Hubris - Prologue. The Bells of Inferno

Ding-ding.

Inferno called to him from the next room. A thin ringing sound that pierced the shadows. He rolled onto his side, closing his eyes. Already he could feel his body's impulse to fulfill a duty he’d carried out a thousand times over, at war with a heaviness so complete it weighed him down like an anchor. Hunger gnawed at his hollowed belly, keeping sleep’s sweet relief at bay. He listened to the wind buffet the house, stirring it into creaky lethargic life. Above his head a spider worked meticulously, spinning web into shape. He imagined the walls of the house folding on top of him. Will it hurt? Will I finally be free?

Eventually the bell’s call reached him again, more insistent. He wanted to clap his hands over his ears. He wanted to scream. Anything to block out the sound.

Crowe dragged his body to its feet. He let out a deep, shuddering breath. The threat of angry tears stung his eyes. He ran his fingers along the trinket dangling from his neck. Monad forgive me. I can't do this anymore.

Floorboards squeaked beneath his feet as he entered the corridor. Step after agonizing step. He pushed the door open cautiously, a frown screwed on his face. The chill inside the room was arctic, turning Crowe’s breath into white clouds of mist. Petras watched him from the bed, not screaming or thrashing about as he did when the fits took him. Eyes blank and unrecognizing. A mind dulled by insanity. The bell rested innocently on the bedside table.

Crowe crossed the room to the bed. He said nothing to the cripled man. The bedpan was full. Down the stairs to the floor. Yank hard to open the door frozen shut. Each movement preordained, the echo of an action from the past. Out the piss goes, blown sideways by the wind. A wind so strong, so depressingly cold it enflamed the cheeks. Back into the house, into the shadows he ducked to carry out his duties.

Get a fire going. Set a pot of water over the flame to boil. Choke down a slice of buttered bread gone stale with salted pork. Indulge in an aether joint. Breathe in the sweet, piney aroma of the herb. He closed his eyes and imagined going to places he would never see. Even now Petras waited for him. Depended on him. What kind of life is this?

Steep the tea. Heat up the dregs of remaining broth. Put the dishes on the tray. Haul the tray up the stairs. Patiently spoon-feed the mad man every drop of broth until the bowl is empty. Day after day until the days turn into weeks, weeks into months, months until the change of seasons. Listen to the house shudder. Listen to the echoing screams within his own mind. Only now when he entered the room things were different. A shift in the air felt rather than witnessed. A heavy silence that made him stop in the doorway, tray in hand. That made him look around to make sure the house was still there, that made him look in the mirror to make sure he was still there. He hated the boy who looked back at him. The boy with tangled black hair, with skin so pale he looked so thin. A starved bone-thin body with long spider arms. Haunted blue eyes that looked back at him doggedly. A youthful face aged by servitude to another. The lion-head serpent at his throat glinted wickedly, making a mockery of his faith. He wanted to hurl the tray at the mirror, break the glass. He cut the thought off before it could finish playing out in his mind

Still that oppressive silence. It swelled, filling the room.

“Petras?” he croaked, voice dusty from nonuse.

The man stared up at the ceiling, unmoving, unblinking.

The chair waited obediently by the side of the bed. Crowe sat down. He watched the man, his face remote. In the few minutes since he’d left his bed, Petras had passed away. May you find splendor in the Eternal City.

He waited to feel something, anything. Even relief would have been welcome. He felt nothing. He wanted to sleep. He couldn't sleep. You have work to do. It struck him then that he didn't have anyone to help him with the task. No one wanted to help him. Not even Bennett who had run off to play rebel in a revolution to which there was no victory. An ember of resentment sparked the darkness inside him.

“You bastard,” Crowe said to the body cooling beneath the sheets. “Look at the mess you’ve left me with. How am I supposed to clean it up?”

The inevitable wave of panic crashed down on top of his head with apocalyptic force. His lungs were seized by the iron grip of a tyrant. His body collapsed on the ground, the world shrinking to a funnel view of the floorboards. Doggedly he crawled across the floor until his back was pressed up against the splintered wood of the door. He’d been seized by such fits of inexplicable panic before; fear was a beast that always lingered at the fringes of his periphery. The solution in the end was not to fight the panic, but to let it engulf him completely. To let it pull him into its swirling depths.

When the spell passed Crowe staggered to his feet. It doesn't matter how you get him down the stairs. No one’s going to know. No one’s going to care. This is my last burden to bear.

It was impossible to lift Petras out of bed. The old man was heavier in death than he’d ever been in life. The practitioner had no choice but to roll him up into the carpet and push him onto the floor. The body landed with a thudding sound that made him think of breaking bone. Crowe glared at the corpse, flicking back sweaty locks of hair out of his eyes. “As ever you are no help,” he muttered.

