Hubris - 55. The Architect

He couldn't say how long they'd been sitting beneath the tree, their bodies entangled. It was only when he heard the sound of voices and the pounding of the drums that he lifted his head. A woman ran past them, her blonde hair streaking behind her; it appeared silvery under the moonlight. She stopped as if sensing Crowe's attention. She turned to look at him, her eyes bright, her cheeks red.

“Come, herald!” she sang. “Come dance with us under the stars! The era of the herald is here at last!”

She let out a bray of hysterical laughter and then she was off racing past the trees towards the platform. Shouts sounded from the direction of the stage. Somehow Crowe managed to pull himself to his feet.

“Twin o’rre? What is happening?” The Okanavian rose up behind him.

Crowe watched the naked undulating bodies dancing before the stage. “They're dancing and…” He blushed.

“And what, my beloved?”

“They're naked.”

“Does public nudity bother you, herald?”

Crowe turned away from the stage. Gyrell grinned at him, her teeth glowing brighter as she drew closer to where they stood. “I’ve always envied those who felt comfortable in their own skin.” Crowe gulped. Why did I say that?

Her smile widened. “Tonight you can change that. Tonight you can be free.”

At what cost? Anyone can feel free in a guilded cage. And still her words haunted him, working to unravel the last of his resolve.

“Both of you come with me. Enjoy this moment of respite while you still can. It will not last long.”

He saw she’d changed into a gauzy nightgown made of white silk; it left little to the imagination. He could see the soft pink buds of her nipples hardened by the caress of the wind. Her body was toned but graceful. There was no erotic intent by her nudity, but it didn't stop Crowe from feeling like a voyeur. She wore nothing else beneath the nightgown. She raised her arms over her head, pulling at the neck of her dress. Crowe looked away before the commander could finish stripping herself bare. Only when she began to walk in the direction of the stage did Crowe and Barghast follow.

She led them through the press of heaving gyrating bodies. Bodies sheened and slicked with sweat and ecstasy. The pounding of the drums seemed to come from within Crowe, not from an external source. He wanted to roll with the rhythm, to give himself completely to the tide. The fear of losing Gyrell in the crowd kept him focused. Without Barghast to steer him helpfully through the crowd he surely would have.

At last they mounted the steps of the stage once more. Unfamiliar faces grinned at him as if to say, It's about time you joined us. Loras shouted something but the words were lost in the roar of the music. Rake’s face appeared like a magic trick, grinning and nude. He clapped Crowe on the back hard enough to send the practitioner stumbling forward a few steps. “You’re going to have the time of your life, my friend! I know I did when I first came here…”

“What are they doing…?” Crowe gasped. Hands slid under his shirt, up his torso. Questing fingers pulled at the clasp of his breeches. Stop! Please stop! Not you…I don’t know you. Damn the aether! Why had he allowed himself to drink so much? He couldn’t protest. He didn’t have the strength to push them away. He was at the mercy of Caldreath.

Just as he’d hoped, Barghast pushed his way through the crowd. Shouts of protest rang around them, but no one was a match for the lycan’s size or strength. “Only I get to undress and undress him!” he boomed in Okanavian. He turned Crowe away from the masses, shielding him from view with the bulk of his body. “I’m with you, beloved. I’m not going anywhere. No one else will touch you or try to undress you.”

Crowe’s hands slid up Barghast’s torso. They swayed together to the music and for a moment they were in a world unto themselves again. He closed his eyes. I can’t remember the last time I felt this free. This safe. This careless. “I want you to undress me.”

A kaleidoscope of lights, faces, and colors flashed before his eyes. Strangers introduced themselves, shook his hand furiously, threw themselves down at his feet and kissed them only to disappear into the shuffle. Just when he thought the maelstrom would sweep him away, Barghast would appear to lead him through the chaos.

Sometime later Crowe and Barghast stood at the center of the crowd. He held an aether joint between the index and middle finger of his undamaged hand. Around him the villagers of Caldreath danced, drank, fucked, turned the dirt to mud with their sweat, but he didn’t care because…Because I’m with the only one I truly give a damn about.

