The wind flooded through the treetops that ran alongside the stream. Tisiphone followed it down the way its water flowed, because the metallic ringing through her bones had caught up to her about half a mile out. She felt her fingers tear into the cold under the water's surface, pulling the water apart minutely before it found itself again, over and over, swirling around her hands as a dancer around a lover.
Plutus had left her around the same time. He always did, when her senses caught onto it. Perhaps because he didn't want to see what she did. Perhaps simply because it wasn't his business to know. Either way, Tisiphone was back to being alone.
The forest was calming this time of year. The mild weather brought flowers to the earth's crust, enlightening the very ground of the world in unnatural colours that even the gods would bow their heads in respect to the beauty of. Her hair caught in her belt as she walked, and her hands worked it out occasionally whenever she felt the telltale pull drag her head back.
This part of her job was always her favourite part. It was so peaceful here. Her head wasn't splitting with a headache, and the ground beneath her feet felt solid instead of thin, and her back vertebrae had finally stopped aching with every step. The sword at her side clinked lazily against the foliage and rocks from every steep climb and descent.
The smell ripened around a clearing in which the steam she was following split into two upon contact with a boulder. But it hadn't been the smell she was following- no. this one was new, and pungent. It smelled stale, as if the body had lingered long past its due and festered in its own discarded fluids.
A shack lay beside it- much less a shack than it was a rundown cottage of wood and stone, but it was small and as unkempt as a shack tended to be. The wretched stench echoed from inside, so Tisiphone's hand gripped her sword hilt with white knuckles.
She paused around 200 feet from the shack, and slid off her boots. Hid them behind a nearby bramble. That quieted her steps into silence. The grass and roots below cushioned every sound, muffled even her sword in its sheath now that she held it still. Her ears strained to listen in to the person inside, but she couldn't even make out the scuffling of clothes nor sighs of breath.
Once Tisiphone reached the window, she peaked her head just into the corner to watch in. An older man, looked to be in his late seventies to early eighties, was crumpled over in a reclining rocking chair. His breathing, though quiet by the thick glass, looked strained. Perhaps she didn't even need to be here- perhaps he was about to go on his own.
She'd prefer it, in all honesty. Tisiphone wasn't one for anger, or regret, so much as she was simply doing her duty.
Tisiphone watched him for a long, long while. And as she did, her thoughts wandered to the skies.
She thought of her life, how much of it she could barely remember, how much of it was spent walking from place to place, following men who must have done something to smell so abhorrent.
Her tongue licked her lips quickly, wetting them for the fuck-knows-how-many'th time. She took a deep breath in through her mouth in an attempt to force the stink from her senses, but it clouded her so much she could barely even do that.
It was as if she could taste it. As if the swallowing she did like smoke had invaded her lungs simply felt like swallowing raw, rotten meat. It gave her a visceral reaction, and she ducked from the window and turned away to cover her mouth with a body-rolling 'HARCK'. She hoped he didn't hear.
Tisiphone hoped to the Gods that he was deaf. But she knew, before she picked herself up to peek in again, that his eyes were at the window the moment the sound had been made. Her blood ran thin, choked up on itself, tore from her chest in heaving breaths as she stumbled away from the shack.
Something fell from her pocket as she stumbled. Tisiphone hardly registered it in her retreat.
Never, in her years of doing this, had she ever smelt or tasted someone quite so putrid. It was still rancid and fizzing in her nose as she grabbed her boots and fled over the stream into the woods around.
She couldn't stick around to finish the job. It had made her feel her own skin writhe over her muscles, her bones rattle in an attempt to escape. He was old, and he was useless, and he had eyes whited over like he was blind and he terrified her. Tisiphone hadn't felt like that since the first time.
That was when the smell dwindled- half a mile out, carried away by the breeze blowing past her. Her knees buckled, and she collapsed onto them with a dull thud that chimed its way into the sky, scaring a nearby bird off a branch. That didn't matter to her, though, No. What mattered was the bile pooling in her ribcage, the stomach acid leaking into her jaw and burning her tongue as she heaved onto the twigs and brushes before her body.
There was a shiver beside her that dragged her by the throat out of her reverie, and she turned her head with a start only to see nothing standing where she was sure a child had just been.
But a child wouldn't be all the way out here.
So instead, she sucked in a disgustingly wretched huff of air, forced herself to stand by hauling herself up on a tree, and focused on the new smell.
Compared to the one of that man in the shack, Tisiphone found herself thinking this one smelled just like her fathers old meat pies. Anything was better than whatever she'd just run from.
