"Terra? Earth? I… I don't…"
No. 3 stared, uncomprehending, at the iridescent, floating sphere. *That* was his home? A violent throbbing pulsed at his temples; fragmented images, like shards of a shattered mirror, churned in his mind, tantalizingly close yet impossible to grasp.
"Ah, yes. One of our pitiable little lambs, shorn of memory," the Bishop cooed, his voice dripping with counterfeit sympathy. He tapped No. 3's head with a pudgy finger, then turned, a showman unveiling his grand illusion, towards the projected blue planet.
"In the mists of a forgotten epoch… Tidal Force was as a_tm_osphere itself, an omnipresent ocean bathing every crevice of this world."
The image of Earth shimmered, then warped, resolving into a flowing, breathtaking mural. Giants reshaped continents with a casual wave of their hands; winged deities tore rifts in the heavens with a single beat of their pinions. Their colossal forms strode amongst the clouds, their every gesture an act of creation or cataclysmic annihilation.
"The titans of that age," the Bishop intoned, "could stride from this terrestrial cradle into the deepest, darkest voids of the cosmos." His finger, a fleshy wand, traced a path across the projection. Galaxies swirled like diamond dust; a stark, black maw, a hungry void, loomed. "And there… they found a… *rent* in the fabric of reality."
This was no mere hole. It was an abyss, a gluttonous entity that devoured all, from which even light itself could not escape—a hideous, weeping wound upon the face of the universe.
"They called it… 'the Gate.' And beyond the Gate… lay another world entirely."
The vista shifted once more: gargantuan colony ships, their sterns ablaze with incandescent light, sailed like majestic galleons towards the fathomless abyss of the Gate.
"And that new world, they christened 'Terra.' It is the blood of these, our Golden Age forebears, that courses through your very veins."
No. 3's breath hitched, a strangled gasp. He looked down at his own trembling hands. *From… another world? Then I…*
"But twenty millennia past," the Bishop's voice sliced through his bewildered thoughts, the firelight in the grotto seeming to dim and shrink, "a war of gods engulfed the heavens."
On the celestial canvas, gods, luminous and terrible, rained from the sky. Their fallen bodies became mountain ranges; their spilled ichor, a crimson ocean. The wellspring of Tidal Force ran dry. And the Gate to Terra, that fragile bridge between worlds, began to crumble.
"For twenty thousand years, the Tide has ebbed, an inexorable decline. This world, like a senile elder, shuffles slowly towards its own tomb. The surviving gods have vanished into legend. And our own great Jupiter… he has vouchsafed no divine oracle, no sign, no whisper, since that cataclysm."
The Bishop shook his head, a profound sigh escaping his lips. The assembled cultists, as if cued, bowed their heads in a display of collective sorrow.
"The fault, alas, is our own," the Bishop lamented. "We, in our hubris, abused powers not meant for mortal hands. We sought to usurp the dominion of the divine. Our blood, our very souls, are tainted with a loathsome arrogance, an unforgivable ignorance. We…"
He expelled another long, shuddering breath, his gaze sweeping over his rapt audience before slowly, theatrically, turning back.
"We… are all sinners."
Then, abruptly, the Bishop's arms shot out, pointing at No. 3 with an almost messianic fervor, his eyes flicking almost imperceptibly to a point just behind the boy.
"But *you*… you are different! Terra, untouched by the Tide's ebb and flow! Your souls, your very blood, still blaze with the undiluted radiance, the primordial power, of our ancestors!"
"The Most Holy Sanctum, employing hallowed artifacts bequeathed by the ancient gods, braved untold perils to snatch you from the collapsing Gate, to bring you to this dying world! We sought in you a flicker of hope, an ember of that lost Golden Age! But…"
His voice, once again, shifted, now laced with a sneering contempt. "Regardless of your lineage, *you*, in your current vessel, are… imperfect. A mediocrity, at best."
"I… I'm not! I—" No. 3, sensing the a_tm_osphere curdle, began a desperate, incoherent defense.
"The doddering fools in the Sanctum may coddle you, may see you as their precious future. I… or rather, *we*…" The Bishop gestured vaguely, encompassing the shadowy, masked figures. "We hold a rather different… perspective."
"What matters is not talent, not some ethereal soul… but your *flesh*. Your *blood*. Imagine, my faithful… if this radiant ichor, this essence of the Golden Age, could flow within *our* veins! How… divinely perfect that would be!"
His voice throbbed with an ecstatic, almost orgasmic fervor. A collective tremor ran through the assembled cultists, their masked faces turned towards No. 3 with a new, terrifying intensity, as if about to witness a transubstantiation, a holy communion. Here, the untainted blood of Terra would scour them of their sins. Surely, any god witnessing this… this *purification*… would gaze upon them with favor!
