"Why should I tell you anything?" Peter said defiantly, clearly prepared to die.
Grant frowned. "Why?" he said, disbelievingly. "Why!? You would dare to ask such a ridiculous question, after all you've done! After all the deaths that you have caused in your path up to this point?"
"So? None of those deaths had anything to do with you. I owe you nothing and I have no regrets."
Grant chuckled. "You're right, you owe me nothing. But what of the child?"
"What child?" asked the man, genuinely unsure of who he referred to.
"The ogre child. The one that suffered in the name of your plan." Hearing this, the man's eyes fluttered, but this time he had no response, and Grant pushed.
"The child who was forced to feed on his own family. You didn't do a thing. You did not eliminate such a dangerous ogre within human territory, and you didn't spare the child of his agony. Not even the decency to put him out of his own misery."
Clearly the words weighed on the paladin, as his head hung low.
In a surprising moment of tenderness, he asked.
"How is the child?" he asked, and Grant responded, this time with a healthy amount of spite in his voice.
"Better, no thanks to you. He's recovering, but even now, he's not comfortable with the presence of others yet."
Though he seemed relieved by that, the paladin remained silent. "I will not speak."
Grant leaned forward, and said it calmly. "You'll tell me what I want, or the temple of Isis will suffer."
Peter grit his teeth. "Your power is nothing to the higher powers of the church."
"Perhaps, but I hardly doubt that'll matter if I only target the bottom level members of the church. The clergy, the followers, etc. How many do you think I can kill before I get caught?" Grant asked, with malice and cruelty laced into his words.
"You fiend!" said Peter through gritted teeth.
Grant shrugged. "I'm sure the people you planned to kill and did kill would say much the same of you."
Peter went silent at that statement, unable to provide a counterstatement to that.
"Look, all I want to know is why. Just tell me why, and you will be on your way."
Peter snorted, but seriously considered Grant's offer.
"Can you promise that once I'm gone, that you will not pursue this issue with the temple once I'm gone?" he hoarsely asked, and Grant jokingly waggled his pinky.
"Pinky promise. After all, I only did this all on a whim"
The paladin seemed skeptical, but he acquiesced nonetheless, for there was nothing more he could demand from the victor.
"Fine. Then..." Peter began his tale.
Peter had served the temple for many years, doing as he had felt right for many decades.
He had been raised by the temple since before he could remember.
Ever since he was young, Peter had heard soft whispers, whispers he would later find was Isis, the goddess, encouraging and watching over him. When the orphanage director was too busy to watch him, he would feel her warm gaze, her encouragement.
As a child, he grew up surrounded by warmth and love.
The temple was his family, everything in his life, something he too, wanted to be involved in.
He wanted to protect the temple, his family that had protected him.
When he grew older, and discovered his potential as a paladin, there was no other option. For them, for her, the goddess who was always there.
He would be it's guardian, to protect the next generation and ensure their safety, and to return the favor.
And so he strode forward, Isis' guardian, her great shield, the man who carried her blessings.
In spite of all the evil he had seen, the cruelty and violence, and weathering the sands of time, Peter stood tall.
None of these could shake his faith, for he was never alone, guided by the people around him, by the goddess herself, though not present, always there for him.
They were always external threats, dangers to the temple from the outside, enemies to strike down.
Peter had always known that there were undoubtedly corrupt people within the temple.
He was no fool, he knew the evils of men were everywhere, all encompassing.
But he was confident, sure that no mortal could usurp the authority of the great mother Isis.
Not as long as she was always there, always watching.
She was the light which shone upon them, filling them with warmth and love, guiding them to be the light of others, to hold out a hand for those who needed it.
A goddess so kind would never let evil go rampant.
That was what he had thought.
Peter had underestimated the corruption of the church however.
So little time he spent within the temple, busy out and about helping people, he had not realized how corrupt the church had become.
It was only by pure chance that he discovered the corruption.
Bam!
The sound of wood splintering was heard as the slavers turned in shock, seeing two guards brutally hit the walls.
A hulking, terrifying presence entered the room, as Peter scanned the room his very existence exuding power and dominance, for when Peter was not in the presence of the innocent, he was a rampaging beast, set to purge the evils of the world..
