Jackal Among Snakes

Argrave reached out to touch Vasquer alongside Elenore and Orion, expecting to feel what she usually offered as greeting—a matriarchal love, far unlike anything else in its intensity. They had come here alone to deliver a brief message and have a slightly longer reunion chat, then return to check on the parliament. But instead of unending love, gray solemnity welled up into Argrave’s being. He suspected his siblings received the same thing, for he felt their puzzlement with Vasquer as their nexus.

Before he could offer any of his own thoughts or memories, Vasquer gave one of her own. Lindon’s visit. He found himself made superfluous as a messenger, and heard some fantastical details about this treaty of ages past—like the fact Lindon had no physical form, or that the Gilderwatchers were what maintained a universal language so that all might communicate with ease. This knowledge was extremely frightening to him—it meant that the Gilderwatchers quite literally influenced the minds of anyone and everyone, eliminating the development of separate dialects or independent languages.

Argrave expressed he felt useless as a messenger. Then, instead of bringing a message, Vasquer conveyed one to them.

Memories played at the corners of Argrave’s mind, tinged with Vasquer’s caution. She asked for his earnest attention, and requested he make no rash decisions. She bridged Elenore’s and Orion’s psyche to his own, and they both gave encouragement to accept this vow. Argrave did. Then, with the eagerness of a stump, Vasquer allowed these memories to permeate Argrave’s being.

Argrave saw the sky, but it wasn’t blue with white clouds—instead, the colors had inverted. The white clouds had turned into mounds of black smoke, hissing and sparking with golden lightning, while the blue of the sky had taken on an eerie dark orange. The red moon had covered the suns in a total eclipse. It was familiar to Argrave both from his experience with Heroes of Berendar and from Erlebnis’ vast databanks. This was the sky on Gerechtigkeit’s advent, when his physical form was ravaging the world.

Argrave saw a putrid living miasma of maleficent darkness covering the landscape, and from it, golden bugeyes on stalks glistened like oil beads atop ever-grasping maws embodying hunger and thirst. It was Gerechtigkeit. Despite the calamity’s awful presence, the bearer of this memory held the gaze of those eyes, then tried to break inside them, psychically projecting their mind forth.

The projected mental being pierced through those eyes, travelling along the nerves to reach the mind and soul. Within, Argrave felt the most malignant rage imaginable. Even though it was just a memory, he felt his whole body strain beneath the weight of the hostility. It was a storm of a thousand daggers, stabbing at his joints with the simplest abstraction of destruction.

Argrave almost wanted to pull his hand away from Vasquer to escape this scene, but held on vigorously as the bearer of this memory continued deeper into this storm of oblivion. It pressed and pressed, wading through a sandstorm in the harshest, most inhospitable desert imaginable. And past all of the rage, past the mindless being, the thoughts of the orchestrator bore themselves. The genesis of this pain.

Memories, attachments, knowledge, a life; they entered into sight, like brilliant gold that had sunken deep in the ocean of blood all about them. This core existence was fragmented, broken, repressed, and oppressed, but it was still the lodestone, the compass, by which this storm of malignance directed its terrible engine. The memories did not say much. They were too brief to represent a full life, but they said enough Argrave knew.

was Griffin. He

by a hideous, wretched claw of consciousness. The memory-bearer wriggled, struggled, and attempted to free, and finally broke away out of the glistening golden eyes. But it had been a trap. Gerechtigkeit followed the probing mind

strength of mind and force of grudge to stretch the deed into an eternity. The original body of Lindon died for a million years before violently exploding along

was consigned to exist without a physical form. Despite this terrible fate, he was not abandoned in the world. Relying on the generosity of his kin to share their minds, he persisted,

from Vasquer. He could tell the memory had been muffled for his sake, yet the sheer experience had sent his whole body into a terror, sweating copiously and tremoring. Lindon had died there, yet the way he’d done so created

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him, Elenore and Orion both had reeled away as he had. His sister leaned against Vasquer, while Orion laid on the

harbored suspicions about Gerechtigkeit’s identity. Between what he’d seen in Sandelabara and what he knew about Sophia’s ability, there was plenty to stoke that hidden and uncertain flame.

unwitting manifestation of his power while he slumbered somewhere, trapped, as his sister had been. Since the very first cycle of judgment to this one soon to come, it had been Griffin alone driving the beast. That young boy was the direction behind that terrible power.

of the earth. Sophia was both his anchor and

and Elenore and Orion looked up at him from their

said to them. “Now that

Orion sat up, Elenore simply said,

Argrave asked. “Why the hell do I even want to know? What in hell is so important he gives the

won’t serve you,” Elenore reminded

and getting himself back under control. With heavy steps, he walked back to Vasquer. He placed his hand on her scales once again, a cynical air about him for

red eyes. Then the scene shifted away into something

travelled. Accepting Sophia as his family, guiding her abilities with a cautious hand, and coming to the confrontation against Gerechtigkeit armed with the knowledge the ancient calamity was