Private Tales A World Governed by Providence

[Emelia Atchins]

The touch brought her back to the here and the now and the laughter and tears cut off abruptly. The twisted mirth melted from her features as she turned to look at Marta with blank incomprehension as she tried to run the stream of words back through her mind one by one.

Marta was clearly of a higher caste within society, much better educated than Emelia. After an uncomfortably long minute, the middle-aged woman shrugged.

She gestured to the door with her free arm shrugged again. Name me a man who isn't poisoned so? She mouthed the words carefully and slowly and with a hint of some regret on her face. She raised that free arm and thrust it into Marta's face so that she could see the thin crisscrossing scars. She pantomimed being struck in the face.

There was a dangerous light glowing in her eyes, a reflection of the poisonous hatred that smoldered beneath the surface. She met Marta's eyes, spite and hate flaring in her eyes. They do not know what fate awaits them, she said silently. And meant it.

 

[Priestess Marta Maisal]

The tightness of struggling comprehension was plain on Marta's face. Alas, she was no experienced lip reader. Unskilled as she was in the practice, only the most obvious formations of the lips—like the "h" sound of who and the "p" in poisoned—could she discern. The fullness of Emelia's meaning would be lost.

Guesswork continued, though this with more hope of understanding, as Emelia roughly put on display the series of old scars on her arm—this accompanied by a violent motion. Marta, without much context, had but guesswork indeed. Was Emelia a sort of vigilante? Had something of this effect, the misfortune they both were suffering now, happened before at the hands of Allirian criminals?

Then came the clearest of all signs. Ever did the eyes unveil the character of their keeper, and her Marta saw anger, hatred, burning intent. It was like the look of a Regulator glaring down at a foul Curite, given wholly to the consumption of magic. And yes, some things deserved the utmost of one's scorn.

"Keep that same fire. Keep it alight in your breast, hidden from your countenance as best you are able, but ignite it fiercely when comes the appointed time," Marta said lowly. And she added with a satisfied smile, "Evil fears good that is so ablaze."

Emelia Atchins

 

[Emelia Atchins]

She nodded slowly. Of course she would keep the flame of spite alive. She didn't have anything else to hold to, after all. Her husband was dead, and her only child years longer in the grave than even the abuser that had beat the both of them every night.

Evil fears nothing, she mouthed as she shook her head ever so slightly. Evil had rooted itself in Alliria for a long time and had never been rooted out, not even close. There had been a time when she had felt powerless to do anything about that, or her lot in life.

It was why she had taken the Faustian bargain: her voice for power. If only the power could replace what had been taken from her. Nothing would bring her the life she had imagined she would have, nor return to her the life of her son. Vengeance was shallow, it turned out. The ashes in the hearth of revenge turned cold quickly and left the hearth unutterably empty.

She looked at the door with intensity, hands clenched into fists. They will die by their own hands, she said in absolute silence.

 

[Priestess Marta Maisal]

The shaking of Emelia's head gave evidence to doubt on her part. Of what, Marta could not say with certainty. Though with the volcanic look Emelia gave to the door of their cell, doubt of their deliverance seemed very much not to be it. Praetor Irene, whom Marta knew not closely but well enough, might take a shine to the likes of Emelia.

"Then let us give mercy its leave, for its gentle presence shall not be needed here."

* * * * *​

So they would sit for an hour, two hours, difficult was it to tell. Yet it was for a time seemingly interminable. To fill this duration Marta mentally steeled herself, fortifying her body for what was to come with the nourishment of the mind and spirit. She thought back to her time in the Temple of the Everburning Flame's seminary, as she after the War College went to further her theological study. Before the assembly of bashrahips and bashrahibes she had given her dissertation, the capstone of her training, to be inducted into the priesthood. She thought of it now, in summarized form:

No one is burdened by misfortune without their own consent.

The Gods of Order, among whose divine company Regel is a part, did not fashion upon this world slaves to the ceaseless stream of cause and effect. Nature abounds with prescribed order, and the Gods' laws closely guard all the elements of the world; ever bidden is the sun to rise in the east and set in the west, ever bidden is Pneria to cross before the slow march of Lessat every forty and five days. Yet these heavenly commands which permeate the whole of the physical world remain absent from that which is best of all the Gods' creations.

The mortal spirit.

Where even the most mysterious and seemingly capricious elements of the world, like that which forms the crooks and bends of a bolt of lightning, are determined, and that the products of this determination will go on to provide cause—seen or unseen—for further determination, true freedom is granted to mortalkind. Each man's will is his own, each woman's her own. What service, therefore, does this provide to the Gods, who in their great capacity could have made each of their children as bound to Order as the recess and surge of the tides?

