XI - Servants of the Nine
- Location
- London, England
Thorn keeps his promise. The training that you are subjected to makes the days and weeks that follow the worst in your entire life, the time you spent sentenced to death included, but it is undeniably effective. You fight, you study, you train, and every step of the way Cardinal Thorn is behind you, wielding the divine power of Hell itself to drive you forward as a slave before the whip.
You grow close to your fellow recruits (your fellow condemned) during the trials, for they are the only ones that understand. When you cannot bring yourself to speak, Mikael allows you to practise anatomy sketching him as he works through his katas. When Lisara flees the darkness of her bedchamber, you make her a potion to poison her blood against the vampiric mist she sees in her nightmares. When Dorgo flees thought in lupine form, you let him curl up by your fire, resting against your side. You start sharing a room after the first week, and one day at a time, you survive.
Survive, and grow stronger.
-/-
"Begin!" Adrastus Thorn commands, and with a roar of fury the ogre emerges from his pen and lunges towards you.
"Left!" you say curtly, hands already rising, fingers weaving the arcane geometries together. Mikael lunges past on your right, Lisara on your left, counter-charging the lumbering humanoid at supernatural speed. Dorgo hangs back, spear ready, the reserve piece in case this does not go the way you plan, but you already know it will. You could do this in your sleep by now, all of you, and the fact that the match has been brought to the forest instead of the grassy field or narrow caverns you used before means nothing.
You finish your incantation and bring your hands together, blurring the essence of the earth with that of water beneath the ogre's pounding feet. At the same instant Mikael throws himself into the air, vaults off the trunk of one of the great trees, and strikes the ogre so hard that any hope of retaining its balance is lost. The ogre slips, falls, tries to rise, brings its axe around to use as an improvised cane. You don't have to say anything, because Lisara is there already, the razor edge of her blade piercing the ogre's hand and forcing it to drop the weapon.
Again the ogre falls, and this time it does not get back up, because Dorgo has shed his skin and now a wolf stands atop the enemy's chest and places jagged fangs against the swell of an enormous throat.
"Cease!" Thorn calls out once more, less than ten seconds after you began, nodding in satisfaction, "Good. Return to the manor - training is over for today."
He disappears then, or perhaps was never present at all, and with a tired sigh you let your hands drop and banish the grease that prevents your erstwhile foe from rising. "You good, Grumblejack?"
"Yeah, good," the ogre groans, picking himself up and rubbing at the bloody mark on his hand where Lisara pierced him, "Could let me win some times, you know."
"No," Dorgo says darkly, slipping back into humanoid form and shaking his head, "We can't."
-/-
"Wait, wait," Lisara says later that night, the bottle dangling loosely from her hand as she fixes Mikael with an incredulous look, "You've never… not even once?"
You're sitting in what you've come to think of as your corner of the manor, a small circle of chairs pulled up around a fireplace in the otherwise abandoned lounge. The servants know your routine well enough by now to leave a dozen bottles of decent wine on the side table before you arrive, and you've not caught a single glimpse of any of them since.
"The Serene Order practises celibacy, and I entered at twelve years of age," Mikael says dryly, holding a single glass of red wine in one calloused hand. You've seen him drink but never get drunk, which seems to be how he has chosen to reconcile the temperate creed of his former life with the reality of his new one. "When would I have had the opportunity?"
"Oh come on, you'd be the first priest in history to keep those vows, and I know the main cult doesn't swear them," Lisara scoffs, shaking her head, "You mean to tell me you never had a cute little nun making eyes at you? All those fit and handsome monks doing martial arts in the sun - no way you couldn't have gotten some action if you wanted."
"He gave oath," Dorgo growls, his grasp of the common tongue slipping with the third empty bottle now standing by his chair, glaring blearily at Lisara, "Rest doesn't matter."
"I won't pretend I never considered it," Mikael chuckles softly, a nostalgic look on his face as he leans over and tops up Lisara's glass from the half-empty bottle they are presently sharing, "But as Dorgo said, the vows mattered to me. Besides, I had more important goals on my mind."
