An Angel Called Eternity

To Bet on Losing Dogs - Cardinal Sin IX: While Reason Burns

Cardinal Sin IX: While Reason Burns

The Seventh Day of the Eleventh Moon, 873 AD.
Aegos, Aegan Hills, Western Dathan.

Sin stalked through the halls of the barracks, his intent singular and mood sour. He didn't like Ser Ezekiel, but seeing as he'd just found out that the man was being held down here, and that there was to be a trial involving him no less, he felt it important to try and glean as much information as he could from the disgraced knight. The man would never act on his own and Sin knew as much, but that didn't mean that he might not slip up and reveal something he hadn't meant to in the process.

Eventually he came to a small cell two floors down that was inhabited, the rest having long since been cleared out of any riffraff. It was quiet and not exactly small, but not huge either. There was very little to furnish the room, but there at the back, arms bound by chains to the stone wall behind, was Ser Ezekiel himself.

"Well, Ser Ezekiel. I was surprised you survived our little encounter along the Aegan Road. Tell me, did it at all hurt when you woke up? Or was it merely your pride that was wounded?"

The man's gaze whipped up to meet him, and as if on instinct the knight made to lunge forwards as an animalistic snarl fell from his lips.

"You remember my mace, don't you?" The knight growled. "I'm going to polish it on your insides until it fucking gleams."

Sin just raised an eyebrow.
"You'll need to be able to hit me with it first. As far as I recall you struggled with that point a little, didn't you?"

At those words a fresh bout of clanking could be heard as Ezekiel railed against his chains, moving as close to Sin as they would allow him to.

"I'll fucking kill you for what you've done! The pious and holy Father, the man who was my master, killed because of a lie you told Adikos! Cardinal Trios died because of you, you vile hellspawn, and it will be the greatest pleasure I have ever known to watch the life leave you whilst you beg for mercy!"

Sin sighed, already growing tired of this whole conversation. He hadn't told Adikos that Trios had been to blame, but to be honest he could understand why Ezekiel would think he had. There was no use in trying to explain to so zealous and rabid a man that he was wrong however, and so Sin elected to simply move along and continue with this... 'conversation' felt like too generous a term, but he couldn't think of anything better at the moment, so 'conversation' it was.

"I'm not here to go into that today. I want to know why your master wanted me dead, and I want to know who else wants me dead."

Ezekiel said nothing, only hocking and spitting in Sin's direction. The glob of phlegm fell short of the bars, but he still curled his lip in distaste nonetheless. Oh, so that's how we're going to play? I'm going to do that back at you one day, you feral animal.

"Now that's not very knightly."

"Who's going to stop me? I'm an Inquisitor-Paladin, you vile sinner. I can do what I please to men as crooked and corrupt as you."

Sin raised an eyebrow. An Inquisitor-Paladin, eh? Normally inquisitors were selected for their agency and quick-thinking, as well as their intelligence. That was why Sin had cosied up to them so much and gotten them removed from Athio as soon as possible. None of those were traits he would assign to the man in chains before him.

"You know," Sin started, his voice falling to a far more sincere aspect, "people like you were my hero once. I wanted to be just like you, and to do what you do. Then I found out what you're really like and realised that, just like so much else in my life, it was all a lie. I've become somewhat disillusioned with what everyone does here nowadays, and it was genuinely refreshing when I met a few people who were exactly what they said they were. You are not one of those people. You're a feral beast in need of culling, nothing more."