"i'd be the dreadful need in the devotee"


-- -- --

Dear sister,

I must tell you, I've met a man today, and the encounter was so entirely strange that I must speak of it or else I fear it will haunt me til the day I die.

He floated up to me like a knife cutting water, long robes billowing in his wake. Out of the corner of my eye he looked like any other holy man of our country: long red robes, armor as gray and as smooth as his short mane, the air of a body made for piety that does not walk so much as it slides from here to there, as if each step is an act of god in and of itself.

I could see then that he was the same blue-gray as your eyes, except where it is interrupted by a paler gray, toward his knees, or the dark black of his ankles. The skin beneath was as black as night, too, peeking out around his eyes and mouth, except for the snip carved into the dark hair of his nose.

It was not his piety or his robes that unnerved me, though we've all heard how the Circle lives and that in and of itself is enough to make even a man like father shudder --no, dear sister. The urgency with which I write has nothing at all to do with anything holy, but the opposite.

He was blinded, perhaps at a young age like the others, some child stolen away from his family because of the eyes. The eyes... I don't think I shall ever forget them, up close. Father has told you, I assume, that any child born with a third eye is sensitive to magic, and that they must wish upon some well of demons and the long-dead to bring it across the veil and into reality. Father says that some of them, those truly devoted to servitude, are allowed to keep their magic, but the rebellious mages, the ones that have no control over themselves and so cannot possibly be prevailed upon to control the legions of Hell itself, are at best blinded and at worst made anew by the church.

This man had three eyes, no doubt about it. Two were red as blood, as if the tip of his horn had pierced the skin and drained down the black of its spire and into his eyes. The third was a milky white, the lids cut through with a thick pink scar that ran from the center of his forehead to the snip on his nose.

Sister, I do not think they quite say what they mean in describing the blinded. They are not made anew by the church, they are unmade entirely. When I asked he said only that the collar around his neck, a thick, black leather dulled by the wear and tear of a life in silence and servitude, is what made him what he is: unnaturally still, like a ghost, or a spider. They make these in the likeness of a snake eating its own tail to bind them forever with the very magic they have been robbed of --or, at least, the ones that did not take kindly to robbery in the first place. When he smiled it did not quite look like a smile at all.

There was nobody behind it. Just the blackness of space. It chilled me to the bone.

Sincerest love,
Olivia

"If I felt pain, it is meaningless to me now. Once I knew only fear, but now I know only service. Whatever pain there was, I believe it an acceptable trade."


-- -- --

- extremely pious
- hates and fears magic above all else
- nearly emotionless
- blind obedience


- incredibly humble
- well-educated
- selfless to an extreme
- rational because he can be nothing else
- approachable, to an extent
- idealistic, for better or worse


When a mage is blinded, much is taken from them: their connection to the earth, their connection to the worlds beyond it, and their connection to themselves. They say the blinded are like sleepwalkers, neither lucid nor entirely asleep, either. They say the blinded walk like a dream through the fog of their life. They say the blinded are emotionless, always. And obedient, always. They are mostly correct.

It has never felt quite like living, to Jask - but he had been a rebellious child, full of piss and vinegar, rebellious and outspoken to a fault, according to the Circle. They had known that to let him develop into a mage, make a pact with a demon or two, and set him loose on society was a tragedy waiting to happen. If they were right no one will know - he was never given the chance to do good.

The blinding had left a hole in him, one that he stuffed full with the Circle's religion, devoting himself with unmatched intensity. They say he makes a good soldier: Jask does not ask questions, Jask prays either in silence or as loud as the church bells, Jask does not speak out or speak up because he is unmoved by the plight of the people. He has only his god and his fear to call his own - and the fear is gripping, like a fist around his throat. The only thing he fears more than the magic of the people is his own, though it has been stolen from him.

This is not particularly common. Most of the blinded and their mages with functioning third eyes hate the church like a worm hates the sun. Jask has been asked, why, and he has only said "because it is dangerous," though no one is sure just what it is, any they may never know.

