Chapter 15: A False Perspective
No comprehension of moments or seconds or hours are left to you.
You might as well be in a free-fall, as you continue to taste ash upon your lips, and feel Their names as if it were a
blessing of broken glass.
There's only one thing you can think of, no matter how empty your heart feels:
No amount of pain or pleasure can outweigh your love for Them.
You stay your hand.
You refuse to cave in.
You still your thoughts.
You are a demon of faith, are you not?
How could you distort the most fundamental, beloved aspect of your innermost being?
No monster could resist lashing out in the throes of their transformation.
You may be a travesty, but not like this.
You are no empty shell of a man.
You're more than a demon.
You are Father Richard Anscham, leader of the Church of Mercy, and you STILL carry with you ultimate proof of
that fact.
You seize your Relic between one, single, human hand. It's scarred and battered, blackened and worked over with cracks of fantastical paint, dripping with molten gold and resonating with the stars themselves— but it is
your hand. You have faith in it.
You have faith in yourself for possibly the first time in your life, and open YOUR Relic before your friends and allies.
The alliance that your Relic was sustaining shatters in a singular instant, severing the remnants of your individual invocations. It cuts the fabric of an unseen bond— but the social ties, the memories you've shared, the risks that these men have taken to help save your life— everything that you've been through together
remains.
Father Pevrel's attack stops just short of the empty expanse where your heart should be. The weapon is a solid spike of darkness that couldn't kill a mortal man. He might have invented an attack that could
only kill a demon— but the lord of wrath looks to you and the item you keep in hand with empty eyes, and a heart full of hatred.
In your hands, between a locket's two small pieces of yellow-gold, lies a mirror. It's smaller than a thimble between your colossal fingers, but this object is not about its appearance, or size, or power.
Between both faces of your Relic lies a reminder of
reflection.
A reflection of meaning. Of faith in oneself.
You just needed another moment. A moment to remember that your love is not about give and take.
You hold onto yourself in the absence of all of the Gods, and still love Them with all of your heart.
Even the slightest thought of temptation, heresy, or sin is unthinkable.
Even if it feels like you have nothing left to lose, you know that couldn't be further from the truth.
Not when you've spent all your life paying respect to Time. You've counted every waking moment, and thanked Her no matter what Her work has brought. The aura of space and stars you've been vomiting is no unhappy reminder of Her harsh reality, or power untold. It's an echo of
endless devotion.
The first cracks in your humanity showed themselves through the God of Nightmares. But He has struck you before with waking terrors, and you have
never feared Dream. No matter how deeply you both have come to blows, your love has carried you through it all. There's room to improve. Room to learn. Room to get to know Him in ways you could not learn of any other.
You'd really like to not lose the leader of the Church of Dream to despair.
You stagger over to Father Wilhelm, paying your other church leader less mind as he is stock-still. Father Pevrel is likely just as paralyzed by introspection as you were a second ago, but you won't stand idly by while one of your dearest friends loses his heart.
Father Wilhelm is bent in two, hands clasped together with white knuckles and bloodied paint. He's been trying to bring his son back to life, and his lap is filled with expulsions of more oils and tempera. It looks like he's been killing himself through terror and grief, so it comes as little surprise that he hardly responds as you put a monstrous hand to his shoulder.
"Leave us." It's not a warning. He's begging.
The strength of the tempest is in your tone. The might of
faith in a greater power. Not in a God. Not in another man. You get on your knees, and take Father Wilhelm into a hug as best as you can because you have faith in
yourself. The motion is agony, but you speak like a demon through it, knowing that you've suffered worse and come out of it all the
stronger.
"
I wouldn't Dream of it."
Elated laughter escapes from your lips.
You could say His name.
"
Look."
A small motion is made with your Relic— just with the mirror— still a colossal arm's length away. The body that Father Wilhelm is holding was so desiccated, it couldn't possibly have been his own son.
He's still sobbing.
