The sorcerer fled from the scorching town, a small torch that divined a path in the bleak landscape within the black night. The clouds covered the moon, and the fire that grasped the town firm and ashy masked The Priest. As if native to the flames, he divined his own path through them, through the town, and through the night. He held a rifle in one hand, an oil lantern in his other.
In the black night—obscuring the pointed mountains to the north and the nearest town to the east—The Priest stopped along the cracked, dusted planes. The planes were houses of war. He saw the boot marks and treads of all manner of man and vehicle—undeniably to The Priest the Briam—prepared to war and plunder against Zett’yrii to the west. He whispered a quiet prayer as he averted his gaze back to the limitless desert scapes.
The sorcerer—large man he was—his cloak gave the signal to The Priest. It was the only transposer The Priest needed. Its tattered fabric that reached down to his clogs was darker than the blackness of the night. It was so dark The Priest was sure the sorcerer had to be sulfur, and if not sulfur, then he had been touched by sulfur, by the finger of evil, and made into its plaything.
The Priest gained ground quickly. His body was full of vigor. He ran over a sandy hill and looked down. In the scapes that were littered seldom by any manner of plantlife, he saw the sorcerer no more than a hundred meters down and away. His tight fingers wrapped around the wooden stock and metal trigger of the gun and he peered down its glass sight. One second. The sorcerer nigh tripped, kicking up a cloud of sand. The Priest fired. His round became but a warning in the darkness. The sorcerer accelerated. He was running to a dark monolith eastward—a shape with details which eluded The Priest.
The Priest slid his rifle down his hands, gripped its midsection firm, and went off on his chase through the black blanket of night.
The bold white eyes of a large shape pierced the veil of night and illuminated the sorcerer. It moved quickly, and its mechanical roar frightened the sorcerer who dropped to his knees. The Priest got into aiming position once again. He did not stutter. He did not blink in the face of the white abyss cast over the once shadowed planes. The vehicle roared and sputtered along the dry ground. There was no other road for it to take to move so quickly to Zett’yrii.
The Priest held contempt in his finger which was meant to pull the trigger of his rifle. The white abyss came closer and closer. Its hazardous smell of oil and gas leaking out into the air, its proximity to The Priest so great he had a good whiff of its fumes. He closed his eyes—stung by the hot aura of the vehicle—and he shut his mouth. Then, in just a moment’s time, it was gone. The vehicle passed him and moved up the sandy hill he just came from. It passed over. It descended. It disappeared. The black blanket of the desert sewed itself whole again, casting its shadow over the scape without error once again.
The Priest ran after the sorcerer once again, only, he was losing ground now. His pace slowed. His eyes felt heavy. He could not ignore the fatigue he had incurred through his rabid pursuit of the sorcerer. The sorcerer was no better. He was huffing, puffing, and physically outmatched by The Priest. But, he knew he maintained some sort of advantage over him. He was fueled by the need to stay alive. The Priest was just his hunter. He saw him as a beast to be shot and killed and made into a trophy by the marksman that claimed him. And, The Priest was but a demon to the sorcerer; a force he had no hopes of stopping, only outlasting, and so the sorcerer outlasted.
The Priest’s legs failed him. The machine that nearly crossed paths with him had taken his last bit of energy with its vile fumes. It was indifferent to The Priest. The whole world was indifferent to The Priest. Yet, he only now realized indifference did not mean an inability to make change. He prayed for the machine’s safety. He praised it in his mind for its ability to advance his own philosophies, tricky thoughts and wired up desires clouded by his own ability to truly perceive them. Now, he failed to perceive the scape. He knew he fully collapsed when he felt the cold rocky ground touch the skin of his cheek.
The sorcerer ran from The Priest. He ran totally east where Drismal—the large shape in the night—stood in the desert.
When The Priest awoke, his eyes stung with grains of sand scraping against their interior and his nose. He spat out clumps of sand and dirt that had made their way into his mouth. He reached into his pocket, retrieved his flask, splashed his hands and face with water, and rubbed the sand out of his eyes. The pain was not a deterrent. It could only be a nuisance that made him act swifter and with more conviction. A sharp pain stabbed at his eyes now that he had removed the sand from them. He clasped his hands together and whispered to himself in the name of Him and walked on to Drismal.