It provides them with children of true goodness, proven character, and displayed virtue.

And to mortalkind, these are the greatest gifts of all. Born without disposition to good or evil, the spirit is ready to be uniquely shaped, the pot that is its own potter. The consequences of the Gods' ordering, alongside the full range of free actions, beneficent and malevolent, of one's fellow mortals, present themselves to the spirit, and it is the spirit which decides how it shall be affected. None can coerce it, none can coax it, for your will is blessed with freedom. All at turns, the choice to embrace Order or give in to Chaos is yours. "But misfortune has struck me." So, then, will you endure it, triumph, and come through all the stronger, brimming with life and light yet? Or will you descend into despair, one of the chief weapons of the Gods of Chaos, and curse the world and all creation? To either of these ends, the journey begins with one's own consent, and one's own consent alone.

And so was Marta steeled.

For at the top of the staircase, much movement could be heard, and men would soon be returning. Yet all of them, all of them, were powerless to diminish her fire. It mattered not whether the newborn day ended with her liberation or her death. She had the courage for both, to secure her return to Gild or to secure her place alongside Regel in the Fields of Duzen.

So let them come. Misfortune? These men would merely be proofs of Marta's character.

And she looked sidelong to Emelia, a knowing glance, an invitation to strike when came their best chance.

Emelia Atchins

 

[Emelia Atchins]

The character of what ran through Emelia's head couldn't have been further from that which steeled the soul of the priestess.

She found the time left in captivity to be maddening in its own unique way. Usually, she could while the hours away working on the nearly ceaseless tasks of mundane life; helping run a way house was an endless task of cleaning and repairing, cooking and waiting upon guests. Running a household in the capacity that she had was equally taxing. Reph worked all day - from before first light until long after dusk.

Sitting idle only left time to reflect on herself, and she did not like what she saw.

She knew she was broken in some way. Some fundamental part of her had been shattered; the cracks had appeared when Sam had died. The mind shied away from that brutality, but even so she could still see her boy broken and bleeding from where she was laying on the floor.

Also broken and bleeding, but from wounds that never healed. Flesh and bone would mend. The spirit? The soul?

Killing the bastard responsible hadn't mended it. She couldn't stop loving him even as he choked to death, hands wrapped round his throat. Sam's death had cracked her; Reph's shattered her into pieces that she had tried to scrape together and reassemble.

Killing Korsk had finished what the other two events had started. Hollowed her out and left her an empty vessel, devoid of any feeling. It didn't make sense, either. She should have been elated to see the criminal under-lord 's blood slowly spreading on the ground. Poetic justice for turning a loving husband into the monster that abused her and Sam until...

She blinked, turned away in her head. Didn't bear repeating, reliving, remembering.

The sound of activity brought her out of the unwelcome introspection. She blinked wearily at Marta, and then looked at the door intently. Just a hint of flame and heat and dark allure ran through her flesh and blood in anticipation.

A dark echo of the fae spirit she had bound herself too in the pursuit of hollow vengeance.

 

[Priestess Marta Maisal]

Men descended the stairs.

First came Daelin—in whom Marta's disappointment had become immeasurable. The same two Kaliti muscle-men came as well. Then came an as yet unseen man, tall and lithe and wearing black, who gave off the air of a well-trained bodyguard. And last there came an old man, his back bent by his years, the sound of his cane thumping the floor in tune with his footsteps; he wore even at this hour extravagant clothing, and it was quite clear that he was wealthy indeed. He might have looked out of place among the ruffians, if not for the particularly callous gleam now present in his eyes—he was a man of business who lacked scruples, and let nothing hold him back.

"So what do we have, then," said the old man, Thurbin Hofnel, proprietor of many brothels, both legal and illicit.

"The exotic one, as mentioned," Daelin said. "Letai."

Thurbin snickered, a harsh throaty sound, and limply pointed his cane at Marta. "There are men who prefer to have relations with mules. You know that? Mules. I said it before, I'll say it again: somewhere between those men and the men who fancy women, you have the men who covet Letai. And they pay well. Yes, very well. Hard to come by, these, and the variety is enticing for those clients. I'll take her." He then looked to Emelia. "What about that one?"

"An extra. Secured in the process. She fills a certain...niche, doesn't she?"

