It was a high fall, indeed, of flashing lights and blurry sights, of a mountainous sacred presence cuddling him tight like a flustered father coming late in the night, the wind whistling in a mournful rhythm. The tails of his coat flapped and twisted about as Valens guided himself, Selin, and Cel with the Gale, easing them gently through one floor after another.
Then, with a tap, they arrived at the ninth floor, and the pressure of that presence quadrupled right away.
Fixing his hair back, Valens waved away the notification that told him he was in the presence of a Divine. Little was there for him to stare at, since he could just shrug it off. The sa wasn’t true for Cel. She stooped like a horse saddled with tons of weight, and breath wheezed weakly out from her lips as she tried not to crumble.
“It’s surprisingly clear,” Valens muttered as he tapped the woman’s back and sent his Lifesurges into her body before peering into the distance. “A lot wider than I expected, too.”
He stepped past the Templar and the undead pair, heard the click of Dain’s boot crushing into the ground behind.
“Blessed Father,” Garran muttered, his armor alive with golden lights, the eyes beneath the slits of his helt sparkling like two little gems. His shoulders sagged as he stared out into the wide hall. “Thought we’d be getting a warm welco.”
“It gets lonelier the more you go deep,” Nomad said with a tilt of his head.
“Right,” Garran nodded.
“We’re not alone.” Valens narrowed his eyes as the whispers grew clearer in his mind. He caught the woman’s voice as if she were speaking by his ear, the pulsing of the invisible lines about him impossible to miss. “They’re close. Right there.”
The place he pointed a finger at had rows of pews lined in an orderly fashion, choked by dust and worn with ti. Hundreds of them left unattended perhaps for centuries, with a red carpet stretched between them. It led further into the hall, illuminated by the high candelabras adorning the side walls and the ceiling, their internal lights wavering at his gaze.
“I suppose we’re in a church,” Valens said. “A spare one, it seems, for tis when the daylight prayer might co across certain complications. This deep, though, I daresay no one can disrupt the duty of the believers.”
“Commitnt is one of the virtues, isn’t that right, friend?” Nomad said as he glanced at Garran. “Gotta keep the people in their slumber sohow. That’s what I’ve heard, at least.”
“Our Fathers have the habit of keeping old relics. I believe those pews there are the original pieces, fashioned from bones of various Dreads, the carpet woven from the hair of the Night Witch. There should’ve been a dais fixed by the old Masters as well, but that seems to be missing,” Garran said as slowly everyone turned to him. He shrugged. “The tis were different back then. They did things with a certain bravado.”
So that’s why they look so pale, those pews, and worn, too.
“If there’s a ritual you’re going for, then I reckon you can’t find a better place to do it,” Nomad said, frowning. “But this pressure ain’t helping it.”
“Let ,” Garran said, then tapped a finger to the poml of his sword. Golden lights blood from the weapon and spread gently toward them, coating the group in a sacred veil.
“That’s better.” Cel wiped sweat from her forehead, tugged her armor straight, and smiled for the first ti even though it strained at the edge of her lips. “I can finally breathe.”
“Was it that bad?” Selin asked her. “I didn’t feel anything.”
“That’s because you’re not worthy of the scrutiny of the boundaries,” Garran said, turning to her. “You’d be burning with pain if an ounce of your forr Wailborn self had remained in your soul. Good thing Valens did that for you.”
I shouldn’t have brought her here.
But then, Valens didn’t have any other choices. The main hall of the Church was full of wounded and the dead, while a battle raged in the city.
That’s what you do when you’re desperately unsure what to do. You go with the tides, and expect to chance upon the best shore there is.
“Not quite here,” Valens mumbled.
“What now?” Nomad asked.
“Nothing,” he said with a shake of his head. “We should move. Sothing is not right with those pews.”
And so, they moved, Garran and Nomad out in the front, Dain taking the flank, cuddling Valens’s odd group in the middle like guardians of an ill-fitted crew. Valens guessed it ca with the situation. It left little room to question the circumstances, which helped them keep Nomad’s identity a secret.
He guided them with the murmurs in his mind, through the pews and over the red carpet. The place where the dais should’ve been was left vacant, but a couple of clues in the form of splinters and a deep impression on the ground told them that soone had ripped the thing out and carried it elsewhere.
Air got close as they marched further into the bright hall until they arrived at the shadow of a pair of giant gates towering high into the ceiling, marked with the Blessed Father’s golden sword, but left slightly open.
Exchanging glances, Garran was the first one to risk a pass-through, Nomad tailing after him. That was when Valens heard a hideous scream split the frequencies. A hiss like a freshly quenched campfire, and then the cascading chorus alleviated into a long, deep silence.
Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.
Valens’s skin prickled as he pushed himself through the gate, into the place beyond where he nearly bumped into Nomad’s back. He blinked around at him and found that Nomad and Garran were standing frozen, staring out into the distance without uttering a word.
Wind slapped his face as he paused at the sight.
There was a sermon.
Rows upon rows of pews stood in orderly lines, much like the first sight that welcod them on the ninth floor. Except this ti, hundreds were in attendance here, with hundreds more standing to the sides, staring dutifully toward the dais hauled over a large, square platform, with four gleaming shards planted at its corners.
Those look similar to the Riftshard I’ve seen in the Weeping Horror’s lair.
“This…” Cel’s voice cut short as she squeezed from the back and got stuck there, like a nail halfway in. “What is happening here?”
Valens sure would’ve liked to know the answer to that question, since the ones attending to this sermon weren’t people. Their shapes were wrong. Twisted in places that made little sense. Their forms wavered, and on more than one occasion, Valens saw them drift into the walls, and back again to hover over the pews.
