Red Chapel Series (3-Part)
Just a wrap up of an old plot meant to initiate Rakvald into Transmutation.
First in the Series: Baptism
Second in the Series: Communion
14th of Cylus 720
She wanted to hear him confess. What did he have for her? Nothing! He hadn't done anything to deserve any of this mistreatment, this foul twisting of his now thrice corrupted soul. What more could she visit upon him, how many indignities would he be made to bear before she was satisfied. And yet she asked only words, of 'confession'. He would not give them to her, he decided. He would wring her neck, if he had to claw back every ounce of control from the wretched blood witch himself. He would do it, but first he needed to distract her with his own words.
He searched his mind for anything that might possibly placate her, or throw her off or confuse her. Anything to buy time before his will returned, and the shackles that bound him were no longer chaffing on his skin. He began healing nonetheless, physically at least, as his graft spark came to the defense of its host. He bore the gift of Graft silently, letting it do its work and seal what wounds and scatches he'd accumulated in the course of their abuse.
Finally, he sighed, not having come up with anything clever to retort. He wished only to be rid of this situation, and get back to his life, his wife, and his land. He hadn't come to Quacia only to be ambushed just yards from the gate. This was his home, and he wouldn't bear the Theocratum's tyranny.
”Confess? What should I confess?” Rakvald asked, his brow furrowed deeply in concentration and thought. He didn’t know what this witch wanted, or what she was playing at. What was her game? Was she actually trying to convert him? He could’ve scoffed.
Rakvald stared incredulous at the woman through his tears. What crime had he committed, that he brought this now on himself? Had he really gone so far astray that such a creature as this now stood in jjudgment over him?
”What do I confess?” He repeated, clenching and unclenching his fists, and hitting them against the ground in futile anger. He wanted to test the integrity of her skull on that floor. He wanted to hear her bones make a musical pop as he crushed her in a deadly embrace. Yet he was impotent here, his actions closely watched by the Tribunals guarding the witch.
He felt the unexplicable soothing of hi smind, as she worked her magic again. ”You must pay for your crimes, Rakvald. They are many. You wield the power of the Wounded God with not a care for its sacredness. Using it as a tool, without reverence. This alone is cause for punishment. You take the forms of wounded animals and men. You are a reborn…”
”No longer. I gave up my Immortality at the altar of a false god. So strike me down.” Rakvald had lost patience with this diatribe. He wanted it over, and so if admitting to sacrificing something to one of the Immortals sufficed, he would take it. He would condemn himself if it meant quitting the company of these bleeders and wretches.
Her eyes flashed in anger, yet she did not strike him. She glowered over him though, causing him to look down in shame that was manufactured, transferred from her tangle to his. He shook his head violently, trying to dispel the intrusion, yet he could not. Not in his weakened state. They had him firmly in their trap still. His fingernails scraped against the ground, as if trying to find some purchase, some meditative focus that he could use to compartmentalize his suffering.
Yet his tears were drying. Through his resistant speech he was beginning to reform his backbone. It wouldn’t be long before her control faltered entirely. He waited for that moment, even as he realized she must be aware of his plotting, his hidden anger, as she probed his mind with her emotionally charged, groping magics. Her spark was like a worm, creeping its way into his mind with degenerate abandon.
But she didn’t give him the satisfaction of seeing his own hands wrap around her neck. Before he could even gather his wits, she stared at him a long moment, glowering over him. Her red eyes seemed to draw out the very life from the air, as she began gathering red ether around her. The ether coalesced and formed around her hands, and she shot a disintegrating ether bolt toward the mage, charging it with the necessary energies for an initiation. One that was fully intended to fail, or so it seemed.
Rakvald took the bolt just below the naming rune on his neck, in the center of his collarbone. Slowly, excruciatingly it began to tear him apart, from the smallest particle to the largest parts, it twisted and turned his fleshy material makeup to literal shreds. His Graft spark roared most objectionably, crying out against this intrusion to their soul space. The Becoming spark hid, afraid of the power that had entered their midst. Meanwhile, the dormant Hone spark stood silent, observing what transpired in the shared space of Rakvald’s soul.
His life and potential flashed before him. The memories that belonged to his ‘fathers’ flashed before his eyes, his lost Immortality, the taste of a god’s flesh. So crunchy, it made him feel alive in the moment, but oh so sick in the next. The pain he’d suffered in the Crack in the Wall had been nothing compared to this. He felt like every part of him was on fire and freezing all at once. Feeling all sensations and qualities. This was well beyond even the pain of the original becoming initiation that Zarik had administered.
His flesh burned, his blood chilled in his veins, his organs twisted and pulsed painfully. Yet he would not be destroyed. He determined, by sheer force of will he would endure. He used a similar mental technique that Zarik had taught him back when he initiated into Becoming. He remembered himself, who he was, and kept that thought in mind even as the magics of the blood witch were destroying him.
The transformation was beyond any he’d experienced, yet it didn’t abate with the following bit or the next, but stretched like a practiced torturer’s session well into the breaks. At turns burned and frozen, at others crushed and then pulled apart. Every pain was his, every sensation and degredation and shame brougth him back to center. This was Rakvald’s pain, he would see it through.
Yet in the last moment, before he could attain apotheosis, he knelt on the ground, and coalesced back into his original shape. He had survived the initaition, or so it seemed. Then, in the next moment, without willing it, he slipped into the Untold, crossing into it. The Veil parted for him, and he vanished from the red chapel, away from the sight of those baleful blood priests, and their sacred witch. Then, he was gone, into Emea.
There, he found a measure of peace and quiet that had eluded him within the Witch’s grasp. Yet this portion of the Untold didn’t provide much in the way of pleasant scenery. He saw a land, grown over with deadened vegetation, populated by unfeeling monstrosities. He thought perhaps he’d slippedinto a nightmare while crossing into the untold for a moment, but no beast made to stalk him here. He was alone.
So he walked through the Untold, heedless of the events that had only just transpired, or the fledgling spark that lay within his soul, incubating.
His feet took him far into that red night, far to the north and east. Eventually, a road came clear in front of him. He followed that path, winding through the Untold, and losing a bit of himself with every step he took. One memory after another faded away, until he reached the end of the journey, and there was nothing left to give.
But Rakvald was not gone from the world, nor rendered a Ether Wraith, stalking Emea for magic users as many other failed transmutation initiations were rumored to be. He did drift on the Untold, crossing into it at the last moment, just as the initiation took hold, and overcame him, reforming him, rebuilding him. Yet in that moment, he lost sight of who he had been. Amnesia set in, as he hurltled through the Untold, into a distant land far from that of the Quacian Blood Priests.
So he awoke, nameless, knowing nothing of who he was, where he came from. Only his reflexive awareness of his magics allowed him to move forward, in that warehouse in Beacon… It wouldn’t be until much later that he realized the presence of a fourth spark, sharing space with his soul.
Continued here...
