BECMI Chapter 94 – Murder, She Witnessed
Contrary to many views of it, Divination Magic was far more dangerous than many realized. That was ignoring the many, many benefits of being able to find out secrets and lore that others desired for their own, or more importantly, wanted to stay buried.
Few considered the implications of scrying on creatures that could detect such magicks, and strike directly at the mind and soul of the interloper through them. The focus and willpower required to keep the magic on track and aligned against wills, materials, or forces attempting to lead it astray, or to pierce through obfuscation or outright Wards or illusions raised to defeat them, was also quite intense.
If one looked at the wrong thing, made mental contact with the wrong creatures, attracted the wrong kind of attention, or faltered when doing something as dangerous as trying to predict the future, well, the consequences could be mind-blowing in all the worst ways.
Your risks when tossing Fireballs tended to be eminently more predictable.
What I was going to do was go looking into the past for my answers. That did NOT mean that those I was going to look at back then couldn’t sense the clairvoyance. Just because it was coming across time instead of space didn’t mean it couldn’t be Warded against and protected from.
However, when the spell was coming in at effective IX, Warding against it was more difficult. Unless the perpetrators had a Mind Blank up, or had used Wish-level magic to cover their tracks, I and those with me should be capable of seeing what was going to happen.
That didn’t mean the guilty wouldn’t be aware they were being watched, but that was a danger we were going to risk.
I was in the nave of the church, Revered Cruxin was overseeing the main sleeping areas, and Prince Ukker had command of those watching the outside, to see who and what approached, and which way they would be fleeing.
The wine at the abbey had actually been unaffected by the disappearance of the monks, which ruled out most of the powerful undead. Most of the powerful undead hereabouts spoiled meat and drink close to them, with the exception of liches and vampires. Vampires didn’t travel well, and liches, well, a lich in this world had to be at least Twenty and an Archmage to embrace that fate, according to the texts I’d read on the subject… and given my patrilineal genealogy, I had definitely spent a lot of time finding out a lot of information on that particular subject.
Bringing up the spell wasn’t all that difficult given the conduits and foci I’d put in place through Shaping the stone. It was a lot of area, but all that meant to me was sacrificing some higher Valences to increase the area and use Cantrips to fill them all with mana.
I had the exact night in late winter that the event had happened, and in any case it was a Locus Moment, a point in time where a lot of magic, life, and death had swirled together and formed an event which had rippled out into the world with more effect than just another battle or group of mortals fighting and dying, which happened all the time.
Days and nights blurred past us under the welling power of the magic, clouds racing across the windows, light fading to dark and swelling with illumination in a rapid dance of chance as the season unwound about us. Shadows of people darted past us in waves and streaks, here and gone, impossible to tell who was who, decreasing in number the further back we went.
A final night went by, and the spell swept to a stop at the moment of dusk, the last of the sun going out, and it was time.
I was in the nave, before the altar, watching vespers taking place all around us. I examined everyone present, focusing on those who were not brothers.
It looked like a southern merchant had stopped by to spend the night, and had attended with two guards.
None of the reports I’d seen mentioned a merchant or wagon in attendance here, so that raised alarm bells.
-Is there a wagon drawn up in the wine or granary area?- I /asked instantly in Marktell, the eye-views of every one of the dwarves visible before me.
Krodduk, one of Ukker’s guards, snapped his head around, all of the dwarves outside looking around for sign of one. -Nothing in the barns or yard!- he /reported instantly, and the other dwarves reported no sign of wagons.
“Your Grace, follow those three,” I indicated to the head abbot, who followed my pointing finger, and frowned instantly on seeing the shadowy images of non-monks in the building. “I don’t recall them being written into the register of guests at the abbey…”
“They were not.” The abbot hastened after them, his hand falling to the mace hanging at his side instinctively.
-Call out if there’s movement outside.- Revered Cruxin moved to back up the abbot at the guest room, stepping in past the phantasmal door for guests.
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-The man’s guards are removing their armor,- the dwarven priest /related calmly, a shout from the abbot mirroring it.
-A dwarf on each man in that room if they separate!- Cruxin mirrored my order vocally, two more dwarves hurrying from from other rooms to watch what was going on.
-Lady Edge, a band of men just came over the wall of the abbey grounds and are heading up towards the building. They are all flying,- another dwarf, Jorggo, urgently /reported.
Arranging that wasn’t cheap, or took a decently powerful Caster. -Make sure there’s no pincer group and then track them all.-
The guests inside, whose forms had also shifted from pale skin to darker copper, stole out of their rooms, separating quickly. One stood guard in the hallway, making sure there were no interruptions, the other two headed to the nave and main doors, respectively.
