Benjin Freeman traced the scars on his hands and arms. Twenty years ago, before the war, before the boats, before the mountains, Benjin had had no scars. Twenty years ago, he and his young wife Hildie had just settled into a new life in Philadelphia, a metropolis on a continent east of the Island State of Tennessee. This life brought him a forge of his own along with a classroom for Hildie. But the War of Sovereignty had erupted, and Benjin answered the call to ply his skill at the shipyards of the fledgling Navy on the Great Inland Sea.
Surviving a ship being broadsided and boarded is no small feat. Benjin was repairing a flat joint when the cannonball ripped through Lawrence’s midships. Hitting the deck, he barely missed the next three projectiles as the brigantine shuddered with the sudden and deadly fire. Screaming men were heard everywhere, and when Benjin escaped to the upward hatch to go on deck, he realized his off-hand and arm were covered in blood and his broken fingers jabbed this way and that. Muscling open the hatch anyway, he ascended to the top deck to a scene of absolute chaos. The captain had already lowered his colors and could be seen retreating to the flagship in a steamboat. Bluecoats were climbing the decks following what had to be an apparent broadside from the British gunboat, its central stack belching black smoke as it turned to bring another volley to bear. Benjin took his smithing hammer and, crunching his fingers back into place around the grip of his long knife, the veteran brawler went to work.
It was brutal. Very few of his fellow navy men remained after being so thoroughly gutted by cannon fire. One by one, he dropped a dozen English sailors, trying desperately to ignore the carnage he was creating. At one point, a saber pierced his shoulder. Wrenching it free, he quickly dispatched his would-be executioner.
When silence descended on the deck, only Benjin and two other Federalists remained. He noted their higher rank, nodded to each, and fell to his knees in exhaustion. That’s when the second barrage began, and the deck soon became a maelstrom of splintered wood and percussive explosion. Benjin climbed to his feet, intending to find shelter, but as he looked around for an exit path, the world went helter-skelter. Sky and deck and earth and water spun in his line of vision until the bracing cool of water surrounded him, and he sunk deeper into darkness. He felt the smooth stones of the sea’s bottom against his broken legs and knew that this was where he died. In the deep. In the cold. In the depths of a swarm of golden orbs surrounding him. Of tentacled limbs wrapping him in a death embrace. He knew he would die even as the voice of a thousand ancient souls pierced his mind.
“I have need of one such as you. One with promise. Purpose. One who needs a call. Will you die here in the deep? Or will you serve the Balance?”
Benjin opened his eyes to see some ancient horror. One of the Old Ones…beings hidden in the thin places between here and the Veil. How long had this one crept along the depths of the inland seas?
Benjin knew he was dead. He could feel the countless bones grinding on bones. There was no recovery from this state, this deep in the water. Looking up was a surface so distant. Looking forward was the single mesmerizing eye of this creature.
“I will not serve the darkness,” Benjin thought.
“The darkness is not evil, child. The darkness only balances the light. I am a creature of the balance. I care for neither good nor evil, for both forces destroy my world. To serve me is to serve the universe. To serve life and death in perfect harmony.”
“Who are you? What are you?” Benjin thought.
“I am an old servant of the greatest good. I am the hands of the Maker. The crawler of the Deep, the Keeper of the Dark. The Destroyer of Worlds. The Savior of Souls. I am Leviathan.”
“Death or Service, then?” Benjin would have laughed if there was any air left in his lungs to do so.
“Death or service, yes,” the creature crooned, “there is no other choice in this life. What do you say, Benjin Ezra Freeman? Do I leave you, or shall we both serve the Maker one more day?”
“I will serve, beast. But if you trick me, or use me, or torture me, I’ll hunt you down and destroy you myself.”
The Leviathan’s laughter was slow, gurgling, and maddening. “Trick, Use, Torture. There is nothing but these left for you, Benjin Ezra Freeman.” The laughter and the single pulsing orb of the eye were the last things Benjin remembered before slipping into the black. “For you and for me, as we are now both servants of All That Is.”
