ARDENT'S ORDERS

ill them all. Those were Owen’s orders. Or at least, that’s what they boiled down to. A cult of demon worshipers had attacked Priest Eran on the road. They proceeded to follow him to the church in Raston and deface the holy sanctuary with demonic symbols and destroy the holy texts and art. The poor man was found cowering in a linen closet, barely conscious and babbling, but able to identify one of the cultists as Hod Ferron, the son of a local butcher in Raston.

Attacking a priest was a serious matter in the eyes of the church. So much so that many of the order considered it a crime punishable by death. The defacement of the holy sanctuary, however, easily carried the penalty of death. Death for the perpetrator, as well as the corrupted family.

It hadn’t taken Owen more than a few hours upon arriving in Raston to track down the Ferron house-shop on the outskirts of the market district. The shop showed no outward sign of neglect or deprivation. The building was painted blue with a simple wooden sign that read Ferron Butchery hanging above the front door. There was a plaque, too, with the image of a butcher’s knife, for the benefit of the illiterate. There weren’t any signs of peeling paint, the glass in the small windows were clean, and the wooden door was stained dark brown and polished to a sheen. Everything was maintained and tidy. No doubt this family used dark magic to coerce illegal profits.

The day was at an end. The windows were dark in the storefront and its door locked, but there were lights above in the family home. The lock was simple and easily broken. The inside of the shop was modestly furnished: wooden counters, and a carved bench for customers had the same polish as the counters and door.

The back room didn’t show the same amount of care as the main shop. Cuts and gouges crisscrossed the work tables and the basins next to them were dented and rusty. The knives, however, lined up on hooks, were a different story. They were of high quality, pristine, and honed to the sharpness of a razor. They were obviously someone’s pride and treated as such. Owen wondered what else these knives were used for apart from butchering animals. Butchering people? Animal sacrifice?

As expected, the stairs to the second floor were just off the back room at the end of a small hallway. As slowly as he could manage, Owen crept up the stairs, making sure to place his feet with care. With the patience of a hunter, he moved closer to the door above him, straining his ears to hear anything.

Then a voice. Male. Maybe this was Hod?

Owen couldn’t hear what was said and needed to be sure of the target’s identity before drawing his blade. It wasn’t until he reached the second-to-last stair that he was able to glean words from the murmur.

“Let’s just be happy with what we managed,” said the deeper voice.

“The priest would have retaliated by now if he intended to.”

So it was the right house and family. They were fools to think they could get away with blasphemy and desecration. From the distance of their voices, Owen guessed they weren’t in the room immediately on the other side of the door. He tested the latch. It was unlocked. He slowly opened the door and stepped into the darkened room.

“You need to keep your head down, son”, the deeper, gravelly, voice said.

“It’s not wise to slight a priest. Especially not as severely as you did. Lay low for a while until this is forgotten, if not forgiven.”

Hod’s father seemed not only fully aware of the crime, but aiding his son instead of turning him over to the authorities. That was all Owen needed to proceed: an admission of guilt and compliance.

The black sword’s magic coursed through Owen as he drew it from its sheath. The sound of voices in the adjacent room immediately quieted. He crossed to the door, light streaming through its edges and kicked it in. It took only a moment for his eyes to adjust from darkness to the light of the hearth. In a more sensitive situation Owen would have been more careful, but stealth was no longer needed— the sword in his hand knew the enemy. They were weak, evil rats to destroy.

“Go, son!” the elderly man said as he stood from the table with a carving knife in his hand.

The young man immediately jumped from his chair and darted out the back hallway.

Owen looked with disdain as he swung the black blade, severing the old man’s hand that held a knife. Owen reversed the blade and followed with a swipe that cleaved the astonished man’s head from his shoulders, before he could even make a sound. The blood along the blade sang through the sword into Owen’s core. This was righteousness. Righteousness and justice!

Alerted by the commotion, a short woman ran into the room. Hod’s mother. Drowned in the bloodlust of the sword, Owen barely heard her scream as he drove the blade between her ribs and directly through her heart. He did this with as much mercy as was available to him. After all, he didn’t know if she was privy to her husband’s and son’s misdeeds or not.

Turning down the hall, Owen saw the door at the end of the hall in rebound from an over enthusiastic exit. He stepped over the bodies and was halfway down the hall when a side door opened and he was blinded in a sudden explosion of pain. He had been struck in the head, or at least that’s what the throbbing in his right temple told him.

***

s his senses came back to him all was blurry and the black sword was no longer in his hands. But Owen still felt its raging power as he twisted on the floor. With one hand he reached to grab the shirt of his attacker. Owen dragged the attacker easily to the floor as his other hand drew a belt knife. In one swift motion he sank the blade deep through the neck. Only then did his vision begin to clear and he looked at the small, crumpled form before him. Long black hair covered the face in a white nightgown. She was just a little girl.

At the sight of her Owen wondered if she had even reached adolescence. No time to think. There was a task still to be finished. Owen picked up the black sword.

Inside the last room down the hallway was Hod Ferron, curled in the fetal position in a corner next to an open safebox.

“Please!” the man said as he held a handful of gold marks over his head in a pathetic offering. “I didn’t mean any harm!”

Owen walked slowly, raising his weapon. Hod continued.

“I meant no harm!” he repeated. “I didn’t mean to! I came out of the alley and he was just there! I didn’t mean to spill the pig guts over him! I thought I saw a friend in the alley! It was an accident!”

