The Sketch Rift: The Seal of Demons

Debacle Gazes

The scab (possibly a reddening horizon) of Sulukridger society that the Ambassador admitted to chafing in his past was not bound to heal; potentially even decaying more.

Ere the twenty-fourth of August, Soal was banished from Hendera -- not necessarily ostracized, but a silent promise had been sealed. Moth saw off the semi-Master Bringer, whose Blessing remained ambiguous, at Grant's Shrine with a massive encumbrance of blades, the Fractals' Shield, rations, and copious stockpiles of auxiliary gear. An unkempt scrap of foolscap marked with a sequence of recommendations for each fork in the dirt passage was his only guide to the illustrious Great Waise Temple, the alleged stronghold of the Reacsoa Hand in the Second Plane itself, made impregnable to all but Soal but Charles Hemingway, a premonition of Moth's counter-revolution. Despite continuing to strategically lurk within the shielded Northwest Waise among his share of Henderian refugees and absconding Fviron, Hemingway was theorized to be conducting orders in Northwest Waise from his perch in the Temple to defend the Hand, if he was needed -- another telltale signal of his insincerity of his contradicted normality.

Soal's despondency had reached a new maximum in the days of impending hysteria before 9101. The conflict between his old (")friends(") had obviously conduced to it, but the loss of meaning in companionship had plagued him for a lifetime, also in his new present day in a devastated household in a shattered family. Even Irene, whose heart he had held close to his own for as long as his memory could serve, had retreated, aided by only an elusive, although rational, Nathaurus. As the silhouette of a colossally amplified and offputtingly rusty and mossy structure, superficially similar in architectural design to the living Fviron temple in Xilling, dominated the scarlet horizon, Soal could only sink down in the shadow of a shallow precipice to ruminate due twilight.

*     *     *

An inherently habitual reflex on the behalf of Nathaurus was not the only incentive for her intrusion of Soal's nocturnal torpor. There had been no blaze, nor had there been firewood, but the Bejirian Incarnation's conjuring -- of an extraneous torch -- was enough to supplement its absence.

Soal awoke forthwith, abandoning his typical midnight hebetude not even to the cacophony of a shriek. Nathaurus's eyes had lost possession of their sole optical worm, and they had both accreted substantial lacerations in their vicinity, striking in Soal's anamnesis an image of the rancorous Arkonnus, hardly reflected in this former outlaw. Her mango-hued cape, once ripe with its definitive grandeur, had been bloodstained, cleaved, and peeled back, only to reveal a woeful visage, evinced by the trite patchwork reminiscent of those belonging to her fallen Sogburian brethren.

"I'm sorry I wasn't able to bring you with Irene," she susurrated assertively, despite her stature and condition of health. "But she may be necessary here; more so than yourself, in fact."

"How so? She deserves rest, but..." Words flowed from Soal's lips involuntarily, before he could realize their connotations. "What happened to you?"

Nathaurus narrowed her wounded eyes as she craned her neck to glimpse the looming Great Waise Temple. "Cha -- Hemingway snapped at me for my constructive assessment of his procedure in defending the Reacsoa Hand. And now, what atrocity he has bestowed me, stripping me of every last Vorren. Day by day, Soullessness will burgeon within me... if we even survive for such time."

"How could he?" the semi-Master Bringer was not fully in disbelief, reluctantly adopting elements of Moth's beratement. "He did the same thing to Ivel."

"Ivel didn't cope with Soullessness," Nathaurus stoically glared into the barren ground as a subject upon which to wishfully channel her spite. "He was already unhinged; but you? Not only are you too valuable to throw into this suicide mission against Hemingway... you're too naive to face the punishment that the Kyueb Reacsoa has in store."

"Punishment?" Soal had heard such mumbo-jumbo from Nathaurus long prior, and on multiple occasions, but this seemed to be a commonplace reasoning for siding with the pseudo-Sulukridger. "You mean, for obtaining the Reacsoa Hand?"

"Exactly," the Bejirian Incarnation grew hoarse with her announcement of alarm. "But it goes beyond that. You mustn't cross into the Temple, at the expense of our macrocosm. Do not go. I am powerless now to prevent you, but even if you defy me, Hemingway will kill you."

"But I may be the Blessed One."

"Who am I to judge whether or not you are wrong?" Nathaurus brandished her torch before Soal, showering embers over the parched earth below: her final attainable mechanism of intimidation. "The fire may not burn you, but when the world bursts into flames, only you will be accredited."

"But what are you going to do?" Soal's circulation and respiration, long burdened with resolving highly consequential judgments, were only willing to hurry. "Hemingway betrayed you, but Moth doesn't change easily."

"I will depart to notify Northwest Waise of this advancement," Nathaurus was already lurching away, devitalized by the treachery of the pseudo-Sulukridger. "I expect no aid from you. But if I have not swayed you, only the calligraphy of the Kyueb Reacsoa can. Farewell." Vanishing under a cape was no longer a plausible option, but the Bejirian Incarnation was very sharp-eyed. The torch flickered into the lightless murkiness with a flurry of her breath.