The Temple of Xhyvas
1st of Spring, 512 AV
1st of Spring, 512 AV
They’d come to him in the night. The crows, inky wings bearing an eternal prophecy. The clack of their beaks, the way those beady, amber eyes skewered him from raggedy furls of feather. They’d gleaned his veracity.
Prickly, heavy flesh lay dappled by a fractured gleam, the clayed residue of his waning oil lamp. There, on his body, was the purple of scars. The ugly japery of a man, cast down by seraphim. That was the tragedy of flesh. The lines of his face were blunt, broken, yet they forged a leonine zeal. Tepidly, the coals of his eyes gazed out, darkly smoldering under blotchy lids, the spiky tufts of hair. They weren’t angelic, those eyes. They’d partaken in grief, feasted on dread. The bitter tears had slid by his broken nose, and those lips, like a scar tracing over the skin, had parted for a lover.
And for her, he’d cast it away.
Naama, why? The crows mocked him, as ever. Their cacophony limned by sordidly whorled imagery. They’d spied his shackles, the heavy chains laying crossways over his uncovered flesh, and the hordes of bereft souls tugged in his wake. This was his curse. The enduring of memory, and the waking guilt. There was a somber pity for them, regret for these specters marred by what he’d become, but to repent his part would’ve been a deceit. There was no sundering this cycle. Though he desired harmony, even that was unruly, bleakly unraveling in discord. The patina of this sacred place, turgidly sinking into its prior decrepitude, was blunted by sullen epiphany.
He was, as ever, the detriment of all that he’d ever wanted. He wasn’t a redeemer. He wasn’t the incarnate of a god, but a broken, confused man. He couldn’t restore harmony with his adjudicating. That chest, the cage of ribs that enclosed his heart, they curved like any other. The creak of joints, the pulsing of blood, hardly culled his doubts. There’d never be divinity. There was augury, but his efforts were in vain.
Tight fists, laid bare of their casings of steel, clenched around the splintery altar. The brazier lay forlorn, its iron tracery just a bed for ashes. The benches were empty, daubed by pale, blotchy smears of shyke. They were always empty. There wasn’t any use for a dead god, much less his priest.
Xhyvas was forgotten. There weren’t any scrolls, any musty tomes sifting to dust to explain what he’d been. That was the worst curse of all, to be forgotten. Ulric felt it keenly, too. Though he’d long despised feeling, he’d disposed of japery. There wasn’t any use in lying.
And now, he was bereft.
Riven from his deceit, he’d only those inky eyes to find solace in, the boozy ritual of slapping skin after dusk, sticky with the fervency of his longing. Those vaunted, yet ephemeral hymns of a power he’d felt once, yet swiftly descended to glaring inadequacy. The comprehension of divinity was far worse, if anything, than its ignorance. That disruption had sluiced into so many vagaries, evoking a stiff cost on his mind and leaving only a vestigial, yet grudging fidelity of a cause already doomed. That was yet another curse. Though he wasn’t a prophet, he’d uttered the vow, harshly banded himself in that duty. There wasn’t any sufficing.
“Xhyvas,”[/i] he rasped, bending his head over the altar. [b]“Forgive me.” Headily, he was suffused by the flagellant’s rapture. The jealousy always seared up in his chest, leaving a char of the betrayed skeptic. That was the grotesquery of his horrid desire, for the tusks to lodge in his chest, to maul, to make him suffer for his inadequacy.
Caw, erupted the crows. Caw, caw. They’d seen this portent, and they ferried to his cold fury. They told that men, unclad by their shells of disregard, raged in tawdry impotence. They were amused.
And there he bided.
