The En Chitei temple was a tall stone tower built atop a rocky hill overlooking the sea. The afternoon light bathed the gray stone in warm orange tones, illuminating a number of people sitting in notches carved into the sides of the tower. Some were windows that lead within, others were simple alcoves barely big enough for a person to sit down. A strong sea breeze buffeted the tower but the people above hardly flinched and sat still as the stone they were surrounded by.
“I’m getting old,” grunted Bill, wiping some sweat from his brow. “Hills are evil.”
“Don’t expect me to carry you down,” said Aven, looking over his shoulder.
“Ha,” scoffed Bill, catching up as the pair neared a gate in the wall. “I’ve got better ways of getting downhill,” he said, scratching at the scales on his neck. Two people stood flanking the gate with ramrod straight posture. They wore simple cloth tunics and no shoes. “Well met, chasers of the wind!” Bill said with a broad wave of his hand.
“Have you come to meet the gaze of En Chitei?” the guard on the left asked, stepping forward.
Bill dug into his coat and pulled out the claim slip. “Not today. You’re holding a box for me and I’ve come to retrieve it.”
The man examined the slip and whistled sharply. The wooden gate swung open, creaking on the hinges. “You may enter,” he said with a wave of his arm. “But you must wait. Our afternoon devotions have not yet ended. When the Esgan has finished she will contact you.”
“Of course,” said Bill, walking into the courtyard with Aven in tow.
“Acolyte!” called the door guard. A woman that looked Aven’s age rushed over. She was dressed like the others, but had a long thick tail tipped with a tuft of black hair. “Bring this slip to the Esgan and return here to look after our guests.” The woman nodded silently and folded the slip into the belt of her tunic. She turned away from the guard and walked to the side of the tower. “I must return to the gate. If you need anything, ask our acolyte when she returns,” the man said.
“I can see why people store lockboxes here,” Aven said, watching the woman start to climb. There were no doors, stairs or windows in the lower half of the tower, only shallow handholds leading up. “Just getting in would be a challenge.”
“And that would be the easy part,” laughed Bill, following Aven’s gaze up as she reached a window and climbed in. “Once you get in you have to deal with the acolytes and an Esgan. No common thief could fight their way through them.”
“What about you?” asked Aven.
Bill grinned. “I haven’t lived as long as I have by being easy to kill.”
The pair waited until the woman appeared at the window and slowly climbed down. “The Esgan has received your slip,” she said, standing before them. “When she has confirmed it is real, she will retrieve your lockbox for you. Until then, I am at your service.”
“Thank you for your speed, Acolyte. Someday you will be running with the winds,” Bill smiled.
“This is a temple, right?” asked Aven. “Do you have an altar for the dead?”
“We do,” the woman nodded. “Around the other side of the courtyard, facing the west. Would you like to pray?”
“Yes,” said Aven, glancing at Bill.
Bill waved him away. “Go on, I can handle waiting by myself.”
Aven followed the acolyte around the tower to an alcove carved in the wall. The interior was painted black, with bits of crystal embedded in the wall twinkling like stars. Above the alcove hung a polished image of the waning moon, riddled with bright red lines. “Thank you,” said Aven, kneeling before the alcove.
“That Ezu…” the acolyte said. “Is he…your Master? Teacher?”
Aven shifted his position, brushing some pebbles out from under his knees. “Yes, I am learning the ways of AcEzu under him.”
The acolyte was silent again, but spoke up before Aven could start. “He has many scars. So do you. Were they earned in battle?”
“We do not live easy lives,” Aven said, closing his eyes. “May I be alone? I wish to speak with the dead.”
“Of, of course,” the acolyte sputtered, hurrying away.
Aven took a few deep breaths and waited until he was sure she was out of earshot. “Hi Mom,” he said to the alcove, fidgeting with his hands. “Everything is going…well, I guess. I found Bill like you told me to. He has some scheme to take on Azun…but you probably already knew that,” he sighed, looking down at the ground. “He won’t tell anyone what it is, but it’s supposed to be a big deal. My job is to steal a book and I got close, but something went wrong when I got in the vault. Don’t worry, we still have a chance to get at it playing the Favor Game. I know you said never get into that, but I don’t have much of a choice.” Aven coughed a few times and looked back up at the image of the moon. “I wish you were here, but I can manage. No matter what, I’ll finish what you started. I promise.”
