Joel was still not at home when John and Lucien were talking, and Auntie Alisa was busy preparing dinner. Their youngest son, Iven, was still playing on the streets with his friends.
“You can never imagine what we found down there,” John said seriously, “There was a demon hall!”
“What?!” Lucien was more than surprised, “They built a hall down the sewers? Has Lord Venn questioned the heretics yet?”
Shaking his head, John sighed with disappointment, “No, Lucien. We didn’t find anyone there. All of them were already gone by the time we arrived.”
“…It’s impossible, John. I didn’t tell anyone else about this except you.” Lucien started feeling worried. What if the demon followers somehow found out it was him who exposed and denounced them?
“Lord Venn told me that information about our actions might have been leaked by a knight. We don’t know who did this yet, but if it’s true, the knight should be of a relatively high level.”
Lucien thought about the possibility that the heretic power had infiltrated into the upper class. However, it was astonishing to imagine that the evil power had corroded some of the noble knights.
“What about Aaron’s Gang?” Lucien asked.
“The leaders escaped, including Rosan Aaron. The rest of the gangsters know nothing about the heresy. They can’t lie in front of the divine power of the inquisition.” John’s eyebrows frowned, “Even though they know nothing, all of them will be sentenced to death by the judges.”
Facing heresy, the church never showed mercy. And Lucien believed that the way the church treated sorcerers would not be any better than that.
One of the books from the library that Lucien read recently was called Hunting Sorcerer, which was written in the year 392 of the Saint Calendar, or say, 423 years ago. It was an instruction for sorcerer hunters and night watchers telling them how to identify the sorcerers, how to track them and even how to torture them. Lucien remembered some of the paragraphs, which sounded ridiculous and cruel to him:
“If a suspect lives in an unsociable or eccentric way, the chance of him or her being a sorcerer or a sorceress is high. However, even if a suspect is always sociable and passionate, the possibility still could not be ruled out, because he or she might just be pretending.”
“If the person you suspect panics when he or she knows who you are, the person is a sorcerer. But if the person does not, don’t lower our guard, because all the sorcerers are experienced liars.”
“If your divine spells cannot help you make sure the identity of the suspect, inflicting sacred punishment on the suspect can be useful: If the person rolls eyes when facing the punishment, that means he or she is trying to communicate with demons to seek for power; If the person’s eyes glaze fearlessly, that means he or she has got the protection from devil power and thus you must torture the person in a more severe way; If the person dies, it is because the demons took his or her life in order to keep their secrets safe.”
“If you have tried them all but still cannot be sure, leave the suspect to our almighty God. Burn the suspect. A sorcerer would burn down to ashes, while God would protect the person safe and sound in the fire if he or she is innocent.”
Lucien was grateful for still being alive. If Lucien had lived four hundred years ago when the book was written, he would have been burned to death thousands of times. The church had been dominating the whole continent for so many years; thus they were now paying more attention to the heresy in the north, instead of going all out hunting scattered sorcerers and sorceresses.
“Then did you find anything in the demon hall?” Lucien asked with curiosity.
Bad memories made John’s eyebrows frown even tighter, “We knight squires didn’t go in there. Knights and pastors led by Lord Venn, Lord Verdi and the cardinal of Salvatore searched the hall. Lord Venn never told me what he saw there, but I saw his face when he walked out… He looked very serious.
“I was guarding outside of the gate.” John’s eyes looked down at the ground and Lucien could tell the bad memory still disturbed him, “When they opened the gate, I saw the ground was covered with blood. And I saw hearts…. living throbbing hearts on the ground. They said that those were hearts extracted from people’s chests when they were alive.
“Lucien, I’ve heard many stories, poems and rumours saying how horrible and vicious the heresy is, but today I finally realized how hateful and inhuman it can be.” John raised his head and looked at Lucien, speaking with great determination, “I hate them, the heretics. I can never forget what I saw there. I want to grow stronger and eliminate the demons completely.”
Looking at his serious face, Lucien smiled, “This is the justice you’re looking for, isn’t it, John?”
