The #Broken_Dagger Forum

People gathered early at the Chapel of St. Iona. The house of worship was a small one considering the population of Myrkentown, but it was not the only chapel in the town and the priory was not too far north on the North Passage Down. The faithful of Myrken Wood never failed to find a way to praise the Divine Majesty as the Church instructed. The gathering was larger on this morning than on others. Whether it was because the some of the congregations who normally prayed at the Priory of Stonebrook or the Chapel of Saint Oran decided to instead attend mass at the Chapel of Saint Iona, or it was merely that more people were looking for salvation, it was difficult to say. Either way, the nave was full of standing parishioners and twice that number stood outside.

The services were long, but no longer than normal. As was common, because few could read, the priest, Willem Eine, and his clerics acted out the scripture for the congregation in the form of a miracle play. The clergymen overacted the roles so that it was very clear what was going on to all who could see. Many relayed the telling to those gathered outside of the chapel. The story of this day was the trial of Aligall.

Aligall was a stonemason who, after the completion of building the house of his Lord, was refused payment. Aligall begged his Lord for the money so that his wife and son could eat and would not freeze during the winter, but his Lord still said no. Aligall left the home that he built for the noble, defeated. Aligall returned to his family, told them what happened, and said that they would have to move to another town to find work, so that they would be able to eat over the winter. Aligall prayed to the Divine Majesty to help him feed his family.

They left the next morning, despite the cold. They traveled along the road for three days in search of work for Aligall. On the fourth day, they were stopped by a group of outlaws. The outlaws wanted Aligall's wife so that they may rape her. But Aligall fought them and they knocked him unconscious. Aligall's son, Borm, also tried to fight the outlaws, but one of the outlaws pulled a knife and killed the young boy. Frightened by the murder, the outlaws fled. When Aligall regained consciousness, he woke to find his wife crying over their dead son. Aligall prayed to the Divine Majesty to take care of their son in the afterworld.

More days passed and still Aligall was unable to find work. They had nothing more to eat. They knew of an abbey a day's walk away and they planned to go there in the morning, so that they may be fed and warmed, before they continued their search for money. When Aligall woke up in the morning, he found his wife, Jesa, had frozen to death in the night. Aligall cried for her and he prayed to the Divine Majesty to watch over her in the afterworld.

The next morning, Aligall arrived at the abbey. It was there that he met the abbot. And from behind a curtain stepped Lord High Inquisitor Tomias Gestahl. He was slender and tall, his face angular and chiseled...but his robes were breathtaking. The colors were so vibrant and rich, so shiny and magnificent. The embroidery and thread of gold made him shimmer as if he truly were sent from the majesty of Heaven. The abbot took Aligall in and fed him. Aligall told the abbot of his not being paid and the deaths of his son and his wife. And the abbot placed his hand on the shoulder of Aligall and said, "I know that times have been difficult for you, Aligall, and it seems that you have had your unfair share of suffering. I am sorry to hear of your pain. But the Creator has sent you here, my son. And as it happens, we are soon to begin building a new infirmary and noviciate. We are in need of a stonemason."

And from that day forward, because of his faith in the Divine Father, even in time of great suffering, He blessed Aligall's life for the rest of his days.

The clergymen moved behind the raised platform and Eine returned to the pulpit. Inquisitor Gestahl remained standing behind him as well. Eine continued to speak on how important it was to have faith, even in times of sorrow and trial, because the Divine Majesty rewards the faithful, pious, and righteous in the afterworld.

After some time he said the words that almost every parishioner wished to hear, "And now, may I present, Our esteemed Lord High Inquisitor, Tomias Gestahl."

Greeted by applause and reserved celebratory cheering-as it was still a house of worship-Tomias Gestahl moved to the pulpit. He flattened his hands on the cool wood, on either side of the large book that rested there. His eyes moved out over the congregation and out the door, where he could see a great many beyond. He spoke with an even voice, which carried with rich tone over those gathered.

"People of Myrken Wood and followers of the One True Faith, I've come to speak to you on a matter of great import. It has not failed to reach the ears of the pontifexus, that which your land has suffered. I have spent the last few days gathering more details on the tales of depravity, ungodliness, debauchery, and heathenism that have burdened the souls of you good and faithful servants of the Divine Majesty.

