Completed Crime and punishment

[Leo Varniak]

Fall 16, 512 AV The writing was coming back to him. He hadn't composed anything significant since his short essays as a teenager, but life had a way of teaching you how to spin a tale if it was a true one. No sooner had he completed the first section of his opus, he itched to begin the second. The feeling could not be denied for long, for all that the story would only get darker and more sinister as it went on. It made no difference to him. The very act of putting it down on paper felt like a long awaited release from it all. And so, a mere few nights after the first installment, he sat down once more and began with renewed strength. Those were grim years he was about to narrate. - - - - - - - - Fire stands out among the four elements in that it has no permanence. Earth, water and even air, once brought into the picture are never going to leave it barring any transformation of an external nature. Fire is not as easily confined into reality. Where does it hide when it's not burning? Through which mystical door does it enter our world when summoned? Where does it go when it burns out? Fire is remarkably efficient: it does what it must, and departs. People are afraid of fire because it sees them, unseen. It creeps into their homes and embraces them till their inevitable collapse. It is ever sleeping, but every once a while it rises and reminds you why it is the prince among the forces of nature. The flames that day were much like that. They did what they had come for, turned their backs and left me alone with the wind whispering through the carcass of my childhood. The house looked like a blackened ribcage. I remember being surprised at being able to see through the building and at the neighboring structures. They had been no normal flames, either (assuming there is such a thing as a normal flame); Syliras does not usually burn so easily. Built out of solid rock, it was made to last. The Dyres know that much, if nothing else. This certainly helped contain the fire, but the total destruction I caused that day should have warranted an investigation. None was ever conducted. Everyone dismissed it as an incident if they were feeling neutral, a tragedy when in a bout of sympathy, and carelessness at all other times. A boy had survived, too old for an orphanage, too young to know what to do with his life. There were a few offers being tossed my way, an apprenticeship or two being promised but with no true intention of following through. Merely acquaintances seeking to keep face in the eyes of the dead. I inspired little pity and even less compassion: a dark-faced boy, strange and taciturn. Rumors abounded that I liked to play with fire. From there it was only a matter of time before a general consensus was reached that either I had sparked the fire through an act of carelessness, or I was an unlucky child somehow cursed by the gods. No-one in their right mind would let such a kid into their home. For a time, the remains of my house served me as shelter from the rain and the dark. I would sit against the one pillar that had survived the fire and sleep there in the debris. Eventually the city repossessed the area to rebuild - the natural flow of time wherein life takes root upon the leaves of death. Even the ghost of who I had been was gone. I had no-one and nowhere to go. Alone and lost, seasons flashed before me like those picture books for children I once saw, where the same scene is drawn in sequence and gives the impression of animation if you turn the pages fast enough. I turned into yet another street urchin in a city where crime was dealt with harshly. I found that begging did not strike my chords - pride was ever my downfall - nor those of my potential patrons. Begging is a subtle artform, combining sophisticated acting, persuasion technique and the right physique. I had none of those. My face simply was no more conducive to begging on the street than it had won me employers and respectable jobs. What I did have that most kids didn't, however, was magic at my beck and call. It was a while before I used it a second time: I was terribly afraid that I might fail to control it just like the first time, and that it would consume me like it had Allistir Varniak. As my options narrowed, however, urgency overrode my unease and wielding my reimancy once more. We can shave our souls, which are fire and water and earth and air. The four humors, as they call them - blood, phlegm, bile and melancholy - which in turn reflect our personalities, are they not the proof that we ARE the elements? Reimancy is the art of giving substance to the four humors of the soul, making ourselves into principles of the world. It is no surprise to any student of philosophy that the self and the world are one. Think like fire and you will leak fire in your wake. Mediocre men are, without exception, mediocre reimancers. I do not mean to devolve into a sterile treatise on magic - indeed, I could wax pages on how Res (ancient tongue - the thing, the raw, the undivided, that which has not undergone separation) is formed as a secretion of the soul. I just want you to understand, if you do not practice the art yourself, how a reimancer does not use the elements: he becomes the elements. And there is always a market for such skills, much as I would rather not make a trade of them. An empty stomach is a remarkably weak position to negotiate in. I had no choice in the matter. Reimancy gave me food and shelter for the next few years, especially taking on jobs seen as unpleasant, or meant for children. I was a magical chimney sweeper as the need arose; I disposed of garbage that was unsafe or impractical to move around; I even burned fields outside the city where brave pioneers wished to claim farmlands from the wilderness. All this I did, with no small risk to myself and my health, and in return I was able to keep myself alive day after day and claim a rathole to call my own. It was, perhaps, the very first thing I owned that I had conquered with the sweat of my brow. And once I had it, my base of operations as it were, I started making plans for the future. The way I saw myself at the time, and indeed the way I saw myself through the greater part of my life, was as an embodiment of retribution. As I promised, I write down the good and the bad alike, neutral in my chronicling. You may remember those lists I mentioned before; in my newfound freedom, I made more and more of them. I played advocate and prosecution, weighing the sins of my unwitting defendants as I gathered proof and evidence, and