(no subject)

 "Micheletto, Rohar, Auditore, prepare to ride at dawn."
 

 2 Omegas, a beta, and an alpha Ezio awore was half feral. Or maybe just mad. Certainly the way Michelletto followed Mentore Miles was not the way a student followed a teacher, but more how a priest might follow the son of God. If he was the sort of priest to offer the crucified form oral release with evening mass. 
 

Ezio did not like nor trust Michelletto, but he did not have to. The Alpha initiate was loyal to Mentore Miles (damningly loyal) and all of them were on a journey to deliver a relic of the gods to a place only gods could know. It was all too fantastic for him to make sense of. 
 

 Rohar at least was solid and steady as bedrock, though he seemed innordinately concerned about their mission which failed to put Ezio at ease. 
 

 "We will be riding for many weeks across the land. Do you speak English?"
 

 "A bit, why?"
 

 "....If the mentore stops speaking Italian, then speak English to him. Nothing else. He can be... confused sometimes, on long journeys. On long rides."
 

 "Confused?"
 

 "It will come back to him, but you must not aid the confusion with other languages. English only. It is the fastest way. Arabic, if he is confused for more than a day. But even then we made decent time from Timbuktuu."
 

 Michelletto, frustratingly, only nodded at this strangeness. And gave Ezio a considering look. "Trauma creates madness, a way for the mind to cope with pain. Who has had more pain than the man *created* to lead murderers in the cause to kill gods? It would be madness to think he was not mad. And we, mad for willingly taking up his madness when he tries to keep us out."
 

 Ezio wished Machiavelli had been brought along, if only to argue something like sanity into his partner Alpha. his insanity sounded too much likes sense. 

 

The first temple they find (Mentore Miles finds) is on the outskirts of Rome, and they have to kill a number of slavering, slobbering feral Alphas for it. "Followers of Romulus. We've nearly wiped them out I hope, but their lairs are fairly simple. You three go a head and loot, if you can't get everything out, I'll go down after you come back."
 

 It's thrilling, being entrusted to run the tomb without Miles guiding the way, and frustrating to be racing his fellow initiates through the traps and pitfalls. Once, Michelletto pulls far ahead while Rohar falters and Ezio finds himself helping the beta back onto a ledge, unwilling to risk either of them sustaining injury just to get some gold. 
 

He is prepared to be chewed out by Miles, who has no affection for him anyway, when the pair reach the end with their own small chests of silver dinari. Instead he is slightly astounded to find the Mentor asking why *Michelletto*, the Alpha, the *sword of the Order* would abandon his armor and his shield to try and impress one old man? 
 

 It is a humbling and enlightening night for all three of them. Though they had killed a number of men and stolen their money, Miles cared only that they could not yet work as a *unit*. 
 

 Ezio had known the pair less than a full month!

But he was the Omega was he not? The armor of the Order. The steel that protected, shaped and defined the body they all represented? Michelletto was the sword, the bloodthirsty and obvious danger, while Rohar was the shield. Rohar was the one most willing to take orders, but also to find compromise. He was the versatile scholar of their group. And Miles, without his armor or sword, was entrusting *them*, these untried three, to protect him with a holy relic to an ancient temple and not fall to any of their vices. 

 

 A terrible test Ezio realized. If they failed, they would lose the most promising Mentore the order had seen in three hundred years. As well as a weapon the Templars would exploit for world conquest, and possibly an evil goddess. Miles rode on a horse with no reigns, no saddle. He wore no armor, and carried only a bow, arrows, and a small ax at his hip with his hidden blades. Not even bombs, or throwing blades. 
 

The man was as defenseless as he could afford to be, trusting three near assassins to escort him safely. It was, the most harrowing test of Ezio's life. And he knew on the third night that Rohar and Michelletto had figured it out to. 


 

It was not until the second week that the Mentore woke, and spoke to the m in a tongue none knew. A flowing roll of vowels and sharp, knife sliced guttural consonants that filled the morning air and made them all wary. 
 

Before any were awake enough to try and question, Miles was gone into the forest trees. An hour, maybe to later, had him return with a whole deer dragged behind him, a single arrow through a dark eye.