"So shall conviction drain with deviance."
--
He stood in front of a mirror. The perfect reflection shimmered with his image. Its face frowned. So he frowned. It raised its hand. So he raised his hand. It pulled out its eye. So he pulled out his eye. This continued for some time before he realised that something about this was backwards.
The reflection looked around. And so his head swivelled.
The walls weren't right.
The cage of moss-caked bricks sped away like vermin revealed by intrusive light. They fled from beneath his feet, from above his head, from besides his arms. The blizzard had returned with hills and drifts of snow. Endless expanses of white dunes stretched beyond perception, sinking and rising like waves in the ocean. The sound of wings beating against the air echoed from beyond the visible horizon, loud and thundering. He took a step forward, and from his print rose smoke as the soil burned and disintegrated beneath his feet. The scent of vitriol invaded his nostrils and his breath quickened as the acrid vapours rose before rapidly coagulating into a heavy miasma that obscured all around it. The cacophony of thrashing membranes grew louder.
He knelt down and dug the point of the sword he held into the snow. A painless wound, gashing him from shoulder to waist, appeared as he did so. The laceration seemed to be made by a single savage claw, and as soon as it appeared, it glowed a brilliant crimson. The fog swirled around him, laughing and belching a myriad of colours. The snow began to scream a shrill cry as it melted away beneath him. His vision clouded, and blood began to pour aslant across his eyes. His lungs became leaden. A hand stumbled out to steady himself.
He could see himself in the snow. His reflection was there. It fell to its side, eyes open and mouth wide with horror.
So, too, did he.
An idle lizard emerged from the fog and snow, squeaking curiously before eagerly leaping into the hollow socket of his absent eye. The beating wings were now deafening, drowning all other senses in their turbulance. Wind currents exploded within his skull, rattling every fiber and every bone. The snow lizard burst from within the other socket, and though he now lacked eyes, he could clearly perceive it growing in size from the length of a finger to a mountain. Its roar was terrible, alien, a thousand chords out of harmony.
The wings began to burn.
His hand reached for his chest. It dove deep, deep into the cavity between the ribs, and took hold of something sharp and rigid, something somber and gray, something eager and calm. The points slashed into his skin. His palms were seared with flames and rainbows, a flow of hot obsidian spewing out of the wound, and he let out a cry as he ripped it from his person. The hills of frost were now alight with flame, burning brilliantly with searing pain. The embers began to coalesce into humanoid shapes as they flickered. Legs and arms sprouted from the inferno, and conflagration began to march in perfect step. They lacked feet or apparel, and yet the steps upon the disintegrating soil now competed with hellish, guttural thundering and the whipping of wings. The whorl of fog grew, and everything it touched was swallowed by an endless void of indescribable colour.
A sudden gasp.
Something was missing.
Something was there.
It should have been present.
It should not exist.
The bell rang. The last chime.
His eyes opened.
Kasrjin's senses flooded back to him in a crazed torrent. His vision was bombarded with shapes and colours. His ears reverberated with noise. His nostrils were filled with cloying, indescribable scents battling for his mind's acknowledgement. The taste of blood fled his tongue. His hands touched a pile of rough but warm leathers.
The first thing he managed to focus on was a pair of steady eyes, both blazing orange in the low light of his immediate environment, bore into him. The Khadai's own sight focused, and some measure of relief washed over him now that the experience had been finished. Sitting next to the prone Au Ra were two more Xaela, a male and a female. The male had a splash of orange face paint marking his face forehead. The female wore a necklace with a thin piece of turquoise and a sprig of mistletoe.
"Your warband was heavy, Khadai. You'd best be faster." the male said. He stood up and stretched, grunting as he did so, and jabbed a thumb in another direction before striding off.
Kasrjin glanced in the direction he was pointing. His brothers lay prone as well, still within the throes of the Communion. An idle arm or leg occasionally shot out, thrashing in erratic movements. At times there would be other male Xaela, their faces too marred with patches of splotchy orange paint, who would unceremoniously roll them elsewhere so as to spare others their flailing, or hold their limbs down until the movement ceased. The labourers patrolled up and down the rows in robotic strides in the same way a row of fieldhands would patrol rows of wheat for vermin. Some of the males were accompanied by female Xaela, upon which a sharp eye could detect small but clearly visible pieces of turquoise pieces. Every now and then, one of the Au Ra who lay sleeping seemed to awake with a start, and a female would be ready to greet them, only for the dreamer to fall back into their slumber.
