Religiosity (Are those ears antennas to heaven?)

There had, indeed, been alcohol for Trudy to nurse.

Bao allowed himself to be led by the old man, while watching Paul wheedle what details he could out of their Good Samaritan, who had given them his name: Liev.

Liev seemed to have made it a hobby of his to keep an eye on stragglers in the city, given the almost casual way he led them to a communal building that sat next to a sturdy wooden structure crowned with the tall steeples they had seen before. It broadly resembled a church, though the plain, almost out-of-place log walls gave it a strange air of modesty.

Even the shelter next door was a little fancier. Inside, men and women who looked almost as beaten down by either time or the weather had made themselves home, and with Trudy’s demands for beer, gave the three hearty laughs, a few spare beds, and a tankard that was being studiously ignored.

A few mugs took the last of the fight out of her, and Trudy found herself out cold and face down atop the lumpy bed, followed not long after by Paul, who seemed to have been running on his own fumes.

“Still awake?” Liev chuckled at the last man standing of the group, who looked no worse for wear on his end.

“Always been a night owl,” Bao answered with a dismissive roll of his shoulders, before following Liev to the front door. Looking up, the robed man could see the night sky past the torches that were being lit at every corner. “Town’s still awake too, you know.”

“There’s always an active shift for soldiers or workers,” Liev advised, almost sagely in his tone, “and establishments have to stay open for them. I can easily find work for the three of you in a place like this. Interested?”

It was a little off-putting how eager Liev was to be of help. Bao wasn’t sure if he was a good judge of character, but being in Paul’s orbit for the past few days had taught him to pretend to be one.

So he gave a nonchalant shrug, brushing off the offer. “I’ll think about it. Has to be a group decision.”

“Don’t wait too long, though – there won’t be jobs forever, you know. I’ll drop by tomorrow, if you’ve figured things out by then. Remember though,” Liev added, mouth having stretched into a dryly amused half-grin, “they’ll eventually run out of hammers and chisels and start handing out shovels for latrines if you dally.”

“I’ll keep it in mind.”

With that, Liev threw on a coat and disappeared amid Fortress Town’s torches, leaving Bao next to the temple, with nothing but his thoughts – and those of the talisman-covered stick he carried.

The journey to their current abode had involved some half-hearted experiments from the three. For Bao’s part, his mild annoyance at the rod’s chatter had led him to abandon it in the woods, only for it to keep turning up ahead of him, clearly haunted and undaunted. Bao had talked of the three having superpowers, and he was certain there was more than met the eye for Paul and Trudy, but for his part, his power was shoving his stick into some invisible place and then recalling it at will.

The stick itself, it seemed, was something that had existed separately until whatever put the two together, and it constantly chattered, like a particularly vexing song on the radio that lingered in the back of the mind, half-forgotten, until by fluke of circumstance it would rear its head again.

Even now, Bao could hear it.

You are undefeatable. You deserve to stand above these people. Spill their blood. Revel in your perfection.

It was so absurd that he was almost brought to laughter. Him? Perfect? He wasn’t sure what perfect was in this world, but he certainly hadn’t been in California, though coming here was slowly turning his memories to mush. Paul and Trudy seemed put together well enough, but him? He faintly recalled shut doors, monitors, and blinds drawn closed to keep out the outside world while he followed every story he could.

The stick reminded him of love songs that spoke of experiences that he was certain everyone liked to believe in, but were sure would never happen.

Standing on his feet felt like a waste of time, though Bao knew he was too awake to bother trying to sleep. More out of curiosity than anything, he took a few steps to the side, onto the steps of the temple, and pushed through its doors.

The inside of the temple seemed church-like, in a rustic way, though the pews didn’t seem to line up in the right way. Rather than having a single pulpit in the back, with all the benches turned towards it, three or four were turned in groups to alcoves in the sides of the walls, each of which held mundane things: A large rock, a carriage wheel, and so on.

He wasn’t sure how this temple worked, but oddly, Bao still felt something like pressure welling up from this interior, almost like white noise, and it was enough, shockingly, to make that whisper in his head fade out.

With this sort of perfect solitude, the redheaded man took a seat and allowed himself to just marinate in the silence.

What he would give for an internet connection – and a phone. Even just a phone with Snake or a trial version of billiards installed, like in the old days.

Something to distract him.

