Chapter 22- Charles Veritas

Chapter 22

 

Charles Veritas

 

           

            Charles opened the rusty iron door into the pits of hell. The stench of blood and sweat filled the room’s filthy and tainted walls. There were no windows or doors aside from the one Charles came in through. No hope of ventilation or escape anywhere inside. All the guilty that found themselves within these walls would never see the light of day again. This room was the beginning of the end. And by the end, they’ll all be praying for death.

            Judge Gordon had a different expression than when last Charles laid eyes on him. Stripped of his black coat and pride, he looked as pitiful as any Cruorian. Beside him was Mentor Gottfried Calantz, one of Judicium’s Shadow’s most sadistic members, renowned for his ability to break people. Charles had only left him with Gordon for about an hour and already the Judge appeared a shadow of the man they first met.

            Gordon was stripped naked on a Judician donkey. A device that consisted of a board with a wedge at the tip, fastened to two crossbeams. The naked victim was then placed on top as if riding a donkey, with weights attached to each of his feet. Blood could be seen dripping through Gordon’s legs like a red stream, his bruised up face in excruciating agony.

            “Let him down,” commanded Charles.

            Gottfried unfastened the weights off Gordon’s feet and pushed him off the device. As Gordon crashed against the concrete floor he let out a groan of both pain and relief. Charles walked to stand over him and removed the hood from his mantle. Gordon’s eyes went wide when he looked upon his face.

            “Charles-f*****g-Veritas!” accused Gordon. “I should’ve known you were behind this. Of course the Fuhrer would send a nonbeliever like yourself to handle his problems.”

            “It seems there is still defiance in you yet,” said Charles.

            “I’m already dead. There will be defiance left in me until my last breath. So do your worse.”

            “I intend to. Choose to cooperate though, and you might save yourself some pain. See, Gottfried is just getting started with you, and I have a couple ideas myself.” Charles pressed his foot against Gordon’s split scrotum and penis. Gordon screamed at the top of his lungs until Charles released his heavy foot from between his legs. “I’m in a bit of rush so I’ll go through the same questions you were asked before. Do be kind and answer them this time…for your sake.”

            Charles signaled Gottfried with a nod. The sadistic Mentor went towards his basket of tools and pulled out a lead sprinkler. A tool that was essentially a ladle with a sphere, consisting of many holes, at the tip. Gottfried filled the sphere with a bowl of boiling oil and returned to stand by Gordon.

The Judge looked up, shivering and horrified. “I already told you, I don’t know anything!”

            “When we first captured you, you denied being a True Believer. After a couple beatings, you confessed to placing God above our Fuhrer. With your balls split, I can only wonder what other revelations you might have. So let us begin. Who are the Archangels?”

            “I-I don’t know! I swear! Aaaargghhh!” Gottfried shook the lead sprinkler on his back.

            “Who gives you your orders?”

            “No one gives me orders! I simply serve God of my own behalf, I swear. I’m not responsible for any of the crimes that…Aaaargghhh! Aaaaaaaaaaaarrgghhhhh!”

            “Is the Son of God here in the city?”

            “I’ve never met him! I-I don’t know! The people say…Aaaarrrggghhhhhhhh!”

            “My last question. Is Alistair Loucelles, Raphael the Archangel?”

            Gordon’s words got stuck in his mouth but his eyes almost popped out. “I…I-I don’t know anything about that. I don’t know who t-the Archangels are, I already told you. I swear it. Please don’t…aaaaarrrrgghhhh!”

            Charles waved at Gottfried to put the lead sprinkler away. “It seems you’re still not of a mindset to be honest with me, Gordon. A shame, for one who supposedly upholds Judicium’s justice. What would your wife think of you? Her husband, a traitor and a liar.”

            “My wife…knows where my loyalties lie. She knows I am an honest man and faithful servant of God.”

            “Is that so? Perhaps we could ask her personally upon my return then. Then we can see how much of an honest man you truly are.”

            “NO!” Gordon shouted as he tried to crawl towards Charles. “You stay away from my wife you Godless devil! She’s innocent! She has nothing to do with this!”

            “Perhaps the Cruorians that once lived in Lumina can remind you of what happens to those who keep secrets to themselves in aid of traitors.”

            “You stay away from her! God will punish you for this! I swear it!”

            Charles turned his back on him and started making for the door. “Gottfried, be sure not to kill him when you teach him how to respect his superiors again.”

            “As you command, Dark Charles,” replied Gottfried.

