A Death in Nysa - Part II

The Death of Eleutherios

The high-feast of Dionysus occurs only once a decade, and preparations for it can take up to a year or more. No detail is left to chance, only the finest wines are presented, only the most hale and hearty animals of their generation are slaughtered for the feast. The dances and reveries begin as the sun starts to sink below the horizon and the air is filled with the cacophony of hundreds of instruments blaring wildly. The celebration last for weeks this way, the participants dancing and feasting to exhaustion, sleeping through the day to repeat it once more when they awaken and the sun dips below the sky again.   

At the climax Dionysus is presented with a unique spirit, crafted especially for the occasion by the finest vintner his faith is able to produce. The Liberator grows to titanic proportions, makes a short speech and then drinks deep of the proffered cup. Then he passes judgement by either distributing the wine to his followers, or pouring the offending vintage out upon the ground.

This time the God drank deep, opened his mouth to begin to speak and then pitched forwards onto the ground in a heap. This wasn’t wholly without precedent, but when blood began to seep from the orifices of his face the assembled cult flew into a riotous panic. Accusations of Deicide and betrayal were thrown to and fro until a sudden blow in anger set off a wave of violence throughout the assembled mass. The vintner, a man by the name of Ioannes, was one of the many who were torn limb from limb by the fearful mob. The secret of what the drink was fermented from was annihilated along with his soul. One of the deity’s demigod children named Cleite kept her head in the chaos and stole the lord’s Thyrsus. Fearing that his apparent death would draw in scavengers and opportunists from across the multiverse, the half-god used the powerful artifact to lock both the doors of the temple-manse and the entrance to the Hall of Rooms within, which contain the only reliable portals linking the god’s realm to the rest of existence. The remaining worshipers flew from the Temple as best they could, the rest finding themselves locked within as madness began to spread like a plague.