Faithfully Yours Part 5: A Time in the Affairs of Witches   Chapter 37 "The good ended happily, and the bad unhappily. That is what Fiction means."   Oscar Wilde

Proctor was sitting in his Tibetan mountainside monastery, a large bottle of brandy beside him. The room was dark except for his screens and the light of a very large fire giving an eerie orange glow to the room.

He was swirling a brandy glass in his hands as he watched his screens, they flashed through an assortments of images so fast, to most eyes the images were not visible.

There was an almost slow smile on satisfaction on his face as orbs sounded and Francesca appeared. Her hair still looked as if her hands had been run through it and she was twirling her ponytail.

"Good evening" he said to her as she wandered across to his window to observe the high still snow covered mountains. She watched them for a few minutes and then turned back to Proctor who handed her a glass of brandy.

"I observed" he said a demonic smile on his face.

She accepted it then glanced at the roaring fire.

"It is summer "she said.

"It is the Himalaya mountains" he replied.'

"It reminds me of your original abode." She told him.

"It offers comfort" he told her. "We all are children of our birthright. We run from it to forget it or turn to it to remind ourselves of where we have come."

Francesca narrowed her eyes and then smiled a small laugh with a hint of the golden. Proctor suddenly found his twirl brandy very interesting. But the smile on his face was not quite satanic.

"I observed" he told her.

"I fear where this goes" she said.

"We do not have a gift of vision" Proctor told her "Only Brother Therold has knowledge, as his role, and I fear I do not always trust his interpretations."

"He has very little understanding of his knowledge" Francesca agreed "he was never this… involved."

"He was never the sole guardian of the prophecy before" Proctor drawled. He hesitated "perhaps that is the secret of the balance; the guardian of the prophecy does not understand it".

Francesca thought about it "He certainly refuses to listen to my advice. Claiming prior knowledge.'"

"Are you not the angel who often says the recipient is free to reject your advice?" Proctor asked.

She glared at him and walked to the window again

"I dislike the mountains" she told him

He smiled

"You are certainly the angel who dislikes her own advice being returned to her" Proctor said dryly to her back.

Francesca turned around and his smile was purely Satanic. She sat down opposite the fire and putting her glass down said seriously "Proctor I fear I may start a war if I cannot contain Cole and Therold".

He glanced at the screens before he answered "You have stopped many wars "he said "so it balances."

She sighed irritated.

'"Not all wars are evil Francesca" he said carefully.

"I know "she said "but I fear it. I carry enough ..guil... baggage over Burvjara "she added.

"If you could not stop Burvjara, only ease it despite the best of intentions and actions available to you. It was meant to be" Proctor told her "The prophesy is Belthezor fixes Burvjara. It is written."

"My fear is that Burvjara is fixed by starting a war in this realm" Francesca said staring into the fire.'

"Then such an outcome is possible" Proctor asked her.

Francesca scowled at him, her crooked face wryly in the firelight, the orange glow almost reflecting golden off it.

Proctor leaned forward "I spoke to Arturo" he said.

"Proctor" she sighed "I  ...it is clearly not his business. It was not necessary. I do not need…"

"Perhaps "said Proctor" but you wished." he smiled "it is clearly not. Arturo's business Francesca.'"

"I know this "she said

"We are demon's Francesca," Proctor told her. "We wage battles to determine the strongest. When Belthezor crossed, it was clear the days of Arturo's pain were numbered. I see it, you do too, that Belthezor is Arturo's successor. Therold does not wish to see this. Or does and resents it.  He does not confide in me this." Proctor also went to look at the mountains through the window then he deliberately turned back "If Belthezor is to work with Therold he will have to prove his strength. Belthezor must win his battle to earn Therold's respect.  It is the way of demons and it is what we are born too."

"I know this" Francesca said swirling her nearly empty glass.

"I observe Friend Belthezor's pretty wife certainly causes…." Proctor stopped. "promotes the confrontation and appear to enjoy her power."

"Phoebe is a catalyst of events, of change" Francesca said "as are many truth speakers. Because the truth is so hard to …accept" she added. "And yes she is enjoying her power.

