On Acting as a Psychopomp
"This has happened before," Victor said to me, appearing as a huge, shimmering fractalized inverted tear-drop shape that hovered over my bed, silently burning with Blue and Black Fire. I could sense when he had entered our house, slipping through all our wards like melting butter in tea. I could feel him moving through the rooms, searching.
"I have seen the great age of war." I understood then that he meant that war has been among humans as long as we've had land to fight over, resources to hoard, and it has meant the vanishing into death of entire peoples since it crept among us.
"I am in Our Lady's service, walk with me." I was pulled up beyond my fleshbody, into my Fetch-beast. A barrage of images flooded into my mindstream. I could see another spirit now, his Fetch Mate. This being was like all stars and earthly fire embodied in one explosive moment, the Scarlet Lust. I knew that they were attempting to "enlist" me in a Fateful Task, that one of the Mighty Dead had come to ask something of the living for a change. A Charge.
"I have many holy wells in the lands you are to attend, use them to wash clean the children as you escort them to their Fates," his Fetch Mate says.
Take all you are given, give all of yourself. "Yes..."
Nine nights numbered to this task, When the Black King roams and comes to ask How does the thread that tethers you bind when the world is needing those of your kind?
Not sleeping well for over a week, the release is bitter-sweet, like life. This is clearly a time for a deep, actual fortnight of red rest.
Rivers of burning children are flowing into the Underworld, confused, lost in a fog of human catastrophe. Dry husks of humans over-parched, rotten flesh, filth, and horrid, fear-filled misery blasting new hellmouths into the surface of our reality. Places where our nightmares flourish as human suffering crescendos, drawing parasites of all kinds. There aren't words.
I try to be a kind beast.
“Tell them we are coming. Coming for their service,” he said to me at release.
The blessing and the cursing be upon us all.