The tongues of flame within the iron brazier flutter like tattered rags, half-dead, their flickering crimson barely forcing back the gloom of this morbid cell. All else lies smothered in darkness. Through the metal door, where only a palm-sized slit admits a trace of light, one may glimpse the butcher—his head swathed in a sackcloth mask—as he stalks the corridor.
Flayed skin burns as if seared by fire. Ankles are raw, and disjointed bones send spasms raking every muscle. At first, he does not realize he has awakened. The face before him dissolves into the rolling of a severed head—its neck a ragged ruin caked with clotted blood, the jut of a throat-bone visible through the sundered flesh.
Either I have gone mad, or in this rebirth I have met with the most wretched fate.
A slight turn of his head—an attempt to shift his gaze from the dead man's face and survey his surroundings—summons a pain that rends him open from within.
I loathe this unaltered flesh! The curse bursts within his mind.
The hunters had granted him no time to prepare, and so this hasty reincarnation is naught but calamity. Should he ever escape this dungeon, his first act must be to perform the surgery that will bend nerve-signals to the will of his consciousness.
After steadying his breath, he unfurls the tendrils of his spirit inward, rousing what scraps of soul remain within this battered vessel—the dregs of its former owner. With no gratitude whatsoever, he burns that faint ember to ash. As sacrifice, it suffices. Through it, he reaches for the warren of Tsathoggua.
At the end of that guttering, corpse-lamp glow awaits a darkness beyond imagining. The corners of the cell brood in silence, rank with damp and stench. From that silence rises a faint rustling. In the midst of a whispering dirge, a mass of ink-black slime seeps through the cracks, pooling into a wrinkled orb no larger than a human arm's length—its surface as withered as the hide of an ancient crone.
The sodden flesh writhes ceaselessly, reshaping itself like sewage-born muck. In moments, a dozen malformed limbs sprout forth—attenuated, undeveloped, like the shriveled appendages of dead infants. They flail in frenzy.
He regards the coalescing horror with no expression. Then, from behind him, a woman's voice breaks the stillness—weak, yet clear.
"You are a Dark Sorcerer?"
...There is another living soul here?
He makes no effort to turn. The ruin of his body denies him such.
The voice persists, the rasp within her throat slowly giving way to something more steady. It holds no fear of what stands before her.
"So this is what they call a lesser breed, is it not? A servant of the accursed gods. I read of such things once, while consigning heretical tomes to the flames."
The words strike him with foreboding.
"You are an Inquisitor of the Cross-Church?"
"Of course I am, Reborn." Her voice tilts suddenly with amusement. "The body you wear was once one of my knight-guards. Do not indulge yourself in stray thoughts—else the interdictions of the Church will cast your soul into the Holy Flame, to burn until the world's end."
So the premonition proves true. Curse this damned Cross-Church.
A blacker mood settles upon him. Save for the Empress herself, who commands the pogroms, none pursue Dark Sorcerers with more fervor than these zealots.
"You are but a prisoner yourself," his voice rasps like stone rasping under sandpaper, "a Burner of the Church."
"Ah, so that is the name you give us—Burners." Her tone turns mocking. "Tell me, then. Was it your kin we reduced to cinders? Your friends? Your masters? Did you weep with joy as their ashes drifted skyward? Did you pray to our Lord, repent the sin of trafficking with the accursed, and offer up those who would not repent?"
This woman prattles endlessly. Has she been bottled up too long? He spits a curse. "Are you thus talkative by nature, or is it the cell that makes you so?"
Now—footsteps. Harsh, dragging. Drawn near, then passing by.
The butcher shuffles along the dripping hall, his great axe scraping steel upon stone, mingled with the sound of human flesh dragging over rough floor. The noise creeps into the cell, vivid as the vision of his body sundered beneath that blade.
Silence follows. Even the woman ceases.
Perhaps the sound awakened old memories. When it fades, her voice returns, tempered.
"...No matter. Let us speak of escape, heretic. I will not perish in some alien lair. Yet first—out of courtesy—should we not exchange names?" Her tone bears no warmth. Perhaps she has never learned what warmth might mean.
