Wille fell flat on her back. The last rungs of the ladder had been caked in slime mould, leaving her with hands plastered in green ooze. Lying winded on the mud and muck that covered the floor, she let herself catch her breath as she watched the small disc of sunlight high above her. She could just about make out the late autumn clouds and the faint glimmer of green leaves, a world away. Her arms ached from the climb so she didn’t mind the cool mud that soothed her tired muscles. Her dress was beyond saving, anyway. Her bag and supplies were safe, if a little splattered, and that’s all that mattered.

She had seen Nocturnes around the grounds, but it had been a long time since she had actually spoken to one. It was hard to believe anyone lived down here, though she supposed that the catacombs weaved their way throughout the grounds and the nunnery walls, and there were probably more palatable entrances. She thought of the rookery, hidden behind a loose panel, and wondered how many other similar places contained the hidden eyes of wandering Nocturnes.

She got to her feet and made her way through the arched doorway, her hand against the left wall to guide her through the dark. She may have passed several connecting corridors, but there was no way to tell. She would stick to the left, and if it led nowhere, return and stick to the right.

The tunnels were not empty. A cool breeze joined her as she moved through the underpassage, rustling her hair and making her shiver. Every so often she would trip on an exposed root, pushing its way up through the ancient flagstones. There was scuttling in the dark, but she was not afraid of rats. It was too damp for spiders, mostly, and when the first spindly webs caught her around the face she was overjoyed. Where there were spiders, there were people. Sure enough, the leftmost passage began to dry out, as though thawing itself from a long hibernation. It became a living tunnel. Even in the dark, she could feel the texture change on the stones beneath her fingers from slick and grimy to smooth and dry. She no longer tripped over tree roots, and the scuttling of small creatures had been replaced by the flickering sputter of an ensconced torch. Still too far ahead to light her way, but she almost skipped joyfully into the small room it lit.

By her calculations, she was somewhere under the infirmary wing, though it was hard to tell for sure.

“Excuse me, is there anyone here?”

The chamber was small, but the walls were tall and her voice echoed up the long, square chimney above her. There were several doors in the walls which ascended up into the distance. Some of them did not align with any landing, and she wondered how anyone reached them. A stone staircase wound its way up the tower, pausing only where the masonry had fallen away with age. She noticed now that the corners of the room were littered with old stones, dusty and white with efflorescence. They were some kind of sandstone, different and much more ancient than the imported black brickwork of the monastery above. Some of these stones were bigger than her, and she shuddered at the thought of being squashed by this crumbling ruin.

“Hello?”

Every so often along the wall there was an indent, some large and others small, where an object had been carefully placed. Each one was free from dust, though open to the air. Carefully looked after, she surmised. There were books as large and as heavy as tombstones, necklaces of tarnished gold, devices of intricate carved staves but of unknown origin. One smaller alcove contained a shrunken head, its lips pursed in an everlasting grimace, hair long and luscious and trailing down from its plinth in plaits and curls.

She put her hand against the wall to steady herself as she lent in to peer at an old, withered hand and gasped when she left behind a bloody red handprint.

Pearl iron.

What she had taken to be condensation along the walls had been pearl iron, seeping through the gaps and coating her hand as she passed. She looked down at her feet. Her large walking boots and the hem of her dress had been stained crimson. She had been walking through red-wrought tunnels, dripping with cruor, only the darkness had spared her the sight. A somewhat terrifying thought, it made her hand quiver uncontrollably. This was her first time actually encountering the substance mined by old Lord Mallory that had terrified his accountant so. A voice from behind her made her jump.

“Ah yes, so you found the claw of the catechism, eh?”

She turned, mortified to have been caught unawares. She hadn’t seen anyone in the room before, but now what she had taken to be another pile of stone moved, and she saw that it was not sandstone at all, but the dusty folds of a many-layered Nocturne habit.

“A singular relic, to be sure. Look closely, child, and see that each finger is not made of skin and bone, but of pulp and vellum.” Wille looked back at the hand, and saw that it was true. What she had taken to be mummified flesh were rolls of finely inscribed paper.

