Sin-Eater - Chapter 25: Ambition (Patreon)

Canta sits leaned back against the back of the chair, his fingers tapping against the table, as he impatiently waits for whatever big-shot they were sitting here waiting on. Honestly, he couldn’t care less about meeting some bishop or some cardinal or whoever it was.

His stomach growls, causing three pairs of eyes to look his way. Alleluia, Valenti and Salvador all sit at the table together with him in a small room that Canta assumes is the meeting place, which, given that he is supposed to be a big deal around here, seems a little dingy. “What?” he asks, annoyed. Nobody says anything, before they look away, except Alleluia who smiles at him from the side. He shoots her a glare, not ready to forgive her now or ever for the deep embarrassment he has had to suffer through these last few days.

He looks around, his fingers still tapping against the table, but faster now, as his annoyance is steadily starting to grow. As an honored guest, the least they could have done would have been to offer him a plate of crackers and some water.

Suddenly, the door opens behind them. The two guards who were outside, stepping to the side as a woman, armored like Salvador, enters. She lowers her head in a slight bow, putting her arm in front of her chest.

“Sin-eater, the bishop would be honored to see you now, if you would accompany me.”

“See?!” says Canta, looking at Salvador who is leaning back on his chair’s hind legs, not having gotten up. He points at the woman. “You could learn some respect from her!”

“Respect has to be earned,” says Salvador, waving him off as Canta gets up. Canta rolls his eyes. Alleluia gets up too, but the woman lifts her hand, gesturing for her to stop.

“Just the sin-eater.”

“She’s with me,” says Canta, lifting his thumb to point over his shoulder at Alleluia.

“Yes, I understand, but this is meant to be a one on one meeting between yourself, sin-eater and the bishop.”

Canta looks at her for a second, before turning back to Alleluia. This is his chance to get rid of her for a little while. Maybe being left behind here for an hour or two by herself would get her to think about the attitude that she’s had lately. It’s a mild punishment, in his eyes, for what he went through. But it’s likely the only one he’ll get to bestow upon her.

The winding of her mechanisms starts to audibly slow down again. Alleluia, somewhat distraught, turns around and starts awkwardly reaching for her crank again. This sight of course, is enough to overpower his urges of revenge as a deep sympathy and compassion comes to him, even if he’s annoyed, angry and hungry. Canta sighs and walks over, helping her with it. “She’s with me,” he repeats, looking past her side to the new Palatinos.

“I am afraid that -“

“Fuck off!” snaps Canta at the woman who shoots upright in an instant, becoming rigid like a beam. “I said she’s with me and if you have a problem with that, then maybe we’ll have to have a talk with the bishop about your sins that I can smell from over here,” he threatens. In truth, the woman is as clean as a new whistle, the cleanest that he’s ever smelt from a human, there isn’t an inkling of sin anywhere near her.

But she doesn’t know that.

Her face goes pale and she looks at the other two at the table for an answer, but she receives nothing more than a shrug from Salvador.

“V… very well,” she relents, stepping to the side.

“My hero~,” coos Alleluia, grabbing his hand as they start walking.

“You fuck off too!” snaps Canta up at her. “We’re going to have a long talk later about the way here!”

“Mhm!” she agrees with a happy expression, much to his confusion and surprise. She leans over, whispering into his ear as they walk out of the door. “When you scold me later, I want you to leave the dress on.”

“Fuck off!” yells Canta a third time, about ready to change his mind after all. But it’s too late now. “This is a holy place, you degenerate!” he scolds, not caring about that fact in the least himself. The armored woman walks down the hallway and Alleluia drags him after herself. “Hey! You! Can I get some real clothes here before I meet some high and mighty, throne-sitting, shit-head?”

The woman gasps in shock. Alleluia waves at her. “Don’t worry, he’s just cranky because he hasn’t eaten.”

The woman blinks. “He…?”