"Urgh, you don't even know what you're missing," Lisara complains, slumping back in her chair and lifting her face to the heavens, "Gods, if I wasn't so sore I'd take you upstairs and show you myself. Val, hon, any chance you could cover for me?"
You raise your eyebrows in mild surprise, taking a long sip of your wine to hide your immediate reaction. You have no idea if this is an elf thing, a noble thing or a Lisara thing, but either way you can't say you dislike it, as such. It's like having your very own jester.
"I am a chaste young lady awaiting her marriage," you say archly, folding one ankle delicately behind the other, "Not some dockyard strumpet, and I will thank you to remember that."
Not that you'd be opposed to sharing a bed with Mikael, you concede in the privacy of your mind. Lisara is a wanton disaster of a woman, but she isn't wrong about how good the monk looks when he's practising his arts, chiselled musculature flexing in the firelight. You don't have nearly enough experience to feel confident in making the approach, but if he happened to ask… or if Lisara ever asked in a way that didn't feel utterly disgraceful, for that matter…
You clear your throat, setting your glass aside and rising to your feet. Best to turn in now, before such thoughts and another bottle or two of wine start making the decisions for you.
"I'll see you all tomorrow, then," you say vaguely, already turning away to hide your flush, "I think He wants us to work through the stealth section again."
A chorus of groans follows your departure.
-/-
You are not the only agents of Cardinal Thorn to receive training at the manor. About a week after your education begins, another band of likely prospects is brought in via boat from the flooded caverns below, taking up residence in a previously vacant wing of the house. Thorn assures you that they are neither replacements nor intended to join your band, the latter of which you believe far more readily than the former, but that they will be working on supporting missions to compliment your work on his main agenda.
It sounds like blatant flattery, but you think there might be a ring of truth to it. For one, the new arrivals are not prisoners as you were, but rather a preexisting band of adventurers named the 'White Ravens'. Without that debt of honour and lack of other options to secure them, you do not expect the Cardinal will rely heavily on them in the future. It is a cynical assessment, but Thorn has put considerable effort into making you a cynic.
For the first few days, your group and theirs tread carefully, sizing each other up like hounds at the bowl. The Ravens have four members, just as your team does, but where you have developed a kind of working equality the adventurers have a clear and obvious leader - Elise Zadaria, a tall and rangy human woman with nut-brown skin and piercing golden eyes akin to a bird of prey. The others in her band - a massive northern warrior carrying a twin-handed sword and a pair of identical twins with the hungry focus of the born poor - all defer to her, and when at last they cease watching you at your training from a distance, it is Elise at last who approaches you.
"You must be Valka," she says, the rough edge of some foreign accent flavouring her smoky voice, "I am Elise."
"A pleasure," you say warily, setting down your sketching pad to look her over. The rest of your team are at the far end of the room, eating dinner and exchanging tired banter, but when they see the other woman approach you they fall silent and watchful. "Do you need something?"
"So cautious. We serve the same master now, do we not?" Elise smiles, and perhaps it is the golden eyes but you could swear there is a vaguely predatory edge to her interest. "You lead your team, I lead mine. Perhaps we could talk, compare notes?"
You say nothing for a moment, considering the woman in front of you. She's dressed in a practical outfit of animal hide beneath a cloak of pale fur, equipment you would normally associate with a scout or outrider, but aside from a curved dagger at her belt she bears nothing in the way of weapons. On one shoulder perches a raven of purest white, presumably the source of her group's name, and though it is hard to tell you think there is more than animal intelligence behind its beady black eyes.
"Why do you think I am the leader?" you ask, genuinely curious. Certainly you would not have described yourself as such.
"I watch your work. Always, you are the one who makes the plans, who they listen to," Elise chuckles slowly, as if amused by your modesty, "Besides - you are the magician, yes? The wizard, in your tongue? Who else has the power to lead?"
Well, she's definitely not Talirean, as if you hadn't worked out that much already. There's an absolute wealth of fascinating social context implied by that assumption, but you don't think quizzing the woman on her cultural background is going to go over terribly well here. Better to start with an answer to her question, if nothing else.
