The Lament had not been confined to the Lords of the Ordeal. Far from it. Not a soul among the Host of Hosts had escaped unscathed, for fairly all had consumed the Meat of necessity. Nevertheless, not all had joined in the obscenities visited upon the Scalded. Those righteous few who had somehow held fast crossing the wastes of Agongorea now found themselves perplexed by the shame of their fellows.
A Host uncannily divided received word of the Holy Aspect-Emperor’s return. Those in the clutches of the Lament became wary, and many skulked aimlessly rather than make display, fearing the judgment of their Lord-and-Prophet. Those few still in the thrall of the Meat, however, made loutish demonstration, howling in exaltation, proclaiming a joy that was more mercenary than pious, for Golgotterath had become a granary in their eyes, and their Lord-and-Prophet’s return an occasion to finally seize the Meat sheltering within. They formed wild, unruly mobs, made lewd celebratory displays. They scoffed at those in the throes of the Lament, took umbrage at their condemning gazes. More than sixty souls would perish in brawls.
A crazed night followed. Throughout the encampment, innumerable thousands huddled in vertiginous remorse, unable to sleep for horror and the sound of intemperate revels on the air.
The Interval sounded upon the desolate dawn. The Men of the Ordeal crawled from their blankets and tents, milled about the messes and latrines, wondering. Then, for the first time in weeks, the prayer-horns blared deep and elephantine, calling all souls to Temple. Men gazed about, wondering. On the southern outskirts of the encampment, a band of Nangaels spied the Holy Aspect-Emperor walking alone in the shadow of Occlusion. They turned to one another in astonishment, realizing their Lord-and-Prophet had beckoned them with a waving arm. Helical lights consumed the mirage utterly, and deposited the holy figure more than a mile to the south. “He bids us!” the longbeard warriors began bawling. “Our Lord-and-Prophet bids us follow Him!” The cry reproduced like mosquitos, leaping from throat to throat, and soon, clouds of Ordealmen were trekking southward.
Hours passed before they had fully assembled. The skies were woolen, the sun obscure. Golgotterath lay sullen in the distance, the golden Horns thrust into what seemed a high-hanging fog. The Holy Aspect-Emperor stood immobile upon a promontory jutting from the foundations of the Occlusion, a ramp of stone like a thumb, famed in legend. Himonirsil, the Nonmen had called it, the Accusatory, and evidence of their ancient works encrusted the terrain above and about its root, basalt wrack marbling the slopes, streaking and staining the whole formation from a distance. The Accusatory had once graced the Arobindant, the legendary Siolan fortress that had anchored (albeit in different incarnations) both the First and the Second Watch, in days older than old, when the exhausted Nonmen had whiled away centuries guarding the Ark. The ramparts had long been razed, and the Accusatory, which had once pointed from the fortress’s heart, now jabbed out of its grave.
So did Anas?rimbor Kellhus, Aspect-Emperor of the Three Seas, stand upon the self-same precipice as C?-jara Cinmoi, King of the House Primordial, only now, the Sons of Men packed the broken slopes below. They choked the ravines, then spread and spread, a vast and soiled blanket, across the dead plain. To a man they looked to their Holy Aspect-Emperor on the Accusatory, thronged with their backs to the dread spectacle behind them, knowing it was enough that He could see.
Though only those on the pitch of the Occlusion could see the number of those still trekking from the camp taper, the entire host fell silent of its own accord, somehow knowing the assembly was complete. Their Lord and Prophet was little more than a speck against the heaped wreckage of the Occlusion, yet even the farthest afield understood He was about to speak.
The Holy Aspect-Emperor stood monumental before them, garbed in robes of voluminous white, his flaxen hair drawn back into an antique war-braid, his beard squared and woven. Intermittent flashes revealed the halo crowning his head, as if an otherwise invisible plate of gold wobbled beneath some otherworldly sun. A retinue milled behind him, largely obscured by the Accusatory’s rising bulk.
“Who?” his voice cracked across the barren scarps and plains. “Who among you has not returned to find your hearth untended, your home disordered?”
Nearly every soul drew breath.
“And who has not been wroth?” he boomed. “Who has not reached for the rod? Who among you has not laid hands upon those most beloved?”
Individual cries dissolved into a gaseous roar.
“So I have found my hearth! My home!”
Palms waved. Voices wailed in involuntary expostulations of sorrow and shame. What was cacophonous swelled into a singular, thunderous howl …
The Holy Aspect-Emperor’s words dropped through it like iron through sodden tissue.
“I took my leave following the Scald … And I returned home … to the Three Seas …”
The Great Ordeal crashed into miraculous silence. It seized their hearts, that word, home.
“I returned to Momemn and the glory of the Andiamine Heights. I returned to what we would save, and I found that turmoil had claimed my house!”
It clutched their throats, gouged their bellies. How long? How long since they had squeezed their children? How long since their wives had last seen them weep?
“So I took up the rod … I set right what had been overthrown!”
Cheers rose in tepid squalls from various quarters, only to collapse into anxious silence … The night had been fat with rumour.
“And now I have returned to the Host of Hosts to find the same!”
A party of four stone-faced Pillarians resolved from the small crowd behind Him, dragging forward a powerful Zeumi youth, naked with his elbows bound behind his back: Zsoronga ut Nganka’kull, the Successor-Prince of High Holy Zeum, and hostage of the New Empire.
“To do the same!”
The Pillarians brought the Satakhan’s eldest son forth to their Holy Aspect-Emperor, beat him to his knees.
“Accursed be Zeum!” the holy figure thundered above the lacerated boy. “Accursed be Nganka’kull, Great Satakhan of Zeum, for he has cast his sticks with Fanayal and his heretical marauders—and so cast his honour and our treaty into the flames!”