AN: Just so you know, if you look carefully throughout these chapters, you'll find plenty of references to historical events, some are more obvious than others, but to the history nerds among you, go nuts. :)
...Yanana...
The city was bustling like crazy as Yuri walked steadily through the streets. She moved at a steady clip, so between the grim expression on her face and her military uniform, she went unmolested and people gave her a wide berth. Not an easy task in such a busy place, but she did not have to so much as go around someone, the aura of death hung over her like a cloud. Despite her grim expression, she was overwhelmed with happiness. 'So many... I can almost smell the heresy, I wonder what games I'll get to play here before that bitch arrives to ruin the fun.' She thought to herself, an almost sexual bliss consumed her thoughts as she turned eyes towards one individual after another. She would look upon one, a man, a woman, the young, the old, it didn't matter, and imagine what they'd look like twisting in her grip.
She sniffed a little dismissively, 'Still better with demihumans, tougher bodies, they hold out longer, makes me miss Jaldabaoth. He gave me so many beautiful toys... even if he didn't mean to.' She giggled a little under her breath and tore her thoughts away from her favorite pastime and focused on the job at hand.
She made her way to the temple and paused to look around, it was a truly impressive pavillion, the court of justice. Though it was colder now and the soldiers wore warmer equipment, the place looked much like what she'd imagined it did. She paused at the temple steps and turned around, descending the long amphitheater seating. There were no trials going on at the moment so except for a few people pausing to relax, it was empty. When she got to the bottom she approached the Pillars of Justice. Yuri smiled when she passed the spot of dried blood where, as the story went, one of the judges had been injured.
The low pillar with the chain on it that had secured Neia's wrists, and the two large pillars where she'd had her back stripped and her wrists secured. "What must it have been like for you... gods, if only I could have done it... how long would it have taken for me to break you... ten lashes? Fifty? A hundred? And those fools could not even manage one? Pathetic." Yuri laughed in a low and pretty tone and touched the chain. "Capturing you might be hard... but oh by the gods... if only..." Yuri's face broke into a mad smile and she fairly hugged the chain to her breast as she trembled at the enjoyment of what horrors she longed for.
She then dropped the chain and looked around some more, a few had noticed her, but none approached, she ascended the stairs again and returned to the temple, pausing suddenly when a beggar crawled over to her and looked up with spittle flying from his lips. "Divine wrath! Divine wrath! Divine wrath!" He shouted over and over again from his doglike position, fear had him shaking with horror and she could not even be sure he was seeing 'her' in front of him.
Yuri grinned and touched his cheek as she looked down at him, "Oh you poor little fool... I am divine 'pain', I fear no wrath." She laughed, then curved her fingers into a clawlike position and raked them over his face. If he registered the pain from the now bloody streaks, he didn't show it.
She pursed her lips in a tiny frown, "Boring." She huffed unhappily, and went the rest of the way into the temple. The decor was par for the course, an open area, a single wall that created a corridor to go to a priest's private offices, the open area filled with seating and a place for someone to speak. The unusual thing was that, despite this being a day for worship, the temple was half empty.
Nobody was in the back at the speaking position. That was curious. Yuri approached someone who was praying and put her hand on his shoulder. "Hey, where's the priest shouldn't he be here for services?" She asked with a raised eyebrow.
The person she was speaking to looked up in surprise. "Are you new here?" He asked. "Oh, of course you are." He said when he tore his eyes away from her face and saw her uniform. He stood up, he was a middle aged man with a stocky body that was slowly going to fat, but the reason for that was obvious, when he stood, he was in obvious pain from his right leg.
"Come, step away from the worship area and I'll explain." He said with a whisper that barely carried.
She moved aside and let him lead her to the wall that made the private hallway. Once on the other side of it, he leaned heavily against it so that he didn't have to rely on his leg. "Yes, the priest 'should' be here, but there aren't enough priests left. They're having to work in shifts and cut services."
"What happened, did they die?" She asked with genuine curiosity in her voice as she scratched her head.
"No, their faith did. After Neia's trial and her departure things got... hectic." He said as he thought about it.