"You may use the name this body once bore." As if he would speak of courtesy with a Burner.
"Ah, but I never learned it. This knight was in my service mere days before his capture. Unfortunate. It seems I cannot pray for his soul's repose. Then let it be so—may his corpse not feed the gate-hounds of this place." She falls silent for a time—neither long nor short. To him, the pause reeks of emptiness. Then she resumes: "Well enough. Speak, then. What is your name, heretic?"
"Mind your words. You know well whose flesh I wear."
"A troublesome man. At such times, should we not pray together for the fallen? Even I have summoned sympathy for him. Or is it that, as a Dark Sorcerer, you have never known such a thing?"
"Sarthel Betraffio." His voice carries weary resentment. Strange sorceries bind this body, forbidding him to utter the false names he had so carefully contrived.
"Never heard of you. No doubt a petty sorcerer from nowhere. What ill luck, that I must rely on a Dark Sorcerer reborn into a condemned man." Her voice turns sharp with mockery. "You may call me Jeanne d'Arc."
His expression does not falter. After all, for more than seven years he has fled like a rat. His reply is cutting. "Nor have I heard of you—a nameless inquisitor from some provincial backwater, I wager. Fit for naught but burning heretics, like any zealot too witless for more."
Her laughter is scornful. "Does the interdiction sit well upon you? Remember—on matters of import, you may not utter lies. And your life is bound to mine. Such is the gift of my Lord. Does this delight you, wretched heretic—fool reborn into the husk of an alien condemned?"
"Remarkable," Sarthel answers flatly, and resumes his work.
He drives the formless child toward a corpse yet unspoiled, plunges warped tendrils into its veins, and begins to drink.
Behind him, Jeanne d'Arc says nothing. He supposes she is disturbed by the sight—not in her flesh, but in her mind. She, who has consigned countless heretics to the pyres, would hardly retch at such a trifle.
His spectral tendrils dance, fastening upon the anchor of his summoned horror. Energy, thick with phantasmal black fumes, streams forth—waves unseen by mortal eyes—filling his body, mending its wreck.
It is forbidden. It is pollution of the soul. But he long ago ceased to be human.
The darkness is his solace, his mother's embrace. Under the inquisitor's stare, his wounds knit, withered muscle swelling anew. The corpse, in turn, withers into brittle husk, collapsing with a crack to ash.
"I take back my words," Jeanne d'Arc's voice cuts once more. "You are the most revolting heretic I have ever seen. Your soul is no longer human. Were you mine upon the battlefield, I would drag you to the tribunal, break you until you confessed every blasphemy."
"Do not speak so boldly when dangling from the ceiling."
He turns at last. In her golden irises, he sees his reflection: a body broader than expected, hair black and coarse yet gleaming despite its dust, a short beard roughening his jaw, and eyes—black, yet strange—not for their hue, but for the turmoil laid bare within: mercurial, calm yet diseased, and sometimes, unmistakably, mad.
He turns his gaze upon the self-proclaimed inquisitor. Jeanne d'Arc wears her pale-gold hair cropped short, her eyes the same pale hue, her skin fair. Starved though she is, her features and form hold their grace. By face alone she might seem gentle, delicate. But her expression—forever see-sawing between coldness and mania—brands her as one whom even the unobservant would know to be impossible.
Now she hangs, chained by both arms to the ceiling, clad in black, dust-laden garb. Her lips are dry and cracked with thirst, their tight curve betraying her foul mood.
My mood fares no better, Sarthel thinks, shaking his head. To conspire with a Burner... absurd.
"Have you seen enough? Will you set me down? Or is it that you have gone too many years without a woman, and need a few heretic heads to slake yourself?"
He ignores her venom.
"Setting you down poses no issue." He snaps his fingers, summoning another ancient warren. Jeanne d'Arc beholds the phantom parchment unfurl in his hand—no ink, no quill. He steps before her, expressionless. "I value life. I mistrust one-sided bonds. Sign this covenant, and let it be the guarantee of friendship."
"...I cannot read."