The Enemy Within (WHF Witch Hunter Quest)

I want to get writing the next update (it's probably going to be a doozy) so let's call the vote there. Faith wins by a pretty substantial margin.

XXVIII - Father

"Blessed Sigmar, against whom no foe could stand, no rogue could hide, no army vanquish. Great Heldenhammer, gird my soul against the trials to come..."

You murmur the prayers by rote, Maria providing quiet accompaniment, as your mind treads internal paths as familiar as the estate itself. You've wondered many a-time what you would say should you return to your father's pyre, and tonight you'll have both podium and audience. Though the Edict shook your faith in the fallibility of men and their laws, the sights you endured at Bögenhafen reaffirmed why they exist.

The world is cruel and cold, unforgiving to mortal men. This Sigmar perceived, and so he fought to impose order on a chaotic universe. Laws, strictures, scripture and writ; all may debate individual rules, yet none gainsay the need for their existence. Morr's precepts are clear that the dead are to remain dead, for the good of all. You believe that your father, whatever he believes (believed, you remind yourself) and whatever he was, would agree.

The Cult of Sigmar holds that the soul consists of animus and anima, identity and energy. You witnessed the flames claim Pietr's body and the priests of Morr spoke prayers for his soul, but the events of today make it clear that some scrap of him remains. This wraith that your siblings speak of must therefore be the anima, the motive force and base instincts of the man-that-was, shorn of the reason and memories which would have kept it from striking at innocent servants and family.

(by that you refer to Maria and the estate staff, of course. You won't begrudge the shade taking a swipe at you for old time's sake)

The law requires that the dead remain in Morr's Garden, and your family's recent troubles prove its necessity. The shade, for you refuse to call it 'father,' is a tattered fragment of Pietr von Bruner rather than the man who loved you. Its existence violates the laws of men and gods, and your duty is clear here as elsewhere.

The shade clearly retains tattered remnants of your father's memories, and it's perverse nature ensures it will use them for evil. The creature will doubtlessly take your father's face, speak with his voice, and use his authority to weaken your resolve. You ready yourself for its faces, the ploys and rhetorical venom that the undead creature will surely employ. The law is clear, and as its enforcer your will must be likewise.

You won't kill Pietr von Bruner at dusk, because you already did so a decade prior. Tonight, Inquisitor von Bruner will merely prevent a shade from preying further upon the living. You make the sign of the hammer across your chest, readying your will for battle.

"By the Hammer."

-/-

Sunset has always been a spectacular thing here, the slow descent of Söll's chariot setting the sky ablaze and painting the southern mountains in shades of blue and purple. You used to spend hours watching them in your youth, your family at your side and cups of hot wine in your hands to ward away the evening chill. Now you stand alone on that self same lawn, your surviving relatives hiding behind the manor walls and peering out through curtained windows, scarcely able to appreciate the beauty that once moved your heart to tears.

You wait patiently as the sun sinks below the horizon and the world grows dark, shadows crawling across the lawn to swathe all in their smothering embrace. All, that is, save for the small patch of burned grass that marks the place where your father's pyre once stood. That stays illuminated in defiance of the gods and natural order, and as your attention sharpens so too does the light. It swells and grows like an unnatural dawn, rising by degrees until a shimmering pillar of sunlight rises from the ground in echo of that remembered pyre, and from between the unnatural flames a figure emerges.

It bears the shape of a man. The skin is black and crisp, like dry and rotting leaves stretched thin over cracked and boiled bones, and here and there runnels of molten fat hang like jewellery in golden chains. You can still see the ropes that held it in place, preventing it from fleeing as the flames rose higher, and when the charred stumps that once were feet touch the ground the grass withers and crawls away.

"Hello father," you whisper, and at the sound of your voice the dead man's head lifts to sniff the air like a hound at the hunt.

"Templar," it snarls, spitting the word through blackened teeth with a tongue fused to the palate, and with that single word it lunges for your throat.

