Published at 1st of December 2023 10:41 am

Chapter 72 True Form

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It wasn’t until Todd had finally found the coven of cultists amongst the workers that he realized that his sight had somehow dulled in the last few months of being here. The workmen were from different regions and on various shifts. Still, following a hunch, he entered their camp late at night and found them worshiping a queer idol by firelight. He was, of course, outraged that these men were using their dirty hands to help build Brother Verdenin’s great work, but he was more baffled that he could barely detect any evil in their dull eyes and wicked hearts.

The next day when they reported for work, Todd had the guards arrest them. As much as he hated torture, he looked forward to putting them to the question so that they might tell him more about what other vipers lay in their midst. Priest Verdenin had other ideas, though, and ordered their execution almost immediately.

“But sir… I—” Todd protested.

“Silence,” Verdenin said in a voice filled with uncharacteristic authority. “These currs have tainted our holy site, and all of their work must be cleansed. They deserve no mercy.”

Though Todd largely agreed, he watched in disappointment as the guards carried out the priest’s order. He understood how personally the priest took this project, but he felt certain that they’d made an error here, but now he could do nothing to fix it.

Todd spent much of the rest of the day trying to understand why he hadn’t seen more darkness on them as he watched the river go by. There was less taint there than there had ever been, or at least that’s how it seemed. “Maybe I’m just going blind,” he said to himself as he sat there. Maybe the water was as toxic as ever, but he just couldn’t see it.

That was when he decided he had to fast and purify himself if he wanted any answers. It was only once that decision was made that he went back to the Temple of Dawn to consult with the priest where it was impossible not to notice how much the building was taking shape now. In the six months since they’d started work, a great deal had been done.

The floor was in place now, save for a few mosaics where the strange plumbing needed to be connected first, and the fountain basins were all assembled on the outside of the growing walls. When all of this was done, the round building would practically be surrounded by its own moat, and the spray of crystal waters would be constant. Todd still thought that those details were utter folly; he had to admit that it would be a sight.

The walls, too, were growing higher, and the effect of the vivid colors of sandstone was very striking, though perhaps a little darker than Brother Verdenin had intended. Though during the day, the waist-high walls looked like an especially vivid sunset, at dusk, it looked more like the sight of a bloody massacre to him. Only the central columns were complete now so that they could start to build the scaffolding for the dome, but in another year or two, the exterior would be complete, and not so long after that, the inside would be finished as well.

And all it would cost was a small fortune, he thought ruefully.

In the midst of the temple, in a tent that sat where the altar would eventually go, sat Brother Verdenin. For the last two months, it had slowly become his office, and these days it was rare for him to leave the site for more than a few minutes at a time. His work had become an obsession, and though Todd would have liked to believe that this was an act of sincere devotion, he secretly believed it was about vanity more than anything at this point.

When Todd said he wanted to take a leave of absence to commune with Siddrim, the priest practically insisted. He told him that he should take as long as he needed. Brother Verdenin blew off his concerns about his sight with general aphorisms about how “the powers and gifts of their Lord ebbed and flowed as needed, and near such a holy site, you obviously have no need for such things.”

Todd thought that answer was especially self-serving for a man with so much darkness in his heart, but right now, Todd could barely see it, so he was hardly one to judge. He also worried that the priest so obviously wanted him away from this spot, though he still had no good answer as to why. Neither of these things stopped Todd from gathering his meager possessions and taking a ferry across the river. There was a monastery only a three-day ride from here, and Todd would pray on those questions there after he’d been shriven and purified.

...

The order of St Thedocious was a penitent order, and they welcomed him. Though many of the brothers had taken vows of silence, the Abbot took the time to hear his confession and listen to his doubts.

“Many are the follies of the holy city,” he agreed after Todd finished explaining the extravagant nature of the new temple and his misgivings about it. The Abbott did not elaborate further but put Todd to work weeding vegetable beds and shearing sheep. It was pointless, menial labor, but Todd found it infinitely more satisfying than anything he’d done in Blackwater. The old brick building of the monastery would never hold a candle to the Temple of Sunset, of course, but that didn’t matter. There was a holiness coming from its whitewashed exterior that no amount of gilding could ever hope to improve upon.

