Ankas Gend knew the routine well. She had been through similar interviews before, and had conducted them herself. She’d taken a shot of her medication two hours ago; the numbing serenity that clouded her judgment was a welcome relief.
A voice from behind her asked her for her name, she couldn’t turn around to see the source, but it was a soft voice, a warm comforting one that made her feel at ease. She replied lazily, her medication hardly letting her rise above a monotone.
“Tell us about yourself,” the voice asked though there was a hint of demand laced somewhere in the words. She couldn’t quite figure it out; her mind was swimming more than usual after she used her medication.
“I wanted to help people,” she didn’t know why she was going this far back, they didn’t care about it, they wanted something else. If they wanted it badly enough, they were going to have to wait for her to explain it all, she decided. “I was training to be a priestess. I knew I had something in me that would let me treat the sick, mend the wounded, and comfort those with loss. A priestess. I tried so hard. But something was wrong with me. I tried to hide it for so long, but it kept growing and getting worse.”
“What was wrong with you,” the voice asked. No guilt, no shame, just a question. She could answer the question; she was getting to it anyways. It wouldn’t matter; in the long run it never mattered.
“I never had the talent for healing. My talents lay in the infliction of pain. I hurt people. I never wanted to hurt people, but my touch could send spider webs of pain over someone’s skin, my breath could blister and my will could hurt everyone around me,” she felt a tingle as she spoke. It was like remembering an old friend for a moment. Her medication swallowed the tingle up, tucking it away from her and leaving her in her comfortably neutral state.
“You’re not hurting anyone around you now,” the voice commented. She wanted to smile, but couldn’t. She rarely did anything expressive while on her drugs.
“I can only hurt people when I’m happy. Helping people would make me happy, and then I would hurt them, and I would feel sad. I would help them again, and feel happy… It was a roller coaster, I wanted to die, I wanted to be something I couldn’t. I was an abomination. I was evil, despite how much I tried not to be. I couldn’t control my power then,” she relaxed in her chair as the voice asked her how she controlled herself so well now.
“They found me, the Inquisition. At first they wanted to burn me alive for being a warlock, a witch, but one of their superiors heard of my power and told me that I had been blessed with a terrible gift. I should use that gift for the good of all, instead of trying to hide it. So they started to train me,” she felt something stir in her mind, like a frightened child running away from the monsters in the dark. The warm blanket of her medication scooped up the childish fear and whisked it away from her before she could feel it out. Something was very wrong, yet she didn’t feel wrong.
“They gave me drugs to make me feel good. Then they had me practice my talents. Then they would give me more drugs. Drugs to bring me up, drugs to even me out to help me cope with my powers and what they needed me to do,” she sank into her chair a bit, it was comfy despite the restraints.
“What did they have you do?” the voice asked, or was it a new voice? They all sounded the same.
“I was an Examiner for the Inquisition. That’s a nice word for sadist and torturer. They would get me soaring high, and then send me in with a list of questions. As long as I had answers when I was done I could do whatever I wanted. If they liked what I found, they gave me just enough to keep me glowing until next time, if they didn’t get what they wanted, I got nothing. They had to be careful, as if they gave me too much I’d probably hurt them a lot more than they would ever want me too. I never learned how to control the flow when I wasn’t working, but when I was asking questions, I was an artist, a master at what I did. They trained me well,” she felt a twinge in her brain as she spoke of the ups. She wanted to go up again. Badly, her body burned to go up again. Her medication struggled against the desire, her will managed to help squash out the unwanted lust.
“How did they train you to be so cruel?” the voice called out, it was in front of her now, but that didn’t matter. The voice could be across the room or across the ocean, as long as she heard the question she would answer.
“Have you ever tried Torine?” she asked. There was silence, so she continued, “Torine makes you feel like a small child getting a great big present. You are on top of the world, and you stay on top as long as you keep taking Torine. They started putting it in my water as I struggled through my training, and before you know it, they had me perfectly conditioned. They bombarded me, over and over, with their dogma, their methods, their, well, their everything. All while keeping me high on Torine. They would bring me down with Viarte’s Root, just enough to even me out. After a while you start to associate all the good things in life with the Inquisition’s point of view. Torine has the bonus side effect of removing your guilt. Viarte also suppresses it so that you can deal with whatever you did while you were high.”
“Did they use you often?” she dreaded that question, it always as a bad question to ask.
“They had me examine three hundred and seventy two individuals personally, be present for the examinations of four hundred and ninety seven, and capture another hundred and fifteen personally,” there was a point she was called on to do seven interviews in a day. She remembered walking from interview room to interview room that day, floating and giggling all the way, her dress ruined with blood, tears and the stench of fear.
“Have you used your powers to kill?” the voice seemed to be calm, comfortable. She was used to accusations, anger, violence when people were questioned, this was much more pleasant. They probably were murderers in their own right, how, or why, would they judge her for her actions?