Thurbin's jaw swirled around as he considered it. "Her too, then." And with a gesture of his hand to the cell door he said, "Well, let's have the inspection, and we'll move this along. I'm headed back to Annuakat in but a few hours' time."

The Kaliti men took their cue. They opened the cell door, and strode inside.

"Do not touch me," Marta said, more out of defensive reflex than in harmony with any cunning plan.

The Kaliti men each stood before the women, and Thurbin just cackled from outside the bars. He surmised what Marta thought the inspection entailed. "My dear, it's hardly that. If you've seen one pair of breasts, one cleft tucked away between a woman's thighs, you've seen them all. No, I need to see if my investment is healthy."

The Kaliti man standing before Marta said to her: "Open your mouth." The one standing before Emelia gave a small sideways nod to his comrade, hinting at the same command for her.

They intended to check their teeth for obvious signs of disease. In a similar manner as one might check a horse's teeth for age.

Emelia Atchins

 

[Emelia Atchins]

Pale eyes regarded the men that entered the cell with hostility. They tracked each of the men as they entered, muscle-bound and quiet. The third man through the door made her consider, for a moment, a course of action. She knew a hired sword when she saw one - sometimes the merchants that frequented the family business brought them along with.

He was likely the most dangerous of all four men in the room.

Anger and spite roiled in her guts, curling round the ball of icy fear that never really left. Maybe, after a fashion, she was actually brave; after all, she soldiered on despite crippling fear that she would again be subject to another. Powerless and unable to stop her world from being shattered.

The heat of a Fae with burning eyes and a sultry voice boiled the blood in her veins. Something like a sexual tension filled her as it raced through her body, potential untapped. Unbridled power.

"...she can watch as her tormentors cow before her mighty words..."

Echoes of that voice in her head made her heart race, desire and terror rippling through her. The flush in her face could have been from either, or from the seething rage that was never very far below the surface.

She pulled her attention back to the here and the now. She gritted her teeth at the casual manner of speech about either of them, but most especially at the fact that she was simply considered an aside. She was already angry at the violation of the safe space that the Refuge represented.

She was not about to stand and be violated again, however minor it might be. Her eyes swiveled and fixed on the black-clad man, sharpened like the knives he likely had on his person. Somewhere.

"You," she said suddenly. Cold, eldritch power laced the word and lashed out like a striking viper. Snaring the bodyguard in a fae glamour of some power. "Disable the other three, then submit to me," she said. Her voice rasped. It was an unlovely thing, poisoned by spite and hatred and anger and vengeance. The power raged like some fiery bliss in her, making her legs tremble as it struck.

She did not want them dead. Not yet. That could come later. Somewhere in the back of her mind, wild laughter bubbled to the surface. It spilled out of her mouth, although it was silent as she had been but for that single commanding sentence.

As was the way of the Fae, chaos ensued.

 

[Priestess Marta Maisal]

In that first second, both the Kaliti men inside the cell were amused; Marta, baffled, for her impression of Emelia as a mute had just been shattered.

Then came the swift sound of a sword being drawn. The Bodyguard, though his eyes—visible above the mask which covered his mouth and nose—hinted at a shock and a struggle to resist, was powerless against the spell put upon him. He stood well-positioned, right at the bottom of the stairs, and thus there was no escape expect through him.

Not that Daelin had such a chance. The Bodyguard's sword plunged into his gut before he could truly become aware of what even happened. Such was his surprise that he did not even scream, and his pain was voiced in no more than a stifled half-grunt. The Bodyguard pulled his sword out from Daelin's gut and Daelin clutched both hands to his stomach and stumbled back against the wall and slid down to sit with his legs splayed wide. Thurbin Hofnel gazed in amazement and stood fixed on the spot, as if he had great difficulty in believing what was happening.

Now inside the cell the two Kaliti men and Marta had become witnesses to the enthralling of the Bodyguard, for the sound of the drawing sword and Daelin's half-grunt had summoned their attentions. Amusement had departed from the Kalitis. And for Marta, apprehension like a dagger plunged into her breast.

"What have you done?" she said near soundlessly, speaking of the horror of Emelia's now quite evident spell. Yet bereft of condemnation was Marta's whisper, and the tone of her words matched more closely a woman who watched a friend go astray in some grievous error.

But there was no time.

The Bodyguard could not immediately enter the cell, could not immediately engage the Kaliti men, after his wounding of Daelin. The sheer fact of distance, though small, precluded it. And as the Bodyguard started to take those paces to enter the cell, close the gap, and do as he was supernaturally bid, the Kaliti men had that moment of free action; they had but their instincts to rely upon.

