Oh Sweet, Deadly Irony
25
FEB/21
Several months ago:
Artellius Quintus was securely bound to the jagged obsidian chair by the two red robed Justicars; their faces hidden behind their featureless porcelain masks. The aged patrician appeared stoic despite his predicament; he was outwardly calm, but a furnace of raw defiance burned in his steel grey eyes. But Vashir was a trained Templar and he could read the man’s secret thoughts, the ones he kept buried behind this veneer of resistance. He could see the feelings of worry and fear that the man tried to tamp down, and that he was worried less about his own fate – for he knew what his future held – but more so for the fates of his friends and family and fellow heretics. When this apprehension threatened to bubble up and overwhelm him, Artellius would promptly force the thoughts back down again with a demonstration of pure strength of will. This man is strong, Vashir thought with begrudging respect, but Thravian will break him.
Vashir himself had interrogated the man for the better part of the afternoon, taking the place of the teams that had tried to torture information out of the old blasphemer for most of the day, but even he had been unable to crack the mental vault that Artellius had built for himself. In light of their failure, they had finally been forced to relocate Artellius to the Crimson Sanctum and to send word to the High Inquisitor, who was on the way over here this moment in order to complete the job.
“This old man was expecting to be caught, to have put in place mental defenses like these,” one of the Justicars marveled aloud, her hollow voice magnified by the featureless mask that hid her face.
Vashir smirked and replied, “No matter, his mind will break. They all do.”
Soon after, the door to the cell opened and High Inquisitor Thravian walked in, his ash-grey robes making hardly a sound as he glided into the room with the deadly grace of a serpent. Warped and bent with age, the High Inquisitor still radiated raw power and authority, and it was impossible not to feel a palpable sense of dread when one stood in his presence. As soon as he entered, Thravian shut the cell door behind him with a tiny exertion of his mental will. Immediately, the temperature inside the stone room began to drop substantially, as all sense of warmth and hope was extinguished by his mere presence. He is manifesting Nuatuhl, Vashir noted, as he turned to face the Inquisitor.
“Your Eminence,” Vashir said, bowing his head slightly, the words carried upon a soft cloud of frosty condensation as the temperature inside the room continued to drop. “We have some of his contacts, as well as the sources of a few of his heretical tomes. He is smart, he clearly keeps the expendable ones on the outskirts of his mind in an effort to placate us, but there is…” The Inquisitor dismissed Vashir with an idle wave of a wrinkled hand. Taking the cue, Vashir bowed and stepped aside, clearing the path for his Master.
The grey-bearded Inquisitor regarded the bound man for a long moment, taking in the entirety of the Patrician with his piercing black eyes. “Yes, I see it now. Locked away. Secrets and Lies,” Thravian spoke in a low, sibilating whisper; speaking in the very voice of Nuatuhl Herself. Vashir smiled slightly, repressing the giddy feeling that washed over him whenever he saw the Inquisitor interrogate a prisoner. Thravian practically radiated raw, crackling psionic power and it was a joy to watch him work; he was as at once brutal as a feral Baazrag yet as delicate and precise as a surgeon at the same time. While the Thir-King might rule Balic, chosen by the Dark Queen to be Her eyes and ears, the Inquisitor was Her voice; he was Her Divine Justice manifest.
Thravian withdrew the holy symbol of the Dragon Queen from around his neck: five dragon talons arranged in the shape of a star, with each talon stained a different color, corresponding to each of Tiamat’s five heads. In the center of the symbol was a perfectly round, clear crystal orb about the size of a human eyeball, which served as a focus for the Inquisitor’s psionic will. There was a slight crackling noise, akin to glass shattering in the distance, and the temperature in the room suddenly began to grow hot and dry. The Inquisitor’s eyes changed as well. Once black, they now crackled with fiery energy as he switched his manifestation to Bhaalgnar, the red head of the Dragon Queen. The crystal in his hand glowed with a brilliant crimson light as he extended his hand forward until the holy symbol was in direct contact with Artellius’ forehead, hissing slightly as it made contact with the Patrician’s wrinkled brow. “Show me what I wish to see,” the Inquisitor snarled in a low and deep growl, speaking directly in the voice of the red head of the Dragon Queen.
Artellius tried to pull back from the touch of the glowing orb from his brow, but his restraints made this impossible. Instead, he steeled his resolve and glowered defiantly at the Inquisitor. “Try as you might, you hateful tool, the power of the Morninglord protects me!”
