Chapter 11: Rites of Remembrance

She followed Paulus as he wound his way towards the Sect War corridor. The passages below were as impressive as ever, but now Lilith could sense others. They teased at the edge of her consciousness, faces in the dark that were no longer there when she turned to focus on them. But she knew they were here. They walked this road. They crept from one pillar to the next. This was their place, the city of the dead. She wondered if they had jobs. Master moaner? Head spook?

They arrived at the altar. Paulus lit the candle and then sat cross-legged in front of the altar, waiting. Lilith could hear already, though, a presence approaching. A ghostly soldier walked towards him. Stalked towards him. As he drew near to Paulus, the ghost raised his sword high, but Lilith stepped in front and said “wait, wait, don't do that!”

The ghost halted in mid-blow, scrutinized her, and vanished. A distant whispering welled up inside her. It was not something she heard, but something emanated from within, as though they were her own thoughts, except they leapt unbidden from within her. She closed her eyes, and focused. You don't belong here, she could make out, you fought no war.

“I'm alive,” Lilith said, “and I'm here to make amends on behalf of the living.”

The whispering filled her ears again, angry and threatening. Demanding something. Demanding retribution.

“We've been distracted,” Lilith said, “the surface villages are half-empty to fight north of the Wall and the fresh bodies keep coming in. We're here to make amends now.”

The ghost wrapped its hands around her throat, and that Lilith could feel, her breath short, her body choking, and though the ghost's face looked human, the vicelike grip on her neck was bone. Lilith choked, and struggled to understand it before it killed her. Distantly she could make out you'll do.

“No,” Lilith choked out, “please, I'm here to help! I didn't even have this job until half an hour ago and I came straight here! I'm not the offering, I'm here to bring you the offering!" The ghost's grip tightened. She could hardly breathe. "You'll get more if...If you let me be...Your messenger!” The ghost considered her for a moment, then released his grip on her. Lilith hacked and coughed and sank to her knees. “Thank you,” she said, “thank you, what do you need? What do you..." Lilith racked her mind, she knew she had learned something about this back in Rin, but she had honestly just considered this part to be putting in the hours so she could learn how to make corpses hack her enemies apart for her. "Sacrifice," she said, "you require a sacrifice, right? What do you want? Food? Treasure?"

The whispers no longer stung so far at the edge of her conscious mind. Teasing out the meaning was getting easier. Thief! was certainly coming through clear. "When?" Lilith asked, but the only response was thief! Thief! Thief! "What did they take?" Lilith asked. It wasn't sound that came now, but a vision. A badge of honor. A small pile of them, really. They had decorated the altar, and they appeared to be made of gold, a rare prize for a grave robber. Lilith breathed out a sigh of relief, glad it wasn't the urn she and Paulus had gone to retrieve the week before.

"We'll find who stole it, and we'll get it back," Lilith said, "I promise." Lilith did not have to concentrate to hear the screams of rage. They were deafening. "I can't give it back now, I don't have it!" Lilith said, and then flinched as the bony claw ripped across her face, leaving three long scratches across her cheek.

Lilith slid to her knees on the stone floor, briefly grateful that she wasn't corporeal and therefore couldn't scrape her skin off on it, and began focusing on the candle. The enraged wailing grew louder behind her. “Come on,” she said, trying to pinch the candle out. Paulus was unmoving next to her, probably meditating. “Come on, go out, go out already,” Lilith said, trying to focus her will on the candle. Munne said that this was an easy trick to pick up but she didn't say how she would actually do it.

The hands clawed at her back while the banshee wailing grew even louder, tearing long gashes from shoulder to hip. Lilith flinched and desperately waved her hands through the candle. The flame flickered and died, and Paulus' eyes popped open. She wasn't sure how he could be perceptive enough to hear the candle's flame going out but not hear the chorus of hatred giving the performance of their unlives, but he was up and moving down the stairs, and Lilith ran after him, batting away at phantom hands that tugged and scratched at her arms.

