The Turning Of Brost

MINDLESS WRITING EXERCISE
"The Turning of Brost"

The following parable has been passed down in Templar lore, and whether or not it really happened is unfortunately lost to time. It is nevertheless taught to new initiates as a lesson in why verifying a target's guilt is of utmost importance before commencing any hostilities.

…

In a village called Mertin, there lived a boy named Brost with his father, mother, and younger brother Javes. Brost tried very dutifully to be obedient, but he was somehow never obedient enough, and his father would whip him, his mother would scold him, his brother would mock him, and all in the village would say he was a wicked one who tormented two righteous parents.

He tried very hard to be helpful, but no matter what good he did, it was never good enough. If he helped a widow with her farming, the people would say "he means to rob her when her guard is down!" If he swept the church, the priest would say "he will set a fire as a cruel jest when our backs are turned!" His brother would go out and tell lies, pouring out the mead and saying that Brost had drank it all, or letting loose the livestock and saying Brost had beat them into frenzy.

In desperation, one day Brost sat at the foot of the steps of the church, and though people raged and threw stones and mud at him, he did not move but to pray, and though the priest told him that God would not hear his prayers, he prayed even more. Yet Javes set about his work, setting fires here and there, stealing trinkets and little things, all manner of small evils he did commit. And when he had done so much evil that even Satan would be exhausted, he told the village that Brost had done it all in that same day.

"How could these be?" asked one person. "He has sat here all day, praying!"

Now Javes did tell his grandest false accusation yet, one that would have had all hell's demons stand and applaud. "He must be dabbling in sorcery! He can be two places at once, maybe even three, and will have one sit here and mumble empty prayers while two more of him burn the hay and break the pots!"

"I have done no such thing!" cried Brost, at wit's end. "I have no sorcery! I have burned no hay, broken no pots, done nothing but pray for an end to the slander that assails me! What will it take to prove I am not wicked? Will the lord Jesus have to come down and speak for me, before you let me be? If I was a sorcerer, do you think I would stoop to such petty tricks? Tell me, where was my brother during all of this? How is it he knows of all these wicked deeds? How can he tell you what was stolen and what was burned?"

He stood and turned out his pockets, which were bare. "I have nothing of yours! Let God see if no one else, I have stolen nothing!"

But the people's hearts were hardened, and they beat him in the village square until he was a few steps from death, and his father and mother spat on him, saying "you are no son of ours! If you wish to do the devil's work, then leave, and may you go to your employer soon!"

And the priest said "Be gone, be cursed, and take with you the demons of greed, rebellion, and sorcery you have so eagerly courted!" Then they drove him from the village with blows and curses.

So Brost did limp and stagger in pain until he came to a circle of trees, and he laid against one in agony. "What did I do," he asked the sky, "to be so hated? I cannot recall what I could have done to turn them all against me!"

And suddenly, there appeared three strangers, all in very stately red clothes, but Brost could see their cloven feet as they approached. "What do you want of me?" he asked, woebegone. "Have you come to take me to hell?"

"No," responded the first, "but we have questions we need answered. There is considerable misunderstanding, we hear, about what we have and have not done."

"My name is Greed," continued the first, "and I have been told that I was with you when you opened the poor box and stole every last coin, that I was with you when you took silver spoons and little girl's dolls, and all manner of thing under the sun. Yet I keep good records, and I cannot say you and I have ever met before now."

"I have not taken a thing that wasn't mine." sighed Brost.

"Curious!" said Greed.

Then the second stepped forward. "My name is Rebellion, and I am told you listened to me when I told you to shirk your chores, and to curse the name of God, that you followed my instructions to set fire to hay and break pots, and to commit all manner of evil in the name of your frivolity. Yet you have never been in my employ, never asked for a command nor were ever given one."

"I have never set a fire not in a hearth, and the only thing I have broken are old stumps for a widow, for what good it did me!" groaned Brost.

"Curious!" said Rebellion.

The third stepped forth. "My name is Sorcery. It is said you have called on me for power, that you sing praises to hell and bring forth poxes. That you sacrifice cats and dogs and mice that you might fly in moonless nights, that you brew poisons and put them in meads, and curse righteous men with foul intentions that lead them astray. Yet I have never heard a spell leave your lips, and the only power you petition is the name of the God I curse. How can this be?"

"How can it be?" asked Brost. "How can it be? I do not know! I sat at the foot of the church, praying an entire day, that they would at least see I do not do the things my brother says I do, and now they believe I can be in three places at once, that I can call on the devil and still pray, that I can be here and there at the same time! All these powers and deeds attributed to me!" and he nearly wept at the injustice of it all.

"Curious!" said Sorcery.

Then the three convened, and at length, spoke. "Tell me, you say that you spent the day in prayer? And surely you have prayed for relief before, have you not?"

"Nightly, when I am not too tired from the beatings." Brost admitted.

"Yet the lord does not answer you? He does not speak to his priest?" asked Greed.

"No, no he has not." Said Brost.

"Yet the priest banished you, and wished you to go to hell. Perhaps your God is ungrateful." Suggested Rebellion.

"No. No, maybe that is not the case." Said Sorcery. "Perhaps the fault lies inadvertently with you. You have been obedient, and helpful, and kind, moreso than any other boy, and that is all they have seen."

"What do you mean?" asked Brost.

"They do not know when you are being good or bad, because you have only been good, for what little good it has done you. Perhaps they need to see what you are like, when you truly devote yourself to being evil, so that they will know good from evil and evil from good."

"Or perhaps," offered Rebellion, "this is all so much a trap. They wish to make a slave of you, to make you work without so much as thanks, and so when you return hungry and begging for bread and salvation, that the priest might bury you a Christian, they will say 'you must work for us without complaint, and prove yourself worthy'."

