Chapter 252

Enzo d’Celestin was a man of efficiency. Zoey didn’t know what magic he had worked to secure them a building in Mantle’s temple district in less than a full day, but magic it must have been. Then again, the red tape of bureaucracy must be far less daunting to the effective dictator of half the Fractures. Of course it hadn’t been difficult to arrange something for them.

Enzo was a feared if well-liked leader—not as strange a dichotomy as a person would think, considering the nature of this world—and his word was law. Not that Enzo himself had been the one to pull strings, rather assigning the task to a ‘fixer’ of some sort, but he’d had his weight behind it, and that was what mattered. Having allies in high places was no small advantage.

Four of them had set off from the d’Celestin estate to visit the temple: she, Aria, Sabina, and Adrienne. Everyone who had a role to play in Zoey’s strange burgeoning business-cum-religion. Aria, of course, as her high priestess; Sabina as the brewer of what would be the temple’s most popular wares; Adrienne as their business manager, and who would be handling many of the more mundane aspects of both the temple and the alchemy business—since the two would be closely intertwined.

What an odd situation she’d found herself in, Zoey mused. Then again, compared to ear-fucking slime girls and dungeons filled with lava elementals wanting to pour magma-cum into her stomach ... well, the word ‘unusual’ was starting to lose meaning.

Mantle’s temple district was gorgeous and well maintained. It was situated high up the mountain, slightly beneath the homes of the lower nobility. Zoey couldn’t help but find that amusing. It wasn’t a codified thing, the way a location’s prominence up the mountainside indicated its importance, but it was obvious nonetheless: and the nobility had happily situated their homes above their places of worship. Did that count as blasphemy?

Part of it was simple practicality, of course, with the entire city, commoners and nobles alike, wanting to attend various temples. Thus proximity to the more common districts was a necessity, but there was still humor to be found in its location.

In a place like Treyhull, despite the size and prominence of the city, many gods, even some major ones, had lacked dedicated temples. But where Treyhull was large, Mantle was a capital: the seat of power for one of the highguilds. So there was much greater variety here. Walking down the neatly paved and well-kept road, Zoey took in the sight of dozens of buildings, each dedicated to either a specific god or goddess or a collection of them.

Many, she assumed, especially the larger buildings, were general places of worship for the sprawling populace to attend. Zoey didn’t think this world had a ‘Sunday Service’, so to say, though there were sermons and congregations of a sort on a regular schedule: it just wasn’t concentrated on a single day. People attended as they felt they ought to, which personally Zoey saw as a more intimate way to commune. But she didn’t hold that opinion strongly. She wasn’t very religious to begin with, so she didn’t have any strong opinions on the subject of religion, really.

Her secularity was maybe ridiculous, these days, seeing how she knew gods and goddesses were without a doubt real. Some of them at least. Then again, even Ephy, for all her grand power, had also come off very human in their interactions, not as some inscrutable entity. Was that because of her aspect? Lust was, after all, a trait of base nature. Carnality was closer to humanity than divinity, she assumed.

Reasonably, her temple—their temple?—wasn’t located in the center of the temple district. Zoey wasn’t sure she’d want it to be even if it had been possible. If she had visitors, she’d prefer them to be people who knew what they were in for. People who sought out the temple intentionally, not wandering in because the building was plopped down in the busiest part of the district.

Plus, Enzo could only pull so many strings. The larger, more prominent temples were all occupied. Finding an empty one that was still in serviceable shape couldn’t have been the easiest task even with loose requirements. It wasn’t like buildings in a prime part of the city were going frivolously unused.

From what Aria explained, even theirs had needed fixing up under rush orders. Fortunately, problems could be solved fast when an appropriately ridiculous amount of money was thrown at the issue, and when the world’s strongest man was leaning on the organizers to get things done, so something had been arranged in time.

The temple was about sixty feet wide and a time and a half that deep: a large building, but not enormous. It was a simple yet attractive structure made of white stone, with two large glass windows flanking the heavy wooden double doors, which Zoey pulled open to invite her party inside.

The interior was likewise clean and well constructed, if nothing gaudy. Like other temples she had seen, there weren’t any pews for sitting, but rather an open space with various alcoves available, meant for private prayer. At the front was an altar, currently bare; everything was to be retrofitted for their needs in the coming days. Enzo might be a miracle worker, but there had hardly been time to outfit the temple for their particular use. And Enzo hadn’t even been told what that use case was. She expected he didn’t want to know. Might keep informed out of necessity, but he hadn’t pressed Zoey when she’d alluded to its lewd nature, and maybe he would keep his ignorance out of preference.

“I like it,” Zoey said, eyes roaming across the stained glass windows, the altar, the arched ceiling. It was cleaner than she expected. After living in Enzo’s manor, though, it admittedly felt plain. Not that plain was bad. “There’s a basement too, right?”

“Over here,” Aria said. She led them to a cubby to the back-and-right of the altar, where a door swung open to reveal a staircase down. The basement was lit with magical lanterns putting off a soft glow. It was barren down there, and smaller than the temple itself, but still plenty spacious. Larger than Sabina’s previous workshop had been.