Totentanz

Book 1 Chapter XVII: Die Sehnsucht

Warning: contains minor character death both off- and on-screen, references to misogyny, and major character death (yet again...).

DIE SEHNSUCHT
German, "longing; yearning; nostalgia"

Nothing ever ends poetically. It ends and we turn it into poetry. All that blood was never once beautiful. It was always just red. -- Kait Rokowski

The wards around Miavain kept its people from realising anything unusual was happening in Avallot. Along the shore the fishermen noticed a mysterious absence of fish and an abnormally high tide, but nothing that couldn't be explained away naturally. Near the Avallese border a few scattered farmhouses felt faint tremors like a distant earthquake. When days passed and nothing else happened they dismissed the tremors and promptly forgot all about them.

People in Avallot didn't have the luxury of forgetting about them. Every day they had to deal with what caused them.

At first they thought the monster was an anomaly never to be repeated. Everyone else that idea for well over a month. Teivain-ríkhon-hrair was much too busy trying to find Diarnlan to keep an eye on the veil, and none of the other mages lived close enough to it to monitor it every day.

The second monster's arrival went unnoticed until it barged headlong into a city. It took all of the Great Mages and half of the Avallese army to finally kill it. By then it had laid waste to the whole city. Only two buildings remained standing. Hundreds of civilians were confirmed dead, thousands were missing, and thousands more were injured and homeless.

The third and fourth monsters arrived the very next day. They charged right across Avallot until they reached the capital. But they didn't stop there. They ran right through it, destroying everything in their path, and continued on their way. A magician in western Avallot was fortunate enough to kill one of them. The other one was still at large.

Ships reported sighting a fifth monster swimming towards Byuryan. Rumours came from kingdoms to the west of a monster wreaking havoc among them. No one knew if it was the fourth monster or a sixth one. Everyone lived in constant terror of the next arrival.

Meanwhile in Miavain the people had a different sort of monster to deal with. It started with the disappearance of all the priests in Olhai Province. All over the province the townspeople woke up to find their priests' heads impaled over the town gates -- a punishment reserved for traitors and heretics. The news quickly spread. Factory workers in southern Miavain talked about it during the breaks. Priests-in-training in the ornate academies began to worry about their futures. The High Priest flew into a rage and hurled his ceremonial crown at the unfortunate messenger who brought him the news.

"I want this heretical murderer dead!" he roared. Later in his public address to the capital's inhabitants he said, "I will bestow a sainthood on anyone who captures the murderer and brings him to me."

In spite of his promises and the government's offered rewards, no one caught the murderer or could offer any information about him. Weeks passed and brought with them many more dead priests but no leads. No one dared say it to the High Priest's face, but everyone noticed an especially disturbing fact about the murders.

They were moving closer and closer to the capital.

Three months after the murders first started was the Day of Muimatorven, one of the biggest festivals celebrated by the Bone-Worshippers. The High Priest's palace in the middle of the capital was the centre of the festivities. At noon exactly the High Priest would walk out onto the raised platform above the watching crowd and would publicly burn any book or piece of writing considered heretical.