"Your lands are in the grips of demons...of that there is no doubt. There are men and women in this very town who summon these demons to do the devil's work and cause the virtuous to pain. They have forsaken their own souls and chosen to fornicate with the Dark Lord so that they may better their empty and soulless lives with the base desires of impurity, immorality, and villainy. I assure you, it will be their self-destruction. It is in eternity that they will pay for their injustice of self and inflictions of evil on each and every one of you good people and servants of Our True Creator.

"I have been charged by Pontifex Elian, God Bless Him and Keep Him, who has been charged by He On High, to come here. I and the other Inquisitors have been charged to come here and seek out that which wishes to harm you; that which wishes to tax your souls; that which wishes to blight your crop and mutilate your herds and flocks!"

Tomias Gestahl paused a moment...allowing the echo of his words to die out. When he spoke again, his voice was calmer, more soothing.

"We have heard that some fear our arrival. We have heard that some think we will round up the non-human of species. But I ask you...for what end? Are we so erred as to believe that the Dark Lord only has power over those without human blood? Of course not. So what is there to fear about our arrival? A fear of salvation? A fear that Myrken Wood may become prosperous and safe and without sorrow? What is there to fear except fear of being discovered? What is there to fear unless you have done something wrong? The pure of soul have naught to fear.

"So I tell you...we are here for the good of Myrken Wood. I assure you that your salvation is our only goal. We will find those who hide among you, pretending to be your friends and your neighbors, who, under guise and darkness of night, sneak off to the forests for debauchery and target you with their incantations. We will reinstate goodness to Myrkentown. Of that, there is no doubt.

"Lord Father, bless the people of Myrken Wood and bring to them a salvation and a freedom from wickedness. Good day."

Lord High Inquisitor Tomias Gestahl stepped back from the pulpit, allowing Father Eine to close the day's services with the completion of the rites.

She was pressed close to the wall, the cornerstones digging hard into her shoulders. The oppressive heat of the noonday sun and the bodies of the hundreds of people that surrounded the building and filled its inner walls to bulging hung like a palpable energy in the air. She imagined that she could reach up above the heads of those who surrounded her and wind a tendril of heat around one delicate gloved finger. She blinked, and focused her eyes once more upon the Lord High Inquisitor.

She brushed away thoughts of heat and flame and narrowed her eyes upon the brightly robed man at the pulpit. They were brilliant, her eyes, blue-violet and calculating. They could have rivalled those very robes. Still, they were hidden beneath the shadow of a hood, barely visible through the press of people. With so many, what was one more cloaked figure quietly listening to the services?

The whispered voices of the congregation blended into a mass of serpentine hisses, and she spent a moment picking individual voices from the mass of them. "Praise the Divine Father," was the phrase most commonly murmered. Beaded rosaries were tightly gripped in the hands of those nearest her, and those around her were almost devoid of magic, save for the powers of their faith.

Disgusting. If it weren't for the heat, the place would be unbearable, little more than a mass of the ignorant and the small number of elite that the stage and it's wooden pulpit bore. She breathed in deeply, and almost gagged. The words of the Inquisitor were broken for an instant by her stifled cough. The two people nearest her glared, and almost caught a glimpse of eyes shifting wildly from cerulean to violet.

She quelled herself to silence and pressed back against the corner again, to become one of the masses - a nothing, with calculating eyes on the robed and learned.

"Bless the Church!" they yelled, as the Inquisitor made his farewell. "Bless the Divine Father! Bless the Inquisition!"

Their words reverberated like death knells in her ears.

"Forgive me, Father," she murmered, softer than a whisper. "For I will sin." The crowd swelled and praised around her, and somehow she slipped between them like a shadow. A flame-topped shadow, it's fires hidden by her hood.

There was another cloaked one among the crowd, but this one had an aura that was as cold as a pond in winter, the water encased in ice. Pale blue eyes, the shade of the sky, the shade of the ocean took in those closet to her. She'd found a seat next to a young farmgirl with a squalling infant. It had only taken a glance to hush the youngling.

The words echoed around her, filling Iome with both dread and a strange sense of... purpose. She'd been floundering, locked in a perpetual state of wandering from one drunken day dream to the next. There were others to hunt the monsters. There were others to be heroes. But in this, in this man's speech, she found her fire again. She found something to oppose.

From the corner of her eye, she saw a cloaked form. And then it hit her. Opposite attracted opposite like two magnets brought together. Fire smashed again ice and Iome nearly slid out of her seat with the force. Visions of heat and flames exploded in Iome's head and made her gasp aloud, a sound she strangled with a forced "Bless God."

