“Hurry up, you lot. All you need is to pick a book, make a sacrifice, and light your candle. There’s a tinder box in the little drawer at the bottom of the altar.” He yawned as he said it, as if he, too, were terribly bored.
I checked my — our — altar. There was, indeed, a small drawer hidden by carved vines and flowers. When I slid it open, there was a tinderbox within, just as he said.
“You light the candle last,” Sir Coriand scolded the High Saint, looking down over his rail to the other man’s platform, “and you should choose your tome carefully. These things have consequences.”
I caught a glimpse of him as his platform crossed on the other side. He was running a finger along the spines of the books as they passed, clearly noting the titles for those that were marked. I didn’t think I could read that fast even if it was all in my own language. Sometimes I forgot how formidable the Engineers were.
I put my head in my hands for a moment to think. What was I to do now?
I felt oddly light with most of my armor gone.
Gone forever, it would seem. The cost to replace that alone … it would be years before I could beg or borrow enough for a whole set. I might be able to appeal to the aspect. Some paladins kept extra odds and ends. A pauldron only in need of a small repair here. Most of a breastplate if someone could get those dents out and didn’t mind that jagged edge over there. They might be willing to part with them. After all, the whole point of our Aspect was that we met the world with open hands. Those who wanted what we had could take it. Those who could, would give to us what they could spare. And the God watched over all of it, his guidance supreme.
I sighed. There would be no more armor anytime soon.
Right now, I needed wisdom more than armor anyway. I had only inklings about this place. I had no understanding of it at all. Should I try to play this game with the others or should I keep refusing? What would be the consequences of refusal? Of complicity?
I bowed my head and put my hands, open, on my knees. Perhaps the God would bring me insight.
I heard a doggy squeal and my head whipped up.
“Brindle?” I called, and there was a snarl and the snap of jaws.
I was on my feet, sword in hand, in the next breath, but I couldn’t even see Sir Sorken’s platform from where I was. I’d lost track of whether it was above or below me, and the vault echoed so much that I couldn’t find it by sound alone. I frantically searched in every direction.
My mind was bombarded with curses. A few were familiar, but most were far more foul and horrific than anything I’d ever heard.
“Brindle?” I called again, more tense. “Sir Sorken? What’s going on?”
I still couldn’t locate them. There was a snapping sound and a man’s grunt and then I heard Sir Sorken’s booming voice.
“Back! Sit!”
I felt my eyebrows lift.
The dog lives. Though it was a near thing. I think the demon may have lent him inordinate strength. They can do that when they’re very upset.
Sir Branson’s words were drowned out by more curses.
“Sir Sorken?” I called out. “What are you doing to my dog?”
More curses.
And then I saw his face appear over the edge of a platform well above mine. “That animal is accursed!”
He tried to kill us. He tried to sacrifice the dog as the thing that does not serve him.
Above me, his platform trembled.
He chose poorly. Both because I plan to eat him alive and because the altar takes inferior sacrifices very personally.
“Sorken, my dear friend,” Sir Coriand called from somewhere right below me.
“Present!” Sorken yelled out.
“I’d not tempt fate, my lad. Only real sacrifices accepted.”
“It would seem that is true. The altar will not accept a mangy, worthless dog.”
