Emilia leaned on the counter and buried her face deep in her arms. “Why does it always have to be like this? Could we maybe once actually do a quest without messing up anything? Either one of us ends up in slavery or we just manage to get the entire town killed.” She mumbled disappointedly.
“None of us died.” Anastacia pointed out and flipped through a small black notebook she had been given, containing the rates and other information about the brothel’s employees.
The priestess looked up and sighed. “That’s what you count as success now?”
“None of us died.” Anastacia repeated.
Gilbert laughed. “Don’t be too harsh on yourself, or on us. It’s not like anything actually bad happened. Besides, this is the fastest we’ve ever found Anna. So if anything, this is going pretty well.” He said and peered through the curtains leading to the raunchier part of the establishment. “Umm… Anna, the one with… well you know.” He whispered and gestured at his chest.
“Ah! Estelle. Sir, I congratulate you for your amazing tastes, but unfortunately she’s booked for like… forever.” The necromancer played her role as the new secretary of sorts while flipping through the book. “But I can recommend you a couple of girls with similar perks.”
“NO!” Emilia yelled and groaned in frustration. “We’re not doing any of this! We’re just going to get the owner here and pay for Anna, then I’ll ask her about a few things and we’re going to a regular inn, sleep until the morning and leave this damn city!”
“Why are you being so grumpy? I’m sure there’s something here for you as well. For example, we just hired this really small, timid guy. According to this, he’s got almost nothing but extremely good feedback from the ladies.” Anastacia said and showed a page from her notebook to the priestess. “According to this quote here, he’s gifted in-“
Emilia groaned and slapped the notebook into the air.
“Don’t be getting rough with my new girl! She’s allowed to toss folks out for touching her.” Estreya exclaimed from the top of the stairs that were behind Anastacia and led to everyone’s personal rooms and the baths. “Oh, it’s just you…” She sighed and descended gracefully down the stairs while fluffing the fur on her shoulders. She put her hand on the necromancer’s head and glared at the adventurers with her uncomfortably large eyes.
Emilia had to shake the feeling that the owlfolk’s gaze drilled a hole directly into her soul and searched for whatever lied in its darker nooks and crannies before she was able to open her mouth. “We’re here to get Anna and King back.” She said and unconsciously started to grasp for the pommel of her mace.
Estreya laughed pompously and leaned on the counter. “Are you now? To me it seems like both of you are here for something else. His motives are obvious, and he has very little to hide, a rare quality in a man these days. You on the other hand are here for Ciel, aren’t you? I can see the white-hot metal flowing through you and something about it sparks joy in me. That’s certainly quite some parasite you’ve got in you.” She said and poked at Emilia’s chestplate.
“Looks like you are the real deal then.” The priestess smirked and grabbed the owlfolk’s hand. “Lady Sylvia has asked me to learn what I can about Alba, Ciel and Mer, perhaps you could spare a minute to tell me what you know?” She asked.
“Sure.” Estreya agreed and smiled brightly. “My room is right upstairs, my new secretary can make a reservation for you, so just pay her for the night and we’ll get to it.”
Emilia froze up for a few seconds and could hear Gilbert snort as he tried to hold his laughter back. “E…excuse me?” The priestess stuttered.
“Not everyone can make a living beating up monsters and bashing in bandit skulls. You have desires, be it to know things or the usual kind, and I’m in the business of sating those desires. So whether it’s answers or getting rid of all that cat hair in you mouth, you’re going to have to pay for it equally.” The owlfolk shrugged and handed the black notebook from the floor back to Anastacia.
Anastacia flipped the notebook’s pages until she found what she was looking for. “So a night with the owner herself? Why settle for anything less eh, miss? That’ll be eight- Wait, why are you like fifty times the price compared to everyone else?” She asked and double checked the rates for Estreya.
Estreya pinched Anastacia’s nose and wiggled it a bit. “It’s a seller’s market when you know exactly what’s lurking in someone’s mind.”
Emilia was having a fierce internal debate about the matter. On one hand, Sylvia herself had told her to learn what she could, but on the other hand, she was a priestess and they aren’t supposed to hire prostitutes – not to mention that she wasn’t even single, and Rosie would absolutely end her if she ever heard about it. In the end she had to close her eyes one more time and seek guidance from Sylvia.
Without a word but with an awfully grim look on her face, Emilia took her purse and placed it on the counter in front of Anastacia.
The necromancer quickly counted the money, neatly piled them into a lockbox under the counter and wrote Emilia’s name into the notebook. “That should be everything, Miss. Your courtesan will show you to your room and… and…” She tried to explain but couldn’t keep her laughter in anymore as Estreya dragged the priestess upstairs.
