Deify/Palladium

The Messiah (Prologue)

They’d dream of this. They’d tell stories, mythologize, turn it into poetry and song. It was not so triumphant a moment as such stories would have you believe. He arrived as the sun began to dip past the hills. There was no moment of triumph, just the pending anxiety, the pounding of his heart which drummed so hard that he could feel it reverberate in his palms, clenched against the reins of his mount.

They had seen camp since noon. They had been on the road for two weeks. It had, he hoped, given the army time to resupply, to recuperate, and to prepare for the coming conflict, a conflict they all should’ve known was unavoidable. Moose after moose marched through the well-trod dirt path between tents, as tired as their riders. All around them, soldiers looked up, trying to read some sort of expression, some sort of meaning, behind bronze and brass masks.

His eye twitched. Sweat had fallen into it again, and it stung. The heat behind the mask was stifling, the metal burned to the touch. It had come loose of its restraints during the ride earlier that day, and with every jerk, ran the risk of pressing the searing metal against his skin. He did not have the time to fix it, so he simply bared the jolts of pain and rode onwards.

The Messiah (1.1)

The Servant Boy

The door opened with a slam, striking the side of the cabinet. A goldcoat held it open, one ear poking out from under the powdered wig, his tricorn and mask askew, and the stains of sweat in dark circles under his arms, bleeding through the thick fabric of his uniform.

Merren, like his mother, a slew of cousins, and the other servants that could charitably be called an extended family, lined up. Their hands folded and tucked behind their backs, their chins up, backs stiff.

Merren’s ass itched.

Then came the rest of the hunting party. Master L’afinsbergh strode in first, the tips of his fingers still shimmering blue and a spring in his step. He uttered a quick and terribly informal ‘thank you’ to the goldcoat holding the door and walked through the kitchen without a look or a word towards the battalion of servants standing, stiff-backed.

Then came the other two goldcoats on the expedition, balancing a wooden pole - the felled trunk of some diminutive birch tree - between the two of them. Tied to the pole was an elk, breathing, but otherwise still and glassy-eyed. The first goldcoat made it through the door. Then the elk’s hindquarters struck both sides of the doorframe. The animal did not budge, but the first goldcoat almost doubled over.

“Pathin,” called the goldcoat holding the other end of the pole between huffs of exertion, “are you alright?”

Merren wasn’t sure how these masked elves could differentiate between one from another.

“Fine,” breathlessly called the first, tilting his tricorn back into position and righting himself. “How are we going to do this?”

The cellar entrance, Merren thought. Use the cellar entrance, don’t try to parade the damn game through the servant’s entrance. You’ll either rip the beast or the doorframe.

“Uh, eh,” the goldcoat still outside muttered, stalling for time.

Merren stole a glance at his mother’s weathered face. She was probably thinking the same thing he was, but it would be uncouth to speak without being spoken to, and Master L’afinsbergh and his wife were sharp disciplinarians, if nothing else.

And, frankly, they were nothing else.

“Move,” came another voice from outside, more authoritative and, in sharp contrast to the exhausted hunting party, with full lungs.

“But if I let go, it’ll fall to the ground,” protested the still-nameless goldcoat clutching one side of the birch log.

“Move,” came the order again, more agitated this time, “I won’t ask again.”

Merren couldn’t see outside the servants’ entrance from his angle, not without leaning forward and, again, that was a breach of protocol. There was, however, a shuffling outside. One of the goldcoats inside -Pathin, apparently- waddled, trying to keep his balance as the log and the elk attached to it bucked and kicked.

Then the door exploded. The plaster walls were rent asunder, the doorframe splintered, the hinges skitting to a stop at the tip of Merren’s scuffed right shoe. The cabinet was also fairly damaged, as was the elk, which was now, still motionless, lying slack-jawed on the kitchen floor, in a slowly expanding puddle of its own blood and a dusting of rubble.

Then in stepped the Huntmaster, and behind him, the last of the goldcoats. The Huntmaster trudged over the slowly breathing elk, past the rest of the shocked goldcoat regiment, and tracked mud halfway across the kitchen, as was his habit.

One of Merren’s cousins, a younger girl, Alis, once whispered under her breath that she thought the Huntmaster was a different kind of tracker. This time, she just flinched as he passed her by. He stopped in front of the servants, barely shooting them a glance, and threw ----up a hand, stopping the goldcoats behind him.

“I want this cleaned up. The good master would like his dinner ready by sundown, and has expressed an interest in roasted potatoes. You will deliver the hide to me, and it would be within your best interests to fix the damages before the Mistress returns.”

