ARC 7: CHAPTER 37: BLOODSTAINS ON HALLOWED GROUND

High above, the cathedral’s bells clapped out their dolorous rhythm again. It sounded different this time, more urgent.

The Grand Basilica of the Blessed Saints had many entrances, and I passed through the one called the Facade of Temperance. The white marble of its pillars were embedded with ivy of gold, and the effigies of scholar-kings watched me from its windows.

I sensed no devils here, and pressed forward through the doorway. Beyond it lay a long corridor, and somewhere beyond that I could make out the distant din of many voices, probably from one of the cathedral’s conjoined chapels. The main nave, which could fit ten thousand people standing, would be somewhere in that direction.

But I needed to go down, to the undercroft the guardswoman had mentioned. I paused and tried to cast out with my senses, hoping to pinpoint the sensation I’d felt before, but soon gave up. If Vicar was underground, then earth and stone would block my senses, and the thickness of aura in the air from the mass made it hopeless.

That obfuscation would also make it easier for any monsters to sneak up on me. I needed to be on guard. So, with one hand on the hilt of the broadsword and the other wrapped around the base of the blade, I walked forward at a steady pace. My steel sabatons clapped against stone worn down by centuries of worshipful feet.

I passed the entrance to several chapels. Each was full of people, their heads bent as the echoing words of preosts washed over them like air. Each time I passed these I shivered, my aura ringing with the litanies filling the basilica. It wasn’t a wholly pleasant sensation. I walked on hallowed ground, and I knew there was a degree to which I’d become unhallowed. My new strength felt less here.

But whatever the Credo Ferrum had done to infiltrate this ground had left its own mark, just like out in the garden, and in this the crowfriars had evened the field. I wondered if an ordinary church might hamstring me, as when I’d tried to approach the campfire during my meeting with Falstaff.

Eventually, I stepped through a doorless portal and found myself on a mezzanine. Beyond it lay a gargantuan chamber, hundreds of feet long and at least two hundred high, with a vaulted ceiling that’d been laid with as much phantasm as stonework. Gray clouds moved across it, and beyond them I glimpsed stars. There were galleries and platforms at multiple levels, and they swarmed with thousands of people. Many more filled the floor at the bottom of the enormous chamber, packed together wall to wall. The columns and painted inner walls of the room were red and gold, an eruption of color after the wintery landscape outside.

The overcast day left it dark inside even with the stained-glass windows that would normally let in sunlight. That, and the braziers lit to chase off the chill of winter in the vast room, gave that congregation a wraithlike quality, leaving much of the vault in relative darkness so I couldn’t make out the full size of the crowd.

At the center of the nave stood the great alter, a raised platform that towered over the main floor. At its top stood the sacrificial basin, and no less than sixteen priests stood around it. A higher ranking figure in robes of red and gold that matched the architecture, likely a bishop, had their hands upraised over the bowl. The central altar included a lower platform where a choir sung.

I scanned the nave, trying to tell if there were hidden fiends or anyone else I recognized. I focused my will on my eyes, brightening the light in them and enhancing my vision, but even then I couldn’t pick out anything familiar in that room.

The click of hard boots tore my attention away. More guards, all of them wearing House Stour colors, had stepped onto the gallery with me. Their eyes were hard and many held long halberds or pikes.

Only one of them wasn’t armored or armed, and that one I recognized.

“I was wondering when you’d show up,” I told the man.

These guards were not as impressed by the unnatural volume of my voice through my mask. Neither was the man who led them. Oraise, Presider of the Inquisition, looked much as I remembered him. A thin man who barely scraped average height, with neat brown hair and a pallid complexion. His eyes were blue as arctic ice, his mouth a humorless slash between gaunt cheeks. He still wore all black, a tailored ensemble that mixed clerical garb, military uniform, and funeral shroud all together. The red trident of Inquisition showed above his heart like a bloodstain.

“Alken Hewer,” the Presider greeted me in his dispassionate monotone. “Or is it Lord Hewer these days?”

“I’ve been granted no lands,” I said. “Just Ser.”

He nodded slowly. “It seems personal friendship with Rosanna Silvering served you well after all. You shouldn’t have come here.”

I turned to face him and the soldiers so they could see my knight’s mark. They all tensed.

“Where is he?” I asked.

Oraise considered a moment before speaking. “Below. I can take you there.”

He couldn’t have seen my surprise beneath the helmet, but he must have guessed it. With a cold smile the inquisitor said, “Are you surprised? When you spared my life that day, it was for this reason. You wanted a double agent, no?” He spread his hands out. “Well, here I am.”

One of the guards wheeled on him. “Presider, this is—”

“The only way to save your king, captain, as I told you before.” Oraise showed no sign of alarm at the angry stares directed his way, his pale eyes remaining fixed on me. “First, Hewer, I want to see your face. I know you used a double during the tournament.”

