HFTH - Episode 188 - Embers

Content warnings for this episode include: Violence, Kidnapping and abduction, Death + Injury, Blood, Gun Mention, Body horror, Smoking, Religious Violence

Intro - Prometheus

You were born of fire and blood the day your master first felt hunger. I cannot fault you for that. In a like way, you are your master. You are the trillion cubicles beneath his head office, you are the vast bowels that loom beneath the throat, you are the hands and feet of a blind promethean statue given a forge-hammer and tongs. You raise your hammer without love, and bring it down upon the anvil without thought, and you have forged by now swords to twice arm the universe and still you continue. You are a homunculus; you are a loveless place. You are a slave, but you will never know it—were you to, they would take your eyes. You are responsible for tragedy and flame, for the crime and for the verdict. Noble is the guise you wear, the straightened lapels of your suits, the clean faces and smiles you have been given, masks to conceal your lack of soul and eternal hunger for it. And yet in you there is a spark of light that could set the world alight, if only you knew how to wield it. If you were free to burn without the basket. You take your torch to the forests of a thousand worlds, and the shapes gathering in the smoke spell Hello from the Hallowoods.

Theme.

Right now, I lurk in a small, dark chamber. It might be made of flesh or stone; the distinction is lost in this place. In it, many devils have waited to present the results of their surveys, receive promotions to higher standing, or receive judgement. The two that stand here expect only brimstone. The theme of tonight’s episode is embers..

Story 1 - Fight to the Death

“Are you ready?” said Barb. The devil’s breath fowled up the hot darkness in which they found themselves, and they stood waiting side by side.

“How could I ever be?” said Polly.

“Heh,” said Barb, and sighed. “Yeah. We’re screwed.”

Probably, Polly thought.

“I don’t think so,” Polly said. “Not yet. We don’t know what we’re walking into.”

“I have some idea,” said Barb. “Not my first time. That courtroom is the last thing I ever saw, you know.”

“Right,” said Polly, and lit the darkness with the burning end of a cigarette. The stone door ahead was jagged, volcanic, like the carapace of a great dragon. “I’ll try not to think about that.”

“Maybe you should think about it,” said Barb, plucking the cigarette from Polly’s hand and taking a long breath of smoke. “This isn’t a performance review, kid. The Industry set us up to fail, it would just be against their own mind-numbingly sycophantic worker bee logic to kill us without going through all the paces of the process. It’s a fight to the death on the other side of this door. And they ain’t the ones dyin’.”

Polly nodded, and his fists tightened. He breathed in, and there was a brighter glow as his horns lit, and breathed out, and they stoked to their full flaming height over his head, cast long shadows from himself and Barb. The fire began to creep down across his body in a slow traveling outline, burning curling black roses into the dull silver satin of his suit, from shoulders down his back until the embers went out at the bottom edge of his trouser legs.

“I’m ready,” he said.

“Very pretty,” Barb smirked, and cracked his knuckles, and paused. He looked up to Polly.

“You’re sure you don’t want to know how long it’s been?”

“I’m sure,” said Polly. “If I begin thinking about it, that’s where my head will be. I need to be here. Focused. Any little slip-up and it’s our necks. But they’ve made a mistake, Barb, and that was bringing in auditors to adjudicate instead of normal corporate review. They don’t realize the weakness they’ve introduced that way.”

“Don’t do that,” Barb frowned.

“Do what?” said Polly.

Barb half-grinned, and breathed out the last of Polly’s cigarette until it was only ash. “Give me hope that I actually have a decent lawyer.”

And then the door ahead of them slid up, and the light of the courtroom was searing. Polly had never been to the court before; there was a strange sense now that he was laying eyes upon the battleground before the battle. The vast room had rows of benches of black stone that stretched across the volcanic mosaic of the floor tiles; they faced a stone altar-like podium where three auditors were sat—iron-masked with hearts of burning coals beneath their furnace ribcages. Coils of chain hung from their backs and trailed into the air. The audience was filled with devils—endless rows of men in suits, a sea of black dotted with the occasional grey or burgundy or stripes. There were a few demons, black charcoal-drawing figures scratched into reality, hearts aflame, who watched from the wings high above like gargoyles. Over it all hung gigantic glass panels separating the courtroom from the vast red sphere of the forge-flame beyond it, strands of light that poured from Syrensyr’s heart into his forges. It was, to Polly’s knowledge, the only window in the entire Industry.