“He!” yells Canta, his spring-tide yellow dress billowing as he walks through the large, white-stone hallways of the aged cathedral. The walls are tinged blue from the dusk-light, shining in through the massive stained glass windows that line the hallway. The two guards behind him, still by the door, start snickering as they whisper to each other.

“That’s it!” barks Canta. “VALENTI!”

Valenti pokes his head out of the door a second later. “Yes, sin-eater?”

“Whippings! Now!” yells Canta, pointing at the two guards who become quiet very quickly. Alleluia drags him away.

“No whippings, Valenti, thank you,” she says with a smile, continuing to walk forward. “You know he gets grumpy.”

“Very well,” he nods. “I’ll be here if you change your mind,” says head-priest Valenti, sounding oddly chipper as he pulls his head back inside of the door and closes it. The two guards sigh in relief, but stay quiet now.

“Hey!” yells Canta, wondering how his voice managed to be superseded in this conversation, but he has little time left to protest, before he is dragged off and away.

His meeting with the bishop takes place in a large hall, that he would call a throne-room. In fact, he does call it exactly that, much to the horror of the armored woman accompanying them, who explains that the title of bishop is bestowed by divine right and that it supersedes any such concepts of human nobility, as they approach the seat at the top of a small staircase where a man sits.

“Come on!” yells Canta, gesturing at the decoratively robed man, sitting atop an ornate chair, atop a small set of stairs at the end of the giant, regal hall that is filled with guards on both sides. “How is that not a throne?!”

The woman ignores him, stepping forward towards the bishop and kneeling down. “Your grace, the sin-eater is here.”

There is a loud clanking of metal all around them. Canta looks as the dozens of guards, standing on either side of the chamber, fall down on one knee with a hand on their pikes and another over their breasts.

Canta blinks, but then a proud smile grows on his face. “See?” says Canta to Alleluia. “Respect! That’s what respect looks like.”

“Shush, my little squirmy-worm,” says Alleluia, planting a kiss on top of his head.

There is an audible laughing that fills the room. With a twitching eye, Canta looks up towards the source, towards the bishop who he wasn’t quite able to see clearly before, given the fall of the light upon his gestalt. “My, my, what a lively fellow this one is,” says a voice that clearly belongs to an old man. It has a certain quietness to its higher pitch, a certain dignity to its perfectly enunciated words. The old man rises to his feet, his decorative, purple robe flowing with him as he moves.

There is a hiss.

The bishop slowly slides down the stairs, towards them.

He doesn’t walk, jump, step or fall. He slides, as if he was a piece of a game that an unseen hand was pushing across a board and as he approaches, Canta notices that he too, is entirely free from sin. But it is different than with the still kneeling woman. She is human and could possibly contain the odor of such a thing as sin, as such, there is still a scent. A scent of emptiness, but a scent nonetheless.

The bishop however, has nothing of the sort. Much like Alleluia, there is no smell to be found at all. “Welcome, sin-eater!” says the bishop as he arrives, his arms spread wide to the side. “Glory!”

“Yeah, yeah,” says Canta, pointing at him. “You’re a machine,” says Canta, stating the obvious, as he points to the piston that is attached to the man’s back, stemming from the throne that he is bound to. There is a gasp that runs around the hall. Apparently, this was a shocking thing to say, despite it being obvious.

The bishop laughs, lowering his hands. “Settle down all of you, it’s fine,” he says. Canta doesn’t know what he’s talking about, until he sees that more than one hand was on the handle of a readied sword or pike. “The sin-eater is right. Glory.”

“Glory,” repeats every voice in the hall at once, their chorus reverberating around the massive ceiling like a choir’s song.

“Is that a problem?” asks the bishop, gesturing to Alleluia next him.

“No, but it’s pretty fucking weir- OW!,” argues Canta, wincing as he receives a minor fracture in his finger for his trouble. He pulls his hand free from Alleluia’s, shaking it out as he regenerates.

