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Appearances are often deceiving: no one understands this better than Fall-From-Grace.
She’s wary, though, of the scarred stranger who visits the Brothel of Slaking Intellectual Lusts. There’s something about him that’s familiar: a pain, maybe. But despite his tough exterior he’s quiet, respectful. He listens with his head slightly tilted, as if his hearing is not as good on one side as the other.
As he goes further into speak to her students, she watches. He’s accompanied by a floating skull that immediately feels wrong to her, and a githzerai with sharp eyes filled with despair and regret.
She watches. Are they with this stranger willingly? The skull is rude and sarcastic. The githzerai is as quiet and respectful as the stranger. At one point, when becomes evident to him that his companion will be talking to the girls for a while, the githzerai goes to the courtyard and sits on a bench to meditate, his strange sword sheathed over his shoulder.
The stranger listens. He asks wise questions and, even more wisely, knows when to leave alone. He even tries to talk to Ecco, for as much good as it’ll do. He tentatively holds her hand when she gets frustrated. Grace hears him promise to ask around to try to solve her problem.
And then he gives Grace a wise answer to her riddle: he is the tenth student, and he has so much to learn. Grace decides that maybe she has much to learn from him as well, so she agrees to accompany him. She has seen unexpected kindness in his heart, and must know if it is true.
Half a day into accompanying the Stranger, they find themselves in the Lower Ward to check on the progress of a strange contraption he had commissioned at the Great Foundry. She quickly learns that he remembers almost nothing of his past, but is simply following his own trail of breadcrumbs.
The Lower Ward is filthy, both with grime and with greed. Deceit runs rampant. Backstabbing is encouraged.
So it is no surprise to come across a slave auction a block from the Great Foundry. Fall-From-Grace averts her eyes and puts a hand over her heart, silently praying for those poor souls and wishing she could do something about it that wouldn’t get her own head on a chopping block. Such is the way of life in Sigil-
The Stranger has stopped. She almost runs into his back, sharing a confused look with the githzerai. The Stranger’s head is tilted again, listening. Grace frowns. He isn’t interested in buying a slave, is he? Such associations would not please her. His gaze is focused on a woman in the back dressed in what were very fine clothes. She’s chained and sobbing, pleading with the passers-by to help her.
The Stranger approaches. Grace and the others hang back, unsure. He goes on his toes to speak to her on the raised block, his matted hair hanging over one eye. She speaks, he listens. The smile he musters seems strained, but he takes her slim fingers in his hands and gently squeezes. A reassurance, a promise. He speaks to the auctioneer and his demeanor changes, becomes more dangerous. Intimidating, menacing. Oddly, it’s not a good look on him.
Whatever he says, the auctioneer nods, gestures, then nods again. The woman is moved off the block and to a holding area.
“The woman named Trist insists she’s being framed for a crime,” the Stranger says when he returns. He speaks in low tones, casting a wary eye on the street. “When her husband passed, she decided to sell his business. A man named Byron Pikit came forward and said that there was an outstanding loan. She had evidence that the loan had been paid, but that evidence disappeared. The judge had her sold to cover the rest of the loan amount.”
“Some justice,” Fall-From-Grace whispers. The githzerai solemnly nods and sighs.
“Paper is damn easy to steal, boss,” the skull pipes up.
“Exactly. She says she saw a rogusish sort named Lenny working with Pikit. The auctioneer has agreed to hold on her until I can present evidence.”
Fall-From-Grace is surprised that a man like this would go out of his way to help a random strange woman prove her innocence. And go out of his way he does, traipsing all over the Lower Ward until he has two papers tucked safely in Dak’kon’s bag (“I tend to lose things too easily,” he explains). One proves Trist’ innocence, the other proves Pikit’s crime. He’d used his words to get them, a silver tongue easing his path.
