Jackal Among Snakes

“The end is nigh, ladies and gentlemen!”

Stain tried his best to push through the crowd to get a better look at things as the man on the platform spoke passionately and feverishly. There could be no doubting that he believed every word he said. And from the look of it, Stain was the sole nonbeliever in their midst. He was taking another form by employing a shapeshifting blessing bestowed by Rook, the god of deception and subterfuge.

“Judgment is coming upon us!” The man held his arms wide as he pranced about the stage, and Stain could just barely make out his features—pearly white, almost immaculate. “If you judge the world of today to the world of yesteryear, you’d have to be an invalid to say there’s a comparison. Can you truly face your ancestors and say that our people possess the same mettle they did to overcome this crisis? I look back, and I say firmly ‘no!’

“We judge a land by its leaders. The man we would call king is the youngest child, in contradiction to all ancient traditions. He rules while his elder brother yet lives, and throws him at his enemies like a hound trained to hunt,” the pale-skinned man spat as he moved about the stage wildly, squatting and leaning down to speak to his enraptured audience. “He claimed the throne by force—but not his own, oh no.” The man spread his arms out grandly.

“The bastard Argrave, born of a shameful incestuous union between the king and his niece, is naturally predisposed to malevolence. Worse yet, his soul vanished, to be replaced by another from a different world—a crueler world, divested of the common virtues all of us share. This new life surrendered his soul to all manner of vile powers. He contracted himself with evil gods like Erlebnis, barbarian elves from both the north and the far east, the monstrous cannibals of the Burnt Desert, and just of late… the squat people in the distant empire known as the Great Chu.”

The passionate speaker fell to his knees and whispered tensely, “Is it normal, I ask you, for our enemies to be left to wander freely through our borders? Is it normal for us to forsake our pantheon so freely? Is it normal, I ask you, for our king to cavort with necromantic magics powerful enough that the heroes of old are brought back from the dead, and propped up like monuments to support his claim?”

Stain contacted Elenore covertly, informing her, “I’ve checked the crowd and marked any threats. Ready whenever.”

The speaker punched the wooden stage he kneeled across. “It’s wrong! It’s wrong, all of it!” He shouted with moving intensity. “The Kinslaying Serpent may play the egalitarian, giving more power to mayors, and nobility, and spellcasters… yet this so-called parliament is packed with sycophants who would drink his sweat if he demanded it. His maniacal sister, who earned the just punishment of dismemberment and blindness, sits atop this council, weaving all these parties in her spider’s silk. Our leadership, dear people, is inadequate. When judgment comes… we will be found wanting,” he whispered gravely.

Then, in an explosion of power, he leapt to his feet. “But even if our leaders are weak, we are still ourselves, undebased by the malevolent powers the Kinslaying Serpent would welcome into our homeland.” A fanatic glint settled into his eyes. “Before we, too, are corrupted… made a slave to the powers wracking the world… we must follow our distant ancestors, rejoining them in the afterlife.”

“Mothers!” The man shouted, pointing throughout the crowd. “Though it may pain you, you must throw your children from the highest perch, and follow them shortly thereafter. Dash the heads of your infants upon the stone. If you feel you must atone for this act, set yourself aflame. Let your pain be your bulwark as you take solace in the fact that your soul, and those of your children, will be liberated.”

“Fathers, like myself!” He continued, pulling out a blade. Stain stirred—he’d anticipated more time. “Allow me to demonstrate!” The man plunged his blade into his gut without so much as a scream. “Pierce yourself, firmly. Let the blood drain down, staining the earth. Take comfort in knowing that you still bleed red… for in time, all of our viscera shall be black and corrupted, just as the king’s.

“And if you lack the spirit to extinguish yourself…” the speaker fell to one knee. “Fight. Fight against our tyrant, to the very last man. Break your nails upon their armor, and smash your bones against their cruel whips. Hunt down those that bear rings—the mark of the Kinslaying Serpent’s taint. Kill them all. Eat their children. Make them—”

All at once, the closed venue erupted open. Argrave’s soldiers stormed in, subduing people in an efficient, pre-planned manner. The few casters that Stain had identified were subdued with Ebonice before they could get out so much as a single spell.

Meanwhile, the ringleader shouted, “The devils come! Purge yourself! This is your last chance to be free! They will not allow us the peace of death!”

He pulled free the blade from his stomach, bleeding copiously as two soldiers climbed the stage to subdue him. By the time they’d neared him, he’d already plunged it again—not his stomach, this time, but his eye. The soldiers caught his arm, dislocating it and forcing him to the floor as the other healed his wound with magic. Stain could only grimace as this whole place was quickly subjugated.

“Good work, Stain,” Elenore finally spoke in his head. “Argrave wants to hear from you in person.”

#####

Argrave leaned back in his chair when Stain finished recounting his tale. It was more than a little harrowing to hear that something like this was going on in one of Vasquer’s safest cities—Dirracha.

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“Far as I know, only three died,” Stain pointed out. “Not exactly flawless, but… the problem is solved, isn’t it?”

Argrave shook his head. “That was one. One of hundreds.”

