They compromised by leaving the system priest’s right hand free so he could write, putting a pencil in it, and then leaving him almost completely alone on a chair by the seashore. Aethe was watching him, of course, but without anyone talking to him, he was free to make whatever notes and write whatever explanations he wanted. It took him a few hours and a few revisions to get it right to his own terrified, desperate standards, but when he was done, he had failed to so much as try to escape or launch an attack the entire ti.
“Here,” he said. “I did my best.”
Marco glanced at the Gulf Isle priest and Elisa, who had been monitoring his efforts at discreet points during his writing ti. They seed to agree with him. Whatever he had written, it was the best he could do.
“Thanks,” Marco said and turned to the Gulf Isle priest. “Here’s so gold. Could you feed him and keep an eye on him?”
“You aren’t worried he’ll try sothing?”
Marco looked at the nervous, broken man in front of him and shook his head. He had never seen anyone so broken and unlikely to cause trouble in his life. He suspected when the man finally found a quiet, lonely place that he’d cry for a while before he ever considered doing anything else.
“No. He’ll be fine.”
The crew of the sinking ship was left where they were, though Marco had the Gulf island priest arrange for them to be fed, too. Once everything was set and their surroundings were clear, he handed the papers to Elisa to read. She shuffled through the small bundle of essays, pulling two clear of the others as she did and handing them to Marco.
“Here. He was very thorough, but none of it really matters besides those two. Tatric’s is on top, so read that first.”
Marco set down the other sheet and put his gun down on it to hold it in place while he read the note on his father. It wasn’t incredibly long.
On the location and status of Tatric
As the reader of this missive already knows, Tatric was approached by the system authorities with a small contingent of troops and forced to leave his ho for the regional capital. In this, he showed very little resistance and appeared to expect the process to have occurred at so point or another.
Tatric was allowed so amount of freedom while the team extracting him from Gulf Isle restocked their ship and rested, and he spent it saying goodbye to various friends and family. He appeared to leave a similar ssage for his adoptive son with each of them, which he was allowed to do.
As you have likely guessed, Tatric himself is of little interest to the capital governnt or the system priesthood. He has neither substantial power nor a unique class and is of note only because of his close associations with an escaped unique class.
He has been fed and kept in relative comfort during his stay at the capital, a prisoner only in the sense that he is not allowed to leave a relatively large defined area or to do anything that would present a danger to himself. He is in large part what you would consider to be bait, a thod of luring his son to the capital.
I can confirm that whatever scenarios the capital’s forces had in mind, they did not expect soone who could easily demolish their system-scorch defenses with superior force, and would not have attempted to lure you in if they did.
“That’s good news, if true,” Elisa said. “The capital seems to be a softer target than we might have thought. Not that they won’t have fighters there, but…”
“But they seem to rely on system priests to make them invulnerable. I can’t imagine they are ready for one tight group of fighters just trying to get sowhere in the capital. How far inland is it?”
“Not far,” Elisa said. “It’s essentially a big town with a short road to a pier. We can probably just bash through.”
“Unless they have heavy hitters. Soone who can stop us.”
“Oh, that’s not going to be a problem.” Aethe waved her hand. “That doesn’t exist.”
The smooth confidence with which she said the latter bit shocked the rest of the group into silence, all of a sudden. They turned as one to look at her, where they found she looked honestly confused at the reaction.
“What do you an? Like soone who isn’t stronger than us? There has to be sothing out there that can stop us,” Marco said. “Like a guy with a whole evil empire. A giant monster. They have to be out there. That’s why we keep watch.”
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“I keep watch over myself most of the ti,” Aethe said. “It’s not because I think whatever I see might kill us. Part of being us is being prepared.”
“Still,” Elisa said. “There’s always a bigger fish.”
“Really?” Aethe said. “You always talk about evidence and things like that. I think the evidence is that there isn’t a bigger fish. We’ve been looking for one, right? We’ve seen a lot of fish. When it ca ti to asure them, we were always just a little longer.”
“I don’t know that that makes sense. We are much stronger than we were when we fought Quill, and we were much stronger then than when we fought Stead. We’ll be stronger still as ti goes on. There must be soone out there who has been doing this longer and is stronger than we are now.”
