IX. Choir of the Livian Nave

All at once, the terrible grip on Soren’s heart was destroyed. He saw the fingers wrapping around Cybele’s thigh through her skirt and the wounds as he leapt toward her.

All at once, Sophia levitated several feet above the floor, pulled her arm back like a sling, and catapulted the effulgent, searing, shrill, white spear of light at the darkness beyond the choir screen doors. A flash of white light filled all of Soren’s vision for but a moment, and then a deafening blast of air forming a visible ring around where the spear had left her palm shot outward, Sophia’s black eyes open in a fury, teeth gritted, her silvery-gray tunic and scapular whipping fiercely against the blast—knocking Soren away as he held Cybele tightly in his arms, tucking her close to his chest.

The fingers came loose as Soren and Cybele slid across the floor, and he was dazed by the white light as he saw the spear had landed with an explosion of light that illuminated the space beyond the choir screen—he saw the rest of the creature’s body, bloated, calloused and wrinkled like its face, forming a giant mass that obscured all sight into the rest of the choir, save an elaborate organ suspended above, from which various heads, their expressions fixed in agony, dangled from the organ’s keys by thin piano wire.

And it seemed the creature’s head and a chunk of its mass no longer existed.

The arm retracted with its hand toward the darkness, and a darkly aching moan reverberated through the nave. Almost as quickly as it had speared Cybele, it retreated into the darkness, and the golden doors shut without a sound. All was quiet.

Maria was already at Soren and Cybele’s side, kneeling on the floor.

“Oh, by the grace of God, thank heaven you’re both still alive,” she said, as Soren pushed himself off Cybele to see to her wounds. He pulled her skirt up to reveal them in full. Maria flinched.

“For a lady but fifteen years of age—I would tear that abomination apart myself,” growled Sophia, who strode over to them. Her hand trembled severely, burn marks upon the palm.

Maria looked at Soren with black eyes. “Soren…?”

There was no thought but for the blood, the holes in her skin, her groaning and inability to cry beyond the pain as she choked on her sobs—

Four open punctures vertically descending the lower left thigh; they are wide enough to fit the width of the first, second, and third finger together; there is penetration through-and-through the flesh across three of the wounds, beginning with the wound closest to the upper thigh; great veins were avoided, nearby arteries are intact; the thigh is slight, somewhat thin, there is more brawn than expected; enough minor veins have been destroyed to yet cause profuse bleeding, which could prove these wounds mortal; bone is intact; nervos restituere, deinde musculos, deinde venas; caro coalescat—

And as he knelt on Cybele’s leg to keep the wounds still, Soren said,

“Forgive me, Cybele.”

And he cursed his lack of laudanum as he entered each wound with a pair of his fingers; Cybele sharply gasped, groaning loudly, squirming as Sophia and Maria pinned her down; Soren shut his eyes, almost wincing from the girl’s pain, opening them again, severe, wide, staring at the wounds; Maria softly sang a lullaby to Cybele, caressing her face; from his periphery he saw Sophia glaring down the nave; he spoke an incantation just short of a whisper, reciting it continuously as a silvery light began emanating from each of the wounds, heard a soft continuous note like an altar bell, and he slowly pulled his fingers out of the wounds, saw the flesh being woven together, heard Cybele choking again; Soren gritted his teeth, and he was sweating, and at last, his fingers were out, and the wounds were sealed, the light fading away from them. Where the wounds had been, there were now severe bruises—but we don’t have time, he thought. We need to leave this place.

He moved off Cybele’s leg, and saw her breathing quietly, with half-slit eyes, parted lips, cheeks sodden with sweat and tears and mucus, her skin pale and sickly, and he gently lifted her head with one hand while with the other hand he held his thumb to the bridge between her eyebrows, and there was now a soft golden light beneath his thumb as he spoke—

“Dormi.”

Cybele shut her eyes, and fell asleep.

Soren lifted her in his arms, briefly surprised at his own strength before he turned to Sophia and Maria, now standing alongside him.

“She needs bedding and rest. We must return to my room before the Hall of Life,” he said.

“No. Absolutely not,” said Sophia, with white eyes now. Her black hair revealed frayed ends, appearing slightly unkempt.

“We—we must continue onward. There is nothing to gain from having to revisit this place as we return to our path,” said Maria, with a somber expression and white eyes of her own.

“But—” Soren stopped himself, looked down at Cybele, limp in his arms as she breathed rhythmically and softly. He turned toward the golden doors, still shut, still utterly silent.

“Then where?”

“Come, quickly,” said Sophia, striding toward one of the doors of the outer wall of the side aisle left of the central aisle. Yet, she stood off to its side, dissolving part of the stone wall to reveal a lever. She pulled it, and next to the lever the wall flashed brightly in the outline of a door, and she pushed upon it with some apparent resistance to open it. Maria now held a beating light in her palm, revealing a small corridor leading to a wooden door with an elaborate emblem carved into its center. Maria stepped inside, along with Sophia.

Soren turned back once more toward the central aisle as he crossed the opening. He saw one of the golden doors parted slightly, and heard something like quiet snickering in his ears. He glared with brow furrowed—

Sophia pushed the stone wall shut as Soren stepped into the corridor.