Chapter 44: Torn to Pieces

"There's nothing to hold onto."

​ You are not merely a pious man. Though you are incredibly intelligent, resourceful, and able to adapt to impossible odds, none of your survival could have been possible without one thing: your creativity.

You close your eyes. The invocation is tilting, more of a lullaby than a whisper. "God of the Night. The sun is setting. Come unto me. Bless me. Shroud their sight. We will interpret the moon, the stars. Take my vessel. Let the darkness come. I want only for Dream—"

The sound of something dripping cuts the invocation short. You open your eyes. They go wide. Wider than they possibly could.

Music

The edges of your eyes continue to unravel. From the periphery of your vision goes the walls, the floor, and the figures in the room beyond. Your gaze unfurls out of the realm of the material, the immaterial, and everything in between.

Dripping, shrouded in paint, the last of your prayer and the start of a scream is completely silenced. Your lips are like liquid. The lids of your eyes seem to have disappeared.

You can see a clear path, winding through a group of entirely distracted priests ahead. One is taking his time with the door to a cell.

Staggering against the wall beside you— desperate for something to grab onto— there's nothing to hold onto. Your fingers splash up against the stone. Blue oils and pigments congeal from the edges of a vision, around your form, and into what you touch. The walls and your hands merge, pooling together for a moment.

The urge to scream is inescapable, but you can't make a sound. Pulling back, away, and out from the wall, you watch as the liquid of your arm takes a solid form again. The droplets of your limb on the floor leaves a network of cracked paint in its wake.

There are cracks running up into your mind, in swirls of divinity.

Grasping from the edge of the wall, clutching at your head, you try to still the agony.

You feel something else. Another hand reaches out from your skull, grabbing hard onto your wrist.

It's impossible to scream. Paint is dripping, pooling along the edges of your broadened vision, catching on every scar along your face, and coursing into your soul.

The hand on your wrist is dragging you into a nightmare.

It's getting darker.

The fingers around your wrist tighten so firmly, it feels as if your skin has intertwined with their own.

You grab back.

It's impossible to tell if your eyes are gone, or if they were never open to begin with.

You're running.

Holding desperately onto the hand of a figure beside you, you feel the ground give out beneath your feet. With how quickly you're both moving, the world around you is a blur. Shades of cerulean, turquoise, and azure streak past your sight. The human at your side is your height, dressed all in black. He's horrifically emaciated, and twitches at every unexpected sound. It's unnerving to an extreme. It seems both of your lives are in danger.

As you tear across a field of stone, leaving behind countless misshapen buildings, spears streak overhead. The projectiles barely graze you both, thanks to how deftly you move. You manage to avoid tripping over dead bodies littering the floor as you sprint, jumping periodically.

There's screams in the distance, coming from just behind you. Your pursuers. You're both leaving behind cries for blood, but the figure at your side doesn't care for the carnage.

He's seeking escape. Your captive turns hard around several corners, winding deeper into narrow corridors littered with writing. They cover every inch of the dilapidated rock and stone. You couldn't hope to ever read every word. Not in a lifetime. There isn't any time granted to you. It's getting harder to breathe, thanks to how quickly you're running. As the stranger skids to a stop, you don't dare to pull away, as he's ripping open a square metal door before you both.

You're pulled inside. The door slams shut. You want to drop to your knees, and are granted the rest you seek almost instantly.

The figure beside you slams his back against the door, collapsing to the ground, clutching at his head as he looks to the small room before you. The windows are boarded. There's no light, only a faint glow from blue paint. It drips from the walls, it pools on the floor, and it is coursing from your skin.

The hand clutching onto yours is laced with scars, buried deeply into your skin and veins.

Through the darkness, crimson catches on your vision. You want to vomit, but nothing comes. Your lips are sealed shut with oils and canvas.

The figure next to you is slaked with blood.

There are corpses in the room before you.

​

A pair of eyes watches you. They're the only thing illuminated in the darkness. It seems to be backed against a pair of moth wings, and follows every last twitch in yours and your companion's forms.

The eyes are on Mother Bethaea's face. Her corpse is draped over a couch. A noose is tightly fitted around her neck, gray and decaying. The body is years old, though the stench of death hits you as if she had only killed herself a few days before. The smell lingers, hanging in the air, on every other body regardless of its state of decay.

The eyes are there on the body of a red-haired man. He's perched and posed, sitting upright on a pile of the dead. They're all in robes of yellow-gold. Every pair of lips beneath him— including his own— have been stitched shut. The mound of carnage is also posed, laying prostrate before you. They're littered with signs of battle. Marred with arrows, slashed with swords, pierced with spears, and crushed beneath the weight of some unknown force. They've wasted, their cheeks and eyes are recessed so deeply into their face that it seems as if they are decaying before your very eyes.

Your congregation is rotting, yet you look away.

There is a man's body in the center of the room.

The figure at your side stands, as if in a trance. The moth and its wings are on your companion's face and eyes. You can't make out his expression beneath the wings of rot, but you follow its eyes as they flit and flicker towards Father Edmund's body. He stops a few feet away from the corpse. It's fresh in your mind. Your mentor has been flayed. You lean down to better look at his face, one last time. A neatly trimmed beard, laced with gold, lines a face at rest. Deep bags sit under his eyes, though his face paints a picture of more than overwork. He possesses wrinkles from smiling so many times before. It's one of the only expanses of humanity left. Every other inch of your mentor has been torn to pieces.

