Chapter 124: Chapter 124

I shudder, feeling a sudden chill come over me in the warmth of the strange cathedral. Looking over my shoulder, I see a large stream of blue light streaking through a giant, stained-glass window directly behind and above us. The frame of the window is arched and pointed upwards like a dull arrow, the depictions inside of the glass are vague and foggy. As if the craftsmen weren’t sure themselves what it is that they saw in their minds eye while working. It is a shapeless heap of fragments of blue and purple and white that somehow, in its shapelessness, manages to still represent something. Some specific entity or a feeling, or something else I can’t quite place my finger on. It’s a mess. But at the same time it looks like it’s supposed to be.

 

  All the while, a shining, pale light streaks through it from the other side and carries with it the tinge of the odd depiction. As if the light itself were carrying the feeling that the artistry invoked. I don’t like it. But I don’t hate it either. Walking forward and down the first steps of the altar I wonder, what is this place? It looks like something the purple robes would be connected to, this seems like their kind of thing. But I don’t see any of them here. There’s only us here. All the rest of the great room is empty. All of the benches, the pews, are empty save for the thick smears of dust that were painted on generously by the brush of father time. Nobody has been here for a while.

 

  My hooves echo out around us as we walk, the clapping of the hard material against the stone floors below striking out with sharp reverberations. There is a strange feeling in the air. It reminds me of the library. There is a… a tired warmth. A nostalgic heat in the air. It’s not hot, but it’s just warm enough that it feels like a lazy heat. Just warm enough that you want to sit down and watch the world go by, past the light of the windows. It feels comfortable. But I don’t know why it does. But at the same time, the fact that I feel unusually safe and protected here makes me all the uneasier at the unfamiliarity of it. What strange forces are at play here? What oddly manipulative and emotionally controlling magics are forcing my mental-hand once again? Forcing me to experience things that aren’t born of my own body and soul.

 

  Reaching the end of the pews, we stand before a large wooden door which is sealed tightly shut from this side with a long wooden bar that spans the width of the construction. Two small steps ring out as the thief jumps off of my back, her wet leather boots slapping against the stones. Walking over to the door, she places her hands beneath the bar and lifts it with a strained groan, as she puts her back into it. The door creaks as she lifts it off and slides it to the side. The heavy wooden beam clunks down against the stones below with a loud rattle, disturbing the hallowed silence of the temple. Grabbing one of the rings affixed to one of the double doors, she strains herself and pulls back to wrench the heavy thing open.

 

Wiping away the sweat and blood and now freshly caked dust out of her face with her forearm, she nods to me with a smile and makes her way back, climbing up onto me again.

 

  The corridor before us is long and seems to just stretch on straight ahead for an impossibly long time. The walls, while mostly the same featureless dark-stone are sometimes dotted with the odd window here and there, the glass of them is always stained and always obscuring what lies behind it. The constructions are always too high up for me to reach. But the depictions are always the same. Either some creature of the dungeon or some vague, shapeless abstraction. There doesn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason to it, it just is and we just keep walking.

 

  Aren’t there any trash-mobs here? Isn’t there… anything here? It’s just been us so far. She hasn’t said or done anything either, so I assume we’re just supposed to keep walking straight down the way. Then again, where else is there to go?

 

  I begin to wonder if the hero-party won’t clear the dungeon before we find what we’re looking for. Speaking of clearing, I wonder where the Unicorn sub-boss is? Can’t remember. You’d think they’d have been on the last floor, but no, the last floor was just where the miller was. It’s one of those separation situations, you know? Like how I can spawn as a slime even if their sub-boss is somewhere else entirely, somewhere I don’t recall.

 

  On that note, some other vague memory returns to me… some desire to check something, but what? There was some loose end I wanted to tie up, but it’s gone from my memory now… hmm. Well, if it was important I’ll probably remember it, right?

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  Some blob appears in the distance, some vague gestalt that slowly morphs into the shape of a door as we draw closer to it. A large, double winged door like the one we had just come out of maybe half an hour ago now. She says something, but stays on my back this time. Walking towards it, I lean my head against it and push, wondering if this one is barred on the inside as well. But it doesn’t seem to be. The door swings open slowly and we look inside.

 

  We look at the nauseatingly angled room in-front of us. At the cathedral hall that is twisted and curved. Rows of empty pews leading forward to a single stone altar. The further in the room goes the more skewed it is. As if a giant had grabbed the cathedral on one end and just twisted it around about forty-five degrees. Like a wet towel being wrung out, the whole hallway and room before us is just warped and bent. But apart from that, it looks just like the room we left before. Exactly like it. With this body, I can’t walk on an angle like that, I’d slip and break my legs in an instant. But I peek my head inside and look around.

 

Down to the side, is a single large wooden beam that seems to have been in the door not that long ago. Two small imprints are still left in the thick layer of dust coating it. Is this the same room?

 

  I look up and across the distance, towards the large window straight ahead. The streaks of pale, glowing blue light seem just a little more refined now. The strange, jumbled shapes that make up the bulk of the stained glass depictions in here seem to be just a little closer together, just a little more tightly compressed, making them somewhat less vague to look at. It feels colder. The thief on my back says something and pats me on the side, I look at her stained and besmirched face and see her thumb pointing back behind us. Back down the way we just came.

 

You can’t be serious.

 

  But as I look down behind us I’m all too certain of it myself. The long, straight hallway has been twisted and curved much like the cathedral, going in a strange, looping spiral, as if this entire floor was a string that had been spun tighter now that we had spanned it. But all of the stonework is still pristine, all the walls and the windows are intact.

 

The only thing that seems to be just a tinge out of place, are the strange, tiny blue strands that run through the cracks of the masonry.

 

 

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