Journal of Miyara Kyosuke (85)
((Miyara, Pito, and Ashu grab the net as they fall;
Rabena flies with the power of the sogin roku. Ashu's part of the
net shreds and he falls again. He grabs again, and dangles with
both hands from the last rung of the net. Miyara's net also rips,
but she also grabs it again and hangs with one hand from the
bottom. Everyone else manages to grab on.
All start climbing back into the cave. This is
the village of F'thaktoi B'kah.))
I see Miyara hanging from the bottom of a net.
I glide down towards her. I practice hovering, but it's more of a
controlled fall. I'll have to use the power of the stone to
hover, not my wings. I make a couple of passes first so we can
both assess the situation. There is a handful of other people on
the net as well, but as I make one of the passes, I see a four-legged
man-sized snake, or perhaps a man with the head of a snake, rapidly
moving across the net headed for their cave. The whole group
seems to be alive. Rabena floats in the air outside the cave.
The beastman steps smoothly into the cave with
everyone else. He has arm and leg banding armor, with a sword at
his side and some wicked fangs which he shows menacingly. He
points out the window at me and says something. It looks like
there's probably a brief unpleasant conversation.
Then the beast turns to Rabena, stepping up to the
cave, and points to her. They too have a conversation. The
beast leaps to the net and slithers quickly away and down to the far
lowest side, entering a cave over there.
Once he's gone, Rabena goes into the cave.
The group shares this cave with a large number of
other cultists ((maybe 50)) standing around.
I come down to the cave and hover in front.
Miyara has been waiting for me, and Rabena has just landed. The
others are near the front too.
I address Miyara. I tell her about the flight,
the fight, and that I lost and failed, but since it's protected it miht
be vulnerable, and that I have been following the signal here.
Hosei points out that the hole might just be a hole to where demons
live and it might have been there by accident. It was trying to keep me
away from the hole, and it it was by accident, it would surely be loose
on the land. I ask if she knows where what I had with me might
be, and she says that they brought it here after it returned to them,
and that they had to hand it over because it is not allowed. They
had no particular interest, and she is sure she can recover them.
The other cultists have moved back. Lots of
stares at Baraku, and at the people conversing in Nipponese -- fearful
stares. The people are in various states of ill health and
disease, malnutrition, frostbite, fever, open sores. It
stinks. WIthin the cave near the entrance is an alcove piled with
human feces, with flies and maggors and rats, and smell.
"I have failed in my mission, and I am becoming a
creature of chaos. I must restore the honor of our family."
I take the dagger, plunge it into my abdomen, draw
it across, and stop flying. I fall, but an air elemental catches
me and starts to carry me up. I add a vertical stroke, and pass
out. I hope this will be the end.
((Rabena puts everything she has into it and heals
me, almost passing out from the effort. I am completely healed.))
I wake up looking into Rabena's eyes. I am
completely healed.
She says, "Please don't do that again, your mission
is not finished."
"Please don't do that again. You have no
concept of honor."
"You are not done. You cannot leave yet."
I sigh and shake my head.
Miyara tells me that she does not think it was a
large failure, just a small one. I am becoming a beastman,
however, and that is a problem. She says that we still have the
stone and can yet succeed, and that may solve the problem. If
not, Miyara will give me her wakasashi and we can go off somewhere
quiet away from the barbarians. I am satisfied with this. I
observe that the barbarians are so very cruel in their ignorance.
I look around. The others have backed away
even further, if that were possible.
A woman steps off the net, less smoothly than the
snakeman. She was clearly once a reasonably beautiful woman, but
time in this place has ruined her clothing and marred her skin.
She has lost all her teeth. Tall and with matted blond hair, and
with sickening facial lesions. She is still full figured and the
clothes cling to her emphasizing it.
