Attributes
Aspect: 0
Domain: 2
Realm: 2
Spirit: 3
Gifts
Invisibility
Immaterial - Customized Gift PM or post to request further details.
Limits
Dead
Restrictions
Cigar Bond: Nearly identical to Cigarette Bond, only difference being Cigars.
Hand of Breeze: The character is functionally Aspect –1 when dealing with the physical aspects of Prosaic Earth. This means that while he can lift small objects, press buttons, and occasionally do other feats of very minor physical labor, he’s got little to no chance of moving vault doors or lifting boulders by himself.
Wound Levels
1 Deadly
1 Serious
2 Surface
Affiliation
Follows the Code of the Dark.
Bonds
Sanctity of his Estates: 5
Anchor: Wilhelm Kerstein: 4
Anchor: Jana Pristina: 3
Anchor: Hans Engelsich: 3
Anchor: John Berman: 3
Survival of Bavarian history and uniqueness: 2.
Anchors
Wilhelm Kerstein
The current head of household for the Kerstein family, direct lineal descendant of Ludwig Kerstein of Bavaria. He is the head of a law firm with a specialty in immigration. He routinely exalts his family's triumph over "that fool Bärmann" to anyone who knows what he's talking about, and if they do not know he quickly acquaints them with this. As if their ancestors' acts were not enough, the family's continual holding to the idea of Prussia or northern German supremacy has earned them Heinrich Bärmann's undying hate. With his Imperator's help, Bärmann bonded Wilhelm and has used his body to bond his other Anchors.
Jana Pristina
If the Kersteins were the actors in Heinrich Bärmann's death, the Pristinas were the orchestra. Originating from a Slavic state to the far southeast of Bavaria, the Pristinas sought unity in Germany in order for Germany to force the Austro-Hungarian Empire to accept pro-Slav legislation. While not as politically active as the Kersteins, the Pristinas were powerful merchants, with commercial endeavors that stretched from farms in Alsace and Lorraine to defense contracting in Vienna itself. They provided the money and the equipment for the assassins to commit the act and escape, and it was they who spread around the money to have the act quietly moved aside. A great-great-granddaughter of the family, Jana Pristina moved away from München to extend the family business' sway elsewhere. Bärmann has since learned of the Pristinas' involvement in his death; his dislike of Balkan Slavs and his generally hateful nature have led him to despise the accomplices of the Kersteins, and thus Jana was bound.
Hans Engelsich
The Engelsich family were once the supporters of the Bärmanns, their closest allies in the effort to secede from the Prussian Empire before too much change occurred. After Bärmann's death, they drifted away and the coalition of support broke up. Eventually, the Engelsich family moved to Berlin and became important figures in German national politics, supporting the cause of German unity, particularly northern German unity. Eventually they sent one of their sons out of the country to obtain a graduate-level education in economics elsewhere; by Fate, he arrived soon after Wilhelm Kerstein was bonded, and thus became bonded himself. Bärmann views the family, and Hans in particular, as vile traitors to the cause.
John Berman
Heinrich holds special hate and bitterness in his dead heart for this man, whom he quietly torments and spites to vent some of his need for revenge. John Berman is a direct descendant of Heinrich Bärmann, son of Heinrich's great-grandson and the first of the family to be raised with a strictly American education. Heinrich's grandson was the one to Americanize the family name, but it is John, who changed his name from Johann at age twenty-two, that Heinrich particularly hates. In addition to his complicity in his father's desertion of the family name, he also has joined a Berlin patriots' group, an unforgiveable sin to his great-great-grandfather. However. Heinrich Bärmann tolerates this membership, though he frequently mentions it in his verbal assaults on his great-great-grandson; to Bärmann's eyes, there is great potential for revenge in his descendant's membership in this society. It is a malicious and gleeful hate that allows him to hold John as an Anchor.
History
"One hundred and thirty-two years ago, the Kerstein family and the Bärmann family fought for the future of Bavaria, whether to continue as a separate kingdom or fully cooperate with the drafting of the 1871 Constitution. The head of the household at the time, Ludwig Kerstein, battled Heinrich Bärmann in the courts and bureaucracy of München at the announcement of Bavaria officially joining the empire Bismarck wrought. Bärmann fought for secession, while Kerstein plotted his enemy's downfall. One day, Bärmann won a battle in the legislature, allowing for the possibility of state secession as an amendment to the 1871 Constitution. Kerstein and his allies could not accept this; on the way home from the legislature, Bärmann was waylaid, stabbed eleven times and left to die in an alley."
That is what the history books would say about me, if they knew the truth. But human history is written by the victors or, more appropriately, the liars and the easily deceived. The humans believe that I was a minor figure, a passing gnat on the corpus of Bavarian politics. I suspect the goldmongering Pristinas of buying favorable accounts for their conspirators. That aside, it has been agony made ethereal flesh to exist for decades after decades, watching my family decay and degrade. My fingers could not grip the implements it would take to properly discipline them, nor could I exercise my voice, which once boomed through the halls of the buildings of München, to prove to them their fall.
Still. There were some advantages to being dead, namely that I could watch as shadowy figures moved through the circles of power in Bavaria, quietly subverting the laws and amendments I had crafted for my country. I watched as countless things grew and flew away, things for which I would know no names until many years passed by. Now that I walk the halls of the Nobilis, I have gathered some amount of evidence to suggest that there was otherworldly involvement in my demise. I suspect several Powers of having had a hand in my death, including the Power of Subversion and the Power of Germany. However, I learned that the Power of Germany has been replaced at least three times since my death, after the ending of the three World Wars, with the last being the so-called "Cold War".
Since my death, I have become ever more supportive of revenge even as I become more hateful. Everywhere I look, I see humans and others who do not seek their just recompense for wrongs done to them. The spread of "conflict resolution" and peacefulness harm the honorable execution of revenge, as well as a petty concern for the value of worthless lives. They also attempt to suppress wrath, greed and spite, in a foolish effort to make Creation bland and mush-mouthed, devoid of the fires that have driven it for eons. It was irritating to see my hated rivals die in the French-caused famines before I was able to strike them down myself. Now I am forced to use their spawn to sustain my grip on existence. It is an intolerable situation, but one to which I am forced.
My enNobling has led me to preserve, however much I may hate them, the children of my enemies. I will never let them forget their crimes against me, though I use their bodies to further my agenda and that of my Imperator. With my newfound power, however, there are newfound problems. The pestilential gadflies of the Light once possessed the Power of Dark Passion, keeping her in a stone vault and defending her Estate themselves, in an effort to suppress Dark Passion whilst not doing the Children of Harumaph's work for them. They could not bear to have the rage-filled eyes of Dark Passion looking out at their beloved human herds. Then the Power of Freedom, himself a Power of the Light, listened to the whisperings of the Power of Suggestion, and at her word he opened the vault. Dark Passion roared from the vault, re-entering the world in a storm of righteous fury. Ever since, the Light has worked, subtly or otherwise, to reclaim Dark Passion; on occasion they have succeeded, but the Dark has always taken it back.
I look at Creation and I see holes in the fabric of existence, holes that were once occupied by things killed before their time, their bodies eaten. I look to the Excrucians; their crimes against existence will be avenged. Now that I have a body, I will divest them of theirs, as well as their power.
Author's Note: The views set down in this story are not those of the author himself. There is also a racist term used; mature minds only.
An Excerpt from Revenge's Library
I stand in the shadows, watching him as he walks down the moonlit street. He is swathed in dark clothes, clearly thinking that this will make him less prominent. Perhaps to beasts' eyes, he would seem less obtrusive, or even less of a threat. In the thousands of books in Revenge's Library, however, there are many tales of delicious atrocities committed by humans against one another, when one of those humans was dressed in a manner similar to this. But this is irrelevant. The thick rubber soles of his boots make a sound against the concrete. Thud. Thud.
I see the house to which he is going. It is a bland house with two floors, rectangular windows and a white stucco exterior. The stucco is causing the house to rot, however. I see, from inside the wall, the wooden beams falling to pieces, fragments worn away by gathered moisture and the constant presence of insects, chewing at the supports. Then I step through the other side of the wall to see a sight that nearly makes my head hurt from its banality. I, who once walked in the halls of power, opposing the birth of a mighty empire that would one day end in cataclysm, am reduced to the pitiful scrapings of suburban America. Though I must admit, I chose to walk this path tonight. Revenge called to me, and its aims are murky.
I walk through the largest room of the downstairs. There is no fire in the fireplace on this warm June evening, though the ironwork about the fireplace attracts my attention. Likely crafted by some modern machine, its darkness might be painted on. With a tremendous deal of effort, I scrape away a flake of black paint with the nail on the tip of my index finger. I brush it away, letting it sit on the expanse of bland, cream-colored carpet. I stare at it, the tiny chip of cheap coloring lying on the empty carpet. I look back at the iron fireplace fixture. It is red-orange where the chip sat.
It is tiresome to ponder their tired, sticky fumblings in the back rooms of the house. My concern, Revenge's concern, is by what means I might obtain proof to give to his wife, and what this proof might be. I pass by the room that is supposed to be the study, and I am forced to suppress a snort of disdain. It is pathetic, this modern view of studys being small rooms, used primarily for watching vapid beasts on one of the television sets. But no matter. I pass through the half-open bedroom door; clothing is cast about carelessly, in the practice I now recognize as utterly ridiculous. Revenge speaks to me, showing me what object might be most useful in furthering the cause of the Estate. It is not without tremendous effort that I grasp and hold the thing, the cheap pieces of plastic and metal wherein is held some sort of human beauty powder. I have never understood that concept, though I believe it may be related to Humanity's inherent grasping of the grotesquerie they live that they must make up their faces to be something that they are not.
I cannot pass through the walls whilst carrying this odd conglomeration of plastic and powder. This presents a problem, though my Estate, knowing my purpose, sees fit to grant me the strength I need to open the door. It fills me with rage, that once I opened the doors to power and greeted archbishops and kings, and now I cannot make any motion more than a child might. No matter. I leave the sounds of their purple, short-lived lust behind me, and the door is wafted closed by the passage of a chill evening breeze.
Once, the streets of München were as vital to me as the very air I breathed. My boots clicked on the paving stones, and I would hear the rattle of the carriages, and the harsh discourses of the politicians or the lawyers. The lighting was made by candles or fire, where there was any at all, and it was dim and random, far more suitable to the harsh, shifting nature of royal and imperial politics. All of the character of streets and roads is gone, to judge by the appearances of this America. In place of the paving stones, their surfaces planed by the passages of countless boots and shoes, there is this concrete. How the Roman artisans would weep to know what ends their material is put! I pause outside the man's house, and I look out at the intersection of the roads. The sky is just as I remember it, cold and unforgiving, but lit by the blazes of distant stars. But the street lacks character; it is dead, a freshly rotting corpse. There are no suitable buildings to catch the dim moonlight and reflect their forbidding façades on the street. I am filled with rage at the loss of what was once valued; the lessons of centuries have been discarded in favor of the new, the cheaply made, the plastic and the fake.
