Reynard shrugged. “I never expected to keep a sorceress capable of advanced attack magic locked up in a simple room. If you wanted to break out of here, you would have done so already.”
Shannon paused. Being a sorcerer himself, Reynard seemed to have a basic understanding of Raquel’s abilities. And Reynard had been able to summon Thor himself, which was no small feat. Shannon wasn’t sure they could defeat both him and dozens of armed men in unfamiliar terrain.
Trying to blast their way to freedom seemed like a worse idea by the moment.
“Shall we go, then?” Reynard gestured to the door again. “The honorable Elfitine is waiting for you.”
“Elfitine?”
“The leader of our Blasphemers’ Garden.” Reynard leveled his clear eyes on Shannon. “Those of you from the outside world know her as the Scrapped Princess.”
The moment Shannon heard the breath catch in Pacifica’s throat, he casually stepped in front of her to block her dropping jaw from Reynard’s view.
Act calm, he thought. There’s no way he could know Pacifica’s the Scrapped Princess.
“Really?” Shannon asked with an impressively even voice. “I thought the Scrapped Princess was just some old myth.”
Reynard walked through the door. “Once you meet her,” he called behind him, “you can decide for yourself if she’s fact or fiction.”
As he walked behind Reynard and took in the scenery, Shannon decided that the word “garden” didn’t describe the island in the slightest.
Clinging to the side of a large basin, more than a hundred buildings stood crowded together. Most of them were one-story residences, but others seemed to be stores or workshops. There were even farming fields and pastures for sheep. According to Reynard, there were even more facilities elsewhere on the island—some underground, like the dock the Inox had unwittingly found.
Shannon heard Raquel make an impressed hum beside him. “It’s like a small city in itself,” she said.
“And it’s on a rock,” Shannon reminded her.
Indeed, Blasphemers’ Garden wasn’t a sandbank built from sedimentation—it was a solid mass of rock the river had dug up over an unfathomably long period of time. Root-taking plants, a tough breed of vegetation that grew on stone surfaces rather than soil, formed thick forests around what few other plants managed to grow in leaf residue, on shattered rocks, or in earth carried to the island by wind and water.
Shannon realized that the village could be self-sufficient as long as the inhabitants were resourceful and a few key goods were purchased off the island and carried back. And although the forests of root-taking plants somewhat blocked the inner section of the island from view, it was the basinlike structure of the island that lent the village its true camouflage. Viewed from the cliffs or ships, no one could imagine that on the inward slant of the island was a community that supported more than eight hundred people.
“Ten years.” Reynard’s gaze moved across the village as they walked, his expression unreadable behind the mask. “We found this island, renovated it, built homes, and laid roads. It took us ten years to get to where we are now.”
Ten years? Considering the extent of the work, Shannon found that time period very short. So this Reynard guy’s efficient, too.
Shannon glanced at the several men who flanked Reynard. They were there to keep Shannon and his sisters in check, most likely. The men wore expressions as emotionless as the words Reynard had spoken.
“All right,” Shannon offered after a moment. “So you built this place from nothing. Why build it in the first place?
Reynard stopped in his tracks. “I told you,” he said evenly. “We are here to condemn.”
“Condemn what?”
“Originally, the parent organization of our Garden was a support group for victims of the Mauserist church’s heretics hunting. The Mauserist Inquisitors are docile these days, but they once conducted religious trials and public executions in the name of eliminating dangerous ideologies.”
Shannon waited. He knew enough history to know that piece of it.
“In these remote regions,” Reynard went on, “such acts were carried out openly until just a few years ago. Even today, they have not ceased completely. The Mauser church is a religious dictatorship that does not recognize other religions; they consider their own beliefs to be absolute, and everything else deserves destruction. They do this to ensure they are an absolute majority.”
“That’s nothing new,” Shannon replied coldly. “And the Mauser church definitely didn’t start the trend of a majority killing the minority.”
Shannon knew the supremacy mob mentality of humanity, and he didn’t appreciate it being dubbed a religious issue. The persecution of “vagrants,” an ethnicity that had only a vague definition, persisted to that day. Shannon and Raquel were even given dirty looks in some regions because of the hint of foreignness in their features.
Shannon also well knew the concept of sacrificing an innocent scapegoat for the sake of stronger solidarity.
Reynard nodded. “That may be, but that doesn’t eliminate the suffering and the despair of the persecuted. The actions of the Mauser church are unforgivable.”
“So what are you going to do?” Shannon crossed his arms. “Capture every Mauserist follower and take revenge?”
“As I said before, we’re not here to take revenge—we are here to condemn. Taking revenge on Mauserist believers would accomplish nothing, regardless of what some of my people may think. We hope to simply make our anger and sorrow known in order to expose the tyranny of the church and the hypocrisy of those who turn a blind eye to it.”
Shannon let a breath out of his nose. He’s full of it, he thought. He’s just putting a spin on complete garbage. Still, Shannon chose to keep his opinion to himself; he sincerely doubted anyone would hear his argument if he spoke it.
“To clarify,” Reynard added, “we are not heretics. We do use an illustration of the Devil Browning as a symbol of our rebellion against Mauser, but we do not worship the devil nor hope for the destruction of the world.”
Raquel tapped her chin. “The Devil Browning,” she recited. “Lord of the Devils, leader of an army of twenty-six dragons. He is the symbol of evil to the Mauserist faith, but according to another theory, he was the Bearer of Sins prior to the Battle of Creation and was known as the guardian god of freedom.”
She hadn’t filled her room back home with books and miscellaneous goods for no reason. Raquel sometimes was a walking encyclopedia.
Reynard turned to her. “How knowledgeable,” he said, with an unusual hint of friendliness. Shannon noticed that his henchmen also visibly relaxed. In most cases, all that was ever said about Browning was that he was Lord of the Devils, as stated in the Mauserist Bible. Few people knew anything more about him than that—it was a good example of how the views of the dominant religion had eventually become common wisdom. Reynard and his people clearly enjoyed hearing opinions of any comrade outside the Mauserist bias of the masses.
“Is that why you’re using the image of the Scrapped Princess?” Raquel asked.
“That’s right.” Reynard gave a large nod. His gestures were exaggerated, and Shannon wondered if they were meant to compensate for the lack of expression on his mask.
“She is the ultimate victim of the self-righteousness of the Mauserist church. To kill a newborn child, for whatever reason, is worse than barbaric; such behavior cannot be forgiven. Allowing her death would justify the Mauserist church murdering anyone they labeled as a sinner. It’s a ridiculous and terrifying thought.”
“Well, I agree with you on that one.” Shannon glanced at Pacifica, but her expression was one of mixed emotion. He turned his gaze back to the black mask. “But do you have proof that your Scrapped Princess is real?”