Completed Unseemly Things

[Radu Basarab]

He chose the mausoleum for its honesty.

It did not pretend to be anything but what it was: stone lungs breathing mildew, a long throat of corridors stuffed with old names and older air. Webs leaned from corner to corner like tired pennants, their keepers big as a man’s palm, black, hairy, and untroubled by Radu's presence. Centipedes wrote brief copper dashes across the flagstones, hunting the bold rats that nosed at his boots and darted away again. He heard their skittering like rain that forgot how to fall. He let them keep their kingdom. He came here for his

The braziers he set around the slab had taken the fire well. Teal-green flames, a sickly, sea-lit hue, climbed their cups and paint his armor the color of drowned gold. The spikes of Radu's pauldrons cast long thorns on the walls. The red of his tabard drsnk the light and gave nothing back. When he breatheed, the plates whispered against one another: when i am still, I am a statue someone forgot to worship.

On the table rested two companions: the dagger and the book. The dagger was curved enough to remember the moon; its edge held the flame with a patient grin. The book was bound in a leather that pretended not to be skin and failed, its cover was stamped with a face in the act of a scream, mouth pulled into a silent vowel. Radu felt its. weight even when his hands were nowhere near it. It watched with its not-eyes, and it approved nothing.

Radu’s gauntlet closed upon the dagger. The weapon recognized a steadier hand than most men lend to their children. Balance admitted itself. He weighed it, a judge setting down sentence, then turned his profile to the book. A small smile, both elegant and unkind, visited his mouth and left it unchanged.

“Sleep on,” he murmured to the thing that was bound. “Thy time comes when I have words ready to put in thy toothless mouth.”

He moved to an uncovered stone casket set back from the table, its lid slid aside years ago by a strength that had not thought to be gentle. The skeleton within lay in the stiff grace of the resigned: gravecloths collapsed to ashen streamers, fingers folded as if they had not learned the living trick of clutching. Radu considered the empty sockets, the neat rows of teeth that had once fenced speech, and the subtle collapse at the temple where a life had taken one last inward step and vanished.

“Thou hadst a name,” he said, and the smallest spider along the lintel tilted on its thread, as if listening. “But names are river-things and I have use of stone.”

With no more ceremony than a man might offer a loaf, he reached in. Bone lifted with a dry click, the brittle music of old promises. He tore the skull from the ragged neck, a sure wrench that raised a puff of dust like a sigh from a tired choir. For a moment he held it as one holds a chalice, letting the brazier’s teal breathe through the hollows and set faint witch-auroras playing in the vault of it. A sentiment hovered, Alas, poor anything, but Radu had long ago smothered sentiment in its crib and taught its ghost to serve him as scribe.

He set the skull upon the casket’s rim. The dagger’s keen kissed bone. The first stroke rang with a thin, bright scrape that pierced the mausoleum’s hush; spiders drew upward a finger’s width in their nets, and the rats removed themselves with the offended dignity of minor nobility. Bone-dust lifted in a pale mist and wandered toward the braziers, where the unnatural flames accepted it like incense. Each line he cut belonged to an alphabet that predated language, a geomancy of binding and address: a hooked crescent turned against its twin, a thorned bar crossing, the suggestion of an eye that never blinked in any honest light. The sigil took shape beneath his hand as a city grows, street by street, inevitable when surveyed from above, unfathomable from within.

Radu worked without hurry. He ignored the centipede that paused at his heel to rear and test the air with feelers like articulated prayers. He ignored the ache that steals into all tasks done well, that quiet cruelty of patience. He carved until the forehead bore the whole of what he intended, lines that seemed to lean inward, tugging at the gaze, a geometry the mind could step through and be lost.

 

[Archanae]

Spoiler: Music

Archanae traced the palm of her hand along the stone wall, drinking in its timeless iconography. Figures seemed to march in solemn procession to the end of the corridor, pointing, gesticulating and summoning, lifting rods and ornamental staves. A spirited journey to the endless afterlife. Cold clarity layered over her like icy water, granted to her by the faded imagery.

Time had already claimed much of it like some callous treasurer. The denizens and visionaries of this old necropolis were long gone. All that remained of them were these weary stones, and a court of new inhabitants, vermin prancing on the bones of great architects. Yes, the dead were indeed a reminder, a chilly warning of what awaited all mortals.

But the dead could also harbour answers that the living lacked. Though fractured, disarrayed and terribly emotional, they often held truths that belied the lies and ignorance of the living. An honesty that lay well beyond the needs of self-preservation.

Scrael, her homunculus, stalked ahead of her with its longer arms on the ground, mimicking a small gorilla. But unlike the fur and hide of such a creature, granite and exposed bone brislted from its compact form, moving with the unnatural twitches and lurches of an animated construct. Gold-flecked symbols slathered its ungainly form like faded pacts, dictating its wretched existence. Braids of tied horse-hair hung about its neck as an afterthought, a half-hearted attempt to mask its jarring undeath. Artificial light pulsed from a central quartz lodged into its ribcage, a bright light that seemed to try in vain to breathe life into its hollow eye-sockets and slack jaw - a jaw which dangled like a fool's grin.


The warm, fireplace glow of its quartz soon shifted, however. It retreated before a foreign light - sickly teal, with rivulets of scarlet fire dancing in its heart. Scrael perked up his head, stopping, knuckles pushing him to an upright stand.

"What have you found, Scrael?"