And Brost considered their words, the first that had made sense in a long time. Could they truly be so cruel?

"Interesting theories, but I fear the intentions may be darker still." said Greed. "I have seen this thing before. To do good unto another is to have that person in debt to do good in turn, and they know of all the good you have done, and that to repay it would take all the gold in the country. So they sought to convince you that you were wicked, that your wickedness might alleviate the debt, and when their lies and slander did not work, they simply cast you out to die."

"That makes sense." Agreed Sorcery. "It is a very difficult thing, even for a wizened witch, to be in two places at once, let alone three. What reasonable person would say a boy could do that, if not without ulterior motive?"

"What wickedness!" said Rebellion. "And where was God? Surely it would not be disastrous for an entire village to go uncorrected in such evil?"

"But what does God care for a human?" asked Greed. "Do farmers weep for broken shovels if they can get a new one? Perhaps He even finds it amusing. After all, isn't the bible full of Him sending plagues? Did he not punish Job with such horrible severity merely to prove a point?"

At this, Brost was filled with a horrible feeling, that wound of betrayal, that everything he believed was good and just was all a lie, and he screamed at the sky. "I denounce you, oh God! King of betrayers! Lord of backstabbers! I have done your will, and you would not speak for me! I called out to you like a child for their father, and you sent your servants to punish me for wickedness I left undone! Oh, how I wish I had done it all! No, I wish I had done more than what they say I do!"

And the three looked at each other, with the smiles of conspirators whose plan has gone without a hitch, and Sorcery spoke in a soothing tone.

"Well, is it not said the enemy of my enemy is my friend? Come with us, learn what we have to offer."

So Brost did harden his heart against God, and he learned every vile thing there was, and for seven years did he labor under them with the same fervor as he had done good, so that at the end there was scarcely any difference between him and his dread tutors.

…

Now back at Mertin, the people's hearts had softened, and when silver spoons were found in Javes' room they beat him, but not nearly as badly as they ever had Brost, for the thought of what they had done sickened them, and they did not wish to do again such horrible things. Brost's mother was beside herself with grief.

"How many times did I curse his name? How many times did I punish him for doing good?" she wept.

And his father cried "My hands have been washed until raw, and yet I see his blood on them! God forgive me!"

And though they were angry with Javes, they forgave him in time, for they had seen what scorn and hate had wrought, and Javes came to understand the full weight of what he had done.

"I have done so much wickedness," thought he, "that it is a wonder I do not sink to hell on the spot. I can only hope the grace of God and the blood of Jesus will let me see the gates of heaven before I am taken down below."

Now Brost did hear that his brother's wickedness was found out, and he said to himself, with what little scrap of reason was left in him, "if they have paid my brother in turn, I shall claim justice has been done, and I will renounce my wicked power, yes, even if I am dragged down regardless."

But when he returned to Mertin, he saw the people greet Javes as they would any other, that he was not beaten as Brost had been beaten, and anger and pain flared in his heart. So he looked to the sky and spoke a hideous incantation, and the sky grew dark with foul clouds smelling of brimstone, and down from them came a rain that boiled flesh and scorched stone.

From house to house he went, hurling fire at those seeking shelter from the rain of vitriol, and he said "Here I am! Here is Brost! I am now what you said I was and more! I am a slayer of men! I am a killer of children! I am a speaker of death and destruction! Are you satisfied? Do you not see what I am when I decide to be wicked? Is it to your liking?"

And at length the storm subsided, and among the steaming remains only his family was left, huddling in the melted ruins of their home.

"Please, son!" his mother begged. "Please, let us pray together, that God might heal you and break this foul thing that holds you in its clutches!"

But he took her head off her neck like an apple from a tree, and did the same to his father, and that was the full extent of what little vestige of mercy that was left in Brost.

He turned on Javes, who was on his knees weeping. "Kill me then. You want revenge? Take it. May it give you some happiness, and may you come to the same revelation I did!"

But Brost remembered the cruelty done him, and beat him as savagely as he had been beaten in his youth, and then worked his worst and foulest curse yet.

"You shall never be able to eat, food will be ash in your mouth. You shall never be able to drink, water shall be sand to you. Your wounds will ache and burn forever, yet you will not die of hunger, nor thirst, nor wounds. You shall live on the cusp of death, yet denied it. Many will shun you as a wicked thing and hate you. Others will pity you but will not be able to comfort you. May you suffer until the very last morsel of you rots away! Let us see if God will answer you, then!"

Then he left Javes to wander in his cursed undeath, and the three demons saw that Brost was now wholly like them, and his every word was a curse, his every deed a sin, and his every thought a wicked plan.

And where Mertin once stood, there is nothing but rubble and death. Nothing grows there, not even the flies will feed there, and those who know the tale say that the village that poisoned a boy's soul was merely paid in turn.

It is said that eventually after a great while, Javes body wholly rotted away after decades of wandering, and so he was finally allowed to die. Of what happened to Brost, little is known. Some say he wanders even now, seeking out those who were wronged like them, and making them like he became, that the tragedy of Mertin would be repeated forever.

So be wary that your actions do not poison others, lest they poison you in turn. Be careful that you do not punish obedience nor condemn benevolence, lest the obedient spurn you and the benevolent turn on you. When one says to themselves, "I have obeyed and been punished for it, I have done good deeds but am called wicked", then surely does hell's agency pay a call to the injured, asking what profits them righteousness if righteousness is called wickedness all the same.

If you risk erring in either striking or sheathing your sword, far better to sheathe in error than to shed innocent blood.

Kyrie eleison.