Sobering Remarks...

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“The Great Church condemned me for alleged heresy for what I am about to tell you.” Symond withdrew into himself and sat back down on a large floor pillow near the fire pit. His ugly face showed the concern and remorse that the crowd had expected. Milo continued to strum on the guitar that was twice his size. To this day I don’t think I have ever come across a true master with the skill that the halfling displayed when he was performing with his partner,.

“It wasn’t a snap of His fingers,” Symond’s fingers came together in a sharp report that surprised everyone, “and the breathing of His name that created the Nameless One and all of us.” Symond’s eyes grew sharper, taking on an edge of what must be the latent troll lineage that I had seen in him before. Despite his performance, I could see the hurt and belief on his face. The past was etched in the slight tremor of his left eye. What he was about to say was the truth.

The warm euphoric feeling I had from Benak’s sour brew faded immediately. Others were just enjoying the show that the two master bards were putting on for the crowd in the Blue Monkey. I was here for research. I had heard of Symond’s story of the beginning, of the Word, of the creation of the Lords of Heaven and the casting out of the Schacté and the fall of Kador. This is what I had come for.

“It was the power of silence and darkness that had reigned within our universe for countless epochs before the Nameless One finally uttered the Word.” Symond licked his lips and motioned for a drink. An oversized wooden cup was handed to him from the crowd and Symond drank deeply from it before handing it back. “It wasn’t the silence of a forest when a great beast is hunting you. It wasn’t that. It wasn’t the silence of an empty church pew in the deep of night when you’re praying to the Lords of Heaven for some semblance of grace. It wasn’t that at all.”

“It was the silence of the universe that had not discovered the thought, the idea, or the very concept of sound. It was devoid of sound and the twitterings of insects such as you or I. Sound had not yet been born, it had not even been conceived!” Symond bellowed to the crowd.

“The darkness was not that of a dank cave when you’re tindertwigs have run their course. It wasn’t the darkness one dreams of when you have finished your business of the world and have gone to be judged by Maal within his bleak halls, it isn’t even the black deep dark that winds its way through our greatest of Grandmothers of all, Rontra.” Symond paused and lowered his head and whispered very loudly and reverently.

“Let not my blood be washed away. Let not be my life forgotten.”

The crowd echoed his prayer to Maal, the Firstborn and the King of Souls. A slight shiver passed through me as I heard the ending of the Entreaty. I knew then that Symond’s words were the truth and that he had been truly punished for them. The sour taste in my mouth seemed to be enhanced as Symond uttered those sacred words. He was deadly serious.

“It wasn’t as simple as the Great Church would have you believe in the legends and tales that the Deacon’s pass down through their Clergy and Paladins. No. There was a war of creation and destruction.” Symond smiled as best he could with the features he had been given. His underbite was more accentuated as he grinned. It showed off more of his troll lineage as his teeth seemed to protrude from his jaw and gnash against his upper lip.

“For countless years the Schacté ripped at the darkness and silence. It roared into the great void of nothingness and ruptured into the black. It cascaded and burgeoned. The Schacté pushed up against the obscurity that was and created the illumination that led to a great coagulation of energies and a convergence of power. The universe itself was being ripped apart as the Schacté malformed the black void.”

“Great tethers of magnificent energy were thrown throughout the newly illuminated reality that was to become the Nameless One. The far-reaching tendrils of divine power took years upon years to begin to form out of the maelstrom that once was silent. It took unknown epochs of time for the Nameless One to be created.” Symond was nearly whispering now, making sure that he made eye contact with nearly everyone in the room.

His sharp eyes drew me in somehow. They were yellow around the edges with crow’s feet that seemed to hint at his age. Between the sour beer in my belly, the freckled serving angel in blue, the crowd and the bards telling me about a new idea of creation, I found that my attention was too fractured to take it all in. Symond’s powerful eyes drew me in. He seized my attention like one of the Naraneth pulling on the iron collar of a disobedient slave.

I took in his story. The Great Church did not condone such blasphemous words that Symond was spilling out for the crowd. Milo kept in time with Symond. The tunes were mellow when they needed to be, drawing the crowd into Symond’s story and hit a crescendo just as Symond was building up his pitch and volume to match the incredible story.

Sparks and embers rose quickly from the fire pit as the door to the outside opened. Symond’s gaze instantly changed, breaking the spell he seemed to have had on me. The fearsome visage inherited from his troll ancestor could not be hidden through the eloquence of his words or the charisma he carried, which was stunningly hideous but very powerful, any longer.

Three cloaked figures came in quickly.

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