“The Good Lord our God wants His people to rejoice in His Name! His Good and Holy Name! Your preachers tell you that your Lord hates you and has cast you into a fiery Hell for all eternity, to be reborn again and again unprepared for the literal Hell you are about to endure for lifetime after lifetime! Eternal, conscious torment, for sins you no longer even recall!
“That is not my Lord. That is not the One God. That is not my Heavenly Creator. And it is not. In. The Gospels! ‘For the One God so loved the world, that he gave his only born Son, that whoever believes in him—do you believe in Christ Savior?!” The crowd that had assembled let out a collective cheer. “I said do you believe in Christ Savior?!” The crowd let out another, louder cheer. “The One God didn’t send his Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world should be saved through Him!’
“Now tell me, lads and ladies and liminally-gendered! Does that sound like the Lord you were told consigned you to Hell for all eternity?! Does it seem, to you, to make sense that the Savior would die, burnt at the stake in Hell for your sins, only to leave you there forever?!”
The crowd shouted “No” emphatically.
“The Lord our God has paid for our sins! As it is written, ‘You were bought with a price;’ ‘you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Christ Savior and in the Spirit of the One God.’ Can I get an ‘Amen’?!”
“Amen!”
“But I am just a sorcerer, I am no priest. Let me hand you over to a true holy man, a fellow in true possession of the Lord’s Spirit, a man who is gentle and humble at heart, just like our Savior! Hear his words, and take them to heart just as you took mine!” Daisy walked over to Ruler and said quietly in Jovian, “They’re all yours.”
Ruler took his place in front of the crowd. The trepanation scar on his head was clear for all to see, and there was a collective intake of breath, a drawing back. This was the kind of sermon they were used to, one with a psychic whip crack of emphasis. But Ruler was no Helland priest, and he caught them off-guard with that. He spoke softly, and put not even the least hint of psi behind his words.
“S-s-siblings in the One God. Children of the L-Lord. As surely as the One God made the heavens, He made them to a precise design.” His voice carried, as he had learned from Daisy, despite a relatively low volume. “Calculations can be made to prove that this is just one more of His beautiful planets. But that is not why y-you should listen to m-m-me.
“You should listen to m-me because I-I-I carry news of what is to come. There will be a time of great trial. A time that Marz, with its great patronage by these powers, will suffer unduly through. I-I do not stand in contradiction of m-my companion! I stand by her message, for the L-Lord has said, ‘The One God Himself is who goes before you. He will be with you. He will not fail you nor forsake you. Don’t be afraid. Don’t be discouraged.’ There will be trials, but the S-Supreme through His Spirit and for the sake of the love of His Son will carry you through them! But dragons are not the friends of humanity! I-I-I have been given to carry a great prophecy of a war to come, a war between dragon and man, that dragons would have be a war between man and man!”
Daisy watched quietly, filing away where he lost their attention and where he brought it back. She also noticed that Ruler didn’t stutter when he recited Scripture. She was also impressed by his focus, continuing to translate his words for her even as he recited them aloud. Still, the time came when the requisite “miracle”—she hated framing it that way, but the people had no concept of the sorcerous sphere of water—was necessary. She set their urn, the same one they had started with, on the ground and conjured water into it. She felt parched. She drank enough water, but it was always possible with sorcery to overextend oneself and she worried she was approaching that point.
As they dispersed water, taking donations as they did so, Ser Irons brought over an older woman, who introduced herself in a tongue that was unclear to Daisy. She looked over at Ruler in a question; the last few days had been strenuous for him as well, he had been exercising his psi unlike any other time in his life. But he shook his head; the woman was not speaking Lider. Daisy apologized and spoke to Irons, asking if they could translate.
“This woman, she says you are welcome in her home. Her husband is there, he cannot come to see you because he is too old for the crowds.” Daisy wondered how old the woman was who came nonetheless, but she knew men were more fragile under their bluster. Presumably—ah, yep, Irons went on, “She would like to invite you as her guest, but if you would speak some of the encouraging words you have said, but to her husband, she would appreciate it.”