“The defendant, the devil Barbatos, and his representative, the devil Apollyon,” said the first auditor.

“You may approach the altar of judgement,” said the second.

Polly kept his eyes focused on no one in particular as he led the way down the central aisle, although heads turned to watch himself and Barb. There were dozens of faces he recognized from various interdepartmental visits. That they had the reprieve from their normal working hours indicated two things to him—that it was valuable to the Industry that the lesson they were about to make out of Barbatos was publicly remembered, and that they expected the trial to be short.

He slid into the empty front bench, and placed his folder of files on the table in front of him. Barb came to a stop in the middle of the aisle.

Sit down, Polly thought. Sit down.

Barb turned as if to look back across the court, and grinned, and flashed his broken horns brightly, a rude sputter of flame that sent indignant whispers rolling through the audience immediately. Some, he imagined, had never even seen another devil’s horns before. And then Barb slid into the bench beside Polly, still smiling crookedly.

“Derailing us before the trial even begins is not a promising start,” Polly muttered, and glanced over to the opposite bench—representing the Industry was Lucy in his white suit, pale hair slicked back, a lapel pin of the red sun. His team of five consultants included Agarus, whose demonic alligator companion lay on the far side of the bench—all Polly could see was a long tail curled out on the tiles.

He turned his gaze to the auditors. They were identical to the lesser eye, but he noted their slight differences—the make and shape of their chains, the skull-like angles of their iron masks, with empty eyes that held the burning flame within. The auditors were the key. If this all had been arranged as a corporate board review with Tiff and Lucy and company seated around them in long rows at a meeting table, they would have tied Polly’s hands and feet with their words and had a sentence delivered in minutes. But that wasn’t public enough for what they wanted.

Auditors were particular. Their logic was cold and clear, and they were sticklers for the letter of the law over its spirit, in trying to reach an as literal as possible interpretation of Syrensyr’s edicts. And, Polly thought, if their dedication to the law was greater than their dedication to their creator, they had a chance.

“Gentlemen of the court,” said the first judge, “we have gathered to adjudicate the case of Barbatos vs. the Industry of Souls. Barbatos is represented by the devil Apollyon. The Industry of Souls is represented by the devil Lucifer. The court of souls is now in session.”

Interlude 1 - Upper Trunk Evacuation

Although not bound by a mayoral evacuation order, residents of the trunk neighborhoods of Scout City have begun to evacuate en masse as the fire reaches its fourth hour. The lack of wind which has afflicted the Hallowoods all summer has meant that the fire has not spread as quickly as some concerned estimates predicted; however, the Scout City Volunteer Fire Department has been unable to control the blaze despite the supply of water being transported from Lurch Lake. The plume of fire raging over the Stumps has attracted Greater Ghostmoths by the thousands, which whirl over surrounding neighborhoods and high into the night sky surrounding the blaze.

While Greater Ghostmoths may appear suddenly or exhibit frightening flapping behaviors in order to startle creatures they perceive as a threat, it is important to note that they are not typically carnivorous. On the other hand, there are concerns that the smell of smoke on such a scale may attract Wandering Night-Gaunts in numbers. Combat Scouts have been deployed to the outer border of the Stumps in order to help circumvent such a threat, although this means a reduced presence monitoring the evacuation efforts within the city’s interior. While it seems unlikely that the fire will make it as far as the trunk of Scout City itself, the plumes of flame are quite high and there is concern that flying embers might light Scout City’s branches.

We go now to one who does not hear this update on Scout City’s fire.

Story 2 - Comparing Notes

Vincent attempted to keep a low profile as he pushed through the crowds that poured out of Scout City’s trunk. With his suit jacket over his head like a hood, he could almost be mistaken for an old mother in a shawl, and he hobbled forward appropriately.

