Trust Exercises

Chapter 2

"I'll admit that I thought something terrible must have happened if you'd returned so soon," said the priestess, a half-elf with her hair graying at the temples, stoking the samovar in the corner with a light touch and a spark from her fingertip. "But I suppose nothing can be so terrible if you managed to make it back. And you have a different friend with you this time, I see."

"I've been making lots of friends lately," said Pike, "but, unfortunately I'm not just here to show them off. We need your help."

"So I've heard." She had heard because Pike and Percy had showed up at the temple early that morning after days of travel, and had been sat in sanctuary after study after library after whatever to the point that the news of their arrival had finally made it to this woman, who wasn't the leader, Percy understood, but most skilled in what they needed. And he wondered if it was always like this or if Pike would have just been able to come and go as she liked had he not been there. Acolytes would stop to chat with her excitedly when they saw that she'd returned, a halfling boy even asking if she was back for good, but then when she said she needed help for a friend they had noticed he was there, and then they'd pause when they finally looked at him directly, and told her to wait while they went to get someone else to see her. And maybe it was that they could see what Pike could see in him, too, something dirty and disfigured, but they were too polite to let anything besides a stunned moment show on their faces.

"Well, take off your coat and take that stool over there, let's see what we have."

Percy shrugged out of his coat as the priestess continued with the samovar until it let out a jet of steam, and when he couldn't find a hook in the small room, he rolled the coat up as best he could and set it on the table in the middle of the room. The priestess finished preparing a cup of tea from the samovar and set it on the table beside it, then turned back to him, sizing him up in a way no one else in the temple had done. She put a finger against his jaw, against the few days of stubble from the road, and pushed his face to the side, then pulled it back to look at her, and then she gazed back at Pike at a corner of the room, her watching but trying not to disturb.

"What did you tell him I'd do to him?" she asked. "He's terrified."

"I didn't tell him anything," said Pike.

"You picked this one up at Whitestone, you said?"

"Well, he's from Whitestone, originally."

"Follower of Pelor?"

He didn't know who she was asking, but his jaw was clenched shut so Pike answered first.

"I think so, but in like, a normal way?"

"Hmm, I see," she said, and Percy's fingers twitched as they dug into his own thighs. "It's all right child, nothing I'm going to do now will hurt." he knew this was just how these people talked, but talking about him when he was right there, over him, he was a child to them, dragged in by his mother Pike. But still he couldn't force himself to form words in his own defense and this was happening anyway no matter his opinion, so the only thing to do was to grow cold and hard and take it, whatever it would be.

And no, what she next did didn't hurt him but that wasn't the metric. She'd undone the top two buttons of his waistcoat and slid both hands under it, nearly to his armpits. And they stayed there for far longer than Pike's hand had been on him, as this wasn't a quick glance at a soul; he couldn't decide whether he could actually feel it or not, even though he knew he shouldn't be able to. Not her hands on his chest but the examination of the gashes and punctures Orthax had made, even a light touch of them still on intimate spaces that weren't meant to be touched, not manhandled by demons but also not probed by priestesses who came after them, whatever their motives.

But this wasn't a real touch, it was imaginary. He could not say anything about imaginary violations, so he bit back his tongue when she pulled back her hands. She at least had the respect not to insist it was not so bad and did not actually hurt. Instead, she wordlessly took the cup of tea from the table and pressed it to Percy's hands. By the look and smell of it, he could tell it was something herbal rather than imported.

"That's pretty extensive damage in there. I'm a bit surprised he's still with us," said the priestess finally.

"Well, he's made of pretty tough stuff, I guess," said Pike.

"People don't survive things because they're tough, they do it because they don't have a choice."

"Yeah..."

"I'm serious, Pike, you're no doing him any favors by calling him ‘tough'. He's weak and pretending otherwise will just hurt him further."

"Excuse me –" those were the only words Percy could dig up from his throat now, but the priestess pressed her thumb against his chin.

"It does not matter who you are outside of this temple, child," she said again, "In here, you are weak. A creature of the abyss sunk its talons into you because you were weak, the way it's eaten away at you has left you weak, and even if you recover, what it's done is in many ways permanent – you will be weakened for the rest of your life from this. We do not do exorcisms like the Dawnfather, who seeks to punish those who have shown weakness, in the hopes that weakness can somehow be beaten out of the body and therefore the soul. It does not work that way, we know it doesn't work. We don't punish the weak here, so there's no reason to have any illusions about what happened and what it's done to you."

There was a reason he was doing this, a good reason, and all he needed to do was be cold, and hard, and take it. He gripped the tea tighter in his hands, but even that was warm, here.

"Why am I the only one who's has this?" he asked of the cup.