"So... would you say it got 'heretic' pretty quickly?" Yuri grinned at the evil pun.
He shuddered. "Puns... no, just... no." He slapped his palm to his face, then relaxed and continued, "But also kind of yes, some Red Paladins took up residence, along with a few priests, they started undermining the temples, they went to the work sites and just waited for people to be injured... then they'd use their magic without even being asked. The temples where it was supposed to happen started losing money. So then they started restricting healing to certain 'areas' and issuing licenses that only official priests could get. People ignored the rules, even the guards. Official priests, the young ones usually, the idealists, some of them started leaving."
He slumped lower, as if he couldn't believe what he was saying. "So then the temples started charging people 'in advance' on the promise that they wouldn't charge people anything when they needed it, that helped for a little while, but then... well they started using the money to push back against the newcomers, making laws that kept them from helping anyone who was a member of the six or the four. So... people left both and joined the new religion. Stupid move really." He added in a gruff voice.
"Why are you still here then?" Yuri asked.
"I grew up under the gods, I'll be damned if I follow an undead." He said grimly. "Not that I don't appreciate what their 'people' are doing, but the temples guide us under the will of the gods, they wouldn't mislead us over something as petty as coin, not with their souls at stake." He said confidently.
"So... when will the priest be here then?" Yuri asked, shifting the subject to keep back her laughter.
"By noon I guess. I'm just here early to pray for healing, most of the people out there are doing the same. Either for themselves or their children." He said in passing, "Now, excuse me... I must get back to it. The gods do not reward idle faith. I must show my devotion to receive their blessing." He said with a pleasant expression that showed his optimism, and walked away when Yuri nodded in acceptance.
She went back to the priest's office and reached down to open the door. It didn't open. "Locked?" She said in disbelief. "No, it's not locked." She grinned and wrenched the knob, breaking the lock, then walking through to take a seat and wait.
She folded one leg over the other and waited, as it turned out the idiot in the temple proper was just about right, an old, wrinkled man in rich robes showed up and looked aghast at his office door, and then almost as surprised at the armored woman waiting impatiently tapping her foot.
"Get in, close the door, sit down, shut up, and wait to speak until I ask you a question." Yuri said without a hint of mercy in her brutal voice, killing intent oozed out of her flesh like sap down a cut tree or blood from an open wound.
He blinked in disbelief, but did as she said and moved to his desk. As an extra measure, she sat staring at him, stretching out the silence while he shifted uncomfortably. When he was thoroughly uncomfortable, only then did Yuri speak. "Explain why you have living heretics in the South. Are they not flammable or something?" Her voice was cold and demanding, and her eyes narrowed as if she was staring at an ugly carcass.
"Ah," he started to say, then swallowed even more uncomfortably, when she asked about the 'flammability' of heretics, she detected a faint smell of ammonia in the air, and he drew back with his hands gesturing up and down placatingly, a fearful smile on his face, "it's... well... did you see the man outside?" He asked.
"The crazy beggar guy? Pretty pathetic, but what about him?" She asked.
"He wasn't always a crazy beggar guy. "He was once a priest, a significant one, then Neia's trial happened, now he's a raving lunatic, 'Divine Wrath' is almost the only thing he says." The priest slumped forward, dejected.
"So?" Yuri asked.
"So now everybody who isn't a heretic, is absolutely terrified of heretics. Nobody will testify against heretics, nobody will accuse people of heresy, nobody will even take a whip to the heretics when they're open about it." The old priest grumbled unhappily.
"Well, your solution has arrived. You know the situation by now, don't you?" Yuri asked coldly.
"The Queen of Heresy, the daughter of the undead, the unliving child, the voice of the skeleton, the dark herald... is coming, yes." He said with equal coldness, which Yuri found refreshing. But that struck her as odd.
"What's with all the titles?" She inquired in bafflement.
"Oh, when she was on trial, she used a multitude of titles to name herself, after she left, people started making up their own to describe her, some more mocking than others, some meant to terrify... some guards even got bored and turned it into, if you can believe it... a drinking game." He said with a measure of annoyance.
"A drinking game. How do you play that?" Yuri asked, suddenly intrigued.
