Chapter 42: an Infiltrator and a Saboteur go for a Walk

And lo, William Oh was delivered unto the hands of sinners, who crucified him, and on the third day, he rose again, crawling through a river of shit and coming out clean on the other side.

-          Jason Salazar

“Hey, check this out,” Will said, pushing his foot against the surface of the water, which seemed to bend under his foot like he’d stepped on a gelatinous sweet.

“It seems like your Ability affects surface tension,” Loth mused as Will pressed nearly six inches into the water before it broke and surrounded his foot.

“Does that mean I can walk on water someday?” Will asked.

Loth shrugged.

Will’s amusement with the newfound ability to wiggle water with his feet didn’t last long once the smell truly engulfed them.

“It’s times like this I regret not getting the phantom eye,” Will said, trying not to gag.

With the phantom eye he could’ve done all of this with significantly less crawling through shit.

They’d briefly considered the Confidence Man technique where he simply bluffed his way into the temple, but Will wasn’t exactly the smoothest, and his missing hand was a dead giveaway.

Will wasn’t that kind of Infiltrator.

No, he was the kind of Infiltrator that got to wade through the city sewers, then squirm his way through a shit-pipe, then wait while Loth used his insects to carefully remove the toilet above them before putting it back exactly how it had been before.

Will held his arms out while Loth’s insects removed the waxed onesie. Loth did the same, and the two of them were inside the Temple of Granesh, and clean to boot.

“Okay, the waxed suits were a good choice,” Will whispered as the two of them crept into the main hall.

“Of course they were,” Loth whispered back.

It was currently the dead of night in the temple of Order. All good priests and priestesses were in bed, dreaming of fire and brimstone…or whatever they dreamt of.

Will paused in the hall as a glint of green caught his eye.

He glanced to the left, where the public would gather to join the clergy in prayer. There was a green pattern on the ground, presumably from stained glass art lit by the street lights outside.

“This way,” Loth whispered, tugging his sleeve.

Will turned and followed as Loth stalked down the halls.

They discovered the barracks, with dozens of priests sleeping off the hard work of spreading the word of Granesh and smiting whoever disagreed with them.

They crept past it.

The next room was a solid wooden door warded by some kind of knot of magical energy that glowed as they approached. Will was tempted to try his hand at disabling it, but he didn’t want to try until they explored the rest of the temple.

No sense triggering an alarm before they got all their options.

Loth tugged at his shirt and pointed to a door at the far end of the hall, marked ‘Storage’

Will nodded and the two of them crept down the hall to the door.

The door wasn’t warded magically, but it was locked. Loth fed some insects into the lock, which turned a second later.

They crept in and Loth held out a glowbug to scan their surroundings.

At the front of the room was normal stuff. Cleaning supplies, brooms, nails, wood, tools, etc.

The further back the shelves went, the more esoteric things got, until the room was subdivided by a towering shelf with a ‘Sacrifices’ sign on it.

Will and Loth glanced at each other and shrugged.

Might as well grab something valuable while they were risking their hide like this.

They went past the shelf and saw the other half of the room was dedicated to shelf after shelf of Sacrifices wrapped in preservatives.

Ooh, they’re organized by floor then monster type, Will thought, heading for the shelf labeled ‘4th floor’.

Will carefully rifled through the shelf.

Ooh, swamp witch. Elite creature from the 4th floor with powerful magical abilities. Bloodsucker, Mankeran Burrowers…

Will turned and held out the jar of preserved insects to Loth.

Loth shook his head. “I want to domesticate them, not add them as Sacrifices.”

Fair enough, Will thought with a shrug, turning back to the shelf. Adder, diseased lumberer, dreamcatcher vine, giant leech, not to be confused with the bloodsucker.

Just based on the Sacrifices it offered, Will could already tell that the 4th floor was going to be an inhospitable place.

…

Will’s eyes widened.

Relic worm!

In the glass jar were hundreds of dead worms snarled into a disgusting mess. They were segmented, pale things with strangely glimmering mouthpieces, as if the worms had metallic mandibles.

Which on a worm…doesn’t make a lot of sense.

Will set the jar in the crook of his elbow and popped it open, setting the top aside before he plunged his hand into the slimy snarl of worms.

Mimicking what he’d seen Loth do, Will held the fistful of dead worms up high, offering them to the Tower.

Do you wish to Sacrifice Relic Worm to Phantom Hand?

Yes.

There was a flash of light and the relic worms were gone.

Phantom Hand has been upgraded. Review the description for changes.

Phantom Hand

Passive

Active: 1 charge.