She spoke with the same cooing encouragement as to a trusty dog. As well as she might - Scrael's mind had long since degenerated into servile searching. And though limited in his faculties, he could still sniff the psychic energies of others, converting their presence into light. His lower jaw clacked against the cavities that made for his teeth, in rapid succession. A sign of danger.

Another mind was here. And a strange one, at that.

She had not expected company down here. No matter. She would ensure her fragile flesh against any blades in the dark. Archanae touched her medallion with its central sapphire to absorb its energy. She then opened a small pot in her belt, dipping a finger in red ocher, before tracing sigils in stone, layering fresh paint over the dissipating imagery of ancient artists.

A spell to thwart physical harm, shunning the touch of steel.

An incantation to safeguard her mind, keeping it clear of influence.

And finally, as a last measure, a circle of antipathy against life, keeping any would-be assassin at bay. Should life still pump in their veins, that was.

There. Archanae descended further, Scrael leading the way. The glow of envious light only intensified, bathing her and her minion in a sea-green illumination. This illumination seemed to slice her in half, part of her flesh, rags and charms claimed by darkness, the other half flaring in this sinister glow.

And soon, she found another trespasser, looming in a central chamber of this tomb. A figure flanked by braziers burning with the same fire that had contaminated her minion, seeming to absorb the plagued light around him, rendering the spikes and edges of his armour to pierce starkly through the darkness. A silhouette with hair the colour of ash and burnt dreams, cascading down his neck in colour-drained strands. Faint cuts and scratches echoed, his arms working with the tireless regimen of a craftsman. Cutting into bone, she knew, for she recognised this sound well.

"I did not expect to find another adept here."

Her husky words trickled down the corridors of stale air, their distinctive rhythm warped by the acoustics, sending rats scurrying further into the safety of darkness. Dull echoes murmured after her speech, like the deceased sought to join in on this discourse, only they couldn't muster words of their own.

Radu Basarab

 

[Radu Basarab]

Archanae

The bone fragment clattered softly against the stone floor as Radu's fingers stilled, the freshly carved sigil still weeping traces of marrow from its yellowed surface. The air hung thick with the scent of old death and darker purposes, disturbed now by the presence of the living, or something approximating it. His movements possessed a predator's deliberate grace as he pivoted, each motion calculated and fluid, like oil spreading across water.

In the sepulchral gloom, his eyes manifested as twin points of malevolent luminescence, white-blue flames that burned without warmth, arctic in their intensity. They fixed upon the intruder and her companion with the weight of centuries, dissecting them with a gaze that had witnessed countless souls cross the threshold between life and whatever lay beyond. The shadows seemed to recoil from him, yet simultaneously cling to his form like devoted servants.

"Adept? How presumptuous. I am master of death's dark artifice, woman. You would be wise to comprehend the vast chasm between what you perceive... and what I am."

The words emerged as if dragged across broken glass, each syllable dripping with contempt. His lip curled slightly, revealing a hint of teeth, triangular, sharp teeth that gleamed unnaturally white in the darkness, a wolf's smile, devoid of any warmth or welcome. The very air around him seemed to grow colder with his displeasure, as though the temperature itself bent to his will.

"Now, trespasser, illuminate me as to your purpose in this sepulcher. I find the intrusions of the living tiresome at best, and I have little patience for those who would disturb my work unbidden."

His stance remained deceptively casual, yet there lingered in his bearing the coiled tension of a serpent preparing to strike. The dagger still rested in his grip, its blade catching what little light penetrated this forsaken place, creating patterns that danced like dying stars across the walls. Blood, not his own, had dried in russet streaks down his jaw, a testament to whatever dark work had preceded this unwelcome interruption.

 

[Archanae]

Archanae tilted her head sideways, charms clinking gently from her hair. How interesting. A creature that considered itself above the living. She wondered what he might be with the curiosity of a mining scholar striking upon a rare vein of lore. A wight? Someone of the vampiric inclination, perhaps? Or maybe something else entirely - some manner of elemental spirit, ascended daemon or a revenant puppeteering a human form.

Whatever he was, his affronted arrogance and sense of superiority were palpable. Likely well-earned, given the danger that seemed to roll off of him like imperceptible waves, raising the small hairs on the back of her neck and prickling her exposed skin with goosebumps.

Oh, yes. She would be right to fear him. But he was far from the first such entity she had encountered, corpulent in power and careless in their confidence. Demons and higher spirits made for excellent fuel for her vessels and artifice, their alien minds usually more durable before the inevitable snap of madness that came from eternal bondage. A brief flicker of azure covetenouss gleamed from her eyes. She wondered what sort of power she might be able to siphon from this one, channeling it into a prize tool . . .

But no. She pressed her lust for arcane power down. Without prior knowledge of this one's capabilities and weaknesses, it was far too dangerous. Often the difference between crushing death and otherwordly servitude for a thaumaturge hung by a thin thread, easily broken. She had made preparations for common tomb raiders. Not something of this calibre.

Courtesy, then, was the way. She would match his insolent speech with refined manners and truth. Often creatures of his stature craved supplication, even hungered for it, seeking to be worshipped as gods. She would indulge this instinct, if only to extract information.

Besides, she couldn't blame him for whatever preconceptions he might have of her kind. Most humans were contemptible creatures indeed, in their current state: Ignorant, weak and short-lived.

