Nobilities' Fault

Memory

Clavius Zane knew the power of the written word, it’s what had gotten him this far, and the only thing that could carry him forward. It’s been a long time since his days scouring libraries for inspiration. With parents both in the more performative aspects of the bardic arts, Clavius decided to hew his own path, to become proficient in putting words to the page, to create the poems and plays and prose. The writer provided the threads, the actors wove a tapestry from it.

Zane’s early works were flights of fancy, he plucked words from the air itself as they lilted from the pages to the actor’s lips. Fantastical stories poured from the author’s mind. He was gaining traction in the thespian scene, and with this new found fame came pressure. Critics began to gnaw at the writer’s catalogue. Hearing these critiques from all angles became the norm, a constant berating.

Zane’s writing was trite. This nobody has nothing of value to say. These fanciful farces won’t get him far. He simply lacks the worldly experience to say anything worthwhile. This final remark, in whatever form it took, always cut deepest.

The writer knew this was true, it plagued him. Clavius needed to compose some masterwork, a piece of literature that grasped the world and tore through it with inky teeth. The writer began his research.

Thought

If the writer had lived in a more learned city, it may have gone differently. There, a university or library would have opened its doors to him and gladly allowed secrets to flow from their pages to his. His hometown was not as willing to impart knowledge on young Clavius. Shrouded intrigue and politics gripped the city, and information was a commodity. One that the writer didn’t have the currency to trade for. Worthwhile secrets were whispered in a ballroom at a gala or passed as notes at bigger theaters than Zane could imagine his work performed at. Back alley brokers and occult tomes were among the only research materials the writer had at his disposal. Any knowledge with weight came with a price, and the writer could only afford so much. Brief glimpses into this arcane world that he had only heard of was all Zane could get.

The writer’s less than subtle methodologies drew the attention of many. Some whose intentions were to take advantage of Zane’s voracious appetite for the written word, others with advice and knowledge, and still more whose goals were shrouded to the writer. The benefactor that approached Zane was of the latter group. In truth, The Keeper never approached Zane, but their underlings did. It seemed at every corner, every library, even the tavern the writer frequented to collect his thoughts after a day of research, The Keeper had someone new offering Clavius the use of their library. It had been this way for months, Zane knew he had to accept.

Trepidation turned to giddy relief, the Keeper’s library changed everything. The writer’s days of scouring the streets for a source were gone. Any book, scroll, or almanac was here at his fingertips. Clavius spent days, weeks, perhaps months poring over the library’s contents. It was here the writer unearthed the dark secrets the high life of his city hid so well.

Necromancy was not a new art. Practitioners of the necromantic arts had made livings out of it, the trading of undead servitude. What Zane had found was not the same benign reupholstering of corpses. This was something else. Something darker. An all consuming blackness that shook the free will from the living and dead alike, making puppets of anything it came in contact with. The writer made a point to find more works that mentioned these beings, secondhand encounters, even speculation as to what these new creatures were, lives and will ripped from their bodies. Book after book seemed to find their way to the writer’s hands. Had Zane left this one out the night before? It didn’t matter. The writer had made his discovery. Behind the terror, the possession, the cruelty, were these nobles, high above all else. People’s lives traded and taken like pieces on a game board. The writer had to show the world the atrocities the aristocracy was willing to commit to keep their status. A mire, perpetuated to ensure the wealthy stay on top. Used as a force of destruction and control, the puppeted people bending to their will. Has it always been this way? The writer needed to force their hand. The public had to learn of this treachery. Clavius was on the verge of his magnum opus.

A tragedy in four acts, sure to wrench the nobles from their lofty towers. They would know him at last. The writer would be heard. The Keeper’s library was all new once more. With the ferocity of Zane’s renewed vigor and purpose the days blurred together. Whether he had been writing for weeks or months did not matter, his goal was always in sight. The story of a champion of light, searing away the darkness with righteous valor began to take form. In battle and with brotherly bonds, this hero beat back the blight. With the completion of each act, Clavius felt like he was coming up for air after being submerged in a frigid lake. Not too long after, the writer would take a breath and dive back into the ocean of ink for time to blur once more.

