Phinneas Ansgot is grey in the eyes, and at the temples. This last is a feature which he has in common with many Myrken residents, who have known prolonged horror over these last years; the human form can only endure so much. He's a burly fellow with a clumsy name, and a way with the hands that belies both, for they say that no-one whittles a figurine like Ditcher Phinneas, whose nimble grip is surely wasted on the shovel he wields for his trade. Unfortunately, the market for little wooden squirrels and wolves is small, while Myrken is always in need of new foundations to be dug, and vaults to be sunk.
His is a humble life, for this is not the sort of work that earns a person great renown -- or coin. But he carries a pike for the Militia like his father before him, and during last year's searing heatwave, he'd dug ditches against fire by side of its leader, Proxenus One-Eye. They'd worked stripped bare to the waist, knee-deep in Myrken's dry earth and filthy with it as well, and they'd swapped stories as they dug -- although Proxenus had certainly told the better ones. It was tales of long-ago wars, that he'd told; of furious conflicts in far-away lands which Phinneas had never before heard named. It was strategy and cunning that Proxenus had recited, given in exchange for Ansgot's far milder tales of... oh, mundane things. The clay they'd had to dug through to sink new Gaol cells, a few years back; a real bugger of a job, that had been. The slowing of business for a ditcher like himself, now that folks were burning their corpses instead of burying them. For eight days they'd worked like this, and in all that time, canny old Proxenus had never suspected that, where stories were concerned, Ansgot was...well, holding out on him.
Amongst the more interesting anecdotes that the ditcher had failed to mention: that folded at the bottom of his clothes' chest by his bed is a set of white robes, cowled and pristinely clean. That for a year and more, he'd regularly worn these robes when, along with the rest of the Order of the All, he'd gathered for worship in a series of deep caverns not far from Myrkentown. That in those dank caves, Ansgot had bathed in the glory of His love along with the rest of their number, and deeply envied the young aspirants who'd given their lives to Him in selfless sacrifice. That during one of these celebrations, he'd shown his face to a swordswoman of unnatural spite, and thought nothing of it. Brother Prime, after all, had stood at her side; all would be well.
This surely accounts for much of his surprise, when he returns home from his work this evening and finds her seated by his fireplace.
This surprise proves to be short-lived, terror taking its place when she comes at him with the schiavona; like so many other members of the Order, he is murderous not by nature, but necessity. The short-bladed knife he'd brought for his evening's whittling doesn't prove obedient, when it comes to bloodshed; a pass of the woman's blade brushes it aside, and slits open his wrist as well. An ill-planned attempt at defense earns him slashes to the palms as well, and when he finally falls, it's because he's slipped in his own spouting blood. It's over quickly, then: a final twist of the blade opens Ansgot's throat, bleeding the last of the life out of him; the last flail of his dying limbs knocks his table's leg so strongly that the little wooden figurines atop it come showering down to join him on the floor. The red of his blood lends them a certain animalistic sheen.
It's the aftermath of it all that proves the most gruesome, for it's then that the sword is put away, and a dagger employed in its place for more... deliberate work. Is it fury that gives her arm strength enough to plunge that knife clear through Ansgot's skull? Is it grief? But there are no tears here, when she's done with him, no tragic exclamations; just a corpse sprawled on its own bloody floor, with a dagger-hilt protruding obscenely from its broken forehead and white robes draped across its knees -- and three words carved deeply into its naked chest:
Belief Is Death
It is, by Ariane's way of reckoning, a good beginning. There is no slaying Thadius, who has survived swords and flames and a broken heart; it seems she can't kill a legend. But perhaps she can make the cost for following its teachings unbearably high, and rob him of his willing, demented flock. Perhaps she can give them a reason to fear working in His service. Surely, if all else fails, Bromn's horrific murder will at least be avenged. This death is a beginning, then: brutal enough to catch their attention, thorough enough to keep it. It's just a shame that her penmanship is so poor; those dagger-carved letters are a little clumsy.
But with some practice, they'll improve.