Otto
Otto waited on the stone outcropping of the Father's temple high up on the mountainside, his dark cloak flapping in the chill breeze.
In the darkness, Tajar was a smudge of glowing firelight far down in the valley, and reports said that most of the Wind Ward temples were now burning. In Portia, he had seen firsthand the threat that these brown-robed Priory fanatics posed, but in his heart, he somehow thought that Tajar would be spared. He had always thought the inhabitants of the great city were too selfish to join any kind of collective movement. This was a sign that it was time for him to act; the stranglehold of the gods was choking everyone, and his family would not be safe until the threat was neutralized.
The Fourth Champion of the Father approached, cradling his hook in his good hand.
"We saw no sign of her, First Champion."
Damn Athir. She'd promised to be subtle when she took the sword, but instead she destroyed half the treasures of the Father's temple and incapacitated the second champion of the Father; no doubt she had done it purposefully to vex him.
He swallowed, feeling the tug of the rutted scar on his neck. To her, he was still that scared boy in the forest, but the last time they had fought, he knew he could have ended her life. That was the problem with her plan; everything relied on her being able to subdue him, but how could he let that happen when even now the champion inside him thrashed and howled for a chance to face her again?
Otto realized he was clenching his jaw, and he eased it. "Keep looking."
The Fourth Champion hesitated, as he always did when Otto gave him an order, perhaps still unable to understand how the scared boy had become so powerful.
"Wait a moment." Lavious Flean, high priest of the temple of the Father, appeared like a thin spectre, his arcanist's staff tapping lightly on the flagstones. Thin and balding, the man wielded his religious fervor like a scalpel, deftly cutting out pieces he didn’t like in order to serve the will of the Father.
"Tell me, First Champion, why you saw fit to give one of our treasures to Second?" Flean asked Otto.
"I thought to send it to safety."
"My job is to think; yours is to act on my wishes, and through me, the wishes of the Father himself."
"I humbly beg forgiveness, high priest. I will take the Second Champion and hunt her down myself."
"Second has paid for his failure with his life."
Otto had seen the brutish second champion alive an hour ago; he was gravely wounded, yes, but he would have healed quickly. The First Priest had clearly punished this failure, but Otto didn’t feel anything for his deceased colleague; the brutish champion had tormented him for years under the guise of making him stronger.
"Then the Fourth Champion–"
"Third and Fourth will stay here and secure the temple against this Prior and his mob."
Otto felt a spike of annoyance at the superior look on the face of the Fourth Champion, but the feeling quickly evaporated as he felt the mantle of divinity settle gently onto his shoulders. For the first time since he was a boy in the shrine above Fallow Vale the Father had turned his attention to Otto. The sound was like a blade cutting the air in two.
The fear threatened to overwhelm him as he carefully reached deep in his consciousness towards his lurking madness. It watched him with a crooked smile, standing guard over the thoughts and intentions he had entrusted to it and masking them.
The high priest clearly felt the presence of the divine, bowing and placing his hand reverently on his breast. The old man appeared to listen intently before speaking in hushed tones. "First Champion, you will track down this assassin and retrieve what was stolen. Where will she go?"
Otto’s mouth was dry as he used every ounce of self-control he possessed. You are not suspected. You are the master of your own mind; you prepared for this. "She will flee into the Faelen realm, as she did before, in the Southlands."
"When you failed to catch her," the Fourth Champion muttered. He hadn’t registered the presence of the divine, he wouldn’t feel the Father if the stern god was jumping up and down on his head.
"If our path takes us towards that foul place, then I will conduct us there," the high priest stated.
Lavious Flean clearly knew more about the Faelen world than Otto had suspected, and there was no way he could let the old priest accompany him to the South. He had to get rid of Lavious Flean without suspicion falling on him.
As attendants saddled the horses, Otto sent silent messages to the allies of Athir in Tajar. In truth, he didn’t know if they could be trusted, but they had shown themselves to be resourceful when they had drawn the crowd to the temple of the Father, and at this point, he had little choice.
Dawn was a distant promise on the southern horizon as they set off at a brisk pace down to the plains of the Fallow River. Approaching Tajar, they saw that the guards had been replaced with brown-robed figures with curiously shaved heads. Neither Otto nor the high priest knew enough about this new god, the Prior. The religion had spread chaos across the south of the continent and spread north like wildfire. Normally they would be hunting down the ringleaders and any champions, but the Father had evidently taken a personal intrest and the need to recover the sword clearly superseded the need to contain these fanatics.
They slowed to a cautious trot as a blockade made of furniture and felled trees spanned the roadway, and sharp objects poked out at intervals.
