“She’s doing well, by the way.”

“What?” Lin looked around at her companion, who up until that moment had been silent.

“Sister Freya. Her fever broke, and now she keeps talking about the wall. She’s more upset about her masonry failing than about her arm.” Hazel replied.

“Her arm’s not better?”

“No,” she shook her head sadly, “Belle thinks she may have anaemia, it does not fester but it does not heal either. She keeps finding bits of rock in the wound, little globes of pearl iron that push themselves out onto the sheets and stain the linen. She’s like an oyster.”

Hazel was silent, thankful that it was dark enough to hide the repulsion on her face.

“She wants her to stay at the infirmary until she improves, but Freya is just… I don’t know. When I visited her last, she seemed so agitated. The wall is all she cared about. She wasn’t interested in seeing me at all, even when I read aloud her favourite parables.”

The torches had led them to a spiralling passage of unidentifiable igneous rock, the surface of which was smooth like glass and reflected the flames with a quality akin to syrup, as though the light were honey, slowly dripping from a darkened spoon. The pearl iron didn’t take to it, and ran cleanly down the surface to pile into clumps along the edges of the floor. There was more of it now, red and ichorous, scenting the room with rust and tinting the perimeter of the light with a growing crimson stain. The doors here were narrower, older, and made entirely of dark studded metal. Sometimes they would pass an open door frame graced with only a pair of twisted hinges, the door itself long since gone.

It was at one of these doorways that the tapered torches stopped.

“Wille?” The two of them called into the room. The sound echoed, though in a muffled way, as though swaddled by dust and time. There was light here, but dim and far away, as though lower than the level of the door. The space within was deeper than expected, and as their eyes adjusted they saw a semicircular room lined with the ancient skeletons of once-padded chairs. The decrepit remains of what would have been quite an impressive amphitheatre, for performances long since lost. High windows were installed on the far side, though they looked out only onto bedrock.

“Incredible... “ Hazel whispered, her librarian heart stirring. “I knew some parts of Palus Somni had sunk, but was this ever really above ground? What do you think, Lin? We are so deep it is not possible, surely?”

“Perhaps we are not so far down as we thought- Ah!” The sudden sound made them both jump, all differences forgotten as the two of them clung to each other. Down on the stage, a single bolt turned in a slow circle on the boards.

“Come on out Wille, we know you’re here!” Hazel shouted, extracting herself from her companion with an air of indignation.

“Here,” her echo responded.

“Hide all you want but you can’t stay there forever.”

“Forever,” replied the room.

Lin ran a finger over the wall nearest her, examining the flecks of metallic dust and the trails of moist lichen that clung to her fingertip. Where her finger had disturbed the residue there lay patterns, intricate and colourful.

“There’s a painting under here. Hazel, help me up.”

Hazel wrapped her arms around her friend’s calves to keep her steady as she perched upon the frame of one of the chairs, using fistfuls of habit to gently wipe away the muck. Her long hair bobbed to and fro with the movement of her arms.

“Should we be doing this? I don’t like it here. It gives me the creeps.” Hazel was clinging to her legs now, her face nestled between the other Sister’s knees as she stared out across the auditorium with wide, frightened eyes. The torchlight did not extend far into the room, and only a small portion of the stage was lit.

“Just a little longer.”

The sound of Lin’s sleeves wiping against the wall was delusive, sending echoes out around the curved room in such a way that it felt like every surface was rasping under strain of scouring. The room reflected itself, became itself, and after a while she felt like she could see them both reflected on the far side of the theatre. A shadow of a girl, holding up another, as she painted long brush strokes on the wall with arms too long for comfort. Hazel looked up at Lin, just to make sure, but there was nothing out of the ordinary. Just her eyes making sense of shadows in the dark.

When she looked back, there was a third shadow.

“Lin.”

“Just a bit more… There, done. Wow, it’s…” She stepped down

“Lin, do you see that?”

“Yes, I see it. It’s incredible. Breathtaking.”

