68Chapter One: Down the Rabbit Hole
A/N: There is a list, somewhere, of the list of things you aren't supposed to do.
Even if I have never seen this list, I'm pretty sure what I'm about to do is on it.
Ahem. Presenting my latest (well, relatively) work: Pieces of Eden, an Assassin's Creed/Forgotten Realms crossover. Expect an ungodly number of original characters.
The Piece of Eden, the innocuous silver ball that had left at least a score of men dead at Altaïr's feet, winked to him and shone. It was the world. He could see every mountain and plain across the globe, sparked with pinpricks of light, marking where many of its brethren could be found, if only someone would go and look. The Piece of Eden showed him what could be, if only he weren't so stubborn.
It was telling him to back down. To listen, to watch. To obey.
Altaïr clenched his fists. No. He would not obey. He would not allow his will to bend.
The orb and others like it had changed the world. They had changed everything, and in doing so had given power to those who would abuse it. Or perhaps the power had corrupted them instead.
Looking at the globe, then to his former master's corpse, Altaïr thought of the nine Knights Templar he had killed over the last few months and wondered if they had all held the same dream as al-Mualim – to be obeyed. To stamp out free will in all its forms…
Altaïr drew his sword and approached the relic. It began to pulse.
In retrospect, the mission to Calimport hadn't been a horrible idea, though Oceanus still hated, among other things, the heat, the sand, and about half of the residents. When that idiot bard had described the city as a wretched hive of scum and villainy, he'd been right, even if someone had him killed a week later.
Still, it had been nice of Lumina to send assistance to a temple of Ilmater in such a horrible place. He just wished it hadn't been him.
As a cleric of Bahamut (more or less), Oceanus knew that the two gods' churches were aligned as allies, particularly in the face of foes such as the goddess Loviator and her fellow sadists. He preferred not to associate with any of the Ilmatari because they were so passive. The Martyred One needed to learn, he thought, to fight his own battles.
All the same, Oceanus knew that he would be stuck in Calimport until the month was up, by which point a group from Waterdeep was supposed to take up the slack. The Calimport Ilmatari had suffered losses this past year, mostly due to overactive crime lords disliking the idea of their foes getting free healing at any decent temple. Out of all the goodly churches in and around Calimport, only the temple of Ilmater would not fight back.
Oceanus, upon being told of this by the high priest of the Ilmatari, had decided to make things more difficult for the native criminals of Calimport. Just last week he had dropped a ceramic roofing tile onto the head of one of the Basadoni Guild's enforcers, probably putting the man out for a few days. Given that he disliked most of the hired swords in the city, it was something he probably would have ended up doing anyway. It helped keep his spirits up.
If there was one thing that Oceanus despised above all else in the city, it was that no one cared at all of what happened to the poor. A man could be born, grow old, and die on the same street, and the only thing his neighbors would care about was looting the abandoned hut. The higher classes wouldn't notice to begin with.
Then there were the extensive "punishments" inflicted on anyone who angered the various crime lords. The older guilds were particularly creative on this point. Before venturing into the kingdom of Calimshan for the first time as a callow (or stupid) youth many years ago, he had never seen a man's body broken so extensively. Now he saw it every day, as the beggars and street folk came to the charity hospital the Ilmatari called a temple.
Now, though, his turn on the healing rotation was over. Gesturing for one of the acolytes to take his last patient of the night, a street child with a stomach so distended it looked like he'd been force-fed a melon, Oceanus sighed. With any luck his patient would survive, but he didn't feel optimistic about the boy's prospects. Oceanus had never been more than a passable healer, having never practiced the arts before coming, but now he wished he was.
Having had his fill of the day's depressing stories, Oceanus retreated to his bedroom – an old storeroom he had modified with a window – and went to the desk. On it were some of the few possessions he had managed to bring this far south, as well as a few sheets of coarse paper, a quill, and an inkwell. The stub of a candle burned cheerfully through the gloom as he sat down and began to write:
Gorri – son of Halil, merchant on the main road, attacked by "The Heart." Dead on arrival – thirteen stab wounds, one missing heart. Claimed by the family.