Thravian flashed a thin, cruel smile as the glow emanating from the crystal began to grow in intensity, casting the entire room in an eerie blood-red hue. Then he spoke in five voices at once, manifesting the Will of the Five as he did so. “You fool!” the voices replied, speaking in diabolical harmony with one another. The Inquisitor bore the full strength of his Will into the mind of the Patriarch of house Quintus and gloated, “I have met your god, and he calls Me Master! I broke his body upon the spine of the world, before he groveled before Me in subjugation and begged for mercy!”
Tears of blood streamed down the face of Artellius as he strained under the fury of the psychic assault, as he tried to keep his mental defenses up to protect those he loved. Try as he might though, it was a futile resistance. His mental vault was blown apart like a house built of straw in the midst of a powerful desert storm. Strong as he was, Artellius broke, just as everyone had before him when subjected to the raw might of the High Inquisitor. The red light blinked out from the crystal, and Artellius hung his head in defeat, blood and sweat trickling down his face and pooling in his lap.
The Inquisitor turned to Vashir and spoke in his own voice, one cracked and frail with age and exertion. “We have what we need; the sum of his memories are contained within, most from the past, but some… appear to be prophecies from his dead god.” he said, removing the crystal from the clawed pentagram and handing it to Vashir. “See to it that your men track down and punish every last person with access to these heresies, and ensure that all are wiped from the ledger of the living. And know Vashir, I will be watching you closely.” He looked down and mumbled something almost unintelligible but for Vashir’s enhanced hearing: “A missing finger and a sandblasted soul…” He then turned to face the defeated Lord, lifting Artellius’ head with a weathered hand under his chin so he could look him in the eye. “For you so love this Morninglord,” he whispered, the words dripping with malice, “We shall have you made into an effigy of his likeness, as we set you alight at the first rays of dawn. The light of your flames will serve as a portent to those who worship these false gods; they will see their fate reflecting back to them in your baptismal fire and hear their future spoken to them in your tortured screams.”
Vashir held the crystal up to his forehead and absorbed the stolen memories, merging them with his own. The roots of Artellius’ heresy ran deep and reached into many other noble houses; the Templars would be busy for days or even weeks stamping out this blasphemy. How had it gone on for so long and gotten so large, Vashir wondered as he handed the crystal back to Thravian and bowed. “You know what you must do,” the High Inquisitor told him, as he turned and left the small cell with the two masked Justicars in attendance.
Lord Vashir followed shortly behind, slightly lost in thought at the enormity of the task that lay before him. A great many prominent and well-connected people would need to be captured and purged as a result of this new information. Given the numbers, they would need to activate all of the Templars and they would need to act with haste. Even casting a wide net and acting quickly, some of these heretics were sure to elude capture once word of the inquisition got out. People of wealth and privilege like this could go into hiding for a long time, and continue to spread their heresy like a cancer from the safety of the shadows.
As he walked out of the giant stone doors leading out of the Sanctum, Vashir was struck by an icy blast of frigid night air. The moon was high in Weyog and it bathed the Red City in a cool silver light. As Vashir began his descent down the 333 steps that led to the ground – wishing that it was not forbidden to not to touch every step upon the consecrated staircase when entering or leaving the hallowed Crimson Sanctum – he wondered about what would drive someone like Artellius to throw away a life of wealth and privilege and esteem. By all accounts, he had it all. Yet, in the morning he would die a death that would be spoken about in hushed whispers for years. And for what? For the blessing of some dead god? For some hope for an idyllic fairy-tale? Only a fool would fight against the might of the Dragon Queen, yet Vashir was just surprised there were so many fools out there willing to risk all for something as worthless as hope. Stupid, foolish hope.
He had put too many heretics to the stake to count, but this time it felt different. He couldn’t shake the feeling that Artellius’ funeral pyre tomorrow might just provide the kindling for something bigger; the tiny spark that grows and spreads until it leads to a cleansing fire that threatens to consume the world. Whatever the case, Vashir was certain that tomorrow would not spell the end of Artellius’ heresy of hope. Things had been set in motion that would have repercussions for ages to come, somehow he was certain of that. But there was no time to worry about this now; there was work to be done. And when he finally reached the bottom of the stairs, he manifested giant vulture wings from his back and stepped gracefully into the air. For now there was hunting to be done…