019 - Mark of a Karravar
“—I am the Will of Nor made manifest. By the Nine-Pointed Star that is the Radiance of the Sun, I will be a shield against the Veh. I will speak true, act justly, and render the judgment of the Citadel of Glass and the Origa who steward the People. Upon my Semblance I bear the Fate of the Varrah. With this Mark, I accept this charge.”
—The Vow of the Karravar
Ai stepped into the interrogation tent that the Avnans had interrogated the New Gihn rebel in just a couple of days ago, Aru trotting silently at her heels. The air inside was hot and tasted of coppery blood and stale sweat.
The lizard-dog let out a low, vibrating growl, the feathers on his neck puffing up in agitation. Even he could sense the wrongness in the room.
“It’s alright, Aru,” Ai murmured, resting a hand on his head to soothe him, “Wait outside for me, boy.”
He huffed in protest, but walked back outside the tent nonetheless. Ai saw him hunker down by the entrance before she turned her attention back to the matter at hand.
The tent was illuminated by daylight filtering through the canvas walls, which cast a warm glow throughout the space that contrasted with its function. At its center, the rogue mage Inneol was pinned to a pair of wooden posts like some sort of twisted biological specimen.
Clearly, Benessel was taking absolutely zero chances.
Inneol hung by his wrists and ankles from manacles attached to the posts in an X-shape, his limbs splayed out wide. The manacles themselves were heavy steel and carved with spellscript that was presumably intended to suppress the activation of magic, which Ai wanted to examine again later.
It was the other restraints that truly drew Ai’s eye.
Inneol was gagged with a rag tied tightly around his skull that kept his jaw locked open and unable to articulate any meaningful sound. A thick leather collar was fastened around his neck, anchoring him to the posts so he couldn’t turn his head. His head had been shaved completely clean, dehumanizing him further and removing any potential cultural context it may have provided.
Most tellingly, his individual fingers had been splinted with wood and tied down with fine wire, spreading his hands open wide and preventing him from forming even the simplest sigil.
In Dirge, magic was a language expressed through symbolic gestures, chants, and any other means of expression that Players were clever enough to build into their hermetic traditions. A mage needed to communicate their will to the game engine—now that the game was real, to the universe at large—in order for their Semblance to make it real.
Karravar Benessel had systematically stripped Inneol of this ability.
Inneol’s treatment was clearly inhumane. But even as Ai recognized this, she also couldn't ignore that these were the very same in-game tools that were widely used during the game to interrogate other Player Characters—back then, it was just a roleplay convention and the use of a game item.
Here, the ugliness of it was plainly obvious.
It was far from just, nor was it particularly pleasant to see with her own eyes rather than represented as a digital abstraction. In fact, even though Inneol certainly had crimes and injustices to answer for, he didn't deserve this treatment. Nobody did. But he was a mage of considerable Semblance who had already proven his hostility, and they needed answers.
Sari stood beside Benessel, her face pale; she clearly seemed unaccustomed to the situation, despite her role as the Karravar’s adjutant in all but name.
“Miss Ayle.”
“Sari.” Ai returned the nod. She saw that Benessel was studying Inneol intently, and followed his gaze to look at Inneol’s right hand.
The Brand—that jagged, char-black flame within a broken circle—was plainly visible and radiating a dull, sickly heat. The Brands given to the New Gihn rebels were able to become invisible to the naked eye, requiring magic to become visible.
Without Ai, whose immense Semblance made easy work of identifying the charred flavor to the minnows swimming in the waters of reality around her, Benessel and the rest of the Varrans would be hard-pressed to locate any Branded individuals if they were intent on concealing their presence. But Inneol’s Brand was clearly not interested in hiding anymore. It yawned with a ravenous hunger, starved of the tribute it usually drew from the New Gihn boys.
Inneol’s eyes snapped to Ai.
They were bloodshot, rimmed with dark circles, and burning with a ferocity that bordered on madness. Even bound and gagged, he radiated a sense of personal superiority that was almost pitiable. Almost.
“Remove his gag,” Benessel decided. He stepped forward and nodded to Sari. She hesitated for a fraction of a second, then undid the gag.
Inneol coughed, a dry, hacking sound, before spitting a glob of bloody phlegm onto the dirt floor.
“You waste your time, Karravar,” he rasped, his voice raw. “I have nothing to say to the likes of you. I am free.”
“Under the watchful eye of the Sun, freedom is a privilege you have relinquished,” Benessel began, “You have orchestrated a local uprising. And might have succeeded if not for your timing. This cannot be countenanced. The justice of the Republic demands your death.