Yazmik – orphan, street thief, suffering from worms. Given potion – will recover.
Indi – orphan, beggar, pregnant. May stay full term.
Gag – old beggar, bone aches. Given potion – will likely return in a few days.
Jornil – unknown, probably orphaned beggar. Treated for worms and internal bleeding, may be too la
And he stopped, because he heard a pebble bounce off of the window shutters he had installed. Crawling over his bed, he opened the window and there was a face, peering at him with a grin that made him want to punch it off. It would have been easier if the man hadn't been looking at him from his place on the ledge above the window, making his head seem upside-down.
"You again." Oceanus said flatly, one eyebrow coming up in disdain. "What is it now?"
Dog Perry, the arrogant up-and-coming assassin that he was, just grinned wider. "Tell me, is that all you have to say to an old friend? I was just stopping by to see you."
The priest sat back. "If by "old friend" you mean "you attempted to kill me because my best friend humiliated you a few months ago and yet, somehow you failed," then yes, I am an old friend." Oceanus said.
Dog Perry's grin turned into a scowl. "I come in peace, overconfident priest. I only wish to see your well-kept patient records."
"Why is that?" Oceanus couldn't keep the boredom out of his voice. Dog Perry was an arrogant upstart, a rat preying on the common mice while the cat was away. There seemed to be more and more of the creatures every day, eager to prove their worth and crawl out of the shadow belonging to Artemis Entreri, who had not been seen in years.
"Surely you would not want me to become upset, priest?" Dog Perry said. "There are whispers that I did not fulfill my contract on the merchant. You must confirm my kill."
Oceanus made a show of thinking about it. In reality, he wanted nothing more than for the idiot to get caught and killed in one of his own webs of deceit. Dog Perry was far from an efficient killer, and missed about as often as he killed. His guild could easily do away with him.
Thinking back on this an hour or so later, Oceanus would kick himself for even wishing such a thing on anyone. No one deserved the wrath of a slighted guildmaster.
"Here." Oceanus said with a grumble, ripping a slip of paper off of the one he had been writing on, the bit with the merchant's name, and handed it to the man. "Just take the damn thing back to Quentin and stop bothering me."
Dog Perry saluted. "Of course, dear priest." Then he disappeared into the darkening night, leaving Oceanus to wonder why he kept letting the assassin ask favors when it was clear the man was just trying to see if he could be ordered about.
"I need to stop doing this." Oceanus said to himself, but he knew that until Dog Perry was sent to kill him or any of the Ilmatari, he'd probably keep ceding to the assassin's demands. He sighed. He had lost his spine somewhere around Memnon. There was no other reason why he kept giving money to beggars when they were just going to spend it on alcohol, or continued to heal the victims of Calimport's underbelly when it would make more sense just to kill the ones responsible.
He glanced at the desk again. A pair of short, stout ceramic bottles stood to the rear, marking the supply of healing potions he had left for the journey home. The candle stub was practically swimming in its own wax, but with its light he could clearly see the heavy star-embossed medallion he used in his more dangerous spells, as well as the little silver locket he had left there to protect it from thieving hands. He didn't dare open it again, not after the breakdown it had caused on his first night here.
Not nearly for the first time, Oceanus felt homesick.
He sat back on his bed, trying not to think of the valley he had settled down in, of the friends he'd been forced to leave behind in the northlands. As soon as the Waterdhavian Ilmatari could make it to their brethren's defense, he would go home as fast as he could. Though he was loath to admit it, the Calishites could take care of their own problems. Better that they did and left him out of it.
It was at about this point that there was a horrendous ripping sound. Blue light shone from a jagged tear in the ceiling, but what was on the other side seemed to be some sort of building…
Oceanus realized that he was looking at a wizard's door, or at least a horribly corrupted version of it. He stood up and scooted around the ragged shaft of light, moving toward the door to call for some sort of help, before remembering that he had let Ash go off to stalk wererats in the sewers. None of the priests were fighters in any sense of the word, and without his gigantic canine pet, Oceanus had a bad feeling that he was at a disadvantage no matter what came out.
