Priory

It is my unwavering belief that any creature with blood within its veins is capable of grave sins.

I now confess my own.

They will name me a Brother of the Order of St. Mathieus. A lie. The first of many. I am no brother. I had not yet done the rituals of our order. I was little more than an orphan stableboy, surviving on gruel and stale bread. Unworthy of both my mother and my Order’s love.

On the day the Faerie King Cleon’s inquisition crossed the toll bridge, I was in the stable with Brother Quinnian, his face was burned into my memory. Leagues away from any Faerie holdings, we thought our Priory safe. Alas, alas…

There was a Faerie mage amongst the inquisitors; air shimmered in their presence like the air before a bonfire. Brother Quinnian looked at me, and, his voice fearless, said, “I release you. Hide deep in the hay. Make no sound.”

Brother Quinnian’s body was naught but ash before the moon rose; I wish his soul suffered the same fate. This was once a fair land, green and lush rushed with the wind off the sea. No longer. Not since that day. Now all chokes on that ash.

I hid like a coward. It didn’t prevent me hearing feeble protests and shouts followed by the impenetrable silence that came much, much too quickly. Sometime later, it may have been days, it may have been hours, I found what remained of the bodies piled in the center of the Chapterhouse exposed to the heavens. To call them bodies was as generous as calling the remains of the Priory a home. The black ash alone would have been harrowing. Instead the blackened and broken beams were intermingled with a shade of gray. I knew those shades of gray, knew how they took their tea, who preferred their sleeping quarters warmed and who preferred them chilled, who to laugh with and who were rigid in their decorum. Fifty-two lives reduced to a number and flecks of gray. I decree any of my sins are nothing compared to this.

It would have been easier to accept it if they were only ash and ruins. Death is a part of life, even a death so brutal as my order’s. Even an orphaned stable boy understands that all meek and mortal beings must one day drift off into eternal sleep.

But the Faerie are not subject to mortal laws.

At first I named the feeling tingling my neck sorrow; that numbness that prickled my skin, made my hairs stand, made swallowing difficult. Then I realized what it was. Faerie magic. It shimmered above like heat around a flame. Is it prophecy or my own impending execution that draws me like a moth to that same description? It covered the desecrated space, and though the roof lay open to the heavens, the Magician bound and sealed the Priory like a pagan tomb of old.

Only once the moon rose did I see them, feel them.

Their blackened tendrils, burned in death and remaining everso, swirled around me, their interloper. A lesser being would have been driven mad surrounded by those spirits, bound forever to their broken refuge, but they were the only family I knew. By the light of the moon, I yearned to dance with those spirits, those Daemons as they’d been reduced to, forever cursed and denied entrance to the heathens. I should have been counted amongst them.

How I wished I’d sworn my vows, or that I’d disobeyed Brother Quinnian. They rebuffed my attempts, floating gently beyond my grasp. I was not yet ready, but better to die with them.

For twelve years, I remained, the only living soul within those ruins.

Until a week ago, when the four of them came through the storm: the princess and three rangers. At first I hoped their entry onto the grounds might pierce the veil laid upon the Priory by the Faerie Magicians and free my brothers. A foolhardy hope that was swiftly proven false. I admit that I had no hand in that terrible storm, but I found its presence a sign of my righteousness and knew I quickly needed to enact my revenge.

I prowled the ruined halls that were my home while they took up residence in the last standing tower. Hidden. Forgotten. From my private places, I watched them eat. I watched them change in an attempt to dry. I do not count this as sin, for I have done far worse.

How they did not discern my presence from their first steps over the threshold, I don’t understand. The first of the Rangers, I know now his name was Julan, stood foolishly close to the edge of the ruined tower adjacent to the one they made their camp in, especially in the rain. A Ranger should know better. One of my brothers led the way in the darkness and stood beside the Ranger, though he could not discern the Daemon.

Thunder obscured the sounds of his screams and the soaked tall grass hid the rest. It’s truly amazing the positions broken bones resolve into. My heart was darkened by how simple an act it was, but they were now the interlopers within my halls, and so I defended what was mine.

The second though… the second I felled out of some darker malice.

He was named Finaral–again a detail I learned later. He stood urinating in our destroyed Chapterhouse. That holy tomb. You do not need to be a mage to feel the power within it, even if these Faerie folk sneer upon our religion. How he didn’t see the Daemons moving within the shadows, I cannot say, but where I killed Julan out of ease, I admit to finding pleasure between thrusts of the jagged butcher’s knife I carried from the day I hid in the straw. I moved the body, nearer the tower; it did not deserve to stay in that place. They found him as I found him…just less of him. I often wonder if that was the first time the princess saw someone’s manhood. I hope so. I hope the mangled sight stays with her until judgement day.

