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The cold bit into him, cutting through his skin and drilling into his bones. The heretics' basement was a far cry from the warmed hearths of the Vault, and certainly nothing like his ever heated private rooms. He sucked in a breath and felt ice stab his chest and spread through him, even down to his chained arms. It was almost numbing in its intensity, but still not quite enough of a punishment for allowing himself to be captured like this.
"Ah, good, the most Holy Inquisitor is awake," said a woman's voice.
His pride disallowed him from looking up, but he heard the soft squeaking of thick leather on wood, the clink of armor shifting with its wearer. More importantly, the scent of burning tobacco filled the air, and he flicked out his tongue as discreetly as he could, tasting the smoke and welcoming the hint of flame riding upon it.
His captors had not missed it, naturally misinterpreting the action. "It seems our honored guest is thirsty - offer the poor man a drink, Flemenet. Oh, and be sure it's warm enough."
Footsteps growing louder in his direction, presumably from the one called Flemenet, then he was staring down at a pair of feet clad in familiar armor...Now, he could not help his curiosity, and he looked up to a young Elezen man wearing Temple Knight garb holding up a brass goblet, a wide smirk etched onto his face. Charibert stared, understanding at once where everything had gone wrong.
"It seems I've been recognized, my lady," said the false Temple Knight, looking back to the woman in question. Charibert's gaze flickered to her. She was an Elezen as well, clad in leather and fur, a smoking pipe resting between the corner of her lips as she stared back at him with a most familiar look of hatred.
"I would certainly be most disappointed if one of the Heavens' Ward - and the finest Inquisitor Ishgard has seen, at that - did not recognize the man clever enough to trick him," she said, still looking directly at him. "I am sure these lodgings are not to your taste...which suits my brothers and I perfectly fine. Now, about that drink?"
Flemenet took this as his cue, raising the rim of the goblet to Charibert's painted and dry lips. Immediately he turned his head away as well as he could. As if he would willingly partake of anything a heretic had to offer him.
"Do not be like that, good Ser. Even a holy knight needs water to live," said Flemenet, reaching up with his free hand to grab Charibert's jaw and roughly turn his head back. Warmth emanated through the heretic's leather gloves, a painfully sharp contrast against his freezing skin, as he squeezed until Charibert opened his mouth. Flemenet was quick to raise the goblet, pouring what was indeed water past his lips. The heretic pushed his mouth closed, forcing him to swallow, then letting his jaw relax before pouring more in. Thirst consumed him all at once, and now he could not help but lap at the goblet, taking in water rapidly. It was indeed just warm enough to be pleasant, and there was enough to quench his thirst.
He closed his eyes as he drank, disgusted that even he could not be strong enough to resist. He heard the woman chuckle, just as the water flowing through his lips seemed to become hotter and thicker, the taste of the brass carrying it suddenly accompanying...
His eyes snapped open and he made to spit, but Flemenet was ready for him, forcefully shutting his mouth once more. Charibert thrashed against his chains, bucking his head this way and that, but Flemenet seemed to expect this, grip only tightening before forcing him to still and raise his head. The thick blood settled against the back of his throat, and once again, he had not the strength to resist swallowing. He shuddered as unholy flames raced through him, the unwanted heat licking at every inch of his being. Evidently satisfied with this, Flemenet finally released him, stepping back and allowing Charibert to hang his head, what blood he had not swallowed spilling from his mouth and splattering onto the floor.
"Tsk, what a waste of our dear, draconic friend's gift." Again, the squeak of leather on wood, and then boots filled his vision before a pair of hands touched his chin. A thumb wiped at the blood on his lips, smearing it over his cheek, and he found himself looking into the woman's gold speckled eyes. When she spoke again, it was with obvious glee at his distress. "But no matter, that should still be enough to bring out the wyrm in you."
"...Heretic whore."
The chill that descended upon the basement felt almost unnatural, but Charibert knew it was merely from the hardening of the woman's expression. Those hateful eyes held his gaze with steel and ice.
