“Does evil need a reason to happen? There are benefits for the individual though, I suppose; great strength, magic and power that they could never had controlled otherwise. But there’s a more important reason for doing it, from the demons’ perspectives anyway; the Vessels exist in order to one day create an Avatar.”
An Avatar? The Triangle were trying to build an Avatar? He knelt beside Father Kilkenny, his heart chilled by the thought. “So Margaret-”
“Margaret was a Vessel of That Which Sins. One of five, she told me. And she would surely have helped form an Avatar for the demon if she’d not escaped.”
“Then why did she come to you?”
He winced, took another deep breath; the memory seemed painful. “Apparently, That Which Sins recruits Vessels by tempting them into deviance, by pushing their wills and their bodies to their limits. Sadly, most are unable to resist. But Margaret told me that some regret falling. And that regret eats away at the control That Which Sins has over them until eventually they lose their faith in it. Most are unable to live with what they’ve become and kill themselves but Margaret… she was raised Catholic. Dust, she came to me for absolution.”
Dust frowned. “She wanted to confess her sins?”
“She did,” the Father confirmed with a weak nod. “She asked me a theological question first; if she somehow made herself forget her sins, could she still get into Heaven?”
“What did you tell her?”
“I… I couldn’t have been more off-guard; this isn’t something you get trained on before they hand you the collar, you understand. I said that a person would have to know the sins that they had committed in order to atone for them but that the Lord might forgive someone twisted by dark powers like her if they confessed their sins before forgetting them. She seemed… happy with that answer. Then she asked to give her confession.”
“You heard it then?” Dust asked.
The Father took a moment to reply. “I did. All four hours of it.”
Dust blew air out through his lips in sympathy and squeezed the Father’s shoulder again. That was why recalling this hurt; that would not have been a pleasant four hours for the Father. More than its fellow gods, That Which Sins asks for perversion and horror from her followers. The Father probably hadn’t been born into the Church, he would’ve had a life before all of this and so would’ve been somewhat subjected to the darker side of life, but even then he wouldn’t be ready to hear the earnest confession of a penitent cultist of That Which Sins.
“I think I see where this is going,” he said, trying politely to hurry this along. “So when she was done…”
“She pulled the Word out of herself. Right in my chapel. Just… trailed off as she recounted leaving the cult and… It was…” Father Kilkenny went pale and looked away. “Do you know what’s involved in taking a Word?”
Dust’s tattoo warmed. He shook his head. “I’d guess it involves magic, self-sacrifice.”
Father Kilkenny’s brow furrowed. “Do you know what a Word is?”
The surprised, perhaps condescending tone, irked Dust. “It’s someone’s memories, taken from them voluntarily to form a source of power. I’ve got one I took from myself.”
“Really? May I see?”
Dust didn’t react as he didn’t like flashing his Word around. But the longer he tried to avoid showing the Father, the hotter his tattoo became. When it was a roaring fire on his thigh, he relented and unholstered the other gun, flicked the mechanism open and caught the enormous cylinder in one hand.
“Sure,” he said, holding the other gun out to the Father.
Cautiously, Father Kilkenny took the cylinder from him. He held it up to the light and examined Dust’s Word, with its red roots and constant, faint thrumming. Then he turned the cylinder in his hands and squinted at its base.
“I see,” Father Kilkenny said slowly. “Well that’s an interesting sight, to be sure. And an interesting turn of events too. But I’ve got to tell you, Dust, that you’ve got the wrong idea about what a Word is. It’s more than a collection of memories.”
He offered the cylinder back to Dust. Dust took it and slotted it back into his weapon. “What is it then?”
“It’s a part of a soul. When you take a Word, you tear out a piece of your soul. And that Word,” Father Kilkenny pointed to Dust’s gun with a pale finger, “represents quite a large portion of your own soul, Dust.”
Dust looked down at his gun, the gunmetal and the inscriptions dull in the low light. The revelation didn’t stun him as much as the fact that it had been a revelation at all. How could he not know what a Word was? Why was that not in his inherited knowledge of the Dixie Problem? And why had no-one in the Solution told him about this?
“You look troubled,” Father Kilkenny said. Then he laughed. “Here’s me, concerned about you when my town is about to be destroyed by monster and harriers. Lord but I can be daft sometimes.”
“I’m fine,” Dust said, holstering his gun. “So they want the Word because it’s part of the soul of this Vessel?”
Then he heard himself. If Words were parts of a person’s soul, and a Vessel’s soul was imbued with the very essence of That Which Sins in the hope of making it corporeal… then what the Father held was actually a part of That Which Sins. It was a guarantee that That Which Sins could never form an Avatar. And it could be used for much, much more…
