Special: Deroch

“You were unable to obtain the confession.” Deroch stated the fact in cold disappointment as he led the former Bailiff out of the cell.

“He was lying about the blessing; I am sure of it! I compelled him multiple times, but he stopped breathing to avoid speakin a word.” The cruel Bailiff complained, while rubbing his wrists where they had been shackled.

The Inquisitor simply sighed and led his accomplice out of the prison complex located deep under the Magistrate’s. It had taken a significant amount of favours to free his planted asset, but Deroch was not known for leaving his men behind… no matter how despicable they may be.

Breathing lightly out of his mouth to avoid the stench of human misery, he reflected on where it had all gone wrong. The news of the Witchdoctor’s sudden imprisonment had caught him off guard, but in the span of a few hours, he had formed a rudimentary plan to exploit this opportunity.

‘If only I had a bit more time to replace the Justiciar…’ Deroch had worked with the upstanding man before, and considered him a benefit to society. Given time, the ruthless Inquisitor would have merely… inconvenienced him, so that a more malleable judge could preside over the case.

Now, the Aberration would be on guard, and the same method would not work again.

Inquisitor Deroch did not lightly label the canonized individual as an aberration, a travesty against humanity. Yesterday, he had received another piece of the puzzle that indicated Exill was an abomination. However, it was tightly under wraps, only known to him and a cooperating Bishop because of the highly circumstantial nature of the evidence.

“You are free to go, I have other business to attend to.” Deroch instructed his informant while nodding to the sergeant on duty. They stepped out into the sunlit courtyard, and he marched straight to the awaiting coach emblazoned with the crest of the Eld Tree.

His assistant Indra, a Priestess who had served him for ten long years was already seated in the carriage, and she knocked on the cabin wall twice, indicating to the driver they should set off. Her sharp features were furrowed in stress, mentally rearranging their day’s crowded schedule.

“Ah…” He softly let out a deep sigh, staring out at the pedestrians passing by. They were vulnerable souls, who didn’t understand the threat they faced each day against the unworldly forces that sought to defile them. Only he, and a dedicated few stood between the corruption that loomed over them.

“Did the Asset fail to obtain a confession?” Indra asked, frowning while she checked again their schedule for the day.

“Yes, though it wasn’t entirely unexpected.” Deroch clasped both hands as if in prayer, “We are up against an individual who can corrupt the sanctity of an Oracle after all.”

The assistant remained silent to the accusations that bordered on Heresy. Deroch knew the woman wasn’t entirely convinced of Exill’s true nature, but that was only natural. The Inquisitor had faced countless unnatural foes over his lifetime and his instincts had grown incredibly sharp, almost to the point where he could simply sniff them out with a glance. There was a tell-tale ‘wrongness’ about them that gave them away, something Indra couldn’t understand.

The carriage was waved through without inspection at the gates, and it soon came to a rolling stop outside a graveyard, evident from the wrought iron fence designed to fend off ghouls. They both alighted from the carriage and entered the yard where a hunched Graveyard keeper prostrated himself in their presence.

“You may rise. Have you prepared the bodies we need?” Deroch looked around at the pile of corpses littering the small yard.

“Yes my lord, right this way my lord.”

The hunched man limped towards a covered open-air shack where two recently deceased corpses of beastkin children lay. Their limbs were contorted in rigor mortis. They couldn’t have been dead for long.

“I scraped them off the street this morning near the slums.” The Graveyard keeper proudly gestured to the corpses. “I received your message and immediately went in search for some freshies.”

Deroch pursed his lips in response to the fetid man’s fawning and stepped aside to let him load the carriage’s covered lockbox with the bodies. Then, he dropped a few silver coins into the man’s grimy palm.

“Thank you me lord!” The Graveyard keeper prostrated himself again, and didn’t get up until the carriage had turned the corner, out of view.

Inside the cabin, Deroch absentmindedly wiped his hand with a gold-filigreed kerchief, disgusted with what he was about to do. The coach was fast heading towards the eastern forest situated a few hours from Ark, from which countless trees were farmed and harvested for the city’s industries.

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“My lord… I failed to mention this in my morning report, but the Lone Tower was spotted near Virigo yesterday morning.” Indra spoke up to fill the tense silence.

“That is fine.” Deroch sighed, putting the handkerchief away. The crumbling Tower was an enigmatic entity. Aside from reports of picking off a few unwary travellers, it was largely considered harmless. What they were about to face however, was equally ancient and posed a greater risk to the safety of Ark’s citizens.

Sometime later, the dirt road gradually became more uneven, and the carriage began to sway vehemently as the Navigator maneuvered past gnarled roots that threatened to tip the vehicle over. It wasn’t long before it came to an abrupt stop.

