Selene…
When she appeared back in Duranell she found Marcus there waiting for her.
“Did Artemis decide to stay behind?” he asked.
“Yes, she said she wanted to stay and watch over the town a bit longer. Hopefully, we’ll see her again soon.”
Marcus started rubbing his throat as he said, “Well, I hope it’s under better circumstances, because I’d prefer not to get stabbed in the throat again any time soon.”
Selene laughed halfheartedly as she said, “Oh whatever. A little light stabbing never hurt anyone.”
He gave her a sideways glance as if to say he wasn't amused but didn't comment on it as he said, "Anyways, with all the funds we were able to get from the job, even if they were given to us by Jiroh, I need to do some shopping."
"What do you plan to shop for?" she asked curiously.
"Do you see these boxes on my back?"
She looked behind him and was surprised that she didn't notice them earlier but he had six small black boxes and 4 slightly larger ones strapped to his back as well as one really big one that covered the majority of his back.
"What's in those?"
"After I killed Malthael's dragon body I started harvesting some of his scales, his muscles, and I went inside his body to carve out a large chunk of his heart. I'm going to buy some spices, roast his heart, and eat it."
Her face scrunched up in abject disgust when she heard that.
"Why the hell would you want to eat a dragon's heart, not to mention Malthael's? You do understand that ingesting his blood could change your body in horrible ways right?" she asked him.
"Yeah, I understand that but I have an experiment I want to try out. Its based on a story I read on Terra. I'll tell you about it later. I also want to try making some armor based around his scales and muscles. I don't want to have to keep draining my magic reserves every time I need armor. Its better to make a solid suit of armor with good energy conductivity and have my Dragon Glass serve as an extra layer in case of emergencies. What about you though? Your upper armor is completely destroyed right now. How did that happen?"
"Jiroh threw his sword at me after I launched him into space and stabbed me in the chest," she said nonchalantly and he looked at her with a look of surprise.
She then gave him a confused look as she said, "What...?"
"Uh...nothing. I just wasn't expecting you to...be able to do all that. You sent him into outer space?" he asked.
"Yes. I figured that he would die instantly if I sent him there but somehow he survived," she said.
"I actually read up on this world's progress on space travel and I guess they haven't figured out that outer space is just an empty vacuum. I'm a little surprised by his resilience to survive the vacuum of space too but he did take on Malthael's physiology so its not that shocking. On Terra, my people have already made multiple voyages to the moon and are developing interplanetary travel."
She stared at him, completely stunned and unmoving.
"Y-your bodies can survive out there?" she said in disbelief .
It took him a moment to process what she meant when she asked him but when he finally understood he laughed and said, "What..? OH! No no no. Nothing can survive out there aside from tardigrades. No, see Terrans developed technology and special suits to breath in the vacuum of space and space crafts to leave the planet. Not even we can survive out there for long. We would die almost instantly as our lungs collapse when the air is ripped from our bodies. Although, if we combined this world's magic with my understanding of science and mathematics, I think we could make the very first moon landing. I could probably do it myself actually but apparently its illegal right now."
She was still reeling from the fact that Terra was such an advanced society that they made machines capable of taking people outside of their planet.
"But that can wait for another day. I need to go do some shopping and check up on Thalia so I'll see you later tonight," he said.
"Are you planning on looking for a house? With all the money we gained from that job, you have more than enough to buy one if you wanted," she said.
"I do...? Well then yes, I'll look for one in a few days."
"Okay then but before the day ends you better drop off your payment to Samael and also make your way back to the brotherhood hall to talk with Captain Dean as well. He'll want to meet you to officially recognize you as a member. Although...he'll probably be mad at me for taking you along with me to Lunaas and making you fight Malthael...," she said, her voice dropping as she was not looking forward to the discussion.
He nodded as he left to shop for some spices and she made her way back to the brotherhood hall. When she stepped inside she spotted Captain Dean sitting at the bar with his arms wrapped around his head and an empty drinking glass next to him.
"Captain!" she called out to him and his head popped up from the table.
"Selene? Dammit, where the hell have you been?! You've been gone for over a month! It was hell trying to keep everyone here under control!" he said with stress lines visible on his face.
Even though Dean was the captain, it seemed they respected her authority more than his even if it was based on their fear of her. She didn't like that but it did help keep things orderly.
He then got up from his seat and she could see him clearly. It seemed that he had packed on a little bit of extra muscle since she last saw him. He stood at six feet and three inches tall and had bulging muscles that stretched the fabric of his shirt to the point that she was always worried it might rip if he moved too fast. He didn't have his arm braces on like he usually did but he still had his sheathed sword next him. His hair is was a dark brown color and his eyes were hazel green. At first glance you would assume he was some kind of pretty boy that barely aged at all but the longer you look at him you start to notice to stress lines on his face from the years he's spent fighting in the Mordrinite War and leading a brotherhood for so long.