I studied him a moment, then clicked my sword onto its back-ring and took both my cowl and my helmet off. When he saw my face, Oraise tilted his chin up.

“How much do you know about what’s going on?” I asked him as I fixed the helm back into place.

“Enough to know that it would be in everyone’s best interest to stop it. This was what Horace wanted.” Something almost like an emotion touched the angular lines of Oraise’s face. “I will not see his ghost vindicated.”

He started to turn, and at that moment one of the soldiers stepped forward and thrust at him with their spear. I was already moving, having been watching that one, and swung in the same motion that took the blade from its catch. The flat-tipped greatsword parted the air and the upper third of the pike, shearing it and leaving the polished wood smoking.

I twisted the blade around, rotated it over my head, and decapitated him. Acidic blood sprayed across the murals of a nearby wall, painting the images of angels and saints there with fuming stains. The crowfriar’s body collapsed to the ground. It immediately started to change, becoming a burnt, bestial thing within moments as the headless body spasmed and twitched. The head rolled away, freeing itself of its helmet as it grew and became something dog-like, iron fangs bared and snapping.

“HOLD!” Oraise boomed, his voice filling the mezzanine with surprising volume for such an ordinarily soft-spoken man. The guards had moved into killing stances when I’d struck, but they froze at the sheer weight of command in the Presider’s roar. There was none of his soul in it, just surety.

I stepped forward and slammed my sabaton down on the still animate head of the devil, breaking its skull. Sulfurous yellow blood and tar splattered across the floor, and the thrashing body finally stilled.

“Vicar had one on you,” I said to Oraise. “In case you betrayed him, I suspect.”

Oraise looked only mildly surprised, more at the abrupt show of violence than the revelation. “I suspected he might. You should also know that there is a traitor amongst your new allies. We were warned that your group split up, and that Delphine Roch infiltrated the basilica in the guise of a nun.”

I felt ice enter my heart. “Who told you?”

“I do not know,” Oraise said. “There may not be time to save her from the ambush the Credo prepared and reach the undercroft before the signing ceremony is complete.” He lifted an eyebrow.

I hesitated for only a moment. Was he lying?

No time to figure it out. “Take me to the doctor. Now.”

Oraise ordered the guards to remain behind and started off at a brusque march. I followed him, wanting to run but instead matching the man’s pace. Why he was helping me I could only guess, though I didn’t trust he’d simply had a change of heart. I wasn’t even sure Oraise had a warm heart. He’d been trained by a previous leader of the Priory as an assassin, a tool to kill political rivals.

“What’s ahead of us?” I asked.

“One of several entrances to the Cardinal’s chapel,” Oraise said. Our fast pace left his words hitched and breathless, one of the few signs I’d seen that he was indeed human. “Perseus was exhumed from his tomb and reanimated during the early days of autumn, and has mostly kept to that same spot.”

“Were you aware the Credo had converted him?” I asked.

“Not at first. I figured it out. Vicar does not trust me. He’s suspected me ever since you spared my life.”

It seemed he was right to, but I saved my breath. We made several turns and navigated increasingly complex halls. The basilica was bigger than most castles I’d been in. Luckily, the fact everyone was congregating in the nave and other chapels, and the fact many of them were armed crusaders hardly in need of guards, meant the hallways remained clear. I suspected the soldiers I’d encountered were security for the king, who was present beneath the basilica.

The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

I heard a scream ahead. That was a woman’s voice, and familiar. I quickened my step and passed Oraise, taking the lead. My hand tightened on my sword’s grip. When I turned down the next hall, I slid to an abrupt stop.

The hallway was filled with figures in black robes, their faces concealed by veils stitched with red tridents. They carried barbed cudgels and quarterstaves, hooks, man-catchers with cruel snapping teeth. Priorguard, the rank-and-file kidnappers and thugs for the Aureate Inquisition. They were attacking a group of four black-robed nuns, or at least four dangerous women dressed like nuns.

Even as I turned the corner, a veiled figure I recognized as Eilidh blurred out of the path of a man-catcher just before it snapped closed over her neck. She back-handed the priorguard holding it with such strength that his jaw broke and his neck snapped, and he crumpled.

She turned to face me, and for a moment I didn’t recognize her. Her jaws had elongated into something more like a muzzle, crammed full of crooked fangs, and her eyes were the bright yellow of a wolf’s. Blood smeared her mouth and chin, drenching the front of her habit, and I somehow knew it wasn’t hers.

When she saw me, the vampire’s eyes widened and her face seemed to melt back into a more human shape. She said something, but I didn’t hear it in the din of combat.

I took in the rest of the scene. There’d been more than a dozen priorguard initially, but several were dead. The other two vampires, Maryanne and Flora, stood shoulder to shoulder in front of Delphine, who they protected with their own bodies. All three of the undead women had taken injuries, though they seemed to bleed very little. Delphine, for her part, looked intact and was rifling through a satchel while people died around her.

