Canta stares out of the window of their bedroom, his hands behind his back, as he looks down over the night-washed courtyard that lies far below them.
It’s been two days since that breakfast. At first, he was convinced that this was some further layer to the odd dream that he had had the other night. But now, after this passage of time, he is sure that this is reality. That troubles him even more than the alternative, as he now spends his sleepless nights racking his brain.
“Go to bed,” says Alleluia from her chair. “You haven’t slept for a while now. It’s making you weird.”
“I will soon,” says Canta, raising a hand to her as he looks back at and out of the window.
His mind, already paranoid for some odd reason, has now been going into overdrive, fueled by his sleeplessness. If the intent of the church is to power him up, to make him strong enough to fight and win against the Demon-King, then why is he here, living in luxury and comfort? Why is his trainer insistent that he never actually learns how to fight? Why are the confessions that he receives always such small pittances?
Apart from the one massive sin that was thrown his way by the Demon-King himself, there has been nothing here but idle pampering. Sure, he levels up now and then, but is that enough to defeat the world’s greatest evil? Or are those just empty tokens of progress, meant to keep his mind at ease and his heart calm – meant to keep his stomach quiet?
His fingers run over his belly.
If the great and terrible Demon-King could send a single distorted here, into the cathedral, into the heart of the bastion of mankind, then why is the cathedral still here? If he had wanted to, the man with the hat alone could have killed everyone here while they were frozen in time.
And what exactly was the purpose of the man with the hat, if not that?
He was after Alleluia.
He wasn’t after the cathedral. He wasn’t after Canta, the sin-eater. He wanted Alleluia. Oriol was chosen specifically, years before any of this ever happened, to be used against Alleluia. Canta is sure of it.
That means that the Demon-King knows about him, but he doesn’t care. He’s not afraid of Canta.
Why not? The only reason that there could be for that is that he’s already been predicted, foreseen, and contained. He isn’t a threat.
Alleluia walks up behind him, placing her hands on his shoulders. “You’re worrying me, you know?”
Canta has a theory about this. But he doesn’t like it. The one thing that does set his heart at ease, however, is that he doesn’t think that everyone knows about this potential truth. He refuses to believe that head-priest Valenti, the bookish priestess Carmela, and the others, who now lay beneath the ground, could be in on it. They truly meant the best for him. But at the end of the day, they were just disposable pieces on the game-board.
“Bubble-pie?” asks Alleluia, trying to get his attention. Canta continues to ignore her.
Canta closes his eyes, thinking about what Salvador had said to him in the carriage on the way here, what he had explained about the last sin-eater. Canta had just thrown it out as just being a funny tidbit, but ultimately worthless information. The man’s gruff voice rings through his head, clear as the chiming of Alleluia’s own words -
‘He got eaten.’
Canta feels his heart beating strongly against his ribs as he comes to his conclusion. They aren’t training him here. They aren’t teaching him or educating him or making him strong or fast or wise or useful. They’re not doing any of that, really.
They’re fattening him up.
“Can-ta,” whispers a voice into his ear. His eyes shoot open wide as he half-expects her to say the sentence that will end his dream, so that he can wake up again in the bed. “Look at this page of the story I’m reading!” she says, wrapping her arms around him from behind and holding the book open before him. “It’s so romantic!” she exclaims. Canta rolls his eyes, wanting to tell her that this isn’t the time. As his eyes roll down to look at the page that she holds open to him, he notices that the printed ink is underlined in the story.
This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.
What knows no bounds is the evil of the creature, locked within the confines of -
“But it’s a little dark, honestly,” she laughs. “Hey,” she whispers loudly into his ear. “Look at this part here! Look what they do with their bodies!” she says. Do you want to try that with me?”
Joyous sparrows fly free, rising from where the sun sleeps and flying to where the moon rises.
“Can-ta~” she coos into his ear. The hairs on his neck stand on end. Did she know? Did she notice before he did? Or did she already know from the start? It doesn’t matter. Canta has come to an understanding now as he stands there, looking at the reflection of himself and Alleluia in the window.
He made the same mistake again. He made the mistake he had made in his old life. He trusted people too easily. It had led him into a trap. Not only that, he had gotten lulled by her as well. She really was playing dumb the entire time. Or maybe it was just fair to say that he was being dumb this entire time? Nervously, he turns his head around and looks up at her over his shoulder. “Is it going to hurt?”
She laughs, the fake skin of her lips finding their way to his for a moment. “I’ll be gentle.”
“That’s a lie and you know i-!”
