Time in the commune went slowly. So slowly that it drifted past the windows with such blithering uncertainty Tisiphone thought that maybe, just maybe, time had turned back on the place.
She'd become accustomed to the food, and the people. But no matter how much she heard the sermons, listened to the devout prayers of the followers, and talked to the priests (mainly Pastor Tyche or Father Arion, as they tended to be closest by at the times and Mother Rani ignored Tisiphone like she was a skin suit infested with rats), she never managed to understand what exactly the religion was about. People switched from referring to their God as a present being and others referred to her as past. People switched from praying to begging to chatting like friends with a corpse of a god that almost certainly didn't give two real shits about any of this.
The priests seemed insistent that prayers went answered, but Tisiphone hadn't seen it. The whole place remained spotless, despite Tisiphone never having seen anyone doing any of the cleaning. Late at night, way past the times Tisiphone had seen people going to hide away in their rooms, she would hear clacks and rustles and rattling. Yet no matter how fast she opened the doors, she never saw what made the sound. Only heard it scurrying away.
And the smell- she hadn't smelt anything but food for the last few weeks. No stench that made her gag, no taste on her tongue that made her want to throw someone through a window, nothing. Pastor Tyche had begun to follow her around, musing "Erin! Erin! Erin!" every five seconds to get her attention, to put her somewhere and ramble at her about their God. She still found them unsettling. She found them creepy. She found that the clothes she had arrived in were missing from the folded compartment under her bed after two weeks.
She also found her robes washed and re-entered into her wardrobe before she'd had the chance to do so herself.
And no one said a word about it, the commune lived like a village would. They had people go out into the town to get food, and more often than not those people would come back with wide grins and sacks full of expensive vegetables that Tisiphone wondered where they got all the goddamn money from.
After a week or two of wandering aimlessly through the hallways, she came across a large open-planned atrium tucked away under the prayer room. It had columns lifting the weight, with what looked like a ballroom dancing floor taking up most of the flooring. No one was in there- however it was the first time she came across necromancy being used in the temple. A skeleton rumbled around at her side, using what looked to be an old towel and spray to polish off the feet of a small statue.
It moved much like a person would, with pins clearly placed between its joints to hold it together. From what Tisiphone could see of the statue, it was a replica of the one in the main prayer room- except this one was missing the axe, and instead holding a fresh bouquet of flowers.
Tisiphone could smell them from where she stood. They were clearly fresh, as the morning dew still stuck to the petals and dripped onto the skull of the skeleton with a 'Thwip thwip' sound that drilled into her ears unceasingly. She took a few quiet steps deeper into the room, her footsteps tapping on the wood of the ballroom floor quieter now that her boots were missing. The space bounced sound around itself like a gunshot in a barrel, and Tisiphone could, now that she was deeper into the room, see at least twenty other skeletons roaming around to clean and set things up. Pastor Tyche had never mentioned the room before- and that felt like it would be worth addressing if not for the fact that Pastor Tyche gave Tisiphone the willies.
She leant her head back to look up at the ceiling, seeing a painted mural of what she assumed was the god that these people worshipped. The face of the God felt familiar, just like that girl, Alcmene, had. Like she'd seen the face in passing on the street.
Surrounding the god in the painting were hundreds upon hundreds of people depicted praying. Tisiphone, however, struggled to discern whether they were praying, or chanting in applause.
The paint seemed to move, ripple like the water of the stream by the shack.
At the thought of the shack, Tisiphone felt a wave of nausea roll over her stomach, the image of the old man flickering behind her eyes, staring out the window right at her as she sprinted from his vicinity.
But before she could think back to the painting, one of the skeletons began to thoughtlessly polish her, which took a good few bats and steps away to get it to stop and move on to something else. She would be surprised if not for the fact that skeletons literally didn't have brains, and therefore wouldn't understand that Tisiphone was not, in fact, a statue as well.
A small, undermanaged door was stationed just above the pillars, from a section of the rafters that was sectioned off in brick. The lock looked broken in from this angle, but it was too high up for her to see. An attic area in an underground ballroom implied that there was actually an access point probably easier to reach on one of the upper levels. Her fingers fiddled with the string of gold in her robes pocket, thumb brushing the small skull emblem emblazoned onto the end of the pendant, and the small sword that stabbed through it.
Somehow, it helped her think. Like it moved her diaphragm up, her lungs and ribs out, and breathed in her place. She took a deep breath in- and smelt it.
Faint- much fainter than she'd ever smelt them before, but it was there for the briefest second. A teasing catch, and she whipped her head around only to see Father Arion stod in the doorway, peeking in. At his hip was Alcmene, clutching that pouch to her chest as she always did. The girl stepped in first, and was immediately enraptured by the redundant actions of the skeletons jaunting their ways up and down about their jobs. Father Arion followed her in.
