#eqlogues

In a way, the Chapel Maid is almost perversely grateful to the moss bugs who've taken over its central hall, and cut her off from the rest of the cavern. This way she has less to clean.

She doesn't make much mess. Her uncle used to, but he's found a place elsewhere to make his messes in. Her brother never did. Used to make a lot of noise, send his querelling and complaining echoing merrily, bouncing off the hard stone arches. Her footsteps—interspersed with the sure, steady thump of her cane—fill the space now.

She makes her rounds, broom in hand, sweeping away the sand which cascades from above and accumulates in the masonry cracks. There’s a small group of pilgrims from the shanty town next door who wait, eagerly, for treasure to rain down, but that’s a fool’s dream. She makes a point not to linger on those, and focuses herself instead on the practicalities of maintaining her chapel. It’s where she draws her name; if it can’t be full, it may as well be clean.

Another piece of the roof came off. 

It’s gone down in a corner, and taken most of the wall with it, collapsing on top of a set of living ashes she’d prepared for a spell. A second, she spares, to mourn the decaying structure, before moving onto more productive annoyances; she has to think what she’ll do to replenish her stock. It’s not often that pilgrims come by—the graveyard scares them off, a poor omen—but there’ll be a curious spirit eventually. She need only be patient.

She’ll move what rubble she can, and nevermind the heavier segments, which will have to lie there silent. It’s not like she’s wanting for space.

Bilewater is never silent; its hostile fauna is quiet but persistent—squits buzz endlessly, and the maggots in the water are restless, a restlessness that pervades the caverns—and the incidental sound of traps going off, capturing prey or misfiring, is frequent. The noise of the Exhaust Organ once underscored it all—noise, and not music, for its oppressive notes could not be anything but a threat, and because song is dirty here, as much the detritus of the signing Citadel as the refuse it forces into the muddy, polluted waters. Deep and sonorous, powerful, such that even in Bilehaven the vibrations, if not the soundwaves themselves, hang heavy. 

Its absence ought to mark a shift. The bedrock of their land—the waterfalls of noxious vapour that pour out of each chimney-pipe, that concentrated infestation that made Bilewater what it is—have ceased, mere wisps pushed through by solitary, dancing currents of air. The building does not even creak, all rusting metal. Even the water, crashing against its collapsing foundations, is muted.

Gilly watches the entrance, door rusted off, now lying at the bottom of the stagnant river. There is nothing small about the Exhaust Organ, but its silence fades it into the background—there is not even the mist which ought to cling to its facades to differentiate it from any other crumbling, derelict structure. It’s hard to tell that this once was a pristine instrument of the Citadel, once shone, but then, it is difficult to tell that Bilewater once was beautiful. 

Nothing has changed. The Organ’s silence has not healed her lands.

Her first step across its threshold is anticlimactic. The entrance’s acoustics are dampened by heavy fabric draped against the walls, frayed by age, bitten by pests, faded to damp grey.

It doesn’t live up to the stories.

No Stilkin has ever set foot here, but the Exhaust Organ is the genesis of Bilewater; a land of cascades and waterfalls, Groundwater in her grandfather’s tales, corrupted and upturned and made sickly. The mythology of the Exhaust Organ suggests its interior ought to be lined by rot and eggs whence the maggots come, writhing all over, or else corrupted water dripping, moulded through. Where are the infected monsters, dripping with venom? Where is the green glow of illness? This stately, faded dullness is not right. 

The floors are dirty, but not unreasonably so. The elevator may be broken, but a recently-cleaned bench sits in the atrium. 

Heart in her throat, Gilly climbs through the Organ pipes, nicking her carapace on pieces of burst metal, further into its heart. She isn’t sure what she’s looking for. Evidence of what this place is. Proof of what it did. Some terrible spectre to justify the damage wrought.

The climb is hard on her body, but she is built for endurance, and Bilewater’s steep cliff-faces and sheer drops have taught her to pull herself up. Eventually, she emerges from the pipes, and finds another level floor, the metal smoothed and inviting. This was built for use. It’s absurd—this is a weapon against the Stilkin, but designed as though Citadel nobles should come and listen to recitals. 

—They well might have. The thought makes Gilly’s skin crawl, makes her bitterly grateful, for all that she tries so very hard to be kind, that the Citadel itself is a shell. If she had lived and watched the Organ destroy her home and seen for herself evidence that people came to listen to the Organ play as though it weren’t decimating an entire people… 

She shakes herself out of it. There’s nothing to it. The Citadel’s fate, in the end, is as grim as Bilewater’s. She must think about healing her home and not get caught up in bitterness.

Her gait slows as she approaches its central chamber, where the Organist must once have played. The trepidation gathers in her chest, twisting and coiling, as unsettled as maggot-infested water. 

She can but be disappointed as she finally enters; a broken mask and a discarded longpin are all that remain, algae growing in humid corners and dust accumulating on the keys. 

There is nothing here; not even a ghost.

Lace catches it. There’s little of her customary humour as she forces it—a gift, as this silk too is a gift, tender hands proroguing their final performance—back upon the frayed remains of Phantom’s face, pressing harder than she needs. It perhaps aches, in the abstract, but they can’t be sure. 

azure || they/them || obsessed with silksong atm 👍 ao3 debellocivili || main is @romanconcrete requests are open if you have a scenario or a ship or just a character + you'd like me to write a short snippet

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