What Everyone Knows
Religion in Lombardi is a study in contradition. It is the birth place of our Mother Church and in no other place -- excepting, of course, my native Castille -- is there such a concentration of the faithful. If ever the continent had a natural bastion for the word of the Prophets, it would be Lombardi. Except. Lombardi is also the heart of Old Remus, the origin of the arrangements with the dark powers of the Adversary. The source of sorcery. And in no other place -- excepting, perhaps, Versailles -- is the power and cost of sorcery so lightly regarded and so openly practiced.
There is no other place, real or imagined, where men are so faithful to their mistresses and so faithless to their wives -- and where such an arrangement is considered so natural that the practice of monogamy is what is remarked upon rather than the reverse. And in no other nation are women so universally degraded and feared in equal measure.
To live in Lombardi is to live in two worlds, neither of which have more than a tangental connection to reality.
But I digress.
I came to Lombardi to find the truth of the nature of the Strega. The power to influence a man's future is curious, but ultimately unremarkable. Men and women do so everyday, with their words and their actions. Who can say what will finally change the course of a man's destiny. But the power to change the past, to alter what has already been written in stone and turn back the hands of time, that would be a power that people would trade their souls to possess. The question was: Had they?
[He goes on to relate his difficulties searching out legends regarding Strega of note and researching the circumstances of their powers, specifically stories that relate documented expressions of Sorte that can't otherwise be passed off as bad luck.]
My questions, however, were not answered to my satisfaction. Nobody had ever questioned these legends before, and the answers always seemed to be "That's how everyone tells it." or "That's just the way it is." But the difficulty with extracting truth from legends paled in comparison to the trouble that came of asking about the Unravelled.
Chapter 7
Under the Surface
Ask anyone in Lombardi about the Unravelled and they will tell you that they know someone who knows someone who has a cousin who saw one. To the collective unconscious of Lombardi, they are nothing more than an allegory, a fable warning of the dangers of becoming too secure in one's power. The stories say that they are Strega who tampered too heavily with Fate, that were slain by the use of their own power. As if the fate that they suffer at the hands of their countrymen simply for being born with a power that others covet were not sufficient punishment. It is said that they are mindless beasts, bent by Legion into destroying what they love in order to be free of the torment that (of course, the stories claim) they brought upon themselves.
Obviously, I thought at the time, there must be more to these stories than a simplistic metaphor. Life is not so easy that connections to others fade upon our deaths, nor are the bonds of emotion so weak that they cease to influence our behavior even years later. Thus, I find it difficult to imagine that a creature bound to this world by emotional ties (for what else are the strands that the Strega claim to manipulate) would seek to break those bonds by violence in death when they were crafted by all manner of behavior in life.
I was partially correct.
After much searching, I found a person, a Strega, who claimed to have seen the Unravelled. Claimed, in fact, to have banished them by weakening their strands rather than through violence. While her use of sorcery disturbed me, I could not see how its use--if she did what she claimed--in any way served Legion.
When we found the creature, and it was a creature, was no longer human. A tangled mess of bone and sinew, it made squelching noises as it approached. As I watched, muscle and flesh were restored, pale skin returned, and it was once again a weeping woman. The woman (for having seen her living form, I could no longer think of her as some wretched undead creature) wailed and sobbed for her lost love, dead at her own hands, along with their child. Revenge, she said, for his perfidious ways. And then the words that would haunt me until my death:
"Change their fate, you can, you know, you can bring them back."
But the dead woman refused, something about deserving death...and then she was dust.
On our way back, she explained it to me. {the book goes on to explain that the legends of the Unravelled are true, but incomplete. They are only mindless beasts because they choose to be so. They are masters of Sorte, they could strengthen their strands, and thus their connection to the world instead of degenerating into undead monsters. But doing so means clinging to memories that ultimately cause emotional pain and most people aren't strong enough to torture themselves for power.}
Before she left, my guide said that if I ever needed anything I should not hesitate to call upon her. And that I knew her name.
Chapter 8
Ghost Stories
Lares, Larvae, Lemures, and Manes are, according to the writings of the theologian, Augustine, Bishop of Hippo, restless spirits of Old Reman mythology. Before the First Prophet, the Old Reman's made sacrifices to the dead. The dead, honored for their good works in life were granted small household shrines, and granted occasional offerings for protection and good fortune. The dead who were feared for their evil deeds, however, were given frequent sacrifices and an annual festival in order to appease their wrath and turn aside their mischief. Bishop Augustine considered the whole practice to be illogical and foolish, in addition to an act of blasphemy against Theus and the Prophet. What value, he argued, was there in performing good deeds, in acting in the public interest, in caring for others, when the wicked were rewarded, both in life and death, more so than the righteous? Why should the evil repent of their foul deeds when the afterlife held feasting and festivals in their honor for all eternity? The Bishop made many other arguments regarding the illogic of the Remans and the superiority of the Church of the Prophets--superiority of values, superiority of truths, and superiority of reason. But this one argument seems to apply conversely to sorcerers. The Church condemns them as agents and tools of the Adversary simply for being born different. Are we not, by doing so, encouraging them to turn away from the Theus, since the Church has made it clear that there is no place for them at the Prophet's table?
I have no answers, and if I did, I am not certain that I would remember them after all is said and done. My life, my history, my very soul will change. Who can say if who I will be will respond in the same way? How much of who we are now is shaped by the choices and events of the past? I am not the same man that I was a decade ago, and, even if Te****a has played me false, I will not be the same man in a decade. Is the man that I was then dead? Perhaps, perhaps not. So I may hold onto hope that the man I am now, will not die once the cloth of my past is rewoven.
But I am getting ahead of myself.
At the time, I did not have complete knowledge of who or what she was. I knew only that her claims to have seen and banished the Unraveled had been confirmed before my eyes. Still, I doubted her good will. I was, after all, a member of an organization that had sworn to put her and those like her to the flame. She had no reason to help or trust me--and good reason to wish me harm. It would have been the height of foolishness to trust entirely to her good will without determining whether or not I could trust her. And when I discovered that the person who had directed me to her in the first place did not know of whom I spoke, I knew that there was a problem.
[The book goes on to detail Bernardo's research into legends of Strega, particularly ones reputed to be capable of altering memories.]
They say that forewarned is forearmed, but even with all that I had discovered, I did not feel prepared to face a being who may or may not have been already dead.
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