Three Acts of Penance [01] Attrition: The First Act of Penance

by S. G. Night

  “He didn’t, really,” Racath answered. “He let me read one book on the subject from his private library, and he’d blotted out a good portion of the text. So my knowledge is spotty. I’m familiar with the concepts, the figures, like the Azrael and the other Angels…but on the other hand, I don’t even know exactly what Roten was. If it was a country, a cult…but I know the Angel of Death.”

  “Well, that’s something, at least,” Oron said with a smile.

  “But what does a myth have to do with Menelaus?”

  “He stumbled across this story,” Oron explained. “He became obsessed with it, plagued by the desire to bring the idea to life. To create a three-man cell of elite assassins. His own personal aspects of death. His personal hit-squad. Merciless, unstoppable, and lethal.”

  “Which, I’m guessing, he called the Scorpions.”

  “Indeed.”

  Racath frowned again. “Weren’t the Three Aspects of Azrael supposed to be judgment, wrath, and comfort?”

  “All ready!” Nelle interrupted, carrying a steaming pot of thick stew over from the stove, along with three sets of bowls and spoons. She ladled out a bowl for each of them, placing one in front of both Oron and Racath.

  “Thanks,” Racath said reflexively, accepting the bowl.

  Nelle beamed at him. “You are very welcome!” She ladled herself a bowlful and took the seat beside Oron, blowing gently on her steaming stew.

  Racath took a mouthful of the stew and looked back at Oron. “So what then?”

  “Ahh, yes,” Oron started again. “See, Menelaus…hit a wall, as it were. None of the Genshwin seemed good enough for him. He wanted the Scorpions to be something extraordinary, to be unnaturally powerful. A simple Majiski assassin just wouldn’t do. To make matters worse, he had no secret place to train them.”

  Taking another bite of stew, Racath inquired: “So what did he do?”

  “Nearly a year after he took the title of Patriarch, Menelaus orchestrated a very delicate assassination,” Oron explained. “The client was a very influential Elf, a High Scholar. As payment — and as personal thanks to Menelaus — he gifted the Patriarch with this place,” he gestured expansively at the world. “The domus. A secret, hollow mountain — one of the Elves’ first successful attempts to create an artificial biome. The High Scholar had it abandoned and expunged from all records so that Menelaus could use it for his own purposes. And so, Menelaus had a perfect place to work. His Nest of Scorpions….” Oron trailed off, his eyebrows knitting.

  “…And?” Racath prompted.

  “This is where things get rather sticky,” Oron said. “This is when Menelaus gets tangled up in things much, much darker than murder. It’s a rather shameful history. Shameful and grotesque.”

  “I have a strong stomach. Enlighten me.”

  Oron continued slowly. “As I said before, a Majiski just wasn’t good enough for him. Menelaus wanted everything in his Scorpions, the best of both Elf and Majiski. Strength, speed, stamina, aptitude with magic in all its forms.” Oron’s eyes grew cold, dark. “So, in an attempt to create such a being, Menelaus kidnapped three Elven women and brought them here in secret. He tortured them, twisted them, and gave them drugs that would make them fertile. And then he impregnated each of them forcefully.”

  Racath nearly dropped his spoon. He gasped, realizing he had bit down hard on the end of his tongue. His mother had taught him that God made the races to be distinctively separate. Crossing bloodlines…it just wasn’t done. But this was even worse — not only was it a religious abomination, but to do it by force? To captive, innocent women? It was sick.

  The older Majiski continued. “The resulting spawn proved to be enormously powerful. He selected his finest Genshwin, a man named Orson Thrace, to raise them and teach them an advanced form of the Black Path. This all went well for a time, and the halfling children grew up to become exactly what Menelaus had hoped for. Merciless, unstoppable, and lethal. Killing anyone Menelaus commanded them to, leaving no trace behind. He had created his Three Aspects of Death.”

  “I don’t see how that lasted very long…” Racath grunted absentmindedly. He was still trying to swallow the bad taste in his mouth.

  “It didn’t,” Nelle inserted through a mouthful of stew.

  Oron nodded in affirmation. “Halflings are unnatural, unstable. Blood isn’t supposed to mix like that. They age quickly, but they tend toward chaotic Magicks, rebelliousness, short life-spans, and madness. Eventually, they all got themselves killed in one way or another, and Menelaus had to start from scratch, using the same women as before.”

