Chapter 5: Nothing To Fear

"Not under my watch."​

You slip inside, being thin enough to get into the building first. Streaks of blood and more cries linger behind you.

The man you healed continues to open the door, permitting Ray to barrel inside. Nothing but a sword, shield, and courage holds the defense.

Both priests stumble in, staving off as much of the attack that they can.

The door thunderously crashes behind you all, announcing your entrance to every figure inside. The building is a traditional stable. Its inhabitants are anything but. There are no living animals here, save for your dog. Horses lay on the floor in tatters with their entrails strewn about haphazardly. Several more corpses litter the scene: Human men. Women. Children. Blood streaks the walls, the dirty hay. The smell of decay— of bodies that have been lying about for at least a day— hits you with the same intensity as the demons just outside. The odor intermingles with sweat, filth, and more repressed fear than you've witnessed in a very long Time.

A number of makeshift restraints are loosely keeping no fewer than three dozen men and women from getting out, in and around the carnage. The precaution is entirely unnecessary at the moment. They are huddled together out of terror, but command enough control over themselves to have not turned in what has likely been days.

There's banging on the door. Demons at your back.

Human suffering hits you. Demons in your mind.

The impact is harder and faster than most blows you have been dealt.

Rope and chains are a grotesque reminder of your own position in the Church of Mercy. Years spent in silent devotion.

Again.

No chill moves down your spine. There is no cold sweat. No reminder of the dark. No tremor or any indication of creeping horror. It's the end of the season, and though mist gathers before the breath of many of the figures around you, you are filled with heat. There's warmth and comfort in your very soul. A Merciful Goddess engulfs every intrusive thought, and fills your mind with something more.

There is nothing to be afraid of. There is light here.

There are no windows. I can't. I've had enough of the dark—

You are a gift. You are the light. They will look up to you. You are Merciful.

The isolated citizens, clergymen and holy women all raise their eyes to your entrance, huddled as they are. For all the fear, there is hope in their eyes.

Your eyes are gold, and the Goddess of Compassion is with you.

Father Friedrich is standing at the back of the stable, without any divinity coursing through him. He is desperately trying to negotiate with a priest who is not in any bonds. Three other priests are badly wounded beside their Father. At a glance, you can recognize that two of them are on the brink of death.

You have never seen the man who's broken voice you recognized before, but he looks vaguely familiar. His brown hair, neatly trimmed beard, and all of the blood on him leads you to believe you may have fought alongside him in years past. There is no recognition in his face as he screams at you and your companion's entrance.

"DON'T COME ANY CLOSER!"

Panic drenches you. He tightens the grip on the weapon in hand. It's a dagger. The priest intends to kill himself.

To withstand so much anguish— to endure so much emotion— to be a man of the Gods and stray so far—

Father Friedrich commands the man one last time. The pity in his singular word is unbearable. He looks utterly exhausted. You strongly suspect that he had to release his connection to Flesh out of necessity, and not for lack of needing His blessing.

"Don't."

There are never outbreaks this severe in the Church of Mercy. Not under my watch.

There's a flurry of movement as the man moves to impale his own abdomen. An unearthly sound rises from his throat before he even strikes. Father Friedrich and all three priests move to act at once.

The two men and your dog beside you are looking to you for protection. An entire stable packed with helpless innocents looks on in horror.

He's already a demon of fear.

Peril coats the walls. It's stifling, choking, and thicker than the filth and decay. The rising fear in every living soul here is placing them at imminent risk of losing themselves to the Catalyst. There's no Time to think about anything more than repressing the outbreak.

Sparks of yellow gold melts across the edges of your mind. You hold out your hands to the men and women before you.

The will of the Goddess and the Lord of Restraint stills Father Friedrich's assault on the suicidal man. He fearlessly tried reaching his son before the dagger made contact. His men do leap to his aid, despite all their wounds. But the supremacy of Your devotion instantly disciplines their violence. It drops every one of the priests in the room to the ground.

Your hands close, knitted together in prayer. Every interlocking finger is wet. The liquid aureate upon them is scalding. Flawless. Your vessel is cracked, and though you don't look to confirm it, you feel Her within Your hands.

The gold comes to your chest, as you wrap your arms around yourself. The motion, the metal, and the heat draws close to your form for a blessed moment.

Temper me. Hold me. I gave it freely to another. Love me.

Grant me restraint.

Calm and control drenches you. You release your arms from your own frame.

The Goddess's gift persists, drips off of your palms, and rises towards the figures ahead. Golden eyes look out to your congregation. Nothing will dissuade your conviction, the bond, and the love you share with your partner.

