Chapter 5: Chapter 5: Who~ are you?

The party rages on loudly behind him.

 

“This is too much,” says the elven woman with deep, purple bags under her eyes who is sitting behind the counter of the adventurer’s guild as she looks at the sword and then at the order. “The customer only wanted to pay forty.” She tilts her head, looking at the title of the weapon and then at him. “Wait… owl god?”

 

“Owl god,” replies Hineni quietly, nodding. The brim of his long hat bobbing down once to obscure his eyes. He had expected as much, there’s no way that an adventurer who needs an iron short-sword could pay three-hundred Obols.

 

“Wooow!” she says in a long, protracted exhalation, her tired eyes light up as she sizes him up and down. “We’ve never had a proselyte in our guild before,” she says, a tinge of excitement shining through her tired eyes. She turns her head, calling into the other room behind the counter. “Hey, Beni!”

 

“Ah, wait, please don -” starts Hineni, quickly lifting his hands in a slowing gesture.

 

A man, Beni, apparently, looks around the open door-frame from the other room behind the counter. Hineni lowers his head, pulling the scarf up higher. He wishes that she would just give him the money so that he can go back home. Unfortunately, chopping wood isn’t going to happen for a while with his bad hand. But he had expected this scene to happen as well. It’s not often that someone is chosen by a god and forced to convert to following them, a proselyte. There are a few others here in this city, but they’re all prancing around in some high-end guild or in a temple. It turns out that being divinely chosen had a way of elevating you off of the streets.

 

The elf points at the menu. “Check this out!” she says excitedly, her voice rising over the loud ambiance of the adventurer’s guild.

 

Even if Hineni had opted to come inside during nighttime, the guild is as full as always. The never-ending party is in full steam behind him as dozens of people drink their way through their lives of adventure and chaos. Thankfully, they are always too busy reveling and being too boisterous and drunk to nose around too much. He can always just walk up to the counter, drop his stuff off and go with the money in his hand. No fuss, no questions asked.

 

“What’s up?” asks Beni, squinting his eyes.

 

“We got a prosi!” she answers very loudly. Hineni drops his shoulders. She’s really making a bigger deal out of this than he was hoping for. Beni’s face turns pale and he rushes over, examining the menu. Hineni lifts a finger, trying to shush them both.

 

“Please be qu -”

 

“A PROSELYTE?!” yells Beni, obnoxiously loud. Hineni flinches together, wondering for a moment if he didn’t just do that on purpose.

 

Very slowly, he turns his head to look back over his shoulder. The party has gone silent and every single face looks his way. Each mug, held frozen up in the air by wet hands, each body, sitting at the heavy wooden benches, each set of eyes, all of these things are frozen entirely, as if stuck in time.

 

Hineni quickly turns back to the counter. “Can I get my money, please?” he asks in a hushed voice. “Just the forty is fine,” he explains, sliding the written-order further across the counter, towards the receptionist.

 

Hushed whispers come from behind him. Hineni feels sweat starting to bead on his skin, on the unscarred parts of it that are still capable of forming any.

 

“Hey, isn’t he that guy…?” the voice trails off as they whisper into their friend’s ear.

 

Two hands hit against the table and they jump up, their chair scooting back. “Wait, really?!” asks the other person in surprise.

 

“I always thought he might be a vampire!”

 

“Maybe he is?”

 

“What god chose him?” There is a dull thud. “Ow!”

 

“Quiet!” hisses a voice next to them, sounding very worried that the wrong person might hear this insinuation.

 

Hineni freezes, not turning around to address the crowd. He stands there, sweat runs down all over his cold, clammy, stiff body. His hands are locked firmly on top of the counter. His eyes are locked on it as well, wide in terror. He wants to leave. He wants to turn around, walk straight to the door and leave.

 

But he can’t.

 

He’s frozen in place once again. He wants to lift his feet, but they feel stuck, as if his soles were glued to the floor. He wants to jump over the counter and hide behind it, but he can’t, his arms won’t move. The only thing he can force himself to do is breathe and even that is far more troublesome than it ought to be.

