Of Martyrs and Sages: Prologue

Of Martyrs
and Sages

I pity the man tolerant of tyranny. Those content with nothing deserve nothing.

Prologue

The sun peeked over the horizon, blanketing the landscape with hopeful anticipation. “Another day,” Patriarch Wyman mumbled as his old eyes gazed across the northern canyon. “A fine one, though…”

A cool breeze gently kissed his wrinkled cheek. Wyman took a long, deep breath as the sweet aroma of honey bread tickled his nose. A morning so glorious could be perceived a miracle in itself considering the nature of the season. The old man fumbled with a damp match before inevitably giving up and prying open a fresh box that showed no sign of condensation from the morning dew.

“Good thing, too,” he cleared his throat with a raspy cough. “I don’t think too many enjoyed stomping through fresh mud; cold and soaked,” he laughed, squinting to keep the sun’s glare from causing discomfort.

“I only wish…” he took a long drag on his pipe. “That I may die as content as I am now... at this very moment,” he sighed with warm smoke slowly escaping from his nostrils and dissipating into the breeze.

“That stuff smells funny, Pa-Pa!” Adrienne Formoza giggled as she covered her nose in a dramatized gesture. “Why do you always hafta do that, huh?”

Patriarch Wyman chuckled. “Well, Adri, I’m an old man.” He took another large puff from his aged wooden pipe. “…and being an old man, I have a lot of responsibility on my shoulders. It gets stressful, you see…”

“So he smokes that crap to make the big bad problems go away,” Reya chimed in as she approached the overlook. “Isn’t that right, sir?”

Reya, quickly approaching her sixteenth year, consistently surprised her peers as the development of her mind raced to surpass that of her tall, slender body. Her long, straight hair, always kept meticulously braided into two equal sections, tended to carelessly dangle in the front over her shoulders; a style that Adri admired and attempted to emulate for as long as she could remember. Reya always acted like the responsible adult in front of her sibling, but secretly resented the decisions of the Verboten high council.

“Do you have to smoke that shit in front of her? At least try to hide it,” Reya snarled. “Adri, see what Pa-Pa is doing there? Never do that, okay?”

“Kay.” Adri smirked at the patriarch. “Ooooh, I think you’re in trouble.”

Wyman sighed. “Hey now, you two, be nice. I didn’t get a chance to relish it when I visited you both in Sanc’tu.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a tiny viridian pouch. “The stuff is hard enough to find as it is, let alone enjoy,” Wyman chuckled.

“Does illegal mean anything to you? You know very well that under Heru’ things like this’d get you killed!” Reya snapped.

“Well…” he relit his pipe with a fresh match dug out from his musty pocket. “…then I guess it’s a good thing we left, isn’t it Reya?” he replied with a gentle smile.

The older members of the Verboten exiles were no stranger to Revenant law. Many witnessed the true face of Heru’ firsthand, and the reality of the promises offered within the walls of Sanc’tu. Since the infamous Fracture, noticeable prosperity flourished within the reformed nations of man. One could no longer dismiss the benevolent nature of the Heru’ and his frightfully loyal following of self-proclaimed Revenants. Where all other promises of man failed, the gentle embrace of Heru’ welcomed a luminous future embellished with bliss.

“Come, girls. Breakfast; then wash up. You know the drill,” Patriarch Wyman commanded as he carefully folded the small bag, and concealed it in his back pocket. “I want you both to be ready by noon, alright?” He glanced at Adri with a quirked brow.
“Noon, alright?”

“Yeahhh, yeah, I got it!” she retorted with rolled eyes. “I swear, make everyone wait one little time and you’re never innocent again, huh?”

“Yep. One little time. And the time after that, and the time after that. Have I missed any yet, hun?” Reya smirked as she playfully poked her sister’s sides. “Don’t worry; I’ll make sure she’s ready to go.” Adri glared at her sister as she abruptly pushed her prodding fingers away. Reya patted Adri’s head in a condescending manner. “Noon or I break your kneecaps, kid.”

Adri sighed. “Y’know, I haven’t even had breakfast yet. Gimme a break.”

“Hop to it, chickadee!” Reya said as she clapped her hands twice. “C’mon! What’s the saying? Life waits for nobody? I don’t know, something like that...”