"What are you doing here!" Exclaimed one slaver. "You cannot be here! We have legally-"
"-I care little for your legalities when they cover such illegal crimes!" Scorned Peter, as he witnessed the slaves terrible condition.
True, slaves were legal, but there were limits to how you could treat slaves, safety conditions. Even criminal slaves had bare minimum conditions that were to be met.
Yet wherever he looked, he merely saw pain.
Beastmen, elves, humans dwarves. They all had that same vacant, lifeless looks. His heart overflowed with sympathy.
Kneeling down, Peter began to heal as many slaves as he could, as the warm love of Isis passed through his veins and into their bodies, as the slightest flicker of relief entered the empty eyes, as they found momentary relief.
"Protect them, I'm going in." commanded Peter, as his two apprentices followed into the room, nodding obediently.
Peter entered deeper into the hideout.
Each room contained an official of some sorts. Civil servants, guards, nobles, priests, all of them doing vile acts to make one churn, with each worse than the last.
With each and every room he entered, a sense of foreboding came over him, as Peter felt something.
A warning to turn back, as if something inside of him wanted him to turn back.
Peter did not know what it was and ignored it, merely feeling his will strengthen, determined to see it to the end.
It was the last room he was about to enter when he felt his hand shake.
He realized what it was.
Divine energy.
It was like it was warning him, begging him to turn back.
The voice, that had always whispered kind, warm words begged.
Begged him to tun back.
Why?
He hesitated for a moment. Should he?
Isis had never steered him wrong before.
Would she do so now?
...No.
But he knew Isis, perhaps better than any other, for Peter was one of her favored children whom she communed with countless times.
She thought his heart was too weak to see what was in this final room.
He thanked her, but Peter was firm.
His heart was strong enough.
Peter was sure.
...
He was wrong.
Seeing the final room was appalling.
Disgusting, with the things he saw there a cruel mix of torture, experimentation, and bordered on necromancy.
But that wasn't wat disgusted him.
It wasn't what hurt.
No, it was who was doing the crime.
It was who was on the table.
A child, one he knew.
Their body changed beyond all belief, experimented on to a horrid extent, to the point he could barely recognize the boy, behind the festering flesh and the aboriginal pieces of monster flesh growing out of him.
Only the face told Peter that he knew the boy.
Isaac, a child whom he knew from the orphanage, one he had seen during his visits there.
The once vivid and happy face had faded, replaced by the same empty look he had seen on all the other victims in the hall.
No perhaps it was worse. He knew this kid. He was his responsibility.
Isaac was not just a random person in need of help. He was family.
And the person torturing the child was a nun that he had also known fro the church. A nun he had never quite known the name of, silently blending in, inconspicuous, but he had seen her as trustworthy, reliable.
Kind even.
The look on her face wasn't kind. It was savage, excited, curious even.
But not regretful. Not kind. Not family.
Her face froze at the sight of Peter.
She stuttered, as she tried to look for an excuse.
"Lord Peter! I, uh, uh, uh, I can explain!" she shouted, throwing the saw in her hand away, as if to explain the crime before her.
For a second, Peter froze.
Unsure what to do, what to day. To see one of his own, fall to such degeneracy, to stoop so low.
And to see one of the people he had sworn to protect, one of the children, to be hurt by the corruption that HE had ignored.
His vision went red.
Peter pinned the nun to the ground and before she could react, started pummeling her with his shield.
Thud.
Thud
THUD
THUD
THUD
THUD!
Peter couldn't think in the moment, as the shield came down, again and again.
THe sound of blood pumping through his eardrums overwhelmed his senses, as he lost himself to the violence.
The nun's face slowly degraded into a pile of flesh, the healing grace imbued into the shield unable to keep up with the sheer urgency he beat her with the shield.
At some point he threw the shield aside and started using his hands, unable to stop himself.
""Lord Peter!""
""Lord Peter!"
It took the combined efforts of his two apprentices too drag him away from the long dead body of the nun.
What got him to stop wasn't them, but the feeble gasps coming from next to him.
The feeble gasp of a tormented soul.
Isaac, who had been empty a few seconds ago, but now his eyes looked alive.
