Repentance

Part 7

Antaeus took the new forged sword, then, into his father's chapel, thinking to show his people the thing that would save them. Instead so terrible was his aspect and so distressing was the crimson sword, shining with an almost unbearable ilk, that the people ran in horror from the hall, leaving only Antaeus and his father Arjun .

When the Confessor had at last saw what his son had made, he must have felt his heart turn to ice in his chest, for the weapon Antaeus held was no simple weapon, but the hersey against the earth that had provided both iron and ivorywood. It was a hole in the architecture of creation, and life rotted through it.

"Such a weapon should not be." the Confessor told his son. "Better we should go into the mists, than ever use such a weapon."

But Antaeus was maddened with the power of the thing, and horribly knotted in the spells that created it. "It is the one weapon that will save us!" He told his Father, "Otherwise these... these creatures! These insects! Will swarm over the face of these walls, and our rightful place will be stolen!."

"No" the Confessor said. "No. Some prices are too great. Look at you! Even now it has worn your mind and heart away. I am your Confessor, as well as your Father, and I command you to destroy it,before it consumes you entirely."

But to hear his father demand such a thing, the unmaking of what he had nearly died crafting and only done, as he thought to save his people from final darkness. It drove Antaeus past all caring. In that moment he lifted the sword and struck his father down, killing the Confessor of the White Mantle.

With the Confessor lying before him he wept and wept, not only for his father, but also for himself and his people. He dropped to his knees, cradling his father in his lap until the tears began to dry. He steeled himself and set the Man down onto the ground. At last he lifted the crimson sword up before his eyes. "From repentance you've been born." He said, "And repentance is all you have brought with you. Repentance shall be your name."

Antaeus, more crazed than ever by what he had done, nevertheless took up his father's mantle and staff of ivorywood and proclaimed himself Confessor. So stunned were his family and people by the murder that they had no urge to resist him. Some actually welcome the change in secret, five in particular who, like Antaeus had been angered by the idea of apathetic abandonment to the surrounding forces.

Antaeus with Repentance in his hand was a force to be reckoned with . With his five Justicars, whom the terrified Pact troops named the Cardinal Hand for their number and crimson colored cloaks. Antaeus took the battle outside of the walls of the Bastion, for the first time in almost five months of siege. Only the sheer numbers of the Pact, prevented the fiendish horror that Antaeus had become from breaking the siege. As it was, if the other White Mantle had rallied behind them it could be that Mantle Confessor, would still walk the halls of Divinity's Reach.

But the White Mantle people had no will left to fight. Frightened of their new Confessor, and horrified by his murder of the former, they instead took advantage of the mayhem caused by Antaeus' and his Cardinal Hand to flee the Bastion, led by the Justicar Leah Zittel , and the son of Antaeus' burnt brother Zelig. They escaped into the dark but protected tunnels which lead into Maguuma's vine riddled Forest.