“Excuse me, but we’ll have to shut the doors soon.”

A quiet, polite voice caught Bao off guard, forcing him to swivel around on the pew to look behind and face a woman in white robes. They had the look of someone who worked in religious sites, though the man had to admit he still had to take an extra second to register those pointed canine ears poking out of the top of her dark hair, which seemed to annoy Paul ever so much. (Why, honestly? Did he not ever read a single book in his life? There’d been stories of talking animals since forever. What, did he grow up on stock reports? Poor man.)

The priestess – if that was what they were called here – frowned slightly. “Apologies, sir, but is there something about me that bothers you?”

“Ah, jeez, I stared, right? Sorry, it’s not you,” Bao sheepishly laughed. “Animal ears on people aren’t a regular thing where I’m from.”

“Truly?” The woman pondered, hands at her jaw. “How odd. Wolf-syhee are no more a common sight than any other like us.”

Well, at least Bao had a term and an idea of what it meant, though he wasn’t sure if he could pick further at it without giving away that… well, he was too dumb to be of this world.

“I, uh, didn’t catch your name. You run this place?”

The wolf-woman craned forward in a combination of a bow and a curtsey. “Alma. I do look after this temple for the Spirits of this area, at least during the evenings.”

Bao gave his name, though he couldn’t help but offer a coy addendum: “I said I’m not a local, so I don’t quite get how you do worship here. You don’t mind giving me a primer while we’re here? It beats sitting here doing nothing.”

“Well, if you’re here, it wouldn’t hurt to offer your troubles,” Alma advised, a hint of a smile on her own face as she crossed the benches to stand by an alcove. “I’m not sure if ‘worship’ is the right word, though. Perhaps it’s better to say we ‘commune’? Or just speak? The Spirits live on this world just like us, after all.”

“What, in these things?” Bao asked, jerking his head to the large, unadorned stone next to the woman.

“Think of them as…their favorite toys. Spirits return to them every so often and sometimes offer some help to those nearby.”

At this, Bao quirked an eyebrow. “What do they get out of it?”

Alma looked over at the stone. “I think they like the company. Spirits don’t have the same needs as we do, but who’s to say all that extra time leaves them bored? They’ve been around as long as the world has, and most of them have chosen to approach and help us. If anything, people are looking to them more than ever. The greatest spirits of this world weren’t idle when they decided to aid us in the war, when they put all their blessings on Harow, the Beacon.

So many terms and ideas. Bao knew he was being swamped in more culture than he knew how to process. He’d need to find a library somewhere and really read his way through everything, no matter how long it’d take.

Nonetheless, all this spiritual discussion felt relevant – after all, he had baggage that seemed to match Alma’s descriptions, if it hadn’t been whispering about bloody murder all the time.

“Are there bad spirits?”

Bao’s confidence dropped as Alma shot him a look of confusion.

“I’ll take that as a ‘yes’?”

“We…” The wolf woman whispered, trying to downplay what sounded like disbelief, “...we just survived the Menace from the Stars. Its corruption must have assailed you at some point.”

Bao looked down at the floor quickly for a second as he assembled an excuse in his head. “Well, you know… it seemed like a distant problem.”

Alma sighed, and it seemed the exasperation was enough to make her sit down heavily on the opposite end of the pew, leaving the two to face the stone.

“...I won’t say all spirits are kind or have our best interests in mind, but the Menace was evil. We don’t know what it wanted when it arrived, just that all it did was spread corruption and attack everything. I can only be grateful that Harow defeated it in the end…”

Bao heard the bitterness in Alma’s voice, and wondered how close to home this cut. More than anything, now he had a new worry to contemplate as pieces started falling into place over what he and the others had gotten themselves into – more than that, how and why.

“I caught you at a bad time. I think I’ll go to bed,” the man quickly excused, and wondered if Spirits were looming over him even now and painting a target on his back.

It would be a long night full of unhelpful pondering, it seemed.

All the while, Trudy dreamt, or perhaps was simply better in tune with the twists and turns of the world’s energy. In her unconscious vision, she sensed something pulsating in the darkness, growing, cancerous, and filled with a malice much like the entity that had ordered her to destroy this world. If she wouldn’t, then that tumour would.

With that lingering sensation in her mind, Trudy wrestled her way upright on her bed, blearily shouting loudly, “This town be screwed up!”