“She did tell me not to steal the book,” I said, giggling.
Veronika grew flustered and slapped her own book with the back of her hand. “You have the inability to weigh the consequences of your actions, good or bad,” she said, her voice rising in tempo and pitch. “The inscription literally translates to ‘You will be excommunicated if you steal this book,’ and you stole it anyway!”
I laughed and let the echo of the room laugh back at me.
I stopped immediately when Yvonne, dressed in Inquisitorial armor, stepped out from stealth in the shadows where she had been waiting. She crossed her arms and looked me over. Her hair was combed and plaited neatly in multiple braids. Lucky the Sparrow sat on her shoulder with his own little armor.
“Augur,” I said. My smile faded and my voice went stale.
It made sense that an Augur, who provided counsel to the elites of the Empire, would be an Auditor, an agent of the Inquisition who watched the watchers. “Have you come to sign my death certificate for me?” I asked. “We’ve been having an argument over who gets the honor.”
Veronika opened her book and took a seat on her chair. “The Auditor graciously offered me my position, after a discussion with the Council of Reconciliation,” she said, answering a question I was thinking but knew better than to ask.
Yvonne stepped forward and grabbed the bars. “Liset, if you have any faith in Gaia, know that I am working for the good of the Empire with her. I need you to trust me with all your heart and soul right now.”
“And how am I supposed to do that?” I asked.
“Aren’t you priest-types supposed to have conviction?” she scoffed.
“You’re right,” I said in my flattest tone. “What a ridiculous question after all you’ve done to me.”
“Gaia has plans for you. If you don’t trust me, then trust her. We really are trying to help you. Even inviting Jericho to speak with you was... illuminating to some matters. He wouldn’t tell us, and we had no reason to hold him like we did you, but he certainly loves speaking with you. A lot. Neither of you know when to shut up. It was quite helpful.”
I remembered Gaia’s prediction for me in my dream. I wasn’t sure how martyrdom would birth a hundred healers, and even if that were her plan, if her plan involved destroying me and my good name, I wasn’t exactly keen on seeing it through.
The Divine Spark on my chest glowed as if to reassure me. My Merchant-Craft skill told me I wasn’t taking a good deal, but it was the best I could hope for.
Auditor Yvonne put a hand on Veronika’s shoulder and addressed her. “I’m here on behalf of the Guardian of the Taken. Record the prisoner’s last meal request,” she commanded. She looked at me and stared into my soul. “Surely the prisoner has had plenty of time to think very, very carefully about what she’d like to order. The last few days, perhaps?”
I took the hint and felt the weight of my worries melt away. Yvonne’s plan from the start finally started to click for me. Leave it to an Imperial Augur to foresee the paths in a gambit.
“Will you honor my request for the sourcing of the ingredients?” I asked.
“We will,” she confirmed.
I remembered what she had ordered for me the first morning, after she returned from the Rowanheath Chapter Hall. I remembered the allies I had made since then, whether I liked them personally or not. I remembered the debts they owed me that I’d had no plans to collect on, until now.
“Right, of course,” I said. “For my last meal, I’d like Chef Boyle to make me her special Hvitalfarian Summer Salad with a side of Stone Soup. The berries are found in Ravenkirk. The nuts are only grown in the Whispering Grove in the Tanglewood. And naturally, I’ll need a beer from the 12th Step Inn.”
Yvonne grinned. “So be it. Coffee first, then justice.”
Red Sky at Morn’
No great story started with someone eating a salad, except this one.
The next morning the sun rose in the east like it always had, oblivious to my situation. It lingered low on the rust-colored horizon. My joints ached from the pressure front of the oncoming storm combined with a final night of half sleeping chained to a metal chair. Not that I had control of my limbs. The Jailers on either side of me had bound my wrists to my chest in a prayer pose with rough rope. My long blonde hair had been shorn in a ragged pixie, my neck branded with the double ouroboros of Areste crossed out, and they kept me in the prisoner’s garb of a shapeless tunic with a rope for a belt. They even took the golden bangles that were my reward from Gaia.
I’m not a forgiving woman by nature. Like everyone else, I must wake up and choose kindness over violence as my default, and it was difficult to overlook what the Inquisition had done to my life. True to the Receiver’s word, Inquisitor Morton was ruining it.
