Abyssus Abbey Chapter 1: Arrival
Story by PenDarke on SoFurry
Imported from SF2 with no description.
Welcome to Abyssus Abbey -- a place where monks study and summon demons in an attempt to prevent the Apocalypse.
The demons are in the walls, listening to your words, your thoughts, your desires, and if you fall prey to any of the Twelve Temptations, you may find yourself changed in ways you may not have expected.
The Abbey has always drawn and doomed those who seek power and knowledge, and if you're lucky, you might find something else there: a change in your outlook, a surprising ability, a friend where no friend was expected, and even romance.
But all pleasures come with a price, and sooner or later the devil will have his due.
Come in. Join the damned.
Chapter 1: Arrival
On a moonless night like this, Abyssus Abbey was almost a welcome sight, looming at the top of its mountain perch. Orange torchlight framing its massive, black gates and lining its crenelated walls raised Tuco's spirits a little. The night was very dark and very cold, and if the rumors were true, wolves ran through these hills. Wolves and worse things. Things that ate wolves.
Besides, his feet were so sore from walking that sitting down anywhere would be welcome. He'd have taken a cart if he could, but the last of his pennies had long since been spent, and besides, few carts would venture near Abyssus Abbey. In the last village Tuco had passed through, the townsfolk wouldn't even speak of it, calling it that place and giving him pitying looks when he asked how to get there.
He tugged his thin cloak around his shoulders. The higher he climbed up the path, the stiffer and chillier the wind. Above him, the massive, sprawling abbey crouched atop the mountain like a panther. He had never seen any building so large before. It looked the size of an entire town, its walls stretching far off to his left, while the rightmost edge seemed to have run out of mountaintop and leaned out over empty space, one crooked tower looking ready to break free of the architecture and go tumbling down the hill.
So this was to be his home, for however long he lasted. The light was welcome, and he hoped for warmth inside, but the closer he drew, the more forbidding and oppressive the place looked. The gates towered over him, twenty feet high at least. He rapped on the rough wood with his knuckles, but he might as well have been knocking on a block of stone for all the sound it made. He pounded a little harder, with the side of his hand, but still only produced a muffled thumping that no one answered.
“Hello?" he called out. His voice sounded tiny and thin in the wind. Just as he was despairing, thinking he'd have to huddle up against the gates the whole night and hope he didn't die of chill (or from one of the things out there in the darkness), he noticed the rope hanging to one side of the gate. He gave it a hard pull, and heard a faint, mellow dong from inside, followed by a long silence.
Then a weary-sounding voice came from above. “You a supplicant?"
“No, I--" He looked up to see the silhouette of a head sticking out of a window above the gates. What was a supplicant? Was he? “I'm here for an apprenticeship?"
“Wait there."
After a time, a smaller door cut into the larger one opened and produced a tired-looking man, accompanied by a gust of warmer air and a smoky, musty, lived-in smell. “Well, come on in."
Tuco followed him through the door and found himself in a wide, open entryway with a pitted wooden floor. The ceilings were shrouded in shadows, too lofty to be lit by the candles inside. He sniffed the air--again, that smoky smell, but also the must of old stone and wood, the stink of sulphur and other chemicals, and a musky odor that reminded him a bit of a stableyard and a bit more of the traveling menagerie that had come through town when he was a young boy.
He sidled closer to one of the candle sconces to feel a little meager warmth and inspected his host, who was locking up the door again. The man was about average height with a lined, weathered face and brown hair hanging loose around his shoulders. He was dressed in a plain, dark brown robe. Tuco blinked. “You look…" and then trailed off, embarrassed.
“Normal?" The man arched an eyebrow. “No, no, it's all right. Whatever you've heard about the Abbey, it's probably true. They keep us Unchanged working the door to help visitors relax. You'll see more tomorrow. This way, please."
Tuco scurried to keep up as the man headed briskly down a side passage behind an iron door. The gusts of wind sounded just as loud in here as they had outside, with a haunting, howling edge to them. The man opened a side door and gestured to Tuco. “In here, please."
