I hesitate to begin this entry with the month and year of the Thacean calendar. For we who called this the month of Lau did so only for some two hundred years. In Ustilian it was Mensis Laudis, and it bore that name for millennia. So too does my designation of the year ring hollow as of late, two hundred twenty-one years after Deadhaus. So much of Thacea's identity was formed from its struggle against the dead. In this struggle we forsook our ancestors and their ways, as we believe that they
forsook us. But much was lost in abandoning the past, our god, our heritage, perhaps even our very souls. "I know who you are," I said to the pale figure before me. "You are The Fetid Prince." "And you are Alaric the Damned." "Your timing was impeccable." "An old talent of mine. You've changed since last I saw you." "I was mortal then. I am that man no longer." "And the possession is reversed this time." He said, narrowing his silver eyes to peer deeper into me. "No mere possession."
Amarax echoed from within my thoughts. "Alaric has volunteered himself as a phylactery." "Has he now." "He swore a pale oath." "Under duress," I added. The Fetid Prince stroked his alabaster face with pitch black claws in contemplation. "Interesting gambit. But they can still unstitch you." "Not if it would destroy a sentient." "Only one of Deadhaus." "All things in time." "Hmmm. Indeed." "And what, pray tell, does any of this mean?" I interjected. "Show him the maw, Alaric."
I set the blackened cage at my feet, where the wisp frantically threw itself against the bars in a vain attempt to flee from The Fetid Prince. Then I held the maw out toward him. "Hmmm." He slowly raked his claws across his face, then quickly withdrew his hand and furrowed his brow. "What is in there?" "The soul of Gwyneth Armin." The Fetid Prince tilted his head, and a faint smile pulled at one corner of his mouth.
"What are you scheming this time, Liche?" "Grant us safe passage to Sepulchrium, and all will be revealed." "I can grant safe passage, but the Pentarchs will decide your fate in Sepulchrium." "An Ascendant stands above the Five." "I prefer not to meddle." "Of course." The Fetid Prince nodded and turned to leave, and I felt Amarax urging me to follow from within. "Wait, I have questions." And the prince stopped. "But little time." "I have nothing but time. Time and
thirst." He turned to face me, a faint smile on his lips, but his silver eye shone without mirth. "Ask then." "What manner of being can destroy an angel?" "Technically, it destroyed itself. A sore loser, really." "You also destroyed the Burning One?" "Oh, he's quite alive, I assure you." "Can it be? Then where has he been all these years?" "In the Northern Provinces." "In the Northern Provinces? Just hiding?" "In a manner of speaking, yes." "What are you? You take the form of a
dragon. You gaze through layers of time. I sense no life in you. You sometimes move as mist as I do, but darker. Are you a vampire?" "You could call me that." "Is he part of the ritual that the dead must be obnoxiously cryptic?" A muted laugh resonated in the prince’s throat, and as he smiled his fangs were bared, horrid rows of them, like the dragon’s. "Do you know of the gods?" "Yes, Keeva told me of their prophecies." "The servants of the gods are many, as are their stations.
I serve Allalmawt in the way that the Burning One serves El’Sabayoth, or the Leper serves the Dreamer, as an Ascendant.” "And what is an Ascendant?" "One who is indwelled by an echo of their ancient divinity." "So you are a god then?" "No more than I am a vampire." I sighed. I had the sense that he was toying with me, in the way he seemed to toy with everything. "Then tell me, as a fellow vampire, why must we feed on blood?" "We are cursed." "Why? What does it mean?
Can it be cured?" "Not even godhood can cure it." "But the messenger. It suppressed my thirst." "Curious." "So there must be a way then. Where did the curse begin? What was its source?" "Ah, yes." The prince glanced into the distance, and his silver eyes reflected fires that did not burn around us. "The Red Lady." His voice was as distant as his gaze. "She is born of the blood. Sacred blood. She worships the blood. Burning blood. Her power flows from the blood. Stolen blood. She is bound by the
blood. Profane the blood. Hail, Red Lady. O Mother of the First Moon. Free us from thirst. accursed are your children." "You're the one who asked." Perhaps this Red Lady knows the way to lift the curse, if it started with her. "She vanished long ago in search of that answer." "Where was she last seen?" “At the top of Mt. Manubaku, in the land of Temek.” This each answer, The Fetid Prince seemed to be drawn deeper into a spell of his own weaving. A spell of remembrance.
