Chapter 18
“Hey. Brandt. Wake up.”
I cracked open a gritty eye at the sound of the unfamiliar voice.
A big, dark-haired man stood over me, looking more than a little scruffy, and it took my sleep-deprived mind a moment to remember that this was Manson, the human who’d invited me out for drinks last night after volunteering at the hospital.
And that I was Brandt. Between my worries, the loud snores and unpleasant smells, and the occasional magical explosion in the distance, it had been tough to fall asleep last night.
Even when I’d managed to shut my eyes, I’d been plagued by a repeating loop of Gorden being shot down in the back alley of the Enforcers Guild.
In the nightmare, he would raise his head from the pool of blood, look me in the eye with his dead gaze, and tell me over and over that it was my fault.
That his sons would no longer have a father.
That his wife would no longer have a man to support her.
That his store would close, and his employees would be jobless.
And all because of me.
“Hey!” Manson shook my shoulder again. “Don’t just lie there staring up at me. That’s creepy as fuck.”
“What’s going on?” I asked, sitting up and rubbing the sleep from my eyes. Thank Magorah my illusion had held through the night, or I’d be in serious trouble. “We under attack or something?”
“No,” Manson said with a chuckle. “We’re going to a special service at the Maintown Temple. We thought you might like to come along. You’ll find it a very pleasant upgrade from that dingy little Ur-God shrine in Rowanville.”
“Oh. Umm, sure.” I gave him a smile, trying to look pleased about that.
“Yeah, I haven’t visited the Maintown Temple since I was a teenager.
” The Ur-God was the human version of Magorah and the Creator.
Except, according to humans who worshipped the Ur-God, He had only wanted to create humans.
To them, mages were an unfortunate accident caused by the Ur-God’s rebellious assistants, who were subsequently kicked out of the Ur-God’s domain in punishment and banished to Recca.
Absurd, but then again, the Mages probably considered the shifters’ belief in Magorah and our legends about ancestral spirits to be absurd as well.
We used the establishment’s barebones bathroom to clean up as best as we could, then grabbed a few sandwiches before heading to the temple.
It was located in the heart of Maintown, and though I’d passed by it a time or two when I’d come down here on enforcer business, it wasn’t until I was up close that I realized how large it was.
A broad granite structure with roses and vines carved into its outer walls, it was easily three times the size of the Shiftertown temple, and it seemed ridiculously extravagant to me.
We shifters didn’t need such large temples – we mostly preferred to worship Magorah on special days, such as the Solstice, and many of our celebrations were held outdoors.
The inside of the Maintown temple was just as fancy, with elaborate carvings of important human figures decorating the walls, and a large, colorful fresco on the ceiling depicting humans frolicking in the Flowery Fields.
As I’d learned in school long ago, the Flowery Fields were the place humans hoped to go to after death, if they had been good and followed the Ur-God tenets during their lives.
If they had been evil, they were sent to the Pit instead, where they languished for all eternity.
This doctrine was very different from shifter beliefs.
We believed that when we died, we had the choice between becoming good or bad spirits, depending on how we had lived our lives, or reincarnating as shifters again, or as another life form.
The main hall of the temple was huge, easily twice the size and four times the height of Branson’s beer cellar, with plenty of seating.
Even so, it was standing room only this morning, with people crowding the aisles and the back of the room.
I watched as temple staff dressed in white tunics with pale gold edging gently guided people out of the center aisle, so that a clear exit path would remain.
“You weren’t kidding about this being a special service,” I murmured to Manson as we found a spot in the corner to stand in. “Or is it normally this packed?”
“Not always, but Father Monor Calmias is delivering today’s sermon. Surely you’ve heard of him?”
I shook my head.
“Then you’re in for a treat! He’s a famous preacher who travels across the Federation, and it’s a great honor whenever he visits our temple.”
From the hushed, but excited, conversation that buzzed in the air, the crowd seemed to concur with this assessment.
The humans were commenting on how inspirational Father Calmias’s last sermon had been, and how they’d begun to see the light at the end of the tunnel ever since he first started speaking a few years ago.
According to them, his radio sermons were the highlight of their weekends, and sometimes, they were the only thing to get them through the following week.
A hush fell over the room, and I looked up to see a man enter the stage from a door hidden in the velvet curtains that lined the back walls of the hall.
Like the other temple staff, he was dressed in a gold-and-white tunic, but his had a cowl hanging down his shoulders and a sort of cape that trailed to the floor.
He also wore a tall hat perched atop his silver hair, with a golden rose – the symbol that represented the Flowery Fields – stitched onto the front.
Without the costume, he would have looked like your average grandpa, with the lines in his face and his kind blue eyes, but as he stood behind the podium and surveyed us, he looked grand indeed.
So this is the famous Father Calmias.
“My children,” he said in booming voice, lifting his hands and beginning some kind of prayer.
When everyone else began chanting along with him, I hurriedly tried to mouth the words, hoping my ‘buddies’ wouldn’t notice.
Judging by the words, which talked about our status as the Ur-God’s favored children, and that we would always be safe in the shelter of his arms so long as we followed his tenets, and so on, I gathered this was a basic opening prayer that all humans were supposed to know by heart.
Of course, if I’d known I was going to be infiltrating an Ur-God temple, I would have researched this ritual beforehand. But this had been sprung on me before I’d even gotten out of bed, and I was woefully unprepared.
Thankfully, Manson and his friends seemed too caught up in the spell of the moment to notice that I wasn’t actually saying the words aloud.
A quick glance told me their eyes were glued to the preacher, so I mimicked them, not wanting to draw unwanted attention by being the only human darting my eyes around.
The last thing I needed was for someone to come up and question me.
Judging by how tight-knit these people seemed, if I mentioned my non-existent grandmother, they’d start asking nosy questions about her name and what neighborhood she lived in.
Once the opening prayer was finished, those in the congregation who were lucky enough to have garnered seats parked their behinds, and a reverent hush settled over the chapel.
“My children,” Father Calmias said again.
“I have spent much time in prayer lately, communing with the Ur-God in this sacred space, and he has given me fateful tidings to share with you. He knows that despite your faith in him, many of you are troubled by the recent wave of death and destruction, and wishes for me to assure you that all you see around you is part of His plan. Indeed, be of good cheer, for we are well on our way to achieving His plan for us, to re-establish humanity’s undisputed supremacy over this world.
Have faith that He will let nothing stand in our way.
Recca will be wiped clean of mages and shifters, as well as the stains they have left behind on our world.
The Ur-god and we, his Children, will rule again! ”
The congregation let out a series of whoops and cheers, and Father Calmias paused to let them have their moment.
I slid my hands into my pants pockets to keep from clenching them or showing my claws, and focused on mimicking the reverent expressions that everyone else wore, instead of gaping in shock at the crazy preacher.
Wiping the world clean of mages and shifters?
I’d thought Manson was exaggerating last night, but apparently, he was completely serious.
These humans really did want to wipe us off the face of the planet.
After the crowd had settled down, Father Calmias went on to explain that our temporary alliance with the shifters was necessary in order to get rid of the mages, who were the primary enemy – after all, shifters were only a nasty by-blow, an unfortunate product of evil spell craft that would have never come to be, if not for the mages.
As soon as the mages were eliminated, the shifters would be taken care of.
He ended this uplifting sermon by urging the congregation not to give in to the mages’ insidious propaganda – the mages would try to tempt them back to their side with promises of food, gold, and jobs, but that was only a smokescreen to entice them into continued slavery.
He told them to stay the course, that all freedom had a price, and that their faith and persistence would be rewarded very, very soon.