God Be With You (And Also My Resignation)
All right, so if you don’t remember this guy Kazim from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, he’s the head of this secret group — the Brotherhood of the Cruciform Sword. Their whole job is to protect the Holy Grail — like, forever — and they take it way too seriously. This dude’s lighting matches in an underground tomb full of petroleum, chasing Indy through Venice with a machine gun, losing half his guys in an explosion between two freighters — total chaos — and somehow still manages to part amicably with Dr. Jones — all gentleman-like, like he’s shaking hands after a tennis match instead of a death duel. “Good chase, Doctor, well played! Shame about my crispy brethren. Maybe the others swam to safety after you punched them off the boat? I must say, amid all the excitement with the giant propeller, I kind of lost track.”
So imagine, later that evening, the surviving Brotherhood’s all managed to gather together for a post–boat chase debrief. Everyone’s sitting around, bandaged up, smelling like diesel and shame. Kazim struts in, all “Brothers! The Grail’s safe! 🏆”
One guy pipes up, “Wait, where’s the American? 🤠” Kazim, all casual, goes, “Oh, him? I let him go. 😎”
The room *freezes*. “You WHAT?! 😲”
Kazim straightens up, proud of himself: “Yeah — I told him, ‘God be with you on your quest.’”
You can just hear the collective groan. Another brother mutters, “Oh, that’s fantastic. You blessed him on his way to undo a thousand years of work.”
Kazim’s still nodding, oblivious. “And technically… he let me go.”
Another guy deadpans from the corner, “did you trot out the ‘my soul is prepared’ thing?”
Kazim’s sputtering — “I did! He wasn’t impressed!”
Chaos erupts—guys shouting, “You got captured?! 😡” “You *negotiated* with him? 🤦♂️” “You lost to an archaeologist in a *boat fight*? 🚤”
“Well regardless of who let who go,” he says, “Turns out he wasn’t after the Grail — he’s just looking for his father.”
And the murmuring starts. One guy leans forward, real slow: “And… where’s his father?”
Kazim, still confident: “Oh, he’s being held in the Castle of Brunwald.”
Silence. Just dead air. Then one brother goes, “Wait, you told him that?”
Kazim’s smiling awkwardly now, “Well, yeah — I figured, you know, if he’s not after the Grail…”
Another guy interrupts: “Kazim, his father is the only person alive who can find the Grail!”
The room goes dead quiet, everyone staring at him — and then another brother jumps in, voice climbing, “Yeah, not just anyone — the world’s leading expert on the one thing we’ve been trying to hide for a thousand years!”
Now they’re piling on — “The guy wrote the book on the Grail!” “It’s literally his life’s work!”
Kazim’s blinking, looking around the room like, “Well… when you say it like that…”
And someone snaps, “How else do you want us to say it?! You just handed a rescue mission to the Grail Whisperer!”
Another voice from the back: “We spent a millennium building traps, codes, and secret maps — and you just gave the answer key to his kid!”
Kazim’s shoulders sink. “Okay… that does sound bad when you all pile it up like that, but he’s locked up, so… 🛑”
“Locked up?! 😤 Now his son, the puzzle-solving, trap-dodging archaeologist who’s robbed every grave from Honduras to Madagascar, knows *exactly* where to go! 🦸♂️”
Kazim’s face *drops*. “I see how that looks bad… 😣”
Someone else pipes up, furious: “You didn’t protect the Grail, you connected the two people most capable of finding it! You’ve basically introduced the thieves to the bank manager!”
Kazim’s flailing: “Brothers, maybe the castle’s hard to reach! 🏞️” Another guy scoffs, “Oh sure, he’ll trip on a rock. 🙄 What’s he gonna do, raid it singlehandedly? 😏”
And another brother goes, “He’s Indiana Jones! That’s literally his thing!”
A grizzled brother slams his fist: “I was once with the Brotherhood of the Lost Ark! 🕍 But now they’re *gone*! Shut down! Jones planned the whole thing on a chalkboard and before our Brotherhood could come up with a new secret map, the Ark was taken 😤”
The room’s a riot now. 🗣️ Kazim’s waving his hands. One pessimist mutters, “Doesn’t matter—the Grail’s in a self-destructing temple anyway. 💥”
That stops everyone cold. “Wait, what?”
“Yeah, yeah — if you cross the seal, the whole floor opens up! Swallows you! Gone! Straight to the center of the earth!”
Now they’re all talking at once. “Oh, that’s fantastic!” one guy yells. “So the Grail’s basically got lava insurance!”
Another brother adds, “It’s got, like, divine motion sensors! Step one toe over the line — BOOM — you’re gone! Cup stays put, thief goes to hell!”
Kazim’s face sinks as the noise builds — guys shouting, hands waving, somebody drawing a diagram in the air:
“Imagine it, brothers — thief crosses the seal, ground splits open, Grail’s like, ‘Nah, I got this.’”
That sets them off worse: “Great! So we’ve been dying for a booby-trapped cup?! 😖
And then another guy jumps in: “Yeah, and what about the Ark, huh? That thing zapped Nazis by itself! These relics don’t need us — they’ve got built-in smite mode!”
Now everyone’s shouting — “So what are we even doing here?!” “A thousand years guarding self-protecting artifacts! We’re basically the Brotherhood of Unnecessary Labor!” “These secret maps that we’ve been building for millennia, how about we just— I don’t know— don’t make a map at all?!”
The room erupts again. Someone shouts, “Oh, right! Let’s hide it by hiding it! What a concept!”
Kazim’s trying to calm them down — “Brothers, please, mistakes were made!” — and someone yells, “Yeah, by you!” He exhales, looks down at the cruciform tattoo on his chest, and mutters to himself, “…I wonder if laser removal’s covered by the Brotherhood’s insurance.”
