Eight Years Later
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Saint Sandersburg—the capital of the Silver Dawn—was the most beautiful city Michael had ever laid eyes on. He often found himself atop the Cathedral Basilica of the Silver Paladin, where he could see the entire city spread out like an ever-expanding mural before him. Each and every building came together like a completed puzzle, each constructed of snowy-marble and glistening gold, entirely uniform in appearance.
In the distance, Michael could see the sheen of the Wall—an ancient mega structure—which encased the entire city in its silver glow. Spread throughout the inner city was around a hundred churches and cathedrals, accommodating different denominations of worship to the Silver Lord; they all followed the one true God after all, even if their practices differed.
In his mind, this was the closest man could come to recreating the glory of heaven on earth. Close. Though, still lacking.
Michael sighed as another plume of smoke broke through the night sky, disrupting the peaceful glow of the city's light. How many more days must this tradition continue? Michael wondered.
The smoke trailed out from the streets of the Crimson Square beneath him. There, the burning ceremony was well underway. Templar convoys acted as a caravan of hearses, carrying the dead—friend and foe alike—to be burned by the perditionaries. The pyromanic clergymen wore heat-resistant armor in place of robes and carried tanks of napalm as they separated the bodies of the men from the monsters.
Father Abraham had taught him that it was the Silver Paladin who started the burning ceremony during the first crusade over three millennia ago—a time when monsters still roamed the Earth. Though, those times had seemingly returned.
Michael's eyesight had always been exceptional—a trait Father Abraham attributed to his divine heritage. Even from several miles away, he could pick out the monsters amongst the dead. No two were quite the same, but all were vaguely human. Some had wings and gnarled beaks, others twisted snouts and canine teeth. Mere contortions of God's image, Father Abraham had lectured him.
Still, he didn't understand why the men insisted upon burning the dead. It couldn't be purely tradition; after all, they refused to burn the monsters, the demons who invaded their lands. The Silver Paladin had not hesitated to burn the abominations in his crusades, so why now did they adhere to some decrees and not the others?
Michael leaned over the edge of the cathedral's balcony, watching the perditionaries spew fire from silver nozzles. Father Embers—another of Michael's teachers—preached of deliverance and the power of holy fire. Absolution, he called it. To be burned, was to be forgiven.
Perhaps that was why they didn't burn the monsters. To be unforgiven was to suffer.
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The ashes of saints and sinners fell upon the Crimson Square like the first hints of snow in the coming winter.
Nora watched as the dead were unloaded from a seemingly endless stream of trucks along the road. Crusaders in silver great helms and winter fatigues. Faceless, three-eyed legionaries in white sagums over heavy black vests. Uniforms, once clean as snow, stained a familiar crimson for which the square was so aptly named.
The dead were all treated with equal respect by the perditionaries, stripped of their mortal possessions and burned together in pyres as both penance and reprieve. It was ancient decree, after all, to burn the dead, to clean the corruption of the flesh and to wash the sin from the soul so that even the heretic may find salvation.
But they didn't burn the monsters. The perditionaries quickly covered the corrupted forms of the abominations and carried them away.
Nora's hands instinctively gripped her rifle at the sight of the wretched creatures. They were demons, after all, to be banished back to the depths of hell from whence they crawled out, not to be touched by the mercy of a perditionary's flame.
Hell was not a place for men, Nora's uncle always said; no, it was a place for monsters too distant from man to be forgiven.
Nora sat atop a white armored truck, watching the burning ceremony from above. She grinned at the sight of her uncle, Father Embers, as he presided over a congregation of refugees. While no incidents had ever broken out at the ceremony, she and a squad of crusaders attended merely as a precaution—in case the refugees got too unruly. Though, she knew the people merely sought the warmth of the pyres, protection from the touch of a fell winter.
With silver nozzle in hand and napalm at his back, Father Embers recited the last rites to the next pyre of the dead, singing his muffled prayers with all the enthusiasm of a church choir—but lacking any of the rhythm. Nora always did think her uncle facetious in his sermons. It was comforting to see the war had not changed that part of him; if anything, it seemed only to encourage him further.
