Fable - Ask Scourge

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Boesarius Terral

Gildan Devil
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Four Gildan Regulators caught them in the field outside Ushak, a farming village close to Gild. The two sidhe so captured were two of the group elusive Fae who had plagued Ushak for some time now. The circumstances in Ushak suggested to Boesarius that there were collaborators among the villagers—a matter which would need some attending.

But for now. Punishment. And forcing these jins to do what he wanted.

The Regulators stood on a dirt path running behind the field of crops. Both Sidhe were on the ground, severely injured, swollen purple with bruises and streaked red with blood, their magic disabled.

"Go to him," Boesarius said quietly into the female Sidhe. "The Sister," so he deigned to call it. He pointed then to the male Sidhe, "the Brother", some twenty to thirty feet distant. "Crawl to him. Like the worm you are."

Boesarius casually began to work with his crossbow. "Do it now. Get there, before I finish reloading."

Now in a panic, the Sister let out an anguished cry and did indeed begin to crawl with her little frail arms, her two broken legs dragging uselessly behind her like a pair of stockings filled with shattered rocks. One arm over the other, pained whimper after pained whimper, the scratching and rustling of the dirt accompanying her pitiful crawling, the Sister inched forward. Her eyes were locked on the Brother, sitting there, a Regulator gripping a handful of his hair and forcing him to watch her efforts. The Sister tried, tried with what meager physicality she could muster. The dirt clung to her wounds, and she was filthy. But she kept going.

The twang of the crossbow sounded behind her, and the bolt soared over her and slammed into the Brother's outstretched leg. He bellowed out a tortured cry, clapped his hands over his mouth to muffle them, but there was nothing else he could do.

Boesarius sauntered forward. He stepped on the Sister's back with a heavy boot as he crouched down. "Not fast enough," he said. One of the Regulators close to the Brother laughed. Leah Kadashal, the Regulator standing dutifully beside Boesarius, merely watched everything proceed with a faint and contented smile.

Boesarius reached down and roughly grabbed a fistful of the Sister's hair. He yanked her head up, forcing her back to arch painfully with his weight pinning the small of it down. He said quietly to the Sister, "I...hate...your entire race. You are the scourge of Arethil, and I would see you eradicated."

He leaned in closer to her ear. Close enough to whisper with a dreadful kind of intimacy.

"But do you know what my problem is, jin? I need you to breed...so that you...can give me...something to kill." Boesarius smiled. The Sister whimpered, and such notes as these composed to Boesarius the song of success. "Did I say problem? No, it is no problem. I misspoke earlier as well. Your kind are not like worms. Your kind are like rats. You cannot help yourselves. You will forever deliver your spawn into my hands, and my tireless effort to cleanse Campania, if not all of Arethil, will never cease."

Boesarius tilted his head, and the angle of the brim of his hat plunged his face into shadow.

"That is what you are going to do for me now, jin. You are going to deliver more of your kind into my hands. Because I am not going to leave you any choice but to do so."
 
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Such was the weave of Fate. Such was the Right Ordering of All Things.

Leah, along with the two other Regulators, and all of them led by Boesarius, had planned and executed this ambush by the Ushak field, yet what were they truly doing? Why, they were merely enacting what was waiting to be. Perhaps the Brother and the Sister, those two pitiful Sidhe, thought in some remote part of their alien minds that there was some escape from this, that if they had done something differently, acted faster, used this spell instead of that one, that this result would not have befallen them. These thoughts, if they so had them, would be wrong.

Because much like Boesarius said to the Sister now, there was nothing they could do. Destined were they for all the years of their lives to reach this moment. And now they were here. And now they would suffer, this in the just turn for the suffering they themselves had caused. Praise Regel.

When Boesarius reached back, Leah dutifully pulled out the iron scalpel and placed it into his hand.

"Your implement," she said.
 
Boesarius gripped the scalpel, keeping his eyes on his prey but sparing a thought for Leah. She had what it took to do this work. To the easily persuaded, the easily deceived, such work as this would be appalling. These Sidhe Fae, wearing the guise of children as they did, manipulated those of a malleable mindset with little effort. These men and women of said mindset, in their well-meaning weakness, would balk, flail, and lament. They would refuse, and mercy would tempt them. And in so doing they would fall right into the Fae's trap.

