Psychopomp

“Recall,” Art’s voice echoes to him, “Dream as memory. Sight. Sound. Touch.”

He remains imprisoned in his sleeping obscurity, chasing fleeting shapes, seeking what he saw, what he heard, what he felt.

“A harp plays as I walk up and forward through a lightless cave, its walls damp and…full of watchful eyes. My fingers bleed from how restlessly they pluck the strings, and every note sings of fearful pain. I hope that the tune will bring the end quicker, that it will keep me from looking back. ‘Do not turn. Do not turn.’ I keep telling myself. When I see the light, the tempo of my harp and step increase, I want out, back to the life before. Excitement overwhelms me as soon as I set foot beyond the cave’s dominion, and I turn. A young woman, pale and on the cusp of corporeal, stares at me, just within the cave. Just as tears well in her eyes and her hand reaches into the light to touch me, she fades away. The blood on my harp is now a taunting memory instead of badges of triumph.” He pauses. “Orpheus.”

“Eighty-nine percent retention,” Art judges with an impressed exhale. “Satisfactory.”

“Art,” Ewain drowsily calls, “were dreams truly like this?”

“How do you mean, Psychopompos?”

“Memories fleeting from sight.”

“I don’t know. Perhaps so. We structure these simulations off the words of the ancestors that had them. Memories become like dreams, intense and engrossing, but once we return to reality they fade away.”

“Unless we resuscitate them often.” These questions always came to him and do so now as shadow grows richer. Gods took dreams with them when they left, and those left behind never explained their significance.

“Worry not of it now.” Art’s voice muffles through the dark. “Preparing stimulant shot six of eight,”

Behind Ewain’s left ear are eight crystal-encased bulbs no larger than pinheads. Only three remain illuminated, with one now flashing its dull soft-white color.

“Administering shot.”

The bulb changes to solid green before extinguishing.

Instantly, Ewain is plucked from the imperceptible vacuum, energy bursting throughout his body, his mind now churning effortlessly. His eyes thrust open reflexively, yet he keeps his body still, absorbing the fresh stimulant with a deep breath.

“Thirty-four hours remaining to the Break Line. Ten to the Red Line. We are about to exit the Oberon Ward and be on the final leg to our destination. ETA forty-minutes.”

Outside the piercing crowns of the Keep were gone, domed and arched peaks taking their place. Through the opening chasm between the buildings and just over the stalwart walls and gate ahead, a glow crawls into sight. Its awful, sour yellow-green color wails into the eyes, and Ewain feels his stomach begin to twist.

Reaching into the breast pocket of his distressed surcoat, he pulls out a clear plastic bottle no larger than his thumb.

“Is that wise?” Art asks, “With the trauma site so near?”

Ewain looks at the bottle, asking himself the same question, though his unmoving face would never betray his thoughts. “We are about to exit the Ward and travel over the Ashen Zones. There are parts of it I have no desire seeing.”

“I could dull your senses. Or more simply you could just not look outside.”

“Parts, Art. Not all.” The grizzled young man emphasizes as he unscrews the top and puts a solitary drop into each eye. Celestial eyes, as the people have come to call the eyes of a Psychopomp, for they so resemble an indigo oceanic constellation against a cobalt background, with stars twinkling in the undulating seams of their radiant irises. Look too long into them, some locals claim, and one will never again be able to look away.

Each drop dims the light of each eye by a shade. He blinks a handful of times to disperse and absorb it. The dreadful glow fades with each until banished from his sight. What all others see.

Upon a leather strap secured around Ewain’s right leg is a sheathed knife, its ornate hilt carved from the sacred Ashwood trees grown only by the Ecclesiarchy and Order. A steel frame binds it all, garnished with gold bands and ancient words. Words said to once be given breath by the Ichorians themselves, words that yield action. He unsheathes the knife and looks at the words, unable to decipher the sounds and attached to each delicate, elegant symbol. Psychopomps only knew their meaning because the priests taught them.

Return to ash, to be remade again.