She introduces herself as Adrianna. She
probably had a beautiful voice once, too. She looks around at the
group. She ignores those with beastman characteristics like me
and Baraku and Slurk, and ignores the obvious warriors like Goru and
Ashu. She speaks to the others in tones from motherly for Sun and
Rabena and Carimera, to alluring for Hosei and Pito, with slight
competitivness for Miyara. She is here to tell us some of the
rules of the place and how things are done so that they can more
quickly rise in the glory of Tzeench.
She pauses as if trying her best to explain
something to us, preparing to speak. She is very emotional about
it, beginning in a rapturous voice. Everything will die or
crumble or burn, tumors will grow, chaos mutations will occur, and
death will come. Every member has a rank. Sleeping
arrangement are awarded by rank. As new members, they are all of
hte lowest rank and sleep here. If they follow the rules are are
seen in the right light by the eyes of Tzeentch, they will rise quickly
in the cult through new ranks, and as they rise so their sleeping
quarters and privileges will improve. Life is hard, they struggle
to follow the wishes of Tzeentch in all things. The quickest way
to rise in rank are to follow immediately and without question the
rules.
The rules are: to obey the great Master Mauro
Malusalbus. To throw off false doctine for the teaching of hte
great master. To spend one's time in contemplation of these
teachings. To cast off love. To embrace change, including
the Great Change, death. to abandon material things. To
wait in ecstacy for the moment when all will be changed forever.
She looks around to make sure everyone heard.
She smiles alluringly at Hosei, and turns and leaves. She climbs
up the net.
Miyara translates for me what the woman had
said. She adds a thought -- we can by the power of the stone,
make things happen away from us that no-one would believe we are doing
and they might believe it is Tzeentch himself. In case we need to
sow confusion or kill anyone.
A young bow, one of the less sick ones, very
cautiously is trying to get around us and out of the door. Pito
steps aside to let him go. The boy scampers up the net.
I ask Miyara, if this is an appropriate time, if she
could tell me what happened and why we are here. She
explains. She adds that Slurk was not allowed in the
confessional, but was chased out and was in this cave when we got here.
Miyara asks Slurk for hte best way to talk to
Marusarabu as soon as possible. Slurk says to follow his
teachings, and to avoid being a threat while coming across as
interesting, he might ask to see us. But if he believes we are a
threat, he will never see us willingly. He says conspiratorially
that it is best to call him the Great Master here.
Yet another cultist tries to leave the cave.
He carefully walks around us, but I step in his way and stare him
down. He's a hobbit. He grins, and for a moment I have an
impending sense of doom, but then I realise he has no teeth. He
says "Hai".
"What are you doing?" I say in Nipponese.
Sun translates when the hobbit looks around for help.
The hobbit says he needs to report to Primo
Grigiovermi. Sun continutes translating.
"How do you know?"
He has to go see him every day at this time.
"What for?"
"To make sure my son is doing what he is supposed to
do."
"And what is that?"
The hobbit says something like, "He is recording the
words of Primo Grigiovermi's tumor." Sun stumbles the translation.
I step aside. "Very well, you may continue."
The hobbit says, "Thank you," and quickly goes out
of the cave.
Miyara goes to the cave mouth and watches where he
goes. The cave we are in is farthest to the right facing the
cliff wall. The cave he heads for is slightly to the left and
towards the top of the cliff. Miyara says in Nipponese, "I
suppose the first thing to try is to try to appear non-threatening, and
as devoted to the strange ideas this cult has as possible. If
that gets us nowhere we'll have to take a more direct approach."
She takes those who don't speak a proper language to the entrance and
whispers that quietly to them, while the rest of us keep the others
cowering.
We sit down and contemplate the glory that is
Tzeentch. People continue to come and go occasionally -- Miyara
in particular studies the movements and times. Occasionally
someone comes over with a handful of faeces and throws it on the
pile. The crowd that had been watching us with interest and fear
calm down a little.
Back in the crowd are other beastmen, and the crowd
seems to give them a little more space. The ones with more
obivous chaos mutations have the crowd part before them, in something
between fear and appreciation.
