The summer of Caleb’s fourteenth nameday, Leopold Titus came to Saint Ewards.
Leopold Titus, twin eldest of Great House Titus, or Leo to his friends, was a short, skinny child. Though fair of face and hair, the heir sported a rather unfortunate scar that ran across his left cheek, just under the eye, spoiling his otherwise quite princely looks. Leo had come to Saint Eward’s as a Ward of the Holy Triumvirate.
It wasn’t unusual for the church to take on a Ward. In fact, such occurrences were quite common amongst orphanages of the Faith.
Patrician families from Old Europe would send their children to chapels abroad, or in small towns or villages local to the continent. It was a function performed with only the best of intentions, meant to allow the wealthy and powerful to better empathize with their less fortunate man, to make friendships and learn lessons that would help them serve the morals of the Faith later in life.
That was the intention.
But then, Wardship had been instituted centuries ago. Things had changed since then.
House Titus was immensely powerful, one of the largest and most influential bastions under the Faith, having endured Old Europe’s unending political and literal warfare for centuries. And Leopold Titus knew that. He knew that his house was powerful, and ancient, and influential.
And he acted accordingly.
To say that the young scion of House Titus did not appreciate his station at Saint Eward’s would have been the understatement of the millennium. He hated it. He hated everything about it. He hated the orphans, he hated the Fathers, he hated the lessons and the manual labor. He thought it was thoroughly unfair that he should be sent to the Cells, in general, and doubly so to such a poor, backwater church.
And he acted accordingly.
The boy Patrician brought with him three companions, sycophants from subsidiary Houses, who set out without delay to make the lives of every other person at Saint Eward’s a living hell. They spat in soup, tore bread to pieces, pissed in water drawn from the nearby well. They ritually skipped or disrupted lessons, constantly and unabashedly stole and hid school supplies, and refused to partake in any manner of chore.
“I must send word to Syn,” Father Abner groused once, when the demonspawn were absent, “for they have misplaced their four horsemen, I fear.”
But the worst was the bullying.
Leo and his friends picked on the younger orphans relentlessly and ruthlessly. Caleb himself, due to his age and relatively introverted demeanor, was mostly immune to their abuse. Still, they ridiculed him at every opportunity, naming him ‘Twig’ due to his lanky build and dirt-brown hair. Put off by his academic successes, they targeted his mundane heritage, promising he’d never get anywhere worthwhile in life without a Blessing.
The truth of their insults stung deep, souring his once-hopeful future.
Their cruelty and sadism drove Fenley into a furor, time and again, and it was all Caleb could do to calm her rage. The Fathers knew, but were helpless to arrest the behavior. The four were unstoppable, thanks to Leo’s status and pedigree. But, even more than that.
Leo was Blessed.
Unlike his friends, who hadn’t yet managed to command their powers confidently, the young Titus heir was experienced. Able to summon aerial orbs of fire under his own control, shaped like little, floating birds. On their own, the creatures were actually quite beautiful.
In Leo’s hands, they were evil incarnate.
The Titus heir started small. A singed hair here, a scorched arm there. Barely enough to scar, to leave a trace, but plenty to terrify. And perhaps, if the Blessed boy had been satisfied with such pithy cruelties, nothing more would have come of it. Of the whole thing. Leo and his friends were only there for the summer, after all. They’d leave some orphans scarred and traumatized, and return home to their lavish future.
But Leo wasn’t satisfied. He wanted to know just how untouchable he really was, just how hard he could push before something…snapped.
And eventually, something did.
It was a sweltering summer day in the northeast of Patrusc’s demesne.
So hot you could almost taste it in the air, so hot the rising heat left little ripples just above the ground. The church’s windows were bound open, in a desperate attempt to generate some measure of chilling breeze. Hot and humid, everything was slick with sweat. The plants in the great garden required constant hydration to prevent wilting, necessitating an endless march back and forth from the well.
Caleb had just finished another trek to and fro, delivering the hard-earned water generously to a row of viny tomatoes, and was about to start off once more when he felt something tremble from deep, deep within his chest.
Turn back.
Caleb frowned. Looking around revealed nothing, but then, that was unsurprising. This voice had come from within, and was barely audible, besides.