You grow close to your fellow recruits (your fellow condemned) during the trials, for they are the only ones that understand. When you cannot bring yourself to speak, Mikael allows you to practise anatomy sketching him as he works through his katas. When Lisara flees the darkness of her bedchamber, you make her a potion to poison her blood against the vampiric mist she sees in her nightmares. When Dorgo flees thought in lupine form, you let him curl up by your fire, resting against your side. You start sharing a room after the first week, and one day at a time, you survive.
Survive, and grow stronger.
-/-
"Begin!" Adrastus Thorn commands, and with a roar of fury the ogre emerges from his pen and lunges towards you.
"Left!" you say curtly, hands already rising, fingers weaving the arcane geometries together. Mikael lunges past on your right, Lisara on your left, counter-charging the lumbering humanoid at supernatural speed. Dorgo hangs back, spear ready, the reserve piece in case this does not go the way you plan, but you already know it will. You could do this in your sleep by now, all of you, and the fact that the match has been brought to the forest instead of the grassy field or narrow caverns you used before means nothing.
You finish your incantation and bring your hands together, blurring the essence of the earth with that of water beneath the ogre's pounding feet. At the same instant Mikael throws himself into the air, vaults off the trunk of one of the great trees, and strikes the ogre so hard that any hope of retaining its balance is lost. The ogre slips, falls, tries to rise, brings its axe around to use as an improvised cane. You don't have to say anything, because Lisara is there already, the razor edge of her blade piercing the ogre's hand and forcing it to drop the weapon.
Again the ogre falls, and this time it does not get back up, because Dorgo has shed his skin and now a wolf stands atop the enemy's chest and places jagged fangs against the swell of an enormous throat.
"Cease!" Thorn calls out once more, less than ten seconds after you began, nodding in satisfaction, "Good. Return to the manor - training is over for today."
He disappears then, or perhaps was never present at all, and with a tired sigh you let your hands drop and banish the grease that prevents your erstwhile foe from rising. "You good, Grumblejack?"
"Yeah, good," the ogre groans, picking himself up and rubbing at the bloody mark on his hand where Lisara pierced him, "Could let me win some times, you know."
"No," Dorgo says darkly, slipping back into humanoid form and shaking his head, "We can't."
-/-
"Wait, wait," Lisara says later that night, the bottle dangling loosely from her hand as she fixes Mikael with an incredulous look, "You've never… not even once?"
You're sitting in what you've come to think of as your corner of the manor, a small circle of chairs pulled up around a fireplace in the otherwise abandoned lounge. The servants know your routine well enough by now to leave a dozen bottles of decent wine on the side table before you arrive, and you've not caught a single glimpse of any of them since.
"The Serene Order practises celibacy, and I entered at twelve years of age," Mikael says dryly, holding a single glass of red wine in one calloused hand. You've seen him drink but never get drunk, which seems to be how he has chosen to reconcile the temperate creed of his former life with the reality of his new one. "When would I have had the opportunity?"
"Oh come on, you'd be the first priest in history to keep those vows, and I know the main cult doesn't swear them," Lisara scoffs, shaking her head, "You mean to tell me you never had a cute little nun making eyes at you? All those fit and handsome monks doing martial arts in the sun - no way you couldn't have gotten some action if you wanted."
"He gave oath," Dorgo growls, his grasp of the common tongue slipping with the third empty bottle now standing by his chair, glaring blearily at Lisara, "Rest doesn't matter."
"I won't pretend I never considered it," Mikael chuckles softly, a nostalgic look on his face as he leans over and tops up Lisara's glass from the half-empty bottle they are presently sharing, "But as Dorgo said, the vows mattered to me. Besides, I had more important goals on my mind."
"Urgh, you don't even know what you're missing," Lisara complains, slumping back in her chair and lifting her face to the heavens, "Gods, if I wasn't so sore I'd take you upstairs and show you myself. Val, hon, any chance you could cover for me?"
You raise your eyebrows in mild surprise, taking a long sip of your wine to hide your immediate reaction. You have no idea if this is an elf thing, a noble thing or a Lisara thing, but either way you can't say you dislike it, as such. It's like having your very own jester.
"I am a chaste young lady awaiting her marriage," you say archly, folding one ankle delicately behind the other, "Not some dockyard strumpet, and I will thank you to remember that."
