Role

Chapter 5

Ixen was in his fourtieth year now.

The young giant sat upon the rocky beach below the temple and stared
unblinkingly into the lake. He could see the monster cast in unspilled
blood in the water. He could always see it when the Prelate blessed him.

It was not as clear as it had once been. That was good, he thought?

Even with the monster, this was one of his favourite places to think. There
was something so soothing about watching the water; waiting for that moment
when a ripple would disturb the placidity and all would become disarray for
that briefest moment. When the status quo would rise against the disruption
and attempt to destroy it. What would come of it? Would the water become an
unmoving mirror once more? Or would something new be born?

He had failed again, he knew. The Prelate had taken time out of his day to
speak with Ixen, as he so often did. To discuss his studies, his
relationships, his... feelings.

He'd not said Ixen had failed, of course, though Ixen knew he had. He
considered himself a good judge of people, and the Prelate never left their
conversations happier than upon arriving.

Ixen simply did not understand. He had studied the Order's teachings well.
Harmony with their fellow man, and nonviolence. Yet how was one to
eradicate disharmony without removal of disruptive elements? Was it wrong
for the lake to annihilate the ripples which undermined its tranquility?
Was it wrong to cull the weeds which would choke the temple gardens if left
untended? Was it wrong to - and this was a thought often entertained yet
never spoken to the Prelate, for surely he would find it more dire than the
first two examples - to cull a man who would threaten the Temple's peace?
After all, he looked at many men and women and found them little better
than weeds in his estimation. Weighed down by unvoiced confessions, acting
out roles they neither believed or felt pride in, tolerant of those even
more intolerable than themselves, and choking an elusive paradise with
their unworthy existences. Why?

Disgusting.

Rotten.

But the Prelate had been kind to him. Given him a home. Given him
perspective. Taught him the value of that distant eutopia, an unrealised
dream. A world remade without the failures of the current one, created
through compassion and harmony.

When he told Ixen he believed in him, Ixen believed it too. Believed that
if he just read more, just learned a little more, just comprehended the way
of things a little more: everything would fall into place, and he would be
able to relate to these people who provoked such an instinctive and
irrational sense of contempt in him. History, the prelate had suggested.
Read of the horrors of the past, gain perspective. See why we do what we do.

Ixen cared little for reading of things already consigned, and yet...

The Prelate had been kind to him.