Ambience

“Oh Seven-Who-Are-One, divine light amidst the pagan dark, gods of mine ancestors and blood, grant me your peace, grant me your mercy--”

The Thrall prayed.

He knew not what good it would do him, but it was all the Thrall had left to him, save the clothes on his back and the stockings on his feet, torn and ragged as they were.

The Thrall could not see.

Far below the cliffs he now walked, not of his own will, waves crashed against the earth and stone, writhing in the moonlight. The Thrall could not see it, but he could hear it, and he feared.

He was not alone.

The Thrall could not see, but he knew he was not alone-- hadn’t been alone since the masked ones had taken him in the night, binding him in silence and leaving naught a single thing else turned. It would look like he had ran, the Thrall knew, in some vain attempt to escape these accursed lands. Had he known that this was to be his fate, he would have taken the chance and tried for a weapon instead.

“O Father,” he whispered, voice dry and hoarse, “grant me thy shielding grace. Harden my flesh, make my resolve like steel! Do not let them take my soul, I beg of you--!”

The swing of a club to his side silenced the Thrall, and he let our a groan of pain, to which the only reply was laughter and hushed whispers. The Father is not with me, he realized, a mounting horror growing within him. The Light of the Seven do not shine here.

“Cease,” came a voice, and the Thrall’s captors pulled at his bindings, halting him. He felt hands reach for him, for the strip of cloth that blinded him, before they pulled away, taking the blindness with it.

And the Thrall saw.

The abomination reached for him, almost lovingly, gently caressing his face, and something primal and guttural within the Thrall broke. His fear overtook him, and he screamed, attempting to escape his captors.

One yank of the chains that bound him drew him back.

“...This one has spirit,” the One With the Ornate Mask said, sounding pleased. “Spirit, if not blood. And his eyes…” the Ornate One reached for the Thrall again, and though he tried to shy away from the man’s grasp, another of his captors, this one with robes not unlike his master’s, yet adorned with a plainer mask, held his head forward. The Thrall, weak as he was, could not move.

The Ornate One’s hands ghosted his eyes, and once more the Thrall knew what he had found had pleased him, and he feared.

Oh Seven oh father oh gods please--

“Yes,” the One With the Ornate Mask said, “our God will welcome this one.”

The Thrall begged for mercy.

The Thrall received none.

And then there was pain and screams and chanting the likes of which the Thrall had never heard yet was able to understand, the throbbing in his head and heart and soul and eye shrieking in horrendous chorus and symphony both with and against the Ornate One’s words--

“Our eyes for the Crow’s Eye,” he heard, and the Thrall wept and wailed and writhed against his pain and bonds. “Our souls for the Drowned God,” he heard, and the weight of a hundred thousand years descended upon him as if his legs had turned to stone. “Blood and Water, Iron and Salt!” he heard, and the Thrall screamed, and his scream was joined by others like him.

“Sustenance for our God, GLORY TO OUR KING!” he heard as he was lifted higher and higher and higher yet still--

The moon was whole and bright.

For a moment, the Thrall was held higher than any lord in all the land. For a moment, he could touch the sky.

And then the Thrall fell, and the sea rose up to embrace him.

---

From atop the cliff, from beneath his mask, Lodos Farwynd smiled.