The tightness of your grip exceeds any chain or rope before you. The men and women in the stable relax. Their shoulders slack.

Empty gazes bore into you with light and divinity. You have shown your works to hundreds of men and women during your service. Thousands, even. This is a trifle. For everything you have endured, there is no need to look behind you.

Not even to ensure that you are working over the priests at the door. You feel them. You feel your allies. You feel the Goddess of Compassion.

You take a few steps forward— heat amplifying with each step— as you embrace the lost soul at the back of the stables. The suicide victim is inert for only a moment.

The air waves with the sheer amount of energy working through you. This priest will not be the first demon you've given restraint.

This will be different. You are with Her.

You are Merciful.

You close the distance. The fallen form contorts into remnants of a man, while the newly formed demon begins to sob hysterically. You've never heard any sound so disturbing come from someone undergoing the change.

Broken glass and shattered pottery stabs your ears and shakes you to the bone. It's excruciating. The priest can feel his vessel breaking.

There is a sickening crack of bone. An unstoppable event. The muscle around the nightmare decays almost instantly, and through the putrefying tissue comes white cartilage. Snapping sinew.

The protruding ivory rips itself cleanly from the confines of Flesh. An enormous out pour of blood smears across half of the stable, smoking and bubbling. The demon's skeleton is slaked with red and black, but the scent of cadavers and copper never hits you. A swirl of the monster's viscera rises into the air, splashes onto the standing skeleton, and congeals once again around a desperate form.

The man of the Gods is undergoing something far worse than death. A wall of tissue contorts around the priest's body, unable or unwilling to assume a specific form.

With light in your heart, you fearlessly stride up to the figure. It has been lost.

The demon of fear and Flesh is rapidly turning into something incorporeal.

The priests of the material on the floor beside you are wordless, and subdued into utter submission.

No one else here will turn. Not under my watch.

The former man's connection to his God was severed. From the heat of his own transformation, his bones char, blood boils, and nothing but smoke remains.

The plumes writhe and contract. Tendrils of Flesh spool and twist before your halted gaze. There's an intense desire to pour everything you have into him, but the demon's Catalyst is in full swing.

There's a small break in the back of your mind. Mercy granted you restraint.

She stays your hand, if only for a moment.

In darkness and bondage, the words of a mentor resonates through every fiber of your being. All of your years of training, restraint, suffering and discipline has instilled in you an unwavering obsession.

Again.

It is heretical, but you have been called a demon yourself many times before. Like a man possessed, you take hold of your Relic.

The hand around the locket is drained. Its gold pours from and pools into the item, while the other instrument of the Gods— your free hand— reaches out. It plunges into the smoke and terror.

Not even the piercing cold and darkness of a demon can penetrate the tie between you and the Goddess. Your voice is steady, coursing with divinity. "I know you are afraid. There will be relief. We will ease your pain. There is nothing to fear."

Gilt pours out through the cracks in your palms. The radiance of countless scars pierces through the demon's bent shadow. Your own vessel is shattered, but it has been mended by something greater than Flesh.

Mercy makes you whole.

A scream wants to rise from the back of your throat. Terrible and incessant sobbing spills from the demon underhand. The tortured figure, its Flesh, and your hands of Mercy writhe against one another in the unholiest display you've ever seen. Smoke and gold intertwines in a grotesque dance, pooling and rising in the air before you. It congeals, and separates again. The Goddess attempts and fails to do more than pull apart the demon from its terror.

Over.

And over.

And over again.

She needs you. Mercy granted you restraint. She leans into you with all of Her blessing and heat.

Mercy is restraint in the face of the undeserving.

She wants you to stop. Though there is an intense love of violence, of suffering, and of mending the broken, She doesn't want to lose you.

In your moment of hesitation, a voice rises from behind you. It's Father Friedrich. He's looking up to you with reddened gold swimming in his vision. The priest has clearly attempted to invoke Flesh to fight through your restraint. Smoke rises from his burning muscle, the flex of his broad shoulders, and the torn fabric hardly adorning him. Gruff and distant, His divinity interlaces something utterly heart-broken.

"Don't. The fight is outside, isn't it? Leave him. Leave me to my boy. You've done enough."

The stream of dead demons littering the walls and floor all along the way from the courtyard snaps into the forefront of your mind. The countless weapons protruding from their corpses. There was a barricade to wall something in. To keep something out. A defense for several dozen men and women who are incapable of fending for themselves. A prison for several dozen souls who could not be permitted to be saved from themselves.

"We can stop. You can stop. It's alright."

You are a man of action, not of questions. You have so little knowledge and so little understanding of the people you surround yourself with as a result.

