EPISODE 11: Order and Ruin

The air was thick with smoke and silence. The attack on the Order of Wormwood still resonating...all at the hands of Orem Black. Son of founder, Reginald Black. How could this be? A familiar face. Never considered a threat or foe...now enemy number one. An agent of the dark, of all things. It’s what the Order was created to stop. What Reginald, Banerjee, and countless others had interpreted from their dream...a powerful threat on the horizon needing to be neutralized. But no one saw it coming, not like this. 

And what had once been the stronghold of the Order’s magic, their beacon of light, Black Manor was now in ruin. Orem and the shocking magic he was wielding, gone, along with Joseph and Fredrick Frost. Riding off into the night with the powerful Book of Amar in their possession. 

For the Order, their history would be marked in two ways. Before Orem’s attack, and after. And in the burgeoning moments after the assault, all that remained in the once hallowed-halls were the devastated and the dead.  

Order member, Hui Chen bloodied but breathing, took charge. He moved along surveying the damage, calling forth the surviving members. The numbers now of “HANDS”, those with real abilities in magic, were only a fraction of that before. “FACE” members, faired better, but not much.

First order of business, sending the most powerful and able-bodied “gifted” members, to scour the city, and find Orem Black and the Frosts. Then, of those remaining, he called for the dead to be collected, and given honorable burials. Searching through the aftermath, slivers of rising sunlight pierced the clouds, illuminating fallen pillars and stone. And as bodies of the fallen were laid out, a panicked voice called from atop the staircase.

Buried beneath a part of the roof that caved in, a man. Blood stained his lips, but he was breathing. Broderick Zayne had been crushed, a direct hit. Heavy debris was moved, he was pulled from harms way.

Zayne was examined by a doctor friendly to the Order. The physician was awe-struck, as whatever injuries Zayne had were already healing. All of Zayne’s bones should have been crushed, but weren’t. He shouldn’t be alive, but was. The alchemist from a different time, was well aware what happened. Conscious and cognizant, feeling the searing and unbearable pain of being pinned underneath the heavy rubble. Was this God? A divine act of a higher power protecting him? Zayne felt as though it was. 

But Hui Chen had seen something like this before, a mortal reshaped by a supernatural aberration. Expelled from his time, in the 1680’s, sent to another plane of existence -- the endless abyss. Then violently pulled back to this realm, switching places with Orem Black. Traversing dimensional membranes, crossing spectral domains, piercing the veil of realms, especially more than once, can do strange things to a person. No longer bound to rules of life in an unexpected way. Crushed by a falling section of roof, Zayne wasn’t merely lucky or protected by the immaculate forces, he had become something else...what’s commonly referred to as an Eternal. 

An Eternal is human still... but touched, as one can still bleed, still suffer, but the rules of time, and of life and death no longer apply. One can live seemingly indefinitely, unless utterly destroyed. Some gain the gift through divine relics, like the Ark of the Covenant. Others, like Zayne, through astral passage. It can also happen by more uncanny means, such as hearing the ethereal voice of certain astral entities...More on that later. 

Hui Chen, seeing with his own eyes knew the truth. But Zayne’s mind had trouble wrapping around such a notion. He was no prophet, no hero...Perhaps not. But the empyrean doesn’t make mistakes. Only offering...possibilities.

ZAYNE: I don’t belong here...not in this time, not in this place. My only wish is to...return home. 

CHEN: To an era which no longer is? Home does not exist the way you want, so you must find a reason to belong here, with us.

ZAYNE: But this fight is not mine.   

CHEN: Your faith was your compass once. Let it guide you again…I have an old friend in Rome. He walks both the sacred and the strange, just as you. Go to him. Find what your eternity is meant for.

Beyond Black Manor, members of the Order of Wormwood, sent by Hui Chen, searched London for Orem Black and the Frosts...but found only fleeting shadows.  

With a head-start, the trio vanished, securing passage on a ship headed to the emerald shores of Ireland. The crossing was wind-lashed, the sea heaving under a sky that never quite turned to day. Fredrick Frost, wrapped himself in layers of black wool, and swore at the cold as he thumbed through the Book of Amar. Joseph sat uneasy, knowing evil had ahold of him. He scanned the waves, half-expecting something ancient to rise from the deep and claim the soul that he so freely offered up. Orem stayed near the prow, jaw clenched, eyes fixed on the horizon and the future he knew lay ahead. Joseph watched his old friend, seeing the darkness teeming.

OREM: Our wants in this world are no more. We control destiny. War is coming. We’re the spark. The match. Let this old world burn — and from it, birth something that’s ours.

Past the angry tides, they’d make their way to Fredrick’s old family estate in the west of Ireland. A forgotten sprawl of moss-covered stone and ancestral secrets, serving as the staging ground for what would come next. Far from the eyes of London and the Order of Wormwood, Orem poured over the brittle pages of the Book of Amar, its ink dark as old blood, script shifting under his gaze like something alive. In the Abyss, Kasson, the demon in disguise, prepared him for his future in two parts…

The first, he was remade, fire-hardened, into one of the most powerful beings on the planet. Versed in all the forms of Black magic and sorcery that ever existed.

The second, he was to delve into the book, to find and interpret the Processions...seven great prophecies meant to bring an apocalyptic battle to heaven and earth. 

The dark, seeking a war against the light, could not act until seven souls met their fates. There were rules, older than time that must be followed exactly, with precision and without deviation. Pursuers, agents of the dark, could not execute any of the Processions but instead use their powers of influence, suggestion, and temptation to guide the hands of man to accomplish the acts.

So the dark would wait, patient, watchful, as Orem, with Joseph and Fredrick by his side, slipped deeper into the Book’s concealed strata. Searching beneath false chapters, between inkless lines, hunting to unearth lost sigils buried in a sea of false glyphs. Obscure mentions of souls with bound paths threaded through existence like veins of divine fire. The Processions, were not simple truths, but fragments of a greater design, a map of becoming, of collapse and return. Each a jagged piece. A gateway. A god-slayer. Myths that MUST come to fruition. Orem was on the path to seek complicated answers to unspoken questions. 

TO BE CONTINUED…