She stood, her tall, lean form standing out rather obviously. She'd worn a hood to conceal her ears. Iome couldn't be sure that these people wouldn't kill her for merely being an elf. Then again, they had much more than that to want her dead for. She slid through the crowd like a well-placed knife slicing between the ribs. When she was with a few footsteps of the cloaked figure, she whispered, her words barely a breath, but she was more than sure that this one would hear. "I didn't expect to find you among the faithful."

I have no reason to hide, I assured myself. Months of being forgotten, of being displaced had a way of surrendering the locals into amnesia of his own past haunting of this poor town. Not that their remembering an identity he no longer molded would be of much help.

Having come shortly before the sun had risen, he adopted a spot in the back against the wall - in the shadows. After several pesky inquiries to his eager arrival, he adopted what he thought resembled a position of prayer and meditated for the next hour or two until what the locals called the "service" began. What he didn't expect was to truely find a piece of prayer in that time.

It wasn't until the cramped little building was half-full did he realize he was in another world of thought - truely questioning what may or may not be a creator out there. He found him self more than adequately frightened that he could be lured to think thoughts he formerly adamantly rejected in the past - thoughts that the tittle "Lord" could be given to a man. A man! And if this man represented what theese poor mortals called the "Divine Father," He would represent the very curser, the very tormentor of his own soul. Even more reason to treat humanity like the cows they are, excluding his own former mortality of course. Incredulous did not begin to describe his former horror. But now.. he intended to listen carefully to the message for more than a reason to start destroying. He made up his mind long ago that he was through being a destroyer. Prayer - or other forms of religious exploration - was not something his kind "accidently" stumbled upon. He had abandoned the idea long ago that he could control his own fate.

****

He could not remember having any expression worth evaluating after the long service ended. He could only think of two things - that there might be a reason for this belief to be spreading like wildfire the way it was - and that he and the rest of his kind were facing a problem if they intended to quell the situation. Soft words and promises not to ruin the world of magic his own generation thrived in would not last, not with the sense of urgency he felt in the room, the sense of Deliverance. Of course he was touched, he was human once too - a cow, to him now - but moreso he was unsettled. It took a lot to make a man like him unsettled.

This little introduction to what he concluded would soon be an avalanche of white unlike anything the world has ever seen made him settle on one thing - he would not stand in its way. There was a force behind this madness, and if he chose to dare it, he could perchance attempt to stand in the face of He who damned his kind for eternity. Small chance, but he knew his own experience today should not have happened. Mere humans do not make one like him unsettled.

And in the sanctity of the church's high rafters, a figure lay in wait, cloak drawn about herself and seemingly able to shield her own figure as eyes of dark blue surveyed the man who spoke below her.

"Wonderful.." The woman whispered to herself in sarcasm, eyes hardening at the sound of the Inquisitor's words. She kept a hand upon her sword, the knuckles of which whitened at every word he spoke.

Thorn shifted slightly,before her form began to disappate to shadow, henceforth moving along the wall, and seemingly unnoticed as it slipped through a crack in the window, and outside to an awaiting horse.

"This town has no idea what its getting itself into." She growled, speaking to the animal she tied loose from its holdings. Patting the horse's muzzle, she mounted up, turning it towards the dagger.

"May the Goddess have mercy on all of them. And us." A growl utttered beneath those words, and Thorn pressed her horse to gallop back towards the dagger.

One amongst many, and of the gathered throngs, one that had chosen to make their appearance public. One of the regions shadowier members chose to make an appearance amongst the faithful without the benefit of cloaks or shadows. Without hiding. Without concealment. Sights had picked out those that'd done what they could to remain concealled. Did he recognize the individuals in particular? There'd been no doubt about the heat he'd garnered off one as he'd slipped past her. The others perhaps less noticable. His presence was a carefully constructed affair of course.

Was he particularly concerned about being recognized? Obviously not. He'd edged his way towards the front of the crowd, and listened in rapture at the sound of the Inquisitor's voice. Listened to the words, the message, and the feeling of the room. The people believed, and had faith. He had his own faith of course, but he would not be amongst those that denied the Inquisitor had presence. Had power.

Perhaps the Inquisitor had even seen him. Set eyes upon the features of the half-elven. Perhaps, it had been a challenge for the Inquisitor. A deliberate effort to place a member of the 'tainted blood', one of the non-human species and determine the man's reaction. Words and phrases were bellowed about him, and his voice joined those, echoing support with his tone.

