Grave Cleric
Tiefling
In every Tiefling’s bloodline there is someone who made a pact or otherwise trafficked with a devil or demon, and the offspring of this malefactor bear the mark of it. Although they’re often treated as though they themselves are evil, most Tieflings are not, and don’t know the specifics of their infernal ancestry. I am not blessed with this ignorance.
I am the only child of my father, who was the only child of his father, who was the only child of his mother. For over a dozen generations, there have been no brothers or sisters in my family, only a single child.
As the only heir to House Lyrstriker, one of the most powerful families in Weld, I had no boundaries. My parents handled any difficulties my behavior caused with either a generous bribe or a directed threat. I could take anything, break anything, hurt anyone, and there were never any repercussions for my actions.
That is, until one day while watching a public religious ceremony on a holy day of Anubis, I took a liking to the holy symbol I saw the priests wearing. On a dare from my friends, I broke into the Temple of Anubis and stole one. I didn’t realize at the time that the gods closely keep what is theirs, so I was taken by surprise when a week later the temple priests and their guards came to my family’s estate to take me away. The High Priest of Anubis had found me and decided that I should pay for my crime by spending a year in the Temple of Anubis as an acolyte. I had just turned 12, and it was the first time I’d ever been held accountable for anything I’d done. My parents’ usual ploys made no impression on the priests and the guards, and I was marched away to the temple with just the clothes I had on.
I put on a brave face, but I was shocked and afraid of the situation I found myself in. Once at the temple, they gave me the robes of a temple servant and put me to work on the menial, day-to-day tasks that it takes to keep a temple running. My attempts to impress my fellow acolytes with stories of my exploits were met with silence, and they distanced themselves until I felt all alone.
My days were filled with chores and duties that I felt were very much beneath the heir of House Lyrstriker, and I very quickly grew resentful. I had only been there a few weeks when I decided to run away. My parents had recently been hinting that there would be something special coming within the year that I would be involved in and had to prepare for, and I knew that if I could get back to them, they would spirit me away to somewhere out of the temple’s reach until they could somehow smooth things over.
On a moonless night a few weeks later, I quietly crept out of the acolytes’ chamber and into the great hall. No one was in sight, and all I had to do at that point was to sneak past the great doors to the inner sanctum and I would be free. However, as I said, the gods closely keep what is theirs. A feather falling would have made more noise than I did, but as I passed directly in front of the great doors, they suddenly swung open and I was blinded by a blast of light. When my vision cleared, I found I was surrounded by the temple priests, and the High Priest himself stood in front of me. “The Lord of Judgement will see you”, he said, and placed his hands on my shoulders.
My strength suddenly left me, and as I started to slump to the floor, he picked me up and carried me into the inner sanctum.
“The Lord of Judgement will see you.”
High Priest of Anubis
The only things I could move were my eyes, and as we approached the great altar, I watched out of the corners of them as four priests inserted sturdy wooden rods into eyelets in the four corners on the top of the altar (which I had always mistaken for decoration) and lifted it off, revealing an empty space beneath. To my horror, the High Priest laid me inside the altar, and as my mind tried to command my body to scream and thrash in terror, the priests replaced the lid.
As the light was closed off from me, I had the sensation of falling. After what my utterly panicking mind insisted was an eternity, I was caught by two massive, uplifted hands. The hands lowered, and I saw the black face of a jackal regarding me with emotionless black eyes. As it set me down onto my feet, I saw that it had the body of a man, as black as midnight. “All in your family are punished”, a deep voice said in my head. “None have atoned.”
A vista opened up in front of me. I saw a Tiefling boy, little older than me, that I knew was my father, even at that young age. He was kneeling in front of a small rune circle that radiated evil, with an obsidian knife in his hand. Standing slightly behind him were much younger versions of my grandparents, each one with a hand on either of my father’s shoulders. My father chanted an incantation that I didn’t understand, and when he was finished, he suddenly shouted “Glasya! I claim the reward promised me by my elders!” With that he plunged the obsidian knife into his hand, withdrew it, and then slammed his bloody hand down into the rune circle. A fierce red light sprang from the surrounding runes and channeled into my father through his hand, but as I looked at my grandparents, it seemed that, even while their bodies still stood, their souls suddenly fell out of their mortal forms. The shocked look on their incorporeal faces quickly turned to agony as equally incorporeal fiends possessed their bodies while others dragged their souls down.
It was as if I followed their descent into the Hells, and as my grandfather struck the surface of a burning pit, flames suddenly flared and he screamed as only the truly damned can. When the flames subsided, I was looking at another Tiefling boy, whom I knew was my grandfather, kneeling in front of a similar rune circle, with another couple standing behind him. The scene repeated, with my grandfather calling a different name while his parents suffered the same fate.
I followed generation after generation of male and female Tieflings, my voice hoarse from screaming, unable to stop it and unable to look away, until finally the Tiefling I saw kneeling was flanked, not by another Tiefling, but by two humans. As the final Hellfire from their plummeting forms subsided, I saw them, not kneeling, but standing next to an altar upon which were the bodies of two murdered children I knew to be their own. In front of them an Archdevil laughed and said, “Yessss, you will be richly rewarded, as per our bargain. It will culminate with your next, and only, child’s entry into our pact when he reaches his 13th year.”
The vista closed suddenly, and I dropped to the ground covering my face with my hands while my body was racked by convulsive sobs. They slowly subsided and I lay still, too weak to move. At that point the jackal-man, whom I knew to be Anubis, Lord of Judgement, stood over me.
“Your forebears, in their lust for wealth and power, made an unspeakable bargain with the high powers of the Hells to satiate their greed. From poisoned roots springs a single sprig.
When the child comes of age and agrees to continue the bargain, the terms are passed on from the parents, who then reap their eternal reward while the Hells sends its own to take their bodies through the remaining time left until they die. All in your family are punished…”
In a faint whisper, all that was left of my voice, I replied “…I…will…atone…”
He knelt beside me and rolled me onto my back, placing his hand over my heart. “My purview is guarding the border between life and death, but it is also to pass judgement on the evil in the world. You will serve me, both to ensure that my boundary is respected and to ensure that the evil that your ancestors partook of is not offered to others. You are mine now, until you come back into my hands. Swear it.”
“You are…my master. I…serve only you until…I…die…”
When I awoke, I was lying on top of the alter, dressed in a black robe with my arms crossed over my chest. The High Priest stood at my head, but when he saw I was awake he came around to the side to help me stand. As I sat up, I felt a solid weight against my chest. I looked down, and suspended on a chain around my neck that I knew couldn’t be broken, was the holy symbol of Anubis that I’d stolen only a short time before.
I was not sent back to the acolytes’ chamber, but given over to the senior priests to train as a cleric. My parents came for me when my year of service was up, and grew enraged when I refused to leave. They had expected to reap a great reward when I continued the pact, which I would have had my petty larceny not gifted me with the one thing that could save me, and they didn’t believe me when I told them what that reward would have been. My repudiation of my “heritage” meant an end to their fortunes. The last time I passed through Weld, I heard stories of reversals that were so extreme that it was widely believed to have been due to a curse from an angry god. My parents are long dead, and I would like to think that they made some amends before the end to allow them some final mercy, because I know that My Lord of Judgement will not have any otherwise.
