The Price of Faith

“Our contacts have given us the location of three different mage-draining facilities, but one of them had already been cleared out by the time we got there. We are looking into the other two, but we do have high hopes that they haven’t been emptied if we can get there in-“

“Daddy?”

Lord Brighton held up his hand, forcing the knight who had been speaking to pause. His tired eyes moved over to look at Moira, just six years old after her birthday last month.

“Moira, hun. Go back to bed. Daddy still has some work to do,” he said, his tone indicating just how exhausted but driven he was to try and root out the members of The Scarlet Hand.

“But Dad, I wanted to tell you-“

“Hun, what did I tell you?” he said, cutting his daughter off. “This meeting isn’t for little girls, and we have to move fast. You can tell me in the morning.”

As he turned to look back at the knight, motioning for him to continue, Moira tried one more time, “But Daaad. It will only take a-“

Her father turned once again, his tired face turning to annoyance. “Moira! Go to your room! I do not have the time right now! Whatever it is, it can wait!”

Moira’s face turned to an expression of shock, but before she could say anything, her father had already turned to the knight and ordered him to continue. The knight, after a saddened look at Moira, continued with his report. Neither man noticed as Moira slipped out of the room, with hot tears peaking at the corners of her eyes, as she gazed down at the single tooth that sat in the palm of her hand. It was her first one, and she wanted to tell her daddy how excited she was to get to leave it under her pillow for the tooth fairy.

But she guessed that would have to wait. Daddy was too busy for her right now.

---

"IN THE NAME OF THE LADY!”

Moira’s hammer glowed with golden holy light, shining like a beacon in the darkest of nights as it made contact with the target’s head. With the **** of a truck, the training dummy got flung halfway across the training yard, tumbling over itself, spilling straw and fluff all over the place. Moira gave a huge 14 year old grin as she looked around for her dad. This had been the very first time that she had managed to summon the Lady’s Blessing, and it was by far one of the most powerful buffs she could give her attacks while fighting in the Lady’s name. Her dad had promised to come watch her train today, since she had received the Blessing in full last night and finally got to put all her training to use.

Plus, since Dad didn’t have the Blessing anymore, he had more reasons to come see Moira use it!

And yet… the only person standing there was one of her teachers, an old man by the name of Jerimiah. Granted, Jerimiah had a grin almost as big as Moira’s on his own face, and was clapping as he walked up to his young student, but… where was her dad?

Jerimiah’s grin started to fade as he saw Moira’s confused expression, and with a small sigh he came down to one knee and placed a hand on her shoulder.

“Well done, Moira!” he said, his grin back on his face in an attempt to make her forget what was upsetting her. “I told you that you could do it! And in just one try too!”

“Where did Dad go?” Moira asked, dropping the hammer to the ground. “He… he promised he would be here.”

“Moira… you know he’s been very busy as of late. With the increase of criminal guilds in the Abyss and the recent abductions in Pennsylvania, not to mention the-“

“But… but he promised,” Moira muttered. She wouldn’t cry. She refused to cry about her dad not showing up to her stupid training. But… he promised he would. She knew he had duties to attend to but he promised and she just wanted to show how strong she was and he promised and… and…

Jerimiah never mentioned the tears he could feel on his robes that day.

---

If there was one thing that Moira and her father became really good at, it was not talking to one another. No matter the time or the occasion, if they weren’t discussing Order business, only the minimum number of words would be exchanged between the two of them.

Oh sure, when it came to Order stuff, they would work well with each other. Her father seemed to be genuinely proud of her when she managed to complete the clearing of a hostile illusion barrier that had been getting dangerously close to the school grounds. Moira would be clear, concise, and well spoken whenever she was giving reports or discussing with other knights about movements made against The Scarlet Hand guild.

But at the dinner table, things would be silent if the two were ever there together (which was still a rare occurrence). When Moira was working on homework or having to stay after school for concert band (she had joined to keep up appearances at school and to give herself something in her life that wasn’t just the Order), she did not tell her father at all. And why would he care? He had his goal of eliminating his wife’s killer.