deciding what punishment would fit the severity of their crimes. Should a man who beats his wife receive a harsher judgment than he who beats a stranger? Is larceny equally bad in the day and at night? After how many offenses does vengeance become justifiable? That kind of questions, which no doubted riddled the minds of legislators throughout history, tormented my spirit as a teenager. If you think me sick or frightening for it, then perhaps you should stop reading, for I eventually crossed the line between theory and practice. I had magic, the great equalizer. With magic, a scrawny kid can take on a big strong man. I could do it. With no physical impediment to stop me, no mitigating influence in my life to persuade me otherwise, and no other distraction from the harshness of my existence, punishing the wicked was the only form of release I knew. Nor was I stupid. I knew what I could and could not get away with. I was and still am a planner. Only an idiot believes the stereotype of the crazed Ivak followers constantly out of control. It is the other way around. We release in very short bursts what we accumulate over a long time. We can release for the better, or for the worse: I released for myself, and none other. - - - - - - - - Leo took a short break, pacing across the room to rest his eyes and hands. He wondered if these words would scare away many a potential follower or sympathizer. Was he supposed to sugarcoat the essence of who he was? Did he have to omit the darker aspects of his life, the ones that made him seem not unlike some of his enemies? His doubt was short-lived. The truth and nothing but the truth: let the fire burn through all the lies. He sat back at the table and dipped his quill into the inkpot. His letters ran irregular across the page, bent ever so slightly in their march like steam rising from the ashes of his thoughts. - - - - - - - - Fear and disgust are the reactions I am expecting of you. You would do well to be afraid, very afraid. The world is a scary place, and fear is nothing but the answer of a rational mind. Do keep in mind, however, for what it may be worth, I truly believed I was doing the world a favor. The targets I picked had committed serious crimes that the Knights could not or would not acknowledge, either for lack of formal proof or because the person in question had ties to this or that family and scandals were seen as undesirable. In the beginning, I never killed. I scared them very much, appearing in front of them in the dead of the night, burning them and then retreating in the darkness. I never assaulted them in the city proper, where the Knights were ever vigilant. Instead, I constructed elaborate excuses for them to leave the safety of the walls, and ambushed them on the road. Sometimes the plan required entire seasons to finally come to fruition. I would savor the wait for that short, sweet moment of letting go. The energies a boy my age would spend wooing a girl and finally bedding her were the energies I spent burning the wicked. With each assault I grew bolder. In the end, I started killing them, at the same time reducing the frequency of my activity. They were always violent men - seldom women - whose crimes were well-documented on the street. Killing was also a necessity due to the constant nature of my modus operandi. There were only so many reimancers in Syliras, and you always stand out more than you think. Does this make me a serial killer? Probably. The final tally rests at seven. For the most part I still think most of them were better off dead. I do regret the narrow scope of my thinking, however. I was not changing the world like I thought at the time. I was just sinking myself into an abyss without end. At some point I stopped. I killed the last one almost by accident, within the city walls. He was yet another abuser of his wife - what is it with all these men treating their wives like property? Does the mark of Cheva give a man such rights? I broke into the house and got into the fight with the man. I had always planned things through with the utmost care, but this time I rushed blindly into danger. It ended with myself wounded, and him dead and burned. But contrary to my expectations, when I turned to face his wife there was no trace of gratitude in her eyes. It shocked me to see her face burning with unadulterated grief and rage. I had always assumed that the victim could not help but hate her molester. I was not expecting this love that made absolutely no sense to me. Love your captor? Hate your savior? Why was the world walking on its head all of a sudden? I watched, transfixed, as she screamed at me. I wondered if she was crazy, or if I was. Maybe we both were. She said she was going to call the Knights on me and tried to leave, running away from me like she never had from her husband. I caught her by the sleeve of her dress, trying to get her to reason. I had no ill intent toward her - this I swear on my immortal soul and Ivak's name. I never wished her any harm. I would have fled the city had she ratted me out to the Knights, but I could not bear to let it end like this without even understanding her reasons. She tripped and fell, hitting her head on hard stone. Suddenly her blood was everywhere but inside her. She died and I never even knew her name. I have since caused countless deaths either directly or as a far-reaching consequence of my actions; but no sin has been greater than this. I left with a blank mask of confusion on my face. Somehow, I managed to retreat to my so-called home. I stared at the wall that whole night and the morning after. If the Knights had come right there and then, I would have asked them to finish me on the spot. I think they would have obliged, but they never came and never knew. The kid who believed himself a god of justice died on that day. There was no need to carry out a sentence. - - - - - - - - Leo gazed outside. Sondra knew, most likely. His greatest sin would accompany her as long as she lived. Not a gift he would have wanted to bestow on someone who, when all was said and done, had believed in him from the start. 'If this is known in Syliras, will I be put to trial for it?' He leaned back in his chair and sat very still for a long time. Everything carried consequences. He couldn't mix and choose in this regard. He would have to take it all, come what may. It would take courage to admit that he was no hero. He could say all he wanted, that he had been just a kid trying to cope with the violent feelings running in his veins through divine power. It didn't change the facts.

