The Church of the True Gods

Ash was more than a little surprised to find herself waking up. She may not have been well versed in Wordcraft, but she did know plenty about the ways people could hurt each other, and rare was the smothering that ended well for the victim. She wasn’t complaining, of course—she much preferred being alive to the alternative. If nothing else, it made her decision to go off alone significantly less embarrassing. That did not mean she was unconcerned, though. She doubted that her survival was accidental, and that meant that someone wanted her alive. She could not imagine any explanation that was to her benefit.

The second thing that Ash noticed was that she was tied to a chair. Ropes chafed at her wrists, binding them firmly behind her, and giving her no room to maneuver. It was simple, uncomfortable, and effective. That pointed towards Ash’s captors being competent; another bad sign.

With any hope of immediate escape dashed, Ash took in her surroundings, and immediately realized that was no simple task. She was in a cavernous room. Indeed, it most likely had been a simple cavern at one point, with uneven walls of solid rock curving far out to the sides and stretching to a vaulted ceiling high above. Copious torches lined the walls and pillars throughout, and it still wasn’t enough to properly illuminate the whole space. Given the rest of the decoration, though, Ash wondered if that might be the point.

The centerpiece was a towering edifice, easily taller than Gerred’s apartment building. It was made of the same night-black material as the keystone, and depicted a strange, humanoid figure with a nightmare for a face. The figure sat upon a throne of cruel majesty, and held out a clenched fist as if demanding obedience from any onlooker, with the whole production was mirrored on the other side. Ash could only assume that this was some manner of religious statue, but there were no offerings at its feet, no candles, or other signs of devotion. It stood alone atop a wide dais, domineering in its solitude. The inadequate torchlight played along its surface, but never quite illuminated it fully, as if the material was rejecting the light. Ash had been positioned across from the statue on the dais, left to stare at it and feel a deep, instinctive dread build within the very core of her being. Ash suspected this, too, was intentional.

The statue was impressive enough, but it was far from the only thing in the space. Along the walls hung banners emblazoned with the taloned emblem of the Emerald Hand. Crates of mundane supplies lined the back parts of the cavern, alongside rows upon rows of simple cots. Much more attention grabbing, though, were the racks of weapons and armor being tended to by people in the cloaks of the Emerald Hand. A huge table bore a map that Ash couldn’t get a good look at, but over which more Emeral Hand were working feverishly. The unintelligible murmur of a crowd filled the area. It all had a sense of preparation, and whatever this group was preparing for could not possibly be good.

Most worrying of all, though, was the number of people. There were dozens that Ash could easily see, and doubtless more behind her. Most looked normal. That is, their bodies were not swollen with Word-granted power. These people went about various tasks, the purpose of which Ash could not guess. The brutes were certainly in attendance, however, lurking off to the side and standing stock-still, as if they were automatons awaiting instructions. In a nearby alcove, Ash spotted the tattoo artist hunched over, slowly drawing glowing patterns on the body of a man tied to a table with an implement similar to the stylus used by the Valkyries. The man was writhing in pain.

“Welcome to a church of the true gods,” a deep voice bellowed from behind her. Ash turned her head as far as her restraints would allow her, and saw a rather unusual man approaching. He was a draicos, one of the last reminders of the lost dragons, an already rare people. Furthermore, he was noticeably on the far side of middle-aged, an unusual sight for such a long-lived species. The bronze scales lining his upper arms and jaw had lost much of their luster, and the neatly combed hair between his curved horns was more gray than not. He walked with a simple cane, and wore long robes of black and purple. He might have been any average, kindly priest, except for the fact that both cane and robes were obviously Scribed. Moreover, he moved with all the grace of a lurking predator, and his golden reptilian eyes gleamed with hunger. Ash needed no one to tell her this man was extraordinarily dangerous.

Ash was scared. There was no way around it, no other way to describe it. For the first time she was truly, fully struck by the realization that she had absolutely no idea what she had gotten herself into.

“This doesn’t look like any Star Temple I’ve ever seen,” she said. In that moment, her only tool was petty defiance.

“Star Worshippers, Forest Goddess Faithful, Endalians, Spirit Children…all these new religions are so small,” the man said, shaking his head sadly. “But no, I must not be so dismissive. After all, none of you have had the chance to know true divinity. You cannot be faulted for your ignorance.”

