You run. You've been fingered.
A single Myrmidon caught sight of you, raised a chitinous arm and clicked out something, a demand to stop, turn over your papers pronto. Lacking papers but in possession of a pair of contraband texts, you beat feet. Trying to outrace a swift footed Myrmidon is a losing prospect, and in due time the ant has you cornered in a dead end street.
"Citizen Unknown," it clicks out, mandibles clattering. "Please remain calm and hand over identifying information and the bag in your possession. Citizen Unknown. Please remain calm."
Myrmidons are terrifying. You've seen their specs, filched from one of ZEUS's records. They were ants, pumped full of divine ichor to mutate them into a six foot tall armored nightmare. Trained in wombs, skilled in all the arts of war. And, a rational part of you in your palace-of-mind points out, you can bleed them for their ichor, because they're the easiest source of the divine blood around. If you can flip one, you've got a loyal bodyguard that'll cross heaven and earth for you. Well, not that it matters, because it'll see that you're an alchemist and it'll cut off your head with that bent-forwards blade of its.
Damn, you thought, I really should have tried for the dumpsters. Discarded broadsheets crunch under your feet. You consider the chances of throwing yourself through one of the cardboard and glass coverings of abandoned stalls, but think against it. "Please hand over ID slowly," the Myrmidon chitters.
You reach into your pocket as it commands. You have nothing in them but the weeping gem in a vial that constantly produces the Alkahest.
The myrmidon steps closer.
And then it falls apart into two haves, lengthwise.
"Damned thing," your saviour mutters. "Can you give me a hand with this?"
You presume that this is the templar that's offeringing you a lit hand of glory. He's dressed soberly. Grey suit, grey pants, burgundy tie and a worn brown greatcoat that's seen better days. There's stubble on his chin and streaks of ash in his hair, but his face isn't that lined and his electric blue eyes have a lively, roguish quality to them. Granted, you think the greatcoat is there to conceal the actual factual longsword he's holding in his other hand. "Urban, Hidden Temple. Take the damned hand already, I never manage to sheathe this sharp right."
You take the damned hand. Dead fingers curl around yours in a memory of a handshake. "There we are. Thing sticks no matter what I do, it seems. You're the one?"
You nod. He nods.
And then you double over with pain red hot in your gut. "Alrighty. That's me done. C'mon, me son, off to the temple we go."
"What in the double fuckdamn," you swear. It's honestly not like you. Your master prized control and stoicism, and therefore, you prized control and stoicism. Spittle forces its way out of your lips. "The fuck was that for?"
"Grand idiocy and hubris, as well as being a singularly graceless pigfuck. Last one's the most pressing, since the first two are endemic to the Perfect Circle. Anyway, get up, let's be gone. Candle's running out."
It was true. Corpsefat was bubbling out of the stump, onto your hand. You pull a face and stand up straight, Urban propping you up when the pain in your gut became too much to bear.
About that…
You begin to wonder how you will pay him back for that. Maybe you will work him over with a length of pipe when he's drunk. The thought warms you enough to walk to where the Hidden Temple of the Second Dawn is disguised almost unassisted.
It's a tutoring center. Two story building, you can see the scribes-to-bes head down through the windows on the second floor. You look at Urban, who's already in the annex and hanging up his coat, making a hurry-up gesture at you. "Gimmie that." He takes the corpse hand and throws it in a grocery bag and leads you to the rear of the building, passing by classrooms where teachers lecture silent classrooms in rhetoric, theology, and law.
You begin to suspect something, and your suspicions are confirmed when you enter the library with Urban, where you begin to flip through some of the textbooks as he whistles something while finding some hidden mechanism. They're doctored with glimmerings of the True Fire's doctrine. This place wasn't just a front house, it's to cultivate believers in the civil service of Heaven, like how the public infrastructure business was lousy with lodges of the New Masons.
A bookshelf swings backwards. "Classy," you remark to Urban, who grins.
"Yeah, I like it. It's got style, even if it's not the most secure. The abbot's back there, I gotta stay here so's no one figures it out."
You nod and enter the Hidden Temple.
It's a sad, shoddy affair. You expected sumptuous tapestries that described the war of light and dark, the creation of Man by unthinking demiurges, all scribed on silk. What you got were vinyl floor tiles and the same beige plaster that comes cheap and easy to throw up. There's a prayer room, a couple more archives, and nothing else. Up a set of stairs is the abbot's office, where a saturnine man, face weathered by the years and a white beared flowing down to his chest. You're jealous.
"Ah, please, sit down, sit down. Today is a fast day, so I'm afraid I can't offer you anything except for water."
His office is gratifyingly mystical and tasteful in an understated way. You can't imagine how it would be like knowing that the Hidden Temple uses self-assembly furniture. "Thank you," you say.
"By the by," the old man says, "you're in our debt now."
"The fuck?" You stand up. The chair squeaks against the wood.
"Think of it as repentance. You have, by your own hand, brought an end to one of the Magisters of the Perfect Circle, an enemy of the Lie. If you were just young and stupid, I would have packed you off after a day or two." He steeples his hands in front of him. "I've heard some very concerning things about your life. The Magisters are sharpening knives and summoning their daemons to, as the youth say, kill your sorry ass."
Fury in a haze descends in your palace-of-mind. It gets shoved in the box with the grief. "Let's say I don't want this. What happens?"
"Nothing. For now," the abbot says. "You go out in the streets and wait for death. If you want to work off your debt, you sign a paper and you get our resources, our help, what-ever you need, we do our best to get it to you as long as you further our holy cause. If you skint, I won't bother with curses or things of that matter. I'll simply have Urban find you and part your head from your body."
You let out an aggravated sigh. There are good sides to this, but you can see it for what it is- unpaid labour. But some shelter is better than none, and you are, after all, a half decent alchemist. If you can't find a way to beat some holy freaks you might as well turn yourself in. "Let me see the contract," you decide.
Scribing, pedagogical work, and some alchemy on commission. Not the worst thing in the world, and at least you will have some time off on your own. It's not bad, you think more to convince yourself, you can live with this.
For a while.
Clock Created- 0/8->Debt: By the grace of the True Fire, the faithful of the Hidden Temple own your ass and expect you to work it off. Congratulations!
What's the name you sign on the paper?
[]- Scharly Piety
[]- Pseudo Alexander
[]- Abd ul-Haqq