            Charles could only stomach so much torture. While he wasn’t against the act, a lot of torture meant a stubborn captive, and he had little patience for prideful fools. Too much time listening to Gordon’s bullshit and he might just well accidently kill their only prisoner of worth.

            Charles made his way up the steps leading outside the dungeons. If Eden’s Tower was famous for anything, it was its stairs. Everywhere you went it seemed another endless cycle of spiral stairs greeted you. His time in the tower had been the most fatiguing challenge in all his recent years. When he wasn’t all the way down in the dungeons, he was all the way up in the Governor’s office, and interchanging between the two had become the bulk of his day-to-day schedule. Today however, Charles had decided to reward himself with some solace in his chambers at the middle of the tower. Even he was human at times.

            His chambers were simple. One window, a descent sized bed, and a plain mirror atop a bureau. The Governor had insisted on a more luxurious room but Charles wanted something simple and inconspicuous with a good view of the city. The other request Charles had was for two messenger doves. The reason being, Judicium’s Justice used ravens, Judicium’s Light used hawks, the Church used doves, and Judicium’s Shadow used whatever attracted the least attention. In Eden, doves roamed the sky like people roamed the streets.

            Charles stepped by his window and looked to the city. Eden was a sight frozen in time. While Judimia was the epitome of Judicium’s image, and Lumina a depiction of Judicium’s grandeur, Eden was living history. Much more traditional than the other two cities, Eden prided in its Illumian roots. The city was very low ground but for its churches and cathedrals, splashing in colors of blue, red, and green. Its true beauty though were its monuments. Eden had by far the most monuments, most having some relation to the Holy Grimoire, particular Eden’s Tower and Yggdrasil.

            Eden’s Tower was said to have been crafted in men’s first attempt to reach the heavens. It was a bold attempt and truly a wonder how men managed to make a linear structure so high and stable. The stones it was built from were also too heavy for men to carry, and given how long ago it was built, it wasn’t as if they had other resources to navigate it. Even now, to build an identical tower seemed beyond anyone’s capabilities.

            Yggdrasil, also know as the Tree of God, was Eden’s most iconic monument. Standing in the center of the city, the center of the world, it was the largest tree in the entire world. Simply calling it the largest tree in the world did not even begin to capture its marvel though. Yggdrasil had a height matching that of Eden’s Tower. Its branches reaching far above and across more than half the city. Once it was said to have a million azure leaves and even more crystallite, but now it stood dead, absent leaves or any signs of life. Within it however, lied the heart of the Church. After Yggdrasil’s azure roots and veins stopped pumping life, men created a home and castle within the tree. The inside, now considered sacred grounds, only accessible by clergymen of certain status and privileges, those of royal blood, leaders of divine right, and holy individuals acknowledged by the Church. And if I were the Son of God that’s exactly where I would hide.

            There was a knock on the door and Charles let out an aggravated sigh. Can a man ever get some peace of mind in this f*****g tower? He opened the door to the beautifully unpleasant sight of Queen Grace. She had her cream colored hair tied up to the side falling upon her slender shoulder, as usual, wearing a faded yellow dress. The bellbottom dresses had fallen out of fashion for more shapely dresses capturing the silhouette with a thinner fabric more uniform with the corset. Grace Evergrant had a body reminiscent of his wife’s that made him long for what he once had. But Charles had learned that beautiful women were never to be trusted. Much less those with power.

            Queen Grace was the most powerful woman in the entire world with not enough worries to bring her down. In the last two years Charles had discovered that her skill with seduction rivaled that of his wife. Childhood friends trained in the same poison of deception. Grace Evergrant had fucked her way into power earning the love and trusts of all her puppets, her strings kept in line through fear. Even the previous Moon fell to her charms, falling in love with her enough to betray those closest to him, and dooming Charles to the same fate as the rest of her puppets in the process. Grace was the only living person aside from him and Caius that knew their secret. A truth capable of seeing him to the gallows.

            Grace smiled her deceiving smile. “May I come in, Dark Charles?”

            Charles allowed her inside closing the door behind her. “What do you want?”

            “I’m wondering how your hunt is going. I’ve done what you asked and made every newspaper know about every atheist the True Believers kill and every True Believer your atheists kill, but all it seems to be doing is escalating the situation. Is provoking them really the right form of action?”

            “Yes.” Charles moved to stand by the window again. “Now that they know they’re being hunted, truly hunted, they are searching for the one pulling the strings.”