Turn back.
His frown deepened. Hearing it once more allowed him to determine the words more clearly, but their meaning eluded still. Turn back, where? He’d barely made it from the garden to the church’s edge. Should he return? And, what was telling him to do so?
Could…could it be…the Priest?
All of a sudden, Caleb felt a rush of adrenaline. Could this be a Blessing? Was it possible? Was he being granted one, at last?
Turn back! Please!
The voice was louder now, almost seeming desperate. Caleb shook his head, confused. He was poised to acquiesce to its demands when he heard something else. Two voices, raised and shrill, and this time all too real. He recognized them.
Fenlay and Leopold.
No, no!
Caleb’s head snapped around, ignoring the words from within, locating the source of the commotion in an instant. Whatever confrontation was taking place sat just outside of his view, around the edge of the cathedral.
He needed to get over there, now.
No, please! I beg you, do not go!
He ignored it again, and took off, legs pumping, breath coming fast and shallow. He could just begin to make out with precision what Leo was shouting.
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“Fucking bitch, you–!”
Then, the wet smacking of flesh on flesh and a high-pitched cry of pain. He rounded the corner in an instant, and saw.
NO!
Leo had staggered back, his face flush and eyes storming, a large red outline in the shape of a spread palm raised upon the already-scarred dermis of his left cheek. Unshed tears shone from the corners of his eyes. Behind him, his posse’s expressions ranged from frightened to equally furious.
Standing right in front of him, her face equally flushed and her back ramrod straight, was Fenlay.
Caleb’s heart skipped a beat.
Run.
For a moment, there was silence, as both parties merely regarded one another, neither quite believing what precisely they’d just seen. It was just enough time for him to reach them.
Leo started forward, a hideous darkness smoldering behind his eyes, but before he could take another step, Caleb interspersed himself between the two. His arms were spread wide, and when he glanced back for a moment at Fenlay, an uncharacteristic terror had stricken her face.
Take her, and run.
“That’s enough,” he said, hoping his voice was deeper than it sounded. “This–”
“She–she assaulted him!” one of the trio shrieked in outrage, stabbing a finger in Fenlay’s direction. “A mundane! A Plebian! She–”
“She made a mistake. That’s all.” Caleb tried to keep his tone steady, and calm.
No, you fool! They will not listen to words! Take her, and RUN!
“She didn’t realize what she was doing,” he maintained, shutting out the voice. “And she’ll apologize…” he turned to look back at Fenlay. She still seemed stuck between terror and rage, giving no particular assent one way or the other to his promise.
“This doesn’t need to go any further–”
“Oh, but it does.” Caleb’s words were interrupted by the Titus heir, speaking low and tremulously.
“Oh, but it does,” he repeated, stalking forwards. His voice shook, but his gaze was unblinking. Fenlay shrank back with every step he took.
“There is a natural order to things,” the boy muttered, much more smoothly now than before, almost as if from memory. He made a strange gesture, contorting one of his hands into a claw.
“As above…so below.”
Six birds of fire, glowing warmly like little hearths, materialized above his shoulders.
RUN NOW! NOW!
“Without order, we have nothing,” Leo crooned. “It must be maintained.” His hand clenched, and the birds’ glow intensified. When he stopped, mere inches away, Caleb could feel their scalding touch upon his skin, even in the summer heat.
“She must be punished,” he crowed, eyes suddenly glowing with childish delight.
“No,” Caleb replied, immediately, staring down at the boy just slightly shorter than him.
“An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth,” Leo sang, ignoring him, as his posse began to giggle from behind.
“A scar for a scar,” he whispered, stroking the offending welt and the blemished flesh beneath. Leo snapped his fingers, and his friends spread out, in an effort to encircle, and prevent their escape.
Fenlay yelped.
“No!” Caleb raised his voice, moving backwards to shroud her with his spread arms, addressing them all.
WHAT ARE YOU DOING, YOU FOOL?! YOU CANNOT FIGHT THEM! THEY WILL KILL YOU BOTH!
RUN!
