the watch
“It is time, take a detachment of guardsmen to the rear of the house”
Tatzin nodded his head, and silently gathered six men who quickly made their way to the rear of a rather nondescript house which an alleged witness had implicated in suspicious agency, lest through some window or doorway any vagrant might escape. It was a shack really, single-roomed and cobbled together of wood, stone and thatch in one of the poorer quarters of the city, away from the roads or the busy central district in the midsts of a grove of trees laid about with nettles and with semiwild-flowers. To Sharaxas it was beautiful in a way, the ruins and the green of the leaves. A reminder of the impermanence of things and the timeless rhythm of father earth. But all caution was prudent as ever, there was no time for contemplation.
Sharaxas gathered the remaining guardsmen once he was sure Tatzin was in position, and together they made their way to the front door and knocked. Once, twice, three times.
“Open for the guard!” he cried.
Silence.
He knocked again and called for the door to be opened. Again silence.
Nodding to his men, Sharaxas kicked the door open, the rickety wooden thing broke instantly upon its bronze hinges and splintered into a dozen pieces, clattering on the dusty floor. Sharaxas sword in hand entered into the dim hollow and his men followed behind him. Their eyes adjusted to the change in light taking in the glow of oil lamps hanging on iron chains from the wooden roofbeams. They beheld in the house by the fruit-bearing trees a man, old and gaut, chuckling to no one in particular not even realising the presence of the intruders . Sharaxas smelt the smell of cooking, like that which came from any of the vending stalls lining the royal way. Perhaps the man was cooking?
The illusion, summoned in Sharaxas' mind for an instant out of wishful thinking and optimistic hope lasted for but a brief moment, before the horror of truth unfolded like waves of cacophonous music tumbling from some discordant buskers lyre. For in the old mans hand was a knife of flint with a handle of bone… stained red with blood which dripped like rain from a blade of grass to the dusty earth. It fell next to yet more blood, blood which Sharaxas soon noticed was pooling at the old mans feet in a fetid pool of sticky mud, mingling with the earthen floor of the old mans shack. His eyes, reluctantly followed the bubbling trickle of red liquid up the black stone of a rough-hewn altar, which was carved with crude glyphs and topped with bones and skulls and other foul things barely comprehensible to the mind of a man, to where in a simple golden bowl lay a human heart, long since bereft of life and spirit severed from the body of the latest unfortunate to go missing. That body was to be found to the side of the single-room hovel, charred and burnt, its head sitting utop a throne of white ash all scorched and blackened in the hovels hearth, while strewn all about it were shards of burnt bone…
Sharaxes swallowed as he realised that here were the remnants of the young girls and old men, the soldiers, grocers and young boys who had been one by one snared in the darkness by this… creature by surprise as they obliviously walked the streets of the city to serve his dark purposes in whatever abomination he had wrought in his perfidious rites.
The old man turned towards Sharaxas, only now it seems noticing his guests and smiled from ear to ear. The guardsmen couldn’t help but notice the rot in the old mans teeth, and his ragged beard reaching to his waist, where his tattered accoutrements were bound together by an old hemp rope.
“You see it don’t you” the old man chuckled “the devourer hungers, and a man provides! Look at the banquet we have cooked upon our fire that it might turn its eye elsewhere”
The old man fell to the floor and laughed maniacally, his eyes rolling with mirth as he gestured towards the heap of burnt flesh, ash and bone that piled high upon his hearth.
“The old one, the old one, the old one” he swallowed his spittle as he continued “Older than the stars, older than the earth. it sees all and all will come to see it, It grows hungry and it knows… oh yes it knows" His eyes flitted from left to right almost pleadingly as he looked at the grimacing faces of the men gathered before that dark altar. "you don’t know don’t you, oh but SHE does, the one who withers the land and raises fire from the earth as it hungers restlessly and eternally in the void and oh it never has its fill.”
Sharaxas pointed his sword at the beast before him, and his guardsman restrained it swiftly bindings its hands and feet in chains and forcing it upon its knees. It made no attempt at resistance as its knife clattered to the ground, its blade falling into the bloody mud which flowed from the heart which it had unerringly cut from the chest of some poor unfortunate soul.
“What is the beast that you speak of” Sharaxas asked, his voice cold and expressionless as anger seethed within him, his sword pointed towards the throat of the old man lest he attempt to kill one last time.
“SHE is the thousand mouths and thousand eyes and thousand hands oh yes she is. For it is death who is annihilation which begets nothing and from which nought but destruction grows, and it HATES your burning god so filled with life, hurts HER eyes you see. But you, oh you know it by another name, yes you do”
“Istria” Sharaxas whispered, reciting a prayer in his mind to ward off evil.
The old man with pallid countenance and the bloody, bloody, knife replied “Yes, oh yes, yes yes. And it comes for us. It hungers you see, so very hungry, and must be fed, and yet so few provide for the dread ones sustenance. Yet soon all shall be received at the banqueting table in the dark abyss and they, oh they shall be the feast.”
“You are mad, the shadow of your dark Lord, he who is death, cannot withstand the Lord of Brightness, the enemy’s dominion has hold on us no longer. Your appeasement of this evil through your disgusting rites is at an end and with it “she” shall go back to the pit where it belongs”.
“Oh but you’re wrong my boy, so very wrong” the old man laughed again as the guardsmen bound his hands and feet in chains. “Hearken to the testament of your prophet, for it is written that a creeping foulness that no battlement can withstand and no sword slay shall come amongst you because you could not close the gates of your souls to sin” The old man smiled ”We know, oh yes we do, for we have seen HER and she has told us so many many things.”
“Dabhatzin, summon an exorcist that this place may be purified of the corruption that has been worked here. Shahuinn, send word to the palace of what has been done here” The two men bowed as they stared with empty eyes at the dark altar of the enemy, and stepped back in the wake of the evil that oozed from it like pus from some putrefying wound, festering and playing host to maggots and black flies.
“Heed the portents, SHE must be fed souls lest all perish in her endless hunger, only blood shall stay the sickle of the dread harvest. The portents… the portents… you must see the portents”
“Dabhatzin, make that two exorcists and a funeral priest, the proper dignity must be given to those who this… thing… has so violated”
“What shall be done with this murderer sir” Dabhatzin inquired
Sharaxas smiled, a bitter smile filled with sadness as he turned to his man, who was eyes wide with disgust and horror, and was glaring at the tattered and chained creature as it was dragged from its lair by his fellow officers of the city watch.
“He shall burn”
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Report of the City Watch
The Priest of the Enemy, whom the commons have taken to calling the "black grandfather" now that his crimes have been exposed and his evil cleansed, continued his ravings throughout his incarceration. He was found unanimously guilty by the magistrate on the basis of his own damning words and was burned on the fourth day of the month of rain, in the year 1748 of the Amure reckoning before the temple of the living god before the people of Tiagho. The shrine to Istria was purified by the exorcists of the patriarchate, and burnt for good measure soon thereafter.
It is the assessment of the watch that the "black grandfather" was rendered mad by the corrupting power of the enemy, who's voiced it seems tormented the old mans mind. Nevertheless his criminal insanity rendered him too dangerous to the common good to be permitted to live. Unfortunately the corrupt words of the man continue to be remembered by the common-folk, in particular the warning (repeated constantly while under our watch) that a "creeping foulness shall come amongst you because you could not close the gates of your heart to sin". The priests of the Patriarchate have endeavoured to assure the people that the lies of the enemy have long been rejected by the Dulama, and that so long as they maintain faith and dutiful devotion to the good god, that its evil cannot overcome them.
~ Aratzas, Commander of the City Watch.