Hubris - 20. Downpour

Crowe and Barghast continued their endless trek North. There was no time to rest; there was no time to heal. The very sky had been split in two with a divide that stretched on as far as the eye could see: a temperamental blue on one side, dark like a bruise on one side of the divide, poisonous red on the other. The work of the necromancers. He knew they would pursue them all the way North if he didn’t shake them off.

He ran his hands along the back of Mammoth’s neck, channeling his mana through his fingertips. Beads of green light trickled from the tips of his fingers before threading through the horse’s fur. It seemed to be working, keeping fatigue for the horse at bay - allowing him to move at a gallop for longer stretches. He wished Petras were here to see him think outside the box. Look what I can do! It was a pitiful thing to want the approval of another, but the thought of his tutor not seeing his accomplishments no matter how small pained him.

A clap of thunder pulled his eyes East. At the center of the red sky a black eye watched them - the epicenter from which the dark mana folded around itself, spreading like a cancer. Coming after them. Soon it would be on top of them. There was nothing he could do about it…except push on. And pray. And try. It’s out of my hands now. Monad will decide our fate. Crowe did his best to ignore the fear that sat deep within his gut. It wasn’t himself he feared for but his companion. No doubt sensing the tension in the practitioner’s body, Barghast had been unusually silent, the only sound the loud rumble of his breath. He gripped the reins in his paws, his arms resting against Crowe’s thighs. The practitioner allowed himself a moment to languish in his warmth.

For now the Passage of Silver had flattened down to a winding thread lined with pine trees on both sides. They swayed in the wind, blowing pine needles in Crowe’s hair, whipping it about in a frenzy. He moved to pull his hood up to keep it from blowing in the Okanavian’s face, but the lycan stopped him, clawed digits closing around his wrists. He made a huffing sound, indicating his disapproval. He nosed at the practitioner, kissing Crowe’s face, sniffing his hair appreciatively.

“Bossy,” Crowe said with a giggle. He tried to grab Barghast’s muzzle but like everything else on the lycan, he couldn’t get his fingers more than halfway around. He’d always believed he’d had big hands with fingers that were too long and skinny for his liking - like everything else about him - but the Okanavian’s immense size made him feel as delicate as a twig. Barghast certainly seemed to enjoy treating him like he was delicate…and Crowe found he didn’t mind so much either. It was nice to be pampered for a change even if the implications of this development in their relationship left him feeling uneasy with uncertainty in those moments when the restlessness of his thoughts held dominion.

He searched around now for something to distract himself from those very thoughts. It was one of the drawbacks of traveling with someone you couldn't understand; it afforded him too much time to think. The state of your mind hasn't exactly been in the best place, ol’ chap, Bennett's voice said in the back of his mind.

Communication. If they were going to survive he would have to learn how to communicate with Barghast beyond just touching and tail wags and pointed looks. We have to start somewhere.

“Barghast.” He wrapped his hand around the lycan's finger and gave it a squeeze.

The lycan perked up immediately, his tail thumping against the tail's flank eagerly. “Twin o’rre?”

Crowe pointed at the nearest tree. “Tree,” he said.

“Tee?”

“No.” He worked to hide a giggle. “Tree.” He turned, grinning, rubbing Barghast's paw. This is a game. We're having fun. Having fun with a red storm of death on their tail no less. He repeated the word slowly, dragging each syllable out. Pointing, rubbing, soothing. Barghast leaned into his touch, eager to learn the game the practitioner was trying to teach him. His gaze would fix intently on the thing the practitioner pointed to before switching just as intently to the sorcerer.

“Tree,” Crowe repeated again. “Tr-ee. Tr-eee.” A shiver raced up his spine that had nothing to do with the cold.

Barghast ran his digits through Crowe’s hair, curling around his finger as if it was threaded gold. In spite of the danger encroaching behind their backs he looked around excitedly at every tree in sight, growling, “Tree…tree…tree…” His tongue dangled out of his mouth, dousing the practitioner with hot saliva. Crowe made a face, pretending to be disgusted, but the lycan’s cheery nature was starting to rub off on him.

It was time to move onto the next word.

He pointed at the bruised half of the sky. “Sky,” he said.

Barghast looked up, his eyes bright with wonder. “Sky?”

The practitioner nodded. “Sky. What do you call it?”

Barghast cocked his head. “Yogagl.”

“What about ‘tree?’ What is tree in Okanavian?”

“Lw’shuggor.”

“I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to pronounce that,” the practitioner muttered under his breath. The language was too strange, a mixture of barks and growls mixed with actual words. Maybe that wasn’t the point…one the many differences between them; he wasn’t meant to speak the language. That didn’t mean Barghast couldn’t learn to speak his. In spite of his canine behaviors, Barghast was not stupid nor could he truly be called a beast. Beasts were incapable of communication. Beasts were not capable of reason.