"Stop there, by order of the priory," called a voice and man wearing the brown robes of the Prior’s followers stepped out from the side of the barricade.
"We are friends of the priory, simple travelers on our way home to the South," Flean said smoothly, bowing from atop his horse.
The man squinted up at them. He was heavyset, with scruffy hair and a beard flecked with gray. His robes were ill-fitting, and Otto spotted a bloodstain around a ragged tear in the cloth at the side.
"Uh, get off your horses then. We're commandering them in the name of the Prior."
Flean’s small eyes narrowed, and he peered closely at the figure. "I thought the shaving of one's head was a requirement of your organization."
"We’ll shave your head if you're not careful," called a voice from the rabble that blocked the road.
Flean pulled back his hood to reveal his bald head; his smile did not reach his eyes.
"Get down off of those horses; you can go where you’re going on foot."
Around twenty armed individuals stepped around the barricade. Half of them hadn’t even bothered to don the brown robes.
"Mercenaries and bandits. Kill them," Flean ordered.
"Yield, in the name of the Father," Otto said, slipping from his horse and drawing his black sword.
He pulled back his own hood to reveal the sharp, angular features of the Father and the group of bandits collectively reeled away from him. Otto hoped that they could at least hold their nerves long enough to make a good show of this.
Nets made of strong fibers and weighted on the corners with lead spheres flew through the air. The threads were made of toughened steel and they screeched along his blade as he dodged the first net. Then he dropped his guard slightly and let the second net wrapped around his body, pinning his arms to his side.
The high priest yelled as he became entangled in his own net. His panicked horse reared up, and the old man was catapulted off, falling heavily onto the dirt road.
Otto took a deep breath. As much as he feared hurting any of these people, the suspicion of the high priest would ruin everything. He exhaled, and a circle of darkness forty feet wide appeared around them, obscuring everything inside it. The howls of the bandits and the high priest began almost instantly as tentacles of darkness flicked out and began to wrap around their limbs, their suckers piercing their skin with sharp spines.
Otto struggled free of the netting and ran to the high priest, neatly cutting the tentacle that held him and pulling the net away. Flean gasped and leaned on Otto for support, and they both stared as a handful of small canisters bounced onto the dirt road around them.
"Run!" Otto cried.
The canisters exploded, and a fine power blossomed out into their faces, causing them both to start hacking and coughing. Stumbling out of the enchanted darkness, Otto blinked and shook his head, seeing the road winding away and splitting into three, then four. The floor was unstable, and the sky spun uncontrollably above him. As the high priest bent over and reached, a hooded figure darted forward and struck him neatly on the back of the head causign him to collapse into the dust.
"Put your sword away, young man, or you can join him," said a voice.
Otto dropped his blade and sank to his knees. "What did you do to us?"
"Uncomfortable, isn’t it? Works wonders against anyone with spells or any such thing, can’t be blasting fireballs when you’re throwing up can you?"
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A small glass bottle clinked on the floor.
"Take that; it should make you feel better."
Otto pulled off the cork and glugged down the liquid. His vision restored gradually, and his stomach stopped trying to empty itself.
The huddle of bandits peered out from the barricade, all except one old woman with neatly curled gray hair and thick glasses that magnified her eyes, making her look like some kind of frog. She wore battered armor and had a sword strapped to her back that was almost as tall as she was.
"So you’re Konrad’s brother, are you?"
Otto glanced at Flean, unconscious on the floor, and felt nothing of the Father’s presence anywhere near him.
"I am," he replied.
"Such a lovely boy, stronger than he looks. Off you trot now; we’ll take care of this one."
-
Otto traveled non-stop for two days to reach the desert heartlands in the south of Parthanea. The evening sun flickered on the looming red walls of the canyons, and the ghosts of his past watched from every shadowed crevice.
It was here that his pride at being given his first mission quickly turned to horror as he watched the other champion of the Father slaughter the peaceful villagers.
It was here that he saw Athir for the first time, discovering that the threat to the Father, the Mother and the Brother, had been a little girl, scarcely older than himself.
It was here that he would end it all.
Several times on the journey, Otto sensed the presence of the Father and filled his intentions with purpose, fixating on finding the Faelen champion and retrieving the white sword, making his very soul reverberate with that desire. This is what the Father expected from his champions: the drive to execute his will, no matter what stood in their way.
Intentions—that was where it all began. No god could read a mind, but all of them had an innate sense for intentions. After all, intentions foreshadowed future action, therefore shaping fate. The problem was that intentions can’t be faked; every fiber of a person's will had to be dedicated to manifesting them. Otto’s deal with the Faelen to save Konrad went against every intention he had to serve the Father. If he became suspicious, a powerful deity like the Father could force his way in and inhabit a champion's body, gaining access to the whole mind. If that ever happened, Otto’s secrets would be revealed, and the father's rage would devour his family.
