Weaponsmith - Chapter 48 (Patreon)

Hineni sighs, keeping his eyes closed as his body moves from side to side.

He already knows that he’s dreaming again. That his mind is some place where it ought not to be.

The man stops, or at least tries to. But he finds it hard to do. It’s as if his body were simply following a well-practiced series of motions that he had been following for so long, that stopping and standing still seems a stranger thing to do than to just keep dancing.

“What is this?” he asks, not opening his eyes. It sounds odd, but he’s sure that now that he has realized that this is a dream, that he will wake up, if he opens his eyes. Does it make sense? No. But in his dream-logic, it does.

Despite him still just standing there, his feet planted firmly onto the stones of the smooth floor, he can feel the other person still moving, holding onto him. “This has to stop,” says Hineni, pulling his hands free. “Leave us alone,” says the man, feeling something press its head against his chest. They smell like frogs and he’s sure that its her. The big frog.

 Hineni takes a step back, trying to push whatever is holding onto him off of himself. “I don’t know what happened anywhere else,” starts Hineni. “But you and your kind need to stay out of our lives,” he warns. “We’re not putting up with y-”

Something presses itself against his mouth. A finger, shushing him. The hand stays there for a moment, sliding down from his face together with three other fingers.

Having had enough already, Hineni opens his eyes.

“I’ll hurt you, if I have to,” says the man.

“Four,” she says, smiling. “Next time will be our fourth dance.” The woman tilts her head, her long black hair dangling, catching a ray of moonlight. “I’ll look forward to it. Hineni,” she says, smiling.

_______________________________________________________

Hineni sits upright in bed, but this time not in a quick jostle. Instead, he quietly exhales and looks around the room. Everything is as it ought to be.

The man rubs his face and bends down, planting a kiss on the side of Obscura’s head before he gets up. She lets out a series of excited clicks and hisses, but doesn’t seem to have woken up, instead, balling herself into the blankets more.

‘Cute…’ flows through his head, the echoes of what Sockel had said this afternoon.

The man rubs his face, getting up and slipping on some clothes before walking out of the room. He needs some air.

It’s not unheard of for gods to speak to people and to visit them in their dreams. Hell, Obscura had literally given him his weaponsmithing sub-class in a dream, back when they first met.

But why is the big-frog calling on him in his sleep?

The man walks out into the hallway, looking at the many rooms of the guild, all of them full. That makes him happy. The beds are full and used, the guild, while not close to being fully functional, is starting off well. He has a family of sorts, he’s engaged. By all objective standards, he has to be happy.

And he is. In general.

But right now, for some reason, he isn’t. Hineni stands there in the long corridor, looking at the streaks of moonlight which shine in through the upstairs windows as he wonders what this familiar feeling is and where it’s from?

The man shakes his head.

The ‘big-frog’ dreams are messing with him. He looks at the door to their bedroom for a moment, before heading downstairs into the restaurant area as he wanders around his own home, like a lost spirit at night.

Hineni grabs his boots and his coat, puts on his scarf and his wizard’s hat and he goes outside, grabbing his axe and slinging it over his shoulder.

For old time’s sake, he’s going to take a walk. There’s something he needs to see, something that he needs to do.

He thinks he understands it now, why he feels a little glum, so late at night. It’s because that person, that man who he used to be, the one who he had gotten quite some distance over, it’s because he’s finally caught up to him.

Hineni grabs the front door of the house, opening it.

Standing on the other side is a woman, dressed in a white robe. The night air blowing the strands of her hair to the side, she stands there, her hand outstretched for him to take, as if she had never left since those many days ago.

“I’m not holding your hand,” says Hineni to the priestess of the death god. In a way, he had expected her to be here, waiting on him. He has an appointment, after all. After Avarice, he supposes it’s best to at least hear out what the important gods have to say. The other ones, not so much. Like that weirdo from the lake-god. “Also. I want to take the axe,” he says, lifting his shoulder. “Need some wood,” he lies.

She nods.

Hineni steps outside, closing the door behind himself and jiggling it to be sure. By the time that he looks back towards her, she’s gone already. But that’s fine. He knows which way to go.

The man follows the street. What the god of death wants from him is as much of a mystery as what the frog-god wants from him. He sure is popular these days and it’s kind of exhausting, honestly.

He stops, staring at the ground for a second, staring at his shadow, projected there from a light coming out of an upstairs window. No. That’s not a good thing to think and it’s not true either. He’s exhausted, sure. But not because of the people all around him. It’s because he’s been thrust into a new environment. So much has changed in his home, in his life, in himself and he’s barely been able to keep up. It’s been a marathon.

Hineni lifts his gaze, looking at the woman standing down at the very end of the street, waiting for him.

He has to be careful. Just because that man from his past has caught up with him, doesn’t mean that he’s going to let him call the shots again.

“The god of death, huh?” he mutters to himself, vanishing into the night.

How bad could it be?