"Are they ghosts?" Alcmene asked loudly from the corner, crouched beside a skeleton scrubbing the flooring, and poking it with her finger as children tend to poke disgusting things they come across, "Or birds?" she asked stupidly, as children do when they are entirely idiotic.
"No, Alcmene, they're neither," Father Arion quipped as he approached Tisiphone, "Erin, right?"
"That's-" Tisiphone almost corrected him before she cleared her throat awkwardly, "Yeah, That's me."
Father Arion followed her gaze, and it was only now that Tisiphone noticed how cold it was down there. The goosebumps on her own arms had raised the moment she'd walked in, but she hadn't been focusing on that. No. She noticed it because, as Father Arion stepped to her side, she caught the breath shooting from his lips in wisps of fog. She felt almost insane for not having seen her own breath in front of her face. The robes kept enough heat in, but even the oil lamps around the hall weren't denting the chill she was finally feeling as it settled into the room.
Tisiphone also felt insane upon looking at Alcmene, who was still jabbing at the skeletons skull and uttering at herself about birds, and not seeing fog from her nose or lips at all. Perhaps she had just looked over at the wrong time. Tisiphone turned herself away from that train of thought and gestured up to the attic door, estimating it was maybe one-hundred feet high compared to where they stood.
"Do you know what's kept up there, Father?" she inquired. The priest shook his head in speculation.
He took in a breath, then made a sound like a 'hm' or an 'agh', before placing a finger under his chin as if posing to be a muse for some unseen artist who enjoyed painting specifically dumb and confused people.
"I'd assume," he began, as if he had any real idea, "that that's where we keep the decorations for festivities held down here. I do believe there is an access point in Pastor Tyche's room, if i'm not mistaken. Either that, or it's got a thousand unnamed scrolls in there."
"Pastor Tyche? They certainly have a lot of sway here, don't they?" Tisiphone mused. It was more to herself than to him, but he responded anyway.
"Mother Rani took rather a liking to them," he stated, "If I recall, she seemed to have taken that fancy after she went into a vow of unseen for a month or so, a few years back. Pastor Tyche says she was ill, and that they took care of her well enough for her to give them a raise in ranks."
Tisiphone found that she didn't believe that one bit. Pastor Tyche had seemed close with the stoic woman, yes, but it looked from what she'd seen like it was more professional appreciation than blatant favouritism. However, she didn't say any of that, and instead responded with a precisely added jovial undertone.
"Ah. they must be incredibly capable, then."
Father Arion said a soft 'yes', then beckoned Alcmene to his side. The girl stumbled over to the pair holding a small finger bone, rolling it between her fingers with interest. Tisiphone kept her eyes on the girl for a few moments- just a second too long to have not seen a single breath puff from the girl's face.
Father Arion didn't notice. Or if he did, he said nothing and gave nothing away. The man took the finger bone from Alcmene and handed it to Tisiphone as if he'd done so a thousand times before. She took it, though she was unsure as to why exactly she'd taken it, and held it flat in the palm of her hand. It rolled around, as round things do, without any real purpose. The man waved his hand at one of the skeletons, and it wandered over and knelt before him. He wiped stray dust off its head and murmured in almost reverence, almost sadness, like he had a lump pulling his tongue back into his throat in upset.
"These poor people came to us ill, dying, or already dead. People whose families stayed, whose children still play in our halls. It upsets me that, for many moons, we may leave their bones to collect dust."
"You don't see it as desecration to make them move?" Tisiphone asked before she could stop herself, "you don't leave their remains to fade back into the world?"
Father Arion responded, watching as Tisiphone's fingers rolled the bone around thoughtlessly in her palm, "Of course not. Necromancy is the greatest gift our God gave us. She knew that souls ought not to go stale in the grounds but to be given purpose. I see desecration to be treated without the respect all living deserve- they may be dead, but they were still someone once. Would you prefer to sit and rot, Erin?"
Tisiphone couldn't answer. Like the fingertip in her palm was someone pressing on her tongue. The kind of Taboo that Necromancy brought along was a strange concept to her, and she realised she'd never assumed she'd rot one day before. Alcmene chimed in, in much the way innocent children do, "I won't rot."
Tisiphone half-wished that statement to be something other than a child's fantasy. The kind of thing only someone so unaware of their own mortality might say. Tisiphone was horrified that, up until a few moments ago, she hadn't thought about it herself. The bone in her palm left a tickling sensation in its wake, and her fingers curled around it as Alcmene spoke again. The child tugged on Father Arion's sleeve with the kind of exuberance found in curiosity.
"Why do we have a ballroom? Do we dance? Can I dance?" she asked.
Father Arion chuckled, "You can dance to your heart's content if you truly want to, kid."