I walk through the house of the wife; it is much akin to the house of the husband's cheaply-bought whore. I see the same patterns, the same false iron, the same boring works cast by the hands of machines, instead of the proper hands who bore the knowledge down through the ranks of centuries. I pause when I pass a door, and feel the sharper, though less insistent, tug of Dark Passion. This, I realize, must be the room of their son.
Dark Passion had whispered to me earlier, that their child was far from where he himself was said to be. He claimed to be at the church a short distance away, the Church of Our Lady, singing the hymns set down in ancient times before they, I, or even Germany and Europe, had yet been fully revealed to human eyes. The son is practicing, yes, though his practice is performed with air-borne paint, gasoline and glass. It might be, perhaps, one of the marvels of humanity that they are ever using new and more creative ways of killing one another. Before I watched the husband go to the house of his tawdry mistress, I watched the son burn the house of another's mistress. I heard him, as well as his friends, shout the slogans passed down by the servants of Hate and Malice. "Get outta town, niggers! Or we'll burn yer skins 'til they're black as yer souls!" he screamed, standing under a shattered streetlight, his head shorn. I stood on the opposite side of the street, drinking in the sight and revelling in the more primal passions unleashed in the display; the purer, darker creations of the mind are difficult to locate in this plastic, pretending America. I see the flashing red and blue lights, the appearance of the law enforcers. It is, perhaps, a long-held regard for the keepers of legal tradition that I do not kill them. Perhaps it was Revenge whispering in my ear that I should let them live until Revenge's purpose had been fulfilled as well. But I digress.
It is with malicious glee that I place the plastic thing on the husband's chair. His wife, believing him to be attending their child's evening practice with the Churchly choir, works quietly at a computer, creating some new work of literature or intellectualism. This, I must admit, I did not expect. Far too often in these new, stimulation-obsessed times, the woman of the household is absorbed in some false drama on the television, a mockery of the grand stage plays of centuries past, even from before my time. I look over her shoulder, careful to hide my leering visage from her sight. "The Fate of the Lustful Liars: To The Eighth Circle or the Second?" I recognize the subject immediately; in my living days, I was taught the lessons of Dante in the churches of München. It is no matter. With a gleeful cast to my being that I was certain must have transcended my invisibility, I whispered into the woman's ear, as a serpent whispers to his unwary prey or the first fly descends upon the corpse to lay its putrid eggs. "Your husband," I said. "To what circle will he descend? Will he be merely buffeted by eternal storms, or made to lie next to the whore of Potiphar's house, his bloated body wracked with fever and swollen by the foulness of dropsy?" When she stood up and whirled about to see whom was addressing her, I was not to be seen. But the husband's chair, sitting opposite hers, bore the telltale thing, the plastic container of falsity. As she began to cry, I paused for a moment to muse. Had the minions of Hell, in their childish obsession with corruption, been the creators of this powder, this practice which spanned millenia and caused so much darkness and suffering amongst humans? I do not know. Yet for once, perhaps for the first time in a century, I applaud them for their ingenuity.
She tore her hair, screaming in anguish; I reveled in her blind rage and despair. I cast the tip of my finger, the finger with which I had scratched the paint from the whore's false ironwork, along her cheek. She turns and looks to the cabinet, the cabinet wherein her faithful husband keeps a pistol. I whisper again into her tortured ear, "You know, perhaps he plans to dispose of you in your sleep, that he might ever lie in -her- bed." For that single word, I summoned up the loathsomeness that dwells in the hearts of evil men, whose own actions I encouraged over the span of years. I brought to the fore the connivances of countless people who in the past sought to murder their spouses or their lovers, thus to claim false rewards or sympathy. Yet I did not implant this hatred or this greed in the woman's soul; I kept it bubbling at the forefront of my being, letting it seep into my voice to distort it with the haggard, hoary voice so commonly associated with the Dead. In the woman's heart of hearts, the place where she kept the darkest secrets of her being, I felt my Estate scream with joy. A seed of Revenge was planted.
I follow her as she walks down the street, I taste the bitterness and hate in her soul, and Revenge drinks deeply. I can almost feel it grow fat next to my own soul, a hearty meal for one of the more well-fed of intangible things. She still does not see me, as I walk without leaving a shadow, or casting a hint of my existence in the flickering streetlight. I realize, however, that she does not know to which house her husband goes. With an easy hand, I gently guide her eyes to the house of iniquity, the den where mortal sins are practiced. One must be careful with the eyes of beasts; I have found too frequently that in being hasty to reveal all of the knowledge to them, they might very well become blind, incapable of proper Revenge. I have also discovered that it suits Revenge's purpose to let the beasts or the other pilgrims of vengeance slowly grasp what it is they are to do. She follows my guiding finger perfectly; the door, which I left ever so ajar, admits a slim shaft of light from within, falling on the grey porch-stone and dissipating into the night's shadows.
Her intrusion to the house is quiet; the very spirits of the night might have learned a lesson from that stealthy beast as she stalked the front of the house, seeking an entrance. I whisper quietly to the door and its hinges and with but a tiny amount of persuasion, they swing open in abject silence. The quiet in the house is near to deafening, save for the cheap sounds of carnality emanating from one of the rooms on the ground floor. I watch her grip the husband's pistol; though my enNobling cost me my knowledge of their use, I yet recognize them. An automatic, large in bore and well-maintained; I reach out my hand to the spirits residing in the gun, making them aware of my presence. I see the husband and his mistress, caught in the throes of their ill-mannered behavior. I see the wife, crying in anger as she points the gun first at her husband. Then I grasp the answer to my own question: clearly the woman intends for the husband to go to the Eighth Circle, instead of the Second. I concur, though I make no move to interfere. The gun thunders, and the husband falls, his body torn and bloody. The mistress screams and the gun thunders again, and she falls. It is then that I notice the flashing red and blue lights outside the house.
I stand in the shadows, though they are difficult to find with the presence of so many bestial police and medical personnel and their well-lit vehicles. As I watch the woman being put into the police car next to her son, Revenge draws my attention away from the screaming combat about to ensue, and directs me towards the husband. He watches as the body of his mistress is wheeled away, zippered in its black bag en route to the doctors of death, the dissectors and the anatomists. Dark Passion whispers to me that he will not allow his life to be destroyed so easily; a stronger will, perhaps, than I expected. Then Revenge shouts at me, a veritable thunderclap in my soul. The ghost of the woman being borne away to the coroner has settled upon this man, the man who deserted his vows to his wife, as the cause of her death. I smile, and I walk to follow the medical vehicle. The song of Revenge calls to me, echoing from the departing ambulance and its morbid cargo. I lift up my head and close my eyes to hear its sweet song, and I muse to myself, "The Eighth Circle will await him."
An Excerpt from Revenge's Library
I stand in the shadows, watching him as he walks down the moonlit street. He is swathed in dark clothes, clearly thinking that this will make him less prominent. Perhaps to beasts' eyes, he would seem less obtrusive, or even less of a threat. In the thousands of books in Revenge's Library, however, there are many tales of delicious atrocities committed by humans against one another, when one of those humans was dressed in a manner similar to this. But this is irrelevant. The thick rubber soles of his boots make a sound against the concrete. Thud. Thud.
I see the house to which he is going. It is a bland house with two floors, rectangular windows and a white stucco exterior. The stucco is causing the house to rot, however. I see, from inside the wall, the wooden beams falling to pieces, fragments worn away by gathered moisture and the constant presence of insects, chewing at the supports. Then I step through the other side of the wall to see a sight that nearly makes my head hurt from its banality. I, who once walked in the halls of power, opposing the birth of a mighty empire that would one day end in cataclysm, am reduced to the pitiful scrapings of suburban America. Though I must admit, I chose to walk this path tonight. Revenge called to me, and its aims are murky.
I walk through the largest room of the downstairs. There is no fire in the fireplace on this warm June evening, though the ironwork about the fireplace attracts my attention. Likely crafted by some modern machine, its darkness might be painted on. With a tremendous deal of effort, I scrape away a flake of black paint with the nail on the tip of my index finger. I brush it away, letting it sit on the expanse of bland, cream-colored carpet. I stare at it, the tiny chip of cheap coloring lying on the empty carpet. I look back at the iron fireplace fixture. It is red-orange where the chip sat.
It is tiresome to ponder their tired, sticky fumblings in the back rooms of the house. My concern, Revenge's concern, is by what means I might obtain proof to give to his wife, and what this proof might be. I pass by the room that is supposed to be the study, and I am forced to suppress a snort of disdain. It is pathetic, this modern view of studys being small rooms, used primarily for watching vapid beasts on one of the television sets. But no matter. I pass through the half-open bedroom door; clothing is cast about carelessly, in the practice I now recognize as utterly ridiculous. Revenge speaks to me, showing me what object might be most useful in furthering the cause of the Estate. It is not without tremendous effort that I grasp and hold the thing, the cheap pieces of plastic and metal wherein is held some sort of human beauty powder. I have never understood that concept, though I believe it may be related to Humanity's inherent grasping of the grotesquerie they live that they must make up their faces to be something that they are not.
I cannot pass through the walls whilst carrying this odd conglomeration of plastic and powder. This presents a problem, though my Estate, knowing my purpose, sees fit to grant me the strength I need to open the door. It fills me with rage, that once I opened the doors to power and greeted archbishops and kings, and now I cannot make any motion more than a child might. No matter. I leave the sounds of their purple, short-lived lust behind me, and the door is wafted closed by the passage of a chill evening breeze.
Once, the streets of München were as vital to me as the very air I breathed. My boots clicked on the paving stones, and I would hear the rattle of the carriages, and the harsh discourses of the politicians or the lawyers. The lighting was made by candles or fire, where there was any at all, and it was dim and random, far more suitable to the harsh, shifting nature of royal and imperial politics. All of the character of streets and roads is gone, to judge by the appearances of this America. In place of the paving stones, their surfaces planed by the passages of countless boots and shoes, there is this concrete. How the Roman artisans would weep to know what ends their material is put! I pause outside the man's house, and I look out at the intersection of the roads. The sky is just as I remember it, cold and unforgiving, but lit by the blazes of distant stars. But the street lacks character; it is dead, a freshly rotting corpse. There are no suitable buildings to catch the dim moonlight and reflect their forbidding façades on the street. I am filled with rage at the loss of what was once valued; the lessons of centuries have been discarded in favor of the new, the cheaply made, the plastic and the fake.
I walk through the house of the wife; it is much akin to the house of the husband's cheaply-bought whore. I see the same patterns, the same false iron, the same boring works cast by the hands of machines, instead of the proper hands who bore the knowledge down through the ranks of centuries. I pause when I pass a door, and feel the sharper, though less insistent, tug of Dark Passion. This, I realize, must be the room of their son.
