Voicemail

There is a foul smell in the air, so strong that it permeates the worn stone of the temple. She remembers that, once, smoke filtered through the hallways, the scent of sweet buds and aromatic leaves heavy in the air as priestesses made their rounds. With time, not even the sweetest of herbs nor the strongest of incense could hide the fetid stench of vomit or the pestilent flesh of the diseased. The stench of decay and the promise of death persists even now, but the contents of her censer make no attempt to mask the smell, the flowers mingling with the goat liver encased in metal that's long since rotted.

The temple is different from what Adiris's hazy thoughts tell her a temple should be like. The endless trees that encircle the complex do not neatly fit with what she thinks she should remember, no memories of leaves crunching under bare feet as she performs her rounds. The crowds of the past, fervent with worship and heaving with disease, are long gone, replaced with quiet. The ragged cries of crows, dark shadows with eyes glistening even in the murky light, and creaks of metal from the cruel hooks scattered across the landscape prevent the silence from being serene.

In the silence, after the sacrifices, Adiris lingers on these memories of the temple that she's remembers it and, inevitably, she compares those thoughts to the temple as it is now, leaving her with impossible, hideous thoughts: this is not how it should be.

Her body often feels as though it's burning, her flesh cracking as she moves and grim ooze seeping from cysts, endless and unceasing growths across her body, but now Adiris feels as though she's burning viciously with shame. Of course this is how it should be - the voice of her god commands it. Many a devoted worshipper would offer all they have to hear their words, although the sea-goat rarely communicates in such a simple manner. Her thoughts muddy when the creator God is present, presenting scenes of followers expressing rapturous joy which feels as real as the breaths she takes. Her diety communicate the sensation of its ecstasy to the deepest corners of her mind and this delight becomes tangible when spindly legs, black as a shadow but no shadow pierces through flesh as readily as the sea-goat's physical form does, take the bodies of those she's offered to the hook.

But still, the doubt persists. Adiris bites her lip, tearing flesh with her teeth and leaving blood on her tongue, and tries to usher the thoughts away with faith. The sea-goat is not a bloodthirsty God, but they do not tolerate unbelievers and it is the duty of the faithful, the righteous, to destroy heathens that would deny them.

It shall be known across the land that the Gods curse the unfaithful. These were words she herself had preached. Words that she had clung to when the plague had claimed her too, vile acid had scouring her throat and skin bursting with swollen boils, have become words that echo in her mind when she stands before bodies hung as offerings. Sometimes they struggle, sometimes they are torn free by their fellow heretics, but both prolong the inevitable.

Adiris knows that the fate of the unfaithful is well deserved, but still the doubt persists. She knows what the unfaithful look like, voicing their dissent and proselytizing their falsehoods. The strangely garbed sacrifices do not speak any words she understands, although the shrill shrieks and surprised gasps transcend language, but they have committed no true acts of blasphemy. They do not wish to confront her, nor do they wish to desecrate her temple nor offer denials to the words she's spent her life preaching.

The only need greater than the need to curse the unfaithful is that moment's greater need to push aside this disturbing notion that her thoughts come close to questioning the voice of her god. Every moment of uncertainty is heresy, suggesting the sea-goat offers anything but divine wisdom, and there's a dangerous blasphemy in the idea that she is doubting the morality of the word of her God.

This is not how it should be, a high priestess alone in a temple devoid of life, her skin torn and robes stained with sickly green liquid and speckled with blood. It is not Adiris's role to question her role under the sea-goat - although, perhaps, the unbelievers she stalks are not the only ones faced with an unending, impossible trial.