As time passes, some of the younger cultists come to
talk with Slurk. It's clear they know him, and don't fear him as
much as the others. They want to know where he's been.
Slurk says he's been helping these great avatars of.... and the vulture
head hisses and the finch and he says he's been guiding these acolytes
to join them here. He says we want help in the final destruction
of the world. They continue with small talk for a while.
After an hour or so, the snakeman returns and he has
another one with him. They are clearly here for Rabena. One
of them says she needs to go with them. She stands and looks
around desperately for someone to speak up, but she says "All right."
Ashu stands up. One of the snakemen turns to
him, waiting for Ashu to make the next move.
The other says, "Come" to Rabena, turns and walks to
the entrance with Rabena following.
Ashu moves to go too, but the one facing him steps
in his way. Ashu prepares to fight, but Miyara tells him to sit
down and wait, which Ashu does immediately.
The snakemen, one following and one leading Rabena,
go out onto the net. They take her to a cave close to the middle
of the netting.
((They have brought her to a man standing just
inside the cave. It's empty of other people except the four of
them. He introduces himself as Loic. As a devoted servant
of Tzeentch and the Great Master, he helps new acolytes to learn to
follow the rules.
He is a big man, wearing a very large suit of black
armor, engraving with many horrible symbols of chaos. He has a
horrible sickly green pallor to his skin. He looks down into
Rabena's face, and she can smell the stench of decay on his
breath. He says, "Magical healing is strictly forbidden. Do
you understand?"
"Yes," she says. Quietly she says, "Yes, I
understand."
He looks at one of the snakeman and says, "Two days
penitance."
One of the snakemen grabs her by the shoulder and
takes her to the net, escorting her somewhere else, mostly back in the
direction of the sleeping cave "The All Perceiving Eye." But it's
a different cave, a little smaller. This one is filled with cots
with a curtained off area towards the back. The cots are occupied
by people in various stages of dying. She is lead to the back of
this natural cave, which is full of beds maybe half of which are
occupied. The beds are sickening but better than the other
cave. The curtained off area she can't see into.
Rabena herself is lead to a very small cave in the
back with an iron grill. She is shoved into it since she doesn't
respond quickly enough, and is locked in. One of the snakemen
sits down on the ground, leaning against the wall looking across the
grill, while the other leaves.
She cannot stand up in here, but there is enough
room to sit. She settles down, closes her eyes, and
meditates. Of course she is meditating on Bianca, not Tzeentch,
but the guard can't know that.
From time to time she hears painful cries from those
on the beds. She prays to Bianca to take care of those poor
desperate people out there.))
Rabena's fate is unknown to us. After a while,
Miyara asks Slurk where they might have taken her -- she will be
unhappy if she has to avenge her death. Slurk is surprised, but
says that healing Miyara's cousin was a mistake, but he doesn't believe
they will ask her to make the Great Change right away. It's more
likely they will require some sort of penitence of her, and if she is
properly contrite, they will use her as necessary.
About 20 minutes after Rabena was taken ((five
minutes after Rabena's imprisonment)) there is a horrible screaming
noise -- someone is being killed very painfully, but clearly not
Rabena. It goes on for about a minute then begins to die off,
another minute to fade away. None of the other cultists even seem
to notice it.
Ashu meditates on every time he's used the sogin
roku to call down fire, and how it felt, and prepares himself to use it
in the near future here.
Another 45 minutes, and a bunch of boys from the
cultists come running towards the mouth of the cave. They have
rough yokes tied to their shoulders, and empty buckets on the
ends. They ignore us, and go scrambling across the net.
Ten minutes later they come struggling back with
buckets of probably gruel. They walk past us. The crowd has
moved forward and as the boys put the buckets down and dive out of the
way, there is a mad free-for-all as the cultists here try to get a
handful of the gruel into their mouth before being trampled or pushed
out of the way. The strongest get one or two handfuls, the
weakest none. The youngest lick the buckets clean. It's all
over in ten minutes, and the boys with the buckets merge back into the
crowd.