Merlino the Addict

A village on the Eastern outskirts of the Southern States….

I am making my way to the Purple Moon Tavern. It’s a nightly journey for me. At sunset, I drag myself from my crude shelter in Collar Alley and painfully proceed, step by step to the Purple Moon. (Laughing to himself) What did I see last night in the Oracle Rapture? Something about the tavern. I can’t remember…

It’s dark now. It’s always dark when I arrive at the tavern. A dim yellow glow comes through the grimy crescent shaped window in the door. It’s the only window in the tavern. The bricks are black and grey with soot. So hot this time of year and inside it’s hotter, and in a few hours my soul will be a searing torch of liquid molten power. I swallow hard and shake, hesitating to enter… I shouldn’t do this. I can’t….

But I want it so badly. Just one more time. I push open the door.

There are two lamps glowing in the tavern, one above the bar and the other to the right of the room. A large fireplace with only a few glowing embers in the far left corner provide the only other source of light. I sit at a table near the fire. I feel chilled despite the heat, the hair on my wasted arms rising and falling with each wave of anxiety. Where is he? Blast that cleric to the bowels of the Old Ones!

I stare at the table, black and sticky with grime. All sounds are suddenly absorbed by the blackness, no mugs clinking, the mutterings of customers snuffed out by the blackness. There is something in the blackness, calling to me. Something that wants to consume everything. Something that wants out. I look up into the depths of a red cowl. The glowing eyes…..

Suddenly the world comes rushing back, laughter, profanities, the smell of sweat and urine. .. And his eyes. The first time I met this cleric of Hro, I did not notice his glowing eyes. I told him this once and he said, I was not touched by the Oracle then.

Raul. My entire world centered around him.

I was distracted by the sinewy movements of Rachlea, the barmaid. Her black hair worn loosely down her back. The skin exposed on her chest glistened with sweat and the icon of Karre hung around her neck lay enticingly on the top of her left breast. But Karre is an evil goddess. This is what my mother told me. This is what all children of the Eastern Empire knew. But here, so close to the Southern States, things were different. ..

Raul waited out my distraction patiently. He understood. When I turned to him again, he said, “Have you had food and drink?” I shook my head. He motioned for Rachlea. Bread and cheese were placed before me. I ate mechanically. I was not hungry. I don’t remember the last time I was hungry. I only remember the Rapture. It fed me. But I had to eat to live on this plane.

I finished. “Come,” Raul said. He led me to a door near the hearth. A door you could not make out until you were within inches, it was so like the walls themselves. Black on black on black. Then, laughing to myself I remember what the Oracle revealed about the Purple Moon Tavern. There’s not a scrap of purple, violet, or lavender anywhere. Only black.

But I am descending now, below. And in moments I will be bathed in the brightest lights of God and magics will pour from my fingers. I create beauty. I create light. …