He gives one paper to the auctioneer. The man reads it once, twice, then nods and produces a set of keys. When he releases Trist, she bursts into tears and leaps into the Stranger’s arms for an embrace. He awkwardly catches her, giving her a pat on the back. He shoots Grace a panicked look and she nearly giggles.
Grace gives the woman a clean jacket and runs a hand over her wrists, healing the chafing there. Trist is babbling her thanks and trying to press a pouch of money into the Stranger’s hands. He is saved from his awkward refusals by Dak’kon, who gratefully takes the pouch.
At this hour, the Great Foundry is closed for the day. The Stranger doesn’t even seem to mind.
The Stranger upends the Decanter of Endless Water onto the burning man’s form, then staggers away as it shakes free of his hands. Steam fills the front room of the Smoldering Corpse bar.
Fall-From-Grace pushes the others behind her, extending her battered wings to shield them. She can take a bit of heat.
“I thought that would fix him,” the Stranger confesses to her later. He had requested her aid in easing an old pain away from the others, but the pain seems to be all emotional. He wrings his fingers, absently twisting them around his wand. “He was suffering like that. I thought he would be better. I thought he – he wouldn’t be…”
“An unhinged murderous pyromaniac?” Fall-From-Grace finishes for him. At his unhappy grimace, she lays a hand on his arm. She’s touched his skin before, to heal him, but this is different. He’s hurting. He made a mistake. “I understand. It’s okay. You made an error.”
“I’m starting to think my entire existence is an error,” he mumbles. “He knew me. The old me. I think…I think I used to know magic before. It’s come so naturally to me that I must have known it before. I fear…”
This time she doesn’t voice his fears for him. She squeezes his arm.
He takes her hand off his arm but doesn’t let go, squeezing her hand with two of his. “I – I fear that I am older than I first imagined. I fear that I may have taught him the Art, that I may have broken him and made him so terrible-”
His voice breaks and Grace sighs in empathy. “That was not you.”
“But-”
“You are not what came before you. Not who came before. Those were different people that shared your face but not your heart. Is something like that in your nature now?”
He wordlessly shakes his head. He’s not crying, but he looks close to it.
“Mercy is in your nature now.”
He shakes his head again. “But what if it’s not? I – I think some of my previous incarnations were horrible people who did horrible things, Grace. They – they bound Morte and Dak’kon to me. I was cruel to Morte.”
“Not you,” she gently corrects.
“He was cruel,” the Stranger agrees. “I know not who was first. I know not his nature, but I have to wonder. I gave my mortality to a hag and – and good people don’t do things like that. But it was not he who bound Morte to him. It was not he who enslaved-” Now he does cry, clinging to her hands and trying to suppress it.
Grace enfolds him in a hug. It’s been a very long time since she has embraced anyone who was not one of her students. She has no words of reassurance. What to say to someone who is suffering from something that cannot be fixed?
“A githzerai bound to me, chained to me like that is unthinkably cruel.” He is a strong man raised in a world of strong men, obvious in the way he hides his face in shame at his tears. “And I can do nothing to free him. I asked. I told him and it did nothing but chain us even further together. And – and he doesn’t even hate me for it.”
“Because he knows that it was not you who did it. It was another man, a worse man.” If Fall-From-Grace ever has the opportunity to travel back in time and meet that version of this kind stranger, her own mercy might be stretched to its limit. Anger is not an emotion she likes, but it’s necessary here. “I promise that I will never let you become that sort of person.”
“Promise?” His voice shakes. His head is buried in her shoulder, his hands fisted in her upper sleeves.
“I promise. If I ever see you upon that precipice, I will stop you. I will remind you of your mercy.”
“And if I don’t listen?”
She cradles the back of his head. “I will make you listen. I will do everything in my power to steer you from the dark for as long as we both live.” It’s more of a promise than she had intended, but obviously this man has a tendency to make those who lead existences of suffering pledge themselves to him. “I promise.”