Inside the room was a straw pallet covered with a thin, moth-eaten blanket, a night-soil pot, and a washbasin with a clay pitcher next to it. “This is where you'll sleep tonight. If you're approved for service, you'll join the others in the dormitory tomorrow."
Tuco stared wearily at the room. It didn't look very comfortable, but he was so tired, he doubted it would matter. Then something the man had said bothered him. “Approved?"
“This is a demonology monastery. You don't think they're going to let just anyone serve here, do you? They're very, very careful here. Do you understand? The Brothers don't like risks. If there's anything in your past or upbringing that you're worried they might not like, it's better to bring it up early." He pointed down the hall. “See those?"
Framing the hallway, perched at regular intervals at the top of the wall, were pairs of gargoyles, each of them gnarled and grotesque, part lion, part lizard, their fanged snouts carved into a permanent grimace, the empty circles of their stone eyes staring downward. “Those are the Gasen. The gazers. If you had even a touch of demon in your soul you wouldn't have made it inside the door. They're all through the Abbey and they'll scream bloody murder if they don't like the look of you. One little peep from those and you're out, if you're lucky and no one thinks you're too dangerous."
Tuco shrank back from them, intimidated. They looked like they wanted to scream. Their hollow eyes seemed to swallow him. “And what if you aren't lucky?"
“Then you go into the Throat. And you don't want to go to the Throat. So be careful. These walls are full of whispers. They make offers, promises. Don't say yes. Agree to nothing. Hear?"
Tuco nodded.
The man gave a grunt of satisfaction. “You'll be all right. For a while. Just take my advice. I don't know what brought you here, but as soon as you've got enough, get out. One day you're fine, the next it's too late. Go on, then." He ushered Tuco into the room.
Tuco shuffled in and sat on the prickly pallet. The man began to shut the door. “Wait," Tuco called. “What should I call you?"
“Doesn't matter. I'll take you to meet Lord Krastor tomorrow. If you're accepted, you won't see me again until you decide to leave."
“And if I'm not accepted?"
The man shrugged. “Then there's not much point getting to know me, is there?" He shut the door. There was the sound of keys turning in the lock.
Tuco lay back in the bed, pulling the worn blanket over himself and huddling under it. It would have been too small for an average man, but it covered his slight frame well enough, despite the holes and ragged edges. It wasn't exactly warm, but it was better than being out in the wilderness.
Now that he was still, the sounds of the Abbey rolled over him. Mostly it was the gusting wind outside, but there were other sounds beneath it. He thought he heard someone shouting, and several times the sounds of large beasts snarling or howling, some distance away. He hoped they came from outside the Abbey. He thought again of the Gasen, their hollow eyes scouring the hallways throughout the monastery, searching, searching for demons, for corruption, for anything that didn't belong. And he thought he would never fall asleep. Halfway through considering it, he did.
The stairway up to Lord Krastor's tower was winding and narrow. Tuco felt fairly sure this was the same tower he'd seen from outside the Abbey; everything seemed to list to one side, and if he looked up or down, the twisting angles dizzied him so badly he needed to cling to the wall. What kind of monk--much less a Lord--would choose to live in such a location? If he didn't know better, he'd swear the tower was swaying in the wind.
The man from last night had led him here and simply told him to climb to the top, where he would be evaluated. The monastery was still chilly, but not as bad as last night, and at least this morning Tuco's belly was full. More so than it had been in months, actually. He'd awoken to the mouth-watering scent of hot fat and bread. After a mouthwatering breakfast of biscuits and pork drippings, he'd been instructed to clean himself with cold water and a coarse towel and then had been ushered down a hall full of Gasen to the winding staircase.
He paused for a moment at the top of the stairs. The doorway was tall, with a wrought-iron handle that looked too small for it. Fighting the anxiety that felt like two dogs fighting in his stomach, he knocked.