The apprentices looked on in anguish, seeing the child like that.
The boy was looking at him with the same hopeful eyes he had always looked at him with.
"Brother Peter..." the boy murmured as Peter strode over to the boy, frantically using his blessing to heal the boy.
But it didn't work. The body was unwilling, exhausted byond all possibility of recovering.
The light dimmed from his eyes, as the soul moved on.
Peter could only watch on quietly as Isaac moved on.
"I want to be a paladin just like you one day! Then I can protect you!"
Peter's hand trembled as he read the reports.
He had never bothered investigating, believing that no matter the corruption, that Isis was watching, that sister Trenee could handle the corruption.
How ignorant he'd been, selfish even.
The corruption had spread farther than he had expected.
Not merely the minimum bribery and tax evasion he had expected.
No, it was so much worse .
Body experiments, slaughter, conspiring with dark sects, illegal slave trade, and even acts of necromancy.
Father RIchmond was perhaps the worst of them, He had been the greatest mastermind behind it all, having a hand in it all, and was becoming widely known behind closed doors. Using his power in the worst way, multiple priests and their wives had fallen to the disgusting pig's ways, as they were used and then thrown away under the pretense of being heretics.
His eyes fell upon the name Paul being one such example.
An entire family destroyed by him, leaving the orphaned son Galileo to suffer.
But one name amongst countless others, an endless list of crimes, things that he had allowed to happen in his ignorance.
No more, he thought as the paper crumbled in his fingers,
No more.
"Peter, it is so good to see you!" crooned the ugly toad that was RIchmond as he gloatingly met the paladin.
"How can I help you?" he asked.
His expression changed as he saw the inquisition behind Peter.
Peter ignored him.
"Chain the beast " He commanded and the inquisition obeyed, rushing forward.
"What are you doing! I am bishop Richmond! You don't have the authority to-"
"Muffle the beast, before it speaks more heresy."
One inquisitor nodded as he gagged the bishop. The beast's eyes bulged out as the poison soaked in.
Peter leaned in. "Festrin." he whispered, and the terrified look in the eyes grew, as the eyes staring back at him glowed with cold rage.
A poison they had made to tenderize flesh. Human flesh. According to the reports, it felt like ants eating through your flesh as your bones broke down into a fine powder, to be better consumed.
Festrin, one of the many horrid things being made under the bishops orders. If anyone were to know the true terror of the poison, it'd be him.
"Get him out of here!" commanded Peter.
From now on, Peter would purge the temple clean. No more would this filth stain these halls.
The executions were quick and brutal.
Each and every person he could connect to the corruption was dragged in before the public and killed, as Peter quietly watched.
The public cheered, and yet Peter found no joy.
Only regret that he had not done anything sooner.
That he had not been told sooner.
Why.
Why had she hidden this from him?
Peter earnestly asked, seeking answers from his Goddess.
The motherly voice no longer appeared, nor the kind assurances and warm words."
Only a sense of shame and self loathing filled him.
The last of the was the leader of this group, bishop Richmond himself.
the man looked less human then before, as the bones inside had dissolved, and the flesh softened more than ever before.
He barely looked alive, much less human.
Not even the crowd surrounding the event, could not believe this was the beastly RIchmond.
Before The executioner could presume his duties, Peter held up his hand, silencing the crowd, and stopping the ceremony.
The brief respite filled Richmond's eyes with hope, only to be filled with terror as he stepped forth.
"I will personally execute this heretic." he said calmly, as the shield manifested itself into reality.
Do it
Whispered the voice, and Peter complied readily.
The sound rang out through the city square with each resounding echo, for so great was the force, that even this soft flesh produced such a loud sound.
Richmond received a swift death, far swifter than he would've preferred, but Peter finished it relatively quickly.
There was only so long a crowd could bear the sight of such a thing before it became sickening.
The death of Bishop Richmond bought Peter no solace.
He had purged the worst part of the church, but he could still see the corruption.
Politicians and racist bigots wandered these church halls, amongst countless types of infections.
Bigots, who hid themselves well enough, planning evil things from the shadows, and politically motivated members of the order, too afraid to act drastically, too worried about covering their own hide.
