The Assassin and the Sorceress Ch. 08

"All irrelevant! None of this nullifies our pact. In fact, your good work today only solidifies it further."

"Bullshit! I'll never come to you!"

"It seems you don't fully understand how promises work, Morgana. In the material world you are familiar with, words are as wind. But in my world, the spirit world, ideas form the fabric of reality. And in this world made of ideas, promises are stronger than chains of iron! You might not find breaking a solemn promise to be so easy as deciding not to make good on it."

"More bullshit! I... will... never... join you!"

"And even if you could find a way out of our pact, where, exactly, do you plan to go, if not by my side?"

"Wherever the souls of the departed usually go."

"Oh... that might not be such a good idea. I would advise against that."

"Why?" I scoffed, tersely.

"Because, in selling your soul to me, you have denied yourself redemption from your sins! I'll tell you where the souls of the departed usually go. They give their souls to God. Only then can God judge them, cleanse them of their sins, and accept them into Paradise. But you have already promised your soul to someone else. Your soul is no longer yours to commit to God. Therefore, there will be no judgement for you, and so your sins shall stain your immortal soul for the rest of eternity!

"And today... today you have become a murderer, Morgana, guilty of the most grievous sin in all of creation! As you said yourself, everything you ever loved is now dead by your own hand. Poor Joseph! The first man you ever loved, and you snapped his neck in cold blood! Of all the murders you committed today, that was my favorite by far. To snuff the life out of someone so dear to you, just because he agitated you! Such brutality! It was beautiful!

"Oh, no. When your immortal soul departs your flesh, you must tread nowhere near God's holy kingdom. For if he catches one glimpse of your corrupted soul, he will surely cast you into the deepest pit of Hell! Do you think you know pain? Torment? After one moment of the fires of hell, you will yearn even for the time you were coated in burning oil! And that for the rest of eternity! There's nowhere else to go. You might as well come to me instead."

"GOD DAMN YOU, VERUS! Then maybe I just won't die! And I know I can do it, too! If you won't take your gift back, then I'll use it to keep myself alive forever!"

"Then we will play a waiting game. And I am ageless, Morgana. Do you have any reckoning, any at all, of how long forever truly is? How many human lifetimes will you hold out before you can't bear it anymore? A dozen? A hundred? A thousand? The blink of an eye to me! You'll go mad long before I will even grow bored! And then, you will join me, all the same."

"Why? Why do you even want me?" I screamed, exasperated.

"A human soul has more power than you may realize, and no two of them are alike. But a soul as unique as yours is exceptional even among the countless souls I have already collected over the course of creation. With a slave like you at my disposal, I will be that much more powerful."

"I will never do you bidding! I'll fight you with all my being!"

"We shall see. I've had far less willing servants than you who have served me very well, indeed."

"I've decimated an army with the power you gave me! Maybe I'll use it to kill you, too! You'll be my last and most deserving victim!"

More laughter. "Despite your cleverness, Morgana, you can be such a fool. Do you really think I would forge a weapon that could ever be turned against me? By my gift to you, you have power over your physical world, and the physical world alone. My true essence doesn't reside there. You could no more threaten me with the Oculus than you could kill a man by plunging a sword into the shadow he casts upon the ground. You are bound to me now. After your death, your immortal soul will join me, to be my servant forever! There is nothing you can do."

"You're lying! YOU'RE LYING!"

His only response was more of that hideously arrogant 'laughter.'

...

I wandered aimlessly in the woods, shivering as the rain came pouring down on me. I didn't care. Had any soul that ever was ever been more lost than I was right now? I should have let Abel burn me alive! At least that way my immortal soul could have been saved.

I eventually collapsed under the relative shelter of a large oak tree and despaired, clutching in my hand the rock of my damnation. In the end, Verus had returned it to me, thrown from the darkness of the cave by an unseen hand and landing by my feet. I had considered leaving it as a final act of defiance, but I knew Verus had won. He had damned me. I took it.

I don't know if I slept, or simply lay there, wishing I could die. When I sat up again, it was dawn, and the rain had stopped. Now that I had come to my senses, the will to live seemed to have returned to me, along with the desire for basic creature comforts. I connected to the Oculus and dried myself off, then healed the remainder of my bruises.

Where would I go now? What was there for me in the world anymore?

I eventually decided to return to the remains of Ash. I needed to give the dead a dignified burial. I owed them that much, at least. I also wanted to count the dead, and at least attempt to name them. Maybe that would tell me who had escaped alive.

When I finally found my way back to town, I discovered well over half of the village had bunt down. The rain seemed to have stopped the spread of the fire, but the areas that had been affected had been burnt to the ground.

First, I counted the dead in the streets. Of course, there was Joseph in the street where he had martyred himself to end my rampage. Next, I counted the dead in the town square, which had suffered the brunt of my wrath. There were twenty-three in all, nineteen of them were soldiers, either pulverized or charred by the rocks I had thrown. Those closest to where the molten rocks had landed were only recognizable to my eyes by the puddles half-melted armor which sat atop piles of grey ash, now turned to mud in the rain. Even their bones had been incinerated.

The day grew even more somber when I searched the houses for victims of the fire. There were forty-seven in all, including men, women, and children. They had probably tried to take shelter in their homes, only to be consumed by the fire. These I recognized through the sight of the Oculus. Their bones were still intact, and the Oculus easily distinguished them from the charred remains of their houses around them. I wonder how many lives had been saved when the rain had stopped the spread of the fire.