Dark Passion had whispered to me earlier, that their child was far from where he himself was said to be. He claimed to be at the church a short distance away, the Church of Our Lady, singing the hymns set down in ancient times before they, I, or even Germany and Europe, had yet been fully revealed to human eyes. The son is practicing, yes, though his practice is performed with air-borne paint, gasoline and glass. It might be, perhaps, one of the marvels of humanity that they are ever using new and more creative ways of killing one another. Before I watched the husband go to the house of his tawdry mistress, I watched the son burn the house of another's mistress. I heard him, as well as his friends, shout the slogans passed down by the servants of Hate and Malice. "Get outta town, niggers! Or we'll burn yer skins 'til they're black as yer souls!" he screamed, standing under a shattered streetlight, his head shorn. I stood on the opposite side of the street, drinking in the sight and revelling in the more primal passions unleashed in the display; the purer, darker creations of the mind are difficult to locate in this plastic, pretending America. I see the flashing red and blue lights, the appearance of the law enforcers. It is, perhaps, a long-held regard for the keepers of legal tradition that I do not kill them. Perhaps it was Revenge whispering in my ear that I should let them live until Revenge's purpose had been fulfilled as well. But I digress.
It is with malicious glee that I place the plastic thing on the husband's chair. His wife, believing him to be attending their child's evening practice with the Churchly choir, works quietly at a computer, creating some new work of literature or intellectualism. This, I must admit, I did not expect. Far too often in these new, stimulation-obsessed times, the woman of the household is absorbed in some false drama on the television, a mockery of the grand stage plays of centuries past, even from before my time. I look over her shoulder, careful to hide my leering visage from her sight. "The Fate of the Lustful Liars: To The Eighth Circle or the Second?" I recognize the subject immediately; in my living days, I was taught the lessons of Dante in the churches of München. It is no matter. With a gleeful cast to my being that I was certain must have transcended my invisibility, I whispered into the woman's ear, as a serpent whispers to his unwary prey or the first fly descends upon the corpse to lay its putrid eggs. "Your husband," I said. "To what circle will he descend? Will he be merely buffeted by eternal storms, or made to lie next to the whore of Potiphar's house, his bloated body wracked with fever and swollen by the foulness of dropsy?" When she stood up and whirled about to see whom was addressing her, I was not to be seen. But the husband's chair, sitting opposite hers, bore the telltale thing, the plastic container of falsity. As she began to cry, I paused for a moment to muse. Had the minions of Hell, in their childish obsession with corruption, been the creators of this powder, this practice which spanned millenia and caused so much darkness and suffering amongst humans? I do not know. Yet for once, perhaps for the first time in a century, I applaud them for their ingenuity.
She tore her hair, screaming in anguish; I reveled in her blind rage and despair. I cast the tip of my finger, the finger with which I had scratched the paint from the whore's false ironwork, along her cheek. She turns and looks to the cabinet, the cabinet wherein her faithful husband keeps a pistol. I whisper again into her tortured ear, "You know, perhaps he plans to dispose of you in your sleep, that he might ever lie in -her- bed." For that single word, I summoned up the loathsomeness that dwells in the hearts of evil men, whose own actions I encouraged over the span of years. I brought to the fore the connivances of countless people who in the past sought to murder their spouses or their lovers, thus to claim false rewards or sympathy. Yet I did not implant this hatred or this greed in the woman's soul; I kept it bubbling at the forefront of my being, letting it seep into my voice to distort it with the haggard, hoary voice so commonly associated with the Dead. In the woman's heart of hearts, the place where she kept the darkest secrets of her being, I felt my Estate scream with joy. A seed of Revenge was planted.
I follow her as she walks down the street, I taste the bitterness and hate in her soul, and Revenge drinks deeply. I can almost feel it grow fat next to my own soul, a hearty meal for one of the more well-fed of intangible things. She still does not see me, as I walk without leaving a shadow, or casting a hint of my existence in the flickering streetlight. I realize, however, that she does not know to which house her husband goes. With an easy hand, I gently guide her eyes to the house of iniquity, the den where mortal sins are practiced. One must be careful with the eyes of beasts; I have found too frequently that in being hasty to reveal all of the knowledge to them, they might very well become blind, incapable of proper Revenge. I have also discovered that it suits Revenge's purpose to let the beasts or the other pilgrims of vengeance slowly grasp what it is they are to do. She follows my guiding finger perfectly; the door, which I left ever so ajar, admits a slim shaft of light from within, falling on the grey porch-stone and dissipating into the night's shadows.
Her intrusion to the house is quiet; the very spirits of the night might have learned a lesson from that stealthy beast as she stalked the front of the house, seeking an entrance. I whisper quietly to the door and its hinges and with but a tiny amount of persuasion, they swing open in abject silence. The quiet in the house is near to deafening, save for the cheap sounds of carnality emanating from one of the rooms on the ground floor. I watch her grip the husband's pistol; though my enNobling cost me my knowledge of their use, I yet recognize them. An automatic, large in bore and well-maintained; I reach out my hand to the spirits residing in the gun, making them aware of my presence. I see the husband and his mistress, caught in the throes of their ill-mannered behavior. I see the wife, crying in anger as she points the gun first at her husband. Then I grasp the answer to my own question: clearly the woman intends for the husband to go to the Eighth Circle, instead of the Second. I concur, though I make no move to interfere. The gun thunders, and the husband falls, his body torn and bloody. The mistress screams and the gun thunders again, and she falls. It is then that I notice the flashing red and blue lights outside the house.
I stand in the shadows, though they are difficult to find with the presence of so many bestial police and medical personnel and their well-lit vehicles. As I watch the woman being put into the police car next to her son, Revenge draws my attention away from the screaming combat about to ensue, and directs me towards the husband. He watches as the body of his mistress is wheeled away, zippered in its black bag en route to the doctors of death, the dissectors and the anatomists. Dark Passion whispers to me that he will not allow his life to be destroyed so easily; a stronger will, perhaps, than I expected. Then Revenge shouts at me, a veritable thunderclap in my soul. The ghost of the woman being borne away to the coroner has settled upon this man, the man who deserted his vows to his wife, as the cause of her death. I smile, and I walk to follow the medical vehicle. The song of Revenge calls to me, echoing from the departing ambulance and its morbid cargo. I lift up my head and close my eyes to hear its sweet song, and I muse to myself, "The Eighth Circle will await him."
An Excerpt from the Journal of Dark Passion
Once there was a town called Riglia, the dwelling place of some five thousand humans in Lombardy. It was a quiet town, a backwater place one hundred kilometers from Milan. Its human inhabitants lived in a state of tense peace; it was the town where several Slovenian and Austrian war criminals had secreted themselves away from the Allies after World War Two, with the help of friends in the town government. From time to time the house of a Jewish family would be vandalized, or a Slovenian house shot. One day, however the Noble of Reconciliation, a Power of the Light, arrived.
I walked through the streets of Riglia, refamiliarizing myself with nocturnal Italy. It was, really, an intriguing sight to see the hundreds of burning electric lights or candles, and to feel my Estates fluctuate with each light at which I gazed. Then, when I gazed upon one particular electric light, the Estate of Dark Passion cackled in my ear. It was the house of one of the town's most fiery political speakers, a man whom my colleagues in München would have called a swillhead. I strode up to the window, made myself invisible, and listened at the window. It seemed that the man was planning to lead the march held by the local Organizzazione di Pace Etnica on the following Saturday. That day was a Wednesday. I realized that my Estate ought to be troubled; why was it not alerting me to immediately solve this problem? When the man's collaborators left, I seized his attention and interrogated him.
After eight minutes and fourteen seconds of questions, he broke down and informed me why he was doing this. A "marvelous fellow" had promised him that he would be reconciled to his estranged wife, with the full blessings of the Church, if he would do what was asked. That, according to the man, was a full three months prior, and all of this work was culminating on that Saturday. Upon further probing and questioning, I determined that the person to which he was referring could be no less than a Noble. Judging by the activity which he was encouraging, I strongly suspected the actions of a Noble of the Light. After a short pause in which I made a divination, I realized that I was, in fact, correct. The Light. The vile imprisoners of Dark Passion, keeping its righteous fire bound away in that dank, befouled vault to rot itself from existence, whilst they made parodies of its glory and stole its very essence. I do not hold a debt of vengeance against the Light for its imprisonment of Dark Passion as my very claim to it, in addition to its freedom, is vengeance enough. But I will not tolerate the mewling sops of the Light interfering further with my Estates. It occurred to me that this Noble was taking a very hands-free approach to the event; surely the beast would have mentioned other appearances of the marvelous man in the time since the first encounter. Which meant that the Noble's defenses would be minimal.
The leader of the group, Paolo Versigna, soon gave up the names of his collaborators; it did not take much convincing for him to forget my existence. Even if he had remembered, however, it is likely that he would excused my existence as a passing memory, perhaps a dream. In any event, he was too contaminated by my actions to make a suitable pawn for the event I planned to take place on that Saturday. For the remainder of the night I plotted. This act of the Light clearly meant something to the Noble in question; I believed that he kept a Bond to something represented on the upcoming parade. The next two nights I spent in walking from place to place within Riglia, locating the houses of the collaborators. In one, the man Ruccio Pascone listened to my words and believed what I spoke. In another, the woman Sophina Telluvi needed far more convincing than did Pascone, but in the end she acquiesced to what I said. The words that finally convinced the both of them were, "Remember 1945." In the house of Bojan Išvoba, however, it took far less.
Saturday came. While I do not need to sleep, I nonetheless was resting on the doorsteps of the town's church on its piazza when dawn's first light broke the horizon. Despite my distaste for the Nobilis of the Light, light itself is a glorious thing, cast in shades of red and orange against the fleeing blues and blacks of the Italian night. Soon, the marble façade of the church was glimmering white, and I knew that it was the proper time. I became invisible and walked toward the house of Versigna. He stepped out of his house and walked to the doors of the city hall, in front of which the crowd had gathered. They did not bear raised signs or insignia, something which confused the organizer. He raised his arms and began to speak, a pathetically lacklustre speech when it was concluded. It did not take long before the crowds of humans raised their bestial voices against his, calling for the downcasting of one group or another. Soon, the mob began to fight amongst itself. Fists flew, bottles of beer were taken up and thrown, and one of the paving stones was wrenched free, and used against the head of an opponent.
Then the Slovenes and the Austrians arrived, carrying their nations' flags. Seeing the brawling mob of Italians, the other two groups paused, dressing their ranks and holding up banners proclaiming their rights and freedoms. One of the Italian mob was alerted to this, and all fighting in the Italian ranks ceased, though this was momentary. The two sides surged towards each other; even my Aspect would have easily allowed me to discern the first punch's thrower, but it would not have suited my Estate to be so intrusive. Instead, I drew back, watching. As the first corpse was thrown to the ground, I smiled coldly and drew out the handful of crushed nettles.
I presume that the Power whose Bond I crippled was greatly pained at the destruction of his efforts. I did not remain in the city long enough to witness his arrival to pick through the shattered remnants of the attempt. I did, however, stay just long enough to watch the bestial polizia pick through the crushed nettles with bafflement. I smiled.
