Arcane Exfil-Chapter 54: What the Lord Wills

Arcane Exfil-Chapter 54: What the Lord Wills

The chapel sat tucked into OTAC’s east wing, its heavy door always cracked open – a standing invitation he’d been declining. He’d passed it a dozen times since arriving, each time with another excuse ready. After morning PT. Once the team got settled. After Kidry. Always after something. And now the postponements stacked up like unpaid debts.
The conviction had been growing since their second week here, that familiar weight when he knew what was right but kept choosing what was expedient. Back home, he’d never missed Sunday service unless deployed, and even then he’d made it work – makeshift chapels in FOBs, prayer groups in transit, taking another day of the week, worship wherever two or three gathered.
Here? He’d been leaning on Cole’s presence as a substitute – iron sharpening iron, perhaps, but informal fellowship over Lisara’s tea service wasn’t the same as proper worship. Cole understood the Scripture, walked the walk, but Ethan needed more.
God was patient with operational tempo; He had to be, especially with soldiers. Still… ‘Do not forsake the assembly,’ Hebrews had warned. And what had he been doing if not forsaking?
Ethan walked through the door.
The chapel was fuller than he’d expected – maybe fifty people scattered across the pews. There were a handful of nobles he recognized from the briefings, but the rest were mostly OTAC personnel and their families.
Morning light filtered through stained glass – Saint Alexander on the left with a crown and Bible, someone named Saint Fermund on the right with his defender’s shield. Together they flanked Christ on the cross, below whom Warren stood, standing at the pulpit with an older priest in white vestments.
Well, that was interesting.
Warren’s voice carried clear and steady from the front, reading from 2 Peter. It wasn’t a sermon exactly; more like commentary between the priest’s main points.
Ethan slipped into the back pew, keeping quiet. Warren caught his eye from up ahead, gave the slightest nod, then continued without missing a beat. The priest – gray-bearded, probably local – stood with his hands folded, waiting for Warren to finish.
He wondered what he was doing up there when he realized – Warren must’ve been called in as a guest speaker. Yeah, he wouldn’t have time for seminary on top of everything else, but the man knew his Scripture better than most. Probably got asked to give the warrior’s perspective on faith.
“The Lord is not slack concerning his promise, as some men count slackness,” Warren read, his voice filling the chapel, “but is longsuffering to us-ward, not willing that any should perish, but that
all
should come to repentance.”
The priest stepped forward as Warren finished, leading the congregation in a closing prayer. Several minutes given to benediction, the customary notice of the Lord’s Supper to be observed next month, and word of a parish supper convening in aid of the poor.
Different trimmings than back home, maybe, but the rhythm was the same old church routine all the same.
People filed out slowly, some stopping to shake Warren’s hand, others clustering in the aisles to talk. Ethan stayed put, watching the crowd thin. When the last parishioner left, Warren made his way down the center aisle.
“Good morning, Walker.” Warren extended his hand. “Your presence is welcome.”
Ethan returned the handshake. “Good to see you too, Graves. You know, I asked around, looking for you. Heard you were here, but I didn’t expect to see you up front.”
“Ha!” Warren shook his head. “No, I am not ordained, if that is your surprise. I merely lend what word I can, so long as duty permits. But you did not remain here for sermons. I take it some matter weighs upon you?”
“I want to learn holy magic.”
Warren studied him for a long moment, like he was reading his soul through body language, checking for cracks that might break under pressure.
He finally spoke. “You will understand, I trust, that holy magic is not attained as one acquires swordplay or sorcery. It is ministry made manifest – prayer wrought into form through mana. Since its founding, the Church has employed signs and sacramentals in such ministry: the water blessed, the holy oil, the sign of the Cross. These do not compel the power of God, but consecrate the act, dispose mind and body aright, and fortify the faithful in their struggle – most of all when they stand against the demonic.”
Ethan nodded.
“I must speak plainly. Holy magic yields itself primarily to those in Christ. Unbelievers may cry, and God in His mercy may answer as a means of calling – granting prevenient grace. But that is not consistent. In battle, you will need consistency, and thus this gift requires true faith. Absent this foundation, your mana would be spent in vain.”
