The Sketch Rift: The Seal of Demons

Rivalry is a Weapon

Moth sat, but he could not stand to recite his injunctions. His fingers and his ankles were simmered into the Kyueb Reacsoa's quintessential construct of dolor. Hoisted onto the shoulders of his subjects of servitude, his throne lacked even wheels to transport it into its state of the highest durability. Whether that would be the Waise Wells, the anonymous garage of Moth's security or the Great Waise Temple, was already settled. There were unsuspecting catacombs lurking beneath the stronghold of the Fviron and their Reacsoa Hand, where they would hypothetically be safe on September First. The trouble was now the journey there.

A detour through Northwest Waise presented unforeseen difficulty. "Basking in the grief that the death of your leader has set will only set you in a new stage of that grief," the Ambassador bellowed. "It would be best to accustom oneself with the status quo than to be incinerated in two days as a consequence of not doing so."

Most of the residents of Northwest Waise (including Anibar, who taunted Moth with her life and was punished by being forced to join him in the bunker of the Catacombs) had already removed themselves and flown to Hendera, so aside from an additional burden for the caravan, the premise of the visit was primarily to retrieve the Fviron, who had gained a translator in their brethren since blindness had befallen their literate Chieftain.

M E S S E N G E R   T O   T H E   K Y U E B   R E A C S O A

Y O U   M A Y   S E R V E   J U S T I C E   O N   O U R   B E H A L F

B U T   O N   T H E   P A R T   O F   N O   O N E   E L S E

F R O M   W H O S E   C O V E T O U S N E S S

Y O U   H A V E   P R O F I T E D

This solemn proposition was deduced in haste by the Ambassador to be a reaffirmation of their pious contempt for him, overshadowing their former loyalties. The cyclopes begrudgingly followed in Moth's footsteps, and Northwest Waise was abandoned forevermore to pass. Its local doyenne, however, was already lurking in wait amid the skulls of the Kyueb Reacsoa's rebels.

Hendera itself would not see an official evacuation effort until the next day -- the day before 9101. The relative elites of the village slipped through at Moth's side, but the civilians were left behind in the streets to ponder for twenty-four hours. And there were only civilians; the slaughter of the militia two days prior had seen through that the still-unannounced Blessed One was the only separation between Hendera and the Bane of the Armorillion, which Moth recognized as a near-impossible probability of survival -- if fifty percent was impossible.

*     *     *

Moth's throne concluded its voyage on a river of perspiration to fall inexplicably into the widest-open chamber of the Great Waise Catacombs, a torch-kindled, egg-shaped dome stretching its subterranean fingertips from below the Reacsoa Hand's abode, the labyrinthine patterns lining its walls designed from decaying human skulls, all of which had been slain before the Hand itself. Hemingway's commentaries of teeth and apples askew and haplessly coincided with the visions of salvation roosting over their heads.

"So let me get this straight," Nathaurus gesticulated on the other end of the den to the arrivals. "You have only let your lamentable esurience fester as your people forsake you for the personage you have already attempted to let go of?"

"I digress," Moth adopted an affectation of the Crusading Sulukridger that cast him into the destitution his servants moaned about. "But you must remain. For as long as you do not confront me... I will not be inclined to obliterate you. You have nothing more to lose."

"You have the toss of a coin to lose," Nathaurus fitted her tongue in her cheek. "My persecution for your misdeed would be folly."

As the convulsion of Moth's bluffing strangled the placation his convoy had sought, Sigjire submissively scurried to the "shriveled ears" of his new administrator to shatter the established tension, a whisper in mind and in practice imposed.

Aloud, the Ambassador wheezed in reply, dust particles swirling as he breathed. "Indeed, I did; six years ago I bid him farewell in his ignorance of the fact that I had just pickpocketed him of the very letter I arranged for him to keep. It should be in his hands now. But only his... and for any eyes who have smuggled a legible siege of its contents, I would grant their bladed downfall."

Anibar stepped forward, an undying light against Moth's dominion, whose constancy of rebellion was now merely a unanimous assurance. She stood at the feet of the Ambassador for what looked to be the last time for a newcomer to such a scenario.

Instead, Moth extended his burnt arms and corralled them around her. "Do not allow your guilt of worthlessness consume you," he cooed. "Rivalry is a weapon, but we have not time enough to blunt its edges against dirt."