The Silent God

[Xarkly 12613]

THE SILENT GOD

Spoiler

 

 

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… I shall free Oren from its shackles …

 

… the sun will set a final time on Urguan …

 

… dethroned from the Pontificate of God …

 

… God sent us to San Luciano …

 

… His Holiness Michael I …

 

… Fidei Defensor shall be bestowed upon Sigismund III … 

 

Sigismund woke with a stifled scream. 

 

Moonflight flooded his bedchamber, but for a moment his vision swam as his lungs heaved deeply, and cold sweat rolled down his face. The words that had been so loud in his sleep were gone, leaving him in the deep silence of the Nikirala Palace. The only sound to be heard was his rasping wheezes for breath, and the faint snoring of his wife - Emma - beside him. It was a small relief he had not woken her. 

 

He placed a hand to his sweat-soaked face and sighed between his wheezes. He was no stranger to uneasy sleep as of late, but despite each night he conquered, it grew no easier. After mopping the sweat from his brow with his forearm, he shed the blankets, and staggered out of bed. He paused for a moment at the cot by the bedside, in which lay the swaddled sleeping form of one of his sons, the infant Prince Josef. It was a miracle Josef had not woken, either -- the baby boy was a terror when he cried.

 

It must have been the dead of night with that deep silence, but there was enough moonlight for Sigismund to trudge across his chambers. His hair stood on end in the autumn cold, but he barely felt it as he donned a pair of boots and a loose linen shirt. After a moment’s hesitation, he took a sheathed longsword - one of Zodd’s gifts - from a stand on the wall, and made his way to the door with the sword in hand. He spared one last look at his wife’s sleeping form, before he slipped outside.

 

Alone, he limped through the eerie Palace corridors with a left leg numb from sleep and the soles of his boots scraping against the floor. By the time he reached the door to the Chapel, tucked away behind the lower dining room, it felt as if both an eternity and a mere second had passed.

 

He placed a hand on the door, and paused to brace himself before he stepped through. 

 

The rows of stained glass windows admitted the moonlight in discoloured beams that cast fractured light amidst the pews leading up to the simple altar, upon which sat silver Hussariyan Cross. 

 

For a moment, Sigismund stood in the distorted light, sword in hand, staring at the altar. 

 

“Are … are you there?” He spoke in a quiet, hoarse voice, but the Palace itself was so silent that it felt like his question echoed.

 

“Are you there, God?” he went on. “Are you listening to me right now? If you are, then … then give me a sign.” 

 

Silence.

 

“Come on,” Sigismund pleaded. “Do something. Do anything.” 

 

Nothing, besides the distant hoot of an owl beyond the stained-glass windows. 

 

The leather of the sword-grip creaked as Sig’s hand clenched it. The scabbard quivered in his shaking hand. “Come on! If you really are all-powerful, all-merciful, then prove you exist! Prove you’re there!” 

 

Sig’s shoulders shook with silent, mirthless laughter as he pressed his free hand to his face. “You want to be worshipped, to have lives devoted to you, and lives taken on your behalf … The least any of us deserve,” his voice dropped to a scarce whisper, “is to know you exist. That … that this all means something.” 

 

“All of those who will die in this war … and everyone who has died in every past war and every war to come … with your name on their lips. Was there a meaning to any of it? Are you nothing more than a pawn, God?”

 

With a rasp of steel, he bared the longsword, and the stained moonlight gleamed on its edge like a bleached rainbow as he brandished it at the altar while the scabbard fell at his feet. “Or are you real?” The blade shook in his hands, sending fragments of light across the room.

 

“Are you real, and just watching as we suffer?” 

 

“Did you watch as the Rimetrolls tore apart this land when I was boy, when thousands starved and an entire race was genocided? Did you watch when the Nachezer parasites crawled out of the Attenlund and terrorized Haense? Did you watch and do nothing?” 

 

“Or what about when your own clergymen, men who had sworn their very lives to you, were cut down at the Red Diet? Did you just watch?”

 

“Did you watch when my son died in my sister’s arms … and chose not to help?” 

 

His laughter echoed throughout the Chapel. “And now it’s all going to happen again. Thousands will die, and your name will be draped over the battles like a veil that makes it all acceptable. And what do you about any of it?” 

 

“Well?!” Sword-clenched in both hands, he glared at the Cross. “What will you do as the world tears itself apart?!” 