He said all this like it had nothing to do with him. Except the hide, he clearly had an interest in that. Without further ceremony, the Huntmaster tracked mud across the rest of the kitchen and walked out the same door Master L’afinsbergh had, slamming it shut behind him, with no regard to the trio of haggard goldcoats, one of whom was no less than one stride from the door when the Huntmaster slammed it.

The goldcoats, despite their grumbling, filed out. One of them, though Merren couldn’t determine if it was Pathin or another -he hadn’t kept track- turned and uttered a quiet apology to the servants for the mess.

With the elves gone, the servants got to work. Alis and Rothbert, the youngest of the servants, began sweeping the plaster and splinters from the floor, while Merren’s mother poked her head outside to better inspect the structural damages. Merren and some of the others hefted the elk onto the central table, a trail of saliva falling from its mouth, and a trickle of blood running through its fur and down Merren’s hands.

He wiped the blood on his apron. A dash of red to an otherwise brown and gray ensemble. One of the servants who wasn’t related to him, a hawk-nosed, weak-chinned girl named Nira -or Mira, he hadn’t been paying attention when the Mistress had bought her contract- held a knife above the still-breathing elk, her hands shaking, and her already wide eyes even wider.

He stared at her for a minute. Just start the incision, he thought. Stop waiting around and do it.

She didn’t.

He put a hand on her shoulder. She jumped. Thankfully, her arms were relatively stationary, otherwise he might be out an eye, or have to explain a cut across his cheek. The way she looked at him, he might still be in danger of that. His grip was tight, his expression… probably bored. He couldn’t really tell. He imagined he looked much like his father had, once. Not comforting.

“Give me the knife, go help Rossa with the potatoes.”

It was a mercy, for her. She probably didn’t like him, and, in fairness, he wasn’t particularly fond of her, either; but despite the rotation of duties, she certainly wasn’t prepared to butcher a soul-dead animal. So she gave him the knife and hurried off.

And Merren got to work.

The rotation of duties was important. At least, he thought it was. The Master would ---lecture -never the servants, but loud enough that he could hear from a few rooms away- that a well-rounded skillset was necessary for proper spiritual development, and in addition, it was a waste to try and teach humans mastery of a specific skill. After all, they’d die before they were truly proficient.

He jammed the knife in the Elk’s throat, and the empty, dim light in its eyes went out. That was what the Master said, but he had long suspected that the real goal was to keep the servants from ever developing enough of a skill to be irreplaceable. Still, Merren had managed to cheat that system. He had memorized who disliked what. Who would happily give him the skinning knife, or let him tend to the gardens, or season the roasts. Sweeping and cleaning felt too low, it was much more preferable to do these things.

He dug his hands into the incision and pulled back the skin. It reminded him of taking off a mask, something plastered to one’s face, like how he imagined the Goldcoats’ half-face masks to be. Oddly, today was a humanizing experience. He heard one of the soldiers’ names. He saw them falter and awkwardly deal with the most banal of chores. He saw them ignored by the higher echelons of the household hierarchy. It almost made them seem human, as if he could be rotated into their roles next. Don the mask and patrol the grounds, chasing off the odd timber wolf, or joining the hunting patrol, or doing the busywork of seeing if anyone on the wanted fliers was hiding on the grounds, like by the hollowed out windmill.

“Help me flip it.” he said to no one in particular. Alis answered the request and the two of them worked to turn the elk over on the table. It almost fell on her, but he still had his hands tight around its neck. He nodded and returned to work. He could almost see himself as one of the goldcoats, but he knew that it was an illusion. If the Mistress or a guest found another hair in their meal on a day that he was to cook, he knew what would happen. He did not reach up and touch the bend in his nose, he kept his hands on and in the elk.

Still, the goldcoats seemed closer to relatable than the Huntmaster did, even without half a face. He saw the Huntmaster’s face. He saw it regularly, but there was nothing approachable or relatable in that cold, angular look, or in those pale eyes. There wasn’t even a name. No Alis or Rothbert or Rossa or Pathin. Just the title. Just Huntmaster. Just the knowledge that should he be ‘worthy’ of attention again, it would be the Huntmaster waiting at the pole when the goldcoats dragged him out. It would be him and those pale eyes.

He ran the knife through the sinews, allowing himself a moment to imagine that it was not the elk pinned on the table, but the Huntmaster. That it wasn’t him tied to the pole, and here he was. On top, in charge, the knife in his hand.

But that was only a fantasy, fleeting. That would never happen. Merren would spend his life like his father and his grandfather. Toiling away at the estate until he died. Then he would spend his death much the same, toiling in the fields as the sun bleached his bones.

