Throughout the various, colorful histories of the Church of the Faceless - from the truly and fanatically religious, such as Mevolent, to the more nefarious followers using the Dark Gods for their own purposes - only one fact remained constant. Everyone who worshiped them seemed to agree that once the Faceless Ones were brought back into their rightful realty, the reality that had belonged to them from the start, they would expunge the stain of humanity and have mercy on no one but their true followers. The list of reasons for worship was long and varied, ranging from the selfish expecting gifts of gratitude to the noble who believed only sorcerers should rule the world.
While most sane sorcerers agreed that this was ridiculous, there weren't very many who truly understood that if the Faceless Ones ever were brought back - because they did, of course, exist, contrary to popular belief - they wouldn't have any concept of mercy, nor any need for disciples. They would kill anyone and everyone, traitors and devotes and mortals alike.
That didn't stop a select few from working to open a portal even after the war with Mevolent was over, convinced that they alone would be spared. Were the Faceless Ones capable of planning, or any form of reason, they might have tried to use this to their advantage. As it was, only sheer luck had brought them so close to reentering their home reality time and time again.
Luck, of course, should have been all they needed. One devout follower idiotic enough to think he might be spared, one window, one bright yellow portal between worlds. It should have been enough to seal that world's fate. Every single one of the dark gods should have made it back home on much less than that.
But that black crystal had somehow survived the millennium, now in the hands of a young thing who shone almost as brightly as the last Ancient did, and it had killed two of them. A bright, impossible pain that shuddered through each and every single Faceless One, tearing holes in their careful disregard for physics. And then the dead man had closed the portal, sealing them all on the 'wrong' side, and their last chance at escape had been destroyed shortly thereafter.
The standard for 'right' now had to be lowered to the standards of this suboptimal reality. A feat which was made slightly easier when the dead man's existence reappeared, and there was suddenly someone to blame. Someone to punish. Someone to put through the same pain every Faceless One had to endure at the death of their brethren. All was 'right' until, quite suddenly, it was not.
A blast of energy, a sear of nothingness so intense that it alerted even the weakest of them. Time, noise, a cacophony that swept through the valley, unnoticed by anything without the ability to transcend each of those concepts themselves. It was the same string of impossibilities that formed their own existences, whipping through a dark void they knew all too well. But something unfamiliar came with it. Something loud, something painful, something remarkably similar to what the beings in this city used to be.
Whatever had caused it managed to do what even the Faceless Ones could not. It had broken through multiple curtains at once, walked a path that nothing should be able to, kept its balance through a whirlpool that, by all rights, should have disintegrated everything within it.
It was something powerful. Someone powerful. Someone who had just broken through the curtains of several universes using nothing but a melodious sound that the Faceless Ones couldn't even begin to understand.
And it was wrong. It brought with it the stink of the void and loud pain, and it was wrong. It would have to be dealt with.
~~
None of them thought to find the little knotted and beaded rosary, because a being that shies away from music has no way of tracing the individual melody that the Archangel was following. The long-forgotten souvenir now lay in what might have once been a courtyard, half-buried in sand, only a mile or so out from the center of the city in the valley floor. The courtyard was otherwise empty, save for a small pile of bones in one corner bleached white by the sun.
The pile of bones might not have looked too out-of-place in a city where the population had been massacred, except that the rest of the city showed no signs of violence. Many of the stone buildings were beginning to crumble due to neglect, but there was otherwise nothing to cause panic - no blood, no bodies, and no remains of any kind. If one looked closer, this particular pile of bones looked like they could be put together to form the lower half of a human's right arm, hand and all.
But just because none of the Faceless Ones registered the tiny rosary, didn't mean it wouldn't be dangerous to find it. The center of the city was where most of them gathered, and where their pets - skinny things dressed in leathers and furs and primitive tattoos, sitting atop massive black beasts with jagged tails and thunderous screeches - flew overhead. Even now, they were circling around the sides of each mountain, keen eyes on the lookout for anything that didn't fit their masters' patterns.