“But the information you possess may earn you some leniency. Answer my questions, and your death will be clean, besides which you will be saved from further advanced interrogation once you have been transported to the Citadel of Glass.”
Inneol stared back, a sneer curling his cracked lips.
“What did you hope to achieve by establishing a rebel outpost, this deep into the Southern Acquisition? This close to contested territory? What intelligence did you hope to gain from kidnapping a Captain of the Varran Army?” Benessel pressed. “You must have known that Avna represents a key investment in the Southern Acquisition. A full mobilization from Balir would have been a matter of time. So why? I shall draw these answers from you in due time.”
Inneol remained silent, his chest heaving. Benessel shifted gears.
“You are powerful, that much is true. But I find it doubtful that you possess the intelligence to plan this entire endeavor,” Benessel voiced, his tone turning provocative. He pointed to the throbbing brand on Inneol's hand, “Who holds your leash, Inneol?”
Inneol laughed, hacking and bloody.
“A leash?” he spat. “You think I am the one who is bound? Look at you, Karravar. Do you even recognize yourself without your chains?”
“Answer the question,” Benessel commanded, his tone sharpening.
“I answer to no one but my own conscience!” Inneol shouted, straining against the chains. “I am free. I am the [Liberator] of these wretches, and you cannot hold me!”
Inneol began to chant—but he had nothing to offer but his own life. He could offer no payment, but still he attempted to weave a spell to break free. The air in the tent began to vibrate in a low hum, resonating in Ai’s bones.
But Benessel simply raised his hand before the first semiotic link in the weave could even form. Sari reacted instantly. She hooked the gag around Inneol’s mouth and pulled backwards, cutting off his chanting with a ferocity that surprised Ai.
Inneol could only gurgle as he was once more denied his humanity. The vibration in the air died instantly. The tent was silent again, save for Inneol’s ragged breathing and the furious, muffled sounds of his rage.
Benessel sighed.
“I see this will go nowhere. Ayle,” he said, turning to her. “There is something else I would like to verify before I turn the interrogation over to you.”
Ai watched as Benessel reached into the folds of his robes to retrieve a chain from around his neck, light, golden, but radiating strength. Hanging from it was a nine-sided medallion of blue-green seaglass, clouded and weathered by time and set into a housing of polished black stone. Etched into the glass was a nine-pointed star, inlaid with pure gold.
“Do you recognize this, Inneol? It is my Mark—the Mark of an anointed Karravar.” Benessel explained. As soon as the Mark appeared, the atmosphere in the tent shifted. It carried a conceptual weight that went far beyond the physical. Even from a glance, Ai could sense the [Duty] and [Responsibility] that was woven into it, the [Fate-of-the-Varrah] that it demanded its holder bear the weight of.
Benessel held the Mark up, letting it catch the light. He pressed it against Inneol’s bare chest, right over his heart.
The effect was instantaneous. Inneol went rigid and slumped lifelessly against his restraints, all of his fire and fury disappearing from his body. His eyes, previously wide with manic fury, went wide in an expression of absolute dread.
It was the look of a dog that had been conditioned into docility by a harsh master—a mix of fear, confusion, and an irresistible instinct to submit.
“The Submission Response—” Sari gasped softly.
Benessel nodded grimly. He gestured for Sari to remove the gag once more. This time, Inneol simply hung there, trembling, his breath coming in shallow, panicked hitches.
“How—” Inneol whispered, his voice barely audible. “No, I left that life behind—”
Benessel looked down at him, his expression a complex mixture of pity and contempt.
“You never left,” He said softly. “You only ran away.”
He turned to Sari.
“The subject exhibits the classic Submission Response. He was trained in an Academy,” He noted, before turning to face Ai, “You wouldn’t know this, Ayle—when wielded by a fully ordained Karravar, a Karravar’s Mark supersedes a trained mage’s own control over their Semblance. This is trained into every mage before they may graduate from an Academy.”
The implications didn't sit well with Ai. It seemed that while everyone could make use of folk magics and traditional cantrips, access to true magical training—and potentially, the power to truly change things—was strictly controlled by the Varran apparatus.
“It can’t have been in the Citadel proper. We would’ve recognized him.” Sari responded to Benessel.
“One of the satellite campuses, certainly.” Benessel withdrew his Mark, but Inneol remained almost catatonic, staring at the object with absolute shock.
“Tell me if this rings true, Inneol, if that is indeed your name. You were once a promising young karra, intent on studying at the Citadel of Glass one day. But your performance slipped. You couldn’t keep up. And instead of entering the service of your city, you ran. Disgruntled with your station but without the talent to back up your overwrought ego.” Benessel surmised. Inneol flinched with every word, as if Benessel were physically striking him.
