Bell, Book, and Candle

Fine... if they won't pray, then... I mean, all I need is for them to lose their blessing for a bit and they’ll remember, even confess again, right? It was still just a guess, based on Galley's odd statement and everyone's hang-up on "confessions." He looked back to Lord Brighton and struggled to keep his gaze steady. Despite the length of the table between them, the Order’s patriarch felt a sword’s breadth away. The basket hilt at the senior’s side suddenly gleamed with menace despite the old man’s fingers resting calmly at his sides.

“I will show you how it works, then,” John finally declared before turning to Krieg. The senior knight glared back at John, his hand already gripping the golden hilt of his blade in preparation to defend himself-

Sovereignty: Eye of the King suppresses Krieg’s Lady’s Blessing!

Alarmed by the green glow in the mage’s eye, Krieg’s grip tightened on his sword... and his face twisted as his hand remained there. The other knights followed John’s gaze while some others still took a step towards the boy, ready to attack at the first sign of betrayal. Galley’s eyebrows raised as she smelled the “blessing” vanish from Krieg, revealing something... fetid. Moira blinked as she felt what she had always been taught to be a divine radiance suddenly wink out of existence... and in its place, a lurid emotion.

Lorelei sensed the change as well, saw the knight’s soul laid bare, and her eyes watered behind the blindfold.

Cornelius merely watched, stunned... not at the knight, but at the familiar, foreboding glow of John’s eye.

<Now, Master!> Juniluny urged, a bizarre hunger evident in her voice. <I've heard your thoughts, how they boast of reading minds... go on, read this one!>

What? Why are you so eager-

Lord Brighton, bereft of the senses necessary to know what had been done, began to demand, “What are you doing to my-”

“AaaaahAAAAAAAAAAAAH-!" A ****, throat cracking gasp for air- "AAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!"

Krieg screamed in an ever-raising howl until his voice began to tear. The knight’s hands, unarmed, dove to his temples to grope at his skull, digging his fingers into his scalp as if to scratch a demon out. Galley covered her nose as her stomach turned at the smell; Moira sobbed as she beheld her father's knight; Lorelei could no longer hold back the same. All around, John looked, bewildered, at the varying responses... and looked up to the new status that appeared over Krieg:

Status Effect: Suicidal (20 black hearts)

The man’s hands suddenly gripped the hilt and sheath of the longsword at his side and tore them apart with the desperation of a starved man. John thought to leap upon the knight except that Iowa and Cassaro had already caught on to what their superior was about to attempt. Krieg's outstretched arms had very nearly brought the blade’s tip to his own neck before the arms were parted. Defeated, the blade slipped from Krieg's fingers as tears rolled down his face. "How could you...!"

The Court froze as Krieg's voice cracked. Lord Brighton alternated between his guard and the glowing green eye responsible for his transformation. "Mage! Cease this sorcery at once-!"

"THEY WERE INNOCENT!" Krieg shrieked in a high, shuddering accusation. "BABIES IN THEIR CRIBS! UNTAINTED! HARMLESS! WE SAVED THEM! THEY COULD'VE LI-!” Krieg choked on the word, incapable of speaking it. “WHY?! LADY HELP ME, WHY-?!"

<Learn the truth now, Master, or let it slip away! We yearn for knowledge, and you've the ability->

A terrible pity welled in John's heart, along with being horrified at what the knight seemed to confess... but John had opened this box. His urge to know mixed with Juniluny's coaxing, and almost on reaction he peeked inside.

You cast Read Mind on Daniel Krieg!

Most minds sang their thoughts idly. Some shouted them, enough to give John visions or glimpses of what consumed one's foremost thoughts. But here... with the blessing peeled away and the naked wound of a mind screaming to the open air, Krieg's mind assaulted John with the terrible recollection, as real in this instant as it had been then. John tried to pull back, but it was far, far too late to not experience the truth, now.

---

Nineteen years earlier...

