Tragedy of Gold

There were repeating patterns in the positioning and poses, in the methods of display. Arms spread, back bent into a hideous bow — chest cracked and hollowed out. Flesh peeled into sheets and hung tight in frameworks made from the body's limbs and primitive twine. A consistent tone was a V-shaped incision cut into the belly of each victim, and a length of entrails tugged out and coiled deliberately at their feet, some unholy umbilical to the blood-soaked earth.

There were darker, more solid smears of gore leading from these former neatly stacked piles. Drag marks, long ones — all going straight up the cracked marble stairs of the cathedral. The Cathedral, which now sat perched on a spur of land, the earth and ground beneath it sunk away, the termination point of the great bored tunnel Bart had glimpsed beneath Lachheim. In that great bowl of earth dug out, they burned.

So many bodies. All burning.

The new shelf that the Cathedral of Ivory occupied hung like a morbid balcony over a great fire fueled by the most gruesome imaginable charcoal, each body taken from the ever-resupplied stacks was then tossed out the rear of the cathedral's main hall, into the blazing hellmouth where the white smoke grew, into fires stoked and maintained by skulking shapes at the edge of the light. The column was bright, ashy white, and here so close to the flames the heat dried the air, made it taste of copper and salts, the calcified lime layering on thick, some bodies framed in masks, waxen casts made of them in death by the destruction of the city.

The cathedral, gods the cathedral. At this point, Bart felt a strange sense of unreality as he looked upon the gutted building. So much defilement had made the world seem all a pall of gray livened only by the bright smears of red blood and the bright glow of golden flame. The roof had been torn down, torn off really. Cast aside by some impossible force, crushing the buildings around it. Its flying buttresses and columns now stood like a great, gaping rib cage, bearing its vulnerable heart to an uncaring sky. The doors were torn asunder, cast down, and trod over in blood and dirt. He could see movement flickering beyond, backlit by the smoldering flames. Here at the center, beneath the strangely static circle of clouds, it was dark and grim — the layer of ash giving the unnatural twilight a gruesome glow like a snowy winter's eve. They were not in Lachheim, not truly. Not wholly. They were somewhere Else. Another place.

"Such atrocity at... such scale..." came Naima's voice, the cool-headed woman's tone strained with the horror of it all.

"On guard," Gram said, lowering his visor and snapping his polearm into a ready position, its vicious pick gleaming. Bart raised his blade and the others did likewise as they tracked his gaze — the skulking figures had emerged from the shadows, they were small, almost dog-like, wearing dirty linen robes that draped them all in flowing gauzy forms. They picked over the bodies slowly, tapping and turning them, and after a moment Bart leaned back, not so much relaxing but recoiling from what he saw or rather — understood. He saw beneath the veil, an eyeless face, but smooth and unscarred by dominance bouts, hands that ended in hooked, bony talons but no thumbs, yet the claws were overlarge, gangly even for the familiar form, and the limbs soft. Unfinished. Immature.

"They're children," he said suddenly, bile rising in his throat and the others turned sharply at him. Cithara merely nodded as the small, veiled forms pulled and carried a corpse from the pile.

"Yes. Ghul children. Never aging, never growing. Too small to fight, they serve instead," she said in an uncomfortably cold tone.

"Let us see where they go — if they are servants, the master must be nearby," Rashid offered, Bart concurred with a nod, thirded by Gram, the trio of men forming the front line as they slowly advanced through the square. Stealth was not a consideration, all of them knew they were expected.

The hunched, tiny figures scrabbled around and carried the corpse of a man of distressingly young years up the fractured stairs, Bart and company on their heels several paces behind, the destruction of the place so absolute it felt as if it had been ruined for centuries rather than months — in this stagnant time, who knows — it could.

The baby monsters shuttled their burden up between the shattered pews now exposed to the eerily still sky, up cracked flagstones to a defiled and desecrated altar — so heavily coated in blood and viscera that it pooled and poured over its edges in sticky, tacky ropes and strands like the runnels of a long-burning candle. They offered the body up to a hulking form, a form in matte black armor, grinning a mad-eyed monster's grin.

"Welcome, heroes!" Parias cackled, spreading his arms to the ruin and carnage about him; "Welcome to the End!"

Weapons were brandished as Bart and his companions entered the gutted structure, the Paladin remaining at their fore, the First Blade leading.

