Pepper / INK /

CHAPTER ONE

Judgement

The Inkwalker’s blade descended and stopped. The boy couldn’t kill him, regardless of what he had done, he could not kill him, not in cold blood. And for a moment the hard face of the Inkwalker softened into something more recognizable.

It was death that stepped forward, reaching to grab at the Ink the man wore. "mehtaplı kum, you in there?" The Ink figure of Death ignored the Walker, talking instead to the Ink, "The sickness has made you both forget yourselves."

"He left us to die." The voice wasn’t Javved’s It wasn’t really anyone else’s either. It sounded like a voice in a sand storm, worn and gravelly. "Your precious Inkwalker, he left us to die. Why did Inkaru abandon us?"

"He didn’t know you were there. He thought you were dead with the others. He went and passed out a few hours later." Death said. "He only lived because Inkaru saved him, just as you saved this one."

"He is a friend." The voice said of the Walker that bore him.

"That may be so." Death held a piece of glowing crystal against the tattoo on the wrist. "But you know the truth. The moon saw, the magic knows." Just as contagious as the virus was the cure. Once the Ink knew what the sickness was, it could teach the others how to fight it. It could force them to remember the truth.

The reaction started slowly, the tattoos turning from the rust brown color they had been to blue-white as active moon magic fought off the blood magic that masked it. Javved tried to flail away, but Death’s scythe blade behind his head stopped that. "You wanted your Ink to bind properly, that is what I’m doing."

The reaction crawled up his arms and across his chest changing the signs to still exotic ones, but ones that were not so dim and dismal. Words of justice, protectors instead of things that attack. And last of all the two lines down his face disappeared. "This is how your Ink should have looked."

Damien fell to his knees, the knowledge of everything he had done washing over him, the people he had killed, the powers he had stolen, the Inkwalkers he had murdered. Everything. What had been done wasn’t a spell as much as a purification. It set things back the way it should have been, but with it came the knowledge from the Ink, and the moonlight of what truly happened.

It also came with the memory of the proud heritage of his Ink. Of the battles it had one, of the Walkers it had been over the centuries, and there, in the dimmest, darkest part of history, of the Thirteen themselves. The First Ones. And the Lady of the Moon, and her consort.

As the memories washed over him, first from the ink, and then from his own life as a child. The memories of himself and Daniel, of himself and all the siblings. They had all been friends, their father-- when he was young, had been a jovial man full of stories and laughter, and then he had gone to visit his friend and had come back-- bent. And months later had come the night.

But this time he saw it as it happened. His Brother blinded by grief, covered in blood as he checked first one body and then the next praying that even one one them was alive. And there he lay, covered in blood, insensate, so wrung out from the spell used against him, that he appeared as one dead, his skin ashen his breath so shallow it was no wonder it was missed. And there was a scream, a scream that tore him apart as his brother cursed the heavens and brought the rain to wash away the dishonor of what had happened.

The battle had stopped by now, the dead were again dead, the dying were dying in peace, and everyone wanted to see what would happen to Damien. Now that he was no longer actively casting, all of his minions dropped to the ground and did not move again.

"What happened to you Damien?"

The voice was familiar to almost everyone. Daniel. He still looked weak, but he was there. "Where did you go?" He smiled. "I missed the boy I used to play with."

"I thought you had left me. It told me you had turned away." He spoke softly. His Ink had been corrupted, it had lied. So twisted by the blood that had bound it, it had told him what the spell wanted him to hear. What the sickness he had been born with, and could still have been cured of, had demanded he hear. Ironically, blood binding him to to the ink was what had activated the Shadow Plague. If his father hadn’t have cast the spell he might have been cured.

Daniel dropped to his knees to hold his brother. "I thought you were dead. You were ashen and I didn’t feel you breathing, but if I had known the Ink could not stay on the dead, I would have understood you lived. But I was so lost in my grief I saw nothing but blood." He took his brother in his arms in the hug he had longed to give him for decades. "Do you forgive me?"

"I forgive you." Damien said. "But do you forgive me, I’ve made a mockery of our name, I’ve tainted my Ink, and destroyed so many." He was crying. "I cast off the name I have taken Javved, the one who lived, and take back my given name of Damien Emmett."

