by Shad N Freud
“You can’t be serious. Who put you up to this? Was it Hiroshi? Did Impious himself decide to pull a fast one on me? I still haven’t forgotten that time he decided to slip arsenic in my tea when we both wore short pants at the Basilica de Notre Pere in Boston.”
“Ah, no. Not a joke, trust me mate, I tried so very hard to get out of this fool’s errand. I can’t give exact details - under orders of course - but this gent needs to come with me. Just out of curiosity, what did he do to wash out? He seemed to be getting top marks in his classes.”
Fernando quirked an eyebrow upward. “Well, I don’t know just what your files say about him, but he’s proven to be a lascivious little rake.” He glared at Cenere as Carl rummaged around in his longcoat, “He would have washed out years ago if he wasn’t so damned talented.”
Carl pulled Cenere’s file out of his coat and reread it. “Here’s his page…wait, two of these pages are stuck together. What is this, jam?” Carl’s eyes widened as he whistled, rereading one part in particular to ensure he read it correctly. “Huh. And here I thought you a poncy git, but Lucifer’s silky legs, you played ‘will it fit’ with Cardinal di Montagne’s wife? Mate, I don’t know how you can walk without tripping over those brass ones you’ve got! After all, the good Cardinal’s only the fifth best duelist in the world; still have the scar from the last time we crossed blades.”
Carl scratched the faint scar just under his eye that started to itch at the memory.
“Fernando, consider it a favor. I’ll get this little bastard out of here before the Cardinal gets ‘ere, as he and I didn’t exactly get along when I was a Bishop in New York. Ciao, Fernando. By the by, do you mind if I borrow a broom closet for a few minutes? This toe rag needs a bit of trainin’.”
Fernando smiled and pointed out the door. “Be my guest. Down the hall, next to the Men’s Room. And Cenere…consider yourself persona non grata in this Basilica until such time as Cardinal Beaumont here deems you worthy to enter.”
“Well,” Carl leered at Cenere as they exited the office. “First thing’s first. Until I release you, you work for me. Tomorrow, you’re gettin’ branded, and I’ll be takin you under my wing. Second, I- “
“Look, I know you think I’m just a shave tail, but the instructors here are a joke. I was taking on people twice my age and handing them their teeth afterwards. So, unless you can move that fat, lazy old ass of yours fast enough to lay a finger on me, don’t start with me.” Cenere glared at Carl defiantly.
“Oh, ho ho…so, that’s how it is, hey? Think you’ve got it all figured out, hey? Well, sonny Jim, you ‘aven’t got a bloody clue as to just who the Hell I am, have you?”
“Oh, I know. Cardinal Carl Beaumont, Grand Inquisitor of Greed and Sloth. Mother was a rutting sow of an Orc Inquisitor, father was a wastrel and a traitor to the Inquisition. And, the rumor is you haven’t seen your degenerate wife or that sweet daughter of yours much in what, thirteen years? Too lazy to visit? Too chickenshit to help raise your own- “
Cenere found he was suddenly dangling from his neck as Carl held him off the ground with one hand, bringing them eye to eye, Carl’s normally brown eyes a deep red. The color of blood, Cenere off-handedly thought as Carl’s upper lip twisted into a vicious snarl.
“I’m only going to say this once, you miserable waste of breathable air.” All traces of Carl’s jaunty tone were gone, his voice as cold as a corpse’s smile. “Say whatever you want about me, my father, or my oaths. But if you ever speak ill of my wife, mother, or daughter again, I’m going to need to see a surgeon because it’s going to be difficult for me to walk if I’m wearing you like a boot. Do I make myself clear?”
“C-Crystal,” Cenere choked out. Carl dropped him and stomped towards the broom closet Fernando mentioned. He opened the door, slapped the runestone on the wall, slammed the door shut, and then flung the door back open after five seconds.
“Get your scrawny arse over here!” Carl bellowed, pointing into the closet. Cenere stood, dusted himself off, and made his way to the door, his hooves making a gentle clopping noise as he walked on the marble floor. He glanced into the closet and his jaw fell open when he saw the entryway to the mansion. Before he could enter, he was punted through the entrance before Carl strode purposefully in, slamming the door behind him.
