Chương 3: Prophecies Suck

Sister Marvella spoke first.

"That is not the hero." Fourteen acolytes stood in a loose and traumatized cluster near the eastern wall, as far from the frozen figure as the church's interior allowed, and said nothing. Brother Fenwick sheepishly moved to the back, carefully holding a tooth. The blue light still played across the marble. The thin curl of smoke from the top of the hero's head had thinned but not entirely gone.

"The prophecy describes a paladin," Sister Marvella continued. Her voice trembled and broke a bit as she was desperately trying not to sound panicked.

"It describes radiance. It describes power. It describes—""It describes the Unextinguished," said Nibbles. Marvella stopped.

"It describes the one who cannot be put out." Nibbles had not turned around. He was still looking at the hero, his paws clasped behind his back, his dark red robes perfectly still.

"It does not describe gleaming armor. It does not describe a divine light. It describes something that endures."

"High Priest," said Brother Aldous carefully, "it is undead."

"I am aware."

"It tried to eat Brother Fenwick."

"I am aware."

"It smells like something dead for a very long time."

"I am aware of that as well, Brother Aldous, thank you." Aldous closed his mouth. Nibbles turned then, slowly, and looked at his Order. Fifteen acolytes in dark red robes, silver catching the candlelight, step stools abandoned, standing in a cluster against the wall, eyes wide and mouths open. He had spent forty years building this moment. They had spent their entire careers preparing for it. He looked at the tooth in Fenwick's hands.

"We will run the verification rite," said Nibbles.

"We will know what we have. Then we will discuss what to do about it." The verification rite had been written for skeptics. The founders had understood that the Unextinguished would arrive without credentials. Born in a world with no magic, he would carry no spells, no titles, no visible power. He would be young, likely untested, and the Order, after centuries of waiting, might look at an ordinary young man and find their faith suddenly thin. The rite existed to silence that doubt cleanly and without argument.

He had prepared his Order for these contingencies; he hadn't planned on using the spell. It wasn't dignified to doubt the hero. Nibbles had studied the rite. Every High Priest did. It was doctrine, the same as anything else, and so he had learned it the same as everything else, carefully, completely, and with no expectation that the knowledge would ever leave the page. He crossed to Fenwick and held out his paw. Fenwick placed the tooth in it without a word.

He retrieved the secondary text from the altar cabinet, the older one, its cover worn to softness, its pages thin as skin, and he found the passage he needed and read it carefully twice before he began. The runes contracted inward, all of them at once. The tooth rose from his paw, turning slowly in the air, drawn into the current of the contracting runes. Energy shot little stars from the spell into the zombie.

When they made contact, the pale yellowed grey skin was shot through with gold, and the hero's system, the glowing screen that had floated above its head since the moment of arrival, blazed open. Not the small watchful thing it had been. Fully open. Every line exposed, every window unfolded, visible to every person in the room. The text above the hero's head was unreadable, its script belonging to no language any of them knew. But the window that appeared before Nibbles was written in his own tongue. He read it.

Something in the locked skills section made him go very still. Around the room, fifteen acolytes watched him read. Nobody spoke. The blue light played across the marble. A candle guttered once and steadied. If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. Please report it. He stood there for a long moment.

"High Priest?" said Fenwick quietly.

"It is him," said Nibbles. The system folded closed. Above the hero's head, the screen returned to its small, quiet state, still and watchful, a single image at its center. The silence that followed had a different quality than the silences before it.

"The rite confirms it," Nibbles continued.

"The binding holds. This is the Unextinguished. This is the hero the ritual called, the prophecy described, and the treasury purchased." He paused.

"What remains of the treasury?" Brother Aldous made a small sound.

"The full accounting," said Nibbles, "will be delivered to the Crown by the end of the week. Twelve thousand gold pieces. The complete reserve." He let that sit for a moment.

"Spent." Another silence.

"On him," said Sister Marvella, in a very small voice.

"On him," confirmed Nibbles. He turned to the altar. The primary text was there, the one that had sat at the center of every ceremony for four centuries, its cover dark red to match their robes, its spine reinforced three times over the years. He opened it to the page he had committed to memory before he could read anything else. The page he had studied every day of his ordained life. He read the prophecy aloud.

His voice filled the church the way the chant had, rising into the vaulted ceiling and settling into the stones. From a world unlit by magic, where no spell was ever cast, The Unextinguished shall be called forth, He who endured when all else passed. The frozen hero stood in its column of blue light, unreacting. The glow in its empty sockets caught the candlelight. Its one extended arm remained in place. The smoke had stopped entirely.

He shall arrive bearing his wounds, the marks of all that he has faced, and he who stands beside him then, made humble, emptied, and abased, shall walk beside him all his days, the truest companion ever graced. Nibbles slowed. He read the lines again to himself. Then once more. Then he looked up. His gaze moved across the cluster of acolytes against the eastern wall. Past Sister Marvella. Past Brother Aldous. Past the others, one by one, until he found the one he was looking for.

Brother Fenwick stood slightly apart from the rest. He was upright now, his robes straightened, his single silver sprig catching the light. His white paw was tucked behind his back, where he hoped nobody would notice it, which was where it always ended up when he was uncertain what else to do with it. He was already looking at Nibbles. His expression suggested he had been following the words and had arrived, several lines ago, at the same destination. Neither of them spoke. Nibbles looked back at the text.

From nothing shall his power grow, Through fire and destruction learned, And only when that flame is mastered, Only when that knowledge earned, Shall he stand against the children, Those who serve the egg that burned. For beneath this earth it waits still, Patient, ancient, without end, And those who kneel before its promise, Shall be one of the waves that he faces, Before the greater dark ascends. The last words settled into the stones and stayed there. Nobody moved. The candles burned.

The hero stood in its column of blue light, exactly as it had stood since the moment it arrived. Nibbles closed the text. The frozen hero stood in its column of blue light. The bare foot. The armor scored with damage. The glowing screen floating above a head that paid it no attention. He looked at the place where the pellets had been on the marble floor. Then he looked at Fenwick, standing slightly apart from the others, white paw tucked behind his back. The prophecy had been written one thousand years ago.

It had known. He clasped his paws together. He breathed. He turned to face his Order with the bearing of someone who had never once in forty years of holy service allowed a situation, however unprecedented, to go unmanaged.

"Brother Fenwick," he said. Fenwick's gaze had gone somewhere else entirely. Behind his eyes, something moved. He came back slowly when Nibbles spoke his name.

"Yes, High Priest."

"You have been named." A pause.

"I gathered that, High Priest."

"The prophecy is clear."

"It is, High Priest."

"You will walk beside him." Fenwick closed his eyes tightly for a second, a pained expression on his face, before sighing. Then he looked at the hero. At the pale yellowed grey skin and the missing eyes and the arm still extended, fingers open, in the position it had held since the moment it dropped him. The hero who had held him at mouth level. The hero that had been confirmed, undeniably and without appeal, by every rite the Order possessed. He could smell it from here.

The prophecy had been written one thousand years ago.

"Yes, High Priest," said Brother Fenwick. [SYSTEM PRIVATE LOG] ──────────────────────────── [Entry 3] Day 1 in the fantasy realm. Verification confirmed by external magical means. The small priest read something. He knows. They all know. The one who almost became a meal is staying. One thousand years. Someone on this side knew he was coming.