Lovejoy — Roleplayer Guild

Phoenix Compound, The Red Seminary, Magnagrad

Hassan sat cross-legged on the stone floor, his eyes focused on his bandaged hand. Somewhere far away he could hear Stina's staccato stutter as the big man recounted the tale SA soldiers were now calling "The Butchery at Tale's End". Beneath the bandages his fingers were a ruinous jut of flesh and bone and the pain, half-dulled by Sister Mel's acolyte-level medicinal ether, was blossoming once more. It was all thanks to that piss-ant smuggler's handcannon. It would take Astraea's talents to bring back his fingers. Two more days until I see her... Hassan thought bitterly.

It took him a moment to notice the silence in the room. His eyes suddenly jolted to attention and the inquisitor found that everyone was staring at him, waiting for him to tell his part of the tale. Hassan was rarely at a loss for words, but there he sat, silent as the moments dragged by uncomfortably.

"Uh, Hassan? Come on! We've been waiting. Tell us what happened with the smuggler," Ragnar demanded, his indigo eyes appearing almost black in the darkened common room.

"Right."

The easy-going smile returned to his lips and as he sat forward, clasping his hands together, all the burdened thoughts of Father Ilya and his traitorous mother banished to that stone crypt where he kept all of his insecurities. Hassan was a born actor, but Stina could always see through him. Any crack in his countenance would easily be noticed by the hulking inquisitor. And thus, he put on his best face.

"Just before Stina turned the pub into a slaughterhouse, I felt them. Two signatures. They were beneath the bar, in the cellar. They were moving quickly. That's when I noticed that one of the signatures belonged to Sister Mel, the nun with the cigarette. She spoke of Kadenza as if they were childhood friends, so, I went down there, and sure enough..."

"Yeah, yeah. Come on, get to the good part. How did he manage to blow off your fingers?" Ragnar asked, smirking.

"Well, my dear Ragnar. This is what happens when you take an opponent lightly. I was also still pretty drunk, so that's another excuse. All I will say is this. He pulled out a handcannon and aimed it at the nun. Wasn't expecting that, really."

"So, you saved her?"

"I summoned a paling around the two of us. A weak one. But I only had seconds to spare. Wasn't anything like the palings you can summon, but it was strong enough to protect us both from the worst of it."

"Hmph. Never would've thought you for the shining hero, Hassan. Galahad will get a kick out of this."

Hassan smiled at his brothers, playing with the image in his head. He turned to smile at Mother Vivica, who was listening to the tale quietly, but when he saw her, a flash of concern shone in his eyes. There was a strange red mark on her neck. An ether scar of some sort, Hassan guessed.

"What happened there?" he asked her, raising his bandaged hand to touch his neck.

"No, no, no. Don't you dare change the subject," Ragnar interrupted, "You've been hush-hush about it all night. Tell us what Kadenza revealed to you! Does he really know where Father Dara is?"

Hassan faked a yawn and leaned back against the couch, stretching his long legs on the carpet.

"I spent more than an hour debriefing those two lieutenants about what I learned from Kadenza. I'm bored out of my mind with this whole Dara situation. It's out of our hands. Doesn't concern us at all."

"Um, hello? Of course it concerns us. According to Church reports Dara was last seen in Lanostre. That's where Galahad, Astraea and Tatiana are. What if they run into him?"

Tatiana...

Hassan closed his eyes and pictured her face. It had only been a week since he had last seen her, and yet he missed her terribly. 

Why didn't you let me go with you? I wouldn't be knee-deep in this mess...

"They are visiting home, Ragnar. They won't be getting into any summoner-related trouble. Besides, we're due in Cero and our mission is too important for the Church to ask them to go hunting some apostate."

Ragnar seemed to have no answer for that, and thus the young inquisitor sat back, a heavy sigh escaping his lips. Hassan understood his warsibling's frustration. A decade of being locked in this place and suddenly on their last night out the three of them get pulled into an SA-operation to hunt down the empire's most wanted fugitive. Ragnar wanted to know everything, every juicy morsel and Hassan couldn't blame him. But there was no way he could tell them the truth of what he discovered. Knowledge was his weapon, and he wasn't going to reveal his knives just yet.

"I promise to tell you all about my interrogation later. For now, I need sleep. The sun is about to come up and we're due at the station not long after that. Rest well, warsiblings."

