The rain beat down from the heavens making a tinny sound against the stained and dirty armor of the young man as he bowed his head over a freshly laid grave. The air smelled of fire, blood, and lastly the flowers laid around the open bed of freshly turned dirt. Lightning crashed above and the wind roared, but in stops and starts shared with the rain like the sky itself was weeping since the young knight could not. His tears had been spent. His emotions run dry. Behind him and outside of the shoulder high stone walls of the little country church were the bodies of several knights and even a few priestesses of the God of Light, servants of the tyrant who had torn this young man's only home apart. The sudden soft sobs of the young man who had known nothing but a life of faith and care should have shaken the world of magic, gods, and monsters he was born in for with it came the ambition that one day would change the very reality and nature of the world he lived in.
If one were to look around him carefully they would see the care taken in burying his fallen comrades, but they wouldn't see the years he had spent with them or known that the various members of the parish had been his only family. The God of Lights' wars to spread his influence over the world of Ballenlight had claimed many lives, and many left behind in that wake had been taken in by the Church of Healing lead by the Goddess Istania. She had blessed her followers with many abilities, but all of them were kind. In fact she had little need for knights, but she had taken in those young men and women who wanted to dedicate their fighting talents to her service. She had done so for the young man who knelt weeping over the grave. None of the powers he had once been given could bring back the one he buried now. Not even Istania could have or would have tried to raise the dead, but like her followers in this parish she was dead now too.
The world itself seemed to weep for her loss. The gentle, and sometimes fiercely tempered Goddess had never had the ambition of the other gods. She had not taken a nation for her own, or led mighty armies in defense of the lands she and a small coalition of gods had decided to rule under a joined pantheon. She had one city close to the eastern coast of the Drudesha, the continent the Pantheon ruled; the city boasted a large port near to our little parish and its weeping knight. The parish was a large one, and had served any and all who came to it for healing, and was often a fond stopping point for traders, adventurers, and wagoners. Otherwise she had kept embassy's within all of the other nations' cities and towns to better make available her care and love. It was truly all she had ever wanted, and that desire had been mirrored in the boy who too like her had a temper, but had dedicated himself and his strength to her and the care of those who needed it.
Now in the world of Ballenlight magic was a known quantity; its use anywhere from the fantastic unbelievable displays of destruction brought out by war, to simple and mundane methods of cleaning a surface or banishing dust from a room. There were various ways to study and observe its effects, and ways to personally check one's own 'status' as it were. Our knight who still wept under the storming sky in his dirtied and bloodied armor had the scribe job for example. His happened to be level 5, and with some little extra care could have been advanced into a higher skill job such as Librarian or Scholar, but had been enough to serve what the church and the knight needed it for. But with it he could open a magically conjured scroll that would show his abilities. He was a little beyond the need for checking right now, but it would have told a story as much as the area around him.
It would have listed the strength of his arm. His skill with the sword and various attacks. That conjured scroll would have told you that he was wounded even if to look at him he didn't seem to care. Yes, that ability, called 'Inspect Person' could have told much about the young man. That he was sixteen, and would be having a birthday in a few months. But it wouldn't have told you his plans or what he meant to do once he was of age. It wouldn't tell you of his heart ache, or the way his heart seemed to freeze in his very chest even as it kept on beating.
The rain beat down on the young man, and the sound it made against his armor went totally unnoticed, buried in his pain as he was. The other graves near him had been made with care all just as recently made into the earth, but none were surrounded in so many of the White Lilly flowers as the grave he bent over still, and many did not have the same flowers at all. There were many colors and shapes of petals and stems, all of which could have been easily identified by the knight's Gardening job skills. That too was level 5, the max level for a simple job, and he had used it for simple things like these flowers, and more besides when in his early days of training he was unable to wield the magic available to many people in the world of Ballenlight. So just in case he had learned his part in the Hedge Doctor job, one step below a true Alchemist, but one that helped his understanding of the body and healing, and gave him some little bonuses that helped him cast minor magics. He knew some Simple Surgery too, giving him a grade 1 status in that skill as well and a grade 2 status in Herbal Medicine. Once Herbal Medicine was grade 5 and combined with the Basic Chemistry skill of grade 1 or higher the young man would gain the Alchemist job. Using these building blocks it becomes clear that one might make themselves like bricks in a wall, a bulwark of knowledge and training.
Together they worked as the building blocks for a higher tier job. Given a year or two more only and the knight would have gained the magically based Healer Job as would have been denoted by his 'Inspect Person' skill when used upon himself even without gaining the Alchemist Job first. That Healer job would have given him access to magic of his own gained through the natural progression available to anyone on Ballenlight, but naturally his Goddess had stepped in before that. Before her death he had the Cure, Cleanse, and Renew Divine Spells granted to him by her in return for his eager faith; each being Divine Gifts that had turned his simple Knight Job made up of the Heavy Armor, Sword, and Shield skills into the Paladin Job. And he had served his Goddess as faithfully as any could ask to gain those gifts. So why?