"I've lost him." He clutches onto the corpse, crying harder than you've ever seen him.
"My boy. I've seen it in every way conceivable, Richard. Don't you understand?"
The Seer of Somerilde turns to you with those divinely blue eyes.
"I've looked ahead. It might not be today. It might not be for fifty more years. But I've seen him die. It's always through something self-sacrificing. He's going to work himself to death one of these days, or go killing himself to protect someone he loves. He might do it to save his own children, or even to not watch me suffer through some catastrophe. He never turns. But—"
Sniffing, Father Wilhelm drops his arms from the body on the floor.
He hugs you, instead.
"Thank you for being here. I won't get to ever see him again if I fall prey to my own fears."
You can breathe a lot easier, and return the motion in full. It doesn't matter that you can't reach to the end of your stomach, or that you have more hands than what can fit around Father Wilhelm's frail body.
It's never been about your body. Not when it comes to your love of Agriculture. Both of you have come to love and
adore each other's peculiarities. It feels like every time that you see Her, your entire world opens up anew. She's more than a partner, or a lover. She's life, and death, and
everything in-between. You want to come to understand all that She is, because She wants
you to be all that you can be.
The ash on your tongue and the sensation of glass in your throat are phantoms. Phantoms of old memories. You endured a famine for all your childhood, and still fought every single
day to make something grow. You starved in the bottom of a cell for eight
years, and not a day went by that you didn't want to lift Her name higher. Your enemies could try and cull your taste for food and water, but not even a curse could make you truly resent Her.
Not when all you've ever wanted to do is love, and be loved in return.
You wouldn't even let two other
Gods distort your devotion to Agriculture, and get to your feet feeling significantly lighter.
The love you hold for your Goddess, your devotion, all of it has
always simply been about being
together.
Father Pevrel has dropped to the bloody floor, sword thrust into the ground. He's clutching onto the hilt to keep himself upright, looking around the field of the dead in horror. You can see clearly that he's shaking.
"Stay back!" He pulls a dagger out from his boot, and can't even bear to look at you. Father Wilhelm sighs at him.
"DEMON! STAY BACK!"
"
I'm not!"
"He's really not, Father Pevrel!"
"Shut up, both of you!"
"
I'm— I'm really not a demon!" There's no fear of losing your mind or body. You stride right up to the lord of punishment, and offer him a hand to get up. There's only ten fingers you can make out, through the haze over your vision, and the sluggishness that feels as if it's lifting by the second.
Soft steps from muddy slippers run up behind you.
The dagger weakly falls to the floor.
Father Pevrel's voice trails out from him, cold and thin. He sounds like he's in enough pain to die, but it's not from his body or mind.
"Why can't I just let go?!" A sudden, hate-filled sneer snaps to you and your Relic.
"I hate you. I hate you for stopping me! I was happy. I didn't have to hate myself for what I NEED! I need it, Anscham! You KNOW how badly I need it, and you still are trying to HELP ME—!"
A waver seizes his voice.
"I stopped myself from killing you, you know. Even through the feeling."
Father Pevrel gently lays his sword to the ground, like he'd lay a lover down to die.
His God leaves him just for staying his hand.
"I've been holding myself back all of my life. It wasn't any different."
A terrified look goes out to the ocean of dead bodies around you all, in that terrible darkness.
"Some of those people's throats I slit? They were alive. I knew they were alive, and I did it anyways."
You try not to get sick on the spot, and frantically look out. You can still see in the darkness with perfect clarity, though the unnatural halo at your back has faded, and the wings protruding from your back are crumbling into dust. You're no abomination of Flesh and Spirit. You've tried your damnedest all of your life to fight, to achieve, to learn, and to be
better.
"I knew they still had their own reasons for being down here, but I didn't care if it was right or not. I just want to kill people. I just want to kill people, Richard, you fucking
MONSTER!"
Father Pevrel suddenly gets to his feet, sheathes his sword, and runs to shove you.
