Published at 23rd of January 2024 7:35 am

Chapter 93 Ten Thousand Candles

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Even with the great dome of the temple toppled and the sun missing from the sky, the surviving leaders of the church would not listen to him. He, like so many of the other veterans who had survived the onslaught of monsters they’d all faced, urged their leaders to act with all the strength they had left and strike at the heart of the evil that had silenced their god and almost eradicated his temple. The ecclesiarch refused, though.

He wasn’t the only one. They all refused. The Hierarch of Purgative Flame refused to fight the decision, and his few surviving high priests did likewise. “We must defend this sacred place! We do not have the men to hold the walls, let alone strike out with an expeditionary force!” they said as one, no matter how many times they were petitioned by the surviving Brothers of the Purgative Flame in the long silence that followed their terrible tribulation.

For the strongest holy warriors to huddle behind the walls of their fortress city while the world was plunged into darkness was folly, of course, but what could he do? He could not even make the argument that they must defend the farmers who fed them as long as the sun no longer existed to ripen the grain.

Every bone in Templar’s battered body told him that staying on the defensive was the wrong decision, but he would have accepted it because that was his nature. Then, the sky filled with shooting stars.

To most, it was seen as an omen, though people could not agree on whether it was a sign of hope or something more sinister. Just the same, everyone watched it, including Brother Faerbar, who was praying at the ruined altar high on the temple mount for more guidance.

That was when he was struck by a star that came careening out of the night sky and hit him like a lightning bolt through the giant hole in the roof above him.

He barely noticed the stars and didn’t remember being struck. He’d looked up briefly at the start of the shooting stars through the ruined tangle of the nearest stained glass window but quickly focused on his prayers to Siddrim. Those efforts were earnest and fervent enough to block out the talking and chanting that otherwise filled the holy place for the next several minutes, and then the world was suddenly lost in white light.

For a moment, Brother Faerbar thought that he had died, but it wasn’t heaven he’d been gifted with, but a vision of hell. He saw a struggling, dying god, as well as the terrifying evil that he had fought, as well as the suffering that creation faced without a light to keep the terrors of the night at bay.

He woke up on the floor of the chapel surrounded by other acolytes and warriors, miraculously healed from the injuries he’d still been suffering from. More importantly, though, he woke up filled with light. He literally glowed with power.

Brother Faerbar had always been sensitive. Most people would have considered him too sensitive for the role of a Templar, but he’d reveled in it. What he’d seen before paled in comparison to the sights he saw now, though. Until tonight, he’d been blind, and it was only now that he could see. The light that filled his soul shone with a purity that let him see right through the men that surrounded him.

It was a depressing moment of exaltation as he saw the amount of cowardice and sloth on display. The church had not been defeated by an army of darkness. They had been defeated by themselves long ago. Some part of the aging Templar had always known this. He’d struggled with his orders many times throughout his career, though he’d always eventually obeyed and done what he’d been told.

That was his sin, and he knew that. He also knew the truth, though. Siddrim was dead, and this was one of his last gifts to the devout. The Templar couldn’t make sense of all the details that had befallen his god, but one word stood out above all the rest: Blackwater.

Something terrible happened in that place, and he personally needed to go and end it. That was all that Siddrim had asked for in return for this power.

Everyone waited for him to speak as Brother Faerbar rose to his feet, but as he absorbed all of this information, he was struck dumb, and slowly but surely, the entire room joined him in silence. “Tomorrow, the sun will rise, but not as we have known it,” he said finally, unwilling to share the full truth with his brothers just yet. “Then, once everyone has seen what has become of our world, we march to war.”

They asked more questions, but the Templar ignored them. Instead, he walked to the ruined window, well aware of the fact that he would glow like a beacon in the dark night. Light shot out of his eyes and mouth, and his every word seemed louder than before, so he did not waste them.

Instead, he repeated his message again to the audience that was gathering below. It was only once he’d done that that he began to preach from the Book of Dawn, trying to give all those who heard him hope that he no longer had. “We must share our light and spread into the darkness in the same way that the flame of one candle might light a thousand more without ever really depleting itself. We must be generous with that light, not miserly!”

