Psychopomp

Still the blood drop lingers on his finger, now as a dried freckle. He knew not what to do with it, for to wipe it on his clothes as a stain seemed dismissive of the act that saw its splash upon him. When Ewain returned to the Mission, promptly after Cornelia’s beheading, he should have gone straight to the docks, into his Corsair carriage, and en route back home to Apeiron where the ever-building strain in his body could be alleviated. This is what Art told him when instead he came before this statue now towering above him.

So lifelike this model of a man seems to him. It stands carved meticulously from the finest white marble gathered from the east, beyond the city, in the wild Ostermarks, as if the artisans used witchcraft to simply turn the man to stone. The detail they put in every crease of his coat and trousers, the cut of his belt and attachments, the curvature and lines of his face, Ewain half-expected this to be the man himself, tall in stature as his accomplishments.

Near the statue’s feet, words sit engraved in a shining gold plaque.

Dietrich Haas

953AE-976AE

Psychopompos Arbiter

Purifier of this Ward

Now so named in his honor

May the Ichorians welcome him

Beyond

Gods. Nine fifty-three to nine seventy-six…he was younger than Ewain is now, and the youth in the statue’s likeness did not shy away. Twenty-three years old, already an Arbiter, and so well-honed he purified an entire ward.

Next to the plaque sits a glass case half an inch thick and inside a Keresta Mk. II, Mermera, axe, and leather gun belt much like his own. No rust or rot beset them, unable to manifest in the airless confines of the case. The Mk. II was bulkier and more squared than the Mk. V Psychopomps now carry. Its top strap lacked an indicator light and a thumb pedal on its side to revolve the cylinder. Back then they only had standard shell cartridges worth one shot each. Yet Ewain’s admiration is upon the flower engravings deftly cut into the blued metal no doubt all done by Dietrich himself three hundred years ago.

And the belt, laced with scores of engravings, shining gems, and prominent medallions with fine fur trimming made Ewain’s seem so barren, so infantile. Had there been no statue here, just these encased pieces of equipment, Ewain still would feel small.

A frayman in his humble beige mantle approaches him, “Psychopompos,” he bows and extends forward a box carved with birds and flowers, “I have the effect here for you, as requested. What would you like done with it?”

Ewain takes and beholds it, admiring the craftsmanship in its shape, “I will take it.”

“What should we tell the mother?”

“Tell her,” he sighs, “the effects were destroyed. Gone from this world.”

The frayman nods obediently with an unfazed face, “Anything more I can do for you, sir?”

“No. Thank you, frayman,” Ewain gives a courteous nod.

“Psychopompos.” The young man bows and leaves.

Bones feel as iron and skin as tactile anchor. Sitting now in the carriage, watching as the light of day crests the city, Ewain absorbs the silence and seclusion. The red freckle on his finger commands his attention once more, and as he chases its sight into a hole of contemplation, his hand begins to tremble. Pressure mounts and mounts in his chest, building to explosion, and he releases shaky breaths to ease its strain. Yet it worsens and worsens, a tempest ascends to whip winds and demand rains. Ewain leans forward, swallows air in a dry throat.

“Art,” he mutters with a shivering dry voice.

“Psychopompos?”

“Zero me,” he commands, watching his hand shake intensely.

Gradually the hurricane within him dwindles. With the receding of its waters, he sees the resonant feelings of the violated and lost in dying tides and watches as they become vague silhouettes.

“Desynchronize,” Ewain says.

“Desynchronizing,” his partner somberly repeats. A faint aqua glow shimmers from the slot behind his ear.

From his fingers and toes, Ewain feels a warm phantom wave siphon away to the base of his neck. A nauseating dizziness palpitates his head, yet he cannot clear it. Something lingers in the dark of his mind to disrupt concentration. Punching a panel before him, a receptacle protrudes just in time for him to vomit into it. All that he expels is stinging, sour bile which singes a throat already irritated. His head throbs as if his skull is imploding and railroad stakes were being hammered into his temples, yet all he can do is endure it.

Damn it. He bangs his head on the dashboard and leaves it until the pain in his head dissipates.

Water…he wants water to wash the foul taste of his mouth and quell his throat. Head still on the dash, eyes closed to keep the nausea captive as he coughs profusely, he feels along the console. Fingers brush over numerous dials and knobs, reading them with touch before finally finding the right one.

A cylindrical metal canister extends out.

Snatching it, Ewain gulps, swishes, and spits again and again until the loathsome taste is banished. Sipping it now, he removes Art’s chip from his head and returns it finally into its nova bright glass panel.

“ETA back home is two hours,” Art’s voice now strangely reverberates around him, outside his body.