So Warren was doing his due diligence. He wasn’t gonna waste breath on someone who’d approach God’s power like it was another skill to check off. No point teaching holy magic to someone whose faith ran lukewarm.
Ethan spoke what he knew to be true. “I believe Christ died for my sins and rose on the third day. I’m saved by grace through faith in Him, not by anything I’ve done or could do. He’s my Lord and Savior.”
“Very well.” Warren gestured toward a side door. “Come, then. Let us speak of this as we ought.”
The door opened into a modest study – about as big as a normal living room, with a single window facing the gardens outside. Bookshelves lined one wall, packed with historical volumes. A kettle sat on a small brazier in the corner, right in arm’s reach of the couch.
“Tea?” Warren asked, already moving toward the kettle.
“Sure.” Ethan took the couch, plopping down.
Warren poured two cups – something herbal that smelled like chamomile, but blended with cough medicine. He set one in front of Ethan and took the chair directly across the couch, wrapping his hands around his own cup.
Warren’s voice eased into a plainer tone, “Before we begin, tell me what you know of holy magic. Not what you would have of it, but what you believe it to be.”
Ethan took a sip of the tea. It was medicinal, alright – the kind of thing medics would push on him when he needed to stay sharp. The aftertaste brought him back to field hospitals, but he had to admit, it did help with thinking.
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“Honestly? Not much beyond what we’ve observed and heard about. Lady Elina has been using it to help Kidry’s possessed, but seeing as they haven’t woken yet, I assume it’s not something you can throw out like standard spellcasting. You’ve mentioned it works through prayer, but I imagine there’s more to it?”
“In a sense. And what is your judgment of its use? Not in tactics, but in spirit.”
Ethan set down his cup. Warren was establishing baseline – same teaching method his old squad leader used, same method his father had taught when explaining Scripture. Start with what they know, build from there.
“If it’s truly God working through us, then it’s not ‘magic’ at all, is it? Like when Elijah called down fire, or when the apostles healed the sick. Miracles, but consistent enough that we can prepare ourselves to be vessels for them.”
The words felt right as he said them. Not magic – never magic. Magic implied human power, human control. ‘
If you have faith as small as a mustard seed
,’ Christ had said, the mountain would move – not because man was powerful, but because He who commanded man to move it was.
Warren gave a sideways nod. “That is… nearer the truth than most perceive. Many think of holy magic as naught but divine ordnance – summoned to smite at will. In truth, the design is otherwise: the power is but instrument, consecrated to the ministry it upholds. The Lord answers, or He does not. We merely ask.”
That sounded too simple to believe. “So, prayer and mana?”
Warren chuckled, as if he’d expected the doubt. “So it seems, does it not? Prayer and mana – nothing more is required, nothing less suffices. The challenge lies in surrender: that one should yield his mana as offering.”
That didn’t seem complex either, but Ethan held his tongue. Warren had to be going somewhere with this.
“In truth,” Warren continued, “one may yield all mana at once, but such excess leaves the vessel spent, a husk. And battle seldom grants the leisure of collapse. To empty yourself at the first prayer is to wager all upon a single cast; if heaven answers not, you are undone. Thus must a man learn to govern the flow of his own reserve, that grace may be called upon without leaving him barren.”
The suspicion that had been building since Warren first explained the technique finally crystallized. Ethan had been waiting for the catch – the complex theological framework, the years of meditation required, some mystical state of consciousness he’d need to achieve. But there wasn’t one.
Warren’s caution didn’t stem from some underlying complexity, or because he was protecting some arcane secret. He was treating holy magic the way drill sergeants treated trigger discipline. Celdorne knew just as well as modern Earth that the human body wasn’t a perfect machine; rational thought and even simple actions sometimes went out the window when shit hit the fan.
Like controlled breathing in EOD work. Any idiot could breathe, but keeping those breaths steady while disarming an IED – that separated the living from the dead. The technique itself was nothing – it was genuinely
that simple
; the discipline to maintain it when everything depended on it was everything.
Holy magic, if Ethan understood correctly, operated on the same principle. The mechanical simplicity meant the difference lay entirely in the practitioner’s faith under pressure – and their tactical judgment. Could he maintain that steady mana flow while praying for a dying squadmate? Could he hold the offering constant when demons were tearing through his position? More importantly, could he gauge how much mana to offer when he might need the rest to fight his way out?
