Byron: The Dark Witch

Prompt the Ninth - Freedom and not Peace

From the window, watching, he’d schooled himself. He’d seen the horror on the man’s face, imagined the discussion at hand and followed with wry humour at the way the Church’s antithetical lapdogs lapped at each other’s wounds. The templar seemed on the verge of histrionics, face turning an interesting shade of puce as Mc-Pompous rabbited on about something at the expense of his audience’s comfort. The little pencil-pusher probably relished the chance to talk to someone who obliged to listen to him.

Noting Aoife’s absence, Byron frowned. Had she noted the same anguish and gone to relieve the templar of his woes? He didn’t understand her. Ice cracked along the glass as he breathed out.

She tugged on the arm of the templar, spoke with a face as familiar to him as her voice. They were coming inside. Heavy feet creaked on the stairs, two more shuffled, taking each step individually, whilst Aoife fairly glided with all her fae grace from the door towards the central living quarters. The door opened. It was time to meet destiny.

It was the sheer size of the templar, towering over Aoife’s waifish figure, that first ensnared his attention. After that it was his malignant green eyes, the cutting way they flicked around the room, scoured it, lingered on every exit, every personal giveaway. They were dangerous eyes. They contained murder.

“Templar.” Byron said evenly.

Killer eyes narrowed slightly. “Witch.”

The templar might have been attractive once but he was full of shadows. Steely Will sang out, ebullient in itself like every templar Byron had ever met, if not more so... and he bore a certain presence that became unavoidable in such close quarters. But he was also hard, granite and darkness, dark hair, dark clothes, dark heart. Byron knew he had a choice. He could accept or deny, make it easier or harder. He didn’t like him though, that made things easier. Even if he was different to the templars of memory, he was still a bulldog, a vicious little beast to whom right and wrong were black and white, good and evil only opposite sides of a coin rather than different coins altogether. Templars were like that. They were blind men slashing swords and hoping for contact.

Aoife’s voice, upturned in a smile, interrupted their appraisal of one another. “Templar Jude, meet my brother Byron. Byron, meet Jude.”

Neither man acknowledged her though Byron rolled his eyes. Sister mine, he shot her a look, you are foolish to bring this monster here. Jude shifted weight, not quite enough to be obvious, more like a clenching and unclenching of muscles to keep them awake.

“What a greeting after you have travelled so far,” Byron broke the imminent awkwardness, intending to leave it there but his sister’s little smile irritated him and he spoke before he thought, “Clearly the church doesn't teach manners to their scapegoats.” He bit his tongue as soon as the words were out, wishing he could take them back. They showed his hand. He would have to pull himself out of this, it gave the templar too many openings.

He took the most obvious though: manners. Of course, taking affront to the insult to the Church teachings rather than to himself, “One could say the same of yours, Byron Bathory. After all, are not the rules of hospitality a burden upon the visited and not the visitor?

Hearing his name on that strange, thin mouth irked slightly. He hadn’t wanted to give his name to this vulture. And it was not freely given. Names held power and Aoife handed it over willingly. Another reason to scold her later.

“I hardly think the burden falls upon the visited when an intruder stands in his living room.” The voice was low, deep and rumbling and despite near perfect stoicism there was a hint of a raised eyebrow in the tone.

Byron didn’t look at Aoife, but saw her shrink in his periphery, likely from the cold that emanated from him, “She is welcome in my house but it is not hers to invite contentious guests.” He shook his head, “But what's done is done. She knows my thoughts on the matter.”

And of all the obsequious things, the wretch bowed. Low and apparently without sarcasm. It sickened him. “I apologise if I have unknowingly given offense to one in whose house I am now a guest.”

“Perhaps apologise by explaining why you're still here.” He quipped, “You have your magus. What's next on the agenda?”

“Someone in my Church is destroying Witch souls, and I have seen what darkness that portends. I am ashamed that the Church is a part of such destruction of the natural order and wish to do whatever I can, however meager that may be, to put it right.”

“How very magnanimous of you.” Now he could hardly hold his mask of indifference. Not even years of practice could make him immune to such nauseating rhetoric. This man knew that he wanted to hear something from him, he wanted to be taken seriously. But Byron didn’t trust him and every word that pitted witches as equals to the Church made him doubt. What equality was there when hate crimes were committed daily against apparent witches, condoned rather than condemned? And what did a templar whose magick had transformed so utterly into a skin of iron will know about the natural order? Templar Will negated that order at an extreme.