But I am a practical woman, too, so when the Inquisition asked me to walk the plank off a burning ship, I gladly accepted. The problem was, my plan was risky even if it went perfectly. And if it didn’t go perfectly, I was dead.
It wasn’t the end I wanted, but I was tired of running. My troubles with Jericho ended today, either in his blood, or mine. If I was right, I had God on my side. If I wasn’t, and she had abandoned me, I didn’t care anymore. I had done my best to sow seeds of goodness that would live on after me. It wasn’t up to me now if they grew or not. That was Gaia’s domain.
Several Jailers led me through Harrowick along winding streets dimly lit by hanging oil lanterns that pooled light into the dark passageways. From what I could tell, the city was constructed as a circle with concentric walls differentiating the populace by importance. Our destination was the Temple of the Holy Seven, set appropriately in a market with a sparkling fountain at the dead center.
The wooden gallows were hastily constructed, but solid. I counted thirteen steps to the platform as we approached.
A crowd of onlookers waited for us despite the early hours. The wealthy must’ve considered it a pastime to see an execution. And of a priest, no less. Vendors opened their carts early and fought at corners for prime real estate to take advantage of my situation. With the rain coming, everyone wore slick cloaks that covered their faces. I lowered my head at the thought that I’d be tried by anonymous onlookers. If anyone had a right to judge me, it was my peers. But I couldn’t see my friends in the crowd.
They should have been there. I had to believe they were there even if I couldn’t identify them.
The crowd murmured amongst themselves as I climbed steadily up the thirteen steps to the gallows. I bit my tongue. What did they expect, a speech about there being good in the world, we just had to rally it, and then they’d all clap and Gaia herself would descend from the heavens to kiss my cheek? None of that would happen. The Inquisition’s script didn’t allow for it anyway, and they had planned everything out from the beginning.
I knew my role to play in this judicial theater.
Yvonne herself had trimmed my hair and pressed the brand into my neck. She explained as obliquely as she could that Corvus was right: no one cared for Carrera. No one liked him. Never did. The Inquisition’s only concern was the security and stability of the Empire. But the premise lulled Jericho into a false sense of safety and power. Ser Berrick had sent her to investigate Jericho at Kismet’s behest a few days ago, after all. They were suspicious of the people Osmark had placed in positions of power. But when they asked the priests to verify my claims, they all stared straight ahead with a plastered smile and said they were happy and had no complaints. They were more afraid of Jericho than the Inquisition.
She’d had other plans for the last few days, but severely misjudged my reactions. When I didn’t go to Hector’s funeral, she had to adjust.
The surprise assault on Rowanheath hadn’t helped, either.
Punishment was not personal vengeance, she explained, but discouraging the populace from evil, no matter the mitigating circumstances. While no one could publicly condone my actions for fear of others repeating them in different situations, the Gua
rdian of Secrets knew the truth about me and what was happening. He would always know even if everyone else cursed my name. Or worse, forgot it.
It wasn’t personal. It was business. We had the greater good of the Empire to think about, after all. And if this went poorly, I’d be a patriot, tucked away with the rest of the Empire’s best-kept secrets in a footnote of history of the man’s dusty library.
That reassured me little, but it wasn’t nothing.
Inquisitor Morton, wearing a half-mask to hide his face, waited patiently for me with his arms folded behind his back. I couldn’t bear to look at him as he gently coaxed me to his side.
I spotted the Commissar dramatically fling open the double wooden doors to the temple across from my gallows. She stood stick straight on the platform in her pressed uniform, my NPC, and saluted Inquisitor Morton sharply. Her voice boomed with an unnatural, almost magical resonance for such a small figure as she addressed the crowd.
“Oyez! Oyez! Oyez!” she cried. “All Citizens having business before this Court of the Ever-Victorious Viridian Empire are admonished to draw near and give their attention, for the Court is now in session, the Honorable Inquisitor James Morton presiding.”
I stared at the noose to avoid making eye contact as the Inquisitor slipped the rope around my neck. If Yvonne was wrong, I’d be a puppet dangling from a string.