“What happened while I was gone?” he asked and she had to take her time explaining how she found Marcus after he had fought Kayron leading up to her recruiting him into the brotherhood and them taking a job together to get him some coin. She ended the conversation when she explained that the two of them had to take down Malthael and Jiroh along with some help from Artemis.
"Wait, you met Artemis?" he asked visibly shocked.
"Yes, we ended up fighting her at first because of a misunderstanding and she helped us finish things later on but...you knew her?”
"Yeah I did. Same way I knew your dad Adrian. They both fought together with me and Lysandra during the war. Then the two of them left for almost a year before she came back to join back into the fight. But aside from that, you said Malthael was brought back to life by Jiroh? Is there a few other details that you're leaving out?"
She then explained to him about the connections she made during the fight regarding the shard of Kayron's Bloodletter sword that Jiroh used to stay alive and Malthael tried to use to permanently resurrect himself. She didn't mention the detail about how she saw Ruvick weeks before her father died when she was young. She wanted to keep that information to herself so she could figure it out on her own.
He let out a sigh of irritation as he said, "While I'm glad you responded to the job quick enough to keep Malthael from coming back for long and also for cutting Jiroh down, as the vice-captain of the brotherhood it’s your job to look after the place while I’m gone and not let it turn a mindless party zone. You were gone for only three days before I came back and I found most of the guys here passed out on the floor stinking of booze."
He then shot a disgruntled look at all the members in the hall who were pushing each other around and getting into fights over different jobs and drinking themselves into a blubbering mess.
"At least Lysandra keeps her brotherhood nice and tidy and her members respect her authority," he complained.
"That's because if they don't she kicks them out, which is why people don't like her that much," she said.
"Yeah but there's only so few idiots I can kick out. They all keep up with work and do more than their quotas. Its not like they don't have a reason to celebrate all the time but I just wish they would be less ridiculous when you're gone."
"Then maybe you should start enforcing some new rules or have a special bar room installed for them to mess around in instead of the main hall. Or hire someone to clean it up instead of trying to make them clean up their mess. Its not like they are going to be very useful intoxicated."
He pondered that for a moment before saying, "I'll keep it in mind."
Dean’s eyes then drifted over to her new moonlight sword and said, "What's up with that? Did Artemis give that to you as a parting gift?"
"Yes actually. She said it would be better if it stayed with me from now on," she said.
Dean then looked at her hair and chuckled before he said, "With hair like that, you look like a piece of peppermint candy."
She involuntarily raised her arms to her head as she held her hair in her fingers and said, "Do I really? This is so strange. As if the white streaks weren't weird enough."
She then realized Dean was poking fun at her and she was preparing a retort back when she heard a city guard rush into the hall.
"Dean Smith sir!"
He stood up straight and looked prepared for business as he addressed the guard, "What's going on?"
The other member fastened his sword as he said, “Apparently someone from Saint Harris's orphanage reported that a god has invaded their church and started terrorizing the children and the nuns.”
A god...?
Oh...
“I guess since we were using so much power over the last month we forgot to restrain ourselves after we were finished,” she said.
"Wait, Marcus is the one they are talking about?" Dean asked with a confused look on his face.
"Yeah, his sister is staying in that orphanage until he gets his own place to stay. He's probably there right now to visit her bot forgot to suppress himself again."
"Well...go tell him to stop so that people stop bitching about it!" he said as he shooed her away.
Marcus…
It didn't take him that long to find every spice he needed which surprised him. Even though they went by different names they were still the same spices he remembered along with a few he either didn't know about before hand or ones that didn't even exist on Terra.
After he was satisfied with everything he had bought, leaving them with extremely panicked expressions, he finally made his way to the orphanage that Thalia was supposedly staying at. He decided that he would pay Samael after he spent some time with Thalia.
While making his way there though he couldn't help but feel bothered by the looks on the merchant's faces when he was buying what he needed from them. He didn’t understand why so he figured that the next time he saw Selene, he'd ask her. He didn't want to make a menace of himself in an unfamiliar society especially when he wanted to use this opportunity to start fresh.
Putting that thought aside, he was excited to finally start looking around for a new home. Obviously he would have to make some renovations so that it was tailored to what he wanted but it wouldn't be too long til they had a new place for the both of them.
The more he thought about it the more his mind seemed to wander as he thought about using his mechanical know-how and his knowledge of Terran technology to make a TV in this medieval world. It might be difficult but he was sure he could pull it off. He then started thinking of game consoles and computers and so many other things he wanted to try and recreate and introduce to this world but he realized he needed to slow down and not get his hopes up. He knew his way around coding but as far as video games were concerned he didn't have that much experience with making such complicated programs.