"A touch melodramatic, but apt," came another voice — Mihai stood to one side, leaning indolently against a shattered pillar, as before naked to the waist, a sash at his hips and tight leathers about his legs — and of course, the blood. Glistening red blood ran him from fingertips to biceps, seemingly ever-wet, ever-fresh as if just interrupted from some fell rite — though this time from the dripping knife at hand, it seems he had been.

"I cannot believe you actually came. An obvious trap, outnumbered, out-matched," Parias snorted as he reached down and seized the corpse, casually throwing it behind him onto the altar with the same casual strength a child might a knotted rope doll. He produced a pair of gold coins casually and flicked them to Mihai with a further cackle, the former magistrate deftly catching the pair, giving them a wet little bounce in his palm.

"You disappoint me, Bart," the black-armored murderer said in a casual tone; "I expected more."

"You expected him to act as you would. Bart isn't like you, Parias," Mihai said in a cool, confident tone, turning to meet the Paladin's gaze. "Bart gave me his word he would be here, and so here he is," he said, tucking the coins away — the statement delivered with such sure confidence, it was casual, matter-of-fact — as if he were discussing something as inescapable as gravity. As if to confirm, the Magistrate raised his chin at Bart inquiringly.

"I gave my word," Bart agreed, raising his blade to a casual rest against his shoulder. "My word that I would kill you both, so as a matter of course — he's quite correct."

"So it would seem," Parias said in a dismal tone, his face a visible mask of distaste.

"You see, Bart," Mihai said, walking back to the altar — where Ishtar awaited, uncomfortably bare beneath tattered robes once more, equally painted in gore if not moreso than Mihai was. She gleefully tore the clothing from the corpse's chest and lay him splayed across the stone altar where Mihai arrived, in one hand the eerie flint dagger from far before, in the other — an obsidian-headed axe, a single-bitted hatchet of primitive design. Not unlike one that had been wielded against Bart on the Ziggurat a year prior.

"Parias doesn't understand things as we do," he continued, and casually hacked the axe down into the dead man's sternum, with the precision born of practice, he hacked each rib out of the way, not so much as breaking eye contact with Bart as he did, behind the Paladin — his companions bristled. Mihai simply smiled, wrenching the corpse's chest cavity apart with his bare hands and a fountain of gore that splattered his arms, chest, and face.

"He is limited, he's an effective hound but he sees things as a hound does."

"He is also within easy distance of unfettered violence so mind your tongue, whelp." Parias snarled, Mihai rolling his eyes at the bluster.

"Please Parias, we know how that contest has always gone. Mighty you may be, but do you have the belly for the attempt once more?" Mihai asked, his last words twisting from his lips like a knife as his gaze slid slowly to the armored murderer's eyes. Staring.

Parias blinked first. Mihai simply smiled.

"He does not see as we do," the former magistrate reiterated, eyes not leaving Parias' face, the larger man flinching away as the sinuous, dark-haired cultist stared him down with eyes so empty and full of atavistic violence they did not even look human. Eyes that only after Parias turned his entire face away, cowed, slid slowly in a slow arc to meet Bart's again. "The Cycle. The circles within circles. You've seen it, Bart," he said with a knowing certainty, those pinpoint-small, empty eyes staring into Bart's across the gutted man's body between them. There was nothing sane, human, or... whole, in his gaze.

"I know you have."

Bart was on the back foot, the memory of his stretching beyond the boundaries of his realm, the phantasmagoria that threatened to rend his mind apart. He had seen it, he understood the beginnings of what that meant. Cithara bristled.

"How dare you speak of such things to him," she breathed in quiet outrage. "Is there no limit to the harm you would do us?"

"None. Not a thing. I would spare no effort to purge you parasites from my sight, sweep aside obstructions because it is all simply going to spin forever," he said, snarling at her.

"People and places all start to look the same after a few lifetimes don't they?" he thrust his hands down into the butchered cadaver, Cithara the focus of his soulless, empty gaze and its ire now. "The petty squabbles and drama of one generation are just the trial run for the same failures of their children; except refined, streamlined for modern conveniences," he cut and worked, eyes never leaving hers as his hands went by pure muscle memory inside the slop of organs and loose gore.

"'Round and round it goes, an infinite circle. New people in the same places, the whole of creation stuck on a rut in the track. Doesn't it start to wear on you?" he asked her, and there were horrible, wet cutting sounds.

