Occulturation #20: Revelation
Disclaimer: There is violence and death in this story. If Garesh killing children is unacceptable, then this chapter is unacceptable as well.
Garesh only has 113 soul beads left.
Ystra only has 0 soul beads left.
Dylishan hour of the Ghost Quintuple (4th hour of the 4th 5-hour period)
Ghost-Incorporeal-Restcha (4th day, 4th week, 3rd month)
A little girl sits on a swing in the night, gently moving her legs forward and backwards to propel herself. Her name is Cleo, and she had expected her new friend to have returned by now. It’s so lonely. It’s been so long since she has had a friend. She stares at the moon gloomily. A shadow passes overhead blurring her sight of the moon for a moment. She whirls her head around, twisting the swing as she kicks her legs about trying to spin. What was that? She wonders. She considers the past few days. There have been quite a few disturbances. She thought she heard a police car on the day she met her new friend, Millie. And she remembers that recently some of the other kids on the playground have mentioned a forest fire that killed and injured a lot of people and some massive Screamers tore through a neighborhood, flattening entire blocks. And just now she saw a shadow pass by? What’s happening to this city?
…
…
…
Garesh doesn’t have a way to track his distance. He feels that he must be at least 10 miles away and hopefully around 20 miles by now but he has no way to check. Once he has time, he’ll need to resummon Millie. But right now, he needs to keep marching. If that thing that Millie wanted to talk to decides that it’s still hungry after it’s done with Millie, he doesn’t want to be anywhere near its hunting grounds. Such is his brisk pace that even his Incorporeal are struggling to keep up. Jack stays inside the lantern because he is too slow to keep up. Willheim doesn't have time to distract himself by shaking branches and bushes as his rapid footsteps kick up dust behind Garesh. Svartr has stretched tall to give itself longer strides, and even then, it totters as though barely able to keep balance at the pace.
A necklace of 113 beads bounces around his neck at his brisk pace. He has kept the spirit board even though it weighs him down a bit. He will need to communicate with his Incorporeals if he makes it out of here alive. He passes tree after tree, and in the darkness, they seem nothing more than shadowy blurs. He hears shuffling in the distance as night critters flee from his approach. Garesh’s legs and hips burn. He doesn’t stop to take a break. He knows that he wouldn’t be able to start again, at least, not at the same breakneck pace. It seems momentum is the only thing keeping him going.
His left arm burns, hand holding the lantern. His right arm swings at his side, hand empty but ready to pull his dagger from its sheathe if he sees anything. His eyes stare forwards, seeing just enough to dodge around trees and avoid bushes and logs. He stumbles on the uneven ground, but his momentum hurtles him forwards and his feet stride to catch up. He can’t fall. The force of his movement won’t let him. It’s the stride of someone who is late to class but isn’t allowed to run in the halls. It’s the stride of someone who is late to work, somehow thinking that pacing faster than a jog is less humiliating than a full-on sprint. It’s a march that is pushing down on the earth as though trying to stomp a wolf to death, giving it a spring forwards as the ground pushes back. For Garesh, however, it is the walk of someone who is fleeing from a beast as quickly as he can while avoiding running since that activates predatory instinct. The problem for him is that he is moving so fast that an onlooking creature wouldn’t know the difference between his stride and his sprint. Both are equally blurry.
Garesh realizes that he has been thinking a lot about how fast he is going. The pain makes it hard to focus on anything else. The fire of Jack shaking in the lantern held in Garesh’s swaying left arm barely registers on Garesh’s consciousness. He doesn’t even check to see if Svartr is still behind him, and he can barely hear Willheim’s scuffle of steps behind the pounding of his own heart. But now that he has realized that he hasn’t been paying attention to his surroundings, a terrible awareness comes over him.
The beating of his heart fades in his ears as it is deafened by a new, overpowering thought. I’m being followed. To his left and a little behind him, he can see two humanoid figures, mere silhouettes in the darkness at this distance. And those people are running at a full-sprint. Unfortunately for Garesh, their sprint seems to be faster than Garesh’s stride. Much faster.
He can’t look over his shoulder without falling over, and he can’t outrun these newcomers. He doesn’t know who they are, whether they are human or Screamer. But he knows one thing, they aren’t that terrifying tree-like monster. He pulls out his knife, a gun would make too much noise, and he’s trying to avoid the attention of the Screamer that has undoubtedly killed Millie by now.
Garesh turns slightly to change his trajectory a bit more to the left toward a wide tree in the distance. If the creatures don’t change their rapid pace, they should reach him about the same time he reaches the tree. He is too out-of-breath to explain his plan to his Incorporeals or threaten the figures away. But that’s just as well. As the saying goes, if you’ve killed once, you’ve killed a thousand times.
20 steps away.
14 steps away.
8 steps away.
2 steps away.
The tree is mere feet from him and so is the couple. He drops his lantern as he leaps forwards with his left foot and presses against the bark with the sole of his right shoe, then he twists his hips as he pushes away from the tree back towards his pursuers. Twisting mid-air to face the cracked face of a horrified woman whose skin reflects Jack's light sputtering in the lantern below. The man beside her is no less a terrifying sight, as a layer of something like opaque skin-colored glass is layer over his face like a mask but has a hole in it revealing his mouth agape in a scream. Garesh doesn’t give the poor man’s voice a chance to catch up to his scream. Garesh smashes the dagger in his right hand into the man’s left ear, then he grabs the woman’s throat as he falls behind them, dragging them both to the ground with him.