That's a good question, but needs more specific answers. Why was the Knight the only one to survive? Why was the Goddess of healing he followed dead? If one took the time to inspect the dead who had been dragged outside and around the back of the parish, why did they all bear the crest of the God of Light, the three golden columns, upon their tabards and on sigils born upon their personal items? The answer might be obvious to some. Greed is an easy one that comes to mind. Ambition, or maybe some kind of argument? Or maybe this was a skirmish of some kind. Was there a war?
Many of the questions will be answered, but the simplest way to put it is Treachery. -With a capital T.
Our knight, poor Ivan of Istania, knowing only his first name when he was taken in by the church as a small boy, bent down putting his head to muddy dirt of the grave his weeping becoming the pained sounds of a man who had given everything to something only to have it taken away. It was an ugly animal sound untouched by pride, shame, or hesitancy, and if one were close they would have heard his teeth grinding as the groan of pure agony escaped his lips. The White Lilly's near him bent out of the way of him as he put his hand to the dirt of grave. Mud ran over his hand. His rough hands which had known only the gentlest kinds of work for the longest time were now marked with split knuckles and the blisters that came with heavy fighting. Ivan's body ached with it still. His wounds burned. But the pain of it barely compared to what he had been through in the last two weeks.
For not everyone in the parish had died in the attack. Not right away. Ivan had been in time to save one, or at least given himself the chance to. And he had done his best, his very best. Had he the Healer Job made up of the Herbal Medicine, and Simple Surgery Jobs he would have certainly been able to save her using the simple, weak, and vital magics that would have given him, but though his Herbal medicine was grade 4 his Simple Surgery was only grade 1. Both would have needed to be level 5 to gain the Healer job. It was only one of many ways to assemble such a job with similar jobs being available made up of other skills, but any of these second tier jobs would have done. Ivan did not have them though, and maybe he could have saved the person he now mourned had he been a little luckier, or if he had worked a little harder on his surgery skill, but that took being near where people were hurt to train, and so close the Goddess of Healing's single city there was an abundance of people like Ivan who carried her gifts and could have healed such wounds at a touch. Before her death at least. Any of his three gifted spells would have saved the young woman now buried before him with ease. The lightest touch, and the smallest drain of mana from Ivan's person offered to the Goddess and returned through him in the form of healing. It would have been enough. He knew that more than anything. He had tried his best to seal her wound, even searching the ruined villages and area nearby for any sort of magic potion that had been left behind in the raid. He really had. Likely he couldn't have done any better considering his skills, and given himself time to search for potions and other consumable magical means of healing nearby. But they had all been raided. What was there had been taken, and there was little since so healing was so often easily available. He had found nothing.
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Not a single potion or tonic that would have helped cleanse the infection than what he had started with and that had barely been enough to get her through the surgery alive.
A scream, a dreadful wail beyond what any animal had ability to make escaped Ivan's lips, and was screamed again into the dirt as his hand clenched at the muddy soil. His scabbed knuckles cracked and leaked with blood mixing with the dirt as the sound fought against the storm. He went on screaming for a time until he had no breath left to him. Had anyone heard it-had anyone nearby not been driven off or into hiding because of the raids and the sudden attack of the God of Light they might have thought he was dying. He was in a way. Hope was dying in his heart. The light within him maybe as some might call it. Despair and grim bloody determination was forming in it now, defiant against his despair. There was nothing. Nothing left for Ivan to hold onto, but that defiance screamed at him to riot, to destroy, and to take everything from anyone who had dared rip his life away from him. There was no one there to remind him not to give into his rage, or to bring back the gentle boy he had once been. That part of his life was now as dead as the people who were in the ground around him. -As the people he had cut down and dragged back behind the church. He screamed again and again until his throat was ragged. Not for any really sensible reason, not for help at least, or in anger at his Goddess. He still had faith in her, and knew had she been able, she would have helped him, and all the people who had come to her. She always did. He screamed because what he needed to do, the one thing left, was so far out of his reach that it was laughable and it made him hate himself and the God who needed to die more than he seemed to be able to fathom. More than he should be able to hate.
The loss of his Goddess's touch upon his mind and soul, the death of his only family, and the death to slow fever and starvation of the young woman, promised to him in all but the most official ways could have said to have driven him mad. There were some very advanced jobs that might have told a person if Ivan truly had lost his mind at that moment as his mind raced with the memories of his gentlest and closest friend. But there was no one there to help. No one was there to comfort him.
