Confessional, 16
[Brought to you by thorondae.]
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Nine
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Seventeen
Confessional
Chapter Sixteen
Dear Christine,
I still don't know what was up with Tenyo last night. I have some ideas, but I'm not going to ask him. We got to spend time together like we haven't in years.
Oh, but I feel so guilty, Christine. I think I need to confess, I really do. I had such awful immoral thoughts while I was sitting there with him. What the hell is wrong with me, Christine? I know it isn't normal to want to do that kind of stuff to your brother. But I can't help the way I feel.
What should I do, Christine? I really don't know.
Lani
~
They buried Lian's memory in the graveyard behind the church, where they'd buried Matthews' memory. Tenyo stayed after the funeral, sitting before the cold, emotionless stone below which they had buried the casket filled with Lian's things.
"Perhaps you are reminded of Glast Heim," she had said. She had been absolutely correct. And then, of course, she had told him that he, he, was strange. The girl with brain damage that made her unfeeling, the girl that enjoyed fighting above all else, had told him that he was strange.
And he was. Because here he was, sitting at her grave, and wanting, somewhere in the back of his mind, to go back to the place that had killed her. And not for revenge, no, she had already scored her own revenge when she'd hacked that Dark Illusion to pieces. He wanted to go back because he liked it there. He liked having naught but the walking dead for company. When your only companions were enemy, it was much easier to be perfect.
Perfect like Lian had been.
From that day on, when he ate his lunch in the graveyard, he ate it alone, and he sat on Lian's tombstone, each time remembering her words. "You are a strange man, Tenyo."
~
Tenyo's confessional duty fell on the day before his next mission's SP date. Ulrike Dvorak had been made a permanent, and Chan was back now. They were set to retrieve a certain sword from the Castle Glast Heim.
And Tenyo was stuck doing his least favourite thing, the day before getting to leave to do his favourite. He listened to people confess the same things they always did, and then promise never to do them again. Liars, all of them.
To the woman who confessed to adultery every time she came and talked about how horrible and guilty it made her feel, he said "Then maybe you should stop sleeping around."
She became very upset, but he merely responded, "You'd stop feeling so horrible and guilty then, wouldn't you?"
She left in a huff. Secretly, he treasured his triumph as he heard her complaining outside of the confessional booth. Maybe now he wouldn't have to listen to her every time he had duty.
The next person to come in and sit down surprised him out of this state of mind. "Forgive me Father," said Lani's girlish voice, abnormally quiet and shy. "For I am impure."
Where normally he probably would have retrieved a different priest to handle her, he was morbidly curious. Keeping his voice low so that she was less likely to recognize it as his, he said, "Go on."
She sighed, paused for a moment, then said, "It's really wrong, and I know it's really wrong, but I can't help it. I don't know what to do, Father. I can't help the way I feel. But I really... really love him. I... I have for years."
"Who?" he asked, trying not to sound too interested. He planned to follow it up with a visit to the offender.
"My..." he could tell by her pause that she was fidgeting, like she always did on the rare occasion that she be nervous. "Oh... you... you probably know him. He works here." She stalled.
A fellow priest? But to his knowledge, none of them had even met his sister.
"Promise you won't tell him. You're not supposed to anyway, this is all confidential, but please, just tell me you won't tell him, Father.
"I won't," he said, still disguising his voice as best he could.
"I..." She hesitated. "I'm in love with Tenyo Fuuji."
His eyes went wide and he listened, barely paying attention in his shock, to her spouting on about it.
"I know it's wrong to love your brother, Father, I know that!" she pleaded. "But I can't help it. He's all I've had since our mom died. Our dad would do... just... horrible things to me, and Tenyo was always there. He never knew what was wrong, but he was there. I-I've felt like this since then. Almost our whole life, really. But I don't know what to do about it, Father, it's unhealthy and wrong and sick and sometimes I don't even care. I find myself wanting to... to do the same kind of stuff to him that my dad did to me. But I don't because I know how much it hurts to feel that and I love him too much to hurt him like that. Oh, but that's exactly the problem, Father, I love him. I really love him. But he's my brother. I don't know what to do, Father, I really really don't." She had degraded halfway through to speaking through tears, and now she broke down entirely, sobbing quietly, almost as if she didn't want him to know.
