"Yes, you are right," said the leader of the other group. Addressing Kinarin again, he said, "To the point then. You will accompany me to the Inquisition room where one of your acolytes will perform the Inquisition. Our glorious Lord Jesolin Kahl wishes to see the progress of my implementations to better judge when we can move upon the Silver Empire itself."
"It will be so," answer Kinarin.
Without delay, the three like-robbed figures started walking back down the hallway we had just walked through. Apparently, our disguises were well done because I was quite sure, had we been discovered, we would have been instantly attacked. And while our combined physical prowess and skills would be sufficient to overcome just about any other physical encounter with the same number of combatants, I was also quite certain we would not prove victorious against the might of this evil force when its totality was set against us as an intentional design. Kinarin, I assume, felt the same because he fell in step behind them without pause.
We silently followed them through a series of doors and corridors, and while my attention was mostly consumed with maintaining this difficult and unnatural gait pattern, I left part of it to watch for any signs of my sisters. The whole time we were following our inadvertent capturers, I had not considered what it meant when the leader had said that one of Kinarin's acolytes would perform the inquisition. But when all six of us came to stand before another set of ornately decorated double doors, and their leader indicated we should follow them through, I realized that either I or Vennesulte would be called upon to follow their inquisition protocols. Protocols that neither he nor I had any understanding of.
"Necron, may I ask your permission to speak with my acolyte regarding his preparation?" said Kinarin before they opened the doors.
"Are you indicating that his training has not been adequate enough to prepare him for this moment? Do I sense a lack of confidence in your methods?" asked the leader with an unspoken hint of accusation.
"Necron, this moment is much too important to leave to chance. I merely request a few minutes to remind my acolyte of the consequences should he fail. I am confident in his ability as an extension of your methods, but I feel a last-minute reminder will focus him more acutely," he said, keeping his head down in a subservient manner.
The head Necron paused to consider Kinarin's words. As he did, the doors were opened and we heard a voice say, "Mordin, my good friend, please proceed with your demonstration."
"Yes, Lord Kahl," he said as he addressed the voice from within the room. "It will begin shorty. As an added demonstration of our proficiency at training acolytes, it will not be my direct acolyte performing the inquisition, but one of his acolytes."
"This is a surprise indeed. Are you confident he is ready?" said Lord Kahl from somewhere unseen inside the room.
"I have been assured of today's demonstration's success. They have requested a few minutes to prepare. Will that be acceptable, Lord Kahl," asked the man named Mordin.
"It is acceptable. When they are ready," he answered. "But do not try the measure of my patience," threatened Lord Kahl.
Mordin bowed his head slightly and turned toward Kinarin, "When you are ready."
"Acolyte," he said looking to Vennesulte, "please accompany the Necron into the room. We will be ready momentarily."
The man named Mordin and the three acolytes, one of which was Vennesulte, walked through the doors with their unified and intentionally limited gaits. After they were far enough inside preventing them from listening in, Kinarin turned to me and said, "Do not raise your head. Listen only. There will be two people in that room who will be the subjects of the Inquisition. One will be used for information and the other will be sacrificed to allow the other's information to flow. You will be asked to perform that sacrifice. When you enter, walk to the altar, you will know which one. Walk up to it, take the dagger, pause for a few moments after you raise the dagger in the air, and plunge it into the heart of the subject."
"You want me to kill this person?" I asked him again.
"Drin, you must do this," he said.
"I do not know if I can?" I said as my head was considering what he had just told me to do.
"Do you wish to see your sisters again?" he asked me. When I returned with silence, he spoke again, "Then you will do as I say. We will not be able to leave here if our disguises are compromised. The power in that room is something we cannot match." Without waiting for any response, he turned and walked through the doors leaving me to watch him go feeling as if this was the second time he had abandoned me when I needed him most.
This whole scene was growing in its impossibility to comprehend. As I crossed the doorway and into the rather grand room, my eyes were instantly drawn to a large altar sitting on a raised dais. It was set against a background of blood red tapestries and illuminated by only a few very faintly lit wall sconces. The flickering of the flames against the tapestries almost created the illusion of flowing blood. Upon the altar was stretched and tied by her hands and feet, a naked woman. Even from this distance I could see the dagger held within its housing supported in a glass case at the far side of the altar. I did not see Kinarin or Vennesulte and was afraid to look around to search for them for fear of betraying my foreign identity.
I was, however, able to see, in spite of my limited periphery, the presence of both the man named Mordin and the man named Lord Kahl. They were both sitting on large, ornate thrones on the far end of the dais opposite the altar. As I climbed the stairs, I felt my heart rate quicken and my palms hidden within the sleeves of my robes grow sweaty. I felt a small bead of sweat develop under my hood as it coursed down my brow. The maintenance of our disguises and the hope of finding my sisters depended on my success during this inquisition, whatever that meant. As I finished my short ascent to stand atop the dais and turned to assume my position behind the altar, I saw a man strapped to a chair. He had obviously been beaten severely, even tortured. At least the surgical precision of his lacerations indicated as much. I could not help but wonder who this man and woman was, what had happened in their lives to bring them both together, at this moment. Were they strangers? Did they know each other?