Jeeves looked up from the couch he was sitting on and watched as Carl shoved the young tiefling towards the training area. “Jeeves! Set the training room to safety mode! This little pissant needs a bit of wall-to-wall.”
Jeeves smirked and stood, walking to the nearest wall and placing his hand on it to activate the no-kill condition in the training room. He then set the pain delay setting to on, thus turning the pain dampening system on. “Shall I prepare a room for our new…guest?”
Carl nodded as he took a deep breath to calm down. “Right. Make sure dinner is on the table when we’re finished.”
Jeeves began whistling and made his way to the kitchen as Carl slammed the door to the training room shut behind them. He then stripped himself bare down to his trousers and removed his entire hidden arsenal before pulling out a pack of Black Jacks, grabbing one with his teeth, and lighting it with his thumb. Carl took a deep drag, and his eyes returned to their normal color. He offered one to Cenere, who sneered at it.
“Right. So, first I’m going to gauge your capability,” Carl said as he pulled out a black cloth and folded it into a blindfold. “I’m going to keep this blindfold on until the training’s over. If you can draw my blood, then we’re done. If not, it keeps going until I say we’re done.” Carl smiled as he put on the blindfold.
“This is hardly fair; you’ve got a blindfold on.”
“Quite right. That’s why I’m also only going to use my right hand.” Carl turned around, his left hand behind his back. He then flipped the junior inquisitor the bird. “Come at me when you’re ready.” Carl said over his shoulder, sneering with the cigarette in his mouth.
Incensed, Cenere drew his dagger and quietly sprinted from one end of the room to where Carl was standing. He stabbed at Carl’s back, but Carl swayed slightly and trapped Cenere’s arm under his shoulder, then twisted Cenere’s wrist and broke it. The shooting agony of a broken wrist caused Cenere to scream in pain and drop his dagger. Carl then pulled while stepping forward and performed a perfect judo throw over his shoulder, dislocating Cenere’s elbow in the process, and throwing the young tiefling several yards before he landed hard on the marble floor. Clutching his arm gingerly, he shook his head to try and clear the cobwebs from his brain before he looked up to see Carl standing over him and screamed in terror as Carl’s large green foot crushed his skull like a quail egg.
Several moments later, Cenere sat up, slightly disoriented but unhurt. He saw Carl had lit another cigarette, and an end table had appeared out of nowhere with an ash tray and a bottle of scotch. Carl placed the cigarette between his lips, taking a long drag as he poured himself a glass.
“You going to lay about all day, or you gonna try and poke me with that toothpick ya got there?”
Cenere stared at the embarrassment to the Inquisition incredulously. The man was smoking, drinking a scotch, blindfolded, and only using his right hand to fight? What kind of ridiculous training regimen had he gotten himself into? Cenere made his way forward cautiously and waited for Carl to take a sip before lunging forward to stab Carl in the chest. Which is why he was caught completely off guard when Carl flicked his cherry at him, the burning ember landing squarely in Cenere’s left eye. He cried out and clutched his eye, blinding him to Carl’s kick to his wrist that sent his his stiletto flying into the air. Carl caught the dagger, kneed Cenere in the chin, and jammed the stiletto through the underside of his jaw and into his brain. Cenere dropped like a marionette with its strings cut and knew no more.
Cenere woke up again, confused by the lack of blinding pain. Once again, despite the fact that he should have died, he was disoriented, but unhurt. He should, at the very least, have a sore throat, not
to mention a useless lump of charred optic nerve in his left eye socket. He glanced over at Carl, who was now doing a one-handed vertical push-up with his scotch in his left hand and his clove in his mouth.
“Are you even trying to hit me, mate? I’m not here to play grab-ass with you, and we’ve got a schedule to keep. So, quit faffing about, and hit ME!”
Cenere snarled and leapt into the air, activating his pendant to make ethereal wings briefly sprout from his back and allow him to fly silently. Carl turned his head to look up from his push-up, then set down his scotch so as not to spill it, flipping onto his feet as Cenere deactivated his pendant, diving with a vicious thrust aimed at Carl’s face. Carl calmly ashed his cigarette as he moved fractionally, just enough to dodge the thrust, which proved to be a feint. Cenere lashed out with his tail as he passed and grabbed Carl around the throat. However clever Cenere thought it was, the move proved fruitless; Carl’s right hand flashed out and grabbed him by the base of his tail, holding Cenere off the ground.
