Connin
16th Day of Summer, 997th Year of Grace
When I closed my eyes and the world faded from my senses, I sensed only the souls of everyone gathered in the town square.
I sensed the Chaos within them.
I felt the yearning for family members of the children that went missing. I felt the grief for loss, the rage for being helpless and envy for those who were not affected.
The Church's teachings resonated within my mind:
Chaos lies within all things born of flesh.
It stirs in silence, whispers in weakness and tempts in pain.
It is the hollow yearning that never sleeps. It is the root of envy. It is the soil that nurtures wrath.
To name someone a 'Witch' meant declaring that they had been consumed by the Chaos within them. It was to declare that they had been tainted by the will of the Primordial Mother and that their desires had been twisted into something dark and horrific.
Only the Lord's Law could bring order to the Primordial's Chaos and so I reached out to it.
"Help me," I whispered to the divine order of all things. "Bind the Chaos of every person standing in the square below me. Silence the void in their hearts."
The Law listened.
It always did.
The winds stirred and a hush swept through the crowd.
Hermann kept reciting the verses from the records of Judgement Day--his voice undulating like the surface of an ocean during full moon.
The Chaos stilled as the Law formed a Supressment Barrier around the town square.
Everyone must have felt it--the sudden peace that washed over them when all pain and doubt was muted within their hearts.
An old man stopped trembling. A woman pressed her lips against her daughter's forehead and the girl smiled for the first time in days.
Everyone had faith in the Lord and the Lord in them.
But s scream split the calm like lightning split the sky during a thunderstorm.
I opened my eyes.
A Witch is one with the Chaos. Thus, if the Chaos is suppressed, for the witch it feels like their soul is being torn apart from their body. It is a pain so excruciating that no ordinary person could stay sane after experiencing it.
The crowd scattered like startled birds and the Inquistors moved swiftly through them.
At the center of attention, they found a man in his mid-thirties, writhing on the ground and screaming, his eyes wild.
His scream was guttural and raw, like a beast's who was being butchered while conscious.
He clawed at his face, tearing skin and splattering crimson all over the the paved ground. His back arched and his bones twisted with sickening crunches.
I stepped off the tower's edge.
"Take me to him," I whispered and the wind raged around me as it carried me to where the Inquistors gathered in a circle.
I landed near them, my robes billowing like smoke as the Law embraced me.
The crowd around me stared in stunned silence. Some even fell to their knees, weeping.
I moved past the Inquistors and saw the man for myself.
He had lost all sense of his humanity and transformed into a hideous creature that resembled something akin to a dog.
It had a bleeding human face with no skin and an eye dangling out of its socket.
"Assist the priests in evacuating all the townsfolk from this area," I ordered the Inquisitor to my left. "Others shall restrain the Witch's movements and cover for me while I prepare the purification spell."
"As you command!" The inquistors cried out in unison.
A few of them broke away from the circle and began evacuating ordinary townsfolk and priests while the others conjured up whips of light and tried to bind the Witch to one place.
The Witch struggled to break free, trying to charge at the Inquisitors surrounding it but could not move more than an inch or two from its place.
I began chanting:
"I pray for your grace,
I pray for this man to be freed,
and his sins forgiven.
I pray to the Lord to accept this man into your eternal embrace."
The wind stirred again and the Law spoke in His stead.
The man's wounds mended themselves, the blood crusting before flaking off. The eye could not be returned to its original place and so it dried up and fell off like some rotting fruit, leaving only a hollow socket.
The man gasped as if he had just came back to life from death.
I knelt down beside him, one hand raising his head while the other gripped his fingers. "Did you kidnap the children that went missing?"
"Yes..." the man muttered, his voice a whispering breath.
"Where are they?" I asked.
"I... They... are no more..." The man gasped.
My heart broke into a million pieces.
"May you find peace in Paradise." I put him down and whispered another prayer to the Lord.
"C-Can't he be saved, your grace?" an Inquisitor asked.
"No..." I glanced at the dying man again. "The Chaos consumes life force to grant an individual unnatural strength. He has perhaps a few moments left."
The Inquisitors all prayed for the man and began scattering.
I started walking toward the church when Hermann found me. "What happened to the Witch? Did you find anything about the children?"
"The Witch has been put to rest." I averted my gaze from his. "The children... they have passed on."
"W-What? What do you mean? T-That can't be true--"
"There is nothing we can do but pray for them to rest in peace, Father," I said and walked away.
I was able to do nothing to rescue those children. I was too late. Perhaps, if I had acted faster, I could have saved at least one of them.
I was arrogant in thinking that I could save them all. I was too careless.
I was the reason they had died.
I had killed them.
Alexandra
17th Day of Summer, 997th Year of Grace
After a few days of working at the estate, I had learned a few things about the Graceford household.
Lord Edward, the Governor of Belmire, was an old and kind man with a warm velvety voice and subtle wrinkles that appeared whenever he smiled.
He cared a lot about his people and I sometimes heard him fussing over their well-being and proper maintenence of public property.
I heard from fellow maids that his wife had passed away due to an illness when his son was still young. Yet, he never remarried.
