Even now, seventeen years and dozens of times stepping into the basilica later, Cadrianna was still in awe. The beauty cut through the fabric of revenge and hatred that lined her soul.
“BEAUTIFUL YOUR HUMIRISH ASS. EVERY DAEMON WORTH THEIR CLAWS KNEW NOTHING BUT SCORN FROM EMINENCE. NOCTIS IS THE GREATER OF THE PAIR.”
See, jealous, she thought. And still thinking about my backside.
The Strix huffed, if a daemonic blade could suffer such a feat.
The oracle led her toward a small wooden door. No handle upon it, and the oracle waved her hands, chanted words of aetheurgy and the door opened. Beyond was a short stair, followed by a hall. Silent, the two walked down each. Rooms lined the hall, filled with people, the vast majority were women. Some of the women looked up as they passed, empty sockets searching her. Oracles. A few men and women were scourges, the protectors of the oracles. Each room was small, no bigger than a prison cell. Modest, some with furniture, most with none but a lumpy mattress.
The hall began a slight descent, torches in sconces, flames burning bright as the hall seemed to suck in the dark. Then the stone underfoot turned to dirt. Packed hard, it was, with cracks throughout.
“The Matron awaits you,” the oracle seemed to stoop further within herself as she spoke. “Answer some of your riddles she may. Only the Divine Himself can give the answers you seek.”
The oracle and the assassin came to a door made of sticks. The room beyond was dug from the earth, confined and ovular, especially crude. A few wooden struts embedded into the dirt held the soil in place. There was a table made of twisted branch, chairs of similar yield. A mattress lay on the ground, beaten and old, bugs crawling free. Ankle deep mist circulated the hovel, seeping from painted runes all along the floor and walls.
At the back, near a boiling cauldron upon a small fire pit was a kneeling woman with her back to them. A red haze rose from the pot, it formed like eyes in the smoke. “Why have you come to me now, Cadrianna Nightingale of Thullyr?” The raspy voice was harsh and unforgiving. “I saw your coming, I did.”
The first oracle bowed and shuffled back up the hall, closing the door of sticks behind.
“Matron,” Cadrianna said reverently, bowing her head. “I seek your counsel.”
“Counsel? Do you really believe that?”
“I don’t understand, Matron.”
“Of course, dear child. The world you know is only a remnant of the old. There is more than what is known to you. What you think you seek is not the truth you demand. You want to know about the Seals to Eminence. That is what your Nightingale blood demands. It oozes from you, quenched only by the Seals of the Great Crystal.”
“The Seals? No, I seek to know more about the Gutter King.”
The elder worked her way to standing, brittle bones creaking as she did. Turning, her ancient and wasted face found Cadrianna’s. The Matron was the oldest living oracle in the Fallen’s coven, older than any living creature not a god, older than the Fallen even. Her skin was emaciated and cracked, missing in some places, showing the living muscle underneath. Wispy, near nonexistent hair cascaded down the woman’s blindingly pale pate as if Zenith’s gentle sun had never caressed her. The creature’s lower lip was gone, and where her eyes should have been, were deep, empty holes.
“Come, child of Eminence, sit with me.”
Child of Eminence? She was a child of Oldport Basin in Thullyr, not Eminence. The oracle made her way to one of the twisted wood chairs, easing herself down. Cadrianna took the other one, it groaned under her weight.
The eyeless sockets drew together in what could only be described as a furrow of brow. “You are like a newborn pup in the world.” Her lack of bottom lip showed the muscle underneath as she spoke, drool dribbling.
The Matron grabbed Cadrianna’s hands in her own ice-cold ones. One hand was painted in whitewash, the other blackwash. Withering cold of Death waiting. Vision Form, warped and defiled from Bliss or Brio’s bikromi. Only the oracles of the Divine needed no eyes to see.
“Your power has steadily been growing. Eminence awaits you. Our Divine’s guile upon us. The Seals are your task. Your only goal. Yes, that is what He shows me.”