"I came seeking knowledge, Undying One. The ancients buried many secrets with them here, lost to time and memory - as I'm sure you know. The gold and silver here is of little interest to me." She splayed out her fingers, curling them in an indicating gesture, as if to grasp his majestic form from a distance, and inspected him with a side-eye like one might size up a grand opal - an aloof gem, prismatic in its white core, reflecting and consuming the light around it. "May I ask who - or what - you are, my luminous acquaintance?"

Her curled hand ended by her own sapphire medallion, mirroring the sapphire in her belt among charms and sandy rags, flickering occasionally with the azure light from her eyes. She spoke as one might gently encourage another to civility, silkily prompting his response.

"My name . . . is Archanae."

Radu Basarab

 

[Radu Basarab]

Archanae

The silence that stretched between them possessed weight, a tangible thing that pressed against the ancient stones like the accumulated dust of centuries. Radu's gaze held the enchantress in its glacial embrace, those pale orbs unblinking, unchanging, as though time itself had frozen within their depths. They were the eyes of something that had transcended mortality's petty concerns, yet retained all of death's cruel wisdom.

A transformation rippled across his countenance, subtle, yet unmistakable. His alabaster brows contracted with the deliberate slowness of tectonic plates shifting, drawing together in an expression of profound displeasure. The shadows that dwelt within the chamber seemed to respond to his mood, deepening around him like loyal retainers answering their master's unspoken summons.

"Your flattery is as transparent as it is futile, enchantress. I am unmoved by such... pedestrian attempts at mollification."

With each word, his lips drew back further, unveiling the architecture of nightmare that lay beneath. These were not merely fangs, no, such a term was insufficient for the rows of triangular devastation that gleamed in the grave-light. Here was dentition crafted for annihilation, each tooth a monument to carnage, designed to reduce both flesh and bone to their constituent elements. The very sight of them suggested epochs of predation, countless ages spent perfecting the art of consumption.

"If you hunger for the knowledge I possess, then demonstrate your worth. Bring forth an offering befitting what you would claim. I do not debase myself with charity for the destitute."

He stood before her like a sentinel of some forgotten age, his presence an affront to the natural order. The air around him seemed to grow thick with the weight of centuries, heavy with the accumulated malevolence of one who had walked too long in death's shadow and emerged... changed.

 

[Archanae]

Spoiler: Music

"Your flattery is as transparent as it is futile, enchantress. I am unmoved by such... pedestrian attempts at mollification."

Archanae trilled a strange laughter, mechanical and stilted, as only one who had shed their humanity in all but flesh and name might chuckle. A smile bloomed on her features like rot on a corpse, spreading with the slow certainty of inevitability.

Not so easily duped, then. Very well.

Darkness and cold seemed to bend to his will. She knew she was in perilous territory, and indeed, if nothing but danger existed in this boundary between them, she might well have made her exit. But she also smelled opportunity here, and that kept her in the glare of his braziers and unseemly gaze.

"If you hunger for the knowledge I possess, then demonstrate your worth. Bring forth an offering befitting what you would claim. I do not debase myself with charity for the destitute."

She placed a long nail on her delicate chin, considering. Her gaze wandered down to her minion, and Scrael shifted uncomfortably, as if near expecting he might become such an offer.

"Alas, I fear what I seek may well be beyond your command - even for someone such as yourself . . ." No mockery or derision dripped from her voice - rather it seemed the bone-dry reserve of someone having found disappointment too often, now guarding themselves against hope. Another weighty pause fell between the two necromancers, like a portcullis closing between them. Her jingling anklets broke the silence, as she dared to test this threshold, taking a step closer to these invisible bars, one bare foot before the other.

As the smugglers of Cerak At'thul were prone to say: No risk, no reward. The importance of her quest demanded her to interrogate this option, however slim hope might be.

"And who am I to presume what you might yearn for? But perhaps, it may be worth the attempt . . . an exchange of ideas, as the philosophers would call it." Her finger fell from her chin like a lowering claw, indicating the exposed skeleton before him. "You say you have already mastered the dread art of summoning the dead. I see it in your work, more than your words." Her eyes gleamed again like sultry sapphires, taking another slow step forward. "But my art seeks more than physical servitude, Undying One. The mind may echo well beyond its allotted time on this earth. And there is more to be preserved from the dead than bones and dust, or rusting swords in skeletal palms. Their skills and purpose can be refined, harnessed, preserved. Improved." She shed any faux humility she might have had, raising her chin imperiously, spreading her hands before her in vivid illustration. "If that is what you seek, then destiny favours you this day."

Radu Basarab

 

[Radu Basarab]

Archanae

The dagger descended with deliberate ceremony, its blade meeting stone with a whisper that echoed through the sepulcher like a dying man's final breath. Radu's fingers lingered upon the hilt for a moment, a caress almost tender in its brevity, before releasing the instrument to its cold repose upon the altar of his dark endeavors.

He moved forward then, each step a calculated transgression of the space between them. The chamber's lesser inhabitants responded to his approach with instinctive terror; centipedes scattered like droplets of living shadow, their segmented bodies writhing in primitive panic as they fled the path of something far more terrible than themselves. Yet one remained, too engrossed in its grisly repast to acknowledge the greater predator's presence—its mandibles working methodically through the putrid flesh of a rat whose death had come days hence.

"Very well. But know this, disappointment carries a price far steeper than mere failure. Should you prove inadequate to the task, you shall find yourself more than just empty handed. Your flesh shall become my banquet, your bones mere vessels from which I shall sup the marrow, savoring every moment of your reduction to sustenance."