Once there was a town called Riglia, the dwelling place of some five thousand humans in Lombardy. It was a quiet town, a backwater place one hundred kilometers from Milan. Its human inhabitants lived in a state of tense peace; it was the town where several Slovenian and Austrian war criminals had secreted themselves away from the Allies after World War Two, with the help of friends in the town government. From time to time the house of a Jewish family would be vandalized, or a Slovenian house shot. One day, however the Noble of Reconciliation, a Power of the Light, arrived.
I walked through the streets of Riglia, refamiliarizing myself with nocturnal Italy. It was, really, an intriguing sight to see the hundreds of burning electric lights or candles, and to feel my Estates fluctuate with each light at which I gazed. Then, when I gazed upon one particular electric light, the Estate of Dark Passion cackled in my ear. It was the house of one of the town's most fiery political speakers, a man whom my colleagues in München would have called a swillhead. I strode up to the window, made myself invisible, and listened at the window. It seemed that the man was planning to lead the march held by the local Organizzazione di Pace Etnica on the following Saturday. That day was a Wednesday. I realized that my Estate ought to be troubled; why was it not alerting me to immediately solve this problem? When the man's collaborators left, I seized his attention and interrogated him.
After eight minutes and fourteen seconds of questions, he broke down and informed me why he was doing this. A "marvelous fellow" had promised him that he would be reconciled to his estranged wife, with the full blessings of the Church, if he would do what was asked. That, according to the man, was a full three months prior, and all of this work was culminating on that Saturday. Upon further probing and questioning, I determined that the person to which he was referring could be no less than a Noble. Judging by the activity which he was encouraging, I strongly suspected the actions of a Noble of the Light. After a short pause in which I made a divination, I realized that I was, in fact, correct. The Light. The vile imprisoners of Dark Passion, keeping its righteous fire bound away in that dank, befouled vault to rot itself from existence, whilst they made parodies of its glory and stole its very essence. I do not hold a debt of vengeance against the Light for its imprisonment of Dark Passion as my very claim to it, in addition to its freedom, is vengeance enough. But I will not tolerate the mewling sops of the Light interfering further with my Estates. It occurred to me that this Noble was taking a very hands-free approach to the event; surely the beast would have mentioned other appearances of the marvelous man in the time since the first encounter. Which meant that the Noble's defenses would be minimal.
The leader of the group, Paolo Versigna, soon gave up the names of his collaborators; it did not take much convincing for him to forget my existence. Even if he had remembered, however, it is likely that he would excused my existence as a passing memory, perhaps a dream. In any event, he was too contaminated by my actions to make a suitable pawn for the event I planned to take place on that Saturday. For the remainder of the night I plotted. This act of the Light clearly meant something to the Noble in question; I believed that he kept a Bond to something represented on the upcoming parade. The next two nights I spent in walking from place to place within Riglia, locating the houses of the collaborators. In one, the man Ruccio Pascone listened to my words and believed what I spoke. In another, the woman Sophina Telluvi needed far more convincing than did Pascone, but in the end she acquiesced to what I said. The words that finally convinced the both of them were, "Remember 1945." In the house of Bojan Išvoba, however, it took far less.
Saturday came. While I do not need to sleep, I nonetheless was resting on the doorsteps of the town's church on its piazza when dawn's first light broke the horizon. Despite my distaste for the Nobilis of the Light, light itself is a glorious thing, cast in shades of red and orange against the fleeing blues and blacks of the Italian night. Soon, the marble façade of the church was glimmering white, and I knew that it was the proper time. I became invisible and walked toward the house of Versigna. He stepped out of his house and walked to the doors of the city hall, in front of which the crowd had gathered. They did not bear raised signs or insignia, something which confused the organizer. He raised his arms and began to speak, a pathetically lacklustre speech when it was concluded. It did not take long before the crowds of humans raised their bestial voices against his, calling for the downcasting of one group or another. Soon, the mob began to fight amongst itself. Fists flew, bottles of beer were taken up and thrown, and one of the paving stones was wrenched free, and used against the head of an opponent.
Then the Slovenes and the Austrians arrived, carrying their nations' flags. Seeing the brawling mob of Italians, the other two groups paused, dressing their ranks and holding up banners proclaiming their rights and freedoms. One of the Italian mob was alerted to this, and all fighting in the Italian ranks ceased, though this was momentary. The two sides surged towards each other; even my Aspect would have easily allowed me to discern the first punch's thrower, but it would not have suited my Estate to be so intrusive. Instead, I drew back, watching. As the first corpse was thrown to the ground, I smiled coldly and drew out the handful of crushed nettles.
I presume that the Power whose Bond I crippled was greatly pained at the destruction of his efforts. I did not remain in the city long enough to witness his arrival to pick through the shattered remnants of the attempt. I did, however, stay just long enough to watch the bestial polizia pick through the crushed nettles with bafflement. I smiled.
In the eternal night of Locus Balthiel, I wander in my beloved Garden. The twisting thorn hedges are of little impediment to me, after all. Also, I am not here tonight to look at thorns or ponder the meaning of blood spilled from a pricked finger. I am here to find a particular statue, as I feel it would be good to encourage the passion behind that statue this evening. I already have a town selected for my work, a pathetic speck of a place called Revano, in the United States of America.
It is curious, that a country I dislike as much as the United States would be the wellspring of so much power for my Estates. An artificial nation, built on the bones and crushed spirits of the people and things that were there first. A plastic nation, unable to admit its faults and wrongdoings. A nation that, yet, harbors a hundred evil thoughts and wishes behind every falsely smiling face. Each house, alike to the others, holds a family twisted with its own unique dysfunctions and hatreds. Perhaps I should not dislike this country as much as I do. But I do. A conundrum of my Estates, perhaps.
I pass the terra cotta statue of Arrogance; it is an ancient creation with a monolithic appearance, set upon a dune of pinkish sand. I turn a corner, my boot treading upon the name of a Julius Brutus Tercinagius who died even before our hated Warden was born. The thorn hedges swirl and cast themselves about, borne by the myriad thoughts harbored by all the beings in Creation. Twisted trees dance to an unseen drummer playing an unheard tune; naked silvery bark stabs up at the black nighttime sky, as though to disembowel the stars and spill their blood upon the ground. A seeming gate of looming, sickened poinsettia trees, their roots littered with dead rosebushes, opens into a clearing in the hedges. A small, circular place in the garden, perhaps no more than four metres across and lined with dead trees, it is nonetheless open to the sky.
The undying moonlight stabs down from above, lighting on a grotesque face cast in darksome bronze. It leers sightlessly up towards the stars, metal eyes filled with tears and unrestrained despair. The face wears a pathetic expression, eyes wide and mouth hanging open in some mocking parody of sadness. Despite its turned face, its back is to me with one hand extended, holding a cat-o-nine-tails over its back. The thing is set with dozens, if not hundreds, of tiny barbed hooks and many have bits of the statue's own flesh and skin caught in them. Deep cuts and gashes cross the statue's back; even though the statue is of bronze, these gashes perpetually ooze blood gleaming black in the moonlight. I pause when my boots touch the dead grass upon which the statue's pedestal rests, and circumvent the lost-wax sculpture.
The other side of the statue is, perhaps, more interesting. The story of Robert Bergson plays out in the myriad ornaments that adorn his bloody person. Around his neck, the shattered locket suspended by a tarnished filigree chain. On his arm, the partially-burned tattoo of his own name and the obscured name of another, its heart-shaped design barely traceable in the bronze. At his belt, the small charm in the shape of a unicorn has been impaled by a tiny spear; the creature leans on its forelegs, minute drops of blood spilling from its gouged chest and clearly in the throes of imminent death. The statue crouches, and his knees rest upon a wooden pew, though the wood has been cut from one of my trees. At his feet is a knife, made from a jet-black metal that does not reflect the light, instead pulling in all the light around it, enough so that it is hard to find the knife by looking for it. Instead, it is better found by searching for the absence of the light. Blood droplets eternally drip from the tip of the blade, pooling in a small hollow in the marble pedestal. A trench running outside the pool is stained with long-dried blood, attesting to its previous overspillings. Still, it is the statue's outstretched arm that is most important to me. Outstretched in the eternal moonlight, the statue's wrist is upraised and exposed to the chill nighttime air.
Flesh torn in jagged patterns by some vicious method rises to either side of the deep slash in the arm. Blood trickles from the corners of the gashes, coloring the bronze flesh black or darkish brown. In the middle of the cut, however, in the canyon gouged by the knife lying on the pedestal, a black and viscous fluid bubbles to the surface. It fills the gaps in the bronze arm, boiling noisomely, though the odor means nothing to the dead. I have yet to determine what, precisely, the substance is. I suspect it is a tincture of pure despair, a distillation of time made fluid, of every moment just before a tortured soul ends its mortal life.
Thus, it is the triumphal nectar of the Dark. I look at the pained and worried face of this statue, and I notice an eyelid twitch. From time to time, the Garden of my Estate sees fit to remind me that a living soul was placed in this undying body, to give the cold bronze a new life and to remind that soul of all that it has lost. It is a trophy statue, a reminder of victory; to gaze upon it is to feel inspiration in the cause of the Dark. I gaze upon the twisted face, the trinkets of the soul's broken life, I watch the glorious liquid eternally bubble and lap at the sides of an eternally shredded wrist, a destroyed life. And I smile.
It is curious, that a country I dislike as much as the United States would be the wellspring of so much power for my Estates. An artificial nation, built on the bones and crushed spirits of the people and things that were there first. A plastic nation, unable to admit its faults and wrongdoings. A nation that, yet, harbors a hundred evil thoughts and wishes behind every falsely smiling face. Each house, alike to the others, holds a family twisted with its own unique dysfunctions and hatreds. Perhaps I should not dislike this country as much as I do. But I do. A conundrum of my Estates, perhaps.
I pass the terra cotta statue of Arrogance; it is an ancient creation with a monolithic appearance, set upon a dune of pinkish sand. I turn a corner, my boot treading upon the name of a Julius Brutus Tercinagius who died even before our hated Warden was born. The thorn hedges swirl and cast themselves about, borne by the myriad thoughts harbored by all the beings in Creation. Twisted trees dance to an unseen drummer playing an unheard tune; naked silvery bark stabs up at the black nighttime sky, as though to disembowel the stars and spill their blood upon the ground. A seeming gate of looming, sickened poinsettia trees, their roots littered with dead rosebushes, opens into a clearing in the hedges. A small, circular place in the garden, perhaps no more than four metres across and lined with dead trees, it is nonetheless open to the sky.
The undying moonlight stabs down from above, lighting on a grotesque face cast in darksome bronze. It leers sightlessly up towards the stars, metal eyes filled with tears and unrestrained despair. The face wears a pathetic expression, eyes wide and mouth hanging open in some mocking parody of sadness. Despite its turned face, its back is to me with one hand extended, holding a cat-o-nine-tails over its back. The thing is set with dozens, if not hundreds, of tiny barbed hooks and many have bits of the statue's own flesh and skin caught in them. Deep cuts and gashes cross the statue's back; even though the statue is of bronze, these gashes perpetually ooze blood gleaming black in the moonlight. I pause when my boots touch the dead grass upon which the statue's pedestal rests, and circumvent the lost-wax sculpture.
