The Infinite Bk. 04 Ch. 09

Absolution

It was the middle of the night, and the Knight's Sheath had settled. The bar was closed, and courtesans lay in their beds beside blacked-out and satisfied customers. All was at peace. But then, that peace was interrupted. There was no warning, only the flash and roar as a barrage of fireballs was unleashed. They splashed against the exterior of the building, lighting up the windows and spraying flames in all directions, shaking everyone awake.

Those who had been present at the original fire of Galvin's retaliation, those who had survived the flames, released screams of terror as horrific nightmares came rushing back. It was happening all over again. They would be destitute once more, that is, if the fire didn't devour them. However, while this would have been a tragedy months ago, the culprits in the street outside found their efforts wasted.

"It's not burning!" one of the robed men cursed, watching as the flames simply withered away, as if they were hitting a stone cliff.

Nothing burned, courtesy of the countless wards of protection Cyrilo and Sophia had laid out across the entire building. Magic circles and runic lines had been written across walls, floors, ceilings, window frames, support beams, and the roof and painted over. It was a fortune in high-grade ink, but the spells were rendered useless.

"Hit it with everything!" another ordered.

The attackers, numbering almost a dozen, raised their hands and unleashed their magic. Bolts of lightning, jets of flame, boulders, water bombs, air blasts, and holy rays bombarded the building like raining artillery, but despite the attackers' best efforts, the Knight's Sheath stood resolute. They could see it with each failed impact, a protective barrier of mana made visible in the darkness, shielding the building from all outside force. This defense kept Uther's armies from breaching the walls of Welindar for so many years.

"This isn't working, we need to go! Hurry and--" An arrow was planted in the man's chest, cutting him off. A second arrow then hit the man beside him in the gut.

"Up there!" a third pointed, directing his cohorts' eyes to a window where Alexis stood, wearing nothing but a nightgown and quiver of arrows, and holding a bow.

"Sorry, we're closed for the night!"

She rained arrows down on the attackers, nailing the men with rapid speed and pinpoint aim, and drawing agonized cries. None of the shots were fatal, not that they needed to be. Each arrow was enchanted with a lightning spell, electrocuting the targets while the paralyzing agent that coated the arrowheads entered their bloodstreams. Her victims were robbed of movement, no longer able to end their lives.

"Scatter!" one of the men barked.

The remaining attackers tried to flee, but Alexis wasn't going to let them go. She dropped a rope from the window, rappelled down, and then took off barefoot through the street. She chased after men, planting arrows in their backs and taking them down like big game. It was over quickly, and Alexis dragged her stunned prey back to the Knight's Sheath, where they were bound and gagged out front.

Windows in all the surrounding buildings were lighting up as citizens, awoken by the sounds of violence, stepped outside to see what was happening. As usual, the knights and soldiers were late to the scene, but this time, they wouldn't simply be hauling away corpses.

"Enchanted arrows with poisoned tips? That is nasty in the best way," said Frigga as the assailants were loaded into a prisoner wagon.

"Dead men tell no tales, so we had to work around it," said Cyrilo, speaking in her cat form with Sophia holding her.

"Are you sure you can get them to talk?" asked Alexis, now dressed.

"Gradius may be gone, but the inquisitors under him are ready and waiting, and Sir Berholm can be pretty intimidating in his own right. You've done well in capturing these guys."

"Will you let us know what they say?"

"Definitely. I'm quite curious myself."

Once the knights left and everything settled, Cyrilo, Sophia, and Alexis went back into the Knight's Sheath, but they didn't return to their beds. Instead, they went down into the basement.

"Are you sure this is a good idea?" Sophia asked as Alexis unlocked the door to a back room. "What happens if the kingdom finds out?"

"The whole reason I'm doing this is because of the kingdom. I trust knights like Frigga to do the right thing, but the church still holds too much influence for me to expect answers. This is the only way to get some honesty."

She opened the door, revealing a dingy room lit by some candles. In the center sat one of the attackers, still bloody from his healed arrow wound and tied to a chair with a gag in his mouth. A magic circle had been inscribed on the ground around him, preventing him from using any spells. Lucius and Daniel were there, keeping an eye on him.