The thought occupied my head to the point I couldn’t hear the Inquisitor’s proclamation of my various sins and crimes, to which I had been offered redemption. He spoke at length until I felt my knees lock to stay upright and avoid fainting.
“Therefore,” he announced to the crowd, “in the name of the Ever-Victorious Empire, I proclaim you guilty. You are to be hung by the neck until dead. Do you have any last words?”
I searched the crowd for Yvonne or anyone I recognized. Their faces blended into one unrecognizable being, Wode, Imperial, Hvitalfar, Svartalfar, and Risi alike. A sea of cloaked, silent jurors. I spotted a blue butterfly flying above the crowd, beating its little wings and then floating away on the cool morning breeze. I hoped it found somewhere to rest before the storm came.
My heart pounded in my ears and I barely heard the Inquisitor repeat himself.
“Prisoner,” he said, nudging my bare foot with his boot, “any last words before your death?”
I finally looked at him and canted my head. “Don’t worry, Inquisitor,” I said. “This won’t be my first time dying. It won’t be my last, either.”
“Irreverent as always,” he said, tightening the noose around my neck.
The Commissar snapped her boots together, a sound that echoed over the silent crowd.
“Honorable Inquisitor!” she cried. “Exarch Jericho, Pontiff of the Holy See, demands his right to judge his Disciple under the eyes of the gods and administer last rites.”
The crowd murmured amongst themselves at the spectacle.
Inquisitor Morton smiled under his mask, like he knew this would happen. There was no way Jericho would miss a chance to see me suffer. No, it was more than that. He’d be excommunicated by his own rules if he permitted me to die while I was still part of his temple. Dr. White, as I knew him back on Earth, was too politically savvy to not recognize this.
When my knees buckled at Jericho’s name, the Inquisitor placed a firm hand on my shoulder to steady me. “Hang in there,” he whispered under his breath, not glancing my way.
“That is the exact opposite of my goal, Inquisitor,” I whispered back.
Morton let his hand fall and acknowledged the Commissar. “The Empire has determined their verdict, and will not be swayed from the natural course, but recognizes the respect afforded to the criminal’s temple. He may proceed.”
The Commissar opened the doors of the temple with a heavy creak. Exarch Jericho, brandishing his gold and blue Imperial colors, stepped out with his arms outstretched to greet a silent crowd. Twelve hooded priests in the white-and-red-striped robes of the Temple of Areste accompanied him. The priests, as one, provided the applause Jericho so desperately waited for, then lit candles as if holding a vigil for me. A few I recognized as the characters my co-workers back at the hospital in Manhattan had created. Of those, I spotted a blonde Dawn Elf who snuck a peek at me beyond her drawn hood. Thia, a priestess I had saved at the Black Temple. I knew her back on Earth as Dr. Nguyen.
I scoffed. I saved her life, and she was going to do me like this?
“Welcome, my brothers, my sisters, my friends,” said Jericho in his typical baritone, drawing out the s on the last word.
“We stand here today not to judge this heretical disgrace to the clergy, this soulless, irredeemable, vulgar woman who has spit in the face of the eternal salvation that Areste, Redeemer of All, offers. No, my friends, we stand here to honor you, Areste’s beloved children, whom she has offered endless grace and mercy towards. May you look upon this wretched, vile, crumbling shell of an elf not with pity, but with fear of your own fate should you choose to bathe in the fountain of sin such as she has. For as it is said in the First Epistle to the Viridians, ‘They that honor the gods shall restore their life; they shall be sheltered from the serpents—’”
“For the love of Gaia, shut up and let’s get this over with!” I screamed over him.
Inquisitor Morton slapped the back of my head and shushed me.
Jericho’s eye twitched. He gritted his teeth, then slipped into a saccharine smile. “As you wish,” he said. The crowd parted for him as he marched up the gallows steps and stood next to the Inquisitor. He pulled out a holy book, no, my holy book, and asked me to place my hands on it. After Inquisitor Morton loosened my ropes enough, I did. Out of the corner of my eye I spotted the attending priests line up in front of the gibbet, praying over their candles.
Standing this close to him, close enough his hot breath hit my neck, close enough I could smell his musty cologne of incense and wine, I heard Serth-Rog the strongest. I had both hands on the book, as they wouldn’t loosen the bindings around my wrists, but my right arm felt like it was blistering with toxic heat.
