[Suzerain of Sheol]

There was a call.

Across the void of ages, through the eternity of anguish which he endured, it came: the first word, the first thought to enter his mind in fifteen-hundred years. He heard it, Pelles heard it -- yes, he began to recall himself, as he hung crucified and impaled to the side of the Throne -- and he considered. He considered the word.

Servant.

With the apprehension of its meaning -- like the opening of eyes until then blind -- came the crush of knowledge: implications of all the centuries that had passed upon his exile, the understanding of the magics that could breach the walls of death and pluck his mortified body from the branches of Hell itself, and the terms of the pact.

Pelles understood them all, and he cared not for any of it. There was but one fixation among the cataract of images that poured over his tortured psyche, a sovereign jewel among the dross of magecraft and scientia that pooled around him: the Grail.

And there was nothing else to consider.

With the sigh of one who had forgotten the absence of pain, Pelles tore himself from the Throne, one limb at a time, splintering bone and rending the annealed tissue of centuries from the conceptual nails that pierced his hands and feet. With shattered fingers, he reached to dislodge the spike driven through his mouth, piercing the back of his skull. His grip slid, coated with the leprous ichor that wept from his wounds, but he found his hold and wrenched it free. The Fisher King did not deny his stigmata, but embraced them in the full nobility of the wretched. He would bleed for the wounds of the world, wear the crown of every sin inflicted, breathe in once more bounteous air and exhale utter torment, the desiccation of all vital souls manifest within his flesh. He would live once more.

Pelles saw the grasping hand awaiting him, reaching across every conceivable boundary in an outstretch of True Magic, saw the beckon of the one who would name herself his Master, and with putrescent fingers seized hold with all his strength.

He had but one question for the sorceress, the same question that had echoed from the ramparts of Carbonec all the days of his mortal life:

"Whom does the Grail serve?"