At dusk, a village was burning.
Cavalrymen held torches aloft, driving the villagers on, shouting as they forced them out of the village corrupted by the devil's plague.
At the edge of the village, beside a main road, a pyre had been piled up, with a cross erected above it.
Seven or eight knights stood around the pyre, and two corpses lay collapsed on the ground.
Before long, two horses came galloping down the road. From the lead horse leaped a young, bald priest, dressed in a plain gray robe, with only a cross pendant hanging at his chest.
"Why set it on fire?" the young priest asked the knight commander, frowning as he looked at the burning village.
"This is the devil's village. It has tainted this place. Only flame can purify it," the knight captain said coldly.
The priest knew the man was merely a vandal, but faith had given him an excuse to act as wildly as he pleased. Things had already come to this; condemning him would serve no purpose. He looked at the two bodies on the ground. "Who are they?"
"The 'devil's' parents. They were the ones who summoned Father Clement and caused his death. They even tried to defend the 'devil.' I suspect they were possessed by the devil as well."
"Suspect? You killed them merely because you suspected it?" The priest grew somewhat angry. It was precisely because of brutes like these, who spread panic everywhere in the name of the Holy See, that the Holy See was becoming ever more twisted and cruel. And faith sustained by fear would never last.
"Are you questioning my loyalty?!" the knight captain snapped back. "A priest died here. The devil killed him, and yet you want me to show mercy to these heretics?"
The