Interlude Three - An Acolyte who Listens

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Being an acolyte of Galen was hard work. It was also rewarding.

Eight-Three-Eleven got to travel across the entire city. She met with people low and high, respected by both, and most of all, she carried the good news of Galen’s mercy to anyone who would listen.

That ended up being very few people.

Galen was… perhaps not as attractive as some other gods. His teachings weren’t about lifting oneself up through hard work, and he didn’t whisper in the ears of inventors and engineers about great machines and incredible contraptions.

His message was about peace and mercy, about standing firm for what was right in order to help others, and about giving up on the chains that bound you.

It was a message that resonated with Eight-Three-Eleven ever since she was a young girl in one of Galen’s orphanages. She couldn’t pass up the opportunity to become an acolyte, though she didn’t know at the time how much work it would be.

She counted herself lucky each day. She moved from place to place across City Nineteen, always on the lookout for people that needed help, and always finding plenty.

There was more to Galen than just mercy though. Galen kept an ear to the ground, and his eyes open. It was a secret that she’d only been introduced to when first becoming an acolyte. Galen was the god of whispers and rumours as much as he was the god of mercy.

It fit, in a way, though Eight-Three-Eleven was only just starting to be introduced to the mysteries of her lord.

For now, she was the one running around, helping where she could, and listening, to complaints, to rumours, to the homeless as they spoke of tiny changes and factory workers that mentioned things in passing that might, maybe, be part of a puzzle she didn’t have the distance to see.

Today was no different. More rumour mongering and helping where she could. The only strange story that was going around was about the Gremlins. A band of street toughs who were only unique because a few of their members were... part of a social strata not usually found in the slums.

Just boys from the academy, failing to mind their own business while hanging out with street rats. Not too uncommon, actually.

The Gremlins were on the outs though. Someone had poisoned the crew. She couldn’t tell if the rumours that half of them were dead were true or not. Probably an exaggeration. With the crew weakened another had pushed their way in. That was the way of the slums.

From what she’d heard, a few of the more clever members of the Gremlins had joined Ratesco’s gang. That could mean trouble. The clergy would want to know about it.

In the meantime, she had been given an interesting request by one of her acquaintances in the slums, a homeless woman called Debra who was always open for a quick chat between jobs and who had a gift for ferreting out interesting misdeeds and gossip.

A girl needed help. A little farmer girl, who had started her own farm right in the slums.

Mushrooms, of the edible sort, and the poisonous.

Eight-Three-Eleven didn’t have the gift for putting together puzzle pieces that her mentor had, but even she could fit a square peg into a round hole. Or maybe this peg was shaped like a mushroom.

In either case, this might prove interesting. And interesting things needed reporting, needed surveilling, and needed to be tended to so that they could grow to help their community.

Galen provided mercy, but he provided help too.

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