[Sedna]

Muszinger

Muszinger recalled a hymn from his childhood. He was sitting on a hard wood bench between his parents. Up front, a man convicted of heresy flogged himself in a wild frenzy of remorse. The choir, high in the lofty recesses of the cathedral lifted up a slow, lonesome song:

And I will lift you up on eagle's wings

The words echoed in him as marched the ornate halls of the palace of Pythium, always just on the edge of real hearing and imagination -- angels' music.

There had been angels defending the gates and towers of Pythium. Hosts of beauty which made the heart ache to look at them and flaming swords to cleanse the wickedness from the hearts of men. Gawain and his knights had tossed them aside like chaff in their charge, and then hunted them down on horseback, hacking their bodies to bloody chunks, which they burnt, dancing around the pyre. Then they sacked the rest of the city, burning and looting.

But now the palace was quiet. Little streams of water murmered in the stillness. Muszinger came to the foot of a spiral staircase. How long before, it could not have been more than six months, had he climbed that other tower in the cathedral at Saran Forest? How many nights ago had he read those orders which had started all this madness, which had plunged the world into bloody war?

Bear you on the breath of dawn

Muszinger reached the top of the tallest tower in Pythium, and gazed back toward the broken tower of Saran, and beyond that to the Mountains of Madness and Fort Doom. These few leagues where he had been trapped for years now-- fighting, always fighting. The broken tower still shone a sickly green, and the stories of the evil king of death, Antrax, unleashed upon a hapless world by Polgrave, had reached the ear of every soldier. Polgrave! Dear friend, lost to the light... and now death stalked the lands north and west of them, cutting of any hope of reuniting with loyal forces. Death rode at the head of a wave of nightmares: every heretic burnt by the inquisition, that was the rumor, each bent on seeking revenge upon the living, be they warriors of Man or Marignon.

Make you to shine like the sun

Muszinger watched the stars. Why had the LORD forsaken Marignon, and which in his time? For now, the borders still held, in one bloody battle after another, but they could not last. Avoca had been struck down by heavenly fire in his office in the capitol as he sat praying for angelic aid. Spire was even now stuck desperately alone in a flood of Ulmish and Van armies. The Archbishop of Marignon, if the reports are true, has been driven mad by the evils of Ermor. No, Marignon would fall. The mighty kingdom which had grown so great in the last years would wither utterly to a flickering ember.

But the greatest threat never came from without, but from within, from the rotten heart of man. Polgrave, utterly mad, and doomed, and fallen into blackness. Dear friend, now a pawn of death, and controlled by the black ichor infecting his veins. And according to Esclave, Wic was performing human sacrifices, and promulgating some now gospel about bringing forth the devils to hold back the flood of death which swirled around Fort Doom.

And hold you in the palm of my hand.

Yet the greatest darkness now in a sky of night was Afti-el. So pure when she arrived in this world, so full of heaven's light. What fell beast now stalked the weary world, trailing sickness in her wake? What twisted darkness had brought her low? How had the plans of the almighty LORD been so utterly perverted, that his greatest servant would lead to the destruction of Marignon?

Marignon would fall. But still Muszinger would ride out one last time on the LORD's crusade. He would track down and banish Antrax if he could, and if he could not... he would take his eternal reward. If those stars still held a heaven, he would see the living face of God. And death, afterall... What was it the prophet had said?

There is special providence in the fall of a sparrow.

Even drought bears fruit.
Even death is a seed.