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.
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."
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