He was wrong, because about a second after that thought something did come out. It seemed to be mostly white; probably a man in a robe. It hit the top of his desk to the sound of shattering potion bottles, and then rolled off and onto the floor.
Oceanus stood stock-still for a moment. Then he stuck his head out the door and screamed for an acolyte, right before rushing over to the man and trying to figure out how to get the pottery shards out of him.
Something glowing and silver plunked to the floor next to him. It went ignored.
Trapped. He felt like he was drowning in a sea of limitless, blinding, suffocating mist. No matter how he struggled, he could never make any appreciable progress, and all the while the shadows closed in, laughing and taunting. Something jerked inside of him; suddenly the shadows screamed and fled, and he could see clearly again.
Altaïr woke to a voice, and to the sense of being flattened. Something warm and very heavy was lying across his stomach and both of his arms. Whatever it was weighed more than he did, or anything he could think of short of a horse.
His right arm felt like it was on fire – something had moved and it felt like prodding at an open wound. "…there. That seems to be the last of them." It was a soft voice, edged with relief. Altaïr couldn't place the accent as other than "not native."
"Arf," said the thing sprawled across him. A dog?
"You can get off him now. I think I can handle it." There was a shuffling noise. The heavy, furry animal stood and Altaïr felt the mattress sag under its weight. The beast sauntered off as the first voice spoke again, "Aril?"
"Yes?" said the another voice, this one with a very familiar accent. Imperceptibly, Altaïr relaxed a little. He was, if not among friends, at least somewhere he could probably travel back to the Brotherhood from. The name didn't exactly ring a bell, though.
"Fetch me a healing potion, would you? The ones I had were all smashed."
"Of course. From which shop?"
"There is more than one?"
"Certainly. But for these wounds, I think I know what you need. It will only take a few minutes—"
"Ah, excellent."
"—and some silver, of course."
There was a long pause. "You would make an exceptional merchant if you ever decided priesthood was not worth it." There was a jingling noise as a few coins changed hands.
"Very true, sir." Altaïr heard the other man leave, and a door far off being opened.
"Now then…" began the first voice after a long moment. Altaïr heard the dog-beast return and begin walking around the table. "When are you going to stop pretending to be asleep?"
Well, that was about as overt of a hint Altaïr thought he'd ever gotten. He rolled over and sat up, his legs dangling off of the raised mattress.
Looking at his possible opponent, Altaïr realized that he was perhaps giving too much credit. The owner of the first voice was probably too young to hold the authority she obviously commanded. She was small, probably half a foot shorter than Altaïr was, and the lower part of her face was obscured by a heavy scarf. She wore a scholar or a priest's robes, with the hood pulled up so her hair color was impossible to distinguish, but Altaïr could see metal glinting off her wrists and ankles. A fighter, then, like Maria.
"My weapons?" Altaïr asked after a short staring contest as they sized each other up.
The young woman gestured to a table off to the side, where Altaïr saw his scimitar, short blade, and pouch with throwing knives. A quick twitch of his left arm confirmed that his hidden blade was still equipped.
As he looked at the blades, however, something massive moved between the bed and the table.
Altaïr didn't think he'd ever seen such a large beast. It was obviously canine, but only just. It was covered in white fur except for the saddle-like patch on its back and the way its white tail darkened toward the end. The creature itself was longer than a man was tall, with its tail's length to double that. Worse, the long tail ended in a bone-colored, hooklike protrusion Altaïr would generously call a blade.
"I make a point of not trusting assassins," she told him. There was a bit of a pause, then, "Though, you are the first to try entering my room using a wizard's door."
Wizard's door? Altaïr wondered. "Explain," he demanded.
She gave Altaïr a disbelieving look. "Explain?" he repeated. "Explain? You dropped into my room from some place unknown, carrying more weapons than a crazed mass-murderer and you want me to explain? I want to know why you—Ash?"
Altaïr glanced at the doglike beast when he heard it give a short, sharp bark. It was staring at the young woman with a look the assassin recognized as stern disapproval. Or at least something like it – it was hard to tell with animals.
"…Overreaction, right." The woman gave a sigh and shook her head. "I apologize. I think I have been dealing with assassins for too long."