The Kaliti before Marta had half-turned to face the imminent threat of the Bodyguard, and he grasped for his knife, sheathed on his belt under his shirt. Marta sprang into motion. She clamped a hand over the Kaliti's own, her long fingers ensnaring the whole of his hand and further frustrating his attempt to draw his weapon. The fingers of her other hand dug into a pressure point on his neck, causing him to holler and nearly lose his balance as white hot pain skittered up and down his body.

The Kaliti before Emelia snapped his attention back onto her after Daelin's wounding. Mayhap he saw Emelia as the greater threat, mayhap he wished to take her hostage. But his choice nevertheless was to lunge at her.

Emelia Atchins

 

[Emelia Atchins]

Madness danced in her eyes, sang its discordant song in the back of her head. It was impossible to reconcile the gentle waitress with the woman who could command another to kill indiscriminately. With the woman who wanted to see bright pain and fear bloom in the eyes of her victims.

As if that could somehow scrub clean the memory of her own terror and pain.

Whatever the Kaliti's actual profession might be, he was a superior to her in strength and reach. He had no weapon drawn - just as well, as she would have died immediately had that been the case. Instead, he just barreled into her and drove her into the ground with the practiced ease of someone who had to do the same a hundred times before.

Somehow, she managed to avoid having the breath driven from her lungs. Her head bounced on the stone floor and for a moment, everything went grey. The silent laughter ceased and she lay like a marionette in his encircling arms, eyes open and dazed.

The eyes focused. A moment to recall the situation, to look in the dark eyes of the man that had driven her into the floor. And then without any preamble, she darted forward with her head and she bit down. She felt her teeth crunch through cartilage and scrape against bone, the coppery taste of blood flooding her mouth as she quite literally bit her captor's nose off.

The man shrieked, spraying her face in his blood, and disengaged. In the next moment, she drove her knee into his chest, that soft space right below the breastbone. Something crunched there, folded inward in a sickening way.

Emelia shoved herself back away from the man on her back, spitting the bit of flesh and bone from her mouth. Madness swirled in her mind, a twisted parody of a smile on her face as she stared at the blood-smeared, misshapen face in front of her. Terror and rage twisted round savage delight at the damage she had done.

Her gorge rose. No time for that now, no time for that...

Emelia got to her feet, swaying, and then unsteadily stepped forward and planted her foot into the side of the ravaged assailants' head.

 

[Priestess Marta Maisal]

Those critical seconds before the Bodyguard's arrival played out each in their own way for Marta and Emelia both.

But now the enthralled man had come. First he went to Marta's assailant, and both he and Marta were entangled in a struggle. With careful precision the Bodyguard stabbed him through the gut, same as he had with Daelin. But whereas Daelin descended into silence from shock, the Kaliti hollered aloud with pain.

"Ah fuck!"

Marta felt the man tense and shudder and finally give way to weakness after his wounding. She released him and quickly stepped back. He fell to the ground, clutching at his wound and grimacing hard, his teeth grinding against one another in his agony. Marta unsheathed and took the knife from his belt and not a pinch of resistance came from him.

The Bodyguard then went to the now noseless second Kaliti and with near casual effort jabbed his sword down through his gut, inflicting the same painful kind of wound on him as well. Already was he in sharp pain, and the fresh injury came to steal the air from his lungs for a second, two seconds, before his strained groans began to escape once more from the cage of his teeth.

The Bodyguard faced Emelia, his eyes the only rebel contingent of his body. And then in knightly fashion he turned his sword down and planted the tip into the ground and came to kneel before her, submitting as he through otherworldly means had been commanded.

Thurbin Hofnel still stood where he had been, more incredulous than aghast as he surveyed all before him, his left eye squinting hard and his mouth turned crooked as though he were watching a poorly acted scene in a stage play—he was evidently not a man much used to things going so completely against him.

Marta breathed, her chest rising and falling with the terrible excitement of combat. Never would it be truly to her liking, though she would not shun a call to it, especially if her country needed her, as it had been in the Westlurch Pass incident. She looked to Emelia. Saw the blood around her mouth, and thought in that first instant that the Kaliti man had done damage to her teeth or some horrid thing like that.

And Marta gave Emelia a quick nod of commendation. What disapproval Marta had for the magic involved could be spared for another time—Regel knew his servant had much to do to rectify the Right Ordering here in this dismal cell.

"You," she said, pointing the knife at Thurbin. "Do not move!"

