Thoughts of a Dying Priest
These are the final thoughts and recollections of The Guardian of Unbodied Souls. His last moments, and his death in a torture room underneath the city.
Please be aware of Trigger and Content Warnings for this piece. This chapter goes much further, darker and harder than the other pieces written for this blog. Please practice self care and only read this if you are in a good space. Enjoy.
CW/TW: Torture, body horror, swearing
💀 Interlude: Death in the Dark:
💀 Interlude: Death in the Dark:
It had all started so simply, Gayfel thought. He casts his mind back to distract himself from the pain as the Wererat opened his wound and poured in the salt.
The new priest had come in and been so eager and wonderful. She had been so personable, so interested in everyone. She worked with everyone one on one so willing to council and help.
Well, at least until the ‘accident’.
Yeah, right, some accident…
Whenever a child or an angry man was acting out, getting bullyish or troublesome, she took them aside. She talked to them one on one. She’d soothe them and talk them down. Always with one hand on their shoulder and one hand holding their arm by the wrist. Gayfell remembered that little detail now of course, how her thumb was always on their pulse point. But of course now it was too late.
How many buggered old men and petulant little girls had he sent to her. She had always smiled so peacefully…was it peaceful? That smile, was it really so peaceful?
His hindsight debates in his head. ‘Was it peaceful, or was it-’
Gayfell screams as his torturer pours in the milk white water. The cut between his ribs bubbles and smokes. He tries hard not to breathe in, but he’s too weak by now. The Wererat pats his head as he gasps. Now he can taste that foul acidic chalk in his throat without it ever getting in his mouth. He puffs out but of course that only makes it worse. He is breathing it through his open wound now as the acid burrows into his exposed lung.
“Now then Faudder… how do we open the door?” The accent is unfamiliar to the priest with the torturer saying ‘father’ so it’s something between ‘fodder’ and ‘fatter’. On top of that, the Wererat’s snout isn’t suited to the formation of the common words and they came out distorted.
“You know,” Gayfell stammers, trying to sound conversational through the stingy air and the twitching convulsions of his lung, “This is a pretty complex torture for you lot…” He winces and hisses through what was left of his teeth. He closes his eyes again, his hate bubbling up with the acid in his open lung. The smile. Think about that smile.
Was it peaceful or was it greedy? Of course now he thought of it as an evil smile, a fake smile like an exasperated teacher forced to go back to an unruly classroom and make nice.
But it’s hard to think clearly about the past with a hole burning in your lung. Don’t think about that. Think of the smile. What was it?
The eyes. It was the eyes of course. Those stony gray pupils with their golden rims, eyes like a dead statue in a fancy cemetery. They didn't move when she worked and calmed the parishioners. They stayed straight forward, unblinking and unwavering.
She’d get the angry old lady or the tantruming child to sit or kneel down to her level and she’d stare at them, talking low and gentle with her hands positioned in just that-
Gayfell screams again as the ratman’s claw digs into his chest. “That doesn’t look good, Faudder, it looks deep.” Then pulling his finger back with a cartoonish ‘ouchie’ expression he taunts, “an’ somethin’s wrong with it, Faudder, it stings too.” The ratman carelessly drops his large hammer on the hole and then giggles against the screaming priest’s ear. “You really should get that looked at, before it gets worse, ya know. Maybe there's some medicine inside that door, huh? You just tell me how to open it, Faudder, and I’ll go get it for you. How ‘bout that?”
‘Dark almighty’ Gayfell thinks as the hammer slips from the ledge of his rib and plops against the inside back of his lung. He coughs and coughs with no relief or affect as his torturer titters. ‘How much longer can I hold out like this?’ Out loud he tries to keep his cheery tone, “Did you try jiggling the handle? Sometimes it gets stuck.”
She’d become the Sun (term for head priest because they direct shadows). At least only temporarily, he thought with some relief, before anyone had even figured out who she was…what she was. When Quettzarr had been called away… Who had called him away… Everyone agreed this new girl should lead until he returned. She’d been doing so well after all.
