A thin rain was falling, not nearly enough to create any noticable amount of wetness in clothes but enough to feel it on your skin, or scales in Fire's case. Fire was running down the cobbled road leading to the Prophet's hill. He was still wearing his black firesteel armor, save for the helmet, which was attached to a small hook at his waist. He had also taken a drop of the potion he had brewed before he departed to his own world, sharpened senses could never hurt when listening to the Prophet.
The road was far from empty, Fire passed several caravans and even more people going on foot, occasionally one who rode on a horse. After a solid hour of running the forest that housed the hill came into view, colossal dark oak trees denied any looks from outside. As Fire got close he could hear the raindrops drumming on the leaves pleasantly. He also heard that the Prophet had already started speaking, which was no surprise since he seemed to only rarely interrupt his sermon in order to eat or sleep.
Fire slowed down as he came close to the congregation, he didn't want to draw any more attention than his tall armored form mandated already. At this point he was a somewhat familiar face among the followers but they still gave him a large amount of space, if out of respect or fear he didn't know.
The congregation mostly consisted of humans but occasionally other creatures could be seen in the crowd, including endermen who seemingly were not affiliated with the Entity, which made sense since most other worlds had an End of their own.
The Prophet currently was again delivering various disconnected tales or wisdoms, at this point the fundamental patterns had become obvious: sleep, twilight, growth. Now the more complex patterns were a different story, Fire had started to grasp some of them but he would need to listen a bit more to be able to name them. Shadow had a much deeper understanding due to her ability to just place a projection at the hill and always hear everything the Prophet said, taking that the projection remained undisturbed. Fire looked around to see if he could spot it, after a few seconds he did, this time it had taken the form of a sparrow in the trees, only that instead of its normal colors it was black, white and red. Shadow wasn't limited by those colors naturally but she did like to mess with perceptive people.
The sermon now shifted from tales to concrete prophecies. "The losses of the past will be repeated in the future!", "The one captivated by ancient scriptures shall never be the same!", "When under the yoke of the Growing One, great strengths are unleashed.", he then stopped for a moment, as if he had just gotten a new vision, "The Forged Champion of light and darkness is near!"
The crowd broke out into murmurs, the Champion was something the Prophet talked about occasionally, seemingly it was someone from another world who would leave a lasting impact on Nexus, not alone but with several others. What surprised Fire was that the Prophet had specifically said the "Forged Champion", the Forged was another figure or perhaps an entire people that occasionally appeared in the Prophet's sermons. When Fire had asked another attendee about it he was told that the first mention of the Forged was something akin to "mortal gods have taken two kinds and forged them into a greater one". Up until now those were two completely different entities but all of a sudden they were one and the same? Granted, the same gods that forged those two kinds were also those who would send the Champion but nothing was ever said about the nature of that Champion. Something about the Forged also seemed awfully familiar to Fire…
Before he was able to finish the thought he noticed that suddenly an increasing number of people were looking at him. Just shortly before one of them spoke, Fire himself realized the implications.
"The Champion is among us!" A man dressed like a farmer screamed while pointing at Fire.
Soon many others joined in with similar cries. Fire didn't even attempt to silence or rebuff the congregation, he had enough experience with cults that he knew that it would be pointless. Instead he just stood there and thought about his best course of action. The Forged seemed to be the Mencur-Besh, Fire had suspected this much before but now it was more or less confirmed by the fact that the congregation recognized him as Forged. The one thing that was still a little obscure was that he also was the "Champion of light and darkness", sure he was a competent leader, sure he had done a lot of things that widely varied in their morality, but a Champion? Fire was quite sure that he did not fit the heroic knight-in-shining-armor archetype that prophecies of that kind entailed.
"Silence!" commanded a previously unheard voice, "Bring the Champion to me!" It was a husky and dry voice, but it sounded quite pained. It wasn't used to speaking authoritatively.
Fire started moving and the crowd parted before him, giving him even more distance than before. He reached the foot of the hill, though the front side was too steep to climb, almost like a cliff, so he went around and ascended. Meanwhile the Prophet continued his usual preaching. The origin of the voice clearly had been Steve, the guardian that was always at the Prophet's side. He met Fire a few paces down the hill and signalled that he wanted to speak to him.
Steve was a man in a tattered leather cuirass and brown cloak over a turquoise shirt. Face stubbled, perhaps shaved a few days before and not since. His eyes were bloodshot. He was jerky - his whole appearance suggested a man acutely aware of the situation but who wanted to be able to forget about it and focus on something much more important.