“A painful process it was for the poor sister, yes yes. But worth it, for she could read her life away with every peel of her skin. Many secrets, so sad. Oh but, forgive me child, I didn't mean to frighten you. Sometimes I like to come down here, and meditate in the ruins of the departed temple. Didn’t expect to see any new faces down here, eheheh.” The figure rose, unfolding itself into a human shape. Her hair was long and matted, white for the most part but tinged with grey and brown. Like an old tabby cat, Wille thought to herself. Despite the wear and tear and general scruffiness of her appearance, her clothes possessed no telltale splatters of pearl iron. She had never seen this woman before, not in the refectory or even at mass.

“I am Sister Caprimulgus. How can I help an Orison such as yourself? Are you lost, little magpie?”

Magpie. It was a word she hadn’t heard in a long time. Archaic now, it was a slightly derogatory word for an Orison, referring to their black and white habit. She thought, however, that the older woman meant it kindly.

“No, actually, I’m here visiting.” She said, unsure of how much to reveal straight away. “You called this place the, um, the deserted temple? Not the oubliette?”

“The departed temple. This is just one part of our oubliette, and one of many temples.”

“Ah, I see. It’s so old. I said, it’s so old.”

The old nun seemed to have trouble hearing her, and shuffled over to Wille with a hand cupped around her ear. She was almost half her size.

“Not our oldest, oh no. I can show you?”

“Please.” Wille wasn’t sure where she was being led, but Caprimulgus seemed excited to take her somewhere. She had grabbed her by the hand and led her now to one of the many heavy-set doors. For an older woman, she had a surprising amount of strength in her arms, and she pushed open the thick door with ease.

“Come, come, this way! Eheheh.”

The door led to a well-lit natural pathway. No bricks or carven stones, the only human touch was the sconces containing the torches which lit their way. Stalactites and stalagmites of white crystal mingled with clusters of reddish mineral formations. Rubies, perhaps, or garnets. Caprimulgus pulled her along almost too fast for her legs to follow.

“This is the ruins of the older church. No, no,” She wagged her finger back at Wille, as though she had said something, “Older even than that. And there are others still older, beneath this one. Yes, yes, eheheh. Older than the stones.”

By now the red and white covered every surface of the cave walls, which she noticed were opening up into a larger cavern. The furthest parts were wreathed in darkness, but she wasn’t sure how the torches, small as they were, were lighting up so much of the visible grotto. It was as though there was a light emanating from the walls themselves, a hidden hue that contrasted with the orange flames as they flickered across the many-surfaced crystals.

In the centre lay a lake, still as stone and delicate, as though a single touch would shatter the surface. Surrounding it lay many crystalline rocks, some as tall as a person. The light reflected in its surface was dull, as though sucked out of the room and drowned among the tranquil waters. Caught between the subtle luminescence of the cave and the golden torchlight, it looked like a sea of rust-tinged blood.

“Ahh, the church! See?” The old woman turned to Wille for reassurance.

“I see. It’s beautiful, truely. I’ve never seen anything like it before.”

“Oh but you have. Don’t you remember, child? Take a closer look.”

Wille walked up to the edge of the pool. It was smaller than she first thought, but deeper. The ruby waters reflected her face perfectly, without a single ripple to distort her features. There was mud on her cheek, but otherwise she didn’t look as worse for wear as she expected. The lake has a strange, intoxicating quality. As though it was both still, and yet moving with a frantic energy just beneath the surface. She felt like if she put her hand in, the current would snatch her away, drag her down, down until there was nothing, not even her. Without realising it, she had extended her hand out to touch the surface. The corresponding ripple that emanated out from her fingertip jolted her out of her reverie, but when she brought it back to her face the tip was red.

“Remember now?” Caprimulgus’ words echoed around the chamber.

“Wait, this is pearl iron?”

