Divina raised her light blessed blade high above her head and calmly spoke a holy invocation of protection as she waded with caution into the unknown darkness of the former-temple grounds.
This had to be the demons hiding place. In her experience, fiends showed little care when hiding away in such remote towns. True closer to cities they might encounter those who would have the giftings and the faith to undo their workings and maybe even exercise them from the world. Out here though, they had little to no fear and would often build themselves a mock temple such as the one in which she now stood.
Motes of silver light took hold and danced with the darkness around her. Inside those sacred walls she fought to suppress her stomach once again, which gave way to an uncontrollable shudder that rolled down the back of her neck once more. She wished her spell had failed as the dancing lights that her spell cast illuminated a horrific sight.
The hall’s stone floors ran slick with a dark coating of blood. Sticky, thick ichor coated every inch of the ground with a dire red and brown liquid. In the isles, entrails had been draped across the backs and sides of the rows of seats like repugnant bunting. In each of the rows in every seat of the sanctuary sat the mutilated corpse of someone who had once been a villager, as if a macabre worship service to a vile god were taking place. Their lax jaws hung open like a discordant choir singing an ancient, and forgotten unholy hymnal. Their dead eyes stared openly forward towards the front of the temple. Divina followed their eye line. Blindly they gazed on a figure, prostrated and unmoving on the altar atop the shrine. The figure had been clothed in a beautiful dress, that had now been tarnished and torn.
A girl, she thought to herself, the final sacrifice to the demon? This had gone too far.
Divina took a hesitant step forward and then stopped. Silence and shadows hung, thick and swirling between Divina and the girl. She paused. This would be an obvious trap, but she couldn’t leave the girls body desecrated in such a way. No doubt the demon had some devious plan for her body. She opened her divine senses to the room, pushing them to view the world of the spirit, the world beyond what her eyes could normally perceive.
Her senses became overwhelmed. A sudden rush of sensory information flooded her mind. She had hoped that her heightened celestial senses might show her where the demon hid. She regarded what she now saw in a sobering new light. The whole place had been tainted by evil deeds. Intangible threads of gloom were pulled, taut from each corpse. They filled the room invisible to the naked eye but to Divina the whole room had suddenly become overcrowded with wall to wall enchantment. In a room filled with such massive amounts of dark magic it was hard to pinpoint any one place where the demon might be hiding. She ceased her sensory spell and poured all of her will back into her shield and light spells. She weighed her options and found herself, without doubt, pressing forward to investigate the body atop the altar.
Moving through the room her head swivelled, scanning the corpses, looking for the moment that the demon would strike. Waiting for a movement, physical or magical, holding the spell of protection around her just in case. She reached the dais and the room remained eerily still.
Keeping aware of the inevitable ambush, the Paladin turned to the girl. She seemed to be about half Divina’s age. Barely older than a teenager, maybe? But from where she stood she couldn’t tell anything more about her beneath the blood and grime and tatters of clothing that covered her. She could see quite clearly that she was bound and gagged and tied to the desecrated altar. She was limp and lifeless. Another victim of the demon.
Divina turned away from her to take stock and look around at the nightmare that surrounded her. Men, women and children murdered and then their lifeless bodies stripped of all dignity. She felt sick to her stomach despite her enchanted charm. But more than that she burned with anger. She knew the next steps and gritted her teeth at the thought.
“Audrashni, give me strength.” She whispered and began to look for her flint and tinder within her pack.
In the apse of the building the shadows seemed to begin to dance with glee at the interaction between the Paladin and her goddess. If Divina looked at them long enough they almost became something tangible that moved with a dark cadence.
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