It was the tenth year of the thirteenth century, and Lieutenant Cooper hadn’t finished packing. Quick hands scrambled over shoddy belongings and canvas bags. Silver moonlight cut through the Temple barracks, barely illuminating the sleeping mounds that lay in their bunks. Cooper’s breath fogged the air. Her gentle swearing cut through the silence as she tied her bag, and with one final look at the younglings she had failed; she fled into the darkness.

She padded down marble hallways, daring not to wear her boots no matter the chill that ate her soles. She was ice, and this was fine. Wouldn’t be too long until she entered the Great Hall, and then with one final door, she’d be free.

Rustling paper broke her momentum. Silently she thanked whatever architect that designed the building, pressing her body up against a pillar. A Silent Brother shambled by, flicking through their book of faith. Cooper held her breath. She never did like the Silent. Barely alive and yet not allowed to die, their tongues cut and brains scrambled. That was absolutely where she’d end up if she was ever caught.

A low sigh escaped her lips. Finally alone again. She slipped out from behind the pillar and into a hard wall of darkness.

“What brings you out here in the dead of night, little cub?” said a voice, one she was sure she knew. Perhaps from a dream or a distant memory. She yelped and dropped her bag with a clank. The owner of the voice appeared as if a veil had dropped and he became visible once more. Rutherford. Captain Rutherford of the eighth squadron. The man who had raised Cooper into her teen years before swiftly leaving without a trace.

“Omera, it’s just you,” she sighed, heart racing regardless. “Let me pass and you’ll never have to deal with me again. Promise.”

“Now, you and I both know that’s not how this works.”

Of course, it wasn’t. The man was a Spectre now, an esteemed shadow knight of the Temple cloaked in duty. His role as father/brother figure had ceased many years prior with a swift disappearance and Cooper’s own rise to power. She could no longer trust him. He was just another pawn for the slaughter.

“Please, Godfrey, don’t turn me in,” she begged, voice rough and throat tight, using his true name for once in her life, “they’ll only make me Silent. I can’t - I can’t live like that.”

Rutherford smiled, though it may have been a grimace. It was hard to tell with the way his lip had been cut and sewn in such a way that it pulled back in an exaggerated sneer. He was handsome once, at least that is what the priests loved to say. Cooper couldn’t care less. He eyed her carefully with bloodshot brown eyes, looking at her from head to toe. The lieutenant’s heart might have stopped right there and then, and she’d be none the wiser. His eyes caught on her chest. No, not her chest - what hung above. A gold ring attached to a simple leather chain. Ah. The two stared at each other like hunter and prey, eyes locked and unblinking. Cooper wished she was six feet under if only to avoid the new round of questions that would surely follow.

But none did.

Rutherford gave a sharp nod, face steel and emotions locked.

“Right,” he said swiftly. She noted that he didn’t look her in the eyes this time, for whatever reason that may be. “I’ll walk you back to your bunk. We’ll speak of this in the morning.”

There was no room to writhe out of it. It was no suggestion, but a thinly veiled order. He gently pushed her with one hand on her upper back when she hesitated, guiding her. Her stomach was a bag of rocks, heavy and tumbling. This was surely her death sentence. She didn’t want to be a Silent Sibling. She wanted to be free.

Rutherford stayed close by her side until she was returned to the draughty room and scratchy blankets. She was sure he was still there, though her eyes were screwed shut, and he likely wouldn’t leave that night.

And he didn’t.

Cooper woke from a fitful rest to him standing over her bed. She nearly crawled out of her own skin, anything to escape the conversation that had to happen.

“You’re needed in the Hall,” he said curtly and with a stiff nod, turning away as if on a mechanised schedule.

“No, wait,” she called after him, scrambling out of bed. She winced as her bare feet touched the cold floor yet again but she refused to show weakness, “tell me what’s happening.”

“You don’t have authority over-”

“Fuck you, answer the question. Did you dob me in?”

“I did what I had to.”

Cooper’s heart sunk to her stomach. Not that she was surprised, he was hardly the same man that raised her. Not any more. More shadow than person, a broken man haphazardly stitched back together emotionally and physically. The perfect Spectre.

“Can I at least say my goodbyes?” she asked, voice quiet. Defeated. “You know, to the younglings.”

Rutherford gave an uncharacteristic shrug, closer to the man he once was than the thing that stood before her now. “I don’t know, can you?”

Cooper might have laughed at that once.

“If it helps, cub, I don’t think they’re going to hurt you. I think Hawkins may have pulled some strings for you.”

