[Fiction] Strings Over Dark

Some people may have seen this when I posted it at RoE, but since it got axed with the last forum upgrade I figure I might as well repost it. This is one of my better planescape short pieces.

Strings over Dark

And whomsoever shall devote themselves to unending toil, they who bind their souls with oaths of commitment, let them never break those oaths, or give themselves to the judgment of the damned. The oath self-taken is the most sacred of all- Imagenether, Chapter IV, Verse II

So it is written, so it shall be. The sacred words slipped like beams of quiet starlight back into Zircon’s mind as he pulled his sword free from one newly dead. The words always found their way back to him; from the distant banishment he had given them, at these times. Times of death. Times of murder. Times of Justice.

And Zircon believes, the thoughts riven into these moments like bleeding gashes. Oaths broken, that brings us to this pass, our oaths, and the Lady’s.

Those thoughts, heretical and strange thoughts in a way, yet also unsurprising, The Lady of Pain is always blamed, and perhaps, in Zircon’s case she might even deserve some of it.

Racing through his mind for what was now a hundreds removed repetition, the sacred words and banal blame did not distract Zircon from his work. He kicked the tiefling’s still twitching corpse to the ground, pulling his sword from the malformed bones of a fiend tinged ribcage, and wiped similarly tainted blood on the dead one’s clothes. That taken care of Zircon sheathed the sharp straight sword in a loop of beaten leather, leaving the blade free to the air, and walked away. The body was left to lie in muddy gutters on the streets of hopeless.

Zircon felt no regret to the dead as he walked off. He had murdered the tiefling in cold blood, plain sight of day in the middle of Hopeless. The kill, for all its violence, had been quick and mechanical; so the citizens had not managed to rouse themselves from their apathy long enough to do anything about it. That lack of purpose was not something Zircon shared with the city. He cared nothing for what he had become, what others would call the worst of all criminals. In his mind’s mirror his own soul was pure, untainted. I follow the instructions of the Holy Writ, that those who break self bound oaths should be cast loose, bonds with the fleshy reality cut away, to face the judgment and ceaseless nether that awaited them. Zircon did not believe this; he knew it absolutely. Also, that a crime committed in service of justice is not a crime.

He was then, Zircon, a Mercykiller.

All life ends. Even death ends. Only the nether is ceaseless. Failure in the end judgmen, when an existence has passed to the borders of the nether, can drop one into that ceaelessness. Otherwise, reality enfolds again. –Imagenether Chapter II, Verse VIII

“How long has it been?” The answer, and also the question, was known long before the words were formed, even before the watery ales were ordered. They had been known since Zircon had chosen the same tavern as always to have a drink in. Keckeck had known all these things, but still he asked the stale question. It was formula, a thing that kept things stable between him and Zircon, kept blood still inside cold veins.

“Long enough to give a pause to the service of Justice.” That was the answer, the stony and rocky answer from Zircon’s voice, the one always given. The words call more words into Zircon’s mind, years worth of memories contained in these words, a single scripted conversation repeated on the un-ended tableau of their linked lives.

Unchanging, that formula, a balm over the raw wound in Keckeck’s life, Zircon. The past bleeds from one man to the other at each meeting, the meetings wastrel intervals from one passage to another. Each one an identical connection to a pat Keckeck had expunged.

Zircon remembered.

“You killed another.” Keckeck said, keeping to his scripted lines, voice a cold whisper, slithering through the stale rotten air of Sigil’s Lower Ward. That air, like those meetings, never changed. Keckeck was used to it, his lungs, not quite human lungs, passed that air well enough. He lived, not slowly died like the humans under that foul gas that the Lady had inflicted upon her parasitic residents.

Fumigating them, Zircon had called it long ago, knowing no care for it. The air did not harm him any more than it grated upon Keckeck, indeed it did not damage him at all. His lungs were rather more firm and solid than smog dared ravage.

Ignored, the air grew angry. Sigil was not ignored, and yet it was. Pay attention to it and it might be more pleasant, Zircon though, as he always thought. Yet more important things than pleasantries bring us to this wrecked place called a city. “I sent one more into the nether, yes.” Words, ritualized, a man sacrificed. All the eulogy one whom Zircon had spitted would ever receive.

“You should not call it that.” Keckeck blustered, knowing the repetition, the futility, but saying the empty platitude anyway, though there was no more reason. No reason at all. “The Nethergaze does not call for this.”