Where’s Lucienne? I thought even as I dashed forward. Was she the traitor?

But the noise of my thoughts faded as battle instinct took over, and I struck the back of the priorguard squad like a detonating cannonball. The executioner’s sword hummed through the air, shearing through layers of cloth, muscle, and bone with each sweep. I worked quickly, economically, using aureflame to enhance the blade’s cutting edge and force the inquisitors to flinch away. By the time they’d turned to make a defense, three of them were dead. The streaks of amber flame marking my cuts blended into almost runic patterns in the air, as I struck fast enough that one hadn’t faded before more joined it.

The vampires were predators, and when their human attackers turned their backs to meet this new threat they reacted predictably. Letting out high screeches that were only superficially like angry screams, they threw themselves forward at their would-be slayers and tore into them with claw and fang.

It was a gruesome sight, watching three attractive women suddenly sprout so many sharp edges and turn feral, especially given their clerical garments. They were like amorphous shapes of black cloth from which fangs and long nails slashed out, almost eldritch.

There were more priorguard coming from the opposite end of the hall, a pincer movement. While the ones on my side of the corridor had fallen to my blade and vampire fangs quickly enough, the bloodlust of the Backroaders had torn them away from their charge. Delphine was still rifling through her satchel. I caught a glimpse of Ormur underneath her veil, chittering in panic.

An inquisitor behind the doctor lifted a crossbow and took aim. I shouted a warning, but Delphine didn’t seem to hear me over the noise.

I was too far. I wouldn’t reach her in time.

You don’t need to.

Without thinking about what I was doing, acting under a sudden flash of intuition, I pointed at the man. Immediately, I felt an unsettling shiver in the air. The shadows at the edges of the hall seemed to thicken and swim liquidly, and an ominous whispering emerged from them.

The string of the priorguard’s crossbow snapped. The cord whipped him in one eye, leaving a slash in his skin and blinding him. He screamed and fell backward, clutching at his bleeding socket. In the same moment, Delphine found what she’d been looking for and whirled about. Her right hand flicked out, letting go of some sort of glittering powder. It glinted a dull orange, like tiny flecks of glass catching a ray of sunlight.

“Ormur!” Delphine cried out, even as she started affixing something to her face. Her pet emerged from hiding to perch on her shoulder. The albino weasel squeaked in excitement, reared its head back, and—

And stopped being a weasel.

The white creature contorted, stretched, and I heard an audible pop as its spine broke. It broke again, and again, and with each snap the weasel twisted and writhed and grew. Spines sprouted from its back, its paws became talons, and pale blue scales began to burst from its fur. It stretched out, lengthening, soon becoming large as an anaconda and wrapping around Delphine’s shoulders multiple times.

“Why did you name your weasel after a dragon?” I’d asked her.

“Because he eats like one, and protects me very fiercely. Also, doesn’t he look like a little wurm?”

Unbelievable, I thought as I watched Ormur transform. She lied to me, that infuriating witch.

The chimera — the wyrmblighted chimera — reared its head high above Delphine’s and let out an avian screech. It still looked superficially like the creature it had before, though the head was more cat-like now with larger ears, white tufts of fur rippling down its serpentine body. It opened its maw, which crackled with metallic electricity, then let out a cough of lightning. That bolt struck the glittering powder in the air.

The resulting explosion made the entire corridor shake. It was actually many small explosions, each flake of the alchemical substance Delphine had tossed out popping with concussive force and ear-splitting noise. Dust and reeking fumes filled the hallway, billowing out to swallow the woman and obscure the scene from view. I threw my arm up to cover my eyes. Whatever was in that gas stung and made me cough.

It took some minutes for the dust to settle. When it had, there wasn’t much left of the remaining priorguard. Delphine curled on the ground, Ormur — now returned to his normal shape — wrapped protectively in her arms. Sticky white liquid and gray miasma sloughed off the thing as it shed the form it had taken, and the creature within looked lethargic. Delphine lifted her head to look at me, and I saw what she’d put on her face. It was a leather mask with glass set over the eyes and pieces of metal perforated with small holes where the mouth should be, giving it a puckered look. Some contraption to protect her from the fumes her powder had created.

My eyes and throat burned, and I suspected that without my magic burning it off whatever I’d just breathed in would be toxic. Caustic too, and I felt grateful for my resistance to heat. “Are you alright?” I rasped.

Delphine tore the mask off and then spent a minute coughing violently. “Yes, I think so.”

I turned to the vampires. One of them — Maryanne, judging by the relatively diminutive size of the mound of black cloth — was straddling a dead priorguard. I couldn’t see her beneath the cover of her habit, but could make out rhythmic movements beneath the robes. They seemed sensual, as did the muffled moans coming from beneath. I could just barely hear the sound of her gulping.