I turned to face the altar and saw that there were rows and rows of pews all filled with similarly clothed individuals, their expectant attentions set firmly on me. I saw the dagger, wickedly fashioned and set into a hilt of black marble. There was a blood red vein of metal running the whole length of the blade that seemed to pulse in tune with my heart, which was beating rapidly and strongly. Beyond the dagger was the woman's face, and set in her expression of mercy, were her eyes.
I noticed them first, perhaps because of their familiarity. They seemed to bore into me, not because of their depth, but because they seemed to know me, at least the compassion inside them indicated as much. This woman's eyes drew me in more than her nakedness ever could. But what I expected to see reflected back to me as fear, was instead manifest as understanding and familiarity. I wondered who this woman was, where she had come from. And then her facial features dissolved into a clarity that dismantled every mortal condition of my humanity. Once I saw her whole face and not just her eyes, I knew why they were familiar. She was my mother.
"Drin," she whispered weakly.
I was grateful for my hood because it was hiding the fact that my breath had stopped and my eyes began to uncontrollably tear. I was stricken to unconsciously stand, because consciously, I was frozen and without the muscular control to even breathe.
"Drin," she whispered again, but this time managed to smile weakly.
Something beyond my own limited fortitude had taken over because I did not respond to her. When everything about me wanted nothing more than to be consumed by her warm embrace of assurance, when I wanted nothing more than for her to tell me things would be ok, when all of me wanted to again be her innocent son tending to his chores, when every molecule and substance I ever identified as me wanted to reach out and embrace her, breaking the leather straps holding her ti
ghtly upon the altar, I could not move. As if paralyzed by the strongest poison from the dessert snakes of the south, my consciousness had been solidly rooted in place.
"It appears your young acolyte has been frozen by the nakedness of the sacrifice," I diffusely heard a woman's voice say. "Perhaps I should send one of my little Ravens to finish the task that your acolyte seems incapable of accomplishing, Mordin."
"That will be quite unnecessary, Vismorda," he said as calmly as he could. Again, my understanding of what was going on outside of myself was blurred almost to the incomprehensible by the nightmare I was living. "Necron," said the man named Mordin.
A few moments later, I felt a presence behind me and heard a familiar yet unknown voice, "Do you not find this exhilarating, my young Acolyte?"
From somewhere deep within me, I heard a voice answer, "Yes."
"Then what is the cause of your delay?" the voice said drawing more closely than it had been the first time I heard it.
"It is all so real," I heard myself say.
"Yes!" it said as it grew in excitement. "It is real. Her nakedness, the pumping of her heart and the blood that flows within her veins. It is the most real thing we will experience! Can you see it? Can you taste it?" he rhetorically asked. "It is no small thing to admit weakness, for in it you will find the key to your strength."
I reached for the dagger.
"Yes, feel it grow within yourself! Taste the bile of hate and the expression of your lust to have it filled. Can you feel it grow?" the voice said as it was now close enough to whisper in my ear.
And in truth, I did feel my hate grow. I hated that my father had died, I hated that my sisters had been taken, and I hated seeing my mother like this, displayed as a toy for whatever evil machinations they had planned. But until I heard this voice from behind me, my hate had remained hidden behind the condition of my own life's directions. But now, feeling it grow, I could not deny its reality. And the more I acknowledged it, the more it grew. And the more it grew, the more I wanted it to grow. I raised the dagger in the air.
"Drin," said my mother weakly to the singular presence of my hearing.
I looked down to her, blade suspended and my eyes continuing to cry. Had it not been for the presence of the voice behind me and its bidding of my repressed hatred to grow, I might have collapsed from the strain of what I now admitted I was about to do.
"Yes! Feel it grow! Feel it pulse within your humanity and sense of judgement. Let it take hold of you!" whispered the voice as it continued to raise my hateful awareness. "Find your release. Find that object of your hate and focus on it."
Still holding the dagger suspended, I turned my attention away from my mother and focused upon where the hate bid me to go. Kinarin. I looked to him and my sadness completely dissolved as did my awareness beyond anything other than hate. Held deep within me, beyond my gratitude for him taking me and saving me from my life on the streets and the brutality of what it would undoubtedly have been, I hated him for a greater brutality that presented because of him.
"Yes!" said the voice behind me much more strongly than it had before. "Feel all of the hate and its connection to the strength you need to do what you cannot do on you own."
In my boring hatred for the man responsible for this moment, me standing over my mother holding a dagger of pulsating evil and waiting for the moment when I would plunge it into her heart, I was no longer Drin Martos, the farm boy, no longer Drin Martos the Selectee, no longer Drin Martos the Assassin in training, I was Drin Martos the Avenger. And the injustices of my life demanded accountability.
"Now! Release all of your pain! Release all of your hate! Accept your power and render judgement!" directed the voice, laced with thrill and glee.
My eyes shifted from Kinarin to my mother, but my hatred stayed firmly cemented on him. She must have seen the change in my eyes. She must have known what I was going to do even before I did. Because replacing her previous partial plea was an understanding and forgiveness.
