Benedictia

The man approached the wall and stopped in front of the portrait painted upon it. While most would have been dumbstruck by the sheer horror of what was painted upon those walls, he gave it no heed. He had seen and slain enough of the real thing to not really care about this imitation. He brought his face close to the painting, and the eyes of the portrait’s subject stared back at the man in gibbering madness. They were a stark contrast to the man’s own eyes which were calm, unchanging, cold, and betrayed nothing of the anticipation that clawed behind them. The man was alone, so no one could hear him as he mumbled to himself. His voice was just low enough to be incoherent to anyone but himself. He put his hand against the wall and slid his fingers across the paint. He pulled his hand close to his face and sniffed lightly. The odor that met him was far from that of flaking paint. He was shocked that the material used to decorate this place had lasted as long as it did. Of course, he overcame his surprise quickly when he reminded himself of what had created this “art”. Indeed, the ruinous powers rarely held to any law or common sense but their own.

As his eyes carefully slid across the etchings engraved upon the stone, the man continued to mumble as he read. His hand followed his eyes, underlining what they scanned. As quickly as his disturbing wispers had begun, it stopped. His hand remained where his reading had ended. The stranger then began to trace the stone with his fingers. He traced and moved his fingers in shapes that only made sense to him. Every move was exact and practiced, and was executed with great gentleness. Almost at a pin’s length, the man’s hand froze. The slightest pressure was applied, and the “solid” stone began to bend and compress under the man’s fingers in a way that betrayed its appearance. The stranger removed his hand, and the stone conformed back into place. With the slightest of hisses, a section of the wall seemed to break off and slide backwards and to the right.
As quiet as it was, the sound of the door opening still echoed down the halls of the catacombs.

Without the slightest evidence of being shocked by any of this, the heavily cloaked figure calmly took a few steps through the newly formed doorway past the door which now stood alone in the room like a piece of unfinished wall. Where his foot landed, clouds of dust rose up in its wake. The half inch thick carpet covered every thing in the dank room. Darkness hung over the place like a blanket. The man pulled a small tube from his pocket and pulled the tape off of the top. The flare sputtered into life and brought with it, a dazzling, yellow tinted light. The man winced and refocused his eyes. He surveyed the room and found that the dust, the cold, and the stale, rank air were the only testament to the age and unvisited nature of the place. There were no spider webs, no crawling insects; no bats or nesting rats. He doubted if he wasn’t the first living thing to enter this room in its many long millennia in the forgotten darkness. His eyes also noticed that the walls, ceilings, and even the floors were covered in paintings similar to the one that marked the door. However, each inch of each copy had something slightly different to it. The figure mused that whatever madman that had decorated this place had at least been devoted to his work. When his eyes finally came to rest upon it, the man immediately knew that all of this detail, and secrecy, and madness of this place had been in complete devotion to what he now stared at. And, if he was correct, it had not been wasted.

The stranger strode forward and stopped in front of the object of his focus. He knelt down to get a better look at the altar. This was the only thing in the room that seemed to have escaped the layer of dust that blanketed everything else. The altar was made up of a statue of a shrouded figure wearing a hooded cloak. The perfection of the curves and folds of the statue’s cloak might have been a masterpiece elsewhere, but here the statue only gave a sense of cold dread. The only detail that gave any evidence to the figure underneath was two glowing coals of eyes that smoldered at the man from under the shade of the hood. Two scaled and clawed hands protruded from the sleeves.

The “hands” supported a cube shaped slab of perfectly black stone. On each side of the cube except the top, hundreds of leering and terrifying faces were carved into the stone. On the top, the slab was completely and utterly smooth, but it gave no reflection of any light, rather any light that touched the stone seemed to almost fall into it.

The man’s eyes continued to move over the altar until they fell upon the entire reason he was even in such a place. The chalice rested upon the very center of the top of the stone. It was eight inches wide at the top and the base of the glass. Carvings and inscriptions twisted and climbed up the handle of the chalice and the cup itself was covered in similar markings. Leaning over it, the stranger’s saw that the cup was filled with an unmoving, red liquid. The man calmly reached up and dipped two of his fingers into the chalice. The sensors in his gauntlet told him that this liquid was surprisingly warm. He guessed that it was probably the only warm thing to escape the cold of this place. The substance dripped off of his fingers and back into the chalice where it made no ripples. There was the slightest tap at the doorway, and the man whirled around to confront the source. Cowering in the door way was a small, chubby man. He shook with fear at the bolt pistol that the stranger now aimed at his head.

“No milord, it is only me. You can relax.” stammered the man in an embarrassingly high voice that shook with fear. The small man’s master noticed how his servant’s multiple chins quivered in terror. His look of anger melted into simple annoyance.

“Of coarse Horace, you have my apologies”, he replied, “I was simply preparing to cleanse this dark shrine.”

“Quite right sir, y-you are quite right. I shall call for men.”

“Ah… No, I think I shall handle this personally. Wait for me at the stairs.”

“Y-yes sir, gladly sir”, breathed the man. With that, the squat figure turned and hurried from the man’s presence.

The stranger turned back to the altar and paused as if in thought. He eventually gave a frustrated sigh. He was going to have to kill Horace now too.

“Oh well”, thought the man to himself, “all in due time.” With that, he turned his eyes back towards the cup and the room once again echoed with his mumblings.