Benjin awoke to the noise of battle. The shipyards surrounded him, and he was in a cot with bandages covering nearly his whole body. As he slipped back to sleep, he realized the guns were firing in a procession. They had won the day. The Federalists had captured or sunk nearly a dozen ships. And Benjin would leave the Inland Sea with a discharge, a medal, a body scarred in eerily familiar arcane patterns, a voice in his head, and a purpose he could vaguely understand.
Months later, Benjin had finally made it home to Philadelphia. But when he learned that Hildie had died of influenza the previous winter, something in him gave up. He worked a forge long enough to save up a sizable pouch of silver, closed the shop down one night, and started walking west, following the whispered voice deep in his mind. The following years were a blurred memory of violence, dreams, and moments of triumph. Freeing a wagon train of slaves. Ending a band of brigands who thought the trailways were their twisted playground. Repairing a broken-down preacher’s cart or fending Federalist soldiers off of women and children foraging for food. Every day, every moment, the whispered voice of Leviathan guided and mentored Benijn in the subtle art of equilibrium and Natural Law.
Crossing the Great Mountains still gave Benjin shivers. The harrowing he endured crossing the Spine of the Ancients was the stuff of old stories. He never believed in ghosts until he met the White Lady of Burke County. He did not believe in demons until he severed a dretch from that poor boy in Canton. When he got to the top of the mountains, he met the People. The Federation had tried to run them out and put them on reservations, but the magic and skill of the People ground the Nation’s expansion to a halt, and now the bulk of the Great Mountains fell under the Protectorate of Shaconage. Most folks talked about the Protectorate as the 26th state, and Benjin couldn’t argue. Leave people to their home and they will leave you well enough alone. Haints, wights, a bad run-in with a wampus cat (Benjin unconsciously traced the claw lines running down his torso) and others filled weeks and months of mindless walking through a new world filled with the supernatural. He thought he had found a place to stay in Mount’n End. He had even repaired and fired up an old forge gone cold. But the fire and steam and noise of the enterprise had attracted the attention of a local Shaman.
This Shaman recognized Leviathan’s marks on Benjin’s arms and asked for the story. Benjin told it. Once completed, the Shaman dropped his cloak to reveal a scarred body so similar to Benjin’s but instead of mottled tentacles, the man’s skin was covered in sharp, angular horns. Holding Benjin’s eyes, the Shaman would only say: “Stag.”
After weeks of comparing their experiences with the Old Ones, the two men parted ways as friends.
By the time he arrived in Temperance, Benjin had begun to show gray in his beard and it took him a heartbeat or two longer to stand up. He had no idea what made him stop walking after so many years on the road, but there was some purpose–some need–in Leviathan that pulled at him at this first sign of civilization on the western slopes of the Spine. After a few years of smithing and living alongside the folks of Temperance, Benjin had been elected Alderman and taken to the work of leadership naturally. Leviathan seemed content, and Temperance grew steadily and without much fuss for almost a decade before Jeremiah Vane showed up.
Jeremiah Vane.
Benjin blew out a breath to steady his rising heartbeat. In his older age, he found that he had less separation between his unique thoughts and the words of the Old One echoing in his head. Both entities knew that Jeremiah Vane had made a deal somewhere in his life.
But not with Leviathan. Or the Stag. Or any of the other Old Ones. Benjin could smell it on him. After overcoming Vane’s first fascination in those early days, Benjin treated the man like a Mountain Cat, waiting and ready to pounce at any moment.
Benjin kept the balance for as long as he could. But the chores became jobs. And the jobs became dangerous. Benjin knew the signs of the Veil’s encroachment: Moon Eyes appearing, boggarts forming up as long-dead family members in the middle of the night. Melted precious metals and fairy rings and rotten provisions. Missing livestock. Missing persons. All of it piled up and told Benjin he needed to act soon.
