The girl dutifully crushes the brass hinges in her no-longer-quite-human hands, and jams the wrought iron bolt. Then turns. Swallows nervously. Wishes for a little light. 

Instead of the normal piled crates and cramped storage room, a single damp stone staircase wanders blackly downwards. Through a hastily walled-off section of dripping sewer then deeper and deeper still. The stair widens to a semi-natural cavern with a number of conveniently labeled doors set into the not-quite-walls. “Chapel,” one reads. Quarters for the more permanent members of the cult’s clergy. The office of the high priest. Storage rooms. 

All about the rough floor, ancient masonry lies tumbled. Fluted shattered marble columns with newer sharp-edged runes that hurt to look at. The crumbling remains of marble-faced walls. Shattered mosaics that could have been a floor once… or maybe a ceiling. The ruins of old Agraphael from back when the Doom first came and long buried by one of the dozens of tectonic upheavals to which the Prime Material has been subjected. 

Your failures do not seem to have interrupted us yet, moronic child. We will visit their high priest, first.

She nods once, briskly. “Sword or no sword?” She wonders aloud. “Sword?” She approaches the door cautiously. “Knock knock?” She tries. It’s bound to work one of these days…

Sword. You might need to block the door, if he tries to close it. And be ready to block his scream, do not repeat your lethargy from upstairs.

The door opens with the soundless lassitude of well-oiled hinges and a confident resident. 

The man is tall, and powerfully built. His hands are calloused from handling rope, his face stained by days laboring beneath the sun. His eyes hold the desperation of one who has drowned… 

He wears the burnt-umber robes of the priesthood of Ard, god of men, but profaned. Marked with the same jagged, eye-tearing runes as the pillars, stitched in green or black or blue or purple. The colors of bruised flesh, contrasting jarringly with the robes. Torn at the sleeves, bare footed, devoid of any of the gold or jewelry of Ard’s priests. A mockery of their finery. 

“Yes, my child?” He asks. His eyes look past her. He blinks. Tries to focus subconsciously, but his gaze keeps sliding off her thin face. Her cloak clings tightly to her shoulders like the pauldrons of a suit of heavy armor. 

“I’m not really sure what to do now,” she says. “They never open the door. Usually it’s a boom and then a necessary bloodbath? I think we’re doing something different this time though.” The unpinns the broach at her throat, drapes her cloak over her free arm, and steps into the cramped little room. 

Close the door behind you. This could be a little while.

She closes the door ang glances about. 

It’s a narrow alcove carved from the living rock by ancient ruination. At the far end is another door, closed and marked with a terrible sigil. Sagging bookshelves decorate the walls with their rows of damp-ruined books. A single desk dominates the center of the chamber, made of thick ocean-battered timber. Shattered coral lies decoratively over the surface. A guttering oil lamp. A slender wicked-looking dagger of some dark metal. 

“Nerissa?” The man frowns as her cloak’s magic fades. “Uh, my queen? Your majesty?” His voice is deep and sonorous, but scratchy around the edges

“Close! Her sister.” 

Ask him, does he believe in his god?

She relays the message because for some reason people persist in being unable to hear the voice even when it’s RIGHT THERE. This, she decides, is because she is insane. It’s not a pleasant feeling, being insane…

“Obviously,” the high priest replies, maneuvering around her towards his desk. “I’ve seen it.” His voice is compelling. Deep. Like the ebb and flow of the tide. “Not a god as you’re used to, but a deep thing. Inexorable and mighty as the sea itself!” 

"Good. Then you have faith?"

“Faith enough in my god, and faith in the ruin it will bring. I do not expect to survive that ruin and nothing you can do to me can compare to what my god brings.” 

he lunges for the dagger. 

Perfect. Let us test that.

A dagger… so like a knife… The girl skewers him through his scarred, reaching, wrist- ancient sword transfixing him to the table like a butterfly on a pin. He doesn’t cry out, merely reaches with his other hand and she delivers a brutal punch to the back of his head. That seems to stop the attempt. 

Still, he doesn’t cry out though he does grit his teeth. “Purity from pain,” he grates out. “Purity of purpose. As the Doom unmakes, so shall I be unmade.”

Correct. Let us begin.

Girl, break a rib. The rest of this will be easier if it hurts him to breathe.

“That won’t be hard. Humans are fragile.” 

A fleeting look of fear comes over the man’s quickly schooled features. 

She smiles sweetly, because really the voice is nice so rarely… And drives her hand into the man’s side. Hard. Not quite as hard as her enhanced muscles can manage, but with far greater force than merely mortal muscles could ever hope to match. She can feel the bone splinter. Can feel the shattered ends grinding against each other. 

He does cry out, this time. And sucks in a quick pained breath immediately after. 

Good girl. Pin his other arm back, now. Lift the shoulder so he can't lie flat.

“Like this?” The girl frowns, withdraws her blade from the table, maneuvers it carefully. He cries out as the blade moves in his split hand. She turns it, and feeds it slowly farther, through his other palm. “You want like…. In the table? Because I think he could just slide off of this? Or… well, it’s a sword. He could… cut the rest of the way through? He would have half hands, but…. Spells? I don’t know?” 

The man grits his teeth to hold in his suffering. To let it purify him. “Purity in pain, purity of purpose.”