“You are no revolutionary, Inneol. Only a dropout,” Benessel intoned, “I ask again: who is your master?”
Silence stretched in the tent. Then, a low sound started in Inneol’s throat. A keening whine that built into a scream.
“NO!”
A scream tore from his throat, raw and bloody. Benessel, it seemed, had miscalculated.
“I am NOT!” Inneol shrieked, thrashing against his bonds. “I am MORE! I have risen ABOVE your petty Order! I will not end here, a prisoner of the Republic. I am—will be—forever free! I am a [Liberator]!”
He pulled against the manacles with a strength that shouldn’t have been possible for his emaciated frame. His Semblance loomed. The wood of the posts groaned. Ai pressed her own Semblance into reality to knock him unconscious. She'd need to wait a bit more for her answers, but it couldn't be helped-
[Soul]-[Sacrifice]-[Ignition].
It took only seconds for Inneol to burn himself into oblivion.
The Burned Brand erupted with a blinding, white-hot intensity, a conceptual heat that went beyond simple thermodynamics. Ai felt the shift in reality instantly. A mage used their Semblance to convince the world to change to their desires, paying a physical or symbolic price to achieve that effect. To Inneol, and to the hermetic tradition that he had allied himself so deeply, it seemed that existence itself was a fuel to accomplish their goals, whatever that meant to their adherents. They would burn themselves—and others—to fan the flames of purpose.
Inneol had nothing left to give but himself. The bonfire of not-flame that represented Inneol turned inward.
Ai watched with her magical senses as the Brand consumed Inneol’s Semblance. The narrative weight of his existence, his memories, his personality, his very being—all were subsumed into the Brand like gasoline poured on a fire. Could she extinguish it with Paradox Loop?
No, that would only allow for a spell to pay for itself. She'd still need to provide her counter spell's logic - and the Brand's insidious engineering was lodged into reality so tightly, that she'd need to cut its Gordian knot by force. But brute-forcing the issue would likely result in the deaths of everyone in the tent with her.
Ai's thoughts raced. Scarcely a second or two had elapsed since he had [Ignited] his Semblance, but by now the process was irreversible. She could see Inneol's diminishment in real-time.
First, he forgot why he was screaming. Then he forgot that he was screaming. Then finally, he simply forgot.
Inneol’s eyes rolled back in his skull, taking on a milky white haze. He stopped thrashing and went limp, held up only by his collar and manacles. Smoke curled from the Brand on his hand, the smell of burning meat filling the tent, heavy and sickeningly sweet. Ai couldn’t tell at the moment whether Inneol’s flesh was actually burning or it was simply his metaphysical ignition that caused her to perceive the ‘stench’.
“Master, is he…?” Sari whispered, horror etched on her face. Benessel reached over to take the man’s pulse, a frown etched on his brow.
The body that once housed the rogue mage Inneol was alive, but the man who had been Inneol was gone. What was left was a simple biological machine, breathing shallowly, heart beating slowly, but utterly empty of the spark that made him a person.
Just a person-shaped hunk of meat.
Ai stepped forward, pushing past Benessel. Frustration bubbled up in her chest. She had questions. Specific questions.
She grabbed Inneol’s limp right hand, ignoring the heat radiating from the charred skin. She pressed her thumb against the blackened mark. She reached into the sickeningly, overpoweringly burnt stench permeating reality around him, trying to trace the connection back to the source.
Nothing.
The Burned Brand was dead, completely burnt out. Any connection it had possessed to another Brand had been severed the moment its fuel—Inneol—ran out.
“Damn it,” Ai hissed, letting go of Inneol’s hand. It hung limply in its restraints. “It’s gone cold. I don’t… there doesn't seem to be anything left to salvage of the Brand. I might still learn something from its remnants, but…”
Ai looked at the husk of a man before her.
“He’s gone,” Ai said, her voice flat. “Whoever—whatever—was on the other end took everything he had and then some.”
Benessel’s shoulders shook with barely contained emotion, caught somewhere between disbelief and fury, though Ai couldn’t tell if it was directed towards himself or Inneol. He tucked his Karravar’s Mark back into his robes, then wordlessly left the tent. Sari glanced at Ai’s eyes, offering a worried look, then dashed off after him.
Ai exited the tent after a while, lost in thought. Aru trotted over from his vigil at the tent’s entrance, demanding she pet him. They’d learned nothing new. Only that an unknown enemy was still out there, hiding in the dark.
One thing was for certain: For Inneol, there was nothing left to say.