You're pushed so hard against your broad chest, you're pushed back and into Father Wilhelm. Granted, you're back to around your normal height to make the motion possible— but you're still incredibly bulky, and send Father Pevrel staggering backwards.
"DEMON!"
"
I'm not a demon—!" Your voice almost sounds normal. You're so happy, you could cry. There is some justice in this world. You know it as dearly as you know yourself.
The Catalyst that you felt was real, but not in the way that the God of Retribution has brought to you. Not in the way you know Him. It's not often that you long for honor or blood, but your
respect for the Church of Vengeance is unwavering, and you are
not about to let its leader down.
The grief across your ally's face redoubles the need for tears, and you're choking up as you say it again with absolute conviction. "
I'm not a demon. Father Pevrel, please—"
He strides up to you, fists clenched, and moves to swing at your face.
You actually move to dodge. There's no need to revel in agony and ecstasy. It's not that you have some sick obsession with Mercy that demands you bend to Her every whim.
For once in your life, you're not a slave to your impulses. You can love
yourself, and care enough about your own well-being for
once to actually shift, and turn away.
Father Wilhelm must have not trusted you, and before it can land, he catches the blow in
one hand with way more strength than he should possess. The man's still invoking Dream, and seems to have slowed the hit mid-air. His eyes are red and inflamed around the blue swimming through them, but he manages a horrible smile to you both.
"No one needs to get hurt."
Both men realize you tried to move out of the way of the hit, and part from their tense hold on one another.
A long moment passes as everyone registers that you cared enough about yourself to not get hurt on someone's behalf
for once.
The three of you drop to the floor, facing one another in a little triangle of camaraderie. Father Pevrel places his hands to his head, hangs his greasy hair, and starts sobbing.
"You don't know what it's like. I was
free. Every waking hour is the real nightmare. It's like torture." He's crying so hard, his voice is breaking up. "But I was so scared. I'm always so scared that it's going to happen. That I'll snap. That I'll hurt someone who doesn't deserve it."
He lifts his head, and stares out at the line of bodies he carved his way through. "I don't want to lose myself like that ever again."
Another horrified moment passes you all by, before the lord of blood speaks softly.
"How many people did I just kill?"
You reach over, and put a (mostly) normal hand to his shoulder, from a (mostly) normal height, and speak in a (mostly) normal voice. You have to keep telling it to yourself. The urge to revert to something unkind to
yourself is all but gone, while there's some other force at work.
It's alright that you're unhinged. It's okay that you've been mistaken for a demon since you were a little boy. You've suffered worse injustices, and have
always fought to do the right thing.
"We'll figure it out, but torturing— but torturing yourself over it is not going to bring them back."
He breaks down completely, and leans hard against the hold on your hand.
You get it, and take him into a hug.
"Get off of me, Anscham."
"No. Father Wilhelm, get over here." He immediately obliges. You're about the same size as you were when you entered the demon's domain! It's almost possible for him to get his arms around you.
You start crying. Everyone is crying, but it's okay.
"We need to find a way to get any survivors out of here," Father Pevrel mumbles, keeping his arms at his sides, leaning harder against the softness of your chest and shoulder.
"You aren't going to try and kill me?"
The hole in your chest is gone. It's aching like your heart has been overworked all your life, just how you like it.
You manage to not break down on the spot, while Father Pevrel pokes you in the usual spot— right over your heart— and gives you his best scowl. "We've been over this, Anscham." Deep breath. He's so worked up, he can hardly breathe— but he manages to still mutter, "not when you're your own worst punishment."
You take him back into a firm hug, and let him cry it out.
Father Wilhelm has been unbelievably quiet.
You
all remain incredibly quiet, save for the sound of the leader of the Church of Vengeance bawling his eyes out for many long minutes. You're acutely aware of Time once more, and though your perception is as unreliable as ever, you couldn't be happier to see impossible color fade from your sight.