He wipes his face, wincing as his sleeve catches on a fresh scar on his cheek. “I fear that I lead all those who follow me into ruin and I can’t ask that of you.”
“But you don’t ask.” She smiles. A tightness in her chest eases. “We choose to follow you.”
Two days later, he echoes those words at Ravel. Two days later, their world turns to darkness and death and dust as they leave Sigil for a long, long time.
Fall-From-Grace is quietly fuming. She should have known.
That deva – no, that Fallen – had gazed up into her Stranger’s eyes and had whimpered, had pleaded for his sword returned to him, had begged for a kindness. And of course the Stranger would help. How could he not, not when there was a broken and bleeding deva in front of him? Trias had wept tears that were probably fake, had moaned in naked (faked) relief as his chains had broken. Few saw the true mercy in her Stranger’s heart. Fewer still successfully manipulated it as well as Trias had.
Then, after he had been freed at great cost (and Grace still shudders at the memory of Dak’kon in her arms, dragging him away from the Curst prison guards and pouring healing into the githzerai until he breathed again) he had lied. He had sent them on a wild goose chase to the last place any of them wanted to go. Grace had been scared in Baator, wielding her spiritual sword to protect the group against the ba’atezu of the dry wasteland. She had been scared. Morte had been terrified out of his poor mind at ending up back in that hell. Only to find out that Trias had known. Trias had betrayed them.
She’s not the only angry one. Morte is muttering threats, Dak’kon’s hand is shaking around his blade, Ignus is creepily whispering about how they should burn the traitor alive from the inside out, and the Stranger…
The Stranger’s shoulders are stiff. He looks near tears. He’d believed Trias – how could he not? He looks like a different man. A dangerous man.
A different man. Fall-From-Grace takes a deep breath in and rearranges her wings. She breathes out. Is this how the previous Stranger had looked?
Yes, Trias lied. Yes, the trustworthy deva had taken advantage of their trust. Yes, the holy had turned stag and repaid kindness with treachery.
But Fall-From-Grace has to believe that even those shrouded in darkness are capable of redemption. If she didn’t believe that, she couldn’t exist. Trias was kind once. Trias was merciful once, but now he’s forgotten. It’s in his nature to forgive, to love, to be faithful and true. Nature can be changed. Nature did change, and it can change back.
Suddenly, as they step through the portal back to Curst, Fall-From-Grace decides that the first Stranger, the one who gave up their mortality, was probably a fine person. The evil one must have changed for the worse after countless iterations of torturous immortality. And now he’s come full circle again to someone she could choose to follow across the Planes.
Someone she would follow to somewhere like Curst. Half in hell, half struggling against its own nature, Curst has fallen like the deva.
The Stranger, cold and angry as he is, starts to remember his kind nature here. He runs with little regard to his own safety to help. He helps even those who hurt him the last time he was in Curst. He takes claws in his shoulder, curling protectively over the young woman who had been cornered. He winces as he strains his shoulder lifting a cart off two trapped people. He's physically so weak, he really should have left the lifting to Dak'kon.
He shows no mercy to the minions of Trias. They don’t deserve mercy. They knew what they were doing, they knew the consequences of shifting an entire town into a hell from which they could never escape. They’d done it for their own gain, with no remorse.
But Trias…
Trias nearly kills all of them. This should make Grace even angrier at him, but instead she keeps her head.
The Stranger stands over the collapsed Trias with the hag’s long sharp fingernail in his palm. He’d wrapped the nasty appendage in twine to wield it as a weapon.
Trias leans his head back to expose his neck. “End me,” he murmurs. Blood oozes over his lips as he speaks. He closes his eyes, ready to find peace in death as he has not been able to find in life.
“Gladly.” The Stranger sets his cursed blade under the deva’s chin.
“Stop.” Grace’s voice is quiet, but it works. She steps forward and takes Trias’ chin in her hand, uncaring of the shallow cut on the back of her hand from the blade as she puts her skin between it and the deva’s life.