"L.. Lani," he said, still in his state of total shock.
Her head snapped up and she made a noise that was something between a gasp and a sniffle.
"You... you..." he found himself at a loss for words. So instead of trying to find them, he stood and shoved open the door, leaving.
"Wait!" Lani cried, doing the same and chasing after him.
She caught him at the door leading out into the front hall, and stopped him by throwing her arms around his waist, pulling him back against her and again crying out, "Wait."
He tore her arms away; she slid out of his grasp and took hold of his left arm as he moved away, dragging him back. She clasped that arm to her chest, and stared up at him pleadingly as he turned to glare at her. And they froze like this for quite some time, until finally Tenyo said, "Let go."
The stone coldness in his voice did not deter her. "No," she answered.
"You're not my sister."
"I haven't changed at all, Tenyo! I've been how I am since we were kids. You're the one who's different. You used to be so cute and shy and you stuttered when you were nervous and you would hide behind me when we met strangers and now you're this really angry soldier who never talks to me anymore and-"
"Stop." He tried to pull his arm away, but she maintained her hold.
"But I don't care that you're different. I still love you, Tenyo."
Another long pause. "That's sick, Sralani."
"I know it is."
And another pause followed that.
Finally Tenyo yanked his arm back from his sister and left. This time, she didn't try to follow him.
~
Glast Heim was, as always, Glast Heim. Fuuji was far more silent than usual. He'd spent the night before their SP date at Chan's house; the crusader didn't ask, he figured the priest would tell him if and when he decided to. Sralani had indicated that she would be busy, and so he'd left Elizabeth with Mr. McAllister instead. He did wonder if something had occurred between the twins, but felt it was not his place to ask.
They ventured into the old castle first thing in the morning. Clayborne sang an old cadence in a soft tenor as they did, the words echoing emptily through the halls. "And we were always ready to go, so early in the morning. So early in the morning." Chan glanced at her and she faded to humming the rest of it. The effect was eerie.
When the Khalitzburg attacked them, Fuuji almost thought he heard Clayborne say, "The door is open," before she notched an arrow in her bow and fired at the thing. But he dismissed it as nothing. The rusty skeleton was easily dispatched and they continued deeper into the castle.
"Which door?" Dvorak whispered as they walked on.
"Mine," the huntress replied, keeping an arrow in her bow and her eyes on the surroundings. "I'll tell ya when." Chan glanced at her again and she went back to humming her cadence.
Only a few paces later, they all stopped in their tracks, hearing the sound of unnaturally heavy breathing from somewhere behind them. Most things in Glast Heim, being already dead, did not breathe. Much less as loudly and deeply as this thing did.
Fuuji slowly turned to look over his shoulder, and there, crouching behind Dvorak and Clayborne like a tiger, wielding a gigantic scythe in one hand, was the horned goat-like demon King of Glast Heim himself: Baphomet.
He took a slow step backward, staring up at the demon. It let out a low snort and its breath condensed into a brief puff of steam, which quickly dissipated. "On my word," Fuuji said quietly, "we scatter."
Clayborne looked at Dvorak out of the corner of her eye and gave the most imperceptible of nods. Baphomet's mouth dropped open into a toothy draconic grin; a hissing noise accompanied the revealing of the razor-sharp fangs. Fuuji's eyes widened just slightly and he shouted, "Scatter!"
They all took off in seperate directions. The King of Glast Heim picked Clayborne and chased after her, hefting his scythe over his shoulder. He seemed to think it was a game. Just cat and mouse, purely for his own enjoyment.
The other three, when they had distanced themselves to a point where they could look back and see that Baphomet was out of sight, stopped and turned back to find one another. Chan and Fuuji met up first, after some over-cautious sneaking around so as not to retrieve the King from the one he'd chosen as his prey.