"Now! Do it now! When all you feel is hate and its vengeance filled judgement, reach out and complete its request!" said the voice strongly and confidently.
My breath began to quicken, my hands tightening on the black marbled hilt.
"Drin," whispered my mother again.
"Yes!" yelled the voice so filled with excitement, it was nearly palpable.
"Drin," she whispered again.
My fingers now turning white from my involuntary clenching around the daggers hilt.
"I love you," she said as a single tear was released from her eyes.
Hearing her say the words I had longed to hear reached into me as if my soul was brought from wherever it existed and allowed to live with a tangible identity all its own. And what my soul felt as part of the condition of its gifted breath was a love so profound for my mother, it literally wept from every pour of its ethereal substance. But there was no joy found in its expression of love, only sorrow. Because even my soul, though now separate and filled with all the intentions of hope, was forced to acknowledge the inevitability of my body's actions and their current conductor. In that moment, when the strain of hatred and love were tearing me apart, I wished nothing more for it to end. And in this wish, my mind was granted its escape. The complexity of continuance birthed from love was something I could no longer attend to with anything of me that was left, if there was anything left at all. So, while I desired love to begin, I gave into the end of hate. I gave in, and the dagger plunged.
Nothing, I felt nothing. I did not even feel the dagger as it sliced between her ribs and into the fleshy meat of her heart. But I did see. And all I saw was red. Bubbling up from her porcelain white skin, it gathered on her chest as an ocean of red regret. It held me paralyzed inside its hues and slight pumping. But soon the pumping ended and the flowing stopped, but nothing else began. As if the final door of my life had been closed and locked behind a set of rusted tumblers, nothing else opened in its place. There was no other pathway or metaphorical corridor down which I could run and hide from my own reality. I had no direction. And while I was crumbling, I heard the voice speak, this time more distant than right next to me.
"You see, Mordin, all he needed was a little push," said the voice.
"Your methods, again, exceed even my own, Lord Kahl," said the man named Mordin.
"Perhaps your acolyte’s hesitation will be a blight on the lack of your current methods, Mordin," said the female voice.
"Vismorda, I do believe Mordin's acolyte performed adequately enough. After all, even you cannot resist the pull of naked skin altogether," said the Lord Kahl.
"Yes, Lord Kahl. Your wisdom offers much enlightenment," said Vismorda. "Now, since we have extracted what we needed from this man, may I be excused to tend to the further training of your Ravens?"
Looking affectionately to each of my sisters and then back again to Vismorda, Lord Kahl developed a particularly malicious grin upon his lips, "Indeed you may. But this will be the last training session you have with them without my presence. I feel they are ready to undergo more strenuous training."
"Thank you, Lord Kahl," she said turning her attention to Mordin. "Perhaps we can combine our training methods in future sessions. I think our coupled techniques may prove to be even more successful than we are singularly."
"We may indeed," returned Mordin giving no hint to his thoughts.
Vismorda turned toward my sisters, said one word I was unable to distinguish, and turned to leave the large room, my sisters falling in step right behind.
As the gathered robed men started to stand and exit through a few different doorways, I vaguely saw Kinarin stand up and turn to address Mordin, "Necron, with your permission, I would like to allow my acolyte to retire to his quarters. I believe he may have endured more strain than he was yet prepared for."
"I agree with your assessment. Lord Kahl's presence, as direct as it was for him, carries with it a very heavy burden. He did well today, as did you," said the still seated Mo
rdin.
"Thank you, Necron. May I request the presence of my other acolytes? I wish to continue our training and feel the reinforcement of today's Inquisition will best be served immediately," said Kinarin again.
"Granted," said Mordin.
"Thank you, Necron Mordin," he said. "Lord Kahl, your influence is something we all can aspire to reach," he said as he bowed his head deep. After Lord Kahl returned this gesture, quite a bit less severe, Kinarin turned and walked toward me. My abilities were still glazed over in a sort of numb lightheadedness, but with both his and Vennesulte's grip on my opposite forearms, I was able to walk and exit the large chamber.
Once we were in the hallway, Kinarin pushed our pace a little more than causal strides forcing me to put more effort into maintaining his speed.
"Drin, we must walk more quickly. We do not have much time. Your sisters will be vulnerable for rescue for only a few minutes I believe," he said, although my current state was unable to register the meaning behind his words. It was almost as if he was speaking in a different dialect. When my strides were not increasing as he had requested and I was becoming a hinderance to rescuing my sisters, he stopped, turned me around and pushed me against the wall, both of his hands on my shoulders.
"Drin!" he said forcefully, "you must wake up from the haze you are in. Your sisters' lives depend on you!" At the mention of 'sisters', the slowly emptying abyss I was falling into managed to grasp onto that word and used it to pull me forcefully back to the here and now. It was as if I was sucked back into the realm of the living and my soul was returned to me. At the very least, that word served as a temporary distraction from a horrible admission allowing me the opportunity for redemption. And it was that chance, to be redeemed, that I returned to full operational acuteness of my faculties.
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