In the time it had taken for her to see the outer gates leading into Elendhor, Tisiphone's legs had long since fallen from scratching pains into cold numbness into running purely on the spite of the fact she required both food and a bed.
Or death.
Death would work for her at this point as well, honestly.
Guards stood proud outside the gates. Pillars on either side, with large iron bars jutting down into the earth, and a bridge linking the two at the top wherein another two guards sat overlooking the woodlands and wetlands that expanded out around Elendhor. The armour was rather threatening, in Tisiphone's opinion, but she had to get into the city somehow.
So long as she didn't look like trouble, the gates should stay open for her- however having come from the fact she'd just vomited and been rolling around in the muck, she highly doubted that she looked anything but high. Or at least a little drunk.
Her feet carried her stumbling towards the gates. None of the guards' eyes were visible, but she could feel them watching her. She could see their heads turn as she pulled herself towards the gates, and a long thin half-rusted spear fell into her eyeline to stop her.
The guard closest was a broad man. Taller than Tisiphone by only a few inches, but clearly someone used to taking up space. His gloved hand was the one holding the spear, and he used it to unceremoniously force her a few steps backwards. Tisiphone had half a mind to drive him away herself- but there were too many people and she had too little energy to get away with it.
"Where are you headed, little miss?" he sneered out.
Tisiphone's eyes narrowed at him- he sounded the type to escalate. She ran hand into her hair and then placed it gently on the hilt of her sword. Not gripping- simply resting. But it drew enough attention for him to clear his throat and speak again.
"Ahem- ah- you wouldn't happen to be drunk, would you?"
Tisiphone scoffed, pushing another huff of air between her teeth and took a strand of hair out of her mouth.
She rebutted, "No. I'm not drunk."
Her eyes followed the shift in his weight uncomfortably. The guard seemed uncertain, but the others had begun to stare, and he had no real reason to refuse her entry other than Tisiphone looked like absolute shit. Her face probably gave away her feelings- though much less because she was pissed then it was that these guards stank as well. Not the scent she was trying to find right now, but one that sat on her tongue with a lingering horrific sweetness that she couldn't hide. Her nose wrinkled up in disgust. She licked her bottom lip in an attempt to get the taste of the smell off. The man stepped aside, and let her in without another word.
The city was vast. Every three men she passed had a different stench to them- it was why she avoided cities in the first place. Everyone had something to hide, bones in the closet, things buried in their yards. She missed the days previous where she could go for hours not smelling or seeing any of it. Villages were often much less smell and much more beauty.
Sheb felt cramped. Her skin too tight, too sweaty yet too cold. The one thing she was following seemed to lead her to a cathedral looming high above the rest of the buildings in the city.
Behind market stalls and bakeries and cottages and homes, atop a small uphill trek, the cathedral stuck out like a sore thumb. Against the greys and browns and woodgrain slabs of the rest of the city, the white and perfect marble stones used to carve out every part of it refracted light like no one was around to be blinded by it. Tisiphone circled the perimeter, trying to find the smell again but finding that it seemed to have completely ceased to exist. Like the soft winds surrounding the building had cleansed whomever's misdeeds had led her here. Thick greying worn steps lead to the front doors- doors that were way too heavy-looking to be opened by any normal human- shrouded in an overgrown burst of vines and gorgeous blossoming flowers that crawled like insects up the sides of the walls and into the open windows of the belltower. Tisiphone stepped up each one with caution, taking in all she could of her surroundings. She didn't know who she was here to find. But she couldn't leave before her job was done- she needed the money, and the flowers when she woke up always made her feel better. Her hands listlessly sought out her satchel as her eyes caught onto the entrance of a burial site beside the cathedral. There weren't many stones visible from where Tisiphone stood, but for such a large city, that seemed rather improbable.
There was, however, pushed into the back and overcrowded by the plants and fauna, a crypt laid out with a large half-broken sign.
The sign itself was etched deeply into a stone slab that hung precariously sideways over the opening of the crypt, blocking off entrance more than any closed gates or moulded bronze doors ever could. Surrounding it were old building blocks that looked to have been torn from its sides somehow- though from what Tisiphone could tell there weren't any gaps in the crypts outer layers.
She reached the doors and knocked twice, loud so the sound would hit whomever was inside.
The person who opened the door had a mild-mannered look about them. Average, at best. Long, unnaturally platinum hair and a pleasant yet oddly self-satisfied smile. Tisiphone found herself questioning what this person actually was, because they certainly didn't feel human. Something was off- their eyes too far apart, their lips a touch too pale, their hands too frail to have pushed open the entrance all on their own.