The other side of the statue is, perhaps, more interesting. The story of Robert Bergson plays out in the myriad ornaments that adorn his bloody person. Around his neck, the shattered locket suspended by a tarnished filigree chain. On his arm, the partially-burned tattoo of his own name and the obscured name of another, its heart-shaped design barely traceable in the bronze. At his belt, the small charm in the shape of a unicorn has been impaled by a tiny spear; the creature leans on its forelegs, minute drops of blood spilling from its gouged chest and clearly in the throes of imminent death. The statue crouches, and his knees rest upon a wooden pew, though the wood has been cut from one of my trees. At his feet is a knife, made from a jet-black metal that does not reflect the light, instead pulling in all the light around it, enough so that it is hard to find the knife by looking for it. Instead, it is better found by searching for the absence of the light. Blood droplets eternally drip from the tip of the blade, pooling in a small hollow in the marble pedestal. A trench running outside the pool is stained with long-dried blood, attesting to its previous overspillings. Still, it is the statue's outstretched arm that is most important to me. Outstretched in the eternal moonlight, the statue's wrist is upraised and exposed to the chill nighttime air.
Flesh torn in jagged patterns by some vicious method rises to either side of the deep slash in the arm. Blood trickles from the corners of the gashes, coloring the bronze flesh black or darkish brown. In the middle of the cut, however, in the canyon gouged by the knife lying on the pedestal, a black and viscous fluid bubbles to the surface. It fills the gaps in the bronze arm, boiling noisomely, though the odor means nothing to the dead. I have yet to determine what, precisely, the substance is. I suspect it is a tincture of pure despair, a distillation of time made fluid, of every moment just before a tortured soul ends its mortal life.
Thus, it is the triumphal nectar of the Dark. I look at the pained and worried face of this statue, and I notice an eyelid twitch. From time to time, the Garden of my Estate sees fit to remind me that a living soul was placed in this undying body, to give the cold bronze a new life and to remind that soul of all that it has lost. It is a trophy statue, a reminder of victory; to gaze upon it is to feel inspiration in the cause of the Dark. I gaze upon the twisted face, the trinkets of the soul's broken life, I watch the glorious liquid eternally bubble and lap at the sides of an eternally shredded wrist, a destroyed life. And I smile.
Revenge incorporates everything from the first feeling of being wronged up to the final moment. Revenge can be large or small; every fast food worker's desire to flip off his boss to every corporate peon wanting to walk into the office with a machine gun and no fear. The biggest metaphysical oddity is that anything can want revenge on just about anything else; the cement sidewalk might want revenge on a passer-by for stomping on it, a wall might want revenge on someone who just threw a brick against it in anger. That tends to be one of the more rewarding aspects of Heinrich's Estate, since it takes a more work to get the targets of the inanimate object's revenge somewhere where the object can take revenge. It's really fun when two inanimate objects want to kill each other and can't get to where the other thing is.
Dark Passion works in more or less the same manner; it incorporates any passion that is outrightly nasty (Ethnic Hatred, Genocidal Thoughts), or "lighter" passions taken to unhealthy levels. Theoretically it overlaps with Enmity and Obsession, but through a miraculous work done by the Darklords after Dark Passion was freed from its prison, his Estate does not cover either of those. Dark Passion is a bit more open-ended than Revenge; Heinrich is able to inspire Dark Passions that are more long-lasting and not as targeted towards a specific end result. Hatred could mean a feud that will last into the next millenium, or Envy could create a long-standing metaphorical arms race between two people.
Dark Passion works in more or less the same manner; it incorporates any passion that is outrightly nasty (Ethnic Hatred, Genocidal Thoughts), or "lighter" passions taken to unhealthy levels. Theoretically it overlaps with Enmity and Obsession, but through a miraculous work done by the Darklords after Dark Passion was freed from its prison, his Estate does not cover either of those. Dark Passion is a bit more open-ended than Revenge; Heinrich is able to inspire Dark Passions that are more long-lasting and not as targeted towards a specific end result. Hatred could mean a feud that will last into the next millenium, or Envy could create a long-standing metaphorical arms race between two people.
A Trinket of Revenge
In the House of Revenge, there is a room whose mass-access entrance was shredded long ago, the spirit of it destroyed by an act of treachery. It is difficult, if not impossible, for anyone who is not immaterial to find a way into this room without breaking holes in the walls or in the floor. The wall outside this room is burnt and black, heavy with carbonized paint and embedded blast debris.
It it not difficult for me to enter the room. One of the perks, perhaps, of being dead. The decorations of the room are...eclectic. A hardwood floor is marked with bloodstains, including a pattern of several handprints angled towards what used to be the door. At one side of the room, sitting in front of a tall 18th century French window, with one windowpane shattered as if by a musket ball, is a long, ebony-black table, trimmed with classical Chinese dragon decorations cast in gold. This massive table takes up the entire wall of this side of the room, and upon it are dozens of trinkets and mementos. A scorched leather satchel, or at least a segment of it, burnt black by an Irish Republican's bomb. Four shrunken heads from South America, the skin dried to a blackish color and tied together by the long hanks of black hair that cling to the dead scalps. A machete with Chechen words on the blade, denoting its use in the murder of seven Russian men in 1999.
Recently, an interesting item appeared in one of the drawers in the long table. It is an archaic Chinese knife, dating to the middle of the eighteenth century. Unlike many of the other things on the table or hidden in its drawers, it is not burned or blasted. I picked up the knife and turned it over in my hands, not entirely sure of its purpose. I suppose the Lady of Blades would tell me more certainly of its make, but it occurred to me that a simple knife would not simply appear in the table without some larger purpose. I took the blade with me into the bowels of my catacombs, to a room where I like to divine the reasons for being of mysterious things that appear in my house. I placed it on a circle of slate, surrounding it with purified salt. Then I took out a piece of parchment and wrote with a raven's feather and children's blood about the nature of the thing. Then I placed it in a Hindu censer and chanted a surah from the Qur'an in classical Arabic, at which point the purpose was revealed, to some shadowy extent, to me.
I saw an opium den in Shanghai, where British traders spoke in hushed tones through a translator to the owner. I saw a caravan loaded with illicit flowers crossing into China under the Union Jack. Not only British, though; I saw German merchants haggling with their Chinese counterparts, and Frenchmen in their Asian homes, attended by Chinese servants and discussing points of policy with Dutchmen fresh from Indonesia. I saw an American, thin and hungry, his eyes gleaming with unconcealed greed, smashing at a door with a blunt axe. Then I saw the decadent palaces of foreign merchants in flames, with the merchants fleeing in terror.
My vision went black, then I saw a modern apartment in some nameless modern city whose location is unimportant. The apartment was palatially luxurious, with marble pillars and statues of dragons cast in shining gold. A Chinese woman, dressed in a fine formal suit, sat behind a matte-black desk with a blotter on the desk and a high-speed new computer at her left hand. She was attended by an American, an Englishman, a Frenchman and a German. A Dutch chaffeur waited in a long black limousine outside the high-rise building.
Then my sight returned. I looked about the room, fairly certain of what I had seen. Then I noticed a shred of parchment fluttering about the room. With a tiny effort, I reached up and plucked the paper out of the air. Printed across its surface, in jet-black Chinese characters, was "Vengeance will be had." I wondered when the vengeance will occur, but I am convinced that it would be interesting.
In the House of Revenge, there is a room whose mass-access entrance was shredded long ago, the spirit of it destroyed by an act of treachery. It is difficult, if not impossible, for anyone who is not immaterial to find a way into this room without breaking holes in the walls or in the floor. The wall outside this room is burnt and black, heavy with carbonized paint and embedded blast debris.
It it not difficult for me to enter the room. One of the perks, perhaps, of being dead. The decorations of the room are...eclectic. A hardwood floor is marked with bloodstains, including a pattern of several handprints angled towards what used to be the door. At one side of the room, sitting in front of a tall 18th century French window, with one windowpane shattered as if by a musket ball, is a long, ebony-black table, trimmed with classical Chinese dragon decorations cast in gold. This massive table takes up the entire wall of this side of the room, and upon it are dozens of trinkets and mementos. A scorched leather satchel, or at least a segment of it, burnt black by an Irish Republican's bomb. Four shrunken heads from South America, the skin dried to a blackish color and tied together by the long hanks of black hair that cling to the dead scalps. A machete with Chechen words on the blade, denoting its use in the murder of seven Russian men in 1999.
Recently, an interesting item appeared in one of the drawers in the long table. It is an archaic Chinese knife, dating to the middle of the eighteenth century. Unlike many of the other things on the table or hidden in its drawers, it is not burned or blasted. I picked up the knife and turned it over in my hands, not entirely sure of its purpose. I suppose the Lady of Blades would tell me more certainly of its make, but it occurred to me that a simple knife would not simply appear in the table without some larger purpose. I took the blade with me into the bowels of my catacombs, to a room where I like to divine the reasons for being of mysterious things that appear in my house. I placed it on a circle of slate, surrounding it with purified salt. Then I took out a piece of parchment and wrote with a raven's feather and children's blood about the nature of the thing. Then I placed it in a Hindu censer and chanted a surah from the Qur'an in classical Arabic, at which point the purpose was revealed, to some shadowy extent, to me.
I saw an opium den in Shanghai, where British traders spoke in hushed tones through a translator to the owner. I saw a caravan loaded with illicit flowers crossing into China under the Union Jack. Not only British, though; I saw German merchants haggling with their Chinese counterparts, and Frenchmen in their Asian homes, attended by Chinese servants and discussing points of policy with Dutchmen fresh from Indonesia. I saw an American, thin and hungry, his eyes gleaming with unconcealed greed, smashing at a door with a blunt axe. Then I saw the decadent palaces of foreign merchants in flames, with the merchants fleeing in terror.
My vision went black, then I saw a modern apartment in some nameless modern city whose location is unimportant. The apartment was palatially luxurious, with marble pillars and statues of dragons cast in shining gold. A Chinese woman, dressed in a fine formal suit, sat behind a matte-black desk with a blotter on the desk and a high-speed new computer at her left hand. She was attended by an American, an Englishman, a Frenchman and a German. A Dutch chaffeur waited in a long black limousine outside the high-rise building.
Then my sight returned. I looked about the room, fairly certain of what I had seen. Then I noticed a shred of parchment fluttering about the room. With a tiny effort, I reached up and plucked the paper out of the air. Printed across its surface, in jet-black Chinese characters, was "Vengeance will be had." I wondered when the vengeance will occur, but I am convinced that it would be interesting.
The Tale of Gregorio the Mad
It was the year 1927, in a small town outside of Florence in the blessed land of Tuscany. I, Gregorio Antonio di Terlucci, worked in the rail yards. My wife Sophia and our daughter Gina lived in our comfortable middle-class house in the city's downtown. Sophia was a poetess, and Gina was just beginning her schooling. Both of them had the most wonderful sky-blue eyes, with a twinkle that reminded me of sunlight glistening off of the Mediterranean.