Owen partly heard what the man said and attempted to restrain his actions, but the sword’s impulse overcame him. It wasn’t until the black blade lay sunken deeply in the man’s chest that Owen fully came to his own full senses and considered the words. An accident? Pig guts?

It all started to make sense. There was no lie in Hod’s eyes as he begged for his life. It meant this had been a set-up, a farce. Owen had seen what the ‘cultists' had done in defacing the sanctuary. Most of the damage was done with smeared blood. Pig’s blood, not human blood, and not at the hands of cultists, but more likely by the hands of an outraged, weak, and corrupted priest.

Owen had been used for murder, all for a slighted priest’s petty revenge. With a clatter the black blade fell to the floor. He didn’t remember pulling it from Hod’s body. Owen turned towards the small body in the hallway. Just a girl. He had killed her without hesitation, blindly following orders.

The girl’s frame seemed even smaller in death. Her black hair draped across her face like a death shroud obscuring her face. Her nightgown had little bits of lace around the cuffs, its purity now stained red. At her feet lay a rag doll and a fire poker. Smart girl. If she’d actually had the strength to match her bravery, she might have done him serious damage.

Owen bent down and picked up the doll. Years of use had taken most of the color out of its red dress. But its fabric was silk-like after years of being handled and loved.

Owen leaned forward and pushed the hair back from the girl’s face. Her blue eyes were still open. He shut them.

“I’m sorry.”

He dared say no more than that. What else could he say? He didn’t even know her name.

Owen took the doll and pressed it into the pool of blood. He felt the doll swell with its warmth seeping onto his hands through the chinks in his gauntlet. Her blood wasn’t on his hands alone. Priest Eran’s hands were filthy. No doubt what had happened at the Ferron house would be explained as the result of a home robbery, and the Ferron’s gold would disappear when they were discovered. The ruthlessness of the Order as well as his own actions sickened him.

Retrieving his sword, Owen made his way out of the home and shop. The sky was fully dark now and the streets were empty. The few people he saw avoided him. The blood-spattered face and the blood-soaked doll he held were not so visible in the night darkness. It was his towering presence and purposeful gait that passersby found off-putting.

***

he church, as usual, was the most opulent building in the entire city, more so in a city as wealthy and well established as Raston. Grand spires of ornate white granite pierced the heavens above. The rest of the church was made from the same stone, with carved reliefs adorning its walls, depicting the lessons of Aeomir. The windows were ornately stained glass and several stories high. The Church never could resist showing off.

Owen shoved the oaken doors open. The entry hall was empty. At this hour only the resident clerics, and of course the priest, would be here, but he saw no one as he made his way to the living quarters. Priest Eran’s room wasn’t hard to find— it was the biggest room at the end of the residential hall.

When he burst through the doors Owen expected to find someone, a few clerics and the priest, or just the priest himself.

The room was empty.

The room wasn’t exactly lavish, but neither was it austere. There was seating around the hearth for small private councils, the chairs made with ample cushioning. The living area of the room was rather quaint: a simple bed behind hangings for privacy. A chest of drawers was pushed into a corner alongside a mahogany wardrobe. Inside it Owen found exactly what he expected— robes. Quite a few common priest’s white robes, but in the back Owen found what he was looking for. Neatly hung and set apart like a sick trophy was a stained robe. Its white cloth was stained in with brown spots, repeatedly washed, of blood.

Owen stiffened at the sound of the door opening behind him. He didn’t turn.

“Who are you?” a voice behind him demanded and snapped.

“I am Ardent Castor. Owen Castor of Aeomir and I have come to report on the matters concerning Hod Ferron and his family.”

“ I hope the matter is resolved?” the priest said huffily.

In response, Owen raised the doll. Priest Eran stared at it in confusion.

“Is that supposed to mean anything to me?” the priest asked.

“This is the blood that you asked for.” Owen responded, his voice starting to tremble with rage.

Priest Eran backed away as Owen advanced. Owen grasped the priest by the robe with one hand as he held the doll in front of the priest’s face with the other. He smashed the bloody doll into Eran’s face, leaving a dark smear. Owen ignored the priest’s panicked gasps as he shoved the doll into the priest’s hands.

“There! Now your hands may carry the blood they’ve earned!”

Owen raised back his fist. The satisfying crunch of the priest’s nose did nothing to dispel Owen’s fury. His fists fell again and again on the priest until there was no more protest from the man who now lay in a ball on the rug, unconscious.

Owen fled. Not into hiding, but instead back to his home, in Kanth. A few days ride from where he was raised and taught. The home of the Order. The place where he had devoted himself to being the obedient hand of justice.

He rarely stopped to eat or rest. Days faded together. There was only one goal: Kanth and the sanctuary.

***

wen barely noticed the groups of clerics as he shoved past them into the sacred sanctuary of Aeomir. Its vast chamber was just as he remembered. Pillars lined the path to the set of steps leading up to the altar. The shafts of light that streamed down upon the raised altar used to appear breathtakingly holy. It all seemed like a joke now. Weak and solemn. Nothing more than architectural intimidation and deceit.

Owen stared at the stone altar with hatred as he approached. This was the very chamber where he made the oath of righteousness and servitude. The very altar from which he had first picked up the black blade and felt its joyous power and its promise of justice.

With a cry of anguish and betrayal, of agony, Owen thrust the blade deep, almost to the hilt, back into the stone of the altar.