"My brothers and sisters!" the Bishop boomed. "Whether you joined our sacred order to seek release from your… persistent afflictions"—he patted a nearby elderly woman, who shivered with a paroxysm of ecstatic anticipation—"or whether you chafed at the… limitations of your own meager power"—he gestured towards a diminutive man in the distance, whose anguished mask bobbed in a deep bow—"tonight, all your desires shall be… consummated!"
He beckoned. A towering figure emerged from the shadows, gliding forward with an almost preternatural silence. In his hand, an ornate, gleaming sword. The blade seemed to hum, to vibrate at an almost imperceptible frequency, an immense, contained power radiating from it that made No. 3's breath seize in his chest.
Silas. Head bowed, his expression unreadable beneath the weeping mask. He seemed… unwilling, or unable, to meet No. 3's terrified gaze.
A violent convulsion seized No. 3. *Danger! I have to get up! I have to get out! Warn them!*
He strained, trying to rise, but his limbs were unresponsive, filled with an unnatural lethargy. Something was sapping his strength, draining him. The runes on the stone dais beneath him pulsed with a baleful, dark crimson light. Countless, fine red tendrils, like living chains, snaked around his body, binding him.
"You… you can't…" He felt himself dissolving, his essence fading, while his physical form remained cruelly, inexplicably tethered.
Large beads of icy sweat streamed down his temples, hissing as they struck the heated stone platform, each drop vaporizing into a wisp of white smoke.
The dais grew hotter, a searing wave of heat rising from the soles of his feet, consuming him.
The Bishop took the sword from Silas. As his fingers closed around the hilt, tiny, jagged sparks of lightning crackled along the blade's length.
"Fear not, child. This will be… swift."
No. 3's head swiveled, a desperate, silent plea to Silas. He saw, beneath the mask, Silas's eyes—bloodshot, tormented—fixed on the ground, his hands trembling uncontrollably.
A silver flash arced through the air.
A searing cold on his neck. A small, almost insignificant tearing sensation… then it blossomed, expanded, an agony that flooded his brain. He instinctively raised a hand, his fingertips encountering a warm, slick wetness. Blood, hot and copious, gushed between his fingers, blooming in obscene, vibrant flowers across his chest.
A scream, stillborn, died in his throat, dissolving into a gurgling cascade of blood bubbles that filled his mouth.
"Ghh… ghh…" The Bishop's obese form wavered and distorted in his rapidly dimming, blood-red vision, like an oil painting submerged in water. His knees, finally, gave way. He crumpled heavily onto the stone, then toppled backward like a felled tree.
The dull thud of his skull impacting the stone disc reverberated in his ears. The high-pitched ringing intensified, a screaming crescendo that drowned out all other sound.
No. 3 lay supine, his vision blurring into a crimson haze. He saw his own blood, a dark, viscous river, flowing along the incised grooves of the stone platform, converging, pooling…
The Bishop, raising the blood-drenched sword aloft, shrieked, his voice shrill with manic exultation.
"Today! We FEAST upon the flesh and blood of the RADIANT!"
The white-robed figures swayed, a tide of faceless ghouls, drawing nearer. Their shadows, cast by the flickering firelight, writhed and elongated, growing, twisting into monstrous, dancing shapes.
The expressions on their masks seemed to shift, to warp in the unsteady light: smiling lips contorted into leering snarls; weeping eyes stretched into wider, more voracious grins. Gold dust, dislodged by their movements, flaked from their bodies, revealing glimpses of the pale, sickly skin beneath.
No. 3's consciousness frayed, unraveled. Strangely, no thoughts of Earth's azure sky, no final ponderings on his lost origins or forgotten family, graced his fading mind. As the ultimate darkness descended, what flickered in his memory was that achingly cold night in the purification room:
Moonlight, a sliver of hope, seeping through a crack in the stone. The furtive rustling outside the iron door. Then, a piece of black bread, wrapped in a tattered rag, shoved beneath the door, still radiating a blessed warmth. He remembered, as he'd wolfed it down, ravenous, hearing No. 7's hushed, urgent whisper from beyond the door: "Slow down, you idiot." And then… No. 6's laughter, soft and suppressed, a conspiratorial giggle, as if reveling in their small, shared act of defiance.
The phantom aroma of bread, warm and yeasty, seemed to linger at the edge of his senses. A faint, almost imperceptible smile touched No. 3's lips. His pupils, wide and vacant, dilated into the blackness.
And in his very last wisp of fading awareness, he heard it: a chorus, a cacophony, of wet, eager, swallowing sounds… like a convocation of vultures, feasting on carrion.