Corrupt individuals who hadn't been connected to Richmond, who were not removed, due to politics.
Worst of all were the records.
Almost none of the records were fixed, none of the victims who had been falsely accused and denounced by the church had been corrected.
It would deface the church they said...
They're already dead, all we can do is do better in their name...
There are more important things to tend to...
Nearly a decade later they continued to say these false platitudes, while nothing was done.
Peter prayed, and begged the goddess for an explanation, for guidance, for something!
Yet there was no response, nothing.
Merely a quiet buzz.
The buzz of being alone.
A sense of anger crept into him, at the goddess who saw everything and did nothing.
And shame...
Shame...
That was it!
The goddess was ashamed!
Peter realized the truth at last.
Clearly, the goddess was ashamed and disappointed at what the church had become, the stagnant corruption. The failures of her children.
And him, who had turned away, never looking inwards, never seeing what had been going underneath his nose.
So she had turned away from them.
From him.
This was the problem.
The church had to be cleansed, by any means necessary.
Even if he had to die for it.
Peter had a plan.
Infiltrate the human supremacists, one of the major corruptions of the church currently.
It was far smaller than the corruption headed by the man known as Richmond, but it was still significant, having grown in the absence of the former, growing within that void. They had hidden themselves well.
Rather than forcefully dragging them out, Peter planned to expose them. in an action so outrageous that all parties would have to involve them, and punish them rightly so.
Maybe then Isis would speak to him again.
She would have to acknowledge him after this.
So he infiltrated them, pretending to be one of them.
They all sickened him, these filthy heretics who sullied the goddess' name with their foolish thoughts, and yet he put up with it, hiding his expression behind a friendly facade.
They were suspicious of him, but like all self-righteous fools, they were easily convinced as long as they believed you were truly for their cause.
It only took a year t infiltrate.
And when he suggested to enact riots and racial division in a far out outpost on the edge of the empire to act as a fuse to light the division in the empire?
They were all for it.
Heh. Fools.
There were forces far greater than they could imagine in the empire, beings with vested interests in keeping the empire peaceful, and who could easily squash him.
This wasn't a fuse, but a flare, meant to force them to act in the face of such a blatant sigal.
To force them to strike them down, to strike him down.
Peter was not ignorant of his significance.
He was one of the most famous paladins within the empire currently. Were he t die under such an extremist movement, there would be no ignoring such a faction. There would be no escape for them.
And Peter would pay for his failures.
His plan was a success at first.
It wasn't hard to get them to fall into their malicious desires, and to act as he needed, killing non humans and inciting violence.
He abhorred their actions, but he also knew that without him, they would do the very same thing.
Instead, he sought to gain the attention of greater forces within the empire.
Buying hundreds of slaves, sending a guard on a killing spree, orchestrating the death of the guild master's son, all of it done with the sole intention of attracting attention, and forcing them to intervene.
He was sure that the temple of Jorvus Mars already had an eye on him.
That didn't stop Peter from punishing himself, flogging himself in a pointless attempt to atone for his actions.
These actions were meaningless besides punishing himself, Peter knew, but this did not stop him from doing it.
In the decade since Richmond's execution, he had developed this habit, thinking of all those he failed.
All he had to do was keep going.
And soon it would be over.
He could rest then.
There was no stopping now. Not when they were this close.
He had planned meticulously, Peter believed.
Eyeing the flow of people entering the outpost carefully, making sure that nothing outside his expectation entered the outpost.
Yet ultimately something slipped through, something he had never been prepared for.
Grant.
He had never predicted the appearance of Grant.
"That's it. Now, either kill me, or hand me over to the guild master." Peter rasped, his story finally done.
He was ready, ready to finally die, to end it all.
The time of judgement was at hand.
Still, he was curious
What this monster, this hypocritical beast would react.
Would he be indifferent?
Angry, at the choices he had made. Would it all be yet another sick joke to him?
For a minute, a long minute, he was silent, and unreadable thanks to his mask.
It was an awkward minute.
"...What!?" Came an astonished statement, laced with annoyance.
"That's all this is? A god damned tamper tantrum!?" Grant shouted with disbelief.
"You little bastard!"
Slap!