Beyond.

“Light,” Ewain commands.

The arm of the metal box extends and illuminates the crystal blade, whose kaleidoscopic appearance seems to absorb the light. Over and over Ewain looks the blade, wiping it with a gentle white cloth now painted with black streaks until not a thing sheens off the light.

“Turn the blade over,” Art requests, the lens upon the square head of the metal arm butting in front of Ewain’s face now to examine the blade in slow, methodical sweeps.

Ewain complies and backs away. Art is always particular about this part.

“Hmmm.” The lens nearly touches the blade with how closely it looks. “I see no foreign matter,” he affirms. “Seems you did an adequate job cleaning it.” The arm retracts back into the box.

A muffled hiss snaps him from his gaze. The center console whirs once again.

The beat of a drum comes in over the speakers, rolling in low and rhythmic and slow.

A beautiful box is soon brought to bear, elevating to the opening to present itself. Its ivory white surface glistens from hours upon hours of dutiful polish and stain. Racing blue lights streak across the surreal surface like lightning: powerful, instantaneous, awe-inspiring. Perfectly centered on the case are twelve thin slots with round slots immediately adjacent to each, all equally spaced in a symmetrical circle inside which is a glowing beveled slit.

The drumbeats grow quicker, louder.

Four of the slots sit filled, the Ashwood cards inside blending seamlessly with the box, distinguishable only by their luminous, pink pulsation.

Slowly, so slowly and carefully, Ewain guides the tip of the knife toward the center slit. Every slight shake must be compensated for, ensuring the razor-sharp tip not so much as taps the surface. Once it is just inside the bevel, he completes the insertion with more ease.

The hilt and box radiate like a full moon, a captivating white bloom overlaid by an aqua tinge.

A steady beat in cadence with the drum resonates in the skin behind his ear, where the green-glowing slot is. When his fingers land upon the bevel, it is as though they touch a pulse, rising and falling with every note.

With a click, a card emerges, and the air electrifies. Every hair upon his skin stands. All sound kneels in fealty to the now thunderous pounding that shakes the very air.

As soon as he touches it, electricity shocks his fingertips…hot, lively, desperate. Its pure white grain howls with sapphire streaks of light and once he inserts it into one of the empty slots, the box mimics its pattern.

Click.

The knife hilt slowly opens to reveal another card. His nerves pinch as he pulls and places it in the slot opposite of the other, then removes a pristine sterling metal cylinder from his belt that slides into the adjacent slot.

Their flashes crescendo in panicked tempo, the time between each shrinking before there is but continuous blue veins throbbing throughout the box.

Only when the light fades, when the booming pulsation settles and other noise again becomes perceptible, does Ewain dare extract the blade, insert a blank card into its hilt, and return it to its sheath.

“Thirty minutes to destination.” Art updates.

Outside the buildings no longer contest the sky, yielding the sovereignty of the horizon to a breathtaking expanse. All of Byzantium now prostrate to view as the carriage travels from the rail above. A solid blue light traces bright along the rail’s worn steel.

Against the night sky, each inhabited ward of the city stands distinct, alone. Their own luminance isolated like towering, starry islands amidst an undulating sea, linked only by the blue lights of the railways and train tracks of the Kardial Transit System.

Even from this distance, the system of walls that encase each ward and the transit lines present themselves so clearly. Three walls, each increasing in height from outermost to innermost, that constitute the mighty Appian walls which separate habitable from uninhabitable. Emerald flames dot all along the top crenellations of each, and between them he sees the men that man the walls, staring out upon the blackness with grim attention and their rugged rifles held firm.

Some look up at his passing carriage, giving a curt nod or wave, and he responds in kind. Ichorians be with you.

This is the part Ewain wanted to see, the walls that have stood for nearly three hundred years and amass to what must be hundreds of miles. It awes him no matter how many times he bears witness to their engineering majesty, the massive cost in blood and life soaked into every square inch, the constitution of the men that built it all. Its story speaks to every Psychopomp and Borderman who look upon it.