The Stranger pulls the nail back an inch but doesn’t remove it completely. “What are you doing? He deserves to die. He told us where to find the Fortress and now I cannot leave him alive for fear he will betray us again.” The words are hissed, the tone angry and hurt.
Behind her, her companions are equally angry. All except for Dak’kon, who lowers his own sword and runs his hand over his Circle instead. He’s thinking. Reconsidering.
“You vowed to spare his life if he told you what you needed to know. Now you mean to go back on that vow. I promised I would stop if you if you started to become like him.”
The words are like a slap. The Stranger drops his weapon. He stares at Grace, the fury turning to fear. “Truly?”
“Truly. This one has changed his nature, but not lost it. Can you not see it?”
Trias opens his unfocused eyes. He’s in agony, so near death but lingering on the edge. “One so low herself, so willing to show me mercy…”
“She’s not the only one.” The Stranger kneels and takes Trias’ head in his hands, his bloody fingers caressing the deva’s jaw. “She’s right. I did promise. I just did not know if I could trust you would tell me the truth…”
Trias manages a bloody chuckle. “Understandable. I am called the Betrayer for a reason. But know that my words are true this time, mortal.”
“I believe you. But what will you do when I have left you?”
Trias’ smile turns bitter. “I must try again to levy forces against the gates of Celestia. I’m afraid there is no other purpose to my existence.”
The Stranger smiles too, but it’s sad. Grace puts a hand on his shoulder. He glances up at her with a grateful smile: the man she knew is once more with her. She fulfilled her promise. He turns back to Trias, stroking his jaw. “Trias, have you forgotten the face of your father?”
“What – what do you mean?”
“I know little about the Upper Planes, but what I do know is that they are bastions of forgiveness. Are they not the home of justice, of beauty, of goodness?” The Stranger rests his scarred forehead against Trias’. Together, Grace is not sure which one is more holy in this moment. She thinks the angel could never compare. “Go home, Trias. Admit your error and beg forgiveness. I think you will find it.”
Trias tries to flinch away from the kind touch, but relents and leans into it. Grace is reminded of a private moment in an inn room in Sigil, what feels like years ago. A similar conversation about mistakes and mercy.
“Your wise words pierce even my twisted heart,” Trias whispers. His voice trembles. His hands rise to cradles the Stranger’s wrists, his broken sword hand tracing over the scars there. “I shall seek my fathers’ forgiveness and – and accept whatever retribution they choose. Farewell,” he sobs. He lets the Stranger cradle his head and bring it to his shoulder, embracing the fallen deva like a parent would embrace a distraught child. “If we should meet again, it – it is my hope that I will be redeemed.”
“Best of luck, Trias,” the Stranger whispers.
He holds the deva until Trias finally lets go of his existential ties and dissolves into golden motes of light that float away, ready to be re-formed at Mount Celestia. Then he holds Grace and begs for her forgiveness for his near-mistake, and she holds him the same while reassuring that anger and hurt can overtake even the kindest man sometimes, but the true test is walking back from that violent edge.
In the dark room of the Curst Administration building, Dak’kon nods his approval. His fingers trace the Fifth Circle of Zerthimon. Morte is surly but agrees that it was for the best. Ignus, slumped in a corner smoldering and near-death himself, growls at Grace and promises that one day he’ll make her suffer.
“I’m already suffering,” she replies. “It is only my wish to prevent the suffering of others.” She puts a hand over her heart. “May even you know the kiss of mercy one day.”
“Unlikely,” he sputters and sparks. “I do not deserve it. Neither do you.”
“We all deserve mercy.” She turns away. She’s already learned there will be no convincing him. Her bones are weary from all the healing she has done today. She has no more to give magically, so she takes the Stranger’s arm to help to him his feet, to limp towards the portal back to Sigil.
Ignus is partially right, though. It is unlikely that any of them will know peace or mercy themselves.