Arc 9: Chapter 8: Agents of Darkness |
Though much of the Exalted’s city was crowded as a rule, there were parts of it that remained almost abandoned. Ghost neighborhoods — literally, in many cases — lost within the greater sprawl. Only the meanest, most desperate souls haunted those alleys, where myriad predators skulked for prey. Deadstreets, the locals called them.
I passed along the edge of one of these in my centipede form. My senses were limited in that shape, all but shrunken to the feel of debris beneath my many legs, impressions filtered through my antennae. Near blind and operating on impulse, it wasn’t unlike reliving my very earliest memories of hunting through the fulgurous violence of Berisembri’s realm.
I’d not thought of my birthplace in some time. The stray memories made me pause at the mouth of a slime-choked alley, antennae twitching as that body’s impulse-driven nerves became confused by more complex thoughts.
Demons do not get homesick. To think so is to misunderstand what we are, and what the place that spawned us is to our minds. The Abyss is a prison, a hungering pit of unfathomable depths to which we were condemned, and which we all resent and long to escape.
Yet, there are whole worlds there — or the carcasses of them at least — and for uncounted centuries I had wandered those unsightly shores. How far I had gone! From the deepest rifts of existence to its uppermost heights. I’d sat at the feet of an abyssal queen and been taught to think, then joined the great flood that laid siege to the God-Tyrant’s throne. I had born witness to both sides of a great turning of time, there was no doubt, experienced the twilight days of one cosmic order and the birth of something new.
Or perhaps simply the death of everything. Either way, I had beheld.
Yet I idled in this mouldering place, toying with its lost souls. I’d not intended to stay long, yet had lost track of time. It hadn’t been a long time, and even so that other place, that star-made city, seemed far and long away.
These thoughts were too complex for the centipede. The transformation came undone, and as the body melted into burning fumes and ichor I reshaped myself into an unremarkable vagrant. This guise wasn’t unlike the desperate waif I’d worn to trick the Justikar, and might have been what she would look like had she experienced lean years living hand to mouth on Rot Voraag’s unkind streets. Gaunt-cheeked and thin, with a face blistered by wasteland winds, I plucked a moth-eaten sheet from a home’s window and wrapped myself in it as an improvised robe. The effect was not unlike the rough traveler’s garments Didikas always went about in.
So clad, I delved deeper into a part of the city unfamiliar to me. It was quiet and still, but not unpopulated. Other forms moved furtively through the alleys or watched me from black windows. There were corpses too. Another bout of plague had swept over the city some weeks back, and still there were bloated bodies being piled wherever room could be found for them. The dead were most often simply given to the dead.
The Waking Breath, the city called that illness, and Flyscourge, and a score of other quaint names given over the hateful years since it first appeared in Rot Voraag’s streets. They might have had no name for it save “the End,” only some anonymous citizen had provided the alchemists with a sample of the sickness before it had first been catalogued, thereby giving them time to synthesize countermeasures.
I had not seen the Urrson again in all my years wandering the Exalted’s city, and wondered if he remembered the taste of my lips. He had called himself godlike then… Was he in the Abyss even now, raging at she who’d tricked him? Did the deserter rue his arrogant words about how tormented I was?
I did hope so.
My idle musings were interrupted by the flutter of wings. Fearing that Rettabrand’s hunters might have caught up with me, I tensed and looked up to the rooftops. They were not high in this part of the city, most of the buildings two or three stories at most. I expected to see one of the city’s large vultures lurking above or a dustwraith in the shape of one, but instead saw smaller forms, all crimson skinned with eyes like bright embers.
The imps had appeared suddenly and in number. Their diminutive forms covered the rooftops to either side of the street like a congregation of red crows. They watched me, silent save for the scrape of their claws on tile and the occasional flitter of small wings.
I took one reflexive step back, and in that moment heard a heavy thump of impact behind me. It was unmistakably the sound of an iron-shod hoof stamping the ground.
