Dry-skinned, feverish, and covered with festering sores, Xzadak Glah, Martyr of the Sword, lay in a rat-infested alley in the city of Copper Hills, and longingly waited for death. The sorcery concocted by the Council of Kings was certainly potent, of that there was no doubt. And surely, it must be acceptable to the Balance, as her orders had been given to her before the whole of the Matron Council. And yet... in the throes of her fever, she wondered. And doubted.
The current Speaker of the Council, the venerable Cax Kalu, had told her that the tendril-beast's appalling hygiene would ease the spread of plagues amongst them, even as Matron Yighaa had warned that this self-same loathing of water would like as not lead to her own infection. It was for that cause that she had been blessed as a Martyr. The fever and wasting disease were born of dark sorcery and teaming vermin, not divine judgement... but even so, she doubted.
Surely, spreading disease was not the Way of the Sword. Did not the Matrons teach that all should be give a chance to embrace its truth? How could these dry-skinned beasts do so, if they were infected and laid low by subterfuge, having never even had the chance to renounce their pagan heresy? Where was the Mercy that serves as the counterweight to Might? Were the whisperings of the priestesses of the coral temple in her home village true? Were the august Councils of the Basalt City merely using the Way to justify conquest? Surely, it could not be so; had she not herself witnessed the glorious emergence of the Sword Made Flesh within the City? Truly, the ancient corporal form of the Sword, in its majestic glory, was a sign of the Council's favor and adherence to the Way... was it not? There could be no truth in the vile blasphemies uttered by the heretic priestess hunted and executed in increasing numbers by the Wardens. Those had to be lies spread by vile mouth-breathing Pretenders. The Sword could not be bound against Itself. Balance cannot be made to serve, one can only serve It. The Councils did the bidding of the Sword. It could not possibly be otherwise! Yet still, wracked by fever and chewed by fleas, she doubted.
As she feebly batted away a louse the size of a small crab, the fever flared once more. In her mind, the gargantuan insect became the multi-bladed Form of the Sword, and she could not bring herself to resist Its condemnation of her. She had become a tool of Power, and had betrayed the Balance. The disease-ridden vermin crawled back onto her weakly wheezing form, and began to feed. Minutes later, when a sorcerous Sending of the Kailasan mages locked onto and then snuffed out the flickering remnants of her consciousness, it was a mercy.
Poll
