Diven/Passing 1 The Passing, Book 1: While the World Went Mad By Noble Diven Introduction: Mazrath counted his candles. Just enough had survived the journey across the Tamarian Empire. He placed them in a circle before lighting each one. Soon the destroyed room glowed, revealing splintered furniture, layers of dust and bloodstains on the walls and floor. He looked up from his work at the scratching of ghosts or mice. To step into Callinday, the City of Bones, risked alerting the tormented souls trapped within its broken walls to his mortal presence. If he were found, the souls of so many dead trying to escape the darkness by flooding into his body would utterly destroy him. But the chance at a life of strength without fear was worth the risk. If this summoning failed he would have nothing else to live for. Mazrath pushed aside his oily and overgrown black hair while he crouched over a tattered book. The loosely bound pages spoke of lighting a beacon to the invisible world. Rather than tease the spirits of the dead hovering just beyond his awareness, he intended to summon a god. The book he searched had survived the journey better than he. Months of wandering from city to city had left his rags faded and loose as they dangled from a body shriveled from exposure and neglect. He coughed, his whole body convulsing with the effort. He looked forward to leaving this weak flesh behind in favor of something stronger and immune to harm or fatigue. He had read of becoming a Firsborn from Aetheria’s early days after the creation and imagined how wonderful that life must have been before the War of Ascension ruined everything. Diven/Passing 2 He had spent many cold and lonely nights reading over the secret history of the world. Tahteem-Hodchi had hoped to bring a unified man to replace their creators and serve no gods but themselves. Instead of leading an age of enlightenment as the first godking, he was poisoned by a jealous brother. Rather than create a utopia, Tahteem’s death had fractured the land into catastrophic civil war. From a vision, the unknown author of Mazrath’s book also spoke of the Breach. At the death of Shasla, the Guardian Mother, Tahteem had corrupted the link between the mortal realm and man’s eternal destination. The great unifier had not only doomed the living he left behind, but forever cursed all who died to a fate of wandering in the Breach’s darkness where few trickled back into the mortal plane and fewer still ever reached the next place where the dead gods reigned. When the Tamarians came from the western seas, they brought a new religion and buried the past through conquest, the militant Order and their priests. Because Mazrath had stumbled onto the truth of the world, the Order had chased him, burned his home, scattered his family and stolen his inheritance in the name of fighting heresy. The ritual said it would bring the dead back from the Breach. One of these old gods, Carmil the Mountainbuilder, lay imprisoned under the Callinday in a mountain of ice. Mazrath clutched the pages while he went over the summoning again. With some slight modifications to the diagram, he could bring Carmil’s awareness directly to this room. Alerting the spirits of Callinday’s mad dead was possible, but they would scatter at Carmil’s passing like minnows before a whale. If the Order knew what he was attempting, an army would have followed him here to destroy both him and the slumbering god. He hummed softly while scratching out the last portions of the design. Once finished, he stood on a twisted keyhole shape touching three points of a circle. The chalk he held had cut Diven/Passing 3 through the grime and he flicked off the accumulated filth from its white edge. Everything was in place. The chant of invitation had once been used by Carmil’s followers whose descendants had become the Mountainborne savages to the east. They would worship Mazrath when he brought the power of their god to their camps and primitive villages. Excitement flooded through his weak body at the prospect of joining. Uttering the sharp words of a forgotten tongue, he called out into the unknown. A cold breeze pushed the burning tips of his candles outward. He stepped out of the chalked circle. His hands trembled and he crossed his arms to keep them still. In all his reading there wasn’t any direction on how to greet something from beyond human reckoning so he tried straightening his rags and waited. This was it, the culminating answer to so much cruelty. In a matter of moments his salvation would appear. The crudely scratched outline lit up and turned like the opening of a lock. Lore and legend be damned, Mazrath smiled wide and held up his arms as the room blazed with white light shining from the center of the circle. The thing struggling out of the floor was the opposite of what he had expected. Rather than a god of fire and stone, a twisted patch of blackness ending in a hood emerged. Two long ashen arms no bigger than a child’s wrist pushed weakly against the floor with spindly fingers. The twisted creature barely made it to his knees, sniffing and whimpering like a delirious wretch. It was a pathetic sight, reserved for only the most desperate addicts of a Gibean slum. Anger surged through Mazrath’s body at the sight of this cosmic joke. He had brought forth some residue from the Breach rather than drawing Carmil up from the earth. After putting this thing out of his its misery, he’d slice his own throat and simply be done with this wretched life. Diven/Passing 4 Perhaps his soul could find Lothran, his dead wife, on its own and together they might survive crossing to the next world. He reached for his sacred knife, the one thing of worth he had taken from the Order, and sighed. The thing jerked up at the noise. It snatched at Mazrath’s legs. Claws clamped down like iron shackles on his skin, pulling him to the ground. With monstrous strength it dragged him towards the center of the circle. He screamed, desperately thrashing against the shadow pulling him closer. The thing climbed up his legs and chest until he lay inches away from the spirit’s void of a face. He struck the thing with his hands, beating against what felt like wet steel. The spirit shoved an elongated claw down his throat. He choked and heaved, smoke filling his senses as the arm forced its way down into his heart and lungs. Mazrath’s vision faded from the pain of frozen glass cutting into his insides. The creature dug around his body as if blindly searching a sack. Organs Mazrath had never felt were jammed to one side or squeezed to near bursting. It was impossible to breathe and he choked, gasped and fought as the world dimmed. Mazrath felt his soul being torn up by its roots like some plant. Still pinning him down with one arm, the spirit, with a strenuous effort, drew out a ripple of dull light. It held Mazrath’s eternal essence up for momentary examination before shoving the entire fist and its contents into the hood. While it was distracted, Mazrath, gasping for air, tried to escape. The spirit pulled him back, bending close. He struggled to breathe through a scraped throat numbed from ice and smoke. A trickle of blood ran down the outside of his mouth. In a grating voice barely above a whisper, the spirit asked, “Whom do we serve?” Diven/Passing 5 Mazrath coughed up more blood. In his delirious state he knew the answer. Though the flesh had decayed to dust long ago, the first godking of Aetheria still lived within the Breach. “Tahteem Hodchi.” “Then serve him well,” the spirit replied, “Your king requires blood. Lots of blood.” In one violent motion, the spirit plunged a claw into Mazrath’s chest. He screamed, the cry cut short when he passed out from pain and blind terror. Birds chirped as they fluttered through the broken house. Sunlight beamed through gaping holes in the roof of the house when Mazrath woke. The broken remains of Callinday’s streets and charred buildings stood visible through shattered windows. Even for the City of Bones, the day seemed unusually pleasant, symbolic of a new life. Colors appeared brighter, even if those colors came from overgrown ruins or burned out houses. Mazrath sat straight up. What had happened the night before felt inconsequential, like a bad dream scattered by the new morning. The leftovers of his interaction were everywhere: a circle of wax puddles, a smeared circle of chalk and deep lines cut into the filth where he had nearly lost his fingernails trying to escape. Looking back he shouldn’t have been so worried about receiving his gift and purpose. Even the awareness of something important missing inside his chest seemed...inconsequential. He stood up and dusted himself off, gathered up his things and strode confidently into the city street. Diven/Passing 6 Chapter 1: Clouds filled the late summer sky and cooled Kane in their shadows as they passed. He dozed, draping an arm forged from years of farming over his eyes. A breeze drifted through the surrounding trees and tickled his shaggy blonde hair. The air stunk of wheat as it always did during harvest time.