Chapter 33. The Rite

e emerged screaming back into consciousness.  First there was nothing and then the world slammed into his delicate senses in a dreadful cacophony of tormented cries and inescapable pain.  Once more he knew the cold stone beneath him.  He writhed in his bonds, his jaws clamped over spittle soaked leather.  Drifting above the animal response to torment was the tattered remnant of his mind, confused and resentful that he had been drawn from the peaceful void and hauled back into consciousness and suffering.

“Abandon your body, it only gives you misery now.  Go free.”

The creature in golden robes drifted around him, withdrawing the glowing white brand from his thigh amid a swirling plume of strange lavender flames.  He whimpered softly as the sensation of burning flooded his senses and for a moment it was all he knew.  The icy sting of salt water drew him back as the creature doused him, a strange harmonic chant issuing from its golden mask.  The black stone beneath him vibrated with arcane potential and an eldritch curtain of light erupted from the deeply engraved symbols that encircled him.  His back arched and he struggled against his bonds.  Memory flared and he had a treasured glimpse of his true nature.  He mentally struggled to recall who he was and why he was here.

“Haodrim, speak to me now,” commanded the Mursaat.

Shivering, he turned his head and spat out the leather plug.  His jaws ached from biting down on it and he knew it was not the first or even second time he had done so.  The brand was familiar; it burned with chaos energies drawn from the Mursaat’s strange rituals.  Each time it carved a new symbol into his flesh, erasing his past as it etched a new future -- a future that no longer included him.

“I’m not Haodrim,” he rasped, and that was the only morsel of truth he knew.  He remembered Haodrim like a fading nightmare, felt him during his rare waking moments, and feared him also.  Haodrim was annihilation.  Haodrim was old, the first and greatest, the bold seeing eye of his dark master. 

He also knew that he was losing the battle for his own flesh, that he had already lost his name and much of his past.  There was a void where he used to exist, the house of his soul stripped of its furnishings and all that was uniquely his.  He wanted it back.  He only knew that he had to fight although he had long since forgotten why he needed to do so.

“Because this is your body.  He has no right to it.”

“Mine, me… who am I?”

There were things he understood that his true self could not know.  The being that hovered over him was Mursaat and he could see it because the gods had bestowed that ability upon him at some point.

“Weh No Su.  You are Weh No Su.”

He struggled to keep hearing that small inner voice, the thin whisper of truth.  That was who he was and if he ever lost it he was gone forever.  Weh No Su was not his name.  It was not of his native tongue.  He came from another place of red dust and ruin.

Staring at the rough basalt of the ceiling, he tried to clear his mind, push aside all that was external. Focus.  It was something he had once known how to do as easily as breathing.  He turned his head and stared blearily at the towering carvings forged from a strange deep violet obsidian that faded into molten orange.  They floated at the far edges of the circle.  Chaotic potential flared and discharged from their jagged points.  Soul batteries.  They powered the Mursaat’s rituals,  the rituals that drove him bit by bit from the house of his spirit.

And he knew what happened now that the Mursaat had expended the gathered power.  So little he could remember about himself, but he knew the details of the rites, the horrific suffering and killing, the binding of souls.  He did not want to see it again.  Haodrim rose back into his conscience with the heaviness of metal, drawn to the spectacle like a moth to flame.  Today it was a Charr warrior dragged into the cavern by four White Mantle Knights.  The beastly figure slavered and snarled, maddened with rage and the indignity of its chains.  Its tawny hide was scored by the lash and a half-dozen wounds of unknown origin.  It limped and stank of gangrene and offal, clearly mad with pain and fever.  The four White Mantle harried it mercilessly, each holding a rope that was attached to the creature’s collar.  Each of them thrust their spear points at it, and when it turned to lunge at one of them in response, the other three drew it back.

He had no love for the Charr.  The sickly creature repulsed him and he had vague memories of hating them for destroying someone or something he had once held dear.  Yet he pitied this one, wounded and shriven of dignity.  It fought with the desperate rage of a cornered animal, its snarls mingled with curses upon humankind and wishes for their extinction.  Drawn to its knees, the Charr roared and struggled, sensing that it would not rise again.  The four gloating figures of the White Mantle encircled it.  The Charr did not see the Mursaat drifting silently toward it, could not see it and did not know what was about to befall it.

He looked away, his jaws clenching in disgust as the Mursaat drew back a sickle of obsidian, its perfectly knapped edge paper fine and sharper than the keenest razor.  He heard the death gurgle of the Charr and the sickening splatter of its rank blood.  The runes around the circle flared once more, this time drawing the energies inward, recharging the soul batteries and imprisoning the spirit of the poor creature.

As before, the Mursaat stepped away from the still twitching corpse and drifted over him.  It produced the loathsome six-eyed mask from the depths of its robes and knelt at his side.  He turned his face away, hating it, for it eroded his tenuous grasp on his flesh.  He cried out as the cold metal pressed down over his brow and cheeks but the Mursaat would not yield and in moments it was strapped in place.

“No,” he moaned, “Please.”

The Mursaat said nothing, only drifted away, his world reduced to a thin slit of firelight dancing over the rough ceiling of the cavern.  Haodrim stirred within him like a sickness, a little stronger than before.  His consciousness faded and he lapsed into darkness once more.