Episode 1 - Chapter 6

He drew an arrow. In Sol’s true flame, sets forth my righteous path.

“Isn’t he too old for her?” Ianc asked. Clementine looked his age, maybe older. Gerald was at least in his forties.

“That is not my place to comment,” Rahorh said.

Marshall, the title was reason enough. The Sacrosanct intermarried to hoard Sol’s favor. His memory flashed, recounting what he knew. Clan deMolay, though a vassal under house Mieres, carried great weight in the southern uncharred ridges of Lys Royeaux. Perhaps they had ascended to a proper house, judging by having an Inquisitor like Clementine.

In the grand cathedrals of the Hallow Church sat Tietra del Saintinas, the closest man to Sol. His pact with house leAbelle and leAngelnet allowed the Church to control the Quaeso chapels, thus the flow of Ishchoir in the world under the Sear, Sahada. The Church’s executioner, the Prune Pontiff, held absolute power to call Inquisition on the Magister houses.

“Woodman!” Rahorh’s voice snapped through Ianc’s dark thoughts. “Stop dreaming. Make yourself useful. Drag those corpses here.”

Ianc nodded, carrying himself towards the plagueborn. They sorted limbs, heads, and torsos into separate, twitching piles. The air reeked of spoiled meat and roast flesh as they started the fire. He dragged the two templar corpses, adding to the pyre. Then he retrieved their heads. Those same opaque eyes to the stag, and those jaws were still biting the air as he threw them in the flame. “What will happen if we eat these undead meat?”

“Hah,” Campa snorted. “You will leak on both ends, then die, then join them in the pyre.”

“What about the animals?” Ianc pressed. “The ginger field. A hunter named Thomas brought back three boars, and then the sickness came.”

“And you, woodman?” Rahorh asked, not looking up from his work. “Same profession. Did you have better luck, or better judgment?”

“I didn’t find success in my hunt and had to use my old stack to pay levy for the Tenure feast,” Ianc said, another half lie. A rhys mentioned that he was infected. He’d skinned the tiger. Could the plague be transferred just by breath? No, he had a few scratches on his fingers, must be the blood.

Clementine stared at him in the entire speech. She gazed back at the piles of corpses and gave a hand signal. As the flame spread, they chanted a low, resonant threnody Ianc didn’t know.

“No Sol reaches for your warmth. No crows feast on your mortal form,
No plague curses your domain, bring forth husk of dominion.
Only us, the ashen warriors. Only us, the devoted shepherds,
Only us and his true flame, sets forth your righteous path.”

When they finished the chant, the fire fed on the flesh, shifting from red to a sickly blue. Then from black smoke blazed a pure, screaming white flame. The taint itself was burnt out of the dead. He stared deep into the pure white flame, seeing shadows in the middle of the burning flesh. Incineration is an honor, they said. His gaze flicked to a dark doorway. A secret dungeon to torture my people. Mirari, if they found out about her, she would face the same fate.

His jaw clenched. Never. I’ll give her mercy first. Who was the shadow, an Archlich like Clementine had suspected? Then how could it cast a spell under the Second Sun’s protection? How could it even impose a rhys and walk inside the Sear? He understood one thing now that he had to become stronger. Wear their insignia. Learn their fire. He had to be a thorn. His voice came rough when he spoke, probing the wound. “Of what law allows the Quaeso chapel to torture people?”

Campa turned, his bulk filling Ianc’s vision. “What are you blabbing about?”

“I think the Quaeso chapel is the plague,” Ianc said, tilting his head up to meet Campa’s eyes. “You don’t torture despair out of someone. You create it.”

A gauntleted backhand caught Ianc across the jaw. Light exploded behind his eyes before he hit the ground. Clementine stood over him, her voice a deadly calm. “That talk will earn you a pyre. We hunt corruption. Sometimes it hides deep. The methods are harsh.” Her jaw tightened. “The furnace is a mercy, for what Makaiel makes of failed subjects.”

Ianc pushed himself up, spitting blood. “People break.”

Clementine bit her lips, her eyes were wide with anger. He could sense Solfire was burning inside those gray orbs. She unstrapped her cloak and the armor beneath, showing her bare shoulders. It was crosshatched with scars, each a healed scream, each a lesson carved into flesh. “Sacrosanct faces temptation the same as Suledins. Your prejudices towards us need to end. You are one of us and shall endure the same if you live long enough.” She re-equipped each piece of her gear with a sharp, final movement, punctuated by her words.

The fire left his anger, leaving his jaw throbbing and a cold understanding in its place. He was a novice judging masters of a war he’d just stumbled into. “Apologises.” He bowed.

With a wave of Clementine’s hand, they made a swift, grim campfire. Ianc watched, stunned, as they ate hardtack and dried meat in the chamber of stench and ashes.

“We also don’t have time for soft methods, woodman,” Rahorh said, “Like grogblossom, if it’s there, it’s there. You take it out, forcing your body to heal. You leave it be, it will explode when you are most unexpected. We have Undead to fight on the frontier, can’t let our backyard turn on us too.”

