Exertus Contemno MMIX

[Damion Shargath]

[Closed.]

A rope lassoed around a pier stilt, squeaking as it tightened. The water silently plashed against the neglected jetty, gently rocking a small wooden boat parked at its side. Three silhouettes climbed calmly onto the wooden planks, the squeaking of old wood reverberating through the air functioning like a doorbell. Seagulls screamed through the hazy evening air, twirling, spinning, and flipping playfully. Far in the distance the wind caressed the shores with gentle waves. Miles outward, in some directions even to the horizon, there was only water. The fiery orange of the setting sun dramatically cast the western face of the fortress ablaze. A blinding, golden reflection cast itself upward from the water. Prominently it resided in the middle of the lake, the small mountain in the sea.

Another hard day’s work was coming to an end. Pyres of smoke drifted from scattered chimneys, drawing contrasting streaks through the vivid evening sky of the Keriban shoreline. At the mount’s peak stood a vast and towering cloister. Tall windows adorned its walls, the rooms behind sealed off behind a layer of stained glass. The cloister’s roofs and towers shot fierce and steeply upward; aiming to pierce the heavens themselves. It was the architectural attempt, at making a structure seem taller to the eye than it really was; the illusionary link to the gods above. From its foundations sprouted a small township stretching almost to the island’s shore. The town bustled with delicate evening activity. Friends greeted one another and disappeared in their homes or taverns. The sound of carriages rumbling over the cobbled streets was subsiding, the colliding of ale filled jugs rising. A large wall of beige rock contained the settlement – the illusion of safety, or the assurance of being encaged - encircling most of the inhabited side of the mountain-island.

The scenery was awe-striking. Once a tidal island, it was now separated from the mainland completely. A violent storm washed away the bridging sandbank decades ago. Like the sword of Damocles the colossal cloister hovered above the town, forcing submission to the religious dictatorship such a massive building radiated. It was a demonstration of the Church of the Ethereal Sway’s ideology. It was to induce the belief that under total control every heresy, every sin, and every evil could be purged. Of course it only worked by threatening any behavior related obliquity to be punished with the most inhumane methods of torture and inquisition. Although regarding formalities, salvation was promised in return for obedience.

“Guests! I can offer ye beds within the Hag Draggles Inn, there are still plenty of rooms vacant there…” A fat, short, bold man wearing a brown robe and sandals suggested as he observed a group of three silhouettes stepping unto the pier. The wooden planks squealed at the weight of they were applied.

The foremost shadow snickered and started towards the man, “I have a better idea…”

Short seconds later the spine tingling sound of tearing flesh shot through the evening breeze. The stout man peered down at his throat with wide eyes. He tried to scream, but all that emitted his throat was the gurgling noise of blood which had gathered in the back of his mouth. With a likewise gruesome noise the halberdier retracted his weapon with a forceful tug. Bloodied shards of skin and veins hung from the serrated blade of his weapon, half a tongue from the foremost spike on its blunt side. With an acknowledging sigh the halberdier concluded that he had probably struck one of his victim’s main arteries. The man fell to his knees and clutched his throat, in vain. At first the blood oozed slowly through the abbot’s fingers, though only shortly before sprayed profusely in all directions. Moments later his murderer stood richly speckled with crimson from head to toe.

‘Sadly, I can’t waste my time with you…more than anything I’d love to tear you limb from limb, believe me. Slowly, agonizingly, painfully, one string of flesh after the other…skin you alive…strangle you with your own entrails…and just before you die, in the last moment of your pitiful suffering I would choke you with the excrements that will have gathered in your undergarments and…but, I sadly don’t possess the luxury of time…’

The man cringed, whimpering, his lips stammering some sort of soundless prayer. His eyes filled with the tears of vanity, helplessness, and despair. He could only guess what lurid calamity was descending on the unsuspecting town. A forceful kick to his head followed. With a bone crunching thud Damion had torn the man from his earth-bound position. A line of blood followed him, aesthetically, if not artistically, through the air before he plunged into the water. The man’s corpulence transformed his corpse into a buoy, dipping him gently up and down in the waves. Though once his cloak had soaked up the maximum amount of water it could hold, he slowly descended into the depths. Only a red hue remained in the water, washing away with the current. With a grin Damion shook the remaining organic matter from his halberd. The severed bits of the monk dipped into the reddened shore beside the pier. Fish shot to the surface, enmeshing in a fight for food, soon turned away by the bloody taste of a human’s skin.

The orange-red hue of the sky no longer posed as romanticism, no hard day ending, no gentle setting of the sun, no quiet evening, no romantic. The orange-red hue of the evening sky was a foreboding omen of anguish. It screamed bloodshed, implied death. The orange-red light was the bewildering fire of terror descending. The birds looping through the sky, they were mocking birds, one’s that laughed as they observed creeping death. Their shadows were black against the setting sun, like a void in the sky. A void was empty, substituted life, and ultimately meant death. The safeguarding fortress walls weren’t protection, they were contraption. Expressionism set the scene.

Slowly an armored boot stepped forth. Crimson streaks ran down its smooth surface as it moved. They glistened before pooling with the blood that slowly soaked into the wooden pier, “It begins.”