Warning: OK, I'll admit, this fic at first glance makes no sense. Read it further and it still makes no sense. So all and all this gets a dramatically weird rating. I apologize lol The characters of the Coldfire Trilogy are not mine and are the creations of C.S. Friedman, a gifted and incredibly talented author. They're only left to us to dream about and construct alternative realities with slightly more hopeful futures (which this fic certainly wouldn't fall under).
Further warning: If you're depressed by nature DO NOT read this. I repeat, DO NOT. My mentality at the time was either a drunken stupor or slightly maddened by excessive lack of sleep. This fic is disturbing. Turn back now, it's not for the faint of heart and is more of an AU. Damien is revoked from the Church after the 3rd book and with nothing left begins to spiral down the very same path Tarrant walked down. Read on those with courage enough to make sense of drivel.
'NEVER SAY DIE….'
He was alone, completely and utterly alone. The words of the Patriarch still rang in his mind like funeral bells, those dreaded words that had silenced and extinguished his soul forever. Even now, as he walked down the narrow cobble stone streets there was a hollow emptiness inside, an unfamiliar void that sucked his thoughts into nothing. He had trouble remembering who he was, the reason for his expulsion, and the memories of his past. Everything seemed reduced to the simplistic tasks of fulfilling basic needs and being attune to aches and pains of his weary body. At one point he realized he felt hungry and stepped inside a local inn for a small bowl of soup. But the thick stew turned to ash in his mouth. Meals no longer satisfied the growing desire to consume everything in sight.
After a time of wandering aimlessly through the gathering gloom it occurred to him that perhaps it wasn't food he desired. No--it was something much darker than that. As if in answer to his half completed thought a young woman dashed out into the middle of the street, her hair pulled back loosely by a faded ribbon. Her clothes stretched generously over her chest and she glanced modestly in his direction. But it wasn't lust that answered her invitation, it was the primeval call of madness. He wanted to rush forward and seize her by the neck, watching in delight as her eyes widened in horror.
Damien rubbed his eyes and turned back the way he had come. What was going on? He hadn't eaten anything in who knew how many days or weeks but he didn't feel the slightest inclination to grab a bite. All his hollow soul called out for was blood, pain, and suffering, an answering to the raw ugly wound that was weeping its venom into every organ in his body. His mind became as flat and primitive as a two sided coin, an opposite for every notion yet nothing behind them. He knew what he desired but he didn't know why or cared to. Night rolled into day than slowly receded back into night. The stars wheeled overhead rising and falling above and below the horizon. One town faded into the next, outlines blurring until his vision was reduced to a faded painting left out in the rain. Buildings lost their stark contours, and countryside melted into a haze of green and black shadows. Nothing in the world seemed to matter, or there was nothing in the world containing any substance of interest. It was strange how mechanical and illusory everything seemed, his body an inconvenient prison within which raged the bloodthirsty soul of a monster.
His home was burned. The Patriarch had seen to that. Not only was he banished from the church and his position recanted but his material existence was carefully snipped out as well. Friends became cold strangers, nothing remained of his except glowing ashes. His accounts had been voided and erased, his possessions dwindling to the ragged clothes on his back. Only the rhythmic plodding of his footsteps kept his mind on the present, the hypnotic sound lulling him into numbness.
But then, one particularly cloudy and windy day, he recognized a landmark for the first time. The cyclical nature of his wending journey had spiraled inward until it led him here--to the center of the maze. The broad marble steps leading up between two tall pillars struck a cord somewhere, the familiar archway and nude statues setting it apart from the wooden and plaster churches stacked end upon end on either side. Damien slowly made his way to the arch, noting the colonnade that marched down the long hall just inside the entry way.
There was no one inside, the vaulted audience chamber empty and silent. He walked past the tall columns not knowing where he planned to go. There was no exit as far as he could see except the doorway through which he'd come. All of a sudden a rather robust woman sauntered into view, her red skirt swishing suggestively about her ankles. Her bodice dipped low exposing a generous cleavage and her stringy hair fell in waves about her round face.
"Yes, my I help you?" Her gravely voice grated painfully against Damien's sensitive ears. He hadn't heard a single spoken word in what seemed like decades.
"I-I think I'm looking for someone." His indecision came as a surprise. It was amazing that he could ascertain any motive whatsoever in his fevered mind.
The woman smiled and bowed low at the waist, gesturing for him to follow. "Right this way sir. There's only one person people come to see in this place." And she guided him through a low gap in the far wall that Damien was sure hadn't been there a moment ago.