“I didn’t say there wasn’t. But they won’t find us until we are strong enough to beat them, if we really try very hard.” Aethe shook her head. “I’m not saying we are literally invincible. But Elisa said the system was giving us power so we can go sowhere and do sothing. She says it a lot. She makes Marco put points into Charisma so it will take him even farther.”
“At the beginning you did say it was for the system to take notice of .” Marco glanced at Elisa. “I don’t think we can say it hasn’t. Not anymore.”
“Right. And since Elisa was right, that ans the system isn’t going to shove us into any problems we can’t deal with unless it’s the right ti for us to die. As long as we are going down the road, the next step will always be the next step we should be taking. We just have to do what it wants, and it will let us live and grow. Until it doesn’t, I guess. But that would co anyway.”
“I don’t know,” Marco said. “Lately it’s been talking a lot about my path. I feel like I have a choice. It seems like it thinks I have a choice. It would be weird if it killed for not following it.”
“I don’t think it’s like that,” Elisa said. “I don’t think anyone has to have adventure. I really do think it probably would let you choose if it ca down to it. But I can’t say it wouldn’t put you on a different road, Marco. Things might change. But that’s all we really know.”
“So what’s the choice, then?”
“Whatever feels right,” Elisa said. “We’ll back you. Now get to the part about temples. I’m afraid it’s not much better.”
On The Capital Temple
The capital temple has been known and maintained by the system church for generations. It is considered by all of the church’s clergy to be its only true duty and mission. Through the control of the temple, one gains control of the system. Through the control of the system, one can control a land. Through control of the land, one can provide safety and prosperity to the people within it.
Since you are already aware of Frisk and have seen his power, it is worthwhile to use him as an example. Absent the system church, one who had gained the power Frisk has been allowed would be able to dominate this entire sea. He could rule as a tyrant, one man against the entire populace. He could crush the inner sea beneath its heel for raw experience or ravage each settlent in turn. None could stop him.
With the power granted by the system in this sea, that kind of power is not a concern. Frisk wields an invincible sort of conventional power, while the church holds the power to take it away. This uneasy balance ensures cooperation, which both parties leverage to ensure the other must protect this land. Each generation has had a champion, and every generation has had the system church to keep them in check.
I do not know the details of what went wrong with this system. It was generations ago, and since then, all who have known the “why” that drives what we do. That is unfortunate, because knowing the base cause would help to ease my conscience about what has been done.
Rarely, so rarely that I dread it missing a generation, those with unique classes are born. For these and only these that the system has blessed especially, the temples respond with communications and offers of power. Only a unique class holder can put the bit to a temple’s power.
At first, our understanding is that the power of the temples would beco unstable only slowly. When this happened, a unique class was found to take the power from its holder. In this transfer, whatever force had beco stagnant was stirred. Whatever great troubles crossed our seas to attack the capital dissipated, and the land was at peace.
These intervals beca shorter and shorter. More and more unique classholders were needed to keep the transfers frequent enough to satisfy the temple and the system, until finally keeping things calm at all tis beca untenable. Storms were allowed. Hurricanes blew. And then you were born, a unique classer par excellence, and escaped.
You will ask, so I will say. There was no sense in which you would have been allowed to grow, or to beco stronger, or to travel, or to live as the system intended you to. You would have died at the first level, an old man who had done nothing but take and hand away the greatest power known, a power that would only be expressed through the sa priesthood that held you captain.
Forgive us. We knew no other way. Without these prisoners, we knew no other way to prevent the storms and waves. If it were just our power, we would have abandoned it long ago.
“Well, that’s a lot more abject an apology than I expected,” Marco said. “I almost can’t be mad at them now.”
“I wouldn’t say that. I’m not so sure they tried hard to find a solution,” Elisa said. “They’ve certainly enjoyed their power.”
“Doesn’t make a difference,” Marco said. “We need to go get Tatric. And I’m tired of waiting.”
The system seed to agree.
Conquest Complete!
Since all your other potential paths of growth are closed, your recent complete victories over mbers of the system church have been converted into resistance to their temple’s power.
Marco nodded. Whatever his choice of path would be later, it was clear that this was his path right now. He was going to go rip the foundations of the capital out if he needed to, but he was getting Tatric back.
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