“Y-you’re still set upon this?” Ruler asked. “They’re not… it won’t be a pleasant experience.” His words were slightly squished as he pulled this way and that, shaving with a small knife and a mirror of light sorcery. She had wondered how a man in ragged clothes kept neatly groomed, and now she knew.
Daisy shrugged off-handedly. “I want to know more about the culture. That means knowing their faith. It can’t be any worse than…” She knew she was trailing off and leaving questions to Ruler that she wasn’t ready to answer, but she didn’t know what to say other than, “…Jupitre. Are you willing to serve as translator?”
“I-I-I can’t, actually, as the services are held in Marzeilles, but it won’t matter.” She pressed him, but he refused to elaborate on his enigmatic statement. It seemed some lessons were best learned first-hand.
The church building was… well, what was it? Striking, Daisy would allow. All the buildings of Marz were, but this was something else. The climate defied wheel windows, so instead the architects of the Church building had made elaborate friezes between arches in the style of the bank building. Very much in the style of the bank building, in fact. The friezes were all depictions of human figures in torment at the hands of goat-legged demons, frankly less horrifying figures than the gargoyles themselves. The main columns were more hideous giants climbed by plaintive humans, and flying buttresses resembled nothing so much as gnarled upthrust claws. At the peak of the Church, so far as to defy resolution without the aid of her telescope, there was the figure of a man, painted in the tanned colors of the local populace, burning in what she were supposed were glass flames which danced with the light of the true fire behind it.
There was an arch over the main doorway, or so she presumed the doors could open, for a smaller door beneath slowly admitted parishioners. It was between the spread legs of a massive gargoyle with anatomy of horrifying implications, leaning forward to form a portico beneath its scarred and parasite-ridden torso, supported by a multiplicity of arms, greeting those beginning up the steps with a threefold menacing leer. Each of its arms and legs bore massive stone cuffs, made to appear to be held down into the ground by lengths of chain. Or so her soul devoutly hoped they were merely carven images, and the demon defending the Church doors was not truly a bound spirit.
To either side, making the Church as much a defensive structure as a religious center, there were what might be termed “gardens” of broken statuary, a grim view of fractured faces and tangled limbs. These were not entirely of whitewashed basalt, but also obsidian or rust red, creating the eerie impression of being made of actual varietous dead. On the heels of that observation came the realization bones, or casts of bones, also decorated the gardens. Daisy tried not to look left, right, or up as she proceeded towards the sanctuary, though she was not so tunnel visioned as to miss the presence of truncheon- and revolver-bearing enforcers in priestly garb flanking the colonnade. Everywhere, she saw a single letter or numeral embroidered into a card suit. In the downcast people making their way up the steps, it was a heart lettered with an A or the occasional 2, while the enforcers, whatever their official role, bore 3’s embroidered in white upon the suit of clubs. Fitting, she thought grimly, that the ones carrying truncheons bore clubs.
Within the church was a vast chapel directly beyond the doors. There was no narthex; this was not a social occasion and this was not a place to gather except in worship, evidently. The interior bore massive reliefs of a penitent congregation flagellating itself, and Daisy hoped that such mortification was not a part of the services themselves. Looking back at the threes of clubs, she wasn’t certain they would let her leave. Ruler was huddled in against himself, but she thought he would have warned her if their services involved mortification of the flesh. The columns supporting the walls were flaming interruptions; glass, but seeming to flicker with inner light, highlighting the evident rhetoric of the populace being in Hell. Above, the chandeliers that lit the space were shaped into accusatory arms with pointing fingers, and at the front was a large brazier of fire in which a stone Savior burned in effigy forevermore.
Daisy had planned on taking a seat towards the back, but it seemed people filed into the chapel from the back forwards in the order they arrived. As such, she and Ruler were seated in the middle of the chapel. She felt uncomfortably visible, between the bright colors of her clothing and the lack of a suit on her back. She looked around, spying a few people in colored clothes, most of them hearts of four or five.