“Oh, you’re a regular sage, sis,” Adri giggled. “Any more gems for me, huh?

Reya shrugged. “Hey, shut up and go get ready!” she barked.

Patriarch Wyman chuckled under his breath.

Adri stuck her tongue out at her sister and proceeded to run towards the encampment. Reya rolled her eyes and casually followed suit.

The dense foliage surrounding the campsite made the small band of twenty exiles nigh impossible to spot from a distance; an ideal location to let the weary rest for a few nights before packing up and restarting the cycle. The fresh river water offered the Verboten a much needed bath, and the thick canopy provided just enough cover to absorb a majority of the fire’s smoke.

The encampment marked the area just beyond the canyon where the Efret and Shii’a rivers began to converge into the mighty Uphraine. Stopping here became somewhat of a tradition for many of the Verboten exiles. Adri and Reya were experiencing their first passing since leaving the capitol city of Sanc’tu one year prior, and still struggled to adjust to the nomadic lifestyle.

“Well, I’m ready to go. Wish I could say the same for some people around here…” Reya rolled her eyes as she carefully hoisted her knapsack. “I say we leave her. She can catch up. Go on ahead, I’ll be right there,” she sneered.

Patriarch Wyman sighed while holding his old, scuffed pocket watch close to his face. “Five after… well, maybe she’ll learn,” he said, squinting his tired eyes. “Everyone! Chop chop! Say goodbye to the Uphraine; we’ll see it again next spring!”

“Wait! I’m coming! Hey!” Adri mumbled with a large chunk of meat nestled within the pouch of her left cheek. A small stream of drool slowly trickled down from the corner of her lip. “C’mon, fifteen minutes! I’m not that late! Wait for me!” She could hear the others already beginning to move on from the other side of the hill. “Don’t leave yet! I’m sorry!” Tears began to swell in her eyes as she struggled to drag her cumbersome bag along the dirt.

“Hey now, you’d think I’d just leave you like that? I said I was always going to be there for you, kid.” Reya smiled as she reached down to help her sister with the load. “Good lord, chickadee; the hell do you keep in here? Rocks?”

Adri wiped the tears from her eyes with the palm of her hand, and offered a relieved smile. “You jerk. You said you were gonna make sure I was ready on time.”

“Yeah, well if I broke your kneecaps then we’d just have to carry you for the rest of the year, now wouldn’t we?”

“Tools…” she blurted as she reached over and grabbed the bag from her sister. “Not rocks. That would be silly,” Adri giggled. “I found them… on the other side of the big river.”

Reya snatched the bag, and began to unceremoniously dump the contents out onto the dirt. Her eyes widened as she gazed upon the pile. “Idiot…” she muttered under her breath.

Adri’s glowing smile quickly drooped into a frown. She looked into the eyes of her sister, glanced down at the scattered objects on the ground, and tilted her head in confusion with a quirked brow.

“You don’t even know what the hell these are, do you? Idiot!” Reya picked up two of the objects and hurled them deep into the woods.

“W-what did I do? We could use them! Look, this knife thing right here,” Adri whimpered as she leaned over and picked up a slightly used dagger from the pile. “It’s so sharp, see? We could make better equipment with this stuff! Look at it. I bet life would be so much easier! I’ve never seen anything like it before. Look how hard and shiny it is! Its way better than the crap we’ve been using, and-”

“Stop!” Reya snapped. “It’s called steel, you dolt. It’s not natural. You don’t just find this kind of shit in the woods; now where did you get your grubby hands on these, you moron?”

Adri shuffled her feet as she looked down in shame.

Reya’s patience was beginning to grow thin. “Well?”

“A camp, okay?” the small girl cried out. “There was a little camp on the other side of the river, but the people were gone, I swear!”

Reya snatched the dagger from the nervous grip of her little sister. “We have to show the patriarch! We have to show all of them, Adri!” she barked as a hint of worried urgency caused her stern voice to slightly crack.

“No! You can’t show Pa-Pa!” she replied, tears now streaming down her soft face. “You’re just gonna get me in trouble again! You always do this. You always get me in trouble! I hate you!” Adri collapsed to her knees, weeping softly with fists firmly clenched around small handfuls of dirt.