“No, not the picture, that. Her.” Hazel pointed out across the room, where the shadow stood unmoving.

“It’s just Wille. But Hazel please you have to see this.” She grabbed the librarian’s hand and twirled her around to face the newly uncovered fresco.

“Call to her Lin, please, I can’t. I am all made of shivers.” She avoided looking at the wall, her gaze still fixed upon the unmoving figure. A growing resentment towards her companion had nestled itself high in her chest.

“Wille! Wille! We’ve come to take you back. Don’t be scared now, come, see this beautiful painting! Look, Hazel, see how it flows? Such purposeful strokes.”

Hazel allowed herself a glance up at the wall, and then another. Her animosity turned to bemusement. The canvas was blank. There was no fresco, no painting, only thin dribbles of pearl iron newly forming at the seam between the wall and ceiling, the rest having been rubbed into the wall by Lin’s careful mopping. The metallic sheen was smooth and reflective, a crimson quicksilver mirror that showed Lin’s ecstatic face, Hazel’s knitted brows, and behind them the shadowy form of a nun they both recognised.

“It can’t be.”

“Mother Superior?”

“Mother!” Lin turned with reckless abandon and flung herself off of the chair towards their missing mentor, only to stop, and stare, her turn now to be confused.

An immense and intumescent blob burnished with dust and oozing clear fluid stood across the hall from them. It’s head was almost cleanly cleft in two, formed around the golden handle of a common convent candlestick. The Gol peeled itself past the stage, through the chairs and towards the girls on a myriad of tiny, scuttling legs that looked as though any single one of them should buckle under the weight of that bloated body. As it moved closer Hazel noticed that the rear end was stationary, fixed in place on the stage by layers of sludge, while the rest of the body extruded itself like some monstrous caterpillar. It wore, if it could even be said to wear anything, the remains of a Mother Superior’s hood and cowl between the folds of its neck and jowl.

“Mother?”

“No, don’t touch it! Lin, stop!”

Lin ran to its side, but stopped short of placing her hand upon the sticky, heaving mass.

“Oh Mother, Mother, is it really you?”

The cloven face, three eyes blinking, turned towards her.

“Ahh… Little Lin. Is that really you?” It said. The low-spoken words were gaseous, wispy things made entirely of air and nothing of breath.

“Mother, what happened to you?”

“Lin, get away from it! What are you doing?” Hazel looked on in disgust as her companion hugged the giant face tight against her bosom.

“You poor, poor girl. Oh my poor girl.” One of the withered legs reached out and clasped her shoulder with wiry ferocity.

“Tell me, my child… Are these dark times over? I hope that one day… One day… All this will end, and those of us so persuaded will cast aside the temptations of nightmares, and we will walk freely once again, untroubled by… By…” The creature had difficulty enunciating through blistered and bloated lips, which did not move in time with its speech, and yet it still persevered, driven by a desire to be heard after such a long time alone.

“Has… Has my convent prospered? Have my charges become the righteous acolytes I hoped they might be? Perhaps you could tell me… Tell me, oh...”

But she couldn’t finish her sentence, the weight of her tongue was too great. She only stared expectantly, with three eyes yearning wide, at the two terrified girls. Every laboured inhalation, wheezing through her exposed and enlarged lungs, marked the seconds that passed.

“I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry. It hasn’t… It’s not... ” Lin began, but the pressure of that gaze was too great for her to bear. “Yes… Yes, Mother. Our ordeal is over, we have won. The Gol are no more, and the convent thrives. The harvest was great and we will eat well this winter. We are waiting for you on the surface.” She was a bad liar, but whatever faculties of reason the Mother Superior once possessed had long since withered away.

“Oh! Oh. What a relief. Yes, to know I did not suffer so for nothing. Thanks be… Praise be… Only, you must be wary. There is one who did… Oh! Augh!”

But she did not get to finish her sentence. Two strong hands grasped the candlestick buried in her forehead and pulled.

“Hazel no, what are you doing?” Lin hugged her matron all the harder.