"Apparently you come up with a title and if you do, you drink, if you don't, everybody else drinks. You've got the timespan of a feather drop and... well most of the time they were all getting drunk very, very quickly. We banned the game but... well the titles remain." He rolled his eyes.
"Hmmph! Irregardless of that, yes, she's coming this way with an army at her back and if you want to fend her off, the heretics are a fifth column, an enemy within the walls. They have to be broken. I've already spoken with the commanding General, he's authorized any and all measures necessary to put down the heresy of this city and ensure it is kept secure."
"Now that... should both alleviate, and create, some fears in all the right places." The old priest said happily.
...Crossroads...
Owl was the first to speak up to Shanda's question. "Dangerous, dirty, and absurdly powerful for humans." He said in his childlike voice.
"Thank you, that's quite right." Kirak replied. "Anyone else?" He asked.
"They're butchers." Ham grunted out unhappily, he folded his arms over his chest in distaste. "My village was wiped out by a scripture a long time ago, b'fore the Sorcerer King came along. Call em'selves the saviors of humanity, but they're killers with uniforms an' nothin more." He spat in disgust.
"Also correct." Shanda said with a regretful smile on her face and a minor tremble to her hands that she barely stilled. "Anyone else?" She asked.
No one spoke. "Alright then. Well you're looking at three of them." Kirak said bluntly. He touched his hand to his chest, "I was a Windflower Scripture."
Shanda touched her hand to her chest, "I was Clearwater Scripture."
"You said three, but there are two of you." Petyr pointed out, trying to stay ahead of the sense of surprise that had clearly caught his friends and made them silent.
"Ahem, ahem." Kirak and Shanda said in unison and centered on Rascal. He lowered his eyes.
"Fuck it." He groused and announced, "I was also Clearwater Scripture. That's how I know them. That's why I can plan things out the way I do, and that's why I survived our suicide mission."
The rest could only gape.
"Why... why are you helping us?" Moira asked in disbelief, "Why are you 'here' at all?!" All she could do was blink as she breathlessly voiced her questions, nor was she alone in her dumbfounded look.
Rascos was the first to answer. "I told you about my time as a mutilis, but that wasn't all. I joined the Theocracy army when I was old enough, they had me 'tested' I guess you could say, turned out I had a talent for stealth based operations, top of my class actually. I was routed into the scripture ranks and hand picked for the Clearwater. We act as scouts and information gatherers, assassins, we can fight but... that isn't our main purpose. This is the thing that got me... the abject hypocrisy. Out in the field, we mantained friendly relations with various tribes, demihumans, elves, and so on, it was the only way to operate out there, you couldn't fight everyone. So we would sometimes help one against the other and negotiate peacefully for help or resources. Here we were, supposed to be the chosen people of the gods, everybody else... worm food or slaves." He clenched his fists and shook with rage.
"I was OK with that for awhile, but you spend time out there long enough, you find out how you're not that different from many of the others we're supposed to hate. I got on well with some demihumans, some isolated elf tribes in the Dark Elf country, that kind of thing. So this one time I was out on an assignment and I got separated, I got hurt, and a couple of elves found me."
He looked around at his comrades, "They... treated me, took care of me, nursed me back from the edge of death until they could get me to one of their tribe's healers. I stayed with them a few days, went hunting with some of their men... then one day we came back and the tribe was... it was dead. The Agante had incited a fight that got that little tribe exterminated. I just couldn't do it after that, I couldn't say we were 'good'. I couldn't believe in our cause anymore. They'd saved me and we'd killed them in return. That was the end of my loyalty to the Theocracy, and to our beliefs, and to our gods. I hunted down and killed the relevant Agante members, soaked some of my things in blood and left them somewhere they would be found by the rest of our people and..." he closed his fist, then opened it and blew over his palm as if scattering dust, "poof, I was gone and presumed dead."
"I took on a new name, then left for the Sorcerous Kingdom as soon as it began. When this war broke out, I joined up as soon as I could. I've got a lot to make up for, killing the right people this time, that's all I want to do." He said in a hollow, empty voice. "Anything else?"
