Splinter Angel Chapter 26 (Patreon)

“–over there, to either side of the statue, see?”

Ana stumbled half a step as she crossed the threshold to the temple, a momentary jerk in her stride. Thankfully, her high Agility kept her from embarrassing herself, her next step landing as smoothly as if nothing had happened.

What the fuck? Ana thought to herself. Did that actually just happen? Did she talk to an actual goddess, or something powerful enough to pose as one, or was someone messing with her? Could magic make you have a conversation of several minutes in the time between two syllables?

No one even seemed to notice. Messy kept talking without even a twitch, though she lowered her voice as they entered the sacred space.

“There’s nothing that says you have to make an offering,” Messy continued. “Just paying your respect is more than enough, according to the priests. But I usually leave something, depending on how well the Delve went and my personal needs at the time.”

“What kind of offerings are we talking about?” Ana asked, on autopilot as she thought about what the supposed Wayfarer had said. Ana wasn’t supposed to be here. A goddess felt, what, obligated to her?

Other than that, two things stood out from what she’d just experienced. The first was that the Wayfarer had said that Nicola was already dead when she got her first level. But that happened before she put a knife in his heart. Come to think of it, she hadn’t received a notification or anything for that.

He must have been brain dead already, the body just barely chugging along for a while. She hadn’t known that she’d been carrying such a burden of guilt over that, but she suddenly felt lighter, like she could breathe a touch more easily.

The other was that if she got to level 50, she’d be untouchable. A demi-goddess. Well, ‘practically,’ but she could believe that. She already felt like some kind of super-heroine when she was fighting. What would it be like with a Strength and Agility above 100? Who could touch her when she’d see them, hear them, smell them coming a mile away?

Who could hurt her when she could no longer, in any meaningful way, be hurt?

“Crystals, usually,” Messy said, answering Ana’s question without missing a beat. “Although the temple appreciates anything, Crystals go straight to the goddess, so they’re usually considered more meaningful.”

“Straight to the goddess, huh?” Ana said. They’d reached the alcove to the right of the statue. The small, dark man kneeling before the low altar there shuffled to the side without otherwise acknowledging them, his eyes closed in prayer or meditation. Human Spearman (17), Ana saw. Some kind of specialised Fighter, maybe?

Messy knelt down by the Spearman and, with a small flourish, summoned a Crystal into her hand. A Lesser one, Ana thought, though she wasn’t sure. Instead of immediately putting it down, Messy brought the insubstantial thing to her lips, giving it a little kiss before placing it on the altar, shifting and rotating it slightly to meet some unknown aesthetic criterion of her own.

There was a brief flash in the heart of the Crystal, a light that in an instant grew to fill it and then collapsed. The Crystal went with it, and just like that, it was gone.

Ana took a small, surprised breath, and Messy turned to smile up at her before rising. “Thank you,” Messy said. “We can go now.”

Ana hesitated for a moment, then summoned a Lesser Crystal of her own. Not bothering with any ceremony, she bent down and placed it where Messy’s Crystal had been just a moment earlier. “Thanks for looking out for us,” she whispered, and with a flash her own Crystal vanished as well. Ana felt a sense of amusement and gratitude wash over her, so quickly that she could have imagined it, vanishing with the Crystal.

“You didn’t have to do that,” Messy said, though her smile betrayed how pleased she was.

“Yeah, I know, but it felt right.” Ana said, first looking at Messy, then turning her head at the sound of footsteps approaching.

“Hey, did you want something?” she said to the man who’d approached them, a tall Human Cleric of the Wayfarer (29) with short hair and a slight smile on his face. He wore the same simple clothes as the other devotees she’d seen in the temple.

“I only wanted to welcome you, Miss,” the man said. His voice was a smooth baritone, but he spoke in a clipped staccato that grated slightly. “And you, of course, Miss Mestendi. It’s rare for us to meet new worshipers outside of arrival days, so I thought that I should introduce myself. My name is Mamtass, and I have the good fortune of leading this temple to our blessed goddess. May I have your name?”

“Anastasia,” Ana replied. After a beat she extended her hand, which the priest shook energetically, clasping it wrist to wrist.

“Miss Anastasia, I couldn’t help but see that you left an offering. Thank you, truly. So few show our goddess the appreciation she so richly deserves, for the amazing world of adventure and opportunity she has created for us. Are you a longtime worshipper, or a new convert?”

“Neither,” Ana said firmly. “I thought she deserved some appreciation, like you said, but I don’t worship anyone.”

“Ah, of course, of course,” the priest said, his smile not faltering in the slightest. “All are of course welcome here, whether they consider themselves members of our congregation or not. The fact that you’ve shown the Wayfarer as much respect as you have already makes you one of my favourite people in the splinter. So many, Delvers or not, take her gift for granted. Would you–?”

