Captain Cremieux was quite proud of where he had gotten in life. Born into a poor family with few prospects on Fleur, he signed on to fight in the Hadric Crusade against the Abyssinian heretics. Fighting side by side with the forces of the Black Armada, he caught the eye of several superior officers, who offered him a place in their units instead of returning home to Fleur. He served with distinction, trained on the frozen comet Helvetra, and rose to become the leader of his own mercenary company.
Most recently, after winning hefty reward fighting in the civil wars on Petron, he settled in for a quiet contract working security on Vintal, in the city of Beroli near Anthusa. In this time, during a period of seclusion, he completed a second round of alchemic transformation, pushing his body far beyond the limits of ordinary human ability.
Which is to say, he was completely overqualified for terrorizing unarmed peasants. But a job was a job.
He and six of his men projected their auras within the chapel, filled to the brim with Inillians listening to their priest’s sermon. The villagers’ screams were cut short by the oppressive weight of the soldiers’ presence, and all but the strongest fell to the ground in a daze.
“Cut your yammerin’ and keep your hands where I can see em! Or me and my boys won’t hesitate to cut your demon-loving throats.”
These people didn’t look much like devil worshipers to him. He’d seen a few, from a distance, at the Battle of Tarfiz, surrounded by foul smoke and leading columns of the risen dead. Still, if the Lord Vicar wanted to make an example of some foreigners, who was he to judge?
One of the congregation stood, unsteadily to block their way. This was their yeoman, Remiro.
“Michel.”
“Yes, sir.”
“You’ve got a fresh heretic with your name on ‘im.”
The young soldier, fresh from his first round of alchemic transformation, was itching to test out his new abilities, and leapt toward the defiant villager with his sword drawn. Remiro pulled the whip from around his waist, intercepting the soldier in mid-air, but Michel batted the weapon away with his bare hand.
Remiro backed away, trying to keep the soldier at a distance, but it was no use. Michel estimated this man’s physical abilities were just slightly more developed than his own. In a straight fight, he would have proven a good challenge. But in these tight quarters he couldn’t afford to use that long weapon to its full potential for the fear of hurting his own people.
Remiro dropped the whip and drew his sword, just barely blocking Michel’s heavy blow. He flew back, but the younger soldier was on top of him, dislocating his shoulder and bruising his arms with vicious strikes the older man could hardly resist.
Never mind his inability to use the whip properly, under the combined suppression of the captain and five other mercenaries, Remiro stood no chance.
His body slumped against the altar, with his nose and mouth bloodied and cuts on his forearms and torso. The other soldiers surged forward and seized the screaming priest. The captain silenced him with a crack across the temple that left his body limp.
Michel took the yeoman by the lapel and savored his victory. He turned to menace the assembled villagers, trembling in the pews and-
“Sir, one just escaped by the side door!”
A low, authoritative voice came from outside the threshold.
“At ease. She’s running to get her master.” A cruel smile spread under a monk’s cowl. “Sit tight, and let this one come to us.”
⚜ ⚜ ⚜
Remiro and Andrea dangled from the steeple, hanging by their thumbs in the dark night.
Cato felt the villagers’ fear pounding in his chest, Remiro’s wounds on his arms and body and the horrible strain in his hands and shoulders. He had been so deeply involved in talking to the voice inside him that he hadn’t even noticed what was happening to his people.
“Welcome, your lordship!”
An armored figure stood silhouetted on the chapel roof. He gave a mock bow, and Cato could see the glimmer of a gold tooth.
Anger bubbled up inside him, but he suppressed it.
“Who are you, that you dare to assault my people, in a house of God no less?”
“If God doesn’t want me to start a fight in his house, he can come down here and tell me. But I see no reason why he’d want to protect you heretics.”
“You have the audacity to call me a heretic after you assaulted a priest?!”
“Priest?” The armored man spat. “Some backwoods witch you dressed up in fancy robes I’m sure. How else is it that the plague kills God-fearing left and right but you bastards are immune?”
Cato’s rage grew. The captain smirked. Just a little more. Once the would-be baron started a fight, the Lord Vicar would have all the cause he needed to burn them all.
“Let them down,” Cato said quietly, “and I’ll urge the Lord Vicar to have mercy on you.”
The captain laughed like a barking dog.
“Horseshit. How about this? You come quietly, and I let your little puppets die quickly.”
Cato leapt up to the roof in a single bound and drove his fist through the air where the captain’s head should have been.
“Too slow!”
A steel-toed boot swept his feet out from under him and a rough hand drove his face into the tiles.
Cato roared and threw an elbow back at the captain’s face. He caught it, and with a quick tug tore it out of its socket.
Cato went limp with pain. “Oh? You’re no fun.” The captain grabbed a handful of hair and threw Cato off the roof to crash into the ground.