Reya sighed and knelt down beside her sister. “It’s not like that, you idiot…” She reached out and gently lifted Adri’s small chin with her right hand. “Look at the dagger. See that?” She pointed to a small series of symbols located at the base of the blade. “Look familiar?”

“I… I think so…” she muttered as she slowly ran her fingers along the engraving. “Vindicators used these kinds of marks a lot, didn’t they?”

“Bingo. Now, if you’re done being a little baby can we please go catch up with the others before somebody else does? If the bastards are nearby, then I think it would be smart to let everyone know.” Reya quickly took the dagger and stuffed it back into Adri’s empty knapsack. “Now c’mon!”

Adri wiped her moist cheeks with the backs of her hands and nodded in agreement.

The girls flew along the trail with a half-hurried jog. An almost casual stride, for a time. Adri was slow, but her sister didn’t much mind. It was not in her nature to be hurried. Adri was a girl of leisure, preferring the simpler joys that life offered over the grand complications of maturity.

Reya’s pace slowed, almost to a complete halt, as if the wind commanded them to yield. The breeze carried a familiar stink that beckoned the sisters. A sadistic welcome. An open invitation, from a most inhospitable host. 

“Adri… smell that?” Reya paused with her nose to the air. “Smoke?”

The silence shattered with a piercing shriek from just beyond the grassy knoll. Reya’s brisk stride elevated into a frantic sprint as her fingernails began to dig deep into her sister’s forearm.

“You’re hurting me!” Adri yelped, helplessly being dragged along the shoddy dirt road. “I can keep up on my own! Leggo!” she jerked, unable to free herself from Reya’s firm grip.

“Shut up and move!” Reya urgently barked with a high pitched crack in her voice. “Shit shit shit,” she repeatedly muttered under her breath as they rounded the corner of the hillside.

The air, thick with soot, caused the girls to shield their eyes as they ran blindly towards the sounds of voices in the distance. Adri began to wheeze, but mustered the strength to keep moving forward in order to keep up with her sister who didn’t seem to acknowledge the blistering smoke being blown directly into their faces from the wind.

“Why? What have we done?” Patriarch Wyman blurted as he held his ribcage in pain, blood oozing from his lower lip. “What have we ever done?” He struggled to climb to his feet in order to look his assailant in the eye.

The tall man’s intimidating presence resembled that of a fortress. His enormous frame bulged from the confines of its metal prison, somehow squeezed into a fine suit of armor befitting the highest of Revenants in the holy capitol city. The plated, polished metal accented an intricately designed crest painstakingly engraved along the trim. A detail only reserved for the likes of a High Inquisitor. His enormous axe glistened in the afternoon sun, despite the crimson streaks of fresh blood tainting the blade. With a grunt, he jabbed Patriarch Wyman in the abdomen with the blunt knob of the handle, causing him to reel over and hack blood into the dirt.

“You’ll speak when spoken to, vagrant.”

Tears began to swell up in the corners of Wyman’s eyes as he fell to his knees. His old ears could hear the sound of fellow Verboten being slaughtered around him. Reya and Adri had just arrived, and quickly taken refuge under a toppled cart.

The man kneeled down to get a look at Patriarch Wyman’s grime-covered face, using his axe’s handle as a crutch. “Tell me…” he whispered, “what has Heru’ ever done to you? You disregard the teachings. You abandon him. Why? Is it worth risking death?”

Wyman slowly closed his eyes, reached into his pocket, and pulled out his pipe; still packed with remnants of the strange green herb from earlier, and proceeded to light it. With a deep sigh he took a puff from his pipe, and gave a gentle smile to the armored High Inquisitor before him. “You know, it really is a fine day today… isn’t it?”

The High Inquisitor stood and shook his head in astonished disapproval. “I see,” he muttered, gently lifting the blade from the dirt and hoisting it high into the air. With little hesitation the axe dropped with the frightening precision of a finely constructed guillotine into its fleshy target. Blood spurted from the wound, staining the once green grass along the side of the trail. Wyman’s head toppled to the ground and awkwardly rolled down the cart path.

“In his name… Heru’ be praised.”

