The Head Priest kneels closer, awe softening the fear on his face. His fingers rest lightly on Sharp Archer's arm, following the dark veins like scripture written under skin.
Father Thomas
This is not binding. This is absorption.
The room stays still around them, only the weak lamp and the steady thrum from Archer's chest moving in time. Mallory keeps to the wall, watching without interrupting.
Father Thomas
Do you feel it in the bones, soldier, or only in the blood?
He studies Archer's eyes, then the scar over his right eye, then the veins again. His trembling eases as curiosity takes over, careful and professional despite the wonder in it.
Mallory
If you are finished staring, Father, tell us what you see.
The priest exhales, almost a laugh, and shifts back on his heels. The silence feels less like a funeral now and more like a pause before an honest answer.
Father Thomas
I see a man still standing. That, in itself, is remarkable.
✓ Quest Accepted
Learn whether the artifact is consuming Sharp Archer’s vitality
“Can I use the power of the artifact to try to fight the Nazis”
YES, AND MORE (Likely, rolled 9)
Father Thomas
You ask if you can turn this hunger against them. The answer is yes, and it will be more than you bargained for.
Father Thomas
My name is Father Thomas. I have seen the old texts, and I tell you now, the artifact does not just serve the hand that holds it. It consumes the host to fuel the fire.
Sharp Archer
The power is there, but it is a weapon that cuts both ways.
“I ask the head priest "so what? I need to consume other artifacts or am I now a vampire like being and need to consume others life forces?"”
SUCCESS (Superb Reasoning, rolled +0)
Sharp Archer
So what, then. Do I need to feed this thing with other artifacts, or am I becoming some kind of vampire and draining life force?
Father Thomas
Neither, soldier. It feeds on your strength, but it is not asking you to hunt lives for it. That is the mercy and the danger of it.
Father Thomas
If it keeps root, it will hollow you by degrees. Fatigue first, then weakness, then the body begins to pay the bill.
Mallory
And if he uses it as a weapon?
Father Thomas
Then every discharge draws against the same reservoir. More force, more cost. The old texts are plain about that.
Father Thomas
The question is not whether it feeds. It does. The question is how much of you it can claim before you notice.
Mallory
He wants a clean answer, but the priest sounds like a man naming a wound he has seen before.
Quest Complete
Learn whether the artifact is consuming Sharp Archer’s vitality
“I thought i heard of the legend of Vlad the impaled becoming the first vampire by consuming an artifact. The legend says there were originally 6 artifacts."”
SUCCESS (Superb Reasoning, rolled -1)
Sharp Archer
I thought of Vlad the Impaler, the first vampire in the old stories, made by consuming an artifact. Weren't there six of them at the start?
Father Thomas
Six is a tidy number for a legend. The texts I know say five were forged to summon, and one was meant to open the way farther. Not a vampire tale, soldier, but close enough to make men mistake hunger for immortality.
Mallory
Five beacons, one that opens the door. That sounds worse, not better.
Father Thomas
If you heard the old name attached to it, that is folklore clinging to a real wound. A host can be consumed by the thing inside him, but he does not rise from it renewed. He is spent by it.
Father Thomas lowers his hand toward the ward, and the chalk line gives a faint, tired shimmer. The frost inside it stays dead still, while the dark veins in Archer's arm stand out like ink under skin.
Father Thomas
The integration is active. It is not dormant, and it is not waiting politely. It is drinking you, little by little, whenever you draw on it.
Mallory
Then tell us something useful, Father. What do we do with a man who's being emptied by a relic?
✓ Quest Accepted
Find an alternative power source for the artifact
“The legend stated that he drained the Muslim invasaders to increase his life force. Is that not what I can do when I fight the nazis?”
SUCCESS (Superb Reasoning, rolled -1)
Sharp Archer
So the legend was eating enemies to feed itself. Can I use this against the Nazis, and keep myself going?
Father Thomas
Yes, if I answer plainly, it can be done. Not cleanly, not safely, and never without cost. The thing does not care what banner the blood wears.
Father Thomas
If you force it through a foe, you may draw strength from the taking. But each use teaches it your shape, your hunger, your limits.
Mallory
That is a horrible answer, Father. But it is an answer.
Father Thomas
The old method exists in the records. It is brutal, desperate, and never meant for a man to rely on.
Father Thomas glances from Archer's marked veins to the shut crate, then sets two fingers against the fading chalk line. The frost at the ward's edge twitches once, as if listening.
Father Thomas
There is another matter. I know how to loosen a host from a beacon, but that is not the same as making the thing harmless. If you mean to keep using it, you need a source it can drink instead of you.