You ignore everything but the hauntingly familiar figure at your side. Its rigid posture, the twitch in its movements, its pallor and nerves. Looking more closely, you see the gold in his hair. There are eyes staring back at you, impossibly wide, and utterly mad. The look is not merely psychotic, but also is rimmed with deep bags under the eyes, sunken into a face that has worn with care and trauma. Lined with scars. Broken and scarcely mended.

You do not draw away. Though any sane man could turn and run, you do not run from your reflection.

With all the force you can muster, you pull the figure into you.

There was a man stationed by your side. Though you can never hope to repay his kindness in full, he knows you as the Father of Compassion. He has shrouded you in darkness. He walks under the night. The path that Father Wilhelm travels has been barricaded by the efforts of another ally. You have spurned Him, the King of Day. He halts the procession of your congregation, the Church of Mercy, and your impending arrest. All roads pass through Calunoth. It is the only one you have not taken. You are the nightmare. You are the darkness. You obscure your sight by failing to open your eyes.

Open your eyes.

You open your eyes.

You are sitting on the floor of the Church of Flesh, back against moist stone. You are shrouded in darkness, paint, and oil.

Flinching, looking to your hands, it's difficult to track your movement. It seems that no matter where you glance, you can't quite recall where you last were. You're confident that you could pass into the room beyond undetected. Eyes wide, you hazard another peek into the room beyond.

The guards have returned to their posts, save for the man who's stationed outside of Jonathan Friedrich's door. It's Gil, the guard who was incredibly suspicious of you before. He's opened the door only a crack, and has obviously been speaking to the demon for at least a few moments.

It's very difficult to hear anything. It's as if cotton is in your ears. It's might be paint, for all you know. It's quite difficult to feel anything, either.

You can't shake the feeling that you're still in a dream.

The guard is moving to enter the cell in the room beyond. You suspect you still have a few more minutes before the guards fully turn over.

Music

Your eyes are open. The room ahead is filled with innocent men stationed at their post, attending to their duties within the Church of Flesh. There is no danger, other than a disaster of your own creation.

An unholy compulsion arises to boldly go out and make every single man before you forget that you were ever here.

Even if I have strayed from the side of reason— have I ever minded straying? Have I not wandered for this long through the darkness? Do I not want for their blessing? Am I not consumed by the Night?

A shroud is twisted around your thoughts, snaking through the need to stay with Dream.

I may be insane, or deranged, or even a demon of faith.

Have I not always wanted more? More than a life of restraint and piety? More than a path of righteousness—

There are muffled voices in the corridor ahead.

Would they want to kill me, knowing everything I could do to them? Is everyone truly so afraid of me? I know I have never wanted for enemies. There are countless men who would rather see me dead than to walk freely.

They would have me destroyed.

No sound trickles in from the speech ahead. No meaning can be found through the intensity of your invocation. Oil and paint swirls— though you have not forgotten a thing.

I have promised so much, so many times, to so many people that I would help myself. That I would do better. That I will be better.

My parents. Mother Bethaea. Father Edmund. Ofelia. Celegwen. Yech. Idonea. Sister Cardew. Father Wilhelm, Father Friedrich, Sullivan—

Looking down to your hands, your scars are obscured. All you can see is divinity.

You drop the invocation.

Exhaustion slams into you. You drop to a knee, eyes heavy, limbs weighed down as if you have never slept in your life. The floor beneath you tilts.

How stupid could I be? Am I no better than a simpering worm— crawling— so desperate for any sort of power or fleeting thrill—?

Pulling into yourself, the motion is almost too difficult to manage. You've never felt so exhausted. Your breath is short, shallow, and the warmth in your body is rapidly leaving.

This is wrong. This has always been wrong. I have always told myself that I am nothing without Them. How can I call myself the Father of the Church of Mercy? How can I demand the respect of those around me when I refuse to change?

I'm pathetic.

Sister Cardew and Father Friedrich both tried to warn me. King Magnus will be furious. Rightfully so. I should be put to a stockade.

I belonged in that cell.

You pause, struggling to keep your eyes open. Head tilting, you pull up, trying to see.

I've never wanted this.

I can't stand being like this.

I've asked for help so many times.

Staggering, clutching onto the wall at your side, a ragged sigh of relief escapes you. The stone is intact, cold, and more than sufficient to get back to your feet. With all the restraint and discipline you can muster, you straighten completely upright. The sound of footsteps comes from down the corridor. You can clearly hear them laced over simple conversation, and an enormous amount of relief. They think you're with the change of the guard.

Looking briefly down to the paint smearing your hands, you wipe the substance off onto the side of your black robes. The evidence of invocation clings to the fabric, azure sticking starkly out against the mundane material. Grimacing, you wipe the side of your lips with the back of your hand. They're damp with paint. You scrub off as much as you can from the edges of your eyes, the corners of your mouth, and onto the edge of your sleeve, but are still entirely unpresentable. You call out. Every word is laced with all-consuming exhaustion and resolution.

"WAIT. Stay your hands—!"