Now, admittedly, he might be willing to support the Inquisitor, and the man's motives in undoing some of the damage that had been wrought upon Myrken Wood. Who wouldn't if they were in his own position? Townsfolk afraid to step out of their doors at night. Townsfolk lurching at every shadow. Such affairs made his own business that much more difficult. If every shadow, if every nuance of darkness was poked and prodded to determine if it held something unsavoury, where could one such as he hide? As obvious, presently, in plain sight. The townsfolk needed the clarity, the presence, the light of the Church at the moment. They needed it, so that they would feel once again that the shadows were safe.

So he would support the Inquisition. He would assist them. He would also pick the pockets of a few of the faithful. Afterall, one never forgot their roots.

In the crowd, leaning against the wall she stood among the people, with no hood over her head and just the light worn cloak around the slender shoulders. She nodded to a few, her face and name now being spread as a person you could not only trust, but get a good laugh by. The bright hazel eyes scan over the crowd with her normal expression of warm greeting but seem to hold a darker emotion of fear as she listened to the other side.
She was indeed afraid for her friends and possibly even herself. Her wore her hair in a low knot at the nape of her neck, the dark blonde on the sides loose to cover the sides of her head where human ears would be. She was one of the lucky ones, her looks not much different the average human.
When the message began she cringed in horror at the story, the tale laced with to many parallels to her own tragedy but she did not get a message of comfort that was intended as she stood there thinking that unlike this man, she had cursed the gods, or god as the case maybe, and shunned the idea of using the clerical magic to heal instead of the herbs and other natural remedies her favored. She sniffs lightly to herself, drawing perhaps an accusing look. " So if I pray to you I get to have children again? Is that how it works?" she thought to herself.
In the purest definition of the term she did pray in the sense that she communicated with a 'Higher Form' on a personal basis that she did have faith existed. She spoke to the 'Higher Form' on a regular basis in fact and did believe in him/her or whatever gender people assigned it. To her it was all the same. God or Goddess, one or many, the tone of the 'prayer' was rather irreverent to borderline cursing most if not all of the time. Still in her own form of logic she was as devout as anyone else here the yelled out praises, she just didn’t see a lot to praise him for.
" Nice try. I am not going to sit here and try and presume that such a small person like myself was personally meant in that message but I thought you just might like to know I still blame you for what was stolen from me, Jaden, and the fact I may no more have the joy of another child. Just in case you were wondering." On the outside Freya was pleasant to the point of being outright friendly and loving to even a perfect stranger, internally she was enraged. Self sacrifice was everything to her, she could have been one of the most reverent and one of the best clerics due to faith and want to heal but not if a God who kills and grants a life of misery to the innocent and luxury on the evil and cruel was one she had to pray to. So far that was all she had seen.
When her attention came forward again she heard the segment regarding humans and non. Her dark brown brows lifted slightly as a curl of a smile came to the lips. It wasn't a smirk or a cruel smile but one of Freya's normal charms and great gift of seeing the light in any situation. " Well at least he's not a racist, this is good. On the other hand, no one is safe now. Lovely." she spoke internally once more, being alone so often made her used to the one sided conversations and since thus far the conversations with herself had only been one-sided with no response she knew she wasn't quite crazy yet. Reaching atop her head with tapered long nails that grew at an accelerated rate no matter how many times she tried to cut them off entirely she scratched a spot atop her head that flickered a bit under the hair.
Walking away while people clapped themselves on the back and praised the deity she smiled once more. The people she had come to midwife for at least had one thing that she could be happy for. They had hope and she did bow her head and thank whatever deity was up there for that.

It isn't so hard to understand the reasons one who has lost every remaining loved one that ever meant anything to him in the span of a few hours might decide to visit a church for the first time. His mother and father now long dead, with no siblings, and both wife and child lost in recent riot - the nightmares of which still awake him in the dead of night - he is left empty. Alone. Where was God that night? Was he in this place all along, hiding from me? Unfair, he knows, to blame God, seeing as how he doesn't believe in one anyway.

Its hard enough to deal with the grief, harder still to mask it, so there he sat bearing his cloud of shame so that despite the crowdedness of the tight little Church, he had enough elbow room from those wary to be near him. He had made the descision to at least try to find some peace in the world here, or may death take him quickly. And quietly. His life never revolved around the pointless ambitions to be known and have wide circles - unfortunately, that drastially limits the numbers of trusted fellows to zero. No one to grive with, to grant his weary soul pity.