Your pistol, ready in your hand since first the light started to grow, roars in answer. Mere lead and powder will do nothing to a ghost, and you had neither the time nor resources to source silver shot inscribed with prayers as your order might prefer to employ, but a few hours of prayerful contemplation sufficed to convey a blessing upon one singular round in your possession. The blessed round strikes the dead man straight between the eyes, snapping back its head in a spray of burning ichor, but what might slay a mortal outright is barely even enough to check the momentum of that charge and you are forced to raise your blade in defence.

The ghost strikes you with vast, unbelievable strength, a sledgehammer blow quite out of keeping with the ragged echo of muscle and bone it yet commands. Even with your sword raised and ready you are still sent sliding back across the ground, your ribs crying out in agony at the crushing strength of the hit, but though you grunt in pain and feel the breath leave your lungs you manage to remain upright. The spectre comes in again but this time you are ready, dropping your pistol into the grass and taking your blessed sword in two hands that you might have the strength to stand against the blow, setting your shoulders and locking your blade in place against the broken ruin of the spectre's fist.

For one long moment the two of you stand there, mortal strength against immortal malice, and then the pressure eases. The spectre has neither eyes to see nor ears to hear, yet as you struggle you could swear you see the moment when comprehension comes.

"...Markus," it hisses, the word rattling from the cavernous echo of its chest, "How is this…"

If you were a different man you might condemn your father's shade here, or perhaps plead with him for a way that you might make this right. Yet you came here in the name of faith and duty, and it is those principles that drive you now. "In Sigmar's name, I bid you depart and return to your rest. Morr's Garden awaits, and…"

The ghost snarls, flame spilling forth in a great wave from between those blackened teeth, and with a hasty grunt you are forced to break contact and put some distance between you. This will not, it seems, be resolved with peace and doctrine.


So be it.

You quell the tremor in your heart and draw your second sword from its sheath. Without the pure silver cladding and divine blessings of your first blade it will do nothing to the wraith, but just having the weight in your off hand makes the old routines come easier to your mind. You flow from one stance into the next, your twin swords questing for the echo of undying flesh, and the deadly dance begins.

Your father always was a skilled duelist, however, and what memories death has taken from him are easily replaced by monstrous strength and an ignorance of bodily limits. Back and forth the two of you go, blades flashing and ruined hands scything, and try though you might there is no opening to be found.

"That uniform…" the shade growls, mad fury creeping by degrees back across the remnants of its face, "A mad dog's coat, a tame killer's colours…"

"I am proud to wear it," you reply through gritted teeth, denying the accusation even as you strive to destroy the thing that makes it, "I have saved innocents and slain monsters, brought the guilty to account and the lost back to the righteous path. Though the road is murky and often strange, I walk it proud and unashamed."

You said the words without thinking, half expecting your heart to rebel at the notion, but to your faint shock there is nothing. You stand before your father's ghost in the colours of the men who killed him, and you do not feel ashamed. Your judgement may be flawed and your choices could well be mistakes, but your motives are pure, your ideals inviolate. You are a servant of your god and your fellow man, and you are proud to think of yourself as such.

The ghost snarls, animal fury overtaking it in the face of your defiance, and that is a weakness. It moves too aggressively, strikes too heedlessly, and with a flickering motion you sever its right arm at the elbow. Burning ichor spews forth in place of blood, coating you from head to toe and searing your flesh with its fury, but with a garbled shout you focus your will and force the feeling aside. The flames are not real and they cannot burn you; you think it must be thus, and so it is.

Burning Blood trait inflicts Ablaze! Markus spends a resolve point to negate it. Three remaining.

Breathing hard you return to your stance, only to realise a moment later that the ghost has not seized the advantage. Indeed, now that you look you can see it has stopped moving, remaining in place and staring at the severed remnant of its hand. A remnant that is even now beginning to unravel like old and rotten cloth, the trauma inflicted upon it too much for even this unquiet soul to ignore.

"Rest now, father," you say, pushing past the faint sting of grief in your heart, "Rest, and dream of better days."

"Markus…" the ghost rasps, turning its blind face towards you as the decay spreads to its chest, "You have to protect him. You have to protect your brother. Protect Rikard."

Then he is gone. It is over.