He was surrounded by walls of gray slate and featureless, steely bedrock; the occasional bit of visible stratum streaked with white and black. The rock freely intermingled with sheets of hardened ice and azure frost, though as his sensation of touch gradually returned, he noted that the cave was remarkably warm and comfortable. The ceiling of the cave was high, but no sunlight shown through. Illumination was brought forth by patterns carved into the ice that glowed a cool white light, and winter gales whistled and howled through unseen orifices. Small puffs of smoke occasionally wafted from the tiny piles of incense that burned in various corners around the ritual cavern, indicating that the Tsenkhai had prepared the location prior to beginning their interpretation.
A pile of equipment and personal effects was organised near the exit of the cave. It was not merely weapons and armour, but other pieces as well; hammers, picks, mortars and grinding stones, small knives and so on. It seemed that the warband was not the only group who had been interrupted by the Communion.
A pause.
He knew where this was, but it was not where he was supposed to be.
Kasrjin's confusion must have shown plainly on his face, for the female next to him answered his unspoken questions.
"It has been two suns since your warband was found. The Tsenkhai continue to interpret the Correspondence and cannot permit entry." she explained. "This is why you had been brought here."
Kasrjin nodded slowly in acknowledgement, his head still groggy from his experience. His arms struggled to support him as he sat up; he had been laying on a crude hide mat, and his joints ached. The female raised a slender arm against his shoulders to help him lean forward, fiery eyes studying him closely. Upon apparently deciding that the Khadai warrior did not require further attendance, she too stood up and strode off to watch for others who may awaken.
The Xaela reached a hand towards his chest. He could still feel the presence of the...thing...he pulled out of himself. The odour of the screaming snow occasionally made itself known within his nose, though thankfully the fragrance of the incense had begun to clear the signature of acrid vapour from within his nostrils quite a bit. Numbness had spread through his limbs. Sitting up and leaning forward was a titanic effort all on its own, but even attempting to twitch his feet or raise a hand took far too much effort. It seemed that circumstances dictated that he not move for quite some time.
It was only a few minutes of idle thoughts--mostly about his experience--and muffled activity before another male entered the cavern, shrouded by a heavy fur cloak. Stepping softly behind him was a female Xaela that was similarly dressed, yet while the male kept his chin tucked towards his chest so as to hide his features, a brilliant violet glance clearly peered from beneath the hood, glimmering as they spotted their target. The female tapped the male's arm; the male obligingly bent down to almost half of his own height as the female whispered something in his ear. The shrouded male nodded and left, while the female made a beeline for the immobile Khadai.
She withdrew the hood to reveal the familiar scruffiness of black dreadlocks tied back in such a way that would keep most if not all hair away from her face. Her oval face, painted the colour of darkened slate, had a severe expression carved into it that did not let up as she knelt at Kasrjin's side, studying his expression with the intense gaze of one who might study a bug trapped beneath a glass.
A frustrated sigh escaped tender but tightened lips, as she did not seem to find what she was looking for, yet her expression was still hesitant.
"You received the Correspondence," she confirmed, more to herself than to the Khadai. Kasrjin nodded slowly. The cobwebs in his mind had cleared fully by now, and though he still lacked locomotion, he could now think with more clarity. That was what was missing from his experience. It was disturbing, but it was...lacking in coherence. Even moreso than previous iterations. And at the same time, there was an intruder, something present that should not have been.
"I had only received a single character," Kasrjin rumbled, the vibration of his vocal chords feeling exceptionally foreign to him as he began to adjust back to the physicality of the material plane. A slight wince caused him to recall the gaping cavity in his chest from the experience.
"None of the Tsenkhai have been able to harvest more than one character, and those singular instances are exceptionally rare." the female explained. Tsanai shed the heavy cloak onto the cavern floor and sat cross legged next to Kasrjin, wearing layered robes of leather and white fur, and brushed an idle hand through her unkempt mane. "You should not have received even that much. How long ago was your last interpretation?"
Kasrjin frowned, his brow furrowed in thought. "Long enough that Kaarad-El should not possess sufficient recollection of Tsuven. Yet, only a single character? If this limitation affects only Tsenkhai, then..." his voice trailed off in uncertainty.
Tsanai sighed again. Absent-mindedly, she grasped the Khadai's hand--still numb from the experience--and pressed the back of it against her forehead for several seconds before releasing it. Her smooth face, normally as expressionless as the glacier itself, had just the slightest creases of consternation on it. "I do not know if this affects others beyond Tsenkhai, but it is irrelevant either way. Three suns so far...and we have managed to collect only a handful." A pause, before she glanced at Kasrjin's emerald gaze with something of a glare. "Are you certain that Kaarad-El has no recollection of Tsuven?"