Gain the use of an ethereal Phantom Hand. Access a tiny amount of dimensional storage with a Charge. Sacrifice a stored Relic to gain its effect.  Relic effect and Phantom Hand’s abilities scale with Acuity.

Acuity gain from items in Phantom Hand do not apply scaling to their own effect.

Current effect:

Ring of Insulation

+6 focus

+6 resistance

+27% resistance to fire.

Oh gods, it’s every bit as awesome as I thought…I think?

“What was that?” Loth whispered, blinking her eyes.

“Found my relic worms.” Will said. “Sacrificed them.”

“Warn me next time, I’m seeing the shelf every time I close my eyes.”

“Sorry,” Will whispered back. “By the way, if something goes from twenty to twenty-seven, what percentage is that?”

“Thirty-five percent.”

Okay, so it was one percent improvement for each point in Acuity, and it’s definitely rounded down.

Will dropped three free points into his Acuity, bringing it up to 40, then checked the Relic currently sacrificed to his Phantom Hand. Vindication followed a moment later:

Ring of Insulation

+7 focus

+7 resistance

+28% resistance to fire.

 Nice. Gotta get back to work, though.

They kept searching through the floors, paying special attention to the 7th Floor shelf, but they didn’t find any Immortal Serpent, which was a bummer, but not unexpected.

Saints

One of the boxes on the floor up against the back of the wall was labeled strangely.

Saints? Will thought to himself, frowning as he scanned the other two boxes on the floor.

Bishops

Priests

Will motioned Loth over, and the kobold picked the lock on the Saint chest for him, and together they pried it open.

“Huh,” Loth whispered. “The corpse fee makes sense now.”

Will dug out a preserved human eyeball with careful writing on the outside of the jar.

Maribel Johan, Reached the 14th Floor and achieved level 62 before retiring. In life, acquired powerful healing and sight-based Abilities.

Estimated 2 focus, 2 acuity

“Well, that’s creepy,” Will muttered.

“This is how they grow.” Loth whispered.

“Eh?” Will grunted.

“Healing Abilities that can target others are rare bordering on unheard of outside of the churches. Then why do so many priests have healing abilities? Because they Sacrifice a piece of someone who did, which gets their foot in the door. Then when they eventually die, their body is divided up among the new recruits, and the cycle continues. That’s why they’re so desperate to get the bodies of their priests back.”

“Huh. You think they’ll be upset if some of their ‘saints’ go missing?” Will asked.

“Undoubtedly. I assume these powerful ‘saints’ are earmarked for nepotism.”

Will clicked his tongue in disappointment.

“Wait,” he whispered. “What’s nepotism?”

“Favoritism based on familial relation. High-ranking members in the organization give Saint-quality Sacrifices to their sons and daughters, who go on to become very powerful and secure high ranks inside the organization, which then repeats itself ad nauseam.”

“At least, that’s my best guess for how it plays out,” Loth said with a shrug. “Every organization has its dynasties.”

“I’m taking a couple,” Will said, grabbing a mummified hand. “I could use a backscratcher. And if it turns out that I was wrong and the Temple of Granesh wasn’t after me, we’ll give them back.”

“And if they are after you already?” Loth asked.

“Then it can’t get much worse than assassin teams attacking in the middle of the night, can it?” Will whispered, slipping the mummified hand into one of his empty belt-holsters, the eyeball into a pouch.

“I suppose we’ll find out. And how are you going to use them?”

“Sell them to Alicia’s dad, probably.” Will said with a shrug.

Loth nodded. “I suppose he’s the only person we have any sort of connection with for whom the benefits might outweigh the costs.”

“Exactly,” Will whispered, scanning the room. “Now let’s go search that warded room.”

Loth checked their exits and secured the barracks door shut while Will waited for her to finish. Once the kobold saboteur came back, he slashed the phantom hand through the glowing symbols on the door.

Will let out a sigh when the wards didn’t explode, summon a demon or raise an alarm, instead the magic simply ripped apart like cobwebs as his Phantom Hand tore through them.

“I love this thing,” Will whispered as Loth stepped forward and ‘picked’ the lock. “Not as much as my left hand, but it’s growing on me.”

A moment later they were past the door, in a well-appointed office that reminded Will of the one he’d seen in the Oilton castle.

Shiny wooden desk, lots of letters, big, fancy chair.

No shelves of powerful Relics and Sacrifices, but mostly the same.

“Watch the door.” Loth said, climbing up on the desk and rifling through the letters. She read faster than Will did. Significantly faster.

“Huh.” Loth grunted after skimming a handful of letters.

“What?”

