Three loud raps woke him up the following morning. Sunlight bled into his room in fractured greens, reds, pinks, and whites through the Rose of the Mother that was enshrined within the stained glass window on the eastern wall. He sat bolt straight in the bed and managed to mutter out a quick," Who's it?" To the person knocking on the other side.
"We're here to escort you to the Adventurer's Guild." The voice on the other side of the door said.
"Lemme…" Jein nearly fell back asleep before he shook himself awake. "Let me get dressed."
The Boy rolled out of the bed and dug through the chest of clothes that had been left to him by the cathedral. It was a simple set of clothing: a pair of light brown trousers, a leather belt, a light blue, long-sleeved tunic, and, at the bottom, a pair of new shoes.
Shoes!
He had them once upon a time, when his parents still cared to maintain the illusion of a functional family, but that was so long ago that he had forgotten how they felt. He slid his feet into them, and to his surprise, they actually fit pretty well. He fastened the buckle around his ankle and headed to the door.
The Guards were there, along with two other people: each out of their uniforms given to them by the church, and instead dressed in civilian attire, with gray hoods pulled over their heads and cloaks that covered sheathed weapons. A second pair of men stood beside them, similarly dressed and armed.
"Wear this."
They handed him a green cloak, tailored for someone just a little taller than he was. It swooped from his shoulder and swept along the ground. One of the men helped him with the brass pin that held it in place by the crest of his right shoulder.
"Are we ready?"
That question was spoken by one of the Guards to the others. This elicited a nod from all four.
"Let's go."
They led Jein down the stairs, and took a left down the hall where the bathroom was, and then banked a hard right. IT wasn't the same path that they had taken yesterday.
"Where are we going?' Jein asked as he looked down the hall where they had entered the evening before.
"They'll be watching the front." One of the men said, "So we'll take out through one of the other entrances."
"Other?"
"They're hidden, but they're in places that we know we can trust."
Jein wanted to know how safe it could be if even his Ceremony was infiltrated, but he had thought it best to keep his mouth shut. Many a times a smart comment like that wound up with a swollen lip, or a chipped tooth that he had to treat with the droplets of potions left in discarded vials scattered near the training grounds for the Bauder family's men-at-arms.
They turned in nonsensical ways: right, and right, and right again, to the point he was sure they were going to end up at the same spot they had just been moments before; instead, he was constantly greeted by new doors and new clergymen running every which way. Eventually, they led him to a large, empty, hexagonal chamber with a similarly shaped fountain in the exact middle of it. Aurrior stood there waiting for the escort and approached The Boy with that same awkward gait.
"When I was your age," He began when he was a few feet away, "I, too, was called to be an adventurer before Destiny drew me to the Father."
The Priest reached around to his back and pulled a dagger free from his waistband. It was sheathed in a bit of black, lacquered wood that was polished to the extent that it caught the flickering light of the candles resting upon the brass fountain in the middle of the room. He held it out to Jein.
"This was the first weapon I ever used out on the field." The Priest said with a tender smile resting upon his lips. "I think it's high time it saw the field once more."
Jein was hesitant to take it up from the Priest's hands, before the elderly man pushed it toward him, and he was forced to take it up, or be struck by it.
"Thank you, sir," Jein said, as he turned the dagger and turned it over and over in his hands, before he drew it.
The blade shone in a similar manner to the sheathe: containing a kind of darkness within it. Instead of simply catching the light, it seemed to hold a little back for itself. It was about a palm and a half in length, and about as wide as his middle and pointer finger together, with a slight fuller starting a little before the pointed tip, down to just above the black hilt.
"Is that…meteoric iron?" One of the men around him asked the priest.
"Aye. My father spared no expenses when I was sent out."
"Lucky kid…"
Jein wasn't sure if he was speaking about Jein or the priest's younger self. He slid the blade back in its sheath and struggled to fasten it to his belt. One of the men next to him showed him how to use the black leather suspension straps to help keep it in place.
"Are we ready?"
One of the Guards impatiently asked as he tapped his foot against the ground in a hurried tempo. Jein nodded, and the same man moved to the fountain. He turned the brass knobs in a certain sequence. The sound of stone scraping against stone drew Jein's attention to his right. On the floor near one of the corners of the hexagonal room, one of the stone tiles pulled back beneath the red carpet, revealing a set of stairs that stretched out beneath the wall. The impatient Priest went first: he uttered a few words as he entered the deep umber beneath the cathedral, and a ghostly candle lit up beside his head.
"Cool! What is that?"
Jein followed after, watching the candle float in place and cast a ring of light around the man.
"It's a spell called Candlelight." The guard said.
"How do you cast it? Can I learn it?"
"You have to meditate in front of a candle until it comes to you." One of the men behind him said. A candle floated around his head as well. "It's one of the first spells that the clergy learns, as it attunes one's mind to the focus required for deeper works in the clergy."
"Can I do it too?"
"I don't see why not."
He knew what he was going to start doing when they got back.
"Can you get spells in other places like that?" He asked.
"I don't know." The talkative man answered. "Probably."
Magic was amazing!