Barghast engulfed him, all fur and muscle and musk and love. They swayed to the beat, enraptured by the music. Fueled by the undying charge in the air. “I didn’t know it was possible to feel this way,” the Okanavian whispered in his ear.

Crowe lifted his head. “What didn’t you think was possible?”

“That we could find happiness in this place.”

“And now?”

“Now I am absolutely convinced we can.”

The herald grinned. “I think we can, too.”

Barghast pulled Crowe to him with a possessive growl. “Make no mistake, twin o’rre, nothing makes me happier than being with you.”

The sorcerer shushed him. “I know my sweet lycan. I feel the same for me. But remember what I’ve told you before: It’s not wrong when other things make us happy. When you hurt, I hurt. When you’re happy, I’m happy. We are inextricably bound.”

The barbarian’s eyes flashed. “Indeed.”

Gradually Crowe became aware that someone was watching him. The sensation made his skin crawl. He pushed the thought away. They were being watched by hundreds of people. They were at the center of focus for an entire village. But no matter which way he turned or how much aether wine he drank, the feeling persisted. He whirled around. He searched the wall of rolling bodies until he found the source of the sensation: a pair of silver fox eyes watching him from the shadows. Slowly the bleached skull of an animal emerged followed by the slight form of a woman. The human walk did not move for her because they were not aware of her. What does she want from me? The last time he’d seen the woman had been a vision. Were she and the creature who had attacked them the same? Or were they different forms of the same entity but somehow separate?

“The more you try to find answers the more questions you’ll have.”

The echo of her voice slid into his mind, raspy and full of despair. Still embracing him from behind, Barghast stiffened. He could see the woman just like he’d been able to see the shriveled demon at the cabin all those months ago. “Twin o’rre?” he whined.

Crowe stroked the side of the Okanavian's face without looking away from the woman. “It's alright,” he said though he couldn't say for sure if they were truly safe. In a tiny voice he asked, “Are…are you going to burn me again?’

The Mother of Caldreath shook her head. “I do not mean you harm, but that does not mean harm won't come to you.”

“What do you want from me?”

“Do not ask questions you are not ready to know the answers to!” she hissed. Her silver eyes flashed angrily.

He recoiled. The terror of igniting her fury was a reminder of how in over his heàd he was. Has there ever been a moment where I haven't been in over my head? He pushed the self-pity and despair away. He reminded himself he was dealing with an Architect. A being so powerful she could make an entire village that had burned down over a century ago sprout out of the ground; she had the power to change the very fabric of reality at will. Violence and force of will isn't going to get me out of this either. I must think carefully. Cautiously. Not for the first time an overwhelming sense of gratefulness washed over him that Barghast had joined him on this journey. I never would have made it this far on my own. The thought bolstered his courage.

“What do I call you?” he asked her.

“I have many names. None of which you are fit yet to speak. The truth is a gift that must be earned.”

“As you say.”

Her eyes flashed. She cocked her head as if studying a new species of insect she'd yet to encounter until your. this moment. “You are different from your predecessor.”

He bowed his head in what he hoped was a humble gesture. “Hopefully that is an improvement.”

“It could be,” came the cryptic reply. “It could also be to your detriment.”

She's baiting me just like Gyrell had been baiting me from the moment Barghast and I stepped inside this wicked little town. And the irony of it is it's working.

“You are different from your predecessor in the fact that you are younger than he was when we encountered one another,” the Architect said. “When we met he was in the middle of his lifespan - a man who had seen war and knew it well. You are but a seed who has hardly begun to sprout out of the soil.”

“Is that a bad thing?” he asked in a trembling voice.

“It means you have yet to be molded by your experiences. By the time I met Petras he was weary and cynical. He had the resolve to do what needed to be done.”

“You think I don't?”

The Mother tilted her head in a single nod. “You do not. Which is why you are here: So that I may shape you into the man you need to become.”

In his mind he saw the Petras who had spent many months in bed, his mind steadily declining. Blank blue eyes - my eyes - staring up mindlessly, lifelessly up at the ceiling. And this Architect thinks I don't have the resolve to do what needs to be done, Crowe thought bitterly. What does she know about me or what I’m capable of?