The words emerged as a promise rather than a threat, delivered with the casual certainty of one discussing the inevitable progression of seasons. His presence loomed before her now, close enough that the intricate engravings upon his armor caught what meager light infiltrated this realm of shadow. The metal seemed almost alive, casting writhing patterns against the walls, a dark choreography that danced to music only the damned could hear.

"I am Radu Basarab, herald of the ruinous powers. Once, I wore mortality like an ill-fitting garment, suffocating in its limitations. Through my covenant with the great devourer, Halch, I cast off that wretched shroud and claimed what was always meant to be mine--life everlasting."

 

[Archanae]

Archanae's eyes widened with greed. But her gaze reflected more than a mere desire for gold or other riches. The alien, teal fires revealed an avaricious flicker in her eyes, of a long search coming to a close, of a lifetime spent in fruitless seeking.

Life everlasting. Could it truly be? This Radu Basarab, if he spoke true, would have achieved what she sought. But at what cost? Enslavement to another god. To Halch, about whom she had heard scraps of lore. The consumer and defiler.

Her initial excitement doused, like a flame cooling into an ember of caution. When she had chosen the path of exile, she had forsworn service to any deity. She spat on the servile worship of her fellow Nazrani tribe, just as they would spit after her trail like an old curse - if they knew of her undertaking.

She stepped closer still to Radu, traversing the cold stone, careful and testing, like a slow-moving dancer practising her steps. Her minion tentatively followed, knuckles grinding slow and reluctant against the floor, as if Scrael held better sense than his mistress. But she needed a closer look. She needed to examine what supposed immortality looked like - just as she would inspect any other precious resource of the earth. Finally, she ended nearly within arm's reach of him, looking him up and down, head tilting and rolling, matching avian curiousity in her examination. He was towering above her, all gleaming breastplate and barely restrained malice.

Archanae, after her cursory inspection, slowly placed a hand on her thin collarbone - a traditional greeting of her tribe. One habit she still couldn't shake.

"I greet you, Radu Basarab. I have heard scant whispers of your patron -- though you are the first of His agents I have met." She would have to veil her disdain for the divine, light or dark. The freedom from mortality she sought would be wrenched from the cosmos, tooth and nail - without the blessing of any god. But perhaps this one's undying state could inform her work. "I am well accustomed to the price of failure, herald. With my every breath, I risk universal retribution. Your threat is no different to what Arethil would say, if the world had a tongue to speak with."

A small, cryptic smile played over her features. Her hand remained near her medallion, stroking its circular edge, its sapphire orb observing Radu like a third eye. Scrael lumbered up next to them, coming to a rest. Finally, she threw back a strand of hair from her face with a flick of her head, having to arch her neck to look up into the icy fire of his eyes. Her intense cinnamon eyes met the hungry flames of his gaze like red clay before an infernal furnace, hardening into stoic ceramic.

"Name this task, then. What is on your mind?"

Radu Basarab

 

[Radu Basarab]

Archanae

The distance between them dwindled to insignificance, two steps, perhaps less, before Radu's arm unfolded with the languid grace of a serpent rousing from torpor. His hand rose, a thing of terrible beauty in its construction: fingers elongated beyond mortal proportion, each digit crowned with claws of obsidian lacquer that gleamed like frozen midnight. The brazier's uncertain flames cast his shadow across her features, transforming her face into a canvas of light and darkness, a chiaroscuro study in vulnerability.

His fingers hovered there, suspended in that liminal space between threat and action. The claws flexed with predatory anticipation, curling inward like the legs of a dying spider. How simple it would be, how exquisitely effortless, to pierce through that delicate cranium, to peel away the layers of flesh and bone as one might strip the rind from overripe fruit. His imagination savored the hypothetical feast: the wet, satisfying pop as her eyes were plucked from their moorings, consumed like delicacies reserved for only the most discriminating of palates.

Yet he restrained himself. Not from mercy, such concepts had long since been excised from his vocabulary, but from a curiosity that superseded his immediate hunger. His hand withdrew with deliberate slowness, each movement a testament to barely leashed violence.

"Very well. You shall procure my sustenance, a mage, perhaps, or one of the fae. Though in truth, any creature suffused with the arcane will suffice. Too long have I been denied the particular... vintage that magical flesh provides. My current endeavors have left me disinclined to abandon this sanctuary for the tedium of the hunt."

The words emerged with the casual entitlement of one accustomed to having his appetites satisfied, regardless of their nature.

 

[Archanae]

Her nail elicited a single and gentle ping from her medallion, tapping its gemstone. It seemed a sharp punctuation to her thoughts, and she took a single step back, a frown contorting her features.

She could not escape the shiver of clarity that she might well fit the desire for magical flesh. But there was no reason to remind of him that.

"And what . . . might I gain in return, herald? If I were to hunt on your behalf."

Radu Basarab

 

[Radu Basarab]

Archanae

The thing that might have been a smile crawled across Radu's features like something diseased. His black lips drew back with the wet sound of a wound opening, revealing gums as pale as cave-grown mushrooms, teeth that gleamed with their own cold phosphorescence. It was an expression that belonged in no honest mirror, a grotesque pantomime of mirth that would have sent the rats scurrying deeper into their walls had they possessed the wit to recognize it for what it was.

The teal flames guttered in their braziers as if recoiling from that terrible rictus, casting shadows that danced like hanged men in the periphery. When he spoke, his voice carried the dusty resonance of sealed tombs, each word dropping like a stone into still water.