Krieg lifted his gauntleted hand to strike the impertinent mage... but the old wizard, gray and powerless now, flinched too honestly for Krieg to carry his blow through. The heretic mage opened his eyes slowly and marveled at the wonder of Krieg's restraint, held there with his hand rearing back to strike a closed-fisted blow. Krieg was one of two guards set to keep the man awake and quiet; the former had been far easier, as a constant supply of pain was to be found via the brass apparatus around the old man's neck. Left naked and without dignity save for this oversized collar, he nonetheless curled his lips back into a grin, missing teeth and all. "Humanity! Hide it well, child," the old man wheezed, "for the Lady covets such trinkets, and takes them of your pitiful lot-"

A backhanded, gauntleted fist struck the old man on his scalp, stunning him into silence as his body slumped against the chains binding him to the chair. Krieg glanced up at Dru Glayson, a veteran knight and one of the Warden's most trusted soldiers. Glayson met Krieg's eye with a nod. "This heretic knows what he did, recruit, but it pays to remind him, and ever more when he starts mouthing off."

But Krieg didn’t know what the mage did. John's consciousness floated from behind Krieg's eyes. He couldn't look away, or control the surroundings of this ultra-realistic memory, but it was clear that he had not truly traveled to the past; Krieg's actions and thoughts were known to John, and with them, lurking behind those same eyes, were the real motivations behind the body.

The old man said nothing as blood trickled from his forehead. Krieg's innate respect for seniors demanded he protect even this alleged, vile enemy... but the blessing flared.

What?

Krieg felt his mind drift off as his body continued to work; the blessing moved his limbs, curled his fingers into fists, and thrashed the old man until he stopped accusing Krieg of mercy. John watched, wincing, as Krieg, the true Krieg, fell quiet as the blessing worked.

But the memory did not end at the beatings. Soon, the Confessor, a grim woman who aptly filled her silvered robe, came in tailed by a rail-thin Hospitaler, the latter an aged man as gray as the prisoner. The identity of Krieg, of a bright-eyed son of a knight, washed over John as he came to realize the truth of his grisly watch.

They were torturers: the Confessor was a mage specializing in pain, mutilation, and injury; the Hospitaler specialized in treating wounds and, when convenient, without stopping the pain.

The two exchanged the ancient mage in an undying loop of truth-seeking before the eyes of watchful knights. The old man howled, begged, and shrieked as his flesh was plied open, his essences removed, and his sanity chipped away while the Confessor demanded the reversal of “the curse.” But John couldn’t believe this old victim knew the answer they sought; the pain they extracted as the memory sped past slowly reduced the elder to a gibbering, giggling madman. The Order was the tax collector and this fool its destitute serf, the latter incapable of payment save by suffering.

Stop it! John screamed from behind the eyes of this horrible memory. The smell of the man’s intestines slapped John, and too slowly did the attending Hospitaler seal the body back up. The old man cried and babbled, and when consciousness failed him, the Hospitaler was quick to revive his incoherent squawking. He’s not even saying words anymore! Stop this! But their demands continued; the old man’s resistance, if it could be called that, remained.

Krieg thought to look away; his head remained stalwart. Krieg thought to leave; his feet remained planted. Krieg thought to quit the knights, to scream to any who would listen of the Order’s true intentions, of cruelties, even evils, done in the name of good, of grim work too awful to endure... but John felt the tug on the knight’s mind as “Krieg” was buried slowly, softly, and trampled over with the beats of a shovel wielded by none other than the new, infallible, sinless Krieg.

What is this...? Why is Krieg remembering... no... it’s because Krieg can’t remember this. The blessing… is suppressing him to keep him loyal. This is because I pulled off the blessing-

But the recollection of guilt had only begun.

---

Fourteen years earlier...

