Rinkaiel: Temple of the Divine Dwarf

[Graybeard]

The junior priest's face lit up with pleasure (or was it just astonishment?) at Ace's inquiry. "Why, we're always glad to have new members! Reverend Orpiment is unavailable, but his daughter, Sister Joli, is minding the store while he's gone. Let me go fetch her."

-----------

"Then let's go," the selfsame Sister Joli was saying to Leo at about the same time. She pressed a button on her desk, and a door shimmered into existence on the back wall of the office -- well, "shimmered" wasn't quite right, it appeared with all manner of clicking and groaning and flashing lights. "Dwarven technology," she pointed out unnecessarily.

They'd only gone ten or twenty feet down the hallway when she stopped again, in front of a sign reading "POSITIVELY NO ADMITTANCE TO UNAUTHORIZED PERSONNEL". "Get ready to move fast," she said. She extracted a key-like object from her jumpsuit and plugged it into a niche in the wall.

Something in the ceiling started to hum. She looked up with what looked like nervousness, if not outright fear, and her pace changed from a brisk walk to an out-and-out sprint that carried her another fifteen feet down the hall. The humming subsided.

She breathed a sigh of relief. "Okay, your turn..."

[Jack Rothwell]

Leo nodded, stretched the cramp out his back and broke into a run. He cleared the distance in a blur a moment later. He skidded to a halt, not wanting to ask, but morbid curiousity forced the question out his lips.

"This looks a hazardous place to work. Dare I ask what we just avoided?"

...............

Eve levered the office window open with a grunt, the pane stuck and squeaked painfully as it turned into a high risk exit for an enquiring infiltrator. She quickly stripped off the restrictive uniform to reveal the darker shades of grey and black she wore underneath. The young woman took a deep breath, leaned out the window momentarily to make sure the coast was clear, then swung her body outside.

It wasn't going to be an easy climb, even though she had less than a dozen feet to cover the stone block surface of the walls only presented narrow ledges that were barely wide enough to grip with the tips of her fingers. Three handholds later the merc had to pull a knife from her boot to jam between two tightly pack blocks to continue her progress. Sweat beaded on her brow; her arms began to voice their complaints. She shuffled inch by inch to the ledge that marked the window to the scene of the crime. The pitter-patter of crumbling gravel set her nerves on edge.

A few agonising seconds later her fingers touched the wooden border of the window. She steadied herself, muttered an 'alright then' and peered inside.

[Graybeard]

"This looks a hazardous place to work. Dare I ask what we just avoided?"

Sister Joli held up a hand to deter any more movement and started to count. "One thousand one, one thousand two..."

As she got to "one thousand ten," there was a THWACK! as a heavy, knife-edged blade plummeted through a slot in the ceiling and embedded itself in the floor just in front of the "NO ADMITTANCE" sign.

"A Dwarven Artifact," she smiled weakly. "I'm sorry -- you were saying?"

[Jack Rothwell]

The room was mess, that amount of detail was immediately apparent. As the hanging merc squinted with gritted teeth through the window she could make out weird devices littering the edge of the room. A huge circular pot with what appeared to be a metal claw sticking out the top crackled red with faint energy sat in one corner, a keyboard-like device covered in intricate metal plating that appeared to be designed to twist and turn sat in another. As the merc's gaze went from one 'wonder machine' to another she saw the damage the flames had caused, the broken parts, the gentle jets of steam being released through warped metalwork. Is there was a cause here, it wasn't immediately apparent.

'Bugger this, I'm going in.'

Eve jammed her toes, barely, between blocks beneath the window sill and drew a thin, flat strip of metal from her pocket. Her body was really starting to complain now. With a great amount of muttered curses she levered the tool behind the frame halfway up its length and jiggled it, to her relief the lock clicked into place mercifully quickly. Eve breathed a sigh and pushed her way inside.

..................

Leo, to his credit, managed to abstain from the urge to skip backwards and yelp like a girl as the dagger had shot downwards. He stared at the faintly quivering hilt.

"You know, I can think of less overblown ways to put a dagger into someone." He said. "Was that another defensive measure by the dwarfs? Seems to lack finesse somehow."

