I started publishing my own work, became a licensed researcher, and worked on developing my own spells and formulas. These days, there isn't a mage alive who hasn't heard the name Mordio.
That's wonderful. You know, I do find there is often rarely a better motivator than spite and success.
[ fuck that lady, actually!! she sucks so bad!!!! but at least for rita, she was able to channel it into something incredibly productive (and, you know, have major issues forever because of it afterwards.)
he hums, a bit cheerful at the idea, but, of course! we can't have nice things. the comic panels show up again, and this time, by temenos. ]
[ it starts with a conversation in the frosty town of stormhail, with the little lamb who you've found yourself guiding: the little lamb who is so, so lost. (42:37 - 48:02)
in his crick way, crick wellsley calls you out on what is undeniable truth: that you don't have much faith in the gods. chosen cleric or otherwise, what you have faith in is the truth, the logical, the things that make sense. he knows this about you, but even so, he confesses his worries and his life story, tells you a fact that shocks you - that he met roi, once upon a time.
roi. roi mistral, a foundling just like you, who found you when you were tiny and terrified and banded together with you. roi, who attracted the kindness of the pontiff jorg, who was adopted at the same time you were. your brother, not in blood but in every other manner. and... you see so much of roi in crick: it's hard not to. they're both the same. honest. bright - so bright, they're hard to look at, sometimes. earnest. faithful. morally sound. the purest heart of the sacred flame.
they are both so good.
but roi is gone, disappeared to the wind five years ago, and the young man who stands before you, eyes brimming with tears, tells you his dream is to cleave wickedness from the world and you swear you could stare at his mirror image. you can't help yourself but to poke holes in it, ever the cynic, just like you were for roi. just like you always were, for roi. because the world will find the light and smother it, whenever it gets the chance. because maybe, if you can show this idealist that there has to be more to life than blind faith, maybe you can save him. maybe he won't befall the same fate.
it's such a familiar conversation that you choose not to sit on it, for once. crick deserves a tiny bit of leeway, after everything you've put him through, and you push past your own guarded nature and pull the information like brambles out of your throat. casually, like it doesn't still feel like an open wound, you tell crick of roi's disappearance, and of the way he is the source of your cynicism and your realism, of the way you've mistrusted the church from the moment he disappeared, and how doggedly you searched for the truth for what happened to him ever since.
for the first time, you reveal your own motivations and your own soft, vulnerable core. you trust crick enough to understand how much this means to you - to understand why you are the way you are. you have given him a thousand false answers to that question, because he asks it frequently, exasperated by your behavior, but today, you tell him the truth.
...something shines in crick's eyes when he speaks to you. he looks sad - upset, even, in the way he does when you remind him that his world of faith is not so clean and bright, but he agrees anyway. he listens. he really is learning, crick - you wonder if it's for the better or the worse, that you could be jading something so pure. honestly, crick admits, there are problems in the sacred guard, and immediately wants to jump to work.
...but talking about roi exhausts you. the weight of your sadness is harder and harder to bear, nowadays, no matter how easily you hide it behind your cassock. you fake an excuse about crick's injury from an earlier fight, reaching out to touch his arm, and crick calls you out on just wanting time alone. it stings, a little, to be so easily read, but it comes with a mix of pride and affection, and you compliment him on his perception, though you've been left feeling exposed. he leaves you for the night; you head to the inn for a night of tossing and turning, something close to what's called sleep.
--
in the morning, you awaken to a hubbub in the center of stormhail.
you've seen this hubbub before - the shocked crowds, the murmuring. someone died, last night - someone was murdered, and you imagine it had everything to do with the very same sacred guard and the truth you've been seeking all this time.
"That's one of them from the sacred guard, isn't it? How'd this happen?" says a concerned townsperson. another gasps, says a prayer. you ask them to move with a combination of politeness and your general aura as the inquisitor and stride through the crowd, and as it parts -
for the third time, a part of your world shatters into pieces.
slumped up against the brick wall outside of the headquarters of the sacred guard is crick wellsley. his body is mangled; blood seeps through his white cloak and down into the white snow, down his white, lifeless face. by some miracle of aelfric, at least his eyes are closed.
your stomach does an unpleasant, horrible twist, and his name tears out of your mouth somewhere between horror and despair - "Crick!" - as you shove past the last of the crowd to drop to his side, to check his pulse. it's the same thing you felt when the pontiff died - that the healing magic you have mastered is useless, that this supposed gift you were given is pointless in the moments it matters the most. you press your fingers to crick's wrist. nothing.
roi's disappearance, first. the pontiff, dead on the floor, mauled by a beast in his own cathedral. and now...
you don't really realize it, but like any number of mourners you've comforted before, you find yourself asking no one - why. the whammy of grief and frustration - why crick, of all people, even if you know the answer - burbles uselessly in the back of your brilliant brain, and it's as you're still holding his wrist that you notice the scrap of paper clutched tightly in crick's free hand. slowly, you uncurl his fingers, icy cold and stiff, and pull free what looks like a torn page from of a book, with a single line of writing.
