James A. Hunter
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Vigil's Valor: 37 – Cosmic Horror Study Hall
🕑 Added 2022-08-16 17:01:02 +0000 UTC“What the fuck,” Cal and I both said at the same instant.
Had I accidentally just killed Renholm?
“Holy shit, look at that,” Cal said, hunching forward.
Pieces of exploded pixie were crawling and snaking their way back across my bed, forming into a ball of pulsing flesh. It was one of the most disgusting things I’d ever seen. And there were still pixie guts strewn all over my bed. Already, I was regretting giving him that damned Scale.
“Wow, I did not see that coming at all,” Cal said, finally straightening.
“You and me both,” I replied. Great, my bed was toast and you couldn’t pay me enough money to sleep anywhere near the pulsing ball of pixie parts. So much for a good night’s rest. Seriously, what the actual fuck? With everything else going on, this was the last thing I needed to deal with. I sighed, headed back into the foyer, and plopped down into the padded armchair. I dragged a hand down my face. “Okay, now that he isn’t in imminent danger, care to tell me what the hell happened out there?” I asked.
Cal settled down on the couch across from me.
“You know how these things go,” Cal replied with a shrug. “Everything was going fine, until it wasn’t. The night started off good enough. We definitely hit a few snags early on, but nothing life threatening, and we eventually managed to track down a book about Chaos Aberrations.”
“Where’d you find it?” I asked.
He paused and frowned. “Look, I’m gonna be honest with you, it’s better if you don’t fully know the answer to that question. Getting our hands on that book took some gumption and elbow grease and—because you’ll probably hear about it sooner or later—Renholm and I mayhave had to set a fire. Or several fires. The quantity of the fires really isn’t that important. The point is, significant property damage was done, and its better if you have some degree of plausible deniability. But between you and me, someone really doesn’t want that book getting out to the general public, because we had to raid the restricted section of a certain, already restricted, library.”
Huh, now that was an interesting wrinkle.
“Still, getting the book was a cake walk compared to all the bullshit we had to go through to get to that Arbitrator you wanted us to look into. His name is Nazer Maux and he’s crazy as hell. Like ex-girlfriend-throw-your-dresser-into-the-pool-and-set-your-house-on-fire crazy. He’s part of some a Sect of Wrath that’s all hellfire and brimstone called the Order of Immolation.”
“The Order of Immolation?” I asked. I couldn’t quite place it, but I was sure I’d heard that name somewhere before. But when?
“Yeah, they’re a bunch of super intense weirdos,” Cal replied. “Real strong Jim Jones, Heaven’s Gate vibes. Wouldn’t want to touch this dude with a ten-foot pole. He studied with the Magi of White light for a while so he can definitely sling a little magic, but I don’t think he’s a sorcerer. He is a one-hundred percent certified asshole, though. The Order of Immolation basically advocates for what amounts to a Vigil-run theocracy and they have a serious hard on for ‘smiting’ the wicked.”
“Any chance he could be powerful enough to summon something like a Chaos Aberration?” I asked.
Cal frowned and seesawed his head. “Eh. Hard to tell, but I don’t think so. Not saying he’s not involved, but I don’t think he’s ringleader material. He’s a zealot. A follower. But maybe that’s all a ruse, because he’s also secretive and paranoid. And did I mention paranoid? Because yeah, paranoid. He had a metric assload of wards set up around his quarters. We accidentally tripped one when we were rifling through his stuff. That’s how Renholm ended up down a leg. Just wrong place, wrong time.”
I grunted. Wrong place, wrong time. Story of my life.
“Whelp,” I said slapping the padded arm rest, “let’s spin the prize wheel and see what a Sage Class Affinity Scale buys me.”
Cal and Renholm had stashed the book they’d stolen in my wardrobe. Like everything else in my room, it was covered in pixie blood, but I could still clearly make out the title, etched in gold sigils on the front cover. A Treatise on the Fell Creatures of Oblivion. Yay. A Treatise. That sounded absolutely riveting and not at all like it would make me want to jump off a bridge in sheer boredom. With the book in hand, I returned to my seat, and cracked the dusty pages.
It was twice as thick as a phone book. This just kept getting better and better.
I started scanning the first few pages and thought my eyes would shrivel inside my skull from how dry the material was. Damn but I wish I had a pot of coffee, because this was going to be a long, tedious night.
