[BEGIN ARCHIVED TRANSMISSION]
I am Custodian 993. I am Tower Lantern by deed, and Tothen Slore by birth. My lamps hang in two hundred and nineteen temples. My scars number forty-one. I have lived for fifty-two years, and have cleaned for forty-four of them. When I succumb, my bones will be plated into the walls of the Cautery Hall, alongside the legions of our bygone fellows. I am unclean, and undaunted.
I begin this record in a place of trepidation, hope, and vanity. I presume my thoughts deserve letters. Forgive me this - as one ages and feels the blade of time become heavy on the neck, one’s mind slows and is more easily preyed by nostalgia and doubt.
My master was 334 Walking Sea. I cleaned with her for many years. A legendary Custodian, sublimated at her end, as is right and deserved. In all that time I never learned her birth name. I believe she had forgotten it.
Walking Sea was given to action and rarely spoke. Though she was steadfast, dauntless, and unbreakable as her namesake, and carried a bounty of wisdom after decades of honored toil, her humility stayed her pen. I have no such grace. I was born a scavenger and hunger grips the bones long past its due. She would surely have chided me for such a show of attachment, but she is gone. In this time of doubt, the acolytes deserve the gift of old wisdom - to cherish or incinerate, as is the enduring privilege of the young as they remake the world we give them.
It is night, on the third day of the conjunction of the Five Queens. Through the platforms and gantries above, I see their dance marked in aurorae across the bruised and thriving sky. I stand on the causeway across from the Temple of Allmartyr Galadaxter, with its warm braziers and bleeding walls that glisten in the lamplight and flow down through grates that lead to the same drainage collection system used by the many thousands of other temples of the City. The runes of the edifice are glowing blue, boiling the blood flowing over them and issuing foul steam into the street. There has been a tragedy - another that I have been called to erase.
I look over my shoulder and up, along my truck’s long neck to its head, high above me. It was also gazing at the stars, but feels my attention and turns one copper eye down to me, curious.
“Work to do.”
Lights along its neck shimmer in assent, and there is a musical warble from somewhere deep in its chest, loud enough to be felt in my breastbone. I start across the street, and feel the pounding footfalls behind me as my truck follows along, unperturbed and prepared as ever.
The enormous temple doors of black polished stone, encrusted with gems and engraved with the tale of Galadaxter’s horrid sacrifice, are closed in mourning. They are rarely closed for any other reason. A projector in the door emits a security orb, which looks at me with its unfeeling aquamarine eye. The color is the default for Albedrotech defense holograms, and clashes gaudily with the temple it is guarding. I have always found a measure of mean humor in this. The City’s temples may build gigantic gold-inlaid obsidian doors and eternally flowing fountains of fresh uncirculated blood, but often neglect to individualize their settings. Thousands of temples, most of which either hate one another or strive ardently to behave as though the rest do not exist, unified under the familiar blue-green glow of cheap security software one can find outside any flesh dealer or noodle stand.
The hologram glances at me lazily, beeps once, and disappears without bothering to scan me. My spear’s signature allows me access to any temple in the city, and is therefore not very interesting.
There is a mighty clank, and a boom, and the several-hundred-ton stone doors glide inward, completely silently. I step through the threshold, the truck ponderously pounding up the stairs behind me.
The narthex is lavish, festooned with liver-purple carpeting, scarlet curtains, and gold trim. Fine wooden counters and walls, attended by golden statues of suffering Galadaxter or his various noteworthy mourners and pallbearers. The torchlight, fabric, and wood cultivate a feeling of plush homeliness that is continually destroyed by the uncanny dark height of the ceiling. There are small doors to the left and right, for secrets, then the great reliefed wooden doors ahead, which lead to the nave, for worship, and things that are not secrets.
The bishop is the only other soul in the room. He is nine feet tall, gaunt, with sunken eyes darkened by the amount of Galadaxter’s curse he has shouldered over the decades. He is permanently bent from the weight of it, and from stooping to speak to those he looms over. His robes, red with white and gold trim, glisten in the firelight from fresh blood recently splashed. Upon his bare white head is a spired wrought-iron crown containing a small burning brazier, nailed into his skull and ever-bleeding.
