Behmor in Immortalis Delivers an Anti Nicolas Speech on Enforcement Without Mercy
The chamber reeked of stale incense and the faint copper tang of blood long dried into the stone. Behmor stood at the podium, his gaunt frame silhouetted against the flickering torches that lined the vaulted hall. His eyes, sharp as flints, swept over the assembled enforcers, those hollow-eyed devotees who clung to Nicolas’s creed like drowning men to driftwood. He gripped the edges of the lectern, knuckles whitening, and when he spoke, his voice cut through the murmurs like a blade through flesh.
“Listen well, you pack of simpering curs,” Behmor began, his tone laced with venom that needed no amplification. “Nicolas preaches enforcement without mercy, as if mercy were some weakness to be scourged from our veins. He stands there in his shadowed throne, draped in the skins of those he claims to protect, demanding we wield the lash without pause, without pity. But I say to you, brothers and sisters in this endless night, his mercy-less path is the true rot eating at our core.”
A ripple of unease passed through the crowd. Behmor leaned forward, his lips curling into a sardonic smile that revealed teeth filed to points in some forgotten rite. “Enforcement without mercy? What folly. Nicolas would have us flay the innocent alongside the guilty, drown the whispers of doubt in rivers of blood. He speaks of purity through pain, of a realm forged in unyielding fire. Yet look around you. Our streets run not with the blood of enemies alone, but with the life of our own. Children torn from mothers’ arms for a glance deemed defiant. Lovers parted because one dared question the decree. This is not strength, it is madness cloaked in doctrine.”
He paused, letting the words sink in, his gaze pinning each face in turn. “I have walked these halls longer than most, seen the rise and fall of enforcers who bowed to his whim. They ended broken, their spines shattered not by foes, but by the weight of their own unmerciful hands. Nicolas promises power, but delivers chains. He bids us enforce without mercy, and in doing so, he enforces his tyranny upon us all.”
“Mercy is not frailty,” Behmor continued, his voice rising like a gathering storm. “It is the blade’s edge honed true, the strike that spares the redeemable and condemns only the irredeemable. Without it, we become the monsters we hunt. Nicolas fears mercy because it exposes his fragility, his need to crush all dissent beneath an iron heel. Rise against this lie. Enforce with judgement, with precision, with the mercy that tempers steel into something unbreakable.”
The hall fell silent, save for the crackle of torches. Behmor’s words hung in the air, a gauntlet thrown at the feet of the enforcer-in-chief. Whispers would spread from this night, seeds of rebellion sown in the fertile ground of doubt. Nicolas’s reign, for all its merciless pomp, trembled on the brink.
Immortalis Book One August 2026