"Your life, such as it is, shall remain yours to squander, first and foremost. Should I find your offering... palatable... then I shall deign to grant you participation in my great work. Through centuries unnumbered, I have amassed tomes of considerable merit regarding the necromantic arts, volumes whose screaming bindings would send any sensible man fleeing in terror. One so... nascent... in these practices as yourself would find much to contemplate within their pages, no doubt."

 

[Archanae]

Even Archanae, who had witnessed many a heinous apparition already, found herself instinctually repulsed by Radu. The plagued horror of his smile, the choking heaviness of his words, dusty and damning like he was fresh out of the coffin. Even the elements of earth and fire seemed to balk and sputter in his presence, as if desiring to disappear from his wake.

Was this what immortality looked like? So warped, twisted and at odds with nature?

If it was, she would have to bury her disgust with her mortality. Eternal life might render her in a similar fashion, after all. If that was the case, human revulsion was a weakness she could not afford. So Archanae concentrated on the gleam of his armour, wondering with absent-minded interest from which age it might belong, in part to distract her from the queasy sickness in her stomach.

"How thoughtful." The irony was mostly to be found in the significant pause after her words, rather than her dull delivery. "Arcane flesh for knowledge, then. I shall consider your offer. But it might tip the scales more towards my acceptance, if I could gain a glimpse into your work. To see if it is truly as worthwhile or . . . terrifying, as you say it is."

Her eyes narrowed and her lower lip dropped, as if reading him more closely, inspecting the facets of his armour. It looked ancient, but of no make she could recognise. All the while, she willed herself to stay and not to distance herself from his unnatural aura. Not yet.

"For one who already has claimed eternal life . . . I must wonder, what grander goal could you seek to accomplish?" She looked past him to the skeleton he was currently unhallowing, jutting her chin at it. "Some quest on behalf of your patron, perhaps?"

Radu Basarab

 

[Radu Basarab]

Archanae

The shadows seemed to writhe and genuflect in Radu's wake as he commenced his measured circumambulation of the table, each footfall deliberate as a death knell upon the ancient stones. Yet whilst his corporeal form moved in that slow, predatory circuit, his eyes, those terrible orbs that had witnessed centuries unnumbered, remained affixed upon Archanae with the inexorable focus of a serpent contemplating a potential meal. No mortal gaze could maintain such terrible constancy; it was the stare of one who had long ago surrendered the pretense of humanity.

"The dark ones seldom harbor ambitions, child. Such petty conceits are beneath them. They are the inexorable forces that seek to corrode the wheel of existence itself, powers and principalities given flesh and form, architects of entropy made manifest in our benighted realm. Their desires are refreshingly... uncomplicated. They require only that I become the harbinger of mortality's dissolution, that I scatter the seeds of annihilation across these wretched mortal kingdoms like a gardener tending his crimson harvest. Through such cultivation of chaos, I merely accelerate what was always ordained, their inevitable resurgence from the void."

A grimace twisted his pallid countenance then, not of pain, but of something far more unsettling. His visage assumed an aspect of profound contemplation, as though he gazed through the veil of reality itself into vistas of possibility that would drive lesser minds to gibbering madness. The flame-light caught the sharp planes of his face, casting them into stark relief that rendered him more statue than man, more revenant than living thing.

"Eternity is a canvas that demands a worthy artist. Consider the sublime arithmetic of immortality, eternal life wedded to eternal power, existence unfettered by any law save the dictates of my own volition. To indulge every whim without consequence, to exercise my will across the centuries without challenge or impediment, to stand as the sole arbiter of my destiny while lesser beings grovel in the dust of their brief, pathetic spans... That is not mere freedom, child. That is apotheosis. That is what it means to transcend the prison of mortality and become something... altogether more magnificent."

 

[Archanae]

Spoiler: Music

To transcend . . . Yes, that is what she longed for. She knew his sentiment of pathetic lifespans all too well. She had seen it. In the isles of Aina o Ka La and the pits of Cerak At'Thul, where lives were as cheap and quickly spent as copper. Her life had nearly been such a measly, tossed-aside coin.

Most human lives were pitiable and short. Barely worth a footnote. Wasted potential.

Oh, she understood his desires all too well. To be unimpeded by gods or mortals alike, to rise above such a pathetic state.

But his was a selfish goal. A hedonistic pursuit of the sublime, of the aesthetic rush of power and transcendence - she saw that all too clearly now. The conclusion her body and instincts had reached much sooner, seeking to warn her mind, had now finally landed in her psyche.

He was corruption made manifest. No better than the heedless vandals and pirates that plagued the ocean, merely on a different scale. A slave to brutality and wanton destruction. He sought to end mankind, along with all other species. While she sought to end this phase of humanity and transmute it into something far greater.

And though she was no stranger to the art of killing, hers served an ultimate purpose. He no doubt killed for the sheer sake of it, to satiate his own ravenous hunger. He was nothing but a destroyer. But she was an architect, breaking and moulding the lands to lay down the foundations for a new world order.

Inevitably, their goals would clash. It was only a matter of time. And by that time, Archanae knew she would have to face savage and powerful murderers such as himself. Possibly even him.

Archanae held that amortal gaze with a face as tense and coiled as steel wires. Her jaw and neck worked wordlessly, quelling the building fury within her. Rarely did true anger seize her, but here, in this moment, it almost overruled her disgust.

An ancient entity such as himself should know better. Infinite possibility for enlightenment and advancement, and what did he squander it on? Egotistical pursuits of sensations and superiority, like an eternal drunkard, intoxicated by pleasure and greed.