I approach, and do not bow or supplicate, as all others in his life do. He looks up at my truck’s head, then down at me with an ancient sorrow in his mineshaft eyes. There are tears in the depths, only barely unable to pour to the surface.
He says, “We were not successful this day. Perhaps at the next conjunction, when the energies are kinder.”
“Perhaps then, Your Grace.”
I can see the bishop uncurl slightly upward as he swells with a number of responses to this, some polite, some less so. But he remembers my station, and the futility, and deflates. “The remains are volatile.”
“I will be vigilant, Your Grace.”
He nods. “May your suffering bear you.”
This is a test, petty in nature. “Aloft and beyond, as I bear it.”
He turns and drifts through a side door, annoyed that I knew the correct response.
The chamber is quiet again, save the sound of burning torches and the near-infrasonic hum of my truck’s nuclear heart. We exchange a glance. It seems unbothered by the social friction, and unfurls the sensor array high up on its antlers. The room fills with invisible light of many colors.
Before you enter a space to be cleaned, you must always scan it. There are things that will wait for you behind doors. A simple trick that catches simple Custodians.
I unclip my screen from my belt and see the radiation returns my truck sees. Beyond the door there is mild electromagnetic interference of an unknown nature. An errant discharge a ways into the nave. Unusual. Many volatiles, but liquids, not threats as the bishop indicated. Aerosolized blood, and other, stranger things. Air quality is breathable. Warm spots above average temperature, but fading. Nothing conventionally alive, nothing producing sound. The bishop’s warning seems premature, but I take him at his word. There are things that machinery cannot perceive.
The heavy wooden greatdoors elaborate on the tale of Galadaxter. The narrative presentation is inverted in a way I find plaintive. Galadaxter’s destruction and fall are shown first outside, then the lesser inner doors justify and contextualize it by showing his great deeds. Commanding armies of willing sacrifices into the base of the Blood Tree to be rendered by its roots. Drinking of the sap to muster the spirit of his subjects within his divine body. Slaying great demons with his ten arms and ten godly weapons, his perfected flesh rejecting missiles and fangs with no need of armor. My breath catches as I realize I recognize one of the figures being slain here. With that corroboration, I realize some version of this may have truly happened - but if I am fortunate, I will never have the opportunity to ask.
I bid the doors split and they open for me, as silently as their superiors did. Before me is a darkened expanse, which is in character. The mourners of the Allmartyr find comfort in wallowing.
I step forward into the dark.
From the microprinter on my arm, I release several scout drones. Little folding robots with hot air balloons filled by a glowing incandescent emitter on their backs. They provide light and information, using small fans to travel through the air. They drift up and spread out, pushing back the dark. Devices of my own invention - sweeping machines to clear the shadows away.
They transmit their sights. I take in the room. The joke you have heard again and again is not a joke - you must assess the mess.
The great hall of the Allmartyr is both lavish and sparse. The distant roof, hiding in shadow, is held up by many mighty columns. From the columns are hung curtains and drapes of black, maroon, red, gold, and white. Some hang down so low they can nearly be grasped. The floor is flat and made of polished stone, an orderless cavalcade of murals, mosaics, stretches of interlocking meanders, seemingly at random. Easy to clean despite its aesthetic indecision. On the walls are tapestries depicting further scenes from the Allmartyr’s grim legendarium, mounted wooden cases containing important relics and their explanatory plaques. There is no furniture. The dedicants of the Allmartyr worship on their feet or on their knees, on a level with one another.
They do this supplicating themselves before the statue of the Allmartyr himself, which dominates the rear of the hall. He is four stories tall, full of power and divine strength, carved of handsome stone and draped in fine flowing robes of many colors. He wields his ten weapons in his ten arms, his many eyes set with burning gems reflecting what little light is left in the chamber. It is detailed enough that individual veins can be seen on his many hands and facial fronds. It is important to the worshipers that they can imagine Galadaxter as alive, because he is dead.