"I am not," Kasrjin admitted. Another frown. "Yet, there should be nothing. Unless--"
"--unless Tsuven was somehow included in your Forfeiture?" Tsanai finished the warrior's thought. She drew her knees up to her chin, brooding. "That does not make sense. Tsuven Tsenkhai was erased. Our interpretations did not lack in consistency afterwards. We were certain." She extricated her delicate hands from the heavy gloves and twined the digits together in deep thought. "Yet Kasrjin Khadai received a character of the Correspondence, despite the fact that he should no longer be able to do so." The slender female repeated the gesture of holding the back of Kasrjin's hand against her forehead, though this time she did not release it so readily.
"Is it perhaps related to the cipher that was used in the first iteration?" Kasrjin asked. Tsanai--still holding on to his hand--the size of which nearly covered both of hers, such was their difference in size--shook her head, the shambles of sable black hair swaying rhythmically with the movement.
"Despite the timing, we did prepare a cipher. A meaningless word that denoted equal parts respect and disdain through sound. Initial reception was...not without problems, but sufficient." She released his hand again, allowing it to fall limply to Kasrjin's side as the warrior adjusted slightly to lean forward more.
The pair sat in silence for some time, both consumed by their thoughts, before Tsanai exhaled and stood up. "I am to prepare for the next iteration. Should nothing come of it, the possibility exists that Kaarad-El will remain uninhabitable for some time."
Kasrjin grimaced at that. "The black ones--"
"Irrelevant, for the moment. The Aljai shall adjust for appropriate distribution." She pursed her lips, and though Kasrjin noticed her trying to hide it, a flicker of worry flashed across the austere female's face. It appeared that Tsanai, too, noticed his glance, for she accelerated her exodus from the cavern. The silhouette of the shrouded male made itself known at the far end of the exit, and the two vanished into the snow.
The other Xaela alongside Kasrjin twisted and turned.
It was the same as the day they had buried their brothers, the day they felt the tug of the Forfeiture.
Something was very wrong.
--
He stood in front of a mirror. The perfect reflection shimmered with his image. Its face frowned. So he frowned. It raised its hand. So he raised his hand. It pulled out its eye. So he pulled out his eye. This continued for some time before he realised that something about this was backwards.
The reflection looked around. And so his head swivelled.
The walls weren't right.
The cage of moss-caked bricks sped away like vermin revealed by intrusive light. They fled from beneath his feet, from above his head, from besides his arms. The blizzard had returned with hills and drifts of snow. Endless expanses of white dunes stretched beyond perception, sinking and rising like waves in the ocean. The sound of wings beating against the air echoed from beyond the visible horizon, loud and thundering. He took a step forward, and from his print rose smoke as the soil burned and disintegrated beneath his feet. The scent of vitriol invaded his nostrils and his breath quickened as the acrid vapours rose before rapidly coagulating into a heavy miasma that obscured all around it. The cacophony of thrashing membranes grew louder.
He knelt down and dug the point of the sword he held into the snow. A painless wound, gashing him from shoulder to waist, appeared as he did so. The laceration seemed to be made by a single savage claw, and as soon as it appeared, it glowed a brilliant crimson. The fog swirled around him, laughing and belching a myriad of colours. The snow began to scream a shrill cry as it melted away beneath him. His vision clouded, and blood began to pour aslant across his eyes. His lungs became leaden. A hand stumbled out to steady himself.
He could see himself in the snow. His reflection was there. It fell to its side, eyes open and mouth wide with horror.
So, too, did he.
An idle lizard emerged from the fog and snow, squeaking curiously before eagerly leaping into the hollow socket of his absent eye. The beating wings were now deafening, drowning all other senses in their turbulance. Wind currents exploded within his skull, rattling every fiber and every bone. The snow lizard burst from within the other socket, and though he now lacked eyes, he could clearly perceive it growing in size from the length of a finger to a mountain. Its roar was terrible, alien, a thousand chords out of harmony.
The wings began to burn.