"Why should I tell you anything?" Peter said defiantly, clearly prepared to die.
Grant frowned. "Why?" he said, disbelievingly. "Why!? You would dare to ask such a ridiculous question, after all you've done! After all the deaths that you have caused in your path up to this point?"
"So? None of those deaths had anything to do with you. I owe you nothing and I have no regrets."
Grant chuckled. "You're right, you owe me nothing. But what of the child?"
"What child?" asked the man, genuinely unsure of who he referred to.
"The ogre child. The one that suffered in the name of your plan." Hearing this, the man's eyes fluttered, but this time he had no response, and Grant pushed.
"The child who was forced to feed on his own family. You didn't do a thing. You did not eliminate such a dangerous ogre within human territory, and you didn't spare the child of his agony. Not even the decency to put him out of his own misery."
Clearly the words weighed on the paladin, as his head hung low.
In a surprising moment of tenderness, he asked.
"How is the child?" he asked, and Grant responded, this time with a healthy amount of spite in his voice.
"Better, no thanks to you. He's recovering, but even now, he's not comfortable with the presence of others yet."
Though he seemed relieved by that, the paladin remained silent. "I will not speak."
Grant leaned forward, and said it calmly. "You'll tell me what I want, or the temple of Isis will suffer."
Peter grit his teeth. "Your power is nothing to the higher powers of the church."
"Perhaps, but I hardly doubt that'll matter if I only target the bottom level members of the church. The clergy, the followers, etc. How many do you think I can kill before I get caught?" Grant asked, with malice and cruelty laced into his words.
"You fiend!" said Peter through gritted teeth.
Grant shrugged. "I'm sure the people you planned to kill and did kill would say much the same of you."
Peter went silent at that statement, unable to provide a counterstatement to that.
"Look, all I want to know is why. Just tell me why, and you will be on your way."
Peter snorted, but seriously considered Grant's offer.
"Can you promise that once I'm gone, that you will not pursue this issue with the temple once I'm gone?" he hoarsely asked, and Grant jokingly waggled his pinky.
"Pinky promise. After all, I only did this all on a whim"
The paladin seemed skeptical, but he acquiesced nonetheless, for there was nothing more he could demand from the victor.
"Fine. Then..." Peter began his tale.
Peter had served the temple for many years, doing as he had felt right for many decades.
He had been raised by the temple since before he could remember.
Ever since he was young, Peter had heard soft whispers, whispers he would later find was Isis, the goddess, encouraging and watching over him. When the orphanage director was too busy to watch him, he would feel her warm gaze, her encouragement.
As a child, he grew up surrounded by warmth and love.
The temple was his family, everything in his life, something he too, wanted to be involved in.
He wanted to protect the temple, his family that had protected him.
When he grew older, and discovered his potential as a paladin, there was no other option. For them, for her, the goddess who was always there.
He would be it's guardian, to protect the next generation and ensure their safety, and to return the favor.
And so he strode forward, Isis' guardian, her great shield, the man who carried her blessings.
In spite of all the evil he had seen, the cruelty and violence, and weathering the sands of time, Peter stood tall.
None of these could shake his faith, for he was never alone, guided by the people around him, by the goddess herself, though not present, always there for him.
They were always external threats, dangers to the temple from the outside, enemies to strike down.
Peter had always known that there were undoubtedly corrupt people within the temple.
He was no fool, he knew the evils of men were everywhere, all encompassing.
But he was confident, sure that no mortal could usurp the authority of the great mother Isis.
Not as long as she was always there, always watching.
She was the light which shone upon them, filling them with warmth and love, guiding them to be the light of others, to hold out a hand for those who needed it.
A goddess so kind would never let evil go rampant.
That was what he had thought.
Peter had underestimated the corruption of the church however.
So little time he spent within the temple, busy out and about helping people, he had not realized how corrupt the church had become.
It was only by pure chance that he discovered the corruption.
Bam!
The sound of wood splintering was heard as the slavers turned in shock, seeing two guards brutally hit the walls.
A hulking, terrifying presence entered the room, as Peter scanned the room his very existence exuding power and dominance, for when Peter was not in the presence of the innocent, he was a rampaging beast, set to purge the evils of the world..
