Putting the E in Madness

[Sigmund Vrell]

In a rather unassuming district located in inner Uruk, a handful of citizens had paused their daily business to stop and stare at a formerly unoccupied building which now bore a large banner, messily emblazoned with “New Temple of Gal’skap, opening eventually!” If that weren’t curious enough, the sounds of muffled voices and the occasional crash could be heard coming from within. They invariably went on their way after a few minutes of stopping and staring, but they couldn’t help but wonder what exactly was going on inside. Perhaps some sort of bizarre ritual?

“Ok, and then we pull the rope.” Opal said as they signaled Yorn to do so. The giant of a man let out an exasperated sigh and pulled. An intricate system of pulleys was set into motion, culminating in Agate being hoisted slightly out of his wheelchair, appearing to stand up to approximately no one in the room. “Tada! By the grace of Gal’skap, he is healed.”

“Is this really a good idea?” Amethyst asked, glancing at her high priest who was busy adjusting pews with his telekinesis and was currently pushing one corner back and forth, not quite able to set it where he wanted.

“Hmm? Oh, it’s fine. It’s good to keep them occupied.” Sigmund said with a cheery grin, slightly marred by the irritation of his failure to get the pew in its exact spot.

“Agate, come on, let’s see some waterworks or something. When I look at you, it's like your ability to walk didn’t even miraculously return.” Opal tutted, hands on their hips.

“Because it didn’t!” The former exclaimed, gesturing incredulously at his broken leg. The sudden movement jolted him about in his harness, sending him slowly spinning around as it was revealed that he had been pulled up a little too far and his feet were no longer touching the ground. Opal put one hand over their mouth and averted their gaze, trying and failing to hide their giggling at their dangling comrade. “Let me out of this thing!”

“If I may, high priest.” Amy sighed, turning away from the sad sight. “A sermon is great and all, but is it really the greatest way to spread the word of Gal’skap?”

“Why not? That’s how it worked back in Amygdala. Every night we’d all put on our robes and gather in the great temple to hear Father preach.” The cultist grinned fondly at the memories, letting out a nostalgic sigh. “I would always sit at the front with Morgan and Father’s other retainers. And Tora came too after she was born, even before she was old enough to talk, and-“

“That’s fantastic, Sigmund, but we’re not in Amygdala anymore. You don’t have the same, uh, cultural backing that you had there.”

The scion visibly deflated at his follower’s words, forced to acknowledge the truth behind them.

“Ah… yes, I suppose you’re right. It’s not easy to start from scratch.” Sigmund started to massage his temples, furrowing his brow as he concentrated. “I need to think draw on the first few scions, when they were building the Mindbreaker Order. Hmm… maybe if I slay a few pretender gods I’ll start to draw some interest…”

“Why don’t you just try advertising on the internet?” Agate asked, now comfortably back in his wheelchair, or at least as comfortable one could be with a broken leg.

“Ooh, I’ve always wanted to use the internet.” Opal gasped, almost visibly vibrating from excitement. “The reception back in the caves was AWFUL, it took like five hours to load a single jpeg.”

“That’s a great idea!” Sigmund exclaimed before glancing between his followers. “What is the internet?”

“It’s like… uh… kind of like a library, where anyone can add anything to it, and anyone can access it with the right device.” Agate explained, struggling slightly to put it into words that his high priest would understand.

“Wow, it sounds incredible.” The psion said, his eyes glowing with joy for a moment before reality set in. “Wait, anyone can add anything?”

“Yeah, pretty much.” Amy nodded.

“Even people like Victor?”

“Mhmm.”

“Oh…” Sigmund said, suddenly looking incredibly downtrodden. “Is there much explicit material in this library.”

“Oh, you poor thing.” Opal said, shedding a single tear as they hugged the scion. No one had the heart to answer.

“Well, to access it we need either a computer or that phone Victor gave you, Sigmund.” Agate said.

“Oh, right, my phone.” Sigmund said, rifling around in his pockets for a long moment. “Hmm… I’m sure it’s around here somewhere.”

“Alright, looks like a computer it is.” The scout sighed. “Oh well, if we want to make a webpage or something that will work better anyway. We can set it up in the back room.”

“Oh, if we want to do that, we’ll have to wait.” Sigmund cut in abruptly.

“Hmm? Why?” Amy asked, mystified.

