Jackal Among Snakes

“What would you do if Anneliese had been collaborating with Erlebnis the whole time, to entrap you?”

Argrave recognized the Keeper’s voice, but he saw nothing of the man himself. Still, left alone with his thoughts, that proposal stirred an unimaginable burden within. It was so utterly wounding that he could barely conceive of it. Of everyone, Anneliese was the sole person he would trust in any circumstance.

“Look at you… so permeable,” the Keeper mused. He heard the steps of his dress shoes behind, but could not see the man himself. “Well, Raven had an Anneliese of his own. Sonia.”

A woman appeared in Argrave’s sight. Deep black hair, short, and with green eyes… she reminded Argrave of Mina of Veden, somewhat. She had the same guarded playfulness about her.

“Sonia worked alongside Raven as the one to educate him of the teachings of Hause. In the end, it blossomed into something more than teacher and student. But she was loyal to Hause before their relationship. Raven thought the opposite, but Erlebnis knew the truth. He kept it close at hand, waiting for the perfect time…”

The Keeper stepped into view, stroking his finely trimmed gray beard. “Erlebnis developed a gambit. Perhaps it would have succeeded if not for the fickleness of others—gods and humans both.” He stepped up to Argrave. “But people are fickle, and the world is unpredictable. On the eve of when we intended to reveal Sonia was prepared to combat the Smiling Raven alongside all of the other members of Hause’s court… the goddess finally relented. She told Raven what his potential was. She revealed everything that she’d been hiding, shattering our designs with a moment of weakness.”

The Keeper sighed deeply. He pulled up a stool and sat down before Argrave. “Had she remained stalwart, persisting in her refusal to divulge the information… everything might have gone Erlebnis’ way. Raven would have turned traitor, helped undermine Hause’s court, and when the time is right… Erlebnis and his emissaries would’ve helped Raven find the answers he was looking for. As a side bonus, Hause would’ve been enslaved. Instead, a single crack in the glass broke the whole window.”

Argrave’s head whirled somewhat. The Alchemist still had his blessing, ostensibly—didn’t that mean Hause lived?

“You’re rushing to the end of the story,” the Keeper scolded. “Here. Watch,” he commanded with a snap.

Argrave once again viewed the perspective of an emissary. Raven stood there, but he was far different. He was taller, paler, stronger, and more deadly. What had once been a cloak of raven was now the unsightly mass of hair that the Alchemist currently displayed, if less organized than it was in the present. As his mind was changing, his self-image… so too was his appearance.

“Even… Sonia?” Raven questioned, his voice starting to take on the harsher aspects of cracking ice that Argrave so fondly remembered. He wore no more rings, sported no more jewelry, and his clothes were ripped and stained.

“We’re afraid so, Raven.”

“On the pier… on the pier, she said…” Raven mumbled, looking up. His skin bubbled, and Argrave thought he might grow nauseous if he were in his true body. “Hause is not a goddess of whimsy, of base torture. I have purpose. They… care for me.”

“They do so at a distance, and with gloves on,” the emissary continued. “You are a dog that they have tamed. A monster that they fear. An evil within their midst, that they handle with care only because there is no alternative.” It held its arms out. “We cannot say what the nature of your potential is. But that secret denied—can you say they trust you, if they will not let you know yourself? They would tell you the truth if they cared for you more.”

Raven laughed. His voice was a rough cackle, and it said far more than any words would have. Knowing what Argrave knew—that Hause had told Raven his potential—made the emissary’s words take an ironic bent.

“Take some time. Think about it,” the emissary urged. “And when we return… perhaps we can aid in helping you find the truth.”

The image faded to black, and Argrave was once against cast into a dark oblivion. He heard the Keeper’s voice, quiet as a whisper.

“By the time our informant told us that Hause had relented to Raven’s pleas, we had already cast the die. Hause had told him the truth—what that truth is, only he knows. But whatever it was, it changed Hause’s actions in his mind from a suspicious tyrant to a concerned and benevolent mother. Perhaps he could have handled that knowledge on his own—resisted his inner nature. But after Erlebnis had spun the tale, it only made Raven think he was a monster that needed to be watched and monitored, lest he do irrevocable damage. The Smiling Raven was actualized, in mind and body.”

Argrave next saw a great shambling figure walking through the streets, his body twisting and writhing in impossible ways. He heard the Keeper’s voice in his head.

“Potentiation,” the man explained. “That is how we described the Smiling Raven’s ability. His body isn’t merely a vehicle for alchemy, for constant change. It’s capable of potentiation. Endless potentiation, with life as fuel.”

The emissary that Argrave viewed this scene through raised its hands, calling upon the Blessing of Supersession to rain down countless spells upon the Smiling Raven. There were hundreds of others alongside it. The Smiling Raven took the spells effortlessly, body morphing and twisting to cast spells in defense. When it came upon the group of emissaries, it relentlessly consumed them.

It descended upon a city with brutish strength. Ravens of pure black magic flew out of its body, seizing all living things with reckless abandon. Upon realizing defeat was inevitable, the emissary calmly relayed this information back to Erlebnis… and accepted absorption into the great mass of the Smiling Raven. Argrave’s last perception was the intense pain of the emissary’s death.