The man reached Ash, and took his place in front of her, with the great statue looming overhead. He leaned forward, resting both hands—and their wickedly sharp claws—on his cane.

“Tell me, girl, do you know the history of this world?”

“Scary demons rule the world, good queen beats the demons, good queen rules for a while, Queendom fails because people weren’t worthy of its ideals, we’re all living in what’s left?”

Ash declined to mention that this was the sum total of the history she had learned in her entire life. The man chuckled.

“Spoken like a true child of the times. Well meaning, but blind.”

The man took a deep breath, looked up at something far beyond the roof of the cavern, and began a speech that Ash suspected he had given a version of countless times before.

“The Nathrendi Empire—your ‘scary demons’—commanded this world with an iron fist, without a doubt. For a thousand years, every mortal soul lived and died at their whim. You might call it tyranny, yes, but it was also order. The Queen of All Heavens claimed she won freedom for all, but what did she really earn? A couple hundred years of relative peace? You said it yourself, her successors could not inherit her strength. Now the world is fractured, at war with itself. Under the Nathrendi, the world was whole. There was no division, no warring nations, only control. No mortal could ever hope to manage such a thing. The Nathrendi were true gods made flesh upon this world and, by our will, they will walk its ground once more.”

Ash’s mouth was dry, her heart hammering against her chest. This was far, far beyond anything she could have possibly imagined the Emerald Hand was or did. If nothing else, they were clearly, utterly, crazy.

“So that makes you…”

“I have the honor of being Tavix the Reborn, First Priest of the Emerald Hand, Voice of the Hallowed Prince of Eight Gems, and Twelfth Hierarch of Nathrendi Priesthood,” the man said, with a formal bow.

As he finished, every voice in the cavern suddenly shouted in unison.

“Glory to the Prince of Gems!”

The sheer force of the exaltation made Ash flinch. Even once the echo died down, and the Emerald Hand members returned to their work, Ash could not stop her arms and legs from trembling.

“I’m guessing you think the keystone and whatever is in those hills will help you bring back your ‘true gods made flesh?’” Ash’s voice was shaking just as badly as her body.

“Precisely,” Tavix said, smiling broadly.

“And you wanted me because…what? Is this the part where you try to convince me to join you?”

“Ah, no. Meaning no offense, I have no interest in you, specifically,” Tavix said, apologetically. “However, you do appear to be aligned with the Valkyries, and you so happen to be a Cindercrafter. Therefore, holding you serves two purposes. Either the Valkyries will trade the keystone for your safety, as has been requested, or they will retain the stone but lose the Cindercrafter they need to navigate the vault. Personally, I suspect they will not let an innocent girl come to harm. But either way they will lose something vital.”

There were a great deal of ways Ash could have responded to this explanation, most of them involving fear and disbelief in equal measure. But all of them risked admitting that she—and by extension Tienne and Solenia—had no idea what he was talking about in regard to a Cindercrafter being necessary for some “vault.” She decided that Tavix did not need to know this and so, by sheer force of will, kept her mouth shut.

The draicos didn’t even seem to notice, as he was too busy with the sound of his own voice.

“So that out of the way, I invite you to stay in our humble shrine while we wait for the Valkyries to make their decision. Please, do enjoy, and contemplate the glory of our rightful masters.”

With one, final flourish of a bow, Tavix walked away, out of Ash’s limited sight. Ash struggled mightily at her bonds, her previous failures entirely forgotten. When this produced no better results, Ash was forced to sit still and stew in impotent rage. She lost track of time as her mind roiled, her sense of the world dimmed as she focused on her mistakes. At one point, simply as an outlet for the tempest of emotion, she shouted at the tattoo artist, still working on the restrained man.

“Hey! You good helping with all this insanity?”

The artist ignored her, not that Ash had any plan for a follow-up regardless.

Eventually, Ash was snapped back to reality by a sharp rap of Tavix’s cane nearby. Her attention captured, Tavix grabbed the back of her chair with one hand and spun it around, his grip far stronger than his physical body suggested.

“As expected, Valkyries remain ever so predictable,” he said.

Ash didn’t need to ask what he was talking about, because at the far side of the cavern, at the top of a set of stairs hewn directly into the stone, was Tienne, and she was holding the keystone.