He continues to roll past them, he releases his grip on the woman’s neck and he holds tightly to his dagger, forcing it out of the man’s skull as he rolls head over heels behind the couple. He punches the ground with his feet, and with the help of his forwards movement jumps back up to his feet. He doesn’t miss a beat. His legs continue marching as though he had never stopped as he makes a tight turn to head back towards the people lying on their backs. The life-size porcelain dolls haven’t the time to put together a coherent thought before Garesh’s marching footsteps pound right next to them.
Garesh crushes the woman’s face with his heel as he marches forwards. He lunges low and grabs hold of the lantern of the heavily rattled Jack. The humanoid Screamers behind don’t have mouths to scream with anymore. He can faintly make out the clattering of glass as they stumble blindly to their feet, using each other for support. Garesh continues forwards and smoothly returns his dagger to his sheathe.
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Millie is struggling to stay awake. Screamers don’t sleep, so her friend continues to tirelessly scramble through the forest. Everytime Millie blinks, her eyes don’t open until she consciously forces them to do so. As her mind falls to her fatigue she hugs the spike impaling corpses on the back of her friend.
Eyes closed.
Darkness opaque.
“Open your eyes.
I know you're awake.”
-
The room is dimly lit.
There are children in chains
Set by five candle sticks.
In circles of chalk paste.
-
Man wielding knife
Kneels to the floor,
Invokes the ancient rite,
Stabs a child, spills the gore.
-
Adjacent candles extinguish
As the kid’s life is drained.
Carves sigils in his fleshy slush and squish.
Millie watches in horror and pain.
-
She and her companions,
They’re only five years old,
Now they understand that
They shouldn’t always do as they’re told.
-
The man comes for the second
Child to be sacrificed.
The sight is so gut-wrenching
Millie’s jaw clenches tight.
-
She didn’t believe it at first,
When the first one died.
But now the second’s hurt,
She can no longer deny.
-
Anger wells up in her,
But she is helpless to act.
Her eyes wander for aid
And land on the Lady in back.
-
“Lady, help us!” Millie pleads.
The Lady looks away, covers her face.
“Someone do something, please!”
But no one moves, Millie has been betrayed.
-
Another flame goes out burnt.
Another life crashes to a halt.
The man moves onto the third.
The chains on the children go taught.
-
Panic grips her soul,
“I’ll do anything!
Just let me go!”
Then she hears faint jingling.
-
The dead children begin to hover
Chained to the floor, bulges in the ground.
Third child dies, flies, drags up an arm from under
The stone floor where a body is now found.
-
There is a man chained to the children
Lying on the ground limbs spread apart
He awakes but displays no fear, just disdain.
His shape is reminiscent of a star.
-
The knife-wielder occultist giggles giddy,
A fourth child is dying, Millie will be next.
The Lady gasps as she sees
The chained person thoroughly vexed.
-
Chained man begins to speak
“Thou depraved mortals defile the light.”
Knife man laughs, “Tis is no heresy,
For we return the lost Angel flight.”
-
The chained man mixes grimacing amusement.
“They are gone. You could only catch one.”
Occultist can’t understand the statement.
“We brought you here, we’ll bring them all home.”
-
Chain man shakes his head.
“Someone had to stay behind.”
Knife man growls, turning red.
Turns to Millie to rend her alive.
-
A swish of wind, the Lady turns to smoke and flees.
The man chained down groans in frustration.
The man with the knife carves a sigil in Millie’s
Back and squeals with elation
-
The deranged mind of murderers,
She will never comprehend.
She will not forgive nor wants to remember.
The untimely demise, the bitter end.
-
The Lady had raised her to five years of age.
That was the mistake of the cultish sect.
Millie learned Witchcraft from that sage.
The man with the knife didn’t last a second.
-
Desperation overwhelmed Millie,
She was the last child left.
She cried against the cult for killing
Her friends, now her only recourse is death.
-
“Vengeance Spirits, Incorporeals, I summon thee!
Feast upon these souls I offer.
Kill these evil men, I demand thy service immediately.
Make them pay, make them suffer.”
-
As her blood spills, she comes to peace.
The cult shall be destroyed.
Before she loses consciousness, she accepts her place.
She feels the chained souls bound to the envoy,
-
The messenger, the forerunner, the herald,
The courier, the reporter, the Angel.
It shares the message of Myliss with the world.
So sad to see one trapped for time and all
-
Eternity in this secret cult hideout.
Millie can’t help anymore, her life fades from her eyes.
Vengeance spirits are here to feast, no binding to restrain their doubt.
So despair overcomes reason, but in hopelessness she defies.
-
The struggle of Screamers to tear apart and take souls.
Millie reaches out, sees the chains are saturated Animus.
She too is bound to a chain, but she has brought the Incorporeals.
A terrible thought in her mind begins to seed its device.
-
She has not passed on because she still has Animus.
Her Animus is a chain, but it makes no difference.
Suffused with Vitra, her power is enhanced.
An echo of her Psyche is tied to her mind.
-
She reveals her plan to her friends,
They are Millie, too.
Millie says to the Millies, “We are one with the Angel.
We have access to his Animus, and our Vitra.
-
The five use the powers of creation, found primarily in Angels.
They reforge their trapped souls,
Tie their Animus together.
Amalgamation or Conglomerate, which term is better?
-
The chains remain, though not physically to bind.
The Angel is free and runs for his life.
The children awake corrupted by death.
The Incorporeals killing the cult member right and left.
-
The vengeance spirits leave something of a type,
A sort of Animus entanglement like the chained Angel’s bind.
She says, “I summoned the Incorporeals, they are mine.”
And she is one with them, but she is one of a kind.
-
Years pass, decades, centuries, more.
How many millenia have passed before
She awoke to a call of vengeance from another
And she regrets the decision to wake from her slumber.