Any normal person would probably be thrilled and more excited to learn about magic rather than fixate on trying to play video games but he was a realist. It wouldn't take them more than a few years to get used to using magic instead of modern technology since this world used it as a tool and as a part of everyday life. He didn't want things to get boring during his time here, and not just that, if he could pull it off then maybe he could show Selene all the movies he's seen in his life.
As his mind fixated on that idea he started having an internal panic. Was it really okay for him to pursue that? After all...he did have a life back on Terra with someone else but...
Selene told him that there was no known method to make it back. She had told him that it was practically impossible for him to go back to Terra.
He...he had to move on. He had his sister with him and that was what was most important to him right now. Whatever life he had before, it was gone. It was time to start anew. He took in a deep breath to calm himself down and forced a smile on his face as he thought about the life ahead of him
As he was thinking this he almost didn’t notice his surroundings as he had already made it to the orphanage.
He walked to the front door and made sure to be careful of how much force he put into his knock, because he didn't know how strong the wood was. If he hit the door too hard he might snap it.
A few minutes later the door opened and one of the children living there took one look at him and immediately went as pale as a sheet of paper. He fell backwards with terror in his eyes as he tried to scramble away.
“Hey! Do you know where…” but the kid took off like a rocket.
Alright, now he was genuinely concerned as to why people were so frightened of him. Was there something wrong with him? He couldn't help this nagging feeling in the back of his head that there was something he was supposed to do but he had remembered everything he had needed to buy. What else could he have forgotten to do? It shouldn't have been possible for him to forget anything with his photographic memory. Maybe he didn't necessarily forget to do something but he was simply too focused on other tasks to realize he needed to do something else. Either way, he'll eventually figure it out.
With the door already open he’d feel like an idiot just standing in an open doorway waiting for someone to come by and welcome him in, so he simply walked inside and closed the door behind him. He had absolutely no idea where he was going and just wandered the halls hoping to happen upon one of the nuns running things and ask for help.
He turned around a corner and all of a sudden he crashed into one of the nuns. Well, it was more like she crashed into him like she was slamming into a wall, and she hit the ground instantly.
It caught him by surprise, and he reached out to help her up.
“I’m so sorry, I didn’t see you there,” he said in as calming a tone as possible, but the nun screamed in shock and ran off just like the kid before and started shouting.
“Sisters! A god has invaded the church! Get the children to safety!”
It made him slightly uncomfortable being called a god even if she was half right. Something about it rubbed him the wrong way.
He decided to follow her and hopefully he’d run into someone who wasn’t completely terrified of him and it would go smoother, but the way things were going he wasn’t very hopeful.
The nun kept running away from him as if he were a slasher villain in a horror movie which really bugged him, but the only way he’d see Thalia was if he kept going. Besides, what kind of slasher villain goes around walking without his weapon in hand and carrying a bag of groceries?
The nun came across two wide doors and blew right past them and into what seemed to be some kind of cafeteria as she stumbled inside. When he walked into it, he spotted nearly fifty children and nuns were that were seating at the tables were already standing with the nuns forming a defensive line around the children.
“Do not take a step further!” one of the nuns shouted at him with a firm voice.
He stopped and started looking around to see if he could spot Thalia but there were too many nuns standing in the way for him to get a good look at any of them.
“Hey, do you know where a little girl named Thalia is? I’m trying to find her.”
The sister who had ordered him to stop continued as she said, “How dare you defile this place with your horrible power. Leave at once and stop terrorizing the children. Your presence is unwanted!”
Hearing that actually made him a bit defensive as he said, “Well that was uncalled for. Look, all I did was knock on the door and the kid that answered just started running away. I have family here so if you wouldn’t mind…”
He squinted his eyes to try and get a better look at the children behind them and he thought he saw one of them shuffling around the head sister simply replied with, “You have no family here, you are simply a mischievous god throwing your weight around and it will not stand. Leave! At once!”
Marcus then noticed head of jet black hair bouncing through the crowd of children trying to make their way through.
He called out, “Thalia? Is that you?”
“Silence and be gone!” the head sister shouted at him again.
“That’s my brother! Let me through!” Thalia said as she wrestled against them.
A small smile formed on his face as he watched the nuns strain as they tried to hold her back but since they were both from Terra, he wouldn’t be surprised if Thalia could very well pick up a full-grown man and chuck him across a field. Breaking through a wall of nuns? It would be effortless to her.
Although when she did manage to break through them she lost her balance and fell face first to the ground.
He stifled a laugh at her clumsiness as he walked towards her and said, "Are you okay?"
Her head popped up with a look of annoyance as she complained, "Did you just laugh at me falling down?"
Not even trying to hide it, he smiled and said, "Yes."
