The System Seas

When they eventually arrived at the priest’s hideaway, they were met by four very stressed-out guards. Marco immediately felt sorry for them.

“Halt,” the guard said. “You are under arrest.”

“For what?” Marco asked back, a little too harshly. “For my class? For not wanting to be imprisoned or killed over it?”

“For that, yes,” the lead guard said. “And for beating up several guards.”

“Oh, yeah, huh.” Marco nodded. “I suppose that’s illegal. In my defense, they were trying to arrest me for the other thing, which isn’t illegal at all.”

“That’s none of my business. I just know you can’t go in here,” the guard said. “The system priest commanded it.”

“We are to hold out!” Another guard butted in with his own worried but determined voice. The first guard glared furiously at him between worried glances at Marco and his team.

“Hold out?” Marco asked. “For what? Do you have a better guard somewhere?”

“No.” The first guard pushed the second back and stepped forward. “We’re it. But that doesn’t mean nobody is coming. The system priest has tools. Tools you don’t have. Tools that can call people.”

Marco stood for a moment. It was good news that the system priest had sent out a distress call, really. It was the kind of thing that would probably save him time in the long run. But it was also the kind of thing he’d have to actually wait to see the results of, and if he was going to do that, he didn’t want to do it on his feet while talking to guards. He didn’t want to hurt them, but none of them seemed that eager to abandon their duties without a very good reason.

“Oh, for…” Riv shook his head. “Here’s what’s going to happen. I’m going to throw one of you as far as I can.”

“What?” The second guard was back in the conversation. He wasn’t being rebellious or defiant but instead seemed to honestly not get what Riv was actually threatening. “What?”

“I’m going to throw one of you far enough that you know you can’t take us in a fight. Then you can say you fled before overwhelming force, or something like that. But first, one of you has to hit me with a sword.”

“What?”

“A sword. Or an axe or a spear, I don’t care. Something that should be lethal if I just let you do it. Then it bounces off, and you can say things like I couldn’t even hurt him when people ask you about it. Do that, then I’ll throw you, then you’ll have a reason to run.”

The main guard shoved the second guard back again, closer to the other two guards. Both of them were smart enough to not be involved in this conversation, something Marco really respected them for. The leader of the small group stepped up again, looking increasingly despondent.

“Well?” Riv said. “Take your shot.”

“Can we just say we did?” The man’s eyes were shot through with shame. “Can we just say that we did? Will you inform our superiors later that we didn’t?”

“See, that’s sensible,” Elisa said. “Of course we can say we did. We won’t tell anyone anything other than the idea that you put everything you could into stopping us. Honestly, once your superiors come, we’ll throw them too, if it comes down to it. They can’t be mad at you for not doing what they failed to do themselves.”

“Oh, they can. And they will,” the man said. “But at least this way I won’t be thrown. Are you going to kill him?”

“Why?”

“Because none of this matters if you are. I’ll send my men away, but I do have a duty. It involves protecting him. If you are going to kill him, I have to fight either way.”

Marco’s heart lurched a bit as he realized that at least at some point, killing the system priest had been in the cards. He supposed it still was if things turned out a very particular way, but really he didn’t expect that anyone on this island could stand up to him fully if it came down to it.

Nobody on Riv’s seemed to be. The real strength, the very powerful folks, were all out to sea. Nobody stayed in a small town as a guard and got truly powerful. Settlements were, in the end, about strength in numbers. Crafters could grow strong there, often, but fighters just didn’t have enough grist for the mill. He didn’t really know what a system priest did, outside of yelling at rambunctious teenagers and granting classes to those who had just started to come of age. What he did know was that the idea that one could actually take four outer sea trained fighters in a fight was a bit silly.

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“We aren’t going to kill him unless he forces us to, and I don’t think he’s strong enough to do that. That includes calling for help, by the way. Trust me. He just doesn’t have what it takes to make trouble for me, even if it’s just me. Us? No chance. I might force him to talk, I might scare him, but there’s no reason for me to kill him when what I want is information.”

“You might want revenge.”

“If he had hurt me, sure. In a roundabout way, he helped me,” Marco said. “Unless it turns out he did something bad to Tatric. If that’s the case, all bets are off.”

“I guess that will have to be enough,” the guard said. “I’m not going to get a much better assurance than you promising not to hurt him unless he hurts your father. Honestly, I don’t want one.”

“Good,” Marco said. “You should go, in any case. If his backup really does show up and if they are stronger than I think, you aren’t going to want to be standing in the blast zone.”

“Nice of you,” Aethe said, after the guards had gone. “I was worried for them for a while. It would have been like fighting children, and none of us can be weak enough to disable them without hurting them.”

