A Light in the Darkness
Posted: Wed Dec 18, 2013 7:36 am
Dalarath's plankton beds were white, the sunken city's bioluminescent fungi and algae glowing sullenly as silent stretched across the cavern. At deeper fathoms than Man still has to dive, night was unfolding. Most were asleep, joined in the myriad walls and corridors of the Darkhallow while their bodies recuperated. Some were up, however, and perpetuated the city's blood-soaked traditions. In Dalarath, families being undone in sudden and brutal murder was commonplace. Ordinary, even. Someone had a slave you wanted, someone else had assembled a bauble that interested you and more likely, someone had a position that placed them just half a step closer to social advancement? You conspired to kill them or to betray their trust. These were people who could sleep soundly over blood-curdling and mind-rending screams of sudden anguish that pierced the moist streets, and who considered feverish omens of the world's undoing with the furrowed brows of the righteous and the smiles of comforted children.
The Augur, however, was not sleeping. He hadn't slept in the last four days, and his new healer had only been by his side for two months. She was working hard to keep him alive and to force him back on the mend, and his trajectory tended to leap and bound between impressive recoveries and sudden relapses. Both of them suspected that someone was forcing the cooks to poison his food and drink, to delay or even reverse his being cured.
In normal circumstances, the Augur had nothing to fear. As fat as he was, his mind could still annihilate all those who had the folly of attacking him from the front. In true Void Weaver fashion, however, his assailant did not show his face and preferred duplicitous and dishonest means. With no easy targets, the now largely useless concubines he still lodged and the small cadre of personal Arbiters were his eyes and ears, ready and willing to step forward at the first sign of any tangible threat. Of course, tradition demanded that the Chamberlain be implicated, but the Augur also knew that striking pre-emptively would be perceived as cowardice by his people. His faithful wanted to see an act of hubris punished in the open, and he couldn't give them that by ridding himself of an obviously conniving snake.
He had everything a man from the surface or the Depths could have ever wished for. Luxurious pillows, the finest of fabrics as designed by atoms and molecules freed of their Earthly constraints, precious metals in generous quantities, and every delicacy the ocean could possibly bring him. Some brine pools even allowed him to taste meals and meats from inland and from all across the world. He'd eaten camel the day before, and that rich meat still wasn't agreeing with him. He had women, too. Dozens of shapes and shades and dispositions and tastes for him to sample, which he did with the gentle touch of a connoisseur.
What had begun as an exercise in hedonism had gradually changed into honest care, both of a material and emotional nature. Pleasure was what he sought, and the insanity he preferred was deep and warm and comfortable, as opposed to what he knew his faithful would demand, day in and day out. As mad as all his women were, none of them were as mad as his own people. They wore fine clothes of their own, slept on mentally constructed mattresses of the softest materials the physical poetry of his mind could conjure, and ate from his own larder. He drove insane not with harm or desecration of the flesh, but with unrelenting carnal pleasure.
What the Augur didn't have, however, was health. The Others were sustaining his self-destructive habits and physique, supplying his organs with defiant life where many others would have begun to show signs of failure. They didn't seem intent on rewarding his inability to stop the Chamberlain's first dagger, however. With a badly healed and previously punctured lung, he spent his nights coughing up fluid or catching himself expressing thoughts only she could possibly approve of.
Thoughts of release, most often. Of dissipating fever spells and restored vigor. Of normalcy, quite simply. If he'd been true to the Black Books, he should have been wallowing in his own diseased flesh, praying for the Dwellers in the Void to elevate his weakened state to the status of an anointment of some sort. Renewed potency, perhaps, or the ability to spread his own affliction with a touch.
He - just couldn't, however. He tried, but he was always too tired to sustain the kind of hatred this would have needed, too busy shivering and calling for fresh bed sheets to not admit that he wanted it to stop.
In a very human sense, he desired release. At the very least, he'd persuaded her to use a few herbs of hers to give the old stab wound the appearance of having festered, of having been blessed by Their blackest of consecrations. Privately, however?