The Mother stopped. Her eyes flashed behind her bone mask. Not with anger but amusement. “I know everything there is to know about you, young herald. I know you better than you know yourself. Come, there is something you must see. Your test begins tonight.”

He felt a chill crawl up his spine. She can read my mind! She knows exactly what I am thinking. What kind of test could an Architect have in mind for me? I’m not ready to find out yet.

The Architect offered him a chalice of aether wine. “You and your guardian must drink this. It will help you to do what needs to be done.”

He drank from the chalice before he could give voice to his doubts. Shivering, he passed the goblet to Barghast with something he hoped resembled an encouraging smile. Once they’d both drank of the aether wine, the Mother nodded, indicating they were to follow. The chalice was gone. Crowe couldn’t remember passing it back. You better get used to it. Petras’ voice crackled in his mind, hard and cynical. The same rules you’re used to don’t apply here.

Shouts sounded behind him. The cacophony of the drums ceased. He cast a quick glance over his shoulder. The crowd was dispersing. No, following, unspooling out to form a line. Gyrell grinned at him from the front of the procession; her hair gleamed like a silver nimbus beneath the star-strewn night sky. It seems this has turned into a parade, he thought.

The excited chatter of the villagers and the strumming of violins and the bashing of tambourines was drowned out by a low buzzing sound. Crickets leapt through the grass. The night was youthful and alive and eternal.

“Look twin o’rre!” Barghast pointed excitedly at the silver line that appeared at the top of the next hill; already the Mother had begun the ascent.

At the top of the hill the aether grove Commander Gyrell had mentioned appeared. But it was not the appearance of the aether grove that made Crowe stop or his blood run cold. Trees sprouted out of the ground. Ancient. Monolithic. The tangled network of their branches formed a tunnel that blotted out the stars. Pinned to each tree trunk leading all the way to the aether grove was a torchcoat. They’d been stripped naked; nails had been driven through their wrists and ankles. Their blood soaked the trees and wetted the soil beneath their feet. Many stared at Crowe in silent accusation. Others begged him to set them free with cracked voices that broke with desperation.

The herald whirled around to face the Mother. “What is this…?”

She cocked her head at him inquisitively. She studied him for a long time before answering with a question of her own. “Does it bother you?”

His lips quivered. His hands trembled.

“Even after what they’ve done to you? What they did to your hand? And still you want to give them mercy…”

He let his silence say what he could not with words.

“Petras would have approved,” the Architect said.

“I’m not Petras.”

“No…you are not.” Even as an echo it was impossible to mistake the disappointment in her voice.

Their trek took them deeper into the forest of death. Blood soaked the foliage beneath their feet. The bodies pinned to the trees no longer plead or twitched with the final impulses of life. Many had been feasted on by animals, patches of flesh ripped away to reveal the bone and muscle beneath. Fireflies drifted lazily through the night.

“Surely there is another way,” Crowe said in a voice that sounded high-pitched and weak. He felt something clench painfully in his stomach. “A way that is better than this.”

“There is not.” The Architect glided through the darkness without stopping this time. Her footfalls did not stir the grass or make a sound. Crowe knee that if a torchcoat were to witness their passage toward the aether grove, it would have appeared as if Barghast and he alone were leading the villagers of Caldreath. “This is something Petras knew. You know it, too, but in your youth you are gullible. You choose not to see it.”

The practitioner glared at the Mother, the fear of igniting her fury be damned. “You also keep leaving out the part where Petras failed. He failed to stop the cycle of destruction in the Second Iteration. If he hadn’t none of this would be here.”

To this the Mother of Caldreath said nothing. The herald felt a stab of triumph even if the victory was small.

At last they reached the aether grove. At the center of the grove, awashed in the silver light from the leaves, was a metal gurney, and strapped to the gurney was the angel from Crowe's nightmares.

Charoum.

The angel had been stripped naked so that his full anatomy was on display. The milky glow of his skin. The slats of his ribs, the length of his long bones. His lack of gentalia. No wonder he hates us, Crowe thought. Underneath his blister, behind his sadism is a creature who has no control. His lips had been shown shut.