The hall is great enough that the far walls are mostly beyond sight in the dark. That dark is held back by a few lonely remaining torches, my spreading drones, and a large bonfire near Galadaxter’s feet. I bid my truck activate its lighting array, and columns of light explode from its neck and head to destroy drifts and banks of the dark where they lay. The state of the hall is revealed.
Huge portions of the flooring, approximately 62%, are drenched in blood. Blood splatters on most of the columns, with greater amounts splashed on those nearest the location of the bonfire. Blood not present on surfaces facing away from the center of the chamber. Fresh bloodstains on many of the hanging curtains, some as high as one hundred feet.
Blood is easy to clean when fresh - soap and water will do. But blood is not fresh for long. Congealed blood is sticky. Hemolytic spray synthesized by your truck will make short work of it, but conserve its use for problem areas. Stone floors such as these will withstand gentle scraping and abrasives. For the curtains, laundering in hemolytic dry cleaning compounds of Absolution 2 will remove blood without damaging fibers or dyes.
There are several corpses suspended in midair throughout the chamber, their skin blackened, but not burned. Tissue appears mummified, in a state of postmorbidity. They wear crimson robes, indicating their status as sacrifices. They are still, hanging in the dark, in limp, unchosen poses.
Unwanted corpses may be disposed of in many ways. Some Custodians prefer chemical rendering, but I find it cumbersome. Incineration is energy expensive, but expedient, and I prefer it. Ashes and bone powder are easier handled than heavy vats of otherwise useless chemicals. Accursed corpses such as these will require arcane neutralization, to defuse hazardous energies and, in this case, dispel gravitic agnosticism. Specific rituals associated with the cult whose building you are cleaning may be found in the Compendium if general-purpose cursebreaking is ineffective. If these rituals are too complex or perilous for you to perform, consult with the temple’s administration, or the Cautery Hall if they are nonresponsive.
Remember that fire is inherently cleansing, and will avail you against many kinds of arcane filth if you are electromagnetically isolated or cornered.
I awaken my servitors from their charging pods on the truck’s flanks. They stand and ignite their eyes. I direct them to begin dissolving and pushing the blood in a grid pattern, from the outside in, toward a drainage access revealed by a hidden panel near the center of the chamber floor.
The first major obstacle, hubward fifty yards from the entrance, is a pair of lungs, each approximately fifteen feet long, with attached bronchi and a section of trachea. Several thousand pounds in total. They slowly inflate, then deflate autonomously, issuing a blood/air foam in gouts from the trachea, creating further mess.
Meat disposal is essentially identical to corpse disposal, but often with less administrative clearance. Again, I prefer burning - it is simplest. I advance and ignite my sprayer, coating the organs in deep-adhering cremation compound 2A, formulated for wet remains. They burn vigorously, and wheeze rapidly for a time before succumbing and going still. The compound will continue to burn as long as there are valid molecules to catalyze, and the residue can be mopped as necessary. These remains are clearly accursed, but of a kind that fire knows.
I continue on, while the servitors address the floors.
At the eastern edge of the chamber is a heart, supine by the wall. It is fifteen feet high and twenty-five feet wide, with lengths of severed blood vessels splayed from its upper section, limp on the floor. I am idly reminded of a beached sea creature. The heart even gasps for air in the same way - beating occasionally with shuddering heaves, which causes new blood to pour from its hoses. It seems inexhaustible. Likely responsible for much of the pooled blood on the chamber floor, and will continue flooding it unless dealt with.
As I approach and aim my sprayer, I see motion. Shapes moving under the surface of the pericardium. Many of them, pushing against the inner ventricle wall. The heart swells, then contracts violently. A series of congealed masses are disgorged in a wet pile from the vessels. Red, glistening sacs, reminiscent of eggs. Curious.
My supposition is vindicated - they hatch. Scything claws tear through the membranes and free their occupants. Parasitic beasts, demonic vermin feeding on the arcane nourishment of the heart and reproducing. A fertile home for them, which they will now defend from me. They are insectile creatures the size of dogs, with scissoring mandibles and many legs terminating in long blades. Each explodes from its egg, writhes angrily, and charges me the instant it finds its footing on the slippery polished stone.
