Some things were sacred by nature. Just as the Supreme Will's avatar had done, it had divided its body into bread and its blood into wine, forever banishing hunger and thirst from those granted this gift. Supernatural power had entered mortal flesh along with the material.
And they were standing atop one such body, whether the Church was willing to acknowledge its sanctity or not.
It was like entering the remains of a grand, lavish banquet and taking a seat at a place long reserved for them. Fresh, barely touched food and wine still covered the long tables, while dust settled over the hanging nets. The host and the other guests had been gone for ages.
A god had once shared its body and power with the people here.
"This..." The monks were all dumbstruck. The sudden shock had brought their minds to a standstill, leaving them unable to accept what they were seeing.
The things that could, in even tiny quantities, create a whole sect of heretics or an entire kingdom weren't even alms or malice. They were merely minute scraps stripped from this place, a few crumbs fallen from the table.
Clotted blackness snaked across the ground like soup spilled over a tablecloth, spreading without restraint before drying.
The two were tightly bound together, as if they had been one from the beginning.
It was hard to distinguish them from certain dangerous Cracks. Both were made of bottomless darkness, and any light that entered never returned.
They also noticed traces of human handiwork. These seemed like enlarged versions of the niches in the outer Rock Clusters, hollowed out of the ground in whole blocks, burrowing deep into the ghastly white wrapped in black veins. They brought to mind tombs without burial mounds.
As they skirted these things, someone