The spears of fire dug into Krieg's shoulder, but his shield remained up and resisted the foul magic. He stood stalwart even as his bone and flesh melted together; he was not yet felled, though he saw Sandra, his fellow graduate of the same year, fall as tendrils of black pierced through her helmet. Krieg screamed in his mind, at the horror, at the urge to flee, at the thirst for vengeance against the heretic mages who had laid their ambush; only the last of the three survived the blessing. Krieg backed up to protect his Lord; he shot a glance at Warden-Lord William Brighton, a father and the ambitious head of the English Order, and confirmed that the blessed golden shield held true against the varied **** of a beast Krieg had not noticed until now. A ten-limbed mass of purple muscles with jutting bones, the abomination wailed upon the Warden-Lord, catching his sword in parries or his shield in deflections, never so much as touching the blessed Warden-Lord himself.

John reeled at the sensation of the man's company. As intimidating as he had been outside this memory, William Brighton was a terrifying war machine as a Warden, and his killing intent washed over John before the man so much as struck a blow upon the horror he fought.

Krieg looked around; living shadows curled and engulfed their surroundings. Krieg, Sandra, and Timothy had all come here with their Lord while the rest of the platoon of knights scoured the other floors; Sandra's body writhed as the tentacles animated her corpse, and Timothy had vanished, perhaps into ash, perhaps into some more terrible fate. More figures began to walk out of the shadows. Krieg raised his shield and swallowed all hesitation... but his sword hand was stayed by the sound of the Warden-Lord's voice echoing with divine power:

“Ye who soweth darkness in the Firmament," he began as a crown of floating shards of glass manifested around his skull, "hear now the Lady's judgment by bell, book, and candle: EXCOMMUNICATA.” The beast had sparred with the Warden-Lord as he spoke, but the beast, the shadows, and all the other signs of heathen magic vanished... and revealed from their illusions and the safety of their magic were the four mages who had attacked them as one. The Warden-Lord's eyes glowed with a golden fury as he looked at the men and women who had already killed two of his loyal knights.

“What did he do?! Where’s Sasha-?!” cried one mage, but none of her companions replied, choosing instead to begin weaving new assaults.

Brighton muttered his only command. "Krieg: find and destroy the abomination in Apartment 23Q."

Confusion. Krieg held his sword up as one of the mages raised her hand, but the next moment the mages had all vanished... along with his Lord, who had just pulled the lot of them into an illusion barrier. Krieg remained in the real world... and just ahead of him, so did Apartment 23Q. The memory blurred; a guiltless charge to finish what was started. A modern apartment; spacious and beautifully decorated, it was quickly washed over by an explosion of tree roots.

John flinched as spikes of wood rapidly grew towards Krieg’s face, but his shield took them all as they rose and, with a hack of his blessed sword, they burned away into ash. Knotting roots rose from the ashes, warding off the knight as the apartment was soon covered in tree roots, bushes, and small, flitting bugs that glowed a sickly green.

One mage still remained to protect the horror they fostered, though she seemed to be far less prepared than the coterie his Warden-Lord had captured. A woman of bright red hair, the mage stood among the wild-growing foliage in a blue nightgown. With a caress of her fingers over her forearms, she grew thin spikes across her skin as she hollered, “Go away! I won’t let you hurt-”

Krieg broke through the bramble. The woman shed rivers of tears as she raised a wall of oak. Something about this was... wrong. Krieg suspected it. John, knowing why these memories seemed to surface, knew it too. No- John helplessly pled.

The sword pierced the wall of wood that rose up... and as the wood blackened into ash, it remained unbroken until the woman slowly pressed her body through it by sliding down into the hilt of blade running through her chest. Her body spasmed as blood poured generously from her lips, her left breast, and her back through which the blade had run. Krieg watched without passion; he had missed her spine, so she could still be a threat. He reached for his knife with his shield-arm, ready to finish her as she sputtered her blood-choked words. The brambles and roots all began to disintegrate, but Krieg braced for some curse-

“Spare... my... daughter...”

Krieg’s eyes snapped wide. Daughter?! That's... no, that can't be. The abomination she harbors is her own spawn?!

