Chapter 332

The horses underneath the trio were moving at a swift clip as they reached the last bridge that led from the Slane Theocracy and over into the Kingdom of Carne.

For the next few days, they traveled in peace, Brain would often put a hand on the hilt of his sword as if it were still intact, and Zesshi would instruct him in some forms of unarmed combat used in the Slane Theocracy, a blend of elven and human martial arts which put him on his back on a nightly basis.

Layali giggled often at the silly faces he made as they practiced while she cooked. And when they slept, she curled up beside Brain. Zesshi slept less than they did, but as she lay close at hand, she pricked up her ears.

"Don't leave me." Layali whispered while Brain snored. But he said nothing.

On their fifth night in the Kingdom of Carne, Zesshi sat upright while Layali babbled her plea to the sleeping swordsman.

Layali immediately tore her eyes away from his face and rolled over to face the sound she heard when Zesshi sat up.

"Come here." She whispered to the small half-elf, and Layali pushed herself up and took the two steps she needed to be directly by Zesshi. The bright eyes of the little half-elf were darting to and fro, she didn't sit down, her feet shuffled as if she'd done something wrong.

"You know why he's going to put you somewhere, don't you? It won't be safe to keep you with him." Zesshi whispered. She didn't have to say it, Layali's hand went down to where the burn mark from his heated sword, still sat.

"I… know. But I don't care." Layali said with a child's stubbornness. Her tiny hands balled into fists. "I don't want someone else! I want Brain. I want Zesshi! I don't want to go some other place! What if you think they're good, but they're not, then you leave and they're mean again! What if I don't like them? What if they die! This whole fight thing, it's to stop a war… what if it doesn't work and I'm stuck in a war… someone'll get me again, I know they will!" She insisted in a tiny squeaking voice.

Zesshi scratched her head and she let out a tiny breath to look down at the girl's feet. "Me, huh… I'm no mother figure, Layali. You know what I want? I want someone so strong that they can utterly defeat me, that way I can have a child so strong that nobody else can defeat them. I'm just a weapon thinking weapon thoughts, nothing more, it's what I do."

"Nuh uh. You ripped apart that monster that was trying to get me." Layali protested immediately, and Zesshi couldn't help but smirk a little when Layali's smile grew despite the pools in her eyes. "You made him into a delicious dinner." She and Zesshi both licked their lips, she wasn't wrong about that much.

"That's pretty weaponish, though." Zesshi pointed out, and Layali's smile turned upside down.

"You got nowhere to go… right, so… if you stay with Brain, I can stay with both of you… right? I'd be safer with you two than anywhere else… right?" Layali asked, her hands clapped together, fingers interlocked in front of her chest as she said, "Please… pretty please… I'll… I'll let you pat my head every day."

Zesshi let the girl take her hand and put it over the golden strands, and it was irresistible, she tussled the girl's hair, but said to her, "There's more to it than safety. How will you live? Brain can't do this forever. Even I can't, even though I can do it longer. You need a home. I understand what you want… but you need to prepare yourself for this… don't torture him, it'll be hard enough as it is. Now please, go to sleep."

Layali hung her head, returned to Brain with two outraged stomping steps, curled up even closer to him than before, and stubbornly squeezed her eyes shut as if Zesshi had said nothing at all.

'I must hate her.' Raymond told himself that again and again while he failed and failed over the few days of travel which followed.

She obeyed him completely and without question. Ate when he said, and what he gave to her. Slept in the room he paid for, and answered when he spoke to her. But nothing more. She moved like a shell, a shadow, and watched him far more closely than he thought possible.

Nor was she the only one doing the watching.

Too frequently he recalled the warning of the Dragonid Queen that his country's ways would catch up to him, and it was that fear of being under her curse that put him where he now was.

In front of him stood a temple to the Six Gods, it was a small place, but old. Rough stone walls of granite, but the steps and floor were smooth as unbroken glass. "Wait here… slave." Raymond said, and pointed to a space a few feet away from the stairs. He couldn't look at her when he said it, when he tried, the memory of that beautiful face twisted in terror when he drew his knife, brought bile and shame up to his throat.