“Atess!” shouted Bill from the other end of the courtyard. “We’re almost ready!”
“Bye Mom,” Aven said, rising to his feet. “I’ll talk again when I get a chance. Heh, maybe if this goes bad, I’ll see you soon,” he said with a weak chuckle, breaking away from the altar and going to join Bill.
As he arrived a person stepped out of one of the upper windows and into thin air, plummeting towards the ground feet-first. A gust of wind flared up underneath her and she landed gently as a falling leaf. The woman wore an incredibly baggy pair of pants that went all the way to the ground and she was wrapped in white bandages from her waist to her shoulders. “I have your lockbox,” she said evenly, long braided hair gently swaying in the remnants of the wind.
“Thank you,” Bill said, taking it out of her hands and checking the number on it. “Do you need us to sign anything?”
“You have the ticket, the box is yours,” she said, folding her hands behind her back and bending her knees. “Should you ever need a place to secure your valuables again, bring them to us. Good day.”
“Wait!” shouted Bill as the winds began to gather under her. “Before you go, we have a favor to ask.”
“Ask, Ezu.”
“We’re in a bit of trouble. Our journey here took longer than we expect and we won’t be able to make it home before the sun sets. Could we rest in your temple tonight?” asked Bill.
“No. Only those walking the path may rest their head here,” the woman said.
“I know you make exceptions for the destitute,” Bill countered. “We were robbed on our way here and need a place to stay.”
“You are right. We do make exceptions for the destitute,” she said, taking a deep breath and letting it out. The force of the wind battered Bill and rattled the coins hidden in his coat. “You are not destitute. Good day,” she said. With a quick jump and burst of wind she was sailing through the air once more, back to the window that she came from.
“Worth a try,” Bill said, handing the box off to Aven while he readjusted his coat and loincloth.
“What if we told them someone was after us?” asked Aven.
“Because,” Bill said, making for the gate. “In the best-case scenario, they tell us to talk to the watch. Worst case scenario, they call the watch for us and we have to answer a lot of questions we don’t want to.”
“What now?” asked Aven, following his lead. The archway led out onto the windswept, rocky hill. At its base was the Thetri village. “We still have some light. We could try to make a break for Chanan Harbor.”
Bill shook his head, carefully navigating the winding trail down. “Even if we could make it, running that distance would be exhausting and we’d be easy pickings. We’re going to have to spend the night at the village inn.”
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“But that’s the only inn in town. It has to be the trap. We should stay somewhere else. I’m sure someone will open their home to an Ezu and his acolyte. We have a place to stay and we dodge whoever’s after us,” said Aven, hefting the lockbox up over his shoulder.
“It’s not that simple,” Bill said, grumbling a curse when he stepped on a sharp pebble. “Whoever wants this has been watching us for a while. They knew we took the job from Chesai and got that robbery set up in less than a day. They’re probably watching us right now.”
Aven grunted and looked around. The hair on the back of his neck had been standing up ever since they started climbing the hill to the Temple. “Are you thinking a Vao?”
“Yes,” said Bill, turning to face Aven when they reached the edge of town. “The ferryman said he was a rich man and I’ve never seen a broke Vao. His summons could have been watching us from the sky the whole way over here. They could be watching us now, waiting for us to get into position.”
Aven looked up into the sky, spotting a few birds soaring through the air. “Summons are the hardest guards to get past, especially if they’re sharing vision with their Vaos. He knows we have the box so we’ve got to go somewhere he can’t see us if we want to even the odds.”
“If we knew how he was watching us, we could go to ground. But we can’t be sure. Our best bet is to get a room at the inn,” said Bill.
“How is that our best bet?” asked Aven. “It’s the natural place to rest for the night. He could have summons already waiting there.”
“It’s the best place to go because it’s the most public. If he wanted to take us out with a horde of summons he could have done it on the road in and picked the claim script off our corpses,” said Bill. “He wants to get a hold of this box as quietly as he can. If someone sees his summons it could be traced back to him. Attacking at night could obscure exactly what they are. Going to the inn means he’ll have to restrain his tactics.”