"No, the sickness did that. Our father went mad for the same reason you did. Your mother had Shadow Plague, and so did our father. Papa got it from Seb, and you must have gotten it from your mom. It’s what changed you. And the plague along with the Ink, made him go mad." His hand rested on his half-brother’s shoulder. Death still held him at bay. "I forgive you Damien. I did a long time ago. I never hated you, I just didn’t know why you had changed. And I couldn’t find you." Calling him by his given name acknowledged that he had cast off the Blood alchemy. "Help me out of this tunic."

Daniel helped him pull the black and red tunic over his head, leaving him dressed in his dirty under-tunic, but even that looked a thousand times better than the sinister silk brocade. For the first time in decades Damien breathed free. It was as if a weight had been released along with the Tunic.

"Can you cure me?" Damien took his brother’s hands, and looked up at the three Walkers.

Daniel shook his head. "I can cure the virus, but there is no way to reverse the damage. Without blood magic you will never cast again. Its been too long. And without the Ink you will die. We two are older than the normal caster."

"So if I want magic, I have to kill?"

"Yes, but if you are cured and your Ink purified, that would kill you, and we both know it."

"And casting with just moon magic?"

"There is no telling what effect that could have." He smiled tightly. "It would probably rebound."

Damien knelt there, his head on his brother’s shoulder sobbing. Sobbing at how unfair it was. How he had chased after what was killing him. How his father had murdered him along with the rest of his family, but he hadn’t been allowed to die. Instead he’d become something else, a creature no better than a Becomer... He was a becomer, a creature that stole the lives of others to keep his own. His father, in his last moments had made him a Becomer, like the cops, so bound in magic that if he died, he would walk. And Damien Emmett died that night, and Javved walked out of the desert in his place.

"Robert?" His voice quavered as he recognized the Inkwalker standing over him. It was Robert’s ink, it had to be Robert’s boy. And if Robert wasn’t carrying it... All at once the memory of what he had done to his friend washed over him. The spells, the sickness, all of it.

"Died in the battle. He was also too far gone to save." Daniel said gently. He placed a hand on his brother’s shoulder, trying to comfort him. "He will be given an Inkwalker’s rites."

"Beni öldür." Damien plead.

"You know I can’t Damien, Ink or no, you are my brother. I could no more kill you than I could kill our father."

"You didn’t?" Damien sounded surprised. "That was the story, that you judged him, and killed him."

Daniel shook his head. "Mom did. My being there broke the Becomer spell just long enough for her to realize what he’d done. She took the blade he’d wanted her to use on me and killed him with it. And then I went and threw a tantrum. Lightening, water, the whole nine, used up so much energy I slept for a decade."

Damien laughed. "That sounds like you, always a hothead."

He nodded. That had been one thing his teacher had always warned him of. "You have any kids?"

"No sevens, if that’s what you’re asking."

"With you out of commission, any living heir will work, any you trust to take the ink?"

"The Ink will find him." Damien said. "You’ve said there is no cure? Right? That the only way I’ll be able to keep the ink is to kill?" It was a fierce, determined smile that crossed his face.

"Yes." Daniel was beginning to understand what his brother was going to do. And it pained him, but how could he argue. If his brother wanted to give up the Ink, to take away the temptation all together, that would be the way to do it.

"Let me up ölüm." Damien spoke to death directly. "If I’m going to do this I’m going to stand on my own two feet for once." Standing, he stripped off the undershirt to show the trinity. The chains now broken they were free from the spell that had bound them.

Death moved his scythe.

"You shouldn’t watch this brother." Damien said, looking down at Daniel.

"I can’t turn my back."

"Yes you can." He said, closing his eyes. He took a moment to pray, to talk to his Ink, and to ready himself for what he knew was next.

"I won’t turn away, not again."

Damien nodded, and both versions of Death stepped back, they were pretty sure what he was about to do. "I have worn this ink a hundred and twenty years, and yet, it is a lie, I am not a righteous man, I am unworthy of my ink." Damien said, his eyes were full of tears, and he was terrified, but Daniel was still holding his hand, as he used to when Damien was afraid. It made sense why he had always been terrified of lightening. The great judgement from an Inkwalker was always preceded by lightening. That day must have terrified him.