"You're supposed to drink it. It's supposed to calm you down a bit. Possession is a distressing experience," said the priestess.

"And you weren't going to tell me that?" Percy demanded. Pike approached and plucked the cup from his hand, sniffed the steam, and took a sip.

"It's literally just catmint," she said, handing it back, and Percy did take it, at least to hold. He tried to think, but found his throat dry, and did take one sip before speaking.

"Pike brought me here because she sounded like she was afraid of doing whatever it was herself," he said. "She, and you, seem to act like what you think needs to be done can be extraordinarily painful."

"It can be," she said slowly. "I'm sorry, what was your name, again, child?"

She had touched him close enough to feel that, the mess of knotted scars that made a full X, not a mere V, and they weren't, they were from before, before the plan for the new weapons were even a tiny germ in his brain, before a demon had put it there, so it had to be no... but... was it? The demon had offered a deal later, but how much had it needed that deal to reside where it did? Demons didn't do deals, that was devils -- could not a demon live wherever it wanted, whenever it did, a deal just a trick for legitimacy once it rooted? What drew it in wasn't the deal, he thought. It ate the souls of the dead, and he'd been planning to kill ever since he started constructing the list – but the list wasn't merely the pepperbox, it was a series of names, something Percy had begun constructing the night of the massacre, while the massacre was in progress. Ripley wasn't a holy woman, but could she have seen that thing that rooted inside him and nursed on that fantasy of killing her slowly, and could that meathook tearing into him have been a means to pull it out before he could fulfill it...

The priestess set a hand on the teacup, the liquid wavering in his unsteady hands.

"And this is why," she said.

"He uh, he didn't actually have a Dawnfather exorcism. It was kind of just an impromptu one," Pike offered.

"Even so," said the priestess. "It wasn't pleasant, I'm assuming."

"No," said Pike.

"Exorcisms are horrible, ugly things," said the priestess. "Theres no way around that. After they're complete, there are more choices... but it is still ugly. But this is one of the points where the differences between philosophies of the Dawnfather and the Everlight diverge sharply, you understand. At Pelor's exorcisms, people die, and at ritual purifications, the ones that survive flagellate themselves for having the audacity to live through it, and then sometimes they die, anyway. And they believe that is the right way to do things. They believe possession is a sickness of morality and those who are too weak to cure themselves are better off dying from it."

Pike sighed, and Percy thought too hard, as he usually did.

"And they can't be correct?" said Percy.

"No, they aren't correct," said the priestess.

"You said yourself that possessions happen to weak people and it leaves them weaker than they started if they survive. You don't think leaving them to live to be taken over again and again and again with all the suffering that entails is crueler than just letting them finally die?"

"Percy –"

"And this is why," the priestess cut off, "as you're even nominally a follower of Pelor, I cannot let you leave until you let me help you."

There was only a brief flash of anger on Percy's face before he quickly stuffed it down. He had to admit there was something to not being possessed by a literal demon anymore that made it easier to quash. Instead, he pushed the catmint tea into her hands and said, "excuse me, can you please hold this?"

"Of course," said the priestess, because of course she did, for these people, acquiescing to a politely worded, inconsequential request from who they had decided was a victim was automatic. She took the cup, and he pushed himself off of the stool, muttered 'excuse me' again as he brushed past her and left the room.

There was no way to enforce her order, he knew. He had just stormed a castle – his castle – infested by vampires and zombies, even unarmed he'd torn apart a vampire's undead thrall. He wasn't about to let some rinky-dink temple guard stop him, especially if they were so keen on not hurting him. He could just leave and get to town. He had enough coin in his purse for a horse, and he could reason with Pike later once he'd returned to the keep. Or, he didn't even have to return to the keep at all. He didn't have to go back to the keep, or Whitestone, or anywhere, really, and with each stride down the hall that was sounding better and better --

And Pike clunked behind him, her little legs in heavy boots working twice as hard to keep up, but she did keep up, just behind him.

"I think we should at least hear her out," she called to him.

"That's what we just did, and she's insane. This whole thing is insane –" his voice was louder than he wanted it to be, or maybe it was just the echo against the bare temple walls.

"She's right about the Dawnfather temples," said Pike. "I – I looked it up yesterday, if you hadn't already agreed to come here instead of Whitestone I would have told you --"

He whipped around to snap, "You would have told me what, that I'm ruined, that I've always been ruined and always will be, and to even think about ending that is evil? Is that what you would have told me?"

"Please –" she grabbed his hand with her burning one, and he saw the glow of Serenrae on it too late, otherwise he would have tried to avoid it. He didn't know what she was trying to do, and never would, because with that one touch, the floor immediately opened up to swallow him.