The corpse did not offer up a response in its defense.

There was no choice but to drag the old man out of the house by his feet. Even this crude act done out of necessity took all of his strength. Teeth bared, eyes slanted against the ache. Breath coming out in harsh, whistling gasps. Cold sweat dripping down in between his shoulder blades, gumming him up. Keep going. Don't stop. Can't stop.

Under the exhaustion a relief to be done. What came after was a blank canvas. What would he paint on it? Each thud of the head on the stairs made something inside of him break until once more the tears burst forth like a dam. Tug, pull, heave, the taste of freedom so close he could taste it. He kicked the front door open. The wind whipped at him with razor-sharp fingers.

He crossed the unforgiving soil to the shed. Inside he found the shovel. He picked a spot beneath the skeleton of an old apple tree. He pushed the curved edge of the spade into the unyielding earth. For hours Crowe toiled away, forcing his way deeper into the earth. He worked with the desperate haste of a man who knows his tenure is almost up. When his work was done, the practitioner turned to face the body, shrouded in a thick patchwork quilt

For the final time he stopped, pushing until it felt as if his heart would burst from the effort. At last the corpse fell into the grave, rolling into the bowels of the earth like a log.

By the time Crowe finished shoveling the soil back into the grave, darkness fell, inky and absolute as the Void. He raised his head towards the star-dappled sky, letting a gust of wind sweep across his sweat-sheened face. He returned to the shed once more to rid himself of the spade and grab the two remaining canters of lamp oil.

He ventured back into the house for the final time. A house that was now rightfully his, if he’d wanted it. He didn't. For too long he’d been boxed in by its moldering walls. He packed what provisions he could in a large duffel bag. There wasn't much. He’d run out of the provisions borne from harvest long ago, living off what he could from the wildlife in the woods. The last thing he needed was his staff resting against the wall in between the door: five feet in length, carved from the thick bark of an aether tree. Sigils carved into the wood glowed with an inner light. He strapped it to his back with a leather holster.

He struck the match. TANNHAUS INDUSTRIES loomed at him from the side of the box. For the first time in days the house was completely still, as quiet as an indrawn breath. “May you find splendor in the Eternal City,” he said. Flames sprouted into life the instant the burning match struck the lake of oil. Crowe exited the house on a stream of smoke.

Crowe lit a joint, rewarding himself with a long drag. He’d earned it. Tendrils of black smoke rolled from the house’s open door. He cried hot tears, feeling the closest to happy he’d felt in a year. His happiness was short-lived, the punchline of a cruel joke delivered like a fatal gunshot wound. A deep cataclysmic roar drew his eyes skyward.

A storm cloud materialized directly over the house, blooming into being like a tumor. It swelled, it's underbelly pregnant with blue flashes of destruction. Never before had the practitioner seen a cloud so large, a cloud so magnificent. The rational part of his mind that remained after months of isolation told him this was not natural phenomena; thunderclouds do not form this quickly. He knew he should move, he knew he should step out from underneath the thunderclouds wrath. But where else was there to go? It spread like a cancer over the trees, sweeping them back with a bale of wind that threatened to knock Crowe off his feet.

In the wind he heard voices raised in symphonic harmony. They soared over the shriek of the wind, over the clash of lightning that would pound the ground into submission. A vortex formed at the center of the cloud, forming a dark tunnel that yawned open like a hungry mouth. Beyond its maw existed the blackest of black, the Void. Crowe stared at it, horrified, and knew - somehow - that if he were to be sucked into the maw, he would fall through an endless darkness. And yet somehow his feet remained anchored to the ground even as the earth around him was whipped into a frenzy, trees dancing in benediction beneath a tyrant force that knew only witless hunger; and still the house burned, flames sprouting from shattered windows like savage fingers plunging fatally into open eye sockets.

A pinprick of light appeared at the center of the vortex. It grew larger, shooting towards the opening like a comet, the tunnel widening in anticipation of its arrival. Through the rent a city appeared in a halo of celestial light that bathed the ground below.

Metropolis! The Eternal City. The city from which my people fell, exiled to a life of slavery.

The holy city balanced atop jagged mountains of black rock: a jumbled sprawl of labyrinthine streets and monuments that towered beneath the brim of an alien skyline. Smoky tendrils of fog slithered over bridges and temples in an effort to devour them whole.

A nameless dot rose above the city’s spires. Crowe caught the membrane-flicker of wings as it drew closer. Slowly the being took shape, multiple arms sprouting from a narrow torso. The figure dropped through the rent, its descent slowing. Delicate features studied the practitioner from behind a veil of silver hair that trickled past the visitor’s shoulders like flowing water - long, dark lashes, soft almond-shape eyes, full lips - gave the creature an androgynous look. Neither or and both at the same time. This was a creature who had existed long before mortals were defined by such limits, its smooth skin unblemished by age, by war. It was adorned in heavy battle armor made out of gold alloy. Crowe suspected no mortal blade was capable of piercing its outer shell. A great sword was sheathed at its back.

