Chapter Four – House of Wolves
Griffin Friar
For all of his negative traits, I do have to admit that Father Cornello does have some good ones.
On second thought, I might be confusing good traits with negative traits that will hopefully get me out of these effing shackles.
But, as of this moment, I'm pretty sure I'll have to amputate my hands if I'm chained up like this any longer, because my wrists are starting to somehow go numb and bleed at the same time. If it would get me out of this room, I'd even make out with Cornello without any hesitation.
(He's not my type in the slightest, but I could close my eyes and pretend he was Gerard Way or Laverne Cox or whoever my current celebrity crush is.)
Actually, the guard who's been standing outside my cell since I got here seems more likely to go for people who look like they're twelve, given how he keeps staring at me. And if he isn't some sort of creepy pedophile and he just thinks I'll try to dig my way out with a nonexistent spoon… Then he needs help, because both my hands are freaking shackled to the wall.
Footsteps come down towards this room, and the guard heads towards the doorway.
"Brother Cray," says the visitor, who I already know is Cornello, "how is our little guest doing at the moment?"
So the guard's name is Cray? I've been trying – and failing – to figure out how long I've been in here, so I never listened to their conversations until now.
"He's fast asleep," Cray answers. "About time."
Cornello walks into the cell and pauses in his tracks. I guess he's seeing me 'asleep' for the first time since I got knocked out by Jason's explosion. (I've been keeping myself awake at all costs, not wanting to be caught off guard. The only reason I've been pretending for the last two hours is because it's the first step of my plan to get the hell out of this room.)
After he regains his composure, I hear him walk towards me again, and he nudges my arm. "My dear boy, it's time to wake up."
Initiate Phase One.
I recoil from his hand and let out an extremely high-pitched shriek, like a five-year-old girl on a school playground. (For once, I'm grateful that I'm the youngest of five, because I can literally start crying at the drop of a hat.) "I – I'm so sorry! Please don't hurt me ag–" My voice cracks, and I'm so shocked by this that I stop talking in the middle of my sentence.
"What did you just say?" Father Cornello asks, his voice practically a growl. It's the first – and probably the last – time I've ever been something close to afraid of him.
My eyes snap open. I'm blinded by the sun streaming into my face, and my eyes automatically start to well up with tears. Soon, my face is soaked, and I'm only slightly ashamed of what I'm about to be doing. I don't get the chance to say anything, because he repeats himself again, all while narrowing his already-pretty-narrow eyes. "I said, what did you just say?"
I flinch away from him when he leans forward into my face, but he grabs my chin and forces me to keep looking at him. (Oh, god, please let this work.)
"Who was it?"
I start to say something, but I choke on my words. Eventually, I manage to whisper, "It… it was Brother Cray." At this, I jerk my head out of his hand and shrink even further back against the wall. I'm crying even harder now, my face buried in my shoulder.
"What's his problem?" Brother Cray – I can tell it's him from his voice – asks. I'm guessing he'd walked into the room sometime earlier and I didn't notice him or something.
At the sound of his voice, I let out a whimper and try to wrench my arms out of the shackles. It only causes them to dig into my wrists even more. I bite my lip until I taste blood in my mouth to avoid growling at the pain.
I hear Cornello turn away from me. "Cray, do you have something that you're not telling me?"
"What?" The guard exclaims, quite loudly.
Wincing, I go to cover my ears, forgetting for a moment that I'm chained to a freaking wall. It hurts. A lot. I clench my teeth together, but a strangled sob comes out.
"Of course not," Cray continues. But he says it a bit too quickly, which is strange. Maybe he's a liar after all. "You think I'm hiding something from you?" He grabs my face, hard, forcing me to look at him in the eyes. "It's because of him, right? A prisoner. You don't even know where he came from."
It's getting hard to breathe; he's not choking me or anything, but I know he could snap my neck in less than half a second if he wanted to. "…I'm from Vermont," I mutter. I don't think either of them hears me.
