Chapter 69: Fear No Evil

"I've always found a way to take the pain."​

Somewhere far off— in the cemetery below your domain— there is a scream.

Off in the distance— having upheld a promise he never had to make— kneels a man. You thought you would never see him again, yet there he remains— ready to sacrifice his mind, body, and soul to aid you.

He is in pain.

You are in pain. You do not know who you are. You do not know who you were.

You are crawling blind, ravaged with agony.

You are grieving. You are a demon that has lost the one anchor holding you onto the world.

You are obsessed— driven to seek out answers— to take knowledge in the palm of your hand. It is all that is left of you.

There was a time once, when you were something more. You have always been more than a singularity. You have been more than a means to an end. More than your knowledge. More than your wisdom. The man reminds you.

Somewhere off in the distance, the man— the holy man, the man in possession of the Gods— reaches out to you. He may have already been there. It's hard to know.

You are very upset. You're covered in ashes, smearing the remains of what you've lost over you, trying to know, trying to feel.

Idonea was the only one to not be afraid of you.

She should have been afraid. Her dedication to her mission got her killed.

Somewhere off in the distance, a man is trying to remind you that he has a mission, too. He doesn't want to make the same mistakes. He is desperate to help.

You do want to stop suffering. It has been over 700 years since you were a member of the Church of Spirit. You know the exact date, but you do not wish to remember it. You know the Gods you served, but you cannot speak of Them. You crave death. You surround yourself with it— but you know there was life, once.

There was someone more. There was a family. So many people that you came to know, to love, to strive to help in every way that you could. To understand. To share your wisdom with.

You're not ready to think of the Mother of the Church of Mercy. You're still trying to decide how to feel on and over the ash and the soot, the decay about her.

It's easier to remember what you knew.

You need help.

We want to help. Please. Let Us help.

You don't want to suffer anymore.

Remember. Regain your sight. Feel peace in your mind. Take meaning from your wisdom. Remember what you were before, what you wanted. Remember. Know.

​

There was love and devotion. Quiet and calm. Peace and understanding. The clergy. The open halls. The absence of doors. The expansive corridors. The spacious gardens. The entirety of Ostedholm's library at your fingertips. The culmination of the country's knowledge, their best minds, their strongest Spirit. Nothing needed to be hidden. Not when it was sacred to know.

You'd often gather with your Brothers and Sisters in congregation, and in reverence to the Goddess. You did not need Her gifts. To know was Her blessing. To teach was your worship. To know yourself— to know your fellow man— was to have faith.

There is a man in the back of your mind, cringing, wracked with agony over all the ways he wishes he could know himself. He's desperate to know you. Desperate to do what is best.

You know that there are so many others like him.

There were so many more who could not sacrifice so much.

The Church of Spirit opened not its hands, but its soul. The embrace of the ethereal encompassed the entirety of Ostedholm, the borders beyond your walls, and the country even further beyond the streets you knew so well. Though many faces that came to you in your service escape your mind now, you once knew them all as equals.

There were some you knew better than others. You all served in the same capacity, with the same devotion. Your Brothers and Sisters were your family. There were so many of you. You no longer know them, but you know what they felt like. You wanted to help them so much. To alleviate their ignorance, to remove their doubts, to take hold of their pain, and to show them what it truly meant to see. Your bond with them was unshakable. Despite their insecurity and fear, you all learned of each other. You were so much stronger together.

You needed their support. Their guidance. They needed you. Your connection to the Goddess was strong.

Together, your collective wisdom sought to lead your home— your family— to greatness. To quell the dissent. To educate the masses.

Dissent.

Ignorance.

Fear.

There was so much wisdom. So much knowledge. So much worth protecting that needed to be kept away.

Locked away.

Hidden as deeply as you all could hide it.

To serve was to know.

To know one another was to know yourself.

You knew one day there would be an end to the age. You knew that humanity was being pressed— being pushed. You and your family did everything in your power to caution those against what was coming.