“It does yet, it does.” Zircon believed the words, he did not say them to reaffirm his belief, but because he had said them long ago. Those words, they were Zircon, in a way. He was a servant of the Nethergaze, and thus was his service.

He is a Mercykiller, Keckeck thought. This was just as much truth as what Zircon thought of himself. Both entities overlapped inside the essence that was Zircon, both forged by his upbringing.

Mineral Genasi, parents unknown, raised by the Corunether Sapphire Dragon on the Quasielemental Plane of Mineral as a warrior and a Nethergaze cultist. Joined the Mercykillers on his third visit to Sigil. Began current path upon conclusion of Sigil’s “Faction War.” These were the facts of Zircon’s existence, ticking themselves off, isolated particles in Keckeck’s mind.

“So you will find another then, and another, killing and killing until all who fled your faction are gone. Will it end, or do you give yourself to the nether along with them?” Keckeck asked this question, knowing its answer as well, hating that answer from the cold core of his own being.

“You know, you know already, my teacher, my wyrmkin master. Should I give in, then I betray my oath and the nether has me, should I let them drag me down, the nether has me. I can only kill and kill until justice’s weeping is assuaged and I gaze clear into the nether once more.” Always the same mortal speech, always. Brutal words, to guide Zircon on his chosen course, and to keep Keckeck silent.

Older than Zircon, and this argument itself aged, Keckeck fell silent. He was wyrmkin, a Nethergaze cultist. He knew the unforgiving ways of that dragon created faith. Wyrmkin, dragon blood flowed in his veins, a taint detectable, setting him apart from humanity, though most would never know it.

As the ritual drinking continued Zircon silently ordering the second watery ales, Keckeck thought on his pupil. Corunether to his boned, the strange machinations of the Sapphire scaled dragon in them both, following the words of Imagenether, dragon prophet, as Nethergazers.

Strange faith, oblivion a world, a reality of its own, willful and terrible. Nether come to take everything but those that dared gaze into it. Mercykiller Zircon, taking holy words and melding them to eight tenets of Justice, creating a conglomerate being, with a conglomerate mission. Nether born, it must be, in cold iciness, Zircon.

Time twisted, Sigil anomaly among the Nether, ruled by, one with, ignored of: Lady of Pain.

War, Mercykillers lost, crumbled, two pieces born from rubble. New names, yet old, Sodkillers, Sons of Mercy.

Traitors all, broke tenants sworn to be upheld. Zircon recalled his endless mission with razor clarity. They must be given to the nether they have wrought.

Two deep glasses drained, the broken clock gives four of its intermittent ticks. Keckeck speaks, voice heavy with the distortions of his draconic blood. “So, who is next?”

“You know.” Answer, as always.

Nethergazer trick, to pull something from nothing, names, races, places. Mimic the reaching, copy the pupil’s already completed delving.

Speak the words, as they swim black across the white background of the mind. “Jarlay Scrollwork, Son of Mercy, half-silver dragon, Excelsior.” Keckeck slid the words beneath the alehouse’s undertone of conversation.

Zircon knew them already, did not listen.

A pause.

Mind snags a trio of words from the dark.

Deviation.

Half-silver dragon.

Bell tones resonate up from morassy nothing, nether calls. Keckeck gazes.

The future spreads, wide limits of possibility diverge, where before had only been two. Perhaps, perhaps, a chance for a pupil’s redemption? Escape the nether called down by the flicker of the Lady’s gaze. A chance.

Keckeck blinks, the script crumples.

Zircon feels the change.

“I think this time I’ll come with you.” Keckeck says with certainty.

Shock spreads across the black, brown, and clear jagged skin of the genasi face. No further reaction.

Fate stretches over the nether, a tight-rope.

Walk it, no choices. “Yes, if you wish it master.” Old scripted answer, new, unscripted, meaning.

Gazing as a human gazes, on only one thing, one way, one level at a time, the nether cannot be scene or encompassed. To gaze fully, through and about all that abuts reality. This if life. The measure of the gaze is al that awaits beyond. –Imagenether, Chapter II, Verse IX

Excelsior, open wide gate of righteousness and valor, fortitude strong, unassailable upon the banks of self-appointed virtue all, upon the far bank of a silver sea only one step and one endless gulf away.