"Master." She acknowledged and went to stand a few feet away.

'Here… here I will feel the touch of the gods… here… here I will be whole. The curse the Frost Queen put on me can be lifted, and I can… do what I need to do.' He told himself as he ascended the steps. He removed his shoes and set them beside the great double door, then he walked in through the door and looked around. A few benches, all of smooth granite, a thin blue carpet that was bare in places where feet had worn through it over the passing ages. A handful of windows open to the air cast light within, and a crude altar sat at the far end of the temple where a hunched over pair of figures worked tirelessly to clean it by hand. 'Just like home.' He thought with bliss as the timeless ritual was repeated before his eyes.

He approached, his feet lightly clapping against the stone and sending out a small noise to alert them to his coming.

He waited with patience until the hooded pair straightened up and a man's voice said, "Phew… that is not going to get easier with age."

The speaker turned around while a woman's voice laughed at his side, "Go ahead and tend our visitor, I'll take the offerings to the back and join you shortly."

"Of course, love, of course." The man said and flung back his hood to reveal a youngish human male with auburn hair, full lips and brown eyes with a roundish head and an all in all 'boyish' face.

"You are the priest, yes?" Raymond asked, and the priest immediately did a half bow with his hand on his chest.

"Yes, I am. Tomen is my name, priesting is my game. Well, mine and my wife's, and this is… for this lifetime, our temple to the divines." He had a broad grin that was so infectious that even given the gravity of the situation, Raymond couldn't help himself.

He found himself immediately liking the young man. "What can I do for you, my good sir, have you come to worship, for marriage, or something else?" Tomen asked in a sonorous voice that made Raymond wonder if he could sing.

"I'm afraid… I was exposed to… to a monster, and it cursed me. I… I can't feel the touch of the gods anymore… I tried to enact a rite… a… a harvesting rite, and I felt nothing but loathing… I couldn't carry on. But I can't detect the curse or remove it from myself." Raymond explained, and Tomen's open, generous expression became grave. The smile ran away from his face and he put his arms out to clasp Raymond's biceps.

"Not to worry, my wife is a fourth tier caster, she specializes in monster curses and poisons, she used to be a healer in the north before we met." He explained and then turned to one side to gesture to a back room. "We have a place for this, a few crystals we keep handy, gifts from our dwarven neighbors, hold mana and let her punch up her spells a little. She can't do a fifth tier spell yet, maybe in another hundred years or so… but she can make a more powerful fourth tier one." He tried to give an encouraging smile up to Raymond, and the Cardinal walked with him without hesitation.

"Now, tell me about this monster, I'm particularly talented when it comes to identifying varieties, believe it or not," Tomen tapped his slightly protruding belly, "I used to be an adventurer. I wasn't the highest ranked, only Mithril, but I was our party's resident expert in monster powers and varieties."

Raymond began to relax further, "She was… powerful. A very powerful demihuman, a dragonid. A human who gave away her humanity for the sake of power… she… I don't know how she did it, I never heard her cast a spell, but the viciousness and violence in her eyes, I could see she must be the one… and now… now here I am, a priest of the six, and I feel like I'm delusional."

"I see, quiet casting… and a dragonid mage… that's no small thing. Rare too, talk about bad luck. Still, the good news is that I've never heard of one that could use higher than sixth tier, and those are vanishingly rare. Even if we can't remove your curse, we know who can, and at the very least we can identify it." Tomen promised as he opened the oaken door and ushered Raymond inside.

"That is a relief. A very great relief." Raymond sighed with relief, the room in which he found himself had three crystals, fragments really, not large enough to hold full spells, they were still relatively scarce items to find in a place like this. "The dwarves gave you those?" He asked. Though he'd never met a dwarf, their reputation came immediately to mind, 'Money-grubbing misers who would hold back a rope from a man hanging off the cliff, if the man couldn't pay to rent the rope.'

"Not in my lifetime, this was centuries ago, it seems the priest who worked here cured a traveling dwarf merchant and refused payment, so when the merchant returned home, he sent these anonymously with no way for the priest to return them." Tomen explained, and Raymond chortled.