I froze. Then, taking but a moment to steady my expression, I turned to find I was no longer alone on the street. The one who stood before me was tall and powerfully built, with shoulders so heavy they made him seem a caricature of a muscular man. In contrast to his upper mass, his waist was narrow and his legs nearly delicate. Instead of human feet, he balanced on the cloven hooves of a goat. He wore charred rags that might have once made a robe, most of the remaining cloth now fashioned into an improvised scarf wrapped many times about his shoulders.
He had once possessed two horns, but one had been severed near its root. The other curled about an elongated skull. The flensed face of a sinner had been fashioned as a mask over that porcine muzzle, human flesh stretched to conform to an inhuman shape.
“Shyora,” the devil said in a soft, almost youthful voice.
“Deacon,” I greeted him.
“We need to talk,” he said without ceremony.
I glanced about at the imps gathered atop the rooftops. “I see. And I suppose this talk is not voluntary?”
Deacon’s voice held a soft note of apology. “The Vicar wanted to send scorchknights. I convinced him to let me speak with you first.”
I scoffed. “I suppose it must be serious then. You do know that the Dust King is hunting me right now? I misled him, but it won’t fool the old brute for long.”
“Rettabrand is of no concern.” The crowfriar gestured with one long, muscled arm. “If you would.”
I followed his gesture to see an open door leading into one of the nondescript buildings to my left. Muted voices and light spilled from it, though I’d been certain none of the dilapidated homes or shops lining the street were occupied by anything requiring either minutes before.
“Please don’t try to run,” Deacon said. “I will catch you.”
He probably could. I’d divided myself too much and changed shape too many times that day. Both my serpent and the simulacrum I’d used to divert the dustmen held substantial portions of my strength. Without time to rest, my chances of getting out of this were dubious.
Had it been only Deacon, I might have tried to wheedle my way out or at least bought time for my praetodemon to bring aid, but the presence of the imps put my hackles up. Whatever this was, it was serious.
And yet, had it only been their intention to capture me, then there would be proper gaolers.
As much due to curiosity than the implied threat, I went into the building. The sound of the crowfriar’s thumping hooves followed me. Inside was a tavern, at first glance unassuming and ordinary. There was a bar with a single tender, and a surprisingly large and active crowd. Customers with the look of travelers from a variety of origins gambled, drank, and conversed at the tables. It was poorly lit, though fire did burn from a centrally located pit over which an impressively large beast roasted.
I paused even as Deacon drew up behind me, surprised at the scene. Most paid us no mind, though I caught a few stray looks from eyes that glowed in the poor light. Many a hand that emerged from threadbare sleeve sported claws, and many of the feet hidden among the legs of stools were cloven or taloned.
“I thought this place was only a rumor,” I said, half to myself.
“It is a refuge for us to gather together and trade news,” Deacon said from my right shoulder. “You are safe so long as you are with me. Violence is frowned on here.”
But not forbidden? I wondered silently. Bemused, I allowed the devil to lead me to an unoccupied table at one corner of the tavern. He traded nods and murmured words with a few as we passed, but I was ignored. Once we’d sat and Deacon waved for drinks, a long while passed without any dialogue.
He broke the silence first. “You look well.”
He said it awkwardly. His fingers — four on each hand, with heavy black claws — fidgeted over the table.
I’d let my disguise slip once we’d entered the tavern. Though I kept the vagrant garb, my face was the one I usually wore when I did not mean to hide my nature. “And you.”
He waited, but when it became clear I wasn’t going to make this conversation easy on him he leaned forward. It was hard to read him through the mask, not unlike the Candrian, and he was better at hiding his emotions. “I am sorry for threatening you, Shy. After last time, Vicar insisted that I could not talk to you… unsupervised.”
While the imps were employed as spies, lackeys, and hunters for the missionaries of Orkael, they were also in many ways their handlers, ranking higher than them in the strange web of obligation that defined their iron orders. While those diminutive creatures outside would follow Deacon’s orders, they would also punish him if he strayed from his task.
But they were out there, and we were in here. All those at the other tables were also devils and damned souls, but they were engaged in their own business. This was as private a conversation as we would be allowed.
