The Man Without: Chapter 26 — The Viand of Sin

The Twenty sixth chapter of The Man Without by Nathan Marchand.

Arko watched the black mist twisted patterns through the air as he sat, knees against his chest, on the floor of Fraenir’s cave.

He didn’t want to look at it, but he couldn’t help it.

It wasn’t real, he told himself. You’re hallucinating. The fall from the shelf must have knocked him out. This was all just a dream.

He hadn’t tried to kill the Eld. He didn’t succeed. That… that… thing did NOT come from him.

There was no way. It couldn’t have. Arko should have known, should have been able to feel that mist lurking inside of him.

Why hadn’t he felt it during the march, when he first regained his body? Or his body regained his mind? Still, why hadn’t he noticed it before? Why hadn’t it come out before?

The mist just kept spinning around him, like his own personal hurricane, not caring about his current panic.

Arko could have sworn he saw eyes, or the suggestion of eyes, watching him from within the mist. Skordasvart. That’s what they called it in the old stories, well newly remembered stories. Skordas, to harvest or reap a crop, from the Iledaesh root Skorahesh.

Svart, black or darkness, from the roots Svah and Arr.

Standardly translated into the Trade Speak as Harvesting Darkness or Reaping Black.

How horrifyingly accurate.

Arko stretched out one of his hands towards the mist. What was he doing? Like a child, he wanted to touch the fire, not knowing how it would burn. Slowly, he inched his finger forward until he could feel the ghosts of the mist-wisps brushing past his skin.

Would it hurt him? Eat him like it did the Eld? Some part of him laughed at the notion. A new part. Or maybe a much older part, older than he was.

Arko’s hand was engulfed by the black mist.

It felt… different. Not bad, but not good either. Like putting his hand into a flowing stream but not as heavy. The Skordas didn’t try to pull him in, as if to eat him. The best word he could find would be, “welcoming”. It welcomed him. Like an old hound whose master had been gone for many years on a voyage. In some way, it knew him yet it was apprehensive. Arko got the sense that it wasn’t entirely sure if he was… himself yet. The hound remembered the master, but the master didn’t know himself.

It had an intelligence; that should have terrified him. Not a human intelligence, no. The mist had no thoughts of its own. Like an animal, it recoiled from his touch at first but, after testing him, smelling him, it embraced Arko, enveloping his hand in a cool breeze.

Some parts of it were feral though, nipping at his hands like mosquitos. But Arko could feel the vast majority of the pack (why was he calling it a pack?) rebuking the feral elements.

Master.

It wasn’t a word, just an impression. But that wasn’t quite it. There was more there. A sense of age, authority, rightful rule over many. Inheritance as well. Position passed down through millennia and the expectation for Arko to pass it down unto others as well.

No, the right word was Patriarch. The mist was calling him Patriarch.

A growl echoed through the cave and Arko suddenly remembered he had not eaten in days.

___

The east wing of the Royal Compound once held the greatest collection of knowledge on this side of the world. The Arrshtaag Libraries, relics of Tu-Kaa, Adanza prophecies, four thousand years of learning and philosophy, all of it was once collected right here in Kraydov.

Sadly, most of the east wing burned during the riots. Two thousand year old scripts engraved in wooden plates were, as one would imagine, very welcoming to the fire.

So much had been lost. So much.

Jara Molotovna never lamented the loss of life, the extermination of her oathkin, the political upheaval, nor the economic collapse. None of it.

But she had cried watching that fire, seeing it burn all that knowledge. The libraries had been her safe harbor during those hard years. Throughout the years of soul-breaking loneliness, years of living not out of the desire to be, but out of hatred for Sigmund, the rows and rows of books had been what kept her (arguably) sane.

Now all she had left was half-burned scraps and metal tablets, written in a language few could read and fewer understand. Damn those Arrshtaag. Damn that ban on Iledaesh. So obsessed with their secrets, only allowing the very highest of their cult to learn the oldest of tongues.

On top of all that, someone was banging down her door.

“Come in,” Molotovna barked, looking up from her desk where one of those tablets had been laid out. Who dared disturb her? Attempting to learn a language no one knew was much harder when she kept getting interrupted.

A grey-skinned man in an officer’s uniform, accented with the slightest hints of blue, entered her study. His shaggy mane of hair, looped together with his beard but lacking a moustache, hung low as he bowed to her.

“Dread Lady.”

“Thnash. I don’t believe I have been informed of the 45th’s success in their mission.” Jara sat back down in her chair, hands crossed in front of her.