“What is he doing here?” Crowe asked the Architect.

“He awaits judgment for his crimes.”

“Whose judgment?”

“Your judgment. Do you not want justice for what he’s done to you? For what he’s done to your people? The look the Mother gave the Inquisitor through her mask could have seared flesh from bone. “He took two of your fingers. He laughed in the face of your pain. He would have done far worse to you had your beloved lycan not saved you. What atrocities do you think he’s committed against Monad’s people who were not so fortunate? How much blood do you think he’s spilt over the centuries?”

The Mother took a step towards the gurney. Charoum glared at her.

He can see her. He knows her. They have history. Perhaps even a shared grudge. Is the enemy of my enemy my friend?

“My dear Charoum, how far you have fallen.”

It was not the Mother who had spoken, but Commander Gyrell. Crowe blinked. His head snapped around in search of the Architect but she was nowhere in sight. Gyrell stood next to the gurney as if she channeled the Mother’s spirit. Crowe gaped at her, sure her eyes had taken on the same silver sheen. But when he blinked they were the same green they’d been when he’d first met her. Her naked skin glistened with sweat. She held hernsword at her side. He was sure now that she hadn’t brought it with her - she’d come out to the grove without a stitch of clothing on and with nothing in her hands - but things in Caldreath had a way of materializing while one wasn’t looking.

“You know him?” His voice came out sounding tight and accusatory. He could feel four hundred pairs of eyes burning a hole in his back. I’m starting to feel like I’m trapped in the performance of a stage show, he thought.

“I don’t need to know him to know what he’s capable of.” Gripping the sword by the handle, Gyrell lifted the sword. Crowe’s eyes fastened on the runes carved into the sword; they burned with the same inner light as the runes on his rod. “Neither do you. I would think your experience at Fort Teague would be motivation enough.”

“You want me to kill him?”

She scoffed. “Don’t you?”

He looked at the angel strapped to the table. “Kill him!” a woman shrieked. “Kill him! Kill the winged bastard! He wouldn't hesitate to kill us!”

A large rock soared over Crowe's shoulder. The practitioner ducked but he needn’t have worried. The rock was not meant for him. It struck the Inquisitor with a resounding thud. The impact tore a pearly brow from a forehead so that a single flap of flesh hung over his eye. The practitioner should have rejoiced, but he felt as if his mind had become unmoored from his body. He was back at Fort Erikson and it was not Charoum he saw strapped to the table, but himself. He didn’t know that he was crying, that he wanted it all to stop in a broken unintelligible sob.

When rocks and tomatoes and whatever the villagers had on hand to throw began to pelt the Seraphim one after the other, the herald fell to the ground. He buried his face in his hands, curled against the ground. If he could have, he would have burrowed into the ground if only to get away from this awful grove. When Barghast stooped to pick him up, he wriggled away with an inarticulate scream of terror - sure the torchcoats had come to take him back to the noose.

He did not know what was happening nor did he have the mind enough to care. He did not know that Barghast had put the bulk of his body between the practitioner or the commander or that he pressed the muzzle between the commander’s eyes, or that his finger was one hair away from pulling the trigger or that the villagers had ceased their shouting and throwing and were now coming forward to intercede; many of them had blades. He didn't see Rake run forward, muttering “Monad, help me!” like a prayer or the Okanavian growl at him in warning or Gyrell raising her hand and commanding everyone to stay back. He didn't hear Barghast tell Gyrell to stop this madness or else he was going to put a bullet in her brain in Okanavian.

In his mind he was in the aether grove and he was alone with the Mother. Again it was not Charoum who was strapped to the table but himself. What remained of himself.

“Do you see what he would have done to you if given the chance?” the Architect asked in that same raspy voice. A voice full of quiet rage. A voice full of despair. “You would have been his project. His experiment. His plaything. There would be no end to your suffering.”

Crowe tracked the needlework of stitches that trailed from his collarbone down to the place where his genitals should be. The Inquisitor had removed his genitals and sewn up the hole. Countless other atrocities had been done to his body with the same clinical precision of a surgeon. The practitioner swallowed. “Why does he hate me so much? What have I done to deserve this?”

