Sin-Eater - Chapter 32: Concupiscence (Patreon)

“Don’t drink too much.”

The familiar voice rings through his head as he stands there on the balcony, looking out over the moonlit, empty courtyard. Nina, the distorted from the well, had told him that during her confession. He had always thought it was just a side quip, given her back-story.

But what if there’s more to it? What if she knew something? What if she was warning him?

Canta clenches his fist. It was right in front of him the entire time. Sure, it could just be a coincidence. But what if it isn’t?

He looks down over the side. The drop is about three stories, give or take. Grabbing the railing, he vaults over it and falls.

The landing is unsuccessful, once again.

His ankles snap, his knees buckling and dislocating as he fails to roll.

It hurts.

He wants to think that he’s gotten used to it, the pain. But, there are certain pains you just never really get used to. This kind of pain that he’s feeling right now is that kind.

“You have to swing your shoulder into it,” advises Alleluia, scooping him up for the fourth time tonight. She cradles him against her body, as she carries him back through the cathedral and up the stairs so that he can try again.

Canta is trying to learn how to fall properly. He’s small, so he gets thrown around easily, not just by Alleluia, but by the palatinos during their sparring sessions. He needs to learn how to recover from being flung or thrown and the best way to do that, in his eyes, is to repeatedly jump off of balconies in varying heights.

“Are you sure that you don’t want me to just kick you?” she asks.

“I’m sure,” replies Canta, wincing through the aches of his bones regrowing again. “You’ll end up getting used to it.”

She looks at him knowingly. “You mean like that other thing you asked me to do with my -“

“Don’t talk about that in a church!”

“It’s a cathedral, sugar-cake.”

“That’s even worse!” argues Canta and she laughs. They had made up after he apologized. She had thought these last few days that he was mad because she had coerced him to drink. Canta laid everything bare before her, metaphorically, explaining his worries without sharing the details of the vision he had experienced.

The sanctity of the confession is absolute, after all.

Perhaps, if she truly is an asset of the demon-king who was just playing dumb, as her strange behavioral swings might suggest, then this was a horrible idea. But, if she isn’t and she is truly just as clueless as he is, then this was the wise move. Since then, the two of them have rekindled again and she seems to have kept her chipper mood, despite the tragedy that befell the cathedral. They had spent all night talking after that and then the rest of the night ‘talking’.

All in all, Canta feels like it was a very productive time for their relationship. Though, he might be biased.

Alleluia had explained again to him that she was made by the dungeon-master, who was the creator of the dungeon that she had lived in and was trapped inside of. When pressed about the skulls, she repeated her line about him telling her about his old life first, which he can’t do, because he doesn’t really remember it. Him saying that he was a dumbass-jerk didn’t help, because she had just replied that he’s still one now.

That escalated into a conflict and that conflict escalated into, well… The sanctity of the confession is absolute.

Canta shakes his head, breaking his train of thought as they get back to the balcony.

“Can you stand?” she asks, lowering him back down.

“Yeah, thanks,” he says, getting ready for the next try.

The night goes on like this for a while.

It is the next day. The air in the cathedral has never returned to normal since that night. The smell of the demon-king had dissipated, after he had ‘cleansed’ himself by setting himself straight. But the other priests are distant and frightened to be around him. More so than before. Even the soldiers keep a wide berth, which does make him a little sad. He supposes that he’ll just have to eat the demon-king all by himself then.

His physical training hasn’t continued with an instructor, the palatinos never coming to train him. So he simply does it himself.

Sweat drips down Canta’s forehead as he pushes himself up off of the ground again. It turns out that simple exercises like push-ups can be done in extreme numbers, given the constant regeneration of his muscles. But he can’t help but wonder if they can even regrow stronger like this? If they heal too fast, would they always just return to their original state? Maybe one day, he’ll raise his stats. There's nothing to do but to wait and see.

He breathes out, pushing himself up off of the ground again. “You can do it!” cheers on Alleluia, never having missed a single one of his training sessions. He would find this very sweet and endearing, if she hadn’t taken off her boot and wasn’t pressing her foot down against his back this very second, as if lightly stepping on him.

He ignores her teasing and pushes up again.

His education is still just as dull, his new instructor being some confused old man they had dug out of the archives. But Canta diligently takes notes, even as the old man talks himself into a circle, going over the same topic three times in the span of half an hour.

As for confessions…

Canta opens the door to the chapel, stepping inside.

Despite only having been a few days, it has gotten a lot dustier in here since that night. He walks past the pews. One of them is significantly out of alignment with the others, but he ignores it as he walks past. It isn’t his to set right. Grabbing the book which Carmela had left on the front-most pew, the thing she always read while he was taking confessions, he heads inside of the confessional with the sack of wafers as well and does his best to listen to every tiny grievance.

“Evil can not take root in a clean heart,” reads Canta. It is hand-written as an annotation before the first page. He sighs, ready to do his best, even if chicken-guy shows up today again.