His hand reached for his chest. It dove deep, deep into the cavity between the ribs, and took hold of something sharp and rigid, something somber and gray, something eager and calm. The points slashed into his skin. His palms were seared with flames and rainbows, a flow of hot obsidian spewing out of the wound, and he let out a cry as he ripped it from his person. The hills of frost were now alight with flame, burning brilliantly with searing pain. The embers began to coalesce into humanoid shapes as they flickered. Legs and arms sprouted from the inferno, and conflagration began to march in perfect step. They lacked feet or apparel, and yet the steps upon the disintegrating soil now competed with hellish, guttural thundering and the whipping of wings. The whorl of fog grew, and everything it touched was swallowed by an endless void of indescribable colour.
A sudden gasp.
Something was missing.
Something was there.
It should have been present.
It should not exist.
The bell rang. The last chime.
His eyes opened.
Kasrjin's senses flooded back to him in a crazed torrent. His vision was bombarded with shapes and colours. His ears reverberated with noise. His nostrils were filled with cloying, indescribable scents battling for his mind's acknowledgement. The taste of blood fled his tongue. His hands touched a pile of rough but warm leathers.
The first thing he managed to focus on was a pair of steady eyes, both blazing orange in the low light of his immediate environment, bore into him. The Khadai's own sight focused, and some measure of relief washed over him now that the experience had been finished. Sitting next to the prone Au Ra were two more Xaela, a male and a female. The male had a splash of orange face paint marking his face forehead. The female wore a necklace with a thin piece of turquoise and a sprig of mistletoe.
"Your warband was heavy, Khadai. You'd best be faster." the male said. He stood up and stretched, grunting as he did so, and jabbed a thumb in another direction before striding off.
Kasrjin glanced in the direction he was pointing. His brothers lay prone as well, still within the throes of the Communion. An idle arm or leg occasionally shot out, thrashing in erratic movements. At times there would be other male Xaela, their faces too marred with patches of splotchy orange paint, who would unceremoniously roll them elsewhere so as to spare others their flailing, or hold their limbs down until the movement ceased. The labourers patrolled up and down the rows in robotic strides in the same way a row of fieldhands would patrol rows of wheat for vermin. Some of the males were accompanied by female Xaela, upon which a sharp eye could detect small but clearly visible pieces of turquoise pieces. Every now and then, one of the Au Ra who lay sleeping seemed to awake with a start, and a female would be ready to greet them, only for the dreamer to fall back into their slumber.
He was surrounded by walls of gray slate and featureless, steely bedrock; the occasional bit of visible stratum streaked with white and black. The rock freely intermingled with sheets of hardened ice and azure frost, though as his sensation of touch gradually returned, he noted that the cave was remarkably warm and comfortable. The ceiling of the cave was high, but no sunlight shown through. Illumination was brought forth by patterns carved into the ice that glowed a cool white light, and winter gales whistled and howled through unseen orifices. Small puffs of smoke occasionally wafted from the tiny piles of incense that burned in various corners around the ritual cavern, indicating that the Tsenkhai had prepared the location prior to beginning their interpretation.
A pile of equipment and personal effects was organised near the exit of the cave. It was not merely weapons and armour, but other pieces as well; hammers, picks, mortars and grinding stones, small knives and so on. It seemed that the warband was not the only group who had been interrupted by the Communion.
A pause.
He knew where this was, but it was not where he was supposed to be.
Kasrjin's confusion must have shown plainly on his face, for the female next to him answered his unspoken questions.
"It has been two suns since your warband was found. The Tsenkhai continue to interpret the Correspondence and cannot permit entry." she explained. "This is why you had been brought here."
Kasrjin nodded slowly in acknowledgement, his head still groggy from his experience. His arms struggled to support him as he sat up; he had been laying on a crude hide mat, and his joints ached. The female raised a slender arm against his shoulders to help him lean forward, fiery eyes studying him closely. Upon apparently deciding that the Khadai warrior did not require further attendance, she too stood up and strode off to watch for others who may awaken.
The Xaela reached a hand towards his chest. He could still feel the presence of the...thing...he pulled out of himself. The odour of the screaming snow occasionally made itself known within his nose, though thankfully the fragrance of the incense had begun to clear the signature of acrid vapour from within his nostrils quite a bit. Numbness had spread through his limbs. Sitting up and leaning forward was a titanic effort all on its own, but even attempting to twitch his feet or raise a hand took far too much effort. It seemed that circumstances dictated that he not move for quite some time.
