Vol.5 Ch.23.1 – Truth Laid Bare I
Chapter 23: Truth Laid Bare
“Ah, my sweet Syr,” the Holy Maiden said. “I had wondered where you kept running off to.”
I went cold at those words and Syr took an involuntary step back. Nobody had ever been able to sense her presence without linking their mind to mine.
“You can see me?” Syr asked.
“How could I not?” the Holy Maiden replied. “The spirit calls out to the body, as is its nature.”
I could see Wilhelm getting confused. “What's going on, mistress?”
“Ah,” the Holy Maiden said, then made a sweeping gesture and a wave of white magic blasted out from her. The tendrils Syr had summoned up to defend against the Holy Maiden's mind magic formed a shield in front of the two of us but that did nothing to so much as slow the wave. It crashed into us to no apparent effect. At least, until Alisha squeaked out:
“Syr?”
Had she... She had, hadn't she?
“There, that's better,” the Holy Maiden said, confirming my suspicion.
“This is... you, mistress?” Wilhelm asked, his eyes focusing on Syr.
“The one who lent me this vessel,” the Holy Maiden corrected.
“I didn't lend you anything!” Syr shrieked. “Give it back!”
The Holy Maiden tittered again. “Oh sweet Syr, I told you already, that I shall borrow this vessel for a little while, that I shall give it back once I have accomplished what I was brought into this world to do.”
“And what use does she have for a body once you've destroyed this world?” I demanded.
“I have no intention of destroying this world,” she said with a smile. “Quite the opposite.”
I blinked. Could she be telling the truth?
“Sophistry,” Syr hissed, snapping me out of it. “By the time you're done with this world it will be unrecognizable.”
At that the Holy Maiden took a few deliberate steps forward, down her dais, until she stood side by side with Wilhelm. And when she spoke I finally understood how she had managed to inspire such fanatic loyalty in her followers. Syr's voice had always been musical and pleasant to listen to but the oratory skills of the Holy Maiden transformed it into something more, something almost hypnotic. She knew what to say and how to say it. Her body language was expressive without being melodramatic. And her words struck a nerve that no mortal could deny.
“Mortals suffer and die. The gods, the ones who ought to protect the mortals, torment them for their own amusement instead. Nobles, who ought to protect the commoners from the gods at least, only further the suffering. Gods and nobles enjoy privileges while the rest live and die in squalor. Such injustice cannot stand.
“But what then? What kind of world do we wish for once these injustices have been redressed? What I promise is a world without hunger or disease, without discrimination or conflict, a world of bliss and of unity.”
“And at what cost?” I demanded. “What are you willing to sacrifice to create this world?”
“Whatever it takes,” she replied.
“And do your followers know this?”
“Sweet Wilhelm,” she asked by way of answer. “Would you be willing to die for our new world?”
“In a heartbeat,” he replied with no hesitation.
“What about all of you?” she asked the rest of her followers. She didn't raise her voice and over the sound of battle it must have been barely audible but it didn't matter.
“Yes, my Lady!” they bellowed, the sound so enormous it rocked the gods and Heroes fighting them back a step.
“So you see,” she continued, “even my followers believe that my vision is worth dying for.”
I shrugged, acknowledging the point, but what I said was: “What happened to the 'we'?”
She tilted her head again.
“When we came in here you referred to yourself as 'we', now it's just 'I'.” Of course I remembered what Syr had told me but the switch back was still weird.
She placed her hand over her mouth in embarrassment, then chuckled. “Ah, that. It's simple, really. I no longer need to keep up appearances. My followers expect a certain verbosity of their Holy Maiden but you decimated my followers until none but the most devout are left.”
“You don't seem too torn up about that,” I remarked.
“This play has almost reached its conclusion,” she said. “We are no longer in need of extras.”
At that she raised an arm, dark Outsider magic swirling around it, and pointed it at the Royal Guards fighting alongside the gods and Heroes. I was about to do something very stupid to try and stop her spell but then I felt it. Finally.