“Cordie was getting overwhelmed by being in a city, she said she couldn’t take being observed so much, so she locked herself in the back room to exist and not-exist simultaneously.” The high priest explained as if it were the most normal thing in the world.

Silence hung in the air as he went back to adjusting the confounding pew, gently pushing it back and forth a few millimeters at a time with his mind. As he did, the rest of the cultists turned to stare at the door to the back room, wondering what exactly they would find if they opened it. Opal in particular took a few sneaky steps towards the door before Yorn snatched them up by the scruff of their neck.

“Don’t.” He said firmly.

“I’m not I’m not.” The cultist said sheepishly as they dangled in the massive man’s grip.

 

[Sigmund Vrell]

“Ah, another lovely day in Uruk, eh?” Sigmund asked, glancing over to address Opal as they strolled leisurely through the city streets. The scion of madness could barely keep his vision focused on one thing at once, filled with an almost child-like amazement and curiosity at the sights, sounds and smells around him.

“Oh yeah. Amazing.” His companion huffed, their arms crossed over their chest. “I love the fireball in the sky that people just seem to accept. I love these crowded-ass streets. And I love that it’s just us. Just you and me… and-“

“Aah, Siggy look!” Cordie exclaimed, grabbing Sigmund’s arm and forcing a strangled croak from a distressed Opal. Though all three cultists were still yet to adjust to a city like Uruk, the high priest’s bodyguard shared much of his excitement, jabbing her free hand energetically at anything that caught her eye, while their seer companion decidedly did not. “That place JUST sells bagels! Ahahaha! Have you ever heard of something so absurd?”

Opal seethed quietly at the laughter of their perceived third wheel, playing back the last half-hour over and over in their mind. The seer had expertly convinced Amy to stay back to watch over Agate and managed to persuade Yorn to stick behind to work on the chapel some more. Everything was going exactly to plan, setting them up for a private PC shopping trip with Sigmund.

The two were already leaving, they were gone. But, next thing they knew, Cordie had hurled herself through the front window, desperate not to leave her charge behind. The priestess was loyal to a fault and it pissed Opal off to no end, at least in part because they had no idea why. Sigmund had liberated the Inverxan cultists, so their loyalty made sense, but Cordie? The seer could only assume the worst: she wanted to get into his pants.

“Let’s just get this over with,” they grunted, grabbing Sigmund by his free arm and storming forward, pushing through the crowds. The lightweight high priest was yanked along effortlessly, and Cordie, her arm still linked with his, was pulled along as well. The chain of cultists cut through the mass of staring citizens, mystified at the sight of one of their lords acting as the middle link of a human chain.

“Where are we going?” Cordie asked, glancing at her charge curiously.

“We’re going to the computer store,” Sigmund replied matter-of-factly.

“Oh…” his bodyguard nodded. “What’s a computer?”

The scion simply shrugged at that, more or less as clueless as she was. Then, abruptly, Sigmund bumped into Opal and Cordie bumped into him, drawing three simultaneous ‘oof’s. Glancing up at the building they had stopped outside, the three cultists came face to face with ‘Easy Steve’s Electronics’, complete with the grinning cartoon visage of the one that they could only assume was Easy Steve.

“Wow!” Cordie laughed, giggling to herself a little. “This is terribly mean, Siggy.”

“Huh? What is?” the head cultist asked, turning to her with a confused look.

“Lord Victor pays you every week and you want to spend it here?” She continued to giggle. Opal bristled for a moment, prepared to admonish her for speaking out of turn, but they couldn’t really bring themself to disagree. This place looked like a hole. “We might as well burn it, no?”

“Come on, it can’t be that… wait, Victor is paying me?” Sigmund said, mystified.

“Yep. I’ve been handling all the finances,” his bodyguard grinned, giving him the ‘ok’ hand sign. “No need to worry. I’ve saved almost all of it away. I would have saved everything but people need to ‘eat’, apparently.”

“Huh…” the scion mumbled to himself, standing in the street silently for a long moment as he contemplated the information that had just been dropped on him. Then, without another word, he turned and walked inside.

As the door swung open, a tinny, electronic ‘ding dong’ sounded from a buzzer above their heads. Piling in, the cultists paused for a long moment, waiting to see if anything would happen. Nothing did.

The store was relatively small, with only half a dozen or so aisles sparsely packed with different types of electronics. At the far end of the store, a single cashier sat at a desk, apparently fast asleep.