Zane was close. Perhaps mere lines from fully penning Nobilities’ Fault. The hour was getting late, and on any other night the writer would have retired to his quarters in The Keeper’s library. Tonight was different. Tonight, Zane was going to complete his masterpiece. The writer’s focus was his downfall. Tearing open the page to reveal inked words beneath, the scratch of his quill was deafening. He didn’t notice the figure as it tracked the dark in behind it. The creature was nearly upon the writer before he even looked up, only noticing that the candlelight he was writing by was growing dimmer far more quickly than it should.

A second later would have seen Zane dead, or worse, becoming one of them. The blade it swung stuck inside the writer’s desk. Clavius stumbled back, trying to send his chair into the Inken monstrosity. When he looked at it, the writer could not see it, as if the thing inhabited a blind spot in his perception. Was it picking up its blade? It had to have been, as inky steel buried itself in Zane’s side. His blood flowed warm over the cool darkness of the sword. The writer knew he would not be able to survive another blow, and certainly had no chance against this thing he wasn’t even able to properly see. He had to disarm it somehow. Clavius’ mind raced with options, and he realized the Inken intruder was no longer facing him. The writer’s eyes tried to focus on the pile of pages that was Nobilities’ Fault, but he couldn’t. This thing was rifling through his manuscript, mixing Zane’s blood and ink with its own intangible darkness. The writer took his chance. Staggering to his feet, Zane grabbed hold of the blade slick with otherworldly ink, and plunged it into the creature. It let out a guttural screech that reverberated through the sword and rattled in the writer’s skull. The inken creature fell, its form melting away into the darkness that now filled the library.

With his manuscript now nigh unusable, the writer realized why The Keeper had invited him here. Clavius Zane was not to pen this revolution. He was its voice and blade. The pen is mightier than the sword, but the writer knew he could bridge that gap.

Balance

Zane’s final days at The Keeper’s library were spent preparing himself for the impending crusade. This amounted to a fair bit of focused research on how to truly destroy what Clavius had dubbed the Inken and practicing with the sword stolen from the one sent to kill him. While The Keeper’s library was well stocked in literature, it lacked armaments, which did not surprise the writer, but disappointed him nonetheless. Spare benches and desks made for makeshift training dummies. Zane had nobody to train him, and while the diagrams and fighting styles depicted in books were thorough, the writer was just that, a writer, hoping to carve with a sword as deftly as he did a pen. Practice cut into his time to research, all the while being careful not to let the blade have his blood again, lest it get a taste for it. After his timeless stint in The Keeper’s library, Zane became a swordsman to be reckoned with. He found that reciting poetry let him keep the rhythm of his dance with death.

As Clavius Zane bid farewell to the library, a creeping figure caught his attention. The writer realized this was the first actual person he had seen in his time at The Keeper’s library. They beckoned him down a hall, into a room with a set of plate armor and a shield, “For your troubles.” The Keeper clearly knew about this threat, so why didn’t they do anything about it themself? Donning the armor, the writer told the person to give The Keeper his thanks, and set out, not knowing his destination.

Zane began scouring the dark corners of the world, searching for these mockeries of life. It didn’t take long for the writer to find his first Inken abomination, in fact it was just that night as he was walking a lonely alley in search of an inn. The writer heard the sound of wet feet sloshing behind him, and turned to see nothing. No cobblestone, no alley. His eyes struggled to focus, and before he could react, he was knocked to the ground. Clavius drew his Inken blade and swung into his blind spot. He felt it make contact with something that felt far more solid than his previous foe. As it fell to the ground, its shadowy ichor splashing down beside it, Zane reeled back. Beneath its inky visage was a person, a real, bloody person. The writer scrambled to their side, on his knees, pressing on the wound, and calling for help. Clavius’ cries subsided when he heard his victim’s voice. Her words were nonsensical bits and phrases of what she must have been before she’d been blotted out by this darkness. The writer stared in horror as he realized what he had to do. As he lifted it, the Inken blade felt heavier in his hands. Zane took his first life, and it wouldn’t, it couldn’t, be his last.