Leah did not allow her goodness, her morals, to be subverted by malicious, deceitful jins. Few possessed this strength. Few, therefore, could do this work.

Boesarius slammed the Sister's head down into the dirt. Let go. And now with his free hand gripped the back of its garb and tore it asunder to reveal the flesh of its back.

"You won't forget the place you're supposed to return," Boesarius said. "I will ensure it."

And as he began to slowly and methodically carve the name of the village, Ushak, into the Sister's back with the scalpel, ignoring the Fae's cries of pain and the hissing burn of iron to its vulnerable skin, he said to Leah, "Instruct this jin. Tell it what we want from it."
 
"We know that your number is seven," Leah said to the Sister, unbothered by her cries as Boesarius scarred her back with the scalpel. Leah's voice, in contrast to Boesarius's own, cold and curt and given to harsh commands, was dissonantly pleasant, given the scene. She spoke almost genially, as though she and the Sister were the best of friends, and that they were having a delightful conversation about the narrative intricacies of some play over tea.

"You will escape back to your realm, gather the other five, and return to Ushak. And you must do so quickly: you have until the sun sets tomorrow. Otherwise, your Brother will perish, and it will be slow and unmerciful; his suffering will resonate through eternity. If you would like him back, you and your kindred Fae must retrieve him." Cheerfully, she added, "Good luck."
 
Boesarius never tired of hearing the screams of a Fae in pain. They were abhorrent creatures, and all ill they received was deserved, for they dispensed it wantonly upon mankind according to their caprice, their malice, and their callousness. Boesarius merely acted as a balance upon the scales, returning their malevolence back onto them in kind.

Boesarius finished carving the name Ushak into the Sister's back. He tossed the scalpel back to Leah. Then he stood and grabbed the Sister by its hair and lifted the creature up and roughly shoved it. "Now, begone. You know what you have to do."

The Sister stumbled and fell. It glanced back at him, eyes full of a fear it so seldomly knew. Yes, creature, be afraid. You thought you could prey upon the people of Ushak with no consequence. You were wrong to think that.

"Time's wasting," Boesarius said to the Fae. "Go."

Driving home his point, the Regulator holding the Brother hostage bent its arm painfully, causing it to cry out. The Sister yelped, then picked itself up and started to scurry away. Just like a rat.
 
Leah watched the Sister go running away, the sound of her whimpering fading with the distance.

She looked to Boesarius. Asked him, "Will we be able to save the children of Ushak?"
 
Boesarius returned Leah's gaze. His eyes were like stones, full of a reckoning with the hard and bitter reality of the matter; a reality which, though he may not like it, he nevertheless accepted.

"No. The Fae are fond of abducting children, through their deceptions or through outright kidnapping. They won't be seen again, and even if they are..."

Boesarius's lips flattened with a cold hatred.

"...they won't be same."
 
"Then their fate is sealed."

Leah did not express regret nor sorrow at this. Why? What cause would there be for it? Was this not also a part of Regel's divine plan? Would he not see to the uplifting of these lost children after their deaths? Would they not be wholeheartedly welcomed into the Fields of Emir for the suffering they endured upon Arethil? Though cruelty existed in bountiful hosts throughout the world, the faithful, and the innocent children, would find their due place in the afterlife. Regel would not abandon the poor children who had been betrayed by their own parents to the predation of the Fae.

Speaking of which.

"Shall we pay the collaborators a visit?"
 
Boesarius didn't answer straightaway. He looked to the other two Regulators, told them to secure the Brother in Ushak, and only then looked back to Leah.

"That's where we're going right now."

The utter, depraved arrogance on display from their fellow Gildans. The Headman of Ushak, one Gundolgu Myerral, had thought playing ignorant would work. But the interrogation of the Brother and the Sister had revealed Gundolgu's complicity in the Fae's work here in Ushak. Gundolgu was a man corrupted. And now the time for his reckoning had come.

But it wouldn't be at Boesarius's hands, despite how much he wanted to do it.

"You will lead the interrogation," Boesarius said to his Regulator-in-training. Leah needed to learn that the monsters Regulators fought weren't only jins like those sidhe. They were sometimes human. They were sometimes their own Gildan kin. "And you will savage Gundolgu until he spills every last drop of truth. Either that, or you will spill every last drop of his blood. But that is for him to decide."
 