"You know I will answer you not, animal," she said in an oddly sad tone, Mihai only smirked wider.

"Does the devotion lessen the sting of the years? Or is it the cock? The latter at least I can understand, the flesh is wonderfully capable of distracting one's thoughts from the inevitable," he asked, eyes turning to Bart again.

"The latest edition, freshly bound in trauma and purpose. Truly, for a lonely immortal — someone like you is just perfect. Made to measure," he growled, eyes narrowing. Bart trembled... that phrase was far, far too intimate. Spoken to him once before — in the throes of new passion. Cithara cut between them again, her golden gaze furious and resolute.

"You will not undermine him, animal. Not so easily, I am his as much as he is mine. I will not let you drip poison into his ear in the spirit of theatrics," she hissed, and Mihai laughed.

"Very well, let us cut to the heart of the matter!" he crowed and pointedly tore the gore-soaked heart from the dead man's chest, raising it above his head, openly mocking her with the obvious dramatics.

"I ask you — why are you again, not dead?" he spread his free hand to the assembled people. "Look at you, champions out of a storybook. Members from all walks of life, the wounded and the noble. Bright, generous souls all of you. It's quite a classic arrangement, isn't it Parias?"

"Add in some overwrought poetry and it could be a Darrowmite tragedy written by some weepy sop in the fens out that way," he said in a dull, spiteful tone, spitting to one side.

"Isn't that the Mother's own truth," Mihai agreed, and his face suddenly became a mask of fury. "Almost like it was fate, almost like it was prophecy." he spat, fingers clenching around that stolen heart, crushing it with a wet, squishing sound that made the guts twist as clots of gore gushed from its cut ventricles before he tossed the heart into a brazier before him, where it leapt and sizzled while the corpse was dragged away by the ghul child-servitors; tossed into the flaming hellmouth below through the shattered stained glass window that once glittered so brightly above the ruined cathedral.

"Which of you is to blame?" he demanded, leveling a gore-soaked finger at them all; "To whom do I put this curse of nemesis upon so I may dispense with all of this?!" he hissed, tone unstable. Mad.

"What in the name of God are you talking about?" Bart demanded, shifting his blade about anxiously — the First Blade was alive with a tangible... hatred, it practically vibrated in his hands with a desire to do violence upon the creatures in the room.

"Do you not feel it, Bart?" Mihai all but screamed, the half-naked, blood-soaked man advancing down the dais at Bart, heedless of the danger as he walked squarely up to the man, eyes never moving, voice not faltering. "The same force that prevented me from stopping your arrival here, the same force that dragged my plans into motion. Do you not feel the compulsion even now? Are you the focus? Was it you who ruined my plans?"

"Yes," Bart answered to all of it, his fingers tight on his weapon as the focus of so much of his pain and suffering approached him. "I am compelled to stop you, to end this bloodbath. To exact upon you furious retribution for these lives lost," he spat and Mihai's eyes went wide, his face expressionless as he stopped some ways away from him, the space between them still somehow... intimate.

"So it was you. Of course it was," he said in a dead tone. "Circles within circles. What are the chances of the one man with the onus to stop me being in Lachheim on the very day of my plan's fruition? Impossible," he said, and Cithara furrowed her brow — similarly his other companions looked around.

"The... bloody fook has a point. All o' this happened as soon as Bart came in tae our lives." Lidia said with wide eyes. Rashid frowned, Nazir did as well, and Mihai began nodding, faster and faster, spreading his arms.

"Yes, even I was pulled along in your wake, cast as antagonist to your little three-act play of a life. Why? I was so careful!" he snarled, rage boiling back up again as he began to pace around. "These machinations, this plan brought to this place to bring her to this place spanned generations, generations Bart. I have ridden the Aldea line for so, so long on this one ordeal, since the Black March! I have labored in new flesh after new flesh, plans within plans — within further plans!" he raved and stopped, meeting Bart's eyes.

"All to avoid the machinery of fate. The engines of prophecy, the balance of the universe. You see reality herself is a petty, miserly old whore," he growled, clenching his fingers into claws. "Tip the balance too far one way, she puts equal weights available to level the tally. However..." he turned again, pacing anew.