A terrifying thought arrested her, causing her to grip her medallion tight, squeezing her dark fingers pale.

If she succeeded, would she ultimately become as him? As depraved and short-sighted? Was this the fate of all mortals earning eternity?

The very idea was almost too much to bear. No. She had to believe she could rise above pleasing her own vanity and hunger for power.

But perhaps, even something as evil as him could serve a greater good. Darkness often knew secrets that the light shunned. She was treading a gossamer bridge here, where revealing her true emotions might result in a plunge into oblivion. Light as a spider, she would have to be. Defeating entities that dwarfed her in both power and age required meticulous preparation and care.

And after all, what better way to harbour such knowledge than interrogating said enemy?

A philosophical question might entice an aesthete such as himself, indulging the dark artistry of his soul.

"I see, now. You seek liberation unknown even to the gods. I can see sense in that. But let me ask you this: how can you know that this endless spiral of satiated desires is not yet another prison? A canvas is beautiful once mastered, indeed, but it is still confined. Limited by its very edges. And so is this eternity of yours, is it not?" Her eyes flashed with ire and insight, unable to fully restrain the fire within. "Chained by ceaseless hunger."

Radu Basarab

 

[Radu Basarab]

Archanae

A mirthless sound escaped Radu's throat, not quite laughter, but something far more ancient and terrible, like the grinding of tombstones.

"If you presume that desire constitutes imprisonment, then you merely reveal your provincial comprehension of existence's fundamental architecture. How tediously predictable—another soul mistaking abstinence for enlightenment."

His movements possessed a blasphemous grace as he reached across the table, long fingers closing around the yellowed skull that rested there like some profane relic. He lifted it with the reverence one might show a chalice of communion wine, though this gesture spoke of far darker sacraments. The bone gleamed dully in the wan light as he cradled it in his palm, and his taloned fingers—those implements of countless murders—began to trace the hollow geography of its visage with an almost tender precision. Each claw followed the orbital ridges, the nasal cavity, the rictus grin of the mandible, as though reading some terrible scripture written in calcium and time.


"Observe this osseous remnant, this calcium testament to mortality's ultimate jest. The cosmos, child, is nothing more than an infinite abyss populated by the random collisions of consciousness—scattered motes of awareness drowning in an ocean of purposelessness. The universe's true visage is one of absolute antipathy, an eternal mechanism of cause and consequence that grinds forward with neither malice nor mercy. It is a blind clockwork deity, perpetually turning its gears through the flesh of those unfortunate enough to possess sentience. Your pathetic aspirations, your desperate prayers for meaning—these are but the squeaking of mice beneath the wheel."

"You speak of sin as though it were weakness, but pride, wrath, avarice, and all the delicious hungers of the flesh—these are not chains, but weapons. They are the very sinews by which we assert our existence against the void's gnawing emptiness. They are declarations of war against oblivion itself. Your quaint dichotomy of good and evil is the philosophy of insects, child. The genuine conflict—the only battle worth acknowledging—is between the fierce heat of passion and the arctic wasteland of apathy, between the glorious uncertainty of chaos and the suffocating determinism of universal law."

 

[Archanae]

Spoiler: Music

Archanae did observe the skull, as if its lifeless sockets could add anything substantial; the only other audience member to Radu's emphatic speech.

The apathetic crushing of souls in a heartless cosmos . . . certainly, she had dreaded this universal jest herself. What if the Gods were mere puppets to some other, daft force - the ultimate chronicler of this tale an immeasurable fool, only surpassed in power by its own half-witted, mechanical function? It was so strange to hear these secret thoughts of hers spoken aloud by another being, another entity who shared her cold stab of clarity. Thoughts that she had nursed in private now reverberated in this crypt, like another punchline in a endless series of morbid comedy.

Dread coursed her veins and seeped into her heart, funneled by her own rapidly pulsing blood. It was a deeper sort of fear than a common, animalistic response: it was an anxiety borne by generations, woven into collective memory, of a body that instinctually knew the end point of its own existence.

Flesh might be weak, but it could be wise. Indeed, it had known from the start that this encounter might irrevocably change her, before her mind could haltingly reach the same conclusion.

"You speak of sin as though it were weakness, but pride, wrath, avarice, and all the delicious hungers of the flesh—these are not chains, but weapons. They are the very sinews by which we assert our existence against the void's gnawing emptiness. They are declarations of war against oblivion itself. Your quaint dichotomy of good and evil is the philosophy of insects, child. The genuine conflict—the only battle worth acknowledging—is between the fierce heat of passion and the arctic wasteland of apathy, between the glorious uncertainty of chaos and the suffocating determinism of universal law."

Archanae's eyes hooded, and her head lowered with the weight of contemplation. So, this was one response, if one accepted this to be the state of the universe. Good and evil . . . chaos and law. Indeed, she doubted that the world could be boiled down to such simple dichotomies.

But what he offered was yet another binary. Roiling, rebelling chaos, starkly defying a dead, logos-bound cosmos. Chaos usurping law, affirming life. But to what end?

Yes . . . his analysis might well be correct. But while she could respect his defiance of the divine and current cosmological hierarchy, her solution to this problem differed . . .

Perhaps he was simply a gluttonous murderer. Yet he held more insight than a common killer. Ultimately, he fought against the same foe as her.

A pause blanketed over the stones like another layer of dust - light and ephemeral as air, heavy as time. The skitters of rats and insects from the dark raised an anticipatory chord, before her voice suffused this sepulchral melody.

