The house is oddly dark. The windows are covered with big curtains, not allowing darkness to enter. With the door locked, it makes feel like we are in a mausoleum.
We are first t with a living room, a small place with a wooden bookshelf in a corner, a sofa and so gas powered lights. There are barely any decorations, no plants, nothing that makes this seem like a place for soone to call ho other than a resting place for when they arrive and then leave when they wake up.
Who was this woman?
Under the sofa, there is a plain brown rug.
"Odd... Normally the followers of Sul allow as much light as possible inside of their houses and have plants growing in every room." Lisa comnts.
"Do they?" Aurelia asks.
"The deity that commands the sun, Elion, is her younger brother, and they are close." I explain. "Based on what the scriptures say, you want to invite the sun if you want to be on the good side of Sul and to grow plants inside."
"I am impressed how much you know about the deities, yet you don’t follow any of them." Lisa comnts. "And you still had a different version about the creation verses."
"I don’t know what to say." I insist that my version is right.
The rest of the house is the sa. And the whole ti, the lack of light makes feel an eerie sensation that makes my skin crawl and the fur in my tail and ears point up.
It is like sothing is observing us.
We search the whole house. The place is the sa.
The books are a bunch of scriptures of the deities, specially about Sul and her relationship with the rest of the deities. The only mark that a follower of her teachings lives here.
"Cannot find anything..." Aurelia, who was in the kitchen, explain. "There are no dishes or silverware... Nonfood in the pantry either. Did she really live here?"
"The Father said that yes, she did." Lisa answers. "Anita was very secretive about her life, but she was a good mber."
Was she very secretive or did she not have much to share?
I open the faucet in the kitchen sink. It makes a loud noise, shakes for a bit, then dirty water starts to pour out. After a few seconds, it cos out crystal clear.
That has not been used in a while.
"We are checking under the rug." I say.
Aurelia moves the sofa from on top of it. Lisa and I start to roll it imdiately after, until we reveal that underneath it, there is a hidden trapdoor to a basent.
"Oh! How did you know?" Aurelia asked.
Too many books and movies.
"If this was not here, I was going to start pulling books out of that shelf."
I move one of the gas lamps closer and, in red paint, there is a sigil that I cannot recognize. An almost perfect circle with six diamonds in the middle.
"I don’t recognize this..." Lisa answers.
I don’t think we have found our chicken ritualist, have we?
I give the lamp to Lisa and I pull up the trapdoor.
Stairs going down into the darkness and a foul sll crawls up, like rotten at.
"Ugh... I shouldn’t have eaten that olette." Aurelia comnts.
I look at Karina.
"I don’t notice anything under there."
Then maybe it is safe. I decide to go down first, and both Lisa and Aurelia follow .
"What is this energy I am feeling? That is not sothing that should be in the house of a follower of Sul!" Lisa says while going down the stairs.
And down there we find sothing none of us would expect. Lisa gasps and Aurelia grunts.
"What...?" Karina reacts.
We found a sacrificial altar.
A table made of stone in the middle of the room. The place is darker than upstairs so I approach with the lamp to see what is in there...
Fuck! What a disgusting scene! There is a man, dried out of his blood with... Shit, it is gross. His stomach is open, and just thinking about it is making my stomach revolt.
Lisa screams when she sees the body and imdiately steps back to not continue watching. She covers her mouth, like she is about to throw up.
I cannot continue looking.
"That nun... She was not a saint after all, huh?" Aurelia comnts while staring at the body with much more ease.
"If I could throw up I would do it right now..." Karina says.
My eyes catch on a dagger in the altar. Under it, on the surface, a single word scrawled in dried blood.
"CEMILLAS"
The dagger is overly decorated with gemstones and a fancy wave on its blade, like it is dressed for important events.
Is a sacrificial dagger.
On the hilt, there is a golden symbol. A world icon, surrounded by an oval. Inside of the oval and on top of the world icon, there is a triangle pointing to it.
"More to research..." Lisa says.
"It won’t be necessary." I know what this is.
"Y-you do?"
I nod.
"This is Gorghlath... The devoured. A Daughter of Demisaus... That fell."
"Fell?"
"W-wait! How do you know this?! With fell, you an...?!"
I nod once more. "I an that we ran into a demonic ritual. Gorghlath, the devourer of worlds, the worm that only feeds, the one that has a void instead of a maw."
"What the...? How do you know about this?" Aurelia asks.
I look at Aurelia for a few seconds. Knowledge of demons is scarce in the lands. They are the fallen deities that go against the designations of their birth and parents.
A being that eats without stopping and doesn’t give back. The antithesis of Desimaus, who believes death is a new beginning.
And before I could answer.
The door upstairs opens.
We all look up the stairs and we hear steps, heavy, threatening, approaching. I turn the gas lamp off.
"Hide." I whisper to my companions and we all take cover in what we find. A bean, a box, the shadows themselves.
I lose sight of the rest except for Karina who is near .
Soone is coming down the stairs. I only see the feet first, and it slowly approaches the altar.
The temperature is colder or I started to sweat. But sothing shifted when the figure entered the room.
I hear sothing, like whispers, saying sothing I cannot quite tell. Maybe it is a wind, but I keep believing it is a voice trying to tell sothing secret.
And then I recognize the person.
A hat, hiding its face in a darkness deeper than a void. What little I can see of them, I know who this person is.
It’s the Traveller.
But what catches off guard is that he is staring directly at Karina, who is floating besides .
Reviews
All reviews (0)