Chapter 8.

  Careless Cruelty

  Leagues away and getting closer.

  Theina bounced in her saddle, humming a tune she only half remembered while twisting a flower she had insisted on plucking from the newly thawed ground. She twirled the stem deftly through her delicate fingers before tucking it into the simple golden ponytail that adorned her head. She wore a set of sleek black leather armor trimmed in the gold of the Conclave. Strapped to her sides were two oddly shaped golden daggers that were patterned after the blades of shears. They were as gaudy as they were effective. Never more so than in the hands of the lithe young woman who sat upon her dappled gray mare. She played absentmindedly with the reins before pulling one of her blades up to eye level to admire the simple yellow flower in her hair.

  Hardwright witnessed all of this with a look of barely disguised distaste. Theina was a woman possessed of much beauty and skill. Surpassing the other acolytes with flying colors and a genuine smile that never left her face. It was true that she seemed to light up rooms with her presence. Hardwright hated it. She seemed filled with an endless energy. Even the bounce of her pony tail made him want to reach out and shear it off. His grimace turned up into a wicked grin. He would enjoy watching the mirth leave those gleaming blue eyes of hers when her task was complete.

  Theina turned back to him as if sensing her presence in his thoughts. She gave him a warm genuine smile that he hated all the more. “I’m so excited to finally have my own assignment! I’ve been wanting to join the order since I was a little girl!”

  He tried to affect a pleasant grin. He had heard this before. The whole conclave had heard of the golden haired acolyte and her intense desire to be a priest like her father before her. Hardwright wasn’t sure who her father was, but supposedly he was quite highly placed, and it would not do to burn a bridge whose position he wasn’t even aware of yet.

  “I’m sure this order will be good for you, sister Theina.” He said, managing to hide his distaste. She had never been beyond the walls of the Holy City of Grandia, and now she was miles beyond it, venturing into the wilds of the countryside as it was escaping the last desperate gasps of winter.

  “I hope this village has some real food.” She turned a sly eye to the disgruntled man riding next to her. “I fear I’ve lost my taste for possum.” Hardwright ground his teeth. Their first meal on the road had been an eventful one. She had found a possum while searching for food. She brought it back held proudly in the air. To all eyes present it appeared dead. Unfortunately for Lusis Hardwright, Cardinal of the Order of Golden Shears. It made its displeasure at being lunch known quite aggressively in his lap when he had attempted to skin it for the naive acolyte, who by the end of the ordeal, was doubled over in laughter by the now needless spit. It had taken two of his accompanying soldiers to pry the creatures jaw from his leg.

  Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

  The tiny claw marks stung almost as much as his wounded pride. But there was a balm to his rage. As she snickered in her saddle, his own cruel smile curled at his lips. The Inquisitors initiation was a brutal right of passing. One that he would enjoy watching. He half listened to her questions about what this initiation would be, where they were going and when they would arrive. “Soon.” Was all he said. Soon they would arrive in the nameless village. Soon this heresy would be stamped out, and soon… he fingered the relic in the leather satchel he carried. He would be rid of her incessant chatter.

  As he reveled in her impending misfortune, he hardly noticed the handful of peasants escorting a cart laden with supplies. Resurfacing from his fantasies of Theina’s misfortunes, he kicked his horse forward, the two guards accompanied him to demand the news of the road ahead from the peasants. Theina watched him go. A curtain of greasy black hair bounced against the pockmarked skin he tried to hide.

  She was unimpressed with the gloomy nobleman. He was an unenthusiastic travel companion, and when he did smile it was always a leering sneer he thought she could not see. She gripped the fine leather of her reins and steeled her resolve. She would show him. She had asked many people many times about the initiation she would be subject to. Most people she asked looked sheepish in their refusal to answer. Often finding something interesting to look at on the back of their hands or the tops of their shifting feet.

  It would not stop her. She had passed every test from her martial training to her weavings. She let her divine thread extend from her fingertip, snaking upward until it passed the tops of the tallest trees she rode beside. She watched it dance among the afternoon light before whipping it down at an unsuspecting boulder that had caught her eye. The face of it split neatly in two with a loud CRACK!

  The sound echoed up the road ahead to the donkey pulling the peasants cart. Its ears fell flat against its head in panic. With a frantic series of brays it set off with all the speed the encumbered animal could muster. The surprised peasants ran after it, leaving Hardwright alone amidst their dust. He turned to give her a familiar glare. Feigning ignorance, she looked around trying to maintain an air of innocence that was fooling no one.

  She sighed, ordering her thread into the dirt at the carts wheels. Pushing her will into the soil she effortlessly manipulated it into mud. The cart slowed and then stopped. It sank into the mud as the panicked donkey continued to pull, splitting the wheel and sending the contents of the cart sliding into the new bog she had just created. “There.” She proclaimed proudly. The problem of the runaway cart was solved. The fact that they were now stranded in a swamp of her own making in the now ruined road was none of her concern.

  She trotted past the downcast but no less furious peasants working to pull their rapidly sinking cart from the mire. She would make a great priestess of the order, she mused, leaving the sinking cart in her dust.