“Shackle ‘im and lock up the rest in the chapel, boys. We’re done here.”
As expected, he was a weakling. Barely beyond the first stage of transformation, if even that, with no combat experience to speak of. Still, that left him with a young night and a full purse. A visit to Madam Tripaldi as the cathouse, perhaps?
A vast surge of energy exploded behind Captain Cremieux. He turned, only to see his men lying scorched and dead in front of the chapel. Cato stood, his bloody injuries closing up rapidly, with lightning crackling across his body.
Cremieux wasn’t stupid. He didn’t survive fighting the Abyssinians by being too dumb to recognize a strong opponent. That surge of power wasn’t coming from the ambient air, it was stored in Cato’s body; that and such fast healing was only possible for someone who had completed at least the second round of alchemic transformation.
Like Cremieux had done just recently.
“Brother Julius!” he cried, unsheathing his blade.
Stolen story; please report.
Cato once again leapt onto the chapel roof, dagger in hand and surrounded by a nimbus of roiling power. Cremieux dashed away, gathering his aura around him, layering it into a shimmering shield that barely survived the scouring force. But he didn’t have to wait long.
Cato’s reckless charge slowed, his limbs growing heavy and weak. Cremieux pressed the advantage immediately. His blade cut into the shining cloud, and very nearly reached its target, but slowed as if by innumerable layers of fabric it missed Cato by a hair’s breadth as he lurched out of the way.
Cato was hunched over and panting. Cremieux repositioned, and a man in a monastic habit stepped out of the shadows.
The captain had thought the Lord Vicar’s instruction to bring along a deacon of the Order of the Rose was foolish, even frivolous. What could a little lordling and his yes-man do against him and his entire squadron?
Though it shamed him, he was glad to have the backup now. The boy was stronger than a young bastard from the country had any right to be. Perhaps the accusation of diabolism was more plausible than he had thought.
“Surrender to us, child,” the monk intoned. “Give up your sinful ways, and the Lord shall surely show you mercy.”
Brother Julius hid a sadistic grin under his cowl. Would it be the mercy of dying first upon the burning stake, or the mercy of being the first to be torn apart by the limbs? Surely it would not be the mercy of a quick death. The Lord Vicar wanted a public spectacle. An example.
Under his habit, he held a doll fashioned from wax and wood, and poured the power of his soul into it. Poppets like these could inflict curses or heal wounds even at great distances if one had a sample of the target’s blood; without such a sample, its effective range was limited to just a few yards. But Julius had learned the shape of his soul, and through this conduit he could impose his will onto Cato’s being directly. The enervating curse was spreading from the boy’s soul into his body, chilling his limbs, slowing the movement of his energy, and sapping his will to live.
So why was the boy still standing?
Cato’s voice came out like a whisper. “That… that’s…”
“C’mon you bastard, make it fun for me!” the captain roared.
Julius blanched. What in the world was he-
“That’s a dirty trick!”
Julius felt like someone had reached into his chest and was crushing his heart. The downside of using a poppet at such close range without a unique medium was that it left the user vulnerable to counterattack by the same channel. But that could only happen if the target’s soul was at least as well cultivated as the user’s.
The monk let go of the poppet and fell, pale and exhausted, to his knees.
Cremieux took a step back. The boy had completed at least the second level of alchemic transformation, and to fight Brother Julius on even terms he must have also cultivated his soul far enough to make contact with his guardian angel. Doing either of those put one firmly above the rabble and opened up a profitable career in the church or as a warrior. To do both… there was no doubt he was older than he looked, and he almost certainly had access to far greater resources than his apparently humble station implied. There was only one explanation.
“Devil spawn! Die!”
The captain unleashed everything he had, all the energy he had stored up in the weeks since completing the second round. It took months to fully stabilize the body’s transformation. Using his newfound power in that time pushed that back by weeks. Emptying his reserves threatened to undo all his recent work, and maybe even threatened his life.
But there was no other option.
An unseen wind crashed against Cato’s golden clouds as the two pressed forward, trying to push the other back with sheer energy. Cato felt another attack on his soul, weaker this time, as the fallen monk tried to protect himself from retaliation. But this time he was ready.
It felt very similar to the delusional state he fell into when the voice in his gut worked its influence. It had the same form and targeted the same places. But it was much, much less subtle.
Instead of just pushing back against it, Cato caught the invading will as it tried to influence him, and… it was difficult to describe exactly what he did. But it felt a lot like squeezing a grape until it burst.
The monk screamed in agony as blood dripped from his eyes and ears. The captain faltered. That was all he needed.
Cato pulled all his energy back into his body and, while his opponent was off balance, gathered it all into his arm. He pierced through the unseen wind and struck the captain full in the chest, sending him flying off the chapel roof.
It was exhilarating. This power was his, all his. With it, he could do anything, with it, he was truly in control, he-
No.