"If you undermine the weights themselves, tip the scale inch, by inch, by inch. She only adjusts so fast, she only adds so many weights. Plans within plans, the slow work of decades," he raked his bloody hands down his chest in fury, giving a little wordless shout of outrage.

"I even engaged in intentionally foolish things so she would pop her head up and crush them, to focus Prophecy's attention away from my grander works all coming together like a thousand, thousand bricks," he then paused and turned his head to him.

"... and then You."

Bart set his teeth, "Have you considered perhaps you just are not as good as you thought?" he ventured, and Mihai bared his own smile like a mouthful of knives.

"Come now Bart, you know exactly how good I am. Even now Prophecy tasks me, it demands I confront you — like this, demands we do this dance of morals, ethics, pomp, and circumstance. It binds you as much as it does I, in fact — I invite you." he spread one hand and gestured at the door.

"Leave."

Bart stared at him. The whole party did.

"If you can, all of you — take up and leave this place. I will as well. Like morning mist, I'll vanish from this lovely little abattoir and start over somewhere else in another hundred or so years." he said and his entire being was serious.

"I swear this upon the Mother, the Queen, and my own Power," he said in a very solemn tone. Cithara's eyes widened, and Bart looked at his friends. Lidia pointedly shook her head, raising her blade.

"You are completely mad, Mihai," Bart said, closing both hands over the hilt of his sword. Mihai laughed, it was mocking — and the edge of it was turned at himself.

"You see?! You cannot even countenance the idea, bound! Bound by fate all of you are, by Prophecy's grim fucking yoke!" he cackled madly, his voice reaching a harsh, infectious soprano pitch as he did. The Lady in White, however, had paused.

"He's right," Cithara breathed, eyes so wide as to be perfectly round, flicking between Mihai and Bart. "God's Love he's right..."

"What do you mean 'right'?" Bart snapped, and Mihai's laughter reached a fever pitch.

"There are such things as Prophecy, as he speaks of. The universe seeks balance, when one power arrays its might, it addresses its opposite so the Cycle continues to turn, eternal renewal," she explained, "It, however, is usually bound to great beings. Beings of Power."

"Yes, yes!" Mihai encouraged her, eyes wild. Cithara's own darted back and forth across the middle distance.

"Oh God... my sister. Bart," she looked at him. "It is you," she breathed, ears laying back. "When Manasa looked for a soul to love mine, a spirit to fill my heart... when she combed her gaze over the portents and potential, she inevitably made one herself," she said, and her eyes drew up suddenly full of fear, pain, and sorrow, teeth clenched.

"The Consort of the Unicorn," she almost whispered. Mihai gave a cry of release.

"At last she sees!" he exulted, eyes wide and it was like a great pressure was released from him. "We all do, revealed at last," he stabbed a finger at Bart.

"You are a cosmic accident, God's own blessed mistake!" he jeered, stomping a foot down, the ground rumbling beneath him as he stalked forward anew. "The idiot garden snake went looking for a lover for her lonely whore of a sister, and by pricking and plucking the threads of fate she forgot who she was, and what she was — as all creatures of flesh do," he sneered, Cithara blinking away tears.

"All of this suffering... " she moaned in despair.

"... All because your dear, dear sister overstepped her bounds. To scour fate for a consort for something so powerful as the Queen of Love demands an equally mighty mate, does it not?" he snapped, and spread his arms, actually rising slightly into the air, the blood from all the nearby surfaces warping, pulling towards him again as it had in the fort.

"And so mighty a champion must needs have his equal and opposite, he would need an appropriate challenge to overcome to test his mettle for such a mantle. A trial, a task..." he said, lips splitting into a wicked grin. "A nemesis."

"When you set off on your journey..." Nazir began, Naima's eyes were wide with understanding and horror; "... we were swept along, everything changed. We changed To be here." He said, Lidia's face poured tears of rage.

"Nae, ye shut ye cursed mouth..." she spat in denial... but Cithara stood stock still, horror having stolen the words from her lips as they realized it. Mihai spread his arms — and spelled it all out:

"Dear Bart stepped out of his home and with him kicked off the prophecy of The White Slut's lonely, paltry little heart. Everywhere he went it drew in the pieces and parts it needed to construct itself to its ultimate goal. The Champion would need mentors, friends, support — a crucible would need be made to test him, and he would need an appropriate antagonist to whet his steel on."