NationStates Jolt Archive

In the brilliant light the Shadow Palace looks dull, washed-out; a merely mortal structure without the darkness to shroud its walls. There is something wrong about it, that the heart of the Shadowed Path can be so diminished.

It should not be, that the Lord Tenebral of the Accursed looks merely mortal. But compared to the being before him, nigh anything looks mortal. In its chains the angel writhes, screams with the voice of the Accursed God Himself.

The Lord Tenebral shudders delicately. It should not be, that a Servant of the Accursed God is here. It is a desperate measure, but these are surely desperate times. If the analysis of his statisticians and the predictions of the oracles are correct, these are the most desperate times in all the two thousand year history of the Shadowborn. The Bright Messenger is coming back!

"Gag it," he commands, in the hissing susurrations of the Shadow Tongue. He needs the angel, but not its voice. An Adjutant hastens to obey, and the Lord Tenebral takes stock of his preparations.

At their points around the circle his Lieutenants are standing, ready to channel their power into the spell. At the northernmost point the Lady Umbral, Ophariana adh Inoresseri, stands waiting. The Lord feels almost sorry for her; the Lady Umbral does not not deserve this. But the Bright Messenger is coming, and none of them deserve what will happen if that comes to pass.

Opposite her at the southernmost point is the angel, and between them, at the center of the circle, is the rose.

It was once called the Rose of God, when there was a God other than than the Accursed, before Inhatan smote the temples of Bel-Iris and killed Sethrannan, before the Iranthi turned to Adhrazal and became the Shadowborn. But that was two thousand years ago, and now the rose is a little worse for wear, the leaves torn, the stem broken. The Lord Tenebral can but hope that some power, some essence of murdered Sethrannan still remains in it.

He takes his place, behind the angel, and begins.

The words he speaks are not the Shadow Tongue but something older, the vowels rounded and booming as thunder, the consonants sharp as lightning, rather than the sibilant whisper of the Tongue or the ringing harshness spoken by those who Serve; an incantation of the murdered God.

The Lieutenants begin their counterpoints, and the Lord Tenebral sees Ophariana's hands clenching into fists to keep from trembling. If he allowed himself, he too would be scared - he stands so very close to one of the Servants of the Accursed God!

In his hands the blade is very heavy.

Before him the angel thrashes, spitting muffled words in the tongue of Inhatan. They should have cut out its tongue. The Lord ignores it and continues. Completes. Draws the blade swift across its throat.

The light flares not merely brilliant but incandescent, the wings shining for an instant bright enough to blind him even through the smoked glass of his mask. But the angel chokes and dies, and the blood is as red as human blood as it falls.

Through the ringing afterimages and the sudden darkness the Lord Tenebral sees that the Rose of God is withered, a broken stalk with petals falling into to dust around it. Ophariana adh Inoresseri, the Lady Umbral, lies collapsed on the floor.

The Lady Umbral opens her eyes, staring up at him, and he sees that those eyes are the bright amber of any Shadowborn; not golden, not the shining light of the God. There are no wings spreading from her back. He has failed.

"It ... didn't work."

Her voice is not accusing, as he'd feared; merely a statement of fact. The rite has failed, and the Shadowborn will need to find some other weapon against the Bright Messenger. It was foolish after all to attempt the rituals of a dead God.

"No," he replies, with heavy heart. "It didn't."

"So it goes."

Ophariana allows him to help her up. She seems resigned to the failure, perhaps relieved. He does not begrudge her any misgivings about the plan; to make an angel of a mortal was always an ambitious idea. He should have known there would be no success in Sethrannan's rites.

... But somehow, the Rose of God is withered. So something has happened, although just what remains to be seen. The Lord Tenebral allows himself a spark of hope.

The angel turns at bay, wings outstretched and blazing white against the dull concrete of the wall. Those wings are the brightest things in this grimy parking basement, far outshining the feeble fluorescent tubes spaced across the ceiling. But they are not quite bright enough; the Shadowborn narrow their eyes behind the tinted glass of their masks, and pull elemental shadow from behind pillars and out of corners. This is the Darkness that cannot be stopped by the Light, wielded by the opposition Inhatan cursed two thousand years ago.