Yet the warning seemed needless. Thurbin, even if he had a more youthful and able body, launched into an accusatory tirade before Marta could so much as take a step forward, "What is all this then? Garland, why have you done this? One harlot is all it takes to make you change sides? I've paid you well! Very well!" And to Marta and Emelia, "You can't do this! Stay in the cell! I command it!"

Emelia Atchins

 

[Emelia Atchins]

Her foot throbbed where she had struck the man who now writhed on the floor in unimaginable agony. Emelia looked at him as she might a worm, something lowly and disgusting and worth her scorn. Her remarkable eyes remained fixed on him where he lay, a pool of blood slowly spreading and the fecal scent of an open bowel assailing her nose.

She knelt and pulled the dagger from the downed Kaliti, the one he hadn't grabbed when he bounced her off the floor like a ball. The weight of the blade in her hand felt...right. She turned her head to regard the hired blade - Garland, he was - with unblinking, cold eyes.

In a single, swift, unpracticed motion, she cut his throat with a backhand stroke. His obedience to her had earned him the only mercy anyone in this room save Marta would get.

A swift death.

Even as his scalding blood spilled on the back of her hand she turned to look at Thurbin. She had forgotten that Marta was even there. She stared at the man, turning slowly to face him. In her eyes an ugly light burned - madness, hatred, spite, all-consuming vengeance. Blood dripped from the hand holding the blade, from the blade itself. Pooled round her bare feet on the floor, filled the air with its coppery scent.

She took a step forward, her eyes fixed on the criminal. A bubble of silent laughter escaped her, but it never reached her eyes as she took another step, all the while the banshee wail of bloodlust sang in her head. His words fell on ears that would not hear them.

 

[Priestess Marta Maisal]

Delusion consumed the old man, so Marta could plainly see. Delusion, or some grand form of arrogance, powerful enough to shut out the truth relayed by his eyes and ears. Fair enough. Let it be his undoing. There was indeed a delightful kind of poetry in that, something oft retold in myriad forms in song and play.

And so the matter came to the fore: what to do, then, with these men. To be certain, Marta knew tacitly her distrust of proper Allirian justice being done (whatever that was supposed to look like in its ideal form); and furthermore, she knew her wariness of the old man's ability to perhaps "alleviate" his guilt with coins slipped into the right hands. The thought briefly crossed her mind to lock them all in the cell, and leave their fortunes to the gods, to perish of wounds or starvation, or, if it did indeed serve the purposes of the divine, to be found and released.

Yet it was Emelia who, by Marta's reckoning, made the decision. She cut the throat of the Bodyguard. Justice done, for it was these men, each and all, who with evil intent threatened both herself and Emelia with a lifetime of debauched slavery—an affront to Jura!—or with cruel death. In so doing they invited death upon themselves, for this was the debt they had incurred to the common humanity of the world. So be it. In lieu of Allirian justice, Gildan justice would serve, for had these selfsame crimes been committed in her country execution would have been prescribed; the only shame in Marta's eyes was the lack of a whip to first scourge them, and of a headsman's sword to then behead them.

Marta did not see those fell looks in Emelia's eyes, neither when she glanced to Garland nor when she met eyes with Thurbin. If she had, it might well have struck Marta that those were the same sorts of looks Boesarius Terral oft cast her way—he being the Regulator who by his very words said he awaited the day when he could flay her alive.

Instead, Marta was busy with her own task. Emelia made for Thurbin, and so Marta knelt down by the Kaliti man who had threatened her.

"I consign you to Regel's judgment."

She with less than expert precision drove the knife between his ribs, puncturing his heart, killing him. His hollering came thus to an end.

Thurbin, meanwhile, turned his full attention onto Emelia. He said as though unfairly aggrieved, "Look at what you've done! And what are you doing now, harlot?"

Emelia Atchins

 

[Emelia Atchins]

The back of her head throbbed where she had hit the floor. A vein in her neck did too, pulsing in time with the frenetic beating of her heart. Marta's voice was in a different time and place from the one she herself occupied, and likely she would have become quite angry at the release she offered the fallen Kaliti. They weren't supposed to go peacefully.

She wasn't allowed any peace, either. Why should anyone else get any.

"...," she didn't say to the criminal lordling's demand. She took each step, slow and measured. She left bloody footprints behind her, and the trail of blood dripping from her hand and the knife in it.