  Nelle spoke up again. “Then came Tera.”

  “Tera?” Racath asked.

  Oron elaborated. “One of the next batch of three was a female, named Tera. The first female Scorpion. Menelaus kept a close eye on her, and when she came of age, he did to her what he had done to the Elven women. He was curious, you see. He wanted to see what would come of Majiski blood mixing with the power of a halfling. And thereby create an even more powerful Scorpion.

  Steam wafted into Racath’s face; he had been unconsciously leaning toward Oron, hovering directly over the bowl of hot stew. “What happened?”

  Shrugging, Oron said: “He made an interesting discovery. The mixture of Majiski and a half-Majiski did not become a crossbreed of any kind. Rather, the Majiski blood became dominant — and a pure Majiski was born.

  “Enraged, Menelaus killed the child, but allowed the brokenhearted Tera to live. He tried breeding her across with her siblings with the same result — inevitably, one half or the other would overpower the other, and a pureblood would be produced. To Menelaus’s great displeasure.”

  Grimacing, Racath rolled his spoon in his stew. “Delightful….”

  “And then things went wrong,” Oron said. “In the 889th year, Orson Thrace fell in love with Tera, and life became complicated.”

  “Complicated how?”

  “Babies!” Nelle quipped.

  “Precisely,” Oron affirmed. “With Orson, Tera bore another pure-Majiski child. When Menelaus found out, he killed them both. The child, too. When he was done, he was left with two male halflings, three captive Elf women, and no master for the Scorpions. And so he called upon Jarom Thrace, Orson’s younger brother and fellow Genshwin, to fill the gap. Menelaus did not, however, tell him how Orson had died, and Jarom took the position without question. And so for the next forty years, the Scorpions continued, worked for Menelaus and — as they eventually died off, one by one — he bred more for Jarom to train.”

  “And by the time he’d learned how Menelaus was acquiring these halflings, it was too late to back out, right?”

  Another nod. “As Jarom watched Menelaus do those horrific things, he became sickened with himself. After four decades, he couldn’t take it anymore. He left it all behind, left the Genshwin altogether. He found God, sought penance through a normal life. He found a woman, fell in love, and in the 931st year, they were married. They were old, as far as Majiski newlywed couples go — both of them were nearing their seventieth year — but in the final year of their first heat, year 936, they conceived and had a son. Oron Thrace.”

  “You,” Racath surmised.

  The older Majiski nodded soberly. “Orson Thrace was my uncle. After my father left the Genshwin, Menelaus tried to replace him with one of the older halflings as the Scorpion mentor. He had limited success. Years went by, and I grew up. I became a High Paladin in the Ioan army when I was twenty — that’s how I knew your father. He and I were in the same regiment in the military.”

  “Ah-ha…”

  Leaning back in his chair, Oron swallowed a modest bite of stew. “But. While my father had given up the assassin’s life, he hadn’t burned every bridge behind him. He hated Menelaus, but maintained an amicable relationship with him and the Genshwin. My father kept no secrets from me — in my youth, he took me to visit Velik Tor, showed me the secret world the Genshwin lived beneath Oblakgrad. I knew Menelaus personally by
the time I was thirteen. He was almost like a godfather to me. A godfather that my family praised in public and despised in private.

  “Menelaus even offered me a place among the Genshwin. My father wouldn’t hear it, but when I was sixteen Menelaus convinced him to let me train in Velik Tor for a few seasons. I had already expressed my desire to become a High Paladin by then, and Menelaus said it would be good preparation for the military — not to mention the good I could do for Io with both the Black Path and Paladin training in my repertoire. Reluctantly, my father agreed, under the condition that he could personally oversee my training. Thus, I learned the assassin’s art.”

  After finishing his last bite of chicken, Racath dropped his spoon into his bowl and pushed it to the side. “What about the Scorpions?” he asked. “Did you know about them, too?”

  “Dimly,” Oron said. “My father had hinted at their existence. He would always talk about that terrible thing Thomas does, but never explained it to me. I came to know of the Scorpions much later. But something else happened before that.”

  Nelle scowled into her bowl. “The Demons.”