The Foundling

There’s a word for it. Paradoxical. No, there might be another word for it: ambivalent. She swore to herself that she’d run down to the library and find which was more fitting, but the thought fled her, just as the ones before it had, and the ones after it would. Her mind swam and her body ached. Her eyes were crusty and watery, something about that briefly struck her as … no, the word was gone, now. Far and away the worst of it, worse than the gnawing headache or the numbness in her joints was the unpleasant sensation of her damp sheets. The day, she would later discover, was already brisk, and the cold sheets and her soaked through nightgown left her with chills.

That was what convinced her to get out of bed. She hated the cold. Granted, one of the good Master’s houseguests argued that in comparison to Virglind or Genywedd, Palladium’s climate was quite pleasant. He might be right, she had conceded at the time, but since he was Aranese, anything colder than the touch of a furnace might’ve felt cold to him. It didn’t do much to actually rebuff his point, but it earned some laughter from the rest of the table, which was victory enough.

Her mind kept swimming, but her body was fairly obedient, in spite of the numbness. There was no warm water on hand, but there was a hand towel to wipe herself down with, which would, as always, do in a pinch. She brushed her hair in a hurry and donned the first vaguely coherent outfit she could find. Not the kind of thing one would wear to a dinner with the good Master and his guests, but fitting for the drudgery of daily activity. A skirt, bloomers, and an undershirt, all white. A brown corset hidden under a blue overshirt, which had faded from pervasive use to what she considered a rather pleasant, subdued shade. And the autumn cloak from her father, though its fabric felt flimsy and thin in comparison to the bite of the weather.

Dressed and relatively cleaned and dragging the brush through knotted locks of hair, she returned to her room proper where the sun had snuck through the curtains, illuminating a leatherbound journal on her side table.

She paused. Of course she had forgotten to do something. It was Mourner Steppan’s idea -- if her dreams truly bothered her so much, she should endeavor to record them and make sense of them. She was, in all fairness, good at that. Finding patterns, experimenting with new variables. The Mourner had once said that she’d make for an excellent scholar and magician, had she been born an elf.

By this point, the specifics of the dream had left her. Her thin lips curled into a bitter frown. Should’ve remembered to do this the moment she woke up. How much time had she lost? Perhaps an hour just laying in sweat and sheets, then another half an hour upending the sheets from the bed and dressing? She brushed her fingers against the feather quill in the inkwell which teetered dangerously close to the edge of the table, but trying to grasp the specifics of the dream was like grasping at smoke. No, that didn’t seem right. When you grasp at smoke, you see what you’re grasping at, there’s the possibility that you’ll wrap your hand around nothing. This was like trying to grasp pitch black smoke in an equally pitch room. It was an exercise in frustration.

The very basics were easy to grasp. The feeling of the dream. It wasn’t dissimilar to how she felt now. Swollen, numb joints coupled with a splitting headache, and the world swaying and yawning with each breath or step she took. There was also the anxiety, the panic. She dipped the quill and began writing.

When she was young, Thea had a friend by the name of Antoinette. She could never remember how they knew each other or where, but no one at the estate seemed familiar with an ‘Antoinette’, so it stood to reason that their friendship predated her adoption. It, too, was smoke in the darkness, only becoming relevant for a moment when you felt the texture of something heavier and meatier on your skin.

But Antoinette. Thea recalled that her old friend had a fear of bugs. Not singular bugs. With a spider or a ranch beatle, she’d face it like one of the Aranese heroes of yore staring down a dragon. But many bugs, even a trail of ants, and Antoinette would break into loud, drawn-out tears, her face turning red as a tomato, and taking on the same texture and shape of one, as well. It might, she mercifully realized before writing down incorrect information, be more accurate to say that Antoinette had a fear of swarms. The crying girl would confess that she often had nightmares about being consumed alive by a swarm of bugs, taking her apart little bits at a time.

That seemed to be a consistent theme in these dreams. Flipping through the pages, the same phrases and themes came up again and again. Symbols, characters, plots, and discernable events faded the further through the sharp-edged pages she went, but those themes were always there. Always. Something crawling under her skin. Lots of somethings. Her heartbeat growing more strained, like the machinery of her body was struggling against some great force, chains trying to keep the cogs from spinning. Fleeting glimpses of light that, somehow, she would always conclude never were, or never would be. Something like veins or pipes, but never actually veins or pipes, having broken open, and their contents leaking out into the abyss.

Then she would wake up feeling like she was halfway to falling off the wheel and being given last rites.