[Leo Varniak]

He sat in front of his writing for half a bell or more, uncertain as to what to write next. There was pain to be found in brutal honesty, but that had already faded after a chime or two. Right now what he wanted above everything else was to convey the whole thing in the most effective way. He could imagine by now that if someone made it past this section without dropping the book in disgust, chances were they had the breadth of views it took to understand him, Ivak and the Azenth. Yes, Ivak. The god would enter the picture once more, but not just yet. The tale had just begun. - - - - - - - - I could tell you I wanted to die, but obviously that did not happen. As they say, if there's a will, there's a way. If I truly had wanted to inflict the final punishment on myself, I would have found that way. I was done killing people in such a manner, but my regret was due to the supreme collateral damage I had caused, not something born out of principle. So I did not die. What I did instead was disappear, more or less, from the public scene. I was seldom seen around, even though I was still there, breathing and watching. After a season, it became clear to me I would get away with that last death; it is, after all, much harder to catch a murderer bearing no relation to the victim. He did not share my blood, he owed me no money, we had never been seen arguing in public. He was, by all means, a stranger. It might have been different if I had stolen something from that house and tried to get rid of it. As it was, I remained an upstanding citizen with a big secret. How long did that last? Several years of which I am not proud in the least. Some people drown their sorrows in the drink, but the very thought of doing so offends me and brings back memories of Allistir Varniak returning from the inn, staggering on his legs with hands itching to become fists. I kept a low profile, only did odd jobs to ensure my immediate survival, and was otherwise lost in a sea of helplessness. I had accomplished nothing. I was nothing and less than nothing. The few individuals I happened to meet over that period pulled back from me in disdain. I was a ball of resentment, burning too low to pose true danger, but never amounting to anything other than pitiful smoke. Yet strange events began to transpire around me, even though I was too blind to piece them together in the correct order. You probably would not believe me if I told you that the goddess Akajia appeared in front of me and others in the forests near Syliras, offering gifts of dubious worth to those who would take me. I assure you this is the truth - why would I lie over it? Stranger things have crossed my path. When faced with a vision of a goddess, furthering her agenda in such a shameless way in my eyes, and those who had gathered around her accepting those double-edged presents like so many fools, I could not help but intervene. I shaped a ball of fire and threw it at the dark goddess. Yes, your eyes did not deceive you just now. A young man of twenty-two springs, angry at the world, shoots a fireball at the goddess of shadows. Oh, she was certainly beautiful to behold. They all are because they can be what they want. But I thought I knew better and attacked her. The end result was not very flattering in itself as I was largely ignored by Akajia, who merely unraveled my spell like an innocent firecracker. What I did do, however, was break her momentum. Whatever plan she had in mind never came to fruition, and to me, then and there, it felt like a victory. Now, three years later, I actually wonder. I stopped something, but what was it? Everything was so crystal clear to me back then, and so muddied now. Could it be that my actions actually ended up hurting those whose simple minds I wished to protect? Was Akajia perhaps trying to help them in her roundabout shadowy ways? I have learned that the gods have much more complex personas than I will ever be able to grap. I am afraid that I will never know the answer. Such is the dilemma of he who would change things: oftentimes there is no knowing what could have been and wasn't. Ethics is a great and terrible branch of our philosophy. How should we act? What constitutes a crime, how should it be punished and by whom? I used to know, and I have forgot. I used to believe in absolutes, in a lightweight set of precepts and moral laws covering every situation in life. Now, however, the blanket always comes up short. At times, I am at a loss, especially around the acts of the gods. The gods. I have had plenty of experience with them. I have dedicated my life to one of them. You may have glimpsed one in a vision once in a lifetime - that is not all that rare in these troubled times. Just because they burned your eyes once, you must not make the mistake of thinking you know them. Words fail me in trying to describe them, but they are dual creatures in ways we cannot imagine. Ivak is not merely fire, not any more than Leth is just a chunk of rock floating in the sky. They are people and they embody their domain as non-people, all at once. And if you gaze at their true selves, it is as if your left eye saw one aspect of them and the right one another. They feel as we do, and more. There are feelings in their hearts that we have no words for, much like an eagle sees worlds more vast than any man's. As they stretch far in breadth, so do they in height. Because their heads are often beyond the clouds, they do not always remember we are not ants. They are larger than life, and those who follow them in true faith also desire to be larger than life. I certainly do. And yet they are just as weak as people are, in some regards. Their desires are, sometimes, all too human. They know the bitter sting of betrayal. Their tears can carve valleys into mountains. To have one as your patron - even to have one as your enemy - is the greatest accomplishment for any man. And make no mistake there, they will "use" you if you would put it in such terms. We are, after all, pawns in their incomparable games. Looking at it from a different side, though, we were already born pawns. I challenge you, the reader, to prove your state of freedom. You will not be able to, for to be alive means to serve. We are slaves to our fellow man, to our own base desires, to the circumstances around us. We are slaves to our addictions, to the handful of cubic feet in which we live, to the trade we ply, to the road we walk, to the starry sky above us. How much sweeter is it, then, to be willing servants to those who can truly shape the world? Is it truly slavery when we can become the pivot of a better future, one that reflects our vision? The gods can't do it without us. We can't do it at all without them. We must realize what we are, and our place as cogs of the marvelous machine called the world. We have a chance to make a difference here. I understand it now, and I hope you can get to see this as well, without going through the same mistakes as I did. There is greatness in every one of us. Yes, maybe we are ants under the night sky, but ants are not without their own splendor. Why is it that an ant can lift a hundred times its weight and a man can't? Perhaps we should revise our notions of what makes a 'superior being'. I, too, want to lift one hundred times my weight. - - - - - - - - Leo put down the quill, realizing he couldn't put it in better words than the ones he had just consigned to paper. He allowed himself to smile a little and penned a short afterword to the chapter. Hopefully his readers had gotten a glimpse of the nature both sinister and incredibly liberating of fire. This was precisely his aim with this book. - - - - - - - - As you can see, my first encounter with the divine was anything but enlightening. Faced with the unknown, it was all I could do to be afraid and launch a vain attempt at destroying it. That in time I learned better ways should be proof that it is never too late to change your views. We learn as we live, and we live as we learn: once either one stops, so does the other, and no sooner. That strange vision of the goddess did mark the end of that period in my life, however. The stars were aligning for me, and for all that I did not want to be found, I never had a chance to begin with. I apologize for making you wait this far, but I needed you to paint the bottom of my soul. I needed you to make it through all the dirty and the uncanny and the twisted. There are also much power and catharsis, enlightenment and epiphany to be found in this tale - the tale of Ivak's liberation, which I am now about to relate, if my words will sustain me. A grand story often has the humblest of beginnings, and this one is no exceptions. It began, strangely enough, with a letter. A letter from my real father, Alvias Zaital. - - - - - - - - But this was a story for another night, Leo decided. He cleaned his writing utensils, cast a last gaze at the half-written page, and snuffed out his candle feeling that he had somehow sailed past the blackest storm.