There was no handy dandy table of contents, so reluctantly, I started working my way through, page by page and chapter by chapter. Mostly, it was a bunch of rambling, half-coherent philosophical musings about the nature of reality and the interplay between the Celestial and Oblivion. The Divine and Profane. A lot of it was a bunch of boring navel gazing, but there were a couple of interesting reflections about Raguel. According to the author, Cnaeus Avidius Galvisius, the Celestials and the Chaos Titans were locked in an eternal war, being played out on cosmic scale.
There were number of core worlds situated along what Cnaeus called the Central Finite Arc and whoever controlled them basically got to shape the rules of reality. The Celestials were currently the shot callers and they’d banished the Titans eons ago into the outer darkness of Oblivion, but the Titans were grinding and hustling to get a toehold back in reality. The world I was on, Alkran, was the key world node in the Cantorii Prime System. Cnaeus believed that if the Titans could subdue enough key world nodes, they’d be able to flip the script, exile the Celestials into Oblivion, and impose their own vision of reality on the universe.
None of that helped me, but it was interesting.
After about four hours—right when I was on the verge of a boredom-induce brain hemorrhage—I found what I was looking for. An obscure passage that talked about an even more obscure ritual called the Sacrament of Oblivion.
Just as the Celestials have mortal agents who serve as their hands and feet, seeking to impose divine will upon the world nodes, so to do the Chaos Titans. What would motivate an individual to serve such cruel, capricious, and unpredictable beings is a mystery I have yet to unravel, but serve they do. It is rumored that the Warlocks of Shadowvale can commune directly with Titans, receiving unholy blessing and unspeakable power in exchange for performing profane rites.
I can neither confirm nor deny the validity of such claims, but I suspect there is at least a spark of truth to the tales.
More common, and a matter I can speak of with some authority, is on the summoning and binding of Chaos Aberrations. The Great Titans are only too happy to dispatch the Beasts of Oblivion in service to those who would seek their aid. The very presence of such creatures within the Material Realm weakens the barriers of Oblivion and, over time, causes additional rifts which, in turn, releases additional Aberrations. In theory, such “Rift Ripples” can result in an exponential influx of Aberrations and the eventual collapse of a world node.
That is why the Vigilant, and those of other holy Celestial orders, take such great pains to eliminate Aberrations whenever they appear.
Still, summoning one is surprisingly easy for those willing to pay the price. Through a ritual known as the Sacrament of Oblivion (which I shall not document, for obvious reasons), a supplicant can sacrifice an “offering of the flesh and spirit” and open a rift within their very soul. Fingers, hands, eyes, even tongues. The amount of “flesh” sacrificed often determines how powerful the summoned Aberration will be. Once the Sacrament is complete, the Aberration will manifest and do the will of a supplicant without question or moral compunction.
Such a pact may seem extreme, yet Aberrations make for powerful allies. They are deadly, cunning, have access to a wide array of Chaos magics, and are virtually unkillable. Unlike other types of Mortka, not even decapitation or complete dismemberment will stop the Beasts of Oblivion for long. The only way to truly rid yourself of such a creature is through a greater banishment ritual or by slaying the supplicant, thus closing the rift and sending the Aberration back to Oblivion from whence it came.
— Cnaeus Avidius Galvisius, 753 KIY, Year of the Basilisk
I closed the book with a thump. Finally, I was getting somewhere. About time.
The passage didn’t conclusively prove anything, but it did confirm that it was possible for someone with enough motivation to conjure an Aberration. Cal had said this Arbitrator, Nazer Maux, wasn’t powerful enough to be behind these attacks, but I wasn’t ready to cross him off the list just yet. This didn’t tell me everything I needed to know, but it was a step in the right direction.
I rubbed at my eyes and set the thick tome on the reading table beside the chair.
More than anything, I wanted to call it a night, but unfortunately my bed was full of pixie guts and there was still one thing I had left to do. A task that couldn’t wait until morning. I currently had two Legacy Scrolls in my possession and Bakos Barna had warned me not to read them unless I was in a secure location. He’d said that absorbing the knowledge contained in a Legacy Scroll would knock me on my ass for a few hours, at least.
If I was going to use one, there was no better time than now.