Ophariana clenches her fists in effort and sends coiling streamers of shadow against the angel, which it parries with a sweep of the flaming sword in its fist. That blade is as bright as the wings and more deadly, and this is a powerful angel indeed; hence Ophariana's presence. The Blood Wind Circle would not need an Umbral, if it were weaker.

The three Adepts behind her step forward to join the attack. Their Adjutants have been left at the chapter house, their Lieutenants lost somewhere in the mad chase from shadow to shadow after the angel; there are only four of them against Inhatan's Servant. It is slight odds, if it is of the highest Sphere; if it is one of the Seraphim, no chance at all. Ophariana hopes that the Lieutenants find them soon.

She draws shadow from the elevator shaft, from the street outside, and sends it again against the angel, aiming to entangle its limbs. If she can part it from its blade the odds will become much better. But she has no such luck, even assisted by the efforts of the Adepts; with the darkness coiling around its arms the angel wrenches free to whirl its blade in a wide arc.

One of the Adepts cries out and topples; all around them the pillars supporting the building above are falling into themselves, spraying chips of concrete and clouds of dust across the parking garage. The wall, the ceiling shatters and collapses inwards, but before it can be hit the angel swings its sword in a circle, cutting a portal into Heaven, and hurls itself through.

Ophariana pulls shadow from the toppling floors above her to shield herself from the collapse, granting narrow seconds to look into the darkness and find a way out. The falling building is left behind as her body follows her sight, emerging beneath a tree in Ileure's central park.

The silence of the park is oppressive after the chaos of falling rubble, free of the native Ileureis at this hour. In the distance she can hear cars rushing down the main road; they call Galmary's capital the City of Lights, and it does not sleep.

Somewhere on the far side of the river is the building she's just escaped. The shadow realm flares and first one, then another of the Adepts steps through to stand beside her.

"Ishanuhan?" she asks, naming the third and missing Adept.

"Dead," one replies, and she suppresses tears. Surprising; she had known Ishanuhan for less than a week, preparing for this mission. But then he was the one who cracked jokes about it, who made them laugh; the others, herself included, had been grimly focused on the mission. Perhaps that lack of focus has killed him, but she misses him all the same.

There will be time for sorrow afterwards, when this angel is destroyed; right now they need to find it again. Like themselves it will not have gone far, and having confronted them it will seek to kill them; Inhatan does not suffer rebellion lightly. The city all around them holds Anrans, Inhatan's worshippers, but Ophariana bears them no particular ill will; civilians are pawns in this game of Gods. But if civilians are His pawns, the angels are Inhatan's knights, extensions of His Will; they possess no free will of their own. The weapons with which Inhatan strikes against the Shadowborn must be broken.

Together they cast their eyes outward, looking through the shadow realm for the brilliant light of a fraction of Inhatan's Will. They find it in the distance, somewhere on the edge of the city, and step through.

The flaming sword is swinging before Ophariana can take stock of her surroundings; she ducks through sheer instinct, flinging up a handful of shadow to deter the blade just far enough away. Even so the fire crackles over her head, uncomfortably hot. She hurls herself at the angel, into a tight embrace, and attempts to wrestle the sword from its hand. Within its grasp she may be safe from the sword for just long enough ...

It is strong, very strong, but she summons shadow from anywhere within reach to strike it, and the Adepts are assisting; the sword is wrenched from its hand and into hers, and she wrenches herself away from it to gain the space to swing. The flames char her the sleeve of her cassock into ash, run across her back.

Oh Fallen, she thinks, I'm burning!