Your frantic breathing slows, as you murmur to both of your friends. "There is more to
all of us than our fears. I strongly suspect that this demon attempted to pit us against one another— against ourselves— when we felt as if we had
nothing left."
You slowly peel Father Pevrel off of your bloody, metal-covered, bile-splattered, paint-flecked shoulder. His face is filthy, which he tries wiping away with a bloody sleeve. It just gets more blood on his face. It's the unhappiest you've ever seen the man, which is really saying something.
You pull him back into a hug, unable to stop yourself. "A day may come when we can answer for our sins in full. As for right now? This is one of the few luxuries we all are not afforded." You give a sad look to Father Wilhelm. "There are too many people counting on us. Until that day, we
must know when to show Mercy to
ourselves."
Several unhappy nods from Father Wilhelm, who drags himself to his feet, and motions to help you get Father Pevrel up.
"You're right. Come on, Nicholas."
More muttering. "Nick is fine,
Atticus."
"Father Pevrel—!" The older priest hoists him onto his feet with your assistance, and starts trying to brush some of the residual flecks of metal off from Father Pevrel's robes.
"Would you believe me if I told you that I find your restraint commendable?"
"I just killed—"
"Under any other circumstances, you want me to say? Eh? No. Particularly now. Neither of us had to say a thing for you to come to your senses. Richard here had to pry me away from my own fears, in fact! And the very lord of restraint required a divine object to come back to humanity."
The three of you look to your Relic, which is now closed, and has been for some time.
You mumble it again. It feels so good to say it. "I
know I'm not a demon."
The starry-eyed priest by your side has yet to release his invocation of Dream, and might be holding onto his patron out of fear of collapse by this point. He pats your back weakly, but speaks to your fellow church leader.
"This is something that brings you little happiness, isn't it? Killing. Torture. Blood. All of it, at the end of the day."
"I don't know." The dark-eyed man shakes his head, and looks to the blood on his hands in turmoil. "
Nothing feels more right. It's the
only thing that makes me feel alive. A few minutes ago, I— I don't think I've ever been happier. But the way that I'm feeling now...?"
Another desperate look goes out to countless corpses.
Father Pevrel stashes the last of his weapons, ties back his cloak, and stares dead-ahead. The gravel of his voice almost sounds like his usual self. "We can talk while we search through the bodies."
You stay right on his heels. "We're not splitting up."
"Do you both remember what I said to Zephadar?" Father Wilhelm has run only slightly ahead, and waves a hand over a body that looks far fresher than the rest around it. A span of darkness shrouds the corpse's features for a few moments, as if all the night's sky was dragged over their features.
They suddenly kick up, twitching like someone in the throes of an intense nightmare.
"Did you just—?" Father Pevrel runs over to the body's side.
You drop to you knees beside the young blonde woman, and find a pulse. She's not asleep, but in some other state of consciousness.
You give a few simple tests, and discern that she's alert— but completely unable to move her body.
Father Pevrel has backed up in horror, and looks to the hundreds of bodies all around.
He looks to his hands, to his sword, and to no less than thirty people that he must have actually killed in the last few minutes.
He's not going to fall to despair, or turn to his Catalyst, but you've never seen someone look like they hate themselves more in all their life.
Getting back to his feet, Father Wilhelm runs right past the lord of shadows, and barks at him.
"You want to set things right? Start helping!" He's a little further down the basement's floor, spurring you both to limp after him in exhaustion.
"Come here, and show me what you can do!"
Both men hop to checking several livelier corpses. In addition to Father Wilhelm's mastery over states of awareness and Father Pevrel's intimate understanding of the human body, your expertise with medicine is a boon. You're all able to find even the slightest traces of motion or physical activity.
It rapidly becomes apparent that there are survivors in all directions, in some sort of stasis. There are three huge problems with this:
#1: You've seen the same few individuals dozens of times. The bodies are repeating, though you don't know how. Each duplicate is seemingly indiscernible from the others, which makes figuring out who any real people are nearly impossible.