“Art,” Ewain begins, putting the canister back into its slot and sitting up, “at the trauma site, with the Broodmaster, why did you interfere?”

“I believed the threat to our lives at an unacceptably close margin.”

“Were you not specifically commanded no motor function assist?” he rubs his head as though it might sooth its heaviness, “You disobeyed my command, then took it entirely upon yourself to administer the Alcatin.”

“I waited as long as I could for you to reverse the situation, Psychopompos. Longer than I thought I should have. Once it became clear to me you could not repel it with your own strength, that we were going to die, I moved.” Art emulates his partner’s coldness, yet in his voice is a faint give, a defensive brusqueness.

“You are suggesting, then, that you were certain I had failed?”

“Our survival is a priority to me, your feelings on your success or failure are not. A death layered upon another is my primary concern, an unacceptable outcome as has been your behavior with this case. You’ve treated this victim much differently than the others. Not all of the victims we encounter will be innocent as this one.”

“I am well aware.”

“Are you also aware that unless you intend to treat all as you did this one, you cannot differentiate between them?” Art asks.

“I Deliver them all just the same.”

“Yet choosing which ones deserve more attention and which do not is not your place. What happens if you become too involved with one? Make promises you cannot keep? Were you compromised with this case?”

“No,” Ewain’s fingers tense on his forehead.

“It seemed you were.”

“You know better than I do, do you?”

“I know that you flirt with damnation and death too intimately, Psychopompos.”

Outside the lights of the city regain their array of lively color and people begin again to bustle about the streets. Ewain watches them all, his hand away from his face and head leaning into the back cushion, “A Psychopomp cannot go on duty unless he is ready for death. You may sense everything I can, attach yourself to my body, but you do not feel everything I do, you do not burden yourself with the pain you are willing to subject me through.” He exhales, “I will not have a Covenant Partner I cannot rely on to trust my judgment or that makes unilateral calls. If you cannot do this, then this partnership is done.” No bluff veil his words.

Many moments of silence tow Art’s reply, “You’re right, Psychopompos. I do not understand you, nor you me, and we must communicate to rectify this.” His voice is solemn. “I will do as you ask.”

Ewain’s brows furrow. He expected Art to dissent and mutually dissolve their partnership. His previous CPs did so with no hesitation. His rebuttal built itself on this expectation, and now he finds himself without words.

“I…I can assist with your wounds. We’re done with our rotation. You can rest.” The robotic enunciation belies the delicacy with which he makes his offer.

“No…,” Ewain’s own voice now disarms its usual frostbitten edge, “It is all right. Thanks, though.” Outside the gates of the Haas Ward bid farewell and the vegetative husk of wards long dead come into panoramic view. His eyes avert down, away until not even a sliver of the Ashen Wards is in his periphery. Across the fringes of his sight, a slithering, wispy void creeps along, a vacuous empty scream demanding to be heard.

Pulling the plastic bottle from his surcoat pocket, Ewain quickly applies two drops to each eye. Their celestial glow fades to starless seas and the vacuous tendrils vanish.

“What will you do with the box?” Art asks of the vessel which carries Norma’s journals. They had not even looked inside.

“I still have not decided.” Ewain answers, his eyes settled now upon the distant but colossal mountains that dwarf the city that surrounds them. Dense clouds crown them as always and, in this morning’s commencement, they reflect the horizon’s indigo blue. “We…we did not have time before the case to learn of the ward’s provenance.”

He thinks of when he was first initiated as a Psychopomp, and every ward he went to was his first time doing such. Before each case and arrival into a ward, he sought the tale of its namesake, a predecessor of towering repute. Their names adorn each habitable ward of Byzantium, and as the priests said, as the Chapter Masters and Grandmaster often repeated, let us not forget the story behind each one. Listen. Learn. Echo. “Tell me of it, Art.”

“Yes,” Art agrees warmly.

As Ewain once more begins the tedious and tortuous ritual of purging and tending wounds new and old, Art invokes the muses. Patrons and celebrators of every story, no tale can be told without their auspices.

“Goddess,” Art beseeches as the young Psychopomp brutalizes himself with his own tending, “may I honor the dead in the telling of their story. Let me not stumble or stutter with the tale of Dietrich Haas, Psychopompos Arbiter, brother long dead.”

And thus, he told Ewain a tale of a young man twenty-three years of age who lived and died three hundred years ago. A time when Demichorians still walked among men, when every building and ward of Byzantium teemed with life, when the terror and treachery of the Great Traitor and his people reigned over the Holy Land and the Holy City.