Every day he worked hard, and every day he prayed for guidance, and slowly but surely, his senses began to sharpen and improve again. As soon as he noticed that he could see the holy light radiating from the Abbot, he was tempted to go right back to the Blackwater and test his vision, but he forced himself to wait. He’d told Brother Verdenin that he would be gone for a full moon, and he aimed to do just that.

So, day by day, he cleansed himself of whatever the taint was that clung to him during his time at Blackwater. These purges took the form of a series of bouts with an illness and increasingly strange dreams. Though he still worked in the fields with a fever, only prayer kept the sickness at bay. Between the vomiting and the sweating, it was as if his body was trying to remove some terrible poison.

Eventually, after three weeks of suffering, the Abbott decided that he had been purified, and any further labors would only exacerbate his worsening condition. “There was a shadow on you when you arrived, acolyte, but you have purged it. Now you must rest your body lest the Siddrim take you before it is time.”

“It’s fine,” Todd insisted, “I can do more. I must do…”

As he stood to make his point, he very nearly collapsed. The Abbot said nothing beyond a knowing smile when Todd added, “Well, perhaps I should rest more.”

Ultimately Todd bowed to the older man’s wisdom and rested for two full days before he made his long journey back. Though he hadn’t enjoyed being treated like a child at the time, eventually, he was grateful that the man had stopped him because his rising fever made it quite apparent that he might not have survived another week of hard work like this. Neither healing magic nor bleeding had done much good, though sometimes that was the way with sickness. A wound was easy to heal with Siddrim’s light, even if Todd wasn’t particularly talented there, but sickness - well, that could indicate deeper problems in the body.

Two days from the monastery and more than a day from the river, he began to hallucinate. If he was well, he would have been sure that the sight was showing him how evil and twisted the world around him had become, but because he’d just ridden this way only a month ago, he knew that was impossible. There was no way that the trees had turned to bone or that the shadows danced at the signposts and crossroads. For that many unquiet dead to exist in this area, there would have to be untold numbers of mass graves, which simply wasn’t possible.

His mind would play tricks on him at random, and that was most noticeable when he passed groups of people on the road back to Blackwater. Some of the men he passed would look perfectly normal, and a few even flickered with the light of a life well lived, but others were stained so black by evil or were so withered by sin that they looked as grey as the zombies he’d fought not long ago. In one case, Todd almost pulled his sword from his sheath to run someone through, but when he blinked and shook his head, he could see that it was not a gang of monsters but a man and his family. That moment terrified him, and he prayed for forgiveness that night before he drifted off into a dreamless slumber.

The next day he reached the river, but he knew it was coming long before he arrived. He could see the beam of light from the heavens illuminating the area around the Temple of Dawn in pinks and reds, which were a stark contrast to the grey and beige that the rest of the world had become. Todd was so weak and feverish at this point that he was having trouble staying on his steed and clung weakly to its neck while he gazed off at the horizon.

Where the shaft of light met the earth sat the walls of the temple, and there, the ground was so red it looked like a bloody war had been fought in his absence. He stared at that spot, and for a moment, he glimpsed something truly terrifying. Though the light radiated up into the heavens and across the plains holding back the evil of this fallen world, the darkness beneath the temple only festered and grew, and the light merely contrasted against it to make the darkness even darker. For a moment, Todd thought he could see something in that darkness. A dark, dread master pulling strings from the depths of its pit… Then he fell off his saddle, vomiting blood.

Todd lay there until nightfall, certain he was dying, when a trader found him and rushed him across to Blackwater. Todd was only awake intermittently during all this, but he was as weak as an infant. During the short ride and ferry trip before he was rushed to Brother Verdinen, Todd tried to warn them about what he had seen, but he lacked the words to announce his fears properly. Instead, he just babbled while the priest sought to heal him with the power of herbs and magic.

The whole time he did, though, Todd could only see a monster wearing the priest’s skin. He tried to pull away from his treatments as one vile concoction after another was forced down his throat, but between the leeches and the fever, he lacked the strength to do so. Todd imagined that he could see the one-armed priest as a man with two arms. That was impossible, of course, especially considering that one of the arms was made of pure shadow and coruscated with a poisonous violet sheen. While he was standing at the death’s door, he saw many strange things.

Brother Verdinen was by his side for days, “Don’t die on us, Todd, that’s an order!” the priest said at one moment when Todd was at his weakest. Todd would have felt better about such a statement if it hadn’t been said by someone with a dark, almost hungry look in their eyes.

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