Chapter 3: Exorcism

The inside of the chapel was cold and drafty, as it was poorly decorated. Only a few wooden pews filled the space, as well as a marble altar in the back, where sacrifices of man and animal alike were often slaughtered during scorching hot days of worship and submission to Sol’s wrath. Its harsh atmosphere cut through Orpheia’s skin as she was dragged through the aisles, kicking and screaming against her muzzle. She had been freed from her yoke, allowing her to flail in the general’s arms, but she had also been stripped of her gown and boots. The humiliation of standing before an audience of men in the nude was unlike anything she had felt before in her life. Of course, Father Grimshaw would sooner pluck out his eyes than stare upon her nakedness with lust. General Bronte wasn’t nearly so proud. In fact, he held a firm grip on Orpheia’s breasts as he carried her, tightly pinching her skin in order to hear her squeal through the wood between her teeth.

“Just look at her,” Father Grimshaw sneered, motioning for the general to throw Orpheia at the foot of the altar.

She scrambled to her feet within seconds, glaring down at the men as they cornered her against the freezing marble. She flashed her pearly white teeth with a snarl. This proved only to agitate her opponents.

“What is she?” General Bronte asked, ogling her bare form. “I’ve never seen a woman so pallid and hairless before.”

Orpheia attempted to cover herself, flushing beneath Bronte’s gaze. She despised her hairlessness. It was a cruel byproduct of her brutal metamorphosis. Her body had shed itself of every follicle of hair that wasn’t on her head as she transitioned into a spectre. Even her brows withered away. Though it left her skin silky smooth to the touch, Orpheia was highly susceptible to wounds and scarring. In fact, the yoke had already severely bruised her wrists and her neck. Even her arms and breasts had been marked when General Bronte held her.

Father Grimshaw sucked his teeth. “She’s a spectre. A creature born of sin. Why our king wants anything to do with this animal is beyond me. But hear me now: I will not allow this beast to roam our holy kingdom without first suffering the wrath of Sol. While I cannot change her disgusting body, I can change the content of her heart. Even if it takes all night. You know what to do, General.”

Bronte sprang into action, yanking down two long chains that hung from the steeple above. Orpheia realized as her wrists were shackled high above her head that the chains had been strung up in preparation for her arrival. Father Grimshaw had likely been preparing her torture from the moment he learned of the proposal. Which left her wondering, had she refused the deal, would she have been taken as a spoil of war? Turned into a concubine instead of a bride? Orpheia let out a furious huff from her nostrils as the chains began to tug against her. Her arms were splayed outward, stretched in opposite directions until her restraints finally stilled, leaving her resting on the tips of her toes. She struggled immensely to remain motionless, but she was barely able to scrape the ground enough to stop her from swinging like a pendulum.

“Guard the door,” Father Grimshaw ordered the general. He narrowed his eyes at Orpheia as he spoke. “Keep our king out until I am finished.”

General Bronte stiffened, frightened by the order. “Father, I don’t think I can—”

“You dare question an order from Sol?” Father Grimshaw roared, pounding his fist against the back of a pew. The booming noise echoed up and down the chapel walls, trembling the chains.

General Bronte’s slimy lips snapped shut instantly. He shriveled away and rushed for the doors like a mouse escaping the maws of a house cat. When the doors settled shut, the air within the chapel fell perfectly still. Not a speck of dust moved until Orpheia attempted to wriggle free from her cuffs. Father Grimshaw watched her from the corners of his eyes, which were once a dark brown color but had grown milky and whiter with age. Orpheia shuddered beneath his damning glare, but refused to allow her face to expose her anxieties.

“You look just like your mother did,” Father Grimshaw began. He spoke in a longer drawl than before, allowing his dark, toad-like voice to reverberate off of every surface around him. “She hung from these very chains, you know. If I had it my way, she would have hanged by her neck. But Sol had other plans for the wretch.”

Orpheia would have spat in his eye for speaking such things. To think that her mother, a once vibrant and beautiful woman, might have possibly been outlived by a shriveled sack of bones was beyond Orpheia’s understanding. The depth of men’s cruelty surely knew no bounds.

Father Grimshaw began slowly and carefully unlatching the heavy golden hooks that clasped his robe shut. The robe parted like a curtain and revealed Father Grimshaw to be wearing a long white leather coat underneath with a high collar, made to keep his skin covered and clean. He rested the discarded robes across the back of a pew. His hands, which held a slight tremor, barely grazed the delicate beadwork that decorated the holy robe’s neck and cuffs out of fear that one of the glass beads might break off. Umbranians were the first to adorn their clothes with such decadent beading. The irony was not lost on Orpheia that the Solians had stolen the art form for their god.

From beneath the breast of his coat, Father Grimshaw pulled out an amulet of Sol—a radiant diamond-shaped sun made of gold and clear quartz the size of the priest’s hand—and pressed it up to his lips. He whispered a silent prayer to the sky above, then bowed his head to the golden effigy that loomed behind Orpheia. It stood the full height of the chapel—a statue of a man in billowing robes; in place of a face, he held a large sun on his shoulders with tendril-likes rays. It glittered from head to toe in stolen gold.

“Mark me, spectre,” Father Grimshaw began. Every word he spoke was dipped in potent poison. “Witchcraft will not be tolerated in the kingdom of Terrsolis. It is filthy and vile to worship something as savage as moonlight. You will learn to bow your knee to Sol by the time I am done with you.”

Father Grimshaw brandished a bullwhip that had been hiding on the lap of a nearby pew, sitting out of Orpheia’s sight. Her breath trembled at the sight of it as the long, black leather snake unraveled in Father Grimshaw’s grip. Though his face was pleasureless as he dragged the serpent behind him, his eyes burned with an insatiable hunger that could only be quenched with the taste of Orpheia’s blood. With his amulet clutched tightly in one hand and the grip of the whip held in the other, Father Grimshaw readied himself behind Orpheia’s backside and shouted out to the heavens above, “Hear me, O’ Sol, whose light pierceth the night and the evil that resides within!”

CRACK!

The whip snapped its sharpened teeth into Orpheia’s skin, burying deep in her flesh for only a split second before Father Grimshaw peeled it back to his feet. Her body cringed, choking on the initial shock of the blow as the pain that followed began radiating across her shoulders.

“Hear me, O’ Sol!” Father Grimshaw continued. “I beseech thee to turn thy gaze upon this daughter afflicted! I pray that the darkness within her be banished by thy holy fire and her spirit made clean through thy radiant grace!”

CRACK!

Hot, furious tears stung Orpheia’s eyes as she swayed forward against the second strike. Two karge welts rose from the skin between her shoulder blades, irritated by the movements of her flailing arms. Orpheia managed to blink away her tears, refusing to give the priest the satisfaction of seeing her pain.

“Arise, O’ Righteous Sol, and let thy healing light penetrate the festering wound of lunar possession that infects this daughter before me! Rebuke the unclean spirit that hath taken root within her, and command it to depart!”