A loud, oddly familiar scream rang through the hallways, and they took off in the direction of the sound.
When they arrived at the scene of the incident, Baphomet was nowhere to be seen. They instead found, as Dvorak did at the exact same moment, running up from the opposite side, Nichole Clayborne. She was leaning against the wall, bow in hand, with blood staining nearly the whole of her shirtfront. A few rivulets of crimson trickled below the belt beneath her breasts, over her pale stomach to seep into the top hem of her skirt.
"Frau Clayborne!" Dvorak reached her first, putting her arm around the huntress's shoulders. "What happened?"
"I'll be fine," she said, pushing the priestess away. "It ain't nothi- oh!" She lost her balance and fell; Dvorak caught her. Rather than help her back to her feet, she set Clayborne down, positioning her to sit with her back against the wall.
"Where's Baphomet?" The ever duty-oriented Chan.
"Lost 'im," she said. Her voice wavered.
Dvorak began unbuttoning Clayborne's shirt to inspect the wound, but she was pushed away. "I'm fine, good god." But her voice was getting fainter.
Fuuji took charge. "Chan, security," he said, pointing to his established perimeter. The crusader drew his sword, moving to stand at the indicated spot. Fuuji went to kneel beside the other priest. Clayborne vehemently refused to be helped, and in a matter of moments, had bled to death and become a lifeless heap on the stone ground. Dvorak cried, but Fuuji seemed strangely unaffected.
"Hey, you better fucking get ready to run," Chan said, glancing at them.
They looked up and saw the gleam of the scythe before they were actually able to make out the shadowy form of Baphomet himself, running toward them.
"Good idea," Fuuji responded hastily, leaping to his feet and dragging Dvorak to hers as he did so.
"Wait! Nichole!" she cried, trying to run back to the deceased huntress.
"She ain't any fuckin' use to us now," said Chan, grabbing her as she ran by, carring her away from both their fallen comrade and the incoming threat.
Fuuji ducked into a corridor, and Chan followed with Dvorak. Baphomet overshot his turn and skidded past, his hooves grating on the stone as he slid to as top. By the time he followed the soldiers down the corridor, they were no longer visible. And so he paused there, lying down much like a cat, blocking the exit with his body. He emitted a low rumbling sound, almost a purr, but far closer to the sort a tiger would make than a house cat. The King of Glast Heim stayed, staring down that hallway, waiting for his game to start afresh.
Fuuji, Chan, and Dvorak had found a large open space, framed by bilateral staircases and a balcony above the doors on the opposite side. They could hear Baphomet's menacing purr, and so they decided to stay there and formulate a plan.
"Mission first," Fuuji said, pacing back and forth across a ten-foot strip of ground. "We need to find the sword. Which means, we need to get past Baphomet and figure out where it is."
"You know what?" Fuuji stopped and looked at Chan, who dropped his sword with a clatter and held his hands up as a display of disarmament. "I quit. I fucking quit. I abso-fucking-lutely refuse to deal with this fucking bullshit ever again."
Tenyo's eyes went wide. "Wh-what do you mean you quit? You can't quit! Prontera owns you, you're property of the Rune-Midgard royalty."
"I really don't give a damn anymore."
"We're in the middle of Glast Heim wing the King of Demons breathing down our necks!" he shouted, waving toward the omnipresent rumbling. "You can't quit!"
"Watch me." He kicked his sword away and sat against the wall, pulling out his cigarettes and lighting one.
Fuuji stared at him, dumbfounded.
That was when the music started. Softly at first, building up to an ominous crescendo, which faded back into dark, sinister melodies of foreboding. Baphomet's purring stopped; everyone looked up to the balcony to see the figure sitting at its edge, playing on a very familiar lute.
Clayborne, with her bloodstains still fresh upon her huntress uniform but her wide-brimmed cowboy hat gone, revealing her short blonde hair to be, in reality, shimmering golden waves down to her waist, which had been tied loosely back at the base of her neck with a large red ribbon. She stopped playing long enough to look up and smile at the trio. "Hallo, meine Freunde," said the unmistakable Nicholai Andalphus.