Paulus leapt into the plague water and sprinted down the corridor. Though it had seemed ages to reach it the first time, Lilith knew it was only a few minutes to the next altar. The spirits did not follow them past the stairs, leaving them in blissful silence as Paulus, shivering with the first symptoms of the plague's return, set the candle into the altar and lit it. “Good luck,” he said, and turned to run to the exit.

Paulus' splashing faded into the distance. Lilith closed her eyes and concentrated, waiting for the ghosts to make themselves known. She thought she could feel them, now, lurking in the distance. “Are you there?” Lilith asked. “I'm here to help. Some of these altars have been robbed. We need to know if yours was one of them so we can return what was taken from you.”

The attack was very straightforward, this time. A spectral presence leaped out towards her and filled her with panic and knowledge that yes, their badges had also been stolen. “Okay!” Lilith said, backing away, “okay, we'll fix it!” And then she turned and fled down the corridor.

“Okay,” she said, catching breath she hadn't lost, “okay, just hit and run. If they all have the same problem I can just pop in, confirm, and be gone before they can rip me to pieces.” She could not see, but she did not have to. She could feel the concentrations of ghosts, knew where the next altar was, and could feel in the distance a churning maelstrom of angered ghosts. Even from a distance of several miles it made her want to run further away. And this was when the catacombs were calm?

Regardless, she found her way to the third altar. This one had not been disturbed when she and Paulus had been here last, or at least, none of the spirits had possessed any remains to try and murder the two of them. “Okay, no candle,” Lilith said, and closed her eyes. If I can feel you, you can feel me, she thought. “I'm here as a messenger,” she said aloud, “from the living to the dead. We know many of you have been wronged. If anyone has dishonored your memory, tell me, so that I can bring the message to my masters and they will see that justice is done.” Slowly, a form coalesced from the air in front of her. This soldier's face had been mauled. Another behind him had his flesh burned away. A third had an arrow sticking from her eye. They all seemed very fresh. “H-have you been robbed?” Lilith asked.

“You don't belong here,” the maimed man said.

“I only want to know if you have any desires to make known to the mortal world,” Lilith said, “then I promise I'll leave as fast as I can.”

“Stay,” the burned man said, “stay forever.”

“If I don't go back,” Lilith said, backing away, “they won't receive any message from you. O-or from the other spirits!”

“Trespassers come, trespassers go,” the shot woman said, “but none may go. Those who come, stay. There must be sacrifice.”

There could be substitutions, Lilith remembered. “There will be,” Lilith said, “but not now. I'm only one. Just please have patience and we will bring you a greater offering, one more worthy of the wrongs done to you by our negligence.”

“Stay,” the burned man said. Other ghosts coalesced behind him, a macabre army. They clutched at Lilith's hands as she turned to run. “Stay!” they shouted behind her, “stay, stay, stay!” But their voices faded into the distance as she ran. The hit and run technique seemed to be working out alright.

One altar left. Lilith focused herself again. “Were you robbed?” she asked. “Why do you stir from your sleep?” The altar was quiet. Lilith waited. “What's wrong?” she asked. The dead had tried to drag Paulus beneath the waters last time, they were certainly irritated about something. “My masters will set it right, but only if they know your desires.” She knew they were here. She could feel them. She could feel a lingering pain. The pain, she realized, from the bane signet she had seared them with the week before. Had it still not healed? Could ghosts even be permanently wounded? “I...I'm sorry,” she said, “for attacking you. I was foolish and didn't know the sacrifice you had made for our kingdom. Please, tell me how to make it right. Tell me why you were so angry that day.”