Their voice had a lilt to it as they spoke- a whisper behind it as if others were trying to interrupt what they were saying but without capacity to scream. It annoyed her. It annoyed her more than it should. It made her want to deck the person in the face but that wasn't very much in the known etiquette upon visiting a holy ground. Unfortunately.
"Oh hello, hello! We have had many new visitors this month, what a treat! First the girl and now you. What can I do you for, ma'am?"
Tisiphone forced herself to smile the same way she smiled at Plutus. Seemingly, it placated the person somewhat. A tension fell from their shoulders, and they smiled back just a tad too wide for Tisiphone's comfort.
She cleared her throat, "uhm, I just… felt lost. This place pulled me in somehow."
The person jumped on the heels of their feet and stepped aside to allow Tisiphone in, and they avowed, "My name is Paster Tyche. Please, do find yourself at home. Are you wishing to stay?"
Find yourself at home? Tisiphone thought, what a strange way to phrase that.
She did need a place to stay, though- and from the amount of children sprinting between the pews and adults standing around idly eating, and not a single crinkle of metal coin anywhere in sight, she assumed that meant it would be free. The joys of religion came in handy like that. To Tisiphone, it was the only thing that this temple's god had ever done for her.
A child roughly banged into the back of her leg, making her stumble before she could respond to the Paster's question. She automatically pulled her sheath away, rotating it on her belt so the child didn't jab themself in the eyes. They stared up at her in awe, then startled away as Paster Tyche stepped to Tisiphone's side.
"Alcmene," They said gently, "What did Father Arion say about running in the main prayer room?"
The child, Alcmene, looked down at their hands and ashamedly mumbled- "He said I'd get hurt."
Pastor Tyche nodded, and Tisiphone watched the child wander back to the small group of children that she had run from. The kid also looked strange- not due to the same strange inhuman lok of the paster, but because of the large sc-
Tisiphone's hand brushed against the Pastor's as Pastor Tyche got her attention again.
She spoke, but only after her mind had caught up to actually answer the question.
"Right, right. I'm here to stay, for a little while." For as long as it took for her to find who she was here for. That may take some time without the smell though.
Paster Tyche grinned a grin that didn't crease the sides of their eyes quite right. Tisiphone found herself wanting to smack it off, but she was never one for immediate violence. Besides, she'd had a strange day today, she would much rather refrain from making it worse. Instead , she simply smiled back, and allowed the Pastor to hand her off to one of the other adults, who proceeded to lead her down into a subterranean section off the back of the cathedral, hidden beneath the ropes and statues in the belltower room. Tisiphone almost expected the place to be dark or damp, and found herself pleasantly surprised by the way the tunnels opened up into hallways resembling a well-kept inn or homestead. Rooms shot off each side of the hall, each big enough to fit five and still have room for an extra bed and kitchenette, and she was led to one of the apparently private suites shoved into the end. It was a white room- bathed in natural light from a thick, partially stained with age, glass ceiling. The glass itself was stained with an image of a woman bent over an iron melting pot. The woman was tanned- perhaps on purpose, perhaps just with the time wearing away at the dyes in the glass, swords hanging in the background and a golden arch surrounding it all.
Pastor Tyche chuckled behind her so suddenly it made Tisiphone jump.
They held their weirdly ageless hand up to their lips to cover it, "That would be one of the founders of the Temple. We had it installed a few years back. Every room has a founder, a sponsor or a first member in the glass ceiling- to pay homage to our greatest helpers."
"Ah," Tisiphone mused out.
She let herself investigate the rest of the room, finding her skin crawl at the fact that the pastor was just standing. Watching. Smiling. Smiling. smiling.
The bed was a ¾ size at best, but looked soft. Her feet would hang off the end if she lay flat, but she decided against telling the Pastor about that. She didn't want them to be around her for longer than they appeared to be planning to. Which at this rate may or may not have been the rest of the afternoon.
Tisiphone didn't know how these kinds of religious institutes worked. The robes all the adults wore all seemed the exact same- so either everyone was a priest of some kind or they had a strange 'everyone must be equal' policy. Either way, at least the robes weren't entirely white. White washed her out half the time.
Pastor Tyche walked into the room as if it were their own, gesturing to the wardrobe embedded in the right-hand wall. It was a walk-in, from the looks of it, and stood behind a tapestry of some unknown figure that Tisiphone found no real interest in trying to remember. They pushed the weaved tapestry aside, and opened the door.
The wardrobe was already full of robes, reds and golds and blues shimmering against the sunlight that seeped in from above them.
"Please change into these as soon as possible. Us in the Temple prefer our keepers don't stand out against one another," they said.
