“So, what?” Poldra continued. “Are you going to switch sides the moment a cute Revenant winks at you?” By her tone of voice, I could tell that she intended her statement to be taken as nothing more than light-hearted ribbing.
“No,” I said, trying not to sound offended. “It’s just that this particular confluence of events is hard to say no to.” I tried to quickly change the subject. “And I’m sure it’s not just me. GM must be doing the same to all of us. What about you? Surely, he’s doing something to increase your willingness to do his bidding.”
“Nothing obvious,” Poldra answered with a shrug. “Well, I did find my old clothes in my room. Also… no, there’s no way.”
It was my turn to smile. “GM knows exactly what we’re going to do for the next three days. There is no form of subversion or manipulation too subtle for him. If a coincidence benefits GM, you can be sure that he made it happen.”
Poldra grimaced. “There was a book in my room that described the fates of all previous Dark Apostles in graphic detail. All fifty-two of them were violently killed by Revenants or NPCs. I picked it out at random from more than thirty books on a bookshelf.” She rubbed the top of her head in annoyance. Though her clothing and appearance was particularly feminine, her body language and way of talking was occasionally masculine. “How are we supposed to get GM out of our heads?”
“Well,” I grabbed my chin in thought, “we know he can’t perfectly predict the actions of the players. Once we start interacting with the Revenants, GM won’t be able to predict our next moves.”
We exited the South Keep and started crossing the long bridge to the Central Keep. A large group of about thirty sorcerers stood at the far end of the bridge. Every individual present in that group wore the same set of robes, so I could tell that none of the Dark Apostles were with that group. That must have been where the sorcerers would wait for their Apostles, I thought.
As Poldra, her sorcerers, and I crossed the bridge, five of the waiting sorcerers broke off from the group and approached me. Once we were a few dozen feet from them, I could tell by the sounds of their footsteps that they were my sorcerers.
“Sir,” my sorcerer with the voice of an old man said, “it is so good to see you. We apologize for not being by your door when you awoke. We thought you would not leave your quarters until later. Sixty-one… um… Amber said that you were in a contemplative mood.”
“Oh, right, names,” I said. “I’ll make sure to give the rest of you names as soon as I see your faces. I wouldn’t want to give you a name that doesn’t match your face.”
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“But sir,” the old man guffawed, “it would be a scandal for so many of GM’s priests to show their faces in a place like this.”
“Then I shall give you names in a more private location,” I said.
At this point, I had been mentally thinking of my sorcerers in terms of physical appearance. Though not all five of my sorcerers had spoken yet, my enhanced senses let me know that two of them were men and three of them were women. The one I was talking to at that moment was the older man, and the other man walked with the confident strides of youthful athleticism.
Regarding the women, I knew that one was smaller and walked with timid, uncertain steps. Filling in the gaps, I assumed that this sorcerer was a teenager who had been promoted to this high rank before she was ready. The other woman was about the same age as Amber and the younger man, and she walked with confidence. Perhaps too much confidence. It was strange to say, but the older woman’s steps sounded almost immodest to my enhanced ears. Just about every inch of her body was covered, and she had not yet said a word, yet I was already somewhat wary around her.
“You’re supposed to give them names?” Poldra asked with a look of confusion.
“Apparently, you’re supposed to give some of them names once they accomplish great deeds. I’m just gonna give all of them names immediately so that I can tell them apart,” I answered.
Poldra chuckled at a joke that I didn’t get. “So you’re supposed to give them names once they’ve done something that catches your attention. As for me, I’ve just viewed them as an undifferentiated blob that exists to answer my questions.”
“I don’t get the joke,” I said. Poldra clearly found something funny about the situation that I did not understand.
“They are - canonically - side characters within the logic of Ferrum. They only get names once they’ve done enough to become ‘named characters.’ Otherwise, they are literally an undifferentiated blob that exists to answer your questions. The masks, the lack of names, the obsequiousness. They are meant to act like NPCs.”
“Hmm, I think I get it,” I said, but I did not laugh. What a terrible existence. To be trained your whole life only to serve as the helpful NPCs in someone else’s story was a cruel joke. I looked over at the sorcerer I knew to be Amber and wondered whether she was happy with her current situation. She turned her head in a way that all others would interpret as completely neutral, but I knew it was an expression of embarrassment.
Poldra caught my intense look at the sorcerer. “Oh, that one?” she asked as she looked over at Amber. “Dude. How did you manage to get seduced by a nun wearing a harlequin’s mask?”
“Shut up,” I muttered. “She took off the mask.”
“Impressive. I tried to get my sorcerers to take off their masks, and they acted like they would rather blow up an orphanage,” Podra said.
“Considering that we’re basically the biggest threat to world peace right now, I’m pretty sure that’s true.”
Just as I finished that statement, a loud “bang” filled the entrance hallway that we were standing within. A massive hole had formed in a nearby stone wall, and a body flew through the air for an extra thirty feet beyond it. The body crashed against the ground and rolled several times, leaving deep gashes in the stone floor.