Barghast pointed again. “Tree.” He pointed a second time, this time over his head. “Sky.” Crowe opened his mouth to praise him but the lycan silenced him by pressing the pad of a digit to his lips. His eyes bore intently into Crowe’s. “Sky,” he said.

“Eyes,” the practitioner corrected.

“Eyes?” Barghast frowned.

“Eyes,” the sorcerer confirmed with a nod.

A mischievous glint entered the Okanavian’s eyes. He kissed Crowe’s right eye. “Sky!” he proclaimed. He kissed the other. “Eye!”

A jolt of thunder drew their eyes skyward. Mammoth screamed, breaking back into a full gallop. Trees raced past them in a blur. Raging gusts of wind ripped Crowe’s hood back.

Mammoth jumped up on his hind legs, almost tossing his riders from his back. Barghast clung to the massive shire horse with his thighs, pressing his belly against Crowe's to keep him from falling off. He barked the Okanavian equivalent of a curse. Crowe pressed his hands against the horse's heaving sides. Through their physical contact he could feel the horse's fear, a black blind panic that made the horse want to run and run and run. Through the fear he felt the horse's exhaustion…or maybe it was his own fatigue, it was hard to say. He'd pushed the horse harder than any rider had before. And he wasn't a horse meant for galloping long distances; he was a workhorse bred for carrying great weight. I know you're tired, Crowe told the horse through their connection; the world shook all around them. I am too. I am sorry this has become your life, that I have dragged you into mine, but in the name of Monad, you have to keep going. You have to keep fighting.

He could feel the horse - and himself - begin to calm when a flash of lightning struck a tree to their right. Hearing the groan of snapping wood, Crowe pulled on the reins hard. Mammoth managed to back away just in time to avoid the tree that crashed to the ground in their path. Another roar filled the sky. The practitioner felt something wet hit his face, red blooming across his field of vision. He ran a finger across his face. It came back red. His stomach clenched. Blood.

A crimson cloud spread over their heads like a rose blooming outward. A torrential downpour of blood rain plummeted from the sky. Crowe snapped the reins and Mammoth burst forward, leaping over the tree in a single bound. Another burst of light struck another nearby tree. It burst apart in a cloud of splinters. Crowe felt some sharp slice into his cheek. At his back Barghast whimpered, clinging to him like a child who is being pulled away. “Twin o’rre,” he whined.

“I know,” Crowe hissed through a shuddering breath. He freed a hand to grab Barghast’s paw. It was a futile attempt at comfort but he didn’t know what to do. Drops of blood rain fell on him, dripping down in his eyes, blinding him, choking him with the unpleasant sickly taste of copper. I need you to be brave. I need you to be the warrior I know you can be. With each other and through the night of Monad we can get through anything. He wanted to say these words so the lycan could hear his voice, but he couldn’t speak. He could only drive them forward in an attempt to get away from the rain.

They didn’t make it far before Mammoth stopped with a frightened wicker. He spun around, prancing in spot with Crowe and Barghast clinging to him like fleas. Crowe snapped the reins as hard as he could, no longer caring if he was hurting the horse or night. Black terror eclipsed him, eclipsed his prayers. It took him a moment to realize the reason they weren’t moving was because they were sinking. Sinking into the ground. It folded beneath the shire horse’s hooves. Black ooze bubbled up from the earth. There was no getting away from the stench of sulfur.

“Hold onto me, Barghast!” the practitioner gasped. “Whatever you do, don’t let go!”

He slammed his palms down on the horse’s back, charging his hand with his suffocating fear. His hands shimmered blue with mana. Fight, Mammoth. Fight with all your strength. Fight if you want to live.

The horse did want to live. He kicked with his hooves, his nostrils flaring. All Crowe could see were the whites of his eyes. They were sinking lower and lower. The black tar was up to his ankles now. Black hands reached up from the pit, reaching for them, pulling the horse deeper. Pitted faces gazed emptily at them, moaning. Begging for relief from eternal suffering. Crowe couldn’t help them. Their souls had been lost to the evils of Inferno long ago. There were no prayers he could offer them. There was no salvation to be had.

“Monad, help me,” he whispered. “May your flame burn bright within me so that I may stave off the darkness…”

Once the prayer left his lips Monad’s fire burned bright within him, white and hot. When he opened his eyes they glimmered with a celestial incandescence. The black muck was up to their hips now. Mammoth had stopped fighting the damned as they pulled them deeper into the earth. Barghast’s cries of “twin o’rre!” only reached the furthest part of his mind. It eclipsed the fear he’d seconds ago, filling him with strength, filling him with courage. It was intoxicating. Waves of white mana trickled down his hands like water, seeping down the sides of the horse’s flanks. Mammoth’s eyes burned white as well, reflecting the act of transference from Crowe to the mount. The horse brayed, kicking harder than ever with a renewed vigor.