He did what he was supposed to do. He went to Vane and voiced his concerns, but as usual, the younger man dismissed him without a second thought. With the entire town and half the county now employed by Vane or working to fuel the enterprise of his “vision,” Benjin would be hard-pressed to find help in confronting the growing problem of the Supernatural effect causing so much strife in Franklin County. When the Angeline boy disappeared a few years back, Benjin’s “comrade in common sense,” Brother Ayden, broke down and lost much of his mind. Benjin was all alone it seemed, back to the bottom of the Lake, in the deep, in the dark.
—
The sun was setting behind enough cloud to make it an ominous orange. It looked suspiciously like the eye Benjin saw regularly in his dreams. As he stared into the celestial beauty of the sunset, the wet, blubbery voice of the Old One whispered, “That realm is far beyond our reach, Little One,” followed by a gurgling chuckle.
Benjin shook off the unease and walked up to the old shack in the woods. He heard Ayden had taken up out here, and expected to find an empty shell and a wasted trip, but the lamp glow in the lone rippled window told him otherwise. Not wanting to cause an upset, he stopped a good ways from the structure and called out.
“Ayden. It’s Benjin. Are you in there? I’m here with no fuss. No weapons neither.”
After a moment, a voice from inside called back, “This isn’t an opportune time, Alderman. I’m…indisposed, as it were.”
Benjin then heard Ayden whispering and knew that the man had either gone completely insane, or something was awry. Slowly, carefully, he made no sound but approached the door to the cabin. “Two heartbeats: one touched by madness, the other by the Verdant.” Leviathan was always on alert. “There is a minor evil here. Out of balance, yes. Madness, yes, but nothing that demands destruction.”
Benjin banged on the door. “Ayden, this has gone on long enough. It’s time to stop hiding and take action. I know you have a sorcerer in there. They’re possessed, Ayden. There’s no time to muck about. I need your help.”
The door creaked open. Ayden stepped out into the growing dusk. Glowflies started winking and the tree sprites started clicking. Behind Ayden, another form stepped out into the evening air.
“I’ll be turned out. Hasil?” Benjin spoke and Leviathan rolled in his mind, chattering on about prophecy and mist and dead things undone.
“Alderman, sir. Been a while. You look old.”
Benjin snorted, “Alderman in name and older than you know, young one. Where have you been? What happened? Why are you Verdant touched? And what in nine hells are you doing out here…” Benjin’s words trailed off as he saw the blue glow of Hasil’s eyes in the dusk, “Sweet Sister, what did they do to you?”
“You know what they had to do, Alderman. They told me to find you once I got here. They said you know their ways, that you’d listen to me.”
Benjin nodded. “The People and I have relations and an understanding. Yes. I’ve never seen anyone touched as true as you, Hasil, and I’ve…I’ve seen some things.”
Ayden stepped forward, “It’s Vane, Benjin. He’s done some great, terrible thing in that temple of his. He opened something, and I can’t…don’t have the strength to close it. Hasil here says you might. The three of us together may be able to close the door.”
Leviathan rumbled in Benjin’s head. “This is it, Little One. Quintessence. The reason for being. The purpose of us. The reason for being. This one carries the demon. Small. Insignificant. But enough to cause its madness.”
Benjin addressed Ayden, “Then maybe we should go inside and chat, eh?”
—
After hearing Hasil’s story, of the friend no one could see, the death in the mountain, being found by the Horned Hunter and taken into the People to learn the ways of the Verdant, Benjin was concerned.
“You mean to tell me that you were born as one of the People. All this time, you have had the gifts and seen signs?”
“I found him in Farseer Cove, Benjin. Just laid out on a log. Wrapped in moss and homespun and just waiting for me.” Ayden seemed almost desperate.
“Farseer…why on earth were you out that far, Ayden? Nothing but haints and fairies out there.”
“And herbs. Some special blends need special roots.”
“Have you been back since Hasil disappeared?”
Ayden looked at the ground, not saying a word. Benjin put a hand on his shoulder and when Ayden looked up, Benjin saw him. Benjin looked at the man through the Old One with a judgment and third sight that he reserved for creatures of the Veil.