“What?” Stain laughed—not in amusement, but sheer disbelief. “Listen… the man had some pipes, but that rhetoric was hardly enough to spawn thousands of offshoots. Is… is it really Gerechtigkeit doing all of this?”

“Yeah.” Argrave ran his hand through his black hair. “The doomsday cults are one small problem of many. But the tale is completely terrifying, doubly so when someone you know gets tied up in one of them. It shakes the whole community. Then, the other moderate factions that Gerechtigkeit is busy creating seem far more reasonable by comparison.”

Anneliese leaned against the back of Argrave’s chair, and her long white hair draped over him as she placed her pale hand upon his shoulder. “Meanwhile, they have a unifying message. Argrave is distributing rings that ward away Gerechtigkeit’s mental attacks to certain people he favors. Gerechtigkeit marks those individuals as enemies to the people.”

“All the while, he causes small disruptions by unearthing small secrets.” Elenore stared out the window with calculating gray eyes. “Your contract with Erlebnis. Your parentage. They’re largely unproveable, and despite some minor deceptions, you’ve been largely of good character. Most rational people doubt all rumors of your malevolence.” She turned around. “But other leaders? People are turning spiteful toward regional administration moment by moment as they learn secrets best kept that way. And everyone desperately craves the rings that Artur is producing, to the point that violence almost feels inevitable.”

“That thing about your father’s niece is true?” Stain said in surprise. He caught an icy glare from Orion, and quicky added, “Never mind, don’t answer.” It was only when Orion retracted his cold gaze that Stain calmed himself, then continued to speak. “I will admit… things in the cities are getting very tense. It’s more violent, more polarized. Everyone’s got a common enemy, but they’re making more among themselves. I think… I think, honestly, in time, you could have a major problem on your hand. I assume you have a plan?”

He did have a plan. Argrave had thought the path to victory seemed so clear, yet now Gerechtigkeit had efficiently weaponized his solution to the problem of mental corruption. He had isolated the people who had been given the rings from the rest of society, turning them against one another.

“I want to speak to their leader,” Argrave said, looking at Elenore. “He seems the most brutally affected by Gerechtigkeit’s influence. We can learn his methods—and if not, we can learn something from the traces left in his body. We can see if the ring can bring them back to their senses, or if they’re lost forever. Until a more permanent solution is found, we need mitigation.”

Elenore nodded. “A sound enough plan. I’ll prepare the man.”

#####

“Any words for me?” Argrave questioned, looking upon the cult leader. The man looked like a pearl plucked from the ocean, almost. “You were awfully talkative a few moments ago.”

The pale leader of the cult only stared at the ground in his shackles, seemingly broken. His wounds had all been healed, but his body remained still and silent, as if there was nothing to say. He’d expected something fiery, but instead he got this nonresponsive person.

Argrave sighed, crouching down. “Alright. Raven, you can put the ring on him. Let’s see if it helps him get better.”

Raven stepped forward, but as he did, the cultist said, “If you had sought a life for you and yours, all you had to do was follow the path written long before your coming. It was ever your own will, your own two feet, that brought us to this.” The man looked up, and Argrave felt a wave of fear and panic as he saw what dwelt within.

The end. Gerechtigkeit himself.

Argrave rose to his feet and stepped back, unsure whether to fight or to run.

“You could’ve struck me down in the same fashion that led to countless lives well worth living. You could’ve raised grand cities from marble and granite and sired children that knew peace for one thousand years.” The chains around the cultist’s arms jingled as the being within craned his head to look at Argrave, with those eyes containing the very end themselves. “Yet greed is your vice, its flame fed with blood from your veins—and soon, the blood of your people. You deemed a millennium of welfare insufficient. You rolled the dice of fate, and a predetermined answer lies ahead.”

Argrave shook his head as others gathered around, ready to fight. “The cycle ends, Griffin.”

“The end has already passed you by. The currents of life, forced into a wheel, were freed of their bondage the moment you brought my sister out from Sandelabara. You and I must struggle to dictate life’s current from here.”

“Not me alone,” Argrave argued. “The world. You’ve never overcome it before, fractured. Now, it’s whole.”

“You act the leader, but a fool’s a fool, and your choice was rashly made. Immortal and mortalkind rallied on such flimsy foundation cannot compare to the millennia uncountable I have spent with nothing but time, preparing for this coming day. I shall respect your resistance with the full of my being, even still.”

Argrave stepped closer, mustering his courage. “Your sister is happy with us. She’s safe. She’s whole. We don’t have to fight.”

“Turning back is a privilege both of us are denied. You must rage against my might with equal fury, or you will be swept away in the tides of my change. There is no fuel I will not use to raise my inferno higher, and no method so low I will not stoop to grasp it. Pray that you possess equal resolve, wayward soul. If you will not do everything in the pursuit of victory, you will not achieve anything. The pigs have been fed long enough. It is past time for their slaughter.”

Argrave was about to open his mouth to ask more questions, but Anneliese stepped forward and conjured a ward. The cultist’s head was solid in one moment, and the next, exploded outward with tremendous force. Blood, brain, and fragments of skull battered against the wall and the ward. On the wall, a hauntingly masterful image of a single flame had been left behind in blood.

There could be no clearer declaration of war.

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