Darkness abound, why had none of them seen it when she refused to give the sermons! She refused to stand on the pyramid at all and now it was no wonder. What would have happened if they’d managed to coax her up there? Would she have burned? Would her real host have knocked her down? Or would the imprisoned shadows have simply come out from their shackles and dragged her down to the abyss between the worlds!?
The Wererat lifts the hammer off his chest and Gayfell can feel the cold air rushing up his chest as he chokes out more coughs.
“That’s not very funny there Faudder, you and I both know there ain’t no handle. Now do you really want to make me mad? Laughing at me isn’t a very good idea, cause I get mad and I'm liable to hurt someone.”
Those wet mushy laughs came again from under those heavy tarps at the edge of the room.
The torturer pushes the hammer, still speckled with his blood, into the open wound. He can feel the sharp chunk of his own bone stuck to the round ball on the back of the hammer. Gayfell passes out as his heart and blood grow cold so near the metal and its beat slows against the pressure of the collapsing lung.
The door swung open and the gust of cold wind almost knocked Gayfell off balance. The coin (a special round board which rests at the tip of the pyramid and is used as a pulpit during services) turns under him, but he keeps his position, and when the board returns to the front again he looks at the door and the newcomer.
She had smiled so sheepishly, endearing her to anyone who looked over, though her eyes never flinched. It was a shy smile, a humanizing expression of embarrassment that put everyone at ease.
Gayfell had continued the sermon without pause. This was one he’d given nearly every winter. It was about balance, like all his best ones. He had been saying that we should not fear the long nights and short days of winter. We should not shiver and complain of the cold when the snow lands on the backs of our necks.
That was when she had walked in, and he had to restrain the smile from curling his lips. Nothing could have made a better button to his words than the little flurries that had come in when she’d cracked the door.
Seething the drops on the stranger’s boot, he quickly decided to try just one new line this year. After all, even an old and well worn sermon needs polish right?
“Just as the snow melts in the warmth of the hearth, we too must melt. Melt our discomfort from the cold in the heat of our awe at nature’s perfect balance.”
Not his best line, but he could try it again next year and tweak it.
“When your arms tingle in gooseflesh, I urge you, hold back your shivers. Close your eyes and cast your mind forward to Eleasis. In the month of the high sun you will sweat and bake and tan. Your skin will be screaming out, begging for the feel of just one falling snowflake.
“As we sit in our houses with our candles as our only lights, we grow sad and weary. We crave the sunlight… And so it should be… for we know that soon our backs will ache at the end of the long days of work. We will look up at the sky and see yet three more hours of good light. We will groan as we bend our backs to push on at the day's tasks. Think of how much, then, you will miss a quiet night inside with little to do but darn your socks, or play with your children.
“In The Dark Tome, when Bashtem found the thieving shadow under his garden, what did he do? He fed it, of course. He fed the remains of the priceless broken china, and the ash from the fire. Both were worth the same in that moment… And why did he feed this thief under the land? To help the land, to watch it grow.
“So too should we feed the winter, as Bashtem fed the earth of his garden. This is a time of peace in darkness when there is little we can do. So use it my friends to darn your socks and read to your children. And smile when you do, knowing it won’t be here for long. This is also the time of bitter cold, of snow and ice, and frozen bones! … So use it my friends. Pack the ice in the cellar and save that cold deep within your bones for them to remember it when the summer is hot and your skin is red from the sun.”
He slowly tapered out, and after the service he had met the stranger. She had introduced herself, shaking his hand and admiring the library in the loft. It turned out she was the new torch (a lesser priest). She had tried to run the last bit of the journey from the mountain and had fallen in a cave, losing everything she had including her robes. Still, she had climbed down and ran here all day, trying to make it on time to be here for the holyday service…
Gayfell comes back to reality, and when he feels the shackles, he wishes he could’ve stayed asleep.
“Welcome back, Faudder man.” The ratman coos, licking down his cheek. “I been busy while you was sleepin’. Can’t wait to show you what I made for you. Think of it as my little gift!” he spits the last word with such venom and hatred, Gayfell can even feel the heat of the word leaving the things hairy mouth.
A scream.
Sudden pain.
Agonizing pain.
Pressure around the eye as though the eyeball itself was being crushed in a vice.
A pause and then sudden instant relief as the crushing pressure disappears.