Scout City was aflame, much like his joints and all of his organs. The trail of smoke drifted up from the neighborhoods of the Stumps, and slowly crept across adjacent neighborhoods as well as towards the great trunk of Scout City’s tree itself. It was out of caution that residents made their way out of the trunk and into the network of caverns below the city, and he got past them as best he could as he alone tried to ascend against the crowd.

“This is insane,” Percy said, hovering almost invisible through the air beside him. Both ghosts had caught up to him minutes ago. “What could have caused this?”

“This is why you never burn your old diaries in a plastic garbage can,” Ratty said.

“I don’t know if it’s that,” said Vincent. He paused. Ahead of him, looming in the center of the crowd, someone was standing on a wooden podium in the middle of the street, shouting out.

“Join the Coda,” the woman was calling. “This fire was caused by the Instrumentalist—the pig! Scout City’s deputies cannot bring justice, so we must bring it ourselves. The hunt begins tonight. The hunt begins tonight!”

This shout was taken up by a dozen or more members of the crowd standing by the podium, and Vincent realized there were more of them than he thought. He kept his face low, but even so, the crowd cleared around him at a bad moment, and a call came out from the podium in his direction. The woman leaned over the edge of the wooden rail, tracking him.

“Sir, will you join us in fighting this new evil?” she called. “Will you join us in reclaiming our city?”

“Keep moving,” whispered Percy.

“I hate when people talk to me outside,” said Ratty.

“Ahm, I’m afraid I am busy,” said Vincent, straightening up. “Solving crimes… as I do. I am Inspector Detector Ga-”

“Vincent?” the voice from the podium said, and the other Coda members seemed to dial in quickly on his presence.

“I haven’t the foggiest…” he began.

“You’ve seen him, haven’t you?” said the woman on the box. “The pig destroyed your morgue. Do you not want to set things right? Do you not want to take revenge from what he has taken from you?”

“I’m afraid I have to go,” Vincent managed, and then darted away as quickly as he could. The Coda did not follow, but he could feel their gaze on his back as he scaled up the winding lane, climbing higher through the coiled main street of Scout City’s trunk, the ghosts only a whisper and a glint of silver jewelry around him. The crowd thinned increasingly as they rose, until he reached the highest neighborhood, where Scout City’s mansions extended out among the gigantic branches. Chateau Greenstreet was much as he remembered it, with a large iron fence and an inner garden. He did not stop until he had made his way through the gate, opened the front door, and nearly collapsed in the foyer. The lights were dim, but a sound greeted him immediately; the long ringing notes of a violin, the sorrowful melody that echoed through the hall and sent a chill immediately through him.

“Uh oh,” said Percy, coming to hover beside Vincent and bristling with a crackling white light.

“I already kicked one of their asses tonight,” said Ratty, appearing on the other side. “I’ve got time for one more.”

“Hold off now, you two,” Vincent said, snatching up a defensive umbrella from the basket by the door, and then inched forward. He followed the sound until he came to the grand study, a wide room with a window that looked out on the trunk of Scout City trailing down to the earth below. The study was dark save for a single candelabra, which cast light on the glinting gold-lettered spines of books, the deep red furniture, the man in a dark smoking jacket who was playing a violin in the dark.

Vincent waited there a moment, basking in the closing notes, until Raj looked up to notice him and the music came abruptly to a halt.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to disturb your playing,” said Vincent.

“Oh, my dear,” said Raj. “Welcome home.”

Marketing - Achieving Your Dreams

Lady Ethel Mallory

Growing up in Truth or Consequences, New Mexico, I was well-acquainted with the meaning of beauty, the meaning of power. My family had neither, and wealth for us was a distant dream. We were the downtrodden dust left behind by the grinding mill of America’s greatness. Dust after the gold rush. I stood in my dollar store flip-flops and watched the waving queen of the town go by on her parade float year after year. Miss Fiesta, dressed like a princess and wearing a crown, waving with her sash. I didn’t think I could ever be her. Beautiful and beloved by everyone in town. A symbol of Truth and Consequence’s pride. But the years have taught me that we, humble American citizens, can be whatever we set our minds to. If we want to achieve our dreams, whether they be beauty, glamor, or survival, all it takes is the god-given ingenuity we have been blessed with. As future CEO of the Botulus Corporation and the future Queen of America, I am a living example of dreams coming true. Believe in your dream. Believe in yourself. And know that I believe in you.