“Yes, jolly good show and whatnot.” A pause descended, awkward after the surprising and awful British impression. And was that a joke? “Listen, you know as well as I do that the Church doesn't have that kind of power. We turned our back on real magick to favor the light. Which means that the Church isn't alone. They have allies. Among your kind. So you can pretend all you want that I am the bad guy here, if that makes you feel better. But either way, something needs to be done and I don't think either of us have the luxury of throwing away perfectly good allies because we don't like each other.”

Byron had thought the same thing, but fixated, prodded first at the man’s language, “Among my kind. Among the antithetical dark witches, you suppose?”

“Among Witches. And, yes, among what Aoife has told me are called Black Witches. Antithetical dark witches is, however, the more elegant turn of phrase. You are good with words.”

He’d gone to university. He’d been a rebel. He was a practitioner of more than just magick. Byron smiled a deathly smile that curved like a knife, “Yes, the Black Witches. Corrupt, deadly, addicts of extremity.” Pacing slowly from one side of the room, back to the other, to Jack’s side and back, he almost mused, “Light or Dark, they are fallen, I suppose, in Church language, isn't that what you say?” He paused, waited, “It's a yes or no answer, templar, don't hesitate.”

A rueful twinge darted over the man’s countenance, “Yes. That is what the Church says.” He fixed Byron with a heavy look, “And No. It is not what I say. But then, I am not the Church. They merely provided me with weapons.”

Byron snorted. Of course they did. What better to do than give a man swords and knives and guns and poisons as a means to an end. But he kept his tone light, “You tred softly. Did you ever consider politics?” He tipped his head, turning back to a previous comment, “I came to the same conclusion, though, when your magus told me what he saw. That and the stain on his soul... it's unlike any magick I know. That's part of why I invited Jack down.” He gestured to his discomfited friend, “Neither of us recognise this brand of perversion despite my misspent youth.”

He dropped the hint carefully, watching for the reaction. It was there, he knew it was. Prejudice. No one was free of them. Least of all templars. They hunted men and women for their sport.

“I'd be a horrible politician. I have a tendency to speak my mind far too much.” Byron watched as the other’s eyes drifted to the magus whose face was even more drawn from watching their show with pale confusion. That man was sicker by the hour, he realised, it was spreading faster than before. But the templar continued before he could think longer, “I can see the...stain, as you call it, on his soul. I looks like the darkness...the corrupt power that spewed out of the Priest when I found him. Whomever is behind this, they are using puppets...they're not getting their own hands dirty. Edward says you think this is some sort of psychosomatic backlash from his vision.”

“Probably. I think it's a weakness in Word magick. Word magick is the pinnacle of light magick, almost too light, because it relies on absolute control, rationalisation... But magick is freedom, it's free will. If every moment of your own magick has to be controlled - how can you protect yourself against the unknown, free magicks you may experience? It's a theory, of course, and Jack is the elder in this situation.” Byron sighed, smiled at Jack. It was a lie in some ways. Jack was the superior in years, his elder in the coven, but Byron was more powerful. He was more powerful than a lot of people. “But you can see the stain - your magick is stronger than some of your kind. I suppose you're not often assigned to cases like this, bit too close to people like me for the liking of the Church. Yet here you are. It's rather strange.” He wondered if that dug close enough to the templar’s stoneheart to cause another reaction like in the garden. Apparently, it wasn’t quite sufficient. But again with that twinge of discontent. Magick scared the templar. It was alien. It corrupted.

Recovering: “I'm a special case. I rarely get assignments; they mostly let me do what I want as a penance for my Trial by Fire. I chose to go after the Otherkin because I thought they chose to be evil rather than unknowingly doing it. I have since been corrected and have learned that the Church kills your kind not because you do evil, however innocently, but because you might do evil. Fear corrupted them and I like to think perhaps God steered me away from that fear. It wasn't an easy path, but here I am. Maybe God finally took notice and is fixing it in His own, inscrutable way. I don't know. I can only do what I think is right.”