That night, Clavius fell into restless fits of sleep, only fully succumbing once he was pulled into a dream. His manuscript fluttered around him, some pages stained as they were the night of his first encounter with the Inken, others devoid of any writing at all. As Zane wandered through the whirlwind of his greatest work, the Inken blade materialized at the other side of the web of words. The writer pushed through this parchment tornado, clawing aside pages of perfectly penned poems. He emerged within the storm’s eye. The Inken blade called to him. His manuscript pages poised still in the air, piranhas of parchment, ready to devour him. Zane started toward the blade. As he approached, arm outstretched, the papers trembled like thousands of leaves ready to burst from the tree with a single gust of wind. The writer pushed forward, grasping the hilt of the blade. Then came the whirlwind once more. Words whipped around him as the entirety of Nobilities’ Fault assailed him. The first two acts sliced lines across his arms, raised in defense. Did his own work think the writer sought to destroy it? Acts three and four clung to his legs, rooting him in place. Destroy it? No. Become it. He tore the blade through the papers, and they stuck to the dark ichor coating it. His new sword began to gleam with the writer’s words, his story come to life. The air cleared of Clavius’ writing, and he found himself standing in the middle of his room at the inn, Inken blade held aloft. Instead of the inky color he knew it to have, it now shone with a silver radiance that bathed the room in its soothing glow.

Zane was familiar with the existence of different magics, but he couldn’t even begin to fathom the kind of arcane writing that penned these horrors he encountered. Each time he came across one it was a desperate fight for his life, even with the newfound connection he shared with the Inken blade. The only connecting thread was a hissing echo of the life these husks once had. Pleading to return to normalcy after their ink-stained minds were of no more use to whatever darkness took them. The writer spared them in the only way he knew how. He chronicled who they were and painted pictures across pages about what their life may have been like before they had become not themselves. There was not a way Zane nor anyone better versed in the arcane arts knew to reverse this condition. It burrowed its way into the host and set roots there so deep to remove it was to remove the victim’s very being.

Word of the writer’s mission made its way as whispers in taverns, a ghost story around the campfire, the crazed artist, trying to weave the world to his word. Few truly knew what Zane’s quest entailed. If asked his profession, he would still claim he was a writer, a poet, trying to recall something that had been inked over.

Ruin

Hubris is deadly. Clavius had to learn that lesson at some point. Unlike many others, it did not cost the writer his life to find this out. Empowered by his own rhetoric, Zane erased countless Inken across the land, all the while weaving more tales of who these people were before they were taken. These were the new stories he wrote. The writer became renowned for penning the plight of the everyman, but with every slain evil, twice as many seemed to appear. The writer needed to make an impact. Zane decided to strike out at the source he’d found for the Inken threat; he was headed home.

In the morning, Clavius Zane approached the tower that housed the high society meetings he heard so much about. He mounted the steps, and began to climb. The next thing the writer knew, he was plummeting through the cool night air, blinking up at some unperceivable horror atop the tower. Zane didn’t hear himself hit the ground, and woke in a familiar library, among books strewn about the room. As he came to, he noticed a cloaked figure slinking out. It turned to him, and his eyes refused to focus on it. The writer started for the Inken blade, but couldn’t find it as his side. The Keeper spoke to him, in the same echoed Inken voice he’d heard so many times before.

“S-small fish-sh-sh, endless o-o-ocean”

The Keeper vanished, and Clavius was once again left alone to do research in the library of an abomination. Recovery was slow. Zane once again began to pen Nobilities’ Fault. This time he wouldn’t be stopped. The writer knew his conviction and otherworldly gift were the only tools he needed. The battlefield was his paper, and the Inken blade his pen. It was time to hone his craft.