Any who knew him remotely might of thought him simple and peasant-like, which suited him well and fine, but that was not the truth. He was educated, eloquent, and was raising a fine child, before whatever force of bad luck plucked his precious gem from him. He was too smart to believe in God, but maybe there was a reason for him to have suffered such a vile blow to his own personal sanity. He intended to find it here or nowhere at all.

****

He drunk in every word. Tears poured out of his eyes, grieving for the man of the story like he grieved for himself. Moreso, perhaps, because that man had a hope and allowed it to prevail. Why had I allowed all hope to die? How could I have been so naive to see the truth? He knew for sure, hope was entrusted in this Gospel.

What a joy to know his ownly comfort had been the Divine Father. God himself spoke to his heart, and sure enough he walked away from that Church a new man. A new man with a new purpose, with a new hope: To spread the message to the grieving, to the sick, to the poor. That was what the Father wanted, that is what the Father will recieve.

All he needed was a name. A new name. God had a tendency to change the names of His spokesmen, perhaps an allusion to the transformation and trandenscendence they preached.

So where could he find a name?

Light refracted in tiny rainbows through the delicate stained glass windows. A geometric masterpiece of Saint Iona herself left indiscernable patterns of color on the shoulders and brows of the sweat-damp crowd. Tiny triangles of blue, green, and gold slid over her shoulder as she shifted to better glance at the woman whom the voice belonged to.

She straightened, and a few tight fire-red curls slipped from beneath her hood. The people who had been pressed close to the rear wall shifted uneasily as the temperature suddenly plummeted. Fire and ice clashed, quietly, just at the edge of a dozen human minds. It quickly faded - there was no fury in the fire, nor malice in the ice.

"If this place was less weighted by holiness and less dampened by peace and purpose, perhaps I would find it in me to be offended," she said, quietly. She lifted her gaze and met Iome's pale eyes with her own brilliant ones. She smiled faintly, and resisted the urge to declare that her purpose for listening to the services revolved entirely around the presence of Tyralor McDougal. The temptation was heavy, if only so that she might see Iome's hackles rise. "Am I not permitted to take comfort in the knowledge that the Divine Father loves and protects his children, and that the creatures of darkness that ravage this land will soon meet their ends? I am no lover of demons or vampires, and I would lose no sleep if I woke to find them all dead."

"SHH!" an older woman hissed loudly. "I cain't 'ear!"

She shook her head and smiled again, just faintly, for Iome. She quirked one delicately gloved finger and slipped past the old woman, and made for the door. Most of the people were enraptured, even after the Inquisitor's farewell, and barely noticed the slightly warmer person who bumped into their backs. One person grunted. She made her way outside, assuming that the other woman would follow her. She sent a quick look of mild disgust towards the too-obvious Tyralor and exited the chapel.

One deep breath of heated summer air, mixed with the scents of at least a hundred unwashed bodies, was enough to make her gag again. She stifled it, coughed quietly, and leaned against the chapel wall. Sunlight caught the gold in the renegade curls and they gleamed. "Just because," she said, in the musing voice of philosophy, "I am not one of these children, it does not mean that I do not believe that their Father is a force to be reckoned with." Perhaps that statement, quietly uttered, where ears were slightly less likely to hear, would explain a little more.

She hoped that she would be forgiven quickly. She had already lived up to her promise. Sins were, unfortunately, far too easy to commit.

The voice of the Lord Inquisitor rang out clear over the crowds; and with Faith, fear was dispelled - or at least, replaced - and shadows driven from the hearts of a multitude as in a single voice they cried their sweet response.

Yet in the hearts of a few, instead, where goodwill might prosper, the words stirred other feelings. Hatred, and derision; seething, knotted pits of smouldering coals in the bellies of those few. Amid the undercurrent that such teachings stirred in the many - ah, yes, for there was hate there, too, suspicion and paranoia lurking beneath the gleam of hopeful bliss - those few whose scorn was earned by the Inquisitor and his flock stood out like signal fires, smoking and burning in red rage upon the astral plane.

Their cloaks and hoods could not hide them from his eyes.

He stood among them solely because of that Hate. Irony. They'd given the proverbial Devil the power to stand among the sheep of God, a wolf all sweetly clad in wool. Faith, light, and hope - purest love and goodwill - could have driven him shrieking from this place and sent him crawling back to his Pit, where he might storm and brood amid the dark and squamous Things that were his ilk.

Yet here he stood; the two-edged sword that issued from the priest's mouth had given him enough to cling to, and he could bear the pain of sanctity.