#2: It may be that this demon has an aspect of Dream. It's a terrifying and very plausible thought. It explains the monster's ability to manipulate reality, and to make nightmares manifest. No one is waking from the condition that they're in, even with Father Wilhelm's mastery of Dream. Father Pevrel has had the greatest luck with making small injuries (like pricking a finger) on the bodies to get a response, but it's hardly rousing anyone. No matter which way that you look at it, though, you're struggling to get the scope of how many people there are to move.
#3: You have no idea still how to get anyone out of here. Even if you find an exit, there are
hundreds of bodies. The process is simply too much for three exhausted men to manage (without further miracles).
In a fit of desperation, you shove your Relic into one person's hand. An almost imperceptible amount of stress relaxes on their pale and sickly features.
"
Mercy." It feels so good to say Her name, you mutter it a few more times to yourself. "Mercy, Mercy..."
You and your allies look on the body in a similar state of horror.
"Are they
all in pain, too...?" You back up, and try your Relic's pain-relieving properties on another body. Same response.
"Are we like this, too, I wonder?" Father Wilhelm scratches at his short beard, seemingly unbothered by the prospect.
Father Pevrel scratches at the side of his neck, hands tense, teeth clenched, trying his damnedest still to keep it together.
"Any other ideas?" You ask.
"You could illuminate the entire area," Father Wilhelm suggests.
"Mercy is sorely lacking here, in all respects. The night here seems endless, and Zephadar seemed incredibly bothered by the light of day."
"That may be insufficient, but I— it has been a
very long time since I used Her light for illumination alone."
Father Pevrel squints, looking to the furthest reaches of the area. "I can't see hide nor hair of an end to this place, but
that doesn't count for much if this is all an illusion." A bold look goes from you, to Father Wilhelm, to his own steady hands. "I'm willing to bet that we could create our own nightmare for this demon, if we put our minds to it."
"Please," you reply. "Go on."
"This is a demon of Vengeance, first and foremost. I say that we give it a nightmare so obscene, it wakes up. Subjecting this creature to horrors beyond belief could end this illusion, would bring us back to reality, and would give this bastard a small taste of his own medicine."
"You are assuming that this is an illusion." Your voice is distant and understandably terrified, as you are downright traumatized from the last demon of Dream you encountered. You shattered definitions of reality to escape, and won't even talk about the event with your counselor. "Escaping from the deepest lair of a demon is no small feat. Doing so against their will is not for the faint of heart."
You can't help but think back to Yech, and to escaping from his own lair at the bottom of the world. He HAD to release you. It was completely impossible otherwise.
"Wait a minute."
"What?" Father Wilhelm has a hopeful glint in his eye once again.
It's enough to get a legitimate smile out of you. Your teeth are back to normal. Your mouth feels back to (almost) normal. Your lips are still scarred and cut, chewed on, and a little goofy when you grin, but it couldn't feel sweeter.
You smile harder, loving yourself for a few sweet seconds. "Instead of forcing our way out, or assuming how this demon operates, why don't we try changing its perspective?"
"That's—" Father Pevrel's scowl is extreme. "Wait just a fucking second here. Before you go off trying to be a
hero. What
happened to you? To me? To all of us?"
The three of you look to each other for a long moment.
"I thought this place was panic incarnate," Father Wilhelm replies. He's been invoking for so long, he hacks up a wad of paint mid-sentence, and casually wipes it from his lips like he isn't in extreme physical distress.
"I was certain that I would die if I were to be left here alone. The first time that Zephadar pulled me in to this portion of his lair of dread... well, I believe that I was subjected to the same vision just now."
A long, hard, bitter stare goes towards the direction where he thinks Teddy's corpse is.
"While I'm in here, I'm certain that I see my boy dead in all realities. Truth be told, the very first thing I was going to do once we left here was to check and see if Teddy was alright. When I was released, everything I had experienced seemed as real as when I was inside."