As the Templar continued on, he couldn’t help but notice that it was true literally as well as figuratively. Normally, Siddrimar would be lit brightly, even at midnight, but today, he outshone the few candles and guttering torches that were scattered around and doing a remarkably poor job of illuminating the white city. However, here and there, he could see other pure white lights milling amongst the masses in the courtyards below.

He was not the only one who had been chosen for this task, and he was sure they would join him soon enough. They had to. They’d seen what he’d seen and knew what he knew.

Once that was complete, he returned to his room to gather his weapons, armor, and the surviving men of his cadre. The rules and the rulers of the church no longer applied because the church was no more. Brother Faerbar would only stay in these lightless walls long enough to prepare, and then he planned to camp outside of the main gate and wait for the rest of his army to show up.

By the time dawn once again touched the frigid world, he was already dressed in his full plate regalia and walking out of the main gate with a growing mob behind him that was trying to heap all sorts of unearned accolades upon him. Prophet. Messiah. He was none of these things. Eventually, he allowed them to call him Paragon, though. That was an ancient title for the leader of crusades, and this is surely what this was to be: the church’s last crusade.

By the time the third sun had risen, they had built their camp just across the river from the city, making their opposition to the church elders very clear: there was no safety to be found in those walls. For a time, they were ignored. However, by the time the first two suns had set and the third one was descending, a trickle of men started to join them in twos and threes. That trickle didn’t become a flood until nightfall, which was also when Brother Faerbar noticed something peculiar for the first time.

By the time full darkness had set in, most of the men that were most loyal to him now had glowing eyes of their own. They’d spent the day telling scripture and stories, and it was that spark that he somehow managed to spread to them without diminishing his own. The other men present, who had mostly discussed fears or concerns about the fragmented nature of the sky, still had dark eyes, and Brother Faerbar thought that was fitting enough. It showed him that he still had work to do.

He’d hoped that explaining how each of the lights in the sky was one of the horses from Siddrimar’s chariot running free would have been enough to buoy them, but it was not. “Agrathixus, Nimeia, Dronicus, and Bosperon cannot light the world on their own,” he’d told them. “They need a strong hand to hold their reins and a world awash in the prayers of good men to graze on.”

It wasn’t until morning that the church elders came with orders and admonishments. They’d obviously been unable to work up the courage to do so in the dark when the growing camp of the Crusaders was lit more brightly than the holy city. Now though, by the wan bluish light of morning, when the frost was still heavy on the grass, they came with banners and censers and all the pomp that they could muster to reassert their authority.

The council of Hierarchs from the different branches of the church started with bluster, but when that failed, they were reduced to reason and then finally pleading.

“Would you dare risk your immortal souls by defying the Ecclesiarch?”

“Marching off with so few men in times such as these would be the height of foolishness!”

“Please, don’t you understand? For the sake of church unity, you must obey us. The men respect you too much. Anything less would cause a rift in the church…”

Each time, Brother Faerbar rebuffed them, and each time, they returned only slightly more humbled than before.

Finally, though, during dinner, after his following had doubled and then doubled again, he denounced them. “Siddrim has left us, and it is because of old men like you!” he yelled. “I no longer take orders from men that have no light in their souls.”

That was something everyone could see. There were over a hundred men in the camp now, and most of them had a little light in their eyes. The church fathers, though, were a notable exception to that, and they left almost immediately once that was pointed out.

“Humility could still save them,” he told his comrades that night by the fire, “But that is a straight the church hasn’t prioritized in truth for a long time.”

All the confrontation did was cause the powers that be to shut the main gate to the best of their ability, but that was, in a sense, an admission of defeat, and over the following day, the trickle of men that had left Siddrimar to join Brother Faerbar’s crusade became a flood, but he never left his growing camp, nor did he stop spreading the tales that would inspire hope in the beleaguered men.

It was only when his dozens had become thousands that the Templars finally started to march to the west. He knew that others would join him along the way, both from Siddrimar and from every city that they passed through, but he could no longer wait. The evil they sought to vanquish continued to grow every day, and if they hoped to drive a stake through its heart, then time was of the essence.

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