"Lady Vaulamie, by your leave, I shall cut this bastard's contemptuous tongue from him - "
"Flemenet!" Here the woman - Vaulamie - turned on her companion, who shrank away and had the decency to look ashamed. Charibert could only sneer at them both, delighted that Flemenet was, in fact, not clever enough to hold his own tongue.
Hers was a name he knew. Hers was a name that had been passed around the Inquisitory years ago. Charibert held his sneer for her as she turned back to him, her brow furrowed and a scowl on her lips.
"Hmph, I should not be surprised you would resurface, Temptress rat," he hissed, before spitting at her feet. The metallic tang of blood would not leave his mouth. "How many knights have you turned from Halone's blessed teachings this time with your whorish ways? Tsk tsk tsk, no matter, I shall see you strung upon Ishgard's highest spire, burning for all to see as your husband did."
Again, that silence, that chill. Vaulamie touched a hand to his cheek, tracing the scar there, before stepping back to Flemenet's side.
"I think," she said, taking a long drag of her pipe, "You have the right of it after all, my friend. I only ask that you take care not to let him choke on his own blood. T'would be a shame for the holy knight to die that way when he did so well with the wyrmblood."
Before he could say anything more, she had turned her back to him and walked out the door, leaving him with the false Knight who had lured him into Vaulamie's clutches. Flemenet smiled. Charibert returned it with a glare.
"You shall have the honor of dying before your beloved lady rat," he informed the heretic. With how small the chamber was, Flemenet certainly heard him, but the man did not acknowledge his words, only disappearing through the door as well.
When he returned, it was with another heretic in knightly armor at his side, carrying a bag that could only contain what Charibert assumed would be 'tools', a suspicion swiftly confirmed when Flemenet withdrew from it a metal gag. With a grin, the false knight grabbed Charibert by his hair and pulled until he had exposed his neck.
"I take no pleasure in this, Ser," said Flemenet, despite the unmistakable glee in his eyes. "But we here have all lost someone to your tenure as First Inquisitor. I'd slit your throat and be done with it, but my lady supposes you would make quite the interesting dragon."
Charibert spat into Flemenet's face, taking satisfaction in the way he flinched, but the man did not jump back and his grip was firm and steady. He only reached up to wipe the spit away with his free hand, before reaching over and forcing his lips to part with probing fingers. As soon as Flemenet had his jaw open as far as it could go, the other heretic immediately approached and, with no small amount of eagerness in his eyes, dutifully slid the gag onto Charibert. Here Flemenet stepped back and released him, nodding in approval at the way he could no longer shut his mouth.
"Which was it you said to my brother, I wonder? That his death was a mercy, or a service to Ishgard?" said Flemenet. His fingers once again found Charibert's hair and chin, holding his head steady so the other heretic could reach into his mouth and pull upon the tip of his tongue. The scent of metal invaded his senses, and he could just feel bile beginning to form at the back of his throat. He set a glare upon Flemenet, doing his best to communicate with his eyes alone that Halone - and Ishgard, by extension - would not stand for the mutilation of one of the greatest enforcers of her law.
A tip of cold metal touched his tongue, and he wanted nothing more than to pull away, but Flemenet held him too firmly. The pain came in an instant. A pressure upon his tongue, and he was struggling and bucking against his chains as the pain consumed him. For a moment he was aware of Flemenet intentionally pushing his head downward, letting his tainted blood spill onto the floor, then his vision mercifully went white.
***
The whispering began as soon as they left him to himself, a thin rotting cloth over his shoulders that did little to stop his shivering. The wyrmblood had infected his mind with the voice of a wyrm, this he was certain, for the whispers were of flight and the sky above, of escaping to a warm nest in the savage plains of Dravania, where his own kind would be sure to greet him, bending their long necks for him before touching their wings to his own...
He grit his teeth, or at least, he tried to. The entire lower half of his face was numb still from all the ice that Flemenet had applied there. "Let's not have you die of shock, either," the knight had said with a wink.