It looks like he's going to be sick, but he forces a sincere smile.
"It's just as I suspected. With the three of us together, we were able to pull through it all."
Father Pevrel's voice does death itself proud. "You're telling me that you have no idea what we're dealing with."
"No idea!"
Dragging a hand over his filthy face, Father Pevrel looks to you. "Any ideas, demon?"
"I'm not a demon," you say for the umpteenth time.
The gravity of the looks you're being given gives you pause. Enough to take one more second to remind yourself that you're human.
You're taller than average, but nowhere near a giant. Fat enough to
almost satisfy the Goddess of excess, but not some grotesque distortion of Her gifts. Your skin is paler than a country boy's should be, tanner than a prisoner's of eight years used to be, and has no trace of volcanic glass or cracks of paint (save for the old scar across your chest). The wings that were protruding from your back are gone, your enchanted robes are mended, the hole in your chest has vanished, and your eyes are back to an uncannily bright shade of forest green.
Running normal fingers through your mop of short, brown, scruffy, human hair, you breathe a sigh of relief. You still feel mentally unsound, have a
deep urge to go binge until you stop feeling anything, and are pretty certain you'll snap under another experience like this, but that is EXACTLY why it's worth saying again.
"I'm not a demon, no matter how much I may fear becoming one. I'm only human."
Gods, does it feel good to say it.
"I'm only human." The relief on Father Wilhelm's features is palpable. You grin at him. "We can save these people— and I haven't lost sight of who I love. I know that Mercy's and Agriculture's love for me is unconditional, and that
all of the Gods would want to be here for us now."
"Alright." Crossing his arms, scanning the ocean of potential survivors around you all, Father Pevrel asks, "what was this about trying to change perspectives, then?"
>Most of the following prompts are NOT mutually exclusive.
>If you sincerely wish to oppose a vote that's cast, please provide thorough justification for doing so.
>QM discretion will ultimately decide in the case of ties.
>A] Invoke Mercy, and unite your invocation with Father Wilhelm and Dream via your Relic. You'll share some light, and a vision with Zephadar of the
fairest possible outcome that this ordeal could present.
>1] That the demon is put to rest, and any remaining survivors come away from the experience intact. Reality is far from perfect, and a LOT of people are going to be VERY traumatized, but this is something you think you all can live with.
>2] Get Father Pevrel to agree to let the demon live, in exchange for it mending the harm it has caused. This could devastate reality as you know it, but you're both so desperate to save as many lives as possible, you're willing to try.
>3] Write-in.
>B] Zephadar said that he could release you and your allies. Maybe he just needs to be made aware that he CAN let his enemies go. Shout out to the demon's lair that you're ready to leave, and try to take hold of as many people as you can.
>1] Invoke Flesh, and simply grab as many people that you can as fast as you can.
>2] Invoke Agriculture and Flesh together for the first time. You get the feeling that the power you'd wield from the Goddess of Life and the God of Action would be obscene, and MORE than capable of getting the job done. Of course, your prior dual invocations left a lasting mark on you. You're aware that there are risks with this amount of power— but you're willing to go that extra mile to turn this situation completely around.
>C] You're certain that you can destroy this demon's lair and get out alive, with survivors in tow. The question is, how many people can you save before you go kick Zephadar's lying ass?
>1] Invoke Mercy and Agriculture. There's no question that after what you were just put through, they're going to want to help you get out of here safely. It's not as if they haven't helped you bust out from a demon's lair before! (A VERY HIGH ROLL WILL BE REQUIRED. If selected, a separate set of prompts will be presented on how to handle the extent of this invocation.)
>2] Show Zephadar the truth about his lair through your Relic. This is probably a VERY BAD IDEA, but you're prepared for anything at this point. (AN OBSCENELY HIGH ROLL WILL BE REQUIRED. Additional prompts/plans in combination with this action are STRONGLY recommended, which will not lower the difficulty of this action, but may reduce casualties.)
>D] Write-in.