You practically know more about demons than other people.

It's a blessing that you have been granted restraint. That you are effortlessly able to hold down the demon before you, to better focus on the words of the man beside you.

The gaze of nearly four dozen other people matters very little.

Father Friedrich looks exhausted. If he truly wished to stop you, there is no question in your mind that he wouldn't last. You've been capable of channeling Mercy for hours before, even though the effort nearly killed you.

Every passing moment is wearing harder on your body and mind. It certainly is wearing on your fellow church leader as well.

"Father Friedrich," you say.

The demon's sobs subside. The man you address snaps his gaze to you. It seems clear that he intended to physically drag you away from the demon— yet for all of his strength, he stops struggling.

There's more than saffron in his eyes. A grieving father battles with hope. "What?"

At his words, your quarry goes back to writhing. It's far more intense than before. Your hold can't possibly persist without giving the demon your undivided attention, but your hands are occupied with a holy Relic and the interior of the monster.

You want to listen— to aid your fellow Father— but you know what needs to be done. A few words of reassurance are the best tool at your disposal. "You have witnessed more than Our tenets before. I have done everything in my power to share it with you. A measure of compassion, and Mercy: My trust."

A shift occurs in your tone. It's disembodied, reverent, and brimming with so much Mercy that you don't recognize your own words. "I hope you can trust in Him, too. He wants to trust in you."

The symbols you wield could be mistaken for many things. The bent blades may look to be a heart, or even a skull, but the demon before you knows what it represents.

Your will is impressed onto the gold, and into the monster. A flare of light coalesces from the locket, around your target's form, and deep inside of the void that once kept its soul. From the demon's maddened Flesh and the luster you hold comes a searing heat.

Every ounce of restraint you have been granted goes to suppressing the gasp and moan that wants to follow. There is something worse than a flame encompassing half of your arm and all of your hand.

For the scent of seared Flesh, and all the desire to keep yourself there, you extract your burning skin and aching muscle from the demon as quickly as you're able. Your Relic stays in the palm of your hand. Mercy gives Herself to you. The burns do not stop you. Heat never has.

You present the symbol forward, driving the demon down and away. It curls into itself. Pearls of gold manifest from the immaterial smoke all about it, and drip to the ground into something tangible. It's almost as if the demon has assumed a material form solely for your benefit. The growing mound is much larger than the man's form in life, oozes, clumps together, and becomes a mass of gilded viscera.

From the center of the shape comes two reddened eyes. They look up to you, and fix on your position. A distant voice rises from the smoldering form, without lips or teeth.

Nightmarish and surreal, the sound wafts over the cold air of the stable. "Who can claim the right to rule the hearts of humankind?"

You know that hesitation here will be certain death for many. No one about you can interject, for want or ability. Father Friedrich remains utterly silent and unmoving, watching your administrations.

"Salvation lies with this man. He is the answer to your fear." A tendril of smoke curls up from the body of the beast. It takes the shape of a hand, and points directly at you.

Father Friedrich looks horrified. It's not at the implications of the demon's speech, the monster's form, or even the use of Your Relic.

"I've heard enough." He's trying to spare what little might remain of your reputation.

The demon before you takes no issue with writhing silently. The moment you're confident that it has been placated, you stash your Relic beneath the collar of your red robes, and whip your head around to Father Friedrich.

Despite its resonance and compassion, your voice becomes quiet enough that only he should be able to hear. "Please. I need an explanation. Why? How could you have let this happen?"

He sounds as exhausted as you feel. "The Church of Mercy hasn't answered a single call to action in weeks. Many of our men— along with the Church of Spirit— left days before the outbreak began. I have been doing everything in my power to protect the city, to attend to our affairs on our borders and our defense in the wild." There's obviously a lot that he's not expanding on, but it seems that even this is too much information for his tastes. "It's no excuse."

The last vestiges of crimson part from the man's frame. He releases Flesh, and looks to the slight movements of the demon with a strange glint in his eye.

It appears to be quietly sitting, and refusing to do so much as slander the men who were about to kill it. Either the demon is so content with your works that it has nothing further to say, or it is actually being polite enough to let you both speak freely.

The church leader discreetly glances to the countless men and women behind you all, and to the clergymen beside you both. He murmurs, "where is Father Wilhelm?"

Replying decently, keeping your voice and breath level, and maintaining your hold on the humans about you is rapidly becoming unmanageable. There's a lot of heat in your face, and it's not from his comment. There's simply so much of the Goddess in you that it's rapidly becoming impossible to think or speak clearly.

She is so proud of you.