John nodded, but then shook his head, “I still don’t clearly know what kind of justice I’m looking for, Lucien. All I know is that I not only want to protect my families and friends, but I also want to protect more people and fight against the dark powers.”
“I know there’s a class among the knights called ‘Demon Hunter’. They walk in the darkness and are willing to die fighting against the devil power. Is that your dream now?” asked Lucien.
“I don’t know, Lucien. I still can’t awaken my Blessing power. Not everyone can become a real knight, not to mention becoming a demon hunter.” John replied, a bit depressed.
“Come on! Of course you can.” Lucien gave John a friendly nudge, “Look who am I talking to? The most promising knight squire appreciated by Lord Venn!”
Feeling the encouragement from his best friend, John grinned at Lucien.
“Talking about Lord Venn…” Lucien asked, “Did he mention anything about your reward?”
“Yes, sure!” John’s face was lightened by this topic, “Lord Venn promised to give me a good knight sword made of fine steel. Compared with what I’m using now, this one would be much sharper and even have some magic effects on it!”
Talking about the new sword, John even giggled a bit with sweet expectation.
Lucien and John stopped their conversation when Joel came back. In the end, John reminded Lucien, “Lord Venn told me that security will be tightened and there will be much more undercover investigations in Aalto recently. You were questioned before because of the witch, so be careful recently. You’re Mr. Victor’s student now, and you never know if there’s anyone who’d frame you for this out of jealousy.”
“Thank you, John. I’ll be careful,” said Lucien gratefully. He knew that, as a knight squire, John was not allowed to leak this kind of information to someone else. Lucien knew he had to be really careful recently and stop practicing most of the spells that could cause a mess. However, Lucien also believed that after this massive search, when the knights and the nobles started letting down their vigilance, it would be even safer than before.
…………
Another Sunday morning, and Lucien was trying to organize everything on his day off. Although he was not practicing much casting during the past couple of days, his analysis work of the other several magic spells went on pretty well. His spiritual power was completely recovered and grew even stronger than ever with his meditation. For now, Lucien could cast up to six spells of the Element School successively.
In his spare time, Lucien also worked hard on his music studies. He spent lots of time with reading different books in his spirit library, but not only music books. From a variety of books, Lucien started to learn more about the continent: those countries believing in the God of Truth in the south, and heretic countries in the north, as well as the evil creatures living in the the Dark Mountain Range.
The brain tissue of the mutant aquatic zombie could be preserved up to three years by exerting the magic once a day, which enabled Lucien to have enough time to collect the rest of the magic matters.
…………
“Your progress impressed me again, Lucien.” After testing Lucien’s basic music knowledge learned within the several classes, Mr. Victor commended, “Then we can move forward to actual practice and to learn how to integrate what you’ve learned from the books into it.”
When Lucien first helped with improving the harpsichord, Victor thought that Lucien might just happen to have an inspiration there. But now Victor felt that Lucien at least had some talent in music.
“Lucien, what musical instrument do you want to learn?” asked Victor gently, “I’m relatively good at violin, harpsichord, pipe organ and flute. But if you want to learn something else, I should also be able to help.”
Lucien never really put much thought into it. He was a bit hesitant. Lucien was a fan of piano back in the days, but he never had a chance to learn how to play it. But on second thought, one day Lucien would set out to find the headquarter of the Continental Congress of Magic and, of course, he could not carry a piano with him all the way. Probably he should choose something relatively portable, like a violin?
Lott, Felicia and Herodotus were curious to see which one Lucien would choose, but Lucien was still hesitating.
“It’s okay, Lucien.” Victor smiled, “If you have any concern, just tell me. Maybe I can help you.”
So Lucien asked cordially, “Mr. Victor, can I choose both the improved harpsichord and violin?”
The rest of the three students were a bit pissed off. They felt Lucien was being really greedy because he could learn for free.
“No problem,” answered Victor, “but you gotta focus on one thing at a time. What about we start from learning harpsichord? And I can probably get some new ideas while I’m teaching.”
“Sure, thank you, Mr. Victor.” Lucien was grateful.