The Broken Rod

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Burt
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Location: In-and-Out Burger, Camrose

The Broken Rod

Post by Burt »

This could go in the library, but I'm hoping it catches up from character backstory to the current day quickly, and serves as Alain's experience of events on WD. Won't include anything too spoilery but I suppose it's a bio of sorts too.

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Crack

The weathered rod came down hard on his back, the count of strikes quickly forgotten in the white flash of pain flaring behind his eyes. How many orphans had been chastised, beaten until their skin bruised and split, by this instrument of torture? Long as he could remember the rod had never broken.

Crack

Another searing convulsion lanced up his spine. He grit his teeth – he was no stranger to the rod, but the funny thing about pain is you never seem to get acclimatised to it. Not at the age of nine anyway. He didn’t cry, which only seemed to make the punishment worse. One day he should try crying.

Crack

“Do what you’re fucking told boy!”, sneered the corpulent matron. “How many times we have to teach you this lesson?”

Seemed like the only lessons the orphanage taught was to keep your mouth shut and do what you’re told. And lessons in pain, of course. Plenty of those.

Crack

“Now get up and get dressed you scrawny little shit. You’re late for assembly and we’ve a guest. An important guest! I ought beat you for your insolence. Maybe I will later.”

She would. She always did. Doesn’t matter that he was late on account of taking a beating in the first place – there was always another one coming, for one reason or another. The other orphans didn’t like spending much time with him, but she certainly did.

He pulled his threadbare burlap shirt on and hurried after the waddling matron. No point showing defiance; everyone knew what that got you. The rod doesn’t break but the will of a child is easily snapped.

Through austere mouldering hallways and past flea infested furniture they made their way to the torchlit assembly hall, the din of another busy day in Ormath a million miles away on the other side of grimy ill-fitting windows. No point thinking about that - only place orphans ever went was the workhouse and that was widely agreed to be considerably worse than the orphanage.

Rows of lice-ridden children lined up facing the headmaster, their small hands scratching and itching beneath moth-eaten clothes. An occasional giggle stifled, wary of the consequences that undue amusement might bring. The rod doesn’t break, but sense of humour is among the first things to yield.

“Today children we have a visitor. Yes, yes, a rare and blessed day! A visitor from the Tower of Skulls no less!”, the headmaster was a snivelling, weak looking man, his balding head glistening with sweat and similarly damning moist patches seeping down from his armpits. “This is priest…”

For the first time he noticed the man – a towering wide-shouldered giant of a person. Obsidian black hair tied back with not a wisp out of place. Firm stubbled jaw that looked as though it could sunder timber. Most strikingly, he had cold, hard eyes. Grey like the sky before a storm. He did not smile.

“Doomguide.” The man's brief correction was final and indisputable. With one alien word the assembly hall was brought to a deafening silence.

“Yes...yes, of course.” stuttered the headmaster, wringing his hands and reaching out apologetically before quickly reconsidering and cowering to a shadowy corner.

Without further comment or permission the man strode forward, pale torchlight flickering off burnished iron platemail. Floorboards crunched and splintered under his oiled leather boots, more used to splintering the soft soles of children’s feet than withstanding the weight of armoured warriors.

Those piercing joyless eyes surveyed each of the children in turn, what judgement was being rendered on their pitiful bodies undisclosed. A thin line of blood from the earlier beating began to weave its way down to his filthy ankles, then dripped with a pitiful plop to the rotten floorboard.

The man approached him at last, lips pursed throughout his silent assessment.

The matron raised the rod to strike. “Not that one Ser, he is…”

The man’s hand rose so swiftly to backhand the matron that it might not have happened, except for her immediately beginning to blubber as the splotchy welt flourished on her sagging cheek. Just as quickly the man seized the rod from her flopping bloated hand and with not even a flicker of effort crushed it between sturdy calloused fingers.

Wordlessly the man tossed a bulging coinpurse to the headmaster, immaculate golden circles spilling forth as it thumped to the floor. More money than had ever been seen in the orphanage, surely.

“Come.” The man commanded, no room for negotiation as his boots thunderous echoes made their way toward the orphanage’s dilapidated exit. “What’s your name boy?”

“Alain.”
Jagoff.
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Burt
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Joined: Sat Jan 03, 2004 5:23 pm
Location: In-and-Out Burger, Camrose

Re: The Broken Rod

Post by Burt »

“Guilty.”

The Council of the Dead sat in ceremonial judgement, decrepit wasting bodies hunched within their voluminous decadent velvet robes; meagre mortal shells dwarfed by ancient alabaster thrones, men so frail they could scarcely lift their withered limbs to sit upright.

“Guilty.”

Eleven years of study, of labour, of faith. Eleven summers and winters, toiling in cold spartan halls and sweltering hot furnaces. No comfort, no compromise, no respite. Barely a word spoken not dogmatic repetition.

“Guilty.”

Another ringing damnation delivered by a shrunken ancient priest. No thoughts for those dutiful years, but why should there be? Alain had been one of the fortunate. A life in the Tower of Skulls was sought by many and offered to few.

Only one remained to deliver his judgement. Unlike the others, hair greying but not yet the thin wisps of white of his peers, such as they were, his martial prowess and unwavering dedication to his Patron’s – all their Patron’s – eternal duty not yet buckled beneath the unforgiving weight of holy servitude. A zealot with cold, hard eyes, sat unbent in his mail.

“Doomguide?” came a shrill prompt from somewhere within the sparse candlelit chambers.

With gaze unflinching he stared in silent contemplation for a while at the boy who so long ago he had spirited from a life of poverty, chaos, and worse; faithlessness. His cheeks tightened as his jaw clenched and his verdict was delivered stoicly.

“Guilty.”

The Council unanimously nodded their sagging mottled chins in smug self-congratulatory unison – all except the Doomguide. He sat statuesque, unblinking and impassive.

A weary seneschal rose shakily to his feet, feebly clutching an ancient staff of ironwood between skeletal fingers, and lifted his ailing voice in an announcement that ought be solemn, but seemed laced with satisfaction.

“Acolyte Alain, nameless bastard, has been found guilty of Heresy in these halls, hallowed by the Lord of the Dead…” the insufferable drone of the voice was a distant echoing buzz. Alain knew as well as any there was only one fate for such a transgression against the Order. Guilt or innocence mattered not now. The judgement of men was flawed, but His Judgement was final and without imperfection – and so Alain would be delivered unto the Fugue.

The trite pronouncement approached its inevitable conclusion, “...and so, we sentence you to…”

“Excommunication.”

The interruption threw proceedings into disarray. With one discordant word the Doomguide brought life to a gloomy chamber which moments before was quiet in its assured righteousness.

The seneschal’s eyes flit between the other Council members who now shifted uneasily. “Doomguide, the verdict was undivided. You yourself decreed this...acolyte, to be guilty. There can be no other…”

“I invoke Primis Reatus.” The response was hard and unflinching. An eerie hush descended across the room, the Doomguide’s eyes still focused on the accused as he swiftly stood upright and strode for the door without hesitation; the Council watching impotently with slack jaws agape.

“This means Excommunication for you both Doomguide! You and the bastard shall never set foot in these halls again! See reason!”

The shrieked threat was drowned out by the sound of the chamber’s huge brass doors being torn open as the dissenter marched away from his life of service. Light flooded in to dissolve the farcical court.

Alain hung his head and whispered sombrely to nobody in particular. “Excommunication.”
Jagoff.
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