Her reply came a moment later, as she cleared the door. A wild light flared in her eyes and suddenly she was darting forward, angling to the right just slightly. As she came even with the elderly man, she hooked to the left and spun round, slashing wildly with the knife in her hand. She was far younger and faster than he was and even though she was ill practiced with a knife, the blade still connected. Sliced through the back of his knee and rather messily just above it on his left leg.

The goal was simple: cripple the old man so that he could not escape. Inflict as much pain as she could for as long as she could. Even as he cried out in pain and surprise and shocked disbelief, she stepped round in front of him again with her bloody blade. She was laughing now, tears of mirth (or possibly of pain) rolling down her cheeks. It was utterly, horrifyingly silent. Her hands hung at her side, the knife gripped in a knuckle-whitening tight grip that was hidden by his blood and that of the Kaliti before him.

Something inside her was breaking. She knew it was breaking, and she didn't really care as long as the animal on the ground before her suffered more than she did. Physical pain wasn't enough; the fact that she was a she and laying him low was as much a part of this as anything.

She lifted her knife hand, and looked at it in confusion, still laughing. The laughter cut off abruptly, as with a knife. She looked at Thurbin with cold-blooded murder in her eyes then.

 

[Priestess Marta Maisal]

And that was one removed from Arethil. Not as glorious a thing as enemy soldiers felled in battle, yet the Right Ordering could be upheld and rectified in ways both small and grand.

Marta stood. Haste was on her mind. No sound issued from the stairway, and if there were other men in the building surely the cries of their comrades would have drawn them. But a lack of present peril guaranteed no safety from the future. So, even though Marta intended briefly to perhaps question Daelin, best to be done with the grim work—especially for Emelia's sake, who lived here in Alliria still, and had not the distant home of Gild to which she could return. Dead men could enact no wicked reprisal.

Thurbin's cry of pain signaled to Marta that Emelia was dealing with him. So she went to the second Kaliti. The noseless one.

"Rot, you miserable bitch!" he spat at her.

Kneeling, and ignoring his ignoble words, she said again, "I consign you to Regel's judgment."

The second Kaliti struggled, trying to stop the plunge of the knife, catching Marta's wrist in his grasp, but deftly she tossed the knife and so switched hands and in a flash drove the blade down, and soon the Kaliti's eyes froze forever as the life left him.

Marta looked down on him for a moment with disdain for his actions but pity for his soul. It would have been better if his last act upon Arethil had been one of contrition. Instead, he sealed himself inside the dungeon of his own evil, and malevolent chaos would rend him in the afterlife until he could be sundered no more, utterly destroyed—the true end for all those given to Chaos.

Emelia Atchins

 

[Emelia Atchins]

Cold eyes. Thurbin wasn't going to go anywhere and she was content with that. Unlike Marta, she had no concern for haste. This was not the first subversive element of the city laid low by her hand and she had a feeling that it wouldn't be the last, either.

She said nothing to his vitriol. Of course. Instead, she walked round behind him. The old man had been effectively if messily hamstrung. Unlucky for him that she had missed any arteries that would allow him an escape. Maybe unlucky for her, too; violence was a poison that inflicted itself as much on the perpetrator as the victim.

She got behind him and then reached down to grab him by his hair, eliciting a squeal of pain that cut off to silence as she pressed the point of the knife into his back just hard enough to bring blood. He went very, very still.

"Let me go, yo-," he began. She dragged the knife down his back, slicing open clothing and skin and muscle with equal ease. The scream of pain and surprise was both music and discordant note both. She had to fight the desire to drive the blade in further, to sever the spine or pierce the lung.

Or the heart. But no. It couldn't be that easy. It shouldn't be that easy. This man was like Korsk. Like all the other filth infesting the city like cockroaches and bed bugs. She needed to make him suffer. Make another example out of this one like she had out of Korsk.

She shifted directions, slicing flesh. Caring letters into his skin as he screamed in pain and flopped in her hand, marionette legs flopping ineffectively.

R.

A.

P.

Something like savage delight burned in her eyes, her mouth a thin line.

 

[Priestess Marta Maisal]

Marta reached the door of the cell, and here was met with a decision unlooked-for.

She endeavored to go to Daelin, yes, and to question him, perhaps even achieve in him some measure of contrition before the demands of justice need be satisfied. When the contest between Marta, Emelia, and their captors was still in doubt, it had been Marta herself who said to give mercy its leave. Then, it could not be afforded. Now, while Daelin's body was doomed, the final judgment of his soul awaited in the balance of this moment, and as a Priestess of Jura she would, if able by Daelin's consent, attempt to tip even if slightly the scales of his life. For Daelin was not her enemy, despite his horrendous crimes. None of these men were her true enemy. Chaos was her enemy, and its gaping maw slavered, eternally ravenous.