With a sigh, Cornello puts his hand on Cray's shoulder. "Just look at the poor boy for a second. He's practically shaking."
"And?" Even though I can tell the guard's still pissed off, he moves his hand away from me. "It isn't my fault that he has issues with personal space."
"He told me it was you. He said your name and everything."
Cray slaps the Father's hand off of his shoulder. "You trust this guy, a boy named Phoenix, over me. Your personal second in command." It wasn't a question.
…Huh? That's not my name.
Using his benevolent voice, Father Cornello says, "I know what you did, so you might as well tell me." He's probably benevolently smiling at him. God, he needs to tone it down, there's no way it'll work.
"Okay." Cray swallows, seeming to be weighing the odds. "I've been skimming from the top of the cash box. But that's it, I swear."
Cornello takes a step back, right onto my foot. I yelp loudly, narrowly avoiding saying what I'm thinking. "You told me that was Pelion. What else are you hiding?"
"…I told you, that's it. Really," he adds after a moment of complete silence passes. "Whatever Phoenix said to you, it's a lie. You know me, I'm not a – a…" He seems to be having quite some trouble finding the right word.
My name's Griffin. Griffin. It's not that hard to remember.
The priest starts walking towards the door, his long swishy robe thing swishing behind him. He turns around for a moment and asks, "Why don't you come with me, and I'll decide for myself whether or not you're lying."
Glaring straight at me before nodding, Cray follows Cornello out of the prison.
As soon as they both go up the stairs, I stop crying and acting like a person who's scared of their own shadow. I lean against the wall, my breath coming too heavy for my likings. "He couldn't just let me out of here before they went to have their special little talk, could he? No, of course not."
About half an hour later, Cornello comes back, this time alone, shaking his head and mumbling something about asparagus. (Huh.) "Son," he says once he reaches me, "Do you want to join the order of Leto? There's now a place for you among the top-ranking members, if you want."
I slowly look up at him, tears forming again in my eyes. (Someday, this is going to bite me in the ass, I know it.) "You… You really mean it?"
He stares at me for a minute, probably trying to judge if I'm being genuine or not. Eventually, he says, "Of course, my dear boy. God Leto accepts everyone, does he not? All of the order of Leto started out as nonbelievers."
Wait, wouldn't the cultists have engrained this stupid religion into their kids from the time they were born?
"But – the kids?" I say. He looks at me blankly and raises his nearly-nonexistent eyebrows, not understanding what I'm trying to say. "Wouldn't you raise the kids to follow Letoism?"
At last, Cornello shakes his head. "Letoism is a fairly new religion; it's only a few months old."
But that doesn't quite explain why everyone follows him like he's their god. If this whole thing started a few months ago, wouldn't they still be apprehensive about following him around like idiotic sheep?
"So, Griffin," he says in that all-knowing voice of his, and I look up at the mention of my name. "You agree to join the order of Leto, then?" I nod. "Good, because I have a special job just for you."
That… doesn't sound weird at all.
"Can I just get out of these cuffs first?" I ask, somewhat apprehensively. "They're, um, they're kinda starting to hurt." They started to hurt the very second I woke up to find myself chained up, but I'm not going to tell him that. After all, he's going to figure that out for himself once he finally manages to pull the key from his robe pockets.
Once he unlocks the first – it falls to the end of its reach, about three feet from the ground – he moves onto the next one without stopping. It's only when he repeats the process and puts the key back in his pocket that he notices my arms only moved about half of an inch.
His gaze narrows as he clamps his hand down hard one of my wrists, moving it from side to side like he's a doctor or something.
When he yanks it upwards, I let out a strangled yelp. I narrowly stop myself from letting out a very un-believer-like stream of words, if only because I need him to think that my conversion into Letoism is genuine.
And I'm not quite sure how he'd react to what I'm thinking right now. He might faint like an old lady. (I'd pay to see that.)
"Probably broken," he mutters under his breath, turning to my left hand. "Eh, I'd say this one is just fractured. How'd it get to be so bad?"