In the aftermath of the Reclamation, when the Vesperterrans reclaimed the Holy Land after nearly 900 years of war, murder, and atrocity, the city was devastated. Months of fighting block by block left every part of the city so thoroughly corrupted it took but a handful of nights for it to become practically uninhabitable. All that death and sacrifice, the loss of nearly all the Demichorians left upon this earth, and the Vesperterrans were left with land they could go nowhere near.

Only when the Psychopomp Order, then at its zenith, undertook what all now know as the Purification Campaign did hope arise. Endless months without sleep, without repose left them devastated yet swathes of the city became habitable. In partnership with the newly founded Bordermen Order, they both sought to secure those sites, and so the walls were built.

To retake the entire city would require every man die thrice, Ewain recalls his mentor’s lesson, and left the Psychopomp Order but a memory. Knowing man’s propensity to sin, his inability to never cast stones, the Order Grandmaster of the time decided it best to retain what they had and spare the Order. Lest those that move into habitable wards render them uninhabitable in a matter of years.

They risked and sacrificed everything, Ewain thinks, and now we are an Order so averse to risk. He shakes his head. Were it not for them in the aftermath of the Reclamation, the war would have been for nothing. So much did they dedicate and sacrifice for the walls’ construction that the elder folk swore their spirits remain tethered and their shapes can be seen patrolling the ramparts in the moonlight.

Looking upon it now, he sees no spectral figures or brooding spirits, though he supposed he could not even if they were there. The eye drops ensured that.

Just outside the walls, streams of fiery green flames spray forth in desperation. He can barely make out the small silhouettes of the men that dispense it, keeping the immediate areas of rubble on the hostile side desiccated fields of coal whose embers whisper through the dark.

Faint decibels of gunshots ring through the night, coinciding with flashes from deeper into the darkness. Resounding booms and plumes of smoke emanate from the massive artillery cannons upon the tallest, innermost wall with subsequent explosions bursting where the rest of the city stood as mummified monuments. Dense, compacted, districts once teeming with life and divinity are now completely overtaken by hundreds of years of vegetative growth.

Vines and moss blanket buildings.

Massive trees punch through structures, tangling their branches together and weaving their impenetrable canopies overhead.

Strangulating grass taller than any man crowd the streets.

A bioluminescence perforates it all, generating a mesmerizing lavender glow that wanes and waxes with the moon above.

More than sixty percent of Byzantium remains like this…a vegetative hell so far fallen from the Ichorian paradise it once was.

Even to normal eyes, the sight of the Ashen Zones is profound, for they can still capture the subtle ethereal glow, the fading supernova of millions of dead welded to the urban skeleton. An indescribable color that questions sanity and floats across the canopies, wailing through the years. A choreographed chaos, cresting, swaying, begging for deeper inspection. Peer long enough, and one’s very sight quaked and peeled away as old paint to reveal beneath a terrifying skeleton. Ewain was okay with seeing no more.

More gunshots cut through the air. It amazes him how far sound travels out here. Ewain mutters a prayer under his breath for those out there, the poor lads will need every bit of help they can get.

“Twenty minutes to destination.”

“The case is in the Haas Ward, you said?” Ewain asks. He can see the nearing destination ahead.

“Correct. A refining ward. All the ore and chemical components for smokeless powder from the Ostermarks beyond the city come through here to be refined before being distributed to the rest of the city.”

Haas Ward…Ewain pings the name in his head for any familiarity. “I am not familiar,” he concludes.

“You shouldn’t be. Your service record indicates you have never been here.”

A ward he had never been to, it was difficult to fathom. “Psychopomps typically see every Ward of the city within two years of their service.” He is into his third.

“It seems there are exceptions.”

“For me or the rest of my brothers?”

Art takes a moment, “From what I can gather, the Haas Ward has not had a Psychopomp visit in nearly 30 years.”

Trains chug back and forth outside, the smoke from their engines blown by the wind to distort the view for a few seconds before dissipating.