Moira was just a side project.

Then came an absolutely awful week for Moira. For one, she had accidentally broken one of her drumsticks while practicing on Monday. She had been feeling rather… off and trying to get some frustration out only to hit the side of a drum a bit too hard with a stick that had seen far better days.

Then she had also managed to get into a small spat with Kim. Not anything of major note, but just one of those small fights about something stupid that managed to end with the two of them yelling at each other and being all hotheaded and angry. Honestly, at this point, she couldn’t even remember what the fight was about. But that little fight had managed to distract her from the cause of her biggest failure of the week.

She had failed to save a student from being killed by Scarlet Hand members.

One moment she was storming off from her fight with Kim. The next she could sense a rocketing explosion of magic somewhere within the school, or rather within an illusion barrier inside of the school. One quick change into her armor and a hop into the illusion barrier, and she had managed to get into the illusion barrier just in time to see a wall of impossibly hot flame almost cook her to ****. But more importantly she got in just long enough to sense the magical presence of someone being roasted alive and someone overspending their mana.

The next day it became perfectly clear who that second person was. Johnathan Newman, one of the more silent nerdy kids of the school, suddenly up and disappeared. It was claimed that he was going off on an internship thing that had him out of school for a bit, or possibly longer if he decided to stay, but Moira knew. She sensed that presence in there and she knew it was her fault that an innocent student died.

She didn’t talk to anyone that evening. Or the evening after that. Had Jerimiah still been alive, maybe she would have talked to him. But he was in the loving arms of the Lady now, and now Moira was all alone to deal with her grief.

But then almost a week and a half later, an opportunity arose. Apparently there had been a couple of mages who ran off when the fire show started, and because of Moira calling for backup after escaping the wall of fiery ****, one knight had managed to track the two of them to an abandoned part of Springfield. After a lot of investigating and peeking into illusion barriers as quietly as possible, they had found it: the secret base of The Scarlet Hand.

Moira tried to remain calm. She tried to keep it together as she asked her father for a chance to show how strong she was. For a chance to redeem herself in her own eyes for failing Johnathan. For a chance to prove to her father that she was someone he could be proud of.

For a chance to get rid of the thing that took her father away and left her with just a Lord Commander.

But that fight… it just made things even more complicated than she thought possible.

She had gone into the battle ready to deliver divine justice to the criminals who made life worse for mages in the Abyss. She had gone into battle with the song of the Lady in her chest and the smiting fire of divine retribution on her hammer. She had gone in ready to bring about the end of The Scarlet Hand and finally make things better.

What she had gotten instead were fights with mages that were little more than scared vandals and the revelation that John was never dead. Instead, he had joined the guild who tried to kill him days ago. Or maybe he faked his ****. Maybe he was working with Lifthrasir the whole time and just needed to get out before Moira found things out. Maybe he was actually the mastermind of everything and making Moira look like a fool for grieving his **** was part of his master plan. Maybe… Maybe…

Maybe Moira was doing something wrong.

The hero’s welcome she received upon returning home for helping to cut off the head of the guild felt wrong. She felt like an imposter in knightly armor. This raid wasn’t satisfying. It didn’t feel earned or like she did the right thing. Not when she was so confused after all of this.

But she had to have done the right thing. They were criminals. They needed to be off the streets.

But why was John there? And then some of the others they arrested… they didn’t seem like hard murderers or kidnappers. They were just mages that looked…

Scared. Just like John was.

She didn’t sleep well that night.

Or the next.

Or the one after that.

Instead of sleeping well, she spent her time looking more and more into the Order. She talked with people, read books on what the Order did, and then read books on what the Order did that WEREN’T written by the Order. Days went by faster than she could anticipate, and nearly a month after her fight with John, she could say that something wasn’t adding up. That she messed up, that The Order messed up.

So when Naoto came to her with the plan of having John get out of prison to help them track down the elusive Lifthrasir, she considered it her duty to right the wrongs of her Order.

And as John held her close in the tiny cave they were trapped in, she thought that maybe… just maybe…

She was finally doing the right thing.