He turned to look at Messy, and his face turned wry. Ana glanced down and saw that Messy had a tight-lipped smile frozen across her face, her eyes rapidly flicking between the priest and the doors.

“I meant to say,” the priest continued without missing a beat. “If you have any questions, or if you would like to learn more about our blessed goddess or our work, here on on other splinters or in the primes, or if you would like to offer up some of your own time, you are always welcome. Our gates are open from before sunup to after sundown. Just ask anyone here, and they can help you, or take you to someone who can. And now, I realise that I have taken too much of your time already. Again, Miss Anastasia, Miss Mestendi, thank you, for your consideration and for your offerings. Have an exciting day, now!”

“Yeah, you too, uh… father Mamtass?” Ana said.

“What an odd form of address,” the priest said, with a smile of actual, genuine amusement, before he moved off.

Messy put her hand on Ana’s back and gently but firmly steered her out the doors. “Sorry,” she said. “I am so sorry. He’s a good man but he’s just always on, you know? I’m sorry if he was too much.”

“Wait,” Ana said, “that’s what you consider ‘too much’? Mess, if everyone who tried to get me to join their church was that cool about it, I wouldn’t have been such a bitch about coming with you in the first place. He didn’t even follow us out the door!”

“Really?” Messy said incredulously. “They do that where you’re from?”

“Honey, I’ve had people tell me that I’m an awful person and that my soul is damned as their opening pitch.”

“How awful,” Messy said, but with a pale blush and a slight smile on her face that were completely at odds with her words.

“So, ah,” Ana said quickly, realising that her choice of words might be interpreted as leading the elfin woman on, “do you ever feel anything when you leave an offering?”

“Feel anything? Well…” Messy thought about it. “A little satisfaction, I suppose. Inner peace, knowing that I’ve done the right thing. It feels good, you know? Is that how you mean?”

“Not, like, gratitude, or anything like that?”

“Oh, yeah! Of course I feel gratitude. That’s why I go in the first place. I’m always thankful to the goddess for creating a place like this, where we can go to be away from it all, to make new lives and really be ourselves, you know? It just feels so obvious that I don’t really think about it, I suppose.” Messy looked up at Ana, her contoured amber eyes sparkling. “If you feel it too, I’m happy for you. Gratitude is such a lovely feeling, isn’t it?”

“I suppose, yeah,” Ana said. She only had a little experience with that emotion, but for her, it had given her direction and purpose. So, yeah, it was pretty good, she thought.

“You know, speaking of gratitude… I can’t really express how thankful I am to you,” Messy continued. “For saving me, for saving Petra and Deni… this Delve could have gone bad. Real bad. And Kaira would have never forgiven herself, I’m sure of it.” She reached out and took Ana’s hands in her own. “So, thank you, Ana. Truly. And I can’t wait to give you those earrings. They’ll look lovely on you.”

“Yeah, uh, Messy–” Ana began, but was cut off when Messy closed the two feet between them, gave her a quick hug, then backed off.

“I’ll see you at the baths, right?” Messy said, moving off to grab her things from beside the temple doors.

“... yeah. See you there.”

Fuck! Ana watched Messy leave by the north-eastern corner of the square, then started walking slowly toward Petra’s to drop her things off. She could have followed Messy, or stopped her. Just a word, a phrase, a short sentence. “Wait!” “I need to tell you something!” “Can we talk, first?” Anything would have done. But she’d just let her go, and the longer Ana left it, the more likely it was that Messy was going to get hurt when Ana told her that she wasn’t interested in anything romantic, neither love nor sex. That she was, she suspected, incapable of the first and almost entirely uninterested in the second.

But friendship? She wanted that. Contrary to what most people that thought they knew her believed, Ana liked people. Sure, she liked people in the same way that she liked animals, or good music, but she still liked them. She wanted friends. But it was hard for her to maintain friendships, and getting better at that was a life-long project for her. Others seemed to have some instinct that she simply lacked. And once they got to know her, really got to know her, most people put some distance between them. Sure, they’d smile and be polite and include her, but it was almost always out of obligation, not appreciation.

She hadn’t been completely lonely, though. Mr. Stamper, her boss, had appreciated her for who she was and what she could do. There were two or three people, in the company and in her MMA club, who seemed to actually like her, and who’d call or text her to hang out. And out of all the people she’d known, Charles, the driver, had been the one who really got her. He found people in general frustrating, and with him she could take her mask off, stop pretending, and he’d be thankful for it. They could talk and understand each other, and it was great.

But they were gone. Hell, Mr. Stamper would most likely kill her if he saw her. And while Kaira definitely seemed to like her, Ana had always had this sense that Kaira wanted something out of her, which had been all but confirmed when Kaira told her that she’d been hoping that Ana would switch to a fighting Class. She’d wanted Ana for the team.