“That is impossible,” Ewain scarcely controls his shock, “that suggests this Ward has been without murder for 30 years.”

“I verified it once I saw what our destination was,” Art replies in a way that validates his partner’s disbelief. “I have cross-checked every Consular Record with public and ward records. Epsilon stability has been stellar here. If there were any murders, even those well covered up, there would be at least a spike or dip. Their graph is steady. Our victim is the first murder of the Haas Ward in 29 years.”

Ewain is nearly speechless. He still struggles to comprehend it yet gathers himself. Endless questions are there, but they deviate from the main priority, that which he approaches for. “Art, pull the full case file up.”

“Been waiting for the word,” the rods descend, and projector clicks on once more, two screens immediately materialize.

On the left is the same portrait of Norma from earlier, elegant in her knee-length, strapless dress. So hard she tries to appear seductive, yet all he can see is a naïve girl. On the top right is a closeup of her eyes, each one singled out and focused on with unsettling detail, and below this the Consul’s report.

Ewain rubs his face and leans forward, “I believe I identified the distinguishing characteristics earlier. She has a facial structure scan registered in the Nexus?”

“Yes,” Art quickly answers and superimposes geometric lines over her zoomed in face, “Last scan was on her nineteenth birthday, so it’s recent.” Her every curve and bump are traced by these thin emerald lines.

“Good,” Ewain slides her portrait aside and amplifies the text and eye scans. The eyes move up, down, right, left, then forward, never staying still but for a few seconds at a time. The blue strands which weave and overlap so densely to form her irises seem like sapphire wicker baskets.

10.12.1256AE

HaasWard1726

Vanished Person?

No

Victim Profile

>Norma Jean Mortenson

>Female

>Age: 19

>Native Resident of Haas Ward

>Records Keeper for Morse Powder Refinery

>No record of travel beyond Ward

>Reports of pharmaceutical abuse in last year

Manner of Death

>Multiple puncture wounds to neck and torso

>Victim left to bleed to death

>Signs of sexual assault

>Signs of sustained physical torture over span of few hours

>On-site blood test positive for strong pharma concentration:

-Trovnia

-Lideline

-Numerta

>Trace amount of Restorna.

>Body primarily intact, left at trauma site

Anathema Development

>Early Gestation at 12 hours

>Brood pit and nodes manifesting upon victim abdomen and surrounding blood, respectively

>Psychological effects mild, area of effect beyond murder site

Other tenants of residential building affected. Voice incantations. Gravitation to trauma site. Respiration difficulty. Lethargy.

>Physiological effects mild, area of effect beyond murder site.

Bolster shot via syrette applied numerous times to counter cardiological effects. Heart rate acceleration significant. Hyperventilation. Palpitations.

>Environmental deformity in nascent stages at time of investigation

>Tartaran growth limited to areas directly in contact with victim or victim essence.

He slides the text and eye scan to the left now, which drags another image onto the right.

Norma again appears, though her youthful vigor and excitement for the future are now bloodstains which engulf her. Her body lies naked upon a linoleum floor. Skin no doubt once carefully tended and soft and smooth is shorn like cheap fabric. Her eyes, so distinguishing even in the picture, look directly at the lens of the camera, at him.

“Norma’s body remains relatively intact at the site, so it will be corporeal entities that we will encounter,” Ewain notes.

“That’s a relief,” Art adds, “will make the case that much easier, though the four-day incubation period will counter some of that. The victim’s body will be fully implanted by now, I’m sure.”

“She was still clinging to it. Poor girl cannot let go of it.” How her eyes still move, still follow whoever dares near her to mutely beg for help, it is an easy deduction. So much care she put into herself, so much time and effort to groom it for what she believed to be better things.

“If the psycho, physio, and enviro elements were at Early Gestation already at 12 hours, then it must be in-,”

“Maturity stage,” Ewain interrupts with a tone that suggests he did so unintentionally.

“Aye, maturity stage.”