He wanted to be on the mend and could not speak of it to anyone. Anyone but her - for whom his feelings were growing increasingly complex.
Dangerous times, indeed.
Turning his head, the squid allowed himself a few moments to cough into one of his pillows. Coming out of it with a swimming head and blurred vision, he gasped for air.
"Healer!" he called out. "Healer, come to me!"
Another coughing fit.
"Please, Meris!"
The Augur, however, was not sleeping. He hadn't slept in the last four days, and his new healer had only been by his side for two months. She was working hard to keep him alive and to force him back on the mend, and his trajectory tended to leap and bound between impressive recoveries and sudden relapses. Both of them suspected that someone was forcing the cooks to poison his food and drink, to delay or even reverse his being cured.
In normal circumstances, the Augur had nothing to fear. As fat as he was, his mind could still annihilate all those who had the folly of attacking him from the front. In true Void Weaver fashion, however, his assailant did not show his face and preferred duplicitous and dishonest means. With no easy targets, the now largely useless concubines he still lodged and the small cadre of personal Arbiters were his eyes and ears, ready and willing to step forward at the first sign of any tangible threat. Of course, tradition demanded that the Chamberlain be implicated, but the Augur also knew that striking pre-emptively would be perceived as cowardice by his people. His faithful wanted to see an act of hubris punished in the open, and he couldn't give them that by ridding himself of an obviously conniving snake.
He had everything a man from the surface or the Depths could have ever wished for. Luxurious pillows, the finest of fabrics as designed by atoms and molecules freed of their Earthly constraints, precious metals in generous quantities, and every delicacy the ocean could possibly bring him. Some brine pools even allowed him to taste meals and meats from inland and from all across the world. He'd eaten camel the day before, and that rich meat still wasn't agreeing with him. He had women, too. Dozens of shapes and shades and dispositions and tastes for him to sample, which he did with the gentle touch of a connoisseur.
What had begun as an exercise in hedonism had gradually changed into honest care, both of a material and emotional nature. Pleasure was what he sought, and the insanity he preferred was deep and warm and comfortable, as opposed to what he knew his faithful would demand, day in and day out. As mad as all his women were, none of them were as mad as his own people. They wore fine clothes of their own, slept on mentally constructed mattresses of the softest materials the physical poetry of his mind could conjure, and ate from his own larder. He drove insane not with harm or desecration of the flesh, but with unrelenting carnal pleasure.
What the Augur didn't have, however, was health. The Others were sustaining his self-destructive habits and physique, supplying his organs with defiant life where many others would have begun to show signs of failure. They didn't seem intent on rewarding his inability to stop the Chamberlain's first dagger, however. With a badly healed and previously punctured lung, he spent his nights coughing up fluid or catching himself expressing thoughts only she could possibly approve of.
Thoughts of release, most often. Of dissipating fever spells and restored vigor. Of normalcy, quite simply. If he'd been true to the Black Books, he should have been wallowing in his own diseased flesh, praying for the Dwellers in the Void to elevate his weakened state to the status of an anointment of some sort. Renewed potency, perhaps, or the ability to spread his own affliction with a touch.
He - just couldn't, however. He tried, but he was always too tired to sustain the kind of hatred this would have needed, too busy shivering and calling for fresh bed sheets to not admit that he wanted it to stop.
In a very human sense, he desired release. At the very least, he'd persuaded her to use a few herbs of hers to give the old stab wound the appearance of having festered, of having been blessed by Their blackest of consecrations. Privately, however?
He wanted to be on the mend and could not speak of it to anyone. Anyone but her - for whom his feelings were growing increasingly complex.
Dangerous times, indeed.
Turning his head, the squid allowed himself a few moments to cough into one of his pillows. Coming out of it with a swimming head and blurred vision, he gasped for air.
"Healer!" he called out. "Healer, come to me!"
Another coughing fit.
"Please, Meris!"