“I did not know you were in the city,” I said.
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“A year now,” Deacon said. The mask of human skin over his muzzle twitched with some involuntary movement. “Two hundred forty-two years, three months, and eleven days since I last saw you.”
So like a devil, to keep count. I felt myself warm towards him. “I thought it was longer.”
“Only thirty-three years since the Silver City went dark,” he said. “There are still regions touched by the Wending Roads which haven’t even realized what has happened. The Tribunal predicts many centuries of disquiet… what is it?”
I was staring wide-eyed at him. “Thirty-three years?”
“Yes.” The crowfriar nodded. “There are ripples still passing through the branes, like earthquakes, or hurricanes… entire worlds are being thrown into disarray. I’ve heard that it should take hundreds or even thousands of years for all of this to play out, but the Wend makes it happen faster. Stray souls are migrating across the network in unprecedented number, when they’re not being preyed on or rounded up by one power or another. There are still some paradise gardens that managed to weather the war, and the ones that haven’t closed their doors or turned on each other are circling their wagons, as it were.”
“The empyreans are fighting each other?” I asked.
“Yes.” Deacon nodded. “It’s war across the Higher Realms. It seems these days like every corner of the Star King’s realm has its own divine monarch trying to remake their pocket of Creation in their own image. In Orkael, it’s being said that new gods will start appearing more frequently in response to mortal terror, on top of all the old powers trying to fill the vacuum.”
He leaned forward. “Heaven has fallen. Now a thousand heavens are appearing to take its place. We’re only just seeing the start of it. The way I’ve heard, this new age will be playing out for a long time and the cosmos won’t look the same when it’s done, not in the slightest.”
I’d barely heard most of his words. My mind was still reeling at the number he’d so casually dropped into the space between us, like a coin set on the table’s smoke-stained wood. Thirty-three years.
It could not have been such a short time, could it? It had felt like a small eternity since I departed the Abyss and joined the great war against the God-King of Onsolem, the most powerful being in all existence. He who had fashioned the very stars and woven the fabric of Creation.
We beat Him. We won. So why—
I recalled rising up with the rest, the brief and violent war against the Zosite as we’d broken through the ceiling of ice and rock they’d fashioned over us. We’d spilled across their kingdoms and thrown down their iron towers beneath lightning-wreathed skies. And we’d kept rising, and rising, until—
I realized then how little I actually remembered. It had been like a long period of drunken revelry. Just flashes. Scenes that came and went in my memory. It wasn’t just demons who’d attacked the God-Tyrant’s throne. There had been vast armies of mortal heretics and rebel dead as well. There were monsters, demigods, rogue angels from the most distant and lightless corners of existence.
I was certain that — before he’d come here — Fell had fought on behalf of his hateful deity in that war to end all wars. The battlefront had stretched across the fields beyond Heaven, which were vast enough to host kingdoms from across the span of all ages with room to spare.
But it was the Abgrûdai who’d reveled most fiercely in that apocalypse.
And then… a long quiet. The torpor of exhaustion and dissatisfaction. I’d felt it, as had many of the rest as they made their roosts on the benighted walls of that city whose light we’d snuffed out.
Then I’d heard my name called. I'd followed it, searched until that familiar fracture in the fabric of existence appeared before me. I knew what it meant, for I’d been summoned in just that way before. I clawed my way through it.
Then the circle. Urizen. Narahn. Rot Voraag. A decade of distraction.
“Thirty-three years,” I repeated.
Deacon nodded. “As I said, this is only the start. You and your kin made quite the mess of things, but my masters are unconcerned. It will be some time rebuilding, but once done they intend to start expanding their influence in earnest. I’ve heard that some members of the Iron Tribunal even see this as an opportunity to build a new order. Orkael is much stronger than any empyrean fiefdom, even with the damage done during the rebellion. As you can see, we are still conducting our business in the mortal plane. Souls are needed, now more than ever.”
He said all of this casually, bluntly, like we were simply trading idle news of distant governments. He seemed unconcerned that he’d just told me that the existential battle my kind had fought, the great victory we had achieved, was little more than the shifting tides between immortal nations.