The dogma didn't matter. The emotion, though, was everything.

He wore no hood, no cloak nor mask. His flesh was his hood; his face was his mask. As plain as day he stood, in coat of embroidered crimson clad, as might any other curious noble come forth from high bowers to hear the words of the Highest. Long hair spilled to the small of his back; rich, dark and silken, its waves were drawn to lean here or there by the breeze.

Leathered fingers lifted a cigar to lips framed by groomed moustache, tapered goatee. In their sensuous clasp the lean black point sought embrace; amphisbaenian, the far end burned with a single, fiery eye, to rival scowling Polyphemus in its furor, and graceful silver dancers were spawned to drift and writhe and frantically mate in midair for those few moments ere they were broken asunder by jealous zephyrs, and left to drift into nothing.

Veni, veni, Mephistophile

Not a lover of the light, indeed. Yet he drank the Inquisitor's words in greedily, for he could see the Pattern shifting, the threads of the future realigning themselves to new paths, new possibilities, that hitherto had eluded his grasp. The words of this man were changing the expected course of events - and he, as the carnal and spiritual host to a being of Order primordial, possessed a power of premonition vaster than the conceptions of most mortal folk. His was a mind of such complex Logic that it could see the future as it was prepared, following a million mathematical probabilities in an instant to paint the many paths that branched out from each decision witnessed, each choice made, each monumental event that came to pass.

It was not a simple thing. The existence of Chaos, the constant foil of the Order he espoused, dictated wild elements that did not always synch with his plans. Some things caused no change at all; sometimes, a tiny incident, seeming insignificant at the time, could wrench Fate offcourse and steer Destiny into uncharted territories. Sometimes, a happening that seemed cataclysmic changed nothing.

But this, he felt, would live up to its promises. Everything, after all, was in place.

His eyes, cunning violet daggers, slew the colours dripping from the Highman's robes.

Demons and devils, indeed. Curiosity tweaked in the mind of the man-who-was-host; did he know, this Inquisitor, what a nest of vipers he'd stumbled into?

Perhaps, this Inquisition would clear away the false pretenders, smite the noisy upstart Tainted who seemed intent on exposing their natures constantly for all to see. Vampires, demons, devils. Kagen'te imposters. They had made his road a bumpy one, and many times threatened to call undue attention to Them.

Them. Ayan'te Maelhim. The Primordial; the Shattered Ones. Those-Who-Are-And-Are-Not. The Denied. A billion faceless stars; a billion formless Things. A billion names that meant nothing.

Oh, some had seen Them. He'd been deliberate in exposing their existence to certain individuals at key points. It was all part of the Purpose, of course; such exposure was well-calculated and surgical. Mostly, they were mistaken for - or assosciated with - the vast sea of imitations. Which was, of course, the plan - all the better to sow ignorance where knowledge might prove dangerous.

There had been one, though, who HAD known, who had been a terrible threat to them; an ancient warrior, a thorn in their side across the many worlds he had roamed and the many times he had drifted through. Had he been given the chance, he might've spread his knowledge about - even formulated a resistance that had the information and the means to oppose Them.

But he'd been taken care of. Even if he now lay within the grasp of Mephisto's rival; the primarch Cilaedim knew that even the Phobhirric Oni-lord would not dare allow the Kobra to escape any more than he himself would.

It mattered not, really, who had him, so long as he was out of the way.

"You are smiling."

Thickly-accented, but elegant nonetheless, the words of his companion came. They did not sound amused.

Mephistopheles turned his vision to the other; he had no need to sense the discomfort radiating from his pallid friend.

A friend who stood, black-clad as ever, wearing a false smile for his people. Indeed, these were now - irony - his populace, his own. Responsibilities had been placed upon him; a demon in their midst, entrusted.

Yet, unlike his purer compatriot, he could scarcely bear to stand on holy ground.

"I am. This is a great day; a moment to be savoured for as long as it lasts, and to be celebrated when it has passed."

"My feet are smouldering, Mephisto."

"Then buy better shoes."

Sultry eyes pierced their counterpart ice-lakes. The wolf in all his ire backed down from the rising serpent; he knew well what venom lay within those fangs, who so dripped honey.

"You risk much, allowing us to be seen together. I presume this is part of your grandiose scheme?"

The half-lidded eyes of Mephisto were cast back to the other once more. His lazy smile said it all.

