Apostles of Doom

“Imagine my surprise to find that my dear old friend, Thrinarv Gottslieb, high priest of Hephaestus, was in town?” Stainsberry was shaking his head at the surprise. “Thrinarv, this is Talarius, who I was telling you about.”

“Greetings, Talarius!” Thrinarv said, putting his mug of ale down and reaching out a hand to Talarius, who shook it in greeting even as the dwarf shot Stainsberry a short glare and said, “What’s this old friend business? We are the same age!”

“Greetings,” Talarius said, looking back and forth between the two; it was hard to believe they were the same age, even though he understood the differences in lifespan. Talarius took his seat.

Stainsberry grinned at the dwarf. “Well, but you look like you’re about a thousand years old.”

“Upstart!” Thrinarv groused. He looked to Talarius. “We were born a month apart, two hundred and ninety-three years ago. He is actually a month older than I.”

“So have you both known each other the entire time?” Talarius asked curiously.

“Not the entire time; we were but children, probably around forty or so, when we met,” Stainsberry said.

Thrinarv shrugged, accepting the estimate.

Talarius shook his head. He had never really had intimate conversations like this with any of the really long-lived races. As “children,” they had both been older than he was now. It was more than a little humbling. Much more so than being around thousands-of-years-old D’Orcs, surprisingly. He figured that was because he saw the D’Orcs as infernal creatures, not mortals. Which, he now knew, they had once been. Argh. He was trying to get that out of his head. “So you are a priest of Hephaestus?” he asked the dwarf.

“High priest, actually,” Thrinarv said, motioning for a server to come by the table.

“So now that the connection to Doom is back, have you met your god?” Talarius asked curiously.

“From a distance. He was working on the portals along with some of his craftsmen,” Thrinarv replied, taking another drink.

“You do not sound impressed,” Talarius stated. “Seeing your god and his avatars doing their work, I should think that would be awe-inspiring.”

Thrinarv shrugged. “My people have a more casual relationship with our gods than you humans, or the alfar.” He nodded his head sideways to Stainsberry.

“I actually don’t follow any single god, as you know,” Stainsberry said. “Our order is faithful to and respects all the Gods of Light.”

“So when you die, where do you spend eternity?” Talarius asked, puzzled.

“Eternity is, in my opinion, overrated,” Thrinarv stated as a server, a hearthean, finally reached the table. “The wine is passable, but the ale is better,” Thrinarv told Talarius. “I assume you don’t want the glargh.”

“Ale is fine for me,” Talarius said.

“I’ll take another as well, Hasbro,” Thrinarv told the server.

“Would you like some food?” Hasbro asked Talarius. “We have a very good potato and leek soup tonight, along with fresh sourdough bread to dip in it.”

“If you like pterosaur, they serve a really good one here,” Thrinarv added.

“It is nice and crispy tonight. I would recommend a side of the pumpkin-spiced turnips to go with it,” Hasbro said.

“I’ll have the soup,” Stainsberry told Hasbro, who nodded. “Are you good on your wine?” he asked Stainsberry.

“I guess I’ll have another, since you will be making the trip,” Stainsberry told the server.

“I’ll have the pterosaur and the turnips,” Talarius said. He had not had pterosaur in years. They were not common in New Etonia outside of Sur Etonia and further south.

“Good choice. I shall have the same,” Thrinarv said.

The server nodded and headed off.

“I have to say that after the few weeks in the Abyss, it’s nice to be back in civilization,” Talarius said.

“The Abyss must be quite abysmal if you consider Agnothnon civilized,” Stainsberry said.

“It’s really not that bad, for Nysegard,” Thrinarv said. “I once spent an entire summer in Astlan in this town called Murgatroy.” Thrinarv shook his head. “Talk about lousy beer!”

“You’ve been to Astlan?” Talarius asked, shocked.

“Of course. Been to a good chunk of this localverse, as well as several others. Of course, I haven’t been to Astlan in over thirty years,” Thrinarv said.

“Neither of us was born here. We choose to work here, where we can do measurable good for the Light,” Stainsberry said.

“Where are you two from?” Talarius asked.

“Excelsion,” Thrinarv said.

Talarius shook his head, he had never heard of the place. “No idea where that is.”

Thrinarv shrugged. “Not many have. It’s in a different localverse, so the laws of magic are a bit different.”

Talarius looked to Stainsberry, who smiled and said, “Born and raised in Avalon, which is also where I trained as a Knight of the Elohim.”

“Where did you two meet, then?” Talarius asked, puzzled at how they could have met at such a young age.

“The Grove,” the two said at nearly the same time, causing them both to chuckle.

“The Grove?” Talarius asked. “The bizarre mountain region in Astlan?”