Frank felt fat. Lazy. Ever since he moved to Hobsven, he’d been running logistics from the comfort of his desk. It was the happiest he’d ever been. Back in Twin Bells, he’d been busy. Busier than he ought to have been, he reflected. It was a backwater town in the middle of nowhere. However, the Mayor had been insistent on building, expanding. He’d wanted the very best for his citizens, and he was willing to work himself and every other official in that town to the bone to make it happen. In his heart, Frank respected that zeal. It was a good thing to see in a nobleman. A rare one, too. But Frank was not a zealot. Frank was a priest. He had one job: enact the will and word of the Artificer, grand creator and master of Angels. While sometimes that meant sending a paladin or two to kill a werewolf or imp or some such, mostly that meant teaching from the Dialogues and preaching once a week. A simple life, not some grand purpose. That was all he needed, and that was all he wanted. And he’d found it, here in Hobsven.

As he pondered on this, he stood from the paperwork he’d been grinding at and shook a cramp out of his forearm. It wouldn’t be time for dinner for another hour yet, but he was hungry. He decided to take a stroll to put his mind off it. Dinner tonight was going to be nice. He’d heard that a paladin’s squad of trainees had been bored and hunted a brace of boars, so the kitchen had thrown together boar steak for the whole Mission. Add to that the potato harvest they’d gotten as a donation from a particularly grateful farmer, and their evening would be grander than any they could have asked for. Frank supposed he probably had the authority to ask for his share early. As he stepped out his front door, he thought the better of it. He wasn’t the type to bully the kitchen staff like that. He also fought down the urge to raid the kitchen goblin-style, like he had when he was a student. He could probably pull it off, and without getting in anyone’s way, too, but he knew if he showed up unannounced he’d make everyone too uncomfortable.

When he’d been working down in the kitchen as a teen, he’d nearly stabbed the abbot when he’d arrived unannounced while Frank was peeling potatoes. The kitchen was its own kingdom, sovereign from the hierarchy of the rest of the mission. A smart man knew better than to invade without good reason, and he further knew better than to do so in a way that would get him caught. Frank had once seen his head chef, when he was working, sneak the full corpse of a very large centipede, in various creative manners, into the meal of a visiting official who’d insulted him to his face. It had been justified, and the man had had no idea until he’d found a full pincer in his final course. Hilarious, to be sure, but also a clear and frightening warning to people who’ve grown arrogant with their power. Frank had been a kind enough man before, but the image of head chef Antoine spot-butchering a centipede the length of Frank’s forearm had burned humility into his soul.

Luckily, he was relatively sure he’d done nothing to earn the wrath of his current chef, Gracian. At least, not yet. He’d have to watch his step. He continued his stroll around the grounds.

Occasionally, people would wave at him, and him back at them. He would never claim to be close with his flock, it’s not like he was down at the pub with them every week, but he knew most of them by name, and they more or less liked him. He was welcome, at the very least. That was enough for him, for the most part. He did like them, of course. He loved every man and woman in his flock like he’d raised them himself, and in the case of a few of the younger ones, he had. But he was a private man, and he craved the peace of solitude. He supposed he was perhaps a little too stuck in his head, but to be fair, where else was his mind meant to be? He chuckled to himself a little.

Of course, sometimes he worried that he wasn’t as clued into the coming and going of the region as his colleagues, but he satisfied himself with the knowledge that his scouting and intelligence regiments were the envy of every mission in 10 day’s travel, any direction you could pick. While he knew those two points weren’t congruent, he found it comforting that even if he couldn’t guarantee that when a fishwife was having a rough patch in her faith she’d turn to him, he could guarantee that she could struggle through that rough patch without having to worry about a surprise attack from a nearby bandit camp or some such life-altering tragedy. And his more charismatic subordinates would be there for her, when the time came, so he took his place on watch against the larger picture and relaxed knowing that at his back, watching his blind spot, was an army of grinning, drunken, pious idiots that he loved with all his heart.

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With that thought echoing in his head, Frank finished his circuit and returned to his office, only to find an officer of his intelligence regiment panting at his doorway. “SIR!” “Yes, lieutenant?” “Sir, there’s news. A new prophecy. A hero has come of age.”

Frank felt his blood run cold. “Well, then, lieutenant. I suppose you’d better join me inside. I’ll call someone to get us some tea. It’s going to be a long night.”

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Samael slammed the door open. “Honey! I’m home!” “I really wish you wouldn’t do that, Sam,” said Theodore. Theo was the proprietor, and an old friend of Samael’s. By now, he’d been a regular customer for well on a decade at this point. He also did gig work for the shop, hunting down reagents and relics and whatnot when Theo needed it. They’d both grown a bit since that first day, when he’d been drawn in by the energy of the various and sundry cursed artifacts mixed into Theo’s display cases and the subsequent wards Theo had been forced to put on them, and the store in general. “Why not? Don’t you want the world to know about our love?” “We’re not lovers, and actually I’m not super sure I want my neighbors thinking we’re friends.” “Theo! My heart! Why would you crush it like that?!” Theo looked up from the letter he’d been reading. “Because I like seeing you suffer.” He grinned back at Sam. “And how’s your day, bud? Slay any dragons today?” Samael looked offended. “Of course not. I would never harm such a beautiful and elegant creature. I slayed a priest.” Theo laughed. Then he stopped. “Wait, really?” “Yeah, turns out this guy was super corrupt. I’m not supposed to talk about it but the guild sent me to take him out. Anyway, what’s up with you?” “Oh, yeah. Check this out.” Theo picked up the letter he’d been reading. “What’s this?” “My black market guy’s been keeping his nose to the ground, sniffing out demonic or divine relics, artifacts, news, etc., because he knows I’m into that kinda thing, and he caught wind of this.” “And this is?” “A prophecy.”

“Oh, Artificer. I hate prophecies. My dad was obsessed with prophecies. Made them his whole life. Hell, he cared about prophecies more than he cared about me. I mean, don’t get me wrong. A prophecy is what put him where he is. It may also have saved his life at some point. But plot and bother I’m sick of prophecies.” “Well, hell, tell us how you really feel. Wait, your dad was the subject of a prophecy? Didn’t know you were important like that.” Samael’s eyes rolled back in his head. He dragged his hands down his face. “That’s the problem. We’re not. We’re totally pointless to the structure of the world. The only thing that prophecy did was give the sorcerer who knew it a nice eensy weensy pat on the back after the fighting was all done and the blood had been shed. People died. No prophecy stopped that. It didn’t save anyone. It wasn’t even informative. All it did was cause a civil war and kill hundreds, only to spark something happening that would have happened anyway.”

“I… Damn. I didn’t know. Now that I think about it, I really don’t know all that much about you. That must have sucked. Do you wanna talk about it?” Sam leaned on the counter for a second. “Nah, you already know everything important. You know I’m sexy, strong, and cooler than anyone else you’ve ever met. Everything else is… history. Anyway, wanna get drunk? I just got back in town from that quest and I haven’t burned through the reward yet. Deeply uncharacteristic of me, I know.” Theo looked around. “Bro, it’s only like 3 o’clock. I’m the only guy running this store. I can’t just close up. Plus, all my best customers come after dark.”

“Fine, fine. Wanna stay in and have a wine and cheese night and get wasted on red wine instead?”

Theo looked him dead in the eyes. “You know me so, so well. I’ll chip in for the cheese if you do the shopping run.” “You got it, loverboy.” Sam waggled his fingers over his shoulder as he rolled out the door.