I would move my arms, but they hurt way too much to do anything at the moment. "Uh. I was trying to get out," I say bluntly before I lose my nerve, "I might have tried too hard, now that I think about it."
He rolls his eyes, right as his other hand – the one with the weird-looking ring – grabs my wrist. Everything starts glowing bright red, and I can only stare at him, wide-eyed, as I feel my bones and whatever else had snapped out of place begin to rearrange themselves. The surge of weird energy travels through to my other arm, and I can feel that one fixing itself as well.
"What…" I growl, yanking my free hand up to my face and twisting it around in a circle until the joint cracks. There's no pain, though; the dried blood is the only sign that there was something wrong. "What the hell did you do to me?"
Cornello takes a half-step back from me. "I healed you!"
I blink at him. None of this is making any goddamn sense. Nothing in this world has made any sense since I got here, though. And to get home, I just have to cooperate with him, and go to a place where people don't act like it's medieval times.
I won't argue with him, hard as it may be.
"Okay."
He's clearly taken aback by how quickly I accepted his explanation, but he quickly nods, starting to walk out of the cell and gesturing for me to follow him.
After a moment of hesitation, I push myself off of the wall and hurriedly catch up to him. "So, what exactly was the job you wanted me to take?"
"Huh? Oh, that. Whenever you come across some who's suspicious, it'll be your job to notify me, or one of your fellow Letoists, about them."
"What exactly do you mean by suspicious?"
Glancing over his shoulder at me, Cornello gives me an amused expression. He ducks his head as he walks up the stairs leading to the next level. Hopefully the next one will be aboveground. "People like that Pelion fellow. Those whose egos are far too large to believe in what the order is doing."
Cain Sherman immediately pops into my head; after all, he did say he hated Letoism and Liore, and that was only seconds after he met me. What was it that Jason called him? A –
"What's a Homunculus?" I ask before I can stop myself. He seems like the type to know.
The priest's eyes widen and he stops in his tracks, staring down at me in what I can only guess is horror. He starts spluttering, but I can't tell his words apart from one another enough to make out what he's saying. He swallows, and asks hesitantly, "Where did you hear that word, boy?"
Is he scared of me? Because of… whatever a Homunculus is?
His eyes are almost popping out of his skull; I look down, picking at the blood on my wrist. It's a moment before I think to say, "I heard J – Pelion say it, the first night I was here."
It seems like Cornello almost collapses in relief when I say this. He puts a hand on my shoulder, and I find my eyes studying the ring on his finger, instead of his face. "People are not allowed to speak of Homunculi in these parts," he says, his voice slightly hoarse. "It'd be best for you to drop the subject, understand?"
I manage a nod, and he sighs. "Now that that's settled, I'll show you to your new room."
As I'm walking behind him, something in my mind finally clicks. The ring on his finger, and the ring on mine – I've twisted it, so only the band is visible – are nearly identical. Holding out the palm of my hand, I close my eyes. What exactly are you planning, Pelion?
Finally, I'm in a small, vaguely cubicle-like bedroom. As soon as I'm alone, I throw myself at the bed from across the doorway. Tiredness controlling my whole body, I don't pay any attention to the other furniture. I'd give anything for a mirror, if only to see how beat up I look.
My hand feels burning hot, like somehow it's being held down forcefully to a lit stove.
Eyes snapping open, all I see is a blinding reddish light. It's bright and hot enough that, at least for a second, I think there's a fire somewhere, and that the reason my breath is suddenly forced out of my lungs is because I'm choking on smoke.
I pick my head up to find myself lying on the bed. I lift my eyes even further up, and I let out a noise of incredulous disbelief, right before slamming my head back into my pillow.
Instead of being covered in horrendously ugly wallpaper like they were just a moment ago, the walls are now mirrors. All of them.
"What's happening to me?" I shriek, but the sound's muffled by the fabric covering my mouth.
My hand's still throbbing, so I turn my head sideways to look at it. There's a mark burned right into the skin, and I know exactly where it's from.
