4. Chapter 4

Chapter 4

" Y ou want me to go through the trials tonight ?"

Father Lewis looked at Zen sternly. "Was it not you who decided to remain active so late?"

The harsh reprimand Zen had expected hadn't come, but instead, Father Lewis had brought him back to the temple, dragged him into his chambers like earlier, and rather than strike or punish him, he'd told him it was not yet time for bed.

Zen was even more exhausted than he'd been after cleaning the temple all day, feeling the thrill of the fight between those ghouls and his potential new friends draining from his body and leaving him further fatigued. He'd failed the trials half a dozen times before, but if he succeeded and became a full priest, he could leave with those adventurers without having to lie.

"I am ready, Father," Zen said. "I wish to complete the trials and ascend as I've been tasked."

"Then come with me."

It was late enough now that there were no sneaking acolytes in any corners. Everything was quiet, empty, and dark save a few candles. Normally, Zen would have felt relief from that, not having to shield his eyes from bright lights or the sun, but the sound of his and Father Lewis's footsteps were like a thunderous mantra of uncertainty, echoing down the corridors and off the high ceilings once they reached the chapel.

Every other time Zen had gone through this it had been early morning, and the bustle of others was an almost welcome distraction from what he would face. Now, when Father Lewis stepped aside, all that remained was Zen and the great mirror before the stained-glass window of the creation of the universe.

The window was in three panels. The first showed the Dark Goddess reigning fire, blood, and chaos down upon the earth. She was a beautiful but mad looking dark elf, every part of her, including her skin and hair, a deep black, save her teeth and the whites of her eyes.

The middle panel showed the Twilight God, a blank-faced and sexless figure with ears like a high elf, accepting the Dark Goddess' chaos into one part of its panel and the holy light of the Sun God in the other as a point of balance between them.

The last panel was for the Sun God, for he had come last, always shown as an armored human warrior coming to the world's rescue after chaos had wreaked havoc. The Twilight God was too accepting, embracing magic and knowledge over peace and prosperity. The Lord of Law was the one who brought order where the other two might have let the world burn.

The true alter at the end of the chapel, however, was for the mirror in place of any pedestal. Belief and real power, it was said, came from seeing oneself as one truly was.

Zen hated that mirror, gilded in silver and twice as tall or wide as he was. He rarely if ever looked at himself, too used to others turning their gazes away that he didn't know how to see his own face and find it pleasant. The bluish tint to his skin, the silver sheen of his eyes, the whiteness of his long hair—they were all so stark, so different from everyone else.

Atop three small steps, the mirror rested upon a tiled silver sunburst on the floor, and it was there that Zen knelt, face to face with himself, with the three gods looking down on him from their tall windowpanes and Father Lewis watching from behind.

Zen couldn't see the priest in the mirror, but he felt his presence and soon heard his voice.

"Remember, you must pass all three trials to ascend. Then you will be awarded your birthright. Close your eyes, my son."

Zen did so, and as Father Lewis began to chant, even through Zen's eyelids he saw the light starting to emanate from the tiles beneath him, warm and enveloping and then, suddenly, everywhere at once.

Zen was in the market with the sky overcast. Was it morning? He didn't remember robbing Jorgen yet today, but the streets seemed thinly populated as if past the midday meal.

Perhaps he should—

A figure slammed into Zen and nearly sent him sprawling. As he struggled to right himself, he saw the young high elf Jax running away as if afraid for his life. Then Zen saw why. Jax held an apple and had collided with Zen trying to get away from one of the merchants, who passed Zen hurriedly in his pursuit, looking livid.

Zen spun around for signs of any guards, but there were none. With no other choice, he gave chase, tension tightening in his gut that pushed him onward, even if the merchant was large and furious and screaming for Jax to stop.

They disappeared down an alley, and Zen caught up to them just as the merchant was backing Jax into a dead-end.

"By the authority of the Sun God, stop!" Zen cried.

The merchant whirled, and then laughed. "By whose authority?"

Zen looked at himself, but he wasn't in his robes.

He never left the temple without his robes…

"Then… by decency's sake, please! Jax is only a boy."

"And a criminal. What else to be expected of an elf?" The merchant sneered, turning halfway back to Jax, which was when Zen noticed the dagger in the man's grasp. "They can't make decent livings, so they turn their children into beggars and thieves. Better we have one less." He gripped the dagger tighter and moved upon the trembling boy.

"Stop!" Zen cried again. His robes were gone, but his hands were his own, his skin still ashen blue, yet the man didn't seem to have noticed or surely he would have turned the dagger on him first. "I won't let you harm him. Now stop or I will call the guard."

The man whirled on Zen again, this time charging at him and bringing the dagger close against Zen's throat. He was so massive, there wasn't room for Jax to get by, left standing there, shaking, as the apple finally dropped from his fingers.

"I'll kill you too! You think I care? Now leave ." The merchant shoved Zen into the wall and returned to advance upon the boy.

"Run!" Zen seized the merchant's arm, fighting with all his strength to keep the dagger from descending. He rammed a knee up into the man's hip, hoping to unbalance him and give Jax room to escape, but while the merchant briefly buckled, he recovered and barreled into Zen again, pinning him to the wall.

Jax fled, and Zen soon felt why there was enough space this time, because the merchant was pressed up against him—with the dagger pierced into Zen's chest.

At least Jax was safe.

Light flashed, and Zen thought surely the Sun God had him, but when it faded, he stood in the tavern.

Zen had his robes on now, and the tavern was as rowdy as ever, each table full of cheering, chattering, and very drunk patrons.

Was Zen waiting on an ale? He couldn't recall…

"Sun God? Pfft! There are no gods! If gods existed, they'd do more than look down on us from up their own asses!"