Leave us, the words came. She could feel memory at the edge of her consciousness. They were...The least of the army? The others had hated them...But not on the field of battle. No, that was what made it worse, she realized. They had been a bit weaker than the other soldiers. A bit slower. But they fought together, lived together, died together. But down here, the others blamed them. Blamed them for lives cut short, for legacies cut off forever. Leave us leave us LEAVE US! Lilith plugged her ears, but it did not make the shouts any quieter. Bony claws slashed at her calves, rising up out of the ground and reaching towards the soft flesh of her stomach. She fled; she might not need her organs now, but she didn't want to be rid of them just yet.

She was able to use the altars as way points to find her way back to the main corridors, though she kept her distance from the angry spirits. She found her still body, and found the floor beneath her covered in blood from her newest wounds; blood dribbled from her cheeks and oozed at a steady rate from her back, and a new puddle was beginning to accumulate at her feet. And the pendant still turned on her chest. Lilith sucked in a deep breath, braced herself for impact, and lay back onto the ground within her body, trying to find sensation again. It didn't take long. Feeling screamed back into her, half her body demanding her full attention. She screamed and popped off the ground. The gash on her back had reopened several the vast array of wounds left by the whipping last week. Her efforts to get to her feet saw her shot through with renewed pain in her calves, and sent her down to the ground again. The piercing pain of her fresh wounds only made worse the dull, bitter agony of the pendant on her chest. She was sick of it and she would never stop being sick of it and she just wanted it gone so she didn't have to quite literally agonize over it all the time. "Please make it stop," she said, almost sobbing as a new wave of pain shot through her back and legs.

"What did they say? Did you reach all of them?" Munne demanded.

"Please," Lilith said, "it hurts so much."

"What did they say?" Munne asked, grabbing Lilith by the chin and glaring at her.

Lilith stared back for a moment, opened her mouth to protest, reconsidered, and then said "th-they said...They'd been robbed. The first two said they'd been robbed. Badges of honor made from gold...Taken by some thief. The third had b-been trespassed and demanded sacrifice...At least two, human sacrifices."

"And the fourth?" Munne said.

"The fourth...The fourth just wanted to be left alone," Lilith said, breath shuddering from pain, "the others...Used to be their friends. But resent them now. Blame them for how they all died. They just...Want to be left alone."

"It's a good thing they're furthest from the entrance, then," Munne said, "we can ignore them."

"But-" Lilith started. Munne turned to her and raised an eyebrow. "N-never mind, miss, of course you know best."

"Speak," Munne said.

"Well," Lilith said, wondered briefly if it was a trap, but even if it was better to speak and get it over with than anger her with refusal. "They gave their lives just like everyone else," Lilith said, "they were no less willing to die for Ascalon, and they proved it. And we're just going to...Forget them? Leave them alone with their misery forever?"

"Surely if you felt their spirits without the candles, you felt also the darkness breeding down here," Munne said.

"Y-yes," Lilith said. She could feel it even now, an ancient hatred festering in the distance.

"Then you know that we must focus our efforts on containing that threat, and any spirit content simply to brood in the dark is not our concern," Munne said, "if their rage will not grow, it will not join the storm. The same is not true for others."

"But..." she immediately regretted saying it, but now Munne looked at her, expectant. Demanding. "But they're the only ones who remember their loyalty to Ascalon," Lilith said, "they're the only ones who won't join the forces against this kingdom out of spite. Why would we be least willing to thank them, and placate traitors instead?"

"Because only the traitors will betray us if they are not placated," Munne said. Lilith rose unsteadily to her feet. "I confess myself disappointed," Munne said.

"Disappointed?" Lilith said, eyes widening.

"Four altars you visited. Four enraged spirits, wronged by their living countrymen, you were sent to pacify. And you feel sympathy for only one?" Munne said, "a true witch has empathy for all the dead. Even the ones she must abandon or destroy. If you do not understand them, you cannot control them." 

"I'm...Forgive me, miss, I'm just a slave," Lilith said, "not a witch."

"Whatever made you think they were mutually exclusive categories?" Munne asked, and before Lilith could respond, said "get out of my house already, you're bleeding all over everything. Get one of those Abbey monks to fix you up."