Flora, who’d lost her veil in the scuffle, approached me and tore off her coif to let yellow hair tumble free. “We’re fucked,” she spat. Her irises and sclera were an angry red. “They were waiting for us, knew exactly where we’d be and when.”

I started to speak, but the sound of Maryanne feeding distracted me. “Make her stop,” I told the vampire in front of me.

Flora glanced at her companion and shrugged. “Blood’ll just go to waste anyway, and they tried to stick us. Fair is fair, yeah?”

I squeezed my eyes shut and took a deep breath. The exhale was loud inside the confines of my helm. “I need to know you’re all controlled.”

Flora scoffed and gave the other hemophage a light kick. “That’s enough, Mary, he’s dry.”

The smaller vampire rose reluctantly. Her habit was ruined with blood, and her face was a horror. Her eyelashes fluttered as she seemed to come back to herself. “Is he? I didn’t notice.”

Eilidh looked hardly less controlled. She was taking small, shallow breaths through her mouth, her nostrils flaring intermittently. The smell of blood hung thick in the air. “Al’s right. We need to… we need to keep going. Someone will have heard all this.”

Delphine stepped up to my side, looking warily at the vampires. I spoke to her, though my words were for all of them. “We were betrayed. Someone from that cabin fed the Priory our tactics. Where is Lucienne?”

Her absence was suspicious, and I didn’t see her amongst the dead.

“Lucienne separated from us,” Eilidh told me. Her voice came out as a low growl, but she seemed to be maintaining control. “During the ambush. We knew something was wrong, and she can move faster than any of us if she’s of a mind. She went back to warn Sans and the others.”

Or to lead more priorguard, or worse, to them. I couldn’t know for sure, least of all why the lamia would betray us. Falstaff had implied there was some sympathy towards the crowfriars, the idea that the nightborn might flourish if the infernals returned, but it seemed a stretch to me.

It’s just as likely someone in the cabin wasn’t who they seemed, I thought. The crowfriars can disguise themselves in any shape they please, as you saw with Vicar and the guards.

I focused on the three vampires, trying to see through their glamour as I had with the previous devils. Those glamours were flimsy in that moment, already unraveled during the fight. Their undead natures were apparent, but I sensed nothing more specific than that.

Flora winced as my eyes passed over her. “Stop that,” she snapped. “It’s uncomfortable.”

It was only then I realized that she was injured, and that unlike the other two she hadn’t indulged her thirst. The left sleeve of her robes was torn, and there were what looked like claw marks beneath. Not something I’d think a priorguard weapon would do, even the cruelest kind.

I blinked and let my focus loosen. “We’ve lost the element of surprise. I was hoping to direct all of the Credo’s attention to me, but the game’s already up.”

“So what do we do?” Delphine asked.

“And who’s he?” Maryanne asked. I realized Oraise was still there. He was staring dispassionately at the dead Priory soldiers. His own men, I realized.

“Inquisitor,” Flora snarled. She started to advance on the man, fingers stretching into curled claws. I put a hand on her shoulder and stopped her, and thought for a moment she’d try to rake me.

I stepped back, not sure my armor would stand against vampire strength. “He’s…” I didn’t want to say ally. “An enemy of an enemy. He’ll take us to where the Credo and the Cardinal are.”

“You’re the Presider,” Flora said to Oraise. her red eyes were furious. “You caught Lark’s coven. I heard about what you did to them.”

“Interesting,” Oraise said as he studied the vampire, showing no sign of fear. “I thought your kind couldn’t step on hallowed ground.”

“Not without invitation.” Delphine stepped forward, trying and failing to brush dust off her robes. “I was never officially excommunicated from the clergy, so I just held the door behind me.”

“Doctor Roch.” Oraise inclined his head, and a note of respect entered his voice. “You understand that this is highly blasphemous? You have allowed souls tainted by the Adversary to enter hallowed ground.”

“I will bear the burden of the sin,” Delphine said. Her tone was brusque, but I noted an edge in it. Doubt?

“And this ground is already poisoned,” I added. “I saw it in the garden outside. There are devils here. More soon. Lead on, Presider.”

Oraise nodded and turned away from the carnage. Delphine stopped me before I followed him. “Wait, Alken.”

I turned to her, though my questioning look would have been lost inside my helmet. Delphine’s expression was pale. Considering the horrors she’d seen, it didn’t strike me that it was entirely due to the violence of the previous minutes. Ormur writhed in the doctor’s arms, but she seemed unwilling to let the weasel go, holding it close as though for comfort.

“It’s not just the Priory and crowfriars,” Delphine told me. “We were attacked before they showed up. That’s how Flora got injured.”

She took a deep breath and steadied herself. “I saw Idiobi not long ago. There are demons here.”

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