  A tangible silence hung over the table for a brief moment. It was gone in an instant, faded like candle smoke, but they all noticed it. It was the silence that always accompanied the mention of the invasion. A small, quiet reverence.

  As it faded, Oron continued, his eyes distant and his lips pressed together in a white line. “The Demons. They just…materialized out of the southern wastelands. An army unlike anything we had ever dreamed of. There were only a few thousand of the Demons themselves, armed with strange weapons and old magic. The rest of their force was filled by creatures that we have come to know as Goblins and Arkûl.

  “They swept across Io. Eviscerated our defenses. Sacked our cities. The Humans of the gentry reached out in desperation, offering Io’s surrender if the Demons would permit them to retain a piece of their authority.”

  A scowl much like Nelle’s found Racath’s face. “I didn’t know that last part.”

  “It’s the truth,” Nelle grumbled. “Cowards.”

  “Then the Occupation started…” Oron sighed. “The eradication of the Jedan Church. The exile of the Elves. The enslavements. The book burnings. The Majiski purge….”

  Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed Nelle blinking back tears. Of course — she’d been alive then. She’d seen the Occupation, lived through the violence. Racath pushed down a knot in his throat and spoke softly. “And what did you do?”

  “Well,” Oron sighed. “With the five cities under the control of the new Dominion, what was left of the Majiski High Paladins — your father and I included — were forced to regroup at Krvistata, the mountain fortress at the northern end of the spikes. There were only a few hundred of us left. Our superior, the highest-ranked surviving officer in the entire Ioan army, was a lowly Lieutenant Commander.”

  The old Majiski shook his head slowly, reminiscently. “Micah Killian. Kel, as we called him. Amazing man. He led us, and directed us to entrench the fortress. Over the next year and a half, hundreds of Majiski refugees flooded in to Krvistata, and we gave them sanctuary. Among those refugees, Racath, was your mother. As well as Nelle.”

  Nelle nodded stiffly without looking up the table. “My father was the augur before me. My family lived with him in the temple in Litoras. Shortly before the Demons came, it was revealed to him that his time as the augur was over, and that the title was to be passed to me…but that’s an entirely different story. I was twenty then. That’s when I stopped aging. When the Demons came, my family hid inside the temple. When they found us…” Nelle swallowed and shook her head. “I escaped, and made my way to Krvistata with the other refugees.”

  “And then came the siege…” Oron breathed. “Kel had hoped that we could dig in and wait for aid from Io’s northern neighbor. But the Demons got around us, seized control of Mount Eranil, and immediately began building the Wall, cutting off any hope of foreign aid. Then they came for Krvistata. The siege lasted from the summer of the 2nd year of the Fourth Age, until the end of winter. Slowly, gradually, the Demons killed us off, gained ground. Took the fortress piece by piece. When things were starting going really sour, Menelaus arrived.”

  Taken aback, Racath raised an eyebrow. “What?”

  “It was the first time the Genshwin acted as a patriotic force,” Oron said. “Menelaus came with his men, and joined the battle. And it wasn’t just a few assassins, either: Menelaus brought all of the Genshwin to reinforce Krvistata. It helped for a little while, but…it didn’t save us. They fought hard and they fought well. But they died just like the Paladins did.

  “Eventually, the Demons captured the fortress and we were forced back into a tunnel we had been digging as an escape route. By then, all that was left was Kel, mortally wounded, Menelaus, myself, your parents — whom Kel had recently married — Nelle, a dozen refugees, a handful Genshwin, and nearly fifty Majiski children.” Oron shut his eyes and breathed deep, rubbing the bridge of his nose. “Orphans, all of them. I’d never seen so many tears in one place. In the end, when the Demons charged the tunnels, Kel ordered us to take the survivors and escape. We ran, and he collapsed the tunnel behind us.”

  “Good God….” Racath released a long, hollow breath. “No wonder my father never wanted to tell that story….”

  Oron took a deep breath and pressed on. “Once we had escaped, the refugees went their separate ways, into hiding in the mountains. Your parents left, too. Menelaus offered to take the orphans to Velik Tor, in the hopes of rebuilding the Genshwin. The night before we were all going to split up, Menelaus asked to speak with me privately.”

  “And told you about the Scorpions,” Racath guessed.

