94

“What’s going on, Lance?” asked Michael.

“Nothing’s going on. As far as it should matter to you, the mission is exactly as it has been. We just need to get this woman to the right place.”

Crick stepped forward, his usual dour expression changing into something neutral, and his body language completely changing in just a moment. His back straightened, his shoulders went back, and his slight limp corrected itself. His face that had always been a bit scrunched up seemed to smooth out as well. By the end of his movement, he looked almost like an entirely different person.

“This wasn’t a sanctioned mission, was it?” he asked.

Lance scowled as his eyes widened. “You… You’re one of Bayle’s agents.” He shook his head. “How could I not see it?”

Michael’s eyes widened as he exchanged glances with all the others. It made sense when he thought about it—Crick always seemed more effective than they expected. He was stronger and faster than most other regulars, and Michael felt like he frequently lost track of him, not just in battle, but even around the fort he’d often be missing for hours at a time.

“You aren’t meant to—it’s one of my gifts. Bayle had a feeling that the mission wasn’t approved. Your documents were all valid, though, and we didn’t have time to prove anything, so he ensured that I’d be a part of this. I’m Knight-Sergeant Crittenden, Stent Intelligence.”

“What is going on!?” managed Ollie.

“You were all identified as potentially high-value assets even before you left the academy. Bayle wanted to keep a closer eye on you. He also ensured that the missions you were on would act well as tests and groom you more for a role with us. Didn’t you wonder why you did so much sneaking around? Why the first pitched battle you were a part of was only recently? Most Penitents are sent to a front like that from the beginning.”

Michael ignored him. All of what he was saying was interesting, but he had other priorities. “What are we actually doing, Lance? Why have we kidnapped this woman if not to bring her back?”

“I’m getting my brother back,” he said, clenching his left fist as he placed his other on the hilt of his silver sword. “I’ve already made the deal with some Goetian mercenaries that work at the prison camp they have him in. We give her to them to take back to Goetias, where they can make use of her skills. Then I get my brother back.”

“We can’t allow that resource to move from our current enemy to a future one,” said Crick, gripping the half of the spear he still had. He scoffed, “Besides, that plan makes little sense. You really believe that they have your brother for the trade? That even if you gave them what they wanted, they would honor it and not simply slit your throat? You’re naive.”

“I know they’ll honor it,” said Lance with that same tinge of madness that had been infecting his every word.

Lance wasn’t saying anything, but Michael wondered if whatever set-up had been done had been by the actions of his father, the general, whom he was being specific not to mention. If Lance had lost his Titles, was it because they flowed from his father, whose actual plan this had been, and he’d been caught? Or was it his father himself that had cut Lance off?

“And what was going to happen to all of us?” asked Marcus. “When you got your brother back?”

“I was going to turn myself in for what I’d done. Tell them it wasn’t your fault and go to the gallows knowing my favored brother was back with my father. I just… didn’t expect it to be discovered so soon… I didn’t expect my Titles to be stripped from me so quickly…”

“Oh Lance,” said Michael, shaking his head slowly. “Did Jakub know?”

Lance’s expression contorted in pain, giving Michael the answer.

Crick pointed at them. “Enough of this. Help me to restrain him, and we’ll get back to Under-General Hans’s camp. I’ll ensure that you’re all taken care of, and only Lance is punished for this.”

They all looked at Crick, then at Lance, then Pyotr, Davi, Ollie, and Marcus all looked at Michael.

Michael shook his head. “This is stupid,” he said.

“You’re with me then?” said Lance, a bit of sad hope coming through his voice.

“No, but I’m not going to let you die either. What we’re doing here, what we’ve been doing… this isn’t the right path. I will always bear guilt for what I’ve done, for this”—he placed his hand on his chestplate—“body that I’ve taken and the life that could’ve lived inside of it. Fighting for Stent will not make up for it. People that lie to us, brand us, who seem raised just to hate us even as we work for them. I can understand their hate, god knows I can. I’ve lost, and I know what comes with it, but the cruelty? The suffering it’s wrought on my friends? Are there even really any retired Taker Penitents?” He looked at Crick in askance.

