Flashbacks: Ourevel: Part 3

Yet another vignette concerning the nature and life of Ourevel the Lustful:

The Enemy of Mine Enemy:

The room was lush with fine paintings of lust and sexually of the sickest kind. The floor was fully covered in large pillows and long haired animal rugs. Over the rugs was a circle of runes written in blood. Standing in front of the circle was a faceless boy waiting very patiently after finishing the stolen words of calling and bonding. It was a few moments later when the shadow in front of him opened to become wings and a beautiful white skin woman stepped out. She was clothed in strips of skin from an innocent that only just covered what you wanted to see. She looked up smiling and almost lost all composure as she saw the boy who was not who she was expecting. She recovered instantly with the skill of a powerful wit. "Well, I felt Love's presence calling and I know you don't have love in you my boy Wrath." She looked at the circle around her. "Nor should you have the power to call and bond me."

"No' but with the power that I cut from a cultist's soul." Wrath paused to point out the body of the cultist lying between two large pillows. "And the grace taken from one in Love's favor. I could tempt the temptress herself. And yes I do know, I can’t bind you to any circle for you are already chained." This was all said a if he was talking about not being able to contain a kitten and not the powerful temptress of the holy. She dipped her toes in the blood of the runes as she stepped though the circle. "Well, Then what do you want with little old me?"

She walked around Garvoche like a fiendish wolf ready to strike at the first move. But Garvoche did not strike nor did he even move. He did not have to, his little friend allowed him to see her just fine. "Boy Wrath, I know you are a child no longer, but I can see how you lost the innocence of your childhood. That which made you swing by that knotted rope. What you did to them! And you think you weren't marked of wrath then? My poor boy, you were born with that mark in you. I feel the joy of it in you now as then. Did she feel it when you killed her? Your anger so great you couldn't stop from killing them all, even your sister." She paused to see if it was working, but there was nothing, not even breathing to show if Wrath was moved by her words. So she looked deeper. "What's this. No love in your heart but for cutting and blood. But! You have taken a lover, boy Wrath. I smell her blood on you. Did you slay her too? Well you will in the moment you lose control to what you really desire and cut too deep. For that is what you lust for not her."

He speaks as he sees her wondering under her smile. "I have let ye say your spill, but it is for not. By now you know that he hasn't come and the others too. I was given by my brother Lord Pride the will to command your presence to stay here even though I can’t bind ye. And by Lord Glutton the hunger to newel slowly on those that would interrupt." He turned his head suddenly toward her. She was worried because she was not sure that this was a fight she wanted right now. Plus, Wrath was known for deadly mood swings. So she sat on a huge pillow with legs in a very unlady like pose. "Well, what you want with me? If not my body, insights, nor my death. Oh...Him."

"I want you to give your lover a message for me. There is a growing blight in Selene. I have found where it is nesting. The Awaking has broken deaths law. It is Bother Damned's and his Order's charge to burn them to true death. " He says coldly.

"Why should he help you? Carrier of the sword of his dead god." she asked as her tail snaked around the blade.

"He can help Selene now and smoke the Awaking. Or fight a stronger enemy later and lose many of his brotherhood in the battle. So it is for his. Not me that he helps. He will know that the battle is his. Only Now or Then, is the chose. And how many will die while he waits. Show him this to set the point.” He gives her a bag with a clawed third arm. She has a few warming thoughts about him and three arms as she takes the bag. In the bag is a still biting head of a ghoul. “Just what he been asking for. How did you know?” She said as sweetly as a devil could.

“I leave you now. Thank you for your audience, My Lady Azrai chained Joachim.” And he is suddenly gone two hooked demons in his stead. They were ready to serve their mistress all too late.

Then the pull of the chain, he had felt her being blocked from returning to him. She thought for a moment about throwing away the bag and not telling him about it. But she knows the boy was right. Her lover would want to end the fight now. “I will have to stop calling him Boy Wrath.” She smiled, “Anyways it will be a nice trip. And he never takes me anywhere anymore.” And with that she returns to her lover leaving the two hooked demons to feed on the body of the cultist for his part in all this.

Garvoche though that went well. He had called on her, not only because she was chained to Cardinal Damned, but also because she would not be bothered by the taint of his body and soul. It was then that Valis’ada entered the room. All of what Lady Azasi said came to his mind as he saw blood wash across her face. Both the succubus and the Rom were seers of souls and knew that the taint of his body could not match that of his soul.

“What is it Valis’ada?”

“We have the time and place. We losted the courier to the Omerta.” She said this with cold anger.

“Find the names of the Omerta and take the hope from them before you slay them.” Garvoche’s orders did not need to be explained. She turned and walked out of the room a mask of scars appearing on her face.

