Orgull was crouching on the far landward side, out of sight, at the edge of where it seemed the fight had happened.

There he found the body of a soldier leaned up against a dock building, by happenstance at such an angle that he was hidden from the barricade. 

Despite the burns covering one side of him the man began to stir when Orgull poked at them. The smell of the burnt flesh made him think of the seminary, his hands were shaking for some reason.  

The man’s eyes focused on Orgull’s holy symbol. “Chosen….? oh thank Asmodeus…. praise… praise… be to Asmodeus…

Please Chosen… please… heal me…. I… I can pay… my family…”

“I’m sorry my child. But your wounds are too severe.”

Orgull didn’t actually know if that was the case, he’d not particularly studied healing. He had two Cures prepared, it was always worth having in case of emergencies, but he was saving them for something important. 

“Worry not. You served your God and your Queen well today. You will be honored in Hell. Made stronger, faster, tougher to join the armies of Moloch, conquering worlds on Lord Asmodeus’s behalf.

Tell me your name and unit, and I’ll be sure your comrades know of your sacrifice. And your family looked after.”

The man’s face contorted. In perhaps anger, or skepticism, but after a moment it loosened again, his eyes unfocusing.

Orgull squeezed the mans burned shoulder tightly. “Your name soldier”.

“Arnau sir… Arnau de.... de Alvis. With the Ostenso division, detachment aboard Mardehzuk’s Claw… Sir I….” 

“Any passphrases or similar? So they know I really spoke to you”

“Pass phrase…. pass phrase is “Moloch” sir… sir I’m….”

Of course it was.

Orgull hadn’t prepared Bleed that day, so he cut the man’s throat. It was messy, but the blood would add to the verisimilitude.

Once the body had stopped moving, he removed the clothes. He’d had to dress and undress children at the orphanage, but hadn’t appreciated how much more difficult it was with someone heavier than you, and who wasn’t helping even the minimal amount they did.

His robes would be too bulky to carry unobtrusively, so he wrapped the man in them like a funeral shroud. Maybe when they retook the city he’d get a proper burial as a consequence.

Wearing the man’s clothes (bloodied leather and chainmail) would make the Disguise easier. It would be difficult to copy the man’s face exactly, given the burns, but he applied blood to that side of his face liberally, and tried to hold the pattern of cracked flesh in his mind when he cast the spell.

“Disguise Self”

Orgull found a broken spear haft to use like a crutch, and staggered his way towards the barricade.

Internally part of him was screaming about the waste of time, while he faked a slow erratic walk towards the barricade, avoiding the holes they’d cut in the platform, the time on his spell was ticking slowly downwards.

The men clearing the area before the barricade glanced up at him as he approached, but didn’t say anything until he was right next to them. 

“Arnau is that you?”

“Of course it is. You fucking turds thought you could leave me behind did you?”

The man laughed.

“We figured you were soft enough you'd be queuing up in Avernus before that first fireball finished. Guess your lazy arse was just taking the chance to get out of some honest work”

He slapped Orgull on the back, pretty hard.

Orgull did his best imitation of a man who’d been slapped on fresh burns

“FUCK. FUCK!

Fuck you and your whore of a mother with Dispater’s horns. You lazy whoresons wouldn't know an honest days work if it bit you in the arse. Now help me up to the barricade you shits.”

“Get there yourself.” He said gesturing towards it. “We’ve got work to do before the heretics turn up again.

There’s a sawbones and a cleric at the back on the left. Get yourself patched up and you might be some use to us. 

Oh and the passphrase is Moloch again.”

With more elaborate blasphemies Orgull limped his way into the barricade, where, after telling them “I’m Arnau, detached to Mardehzuk’s Claw, and the pass phrase is fucking Moloch again. Now fucking show me to the sawbones.” he was shoved towards a half open tent, next to another closed one, where the walking sitting and sprawling wounded were waiting. 

He remained standing and, after a couple moments visibly looking at the other men, asked “How long have you been waiting then?” at their unamused expressions he said “Fuck this I’m going for a piss. Nobody's to take my place in line understand.” and limped off. 

Now he was through, he could see that as well as that large barricade to the North, there was another, smaller one, blocking the westward path out to the Custodisce Break proper, with maybe a hundred soldiers milling around behind it. Walking out while visibly wounded probably wouldn't end particularly well either. 

He found an unobserved corner among the remains of the food stall that normally served the workers passing through here.

“Invisibility” he whispered. 

He dropped the spear, and tore off the chainmail, for the weight and noise, and made his way, fast as he could, to the gate of the western barricade. 

He’d practiced before, amusing himself by rearranging the staff’s work in the office, and once or twice moving through crowds. But the tightly packed crowds of soldiers behind the barricade were more difficult. He waited an entire agonizing minute stuck between two soldiers, with no gap he could slide through without touching them. Before one turned slightly and he managed to squeeze past them. Reaching the gate and following out after a group of soldiers. 

Once he was through the docks were stretched out to sea before him, and afraid his spell would run out at any moment, he legged it. 

Orgull had never really explored the Custodisce Break. It had presumably been impressive when Abrogail Thrune the First raised the pillars from the sea, was gifted archdevil sized spears from the forges of Phlegethon, and drove them into the stone as the foundation of her imperial shipyards. 

(Orgull knew the former Arodenite cathedral must predate the Chelish civil war, and there would be no reason to build an impressive temple, or even city, here without the unreasonably good harbor. Making the timeline questionable. But he had never cared to think on it much.)

Now it was a haven for the truly desperate, those with no homes who feared the consequences of sleeping on cleaner streets, criminals of the efficient sort. Not the kind of tame roughness the neighborhoods around the fighting rings had to give a thrill to merchants, aristocrats, Chosen, respectable folks like himself. 