My truck, sensing danger, cranes its neck toward me from the chamber entrance, bathing me in light. Its array focuses and emits a castigator beam, which screams over my shoulder and vaporizes several of the beasts in a line. I change tanks to cremation compound 5, a hostile entity defoliant. A blessed wave of blue flame flows from the nozzle, forming a wall that fries the insects it sticks to and temporarily pauses the ones behind.
The servitors, eyes reddened in anger, drop their scrapers and mops and remove photon carbines from their backs. They dutifully shoot the pack through the firewall from across the chamber, each shot puncturing through carapace and meat as easily as a needle through cheese. The truck sweeps another beam horizontally across the formation, and the few remaining beasts explode as the column of light passes over them. The servitors’ eyes return to green.
“Thank you, gentlemen.”
The servitors look to one another, muttering “Good job. Hm. Good job,” in brief celebration before returning to their work.
Your servitors will likely not speak and do not need to be thanked in any way. I have simply allowed my servitors to go many years without reset calibration, and they have developed personalities due to processor drift. This is a sentimental affectation, and is considered poor equipment maintenance.
You will encounter resistance, from time to time. Ritual remains do not always accept cleaning. Be vigilant. Endure in filth. You alone are given the tasks that others cannot tolerate. You are counted upon to make this world new again. Without those that clean and fix, the world falls apart.
Between the eastern wall and the rear, there are more remains. One is a rib, thirty feet long, fresh and white, with peeling periosteum and smeared with drying blood. Divided into manageable pieces with a water blade, incinerated, pulverized to gray-black powder, and washed down the drain. Stray coils of intestine strewn about. Gathered into reels and incinerated. An eye, the size of a large melon. A quatrefoil pupil, in an iridescent purple-green iris. It contracts and attempts to focus on me as I pass. Lanced, drained, and incinerated.
It is true that many of these things are valuable, if collected and sold. Witches, abraxulists, politicians, physicians, and drug barons pay fortunes for accursed remains. A string of the heart or one vial of vitreous fluid would purchase a personal orbital and the authorizations to match, and some Custodians violate the precepts to engage in this trade. I do not hate them for it. Our life is brutal and horrid. However I find no contentment in property, substances, or financial status. They cannot be relied upon. My companions are light and flame, and it is in them that I dwell. I am trite, in that I find cleaning to be its own reward.
Near the bonfire at the rear of the chamber, I come upon a brain.
It is the source of the electrical anomaly I detected earlier. It is large, nearly fifty feet across, and well-ruined without its skull to support it. It sags and has lost much of its shape, again like a lost jellyfish. Its configuration is not humanoid - there are four lobes connected to a central pons, from which uncoils a long, torn spinal cord. Its purple veins pulsate rhythmically. Arcs of blue-white electricity crackle and snap across its surface, sometimes causing the tail to twitch.
The servitors are cleaning around it with no ill effects, so I approach it. It reveals its nature to me.
Unlike the servitors, I have most of a brain remaining, and this one knows its kind. Thoughts crash into my mind. Begging and pleas. I am shown mental images of hauling the brain away from this place, sheltering it, feeding it. I feel the ecstasy of its tendrils entering the back of my neck, fusing with my own nervous system. The sensation of monumental psychic power, that I could use to carve this world to my desire. Promises. Bargains. Dreams. Control. Take me away from here. Shelter me. Restore me. Give me warmth. Give me blood. Our power will combine and together we will imagine this City into shape. Let me make a god of you.
I inhale a deep breath of sacred mist from my mask, clench my jaw, and douse the remains in cremation compound 3B, for virulent biohazardous contaminants. The brain burns, screams, and dies. I can feel blood leaking from my aural shunts, under my armor. I activate my interior sterilizers and let the euphoria of the mist wash the psychic pain away.
I am my own god.
The better part of an hour later, the servitors are using the truck’s water hoses to wash away the dregs on the floor, and hooking down the floating corpses for neutralization and disposal. One unloads the mobile laundry and begins washing the curtains. The scorch marks on the tiles from our weaponfire are buffed and polished away. Scratches are filled with flashcrete putty and sanded. The temple heals.
There is only the bonfire to be dealt with.