To the front, more material-looking shapes were in a muted discipline. Claws jutted out from where there should’ve been nails. Dark veins pulsed ominously across their pale arms and legs, all dressed in rags as though prisoners had recently found their way to freedom.
These weren’t your average prisoners, however. These were Wailborns—hundreds of them—leading the swarm of shadows.
“Oh God,” Garran muttered silently.
“I don’t think he’s here,” Nomad said, frowning out into the sight. “I don’t think he’s aware, either.”
Valens squinted toward the dais while the others drank in the heavy air of this false church. He caught a familiar face there—Lenora, buckled on her knees, head bowed with both arms stretched behind her, held by a stranger whose frequencies muddled in and out like he was about to pass out.
Is that Jack? The thing on his back—
It was an eye, covering most of his bare back, open wide with crimson lines wriggling underneath the thin mbrane. Looking, searching, staring at the shadows at all tis like a paranoid mother thinking her children were up to no good.
The third and last figure on the dais was a woman whose face was clean. Way too clean, considering the fog churning under her skirt, washing off of her like tides of a giant ocean. She held one hand over Lenora’s head, eyes closed in faithful bliss as she muttered the sa words.
“Co back to us. Co back to us. Co back to us…”
And Lenora certainly looked like she was trying to co back from sowhere—by the tightness across her neck, and maggots squirming over her face. Coming out of her skin rather than trying to worm their way in. Coming out from the monster she truly was.
“We should do sothing,” Cel said. “That’s why we ca here, right?”
But what could you do against an army of shadows with a few n by your side? Could they bleed? Could they feel pain?
“You never know without trying,” Nomad said, then hauled his sword off with one hand. “Just don’t try to stab them through. We have to cut the head to be done with the minions.”
“Cut the head?” Garran echoed.
“Her head.” Nomad raised a finger to the blissful woman who carried out the ceremony over the platform. “It’s that simple.”
“That simple…” Valens shook his head, then quested for Inferno as he felt the shift in the Resonance.
There’s no turning back now. There’s no—
A terrible screech interrupted his thoughts. A gust of sudden wind splashed against his face. Then he saw soone dart past him, toward the back and into the high gates behind, got stuck there with a giant shadowy spear through his chest.
Valens held his breath and stumbled sideways between the dissolving shadows of that great spear. He realized with a surge of terror that it was Nomad’s body that got nailed without them even noticing.
“Shit!” Garran cursed and moved back to the door, dragging the group along with him as he faced the pews crowded with shadows. There on the high dais, that strange woman was staring at him, slits of her eyes opened halfway and full of venom.
“Don’t you dare interrupt again,” she hissed in the Shadow’s Tongue, then turned slowly and placed her hand back on Lenora’s head.
Valens called for a Lifesurge as he forced himself out of the shock, heart thumping in his mouth, edging along their group and closer to the gate while Nomad’s lifeless body slid down as the shadowy spear disintegrated into nothingness.
Sothing tried to reach him, clattered around him, voices muttering, frequencies rising. He lost their touch and leaned over the undead’s body, scowling down at his expressionless face with his hands twitching.
“No,” he mumbled when he felt cold skin under his palms. “Stay with . I need so space. Space, people! Move over—”
“Bloody… hell,” Nomad grunted, eyes blinking round at Valens with little light to them, his chest mangled into a ss of flesh and bones. Underneath, the Heartstone was still thumping, sending mana across his limbs.
“You,” Valens paused as he checked his body with a Lifeward. “You’re one lucky fool. That spear missed your stone.”
“Still hurt like a bastard,” Nomad mumbled. “Can’t you do anything about the pain? I need treatnt. I need—”
“There’s no blood,” ca Garran’s voice. “Why is there no blood?”
Dain’s huge body towered over Nomad as he stepped closer to them. They were lucky the shadows and the Wailborns were too occupied with their Mistress to pay them heed.
It’s either that, or we’re just a mild distraction in the grand sche of their mission. Little ants. You don’t go out of your way to kill a bunch of ants.
“Never been much of a bleeder,” Nomad worked himself over to his knees, letting Valens stitch the mangled tissue over his chest. It was an ungodly work of craftsmanship, his skin was. Fixed by threads and slimy glue to his bones, smoothened to perfection. Even the lines were aligned in a way that would allow the creases and the shifts, which told a lot about those Bone Collectors in the Underworld.
“Is that so, friend?” Garran opened the hem of his helt and peered down at him. He wasn’t smiling now. “Then you wouldn’t mind if I check that chest of yours for good asure.”
“There’s no need,” Valens said, managing the last stitch over the scarred tissue. It was surprisingly easy since there was no blood for him to deal with, or organs to care about. Just like how he and Master Eldras practiced on artificial skin with their surges back then.
What am I thinking?
“Oh, but there is,” Garran said, right hand tightening around the sword’s handle. “Because I saw that damn spear run him through. You can’t shrug off sothing like that. Or you’re not supposed to, if you’re a living, breathing man.”
“Eh, you caught ,” Nomad raised both hands, even against Valens’s glaring. “It is true. I’m a bit of an undead myself. That shouldn’t change anything, right?”
“Take him,” Garran gestured at Dain. “Take the woman, as well. I’m tired of being betrayed and played around. It’s just too much shit to deal with. Take them and strap them to the gate—”
“That won’t be necessary,” Valens said with a sigh.
“I’m losing faith in your abilities, Val. Don’t try —”
“Look at that,” Valens said, squinting toward the dais. “I don’t think we have ti to pass judgnt in our little group. Lenora needs our help.”
Or we need sothing else.
Because wings jutted out from her back, dark wings with claw-like thorns lining the edges, tearing through skin in a spurt of gore and bloody rain. Her teeth grew sharper as the dozens of Wailborn crowding the front pews hissed in expectation, their veins wriggling in crooked bliss.
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