Sin-Eater - Chapter 57: Delusion (Patreon)

“So how are we going to get in?” asks Alleluia.

The two of them have been walking for a few days. The entire landscape around the cathedral city is now mostly calm, having begun recovering from the many blazes and fires that had burnt here not long ago. Any houses that they find on the way however, whether burnt low or still standing, are now just as quiet as well.

“Do you think we should use the tunnels?” asks Canta, doing his best to wind up her crooked crank.

Alleluia shakes her head. “I think by now, they’ve probably caught on that we like using those.”

“Yeah, that’s possible after the whole lizard-city thing,” he says, leaning back against the tree next to himself.

“Do you think they’re lizards too?” asks Alleluia, nodding her head towards the giant white-stone walls of the cathedral-city, with the gargantuan dead tree in its center.

Canta shakes his head now. “No, I think they’re just normal humans,” he explains. “I bet they don’t even know what the world is really like.”

“The bishop?” asks Alleluia. “The priests?”

“I think they’re all on the same page as us,” says Canta. “They just don’t know what we know,” he explains, looking up. “They think they’re fighting the good-fight, but they don’t even realize that the fight was over a long fucking time ago.”

“You think?” she asks.

Canta nods. “That’s why the church still sends out hunting parties for distorted now and then,” he says, looking at the giant, dead tree. “They’re sitting inside the mouth of a dragon so big, that they can’t even see it, shooting arrows at the lizards that they see running by,” he explains.

“What about the palatinos?” she considers.

“They’re in on the game. The palatinos and those shadowy fucks who chased us when we left. Probably demons.”

He listens to the mechanisms of her body moving as she sits there, thinking for a moment. “So, there are demons in the church?”

“For sure. They’ve set roots,” explains Canta, thinking for a moment now. “I bet the big-shots are in some kind of deal with the demons,” he says. “They leave the city alive and in return, everybody who ‘knows’ just smiles and waves. And all of the normal priests like Valenti just live their normal, everyday lives, none the wiser.”

“Should we just… go into the front gate?” she asks. “People know you’re the sin-eater. If they’re not on the demon-king’s side and you explain the situation, they might help us.”

“They might,” says Canta, shrugging. “Or they might swarm us and drag us to the church. Who knows what they said we did?” he speculates. “Besides -” he points at the front of the city, at the gate covered in streaming water. “You’ll get soaked if we go through there. The falling water might even mess up your gears.”

“Oh,” she says, clearly out of ideas. “So, what do we do?” asks Alleluia. “We can’t go through the gate and we can’t use the sewers.”

Canta moves forward to the edge of the tree-line, staring out at the giant walls of the city and then over them, coming up with a plan. There’s only one other way inside.

Later, after night has fallen, the two of them stay on the edge of the tree-line and make their way down south, keeping the city to their side, essentially running straight past the front-gate. Then further along the walls, until they reach the shoreline. The walls extend out a little into the ocean. But the tower there looks like it’s mostly entirely ignored.

The two of them scour the shoreline, until they find an old fisherman’s hut, filled with ash. Canta chooses not to think about it too much as they take one of the remaining canoes and drag it back. Carefully sitting Alleluia inside of it, they slowly start to row their way out into the darkness, always sticking to the wall. It takes a few awkward minutes, but thankfully the waves are calm and the moonlight is low and they reach the edge of the tower in the water.

“Are we going into the city?” asks Alleluia quietly, looking at the harbor warehouses that are alight and visible from where they are. Canta shakes his head, rowing the boat steadily further around the tower.

On the inner edge, where the tower meets the wall, is a small door that simply goes out into the water.

“We’re going here,” he explains, carefully standing up and pulling on the door, peeping inside. Empty.

Holding the boat steady, he climbs inside and then does his best to help Alleluia out, as the two of them climb into the stone tower.

“What is this?” she asks, looking around as they close the door behind themselves.

“The city has a lot of watchtowers,” says Canta. “But that doesn’t mean all of them are used,” he explains. This is another one of those tidbits of information he had learned from what is appearing to be the most educational moment in his life, during his ‘book learning’ sessions back in the cathedral, the one on logistics.

Ships don’t come from the south anymore. They haven’t for a long time. So the amount of man-power invested in this side of the city was entirely minimal. The only real ships moving around were from the city itself. That means the ocean side was hardly watched at all.

The demon-king, whoever he is, is sloppy. The warehouse tunnels, all the little flaws and mistakes like this one, there’s always something somewhere that only he can see, despite it being obvious, despite it being right there. It’s like with the memory of Samael and his so-called ‘wizard eyes’.

He’d think he’s going crazy, honestly. But his paranoia hasn’t led him wrong once so far. Grabbing Alleluia’s hand, they quietly make their way up the staircase of the ocean tower, heading up towards the top of the wall. They’re going to be in the city soon, then it’s just a matter of sneaking into the castle or palace or whatever the hell it is that they have here. But Canta already has an idea about that too. It’s so obvious, it’s right there.

He can see it.

Only he can see it.

“Come on,” he says. “We’re going to the cathedral.”