They cleared their throat and took a robe out, holding it up to Tisiphone to take.
"These should fit you perfectly, ah… I'm sorry, you never told me your name."
Tisiphone took the robe, and could swear she felt the silk beneath her fingertips move on its own. Shrink, almost. A feeling of dread pooled in her stomach. It curled around her nerves and dragged and pulled until she realised she didn't want to tell this person her name. She didn't want them to know who she was. She felt her tongue stick to the roof of her mouth like tar had been poured into her throat. So instead, her mouth blurted out the first name she could think of.
"Erin. My name is Erin."
Pastor Tyche's eyes twitched so minutely that Tisiphone barely noticed it. But it was there, like they knew she was lying but not how to say it. Or maybe they didn't want her to say it. They were difficult to read, and in all honesty, Tisiphone didn't want to read them anymore. But instead, Pastor Tyche just said, "Well then Erin, why don't you get changed and meet me outside your room in a few minutes. I'd like to show you around and introduce you to our priests."
Tisiphone inclined her head in a yes, and watched as Pastor Tyche left the room and shut the door behind them.
The robes were placed on the bed haphazardly as Tisiphone walked the edges of the room, feeling over crevices and ledges and climbing over the shelves to check for anything that may incriminate this place. Something had led her here, it was too perfect. Nowhere that people went with the kind of smel she was following ever had such perfection around them. There was always rot caked into the world around them, rust hidden in the seams of their cutlery, threads loose in their clothes or grease lifted into the cracks of their faces. But there was nothing. It was perfectly pristine. Seamless even between the cracks of brick and white paint. There was a pillar on either side of the room, high and thick. Emblems of snakes slithering around them all the way up, in fools-gold. Tisiphone reached for her satchel again, getting out one of the birdsfoot trefoil flowers and sliding it into the robes sleeve pockets.
When she stripped her clothes off, she folded and placed them under her bed, feeling the need to keep her possessions out of sight. Pastor Tyche seemed the type to have a key to everywhere.
Tisiphone was very much into the idea of keeping her things on her person at all times, however that didn't seem feasible right about now.
The robes did fit perfectly. Too perfect. Tisiphone was aware she was rather tall, and rather lithe, and rather lean in muscle. Usually robes would sag sadly above her ankles, or would be too tight under her arms, or drape much too far onto the flooring. But it fit, and it fit well. She could move so easily, and she opened the door to see Pastor Tyche still fiddling with the embroidery threads on the edge of her sleeve
It appeared she'd interrupted a conversation between Pastor Tyche and a woman. This woman was dressed slightly differently- where most robes were majority bathed in a deep crimson red, this womans' robes were a dark phthalo blue, with golden streaking lines all flowing towards her heart. What drew Tisiphone's attention was the fact that this woman was almost Tisiphone's exact height. Though she seemed much more built in stature, and held herself in such a way that commanded- no, demanded respect from all those she met. One of her eyes was a golden-brown fake eye, and pushed awkwardly against her eyelid.
She frowned at the sight of Tisiphone as a mother would frown at a child for getting into a minor scrap. Without a word, the woman walked away. Pastor Tyche turned back to face Tisiphone with their hands folded in their front, and bowed.
"Much better," they said, "Apologies about how our dear Mother Rani treated you. She's never one for strangers of our religion. Many of her devotee's are those born into the sect, you see."
Tisiphone followed the woman with her eyes, and ignored all that Pastor Tyche had said in favour of asking, "Why are her robes different?"
Pastor Tyche began walking back in the direction of the prayer room stairs to get up above ground, waving their hand over their shoulder in an action of beckoning.
"She's a founder of this temple, you see. Quite the reserved woman, but her and the others built this cathedral and living quarters from the ground up, and for that we are grateful. Our God, may she resurrect soon, was pleased," Pastor Tyche chortles out, as if it were some kind of inside joke to them.
Tisiphone was caught on the 'may she resurrect soon' part. The look on her face said enough according to Pastor Thyche.
They held the door open leading into the bell tower for Tisiphone to walk through as they answered,
"Ah, yes, my dearest child. Our god is dead, very dead. But you needn't werrit- her power still seeps into our soil and bones, and our prayers are still answered. The rise in necromancy here gives us the hopes that one day we will devise a way for her to return to us!"
Necromancy.
Tisiphone had never met a necromancer, nor any mage of any kind. They were rare- and despite the fact that necromancy was on the rise, they were mostly in hiding. In fact, a decent amount of the time, the very subject was taboo. It was seen as disgracing the dead, defiling their bones and disrespecting their resting souls. To find a temple even willing to think about the subject, much less one so willingly ready to fall into its grip, made her concerned as to who exactly found this place holy at all.
