A Gamer's Guide 444 (Patreon)

Buccina and the former Goss faded into the darkness of the tunnels. Garath did not feel any particular need to worry about Buccina. Buccina may have been young, but he was competent. Besides, with his blessings, he could realistically kill the youth before he could absolve him. 

…Assuming the kiss of absolution had any effect on Buccina, of course. There was no way of knowing. That is, unless they—

“He knew you’d come, eventually,” Fr Moonlight said. Garath restrained himself from flinching. Having formers that close to him wasn’t good for his heart. Smiling enigmatically, Fr Moonlight looked Garath up and down where he stood next to him, compressed and human. “Never had he predicted you to arrive like this, though.”

Arms folded across his chest, face neutral, muscles tense, Garath politely asked, keeping the suspicion from his voice, “To whom, may I ask, do you refer?” 

“Surely, you haven’t forgotten…?” The old priest gave a chuckle. “Oh, I’m sorry. I was under the assumption that you knew… No, you’re right. Here, allow me.” Turning around, Fr Moonlight squinted up at the harsh stone door, plucking a pair of glasses from his pocket before reading, line by line, until… “There he is. Fifth row from the bottom, forty-eighth from the right.”

Garath felt his brows furrow. He could not fathom the intentions of the old former. Nevertheless, had he wanted his life, he would have taken it already. Turning around, Garath counted the rows, first from the bottom, then from the right. One, two, three, four…

“This door didn’t exist a thousand years ago. You do not recognize it.”

Fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, eighteen…

“He made many things during his time here. This door, the mural in the atrium, the chasm of absolution, the chamber of penance—even the church itself.”

Twenty nine, thirty, thirty-one, thirty-two…

“Dragons are not easy to command. They refuse that which cannot budge them. But not him. He had a way with them. It wasn’t fear; it was something far deeper.”

Forty-one, forty-two, forty-three…

“But this door is the only thing he put his name on. The same as everyone else. When he felt it was his time to die, he did as all the others, and by my hand, by my kiss, by the grace of Her Divinity, he allowed himself to be turned to dust, from whence he had come.”

Forty-four, forty-five, forty-six, forty-seven… He read the forty-eighth name. 

“Ferruem,” he breathed. Had he not said it, it wouldn’t have existed. The name would have refused to take its place within his heart. It would have remained on the door, an abstract, impersonal series of scrawls that no language recognized anymore. Only he knew that language. Only he knew that name. Even his old one, that he had forsaken upon his ascension. The name of the closest thing Garath had ever had to family. His kin. Chest tightening, Garath turned to the old priest. “Then, he…?”

“Until a hundred and fifty years ago, he was here.”

“Why? Why stay here? All these years…” He pressed his hand to the cold stone. There would be no answers from it. All it held was his name, shining down like a faulty star. Written with his ridiculous scrawl. No better than a drake’s clawprint. “Why here…?”

“He knew you would return. Not when, not why… But where. Even if you had never found absolution through the God of Hope, he knew you would come eventually.”

“That I would come to destroy what he had built? To finish our business? End the world once and for all, starting with my old home?”

The priest blinked at him. As though none of these things had ever crossed his mind. “Why, no. Not at all. He only wanted to see you again.”

Garath deflated. “To… see me?”

“Yes. That’s all.”

“That can’t be all. I led the extermination! I forced him to become my weapon! I was so blinded by bloodlust that his betrayal seemed an impossibility! My final memory of him is him calling down bloody fire upon my form!” Wings unfurled, heart burning, mind drowning, Garath gestured, arms trembling with rage, at the world in its entirety. “Had he not stopped me, I would have ended the world! My return should have brought dread to churn within his stomach, terror to ravage his mind and soul. Not to—to…”

“Led the extermination?” Fr Moonlight parrotted. “Certainly, you may have held a central role, but I believe you understate Ferruem’s role as the true mastermind.”

Often, despite his knowing better, Garath found himself a victim of his own rage. It tended to blaze within him, needing little kindling to rouse a devastating fire. It had burnt the world once, but now, as that fire rose within him, higher and higher, belching smoke as thick as tar, hot enough to melt bones, a few solitary words, spoken with the soft, scolding tones of a gentle priest, was enough to smother the fire entirely, the only cinders remaining eliciting a tiny puff of confused smoke. “...What?”