[Graybeard]

"Was that another defensive measure by the dwarfs? Seems to lack finesse somehow."

Sister Joli looked uncomfortable; Leo might have been forgiven for getting the idea that that was her standard facial expression when she was away from the front, "public" part of the temple. "Well -- you'd have to talk to my father to get the whole story," she said. "As I understand it, the -- ward against intruders isn't a construct of the Holy Dwarves, just the blade itself. The high priest before my father, one Reverend Antimony if I understand correctly, came into possession of a most wondrous Artifact indeed, the wreckage of something we couldn't even begin to comprehend. Most of it is locked away in a museum in Tsuirakushiti now. Hmph," she snorted. "The unenlightened Tsuirakuans don't even care to study things like that any more. There are replicas of some of the parts of it in various temples, but this is a tiny fragment of the original material that Reverend Antimony got hold of somehow. My father decided it must have been intended as a defensive system, so he had it built into one. I don't know how or why or who did it; I was a little girl when it happened. But it's been here ever since then."

As Leo watched, there was a grinding, humming noise from overhead and the blade retracted into the ceiling. Joli pointed to an inscription near its trailing edge as it rose.

"We know this is in the Dwarven language," she said, "and so we assume that it must be some manner of sacred text. But honestly, I have no idea what 'JET A FUEL ONLY' could mean in the context of a defensive weapon -- do you?"

[Jack Rothwell]

Leo shook his head. "My father had a few old books about dwarven culture, mainly for aesthetic purposes. It just seemed to be the right thing for a man of his standing to have." The merc felt a lump in his throat; even months after his death and the tempestuous, destructive relationship they'd had while he was alive, his father remained a raw subject for him. He tried to clear his mind and continue.

"I glanced through them a couple of times; there was nothing about jet fuel in either." An idea occured to the merc. "If you like I could send for them as a donation to the temple, you and yours would probably have more use for them than I."

...............

'Nothing...'

Eve scanned the room for the third time with frustration etched into her youthful features. All that effort, and for what? No casing of incendaries to be found, no matches, no fuel, no convienient yukki staffs propped behind the curtains to offer an explanation for the origin point of the fire. A busted container hissed angrily at the mercenary as she made another lap.

Whatever had hit this place had done so cleanly, untraceably; that in itself was suspicious. From what Eve had heard from Leo about the liquor store attack it seemed unlikley the two incidents were connected. The liquor store had been an effective, but blockheaded, attack in broad attack where the culprit hadn't even shown the foresight to bring his own transportation to escape the scene of the crime. Whoever hit this place had used stealth and cunning; a real professional. An inside job maybe?

Eve sighed, looked around for one last time in case she'd missed anything, then slowly, painfully, levered herself back out the window.

[Graybeard]

"If you like I could send for them as a donation to the temple, you and yours would probably have more use for them than I."

Sister Joli's face lit up with genuine pleasure. "Why, that would be wonderful! Our library here is, to put it mildly, rather sketchy. Truthfully, there just haven't been that many texts published on the Divine Dwarves by anyone except members of our clergy, and some of them are rather ... amateurish." She rolled her eyes as though that was an understatement. "Adding some scholarly works would be a wonderful thing. Let's take a quick detour on the way to where the fire was, and I'll show you the library."

She turned down a short corridor leading to a door marked "Library of the Divine Dwarf," but she was still fumbling for a key when there was a loud THWACK! from somewhere behind them, followed by an ominously truncated, gurgling scream.

-----------

Joli wasn't the only denizen of the temple who had heard the scream. Somewhere back in the back, a figure in the usual Divine Dwarf getup had been alerted, and came running ... directly past the window that Eve was exiting.

"Hey! You! What do you think you're doing?"

-----------

A few seconds earlier, the source of the scream had left Ace standing in the lobby of the temple. "Sister Joli! Sister Joli!" the acolyte enthused. "We have a new convert!" He bustled through the door through which Joli and Leo had passed a few minutes earlier, as Ace stood waiting (and thinking, wait a minute -- aren't you a little premature here?). He entered the priestess' office, and with his superior powers of observation, immediately realized that she wasn't there ... but a never-used door at the other end of the office stood open.

