Night 63: Chapel

[she_is_ruin]

_{[from here]}

Yomi didn’t know what she was looking for, but if there was a chance she could find a means to speed up her healing in this place, she was willing to try. The downstairs infirmary was another option, but conventional healing methods would only go so far.

A creature like her needed something drastic. She needed something now.

(There were those creeping, menacing fingers again, almost a physical touch on the back of her neck.)

Slowly, she took one step forward, then another, the sound of water drawing her forward. She remembered coming here during the day, but everything felt different now, slightly askew. Tarnished. More or less like she, herself.

Comments

[skeletonenigma]

Skulduggery wasn't too fond of religion, as a general rule. The fanatics who worshiped the Faceless Ones had definitely soured the whole thing for him, but he'd never really liked the concept even before Mevolent started attacking the rest of the world. The idea of praying to someone who you weren't even sure existed just seemed odd, and most mainstream religions were so wonderfully selfish that Skulduggery couldn't even begin to take them seriously. His own family had believed, when he was younger, that he was possessed by the devil. A laughably old-fashioned concept now, but at the time, it hadn't been fun.

Still, the last thing he'd expected in a hospital-prison alternate reality was a chapel.

Skulduggery couldn't immediately identify the religion. It looked like an all-denominations sort of chapel, without a high ceiling or grand stages or anything specifically religious apart from a dim stained-glass window. There was also the sound of running water coming from the front of the room, which seemed to be what interested Yomi the most. Skulduggery slowly followed her forward, hands flat by his sides, quickly checking each pew as they passed for... well, anything, really. Objects, lurking monsters, traps. Anything could be hiding in a darkened all-denominations chapel. Did the Faceless Ones have a sense of irony?

The sound was coming from a fountain at the front of the chapel, a demonic-looking fountain carved from stone and rendered in stunningly horrific detail. Whoever made the fountain clearly wanted to be as frightening as possible, and they succeeded. Sparing the fountain no more than a short glance, Skulduggery walked right up to it, and the smell of blood hit him before he realized what color the churning liquid was.

Charming. Much more on par with a reality trying to mess with peoples' heads, however. Skulduggery, who was used to far worse, wouldn't have blinked even if he remembered he could now do so.

There was something inscribed in the base. "Any sinner who is injured, step forward and be healed for a price," he read out loud. No wonder Yomi had been so intent on coming here. He glanced back at her. "Any idea what that 'price' is?"

[she_is_ruin]

Yomi soon realized the fountain’s water was not actually water, as well. It was a huge step away from the place’s usual atmosphere of lazy peacefulness during the day; this new side of the chapel was dark and macabre and not a little ominous. But then the nightly transformation seemed to bring out the worst in everything--and in everyone.

She felt a certain amount of pregnant expectation. During her stay at Landel’s, she’d walked into more disturbing places than this, so the only matter at hand seemed to be what, if anything, would happen now.

“The whispers I heard about this place were true,” she murmured quietly to herself. With each survey of the room, her eyes kept being drawn back to the fountain. Hadn’t Landel said this was a kind of holy place in his twisted mind? An area where monsters wouldn’t attack? If that was true and the fountain wasn’t just a figment of her imagination, then she’d gotten very lucky. Something that could take away her injuries, could get her on her feet faster… that was good, wasn’t it?

She looked back at the man with a distant expression, almost as if she were seeing right through him. “None. But I’ve already sinned in the worst ways you can. What’s the worst it could be?”