Crap! He had done it again. He realized the barkeep was back and wanting to be paid.
“No tabs. Cash on the barrel,” the barkeep said.
“How much?” Vaselle asked. He must not have heard the barkeep say a price.
“A secundus.”
Vaselle frowned, not quite sure what a secundus was. He assumed it was a second-class bronze coin, which implied a decent beer. The venue contradicted that, but oh, well. He dug into his purse and pulled out the equivalent Council States coin and handed it to the barkeep.
The man stared at it and flipped it over a couple times. “No change,” he said, pocketed the coin and headed towards the other end of the counter.
Vaselle shook his head and took a sip of the ale. He promptly coughed at the nasty concoction.
The priest of Tiernon looked over at him and said, “You from out of town?”
Vaselle blinked, looked over to the ugly priest, and realized that it wasn’t so much that the priest was ugly, he was half orc. He blinked again. “Uhm, yes…”
The priest nodded.
“I’m sorry, but you are a priest of Tiernon, yes?” Vaselle asked.
The priest sighed wearily, as if he’d heard the question a few too many times. “I am.”
“And you have orcish blood?”
“I do.”
“Sorry,” Vaselle said. “I am sure you get that all the time. It’s just that when I was a youth, I was schooled first by the Brothers of Hendel, and then later I spent some time at the seminary of Tiernon before deciding on wizardry.” It was a real stretch, but close enough without getting into humiliating details. “And, well, it was a rather human-centric organization, so I am a bit surprised.”
The priest blinked and suddenly smiled. “You are a follower of Tiernon? Or of Hendel?”
Vaselle froze for a moment, not knowing what to say. Technically he supposed he had been a lapsed follower of Tiernon before giving his soul to the master. However, that detail would probably not be appreciated.
He put on a self-effacing grin. “A bit lapsed, but yes. I grew up on Eton and I now live in Freehold, and to be honest, haven’t been that regular at the chapel.” Actually, “never been to chapel in Freehold” would be more accurate, Vaselle thought.
“Excellent, my son!” The priest patted him on the shoulder. “We get so very few followers of Tiernon here, at least up until the other day, that it’s a true pleasure.”
Vaselle grinned. “I can imagine. I suspect there are fewer chapels down here than in the Council States.”
The priest nodded. “I would think so, although I’ve never been that far north.”
Vaselle asked, “You’ve lived in this region your entire life?”
“I have; I was raised by an itinerant priest of Tiernon and chose to follow in his footsteps. I’ve spent my life and my mission in Murgandy and the United Federation.”
“You and your mentor must enjoy a challenge if what I’ve read about the region is true,” Vaselle said.
The priest chuckled. “Indeed. But it is rewarding.”
“I can imagine.” Vaselle really could; it had been his lifelong dream to do exactly that. Of course, now he was in an even better position to serve. “I am Vaselle, by the way.” He stuck out his hand.
The priest took it, smiling. “Teragdor.”
“So it appears we have a restless resident,” Phaestus said after several minutes of the Ops Team scanning the system.
Delg Narmoloth nodded. “Aqua-Chamber K.”
Völund also nodded and added, “Aqua-Chamber K is one of those closest to Mount Doom. It appears, but will need to be confirmed, that the temperature of the aquatic suspension has shifted significantly, most likely due to the great deep freeze Tommus used to defeat the Maelstrom.”
Roth Tar Gorefest nodded. “Well, Doom’s ambient temperature did approach absolute zero, so that would probably have been felt down here.”
“So what does this mean?” Tom asked.
“It means Sleeping Beauty felt a chill and got restless in its sleep,” Tizzy interpreted.
“That pretty much sums it up. It’s in a transition state between sleep and waking,” Völund agreed.
“So what do we do?” Tom asked.
“Well, the automatic systems are working to restore equilibrium temperature smoothly, the hope being that the prisoner goes fully back to sleep,” Phaestus answered.
“This Titan is not the most dangerous, so that is good. The real danger is that it might disturb the sleep of others and wake up something more dangerous,” Völund said.
“So what do we do to stop that from happening?” Morok Deathstealer asked.
Phaestus shrugged. “For now, we keep a close eye on it. If the restlessness continues”—he paused and looked at a monitoring screen with some image on it that Tom couldn’t quite make out—“then the answer is probably the same as if it were fully awoken. If it woke, given time, it would work to awaken the others.”
Arg-nargoth sighed. “How many worlds are going to have to pay for that?”
“What do you mean?” Tom asked, concerned.
“For this particular Titan, the best answer would be to let it out for some exercise until it tires itself out and wants to sleep again,” Völund said sourly.
“Hence the death toll,” Darg-Krallnom said.
“And that works?” Tom asked dubiously. He couldn’t imagine an awakened Titan just going on a vengeful rampage and then docilely returning to sleep.
“With this one, yes. It’s been done before, both for restlessness and to be of use to the gods,” Phaestus said.
“Wait!” Tizzy exclaimed. “You said Aqua-Chamber K?”
“Correct.” Völund nodded.
Tizzy shook his head and grinned. “In that case I claim dibs on giving the order!”
“Dibs on the order?” Zelda asked, puzzled.
“Yes,” Tizzy said. “I get to be the one to say: ‘Release the Kraken!’ ”
Vaselle was starting to feel more than a bit tipsy. He was in fact, quite drunk. This crap beer was hitting him hard, he realized as he swallowed the last of his fifth one. He motioned the barkeep for two more beers, one for him and another for the priest. Vaselle had started paying because naturally, itinerant priests did not have much money.
Vaselle was by no means wealthy. He had a good middle-class (by Freehold standards) income, which here was probably a pretty decent income. However, he also had quite a bit of change left over from exchanging Mount Doom gems for material components. Plus, he was quite sure he could get more gems and precious metals from Mount Doom if needed. He’d have to be careful about flooding local economies, of course, he thought dizzily.
He and Teragdor had been having a surprisingly enjoyable discussion. True, they did have a common background in wanting to serve the Five Siblings, but then their career paths had radically diverged. Or at least Vaselle’s had; he’d been forced out and into conjury, only to end up as a warlock to the Lord of Doom.
Teragdor had faced tremendous prejudice due his bloodline, but had somehow persevered in the face of prejudice, resentment, fear and generalized resistance to his becoming a priest. Which seemed to Vaselle a rather depressing indictment of himself: a half-orc could become a priest of Tiernon, yet he could not?