A safe haven found within the most dangerous of communities, a microcosm held in the very depths of the old city districts of March. A saloon illuminated by dim lighting from ancient biofuel lamps, plastic tables and chairs covered in sheets of long dried spills and vomit. Business found only by the currently absent bartender and the half dozen drunks currently unconscious from alcohol poisoning.
As well as the six at the very corner of the establishment.
Uneven alignment, circumstance creating the most unusual of allies through just one soul between them. A small, childlike form currently sitting upon a chair, its head only barely tall enough to stand above the limitation of the table. Emotionless blue orbs like painted glass stare into the far distance; the unfocused gaze creating a lifeless, doll-like appearance. A chest unmoving in breathless existence, extremities unnaturally still in the idleness of systems.
An awkward silence held between the Five, their table currently filled to the brim with ordered plates of fried and pickled matter consumed wholesale by Samuel and Samantha. A mage’s appetite the resultant of biological reactors within augmentation, the small form subsuming calories without stoppage in an epic quest measured in the uneaten meals between them. The girl, however, simply gives into the gluttony of human vice; a hunger from a lost dinner now regained through the financial backing of a recently paid Bandit.
Madeleine is the first to break the lack of talk, casually twirling thumbs as she clicks her tongue. A target the most sociable among them, she just turns over to the man at her right. “So… it's pretty cool to meet you, Alto.”
A soul left reeling from a fundamental shift in his existence, eyes only held towards the inhuman beast sitting next to him. Alto Carrin only has scripture and prayer, pale green eyes shifting suddenly towards the woman. “W-what?”
She simply sighs. “Nevermind.”
The Judge sits directly across from the Being, an analytical gaze working its way through the entire structural form of his creation. Unscarred face of pale complexion, the near-black clothes upon his body woven from beyond the eons of history. Fabric of unknowable origins, worn in an impossible mathematical precision harkoning to only two sources: mastercraft or arcane creation.
The eyes of the thing are the hardest to identify, the sky blue coloring only found in the twelve cities of Southlands and perhaps the western frontiers; yet the black hair upon the boy’s head of a westland or Armin origin. A passage of genetics unable to reconcile the anomaly, instead a solution found in a humanity long forgotten.
Something more ancient, something older than the pointed compass and Armin’s children.
Her mind frustrated at the silence, impatience finally breaking the dam of social normality as Madeline recklessly asks the One. “Ok, so what the hells do you want us to do for you?! I mean, you’ve got us all here right?! Assuming we are the ‘five heroes’ to save the world.”
The Being’s face turns to face her, ignoring the casualness of her words.
“Wait.” An interruption before a perfected answer, Judge Murphy outranking the importance of a stated task for hostile forces in the present moment. “Who were the individuals who attempted to kill us?”
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The Thing turns to him with a decisive answer. “I don’t know.”
It doesn’t know, a simplistic knowledge ungleaned from a simple watcher of humankind.
Alto Carrin receives his answer from the world, the fracturing of belief from five gods identified from the colorings atop their uniforms. He stares into the space between spaces, a quiet voice in the silence of the world. “Blue armbands are used by the Temple of the Savior. They’re… they’re one of the cults in the city.”
Madeline chuckles to herself. “It's a pretty well funded cult in that case. They had automatics and explosives, enough for twenty seven dudes. Don’t even think the military could scrounge up enough hardware for something like that.”
“And arcane modifications to those weapons.” Judge Murphy reluctantly adds to the criminal’s analysis.
Silence at the enemy, a cult’s own existence, an existential threat towards the continued survival of five souls. His question answered, the old man simply nods as the point of conversation is finished.
She continues off her precious question, a hesitant belief in divinity expressed through the casualness of her words. “So… what’s the job?!”
An answer stored in memory retrieved, given to the impatient creature. Calm, emotionless; only facts within the words. “There is a location within the underground of this city; nine point four six miles below standard level at the base of what you refer to as the leyline tower. I require your assistance in bringing the five fragments to that location.”
Alto Carrin quotes the prophecy, taken from the books long declared heretical in the midland tribes yet still taught between the gaze of persecution. “And the savior shall sleep beneath the mountains beneath the holy walls, awaiting the arrival of the five…”
“Gods damn, you’re joking…” Madeleine stops, an assumption created. “You want us to dig you a hole ten miles down to do what?!”
Samuel forces himself to stop, a meal mid-consumed as he attempts to correct the Bandit’s statement with raw, academic knowledge. “A tunneled catacomb system exists beneath the city of March. No complete map exists of it.”
A hundred thousand miles of darkness and dust, endlessly webbing out beneath the bedrock of the world. A home of ancient cults, the damned of a decrepit society, and the lost treasure hordes of mad kings and queens; an entire network of tunnels carved by the hands of humans and ancient monsters.
The great dungeons of March, a universe in its own right left unexplored for the better of humankind.
The woman stops, a failure to read the seriousness of the statement apparent as she simply leans back. “So you want us to get lost… in a gigantic catacomb beneath the city for… something. Nice pitch, got me convinced.”
Alto asks the general question, a test of faith from his mind spoken calmly towards the childlike thing. “Do the catacombs even reach down that far?”
It answers with absolute certainty. “They do.”
Madeline scoffs. “Yeah no, I doubt that. And even if they did, there’s nothing you can offer to convince me to go down there. I ain’t dying lost and afraid in the deepest, dankest depths of this godsforsaken town. And not with these guys, that’s for sure.”
She expresses the opinion of them all, a spokesperson to the entire group resounding with unspoken agreement. The basic human concept of survival against an unproven, utterly insane concept; they all just stare at the being with cold disagreement.
It cannot fail, not now. A flood of emotions rushing as the failure point of it all fast approaches, a mind utterly breaking against a dead ended fate, of a promise unkept and a salvation unfound.
He interrupts the process; offering the most fundamental of promises in a desperate response, of a bargain which cannot be refused by logical minds. A universal conceptualization for all mankind, an accidental appeal to the most fundamental of human desires.
“I can save this world.”