"If it was anonymous, how do they know it was him?" Raymond pointed out the hole in the plot of the story, and Tomen answered…

"Because the dwarf showed up about fifty years later asking if they liked his gift, by then it had been so commonly used for helping to heal curses… and the original priest was long dead, that nobody wanted to return it." Tomen chuckled. "They finally reestablished contact with us not that long ago actually, they pass through now and then making maps, and apparently they still remember this place."

"Hmpf. Exceptions prove the rule." Raymond muttered under his breath, but wasn't in the mood to argue.

"Now, let me get my wife, just sit tight." Tomen gestured to a polished wooden chair and Raymond sat there with his back to the door.

He didn't wait long. He felt their presence behind him, and the glow of magic after the softly spoken casting of the spell [Identify Curse] [Detect Magic][Detect Curse][Identify Item][Diagnose] The woman at his back ran through spell after spell, with the light blue glow of magic surrounded him with its warming light.

Then it faded away and the woman's voice reached out to him, "There is no curse on you. No magic, not even a trace of it."

Raymond lumped forward. "Then why… why can't I do my job? Why did I hesitate…?"

"What were you trying to do?" Tomen asked and approached Raymond's back, he placed a hand on the Cardinal's shoulder and gave it a brotherly squeeze.

"I'm… from the Slane Theocracy. My colleagues sent me an elf to act as my attendant and bodyguard. I had her healed from an injury, and the potion's unintended side effect was that it restored her ears. I was going to harvest the parts commanded by the gods… but she… she looked at me. I saw us reflected in the waters of a little puddle nearby, I-I couldn't do it. What else could it be if not a curse?" He asked and looked over his shoulder just as the woman threw back her hood to reveal the ears of a dark elf.

Raymond sucked in his breath, a mix of pity and hatred warred on her face, she glowered at him, her still outstretched hand had begun to have tremors and she stepped back from him as if he were a monster. Her husband stepped slightly to the right so that he was in between her and Raymond.

"There's nothing sacred about it. That's not a rite, that's a mutilation." Tomen hissed the words through clenched teeth.

Raymond spoke in a hushed whisper as if he were witnessing some horrid conspiracy, "A dark elf… in the temple of the Six? The ones who chose humanity…"

"We don't believe that here." The dark elf spoke with the crisp snap of a matron, her shaking hand became an accusingly pointed finger. "What you feel isn't a curse, scion of cruelty. I can tell you what it is, and may it burn you like fire."

Raymond's eyes opened farther, almost bulging as the dark elf dared to reprimand him, a human and a priest of the gods. But her claim to knowledge stopped him from shooting to his feet.

"Empathy." The dark elf priestess said.

"Empathy…? You're not serious…?" Raymond rose to his feet and put a hand to his forehead, he kept his back to them to hide his face and looked up toward the ceiling.

"Yes." The dark elf priestess replied.

"We believe that the gods did not choose humanity, that this is a perversion of their truth. They chose the just, the kind, the good. Search the book, your 'rite' as you call it, your 'harvest' is not mentioned even once. But you still think it holy because you were told that it was." Her finger shook but never wavered from his back.

"But she's-" Raymond was immediately shut down.

"Alive." Tomen said, his hand came again to Raymond's shoulder. "Alive and breathing, every bit as much as you or I. And intelligent too… isn't she?" He asked and forced Raymond to turn around, he clasped Raymond's cheeks in his hands and brought his forehead to Raymond's own even though he had to stand on his tiptoes to do it.

The cardinal could feel the sweat on Tomen's brow, "I would throw you out of here… cast you out of this sacred place right now… except I believe my wife. I trust her judgement… so I will give you a moment. Tell me, priest to priest…" Tomen urged, and Raymond batted the smaller man's hands away.

"It can't be… yes… she's intelligent… beautiful… such a lovely voice and… those beautiful eyes, I've never seen such blue, not even in the sky itself… she carries herself so firmly and… even when she's afraid… there's a dignity to her I can't look away from…" Raymond said and with a snarl he turned and kicked the chair, sending it flying into a wall where it shattered into fragments and clattered to the floor.