Revenant law was simple. Give up that which is not needed, and regulate that which is kept. Considering how muddled the state of the world became after the events of the Fracture, this once primitive idea spread like a savage flame. The Earth silently put up with the parasitic human infestation for years, and demanded reform.

For the first time in years, the promise of a brighter tomorrow shined like a beacon of opportunity, and the inhabitants of the world gave praise and devotion to a new hope. The wrath of nature finally subsided, and life as we knew it began to feel more forgiving through the pure, simplistic teachings and flawless leadership of the first Heru’.

His followers called themselves Revenants in honor of those fortunate souls who triumphantly returned from almost certain annihilation. A new age of saviors descended, and we rejoiced.

“Ey, yo, Sunder. The hell you doin’, aye?” a scruffy man bearing the same High Inquisitor crest chuckled as he carefully wiped blood from his two meticulously sharpened knives.

Sunder sighed as he lifted his axe and carefully balanced it over his shoulder. “A copper for your thoughts, Argent?”

Argent, though a much smaller man, maintained the frightful reputation as one of the most ruthless inquisitors under Heru’. Stories of his blood lust stretched across the globe, and few would dare consider him anything less than a beast of only the most twisted nightmare. He sheathed his blades and proceeded to light a makeshift cigarette. “C’mon, mate,” he grunted as a puff of smoke wriggled from his lips, trickled along his gruff face, and dissipated into the warm air. “You’re doin’ it again. Talking to ‘em. Makin’ this shit too personal. You aint goin’ soft on me, eh?”

“Heh, yeah, I like to get to know who I’m beheading. You know, ask if they have families. See how many kids I’m orphaning before I hack them down,” Sunder replied with a chuckle.

Argent grinned. “Cheeky bugger.”

“It’s just...” Sunder’s smile began to fade. “Well, how many are you at?”

Argent scratched the bristles of his chin, quickly calculating in his head. “Eh, including these? Shit, I dunno; last body count we did had me at 436, mate. Blight an’ Ambrosia sat at a pretty 417 each, you had the lead with 441. Why do ya ask?”

“Think about it. Why are our numbers even that high to begin with?” Sunder proceeded to roll over the bloody corpse of a young woman with his foot who looked to have been no more than 25 years old.

“Why? Because it’s our job, twit; and we’re damn good at it. Kinda question is that?” Argent leaned over and spat into the dirt.

“No. I mean why do so many rebel? Why are so many who were once considered family under Heru’ now regarded as vermin? They risk death. Why? What’s the reason? I… just don’t understand it, that’s all.”

“Oye!” Argent snapped. “Dangerous thoughts mate. I suggest you keep ‘em to yourself. I aint about to cover for your dumb ass should the Chaplain see you questioning this shit.”

Sunder shrugged. “Yeah… nah you’re right. We serve our purpose in life. They don’t. They contribute nothing-“

“Therefore they are nothing,” Argent snarled as he glanced in the direction of the cart that concealed the two girls, and proceeded to meander over. “Aye, piss off for a tick, mate.”

A rush of panic swept over Reya as she heard the muffled footsteps of Argent slowly approaching from outside the cart’s old wooden frame. Despite her best efforts she could barely keep her hands from shaking as she silently pried a loose board from the opposite side. The dusty wood creaked slightly, but suddenly gave way with a careful jerk which loosened it from the frame. “Adri… on three,” she whispered.”

Adri cowered in the dirt; tears running down her cheeks and dripping from her chin. “Pa-pa,” she whimpered.

Reya grabbed her sister and gave her a quick shake. “He’s gone, Adrienne. We can’t change that.” Her bottom lip began to quiver. “We need to run,” she blurted, quickly turning her head to hide the appearance of fresh tears in her eyes. “The woods aren’t far. We have to go. We have to try!”

“One… two…” Reya whispered as Argent's shadow crept just outside the cart. “THREE!” she shouted as she dragged Adri by the hand, and dashed madly towards the dense thicket.

“Choices,” Argent mumbled with a wicked grin as he unsheathed and aimed one of the small throwing daggers that he kept concealed under the flap of his leg armor. “Eenie…meenie…miney…” he sadistically licked his upper lip from left to right before hurling the blade with terrifying velocity. “Moe.”