Seven hundred years of failed and middling crusades brought the Vesperterrans, children of the Ichorians and faithful worshippers of them still, one final crusade of promise. Over many tribulating years, under the leadership of loyal Demichorians, bastions and marches were retaken, villages and fields resettled and plowed until all that remained was the shining city.

Dietrich was a commissioned knight from the Galatian Kingdoms of the Vesperterra across the sea. He fought under his father’s banners, part of the early campaigns that sponsored the conquest of much of the Outremer and the watering of its land with bloody slaughter. They rendered no mercy for the heretical and hedonistic Levians, followers of the Traitor. The Psychopomp Order followed behind, cleansing their work.

Then upon the burnt orange dusk of a sodden night, the host of Dietrich and his father came under attack. Surrounded, beset upon by a grotesquerie of beasts and their handlers, nearly the entire host was killed, including Dietrich’s father, and their corpses mutilated or consumed. As Dietrich’s own death neared, the trailing Psychopomp detachment arrived and demonstrated their reputation as unequaled warriors.

They took him and the few other survivors to a rearward encampment of Asclepias, where the maidens of health and healing took Dietrich’s arm and leg to save his life. Left crippled, to wither and writhe as the feast of monsters upon his kinsmen and father gave no mercy to memory, he raged. His furor became known to priests, soldiers, and laymen throughout the Outremer and Vesperterra, yet he remained a broken thing, unable to make more of spoken fury and guilt. He commanded the Psychopomps, known for restoring the maimed, to repair him.

They refused. The order gave no fealty to any lord born of earth, only to Morrius and his daughters. If the Lord Haas wished for restoration from them, then he must relinquish his rage, his vows of vengeance, and join them. A warrior of his talent would be a valuable and effective member. For days, the priest Jor Reeves spoke with Dietrich. Death, now and for a thousand years, he told him, no longer released mortal souls. Every murder poisoned this world. As Dietrich raged to kill more, the priest offered him something…the opportunity to speak with his father once more and purify the world instead of poison it.

After many nights of contemplation, Dietrich accepted, vowing to forsake killing and instead extract souls. In his inducting confession, he confided to killing hundreds, some with bestial violence. When Psychopomps went to purify the site of his father’s and kinsmen’s death, they permitted Dietrich upon the site to speak with his father.

It’s said he changed entirely after this. Years passed as the Order trained him, sharpened his skills, and attuned his senses. Upon his induction, the crusade reached the gates of the Holy City. Over months, millions died, bathing the city in bloodshed never before experienced, sewing every quarter in a Gordian knot of corruption and torment. Despite all their sacrifice, the defeat of the Levians and their leader, the Vesperterrans inherited a city now uninhabitable.

Thus, the Psychopomps began the daunting Purification Campaign. Members were organized into detachments led by an Arbiter and given a part of the city to purify. Day and night, hour upon endless hour, he and his brothers suffered and slayed, pushed to unfathomable limits that saw bodies shut down. Weeks straight with no respite, bodies abused mercilessly to irreparable mutilation, minds pushed to perpetual flirtation with madness, many died. Some collapsed from exhaustion, some succumbed to corrupted wounds, and others put down after falling to madness.

After three weeks of no sleep and no rest, Dietrich and his brothers purified the districts that would form the Haas Ward. For this, fate demanded his sight, his arm again was lost, and anathema blackened his torso to oblivion. Unable to continue, unwilling to fall to madness, he was given death by honorable discharge. Amidst prayer, chants, and the witness of many brothers, as he sat calm upon his knees, Dietrich’s Chapter Master offered a testament to the Ichorians before thrusting his sword into the base of Dietrich’s neck. All called to their patron Morrius to give him abode in mighty halls.

“No official or common records know the precise numbers,” Art begins to conclude, “but it is believed Dietrich and his brothers slayed thousands of broodlings, with the Arbiter himself credited with hundreds.” He punctuates with a huff of admiration. “Since then, millions have come to call the Haas Ward home. The Mission site was the base of operations that Dietrich’s detachment operated from, and where his statue now stands is where he was honorably discharged and interred.”

A titan of the Order, Ewain ponders, whose accomplishments anchored his name in history and gave to millions a home in this holy residence. Such service for the people, for the Ichorians, there could be no doubt the man earned absolution and reverent songs through the ages. His tale became one for young boys to listen to with fascination, to become part of their imagination and dreams…. What dreams he used to have.

“Thousands of souls, he must have Delivered, Art,” Ewain muses as he regards the city husks all around, “Restoring a part of the Holy City…to wield such ferocity…” his voice drips with deference, “the Gods truly rewarded and welcomed him. He was Worthy.”