"I have not heard of this land." "You would know it as the Shattered Wastes, for that is all that remains." "Where the Anaii come from? West of Thacea? A wretched desert of broken stone and stinging sands." "It was not always so. 10,000 years ago the land of Temek was a garden of many rivers, and every stream therein flowed from the mighty Ureti. The peoples of Temek believed the first man was carved from red clay by his waters, and so they revered the Ureti as
The First Mother. All were bathed on the day of their birth in its waters, and each was returned to it in death. To flow westward to and pass beyond sight. Though many tribes and cities warred across Temek, free passage was given to any who bore their dead back to the Ureti. In summer, farmers would travel across the land to cast a portion of their crops into the river as gratitude.
Merchants would toss coins into its depths before signing a new deal, and young maidens would listen to its whispers. For the name of the one they would marry. But if a fisherman should fall from his raft or a traveller stumble along the banks, it was forbidden to help them, for they had been claimed by The First Mother, and to defy that claim was blasphemy. Of all the dwellings of man and Temek, five city-states rose above the rest.
With trade, fishing, and agriculture, they grew so prosperous that they came to be known as the Jewels of the Ureti. Through their combined power, the garden of many rivers was made free of foreign invaders, and for two centuries this security would last. Until the day that red sails rose upon the western horizon. The lone vessel fled across The Nameless Sea , a sight unseen by those who dwelt in Temek. For The Nameless Sea was so cold for the doom it brought to any who crossed its waters.
Countless mariners tried their luck, carving holy symbols into their holes, bathing in the Ureti's waters before they embarked, even praying to the sea itself. But their doom was the same. Those few that washed back ashore spent the rest of their lives as if walking in sleep. They remembered nothing before the journey. All words were taken from them, even their names.
It is said that no wind blew on the day the red sails came, and yet they were so full that they bore their vessel into the mouth of the Ureti. Those that gathered near the river's mouth spoke in low whispers as they watched. The ship was shorn of wood like blackest coal, and its prow bore twisted black horns that clove into the ruddy banks. None dared approach on their own.
Instead word was sent to the Uretim, river priests whose order counseled all rulers into the back, and three of them came by canoe to the landing site of the red sailed vessel. They stood in robes, sewn from the scales of great river serpents, the sign of their order. Their hoods each, the gaping maw of a serpent, enclosed their heads as if to devour them. And the crowd cast their eyes to the ground, knowing better than to meet the gaze of the holy men.
When the river priests returned, one cradled an infant taken from the vessel. He raised his hand and claimed that none could pass and live, so the child must be an omen of death. He would give her to The First Mother, lest doom fall upon Temek, so saying he dropped the child into the waters. But the people of Temek soon beheld in gasps and whispers as the child resurfaced, her body coiled by a young river serpent.
Yet the serpent did not bear its fangs, and soon it was joined by others, slithering from the depths to merge as a writhing mass that kept the child above water. The Uritim fell to their knees on the muddy banks, as did the people of Temek. The one who had cast the child into the water rushed to retrieve her and cradled her bawling form in the vipress folds of his cloak. He declared that the will of The First Mother had been revealed that the child should be borne by serpents.
In answer to the miracle they witnessed, the Uritim took the child to Sephim to be raised in the river temple among the order. She was given the name Merinth, and instructed in the rituals of the river priests. The Uritim held purity above all virtues. They bathed at dawn and noon and dusk every day in the waters of the Uriti, which flowed through the central chamber of their temple. They shaved every hair upon their heads and bodies with curved knives cut from the fangs of river serpents.
If a single bath was missed or a single hair was seen, the offender would be taken before Grand Adder Guraj, head of the order, so that they might beg to be flogged for their transgression. He sat bowed under the weight of his wide-flared hood and wore an expression of incredulity until the begging was sufficiently convincing. Those that did not beg, or those that were found to have let a transgression go unreported, were sent to wash away their sins in the waters of The Nameless Sea.
As such, there were only two kinds of Uritim in Temek, the Immaculate and the Dead. Merinth learned obedience quickly. Among her superiors, she learned to avert her eyes, for to meet their gaze was forbidden. The Uritim denoted rank through tattooed markings. Each looked upon another feat first, then moved their gaze up to the throat and knew by the markings there whether they could meet the eyes of the one who bore them. With her bare throat, any could look upon Marenth.