From all around her brilliant floodlights stab out, piercing her like shafts. It is like staring into a dozen suns, and through watering eyes, half-blinded, she makes out shapes. The angel is climbing to its feet, but behind it are hulking metal figures twice her height, from which the floodlights spit forth; Galmarine urban combat mechs. The angel led them straight into the middle of the Ileureis garrison of the Galmarine Defence Force, and like fools they followed it unthinking. These are Anrans all about them, and the Shadowborn are trying to kill a Servant of their God. Even she cannot possibly stop all the rounds ready to issue from their machine-guns.

In the glare of the floodlights and the brilliance of the angel's wings she should be burning. Unshielded by her cassock Inhatan's Light should char her skin. Somehow it does not; the arm she throws up to shield her eyes is alabaster pale.

"You are surrounded!" The voice booms from the speakers of the mechs, speaking Galmarine. "Surrender immediately!" It repeats itself in broken Shadow Tongue a moment later.

"No," she says softly, feeling strangely detached from her own imminent demise. "No, I don't think I shall."

She lunges forward behind the flaming sword, piercing the angel through the chest, and sees the Light of God depart its eyes. Wrenches the blade free, feels bullets peppering the air. They rip through her skin and leave crimson trails in their wake but she is already leaping up towards the closest mech, and up and up until the pilot is staring terrified at her through the glass. A swing of the sword and cockpit and pilot are divided. She leaps again and a second mech topples, and another and another ...

Some unknowable time later she stands amid a wasteland of twisted metal and guttering flames. The sword is motionless in her hands. Across her body bullet wounds are puckering into scars and fading to nothing. At her feet a puddle of water or coolant fluid or some liquid has spilled, and in the wavering reflection she sees spreading from her back the wings of an angel, as brilliant and terrible as the Light of God.

The Lord Tenebral steps through shadow to emerge beneath a gnarled beech. The tree was not here a quarter century ago, when the threat of the Czevejec Republic forced the construction of this base in Midnight's southern mountains. But with the abrupt collapse of the Republic the base was mothballed before it was ever used, and the alpine forests are beginning to reclaim it.

The tree stands sentinel before the heavy doors of the fortress, looking out over the cracked asphalt of the airstrip and the depths of the Imbreith Gap below. The Lord Tenebral smiles to himself, remembering those days when Czevaj was on everyone's lips and the fear of a Republic tank battalion crossing the passes was in everyone's minds. Strange to think that they feared a merely mortal war, with a divine one now hanging over their heads.

The doors of the base are open, just as the Watchers had said, and in the shadow realm the Lord Tenebral can see her presence, the light twined around the darkness of her soul. He feels, perhaps, a little guilt; it was on his instigation that she volunteered for the rite, after all. He'd hoped it would succeed, even after they'd sacrificed the angel and it had seemed to fail; but that it would succeed like this ... it was a terrible thing they had done to her.

He walks into the base, into shadow, but does not remove his cassock or his mask; there is a terrible light awaiting him. She knows where he is just as he can see her; he could step directly to her side but walks this long way out of politeness, out of caution. It would be unwise and impolite to appear abruptly before her, when he cannot tell what thoughts are occupying her mind. He fears what the shock of discovery, the spectacular failure and success of the Ileure mission, may have done to her.

So he walks slowly through the darkened base, through machinery and fixtures shrouded in plastic sheeting, and finds the emergency stairs that link the levels of the fortress. There are five above the surface, culminating in the watchtower overlooking the Imbreith Gap, and twice that below; they'd feared Czevajec nuclear strikes, back when it was built.

Down and down, his steps echoing in the stairwell, until at last he comes to the final landing, site of the generators and the nuclear plant. Here, between the looming walls of machinery, there is light.

She is sitting on a catwalk meters above his head, her knees drawn up to her chest. A flaming sword is in her hand, and from her back wings extend bright and glorious. That Light is painful to look upon, and he wonders how she manages.

"Ophariana," he calls, and finds himself suddenly at a loss for words. "... I'm sorry."

"Lord Tenebral." she sounds as if she's been weeping, and when she lifts her head he can see her eyes are red. "We succeeded ... horribly."