The black souls writhing in the pit continued to pull at them, relentless, desperate. Unintelligible words from countless different languages sounded from clogged throats. No matter how alien the sound was the meaning was the same: Help me.

Slowly but surely Mammoth dug himself out of the tar, hooves digging divots in the soggy ground. Blood marked everything, making the world glisten and stink.

“Yah, yah!” Barghast took the reins from Crowe’s hands, steering the mount through the downpour.

Crowe could feel Monad’s fire dying. No…don’t leave me. Not now. I need you. He reached inside himself, trying to stoke it back into life to no avail. His prayer had been answered, nothing more. The price of channeling Monad’s light had not come without a cost. Its death left him feeling hollowed. Drained. He ached in a thousand places, cold and sticky with dried blood. He wanted nothing more than to crawl out of his skin. He could feel exhaustion pulling at him but he forced himself to stay awake. He had to. Mammoth and Barghast were depending on him.

A mile later another blessing in the appearance of a chapel. Barghast barked something in Okanavian, pointing at the windows. The practitioner could just make out the bare flicker of light through the blood-flecked crystal glass. A shudder of hope attempted to travel down his spine but he stopped its course. He’d been disappointed before. Sure enough they were now close enough to the windows he could see why he felt that way.

The first window showed Elysia, the beloved matriarch of the Theocracy’s domineering religion. It showed her gazing down the world in a ring of light, with her people watching from down below. Winged creatures that resembled Seraphim circled around their matriarch to join her in the enactment of her retribution. Between the matriarch and them a single glow of white light descended into a vast pit in the center of the Earth: The Void. Every detail stitched together to form a narrative: The coming of Elysia at the end of every Iteration, to throw Monad down into the Endless Pit where he would remain until the next cycle. Where the origin of their eternal feud came from was never said - always left in shadow.

“Barghast,” he said with intent.

The lycan’s ears swiveled in his direction. “Crowe?”

“We need to be careful.” The practitioner pointed at his eyes with both fingers, then at the chapel. “Eyes.” He stood with his back straight and his hands clenched into fists where they were visible, letting his body language say what he could not with his words. Barghast nodded, his ears flicking towards the chapel. He reached for his rifle.

Crowe hovered on the edge of uncertainty a moment longer. His shoulders ached under the burden of the decision. It was exhausting always being the one to call the shots. Being a stranger in a foreign land, how could he expect Barghast to know what to do? I'm little more than a stranger myself. What fools Bennett and I were thinking it would be to venture out into the world. A voice in the back of his mind wondered if Bennett had ever made it to Caemyth, if he was still fighting the Theocracy with the rebels…or if he'd been burnt to ash at a pyre.

It was a Theocracy church they stood before. The church of the enemy.

His instinct was to keep going - brave the blood storm. The last thing he wanted was for the loyal subjects of Pope Drajen to call attention to his whereabouts. And yet the nearest settlement, Boar's Town, a town known for its logging industry and the trade it pulled in, was still two days away. Whether Monad is with me or not, I can't push myself that far. Certainly not Mammoth. We need a night's rest.

Before he could act on his decision, the doors of the church flew open. The light of a lantern appeared in the dark, revealing herself to be a young woman around Crowe's age.

“Hurry!” the round faced girl shouted, standing under the eaves of the church. “I cannot bring you and your lycan friend into the church but you can all take shelter in the stables tonight!”

Something Bennett used to say about not kicking a gift horse in the mouth flashed through Crowe’s mind but the words slipped from his mind like wet yarn. Gesturing for Barghast to lower his rifle and follow, the practitioner pulled Mammoth along after the young woman. She moved hurriedly, hugging her robes around herself. Fat droplets of rain spread along the fine silver silk of her cincture.

They stuck close to the shadows of the building, their shoulders brushing the wall. The young woman hissed something under her breath, waving a hand for them to stop. They froze before a large crystal glass window. The reason for their sudden stop presented itself in the form of a human shadow. It stood, hunched over and bony, thrown into distortion by the light at its back. The outline of a candle burned in its hands. Barghast growled low under his breath, his eyes drilling holes through the glass. The woman watched him from over her shoulder; all the blood drained from her face.

“Barghast.” Crowe took a step towards the Okanavian. Barghast’s hackles were raised. His tail pointed straight up in the air. Not for the first time, the practitioner wondered what it must be like for Barghast to be in this strange place, unable to understand the language or the things happening around them. He couldn’t wait to get behind closed doors where they could be alone. He pressed his fingers into Barghast’s fur where it was thickest at his chest, combing through it. He could only imagine how the lycan must itch. They were both covered from head to toe in black tar and blood.

