(TLO) Chapter 87: Inaccurate Fools (Patreon)

There is a consistent belief that the older a man becomes the more informed his decisions. A seemingly general consensus that age begets wisdom. This is true, undeniably so. However, most tack onto it a belief that with these correlations—age begetting wisdom—that the old never find regret in actions save those of their youthful past. Again, this too, might hold truth. But sitting now, with his head in wary arms, Monsignor Faust thought all those who believed in it fools.

Inaccurate fools.

He sat in his office, uncomfortable in his chair—a thing of comfort—as he rubbed his scalp. The chair was one of his vices, its comfort entirely unnecessary. So he tried not to blame his discomfort on it. After all, why should he? His discomfort came from his decision. A decision he had made months ago in good faith; for the sake of the seminary. But now that he had executed it, he wondered if it had been the right one.

“You look too bothered,” Ulrich stated, always the observer, from his seat on the other side of the massive table Faust’s elbow was propped on.

He was seated comfortably, his back relaxed against the rest of his chair. Even across the chaos of parchments and books that left his table looking like a vulture’s feast, Ulrich’s demeanor fought to bring some decorum to the office. In a single word, he hated it.

Beside Ulrich, poised on the second chair, was John. Gathered here were the holders of the seminary’s secret. It was befitting, considering he sat troubled by decisions made over the same secret.

“Ul here does have a point,” John said. “You look too troubled. Perhaps you should not have done that.”

Faust scoffed loudly. “What’s done is done. I can’t change it now, not even if I wanted to.”

“Perhaps,” Ulrich agreed. “But why send Anthony? He just made Baron. Shouldn’t he be more focused on other things right now. It’s not even been three months.”

Faust waved a dismissive hand. “His authority is no excuse. For all the genius he had as a seminarian, he should’ve made Barony over a year ago. He’s grown complacent.”

“True. But why him? Or more accurately, why not Igor?”

Faust turned a questioning eye to Ulrich.

The Reverend seemed about to explain when John said, “It’s his class, after all. I doubt any of the other Reverends will understand the children more than him.”

“True,” he agreed. “But Igor’s too strict. Too hard. Sometimes I wonder if he’s breaking; if his inability to go beyond Barony ever since Jedidiah’s evolution is getting to him.”

John put a thoughtful hand to his cheek. “He has been more brutal,” he mused.

“More so than Ivan,” Ulrich agreed.

“Besides,” Faust took his hand from his head and scratched his neck in pretense of stroking his beard, “he wouldn’t have followed this specific command. He would’ve fought it till the end.”

With a force of will that proved unnecessarily needed, he stilled his hand. The itch had gone on for years now, and Kyle’s prescriptions were becoming benign. He’d applied the healer’s salve twice this morning, against the prescribed once, yet it was having no effect.

The itch had begun six years ago. It had been simple then. A simple scratch here, a rub there, and it was gone. Over the years it had aged, much unlike himself. Aged well enough to focus its attention. Now it only affected his neck, and scratching it did nothing. Rubbing it did nothing. If he had the inhumane flexibility and the absence of pride he would’ve taken a set of teeth to it, anyone’s at all. Last week during his last checkup Kyle had given him dreadful news.

Apparently, his skin just beneath his jaw was going through necrosis. It was dying. In a few months Kyle estimated it might begin decaying. It had terrified him, even now, but it had not surprised him. He’d been told this would happen years ago when he’d been offered the gift of Barony. It had been the only way to his evolution. The only path available to him. He was promised Barony, but that the next step was up to him. The moment he’d hit Barony his clock had begun ticking. Unlike others, he only had so long he could be a Baron. It seemed he was running out of time. As promised, his reia had begun forcing his flesh to eat itself alive.

You knew the risks when you agreed to it, he told himself, complaining even as he did. It had seemed necessary then.

No. He frowned. I overestimated myself.

Still, there was a silver lining: he wasn’t dead yet.

“You’re awfully quiet.”

Faust raised his head to look at Ulrich. The man looked back at him with worry in his eyes. Long gone was that terrified child who’d stumbled into the seminary with piss soaked trousers and runny nose. Gone was the child who the seminary had taken from his loving family simply because it saw a talent in the boy. A talent no one was willing to recognize save them.

“Thinking,” was his only response.

“It’s a bit too late for that, don’t you think.” John rubbed a tired hand over his face. “I don’t like the kid and yet I feel terrible for this. Why did you do it, though? Why did you ask Anthony to ignore whatever happened to the boy?”

The answer to the question was simple: because he’d been asked to. But he couldn’t tell them that. They wouldn’t listen. They wouldn’t believe. They would not understand. It had been requested of him only because it was the best way to avoid casualties. This he knew as he knew he was dying. Gently, with the self-deprecation his mind was seeming to enjoy, it pulled him back into his thoughts, weaving a web of regret and decay as it dragged him to a memory months old, created during the seminary’s test of winter.

In it, he stood in the mist to the north of the seminary, just beyond its gates, hidden amidst a sea of trees. The fear he’d felt from it the first time he’d walked into the seminary, barely Silver, was nowhere to be found now.

He waited amongst the blackened trees, feigning an absence of trepidation for the man who had called him. How the man continued to walk into his sleeping chambers to plant the note that summoned him was something he still could not understand. And how the man always placed it on a spot he would always look at first when he stepped in was fearful. Once, he’d thought the man perhaps a diviner. He did not anymore. Diviners were a different breed of soul magi who acted in certain ways this man did not.

Faust had been standing outside for hours on end before the man had arrived in the darkness of the night.

He walked out from within the fog, expelled from it as if he’d been there all along. His hair was cut short, his beard trimmed to lengths no more than an inch. He was as tall as Faust when he stood without a hunch but for some reason always seemed taller. His steps were regal, if slow. Even his actions carried the same cadence. But to call him sluggish would’ve been awfully wrong. No. Everything about him was simply slow, purposeful. It was as though every action he made had a purpose, an intent. From the smallest breath to the greatest roar.

Faust found himself dreading the day he would hear such a man roar.

“You came,” he said, glad to hear none of his fear in his voice. “I was beginning to think you would not.”

The man looked beyond him, off into nothingness. It made him feel like a simple speck. An unnecessary stain on the face of the world. If he didn’t know better he would’ve thought the man was actually staring into the seminary, watching the ongoing activities.

The thought gave him pause.

Did he actually know better? he wondered. Even now, after three meetings, he knew nothing of the dark skinned man before him. A man that even standing barely ten feet away from him, he could sense nothing of. The man might very well not exist to him.

After a prolonged silence, he spoke again. “So you are called Jabari. Don’t you find it odd that I should learn of your name through the boy and not you?”

Jabari turned his attention to him for the first time and he squirmed under it like a child who’d done wrong. Gunmetal grey eyes bored into him with clear disinterest. Yet it encompassed him whole. It looked into his soul and found him unimportant, even now.

Is this what that child will become? he feared. After all, they were the only two living beings he’d seen with eyes of this color.