"I have observed that it is easier to accept a ...safe lie or a half truth than face ...consequences" Proctor agreed glancing at his screens behind Francesca. "But whatever happens between Belthezor and Therold it must be a pure truth. Between them at least because it is all they will have."

"You do not confront Belthezor" Francesca said.

"It is not the nature of the watcher to confront the warrior" Proctor answered. "It is the order of the demon world that there is confrontation between the lore master and the warrior. It is how the Source controls his evil."

"How does it end?" Francesca asked.

"In an uneasy alliance once who is the most powerful is established, usually the warrior" He added,

Proctor picked up the bottle and filled her glass and his own. "It is the good stuff" he said

"Do I depend on this to much?" she asked indicating the glass.

He shrugged satanically "No merely enough to relax your angelic predisposition and consider a ... other perspectives and choices. I will tell you frankly that discovering this in an angel made choosing my path.... possible" he said not looking at her.

"Oh" she said "I  ..."

"I chose Francesca" Proctor said looking at the fire not her.

Francesca stared at the glass "You did not have to speak to Arturo for me" she said

"But then I also spoke with Durand" Proctor told her confessing all..

"Oh Lord Proctor" Francesca answered "Why?  We already understand the right of it is that Phoebe is Cole's wife".

"I know" he said "But it balanced I thought."

"What did Durand say?" she finally asked.

"He wondered if Therold was being affected by spites" Proctor told her with a malicious smile.

"That only happens to females" said Francesca

"I believe that is his point" Proctor answered. "It was meant to be an insult to Brother Therold" he added

Francesca curled her legs under her and stared into the fire swirling her glass.

"Durand is disgusting" she said finally. "And I do not appreciate Durand implying being female is an insult."

"We are in agreement" Proctor told her also looking at the fire. "I will inform Brother Durand" he smiled.

………………………………………………………………

The guardian Therold stood on a narrow ledge in the Underworld starring into the bottomless pit. He could see the shadows of the fires of Hades and the Underworld far below him and as he stood staring at it he could hear the cries of torment of the lost souls stored there. In those pits were the demons who had been condemned to the mores of hell by the source, or stabbed by evil athames Also souls condemned there at the pleasure of their demon masters. The mortal creatures who had sold their way into an immortality not realising the truth of serving the fallen angels, not realising until far too late their only release would be to find their way into great upper levels of evil.  Or find some-one or something willing to risk everything, the balance, the natural order and their own condemnation, in order to release their torment, as had happened to the mortal father of the demon Belthezor.

Therold smiled bitterly to himself. He knew that little secret, at the time, he had felt the balance shudder and then fall into place, and his perception had been that nothing in Evil had changed, when in fact it had heralded the massive changes that happened when a guardian arose. Now, thinking of the so called Guardian Demon Belthezor, Therold wondered again if his first perception was not the true one.

It was Therold's atonement to be sent back to that place which he hated. The underground was banned to Proctor and Durand and now Belthezor.  Hilma had scorned it, drawn to the light. Arturo could go there but hated it and would spend decades if he could, avoiding it. The irony that the he was summoned back to the place that was the epitome of the lore and legend of the Underworld was not lost on Therold. Therold's penance was to be returned to the place of his pain, to seek the words of truth in a place where truth was hidden and bring it  to a place where the words could be spoken.

There were times in his past evil life when Therold has spent cycles staring at that hole and wondering if in the end it was going to be the only escape from the horror of his existence as half breed demon.

The pits had both fascinated and repelled Therold. It was only his real fear of the roaring flame, compounded by the fearful legends he discovered as he used his great power to understand and discover the lore of evil, to fight his way up  the Underworld hierarchy that had stopped him initiating his vanquishment. What he now knew would have been a futile attempt to escape his own evil. He had been told once scornfully by a powerful lore master intending to inspire him to greater evil, that there was no escape from evil, only atonement, and if you spent eternity in atonement it meant evil controlled your life and your actions anyway. This Therold believed to be the only complete truth ever told in the underworld.