Wind howled through the tunnel, and their footsteps echoed down through the inky blackness beyond the ring of light emitting from the impatient Guard's phantasmal candle's light. It was encased entirely in stone: the vaulted ceiling was held up by wooden posts in the middle of the room that they navigated around every now and then, the cast ring of light illuminated doors on either side of the long, narrow hall. The air here was hot and heavy; despite morning frost no doubt still clinging to the sparse vegetation that grew in the city limits, and upon the thatched roofs of the city's homes.
"How much further?"
Jein's words hung in the dark unanswered. They didn't seem to travel far from his lips at all. Perhaps it was the howling winds suppressing his voice. Perhaps it was the soft glow hanging in the air around the group. Not even their footsteps seemed to make a sound loud enough to echo off the stone walls.
The Guard in front turned into one of those doors and pushed it open. He held it open and took his place at the back of the ranks, while the rest of them moved up in the line. This path seemed to go further down into the Divine's Roost, one of two hills that rested in the middle of the city of Astaire. The other held the Bauder estate, where the Lord of the Border Realms, Baron Bauder, resided. The two were connected to one another by a stone bridge that spanned the space between them, and further to the town by a road guarded by a gatehouse. Armed guards stood ready for whatever threat might pop up, and, as the largest city in the Frontierslands of the Camareth kingdom, there were plenty of threats that loomed ahead of those that lived here.
From the door and the path that spiraled down, it eventually evened out. From there, it was only a short walk until the Guard in front stopped in front of another door. He pushed it open with his shoulder. This one, too, led to a staircase, this one going up and terminating at a wooden hatch.
"I'll go first."
The Guard with the red hair and gray eyes directly in front of Jein said.
It was the first sounds other than the wind that Jein had heard since they entered the tunnel beneath the cathedral.
The Guard walked up the stairs: his footsteps creaking against the wood, as he climbed the half-dozen steps, and pushed against the hatch. It groaned loudly like a man awaking from a year-long slumber. On the other side, he stopped for a moment and looked around: his hand on the hilt of his sword.
"Let's go." He whispered loudly back into the inky black that he had just come out of.
Another Guard went up, and then it was Jein's turn. Step by step, he climbed. The staircase ended in what seemed to be a storage room. Wooden bowls and carved utensils: the rusted hilts of ancient weapons, and the shafts of half-finished spears sat in the room in large wooden crates pressed against the walls. A table covered in ink dried to a sticky film. Beneath it, a rotting piece of parchment, and a half-eaten quill sat near the hatch: to the point that if the man who had entered first let go of it, the hatch would rest atop it. There was a path cut through the clutter, and then through a tattered curtain hanging in a threshold. No light or noise emanated.
The other Guards stepped out of the darkness one by one and into the room. There, they waited until the hatch was closed.
"We're near the guild right now." One of the guards spoke. "We will leave in pairs — Benoit and I first," the man motioned to himself, a rather large and intimidating man with a thick, auburn beard, and no hair sticking out from beneath his hood, and then to the red-haired, gray-eyed guard, "Gimel and Leith after ten minutes have passed. We will position ourselves within and around the Guild Hall and watch for any suspicious activity."
Gilium and Leith were brothers, or so Jein had thought. They looked so much alike with their long blond hair and green eyes that they couldn't be anything but. The bearded Guard explained and looked to Jein.
"You leave 10 minutes after them, do you understand?"
Jein nodded.
"Head straight for the guild, register, and then head straight back to this building that you walked out of, understand? We will come into contact with you if something changes."
Jein nodded.
The first pair left. The rest of them stood within the silent room for a moment before Gilium spoke.
"Your brother and sister were removed from your parents' custody last night." He said.
"What?" Jein's heart skipped a beat. "Where are they?"
"They're on the way to the capital. We've received correspondence from the conclave that they will be kept safe until the time comes when you join them in the capital."
The Boy didn't know how to respond. His brother and sister were going to be okay. That was a load off his mind. Now, one of the many thoughts rampaging through his mind was quieted. The rest: about meeting the conclave, about his future, however, were as loud as ever.
"How are they getting to the capital?"
"On an airship that should be leaving at about noon. It'll take them three weeks to get there from here."
"Why so long?"
"They have other stops along the way they have to get to...you'll find out whenever the person from the Conclave arrives."
"Am I going on an airship too?"
"More than likely. It is the quickest way to and from the capital, and you'll be with a member of the Conclave, so they'd be able to fend off any cultist attacks that might occur."
Jein's heart thumped. He had never been in an Airship before! They moored just a little out of town, and as a slum-dweller, he wasn't allowed out of the ancient moats that once surrounded but now housed the slums, where the apostates, branded criminals, and other reprobates lived. This had been his first night out of the slums in his life. There was a rule in place within the city of Astaire that if you were a slum dweller, you had to be back in the slums by sunset.
He was living in the leftover straw tossed over the side of the bridges that spanned the moat that houses the slums after his parents kicked him out when he turned 13 for the two weeks or so before his Ceremony. After that, he went to sleep in the stables until he was able to save enough money for a room in the inn. And then, for a house for his brother and sister to live in. But now, he had both a place to live in and his siblings being taken care of.
The ten minutes passed in idle conversation. The brothers talked about their home in a town called Deredin, about a week and a half away. About the loves they left there, and about their sister, Aury. Once the time was over, they waved farewell to Jein.
There he waited for his time, and when it finally did, he stepped out through the curtains.