...

A man, only one man stepped into the deepest of the Walking Tombs, a tomb city taken from the dead by the Awaking. The old streets are teeming with the ghoulish dead. But the armored man simply steps to the center of the long entombed street. He payed the hisses and howls of the undead no mind as he kneed down, setting the large case on the ground. He opens the case to reveal an altar and stands up tall and full as the undead start to swarm at the smell of the life of him. The black robes of the Order of St. Ignatius open when he raised the golden bone reliquary showing the full plate armor underneath. The ghoulish dead swarm forward but he does not even blink. He speaks a word so holy the ground shakes as it becomes hallowed. The man’s green eyes focus with a merciless will and he sends waves of holy energy burning through the air. A ghostly form leaps up through the floor at him. He catches the wraith by surprise as his hand holds it by the throat. "Who are you?" the wraith cries. It's neck now smoking from the grasp. It was being held fast not by the man's strength, but by an adamantine will of purpose. "I am the terror in the broken of death's law," the man spoke softly. "We are death and the dead have no fear," The wraith could barely speak under the meld grip. The man slowly looked down at the now kneeling wraith "I am Cardinal Damned."

The wraith felt what it thought it could not, the terror in the dark void of its soul. Cardinal Joachim chain Azrai smote the wraith down with Holy power as the undead swarm now tried in vain to run but, with the very floor and walls shaking and burning with his holy will, there was no escape.

With the Awaking's undead city filled with the ash of burning dead like a snowstorm, a pale arm lovingly slides around his upper leg leaving a beautifully painted clawed hand resting at his crotch. Azrai sits at his side playing in the ash-snow with her other clawed hand. "See I told you it would be fun, my lover. And I know how to make it even better."

Joachim smiled a cold, tight smile. Light drifted around him, burning embers falling and cooling to dull red. He clambered laboriously to his feet, silt and lakeweed swirling around him. He took a deep breath of pure, freezing water, and looked up at heaven's light twice fractured, first scattered by the nine splintered spheres, and then caught in falling shafts of light of Lake Koenigswinter. "So, Lord Wrath, I see now -- I live because I am useful, is that it? I will ensure that you regret it." He draws a small musician's ash-steel tuning fork, and strikes it on the back of his armored hand. As unheard resonances cause the water to ripple in reverse, spreading rings outward on the surface of the lake, there is a flash of hellfire, and Cardinal Damned is gone.

---

Cardinal Joachim and Lady Azrai reappeared with a flash of hellfire in the precise center of an intricate lapis-lazuli mosaic, around which has been carefully laid a circle of silver interspersed with burning white candles, in a cool pillared stoa, in the Glass Sea tradition, that looks out over the Lacrimosa. A strong smell of sulphur and apples fills the air. Standing at the five peaks of the inlaid pentacle are the heads of the Order of St. Elena, Rose and Ivy, the leaders of the nephilim, Eosphoros, the Harrower of Targos, and the Lord of Love himself.

Ourevel smiles at the two as they appear in the circle. "Thank you for coming, Lord Damned. You'll find that some of us wish your company for more than just your perceived usefulness." Ourevel steps away from his point on the circle, hefting the Hexenhammer off his shoulder, and gestures for Joachim and his lady to exit the circle. "Love has room for all manner of hearts."

Ourevel smiles benignly at the Ignatian, "Brother Joachim, clearly we have our differences, but we are both men of discipline. True, I have my faults, more so in the past, and I do not fault you your righteous indignation at my having participated in the slaying of your god, but you must recognize that this world is ending. There is a new world, just beyond the threshold, waiting to be populated and, unfortunately you may think, destined to be ruled by my brethren."

Ourevel, holds up a protean-silver coin bearing the Targolid heiroglyph for 'Suffering'. "You, worthy Cardinal, are a man of discipline, a man who knows love, who knows the pain that comes with it, and who knows how to resist your baser urges. Still, you love. I have seen this in you. Yours is a purer kind of love than many I have seen, a love based in the heart and mind, and not in the flesh. You know that in this you already do me service?"

Ourevel laughs. "I do not presume to ask any service more than this, for we are, and shall be, opposites. Mine is a discipline based in the pursuit of all love, while yours is based in the resistance of one of my aspects. However, I do see you as a peer, good Cardinal. Your humility gives you worth. This discipline and humility is something that is needed in the new world to which we go. I wish for the new world to be one in which all who love can find a home and your understanding will aid that."

Ourevel extends the coin to him, "Will you come with us to the new world, brother Suffering? Will you let your discipline be a balance to the chaos that otherwise comes with me? I do not wish my new world to collapse before its birth."