Her inspection of her surrounds was interrupted by what she initially thought was a literal whip crack, but was in fact a lash of psionic power. The priestess at the head of the chapel wore her hair so short as to stand directly out from her head, and so the trepanation scar was apparent even from Daisy’s distance. Daisy realized with a dawning dread why Ruler had said it wouldn’t matter that he couldn’t play translator. The priestess didn’t even attempt to speak, might even have had a broken and crooked jaw, but delivered her sermons directly to the scorched psyches of her congregation. With every sentence Daisy felt herself wincing, until Ruler caught her eye and the lashes were somewhat muted.
“We are the Ranks of the Damned! We live in the Kingdom of Hell! The One God examined us and found us wanting, we are guilty and condemned! Even our rulers, though their sin may weigh less heavily, were found unfit for the Kingdom of Heaven! Never forget that the One God knows all! This is the justice of the caste system! Each and every one of us was assigned from birth to a suit and caste, and it was led by the Spirit, who visits even us condemned souls in Hell to grant us an ordered society!” Every sentence was a declaration, whipped directly into the minds of the congregation.
“Work hard, for you toil for the Lord! There was no mention in the Apostle’s letters that work ended in death, and there is no rest for the wicked! The One God sees into your soul and knows when you do not apply yourselves to your just and, may the Lord will it, redemptive labors.”
Daisy felt an immediate surge of dismay, and the Gospel came to her mind, “Come to me, all you who labor and are heavily burdened, and I will give you rest.”
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The priestess went on in her sermon. “Some souls were simply weak, prone to temptation; they are put into the ace caste, where they will not face the great temptation of abusing power! Some souls needed the structure of a holy order, and these were inducted into the suit of clubs, keeping society orderly! And some are perhaps closer to redemption, in need of purgation rather than punishment for their sins; these are the souls which are chosen by the Spirit-led dealers of cards to be our leaders, our prophets! For in a world populated only with those who have earned the One God’s wrath, a world of sinners, we could not trust the word of an alleged prophet to be anything but the words of the Archenemy, who lays claim to all souls in Hell!
“Do not think that the eventual redemption of those in purgatory, elevated above you on Mount Olympus, working their way out of their state of fallen Grace, means that you will escape from your own torments in Hell! You may think that you have hardened your heart to the punishment of the One God’s wrath, but you will pass into a torpor and be born again to Hell, fresh and defenseless, ready to learn once again the Lord’s deep and abiding hatred for you!”
Honestly, Daisy felt the woman would have done well to punctuate her sermon with a few regular statements, then she remembered that Ruler, his skin now shining with sweat, was softening the psychic blows of the sermon. She tried to make a mental note to ask why he could only translate languages he knew, while the priestess clearly transcended linguistic barriers. Perhaps it had to do with the invasiveness of the psionic tendrils of thought. Another whip-crack brought her attention to the front of the chapel. It was more vitriolic platitudes, and Daisy finally could no longer stand to accept it laying down. The priestess was misleading her congregation, oppressing an entire city it seemed, with a ridiculous caste system and Infernalist doctrine unlike any Daisy had heard even on Jupitre.
“What do you make of me, then?!” Daisy demanded in Lider. Even as he was gesturing for her to sit down and be silent, Daisy appreciated that Ruler was doing as he had promised and giving her the words she needed in the tongue she didn’t know. “I came directly from Jupitre to Marz, and I never died. I am alive, and I tell you that this planet is Marz, not the outer circle of the universe that makes up Hell! You are on the fire planet, but if it is Hell it is one of your own making, not one in truth!”
Avery jerked and Daisy felt the blunted recoil of a psionic rebuke. “You are now in Hell, deluded though you may be! It was not another planet; rather, it was another planet but also another plane of existence! You cannot know whence you came from relative to where you are!”