As I'd said, if she had been the genius tactician Hades and Athena had been worried she might be then she would have questioned why I had been content to stall her when time was on her side but evidently she enjoyed running her mouth too much. And by asking her banal questions I had given Alisha and Athena all the time they'd needed.
“I banish thee!”, Athena shouted and a beam of golden energy slammed into the Holy Maiden. The beam exploded outward, carving a ritual circle into the ground in golden energy as it struck. Athena been muttering that incantation under her breath practically since the moment Ares had died and finally her efforts had paid off.
While the Holy Maiden was still reeling from the golden beam Alisha's voice rang out as well: “Cleanse!” A wave of blinding warmth blasted out from the little elf, scouring the entire tholos. Every bit of Outsider corruption was burned out of our foes and the remaining cultists squealed as every part of their bodies touched by the Outside evaporated.
Evidently these cultists had been more Outsider than mortal at that point because when the miracle had run its course all that was left of them was piles of flesh and cartilage clad in robes soaked through with pinkish blood.
Of the cultists only Wilhelm remained, his breathing ragged but otherwise unharmed. Whatever she had done to him, it had either involved far less Outsider corruption or it had been far more sophisticated.
The black blob holding Hera in place had melted away into nothingness but somehow the one holding Zeus in place had only been singed the littlest bit. Had it been made to be sturdier or was there something more sinister going on? Had she created that blob by melting down Zeus' own body or something?
The Holy Maiden stood slumped over in the ritual circle Athena had cast, her breathing shallow and her head held low. Syr looked at me uncertainly and I gave her a nod.
She took a deep breath, an action that was wholly unnecessary seeing as she had no body, and then she approached the Holy Maiden's... no, her own body. She took one hesitant step at a time, slowly creeping closer. When she reached it she placed a hand on her body and...
“Hihihi...” There was that titter again and Syr jumped back in shock. “Hahaha...” The Holy Maiden laughed as she righted herself, standing back up to her full height before throwing her head back and letting out a manic laugh. “HAHAHAHAHAHA!”
She stomped her foot and the ritual circle beneath her shattered with the sound of broken glass. Her hair twitched, then began to move. It started out as perfectly normal strands of lustrous black hair at the top of her head but then morphed into glossy black tentacles at the tips, curling and questing around her, though for the life of me I couldn't tell where it transitioned from one to the other and looking for the transition only hurt my eyes.
She met my gaze and though her irises were the same radiant purple as Syr's, her pupils seemed to hold an unfathomable depth, as though I was gazing into the night sky and the night sky was staring back at me, though without a star in sight. Empty night.
“An exorcism?” she asked. “A Cleansing miracle?” Her voice was still Syr's but it reverberated in a way that made my ears ache. “Did you believe me to be some lowly lich?”
My blood ran cold at those words. “What are you?” I breathed.
She gave me a smile like a benediction, then intoned: “Unveil the truth, Divine Presence!”
Instantly everyone present, Royal Guards, Heroes, gods, Wilhelm, even me and my girls, were forced down to our knees. Even Syr, despite being a mere spirit within my mind, crashed to the ground. I had heard of this ability, of course. Divine Presence was a miracle some of the stronger gods had access to, a way to use their sheer divinity to disable mortals. But I had never even heard of a Divine Presence strong enough to force gods to their knees.
“Attend me, so you may learn,” the Holy Maiden said, her voice holding absolute authority. “Twenty-one years ago a group of worshipers of the Dark Mother had an ambitious plan. They wished to draw the Dark Mother into this world in Her entirety. A foolish wish, however heartfelt it might have been. A being as great as Her cannot simply be summoned. If it were that simple, it would have been done long ago.
“But they were adamant and finally they devised a way for it to work. They would create not a gateway for an entire Outer God, but instead they would create a perfect vessel. They would summon just enough of the Dark Mother to mate with and sire offspring. That much was not uncommon. Many of Her creatures were sired by mortal men, though birthed by an Outer God they were still born outside Creation, with no link to the world of their fathers.