“That would be correct, Dread One. Stanislav has failed, his Battalion wiped out by the Creature.” Was that a smile from the Saritican’s lips? Dreadful people, these Sariticans.

“Pity,” Jara droned, “but not unexpected. By the grace of our King, I am prepared for this.”

“Lady Molotovna?” Thnash looked up at her. Was he… appraising her? Foul people with fouler practices. How she wished her King would simply wipe their smoke-blanketed continent off the face of the world. The King of Tyre saw some value in men such as Thnash, and Jara had to begrudgingly agree. Their… practices were truly unique among the methods of Sibyllance. It would be a shame for all that knowledge to be lost.

Jara pulled a thick cord hanging beside her desk. A bell rang deeper in the palace, muffled by wall upon wall of stone. “The Master of Tyre has seen fit to bless us with some of your people.”

“He has sent more Sariticans?” Apprehensive, curious. Did Thnash not want more of his kind here? Did he have some lingering ideas of grabbing power here? Or was it flesh he wanted?

“Our guests are far more than mere men, Thnash. You were one of them once, were you not?” His grey face paled to a pure white.

“Saretics. The Servants of Holy Sarit walk unhallowed grounds?”

Jara laughed. “They have been kind enough to assist with acquiring our Master’s prize.”

Plague upon Suminaryt, the Deceiver god, exile from the Divine Lands. A chant echoed, its beat getting closer.

Praise be to Curhai, we embrace the upheaval you bring.

Praise be to Putres, we celebrate the rot which reaps the fallen.

Praise be to Scarci, we cherish your gifts of hunger.

Praise be to Epyde, we wear your boils with gladness.

All the world praises the god of men! The source of souls!

Without he, men would share the punishment of the gods.

Praise be to Holy Sarit, he who speaks and the world breaks!

Thnash dropped, prostrated on the floor of her study. Three figures rounded the corner, cloaked in ashen grey, their faces concealed, yet they continued their chant.

Praise be to Holy Sarit, he who speaks and existence is sundered!

For you, we break the world!

___

There was nothing else, Arko told himself as he turned the impromptu spit. Nothing else. There was a reason it was called the Ash Waste. No water meant no plants. No plants meant no animals would live here. No animals meant there was nothing else to eat. Arko had no choice.

He had to eat Fraenir.

Arko had found the heart, still beating, lying in the pile of ash which had once been Fraenir’s body. For some reason the Skordas had left it alone, only devouring the stone which made up his form. It wasn’t human, as far from it as he could tell. Too large, far too large. It took two hands to lift out of the ash. Roughly the size of a horse’s head, the fleshy mass had shivered in his hands, still beating without anything to pump through it.

It’s all there was, he told himself. For hours he had searched the cave, looking, hoping to find some source of food. There was nothing, nothing but that foul alcohol Arko had fallen into. Couldn’t keep more than a mouthful of the stuff down. The second attempt had left him heaving on the floor, spewing out what little he had left in his stomach. He tried another swig. It stayed down that time.

Like someone had mixed ash and the foulest, most sour wine he could imagine into one vile concoction.

How could anything, even an Eld with a stone gut, have kept the stuff down?

After that failed attempt, Arko found the heart. There were no other options left. Nothing in the cave but that foul wine. Nothing to hunt, even if he had the strength or tools to do so. All he was left with was this.

The iron bar, formerly his attempted weapon of vengeance, was the spit upon which Arko cooked what was left of Fraenir.

Now it was time. Dinner was ready.

Arko tore off a hunk of the heart, a much darker brown than its former pink hue, fingers burning as he did so. Time to get this over with. He ate the heart. Piece after piece, bite after bite, like a beggar devouring a king’s feast. He didn’t care about the taste. He didn’t care about the burning fat that seared his lips. He didn’t care about drippings burning their way down his face, covering his beard. All Arko cared about was getting something resembling food into his stomach.

Soon, much sooner than he expected, there was nothing left but the last vestiges that had encrusted over the bar.

His stomach rumbled. Pain engulfed him.

Arko fell over, the light of the fire fading each moment. Was he dying? No, he just needed rest. Yeah, just rest.

He curled up, hands tight against his chest, back to the fire, as Arko fell further into something that was more than simple unconsciousness.

___

Arko woke in a field of black flowers swaying in a nonexistent breeze. A white expanse extended into the infinite above him. Raising his head, just barely, Arko could see a small homely cottage, monochrome in color, in the distance. Its black-brick chimney puffing soft plumes of smoke a short ways into the colorless infinite.

___

The End of Part Two of The Man Without

To be continued in Part Three