One remained besides the princess. I admit I had no plan for the Master Ranger. Whether I was imbued with some magic, or overcome with rage, I cannot say. I do remember the scream from the Master Ranger when he came out of their refuge to find Fineral’s body.

I rescind my statement. Something inhuman indeed overcame me. It is the only explanation how, red as his blood was, I overcame Master Ranger Talard. He was worthy of that title. Even in the wet darkness of the ruined cloister, he didn’t so much swing a sword, but dance across the stones. I should be dead. Maybe I have and one of the Daemons, my dead brothers, reinvigorated me.

Maybe. Maybe.

I cannot explain it. He stood bravely, yet died impaled on his own sword. By my own words above I admit I am a coward, yet it was he who lay dead. I wonder, does his unbound soul find solace in its freedom?

She remained in that chamber, strong as a willow and truly as gentle. I had not expected that. Her deep emerald eyes penetrated the night.

Now it comes to the delicate matter of my confession.

I have been named a murderer and a rapist.

I’ve confessed to murder thrice over.

Maybe I should have added a fourth at that moment.

But I did not. And with the knowledge of her living breath, I decree: if I am a rapist, why did I let her live?

I decree: of this charge I am innocent.

I did not violate her. I found her cold, shivering, terrified. I am a coward, but I’m no monster, weak and scared as she was. Instead, I slumped by the fire, my pulse lessening as whatever power that overcame me abated. I was so weak I could not move. We sat there in that place until total darkness overcame us. I thought she might be mustering her Faerie magic, but my fight was gone, my rage gone, drifting off to the stars like the souls of my brothers yearned to.

In the hours that followed, I watched the fear overcome her too as her soul changed in that darkened tower into something much darker. The fear, the terror… I did not touch her, and yet her soul, her soul…

Maybe I should have killed her, not out of rage, but out of mercy. Alas, I swear I did not lay a finger on her. Her body was as whole as it was when she entered the Priory. I will pray for what her soul experienced that night. Maybe in my disregard I am guilty.

I had prayed so many times for my Brother's deliverance. Now, I hope they answer my own prayers and deliver me from this coming pain through some divine intervention.

And, once my soul passes on, I pray my brothers find peace.

This is the sworn and signed confession of Justinius, Last of St. Mathieus’s Order.

King Cleon snapped the parchment roll shut, fighting the urge to toss it into the flames beneath the man-sized cauldron just below his dais. It was worth nothing. He did not believe a word of such falsehoods. He wished he could flay this man alive himself, but a delicate message had to be sent. He passed the parchment to a nearby steward. “It’s time, bring him in and let us end this. Oh, and bar the doors, this will be unpleasant but all here need to bear full witness to what happens when such monsters cross the throne.”

His daughter, his only child, sat beside King Cleon in full view of the court. Rumors swirled already, as rumors always do. This monster Justinius threatened their rule in more ways than one. Let his crimes be declared in front of all and let them all witness King Cleon’s terrible justice. Some acts called for a deft and quiet hand, some called for the proverbial swinging axe, and some called for worse fates still. He decided the moment they returned from that ruin with his shriveled and violated daughter that this called for the latter.

The entirety of King Cleon’s court assembled along the walls and up in the gallery hushed as the iron and wood doors at the far end swung open, then closed, followed by the grating, sliding bars. All else was quiet except the cackling flames. “Keep heart, my dearest. I need you to be strong. They cannot sense fear, nor weakness. He deserves this,” The King whispered.

Princess Paloneria said nothing, hands held in her lap, just as she had said nothing since the rescue party returned. She was gaunt, denying all food or drink claiming it made her ill. She would recover. As the heir, she had to, but it didn’t lessen his hatred for the beast now walking toward them. The throne was hers, and hers alone. The Faerie people mated for life, and though Queen Visteria fell a century ago, King Cleon honored his oaths.

“Justinius!” The King yelled, voice elevated by Faerie magic so that it deafened the entire chamber. Two guards led Justinius down the chamber and up the scaffolding over the cauldron. Both guards wore full armor and heavy swords at their side despite Justinius being chained. “As a murderer and a rapist, you are condemned to death four times over. As a murderer, simple beheading would suffice as punishment for your crimes, but for the rape of the Princess, your corporeal body will boil and burn until the Underworld claims your soul and you suffer the same fate in perpetuity. Do you confess to the rape of the Princess? With a confession, I might find mercy in my heart.”

Below, the cauldron bubbled and rolled, easily deep enough to submerge Justinius laden with chains as he was. This was a Faerie hall and Justinius knew their mercy better than most.

Justinius raised his head, no longer the meek defeated thing they found. “I deny it today, and every day hence!”

A moment of frustration flashed across the King’s face. King Cleon raised his arm to deliver the final pronouncement. All eyes lay upon him, the terrible act nearly done.

“But I do not deny her murder.”

