CHAPTER NINE
Thera has finally pulled together the sacred items needed to finally retrieve the bone mask, and hopefully restore Sanctuary and return home.
In the broad light of day there was no one to interfere with Thera’s explorations. In the centre of Sanctuary, beside a Chapter House of the House of Daring lay a small park. Built around a polite pond, slopes that were dotted with ornery trees who kept on despite the ash fall.
There were many such hidden gardens and parks in Sanctuary but something about this one drew her. The balance between the serious and the serene. She had found the place weeks ago when searching for the best place to fish. There were places that held good fish… but this wasn’t one of them.
Thera brought her small collection of sacred items here and laid them on a fallen log at the water’s edge while she practised her knife throwing. Next to the log, in the shade of a great tree, she had placed a thick rug and next to that a clay water urn, her shoes, some smoked fish and the pieces of a silver mirror.
She had tried fixing the mirror with the divine brush, but most of the pieces were too large and the brush had limitations. Still, some meditative moments were spent earlier this morning arraigning the pieces so that they were an approximate fit inside the frame.
Ankle deep in the pond, the knife left her hand and, as long as she was less than twenty feet away, it would thwack into the trunk of the tree she was aiming at.
Every time she landed a hit, she took a step to the right and threw again. This knife hit, just like the others and Thera stepped out of the shallow water to collect it.
It wasn’t enough. Thera didn’t know how she was going to take down the twisted witch who wore the mask of gold and bone. But it wasn’t going to be with a knife from twenty yards. Still, she practised.
—-
As the sun reached its zenith she finally waded back out from the pond and took pause under the shade of the tree and sat looking at her collection of trophies.
The last one she had acquired was the coin. ‘Final Payment’ the sisters of sanctuary had called it. A way to re-wrap this mortal coil around oneself, after it had been shaken off... and on the other side of the coin (because it seemed all of the sacred items had two functions) a way to sever a spirit.
Thera loved the weight of the coin in her hand. She turned it as her mind turned over. It was the heart of her plan. She knew that. She just didn’t know how, exactly.
The Seer’s Card had some social function that was useless to her now. But the other function. Thera picked it up and tossed the thick ground rug over her head. Crouching down and without her eyes adjusting she saw little but darkness. Then she held the card up to her eyes and it was as if day had come to the darkness. With the card, you could see. Always. No matter the light or the gas or the liquid in the way.
Thera tossed the rug to the floor and placed the card back. There was a power there. An advantage of blood and blade and last breaths.
Leaving the fluttering Lunar Moth and the small, delicate ring that lay on the bench, Thera instead picked up the Divine Brush. She made herself old, then young. She made herself look like a warrior and then a lover. She made herself look like a desiccated corpse and a handsome man. She made herself look like Belsh and then she tried to make herself look like she had before she entered the Web. She tried and then tried again and then when it was clear the Brush wouldn’t work with what she didn’t know, she placed it down.
The Lunar Moth was a thing of beauty. It seemed alive yet not at the same time, tamely remaining wherever she placed it with fluttering wings moving in graceful intermittent beats. At least one of the wings seemed to be made of shadow, but which wing depended on the way the moth was held.
The moth was her hard knuckle. Her ace in the hole. She held it up to her eye. Unlike the Seer’s card, there was no change to the world as she looked over the top of its ephemeral wings. Then, gently, she blew on it.
Thera remembered a ceremony of light in a mountain temple. Up where the air is cold and still a thick walled room would be set with mirrors and candles, placed just so. Then with cloth and board and holes, beams of particles were shown to appear in the air. With some mindful application the beams were moved through different patterns. The bars of golden dust hanging in the air above the prostate supplicants below.
When Thera blew on the Lunar Moth, something similar happened – in the way that a bonfire is similar to a candle flame.
Atop the Moth the beams of flickering light took off with Thera’s breath and pulsed their way across the small clearing. They unfurled and blossomed into a beautiful möbius loop of geometry. No start. No end. A series of bound circles and petals that spun ever wider as if a spiritual painter with light as her medium had written on the air the essence of a flower in bloom. Thera stepped forward with the Divine Brush and dusted it up and down the broken mirror. Before, moments later, the sacred geometry passed back in to the void.
Thera released a breath she didn’t realise she’d held on to. The Lunar moth could summon sacred geometries. One of the Sacred Souls had told her of this, but she hadn’t believed it till she saw the patterns. They didn’t last long and - Thera looked down at the Moth which now looks dun and formed of base metals - it seemed to need time to recharge. But the sacred geometry was power in its purist form. It could super charge any other of the Sacred Items.
And as Thera looked across to her reflection in the flawless mirror, which was crowned with her sacred trophies, Thera danced the last item, The Ring of Secrets, up and down her fingers and finally knew how she would dispose of the witch with the bone and gold mask.
Pick a skull:
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3) #5246
Head to the discord to vote before Midnight EST 29th August.
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