  Oron nodded in affirmation. “He told me everything. Repulsive, to say the least. Menelaus may have come to our aid at Krvistata, but he was an evil, evil man. Then he told me that the Scorpions were in crisis. They were still here, in the domus, hidden away from the Dominion. But one of the halflings in the trio at the time, a female, had secretly been with an Elf during one of her missions before the Demons came. Here, she had given birth to a pure-blooded Elf child. A boy.”

  Racath snorted. “I’ll bet Menelaus loved that.”

  Oron bobbed his head. “Indeed. The real problem was her tutor, an older halfling. Menelaus told me that the mentor became enraged when the child was born. A fight had broken out. When all the dust settled, all three Scorpions were dead, along with their tutor, and Menelaus’s captive Elf women. All that remained was the Elf child. The Elves were in exile by then, completely gone, leaving him with no means to restart his halfling bloodline. With hardly any Genshwin to entrust the mantle of mentor to, Menelaus told me that he wanted me to fill the role that my father once had. He requested that I work alongside him and the Genshwin in secret, and train his next set of personal elite assassins. I agreed, under three conditions.”

  He held up three fingers. “First, the boy, the Elf child, would live. Second, under no circumstance would the Elf — or anyone else — be subject to the atrocities of the crossbreeding. We would work with the natural-born, pureblood Majiski stock we had available, even if we had to wait for decades for a suitable candidate to come out of the Genshwin. And lastly, Nelle would accompany me. She had told me of her visions during the siege, and I was not about to let God’s augur die on my watch.”

  “And Menelaus agreed?” Racath asked, surprised.

  “He didn’t like it, but he didn’t really have a choice,” Oron said. “He wasn’t particularly fond of the Church and felt no inclination to protect Nelle. But I had him over a barrel. So he agreed.

  “And we came here,” Nelle finished. “Oron, to raise the boy — who Menelaus had named Notak et Sine Nominé — and teach him to be a Scorpion. I, to protect what knowledge of God remained and continue my visions.”

  “Meanwhile,” Oron added. “Menelaus began recreating the Genshwin. But, he realized, he needed to hide the horrific crimes of his
past. While most of the Genshwin were still new, ignorant orphans, Menelaus began censoring knowledge, destroying or hiding books that might compromise him — such as the Jedan scriptures in taj Libris Io that would condemn him for his actions. He covered up history, squelched knowledge of magic and arcane sciences…and then he changed his name.”

  Realization struck Racath. “Wait,” he said, holding up a hand. “Menelaus is…?”

  “Mrak.” Oron said. “Yes.”

  Racath’s fists clenched so tight his knuckles popped. He tried to think, but it felt like fire was clouding his brain. Everything about the Patriarch, every mysterious detail, suddenly made sense. And it was a horrible truth. Before, Racath had resented Mrak, for his cowardice and irrational secrecy. But now…now it was more than resentment. It was hatred, pure, simple, and righteous. He wanted to speak, to vocalize the anger, but nothing came out through his grinding teeth.

  “Changes things, doesn’t it?” Oron asked. “The truth.”

  “Why the faul haven’t you just killed him?” Racath seethed. “It would have been easy…and everything could have been different….”

  Oron shrugged. “If only it were that simple. In the end, we will have to kill him before we can destroy the Dominion. He’s an obstacle. But for now, the unfortunate truth is that Mrak is really the only thing that’s holding the Majiski together. Eventually, the time will come when the Genshwin are ready to break away from his dogma, but not yet. And — while it galls me to admit it — we still need his resources and his cunning.

  “However, rest assured that I do not subscribe to Mrak’s agenda. He believed that I would be creating mindless, ultra-potent assassins to serve his every whim. But I have a lot more autonomy out here than he knows. With God’s augur at my side,” he gestured to Nelle, who grinned toothily. “I decided that we would make the Scorpions into a band dedicated to restoring the old Commonwealth of Io.

  “Against Mrak’s will and without his knowledge, I would teach them the history that he had had hidden from them. I would tell them about the secrets of the world that exists beyond the Grey Wall. I would instruct them in the religion that the Demons destroyed, as it is the key to understanding and defeating our enemy. I would enhance their skills as Genshwin assassins to make them like nothing the Demons had ever seen before. That’s what I did for Notak. That’s what I did when Mrak finally selected a second Scorpion candidate four years ago, Rachel Vaveran. And that’s what I intend to do for you now.”