Ianc nodded. Their reasonableness was a new kind of trap that seemed to latch on his collarbone. The kinder they were, the deeper the betrayal would cut when he chose Mirari over them. “At least, let me have some weapons. I’m useless to this course without a means to protect myself.”

“Haven’t you just heard about ‘explode when you are most unexpected?’ We are not giving you any weapons until the orb is destroyed.” Rahorh shrugged.

“Not even a shield?” Ianc insisted.

Campa finally barked a laugh. “Persistent little badger, aren’t you?”

They moved out before swallowing their last bite. The guys took a piss in the corner. Clementine and Abigail were having a conversation in private, leaving Ianc no choice but to stand practicing his new kite shield. It was heavy and unbalanced from the cracks it had endured after the plagueborn confrontation. At least when it eventually broke, he could have two pieces of wood to throw at his opponents.

He mimicked what he had seen the templars did in the training yards, crouching down and pushing. One step, two steps, and at the three, he sprung hard at the imagining enemy. This motion, if combined with a line of soldiers, would bash the undead to the ground for the next line to pin them down; or the templars would just bring down a mace, while the next line advanced through the gaps. He had always loved the craft of formations and group motions, to join a group of men fighting evil. But his situation forced him to be a lonely hunter.

“That’s a good move, but you have to let out a battlecry in the last push,” Blake said. Then he demonstrated with a wink.

“Yes, yes, it will send the undead crumble in fear. Keep your breath, the undead will not,” Arron said, shaking his head.

Ianc looked between the brothers. “How come your group fights so differently?”

“We are the Inquisitor force,” Clementine interrupted, “We don’t fight the mass of undead, nor the people protest. We seek things like that plagueborn, or people who dabble in necrotic magic to execute Sol’s punishment. Which is this way, towards the source of all this trouble.” She turned, signalling them with hand signals and took the lead from Campa.

Ianc followed the group, with two sol templars behind him. They had lost four, but it seemed death had not shaken them a small bit. Perhaps it was the responsibility of the blessed soldiers, perhaps they were just brave. The corridor led up in the same fashion as it had led them down to the furnace, promising another confrontation that Ianc didn’t want to face. He might find Mirari there and it imposed a shroud of fear upon him. Could he side with her to fight against the people here? He knew one thing that he didn’t want them to be hurt. He bit his lips, then spat. Mirari comes first.

“It’s locked, not barred,” Campa said, “Guess I’ll be first to lead us into the light this time, Inquisitor.” He heaved himself, about to charge at the door.

Abigail yanked the hulky templar aside, but the attempt resulted in her being pulled up two steps, almost toppled over Rahorh. “The noise risks being heard by whatever inside the fort. I can pick the lock.”

She busied herself for a while, no one else made a sound but the tiny clicks of her tools. With a sharp clink, she pushed the door open. It was awkward, for the rusted hinges gave out a series of mocking creaks that could be heard in the far end of this corridor. Even though no one made a comment, Ianc saw their chainmails shaking. Clementine quickly took charge as usual and burst out of the narrow space they were in, followed by Campa, then the siblings.

“Clear.”

The bright light felt like an assault as Ianc entered the courtyard. It was absent from life, not even a corpse was walking or lying on cold stone. Behind him was the watchtower, probably the one he had been kept imprisoned in that bird cage when he woke up on the opposite side. The two templars behind whizzed through him and opened the portcullis while the rest kept vigilant eyes on the wall, the servant quarter, and the big arch doors that led to the courtroom where the lord hosted the feast.

The templars they had parted on the chapel below reappeared, marching in order. The leader strode right before Clementine with a grim face. “The escort party sent a signal. The people we saved yesterday… turned instantly when the barrier was down.”

Clementine glanced around, counting the numbers. “Then we are surrounded, but we are at the heart of this plague. Sol Templars! Make your stand here. I, Inquisitor Clementine deMolay, swear under the light of Sol, that we will prevail.”

She turned to Ianc, her armor scarred, her eyes hollow with a failure she’d never admit aloud. “Your connection to the orb. Use it, or we all die here. This town is just the first.”

It stunted him. A Sacrosanct asking for help? He breathed in slow and deep, then nodded. “I follow your lead.”

The templars mounted the walls in a matter of seconds, chewing on their supplies as they moved. Ianc saw no sign of fear in them, or they might have hidden it well under their helmets. But in him, fear was a cold worm in his belly. His knees felt water-weak. He had just given a promise and might have to break it if he found Mirari behind those great doors.

Campa was the first to ascend the staircase, his armor cladded, his boots thudded, his cloak floated. He charged the great doors like a battering ram. They boomed open, vomiting out streams of black, grasping smoke. The oaf templar rolled forward, then sprung to the side, hiding himself behind a pillar.