The walk along the piers was interesting, if you were entranced by the sparring and spelling of new galleys (he wasn’t), or the migration of gold from captain to sailor, to bar and brothel, then back to captain, all within a stone’s throw. (Abadarians might wet themselves, but he preferred the Mammonite simplicity of “Captain to Chosen”.)

But beyond that it was a repetitive maze of old rotting warehouses, turned slums and barracks, stacked on top of one another haphazardly. People had driven iron spikes, now mostly rust, into the pillar to extend it upward, reaching as high as the cathedral. Lacking planning or maintenance it became a vast edifice of half rotten wood, connected together erratically with sloped platforms or ladders.

Amid the mess of scarred wood he noticed repeating marks that seemed more deliberate. Thief signs?  After nearly plummeting through rotten floors into the waves, twice, he determined what two vertical lines and a cross meant. Another recurring sign, something like a star made with the tip of a knife, seemed to point to safer paths, and lacking a better idea, he followed them.  

Eventually, as dusk was falling, he wiggled through a gap in the roof of a warehouse, into a surprisingly dry attic. It looked like it had been inhabited, the floor cleared of dust and debris, the ashes and burn marks from an old fire, and hole that was evidently used as a latrine. But not recently he guessed, there was dust on the floor, and the smell of the latrine was thankfully muted.

There looked to be more thief marks on the wall, but it was too dark to see them clearly, and he didn’t really care to. He barricaded up the gap in the ceiling as much as he could, using the hilt of the Presbyter’s enchanted dagger to hammer some rusted nails into place. It wouldn’t hold, but it should at least cause some noise when someone else broke in.  

Then he sat in the farthest corner, knees up against his face, dagger in one hand. He heard distant screaming, and smelt fire on the wind. He shook, probably from the cold.  

He wasn’t sure if he slept, the night an endless moment of listening in the dark. But eventually he felt dawn come and, as he had done every day since his Choosing, kneeled and opened his mind.

He’d been told as a child that when you prayed Asmodius saw every part of you, seeing into your true motives deeper than any wizard could. At the seminary he’d been taught to rehearshe e the events of the previous day, the decisions he’d made, and if they had been correct. So that he might judge himself as Asmodius judged him, and try to be a little less pathetic. Before making his plans and requesting his spells for the day ahead.

He thought of the body of the Senior Presbyter on the ground, the expression in his face as he fell, not angry, but surprised? Confused? Betrayed?

I know he was Yours. And it’s a sin to damage what is Yours. A sin to violate the hierarchy as well. But he was a fool, he would have wasted both our lives, and many others besides. Surely it serves you better to be smart? To know my value and preserve it. To wait for the perfect time to strike, like you slew Aroden in His moment of weakness, I will fall upon the Galtans when they least expect it. If that be your will. 

He thought about the soldiers, the one he’d killed, but also the others. Bravely preparing to fight, while he had snuck away.

I couldn’t have stopped them, I couldn’t have saved them. Even if I’d told them the best way to serve you was to live, they wouldn’t have believed me. They were good Asmodeans and obeyed their orders to the last.

You didn’t pray for others to have mercy in Hell. That would be besides the point, and no favor to them besides, to wish them to be weaker. You might pray instead that a particularly pathetic enemy was turned into a paving stone, or destroyed, rather than getting to become a devil like you. But in the end it was up to Asmodeus what use he made of his possessions.

I commend to you the soldier Arnau, and his comrades. Who by their sacrifice helped me survive so I might serve you later. They will make strong and crafty devils. Let them be the vanguard in Your conquests, and feast on the blood of Angels, if it pleases you. Let their deaths be avenged swiftly when Her Infernal Majesty's wrath falls upon the Galtans. 

For now I think I can best serve you by trickery not by violence, until I know the lay of the land, where best to strike the enemy, and when the Queen’s vengeance will come. Grant me those spells I need to do so. I humbly request Invisibility, I humbly request Disguise Self, I humbly request…. 

Little is known by mortals of how Gods relate to clerics. How much can a God see? And how much do they care to look? 

The common folk generally believe a cleric would be stripped of their powers if they deviated from their God’s will, so can be trusted as long as their powers remain. Though some scholars claim it only proves they remain within an alignment step of the God, these scholars tend to be unpopular, particularly in places with established churches.

Cayden Cailean is said to feel for his clerics as he once did for his drinking buddies, party members and lovers. For other Gods a closer approximation might be colleagues, employees, or e̴̩̯̞̝̬̹̕̕ntity-̸ ̵who̷̞̞̬̞̯̎͒͝se-utility̸-is-valued-̸-̴and-̵̗̗̖̫̽̈́͆coordinated-with-̸̞̭̝̋͌̂͌for-mutual-̷̳̯̫͍͐͝benefiţ̶̆͊̽͝ͅ.

A God’s mind is vast but finite, they must divide up their attention based on their priorities, and how much else is happening at the time.

A God can look at their cleric with a fragment of mind beyond any mortal, or reply to prayers with the equivalent of a single line of code. 

He almost collapsed in relief when he felt the touch of Asmodeus’s attention and his spells flowing to him. A tension he hadn’t realized he was feeling across all his body released, muscles suddenly unclenched, suddenly light headed.

It was silly in retrospect, it had always been obvious that he was doing the right thing, but some small part of his mind must have still been doubting. 

And…. There was that feeling, like an extra finger on your hand you hadn’t noticed before, an extra spell slot waiting patiently to be filled. The dusty unpleasant air of the warehouse was tickling his throat and eyes while he prayed his thanks again and again, and humbly requested an extra Invisibility.

Not only approval but reward for his efforts. Asmodeus loved him.