Moros woke up with a start, coughing up blood in a now empty baptism pit. He didn't even give himself time to try and process what had happened. The first thought in his mind was Laura.
He tried standing up, but found he was still too weak to hold his own weight.
'I have to get out of here,' he thought, clawing at the pit's earthen floor.
And then the memory of his dream flooded back into his mind. 'Right, my powers. I had a dream, that means I got something right?'
A distant yet familiar voice broke his train of thought.
"It is daytime. You have been appointed as a Son of Shadows."
Moros looked around the room, his strength slowly coming back to him. "Who said that?"
"Your virtue is weakened by the sun's light. Yet a shadow is strongest at the sun's summit."
Moros slowly picked himself up. "Virtue weakened? Shadows strongest at the sun's summit? What are you talking about? Who are you?"
No one responded. Instead, a tattoo appeared on his left wrist; the symbol of a cresent moon.
It felt cold, like a piece of metal was being held against his skin. He ran a finger over it, brows furrowed.
'A spiritual rite?'
Just then, a wave of cold pressure shot up from right beneath him. It felt like he'd just dived into ice cold deep waters.
By the time it subsided, a bronze pistol lay in his left hand, and the tattoo that had been there only a moment ago had dissappeared.
He stared at it with a determined look. 'A fire armament,' he thought. One of the more rare spiritual rites one could obtain. From memory, only a single named champion used fire arms.
'A shame. With this, I could've made something of a name for myself within the church,' he realized. But going against the church was a small price to pay for saving his sister.
He climbed out of the pit, pistol in hand and rushed for the doors.
*
Moros stalked the corridor right outside the testing chambers, holding his ears to each door in an attempt to find the one his sister was being held in.
'She has to be in one of these rooms. I didn't see any inquisitors in the church, they're probably going to hold her until one of them arrives from the city centre,' he realized, moving on to the next door.
He heard someone speaking beyond it, however there was no shouting or struggle to indicate they were holding a heretic inside. But just as he was about to leave, he heard a familiar voice.
'Laura.'
As he was about to open the door, he suddenly stopped, looking down at his pistol.
'What exactly is my plan anyway?'
From the looks of it, his spiritual weapon was a low grade flintlock. That meant it didn't even have the rapid fire mechanic that steam powered pistols had. On top of that, he had ever even used one before.
How was he supposed to take on full fledged apostles like this?
He shook his head.
'It's not like i have a choice. What am I going to do? Just let them take her?'
In the end he decided that he atleast needed to see how the weapon functioned before attempting anything.
So he held up the pistol, pointing it down the hallway towards the bronze doors that led out into the waiting room.
'Just pull the trigger, right?' he thought, before squeezing the trigger.
In that moment, he could've sworn he saw the shadows cast by the fire torches shiver. An instant later, the hammer of the pistol sent out a spark as it snapped down. Blasting a small bolt of fire and smoke down the hallway.
It was suprisingly slow. Nothing like what he had seen on the tele-visual boxes.
Once the fire bolt hit its mark, several inches away from where he had actually been aiming, it left a small dent in the bronze doors.
'This won't even out a debt in holy armor,' he realized.
'Maybe I'm supposed to activate some sort of technique? Or say a prayer like those knights on T..'
A scream, interrupted his thinking. It came from bring the door.
"Laura!"
Without a second thought, he burst through, already pointing his pistol at the nun inside.
The room was identical to the testing chamber he had just been in. Wooden flooring and ceiling. And a pit filled with blood at its centre.
"What's going on here?" The nun asked, hands dyed crimson with blood.
"Moros?"
It was Laura, and she was... alright?
"What are you doing here?"
She was naked, and almost completely submerged within the baptism pit. A book was floating right above her, with streams of radiant green light linking it to the nun's hands.
"Stand back!" A voice shouted from behind him.
A group of sisters were walking past the door, surrounding a boy covered in blackened blood.
"John?"
Everything began to click into place. Laura wasn't the heretic they'd discovered. Atleast not yet anyway. It was John.
Moros began shaking his head. He'd been so nervous about this, he had just jumped to conclusions.
"A heretic," the nun whispered as she got a glimpse of John being escorted past the hallway, restrained in glowing magical chains and gold pentagrams.
"I thought..." Moros began. He'd just screwed up big time. If the nun reported this, they could have him executed for pointing a weapon at her.
"Child," the nun whispered, her attention moving from the commotion outside to Moros and then below her to Laura; who was still confused about what was going on.
"By the lord, you're twins," the nun mumured, right as her eyes lit up, as if understandung something.
"Did you hear about the heretic and think to come make see of your sister was safe?"
Moros stared at the sister wide-eyed as she walked over to comfort him.
'What?'
"Child, you should let the adults take care of this," she said caressing his hair like a mother would. "Still, you're a brave one. You'll make a fine apostle. "
"Huh?!"
"But you really should not use your spiritual rite without proper training, it drains your virtue faster than you..."
The rest of her words trickled into his ears like muffled whispers as he fell to his knees. He felt... weak, drained. As the world dimmed, the last thing he saw was Laura laughing.
"You idiot," she mouthed, right as everything went black.
*