Phantom: Chainfire Trilogy Part 2

As she straightened, Nicci shrugged with a mocking, dismissive gesture. "This life is finite, transitory, so, in the scheme of things, in contrast to an eternal afterlife, how important can a fleeting life in this miserable world be? What true purpose could this brief existence possibly have, other than to serve as a trial of the soul?"

Jebra looked uncomfortably dubious yet unwilling to challenge Nicci when she framed it in such a way.

"For that reason," Nicci said, "sacrifice to any suffering, any want, any need of your fellow man is a humble recognition that this life is meaningless, a demonstration that you acknowledge eternity with the Creator in the next world to be the consequential concern. Yes? By sacrificing you are avowing that you do not value man's realm over eternity, the Creator's realm. Therefore, sacrifice is the price, the small price, the pittance, that you pay for your soul's eternal glory. It's your proof to the Creator that you are worthy of that eternity with Him."

Richard was amazed to see how easily such a rationale — delivered by Nicci with confidence, command, and authority — intimidated Jebra into silence. While listening as Nicci towered over her, Jebra had occasionally glanced to the others, to Zedd, to Cara, to Shota, even to Ann and Nathan, but seeing none of them offering any objection or counterarguments, her shoulders began to hunch as if she wished she could disappear into a crack in the marble floor.

"If you confine your concerns to being happy in this life"—Nicci casually swept an arm out, indicating the world around her as she glided regally back and forth before them — "if you dare to revel in the senseless trivialities of this wretched world, this meaningless, brief existence, that is a rejection of your all-important eternal next life, and thus a rejection of the Creator's perfect plan for your soul.

"Who are you to question the Creator of all the universe? How dare you put your petty wishes for your insignificant, pathetic little life ahead of His grand purpose of preparing you for all of eternity?"

Nicci paused, folding her arms with a kind of deliberate care that implied a challenge. A lifetime of indoctrination gave her the ability to express the Order's carefully crafted tenets with devastating precision. Seeing her standing there in her pink nightdress somehow only seemed to underscore her derision of the triviality of life. Richard remembered all too well Nicci delivering that very same message to him, only at the time she had been deadly serious. Jebra avoided Nicci's piercing gaze, instead fixing her stare on her hands nested in her lap.

"To bring the ways of the Order to other people, Galea for example," Nicci said as she resumed her pacing lecture, "many of the Order's soldiers had to die." She shrugged. "But that is the ultimate sacrifice — one's life — in an effort to bring enlightenment to those who do not yet know how to follow the only right and true path to glory in the next world. If a person sacrifices their life in the struggle on behalf of the Order to bring salvation to backward, ignorant, and unimportant people, then they earn eternity with Him in the next world."

Nicci lifted an arm, sheathed in the satiny, pink material of the nightdress, as if to reveal something magnificent but invisible standing right there before them. "Death is merely the doorway to that glorious eternity."

She let the arm drop. "Because an individual life is unimportant in the scheme of things that really matter, it's obvious that by torturing and killing individuals who resist, you are only helping to sway the masses of the unenlightened over to enlightenment — so you are bringing those masses salvation, serving a moral cause, bringing the Creator's children home to His kingdom."

Nicci's expression turned as grim as her pretense had been. "People who are taught this from birth come to believe it with such blind zeal that they see anyone living in any manner other than according to the Order's teachings — in other words failing to pay the rightful price of sacrifice in return for eternal salvation — as deserving of an eternity of unimaginable agony in the dark cold depths of the Keeper's realm of the underworld, which is exactly what awaits them unless they change their ways.

"Very few people who grow up under this indoctrination have enough of their reasoning ability still intact to be able to think their way out of this bewitching circular trap — nor do they want to. To them, to rejoice in life, to live for themselves, is trading eternity for a brief and sinful frolic before a looming doom-without-end.

"Since they must forgo the enjoyment of this life, they are going to be only too quick to notice anyone who fails to sacrifice as they should, fails to live by the canons of the Fellowship of Order. Besides, recognition of sinfulness in others is deemed a virtue because it helps to direct those who neglect their moral duty to turn back to the path of salvation."