 

A hand suddenly grabs his good one, breaking the spell as the man across the counter vigorously shakes it, together with the rest of his entire arm, exclaiming what an honor it is. But Hineni doesn’t really get much of his dialogue, he’s too busy feeling the blood rushing through his brain and back into his icy-cold fingertips. His heart thrashes in his chest. The inevitable scooting of benches being pushed away and of boots rising up comes to his ears as several people from the crowd make their way towards him.

 

“An owl-god? I’ve never heard of that,” says some curious woman.

 

“Do you think they’re powerful?” asks another voice.

 

Some groans, sounding unsure. “Maybe it’s some offshoot of the forest-god?”

 

Excited whispers come in response to that proposition. “I bet they’re really smart! Owls are smart, right?”

 

“I bet for a caster, it’d be a great god to follow!”

 

But all of their words and their prodding gets drowned out, as he stares in unblinking parallelization across the counter. The touching of his body, of people examining the sword or the window all vanishes away out of his perceptions as all he feels and hears is the beating of his heart. It’s faster now. Stronger. It strikes in his chest. Once. Twice. Thr-

 

“Who are you?” asks a voice at his side.

 

Hineni’s eyes go wide and his shaking head turns to look down at the small, blue-robed caster standing next to him, tugging on his sleeve. Her face is young, her eyes curious and excited like all of those of the many other people around him. All of them want something from him. Information. Connections. A job. Requests to become fellow worshipers. Banter.

 

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It’s too much.

 

People are pulling on him, trying to get him to their table to drink with them. “Huh? Mister?” she asks again. “Who are you?” His eyes go even wider as he stares at her, they burn from dryness. He hasn’t blinked once. “Huh?” His body shakes. She’s going to say the word. She’s going to say it again. She's going to say it again. His eyes open as wide as they can go, as they burn from the growing irritation.

 

“Who?” she asks a third time.

 

Hineni breaks. “EXCUSE ME!” yells the man and rushes away from the crowd, pushing his way out of the guild and sprinting out into the night, ignoring any calls that come after him, leaving both the sword and the money behind as he runs through the city, back to his house as fast as he can and with every step he takes, the shadows move alongside him. The wind he hears in his ears is not just that born of his own momentum, rather there is another source, some cold, whispering night-breeze.

 

His paranoid eyes dart left and right, looking into every crevice and darkened window that lines the road which he runs down as fast as he can, gasping and heaving for every breath of air that he can draw into his mouth through the fabric of his scarf. Starlight accompanies him as one of the lone sources of light out this late at night, save for the rare firefly glow of a still illuminated window.

 

But even with this sparse, poor light, he can see it in every shadow. In every dark corner that he runs, in every open, lightless window, perched on every roof, is the owl.

 

No matter where he turns his head, the owl is there and it watches him.

 

Hineni tears his keys out of his pocket, jams them into the door and barges inside, slamming it tightly shut behind himself, before falling down with his back against it, his chest heaving, his eyes wet. Clutching the top of his hat, pulling his knees in, Hineni sits there, trying to calm back down. But the faint, lingering smell of fire, which is always present here since then, does nothing to alleviate his panic.

 

There is no solace to be found however, in his moment of silence, nor any resolve for his unease. The quiet that he had expected to find in his home is broken by a quiet laugh. His shaking eyes trace lines over the gaps between the floorboards as they rise upwards.

 

“Hineni! Hineni! Hineni!” calls the voice of the owl-creature. But Hineni doesn’t look up further towards the source, he continues staring down at the floor beneath him, his fingers clenching the hat tighter, pressing through the fabric and down into his skull. It’s too much. It’s too much. The voice calls out around him and he hears the ruffling of feathers as the entity floats in a half circle before him, calling his name over and over and over.

 

But he never responds, keeping his eyes locked onto the floorboards.

 

Something slides into his downward locked vision.