“Pah! Pearl iron, pearl iron. No my child, this is the blood of the sleeping God. Ieklos Phobetor!” Wille was not sure if that was an epithet, or a curse. It was certainly not a title she had heard before to refer to the Dreamer.

“Many of our order come here to end their journeys, do you see?”

For the first time Wille looked closer at her surroundings, and gasped. The rocks crowding the edges of the lake were humanoid. No, not just humanoid. Human. Calcified nuns with hands clasped in prayer, down on their knees and facing the pool. Some were wearing visible rosaries and robes with fairly recent designs (monastic traditions, being what they were, rarely had a need to follow modern fashions and yet still, every hundred or so years, it still happened). All across their bodies were tiny crystals. Without thinking, Wille licked the red stain from her fingertip. It was salty, with a hint of iron.

“This lake, it’s filled with mineral salt deposits filtered through the pearl iron. These people, they came here… and turned to stone.” She said it aloud more for her own sake than for the elderly sister’s, who merely nodded as though what she had said was the most normal thing in the world.

Some of the figures had lost many of their defining features. Clasped hands became outcroppings, heads became featureless boulders. Closer to the edge of the water the rocks were smooth and formless, with many millennia of wear reducing the body to nothing. Some of the oldest casts, she was sure, looked distinctly less-than-human. Ancient, primordial worshippers had congregated here long before there was any kind of organised church.

“Is this what you have come for? Do you wish to end your journey, child?”

“Wha- oh! No, not at all! Actually, I came to ask… Did you by any chance meet an Etude recently, Sister Harriet?”

“Harriet, Harriet… Yes, yes, I did not meet with her, but I think Mischa may have. Mischa!” She called out, though Wille doubted anyone could hear her from down here.

She began to leave the chamber and Wille scurried after her, wondering absent-mindedly if the rocks that crunched beneath her feet were once bones. They had left via a different exit, one she hadn’t noticed before, and at some point the walls fell away on each side. Caprimulgus soldiered on ahead, unmoved, and it was only out of fear of losing sight of her did Wille step out onto the old stone bridge across the abyss.

“Mischa!” Caprimulgus’ voice echoed across impossible depths. In the distance, Wille could see the distant shadows of other bridges far above and below. The colour of the rock beneath her feet was only a shade lighter than the darkness surrounding it, and she feared that at any moment she could step out into nothing and fall. The Nocturne’s white habit stood out as a shining beacon ahead of her, and so she followed close at her heels.

It felt like an age had passed before they approached a doorway, cut into a sheer cliff face of black basalt. Inside were more stairs, but as they climbed they seemed to move from the age of primitive stone-carvers to the iron-wrought railings of later ages, on again to the masonry and architecture of a medieval castle. She felt that rather than moving through space she had been travelling through time, layers of the ages stacked one on top of the other. When they finally opened the door at the head of the stairs, it was almost cosy. A fire burned in the grate in this wooden-vaulted room, not much larger than a lord’s bedroom. For a bedroom it was, and in the centre stood a richly canopied four poster bed, laden with silks and satins of intricate brocade. The room was otherwise bare, expect for the many hundreds of guttering white candles strewn about the floor. Wax coated the bottoms of the curtains and blankets that trailed out along the floor, and every so often around the base of the wooden frame there lay a silver censer that exuded a dense and bitter smoke. Wille had no idea how this bed did not go up in flames.

“Mischa! Wake up my dear, you have a visitor here to talk to you about the Angol.”

“Uh, actually…” Wille began, but was interrupted by a high-pitched voice, youthful and nasal, coming from within the drapes.

“The Angol? Is that what thou’rt in search of? Pray, is that why thou hast wend thy way to this hypogeal carcern?” Sister Mischa spoke in a dialect so archaic, Wille could barely understand her.

“Actually I came to talk about Harriet, Sister.” There was no time for a theology lesson.

“Ahh, hmm.” Both Mischa and Caprimulgus hemmed and hawed at this, as though uncertain of how to simplify matters. Then, as though explaining birth to a baby, Caprimulgus continued.

