Chapter 45

Luke groaned and rolled over in bed. His head wasn’t exactly pounding, but the sunlight stabbing at his eyelids was not welcome. He pulled the blanket over his head and tried to go back to sleep, but now that he was awake, his bladder was demanding attention. “God damn it,” Luke muttered, kicking the blanket off and sitting up.

He stopped and looked around blearily. Wherever he was, he didn’t recognize it and also had no idea how he’d gotten there. It was a small room, barely wide enough for the bed, with a window he couldn’t stick his head through, and a door that was maybe six feet tall. Everything felt small and cramped, which told him that his current situation probably had something to do with Zea.

He had to literally crawl out of the bed before he could stand up, and even then, he felt like he was going to smack his head on the ceiling. It had a few inches of clearance, thankfully, but it was claustrophobia-inducing to be in such a small room, like he was some misplaced giant. The door’s handle was set much lower than he was used to as well, forcing him to bend forward to turn it.

The hallway wasn’t much better. It needed an extra foot or two of width so that he didn’t have to hunch his shoulders together. Luke shuffled down the hallway, passing by numerous closed doors that were all too small and all too close together. Before he made it to the end of the hall, one of them opened and Zea stepped out.

“I thought I heard something large and heavy thumping out here.”

“Yeah, hi. Where are we?”

“The Brick Stouthouse. You paid for our rooms, by the way.”

“I did? I don’t remember that at all.”

“Least you could do,” Zea told him.

Luke took a second to study her. Her body was… tense maybe wasn’t the right word, but he couldn’t think of a better description. If he didn’t know any better, he’d have said she was afraid of him. “Look, whatever I said last night, that was just the alcohol talking.”

“Oh you said plenty.”

“I did? I’m sorry?”

Zea laughed, but she didn’t sound amused. “We should talk.”

“In a minute, yeah. I need to piss right now. Where’s the bathroom?”

That last word didn’t come out quite right. He could feel his language skill twisting it around to translate it, but couldn’t figure out exactly what he’d said. It was like when the skill was only rank 1 and every word he said felt like an invisible hand had grabbed his jaw and was working it around to form the sounds it wanted.

“End of the hall,” she said, pointing at a door that was somehow even smaller than the rest. “Come to my room when you’re done.”

Zea stepped aside, but left her door open, and Luke squeezed himself down the hallway into what was essentially a linen closet, except with a bench that had a hole carved into the middle of it. There was no running water, or even water of any kind. There was a stack of something kind of like paper, fibrous-like and strong enough not to tear easily. That was depressingly all too common.

Luke finished his business and shuffled back to Zea’s room, where she was seated on her bed. “Close the door,” she told him.

“Okay.”

Luke made himself comfortable on the floor while Zea stared at him silently. Her hands fiddled with the hem of her shirt while she watched him, and her leg bounced up and down. Now that he really got a look at her, she looked exhausted.

“So,” she began slowly. “You’re an off-worlder.”

Luke shot straight upright. “What?”

“You told me last night you got the templar stuff off a brute squad that tried to kill you. And that you think it’s because you’re an off-worlder.”

“Shit,” Luke swore. “I’m never drinking with Zammin again.”

“That means you’re an apostate, an enemy of the Gods, forever hunted by the church, and to be killed on sight. Anyone aiding you would also be killed.”

“I didn’t ask for any of this,” he told her darkly.

It was no wonder she was so afraid. They didn’t know each other that well, and he’d apparently blurted out a secret that someone might be willing to kill to protect. She was wondering whether she was going to walk out of the room alive or if he’d leave her corpse in the bed and flee. He could have told her she had nothing to worry about, but coming from him, he could understand why she might not believe it.

“You think I asked to be poor and homeless? That’s the crap hand life dealt me,” she said with a bitter laugh. “I guess it’s still better than yours.”

“Gee, thanks. What now?”

“You tell me. I still need the money. Are you still willing to fight?”

Luke shrugged. “I need money too.”

“What happens when the next templar or inquisitor shows up?”

“Maybe we’ll get lucky and it won’t happen.”

Zea shook her head and said, “You don’t know what you’re talking about. I didn’t get the whole story, but they sent a squad out into the wilderness to hunt you down. How did they even know about you?”

“I don’t know. The gods, I guess? Seems like a god-level thing to know about.”

“Lucky for you that the Covenant exists then, huh?”

“Sure. I’m so lucky,” Luke agreed.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean it that way.”

“Look, I wasn’t planning on telling anyone about this. It doesn’t really change anything, so how about we just pretend you never found out and we’ll get on with our business? If some church asshole shows up before I’ve got the money I need, you can just scamper off and leave me to fend for myself.”

