The inquisitor
1916 Words
The cold nocturnal breeze hits his face as he runs and jumps over the floors.
Why am I sad? Why am I here? Who am I? He thinks as his body moves on autopilot. He doesn't know where he goes, he doesn't know what is waiting for him there. He only knows that something inside him is pushing him to go in that direction. He goes towards the docks.
As gets closer, the grey world he sees through his eyes earns color, a purple-blue glow invades the monotony he is used to, and as he gets closer the glow becomes stronger, until it is everything he can see, and even overshadows the sun. They are two. Two suns of power.
"My name is Eltanin, and I am a steel lord from the land of steel, beyond the vastity of all the oceans," one of the sources of the glow declares. "I'm a warrior god, and also an explorer."
"Eltanin…" the observer lets out.
Is this my voice? he thinks after hearing the musical and beautiful voice that comes out from his mouth. "Eltanin…" he repeats, and smiles.
"Eltanin!" he shouts later when he is alone in the darkness of the forest again. All the animals and all life seem to run from him. "Eltanin!" he repeats, happy as a child who has earned something priceless. "Eltanin!" he shouts again, feeling as if that word is the first and only word he needs to know.
He has been running, returning to the dark place from where he came. Home. But something has stopped him, abruptly; it's a meaningless detail, but it is enough to stop him. He has reached the place where the light of Eltanin ends, beyond that point the grey rules. He can't go beyond. He doesn't want to go beyond.
"Eltanin!" he repeats and he learns that he only knows that word.
But I know how to speak! I've spoken before! he thinks, knowing he should be shocked, but he isn't. He is as cold as ice, repeating that one fascinating word.
He can't go beyond the light.
Hours pass and as they do his need to go back grows and grows. He needs to go to the dark again, but he can't go.
What should he do?
Despair feels cold, but still burns. He rolls on the ground from side to side, in pain, expressionless, mad. His face changes into a horrible smirk as he trembles and then he just stands up.
"I will lead the light to the dark," he says. "I will lead you, Eltanin! Eltanin! Eltanin! I will lead you to the dark!"
He turns around and returns to the city. Straight to the lord of steel.
Again, the breeze hits his face, but this time it's colder and it's followed by ice shards, lightning bolts, fire, and many other lethal projectiles, magical projectiles. The defenses of the ship and its guardians are defending themselves. They don't want him there, but he is very fast.
He doesn't know what spells are, or from where they come or will come. He just moves like a puppet, controlled by something else inside of himself. Nothing hits him.
Harmless he gets to the stairs in the middle of the ship, where the mainmast should be. They lead him several meters up to the command center of the ship. He finds a platform there and a throne of gold that will kill him if he seats or gets too close. The throne is below the roofs to protect whoever sits there and some steps behind are the captain's chambers. The room of Eltanin. This area is only for Artorious, Eltanin, and...
He stops. Abruptly. He can see it. The light. Its attention is in him. His life and existence are in its claws.
"Who are you, creature?" the musical and fascinating voice asks. The man comes out of the shadows. A vampire. "Speak now-"
The vampire looks behind, and the head covered in purple-blue scales follows him.
"Altair… I'm sorry," the vampire lets out as an apology, kneeling immediately.
The purple-blue dragon ignores the vampire and gets closer to him, the stranger, the invader, and pierces him with its gaze. He has to look somewhere else. He can't stand that deep gaze. He just learns he shouldn't be in front of her eyes.
"What are you, creature?" the doors of the chambers are opened and a voice comes out from them. Footsteps are heard, and a blue, cold light comes out from the doors, a prelude of the wonderful being who comes to meet him. "Speak."
"I'm your humble servant, my lord, I'm here to plead loyalty! I beg you! Accept me!" he replies, not knowing that he was that eloquent until that moment.
"Plead loyalty? You?" the prince repeats. He is not ridiculing his statement. It's not the first time people have come offering loyalty. "Hm."
"Tell me your name, and what you are," the prince says.
"He has come to this place, dodging all those spells, fighting all those warriors, Altair," he says to the dragon and the invader understands the dragon and Eltanin are very dangerous. He kneels before them.
"Go downstairs and wait for me there," the prince adds. "You are not supposed to be here."
"My apologies, my lord!" he responds, stands up, and goes downstairs.
"Go with him, Art."
"Yes, my lord," the vampire replies.
"I come from the south, my town was eradicated when I was a child and I was one the only survivors," he says. "I was raised by the church, trained with the inquisitors to be one of them."