“They keep referring to this person called ‘the prophet’, something about the end of the world, and how our ‘ancient enemy’ is sending monsters in human form to set the stage for the final battle between good and evil. You know. Crazy person stuff.”

Loth cocked her head as she read the next one. “They also mention offhand about nonhumans being unclean and eliminating them being the next phase in reclaiming The Tower, right after finding The Deceivers. With a capital D.”

“Dicks,” Will whispered, turning his gaze back to the hall.

“Indeed,” Loth whispered, climbing off the desk and peering under it.

“Ooh.” Loth’s voice was muffled under the desk.

Clunk.

Will tensed at the sound, scanning the hallway.

Nothing.

“What was that?” Will whispered, turning back to find a portion of the rug propped up.

“Secret door,” Loth said, emerging from beneath the desk to kick aside the rug and pry open the hatch, revealing a staircase descending further into the bowels of the earth.

They closed the door to the hall, and the two of them snuck down into the darkness, navigating by the light of the glowbug.

“I’m not sure if my nose is still burnt from the sewers, but are you smelling that?” Will asked as they descended. It smelled like death.

“I’m seeing that,” Loth said, panning the glowbug over the floor, which seemed to be caked in old blood.

In the center of the room was a corpse tied to a man-sized X suspended high in the air, seemingly tortured to death. A young man, about Will’s age, height, eye and hair color, with a missing left hand that had healed a long time ago.

Looked pretty similar too, under all the bruising.

Will’s hair rose, breathing spiked, stomach churned as he imagined the amount of suffering this…boy must’ve gone through because of a simple case of mistaken identity. He could faintly feel every cut and burn, the rough rope against his wrists, the stickiness of his own blood drying between flesh and wood.

Will’s vision went blurry, doubling as his eyes crossed and he faintly felt like he was looking down at himself from an elevated position…imagining himself as the corpse strung from the ceiling, watching this slightly more fortunate echo of himself have a panic attack.

Will doubled over, the content of his stomach that had been threatening to rebel ever since the sewers finally escaping confinement.

“I think…they might be after me,” Will gasped, wiping his mouth with his sleeve.

“That’s a pretty safe bet,” Loth said, nodding.

“Intruders!” A shrill voice echoed faintly from the staircase above them. “Wake up! Wake UP!”

Well, that’s not ideal, Will thought, glancing up at the staircase.

If they had got caught in the hallway, they would be able to make a break for it, but since they were down here un the secret basement, the only way out was to make it up the stairs, through the office, past the barracks, which would no doubt be vomiting priests into the hallway.

Will had no confidence that he could cut his way through those odds.

Actually..secret basement, huh? Will thought, glancing around until he located the toilet room in his mental map. Then he traced the shit-pipe to the sewer, then the main sewer itself…

“The sewer is right there,” Will pointed at the wall. “Break through and we’re out.”

“But we don’t have our wading gear.” Loth whined.

“Tough.”

“Easy for you to say, it’s not up to your eyeballs.” Loth said, crossing her arms.

“They broke into the Bishop’s office!” A faint voice called. Loth had re-concealed the hidden hatch, but the bishop would surely check it in a matter of minutes, if not seconds.

“…Fine, but I ride on your shoulders.”

“Deal.”

Loth pointed at the wall and one of her bugs grew massive and armored before it shot through the wall, punching a hole into the sewers.

Four more in rapid succession and a solid kick made a hole big enough for both of them to climb through, allowing the exotic smells of the sewer to flood the church’s secret torture-room.

“…What are you doing?” Loth asked.

“Giving them the finger.” Will said, posing his dead doppleganger’s hand in a clear middle-finger. “I thought about taking him with us to really creep them out but I wasn’t sure we could get away while carrying him.

“Ah, you forget,” Loth said, and Loths’ insects began to swarm towards the corpse.

“Nice,” Will said, cutting Dead Will’s restraints before patting his shoulder. “You’re coming with us, buddy.”

Dead Will gave him a grateful middle finger and a rictus grin.

Will climbed out the hole in the wall first, landing waist deep in muck, then grabbed Loth and placed her on his shoulders.

Dead Will followed through, suspended in midair by Loth’s flying insects.

Will glanced back and saw the bits and pieces of the busted wall floating back in place, re-sealed by Loth’s swarm gluing them back together with their secretions until there was no sign the wall had ever been broken.

“Hah, that’s gonna mess with their heads,” Will said as he waded as fast as he possibly could without splashing poop-water in his mouth.

“…Wait, why can’t you just get your bugs to carry you!?” Will demanded.

“Hiyah!” Loth said, kicking her heels against his ribs.