 

His vision, focused on the ground beneath himself, has no choice but to fall onto the creature that has slid down on its back, sliding into his sparse field of view head-first, resting just between his boots. Hineni stares fearfully at the large, yellow eyes staring his way from just beneath his own face, shining out of the hood up towards him. Their unnatural glow is likely the brightest thing in the room. It stares up at him curiously. He can smell the creature, the smells of its body are overpowered by scents that carry notes of forest-wood and soft flowers, the conjoined odor of which is out of place with the overwhelmed feelings that he is feeling right now.

 

“Hi- ne- ni?” asks the owl-god.

 

“Who are you?” asks Hineni, staring with wide eyes that still haven’t blinked once at the thing beneath him. It tilts its head, which is resting on the floor between his two boots, instinctively from side to side, the back of its hood rubbing over the wooden floorboards. He feels it bumping into his left boot.

 

“Whooo~” coos the owl-creature softly, tilting its head back the other way.

 

Hineni’s eyes shake. “WHO ARE YOU?!” he yells, trying to grab it.

 

There is a ruffle of feathers and Hineni instinctively covers his face to shield it. Looking down a moment later, he sees that the creature has vanished, disappearing from in between his feet. Hineni finally rises up, looking around the room fearfully. He stands there in the darkness, searching for any shadow that moves, for any displaced air that might give a hint to the presence of the creature.

 

But he receives nothing, save for a loud, angry, hissing sound.

 

Hineni looks upwards towards the rafters above the hall, staring at the darkened silhouette of the creature, sitting there high above him in the shadows and glaring down at him with two, wide, giant, yellow eyes. It twists its head around into a full tilt, first one way, then the other. Its body is pulled together tightly and it sits stiff, tall and rigid.

 

The two of them stare at each other for a while, both of their sets of eyes wide, unsure and paranoid.

 

“He is scary!” hoots the thing, sounding deeply offended and narrowing its eyes. It leans down from the rafters, bending its body forward as it glares at him, as it reads his body in anticipation of an awaited attack. “…He is scared,” it says, its narrowed eyes going wide again in realization. It vanishes from the rafters in an instant, together with a flurry of feathers. Hineni stares around the room, his hands at his side, as if prepared for an attack. His body is tense. “Who~?” Movement circles all around him, Hineni doesn’t know which way to look. It’s fast. Even in this indoor space, he can’t find it.

 

“Hi- ne- ni,” says a voice from besides him. He turns around and looks at the owl-person sitting on the edge of the receptionist’s counter, its legs dangling off the edge as it swings them. “He won’t be hurt. He is safe. He- ne- ni,” says the entity. “We are,” it says, pointing at him and then at itself. “Safe.”

 

“Who are you?” asks Hineni, stepping forward towards the thing that just sits there, dangling its legs, seemingly having come to the conclusion that it doesn’t need to be afraid of him. “What do you want?”

 

It tilts its head.

 

“Who~ has Hineni visited?” it asks. “Ob -”

 

“Who~ has Hineni exchanged three gifts with?” it asks. The creature grabs its hood. “Scu -“

 

“Who~ has followed Hineni’s call?” it asks. “- Ra!” it proclaims, dropping its hood to reveal its sharp, bony humanish face. It pulls its taloned legs up, squatting on the counter and tilting its head. “I want power.”

 

“Huh?”

 

It tilts its head to the side, staring at him with its haunting eyes. “Obscura wants power,” it explains, vanishing once more with speed that he is unable to follow. A voice comes from just behind him, between him and the door. “And Hineni will help,” it says. He gets the feeling that this statement isn’t a suggestion or a realization from the creature, but rather, a command. He feels two hands, adorned with thin human fingers that have long, sharp talons, touch the sides of his stomach from behind.

 

“Why should I?” he asks, finding a surprising amount of sudden bravery to even bring up the obvious question.

 

The fingers run around him entirely, locking together on the front of his stomach as the thing clutches him from behind. He looks down at the razor sharp talons, pressing lightly into the fabric of his coat, just above his stomach. They could tear through it in a second, if the creature were so inclined. “Because Hineni wants,” hoots Obscura, lifting a finger. Hineni’s eyes follow its direction, towards the booth and the window where he has sat alone for so many days. “- and Obscura will give.”

 

 

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