I
had a week to burn, in subjective time, before the whole crew showed
up. Which was good, really. Every few hours, another side, detail,
minor realization, of what had happened to me would break loose. I'd
end up sitting on a hillside, lost in reverie over the existence I'd
lost, and the one I'd gained. It took a while for me to actually
come to terms with the facts. I was dead. Existence went on.
In
the meantime, I practised calling up roads. Even the crappiest would
do, but I did need to learn to navigate for myself. Ulla could find
some places with absolute certainly, she said – those she had
marked in the past, and places corresponding to one of her (and now
my) dreamer-selves. But just those; she had no ability to dowse out
new places.
So
I practiced, and slowly got enough of a handle on it to pull together
faint pathways – though they would vanish again if I lost my focus
on the target. Then Ulla and I went off to see the cluster of towers
where we'd fought our first battle; Mrs. Krenski, Patricia Malkin,
and company. We spent a few days in the ruins of Louisa Calhoun, who
had been crashed into her coma by an hefty dose of tainted morphine.
It
had been a shot in the dark, but it paid out. Louisa had been an
inductee into the cult; I wandered through her memories of meeting
them through her father. Watched the scenes play out, over and over.
They may have been regrets; certainly, Louisa hadn't let go of these
moments. Some of the scenes were funny, to me; ridiculous mummery
and pageantry pretending to be sacred ritual. Others weren't; a few
of the rituals had the 'smell' of dreamland logic, but didn't appear
to have any effect – at least, none Louisa recalled. In the social
events around these rituals, she also remembered how there had been
a fair bit of guffawing about how Louisa had a name "like a
nigger-blood", and it was good she wasn't one, which baffled me.
Racism wasn't something I would have expected from people ready to
traffic with inhuman things from dreams. Ulla clarified, when she
noticed my confused disgust.
Cultists,
and those that fight them, are often concerned with purity of
breeding, Benjamin.
"That's
idiotic. Why?"
Their
choice of targets is foolish, but the reason cults are often
especially concerned regards possession. Those who are possessed
often sire or bear children that grow strange as they grow older.
Many family curses derive from it.
"So,
what? There are people out there that grow horns when they come of
age, like that?"
Yes.
Precisely like that, among other things. Dark skin, though, is
irrelevant, unless it passes outside the human range; their fixation
on it distracts them from real dangers. This particular cult should
be looking for bulging eyes, wattled skin. Look there, at the one
with the knife.
I
walked through the half-transluscent scene, to look closely at a pale
and balding, sickly looking man waving a ritual dagger.
He is
descended from Dagonites. It is a known heritage in your part of the
world.
"How
can we not know about this? Science, I mean. Why no record?"
Some of
the thinned-out heritages are known to humanity at large, as
disorders and failures. Others, not long after they manifest, draw
the holders out of the world. Still other alterations are visible
and tangible only to the initiated.
"Visible
and tangible... So, someone might have horns, that are there in the
waking world, but only dreamers will see them and feel them?"
Yes,
again. You broke through into that same state yourself, at the end,
if you recall.
"Damn.
Yeah. Still, why are you telling me this? I mean, it's some
fascinating shit, but.... Are we just making idle conversation?"
The parts
of ritual that we have seen here, which the cult seems to understand,
are parts which invite possession. They own a vast underground
ritual space. Their leader is "the Keeper"; what does this
leader Keep, and why would such a leader not be invited to witness
your execution? It seems likely enough to me that Kether-Kinal has
attempted to create such beings, and possible that their Keeper is
one of them. The pattern is not unknown.
"Well,
that's just amazingly nasty. We couldn't have figured this out while
I still had a body?"
Evidently
not. What would you have done, embodied, with such knowledge?
"I
dunno; figure out how to make a bomb, and cave their roof in on
them?"
You could
tell your allies to do so. They would be very likely to do exactly
as you suggest, I believe.
I
thought about it, as we continued to wind our way through Louisa
Calhoun, though I was more interested in the puzzle of how she had
ended. What I couldn't find, in her memories, was some explanation
of why they'd decided to drug her up. She'd accepted the basics of
the cult – the idea that there were many gods, and that some gave
real benefits, while others didn't. By dedicating herself to
Kether-Kinal, she'd become part of a grand family. And on and on.
And then, they poisoned her. It didn't seem to make any sense.
"Yeah,
I'd be in favor of the bastards getting a bomb. I mean, I'd rather
plant claws into them. I'll take what I can get, though."
If your
allies destroy this project, Kether-Kinal will come for them, and for
you, even here. You will have a fight on your hands. Your allies
have one coming, regardless; your mysteries and those of the cult
cannot both exist and grow in the same town forever. Additionally,
if Laurent has a capable successor, they will very likely seek out
Gina and Raymond, and kill them as well, in the nights to come; they
are your known confederates.
I should
say plainly, as well; I can only have a single bonded companion. And
while you are now much harder to kill here, and will heal rapidly,
death here is now death forever, for you.
Great.
It
was time to get back to everyone's pillars, though.
