breath and blinked until his vision returned.
The dead body came into sharp focus at the end of a tunnel through the cliff face. It was armoured beneath a black coat and a white tabard with the red Nousian Monas. Blue fingers clutched a longsword in one hand, and a broad-brimmed hat lay crumpled beside the head. Black hair framed the gaunt face like a dark halo; the eyes were white and vacant. The body faded away and the cliff grew once more solid and impassable. Shader glanced over his shoulder. The wall of nothingness was still there, a hair’s breadth away.
Something yanked at his umbilicus, spinning him from the path of the Lacunae. He felt the emptiness rushing towards his back, but then his spine arched violently and he was catapulted face first towards the cliff. He tensed before he struck, but there was no impact, only blackness as featureless as the Void itself. The terrible realization struck him that he’d missed his chance and the Lacunae had struck him from existence.
THE RESURRECTION OF DEACON SHADER
H olding the sword.
Still thinking.
I am.
Grey walls of mortared stone emerged from the darkness. Rows of pews stretched away from Shader down a long nave to the shattered wooden doors of the Templum of the Knot. He was suspended above the altar, the gladius still held firmly in both hands, but its light now spent. He craned his neck to see what was holding him in the air, but there was nothing.
And then he saw the body and the pool of viscous blood in which it lay. The skin was ashen, the black hair slick with gore, and the once white tunic stained crimson. In that instant, as he gazed with cold dread upon his own corpse, he knew that Tajen had been right: he’d not been dreaming—the gladius was proof of that; and he’d not been in Araboth, the realm of the dead, either. The doppelgänger sprawled on the templum floor was testimony that he’d been in two places at once. His flesh had bled out on Earth, whilst his soul was trapped on the brink of oblivion in the demesne of the Demiurgos.
Time stood still as Shader contemplated his spirit body. The flesh felt real enough, and yet it now levitated above the ground. It seemed possessed of boundless energy, its organs harmonized and orientated beyond the usual petty desires and instincts with which he was accustomed. It was a good feeling, exhilarating; but it no longer seemed real. The corpse below him was his anchor to reality, the bedrock of his humanity. It was so clear now; his struggle was not a war between the flesh and the spirit, it was a search for authenticity. For the first time he knew what the Grey Abbot had meant when he’d quoted one of the ancient Paters:
The glory of Ain is a human fully alive.
Rhiannon had been wrong. No, Huntsman had been wrong. Aristodeus had been wrong. Shader felt his muscles tighten, even in the spirit. Rhiannon was no threat to his purity. If anything she was as essential to his being as the beating of his heart.
Fully alive:
not one thing or the other, knight or monk. Just a man.
Nothing stirred beyond the wreckage of the doors. The templum was empty, leaving Shader to wonder at the outcome of the battle with the undead and the Dweller. He turned his attention back to the body on the floor and was about to check its pockets for the serpent statue when a cowled figure materialized in the air above the chancel.
‘It has gone, Deacon Shader. Already taken.’
Shader lowered his eyes. ‘I heard your voice in my head when I fled from the Abyss.’
‘My voice is often in your head, only you never cease your internal chatter long enough to hear it. So, you believe in me now, do you?’
The Archon? Shader had assumed he was just a Templum myth propagated to bolster the supernatural elements of the faith. ‘Well, I have your sword,’ he said, twirling the gladius in his hand, ‘and that seems real enough.’
The Archon laughed—a sibilant rustling sound like a breeze through dried leaves. ‘You
The dead body came into sharp focus at the end of a tunnel through the cliff face. It was armoured beneath a black coat and a white tabard with the red Nousian Monas. Blue fingers clutched a longsword in one hand, and a broad-brimmed hat lay crumpled beside the head. Black hair framed the gaunt face like a dark halo; the eyes were white and vacant. The body faded away and the cliff grew once more solid and impassable. Shader glanced over his shoulder. The wall of nothingness was still there, a hair’s breadth away.
Something yanked at his umbilicus, spinning him from the path of the Lacunae. He felt the emptiness rushing towards his back, but then his spine arched violently and he was catapulted face first towards the cliff. He tensed before he struck, but there was no impact, only blackness as featureless as the Void itself. The terrible realization struck him that he’d missed his chance and the Lacunae had struck him from existence.
THE RESURRECTION OF DEACON SHADER
H olding the sword.
Still thinking.
I am.
Grey walls of mortared stone emerged from the darkness. Rows of pews stretched away from Shader down a long nave to the shattered wooden doors of the Templum of the Knot. He was suspended above the altar, the gladius still held firmly in both hands, but its light now spent. He craned his neck to see what was holding him in the air, but there was nothing.
And then he saw the body and the pool of viscous blood in which it lay. The skin was ashen, the black hair slick with gore, and the once white tunic stained crimson. In that instant, as he gazed with cold dread upon his own corpse, he knew that Tajen had been right: he’d not been dreaming—the gladius was proof of that; and he’d not been in Araboth, the realm of the dead, either. The doppelgänger sprawled on the templum floor was testimony that he’d been in two places at once. His flesh had bled out on Earth, whilst his soul was trapped on the brink of oblivion in the demesne of the Demiurgos.
Time stood still as Shader contemplated his spirit body. The flesh felt real enough, and yet it now levitated above the ground. It seemed possessed of boundless energy, its organs harmonized and orientated beyond the usual petty desires and instincts with which he was accustomed. It was a good feeling, exhilarating; but it no longer seemed real. The corpse below him was his anchor to reality, the bedrock of his humanity. It was so clear now; his struggle was not a war between the flesh and the spirit, it was a search for authenticity. For the first time he knew what the Grey Abbot had meant when he’d quoted one of the ancient Paters:
The glory of Ain is a human fully alive.
Rhiannon had been wrong. No, Huntsman had been wrong. Aristodeus had been wrong. Shader felt his muscles tighten, even in the spirit. Rhiannon was no threat to his purity. If anything she was as essential to his being as the beating of his heart.
Fully alive:
not one thing or the other, knight or monk. Just a man.
Nothing stirred beyond the wreckage of the doors. The templum was empty, leaving Shader to wonder at the outcome of the battle with the undead and the Dweller. He turned his attention back to the body on the floor and was about to check its pockets for the serpent statue when a cowled figure materialized in the air above the chancel.
‘It has gone, Deacon Shader. Already taken.’
Shader lowered his eyes. ‘I heard your voice in my head when I fled from the Abyss.’
‘My voice is often in your head, only you never cease your internal chatter long enough to hear it. So, you believe in me now, do you?’
The Archon? Shader had assumed he was just a Templum myth propagated to bolster the supernatural elements of the faith. ‘Well, I have your sword,’ he said, twirling the gladius in his hand, ‘and that seems real enough.’
The Archon laughed—a sibilant rustling sound like a breeze through dried leaves. ‘You
Similar Books