Whether she means the ritual or the Ileure mission she doesn't say. The Lord Tenebral assumes something of both.

"I swear I never expected this, Ophariana," he tells her. "I'd never have tried it if I thought it would make you one of them."

She laughs bitterly. "A Servant, you mean? I was scared it meant I was His, at first, that I'd find myself doing things ... but I killed one of His. And others besides."

The Lord Tenebral has seen the reports, and knows that it was not the Gelmarines who killed the two Adepts with her at the garrison.

"But no, it seems I have free will. Somehow. Maybe because I was already human, maybe because we used the Rose of God ... maybe because Inhatan won't touch me."

"I did some research," he tells her, "After the ritual ... found some books in the libraries of the Spires of Night I hadn't seen before. Ophariana, I don't think that you're one of His at all. The Rose of God did something unexpected to the ritual ... Ophariana, I think you're one of Sethrannan's."

"The Murdered God?" that laugh again. "He's two thousand years dead, in case you hadn't noticed. Inhatan broke the temples, slew the God, and all His angels died with Him. They're animated by the Will of God!"

"But some of His Will must have gone into the Rose, or it would not have been a divine artefact and we would not have been able to turn Inhatan's Will from His Servant to you. I think when that happened it became Sethrannan's Will ... making you the only Servant of the Murdered God.

"Ophariana, you have free will! The God who could command you is dead, and we need you. If the Bright Messenger incarnates again, Inhatan isn't going to spare you just because you're a Servant - if anything, He will hate you all the more!"

She is silent for long moments.

"I don't think I can, Lord," she says finally. "I am a Servant - Adhrazal is Prince of the Fallen, who lost his power and his might with the coming of the Gods. I represent everything he fights against - how can he accept me back into the Shadow Palace?"

"I believe he is more forgiving than you think, Ophariana. At least think about it, for our sakes. You're still Shadowborn, and we will not forsake you!"

"I'll think about it," she replies. "Go now, please."

"I'll see what I can do for you, Ophariana. This base is military property, but I may be able to change that, if you want to stay here ..."

"Go!"

She glares at him, her eyes glowing with blue-white flame, and he retreats, leaving Ophariana to her sorrow and her light.

Imbreith means storms in the Common Tongue of Midnight; here at the Gap the high clouds rolling south through Midnight from the sea meet the hot winds of the central Skarnic Plain, sending thunder crashing around the peaks of the mountains.

Imbreithian, then, is the Fortress of Storms; aptly named, now that Sethrannan's Servant has made it her home. On a night when the rain is driving and the lightning is flickering through the glass of the old watchtower, Ophariana dreams.

Flaring braziers, pale skin, golden eyes. Wings, darker than night; blood, redder than roses. Gnarled bark close as skin; a shining horizon far distant. Blazing eyes, blazing wings, blazing swords, rising and falling. A figure kinder than any lover, more wrathful than any enemy. And the scent of roses, as soft and as sweet as the Rose of God.

And somewhere between sleeping and waking; a tree wound about with climbing roses, carved deeply with a jagged line over which the bark has grown puckered and rough. A lightning bolt.

That scent of roses stays with her while she showers in the frigid water - despite his promises, the Lord Tenebral has yet to have even the auxiliary generators turned on - nagging at her mind until, finally, she lights a candle.

At the boundary of darkness and light her eyes slip through, searching out a tree wound with roses. There are many trees and many roses, but only one bears that jagged mark scored into its wood. She finds it, eventually, in Iskaraban, easternmost and most benighted of the Skarnic states.

Ophariana steps through, and finds herself immediately assailed by that scent of roses; she stands in a thicket of them, growing wild over ancient stonework. Before her stands the tree, lightning-graven, gnarled as any ancient grandfather.

Behind her there is a gasp, and the sound of breaking glass; an old man, bearing a wineglass in one hand. She guesses they don't often see the black cassock of the Shadow Palace, here in Iskaraban.

