I killed those men.

He'd had no issue kicking down that door and slamming his hammer into the skull of the first man he'd met.

Seven of them, but it was the last one that concerned Brenn so – the man had begged for his life and he'd still ended it. Power like his... It was rare, those in the successor states wanted to believe magery was common, but not to that degree. Your village healers and sages were common enough, surely, but not individuals with strength enough to raise their infusions to smashing through the wall of a building. What that kind of thing would do to a man...? Flatten them, as he'd just done.

Life was full of amusing little twists and turns, how a man can change by his own merit – or how he can be saved by another. Brenn could still remember the fire in him when he'd tracked down the man that had beaten Jennifer. Back when she was less 'mother' and more of a sister, Brenn had been... 11 or 12 years old, but he was strong for his age, and the Locket had put his physical abilities to good use. And in turn, he'd made good use of their lessons, beaten and starved – forced by circumstances to become either a good thief or a scary one. Brenn had no talent for quick fingers, but he excelled beyond most men at beating someone's face flat.

He'd almost killed that man, truly, another thief just like him that had given Jennifer a black eye when she'd refused to give up her allowance. Brenn had tracked him for an entire day, through the winding warrens of Kriegstad, and had cornered him in a brothel. Balls deep, yanked out of the prostitute he'd been laying with and hung out the window. Brenn's one and only talent back then... Perhaps even now, was his insane strength, but even more than that was his well earned abilities to weather abuse. Beaten more times than he could count, forced to set his own broken bones and hide it from Jennifer, but she'd always known. Necessity enables a looking of the other way, sometimes, but never with her.

Brenn hadn't been thinking about Jennifer when he'd done it, dropped the man from the 3rd story of a whorehouse and watched on as his legs were shattered. Marched down to the mewling wretch and tore two of the man's fingers off bare handed, not for justice. For revenge, to teach the man a lesson before sending him to the black. There was a difference there, justice and revenge were not the same.

Beneath shadowed eaves he'd heard her voice, a blind woman in the service of Vestia – not even a priestess, just an adherent. An unofficial member of the flock, but she was blessed. Blessed with the most beautiful voice Brenn had ever heard in all his life, a siren's song that froze the fire in his blood and made him stand. A blind woman, and yet she'd been looking right at him. One would expect...

Perhaps context is necessary. There is no god of pacifism, in Brenn's experience all gods wanted for one form of conflict or another – they needed it of their faithful. Even the gods of life and nature where not wholly altruistic, but a fair few of them considered the act of killing to be profane. It was, profane that is, to end a life out of the simple fact that oneself was right – with no heed to the needs or opinions of others. That was revenge over justice, and where the gray places of mankind grew muddied. War was inherently unjust, and yet standing up to fight for what one believed in was sacred – thus a soldier is not evil, not inherently.

A warrior, too, who commits himself until consensual battle under a moral code or supporting set of ethics is not evil.

One would expect the gods of light and order to forbid the act of killing. They did not. Aphrosia, goddess of passion, love, and lust – could be a bloody one. Her templars were rare, few of the martial discipline would follow a goddess like that, but they battles for any reason at all. Vanator and Aotrom were both warriors, slayers, two sides of the same coin. Vestia, though, was the mother – a goddess of propriety, family, oaths and promises, the hearth. A warm and gentle goddess, Brenn had passed her chapels so many times, that silent smiling god, and scorned her, a very popular goddess in all the known kingdoms. For her wholesomeness, few gods were so relatable to humans as the sister and mother of all. A small faith, but a known one, and Brenn's heart had sank when he'd beheld that blind woman looking down on him in pity. Expecting some... Rebuttal, rebuke, punishment, for surely an adherent of the Hearth Mother would have looked at such an act with nothing but disgust.

He'd be wrong, again, and it was the first time in his life that he'd truly been humbled like that. The first of man times thereafter.

“Does he deserve it?” She'd said, as soon as the song had stopped, and Brenn had nodded though the woman shouldn't have been able to see it. “Then do it.”

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“...Why?” He'd asked her that, even though he'd been the one so ready for it only moments before, the man had still been screaming. All violence had left Brenn's mind in observance of her son, he'd wanted to hear it again. Now, it's all he heard, Her Choir.

“Do you want to kill that man?”

“Yes.”

“Then do it.”