“What have any of us done to deserve being stuck in this eternal cycle of suffering? In the case of this creature, it’s not that he hates you. He hates himself. He hates what he is. He fears having a lack of control. And like the worst of immortals he is incapable of admitting it to himself. So he takes his fury on those he convinces himself is responsible. Those he thinks are small and weak and less than him.”

Crowe blinked. When he opened his eyes his own mangled body had been replaced by the Inquisitor’s. The angel’s eyes cut into him as he strained against the chains that bound him to the table. Not even Petras looked at me with such hate. “Surely there’s another.” He took a few steps towards the thrashing angel. “We don’t have to do this. We can stop this war. This can be the last Iteration. There doesn’t have to be another…”

He’d hoped his pleas would calm Charoum. They had the opposite effect. They only seemed to bolster the Seraphim’s efforts to break free. The table groaned, buckling in the center. One of the chains snapped. Charoum’s arm shot out, a blur of motion. His long fingers seized a handful of the practitioner’s raven hair in a steely grip. The sorcerer yelped. He tried to pull away only for the Inquisitor to yank him forward with such force, his forehead slamming into the table, his knee digging furrows into the dirt.

“Help me!” he begged the Mother.

“Do you now see?” The Architect knelt at his side, indifferent to his pain. Her eyes reflected his desperation to be free of terror. “Do you now see there’s no other way?”

“There’s always another way!” Gritting his teeth in defiance, he dug his dirt-caked nails into the sadistic angel’s flesh. He yanked back. Never mind that it felt as if his flesh was on fire. Never mind that he feared Charoum might rip his scalp clean off. All he cared about was freeing himself again. You’ll never have me again, this much I can promise you. I’ll eat a bullet before I let that happen. At last he heard a ripping sound. He came free, falling back onto the ground with a grunt. Tears ran down his cheek. Through the blur of pain he could see Charoum held a handful of his hair. The angel’s eyes flashed with smug triumph.

Crowe thought, That’s the last bit he’s going to take from me.

It was all he had time to think. There was another shriek of metal and the Inquisitor rose to his full height, an angel of vengeance and sadism. His powerful wings spanned out to their full width. Crowe watched him tear out the stitches that steeled his mouth shut with his fingers. Trails of blood ran from the torn sutures, turning the milky canvas of Charoum’s flesh red.

The practitioner closed his eyes and laughed. The situation could not be more ridiculous…or more expected. Of course this would happen to me. I never did have the best luck. I always knew I was born to die young…

Before he could finish the thought, he felt the angel’s knees press into his belly. Felt them press all the way down until he couldn’t laugh. Couldn’t breathe. A second later, maybe less he felt Charoum’s cold fingers close around his throat. A throat parched from thirst and screaming. Through the jerky rush of his heart he heard the angel say, “Through your death the Third Iteration is saved…the nightmare will end and at last I will be free of my creator…”

The practitioner didn’t know what the words meant and he didn’t care. He looked up unafraid into the sovereign face of his death and grinned even as the Inquisitor’s blood seeped through the cracks between his teeth. Who says death can’t be merciful? he thought. The corners of his vision darkened; stars exploded before his eyes. Now I can be done with this whole herald business. Maybe in the next Iteration I’ll actually be able to get the job done.

“Would you give up in defeat so easily? Compared to your predecessor you truly are a disgrace.”

The hands around his throat vanished like smoke. There one second and gone the next. He gasped.A burst of air rushed into his lungs. He opened his eyes. The Architect towered over him. She shook her head in disappointment. “This is why you don’t send a boy to do a man’s job.”

He jumped to his feet. It was a trick - it had to be. At any second the Inquisitor’s hands would close around his throat again. He whirled around to face the gurney. He expected to find it overturned, the frame bent into something unrecognizable. Instead it was intact. And there was the angel still strapped to the table, his mouth stitched shut, bound by chains.

Crowe looked at the Architect. His inside turned to ice. Not the chill of fear but the chill of indifference. “You play a cruel game, Mother.” He spoke with the voice of a man who has lived a thousand years too long.

