That bitch, Everett thought. She felt slabs of meat peeling from her back as she was dragged by the leg through tunnels she couldn't recognise.
Footsteps, methodic and practiced, in a set of three, resonated a few foot ahead of her. Voices chattered from each side- one smooth and low, that Everett recognised as Kritana's almost immediately.
The other two were certainly male, and partially familiar.
The lights of the tunnels glowed with an unnatural shine, withering in greenish hues that made Everett feel like she was being dragged through a darkened forest.
Once her sight had adjusted to the darkness of the tunnel, she made a feeble attempt at lifting her head to see who was talking.
One of the men was the one who's shoulder her foot was being pulled over- though he was rather much shorter than her, and it meant her head was hitting on the rubble and debris left on the ground.
The other looked thin and tall. He was difficult to see, but each time they passed under a hanging lamp, his pale face became a distinctive clear.
Furrowed brows, with a bold head and white hairs poking out of his ears more then anywhere else. His nose was crooked- not dissimilar to Everett's own, except it buldged off his face in a rather unsightly manner. His cheekbones were raised just too far, making his cheeks sag in on themselves.
It took her a moment. It had been years since she'd seen him, and he was no longer in the same prestigious preist uniform she had been accustomed to. She could have sworn he'd taken a vow of silence, but she was starting to assume that he instead had simply been actively ignoring her.
Father Drin.
Everett's ears were clogged to all hell, and she couldn't make out more then a few sentences passed between the three since they didn't appear to have the decency to talk loudly so the unconscious person they were kidnapping could hear them.
"- dropping by, but it really doesn't mean that's why she was -"
"- But Father, she left us -"
"- ana, don't make her excuses, she clearly -"
So, to Everett, it was all gibberish at best. Or Nærvorsk. She couldn't speak that, either.
The tunnel repeated itself over and over, and she let her head drop back to the ground once her muscles began to sting at the effort it took to keep looking around. Her broken leg was swinging limply at the man carrying hers' side.
Upon the roof, snaking through the centre of the tunnels black stone walls, the ceiling was a mosaic of artistry. It was a story Everett didn't need to see to remember off-by-heart.
Her mind flashed back to being told it during sermans. Over again, over again, told in a poem that trickled into her ears and had, once, convinced her in her faith.
Unwillingly, it replayed in her mind as she watched the mosaic unfold above her.
Upon the whittled winds of Giarul
As entombed, her majesty sings.
Blessed be the ears of her followers
And her voice created beautiful things.
Inside the boundary of her grasp,
Our God may hold us dear,
Those who she held within herself,
Fed from her bussom, raised by her tears.
Her rivers sprang life to our world,
And for that, we gave her our deaths.
Once our souls are lain to rest,
We may bury our bones upon usefulnesses chest.
She'd never understood it all that well, but it had been said so often, so clearly, so vehemently, that she'd had no choice but to memorise it.
She knew the story that went alongside, of how their God had made people to give her creations someone to admire them.
Everett had always been seen as strange when she began to ask questions when she was young.
She'd asked what made humans so special. Why necromancers only existed in people and not animals. Why God had decided to lay her whole being to the grounds beneath people's feet.
She'd run away once she realised not even Father Drin or Mother Aubrey could give her an answer.
Apparently, that was the wrong thing to do.
The dimness of the mosaiced roofing came to an end once the room opened up into a large cathedral-esk space. The walls were lined with stained glass windows though which no light came, holding images of saints of old, of necrobeasts and priests.
It startled her slightly to turn her head to the side and see a stained glass rendition of Kritana herself- dowsed in royal rags and colours, and her skin made much warmer by the glass dye then it truly was in person.
Her usually ashen features were vibrant there, and Everett wondered if perhaps the creator of the piece had been into Kritana in any capacity.
Because whomever was into her must have been having a stroke.
Another woman's voice drawled in, resounding around the empty casm of space, with a lilt to it that Everett was sure sounded like southern Elendhan.
"So this is the girl?" It queried. The slowness of the vowels made Everett's mind malfunction- she'd heard such accents before, but this woman's seemed to make her shiver.
"It is. She was stupid enough to go to Kritana to sell a bone rune. It's almost as if she's a blithering imbecile," Father Drin gurgled, "She can't even pretend to be unconscious."
Everett scoffed loudly, twisting herself into a stupid pretzel to try and wriggle out of the stout man's grip.
"Drop her, Vance, she's just going to break another limb if she continues how she is."
She was let go of, falling face first onto the carpeted ground with a dull thud and a grunt of pain when Kritana spoke.
Rubbing her nose with the assurance that it was certainly at least bleeding (the crack it made when she'd hit the ground worried her) she sat up and rested her back languishly against one of the many pews beside her.
"I'm not an imbecile, Father," she licked a fleck of blood from her lip after it dripped from her nose, and grimaced, "I'm not the one who's brainwashed into worshipping a long-dead God who couldn't have cared less about us."