He was led through one room after another finding the succession of windowless compartments suffocating. At long last they came out in a circular foyer where a lovely garden grew in the center, the plants twisting upward beneath two large skylights. Stray beams of muted sunlight fell in patches about the room, the air frigid and still. Damien shivered and waited while the woman fetched her employer, scuttling towards a service door set in the floor. She pulled it open with a grunt and promptly disappeared from view. Damien walked over to the railed enclosure, admiring the wide range of flora that grew there. Orchids bloomed amid the wide leaves of waxy bromeliads, and striped ribbon grasses grew in clumps about their bases.
His study was cut short however by a sudden escape of air that created whirlwinds about the epicenter of the foyer. Damien walked towards the spot where the service door had been, wondering where all the air was rushing out. But there were no openings in the wall, just the skylights that offered a view of the iron gray sky above. The woman reappeared and in a moment transformed smoothly to the rumpled countenance of an elderly gentleman well past his prime. His firm gut stuck out above pressed trousers, and his torso was encased in a neat jacket. "Hello. How may I help you?" His voice was as sharp as a knife and just as deadly.
"I'm looking for someone." The statement was surer now, the only concrete thought he'd had in days. Damien latched onto it desperately, knowing intuitively that this person was the one he had been searching for.
"Me I take it. Sit down, sit down. And tell what brings you here." The man gestured behind him and stepped back to reveal a neat trio of sway-backed chairs positioned around a small coffee table. Damien took a seat and stared at the man for a few moments in bated silence.
"There's something terribly wrong with me. And I don't know what."
The man searched his eyes and sighed heavily. "You're Damien Vryce, aren't you?"
Damien hesitated. "I-I think so. Do you know me?"
"I used to. So you have no recollection of your past or what brought you to my doorstep?" A nod was his only answer. "And no idea of who or what you are?" Again the terse nod. "Well then my friend, I'd say we have some catching up to do. First of all, you won't know me even if I told you my name but I'm going to say it anyway for posterity's sake. I'm Karril, and this is my humble abode. We've met before. But what I want to know is just what happened to you. You're a wreck, your memory completely drained. Who did this to you?""I--" Damien couldn't quite bring himself to say it. But somehow the words formed on his lips. "The Patriarch dismissed me from the Church." Karril inhaled sharply. "But after that--it's as if I've relinquished my soul."
"And I take it that bastard has destroyed everything else that tied you to your humanity. He didn't physically or mentally harm you, did he?"
Damien shook his head vigorously. "I just walked out. And that's what I've been doing for the past month, at least I think it's a month. I sort of know who I am and what's happened, but it's obscured behind a dense fog."
Karril nodded knowingly. "It's denial and the most extreme case of escapism I've ever seen. Well, I don't think I can help you find yourself again, but I can certainly put you up for a while until you do."Damien smiled gratefully, the uncomfortable feeling subsiding. "And there's one more thing Karril. I want Tarrant's body."
Karril avoided the question at first, brushing it off or negating it completely. But after awhile Damien became more forceful and the demands began to grate on the demon's nerves. Finally he confronted the man and gripped him by the shoulders, forcing his chin up until their eyes met. "Why? He's dead you know, or at least as good as."
"I-I know." Suddenly a strange surge of pain and what felt like sadness swept over him and he gripped his abdomen instinctively. What on Erna was that? "I just--want to see him one more time. To find peace and slowly reconstruct my world again." The lie came easily to his lips.
"Hm. Well, it'll take some string-pulling and not a few favors, so you owe me on this one Vryce. But if it'll help you find something to help piece together that shattered soul of yours then I suppose I'll try."
Gathering the two priests and archdeacon had been easy, but dragging them down to the abandoned church had been nearly impossible. They couldn't be incapacitated in any way for the ceremony had to take hold of three sound bodies. So he resorted to cloth gags and acid threats, swinging his sword menacingly before him. The three men cowered on the stone altars where they had been bound, their robes tangling about their legs. Everything was in place.
Halfway through the operation Vryce looked up startled and wondered what in the vulking Hell he was doing. It was like working for an employer he'd never seen but who controlled his every move like a pawn in a twisted game of chess. Damien had no idea where he was going, or what on Erna these preparations led up to. He could sense that these quavering men weren't long for this world, but surprisingly that didn't bother him. They seemed shallow archetypes of a lost dream, a world he had long forsaken. They and what they symbolized meant nothing to him--in fact, he felt every right to do as he pleased. But it wasn't vengeance that drove him unthinkingly to the remote monastery and small church within the Inner City. Nor was it revenge. It was simply an outlet for his hate, a soothing balm for the raging inferno that burned deep inside. It quieted his thoughts for a moment and gave him peace.