Already was it decided, so Leah believed—she would merely be enacting what was writ in Regel's divine plan. This was the nature of the gods, was it not? They did not intervene personally to dispense their wrath upon the guilty of Arethil, but instead they contented themselves with arming the righteous to carry out that justice. What happened out here in the fields of Ushak's periphery exposed Gundolgu's culpability, and so now at last had she and Boesarius been armed to deliver the retribution Gundolgu was due.

Regel had ordained that she be his agent here. In this, she would act in the manner most pleasing to the God of Jura.

To Boesarius, Leah offered a Gildan salute—the placing of her right palm upon her heart and the bowing of her head, a versatile and oft used gesture of respect. "It will be done, Boesarius."
 
"I know it will."

He jerked his head in the direction of Ushak, beyond the crop fields, and they started walking. Gundolgu's life might well be measured in the amount of steps it would take them to reach his house. When caught conspiring with the Fae, people most often acted rashly, as though they had sold their allegiance entirely to those otherworldly creatures. It was no magic which afflicted their minds, causing this; it was merely the seductive tongue of those abhorrent jins, which were all well versed in appealing to the weaknesses of Men.

He spoke aloud on this. "Tolerance," Boesarius said, "can be the greatest and most insidious of all evils, Leah. A castle gate that is always open will inevitably let in the man, or creature, which will bring ruin to everyone inside. Vigorous discrimination at the gate is an absolute moral good."

He looked sidelong to his protégé.

"Know that it is the most profound deception upon Arethil, this rampant notion that the Fae cannot lie. They are creatures of chaos, and they will always find a way to tell their victims exactly what they mean to tell them to achieve their mercurial ends. Toleration of the Fae, to any degree, is always a mistake. See the ruin they have brought to Ushak."
 
Six children gone "missing" over the course of two months—this was the ruin which Boesarius alluded to, and which Leah herself had inquired of just a few moments prior. It stood to reason, then, that those seven sidhe responsible each sought a victim for themselves. For what purpose—who could say? They could perhaps coerce the Sister in returning in a desperate bid to save the Brother, but Leah presumed, especially after Boesarius's words, that no amount of torture could loose from the lips of a Fae such secrets.

"From where do they come? These Fae?"
 
"Natively, they are alien to the natural world of Arethil. But it is impossible for them to stand peace, and so they cannot content themselves to stay in their squalid realm. They invade ours in consequence."

He swept out his hand.

"Much like vampires, the Fae delude themselves into thinking they are 'civilized'. They are fond of putting on a pretense of civilization to further this delusion, and these pitiful attempts they call 'courts'. In Campania, we suffer almost exclusively the depredations of the 'Summer Court', a brand of Fae so depraved they are loathed even by their own kind. Those sidhe were of their number."

Again he looked to Leah, annoyance flashing across his features.

"Has the War College taught you anything of value when it comes to hunting monsters?"

Did they think the Regulators would do all of the work these days?
 
"The peace among nations has made them, during my time in the College, wary of the inevitable wars to come," Leah said. The Armistice was something unprecedented, at least in recent history, in the Bloody Crescent—every Campanian power probably felt as wary as the Instructors at the War College did.

"They valued military tactics against more human opponents."
 
Boesarius shook his head in mild disgust. So they did think the Regulators would do all of the work.

"Our fellow-citizens may fear the foe who takes to the field, who comes knocking brazenly at the gate, but that is not at all what they should fear," Boesarius said. "Of all the aberrations of chaotic magic in the world, Fae are by far the most insidious. They are the rot whose festering is too late to cure by the time it is noticed."

They walked through the field still, and Boesarius's tone took on a slightly different character. A first for Leah to hear. So faint, yet there: the hint of intimate sincerity.

"I regret nothing that I do. It is only the timing of my actions, and this is always outside of my control. We come to Ushak, and six children are already lost to us before we even arrive."

He dropped a hand onto Leah's shoulder, stopping and prompting her to stop too. He faced her. Looked at her.

"Destroy your compassion, Leah, or it will kill you."

Good men, good Regulators, had taken their own lives over their troubles. Such was the harsh reality of the Regulators, that hardly were they saviors more than avengers.
 