“I can, in fact. I am a Bachelor geometer, I can show you the positions of the stars and prove with mathematics that this is the fourth planet from the Heavenly orb of the sun!”
“What is your caste, impudent whelp?! I am the authority here, while you do not even speak civilized Marzeilles!”
“I have no caste, I have no suit, I came to Watergate through the portal by which water makes its way to Marz from Jupitre! Answer that, blasphemer!”
“You are the blasphemer! You died! Your last memories before you came to Hell are doubtless an illusion created by your mind to deny the horrible truth! It is true, that some souls are so corrupt and hateful that they come to Hell as they were on Orth, and you must be prepared for the special torments the One God has saved for you!”
“You, and all this congregation, must know that you deal in lies, brought forth from the Lord of Lies, who wants all to give up on Salvation, the only means by which he gains souls! ‘As sin entered into the world through one woman, and death through sin, so death passed to all men because all sinned.’ And then, ‘If by the trespass of the one, death reigned through the one; so much more will those who receive the abundance of grace and the gift of righteousness reign in life through the one, Christ Savior’!”
“I will not debate scripture with an allegedly suitless interloper! The dealers of cards will see through your deceit, strip you of your casteless clothes, and brand you properly that you might never again blaspheme and be heard by anyone, in this congregation or any other! The Savior, whose blessed mercy allows that we might suffer and toil in the hottest depths of Creation, declared that those who broke His least commandment against calling another a fool would be in peril of the Hell of Fire! And what do you call me, a priestess, in claiming that I do not know my own scripture!?”
They went on in this vein for what seemed to Daisy mere moments, though it must have been longer for the exchange of vitriol involved. Finally, the priestess ordered Daisy to report to the city hall, where a dealer of cards could assign her the eternal fate which would be her caste and suit. Daisy had had enough. “I can prove by water sorcery my purity, and so I shall!” Daisy concentrated and summoned a sphere of water into her hand, but a psionic slap, even blunted by Ruler, broke her concentration. The entire room rocked with the force of the priestess’ wrath.
Daisy’s focus lost, the water poured down off her hand and spattered to the floor. “You waste water? This is how you show your purity?! There is no such sphere as water to quench thirst in Hell, there is earth and air and fire! You waste our time with nonsense! Begone!”
Daisy, feeling dispirited, rose and walked from the Church. It seemed that summary dismissal by the priestess trumped even… whatever purpose posting guards at the exit to the building served. She sighed. Ruler slumped against her as they exited, the effort of translation and shielding them both from the priestess’ psionic attacks evidently having taken its toll upon him. She stood there, holding up his weight, until he seemed steady on his feet again.
He laughed weakly. “Y-you certainly know a thing or two about wrath.”
She shook her head. “Do not forget. Wrath without prophecy is injustice.” She wrapped an arm around his shoulder, and felt a frisson of relief at the contact with another, non-hostile human being. Ruler continued to stand on his own two feet, but leaned into the contact and the crook of her arm, and the two of them set out to find somewhere to while away the time until town hall opened the next day.
Struck by a thought, Daisy asked Ruler, “What did she mean, that there is no water sphere? Is there such a thing on Orth? I feel like we talked about it. You’ve seen me conjure water.” Ruler sighed and shrugged. His own element was not impacted by Marz’s elemental alignment, but he had seen no evidence of water sorcery in his time on the planet. He had also witnessed the practice of using fire to boil waste to extract the water from it by distillation, so no he didn’t think they had any concept of the water sphere. This was shocking to Daisy, who had not imagined so much could be lost during the Age of Loss and yet to be regained in this, the Age of Steel. She wondered what wonders—hah—the next Age would hold, for the current Age had surely gone on quite a while. But if Marz and Jupitre were any indication, perhaps the next Age would be another Age of Loss, all knowing surrendered to the Repositorium for gold, forgetting the temples that once made the gold sacred, all thinking surrendered to dogma, forgetting that faith without reason was death.