Waters of emotion wash over Zircon, and sink into the sinkhole that is his mind. His battered armor proves him one of baser concerns than the wastrel of purity that stalk the streets, Excelsiors paladins. Their armor shines, but with a hollow touch, they are yet untested here. Their honor is unimpressive in its safety.

The mineral coating that serves Zircon for skin is a rough and crude thing, not like these polished ones. Yet, were he polished in that way he would gleam like the mineral that gives him his name. An imitator of diamond.

Yet he does not. He is a Mercykiller, even if the Mercykillers are gone. Only the instrument of justice at his side, his naked sword, shines.

Ever does it shine! The blade is sharpened to a razor’s edge, and the metal clearer than a mirror. It is out of place on such a battered man, and yet it is not.

Wise ones in Excelsior avoid Zircon, and the crumpled man of sharp features who walks beside him. That sword is the weapon of one who kills. The crystalline pits of Zircon’s eyes are unreadable, but the enforced coldness to Keckeck’s manner beside him reveals that truth.

This pair is not one to unwarrantedly oppose.

Crystal eyes shift on Zircon’s face and holy words run through his head. He is in two places now, one half of him searching for a being to question, the other lost gazing into the nether. He is hunting.

Keckeck watches. Excelsior in one eyes, and Zircon in the other. Ridges of bone jut about his own eyes, a sign f the dragon blood he carries. Others do not notice it; it is too subtle, this draconic tinge, not like the blatant markings of Zircon’s mineral heritage. A wyrmkin slips unnoticed into the human stream.

For all the uneasiness they cause, the twinges of danger and darkness the paladins feel from them, no one stops the pair. No one even speaks to them, or has their presence stick in their mind. Nether washes over the two gazers, and they are not firmly anchored in reality in this moment, a gift from their dragon master.

None will notice them until they breach the nether bonds by altering this moment.

Zircon’s head moves, the internal stream of holy words comes to an end. Justice slides formost into his mind.

Keckeck sees this, he follows the crystalline gaze.

A young woman in shining armor has been pinned under those crystal lenses.

She cannot be more than twenty, and she wears the Sons of Mercy symbol on her tabard.

Zircon remarks this, as does Keckeck.

The wyrmkin notices that she is completely human.

Rock-skinned arm pushes the robed Keckeck solidly aside. “Mine to deal with this.” Zircon says levelly.

Keckeck stands aside.

The young woman stares as at the grim look on Zircon’s face as he approaches. Her hand reaches toward a scabbarded sword, but then she thinks better of it.

“Girl.” Zircon speaks, unwilling to call anyone a Son of Mercy, which would mean they must die. This girl is too young to be one of the oath breakers. “Jarlay Scrollwork. Where?”

His speech is bone-breaking, a cruching voice to beat down others. He stands poised and solid, ready to break those who fail to answer.

The girl crumples beneath his demand, such a simple request really. She is not ready yet to not answer, doesn’t understand that she could. Zircon is a pain-faced killer, but he does not want to kill her.

The girl cannot tell this, Keckeck, watching silently, can. You cut into the tight rope you walk with your own sword, my pupil. Yet he does nothing.

“On watch in the Square of Restoration, the Spireward side.” The girl says, in no little fear.

Zircon turns on his heel, a motion of smart military manner, old training of sapphire dragon and mercykillers never forgotten.

The girl son of mercy is dumbstruck by the sudden termination of the encounter.

Keckeck hurriedly jogs to Zircon’s side. There he resumes his silent vigil.

Zircon does not bother to acknowledge him.

For one who falls into the Nether there is nothing. All is lost and gone as they are taken and coated by the things that claim them. Yet, it is difficult to fall such, the nether lies beyond all, and detachment from all things is not easily achieved, nor easily judged. –Imagenether, Chapter V, Verse II

The gaze of Zircon falls upon Jarlay Scrollwork like a blade upon the neck. The half-dragon, tall and tin with silver skin, a inhuman frill amid his hair, and other signs of piercing inhumanity, stands quiet watch on the cobbles of the Square of Restoration. He is unaware of what is coming.

