Chapter 37: Around The Bonfire

Eris heard Turk speaking of my time with the Dolomites, and when she came to me she looked bitter, but accepting, in a defeated sort of way.

"You told my father you served the Erudites."

"I did not know either him, or you. Can you truly hold it against me to have withheld such shame from strangers?"

Again, she looked accepting in a defeated sort of way. "They are husks that keep holiness in thrall, siphoning it from living souls with no remorse for the pain they inflict. They're worse than the Devils."

"Much worse," said I. "But they're no more."

She never asked me what I did for them. I am grateful, as I would have told her, either with my words or with my silence, and she would have fled from me, leaving me an even sadder thing than the husks that completed me. But she did not ask, and so I was spared the grief of telling my love how I, as an adolescent, took part in the vivisection of pregnant mothers so that the unborn of each kindred could be studied etiam viviens. Still I remember crawling into a giantess whose heart

gave out and cradling her fetus so that it would not die unloved. Also I remember finding old books in a long forgotten archive, and seeing that these experiments had all been done before, their results cataloged in exhaustive detail. That so many were suffering so horribly because these husks had outlived their own memories should have filled me with rage. But I was a small boy, powerless and vulnerable. Call them husks if you will, the Dolomites were strong.

Forgive me, please, as Eris did. Also, forgive me please for lying to you. I was not powerless. I knew the inner workings of their sanctum. Not fully, of course, but I learned where to find their jinn, and could have applied myself to learning their higher commands. I could have learned the right words to let loose the abominable chimeras they kept in their oubliette and delivered them to justice. True, a tortured horde would have been released into the world, but they would hardly have been noticed amongst the vastness of Tarthas's many baleful throngs. But I felt frightened by the thought of attempting any revolt, so I emptied myself of rage and let pity fill me instead. Those who survived the Dolomites' more moderate work finished their days in an old westing house. I gained their forgiveness through diligent care, being with them every day to offer empathy and comfort. In time, even the giantesses accepted me, seeing in the way my shoulders slumped that I was as much a victim of the work as I was a practitioner. It was their mercy that lifted my eyes skyward.

My shoulders were slumped as they were when I started attending the excrutiants at the westing house, and as the senior giantess did to me then, Eris lifted my chin with her (much smaller) forefinger, and with her big, dark, girlish eyes gave me license to smile. Around us sat Turk and a few others. Abdiel was the only one I recognized, though I was told the lucien sisters were still alive. I was feeling foolish, though without reason. Still, though I had no reason to suspect Turk and set me up to be embarrassed or killed, I felt as if both had happened.

Eris spoke excitedly to those gathered. "A jinn appeared, one like no other I'd seen. She was tall and beautiful, with webbed feet and toes, and fins that looked like gull wings. Her skin moved like waves, as well. And she hovered freely and moved about, with no vessel, waving us on. We were both in a vision, and we saw ourselves walking beneath a cleansed sky, with a million eyes looking on us from afar. Then the lights and heat turned on and I knew my Victor had succeeded."

Instead of a jinn emitting a bubble of heat and light, I was saved by Eris and Turk and a bundle of dry clothes. I felt oddly comforted that they also had visions, though the nature of each frightened me. From Ossary to Haven, I had seen very little of Tarthas, and still I'd seen so many strange and unbelievable things. If I have the time and the heart, I may write down some details of my younger years that might give added meaning to what I record here. I had reasons for starting my account at a later time, but already I feel less pained when I think back to precious Kendra, brave Dolores, and selfless Oscar.

Were blood to gain the power of a man's seed, there would be no stopping it. It would become a monster, a gaping thing that would plant itself within the soil at the heart of the cosmos, and from there its roots would press their way into every atom and all would be violently rewritten, turned outward so that viscera would become skin, and instead of a starborn figure of copper and bronze, Adonis would be a flayed mechanistic horror, and we an animated chorus of bile who prayed at his sanguineous feet. Nine, nine, nine, a triad of triads of triads... I waited... Turk waited until Eris was engrossed in a story told by one of his current followers of a settlement founded for the singular purpose of providing and protecting healthy foods and medicines before inconspicuously leaving the fire. I waited a few moments before following, giving Eris's hand a reassuring squeeze before doing so.