Hawkins absolutely didn’t and wouldn’t pull strings for her. Hawkins was a rampant bitch who thrived off of her misery. She didn’t speak her mind, keeping her words locked behind the prison of gritted teeth and clenched muscles. Rutherford seemed to take her silence as compliance, nodding once more and leaving her to get ready.

The barracks awoke with steady chatter. The bunks were packed so tightly that it was near impossible to hear yourself think, not that Cooper ever had an original thought in her life. The noise did little to still her quaking stomach. She jumped to her feet, eager to leave before she had to look into the big eyes and squishy faces of the younglings in her care.

She returned to Rutherford’s side, past the large double doors and deep in the shadows of the hallway where the light dare not touch. It was as if Rutherford fended away anything light and warm, keeping a chill in the air around him.

Her feet clacked against the floor, the only true noise in the near-empty halls - Rutherford moved as silent as the shade he had become. Cooper wasn’t sure how much of a man he was any more. She hadn’t once seen him in the food hall in previous years.

“What’s going on?” she asked hastily, her body already prepared to flee at the slightest speck of danger.

“You know I can’t answer that,” Rutherford barely spared her a glance.

Cooper’s mind raced with the possibilities. “They’re actually going to do it, aren’t they? I’m going to be Silent.”

Rutherford sighed and slowed only marginally. He shot her an apologetic smile and ushered her through the grand oak doors. Never the best sign.

The Great Hall was empty but for the two priests that stood near the wooden altar. One stood behind a large wooden chair that seemed to have been borrowed from High Priest Nyxus himself. It wasn’t one she was overly familiar with, she had never had many reasons to speak to the head of the Temple. She could count on one hand how many times they’ve met, and most of those had been when she was far younger. He hadn’t even been the one to reprimand her recent actions, leaving that to the lower priests.

“Is this a fucking intervention?” she spat, voice a near growl. Rutherford only led her towards the two priests, ushering her to sit in the chair and leaving her with a nod. She gripped the armrests tightly, fingernails digging into the wood. She ground her teeth, glaring after the man.

Instantaneously, the priest began clipping her hair with scissors, back to the standard that was expected of her. Her stomach churned with sickness and hate. She had let her hair grow purposely over the past year when her rebellion truly began. It had barely hung past her jawbone, or it did before it fell to the ground in thick, haphazard chunks. Cooper could only listen to the stubborn snip snip snip as more and more of her hair tumbled to the ground, some catching and falling on the hard leather of the seat. Her eyes felt hot as she gripped the chair to hold herself from lashing out.

She felt as if she was the scrawny, underfed whelp that had to be dragged kicking and screaming into the Temple, not the armour-clad rectangle of a woman that she had grown up to be. She grit her teeth. If her escape had worked, she wouldn’t have been here. Wouldn’t even have been in Kingshill - damn her training, she’d be halfway to Demus by now without a thought of the Temple or the Academy left on her mind. She would have been with her fiancée, perhaps even married by now. What a life that would have been.

And of course, there was Esmeray - an old hag of a woman, older than even Nyxus himself. So old, that her face was far more reminiscent of a walnut with eyes painted on. She grabbed one of Cooper’s gauntlet covered hands, ripping the metal obstruction from her body and tossing it to the marble floor. The old woman brandished a knife with glee, readying it at the young Templar’s fingertips. Cooper went to pull her hand back, body jerking, scissors stabbing into the side of her throat. She could feel the cut threatening to drip already. She let out a hiss, her hand being slapped back down onto the armrest before she had the chance to pull away. Her hand was clamped tightly underneath Esmeray’s, and she despised how much she longed for what passed as physical contact between the Temple’s walls. Abhorrent, uncomfortable, yet familiar. She would never go so far as to say it was comforting.

Esmeray tutted at her, picking up her discarded chalice and readying her knife once more. She sliced Cooper’s finger as if it were the easiest thing in the world, and it damn well might have been for the old woman. She had done it for years, even made the first incision on Cooper and collected that first drop of blood herself. The old crone was even responsible for the scarring on her back that claimed her as Temple property. Cooper wished she could see Esmeray as a type of grandmother figure, but the far older woman was as ill-natured as they came. There was no family within the Temple. Only Priests and Templars. It had become so normal that Cooper wasn’t sure if she longed for it any more.

Her blood flowed down into the chalice, collecting into the hollow of its stem. The round node quickly filling until Esmeray was satisfied, pulling the chalice away and letting Cooper drip over the floor. She tutted again, pulling the node from its place and firmly setting a small cork within its opening.

“You’re done,” she said in her scratchy voice, much like nails on a chalkboard but ten times worse, “you may go.”

