Sky of Tears

 Run, run, soldier boy

The sky is turning black

Mind your head and watch your feet

The hounds are at your back 

Vori walked.

Simply walking was not something the neophytes often had a chance to do. Between the drills, training, and slightly insane teachers, most of a neophytes' time was spent running from one late appointment to another.

So, when Vori has a chance to walk back to his room that night, no responsibilities, he relished in the stride. He didn’t think much of the lack of front guards. Believe it or not, the position wasn’t always kept up. Something about living on top of a frozen, desolate mountain in the northern end of creation kept out the salesman. So when Vori passed he empty posts by the doors, nothing seemed off.

Still lost in his thoughts from his one night off a season, he didn’t notice the empty hallways as he walked through. Even for a military order of monks, they were quiet. Contemplation, Master Raykus always said, was the window to your own soul. Know yourself to know your art.

Which meant a quiet, empty hallway didn’t raise the alarm bells it should have for Vori. In fact, for the first few hundred feat into the quiet monastery, nothing raised the alarms until he stumbled over the first corpse.

Hide, hide, soldier boy

The end is coming fast

Say your prayers and make your peace

This fight will be your last

Vori ran.

The body had been Master Raykus. The students at the monastery all learned the art called the Mirrored Mind, the ability to split your mind into pieces to think on several things at once. Vori did this, which allowed him to panic while he ran away from the body. Two more pieces of mind debated. One, Logic, knew who had killed Master Raykus.

"Two long cuts, perfectly parallel, accompanied by lightning burns. The trademark of-"

"No!" Screamed the shard called Compassion. "He didn’t do it, couldn’t have, not possible. He would never attack a fellow Brother."

"Look at the facts," Logic stated in the mental debate hall. "No one else could have."

Vori let them debate, Urgency and Anxiety taking over his body as he ran. He didn’t spare a glance at the other bodies. Couldn’t. Wouldn’t. He had one goal, the first thing all brothers had to do when the monastery was attacked. He had to get to the Cradle. Make sure it was safe.

It was not safe, even if Vori didn’t fully understand why the familiar figure looming over the cradle threatened him so.

"See?" Logic gloated. "I told you."

Crawl, crawl, soldier boy

Why do you bleed so red?

Take you sword and take your shield

Maybe you’re better dead

Vori stood.

At this moment, fully a dozen different shards held court in the burly half-orc’s mind. Each shouted out a different viewpoint, a reason as to why he did this or why it wasn’t him.

Standing over the cradle, Master Avaritus removed one of his swords from a fellow neophytes chest, and watched her lightning scorched corpse fall to the ground. Vori closed his eyes in denial, rage, and any other emotion he could use to block out the scene. When he closed them, he was somewhere else.

Vori looked over the warm, sunlit balcony that adorned the monasteries northern edge. He wondered, briefly, what magic had forced him there before looking over at the other two figures and realizing . He saw the younger man, a half orc so coated in layers of flat, slab-like muscle that he still looked squat despite standing a head taller than most men.

He saw the scarred face with the too-distant eyes, the grey eyes of an old man in a young body. Eyes that saw too much and wanted to close just for once. Vori saw himself, before looking away at the man his younger self was sparring with in this memory.

Junius Avaritus had always looked more like a heroic form in a painting than a real person. The long, aquiline nose, jaw sharp enough to cut a demons hide. The master was famously a distant man, often preferring to speak in koans than in normal words. Why he had taken the stout, direct half orc under his wing was the subject of the monasteries largest betting pool.

The two soldiers, for soldiers that both were, sat after a sparring match. Vori knew this memory well, knew that he had just learned how to fight using his whole body as a weapon. Vori knew the conversation that came next and tried to close his eyes, shut his ears, to not be reminded of-

Avaritus, murderer, traitor, and the closest thing Vori ever had to a father, spoke

“Vori” he said, and the young half orc rolled his eyes. He knew that tone meant thinking questions.
“Do you know” Avaritus continued “the most difficult step a man can take?”

Vori blinked and answered “Uphill?” Vori hated stupid questions like this. They were here to hunt demons and slay monsters, why all this storm-cursed philosophy.

“The most important step” Avaritus said, gazing out over the mountain range “is the next one. Always the next step. Each day we have here is a gift, not a right. To earn it we must struggle. Do you understand? It is not the first step, it is each step after. You remember, yes, what the most important words a man can say are?”

“I'll be better” Vori answered, still not understanding.

Die, die, soldier boy

Close your eyes and sleep

The war is done, the day is gone

Just let your mother weep

Vori returned to himself in a room filled with staring monks. He knew he’d been lost a while, as Avaritus was gone. In his place, the wizened form of Master Taevar stood and looked at Vori. The half orc stood motionless and staring, the tears flowing down his slab-like face.

“Vori” Master Taevar urged, obviously having been trying to reach the young man for a long time, “Vori, you must answer. The Cradle is empty, Who was with him? Who else took the Children?”

Vori only shook his head at the question. Words were beyond his shocked mind at this point. What could he say? How could he explain all the betrayal? How could he explain anything with that storm raging through his veins, the terror threatening to tear him apart.

“What do you mean, Vori? You don’t expect me to believe that...oh lords. Oh Lord of All, he didn’t. Vori, you must tell me he didn’t. Not all seven Children.”

Vori shook his head again, then opened his palm. There, for a brief second, the hand was visible, with a single knife cut across the palm. Then the hand burst into a rich, eldritch flame. Blood red, purple, and silver flames danced across the palm, and for a heartbeat a single figure danced among them.

A name rang through Vori's mind, in a voice he never heard before. Master Taevar stepped back in an understandable feat. Vori was the only pupil of Avaritus, the man who just slaughtered almost every neophyte and bonded almost all of the Seven Children of Damnation, the most powerful fiendish spirits the Order has ever claimed. And now that Pupil was standing here, apparently preparing to keep following the master that he loved so much.

Vori shook his head a third time “Avaritus betrayed us. I know, Master, that you expect me to do as he did. That you expect me to follow his footsteps and bring more darkness to this world” Vori pauses as Taevar nodded, one hand on his sword “Master Taevar, I promise you something, something I only now understand” Vori said, his posture changing to a resolute position.

 “I promise to do the most important thing I have ever done. I vow to do better”

Vori took his next step.

Why, why, soldier boy?

Why do you try to live?

What worth is in your broken soul?

What have you left to give?