No... Dread budded in John’s mind as Krieg felt his Lord's presence. He turned to watch Lord Brighton through the shattered doorway of the apartment... no worse for wear, and no longer accompanied by the four mages he had dragged into his barrier.

The Warden-Lord seemed unphased by whatever battle he had just endured. The radiance of war glittered on him: the Lady’s rose glowed over his forehead; a broken crown of golden glass shivered over his brow; and the crown glittered, golden like the dawn, with a radiant halo that emanated from behind the Warden-Lord’s head. His sword remained pointed at the only inner door of the apartment, a bedroom door no doubt, as he pushed it open. Krieg caught sight of it: the abomination...

She was four, maybe five years old. Despite a light-gray skin hue, she had puffy, rosy cheeks that grew redder as eyes of pitch fell on Krieg... and the corpse of her mother that he let slip to the floor. Her hair was bright orange, like her mother’s. Her skin was a slimy, pale shade, and her black eyes widened as she inhaled to scream. Perhaps some form of merfolk-human hybrid? But both Krieg and John could see only a child left wide-eyed as she caught sight of her mother’s slumped form on the ground. The tiny girl screamed. Lord Brighton’s cloak censored the sight as he approached the monster.

Krieg thought to question so naked an innocence... but that Krieg fell away, piece by internal, humane piece, until only a proper, loyal soldier of the Order remained. John felt every piece being torn from Krieg; but unlike Krieg, John couldn’t forget the sensation, the **** of a self, that the blessing worked. John couldn’t shake the familiarity of it: Juniluny’s vile spell, that which ate the soul, bite by bite, and left John suffering... and how it was so very close to this banal blessing as it did something too similar to the loyal knight. John couldn’t ignore the agony of it anymore than he could the heart-sinking sound of this recollection.

“Mommy! Help!” finally cried a child’s panicking voice. A human child. An innocent child, John truly believed.

Stop him! John screamed. He didn’t care if it was an abomination, alleged to be the spawn of some evil; the voice was pure, and the murderous intent of the Lord of the Order was blasphemous near such an innocent. Useless as it was to argue against a memory, John still felt himself screaming. Fucking stop and just think this through-

“Mommy!”

I have to stop him. But Krieg’s thoughts were tiny, marginalized, and finally packaged away.

Fuck that! Krieg, snap the fuck out of it! Resist this fucking blessing and-

A sound like the wind cracking. Silence.

NO!

---

Two years earlier...

No more... please...

The time was barely there; the memories leading up to it were a guiltless blur. Krieg was virtually gone, now; for a moment John had thought he was occupying some other body, except these had to be Krieg’s thoughts or memories, and soon enough he saw the man’s familiar hand as it twisted the sword out of a dead, robed monster.

The Daughters of Duva'krghta: a cult of child-molesting fanatics that worshipped the nearest pronunciation of some Outsider deity. The cult itself was mostly men; the “daughters” were their victims, though they were never human when the Order eventually found them. It was righteous work to purge the wretched from the Earth; their screams were ended too quickly, for Krieg and his men were too efficient in the slaughter of those vile mages and hanger-ons. Krieg would have seen them suffer in the dungeons for their crimes, or by his own hand if the Lady willed it.

John still grieved a child that died years ago... but here, at least, John could feel a small comfort. A slaughter of child molesters...? How is this guilt-inducing... John stopped his doubt; removing the blessing had unleashed these horrid memories, so he needed only to wait... or else find some way to escape the irresistible torrent from Krieg's mind.

The vision blurred past the bloodshed in fast-forward. A door, golden and gleaming with the face of their heinous goddess of teeth and protruding growths. Duva'krghta. The Child-Eater, she was called by some. The Rebirther, by her worshippers.

The door opened. Krieg heard their cries: thirteen kidnapped infants sat in four huge, shared cribs. He dared a peek into the nearest bundle of them... and sighed with a tearful relief; they were untainted, untouched. The ritual hadn't even started, it seemed; the stolen babies were likely hungry and stressed, but alive without marks, each clothed in a simple diaper. The Order had caught the cult too late to save some dozens before these, but these... these would recover. They cried and wailed for mothers in hospitals they were stolen from. Healthy voices, all girls, like all the rest.