Zen turned, that voice cutting cleanly through any others. He resented the Sun God for his silence, but he never once doubted that the gods existed.

"It's bloody nonsense!"

"Nonsense?" Zen strode forward, and immediately the man's friends hushed at their table and straightened upon seeing that they had been overheard by an acolyte. "And where do you think magic comes from if there are no gods?"

"Not from prayer," the man held firm, eyes glassy as his drunkenness pulled out his true feelings that he likely wouldn't dare speak otherwise.

"Perhaps you're right," Zen said, the rest of the tavern petering out to stifling silence. "I, however, believe. Would you deny me that right?"

"To be wrong ?" The man slammed his tankard on the table, causing its contents to slosh over his fist. "To be foolish and mindless with your magic tricks? Be gone, sunbeam !" He snickered into his ale and drank down a large gulp.

Zen thought of the teachings that had been pounded into him since he could understand speech, and though he feared sometimes for his own sake that they be true, he recited, "Words save no one, only the light of one's true heart."

The man leapt at Zen like an animal, but Zen didn't give him the satisfaction of flinching.

Another light flashed— another? —and Zen was in the temple proper, with screams and bedlam all around him in the dark of night. His brothers and sisters were frenzied, rushing about like blurs of silver and blue in the candlelight and crying for everyone to run.

The temple was under attack!

"It's Chaos!" a passing acolyte shouted. "The Order of Chaos!"

Zen felt a twist of fear. All he knew of the Dark Goddess and her followers was what he'd been told, that the Lady of Chaos promoted violence, blood sacrifice, and revelry to the point of insanity.

He tried to follow the others, but everyone seemed to be running in different directions.

"Here!" A priest pressed a dagger into Zen's hand. "They're coming!"

Before Zen could take in all that was happening, a howling woman wearing red robes—a darkling like him—charged him while swinging a hand-axe.

He raised his dagger just in time to parry, causing a clang of vibrations to shoot down his arm. It stung, but Zen still bit out a hurried, " Bless !" and summoned brilliant light into his weapon.

The woman staggered back, and Zen wasted no time before striking with the hilt of his dagger at her weapon. She howled far worse than her war cry, the prayer within the dagger burning her palm and forcing the axe to drop.

Zen raised the dagger again, but as the light dimmed, the woman opened silvery eyes, her face ashen blue like his, and lifted her hands in placation.

"Spare me!"

Zen wavered. She was the enemy. She would have killed him without blinking. She was clearly mad and followed a mad god.

Yet, as he looked at her, trembling beneath the promise of a killing blow, all he saw was her fear and how easily he could have been just like her if he'd been raised somewhere else.

"Go." Zen let his arm drop. "Escape while you can."

"No!"

Zen gasped as the vision burst apart like a scattered cloud of smoke.

He was in front of the mirror, still kneeling upon the holy sunburst, as what he'd been experiencing faded from the mirror's reflection and instead, he saw himself—and Father Lewis storming up to him from behind.

"Why?" He wrenched Zen around and shook him violently. "You know the law! Yet every time, it is the same with you!"

Mind reeling, Zen could barely focus let alone fight as Lewis dragged him to his feet and over to the stained glass on the right wall of the chapel, where a different scene loomed above. These panels told of the Sun God's three main tenets.

"Protect the innocent even at risk of bodily harm," Father Lewis said of a man protecting a small child from a bandit. "You never fail to pass that one."

He dragged Zen on to the next panel.

"When questioned by heresy, know the words to volley back," Lewis continued of a priest praying despite a blasphemer screaming at him. "You have failed that one before, but tonight, you succeeded. And yet ."

One last time, he heaved Zen onward and thrust him forward to face the final panel—a young acolyte killing a follower of the Lady of Chaos.

"Be ready to end an evil life, even if they plead, for any mercy they deserve—"

"Will be granted after death," Zen finished, hoping Lewis would calm and release him, but he yanked Zen close with fury in his eyes, and Zen remembered why some days he hated the Lord of Law.

Because mercy and forgiveness had conditions.

"And still you fail— every time . You are almost unparalleled with healing and divine spellcasting, as if to prove the Sun God forgives your tainted blood—"

Zen cringed.

"But still—"

"But still I will not bow to your god's cruelty?" Zen spat.

Lewis struck him so hard, Zen's head spun, and he fell to the floor like a sack of grain. " My god? But not yours?"

Zen said nothing, too afraid to look up, for he had spoken unthinkingly and now he risked the fate he'd always feared.

"Come with me."

Those same rough hands pulled Zen to his feet, the world spinning far worse than before, as Lewis hauled him from the chapel and toward the wing of the temple reserved for healing.

The large room was quiet but full of recovering victims from recent attacks, most of the wounded asleep, while a few priests watched over them. Against the far wall were the bodies of those who hadn't survived, soon to be taken out and buried or burned.

That was where Lewis brought Zen, where there were six fresh corpses—no, seven , because two were children laid end to end—all elves, and one of them was…

Jax.

Zen's stomach sank. He couldn't move and nearly tripped when Lewis forced him to stand before Jax's shredded body, red with so much blood and eyes frozen in fear.

"You aided in fending off an attack. Well done. These are the victims from an earlier attack elsewhere that could have been avoided if we had more priests .

"You could have helped in that fight, but even more so, you might have saved these souls if you'd converted them instead of stealing an apple for one. If you took your vows seriously, that boy and his brethren could have sought sanctuary, but instead, they became cattle for the damned."

Bile rose in Zen's throat, and once again, he couldn't stop it. He turned his head and vomited on the stone floor. Only then did Lewis release him, derision clear in his tone as he backed away.

"You will return to your room and think on your sins, but I will ask again in the morning—who do you serve? Think carefully of your answer, child. You are running out of time."