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Seventeen
Confessional
Chapter Sixteen
Dear Christine,
I still don't know what was up with Tenyo last night. I have some ideas, but I'm not going to ask him. We got to spend time together like we haven't in years.
Oh, but I feel so guilty, Christine. I think I need to confess, I really do. I had such awful immoral thoughts while I was sitting there with him. What the hell is wrong with me, Christine? I know it isn't normal to want to do that kind of stuff to your brother. But I can't help the way I feel.
What should I do, Christine? I really don't know.
Lani
~
They buried Lian's memory in the graveyard behind the church, where they'd buried Matthews' memory. Tenyo stayed after the funeral, sitting before the cold, emotionless stone below which they had buried the casket filled with Lian's things.
"Perhaps you are reminded of Glast Heim," she had said. She had been absolutely correct. And then, of course, she had told him that he, he, was strange. The girl with brain damage that made her unfeeling, the girl that enjoyed fighting above all else, had told him that he was strange.
And he was. Because here he was, sitting at her grave, and wanting, somewhere in the back of his mind, to go back to the place that had killed her. And not for revenge, no, she had already scored her own revenge when she'd hacked that Dark Illusion to pieces. He wanted to go back because he liked it there. He liked having naught but the walking dead for company. When your only companions were enemy, it was much easier to be perfect.
Perfect like Lian had been.
From that day on, when he ate his lunch in the graveyard, he ate it alone, and he sat on Lian's tombstone, each time remembering her words. "You are a strange man, Tenyo."
~
Tenyo's confessional duty fell on the day before his next mission's SP date. Ulrike Dvorak had been made a permanent, and Chan was back now. They were set to retrieve a certain sword from the Castle Glast Heim.
And Tenyo was stuck doing his least favourite thing, the day before getting to leave to do his favourite. He listened to people confess the same things they always did, and then promise never to do them again. Liars, all of them.
To the woman who confessed to adultery every time she came and talked about how horrible and guilty it made her feel, he said "Then maybe you should stop sleeping around."
She became very upset, but he merely responded, "You'd stop feeling so horrible and guilty then, wouldn't you?"
She left in a huff. Secretly, he treasured his triumph as he heard her complaining outside of the confessional booth. Maybe now he wouldn't have to listen to her every time he had duty.
The next person to come in and sit down surprised him out of this state of mind. "Forgive me Father," said Lani's girlish voice, abnormally quiet and shy. "For I am impure."
Where normally he probably would have retrieved a different priest to handle her, he was morbidly curious. Keeping his voice low so that she was less likely to recognize it as his, he said, "Go on."
She sighed, paused for a moment, then said, "It's really wrong, and I know it's really wrong, but I can't help it. I don't know what to do, Father. I can't help the way I feel. But I really... really love him. I... I have for years."
"Who?" he asked, trying not to sound too interested. He planned to follow it up with a visit to the offender.
"My..." he could tell by her pause that she was fidgeting, like she always did on the rare occasion that she be nervous. "Oh... you... you probably know him. He works here." She stalled.
A fellow priest? But to his knowledge, none of them had even met his sister.
"Promise you won't tell him. You're not supposed to anyway, this is all confidential, but please, just tell me you won't tell him, Father.
"I won't," he said, still disguising his voice as best he could.
"I..." She hesitated. "I'm in love with Tenyo Fuuji."
His eyes went wide and he listened, barely paying attention in his shock, to her spouting on about it.
"I know it's wrong to love your brother, Father, I know that!" she pleaded. "But I can't help it. He's all I've had since our mom died. Our dad would do... just... horrible things to me, and Tenyo was always there. He never knew what was wrong, but he was there. I-I've felt like this since then. Almost our whole life, really. But I don't know what to do about it, Father, it's unhealthy and wrong and sick and sometimes I don't even care. I find myself wanting to... to do the same kind of stuff to him that my dad did to me. But I don't because I know how much it hurts to feel that and I love him too much to hurt him like that. Oh, but that's exactly the problem, Father, I love him. I really love him. But he's my brother. I don't know what to do, Father, I really really don't." She had degraded halfway through to speaking through tears, and now she broke down entirely, sobbing quietly, almost as if she didn't want him to know.