If Altaïr had been anyone else, or at least been in a better mood, he would have been more interested in the exchange. Not today, with his head pounding and his arm feeling like it was going to catch fire. Glancing at the wound, he noticed that someone had pulled his sleeve up and had been halfway to bandaging it. "Was this your doing?" Altaïr asked, indicating the angry-looking cuts. None of them seemed that deep.
She nodded. "Yes. I was planning on finishing before you woke."
At that moment, as they stared at each other uneasily, the dog leapt back onto the bed and, though Altaïr jumped away instinctively, curled around the spot where he would have been. The dog gave him a mournful look, then just as quickly dismissed him and settled its head on its paws.
"You have never seen an animal like him?" the green-eyed woman asked. She approached cautiously, but Altaïr realized that Oceanus had taken the dog's action to mean that the assassin was, if not trustworthy, then at least not trying to kill her. Which was true, Altaïr had to admit. He didn't plan on killing the woman, mostly due to not having any idea of what to do next. Besides that, he would rather not kill any woman, period, not matter how rude. "This is Ash. He is a friend."
"I can see that." Altaïr said, a little more sharply than intended. It was becoming slowly, painfully clear that he was deeply out of his depth and nowhere near home.
The young woman glanced at him curiously – apparently, Altaïr had been downgraded from "threat" to "mystery" – and said, "Who are you?"
"Altaïr ibn La-Ahad." Altaïr replied, pulling his hood back up and clumsily trying to wind the remaining bandages around his exposed upper arm, even though he was not left-handed and had little experience with medicine in any case. He still felt rather off-balance, and probably more than a little cross. After a while, the green-eyed woman sighed and forced the assassin's fingers away, determined to fix this on her own.
"Well met, Altaïr," she said as he wound the linen around the wound. "I am Oceanus Winterheart, the one whose room you landed in and whose potions you shattered."
Wait, "Oceanus"? Wasn't that a male name? Then, there was a chance that... He roughly pushed the thought aside. "Where am I?"
"In the temple of the god of mercy, Ilmater," the priest (er, -ess? Something like that...) said. "I am a priest of the god Bahamut, here on sabbatical." That solved that mystery, then, unless Oceanus was actually a woman playing at being a man like Maria had, but for some other reason. Altaïr would fully admit (inwardly) that he wasn't thinking very well.
Altaïr sighed and tried to think through the fuzzy, stunned mess that was his mind at the moment. "Have you ever heard of Jerusalem?" he asked after a moment, trying the name of the most famous city he knew of.
Oceanus asked without looking up, "Is that some kind of plant?"
"No. It is a great city in the desert, in Palestine."
"Never. The only great desert cities here are Calimport and Memnon, and I would have heard of any others." Oceanus said flatly. "Have you ever heard of them?"
"No." Altaïr admitted. He would not admit, though, that the reason he had never heard of them was because he had no idea where he was in relation to home.
Oceanus blew out a frustrated sigh. "Did you live under a rock before coming here? This is Calimport, the capital city of the kingdom of Calimshan. It's the largest city in the world. How could you miss it?"
Altaïr said nothing. He stayed silent as Oceanus fussed and generally carried on like a put-upon woman, thinking. Something was terribly wrong here.
It was almost painfully clear that the man was confused, Oceanus realized once he'd managed to stamp down on his temper (which took a while; as far as he was concerned, he was perfectly within his rights to panic if someone suddenly showed up in his bedroom). While clearly a fighter, he carried no enchanted weapons, and Oceanus had a strong suspicion that the style of robes he wore had been out of style in Calimshan for centuries. Every detail indicated a distinct not-from-here vibe.
Despite that, though, the man was clearly Calishite from his face and skin tone. Even his build, minus perhaps the fact that he seemed to be in top physical form, was obviously native to the Calishite people. For Oceanus, that just meant he had a mystery on his hands. "Mystery" often translated into "headache."
As for the name, it didn't sound like any of the local names he had heard over his month here. The fact was, there wasn't really a Calishite naming scheme, at least not compared to the northern countries. After running into, variously, Dog Perry, Quentin Bodeau, Artemis Entreri, Sharlotta Vespers, and even the Pasha of the Basadoni guild, he had long since given up finding a pattern.