“And so one of these brave fools set out to not only mate with the Dark Mother but to carry their offspring within himself. Naturally, he died giving birth to the child, as mortal males are not equipped for such a task. But the child survived. It was healthy. It appeared perfectly human.
“The father's compatriots took the babe and left it at the doorstep of a childless family, a caring man and a barren woman who were overjoyed to have a child to care for. And soon the babe's presence began to show its effects. The woman's barren womb was cured by the fertility radiating off the babe and she bore her husband three children, little siblings for the child that had become a lovely young woman by that point.
“The child was sweet and kind and gentle, soft-spoken and beautiful enough to make grown men weep. She was nurtured with love and kindness all her life, never encountering true hardship. Even when the family struggled through a particularly cruel winter, baskets of food kept miraculously appearing on their doorstep, the same way she had once appeared on it. After that, their entire village believed the child to be blessed by the gods. Oh, how right they were.
“And when the child reached the age of majority she began to hear the call of the woods. They called out to her, recognizing within her their patron. And the girl, in a trance, went into the woods, into the darkest parts, the ones that most mortals would not find even if they went looking for them. And it was there that she came into her destiny, to be a vessel for her mother.”
“I...” Syr whimpered. “I am the...”
“The daughter of the Dark Mother,” the Holy Maiden confirmed. “Flesh of Her flesh, blood of Her blood, born inside Creation but tethered to an Outer God.”
“And then you are... Shu...” Syr clearly had the same trouble saying the word that I'd had but she forced it out. She needed to. “You are Shub-Niggurath.”
The sensation of a thousand eyeballs staring down at us crashed into me, engulfing my entire being. It was suffocating. An infinity of being beheld, of every dark and shameful secret being seen, of something impossibly vast judging me and finding me wanting. I squeezed my eyes shut, as if being unable to see would stop the presence from beholding me. Finally, after what had felt like an age but had only been a moment, the sensation faded.
And just as the sensation of being beheld by this vast entity had come and gone something else beheld me. This second entity did not gaze upon me with malice but with love. And though it was infinitely weaker than the suffocating presence had been, its warmth still managed to banish the cold shivers the other presence had caused.
I opened my eyes again and everything was blurry. But I couldn't pass out now. I had to do something.
“If you thread a strand of your hair through the eye of a needle,” Echid— no, Shub-Niggurath said, “did you force your entire being through it?”
“No,” I replied, mostly to reassure myself that I could still speak.
“Of course not,” Shub-Niggurath agreed with a nod. “You threaded as much of yourself as would fit through it. But that strand of hair is still connected to the rest of you. That is what I did. I am the Dark Mother in the same way that your littlest finger,” she looked at me, “is the Godsforsaken.”
I had used this title I had been given so many times, taking pride in it. But somehow, on her lips, after beholding me the way she just had, it sounded like a condemnation. I truly did feel forsaken by the gods at that moment. The gods were kneeling just as I was, just as unable to stop her as I was. And that weird blurriness...
Hold on. No, my vision wasn't blurry, exactly. It had seemed like it because I'd been looking over at where the gods knelt but as my eyes darted around my vision seemed to clear. I looked back at the gods, then back at my girls and finally I realized what I was seeing. Threads.
White threads were coming out of everyone present. The Royal Guards only had two or three each, my girls all had half a dozen of them, some of them interwoven between us and some going far into the distance. The reason my vision had seemed blurry when looking at the gods was that each of them had hundreds upon hundreds, a tangle of gossamer-thin white lines coming out of them. I had an idea of what they were but that just couldn't be possible, could it?
Shub-Niggurath walked over to one of the Royal Guards, knelt down in front of him and grabbed hold of the sword he held in limp hands.
“Now, as I said, this play is coming to its conclusion and there is no more need for extras. But there will always be a place for the devout in the new world. Choose.”
“I'd rather die than join you,” the Royal Guard growled, defiant to the end.
The last syllable had barely left his mouth before the Holy Maiden rammed the sword into the top of his head. “Suit yourself.” The man was dead instantly and the moment he expired, one of the threads coming out of him snapped with the sound of an overstretched wire.
Gods above. I was seeing the threads of fate.