The disturbance in the curtain of reality was gone - shielded, protected, untraceable, it didn't matter - and it didn't change that something felt wrong, like an object just enough out of place to be annoying, but not to lend itself to discovery. Something was here, and they all knew it. Two of the closest Faceless Ones began pouring slowly through the streets, preceded by their silent head-splitting whispers, heading for the place where the powerful act had been committed. They were expecting to find whatever had caused it - or, at the very least, a trail that thing had left.
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While most sane sorcerers agreed that this was ridiculous, there weren't very many who truly understood that if the Faceless Ones ever were brought back - because they did, of course, exist, contrary to popular belief - they wouldn't have any concept of mercy, nor any need for disciples. They would kill anyone and everyone, traitors and devotes and mortals alike.
That didn't stop a select few from working to open a portal even after the war with Mevolent was over, convinced that they alone would be spared. Were the Faceless Ones capable of planning, or any form of reason, they might have tried to use this to their advantage. As it was, only sheer luck had brought them so close to reentering their home reality time and time again.
Luck, of course, should have been all they needed. One devout follower idiotic enough to think he might be spared, one window, one bright yellow portal between worlds. It should have been enough to seal that world's fate. Every single one of the dark gods should have made it back home on much less than that.
But that black crystal had somehow survived the millennium, now in the hands of a young thing who shone almost as brightly as the last Ancient did, and it had killed two of them. A bright, impossible pain that shuddered through each and every single Faceless One, tearing holes in their careful disregard for physics. And then the dead man had closed the portal, sealing them all on the 'wrong' side, and their last chance at escape had been destroyed shortly thereafter.
The standard for 'right' now had to be lowered to the standards of this suboptimal reality. A feat which was made slightly easier when the dead man's existence reappeared, and there was suddenly someone to blame. Someone to punish. Someone to put through the same pain every Faceless One had to endure at the death of their brethren. All was 'right' until, quite suddenly, it was not.
A blast of energy, a sear of nothingness so intense that it alerted even the weakest of them. Time, noise, a cacophony that swept through the valley, unnoticed by anything without the ability to transcend each of those concepts themselves. It was the same string of impossibilities that formed their own existences, whipping through a dark void they knew all too well. But something unfamiliar came with it. Something loud, something painful, something remarkably similar to what the beings in this city used to be.
Whatever had caused it managed to do what even the Faceless Ones could not. It had broken through multiple curtains at once, walked a path that nothing should be able to, kept its balance through a whirlpool that, by all rights, should have disintegrated everything within it.
It was something powerful. Someone powerful. Someone who had just broken through the curtains of several universes using nothing but a melodious sound that the Faceless Ones couldn't even begin to understand.
And it was wrong. It brought with it the stink of the void and loud pain, and it was wrong. It would have to be dealt with.
~~
None of them thought to find the little knotted and beaded rosary, because a being that shies away from music has no way of tracing the individual melody that the Archangel was following. The long-forgotten souvenir now lay in what might have once been a courtyard, half-buried in sand, only a mile or so out from the center of the city in the valley floor. The courtyard was otherwise empty, save for a small pile of bones in one corner bleached white by the sun.
The pile of bones might not have looked too out-of-place in a city where the population had been massacred, except that the rest of the city showed no signs of violence. Many of the stone buildings were beginning to crumble due to neglect, but there was otherwise nothing to cause panic - no blood, no bodies, and no remains of any kind. If one looked closer, this particular pile of bones looked like they could be put together to form the lower half of a human's right arm, hand and all.
But just because none of the Faceless Ones registered the tiny rosary, didn't mean it wouldn't be dangerous to find it. The center of the city was where most of them gathered, and where their pets - skinny things dressed in leathers and furs and primitive tattoos, sitting atop massive black beasts with jagged tails and thunderous screeches - flew overhead. Even now, they were circling around the sides of each mountain, keen eyes on the lookout for anything that didn't fit their masters' patterns.
The disturbance in the curtain of reality was gone - shielded, protected, untraceable, it didn't matter - and it didn't change that something felt wrong, like an object just enough out of place to be annoying, but not to lend itself to discovery. Something was here, and they all knew it. Two of the closest Faceless Ones began pouring slowly through the streets, preceded by their silent head-splitting whispers, heading for the place where the powerful act had been committed. They were expecting to find whatever had caused it - or, at the very least, a trail that thing had left.