I must flee, whispered the wyrm. These chains will not hold me when I have wings. This cold will not pierce my scales, and I will be whole when I abandon this flesh...
No. He would never allow it. He was no heretic. He was one of Halone's chosen, granted her blessing to capture and kill those who turned away from her. This was merely another test from her to measure his piety. and he needed only endure. He would be as a smoldering flame, until she came for him, to lift him out of this Fury-forsaken hellhole as an inferno. He needed only endure...
Halone would guide him...
Like the vermin he looked down upon in disdain, he now could only desperately cling to his unwavering beliefs. The wyrm did not cease its attempted seduction, mimicking the voice of his thoughts when it spoke. Never. He would never turn. He was no heretic. The cold, too, continued its assault on his body.
He needed his flames, but they had refused to come, not here where ice was damn near the only sort of aether present. He'd managed a single, flickering spark that immediately dissipated.
He had one option left to him.
I can breath all the fire I want.
The heretics were fools to leave him to his own devices. No doubt they assumed they would find not an Elezen man when they returned, but a wyrm still bound in shackles too small for it. Fools, the lot. He turned his concentration inward, feeling the swirl of aether as he called it forth. His own essence, his own lifeblood - come, he beckoned to it, and he felt, in the air before him, the beginnings of a tiny fire -
The wyrm roared. He gasped noiselessly. The numbness of his mouth had begun to fade, and in its place came a powerful ache accompanied by a dull lack where his tongue should have been. The pain began to spread, slowly, as terrible as before, and he writhed once more against the wall his chains bound him to. Anything to alleviate it, anything to make it stop -
FLY! howled the wyrm.
Never. He would never. He struggled against his chains, barely even aware of the distant laughter from the door ahead. His entire face burned with pain, worse than when his cheek had been cut, worse than...
Burn...
Charibert willed himself to ignore the screaming of his body. He had important, delicate work to carry out, and there was no one more precise with a conjured flame than him. He threw his head back, letting his jaw slack and, with much effort, once again called upon the aether within him.
A single ring of flame at an intensity normally reserved for heretics formed within his mouth, licking at tender flesh for a single second before immediately dissipating. He saw white in that moment, but once the pain had faded, he was left with no feeling at all within his mouth. The heretics had used a flame to stop his bleeding while he had been unconscious, but surely they had not anticipated he would use one of his own in this manner.
He smirked to himself. The Fury had not forsaken him yet, not entirely.
Movement caught his attention. He looked up, just in time to catch sight of Flemenet fleeing the room, door slamming shut behind him. He kept still, listening carefully, and when he heard nothing, he looked to the chain that kept his right hand bound.
I can break it. I can rip through it. I need only fang and claw and teeth.
He had a better idea. Again, aether from himself to power a small tongue of fire, enough to thaw a single link in the chain before he had it burn brighter and hotter, enough for him to grasp a part of the chain and pull and have that single link simply melt apart.
Shouting and screaming filled the air, just as he had the flame do the same for the chain to his left. A battle had started somewhere, and he could just make out the thundering of several footsteps at once.
I must join them!
He stepped forward and stumbled, falling onto one knee and feeling the rag on him slip off. He breathed in, deeply through his nose. Tiredness settled over him, a heavy blanket of exhaustion comprised of the pain of losing his tongue combined with all the aether he had used. It told him to lay down and sleep, to let the wyrm consume him. A moment, a single moment, it would be all he needed. Fury give him strength.
The Articles of the Halonic Polity. Focus on that, Charibert reminded himself as he found his footing and gripped the rag to drag it along with him. The first article speaks of devotion to Halone. Blessings rained upon those who were pious, her wrath upon those who were not. The door swung open at his touch. The second article spoke of Halone's miracles and guidance. Many triumphs over Dravania could not have been possible without the Fury touching Ishgard's men and women. Beyond were a set of stairs. The third article spoke of methods of extolling the Fury. Hymns for choir, he knew them all, every word and every tune, he'd sung them all with his brothers and praised Halone with only the finest of voices. At the top of the stairs, he found another door, and stepping through revealed an empty room with, to his relief, a blazing hearth set into one wall. The fourth and fifth articles dealt with the divinity of the Archbishop, his clergy, and the inherent superiority of the High Houses and other highborn. There were those like himself, born to the wrong set of parents, but with the excellence and brilliance that only highborn could display, and thus, there were the rare ones like himself who could elevate themselves out of the Brume.