-
For the price, the room was passable. A pair of lumpy mattresses shoved against each wall of a narrow room with a window looking out into the inn’s courtyard. The u-shaped building was two stories tall and Aven and Bill had a room on the second floor. The lockbox rested on the bed and Aven knelt on the floor, poking at it with a set of lockpicks. “Almost done,” he mumbled, twisting one of his tools gently to the left.
“We still have some time before sundown,” Bill said, gazing out the window through a gap in the curtain. The temple was a popular destination for pilgrimage, and the inn played host to most of those visitors, but they were between holy days and the inn had few guests. Any one of them could be the man after them.
“Got it,” Aven said as the latch clicked open. In the box was a pile of soft, colorful cloth. Aven pulled it out and it gently unfurled into a long banner with the image of a person drawing a bow sewn into it. “What is this?” Aven asked.
Bill held up the cloth and examined it. “One of Atemzls gods. They’re called the Chuxa,” he said, examining the detailed patterns and rubbing the cloth between his fingers. “This is high quality. Very expensive. Very rare.”
“All this over a blanket?” Aven snorted.
“An expensive blanket,” Bill said, gently folding it back up and locking it back in the box. “Value is value. He’s coming for this tonight, so we better be ready.”
-
It wasn’t the least comfortable night Bill had ever spent. He was wedged into the rooms wardrobe, peering out through a crack in the door. A single guttering candle cast light over the two beds, stuffed with sheets to make it look like he and Aven were resting there. Aven was under the bed and Bill envied him. Even laying on a hard floor was better than standing for hours. The rest of the inn was silent, but every creak of the floorboards made him tense up. Whatever move their pursuer made next would tell Bill a lot about his capabilities. A good Vao could create giant summons in all kinds of strange forms. They could even maintain control of more than one at a time or give them complicated instructions. If a single dog-sized monster smashed in through the door and tried to bite everything in sight, it would be good news. Anything more would be a bad sign.
A soft creak interrupted Bill’s train of thought and he held his breath when he realized it didn’t come from the hallway. Above him he could hear something crawling across the roof towards their shuttered window. Something outside eased the shutter open and a bald head poked through the window. The summon looked like a stretched out hairless monkey with thorns all over its body and wicked claws on its hands. Its dim, yellow eyes reflected the candle light as it sunk its claws into the ceiling and crawled inside. Bill watched, holding as still as he could while the creature closed in on the wardrobe. It was small and alone, but it was following orders to stay quiet and search for the lockbox, not something as simple as attack. As far as he could tell, the next place it was going to look was the wardrobe.
When the summon drew closer Bill cursed his cramped hiding spot. There was no way to position himself for a solid hit when the door opened. He launched a quick jab to its face that sent it reeling back and gave him enough space to get out of the wardrobe. The creature let out an ear-splitting shriek and lashed out with its claws. Bill avoided them, leaping back and slamming into the wall. It lunged again but Bill ducked under the blow, grabbing it around the waist and surging forward. His weight and momentum carried both of them over the side of the roof. As the ground rushed up at them, Bill took a deep breath.
When he hit the ground, his body turned to water and everything went black. The weight of the summon sent him splashing across the courtyard in one massive wave. He could feel the cobblestones underneath him as he flowed away from the summon. When he was far away enough he inhaled and his body snapped back to normal. His jacket was under the summon but his loincloth was still secured around his waist. The summon thrashed on the ground, both its narrow legs broken from the fall. Bill strode up to it and stomped on its neck. The summon twitched and its body turned into a pile of sticks with an crudely woven silk doll inside. Bill snatched it up, stuffing it into one of the pockets of his coat before sliding it on.
Aven jumped down from the window, lockbox in hand. “Are you hurt?” he asked, running to Bill’s side.
“Just scratches,” he grimaced, wiping his bloody palms on his jacket. The few people at the inn were all awake now and sticking their heads out of their windows. “Looks like we’re not going to be able to keep this one quiet. That scream probably woke up the whole village.”
“I couldn’t get out from under the bed quick enough to help,” Aven said, wiping sweat from his forehead.
Bill shook his head. “Don’t worry about it. Whoever’s after that wants to keep things quiet too. We may have bought ourselves-“
A small tremor shook the ground.
“…Did you feel that?” asked Aven.