Cenere’s eyes widened as Carl squeezed the base of his tail, pressing his manicured pinky into the nerve cluster at the base and causing the most exquisitely agonizing pain Cenere had ever felt in his twenty-four years. A white-hot bolt of pain radiated up his spine and he immediately released his hold on Carl’s throat. The half-orc Cardinal smiled, his evil grin filling Cenere with dread, before he swung the hapless tiefling like a sack of potatoes and smashed him into the marble floors repeatedly, each time impacting brutally enough to crack the hardened stone. A broken bag of mercifully oblivious viscera flew across the room after Carl finally hammer-tossed Cenere’s lifeless and broken body, the formless mass of meat and bones hitting the wall with a loud splat and clung there for a moment before slowly sliding to the floor.
“Puny tiefling. Carl smash!” Carl chuckled as he picked up his scotch, taking a long pull as he waited for Cenere’s body to slowly un-break itself, the room’s safety mode ensuring that the younger Inquisitor wouldn’t die.
As Cenere slowly regained consciousness, he sat up stiffly and stared at Carl. Carl had gotten a pack of cards from somewhere and was building a house while seated at the end table, a fresh glass of scotch sitting next to his left hand. Cenere felt deeply insulted as Carl held up a whip with Cenere’s initials on the handle. “Howsabout you try usin’ this instead? Or would you prefer a gun? Perhaps an artillery piece to make things a bit more even? After all, you’re fighting a one-armed blind man and you’ve already died three times. Without actually harming him even once.” Carl threw the whip over his shoulder into Cenere’s outstretched hand and continued building his house of cards.
The voice in Cenere’s head that had largely gone ignored was screaming ‘Danger, you idiot! Danger!’ only to be crushed back down by two other voices: youthful arrogance and his best friend, unyielding rage. Those voices simultaneously yelled, ‘Fuck that! You feel great! You can win! You. Can. Do. This! Kick his ass!’ Cenere’s common sense, drowned out by the two voices that drew their power to influence the young tiefling from his gonads, wept as she quietly made her metaphorical way back to his frontal lobe, bemoaning her fate, and declaring herself on the dole until Cenere decided to use his brain for more than just a place-filler between his ears.
Infuriated by his lack of success, Cenere cracked his whip at the house of cards and caused it to collapse like his chances of getting out of the room without further injury. He smirked as Carl stood, pulled a new clove out with his teeth, and lit his cigarette with his ignited thumb. Cenere then lashed out again and knocked the cherry off Carl’s cigarette. Carl’s right hand caught the whip on its return swing; he spit out his clove, turning as he yanked Cenere forward. Cenere jumped with the pull and activated his pendant again, adding a bit of momentum as he lashed out with a double-hooved stamp kick aimed at Carl’s face.
Carl dropped the whip and spun out of the way of the blow, grabbing his bar stool one handed and completing the spin with a powerful blow upwards to Cenere’s back with the ersatz cudgel. The blow redirected Cenere’s momentum upwards and into the celling, which cracked with the force. Carl rested the stool on his shoulder for a moment then spun around to catch Cenere in the head with it as the dazed and broken tiefling fell back to the floor, ruining his bonny good looks as he was sent careening back into a familiar wet spot on the wall, his flight arrested by several thousand pounds of marble, which again echoed the sound of his skull emptying its contents all over the now ruined décor.
Carl smirked and whistled as he hopped up, summoning a couch, ottoman, and television from the floor, and landing on the couch with his feet kicked up. He pulled a cigarette out of the pack, lit it, and then poured himself another scotch as he picked up the remote with his left hand, changing the channel to listen to his daughter’s favorite cartoon series as his erstwhile apprentice slowly regained the ability to do more than drool and consider the sociopolitical ramifications of the color blue.