Gilbert waited until they heard a door at the top of the staircase close before placing Anastacia and King’s portions of the reward on the counter. “Why didn’t you just leave? There’s no way anyone here could do anything about it.” He asked.
“You said no fighting. Besides, she won that money fair and square from me, and I’d rather just pay than have it on my conscience.” Anastacia shrugged.
“Fair enough, if you think you should pay, that’s what you should do.” Gilbert agreed. He looked around for a chair so he could rest his knees for a while, but the brothel’s lobby wasn’t built for killing time and there wasn’t much furniture beyond the counter and a small walk-in closet where most patrons were required to leave their weapons.
Anastacia noticed her friend’s discomfort and got up from her seat. “Soooo… They’ve got the whole night reserved, so how about we go in to look at like butts and stuff? I get a discount at the bar too.” She suggested and pulled aside the curtain blocking the view to the bar.
The old adventurer wiped away some fake tears and gave Anastacia a pat on the head. “I’ve never been so proud of you before.” He sniffled and headed inside.
Estreya guided Emilia by the hand along a long corridor in the second floor of the brothel. They passed at least a dozen rooms with increasingly fake sounding names written on their doors before reaching the one they intended to enter. For some reason the light from the crystal lanterns lining the corridor didn’t seem the reach the last door and instead dimmed unnaturally quickly near it.
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Somehow being in the shadowy corner felt extremely odd to Emilia, both good and bad at the same time, it was like the dark was slowly suffocating her, but she also felt somehow weightless.
“You’ll get used to it.” The devotee of Ciel said and knocked on the door, which slowly creaked open and flooded the entire corridor with absolute darkness as if it had been a dam holding back water and finally gave in.
As far as Emilia could tell, the entire world had been engulfed and drowned by black. There were no scents, no sounds and no other point of reference in sight, aside from the glowingly pure white owlfolk in front of her. The priestess started to panic slightly and instinctively started to tap into the strength Sylvia gave her. At first it appeared to work, but only a few seconds later the dark snuffed out whatever light her fire was able to conjure.
Estreya put her hands on Emilia’s cheeks and squeezed lightly. “Do not fight it. You have no idea of the weight class you just stepped into. Expecting something as futile as joy to do anything here is like lighting a candle in the night and expecting it to turn the darkness into a day. But also know that you have no enemies here.” She explained calmly and gave the priestess a chance to collect herself.
“Where… where are we? What happened?” Emilia asked and gasped for air.
“This is the primordial night. You could say that this is what Ciel is. The mortal world continues on its tracks like it used to, in case you are worried about that.” Estreya said and pushed Emilia carefully on the chest to make her fall on her back on something soft. “Take a seat, there’s some water in a pitcher to the left of you, just feel around if you can’t see it. I’d offer some wine but that would be pointless, now wouldn’t it?” She continued and took off her gown in a far more provocative way than was needed to before combing through the abyss and picking up a set of pitch-black robes that showed the moth-shaped mark on her chest. To Emilia it was impossible to tell where the robes ended and the darkness began, so it almost looked like the owlfolk had sank into the dark for the most part.
“There’s something here? All I can see is black.” Emilia said and was surprised when she found the pitcher after feeling around a bit.
“Well I do live here, so all my stuff is sort of spread around this place. Seeing here depends on the type of a person you are, so it’s not really a surprise a devoted priestess like you can’t see a thing, but that small necromancer of yours could probably see more than enough.” Estreya shrugged and sat down on what seemed to be a lounge chair a couple of meters away from Emilia. “So then, what is it exactly that you wanted to ask? I don’t see why the folks at the cathedral couldn’t tell you what you needed in sufficient enough detail.”
Emilia squinted one more time just to make sure that she couldn’t see even the basic shapes of things, but that was to no avail and the darkness remained pure. She took a sip of the water she had found, hoping to clear her throat and quickly realized that it didn’t even taste like water, nor anything else really, she could definitely tell that it was water by the feeling, but that was it. “Well, like I said, Lady Sylvia asked me to find out what I can. The priest at the temple told me about Alba, Ciel and Mer, and what happened to them. So I suppose I’m here to learn what happened to Ciel and Mer since, but I’d also like to know why you don’t have a temple. Ciel is obviously still here and could probably gather followers easily if you did that.” she asked and tried to sniff the water to see if it at least smelled like water.
