Jackal Among Snakes

“What would you do if Anneliese had been collaborating with Erlebnis the whole time, to entrap you?”

Argrave recognized the Keeper’s voice, but he saw nothing of the man himself. Still, left alone with his thoughts, that proposal stirred an unimaginable burden within. It was so utterly wounding that he could barely conceive of it. Of everyone, Anneliese was the sole person he would trust in any circumstance.

“Look at you… so permeable,” the Keeper mused. He heard the steps of his dress shoes behind, but could not see the man himself. “Well, Raven had an Anneliese of his own. Sonia.”

A woman appeared in Argrave’s sight. Deep black hair, short, and with green eyes… she reminded Argrave of Mina of Veden, somewhat. She had the same guarded playfulness about her.

“Sonia worked alongside Raven as the one to educate him of the teachings of Hause. In the end, it blossomed into something more than teacher and student. But she was loyal to Hause before their relationship. Raven thought the opposite, but Erlebnis knew the truth. He kept it close at hand, waiting for the perfect time…”

The Keeper stepped into view, stroking his finely trimmed gray beard. “Erlebnis developed a gambit. Perhaps it would have succeeded if not for the fickleness of others—gods and humans both.” He stepped up to Argrave. “But people are fickle, and the world is unpredictable. On the eve of when we intended to reveal Sonia was prepared to combat the Smiling Raven alongside all of the other members of Hause’s court… the goddess finally relented. She told Raven what his potential was. She revealed everything that she’d been hiding, shattering our designs with a moment of weakness.”

The Keeper sighed deeply. He pulled up a stool and sat down before Argrave. “Had she remained stalwart, persisting in her refusal to divulge the information… everything might have gone Erlebnis’ way. Raven would have turned traitor, helped undermine Hause’s court, and when the time is right… Erlebnis and his emissaries would’ve helped Raven find the answers he was looking for. As a side bonus, Hause would’ve been enslaved. Instead, a single crack in the glass broke the whole window.”

Argrave’s head whirled somewhat. The Alchemist still had his blessing, ostensibly—didn’t that mean Hause lived?

“You’re rushing to the end of the story,” the Keeper scolded. “Here. Watch,” he commanded with a snap.

Argrave once again viewed the perspective of an emissary. Raven stood there, but he was far different. He was taller, paler, stronger, and more deadly. What had once been a cloak of raven was now the unsightly mass of hair that the Alchemist currently displayed, if less organized than it was in the present. As his mind was changing, his self-image… so too was his appearance.

“Even… Sonia?” Raven questioned, his voice starting to take on the harsher aspects of cracking ice that Argrave so fondly remembered. He wore no more rings, sported no more jewelry, and his clothes were ripped and stained.

“We’re afraid so, Raven.”

up. His skin bubbled, and Argrave thought he might grow nauseous if he were in his true body. “Hause is not a goddess of whimsy, of

no alternative.” It held its arms out. “We cannot say what the nature of your potential is. But that secret denied—can you say they trust you, if they will not let you know yourself? They would

have. Knowing what Argrave knew—that Hause had told Raven his potential—made the emissary’s words take

urged. “And when we return… perhaps we

was once against cast into a dark oblivion. He heard the Keeper’s voice, quiet as a

he knows. But whatever it was, it changed Hause’s actions in his mind from a suspicious tyrant to a concerned and benevolent mother. Perhaps he could have handled that knowledge on his own—resisted his inner nature. But after Erlebnis had spun the tale, it only made Raven think he was a monster that needed to be watched and monitored, lest he do irrevocable damage. The Smiling Raven was actualized,

figure walking through the streets, his body twisting and writhing in

merely a vehicle for alchemy, for

the Smiling Raven. There were hundreds of others alongside it. The Smiling Raven took the spells effortlessly, body morphing and

descended upon a city with brutish strength. Ravens of pure black magic flew out of its body, seizing all living things with reckless abandon. Upon realizing defeat was inevitable, the emissary calmly relayed this information back to Erlebnis… and accepted absorption into the great mass of the Smiling Raven. Argrave’s last perception was the intense

first we saw of his new form. We don’t know what triggered it, what his goal was, or even if he was truly capable of thought in that state. But the Smiling Raven was capable of subsuming everything vaguely alive into its body. Mortals, divine servants, or even the gods themselves… it didn’t matter. He took them all. Potentiation—to make more effective or more active. To

down upon a huge landmass from high in the sky. It was consumed by a swarm of black ravens born of magic, swirling about the sky over a thousand dead cities. They hunted everything—people, animals, even bugs, until nothing remained in this entire continent. He turned the landscape silent and still, consuming all in his wrathful

to fight against the Smiling Raven. They fought hundreds of thousands of his magic-born summons. Some say that the fight against

and it clutched a purple orb in its beak. It held this orb before its chest, where Raven’s face smiled at it in total peace. The perspective that Argrave saw—it

tell the battle was a brutal thing, devastating the lifeless

this battle. Only

subtly took away the purple orb that the Raven had been clutching. With the creature

Raven’s precious love Sonia lives on. The goddess that aided him remains alive. Whatever he did

that Erlebnis had made to breach the orb, to access the goddess trapped within. None of it had even marked the globe. Their long

seem. A new identity, to spare the world the dangers of his mind, and his potentiation.” The Keeper rose. “I can see your questions. Where is this orb, containing Hause’s very essence? Is it in the vault? Is the

Hause is in the vault. I’m permitted to tell you that much—it’s all in this book, after all. She’s a prisoner.

both Mozzahr, and your friend Raven… and we’ll see, won’t we? And maybe you’ll learn what I am. Perhaps you’ll understand why the Alchemist told you…

#####