"How's he doing?" Cyrilo asked.

"He's been struggling against the binds a bit, so I think that toxin might be wearing off," said Lucius.

"Good, let's see what he has to say."

Lucius pulled the gag out of the man's mouth, and he immediately began to swear. "Goddamn beast heathen! My soul will be welcomed into the gods' embrace, but you all will be cast into mud for your sins! Do your worst, you fucking--"

A punch from Lucius interrupted the rant and splattered blood onto the floor. Sophia winced and looked away.

"Sophia, go wait upstairs," Cyrilo said as she hopped from her arms. Sophia didn't even reply; she just fled the room. Cyrilo walked over to Daniel, and he picked her up so she could speak at the man's eye level. "I hope that punch managed to knock some sense into you. You aren't going to be rescued. No one is coming to save you. If you don't want your bloated corpse to be fished out of the harbor, you'd better start talking. Who sent you? Who is in charge?"

"You think death scares me? I came here ready to die for my beliefs, eager to drag you fucking heretics to the grave with me, so do me a favor: eat shit and choke on it." His words earned him another punch from Lucius.

"Die at your own hand, maybe," said Cyrilo. "At least then, it's nice and quick and in your control. Even dying in battle would be your choice. But look at your current position. Do you really feel in control? We have all the time in the world to pull out your secrets."

"Everything you do just proves me right. You're nothing but a bunch of soulless beasts, here in your temple of sin."

This time, Alexis punched him. "You bastards think you're so righteous?! You kill people and burn down buildings with no respect for life! When did the gods ever give you the right to act like monsters and still look down on us?!" She punched him again. "Talk, damn it!"

The man spat out a mouthful of blood. "I don't talk to filthy animals or whores."

"I think I got an idea to make him spill the beans," said Daniel. "I just need a rope with a knot on the end, and I know for a fact that we have a chair without a seat somewhere in this house."

"Just leave this to me," said Lucius. "I know how to make people talk."

"Daniel, take me upstairs," said Cyrilo. "I find myself craving some tea while we wait."

She and Daniel left, but Alexis remained behind with Lucius, standing back and watching him crack his knuckles and crick his neck.

"You know, as a soldier, we were tasked with killing monsters and bandits, not that there is much difference between the two. You hunt them, you trap them, and you spill their blood onto the ground." He kneed the man in the jaw, busting his teeth and drawing a groan of agony. "In order to keep the trail from going cold, whenever we raided a bandit camp, we'd always allow one of them to slip free. Do you know why? It's because they would lead us to the next camp, and we'd start the process all over." He punched the man in the gut, hard enough to make him spit blood.

"There were other times, when the only way to find the next camp was this right here. You had to rip the information out of them by force, and we didn't have any fancy torture devices like the inquisitors in the dungeon. We were out in the wilderness and had to rely on our fists and whatever we had on hand to get the job done, so we had to figure out how to punch someone in the head without knocking them out, how much damage you can give them before they'd die. It was a long, messy process of trial and error, but we got pretty good at it."

Lucius punched the man square in the nose, pulverizing the cartilage. "But you wanna know the real secret? You gotta keep telling yourself that who you're beating up isn't a person. They're just a nuisance, a problem on two feet. They're the thorn in your side, the shit on your boot, the mosquito sucking your blood. Their life isn't worth anything, so you can do whatever you want to them as long as it leads to answers. You hear what I'm saying? It wasn't enough not to mind hurting them, you had to learn to like it, like it a real lot."

Lucius stomped on the man's balls, making him vomit in pain. "Sometimes it wasn't just bandits we questioned, but the people sheltering them, the citizens who knew and kept their mouths shut. And do you know what the rules were for them? Exactly the same as they were for the bandits. It didn't matter why they did it, whether they were bribed, blackmailed, or threatened. They were just another obstacle in the way. You don't want to know the kinds of thing I did to the people I was supposed to protect, but you will, because I'm going to do them all to you. Believe me when I say it's in your best interest to start talking."

"I'd rather die," the man groaned.

"Oh trust me, that'll happen soon enough, but not the way you want it to."

