Balthas sat on his front porch skimming over the letter his sister had sent him a few days ago, wondering just how much of the truth about her daughter who was staying with him, he could successfully white wash. His eyes drifted over the lawn to the flowers bordering the road and from the bees and butterflies to the stick figure of an Asmodian, haltingly making his way up the street. Though he had only met the young male once, Raven had made an impression on the old warrior. He started to rise from his chair and call out to him, but held his tongue choosing instead to silently observe. He set the letter he was holding aside as the young assassin went to lean heavily against a tree, wiping his brow. The retired Templar had a pretty good idea where the assassin was headed when he saw the cleric appear at the top of the hill only to turn around and go back the way he had come. Balthas pondered what he had seen a moment and then testing a hunch, he hailed Raven in the thunderous voice of a drill sergeant. Sighing inwardly as the brittle looking Asmodian reacted with the textbook exaggerated startle response of one suffering from an acute stress disorder .
"Headed to the clinic are we?" Balthas inquired in a much more normal tone of voice as he left his porch and walked toward Raven. "Be a good lad and help an old soldier up that cruel hill before us. These poor old wings of mine ache to much this time of the day for me to fly." The hyperalert assassin approached him warily scanning every inch of his person as well as the terrain with practiced rapidity. The wily templar leaned on Raven's supportive arm when it was offered. His fingers brushing over the flutter of an elevated pulse. Balthas would have probed his escort with a number of explorative questions, but neither of them retained enough breath at the crest of the climb to engage in conversation. So in silence they made their way to the clinic with the alacrity of a pair of lobnite.
Already late for his appointment, Raven barely had time to offer Balthas a proper parting before he was swept away by a muttering cleric. Unperturbed by the briskness of Raven's departure, the templar made his way to the head cleric's office. Her door was open, as it usually was and she sat behind her desk reading a book, as he usually found her.
"Knock, knock?" he said holding two steaming mugs of coffee he had picked up from the clinic breakroom.
"Balthas, to what do we own the pleasure of your company?" The tiny cleric asked looking at him from over her reading glasses. " I don't have any patients that require your services at the moment. You know I would send them down if I did." She said putting aside her book. "Is you leg bothering you? That wing of yours? I do recall this time of year seems to aggravate those old injuries of your. Need me to write you a prescription?" She rattled off as she fished a pad out from under a pile of clutter and started scribbling across it before he even had time to open his mouth.
"Actually, I came to ask you about the new arrival from Pandae." The templar inquired nonchalantly.
"New arrival? From Pandae?" Gaynor pondered, tapping the pen against her chin. " Oh, Raven!" She exclaimed. "Thin, pale, hair to match his name? That the one?"
"Yes, Raven." Balthas agreed.
"Bally, Bally, Bally." She scolded. " You know I can't talk about patients. Especially active duty military ones." She said loudly as she leaned over her desk beckoning him closer with a finger. "This Raven is a curious one. I've not seen so many thick black lines blotting out information in a medical history for quite a long time. Not since You Know Who." She said placing special emphasis on the last three words. "Strikingly similar injuries as well. This one, however, seems of special interest to the Fang's leadership. His medical treatment here arraigned by Kvasir himself and signed by the Governor of Pandae. Signed mind you not stamped." She whispered conspiratorially as she slid a black folder with the emblem of Fenris' Fang embossed on it's cover toward him. Leaning back in his chair, he flipped thru the pages of the file. True to her statement, the records within were heavily redacted. When he got to the most recent entries, he could not help but inhale sharply, his brow furrowing.
" I know." Gaynor commiserated. "So, why the interest in our little assassin? Is there something I should know?"
"No, no. My niece and I happened across him the other day while out for a stroll. Peaked my curiosity to see one of his ilk here in our Sarpan." Balthas said taking note that Merrill was Raven's acting Cleric not Gaynor herself.
"Ah, I see. Did your visiting ward take a shine this brooding young male in uniform with those evil looking daggers strapped to his back?" She said with a shiver. "Girls her age do seem hopelessly attracted to his type. Fear not though, I daresay he'll not be darkening our shores for very long. His wounds were mostly healed by the time he arrived here. Aside from the infection that had settled in them and his low weight there wasn't anything seriously wrong with him. I handed him off to Merrill."
"I see." Balthas said. "Well, thank you for the...perscription." He said with a wink, pocketing the slip of paper and sliding the black folder back across the desk.
"Any time, Bally." Gaynor said affectionately as she returned to her book.
Balthas stopped by the clinic breakroom under the pretense of washing up his coffee mug. After rinsing out the mug and drying his hands, he took out one of his calling cards. On the back he wrote: 'Dinner. Tonight!' and placed the card prominently inside Merrill's locker.