When Cenere fully regained consciousness again, Rage and Arrogance were gently knocking at Common Sense’s door and begging her to come back to work, as they’d mucked things up during her sabbatical and needed her to clean up their mess. She set down her copy of Sense and Sensibility, sighed in the manner of long-suffering parents, and immediately sent the signal to the Amygdala to go ahead and get the poor lad’s attention by causing his sphincter to nearly prolapse in fear as the facts of life set in. Arrogance and Rage promptly started crying in relief as they hugged each other and fell to the floor, finally letting the smart one in the group take over.
Cenere stood, knowing that the phantom of pain he should be feeling from the barstool strike should have left him vomiting shards of his spine and pelvis. His kidneys and bladder as well would have toggled the permanent setting for “Pissing Blood” before going on vacation, and the quite literal splitting headache he should have had upon waking were only a taste of what the shirtless monster of a man-thing watching…well, listening to Jangles and Burble, had in store for him should he allow this farce to continue. Cenere decided that discretion would be the better part of valor, dropped his weapons, and ran for the door, screaming in abject terror.
Carl smirked and set the remote down, snapping his fingers. The double doors leading into the training room promptly disappeared, causing the pit of Cenere’s stomach to sink so low it could see the makers mark on his shoofs with binoculars.
“Now, now, now. Is that any way for an Inquisitor to act? Running away with dirty nappies? Where’s all that piss and vinegar from the hallway outside? I thought you wanted to show me how pathetic the trainers at school were. I mean, how bloody hard is it to hit a man who’s blindfolded, half drunk, and only using one arm? A green ickle firstie should have been able to accomplish at least that much. Don’t tell me I need to completely retrain you?”
Cenere turned, his face in a tight grimace as he fought the urge to leave a puddle of his previously mentioned courage on the floor at his feet. He knelt with his head bowed, and his arms stretched in front of him, palms up in surrender, fighting the urge to cry in shame at how utterly he’d been defeated. Carl lifted his blindfold up enough to uncover his left eye, then hopped up from his sinfully comfy couch as it and the rest of the furniture sank back into the floor. He took off the blindfold, snapped his fingers, and was once again fully dressed. He then strode over to Cenere and pulled up his right sleeve.
“You see that? The mark of the Infernal Fist? We Inquisitors are expected to take any training we think will help in our duties. I spent the better part of a year getting beaten as badly as you just got by my Sifu, who only used one hand and fought blindfolded. A year. And after that, another six before he finally had to take that bloody strip of ruddy cloth off to fight me. So, lad, understand that I get it. You’re talented, you’ve got a bit more power than your mates at the school. You’re a bloody prodigy. I used to be in your…well, not shoes, but I spent a large part of that seven years where you are now. You’ve got youth and talent. I got that, plus age
and treachery on my side. I want you to learn from all this.”
Rage and Arrogance looked at each other, slowly developing mutinous thoughts again before Sense grabbed them both by the ear and dragged them away to give them a good dressing down. Meanwhile, Snark decided to grab the control board while she was dealing with the other two idiots and pitch his hat in the ring for a moment. Cenere snarled up at Carl. “Learn what? The myriad ways an old bastard like you can kill me over the course of a perfectly good afternoon?”
Sense screamed murderously as she tackled Snark to the floor and began to pummel him as she cried in mourning for the likely ass whuppin’ her host was about to receive. To her surprise, and Snark’s relief, Carl started laughing and helped the kid back to his feet.
“Look kid, the point was to instill two important things into that pointy head of yours. First, there will always be a bigger fish than you in the big blue ocean. You gotta learn to listen for snake rattles when you deal with folks and be prepared to get the fangs when you decide to stomp on the snake’s tail.”
“Noted. And what’s the second thing I was supposed to learn?”
“How effective the Pain Suppression system is in this training room.”
“What Pain Suppression system?” Cenere clapped both hands over his mouth as his eyes widened in horror at what he’d just said, knowing inherently that he’d just shoved both hooves up to his hamstrings down his throat. Sense looked up from where she had straddled Snark during his pummeling and noticed that Booger-Eating-Idiocy, with his tongue hanging out of his mouth and his finger up his nose to the knuckles, pushed ALL the buttons. She then stood, straightened her clothes, gave everyone involved the finger, and stomped back to her chamber, slamming the door hard enough to crack the plaster.