A biting breeze swept into the room, through what was the building's front door where he could just see Vaulamie, wielding a sword of her own, locked in battle with a Temple Knight on the snowy field beyond. Freedom. Escape. The sixth article dealt with the crimes Dravania's ilk had committed against the First King and his Knights. The dragons had betrayed them like the ignoble animals they truly were, turning on his peaceful Elezen forefathers in a terrible act of violence. He needed only to step outside, to let the Knights see him and know he was alive. Surely the Fury had come to save him herself. Surely she would never forsake one of her most beloved followers. He was her holy flame reborn as a mortal.
He drew upon the fire in the hearth, feeling it rush toward him. His entire body warmed up immediately as the tongues of fire circled him lazily.
Who was he to deny so easy a target as a rat preoccupied with other matters? He turned back to the exit, and he could see that Vaulamie had cut down the Knight and was facing another. It was time to make her pay for the crimes she and her ilk had committed against the Holy See and himself.
Something came barreling into him from behind with a roar, knocking him to the ground before flipping him over with unnatural strength. Hands - no, claws pinned him down, puncturing his skin, and he gazed up into Flemenet's eyes, fully golden now, his face framed with scales and several horns jutting out of his head and back. The heretic roared, and Charibert could see the scales growing inward on his face, slowly claiming more and more of his humanity. I need only free myself too. The seventh article spoke of heresy.
"Your knights will not take my lady, and you certainly will not harm her." Flemenet's voice came in a low, monstrous growl, and then he leapt up to his feet and began to drag Charibert toward the exit, uncaring if he slammed into the legs of a table nearby. Flemenet's gaze was firmly on the Knight Vaulamie was fighting, and Charibert could feel through those bloodied claws on his shoulder the growing strength in his muscles. A fully formed dragon would soon be bursting through that door, and with surprise on the heretics' side, only a slaughter would likely ensue.
The seventh article of the Halonic Polity was the article he knew the best. Everything to do with it, Charibert knew by heart.
Flemenet had made a mistake in his effort to keep Charibert alive still. With a laugh stuck in his throat, Charibert tossed the rag upward and toward Flemenet's face, letting it distract the half-turned man as he called upon the flames of the hearth once again. They rushed at Flemenet, burning hotter and hotter as they approached, until they had engulfed the heretic entirely. He howled, a noise more dragon than man, as Charibert swiftly directed the flames into a wreath around his misshapen head first before letting them find their mark. Every flame dove into the man's mouth, past slowly lengthening fangs, down his throat and into his gut.
Screams and sizzles filled the room as Flemenet boiled from within. What remained of his human skin turned redder and redder and darker and darker, his scales likely providing no amount of relief. Charibert held the flames were they were, forcing them to maintain their strength, until the heretic's screams ceased and faded into whimpers, and it was not long before that too became silence instead. He breathed in, letting the flames burn their way out of Flemenet's body through empty eyesockets. How he loved the scent of a freshly burnt heretic.
A man must gaze not upon the eyes of a dragon. A man must hearken not the words of a dragon. A man must lay his hands not upon the flesh nor blood of a dragon.
A gasp filled the air. He turned to the door, and spotted Vaulamie standing there, splattered with blood, sword completely red, and several bodies on the field behind her. He watched her gaze move from him to Flemenet's corpse, then back to him, and he smiled out of courtesy to a woman of her standing.
She might have attacked him then, had it not been for the chain he flung at her, links made of tightly controlled fire that pierced straight through her shoulder before curling around her arm. She screamed as he pulled upon the chain, dragging her down to the floor and closer and closer to himself. She struggled, digging her feet into the floor and flailing this way and that, but reaching up to touch the chain only made her yelp and release it, palm and fingers covered in burns.
