Victor should be dead by now, so everyone keeps telling him, from his cousin Thomas as they were playing knights as children, to his father, Faerin Auroran Karash, who never seemed to get over the fact that Victor had risen from his sickbed as a child, and never seemed to have forgiven Victor for not being what he expected, pure, good and healthy either, and now to Sir Balin who said he was a disgrace to everything the church of Mitra stood for. Baah! Everyone kept saying that he should be dead by now, yet he kept living, just to spite them, he kept on living, a regular dead man walking. Maybe this cell would finally be what killed him, or the executioners axe, or was he to burn? That might prove an interesting experiment seeing as he was inherently resistant to fire. To hell with Mitra and everything she stood for, false prophets all of them! With a first hand view of the inner workings of the church and it's inquisition Victor could tell you that not one in ten showed the conviction in faith to manifest any sort of divine blessings, not one in ten was anything more than a liar in golden robes. Clerics? Baah! False prophets and preachers of a weak faith convenient to their own weak selves, selfish bastards who craved nothing more than a soft bed and a supple body to warm it for them, gold was the only thing they understood or revered. And paladins? Huh? Heraldry and gilded armor does not make a paladin, the texts talk about paladins, men and women whose virtue is so pure that they manifest the powers of good in every action they make. Curing diseases with a mere touch of their hands, their mere presence a ward against fear and evil, their weapons a bane against evil. There were no paladins on this day, only trumped up knights filled with their own egos, at least that was the only sort of paladin Victor had met. Victor could manifest power, oh yes, he could. Not just the power of controlling a mans fate, bound in leather and iron to a sturdy oaken chair in the inquisition dungeons, that was power of a different sort, no, his mere touch could drain a man of his stamina and could cause a man pain for every lie he told, he had shown and manifested the power granted by Asmodeus, and now they would condemn him for it.
Victor had joined the church when all hopes had finally been crushed that he might join the ranks of the Knights of the Alerion, his family traced their lineage to the Battle of Tamberlyn, where Victor's great-grandfather, Aurus Karash, a 'paladin' of Mitra, had been among the ranks to hold the bridge, so Victor's denial into the knights ranks had seemed like the final blow to House Karashs ambitions to gleam some prestige out of the celestial blooded child born to them. Well, the final blow 'till now anyway. When Victor had been born the vultures of the ailing House Karash had all squealed with joy, his burnished-copper skin and the golden sheen to his blond hair could mean only one thing; the blood of celestials ran through the veins of House Karesh. The implications were staggering and Victors father, a third son of the fourth son born to a maid who was said have died at childbirth, soon became the most popular man to have at any party or minor gathering of every person of any import who could claim any iota of relation to the celestial child, and so Victor grew up in castles, mansions and manors, surrounded by doting aunts and uncles all claiming the title of favorite and all wanting the golden boy to live with them for one reason or another.
And so Victor grew up with plenty. Plenty of food, plenty of clothes, plenty of the loving attentions of his elders and plenty of the jealous attentions of his peers. Victor was far from the only child of his generation, there was Thomas and Bertrin, brothers separated by two years who loved nothing better than wrestling, playing tag, Knights and Knaves with the rest of the herd of boys, Antoin, Mikail and Sustian, and other physically demanding games, friendly games on the surface in which the strong and healthy Victor always excelled in despite not being the eldest, but games ripe with competition and jealousy, Victor had lost count of how many times Thomas said, untruly, that Victor should be dead in Knights and Knaves or that Victor had not tagged him. As boys are, they soon split into two rivaling groups, one led by Victor with Mikail and Sustian, and the other led by Thomas, ever competitive and ever jealous. And then there were the girls, Hana, Mara, Kiathrin and Admara, led by Hana they themselves wanted the attentions of Victor as well, bickering among themselves about his manner of dress and behavior, all believing they knew best, just like their mothers and aunts, all but Admara, blessed Admara, loving Admara.
She had been the only one who never demanded anything from Victor, she demanded no flowers, no special behaviors and no tokens of any kind, she had been the only one where Victor could relax and be himself with. He had enjoyed he company since he could first remember her, collecting seashells by the Cambryan Bay, picking apples from the orchards in a Heartlands manor, catching fireflies in warm summer by the southern shore and sitting together in silence in large gatherings and, as they grew to teens, kissing in the hay loft of Lerkvale Ranch. Their love had been perfect, pure and innocent, it had the blessing of all around and it was the cause of many a jealous pang and bickering as well. As perfect as the love was it was not meant to last. On a perfect summer night, warm, calm and quiet, the two of them fell asleep in the hayloft, waking up to the smell of a fire burning Victor, the golden boy, the picture of health and the pillar on which all of House Karash's ambitions rested upon, jumped to action. Looking around to see the hayloft aflame he gathered his beloved in his arms and made to carry her to safety, but he never made it. The floor gave out and the two were buried in burning beams and hay, Victor lived, though he was told he should be dead, but Admara did not.