One day, a train arrived from Rome, heading north. As the inspector of rail cars for the rail yard, it was my duty to determine what precisely was in the train. Box after box labelled "Ammunition," or "Rations," or similar things. A soldier accompanying the train stated that they were to go to garrisons in Lombardy. It was the first of numerous military trains that I saw.
In the summer of 1928, a civilian train arrived. In the days before, I heard stories from engineers and train-workers of odd disappearances among railyard officials and bureaucrats. As I look back on it, I see how blind I was, that I did not believe what others quietly said about Il Duce when it was believed others were not listening. Nonetheless, I attempted to inspect this train. Government soldiers stopped me, saying that they had orders from the head of the yard to not allow me access. I knew, however, that the head official was at home with a severe case of the flu, possibly pneumonia, and I refused to accept this statement by the soldiers. I was about to try to force my way past them when one of them said, "We know about your lovely wife and child, Gregorio. And you know what happens to officials when the trains do not run on time." At that time, I did not, but I backed off when they mentioned Sophia and Gina.
All that day, and well on into the following month, I could not get the image of the mysterious train out of my head. What was it carrying? Why were government soldiers accompanying an ordinary cargo of civilian freight? Why had they bothered to learn about Gina and Sophia beforehand? Then I was notified by a Roman acquaintance by telephone that there was another mysterious train on the way. Shortly after the train departed, he had gone to look for his boss and realized that the boss could not be found, and there was no explanation for his disappearance. This fired my curiosity, and I spoke of it to Sophia that night after we put Gina to bed. I looked into her eyes and related my story, and the compassion and encouragement I saw there sparked me to my fatal enterprise.
The next day, this mysterious train arrived at my rail yard. I went out to try to inspect it, but the government soldiers refused me. I expected this, and I came back around dusk, equipped with a crowbar, torch, and a newfound sense of determination. I smashed the skull of a mastiff keeping watch, and crept past the guard patrol to make it to the train. I pried open the door to the first car, and there I was greeted by a horrific sight. A leering head, its body lying a short distance away, stared sightlessly back at me. I immediately suspected that it was the body of the rail yard boss from the south, mentioned to me by the Roman. I shone the torch inside the car, and saw to my ultimate horror stacks of corpses, heaps of slowly putrefying bodies piled around the freight car, heading for a place which was only known to the Almighty.
Then the first bullet hit me, the sound of a shot ringing in my ears. In the flash of searing pain, I thought of Sophia's sky-blue eyes and beautiful face, watching me from under her curls of long black hair. I heard a second shot and felt a second tearing pain in my shoulder. The crowbar fell to the ground alongside the torch, and I thought of Gina, smiling happily up at me as we walked in the park and listened to birds twittering. I lay on the cold ground, bleeding and in great pain, when three soldiers walked up to me. One of them, whom I recognized from the day before, stated, "The trains will run on time." He raised his rifle and I saw a sudden burst of flame.
I awoke. I did not know where I was. With some effort, I was able to regain my feet, though when I looked around I saw that I was in a twilit version of Hell, filled with gravestones and mausolea, and buildngs that looked to have been designed by the very minions of Lucifer Himself. Then I spotted someone standing next to me. He was dressed in archaic clothes in a German style relics of some time before mine. He held out his two hands, silent as the grave from which I had risen, to display two things. A church's ledger, showing that the date was March the fifteenth, in the Year of Our Lord Nineteen-Hundred and Forty-Two. In his other hand was a sheet of stationary from the Italian government, from the very desk of Il Duce himself. There were three names on it.
I scarcely remember anything from the time after that, and very soon I expect I shall descend into howling madness once again. Already my black-feathered wings, gifted to me by some angel or demon, begin to twitch. The three men will pay. I see Sophia's eyes in my mind, hear her voice in my ears, only now her voice has changed. Instead of bolstering my courage and my determination, now she wails for me, for she is lost. I hear the screams and benighted shrieks of our daughter, stolen away by some creature or monster and far away from me. I will not rest until I find them. Their screams and their eyes haunt me, those sky-blue eyes surrounded by rich dark hair. The only solace I will find is in the capture and annihilation of those three barbarians who stole the world from me, who took my life away. I do not know whether they are living or dead, but I do not care. Already a manic smile creases my lips against my teeth. I take a step and surrender my consciousness to howling rage.
It was the year 1927, in a small town outside of Florence in the blessed land of Tuscany. I, Gregorio Antonio di Terlucci, worked in the rail yards. My wife Sophia and our daughter Gina lived in our comfortable middle-class house in the city's downtown. Sophia was a poetess, and Gina was just beginning her schooling. Both of them had the most wonderful sky-blue eyes, with a twinkle that reminded me of sunlight glistening off of the Mediterranean.
One day, a train arrived from Rome, heading north. As the inspector of rail cars for the rail yard, it was my duty to determine what precisely was in the train. Box after box labelled "Ammunition," or "Rations," or similar things. A soldier accompanying the train stated that they were to go to garrisons in Lombardy. It was the first of numerous military trains that I saw.
In the summer of 1928, a civilian train arrived. In the days before, I heard stories from engineers and train-workers of odd disappearances among railyard officials and bureaucrats. As I look back on it, I see how blind I was, that I did not believe what others quietly said about Il Duce when it was believed others were not listening. Nonetheless, I attempted to inspect this train. Government soldiers stopped me, saying that they had orders from the head of the yard to not allow me access. I knew, however, that the head official was at home with a severe case of the flu, possibly pneumonia, and I refused to accept this statement by the soldiers. I was about to try to force my way past them when one of them said, "We know about your lovely wife and child, Gregorio. And you know what happens to officials when the trains do not run on time." At that time, I did not, but I backed off when they mentioned Sophia and Gina.
All that day, and well on into the following month, I could not get the image of the mysterious train out of my head. What was it carrying? Why were government soldiers accompanying an ordinary cargo of civilian freight? Why had they bothered to learn about Gina and Sophia beforehand? Then I was notified by a Roman acquaintance by telephone that there was another mysterious train on the way. Shortly after the train departed, he had gone to look for his boss and realized that the boss could not be found, and there was no explanation for his disappearance. This fired my curiosity, and I spoke of it to Sophia that night after we put Gina to bed. I looked into her eyes and related my story, and the compassion and encouragement I saw there sparked me to my fatal enterprise.
The next day, this mysterious train arrived at my rail yard. I went out to try to inspect it, but the government soldiers refused me. I expected this, and I came back around dusk, equipped with a crowbar, torch, and a newfound sense of determination. I smashed the skull of a mastiff keeping watch, and crept past the guard patrol to make it to the train. I pried open the door to the first car, and there I was greeted by a horrific sight. A leering head, its body lying a short distance away, stared sightlessly back at me. I immediately suspected that it was the body of the rail yard boss from the south, mentioned to me by the Roman. I shone the torch inside the car, and saw to my ultimate horror stacks of corpses, heaps of slowly putrefying bodies piled around the freight car, heading for a place which was only known to the Almighty.
Then the first bullet hit me, the sound of a shot ringing in my ears. In the flash of searing pain, I thought of Sophia's sky-blue eyes and beautiful face, watching me from under her curls of long black hair. I heard a second shot and felt a second tearing pain in my shoulder. The crowbar fell to the ground alongside the torch, and I thought of Gina, smiling happily up at me as we walked in the park and listened to birds twittering. I lay on the cold ground, bleeding and in great pain, when three soldiers walked up to me. One of them, whom I recognized from the day before, stated, "The trains will run on time." He raised his rifle and I saw a sudden burst of flame.
I awoke. I did not know where I was. With some effort, I was able to regain my feet, though when I looked around I saw that I was in a twilit version of Hell, filled with gravestones and mausolea, and buildngs that looked to have been designed by the very minions of Lucifer Himself. Then I spotted someone standing next to me. He was dressed in archaic clothes in a German style relics of some time before mine. He held out his two hands, silent as the grave from which I had risen, to display two things. A church's ledger, showing that the date was March the fifteenth, in the Year of Our Lord Nineteen-Hundred and Forty-Two. In his other hand was a sheet of stationary from the Italian government, from the very desk of Il Duce himself. There were three names on it.
I scarcely remember anything from the time after that, and very soon I expect I shall descend into howling madness once again. Already my black-feathered wings, gifted to me by some angel or demon, begin to twitch. The three men will pay. I see Sophia's eyes in my mind, hear her voice in my ears, only now her voice has changed. Instead of bolstering my courage and my determination, now she wails for me, for she is lost. I hear the screams and benighted shrieks of our daughter, stolen away by some creature or monster and far away from me. I will not rest until I find them. Their screams and their eyes haunt me, those sky-blue eyes surrounded by rich dark hair. The only solace I will find is in the capture and annihilation of those three barbarians who stole the world from me, who took my life away. I do not know whether they are living or dead, but I do not care. Already a manic smile creases my lips against my teeth. I take a step and surrender my consciousness to howling rage.
The Revenge Virus
In the Doorless Room, on the Chinese table trimmed with dragons, there is a French pastry container, though there is no apparent pastry under its glass dome. The glass dates to the late 19th century from a high-class cafe patronized by some of the Impressionists, whose petty rivalries and frivolous actions provided some of the more amusing antics making up the Estate of Revenge. It sits on a circle of fine lace, which itself rests on a stately silver holder, its wide platter trimmed at the edges with austere renditions of thorny briars and brambles. I do not recall precisely where I obtained the lace, though I remember plucking the silver holder and the glass from the burnt wreckage of the cafe in 1944. Members of the resistance shot at a Nazi patrol from this building and the Nazis responded by levelling it with flamethrowers and a tank. It was no small miracle that the glass and silver survived intact.
Maybe it was the action taken by the Nazis, or the resonance of dozens of artists' petty bickerings, but the glass dome trapped something curious. I was aware of it when I stepped into the room one day, though I did not know what to make of it. I believe it was the year 1954. That year, a man in Washington D.C. attacked hundreds of others for being allied to the Russian Communists. My Estate spoke to me, saying that this man could easily become a pawn for the Excrucians if he was not stopped. His flagellation of others' good names, while not in itself a problem, was becoming so out of control that it threatened Revenge. Humans being the lowing herds they are, intimidating enough of them might quash the impulse for revenge in them. It occurred to me, as I reviewed the situation, that the United States military could crush the impulsive buffoon. I took the glass dome and silver platter with me when I went to Washington.
Unbeknownst to the humans in the city, I was watching the legal proceedings engulfing the spirit of the city's law system. I appreciate laws and legalities, at least of the human sort, as they encourage the practice of gleeful Revenge, as well as other enterprises. At sunrise one day, I removed the glass dome from the silver platter. I heard a burbling susurrus, then an ethereal cackle. It took a great deal of work, compared to my usual excursions, to determine what happened after that instant. The humans in the room began to whisper amongst themselves and hateful looks were cast at the Senator who had until then encouraged the crazed accusations flung about by all and sundry. I watched as the humans turned against this Senator, and Creation itself shifted its weight. I must note that it did so incrementally.