"L.. Lani," he said, still in his state of total shock.
Her head snapped up and she made a noise that was something between a gasp and a sniffle.
"You... you..." he found himself at a loss for words. So instead of trying to find them, he stood and shoved open the door, leaving.
"Wait!" Lani cried, doing the same and chasing after him.
She caught him at the door leading out into the front hall, and stopped him by throwing her arms around his waist, pulling him back against her and again crying out, "Wait."
He tore her arms away; she slid out of his grasp and took hold of his left arm as he moved away, dragging him back. She clasped that arm to her chest, and stared up at him pleadingly as he turned to glare at her. And they froze like this for quite some time, until finally Tenyo said, "Let go."
The stone coldness in his voice did not deter her. "No," she answered.
"You're not my sister."
"I haven't changed at all, Tenyo! I've been how I am since we were kids. You're the one who's different. You used to be so cute and shy and you stuttered when you were nervous and you would hide behind me when we met strangers and now you're this really angry soldier who never talks to me anymore and-"
"Stop." He tried to pull his arm away, but she maintained her hold.
"But I don't care that you're different. I still love you, Tenyo."
Another long pause. "That's sick, Sralani."
"I know it is."
And another pause followed that.
Finally Tenyo yanked his arm back from his sister and left. This time, she didn't try to follow him.
~
Glast Heim was, as always, Glast Heim. Fuuji was far more silent than usual. He'd spent the night before their SP date at Chan's house; the crusader didn't ask, he figured the priest would tell him if and when he decided to. Sralani had indicated that she would be busy, and so he'd left Elizabeth with Mr. McAllister instead. He did wonder if something had occurred between the twins, but felt it was not his place to ask.
They ventured into the old castle first thing in the morning. Clayborne sang an old cadence in a soft tenor as they did, the words echoing emptily through the halls. "And we were always ready to go, so early in the morning. So early in the morning." Chan glanced at her and she faded to humming the rest of it. The effect was eerie.
When the Khalitzburg attacked them, Fuuji almost thought he heard Clayborne say, "The door is open," before she notched an arrow in her bow and fired at the thing. But he dismissed it as nothing. The rusty skeleton was easily dispatched and they continued deeper into the castle.
"Which door?" Dvorak whispered as they walked on.
"Mine," the huntress replied, keeping an arrow in her bow and her eyes on the surroundings. "I'll tell ya when." Chan glanced at her again and she went back to humming her cadence.
Only a few paces later, they all stopped in their tracks, hearing the sound of unnaturally heavy breathing from somewhere behind them. Most things in Glast Heim, being already dead, did not breathe. Much less as loudly and deeply as this thing did.
Fuuji slowly turned to look over his shoulder, and there, crouching behind Dvorak and Clayborne like a tiger, wielding a gigantic scythe in one hand, was the horned goat-like demon King of Glast Heim himself: Baphomet.
He took a slow step backward, staring up at the demon. It let out a low snort and its breath condensed into a brief puff of steam, which quickly dissipated. "On my word," Fuuji said quietly, "we scatter."
Clayborne looked at Dvorak out of the corner of her eye and gave the most imperceptible of nods. Baphomet's mouth dropped open into a toothy draconic grin; a hissing noise accompanied the revealing of the razor-sharp fangs. Fuuji's eyes widened just slightly and he shouted, "Scatter!"
They all took off in seperate directions. The King of Glast Heim picked Clayborne and chased after her, hefting his scythe over his shoulder. He seemed to think it was a game. Just cat and mouse, purely for his own enjoyment.
The other three, when they had distanced themselves to a point where they could look back and see that Baphomet was out of sight, stopped and turned back to find one another. Chan and Fuuji met up first, after some over-cautious sneaking around so as not to retrieve the King from the one he'd chosen as his prey.
A loud, oddly familiar scream rang through the hallways, and they took off in the direction of the sound.