Surviving solely because of his angelic heritage, his innate resistance to fire, Victor suffered few burns though some broken bones but what he suffered the most was the loss of his love. Finding little solace in the comforts of his family and friends he grew recluse and distant, finding excuses to be alone and places to hide when could not.
A year of melancholy ended on his 18th birthday with Victor bound to bed, feaver burning hot with cold sweats running for days, physicians where clueless and clerics useless as nothing seemed to help alleviate Victors pains as spasm wracked his body and liquids seemed to run from his every orifice. Days on days and weeks on weeks the golden boy grew thinner and paler, everyone believed he would die. Victor heard them talk through the haze of pain, the physicians, the clerics and his father, they all agreed; there was nothing to be done, his body was rejecting his angelic blood, the boy would die, the amazing fact was that he had not done so already. But Victor heard them, and he hated them for their words and he grew to hate his family and their guile as he thought on the smiling faces of aunts, uncles and cousins, how they must leer at him now, how they must rejoice in the secret places of their hearts as he lay there, helpless, wracked with pain, a prisoner in his own body unable to control his feces. Roiling his hate into anger he fought, he fought for breath and he fought for control of his muscles, eventual his body calmed and the fever passed but his anger boiled. Rising shakingly from his bead Victor was forever changed, what should have killed him certainly had not made him stronger. His coppery skin had drained of luster on his golden hair had turned auburn, no longer catching and reflecting the light as it had, he was thinner and every movement stole his breath away and caused him to sweat from effort, causing him dizzy spells as if his lives blood now refused to flow through his body. But the change was not just physical, but mental as well.
Now Victor didn't need to make excuses to not attend every gathering ever held, everyone knew his condition, his aching joints and his lack of stamina apparent as he ran out of breath in the smallest of tasks as walking down the stairs. Despite this Victors father held onto the hope that the boy might recover, after all the boy was still alive, but as a year passed that hope turned to dust. Victor displayed no increase in stamina, his appearance did not improve and neither did his attitude, but under his fathers goading Victor tried, he swung a sword and shot a bow with a trainer, he dressed in armor and nearly killed himself trying to ride a horse and Victor grew stronger, but his pains did not subside and his stamina did not improve, at the end of the year Victor even graced his father with applying to join the Knights of Alerion, an application that was promptly rejected as Victor added to the fires of his anger by humiliating himself in the tryouts, courtesy of his cousin Thomas.
The humiliation drove Victor to seek out ways to separate himself from his family and it's estates and his escape route ended up being the holy church of Mitra in Matharyn. Fleeing the silent stares and the quiet accusations.
Accepted with open arms into the fold of the church Victor lost himself in studies in the great library of Matharyn, spending hours, days, weeks and months and years gleaning texts and participating in holy rituals, memorizing prayers and sermons and playng the role of a dutiful acolyte, what Victor truly wanted was answers. Why was his body so week? What had caused his illness and was there no cure? Spending 3 years in the church Victor learnt a lot of things, first, humans are not to be trusted, and second, the love of Mitra is a lie.
In his quest for answers Victor inadvertedly studied religious texts, anotomy and his own origin, his quest for knowledge led him down many paths and eventually his thirst for answers drew the attentions on the inquisition. They believed him to hold exactly the right qualities that they wanted, a hunger for the truth and a restlessness in seeking it, knowledge of the churches teachings and above all, a dispasionate mannerism when it came to the guilt of others. That, and his studies in anotomy, landed him in training with the inquisition where he distinguished himself in their dungeons.
But Victors thirst for answers led him on the path of the forsaken, disillusioned by watching the men on the church at work he grew to resent them for their lack of displays of divine power, how could his answers lie here if there was no manifestation of divinity? Frustrated by his own lack of progress in the matter he started offering up prayers to the churches arch enamy, Asmodeus himself, as noone else seemed to be answering Victor decided that he might as well try that farce too, swearing himself to the Prince of Hell if he would show him the the path to power, if he would show him they way to his divinty, as noone else would, Victor offered up to serve the Dark Prince and to see that his place was restored in the pantheon of Talingard. With little or no hope of success Victor was taken by surprise when he manifested power during a session in the cells, nearly killing his subject.
Coming to comfort with his newly manifest powers with time Victor started excelling at information retrival, so much so that he unknowingly drew the eyes of the inquisition himself. Coming in for work one morning, groggy and dishelved and feeling weaker than ever, not rightly knowing what had transpired the night before, how he got home or who he had been with, Victor was met by armed knights and clapped in irons and charged, confused at what was happening he was led away and charged with heresy.
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