From somewhere behind him two acolytes proceeded down the aisle of marked gravestones, bearing a litter containing the Neocount's corpse. Damien shuttered when they pulled back the curtain, the man's face unchanged in death. And something else bumped inside him. Something he had never felt before. He pushed it aside and turned to Karril who was hovering nervously outside the wrought iron gate. "Go, leave this place if you don't want to be consumed by the pain." When he caught sight of the sacrificial victims his eyes widened and he shouted fiercely. "Stop this madness Damien! I was wrong to have helped you. You're consumed by madness!' But Damien kept right on with the preparations, fingering the fine steel blade that he had had recently sharpened for this night. The moon overhead reached its zenith spilling cold light over the graves.
"Karril, if this works out, I'll regain my soul. Or what's left of it anyway. But if it doesn't and you return to find me mortally wounded DO NOT heal me. Leave me to Hell."
Karril blinked and wondered what unearthly creature had possessed the man before him. His face was haggard and deathly pale, his body thin and muscled. His soft hair was swept back from his forehead and his baggy clothes fell loosely about his narrow frame. If Karril didn't know any better the beautiful figure before him looked sort of like…
The thought vanished as the rigid body of Tarrant was lifted from its velvet berth and placed on a marble plinth, the statue that formerly surmounted it lying in pieces on the ground. His face was unchanged in death, the silken robes and tawny hair still soft and rich in color. It seemed not a day had passed since that fateful hour in that cursed land. That day a piece of Damien had died, the rest quickly following when he returned home to a find a summons awaiting him on the mantle.
Karril was growing anxious, his shouts carrying across the hallowed ground in the chill night air. No other sound penetrated the heavy silence, only the a fluted whisper of a mournful song as the wind shuttered past the tombstones. "You're just like him, do you realize that? How far have you come to recede so far? He sacrificed everything for the honeyed promises of a bitter betrayal. But do you want to wait five thousand years to realize your immortality was bought at a price you could never pay? What are you doing! Think Vryce! Tarrant killed his family, his soul, and the institution he had spent his whole life constructing that saved Erna from itself! Do you want to throw the same gifts away?"
Damien shook his head sadly as if the spluttering demon were merely an ignorant child. A cold laugh sprang from his lips and he started when he realized it was his own voice that spoke with such vapid sarcasm and contempt. "Hah! Little you know of humans, Karril--or else you'd realize that we have nothing to lose, and everything to gain! Tonight I realize what I've wasted my whole life trying to find. It's what Tarrant saw, and what he eventually lost sight of as madness consumed him! All I know is that I can't go back, and that for one such as I there is no hope for tomorrow. Only the bitter dregs of loneliness and darkness. If I have to live my whole life without light, than at least let me choose my darkness."
Karril stopped mid-sentence, stared at him curiously for a minute then sadly shook his head in mute acquiesce. "If I can't stop him from losing his mind I can at least spare him from death." He muttered and pushed his way past the gate.
The three holy men were crossing themselves frantically. Karril thought it a rather grand irony that of all of the men of the Church Damien had to find the weakest and lowliest of the lot. They were probably accepted into service on the tailcoats of their esteemed forefathers to whose golden image their light was a mere flicker. Or else they wanted a quiet desk job away from the humdrum of humanity, the race of life they just couldn't keep up with. Fools, the whole lot. Nothing would come of their deaths except for a muted whimper of sorrow from a distraught relation. But nothing of substance. Suddenly Karril understood. It didn't matter the stature or importance of the souls Vryce sacrificed. The smaller the man the better for the news of their murders would take that much longer to spread. It was the mere fact that they had been sworn into a holy contract that Vryce had been so rudely excommunicated from. Cut from the mold and dashed on the floor with all the other misshapen oddities and ecclesiastical misfits. They were the Lord's servants and as such ripe for the slaughter. Karril shook his head gravely. It was only through knowledge of another man that he was able to follow Vryce's unconscious footsteps. Another man who wasn't so different from the one who stood before him, the world spreading out beneath his feet. Karril could feel the fae sweep past in eddying ripples that pooled amongst the graves. The whole cemetery became alive with the bluish-red glow of earth-fae, a swirling maelstrom of such awesome power that it took his breath away. And at the center of the raging vortex stood Damien, his arms upheld to the skies. Thunder rumbled to the north, and lightening crackled like the hiss of an extinguished flame. It was electrifying, and Karril stepped back until he could grab hold of the iron railing. Something was about to happen, something terrible and immense the likes of which Erna hadn't seen since the renouncement of the Patriarch's soul.