Zircon’s first impulse is to simple walk up and plunge his sword into the paladin-dressed Son of Mercy. The mineral genasi quells that swiftly. It would be justice, but it would be certain death. This is not Hopeless, eyes do not self-blind in this place, at least not to such baleful wrongs. They were of course blind to the oath breaking, the foreswearing of bonds that took this Son of Mercy. Abandonment of those tenets though, was not a crime recognized in Excelsior.

A lack of understanding there, it suffuses this place, Zircon thought. Gaze into the nether fools! See the truth of reality!
“Keckeck,” Zircon speaks, jolting his companion out of examination of the half-dragon. “Find a way to bring that oath-breaker into the alley we passed moments before. From there I will deal with it.”

“Why should I?” Keckeck asked testily. “I am not party to your mission.”

“You came with me, therefore you are.” Zircon snapped. He pointed at Jarlay. “Do it.”

Keckeck saw Zircon move back, fading toward the alley. “I suppose that I have no choice.” He grumbled under his breath. “This is the last chance.”

Approaching Jarlay, Keckeck let the nether touch obscuring his form fall off. He moved with deliberate intent now, and was thus noticed. Though not remarked, Excelsior was a place firm in its self-security, and he did not seem a threat to any of the citizens.

Jarlay gave him a look, the roving gaze of a guard, a moment’s inspection, seeing nothing but the outermost surface. The gaze passed over Keckeck swiftly, missing everything.

So. That is it. Keckeck thought. A loss I see. This one lacks assured purpose. Yet, if that is so, why take this course? Why break the oath to exchange a known path through the nether for one not charted?

Keckeck, not of Sigil, not of the bleak city of the Lady, though he did visit it, did not grasp this thing. The Lady’s actions had brought this pass; cast the factions into a war not of their own making.

Given them to Sigil’s own split nether Zircon called it. The Lady’s fault, yet her judgment is not come, perhaps never shall be.

Ignorant of this, Keckeck gazed at Jarlay Scrollwork, searching for the ties, the essence of the Sons of Mercy course this one charted.

Weak, weak ties are these. There is then a chance. Keckeck saw that glimmer then. Now, only here is the chance to act, before Zircon cuts his rope.

“Well met, Dragonson.” Keckeck said to Jarlay.

The Son of Mercy’s head spun, the word ringing emptily, but not without shock, into his ears. Dragonson, a rarely used title for a half-dragon, a title of great respect, thus its rare use. Half-dragons rarely garnered any respect. Jarlay had never been so honored before.

A second glance, really a stare, given to Keckeck, analyzing the robed nethergazer long and hard. Confusion spread across the face, and then into the stern guard’s voice, creating a more natural sound. “You, you are…”

“I am what is called a wyrmkin.” Keckeck replied smiling through his slightly scale-suggesting lips. “A bit of blood in my veins from the past, a dragonson or dragondaughter in my ancestry. Moreso, I have experienced dragons firsthand.”

“Firsthand?” Jarlay was now greater into a morass of confusion led by the Nethergazer’s words. The half-dragon had never met a dragon; they were very rare on the planes. He might be the son of a dragon, and mortal, but the draconic side of his heritage was a mystery. “I never met my father.”

“Sad that,” Keckeck answered, not at al surprised. He had sensed that after gazing at Jarlay from the beginning. “I would speak to you for a moment, regarding such things.”

“Now?” The Son of Mercy struggled to keep up.

“Do you worry about having a lapse of duty?” Keckeck asked. “Do not worry, we will still be able to look out, the rest of the town will just look in. This will not take long, and it is important, Dragonson.”

Conflicting duties warred in Jarlay, but in the end Keckeck’s jovial manner and knowledgeable gaze decided him. “Alright, just for a moment.”

Keckeck felt his chance solidify, dragon blood triumphs over the nether bound duty to the Sons of Mercy. A chance, perhaps, even to save both.

They moved off the square, and the twisting wrapped around them both, as Keckeck quietly used his powers to screen them away from those whose gaze was bound to concrete forms.

Into the alley they passed, not a dark place, or threatening, such places did not exist in Excelsior, but secluded. To gaze within would require focus, more as Keckeck wove a spell to hold sight and sound within the space. A simple spell, one he had long used in his work as a Nethergazer, less hostile than Zircon the wyrmkin might be, but his mind was dragon cold and just as dangerous, yet danger of a more complex form than the oath binding fanaticism that consumed Zircon.

Jarlay heard the muttered spell, but he expected no trouble, not from this one, not here in Excelsior.