Nonetheless, the Senator who had encouraged the rampaging paranoia in the government and nation soon fell from power. The spirits of legalities and law worked against him and hundreds of reputations, wounded by his efforts, rose up against him. I even watched as one or two departed from Locus Balthiel in their final gesture of revenge in 1957, as the Senator lay dying from a drunkard's disease. Reputations revenged themselves on paranoia and accusations crumpled to dust or incapacitation under an iota of Creation's wrath. I have no illusions that what was released merely acted with a tiny amount of Creation's power, but then Creation is a nigh-unimaginably mighty force.
When I returned and set the glass dome on the table, the susurrus bubbled in the room and I saw a ghostly image cause the lines in the room to blur. A stately sheen was restored to the silver platter and it seemed to me that the thing from the dome had returned. Later study of the dome and its contents revealed that this was the Revenge Virus, one of the self-sustaining creations that Revenge made for itself. It is not a virus as the doctors of today know it, nor is it the wrath of God as the religious "doctors" of past centuries would call it. It is a virus that lives in the spoken word, the transmitted thought, the written tale of unrevenged wrong. It spreads itself with ridiculous ease to infect the minds of humans, spirits, and odder things besides.
In my library a day after the discovery, I found a book that I had not written. Though the pages were medieval European vellum, the cover bore an archaic Persian painting dating to the time of Alexander the Great and the ink, I sensed, was the lifeblood of a spirit representing a certain bend in the Thames River. This eclecticist patchwork related the history of the thing under the glass. It lived in the Tennessee backwoods once, promoting a feud among rural families, it dwelt in the words of rival ideologues during the French Revolution, and even the writings and speeches of ancient patriarchs who wrote the Catholic canon fifteen hundred years ago. I wonder why it reappeared now.
In the Doorless Room, on the Chinese table trimmed with dragons, there is a French pastry container, though there is no apparent pastry under its glass dome. The glass dates to the late 19th century from a high-class cafe patronized by some of the Impressionists, whose petty rivalries and frivolous actions provided some of the more amusing antics making up the Estate of Revenge. It sits on a circle of fine lace, which itself rests on a stately silver holder, its wide platter trimmed at the edges with austere renditions of thorny briars and brambles. I do not recall precisely where I obtained the lace, though I remember plucking the silver holder and the glass from the burnt wreckage of the cafe in 1944. Members of the resistance shot at a Nazi patrol from this building and the Nazis responded by levelling it with flamethrowers and a tank. It was no small miracle that the glass and silver survived intact.
Maybe it was the action taken by the Nazis, or the resonance of dozens of artists' petty bickerings, but the glass dome trapped something curious. I was aware of it when I stepped into the room one day, though I did not know what to make of it. I believe it was the year 1954. That year, a man in Washington D.C. attacked hundreds of others for being allied to the Russian Communists. My Estate spoke to me, saying that this man could easily become a pawn for the Excrucians if he was not stopped. His flagellation of others' good names, while not in itself a problem, was becoming so out of control that it threatened Revenge. Humans being the lowing herds they are, intimidating enough of them might quash the impulse for revenge in them. It occurred to me, as I reviewed the situation, that the United States military could crush the impulsive buffoon. I took the glass dome and silver platter with me when I went to Washington.
Unbeknownst to the humans in the city, I was watching the legal proceedings engulfing the spirit of the city's law system. I appreciate laws and legalities, at least of the human sort, as they encourage the practice of gleeful Revenge, as well as other enterprises. At sunrise one day, I removed the glass dome from the silver platter. I heard a burbling susurrus, then an ethereal cackle. It took a great deal of work, compared to my usual excursions, to determine what happened after that instant. The humans in the room began to whisper amongst themselves and hateful looks were cast at the Senator who had until then encouraged the crazed accusations flung about by all and sundry. I watched as the humans turned against this Senator, and Creation itself shifted its weight. I must note that it did so incrementally.
Nonetheless, the Senator who had encouraged the rampaging paranoia in the government and nation soon fell from power. The spirits of legalities and law worked against him and hundreds of reputations, wounded by his efforts, rose up against him. I even watched as one or two departed from Locus Balthiel in their final gesture of revenge in 1957, as the Senator lay dying from a drunkard's disease. Reputations revenged themselves on paranoia and accusations crumpled to dust or incapacitation under an iota of Creation's wrath. I have no illusions that what was released merely acted with a tiny amount of Creation's power, but then Creation is a nigh-unimaginably mighty force.
When I returned and set the glass dome on the table, the susurrus bubbled in the room and I saw a ghostly image cause the lines in the room to blur. A stately sheen was restored to the silver platter and it seemed to me that the thing from the dome had returned. Later study of the dome and its contents revealed that this was the Revenge Virus, one of the self-sustaining creations that Revenge made for itself. It is not a virus as the doctors of today know it, nor is it the wrath of God as the religious "doctors" of past centuries would call it. It is a virus that lives in the spoken word, the transmitted thought, the written tale of unrevenged wrong. It spreads itself with ridiculous ease to infect the minds of humans, spirits, and odder things besides.
In my library a day after the discovery, I found a book that I had not written. Though the pages were medieval European vellum, the cover bore an archaic Persian painting dating to the time of Alexander the Great and the ink, I sensed, was the lifeblood of a spirit representing a certain bend in the Thames River. This eclecticist patchwork related the history of the thing under the glass. It lived in the Tennessee backwoods once, promoting a feud among rural families, it dwelt in the words of rival ideologues during the French Revolution, and even the writings and speeches of ancient patriarchs who wrote the Catholic canon fifteen hundred years ago. I wonder why it reappeared now.
A Night in Moscow
I stand in front of what was, and in some places still is, known as Red Square. The Kremlin, villain supreme of American popular swill and subject of international vilification for decades. Not that it is entirely undeserved, either. These days this building is occupied openly by thugs, murderers, organized crime's pawns, and members of the old secret police. I see nothing wrong with this. It is refreshing, sometimes, to find a government that is freely and quite obviously corrupt. For one thing, it saves the juvenile minions of Hell having to make its subversion their personal business, and allows those of us with more refined agendas to pursue them in peace. Sometimes I tire reading or hearing of the imbeciles who trumpet their feats of corruption as though they were the heralds of the Light-Bringer Himself. To be fair, should one of His heralds actually make its presence known, I would allow for such behavior, though I doubt the herald would be so crass.
Walking the streets in January is refreshing; as I walk unhindered by the frigid winds, I hear the people whispering and muttering to each other, the shouts of men and the screams of women. The belches and the groans of the drunkards in the streets, which are more numerous these days as the oligarchs and Mafiya dominate the country. Increasingly the people bear the signs of too much vodka, which itself is often adulterated by Mafiya and others. It is like a tree of ripe olives in the Grecian sun; all one must do is gesture gently at the branch, and the fruit falls away into one's grasp. I hear the whispers in my head growing louder, then falling away again as whatever problem was present corrects itself. There is an orchestra, the Saint Petersburg Philharmonic, playing at a grand theatre tonight. It has been years since I heard the Saint Petersburg Philharmonic. As a matter of fact, I believe the last time I heard them was when I visited Vienna on a diplomatic journey from the King. It is an unusual excitement to determine that I will finally be able to see them with the eyes that were once shielded by mortal flesh. Though the orchestra will not be the only intriguing thing at the theatre.
His name is Akhmed, and he is taking a great risk by attending this theatre. After the gassing of the hostages and the violence following it, this theatre lay broken until repaired and altered by the city and its hired men. It is lined with thin layers of paint, cheap carpeting and supposedly gilded wood, which is in practice thin sheets of tin glued to a piece of wood and painted with reflective gold paint. However, this is entirely suitable tonight, as the winter wind shrills and screams outside, not entirely kept out by the cheap insulation and poor roofwork. No matter. Akhmed sits in the balcony overlooking the stage, perhaps here to hear Borodin's compositions on Central Asia. I dimly recall hearing of Borodin in the halls of my home, that he was a beacon of light in the dark expanse that was Russia in the last years of the Czarist rule. I spied some few remaining spirits related to the bloody demise of Nikolai II and his family on my way to the theatre. I must remember to ask them to return with me and dwell in my house. Perhaps I shall add a Russian hall.
His name is Pyotr, and his brothers were sent to the Caucasus. The Russian military, never a paragon of refined skill, uses its troops as though they were a hammer and Chechnya a steak in need of tenderizing. Mikhail and Boris returned in corpse bags, and their father was fortunate enough to receive news that his sons died in battle. Frequently there are no news given, and families are left to wonder about their fate of their offspring. From time to time I grant them visions of their children, and the number of brutal revenge murders in Russia rises. Pyotr saw Akhmed entering the theatre, having come from Moscow State University, and he made his plan. I listened to the plan itself, and saw that it was good.
I stood with one hand resting in the palm of the other behind my back at the corner of the balcony, looking down at the orchestra and listening. It was a fine performance, I must grant them that. Perhaps I will spare some few of the world's musicians, that they may hold out the golden leaves of Shangri-La and taunt the stinking masses below. Then again, as my own case proves, the finer things in life are only appreciated when that life has been burned away, so that one's senses were tempered in the fires of immortality, granted a new sheen and edge. I wonder what business the Power of Funerals is conducting these days; perhaps I should send a letter. I close even my tempered senses, and open the eyes granted to me with the higher flame of Creation, seeing thousands of ethereal spirits drifting together and slipping through the ears of the listeners, from time to time their cohesiveness slipping as they fall on tone-deaf ears. When I see them, they see me, and I whisper to them in archaic words, deliberately not entirely hiding my words from bestial ears. I notice a fat old man, pasty-skinned and bloated from too many bottles of vodka spiked with chemicals, abruptly sit up in his seat and look around and I notice that he heard me. Good. Perhaps Death will follow closely in my footsteps to remove his plague from this hall of refinement.
The orchestra played on while the howling wind outside grew louder, then faded out slowly as the music built. I have a slight suspicion that this was not coincidence, though it is of little consequence as the final notes veritably sing from the instruments of the orchestra. A hundred, at least, finely-dressed beasts stand and bow and for a moment I might almost have forgotten that they are beasts. Perhaps a higher order of beasts, the alphas among the lower wolves, or the kings among the lions. Still subordinate to the highest of all predators, but rulers in their own small way. A whisper in old Bavarian brings me back to reality. Pyotr is moving.
The red carpet attached to the lacquered-plywood steps is cheap, woven by desperate children in an effort to make some few rubles to feed their families. Pyotr, perhaps a child wronged, waits at the feet of these stairs. Akhmed travels among the ruck and run of Russians, though many who recognize his ethnicity give him wide berth. I hear whispers in Russian and I smile; even if Pyotr fails, there are a dozen men and women who will complete the act regardless. I still hear the final notes of Borodin's composition in my ear as Pyotr's pistol leaves its holster under his long coat. I raise my hands and imagine myself a conductor, drawing and sweeping in perfect time, timing the musical notes resounding in my head with the shots fired from the pistol. Akhmed blinks once and stumbles, his suit of fine Egyptian cotton and leather overcoat now holed and bloody. He utters a hissing curse in the Chechen tongue and collapses to the floor, amid screams from many unknowing Russians and quiet, grim smiles from those few who saw him before the shooting. Pyotr fires a final shot into Akhmed's face and flees the theatre, hiding his pistol and running with the crowd. I remain with the corpse for some moments after the theatre has mostly emptied, with a bare few still in the lobby lined with chemical paint and floored with cheap carpet. I see Akhmed's ghost struggling from his human shell and I press the ghost with a signet ring that I carry on just such occasions, leaving a mark on the back of his right hand. Before he can determine what has just happened, I slip through the walls of the theatre and back out onto the Moscow streets.
