The Enmity of Scolrys, Part XXIV: Strife Everlasting

As the final days of Omeian came to a close, Strife’s fervent warriors assembled to give unto Him an offering of their belief and power captured by their hands.

Called to Sibre by the Warlord’s chosen, the Theocracy of Spinesreach swiftly assembled upon the parade ground at the heart of the fortress. Beginning first with ceremonial bloodshed and combat, Strife’s devotees made of these sanctified battles an offering to Bamathis. Blood misted the tundral air as lives ended at the points of blades and the seething bite of spellcraft, giving the essential element of life and belief to begin the ritual in earnest.

With the opening proceedings handled, officers and congregants joined together to deliver their prayers to their Lord – and, in the process, the ears of the rest of the realm. Kagura, Tzarentesh, Sysaa, Sheryni and Herald Whirran each bellowed aloud their devotions to Lord Bamathis, their lives one and all extinguished again at the end of argent spears as a show of their willingness to die beneath His banner. Cult-like fervour overtook the crowd as they looked to Ulo, the supposed Oracle of Madness, to speak their part – words that swiftly transfigured into a potent deathrite that smothered not only the mad Harpy’s life, but obliterated the captive vexation of over a thousand Chaos gremlins. Invisible force seized the skies overlooking the Western Tundra, its unseen hand twisting cloud and welkin clarity alike into a knotted braid of ritual tension.

A polychromatic helix lanced up towards the firmament from the Sibre’s parade ground, the unleashed essence of a thousand Chaos gremlins staining the sky with the murkiness of their collective individuality. The churning power ascended in a filigreed spiral that set reality aquiver, its varying shades casting auroral brilliance and wavering shadows across the Western Tundra – and soon, Sapience at large. As the helix achieved its apex, its unyielding energies strained ever further. Like a knife working through flimsy fabric, the accumulated power slashed into the borders of Material Prime before undergoing a rapid expansion that wrenched open the celestial vault.

The endless expanse of far-flung Chaos yawned open in place of the sky’s lofty ethereality, beckoning the eye to budding terror. Countless shards – worlds unto themselves, entire realms woven from the remains of an ancient place established before light glimmered and shadow seethed – gleamed within the colourless fires of raw cosmic primordium. Regions beyond Umbral and Astral inclination burned and shimmered there within Creation’s abandoned crucible, one and all shining beacons of dissolution, salvation and bountiful possibility – a promise of infinity beyond imagination. An eldritch symphony drifted out from the writhing chasm wrought by ritually bound essence, filling Sapience with the distant woodwinds so familiar now to those forced to face the Faceless and Its endlessly profane designs.

It That Woke extended Its tentacular grasp into the Prime for the third time of this unnamed age, a writhing appendage lined with wheeling eyes, rasping suckers, and fanged maws that gaped open to bellow sanity’s funeral dirge.

The wicked, ichor-stained edge of Caelestis glimmered into view at the window’s border, its blade sawing through the Faceless One’s bold incursion. The Fiend of a Thousand Featureless Faces wept and gnashed Its non-existent teeth, Its agony roiling through the outer realms. Its pained cries were as psychic torment to the Prime Material, forcing the searing lance of twisted empathy into the centre of every mortal mind.

Bamathis, Strife Incarnate and once-enforcer of a now fled Creator, charged into view within the gaping aperture affixed to the sky.

Bellowing aloud an ancient battlecry only heard in mythical tales whispered around soldier’s cookfires and heroic stories of militant slaughter, the Forgotten Son plunged forward in pursuit of an enemy blessedly elusive of mortal perception. Sensing the intended recipient of its vast possibility, the multifarious helix breached planar space to meet Him. As the energy crossed over into the maddened vista of Chaos, it underwent a profound transfiguration; no longer a haphazard, crackling column of chromatic wonder, it became harsh pewter light that bathed Bamathis in empowering radiance, knitting closed His countless wounds and suffusing Him with vigour renewed.

Penned by my hand on Falsday, the 23rd of Slyphian, in the year 3 AC.