The archbishop, his Holiness, declares thus, and thus is it law.
He glanced around, and found her pipe on the table he had hit earlier. Expending some effort, he dragged over to it and grabbed the pipe, then reached down and carefully placed it at the corner of her lips, where it teetered before finding its balance on her chin. A snap of his fingers that made her jolt in surprise later, and the pipe was lit, smoke lazily rising in curls from it.
"You will never be free." Her voice shook, and he relished the fear growing more and more evident in her eyes. "Do not forget, Ser. You are one of us now."
A man who partakes of dragon blood shall become one himself in due time.
Charibert took her tongue first, having the flames destroy every part of the inside of her mouth. Her hands flew up to her face, but she could do nothing, and soon her screams turned into silent ones. Righteous punishment for her spoken heresy and for the seduction of holy men. Selfish revenge for his own tongue.
He is tainted at the first drop of blood to pass his lips.
Next went her limbs, hands and feet pulled open and spread eagle with more chains, then wrists and legs sliced through with thin saws of compact flame. The heat ensured she did not bleed from the resulting stumps, not yet, and his smile only grew when she twisted upon the floor. Laughing to himself, he threw the chain still in her shoulder upward, having it pull her body up until she was dangling in the air. It was not quite the highest point of Ishgard, but it would do.
No cure exists for the sickness begat by dragon blood save for the mercy of death.
He paused.
Even without his tongue, he could taste the dragon blood. The wyrm, suppressed by his singleminded focus on the Articles of Halonic Polity, flitted at the edges of his mind and body, gentle, welcoming, tempting.
He had been tainted.
It had been forcibly. The Fury would forgive him.
He had personally seen to the executions of countless tainted knights who refused the mercy of death.
He was a pious man, never once straying from Halone's teachings. The Fury would forgive him.
His brothers, who detested him, were pious men too, and when they found him, they would only do their duty.
The Fury would forgive him...The Fury would...forgive him...
The archbishop, his Holiness, declares thus, and thus is it law.
His was a holy flame, borne from blessing granted to him by the Fury herself. He was that very flame, given a mortal form, and so he had carried out her destructive will for all his winters upon Hydaelyn's soil. He had punished heretics and unbelievers, had devoted his life to the Archbishop, had clawed his way out of the slums. He had done whatever he could to serve her ever better and better, overcoming every test of his faith she had tossed his way.
And now, her ultimate test.
Charibert began to laugh.
He was the Fury's holy flame, yet tainted. There was only one option left to him.
He turned to face the door with its snowy field beyond, ignoring the gurgling woman still hovering in the air. He refused to take a step out of this Fury-forsaken place while the wyrm yet lived within him, so he would have to purge it right here.
He called once more upon the aether within himself, augmenting first the flames without, before turning them inward. The sickness had surely spread to every inch of him now, festering in every vein and nerve, again threatening to consume him. It would be easier. To change. To fly. Let the wyrm take control, and he would never have to worry ever again. No more Halone, no more Ishgard, no more heretics, no more Heavens' Ward. There would be nothing but the sky and himself, endless expanses he would be free to explore...
He staggered, grabbing his head as a sudden heavy weight seemed to appear there. Rather than smooth skin, he found his fingers brushing over hardening scale, and when he lifted one hand higher, he discovered horns had begun to grow from him.
A single moment of weakness had been enough. There was truly only one option left.
The fire around him swelled, catching everything between him and the building's wooden walls and setting them all ablaze. For himself, the aether in him began to burn, brighter and brighter, hotter and hotter. Halone's holy flame would purge from him the dragon blood, and free him of the sickness. He only needed to make it burn whiter and more intensely than any he had conjured before, and just before the inferno devoured his vision, his body, and everything around him, Charibert thought he saw and heard Ser Zephirin appearing out of the snowy field, shouting his name.