Inside Byron raged: What you think is right? Who made you judge, jury and executioner other than your Church? Was it your all-loving god? You suppose that it might be him guiding you - but that's compulsion, that's a nice way of saying you have no choice, no free will, that there is some great cosmic plan where the blood is washed off your hands because it's all in the diagram. And if you say that he gave you free will to choose and you chose to do these things, then what's to absolve you of your hate crimes other than a church covenant? But he said none of this. Instead he went for the throat, “Free even of the fear of yourself? You templars teeter along a line finer and thinner than any other witch. Your Will is blood magick honed into one performance. The stronger your power, the more dangerous that performance can become because it doesn't want to stick fixed as pure will. It's inherently free. And you control it.”

Yes, that drew a reaction. Fists clenched, brows twitched, lips thinned into a line. The templar stood, still rigid, unmoving, a soldier except for that smart mouth. He did fear this. “I am terrified of myself, Byron Bathory. You were watching out that window, were you not? When I found out I have magick. I am terrified every day that I might do the wrong thing. That I will undo my covenant with the Lord. Because though He may guide us, we are responsible for ourselves. You are responsible for your own actions. I see the black magick within you, and the stain it left on your soul, but I also see how hard you have worked to repent for it. And seeing that struggle to return to some semblance of yourself, it leads me to believe that darkness is not a death sentence. It may be undone. Which gives me faith. Because I do not ever want to become corrupt. That is my choice. And that is how Free Will works; it is a choice guided only by our knowledge of what God may want, but it is a choice..”

“You think you see me,” Byron rolled his wrists, hearing the joints crack and jar, “My balance of dark and light. And you put it so delicately.” He smiled, mouth caught in a rictus akin to the grin of a corpse, “I don’t think you can see me. I think you sense the darkness and you’re hoping. You don’t want to think that the best hope for your Church is part of it. “You're right. It was my choice, my decision, my battle for my own free will. You don’t even understand yours yet. I want to be free. I want to look up at the sky one morning and dance in the shadow of the wind and I want to know that I am free. But could you let me, as an ally? When my own people watch me with a wary eye. When I chose the black stain on my soul unlike your pencil-pushing partner? You purport to want to work together with a witch whose soul is stained with the same blackness you hunt, who has rejoiced in the same darkness as those Crone worshippers, been welcomed and thanked by the Wild Dark? You think you can be my ally, Templar?”

The templar Jude bowed his head, eyes closing , perhaps in frustration or pain, he couldn’t tell. But he shifted his weight, paused, struggled to find the words until it came out like a prayer in the confessional. "It is faith. I cannot see the light in you;” Byron didn’t expect that to smart as it did, “only the sense of black. But there is more to you than your soul for me to use in my judgement. And no, I do not want someone whose soul is black fighting against this...unnatural magick any more than you want someone from the Church to be on your side.” That was true. He wanted to work with the Church about as much as he wanted to be a member of GOP. But then came the second truth, and it ran both ways, “You are the ally I need; some convergence has decided that for us. If I take it on faith that you are better than your soul makes you seem, it is because of Aoife. And because of Edward. And because that Witch there, in whom I do not sense black, has not torn you apart. If I say what I say, it is because I need to convince myself that you are trustworthy. Because, between you and me, I am willing to bet you are the worse, even though I fight for the Church and you do not."

“You and your kind are the devils in my version of hell. I've seen what you do to people like me. But I’ll say it again, I want to be free,” Byron said, his face glowed and his voice rang with zeal, “And maybe we can stop whatever catastrophe is coming our way. I won’t pretend that McTaggart’s trust in you gives me faith, or that even my ever-helpful sister persuades me that this is a good idea. If anything, your confession gave me what little hope kindles for me that this might work. But...” He shook his head, red hair picking up like flames in an unnatural breeze that tried to sooth his nerves, “this force is bigger than us. It is every temptation. It is seductive. Whilst it might sicken you now, when you feel it in its extreme like in that chapel, it’s the sort of power that corrupts even the strongest will. We will both face the worst possible versions of ourselves. Versions not even your sword could absolve.”

If any of his words hit home, he wasn’t sure. He wasn’t looking. His thoughts traced the patterns of the last five years, the questions of personal power, identity, free will, control, wildness. Darting ideas, memories, the way his addiction caged him within its seductive embrace, ensnared him so thoroughly... He’d been kept like a bird in a gilded cage by his own black soul. He wouldn’t go there again. He’d made the choice a long time ago. He knew that Jude had to know it.

“I’m determined to fall on my sword should the time come,” He admitted, softer and softer, “Would you?”

Word Count: 2,872