Not that you'd be opposed to sharing a bed with Mikael, you concede in the privacy of your mind. Lisara is a wanton disaster of a woman, but she isn't wrong about how good the monk looks when he's practising his arts, chiselled musculature flexing in the firelight. You don't have nearly enough experience to feel confident in making the approach, but if he happened to ask… or if Lisara ever asked in a way that didn't feel utterly disgraceful, for that matter…
You clear your throat, setting your glass aside and rising to your feet. Best to turn in now, before such thoughts and another bottle or two of wine start making the decisions for you.
"I'll see you all tomorrow, then," you say vaguely, already turning away to hide your flush, "I think He wants us to work through the stealth section again."
A chorus of groans follows your departure.
-/-
You are not the only agents of Cardinal Thorn to receive training at the manor. About a week after your education begins, another band of likely prospects is brought in via boat from the flooded caverns below, taking up residence in a previously vacant wing of the house. Thorn assures you that they are neither replacements nor intended to join your band, the latter of which you believe far more readily than the former, but that they will be working on supporting missions to compliment your work on his main agenda.
It sounds like blatant flattery, but you think there might be a ring of truth to it. For one, the new arrivals are not prisoners as you were, but rather a preexisting band of adventurers named the 'White Ravens'. Without that debt of honour and lack of other options to secure them, you do not expect the Cardinal will rely heavily on them in the future. It is a cynical assessment, but Thorn has put considerable effort into making you a cynic.
For the first few days, your group and theirs tread carefully, sizing each other up like hounds at the bowl. The Ravens have four members, just as your team does, but where you have developed a kind of working equality the adventurers have a clear and obvious leader - Elise Zadaria, a tall and rangy human woman with nut-brown skin and piercing golden eyes akin to a bird of prey. The others in her band - a massive northern warrior carrying a twin-handed sword and a pair of identical twins with the hungry focus of the born poor - all defer to her, and when at last they cease watching you at your training from a distance, it is Elise at last who approaches you.
"You must be Valka," she says, the rough edge of some foreign accent flavouring her smoky voice, "I am Elise."
"A pleasure," you say warily, setting down your sketching pad to look her over. The rest of your team are at the far end of the room, eating dinner and exchanging tired banter, but when they see the other woman approach you they fall silent and watchful. "Do you need something?"
"So cautious. We serve the same master now, do we not?" Elise smiles, and perhaps it is the golden eyes but you could swear there is a vaguely predatory edge to her interest. "You lead your team, I lead mine. Perhaps we could talk, compare notes?"
You say nothing for a moment, considering the woman in front of you. She's dressed in a practical outfit of animal hide beneath a cloak of pale fur, equipment you would normally associate with a scout or outrider, but aside from a curved dagger at her belt she bears nothing in the way of weapons. On one shoulder perches a raven of purest white, presumably the source of her group's name, and though it is hard to tell you think there is more than animal intelligence behind its beady black eyes.
"Why do you think I am the leader?" you ask, genuinely curious. Certainly you would not have described yourself as such.
"I watch your work. Always, you are the one who makes the plans, who they listen to," Elise chuckles slowly, as if amused by your modesty, "Besides - you are the magician, yes? The wizard, in your tongue? Who else has the power to lead?"
Well, she's definitely not Talirean, as if you hadn't worked out that much already. There's an absolute wealth of fascinating social context implied by that assumption, but you don't think quizzing the woman on her cultural background is going to go over terribly well here. Better to start with an answer to her question, if nothing else.
Article: Elise Zadaria, leader of a second team of Thorn's prospective agents, wishes to extend the hand of friendship and cooperation, one villainous female spellcaster to another. How do you respond?
[ ] Open and Friendly
You're to be living in the same building for the next few months, and perhaps working alongside each other in the future. Why not at least try and get to know each other, personally as well as professionally?
[ ] Strictly Professional
You're not averse to trading hints and feedback with a fellow spellcaster, but you're members of separate teams working for a priest of hell. Letting her get too close isn't just foolish, it might be downright suicidal.
[ ] Polite Refusal
You've no interest in this woman and her schemes, whatever they happen to be.