He felt a wordless grumbling deep inside, which he quashed.
Stop it.
Cato took a deep breath. After just foiling a much less sophisticated attack of the same kind, how would he let himself be so easily taken by the influence of the voice in his gut? At the same time, what was it trying to distract him from now?
A weak, bloody cough answered him. As if waking from a dream, Cato suddenly remembered Remiro and Andrea, tied up by their thumbs not a few yards away. He cut their bonds and lay them on the ground before the chapel, still scorched by lightning and covered in the bodies of soldiers. Within a few minutes the two were stable, though even with his power it would take them longer to recover from the severe injuries they had been dealt.
“My lord… the villagers.” Remiro wheezed.
“They are safe. Rest.”
Cato turned away, but Remiro grasped his sleeve with all the strength left in his arm.
“They are not safe. Beroli is not safe, my lord.”
“I defeated the soldiers, Remiro. We’ll take everyone back to their homes and speak to the Lord Vicar-”
“No! Open your eyes, my lord. That monk with them… it must have been the Lord Vicar who dispatched them. He is our enemy.”
The cold truth sank into Cato. After being welcomed into the city so warmly just days earlier, two disasters befell the villagers seemingly designed to provoke his retaliation. He thought it only went as high up as one of the council members, but if that monk was also the Lord Vicar’s subordinate… it made sense, of a sort. Cato still couldn’t understand such a fast change of heart, but it was clear that they couldn’t remain in Beroli.
He spoke hastily to the villagers. They would gather what they could and meet in the square within an hour. There was no time for anything heavy or slow, only what they could carry on their persons. It was to their good fortune that they had already sold almost all the livestock.
But even if they could clear the city walls, this battle must have gotten attention, and the Lord Vicar’s men would surely pursue. He needed some insurance.
The following line of thought came naturally to him, as if it was one he had considered and used many times in the past. Hopping back onto the chapel roof, he grabbed the monk by his habit. He was unconscious and injured, but alive. Priests with his grasp of the soul and its power would not be very common in a smaller city like Beroli, and he would be quite valuable to the church, without having so many ties that he would make more enemies. Just the right kind of hostage.
The captain would have also made for a fine prisoner. But while he searched the streets behind the chapel, he found no sign of a body.
⚜ ⚜ ⚜
Captain Cremieux rushed his broken body through the dark city streets.
Get away. He had to get away.
That boy was a monster, a devil in human form. He needed to gather the guard, the church everyone, and exorcize him before he could escape.
The watchmen at the Lord Vicar’s estate let him through, despite the late hour and his bleeding, manic state. He staggered, followed by a train of confused and concerned guards, into the Lord Vicar’s chambers, fully prepared to excuse his impertinence with the most urgent news.
He found the Lord Vicar drinking a fine vermouth with a guest, and felt chills under his disapproving gaze.
“Lord Vicar, forgive me! The heretic has slain my men and taken Brother Julius. He is a devil-child, a-”
He was cut off by the Lord Vicar’s pointed clearing of the throat, and fell silent. There was venom in his voice.
“Captain. I am entertaining a guest.”
“Apologies Lord Vicar, apologies…”
He turned to apologize to the guest, but stumbled over his words. He recognized that face. Twenty years earlier, just as he was forming his mercenary band and signing a contract to fight in Petron, he saw his old commanding officer in the Black Armada for the last time. Cremieux had wanted to recruit old Savon as his second in command, but he had gathered his own force instead, and already had a job lined up.
The last time he ever saw Savon, he showed Cremieux the sketch of the man he was supposed to assassinate. A goldsmith who had made a few too many enemies, recently banished from Anthusa. Alone, with no patron and no protection. It was a nice, easy job to show the new recruits the ropes.
By the time Cremieux came back victorious from Petron, he was able to visit Savon’s cenotaph. He had been the best of friends. They had saved each other’s lives. He was nearly a second father to him. According to the farmers who came upon the scene, there was barely anything left to bury, and they could hardly tell what remains belonged to whom.
That face from the sketch was looking down at him now. Cremieux shut his mouth.
The Lord Vicar sighed.
“I’m afraid I’ve shown you something unsightly, Benicio. It seems that good coin doesn’t go as far as it used to.”
“I’m not a man so easily put off my drink, Phaero. But tell me, what is this business about a devil-child? I thought you ran a tight ship around here.”
“I thought so as well.” Hard, flint-like eyes fell on Cremieux again. “But I allowed some refugees into the city lately. They seemed harmless enough, but it seems they have been causing trouble.”
Silence reigned in the Lord Vicar’s chambers.
“Say, Benicio, I would not want to impose, but…”
Benicio Cecchini gulped down his glass in one go and cracked a smile.
“Lord Vicar, don’t be such a stranger. It would be entirely my pleasure.”