Arc 9: Chapter 2: Rot |
The city rose from the hungering maw of a vast, cold desert, an ancient seabed long dead and dry. The stunted child of those primeval waters could still be spotted to the west, a desolate sea guarded by a lonely harbor with a single winding, dust-choked road connecting it to the city’s two-hundred foot walls. It formed a great ring around and upon the cliffs of a mesa, those walls, their towers many and high, built of glass and great fragments of stone that seemed like they’d been molded rather than raised, as though shaped as clay by titan hands.
The walls jutted dramatically higher to the west and east, terminating in high towers. At the heart of the city, upon the surface of the mesa, stood a great citadel of pale gray stone, its many tiers upheld by fluted columns. It seemed a city unto itself, that mighty complex of gargantuan statues and slabs, and I guessed it to be the seat of whatever power ruled this place.
I looked down on all of it from the turret of a high mansion tall enough to be a castle, where I balanced upon a cornice with my wings folded around me. I spent some time admiring the view and feeling the wind against my new skin — it was strong that high up — and indulged in an idle fancy that I was a guardian angel looking down upon my flock.
Perhaps I was an angel, at that. After all, that old sorcerer had called me out of the decrepit owl’s realm, not Hell.
The thought reminded me of what Urizen Taar'uk had said about the previous owner of the body I wore, and I grew bored of the game and turned my attention elsewhere. There were others sharing the skies of that cosmopolitan desolation with me. Ragged vultures circled many of the towers, competing for roosts with jagged-beaked crows and spear-wielding imps who gathered in screeching warbands to fight over dry skies. Such a dismal place.
I flew down to the streets, and there found a very different form of decay. They were squalid and bursting with life, the avenues virtual rivers of humanity that boiled with the heat of warm, unwashed bodies. The air had been cold above, but ‘twas not so below, and beneath those mountainous towers of black glass and clay the citizenry dwelt in a fever of claustrophobic warmth.
I moved through the alleys in shadow-shape at first, but wanted to experience the city with mortal senses. I stole a blanket left on a line to dry, wrapping myself in it from head to foot like a cloak as I hurled myself into that living river. I drew my wings back into myself, folded them manifold times until they wrapped about my vessel’s spine. I did not fully take human shape, keeping my nocturnal eyes and my serpent, letting it peak from my shroud to taste the new languages of that city and learn them. There were many tongues spoken in those streets. There were myriad kinds of dress, faces that ranged in complexion from dark to pale, and exotic weaponry carried by bands of mercenaries or the guard retinues of the wealthy.
Not all of the denizens were human, either, and more than once I had to shift out of the path of gangs of ogres, caught glimpses of ghouls feasting in the most shadowed alleys. Everywhere there were scavengers.
I knew the alchemists by their styles and accessories, by the way they traveled with homonculi guards wielding blades of false gold, and by their harems of lamiai and harpies. I guessed by their lavish garb and the way the crowds parted for them that they held power in that city. They all wore masks, though the man who’d summoned me had not. Curious.
On one street, I saw a medousai slaver hawking a menagerie of her victims. They were mostly young women, a few men and some elves, all beautiful and frozen in stone, invariably caught in expressions of horror, pain, or deep sorrow.
“You there, pretty one!” The merchant spotted me in the crowd and pointed a scaled finger as her veiled face fixed on mine. “Would you not join my gallery? No more fear, no more hunger, no pain or sickness! Young forever, coveted by the rich, yes! You want to join them, don’t you?”
While experiencing the next millennium or two as stone would be a novel experience, it was only my first day in the mortal realm. I retreated back into the crowd, the baleful eyes of the gorgon watching me through their veil as I went.
There were devils in the city, as I’d already seen. Imps flitted across the rooftops and hurled their vulgar curses down into the crowds. Occasionally, one would strike true and set some unfortunate’s hair aflame, or worse, always with a cacophony of amusement from above. One unlucky girl caught a stray curse and was aged fifty years in a moment. I passed her by as she wailed in horror and clawed at her sagging face, following the flow of traffic as it avoided her for fear it might be catching.
There were greater devils than those imps, some of them disguised as the vendors and performers who choked the edges of every street. Occasionally I would catch the acrid smell of rot through the odors of sweat and waste, and saw decayed or even fully skeletal faces beneath the tattered hoods of beggars, who huddled rat-like in putrid alleys.
At one street corner I saw a sign, and to my surprise it was written in a script I knew. It read, in aggressively large and blunt letters, DO NOT GIVE ALMS TO THE DEAD. The rotting beggars beneath that sign held out stained bowls in their fleshless fingers.
Just where was I?