“The leader is a priestess!” the abbot roared out in fury. “She’s waving around the symbol of Gulguz, and I believe she Cast a couple of Silence spells to make sure they were not heard!”
“Intruders came in from the east!” Prince Ukker shouted outside the open doors, shadows now drawn across them. “Using flying magic!”
We watched as the Wards on the doors were broken by some magical item, flaring and cut off, while the two monks on late-night watch were ambushed and strangled without being able to get off an alarm in the magical Silence.
The priestess had gone right to the altar, unloaded some items on it, and begun some magical Ceremony as the first of her helpers threw open the doors and allowed the raiders inside.
As two groups, the band of raiders then fell upon each room in turn, while the leader of the second band turned out to be a priestess who joined the first in a dark Ritual around the altar.
“The altar is being desecrated to empower a Ritual of dark magic,” I announced to everyone with Magevoice. “I had heard that Gulguz was a deity of fire, but this is not magic of fire at all. They are dealing with demonic forces…”
“They are not killing the monks! They are wounding them and rendering them unconscious!” Revered Cruxin called out. “They are hauling them to the nave!”
I looked back as the first raiders dragged the first strangled and unconscious monks to the altar, throwing them upon it as the priestesses changed positions.
The abbot was there now, looking upon this with seething fury as a wavy Athame was brought out by the priestess, and it plunged down into the heart of its victim.
Out of the ruined mess of his chest, darkness and fire billowed forth in a black and burning cloud, forming into a brooding presence whose Aura weighed down on the magic and the room physically, hurting the eyes and the souls to stare at. The abbot staggered away from the manifestation of the thing… and drew its attention!
“What is this? You have drawn my attention, little one…” Its voice was sibilant, undulating upon the skin and the soul, clearly conveying that it wasn’t looking at the flesh of those about it. Great scaly arms manifested from inside the cloud, as burning eyes shrouded in smoke and a circular maw both opened into glimpses of oblivion behind them on the surface of the cloud.
It started to move after him, through the Illusion, but was distracted by the priestess calling out something we couldn’t hear responding to its words. With a laugh it reached down, picking up the slaughtered monk, and we could see the echo of his spirit writhing within its corpse as the creature opened wide its maw, and then stuffed the entire body of the man down its throat with relish.
The corpse burned as it went in, and we could hear the spiritual wail as his soul was consumed.
My eyes went very narrow indeed. This explained why no trace of the monks could be found. They had been fed to this Soul Eater!
The eyes of the Soul Eater kept shifting between the sacrificed monks and me as I stood there, watching each and every monk, including the previous abbot, be sacrificed one by one and fed to the creature, who devoured them and their souls with glee and gusto, making of each a show and performance for us to behold with horror.
This was already done months in the past, but the demon could see us watching, so effectively it was displaying all of this for our benefit!
All of my group were gathered by the time the last of the monks died, and the creature laughed uproariously, even the spilled blood flaring and vanishing as it completed its task.
Then it turned its eyes on me, although the priestess there probably thought it was looking at her. “I will be waiting for you,” it promised me, and then claws and jaws and smoke spun around, whirling and imploding into itself, and it vanished into nothingness.
The tools and implements upon the altar were retrieved, stored away, and then the entire group of raiders left the nave through the open doors, heading out into the night and the silence there, leaving an empty and brooding building behind.
With that, I let the Illusion end.
The abbot, and what monks had dared to re-enter the building, were all ashen as they stared at the altar there, upon which so many of their brethren had been slaughtered.
I extended Dread and laid its head atop the defiled altar, the desecration of it far more symbolic than the unholy magic that had dissipated before it was found.
There was not the slightest bit of outcry from the monks as the solid block of wood and cloth shimmered, aged a million years in an instant, and fell to dust upon the ground.
“I will find you another altar, and it will be appropriate to what was done here, be sure of it.
“Baron Torwell, I believe I can safely assure you that all culpability in this matter will be lifted, and blame assessed where it can be directed. There will be some who claim that no magic and mere illusion is sufficient to claim proof, and they may be right in the courts and laws of mortals.
“But this is one church of an Immortal striking against another, and the rules they play by are very different. Your Grace, I believe you have enough here to call for an Edict of Demonic Censure against the Church of Gulguz, naming them Unclean in the eyes of the Church and all dealings with them to be beyond the law, all agreements non-binding, and any servant of that Church an enemy of all mortal souls.
“What you saw happening here was the invocation of a Soul Eater, a race of Fiends in service to Entropy. What Gulguz thinks it is doing using them is madness, but it means that it is preying on the very souls of those that oppose it.
“Extermination is the only answer to this desecration of the highest order.”