Passing the area where the fires began to thwart Napoleon, I gather a number of older spirits to follow me, in addition to those who already followed me from the theatre. I suppose I look quite the marshal, at the head of a column of spirits shuffling and bloody, refined yet brutal. I spend much of the rest of the evening walking the Moscow streets, the odor and cloying sentiments of humanity borne away on the frigid winds. Moscow, like those places in Russia I have visited recently, seems poised to be a stronghold in the near future, thus I must go elsewhere in the nation to determine what places I might want to attend next. Perhaps Vladivostok, whence I hear rumors of troubles with the Chinese, or Volgograd where the foolish imperials' dreams died in a tide of blood. Or maybe I might wander in Siberia to find Stalin's gulag, as sacred a place to me as Saint Peter's is to the Pontiff. Returning to the theatre, I see Akhmed standing over his broken corpse, anger clearly building in his soul. With but a few words of clarification, he refuses to listen to any more and stalks off in search of others and in search of Pyotr. I cannot help but smile, and I gather the spirits from the finest composition performed that evening. Sweet music will resound in the halls of my house.
I stand in front of what was, and in some places still is, known as Red Square. The Kremlin, villain supreme of American popular swill and subject of international vilification for decades. Not that it is entirely undeserved, either. These days this building is occupied openly by thugs, murderers, organized crime's pawns, and members of the old secret police. I see nothing wrong with this. It is refreshing, sometimes, to find a government that is freely and quite obviously corrupt. For one thing, it saves the juvenile minions of Hell having to make its subversion their personal business, and allows those of us with more refined agendas to pursue them in peace. Sometimes I tire reading or hearing of the imbeciles who trumpet their feats of corruption as though they were the heralds of the Light-Bringer Himself. To be fair, should one of His heralds actually make its presence known, I would allow for such behavior, though I doubt the herald would be so crass.
Walking the streets in January is refreshing; as I walk unhindered by the frigid winds, I hear the people whispering and muttering to each other, the shouts of men and the screams of women. The belches and the groans of the drunkards in the streets, which are more numerous these days as the oligarchs and Mafiya dominate the country. Increasingly the people bear the signs of too much vodka, which itself is often adulterated by Mafiya and others. It is like a tree of ripe olives in the Grecian sun; all one must do is gesture gently at the branch, and the fruit falls away into one's grasp. I hear the whispers in my head growing louder, then falling away again as whatever problem was present corrects itself. There is an orchestra, the Saint Petersburg Philharmonic, playing at a grand theatre tonight. It has been years since I heard the Saint Petersburg Philharmonic. As a matter of fact, I believe the last time I heard them was when I visited Vienna on a diplomatic journey from the King. It is an unusual excitement to determine that I will finally be able to see them with the eyes that were once shielded by mortal flesh. Though the orchestra will not be the only intriguing thing at the theatre.
His name is Akhmed, and he is taking a great risk by attending this theatre. After the gassing of the hostages and the violence following it, this theatre lay broken until repaired and altered by the city and its hired men. It is lined with thin layers of paint, cheap carpeting and supposedly gilded wood, which is in practice thin sheets of tin glued to a piece of wood and painted with reflective gold paint. However, this is entirely suitable tonight, as the winter wind shrills and screams outside, not entirely kept out by the cheap insulation and poor roofwork. No matter. Akhmed sits in the balcony overlooking the stage, perhaps here to hear Borodin's compositions on Central Asia. I dimly recall hearing of Borodin in the halls of my home, that he was a beacon of light in the dark expanse that was Russia in the last years of the Czarist rule. I spied some few remaining spirits related to the bloody demise of Nikolai II and his family on my way to the theatre. I must remember to ask them to return with me and dwell in my house. Perhaps I shall add a Russian hall.
His name is Pyotr, and his brothers were sent to the Caucasus. The Russian military, never a paragon of refined skill, uses its troops as though they were a hammer and Chechnya a steak in need of tenderizing. Mikhail and Boris returned in corpse bags, and their father was fortunate enough to receive news that his sons died in battle. Frequently there are no news given, and families are left to wonder about their fate of their offspring. From time to time I grant them visions of their children, and the number of brutal revenge murders in Russia rises. Pyotr saw Akhmed entering the theatre, having come from Moscow State University, and he made his plan. I listened to the plan itself, and saw that it was good.
I stood with one hand resting in the palm of the other behind my back at the corner of the balcony, looking down at the orchestra and listening. It was a fine performance, I must grant them that. Perhaps I will spare some few of the world's musicians, that they may hold out the golden leaves of Shangri-La and taunt the stinking masses below. Then again, as my own case proves, the finer things in life are only appreciated when that life has been burned away, so that one's senses were tempered in the fires of immortality, granted a new sheen and edge. I wonder what business the Power of Funerals is conducting these days; perhaps I should send a letter. I close even my tempered senses, and open the eyes granted to me with the higher flame of Creation, seeing thousands of ethereal spirits drifting together and slipping through the ears of the listeners, from time to time their cohesiveness slipping as they fall on tone-deaf ears. When I see them, they see me, and I whisper to them in archaic words, deliberately not entirely hiding my words from bestial ears. I notice a fat old man, pasty-skinned and bloated from too many bottles of vodka spiked with chemicals, abruptly sit up in his seat and look around and I notice that he heard me. Good. Perhaps Death will follow closely in my footsteps to remove his plague from this hall of refinement.
The orchestra played on while the howling wind outside grew louder, then faded out slowly as the music built. I have a slight suspicion that this was not coincidence, though it is of little consequence as the final notes veritably sing from the instruments of the orchestra. A hundred, at least, finely-dressed beasts stand and bow and for a moment I might almost have forgotten that they are beasts. Perhaps a higher order of beasts, the alphas among the lower wolves, or the kings among the lions. Still subordinate to the highest of all predators, but rulers in their own small way. A whisper in old Bavarian brings me back to reality. Pyotr is moving.
The red carpet attached to the lacquered-plywood steps is cheap, woven by desperate children in an effort to make some few rubles to feed their families. Pyotr, perhaps a child wronged, waits at the feet of these stairs. Akhmed travels among the ruck and run of Russians, though many who recognize his ethnicity give him wide berth. I hear whispers in Russian and I smile; even if Pyotr fails, there are a dozen men and women who will complete the act regardless. I still hear the final notes of Borodin's composition in my ear as Pyotr's pistol leaves its holster under his long coat. I raise my hands and imagine myself a conductor, drawing and sweeping in perfect time, timing the musical notes resounding in my head with the shots fired from the pistol. Akhmed blinks once and stumbles, his suit of fine Egyptian cotton and leather overcoat now holed and bloody. He utters a hissing curse in the Chechen tongue and collapses to the floor, amid screams from many unknowing Russians and quiet, grim smiles from those few who saw him before the shooting. Pyotr fires a final shot into Akhmed's face and flees the theatre, hiding his pistol and running with the crowd. I remain with the corpse for some moments after the theatre has mostly emptied, with a bare few still in the lobby lined with chemical paint and floored with cheap carpet. I see Akhmed's ghost struggling from his human shell and I press the ghost with a signet ring that I carry on just such occasions, leaving a mark on the back of his right hand. Before he can determine what has just happened, I slip through the walls of the theatre and back out onto the Moscow streets.
Passing the area where the fires began to thwart Napoleon, I gather a number of older spirits to follow me, in addition to those who already followed me from the theatre. I suppose I look quite the marshal, at the head of a column of spirits shuffling and bloody, refined yet brutal. I spend much of the rest of the evening walking the Moscow streets, the odor and cloying sentiments of humanity borne away on the frigid winds. Moscow, like those places in Russia I have visited recently, seems poised to be a stronghold in the near future, thus I must go elsewhere in the nation to determine what places I might want to attend next. Perhaps Vladivostok, whence I hear rumors of troubles with the Chinese, or Volgograd where the foolish imperials' dreams died in a tide of blood. Or maybe I might wander in Siberia to find Stalin's gulag, as sacred a place to me as Saint Peter's is to the Pontiff. Returning to the theatre, I see Akhmed standing over his broken corpse, anger clearly building in his soul. With but a few words of clarification, he refuses to listen to any more and stalks off in search of others and in search of Pyotr. I cannot help but smile, and I gather the spirits from the finest composition performed that evening. Sweet music will resound in the halls of my house.
A Plan for Tokyo
Much as the Angelic appears devoted to Japan's glossy, plastic exterior, I am devoted to Japan's stifled, noisome underbelly. There is an ethnicity in Japan known as the Ainu, persecuted by the Japanese. Because of the annoyingly loud connection between Japanese culture and American, I will bring over an American phenomenon to this apparently law-abiding country. The riot has served people well in Los Angeles and other places, and is easily brought to bear by the looming bugbear of ethnic hatred.
I expect that on the day of the eruption, there will be an outbreak of pro-Ainu violence by Japanese supporters. The Japanese police will retaliate against the "collaborators," and mobs will be roused to anger. For once, rage will run rampant in the streets as the public takes on the police, an all-too-infrequent occurence in these annoyingly orderly modern societies. I suppose that this will cease when the eruptions begin, but as always there are an opportunistic few who will continue with the violence, even when the police move out in force. Perhaps I might even arrange an incident by American Marines on leave from their bases in Tokyo. The white-slavers who stifle my Estate by their ironfisted control of their fleshly trade goods might get a knock on the door from some American military. As a matter of fact, that might be very entertaining indeed.
Much as the Angelic appears devoted to Japan's glossy, plastic exterior, I am devoted to Japan's stifled, noisome underbelly. There is an ethnicity in Japan known as the Ainu, persecuted by the Japanese. Because of the annoyingly loud connection between Japanese culture and American, I will bring over an American phenomenon to this apparently law-abiding country. The riot has served people well in Los Angeles and other places, and is easily brought to bear by the looming bugbear of ethnic hatred.
I expect that on the day of the eruption, there will be an outbreak of pro-Ainu violence by Japanese supporters. The Japanese police will retaliate against the "collaborators," and mobs will be roused to anger. For once, rage will run rampant in the streets as the public takes on the police, an all-too-infrequent occurence in these annoyingly orderly modern societies. I suppose that this will cease when the eruptions begin, but as always there are an opportunistic few who will continue with the violence, even when the police move out in force. Perhaps I might even arrange an incident by American Marines on leave from their bases in Tokyo. The white-slavers who stifle my Estate by their ironfisted control of their fleshly trade goods might get a knock on the door from some American military. As a matter of fact, that might be very entertaining indeed.
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