Lucius continued the beating, using his fists as tools of torture. There was no hesitation in his actions, and he paused only to give the man the opportunity to speak or pick him up after accidentally knocking him over. Blood splatters covered the room as the interrogation went on.

Alexis, who had initially felt herself burning with such fury, now felt her stomach turn into a bubbling cauldron of anxiety. It was getting harder to watch Lucius pummel the man, and the sounds of his fist striking and blood splashing made her wince. She felt sick and didn't know why. After all the lives she had taken, all the fights she had been in, why was this disturbing her so?

She then realized she had seen this before. It all came flashing back, Noah's fight with Seraph. She remembered Noah's brutality, the punches raining down on an opponent too weak to resist. The realization made her sicker, and she silently wished the man would give in and talk, if only so that she wouldn't have to witness any more savagery. She dared not look, and it took everything she had not to cover her ears to block out the violence.

Eventually, Lucius stepped back, dripping sweat and out of breath. The man, still bound to the chair, was wheezing with blood trickling from his face, which now looked like ground beef. "Call me impressed. You're resilient, I'll give you that. Tell me who put you up to this, and the pain will stop."

"N-n-never," the man whispered, struggling to speak with a swollen mouth missing its teeth.

"Fine, have it your way. No more going easy." Lucius walked over to a corner table and returned with a rusty knife.

Alexis stepped forward and stopped him. "No more, we can't do this," she murmured.

"What are you talking about? These bastards just tried to burn down the Knight's Sheath and kill everyone inside."

"This man is despicable, and he deserves to be punished for what he did, but you're beating on an opponent who can't fight back."

"Well this isn't a fight, it's an interrogation. There is no honor or rules. You want answers? This is how we get them"

"Not like this. There has to be another way to get what we need."

"Do you think the inquisitors are treating his friends better? They're doing the exact same thing we are for the exact same reason."

"I know that! But... this is not the person I want to be, and not the person I want you to be either."

Lucius gave a weary sigh. "I already am this person. I became this person before you were born. Look, I'm not going to argue with you about this. This is what's happening. You either have the stomach for it, or you need to leave. Those are your only two options, so what'll it be?"

Alexis looked down, her shoulders trembling, then turned and left the room. She moved up the stairs with unsteady feet and stumbled into the parlor, where everyone was waiting.

"Alexis?" Sophia asked, worriedly.

Alexis said nothing to her and wandered outside as though she was drunk. She stood still for a moment, looking up at the stars and breathing the night air, then leaned over and retched into the street. Sophia rushed outside to comfort her, realizing that she was crying.

"I thought I was ready," Alexis said through tearful gasps. "After all my training, all my hard work, all my fights, I thought I was strong enough to do this, but I'm not. If this is what it takes to change the world, then now I know why it never changes."

Sophia hugged her while sniffling. "You are strong enough. You're as strong as you need to be, and as strong as I want you to be. Please, don't ever change."

They stood like that outside while the screams of pain began under the Knight's Sheath.

----------

"The priest's name is Marduel, and according to the assassin, he was the middleman for handing down orders," said Lucius, speaking in Cyrilo's study with Alexis and Sophia the following day.

"Hmmm, Marduel, I believe he follows Lumendori in the local cathedral. Hopefully he'll have some answers for us."

"Should we go to the knights with this?" Sophia asked.

"And tell them what?" Cyrilo countered. "Tell them about the name we got from the man we tortured in our basement? He is useless to us as evidence. We can only use him to provide a clue for our next step. Lucius, what's his condition?"

"Dead. He made himself drown in his own blood."

Alexis and Sophia both winced at the description.

"Well at least that simplifies things. Keep him down in the basement. I'll figure out the means of disposal. Now, let's go talk to this Priest Marduel. Lucius, you stay here and hold down the fort. Ladies, come with me."

As they all left Cyrilo's study, Alexis stopped Lucius. "I just wanted to say I'm sorry about last night. I was too weak to do what needed to be done. It won't happen again."

Lucius rested his hand on her shoulder and gave a sad smile and sigh. "When I was your age, I had the chance to draw a line like you did, and I didn't. I chose instead to tell myself it wasn't my fault, that everything I did was for the greater good, because I was just following orders. I thought I could just bury everything and wash the blood off my hands, but I was wrong. I've regretted it every day of my life. Don't expect the world to abide by that line, there will always be a price to pay for maintaining it, but it's better to suffer for that line than not to have one at all."