What kind of God did these people worship to begin with? Tisiphone had never heard of a god being dead, or even having the capacity to die at all.
.
.
.
The kitchens in the cathedrals mess hall ran alongside the same wall the pews did. Now that Tisiphone was listening to the hubble and hark of the open planned rooms of the commune, she could tell that there was at least one Pastor on the stand at the front whittling away at some testament, some sermon, some speech to the people who would stop to listen. It rotated who, as well, and Tisiphone quickly learned who the priests and pastors were. Pastor Tyche had finally left her alone- though she felt their eyes boring into her skull when they clearly thought she wasn't paying attention.
The children all looked happy and well fed- save for a small, olive-skinned child who was partially skinnier than the others. It was the strange little short-haired child that had run into her side on the day she'd arrived.
Tisiphone found that that specific child was carrying around a small pouch. The pouch was grey and brown, made probably of a rough kind of dyed sheep's wool. No one inquired about it- in fact whenever the girl dropped it, people gave it back without question. It jingled as the girl walked, and Tisiphone found herself watching the child whenever she was in the room with her.
Alcmene felt familiar, somehow. Like they'd met before. Tisiphone had a feeling she'd met the girl when the girl was a woman, sometime many years ago, but she didn't understand that thought in the slightest and forced herself to forget it. Alcmene, much like Pastor Tyche, had a strange kind of timelessness to her. She looked like a child, acted like a child, ran away from things she'd done wrong like a child. But her eyes, and the way her face resembled something much older, the way her eyes sagged in places one would expect wrinkles but instead found soft, smooth skin, it made Tisiphone intrigued.
The child held onto that pouch as if it were a lifeline. It gave away her location and her speed. Tisiphone also noted that one of the priests, a kind man named Father Arion, tended to stick around Alcmene more than he did any of the other children. Tisiphone had asked him, on her second morning theorem, whether she was his actual daughter. He'd responded by laughing, and telling her that they'd simply fished the girl out of the sewers the other week.
She decidedly didn't ask anything else of him after that
On her third day, she wandered out of the main areas and into the burial site. There were small signs lining the walkway to it, stating not to trespass, but it's not as if she had never broken into somewhere before. Before the seedy wooden gates that closed off the burial site from the public, Tisiphone discovered a rusted silver key. Well, perhaps it had been silver once, but now it was a horrid colour of cat shit and orange cannibalising decay. Something told her to pocket it, and to not show anyone that she had it. She didn't even exactly know what it was for, and it was a model of key that had been out of circulation for a good few years by now.
She couldn't open the gate- the latch had rusted itself shut over the last few years, and the hinges were all but absorbed into the plantage surrounding it. So instead, she climbed over the gate and landed with a thud on her knees on the other side. It stained the pants of her robes, and she attempted to brush off the mus and splinters only to get disgusted and stop trying when it just stuck to her hands as well.
What caught her attention first was the overt lack of actual graves. The gravestones that lay there appeared much older than the building whose shadow they resided in. They were disheveled, overgrown, chipping off as her fingers ran across the tops with names scratched in so lightly and so faintly that they were lost to time as to who these people ever were. She could barely make out some names on the five she saw in her vicinity- and out of the twenty in the yard, only seven had names visible , one of which only half the name had survived.
Aeacus, Meg, Ahurani, Calchas, Antigone, Ismene, and the chipped off name simply fell off of reading capacity after the word 'Til'
She picked some flowers from the border, and placed one on each of the stones. She placed the birdsfoot trefoil atop the one titled 'Meg'. The crypt, even from here, still looked oddly put together despite all the slabs of marble and rock around it that, assumedly, came from it.
Up close, the sign that precariously hung down in front of the crypts opening bronze doors was much more visible. And while what was written on it was cut off partially by the large tear that had crumbled away from the slab, she could read half of it.
Upon our praye
To lay our hea
Eventual End
To the life of Ti
She wiped off stray dust from it, trying to find a way into the crypt to see inside. Something had to be off here- she'd been told by one of the passing priests the day she arrived that the cathedral and burial grounds had been amassed at the same time, but this area felt older. It felt aged, it felt older than the earth it was built upon.
A glint of something reflecting the light shone out from just behind the hanging sign.
It looked like a necklace, or something elongated and flexible. Tisiphone tried to move the sign, and discovered it was much too heavy.
So she instead leant her first half over the sign into the gap between crypt and sign, reaching down to grab at it only to pull her hand back up holding something new.
Something so new, in fact, that Tisiphone couldn't see even an inkling of dust on it.