Astrid bought some stew at a crowded tavern, one of the few places open today. She tried to figure out what she should do now that she was basically homeless again. Maybe the mayor would give her an apartment one of the following days, but that didn’t help her situation for tonight. She had spent most of the day trying to find Villads or Brigitta, hoping she could stay with one of them for a night or two, but with no luck. They were likely being kept at home by their families after the monster breach, and Astrid didn’t know where they lived.
Now she could only think of one place where she could spend the night other than the street, and she hated that she had to resort to this. The one place she could stay was the temple of the god of Deception. People could stay in the temples of gods at no other cost than a lifetime of servitude, which she was already paying. She might as well use the few privileges it granted. Maybe she’d even get a free meal in the morning.
Astrid finished her stew and got up from her seat, which was immediately taken by another person. Then she headed out towards the temple square. Outside the temple of medicine, the line of people had only grown longer. Astrid should probably seek medical attention herself, as Kelan, the healer on Walter's team, had advised. However, she felt fine at the moment and didn’t want to waste the healers’ time when so many people urgently needed their help.
More people stood by the other temples, praying to whatever gods or goddesses they thought could best help them at the moment. However, no one went near the temple of Deception which meant that if she did it, everyone would notice. Unless… She used her cloak to change her appearance into a mixture of several strangers she saw, as her own appearance was too recognizable. Then she used her notice me not spell as an extra precaution, and after checking one last time to make sure no one was paying attention to her, she walked up to the temple and quickly slipped inside.
“Who’s there?” a gruff voice said the moment the door closed behind her.
Astrid hadn’t expected anyone else to be inside and immediately dropped her disguise. "I'm...” she wasn’t sure what to say. Should she introduce herself as Astrid, Sigrid, or something else?
“Oh, I know who you are. I’ve heard a lot about you.” The man was tall with graying hair. The gold trims on his black robes indicated that he was the high priest of this temple.
“You have?” It filled her with unease that another person knew her secrets. Could she trust this guy to keep it to himself?
“I have. Our god is quite fond of you. He finds you quite entertaining.”
“Oh.” She wasn’t sure how else to respond to that. She couldn’t exactly tell this guy that she wished Sham would just leave her alone. Not when she had come here on her own volition, seeking shelter.
“I’m just looking for a place to spend the night.” She looked around the small room that contained nothing but the altar along the back wall and an old rug taking up a good chunk of the floor. It didn’t look like there was anywhere to sleep. The room barely looked big enough for the high priest to lie down. Astrid had thought all temples offered followers a place to sleep, but maybe she had been mistaken.
The high priest must have picked up on her confusion.
“This is just the front room, which is open to the public. The rest of the temple is down here.” He bent down and pulled the rug aside, reviewing a trapdoor hidden underneath. With a swift movement, he pulled the door open.
“Let me show you to your room,” he said and descended the ladder.
Astrid hesitated a moment before carefully following the high priest. It was dark, so she had to feel her way down. It was slow going. With no idea what she would find at the button, she could only hope it wasn’t worse than spending the night on the street.
After what felt like an eternity, she finally reached the bottom. The high priest had found a lamp, so Astrid was able to see that she was standing at one end of a tunnel. The end lay out of sight, so there was no telling how long the tunnel was.
“This way.” The high priest said he was setting off at a fast pace, so Astrid had to run a bit to keep up. Each step reverberated through the tunnel, and Astrid was beginning to second-guess whether coming here had been a good idea.
“Are there others in the temple?” Astrid asked. It would be nice to know if she should expect encountering more people during her hopefully short stay.
“Not right now."
“What about in the rest of the city?”
“Largon has many followers of Deception.”
“How many people? Who are they?”
“Only I know the exact number and identities of the followers. And I am not sharing that information with anyone.”
“That’s fair” She was actually relieved that he wouldn’t tell anyone. That meant he wouldn’t tell others about her either. It would have been bad if anyone could learn of her identity just by asking the high priest.
They continued walking, and Astrid spotted a staircase up ahead. However, they continued walking right past it, and there was still no end inside of the tunnel.
“What’s up that staircase?” Astrid asked.
"That's the entrance to the temple that most people use.”
A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.
“Theres another entrance?”
“Of course there is. Not everyone dares to use the main entrance in the temple square.”
“Where is it?”
“At the pawnshop, not far from Temple Square. If you ask the shopkeeper if you can see the stuff in the back, he’ll take you out to a storage room. There you can show your amulet, and he’ll open the door for you.”
They continued walking in silence for another minute before the high priest stopped in front of a door.
“This is the living area of the temple,” he said, pushing the door open.
“Where does the tunnel end?” Despite having reached their destination, Astrid still couldn’t see the end of the tunnel.
“It leads outside the city so we can avoid the guards at the gate when we want to come and go unnoticed. The exit is carefully hidden somewhere in the forest. You won’t be able to find it unless you know where it is.” He opened the door and entered a common room with a table and chairs in the middle and a fireplace by the far wall.
“The rooms are through the door on your left. They are all vacant, so you can take whichever one you like,” the high priest said before leaving the way they had come.