"What are you doing here!" Exclaimed one slaver. "You cannot be here! We have legally-"
"-I care little for your legalities when they cover such illegal crimes!" Scorned Peter, as he witnessed the slaves terrible condition.
True, slaves were legal, but there were limits to how you could treat slaves, safety conditions. Even criminal slaves had bare minimum conditions that were to be met.
Yet wherever he looked, he merely saw pain.
Beastmen, elves, humans dwarves. They all had that same vacant, lifeless looks. His heart overflowed with sympathy.
Kneeling down, Peter began to heal as many slaves as he could, as the warm love of Isis passed through his veins and into their bodies, as the slightest flicker of relief entered the empty eyes, as they found momentary relief.
"Protect them, I'm going in." commanded Peter, as his two apprentices followed into the room, nodding obediently.
Peter entered deeper into the hideout.
Each room contained an official of some sorts. Civil servants, guards, nobles, priests, all of them doing vile acts to make one churn, with each worse than the last.
With each and every room he entered, a sense of foreboding came over him, as Peter felt something.
A warning to turn back, as if something inside of him wanted him to turn back.
Peter did not know what it was and ignored it, merely feeling his will strengthen, determined to see it to the end.
It was the last room he was about to enter when he felt his hand shake.
He realized what it was.
Divine energy.
It was like it was warning him, begging him to turn back.
The voice, that had always whispered kind, warm words begged.
Begged him to tun back.
Why?
He hesitated for a moment. Should he?
Isis had never steered him wrong before.
Would she do so now?
...No.
But he knew Isis, perhaps better than any other, for Peter was one of her favored children whom she communed with countless times.
She thought his heart was too weak to see what was in this final room.
He thanked her, but Peter was firm.
His heart was strong enough.
Peter was sure.
...
He was wrong.
Seeing the final room was appalling.
Disgusting, with the things he saw there a cruel mix of torture, experimentation, and bordered on necromancy.
But that wasn't wat disgusted him.
It wasn't what hurt.
No, it was who was doing the crime.
It was who was on the table.
A child, one he knew.
Their body changed beyond all belief, experimented on to a horrid extent, to the point he could barely recognize the boy, behind the festering flesh and the aboriginal pieces of monster flesh growing out of him.
Only the face told Peter that he knew the boy.
Isaac, a child whom he knew from the orphanage, one he had seen during his visits there.
The once vivid and happy face had faded, replaced by the same empty look he had seen on all the other victims in the hall.
No perhaps it was worse. He knew this kid. He was his responsibility.
Isaac was not just a random person in need of help. He was family.
And the person torturing the child was a nun that he had also known fro the church. A nun he had never quite known the name of, silently blending in, inconspicuous, but he had seen her as trustworthy, reliable.
Kind even.
The look on her face wasn't kind. It was savage, excited, curious even.
But not regretful. Not kind. Not family.
Her face froze at the sight of Peter.
She stuttered, as she tried to look for an excuse.
"Lord Peter! I, uh, uh, uh, I can explain!" she shouted, throwing the saw in her hand away, as if to explain the crime before her.
For a second, Peter froze.
Unsure what to do, what to day. To see one of his own, fall to such degeneracy, to stoop so low.
And to see one of the people he had sworn to protect, one of the children, to be hurt by the corruption that HE had ignored.
His vision went red.
Peter pinned the nun to the ground and before she could react, started pummeling her with his shield.
Thud.
Thud
THUD
THUD
THUD
THUD!
Peter couldn't think in the moment, as the shield came down, again and again.
THe sound of blood pumping through his eardrums overwhelmed his senses, as he lost himself to the violence.
The nun's face slowly degraded into a pile of flesh, the healing grace imbued into the shield unable to keep up with the sheer urgency he beat her with the shield.
At some point he threw the shield aside and started using his hands, unable to stop himself.
""Lord Peter!""
""Lord Peter!"
It took the combined efforts of his two apprentices too drag him away from the long dead body of the nun.
What got him to stop wasn't them, but the feeble gasps coming from next to him.
The feeble gasp of a tormented soul.
Isaac, who had been empty a few seconds ago, but now his eyes looked alive.