Rahorh and Abigail burst in right after. Their hands were holding torches that radiated white light that beat the black smoke deep into the throne room. Ianc gazed inside, his mind was so focused that time seemed to slow itself down. In the hall’s heart hung the orb, a pulsing, diseased egg. Gray tendrils dripped from it like roots, piercing through the nobles of Camelford, now dangling marionettes of death. They twitched with each pulse, puppets to the orb’s black magic.

The group acted as they used to. Blake shot while Arron pulled the benches together, making a blockage. Campa and Clementine joined forces on the left flank, blocking, pushing, slashing whatever came at them.

Ianc knew instinctively he had to help Rahorh and Abigail, for these undead were much faster than the stragglers he had fought before. He crouched behind his shield and hurried to the right flank, where the rhys had already got rid of the torch and fought with a pole. Ianc bashed one undead onto another and saw a flash of metal from a far. The armored corpses drew swords. Their eyes glowed like hellish coals, gray smoke leaking from every seam. “Is that normal?” He yelled.

“No! Keep your wits about you and protect my sister,” Clementine roared. She disappeared into the shadow on the far end of the hall.

Ianc glanced at Abigail. She was puffing, her arms continuously dancing in the air to conjure some kind of huge spell that formed a big orb of flames before her.

“We need to burn them lest they become another plagueborn,” Rahorh roared. His arms also danced in a whirl of movement. But instead of conjuring another ball, his Solfire spurted into Abigail’s, enlarging it dramatically.

Blake joined Ianc’s side. “Take the aisle near the wall.”

Ianc skipped to the right aisle. The combined spell of Rahorh and Abigail swelled into a miniature sun, its light a physical force pushing against the orb’s necrotic glow.

Ianc reached his position and found one undead was cramping over. It stumbled on the benches, but its target was clear. He wished he had his composite bow here so he could end this quickly. He inhaled sharply, and charged with the kite shield pointy end. The undead dodged with unnatural speed and slashed low. Agony ripped from hip to armpit. As they clashed, the thing’s face swung into view. Ianc’s breath died. Oscar, Mirari’s victim. Death had not erased that spoiled arrogance in those hollow eyes.

“Oscar!” He gritted through his teeth. To his surprise, undead-Oscar reacted to his calls. It stopped moving and gazed at him. A crazy idea appeared in Ianc’s mind. They weren’t mindless undead, they were controlled by the necromancy orb. “Cle! They still have their mind.”

Undead-Oscar launched itself at him, sword coming down. He blocked it, then used all of his strength to push it towards the wall. A foul smell invaded his nostril as it opened its mouth to bite him. Cluck-cluck-cluck. He hammered an elbow at its throat, then its mouth, its nose. You died and returned but my sister is alive and gone. Why? Die! He kept releasing a barrage of hatred until the pain bounced back. With the last drop of hate, he spun around, bringing the kite shield to a full circle that ended on undead-Oscar’s neck.

He gasped for breath, his arms and legs were shaking as he picked up the sword. He shouldn’t let his anger take him like that, not when surrounded by undead. A mistake he swore he wouldn’t make again.

The air cracked when the orange orb clashed with the black egg. Sparkling embers glowed and diminished, leaving plumes of smoke that soon evaporated into thin air. Across the room, Clementine and Campa were throwing fireballs at the corpses, preventing them from being re-animated again.

A movement snagged Ianc’s eye. A pale strand, nearly invisible, slithering from the orb toward Clementine’s back. He blinked. Campa, right beside her, gave no sign of seeing it. He sprinted. “Cley, behind you!”

She turned, confused. The strand coiled behind her like a serpent.

He leapt from the bench, sword swinging. It sliced through the strand, but didn’t cut it. It turned toward him, recoiled again and struck him in the chest, right on the black mark. Numbness spread from his chest to his neck, his limbs, even his mind. He was pinned in mid-air. In his sanctum, the white tendril speared toward his tiny, newborn spark. It will eat me. Become me. Make me undead. Despair met a deeper, stubborn rage. His inner self didn’t think. It acted, calling out a hatchet by pure memory. With a woodman’s practiced swing, he chopped at the tether connecting the strand to his spark. No plague curses my domain.

“What in the light is that?” Campa shouted.

That was the last thing Ianc heard.

The hatchet bounced back. Gray mist wrapped around his spark. His body was drifting away from his mind, serrated by the orb’s invasion. The avatar in his inner sanctum still has a chance. He imagined his weapon, a bow, and it appeared on his hand. He drew an arrow. In Sol’s true flame, sets forth my righteous path. With sole commitment and a stubbornness to live, he released it. His corrupted spark splintered, then exploded.

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This chapter marks the end of Episode 1. Please feel free to comment or share any feedback. I genuinely welcome honest criticism.

Here’s an extra poem to sum up Episode 1.

The Sear hums,
Blue eyes stare back.
A dear’s future sold for Solfire,
A nightmare returned from hollow prayers,
Chains and Blood. The brooch lies broken.
A shadow wearing a rhys’s smile whispers a killing spree,
The cages swing, a woodman flying free.
In the furnace heart a gray egg pulses, 
From a confused heart, arise a new resolve.
The Sear hums,
Death's eyes stare back.