Thinking it over as he waited for Aril to show up, he realized belatedly that in the basic language of Calimshan, which most people didn't bother to learn because the common tongue of Waterdeep was the main trading language, Altaïr ibn La-Ahad translated to, roughly, "Eagle Son of No-One."
After a while longer, as he wondered if Aril had been robbed or killed, he sighed. He'd just have to stay put. If he left, one of the others would probably decide he'd gone missing and then leave to look for him, and so on. While he was certain that Calimport held nothing that could be a real threat to him, the same could not be said regarding his fellow priests.
He sighed again just from thinking about it. Sometimes he felt like a nanny.
Altaïr stood off to the side of the room, just far enough out of the way that someone wouldn't trip over him, but at least visible. Oceanus got the unpleasant feeling that Altaïr knew more about the art of disappearing that he did.
While Oceanus had been binding Altaïr's wounds, Ash had gone off somewhere. Oceanus rarely thought about where his furry companion went to when he wasn't looking, figuring that if he heard screaming he'd be on the right track. The dog-creature had a bit of a reputation in Calimport's underbelly, mostly for being a Beast That Stalks the Night. Oceanus didn't really mind.
Still, though he never worried for Ash's safety, he did sort of wonder where he could have gone. After all, Ash had seen the entire upper floor many times before and had never been all that interested in it unless Oceanus was going to upstairs to sleep and Ash felt like being a bed-warmer. Oceanus had a sneaking suspicion that it had something to do with the fact that there was no food to beg off of people up there.
Ash finally decided to make his appearance, his claws clicking on the stone steps as he meandered down. Oceanus glanced at his companion and saw him trot over to Altaïr, holding something silver and glowing in his jaws.
"What is that?" Oceanus asked as Altaïr took the glowing object from Ash's mouth.
Altaïr gave it a good look, wiping some of the dog's drool off of it, and tucked it into his hip pouch without a word. Oceanus heard his breath hitch, though, and wondered why that was.
It had followed him.
It had followed him.
Altaïr went up to the room Oceanus had lent him, with his thoughts spinning wildly out of control. The Piece of Eden made everything so much more complicated, only by existing.
Altaïr sat on the bed, turning the innocent-looking silver orb over in his hands as he thought. Temptation-incarnate, the Piece of Eden had a long history. All of it involved either miracles or slaughter, or possibly both in unbelievable proportions. All of it ended in madness and death.
He wondered if al-Mualim had understood. If he had understood the depths of the item, the silver-tongued nature of sin and how the Piece of Eden threw the doors wide open for them. Or had that urge, the urge to take free will from all of mankind, been part of al-Mualim and the rest of the Templars all along?
Did they even understand what that would mean? Altaïr had been taught almost from birth to see the truth, no matter how depraved or brilliant, just as all of the assassins had been. Then why had only five of them, counting Malik, been able to resist? Altaïr was stubborn and remembered dozens of masters over the years trying to teach him obedience, too, but maybe that was where the plan had fallen short. His master had wanted to use him as a killing tool, but that had fallen flat in the face of his will.
Indomitable will. Unshakeable faith.
Impervious mind.
He sighed. Leaning back on Oceanus's bed, he turned the orb over again.
He wasn't sure if the orb actually had a mind of its own – it seemed to him to be just a weapon, another tool – but there was always the chance that artifacts so old that myths had been spun from them were more than what they appeared to be. Then there was the fact that, among the people who knew of the Pieces of Eden, there seemed to be an insatiable urge to claim it as their own. Briefly, Altaïr wondered if it would attract more coveters, perhaps ones too powerful for him to fend off.
The Piece of Eden sparkled innocently in the moonlight. It made a mockery of everything human strength stood for, just by existing. He had wanted so badly to destroy it and had failed. He even remembered the exact moment when his blade had touched its flawless surface, right before the world had become a dark blur and he had woken up to a grumpy busybody of a priest trying to "fix" him.