"Radu Basarab . . ." She let the name hang for a spell, fanning a fevered susurration among the nocturnal creatures with its ancient curse - while igniting her mind with its nascent blessing. "I wish to thank you."

That single breath of words, so simple, yet profound enough to strike nature's vermin silent. The alien fires flickered with disbelief, and the mad, umbral shapes in their wake seemed to pause, like dancers freezing before the view of unveiled royalty.

It was with a rattling, rasping breath, heaved in like a sword holstered back into its scabbard, that she continued:

"I have walked this earth my entire life . . . alone . . . bearing this uncanny vision of the world. And now, I finally meet another who understands. Someone who sees the true enemy. Not in any manner of creature or mortal foe, but in the very fabric of reality itself. Limiting us in our scope - and our true potential." Her eyes flashed blue, and for a flickering moment, the fires' hue nearly submitted to a blue flame themselves - mirroring her gaze of crystallised clarity, cold fury and visionary determination. "Whatever else may happen to us in this mindless world,"-her eyes flared with unspoken intent, head tilting, as if already preparing herself for any future altercation-"and whichever side we may find ourselves on, I now know one thing, at least."

Her final thought came as a whisper of realisation, now speaking to the remains and herself, rather than her counterpart. Her fingers traced the edge of the table, ragged robes rustling.

"I am not alone."

Radu Basarab

 

[Radu Basarab]

Archanae

With methodical precision, the ancient thing returned the skull to its position on the table, setting it down with the careful reverence one might afford a religious artifact. He then approached her, closing the distance between them with measured steps that betrayed no urgency, only inevitability.

Without preamble or warning, his hands descended upon her shoulders. The gesture carried an unexpected quality, where one might have anticipated crushing force from such a creature of renowned cruelty, his touch was instead exploratory, almost clinical. His palms rested flat against her shoulders before his fingers splayed outward, tracing the contours of her arms in a downward motion that seemed more assessment than assault.

Throughout this examination, his gaze remained fixed upon her face with unsettling intensity. Those ancient eyes never wavered, never blinked, maintaining their scrutiny with the patience of something that had long ago transcended mortal concepts of time. His expression revealed a mind engaged in some complex calculation, weighing possibilities known only to him.

"Were you any other supplicant, any other mewling petitioner come crawling to my threshold with delusions of significance, I would have found your pathetic insinuation of kinship so monumentally presumptuous that mockery alone would be insufficient recompense. The very suggestion would merit nothing less than complete evisceration, followed by days of exquisite torment for your audacity. And yet..."


His fingers moved to capture her chin between two clawed digits, applying just enough pressure to tilt her face upward, forcing her to meet his examination more directly.

"I find myself experiencing that rarest of sensations, genuine intrigue. How delightfully... unexpected. Make no mistake, child, I harbor no maudlin sentiment toward you, no vestigial echo of human compassion pollutes my consideration. Such weaknesses were excised from my nature before you drew your first breath. No, what motivates me is altogether more... refined. I am consumed by a connoisseur's curiosity, a desire to witness what manner of creature might emerge from the chrysalis of your potential when subjected to my particular philosophy. Consider yourself my experiment in directed evolution, a study in how far one might fall when guided by truly capable hands."

 

[Archanae]

Spoiler: Music

A faint gasp escaped her at the touch on her shoulders. Clearly, her spell of antipathy did not work against this creature, which would lend some credence to his claim of being beyond life. Unnaturally cold hands travelled down her obsidian skin, claws a hair's breadth away from rupturing her flesh. She could feel the force behind even these light brushes, particularly when ending by her chin, like pincers that could wantonly break her jaw.

Despite this, she met his examining gaze with something akin to stubborn defiance. But below these surface expressions, a deeper intent lurked - a guarded mirror, in which Radu would find his own prodding examination reflected back at him. Her fingers clutched a talisman of jasper rocks behind her back, and Scrael lumbered up near them, tracing them like a dutiful warden. Precautions all.

She had never quite met a being such as Radu. A hubristic demigod in shining breastplate, his face pale as sea-foam in the wake of a sultan's ship. All the ill temper of a scorpion, coupled with the cunning of a snake and the strength of a bull. Repulsing and fascinating all at once. A chimera of mercurial humours and endless appetites.

They could not be more different, at least in appearance. A slight obsidian mortal dressed in decorative rags and a grand opal revenant bedecked in ostentatious gold. But they had the same foe in common. Only their methods of warfare against this oppressive Logos differed.

She knew he spoke candidly. Even if he had said nothing, she would have known he lacked human compassion. But at least he was being honest about his intentions. An honesty that she was unfamiliar with except in her own company; she had gotten so used to the lies of common folk that this sort of direct conveyance felt like a plunge into arctic water. Her lips split for a silent spell, before forming words that gurgled faintly like water from a leaking pipe:

"You believe . . . that I would change from your philosophy alone?"

Radu Basarab

 

[Radu Basarab]

The distance between them collapsed to nearly nothing as the ancient one leaned forward, positioning his countenance mere inches from her own, a proximity that violated all conventions of mortal interaction. The space that remained could be measured in the breadth of a blade, perhaps two fingers' width at most. This calculated invasion of her sphere brought with it sensations that defied comfortable description: the measured exhalations from his nostrils played across her ebony skin like the breath of a tomb, each expulsion of air carrying with it an impossible confluence of scents.