As I paused to consider the question, the ringing of a bell and the rumble of something like to thunder echoed down the street. I turned just as something enormous stepped into view at the end of that avenue. Four-legged it was, with a body like that of a lion’s and the face of a regal woman with a molten light issuing from her narrowed eyes. She was fashioned all of bronze plates and crystallized stone, and even from so far I could hear the tortured grinding of her stride, the way the body splintered with each stiff motion. A bell was constructed on her back, and with each step it tolled with a sound that resonated through the very bones of the city.
She could have filled the street I stood in, the shoulders of her powerful forelimbs scraping the buildings to either side.
“Some of them still move,” said a rough voice. “Even after all this time, they wander and wait for their masters to return to this place, even though they have the strength to take it. Take the world, if they wanted.”
I did not turn to the speaker at first, instead watching that woman-faced lion until it had passed down another street and vanished, leaving me only with a glimpse of its long scorpion tail before that also disappeared. I could feel its steps through the very ground well after it vanished from sight. Only then did I turn to see who had spoken. It was one of the beggars, this one sitting apart from the rest and draped in grimy rags. A hood covered their head, their garb not unlike my own pilfered cloak.
Gathering my shroud, I knelt and tilted my head down to see under the hood. The face beneath was a ruin, what flesh remained turned to scaly scraps of dark leather held in place by webs of pus-stained sinew. Cracked teeth formed a rictus grin, no lips or cheeks to mask them, and the eyes were empty windows into the cavity of a skull within which many small shapes writhed.
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He seemed another dead man, a wight or dyghoul like the other wretches along the street, yet I saw something else in those empty pits he had for eyes. Something looked out from the cadaver, something that recognized me in turn.
“I see you, brother.” I spoke softly in the tongue of Nekhral, known to many demons and damned things.
“Brother!” The creature’s jaw opened as he laughed, and for a moment it seemed it might break apart and fall from his skull. He let out a hacking cough, spraying the already filthy cloth over his lap with mucus. “I would need to be much prettier to be your brother, wouldn’t I?”
Maggots crawled in the phlegm he’d coughed up. Ignoring them I said, “You are Urr, are you not?”
“Only one of his bastard sons,” the demon said with another plague-ridden chortle. “And before you ask, I will not give you my name.”
“Nor shall I offer you mine,” I said. Somewhere in the city, that mournful bell was still ringing as the one carrying it continued their march. “What is this place?” I asked the other demon.
“This?” The rotted skull shifted, as though to look around, and if it had possessed eyes they might have blinked then. “This is Rot Voraag, sister, the City of the Exalted!” He spread his arms out, revealing them as tumorous and infested with pustules. The fingers that slipped the threadbare cloth sported sharp, yellowed claws coated in a damp film. “You mean you don’t know it? It’s quite famous, even beyond the mortal plane.”
I had not heard of a place called Rot Voraag, but then Creation was unfathomably large. “I was only summoned here a short time ago, by a fool who is even now being peeled apart by the acolytes of Zos. And who is this Exalted?”
“Just another warlord,” the Urrson said through a fit of coughing. “They say he holds great power, that he bargains with gods, that he has walked distant dimensions and sits at table with the lords of Hell.”
“He is Magi?” I asked, growing more curious.
The corpse-thing made a limp gesture with one decayed hand. “Who knows? Few see him outside the Akropolis. He could just be another alchemist — city’s infested with them — or even a lich. Maybe he’s one of the Fallen, a castoff from their gardens in the stars…”
A cruel smile played across my lips. “Then he is renegade no longer. We have made them all beggars.”
“Ah.” Was it my imagination, or did his voice become sour? “You came from there, didn’t you?”
I knew what he meant, and that should he speak the name of that place aloud it would cause him a pain even an Abgrûdai could not endure. It was the same for me, so I simply nodded. “And how did you come to be here, son of Urr? The Zosite and their slaves are in this place. Do you not fear them?”
“They pay me little mind,” the Urrson said. “I think they value the sickness I bring to these mortals. It makes the herd more desperate, more like to pray to the Iron God for salvation through bargain. Besides, you and I are not the only ones here. There are others of our kin, and more. More than just Abgrûdai and Zosite! Our war is ill tolerated by the Exalted, and the powers that hold court in his city tread his indulgence with caution.”
“The one who summoned me would disagree,” I noted.
“He probably angered the Exalted,” the Urrson said with a damp laugh. “Or he was clumsy, or got sold out by one of his peers. There is no law here but perfection in one’s craft, no rule but the rule of strength and secrets. You’ve seen these streets — they swallow hundreds a day, but thousands more spill in from the wastes to replace them. The city is always dying, always renewing itself, but the works of the alchemists and the Exalted, the slaves and artifacts they bring from other lands and other worlds, it all keeps the machine churning.”