His kind are not strangers to tense smiles and eyes that deliberately avoid their faces. If they smile it is not because their hearts are stirred to do so, but because it makes the populace more comfortable. Most don't like looking a man in the eyes and seeing nothing behind them. Jask smiles rarely and laughs more rarely still. He stands still like a priest, cleans his robes with silent and loving precision, and obeys as if it is his one purpose for being.

It is.

"“If you can convince people that freedom is injustice, they will then believe that slavery is freedom.”"


-- -- --

The Circle of the Broken Sword was founded to solve a single problem: the end of the world.

It is said, though the origin is dubious and the script on the prophecy looks far more recent than the centuries back from which it is said to have come, that mages would bring about armageddon, one way or the other. The Circle did not tell the people that they were the head of the snake, wishing on ghosts to bring their talents into being. They did not mention that they were mages, themselves, or at least their most respected members were, behind closed doors.

Though it should be obvious. Who enchants their collars? How does anyone come to discover that to blind the third eye will seal a person, body and soul? Who speaks into the churches with the voice of God? If there is a god on earth that is privy to their goings-on it is not the just and benevolent one of which they speak, that much is for certain.

Jask was born in the dead of winter, with three eyes as red as the blooded snow on the days of sacrifice. He had not been met by the love of a mother or the proud but stern face of his father--the room of his birth was full of apprehension, a silence so thick it choked, and and the grim, pale, bleak faces of a couple already in mourning. It was bad luck to give birth to a child with a third eye, a mage, the harbingers of the apocalypse. His mother had smiled, though it was feeble and shaking, but Jask had known. Jask had always known he was a thing to be feared.

The Circle would say they gave him a chance, that even as a child he had been unruly, wild, dangerous, as if all the magic within and without him had driven him mad before he had turned a year. He had felt the whispering in him since the week after his birth, a voice that asked his name, who he was, what he thought of his parents. It had smiled at him in a way that his parents never quite could, in a way that the Circle outright refused. Everywhere he went Jask was met with scorn and distrust, and he had turned that scorn and distrust first on the voice in his heart and then on himself.

But the voice only grew louder, and louder, until his first birthday, when Jask was asked to choose: to be blinded, or to die. He had chosen death, strangled by his fear of himself and his magic and the voice that now screamed at him as he cowered in the dark corners of his heart. His mother had been the one to say no, let my son live. He deserves to live. Jask had not agreed. He still does not agree.

(On the day of their choice each young mage is given, if they choose to live in silence and servitude to the Circle, a black leather collar in the style of a snake eating its own tail. These collars erase a person's magic whole cloth, both physically and conceptually. Some have suggested that they might be mind control devices, giving the mages at the head of the church the ability to hand down punishment as if by divine intervention, to turn an already blinded troublemaker into a devout and god-fearing thing, believing that their suffering comes not from mundane hatred but from their deity itself.)

(But the Circle of the Broken Sword would never torture their congregation, no matter how dangerous they are--right?)

The blinding is painful, unbearably so, but it fades into a sort of throbbing numbness and then to the stillness of a snow-covered field, and the cold on one too. For the first time Jask felt holy silence, and became holy silence. He had cried. He had cried when they fastened the collar around his neck. He had cried when they gave him his robes, clean and red and smooth, and he had hugged them close.

He has not cried since.

"i'd be the dreadful need in the devotee"


-- -- --

Armor: *CURRENTLY NO ARMOR*

Robes: The robes of a holy man of the Circle of the Broken sword: soft, red linen edged with gold that drapes over his chest and his torso, with long flowing tails that float across the ground as he walks.

Collar (enchanted): Supple black leather tooled to look like a snake eating its own tail, with the eyes and mouth and tongue painted red. This collar is enchanted to make him oblivious to magic; though he is not immune to it, he cannot see it happening or recognize it for what it is.