 

“ANSWER ME!” 

 

As always, God was silent. 

 

But that did not vex Sigismund. Instead, as his voice echoed throughout the room, he suddenly found that the sword had gone still in his hands. He was no longer shaking, and the anger that had bubbled inside him had vanished without warning. The sword was dead-straight in his hands now, levied accusingly at the Cross.

 

“I knew it all along.” Sig’s voice was soft, now. “I knew it as my son lay dying in Petra’s arms. I knew, God, that if you weren’t going to save the life of an infant boy who had done no wrong …” 

 

Slowly, his eyes opened. “ … then I knew you were never going to save anyone at all.” 

[FlemishSupremacy 4930]

Flemius hides in the closet after having whispered some sweet nothings to King Sigismund as he slept...

"That was close..." He thought, as he stood perfectly still behind the wooden door!

[argonian 12837]

Jurgen Barclay, for one, lives in a world where divine intervention is so common that it's literally happened multiple times in his own lifetime, and a world where Aengulic accounts have confirmed his faith, and so he has no misgivings.

[Capt_Chief26 1205]

4 minutes ago, FlemishSupremacy said:

Flemius hides in the closet after having whispered some sweet nothings to King Sigismund as he slept...

"That was close..." He thought, as he stood perfectly still behind the wooden door!

Ser Reinhardt hides behind a curtain in King Sigismund’s room, he heard Ser Flemius whispering

[Burnsider 4542]

Presbyter Ileana had been munching on an apple in the Confessional. "Well ****," she mumbled.

 

Because there was a worm in her apple. That's why. She didn't hear what was happening out there.

[Lomiei 1487]

4 hours ago, Burnsider said:

Presbyter Ileana had been munching on an apple in the Confessional. "Well ****," she mumbled.

 

Because there was a worm in her apple. That's why. She didn't hear what was happening out there.

@Burnsider
[!] Whilst His Majesty, Sigismund III faced an internal struggle with a doubt of faith, like many do, the worm inside of Presbyter Lleana's apple wiggled and writhed happily, enjoying the closeness and warmth of it's home. 

It had previously been asleep, you see, resting in a state of hibernation as silently as god's voice in the church that night. It dreamed on and on about the bitter taste of dirt, and the ants that used to crawl and bite all around him in the times before it inhabited the ripened red fruit. 'I like it much better here,' the worm thought to itself, unaware of any god or kings. 'it tastes so ni-...' Gasp! (imagine a worm doing whatever would be the equivalent form of gasping for a worm).

Suddenly, the worm's world started to shake... CRUNCH 'huh? whats happening?' the worm's favorite resting place would be whirling around himself as the presbyter began to enjoy her snack in the confessional at midnight for some reason. Violent vibrations uneased the small creature of god, who knew not of it's creator. Willsterschire the Worm twisted and turned, only hoping to wait out what seemed like the entire world splitting in twain. And then... light. 

The worm reeled it's head back and curled as far into the center of the apple as it could, after a gaping chunk of the apple was torn away from the rest of the wall. There, was revealed revealing Lleana's opened mouth briefly before it closed, only showing a large pair of lips moving up and down. Willsterschire the worm could only blink as it witnessed something no other worm than himself could ever see, all those who lived underground, devoid of sunlight and the warmth of apples. 

"Well ----". The whisper of the presbyter's words might have been silent to some, but in Willsterschire the Worm's ears they rang like church bells, deafening. Were these the words of a god? what other entity could possibly throw such disarray into his life at so quick of a pace? It could, if it wanted, completely swallow the worm whole, *or*, give it 100 apples to live in, each more luxurious than the last. But instead it simply looked down at him, booming words of great mystery, then falling into silence.

As it cowered in fear, it could only sit and wait for a sign, anything that would reveal the mysteries of it's power, and even maybe it's origin... not that Willsterschire could even understand it if it was laid in front of him. 

[CopOwl 1668]

11 hours ago, Capt_Chief26 said:

Ser Reinhardt hides behind a curtain in King Sigismund’s room, he heard Ser Flemius whispering

 

The currently missing Dame Lynette actually finds herself holed up inside the Royal bedchambers and blinked when she watched Ser Reinhardt creep into the room; subsequently hiding behind the curtain. 

"The f---?"