Ciril left the church in a grim mood. He trod over the clearing and the paved stairs leading uphill, closer to town than the congregation itself was… Well, nowadays the town was almost around Saint Maya’s church. Not ten minutes later he was at the back entrance to the funeral house - he would have gotten there sooner but he was pushing forty and was no longer so spry.
The door opened and he walked the familiar hallways. He had been there countless times, performing rites for the departed as the clergy ought to before the morticians or their workers inhumed them.
It felt different when it was more personal.
He quickly arrived at one of the three alcoves that operated at the time - there had been three though one was undergoing renovation. On the wall were the relics of heroes, including that ring of the Radiant Ciril would usually glance at. He did not that time. Instead, he stared at the open casket.
Magdalene looked a bit pale and thinner than Ciril remembered. Otherwise, she could not be told apart from when she had lived besides the lack of breath.
Ciril had also not clearly really known her. He never knew she had a sister who still lived. Neither had he known the old shopkeeper liked to crochet, not until the family had submitted it to be fit into his rehearsed speech.
He reminisced of the many memories he had of the woman. He had known her since he was a wee lad, an acolyte looking for a bargain on something to bite into, meeting a kindly old shopkeeper.
But not a single one of that was deep. It did not stung nearly as much as Ciril thought it should have. He thought she had earned the pain and grief he was simply not experiencing.
After staring at her for too long Ciril went to check on the supplies in the adjacent room. As always, they had not been touched so he prepared the incense and put the burners across the room, ready to be lit when the time came.
“The scriptures tell us there are only two sins…” his speech was nearly the same as always. Small alterations, changes dependent on the person. He mentioned briefly how he had known her himself when praising every virtue conceivable as to not stain a single memory, but it was barely different from reading a script. Ciril felt guilty about that but could not help it.
When it was done, he comforted her weeping grand nephew - she and the lad had been close - then it was over. Ciril wondered if there should have been more. By then he realized he was more worried about Rebecca’s recent silence than the boy.
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A year later when Ciril walked by where Magdalene’s shop used to stand there was a flower shop there. When he asked about the grand-nephew the new owners said that their predecessor sold the property after being conscripted for the War.
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Ciril never heard about the boy again.
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It was well after his forty-seventh birthday that a reply of sorts from Rebecca finally arrived. He had been speaking with cardinal Jonathan often at the time, planning for the possibility he may yet ascent above the rank of a bishop. Nay, it had seemed almost as a foregone conclusion. A position overseeing the distribution of philosophy had would be freed by the previous holder ascending to crimson cloth - it seemed many favored an outsider like him, barely in touch with the stale politics that were inevitable at the Church's seat of power.
Ciril stared at the coffin, unable to understand. The casket was, as happened to often be the case with soldiers, closed.
He was not sure that the lips speaking the words he had spoken a thousand times before were his. Not certain it was his sight that stared at the soldiers coming to say goodbye to their comrade, filling the cloister nigh to the brim. When he spoke of the departed’s past it was perhaps the first time he spoke truthfully and from the heart. By the time it was over he had shed tears, yet still had a memory of attempting to offer guidance the best he could.
Before the sun set he was standing alone, watching the patch of dirt below a tombstone, reading Captain Rebecca Halloway. On it lay few flowers but a mound of metal shells the soldiers had left. In his hand Ciril grasped the one thing dedicated to him in her will: A cheap armband. A silly gift she had relentlessly mocked him for buying, almost fifteen years prior to that day.
Suddenly the seat by the Holy See felt so very distant and meaningless. Jonathan visited Ciril once in those days. The bishop did not remember what words they had each said but knew that in the aftermath he was soon no longer in the running for that auspicious honor of adding an 'arch' before his title. Following that, Ciril withdrew from more than just ambition. He kept to his duty at Saint Maya’s church yet they felt… hollow. Even his prayers themselves felt as if they had been stripped of something fundamental.
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By the time Ciril spoke with Jonathan again half a year had passed. Someone else had taken that position, though when the old cardinal came he brought with him another bishop. A younger man in his thirties by the name of Janus, apparently a prodigy. Despite all of Ciril’s grimness, the two bishops made quick friends, through their mutual comprehensive interest in philosophy and alike preference for books.
By the time the two left and Ciril returned to his automaton self... but he felt at least a little better for the first time in a while.
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Time withered away. Months. Then years.
Ciril never reignited his ambition. He scarcely noticed that he performed the priestly duties less and less. One day he realized he could not remember the last time he had held the confession booth and that it had been months since he had last held a sermon. That lost souls had become so startingly infrequent among those he spoke to.
Cardinal Jonathan too passed one day, Ciril dragging himself to the funeral - a grand ceremony worthy of the man. There he met Janus again, an Archbishop already by then. They reconnected again and Ciril found that Janus was positioned to succeed their mutual friend's rank. He congratulated him and they would keep up correspondence afterwards.
Janus' ceremonial ascension a few months afterward was the last time Ciril ever left his home town.
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When the 10th wall fell a few more years later, and the casket arrived for Richard - the boy he had helped all those ages ago - Ciril no longer felt anything at the news. He carried the rites as he always had. As he would keep doing in the future. Mechanically, repetitively. Hollow. He never visited the grave for all it was just a ten minute walk away.