But these would live. Krieg felt his chest well up as he realized that, these, at least, would be saved. Krieg and his knights had killed some hundred of their twisted bodies before: Outsider-tainted horrors that lost whatever vestige of humanity was used as the soil to grow them. But these little girls were finally safe. Krieg would like to be a father one day; where he always wanted a son, he thought that even a daughter would be nice, one to grow up strong like the Wardens. The Lady is merciful, he confidently declared in his mind, and he began a small prayer of thanks-

Orders whispered in his ear from unseen masters: corruption.

No... stop...

The babies were here; the risk was too great. Outsider magic can hide in plain sight, hide from Seers and Sages, the Lady herself. What if even one had been implanted before the knights had arrived?

I don't want to see this...

The cost would be too great.

Why won't this stop?! How do I quit?!

The voices argued in Krieg's mind; when the orders came at last, he asked the voice to repeat.

STOP!

<They are too great a risk, Sir Krieg. They must be purged,> urged the guilt-riddled thoughts of the Sage, <so that the world may be safe.>

The infants wail for milk, for mothers... for their lives.

I SAID STOP! I DON'T WANT TO SEE THIS-

Krieg stood frozen. His men were equally shocked.

<Release them to the Lady's mercy, Sir Krieg,> came the solemn voice of Lord Brighton himself. Krieg felt himself grow distant from his own flesh; the urge to argue faded, and the conscience that screamed was buried slowly, achingly. <This is the Lady's will.>

Krieg wanted to scream... but the Blessing held true. The final bits of him fell beneath the tidal wave of faith’s fury. He confirmed the order, his mind distant. Piety filled his thoughts; he watched his own actions as if from a distance.

His fully-armored form approached the nearest crib; the other men, equally powerless, moved to the rest.

John's mind sobbed with that of Krieg's; the two watched, powerless, as the blessed Krieg looked down into the worn wooden cage.

A girl, less than a week old, cried with eyes washed shut by the first light they had seen in days.

She couldn't see, much less comprehend, John's sword as it hovered over her frail neck. The Gamer squeezed the blade tightly before impaling-

---

John's own voice screamed with Krieg as he **** the spell to an end. Tears burned his eyes; he had fallen to the ground at some point, and the Eye had released Krieg from its grip. John's spell had released, too, as he had ordered it... but there, in the vacuum of Krieg's violated identity, that split-second had become minutes, or an eternity to John. The Gamer slowly sat up, his eyes darting between the swath of confused or horrified faces that covered the room... with one furious exception in the gentleman Lord whose cold orders from the memory now haunted John's mind. It had truly been seconds.

John's body convulsed as nausea and misery washed him so thoroughly as to overcome his Gamer's Body; he couldn't spare so much as a glance at anyone present. He gripped his hand; silently, he repeated to himself how it wasn't him, how he didn't do any of those things... of who the real victims and the real villains were.

"What are you two doing? Release me!" Krieg demanded, his voice suddenly even. More confusion, and the two knights slowly eased their grips on their superior, watching the man carefully as he shrugged them off with withering stares. He broke from this only long enough to bow before Lord Brighton. Apparently unaware of the last few seconds, he declared, "Please excuse their outbursts, my Lord."

Cornelius adjusted his glasses as he contemplated the knight. Lorelei bowed her head. Lord Brighton only nodded slowly before returning his glare to the child who had brought chaos into his hall.

John had made his point... but the reason for making was all but forgotten. "The blessing... it... it just makes him a different person whenever it’s convenient." John's words seeped from his mouth; he could not contain them, not now, not after all that he had seen, done through Krieg's eyes. The Court heard him; the Court did not respond. "The statue gets confessions by speaking to.... the real knight. The blessing... it replaces him, by... tearing the disobedient parts from him. I felt it: it was like sinking while something else moved your body... it bottled up any emotions, arguments, free will that stood in your way,” John growled at the leader of the procession, “and only allowing it when it served your purposes... these people are..."