"So, you look enough like what he described," He was looking at Fire's armour, too preoccupied to look him in the face. "I think the other one mentioned you as well. What's your name?"
"I'm Fire, my origin lines up with the prophecy but the Champion bit is news to me."
"Yes, sorry about that." He was tapping his foot and he started looking at the tip of his boot as it moved up and down. "It's all rather sudden and inopportune, I know."
Fire said: "I honestly was looking for something that would allow me to investigate further into what exactly this world is and what the Entity had to do with it. I already returned home and came back so I'm not going anywhere anytime soon."
He rubbed his chin. "So, how much am I going to have to tell you?" A pause, but before Fire could respond he broke back in: "You know the Entity exists. You know we're in Nexus. You know the Entity had something to do with it. That it's imprisoning people at the - wait, were you involved with that breakout a few days ago? Sorry I couldn't make it, the Prophet had need of me and I'm not the best equipped for open confrontation at the present moment."
"I was not personally involved in the breakout. I was at the Tower though. I managed to earn my permission to leave through a small exchange of information with the Ender. I do know the people who started the breakout though."
"Ah, was it the General? The one with one eye if that's happened yet? Also, information exchange?"
"I explained to the Ender how they can temporarily open the tunnels to other worlds, mostly in order to get their scouts back. The methods I described are vastly inefficient and impractical though. In turn she let me look at the atlas of worlds they mapped out, there were also some other crumbs of information she let slip."
"Inefficient...?" He massaged his forehead. "By the Gods, do you even realize what you've done? The Entity has a whole team of engineers and magi working on this stuff, they're probably working on refining your 'inefficient' methods as we speak!"
Fire sighed. Context once again had proven to be important. "They already know how to establish permanent portals, what I told them allows them to get one person through an unprepared tunnel at a time, maybe two. From the talks I heard exploration has become a goal of lower importance, they have already gotten quite far out and any further out the tools they use to locate tunnels will fail since they rely on energy flow. I was talking to their head of military, not their head of science. That one was probably busy interrogating another captive." Fire said without only minimal changes in his voice despite his slight annoyance. "Besides, the conversation with the Ender and the maps I saw allowed me to travel to my home world, on the way I made some interesting discoveries, it also allowed me to bring a person of extraordinary power into Nexus who can assist us."
"Exploration? As a matter of lower importance? Interesting… and worrisome, supposing it's true. But never mind that. The Prophet never lies. I am most interested in this recruit of yours. The Prophet spoke of many others who would assist you in your mission. I've guarded him for many years and he's always been a tad vague about that. Perhaps as we learn more about these individuals, it will shed light on those parts of the prophecy."
"The one I brought with me is my sister, a powerful mage, probably even more so in Nexus since in our home world her powers are restricted by our gods." Fire paused, then pointed off in the direction of the road. "I believe we are getting company, something just teleported in… Multiple in fact… armored… advancing quickly. I better get out of sight."
With those words Fire ran down the hill and hid in a bush that allowed him to both remain hidden and get a good view over who exactly it was that just arrived, he did have a hunch. Steve was gone, the Prophet with him.
It turned out that hunch was correct, the Ender and a squadron of elite endermen had entered the clearing with the hill. Fire had no real reason to hide but it was better for him to stay under the radar for now. Without a word they spread out and began looking through the crowd, didn't take much to figure out who they were looking for, they were still hunting the escapees. As one of them drew near, Fire's heartbeat stopped, not out of fear but voluntarily in order to avoid detection, he was not spotted and the enderman moved on just when Fire felt a bit of dizziness coming on.
At this point the congregation was only a hand's breadth away from mass panic, it seemed that the Entity's minions had never been to this place before, especially not someone as important the Ender, her reputation preceded her. After another signal from her, the endermen started questioning selected members of the congregation. Speaking in the tongue understood by humans seemed difficult or at least unfamiliar for them, in slow, simple sentences they asked incessantly if anyone had seen any of the escapees. After some time, they finally found someone who had, if only briefly. Luckily the villagers they had sat in the carriage with weren't present, otherwise the others would be in serious trouble.
The Ender seemed not exactly content with this small scrap of information but it they couldn't get anything more out of the congregation, she spoke up: "Our work here is done for now. If anyone gets caught harboring or in any other way assisting the escapees there will be deaths. Information regarding their whereabouts will be handsomely rewarded."
After those words the squadron assumed formation and teleported away with more force than needed, leaving scorched grass where they stood. Fire remained in his bush until he could be absolutely sure that they had in fact not teleported to a nearby location. He then left his hiding place and returned to the hill, where he found a very worried Steve. The Prophet was back to speaking as if nothing had happened.