"Surrender yourself not unto silent dusk. For the light shall fade."
it's the same words. the same ones scribbled onto a scrap of bloody paper in the pontiff's final book of scripture. it's a clue. it's a - it's information. crick died for this: a piece of information you desperately needed to crack the final clue of the corruption of the church.
it's as you're holding this in your hand, eyes wide and head already starting to spin, that you hear the sacred guard bark at the crowd to leave. one in particular comes to the corpse, to you, and speaks with loathing. - "What are you doing here?"
you snap at one of many useless crows that he's your friend, that you want to help with the investigation, but you're called dead weight, and the sacred guard scoffs and sends you away. you go, without protest, clutching the paper crick died for in your hand, safely stolen away from the prying eyes of the crows.
for a moment, you look past them. you think of crick, his beseeching eyes and naive, pure dream. his want to fix corruption, the way roi had, the way you want to. the last bastion of goodness left standing in the church of the sacred flame, the little lamb who you'd grown quite fond of, now struck down - a lamb in the den of the wolves - and you stare at the paper in your hand.
"Your clue is safe, and it was not laid out in vain. I will follow the path you've laid out before me."
and you do what you've done a hundred times in your life. you do what you did when you were standing at the body of the man who raised you, the only authority figure you've ever known and trusted. you do it now, at the body of your little lamb, who despite all the questioning you led him to, believed in you. despite the fact that you were the guide who inadvertently led him to his grave.
you close your eyes, and you murmur the truth lies in the flame, and you tap into the sacred flame's visualizations of spirits to follow his way. crick, only a spirit takes on a new role: he's the one that guides you.
and he leads you to the belly of the proverbial beast. you find the book crick tore his page from - you find a secret library, and you find the deputy of the crows, cubaryi, a woman who you have never trusted. she informs you with a cackle that it was the head of their ilk who killed crick - that he had to die because he knew too much. you, by leading him to the truth, led him straight to the lion's den.
you're so angry, suddenly. angry for the injustice of it all. angry for crick, angry for the pontiff, angry that your intuition about these gods-damned crows has always been right, angry enough that it shows on your face when you ask where kaldena is.
the deputy points it out, and mocks you. "Does it hurt, knowing your cute little assistant's been killed?"
you don't respond, lest she know that she's right. the deputy tells you cheerfully that kaldena's gone, and you have to die, that the hound must be brought to heel, and you draw the staff of judgement with a kind of quiet, holy fury that you never show. you have had no faith in this organ of the church, and you are not betrayed.
no. you are angry. ]
Fine. Seal your lips, you so called messenger of the divine. [ you snap, and with the other travelers at your side, you challenge her to battle. you will walk out of here alive.
and when you do, you will turn on your heels for toto'haha, and you will find kaldena, the heart of the rot of the church, and you will snuff her out for good. the truth - for the pontiff, for crick, and for roi - will be brought to light. ]
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Date: 2023-10-18 02:08 pm (UTC)[ sometimes a relationship goes so badly that you just become a hermit, nbd. ]
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Date: 2023-10-19 01:42 pm (UTC)I see. I imagine that was a time to hone your craft...?
[ once again - he thinks about how much rita and osvald would get along. a scholar is a scholar. ]
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Date: 2023-10-19 06:46 pm (UTC)I started publishing my own work, became a licensed researcher, and worked on developing my own spells and formulas. These days, there isn't a mage alive who hasn't heard the name Mordio.
no subject
Date: 2023-10-20 03:38 pm (UTC)[ fuck that lady, actually!! she sucks so bad!!!! but at least for rita, she was able to channel it into something incredibly productive (and, you know, have major issues forever because of it afterwards.)
he hums, a bit cheerful at the idea, but, of course! we can't have nice things. the comic panels show up again, and this time, by temenos. ]
no subject
Date: 2023-10-21 05:48 am (UTC)That friend of yours...
[ ... she's not really sure what to say. condolences? she doesn't really know how to express them. ]
... That kind of stuff always seems to happen to people like that.
[ actual good people, she means. ]