Maybe that was unfair. She wanted Ana for the team because she appreciated what she could do, and they got along. And from the sound of it Kaira made it difficult to recruit or hold on to people. It made sense that if they got along, even liked each other, which they did, Kaira wouldn’t want to miss the opportunity.

But Messy truly seemed to want nothing from Ana but herself, and that was something Ana wasn’t used to. It was something rare and fragile and beautiful, and she didn’t want to fuck it up. She was used to people wanting her just for sex. She’d even give in every so often just for the physical closeness – it wasn’t like she hated it, and her body responded well enough. She just didn’t feel any desire of her own for it. But she didn’t get that sense from Messy. It was probably part of it, from how Messy had looked at her, but there was also a… what? A gentle, undemanding desire to just be close? Something like that. Messy was attracted to her, but she also seemed to like her.

So what if Messy took offence that Ana wasn’t interested in her in the same way? What if Ana showed her real self, without the facade of normalcy that she put up, and it scared Messy off? What if she waited too long, and Messy would have been fine if Ana had just said something earlier? What if she said something now, and Messy would have been fine if she’d just taken it slower, and let her get used to the idea?

What if?

Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

At Petra’s, Mikkel stood behind the counter, like he usually did when Petra wasn’t around. And there it was. That was the way Ana was used to being looked at, though he wasn’t blatant about it. But he was a 15-year old boy, so whatever. He handed over her key and told her that Petra had said that she hoped Ana would join her at the baths.

As she dropped off most of her stuff in the room, Ana found her gun in the pouch she’d kept it in. She’d never even considered drawing it. Not that it would probably have done much, but even with all the violence, all the danger they’d been in, Ana’s first choice, every time, had been to get stuck in. She’d just gone in, fighting hand to hand, high on the rush of combat and boosted Attributes.

That was probably bad, but she quite frankly was in no mood for introspection. She grabbed a set of clean clothes, and dropped off her key with Mikkel again before heading out.

Besides the light midday crowd, only Petra and Deni were at the baths when Ana walked in, still feeling no less weird about being naked around a bunch of strangers. Deni immediately offered to help Ana rinse before getting in, but Ana waved her off.

After getting as clean as she reasonably could, Ana slipped into the little piece of heaven that was the steaming bath. And she felt even better about it than she had before, since Sendra had told her about the various magical devices that constantly circulated, heated, and cleaned the water. No stewing in filth here – cleaning off before getting in was more about politeness, efficiency, and some kind of social grooming ritual than anything else.

She made her way over to her erstwhile teammates, exchanging some simple greetings, and then just let herself relax for a while in the soothing warmth of the water. She did her best to let her concerns go down the drain with the dirt and the tension, and the rest of the team slowly drifted in.

First came Sendra and Dil, scrubbing each other off before joining the growing group in the water. Then when Messy walked in Ana almost panicked. Should she offer to help her? Would that give the wrong signal? Or would not offering be seen as a rejection? She had just decided that, no, this was just something friends did here to bond, and she should definitely offer, when Kaira walked in a few seconds behind Messy and rendered the whole dilemma moot. The last to arrive was Rayni, who waved Ana down when she raised her eyebrows questioningly at her, and then they were all there, a sombre group despite the success of their little adventure.

They talked little. Simply being there, together and for each other, seemed to be enough. What they did say was either praise for particular feats that each of them had performed, or short discussions about what they’d do with their Crystals, which was a common enough topic to have a name: Sell, Save, or Spend? Messy and Rayni needed the money, and were selling most of theirs, as was Ana… probably. Petra was doing about half and half, selling her most valuable Crystals and spending, or ‘eating’, the rest. Dilmik and the group’s mages were going all out on spending. Dilmik apparently qualified to switch to an Administrator class already, but there was some really good organisational Ability at level 15 that she didn’t want to miss out on. Deni, of course, was going to reset her class and start over as an Evoker, and needed everything she could get. Sendra just wanted to get stronger. And Kaira…

“Here,” Kaira said, holding her hand out to Deni. There was a small pile of Least Crystals and Shards in it. “This is what I got for the whole Delve. Not much, but it’ll help you along a little. Take it from someone who’s reset: Those first levels suck!”

Deni, of course, protested, but finally gave in with profuse thanks.

The mood had risen slightly when it absolutely plummeted again. They were all about to leave and go their separate ways when a muscular woman walked in, pale and with long, black hair, and it seemed to Ana that all eyes were on her as she mechanically rinsed off. Ana vaguely recognised her, but it wasn’t until the newcomer had gotten in the water and curled up on herself in a corner, her eyes empty, that Ana remembered.

The woman was a Human Bulwark (20). This was one of Jancia’s two teammates, from The Living Daylights. And she was alone and broken.