______________________________________________________

The hairs on Hineni’s neck stand on end as somber singing fills the hall as the deep throes of a single man’s voice echo around the massive stone corridors of the temple, as the unseen person leads a chant, while a chorus behind him continues on, acting as his low-toned back-up. The ceiling of the temple is up so high that Hineni is sure he could fit his house just into this single corridor two or three times, stacked on top of itself. Gods sure do love their big, ornate structures. Honestly, he hopes Obscura doesn’t get any ideas. He really likes their house as it is. It’s… cozy.

Arching his neck backwards and trying to focus on the ornate cupulas above him almost makes him dizzy.

In comparison with the building itself, he feels absolutely minuscule. But perhaps that is the point of the crushingly oppressive atmosphere. He walks on after the robed woman, leading him down the corridor, through a maze of gigantic, ornately carved, stone pillars made out of a dark, gray basalt rock until they reach the end of the hallway, where a heavy, massive door sits embedded into the wall. Each great hinge is as large as himself, each door, ornately hewn as if by hand, the size of a three story house.

Hineni lets out a breath that he has been holding in for too long as he stares at it, glad to have reached the end, but nervous about what lies beyond.

A god. A real god. Not some obscure, deistic entity, but a real, flesh and bone god who was there when the world was made.

Every last hair that he has continues to stand on end. It isn’t that there is an electricity in the air, rather, there is an overpowering, crushing sensation of a presence. A cold presence. Like the breath of a ghost down a nape at midnight, it floats through the door and reaches him, touches him and Hineni almost finds himself thinking about stepping back to get away from it.

His eyes wander around the looming, dark gray rock which makes up the entire cathedral, despite the bright moonlight outside, not a single ray of it makes it inside. The large, ornately decorative windows seem to act as barriers themselves, rather than points of entry for such things. This is a cold place, an empty place -

The large doors creak as they begin to open wide, slowly, inevitably, the maw of a great beast ready to consume him.

- A deathly place.

Hineni then lets out another breath and stands up straight, adjusting his scarf and hat as he looks out past the rim of the thing towards the priestess at his side. The woman beckons for him to walk inside, but does not seem to be willing to do so herself. Not out of fear, it simply isn’t her place.

…Yet.

Hineni looks back ahead of himself and into the room, the chamber. But he doesn’t see a room, he just sees fog. A vague, nebulously pale and cold fog looms in the space, hiding anything that might be visible from sight. It feels…

He shudders and steps inside.

It feels cold.

Slowly, the doors close behind him. Hineni finds himself alone.

He exhales again, watching the vapors leave his mouth and drift through his scarf, floating away to intermingle with the rest of the fog. He watches it depart from himself and fade away, like the soul of a dying man, floating to mix in with the waters of the river of the dead.

“…Hineni…” whispers a quiet, sharp, feminine voice to his side. Hineni shoots a quick glance that way. But there is nobody there. His heart beats in his chest, loudly, strongly as his hand lifts itself up to reach for the fog.

That voice. He recognizes that voice. Even if it was just a whisper, just a word, just a single second. He knows it.

A silhouette forms itself out of the fog. It takes the shape of a human woman made up entirely out of mist. At least her flesh is and Hineni stares through her, towards the many thousands of faces that begin to form in the shadows of the mist.

A rattling sound comes from the darkness and in horror, Hineni lifts his boot as a bone flies free from where he was standing. Dozens, hundreds of bones roll from all around the room, collecting together into a misshapen entity with too many arms, too many legs, but the fog still surrounds the wrong-skeleton in the form of a woman. A woman who holds her arms out towards him, beckoning him to come closer.

“Hineni…” whispers the thing, reaching for his outstretched hand. A soft wind blows and tousles his hair, his scarf moving. An old feather flies out and he catches it. His eyes open wide and he lowers his hand and his head.

He exhales a second breath, letting out the odd feeling that he had welling inside of himself.

“Hineni…”

“You’re dead,” he says, lowering the brim of his hat and turning his head away. “I killed you,” he says, clenching his fist so tightly shut that he can hear the strain of his leather gloves. One.

Hineni stops in his tracks, looking back at the shadow that begins to retreat into the mass of fog. He finds it… hard to do. But he doesn’t lower his gaze again.

“I’m doing well,” he says, nodding to the fog. “I’m engaged now, you know?” he explains, rubbing his head awkwardly, showing her the feather. Two.

The bones fall apart, the faces vanishes and then, so does Hineni, stepping forward further into the chamber. “Go back to sleep. I’ll catch up with you when I’m done, okay?” he asks. “Sorry…” he apologizes, watching as the last of the foggy entity clutches its hands together in a doting manner, shaking its head, before dissipating back into nothingness. There is an overpowering smell of water-lilies.

Three.

The last bone strikes the ground at the same time that something dewy falls from his face. Hineni turns back forward and keeps walking. Must just be the condensation of the fog on his skin.

