I want to stay with her like this, out beneath the moonlight, our bodies pressed close. But the Votum’s power drags me forward toward its purpose: the destruction of God.
Wordlessly, Nyatrix and I make our way to the Spine. I’ve walked this crushed shell path a thousand times and yet not an ounce of it feels familiar. It’s a gift, I suppose, that the places I loved have turned alien to me. Easier to pull out the weeds by their roots if they no longer take the form of my favorite flowers.
We slip through the doors of the Spine, Nyatrix leading the way. To my surprise, it is silent and utterly empty. I expected the ruin—cracked statues, weed-choked marble floor, stained glass little more than a memory. But no Holy Guard paces the corridor, no Host Knights prepare for battle. Did He send the entire army to Liminalia? My stomach twists and nausea blooms in my throat. If He left Lumendei undefended like this, then?—
The Devorarium doors burst open in a sweep of stale wind. I freeze, my feet rooted to the spot, as Nyatrix and I are suddenly bathed in sickly green corpse-light. Nine High Ecclesians line the doorway, veils pressed close to Their desiccated features.
“The Service is about to begin,” Their voices boom together, echoing inside my skull. In a horrible symphony, all but one Ecclesian turn away, processing down the aisle. With only one remaining, I can see into the Devorarium, and what I find there is nothing short of all my worst fears come true.
Foundlings fill the pews. For a moment, I think it’s only the terror coursing through my veins that brings the thought to my mind. But I would know the slope of Carina’s shouldersand the swan-like set of her neck anywhere. Alta’s thick braid. Headmistress Magdalena’s graying curls. And plenty I don’t know—too young, too small, to work in the gardens or the infirmary.
I hear Nyatrix’s sharp intake of breath as I gaze upon all the people in the pews, utterly still, staring straight ahead. Are they even breathing? Are they still alive, I wonder? Or has He already taken what He wanted and left nothing but husks?
“What are you doing to them?” someone snarls, and I am surprised to realize a heartbeat later that it’s me speaking to God in such a tone.
“Preparing them for the Holiest of Rites,” the single Ecclesian says. They’re taller than the rest, Their shoulders broader, something about Their form, even beneath the vestments, familiar. “To be devoured by their Lord and Savior.”
“No,” Nyatrix says, simple and resolute. Her sword is drawn and she’s charging forward before I can even process that she’s moved.
My heart follows her before my body does, wings spreading as I push off the ground and into flight. My muscles protest and pain wracks my body, but I do not yield.
The moment we both cross the threshold, the Devorarium doors slam shut behind us. I prepare myself to find the nearest Ecclesian, to return Them to the Fatum They once were, but then the heady, resinous smoke of Midnight Mass incense barrels into my nose.
My eyes burn and I cough. Distantly, my mind fuzzy, I think I hear Nyatrix sputtering, too. The incense—blood, labdanum, rot—invades my senses, forcing its way into my skull. I waver, unsteady on my feet, and only at the last moment do I feel the unmistakable thrum of Mysterium. A sedative Blessing, I realize just as it sinks teeth into my brain.
My feet shuffle forward without my command. My thoughts scuttle like beetles and I fight to corral them. When I finally do, my body processing down the aisle against my will, despair wraps cold fingers around my throat.
In Liminalia, I found myself marveling at my prior willingness to obey, wondering why I was so pliant. But not once did I remember the ever-present curls of incense. How these devotional resins so often returned me to a place of what I thought was peace, enraptured by the wonder and beauty of the Host. How the only times I managed to disobey were within my room or the Vincula—where the air is free of slinking, seeking smoke.
It’s too late for any of it to matter now; I cannot make my body stop its funerary march. My eyes blur with stinging tears. In the pews, the other foundlings are utterly silent as I pass, hollow smiles plastered onto their lips, heads slightly bowed, hands folded in empty prayer.
Past the Ecclesian ahead of me—the familiar one—I catch sight of Nyatrix’s silver armor winking in the candlelight. She, too, stumbles forward in that same ungainly movement I noticed during the Communion on the night we fled this city. The instant I draw the connection, pain sears the inside of my skull like a punishment. My entire face burns, as though I’ve drawn seawater into my nostrils.
My body brings me to the end of the aisle, where I fold into a bow beside Nyatrix. For a moment, I glimpse the beads of sweat on her temple, her clenched jaw, her muscles tensed as she fights the First Son’s invasion. Slithering whispers echo in my ears, but I shove them away, trying to reach for the edge of a pew to hold myself upright. But my body collapses into a seat of its own accord. A front pew, nonetheless—a place that someone like me would never occupy, not by the rules I thought I knew.
Before me, the Ecclesians arrange Themselves on the altar in a half-moon, facing that towering statue of the First Son. For now, no eye-wound opens in His belly. Upon the steps, the same candles from my last night in this city are lit—the source of that pale, horrid glow, as tall and narrow as spindly fingers, clustered together in great spikes like the nest of something venomous.
Instead of a pontifex, one of the High Ecclesians stalks toward the lectern, which is wreathed in the wispy gray fabric of a death shroud. I grit my teeth and push against the Mysterium-charged hold on my body, begging for the Votum to dosomething. But even the great Creatrix is caged within my flesh and bone the same way I have always been, bound to pain and ridicule. I desperately want to search for Nyatrix, but the First Son’s power keeps my gaze firmly planted ahead.
“The Lord be with you,” the Ecclesian greets at the altar.
“And with your spirit,” my mouth—all of our mouths—reply at once, monotone and lifeless.
“Today, dear congregants,” the Ecclesian says, gauntleted fingers curled around either side of the grand carved lectern, “we finally become One Flesh.” They fling out one spindly arm, Their tattered vestments dripping like torn skin, and gesture toward the statue of the First Son. “To begin, let us confess to our Almighty God,” They say.
Again, my mouth moves against my will, the voice that rises from my throat a pale imitation. “We have greatly sinned in our thoughts and in our words, in what we have done, and in what we have failed to do, and through our fault, our most grievous fault,” we all recite at once.
The entire Devorarium pauses, a moment strung so tautly I feel as though my eyes might burst like overripe fruit. Then my mouth moves, my vocal cords straining as I fight to keep these heinous verses from my tongue.
“Therefore, we ask the First Son, Blessed Sempiternus, to make us one mind, one body, one flesh, and guide us to everlasting life,” I say—we all say—despite my efforts.
A sudden pain overtakes me, like my mind has been cleaved by some great blade. I open my mouth in a soundless scream, tears blurring my vision as sweat gathers at the nape of my neck. The pain digs deeper, piercing the soft flesh inside my skull. The agony is extraordinary, all-consuming—and yet, I remind myself that I have lived through worse.
Locked inside my own body, I hurriedly retreat to my inner room. That tiny place in the chamber of my chest where a shattered piece of a goddess prowls, where I’ve spent so many anni finding refuge. The corpse-light, wrapped in labdanum incense, chases me through the corridors of my own bones, spidery hands outstretched. But I reach my chamber and slam the door. I do not know if I am intact, if I am sane, if I have saved anything at all, so for a moment, I just try to breathe.
The mind-splitting pain is still there, just distant, held at an arm’s length the way I’ve spent a lifetime training myself to do. Through the haze of tears and sickly smoke and the pounding anxiety I can suddenly feel again, I watch as a High Ecclesian pulls an ancient leatherbound papyrus from the lectern.
My body rises, God’s puppet, my movements jerky. I steady myself from my inner room as the Blessing—if it can truly be called that—hurls itself against the door. And then, on the peripherals of my senses, a voice. No; nine voices. Fatum, once. Monstrous, now.