As much as he hated and was fascinated by the pit, Therold felt the same way about the higher levels of the underworld. Therold was born to the cults of lore, born to a powerful heritage where the greatest of his kind, priests and lore writers had risen to the very highest levels of power in demondom. Higher even than many of the great warriors of legend and myth. As was the nature of demons, Therold and those of his kind were consequently scorned by the warriors until the lore master rose to their great power.  When a lore master outranked the warrior casts, he existed to destroy and bastardise the warrior class and then the warriors hated them more and shuddered in their presence. Every, small physically insignificant lore demon from the first time they were ridiculed and pushed aside by a warrior, dreamed of that day when great warrior demons shrank in their presence.

Therold had found some comfort in his demon times, by coming to the pits and knowing that many of the screams he heard were from the spirits of warrior demons, sent to the mores of hell by the source.

Therold even knowing he was safe from the dreaded hole found himself panicking a little, as usual, but was unable to resist looking over the on the edge of the hell of his own making and then leaned back. He slide down against the wall and thought back to the time when he was evil, when demons, warriors of the upper hierarchies had sneered at him and abused him because they hated to defer to the lore masters. They hated the ones who knew the legends; the ones who understood them; the ones who could tell the great fearsome warriors and demons leaders, the disciples of Lucifer, that their quest for the ultimate power had been in vain.

How the warriors had hated him, even more than other lore masters, sneering at his mortal heritage and human weakness. And yet despite this, Therold had wanted them to be heroes. He had found the stories about the possibilities of majesty and nobility and part his pain was his discovery that the warrior legend was at its core a myth. Those warriors were just as frightened petty and weak as Therold.

Therold snorted. He remembered those demons.  Demons like Belthezor, magnificent in their demonic red and black majestic presence. Demons which could embrace their evil. Even lore master that he was, knowing the dark secret of demondom , that these warriors demons suffered through desires for more and more evil,, never to be sated, he had hated them, as only demons could hate. Even now when, only the Guardian remained,  the hatred was no longer a part of his calling, to address the nuance of lore, his penance was made all that harder by dislike and suspicion of such great demons. Demons like Belthezor.

Therold the guardian smiled to himself and how they had hated him for that power and how he had hated them for the way they treated him, bowing to his wisdom to his face and mocking him and making his demonic life hell. And guardian though he was, many things had not changed. Therold spent much of his time digging through the lore and to find its secrets. All in the guise of a meek lore seeker, still accepting jibes and scorn form the warriors and pretending not to notice, and resisting the temptation of his great guardian power to smite them.

Therold leaning back on the ledge and staring with fear and some contemplation into the mores of hell as he had so often done in the  days of evil was brought to thinking of Arturo. Arturo had been one of the great majestic demons warriors whose purpose it had seemed, was to make Therold's life hell. But Arturo had also been the means of freeing him from the agony of his evil, of showing Therold the way to escape, by recognising his power. To Therold Arturo was the hero that in his evil days he had wanted the warrior upper hierarchy demons to be and had faced the agonising disillusion that those demons could never be.

In Arturo, Therold had discovered that the legend of the heroic great demon was possible. But Arturo when Therold first knew him had already walked through his fire of his own making. Therold had never known Arturo in the days of his own evil and he had never seen Arturo less than what he was.  So Therold could love and admire Arturo. Unlike Belthezor.

Therold had never seen the great warrior demons cross in his time as guardian. The Succubus Hilma had been a warrior but her calling was to the light and it was not her nature, even as a demon, to notice insignificant lore masters. Even so it had taken Therold much effort to resist the temptation to retaliate for her mockery of his hospitality and tea.

Of the other guardians, Proctor the watcher and his friend was different sort of demon whose contact with lore masters had always been to seek out and respect heir wisdom, and the wily bounty hunter zoltar Jako who had passed so Belthezor could cross was not of the great demons warrior sect. Unlike Belthezor with his Brotherhood connections, and history of having been taken over by the Source. 

In his collections of the visions of the future, from the last eclipse Therold had found many visions of Belthezor and his beautiful witch. Therold alone knew for certain that the coming of a guardian who walked in Arturo's footstep meant Arturo's time was limited. 

Belthezor had a long road to walk. Therold had reason to know that it was going to be a very hard one, harder even than that walked by guardians whose evil had been less powerful.  Much as Therold loved Belthezor' witch with a passion that only true courtly love could engender,  he was fearful that he a saw nothing in the irritating, prattling bratty man who took such a demonic delight in being a difficult mortal, that indicated Belthezor was fit to be worthy of her love.