Rebellion, he called it, like it was little more than an inconvenient upheaval. We had beaten God.
True, powers and orders that had existed since the cosmos was still little more than boiling light and soundless wind were being overturned, but what matter was it, if it all simply reformed in some other configuration?
I could hear that plague demon laughing in my memory, and felt my pensive mood at seeing Deacon’s familiar face shifting into indignation. Just then, a devil in the shape of a skeleton with snakes slithering through its ribcage arrived and delivered drinks. I masked my unease by draining my cup, finding it full of warm, fresh blood. The rush cleared my head and helped me think.
“A king had to be drained less than half an hour ago to pour these cups,” Deacon said and lifted his own in toast. “I had to call in a favor, but it’s been a while, Shy.”
I was no longer in the mood to be flattered. “There were a thousand kings to a legion in the armies we broke on the elysian fields. They taste the same as any other mortal.”
Deacon shrugged, and sipped royal blood.
I set my own cup down and stared at him over the table. “You did not accost me to speak about politics.”
“I did, in a way.” He set his own cup down, mirroring me. “We know you’re trying to infiltrate the Exalted’s court. You’re not even being subtle about it.”
My lips quirked into a smile. “So far as I could tell, he doesn’t have any succubi in his harem… not even any infernal ones. What, did Hell do aught to upset our Yellow King?”
“This isn’t a joke, Shyora.” Deacon’s tone was serious. “The Exalted is on the verge of becoming a god. He knows exactly what he’s doing — he has spent a thousand years wandering across both the ruins of this world’s empires and the wildernesses of Hell. He has influence with many factions in Orkael, both among the Zosite and the ennobled damned.”
I knew that Orkael — the dominion of the dark deity Zos and His acolytes — was actually many fiefdoms ruled by powerful beings who rivaled any empyrean lord of the Higher Realms. Much of it was contested and wild, its regions ever-shifting both in physical shape and ownership. And it was but one region of a vast tapestry of half-finished and ruined worlds, a chasm-verse beneath the middle regions of the Star King’s empire wherein mortals dwell.
And beneath those infernal realms, perhaps at the bottom of everything, lay the Abyss. Hell was but my homeland’s ceiling, and dwarfed by it.
Deacon continued his narrative. “The Exalted did not participate in Heavenswar during its early years, but there is word that he is beginning to take an interest in it. If he achieves apotheosis, he could become a true contender. Orkael is considering who to back in this conflict. Even if it takes ten thousand years — even if ten million pass — one day there will be a new King, and Rot Voraag’s ruler is more friendly to our realm than most.”
I chewed on all of this for some time before speaking. It is not in a demon’s nature to think on distant futures — we are more prone to dwelling on the past. This was always something I struggled with during my conversations with the soft-spoken crowfriar. He was a devil, and his kind always looked forward. Where a score of centuries might pass for me while I sulked on the bitterness of a single moment, he would be counting every passing second like they were marked by the hand on an unfailing clock.
In fact, I knew there were clocks in Hell. They had been ticking since time started, and would until it ceased.
“Why not try to place your own lord on Heaven’s throne?” I asked.
Deacon’s mouth was not visible, but it might have quirked into a smile then. “Zos does not rule. He simply is. The Tribunal seeks a worthy steward to maintain what might be salvaged.”
There was definitely more to it than that. Orkaelin adherents were always quick to cite their duty, but they were as hateful and greedy as any of my own kind.
“What do you want of me?” I asked, repeating my earlier question. He was circling around it, and I’d grown impatient with his stalling.
“Continue doing what you’re doing,” Deacon said. “My order will not impede you. In fact, we will help. We already have agents inside the Exalted’s court.”
I narrowed my eyes. “And why would you want an Abgrûdai seductress supplanting your efforts with this nascent deity?”
