#terzingo

It comes on the tail-end of his vestments hissing over his robes: a flick of fabric, a whisper of skin, a willow of a question. His body fills the sacristy mirror like a mulling giant; behind it, the pale shadow of her own. She clenches her fingers on the case in her hands, laid carefully with unblessed items for the night's mass.

The organ overture is already calling for him—not that it means anything. It would take an act of divine prominence for him to be on time for his own funeral.

He unfurls from his slouching, tugging his collar flat. "Everyday is a confession, no? But spending the hours stuck in those stinking coffins, you mean? Che." A fussing of silk; an idle growling. "No...no."

"What would they confess to you?"

His eyes find hers in the glass: moss and moonlight on a flutter of ocean foam. In the sharp shadows of his paints, they glint with the strangeness of a wolf's. "After my secrets now, eh?"

Mariella flusters. "Is it...out of place, to ask?"

She is only a priestess, and not yet an elevated one. By all precedents of the church, his standing is a milestone above hers.

Perhaps it is overstepping. Perhaps it should be.

And yet, despite those precedents—despite any expectations for propriety (that she must address him as Your Unholiness first, and Papa second; that she must hold her magic in check in his breathing space, lest his own consume her; that she must keep to the Way, above all, and her Will only sparingly)—he has done nothing but snap those steel bars like sticks.

Unholiness, this—Unholiness, that—Hell Satan, Sister, I am not my Father. Not yet, anyway.

There are spells you are interested in, no? I may not be a master of the craft, but, eh...I can certainly try. A group effort. We will stumble together.

The Way is what the texts deem. But those texts were written by rancid men in rancid rooms—they are fallible. What do you see? What do you think?

"You weren't familiar with the orders, were you?" Terzo asks her.

"I—no."

"The, eh...?" He twists a finger into an odd shape—a true, holy cross. She's grown so used to the symbol being inverted that it feels like broken thumb.

"Gods, no."

His mouth crooks at a smirk. For a breath, he muddles with his gloves. "We cannot claim to be so different, you know. Without its bones, this faith would have no onus to stand on. No birthplace." One hand slides home: a leathery hush in the dry room. "Wretched siblings, the two of us." The other, flexed and squeezed. "Shepherds and sowers."

The parable strikes her as odd. "I think Monsignor Emeritus would disagree with that."

Terzo scoffs out something like a chuckle. "Primo probably would. Would disagree with a lot of things." It must bring her initial question back to him, like a gnat buzzing back to light. "No amount of prayer or penance will grant you eternal life, in this. Eternal damnation—that's all we were promised...our original sins." 

She hears those words as clearly as if the Monsignor were speaking them, himself—and maybe he had, in years past, in rooms she hadn't been privy too. 

Terzo's gone hunting for the incense he prefers, rattling through unmarked jars on the shelves by the back wall. "But, eh," he drolls on, clicking his tongue when he finds it, "it is not in the nature of most to want to race towards it, no?"

"Racing towards...death, you mean?"

"Mh...perhaps." Twisting hinges, twisting silks, twisting cords hung like a limp noose. "We come to any faith craving certainty. Why else would it exist?" There is something like softness in his voice, but strange, spiteful: a splintered ache that scathes as much as it soothes. "We are curious things," he mulls on, "always after the answers. We want our heads patted and our hearts stuffed. If we are doomed to burn..." Another straightening of his gloves, golden nails clicking, "we want to hear it told as a warm embrace, mh?" Green glinting in the glass. "If we are destined to Hell, we want it painted beautifully."

A cynic and an admirer, in turns.

If there's anything she's learned of him, it's that he holds both between his hands, at all hours. Resentful as much as he praises; a dark messiah talking through both sides of his teeth.

"In Primo's view, Death would be the only certainty; the most primal fear." The vestments done, smoothed flush, glittering off the broad sweep of his shoulders, he turns back to her—but his eyes are wandering the floor like a snake without a scent. "Some may praise their mortal Will until their last breath." In the hollows of his bones, the undead glint of his left iris pierces her to the bone. "That don't mean they don't fear it."

For a time, she parses through the cracks of that. "Do you?" she wonders.

His lashes flick cattishly: his smile too simple, too clean. "Oh, terrified," he rumbles, and his stare blooms like moons. "But, ah...better to make peace with it, don't you think? Besides—the dying's the easy part. The living bit...well." He crooks his head on his neck. "That is where the confession comes in."

The organ strikes up again. It is only a ghost to her—a blare on the fringes of her memory.

She's back in the cistern, a labyrinth of floors beneath her feet, the night she'd met him as a cardinal, stood in frigid water flickering and red and blessed him as third heir to the title of Papa Emeritus. 

He'd been flighty-eyed then, too. Seen and unseen, and unnerved by it, no matter the layers his own hands had peeled off.

His boots are lazing over the floor. He sets his incense in the case she holds, close enough now for her to smell the faint traces of citrus off his neck, the smoke on his hair, tamed down beneath the tails of his mitre.

"So confession is...a place for fears," she reasons.

"Fears...denials...doubts." His paints contort his face to ghostly seams, living and Undead—but even they can't hold down the creases in his smile. "Uncertainties," he slithers on, nesting his hands behind his back, "suppose you could call it."

"But you can See, with certainty."

He prods the door open with his boot, and holds it for her. The only answer she gets is a crook of his lip.

The organ is nearing its third stanza, blaring a touch impassionately now. But his flock will wait. They have always been willing to wait for him.

"After you, Sister." Terzo tips his head, his eyes flitting through his lashes. "Mari."

The congregation rises in greeting, chatter sliced to reverence will every lope of his heels, every bow and murmur, every blessing cast below.

"In nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Malus," he calls, and his siblings call back: "Omnes celestes delendi sunt."