Shanda looked them over, "If you must know... then me, I used to work with Rascos, but the kicker for me was when we went heretic hunting in a village in our own country. There was this family that was accused of heresy by the local mayor, it was a big enough deal to call us in because the father was one of the largest landowners in the area. Of course we found what we sought, he was tried and executed, his property was confiscated and his wife turned out onto the street with their two children."
She let out a bitter laugh, "Of course we found the evidence the mayor wanted us to find, the land was resold and he bought most of it up, the wife ended up in a brothel to survive, and she didn't last a year, she was this little spring foal of a girl, delicate, wholly unprepared for that life. The brothel owner gave 'contracts' to her children, and the mayor approved them, the contracts were disgustingly one sided, and so these two naive little ones, not even ten, ended up getting worked to death in the fields that used to belong to their father. I didn't know all this at the time, I'd done my job and moved on. I found out when I went back, I returned the day the children died, passed where they were being disposed of just at the moment they were being thrown into a hole in the field by the road. I recognized the little boy's flaming red hair, it was still vibrant even in death... I..." Shanda clutched her hands together as if in prayer and squeezed them tight enough that they shook.
"I... I did that to them, even if I didn't mean to. So I started checking and found out what happened after I left. That was what opened my eyes, I started realizing all our 'heresy hunting' was a sham! A sham! We were being used to crush political enemies, steal land and lives and goods and... I hadn't signed up for that. So I killed the mayor and ran off, I faked my death by throwing some of my equipment into an area known to be occupied by monsters, after smearing the mayor's blood on it of course. I heard rumors about a killer outside this city and recognized Rascos's work. I tracked him down and he hooked me up with Kirak. Now I run the whores and the information brokerage in this city."
Kirak rolled his eyes, "You're both long winded. Short version is that my story is a lot like theirs. Look you want to know the truth, Scriptures seem as crazy devoted as they do because some people out there... they're like us. They quit, they take off and can't do that shit anymore. Sometimes some poor sap falls in love with an elf, sometimes they start to identify with the people they're supposed to hate, but either way we all go one or two ways... we get sick of the crap our country makes us do and realize we're on the wrong side, or we go full fanatic to the point where nothing matters but their orders." He pointed to Ham, "The ones who visited 'you' would be the latter." Kirak said grimly. "I hooked up with Rascos and he hooked me up with Shanda, he used his unique skills with deception and illusion magic, among other things, along with some money he'd put aside, and got us set up as the ones who run the underground here. You'll find an ex scripture or two in most of the cities of the Theocracy if you look into the criminal elements. We're hunted, of course, not everybody fakes their death effectively. But we exist. Satisfied?"
"Do we really have a choice but to be?" Petyr asked.
"No." The trio of ex-scriptures replied bluntly.
"Then yes." Owl said reluctantly.
"Well, if we've got... all that out of the way, then this is what I got from Mananak before he was captured." Petyr said anxiously and explained about the enchanted scorpion ammunition.
"Yeah, that'd be a problem. Every problem can be solved, you can't do much about what they've already got, but how about if you keep more from being made?" Kirak suggested confidently.
"Yes, that'll do. But how, we don't know where they're being made." Moira pointed out unhappily, her lips contorted into a frown.
"But I can tell you who makes them." Shanda said with a wicked smile. "There's only one magic user in this city who can handle that, he favors one of my more expensive whores. I can get you into his residence and you can kill him, if he dies, well with the city under siege, they won't be able to get anyone else in who can make those."
"Tonight then." Rascos said. "Who will handle it?"
Nagi and Romare traded a look, "We've already worked together once on sneaking in somewhere, I think we can pull this off." Nagi said with a confidence he wasn't entirely certain he felt, but faked well enough.
"Alright." Shanda said, "I'll send someone for you an hour before she's scheduled to tire the lecher out. He always dismisses his guards during that time because he's embarrassed to be seen naked, and from what my girl tells me, he should be." She giggled salaciously. "You can sneak in with relative ease, wait till he's asleep, and finish him off... pun intended of course." She said with another wicked laugh, one that brought unexpected laughs in return before, after a few more minutes of discussion, they all got up to part ways.