"Easy, friend," she says in rusty Karabanj, "I'm not on Adhrazal's buisness."

And she casts aside the cassock, unbinding Sethrannan's Will from its hiding-place deep within her soul, allowing the wings to rise from her back and the fire to light in her eyes. The wineglass shatters as the poor man falls to his knees, his forehead hitting the ground in the deepest supplication of the Anran Church.

"Bright Servant, have mercy upon me! I am faithful, I am pure of heart, I have not profaned the temples of your Master's worship - do not turn from my face the gaze of the Lord of Light!"

"I am not a Servant of the Accursed God," she growls. "Get up, man - I am a Servant and not a God!"

Tremulous, he climbs to his feet, staring at her in something akin to shock. She guesses they see angels even less than Shadowborn in rural Iskaraban.

"What do you here?" she asks him, more gently.

"I - I - my Granpere said always to give an offering to the Balefire Lord, after rain and after storm, for his blessing and his mercy. I'd not thought - I'd never thought 'twould attract the notice of - of such as you, Lady."

"The Balefire Lord - Sethrannan? The Even-Handed God?"

"Yes, Lady. So my Granpere called him, upon a time. But I'd not thought 'twas blasphemy, Lady. I'm an Anran, Lady, to follow the Bright Messenger and the Prelate Saul. I - I've sinned thousands of times, haven't I?"

"My countrymen call Him the Murdered God, and you have sinned against Him every day you followed the Accursed God, His murderer. But He is a forgiving God, I think - and more to the point, He is dead."

"But my Granpere said that he didn't know as how you'd kill a God, and as how I should pour the offering anyhow, on account of how He might be coming back. Will He be coming back, Lady?"

He might be coming back ... That an Anran would think so is no suprise - they've been predicting the return of the Bright Messenger since Anra's death in Bel-Iris - but that it might be true ... Ophariana has no gift for prophecy - and yet, she dreamed the tree which stands here.

"I don't know," she admits. "But it's there to hope for ... make the offering, and tell your grandson in your turn, sir."

He looks down at the shattered wine bottle.

"I'll need to fetch another, Lady," he says, wringing his hands.

"Long before Anra, it was done another way," Ophariana tells him. She finds a thickly thorned vine and closes her hand about it until the spines break skin, traces her bloodied palm along the jagged line of the lightning bolt.

"Of course, it was wine they washed the Bright Messenger with, before they flayed him; you may wish to use it still."

But he follows her example, and runs a bloody hand down the lightning bolt.

OOC: I envision keeping this as a story thread for now, but I welcome comments, and I have started an open thread (http://forums.jolt.co.uk/showthread.php?p=12197507#post12197507) featuring Ophariana adh Inoresseri, only Servant of the Murdered God - which you are all more than welcome to participate in.

OOC: I've been asked to provide a summary of who's worshiping whom, for clarity, so here it is.

Inhatan, the Bright God, Lord of Light, the Accursed God (so named by the Shadowborn) - a sun god, His symbol is (naturally enough) a rayed sun. He and His martyred avatar, the Bright Messenger Anra, are worshipped by the Anrans - who are divided into the Saulic, Cephastine and Martinian denominations, corresponding roughly to the Orthodox, Catholic and Protestant denominations of Christianity.

Sethrannan, the Even-Handed God, the Balefire Lord - a storm god, His symbol was a rose. He was worshipped by the pre-Shadowborn before Inhatan killed Him.

Adhrazal, Prince of the Fallen - an angel, ruler of the angels who never swore themselves to the service of the gods. Along with Asrathanos, the Angel of Death, Satevis, the Angel of Blades, and Azakiah, the Angel of Desire, he is worshipped by the Shadowborn.

Urhaziel, Lord of the Forsaken - an angel, ruler of the angels who broke their vows of service to the gods and were cast out of Heaven. He rules over the demons of Hell, accompanied by his lieutenant Asphelhaz and the arch-demoness Tzaol, Mother of Demons. He is worshipped by Anran heretics.