The Priest’s oiled black bark hat and his thick maroon long coat shielded his body from the burning rays of the sun. But, his coat was no longer maroon. It had been charred to the color of coal when he emerged from the flames of the town the sorcerer set fire to. It protected his skin from the impure fire born from malicious intent, and he was forever grateful to it.
To Drismal The Priest walked. With rifle and lantern in hand, he stood outside the town which was held within the confines of the Usgarian desert—the new land the Briam had taken from the Zett’yrii. The war still raged wild and violent with the only color it produced being the red of the men it slew, the men that were not as blessed as The Priest.
The gates of Drismal were little more than an open space with a barely drawn path down the middle. As one of the Usgar’s many new wild towns, The Priest held his rifle tight and with pure intentions. The town stretched for a few dozen meters in width and was long enough so The Priest could not see through to the other end of it when he lined up his vision perfectly so his vision was not blocked by the occasional protruding building or sign. The town’s construction was shoddy and the dark wood used to build its two meter fence had bleached long ago, likely during Drismal’s creation. The Priest stepped into Drismal—onto that center beaten path—and looked around.
Bars and barbers and all manner of unlabeled buildings and hovels were immediate to his right and left. He was indifferent to it all just as they were to him. There was no intrinsic merit or meaning in the act of creating. What existed to The Priest without meaning to him existed only to assist in his ruin.
From several meters away—behind a shoddy and bleached wood construction with no sign or symbol or word to give it meaning—emerged a man with a pistol in his hand. He wore a white shirt and a suede jacket and his hair had clearly been freshly cut. He exuded wealth, opulence, and power to The Priest. His gait was straight and solid. His fine shoes seemed to effortlessly kick away the dust and grime that tried to cling to them. Now, the man stopped just two meters from The Priest. He stared him straight in the eyes and told him, “You can’t bring that in here.”
“Apologies. I can throw my lamp outside. It is daytime after all,” said The Priest.
“No, you don’t understand. It’s that gun of yours.”
“You have a gun as well,” argued The Priest.
“I’m a justice officer.”
“Where’s your uniform?” Asked The Priest.
“I don’t see that you have one.”
“I do. It’s what I wear to service.”
“Then you are unfit to carry that rifle. Come, dispose of it at my office.”
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“I only hold it by the midsection. I’ve no intent to shoot. Your pistol’s a model Klein 76; it’s the great equalizer. Mine’s made for hunting. Yours’ for murder.”
“I don’t give a damn what model it is. I’m a justice officer.”
“Your finger’s close by the trigger. One flick and you hold the power of death at the twitch of your index. My hand’s a foot from the trigger. Let me pass.”
The man laughed heartily. “Alright. I’ll let you pass. But come to my office first. You look thirsty. I’ve got a few jugs of water.”
“Boiled?”
“Boiled and cooled for an hour. It’s the tastiest water you’ll ever get. So come, come. Come and get your water.”
The Priest followed The Justice Officer to his office. It was a small cubic building with railings on the side and a yellow cross painted onto its sign. The interior was dirty with old dusted floorboards and four-pane windows staring out to the rest of the desert town. In the back of the room was a tall oak door which The Justice Officer and priest walked through, leading to a small hovel.
“Welcome to my office,” said The Justice Officer as The Priest looked around.
The interior was even more cramped than the room they had just been in. Half of it was taken up by The Justice Officer’s desk with only a small gap to the right which The Justice Officer walked through to sit in his old rocky chair. There was another chair inserted in a large slot in the front of the desk.
“Sit,” The Justice Officer told The Priest who obliged him and pulled the chair out from the desk and sat on it. “Set your stuff down,” said The Justice Officer as The Priest rested his rifle against one of the pristine walls of the office, his lamp being set down to his left with its handle still easily in reach.
“Now you,” The Priest said.
The Justice Officer shook his head. “I won’t be resigning my revolver.”
“Why not?”
“It’s what makes me a justice officer. I’ll put it on my belt when I need to do something that requires both my hands, but it only goes in my desk when the sun sets. I stop being a justice officer and then, I’m just a normal person. Albeit, a normal person with the best looking, best shooting gun in Briam.”
The Justice Officer reached under their desk and placed a green, featureless glass bottle on the desk. He reached into his desk and placed two shot glasses next to the bottle. He plucked the bottle’s cork off in one swift motion and put it in his pocket. Then, he poured water into both the shot glasses halfway, setting the bottle down on the table before pushing one of the glasses towards The Priest.