A fierce wind sprang up, whipping Damien's hair into a twisting spiral. His hands were shaking and his palms were sweaty. The acolytes glanced fearfully at one another and fled, banging the iron gate loudly behind them. Their pounding footsteps were lost in the drum of rain that poured down from a cloudless sky. The thunder grew louder, spreading out over the plains like an avalanche of sound. The ground beneath became a sea of mud, the cloying morass sucking at Vryce's feet. He stepped atop the base of the plinth, lifting his face to the angry heavens. "Hear me now in this time of need! I call on You who respond to blood and the pain of an empty soul!" Lightening flashed, touching earth several hundred feet beyond the gates. Karril jumped and narrowed his eyes in an attempt to see through the driving rain.
The priests were shaking from head to toe, knowing without question their fate. But the archdeacon wasn't so easily cowed. He scowled up at Damien and attempted to shout some vestige of a half-forgotten sermon but strangely the words eluded him. The three men didn't have one collective thought between them, their heads emptying out into the icy deluge that threatened to drown them as they lay pinioned to the overturned headstones. Damien began to chant in a language he didn't recognize, the words tumbling from his lips like weighted stones. The wind died suddenly as if calming to better hear the rhythmic incantation that filled the night and resounded from the surrounding hills. Even the priests seemed to cease their incessant trembling and moaning. The earth fae stilled and finally stopped altogether, solidifying like the surface of a frozen lake. But Karril could still see the swirls of wine and gray blue that pooled beneath his feet, glassy and opaque. But Damien was unaware of the change in his surroundings, his eyes closed and his spread apart to brace him against the edge of the rectangular marble platform. "I ask you now, you of unending night, to take what I have not forsaken in exchange for a departed life! Bring breath and warmth to a body long since cold to the rush of blood and the kiss of night!" 'Rush of poison would have been more like it.' Damien thought to himself, an amused observer inside a body possessed. He stared out through foreign eyes and wiggled his ephemeral fingers in the gloves of another man's. His soul was being ripped from its numb carapace attached only by a single shimmering thread, his corporeal form scooped out like an empty shell. And in its place a rose a knew knowing, a keening sense of awakened awareness that passed beyond his five senses. Indeed a new sixth sense took root in the middle of his being, an intangible sensation that noticed things his mind couldn't yet comprehend.
Then, as if a blind man were presented with lenses to restore his sight, Damien awoke with new eyes reabsorbing the world again as if for the first time. Trees stood out in eerie transparent shadows, the only solid thing in sight was the shifting sea of raw power that stretched beneath him spreading deep and wide to the very center of the earth. It capped and peaked in eddying waves, ripples of unholy night that throbbed to the beat of his dead heart. And far above the stars glittered with a greater brilliance than all the lamps in heaven. Each spoke to him with a distinct voice and song, their soft light spilling about his head and shoulders like a celestial cowl spun from starlight. This creature glanced down at his body, startled to find it still human. But his skin was as white as the corpse at his feet, his hands skeletal claws. Damien wiggled his fingers tentatively, reanimating his new body. Attaching each connector one by one he painstakingly rebuilt his shattered nervous system beginning with the spine and working through each limb. But the effort cost only the shadow of a sigh and the sluggish bump of a heartbeat. Movement and thought were effortless now, moving fluidly through a new plane of awareness. The night called out to him in a chorus of unearthly cries, some far from human while others wept the familiar dirge of the damned. Damien looked out at his new company, the bodies of the priests and the archdeacon lying dead in a pool of blood. Their bodies were burned and badly scared as if they had been electrocuted by an intense bolt of lightening. With each drop of the crimson wine into the purplish maw of fae it swirled anew in a tightening knot of hunger. Damien's new soul--if it could even be called that--hearkened to that power's desire and he fought the urge to rush forward and consume the men alive. What had he done?
From somewhere behind him he heard the low moan of a demon. His ears pricked up and he swiveled his head, relieved to find that it was only Karril. And with a sudden rush he realized he could remember everything that had ever happened to him since the day he was born. The journeys through the Rakhlands, the frantic chase and Cianni's kind, sweet face. The pangs of Zen's death resurfaced, the memories of a thousand yesterdays ramming him hard in the chest. Damien gasped and plunged deeper, moving beyond the crammed files of his life's registry finding his mind could pass beyond searching through every thought and every discovery since Time Immemorial. Then, with a resounding clang, the door to those worlds was shut, slamming down in his face and catching his fingers in the doorjamb. Damien shouted and leapt backwards, trapped in the cloying files of his own life's record. But they were as good as dead to him now. Those faces masks of traipsing corpses and leering progenitors who delighted in weaving lies.
