- Rune Breaker: Chapter 13 – Tales of the Rune Breaker
- Rune Breaker: Chapter 14 – Another’s Darkness
- Rune Breaker: Chapter 15 – The Tenth
- Rune Breaker: Chapter 16 – Daire City
- Rune Breaker: Chapter 17 – The Flaw in the Myth
- Rune Breaker: Chapter 18 – The Trinigon Arena
- Rune Breaker: Chapter 19 – Citadel
- Rune Breaker: Chapter 20 – Audience
- Rune Breaker: Chapter 21 – Sparring Sessions
- Rune Breaker: Chapter 22 – Grace From Outside
- Rune Breaker: Chapter 23 – Old Soldier
- Rune Breaker: Chapter 24 – Bones of the Earth
- Rune Breaker: Chapter 25 – Matasume the Wind
- Rune Breaker: Chapter 26 – Devices
- Rune Breaker: Chapter 27 – Ashes of The Dawn
Stone lids around the eye narrowed to peer at him. It couldn’t speak, but it registered some sort of reaction by rattling the grates in their mountings before engaging its gears and causing them to roll, one by one from his path until all three were retracted into their housing. Immurai had no means of knowing what that meant; whether the gate liked, respected, or loathed him, but he cared not at all. Its loyalty would eventually become a liability, necessitating its destruction.
Beyond the gates, a priest waited.
The high priests who attended the Citadel were one step below the demons. If they survived long enough, displayed devotion to the Threefold Moon, and performed great work in its name, their flesh would be remade and they would become as immortal and powerful as Immurai.
Sha Etremes, the priestess sent to receive Immurai was very highly valued indeed and her body was already heavy with the gifts of her god. Once she had been an elf maid of the deep forests of Vini Tresolm with dark hair and pale skin. The Threefold Moon had replaced pale and vulnerable flesh with iron, teardrop shaped scales in irregular patches over half of her face, neck, legs and torso. One arm was completely given over, while the other had been touched not at all. Her eyes were like smooth, green stones the size of a child’s fist, and her front teeth protruded like a rodent’s.
Beneath the skin, there were other transformations, Immurai knew. Poison glands, new specialized organs that granted new senses, and other nasty surprises for anyone that might threaten or annoy.
Priests like Sha were brought to the Citadels in part because their mutations could no longer be hidden from the rank and file worshipers who had no idea what the Threefold Moon was actually about, and in part to teach them to become demons. Within a handful or years, Sha would be raised to full demon, and completely transformed. She would cease to be Sha Etremes and become something entirely new.
That was the new way. Immurai was old, so old that he had never been a priest, or a man. He was a wholly new creation of the god.
“Immurai the Masked has come in the full light of day to the Citadel of Ascended Flesh.” Sha declared as he stepped over the threshold. There was an insolent amount of familiarity in her tone, one that rankled the part of Immurai that recalled the simpering orphan left in the wake of his brother demon Aludda the Vanquisher. The long since Vanquished. Now his only legacy was the elf whose mind he shattered that day, now on the cusp of demon-hood herself.
Reluctantly, he let the comment pass. There was too much at stake to risk it in order to punish an obviously favored priest. At times that this, he was glad of his mask; having no expression helped him play it off as him ignoring her.
“The tidings I bring to Our Lord is too great to languish under the formalities of waiting for moonrise.” He said dispassionately. “Obviously, I would like an audience.”
Sha nodded before turning on a heel and walking deeper into that Citadel with Immurai following behind. Past the receiving chamber was a long, curved hallway, designed to be defensible. At regular intervals, there were wide alcoves, each occupied by a hunchbacked, bipedal beast with a hunched back and widemouthed head resembling a frog’s. They were another creation of the god: imoc-te vorian also known as Kay-dan fists after one of the god’s many names and guises.
Unlike creatures like Immurai, these lesser demons were stupid, unable to function at all without orders from a priest or demon. They made up for it by being strong and numerous. Ordered to guard, the fists stationed in their alcoves stood and stared blankly as they passed.
Shortly, Sha turned them off through an arch and into an upward sloping hall. It was lined with statues of honored demons that were sacrificed to further the purpose of the Threefold Moon. Immurai knew them all, had been instrumental in many of their sacrifices. He spared them not a glance.
They came to another gate-demon like the one out front. This one sealed itself not with grates, but six inch discs of solid steel. Only when Sha identified herself by name did it open. From the space beyond, heat and sulfurous funk blasted out to meet them. The Hall of Rebirth and Transcendence; where the priests were made, where the demons were born.
Every surface was metal; iron, steel, or copper. They formed the twisting catwalks on level with the entrance, the floor some thirty feet below, and the massive, two story vats of sludge that continuously boiled. The sludge constituted the remains of every enemy felled in the name of the Threefold Moon within the domain of that Citadel. Their bodies nourished the next generation of demons.
In the largest vats, embryonic imoc-te vorian, imoc-te jaa, and imoc-te saistes grew like cancerous tubers in defiled earth. There were smaller vats as well, large enough for a single demon, even those considerably larger than the humanoid Immurai. These were inscribed with permanent spell structures for Earth, Water, and vitae: the means by which new demons were made from priests.
One such vats was being attended by three priests, each nearly as far along as Sha. No doubt, one of their former colleagues slumbered within, feeding on the flesh and blood of the god’s enemies and stealing skills and knowledge from their sundered brains. All the while, the priests chanted and worked spells, influencing the gestating demon’s form according to the god’s design.
As they crossed the central catwalk, high above the vats, She deigned to speak our again. “He has other agents in the world, Immurai the Masked. He knows that the King of Flame and Steel is dead. He is not pleased with another failure when once you held such great promise for him.”
Immurai looked down at the vats, watching some hook clawed horror created to work the vats hauling a stillborn imoc-te jaa to the surface. It proceeded to rip the creature; a powerful looking mixture of big cat and bear, to shreds, carefully seeding it’s pieces back into the pool of sludge to feed its stronger brethren.
“Stay and listen, if you wish, priestess.” He said in a purposefully calm manner. The great promise I once presented to Our Lord has come again. A power that will tip the balance between the gods is once more within reach. He will hear me, and He will grant my requests, for what I promised those centuries ago was worth any risk.”
“It is not my place to judge your worth.” said Sha, making it clear that she did anyway and found him lacking. “It is His alone; He and His vessel.”
As they drew closer to the end of the catwalk and the third gate-demon, a wash of power struck them. Even through the ten inch plates of orihalcon that made of the gate, the power of the god’s presence touching the plane was enough to steal their breath.
In the Citadels, the Hall of Rebirth and Transcendence was always directly adjacent to the vessel’s sanctum. It allowed the new demons and risen priests to be reborn in the direct presence of the power of the Threefold Moon, placing them in His will from the moment they came into being.
Sha spoke to the gate demon, and it uttered an affirmative by grating it’s impossibly strong discs into a semblance of the harsh language of the Threefold Moon’s disciples. This creature was new to Immurai, or at least its intelligence was. It likely had a name and title. He filed that away as he and Sha passed through the aperture and into the domain of Adruzan Kay-da, the Threefold Moon.