With a quick look at Ruler, Daisy nodded her assent. She slipped a few coins to Irons, asking if they wouldn’t mind getting something from somewhere nearby, intentionally getting too much for just the three of them. Irons smiled appreciatively at her intent, and disappeared down an alley. Daisy realized only moments later that she was unable to talk to the woman. She wondered who in the audience had been translating for her. Her next worry was whether Irons would be able to find them. Then again, Irons could read street signs. They probably had gotten an address. Heaven above, they might have been the one translating for the woman.
Following, however, took no speech to communicate, and so she followed the woman to her home, less paying attention to their surroundings and more to her gray bun. Anything to avoid paying close attention to the worn and ragged ace of hearts on the back of her vest, in better repair than any other article of her clothing.
The door they walked through was an irregular wedge of stone, well away from any copper banding to reduce the temperature. Once inside, despite having thought herself used to the heat, Daisy began to sweat. She had seen worn and threadbare souls, the manifestations if not the sorcerific realities of reliance upon the Repositorium of Knowledge… but she had not had much exposure to the realities of crushing poverty. That was, perhaps, the ultimate lie of the Repositorium. By the time one had no alternative to destitution, one was barely sentient, and fell off a berg to hit the theoretical Diamond Palace at the heart of the planet.
Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.
Inside the door, likely not an intentional eccentricity but a castoff leaving of some masonry project, were a low table and two slabs, one to either side of it, obviously intended as both seat and bed, all of fire-baked clay. Though she supposed it wasn’t necessary in the heat, the lack of blankets harrowed Daisy, and there were not even pillows. Perhaps that was normal on Marz, she tried telling herself, but she couldn’t quite believe human beings would keep on keeping on in the face of such poverty. She thanked the One God she had sent Irons to obtain food, even cheap food, as whatever they had left sitting on the table was clearly spoiled. There were two urns and a small mount in a corner of the room. They smelled like a burnt chamber pot, and Daisy recalled that she had been told they boiled their waste to obtain water from it. It was, admittedly, a practice she’d considered in desperation, but sorcery was at least clean.
All this she took in over a matter of moments, but by the time she had wiped the dismay off her face it was clear the old woman had seen it. Laying on the far slab was a thin old man. He called to the woman in a hoarse voice, and she hurried over and used a rag to sponge water into his mouth. Then she prepared to feed him, and Daisy hurried to try to arrest her action, even if it meant abandoning the pretense of having too much. If he was too ill to get out of bed, he was likely too ill to endure a round of food poisoning. That could even be why he was ill. Through gesture and pantomime, as well as Irons’ name, she managed to convey that food was coming. The old man, however, grumbled and complained, only to be shushed by the apologetic woman. She held his hands in hers, and it was clear to Daisy they loved each other as only people who only had each other could. She started to ask about children, relatives, before realizing one element of their translator relay was still absent.
Daisy was ready to send Ruler out to find them when they ducked in, carrying a clay jug full of some kind of stew. Mashes and stews were popular on Marz, a way of incorporating water into the meal by the ingredients and get around the high cost of pure water. That much Daisy had learned. By now having lost her appetite, Daisy invited the couple through Irons to eat as much as they willed. The man tried to protest, to rise, but even that effort was taxing for him and eventually he waved a hand and accepted being spoon-fed by his wife.
The man, at least, was hydrated. Casting back through her memories, Daisy realized the woman had been in line—she was not going to stand in someone’s home and think of them as “the woman.” She asked through Irons and learned that they were Mam and Ser Dutiful Labor. Daisy made a show of eating some of the stew, but mostly she talked, reviewing points from her sermon that day. When her throat grew hoarse, a condition that had afflicted her more and more, she gave the stage to Ruler. Finally, with more than half a jug of stew and a full urn of water, Mam Labor clasped her dirty hands on Daisy’s, and she was painfully aware of the fact she had summoned water for her ablutions that morning more than of any sense of contamination. “Thank you,” she said. “Ever since they reduced the water rations a week ago—” Daisy thought back and realized that was a few days after she had arrived. Guilt already running in overdrive, she wondered if she was the cause. So concerned with the possibility, she missed the rest of Dutiful’s thanks, but smiled and nodded before slipping out and into the streets—were they marginally cooler, even, than the hovel abode of the Labors?