That posed this worthy a quandary. On the one hand, acolytes had been warned never to venture beyond the "public" parts of the temple until they were fully indoctrinated into the Ways of the Divine Dwarf, which he hadn't been. On the other hand, he'd also been instructed, in clearest terms to report any potential converts immediately to the senior clergy of the temple. So to go, or not to go? Which rule was he supposed to break?

Eventually enthusiasm won; the temple just didn't get that many converts. He rushed through the door, ignoring the no-admittance sign ... and into range of the blade falling from the ceiling.

THWACK!

-------------

Layla was getting a queasy feeling about this day, and it was affecting her "studies" with her friend. She poked listlessly at the brick with her mind, knocking a few solid flecks off but not making any progress with her lesson.

"Is something wrong?" Galina asked, concern on her face. "That isn't like you. Your concentration is usually something to make a budding arch-mage envious. Is there a problem?"

Layla looked up. "There might be. I'm just getting a bad feeling about this session you have with Kitaura. He's bad news, Galina. I get along with him okay, but damn if every time I see him doesn't lead to somebody somewhere having bad trouble."

Galina gave her a searching look. "I'll be okay ... really. Look -- are you worried about something in this Divine Dwarf silliness?"

A mind reader? Layla wondered, decided it was possible; the Tsuirakuans were supposed to have skills like that. "Could be. I hate to deviate from your plan, but could we make a run over there? My boyfriend is -- talking to them about some things and I worry about him." And about you. And me.

[Jack Rothwell]

OOC Going for the inner courtyard idea if that's cool./OOC

"Hey! You! What do you think you're doing?"

'Oh...shit...'

Eve looked out at the man who stood two floors below her, staring up from the cobbled inner courtyard. Her mouth worked silently, trying to word the correct line to reply with. She thought of the scream she'd heard a few seconds ago; an idea presented itself.

"Help!" She called down to him, consciously changing her limber movements to an uncoordinated scrabble of desperation and her voice to one of a damsel in distress. "There's a man in there! He's trying to kill me!!"

...............................

Leo wheeled around at the scream; his hand dropped to the revolver in his longcoat pocket of it's own accord.

"Sounds like the fire isn't your only worry here." He winced internally, immediately beginning to worry about Eve. "I think we should investigate that."

[Graybeard]

"Stay right where you are," the man in the courtyard said, uncertainty in his voice. "You're trespassing ... aren't you?"

-----------

Sister Joli could move remarkably quickly now that she was unencumbered by the "sacred enhancements." It only took a few seconds for her to get back to where the blade had been and see what had happened ... and a few seconds longer for her to punch her cookies at the sight.

The Dwarven Artifact had pinned the acolyte to the ground, impaling him messily at about waist level; that had been the impact they'd heard at the library. The abrupt end of the scream, however, had resulted from a second blade falling from the ceiling. This one wasn't dwarven, it was a plain old guillotine blade, and it had done to the body what guillotines are constructed to do.

"Oh, shit," Joli sobbed as she looked at the carnage.

-----------

Ace had heard the impact and scream too, and decided that whatever was happening here, he wanted no part of it. He quietly left the temple, hoping that no one had seen him.

[Jack Rothwell]

Eve gritted her teeth and cursed under her breath. She couldn't turn and shoot the man in the awkward position she was in, and dropping to the floor would entail fracturing an ankle at the very least. She didn't waste further words. The mercenary abandoned all pretense of innocence or stealth, and hauled herself sideways hard, her legs pinwheeled wildly as she grabbed the edge of the window frame and she dragged herself inside. It was time to run.

..........

Leo stared at the scene of carnage and fought back the nausea that was trying to climb up his throat. He forced himself to look at the body, the cause of death was as obvious as the pool of blood that was draining into a crimson circle by the body of the unfortunate man. The more important question at that moment was what had triggered the lethal device. The timing of the investigation and the scene before him were too well timed to be a coincidence. Paranoia settled on the mercenaries shoulders as he pulled the gun from his pocket and pointed at the door.

"I'm going to take a look in your office. can you cover me?"

OOC Retcon, geography was never my strong suit /OOC