We stood near a circle of large graves that Eris and I exhumed in a search for footwear. Beyond us was an empty stretch of flat land that seemed in the night's darkness to fade prematurely, as if the world had been cut short and we stood close to its end. I knew the sinking ruin of Haven was near, but it was hidden, and this made Tarthas feel at once claustrophobically small, and yet unnervingly huge.

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"You've both helped immeasurably," Turk said, his eyes afar. I had a feeling that he was looking through the wall of sightlessness, so I turned my eyes to ether and saw white shapes moving against a flat wall of pure black. They were animals, but not, their bodies human-like, and their limbs, except that past the elbows and knees they were abnormally long and thin. The shapes loped along in a gangrel way, dipping their heads to the ground and raising them. Suddenly they stopped and swiveled their round, smallish heads towards me. Red lights glowed between their brows, and they turned fearfully, hunched like dogs do when their masters are angry, and then they were gone. Turk spoke my deepest fear. He helped me, though he had the touch of a bricklayer, yanking the arrow from my bleeding abdomen and pouring super glue on my ragged flesh.

"Haven is inaccessible now. Should you come with us, we may find medicine for your wife. Eris deserves to live, Victor. More than anyone I have ever known."

"Can we go to this settlement your man is speaking of?"

He shook his head, eyes squinting. "Burned to the ground, by Blitzkrieg himself."

That bit of information added strangeness to the anger. "Why would he rise for such a trivial matter?" I asked.

"The settlers were hardy folk, and they put up a fight. Several Devils died, so he came up to avenge his sons."

"Did you see him? Or did he leave some mark?". I wanted to know how to spot the beast's presence so I could track him. Somehow I had a feeling he was present at Haven when the Boardroom was filled.

"He has a favorite form of torture. The adults were put on pedestals and plasticized up to the eyes. Then the children were taken apart like dolls in their view.". He turned to me then, stepping closer as he spoke. Never before had I seen such hate in a good man's eyes. "You see, the Devils are cruel, and hungry, and are sated by pain, not death. The more terror they see in a victim's eyes, the greater their satisfaction."

I wanted them dead. Even more than the targs, I wanted the Devils dead. "Their hunger must be their weakness. We can exploit it and use it against them."

"Your place is by Eris," he then softened and put a hand on my shoulder, "for as long as you have her."

He gave watch orders to his crew, then went to their camp and slept. I sat by Eris and listened to the soldiers' stories while she lay her head on my shoulder. I saw a weta walking near the fire. To distract myself from the gnawing thought that we might never again find the medicine she needed, I tried to lure the weta with a sprig I found in the soil. It was withered, its bud a husk, and the insect wanted nothing to do with it. Weeks went by before I took down all our furnishings and restored the mausoleum to its original purpose. During that time, Eris had been rapidly declining, as she was struggling with withdrawls from her drugs as well as her sickness, and each day she spoke more ardently of me joining with Turk, assuring me with well meant lies that she could care for herself. The morning of her death, I awoke alone, and found her floating in a hot spring we bathed in. The gangrel creatures were on the approach, but fled when my eyes found them. I then put my love in the sarcophagus meant for the head of the family, and in her pale, drained hands I placed the same withered sprig that no creeping thing would touch. I laid in there with her through the night, and the next three days saw me in a state I don't relish describing, as I tried with a mad fervor to end myself, testing the boundaries of my regenerative powers and greatly extending my threshold for pain.

Turk came on the fourth day, a riderless courser tethered to his destrier. She was a little small for me, but a sturdy mount nonetheless. Her owner had been knocked off her during a fast charge, and was dragged away to be used to sate the Devils' hunger. The same rider also had a well made spear imbued with a kinetic sprite, and to go with mount and spear I donned my shroud, remembering tearfully how Eris had worked it into its proper position. On my first ride with Turk I saved a blacksmith's wife and son, and he made for me spaulders and a hauberk. At another village I took a white cape from a devil captain before Turk could splatter the thing's blood on it, and it was enough fabric for the old seamstress there to make it into a smaller cape and tabard. She asked me if I had a coat of arms for her to sew onto the tabard. Abdiel was twisting a knife into the breast of a miserly man who had aided the Devils. I turned to the seamstress and unclasped my armor, then pulled down my tunic and showed her my brand.

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