For a long moment all you can do is stand there and stare into space, whatever other feelings you might have had about laying your father to rest now replaced with absolute bafflement. Why Rikard? You are the oldest child and the most militant by far, so naturally you have a duty to protect your siblings from whatever might come to threaten them, but why did your father not mention Maria? You know he loved each of you equally, or at least you thought he did, so why only ask for protection for one? Is there some threat that only Rikard faces, some malady that has spared your sister to afflict only him? If you were a physician such a situation could well explain it, but you are a templar, not a doktor. What is it that your father felt so strongly about that he…

Comprehension comes in a single frozen moment, and before you can even put it into words your feet are carrying you back across the lawn towards the manor house. Maria opens the door as you approach, stepping out to greet you with a smile both sad and relieved upon her face, but whatever she spies in your face takes the words from her mouth before she can think to speak them.

"Where is he?" you say, your heart thundering in your chest.

"I…" Maria hesitates for a moment, as if to deny you the answer or perhaps to profess ignorance, but in the end she speaks. "Upstairs, in his studio."

You nod stiffly and step past her without a further word, ascending the grand staircase two steps at a time. The walls on both sides are covered in works of art, as are almost all bare stretches of wall throughout the estate and those of your social peers; you always found them pleasant to look upon, but it was your brother that took a real interest in art as a discipline. He started painting at a young age, and your father dragged the three of you along to more than one salon designed to show off the budding artist's newest works to those who might coo over them appropriately. When Rikard's interest lasted out the first year, father had the manor remodelled to turn one of the upper rooms into a professional studio for him, and the open doors await you with all the patient malice of a predator's maw.

You find Rikard inside, standing in front of a blank canvas with his arms folded behind his back, and your brother needs only a single look at your expression to realise what has happened.

"Ah," he murmurs softly, looking you over with a kind of weary contempt, "I suppose you figured it out, then?"

It is difficult to speak, your throat swollen tight with emotion, but you force the words through anyway. This is too important to let your heart goad you into silence.

"Father wasn't the witch," you say, each word a torment, "you were."

Rikard hums faintly at that, glancing sideways at one of the works he has propped up on a frame nearby. It is a landscape, the view from a nearby hillside at night, but between the shining points of the stars and moons he has traced long flowing patterns of pale blue and off white, one blossoming into the next in a strangely ordered harmony. It would look beautiful, you think, to someone who didn't understand the significance.

"Father always had an interest in the arcane and those who practiced it. He didn't have the Sight, but he still collected testimonials, paid handsomely for old journals," your brother says with a vague wave of his hand, "I don't think half of it was accurate, but enough was that he recognised what I was painting before even I did."

Your hands have curled into fists by now, clenched so tight it almost hurts, but you keep your voice level with an act of will. "Why did he not send you to the Colleges?"

"Do you know how many apprentices survive to become magisters, Markus?" Rikard shoots you a sideways glance, shaking his head, "Or of those that do, how many live to grow grey hair? It would have been safer to buy me a commission and send me off to war for the rest of my life, to say nothing of the mutation that seems to reliably befall those of any talent. Not that they call it that, of course… though perhaps they will, with the new edict to clear the way."

"You speak of the danger, of the risk?" You shake your head, unsure whether the disgust you feel is at your brother or the man who raised you. "What of duty, Rikard? What of faith?"

"And where would those have led me, Markus? If I had gone to the Colleges and become an obedient little servant?" Rikard smiles mirthlessly, "I'd have graduated by now, most likely. Would I have been sent to Ubersreik, do you think? Sent to take up arms against our liege lords, in service to a tyrant's paranoia?"

You grit your teeth and swallow your words, refusing to be baited. You have your own doubts about Karl-Franz's choices of late, your own criticisms that you would make of his policies, but this isn't the time to get drawn into a debate about the Emperor. That isn't what is important here.

"He went looking for more information, didn't he," you say instead, knowing by the hollow weight in your heart that you speak the truth, "A sanctioned wizard might have reported you both, so he went looking elsewhere. That is how he made contact with the witch."