Muted by the door, a voice answered, “Come." It was an older voice, and deep, aristocratic, the kind that didn't waste words on underlings. Why say, “Come on in," or, “Please make yourself at home," when “Come" would work just as well?
The door gave a satisfying, slow creak as he pushed it open. A gust of hot air wafted out. The smell was odd and unpleasant. It was earthy, but with rot, and an acrid scent, as though someone had turned over a very large log. The room inside was huge and dim, with only a few candles burning. There were no desks, no chairs, no bed, nothing that suggested that anyone spent any amount of time here other than the bookshelves, which lined every wall and sagged with the weight of innumerable tomes. They stretched up the walls, far beyond the reach of the meagre candlelight, fading into darkness above. Tuco couldn't tell how far above him the ceiling was, and if the tower had any windows, they were blocked by the shelves. The air felt very stuffy and dry.
“Close the door," the voice instructed. Tuco couldn't see the speaker. He peered up into the gloom above him. Something drifted in the stirred air, like threads.
He pulled his hat from his head, his mussed brown hair falling in front of his eyes. “If you please, Your Lordship, my name is Tuco. Tuco Witchywine, sir."
“And you come seeking apprenticeship?"
“Yes, sir. If I am accepted. You see--"
“Your family is in dire straits. Starving. You have younger siblings going hungry. An infant is ill. You hope to earn as much as ten pence a week that you will send home to them for food and medicine."
Tuco stared up into the blackness, astonished. “But--but how could you know that, Your Lordship? Are you a demon? Or have they given you secret knowledge?"
“Tut." The voice sounded bored. “It is the same story of every young man who comes through here. Or nearly. Some wish to avoid a draft into whatever war Queen Tibera is bothering with. And some wish to avoid the debtor's prison. But most…" There was a long, weary sigh. “Most just want to send money back home. For food and medicine."
Tuco didn't know what to say. He turned his hat around and around in his hands. “It's good money, sir."
“You're very small for an apprentice. Are you of age?"
“Twenty-two, sir. The clerics say my growth was stunted on account of we didn't have much to eat, sir."
“So you are a religious boy, then?"
Tuco scoured the ceiling for the source of the voice. His eyes were adjusting to the darkness, but he still couldn't make out anything in the gloom. Just more and more of those long threads hanging down. “I say my prayers most nights. And on holidays Father would take us into town for services."
“Not regular, then. But you know the Twelve Temptations?"
“Oh, yes sir. Recited them every day since I was three years old, sir."
“Say them now."
Tuco didn't even have to think before reciting them. The deadly temptations were as familiar to him as the names of his own family, and there were more of those. His father had tried to teach him his letters using the curled brown parchment on the wall, the one with The Twelve Temptations calligraphed in red ink at the top, outlined in gold:
1.
1.
The Temptation of Food
The Temptation of Ease
The Temptation of Carnal Pleasures
The Temptation of Safety
The Temptation of Wealth
The Temptation of Belonging
The Temptation of Beauty
The Temptation of Love
The Temptation of Position
The Temptation of Vengeance
The Temptation of Power
The Temptation of Self
Dutifully, he recited them.
There was no answer from the voice for a moment. “So you can memorize your scripture. But do you understand the temptations?"
Tuco wondered whether it was better to put up a confident front, but decided humility was the better option. “I--I hope so, sir. But I'm sure I have much to learn."
“This is not a place for learning," the deep voice answered sharply. “When you come here, it is expected that you have completed all the education, both academic and spiritual, that you hope to receive."
This answer was puzzling. He looked down at his hat for a moment, and then back up at the gloom. “I don't understand, sir. I thought I was to become an apprentice. Am I not supposed to learn?"
“It is a possibility. But a rare one. Most apprentices do not last long here. In any other apprenticeship, your father would be expected to pay a fee for your training. Here, we pay. Do you know why?"
“Because no one leaves Abyssus Abbey. Not… not unchanged, sir."