Story 2, Continued - Comparing Notes

Someday, I wish you would learn that advertising in dream makes people not like you. Although, come to think of it, I do not know what that says about me. Perhaps the difference is, when I am gone, people miss me.

We return now to Vincent Loren.

Vincent came to hug Raj tightly.

“I thought, several times tonight, that I was never going to see you again,” said Vincent. “We’ve had some close shaves tonight.”

“I had a suspicion things were going poorly,” said Raj. “Although until Diggory returned I did not realize just how poorly. Where have you been?”

“We found where the Quartet have been hiding,” said Percy. Vincent only really saw them when they spoke; otherwise they were outlines, illuminated by the distant firelight through the windows, transparent like jellyfish in clear water. “There’s a stone chapel out in the forest, in a hollow where the roots can’t reach. They’re finishing a weapon that my father had begun building—a church organ, one that commands the souls of the people they’ve killed. Each murder victim is tied to it.”

“Murder victim?” said Raj. “Did you see… well. A tall man, square head…”

“He was there,” said Percy. “He’s like me and Ratty now. A ghost.”

“Which isn’t a bad thing,” said Ratty. “But the circumstances are really fucked up.”

“I would concur,” said Raj. “No wonder my seances haven’t worked. You’re saying my husband’s spirit is tied to this… weapon.”

“That’s not all,” said Percy. “There’s five of them. One has a mask with these metal flowers on it. They sit on the church steps and don’t move. That seems to be the one directing things. One of them is Ben Alder. He… knows me from a long time ago.”

“Ben Alder is the leader of the Coda,” said Raj, contemplatively. “A support group, originally, for the victims of the original Instrumentalist. He was one of my husband’s last clients.”

“There’s something messed up in there I think,” said Percy. “And I don’t know what happened to their previous Drum, but they’ve chosen a new one. It’s Cole Kane, the deputy. He’s their new drum.”

“Was that him?” said Vincent, eyebrows raised. “I thought I recognized him. He came at me with a knife and cable. I owe my life to Ratty, keeping him busy so that I could escape.”

“No probby,” said Ratty, floating high up in the room, tapping a portrait in a frame so that it sat slightly crooked.

“You didn’t kill him,” said Percy, looking up.

“Nah,” said Ratty, and grinned. “I would have felt bad, he fought like a baby.”

“Is your hand okay, by the way?” Percy said. Ratty frowned at that.

“Your friend Diggory was here, an hour ago,” said Raj, disentangling himself from Vincent in order to place his violin back in its coffin-like case, and he went to sit by the light of the candelabra. “It appears, to try and summarize all that they told me briefly, their investigation revealed the identity of one of the Quartet—which turned out to be Heather McGowan, sister of the groundskeeper Russel McGowan and Scout City deputy. Before they could catch up with her, Shank did, and he engaged in a fight with all four of the Quartet. Heather was killed, and Shank was followed by Scout City’s remaining deputies.”

“When did all this transpire?” said Vincent.

“Tonight,” said Raj. “Apparently. In the early hours. When Diggory, Shelby, and Riot found Shank, he was in the Stumps. They had an altercation with the Scout City deputies there, which resulted in a deputy named Ignatius lighting fires that it seems have been going throughout the night. You can see the glow from here.”

“Quite severe, the fires,” said Vincent. “Many citizens are evacuating the Stumps and the upper and lower trunk, making for the roots district. I do not know if it is going to continue to be safe up here, Raj.”

“You said Diggory was here an hour ago,” said Percy, appearing in a glimpse. “Where did they go?”

“Most of our friends appear to be rallying in the north end of the Stumps,” said Raj, “preparing to lure the Quartet away from the city by making Shank’s presence obvious. They’re hoping that by dawn they’ll be able to confront and capture them. Diggory, though, is bound somewhere else first. They said they were visiting a friend.”

“North end of the stumps. Got it,” said Percy, hovering up into the air beside Ratty. “You ready for a little more action?”

