"How are you off for leave, Yak?" said Petter. "I've been invited to a party by an old friend who used to study at the Academy, and he insisted that I bring someone with me. It's on the fifth."
"I should be able to manage that," I replied.
Although he was my father, I never really seemed able to address him as 'Dad', not least because he looked younger than I did.
At the appointed hour, we found ourselves at the address he had been given.
It was a large, Gothic mansion a few miles from where Xe'Pherion City was currently located. The mansion seemed at one time to have been a place of worship, but had since been re-architected as an abode of demons.
Petter had come wearing a white shirt with a curious red marking upon it, something a bit like a clan symbol but harsher. It looked as though he had painted it on himself, and I had half a mind to ask where he'd got it from, but I didn't. "Just dress casual," he had said earlier.
When we arrived, we found a group of people gathered upon a space of gravel, evidently laid out flat for some particular purpose. To my dismay, they were all stood in rows, wearing the same kind of white teeshirt that Petter had. Each one was adorned with a different occult sigil, daubed upon the shirt in what I hoped was not blood.
Oh my Gods, it's a coven, I thought.
"How did you meet your friend?" I asked nervously.
"He was studying the Secret Religions of Furrae module," Petter replied.
"Rather an interesting guy, although we kind of lost touch when he began to concentrate exclusively on religion. He turned somewhat inward."
"Welcome Petter," said a canine incubus with black leathery wings and headwings. He had the look of an Alsatian, although his fur was entirely white.
"Good to see you again. And I thank you for bringing your friend here."
"Jakob," I said. "Pleased to meet you."
"Malnemar. It's always good to meet a fellow incubus," he replied, shaking my hand. Glancing at his watch, he suddenly looked up sharply.
"Oh, I'm sorry. It is time to begin the preliminaries, so if you will excuse me, I must start. I'm sure Petter will help you out."
So saying, he turned and was shortly stood at the head of the lines. Petter took his place in the shorter row and bade me join him. With Malnemar, we made exactly thirteen.
"In times past there were other gods," he called in a singsong voice.
As he stopped speaking, the disciples chanted "Oo-Rei-Aar" and gyrated, twisting their bodies and limbs into occult gestures.
Acutely aware that I was the only one without a white shirt, and that I had no idea what I was supposed to be doing, I glanced at Petter and copied his gestures awkwardly.
"They sought to contain our Father for His power had grown strong," he called.
"Oo-Rei-Aar" replied the crowd and moved their bodies into a new pose.
"Their weakness proved its own reward,
For now the pretenders lie dead and there is only one god,"
"Oo-Rei-Aar..."
"And His name is Thess," Malnemar called exultantly.
"Blessed be He for ever and ever!"
"Oo-Rei-Aar! Thess Oo-Rei-Al!" called the disciples and performed an even more intricate gesture.
"He is the door, and the key to the door.
When He embraces Himself the way is clear!
As once it was, soon shall it be again!"
"Oo-Rei-Aar! Thess Oo-Rei-Al!" the disciples screamed, and then silence fell.
"Very good. We shall begin," he said in a perfectly normal voice, and clapped his hands.
"Within the house lies the golden chalice, sacred relic of our Father Thess, bestowed unto me in my travels."
"I think he stole it from SAIA," Petter hissed.
"He whomsoever finds the chalice shall be granted the riches promised us by our Father. Go now, and seek it." Malnemar clapped his hands again, peering up at the gathering clouds and the disciples filed into the large, creepy-looking mansion.
The mansion had about eight stories and countless rooms upon each floor, some of which were centuries old, others which would not have looked out of place in Zinvth, or even Earth.
Although we were supposed to seek the cup on our own, Petter and I joined together and worked as a team. The maze-like aspect of the mansion was heightened by the fact that many doors were locked, and a good portion of our time was spent looking for keys to open them, keys which were hidden in strange and peculiar places.
Malnemar was nowhere to be found.
There were so many questions I wanted to ask Petter, about how he had come to be involved in a religious cult like this, and indeed how deep his involvement went. Was he a disciple, an acolyte or simply a friend to the cult's leader?
I decided against such direct questioning - besides, we were not alone. While it could be a perfectly benevolent religion, I was far from convinced.
It had begun to rain just as we entered the house, and where some of the disciples' shirts had got wet, the glyphs upon their backs had run. I decided I was not going to ask Petter why one of his fingers was bandaged.
"Are all his parties like this?" I asked, a seemingly-innocent question, but one where the answers could be very revealing.
"I've only been to one before," he said. "And I wasn't sure if it would be the same this time. I wasn't even sure if we were supposed to come in formal dress or what, but since he did ordain me as a sort of honorary member of the sect, I figured it would be a nice gesture to come in ceremonial attire. I figured I could always shapeshift it into something else later on if need be."
We tried a key I had found lying beneath an ash-tray upon the door in one of the peculiar rooms - it was split-level, with stairs joining the two doorways which were at different heights. Keeping the carpet clean must have been a real drag, but such thoughts vanished from my mind as the door sprung open.
"Hah!" I said. "Should we leave the door unlocked, or lock it again? For that matter, should we share the keys with the other guests, or horde them for our own use?"