You try to take a deep breath. They are clear despite all of the smoke you inhaled earlier.

She loves you.

Another deep breath. The simple act of drawing air into your lungs

"M-Mercy..."

An extremely concerned look is directed towards you, though the Father of Flesh doesn't dare to tell you how to handle your Goddess. No one else that can interrupt does. You're given enough time to compose yourself.

"The outbreak carried into the courtyard. He stayed behind to fend off the worst of the assault. There is an evacuation taking place within the Church of Flesh, for the—" You are not going to make a scene. "—for the wounded."

"We still have Time, then. Let my men see to Johnath—" There's a streak of pain so sharp across Father Friedrich's face that he can't finish his sentence.

You are Merciful. "To the demon."

Said demon— Jonathan— does not bother to correct either of you. Its hideous amalgamation of Flesh, gold, and ultimate relief merely looks up to you. Gratitude is somehow painted across its grotesque parody of a face.

The monstrosity rasps, "thank you for this final gift."

The jerk on your heart, lungs, and soul threatens to steal out the world from under you.

The demon is demonstrating compassion towards more than itself.

Wide-eyed— fearing the worst— you look back. You're not in a Dream, or having some fit of the imagination. The Goddess of Compassion is still working through you and the congregation behind you.

Repressed as their emotions remain, these lost souls could still turn to the Catalyst. The priests around you— restrained as their bodies may be— could lash out the second you release them.

There is no telling how long the effects of Your gifts will last.

Especially on a demon.

Despite all the restraint that the Goddess has granted you, there's still the unavoidable need to stay with Her. "I— I'm sorry. I am so sorry."

Thanks to your works, a demon is blissfully reclining. The spread of its eyes and congealed Flesh is more obscene than any hitch in your breath.

The sincerity of your apology does not only go out to Mercy, your congregation, or the men kneeling beside you.

You genuinely want to apologize to yourself for the abuse.

Pools of molten blessing spill from your outstretched hands. The attempt to beckon Father Friedrich closer is cut short for a moment. Unendurable relief courses through you. The surge of respite from your pain— from the worries of the material— stops all movement in its tracks.

She is divine.

She can't keep herself off of you.

She is so content with your works.

It's not enough.

We can do more.

You redouble your efforts at composure, clench your fists, and bite into your lip. It muffles waves of gilt. She's on your lips. She on you, in you—

The Father of the Church of Flesh glances between the disfigured remains of his fallen son and your divine preoccupation several times. You can't hope to restrain yourself, let alone keep your hold on him any longer.

He finally seems to recognize your efforts and fearlessly crosses the distance between you both. All of the pain in his face indicates he has much to atone for as well. "There's nothing to apologize for. Self-pity can wait. If everything you've said is true— and I'm sure it is— we are wasting Time."

You keep your voice level, righteous and utterly convicted. No amount of devotion will keep you from serving Her. "I do not pity myself for invoking Her. There is time for this. I have always made the time for what needs to be done."

You respect Time more than anything. No one accuses the statement for any of the blasphemy it may invoke. Not even from the monstrosity near your feet.

"What can be done about the demon?"

Your fellow Church leader miserably grimaces. "We have no precedent for this. I would strongly advise to not make an immediate decision, if he's no longer an immediate threat."

You are as apologetic and pained as can be. "This may not last, Father Friedrich."

If only for a second, the father's anger and frustration threatens to overtake his reason. "That would be too fucking convenient, wouldn't it?"

The heat coursing through every crack of your overworked body wears on you, and simultaneously keeps you on your feet. For how badly you want to kneel and pray, there is little doubt in your mind that the blessing will only intensify. Your reverence is perfect, and so is She

Grief is back in his eyes, and his grimace persists. "I don't suppose keeping it restrained separately will do a damn thing, either."

"That may be our best option," you offer, looking around with gold in your eyes. "There is much that should be forgotten here."

Nearly four dozen men and women look up to you. They meet the yellow in your gaze with similar divinity. It's taking everything you have to actively keep your sway over so many for so long, but you are determined.

Father Friedrich put a hand firmly to your shoulder at some point. "There is no shame in loving Her— but you can't keep this up forever."

Anything less would be a tragedy.

"I want nothing more than to serve Her. To grant relief from Our children's pain. To do all that We can."

She holds onto you so tightly that you can hardly see. Flecks of gold dance in your vision. There are so many people who need Your gifts.

Metal and light settles on the mortal man before You. "Will you still permit him to aid you?"

Father Friedrich nods and rises to his feet. The needle he wears is slick with blood, but he returns it to his hand in an instant. "Make it quick. We have more lives to save."