It was not so different from the Silver City. Smaller, ruled by a single petty tyrant rather than a squabbling legion of them, but I’d been brought to a place far too familiar. The realization brought a sigh to my lips.
Ah, well. At least I got to walk about with warm skin for a time, take in some new sights and sounds, taste fresh fruits. I could always go back when I became bored. It wasn’t like I’d come here by choice, though I did want to know if any others held my name. It was vanity, in truth, but surely that second-rate occultist was not in sole possession of it.
And if any knew my true name, as that old fool had, then I would taste the meat of their hearts.
I stood and almost left then, feeling a sudden energy, but something about the plague demon’s words rankled me. Pausing I said, “You say that I came from the Highest Place, but you say it as though it leaves a foul taste, brother. I would know why.”
The hooded visage tilted up, and there was a pause. It was only then I realized what was missing in him — the fires of that great ruin did not reflect in his rotted gaze, as it did in mine and all others who had witnessed it. He had not Beheld.
“You weren’t there,” I said aloud as I reached the conclusion, and my lip began to curl into a sneer. “You did not answer the call.”
The Urrson’s voice was low and dark. “We are Abgrûdai, sister. We are the refuse of His creation, the trash. There is no grace for us, no salvation. Our lot is torment.”
I threw my head back and laughed, high and loud, and many passerby shied from me. “We have taken His grace as a war trophy! Our salvation is already in our hands, thick as the blood of the angels we gorged upon. We proved ourselves mighty, and now we rule in Heaven. We are the gods of these sheep, they merely do not know it yet.”
I spread my arms out to encompass the city, and in that motion embraced all the pleasures I would take from it.
The dead face only stared up into mine, no black humor in it now. “We… We, we, we. There is no we. Each of us is singular, sister. You listened to that fool lion preach too much, and now you all think you’re part of some army. We are the residue of a curse, not a people.”
“We could be,” I argued.
The Urrson scoffed. “If trash sweeps back into the house, then it just trashes the house. You’ve thrown out all of His servants, true, but He only went to a higher place, mark my words, sister. Nothing’s changed. You’ve just made another hell. We carry it with us, don’t you see? In here.” He tapped the side of his moldering hood with a clawed finger, and then he laughed again, a mad sound this time, a gasp of poisoned air that carried with it a weight of hate and despair. “No, my tormented sister, no! You are just like I, just like all the rest of our foolish kin! We are stained spirits, cast out, left to rot! And rot doesn’t go away, sister, it does not heal. Trust me. I know.”
The creature coughed again, spilling more maggots and mucus onto the stone. “I’m right where I need to be… in the middle of their despair. And if Zos’s acolytes send me back into the darkness, then that’s well and good too. I’ll be spat out again, eventually.”
I turned my nose up, feeling a cold disdain for this pitiful deserter. “You are a coward and a fool. You did not join us when we despoiled His throne because you thought we would fail, and now you seek to justify your cravenness. Stay here in this pit and rot, then.”
“I’m trying!” He laughed, mocking me with his wretchedness. “It won’t be long now. Once this old carcass falls apart, I’ll breathe a last gasp that will scourge this land. Then we’ll see who is godlike.”
No quip came to me at once. Though he did not harbor an ember from Heaven’s death in him as I did, something virulent and hungry did incubate in that wheezing vessel. That son of Urr carried a great plague in him, was the source of much of the sickness likely already rampaging across the overcrowded city.
I turned to go, wishing to speak no more to that refuse, but the Urrson stopped me. “Wait!” He rasped between coughs. “Wait, sister.”
When I turned, he lifted a hand palm up. “Alms, sister. Alms for a poor blind beggar.”
I had no hacksilver for him, nothing but the cloak, damp from the blood that wept from the two wounds where my wings had been. Instead, I knelt again before the corpse and took his face between my hands, placed a kiss upon his lipless teeth.
“For giving me the city’s name,” I told him as I rose and adjusted my cloak. “And the title of he who rules it. May your plague spread swift on hateful winds, brother.”
“May it at that!” He cackled. “I’d take slow winds too, so long as they blow.” He lifted skeleton fingers to his mouth where I’d kissed him, almost marveling at it.
My own lips prickled as though from a burn. I’d taken a taste of his disease, incomplete as it was, thinking it might prove useful. I wondered at this strange and terrible place as I moved along. It lacked the majesty and horror of the Silver City, but there was something about it. A telltale scent of opportunity.
My gaze went to that palace atop the mesa. It rose from sheer rock, tiered and palatial, a looming fortress of pillars, statues, and glaring depths lording over the sprawl below. The Akropolis, where the magus who ruled this place resided, this Exalted.
I was in no hurry to return. Wrapping my cloak tightly about myself, I dove into the city and let it swallow me whole.