The young woman now dead and buried in the grave beneath his fist clenched in the dirt had been called Tanya. Another of the church's residents whose only other name came from her associations. She had been training as a young sister, a priestess of the church of healing, and shared many skills with Ivan. The two had spent long nights in youth together writing their letters, practicing their numbers, and gathering the needed very basic skills for the scribe job. They had lived and eaten together. Grown as brother and sister might, but always with the knowledge that they were a family put together from broken ends- made whole and given a place by the Goddess' love. As they grew they had made plans together, never quite as secret as they might have liked, but pure all the same. When they were of age they would marry. They would travel the world some to see it, to heal anyone who needed it wherever they went, and then they would return home and have a family of their own. They had talked about that many nights in recent years filled with the hormones of change as they grew into sexual maturity, but they had waited with some gentle chiding from the Goddess of Healing the only thing necessary to keep their chastity.
Ivan remembered her gentle touch now. Her scent laid a phantom touch upon his nose, mixed with the dirt and flowers, and something all her own just like it once had been. And he screamed again as he remembered holding her in fever, the wound tended, but her body infected all the same. He heard her voice in his ears weakened with the inability to more than drink water, his surgery not enough to repair the whole of the damage inside her body.
“Ivan...” She had said weakly, her voice dry with a thirst she could barely slake, only days before. Night was closing in, the memory as clear as any moment before him in Ivan's mind. Tanya lifted the blankets where she lay, and tiredly pulled away all the bandaged layers held tight against the skin of her belly. Her pale lovely body, fit with work, and still glowing somewhat with the lively suppleness of youth was burned into his mind. At the time he had starred, not that he hadn't seen nearly all of her by accident or by bits and pieces before, but all the same to see her then made his heart race. Though he really couldn't feel the rate of his heart where he still knelt screaming into her grave.
Still the memory went on.
“Ivan...please...sleep here tonight...with me. I want to feel...” She blushed clear enough even with her dreadful fever, its strength making the light of her eyes pale as her body fought against it. Still they showed some small desire. To touch and be touched by the one she loved. Ivan hesitated, and only half remembered his weak excuses, too much of his brain taking in her loveliness as it was presented to him. Even wounded with her middle wrapped she was still the most beautiful thing he had ever seen.
In his memory things skipped along until he was in the blankets beside her with nothing between them but the wrapping around her middle. The stitching was holding, but the infection had still taken place regardless how hard Ivan had tried and with the salve he had used to cleanse what he was able when the work took place. He remembered the touch of her fever hot skin, still so supple and soft if not a little dry. She clung to him and guided his hands and fingers over her body where she lay unable to move lest the stitches give way and put her in even more peril. He remembered how his heart beat, and how he could feel hers gathering its pace as well when his hands went over her breasts near her heart. Her eyes glittered with love, and for some little while they kissed softly. They had done so before, but not with this heat and gentle passion. Had she been well such a thing would have sent the two of them over the edge regardless of what the Goddess might have said or done in the time after, but neither did they do such a thing then.
They were together. That was enough. Her weakened body was still as lovely as it had ever been and the memory of the touch burned through his fingers and across his body all the way to the present.
“I love you Ivan.” Tanya told him weakly. “More than anything.” Those gentle words burned in his mind and sent fresh tears from his eyes as he remained screaming his throat into a ragged ruin above her grave. Those were the last words she had said to him. She had lived some time on after, her body still fighting, but not with the energy to wake her. He had tried to feed and water her what little he dared, but it hadn't been enough. In truth, without healing or better surgery than he had managed she would have died in time either way, but that was a burden of knowledge Ivan did not carry. What he had was already enough to break him.
Somewhere in the agony of his mind as it tore through memories with a will as though it were trying to bring her back through them came clarity. A single thought of long ago, and something he had seen and been guided away from by the Goddess herself. As though it were a last impression of her will given to him in the depths of his grief.
The memory fuzzed at the edges reminded him of a vault hidden within the great temple in the now occupied city of Istania, the Goddess's home and center for her most devoted followers. It had been a bastion against a greater evil and taint, and only Istania's holy power could keep what was within at bay. In his mind somehow he remembered just how to work the ancient locks and seals, the pattern that would open the door to the forbidden chambers of the vaults beneath. And his screams cut off, vision returning though he had never closed his eyes.
The world seemed quiet without the raging screaming ripping from his throat. His next move was made clear. And the world should have shuddered in terror for the evil that was about to walk it. Had the world been able to, it might have been wise to strike Ivan down with a stray lightning bolt cast from those that broke the dark of the sky just then, but no such thing happened. The world should have been trembling in fear, but instead it kept on as it always had, uncaring and indifferent as Ivan stood and went inside the parish to gather his things.
He needed to get inside the occupied capital.