The Scroll of Celestial Scrivening would augment my Sage Smith ability, but since I didn’t currently have that skill activated, I’d have to hold off for a while. But there was nothing stopping me from reading the Scroll of Twin Shadows. I slipped it out and lightly traced my fingers across the brilliant cobalt fabric. A gentle heat drifted from the scroll, warming my hand. A flutter of nervousness worked its way through my belly as I carefully unbound the soft leather strips tying it shut.
Scroll of Twin Shadows
The Path of Twin Shadows is an ancient martial technique, which allows a Vigil to duplicate their Soul Bound Weapon, crafting a flawless shadowed version that deals additional Torment damage with every hit. The conjured weapon will be identical in all other ways and will have the same inherent properties as the original, including any enchantments derived from Arcanum Tokens, Affinity Scales, or Ward abilities.
Legacy Binding Location: Soul Bound Weapon Boon
Recommended Attribute Minimums: Insight, 20; Verve, 20; Brawn, 24
Recommended Skill Selections: Mind Vault
Would you like to proceed by reading the Scroll of Twin Shadows? Yes/No
I hit yes and the glimmering golden words faded from the air. I unfurled the scroll expecting to see more text, or maybe some sort of training-style manual with step-by-step pictures that even a crayon eater like me could follow.
There were no words. No pictures.
Instead, there was an intricate circle and thousands of sigils and incomprehensible occult diagrams, all interconnected through an elaborate series of overlapping geometric patterns. It also appeared to have been written in blood, which was somehow still glistening and wet. When I ran a thumb over the page in curiosity, it came away clean.
What the hell was I supposed to do with this?
I squinted and looked closer, closer, closer, until I was nearly pressing my nose against the page. There was something hiding just beneath all the cryptic images and purposely confusing patterns. A faint glimmer of light, which seemed to swim on the edges of my vision. If I could just get a good look at whatever was causing that light, I’d be able to understand what I was supposed to do.
I didn’t blink, didn’t breathe.
If I twitched, I would miss it.
The light grew more intense, more insistent as I stared at the scroll.
I had no idea how long I sat like, entranced and unmoving, but eventually my eyes began to water. Except it wasn’t water. Bloody streaks ran down my cheeks and fat drops of crimson splashed onto the page. Instead of marring the surface of the scroll, the blood disappeared, absorbed into the parchment. Slowly, the symbols, shapes, and patterns began to change. To swirl and dance and move, rearranging themselves as the light emanating from the scroll intensified.
Then the scroll was gone and I was falling into the images, like Alice tumbling face first into the rabbit hole. Slowly, the sigils resolved into a face made of stars, the eyes were swirling galaxies teaming with untold life. She was an older, stern looking woman with a hard jawline. It was a face I’d seen before; a soft voice whispered a name in the back of my head. Gadriel. The visage of Justice. My patron and the same aspect who had blessed me with the Soul Bound Weapon Boon.
She spoke three words, but they weren’t in English or any human language for that matter. They were primal. The sound of a hurricane. The death of a neutron star, collapsing under its own weight. The distant echo of the Big Bang bouncing around the universe.
Still, I understood her.
“SEE. KNOW. COMPREHEND.”
Cal had told me shortly after I’d reincarnated that creatures of flesh and blood weren’t physically equipped to handle the complexities of ultimate reality. Apparently, that was the reason I couldn’t fully remember my original encounter with Raguel. I hadn’t really been able to understand the offhanded comment, but now… now I did. My eardrums ruptured and warm blood poured down the sides of my face. My eyeballs burned as though I’d just looked into the face of the sun for an hour without blinking. An onslaught of powerful, overwhelming images ripped through my mind like a hurricane as Gadriel imparted her wisdom onto me.
In a flash of revelation, I instinctively knew how to split my Soul Bound Weapon. How to draw apart its shadow in a process not terribly dissimilar from what the Profane Dread Shadow did when expanding its brood.
Then, as quickly as it came, the flood of images halted. The roaring sound of the universe whisked away. I was back in my body and when I glanced down at the scroll, I saw it had turned to dust in my hands.
That wasn’t so bad, I thought.
Then I projectile vomited a gallon of blood down the front of my chest and passed out in the chair.
Comments
James A. Hunter
I felt so bad because the cliffhanger with Renholm is such a dick move, especially knowing he was going to be fine
BelligerentGnu
Once again, chuckling out loud here. Also, interesting. So we're looking for someone who recently lost body parts.