The practitioner only knew one word for the creature who had graced him from the heavens, “Seraphim.”

Angel. Messenger of Monad. Warrior. Servant. A being who carried out the bidding of another greater far more powerful being. And yet even beneath its unreadable gaze, Crowe could feel his own powerlessness in its wake. Upon realizing the futility of his existence, Crowe regained function of his limbs and stooped in a bow.

Still airborne, the Seraphim raised a hand. “Rise to your feet,” the angel said in a voice that echoed with waves of power. Crowe rose to his full height. The angel reached out to him, slowly drifting closer. Crowe sensed no malignance in this gesture; if the Seraphim had the inclination to destroy him, it could have done so. The practitioner’s feet moved of their own accord, free from his mind. He hesitated only briefly before taking the offered hand.

The angel’s flesh felt radiant against Crowe’s, sparking the nerves in his hands back to life. Warm fingers tightened around his wrist, a grip strong enough to hold him in place. Crowe knew he would not be able to pull away if he wanted to. Not until the Seraphim had delivered its message.

The moment flesh made contact with flesh a hole opened inside the practitioner’s mind. A hole into which a flood of phantom images, sensations, and sounds fell through like the arrival of the apocalypse. Explosions of gunfire; the earth-shaking detonation of cannons, of dynamite; the sound of bayonets slicing through air, through living flesh. He saw men dying in fields by the hundred thousands. Dying in puddles of their own blood. Their own shit. Men who turned back into little boys before the curtains closed. Women who were forced to step into the boots of men in the wake of their absence. Children whose lives were snuffed out before they could ever truly begin to bloom. It shocked him to his core like white-hot needles stabbing into his soul. He tried to yank his hand away but of course the Seraphim did not let go. Would not let go.

The Seraphim’s voice cut through the cacophony like a knife. “Once your people walked the streets of Metropolis, kings and queens and gods. Divine in their own rights. They looked down on the cosmos from atop towers made of diamond, made of pearl. For many eons this was so until they were cast exiled to the material universe where they wilted over time.”

In his mind Crowe saw the statues of revered deities crumble to dust, saw blood so red it was almost black flow through the streets and gutters of Elysia like an open river.

“For a time they flourished in this new world, but the world you call home is not meant to be. The world you know is a mistake. Monad’s people suffer in ways they were never meant to. They have been mocked, beaten, tortured, raped, and enslaved.” The Seraphim’s voice trembled with such anger, Crowe almost cried out in fear. “Worry not, for the suffering of Monad’s people has not been in vain. Though he still sleeps, the time for Monad’s awakening draws close. Upon his awakening this world - this mistake - will cease to exist. In its wake he will build a new world. A better world.”

“I don’t understand! What do you want of me?”

The Seraphim’s eyes bore into his like burning embers. “You are the herald, the mouth through which Monad will speak. The flaming sword that breaks chains and delivers swift, bloody justice. You are the beacon that will lead Monad’s people out of exile. So it has been decreed.”

An invisible cord pulled at Crowe. He soared over a long winding road that linked the North and South - the Daminion Highway. He saw a small town gripped by the shadow of a hungry beast; somehow he knew the town’s name was Timberford. Further North, on the outer edge of the Mirror Expanse he saw the ruins of a dead city whose name he did not know. He glimpsed the inside of a chamber where a woman, her face obscured by a cowl, waited in a dark chamber…waiting for him. “Your path has been set for you. Your pilgrimage begins now.”

At last the angel released the practitioner. Crowe fell to his knees at the messenger’s feet, weeping fresh tears. The Seraphim watched him as it backed several paces away, indifferent to his fear in the decree of this impossible task. The practitioner could only watch as the Seraphim spread its wings and took flight, soaring back towards the vortex. Once the angel breached through to the other side, Crowe was rewarded with a final glimpse of Metropolis’ majestic streets. It shrank, receding back into the Void, celestial light flickering as if Monad’s divine hand muffled it. With a final pop of air, the vortex at the center of the cloud folded in on itself before blinking out of existence. By the time the time awareness returned to him, the house that had once contained his life had burned down to cinders. It wouldn’t be long before rain and snow swept the last of what remained away.

The momentary freedom he’d found was gone - snatched out of his hand by Monad himself. Petras in his grave laughing at me right now, he thought grimly. A far greater burden than caring for another had been placed on his shoulders.

Again he could hear Inferno calling for him.