"Will you teach me?" Alcmene asked again, because of course she couldn't dance. Tisiphone held back a scoff as Father Arion took the child's hands into his own, tying her pouch to the ribbon belt around her pants, and started showing her some back and forth movements that made it abundantly clear that he couldn't dance either.
Tisiphone drifted around the room as they did, circling the edges and tracing her hand over different sections until she felt a rock toward the back left corner, behind a pillar, come loose. It shifted only the tiniest bit under her touch, and when she tried to pull it, she found it was lodged on something shiny just inside the crack. She slipped the bone fragment into the pocket she had the pendant in for safe-keeping, because for some insane reason, she felt the need to keep a hold of it, and bent her knees awkwardly to get a good look inside. A skeleton came to her side holding a lamp, as Father Arion yelled across the room despite the echo being enough that he could simply have spoken at a normal volume.
"You need a little light to quell your curiosity, Ms. Erin!"
His naivety as to why Tisiphone was looking around was cute, and at least it meant she needn't come up with an excuse for her strange behaviour if he was already justifying it himself. The skeleton's hand held the lamp close to the gap, and Tisiphone found herself staring at some kind of hinge. Straight through the rock, looking like the type used on her fathers butcher drawers that were less susceptible to rust. The kind that implied she may be able to-
'Clink'...'clatter clatter', 'Shunk'. The rock pushed itself back into place, and the sound of stone scraping stone interrupted Father Arion and Alcmene's dancing enough for him to jog over to Tisiphone and look around to make sure she was okay. Tisiphone nodded her head, not looking at him but looking past him, to where a gaping opening had just made itself known. The opening was small- certainly she would have to crawl to get through it, but it wasn't there the moment before. Father Arion visibly tensed, gripping Alcmene's hand tighter as he muttered, 'I didn't know about this."
Alcmene herself was staring into the hole, half-hiding behind Father Arion's leg. Tisiphone lowered herself to it, and Father Arion commanded the skeleton to follow with the light. Inside all that was visible was thick bricks of stone. One side, closest to Tisiphone, was carved roughly with runes she couldn't read. They looked hasty, as if carved in to keep something in, or keep people out. From the deep notches that jabbed out randomly from one side, and the pieces that identically poked out of the other wall, it seemed as though the passages' rocks had been fused together somehow. Each jutting piece, as Tisiphone reached in and dragged her skin down it, felt like it was coated in a thick black layer of cremains. That meant it was supposed to stay shut. The clattering sound made more sense now that pieces of hardened cremains sprawled out in the opening ground, having been cracked with both age and the pressure of being pulled apart when Tisiphone had pulled the latch.
She turned herself back to face Father Arion, only to find his face drained of colour. He could clearly tell what it was that had shattered, the fact someone had been trying to keep something in there. He tapped his hand restlessly against Alcmene's side, before looking at her and kneeling between her and the Tunnel entrance.
"Alcmene," he said, trying to be calm, "go back up to the cathedral and go to bed. I need you to promise that you will not tell anyone we found this unless we don't come back tomorrow, okay?"
Alcmene got a face like she had inhaled lemon juice, and nodded fretfully. Her hands found the pouch as she scampered off into the hallways outside the ballroom and out of sight. Father Arion waited until her jingling sound had trailed into nothing before he looked back at Tisiphone with a frown.
She spoke first, tilting her head to the side peculiarly.
"Why can't she tell anyone?"
Father Arion got to her side, his gaze drifting to the cremains and runes with a look of apprehensive knowledge.
"Because those runes aren't to keep something in. It's to keep us out. Someone here did that- it's not fresh but it is new enough. Since I don't know who, I don't trust that anyone else knows you've opened it."
Oh.
Okay.
Tisiphone nodded, before she gestured her head towards the opening and muttered quietly, suddenly feeling like they might be heard or seen sneaking around like teenagers.
"Are we going in?"
Father Arion nodded, his fingers twitching against the soft stone as he started to go in first. The Skeleton followed with the light after, close enough for Father Arion to see enough, and Tisiphone tailed them inside.
At first, it took much too long for her eyes to adjust to the shift in light, and her hands kept catching sharp pieces of ore and bone as they crawled, until the tunnel opened into a damp, stale staircase. Father Arion held his hand out for her to grasp as she came out the end, almost slipping on a wet patch that was less than visible in the dim light of the oil lamp.
Bones descended first, then Father Arion right behind. Tisiphone kept a flat palm against the wall to orient herself, feeling a rise of anxiety in the pit of her stomach upon realising how cramped the space really was.
The stairs travelled down forever- Tisiphone almost certain they'd hit the earth's core and come out the other side before they found anything useful. It was somehow colder in there, with a soft breeze blowing up from wherever the staircase ended. Tisiphone couldn't see any vents, but she could smell the telltale smell of decay wafting into her fact. Father Arion wrinkled his nose as he and the skeleton paused their stride on the staircase.
