The path through the garden had been cleared.
The main building's doors were protected by a ward, but the repeated blows of holy light quickly shattered it. Both doors toppled inward, kicking up a cloud of dust and debris.
A thicker, sweeter stench of rot billowed out from behind them, mixed with the sticky sounds of flesh writhing.
Hubert had returned, and the other priests looked to him as their anchor. He was a natural leader, and he took the lead without hesitation.
The golden light from his warhammer dispelled the shadows lurking within, revealing a heavily mutated interior.
The walls were covered in layers of throbbing dark-red flesh. A viscous pool of dark-green fluid coated the floor, while thick, intestine-like structures hung from the ceiling, slowly contracting and expanding in some rhythm. The original hall had been divided by proliferating flesh into twisted passageways and chambers.
"Stay alert!" Hubert growled. His warhammer swept through the air and smashed a creature that had leapt from the wall, its body resembling a melting wax figure.
The group quickly followed him inside, but their advance immediately ran into a different kind of difficulty from what they had faced on the garden path.
The fleshy maze seemed alive, constantly shifting. Paths they had just cleared were soon blocked by new growths or surging mucus. Monsters emerged from unexpected places—some crawled out of cracks in the floor, some dripped from the ceiling, and some were part of the walls until they suddenly split open, revealing a mouth full of sharp teeth.
"We need to know the building's layout!" Murphy, a deacon of the Mechanical Church, stared at the data flickering across the metal pages in his hand. "The Sky-Covering Umbrella can hold out for less than six minutes. Even indoors, ordinary walls can't block