“My, my!” says the bishop, looking at Alleluia. “M’lady,” says the ‘man’, lowering himself into a bow. Or more aptly said, the piston does so, releasing a slight hiss as he lowers his head. “Bishop Zacaries Montero, it is an honor to meet you.”

Alleluia is, of course, delighted at being so formally greeted and lowers herself into a curtsy. “Alleluia, I’m charmed to meet you, your grace,” she says, formally introducing herself.

“Hi, Canta, sin-eater. I’m the important one here, remember?” barks Canta from the side, looking around the room for some acknowledgment.

“Ah, that’s a good name,” says the Bishop to him. “Do you like to sing?”

Canta rolls his eyes, looking down to the ground and crossing his arms. “Ah, fuck’s sake,” he mutters.

“He does, but it’s really bad,” says Alleluia, apparently also delighted that the bishop knew this tidbit.

“You know…” starts Canta, feeling his blood begin to boil. This day was going to be it, he’s finally going to snap. Demon-king? Maybe he’s not so bad. Hanging out with him couldn’t be worse than being embarrassed and emotionally abused all day, every day. He wonders if the demon-king needs a sin-eater? Though… probably not. He supposes that a ‘demon-king’ rather likes sins to be present in the world. The emphasis is on the word ‘demon’, after all.

Canta sighs, deciding that it’s best to let it go. Breathe in. Breathe out. Calm. He’s calm. Everything is calm. New life. New Canta. No anger. No anger.

No anger, he repeats in his mind, letting out another deep exhalation.

“Sin-eater,” says the bishop. Canta reopens his eyes, surprised to see that the man is fully bowed down now, this time to him. “I am graced by the heavens to meet another of your kind.”

Canta, of course, now has his turn to feel good. It isn’t every day that someone bows to him, though, in his opinion, it really should be. “I heard he got eaten,” says Canta.

The bishop raises himself upright, the pipes on his back hissing as he looks his way. “He did. But he was a dick, so nobody really cared.”

Canta blinks, not having expected such a blunt, true answer from the bishop. Unable to stop himself, he breaks out into a fit of laughter, his voice echoing around the grand chamber.

“You’re all right, bishop,” says Canta, stopping himself. “Your grace,” he says, but still rolling his eyes a second time.

“Please, Zacaries,” says the bishop.

“Fine, Zacaries,” replies Canta, pointing at the fake-man. “Look, let me get to the point, because I’m tired and hungry and-“ he takes a deep breath, calming himself. “I act like a dick when I’m like that,” he mutters, gritting his teeth as he openly states the obvious as if it were an embarrassing fact. He looks up at the bishop. “What do you want? Why are we here?”

The bishop stares at him for a second, before then looking around the room. “My, my, this is a surprise. Did nobody inform you of the situation?”

Nobody in the room says anything. Canta just shrugs, listening to the hissing coming from the man’s body and to the whirring coming from Alleluia’s. Bishop Zacaries Montero sighs, and lets the piston pull him back up towards the stairs.

“There is a great evil upon our world, sin-eater,” explains the bishop. “When a man’s heart becomes so dark and so tw-“

“- Demon-king?” asks Canta, cutting him off and right through the poetic bullshit. The room, of course, starts muttering nervously again at this latest sacrilege.

“Demon-king,” nods the bishop. Canta is really starting to appreciate him. The bishop raises a hand. “Sin-eater, the reason you are here is because I want you to eat him.”

“You want me to eat the demon-king?” asks Canta incredulously, raising an eyebrow, pretty sure that he heard that right. But he just wants to double check.

“I want you to eat the demon-king,” replies the bishop, being pulled back onto his not-throne throne.

Canta looks around the room, not sure why everyone on the sidelines looks like the world is going to end tonight. Their faces are all pale and terrified. His stomach growls loudly, the noise breaking the heavy quiet in the room.

Canta shrugs, looking at the bishop. “Sure, whatever, I guess,” he sighs, too hungry to care.

“Very good!” exclaims the bishop as they come to an agreement.

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Non-canon, but cute!