With nothing else to do, Astrid went through the door on her left and walked to the very end of the hallway before taking the last room.
The room was bigger than the one at the inn, but not by much. It had a bed, a small table, and a chair. There were no windows, but since they were deep underground, it made sense.
It was still a bit too early to go to bed, especially since she had slept so long, so she figured she could spend some time training. With everything that had happened during the harvest festival, she had had very little time to build her mana, which meant it was unlikely she would be allowed to learn the new spells in her next class. Especially not since her fight had given her a good chunk of experience points, so she now found herself halfway to leveling up. The last thing she wanted was to reach level two with a subpar mana pool and miss out on a good bonus.
Health: 24/24
Stamina: 40/40
Mana: 30/30
Focus: 20/20
Spirit: 16/16
Astrid sighed. There was still a long way to go.
She retrieved her quarterstaff and cast her basic shield, holding it until her mana was completely drained. Since she had nothing else to do, she decided she should try falling asleep.
*
As Astrid entered the common room the next morning, she froze in place, unable to believe what she saw. At the table, Gorm sat eating breakfast with the high priest.
“Astrid.” The high priest said, gesturing at the chair beside him. “Come join us.”
Astrid slowly walked to the table and sat down. She accepted the plate of food that her high priest offered her.
“Is someone in hiding?” Gorm said with a smirk that made Astrid’s cheeks flush with anger.
“No, I’m just saying for the night. I thought you had been apprehended by the guards.”
“I was thanks to you telling on me, but I managed to escape.”
“What did you tell the authorities about Gorm?" The high priest asked, sending Astrid an angry glare.
“I didn’t tell them anything. He’s the one who told them about me.”
“Only because you told on me first.”
“I said nothing but what we had agreed upon.”
“You told them about Astrid.” The high priest said. Now he was livid. “You know that is not allowed. Is that why you’re here, Astrid? Are they after you?”
“No, they didn’t believe what Gorm said. They think he’s just trying to spread nasty rumors about me.”
“You’re lucky, Gorm. If she had been exposed, you would be facing serious consequences. The high priest said his anger was slowly dissipating. “The same goes for you, Astrid. Anything you see or hear here, you keep to yourself. The same goes for anything you might learn about other followers of Deception unless our god himself tells you to do otherwise.”
Astrid nodded in agreement.
“It must be nice to be the hero, so no one will believe you can do any wrong.”
“If you had stayed like you were supposed to instead of running off in the middle of your shift, you could have been a hero too,” she retorted. “What were you even doing that was so important that you left us to fend for ourselves?”
“You don’t know? I thought Walter would have told you everything.”
“We haven’t had the chance to talk about it yet.” No way she would tell Gorm that Walter thought she was too young to be told the reason.
“Well, since you want to know, I had a little errand to run. Some people had agreed to work for friends of mine.” The way he said ‘work’ made Astrid shutter.
“That doesn’t explain why you had to leave us.”
“It really is none of your business, but I guess it won't hurt to tell you about it. It’s not like you can share the information with anyone. I was ensuring the people got safely onto the boats. If it hadn’t been for the monster breach slowing down the process, I would have made it away with the last boat as well.”
“Why would people want to leave Largon on boats to go work for your friends?”
“You have seen the conditions most refugees in the city live under. With winter approaching, they are getting desperate, and options here are limited. That makes it easy to get them to sign a work contract as long as you promise them a place to sleep and a bit of food. Often, they don’t even care that you won’t be paying them anything. Then once they are far away from all they have ever known, it’s too late for them to change their minds.”
“That doesn’t sound legal.”
“But it is. I offered a work contract, and they signed it of their own free will. Of course, sometimes we have to break the laws a little. Not everyone is willing to sign these contracts. For those people, it’s better to offer them a loan. Then all you have to do is steal the money back and wait a bit. Soon they’ll fail to pay back the loan as agreed, and you can demand that they work for you until their debt is paid. And if they are far away from their former home, they might just keep working for you afterwards, as traveling back is too expensive or dangerous.
“You can’t just take advantage of people like that.” Astrid said. “It’s evil.”
“Of course it’s evil. Did you expect anything else? We are followers of Deception. Deceiving people is what we are supposed to do.”
“Well, I won’t be doing it.”
“Really? Then what do you call this double-life thing you have going? You basically have the leadership of Largon deceived. What will your ‘friends’ say when they find out the truth about you?”
Astrid didn’t have a response to that and looked down on her food that had suddenly lost its appeal. Gorm let out a short laugh at her silence.
“Just be glad that your status as a follower kept you safe from the scheme I’m running.”
“What do you mean?”
“When I first saw you roaming the streets alone, I thought you’d be an easy target, but after watching you for a bit, I noticed that you weren’t as innocent and helpless as you appeared to be.”
“That’s why you knew what I was. You have been spying on me! Sham mentioned he had people watching me.”
“I would see you on occasion, and let our god know what you were up to if he asked.”
“Good thing you’ll be hiding in here for the foreseeable future. That way you won’t be able to spy on me or hurt any more people.”
“I’ll be out of here sooner than you think. In the meantime, there are a lot of people doing the same scheme as me all over Otimra, and many are worse than I am.”