FF017 – Pergil’s Duty

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Pergil Olam had once felt the the call to Bahamut’s service. Justice and righteousness had burned in his breast and he’d been all set to pledge himself with a holy vow but then his twin had died and Pergil’s life had changed.

The Silent One hadn’t called him. Not exactly anyways. Pergil didn’t hear a voice speaking to him, or encounter any mystical dreams offering him a choice in his life. He was simply walking home after he heard the news of Barl’s death, and he passed one of the Silent One’s temples, and he just knew.

It had been fifty years since his steps had swerved onto a new path and looking back and reflecting on the journey he’d taken he found he didn’t regret a day of it.

The Silent One’s sacraments were centered around death, but Pergil’s ministry, as with all of the cleric of the Silent One, was focused on the living. It was his duty to help those who remained behind accept and work through the grief even a timely death could bring.

In the case of untimely passings there was room to call the departed back to the life they’d left behind, but once a soul was ready to move on, it was the greatest sacrilege to try to hold them back from the transition which all things must someday make.

Pergil had good and bad days, the same as anyone else. There were cases were he could offer no succor, and cases where no aid could be given, but by and large he was quietly content with the comfort has was able to bring.

He wrapped thoughts like that around himself as he walked through the twilight streets to aid another of his flock. Young Jag Blackborn had inherits the Silver Arches early after the passing of his father and already the boy’s luck had proved poor, with some mysterious creatures raiding his stores.

Jag was having a difficult enough time processing the loss someone who had been so large a part of his life. The last thing he needed was monsters invading from the city’s subterranean reaches.

It had been many years since Pergil had been given a reason to swing his scythe, but the weight of it was a comfort in his hands as he descended the stairs to Jag’s basement. Jag had offered to come with him, but Pergil had refused. The “monsters” were likely nothing more than oversized rats, but even giant rats could carry disease and the last thing Jag needed was a bout of the plague to deal with.

As things skittered in the shadows, Pergil called for a light spell.

A dozen eyes looked back at him.

Cold, dead eyes which moved with an inhuman hunger.

Pergil tried to raise his scythe, but his old bones were too slow to respond. They were on him before he could scream.

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