Hassan rose from the floor and bowed to the three inquisitors before making his way out of the common room. He proceeded down the long hallway where their individual chambers were located. The first set of doors, more ornate then the others, was blazoned with a large purple crest inlaid with a constellation of multicolored spheres. Galahad's chambers.

He continued, making his way past Astraea's chambers, then Stina's, Ragnar's, Ziotea's, Rodion's, then his own. He proceeded to the far end of the hall, where he stopped at the last door. Hassan stole a final glance down the long open hall, and when he was satisfied that no one was present, he turned his attention to the door. An azure crescent and pale star adorned it.

Hassan brought his hand to the door handle, where above it there was a small keyhole. He closed his eyes, sending waves of phantom ether into the locking mechanism, feeling and probing as if with his own fingers. They were as familiar to him as the mechanisms on his own door, and thus...

Click.

It took but a moment, and the door was unlocked.  Hassan pushed open the door silently and made his way inside Father Ilya Bjornlie's chambers.

***

A collection of rifles on the wall, with one conspicuously missing. A pair of crossed sabers. Photographs. A House Bjornlie banner. The floors were clean. The bed had not been slept in. A work desk with nothing on it, save for a lone red potted plant. A parting gift from the gardener of Leviathan, perhaps?

He sighed as he stood in the middle of Father Ilya Bjornlie's chambers. 

Hassan didn't know what to expect to find in this place, but he was hoping something would immediately jump out at him. So far, nothing did.

Hassan hadn't spent much time getting to know Ilya since the marksman, Viveca and the quiet one, Oren, had been transferred to Warband Phoenix , but the man seemed decent enough. He was one of the best riflemen in the Seminary, and his crazy water magic was pretty interesting, Hassan admitted, but he was a Varyan, through and through-- rich, blonde, with the cocksure smile of one who knows that the world will always belong to him, and for that reason Hassan would always find him annoying. He certainly didn't seem like the type to be hiding any dark, terrifying secrets however.

... But of course, secrets were the lifeblood of the Seminary. Creid, Aleksandre, Antonin, Ragnar, even himself. Everyone had a secret. What was Lady Ophelia Bjornlie's? And was her son involved? If Ilya was involved, if he had any connection to Father Dara...

He tore through the work desk and found nothing but workman's tools and spent shell casings. A large dresser was completely empty, as was all the other storage compartments in the room.

"Fuck."

Finding nothing in Ilya's bedchamber, Hassan made his way to the adjacent room, a large stone chamber with a massive pool of water in its center. The "Water Room", is what he heard it described as. Ilya used this place to practice his ethereal abilities. Apparently he had one just like it in his old chambers at the Leviathan compound.

It was a beautiful space, Hassan realized. The shifting water painted the walls with its cascading reflections and above, a round glass portal gave way to the open sky. As his footsteps echoed through the chamber Hassan realized that he could hear nothing else but the sound of the water. There was no whirling of machinery here, no crooning wind as it swept through the cavernous hallways. Only water.

Hassan closed his eyes, and breathed. Gifting himself this one moment to be free of the chorus of machines and clockwork that eternally permeated his hearing. He silently cursed Ilya for having access to such a place.

That was when he felt it. Something brushed up against his leg.

Hassan opened his eyes and saw the wolf pup staring up at him. It was the the black one with dark indigo markings. The largest of the three, and only female, if Hassan remembered correctly. It was gazing into his eyes silently, wagging its tail.

Suddenly, he remembered.

The pups were supposed to be in Ragnar's room.

"How in blazes did you get in here?" Hassan asked. He was sure he had locked the door behind him.

***

 By the time he walked out of Ilya's chambers the sun was rising low in the horizon, the first rays of its distant light making their way into the compound. Keeping the black pup close to his chest, he turned around and locked the door with his ether. 

"This isn't over," he whispered to himself, taking one last look at the crescent moon and star that adorned Ilya's door. 

Hassan made his way down the hall silently, stopping outside his door in the middle of the hallway. He gazed into the darkened common room, empty and lonely, now slowly beginning to fill with light. He tried to remember it as it always was in the mornings, packed with his warsiblings getting ready to begin morning training.

Soon, he would see them again. He found himself looking forward to it. Hassan turned and entered his room, shutting the door behind him, failing entirely to glimpse Viveca hidden behind the corner ahead.

She had seen everything.
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