“Child, when Sister Harriet came to us, she sought answers about the Angol. She asked us about the blood of God and…” A wistful look came over her face, “I do believe she will shortly, if she has not already, ascended to become an Angol herself.”

“Sister Harriet is dead. She was killed, shortly after visiting you down here.” Wille had to stop herself from coughing, the smoke from the incense burnt her nose and throat.

“Nay, that is not possible. I did accompany her, and climb’d to the surface at vespers. I believe it not!” Mischa’s piercing soprano reached its zenith as surprise and doubt crept into her voice.

“Let me look at thee.”

Caprimulgus pulled at a silken rope at the edge of the bed, and the curtains slowly parted. Seated in the centre of a hoard of pillows was sister Mischa. A red veil covered her face and hair, though the fabric was sheer and beneath its folds Wille could just about make out a long, elegant outline. Tassels of golden thread hung at the fringes. Her habit - if it was a habit, and not a nightgown - was of white lace, which tugged at her figure and at some point became one with the bedsheets. The red-veiled face scrutinized her.

“Thy tongue is true. So, she hath died.” Mischa seemed to deflate, pushing herself deeper into the covers as her wails filled the chamber with sorrowful song.

“Oh, hush hush now! There there!” Caprimulgus clambered onto the bed and wrapped the crying nun in a comforting embrace, and motioned for Wille to join them. The keening cries weren’t going to stop anytime soon, so Wille gently lifted the covers to one side and slipped into the bed, Mischa nested between the two of them. The bed was incredibly soft and she sank into it so quickly she thought for a moment she was back in the grotto and had fallen into the lake. Her head slipped under the surface. Beneath the blankets, all sound seemed to stop. The cries were muffled through layers of feather down. A claw-like hand grasped her arm, tenderly, its fingers elongated and skeletal, and she could hear the voice of Mischa clearly in her ear though the distant howling did not seem to stop.

“What thou seeketh is no longer here. Hear me, tidfara, o wanderer whose time hath come. Pilgrim, seek now the mortal body of she who is slain, lest all her dreams cometh to naught and the night turn only to ruin. Her journey hath ended, but you can continue the meeting.”

"The meeting?"

Wille felt hot breath on her face, and realised she had been screwing her eyes shut. She opened them, and moaned with realisation. What she had taken for elongated features were beastlike, a narrow snout of stretched skin ending with a small and tapering mouth of knotted teeth. It spoke now, in that high-pitched voice in a language long-forgotten.

“Efyngelic is us.”

We are the same. Some part of her brain knew this is what it was trying to tell her, this primordial fiend that existed outside of its own time, encroaching into the future with the horrors of the past. The first Gol.

Wille screamed and thrashed at the blankets, trying desperately to break free of them, but the more she pulled the more there were, until finally the covers came free and she pulled her head back into the light - so bright - of the room. Gulping for air, sweat poured from her brow as her eyes adjusted to the sudden light, and she saw Caprimulgus and Mischa - normal, human Mischa - gazing at her with interest. A dream, perhaps, and nothing more. The cruel tricks of a smothered brain, unable to bring enough oxygen when weighted down by feathers. Perhaps there was something in the incense.

“I-I’m sorry. I have to go.” She pulled herself free of the bedsheets, untangling her booted feet.

“Prithee be careful, tidfara. We will meet again when the hour is right. Mind my words, and seek thee hence the mortal remains.” Mischa said, before closing her curtains and disappearing into the gloom.

Caprimulgus guided her up a flight of stairs, humming to herself cheerfully as though unaware of anything strange that might have happened. They came out near the large bathroom, the one where Claudia had first seen those strange insects, from a panel in the wall that Wille had never suspected hid a secret path. She turned the taps now, and stripped off her muck-covered clothes to the sound of the copper pipes clunking and banging. She would be grateful to soak her body, to lie suspended in the steamy water and forget all about the abhorrent lake of blood at the centre of the earth.