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The Rite of Sanctuary
3.5) The Benefactor

3.5) The Benefactor

The Artist took the time to twist a temporal aspect to put hei's current project into suspension, before hei responded to the call for help. Because of this, hei was far too late to help with the disaster.

Not that hei could have done much to help with such a event. Hei was a artist, not a power. But seeing the aftermath in which so many others had lost their lives, either by destruction or alteration into something new but not viable, it still left hei feeling a pang of guilt. Enough of one to want to do something even after the fact.

Then the Habitual Vortex, who seemed to have contained the worst of the fallout, called for volunteers.

-Fractures were made and a toxicity has leaked down to the projective layers, if any are willing to try to save the beings who exist down there. Now is the only time to act.-

The artist considered the request and decided to give a try. It's project would keep, and even a ephemeral deserved it's chance to be. Besides, it would only take a moment to take responsibility for a life. How long could a ephemeral exist anyways?

The instance was almost painful to regard. Nothing more then a bilateral projection from a simple state, but still life found a way.

A ball with a heated gravitated center, teeming with organic life on it's surface, and nearly a quarter of it juxtapositioning with a fine mist of the toxin.

Unfortunately time was not something that could be manipulated here, not without tearing something, so the artist only had a so much hei could do.

First. Pick a target to save, something with weight, not just mass, but a presence in years and lives.

There. Solid, blocky. A place where many had gathered together many times. Combining their wills in a plead for help, for love, and for forgiveness mixed in with the more banal.

One angle of it would shield the rest from the toxin as hei pulled it free from the rest of it's "World'. The place set aside for disposing of the empty vessels by letting them dissolve into the inert mass could take the hit.

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Almost poetic really.

The gathering place would be saved, along with a being designated as it's caretaker, another being who was there, and one more that was dragged along with some extra mass that came away easily behind the mass of the gathering place.

The artist decided to take it as well. It looked like there wasn't going to much left of the rest of the place after the toxin soaked in. So why not?

Then...it set what it had saved in the void.

For some expression of time it would exist there, but ultimately it would break apart into smaller and smaller pieces until it was gone. That's what the void was supposed to do.

But hei could hardly just wait around to maintain it. Hei had it's own life to get back to after all.

So hei reached into what it had saved, inward to place regarded as special, the heart of the collection of mass. Where a small bundle of material sat. Significant because so many believed that it was.

The artist gave the bit of mass a drop of thought, a whisper of life, or a touch of possibility depending on how you thought of it. But it would make the assemblage of mass a place of significance, resistant to the void.

At least long enough for someone in charge to do something with it.

After the artist departed back to something that was similar to a home. To return to hei's project without any further thought to the lives and the place hei had saved. Something began to awake within the recess below the alter in the church of St Kentigern.

The saint's body had been entombed intact. So relics had been had to come by. The cup may or may not have ever belonged to him. But people had believed it did.

That was enough.

It did not yet think. But it observed.

It observed all the fragments of places gathered up and arrayed in the shape of a sphere, and then watched as the space beneath and between them as it was filled in.

It observed the toxin that had been brought along by so many would be saviors, for the most part all unknowing of their extra burden. It watched as one such part as it become part of the Context and expressed itself becoming something that could take control over the unwitting animated remains of those long ago fallen and returned to the earth.

It observed it's servant take a stand and fight to protect the place where those who might come to in search of help and shelter.

It was pleased.

It had little understanding of how and why it was made, but the focus of existence was defined by a man turned into a symbol that stood for two things.

Protect those who stay true to their promises.

Oppose those who oppress others.

Sean Murphy seemed like man who keep his word, and would stand up for others.

So the being who had began to think of himself as St Kentigern, for lack of another identity to take, decided that as the chosen one, he would have the young man's back.

You know, to make it easier to give him bit of a shove when needed.

After all, Sean Murphy seemed to be a good man, but he wasn't a saint.