"Etelka Herzen, yes," Rikard nods, folding his arms and frowning at the memory, "I'll not defend that choice, nor the quality of her character. She fed him with honeyed words and poured poison in his ear, convinced him that there was another way, one that was safer and would not see me lost to the family entirely. Doubtless she had some larger scheme in the works, and I like to imagine that father would have broken off the relationship once he realised what it was, but you ruined it before they could get that far. Father knew running was pointless; we'd be caught, and there was every chance the hunters would realise what I was. So he stayed to greet them, and made sure to cast a spell where they could see him. After that, well, they saw what they wanted to see."

"Wait," you interrupt, frowning in confusion, "You said he wasn't a witch. How did he cast a spell?"

"I said that he didn't have the Sight," Rikard corrects you with a thin and mirthless smile, "but you don't need to be able to perceive magic in order to shape it, you just need to have a soul. When a drunkard starts a fight, the red wind blows hot across his heart. When an old man feels Morr's hand upon his shoulder, the purple wind draws close. Even you, Markus, shape the winds of magic with your every thought and deed - even from the window, I saw the white wind respond to your thoughts when you fought our father. Let me guess - you were thinking of faith and duty, the proper order of the world?"

"What are you saying?" You have no idea if Rikard is telling the truth or not, for your education in matters magical was always more concerned with the signs needed to hunt it down or face it on a battlefield.

"I'm saying, Markus, that if you knew the right words and the proper gestures to use, you could have cast a spell as well as any magister," Rikard chuckles bleakly, then pauses for a moment in thought. "Well, not exactly. There are reasons the Colleges don't try and educate everyone, after all. It's… ah, how to explain…"

Your brother looks around for a moment, then nods and crosses the room to a small desk piled high with pots of paint. He opens a drawer and draws out an elegant dueling pistol from within, and though you tense with sudden suspicion he does not point it at anything, instead holding it up in demonstration.

"To cast a spell without being able to perceive the Winds of Magic is rather like loading and firing this gun, if first you donned a blindfold and a set of thick woolen mittens," Rikard says, nodding in satisfaction at his own explanation as he feeds powder into the barrel and draws a small bullet from a pouch on his belt, "Physically possible, provided someone had explained to you what a gun was and what motions it would require to load, but far more dangerous, to you and anyone you might accidentally point it towards."

"Even if I accept you are correct, this isn't a question of technicalities, Rikard," you say tersely, painfully aware that your brother hasn't put down the pistol, that there is a rapier propped up by the edge of the desk, "You are a spellcaster. You must go to the Colleges."

"No," Rikard says simply, and despite yourself you cannot restrain a snarl.

"Damn it, Rikard, it isn't a choice!" you roar, taking a step forward and letting your hand go to the hilt of your sword, "I can offer amnesty for past deeds if need be, but you know better than most what the penalty is for unsanctioned witchcraft!"

"Oh, but it is. A choice, I mean," Rikard says, an odd little smile on his face now as he looks at you, "I could learn to cast spells, but I haven't. Not since father died, at any rate. I perceive more of the world than most do, but aside from my paintings that awareness changes nothing about my life. I am neither a spellcaster nor a witch."

"You know the law doesn't see it that way," you say, fighting down the bleak surge of despair that threatens to consume you, because you can see how this is going to go. You can see what Rikard is working himself up to.

"The law is ink on paper, Markus, and justice is blind; why else would Verena hide her eyes?" Rikard says softly, and you can hear the anger in his voice, the bitter contempt that lurks behind his placid expression. He knows full well how poorly such an argument would hold up in front of any court you might happen to find. "What matters is how it is enforced, and here you are, an agent of the church and state charged with doing just that. So tell me, brother mine. You've heard my argument, and you know my answer. What is yours?"

Article:

Choose One:

[ ] Kill your Brother
Rikard hates you too much to listen to any argument, and will resist any attempt to arrest him with lethal force. You can't let him go, and try though you might, you cannot capture him alive. His death is, at least, kinder than your father's.

[ ] Turn a Blind Eye
Walk away, and hope that your brother is telling the truth. If this ever comes to light your peers may well understand, may even sympathise, but they will not pardon you. You will burn like your father did, for the Templars cannot be seen to be above the laws that they enforce.