“Hey, I did okay,” Riv said. “And Elisa could do it.”

“Elisa, sure,” Marco said. “Don’t think I didn’t hear some bones crack when you were roughing up the last group of guards.”

“They’ll heal. Heck, Elisa healed them already. I guess I am glad she doesn’t have to, though.”

“I have to say,” Jane said. “You guys are much weirder than I could have imagined. And I can imagine a lot. Before we go in, I can raise your charisma quite a bit. You aren’t actively using it for anything so it would stick for a while.” Jane looked at Marco carefully. “I’m a charisma main. That means I can increase it a bit easier. There’s a better conversion rate when it’s stat to stat like that.”

“No, it’s fine. I don’t even think it works that way. I’m not a more convincing person when I have high charisma.”

“Really? I am,” Jane said. “You’ve seen how Riv looks at me.”

“That’s just how you are, Jane,” Riv said. “Snatching eligible bachelors from the sea herself and being kind of a lot regardless of stats.”

“Regardless, I think it’s time we went in,” Elisa said. “We can discuss how on earth Riv told us there was nothing between you two when we leave this sea later.”

“Oh, for sure we are talking about that. But yes, please, don’t let me ruin your routine. It feels important that I learn to adapt to your stuff.”

There was no difficulty getting into the priest’s annex office. It was blocked only by a fragile, conventional door with a normal, unenchanted knob that wasn’t even locked. Marco put his pistol into his offhand as he opened the door, just in case. He didn’t think he’d need it, but you never really knew.

The door creaked open, revealing a room in all ways like Marco remembered it. There were just enough windows to let in a dreary, half-effective amount of light, just enough to make things in the room drearily visible without actually illuminating beyond the bare minimum. The floor was unfinished and ill-fitted, which was less impactful considering the room only held one major piece of furniture, a heavy desk built with a lot of wood and almost no eye for craftsmanship. The minor pieces were a few chairs, one on each side of the desk. When Tatric had dragged him in here to pay penance for his sins, he had made Marco sit in the chair while he stood, packing a pipe or whittling on a piece of wood.

Nothing had changed. Not in the furniture or the tenant, who was behind his desk as always. He looked older now, somehow. Not that much time had passed, but Marco could tell he was dealing with a man now past his prime.

“I was wondering when you’d come back. And how you’d come back.” The priest motioned to the chair apologetically. “I don’t have enough seats for you all. I didn’t know there would be five, but I could have at least prepared for four. Frisk’s reports prepared us for that much.”

“For the how, we came back by ship.” Marco ignored the chair, as did the rest of the team. “I thought that much was clear.”

“I mean more what kind of people would come back. It always felt like you would, if you can believe that. Something about Marco the troublemaker going away forever just didn’t sit right. There wasn’t enough trouble in it.”

“Not that you didn’t try,” Marco said. “You sold me without a moment’s hesitation.”

Marco wondered if the aging priest would deny it. He had spent a lot of spare moments here and there imagining this moment, and most of the time he thought that was how it would go down. The truth was different.

“Not only that. There was no hesitation because I had decided to sell you long before you were born. You weren’t the first, you know. Didn’t you ever wonder why nobody found it odd? Even before you made it beyond this kingdom, you would have found having a unique class is not considered negative. In some places it’s celebrated, I hear, not that I’ve ever been to those places.” The priest shook his head. “You know I’ve already called them.”

“Yes.” Marco saw something in the priest’s eyes that he half-understood. “Thank you.”

“You know enough to know to thank me. That’s something I wouldn’t have expected from the boy back then.”

“Well, I’m not him anymore.”

“Are you strong? Is that how you came back?”

“Yes.”

“Stronger than Frisk?”

Marco had enjoyed the luxury of several days to think on just that question. He thought he could answer it fairly.

“In most ways, yes.”

“Well, good,” the priest said. “Here’s some documents. I wrote down everything I knew a long time ago, expecting this. I’m afraid it’s not as much as you likely hoped you could get, but it’s a fair amount more than I expect you know right now.”

Marco handed the documents off to Elisa, who tucked them into her bag.

“When will they be here?”

“Tomorrow. Maybe late tonight. I’d recommend you sleep in your boat. If you recall, there are some coves on the other side of the island that will hide your ship well, if you want to sleep at all tonight.”

“Got it,” Marco said. “I appreciate your help. As to the rest of it…”

“I’m sorry, yes. I know that I’ve done wrong things. But, believe it or not, that’s not something I had a lot of choice in once I got my class. If I had my way, I would have been a tailor. If you make it safe to be a priest in the right way, that’s fine with me.”