SIN EATER

Chapter 11. The Forehead Lump.

It took a great deal of constant effort on Rats Stars part not to reveal himself to the master blacksmith by giving him crafting tips.

This proud man with an average business that had its ups and downs was a master craftsman.

While Rats Stars could take decades learning the meat and muscle of this craft to gain the dexterity needed to match him, he also had tech knowledge to radically change his business.

Rats knew how to make the materials last longer, the forge hotter, the products stronger and sharper. He also knew that saying the wrong thing could accidentally push this civilization into a steampunk age qazi-state!

Yet he loved educating people.

He longed to teach others the way a bird needs to fly.

Rats suspected that this was not arrogance or ‘showing off’. That this need to teach was in no way a character flaw but instead a type of hunting or feeding instinct of the species he was. But he could not be certain that he was not just self-licencing himself to be an arse!

The hunger was growing.

He could force down swallows of food and drink for ‘social convention’ reasons but it did nothing for him.

By the second week, after hearing for the first time the horrendous news of the slaughtered village.

(Which he thought was a crime committed by the Satites.)

After spending most of the night sobbing his heart out.

He was now feeling constantly light-headed and finding it hard to concentrate due to this hunger.

This combined with the itchy sore lumps on his shoulder blades and forehead were keeping him up at nights and exhausted.

The little mere morsels in general conversation of,

“Perhaps you should ask them”

“Can you offer a hand”

“I am sure it will all be ok”

And of simply listening to people moan about their day was no longer enough to sustain him.

He now needed a substantial meal.

The master blacksmith could see that this kid was looking ill.

“Off you go lad,” he said

“I am fine,” said Rats, barely keeping his eyes open.

The blacksmith knew what laziness looked like and this was not it!

He had gotten to know the lad over the last two weeks and was very impressed.

The poor boy was normally a fantastic conscientious worker.

The best casual worker he had ever seen.

No job was too small or little or too trite.

Every task set was treated as important.

He knew this kid had no family.

The master blacksmith was so impressed with this kids’ drive and work ethic that he was seriously considering offering him an apprenticeship and a place in his own family.

So watching him push a broom as if lazily and only half paying attention was not like him.

It was like every other casual worker he had ever hired in the past but it was not like Rats.

It made the master blacksmiths have a second look.

The lad looked pale and sickly and was obviously unwell.

He then remembered that in the last twenty-one-day the lad had not had any time off.

Not even a single afternoon to himself.

Going over the last twenty-one-day in his head the master blacksmith realised that he had not even taken any of his lunch breaks.

Or any breaks!

With horror and guilt, the master blacksmith realised this lonely lad had worked from far earlier to far later each day than should be reasonably expected. With the same drive and energy all day, every day!

Only now did he realise that this kid was am potential apprentice goldmine.

Only now did it dawn on the master blacksmith how much he had taken the poor homeless lad for granted.

Rats Stars had done far more than was expected from casual labour working for just food and board.

The master blacksmith was not a cruel man.

He had never demanded so much work for so little.

It just happened and he had been far too wrapped up with other work matters to have previously noticed.

It was embarrassing!

The will make him look like a shitty abusive monster to the rest of the village.

No wonder he was starting to get the occasional judgemental pointedly directed arched eyebrow, lately!

He was working the poor lad to death!

“Sorry lad,” the master blacksmith said,

He was the lad, Rats, look up with exhausted watery eyes.

‘Had he been crying all night?’ the blacksmith asked himself!

 “Sory,” he said again.

“Why?” asked Rats in genuine confusion.

This just made the blacksmith's heart, break, just a little.

‘What a selfish s**t I have been!’ he thought.

“Sorry Lad, You go and have a day off.”

“I am fine,” said a very tired and hungry Rats in confusion.

 “Nonsense Lad!” exclaimed the master blacksmith.

“In fact, here is a silver coin and few copper ones”

“Go treat yourself and have the entire next two days off!”

‘Look’ thought the master blacksmith, ‘He is looking brighter and a bit healthier already!’

‘I may not have to pay for a doctor after all!’

Rats was not quite sure why.

Due to starvation and tiredness, his mental acuity was not as it normally should be.

But he suddenly started to feel a bit better now.

As if he had just been given a decent although still light, full meal

A thought nudged the master blacksmith's mind,

‘You were already thinking of offering him an apprenticeship anyway,’

‘But now you know how much of an asset this lad might truly be!’

‘You may never get his lucky staff wise ever again!’

Then a more selfish thought also kept into the master blacksmiths mind.

‘Other business owners in the square are bound to have noticed what you did not.’

‘He might get pinched by one of them with a really good job offer’

Again the previous thought as a repetition but with a different more intense emotional flavour and a new urgency.

‘You may never get his lucky staff wise ever again!’

“Actually, Lad, take two more silver coins and tonight you can eat with us in the house and we will sort you out a proper bed!”

“In the morning we will discuss a bright future you may have ahead of you!”

So now Rats Stars had three whole silver coins and a handful of coppers with two days off to himself!