"Thank you," Alexis replied.

She, Cyrilo, and Sophia left the Knight's Sheath and boarded a carriage to the nearby cathedral. It had been a long night for all three of them, but at the moment, they couldn't sleep if they wanted to, not until they pulled on this thread and found out where it ended. Given the tense situation, Alexis carried both a short sword and a bow, ready for any enemy that might appear. They disembarked in front of the church and hesitantly entered. This early in the morning, Cyrilo was in her feline form, and Sophia carried her.

The church was mostly empty, minus the dozen congregants taking their morning prayers. They passed by pews bathed in the colored light of the windows overhead. Half depicted the six elements, and the rest showed saints and great warriors from the church's past. At the end of the cathedral hung a line of flags depicting a rune of one of the elemental gods. A middle-aged man in a white robe, marked with the sigil of Lumendori, was reading silently at the podium but stopped when the three approached.

"Priest Marduel, I believe you know why we're here," said Cyrilo.

The fear on his face was evident, but still, he tried to weasel his way out. "I'm sorry, but I have--"

"Don't, just don't," Alexis warned.

"Your name was given to us last night by a certain individual. I'm sure your congregants would love to know the context."

He gave in. "Come with me, we'll talk in my study."

They followed him out of the main hallway and into the building beyond, with Alexis keeping her hand on her short sword. He brought them to his private office, with shelves lined with books and religious antiques. As Marduel moved behind his desk, Cyrilo spoke up. "Keep your hands where we can see them."

He obliged and sat down, sighing in exhaustion as though the day was ending instead of starting. Alexis and Sophia took the chairs on the other side of the desk while Cyrilo hopped onto the desk, staring straight into the priest's eyes.

"So, let's get the obvious out of the way: you sent those men to burn down my establishment and kill everyone inside. Are you going to deny it again, or show some dignity?"

"I... I didn't know what they would be doing. The men came here last night, having already received half of their orders from someone else. My job was to tell them where those orders would be carried out. I myself was ordered to direct them to the Knight's Sheath."

"By who?"

"I don't know. There are times when orders are delivered via letter, unsigned, but bearing the official church seal. I'm simply a degree of separation between those up top and those below."

"What a virtuous endeavor for a man of faith, to keep your bosses from getting their hands dirty," Alexis hissed.

"We all have our role to play in the gods' plan," he replied, unable to make eye contact.

"I refuse to believe that's where your involvement ends," said Cyrilo. "Tell me everything you know, or tell it to the inquisitors. Why is the church so desperate to get rid of us? They would have never had the balls to do something like this a year ago."

"You know why. What happened since last year?"

"Noah," Sophia gasped.

"His feud with Prince Galvin and his mother was exactly what the church wanted. His infamy let us paint him as a villain that could unite the masses through shared disgust and outrage. He became a point of reference we could use to direct our flock away from, an example to warn against and prove our fears for the nation. However, the damage he inflicted was more than we could ever expect. It wasn't just his actions against the Herald family that made him famous, it was the bloodshed of the Red Revelry."

"The night of a hundred heads," said Alexis, thinking back to Daniel's song.

"The official story is that he suggested the area solely for tactical use against the revelers and bounty hunters, but the fact that the night ended with a pile of severed heads in front of the church sent chills down the spine of everyone in the clergy. We hoped to use it to paint him as an enemy of the gods. After that, there was the matter of Prince Seraph."

"What does Seraph have to do with this?" Alexis asked.

"Everything. Despite his father's best efforts to keep him away from us, the church has been grooming him to rule. When Adwith Tarnas first arrived, we'd never heard of 'Light's Emissary,' but his power was nothing short of divine. We tried to welcome him into the church, hoping to make him a mighty cardinal that would galvanize our followers, but he refused, and Seraph was going to be our next big chance. We planned to paint him as the hero our country needed, while Noah seemed a perfect nemesis, representing everything the church opposed, and would serve as Seraph's stepping stone.