“You don’t have to supplant it.” Deacon leaned forward, his earnest demeanor becoming more pronounced. He was often somber and contemplative, but now he seemed eager, though I could not read his eyes through the black holes of his mask. “Vicar is willing to make you an offer on behalf of the Tribunal. Help win the Exalted over to us. Convince him that he must not only engage in the war for the Silver City, but win it. Council him to allow us to establish an enclave here in Rot Voraag.”
I didn’t know whether to scoff or laugh in his face. “And why am I to play the devil’s advocate for you and your taskmasters?”
Deacon’s reply was serious and grave. “Because the Zosite will make you one of them.”
I stared at him in open shock, mouth agape. He paused to let that sink in.
“They are willing to grant you audience with our God,” Deacon continued. “Do this thing for us, and you will be made Zosite. You will no longer be condemned to an eternity of being hunted and tormented, no longer threatened with imprisonment in a pit in Hell. You will become Ennobled — not one of the seraphim, perhaps, but as close to them as any are capable of being.”
I could only shake my head, dumbfounded. “I am the Adversary.”
Deacon shrugged. “You know it has precedent. Other demons have been elevated to the Zosites’ ranks.”
“Traitors and dupes,” I spat.
Deacon gave me what I knew from him was a look of reprimand. “Come now, Shy, you know as well as I that you Abgrûdai are no nation. You have no more loyalty to that horde of malcontents than they do to you. The Abyss might have realms and leaders in it, but only because they’re the strongest.”
“You have said yourself that the old order is being overturned,” I said with a heat that betrayed my indignation. “Who is to say what we will be tomorrow? The Gatebreaker—”
“Will never claim the Throne,” Deacon interrupted. “He lacks the capacity. Only my realm has it. You know I’m right, Shyora, because you think. You have always been more devil than demon. You could thrive with us.”
My nails formed grooves in the table’s surface. “You are offering to make me a slave.”
“Better a servant to a greater order than an animal,” Deacon said calmly.
I did laugh at him then. It was an unrestrained sound, brief and loud. “You enjoyed me being an animal once, if I recall!”
Silence. I realized the whole tavern had fallen quiet. I knew a small amount of wariness then, for I was not amongst friends — in fact, these were some of the most dangerous beings in all Creation, both subtle and strong, and they would all put me in fetters given half a chance.
But I was too angry to care. The folly of many a demon.
“Please, Shy.” Deacon’s words became imploring. “This rebellion is doomed. The Silver City will be retaken. You did not do as much damage to us as you might believe. The disciples of Zos will restore order, and it will be an ungentle order. Better you hold the chain than wear it. I’m trying to help you.”
Perhaps he was. He had been mortal once, and still remembered what it felt like. We had met while he’d been mortal.
Before I could reply, the tavern door opened and two men stepped in. One was thin and clad in worn robes, with a battered quarterstaff in hand. The other was a looming shape near imposing as any infernal enforcer, clad from head to foot in blue-black steel crawling with runic patterns.
Didikas had my praetodemon on his shoulders. He spotted me near instantly and started forward, entirely heedless of the congregation of horrors from the afterlives within that room. Fell followed close behind, bowing his head so his horned helm did not scrape the doorframe.
When the wizard came to a stop by the table where Deacon and I sat, he first looked to the crowfriar. “I dispute your claim to this one, missionary.”
“There is no need,” I said and stood, adjusting my clothes. “I assume I am free to go?”
Deacon only stared at me forlornly through his mask of skin. “The Vicar is willing to offer you nine days to agree.”
“How traditional,” I said dryly. Then, because I knew he had tried to help me and because he had been one of my more memorable lovers I said, “It was good to see you, Meshann.”
He only bowed his head. Didikas glared over my shoulder like a sullen crow, and Fell watched the other devils through the impassive mask of his helm. We would need to be gone soon, or his need to pay homage to his faith through suicidal challenge would overtake him.
I decided to at least make something of this interview. “There is a new entity hunting in the city. It has been mutilating human souls. It may be a rogue demon.”
Deacon nodded thoughtfully. “I will look into it. Thank you.”
I turned then and let Didikas and Fell lead me from the tavern. I would dwell on everything the crowfriar had told me for some time.
