I didn't stop running until Ikaris told me to.
He stopped us at a church that had been abandoned near the ports of Bruis, not too far from where the Ewe's Sanctuary was.
It seemed mostly intact, although Ikaris didn't inspect it. Yet he assured me it would be fine.
Somata cannot enter churches—even abandoned ones.
He didn't explain, only saying a few words. He told me it wasn't the Seven Saints that kept the Somata away; it was that churches were always built with a sigil that wards off anything non-human
I step past the gate, my lungs seething, and every bone in my legs trembles like they've forgotten how to hold me. I can feel the tiny flame scutter within me, pulsating its warmth through my legs, bits of it within my lungs.
I've never run that fast or that long in my life. If Ikaris hadn't given me a portion of his fire, I would've collapsed a while ago.
The church looms ahead: Bent spires claw toward the sky, cracked and half-broken. Moss splits the stones along the walls. A heavy wooden door swings open as I pull on it, letting out a low groan that echoes in the cold night. Rainwater drips from the crooked rooftop. The stained glass that would've depicted the Seven Saints is long gone, replaced by boards and darkness.
The place looks like it's been dead for years.
I glance back. Ikaris stands just beyond the iron gate, right outside the churchyard.
The tattered edges of his coat whip in the wind, his sword gone, probably in its other form. I couldn't see his flames.
He doesn't follow me in. "You're not coming?" I ask hoarsely.
"No," he says.
"Why not?"
He looks at the church like it's a grave.
"I've already said, the church wards anything that isn't human, anything that lacks the blood of sheep."
"You're not human?" I ask naively.
"No."
Of course not, his white hair, those flames, his star-like eyes, the silver streaks I saw on his hand, none of those attributes are human. Yet, I didn't want to venture in, not without him.
The darkness presses on me like gravity. My feet are made of lead. I couldn't keep my back straight.
"Is there no way for you to enter?"
"No," Ikaris says again. "Don't worry about me, the church will hide your scent from the Somata. And once you rest, we'll leave at daybreak."
"Where would we go?" I say after a second.
"Out of Bruis. It's not safe here, not any longer."
***
The noise echoes through the dark like a warning bell. My heart beats follow it, throbbing inside my skull, louder than my footsteps as I walk further into the old church.
My legs ache. My body shakes. Every breath I take feels like my chest is lined with nails. And yet, I'm alive. Somehow.
Those things, those Somata, I can't get them out of my head. The choir of screams, the sea of crawling hands, the eye that seemed to look like it could erase me from existence—I've survived them. I should be dead. I felt death. I looked it in the eye, and through it, I saw Mother.
And now I'm here, in a church, alone.
The silence isn't comforting. It's thick. It's oil that clings to my skin and can't be completely wiped away. I don't know whether to lie on a pew or keep moving, so I wander.
The pews are crooked and rotting. Mold climbs the walls in patterns that almost look like veins. I step over a rotted book of hymns, its pages soaked with rain and time. The ceiling creaks above, sounding like rattling bones.
I look up at the altar, and there's a tattered tapestry of the Seven Saints. From where I stand, they aren't there, only shadows.
I've never prayed in my life, never believed in the Seven Saints. Why would I? What god lives in a brothel?
Mother never prayed. She said survival was its own religion.
Before we settled in the brother, when I was almost too young to remember, we traveled from street to street, city to city, duchy to duchy, never settling, fearing a life of stillness.
Then we came to a brothel, and never left.
I've already faced the cruelest kinds of humans who inhabit this world. I've seen what lingered behind them, but I've never really given them a name.
Somata: the creatures that drove Mother to her death with their whispers. That's how I imagined them to act, life's cruelest whispers.
But tonight, they made me change that thought: their hunters, my hunters.
I stop, and the sound of my footsteps are gone. The silence is even thicker, just deafening. It's pulsating in my ears.
I led myself to one of the pews, placing a hand on it. I slowly lie across the rickety wood, the cold blankets on top of me, wrapped in its embrace. I hug myself to keep warm. I can feel the fire inside me slowly die.
I'm too tired to think any longer. Mother would've told me to rest.
Yet, I can't.
After this night, after almost losing my soul to those creatures, I can't help but wonder something.
How did Mother keep those creatures from attacking her?