Cold metal hands lock themselves beneath his shoulders, pressing down too tightly against his ribs, which crack ever so slightly beneath the pressure. The next thing Canta knows, he is lurching through the air, surrounded by splinters of glass on all sides. She had jumped through the window, holding onto him.
As they descend down unto the world like a pair of swooping nightbirds on the hunt, Canta hears the rush of the wind and the flapping of the fabric of their clothes, together with the odd sound of crystal tinkling. Time seems to slow in that second as the fall begins, so much so that for a brief moment, he really does think that he was just dreaming and that this is all just another illusion of the man with the hat.
He watches as a single string of red blood connects him to the top of the window. It’s just like back then, isn’t it? Back up on the bridge, when this all started.
But the ground comes quickly enough to erase that train of thought. Alleluia holds him against her chest as she lands. The force of the impact breaks some of the bones in his body, but also something in hers. He can feel the snap of some tense piece of metal as well as the corresponding jolt of her body.
Still in a half daze, his eyes wander up to the broken window, where he sees two silhouettes looking down at them, before quickly running away and shouting.
They lift up off of the ground as Alleluia runs, slinging him over her shoulder and holding him in place with one hand. Midnight dew glistens atop the cold blue-grass and shimmers in the starlight and the glow of the vivid moon, which hangs so high and heavily above them all. The presence of the night, of the darkness that exists between every gap of star-shine feels so palpable, so real, and so heavy that he feels like it will come crashing down on them at any second, as if every strand of shadow would come together into a net to constrain them.
A quiet bell from upstairs starts ringing, then another, louder one, in response to this signal. A church-bell. Voices fill the night. Confused voices. Canta feels his spine pop back into place. “Are you okay?!” he asks, looking at the back of Alleluia’s head as she runs. His eyes wander down the back of her body, where he sees nothing particularly out of place.
“I’m fine, hootie-owl,” replies Alleluia, squeezing him once for emphasis. Canta squeaks, which turns out to be a mistake as she then just squeezes him again and laughs.
Shadows swarm around the edges of the courtyard as they run. Canta realizes that, given the nature of the secrecy of this trap, most of the priests had no idea what to do or what the threat could even be. None of them are chasing them. None of the normal people of the church are even close to being ‘in on it’.
But then he sees them, the hooded figures, always standing just on the edge of his sight, never mixing in with the scrambling crowds of soldiers and priests who are trying to coordinate about the problem at hand, trying to understand what the issue is that is signaled by the tolling of the bell. A heavy smell lingers in the air — the perfume of the Demon-King, wafting together from a hundred individual bodies.
As they run straight down the path, Canta turns his head to the right, looking past Alleluia at the way she’s going.
To the closed gate and before it, stands palatinos Salvador, together with his instructor. Both of them are armed. Both of them stand there, watching them approach, as if they had been standing guard there all night, just waiting for this possibility. Canta assumes that if they’re just standing there, that they’re confident that nothing is going to get past them. “Bad plan!” barks Canta, trying to over-shout the noise that fills the chaos. “We can’t go through there!”
“We’re not!” replies Alleluia and takes a sudden turn to the right, heading down a row of hedges that break off along the side-path. Canta, looking back behind them again, waves at the two palatinos, who seem just as surprised as he is, and then give pursuit.
They might look good in armor. But they look like shit running in it. Canta gives them both a finger for their troubles.
There is a second crashing, and his body shakes as the vibration shoots through him. Alleluia kicks open the door to the small chapel, where he eats his daily sins, breaking it off of the hinge. As they run past it, Canta can’t help but stare up at the broken hinge that holds the door in place and feel an odd sense of familiarity with it. Weren’t the doors in the dungeon broken like this too?
“The confessional!” says Canta, suddenly realizing.
“That’s the idea!” replies Alleluia, as she jumps up onto the tiny stage and then rips through the curtain of the confessional booth. With a small punch, she breaks through the wooden grate of the confessional with ease, and as they jump through it, Canta can’t help but look at the open-faced book laying down on the shelf below them, the page open to that hand-written line in it.
‘Evil can not take root in a clean heart.’
They break through to the other side, entering into another chapel, this one by far less ornate and nice. Honestly, it looks like shit. The priest, still present here at this late hour, seems to have been surprised by the ruckus and frantically scrambles their way.
Alleluia pushes past him, running through the next door and then breaking that one as well. They emerge out into the city, the bell of the cathedral ringing loudly behind them, together with the sounds of many voices and sharp whistles that fill the night.
Setting him down, she lets him quickly wind up her crank for a few turns, and then they both run into the night, ducking away together into the first alley that they find.