Ewain reads over Norma’s MD (Manner of Death) again and again. “Her pharma intake is…puzzling. Trovnia is an upper, psychedelic more like. An escape pill plebeians use to bring some existential bliss to their lives, yet she also took Numerta, a nerve relaxant. The Lideline…” he sighs, “a motor function grounder.”

“A burgeoning rape drug,” Art adds.

“The combination would have rendered her…painfully immobile.” A pang emits within the young man’s chest with the utterance as his gaze returns to her picture. If he had to guess…depending on when she took the Trovnia, Norma’s vision was skewed and there was incongruity with the rest of her senses. Her sight was in a bastardized reality while the Lideline left her completely unable to fight or flee. She did not see as whoever did what they did to her, and her other senses would be muffled but not inert. No, Norma no doubt felt the groping and pain, smelled whatever foul scent…. Ewain’s stomach twists and disgust wells in him.

“Your emotion readings are ticking already,” Art says. “Is something wrong? Would you like me to zero it?”

“No, I need to be above zero right now. It can wait,” Ewain breathes out, trying to steel his insides until they are cold and hard.

“You’ve not opposed it before. Why now?”

“Because I said so. That was then, this is now. Focus on the task at hand.”

Silence speaks for Art’s acquiescence until his own words come, “It’s probable the killer forced those pharmas into the victim to make their required effort minimal. Produce an easier victim.”

“The Consul noted no track marks on her. I presume he would have searched as soon as the blood test read positive. It is possible they were given to her orally.”

“Forced oral ingestion? I suppose it’s possible, but it’s also possible the victim either knew the killer enough to lower their guard or they were exploited in some indirect manner in a public location.”

“You see the pressure marks on her throat? Bruises on her face?” Ewain points out somberly. “Killer possibly choked and beat her until she took something.” He sighs heavily. “Do we have a Sensory Eval from the Consul?”

“We do; however, it’s marked as Eval-48.” Done at the 48th hour of a trauma site’s lifespan.

“What the hell? That is the last Eval he sent?”

“It is.”

Consuls are expected to conduct one every twelve hours to be as informed as possible on a site’s development, up until it is too dangerous for them. “The site is over 110 hours developed,” Ewain annoyingly groans, “I will speak with the Consul when we arrive, review his last Eval there.” What an inefficient use of time.

“Perhaps this works out for the better right now. We’re 10 minutes out and still must run detoxification and recalibrate your pharma composition.”

Ewain sighs, placing his arm back upon the rest, palm up. Were it not for the Repose, they would have been able to do all this proper in the carriage. Save time. Art bore no qualms about conducting most routine actions at Missions, but for the young Psychopomp doing so was inefficient time management. A reason he did not like Reposes.

Hisses and cranks clamor from the metal box, in sync with the needles of various gauges upon its face that lurch back and forth before settling at zero in silence. The robotic arm moves and guides a needle attached to two tubes, one green, one blue, back into the metal plate in Ewain’s arm. It takes only a moment for the gauges to move, ticking past marks and numbers to settle upon a cryptic combination.

“Blood toxicity is high. Expected considering the extent of your wounds. Your Kore will have her hands full if you get through this case alive. We’ve been forced to administer pharmas simply to keep you conscious, even with the purge.” A muffled sigh precedes Art’s next words, “There is not enough time to both properly detox and recalibrate, not if you are wanting to get it done in the carriage.”

The approaching ward’s ominous glow grows closer, its luminous aura offering no reassurance.

The gauges offer no better as Ewain looks at each, seeing the pharma composition he selected for the previous case. Triple bolster to strength, single bolster to anathema tolerance, single bolster to sensory perception. Reflex and physio constitution left at base.

If he detoxed, he will be stuck with this composition but can safely use onsite pharma bolsters. If he recalibrated, then his base levels will be higher and provide more steady momentum but using any quick bolsters could push toxicity to lethal levels.

Art must be bursting at the seams to advise he do this at the Mission.

Those ward lights come nearer and nearer.