Ayden saw Benjin’s eyes glow with the dark green of deep water in old mill ponds, and he was suddenly terrified. Faster than a blink, the big man’s hands snapped around Ayden’s face while two other arms snaked through Ayden’s and laced around chest, pinning both arms and man to his chair.
“What? You can’t! Lay off me, you God’s bloodied boogers. I won’t be handled like a-”
But he didn’t finish. By this point, Benjin had found the black spider-web-thin filament of the demon tied to Ayden. He glanced at Hasil, who in one deft move, dropped Ayden’s arm, drew some kind of a thin, bone dagger, and flipped it over into Benjin’s hand so quickly you couldn’t hardly see the action.
Benjin growled, “You know, priest, by letting one of these things bind to you, you make yourself susceptible to all forms of possession?”
Ayden didn’t respond, his face was beet red, and his eyes bulged from his head. Spittle trickled from the corner of his mouth.
“He was using it to scry,” Hasil muttered, “when his spiritual gift left him, and he stopped following The Way, the brothers removed him from office, but instead of rebuilding himself, he fled and went looking for me. But Granny Patience wouldn’t let him find me, so he found a fiend to help him. I have been coaxing it out these last few hours, listening to the trees tell me you were coming, trying to time it right. The Verdant knows he holds a thing from beyond the Veil. It won’t give him his gift back.”
“The Verdant is hell and tarnation!” Ayden trailed off into sobs, “The Veil is a false lie! The Holy Mother is a hag and Christ-life is a hoax. We’re all going to die anyway! The Verdant Daughter will kill us all regardless.”
Benjin caught Hasil’s eye again. By this point he had angled the bone blade on the filament, ready to cut. “Verdant Daughter?”
“The fiend takes the form of a child and tortures him,” The young man’s voice bled through with sadness for his adopted father. “Convinced him that both Church and Verdant are enemies. He is trapped. When you cut, we can heal, but he will never be whole after this much time being Veil-sick.”
Leviathan pushed on Benjin’s mind, ready. He flicked his wrist, cut the cord, and as Ayden screamed and Hasil wrestled the man into his bed, Benjin went to work.
The scars on his arms grew hot, then glowed, then erupted from his body in multiple directions like tentacles of pure light. One latched onto a shadow cast by Ayden’s bed, then another, and another, until Benjin felt confident he had entangled the fiend with Leviathan’s powers.
Wriggling in his “arms,” the demon screeched and fought back, tearing at the Kraken’s tentacles with teeth and claws. It had taken the form of a child, about the size of a child’s doll. The surface of the thing glistened and pulsed with an inner iridescent glow that erupted into prismatic colors like an oil slick on water. Leviathan’s power twisted, tightened, and brought the creature closer to Benjin. He was familiar with the Old One’s glee when a thing beyond the Veil was trapped in its clutches. They had exorcized thousands of demons through their symbiosis. Benjin felt the familiar surge within him, saw the orange glow of Leviathan’s ethereal limbs brighten, and heard the demon screech in terror as it was steadily consumed by the Old One’s suckered arms. In moments, nothing was left, only the drifting dust-like remnants of the creature that did not belong to this side of the Veil. The Ordered world reclaimed the imbalance caused by a creature from the Chaos Waters of the Abyss. Leviathan’s visage disappeared. The creature calmed within him, and he turned to find Hasil staring at him with interest. Ayden was passed out on the bed behind them.
“Benjin, The Verdant is coming in water and fire. Some doors, once opened, cannot be closed. I need your help. And his.” He looked toward Ayden, who had aged ten years in a few minutes.
“Quintessence, little one. We triumph or die here,” burbled the spirit.
“Tell me what we should do, Hasil. It’s past time we dealt with this.”
The two talked long into the night, and at dawn, the three of them began the journey to Temperance and their fate.
Ealdsmyth Tabletop Role Playing System 