It is a pile of what appear to be old relics, furniture, scrap wood, and corpses. Some are impaled on pikes. Some are only pieces, with the rest of them missing. Several appear half-eaten. As I approach with my water sprayer, I notice one of the figures in the center of the blaze is very whole, and free-standing. Tall, and facing toward me.
I swear aloud. The servitors’ eyes turn red and they drop their work once more. The truck charges its beam emitter. I order them to hold.
The figure takes a step forward, and a second. It walks from the blaze into the spotlight, and is revealed.
A tall, muscular man of heroic proportions, dressed in a crimson and navy blue harlequin surcoat and voluminous fur collared cape held to the shoulders by large steel pauldrons. The belt and cape are trimmed with gold. His boots are heavy and sensible, made for marching. His legs and hands are mailed and plated with unadorned steel. About his head is a mail coif, upon which is a simple crown of woven gold bars, with no gems. All of the man that is visible is the oval of his face, which is a fleshless, gray human skull, within and without which dozens of bees swarm and play. Above the crown is a halo of crenelated white light, serrated and pointed ninefold. In his right hand is an inhumanly long but otherwise conventional bastard sword, which he places tip-down on the stones and pushes slightly. The blade sinks in as though it were mud. He leans on the crossguard casually, at ease.
This demon’s name is technically known, but mortals’ attempts to speak or think it result in vomiting, hives, and bleeding from the eyes. I cannot record it here as it will corrupt the data and the drive that contains it. As such he is only known as -
“Your Excellency.” I do not bow.
The voice that comes from the skull is rich and sumptuous, like melted chocolate, but ruined around the edges by the sound of buzzing insects.
“Tower Lantern. You know, once is happenstance, but twice is fate.”
I say nothing.
“You seem unchanged from our last encounter. It saddens me to have left no impression on you at all. Perhaps this is to be expected from a servant of such stainless character! How long has it been? Chronology often eludes me.”
“Fourteen years, my Lord.” These last two words erupt from my speakers completely unbidden, as they did back then.
“Ah, such a time… but you have grown, I think. I sense a strength, a heat within you that was not so intense when we last met. You are hardened, tempered. I hope your trials have not left you brittle.”
“Do you intend to repeat the events of that day, Your Highness?”
His Excellency throws his head back and laughs heartily, pretending to wipe a nonexistent tear from a bony orbit. A bee crawls from his nasal cavity and flies away.
“I intend many things, but no, I do not think I will endeavor the mistakes of the past. I was beaten, right and just. You left an impression on me, in more ways than one.”
With one hand he removes his crown and his coif, and in the other conjures a bright flame so I can see the top of what he uses as a head. There is a scorched borehole there from when I shot him through the eye.
He replaces his hood and crown. “A fine shot. Spurious perhaps, but one must admire the spirit. My offer was not spurious, or made in so sad a place as desperation, you know. You have the heart of a knight. Somewhat mawkish perhaps, but anything can be hammered out with good training. It would be an honor to induct you into my court. A title. An estate. To do good, noble work under a flag of worthy colors, rather than… blank white.” He indicates my robes with a disparaging hand. “There is no glory in cleaning up messes, Tothen. You simply assign it where none can live, to content yourself. It is unbecoming. You could shine so much brighter than this.” He shrugs magnanimously. “Why not, hm? Why not?”
“Because my toil is mine. Not Yours, Your Most Indubitable And Exquisite Supremacy.”
A wrathful, indignant fire lights in His Excellency’s eyes for just an instant, so brief that I might not have caught it without recording lenses. “Hmph! Fine then, in the midden may you ever dwell, if it so enriches you. Such a waste. Thus always with mortals - you spy the gem in the muck, but the gem is so difficult to clean. All the same, I am not so easily rebuffed, you know. Persistence is My watchword.”
“My nature is my choosing, my Liege. Is Yours?”
“For the wheels to spin, they must fit upon their axles! Nature is no choice. It simply is.”
“Why are You here, Your Grace?”
“Why else? For the joy of it! For the stories it will create. This world is full of astonishments, and it would be most august to have them vouchsafed under My custodianship.” He sharpens this last word and stabs me with it.