She could only look on others without markings. Yet even among other bare throats, she learned silence, as each was a potential informant. And though she was hairless and dressed in serpent robes as they did, she was set apart by a foreign heritage. While those of Temek were tawny and lean, Marinth was pale and somewhat shorter than her fellow bare throats. Her green eyes were singular among all others that were brown. This did her no favors. When she was not performing her duties, she received
instruction. There were rituals for every aspect of life in Sephim. Rituals for victories in war and rituals for defeat, for births and funerals, for blessings of homes against evil and for food against poison. Every plant and animal and substance in Temek that produced a poison or venom was committed to memory, their names which part of them was poisoned its effect on the body and its counter. For poison was held by the Uretim as the highest form of purity. Many of their medicines were
derived from it. A single drop was said to contain both life and death, depending on the hand that wielded it, and the lower levels of the temple were lined with flasks and bottles as far as the eye could see. The initiation ritual of the Uretim was one of poison. Young bare throats had to imbibe the venom of a juvenile river serpent. One drop of the yellow fluid dulled the senses, numbing pain. Two drops brought deep, dreamless sleep. And three brought sleep eternal.
To become Uretim, a chalice of the venom had to be drunk to the last drop. To survive this ritual, bare throats took the venom with their meals for years before the day they would be tested. Half a drop was mixed in at first, and when it could be taken without effect, its dosage was doubled. And then again, when that could be taken freely, and again, and again, until it was taken as a cup to
wash down the last bite of food. Yet even with such painstaking preparations, many bare throats would not survive their initiation. Merinth only barely did. She slipped beneath the waters soon after drinking the chalice and was swept out of the temple. But before she was born to The Nameless Sea , the priestess' body began to blow and swirl, dispersing as a cloud of mist and rising from the Uretti to drift along its banks. And from out of the mist, stepped Merinth, made whole once more.
The prince spoke as if he no longer saw me, and indeed his eyes reflected places that did not surround us. In their silver I saw the temples of which he spoke, the lush gardens, the mighty rivers. I was held transfixed, gazing upon two mirrors that reflected millennia gone by. And he continued, unawares the world that was before him, as if he still lived in that time. The years turned, and Temek flourished.
But as its populace swelled, so did the thoughts that poured from them, until at last they drew the many eyes of the Ancients. From their prison kingdoms the Ancients whispered to the river peoples, searching for those that could hear and obey. Many heard, but most could not endure the truths revealed to them. By the hundreds they hurled themselves into the Uretti and were born west, shrieking, laughing, drowning.
In terror the river peoples turned to their kings for answers, and the kings turned to the Uretim. Lambs were slaughtered in the river temples, their blood flowing with the Uretti. But the Ancients were not appeased. The whispers persisted, and with them the suicides, prompting the Uretim to call for human sacrifice. Others were offered first their severed heads splashing like so many melons into the river, then commoners whose law-abiding heads soon followed.
Then daughters of virgin blood, which was blasphemy to spill, were sealed in wicker caskets of their likeness and plunged into the river. But the Ancients were not appeased. A stranger walked among the river peoples then, stooped and hunkered beneath the bundle of a withered cloak. His flesh was wholly bound in strips of linen stained with leprous fluids, and his head trembled erratically within its cowl, softly chattering teeth that shriveled lips failed to cover.
He passed from one city to the next with a prophecy that doom had fallen upon Temek, and that blood would stain the land and sky. He told the river peoples that their only salvation was to abandon the opulence of cities forevermore. For his message and appearance, the stranger was met with vicious reproach. The people from the cities cast stones and curses upon him, driving him from their streets. But the stranger only smiled and passed on.
And when he came upon the jewel of the Ureti, where the Anai dwelt, the stranger was welcomed to sit among them and given tea and bread. The sages of the Anai listened to the stranger's warning and accepted it, for they sensed in him a power beyond their reckoning. They took only what supplies they could carry in a caravan and forsook their city to wander the land as nomads. Then the stranger smiled and passed on.
The other jewels of the Ureti remained fastened in place, and whispers drove deeper into their peoples. Many could not hear them, or could only faintly sense them. But even for those deaf to the whispers, a dark dread had come, a feeling in the back of their heads as if they were being watched, even when alone. Even nightmares that woke them screaming, yet were never remembered. And from the cities the voiceless words spilled out and seeped into the forests.
