*Curious* he thought to himself as he heard the stranger approach and enter the confessional.
The middle aged priest couldn't possibly see the confessor but he could most definetly hear his breathing at first.
"Bless me father for I have sinned. My last confession was the 8th of the Lower Wind month, around this time last year." the voice came. It seemed to be both silky, and quivering with fear.
Father Francis was taken aback by this. He wasn't expecting a confessor during today. Almost all of the faithful would be either in the main temples to the four to pray for their sons and husbands safe return or in the streets to see them off to the war.
"Y-yes, you are blessed my son, speak your sins and let them be forgiven."
He stuttered out the sentence he seldom got to say apart from the odd beggar trying to sucker him into charity. He tried to muffle the sound of his book closing as the priest leaned in.
"Father, is it permissable to kill one man to save several?"
*Ah. A quick confession from a conscript trying to ease his concious about going to battle. This will be quick.*
"Yes, on the field of battle it is to be expected though it is not acceptable to be cruel in your dealings with violence."
*The poor bastard will be lucky to kill even one man.* He recalled. *It takes about four spearmen to kill one knight of the Empire.*
"And what if it isn't on the battle field Father? What if it's here, in the city?" the voice asked.
The priest paused for a moment.
*Here? In the city violence was far from uncommon but it was mostly relegated to the actions of Eight Fingers and their illicit dealings. Commiting violence to save others in the city? Perhaps a city guard then.*
"Yes." He said with resolve. "To save the lives of innocents, then killing is only to be expected. Especially if the person you kill is someone guilty of terrible crimes." The priest added with a note of pride in his own intellect, for he had truly sagious to figure out the confessors vocation in such short time.
"Ah." the man sighed. "It fills me with such joy to hear you say that Father. I feared maybe my own compass was skewed." The voice finished with no small measure of relief.
*Well that's that then-*
"What if I grant an evil man a fate far worse than death then? To save others of course."
the Father paused for more than one moment. What could be worse than death that this watchman would give?
"Well, to be sure the worse fates of all for the evil are dying before they have a chance to find God's forgiveness, no? For after death there are no more chances at redemption, and God will cast the sinful into fire."
At this point, he was simply repeating lines he remembered reading from his training. The pride he felt a mere minute ago had quickly been reduced to near nothing as his own inadequecies came into view once more.
The man on the other side of the thin wooden lace seemed to shift and inhale.
"That fire Father, that is the worse possible thing then?" he inquired.
"Undoubtebly" the priest answered, getting the distinct feeling he wasn't going to enjoy this confession.
"Do you know anything about healing magic, Father?" the man seemed more open and involved now. As though he had stuck his hand onto a pot he may have expected to burn himself on.
*What does healing have to do with this?*
"I can perform healing magic of the 1st tier once a day." the priest said sadly.
"And what do you know of spell scrolls?" the man asked, hoping to lead to a point.
Father Alaki considered the question for a moment. Not much, as it had turned out. He knew that animal skins could make first tier spells, and goblin skins could make second tier spells. Apart from that, very little. He had said nothing for too long. The man decided to continue.
"When I was a child, I grew up in a village outside of E-Pepsel. My grandmother taught me magic of the 0th tier and a single spell of the 1st tier that she knew when I was 6. It was the spell [Light Healing]. Normally if someone lost an arm, and then had it healed back, the arm that was severed would disappear into a bit of black smoke. However there are ways to bypass this so that the arm remains, by turning the severed arm into something else, like cooked meat. While I had effectively become the villages defacto healer whenever someone was hurt, I never made any money from it and always did it for free. When times would get hard, I would hurt the family pig, and then heal it again to sell the pork in the city." He finished.
*Torturing animals? No. Not torture in the conventional method for pleasure. Just doing what he has to do to survive. It is just a pig after all.*
"Y-Yes I can see where this may hold on your concious, but it is just a pig no?" he sputtered trying as hard as he could to hide his newfound uncomfortability being around this strange confessor.