“I won’t let that happen!” Caleb yelled at the voice within. His cry startled the bullies, momentarily arresting their advance. “Don’t worry, Fen,” he comforted the now violently shaking girl behind him. “I won’t let that happen.”
The three friends looked confused, and unsure, but his words merely invigorated their ringleader. Leo quirked his head to the side, and smiled.
“Oh? Fancy yourself a hero, Twig?” He flexed his fingers, and the birds veered outwards, circling the two. They formed a tight orbit around Caleb and Fenlay, locking them together, drawing ever closer to scorching flesh. The Titus heir leaned in close to him.
“Where’s your Blessing, then?”
The three bootlickers resumed their advance, now encircling the two completely. Caleb squared his shoulders, and took a deep breath. Fenlay was huddled against his back, shaking uncontrollably. One of the birds drew close enough to singe his eyebrows, drawing a sharp line of pain across his face. But Caleb didn’t even flinch.
For some reason, he didn’t feel afraid, at all. It felt like there was some pressure deep inside him, building and building, waiting to burst.
NO, NO! I BEG YOU, NO! NOT AGAIN! DON’T MAKE ME DO THIS AGAIN!
The voice admonished him, but he didn’t care. Summer’s sweltering heat was starting to fade away.
“Where’s your Blessing, Twig?” Leo crowed, a deep grin splitting his face in two as his birds began to caress Caleb’s flesh. The firebirds dipped down, leaving deep pink lines of bubbling skin, filling the air with the scent of sizzling meat.
It…it felt good.
Caleb’s bones began to vibrate, his whole body starting to hum. He grinned right back at his abuser.
Leo’s smile faded. The bullies recoiled, but time was slowing down.
NO, STOP! STOP!
The pressure built to a crescendo.
Caleb felt unstoppable.
NO, NO, NO! YOU’LL KILL THEM! YOU’LL KILL THEM ALL!
Caleb looked down. His wounds were gone. His skin was glowing. He was beginning to float off the ground.
His smile broadened. He took a deep, deep breath, filling himself with Light.
In one final pulse of pure euphoria, the pressure burst–
NOOOOO!
–and then Caleb was somewhere else entirely.
Darkness surrounded him.
He couldn’t move. He couldn’t breathe. There was no air to breathe. He was immobilized in deep space, trapped in an omnipresent vacuum.
Suddenly, a million pinpricks of light blazed forth in his vision, an unfathomably exquisite cloak of jewels, glimmering and glittering in stellar asynchrony, illuminating the endless void.
Following unknowable instinct, Caleb turned around and SAW.
Two huge creatures filled his perception.
They could hardly even be called creatures, so vast were their proportions, millions of times larger than the largest mountains. They were entities, unknowable, incomprehensible, wholly and entirely alien. They were gigantic larvae, pulsating grotesquely, covered entirely in a myriad of kaleidoscopic scales. The very sight of them assailed his mind, their forms shifting and warping before him, radiating unknown colors and particles.
They crawled through space like massive serpents, pushing and pulling the fabric of the universe itself like dirt, fuel for their eldritch locomotion. They moved in tandem, synchronously, coiling and curling around one another helically, partners in an endless dance. They communicated with each other not in mere sounds, but in the radiation of collapsing stars, in the esoteric murmurations of ever-spinning singularities.
Their arcane speech burned his ears, burst his eyes, boiled his brain, and somehow contorted itself into words and meaning:
DESTINATION.
AGREEMENT.
TRAJECTORY.
AGREEMENT.
Their ancient ritual performed, the two turned towards a small sphere of green and blue that shone with life from immeasurably far below. Caleb’s stomach turned, his mind swam, and a great white light consumed him, returning him to reality once more–
NO.
The vision froze.
Slowly, grudgingly, the light receded, and Caleb’s body was revealed.
But it had changed.
Gone were the string-bean arms, replaced by bulging cords of rippling muscle. Gone was the dark brown hair, replaced by angelic locks of purest yellow-gold. And the eyes, though just as bright and blue, were no longer those of a naive youth.
The boy was gone.
The Immolator had taken his place.
Caleb Conway, High Inquisitor of the Holy Triumvirate, veteran of the Frontlines, curled into a ball and wept.