And sure, mana potions were standard issue, but that meant nothing when supply lines got cut or when extended operations burned through reserves.
Ethan gave a nod. “Alright, I understand. So how does it work?”
Warren leaned forward and held out his hand, palm up. “Observe.”
A faint shimmer appeared above Warren’s palm, like heat distortion off summer asphalt. The mana bled out but didn’t go anywhere, hanging in the air like it was waiting for instructions.
“The mana departs as measured pace – neither flood nor drought. Thus you offer mana sufficient for prayer, but not unto exhaustion.”
The shimmer faded, and Warren lowered his hand. “Now attempt the same – just the release of mana. Prayer shall come later.”
Ethan extended his hand and accessed his mana, then opened the channel without giving it form or purpose. Warmth pooled in his palm and dissipated into the air in a steady trickle.
It was a lot easier than Ethan had expected. But then again, he’d been practicing the foundational principle since their first night. Between his own experiments with barriers and Verna’s drills on temperature control, he’d gotten used to mana flow.
“Good. Maintain for a minute.”
Ethan held it. The drain was minimal; he’d burned more on cooling hot tea when no one was looking. When Warren nodded, he ceased the flow.
“Once more – this time with measure. Vary the flow: let the offering swell where the petition is grave, and be restrained where it is slight.”
Ethan adjusted the flow up, then down, then back to baseline. It was easy peasy, like adjusting water pressure – more for washing dishes, less for filling a glass.
Warren nodded his approval.
“So is the variation just instinctive?” Ethan asked. “Based on what feels appropriate for the prayer?”
“There is no formula,” Warren replied. “A true prayer born of desperation, though scant in offering, may yet move heaven – while an abundance of mana, yoked to hollow words, avails nothing. Mana is but courtesy, a token that you come not empty-handed. It is the faith beneath the prayer that weighs with God.”
Ethan got it. It was the exact same way with normal prayers.
“Now then,” Warren said, leaning back in his seat, “you are ready for the true attempt. Let the flow be steady when you pray; let the words be no trial of mechanism, but supplication in earnest.”
Ethan nodded. What should he pray for? His mind went blank the way it did when someone asked him to name a song – suddenly every prayer he’d ever spoken vanished from memory.
He closed his eyes and let the mana flow steady from his palm. “Lord, help me understand this. Help me get this right. Show me how this works. In Jesus’ name, amen.”
The mana continued bleeding out into the air.
Right, of course it didn’t work. He was praying about praying, asking God to help him succeed at a technique. Like asking for help with his marksmanship scores instead of protection in battle.
Ethan tried again, maintaining the flow. Maybe something broader. “Father, bless our efforts here. Guide our training, our preparation. Make us ready for whatever You’d have us face. In Christ’s name, amen.”
Still nothing. The mana just leaked away uselessly.
For some reason, his mind was clouded, and all he could produce were checkbox prayers. He opened his eyes and let the flow cease. For a second he wondered if holy water in hand would’ve made a difference. Maybe the sacramentals could have steadied what his heart was fumbling.
Or maybe he just needed to actually think for a moment, put together a genuine request, before trying again.
Warren remained silent, probably just waiting to see where this went.
Ethan closed his eyes again, this time with a solid image of his family. “Lord, please let me be with Lizzie and Freya again. Let me hold my daughter, hear her laugh. Let me see my wife.” The words came out rougher than intended, carrying weight he usually kept locked down.
The mana continued flowing out, dissipating normally.
“It is not the seeming worth of the request.” Warren didn’t sound disappointed, at least. “Every prayer is received; yet holy magic answers only what the Lord wills in that hour, not to our own measure of need. At times He accepts the offering for ends unseen; at times He withholds, for His hand is already at work by other means.”
The words should have been comforting, but they landed like doctrine on raw nerves, considering Ethan had just asked to see his family. Maybe Warren was right; maybe God was already planning that.
Ethan let it go and looked up at Warren.
The Slayer Elite moved to the window, hands clasped behind his back. “Perhaps it may aid you to hear how I first was led to faith – how my hand first wrought holy magic.”

Chapter 54: What the Lord Wills