“What? No rituals?” said Cooper, voice marked with bitterness. She stood with no hesitation and sucked the bloody finger into her mouth in an attempt to stop the bleeding. The taste of iron filled her senses, but it wasn’t enough to stop her from running her tongue over the thin cut. She grimaced at the shooting pain, finally relinquishing her finger to the cool Temple air. It stung even more. “I’m rather disappointed, truth be told.”

Esmeray pointed her knife at Cooper, waving it on unsteady arms. A crude little thing, a chipped iron triangle connected to a wooden handle darkened with years of sweat.

“Watch your tongue, Cub, or I’ll have the mind to make you Silent.”

“And wouldn’t that be a shame for everyone? I think you’d miss me too much.” Cooper smirked as Esmeray rolled her eyes, cleaning her crappy knife on her purple priest shawl darkened and eaten away with age. “Oh you would, wouldn’t you?”

“Quiet, Cub, that’s your last warning.”

“You’ve gone soft in your older age,” remarked Cooper with a wide imitation of a self-satisfied smile, though not really feeling it. She knew better than that. “Never used to give warnings. Used to just beat the shit out of me for fun.”

Cooper swiftly ducked and missed the slap that came, dodging under the hag’s arm and shuffling out of the way.

“I’ll be sure to remember you!” she hollered, as brash as she could muster. It was only fair for the twelve years of service they had put her through, even if she at most was an annoyance. She waved off the crone, walking backwards out of the door, waving at one of the women who had made her life hell.

The Temple grounds were alive with the sound of metal clashing against metal. The uncomfortably muscular builds of Templars fought against each other, barely holding back. They were raised to die, and their fighting reflected that. Each move was made for power, magic - not defence, leaving large gaps where they could easily be hit and taken down. Cooper couldn’t judge them too harshly; she was the same after all. Not that she had magic - none that could be exploited by the Temple, at least. They still had their ways of keeping her in line, and whatever source they found in her was enough to keep her alive and mostly out of physical harm.

“Cooper!” yelled a voice she knew all too well, breaking what little peace there was. The rampant bitch herself, Mycah Hawkins, Captain of the twelfth squadron. “Where’d you think you’re going?”

“Out, clearly,” Cooper rolled her eyes, throwing her Captain an easy smile, “what do you want, Captain?”

“I guess that you weren’t notified?” asked Mycah, although it wasn’t really a question. A smug remark from the woman who took Cooper’s title. “What am I saying! Of course, you weren’t. You’re a fuck up at best.”

“You forgot wildly inconsiderate and talks out their ass. Do you have a point, or are you going to let me go?”

Hawkins shrugged, crossing her arms over her chest. Cooper groaned.

“I literally could not care less about you, Hawkins.”

“We’ve been selected by the Queen to run a search party.”

Cooper wetted her lips, letting herself mull over the words. “Okay, one; our squadron’s mostly younglings, two, a search party?”

“The Queen asked us, not the Squadron,” Mycah explained slowly, using her hands to emphasise her words as if explaining the situation to a toddler, not that Cooper asked or cared. “Us, as in you and me, have been selected to lead a search party to find the Queen’s missing son.

“Sounds like Temple propaganda.”

“You’re Temple propaganda.”

Cooper clicked her tongue, inclining her head to one side. Well, she wasn’t wrong. She had many tattoos and scars in the shape of the Temple’s sigil, a process that Hawkins had somehow skipped out on. The new Captain had skipped out on much of the Temple’s traditions; like the ever-so-fun Death Games, the normal things. Hawkins sighed, pulling out a paper from her pocket, slowly unravelling its folds and giving it to Cooper.

“You know I don’t read that good,” said Cooper, skimming it regardless before handing it back. “This isn’t even Syi Dorian, what the hell?”

“Shaamali, yes,” nodded Hawkins, (“You don’t even speak Shaamali-” Cooper butted in, to no avail) “look at the stamp. That’s the important thing here.”

Cooper did as she was told, staring down into the shiny red wax. The image was smudged, but it was obvious enough to show the dove of house Fernsby. The words that surrounded it were barely existent, but Cooper knew what they were. Affo, Medi, Yo. Peace, Life, Prosper. The words that branded Mabristan under their family’s rule. Ironic, really, that it was their family that started a war that lasted forty years, only ending a few years after Cooper first came to the country.

“We’re leaving at the end of the week,” stated Hawkins, her expression almost softening to her barely hidden excitement. “Don’t fuck this up for me.”

Cooper rolled her eyes, muttering words of exasperation.

So much for her escape plan.