doubt not my words.
Bishop stared into the hollowed entrance to the mausoleum that generations of their ilk had carved beneath the outskirts of The Hewn City--their once-elysian, once-sparkling home now entrenched in a forgotten darkness that coiled between the ruined streets and ever-feebling candlevigil that kept that ever-encroacher at bay. the soil was thick and pale with bonedust and limestone, and here and there stains not quite as dark as those history had given the small hamlet of Dunnsmouth splattered against the walls.
Bishop was ancient, that much was known. He had outlived even Matron's patriarch, and the patriarch before him, and yes, the one before he as well. There was a reason he was deemed High Priest of the Voidfaith: he had a spark of The Void Incarnate's divinity, and it showed in his longevity. He had scraped out the mausoleum himself, sleeplessly, a decade's worth of work, still growing as more and more sacrifices were to be made to keep the coming evil at bay.
"Nothing can withstand the onslaught of the False-Arbiters," the priest intoned, the words spilling from his mouth with practiced ease as he stepped into the catacombs, "but for the dedication we chosen few have for Our Glory Eternal."
stop spewing that drivel just to annoy me. you don't believe half of it.
the voice comes from behind him, its siren's call like a droplet of ink into water, twisting, churning, slowly hissing into its surroundings.
cathedral had come, as Bishop knew it would. Normally it stayed silent like the barren black-barked trees among others, but in its domain with only the dead and an unsure priest to listen to its sibilant rattle, it felt free. Bishop was glad for the company, at least. few were permitted to speak their minds so bluntly, lest they find their way upon the Altar of Void Everlasting.
"We do what we must to keep the flock penitent. Their fervor to the all-but-forgotten is just one of the many seals against the Judgements." he paused, staring as inky ichor slowly dripped from a wall. "Even now, they breach this holy sanctum because of whispering doubts amongst the people. We have waited four hundred and ninety seven years for Chernobog to grace us with his presence. We need only wait three more."
and when your false gods don't appear? what will you do when your flock turns to the wolves they are that you keep so loosely leashed?
"Then I shall surely perish at their hands, as you well know. But it will not matter. 500 years of service to the Ignorant Idols is a powerful seal. I doubt even Glittering Avarice could break it, with all her mage cronies at her command included."
and when you perish, piotr? the voice in the shadows sighed.
where will you go then?
"Wherever you deem I should, my dear Cathedral. Wherever you deem I should."