[Gossamer]

Character: Leo Varniak

Experience: Writing +5, Psychology +3, Philosphy +2

Lore: Writing: Piecing together the past in an organized manner on paper. Writing: Crafting a chronicle, Writing: Writing a Biography, Reimancy: The nature of fire. Self-Awareness: What being an orphan means. Self-Awareness: Trapped in the awkward place between boy and man. Self-Awareness: Pride is prominent within me. Self-Awareness: Understanding the underlying diplomacy as to whats going on between offers to assist and the reality of the assistance after a family’s demise. Self-Awareness: Using Reimancy to make a living as a child. Self-Awareness: Food is a strong motivator to stave off starvation. Writing: Anticipating a readers’s reaction. Writing: Advising a reader on how to react, Self-Awareness: Causing death even accidentally. Self-Awareness: Realization of one’s greatest Sin and know knows about it (Sondra). Self-Awareness: Being in so much mental pain death would be a relief. Akajia: What she looks like. Akajia: Her ability to ignore mortals who displease her. Akajia: Thwarting a Goddess’ plans, Religion: Understanding The Gods cannot live without us. Religion: The Gods have weaknesses too. They are not unlike people.


Additional Note: Lovely read. I keep giving you psychology because you delve a great deal into the psychology of yourself, your gods, and people in general.