A Fine Black Sky
CHAPTER THIRTY SEVEN
Kid could not help himself returning to that room in the top of the Tower later the same day, long after he was required as an Apprentice. It compelled him - it drew him in, like a drug, causing him to search again and again for that sensation, the thrill of first encounter, the object of desire that could never be achieved again once it had been experienced. Yet he would search for it, that ephemeral, ethereal component, and perhaps always crave that which had never particularly existed in any true sense in the primary instance.
It was also a time for Kid to reflect and to speculate, on the function these scales would play in his future as the Chief Advisor to his Brother, Eighteen. He took his success in the trial as an inevitable outcome to a preordained accomplishment, his life forever chained to that of the Aplombinate Vesy of Kombayn and its components, a sure fire convoluted addition to his future in some capacity yet to be determined.
When he could no longer justify his observance and presence within the room, Kid took himself back to the Apprentice quarters, for a long night of staring at the ceiling and, as he always did, contemplation of the years yet to come.
Kid was almost upon the Communal Room, which he would have to pass through, simply to obtain access to the Dormitories, when the reverberated echoes, each rolling over the other in a masquerade of dissertation, sounded a confused description, and in some way a recruitment dialogue, to the obfuscative language of the cultic. Kid moved further in, still hidden by the shadows, but able to observe the scene.
An Apprentice, a young man of wild attire and wilder complexion, was sat forward on his chair, causing the other half-dozen Apprentices to follow suit, attentive to the measured and tonally assured words of a practiced orator. Kid knew him as Rowne Bakkerseff.
“In Tenebrae Deus, the motto of the Veiled.” he spoke. The doctrine of the creed was a more appropriate axiom. It meant ‘In Darkness There Is God’. The Veiled were a dogmatic cult of dark ideology and the inference that the darkness the people of Unity suffered was in some way a tenet of the belief system, in that it was some kind of divine providence - given to the people by their God, containing their God and was the only kind of spiritual nurture the people required. The principal problem with the Veiled was that it demanded absolutes, total compliance with the prophetic word of that God, regardless of its contradiction to the general performance of life. It contained zealots, fanatics, becoming the preferred faith of the extreme minded in Unity. And it was growing in strength, deeply engrained into the structure of the world and its people. It was perhaps because it spoke to the lesser entitled, being a belief that demanded only fealty to the God, regardless of consequence. It was principally a City religion, but was finding a foot-hold in the Towers, through the propensive vitriol of the Workers who came to the Towers and held their preaching in the empty rooms of the Attendant’s Quarters. There it festered in resentment, occasionally striking at the heart of the community, but thankfully for now, it was contained in absentia.
The Cultists, the Mono and the Many. It was a system of religious belief that would often find itself at odds with the perpetual, and sometimes transient, beliefs of others. Often a God, or many, would be called upon in time of suffering, grief or condemnation. But there were those with strongly held beliefs, and the spiritual conviction to marry with it, like Rowne himself.
The man of the Veiled continued on, set upon his ideology, “There’s a promise in the warm, calming embrace of the Veiled, you know? Of a secure way of life, of spiritual growth and, as long as you would trust in the Darkness, it will give you serenity, tranquility and contentment for as long as you shall live, and what’s more you will always live with confidence - for be assured, my God is ever present, attentive to my needs and pleasing to my dreams.”
Kid observed how a glow of hope and expectation sprang out amongst the other Apprentices, seemingly desperate to cling onto something - anything - that would produce that seal for the hole left by their parents and family. Kid had been devoid of that carbuncle long before he ever became an Apprentice. He only had himself, and that was all he could and would ever rely upon.
However, there was a part of Kid that insisted he warn these Apprentices, to ensure they were indeed armed with the mindset to approach such a system as the Veiled, and not merely to be dragged along to a contest where the only winner was the Dark.
When Kid spoke upon something he was passionate about, even his own intonation surprised him, and he initially thought the words escaped a proxy, with a more commanding voice, “You must all realise that, despite his clement and informed words, Mr Bakkerseff is not relating to you the certain and inalienable truths of our world, that it was the Old Gods who gave to us all we see, all we experience and all we touch. Not the MonoGod. Certainly not the Veiled. It is disloyal to them that you in any way appease this cultish nonsense. In fact I compel you all to gather more information about all faiths, even the MonoGod, before you lose sight of what it is you truly seek, spiritually, within yourself. It is about choices, you understand, and making reasoned ones, choosing a path for your life and developing a passion for those things that truly mean something, and not the prolonged lifelessness of solitude and ignorance.” And within those words, even as he spoke them, a realisation was revealing itself to KId. He must practice what he preached, look within himself and understand what was before him. it was a coming of age, essentially, allowing him to move onto the next part of his life.
“Yet there is too much reliance in what you say, whatever your name is, of those Old Dead Gods, who left when they were no longer required, when a desire for more modern thinking brought us the MonoGod, who is, in His own way, an interesting diversion, but we must remember - all of us - that it was the Darkness that spawned the Old Gods, not the other way around.”
“But not your Darkness, Rowne. That was a primordial darkness that spawned the Old Gods. Your Darkness, if it be anything other than a lack of light, is an interruption on anything other than a sensible, logical, reasonable debate of the benefits of religious and spiritual beliefs.”
“Faith and the Ruler. Of course you would hold with that old, tired manifestation. Is not your Father a follower of Yvr? An Old God? No, your Father is not progressive, and he teaches his Sons thusly. That is why the Darkness is required - to heal the hurt you and your kind perpetrate upon the world every long, tired - dark - day. There is always my God outside this Tower. Where are your Gods? I do not stand, walk to the window and open it up to the face of Yvr, or Dynnyr, or Byryll. Do you?”
But Kid had no answer to that. He had no further argument. It seemed Rowne was a more informed zealot than Kid had given him credit for. Kid learned a valuable lesson that day. One cannot be right all the time. Sometimes - sometimes one should pick the fights they knew they could win. Or was that unethically shameful? Perhaps he was still a boy, and requiring of the maturity of experience. Perhaps. It was all speculative, of course. And only time would tell.
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