That pissed the wrinkled old windbag off, because he stormed over to her and grabbed harshly at the hair ontop of her head. He ragged her around, yelling so loud that it made Everett feel as if she were having an aneurysm.
"You insolent little beast! You are damn well lucky that we needed you here, or we would have left you on the streets of the market, dead! You hear me?! DEAD!"
"Maybe you fuckin' should have you godfearing bone-whore!" Everett yelled back; her hands came up to her scalp to stop him tearing hair from skin, and she thrashed around as much as she could to get out of his grip.
The woman with a southern drawl interrupted with a bored, rather unimpressed expression, grabbing a thick hand over Father Drin's wrist as she groused, "Father Drin, need I remind you we are in God's dearest tomb? Get your hands off of her, before you disgrace what's left of your dignity."
Everett sucked a breath in and rubbed through her hair while scowling at the elder man. The southerner held a calloused, gorgeously worked hand towards Everett to help her up.
The redhead's mind staggered rather embarrassingly as she was hoisted to her working foot, and even more so when the broad woman caught Everett when she stumbled.
Once she found her feet, and her heart had calmed back into a healthy rhythm, she leant back against the pews wooden panelling and took in the view of the woman before her.
The southerner was hot. Tremendously hot. She must have towered even the most intimidating of guards, and she had a loosely tied blacksmiths apron draped around her waist. Her hair was copper in the light- tendrils of unnatural blues and greens like oxidising metals streaked back where most would assume hair would grey at the sides. Everett was under some kind of spell, she must have been, because she could have sworn as the woman stepped away that her skin reflected almost iridescent scales along her cheeks.
"Everett," Kritana rudely broke the moment and pulled Everett's attention away from the goddess of a woman before her, "- this is Eylara. She's the town blacksmith and one of the founders of our Temple."
That made Everett do a double take.
One of the founders?!
This woman looked no older then thirty- but the Temple of Trelancisk had been around for over two hundred years by now.
Everett's eyes followed Eylara's moves as she wandered away. The southener had a self-righteous swagger that, while it pissed Everett off, was entirely too attractive and well earned for her to point out.
The woman had some sort of grandeur to her. As if all the soot and molten iron had seeped into her muscles over time and made the body and soul of her into some kind of sword-making deity.
"She's a founder's grandkid, you mean?" Everett attempted to confirm that surely this woman wasn't over two-hundred years old.
Kritana snuffed a cheeky laugh into her palm, ringing her free hand into her braid to twist the spines over her fingers, "No, Ev, she's a founder. Older then the temple and even old enough to have met the towns first mayor."
Eylara rested her back against the large statue towards the forefront of the cathedral. Her arms crossed, and a more then serious look on her face. Everett found herself looking up at the statue.
It was a genderless form, stood grand above everything else in the room, made of marbled rock and cartilage. An axe was raised above their head- not in defense nor attack, but in triumph. Their long hair flowed as if in the wind, and Everett recalled as a child having thought she'd seen it move.
It had a long, thin crack up its spine, leading from the back of its left foot. Everett could see herself as a young girl, tracing her hands over the statues base, trying to figure out where marble met bone.
Eylara's voice broke the stretch of quiet, and she pulled a raggy scrap of paper from her pocket.
"Kritana says you're an impeccable navigator. I've been looking for something, and I can't seem to find it on my own."
The redhead removed her hand from her nose. A trickle of blood dripped down to her chin, then onto the flor at her feet as she stepped out to look dead at the woman.
"What exactly are you trying to find?" she said listlessly.
A sharp wind whipped through the tunnel and into the statues many crevices, creating an ambient whistle as Eylara responded, "Does that really matter?"
Everett's nose creased, and she winced at the sharp sting that shot through it.
"It matters," she began, "because I'm not going to do shit for you if you leave me in the dark. I'm not some idiot- I'm not gonna wander into some bullshit plan just cause some southern ageless woman told me to."
Kritana decided to jump in, wafting her hand in Everett's direction, followed by a crack as Everett yelped and grabbed her face, stumbling a little when she hunched over at the sudden jolt.
She said, "Oh don't be so rude to your elders, Distal, she's trying to be polite."
Everett grimaced, looking up through her fingers before grunting, "Oh screw off, Mor. You kidnapped me, this isn't the time for you to take a moral high ground."
Eylara raised her hand to shut them up, holding the paper out to the side for Father Drin and the stout, weirdly silent man stood rigid beside him.
Father drin opened it up with his scabbed fingers. The sound of paper crinkling cut through the air before he began to read it aloud.
"Dearest Eylara Fyrmara," he croaked, "Upon my death, I have sealed a tomb for my body to lie in. This is not to make things difficult for you. I intend to teach you something. Elendhor holds many more beastly secrets then you may ever realise, and I pray to our God (may she resurrect soon) you find what I have buried in there. I trust no one else with this task but you. You have saved me once, now you must do it again. My many condolences for your loss, That Who Remains."
Everett blinked.
"That means fucking nothing to me, Father."