I pull the ring off my finger and throw it across the room.
An indeterminate amount of time later, when I've managed to calm myself down enough to get close to the ring without feeling the urge to chuck it out the window, I pick it up with my thumb and index finger, examining it.
"Can you turn the walls back to that ugly wallpaper?" I ask it.
It feels idiotic to talk to an inanimate object like it's going to talk back to me.
Then again, as the walls turn back to their original color before my eyes, I could be talking to a rock, or even a stress ball. The kind that I found myself playing with absentmindedly while I did particularly stupid homework questions.
Putting the ring down, my hands go towards my neck to find the familiar necklace chain there. But it's vanished, which really shouldn't be that upsetting or surprising. I'm lost in who-knows-where, people think it's the twentieth century, and I'm upset about an empty necklace chain. I'm acting like such a girl.
(My eyes widen, as if I'm expecting my sister's hand to smack me in the nose like she always did – does – when I make a comment like that.)
Uh… Could you create a necklace chain, maybe? I try directing my thoughts at it, like that will work any better. A chain appears in my hand, however, and I try not to stare at the ring in awe. Instead, I open the clasp of the chain, thread the ring through it, and then close it again.
That settled, I collapse onto the floor and laugh. A magic ring that grants your every wish, huh? Lord of the Rings… Harry Potter… The Chronicles of Narnia… The 'magic rings' in those series always lead to trouble, death, destruction, and the likes. And magic worlds, too, but by now I'm far more eager to go home than explore a new unknown world.
Even if this is the real world, and not fiction, I'm not going to use it any more. I know enough about this stuff not to be a middle-grade kid's book protagonist.
So I put the necklace on, noticing the all-black cultist's uniform at the end of my bed I hadn't seen before. Wanting to get out of these annoyingly huge clothes, I quickly change into them. They're only a little better, but at least I'm not constantly tripping over my feet.
With an exasperated sigh, I head out of the room, tucking the necklace under my shirt and then closing the door behind me.
All of my instincts are telling me to go outside, so I find the nearest window and look out. Two stories above ground, it looks like, so I'll have to find two staircases before finally searching for the door.
The building is eerily empty as I walk through it, and I speed up into a slight jog, the hallways whipping by me.
I push through what I assume is a side door, finding myself outside and facing nothing at all, but my mind suddenly jolts to attention regardless. It takes me a moment (a very long moment) to realize that it's because people are yelling, and it sounds like they're close.
Turning to the right – nothing – and then to the left, I figure out that there are people gathered around the front of the building. I head towards the nearest person; she's only a few feet away from me. Before I can ask her anything, she catches sight of me – seeming almost happy to see me – and asks, "Is the Father coming?"
"F – Father Cornello? I… I'm not sure."
Her face falls, and she rolls her eyes, turning away from me in apparent disgust.
Cultists.
I start walking again, and eventually I have to fight through the crowd just to keep moving. But eventually, when I'm just about fifteen feet from breaking through the end, everyone starts to pack in even tighter, like they see something I don't.
They probably do, actually, because I'm facing the opposite direction.
I look over my shoulder, but I can't see anything at all except for the backs of the people who're in front of me. (Great, just great.) I push past the rest of the people who're blocking my escape route, and I don't even apologize when I accidentally elbow someone in the stomach. And then when I not-so-accidentally repeat it on a guy who's almost twice my height.
Even when I manage to get out of the crowd, I still can't see what they're looking at, so I do the only thing I can do. I start to jump in place.
As I kind of suspected, standing on top of a huge staircase is Father Cornello.
There's a brief flash of red light; it's the same red light that somehow came from my ring, along with his ring. Which means… His ring is probably the same kind of ring that mine is. With that thought in my head, I land hard on the ground, stumbling a little but remaining on my feet. I'm about to go walk away from this horde of cultists when I hear someone say:
"But somehow he's ignoring the law of equivalent exchange."
