Judgement

The Arbitrator’s robe dragged along cut stone. The swish of it echoed in the vaulted chamber. He took each step slowly, carefully. There was no room for error in these proceedings. Every breath was planned, every twitch accounted for. The stone was cold beneath his bare feet, achingly so.

A thousand hooded faces followed this singular procession. Shadowed eyes tracked their priest’s steps down the center aisle to the ceremonial dais.

Three things waited for him. One was a stone, dark and softly pulsing. Another was a knife, so sharp it hummed. The third was a girl. She was young.

He took up the knife. Chains rattled at the girl’s flinch. The tip pinched his thumb. A drop of blood, dark and swollen, rolled down his hand. It sizzled as it met the dark stone.

The stone quivered. The church rumbled. The shadows deepened. Darkness swirled about the atrium and pooled beneath the dais. The Arbitrator took slow, careful breaths.

The sacrifice is acceptable. The darkness spoke in the cadence of a sea at storm. The girl began to weep. Her cries echoed around the room, but not one of the gathered acolytes moved to comfort her.

The darkness rose, its form blurred, its edges sharpened until the figure of a man stood above the helpless child. The god chuckled.

I so relish the screams of the damned.

The Arbitrator walked a slow circle around that god, that pain incarnate. He made sure more drops of blood fell upon just the right tiles.

The god reached for the girl. The Arbitrator took its wrist.

You will lose that hand. The words rumbled in the Arbitrator’s skull.

“You will lose far more.” The Arbitrator plunged the knife into the pulsing stone. The acolytes threw back their hoods and spoke a thousand variations on a single cantation. The darkness fled its body and coalesced into a chain with a thousand links. It made to leap from the dais, but the tiles below its feet held it firm. The chain struck like a serpent and snared its neck.

The Arbitrator pulled away, his hand suddenly burning where it had met the god’s flesh. He drew a key from his robes and unlatched the girl’s chains. She did not move. Her eyes were fixed on the chained god.

I cannot be bound, it seethed. I shall drink deep of your suffering.

“Better mine than her’s.” He took up the girl and ran. He ran from the god, from his acolytes, from the church itself. Behind him, the god screamed in the cadence of a dying world.