This process goes on for another day.

Then another.

He’s getting used to doing the exercises and unfortunately also, to getting stepped on, which ends up becoming a thing.

“Clean heart. Clean heart,” mutters Canta to himself, stumbling out of their bed-room later that night to go and get some water. He doesn’t get far, before a mechanical hand shoots out of the darkness, dragging him back inside before he can scream.

He isn’t sure how the ‘clean heart’ thing is working out, but everything else is showing progress.

A week passes just like this.

Alleluia now helps him with his training. At first, he had asked her to try hitting him with some of the dummy weapons, so that he could practice dodging. She says that it’s not a refined thing for a lady of her stature to do. Canta can’t help but notice an odd inflection in her voice however, as she states this fact of the nature of her world.

Her tune changes quickly however, as she sees a leather whip, used to train the large bipedal Anqas which pull the carriages. It had ‘somehow’ managed to find its way here. Canta can’t confirm it, but he has a sneaking suspicion that she had arranged for this. He had seen one of her priestess attendants sneaking around here the other night.

He doesn’t get very good at dodging. But he does learn something else new about himself.

“Clean heart. Clean heart. Clean heart,” mutters Canta, stumbling through the darkness. Water. Water. He needs water to wash away the sins. “Clean hea- IAH!”

He vanishes in the ink, from which only the sound of whirring clockwork can be heard.

Another week passes, Canta hasn’t wasted a minute of it.

He drops down from the balcony, bracing his upper body forward at a slight angle. In the instant before his weight hits the ground, he shifts himself forward, rolling over his right shoulder and flopping onto the grass onto his back, looking up at the night sky.

He did it.

Canta smiles, then rolls over and gets up. Stretching his arms out forward, he drops into a squat and starts doing several repetitions.

“Are you okay, honey-drop?” asks Alleluia, coming back down the stairs. “What are you doing?”

“Squats,” says Canta, thinking about two things. He thinks about what he wants. He thinks about what he’s doing right now, in this very moment and if it will bring him towards his goal. Right now, it will.

“I see that. But why?”

“I want to get stronger,” he replies, getting right to the point.

“Huh…” she replies, not really understanding. Canta breathes out, lowering himself again. He’s going to have to get a lot stronger if he wants to be able to carry her.

The next day, when they go to the training quarters, the palatinos, his instructor, is standing there and waiting.

“Well, look who came crawling back,” says Canta, somewhat surprised. “I thought you chickened out,” he says.

“I wasn’t afraid of you, I was disgusted,” says the palatinos. “I had no desire to return.”

“So why are you here now?” asks Canta smugly, ready to receive some acknowledgement for all of his hard work these last few weeks. Had she perhaps seen his efforts through the windows? Has she noticed out of the corner of her eyes how he has been pushing through his suffering with determination? Has she seen that he’s someone worth being recognized?

“The bishop told me to,” she replies, clearly annoyed.

Canta sighs.

One day, somebody would give him what he’s hungry for. A little recognition.

He and Alleluia exchange a look, she seems a bit disappointed, but heads to the side to watch and to cheer him on.

But he doesn’t mind if she hasn’t been watching their training sessions. That means he has an advantage over her, especially since she probably thinks that he hasn’t been doing anything at all this entire time. He can see it, even from here, that look in her eyes as she stares his way from across the dirt-patch. It isn’t pity, or contempt or confusion. It’s physical, palpable revulsion in her eyes.

He gets the feeling that the palatinos isn’t too fond of him.

Alleluia might not actively fight at all, even though she clearly can. Canta doesn’t need to see her crush a skull to know that she’s able to do that, she was at the bottom of a dungeon for a reason. But training with her, an opponent who is stronger than him by leagues and miles, offered a unique insight into his own weakness. He’s not physically strong, yet. He can’t stand toe to toe with her. He’s not really fast or nimble either, barely able to avoid half of the strikes of the whip on a good day, let alone a trained kick from a professional fighter.

But he’s resilient, thanks to his abilities and he likes to think that he’s learned something.

Canta circles the palatinos, who stands in the middle of the arena, not even bothering to turn to face him as he walks around behind her. Once he reaches the front again, reaching the position that he determines as the right one, he winks to Alleluia who pretends to be embarrassed, before he turns on his heels and makes a dash towards the palatinos.

His jaw cracks and his head snaps to the side as he is sent flying backwards.

Canta’s body lurches in mid-air as a metal hand catches him and a second later, he flies back straight towards the woman as Alleluia hurls him, his fist colliding with the armor of her stomach.

He falls to the ground and lifts his broken, floppy hand, laughing at her while crying tears of pain. “Aaaaah~! Get fucked!” he cheers. “I totally got you!”

It hurts a lot.

He receives a second kick for his trouble and skids across the dirt, back towards the benches.

It hurts even more.

He feels a boot pressing itself against his back as Alleluia consoles him at the same time as stepping on him.

That hurts the most.