An Angel Called Eternity

To Bet on Losing Dogs - Cardinal Sin V: A Small Radiance

Cardinal Sin V: A Small Radiance

The Twenty-Ninth Day of the Second Moon, 873 AD.
Aegan Road, Aegan Hills, Western Dathan.

He allowed the discipline to fall on his bare back as he walked along the road. His other hand still clutched at his cane, now a little tighter as the stinging sensation upon his back grew with each swing of his arm.

"I am sinful."
Crack!

"There is a daemon in my heart."
Crack!

"I indulged in the sin of wroth."
Crack!

"I allowed myself to overindulge in wine five nights ago."
Atonement flooded through him with every swing of the whip. Crack!

"I indulged in pleasures of the flesh with a willing servant."
He was purifying himself, little by little. Crack!

Despite the pain that last one still made him smile. The same woman who'd apparently been watching him train had been very enthusiastic to- no. This entire trail of thought was sinful.

Crack!

He gritted his teeth at that blow, exhaling with a shuddering breath. She initiated it! The voice cried out. Why would we deny her something so pleasurable?
Sin flogged his back again with an even greater force, hoping to get the voice to shut up and leave him alone.

Crack!

He was glad that he always had the discipline on him. It made his slip-ups so much easier to correct when he didn't need to go out and find a sufficient number of reeds or thin branches. Far, far easier to carry his own than to worry about all of that.

Crack!

He stopped. What was that drumming in the distance. Were those... horses? Soon the noise of a carriage and hoofbeats joined with the faint whinnying on the road, giving him pause and making him stop his penance, if for no other reason than so he could turn around and better see who it was that was gaining on him. He'd punished himself enough for now, so there seemed to be little harm in taking a moment to rest. He laid his roughspun cloak and hood down by the side of the road alongside his haversack, knelt upon the ground, and began to pray.

It didn't take more than ten minutes for the party behind him to reach where he knelt. A pair of horsemen brought up the front, both with spears by their side and boiled leather jerkins for protection.

"Identify yourself, stranger!"

Sin nodded at the one who had spoke, slowly rising to stand. His back was still bloody from the whipping he had given himself earlier, but he supposed that he couldn't have looked too bad at the moment.

"I would have you tell me of your master first, my good man. You are not the first armed men on this road to happen upon me and wish me ill."

The two men looked at each other, suspicious and confused.
"We found a knight bloodied and beaten not an hour back from here. Was that your doing?"

Sin nodded, smiling as he held his hands out in open gestured compliance.
"Indeed it was, my good men. He sought to take my life as I travelled. I corrected him of the notion that he was capable of such a feat."

As he continued talking a figure stepped out of the carriage, demure and olive-skinned. Sin smiled as the man turned to look at him, eyes widening and voice filled with surprise.