"She's an enemy of humanity! We've been fighting her kind for over a hundred years! Empathy?! She's evil!" Raymond yelled with such virulence that when Tomen looked at him he could see clear to the back of Raymond's throat.

Tomen's wife stepped back and her husband got in the way of any view of her.

"It must be a curse… some magic that makes me doubt myself… lesser priests than me carry out their duties… she's not human, so how… how could I feel… bad for her, if she had the strength, she'd kill us all… I know she would… elves are evil." Raymond said, but the power was gone, his knees were shaking and the rest of his body followed hotly after them as if he were shedding the fear of his first fight to the death.

"You need to leave." Tomen said with icy finality and turned to the side, pointing toward the door, "You're scaring my wife and I won't have that. I want to help you, priest. I do. But I will not do so at her expense."

Raymond calmed himself, smacked his lips, took a gulp of air and gave a numb nod, "I… yes, I'll-I'll go."

"I'll show you out, I can do that much." Tomen replied as his wife all but fled, though as Raymond passed from the back room to the hall of worship, he heard the dark elf hiss at him like an angry cat.

As they made it to the door and passed from beyond its shadow and out into the light of day, Tomen grabbed Raymond's bicep one more time, Raymond look up at him, stopping in mid step.

"One word of advice from… priest to priest." Tomen said, and Raymond waited for him to speak.

"I don't know this elf, maybe she is evil, maybe she isn't… elves are people just like us, they're capable of good or bad… but one thing I know, it's a whole lot easier to hurt someone if you've convinced yourself they deserve it, even if they don't." Tomen said and Raymond yanked his arm away from the man's grip.

"Thank you." Raymond said, and began his descent down the steps.

Nua was waiting where he'd left her, her eyes downcast and hands folded in front of her. "Did the priest relieve you of your curse, master?" She asked.

Raymond said nothing when she spoke, he looked her up and down and said, "Just get the carriage."

A tiny murmur followed, "Yes, Master."

As she left, he saw an opportunity. 'She's evil. I'll prove it, I'm not wrong.'

Members of the Black Scripture learned many arts, some were trivial, some were powerful, but what made the Black… the Black, was that they used even trivial arts to maximum effect. 'Cause a landslide with a pebble…' The motto of his instructor came back to him.

He waited… the streets of the town in which they were, were busy to say the least. Horses, carriages, the everyday routine of busy life went on without stopping.

He could hear his own carriage approaching from the side street where Nua left it.

She hopped down with such lithe gracefulness that even he couldn't hear her land when her feet hit the ground.

Nearby, a human child began toddling across the street, no more than five, he almost sprinted, or what passed for it before falling on the ground with a wail.

Further down the way, Raymond watched a horse spring away from its master, it came tearing down the street, berzerk, enraged, its hooves like thunder from the ground, gouging out the earth with its hooves. Raymond reached within his cloak to grasp the hilt of his favorite knife, but one eye was on the slave.

'Enemy of humanity... Show your hand.' He prayed to the gods… his fervent longings cast up to the highest heights of heaven.

Nua however, had her eyes cast on more worldly things. The child's mother screamed, her hands clawing at her face when she realized her child toddled away, and the danger that bore down on him.

She rushed from her position by her master, her feet chewed up ground faster than he thought the slave could possibly move, diving forward, her arms caught the boy at his shoulders, and she went down to a tumbling roll head over heels several times with him tucked into her chest before she came to a stop as the horse barrelled past. Dusty and dirty, but none the worse for wear, she rose to her feet, and found herself confronted by the terrified eyes of what could only have been the young boy's mother

The woman was a head shorter than Nua, and embraced her like a sister, she grabbed Nua's shoulders, rose to her tiptoes, and kissed the slave's cheeks again and again. "Thank you… thank you… thank you… my boy… he's all I've got left… you saved him… thank you… you're a hero… A hero…" She fell to bawling and shivering as Nua gently disengaged herself, trying hard not to lay a hand on her, the slave backed away.

