The sound of whip cracks echoed down the hall. Redmun couldn't stop a sigh from escaping his lips. Twice he'd come before, hoping not to have to see penitence in action, but it seemed insanity was awake at all hours of the night. At least the Saint wouldn't be there.

Redmun had spent the last couple of days watching the Saint from afar, keeping tabs of her routines. It wasn't hard to remain unseen in those tunnels, but just seeing the woman made him uneasy. Never before had there been such a perfect, disgusting example of the church's teachings. The girl couldn't have been older than twenty, but she went to the Church to be whipped daily. Once she'd encouraged children to come with her.

He was ready, now, to go see the congregation. The Saint wouldn't be there, too busy inspecting the place's armory. No doubt sneering the whole time. The little witch.

His footsteps felt too loud in that dark tunnel, but he made himself appear at ease. Bold, even. Redmun passed into the dim, candle-lit chamber, wrinkling his nose. Infected wounds, drying shit, people pissing themselves from the pain. Six people were strewn about the floor of the chamber, each in their own type of self-induced torture. Two being whipped by men with bloodied back themselves. One affixing cilice to her legs. All in the name of Gods that, if they were even real, had abandoned this place long ago. Insane. Some managed to take their penitence with a measure of dignity, but most wept, wailed or cried out. Non-believers pressured into the disgusting practice.

A man in white robes rose from smiling down a nude young man who had his arm in a vice, and came towards Redmun, still smiling. “Good morning. I am Father Wistac. What can I do for you?” His vague, distant smile was even less convincing than the Saint's, but it left soon enough as his dreary eyes drifted down to the insignia on Redmun's chest. “Oh. You.”

Redmun smiled, and gave the Possessor's Insignia a little rub. In very broad, vague lines, it was a hand giving, and a hand taking. It was symbolic, both of the Pacts between a Possessor and their Evils, and of the deal between Possessors and the rest of humanity. Possessors gave, everything else took. Except the Church.

“Yes, me. I have some information I need, and I thought you might help.”

The man's smile did not return. In fact, the half-asleep face turned into open scorn. “Help you? I would give you no help save to remove your arm, or leg, or whatever part of you you've let an Evil defile, you pathetic wretch. Perhaps then I might give you help you desperately need.”

Redmun almost flinched back at the assault. It had been said in a mild enough voice, but with undeniable fury behind it. More than a few sufferers glanced their way.

“Right… Only, I'm here to ask after someone who passed through here. A caravan, whose members apparently visited your congregation. Perhaps partook of your…” Redmun gestured about the room. “Delights.”

The man raised his nose about as high as it could go. “What care you of our members? Your kind fight the very purpose of this land. Worse than the Evils you so righteously 'defend' us against!” He did spit now, right on Redmun's trouser leg, and looked proud of the fact. A brave man. “Honestly, Possessor,” he said with as much scorn as Redmun had ever heard. “How can you possibly believe this is a world we were meant to live in? Have you no decency? No compassion? Our true world is beyond this one. That is the one to which your energies ought be directed. Yet instead you insist on making our penitence that much harder, take that much longer. Disgusting! Unholy!” He spat again, this time right on Redmun's face.

Redmun stood there for a moment, breathing. Just breathing. He slowly raised his gloved hand and whipped the wet spot away. The image of strangling the man flashed in Redmun's mind, and he didn't push it away too firmly. He forced his voice to perfect, deadly calm. “A woman by the name Layla Thorton came here. I just want to know where she was heading.”

“Why?” he demanded with a stomp of his foot. “Why do you care about one of ours? Better that you don’t!”

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Redmun shuffled his feet, looking about the room. If he wanted he could make an example of… But no, that would solve nothing. Nothing but his anger. He folded his arms, resolved not to be the one to escalate. “We encountered her a few days before we came here. She… She died and I want to at least let her family know.”

Father Wistac looked right at Redmun, staring him in the eyes. Then he smirked. “Perhaps you didn't ruin her chances at salvation after all.”