The devotee of Ciel let out a long and uncharacteristically mournful sigh. “When we discovered the primordial night, there were two of us that were blessed with the mark and I did want to start a small church together, but the other newly hired devotee was a lot younger than I was, barely a toddler really. I don’t know if she took the brunt of the blessing or if her undeveloped mind couldn’t take it, but the mark broke her in a major way. She fled into the night and I wasn’t able to find her after that. Now I assume she’s either dead or Ciel is watching over her in some other place, but either way he’s not telling me. Anyway, after that happened, it just seemed a bit pointless to start a church since it’s not like people don’t believe that the night happens, right? So I just sort of returned here and continued doing what I was familiar with while watching over Mer’s fall. If the seal by the temple ever breaks, maybe I’ll be of some use holding Mer back, or something.”
“Wait, so Mer is still there? And alive?” Emilia asked worryingly.
“Something like that isn’t going to go away on its own. It’ll stay down there until something breaks the seal or a powerful enough god figures out how to kill it, I highly doubt we’ll live long enough to see either though.” Estreya said and leaned back on the lounge chair.
Emilia was puzzled by the inaction from the gods on defeating Mer. “Is there a god powerful enough to do that? It took the gods of dawn and night to barely be able to seal it.” She asked and tried to place the pitcher back down, but accidentally knocked it over. She didn’t know if spilling water on the primordial night was an issue or not, but it didn’t seem to bother Estreya, so she left it as is.
“Ciel seems to think there is, and so does his father, or ‘Father of Light’ as you might know him. Ciel’s old man probably has the oomph to do it but he isn’t much of a fighter as he lacks a physical form, but he’s probably working on it since the dark being Mer is a direct insult at him. Maybe you being here is a part of his plans, maybe it’s not, who knows.” Estreya laughed, grabbed something from the floor and fiddled with it while talking.
“Our relationships with our gods are very, very, very different aren’t they?. Do you actually talk to Ciel?” Emilia asked and started to feel the soft surface she was sitting on. It felt a lot like a bed, and she would most definitely be checking her cloak for stains later in case it actually was Estreya’s bed.
The devotee tossed whatever she was playing with on the floor. “Well, Sylvia is a small-time god in comparison, so she probably can spare the effort to micromanage your life and grope your soul like that. Ciel blessed me once and I can feel him watching over me, and that’s enough. If anything, I’m glad that I’m not given some pointless feel-good tasks every time someone drops their wallet.” She snarled, clearly annoyed by the question.
Worried that she might have touched on a sore subject, Emilia tried to come up with a new one. While thinking, she felt around some more and was glad to see the devotee find her blindness amusing. “Oh! What about this other devotee you were talking about, what was she like? As an adventurer, I get around a lot so I might be able to find her if I know what I’m looking for.” She asked.
For a brief moment, something resembling excitement flashed on Estreya’s face as the other devotee was mentioned. “Think me but smaller. Honestly, you of all people should know what a bit of divinity can do to a young person’s mind, so even if you could find her, it might be better to leave her be. But if you still decide to try, she should be around sixteen or seventeen years old these days. She also won’t remember her name so that doesn’t help you, but a surefire way to know is to check for this.” She said and pointed at the mark on her chest.
Emilia nodded happily. “I’ll be sure to keep this in mind.”
Estreya yawned and stretched her arms. “So have I answered all your questions yet? I only know so much.”
The priestess didn’t exactly have a premade list of questions, she was mostly just interested in how the devotee herself operated and what was the current state of Ciel and Mer. She would certainly have some questions to Sylvia as well, as pieces had started to fall in place a bit too smoothly. Only a few months ago she had made contact with the desert dwellers that worshipped The Father of Light and somehow, out of all the gods there was, his name came up again when she had followed the goddess’ instructions. Not that Emilia would ever suggest that Sylvia was doing anything besides helping mortals in some way she hadn’t yet understood. It was definitely interesting to see someone who was in a similar situation to hers as well, and if pressed, Emilia would probably say that meeting Estreya made her feel a bit better about herself and her relatively intimate ties to Sylvia.
“I think that’s everything I was supposed to learn.” Emilia shrugged.
“Well your reservation is far from over, so are we going to fuck or what’s the deal here?” The devotee smirked.
Emilia quickly shook her head and backed up a bit. “No no no. You can just have the night off.” She mumbled.
Looking slightly disappointed, Estreya got up and walked over. “Oh well, your loss. Tell the necromancer to leave my money in the lockbox.” She sighed and raised her foot to kick Emilia lightly on the chestplate.
In a blink of an eye, the priestess crashed against the wall of the corridor they had been in a while ago. Estreya was nowhere to be seen, nor was the primordial night. She was also able to breathe freely again and could feel her strength flow back into her limbs. Emilia stumbled up and started to head back downstairs while mulling over what had just happened and preparing to drag Gilbert and possibly Anastacia by their ears, away from a whole battalion of prostitutes.