(TLO) Chapter 152: Protocol (Patreon)

Faust walked the confines of the seminary like a wraith haunting a home. In the darkening evening there was little chance anyone would see him. By this time, the seminarians would be having their dinner.

While he wished to avoid prying eyes, he walked with a straight back and did his best to keep his weakness from his actions.

He found he’d missed the cool evening air. For the last eight months he’d confined himself to his room, drinking elixirs and potions Kyle had gotten him. As the head healer of the seminary he was the only one who knew the extent of how bad his case was.

He got to the exit of the seminary, guarded by walls that would hold in the event someone made their way past the protection of mist that surrounded the seminary. Once upon a time it had not been a worry. Then the Baron wars had taken place and the seminary had learned that with enough resources and determination, even those not trained to withstand the mist could walk it.

One of their saving lucks at the time was the presence of the walls. Then, it had not been armed as it currently was but had served its protective purpose. None of their enemies had ventured deep beyond it.

Standing within its confines, he raised a single hand and made a sign employed long since. The watchers of the gate stared down at him in confusion. He was certain they wondered why he didn’t simply remove his hood, unveil his face. It would ensure a quicker response, but it would also reveal a secret kept between only two people.

He would rather wait out the delay of the signal.

A gold seated atop the wall paid attention to the sign and passed it along to a gold seated at another position. That gold went through the unnecessary task of signing another. It was a process that took less than three minutes.

In the shortest time, Tamori, the ancient gate keeper stood before him.

“Monsignor,” the man greeted, skeptical. “To what do we owe this departure?”

“I am in a state,” Faust said. “And for the sake of my cultivation, I require the presence of the mist.”

Tamori scratched his jaw contemplatively. “I don’t remember you ever having to cultivate within the mist, Faust. Is there something else I should be worried about? Something we do not want others to know?”

Faust nodded once, the action so slight any not near him would miss it. “However,” he added hurriedly, “I am dealing with it.”

“Are you?”

“Yes.”

“I see.” Tamori raised a hand and made a gesture.

At his gesture there was a turn and a clank that echoed within the walls. Inside them a winch turned and gears croaked. Then the portcullis that barricaded his entry was raised until a path was before him.

He nodded his thanks to the gate keeper and ventured forward. As he passed the Baron, the man spoke again.

“You do know you are becoming a legend within these walls, right?”

Faust chuckled at the question. He’d heard a few of the stories. The new seminarians had their speculations of him. So did those who now worried that they did not see him often anymore. He new them from the youngest seminarian to the oldest priest.

“Which of them do you speak of?” he asked as he ventured past the raised portcullis.

Baron Tamori was too far when he answered, but his words reached him nonetheless.

“The Wraith of the Seminary.”

Perhaps it was a fitting title. Perhaps it was not. Like most other names the seminary whispered about him, he didn’t let it bother him. He had bigger problems than what people thought of him.

It wasn’t long before he reached another gate. This one he opened himself. While it was only a single door designed to admit and expel a single person, he struggled with the task. The door groaned and popped as the aged do. It creaked like something hanging from hinges not oiled in a time too long now rusting from disuse. It announced his departure and he winced at it.

This, too, took him a moment to open.

When he succeeded, he sighed pathetically. He felt pathetic. Opening this door was a simple task for any Baron. Yet, here he was, struggling with it like a newly evolved gold. He was becoming a ghost of himself. The Bloody Baron was becoming less than a Baron.

Then slowly, with the same sluggishness of the old he hadnt felt in years, he shuffled his way into the mist. He walked a long length of a mile and took a left turn at an unmarked tree. He counted three trees and took a right. He passed for more trees and took another left.

Each turn he took was pointless to him, but instructions had been given and a desperate man, no matter how powerful, followed instructions. Also, each stepped surprisingly gave strength to his legs and eased his breathing. Where he had once been breathing like a man with collapsed lungs, wheezing more than breathing, he now breathed like an unsouled with the flu.

When he arrived at his destination, he sat and waited. Normally he would stand, but he was no longer the soul mage he once was.

He waited over an hour, and the moon and all its stars usurped the sun before Jabari came. When he did, he simply emerged from the mist and as was always the case, Faust’s senses were blind to him.

Each time Jabari summoned him with a note in his room it was always with instructions. Each time the instructions were different. Sometimes it asked that he do specific things, other times it simply asked that he meet somewhere. One thing they all had in common was that each one was through a different entrance of the seminary.

Faust was sure if to be pleased that the man changed their location so that an ambush could not be set for him or to be worried the man knew so many ways into the seminary. He dreaded the day the man would summon him through an entrance he did not know.

“It has been a while,” he said in way of greeting.

“Not really,” Jabari answered in the same deep disinterest he always had.

“It’s been more than two years,” he returned.

“True,” Jabari conceded. “But even ten years is not a while, in the scope of things.”

“Then I take it you’ve been planning all this far longer than ten years.”

“Longer than you can begin to fathom.”

Faust nodded slowly, fearful for the news he was to give. The news the man before him had not asked for.

“If you are here about the boy, I have a bit of bad news.”

Jabari walked to stand beside him, facing the opposite direction. Looking to the seminary where Faust faced away from it.

“Is that so,” he said.

“There was an accident during one of his training.”

“I am aware of it.”

Faust turned his neck to look up at the man in shock and suffered the consequence of his action. Pain shot through him like a scorned lover is quick to hurtful words.

The events had happened no more than twelve hours ago. How exactly did Jabari learn of it?

“He should have taken it with his left arm,” Jabari said, as if reading a particularly boring passage from an even boring grimoire. “It’s his stronger limb. No matter. He’ll be alright. If he is not, then that is the best he could be. A one armed mage is always better than a dead mage.” He looked down at Faust. “Wouldn’t you agree, dying one?”

Faust agreed. “Is there anything you don’t know?” he asked, pushing his hood from his face.

“It would surprise you to know how much I do not know. Or perhaps it would not.”

With his face exposed, Faust was surprised to find the man did not flinch. The necrosis that had started at his neck as no more than a simple itch had spread. It had consumed his neck first. Now it had spread to his face. It littered other parts of his body but they were easy to hide, easy to conceal. Only a fourth of his face was yet to be corrupted. The rest of him, however, was a walking dessication of a corpse. He was green with gangrene and his face drooped to one side. He was decaying. How he released no smell was beyond him.

“Can you fix me?” he asked.

“I have a request for you regarding the next world crack,” Jabari said casually, returning his attention to the direction of the seminary.

Faust clenched his teeth, annoyed to be dismissed so rudely as if his situation did not matter. Still, he kept his composure, there was much to negotiations than being guided by the wrong emotions.

“The next world crack has not been predicted,” he said.

“Perhaps not. However, it will take place within the next month. There are protocols to it, protocols the seminary follows along with the rest of the world. Seminarians are not allowed to participate in the closing of the world crack. However, those that have proven themselves strong enough are dispatched, under guidance, to close the insignificant fissures that result from it.”

“And—If what you’re saying is true—what do you want from me?”

“You are going to break protocol.”

“You will have me go against a set of rules designed to keep the seminary and the rest of the world safe?” Faust asked, confused.

“Yes. Only priests will be dispatched into the crack. And only golds, at that. As for the rest of the world. Only those of silver authority and above will be allowed into the crack…”

“Because they are the only ones strong enough to venture into it. Iron mages cannot withstand the reia density within. The strong ones faint in due time from the pressure, and the weak ones die.”

“Yet you will break two protocols. You will send in Seth’s team. They will work in tandem with the seminary, and you will send Seth along with them.”