"Nema." Terzo lays his palms upon the altar. "Tonight, we will discuss the matter of faith. Of doubt. Of confession." The heat of his glare slides unhurriedly across the crowd before him. "Consider: To whom do you cast your doubts in the Eternal?"

His siblings call back: "The Unholy, through whom All is Written." 

Terzo calls again: "And to whom do you place your faith in the Known?"

His siblings return: "In Us, through whom All is Possible."

A purr slides across the hall. "Good...very good. Be seated."

The crowd clatters and shuffles to their pews, eyes expectant on their liege and Lord-consort. But Mariella stays standing, stays with him, steadfast in the shadows. 

If he is a king on a black dias, she is the queen guarded on his chessboard. An overseer keeping a guard dog in check, as much as a loyal hound, herself, called to heel at his side.

His faithful cling to his every word, burling and soft across the arches.

Terzo couldn’t do it.

Put on a happy face, flirt with siblings, urge everyone to have enough cocoa to warm their bones. Maybe even regale the newer recruits with stories about his glory days.

He would rather be outside in the storm without a coat, hence…

The wind whipped, snowflakes stinging his cheeks as he trudged through ankle deep snow. The Abbey loomed behind him, its grand silhouette barely visible through the swirling. A prison of regret, despair, and rotten memories.

It was expected of him, he was to embrace being trotted out when convenient, paraded around for nostalgia's sake, then make himself scarce the next event. Of course, Terzo realized this wasn’t so unlike his time as Papa but the scale was far more grand and the performance meaningful. Now, he was just a relic gathering dust.

Terzo’s dress shoes were already soaked through, toes numb. His teeth chattered uncontrollably, clicking together in an irregular rhythm, but he told himself he was fine. More than fine, actually. He was doing what he wanted, even though it was painful.

“That’s me, eh?” He said to no one.

Perhaps freezing to death out here wouldn't be the worst fate. At least then he'd be remembered as dramatic rather than pathetic.

“no-“

A voice hissed from the shadows, urgent and sharp.

Terzo stopped. His shoulders squared despite the cold but he couldn’t help but feel a surge of warmth, of *excitement*.

"Show yourself," Terzo called out, his tone almost casual.

From the darkness between snow-laden trees, two red eyes blazed to life. They didn't blink. Didn't waver.

"you will be beloved. you will be remembered."

The words rang hallow and empty in his ears. Terzo laughed, a bitter sound swallowed by the wind.

“Really? I hate to argue with you but that’s hard to believe,” the former Papa scoffed. He was unimpressed and wanted nothing more than to be free of the beings presence.

The wind intensified, howling through the trees like a wounded animal. Snowflakes clung to his eyelashes, blurring his vision. Tears pooled from them.The being’s crimson eyes grew in the darkness, expanding until they seemed to swallow the space between the trees.

“you dare question the will of the morning star?”

That shut the former Papa up. The demon's voice echoed through the storm, pricking his frozen ears.

“you will be beloved. you will be remembered. when the time is right."

Terzo's breath caught in his throat. This wasn't the first time something from below had reached for him. It never was just once. He had always been sensitive, along with his brothers, to the infernal presence that surrounded them since birth. Always watching. Waiting. Reminding them of the promise they had been born into, without choice, without question.

His soggy shoes crunched through the snow as he took a timid step forward. A gloved hand reached out to the darkness. Terzo wanted to touch it. Wanted to feel that this was real. That he could be remembered. His fingertips trembled as they neared the void where those crimson eyes burned.

“enjoy the short amount of it you have left, vessel. run on, back where you belong.”

Just before contact, the eyes blinked out.

Terzo stumbled forward, catching himself against rough bark. His palm scraped against the tree, leaving behind traces of blood that immediately froze in the bitter air. He stood there, panting, his lungs burning from the cold.

The forest was silent now. Even the wind had died down to a whisper.

He stumbled back toward the Abbey, legs barely carrying him through the snow. Outside, siblings of sin were scattered across the grounds, enjoying the fresh powder in the brisk air. Terzo shuffled past them, head down, arms wrapped tight around himself.

"Papa! Papa Terzo!" one called out cheerfully. "Do you need a coat?"

He didn't answer. Didn't even look up.

Another sibling stepped toward him, concern creeping into their voice. "Are you alright? You're soaked through—"

Terzo kept walking.

He made it inside, dripping melted snow across the stone floors.The warmth of the Abbey hit him like a wall, but it didn't reach the cold lodged deep in his soul. The common room closest to the retired Papas' quarters was still far from their sequestered homes, but it was the nearest refuge. Terzo pushed through the heavy wooden doors, leaving a trail of wet footprints behind him.

Inside, a fire crackled in the hearth. Two figures sat in worn leather chairs—his brothers, Primo and Secondo.

Secondo looked up first, his expression souring immediately. "Got out of your duties once again?" he sneered, setting down his book with deliberate force. Terzo said nothing. He stood in the doorway, dripping, shivering, staring at nothing.

Primo glanced over the rim of his reading glasses, taking in his youngest brother's appearance with mild concern. "You look like you've seen a ghost, fratello." Still, Terzo remained silent. His lips were tinged blue, his hair plastered to his forehead. The warmth of the room seemed unable to reach him.

He had wished for death more times than he could count. Had wanted it to come swiftly and mercifully, to finally release him from this existence that felt more like a chore than living. But now, standing before his brothers with frozen limbs, torn gloves and bloody palms after he received confirmation his death was imminent, he was terrified. He wanted to tell them what he had seen. But he found himself unable to form the words, his throat closing up every time he tried to speak.

They both looked at him expectantly, waiting for some explanation for his disheveled and disturbing appearance. Without uttering a single word, he turned and silently left, retreating back into the cold corridors of the Abbey.