“Seventeen hundred men, women and children have died because of the use of my powers at the command of the Inquisition. Some of them where warlocks, or evil mages or priests. Most though, most where just normal people caught up in the whole mess. Once we finished with them, we couldn’t let them leave. They’d get me really high and let me finish them off. The Torine would tell me that I loved it. When it wore off I would be a wreck though. I started taking Viarte when I woke up after my first year. I’m on Viarte constantly now. They tried to break my addiction to it after my second year of service, but I kept trying to kill myself. So they just kept me on it, as long as they could give me enough Torine to let me do my job they didn’t care. They had plenty of Torine, they only had one of me,” she sighed; she remembered those days. The Viarte kept her from feeling anything other than memories. No emotions crept through the haze, though occasionally a twinge of something would sneak its way past, but it would get squashed before she could focus on it. Viarte was good like that.
“You had several clashes with the Brotherhood of Mages, did you not?” the voice asked. She wanted to smile, but she couldn’t bring it about. If they were part of the Brotherhood, they’d kill her, and so she picked a story that would give them little choice otherwise.
“That was the organization I was charged with taking down. Well, to take down their members at least. They would give me a name, and a sketch, and I would head into town and ask around. If I found information, I got a bit of Torine as a treat. When I found one of theirs, I was to take a vial of the emergency medication I’d been given and take them into custody, or take them down. Whatever was in those vials was fantastic, it was always like flying, I would inflict pain, tear off flesh and skin and burn out people’s eyes with a touch; all while flying above it all. I was charged with tracking this one girl towards the end of my service with the Inquisition. She was a pretty little thing, but she was also a warlock. Her powers were horrible, devastating, not unlike my own, but because she was on the other side, they were alien and disgusting. She could conjure fire, electricity, anything she wanted. She had to be in pain though, and it had to be enough pain to be of use. I was chasing her once again, she was my last assignment, but she kept getting away. We were fighting through a city, I forget the city now, but it was a big one, near the ocean. I was starting to come down, I couldn’t let myself come down in the middle of a fight, but I was too busy chasing her to get one of my vials open. I found her in an alley crying to herself. You see, to get the pain she needed to cast any of her magic she was cutting herself. In her haste, she cut herself way too deep. She was bleeding out, in shock, fearful, and there I was rapidly coming down afraid that I wouldn’t be happy enough to finish her off. So, I’m standing there, struggling with my emergency vial, trying to get the cap off, but it won’t come off. I broke down, she was trying to feel pain through her shock so she could finish me off, and I’m trying to get high enough that I can kill her,” she shuddered slightly as she told her story.
“Then what happened?” the voice asked.
“Before I could get my vial open, he, the mage lord, the one we’d been hunting for years, came out and slammed me into a wall repeatedly with a wave of his hand. He smashed all but one of my vials on the ground, even the Viarte. He then rubbed a pinch full of dust over the last vial of Torine I had, and handed it to me. He told me it was poisoned, that it would kill me instantly if I took it. He knew I was desperate, just to even myself out. He scooped up the girl, she was almost unconscious at this point, and left me there, weeping over my poisoned vial in the middle of the alley. I spent three days searching for an Inquisitor, that whole time I couldn’t find a single vial of Viarte or Torine. I did horrible things to try and get some, but all I had was my poisoned vial. I found an Inquisitor; he took a look at my vial and told me that it was fine. He tasted it himself. It was fine. I’d been tricked. I spent three days in absolute hell, having to live with everything I’d done, everything I’d become, and the whole time I had the ticket out right there in front of me. I couldn’t take Torine again. Every vial I was handed became that poisoned vial. They tried everything to get me functional again, but nothing worked. So they left me, they dropped me in some no name town on the mainland with a months worth of Viarte, and a single vial of Torine. They figured that eventually the brotherhood would find me, and kill me. That was four years ago,” she sighed again. The Viarte was wearing off. She cursed to herself knowing that she was going to die. If she had only been more careful, but there were few people who matched her description and also needed three vials of Viarte a day to function. She was surprised the brotherhood hadn’t tracked her down sooner. She felt fear slowly creep into her mind. She was coming down fast, or actually, she was coming too. For the first time in years her mind started to drift back to reality.
The scarred up face of the warlock she’d chased so long ago crept into her vision. There was a man behind her. Tears started to roll down Ankas’ cheeks.
“The Brotherhood regards itself as merciful Miss Gend. But for a creature as foul, violent, and horrible as yourself, we can have little mercy,” the voice spoke from behind the face of the girl in front of her.
“I know,” she half sobbed, her lips trembling as she attempted to keep some of her composure. The Viarte was gone, it was just her and her past. They’d spent a long time apart for a reason.
“I want you to hit me Brother Yanin. I want you to hit me, very, very hard,” the girl whispered as she leaned in close over Ankas’ bound form. Ankas heard the fleshy impact. She felt something in her mind unhinge. For a few, brief moments, she was clean, pure, and beautiful again. She was herself. No drugs keeping her afloat, no shame for her past, nothing. She supposed it hurt, that her end was horrible and grisly, but as Yanin had said, the Brotherhood was merciful. She plunged into death, holding onto that last moment of clarity before all existence was blasted into dust and blackness.
Yanin looked at the bruise rapidly forming on the young warlocks back. Ankas Gend, one of their greatest and most violent opponents, was dead. He couldn’t help but feel sorry for her; she was just a terribly used and lost girl. He looked at the road map of scars that covered his disciples back. He shuddered at the similarities and tried not to focus on exactly how different they all were. The seasoned mage threw a white blanket over the body, watching for a moment as the slow stain of blood crept through the sheet before leaving the room.