The apprentices looked on in anguish, seeing the child like that.
The boy was looking at him with the same hopeful eyes he had always looked at him with.
"Brother Peter..." the boy murmured as Peter strode over to the boy, frantically using his blessing to heal the boy.
But it didn't work. The body was unwilling, exhausted byond all possibility of recovering.
The light dimmed from his eyes, as the soul moved on.
Peter could only watch on quietly as Isaac moved on.
"I want to be a paladin just like you one day! Then I can protect you!"
Peter's hand trembled as he read the reports.
He had never bothered investigating, believing that no matter the corruption, that Isis was watching, that sister Trenee could handle the corruption.
How ignorant he'd been, selfish even.
The corruption had spread farther than he had expected.
Not merely the minimum bribery and tax evasion he had expected.
No, it was so much worse .
Body experiments, slaughter, conspiring with dark sects, illegal slave trade, and even acts of necromancy.
Father RIchmond was perhaps the worst of them, He had been the greatest mastermind behind it all, having a hand in it all, and was becoming widely known behind closed doors. Using his power in the worst way, multiple priests and their wives had fallen to the disgusting pig's ways, as they were used and then thrown away under the pretense of being heretics.
His eyes fell upon the name Paul being one such example.
An entire family destroyed by him, leaving the orphaned son Galileo to suffer.
But one name amongst countless others, an endless list of crimes, things that he had allowed to happen in his ignorance.
No more, he thought as the paper crumbled in his fingers,
No more.
"Peter, it is so good to see you!" crooned the ugly toad that was RIchmond as he gloatingly met the paladin.
"How can I help you?" he asked.
His expression changed as he saw the inquisition behind Peter.
Peter ignored him.
"Chain the beast " He commanded and the inquisition obeyed, rushing forward.
"What are you doing! I am bishop Richmond! You don't have the authority to-"
"Muffle the beast, before it speaks more heresy."
One inquisitor nodded as he gagged the bishop. The beast's eyes bulged out as the poison soaked in.
Peter leaned in. "Festrin." he whispered, and the terrified look in the eyes grew, as the eyes staring back at him glowed with cold rage.
A poison they had made to tenderize flesh. Human flesh. According to the reports, it felt like ants eating through your flesh as your bones broke down into a fine powder, to be better consumed.
Festrin, one of the many horrid things being made under the bishops orders. If anyone were to know the true terror of the poison, it'd be him.
"Get him out of here!" commanded Peter.
From now on, Peter would purge the temple clean. No more would this filth stain these halls.
The executions were quick and brutal.
Each and every person he could connect to the corruption was dragged in before the public and killed, as Peter quietly watched.
The public cheered, and yet Peter found no joy.
Only regret that he had not done anything sooner.
That he had not been told sooner.
Why.
Why had she hidden this from him?
Peter earnestly asked, seeking answers from his Goddess.
The motherly voice no longer appeared, nor the kind assurances and warm words."
Only a sense of shame and self loathing filled him.
The last of the was the leader of this group, bishop Richmond himself.
the man looked less human then before, as the bones inside had dissolved, and the flesh softened more than ever before.
He barely looked alive, much less human.
Not even the crowd surrounding the event, could not believe this was the beastly RIchmond.
Before The executioner could presume his duties, Peter held up his hand, silencing the crowd, and stopping the ceremony.
The brief respite filled Richmond's eyes with hope, only to be filled with terror as he stepped forth.
"I will personally execute this heretic." he said calmly, as the shield manifested itself into reality.
Do it
Whispered the voice, and Peter complied readily.
The sound rang out through the city square with each resounding echo, for so great was the force, that even this soft flesh produced such a loud sound.
Richmond received a swift death, far swifter than he would've preferred, but Peter finished it relatively quickly.
There was only so long a crowd could bear the sight of such a thing before it became sickening.
The death of Bishop Richmond bought Peter no solace.
He had purged the worst part of the church, but he could still see the corruption.
Politicians and racist bigots wandered these church halls, amongst countless types of infections.
Bigots, who hid themselves well enough, planning evil things from the shadows, and politically motivated members of the order, too afraid to act drastically, too worried about covering their own hide.