"It's fine… it's fine… just… have a safe day…" The golden haired elf gave the little boy a wiggle of her ears in his direction, and now out of reach of further gratitude, Nua retreated to the sound of wild thanks and murmurs of approval.

Raymond's face was drained of blood, pale as a ghost, he said only, "Get in and drive." The words were so small that she barely heard them, but whether she did or not, she knew what he wanted.

They reached the inn and Nua followed her master within, the simple building was of wood with the beginnings of stone expansion, workers were laying down blocks while others were laying down mortar. He yanked his eyes away from the construction. A dwarf was standing on a crate while an elf held out documents that must have been plans, and not far away more elves worked on what must have been gardens while orcs and goblins laid or carried stones alongside humans. Perhaps the worst was seeing ogres bearing the largest loads, great lumbering brutes… and no one ran.

'This place…' Raymond shivered while breezing past the front desk and up the stairs, he moved so quickly that Nua had to almost run to keep up with him.

When he opened the door for himself he stopped and said, "You're coming in with me."

"My Lord." She answered, and though he felt her eyes on his back, he said nothing more, only entering and going to sit on the nearest chair.

He drummed his fingers on the table, faster and faster, they were the only sound in the room, he stared at the wall near his bed, the drumming grew louder, faster. Nua glanced at him, she held her hands in front of her waist, then folded them behind her back, then she went to stand at his side… and shuffled her feet before moving away.

"Just kneel there." He pointed to the place in front of himself, out of reach by several feet. "You're annoying." He groused.

She obeyed, sweat on her dirty forehead ran down her cheek, she looked down at his feet and folded her hands together in her lap.

"Why did you save that boy, slave?" Raymond demanded, barely moving his lips.

Nua didn't raise her eyes. "I don't understand, master. Did I do something wrong?"

"You could have been killed." He answered her, his fingers drumming faster.

"I'm sorry replacing me would have inconvenienced you, master." She replied without raising her eyes, but her pulse began to pound as she felt his focus land on her at last.

"Look at me, slave." He commanded, and she finally looked up.

When he saw those endless blue, the way they danced even when frightened and uncertain, he almost lost himself for the moment and then clenched his fist hard enough to hurt his palm with his fingertips. "Why? Tell me why you did that!" He snapped at her, and she flinched without leaving her knees, briefly closing her eyes to brace herself to be hit.

"He was a human." Raymond said to her, and she inclined her head to acknowledge it.

"He was. But I don't know what kind. And… and shouldn't he get to find out? If you saw a dog in the street, wouldn't you help it, master?" Nua asked, she was no longer able to hide her quickening breath as she felt the danger in the room rise.

"He's your enemy, isn't he?" Raymond snapped again, avoiding her question, but to his surprise, she shook her head.

"He's just a little boy, I never knew him, he never hurt me." Nua replied, blood seeped out of his palm and between the tight clenched fingers of his fist.

"I-I didn't think, I just saw he was going to be crushed and, I don't know. I've never hurt anyone in my life, but I knew it was going to be bad so I just… I reacted. I just think… thought he deserved a chance to… everybody deserves a chance… I've known good humans… a few. Maybe he was a good one… I hope he will grow up to hate my kind, but maybe he won't, probably not… this place," she looked around the room as if she could see the whole country, "like something out of a children's story… I haven't felt hatred from any of them. Not once."

She became sullen, reaching up to touch the collar around her throat. "If your slave displeased you, master, I apologize for doing so."

If there was remorse in her words, he couldn't see it.

"You're an enemy of mankind." He declared. But she said nothing.

"Did you hear me?" He asked.

"Yes, master." She answered.

He resumed drumming his now bloody fingertips on the table.

"Say it." Raymond commanded.

"I am an enemy of mankind. She obediently repeated.

She braced herself, closing her eyes, waiting for him to hit her as she felt his fury rise and the bloody fingertips made wet slapping noises against the table.

It didn't have the effect he sought, he deflated, slumping in his chair. "I don't care what the priests said. I have to be under a curse." He growled, her ears twitched and caught his eye.

"Master? Why?" She asked, a twinge of curiosity.