“Lin, you have to snap out of it!”

Hazel put her foot against one of the cheeks to brace herself, pulling with all her might, until the metal stick came free with a sickly squirt of pus and bile that drenched the two girls.

“Uagh! Augh! Help me! It hurts so!”

“Don’t listen to it!” With an overhand strike she smacked the candlestick down upon its forehead, sending one side of the head snapping forwards with a sickening crunch. The Gol writhed from side to side in it’s agony, sending Lin flying backwards into Hazel.

“Help me, I am done! Oh! Oh, my child!”

Her final words slurred as the stream of ichor set free by the blow eventually bubbled out into nothing, spurting without vigour as the old body deflated onto the floor with stunted legs twitching. It was a long time before the two of them felt able to move, bundled together on the floor where they had fallen.

“Why did you do that? Hazel, why? We could have helped her, we could have, we could have…” Wretched sobs interrupted her and she pressed her face into her hands to cover the grief that threatened to overwhelm her. Hazel put her arms around her gingerly, unsure if the touch would be welcome.

“That was not her. Mother left the monastery, I was there. I waved at her as she passed under the gatehouse. I’m sorry, Lin, really I am, but we have to go. There could be more down here. Come on.” She pulled the girl upright without much difficulty, though she felt limp in her arms.

“Come on now, there we go.” She said, as she guided her gently towards the door.

“But, the painting!”

“Hush now, it is only a mirror, nothing more.” But Lin was not listening, her eyes lingered on her reflection and her steps came to a halt. Hazel could see them both reflected there, and the stage behind them, and upon the stage the body of the Gol seemed human, though she knew in reality the body was monstrous.

“It’s a topsy-turvy mirror, that’s for sure! Please Lin, we need to go now.” She said, but Lin was still engrossed and took no notice of her.

“Do you see us? Lord, how peculiar. It’s almost as if…” Her thoughts trailed away as she placed her forehead against the metallic glass, her breath steaming on the cool surface. Hazel tried to tug her away, but stopped when from outside the room there came the sound of a distant voice, growing nearer and more frantic.

“Don’t you gesture to me like that, Beatrice, I am one hundred percent sure we did not come this way before.” There was a silence, presumably as the speaker listened to Sister Beatrice’s hands.

“Well, then, we shouldn’t have run then. Let’s just go back in time and tell ourselves that, shall we? Dreamer have mercy. Look, there’s a light.”

“Oh thank goodness, it’s the others. Magda! Claudia! We’re in here!” Hazel called, only to receive a silent reply. The footsteps stopped, and a whisper carried on the wind.

“...Did you hear that noise? What was that?”

“Magda, it’s us! We’re here!” Hazel called. Lin was still fixated upon the mirror and hadn’t shown any reaction to their presence. Her eyes lay wide upon the glass, pressed so close as to be touching, reflecting in intimate detail the capillaries in her sclera and the blossoms of her iris. Outside in the corridor there was a sound like someone blowing out a candle as a pair of shadows peeked around the doorway.

Hazel met their eyes with a sigh of relief, but before she could say a word the two nuns clambered back into the hallway, their slippers scuffing the floor in their hurry to retreat. Magda covered both her mouth and that of her companion with quivering hands, drawing them both slowly away from the door.

“Magda, what’s wrong with you? Beatrice?” As she took a step forward, the two of them fled.

“Stop! Don’t go that way, that’s the wrong way!” She sighed, and turned back to Sister Lin, who had finally extracted her attention away from the walls.

“I don’t get it, Lin. What is with them? Do you think they saw the Gol, and panicked?”

“We should find them before they get too lost.”

Hazel nodded. It was the most sensible thing Lin had said all night.

As they left the room, the earth-stained mirrors that lined the auditorium reflected their shapes from a myriad of different angles; two misshapen beasts, Gol-touched mutations, trailing out and into the corridor. Behind them, the body of an older woman, her face set in serene sleep as it lay half crushed beneath a single brass candlestick.