“What did you say?” Redmun asked, his hands gripping the priest's collar of their own accord. But no, this wasn't the time. He shoved the stupid, disgusting creature onto the ground, and stepped over him, speaking to the room. “I'm looking for anyone who met the woman Layla Thorton. She was here, with a caravan, two or so weeks ago. Who can help me?”

Aside from a few moans, and the priest's sputtering, there was no sound in the chamber. The young man whose arm was in a vice looked about, his eyes wide. “I-”

“You say nothing, boy!” The priest roared from behind. “Aiding a Possessor is against the wishes of Sephelia and Orth-tet! Do not let your soul be-”

Redmun slipped on leg behind the priest's knees and pushed. The man's skull collided with the ground with a satisfying thunk. Redmun knelt beside the still conscious man. “Father, I usually don't do things like this, but no-one has ever completely dismantled my need to be polite before, so I'll be frank.” The man wasn't quite looking at him, so he slapped his cheek a few times, and pulled him up a little closer. “If you talk again before I leave this room, I promise to donate a fortune to the poor of this place, and ensure they buy enough finery and jewelry to make Emelia jealous. Then I'll take your tongue, so you can't spew this shit anymore.” He pushed the man back down, and went to the young man. “You were saying?”

The boy cast about, tears streaming down his face. The vice had several screws poking into his flesh, blood trickling from each. “Uh.”

“Don't look at the priest, lad. Look at me, and answer, if you can.”

“Uh. Just that the caravan had a girl with it. I didn't know her name, but she came in here with the others.”

“Did you talk to her?”

“No, I was doing my penitence like I'm meant to!” He spoke over Redmun's shoulder to the priest, as if his wounds were in question, fighting pain all the while. “No-one talks here. No-one.”

Redmun rubbed at his brow. The boy looked terrified, and the pain was obviously getting to him. If he had a clearer head… “Why are you here?” he whispered. “That looks like agony. Why do this to yourself?”

The young man faltered, grabbing at his arm. “My ma kept the faith.” He again glanced at the priest, and lowered his voice. “The old faith, without the church. She was comin' to live with me here, hired a Possessor and everything. It didn't do any good.” He shook his head. “I just want it to make sense.”

“It doesn't have to make sense,” Redmun said.

“You don't understand,” the man whispered. “This place is supposed to be safe, but she… my brothers. They're all gone. It has to make sense.” A glance at the vice brought tears to his eyes. “Somehow.”

This was a waste of time, Redmun thought as he stood. Why do I even care? Layla's just one more dead person in this land. Won't make a difference to her family. They can probably guess. But he knew why he cared. Because it hadn't just been another death by an Evil. He'd murdered her. He wouldn't learn anything else there, though. He turned, hand on his head against the nausea that stink was causing in him.

The Saint was standing in the doorway.

“Why, hello,” she said, her hopeless eyes looking up and down, and giving the same treatment to the red-faced priest, who had only just fallen to the floor in prostration. “What are you-”

“Nothing,” Redmun said as he brushed past. He couldn't deal with her now. Not with his temper as it was.

“The beast has decided to torment us,” he heard the priest saying from down the hall. “But now that your holiness has arrived, he's run off with his tail between his legs! No doubt to cry to that Evil's whore of a partner!”

Redmun stopped, and turned. The Saint, too, was looking at the Priest, though hell if Redmun could tell what that look meant. It didn't matter.

He grabbed the hefty, metal-reinforced torch from the nearest sconce, took a step, and threw. It swung in the air, passing between the Saint's bodyguards, flying an inch from the saint's nose. With a shower of embers and flame it struck the priest in the eye, and sent him sprawling to the ground.

Redmun spat. “Suffer that, you fuck.”

The man cried out, wriggling and floundering on the floor, clutching his smoking wound. One of the Church-goers burst from the room, calling for guards, demanding justice.

Cielaine looked down at the wounded priest, then back up to Redmun. Her two armored guardsmen had drawn their swords. She placed a delicate hand on their shoulders.

“Leave him. Let the guards sort out their own order.”

Redmun met her eyes, but had to look away. That woman had no life in her eyes, no blame. It was disgusting. Soldier's feet began stomping down the hall, heading his way. Redmun turned to meet them.