“Sometimes we must do cruel things in order to achieve victory over our enemies. I believe Gyrell has told you something of the like. Cruelty begets cruelty, cruelty begets discontentment and discontentment begets change. Change loops back into cruelty and the cycle continues…Loras knows this. Petras knew it. Even your lumbering lycan knows this. One day you will come to know this as well - if you live long enough. But this is no game.”

The Mother approached the gurney. The bones she wore around hernwists jangled musically in the silence of the grove. This time Charoum did not fight against his restraints. This time he flinched back with a muffled whimper. This time he only had eyes for the Architect. The practitioner felt something stir in him that might have been triumph. He’s afraid of her. He should be. Now he’s the weak one.

“You don’t remember me, do you?” the Mother asked the angel.

The Seraphim blinked in confusion. If he could speak Crowe knew he would have demanded answers and try to gain control of the situation, but with his lips sewn shut again it was futile. Did Charoum sense the futility of his fate as well?

“You are not who you once were, Inquisitor. Neither of us are. We’ve both fallen from grace, haven’t we, Inias?”

Charoum recoiled as if the Mother had slapped him.

It must be one of his names from a previous Iteration. And he doesn’t like it when anyone uses it. Not when he’s spent all this time reinventing himself. Crowe filed this information away for later consideration.

“I, too, have reinvented myself over the many passing aeons. When I last saw you we both walked in different skins and talked with different voices. But in some ways we are not so different. Like so many of the mortals we resent, everlasting change is rare in our lot. You are the perfect example. In your past life you were always so eager to please our beloved creator. How your face would brighten up any time you were given the opportunity to gain his approval…and how you would wither with resentment when you didn’t get it.”

Charoum clamped his eyes shut. A tear rolled down his cheek.

“The need for approval is a feeling I know well. What child doesn’t seek the approval of their parents or feel resentment when they are negligent. But unlike you I never forgot my place. I never forgot that even for an Architect our role in the cycle of life is a repeating loop of self-perpetuating errors. Your error is that like an untrustworthy dog you always want to climb higher than you can reach. So when war broke out in the heavens and Elysia ripped our father from his throne and cast him out into the Void, you did the only thing that was natural to you. You latched onto the closest living source that could grant you a position of power: the Theocracy.”

Charoum sagged in his restraints. It seemed all the fight had drained out of him.

“But I know you, my arrogant brother. You delude yourself into thinking your Crusade against Monad’s people when it is really about vengeance. Your hurt pride. Rather than admit this to yourself you have spent the last Iteration slaughtering every practitioner you cross paths with in search of the herald. You’ve deluded yourself into thinking that by killing him you will be the savior. All so you can lick the shit off Drajen’s bootheel.”

The Architect turned to Crowe. “Do you see now? There is no hope of getting through to him. Even now he only thinks of his own suffering. Never the suffering he has forced upon others. Like you he is trapped in a cycle of suffering only his is of his own making. There is one last thing I want you to see…”

She waved her hand at something behind Crowe.

“This is what happens when you grant mercy of those who do not deserve it.”

We’ve had this conversation before…

Crowe looked down at another blank-eyed corpse of himself. The finger-shaped bruises indicated where Charoum had strangled him to death. And there was another corpse. And another. And another.

This time he didn't feel fear or shock or anger. He only felt a glacial numbness. “How many times has this happened before? How many times have we had this conversation?”

“Too many. Now do you see what has to be done? And why?”

The practitioner nodded. “I do.”

He jerked up with a gasp, gulping for air like a fish pulled from the sea. He shook his head violently to clear it from the fog of the Architect’s vision. A vision that until now had felt indistinguishably real. So much so that he could still feel the sting from where Charoum had ripped out a handful of his hair. He ran his fingers through it. He’d no sooner made the realization that the vision had been nothing more than an illusion when he felt Barghast’s paws close around his arms and haul him effortlessly to his feet.

During the duration of the vision little had changed in reality. Rocks and rotting fruit soared through the air, pelting Charoum’s red-spattered body; he was still bound to the gurney. It took Crowe a moment most of the red was from tomato juice. What blood was visible came from where his flesh had been torn open by rocks.