The next day, Daisy took up her position where she had sold water for the previous week. However, this time she did not start by summoning water, but by shouting. “Enough! It has been enough! Do you know where I have been? I have been in the home of two of your elders! Their conditions were appalling, both living and health!” She saw Ruler flinch in concentration as a word or phrase didn’t translate neatly. “I see many familiar faces, and that should not be!” The assembled line looked taken aback, some abashed, others turning to go. “Not because you shouldn’t seek out assistance! Do not take that to be my meaning!
“People of Marz! This is enough! I have spoken of the heresy that Marz is an Infernalist Hell of eternal suffering, but now I speak of the ramifications of that alleged Hell! The caste system is a lie! The One God wants for you to better your lot! And again I turn to the Gospel, the Word of the Savior who is the Word, the One that your Infernalist leaders have hidden from you, to say ‘I tell you that there will be more joy in Heaven over one sinner who repents, than over ninety-nine righteous people who need no repentance’! The One God is not a wrathful God consigning you forevermore to a predestined fate! The Wholist—” Daisy cut herself off. While the Wholist Church thrived on Jupitre, she had seen no evidence of it on Marz. So her point as to Wholist doctrine concerning divination would be lost on them. She tried to recover her equilibrium and bull on ahead. “The One God so loves you that He suffered the ultimate punishment on your planet to buy your redemption! Those in power have lied to you, or been lied to themselves, but the system by which Helland runs is not right! It is not just! And it is not Godly! They have taken the Lord’s Creation and made a Hell on earth! And I say we go to the cathedral at the center of Oracle City, and we tell them we will not stand for it!”
The crowd stood stock still, seemingly shocked into silence. Daisy wondered if she had failed to prepare them sufficiently for her radical views. Even if they were the truth, anything sufficiently outside the scope of one’s worldview would be rejected. As the silence went on, Daisy began to despair. Then a voice cried, “We deserve… enough water!”
“We deserve to become deuces and even threes, not see the children of threes placed over us!”
“We deserve to not be in a Hell of their making!”
“Down with the Donjons! Down with the castes!”
Soon, the entire crowd was declaring their discontent. But still they were looking to Daisy for leadership. That wouldn’t do. She could not afford to be the linchpin of a revolutionary movement, unless there were no other choice. So she raised her voice again. “You are the masters of your own destinies! There are more aces than any other caste, you hold the power to decide!” She started walking in the direction of the cathedral, but kept her pace slow. As energy rose in the group, she slowed, and then stood in their midst, and finally was lagging behind the noisy mob. She watched as they strode up the steps of the cathedral, and then broke as a wave upon its doors. They were sealed. From the shadows and behind statues, clubs strode into view.
Daisy wheeled and saw that the entire square was cordoned off. She nearly cursed, she should have known that publicly speaking would have its disadvantages. As clubs approached, she looked to Ruler. The first woman to grab him, he grabbed her forearm and with an electrical crackling sound her arm went limp. Then he drew his revolver, swinging wildly from side to side, trying to buy himself space, but he was slowly being hedged in. Daisy, meanwhile, was spinning her staff as quickly as she was able to deflect truncheon blows, but the mob had broken and she was rapidly growing more and more outnumbered. Her staff was wrenched from her grasp, and she had no martial training without it. She went limp, but endured several blows before being wrenched upright and manacled. She looked around for Ruler, but didn’t see him, though she heard him shout, “I love you, Daisy!” followed by a thud.
Perhaps, she thought to herself, the Savior was not commemorated for His love, but as a warning to those like herself who thought they could challenge the social order. Then again, He rose again. Assuming they didn’t put her to death, she would be back as well.
