Drip, drip, drip.
The rain had started to pour outside; luckily, the cloaked boy was now stuck there in the church. I cleaned the water off my shoes on a nylon mat placed at the entrance of the church and walked my way through the aisles. "Ouroboros, creator of Ouran…"There was a priest at the front reciting similar tales to the ones taught to me as a child. "Protector and creator of the terrain we roam, please protect us from the imputresco that has plagued the Kilotree forest and stained its roots..." I was now one aisle away from the boy, one foot away, a few inches away, and just as I was about to open my mouth, I was instantly silenced.
"Do you believe in Gods?" The boy asked as he reached for his cloak and pulled it off, revealing his lacerated face.
Portions of the boy's skin were missing; instead of these torn portions revealing bloodied flesh or scabs, his supposed flesh looked like paper: burnt paper - kind of like a paper-mâché sculpture of a face, except containing a few unpainted portions.
"Well-" I began to say slowly as I averted my eyes towards the church's roof: taking time to ponder my answer, "I am not sure... I believe in their presence - in the sense that I can appoint an outer subject to entrust my hopes in - though I struggle to actually believe in their living existence."
I carried my eyes back down to the boy, snapping out of the drunken trance that caused me to answer a stranger so honestly.
"..."
It seemed my words made no sense to the boy, as for his response to me was silence.
"I mean-" pausing, "I'm sorry, I said that wrong. I-" My stuttering destroyed any chance of adequately explaining my beliefs, and hence I decided that it was just better to keep my mouth shut.
The boy continued to stare at me with his brown eyes which refracted the church's yellow lighting, it was as if there were dancers parading around his pupils.
"The Gods created this planet: the six founding Gods formed each and every layer and detail of Ouron. How could you possibly doubt their existence?" He pressed as if he were scolding a child "The layers of this planet are literally built from the lifeless bodies of Gods."
"You mean soil?" I snidely responded, annoyed at his imperious attitude: he did not seem amused.
"Bodies of dead Gods. Gods killed during the Eradication"
I had once heard of the Eradication, I've learned about it from sermons that the priest back home used to recite. He taught us that the Eradication was a dispute lasting thousands of years between hundreds of Gods because they each wanted to own Ouron. The dispute grew into a war that took place on Ouron itself. As centuries passed the war collected countless corpses of Gods, and with no space to place the massive bodies of these Gods, the corpses decomposed into the soil and Ouron began to expand: making it five times its original size of 3,900 miles.
However, all of this just did not make any sense to me; I didn't mean to doubt the church's teachings but I couldn't understand how life was able to exist and survive after the Eradication - especially since these tales state that the corpses of Gods had begun to cover the entire surface.
"..." The kid's silence and the increasing warmth of the church due to more visitors entering to escape the rain had started to provoke my temper. With each second the boy remained mute I found myself wanting to shake the boy by the shoulders and ask a million questions, but at the same time, I wasn't sure how to ask him anything.
I wanted to know more about a story he rehearsed, about the bodies of the Gods... and why he even took me here in the first place. I forgot about that - what am I doing casually talking to this child that abducted and brought me to a decaying underground city, I needed to know where I even am.
The city that he dragged my unconscious body to had a dirt roof instead of a sky which would occasionally drip droplets of water. He couldn't have possibly brought me to an underground city, underground cities don't exist anywhere in the world. What is this place? Maybe I'm above ground in some sort of - I don't know- dirt dome? Cave? Sphere?
I didn't realize it but I was standing in front of the boy for several minutes. My lips were stiffly spread across my face in an almost frown and my eyebrows were furrowed causing creases a cross my forehead; I looked pretty grim.
Upon re-adjusting my face I noticed that he was intently staring at me as if waiting this whole time for a question.
"Why did you bring me here?"
"Because you fainted"
"But why bring me here?" I impatiently vocalized. The boy's inability to properly hold a normal conversation was starting to poke at my nerves.
The boy stood up and walked to the left side of the aisle without bothering to answer me. Prick. The half-dome roof was painted with ununiformed splatters of paint atop a black base. The sides of the church were lined with arches that each marked another row of benches. As I followed the boy past the columns he guided me towards a descending staircase.
The stairs were quite old; with every step the boy and I took a high-pitched creak would fill the air. I was terrified that the wood would break at any moment.
Once both my feet stood together on even ground I took a moment to admire the room before me. It was completely empty and had walls and a roof made out of stone. It was freezing cold. Little bumps started to form on my skin and the hair on my arms stood straight. It was appallingly cold.
The boy beckoned me to move towards him with a simple move of his hands and closed a door behind me that I hadn't noticed. It became pitch black, though, and the room became vaguely illuminated by a source of light that I couldn't find. Whenever I spun my head to see the light there was nothing but darkness, but when I faced my back towards the source, the room started to faintly glow, revealing its stone walls.
This whole time, the boy was, again, watching me in silence. It has been around thirty minutes since I entered the church and this boy has only said five things to me. Being around this kid has been painfully perverse.
Within the dim lighting, the boy's silhouette was noticeable. He moved forward causing an echo with every step and only stopped moving until he was a foot away from me.
"Would you like to sign a contract with me?"