He knelt down and helped her and as he did the head nun said, “That god over there is your brother?!”
Thalia tilted her head and her face twisted in confusion as she said, “Uh… no. He’s just a regular human like me. Calling him a god is weird.”
The head nun sighed in exasperation as she walked towards them and placed her hands on Thalia's shoulders as she said, “Your brother is too dangerous to be here. His magic is terrifying the other children and frankly to some of the sisters here as well. To be perfectly honest, you have more courage to face him than we do but he cannot be here. He must leave.”
Just then, Selene appeared in a burst of flame beside him and quickly told him, "Marcus! Seal up your magic now! You're scaring everyone."
Oh...now he remembered.
At Selene's appearance the children and the nuns looked even more panicked with her than they were with him. Even the head nun who was mad with him initially went pale at the sight of her. While he was grateful that they weren't afraid of him anymore, it did bother him that they were so scared of Selene.
A few moments passed and once he had managed to suppress himself to a manageable level, the head nun escorted the three of them to the terrace of the orphanage so that they had an area to themselves without bothering anyone.
Before the head nun went back to her duties Marcus actually called out to her.
"Before you head back can I actually ask you some questions?"
"Hm? I suppose so. What questions would you have for me?"
He took a moment to ask Selene to watch Thalia for him before he headed back to talk with the head nun.
"I just want ask a few things about this place so that I know my sister is in good hands while I'm busy working. I didn't have the time to talk to you earlier before I left for my first job so I'm asking now," he said.
"I'm afraid I don't follow. Are you not familiar with Saint Harris's church?"
"No, I'm not. My sister and I are not from this world so we are still unfamiliar with how things are run here," he said and when she heard that her eyes widened.
"So you are a visitor from another reality like The Phoenix? Its no wonder you seemed so confused."
She must have been talking about the woman Moyako when she mentioned 'The Phoenix'. Whoever she was she had to be extremely well known and popular. He really needed to meet her as soon as possible.
"Uh...yeah exactly that. I just want to know about this church. When you called me a god it felt...unusual. When I think of a church that worships a god addressing a random person as a god...its confusing for me. Wouldn't that be blasphemy?"
The head nun actually laughed when she heard that.
"Oh that is quite humorous. I see where your confusion comes from now. Our church does not worship any god or deity. Any religion centered around the worship of a higher power like that without substantial evidence of its existence is foolish!"
He was so stunned by what he had just heard that his mouth hung open in shock. He had to close it to maintain his composure.
"Wait, hold on a moment. Where I come from churches and religions around the world are based mostly on the belief of higher power even without solid evidence of their existence. How does this church work differently?"
"Our church's belief is founded on a set of principles, a certain way of life or dogma if you would. To live one's life according to the rules set by ancient heroes and figures of ages past. To worship gods in this world would be foolish as even the gods have their own lives to live separate from our own. They are seen as nothing more than people with power much greater than ours and lives longer lived but still just people nonetheless."
"And what rules do you follow and preach to others?" he asked.
"Why do you ask? Do you intend to convert even though you were from another reality? What of your beliefs in the previous world?"
"I was never religious in the first place and I have no intent to convert to whatever...this is. I'm just curious as to what it represents, or better yet, I want to know what you call this religion," he asked.
"Well, if you want a specific name for it, I guess you could call it the Dogma of Dagon," she said plainly and he was surprised once again.
"Dagon? When I came here I learned that Dagon was the old king of Amaskia over 10,000 years ago. A warmonger. Why would you make a religion based off the actions of a mad man like that? He even went so far as to wage a war against the entire world and not that long ago the country of Mordran did as well didn't they?"
"Hmm...So it seems you've done your own little bit of reading on our world's history. I guess it is quite the ethical debate, to base a belief centered around such a terrible man's actions. However, I suggest you dig deeper into his past and his actions and for the reasons as to why he waged such a war. Also, it is not solely because of his actions that our world's dogma exists. The actions of others in response to his declaration of war also have their part in it. If you wish to learn more about this world's history and the history of our dogma then I suggest you read the tomes describing the war. Search for the names Lycaon, Athena, and of course, Dagon himself," she said as she then gave him directions to Duranell's temple.
With that, the head nun trotted off to see to her duties and left him incredibly confused, not just from the fact they had developed their religion or 'dogma' as she called it from a war mongering king but also from the fact that she had listed the names of two individuals from Greek mythology.
Athena and Lycaon.
Athena herself was one of the most well known Greek goddesses of all time as the goddess of wisdom, and Lycaon...well he was a much darker character if the stories about him were accurate. A man who killed his own sons and attempted to serve them to Zeus as a meal to test his divinity. He wondered what the two of them had to do with this world.
These were questions for another day. For now, he wanted to enjoy the time he had to spend with his sister.