That is where Merinth first heard them. No longer a shaven acolyte of the Uretim, but a young woman with a mane of red. Since her departure from the River Temple, she kept to the wilderness, avoiding mankind, and tales were told of the pale woman with red hair, who lived in the woods and could change her shape. One day as she knelt before a streamlet to drink, the whispers swept about her in a great wind, hundreds of words, all of them foreign except one. Merinth.
As she heard her name, she saw her reflection in the water distort, rotting so that the flesh slipped from her face and her eyes ran as yellow jelly, leaving a visage of death staring up at her. She sprawled backwards, shielding her eyes with one arm, and by reflex her body dissolved in the mist. She burst from the mist as a great red wolf, bounding in terror through the trees. She could not outpace the wind, nor the many words it carried, but they sounded different to a wolf's ears.
Driven more by instinct than reason, she was insulated against the madness and the whispers. Now they rhymed with the whispers of falling leaves, a winter winds, voices older than language, songs of change. She slowed her gallop, coming to rest again by the stream, and looked with wolf's eyes into its waters. With them a pale young woman with black hair, draped in gossamer white, lay drowning. Merinth cast off her bestial form, dissolving into mist and emerging as a
woman once more. She reached for the drowning girl, whose milk-white eyes snapped open as Merinth's hands broke the water's surface. But before she could pull back, the drowned girl seized her wrists and pulled her down. Merinth thrashed and sank far deeper than she should have in so shallow a stream. She tried to rest free, but the icy grip at her wrists was unyielding, and she
found herself unable to change forms. As she looked into the dead woman's eyes, she heard a voice cut through all other whispers in her mind. When Merinth counsels kings, the whispers will fade. These words were the last Merinth heard before darkness took her. She awoke with a gasp on the banks of the streamlet, far too shallow to sink in. Merinth fled from that forest, yet the coming days brought her no peace. The whispers were ceaseless, and within
them was her name, time and again. She could insulate herself from them as a wolf, but never deafen them. She dreamed of the black ship with twisted horns. She dreamed of the words the dead girl had whispered in her mind. Days later, exhausted, she stumbled to the gates of Sephim, which were unguarded in the chaos. She wandered in human form as if sleepwalking, but none noticed her, for most were gathered in the river temple, praying for protection, or huddled in their homes in fear.
Though she did not know the way, the palace of King Narm rose above the rest of the city, glinting gold along its tower tops, and all the roads of Sephim led to it. When she told the guards she must see the king about the whispers, she was seized and brought before him, too tired to offer any resistance. King Narm sat on a throne of gold, gazing down at the pale redheaded woman brought before him. But Merinth did not meet his gaze.
Her eyes were locked under the fabric that hung on the wall above the throne, a vast swath of crimson, one she had seen in a dream. The vessel that brought her to Temek was deemed cursed and burned in the mouth of the Ureti, but its sails were so luxurious that they were brought to the king as a gift. In her trance, she did not see the advisor at his side, watching her from beneath a hood that flared in likeness to a river serpent.
The king demanded to know who claimed to have knowledge of the whispers, and his voice startled Merinth, who now noticed the grand adder. She almost ran then, realizing who he was, and that she was looking him directly in the face. But then she noticed the milky veil across his eyes, robbed of the last of their sight in the years since she had left the temple. She pointed at the snake-robed man, shaking her head in terror, and King Narm
laughed. He told Merinth that she was wise to fear the cunning old adder, but that she was safe here. Still, she simply shook her head and pointed, and so Guraj was sent away with a scowl, and the king ordered her to speak. Merinth re-told her vision at the stream, and the king stroked his beard as he listened. He said that there were many strange signs in these dark times, and strange visitors, but perhaps the girl she'd seen was a river spirit offering its aid.
He named Merinth Counselor then, under threat of burning if her counsel failed, and all at once the whispers stopped. The king who was deaf to them did not notice, but soon the people of Sephim emerged from their homes murmuring softly, then clamoring, then cheering in the streets at last. Merinth lived in the palace then, in luxury she had never known, and her dreams were undisturbed for a time, until she felt eyes upon her as she slept.