“I take no pleasure in saying this, but seeing as how Kitty had placed enough faith in you to absolve your sins, I feel it is my duty as a man of faith to question your pride.”

“By fire, of what do you speak?”

Reaching out, the little priest took his hand, and held it, very tightly, boring his eyes into Garath’s. “Do not find pride in your mistakes. Do not inflate your participation in them. Though your part was doubtlessly a great plight upon the world, you must not shoulder the sins held by Ferruem. Your sins are yours, his sins are his.”

“Certainly, but—”

“Hear me, Garath! The extermination is not yours alone. Release it, and with it, release your pride.”

It struck him, then, as clearly as the peal of a silver bell, that something very strange had happened. To him, the extermination was mere months ago. Less than a year ago, he had ravaged cities and led dragons into slaughter. Then, there had been no questioning it. No need to doubt the testimony of the slaughter’s few witnesses. Nothing but certainty. 

But times changed. In the blink of an eye, yesterday had become history. 

“Why…” Garath asked, eyes on his hands, still held in Fr Moonlight’s small, soft grip. “Why do you believe Ferruem led the extermination?”

“It’s common knowledge,” Fr Moonlight said. “Anyone with any minor interest in history would know it. However, I happen to quite like reading history, so I’ve… Well, I hope this doesn’t sound strange, but I’ve read your memoir.” The memoir he didn’t write. The memoir that no one could have written. “Fascinating read, really. Most memoirs tend to gloss over the childhoods of important figures, so to read yours was a bit of a treat. It’s awful what they did, with the purifications. Truly barbaric practice.”

A jolt of black and the humid suffocating heat and in an instant, in a single instant, Garath understood it. A flash of inspiration, coalesced into a single, all-consuming question: Who else? Who else knew? Who else knew but him?

“Ferruem wrote it,” came the answer, startled out of his lungs like a gasp, “Ferruem wrote the memoir.”

The old priest released his hold on his hands. “Surely, you jest?”

“Only he could have written it. Only by his hand could those atrocities have been penned. Only he knew… only he, my brother, knew of my purifications. All else were burnt. And he—” The words choked him, lopsided and thorny and wrong. It didn’t make sense. Why? Why? Why? They had parted as enemies. Worse than enemies, because brothers did not become enemies, they became something else, something worse. Something like stars consuming one another to become a black hole. All-eviscerating And yet, he had… “He rewrote history.”

“Rewrote…? For what purpose?”

“I don’t…” Thick, lead-encrusted thoughts pressed against one another in his brain, too many drakes in a pen too small, cramped dragons, huffing and puffing with fire and soot. Ferruem was his brother. Ferruem was something worse. He would have killed for Ferruem. Ferruem burnt the world for him. But he would not die with him. In the end, when the fire ran out of kindling, Ferruem turned on him. His Goddess, too. 

And yet, and yet, and yet, and yet! 

The gnashing of his teeth only barely drowned out the thumping of his heart.

“My sin,” Garath rumbled, “my sin, of cowing the world. Why, if he was a good man, would he ascribe such a thing to himself?”

The priest’s quizzical eyes met him, uncertain and ignorant. “I—I’m afraid I don’t quite follow. You believe Ferruem wrote your memoirs? That he would have taken the burden of your extermination unto himself?”

“Yes!” Garath said, taking the priest by the shoulders. “He did. And he did it so well it tricked the world. No one is alive to contradict him. Why would he do such a thing? Though I have not read it, I know its contents. I know how he portrayed me. Dumb, dull-witted, a mere weapon to be used. Faultless. Yes, that is what he made me.” The fire was returning. The cinders had lit a spark, and now, all he needed was a little kindling, and soon he would see the world alight again. “Had he been a dragon, I would have understood it. Then, this would have been a matter of him taking my glory. Portraying himself as the secret mastermind, to use me as he pleased. Ferruem of the Lakes and his weapon, Garath the Pesticide. That is what we would have been. No more.” Heart pounding in his ears, Garath leaned in, until his face was mere inches from the priests. “But he wasn’t a dragon. Not when he wrote it. He was a former. Like you. And formers are not made easily. But you—you are a former, like him. You must know. Why? Why would he have done this? What other explanation can there be?”

The expression on Fr Moonlight’s face melted, out of confusion, into gentle, awful pity. “After all this time, you still cannot imagine that someone would do something out of love for you?”