Zavutur gro-Muzgob

Half-Orc / Cleric

Submitted character story

The room is dingy, drab, depressingly dark. There’s only a few lit torches around to cast eerie shadows on the stone walls. 

In the middle of the room is a wooden chair with a human man tied securely to it. He looks much worse for wear, clearly having taken a beating or seven, bloodied and bruised. Every breath is rattled and labored, his head drooping, his long dark hair falling over his mangled face. A door opens, startling the man back awake, his head snapping up to see the entrant. zavutur steps inside, clad in the regalia of his clerical order of Solas. He steps up to the man, the deep shadows making him seem even more imposing than he usually is. The captive’s eyes go wide. It’s as if he’s looking at a ghost.

“You…you’re…we…”

Zav lets the man start and stop several sentences, his golden eyes hard as he glares down at the man as if he were no more than dung under his boot. There’s also perhaps the sense that he is enjoying watching the man squirm at the mere sight of him. When Zavutur still doesn’t move or reply, the captive begins trembling in true, utter terror. “How…?!”

“I am the High Inquisitor Zavutur gro-Muzgob, of the temple of Solas,” the half-Orc utters lowly, the introduction more of a threat than a greeting. “And you are the leader of the cult that murdered my brother.”

Realization dawns on the man’s face. Then, if it were possible, his terror only grows. “B-brother…oh, fuck...”

Zav takes a step closer, leaning over to support himself on the arms of the chair - or more appropriately, the arms of the man tied to the arms of the chair. His weight is clearly painful, but not enough to break bone. “Twin brother,” he clarifies, not that it wasn’t already clear. “His name was Balagog. Not that you cared to know it when you and your parasite followers were butchering him alive.”

“We - the teachings - he - “

Something about the man’s sheer audacity to even attempt to defend his heinous actions makes Zavutur snap. He cocks a shoulder back and slams his fist into the cult leader’s face with enough force to snap his head to the side, a sickening crunch of bone echoing off the stone walls along with the man’s shout of pain.

It’s a start.

It’s hard to say how much time passes. Eventually, the man is pinned to the floor with Zav over top of him, wielding the cult leader’s own curved, wicked dagger. It already drips ruby red blood, and there’s almost a manic look to Zav’s eyes. His black hair is disheveled, giving him a far more feral appearance than his usual self ever displays. “Please!” the man croaks weakly. “Please don’t - “

“Is that what my brother said when you were killing him?!” Zav roars. “When you were taking him from me?! Do you think I will show you mercy when you showed him none?” His face lowers closer to the man’s, now nearly unrecognizable. The air is still and tense for a moment as Zav’s deep, angry voice promises, “I will bury you so completely that they will not find your body for a thousand years.”

With another roar, the dagger in his hand flashes in the dim torchlight before it plunges into the cult leader’s heart. As the life leaves the cult leader’s eyes, there is the slightest trembling to the hand holding the dagger.

Once he knows the man is well and truly gone, Zavutur shoves himself off, leaving the dagger buried in the man’s body, and still on his hands and knees begins to sob. Great, heaving wails wrack Zav’s entire body, his eyes squeezed shut tightly, and his mouth open with his guttural, raw sounds of anguish. It crashes off of the stone walls, echoing in his ears. Revenge is his…and yet nothing has changed.

Balagog is still dead. The other half of his soul will never come back, no matter how much blood he sheds for it.