The Church

Aaralon began to move along the road towards the church, the little voice seeming pleased with that decision.

As he neared the place he watched as the few people standing outside moved inside, he half expected the doors to be closed, excluding the outsider from whatever service was going on inside. Instead, they stayed hanging open, the inside dark against the grey sky as Aaralon climbed the steps.

The sound of a voice, strong and male, came from inside, a booming speech that had the revenant “ahmen’s” of the congregation as punctuation. Aaralon slipped inside and found an empty pew at the back. No-one turned to look at him, all eyes instead focused on the figure standing before the altar.

The church was surprisingly well-appointed for such a remote place, most of what had once been the wooden frame of the building had been replaced with stone which, considered the terrain, must have come quite some distance. They even had a stain glass window in pride of place above the altar. To Aaralons surprise it didn’t show the usual imagery of the Lord handing down blessings or watching with fatherly pride over the peoples of the world. Instead, it showed the Casting Out of The Wicked, a story of the “true church” driving out a sect of magic users. He had only ever been taught it as an example of the dangers magic users could face in the wider world and here it was being held up as something worthy of praise. In the glass, the golden armoured warriors of The Lord brandished spear and shield as the dark and twisted magic users tumbled out of frame, the merest hint of red around the bottom of the frame suggesting the fires of hell.

The image finally made Aaralon really tune in to what the man standing before the altar and gesturing wildly was saying. The crowd suddenly swelled in a sound of mindless adulation as the priest seemed to come to the end of some part of his rant. He paused for a long moment, seeming to bask in the praise before letting his expression darkening as he began to speak again.

“We are not cut off from the world out here,” he began with a wide sweep of his arms. “Travellers bring stories of the wider world and the so-called, great cities of the earth and I listen to them keenly. For the unwary are easy prey for the evildoer!” He ended his sentence with a shout, his fist in the air before again relaxing.

“Brothers and Sisters it is with a heavy heart that I must tell you that the rot of magic has spread far. The travellers bring me stories of the crimes that are allowed to be enacted in the name of ‘progress’.” He spat the word like poison. “They allow their children to be taught how to consort with demons! With Demons! They raise these sinners up and allow them to build schools to sin!”

The crowd roared with mindless, animal rage at that and Aaralon did his best to mime along.

“Is it any wonder that so many of the true faith have fled from the sins of the wider world?” He looked around, his eyes raking over the room without ever really looking at anyone.

“I see new faces in the church today and I am thankful. Thankful that the truly faithful have found there way to safe harbour, to a place where we can all protect our immortal souls from the sins of the outside world.”

A cheer went up from the congregation and it was edged with the kind of self-satisfied anger that Aaralon had known all too well. That strange mix of knowing you are right and hating that others refuse to see it. Always underpinned by the assumption that they do so purely out of spite. It had been in the chants and voices of the students who did attend the chapel along with preachers that had plied their trade in his hometown. It used to turn his stomach but now, with the voice and the changes his Master had brought in him, Aaralon could see something else.

As he looked around the room he didn’t see men and women who had truly been ‘saved’ from the baser desires and wants of the lowly mortal realm. They had simply suppressed them. Pushed the unspoken wants and needs down, some so far that they might even have truly thought they were gone, some hiding just below the surface and given away by glances and expressions.

Now he saw men who lusted after women other than their wives or even after other men. Women who felt the same or who wanted to lay with more than one partner. All of these banal urges lay atop a sea of nearly formless desires for darker things.

It was a wellspring that only needed the right person who knew not only how to release the pressure but how to direct that pressure into something useful.

Aaralon hadn’t been sure if he was the one to do it until he looked at the priest and realised just how easy it could be.