Corrupt individuals who hadn't been connected to Richmond, who were not removed, due to politics.
Worst of all were the records.
Almost none of the records were fixed, none of the victims who had been falsely accused and denounced by the church had been corrected.
It would deface the church they said...
They're already dead, all we can do is do better in their name...
There are more important things to tend to...
Nearly a decade later they continued to say these false platitudes, while nothing was done.
Peter prayed, and begged the goddess for an explanation, for guidance, for something!
Yet there was no response, nothing.
Merely a quiet buzz.
The buzz of being alone.
A sense of anger crept into him, at the goddess who saw everything and did nothing.
And shame...
Shame...
That was it!
The goddess was ashamed!
Peter realized the truth at last.
Clearly, the goddess was ashamed and disappointed at what the church had become, the stagnant corruption. The failures of her children.
And him, who had turned away, never looking inwards, never seeing what had been going underneath his nose.
So she had turned away from them.
From him.
This was the problem.
The church had to be cleansed, by any means necessary.
Even if he had to die for it.
Peter had a plan.
Infiltrate the human supremacists, one of the major corruptions of the church currently.
It was far smaller than the corruption headed by the man known as Richmond, but it was still significant, having grown in the absence of the former, growing within that void. They had hidden themselves well.
Rather than forcefully dragging them out, Peter planned to expose them. in an action so outrageous that all parties would have to involve them, and punish them rightly so.
Maybe then Isis would speak to him again.
She would have to acknowledge him after this.
So he infiltrated them, pretending to be one of them.
They all sickened him, these filthy heretics who sullied the goddess' name with their foolish thoughts, and yet he put up with it, hiding his expression behind a friendly facade.
They were suspicious of him, but like all self-righteous fools, they were easily convinced as long as they believed you were truly for their cause.
It only took a year t infiltrate.
And when he suggested to enact riots and racial division in a far out outpost on the edge of the empire to act as a fuse to light the division in the empire?
They were all for it.
Heh. Fools.
There were forces far greater than they could imagine in the empire, beings with vested interests in keeping the empire peaceful, and who could easily squash him.
This wasn't a fuse, but a flare, meant to force them to act in the face of such a blatant sigal.
To force them to strike them down, to strike him down.
Peter was not ignorant of his significance.
He was one of the most famous paladins within the empire currently. Were he t die under such an extremist movement, there would be no ignoring such a faction. There would be no escape for them.
And Peter would pay for his failures.
His plan was a success at first.
It wasn't hard to get them to fall into their malicious desires, and to act as he needed, killing non humans and inciting violence.
He abhorred their actions, but he also knew that without him, they would do the very same thing.
Instead, he sought to gain the attention of greater forces within the empire.
Buying hundreds of slaves, sending a guard on a killing spree, orchestrating the death of the guild master's son, all of it done with the sole intention of attracting attention, and forcing them to intervene.
He was sure that the temple of Jorvus Mars already had an eye on him.
That didn't stop Peter from punishing himself, flogging himself in a pointless attempt to atone for his actions.
These actions were meaningless besides punishing himself, Peter knew, but this did not stop him from doing it.
In the decade since Richmond's execution, he had developed this habit, thinking of all those he failed.
All he had to do was keep going.
And soon it would be over.
He could rest then.
There was no stopping now. Not when they were this close.
He had planned meticulously, Peter believed.
Eyeing the flow of people entering the outpost carefully, making sure that nothing outside his expectation entered the outpost.
Yet ultimately something slipped through, something he had never been prepared for.
Grant.
He had never predicted the appearance of Grant.
"That's it. Now, either kill me, or hand me over to the guild master." Peter rasped, his story finally done.
He was ready, ready to finally die, to end it all.
The time of judgement was at hand.
Still, he was curious
What this monster, this hypocritical beast would react.
Would he be indifferent?
Angry, at the choices he had made. Would it all be yet another sick joke to him?
For a minute, a long minute, he was silent, and unreadable thanks to his mask.
It was an awkward minute.
"...What!?" Came an astonished statement, laced with annoyance.
"That's all this is? A god damned tamper tantrum!?" Grant shouted with disbelief.
"You little bastard!"
Slap!