“That was the first we saw of his new form. We don’t know what triggered it, what his goal was, or even if he was truly capable of thought in that state. But the Smiling Raven was capable of subsuming everything vaguely alive into its body. Mortals, divine servants, or even the gods themselves… it didn’t matter. He took them all. Potentiation—to make more effective or more active. To intensify.”

Argrave felt the wind at his cheek, and looked down upon a huge landmass from high in the sky. It was consumed by a swarm of black ravens born of magic, swirling about the sky over a thousand dead cities. They hunted everything—people, animals, even bugs, until nothing remained in this entire continent. He turned the landscape silent and still, consuming all in his wrathful journey.

“In the end, Erlebnis formed a large coalition with other gods to fight against the Smiling Raven. They fought hundreds of thousands of his magic-born summons. Some say that the fight against him was more intense than that against Gerechtigkeit. Erlebnis’ theory is that Gerechtigkeit interfered in his plot to birth the Smiling Raven, thereby weakening everyone. Whatever the case…”

They came upon the center of a metropolis. Sitting on the belltower was the Smiling Raven—and now, its namesake meant sense. It now took the form of a fat raven, and it clutched a purple orb in its beak. It held this orb before its chest, where Raven’s face smiled at it in total peace. The perspective that Argrave saw—it was Erlebnis’.

An intense battle raged between Erlebnis and all of the gods he’d called upon to aid him in this task. Much of it was obfuscated, for this book contained information about the Smiling Raven alone. Still, Argrave could tell the battle was a brutal thing, devastating the lifeless continent utterly. The power was of such scale that Argrave had difficulty comprehending it. Whether days or minutes, the coalition of gods managed to put an end to the Smiling Raven—though not at small cost.

Eighty-two gods joined this battle. Only seven left it alive.

Argrave wanted to learn more about them, but the Keeper restrained his sight to the Smiling Raven alone. At the end of the battle, its gargantuan corpse lay there battered and broken. Erlebnis subtly took away the purple orb that the Raven had been clutching. With the creature dead, and with no one left alive to tell its tale… Erlebnis’ blunder was lost in time. Perhaps not quite, however—one bit of evidence remained…

“That orb… perhaps you would analogize it best as a snow globe,” the Keeper said, stepping out before Argrave. “Within, Hause and all of her court persist… alive, frozen within. Raven’s precious love Sonia lives on. The goddess that aided him remains alive. Whatever he did as the Smiling Raven, he protected Hause and all her servants in this small pocket of incomprehensible magic. And this orb…”

Centuries passed before Argrave’s eyes—the countless attempts that Erlebnis had made to breach the orb, to access the goddess trapped within. None of it had even marked the globe. Their long rest was never disturbed.

“Erlebnis thought that the Smiling Raven’s tale ended here,” the Keeper said, and Argrave once more saw him sitting behind the elaborate desk, suit and tie neatly creased. “But he lives on as the Alchemist, it would seem. A new identity, to spare the world the dangers of his mind, and his potentiation.” The Keeper rose. “I can see your questions. Where is this orb, containing Hause’s very essence? Is it in the vault? Is the Alchemist in danger of becoming the Smiling Raven again?”

“Well…” the Keeper narrowed his golden eyes. “Yes, Hause is in the vault. I’m permitted to tell you that much—it’s all in this book, after all. She’s a prisoner. As for all the other questions… I think you’ll need to answer them yourself. Our time together is nearly over.”

“But…” the Keeper stepped closer. “I’m in the vault, you know. And I do wonder if we’ll meet. Survive both Mozzahr, and your friend Raven… and we’ll see, won’t we? And maybe you’ll learn what I am. Perhaps you’ll understand why the Alchemist told you… that you will learn why not to learn.”

#####

Argrave stared at the shut binding of the book, and then raised his gaze up to look at the Alchemist. He saw a man anew—Raven. And maybe… the Smiling Raven.

“Now you know,” said the Alchemist. His crackling voice had lost much of its fear factor in their long journey together… but having seen what had had, he could think only of Raven on the verge of madness while the emissaries poisoned his mind.

“I know. But do you?” Argrave questioned, his whole body tense. “Do you know all you’ve done?”

“I do,” the Alchemist confirmed with a nod.

Argrave’s eyes shook, and he faintly acknowledged Anneliese coming to his side in support. He swallowed, then pressed, “What did Hause see in you?”

“She saw what you did,” the Alchemist tapped his white spear against the ground. “Her blessing drew out that potential, unlocked my body. It wasn’t… inherently negative.”

“And that potential… the Smiling—”

“Don’t speak its name,” the Alchemist interrupted coldly. “Never mention it, utter it, reference it. You know the consequences. You learned… as I did.”

He felt Anneliese grip his hand, keeping him steady, and Argrave mustered his next question. “Did it die, all those millennia ago? Or does it still exist within you?” Argrave looked around. “And… do you intend to call upon it once again?”

The Alchemist was silent for a few moments, and he turned his head up to the sky.

“Even if I tell you not to say it… reality remains. I cannot escape that name. The Smiling Raven never dies,” he said simply.

When Argrave looked upon that noseless face, gazing deep into those gray eyes… he saw Raven within them, living on even now. And the insurmountable task before them had been contextualized, somewhat. This simple heist might not remain as just that.