“Here, my Lord. In this temple, of little repute and anonymous station. Surely there are more fitting places for one of Your stature to be visiting.”
“You catch Me in quite the embarrassing posture, Tothen. You see, these men and women endeavored to make their own god. I attempted to commandeer the vessel for Myself, but My power proved too much for it, and it ruptured. So here I stand, only partially manifested. Yet again.” The flame flickers in his eyes once again.
“I see.”
“Hence my unwillingness to fight you once more, Tower Lantern. You are formidable, and without at least a measure of My true power, I know you will be victorious again. Even if I did defeat you this time, your cohort would assemble and crush Me easily. No, our contest will have to come another day, when I am conjured more completely.”
“You are wise, my Lord.”
“Ha! Few are privileged enough to give Me cheek, Tower Lantern. And in so few words. Oh! I see something has changed. You have taken a spear since our last encounter.”
I do not respond to this, though he is correct. I bring a spear in the event something like him crosses my path again.
“The most sensible battlefield weapon ever devised, after the shield perhaps. A choice that is eminently correct for one with such peasant aspirations. Predictably, I prefer the sword.” He draws his from the stone tiles and flourishes it, producing heavy whoom sounds. “A little better in close quarters scrums, where I find Myself most often. And I admit an appreciation for the intimacy such a weapon provides. I like to look those I slay in the eye.”
I do not respond to this either. His Excellency is a blowhard and a duelist - he grows bored if his repartee is not returned or challenged.
He sighs. “Very well, Tower Lantern. I see your patience is exhausted, after a long day of manual labor. I have not given up on you yet, however. Here.” He removes the finger that was holding the sword upright. It falls forward and crashes to the floor with a deafening CLANG, cracking some of the stones, which he knows I will have to repair before I leave.
“Keep it - I have many. Fine steel, of a kind beyond your peoples’ ken. Train with it, if you’ve a mind. Attempt to see things from My perspective. Or sell it, haha! A weapon is a weapon, no matter whose hand wields it.”
A thought occurs to me.
“Did You know Your likeness is depicted on the door of this temple, Your Grace?”
He cocks his head. “Oh?”
“Indeed, my Lord. You are shown being slain by Galadaxter. Impaled by his spear, specifically.”
There is no flame in his eyes. “Is that so? Hmm… well. The invention of carving itself is testament to the surety of mortals’ memories. Perhaps when I return I will correct this error. I have written a new chapter in the Allmartyr’s story this day, after all. It is best to carve the truth of things, not hearsay.”
“Perhaps then, Your Grace.”
He turns his back to me, and walks back into the flames. “Shine bright, Tower Lantern! For what filth can be cleaned if nought can be seen? Until we meet again!”
He disappears. The space where he was unbends and exhales, relieved of its hernia.
There is no cleaning things like His Excellency. Glory and pride are ever-renewing contaminants, boiling up in the hearts of men eternally. He, and things like Him, are why our work exists, and why we exist. There will always be a mess, and we will always be there to clean it. They are meaningless without the other, as light is given shape by shadow.
I spray the sword with disinfectant X3, blessed and formulated to counteract demonic energies. Nothing happens to it. I scan it with spectrochemical and thaumic lenses - nothing. True to his style, it is just a sword. His Excellency knows he does not need ostentatious curses to work his will - the real hex is already within us all, waiting to be unlocked by violence, tragedy, riches, or simply the right word.
I inhale, and exhale. I feel the warmth of the flames on my shoulders as my servitors continue burning and cleansing the chamber, returning it to some sort of order. Temporary, yes. Futile, yes - but the flame is only treasured because it can die. The ashes are worth the heat, as always.
I load the sword onto my truck, finish the last of the scrubbing and repairs, and bid the servitors back to sleep in their charging racks. I leave the temple, into the cool night, into the silly street on this unremarkable platform deck of this filthy and convoluted and wonderful city, away from the stench of blood and darkness. I look up at the sky, wheeling and free.
Where there are no stars, make them yourself. Where there is no sun, choose to burn - and let nothing douse you.
[END TRANSMISSION]