“Hrmm…” Sigmund mumbled to himself, rubbing his chin gently. He had next to no experience with crossroads stores, but an empty shop with a snoozing attendant was a universally bad sign. Still, he continued into Easy Steve’s with a shrug, seeing little other option to buy a computer. As the high priest disappeared into one of the aisles, Cordie went to follow him, only for an arm to snatch her into a headlock and drag her into a different aisle.

“Blegh!” she choked, struggling for a moment before falling limp in her captor’s grip, her prismatic eyes beginning to flash a bright, angry red. “Self-destruct sequence initiated! Glory to the Old Aesir!”

Opal looked down at her, dumbfounded for a second as they noticed the flashing of her eyes begin to grow in speed and intensity. The seer couldn’t discount the possibility that this was some weird joke but didn’t want to take the chance.

“Stop!” they hissed quietly, loosening their headlock on the bodyguard. “Abort! Abort! It’s just me.”

Cordie pursed her lips for a second, turning her head at an angle that her neck really shouldn’t have been able to facilitate before the flashing stopped as soon as it had begun.

“Keep it down, you two,” Sigmund telepathically told his subordinates from the other aisle. “You’ll wake up the cashier and no one wants to have their nap interrupted.”

“Sorry…” they both responded in turn before Opal released Cordie from the headlock, allowing her to properly turn to face them.

“Hi Opal,” she whispered to her fellow cultist, careful to keep her voice low. “You can just say something if you want to show me the er… phone charger adapters for the different outlets of different worlds?”

“That’s not what I’m doing. We need to have a talk, me and you.”

“We do?”

“Yeah, we do,” Opal hissed. “Don’t think I don’t know what you’re doing.”

“Believe me, I don’t, but I still manage to pull it off,” Cordie replied, an undeservedly smug look on her face that just pissed the seer off even more.

“I’m not going to be thrown off by your jokes. We’re not friends here. You’re a threat to me and my-”

“I’m a threat to you?” The bodyguard asked, suddenly visibly distraught,. “Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t realise.”

Before Opal even knew what was happening, Cordie dug into the center of the palm of her hand, ripping out a gnarled ritual dagger with a spurt of oily black blood. With her weapon free, she swung mercilessly towards her fellow cultist’s jugular. Yelping, the shaman ducked out of the way, the blow sailing harmlessly over their head.

“What the fuck are you doing?!”

“I’m being a threat to you,” the bodyguard replied, not a sliver of malice in her face or tone. Rather, she simply seemed confused at Opal’s objection.

“Not that kind of threat! By Gal’skap, holy shit!”

“Hmph… Ok… you seem upset with me but I really don’t get it…” Cordie frowned, sliding the dagger back into her hand, the wound healing over in an instant and concealing the blade as if nothing happened. “But as long as you don’t cause any problems for Sigmund, I have no issue with you.”

Across the store, the high priest was oblivious to the conflict between his followers, more concerned with his selection of PC. All of the different brand names, specifications, and models were giving him a headache. He got the feeling that even his divine communion with Gal’skap couldn’t help here, that even the Madness Within himself would be stumped by the profane display before him.

“Ergh… Aesir help me…” he grumbled to himself. Focusing on the one aspect he could understand, Sigmund closely inspected the numerous price tags before him before reluctantly settling on the most expensive one. Surely the priciest machine had to be the best, right?

Still rather uncertain but seeing nothing to lose, he levitated the priciest PC from the shelf with his telekinesis. Worst case scenario, he was sure King Gilgamesh would write the purchase off if he asked nicely. Approaching the front desk, he plonked the computer down along with various essentials that his followers had helpfully jotted down on a sticky note for him. A monitor, keyboard, internet router, everything that he was assured he needed to make the machine function.

Waking with a start, the cashier rubbed his eyes sleepily, sitting up at his desk. Fixing his glasses, he gave the Lord of Uruk a blank, glazed over look that he might well have given any other customer. Sigmund could hardly blame him, he supposed. The very purpose of the PC he was buying was to spread the word of his cult, after all.

“Just these, please,” he grinned, gesturing at the assorted electronics he had piled up before him.

“Right… sure thing,” the cashier yawned, slowly scanning the barcode of each item, taking his sweet time to process the purchase. As an uncomfortable silence descended over the store once more, Sigmund suddenly realised that he would have to pay for all of this and subtly began rifling around for his coin purse.