Slaves. John's stomach churned.

<In good company, indeed,> whispered the halfling.

No... no, this is... this isn’t just different; this is horrible. Alysha’s anger, your frustration, Tita’s loathing of non-elves besides me, Ju’s fear, Vok’s self-loathing, Tara’s... Hell, everything... no. You all... you all keep your minds, your identities. This is... this is monstrous. This is...! John’s thoughts grew darker as the memory kept swimming back: of being Krieg, of feeling his hands being taken over, of preparing to execute a wailing newborn-

Fuck the Order.

Moira knew the glow of John’s Eye. She knew how it snuffed out magic from the Complex; she had felt the Lady’s radiance leave Krieg, too, and felt the guilt of a sinner well inside of that noble, unflappable knight. This... this must be a misunderstanding. The Lady would... never... Her mind reeled as she looked at John, the knights, the Hospitalers, even Lorelei... anywhere to avoid her father’s gaze. Her doubt shamed her, but she struggled to dislodge it.

Galley was another matter entirely. The horrific odor of self-loathing, hatred, and grief that had spilled from the man had vanished, leaving only the memory of that hideous smell. The man’s blessing was there again, but that knowing his soul bore was now too tangible, too familiar. The kid's right. Somewhere in the stern, loyal profile of the knight crouched the real man, whipped and beaten into submission, destroyed by conscience and magic... and cursed by what she had been told was a blessing. She had caught only a whiff of him, but she couldn’t ignore his traces in the air, now. Who was she working for, really? It had been a question from time to time, but the horrific experiments or **** committed by so many of her targets had always put her questioning aside... perhaps until now.

But all the rest of those in the room were of different minds: the knights, Hospitalers and Confessors all watched John with accusing glares. They were the blessed host of the Lady; whatever doubts could have crept into their minds was snuffed out, just like all the rest that came before. Cornelius sighed his age; Lorelei merely focused on commanding her own faith. Neither needed a blessing to endure their burdens.

But least of all who needed it was the bearded elder of the Brighton clan. John stared into the man’s eyes... and the man, with a soft shake of his head, answered, “This farce can no longer be tolerated, Mr. Newman. Produce the Cabalist... or you shall have breached your contract with the Order.”

Galley’s eyebrows peeled up at that; she could already smell the answer rolling off of John as a growing fury. “H-Hey, John,” she started to whisper. “Don’t-”

“I’ll never lift a finger to help you again, you... you fucking monster.” The Hall inhaled with a joint gasp. “I don’t know what you won’t do when you think you’re right, but if that... if that nursery was just one piece of it... and what you did to... Jesus-fucking-Christ, to everyone, to your people, to others... no, fuck all of that! You’re no better than the fucking Cabal if this is how you run-”

The world shivered.

Unseen, Lord Brighton had given a prepared signal. John looked about, confused, until he switched his Eye’s mode.

Reality Buffer, Level 72
Creator: The Grasping Eye, crafted and christened by Magoi Magus
Population: Hidden
[English-speaking customer detected] Behold! Standing opposed to the nefarious illusion barriers of common hedge mages, the Reality Buffer is the latest and greatest invention yet from the mighty Magoi Magus! Come! Behold! Like oil and water, “hard” reality parts space and time, perfecting the vision of Gaia and divorcing its purified essences from the malleable indignities of the real world! This buffered reality becomes resistant to all attempts to violate it, and by its purity creates a tangible, impenetrable, yet invisible wall through which nothing can break in or out. Purchase yours today for the low, low price of 5,000 thalers! - Magoi Magus

“Then heed my sentence, John Newman of Springfield: I recognize thy breach of word, thy breaking of oath, and I declare thee...”

The world seemed to breathe, and then exhale, with Lord Brighton’s single word.

“... WARLOCK.”