“Do you know what that is? Do you know what 'Changed' means?"
“Yes, sir. I think so. We've seen some of the people who have come back, sir. There was a fellow back in Washburn--that's my village--who went off here and he came back after four months. Only he wasn't the same. His arms were snakes, sir. Not just scales and such, but proper snakes, with heads and everything. He said he could see through their eyes, sir. Feel what they felt. One time… one time I found him feeding them rats. He acted strange. Not scared, or mad I'd caught him. Just proud. He said feeding them made him feel strong. I told my mum and we… we weren't allowed to talk to him anymore, after that."
“I remember him." The voice sounded thoughtful. “Yes. Jenkins. The gift was three snakes."
“Three, sir? Only he just had the two arms."
“Yes." As if the question hadn't been asked, the voice continued. “Do you know why I said gift?"
“No, sir. It's not the sort of thing I'd like on my birthday, sir." He ventured a little laugh, on the off chance that a boy with a good sense of humor would be appreciated.
“The demons in Abyssus Abbey are evil, but their changes are not haphazard. It means random, boy," the voice added when Tuco screwed up his face in a puzzled expression. “What they do to you, they do based on your desire. Little wishes. Things you thought you wanted in the moment. When a demon is in your mind, whether in the power of your ritual, or even, rarely, just in the hallways or dormitories, all it takes is one little slip, one moment of errant desire. That is why knowing your Temptations is so important. Only one moment of forgetting them could be your downfall."
“But…" Tuco trailed off, remembering his situation. He did not want to risk his acceptance by questioning one of the masters of the keep, especially one who, if he was calling himself Lord, must still be a noble.
“Yes?" the voice said kindly. “Go on. The demons may seek to satisfy your curiosity in mischievous ways, but the Brothers here will not."
“Well, if the demons are so dangerous, then why summon them at all?"
“No one has told you what we seek here?"
“No, sir. People say you want things from the demons. Wealth, or power. Gifts."
“Gifts." A dry chuckle came from somewhere up in the ceiling. It sounded almost angry. “Gifts?"
And then something, swinging at the end of a long thread, lowered out of the shadows. Something huge and round, with many long, spindly legs. It was a massive spider, easily ten feet long. Its shiny black carapace gleamed in the candlelight, and splashed across its bulbous abdomen was a red hourglass shape. But where its head should have been, the black chitin melded into the lean torso of a man--an older man, wearing what had probably once been a fine shirt and waistcoat, but which was now rumpled and worn. From the waist up, he looked completely normal until Tuco met his gaze and saw that he had six eyes, arranged in a row below his brow. Two looked like ordinary human eyes, brown and tired. The inner two were solid, empty black, and the outer two glittered, shifting white sparkles in a sea of deep blue, like the night sky. He grimaced, and Tuco saw that two of his teeth were long as his fingers, curved and black. “Does this look like a gift to you, boy?" he snarled. He stepped closer to Tuco, the long, thin legs moving in a complicated ballet, his footsteps silent.
Tuco had instinctively recoiled back against a bookshelf, but he forced himself to step forward, to ignore the pounding in his heart, and take a few deep breaths. They wouldn't have sent him in here to be killed, and the… lord… had given him no indication of menace before now. He frowned.
“Well?"
“I'm thinking, sir."
“About what?" the spiderlord snapped.
“About… whether it would be a good trade. Human legs for a spider's body. I guess people would be pretty scared of you, but that's better than them pushing you into the mud, right? But you're never going to trip and fall down ever again. And it looks like you can use them to climb all over, which could be very fun."
All six of Lord Krastor's eyes widened. “It… well, it can be fun, yes."
“And useful, because now you can reach all those books without ladders, and you can make your home in any part of a room. I bet eight legs run pretty fast as well. And it looks like you can spin webs, which could be useful for all sorts of things. Making snares for animals, of course, but also any time you need to stick two things together or have a bit of string, you've got it. That's got to be handy." He sighed, frowning again as he thought. “But… the eyes, sir. Can you see out of all of them at once? What is that like?"
