He was reading through papers which his advisors had written concerning legal punishment for theft when he glanced over his shoulder yet Arius had no idea why he took this sudden gratuitous action. In his chamber behind him on a gilded stand was a candle burning, in the flame he saw it, it was formed by fire and disappeared almost immediately. A short involuntary hiss of in drawn breath escaped Arius while chills danced about his spine. The image all but burned into his eyes was the character often symbolizing and first in comprising the word death. For some vaguely dark reason this commandeered his interest, a moment passed before he dismissed the occurrence and returned to his reading. Later that night he was tormented by thoughts of the event. “Why did I see that? It couldn’t have been some trick of the mind, neither could it have been a trite happening unconnected to any deeper relevance, for had it been as such why would I shudder upon its remembrance even now?” Though all was still in his room as Arius pondered it He Who Was Not Contained seemed near him, chilling the air, his neck turned to goose flesh and he could almost feel the icy blood from his master on his skin. He was at the same time disturbed but painfully aware of the power about him and left terrified but intrigued.
First the candle flame then a broken piece of porcelain on the ground, dropped by a careless servant, Arius was too consumed by what he saw even to beat the disrespectful child properly. These were seemingly usual occurrences but the fleeting symbols understood to mean words burned underneath all too clearly. The next was a tree blown in the breeze, they didn’t stop there. After a little less than a month Arius put all of these words into a sentence, that was more or less inevitable, he was plagued by thoughts concerning them for hours every night. The sentence went, “Beckon the malicious, the ones sheathed in gangrene, death to the ignorance of what flows from me.”
When no one was watching Arius dawned a battered servants cloak, hood drawn, and at dusk snuck to where Fost worked a small farm. Respecting men who he had formally viewed as dirty farmers or rough handed craftsmen as superiors had been very shocking to Arius and stung his pride at first. Soon the never failing knowledge of his cult and acuteness to their collective master had shown Arius his god’s wisdom in this. All of which came to memory as he saw Fost out working a field, he was bent over pulling weeds. Wearing not but worn, poorly tailored leather pants, his dark, sun weathered body was wrinkled with age. After Arius led him away from potential watching eyes he explained the late eldritch happenings he’d been a part of. Upon the telling Fost’s thickly bearded face steadily bloomed an unsettling grin which spread widely yet there was no warmth in his brown eyes. “you have taken to his cause and our master’s been noticing. He’s callin’ to you, wants you to go farther, you’re ready for ya first summoning.”