It was only a few minutes of idle thoughts--mostly about his experience--and muffled activity before another male entered the cavern, shrouded by a heavy fur cloak. Stepping softly behind him was a female Xaela that was similarly dressed, yet while the male kept his chin tucked towards his chest so as to hide his features, a brilliant violet glance clearly peered from beneath the hood, glimmering as they spotted their target. The female tapped the male's arm; the male obligingly bent down to almost half of his own height as the female whispered something in his ear. The shrouded male nodded and left, while the female made a beeline for the immobile Khadai.
She withdrew the hood to reveal the familiar scruffiness of black dreadlocks tied back in such a way that would keep most if not all hair away from her face. Her oval face, painted the colour of darkened slate, had a severe expression carved into it that did not let up as she knelt at Kasrjin's side, studying his expression with the intense gaze of one who might study a bug trapped beneath a glass.
A frustrated sigh escaped tender but tightened lips, as she did not seem to find what she was looking for, yet her expression was still hesitant.
"You received the Correspondence," she confirmed, more to herself than to the Khadai. Kasrjin nodded slowly. The cobwebs in his mind had cleared fully by now, and though he still lacked locomotion, he could now think with more clarity. That was what was missing from his experience. It was disturbing, but it was...lacking in coherence. Even moreso than previous iterations. And at the same time, there was an intruder, something present that should not have been.
"I had only received a single character," Kasrjin rumbled, the vibration of his vocal chords feeling exceptionally foreign to him as he began to adjust back to the physicality of the material plane. A slight wince caused him to recall the gaping cavity in his chest from the experience.
"None of the Tsenkhai have been able to harvest more than one character, and those singular instances are exceptionally rare." the female explained. Tsanai shed the heavy cloak onto the cavern floor and sat cross legged next to Kasrjin, wearing layered robes of leather and white fur, and brushed an idle hand through her unkempt mane. "You should not have received even that much. How long ago was your last interpretation?"
Kasrjin frowned, his brow furrowed in thought. "Long enough that Kaarad-El should not possess sufficient recollection of Tsuven. Yet, only a single character? If this limitation affects only Tsenkhai, then..." his voice trailed off in uncertainty.
Tsanai sighed again. Absent-mindedly, she grasped the Khadai's hand--still numb from the experience--and pressed the back of it against her forehead for several seconds before releasing it. Her smooth face, normally as expressionless as the glacier itself, had just the slightest creases of consternation on it. "I do not know if this affects others beyond Tsenkhai, but it is irrelevant either way. Three suns so far...and we have managed to collect only a handful." A pause, before she glanced at Kasrjin's emerald gaze with something of a glare. "Are you certain that Kaarad-El has no recollection of Tsuven?"
"I am not," Kasrjin admitted. Another frown. "Yet, there should be nothing. Unless--"
"--unless Tsuven was somehow included in your Forfeiture?" Tsanai finished the warrior's thought. She drew her knees up to her chin, brooding. "That does not make sense. Tsuven Tsenkhai was erased. Our interpretations did not lack in consistency afterwards. We were certain." She extricated her delicate hands from the heavy gloves and twined the digits together in deep thought. "Yet Kasrjin Khadai received a character of the Correspondence, despite the fact that he should no longer be able to do so." The slender female repeated the gesture of holding the back of Kasrjin's hand against her forehead, though this time she did not release it so readily.
"Is it perhaps related to the cipher that was used in the first iteration?" Kasrjin asked. Tsanai--still holding on to his hand--the size of which nearly covered both of hers, such was their difference in size--shook her head, the shambles of sable black hair swaying rhythmically with the movement.
"Despite the timing, we did prepare a cipher. A meaningless word that denoted equal parts respect and disdain through sound. Initial reception was...not without problems, but sufficient." She released his hand again, allowing it to fall limply to Kasrjin's side as the warrior adjusted slightly to lean forward more.
The pair sat in silence for some time, both consumed by their thoughts, before Tsanai exhaled and stood up. "I am to prepare for the next iteration. Should nothing come of it, the possibility exists that Kaarad-El will remain uninhabitable for some time."
Kasrjin grimaced at that. "The black ones--"
"Irrelevant, for the moment. The Aljai shall adjust for appropriate distribution." She pursed her lips, and though Kasrjin noticed her trying to hide it, a flicker of worry flashed across the austere female's face. It appeared that Tsanai, too, noticed his glance, for she accelerated her exodus from the cavern. The silhouette of the shrouded male made itself known at the far end of the exit, and the two vanished into the snow.
The other Xaela alongside Kasrjin twisted and turned.
It was the same as the day they had buried their brothers, the day they felt the tug of the Forfeiture.
Something was very wrong.