The voice comes from my right. For some reason those last two words – equivalent exchange – immediately catch my attention, like I've heard them before. (But I haven't, I know that.)
I jerk my head around to look in the speaker's direction. Standing on a suitcase is a boy in a red coat, his hair pulled back in a braid and his hand on his forehead to block out the sun. He's still talking, I realize with a jolt as I see his lips moving.
"–an object of equal mass," he finishes, glancing over his shoulder before he resumes staring at the stage.
What's he looking at? I wonder, slowly following his gaze to… the suit of armor that's standing next to him. Whoever's in it must be ginormous; it would take two and a half of me to even try to work it. The headpiece of the armor tilts to look down at the boy, and then the person in it says something, but I can't hear them over the noise of the crowd.
It's probably a little conspicuous to be staring straight at them, mouth slightly open in shock, so I face the stage again, only looking at the two of them out of the corner of my eye.
"Yeah, there's just one way – bingo," Blondie says. He hops off of the suitcase and picks it up in his hand. "Let's go, Al; we can get this bastard right now, with everyone watching. He's conned the people of this town long enough."
I realize with a jolt that he's talking about Cornello, who's probably still using his magic ring up in front of everyone.
The armor calls out, "Brother, wait!" His voice – for it's definitely a guy's – is much higher than I'd expected it to be. "We should wait to confront him until he's alone."
"Aww, what's the fun in that?"
"He's surrounded by hundreds of his loyal followers. If you did anything to him, they'd just beat you to death with a shovel. Or some other farming equipment they keep on hand."
Blondie sighs and turns back to him with a huff. "…Fine. But you can bet I'm taking this fraud down as soon as he's alone, you got that?"
Nodding with a creaking sound, the armor snorts and turns back to the stage.
The ten minutes that follow are some of the most awkward in my life. Finally, the crowd begins to disperse, nearly trampling me in their efforts to leave. The two guys I've decided to follow wait until almost everyone's gone before heading up to the stairs that lead to the main door of the building.
Even if one of them wasn't a huge suit of armor, I still could've kept track of them easily, since there's only about five other people out here. (And that boy's red coat is so bright I bet I could see it from the moon.)
They push open the door and head inside, and I wait a minute before going in after them, doing my best to seem inconspicuous.
"–not really the religious type," Blondie is saying as I walk in. They're standing in front of Rose, but none of them notice when the door shuts behind me.
She inclines her head slightly, about to say something, but now I'm close enough to talk without worrying about being misheard."If you're not religious, then why are you in a church?"
He whirls around to stare at me, something like indignation on his face. It takes several seconds for him to compose himself enough to mutter, "Why should I tell you?"
At the same time, the armored man explains, "We just have some questions about Letoism and what beliefs the Letoists have, that's all."
"Oh. Then you should ask… anyone but me. I'm actually a really new, uh, convert."
"Yeah? How old are you, anyway?" He leans towards me a bit. (He's an inch shorter than me, which is a little weird. I'm used to being the shortest one in the room by a longshot.) "Let me guess, ten."
I simply roll my eyes. "Actually, I'm eighteen. Nice try, though." I make it extremely clear from the tone of my voice that I don't think he was even trying at all.
Giving an exaggerated shrug, Blondie sits down in the front-row pew with a sigh. "You Letoists believe in miracles, right?" He stares right at me as he asks this, his golden (yes, golden) eyes unblinking.
"Did you not hear what I just said?" I whisper in exasperation.
Rose, however, says, "Yes, we do." I'd been expecting an answer like this from her, so I manage to not show any traces of surprise on my face.
He nods, keeping his head down and staring intently at the floor. "Then how about bringing the dead back to life?" He rests his arms on the top of the pews casually, shifting his gaze upwards.
She smiles at his question, taking a half-step forward so she's in front of me. "Yes."
My eyes widen inadvertently, and I take a desperate breath. Bringing the dead back to life…? She actually believes that? At least two pairs of eyes are on me – the boy's golden ones, as well as the armor's reddish-pink ones. They both saw what just happened, that's immediately clear.