The last area was the castle itself. There were five soldiers who had died in the collapse of the wall. As I approached the threshold, the site where my final rage had been kindled, I heard someone crying for help from within the castle. It was Susan! I had left her in there! How could I have forgotten!

I ran to the throne room. Her cries for help intensified as she must have heard me approaching. Yet, as soon as I entered the throne room, I watched all hope suddenly drain from her face as she saw it was only me.

Four more dead soldiers littered the floor here: the one I had thrown against the wall, the unlucky one behind him, and two more I seem to have killed accidentally. And, of course, there was Abel, still skewered to his throne by his own sword, now dead. His eyes and mouth hung open on his stiff, pallid face in an accusatory death stare. Suddenly, I felt bad for killing even him. There had been eighty-one deaths in all, all my fault. The population of Ash had literally been decimated. This didn't even count those who might have die on the exodus, a road of many miles, traveled by a party that would have included children, elderly, and the sick and injured, and almost certainly would have had no time to gather proper provisions.

Though Susan hadn't been able to escape with the rest of the survivors of Ash, she could at least count herself as one of the survivors. Less certain, however, was whether she could count herself among the fortunate or the unfortunate that day. Or perhaps even the dead were fortunate compared to her.

As I approached Susan, she looked up at me and gave a single, pitiful whimper. I could tell she had been crying. A lot. The poor girl had been trapped in this graveyard... no, this slaughterhouse since the violence the night before, probably wondering if she would starve to death still bound to that chair. She would have watched the Lord Magistrate die, I realized. How long had it taken him to die from that wound? Did they converse while he still clung to life, or did they both sit there in hopeless silence?

I released her from her chair. She staggered weakly to her feet, then took a few steps back, recoiling in fear and waiting to see what I would do. She seemed to understand how pointless running would have been.

"It appears it's just the two of us now," I said to her.

6

Morgana sat there on her bed in silence. Adrielle, still sitting in the armchair facing her, decided to give her another minute in case she had anything else to add, but it seemed she had come to the end of her story.

"What did you do with her," Adrielle asked, finally breaking the silence.

"I took her in with me. Oh, bother! Why mince words? I kidnapped her! I could have tracked down where the people of Ash fled to and taken her to them. Or, at least I could have tried. I didn't. She was the last person in the whole world I had, so I told her they were all gone. That way, she would need me to provide food and shelter and such. I buried the dead, and then we made our new home in the castle. This castle.

"I wasn't kind to her. I know she had treated me poorly before, but nothing she had done made her deserve what I did to her. All those things I had fantasized about doing to her... I did all of those things to her and more. She was my slave. My plaything. How I treated you when you first got here wasn't good, either. It wasn't nearly as bad as how I treated her back then, but still..."

"Yes?"

"I'm sorry. I'm sorry for how I treated you, Adrielle."

"Oh! Well, I'm glad to hear that."

"Even what you came here to try to do wasn't a good justification. It was all because of a misunderstanding. Except, had you known the whole truth about me that day, maybe you still would have wanted to kill me. And I couldn't even blame you for that."

"That's not true."

"Really? You wouldn't want to kill the murderer of eighty-one people? Have any of your other targets killed so many people?"

"First of all, yes. But more importantly, it's not about numbers. I've been sent to kill fourteen people in my life, but I don't count those among my greater sins. You didn't 'murder' those people. They were trying to kill you! I've never had boiling oil poured over me, but I've been in dire situations like that before. And I know how the frenzy takes over. You turn into an animal. I wouldn't be alive today if it weren't for that."

"Don't tell me I'm not to blame!"

"I'm not. I'm trying to tell you that you aren't beyond redemption!"

"Weren't you listening? I bargained my soul to Verus! He owns it now! That means redemption isn't coming for me! All the sins I've committed will never be cleansed from my soul, because I willingly bartered away my right to stand in judgement before God! Now only Verus can save me from the damnation he himself condemned me to!"

"Who is he?"

"Verus? He's the Devil, Adrielle! The fallen angel, Lucifer! The very same! I always knew. I can be so intelligent sometimes, so clever! Yet, at the same time... so, utterly lacking in wisdom. He told me that he wasn't Satan, the Great Deceiver, that the Devil didn't even exist, and so thoroughly did I believe his lies that I named him Truth!"

"The Devil... are you sure?"

"If not him, then a servant of his carrying out his will. I don't think it would make much difference."

"I... I see." Adrielle tried to think of something to say, but she could think of nothing.

"What can I do?"

"I don't know. I don't know much about the Devil. Even less about how deals with him work."

"It's hopeless, isn't it?"

"No, it can't be!"

"How?"

"I don't know, but that can't be the final word. I'll think of something. If there was a way out of it, do you think he'd tell you? He's the Deceiver, after all. But it can't be hopeless! It just can't be! My faith in God tells me that! God is all-powerful, and he loves every one of us, despite our sins. Even those of us who have taken the lives of others! I know he hasn't given up on you! Therefore, there has to still be a way for you to save yourself, because He wills it!"

"I'm glad to hear you say that! You have no idea how comforting that is. Adrielle... thank you. Thank you for trying to help me."

With that, Adrielle got up from her chair and sat down on the bed next to Morgana. "Anything for you," she whispered into her ear as she unfastened her cloak for her and slid if off her shoulders, then pulled back the blankets, inviting her to lie down next to her. Morgana kicked off her boots and laid down next to Adrielle, and the two women embraced, listening to the silence. There were no sounds but their breathing and the beating of their hearts.

And then, suddenly, from just outside Morgana's chamber door, there came the sound of bare feet padding away down the hall... and the soft jingle of extravagant jewelry.