“Oh thank the holy dark!” Gayfell pants as the pain ends.
“Now now Faudder, relax… it’s all over now.”
The chains rattle, “Well it was good to meet you, I'll be going then.”
The ratman laughs. “No Fauder, silly Faudder. The installation is done.
It’s then that Gayfell can feel the metal, the cold hard metal around his eye. “What i- AaaaH AaaHH!”
This time it’s not pressing but pulling.
“Don’t move now, Faudder.” The rat man backs away but there is still a blur split over one eye and the pulling continues. A shiny glass bulb with white sand is suddenly in front of Gayfell’s eyes. “You know what this is?”
“An egg timer?”
“Hey good job d’ere, no fooling a holy man huh.” A small sound of broken glass.” This one is just heavy enough to pull your eye out, Faudder. So you got fifteen minutes to tell me what I wanna know.”
In the darkness, there is the barest tiniest hiss of falling sand and the pain behind Gayfells eye doubles… and then triples.
How much of that was true? He knew now, of course. He thought he remembered the letter announcing the coming of a new member from the south, not the west.
Maybe it had been the west… Maybe she’d only half lied, he thought sardonically. It’s possible the real priest had fallen in a hole, one she’d dug and been waiting in. Maybe they’d struggled too much and that was why she’d been late… No…
That sheepish smile that had endeared them to her right away… she hadn’t been late. He couldn’t believe that, not with what he knew now. She’d probably been staying there for half an hour, crouched or hidden outside the door, listening and waiting for just the right moment. A moment where the interruption would fit; call enough attention to get them to look, but not to truly interrupt. A moment she could play that embarrassed little smile and win them over.
And now the office is empty… Now I'm down here. That leaves what? The two torches and the candles (acolytes) the lanterns (active community members and helpers in the church) and who knows how many of them are damp (out of faith) or worse broken (sinners). How-
The ratman is laughing and giggling, when the door bags open.
“Boss!” The torturer coos and bows low.
“Enough of this,” It’s a gruff woman's voice and the priest knows it instantly. He starts squirming, not caring if the contraption pulls out his eye with the last of his dignity. He clambers at the shackles, “You bitch! You demon! You foul unearthly wi-” A wet rag is shoved in his mouth. It tastes like well, let's just hope it's not that…
“You’re a stupid old man, Gayfell.” Zaanth says, poking her head into view above him. Then, with an almost seductive smile beneath stony dead eyes, “But you know that now, don’t you?” The priest feels her will digging into his brain as she talks with her thumb on his wrist, “I’m gonna take that rag out, and you’re gonna say it. You’re gonna say, ‘yes, I'm a stupid old man’.”
The rag is pulled away and Gayfell tries to force his jaw closed, but her will pries it open. In a weak and frail sob he cries, “I am a stupid old man…” His muscles go limp as the words hit his brain and he feels every shame of his life all at once.
“There there.” Zaanth says with no remorse or comfort in her voice. “And now say, ‘I’m a broken old man, bent to your will’.”
The tears burn on the metal still pulling out his eye as he repeats, “I’m a tired, broken old man. And I bend to your will…” He’s weeping openly now as he thinks of every face of the community he’s loved, tended, sheltered and maintained his whole life. Both the living members and the hollow sunken skulls he shepherded into the darkness beyond. All of that, and now he knows he will betray it all.
“Now,” Zaanth says softly as the ratman chitters next to her. “How do we open the door?”
“If I tell you…” He sobs, thinking of the fluffy ashes in all those urns. “Will you at least let me care for my flock of the dead?”
“Of course,” Zaanth coos over his face in a hollow monotone, “just tell me, Gayfell.”
He knows she’s lying and he summons the last drop of strength that the shadow gave him. “It’s not a word, or a key… you have to…” He arches his back and before he can cough again, spits in Zaanth’s eyes.
The pain is immediate and intense as Zaanth yanks the eye from its socket, she gives into the feral blood inside her and rips the optic never apart with her teeth. Then she jams the eyeball into his open gaping chest wound, pushing it against the meat of his lung. “There! You idiots love balance! Right!? You’re all about it! You wouldn’t shut up about it even on the day I met you! So here! Now one eye sees outside and one eye sees inside!”