"Perhaps Father. When my own mother died I had begun to do so every day. Not just to earn a living but to earn a future. Eventually with practice I had become a 2nd-tier magic caster by the time I was 14. At that point I had the abilites to summon lesser angels, and other such creatures... so I started manufacturing spell scrolls. I brought my wares to Re-Estize in order to make more money from doing so, harvesting skin from pigs in order to create them and sell them at the Mage's guild but the more and more time I spent outside in the streets the more and more I saw how powerless I was. In the village I healed everyone. Everyone was healthy regardless of their position. I made sure of that. When I came here it was moving from a small town of 250 to a city of a million. I tried.
I tried for a year and spent all of my mana every day, healing random people who truly needed it. Yet, when I did everyone started coming to me like moths to a flame. With all of their needs and I had so little to give every day. Who would live? Who would die? Even if I prioritized the children, there were so many children whose parents couldn't afford proper healing. They weren't just drawn to me, they were smothering my light and every day I had to bear it. I had to keep going and try my hardest to not give into dispair. It wasn't self pity that was seeping into my soul but rather depression at being so powerless and caring too much in a world that didn't care." He declared.
*That's... definetly something.* The priest thought. He was desparate to digest even a sliver of this information. *Wait, healing people like that sounds like-*
"I found a way. Oh I found a way. I designed a spell that could recover mana. Of course, casting it required more mana than it restored less mana than it took to cast. Yet it was my salvation because I soon came to learn from a tome I shouldn't legally posses that human skin can be used to make spell scrolls of the third tier."
*Oh no.* it all came clicking together at once for the priest. The killings, the healings, the story. The Priest was no physically recoiled, leaning back trying to get away from the speaker. *HE IS-*
"From that same ancient tome I learned forbidden lore. Lore to stain my very sole. I raised the undead Father. Normally I can only use [Over magic] to cast one spell of the third tier a day in exchange for the vast majority of my mana and [Animate Dead] meant little but I was able to create Skeleton Mages. When equipped with a magic item enchanted with my spell they could create the scrolls for mana restoration themselves and thus, transfer all of their mana to me. So I found evil men father. There was no shortage. I came in the night and took rapists, and murderers, and anyone else I thought sinful and by God I stripped them of their flesh and made... deliverence. I armed my self with this binder around my waist, filled with scrolls, and went into the streets. I healed and healed. I restored limbs, and routed fevers, and every moment I did it I felt bliss because a little bit of justice was back in the world as the meek were made whole and the evil were brought low. As God looked down on my would he see my stained soul? Did God know I stained my soul so that I could further the principals of charity? I threw myself into the arms of Necromancers that I might feel God's embrace. The people all love me now. Yet there is still so much more to be done. I have purchased for myself, several magical items from the Empire. A ring of [Dimensional Move]. A ring of [Fireball]. Boots of [Flight]. And now I bring my body and my tome to the war, the war of which takes lives and brings starvation to the Kingdom. Yes, this war is surely a disease in itself. And indeed, I intend to cure it. I will take all of my being and cut down as many knights as I can. Yes, yes. They are not conscripts, they are men of violence. They chose to become knights. They knew the risks.
So there can be no doubt that this is simply the way of things. For every one of them I kill, four to five men will go home to their families. If I kill 10 men now, 40 men will hug their children again. I have enough scrolls to set off over 200 fireballs. Each will kill a dozen men and more and God will love me."
He finished in a way that had more sounded like a man describing his lusts rather than a man of perversion sounded describing his own lusts.
The Priest of the God of Life sat there stunned. His body could not move. It would not be possible for him to even defy anyone, were it that they opened the door of the confessional and slid a dagger between his ribs.
"I-I-I..." he mumbled.
"Yes. I know. Thank you Father, for hearing my confession." The spellcaster, the Necromancer, the torturer, and yet, the most beloved man to the lowerclass replied to the gibberish. He sounded... depressed now. As though he had reached out to feel a warm blanket, but instead, found it cold.
"Please remember to pray for me, while I go to make a good accounting for myself on the field. [Dimensional Move]." With that sentence and that invocation, the man was gone. Leaving only a stunned Priest, as the rain began to fall outside the window.