“...agh, damn it sixfold,” the cultist cursed under his breath. He had left it back at the temple. Frowning, he reached out telepathically to his bodyguard. “Cordie, have you got money on you, I left mi-”

“Yes, of course!” She responded instantly over their mental link. “Coming!”

“H-Hey,” Opal snapped as they watched a Cordie whip around on her heels and speed-walk over to the register, leaving them behind without a second thought. “T-This isn’t over…”

 

[Sigmund Vrell]

“Oh yeah. It’s all coming together,” Opal murmured to themself, having repeated that same phrase about a dozen times since they had sat down. It had taken the cult a good day and no small amount of prayer to get their new PC set up, and ever since it had been operational Opal had been glued to their chair, insisting that they had received some nebulous vision from beyond for their webpage.

As the seer got to work, the rest of the cultists had gone about the finishing touches of converting the old building into a usable chapel, setting up the pews and the stage for Sigmund to preach from. While far more humble than the colossal temples that he was used to, the church was perfectly serviceable for the budding faith that they were working with.

“Ah. This place cleaned up rather well in the end,” Sigmund grinned, placing his hands on his hips as he surveyed their handiwork. As he said, the building that was once little more than an abandoned building now looked the part of a place of worship, if a relatively simple one, their success owed in no small part to the use of telekinesis in the construction efforts.

“Yeah, gotta admit that it went pretty well,” Amy nodded, though her attention was obviously preoccupied, as was the case with the rest of Gal’skap’s faithful barring their leader.

“So… I’m just gonna come out and say it,” Agate murmured from his wheelchair, craning his neck to peep around the corner into the back room. Through the doorway, Opal was feverishly tapping away at the computer, uncharacteristically silent barring the occasional affirmation that things were ‘coming together’. “Am I the only one who’s worried about that whole situation in there?”

There was a chorus of agreements throughout the chapel. Sigmund stayed silent, but his expression betrayed his concerns at what their loose cannon colleague was up to.

“I’m sure it’s fine…” the scion trailed off, convincing no one with his assessment. Frankly, he didn’t even know what ‘fine’ would look like in this circumstance, he was just hoping that Opal knew their stuff. They at least knew what a jpeg was, which put them ahead of the curve of the technologically illiterate cult. Then, abruptly, there was a loud slam from the back room and the seer rose dramatically from their chair, arms outstretched as they whirled on their heels to face the group.

“It is done,” they announced. “Approach.”

No one moved at first, barring nervous glances at one another. Even for a cult dedicated to the Mad God himself, there was an ominous aura coming from the room that no one could quite place. Across the room, on either side of the chapel entrance, Sigmund’s bodyguards each subtly shuddered.

“Hey,” Cordie whispered, stepping over and elbowing Yorn in the side. “You scared, big guy?”

“Of course not,” the giant of a man replied, his voice slightly gruffer than usual to hide his concern.

“Hahaha, liar,” his partner cackled. “I’m scared and you’re a way bigger coward than me.”

Clearing his throat, Sigmund plucked up his courage and stepped forward, the Manic Codex clutched tightly in his hands as he entered the back room. As he approached, Opal excitedly gestured to the seat, encouraging him to sit down. When he obliged, the high priest found himself looking at… something.

The background of the webpage was an unnecessarily vibrant purple that slightly hurt Sigmund’s eyes, and the text was set in a thin black font that made it difficult to read. Across the page, numerous animated images were plastered, tangentially relevant at the best of times, as was a series of still photos, including pictures of Sigmund, King Gilgamesh, a drawing of the present members of the cult (of which Opal drew themself and Sigmund significantly larger and in more detail), and an ‘artist’s impression of Gal’skap’ which consisted of a grinning, many-limbed stick figure.

The sensory overload was so much that the scion almost forgot to actually read the information that had been presented on the screen. As he refocused, he found himself presented with a few sparse paragraphs of basic but generally accurate information along with the location of the chapel and the time of their first sermon.

“Well?” Opal asked proudly. “Pretty cool, right?”

“I don’t think I’m cut out for this internet stuff,” Sigmund replied, rubbing his suddenly aching eyes. “But it works. This will probably draw the attention of uh… you said the internet was popular?”

“Extremely.”

The high priest let out an exhausted sigh. The people of the crossroads were a different breed, that was for sure. “If you’re certain... I’m sure we’ll have a full house for our first sermon.”