“Boss, I’ve been-” the ratman starts, backing away from her. Under the muffled tarps we hear the dumb laughter of dripping mouths.
“Shut up!” she shouts and throws the torturer's eye puller at him. I’ve had enough of these stupid old priests!” There’s a clang as she tosses over, with one hand, the other chair with the other dead priest bolted to it. “I’m done with this. And I will break this idiotic tome fondler!”
She runs back over the table and Gayfell can feel his leg lift. “What, what’re you-”
There’s a wet smack as she back hands him, “I told you to shut up!”
The sound of paper unfurling.
Rustling as scrolls are unwound and wrapped around limbs, intertwined.
“Oooh, that’s so viscous Boss, it’s so goo’oo’ood!” The ratman snickers, his finger-claw-nails clicking together. Then in a sudden pleading whine. “Please Boss, please can I tell him what it is!”
“Why? He’ll figure it out.”
“Boss, I've been stuck with the tired old windbag for days! I want to watch his hope die in his eyes, well eye now!” the thing cackles.
Zaanth pauses, and then breathes out, “Fine.” She consents as she ties the last of the scrolls around the priest’s neck. “Tell him.”
The Wererat torturer comes close to the priest's ear. It shivers with goose pimples as the round needle-like whiskers prick his cheek. “The boss, she made you a cast, Faudder… she's gonna heal you! I’m not lying neither, Faudder.”
Silence.
“It’s a special healing cast made o’ scrolls, see, scrolls of Cure Wounds. They’s wrapped all around your legs and arms and chest and heed now, Faudder.” He pronounces ‘head’ with a long E.
Gayfell closes his eye and hollow eyelids, waiting.
“But I guess they was runnin’ low on scrolls, cause some o’ them… will they don’ look much like Cure Wounds… Faudder, why don’t we ask the boss, huh?” He turns to Zaanth, a mockery of good natured cheer in his voice. “What’s these other ones there, boss?”
Zaanth’s anger is burned out now. She sits on the tool tray and picks at some dirt under her ring. “Inflict Wounds.”
The ratman laughs and Gayfell can’t bring himself to cry or even to care anymore when the salty tears fall inwards, from the duct and onto his bleeding open nerve.
“That sound be fine, right Faudder?” The evil little thing chuckles. “You’ve got the holy magic, so you tell me.” Then, before the priest can answer, he shoves the end of the hammer into Gayfell’s mouth with a pop.
Zaanth looks over at the muffled thrashing priest, she rolls her eyes and nods to the Wererat.
Once the hammer is pulled from his mouth Gayfell looks at her with pleading eyes, through a popping and clicking jaw he sobs and croaks, “In.. inside the pyramid… it’s tied… tied under the dark pew…”
Zaanth slowly sits up as the broken priest coughs and gags. She stands back on the torturer’s chair and then leans down to Gayfell’s ear. With a complete lack of emotion in her voice she whispers. “I know. I found it yesterday morning. Just after the service.”
As the priest looks up at her with one wide eye filling with confusion and blood, Zaanth flicks a finger.
The magic contained within the scrolls pours over the priest's body, seeping into his muscles and nerves.
The two conflicting spells rip and mend the priest's flesh in unison. They pull him apart and knit him together in an endless cycle, a circle with no beginning or end of healing and pain, soothing and suffering.
This goes on for hours until finally Gayfell’s will passes into the last darkness, and his soul can be hurt no more.
As i said, this is much more intense than my other writing. And it’s fair of you, as a reader, to ask me why i would put this huge shift in tone down in front of you. Well first, let me say that i am am fine. This is not a statement on my mental health. D&D (and RPG) should first and foremost be fun. Okay, so then WHY do this!? Even in that spirit, and perhaps because of it, i feel that sometimes we become too glib. We joke about a person being “chaotic evil” or “true neutral”. That’s fine, but we should also remember that there is real evil. Real will in the world to pull us apart, turn us against our neighbors, rip our humanity from us and shove us into the dark chaos of uncivilized beast clawing in the dark void of space. This is evil. And i wanted to remind us of it. And to remember what and why we should fight against it and love our neighbors. In balance, Kai “Sparky” W. 2/16/24.