“Child,” calls a new whispering voice from ahead of himself. A man’s. “Child of mine,” it calls.

Hineni narrows his eyes, his piercing gaze fixated on the floor and stops in his tracks, looking up towards what he sees. He has reached the end of his path. The room is separated by a thick, unnaturally straight wall of fog. It’s like a translucent curtain, like a veil.

Ahead of himself, he sees only the silhouette of a man, sitting on the silhouette of an ornate platform. His body is slumped over sideways, as if he were the corpse of a king, fallen over a forgotten throne. His bony, cloth-laden limbs do not move, his wispy colorless hair doesn’t sway, his fingers don’t twitch and yet, Hineni hears his voice.

Clenching his fists together, he lifts his eyes to the most fearful entity that he has ever witnessed.

“What do you want? I’m not yours yet,” says Hineni. “I’m sick of you people bothering me at home.”

The whispering voice laughs a quiet, hacking laugh as it begins to cough. But all the while, there is not a single bit of movement from the body.

“Ash…” replies the god. “Ash,” he says again. “Ash. You are mine in half. I claim you.”

Hineni steps forward. However, despite taking a step closer to the throne, to the man, he finds himself standing at the exact same spot, as if he hadn’t moved an inch. “I deny your claim,” states Hineni. The fog begins to swirl. “I am the owl-god’s. You’re too late.”

“And yet, here you are,” whispers the voice. “Child.”

“I’m already spoken for,” repeats Hineni, lifting his arm to display his feather to the entity. “I’m engaged.”

The entity continues to laugh, hacking its lungs out as it does so. “You waste your life for a pittance,” it says. “You would be much better served to give it to me.”

“What does something like you want with my life?” asks Hineni.

The fog begins to creep towards and around his feet, as if it were the rising water of a coming tide. “You have gotten bolder, since we last met,” says the thing on the forgotten throne. “Do you not fear me anymore?”

Hineni lets out a deep breath. “Weren’t you listening?” he asks. “I said I was getting married,” states the man. “I’m not afraid of something like you anymore.” Now. This isn’t true, of course. But he thinks that it was a good line. He wishes Rhine was here to have heard it. He thinks the boy would have been impressed by that line.

 Laughter breaks out in the fog as the voice from the throne hacks out another joviality.

“Teetering,” it whispers into his ear, as if it were standing right next to him. “For ten years, you were teetering,” it says, floating around him from side to side. But Hineni doesn’t look towards its source, as he knows that the thing is just trying to unnerve him. He stares up at the body, his eyes locked on to its eyes, which somehow seem to be staring his way, despite never having moved an inch. “When you were a boy, I almost had you,” it says. “When you grew from there, I almost had you,” it whispers. “You were teetering on the edge of the void for so long and then…” it whispers and he feels something touch his back. But he doesn’t look. “You became a man and I almost had you. A few more weeks…” it hisses. “A few more months and you would have broken. I would have finally had you.”

“I’m here now,” says Hineni, gesturing to the space around them. “What do you want?”

The fog pulls away from him, drifting up and away, back towards the throne and the corpse.

“Weaponsmith Hineni,” says the spirit of death. “Chosen of the owl-god,” it adds on with an almost mocking hiss to its voice. “We come unto an age of death,” it whispers, almost gleefully now, as if the tension in its voice, the venom in its spirit, had all vanished at this fantastic news.

“What?” asks Hineni. “People die all the time,” he says, shrugging. “What does this have to do with me?”

“It has everything to do with you… ash… ash…” it whispers. “Ash… Weaponsmith Hineni, chosen of the owl-god.” Hineni narrows his eyes. Gods do like to be obscure and obtuse, don’t they? “War,” it says. “War, Hineni.”

“Huh?”

“For us, weaponsmith Hineni, it is the greatest season of the decade,” says the god. However, despite the morbid joy in its voice, the body still hasn’t moved a single inch. “The south is breaking free. This will not be allowed,” it speaks. “Generations will die. Ash will paint the land. Ash will paint the skies,” it says, its voice becoming higher and higher in pitch. “And there will be so many… so very many bones,” says the god of death, ending with a cackling, hacking laugh.

“War?” asks Hineni. “With the south? I haven’t heard anything about that.” The fog begins to condense, obscuring the silhouette on the throne once more by the second. “Wait!” calls Hineni, looking at the vanishing figure. “What was this about? What do you want?”

“I want you to make weapons, weaponsmith Hineni, chosen of the owl-god,” whispers his mother’s voice into his ear. “Our season of harvest has come, child of mine.”

And with that, the voice vanishes, leaving Hineni standing in a fog that feels slightly less present than before. Looking around at the empty room that he finds himself in, the man turns around and leaves.

The man stares for a moment, sighing. “Next time, send a letter, okay?” he tells the room.

Why are gods always so dramatic?

The man hoists his axe back over his shoulder. Forget the wood. It’s time to go home.