Another tremor and then another rattled the shutters on windows until an enormous humanoid figure rounded the corner of the inn. It was ten feet tall with bulging muscles, no head and a wide eye in the center of its chest, wielding an uprooted tree as a club. Scurrying between its legs was a raptor summon with bright feathers and wicked claws on both feet.
“I don’t think he cares about keeping things quiet anymore,” Aven said, tossing the lockbox into the bushes and adjusting the grip on his long knife.
“You might be right,” Bill said as both summons charged at them. “Keep the raptor busy, I’ll take out the giant!” he shouted, racing to meet it. The giant swung its club and smashed into Bill, but he liquefied and flowed to the giant's left, aiming a straight punch at its side that made it stagger.
Meanwhile the raptor stalked towards Aven, hissing and chirping. It wasn’t as big as the giant, but it wasn’t any less dangerous. Aven held his knife out in front of him as they stared each other down, muscles tense. The raptor lunged, leaping through the air with its claws out. Aven rolled to the side and leapt up, trying to circle around behind it. The raptor didn’t stop, bolting towards the shrubs where the lockbox lay. It had a few seconds to root through the branches before Aven caught up. The raptor spun around and delivered a hard strike with its tail to the side of Avens head, sending him sprawling to the ground, stunned.
“Aven!” Bill called out, seeing him fall out of the corner of his eye. Another blow of the club came down and Bill liquified to avoid it. The giant stomped again and again, trying to hit the flowing, twisting puddle of water, but Bill kept his distance, popping back to normal well away from the giant, but too far from Aven. He fought to control his breath as his heartbeat thundered in his ears. “Get up!” he called to Aven as the giant lumbered towards Bill again, club raised.
The ringing in his ears was fading as Aven pulled himself up, arms and legs feeling like lead. The world swam around him as the giants club shook the ground beneath his feet. He tried to focus on the bright, colorful blob in front of him. The jaws of the raptor tore through the bushes, letting out a triumphant chirp when it found the iron lockbox. The chirp snapped Aven to focus and he lunged forward and seized the raptor by the tail. It squawked in surprise and tried to bite, but couldn’t reach. Aven twisted his body and dragged the raptor to the ground. By the time it got back up Aven had the lockbox in hand. The raptor hissed and crouched; eyes fixed on the lockbox. Aven slowly circled left, holding the iron box in front of him, trying to get closer to his dropped knife. Behind him Bill was slowing down, escaping the giants blows by a narrower and narrower margin each time. In the distance, bells and whistles summoned the Watch to action.
Then the torches lighting the courtyard started to go out.
Aven chanced a glance over his shoulder as the steady firelight died away. He spotted a woman with glowing gold eyes running at him, staff in hand. Whenever she passed under a torch, its fire snuffed out as if doused in water. The moment of confusion cost him and the raptor lunged and knocked Aven to the ground, jaws seizing the lockbox. He held on for dear life as the raptor tried to yank it out of his hands.
“Get off!” screamed Yazwa, smashing her staff down on the raptors head. The raptor squealed and let go, staggering to face the new enemy. Aven landed a savage kick that knocked it to the ground. Yazwa hit it again with her staff and Aven beat it with the lockbox until its body shuddered and transformed into a pile of dead leaves.
Aven gasped for breath on his hands and knees, sweat soaking his clothes. He snagged the woven silk doll out of the leaves and stuffed it into his pouch. “Thank you,” he said, looking up at Yazwa.
“You’re the assassin,” she said breathlessly, clutching her staff tight. “From the Magistrate’s.”
All Aven could manage was a feeble shake of his head.
“You are,” she insisted, looming over him. “Tell me-“
“LOOK OUT!” bellowed Bill.
The giants club sailed through the air, tumbling end over end as it flew towards Aven and Yazwa. Aven flattened himself on the ground and pulled Yazwa down with him. The club swept over them, smashing into the inn with a rattling thud.
Hurling the club threw the giant off balance and Bill didn’t hesitate to take advantage of it. He grabbed the giant around the waist and lifted him off his feet, slamming him into the ground. Before he could recover Bill stomped on its knee and the giant spasmed as its joint broke. “We have to go!” Bill shouted, breaking into a sprint, adrenaline surging through his views. “Now!” he said, hauling Aven up off the ground as he tried to check on Yazwa. Lockbox in hand, the pair bolted into the dark woods, leaving the chaos behind them.