NOVEL NEXT 63 – The Fiery Eye of Judgment
The Ex-Inquisitor gave a slow nod, observing as the Confessor walked away before she allowed herself to slump back onto the cold marble, staring into the ceiling as myriad thoughts and questions roiled about in her head and the icy stone beneath soothed the ache of her cuts. She looked up at her sword, wedged between the chapel’s marble floor panels, the dungeon fuel gem staring at her from its chain like an eternally judging eye. Something inside Alcerys was reluctant to grasp it, to take up the charred sword, as if that act would inexorably set her on the path of renegacy that she had chosen.
For now, though, there was the briefest moment of peace, in this forgotten place, in this transitory time. She closed her eyes for a few seconds, let out a sigh… And woke up hours later in the early morning, the holy candles having burned into puddles of wax on the floor.
Cold air had snuck into the chapel, and her only barrier against the elements was the burned-up tattoo ink which had formed a thin crust on her skin. She cautiously raised herself into a sitting position just in case her wounds had somehow adhered to the stone, and to her relief, there was no painful ripping sensation when she pulled herself from the stone. Only a vaguely unpleasant stickiness.
Alcerys looked over what was left. In the limited light that reached this place, she saw that some of her other possessions had burned up too - her gas mask, for one, was a crumpled mess of rubber-flakes and metal shards. Her suit of plate had a charred appearance, and scraping it with her nails made clear that it wasn’t soot - the metal was just like this, warped and burned by divine fire, permanently blackened. The fabric seemed untouched.
Her clothes, thank the Dead Ones - or rather, the Omniudex - had been spared the torch. They too, looked permanently charred, but their Fog-infused fabric hadn’t changed in feel or function in the slightest. Alcerys had been ready to wrap up what was left of her possessions in the ceremonial mat and walk to some tavern wearing just the robe she had used to conceal her identity, but somehow being spared that indignity roused a deeper gratitude than any single other event of the preceding night.
She dressed herself, grinning and bearing the pain as even the immaculate Fog-tailored fabric of her inquisitorial garb irritated her skin where her tattoos had once been. It was a strange state of mind to be in, without geasa to help order and compartmentalize her thoughts and impose a structured order upon that which she saw. In a way she’d grown addicted to them, and would now need to re-learn how to function without them. Over the several minutes it took her to get clothed, Alcerys looked upon the sword. Its charred and distorted form, its unwrapped handle with the tatters of purity seals still hanging off it, the thorny crossguard… It somehow looked how she felt.
The scabbard hadn’t been spared the flames either, even if it had remained sitting on the ground. Just as the blade which belonged inside it, it had been charred by the fire and stripped of inquisitorial symbology. Only scraps remained from what had once been her firearms, her Stars of Calamity that had so many times saved her life, mirroring the state of her own mind. The dissolution of the geasa had left the building-blocks of raw understanding floating freely in her head, unbound and without a framework to fit into. Alcerys knew how to perform Fog-breathing, she knew how to channel the power it bestowed, how to build it up within her body and focus it, but the artificial spiritual muscle memory which had formed it into Inquisition Arts was gone.
Her coat was much the same, only a few pieces of burned metal left lying amidst a mess of tattered fabric. It felt wrong to just leave it behind like this… And so it was that she resolved to use its fabric as the replacement handle wrap for her sword. Before she could even begin to do that, however, she would need to prise it from the grip of these marble slabs underfoot.
And so she turned to that blade, the thing which that reluctant voice in her mind didn’t want to even come near. She took a deep breath and reached for the chain which hung from its brambly guard, itself bearing numerous small spikes that shuddered and receded at her touch, growing short and stubby. A thrumming heat radiated out through her hand, an inexplicable urge to raise it to eye level and stare into it. The patterns of blue and red within the stone had shifted, ever so subtly, forming a spiraling swirl of colour with a barely-visible vertical slit of purple where they met, like the iris of a great beast’s eye. It felt as though it judged her every movement, every thought, and yet somehow, this reassured her.
Even the consideration of putting it around her neck felt wrong. She decided to put it around her left wrist, doubling the chain on itself. It dug into her skin just enough to always be felt, taut around her arm, yet when she tried to remove it it came off with little effort. Of course, it was cold-iron - it shouldn’t have been surprising that it changed its shape. The way the gem sat, it was just a subtle movement and a small mental command away from landing right in her palm.
“...But what am I to call you?” she muttered to herself as she did this. It was still an Ignis gem as far as she could tell, and that combined with its newly-exhibited properties… Yes, something like “Fiery Eye of Judgment” ought to do. The Eye thrummed on her wrist, perhaps in agreement. She was not fool enough to doubt whether divine intervention could grant sentience unto an object, let alone one already from such an extraordinary source as a dungeon.