When they arrived at the scene of the incident, Baphomet was nowhere to be seen. They instead found, as Dvorak did at the exact same moment, running up from the opposite side, Nichole Clayborne. She was leaning against the wall, bow in hand, with blood staining nearly the whole of her shirtfront. A few rivulets of crimson trickled below the belt beneath her breasts, over her pale stomach to seep into the top hem of her skirt.
"Frau Clayborne!" Dvorak reached her first, putting her arm around the huntress's shoulders. "What happened?"
"I'll be fine," she said, pushing the priestess away. "It ain't nothi- oh!" She lost her balance and fell; Dvorak caught her. Rather than help her back to her feet, she set Clayborne down, positioning her to sit with her back against the wall.
"Where's Baphomet?" The ever duty-oriented Chan.
"Lost 'im," she said. Her voice wavered.
Dvorak began unbuttoning Clayborne's shirt to inspect the wound, but she was pushed away. "I'm fine, good god." But her voice was getting fainter.
Fuuji took charge. "Chan, security," he said, pointing to his established perimeter. The crusader drew his sword, moving to stand at the indicated spot. Fuuji went to kneel beside the other priest. Clayborne vehemently refused to be helped, and in a matter of moments, had bled to death and become a lifeless heap on the stone ground. Dvorak cried, but Fuuji seemed strangely unaffected.
"Hey, you better fucking get ready to run," Chan said, glancing at them.
They looked up and saw the gleam of the scythe before they were actually able to make out the shadowy form of Baphomet himself, running toward them.
"Good idea," Fuuji responded hastily, leaping to his feet and dragging Dvorak to hers as he did so.
"Wait! Nichole!" she cried, trying to run back to the deceased huntress.
"She ain't any fuckin' use to us now," said Chan, grabbing her as she ran by, carring her away from both their fallen comrade and the incoming threat.
Fuuji ducked into a corridor, and Chan followed with Dvorak. Baphomet overshot his turn and skidded past, his hooves grating on the stone as he slid to as top. By the time he followed the soldiers down the corridor, they were no longer visible. And so he paused there, lying down much like a cat, blocking the exit with his body. He emitted a low rumbling sound, almost a purr, but far closer to the sort a tiger would make than a house cat. The King of Glast Heim stayed, staring down that hallway, waiting for his game to start afresh.
Fuuji, Chan, and Dvorak had found a large open space, framed by bilateral staircases and a balcony above the doors on the opposite side. They could hear Baphomet's menacing purr, and so they decided to stay there and formulate a plan.
"Mission first," Fuuji said, pacing back and forth across a ten-foot strip of ground. "We need to find the sword. Which means, we need to get past Baphomet and figure out where it is."
"You know what?" Fuuji stopped and looked at Chan, who dropped his sword with a clatter and held his hands up as a display of disarmament. "I quit. I fucking quit. I abso-fucking-lutely refuse to deal with this fucking bullshit ever again."
Tenyo's eyes went wide. "Wh-what do you mean you quit? You can't quit! Prontera owns you, you're property of the Rune-Midgard royalty."
"I really don't give a damn anymore."
"We're in the middle of Glast Heim wing the King of Demons breathing down our necks!" he shouted, waving toward the omnipresent rumbling. "You can't quit!"
"Watch me." He kicked his sword away and sat against the wall, pulling out his cigarettes and lighting one.
Fuuji stared at him, dumbfounded.
That was when the music started. Softly at first, building up to an ominous crescendo, which faded back into dark, sinister melodies of foreboding. Baphomet's purring stopped; everyone looked up to the balcony to see the figure sitting at its edge, playing on a very familiar lute.
Clayborne, with her bloodstains still fresh upon her huntress uniform but her wide-brimmed cowboy hat gone, revealing her short blonde hair to be, in reality, shimmering golden waves down to her waist, which had been tied loosely back at the base of her neck with a large red ribbon. She stopped playing long enough to look up and smile at the trio. "Hallo, meine Freunde," said the unmistakable Nicholai Andalphus.