And now what? With any luck at all he'd be able to hide the Piece of Eden, take it out of the game. But without any Masayf, any stronghold to bury it under, the desert was the second-best choice. Despite the fact that every modicum of training and common sense he had ever gained over the years screaming at him, despite the fact that he was still injured, the idea of the Piece of Eden having free reign in any city was utterly repulsive. The desert would take it and hide it forever.
Turning the memories over in his mind, he only noticed the passing of time as the moon began to drift to the other side of the sky. After that, he stared fixedly at the ceiling as he spent many minutes trying to gather and place his wildly-spinning thoughts.
With a grunt, he drifted back to reality as soon as he heard footsteps outside the door. The person creeping around was skilled – he was walking mostly on the nail-heads to avoid making much sound – but Altaïr had long since learned to train his senses far belong any normal human limits.
The knock came eventually. It was Oceanus. "Altaïr? You need to get out here. We have to leave."
Altaïr crossed the tiny room in two quick strides and opened the door. Looking down a little, he recognized the priest after a moment. He had changed clothes completely and now looked like a common street thief in black and brown, with a scarf tied tight around his head. His eyes, however, were the same, right down to the stare that seemed designed to burn through solid rock.
Altaïr didn't blink. "Why is that?"
"All of the Ilmatari have been ordered to leave the city, on pain of death, before dawn." Oceanus said in a clipped tone. "That includes me, and you if you plan on living."
Altaïr bristled. If there was one thing he couldn't stand besides Abbas's condescending attitude, it was being threatened. His right hand itched with the temptation to use the hidden blade, but it only lasted a moment.
"Someone did something rash." Oceanus said shortly. "I have no idea what the Ilmatari have done to anger the thieves' guilds like this, but this is their order, and they have many ways of enforcing it." The priest made an expansive gesture. "The walls have more eyes than you can imagine. They already know you are here, even if they know less about you than I do, and that is very little indeed."
Altaïr was struck by the image of Talal, briefly. Organized criminals? Why would a young priest even know about this sort of thing?
"The Ilmatari depend on you as a bodyguard," the assassin said after a moment. He should have seen it earlier – Oceanus moved like a slighter, younger version of an assassin. It wasn't obvious at first glance, and Altaïr's Eagle Vision hadn't registered him as a threat but…he was dangerous. The experienced sort, not the kind that went off to do stupid things that got entire squads killed.
Oceanus gave a jerky nod. "None of them are fighters like you and I are. I…" He glanced down the hall and Altaïr looked over his head to where Ash was helping an elderly priest or patient down the hallway. "They are too slow, or infirm, to escape in time. I need to buy them more time, but I will not be able to hold off the early killers for long enough."
At least he admits it, Altaïr thought. "You want me to help."
"Yes. If Ash guards the Ilmatari as they flee to the docks, we may be able to hold off the remainder of the men the guilds will send."
Well, he definitely wasn't going to admit that this made his life much easier. Getting out of the city would probably limit the Piece of Eden's influence.
Oceanus seemed to deflate a little the longer Altaïr stayed silent. After a while, he said in a voice so quiet Altaïr almost didn't hear, "Please?"
Altaïr didn't have to think too hard on that one. He nodded.
"Good. I will explain as much as I can as we go." Oceanus said, and in one blur of movement the priest was suddenly perched on the windowsill. Altaïr could see at least six knife hilts as Oceanus turned to face him, gave him a smirk, and dropped out of sight.
Altaïr followed a moment later. He knew that this sort of beginning always led to someone ending up dead. And Altaïr knew where he stood with dead people.
Namely, upright, holding a bloody eagle feather in his hand.
A/N: Edited.
Anyway, for reference, Oceanus is about 5'1", weighs about a third less than a normal man, and looks and sounds enough like a woman to confuse everyone who's meeting him for the first time. He looks like a teenager, which is why Altaïr commented on it.
Also, Altair is about 5'8" (I think - he doesn't seem much taller than most people in the game), normal weight and build, and is 25 years old according to the Assassin's Creed wiki. So he doesn't exactly have much room to talk.
ALSO, to whoever keeps saying "more please," give me an idea instead of just demanding another update. I even have it listed in my bio as a personal pet-peeve, so if you don't have anything useful to say one way or another, don't bother.