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To hear Boesarius say it aloud, and this is always outside of my control, came as a cause for silent rejoicing, for it was an opportunity. Beneath his hardened exterior, did he lament this fact? Did the circumstances of Ushak, eluding his grasp before he had yet even the chance to try for the grasping, cause him trouble? Leah had the solution. Resting prominently in her heart, her strongest held belief of which she so rarely spoke, held the answer to his potential woe. And one day, perhaps, she might be able to tell him. To convince him that Regel's divine majesty went beyond even what he at present comprehended.

But such an opportunity was for the future. Here in Ushak, they had business that required their attending.

And did not require their compassion.

Leah smiled as she usually smiled, calm and unmoved, as she said, "In the service of Regel, I will do all that is required of me."

Of course. For Regel had a plan for her, did he not? And this plan would come to realization upon Arethil...and Leah patiently awaited the day.
 
"Good."

Boesarius produced from his coat a set of iron knuckles. He presented them to Leah.

"Take them," he said. "They'll protect your fist, and prevent you from breaking your own hand." And he elaborated further on this thought. "Basic—crude—methods of interrogation will do here. More advanced techniques require the right setting, one that cages hope along with the body. They also require far more time."
 
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Leah slipped on the iron knuckles over her gloves, finding that with the fabric about her fingers it made for a more snug fit.

"And what shall we do with Gundolgu if he does not talk?"
 
And here Boesarius smiled. A rare and baleful sight.

"No need to worry," he said. "They always do."

The body was always weaker than the spirit.
 
Ushak.

After emerging from the field, Leah and Boesarius stepped into the village. A small settlement, naturally, some hundred souls or so; a place where the disappearance of six children—six of anyone, truly—would surely be devastating. But Leah feared not, not for the children who had been taken, nor for the fate of the village. Because they, she and Boesarius and their fellow Regulators, were the agents of Regel. They would purge the chaos which had fallen onto Ushak, and bring it back into the Right Ordering. They need only root out the inhuman monsters who plagued it.

The sun was in retreat from the sky and long shadows accompanied the pair of Regulators as they walked. The pathways through Ushak were dirt, the homes farmhouses, and never far was the evidence of livestock: the congregations of chickens, the clinking bells of the collars of sheep as they were shepherded back into their pens, the neighing of horses from barns and the sight of cattle even farther afield. These smaller villages made up the rustic lifeblood which supported the larger cities like Gild, which in turn offered the protection they lacked. And so it was that the well-being of Gild and Ushak, of other such villages as well, were inextricably linked. Thus was the import of their task revealed.

Leah and Boesarius approached the Headman's house. The former knocked. They waited, neither saying anything. A moment later the door opened. Gundolgu's wife, Alma, had answered, and she smiled cordially at them and opened the door all the way and said, "Regulators. Come in, come in."

Leah and Boesarius entered. In a casual manner, Leah took off her hat and set it by the door; so did Boesarius. Gundolgu and his three sons were seated at the table in main room, eating dinner, and as Alma sat back down, Gundolgu stood up. He wiped his mouth, walked to them, and said in a quiet voice so as not to disturb his family's dinner: "Regulator Boesarius. Regulator Leah. What news?"

"We caught them—the Fae predating upon Ushak."

Gundolgu, masking whatever contrary feelings he might have add, looked relieved. "That's wonderful news. Wonderful. How many were there?"

Leah smiled. "That is what we have come here to speak with you about."

Because he knew. He lied to them when first they arrived in Ushak. He knew that the number of the Fae was seven, and he knew much more.
 
Boesarius took a small step forward. His face was closer than courtesy prescribed to Gundolgu's own. He stared him down.

"Tell your wife to leave with the children," he said quietly. Calmly.

Gundolgu blinked, and then his body started to tense up. This was the onset of another fear with which Boesarius was well acquainted—the fear exhibited by a subject who knew he was caught. Breathlessly, Gundolgu said, "What? What do you...?"

"Tell your wife. To leave. With the children," Boesarius said again. "Do it."

After this, it would be Leah who would take the reins. If some opportunity arose, some teachable moment perhaps, then Boesarius would step in and provide an example. But otherwise, it would be her.

She needed to extract Gundolgu's guilt and drag it out into the light.
 
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