Seeing his brother wreathed in storm, larger than life, calling the waters to him, destroying everything the boy had ever known, and then leaving him in the sand, with nothing but the clothes on his back, to die. But now he saw it as his brother had, as Inkaru had. Him, glancing around at all the dead, knowing that every living soul he knew was dead. His mother, his second-mother, his siblings, his half-sibling, everyone that meant anything to him was gone, sacrificed to a spell that his brain still couldn’t wrap itself around. A scream piercing the air as he fell to his knees, hands to the ground as the tears started, and with them came the rain. He hadn’t summoned the rain, the rain had come because he hadn’t been able to control it.

Damien shook himself back to reality. "There are many crimes for which I could be judged, but most of them I was not in my right mind. But the one I have held on to for all these years, the one that set me so indelibly on this path, I killed a couple who took me in from the desert, and protected me, who taught me the ways of the dark arts, and the moon Alchemy it came from, but they would not kill, and this they told me. That they had each other, and that in their mind nothing was worth the misery of taking another life. I didn’t believe them."

He paused a long moment before he continued. "And I killed them, their only crime being close to me, for the dearer the sacrifice the more power you get. This, is my crime, that I did willfully, and knowingly murder my second parents for my own gain."

Daniel couldn’t hate him, but he did drop his hand, not because he was disgusted, but because he knew what came next, and touching his Ink would be bad. It was hard enough just watching, though he’d never seen another Inkwalker Judged. He knew it happened, rarely, but it happened. The thing every Inkwalker feared, the reason they wore Charon, the Judge of souls.

"I’m sorry." He mouthed to Daniel.

The Ink’s reaction was nearly explosive, so fast did the tattoos leap to life.

"Please, be kind." Daniel said. "He was a good man once."

Death merely bowed his head. He would be as kind as he was allowed.

"Inkwalker," the specter of death said. "Cleanse the bottle so they can go home."

Daniel rose, picked up the bottle and said the prayers of cleansing. Then, he knelt with it in his hands and spoke the prayers of unbinding that an Inkwalker used to take his ink off.

"I’m sorry Damien." He put the bottle down, eyes closed, he couldn’t watch.

Each tattoo slipped off of Damien into a pool of ink and slithered its way to the bottle, but they could hear him grunt as they tore themselves loose from him. At the best of times, the Ink leaving was uncomfortable, when it left like this it was painful, but the Ink restrained itself, not cutting him, not tearing the skin, just stripping itself from his mind and body.

Damien was weeping softly before it was over, everything he had known, the Ink, it was gone, he was, for the next few moments, his last few, totally, and completely alone for the first time in ages. And the memory of killing them had scarred him forever. It had made him try to be heartless and cold, because he knew if he wanted power they would not be the last. And even that was a lie. All he had been doing was feeding the thing killing him.

Daniel didn’t see the stroke that felled his brother, but if he had he would have been surprised. Death called the blade he had used on his parents, He felt it was fitting, a blade like that was never supposed to be used for dark Alchemy, so this would even it out.

Unlike most Inkwalker Deaths, his was quick, and other than the pain of losing his ink and being alone with his recriminations, relatively painless. Death rammed the blade into the kneeling man’s heart, hard enough that it came out his back. And as the blood gushed to the ground, Death smiled grimly. The blood touched him and he too faded away, taking the knife with him.

Damien was dead before he finished falling, and the people stood stunned. It was rare to see an Inkwalker judged, but it was rarer still to see them judged not by another of their kind, but by their own ink.

Max finally put a hand on Daniel’s shoulder. "It’s over Daniel." He said quietly. "We should prepare the dead."

Daniel rose, taking care to avoid the black tunic his brother had eschewed in his last moments.

"What of Damien?" Max asked. The general preparation for a necromancer was to be burned or buried on unconsecrated ground.

"Give him the rights of an Inkwalker. He did redeem himself in the end." Daniel said. "He was a good man, he was my brother. So please, don’t remember him for this, remember him as a victim of the plague, not in his right mind until the end."

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Next Chapter: The Inkwalker Lives