In the black of moonless night she woke to the sound of dripping water, and as she rolled to face it she saw standing in the corner of her room the dead girl from the stream, her lifeless body dripping water on the floor. Merinth opened her mouth to scream, but the dead girl put a finger to her own lips, and Merinth's throat closed.
She could not move as the dead girl crossed the room and stood at her bedside, and icy hand clutched Merinth's jaw and turned her head to face away from her oppressor, who knelt over her and whispered in her ear, dripping cold water upon her. And from the mouth of the dead girl counsel was passed to Merinth to be given to the king. Droughts and plagues were forewarned, allowing Sephim to prepare, and Merinth gained favor in Narm's court.
Grand Adder Guraj was still held in high esteem, but Merinth would never speak when he was present, fearing that he would know her by voice. When asked of this silence by the king, she would say only that her vision showed her that she must not be seen or heard by the Uretim, and because all of her prophecies had come true, the king allowed her to speak to him without the Grand Adder present.
It was not long until news of the silent stranger passed to all the river temples, and Merinth was held in great contempt. In the coming days, she began to warn the king of treachery from the other jewels of the Ureti. When the Grand Adder learned of these visions, he decried them, but by then Merinth's words held more weight than all the river temples. Soon the trees of Temek were felled for spears, and the jewels of the Ureti were set aglow by the fires of war.
Only one of the jewels would not take part in this conflict, which would later be known as the Braiding. The Anai had abandoned their city, wandered far into the wilderness of Temek, and it was in this empty city that the Braiding began, as the remaining city-states attempted to claim it for themselves. For the cities of Ranaam and Sodyba, none who heard the ancient's call managed to survive with their sanity intact, and therefore their armies were unguided by prophecy.
As lines of spearmen clashed outside the abandoned city, Merinth peered from the tree line from a wolf's eyes. The foes of Sephim soon found themselves outflanked, their escape blocked at every turn. There was slain to the last man, and Sephim stood victorious. But then the city of Sibeth sent forth its army, and it was led by a towering figure draped in flowing robes of white adorned with golden braces.
His hair and beard flowed together as an ivory mane, framing a face set stern as stone, and eyes set aglow and fiery gold. The armies of Sibeth knelt in the field as Sephim's forces charged forward. Then the man in white reached above his head with one hand, and a bolt of gold streaked from the heavens, striking his open palm and forming into the likeness of a spear. A thunderbolt caught and suspended, still crackling.
He hurled his heavenly weapon into the oncoming charge, and Sephim's soldiers were flung from the blast, scorched to a hush in their flight. Death beheld the awesome power of Sibeth's champion from the forest, and heard in her mind the flurry of whispers from which a single thought emerged in clarity. "Flee!" She turned from the battle, weaving through the trees and bounding strides, leaving the men to their fiery demise. At night, she knelt before the king and
conveyed what she had witnessed. The king told her that the Uretim heaped curses upon her, placing the blame of the defeat on her false prophecies. Merinth could have fled then, returned to the forest to live as a wolf, and no mortal hand could have barred her way. But the dead girl had told her of this day, of the defeat at the Anai city, of the one that led the armies of Sibeth, and the ancient he served.
Merinth revealed that new gods had come to Temek, that the champion of Sibeth was called the Burning One, and that his power came from the god El’Sabayoth. She revealed that the god who had given her visions, the one who sent what the king believed to be a river spirit, was named Allalmawt, and that only through its worship could Sephim be delivered. And so the king ordered that the river temple of Sephim be converted to the worship of Allalmawt.
The Uretim in Sephim revolted, but in the strife of the braiding, they could not rally the river temples of the other cities. They barricaded themselves inside their temple, but their resistance was brief. Merinth came to the temple and spoke to those on the other side of the barricade. She told them that the time of the Uretim team had passed, but that any who wished to serve her new order with the same devotion they had with the old would be spared.
Many of the bare throats agreed, and as they outnumbered the higher ranking Urit team, the barricades were brought down, and Merinth returned to the temple in which she was raised. This time, as a conqueror. There is more to the tale of The Fetid Prince, but the bloodthirst is upon me. I shall resume my writing after I feed. Amarax says I need not fear the wraith so long as the prince is near, and so I shall not roam far, but the scent of blood carries on the night wind, and I must follow.
Alaric the Damned.