But to her right were Emelia and the old man. And the disquieting sight of what Emelia had chosen to do. Far worse, the soulless look in her eyes, now that Marta could see it in its infernal fullness, which attended Emelia's actions.

Daelin could wait. He wasn't going anywhere.

Marta left the cell and approached Emelia, busy as she was with her blade.

She said simply, evenly, "What are you doing?"

Emelia Atchins

 

[Emelia Atchins]

Simple words shouldn't have been enough to break her free from this particular nightmare. And yet. Marta's quiet words stilled her blade in his quivering flesh. She turned to look at the priestess with eyes that still burned with something ugly in them.

After a moment to think, she pointed the blade at Thurbin, blood dripping from the tip. She quickly pointed that blade at herself and then Marta. And then in a sweeping gesture that spread droplets of crimson like rain to encompass the whole of the world.

This man is an evil man. This man would have done worse to you and I, and has done worse to many others.

She haphazardly pointed at the quaking man on the ground again, and made a gesture with her other hand, drawing a square in the air and miming writing. Cold eyes glittered as she gestured with her head at the old man, and made the universal gesture of killing him - the knife across the throat.

Making him suffer didn't make her feel any better or any less fragile and fraught. She could only hope that butcher the bastard like a lamb would send a message to the right people. There was no consideration for the fact that it had been done time and time again... and still the wars between thugs raged and the lives of simple people were shattered by those same fiends.

She wanted them all to taste the vengeance of the silent ones. The weak ones...

 

[Priestess Marta Maisal]

Hopeless were Marta's attempts to make sense of Emelia's gestures—save the last, of course. But what spoke more true than any motion of the hand were her eyes. Ugly. Cold. Filled with death.

She had a pale light in her eyes worse than any of the men in the cellar, dead or yet living.

Here it was that Marta needed to tread most cautiously. Those most given of all to their evil deeds knew what they were doing, were in fact in love with their evil, and so thereby became wholly vicious. Marta could only pray that Emelia was not yet there, locked inside the dungeon of her own evil, as she had thought of the noseless Kaliti; could only pray that some semblance of her earlier regard of Emelia remained true, that some heroic ember smothered by vile ash yet shone and had not given way, that she was not entirely mistaken. Replete with danger would be any attempt at intervention, however gentle, for the dagger Emelia held was not foremost of her weapons, nor even that horrid hidden magic of hers which made slaves of any under its spell, but rather the will, corrupted by Chaos, to do as she would and suffer no rebuke.

Yet Marta had to try. If in the case of Daelin the scales could merely be tipped in the slightest of ways, here with Emelia the full righting of a woeful imbalance lay at stake.

"Emelia..." Marta said at length, "...that blade cuts not him alone."

Emelia Atchins

 

[Emelia Atchins]

She started at her name, blade in suddenly immobile hand. The bastard made pained sounds on the ground before her. Almost pitiful, after a fashion: all the power that wealth had brought him availed him not one whit here. Indignation and outrage directed to his supposed lesser had bought him no mercy and no safe passage.

Emelia turned slowly, raising her hands - knife included - to bare her arms for emphasis. The flesh was criss-cross network of scars. Her eyes cut sideways to the man on the floor quivering in pain, some incredible anger flaring in her eyes.

Her own indignation and outrage. Some fragment of the loss that spurred all of this on gleamed in her eyes beneath the flames of anger.

The hand holding the blade trembled. For a moment her eyes went distant as she recalled one horror or another. Were plenty of them to pick from in a life filled with unnecessary hardship.

 

[Priestess Marta Maisal]

Marta looked upon Emelia's arms and inexorably her gaze softened. How could it not? For the scars wove together a story without words, an implication of dreadful weight. Emelia's life had been marred, and thus was it the nature of pain to beget more pain. How many nightmares had she suffered? How many throes of despond or hopelessness or anger, mayhap anger whose intensity burned then as it did now?

She met eyes with Emelia again.

"It is a terrible thing you have suffered. Truly. And you have carried it for a long time, I feel. I am troubled by the sight of what has been wrought, and my heart fills with sorrow."

Providence, so Marta believed, had now placed her here, her and Emelia both, and this with explicit purpose. Even evil things, as was their kidnapping, could Regel and the Gods of Order bend to their design.