Therold knew that  Arturo and Francesca believed that Belthezor could and would walk the path but unlike them visions of the future had been revealed to Therold and he  saw nothing in Belthezor to indicate he could be the hero of legend and myth and have the wisdom to walk the places, Therold knew Belthezor's path would take him. Therold saw nothing that suggested to him Belthezor would, or even could, protect the beautiful fragile woman he called his witch on the long journey that his beautiful Phoebe would walk with Belthezor. 

Therold could say it was not just jealousy that Belthezor held the beautiful Phoebe as his own. It was genuine fear for her wellbeing. Therold had seen in the days of his evil how demons such as Belthezor, warriors he thought with a sneer, could turn and use and then harm those closest to them. Therold knew the name evil gave Belthezor, the Great Betrayer, was well earned.  If Belthezor ever fell back on the ways of his own evil, Phoebe would be the first to be harmed.

And Therold held her in the passion that only true and noble courtly love could engender. She was his beloved and his heroine, the embodiment of all that made him cross from evil and Therold knew as her knight he would love her, protect her from all who could harm her, including Belthezor, the great warrior himself. He hugged the secret to himself, bound by all the power of his great calling not to impart it. And because he loved her, it racked him with fear that the beautiful witch was destined to be the sole nemesis of the current Source, to thwart him and haunt and confront him for the 500 years of his reign. And she could only do this if she was protected by a guardian.

Therold peered into the pit that both repelled and haunted him, yet also drew him. He thought of how he came to his calling. It had been a long hard crossing. Nothing as easy as the mere 120 years maybe 60 of those knowing, seeing the light, that Belthezor's claimed he suffered evil . Belthezor only suffered only a short time in Therold's view, until the beautiful Phoebe showed Belthezor the way to fire and beyond.

For Therold it had been more much more, nearly 300 years from the time he was called until he found a way to cross, and maybe 200 years before that of suffering through his own evil. He was bred when a female of his clan had been ordered to seduce a young monk who gained notoriety in the 11th century by writing a series of fantastic histories that would later lead to justify much of the religious inquisitions of a later period.

The clan of lore masters of Evil had so admired the gifted lies in which the monk had twisted the truth into a plausible and evil document, they had first bought his soul then bred him to one of their number. Therold had seen his father serve the demons well, manipulating lore for the source, until in a fit of irritation the Source had vanquished him to the bottom of the pits of Hades, where as far as Therold knew his soul still languished.

 As a young demon, from a clan whose knowledge and ability to decipher lore and find the secrets that no other demons could find had been the basis of their considerable power, Therold saw much of what went on close to the Source; the source of before the last, and like the pit it repelled and fascinated him. He saw the power around the source and as a student and master of Lore knew much of the secrets and battles of the great demons close to the source. Therold like many of his brethren and clan was able to protect himself from those demons with his humble demeanour and his self effacing humility, but at suffered bitterly as the great warriors scorned him.

Therold thought of his first step to the light in the early 14th century. Therold then a fairly young demon for a lore master, a bare 200 years in existence, had been sent to investigate an Italian poet named Dante. Dante had apparently used some demonic connection to write a work that described hell and the inferno and the demons were concerned that the poet had stumbled on something that was almost true. Therold remembered the Source, the one of the times he had been born, in what was known in the earth realm as the middle ages, had been for want of a better word... paranoid about the legends and myths of the underworld and their exposure, and what knowledge had sneaked into the middle realms. A paranoia that made survival very hard for demons such as Lore Masters who guarded that knowledge. With some justification, Therold thought. That source as all sources before him and after him, found out the means of their passing in the first eclipse of their reign and this one was defeated when evil was exposed to the realm at the time of the renaissance. .

At the time, Therold had been young and considered by many peers as a brilliant lore master but unknown to them he had been caught in a total sense of despair at the things about which his calling had given him knowledge. He knew of the failures and agony of evil and its inability to completely annihilate good no matter how much success seemed to be in its grasp. And worse Therold had stumbled across the secret of the balance. That good must win the battle…. just. So he knew that all the plotting fighting and victories could not change that which was written.