Drawing himself back to the present Damien looked around, nearly falling on top of the warm body that lay before him on the marble slab. Instead he pushed off and slid to the ground, letting the crashing waves of earth fae lap at his neck and pull at his legs. Karril slowly disengaged his stiff fingers from the bars of the fence. His knuckles were white and as immovable as stone. He shook himself and hurried across the cemetery, the fae subsiding into murmuring pools that splashed beneath his boots. Damien was staring vacantly into the distance, his eyes white with a ring of color spreading thinly around the milky pupil like a halo. Karril passed his hand before the young man's face but to no avail. Now that he could actually step back and get a good look at him, he was amazed how much cleaner and neater he looked. His well-balanced proportions were amplified somehow, his expression almost angelic. His hair had grown into a thick tangle that fell just below his shoulders, his thin frame appearing all the more fragile.
But what caught his attention was something far more incredible, a miracle he had never before seen performed. A groan arose from the lips of the corpse whose cheeks were now flushed with the throbbing pulse of life. The fingers twitched, the arms moved. Presently a pair of wide blue eyes stared back at Karril, as lusterless and cold as the hands that reached up to cover them. The man sighed heavily and sat up, shaking his head as if casting off the remnants of a bad dream. His silk robes whispered as they tumbled in a sheath of crimson to the ground that had stilled its tempestuous motion. "Why?" The rhetorical question hung between the two men like a pendulum, swinging back and forth in the darkness. Karril had never deigned to understand men--in fact he despised them. Most in his employ were too stupid to remember a simple command and those that weren't still struggled to carry out the simplest tasks. They had not the concept nor the words to function within any society other than their own. Karril preferred breeds of his own stock, creatures of ephemeral shadows that took on a life given them. They were cut-outs, paper facsimiles of whimsical characters dreamt up in a comical stupor. Some knew only the pulse of the dance, their bodies twisting and moving to the beat of an ancient song. Others were caught in a perpetual embrace like the stark figurines on a Grecian urn. Forever caught in another's arms but bereft of the emotion to enjoy it. They were shallow, yes, but simple and kind, easy to instruct and harmless in their play. Men and women both flocked to his halls, haunting the upper stairs and crowding onto the portico that overlooked a magnificent garden. Karril was at peace there satiated by the velvet sighs of a hundred lovers whose hearts were as blank as the white marble on which they leaned. So he never grew to know them intimately, for there was nothing beyond their plasterine smiles. Humans remained quite a mystery to him, one that he didn't wish to explore. It was a pointless endeavor and a complete waste of time. He would rather be amused by their shadows than their empty prattle.
But when Tarrant looked up at him with those dull cerulean eyes lifeless and empty, he started backwards overwhelmed by the volumes of pain and sorrow that lingered there. Never a good judge of character he was shocked to see how open and vulnerable the Neocount was, exposing himself without pretence. Karril eventually found his voice again and loudly cleared his throat. "Uh-hem. Welcome back to the world of the living. I trust your accommodations weren't to your liking?" Tarrant continued to stare blankly, his heads resting limply at his sides. Had Vryce mispronounced one of the verses thus severing Tarrant from his soul? Then the body before him was just an automaton, a hollow shell like the shadow puppets that frequented his temple. The shaken man spoke however, carefully debating his choice of words. "Is this real or the product of a fevered mind?"
Karril grimaced, wondering to what worlds the count had been taken and what horrors he must have seen and been subjected to. It was no secret that Tarrant's life was one of anguish, suffering, death, and decay, not all of which pertained solely to him. Everything he touched left a withering mark that destroyed all it came into contact with. Given, there were a few lucky souls that had withstood his taint, but they were few and far between not the least of which was--
Karril started and looked down at the base of the slab where Damien lay curled with one arm across his stomach. His eyes were clenched tight and if it weren't for the subtle rise and fall of his chest he would have sworn the man was dead. Tarrant looked around at the barren moor that stretched beyond the walls of the ancient cemetery. Gnarled limbs of old oak trees stretched toward the cloudy heavens that began to obscure the soft wash of moonlight. But other than that no denizen of the night leapt out to seize his throat. No conjurer stood proud of his momentous deed. In fact--there was not a soul in sight save for himself and the demon. Then a groan drew his gaze towards the ground and he found himself wondering what sort of beast lay there. How long had it been since his demise? What manner of creatures dwelt now in the human's stead? Karril seemed unchanged, but his kind could live for hundreds or even thousands of years. Tarrant waited as a slender hand gripped the edge of the slab and gradually the shape of a head and shoulders appeared. If he didn't know any better it almost looked like… "Damien." He had intended for it to be a question but it came out in a short bark.
The man looked up startled and Tarrant's eyes widened. "What on Erna happened to you?"