The effect was immediate. A rumble of pleasure sounded deep within his chest. His tail drooped down to the blood-sodden earth. “Twin o’rre,” he rumbled.

Crowe shushed him. He dropped his voice to a whisper. The shadow had moved on but the girl still watched them, wide-eyed and frightened. He turned back to her, biting back a scowl of frustration. “We’re right behind you, we just need a minute. He has no idea what’s going on. He’s just scared.”

“Oh, aye,” the girl said with a jerky nod.

Back to the lycan. “We have to be quiet,” he whispered. He resumed stroking the lycan’s fur, digging in lightly with his fingers. “Hang in there. We’ll be alone soon and I’ll scratch your belly some more.”

He knew Barghast couldn’t understand him, so he took his finger, coaxing him with touch. Barghast’s paw engulfed the lower half of his arm. Crowe could feel the tension in his fingers. “Crowe,” he said amiably enough. It was enough to get him going. The nun let out an audible sigh of relief.

Following the nun, Crowe led Barghast by the hand through a courtyard. Blood spilled over the sides of a fountain in the shape of Elysia’s torch. Reluctantly, Crowe removed his hand from Barghast’s grip long enough to help the nun open the stable doors.

“What is your name?” he asked her.

“Elise,” she said. She shot another frightened look at Barghast. She turned back to Crowe. “You’re a practitioner, ain’tcha? Who else would travel with a lycan?”

Crowe bit back a curse. “I am,” he admitted reluctantly. “Is it that obvious?”

Elise wrinkled her nose. “If you didn’t have the beast with you, it wouldn’t. You should get rid of him.”

The practitioner could not keep the anger from entering his voice whether she was helping them or not. “He’s not a beast. He is capable of reason and morality just like you or I. Though you and I stand on different sides of a great divide, I can assure you we mean no harm. We simply need a place to rest for a few hours and then we will move. However, if our presence here makes you feel uncomfortable we will leave this instant.”

“Just until morning then.” The girl looked up at the sky. She looked like she’d run through a battlefield. Crowe knew they looked worse. Barghast and he had literally pulled themselves out of a pit of Inferno. “We’ve been cursed, haven’t we?” she asked in a quiet voice. In the glow of the lamp the practitioner could see Elise’s skin was a healthy olive color.

“Yes.”

“It keeps spreading,” she said gravely. “Further than the eye can see.”

He led Mammoth and Barghast into the stable. Three out of four of the stalls were filled with horses. They swayed anxiously, their ears splayed in different directions, no doubt anticipating the next blast of thunder. “In you go,” Crowe whispered, patting the horse affectionately on the flank. “You’ve earned your rest.” The horse had earned his rest for the next week but the practitioner was not in the position to let him have that luxury.

Elise had not moved from her spot in the doorway. Her eyes remained fixed on the roiling clouds above their head. Puddles of blood sloshed down the gutters of the church, pooling on the ground; it looked as if the very earth itself was bleeding. “Why are you helping us?” Crowe asked. “By the decree of the Theocracy you should have alerted the Theocracy the moment you realized who we were.”

“Before this night I would have,” Elise said. “But this curse has been placed on lycan, practitioners, and the Theocracy alike. None of us are safe from Inferno’s wrath.” She clutched at her necklace. “The Iteration’s end is close at hand and we are all paying for our sins…no matter who we pray to for comfort at night.” Her voice was littler more than a silky whisper but her eyes held his intently. In the luminescence cast by her lamp, the practitioner could see she wore a chain around her neck with the torch of Elysia resting against her robes. A drop of dried blood smeared across the charm. Like his faith in Monad, misplaced as it may be, the teachings of Elysia was probably all this young girl had ever known. He was grateful to her for granting Barghast and he mercy at all.

“I must be getting back,” she said after a long, uncomfortable moment of silence in which he’d thought she’d changed her mind and had decided to alert the Theocracy after all. “Father Monroe will get suspicious if I’m gone too long. He doesn’t get around as well as he used to but he still has a keen mind. I will bring back food and clean clothes when I can.”

“Please, don’t trouble yourself anymore than you already have on our account.”

This earned him a small smile that eased the cramp in his belly nonetheless. Here was a soul just trying to help other souls in need; faith had nothing to do with it. A reminder that there were still kind souls in this world. She slipped out of the stable, leaving Crowe and Barghast alone.

The howl of the wind, the particular way it made the walls of the stable shudder around them pulled at his exhausted mind…pulling him back to a stormy night not so unlike this one.