(The equivalent of a 2020 AD UK money of 35£)

With the tragedy of the Village m******e still fresh in his mind, he felt he could do with some alone time to process and maybe morn for them all.

Although Rats Stars had infinite knowledge of almost all things (other than himself) he was not a computer. He was an emotional being. So although he did not believe in the Imperial Church as religion itself, he did believe in people.

He felt he need to mark the tragedy significantly somehow.

So when he saw the spire of the local imperial church the marched towards it.

He planned to light a candle to all those poor dead and meditate quietly on the tragic loss of life.

He would light the candle for the two redheaded twins, Skarlet and Krimson Rouge. The first people he had met who had gone out of their way to take him to a doctor

He would light the candle for poor Tug Phug the playground bully who had tumped him unprovoked.

Tug, who cried in his arms because he felt his brothers did not love him.

He would light a candle for all the other slaughtered screaming children who could not possibly understand why this was happening to them.

He would light a candle for that silly addled magic-user, Enow Nil, who had failed to heal him.

Admittedly the medical magic-user also had tried to kill him, but only because he was terrified at the time.

He would light a candle for all the nameless families that had been mowed down by cold callous soldiers who had felt compelled to obey such unjust orders.

In a type of forlorn hope for their souls, now drenched and forever stains with innocent blood.

Rats also would light this candle for those attacking soldiers as well.

He dearly hoped that somehow, those soldiers would find some sort of inner peace despite the terrible crippling self-harm they had done to their own immortal souls.

He would light one single silent candle for them all and let himself ‘cry it out’ if he needed it again.

That was the plan.

That is not what happened!

As Rats approached the church his pace unconsciously slowed.

He did not notice that it had, but it did!

His body subconsciously did not want to go there and was trying to scream at his conscious mind to stop!

As he got to the door, his forehead lump felt a burning itch.

“Ouch!” Exclaimed Rats Stars and he reached up to rub this sore spot.

He shrugged and reached for the door again.

“OUCH!”

The forehead pain was much stronger this time.

Meanwhile, his subconscious was yelling to the front of his mind!

“Hey, YOU!”

“Yes! You! You flushing moron!”

“Pay attention!”

Rats Stars stopped and started paying attention.

On the face of it.

On the surface.

It was a church to the imperial Sunite, those who are over, Empire!

It was made of large grey stones.

Grannies and the young flocked here every ten days.

An elderly priest would speak words of faith virtue and healing to his flock on this holy day.

Then everyone would go home and have a semi special family roast lunch together.

It was a building of naming babies, celebrating marriages and of deaths being mourned by loved ones.

People prayed to the Emperor or Empress.

(Currently, it was an Emperor.)

They believed, confessed and all tried to be better people.

Under all that, though there was something that felt, simply “Wrong”.

Rats searched his mind and found nothing.

All the symbols were all variations of holy symbols found throughout the Multiverse.

A local dimensional variant of positive energy should be being channelled and directed the to help guide and help sustain the souls of all the worshipers here.

Everything in his encyclopedic knowledge of all things told him that this was a holy place on the sanctified ground used by people who want to be good and who want to go to a heavenly afterlife.

But despite all this evidence it still felt simply “Wrong”!

Somehow, “Incorrect”!

But Rat Stars the Sin-Eater could not quite understand why it should feel this way.

No amount of fact listing was helping.

The lump on his forehead struck him with a burning sting again making him grimace in pain.

He found himself reaching out with his feelings and instinct, instead.

Like coloured gell layers and filters lifted from a photograph, one at a time, he peeled back layers of the surface obvious.  

To see what mere listed knowledge could not tell him.

This was the awakening of a new power of the Sin-Eater.

He felt the strange forehead lump that had appeared in the last two weeks grow and tingle.

He could feel that despite all the nice words and good intentions of the nice people who came here, that this ‘place’, this ‘church’ was… Evil!

It channelled and spread and inserted evil though the ‘Back Door’ of peoples minds while calling it ‘holiness’.

He could feel that while the priest believed and preached brotherly love every holy day that a real message of intolerance and hate was poisoning the congregations immortal higher selves in almost imperceptible yet constantly dripped amounts all their lives.

It was an insidious spiritual invasion of dark forces that must have been started and kept on going for over the last four hundred maybe even five hundred years.

With this strange new forehead lump buzzing excitedly he could see the spiritual energy in the ground, be both radiated and channelled through this little local churches spire.

Even on this wavelength of higher vision, at a cursory glance, it still looked almost holy.

“Sensitive” mortal people would still be fooled into feeling a false sense of holiness here.

But push just a little bit more and you could then clearly see that evil energy was being channelled and used here instead.

Like a wolf in sheep's clothing, you were only fooled from an unfocused distance.

At a second look, it was blatantly obvious.

Rats Stars felt ill.

His forehead buzzed.

The local priest also approaching the door screamed in terror.

Because as the poor priest approached the church door he had seen a young lad.

The new boy from the master blacksmiths forge.

But as he got closer the boy near the door had turned.

And blankly stared at him.

The horrifying part was that the boy was staring at him with three eyes.

Three eyes instead of just two!

A large human-like eye was also staring at him from the lad's forehead!