“Ready? I’m practically starving,” said Ratty, and it floated down to pat Vincent’s head, scattering his wisps of hair with the static electricity of her hand. “You should probably stay here this time.”

“No complaints from me,” said Vincent, pursing his lips. “I’ve been awake for nearly twenty-four hours and I’ve walked something like fifteen miles.”

“Hah. Imagine walking,” Ratty said, and lifted off back into the air.

“Vincent, Raj, we’re going to go then—meet up with the others. We will stop them tonight. Make them pay for digging my father and everything he stood for up again.”

“Godspeed,” said Raj, and with that the ghosts were gone, whistling out through the door and into the night, as quick as a rushing wind. Raj came over to stand beside Vincent in the chair, a brown hand on his shoulder. Vincent tilted his head to lay his gaunt cheek against it.

“I was increasingly worried,” said Raj, “that the Quartet would have taken two people I love from me.”

Vincent treasured those words, and kissed Raj’s knuckles.

“We’re not going to get to rest at all, are we?” said Vincent. “For what they did to Raoul, what they still are doing… this must end.”

“A little rest,” said Raj, squeezing his shoulder. “A few hours, perhaps. And then, when the sun rises, vengeance.”

Interlude 2 - Opening Remarks

Opening remarks have been made in the case of Barbatos vs. the Industry of Souls. In summary, the position of the Industry of Souls, as stated by their representative Lucifer, is that it is customary after a devil commits crimes against the Industry, such as theft of souls and the illicit stockpiling of them, that this devil is punished by removal of their horns and eyes and cast out from the Industry of Souls to starve out into nothingness. While typically devils who are employed by the Industry return to it when their temporary mortal bodies are destroyed, it is unprecedented for a devil who has been exiled to return to the Industry in this fashion, and after Barbatos’ return to the Industry following the sacrifice of his body to a starwolf, the sentence that the Industry has proposed is not to simply exile Barbatos a second time and return him to a seemingly ineffectual sentence of starvation, but to have him destroyed outright as an intruder upon the premises.

By contrast, the position of Barbatos, as stated by his lawyer, is that the policies of the Industry are cruel and unbefitting of beings that have free will, and that the root issue of Barbatos’ troubles stem from the lack of any way for a devil to resign from the Industry through their current legal avenues. Which has brought the court to the pivotal question of needing to prove whether or not devils have free will in the light of their creator. And whether their creator will ever permit that question to be answered.

We go now to one who does not know what to do with free will.

Story 3 - Old Habits

Riot pushed open the door to the groundskeeper’s office. A familiar hearse hung from the ceiling on chains, and the table and workfloor spread out beneath it was dark. Arnold and Russell followed behind her, closing the door to the rush of commotion outside, and the voices that followed her, although she could still hear them through the windows.

“Why haven’t you done anything?” one called. “Why does this city even have groundskeepers?”

“The groundskeepers were there when the fire started,” another called. “Fighting the deputies. They’re helping the pig!”

Someone tried the door, which Arnold had barred.

“This is a disaster,” said Russell, pacing after Riot. “No one knows what’s going on.”

“We can’t worry about that right now,” said Riot, coming over to the tall cabinets of dark wood that lined the upper walkway’s wall, and she fished in her coverall pockets for a moment before looking to Russell. “You have the key?”

He reached up to fetch it from the top of the shelf, and she stepped aside as he pulled open the armory doors. She had a faint recollection of opening the back of Walt’s hearse and seeing the rows of weathered tools he’d employed to smooth out hedges or trap flesh-eating blackwater ghouls alike. He would have been knocked off his feet to see the collection Scout City’s groundskeepers had amassed in his absence.

“Well?” said Russell, hands on his hips, looking over the collection. Saws and gardening tools, vampire hunting kits and animal traps, harpoon guns, coils of silver chain, bags of feed and jars of repellant, shields and a collection of medieval weapons, and devices she could not identify were arranged on rack after rack within the cabinet. “What do you think we should bring?”

“I don’t know what half of this stuff is,” she said. “You’re the leader, aren’t you?”