"Do you smell that too, Erin?" he asked.
Tisiphone very nearly bumped into him. Her footsteps stopped, but echoed down as if she were still walking.
"I thought I was the only one who did. They don't smell fresh," she replied, leaning forward a little with a deep breath, "Smells closeby, too. Hope we're near the end of the staircase, my legs hurt like fuck."
"Language, spirit," Father Arion chided automatically, motioning lightly for the skeleton to continue. Around ten steps ahead, the light caught checkered flooring covered in cobwebs and dust, grime lining the crevices between the tiles as they stepped onto them. Father Arion noted the lack of a final step- in its place was a flimsy piece of old dry wood being actively eaten by mites and a foot-side drop into some kind of casm, probably into a lower floor of whatever plec they had stumbled upon, and held Tisiphone's hand in his to help her down. Her feet hit the cold tiles, and she shivered. The hairs on the base of her neck raised, as the smell of decay tore through her body like a tidal wave of death. Rotten egg and stale marrow and fungal infection. Father Arion gave her a look, frowning slightly before searching through one of his many pockets. He pulled out a small sprig of rosemary that matched the kind used in the kitchen, and a small napkin.
Tisiphone hunched over, pulling her hands to cover her nose to block out the smell and coughing as it hit the back of her throat harshly. Father Arion carefully squished the rosemary against the napkin, crushing it a little so the oils sank into the cloth, and removed her hands to push it infront of her nose.
The woman took a deep breath and sighed as the rosemary covered most of the horrid smell.
"Sensitive nose?" Father Arion weedled, once Tisiphone looked less inhumanly pale. She nodded, coughing a little as the rest of the scent finally left her lungs. Father Arion simply gave her a kind nod, and let her keep the napkin as they walked further into the room. The room was tight, running in a similar thickness as the common commune hallways, but the walls were laced in bone marrow and skulls and random pieces of what probably used to be signs on gravestones. Father Arion looked at every one, probably trying to place whether he recognised them or not, whether he'd seen those bones before. He held his own nose to avoid the stale air, breathing through his mouth enough that it felt like lint and musk had coated his tongue. Around twenty feet into the catacomb-resemblant room, it split off into two. Tisiphone looked up and down both, the skeleton ahead following her gaze with the lamp, before she spotted something very recognisable. A skull, encased in an oxidised bronze, with a half-rusted iron sword stabbed through its cranium and poking out its jaw.
She pointed to it, stepping in before Father Arion could tell her not to.
The tile beneath her foot slid down, and Tisiphone only had time to hear the yelled "Erin!" before she felt a gush of air blow past her, and the glint of metal only an inch or so before her eyes. The thing looked like an engorged arrow, burrowed into the bones of the wall and having shattered enough that Tisiphone could hardly see through the dusty upthrust. A boney hand uncased her arm and dragged her backwards, where Father Arion turned her around to look her over for injuries.
She hadn't felt anything but the wind, holding the napkin firm to her face as he turned her head this way and that. He let out a breath of relief upon knowing for a fact she hadn't been lobotomised by the spear trap.
"God only knows that was a stupid thing to do, Erin," he stated, flicking her forehead. Tisiphone groaned, rubbing her forehead with the ball of her hand.
While she stood there, using one hand to hold the napkin to her face and the other to rub her forehead in annoyance, Father Arion turned his attention to the mechanisms down the hallways.
"Lord, forgive me for hurting these people," he uttered, confusing Tisiphone for a moment before her eyes caught a glimpse of a twisting mass to her side. The bones began to wriggle away from the walls, falling over one another. Turning around revealed that all of the catacomb walls were breaking apart to fumble their way towards them. Tisiphone could feel the bone fragments moving beneath her feet, and she moved off to the side to avoid them as best she could. Father Arion had a look of concentration pushing his features stiffly, as thrushes of fragments and bone cascaded past him into the hallway.
Pushing on loose bricks, tripping the wires, coiling cartilage around the stakes that shot from the flooring. Once the avalanche of person and cranium and ulna had collapsed and stopped writhing, Father Arion dropped to his knees and rested his back against the now-bare solid of the cave walls. He panted, holding his chest for a second as Tisiphone sidled up beside him.
"Does doing that hurt you?" she mumbled quietly, trying not to take any air into her mouth for fear of the stale stink getting into her lungs again.
"Not every time," he hissed, before taking a deep breath in through his nose and looking ready to vomit in regret, "Fucking– it stinks down here–"
The pair were interrupted by a low rumbling from the passageway, loud enough that the bones rolled off the heaps they had fallen into and hit the priest's knee.