They have turned against you. There is no escape. You will be mine. Have no fear.
It will all end soon.
I wasn’t crazy. I wasn’t a secret Darkling, either. I was reacting to him. I didn’t remember it happening when we first met, but it was exactly how I felt around Cian and the mirror in the Black Temple. I didn’t know how to explain it and glanced to the Inquisitor for help. He didn’t seem to notice at all.
“I’m disappointed in you,” said Jericho, placing his hand over both of mine and squeezing much too tightly. “You may not be scared to meet your Maker, but you should be scared of me,” he whispered.
I wasn’t. I was scared to lose my class, but I wasn’t scared of him.
He raised his voice so the crowd could hear.
“Given that this lost soul has renounced Areste in her thoughts, in her words, in what she has done and what she has failed to do, I hereby excommunicate her from the Temple of Areste. She will be known only as Vitandus, one to be avoided. May her name be anathema. May no one greet her or offer her help. May no one associate with her. May she be accursed. May even the memory of her die, as she is now dead to me.”
The attendants around the foot of the gallows each rang a bell eight times, then extinguished their candles on the ground, chanting, “Fiat! Fiat! Fiat!”
So be it.
<<<>>>
Temple Alert:
You are no longer a member of the Novus Ordo Seclorum.
You no longer have faction benefits available to you, including access to the Tree of Areste.
You no longer may accumulate Faith points through daily orisons or heroic actions.
<<<>>>
Your relationship with the Novus Ordo Seclorum has changed from Unfriendly to Hostile.
<<<>>>
I stared at the notifications in a mixture of horror and relief. I didn’t feel any different though. Jericho didn’t miss a beat and addressed
the crowd. “This action, while necessary, won’t bring back Theologian Hector, whose death she is responsible for, or any of the priests she’s led astray to her new master, Serth-Rog. But perhaps this judgment will prevent more unnecessary tragedies.”
He kept his hand in his pocket as he looked me up and down, biting his lower lip. He kept his voice low, just for me. The false grandeur in his voice was lost. No longer the esteemed exarch, he was my former administrator, the tired old man who never had a kind word for anyone and would make us work through breaks then steal our lunch money.
“Last chance, Dr. Chen,” he said softly. “You can perform corvée to pay your debts, or I will send you to Morsheim myself.”
I glanced at the trapdoor underneath my feet then back at him.
“Is that a promise?” I asked.
Jericho held me tight, set my holy book on the floor, and withdrew a black velvet bag from his pocket. I recognized it and pulled away at once, but he held on. The Inquisitor placed his hand on the small of my back to keep me in place. My Strength was too low to resist, as much as I flailed.
To anyone else, the contents looked like ash on his fingers. The normal mark of someone excommunicated. But I had seen the sooty blight of the mold that infected someone with the Curse of Serth-Rog before. I only had one level left of the curse to endure, and if I died with it on me, I didn’t stand a chance to respawn. That’s how he’d execute me. He’d make his accusations true, and I’d join the Darklings by default to retroactively justify his actions. This wasn’t part of the plan though. And the Inquisition didn’t seem to believe it wasn’t just ash.
Two Jailers restrained me as Jericho explained the powder on his gloves. The Inquisitor had to know he was lying. I had told them at length what it was. His agents had told him what it was. But he was going to let Jericho touch me with it anyway. I had agreed to be a deadman’s switch for the good of all Eldgard, but not like this.
I wasn’t sure I had enough faith in me to be okay with this.
“Despite what some apostates may say,” he said, glancing back at me, “I am not unaware of the plague rumored to be spreading throughout the land. But my children, I tell you what this plague is: it is brought about by the corruption of faith. If we are not obedient, if we are greedy with our tithes, if we do not place all our trust in Areste and the promises she has made, we are fertile ground in which corruption flourishes. Through Her cleansing light, we may yet be saved—there is no helping those whose pride is greater than their faith. All the same, I will administer last rites, even if she is not penitent.”
Viridian Gate Online: Schism: A litRPG Adventure (The Heartfire Healer Series Book 2) Page 29