Fate - First Reply Cathedral Spouts and Weeping Moons

[Pneria]

Spoiler: Music

The cathedral gargoyle stared at her, water vomiting from its mouth and eyes, the rest spilling down the sides of its horns. The rain overflowed every spout and caused a cascade of water to flood the streets below. Pneria could see it. She perched near on height with the rusty sabre of the moon that shared her new name, weeping with the rest of the heavens, barely visible.

Lessat, the larger moon, loomed on the other side of the curtain of rain, like the blueish dome of some alien temple in a faraway realm, the only other witness to Pneria's climb. Pneria knelt besides the gargoyle, which was petrified in its snarl, scaring away nothing but pidgeons seeking shelter. Crabbing below vaulting architecture above her ledge, the heavy drops thundering on her hood receded; and so leaned into her cover, fingerless gloves patted the dark wall, seeking a different surface than stone. Eventually, her dirty fingernails tapped glass. There it was.

Despite the flutter of her heart at having Death himself breathing down her neck, not more than a pace or two away to open air and a long fall, Pneria allowed herself a satisfied grin. She had bloody done it. She had reached the Whispering Gallery. Without the magic of House Iskandar helping her -- allowing her quiver to be filled with rope-bolts enchanted by magical, growing vines -- she would never have made it up here. This had to mark some sort of record of scaling tall buildings for footpads and crack-clerics such as herself. Oh, she would definitely brag about this one.

But first, she had a task to do.

Pulling a sharp implement of Emril steel, she cut the stained glass, a tiny circle at about the height of her ear. Next came a strange plant of purple petals, which stuck to any surface, used to pull out a tiny hole for herself. Pneria squinted and peered through.

The Whispering Gallery circled right below her, like a coiled snake of a balcony with a railing, boasting a grand open space that allowed view to the nave of the cathedral. It was famous for carrying acoustic sound in a unique fashion, hardly spilling into the consecrated halls below, only echoing within its high architecture. Pictograms and vivid imagery of Celestianism decorated the circular walls of this dome. The cathedral had shut its doors to most everyone at night, even the bell-tollers and servants had gone to bed by now. She couldn't see the two she was meant to eavesdrop on.

But she could hear them. The priest and the beggar. It was a genius cover -- the beggar had come seeking sanctuary, now asking for the wisdom of the priest to amend his ways. Only their trades belied their black souls. At least if Pneria's contact could be believed.

". . . it is time we do something about . . ."

"What? Snuff her? We can't . . . many risks . . ."

"They already suspect . . . Watch . . . Iskandar . . ."

Pneria strained to listen, but their footsteps had taken them farther away. Perhaps inside a stairway. They might be ascending, coming closer to her location.

A flutter of wings caught her by surprise. Pidgeons flew out in scattered disarray from one of the vaults, startled by something. Her iron-grey eyes glanced up there for a long moment — but she saw nothing but rain, stone and shadows.

Pidgeons startled easily. Perhaps by themselves. By Astra, who else could damn well be up here? No one, that was it.

 

[Rhenn Willowood]

Rhenn Willowood had not planned on company.

The man crouched in the empty space between two ribs of flying buttress, where the rain slid past without ever quite touching. The stone was slick, and the night loud with water and wind, but none of it belonged to him. Rhenn belonged to the dark, and the dark had long since learned the shape of the Darkwalker.

The climb had been irritating rather than difficult; Too many decorative excesses and watchful angles. Irritation was never enough to ward him off, though. Especially not from places like the Gallery. Relics slept best in places like this. Old bones wrapped in gold. Chalices kissed by a thousand liars. Saints who’d bled just enough to be profitable.

His single working eye was mapping his entry, tracing the rain-dark stonework until he saw movement where there shouldn’t have been any, a shape resolving itself against the night, nimble and stubborn, hauling itself up toward the apex like it had something to prove.

Well, I’ll be fucked.

He watched her climb, irritation giving way to something sharper. She was good. Not perfect, but competent in a way that demanded attention. She moved with purpose, trusted her tools, trusted the wall.

That trust would get her killed someday.

Maybe tonight, depending how unlucky she was.

She reached the gargoyle, knelt beside it, worked fast. The glass cutter came out, clean and precise. He caught the faint tick of metal on stained glass even over the rain, and watched her peel open a listening hole like she’d done it a hundred times before.

Rhenn shifted his weight by a hair, just enough to peer down through his own angle, letting the cathedral’s strange acoustics do their work. Voices drifted up, distorted but legible enough to sketch intent if not faces. A priest. Someone else. Fear, urgency, calculation. Words about suspicion. About action. About watching the wrong people too closely.

Assassination, maybe. Blackmail. Church politics. None of it his concern.

Then, the pigeons scattered. Somner's sake, it was always fucking pigeons. As if they were the only damned things that had no trouble seeing him. For a moment, her gaze passed close enough to where Rhenn clung that another man might have panicked. The rain did its work. The shadows behaved. The moonlight broke where it should.

Rhenn moved.

Not across stone. Not through rain. He stepped between shadows, where the moonlight failed to agree with itself, where it broke against the Cathedral’s angles and left thin seams of dark behind. To anyone else, it would’ve looked like nothing at all, naught but a blink the eye forgot to finish.

He was suddenly very close.

"Fancy bolts." His voice was low, as rough as gravel dragged across silk. "Don't you think that's cheating, though?"

Pneria

 

[Pneria]

The shock nearly killed her. She jumped back, then barely caught herself, fingers clutched inside the nostril of a nearby gargoyle.

"Herald's balls--"

Fear and surprise skittered all the way from her toes in her boots sliding through rainwater, up through her quivering legs and spine to her throbbing temple. Throbbing, because she had whacked her head against a nearby buttress. But better that than being a smear on the streets below.

Composing herself, she curled back into the safety of the ledge. She couldn't get much farther from him -- limited space demanded uncomfortable proximity.

But she could draw her saw-toothed knife from her boot. It whipped out before her in the blink of an eye, affording her some measure of safety against the wraith that had decided to haunt her tonight.

Even up close, the weak illumination of Lessat fell upon him strangely; as if the larger moon reluctantly acknowledged his presence, grudgingly revealing him to mortal eyes. What Pneria could see was a face wrapped and muffled in mask and hood, the sliver of flesh and eyes twisted, deathly pale and asymmetrical in colour. A white orb flared next to a dull, brown iris. Aye, if it hadn't been for his cocky words, she could well believe him to be some revenant unhallowing the cathedral spires.

"Don't know what you're gabbing about. This ain't a game of cards." Her heavy breathing and the side-eye she gave the merciless edge reaffirmed this for her. She lifted the knife a tad, like it was some holy symbol she could use to ward off this ghost. "There's only breathing or snuffing out. And if you inch any closer, I'll snuff ya faster than a sarding candle, mark my words."

The snapping breaths between her hissing words hollowed some of her threats, more akin to a cornered animal than a hardened killer. But a beast backed into a corner could still bite.

Rhenn Willowood