Sabine was a princess pursued by the sorcerer Dahkhal until she managed to turn the tables on him. She exchanged the world’s memory of her existence to trap Dahkhal as a tiny jellyfish in a
Sabine was a princess pursued by the sorcerer Dahkhal until she managed to turn the tables on him. She exchanged the world’s memory of her existence to trap Dahkhal as a tiny jellyfish in a ring on her finger. In an ironic twist, Dahkhal was the only person who remembered who she was, and they became friends. That is, until the ring was stolen from her by Deacon Struct. Now she’s set off to find her lost ring. To read the previous adventures of Sabine, click here. To support us on Patreon, click here. The story continues below.
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Sabine descended into the cavernous darkness. The paths were every bit as twisted and bleak as the underground she entered after Silfde’s party, but now she had chatter to lead her way. Eventually, the rock on her left side tapered off as the path sloped downward. Sabine bent in the black as she looked down into a wide, central chamber. Maybe three dozen figures in black cloaks mingled about, sipped from goblets, and ate from platters of tiny sausages.
Bits of conversation wafted up from below. “You hear the latest marvelous fable?”
“Bleh, yes. Same repetitive, feel-good garbage as ever before.”
“It’s all kiddie stuff out of magic kingdoms these days. Where’s the nuance? Where’s the fables for sophisticates like us?”
At the same time and with the same cadence, Sabine and the Dahkhal voice said, “People really are what they eat, because all I’m hearing is a bunch of wieners.”
The deacon’s congregants continued to mill about. Sabine hoped listening in on their conversation might tell her something helpful, but the cult members did little but complain about plays and music.
“Come on, they’re just whining,” Sabine said. “Do you know anything useful?”
Of course I don’t, girl. I don’t know anything more than you do.
Sabine grunted. “You don’t have to be such a bastard about it.”
YOU don’t need to be such a bastard about it. And stop shaking your hand like that, you’re not wearing the ring anymore.
She turned and scowled; she hadn’t even realized she’d been doing it.
In the midst of eavesdropping on their inane discussions, Sabine heard a great grinding of stone on the chamber’s opposite side. A sweaty, shirtless, muscular figure peeked his head out from a newly formed crack in the wall.
“Oi, lot, Deacon said the ritual’s going off in twenty minutes. Get your yucks in now, then we’re off to the promised land.”
The sycophants cheered as the muscular man slipped back to the other side of the crack and it ground shut again. With a squint, Sabine made out a narrow catwalk path across from her that led in the same direction. With the slowest, most careful stride she could manage in her still-hungover state, Sabine crossed the central chamber and slipped into the adjacent room. Within, she beheld an enormous carved chamber full of pews and walls lined with stained glass. The muscular cultist stepped away from a huge, twirling mechanism that allowed for the opening and closing of the entryway.
At the far side of the chapel stood a massive wall of stained glass, a relief of an eye surrounded by fur with three slash-like pupils sat in the center. From behind the glass came a call of, “Are the rest of the congregants ready to begin the ritual?”
Sabine froze up at the familiar sound of his voice. Struct— and maybe even the real Dahkhal—were just a room away.
“Yes, sir,” the shirtless man said. “Just told them to start up their last call.”
“Excellent, my boy. Onward to the end we march.”
Sabine tiptoed across the catwalk and envisioned how things might play out. If she could slip up behind Struct and get in one good slit across his neck, she could reclaim Dahkhal and slip out right over his parishioners’ noses.
Yes, perfect, flawless. Except that Struct has a mad god on his side almost certain to offer him his protection and blessings. Apart from that, yes, flawless.
As she crept, Sabine mumbled to herself, “He’s just a servant. I’m the one with divine power already inside me.”
And what good’s it ever done you? Besides when it gave you the hangover of a lifetime?
At the end of the walkway, Sabine slipped into a small chamber behind the wall of stained glass. On one side sat a desk with a book on top, in the opposite corner was a dark hole with a ladder sticking out of the center. Struct was nowhere to be seen, so it seemed clear enough he must have descended. Sabine slipped up to the book and did a fast leaf through the pages to confirm the Dahkhal ring wasn’t within. She uttered an, “Ugh,” when nothing came of the search, then glared down at whatever page she’d landed upon.
The book was full of Struct’s meticulous handwriting. The cover read, On Deconstruction, and on the page she examined, Sabine read a list of scenarios followed by what apparently passed for clever corruptions in the deacon’s mind. “People use trees to hang other people as judgement—so what if trees themselves were judgmental?” “To death do us part—so they’ll blame everyone else for whatever is wrong in their terrible love life.” “If a mother’s devotion was boundless—but the devotion was only to herself.”
Sabine muttered, “Is any of this even deconstruction? Most of this just sounds like word association, at best.”
The Dahkhal voice asked, Do you even know what deconstruction is in this context?
She glared at her naked left ring finger and stuck out her tongue. “If I don’t, then you don’t either.”
Her psychotic argument was cut off as a door behind her slid open. “Oi, who the hell are you? What’re you doing in the deacon’s chamber?”
Sabine raised her hands and jerked around to face the burly, shirtless man who worked the stone mechanism. The look on his face seemed more like confusion than malice, so she decided quickly to roll with it and said the first thing that came to her mind. “I’m—uh—I’m here for the ritual. I’m the virgin sacrifice.”
The shirtless cultist said something in reply, but Sabine couldn’t hear him over the overwhelming, HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA that suddenly reverberated inside her head. She raised her voice to ask, “Could you repeat that? Ringing in my ear.”
You—a virgin sacrifice—could you imagine?!
“We’re deconstructionists around here,” the burly man said. “We actually do it the other way around. We only sacrifice whores.”
And, for reasons she couldn’t attest to, this set off something else in Sabine’s brain: a breaking point for the amount of nonsense she was willing to tolerate. “What? Why? For what reason? Just to be contrarian? Just for attention?”
He balked. “Absolutely not, there’s a perfectly sound reason for it, I assure you.”
Silence stretched between the two of them until Sabine raised a hand and motioned with a, “Go on,” gesture.
“… I mean, I assume there is. Can I check the deacon’s book?”
Again, Sabine just motioned at him to proceed.
As he closed in on the book, something suddenly crossed his mind. “Wait a second, idn’t you the redhead the deacon said—”
In a swift motion, Sabine rammed the athame into him and let a surge of magical energy rack his body. He let out a short, sharp scream before he collapsed downward, dead.
From the nearby underground, Sabine heard Struct’s call. “Jones? What’s going on up there?”
You had to kill him. Except you didn’t, Dahkhal said. Of your limited options, this was by far the worst.
Between grit teeth, Sabine said, “Shut up.”
He’ll be up any moment if you can’t ward him off. What are you going to do, try passing that mannish voice off as his? You’re hardly a lady, but you haven’t got the depth.
As if she took that as a challenge, Sabine raised her voice to a shrill level and called back, “Fine, deacon! I—uh—I walked into your desk. Balls first. With my huge balls. You know how it goes.”
And once more—of the worst conceivable options—
Struct’s voice grew closer as he called back, “Ah, yes, and you’ve gone falsetto. Carry on.”
As Sabine lugged the body out of the vestibule, she said, “Just going to the pews to pray. With my head down. And my body still with the wonder of our lord.” And she racked her brain for anything useful she might take from the deacon’s texts to turn against him.
To Be Continued…