Nora struggled to recall her own life before the war. It was all a blur. She was just a child then, barely nine years of age when the Collective invaded her homeland. A year after that, the demons came, the monsters which claimed her mother.
She didn't like to think of those times. The memories only filled her with regret. She was young, powerless back then. Instead, she preferred to focus on the good memories. She recalled the days spent with her mother and father at the burning ceremonies. Back then, her uncle burned the dead only once a month; it was a day of celebration and remembrance for loved ones lost.
Now, it was a daily ritual.
The one consolation Nora had in her life was seeing her mother burn. Her uncle assured her that she was set free for a perditionary's flame was a kerosene of absolution.
Every day the perditionaries brought the dead to the Crimson Square. And every day they burned the dead—for in war there was always dead to be burned—yet today, Nora could not quite explain how, but somehow, something was wrong. Perhaps it was the growing tides of refugees flooding through the streets. Perhaps it was the absence of the Rat-Kin whose devotion to tradition was usually unmatched. Or perhaps it was the bodies that were stacked higher than Nora had ever seen before . . .
"And to think, these are just the ones we found." The words made Nora jump, almost causing her to fall off the edge of the truck. She glanced to her right and found her father, Saint David, standing beside her, his mouth on the cusp of a smile. She hadn't even heard him climb up beside her. "It's daunting, isn't it?" He asked with a stone-cold conviction, his voice hardened by a lifetime of service to the Church. But Nora had grown accustomed to his callous undertones.
"You always know just what to say, old man," Nora replied, trying not to smirk.
David raised a bushy eyebrow and sat down beside her. "Old man? I'd like to think I got a few years left of my youth," he proclaimed.
They laughed together, father and daughter, looking up at the trails of smoke that carried the souls of the dead to absolution. The smoke burned red and orange, turning grey then black as it melded into the night sky, disappearing into the embrace of heaven beyond.
It was a beautiful thing. So beautiful it made Nora smile like a minstrel man, knowing her mother was smiling back at her somewhere up there. "Y'know, I envy the dead in a way . . ." Nora paused as she turned to look at her father.
The pyre's cast an unfavorable shadow on the man, highlighting the gaunt caverns in his cheeks and the dreariness festering in his sunken eyes. His white surcoat was muddy and damp, his beard bushy and unkempt. Nora had never seen him like this before. Even at his worst, Saint David held himself high, she knew that. It seemed just yesterday he was the burly man who carried her atop his shoulders. How had she never noticed what he had slowly become?
"Nora?" David turned to her amidst the silence. His smile faded away. "You needn't worry about me, my little angel," he said gently, as though sensing her concern. He reached out and ruffled her shaggy red hair, like the father she remembered used to do.
"R-right, of course," Nora said, trying to reassure herself. She leaned against her father's arm and looked back up at the burning sky. "I was just saying how I envy the dead. To be burned. To be set free. Free of worry . . . Do you think mom still worries about us?"
"Hah, what would she need to worry about us for?" David wrapped his arm around Nora's neck, shaking her ever so slightly. "It's God's responsibility to worry. Silver Lord knows your mother could use the break."
"Yeah. . ." Nora rested in her father's embrace for a while, watching Uncle Embers continue his sermon. It wasn't often she got this much time alone with him, so she relished the moment for all its worth. Yet, her mind turned once more to her mother, like a scratch she could not itch.
"Hey dad," Nora said, coming close to a whisper, almost afraid of what she was going to ask.
"Something the matter?"
"Did you ever find the one that did it?"
David paused for a moment. "Did what?"
"Killed mom," Nora solemnly replied. She had not expected the words to come out so easily. It was something she had wanted to ask for a long time, but she was always too afraid of the grief it may bring.
". . . No," her father flatly replied, refusing to look at her. She knew that tone. He was angry—not at her, but at himself. David continued to gaze at the smoke, watching as it bellowed out into the sky. "I remember that night so vividly," he said in a tone approaching a whisper. "I struggle to sleep most nights, fearing I may relive it yet again."
Nora sat up as her father fell silent. He did not open up about such things often—or ever at all for that matter. Though, she knew better than to press the issue further. Perhaps she should not have even asked at all, but still, she felt she had a right to know.
She would have to wait.