Chapter Sixty-Nine
The Wrathful Hand
Sarah and the priest made their way around the side of the church to see the wide-set graveyard in the distance. They stepped into the shadow of the stone tower laid darkly before the plot and ambled slowly through the gnarled iron gate of the cemetery. There seemed to be far too many graves for a town of only fifty people or so. She wondered if there’d been an outbreak of sickness. In smaller towns without researched medicine, it was common enough for a flu to become a plague.
Doesn’t explain why there’s only a dozen houses, she thought.
Far in the centre of the yard lay a stone archway with an enormous chain draped over it, carved from rock. It closely resembled the kind which kept warships anchored to harbour, as each link was thicker than her arm. Beneath the arching stone was a deep staircase and presumably the mausoleum below.
By the time they’d reached the threshold, they’d been walking for fifteen minutes, and the town seemed far away. The priest ambled along idly, humming as he walked, and Sarah tried not to comment on his dawdling pace. “What kind of church is this, by the way? I assume Riinin, by the look of chain?”
The priest picked a lit torch off the inside of the curving arch and held it aloft in his right hand. As they descended into the dark, the voice of the priest echoed behind her. “Of sorts, I suppose. However, our church celebrates that which Riinins condemn,” he said ‘Riinins’ like it left a bitter taste in his mouth..
Sarah frowned, realising she hadn’t heard him use such a tone before. “Such as?”
Their steps echoed faintly down into the darkness as the flame cast dancing shadows on the wall. Sarah’s time in the bright daylight had stripped her of her night vision. She idly touched her sword as the priest spoke.
“Immorality. Idolatry. Sin.” The priest saw her face in the dark and her hand naturally upon her sword, the blade flickering in the firelight. “Only the lesser of those evils, I assure you. We worship these ideologies in the hope that God will see the desperate state of our kind and return to us with his undying wisdom.” His smile was bright in the shadows.
Sarah felt a chill run down her back and pressed on in the dark. She’d grown up in the province of Arcavelot, where everything was bigger and wealthier, which unfortunately meant the same for their religious sects, holding almost as much sway over the local people as the governing powers. The man before her was making them all seem rather reasonable.
They came to the bottom of the stair and the priest in black led Sarah to a stone door, pinned shut by two tall, heavy braziers, presumably used to light the dark corridor as they were both filled with slick pools of animal oil. Both were forced up against the doors to keep them closed.
The priest hung his torch on the wall, careful not the let it get too near the brazier bowl and looked to Sarah.
She paid him little mind. “It’s behind this door?”
The priest held his great chain as he pressed his ear to the gap in the door. “It’s gone silent. There was much screeching before. We must be quiet, so as not to alert it. You take that brazier and I’ll take this one,” he said, grabbing one of the open stone lanterns.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.
Sarah silently hauled the stand and bowl to the side of the room and set it down, careful not to slosh the oil onto the ground. “Your chain,” she whispered, seeing him steady it against his chest. “What does it mean?”
The priest’s dull eyes glimmered in the torchlight as he set down his brazier and placed his hand on the door. “When Rii, the Seraph of Light, bound the Dark-Seraph Thall in a chain of his bright righteousness, he also manacled darkness, sin and corruption. He forced it away from the world. But over time, we have managed to find those things on our own. My church intends to break the chain completely, so that Rii will return by God’s grace, and show us the path of righteousness once more.”
Moral deprivation in the hopes of divine intervention. She looked at him for a long moment, wondering what kind of chaos would be unleashed if that practice was global.
Sarah stepped before the door and drew her sword in the dark. “And what if Rii doesn’t come?” she asked, to keep the silence at bay
“Then damnation shall inherent Draendica, and we shall suffer the punishment for our sins here in the living realm. And perhaps after that, in Enthall, we will have absolution. Are you ready, Maiden?”
A cold shiver climbed Sarah’s back as she hummed in thought.
The door was drawn open, exposing a wide crypt, stacked high with catacomb shelves of bones and skulls. In the centre of the room was a small shaft of light spilling from a foot-wide porthole above, illuminating much of the chamber.
She stepped lightly into the room and squinted in the dark corner shadows only to grow confused. The hole above her was small and Sarah began wondering if she overestimated just how big the creature would be.
“It must’ve escaped through that opening,” she said, lowering her sword. “There’s nothing in here.”
The priest, still stood by the entryway, sighed and shrugged. “I’m afraid that’s not true.” He looked quietly at her and then placed his hand on the stone door.
Sarah felt a sliver of ice slip into her heart. She let out a dark breath which soured into a humourless laugh. “Don’t try it.”
A gentle thudding of footsteps sounded above and Sarah glanced at the ceiling of the mausoleum. She watched as several figures flashed passed the opening, hauling heavy barrels. Sarah looked sharply back to him. “What is this?”
The priest frowned and placed his hand on the rim the brazier bowl. “My faith was beginning to waver. God forgive me… But the moment I saw those demons, I knew God was finally seeing our work,” he spoke as though the words filled him with a painful joy. “Finally enacting His punishments.”
“If I’m one of God’s warriors, why keep me?” Sarah asked, stepping quietly closer, trying to reduce the distance between them.
The priest glanced back up and his eyes danced with a dark insanity. “Because nothing else would bring our Lord’s wrathful hand to Draendica more swiftly than the destruction of one of His Angels.”
Sarah threw herself toward the door as he hurled the bowl of oil inside and the torch down on top of it. Flames erupted in front of her. She swore, shielding her eyes from the brightness as the oil burned and the door slammed shut. She couldn’t so much as reach over the flames when she heard the other brazier pushed up against the entryway.
“Asshole this fire is going to burn out in about a minute! And when it does I’ll break though this wall and rip your fuckin’ lungs out! See how well you pray then!”
Behind her, a slosh of liquid pounded the ground and she turned to see steady rain of oil began pouring through the porthole in the ceiling of the room. It pooled over the centre of the floor, growing wider every second. She watched as each barrel’s worth spread the thick oil closer and closer to her and the fire blazing by the door. The woman breathed out her panic and gritted her teeth. Sarah knew once it went a flame the room would become a furnace.
Better come up with something because you don’t have a minute.
*****
The priest smiled idly to himself as he strolled back up the crypt steps toward the light, muttering, “Our salvation is at hand,” over and over again, until finally he breathed, “At last, I shall lay myself at the feet of my master and he will know my good-”
The priest looked up into the light and his smile collapsed as he found Rose standing there, tucking away her wand as she rolled out her right fist, already dark with bruises.
“I’d tell you to pray, but trust me, even God couldn’t keep you safe from me,” Rose said, her voice echoing in the dark.