To look upon their faces, they seemed not so different; Mephistopheles, and his companion. Both wore their hair luxurious, long and thick; both framed their firm lips with well-groomed goatees. Both bore hawkish, aquiline regality; a carnal sensuality, and overtones of a distinctly predatory nature.

Yet one seemed a bleached, elder version of the other; one, who dressed in black, was all of white, his face all of angled, sculpted ice. His hair by contrast was curlier and coiled about his shoulders; where Mephistopheles wore his longer and straighter.

The man they called Mephisto was a mingling of panther and cobra; sinuously coiled, lazily draped, and well assured in its unspoken power. The other was a wolf, a bat; calm, softspoken and pleasant, but posessed of an icy edge and an undercurrent of brimming violence due to erupt should he become displeased.

Mephisto hid his violence deeper, and oozed a thicker and sweeter honey to lace his poison.

"You have nothing at all to worry about. It is rather time I made my public debut. The tavern is becoming far too stuffy for my like."

"I trust you know what you are doing."

"As you did, when you piked your trophies on the roof? Please."

Words had been bandied back and forth; meaningless. To gaze upon the two on the spiritual realm, however - ah! There was a spectacle of duelling, territorial beasts, played out in spectral glory that would drive the sanest man to gibbering shards. Yet the black-clad man had lost, backed down beneath the might of the crimson prince. They were carved of different stuff; yet the one they knew as D - for his signiature - was not merely the puppet of the other. His will and his goals were his own; but, for the moment, they ran parallel to those of this...beautiful obscenity that stood beside him all uncaring of the pain.

Arctic eyes shot back to the Inquisitor. He could smell the Faith. It scorched his nostrils and spilled like acid into his eyes. It was all he could do to bear it. He could not see the flow and ebb of Hate; he could not decipher the source of Mephisto's ease. It drove him mad.

"I will endure no more of this. Seek me at my home, if you require me."

With that, and a snort - characteristically imperious - he turned and swept onto his parked carriage, barking to the heavyset, gypsy driver.

Mephisto did not bid him farewell, nor even turn to watch him go.

"Perfection is a thorn without a rose," he murmured, and with the passing of a crowd urging closer to the disappearing Gestahl, so too was he gone.

Pyra’s words only brought the faintest of grins to Iome’s thin lips. She kept her response sheathed in those same husky, lightly accented tones that fell in monotonous patterns. Beneath the hood, one tapered ear flicked and she whispered, “Praise be to the Father.” If there was the faintest impression of a sneer in her words or the hint of icy cold fury that slithered beneath the surface of those pale eyes, she hid it well.

Once beckoned, Iome followed. Many glanced in the tall elf’s direction as she passed. Some were baffled by the suddenly frigid air that whirled around them as she walked by. Others were astonished by the height of the figure; well over six feet in a time were most men weren’t even that tall. Outside, Iome sucked in a breath of warm air and expelled it with a tiny burst of frost. The only outlet for the chilled anger rippling through her veins.

Sunlight captured the gleam of pale blond hair from beneath the hood and imbibed the strands with false warmth. Iome listened carefully to what the other woman said and carefully considered her own answer before responding, “I fear more the men who believe they are the agents of such a wrathful being. Their God may be perfect, but men are only men. Flawed.”

She looked away. The shift of her hood revealed a hint of the angular face concealed in its shadows and the tension evident in the drawing together of her lips. Iome sought out those brilliant violet eyes, her own as stormy as if a hurricane wreaked havoc over their icy surface. When she spoke, it was with a burst of passion unexpected in one so cold and usually lacking in emotion. “They will make mistakes.”

Iome’s eyes closed and she tried to shut out the vision of innocent women killed for nothing more than knowing of the herbs that ease a birthing woman’s suffering. The bodies of men crumbling for the sin of praying to the God of Storms to spare his crops for another year rather than beseeching the wrathful God of the Christians instead. Children tortured for the crime of singing ancient songs of Gods long dead while at play. These visions tumbled in her head and turned her stomach.

Between clenched teeth, she said in a growling whisper, more heavily accented than usual, “I lost my first family to the demons these men wish to destroy. I will not lose my second to demons who wear the robes of their God!” She bowed her head and her gloved fingers interlocked over her chest.

The departing D passed just within the edge of her peripheral vision. She could hear, although she did not watch, the crack of whips and the sounds of hooves. Dust billowed in a cloud as the carriage moved quickly out of sight. Her eyes flickered towards it, and returned to Iome. Their movement was barely noticable.