“Disconcerting," Lord Krastor replied, but his voice was tinged with surprise and interest. “The inner ones see the past and the outer ones see the future. A little ways, in some cases."
“But sir, that's amazing! That's an incredible ability. Why should you see it as anything but a gift?"
“Because I'll never have a normal life."
“Oh, I've had one of those for a while, now. You aren't missing anything, sir."
“And people will call me monster."
Tuco nodded ruefully. “People call me cruel names sometimes too, sir. It hurts at first, but really they're just letting you know who's not worth listening to. And if I had a spider's body, I could play all kinds of pranks on--"
“Don't," Krastor said sharply. “Don't wish for it. Don't let the thought enter your head. Everything has a… a cost. But you do have an interesting perspective, don't you?" He stared at Tuco for a moment, and as he did so, the two glittery eyes seemed to yawn a deeper and deeper blue, the stars within them spinning. Tuco gazed back into them and felt for a moment as if he were plummeting down, down into them, falling into an endless night sea full of the reflections of stars. Then Krastor blinked, and he was suddenly back to himself.
“It is seldom that I can see far into the future of any person. My eyes show me only events that are set and will not change. People are predictable, but they do make choices, so their futures are blurred, indistinct. Sometimes an applicant will come to my room and I can see the temptation deep in their hearts and the changes they will take over time. But you…"
“Me, sir?" Tuco asked. He felt uneasy about hearing his fortune. The traveling people had told his fortune once when they had come through town, but it had always been very vague, about finding a secret love and a new opportunity for wealth, the sort of thing that could have applied to anyone. He had never before met anyone who could physically look into the world beyond.
Krastor shook his head. “No. No, I won't tell you, lest it influence you. The futures I see cannot be changed, but the unset futures can, and I will not influence them."
“Yes, sir," answered Tuco, disappointed. “But if you don't mind my asking, what was it you wished for that earned you these changes?"
The older man shook his head and then stared past Tuco as though looking into the past, which, Tuco supposed, he was literally doing. “Mobility, for one. Rheumatism had seized up my joints. I could not reach my books to continue my research. And I'd wished for sight, to see the unseen, what had been and what might be. The demon who answered chose to grant my wish by making me part spider."
“What were you hoping to see, sir?"
A sigh. “The answers to why we're all here, at the mouth of Infernus, the demon world. It is here that the Beast of the Apocalypse will rise to consume the world. And it is only here that any of us have a chance to stop it. That is what most of us wish: to seal the demon lords away forever and prevent the end of days. Of course there are always some who insinuate themselves into our ranks seeking power or wealth as you said, but the signs are clear: the end is coming soon. And that is why, more than ever before, we need apprentices."
Tuco nodded, understanding. “You use us in your rituals. To call the demons. So that we can take the changes for you."
Lord Krastor's many legs beat a tattoo on the floor, like a man drumming his fingers. “Alas, it is so. To cast the rituals requires a working mouth and tongue, hands and arms that can perform the tasks and inscribe the sigils, and a mind not lost to lust, wrath, or greed. Few can last more than a few encounters with the demons without losing at least one of those. As far back as our records go, none has lasted more than five summonings. If we lose all the knowledge and experience of one of the masters here… then we have lost valuable progress toward thwarting Sathanus and his coming Apocalypse. Apprentices become necessary to bear the cost of these rituals. Of course, we try to release them before they are too far gone, but…" His six eyes turned downward, looking beyond the floor to some room deep within the Abbey. “...but often we are not successful."
He took a deep breath, which made his large abdomen pulse and rise. “Well. Let us test you. That is, if you still wish to be admitted."