You all knew beyond any and all doubt that Ostedholm would fall. You all had pushed too far.

There was war. Not among men— though you knew of the instability and strife. You had heard of Lords in their castles, feuding and fighting over petty lands and petty indulgences. Not among women— though they sewed discord through the rank and file, tempting you all to sin. Not among the church— strong as you were, allied together, in your common bonds.

There was war within the very hearts of humankind.

It was a gradual descent, deep into the earth. The land you revered, the gardens you kept, the defenses you held. The lives you saved. All of the people you reached out to in the last few years, as you tried to bury everything you held dear.

You buried your friends.

You buried your wisdom.

You buried your family.

You became obsessed, utterly fixated, and bent with every fiber of your being over understanding why.

Why did one understand themselves? Why did there have to be so much conflict? Why was there so much strife? Why did demons have to be feared? Why did they have to be fought?

"Why was death the only cure?" You had heard it from the lips of the very Mother of the Church of Mercy.

You understood her conviction— but you needed to know. So you studied. You devoted yourself, your wisdom, and your worship away from the clergy. Away from the land above— the hopeless inevitability. You had to do something.

Study made way for experimentation. You loved your work. You loved to know. You wanted to share your wisdom, to understand.

The dead didn't ask questions. They only provided answers.

You learned.

You knew.

You turned.

You remember.

There's a sob within a scream, within a man, within the cemetery. He is suffering a fate worse than death. Held together by the might of two Goddesses, he suffers you to live. He's suffering hundreds of years of wisdom, of knowledge, and of flirting with a demon's mind while containing divinity.

You want him to learn.

You want him to know.

You were a lover. You knew what it was to love, once. There was your Sister in Spirit, who you would listen to endlessly. You loved to hear her thoughts, her fears, her dreams. You loved the way that she would try to get you to change. You always wished you could.

You were a speaker. You knew what it was to preach, to share your wisdom with others. Everything you learned was wasted if it remained unknown. You knew the Father— and that for all of his experience, he still had to rely on others to succeed. You told him of his strengths, his weaknesses, how he could change and what you both knew to be right. You always envied him.

You were a scholar. You knew what it was to learn, to see what there was in the world. You knew what to take and what to leave. There were so many clergymen among you in the libraries of Ostedholm that you drew your wisdom from. There were so many hands that changed over the same pages you poured over, seeking knowledge. You longed to know them better. You needed to know.

You were a butcher.

You were a killer.

You did not hesitate to do whatever needed to be done in the name of the ethereal. You looked to the material. You poured over the dead. You pieced them apart. You buried them.

You hid.

You fled.

You sought refuge in open hands and an open heart. You could not understand her. You hated yourself for not understanding. You were a child.

You were taken in by the Mother of Mercy, promised safekeeping, and given a chance to learn: To practice your work, to love, to teach, to learn, to know. She gave you something to hold. You took all of her empathy and all of your knowledge. You worked tirelessly to find her answers. To seek out a way to save you all.

Years passed. Your hands grew calloused. The shovel that you held brought no wisdom. No comfort.

The pages of your books crumbled and decayed. They were buried, locked away, and lost to time. Behind a door. A safeguard and a promise: That one day, things would be better.

You were lied to.

You hate liars.

You hate the truth: There is no cure. There is no hope.

Your hands grew cold. There was no warmth at the bottom of the earth.

You long for death.

Idonea did not have any answers. For all of her good intentions, she could not save the city. She could not save her children. She could not save herself.

Your hands are all that is left. She's gone. Everyone has died, or suffers a fate worse than death.

There are the ashes. There are the ruins.

There is a sense that at one point in your life, you actually knew something. What it meant to live, to serve, and to know. But you are a demon. You cannot return to the world outside, and you do not wish to.

You will not destroy Father Anscham's one chance to do something with your wisdom. You will not permit the world to go without all of the knowledge that he can share. You will not allow a man who has suffered in so many ways to go any further without understanding.

You will not break his Spirit.