“It doesn’t really work like that. If you’re in the middle of a fight and the church raids the place, they’ll arrest everyone they can. Nobody will be safe, not the staff, not the audience, not the other fighter. For something like this, they do not do half-measures. They already sent five people to kill you.”

“So what then, we split up here?”

“No. I’m in it now, whether I want to be or not. Might as well ride it out and see how things turn out.”

Luke leaned back against a wall and blew out a noisy sigh. “I’m sorry. This all sucks. I get it. I’ll try not to involve you in anything else. I’ll fight, we’ll get paid, then I’ll piss off before any trouble comes down on you.”

“You really trying to sail across the ocean?” Zea asked.

“Yeah. Why?”

“That’s going to be a lot harder than just catching a ship going up or down the coast. You’ll need to go north. Inter-continental trade ships make the crossing where the water is colder. It’s a shorter trip and there’s less chance of being attacked there.”

“Fuck me.” Luke smacked the back of his head against the wall in frustration. “There’s always another step, isn’t there? So I’m going to need passage on at least two ships, not one.”

“Probably. What are you going to do when you get there?”

“Start walking until I get to the place I’m looking for.”

Zea opened her mouth, thought better of it, and closed it. It was probably better that way anyway. The less she knew, the less she’d be involved. He assumed that meant she’d be safer, but the way she talked, Luke was kind of wondering if anybody around him was safe. She made it sound like they’d just indiscriminately abduct anyone they thought was connected to him, and maybe that was true. If so, the church was pretty fucking evil, as far as Luke was concerned.

“Since you know anyway,” Luke said, “do you mind if I ask a few questions?”

“Oh. Uh, sure, I guess.”

“Okay, first off, what’s up with everyone’s level being so low? That’s been bugging me ever since I started running into other humans. I find random animals all the time with higher levels. I’ve seen goblins over level 20. But most humans don’t make it past 10. Even the cops aren’t that strong. The one templar that tried to kill me was only around 22 or 23.”

Zea just stared at him, her mouth open. “Oh Gods, you don’t know. Of course you don’t. Why would you?”

Luke didn’t like the sound of this. “Don’t know what?”

“People try to keep their level low because the more XP you have, the faster you go insane and have to be put down. People who get too high a level often are killed even if their minds aren’t broken yet, while they can still cooperate. No one wants a level 50 terrorizing the country, forcing other people to level up just so someone is strong enough to stop them.”

“I’m sorry,” Luke said, trying to keep his voice level and calm. “I’m going to need you to repeat that.”

* * *

There was something off about this job. Cardinal Gnox had kept a lot of information back, which was perhaps expected, but frustrating nonetheless. It wasn’t like she wasn’t going to find out anyway, so him hiding it was disrespectful towards her and her master. She had to wonder if he’d seriously thought he could keep something like this a secret, and after that thought, she wondered who it was above the cardinal who’d commanded it be handled that way.

Politics aside, there was an actual apostate to find. Someone near the top of the hierarchy had received a divine revelation directing them towards the target. A whole brute squad had failed to take the apostate out, and two of them had been over level 30. Even if the apostate hadn’t been an apostate, someone with that many levels was practically a target just because of the threat they represented.

There was a reason only inquisitors were allowed to level that high. Only they had the training and mental fortitude needed to resist the corrupting, insanity-inducing effects of high XP. Even then, without the blessings of the gods, they too would fail in time. The thought of some random apostate being in the high 30s or even 40s was… troubling.

Cardinal Gnox had to have known all of this, but he hadn’t bothered to share the details with Myla. She’d wasted precious time confirming facts she should have known before she’d even started, and when this was all over, she’d be paying the cardinal a visit to discuss exactly how bad of a mess he’d made trying to play games with an inquisitor. For now though, she needed to find the apostate.

She thought she had a lead to follow, but only time would tell how it panned out. Some templar gear had shown up on the underground markets. There wasn’t much, and maybe it was a dead end. Thefts did happen, and not every templar made it home from every job safely. It could be unrelated to the mysterious apostate, but she chased it down anyway.

And then Myla saw it. “I knew it,” she said, staring down at the breastplate in her hands. It wasn’t much to look at, just standard issue armor, and not even in particularly great condition. Whoever had owned it hadn’t taken care of it that well. That didn’t matter though.

What was important was the symbol stamped into it. It was an after-addition, clearly tacked on years after the armor had been forged. Six circles, their lines weaving through each other and every one a different color, gleamed brightly near the top of the breastplate. The Sign of the Six.

Whoever had originally owned the breastplate had been on a literal mission from a god, as ordained by a cardinal or perhaps even higher. An apostate hunt could certainly qualify, especially one as high level and dangerous as this one.

Myla had a thread. Now she just needed to pull on it and see what came unraveled.