“Crowe?” Barghast’s snout felt cool with his burning flesh.

“I’m fine, I’m fine.” The practitioner wriggled out of the lycan’s embrace. Too much was happening at once. It’s hard to keep things straight when you’re bouncing from reality to reality. It felt as if his blood on fire. He searched frantically for Loras. To his relief he discovered she had not moved from her position by the gurney. Their eyes met. She nodded with a knowing smile. Now you are where you need to be that smile said.

Crowe’s fingers slid into the pocket of his robes with a will of their own. He pulled out the dagger. The blade, which had become a replacement for his missing fingers, gleamed wickedly in the firelight.

“Twin o’rre?” Barghast whined again.

He might as well have been trying to reach through to a deaf man. Crowe felt the last resolve slip away. I know what must be done now and I surrender myself to it. He drew up to the other side of the gurney. He gripped the dagger with white knuckles. Charoum watched him, wide-eyed and pathetic. His lips quivered, peeling back from shattered teeth. His breath came out in harsh whistling gasps. Had damage been done to his lungs? Crowe felt his lips curl into a smile at the thought.

Someone offered him a goblet of aether wine. He drank from it deeply until it was empty. Someone took it away. He looked at the Inquisitor. “Are you afraid?” He wiped his mouth with a grin. “You should be. I gave you a chance to do things differently. You should have taken it.”

Before he could give himself time to think about what he was doing, the herald drove the dagger to the hilt between the angel’s ribs. The Seraphim made a strangled gasping sound. Crowe yanked the dagger out and drove it in a second time. His arm was a piston, the dagger a serpent that struck quick and hard. Beware the bite of the Lion-Headed Serpent, he thought. Its teeth rends flesh and draws blood.

Only when he was on the verge of collapsing, his robes soaked and clinging to him. Another goblet - or maybe it was the same one - was offered to him. He drank from it until aether wine sloshed down the front of his robes.

Through his drunken haze Gyrell grinned at him, her teeth whiter than bone. Sometimes when he blinked it was the Mother’s face he saw, but most of the time it was Gyrell's. “You are where you need to be. Now you're ready to do what needs to be done.”

Someone handed him a silver pitcher. Its contents reeked of oil. He almost barfed a second time, but clamped his mouth shut to keep it contained. I’ve embarrassed myself enough in front of these people. Rake drew up beside the herald, his face hard as stone. He looked more like the man Crowe and Barghast had met in Timberford. He held a burning torch in his hand; the tendons in his wrist stood out like cords. The undulating flames cast shadows over the grass.

Crowe approached the gurney from the front. Not for the first time he had the sensation he was being driven by an alien force. A force that was both an integral part of him and separate. He tipped the pitcher over Charoum’s head. The black liquid cascaded down the front of the Inquisitor’s front, tainting the white of his feathers. “Can you feel the irony of the situation you find yourself in?” he heard himself say in a mocking voice. “How does it feel to know you will suffer the same fate you have put so many of my people through?”

Rake handed him the torch. He spat on the Inquisitor. “Damn him to the Void. Make him pay for all the blood he has spilled.”

Crowe turned to the crowd. They fell into an expectant silence. Behind him Charoum made sputtering sounds. “Look upon the Inquisitor!” he shouted, his voice hoarse but powerful. “See how the self righteous fall!” He pumped his fist into the air. He took another healthy swallow of aether wine. Once more his skin buzzed. It felt as if an electric charge was building pleasurably behind his eyes. Voices screamed around him - not with hate or despair but with joy. With love. Their love fueled him. “Commander Gyrell is right about one thing!” He flashed her an appraising grin. “Today the era of the herald begins! The era in which we begin fighting back; the era in which we take back what is ours; the era in which we say enough is enough!”

More thunderous applause. More cheers. The sound rose up above him like a wall, crashed over him like a wave. Who knew being the herald could feel so good?

In his hand he held a match. It hadn’t been there a second before, but he didn’t care. In this place we can have everything we need…Everything we want. This is a safe place and here we are not slaves but gods.

He looked back at the Inquisitor. “You reap what you sow.”

He threw the match.