Evil lurks within good

fiction

"So the lead monk turned out to be evil after all?" Walker checked with the others present, her voice in hushed surprise.
She had just returned from her run about town, getting the latest news from everyone & anything, mostly by observing than probing.

"No," Smith corrected her, bringing out a tricky pair of small, delicate metal clasps for some final bending adjustments, "evil was never the conscious intent, just that almost all his monkhood, in their research into the divine, lost touch with mortal compassion.
It took the deaths of babies & children, within this town & without, to awaken many to something very wrong going around."

Grower came in to sit, his tray piled with cool, damp, just-picked mushrooms.
Overhearing Walker & Smith at the start, he added, "The monks deeply believed their good intentions, hoping to extract the pureness in the very young and understand it better, so that all may emulate their innocence.
But they used harsh methods gotten used to from their daily rituals, and that only caused the little ones so much damage.

"Evil lurks within seemingly good motives."

During this while, Artist had been quietly leaning at a side wall, listening to the exchange, and he said, "I just heard more about that Kingdom diplomat denounced by our mayor.
Folks here & there are finding it hard to believe any ill-will concealed within a kindly gesture of friendship."

"Yes, it gets more troubling when little imps appeared too soon in the next week past, to assault trading folk for no common sense," Smith agreed, holding the jacket he had just welded the clasps on, and flinging it straight with both hands.

"And now the mayor's practically vanished, after the townspeople almost killed that poor representative with their lynching."

"You think that whatever diabolic forces couldn't get our leader here, finished him off privately?" Grower questioned.
The powerful smell of still-fresh fungi was beginning to fill the room.

Walker let out a quick, amused laugh, stretching her standing legs, as was her habit before going on one of her countless little jaunts again.
"Stop teasing Smith and us, Grower!
Your tone hints so strongly that you think it's all a deception.
The person we've trusted for several years, might actually be the seed of chaos trying to fester in this nice place!"

"You suggest right," Artist returned instantly, and Smith was nodding slowly in their general direction, taciturn as usual again, "Forester and Marsher are already starting to track twisted creatures walking their grounds, few in number but... that's why it's troubling.
They seem too well-hidden, to leave such few signs.
In the direction of where our likely ex-mayor was last headed."

"Oh, that supposed trip to visit kin at our neighbour town, when we now know no such thing was expected coming."
Walker sank into uncommon brooding, but not for long, as expected.
She actually propped up on a bench, for a moment.
The shed wrapped briefly in quiet.

Then she spoke up, "Our old friend Sage, whom, admit it, we see as our goodly senior, you think too that...?"

Artist finished the final outlining touches to her coal sketch, looking up sharply, "Anything is possible."
But what he wouldn't say, kept within, was he really felt the opposite.
That brainiac was too untouchable in his natural & true rightness.

That would be a problem.

(inspired by their character cousins from River Town, in this post from another blog of mine, World & Space)

A bit about why I wrote this.