"I know what I have to do… but I…" He stood, drew his knife, and reached out as if to take her ear.

She broke position, scrambled back and pushed herself against the wall, her arms spread out and feet kicking against the floor, her head shaking back and forth so much that her twitching ears slapped the wall.

Sweat soaked dust dripped to the floor as her breathing went wild and frantic.

He sat as soon as he saw her eyes. "I can't." He uttered, "I'm supposed to hate you, to look at you and… I just… can't. If I could only-" He flung the knife down into the wooden floor where it pierced to the hilt and remained upright.

Nua slowly relaxed, though she was breathing hard, her flailing came to a gradual stop.

"M-Master… may I speak freely?" She asked. Her mind screamed at her to shut up, but she couldn't.

It was like a mockery from him, worse, a worse form of cruelty, 'At least if he'd cut them off it would be over now! As it is… it's like some twisted torture to drag it out!' Her anger built and carried away her reason on its tide as she spoke.

"You've got it backwards, master. If you really want to hate me, you have to hurt me first. That's the nature of your kind. First you hurt someone… then you find a reason to make it okay, you hate them because you hurt them, because you know you're wrong and you hate yourselves for it!" She hissed the vitriolic words and glared at him, verbal viciousness fell from her tongue without end.

"If you just start beating me and abusing me, you'll hate me plenty in a very short time… because it beats the alternative!" She snarled at him, and he shouted back in return.

"I'm a cardinal! You're my enemy! You were born my enemy! This should be easy! It's a routine rite performed all over my country by lesser men of the gods than I! You hate all my race and would burn my country to the ground if we didn't keep you beneath us!"

Nua's eyes became icy as she looked at him, "Sometimes… I do feel that way. I loved one man… and after I gave myself to him… my first true love, he laughed at me, and had me cut to pieces up and down my back so I'd spend the rest of my life as an ugly mess! That was how I learned of 'the Game'."

She stepped closer to him, turned about, and raised her shirt to show every one of her scars. "Even that potion didn't fix it all! Do you want to add to them?!" She shouted and yanked it down again. "The second of your kind I loved… gave me my happiest days, but then his wife found out he loved me… forced him to beat me… and then I was sold to a farm where the child I'd have born him was forced too early out of my body… Yes, master…" She spun to face him again, "I sometimes hate all of you… and I wonder why you hate us so much. You can't do without us, we make your slave catchers, harvest your food, nurse your spawn while you sell ours. But not always… I know not everyone is bad… some have been… very kind. Here, if you want to make it easy, I hate this… taunting, far more… the constant threat is worse than the act itself!"

"You'd help a wounded dog I'm sure of it, but mutilate me for daring to exist? I'll do it myself if it'll just stop this agonizing waiting! Better my hand than yours or Dominic's!" She crouched down and yanked the knife out of the wood, grabbed her left ear to pull it tight, and brought the edge of the knife to her flesh and began to saw.

"No!" The word escaped his lips and before he knew what he was doing, Raymond had her wrist in his hand and yanked it back from her ear before she could sever her connection to her people. He twisted her wrist away and slapped the knife from her grasp to skitter along the floor.

"This is what you want! What you're trying to want!" She shouted an inch from his face, as he released her, the momentum sending her staggering backwards over his bed.

"Don't! Just… don't…" He quieted down, he was breathing hard despite the fact that he wasn't nearly tired, his eyes wildly darting over her and searching for injury as she pushed herself off the bed.

"I… I don't want you to be hurt, I'm sorry… I'm sorry…" He gasped, and Nua began to look him over again, appraising him up and down as if seeing him for the first time. A tingle ran up and down his spine, and she began to relax.

"Now I understand… I had you all wrong." She began to laugh, her hand dragged down the length of her face as she sighed and laughed even harder. "How… how did a man like you become a Cardinal of the Slane Theocracy?" She asked, ignoring the deep frown that once would have set him on edge.

"I thought you were the purest form of evil… but you're not. You've just been playing evil your whole life… and if you can't even beat me the way your friend did… you're not good at playing it." Nua told him without a hint of apology.