He became aware by degrees. First of discomfort. Of a dull ache that seemed to bore through his side and into his back. Then of the throbbing of blood behind his eyes. The steady thump thump of his heart beat that seemed to drive right into his brain with its deafening resonance. Other smaller pains that demanded less attention than the first two. Of rough sheets under his back. Of moist, cool air that touched his skin. Of a cavernous, silent weight that lurked over and around him; that his senses, on the verge of wakening could not pierce.
He opened his eyes to darkness. It took a moment to realize he did not know where he was. No familiar place most certainly. He started, bewildered and pain lanced through his side. His shoulder ached dully. He drew an unsteady breath, curled about his knees in efforts to drive the pain away. Trying to clear his head enough to heal it. The magic came erratically, as though it were hesitant to respond to his will. He pushed the pain away. Healed the wounds in his flesh with greater effort than he could recall ever having exerted in similar tasks. His head still throbbed. He called a witchlight and it came at his bidding, showing a small stone room devoid of windows, boasting only the cot he lay upon and a rough stone alter with the symbol of the one god carved into its face.
He pushed off from the side of the cot, wincing. Mind recalling the pain he had washed away from his body even if it was physcially gone. He was bereft of armor. Bereft of everything save trousers and linen undertunic and those were crusted with blood. He recalled the mountain. He recalled the echoing cracks of gun fire. Gun fire. He'd had pieces of lead from a technology of old lodged within him. Someone had taken them out. He had certainly not done it in his healing. Those dead little pieces of ancient weaponry had stymied his attempts.
He took a breath and tried the door. He expected it locked. He expected to have to magic his way past it. But it opened easily, creaking on rusty hinges. He stood in the doorway, staring out at a dark stone passage. The ceiling was low, the walls close and thick. There was something about the stone of the place -- floor, ceiling, walls - - that was odd. Something that was muffling and ancient and foreboding. There was power in those stones. Dormant, subliminal power that was layered so thickly as to be impenetrable. Wards, he thought. Wards on the walls for some purpose. Wards in the stone of this place. Wards so strong that it must have taken centuries to layer them. To build upon their effectiveness. He put fingers to the wall to try and determine their purpose, but they were silent and featureless in their rest. Only whatever they were meant to protect would trigger their energies.
He did not know which way to go. This place lent him no clues. Try as he might, he could sense nothing but stillness from within and without. Either that or the wards muffled his inquiry. There were steps leading up. Up was a good direction. He felt as if the weight of the world were resting above him. There was a hall at the end of the steps. A gathering place perhaps with tall ceiling and thick columns running along the sides of the wall. It was still oppressive and dark, despite the size. There were torches burning at the far end. What looked to be the nave of a chapel resided in the flickering shadow. A figure knelt before the alter, head bowed, hands clasped before him.
Kall-Su stared, needing the way out. Needing confirmation that this was not some fever dream. He took a step down the aisle and the kneeling figure shifted, turning his head to look over his shoulder.
"Oh, hello Kall-Su." The Prophet smiled at him.
He didn't hesitate in mouthing the words of a spell. Summoned a force of energy that made the air waver and cast it towards the nave. It rebounded off a shield and crashed against the walls. And a strange thing happened. Instead of crumbling from the impact they seemed to absorb it. They shimmered and pulsed while the energies of Kall's spell raced along the lines of mortar and stone, desperately looking for a path out and not finding it. The wards had come into play. They protected these walls against magic.
"Wicked, foul thing to desecrate a chapel dedicated to the one god." The Prophet clicked his tongue reproachfully, rising to his feet with an audible creaking of the knees. "Mortal bodies just don't last as long as they ought." He remarked and Kall blinked, caught off guard at the casual observation. The Prophet opened his mouth and a blinding ball of white energy burst forth from between his lips, growing as it sped down the aisle towards Kall. He threw up a hasty shield, which would have deflected it save for the fact that where shield touched floor, the ward ate at its fabric, dispersing the lower section of it. Energy got through, stabbing its fingers upwards and enveloping him, finding all the weak spots where the wounds had been and gouging newly healed flesh. He cried out and fought it off, breathless and staggering.
He tried to summon an elemental and felt it stirring at his request, but it hesitated, repelled by the wards that guarded this place. It wanted to come to his bidding, but could not convince itself to pass the wards. He cursed it for a sniveling coward and called forth an ice spell to crystallize the air surrounding the Prophet. The air wasn't warded and it was humid enough to give him all the fuel he needed to create a weapon.