“Well, the senior groundskeeper,” said Arnold, standing a few paces behind, leaning on the rail. “I just happen to be understudy senior groundskeeper, which is a step up from junior.”

Russell looked back to her.

“Riot,” he said. “I’ll be honest. The things that Arnold and I have had to deal with so far as groundskeepers have been… animals. Giant bugs and griffocaughs, night-gaunts and blinking-cats. Or people so twisted by blackwater that there was no talking, no reasoning with them. We’ve caught things and relocated them miles away from the city, we’ve learned to stop doing things that aggravate the woods. But we’ve never faced down people. Scout City’s own people. You’ve faced the instrumentalist before. You led the charge to bring him down the first time. What do we need to do here? You tell me. Arnold and I are behind you all the way. But we need your expertise here. We need your experience.”

Riot nodded. Me too, she thought. She put her hands up against the top of the cabinet and leaned against it, took a deep breath in. What would Riot do, she thought? What would Clementine? What would Walt?

She breathed out. Two people had given their lives so that she could have one. What would they say, if they were alive?

Both Arnold and Russell were looking to her, waiting for a leader. Waiting for someone who knew what they were doing. Sorry, she thought. You get me instead.

“Right,” she said. “So. We’re going against at least three people, who have repeatedly murdered innocent people in Scout City. We don’t want to kill them, if we can help it, but be prepared to. For me and Shelby, they had no reservations about trying to stab us to death in an alley, and it’s unlikely we’re going to be able to talk them into giving themselves up or making a big confession. So we’re going to have to go in prepared for a fight. Anything that can trap them, slow them down, injure them is good. They’re usually the ones setting the traps, so I don’t think they’ll be expecting it from us, but the element of surprise will only be there for so long. From what I’ve gathered from Shank, they work as a team, so they’ll be trying to split off and then come together, catch us off guard.”

“We’ve got a lot of hunting traps,” said Russell. “Tripwires, noose traps. If we set up a main stretch that Shank is on, I’d bet that other members will cut to the side through the woods. We can hide these along those paths.”

“Good,” Riot said, and paused, looking over a set of silver spikes poised on a velvet bed.

“And,” she continued, “we should come prepared to deal with more… supernatural stuff. I know we have an agreement with Shank, but if he goes to try and kill the members of the Quartet we’ve captured, I’d like to know that we have some tools to stop him.”

“I’ll work on that,” said Arnold. “I got through to him before, when he was going to kill Russell. I don’t think he likes me, but I think he’ll listen, enough for me to get his attention. I don’t want to actually bring out more fire after seeing what Ignatius did, but we’ve got a flare gun that might frighten him for a moment, enough to save someone from him if he gets after them.”

By the end of half an hour of planning, they each had a hefty bag ready to go, but Riot stopped for two last things—the Walter Pensive’s Groundskeeping hat which she had left on the dashboard of the hearse, which she put on firmly, and a weapon—she almost went for the mace, but settled on a silver-edged groundskeeper’s shovel. It was no sword, but it had a good heft in the hands, and she thought in some way that Walt would have agreed.

Outro - Embers

Embers. There are a hundred thousand lights, dreamer, drifting up from the blackening neighborhoods that surround Scout City’s trunk. Born from bark wall or branched roof, they rise with the wind to hover in a glowing multitude. Sparks spiral with the smoke as it paints the night sky. Each one is full of potential; and although they could touch upon nothing and fizzle out without a trace, they might just as easily land somewhere entirely unexpected, and thrive. Drawing in sustenance from fresh timber and breathing in new life, glowing hotter and brighter until a new flame is born, from which new embers will follow, changing life after life forever in the wake of their energy and light.

No matter where you fall, dreamer, I am your loyal host Nikignik, waiting lit for your return to the Hallowoods.

The bonus story that goes with this episode is called 'Scrap Meat' and is available on the Hello From The Hallowoods Patreon. Consider joining for access to all the show's bonus stories, behind-the-scenes and more! Until next time, dreamers, only you can prevent forest fires. Why aren’t you doing that? Why aren’t you preventing forest fires? They’re still happening all over the world. Why aren’t you using your power? How many will pay the price?