“Yes, there are many.”

He looked at Lance.

“I… I’ve never met any.”

“No. I can do better elsewhere. I can heal more. I can—” He heard the faint whispering of the Divine in his ear. “I can serve the Divine better away from Stent. And I won’t be the barrier that keeps my friends from seeking a better life elsewhere either.”

“I’m sorry about this,” said Lance as he raised his branded arm.

“So am I,” replied Michael.

Lance activated all of their brands, and Michael used every ounce of his concentration sending the combined pain of all five of their brands right back at him. He’d known either Crick or Lance would try it, so he’d been ready.

Lance had a sharp intake of breath, and his eyes widened. He fell onto his knees, then collapsed forward, the combined pain instantly rendering him unconscious.

They all turned to look at Crick, who was eyeing Lance and Francesca, the remains of his spear hanging loose in his hand.

“You may be able to move the pain of the brand to another for a moment, but what about when it starts to go off constantly? What about when there’s no one left to send it to? Help me bring back the girl—and Lance too—and I’ll forget everything you said. I’ll let Bayle know how invaluable you are. It wouldn’t even be a lie—whatever you did back in the cavern is unlike anything I’ve ever seen. We can discuss lowering all of your terms, extra benefits. Just help me bring them both back.”

“And let you hang a kid because he made a stupid decision to try and save his brother from a prison camp?” asked Pyotr. “No, I don’t think we’ll do that.”

“How can you say that? After he put all of your lives at risk the way he did?” asked Crick.

Pyotr chuckled and gestured to Michael. “Some of my brother’s stupid is wearing off on me, I guess. Besides… it got us a good distance from Stent, didn’t it?”

Crick gripped what was left of his spear, looking at all of them.

“I’m sure you’re stronger than you’ve let on,” said Michael taking a step toward him with his hand on his sword hilt. “But do you really think you can take all of us?”

Crick’s expression became neutral again, and he shook his head. “You won’t let me take the girl either, I presume?”

“No. She’ll be able to go wherever she wants,” said Davi. “I think she’s been through enough.”

They all nodded in agreement.

“So much wasted potential,” said the knight-sergeant, shaking his head as he started to slowly back away. “Watch your backs.” He turned around and started moving south, far quicker than they’d ever seen him move before. Michael found that he was hard to track as he moved, almost as if he was becoming out of focus.

They all stood there, the enormity of what they’d just done settling on them heavily.

Francesca kicked Davi in the leg, yelling through her gag, and he bent down to tear it from her mouth and untie her hands.

While he was doing that, Marcus approached Michael and wrapped him in a hug, squeezing surprisingly tightly.

Michael returned it with just as much strength, hearing their armor groan a bit from the strain.

“I’m so glad we’re all leaving together,” said Marcus. “I would’ve missed you, man.”

Michael nodded. “I would’ve missed you, too. Now turn around.”

“Woah, I didn’t mean it like that,” he said, chuckling.

“Shut up and take off your helmet. The sooner I try this, the better.”

Marcus did as he was asked, and Michael placed his hand over the brand on his neck. He took a breath and started to focus on it, feeling the heat in his hand spread and watching the light build. He could feel the damage to the tissue, but more than that, he could feel something deeper that his healing didn’t seem to quite reach. He began to divine him, and focusing on the brand, he was able to see a small gathering of divine energy sealed within it.

He began to focus on that energy as he healed, slowly working it toward the surface as the damage to his neck began to mend. Several letters and words of it began to leave from under the skin where it had connected to his soul and then began to drift back into the air around them before shooting off very quickly to the south. He could feel a kind of soft guidance to his movements, a gentle nudge here and there wherever he touched the divinity within the brand. There was subtlety and strength to those nudges, and he could tell they were guiding him around lethal traps inlaid in the brand’s divine circuitry, things he never would’ve anticipated. After what felt like an hour but had to have been much less, Michael removed his hand. A bout of dizziness nearly made him fall over, but he managed to keep himself steady with Marcus’s help. He looked back at where his hand had been, to see unmarked skin on Marcus’s neck. If he’d tried that before that moment, he almost certainly would’ve killed him.