Ice formed at the Prophet's feet. The man looked down with mild surprise as it raced up his body, encasing him in a sheath of white ice. It thickened, layer upon layer until it was no longer recognizable as a man. Then the cracks began. A spiderweb network of cracks that started at its heart and worked their way out. Like the shattering of glass it began to chip away, littering the floor with shards. It exploded outwards in a final thrust of rebellion and Kall had to put up a shield again to avoid being impaled by ice of his own making.
Angelo stood there, smiling benevolently. "Do you understand how irreverent this is? Can you grasp that concept, being what you are, an aberration spawned of an unholy coupling?"
"Shut up." Kall cried out the words of a spell and released it in a single breath. It consumed the Prophet, swirled around him, its excess energies absorbed by the wards on the walls. This time when it cleared, the Prophet had his back to the alter, his shoulders haunched. A little trickle of blood ran down the corner of his mouth. The bloodied lips turned up to regain the smile. Kall wanted to scream. He wanted out of here.
"Don't speak to me of irreverence, you murderer." Kall spat at him.
"Oh, you can't begin to imagine." The Prophet summoned a spell. Kall braced for a powerful strike and got the opposite. A corpse lay at his feet. He looked down in shock and took a hasty step backwards. Bloody and ravaged, as if it had been blown apart by some terrible spell. A woman's body. Long, blood soaked hair tangled about a face that was no longer recognizable. But there was something about her that struck a chord. Something that made him catch his breath and choke on the bile that rose up his throat. He had seen this before. He had seen this ravaged body before. So long ago it was shrouded in the cobwebs of his memory, pushed away into a place where he might always treasure the guilt and yet not have to relive it day after day. He knew that body, because he had wrought the damage himself. A hundred years ago, locked in a shrine where they had sent his own mother to kill him.
He put a hand to his mouth, stifling a cry. It wasn't real. He told himself that. He knew better than to even believe it for a second, but he couldn't look away all the same.
An high impact energy spell hit him full center. He didn't even notice it coming. It blew him back into the wall with enough force to shatter bone. He slid down, mostly conscious, more interested in searching the floor for that terrifying corpse than pinpointing Angelo's location. It was gone. Melted away like the illusion it had been.
Angelo knelt at his side and the tall, ominous figure of Sinakha loomed behind him. The Prophet held something in his hand. A thin glass tube with a needle on the end. He plunged it into Kall's shoulder. He hardly felt it through the shock of the spell.
"A little something to make this easier on all of us. Wizardbane, they call it now. It used to have another name. I find it rather useful. You realize now, who's the master of this place, don't you? I had to let you find out for yourself, otherwise you'd have tested my limits." The prophet ran the back of his hand down Kall's cheek. "You understand now, don't you?"
The world was beginning to go soft around the edges. He was finding it increasingly difficult to focus on what Angelo was saying. His concentration began to scatter. He wanted to summon the magic and blast Angelo away from him, but he couldn't remember the words and the magic swirled aimlessly about, unchecked and ungovernable with his wits so shredded.
"Its all right." The Prophet promised. "You will."
It took three tries for Arshes' voice to get through the self-induced trance. Schneider blinked, pulling back from a mental search of the eather so intense it had his head swimming. It took a moment for his eyes to focus on the dark elf's face. Her eyes were worried, ears canted low in her agitation.
"Anything?"
Slowly he shook his head, running fingers through his hair in weariness. Not a thing. He'd been searching the ethereal plane for what seemed hours on end for some tiny trace of a presence that should have been clear as day to him and come up stumped and empty handed. Nothing. No single trace to hint that Kall-Su was even alive. But he knew he was. He was too valuable a commodity to a man who stole magic and form to keep himself alive and in power. It was a scary thought -- Angelino with Kall's power combined with his own. Separately either one was a force to reckon with --- one did not wish to dwell on what might happen if Angelo did succeed. One did not wish to contemplate what would happen to Kall's soul if he did. The logistics of the Prophet's pastime of body snatching were not perfectly clear to Schneider. One assumed the original owners of those stolen bodies were not allowed due consideration from the thief. One assumed there was a great deal of discomfort, mental or physical or both, involved. He did not wish that on Kall-Su. He arduously wanted to circumvent it.
"We're getting ready to leave." Arshes said. She looked tired. Her face was drawn. She held concern over Gara who was still weak, but gaining ground swiftly. She held concern over Kall-Su, though she might be loath to admit it, the rivalry between them a thing that had always curbed any show of affection. But, though one might quarrel with a brother, one would not wish great harm upon him.