---

John looked over the notification a couple of times, rubbing his chin in thought with one hand while the other rested on Moira’s side, who was still cuddled up on him. It was simple in theory. Almost double the casting cost, but they had the chance to be chain activated. Did they have to be chain activated with other trap runes? Or could he, say, line up a bunch of Kenaz traps and then activate his own rune at a later time, thus turning a room into a giant fire pit whenever someone stepped on a trap or when John chose to activate it?

And for that matter, it didn’t specify kinds of runes in the text. Could he set up a massive healing circle? Or maybe write enough Uruz runes on himself that a single touch would turn him into the next WWE champion? And did this work with godly runes too? He had been thinking about trying to cast more of those, especially the Vidar: God of Vengeance rune. Sure, it would eat up all his mana, but what if he could chain a few of them together? It would cost him some health to set them as traps, but with some Meditation and a bit of effort, he could turn himself into the ultimate version of “fuck around and find out”.

Then again, he could accidentally waste all that stored damage on a missed hit or an accidental attack. What if he accidentally punched Frank while storing up damage for a boss fight?

‘That’s called getting rid of a problem. Plus, the shithead deserves it, and has been getting away with too much for far too long anyway.’

John took a slow breath, trying to silence the nagging voice of his father. Said voice had gotten almost unbearably loud while in prison but had silenced itself when he got out. Now it appeared that it decided to make a permanent return to John’s life, much to his chagrin.

‘Don’t be like that, kid. I told you in the prison, you ain’t in a fucking fairy tale world. You’re in a world just as hard as your old man’s world, and you gotta toughen up if you don’t wanna die or get thrown back in the slammer.’

‘Dad. You’re Hispanic,’ John thought, daring not to look behind him in fear that his hallucinations of the man also made a comeback. ‘Why do you sound like a New York taxi driver.’

‘Don’t blame me. You’re the one imagining me here.’

‘Then I would prefer to imagine you going away forever.’

‘Then why ain’t I?’ John could feel the grimy gaze of his sperm donor behind him. ‘Maybe you don’t want me to go. It’s a helluva lot easier to blame any terrible shit you do on having an old man who was terrible. Sort of a whole “sins of the father” type deal to make yourself seem less guilty.’

‘John? Can you hear me now?’

John let out a sigh of relief as the voice of his father melted away, now replaced by the voice of Mavis echoing in his mind.

‘Mavis. Thank the gods. Moira and I are trapped in here. Can you get us out?’

‘We’re trying our best out here, but progress is slow. I couldn’t feel your soul passing on, so I knew at least YOU had to be alive, and that probably meant you were at least in some form of an empty space. If we try to dig you and Moira out too quickly, we could risk another cave in.’

‘Moira has a protection spell. She could use that to keep us defended.’

‘Yeah, but how long can she keep it up?’ John could feel a slight snicker through their mental connection. ‘Also, that’s what she said.’

John looked down to Moira, shaking her a bit to get her out of… sleeping? Memory lane? Well, whatever she had been doing, the shake seemed to wake her up as she looked up at John. “Find a way out for us?”

“Maybe. Mavis just contacted me and said the others are trying to dig us out without risking a cave in. Can you put up the barrier spell to keep us protected so they can dig faster?”

Moira’s mouth shifted to the side as she thought before saying, “Maybe. I don’t know how long I can keep it up though. Maybe a minute at most… I am kinda tapped out from casting it twice in a row.”

‘Mavis, did you hear her?’

‘No. Honestly, our mental connection right now is kinda weak. All that warpstone exploding has wreaked havoc on the magical aura shit of this area.’

‘Wait, the warpstone made magic ITSELF unstable?’

‘As far as Naoto has explained it, yeah. You’ll have to talk to her about it, but she said something about it being made up of chaos in stone form or something and it's not bound by rules of magical… something or other. Honestly, she was kinda going over my head with the explanation as I was more focused on trying to get you out of there.’