Cleon’s brow furrowed for just a moment, his body unwilling to betray his consternation for anything more than a moment. He parted his lips.

“Such is the fate your rape of this land has sown.”

Hands clenched and jaw set, rage boiled through the King of the Faeries, Conqueror of this remote backwater. “Then your punishment is too merciful for your foul soul. Headsman, send…”

Though he stood firm before all, his voice trailed off at the soft whimpers coming from the dais beside his throne. Her knuckles were bone-like against the arms of her chair and her eyes darted back and forth, her body gyrating like a child waiting for their midsummer festival present. “Darling…”

There was a ripping sound, not unlike the tearing of a tapestry with a knife–an odd thought to cross Cleon’s mind as he watched a line form between his daughter’s eyes, then trace down her thin body, before unlacing itself neatly in two. It almost reminded him of a mummer's farce designed to frighten children at market, except that the mummer’s farce didn’t rush crimson blood across the dais like a river while the fatty, gelatinous mass of brain, intestine, and stomach lopped out onto the carpet.

All stoicism evaporated. “Darling…? Darling? Are you alright?”

Her eyes remained still as the rest of her intestine settled.

“Darling?”

The figure that replaced her seemed so very irrelevant at that moment, so much in fact that no one besides Justinius even turned to examine it. It hovered just above the Princess’s remains, its billowing, incorporeal robe not disturbing the pooling viscera. Though its edges fluttered, drifting in the breeze, the Daemon’s body was one of impenetrable darkness. In its hand was a jagged, rusted butcher’s knife.

A roaring laugh penetrated the silence, deep, bellowing, churning like the water boiling in the cauldron. “Ahh my brothers, you have heard my prayers! Come and deliver me from this evil! Deliver your vengeance!"

The Daemon moved with infernal speed, dispatching the guards who stood beside the barred doors in a blink, throats spewing crimson blood. An entire age passed between breaths. Not one courtier moved, stunned.

A scream ripped forth from some highborn lady in the Gallery, and the assembled lords and ladies stampeded in every direction, driven by no master or order besides chaos. The Daemon appeared on the scaffold before the two armored guards had a chance to act.

Had reason dictated their actions, perhaps they’d have executed Justinius’s sentence and dumped him into the still bubbling caldron. Perhaps they’d have run into the crowd now struggling to free themselves from the chamber. Instead, they drew their insignificant weapons against the Daemon.

But the Daemon wasn’t the only one seeking revenge. With all his remaining might, and weighed down with the heavy chains as he was, Justinius lunged into both the guards, shoulder bone meeting unprepared chest plate. A momentary shriek was brutally, abruptly silenced as their heavy armored bodies sank to the bottom of the boiling cauldron. They were the only ones that fell in that hall Justinius harbored a shred of sympathy for as the water rolled red.

The flames from the cauldron, now untended spread and the Daemon moved amongst the billowing black smoke, blade flashing indiscriminately through King Cleon’s court. Blood sprouted intermittently. Barred as the doors were, the crowd pressed against each other, until the bodies piled up both against the door and before the Daemon’s blade.

As he lumbered down the stockade, Justinius watched as the Daemon pierce the breast of a courtly woman in a long red silken robe. She had no trace of Faerie blood in her and yet had stood beside them as they conquered these lands. Her husband–for he had to be–shoved her bleeding body aside and tried to force his way through the crowd. Justinius paused curiously, noting how quickly the eyes, even vibrant Faerie eyes, stilled to white when the blade slammed through his skull. Coughs replaced screams as the flames climbed up the tapestries; acrid, burning flesh and Justinius was nearly overcome.

King Cleon remained stunned on the dais. Justinius marched ever closer, each step labored by the weight of the chains around his neck, around his chest, around his arms. Despite everything burning around him, Cleon stood over the remains of his daughter even as her innards sullied his fine boots. Were Cleon a better man, he might not have found himself in such a place. Were he a braver man, he might have defeated the Daemon with his own magic. Alas he was neither.

But there were many cowards in the chamber that day. Justinius’s resolve froze seeing the dead girl, torn from head to foot. There was indeed a gentleness to her, now reduced to little more than pâté. Justinius vomited, and the action tore King Cleon from his reverie.

It was enough. The air shimmered, and in his fury, King Cleon shoved Justinius. Timbers fell from the roof above as the King of the Faeries unleashed his full malice. Fire and Magic intermixed. Justinius met eyes, or what passed for spectral eyes, of the Daemon, willing it to come to his salvation.

Instead, it gazed skyward, and disappeared into the stars. Free.

Justinius screamed a curse that was ripped from his lungs by the thickening smoke and flames.

There was the smallest moment of malevolence in Cleon’s eyes, a glint of the smallest revenge.

Even after the thousand centuries Cleon’s and Justinius’s souls remained trapped within that ruin, that glint never left.