Kiro still had men out in the mountains. Kiro would keep men out until the storms blew them back to the safety of the lowlands. There might be men of Angelo's out there still, Schneider did not contest that, but he was convinced that the Prophet himself was long gone. Let Kiro search if he liked. It soothed the man's feelings of helplessness to be doing something. Schneider knew better than to waste his time freezing up in the mountains. He could conduct his own hunt better from the comforts of Sta-Veron. Where all that was his was under one roof and he could better protect them.
They were chanting mantras against evil. He knew the words like they were written inside of his eyelids. He knew all the religious songs designed to protect man against the darkness. He never listened to them anymore -- ignored their presence in the world, but could not block out the monotonous singing of the dull eyed acolytes who shifted like shadows through the halls of this monstrous place. A place warded from the inside and not the out. Warded to keep things in, but not to repel.
"You're contaminated." The Prophet had said, so close that he felt the man's hot breath on his face. "We can cleanse the body of the filth of evil, but the soul is another matter. Purify him so that he does not offend the eyes of the One God."
Sinakha had wrapped thick fingers about his arm and jerked him up. The wizardbane had him reeling so badly he couldn't stand without the hurtful grip. Concentrate. Try and gather scattered thoughts so he might cast a spell. But every time he thought he had a grip on his wits, they would spin out of control and he would find himself dully responding to the impetus of Sinakha's grip on his arm. Turn right. Turn left. Climb steps. Stop.
Time slipped away from him. He did not recall entering the room with the incense and the chanting acolytes and the walls adorned with symbols of diocese protection. Sinakha thrust him into their midst, hovering a handbreadth behind and they circled him, shaking tiny bells to drive away demons and waving sticks of incense in the air. The smell made him nauseous. The room wavered around him. Without the support of Sinakha's hand, his knees threatened to give way.
He didn't want to kneel among them, while they chanted protections against evil aimed at him. But there was little help for it. One knee buckled and he went down, a hand on the floor, staring at the circling feet around him. Even with the wizardbane debilitating his wits, his pride still screamed protest at the situation.
They laid hands on him. Gentle enough not to alarm him. Just pulled him to his feet and drew him towards the back of the room where the air grew moist and warm. There was a baptismal pool there, under the symbol of the One God. It smelled of lavender and incense. He balked, realizing what they wanted to do. Fingers pulled at his bloody tunic and he panicked, not caring what magic he summoned or whether he could control it in his present state of mind. He willed the power desperately and felt it stirring erratically and wildly in the eather around him. It howled with abandon, almost as if it were a living thing that sensed that the hand that had always controlled it was beyond that mastery now. He released it, no actual spell, the words of one wouldn't gather in his head, intending to blast the priests away from him. But it went astray, whirling like a dervish about the room, putting out torches and shattering scones of incense, rebounding off the warded walls. A priest not even near him got hit by the residue fringe of it and screamed as half his shoulder and arm were torn from his body. The others cringed, loath to hold on to him, afraid to let go.
Then Sinakha was upon him. Spinning him around and backhanding him with enough force to send him to the floor at the edge of the pool. Again and his senses threatened to depart entirely. There was no resistance in his limbs when Sinakha dragged him into the water and plunged his head under the surface. Held him there until he was half drowned, sucking water into his lungs, then drew him up, coughing and choking on the water he'd swallowed.
Sinakha didn't say a word. Just drew him up and stared meaningfully into his eyes. A very clear warning. Then he was thrust back into the arms of the acolytes as the big man sloshed out of the pool. Everything turned gray about the edges. The world went away.
And came back in the same room he'd woken up in the first time. His senses were no clearer than they had been when he'd passed out. So he lay there miserably trying to organize thoughts that willfully refused to be subjugated.
He was in clean, white linen clothing. Loose, draw-string trousers and beltless tunic. His hair was dry, which meant some time had passed. He slipped out of bed and lost balance, going to one knee at the edge of the cot. He leaned there a moment, head in his hands trying to gather his equilibrium. It was like he was perpetually at the edge of sleep, hazy and sluggish of mind and body. He made a little sound of frustration and pushed himself up. One, two, three deep breaths to gather focus.
He went towards the door and found it unlocked again. Unsettling that they didn't try and lock him in. It worried him more than such a trivial thing should have. Same hall outside. He knew what lay in the one direction, so he took the other. Somewhere there had to be a way out. A door, a window where the wards were not so dense. Long hall way with doors -- some locked and some opening into empty rooms, as bare as his own -- none with windows. There was an intersection. He chose to go forward, half leaning against the wall because it was easier to walk that way with that solidity to help his balance.