There was mint upon his breath, not the fresh herb of summer gardens, but something preserved and desiccated, as though plucked from some apothecary's jar sealed centuries past. Beneath this lay the unmistakable essence of aged leather, redolent of bindings that had confined forbidden volumes in libraries best left unvisited.

Yet pervading all was something far more disturbing: the scent of all the cold places in creation, of permafrost and mausoleum air, of spaces where warmth had never dwelt nor ever would.

When he spoke, the word emerged as both acknowledgment and challenge, shaped by lips that had forgotten the taste of mortality a couple generations too early. "Perhaps," he intoned, allowing the single syllable to hang between them like a suspended blade.

His subsequent query took the form of a philosophical snare, elegantly constructed yet impossible to navigate without consequence.

"A simple proposition, girl. Remain shackled, cowering in that protective carapace you've constructed, genuflecting before destiny's arbitrary decree, or rise up and seize the dices from fate's withered grasp. Cast them again. Demand a superior outcome. Which will you choose, supplication or insurrection? Should you say the latter, then you've already fallen into my grasp."

 

[Archanae]

Archanae smirked up at him, despite his unholy proximity. In this question, she regathered her wits and the precision of her speech. She knew her answer well before he had finished his query.

"Ah, but I cast these dice already by finding your . . . distinct company. And I shall cast them again, verily. I cannot help but gamble with destiny." She took a step back from him and put her hands together in mock prayer, the gesture as ill-suited with her as a criminal in a guard's uniform. "I am no supplicant to the gods, herald. Neither yours or theirs. All I worship is my own ambition. But my rebellion started long before you posed me this question." She brushed past him in this dance with death, her moves similar to the ritualised distancing that accompanied two partners in a ballroom, rather than this dusty catacomb. Proximity and remoteness. Acceptance and rejection, teasing desire. With his distance, she could recoup her cunning from his oppressive aura.

"But I am intrigued by your art. Show me more." Her fingers landed again on the table, studying the skull he had venerated like a holy relic. Her whisper came out with all the danger of a drawing dagger. "And if I deem it precious, I shall bring you such ripe, enchanted flesh that you can barely imagine it."

Radu Basarab

 

[Radu Basarab]

Archanae

The ancient one's response emerged with the finality of a sepulchre door closing. "No," he said. The monosyllabic declaration carried neither hesitation nor room for negotiation, it fell between them like a woodcutter's axe, severing any possibility of compromise.

His subsequent words took on the cadence of one explaining immutable laws of nature to a particularly slow pupil. "Elementary economics, child, supply and demand. I can procure my own sustenance, despite the tedium. You, conversely, will find no other being of my particular... refinement... within two hundred leagues of this festering province. And should you miraculously stumble upon another of my ilk, rest assured they would extract a price that would make my requirements seem positively charitable by comparison."


The lesson in economics concluded with a gesture both casual and terrible. He extended one pallid finger toward the skull that rested upon the table, and in that instant, the object transformed. Ghastly flames of an otherworldly teal hue erupted from the relic's vacant sockets and nasal cavity, tongues of spectral fire that seemed to feed upon darkness itself rather than consume it. The conflagration enveloped the yellowed bone entirely, wreathing it in an aureole of unnatural luminescence.

As though animated by some blasphemous vitality, the skull rose from its resting place, ascending into the fetid air with the grace of a thing unbound by mortal physics. It commenced a languorous orbit around the girl, maintaining a trajectory level with her own head, tracing circles that seemed to inscribe invisible sigils in the space between them. The flames continued their silent dance across the bone's surface, rippling across the exposed brow like attendant demons.

"Midnight, pupil. Return with my feast and earn your reward. Fail, and you become the feast itself, a rather ignominious transformation, I assure you. This osseous companion shall assist your endeavor. Return it pristine, or suffer consequences that would make consumption seem merciful."

 

[Archanae]

An exit. This Radu granted her one, though he remained stingy with his secrets. No matter. It was to be expected of beings such as him. They rarely gave anything for free. She could ignore his pompous and lecturing tone for the sake of new knowledge.

Midnight. A short timeframe, indeed. Whether or not she could procure arcane flesh in the span of a day, she should take this chance to leave. She might not get another.

She eyed the skull with vigilant scrutiny, gathering her robes about her. No doubt it would work as a distant eye for him, a means of keeping track of her progress. A quest, then, to feed the dark desires of them both. And should she fail to find a worthy sacrifice, she would have to begin plotting how to rid herself of this grinning and osseous fly.

"A midnight seance, then? How fitting. Then I shall take my leave."

Spoiler: Music

She made her way from whence she had come, now with both Scrael and the hovering skull in tow. Before she stepped beyond the threshold of this hall, though, she turned halfway back towards him, observing him, a distant star in the dark with his burning braziers.

"Divinity is forged on the anvil of our spirits. A Cortosi saying. They say that without the faith of mortals, deities lose their power. I wonder -- what power might we have, if we began worshipping ourselves instead?"

She did not raise her voice to compensate for the distance, but rather mused aloud, partly to his far shadow, partly to herself. Whether these words reached him or not, they crystallised Archanae's intent, fuelling her stride with purpose, as she sought the light of the outdoors.

A sacrifice for the sake of a brighter future. She was no stranger to such deals. Though a singular thought nagged her, persistent in the back of her head.

Was this to be a trade of commerce or a religious sacrifice on his altar?

Only time would tell. But regardless, someone would perish this night. And like Death itself, she would have to make the arbitrary choice of who was to suffer this end.

Radu Basarab