Shanti awoke bound, gagged, and with a thick hood pulled tightly against her head. She sensed she was moving, but in some form of fast transport that traversed the terrain more smoothly than would a wheeled wagon. Her last meal must have been laced with a soporific because otherwise she could not have slept through the rough binding that now lacerated her wrists and ankles or the insinuation into her mouth of the knot of cloth that threatened to choke her.
When the earth sled’s motion ceased, she felt a strong arm hoist her without effort, and then she was dangling over someone’s shoulder. The putrid smell of the person’s flesh as her face pressed and jostled against his back penetrated even the suffocating hood so that she was certain who bore her: Og-Nedi. She felt him poise and then make a small leap before landing on what she assumed was either the ground or a platform of some kind. The monk chuckled and exchanged a few words with someone in a language she did not know. Then he began to jaunt, bouncing her along as he did so.
By now, she was no longer surprised at Og-Nedi’s athleticism, despite his likely age and decrepit appearance.
How long had they travelled while she slept? She could not guess, but wherever they were, the climate was pleasant. She could feel sunshine warming her, and this stoked the Aasimar spark within her momentarily as she had not been outdoors since...since the death of her parents. Once she thought she heard the chirrup of some songbird, and she whimpered around her gag.
Og-Nedi slowed, stopped, and set her down with surprising gentleness on what was too flat and even to be the ground. She heard a key turn a latch. Then she was brought upright, and she felt a tug as something knifed through the bonds of her feet.
“Walk, my child.” Guided by the monk, she stepped forward and sensed a door closing behind her, then the latch once more turning.
Abruptly, the hood was off, her eyes blinking as they adjusted to the light of the room around her. It was rustic but charming, with great wooden beams running along the ceiling, a stony fireplace, and walls lined with knotty-pine cabinets. In the middle was a massive oaken table surrounded by sturdy chairs. Diagonal from her a small stairway climbed upward and out of sight.
Og-Nedi grinned at her. “Welcome to your new home, my young apprentice.”
She could only nod.
“Oh…let me take that gag from you. It was necessary I’m afraid to keep you from accidentally alerting your captors when we fled.”
As her stretched jaw felt the obtrusion of the gag expelled, she again nodded, not knowing what to say but fearing that any wrong word would be punished.
“You are likely very confused right now. So let me explain something to you about the nature of the Mockery, which is the religion—nay, principles!—practiced among us at the temple.”
He guided her to a chair as he spoke, not yet releasing her arms. “Our faith—the faith you will soon embrace—is not entirely about pain and suffering. That through agony—experiencing it…and inflicting it---one transcends mortal existence is our highest achievement…the truth that we will in time spread to all mankind. But just as we learn that the physical is insignificant when compared with the spiritual, well, then, what follows?”
She hesitated, lost several places behind his rapid expostulation against all the goodness that had always drawn her, instinctively, like an aery and vulnerable moth to a consuming flame.
“Oh you don’t need to answer, dear. I would be astounded if you already grasped so much this early in your retraining. What follows is that we must also learn how to injure the spiritual. That is the next step in the path to godlike power. When you can disfigure and maim another’s spirit as easily as you can mutilate his body, then, then you will be truly releasing the infernal being that resides shackled in us all!”
She started to shake her head in disbelief at the horror he was describing, but she had learned better than to disagree with anyone from the monastery. Why, though, had he brought her here? After weeks of despair, Shanti could not help but hope that any change in her circumstances might be for the better.
“The Mockery teaches that the supreme method of injuring another spiritually is through betrayal,” Og-Nedi continued. “Nothing else is as effective at establishing your own dominance and crushing any decency in others as returning their naïve trust with treachery. Trust—believing in it, keeping to it—all of that is for the weak who must rely on some craven morality for their protection. The strong do not need to trust, and do not let the bond of trust constrain their own behavior!”
He paused and looked at her, his eyes almost benevolent but yet retaining something predatory. He sighed. “You won’t believe this truth, however, based on my words alone. No one learns through words.”
She heard a movement upstairs, and a door opening.
“You shall have to experience it, my child. I have warned you now, have I not? Are you wise enough yet to heed my warning?” He pursed his lips in a mournful mien and shook his head with exaggerated slowness. “I don’t think you are.”
Her gaze went to the stairs where a shadow fell, followed by the creaking of steps. Someone was coming down.