A slender figure shifted out of the shadows of one fork of the intersection. He caught the movement with the corner of his eye. Glanced back and it retreated back into the darkness. He could not be certain he'd even seen it, his own mind was so untrustworthy at the moment. It did not come back out, so it either never existed or had fled. He began to continue on.
"Wait." A timid voice echoed along the stone passage. He turned, pressing his shoulders against the wall, staring into the shadows. A girl half stepped out from them, using them to hide her face. "You don't want to go down there. It's not allowed."
He blinked at her slowly. Her face was hardly visible past a straight fall of dark hair. She kept her head lowered, as if in deference. He tried to shake the clutter from his mind, thinking that if it was not allowed, then perhaps it meant down this passage was a way out. He started to move forward.
"You'll get into trouble." She warned, sounding almost disappointed.
As if he were not already so deeply in it, it threatened to drown him.
"Is there a door?" he asked and his voice sounded strange in his own ears. He had to stop and listen to it to ascertain it was his own. "A way out?"
"There are no doors. No windows. Just walls." She replied. Lost, disconsolate voice. "But that way -- that way leads to Below and the Master forbids any to go there."
There was the sound of footsteps, the tap tap of a cane on the stone. The girl gasped and shied back into the shadows. Kall stood his ground. The Prophet strolled down the dark corridor, a carved staff with the symbol of the One God in his hand. He never faltered in his step, as if he were not at all surprised to see Kall-Su there.
"Awake again, I see. And treading where you should not."
Kall glared, trying to gain enough composure not to make a fool of himself.
"You are insane if you think to keep me here."
"You killed a man of mine last night. You don't yet grasp your position here."
Last night? Had it been that long? "What do you hope to gain by this?" he hissed. Angelo merely smiled at him.
And something tried to crawl inside his head. Kall's eyes widened and reflexively he repelled it. It didn't require concentration or reason, it was mere natural habit to expel intrusion into the recesses of his mind. He saw the Prophet's frown of dissatisfaction, then a sharp stab of agony burned in his chest. He gasped, short of breath, clutching at the wall as the molten pain followed the pathways of his arteries into his body. Fire burning through his veins. Incinerating him from the inside out. The end of the staff hit him between the shoulders, a solid thump that drove him to the floor.
"Don't fight me." Angelo said, standing over him, the foot of the staff by his head. He squeezed his eyes shut, trying to drive off the hurt, but it was insistent and insidious in its crafting and he in no shape to latch onto it and drag it away from him. "You killed a righteous man. Don't you think you deserve punishment? Don't you think you should beg forgiveness of the God?"
If he'd had the breath, he would have cursed the Prophet. The staff smacked into him again, like a hammer striking his flesh. A rib cracked. He heard it snap. That mundane pain was nothing to the lava that cursed through his veins.
Crack. It glanced off his skull, tearing the skin behind his ear. Blood trickled down his cheek, running into his mouth. Behind the darkness of his lids he saw lightening quick flashes another face twisted with rage, demanding penitence. An old man with a raised cane cursing him for ever being born.
"No." He cried, and raised an arm to block another blow. The oaken staff bounced off his arm, making the limb numb with shock. Angelo laughed, catching his wrist and pulling him half way up by it, pushing him against the wall and whispering. "You know how to ask for absolution, don't you? You have to try so much harder to gain His heed, being the spawn of a demon, than a righteous man would -- and sometimes he still won't listen, will he?"
The pain wouldn't stop. He didn't know it was blood or tears running down his face. He would have preferred to have just passed out and escaped it that way.
"You can stop it." Angelo whispered, a fey, taunting voice that got past the thrumming white noise of pain in his head. "Just a few simple words."
A few simple words? What had placated that other fanatic so long ago? What had he said over and over, time after time to make the old man stop railing and accusing him of things he never had been certain he'd been responsible for? Nothing for long, but if he sounded like he truly meant it he might stave off the the brunt of the anger. Just a few words to stop the pain. Nothing so monumental as a surrender. He was not stupid enough to suffer needlessly out of misplaced pride.
"I'm sorry." A whisper. He barely heard it himself. "Forgive me."
"Oh, yes." Angelo brushed his hair back, a caress almost. And the pain faded away, a tangible memory that left Kall shaking. "You are so much more reasonable than he was."