“But what of the Gutter King? He’s why I’m here.”
“Time will come for him, child. His ruin is bound to yours. Bound to the Seals. Your path is now open before you. The balance between Life and Death is wearing thin. The four Seals will shatter and the draconem guarding them must break. They must shatter for Eminence to be reborn. For a new god to rise. Yes. Holy be thy Fallen. Your blood, your family blood is tied to the Seals. Yes, of Ignis. Nightingale blood. You must remember so the Seal can be broken.”
Cadrianna thought a moment. The oracles only spoke in riddle, only said what they were given by the Divines, were like the bikromi seers, voices to the Pentax. “Is this why my parents were murdered?” Her family name was Nightingale, her parents had been a loyal House in Oldport Basin before they left the City of Sin and moved to the City of Sands after her marriage. Nightingale, O Nocturne, she hadn’t thought of that name in so long. “Why Brynn was taken from me? Why I was trained?”
The Matron smiled the best she could with naught a lip. “The enigma of your past is strong, child. There is only the Seals for you. Temples of the old world. Yes. They await. They await your hand. Your past revealed when they are broken. Eminence demands you, calls you. It is in your blood. Eminence blood. Answer me this, why do you hate?”
“Zenith has forsaken me. Taken my family, left to rot in the ground while I suffer the living. Is vengeance not enough? Nocturne is the only god for me, now.”
“Vengeance merely brings ruin.” The Matron closed her empty eyes and began to hum. It went on and on, their hands conjoined. Finally, she stopped. The cauldron spat viciously in more red smoke. “Our blessed Solanine seeks the one who bears the Eye of the Soul. Seeks the way to break open the gate to Eminence in our blessed father’s name. Find the Seals, they are your destiny. O,” her head lulled. “Yes, this is your true path. By your hand you will help break them. By the blood in your veins, back to Eminence you are charged, Cadrianna of Nightingale blood.”
“And what of the Gutter King? The Fallen wants his blood.”
“And blood you shall give, child. When the last great vvyrms billow forth from the desert sands, his blood shall rain down upon you. The Forgemistress’ tears sparking Her anvil, drenched in blood, by Her Hammer. Blood giveth blood. Blood begat blood. Only with the blood can the Seals be broken. Yes, O yes. You must allow yourself to see without eyes unclouded by hate, Cadrianna of Nightingale blood. Blood rules all.”
The Strix sighed. “THIS IS SOME SHIT IF I’VE EVER SHOVELED SOME.”
XX
Cyan the Defiant
CYAN’S EYES SNAPPED open as the faintest footsteps outside the temple door broke his meditation.
“What is it?” Cyan shouted.
In the throes of his aetheurgic prayers, his senses detected the plodding footsteps beyond the temple doors, a hand raised with the intention of knocking, the hesitant breathing, the reluctance to intrude.
But somehow the voice in response was lost in the aetheric haze.
Kneeling at the base of Justice’s statue within the temple of the Scattered Shards in Drenth, Cyan the Defiant lowered the sleeve of his cassock over the runic tattoos upon his right arm, which faded as he let go of his Shard Form aetheurgy. Straightening his midnight blue cassock as he rose to his feet, he moved across the small temple, refitting his breather mask upon his face, the horsehair bristle swishing lightly. He left his Sharded Gauntlet upon the stone before the statue of the great god to whom he was devoted.
Cyan opened the temple’s door where a young woman—barely older than a girl if he was being honest, which Cyan was in nearly all manners—stood with hands clasped behind her cassocked back, although one elbow was heavily bandaged from a recent shattering. A breather upon her face topped with red, bouncing curls.
“What is it, Harlequin the Bloodless?” he said curtly. “I’m in the middle of my prayers. Has she been prepared for our return, or has she already tried to flee? I wouldn’t be surprised by the latter.” A small shudder ran through him, as he hoped the latter wasn’t the case. He was in no mood for another chase.