Then his gaze caught the crystal-touched skin of Zircon.

In a sudden shattered moment, Zircon held the image of a solid trooper, and officer of the law. That was the old image, the Mecykiller from before.

Holding that image, Zircon felt it for a lie, the Lady decreed that man to be gone. Then let her reap the reward she has sown.

The shards of the moment clattered down, and, gaze falling clearly onto Jarlay, the Mercykiller changed. The dutiful soldier vanished; a killer took the body instead.

Naked sword sprung from its loose loop, blade shining in the light. He moved with quick precision, to plunge the blade into Jarlay’s throat.

The half-dragon Son of Mercy could not react in time, was not at all prepared for this sudden and merciless attack. His eyes widened in shock as steel death came for him.

Keckeck caught the blade in scale-tinged hands. Blood ran down his palms. “You will ask questions before you cast this one into the nether.”

Crystal eyes narrowed, as the blade hovered mere inches from Jarlay’s throat. “Why?” He hissed, Mineral teeth scraping.

“You will judge him yourself?” Keckeck mocked. “Since when has the nether revealed all its mysteries to you?”

Blood dripped from Keckeck’s hand, to mix with a flecked scale and drop to the ground in a splash. Pain stained the wyrmkin’s eyes, to mix with the resolve in Zircon’s and the terror in Jarlay’s.

The moment stretched, strings held taught over the clamoring sea of nether beneath, tight with strain.

Slacken or break, three fates held in the balance.

Zircon, one chance at redemption, at reclaiming a true purpose as Mercykiller and Nethergazer, the old one cast aside in blame at one who stood apart from nether.

Jarlay, who must acknowledge a broken oath or live a half-held lie at other’s behest, casting aside himself because he feared the nether the Lady had otherwise offered too much.

Keckeck, who must redeem his failure in allowing Zircon to waver, and save this one of dragon blood as his duty to the Corunether who gave him the path.

Three strings stretched and knotted together, the center string, which held all their fates, made of crystal.

A simple question: push the sword forward or leave it ready.

Gaze through the formless nether that surrounds all things, with eyes unleveled and unclouded. Once you pierce the nether fully it will never halt your vision again, the multiverse shall be revealed and the truth shall at last be grasped. – Imagenether, Chapter I, Verse I

Zircon did not push his sword forward. His crystal eyes gazed far past Excelsior to the Spire even, and to Sigil atop it. The Lady, the Nether, the same. Forces of the reality beyond the multiverse, not to be tamed.

Eyes focused once more. The repetition of killing suddenly stopped, and he asked a question, a simple thing he had never asked before. “Why did you break your oath to the Eight Tenants of Justice?”

Keckeck let go of the sword, dropping his hands, energy gone, part done.

“Because I was too weak to go on alone, Mercykiller.” Jarlay sobbed, recognizing Zircon for what he was, someone who had remained true to what he had sworn, at least, truer than he. “I had been alone so long before, I couldn’t bear it, not when they pardoned us, not when the Lady spoke. I was not strong enough.”
“I see.” Zircon said coldly. “You were simply too weak to hold to your oaths, not strong enough to break them.” He turned to Keckeck, crystal eyes icy and shining with reflected light from the towers of Excelsior. “Teach him to be strong.”

Keckeck nodded, having sensed this outcome since that sword held its place.

Jarlay, reeling and confused, terror dispersing within him, almost relaxed.

“Hold!” Zircon barked. “I will see that strength now, find it within, or you will die. Stand motionless!” He commanded.

The sword moved, sharp steel point cutting into the scaled skin at the left side of his throat.

Jarlay twitched, pulling away from the weapon.

“Stand fast!” Keckeck hissed. “You are a dragonson!”

Jarlay gritted his teeth, no longer having the will to do anything else.

A series of cuts, slow and deliberate, the icy tough of cold steel on the skin, and flowing blood, cutting a scar.

Then half-dragon made no further moves.

A red mark was there soon, and Zircon was done, red stain on the silver scales, a mark that would never fade.

OB

Oath-breaker.

“Be strong enough to live with that.” Zircon spoke the words, and placed his bare blade back in the loop at his side. “Or the nether will take you.”

Then he was gone, steady purposeful footfalls echoing on the even pavement of the streets of Excelsior. His stride that of a Mercykiller once again.