“I can't.” He'd replied, feeling his knees grow weak, eyes weary, and she'd embraced him. Brenn hadn't remembered weeping ever in his life, even when he'd been the beaten child with broken ribs that Loquacious had plucked out of a gutter and taken to Jennifer. He'd wept then, in her arms, feeling the warmth blossom within him – love, perhaps. The wholesome, platonic love of a boy that had barely gotten the chance to know his blooded family.

The gods were powerful, one need not be a paladin to know them, but few and far between can claim to have truly laid eyes on a miracle. Brenn still to this day wasn't quite sure why. Why him? He'd been given a single spark of the light and told to do with it as he pleased. Three options as part of a bargain, gods loved to bargain, but they also loved to test – that was the difference in the stories that separated those of the light from the shadow.

Kill the man, burn him alive with that shred of light so profoundly bright.

Sell it, it was a magical reagent and source of power any mage would give their life's worth for.

Or heal the man, and forgive him.

Brenn hadn't though about it, he'd chosen the final option for no other reason than the raw revulsion at the person he'd become. The man, himself, was irrelevant – while Brenn could never say for sure, his time in the faith had shown him things. Vestia was not the goddess of forgiveness, gods did not forgive, not as humans did, at the very least certainly not Her. She didn't care, to summarize, what he chose to do with the man – but it had also been a test of character. The Mother that saw the best in all things but understood that not all men were good – he could've killed her and she would not have been wroth with him. Though he'd never hear that song again, not Hers, perhaps that's why he'd done it.

Regardless, that had been the moment he'd been 'saved'. Shown an alternate path, a way out, and he'd taken it – following the blind woman to the church and kneeling before her altar. Observed by a dozen hooded women, the priesthood that sat high above their faith. And he, perhaps in contradiction with his consideration of his patron, came to know true forgiveness. Or... Acceptance, rather, there might've never been any forgiveness at all. Rather the test, the fact that he was capable of looking at misdeeds and accepting himself for who he was – but more than that, who he could be.

Vestia was not the goddess of forgiveness... She was not a goddess of pacifism.

She was the light inside him and the hammer in his hands as he swung it down and crushed the skull of a man who'd committed himself wholly down the unjust path. The first man that Brenn had ever killed, the justice of the faith. And again, left to wonder, just how just was it? Her guiding line, however, that heat inside of him did not dull, and thus it was right. Or so he thought, frowning down at the limp corpse of a rapist he'd caught and engaged with in a rage, chasing him several blocks before putting him down.

Brenn sighed, lowering himself onto his haunches with a sour look on his face and shrouding the man so as to commute him to a burning. Once justice was done, a man was due the honor of a funeral by fire, that's how the House of Light did this. He'd struck the man hard, too hard, cratering the ground and likely waking every citizen on the block in the dead of night. Familiar... His sense something wrong had happened nearby, and he'd immediately run towards it and followed the melody of Her Choir and murdered this man. No questions asked.

Am I any different?

He'd ask this of himself, in prayer to the Mother, daily supplications that were almost never answered. Paladins didn't speak to gods, not even the most high among them could expect any form of response, but for whatever reason hers had become so common of late. He thought. He hoped it was her, and not some other malign intelligence, but he knew inherently that it was. His proof that he was different, except...

Her single worded reply.

No.

And he stood, snorting in amusement, carrying the limp corpse of the man back to the chapel, beneath the twinkling starlight, before the song began again.

“Excuse me.” And just like that, in the blink of an eye – it was over – another citizen likely gravitating to his armored and official looking self to ask for aid.

What a shame. Brenn sighed, or he would've, if said sigh hadn't turned into a gasp of astonishment. Standing in front of him... The song didn't stop. Not for a second, in all actuality, in fact it had never seemed louder than in that moment. Standing in front of them was the most beautiful girl he'd ever seen in his life, a lithe beastkin woman with purple black hair and a sigil of the Lavender Locket emblazoned on her outerwear. A source of fear, that, even if he was long removed from their employ – granting her a reaction one might expect.

“Sorry, I was wondering if you could show me to the Rabbit's Foot Trading Company office in Amistad? My name is Yana, and I have business with one Lady Ella... Are you a knight, sir?”

"I..." Brenn's voice hitched in his throat, an angel stood before him and he couldn't help but to freeze. "It would be my honor to assist you, but as you can see..."

"It's not the first dead body I've ever seen." She smiled softly, radiant, enough to throw the dusk away and bathe him in light. "I was told your church was the most helpful of all in this region."