            “Sounds a lot like what you’re doing.”

            “Exactly. I’ve turned this into a game of who finds which puppet master first.”

            “And…how’s that going for you?”

            Charles turned from the window to look at her. “Why would I tell you?”

            Grace glared at him. “You still don’t trust me. I’ve done nothing but help you since you became the Moon and you still don’t trust me. You in the other hand have done nothing but use me. Whatever happened to friends with mutual benefit?”

            “Knowing how well my mission is going does not benefit anything but your curiosity. And being that you’re a servant of God, the possibility of you being a True Believer will forever be there.”

            “What about your son? He believes in God. Does he have the possibility of being a True Believer as well?”

            “He is not my son. He’s an orphan raised by Judicium’s Youth.”

            “A Second Generation Youth,” she added. “Those are more crazy than they are obedient. And yet you have him going to the heart of the enemy right next to the Archangel of Gluttony. Why not send one of your atheist Mentors? The only reason you even picked them, the same as the Fuhrer picked you, is because they don’t believe in God. So if your trust is based on faith, why does your son have what I don’t?”

            Charles hated that he had to explain himself, mainly for his lack of a satisfactory answer. “His Cruorian wife has the most knowledge about Alistair Loucelles and will only dispense her information to Caius for lack of trust in anyone else. That alone makes him the most fit for the task. He’s also the same guy who discovered the Mother of Cryst’s identity and put an end to her.”

            Grace chuckled. “Are you listening to yourself? Putting your faith in a believer and a Cruorian. Whatever happened to the Charles who would eradicate religion from this world and anyone that wasn’t a Judician?”

            “Say what you will, without this believer and this Cruorian not only would Paradise Lost still be around but we wouldn’t even have a lead on the Son of God and his Archangels. I don’t enjoy placing my trust in them, but I’m no fool either. We need them.”

            “What if he fails or is converted?”

            “If he fails, he’ll be dead. If he converts, I’ll kill him myself.”

            Grace sighed with disappointment. “That kid will be the end of you.” She took a seat on his bed. “Any word on your other son or your wife?”

            Charles looked outside the window again. “No…”

            “You’re son is alive,” she said, sounding almost genuine. “If he wasn’t, they’d make an example of him like all the other nonbelievers. And your wife…”

            “I know she’s alive. And I hope she stays that way so when I find her I can kill her myself.”

            “Just because she’s a True Believer doesn’t mean she’s a traitor. There are still those whom simply worship God above the Fuhrer.”

            “Of course it means she’s a traitor. Why else would she run away?” The thought reminded him of darker subjects. “I hope the life of her daughter was worth it…”

            “I don’t think…”

            A loud knock interrupted their conversation. “Who is it?” asked Charles.

            “It’s Mathew, Dark Charles.”

            Charles opened the door. Mentor Mathew Gannon was another atheist, like all the other Mentors handpicked by Charles for this mission. Mathew was a skinny skeleton of a man, famed in the Shadow for his discretion and ability to track. Unlike many other Mentors, Mathew was more active in the field than behind the scene, lacking in both Nights and Spiders under his command. Charles appreciated this, preferring his information coming from a firsthand source as opposed to the usual second or third.

            Mathew crossed his arms and saluted. “I have some information I think you may be pleased with.”

            Charles turned to Grace and commanded, “Leave us.”

            Grace rolled her eyes. “Sometimes you forget we’re both members of the Council of Seven.” She walked passed them with a spiteful march.

            After she left Mathew entered and Charles closed the door. “So, what did you find out?”

            “Leaving the Azure Palace I saw an individual of little note leaving with Gravure Ilianos, the Azure Prince’s second in command. While following them they spoke of a meeting with an Angel. Now whether this Angel is an Archangel or not, I can’t say for sure. What I do know is that the individual of little worth will be meeting this Angel alone sometime soon. When exactly, they did not say.”

            “An Angel,” Charles said quietly to himself. “I want you to continue following this individual. I want you to have eyes on him every minute of every hour until this fated encounter. When they finally meet I want you to capture this Angel and bring him here for Gottfried to question.”

            “What do I do with the other one?” asked Mathew.

            “Kill him for all I care. The true price here is this Angel.”

            “As you command, Dark Charles.” He saluted. “There was one other thing.”

            “What?”

            “The woman you wanted. The Judge’s wife. We have her.” He does quick work. I was right to pick him.

            “Good work. I think it’s time I paid our prisoner another visit.”