"I'm not sure," he replied. "Keeping them to ourselves is a strategic advantage, but it seems somehow unfair. I guess it depends how desperate you are to win, really. Tell you what - let's keep the keys, but leave the doors unlocked, at least for now."
Behind us, there was a burst of satisfaction, as one of the other 'guests' - a raccoon Being - located a key behind a dusty old tome and unlocked another door, blissfully ignorant of the fact that Petter and I could feel his emotions and thoughts. He passed through the door and there was a sharp click as he locked it behind himself.
"Well, at least we know what his take on it is," I muttered darkly.
"You'd better hold me back if we meet him again, or I'll kill the little bastard." I locked the door we had just come through out of spite.
An hour later it seemed that everyone else was doing that too, as there were many doors which were locked and little things out of place in the rooms which led me to believe that a key had been taken from somewhere and not returned.
I became more and more frustrated, and even caught myself wondering whether to attack one of the other 'guests' and steal their keys.
As Petter slipped into the room next door to have another look at what appeared to be a locked fire-door, I leaned upon a bureau that wouldn't open. Like all the other locks, it was warded against telekinesis, which was pity, otherwise we could have just used that and not bothered with the keys at all.
I gazed irritably at a picture hanging on the wall, when I was suddenly struck by an idea. Examining it, I found a combination lock in a compartment behind it, and incredibly, he had forgotten to place a ward upon it.
Oho, I thought, That's got to be where the chalice is. So, there's a scrap of paper with the code in this treasure hunt as well, eh? Well, I can't be arsed to go and find it. Not when I can get this open in seconds and snag the prize, at any rate.
Pressing my finger against it I examined the mechanism with my mind, and as my finger glowed, the six internal bolts withdrew and the safe sprung open to reveal not the chalice, but a pair of keys.
Curious, I thought, and tried them on the bureau. Inside was a small drawer, which I unlocked and removed using the other key. To my delight, it was filled with keys. "Now I've got you," I said, thinking of Malnemar.
Just then, Petter came back in. Grinning, I showed him the drawer.
"Oh my Gods," he said, aghast. "I don't think you were supposed to do that. It's probably the keys for the parts of the mansion which are off-limits to the game."
"Well I'm getting bloody sick of this so-called 'game', so to Hell with it!" I snarled, and marched into the other room, carrying the drawer full of keys.
Selecting one I got the fire-door open, but it was self-closing and it slammed shut before I could stop it. Since I had the key, Petter was stuck - because the face of the door from this side was perfectly smooth, with no lock nor handle.
"I'll head right and try and meet you the other side," I shouted, hearing his faint acknowledgement through the door. But even armed with the secret box of keys, I found myself getting progessively more and more lost within the hidden depths of the mansion.
Eventually, some three hours later, I despaired of ever finding Petter again, and decided to leave this madhouse entirely.
No big deal, I thought. I'll catch up with him tomorrow at the Academy. To be honest, I've been to better parties.
Opening a sturdy iron door, I found myself in the grounds of the mansion once again. Turning a corner, I almost ran right into Malnemar himself.
"At last, I was afraid we'd lost you," he said, smiling as if in great relief. "The game ended hours ago. Now is the time for the cleansing-of-self. I know this is your first time, but don't worry."
He produced a quill and a small vial of red liquid. Blood?
"I'd keep the shirt, if I were you," he said. "It helps conceal the fact that you don't have the tattoo upon your chest."
He opened a door, and led me in to a board-room, where all the other guests, including Petter, were sitting naked at the table. In front of each person was a small red book, a quill and an inkwell, presumably filled with blood.
Oh shit, I thought. Petter, whatever have you let us in for?
Malnemar, wearing his ceremonial robes and now the only fully-clothed individual in the party, left through the back door into a small study.
Before he did so, he told us that we were each to write our own account of the chalice game, providing evidence that would denounce another member of the group. Once we were done, he would call us in turn to the study for a one-to-one interview.
This was a problem for me, as the only person I had ever met before was my father, and no way in Hell was I going to denounce him. Besides, since I wasn't a member of the cult in the first place, lacking the vestments, tattoo and in short being wholly incompetent, it was a dead cert that the others were going to denounce me anyway. So I signed my name, but left the book blank and waited.
As I waited I suddenly realised that there was something odd. The two rows of people sat on opposite sides of the table had looked okay when I entered, and there was Malnemar too, but now that he was gone I realised I had miscounted. There had been twelve disciples before, and now there were only eleven of us.
As my horror grew, the door opened and Malnemar came to collect the books.
He returned to the study for a few minutes before returning to call out his first interviewee. It was me, of course.
"Sit down," he said warmly, and offered me a drink. "I wouldn't normally do this, but I guessed that it would be better to sort you out right away, so you're not just sitting there fretting to yourself and generally stewing."
"Thanks," I said nervously.
"No problem. Now, you killed Lucien in the library, didn't you?" he smiled.
"What?" I snapped, my frayed nerves giving rise to a quick temper.
By way of reply, he pointed and as I turned to look, he locked the study door. But I barely noticed, for my eyes were locked upon the corpse of a young lupine Angel, perhaps twenty years old at most. His heart had been pierced and his dead eyes still stared at the ceiling with a look of terror.
He had been dead for an hour at least, but I checked anyway. Steeling myself, I closed my own eyes and looked, but the poor wolf's soul was no longer there.