“"So how do I use others life force instead?"”
SUCCESS (Superb Reasoning, rolled -2)
Sharp Archer
So how do I use other life force instead?
Father Thomas
You do not drink from a man like ale from a cup. You redirect the taking through a living conduit, blood in the field, pain at the edge, a shock the thing can seize first.
Father Thomas
A wounded foe, a dying charge, a body already spent, the beast will take what is easiest to reach. If you time it right, it takes there instead of here.
Mallory
That is still a damned ugly bargain.
Father Thomas
It is. And if you mistime it, it drinks through you anyway. The ward will not hold much longer.
Father Thomas lifts his hand from the chalk. A hairline crack runs through the fading circle, and the frost answers with a thin, crawling shiver.
Father Thomas
If you mean to survive with this thing, Archer, you need a source nearby when it wakes. Otherwise it chooses you.
“I ask Father Thomas how to find a living conduit”
SUCCESS (Superb Reasoning, rolled -2)
Sharp Archer
How do I find a living conduit for it?
Father Thomas
Look for the one the field keeps bleeding around, or the one who draws every blow to hand. The thing wants a living path that is already open.
Father Thomas
A medic under fire, a runner carrying messages, a sapper with hands full of wire, anyone already standing at the edge of hurt. It does not need innocence. It needs access.
Mallory
That sounds like a prayer said backwards.
Father Thomas
If you must use it, you do not choose the finest man. You choose the nearest wound, and you keep the source between you and it.
He taps the chalk ring with two fingers. The crack does not widen, but the frost beside Archer’s boots trembles as if something beneath the floor has heard its own name.
Father Thomas
There. That is the shape of it. A conduit is not a relic, Archer. It is a person with the misfortune to be standing closest when the beast wakes.
“" what if I absorb a second artifact?"”
SUCCESS (Legendary Willpower, rolled +1)
Sharp Archer
What if I absorb a second artifact?
Father Thomas
Then you would have a second hunger to feed, and a second wound to hide it in. It might buy you time.
Father Thomas
He studies Archer’s arm, then the crate, as if weighing two fires against one body.
The priest draws a slow breath and gives a hard, reluctant nod. For the first time, he does not speak of the beacon as a curse only, but as a system that can be turned against itself.
Father Thomas
Yes. A second beacon could serve as a reservoir, if you can keep it from waking all at once.
Mallory
That is the first answer in this room that sounds like a plan.
The frost at the ring’s edge shivers, then settles, as if waiting for a decision. Father Thomas keeps his hand near the chalk crack, but his eyes stay on Archer, measuring whether the man in front of him can survive the answer he has just been given.
“"Father, I need you to take me to the artifact the allies have and send a runner to the generals to explain the situation."”
SUCCESS (Legendary Willpower, rolled -1)
Sharp Archer
Father, take me to the allies’ artifact, and send a runner to the generals. They need the full picture.
Father Thomas
I will do both. If this thing is feeding on you, command has to know before it feeds on anyone else.
He straightens from the crack in the chalk ring and reaches for his coat, already deciding the room is no longer the limit of the problem.
Mallory
Good. Then somebody gets moving while the rest of us keep him upright.
Father Thomas snaps a short instruction into the hallway, and a runner appears at the threshold to take it at once. The frost at the ring edge trembles, then holds.
Father Thomas
Get your things. We go to the secured holding room now, and I will show you what the allies have locked away.
The priest steps aside and opens the door, making the way out real. Archer’s arm stays lit by those dark lines as the room releases him into motion.
Sharp Archer leaves A small war-rental room behind and arrives at secured holding room.
“I go with Father Thomas to the holding room”
SUCCESS (Superb Agility, rolled -3)
The secured holding room is colder than the hall, a clean, deliberate cold. Chalk lines box the floor, and the crate sits under lantern light while frost beads along its seams.
Father Thomas stops at the threshold, then leads Archer inside with a surgeon's care, as if the room itself might bruise him.
Father Thomas
This is the one the Allies kept separate. It does not wake like a weapon. It feeds when it is near a living host.
Sharp Archer
The frost is thicker here, but it holds inside the chalk.
Mallory
So tell us plain, Father, is he carrying a sleeping thing, or a thing that is eating him?
Father Thomas
Eating him. Not all at once, but steadily. Those dark veins are the proof.
He lifts Archer’s arm just enough to inspect the pattern, and the black lines answer under the skin like ink drawn toward a flame.
Father Thomas
If we do nothing, it will keep taking until there is less of him left to call Sharp Archer than there is to call this artifact’s host.