The stones of Saint Iona's chapel pressed into her shoulder blades, windworn and rough with age. She lifted her chin and regarded the clenched jaw of the other woman. Sunlight breached the hood's shadows for a moment, casting her bronze features in golden relief. She was no more than five and a half feet tall, and the icy elf towered over her. She was quiet for a long moment, letting silence hang thick in the air between them.

"I have never seen such passion from you." It was, perhaps, an innappropriate thing to say. It was definitely unneccessary to voice the observation. Her expression had barely changed, even at Iome's violent declaration. Fire, with no emotion on her face, and Ice with clenched teeth and quiet fury. She spent half a moment being fascinated by the dichotomy and the contradiction, but quickly blinked away the calculation from her eyes.

"I have seen men and women burn for heresy, Iome. Men and women who were completely innocent, and those guilty of no more than rendering what helpful service they could to the people of their homelands," she said quietly. Her words were careful, the result of those few moments of mental deliberation. She paused again, noting the shift in the crowd, and the slow movements of the departing faithful. Even more quietly, she murmered, "And I have seen the robed priests of the Divine Father bind heretics to their pyres with chains of magic." She paused again, and smiled slowy. A gleam of satisfaction crept into her eyes. "You see, I taught them that ropes always burn... But some heretics do not."

She watched the elf's reaction closely. "Demons come in all shapes and sizes, and all manner of disguises, but many people are evil without a single demon in them, save for those conjured by their own minds. What God of peace and mercy lets slaughter reign among his children, and demons run through his flock like rabid wolves? Theft, rape, murder..." She shrugged. "Perhaps murderers are what we would all become if we were scorned by God." There was a hint of greater meaning in the last statement, heavy below the whisper and difficult to identify. What it meant would remain a mystery for a very long time. "After all, even murderers were children once." There was a brief moment of silence, and she looked thoughtful, and even distant.

She shook her head. "I am sorry. I did not mean to veer onto a tangent and ramble there. I commend you on the solidity of your beliefs. May they remain steadfast and your arrows be true." There was a gleam in her eye, and she grinned. "For now, I suggest we depart like the rest of the faithful, and let most of these people," She was not unaware that many in the crowd would have noticed and recognized her, "Remain oblivious of any lack of faith you or I might possess."

She pushed away from the wall, and paused to listen to any other words Iome had to say. Her eyes followed the departing back of the porch philosopher, his crimson coat a brilliant beacon among the crowd. Under her breath, she whispered, "I'll be damned." The vague temptation to set the end of his cigar to flaming rose and soon passed like the whisp of its smoke in the wind. She chuckled softly, hollowly, and looked up at Iome once more. Perhaps the faith of this crowd was weaker than she had guessed, or he was stronger than she had guessed. Both, probably. Intruiging.

And suddenly, it came to mind that there was more to this than it seemed. More to all of this...

A slow, cold smile curves her thin lips at Pyra’s initial comment. One gloved hand brushed a few strands of golden blond hair that has escaped the confines of her hood to dance before her sharply featured face. “My passion stems from my belief that the innocent should be protected from evil at all costs. But...”

She trailed off, worried that she had revealed too much already. She was one who liked to keep her thoughts and feelings to herself, to weigh and measure each in turn before coming to a conclusion or revealing her stance of an issue. But this wrecked her carefully guarded silence. All she could see was the thickly featured face of her second mother, lined with grief as she was cast out of her village for the ‘crime’ of having been kidnapped and raped. All because some deity proclaimed soiled women were not fit to be lived with.

She hadn’t noticed how hard she’d clenched her fist or that she’d been grinding her teeth. She listened in silence to Pyra’s words. There was wisdom to them, but also a certain… indifference. Iome stared into the face of the fiery red-head, what she could see in the shadows of the hood. They’d both seen pain and death and horrors beyond belief. She knew not the names of those that plagued Pyra, but they were in her eyes, lurking in violet shadows. Perhaps she had found a way to shut away the pain, to ignore it. Iome saw the face of every charred body, every headless child’s corpse, and every disfigured woman in her dreams, in her nightmares.

Pyra began to walk away and Iome had offered no other response. She merely bowed her head and before turning to walk on her way, she whispered on the summer breeze, “May the Gods be with you.” She wandered on her way, to chew over Pyra’s words and, perhaps, to search for a few moment of peace. For Iome’s Gods did not live in a church in the words of men. They lived in the trees and in the sky. And they lived in the hearts of the innocent.