“You a glass half full or a glass half empty kind of fellow?” Asked The Justice Officer.
“I don’t get what you’re saying,” said The Priest as he picked his cup up and felt the cool water inside swish around in it.
“That cup you’re holding—would you say it’s half full or half empty?”
“I wouldn’t know.” The Priest gulped down the water. “Now it’s empty,” he said, putting the glass down and flicking it over to The Justice Officer.
“Oh, pour yourself another. It’s yours as much as it is mine. The Justice Officer has chosen to share it with you, after all.”
“If you say so,” The Priest said as he poured water into his shot glass until the liquid teetered on the edge of the glass, nearly dripping out of it.
“You wouldn’t happen to be a priest, would you?”
“What gave it away?”
“That hat of yours seems to be what holy men like nowadays, at least in the Usgar.
The Priest was silent. He drank his water again. “Do you know of a man who ran through here with a black cloak? He’s large. And, his clogs are light brown. They’re Sanderson made.”
“Not at all.” The Justice Officer eyed The Priest’s rifle. “Were you gonna use that on him?”
“No. Not if his dignity shined through and he gave himself up.”
“So you’re hunting him? Why?”
“Stoneward’s burnt to the ground.”
“I saw it last night. You wouldn’t believe the horror on my face when I realized Stoneward was razed. I come out for a bit of stargazing after a hard day’s work and the town’s a fire pit.”
“A lot of Briam’s been burning.”
“So you’ve heard about the fires? Me too. They say this is some sort of divine punishment for the invasion of Zett’yrii. Me? I just think it’s some common criminal. Maybe it’s a gang. Either way, all this destruction and death will probably be traced back to a few misanthropes. Nothing more.”
“I think that man’s responsible.”
“Who?”
“The one in the black cloak—the sorcerer. I’ve seen him walk through the fire and flames of a dozen razing grounds. And, I’m sure he started them. For what purpose, I do not know. But I know a man cannot be so evil. So, he must be evil incarnate, The Sulfur, Mas’rou in the western sanctuaries of Zett’yrii.”
The Justice Officer poured himself some water and slowly drank. “Don’t you think that’s a bit of a stretch?”
“Not at all. I’ve seen Him. I’ve witnessed a piece of god; Wistraff.”
“Really?”
“I’ve seen something even better, though. I’ve witnessed a miracle.”
The Justice Officer finished his water and leaned in closer to The Priest. Curiously, he asked, “Unto what?”
“Me. I am the one who has been honored by Him.”
The Justice Officer leaned back in his chair. He went to pour himself more water but the bottle was empty.
“So long as everything I do is for the sake of following the divine path he hath laid out for all men to walk on, my soul will be secure. The sorcerer taints that security. To allow him to exist is ignorance not just on my part, but on humanity’s.”
“So you need to kill him to go to Heaven?”
“Definitely. I’m sure of it. It’s my duty as a human being to eradicate the unholy. But, not all are fit for the duties given to them. As a priest, I have no excuse to allow him to persist.”
“I thought all Wistraff wanted was for the average man to be a good man. You know; love yourself, love your family, love your friends, be generous, that sort of stuff.”
“The greatest evils take a bit of sin to annihilate.”
The Justice Officer nodded. “True. I can’t say how many I might’ve crippled during my years as a justice officer. But, it’s all to protect the common man. The moment you’re born, you deserve to be protected by the shield of justice. And, it takes a strong justice officer to hold it up and protect so many. You can’t just do whatever you want and still hope the shield protects you. If you step out of line a little too far. . .” The Justice Officer motioned and made poor vocalizations of a gun firing. “You exist outside of justice. You’re an outlaw then.”
“Then I hunt the sorcerer in the name of justice as well. Why not help me?”
“I can’t just hunt people on a whim. You need to see them step out of line. Even then, it’s not so simple. You need to know why they did it. Did they mean to hurt people? Did they even hurt others, or did they only hurt themselves? It’s complicated, really. It’s hard to be just and right at the same time. People don’t just become evil because they want to.”
“The sorcerer is just that, though. That’s why he’s the ultimate evil. He is evil for evil’s sake.”
“Then enjoy your hunt.”
The Priest stood up, dusted himself off, and took his rifle and lantern. “Thank you for the water.”
“No problem,” said The Justice Officer as The Priest left.