"But compassion unaided by truth will prove no adequate remedy, and so I say to you, Emelia: those scars invite you to an evil worse than that which inflicted them. Do not listen to them. The disfiguration of the spirit is uglier still than the disfiguration of the flesh."

Emelia Atchins

 

[Emelia Atchins]

Her eyes sharpened at the Priestess' words. Frustration gleamed in her eyes, that and a world-shredding anger born partly of her inability to articulate what she wanted to and partly by the lack of understanding - to her mind, at least.

Then what of the evil that festers, unheeded? She spoke the words heedless of the fact that no words came forth; her lips formed them and her tongue wagged but no sound came forth. Her hand tightened on the grip of the knife until her hands turned white as snow.

She was mostly concerned with herself and the evils she had endured and the retribution for those wrongs. However... the blight of the evil she and Marta had just endured had persisted for years. Decades, even. That and other things - thieving, murdering, exploiting those that could do nothing for themselves.

She had been at the receiving end of it and did not like it and would not let it go ignored any longer if she could help it.

Without uttering another word, she spun and buried the knife in the lecherous old man's back. She left it there as she turned back to Marta, eyes uncertain and mistrustful.

 

[Priestess Marta Maisal]

Marta's eyes fell to Thurbin after the knife was plunged into him. His mouth was wide with a breathless scream, as soundless as Emelia's words, and yet even as it was done anger still twisted his face. Exhausted and hoarse and weak from his agony and his shock, what small and vile words he was able to utter came out as unintelligible. But the man, even as he lay dying, would not repent. He loved his iniquity too much, even as the world was slipping from his grasp.

Marta met Emelia's gaze again.

"He is a man whose evil extends beyond our reckoning. Both you and I know what his just sentence is to be, for it is all mortal hands can render for a collection of crimes so grievous. Indeed, it is our task to deliver him for his true punishment. We are divine instruments, and our appointed purpose is clear. Let us not damage ourselves in the pursuit, becoming as he is, for then merely will a body perish, but the evil once infesting it will live on, coming by our own invitation to inhabit us, and thereby finding sanctuary to persist in Arethil."

And now Marta offered her knife to Emelia. Gently, she said:

"Finish him. Or merely stand aside, and I shall consign him to death."

Emelia Atchins

 

[Emelia Atchins]

She looked back at the old man and then back to Marta with a shrug. Short of cutting his head off she did not see how he could be more consigned to death than a knife through the heart. Thurbin was just a tough old bastard that wasn't ready to embrace death yet.

But Emelia still stepped aside anyway. Killing people was not a thing she was good nor efficient at it. Hardly surprising given that she was simply an innkeeper's daughter that served table and turned down beds for a living. Being a victim of violence had been her life until only recently.

Marta was likely right, though. Something of the violence done to her and visited upon others had stained and broken something inside her head and, likely, in her heart as well.

She stared at the bastard on the floor with naked hatred, watching his blood slowly spread across the floor,

 

[Priestess Marta Maisal]

With the way clear, Thurbin's fate would be hastened along to its inevitable conclusion. Marta stepped forward, and she knelt down, and she endured the scorching glare of Thurbin's final regard as she delivered the killing stroke, and thus did the light of life—however spiteful it was—depart from his eyes. Marta spoke a quiet verse from The Testimonies, and then she stood, the blooded knife still in her hand.

"One more," she said, "and then our appointed task will be done."

She turned to look at Daelin, who still sat where he had fallen, his reddened hand clutching his stomach. He knew they were coming, as he had sat there, listening and watching, and he looked at them now, Marta and Emelia both, and he said with a touch of dismissive disdain, "What do you want? Do you want me to beg?"


Emelia Atchins

 

[Emelia Atchins]

She regarded Thurbin's death with the same cold, emotionless regard that his employees had for them when they had been tossed into that cell. Anger swirled within her but it was not necessarily directed at the hapless victimizer lying in a spreading pool of his own blood.

The entire system was and had always been rotten to its black core. Scum like these men thrived off the corruption, bent others to their dark will and stained all the same uniform grey. Drove others in desperation to turn to dark things in order to eck out some meager light in lives otherwise clouded and dark.

She turned to look at Daelin with those cold eyes. She shook her head at his question, eyes never leaving his as she held a hand out for the knife. Her lips were drawn in a thin, bloodless line. Did begging ever help any of those screaming for mercy to you? Her lips formed the words and her throat bobbed, but no sound came forth.

Didn't really need to. The answer to the question shone in her eyes. Daelin would be granted a small mercy.

A quick end.