“Recalibrate,” Ewain decides. His patience for these routine things is always low. “Reduce strength and anathema to base. Triple bolster to reflex. Single bolster sensory and physio each.”

“Strength, anathema to base,” Art repeats with as little disagreeing inflection as possible, “triple to reflex. Single to sensory, single to physio.”

As the gauge needles adjust, a pressurized hum lulls the Psychopomp into a trance. Muscles feel as though they are shriveling while a dizzying clarity overtakes him, as though new eyes, ears, and even skin all freshly embed upon his body.

“What bolsters do we have loaded?”

“Kronyl. Alcatin. The standard fare.” He pauses, “We’re entering the Ward.”

A massive archway frames the gated opening between the titanic Appian walls.

Reclaimed 980AE.

Welcome to the Haas Ward

The words are emblazoned in torch-lit gilded letters on the crown of the arch, as bright as they were when first erected hundreds of years ago. Identical bronze statues crafted in the meticulous likeness of a great man and many times taller than any other stand vigilant guard along each side of the gate, lit bright by gas lanterns which never extinguish. Broad platforms and walkways surround the statues, enabling would-be onlookers to loiter and solicit in the statues’ proximity. Yet tonight the platforms stand empty and quiet.

Dark, craggy buildings of restored stone and metal cram along narrow traffic-ways and alleys, nearly suffocating the carriage and train rails that pass through. Their steep, shingled crowns are far from the godly heights of the Keep yet still imposing enough to make entrance through the archway like entering the ribbed belly of an urban beast. Panels of moving pictures and mesmerizing lights that normally hang from certain building faces to project their blue, pink, and purple lights are extinguished. Only the yellow glow of a myriad gas lamps bathes the precinct now.

Refineries consume entire blocks and offer legitimate competition for altitude, their smokestacks nearly towering over the surrounding residential and pleasure districts. Continuous plumes of smoke billow out and hinder the stars above.

“Let us go ahead and sync, Art,” Ewain says as he turns his sights from the ward to the dashboard.

The needle pulls from his arm and everything returns to the box. “Doing full transfer to Ashwood cell now.” Nova blue lines pulsate around the slot.

He takes a deep breath before extracting the chip and tenderly fitting it in the slot behind his left ear. “Begin synchronization.” Closing his eyes, Ewain takes another deep breath. A phantom feeling echoes within him, recoiling off bone and sinew. Every passing second gives it more substance, like a ripple from the base of his neck that bounces throughout the body. His insides throb and a rattling ache shivers through his skull, seeping through his brain. It takes years for young Psychopomps to process and proceed through the overwhelming feeling of inviting cooperative control over their body. Often, they lost voluntary function and heavily vomited all over themselves. Just now, with a few years behind him, Ewain barely manages to achieve the sharp concentration and bodily control to relinquish any thoughts, surrender consciousness to emptiness, and avoid a shameful vomit bath.

“Synced. Beginning validation.” Art says, his voice strumming through bone once again.

A few seconds pass before Ewain’s eyes and head move with incredible precision. Up. Down. Left. Right. Both hands touch each finger to its corresponding thumb in perfect sequence.

“All right,” Ewain interrupts, returning his own smoother movement to his body, “Enough.” Over his left hand he slides a thin, polymer glove that covers his palm and only two fingers, the middle and ring.

In a pristinely carved and thoroughly polished wooden panel built into the front dashboard sits his Keresta Revolving Hand Cannon Mk. V. Its four-inch barrel is lodged deep while the frame is cradled tight by arms of metal and timber. A monotonous magnetic resonance hums a cadence for the modest lights which crawl along the station’s edges.

“Eighty-one percent magnetic charge on the percussion plate. Ought to be plenty enough.” Art informs.

“It will have to be.” Ewain grabs the mahogany grips and after the charging station clicks, he draws the obsidian behemoth. Gilded engravings dedicated to Morrius bestow elegance upon the firearm. Its rugged squared frame and octagonal barrel a metal tapestry with space pleading for further fulfilment.