John nodded, even though Mavis couldn’t see it. ‘Well, thank you for trying to get us out. Moira says that she can keep it up-‘

‘Heh.’

‘KEEP UP HER BARRIER for only a minute or two at most. Her mana is pretty drained from doing a double cast of it one after another.’

‘Understandable. Let me talk with everyone out here and see what we come up with.’

“Well?” Moira said, poking John in the side. “Don’t leave me hanging. What’s the plan?”

“Trying to figure that out now,” John said. “Mavis is going to talk with the others and see if we can figure something out to get us out of this mess.”

“Well… We gotta come up with something,” Moira said, crossing her arms and leaning against John a bit more. “Of all the places I could die, a rat-made tunnel isn’t exactly high up on the list.”

“I’ll be sure to take you somewhere better next time so you can die in a higher quality place,” John replied with a grin.

“Oh, thank you, kind sir,” Moira mocked, giving him a dramatic bow. “The Order of the Golden Rose will be most gracious that you took their Warden to die in only the most beautiful of locations.”

“Hey, I never promised beautiful. Only better than a rat tunnel,” John said, holding his hands up in defense. “How does downtown Detroit sound?”

“John, you promised better than the tunnels. Not equally terrible.”

The two shared a small laugh only to be interrupted by Mavis speaking in John’s mind.

‘John, you can still hear me, right?’

‘Loud and clear. What’s the plan?’

‘Okay, so Sigmund managed to move a rock and found the dead body of the rat ogre. Looks like the thing went flying and sailed clear over the two of you. Its warpstone isn’t completely destroyed, so we are going to blow up the warpstone on its corpse and hopefully clear a path for the two of you.’

‘Oh good. More explosions.’ John rolled his eyes. ‘Maybe this time we can cause a cave in on top of the cave in. Do two cave ins cancel each other out?’

‘No, listen, you dumbass. Once the initial explosion goes off, you and Moira need to run to the entrance with the barrier spell up. As far as Talia has been able to tell, the area above you guys is actually near the Council Tree, so we should be out of rocks and dirt to fall on your heads. The barrier spell will protect you from the explosion and random free rocks, but there should be almost none once the explosion goes off.’

‘Got it. I’ll convey the message to Moira. Just tell me when you’re ready to blast away.’

‘We’re ready now. Just give us a signal.’

John looked over to Moira, who had pulled away from John’s embrace and was now standing and dusting off her armor. “Ready to put up that barrier?”

Moira gave him a quick nod before clasping her hands together and bowing her head. Just like when she first casted it, John could hear Moira muttering something that sounded vaguely like Latin. He could see her hands starting to glow with holy light the more she spoke, and see small rose symbols on her armor light up with the same holy glow. John could even feel her magic seeping into the air around him, with the area between the two of them beginning to get a soft warm feeling akin to getting into bed after a long day.

Just as John was about to let out a content sigh, Moira thrust her hands forward and, with eyes ablaze with her holy aura, shouted, “BARRIER OF FAITH!”

However, something slightly different happened this time as compared to just a few moments ago. This time the light that poured forth from her hands was a bit stronger. A bit more intense in its glow. It was a bit more gold in color, and if John were to hazard a guess, he would say that it was probably a bit stronger than it was just moments ago.

Why she got the sudden power up, he couldn’t say for certain. But there was no time to ask. The second that the barrier managed to get over their heads, John quickly sent a mental message to Mavis.

John and Moira both had barely a moment to fully brace themselves as a shot rang out from beyond the rock walls that formed their cavern, followed by a deafening explosion and the tremor of metric tons of rock being flung away from the two of them.

“MOVE!” John yelled, earning a nod and quick steps forward from Moira. The two of them booked it, rubble raining down upon them as they moved closer and closer to the rest of the group. John could faintly hear them yelling at them, but the ever present rumble of rocks drowned them out.

Yet, perhaps through sheer luck or maybe the divine will of the gods above, after barely 30 seconds of running, Moira and John were finally out of the cave. And as Talia and Mavis wrapped their arms around John, and Sigmund gave Moira a pat on the back, John finally took a breath of relief.