“It’s done, but I think we were right that it tells them what we did when I heal it. I’ll need to move quickly with the rest of you.” He gestured to Ollie and began the process again, though the strain he was feeling was starting to build too much for him to keep at it much longer.

Davi helped Francesca to her feet.

“I’m sorry about all of this. Do you know your way back to your camp?” he said.

“Where are you going?” she asked.

“It would not be smart of us to tell you,” he replied, his eyebrow raised.

“I may want to go with you, if you’re going where I think you are.”

“Where do you think we’re going?” asked Marcus.

“Swandia. The only place I’ve heard of that doesn’t treat Takers like shit.”

“I thought you said that Tusynia didn’t keep you as slaves.”

“It does treat us as slaves. I was lying to get you on my side. It’s better than Stent from what I’ve heard, but that doesn’t mean I want to be stuck here. Besides, Swandia has the largest mountain range on the continent.” She smiled. “The things I could learn there, particularly if I can join up with some dwarves.”

“I don’t know. We’re going to have enough trouble keeping ourselves fed, and you are hardly in the shape to travel,” said Marcus.

“We should help her,” said Michael. His vision was half gone, but he was holding on to consciousness somehow. “She wants the same thing the rest of you do.”

“Yes, listen to the one that can glow gold and heal people. Clearly he has the right ideas about things,” said Francesca.

Ollie laughed. “It took us this whole time to get him to agree to desert. Let’s not give him too much credit.”

Michael shook his head, smacking the back of Ollie’s as he finished healing him, and gesturing to Pyotr.

“Once he’s done, we’ll get moving,” said Marcus. “Svict will be the most dangerous part for us, but once we’re through there, we’ll be home free.”

Michael focused on healing Pyotr, then Davi. Finally, he placed his hand on the back of his own neck and started to focus. As he worked, he kept finding himself hesitating. He would push back against the nudges and pushing of the Divine that had been helping him with the others. If he left. If he abandoned the sentence that had been laid out for him, was that justice? He had taken a life. He believed that thoroughly. If the man who’d killed his son was in his position, would he want that man to free himself? In spite of everything he’d taken from him? It wasn’t the same. He realized that. His own guilt had equated it, but he hadn’t known he was taking a life. That still didn’t make it right, and it was still close enough to tear at him.

The Divine stopped nudging him. It stopped whispering too, instead leaving him in silence. It wasn’t going to tell him what was right. He needed to decide for himself, and whatever duty he had to the Divine, he needed to choose to serve in spite of this.

He would understand. If that man were in his position, he would be able to help people by choosing freedom. His rage at that man wasn’t worth the deaths of others. It wasn’t worth allowing greater suffering at the hands of an unjust system. He let some of that anger go and felt some that he’d felt toward himself fade away as well. It would never completely fade, but that was okay. He didn’t want to let it go completely. He hadn’t earned that, and possibly never would.

He felt relief wash over him as the Divine returned to him and helped him to finish his task. He removed the brand from his own neck and felt the wound in his soul seal.

He fought to maintain consciousness and drank some water before lifting his hand to heal everyone of whatever small scrapes and bruises remained. The warmth of his hand reminded him, as always, of his wife and led him to remember the sketches of his children that still rested in his pack. They were still with him, and he’d hold onto them dearly now that he was working to pursue his penitence his own way. He could still hear the whispering of the Divine, the words finally clear enough for him to make out. It wasn’t devoting himself that had seemed to imbue him with divine might—it was devoting his actions as if he were offering a Deed to them. That lack of understanding had led to Jakub’s death, but he understood it now. He had a lot more work to do, a lot more gods to find. He listened to the words of the Divine.

~Godseeker~devotee~believer~pilgrim~

The Story Will Continue In

Penitent 2

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