The Inquisitor and his Assistant alighted from the carriage and greeted the two Paladins who had arrived earlier to secure the area. They each held the reins of a warhorse, draped in light padded armour that displayed the symbolic red liveries of the Church.

With practiced ease, the Paladins withdrew the two beastkin children’s corpses from the lockbox at the rear of the carriage and shouldered the pitiful bundles onto their mounts.

“Navigator, you may lead the way.” Deroch commanded, once the driver had secured the carriage.

“Yes my lord.” The neatly dressed man withdrew his brass accumulator from a side pouch and led the small party deeper into the forest.

One might question why a Navigator was necessary for this brief foray, but their destination had a tendency to change locations every now and again. It was best to be prepared and forewarned beyond the safety of Ark.

Half an hour later, they stepped into a small clearing, and the temperature immediately dropped several degrees. The hardened warhorses whinnied in fright and refused to approach the stone altar that lay at the centre of the glade.

“Stay with the horses Indra.” Deroch instructed his Assistant and oversaw the Paladins each carry the stiff corpses to their destination.

The sense of wrongness gradually became stronger as they approached the weathered altar. Their breaths frosted up the air and the distance appeared to stretch out, taking longer than it should to arrive at the monument.

Once the bodies of the children were softly lowered on the pitted surface, the group stepped back as one. Now… they just had to wait.

It was at first like a whisper of the wind.

The sound of creaking branches and the agonizing wails of splintering roots grew to a crescendo. Deroch glanced at his attending Paladins with concealed pride. Apart from their stiff postures, they didn’t display an ounce of fear. Behind them, the sound of panicked whinnying could be heard, and the desperate attempts of the equally frightened Navigator attempting to calm the horses.

Soon, beyond the treeline approached a colossal entity of twisted branches that ambled erratically towards them. Its official designation was the Cycad Elderbough, and it was a teeming mass of plant matter three storeys tall, rivalling even the Kingdom’s War Colossi that protected the mountains up north.

The faceless entity approached them with furious calm and came to a stop in front of the altar. It stood still, as if examining the party while discordant tendrils and branches constantly rearranged themselves around the Eldritch entity.

Then, too fast for the eyes to see, two tubular limbs shot out from its torso and absorbed the dead beastkin children. Having satisfied its unknowable urges, the lumbering titan turned away and was soon absorbed by the treeline.

The Inquisitor remembered to breath, and he drew in a ragged gasp of air. He had conducted this ritual countless times over his career, but each time, his body locked in fear of the Cycad Elderbough’s physical presence.

As much as he despised negotiating with these cancerous entities, he understood why the ritual had been emplaced hundreds of years ago. Legend had it that the Cycad abomination had consumed countless of the Kingdom’s bravest heroes, terrorising the surrounding forests and devastating Ark’s industry into a grinding halt. That was, until the Oracle had divined a method to temporarily appease it.

Even now, the ritual had created a schism within the Church, with a growing minority claiming that any form of negotiation with abominations went against their core tenets. Thus, the task of appeasement fell on the shoulders of moderates like himself, who nevertheless despised this thankless duty.

Unable to quell the shiver that travelled down his spine, Deroch and his group retreated from the Cycad Elderbough’s glade. With the aid of the Navigator, they returned to the carriage, and the Inquisitor wearily stepped into the cabin, feeling all forty-seven of his years. Their return trip to Ark was punctuated with a tense silence.

“Are you alright my lord?” Indra enquired after a while. She had noticed him fidgeting with his ring, a habit that usually didn’t bode well for the citizens of Ark.

“It is not me you should be worried about...” Deroch whispered back. It was as if there was some sort of inner turmoil eating away at him. “What do you know of the origins of this ritual?” He eventually asked.

“Only that the abomination terrorised the countryside for time immemorial, and that it was contained at great expense in terms of lives and resources. Once killed, I read it reforms deep in the forest.” Indra recited the texts she had read word-for-word, an ability Deroch valued highly.

“That is correct… but what the text fails to mention is that when the ritual originally began, it would be years before the Cycad abomination would harass the countryside between offerings.” Deroch softly confessed while staring out into the passing farmland.

Indra’s eyebrows rose, shocked by the implications. It was the first time she was hearing of this. During the past ten years of service, she had noticed a few discrepancies in the schedule of their ritual, but not to the extent described by the Inquisitor.

“But we are doing the ritual every two months. Then it would...” She didn’t finish her sentence, worried about what it meant for the future of Ark.

Deroch let out a soft sigh, his blue eyes fixed on the beautiful countryside scenery.

“What will we do when we have to do this every day?” He slowly fixed a cold gaze on his Assistant, “What will we do when it isn’t enough to pick dead children off the streets?”

Neither of them had an answer to the chilling dilemma.