In the archives of the Fathers' Temple in Tajar, Otto found the protection he needed. The short text detailed the search for a missing champion who had been cursed and gradually lost her mind untll madness claimed her. Later, she escaped the temple, and when the other champions failed to find her, they appealed to the Father, only to discover that he was unable to sense her at all.
Otto had seized on this glimmer of hope, forming a desperate theory. If the fates were a web of intention, then madness was the unpredictable antithesis to fate; it had hidden the lost champion from view.
As night fell, Otto began the evening ritual he had developed so many years ago. Gazing into the flames of his small fire, he let madness invade his mind. The buzzing sound threatened to overwhelm him, and he held on to his sanity by his fingertips.
Madness shrouded all of the thoughts and memories he kept here, masking them so that his intentions could be managed. His memories of meeting Athir in the glades to the East, and again in the dirty city on the western coast. His trip to the Echo was in there as well, when he had asked them to protect his brother. As well as the time spent with Konrad in Portia only a few short weeks ago. All of them were shrouded, but now it was time to follow the plan he and Athir had formed and bury them so deeply that even he couldn’t see them any more. It was possible he might never see them again.
Working slowly, he fed his intentions, fears, and memories into the churning chaos—anything that could betray him should the Father gain access to his mind. After this, all that would be left was his intention to end Athir’s life, forged in steel for the Father to see. Otto would not be able to hold back, and if Athir were not good enough, he would kill her.
The madness gobbled everything up, hungrily clawing at his mind until, with a superhuman effort, he forced it back to crouch at the back of his consciousness and flopped back, panting and gazing at the stars overhead with a crooked smile. It was funny, really; he had tamed madness as a precaution against the Father forcing his way into his mind.
But why was that funny? He was sure he knew once, but now it was an echo of a memory.
Hours later, the wind whipped up a swirl of cold sand, and the mantle of the Father’s presence settled onto the First Champion's shoulders like a cold shroud.
"She is here. End her life; retrieve the sword." The Father ordered.
Nearby, a sword was drawn from a scabbard with a silken hiss. The Faelen champion had arrived, and the Father was watching.
The champion rose to his feet, his intention forged into a spear aimed at his enemy’s heart.
The face of the champion of the Faelen was carved from stone. All creatures, whether humans, elves, gnomes, or orcs, were a rambling chaos of emotions, and he had always been able to sense them. But she was able to mask hers from him, creating a fortress in her mind that locked everything inside its high walls.
"I thought that you would come back here, where our story began. Where is the sword?" the First Champion of the Father asked.
She didn't speak, simply waiting in the stillness and silence of a lost grave.
"No matter, I'll find it when you're dead," the champion said.
He concentrated on the sand around him, infusing it with his power and his will and four creatures, each eight feet tall rose before him, their forms vaguely human shaped, except for their arms with ended in balled fists of sand.
The Faelen champion vanished, and he tracked her movements as best he could as she hacked through the sand giants. Her footsteps were all but undetectable on the sandy floor, but he sensed her bearing down on him and raised his blade just in time to catch hers as she reappeared above him, her face twisted in rage.
The clash of their weapons rang out in the clearing, and she darted away once more, pursued by the creatures he had summoned.
The Father’s champion used the distraction to begin pulling in the lingering heat from the rocks around them, filling his spirit with the latent energy of the desert sun until a ball of fire began to form in his palm.
One of the sand giants turned to glass and shattered; two more were swept away by a screaming wind; and the third turned to face the champion for the Father, obeying the will of its new master.
The fireball in his hand was as big as a melon now, and its heat burned away the sleeves of his jacket. The Faelen champion raced towards him, and he howled like a savage wolf as he released the molten energy. She darted upwards, boosting off of some invisible foothold in the air, but although she had clearly anticipated a burst of flame, her eyes went wide as a twenty-foot-high wall of fire erupted in front of her. It was so powerful that the Champion of the Father was blasted back into the rock wall behind him. The Faelen champion was not so lucky, bellowing in pain and frustration.
He thought for a moment that she might be foolish enough to try to break through. But then the wall of fire buckled and collapsed in on itself, and the flames were sucked into a vortex that whipped them up into a tornado that barreled towards him.
He dove out of the path of the inferno as the remaining sand giant fell to fine particles and the fire scattered to the winds.
"Enough of your tricks," the Faelen champion said, drawing her short sword.
A whisper in his mind tried to gain his attention, beseeching him to let her win. At all costs, she must win. He snarled and clawed at the notion, sending the pieces fluttering into nothingness. His pure intention was to end her life as the Father intended.