Lord Thorne was different from his elder brother--he loved his coin more than he loved anyone else and I heard in gossips that he always pushed for policies or levies he could profit from.
I hadn't yet seen Lord Elijah, the young lord of the Graceford household but rumours suggested that he was a handsome young man.
The tasks given to me today were of dusting portraits in some halls and brooming the courtyard.
It sounded easy enough but the procedure itself was quite difficult--I had to dust portraits and painting delicately so that I didn't damage the artwork itself even a bit.
It took almost an hour to complete one hallway after which I began walking toward another.
I turned the corner a bit too fast and slammed into something firm. I stumbled back, my arms flailing in the air to grab onto anything.
But before I could fall, a hand caught my arm and pulled me up.
It helped me straighten up and when I looked up, I saw him--his face a few inches away from mine.
His eyes were paler up close and his almost symmetrical face had no emotion at first--as if he didn't even see me--but then his gaze studied my face and the glasses that had slipped from its perch on my nose, barely clinging to one ear.
"Well, haven't I seen this before?" He smiled, his gaze cold against my skin.
Beads of sweat formed on my forehead and I noticed hitched breaths escaping my lips.
"I finally found you," he said, his voice smooth yet sharp and dangerous. "My precious."
His smile wasn't polite or kind. No, it was the smile of a boy who had finally found his favorite toy after frantically searching for it.
And... I was the toy he was looking for.
Adam
51st Day of Spring, 997th Year of Grace
"Are you sure about this, lad?" Mr. Bodkins asked. "You won't be able to tell the lass about this."
"I'm fine with it," I said, readying my stance. "I'll do anything to make the world a better place for my sister to live in. Even if it means lying to her."
"Very well," he said, cracking his knuckels. "I'll teach you the basics of hand to hand combat but stealth is beyond me. You'll have to ask Crow about training you in that aspect."
I nodded.
"Let's begin our first lesson." He flung his spectacles at me and I reached out my hands to catch them. "Never take your eyes off your opponent."
The next moment, a first slammed into my face with the power of a sledgehammer and I was thrown to the floor.
Crimson trickled from my nose but I dragged myself back to my feet. "Aren't you too hard on a kid?"
He came charging toward me. "You won't learn otherwise!"
He flung another fist at me but I dodged it barely. Before I could find my footing and straighten, another first collided with my stomach and I fell to my knees.
"Second lesson: never leave yourself open to the enemy's attacks," he said and I spouted all I had eaten in the morning on the floor.
No fists came at me for me during the vomiting and so I looked up after I was done to find Mr. Bodkins staring at me with crossed arms.
"Done?" he asked, offering a hand.
I wiped my lips, grabbing his hand and dragging myself to my feet again.
"Just so you know," he said, pointing to the disgusting puddle I had made on the floor. "You're cleaning that up later."
"Annoying geezer," I muttered under my breath.
***
17th Day of Summer, 997th Year of Grace
People tend to lie to their loved ones to protect them from worse.
I decided to do the same when I joined the Obsidian--the True Faithful's spy network that worked in the shadows to accomplish tasks with questionable morals.
Very few within the organization knew about the Obsidian's existence and I was recommended to join it by an executive member named Crow.
He was a man in his forties with gaunt features and a harrowing scar that marred his right eye.
I was willing to dirty my hands with blood of others and even burn myself to create a world where Alex could live in peace so I accepted his offer.
It took over a week to gain the approval of my seniors and finally I was sent on my first mission to a small city named Norton a few days away from Belmire.
My task was simple--ivestigate a merchant named Garrick Stone who had his base of operations in Norton and get rid of him if necessary.
He was suspected to be working with local bandits to plunder nearby towns and villages and selling off young people to slave traders while massacring the masses.
Of course, I wasn't sent alone on the mission. I had a senior agent named Felton Green and two other agents accompanying me.
Now, the time to begin purging evil had come.
Alexandra
17th Day of Summer, 997th Year of Grace
"W-What are you doing here?" I pushed him away and straightened myself.
"What do you mean?" he asked, chuckling. "I live here."
"You live here?" I scanned him from head to toe. "Do you work here?"
He was dressed in a dark surcoat with a grey chemise peeking from underneath. Under the sunlight, his hair appeared chestnut in colour and fell just past his chiseled jaw in curls.
"Ah... yes." He chuckled again. "I work as a valet for Lord Elijah."
"I see .." I fixed my glasses on my face. "Do excuse me, I have work to do."
I walked past him but he didn't stop me. He didn't call for me.
I walked toward courtyard I needed to broom.
Elijah
17th Day of Summer, 997th Year of Grace
I finally found her.
When we collided in the hallway, I had the urge to consume her then and there again. I wanted to bite into her essence and devour everything that made her burn so bright.
But that would've been too soon.
A good book never brought the reader to the climax in the first few pages. There was no anticipation for a meal without the aroma of its preparation.
She was prey--oh, yes, she was. But not the kind you pounce on right away.
If I wanted her to fulfil me, I needed to have more control on myself.
She deserved better than just plain horror.
No. I wanted her to ache for me. I wanted her to break for me. I wanted her to burn for me.
I wanted her to ruin me too.
So I let her go to prepare for the lure.