"Inquisitors?" the prince asks, scrutinizing the jet-black eyes of Fernando. That is his name.
"Yes," he responds, returning his also jet-black threads of hair to the right position. "The holy father lord Arrius from the sacred land named Innotentious came here centuries ago, and he brought a copy of the mallus, the book to fight the dark arts with him."
"I am a master of the dark arts, Fernando," the prince states. "And I'm hated by the Church for that reason."
"I know," Fernando responds. "And to be honest, my lord, even the inquisition used the dark arts."
"I know," the prince confirms. "Fight fire with fire is one of their roots."
"It's all for a greater purpose," Fernando says. "But you are a god, you can't be judged. You are the judge."
"What happened with the Inquisition?" the prince continues.
"They keep doing their job," Fernando responds.
"Why aren't you?" he adds.
"Fate," he replies.
"I assume you had a unit," Eltanin tells him. He didn't say more about fate. He confirmed not saying anything that all that happened to Fernando was to bring Fernando to his side.
"They all fought with honor and bravery!" he responds. "At least those who didn't run…"
"It was too much for them," he says.
"It was, yes! I barely survived," Fernando continues. "But I assume we won the battle…"
"I don't think you did," Eltanim says. Fernando feels that he is not judging him. "Tell me the details, all that you remember about that thing, and the fight."
"Yes, my lord," Fernando responds.
He drinks again. The whine is heavenly.
We were informed of a witch near Oldstar town, in the South, in the domain of the queen Mallory the ruthless. The inquisition had instructed the queen to solve that problem immediately, but the queen claiming that the witch was instead, a healer, refused. The Inquisition had to act before this could become an affliction of all the country. We went to the South. Me and Three hundred, armored and well-trained men.
We were close to the town, ready to battle because our scouts told us that the queen was waiting for us there, with a group of her men. She would have fought us. She would have died there, but our duty is first.
Our priests sensed something dark in the forest and they concluded that it could be the source of the curse of the witch. We entered the black forest that everybody feared. God was with us. He was.
What happened next is that we move through the rotten forest and land, killing monstrosity after monstrosity. Nothing could stop us. We were going to fulfill our duty and the land would be clean of all evil. That's what the priest said. We believed after we witnessed the miracle of healing magic. Now I think that it was a trick the priests used to keep us there as meat shields. Later I would learn that they had been given the order of eradicating the evil in the forest after they reported about it. You see, we were not simple warriors from the Inquisition. We were the best, equal if not superior to the knights of our holy Titania. We had never failed.
The first night we lost a man to some kind of living a root that made us throw up with just seeing it. I remember that we threw up many times after our encounter with such a thing, just because we recalled it. We managed to defeat it and it withdrew. We followed it the next days.
Four days later only ten of us remained. The roots were tentacles and they kidn*pped the others. Our priests had become insane and they repeated words that nobody could comprehend. In the next fight, they ran, smiling to be crushed against the ground by those horrible things.
We ran, we all ran.
Ten minutes after we started running one of us started to laugh for no reason. We turned around and asked him why. He answered with the same words that our priests had used before their end. Then he tried to kill us and no matter how many times we stabbed him he kept moving, he kept laughing, he kept trying to kill us. We decapitated him, cut his limbs, and yet he still laughed. He didn't die. We buried him. We didn't want to hear his laughter anymore. Somehow we still kept hearing it.
How does one laugh without lungs anyway? It's curious because I can't hear it anymore.
Then we kept running. We knew we couldn't escape so we moved to the center of the forest, to try to kill the heart of the beast. Two men more fell in the path, fighting some sort of rotten humanoid. We couldn't stop. We had to kill that thing. It was our secret duty.
The captain told us that one of us had to become a messenger in case we failed. We chose to use luck and I was the lucky one.
The next day we got to the heart of the forest, and we saw something that I can't remember.
"You were right, my lord," Fernando lets out, kneeling until his forehead is on the floor. "We didn't win. It killed them all."
"You escaped?"
"No, I didn't," he responds. "After that, one tentacle found me and everything turned black and silent, and the next thing I knew is that I was getting here. "You called me to serve you, didn't you?"
Eltanin smiles and nods.
"I will serve you, my lord. I'm yours," adds the inquisitor.
"Tell me…"
"Anything," he quickly responds and Eltanin smirks.
"Where is the center of the forest?" the prince asks.
The inquisitor smiles. "I'll lead the way."
- Writer