The Faelen champion held the two blades rock-steady with her knees slightly bent, and her calm confidence unleashed a rage within him.
"You cannot win!" the champion screamed, flecks of spittle flying from his mouth.
"So self-assured, you never did believe me when I said I could beat you," she said, her mouth twitching at the corners.
The father's champion moved forward like a vengeful wraith, giving himself up to the exhilaration of the fight. Both champions moved with precision, striking and darting with their swords. Their movements were so exacting that even when their blades met, they barely whispered against each other, their wielders so aware of each other that they knew exactly what the other would do. It was a dance on the edge of a razorblade, and the loser would not be the better fighter, the fastest, or the better trained. The loser would be the one who made a mistake first and let their concentration slip for just a fraction of a second.
The champion of the Father saw his own red eye staring back at him in the reflection of Athir’s blade as it swept past his face. Her hand moved a hair's breath to one side, and his counterstrike found nothing but air. A mad cackle escaped his lips as he danced with his own death, a buzzing sound thrumming in his ears.
Time slowed to a trickle, and in the space between heartbeats, he saw that her last movement was a fraction of a second too slow. Not enough to create an opening, but he pressed harder, and with each parry and thrust, she borrowed more time that she was unable to pay back. The champion gritted his teeth and forced her to take a step back, and in that moment he knew that she saw it too; her eyes were wide, her fortress slipped for a second, and he saw her fear. But it wasn’t fear for herself; she was afraid for him.
The Father was a heavy presence in the air around him as the champion took one perfect step forward and struck his sword through the Faelen Champion's flank, and it was only as he felt the metal scrape along her ribs that he realized that he had lost.
Looking down, he saw the hilt of the short sword protruding from his own stomach.
The Faelen Champion's face was inches from his own, her teeth stained red with blood. "Now you see your mistake, Champion. You can only win if I’m dead, but I consider both of our deaths a victory," she hissed.
A searing pain in his abdomen forced him down onto one knee, and the Faelen champion staggered backwards, her hand shaking as she pressed it to her own wound to stem the flow of blood.
The Champion of the Father met her gaze and called out in desperation.
"Father, save me," he whispered.
Time stopped, and the Father stepped out into the clearing, the sand on the floor undisturbed by his passing. He looked exactly as he did in the statues and effigies in temples all over the continent. Tall and proud, his beard cropped short and pointed. His eyes were red, and the champion knew it was the red of the Faelen Echo, though he could not recall how he knew this with such surety.
The Father’s gaze flickered over to the Faelen champion, frozen in time, then came to rest on him.
"You have failed me."
Champions of the Father could invoke his voice, but it was a pale imitation at best. His was the collective power of thousands of mortals who gave him their devotion. He was the spider at the heart of the fates and each word sent tremors through his web.
"She considers death a victory," the First Champion of the Father said through clenched teeth.
"All lost causes have their martyrs," the Father agreed.
"Please help me; she could still heal herself."
The Father’s red gaze intensified, and the champion opened himself to divine inspection; inhabiting a champion would leave the Father vulnerable, but the champion had nothing to hide.
"Give yourself to me," the Father instructed.
The champion's vision was blurring, and the sand under his knee was stained deep red with his blood. "My body is yours."
The pale image of the Father disappeared, and the Champion felt pressure on his consciousness as he was removed from control of his own body. He was still present, but he looked out of his own eyes like he was seeing through the gaze of a stranger.
-
The Father sighed as he pulled out the sword and stopped the blood from leaking from the wound. He took a deep breath and fought to suppress the sensory overload of a mortal body, repressing the pain and shutting down the olfactory systems. The mortal realm had attractive scents, but this place smelled like a butcher's yard.
His First Champion's body was a marvel; young and powerful, it would be a useful vessel for him to use while he worked to restore order in Parthanea. It had been a long time since he had taken an active hand in matters on the mortal realm, but the missing Faelen sword and the rise of the Prior had shown him that he had been too lax of late. There were also pleasures to be had in the mortal realm, and it had been a long time since his last visit.
First he would end this Faelen Champion. The Faelen had been taken care of a millenia ago, the last thing he needed was for them to find their way out of their prison. He took a step forward but faltered, his footing unsteady as a village drunkard.
"What is this?"
A shrill giggle drew the father's gaze inward, where a small, dark space was nestled at the back of his champion's mind. Each time the Father tried to look directly at it, he found his gaze sliding off.
A thrill of laughter came from the small space and quickly grew into uncontrollable giggling as a tightly wound bundle of thoughts, memories, and intentions unraveled and Otto’s secrets come tumbling out.
"Traitor!" the Father roared.