Taking a tiny notebook out of his jacket pocket, Blondie flips it open to a random page, holding it above his head as he reads, "Water, 35 liters. Carbon, 20 kilograms. Ammonia, 4 liters. Lime, 1.5 kilograms. Phosphorous, 800 grams. Salt–"
"This isn't a chemistry lesson," I growl, "so what's the list of elements got to do with anything?"
He sends me a calculating look and closes the notebook. "That would havebeen the complete chemical makeup of the average human adult. But never mind that. Can you take us to see the Father? We have some questions that only he can answer."
Why does he know the complete chemical makeup of the average human adult? That's a little strange. "…Okay, I'll get him now. What should I say your names are?"
"The Elric brothers," Blondie says proudly, running a hand through his bangs. "We'll wait here until you come back." I nod, then head off to find the wizard (dammit) Father Cornello. Eh, it's practically the same thing.
"Griffin," Father Cornello says, and I recognize the tone of his voice as condescending. "If you think that everyone who visits me is suspicious, I'm never going to get any work done." Putting his hands on my shoulders, he sighs and shakes his head.
"Don't patronize me," I mutter, "I know the difference between believers and the Elrics."
His mouth is open, no doubt to continue his meaningless drivel, but he snaps it shut. "Did you say the Elrics?" He seems to recognize the name.
I incline my head a fraction of an inch and say, "Yeah. One of them was in a huge suit of armor, and the other's a teenager."
Cornello's face falls; he takes a few steps back and starts rifling through a drawer of his desk. "I had a suspicion that some State Alchemist would investigate the order, but I didn't know it'd be Fullmetal," he says, picking something up and shutting the drawer again.
What's a State Alchemist? I wonder briefly, right before he presses what he picked up into my hand.
"Father… why are you giving me a gun…?"
He gives me a blinding smile, one that'd be reassuring if it was in different circumstances. "It's a chance to prove your loyalty to me. You're to shoot the Fullmetal Alchemist. He's come to tear down the order to further his own career, and he'll stop at nothing to do just that."
I swallow the bile rising in the back of my throat and stare down at the floor. In order for this to work, in order for me to get out of here and go home, I'm going to have to play along. "And the other one? His brother?"
There's a pause as he thinks over my words. "Him, too. Just to be safe, you understand."
"Alright," I choke out, my hand closing around the gun.
I updated in less than a month this time! And it's even longer than last time too.
As for the chapter notes, there're only two that I can think of.
The first is Cornello's healing alchemy, which is kinda similar to Marcoh's. I'm assuming that, since he's running such a large miracle-based organization, he would have to have at least a small amount of capacity to heal (living) people. It'd be amplified by the Stone tenfold, that's for sure.
Next is Griffin's – originally Jason's – ring. Since Grif has no clue what alchemy is at this point, he thinks it's 'magic.' (It's not. Obviously.)
Review, and I'll give you… I don't know… a Rose plushie. Still better than the Cornello one.
(It might take a while for the next update to come; I've been so focused on this chapter that I haven't even started the next one. Oops.)
And now for the replying to reviews thing, because I'm literally incapable of remembering to do that:
Lilaclily00: I am unearthly levels of insane. For instance, my cat got up off of my lap to go lick himself on my bed, and I started crying. That was this morning, in case anyone was thinking I was four or something. And I'll make sure to keep that insult in mind!
Blue VanLocke: Thanks! And we'll see Sabrina soon enough, she'll just be a lot different. (Her personality is the same… just about everything else is changed, though.) *hands you both a Cornello and a Hughes plushie*
Dark Meow Meow Kitten of Doom: HOW DARE YOU MAKE A NINA JOKE IN MY PRESENCE?
Xandora: Thanks! And yeah, Lorelei's definitely not a sadist, and she doesn't really go around killing people left and right. Not yet, anyways.
Guest (An Arm and a Leg?): Thanks! Enjoy your plushie. Even if it is semi-imaginary, you can still enjoy it.