“Yes, sir," said Tuco, though all this talk was worrying. He knew he might not go home to his family, or that if he did, he would not be the same, but everything sounded much more dire than he'd realized. Several times over his childhood, he had been allowed to look into the big, elaborate Book of Truth at the cathedral. It had been mostly pretty words that he could not read, outlined in red and gold like the list of Temptations on their wall at home. Tuco could not even begin to understand how shapes could form sounds on a page; the act of reading was itself a kind of magic that eluded him. But the vicar had showed him some of the special pages, made of a special paper, with finely detailed, brightly colored illustrations. There was the picture of Shimshon, the strongest man ever to live, tearing down the temple of the heretics with his bare hands. There was Jehoshua, blowing the bugle of the Seraphim so loudly that it fractured the walls of the damned fortress Reah, sending them crumbling to the ground. A lot of dramatic pictures of ancient buildings being destroyed, really.
But the last illustration, the one near the back of the book, had been terrifying, for it showed the city atop Mount Megiddu, the site of the last battle of humanity and the angels against the demons. Everywhere there was fire, and destruction, and people screaming, and above it all rose the figure of Sathanus, the Beast of the Apocalypse, a terrible red dragon whose seven horned heads reached toward the sky, each crowned and breathing destruction on the world below. On that day, the world of mankind would end, the angels would rescue what souls they could and take them to the Green Pastures, and the demons would take over the earth where they would rule it into its ruin and the end of time. The image had been terrifying, haunting his sleep, and driving him to obsessively avoid the Twelve Temptations. As he'd grown older, the memory of that image had lost its potency, but now, to hear from a monk and a noble that it was real and that it could be soon? That was frightening.
But it also meant that helping these monks with their work meant more than just assisting his family; he could be playing some small part in stopping the end of the world, too. If there was any chance at all that he might be able to help, he had to take it. He stuck out his narrow chest a little. “I wish it very much, sir."
Lord Krastor's unreadable eyes searched him for a moment. What past was he seeing? What future? “Good," he said finally, and his eight legs moved, gliding him across the floor to a small bureau wedged between two bookshelves.
“It's amazing how smoothly you walk," Tuco said. “Why, I expect you could carry a full cup of tea and never spill a drop."
Despite himself, a smile quirked the edge of Lord Krastor's mouth. “Don't overdo it, boy. You'll get in, or you won't." He took something small and round from the top drawer of the bureau and brought it back to Tuco. “Open your hand."
Tuco reached out, and Lord Krastor dropped a small glass marble into it. The glass looked as though it had once been clear, but had shattered many, many times and been reformed, so that the inside was a crystalline white. “What am I supposed to do?"
“Just hold it a moment. It will darken with every temptation you have fallen to."
Tuco waited, staring at the little ball in his hand. It was surprisingly heavy. “How long should it take?"
Lord Krastor's brow wrinkled above his six eyes. He leaned closer, peering. “Of course, small slips here and there would not show at all, but still, I would expect to see some threads within it." He straightened up. “Well, well. It seems you are uniquely suited to serve here." He plucked the marble from Tuco's palm and tucked it away, but not before Tuco saw dark purple swirls snake through the bauble.
“Does that mean I'm accepted, sir?"
“It does indeed. Just go through that door, and someone will lead you to the apprentice quarters."
Tuco glanced back, puzzled. “That door, sir? But… but that's the door I came in."
A small smile. “Is it?"
Tuco pulled the door open, but where before there had been a narrow wooden landing and a rickety staircase spiraling down, now there was a series of wide stone steps leading down no more than two stories into a wide, open hall. He gaped, astonished.
“Goodbye, Tuco," Lord Krastor said. His voice came from above. Tuco turned; the master's long, spindly legs were delicately carrying him up the side of one of the bookshelves and back into the gloom of the ceiling. “I hope you last, boy. I really do. Be vigilant. Guard your mind against temptations. And never, ever, offer your soul for any reason. Your soul is you and you are your soul. Give it up, and you give up yourself, and the demons will control you forever. Goodbye."
Then he was gone. Tuco closed the door and walked slowly down the steps into the halls of Abyssus Abbey, the last home he could ever expect to see.