He knew of the downfall of the sources and the fate of demons sent to the mores of hell, and the purgatory of the wasteland. He knew of the futility and failure of evil to sate even the lowliest sludge. And he knew that all the searching for power in demondom was in the end worth nothing. What he did not know was that in his disillusionment with demondom he was taking the first faltering steps on the path to the fire of his own making. All he needed was the catalyst to understand his choices.

Therold had sought out the poet Dante and discovered the then Source had reason to be concerned. The poet had written of the hell and purgatory and heaven and he had used the mythology of the time, and the legends and the dreams and woven them into a panorama of magic, religion and prophesy.

Therold recognised the basis of much of Dante's work and how the poet had twisted the reality of the underworld and knew and even discovered the informants Dante used. Therold had had the power to destroy Dante and his work. However while Therold's demon half had sort lore as a power, the human half of Therold had always found passion and beauty in words  and been fascinated the wisdom humans told in their writings often buried in obscure monasteries and temples. His passion for great secrets had lead him to discover the truths behind legend and myth. And then he had hated his humanity because it exposed him to understanding and consequently recognition of the futility of evil.

Therold had been planning to destroy the poet Dante and his work, but he had been held back while he gave into the temptation to read it. He read of Purgatory and scoffed the idea that somehow simple suffering could atone for the fall to evil. But as he sort some answers to how Dante had created his works, a spark of hope had been lit on Therold.

However it was when he read of the third part of Dante's work Paradiso the vision if heaven that gave Therold the belief that would lead to his calling as a Guardian. Demon that he was, he was scornful of such a vision and the promises of this vision, but his passion for words and his nature to know and quest lore led him to Dante's vision of seeing Heaven through the eyes of Beatrice, a beautiful woman for whom the poet Dante professed a noble and courtly and totally platonic love. Beatrice was far to beautiful and noble of soul to give her body to Dante and the poet enamoured of the vision of courtly love was prepared to worship her from afar. Beatrice rewarded his fidelity and deference by showing her lover heaven. And by proxy showing Therold heaven.

The poem changed Therold's life, and while he served demons for another quarter of a millennium, Dante's vision of heaven inspired by his courtly love for Beatrice haunted Therold.

Therold had reason to report f to the source that the poems were the result of an active imagination, an as did all his brethren of priests and lore masters, reserved the part he knew to be truth to himself because truth had not place in the underworld. Still a minion of evil, he had saved himself from the Source's wrath by ensuring the poet suffered his own form of purgatory, exile from his beloved Firenze. Yet in the following centuries while Therold undertook his own secret pilgrimage, some of Dante's words had stayed with him ringing over and over in his head as he returned to the underworld

"Abandon all hope, you who enter here." Dante had written of hell.  The words rang in Therold's head and the truth of them taunted him. Because Therold nearly had abandon all hope, and he only found it again when he read of Dante's words about his beloved Beatrice.

"Love with delight discourses in my mind upon my lady's admirable gifts." Dante had written about her.

Dante had nobly and faithfully loved  a woman beyond his reach and found paradise through the purity of his courtly love. The image was so strong for Therold it had sustained him for three hundred years until he found the light and finally crossed. For Dante, Beatrice was a light between truth and intellect. The beauty of his courtly love for Beatrice that had allowed Dante to see heaven and the hope such a story gave him, allowed the lore master Therold, to discover another of the few truths in the underworld; that half breed demons had crossed into the light to achieve a power beyond anything dreamed of in the dark caverns. Well in truth, it was the story of Beatrice and because a certain large and angry cat crossing Therold's path.

The guardian Therold hung back on the edge of the pit and thought of Beatrice and courtly love as the moans of the damned filtered from the bottomless depths. Therold's attention to the pits was caught as the noise of falling souls increased and he found himself confronting a great red and black warrior demon, standing on the edge of the pit, observing its captured souls. As it saw the small monk like Therold, it stepped into his path, leaving him a choice to shimmer or fall.

Therold crossed his hand monk like in front of him, in a gesture that could have been perceived as blasphemy in hell, then he sneered before remembering now he must resist temptation to swat the demons and with a humble nod of his head he shimmered away from the mores of hell.

...................................................................