 

***

 

            Gordon had a severed knee and sealed burn marks wherever he had cuts. His skin was pale and his lips were blue. If he weren’t breathing he’d look like a corpse. Crystal shards could be seen materializing in certain parts of his body, which meant Gottfried, was injecting crystallite into Gordon’s body to keep him awake and from dying.

            When Gordon noticed Charles his eyes grew wide. They grew even wider when he saw his fat naked wife all bruised up and in chains. Mathew pushed her into the floor and placed a foot atop her back and aimed a revolver to the back of her head.

            Life seemed to come rushing back to Gordon. “No! You monsters! Leave her out of this! She’s innocent! She has nothing to do with this!”

            Charles looked to Gottfried standing beside him. “Has he told you anything new?”

            “Nothing he hasn’t already said before,” answered Gottfried. “Now instead of simply referring to himself though, he claims no one knows who the Son of God is. At least now his story clicks with the other True Believer prisoners we’ve had. That only the Archangels know who the Son of God is.”

            “Why is that?” Charles asked Gordon.

            “I don’t know. I already told you before, I’m a True Believer but I still serve Judicium. I have not betrayed our Glory!”

            “The new law dictates that any True Believer is a traitor to this country,” corrected Charles. “Now, if you love your wife, I suggest you start coming up with some answers.”

            Gordon burst into tears. “Please…I beg you Charles…leave her out of this. You’re a better man than this…you’re a better man than this!”

            BANG!

            Mathew shot Gordon’s wife in the leg, releasing a screech of pain. Gordon cursed and cried as he tried to force himself from the chair he was tied to. “You monsters! She’s innocent! You’ll pay for this, I swear! God will punish you!”

            Mathew rubbed the barrel of his gun all around Gordon’s wife’s face making her hyperventilate with fear. “God may. And we may just be monsters. And she probably is innocent. But regardless of all that, you’ll still see your wife die a slow…and painful…death,” said Mathew. “And don’t even think for a second we’ll give you the luxury of following her afterwards. So why don’t you talk, Gordon…and make this easier on everyone.”

            Gordon swallowed his snot and tears, shaking with rage. “You’ll go to hell for this…all of you will go to hell for this!”

            BANG! “AAAAAaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhh!” cried his wife.

            “I’ll talk! I’ll talk! Please…just let her go.”

            Charles walked in front of him. “Talk, and it is done.”

            Gordon put his head down in shame. “They…The…God please forgive me…” He continued to mumble to himself for forgiveness for a bit before actually saying anything of worth. “The True Believers…they’re just like the Shadow.”

            “Speak clearly, I don’t have patience for riddles.”

            “They operate just like the Shadow. If Judicium’s Moon was the Son of God, the Archangels are the Mentors, and the Angels the Nights. The rest are the equivalent of Spiders, followers who support the cause with no true knowledge. There! I said it! Is that what you wanted to hear? Now let her go…”

            Charles had feared the True Believers functioned a similar way to Judicium’s Shadow. It explained why information and identities were so hard to come by and why all their prisoners, even when broken, had little to nothing to say. “Where do you fall in the hierarchy of things?”

            “Isn’t it obvious? I’m an Angel.”

            “Which would mean you report directly to an Archangel. Which one do you serve?”

            “Don’t play the idiot. We both know who runs this city. The Archangel of Gluttony, Raphael. Alistair Loucelles.”

            Charles sighed with disappointment. “Then it appears you’ve spent your worth. A deal is a deal. Mathew, free her.”

            Mathew pressed the gun to the back of Gordon’s wife’s head. “NOOOOOOO!” begged Gordon. If only begging saved lives, thought Charles, bitterly.

            After Mathew painted the fat woman’s brains to the floor, Charles ordered, “Gottfried, see what else you can get out of Gordon before you kill him. Mathew, start searching for your Angel. We’re going to find and tear Raphael’s web apart.”

Author's Note

I don't really have any questions except on your thoughts so far on where the story is going and character relations.

Reviews

[Dark Rider]

Oh, Charles. Something snapped inside that head of his, I'm sure. XD I just found this really good and amusing at the same time. Don't ask how, I'm just weird like that. And I really can't wait to see what happens next. Please put up the next chapter as soon as you can!

[Cynical_Art]

lol as long as it's continuing to be entertaining I'm happy XD I'll try to have the next chapter up by tomorrow, Saturday the latest.

[Dark Rider]

Can't wait to read it! ^^