Where the Heart Is, Part 4

"Yes," you say. "The demon still thinks I'm working for him. He didn't notice me when I was spying on him. He was... preoccupied."

You let your voice tremble just enough on that last word that it guides your prey right into the next question. "What was he doing?" Elianna asks through the mesh of the confessional. From her tone of voice you suspect she can already guess the answer, at least in its broad shape.

Still, it's important that she ask. That she drag the specifics out of you.

"He... he had two girls in bed with him, at the same time," you say. "I... didn't recognize who they were, but they looked similar. I think... they might have even been related. But they were both naked, and he was making love to both of them."

You lean forward against the confessional, as though for support, which also has the effect of bringing you and your words closer to the screen separating you and Elianna. "Please, holy mother! You have to help me to stand against this temptation! Thank Selal that I kept my distance when I was dealing with him, that I never actually let him get his hands on me. But... even just watching it... the way he touched those girls... The way he made them moan..."

"Selal's grace will not abandon you, child," the cleric assures you, her warm, comforting voice filled with resolute faith. "The temptations of the flesh are many. But the goddess always gives us the strength we need to resist our baser urges, whenever they would lead us astray into sins that would harm ourselves."

Perfect. There was always a risk that Elianna might have wondered if you were more compromised by the incubus than you had let on. But by freely admitting a lesser degree of temptation, you can control the narrative. You can control how that idea is framed, when it first arises in her thoughts. You can cement yourself in Elianna's mind as someone desperate to resist what little temptation she did see. A lost lamb that someone like her cannot give up on.

After all... she believes that righteousness will triumph over corruption in willing hearts like yours.

Not only that, but it also gives you the chance to plant your first seeds of temptation yourself. Not large seeds, perhaps. Not yet. But even here—even in the heart of holy ground, with all your demonic powers sealed—you can still start to tug this heroine's imagination toward thoughts of carnal pleasure. Simply with your raw charisma alone, and the unimpeded access to her ear that this confessional gives.

"The worst part of all was... it wasn't just the sex," you continue, putting exactly the right combination of husky worldliness and frightened vulnerability in your tone as you continue to spin a tale designed for Elianna's ears. "It was... how tenderly he treated them. The way he held them. The way they held each other. Like they could finally open their hearts to each other, holding nothing back. Completely intimate, without any fear. I've..."

Here you let your voice break a little, before finishing in a shaky voice. "...I've never had that before. With anyone. The kind of live I've lived... I've never been able to open myself to anyone like that. I've... always been alone."

"You are not alone, child," comes Elianna's urgent voice from the other side of the confessional. "The goddess is always with you, even if it is not always obvious. And now I am with you as well."

"You... are?" you say in a small voice, perfectly pitching your voice to make it sound like her words had the intended effect. You want her to feel like her support is beating back the darkness that threatens this wayward child of Selal. "I... You're right, holy mother. Thank you. Thank you so much. Talking to you, it's like... it's like I can feel hope again. I haven't felt this way in a long time. Not since... long before I even met this demon."

"I am glad I could be of comfort," Elianna says. "Just remember the words of Selal's scriptures, and create a bastion in your heart to stand firm against the false promises of the enemy. No matter how it might have appeared in that moment, this fiend is a servant of Kovora. And a triumph for Kovora would mean the ruination of all that is good under Melca's spiteful heel. Now pray with me, child. Pray for the strength to face this trial."

The holy mother leads you in a ritualized prayer, which the two of you repeat seven times over. You recite after her, playing your role to the hilt, the very image of a desperate, penitent sinner. A desperate, penitent sinner who is increasingly reliant on the support that this unseen cleric is providing her.

And surely she wouldn't abandon an earnest child of Selal in such need, would she?

You don't do much more overt temptation after that. Still, you make sure to fill your prayers with emotion and desperation. As though you're clinging to every word that Elianna speaks, like a lifeline. Above all else, you want to fuel the emotional intertwining between the two of you. The sense that you would be destroyed if Elianna were to ever abandon you.

Eventually, however, the confession does reach its end. Elianna absolves you of your sins and pronounces a blessing over you. Then she tells you the time and place for you in-person meeting tonight. She tells you to visit a certain room in a run-down tenement building close to the orphanage, and that she'll meet you there tonight. You can understand the desire for a location away from prying eyes and ears, as well as her desire to keep the children out of it. Though you are a bit surprised that Elianna had a particular location so ready at hand. Perhaps she knows the building's owner?

In-character, you thank her profusely. Then you leave, walking out of the confessional area and back into the main sanctum. Considering the hour that Elianna picked for your meeting, you find yourself with some time to kill. Not a great deal of time... but perhaps it might be enough to take care of a smaller task.

Considering that you're posing as a criminal, you could stand to familiarize yourself more with the local underworld, even beyond what Rysanial conveyed to you second-hand, before setting out on this venture. You could meet with her network of already-subverted contacts yourself, and spend some time brushing up on the most recent developments. It could come in handy if you end up in a situation where your cover comes under close scrutiny from someone also familiar with that lifestyle.

You could also seek out the Thousand Eyes, attempting to make contact with Kovora's ratfolk spies in this city. They, too, would likely know about the local underworld... though since they would be seen more as outsiders, their information would probably not be as intimate as someone who lived in the very heart of it. However, while the information in that one respect might not be quite as personal as with Rysanial's contacts, if you make contact you might be able to leverage their entire network for other tasks.

Alternatively, seeing as you're already here in the Grand Cathedral, you could probably still subvert the priestess that Rysanial identified while you're in the area. That wouldn't give you any extra knowledge of the criminal element, but it would give you a stable food source, and an agent connected far closer to your immediate target than any criminal would be.

You judge that—if you were quick about it—you should be able to accomplish any of those three tasks and still manage to make it back just in time for the meeting. Alternatively, you could pass on any of them. You could, instead, spend the intervening time watching Elianna herself, observing her own preparations for the meeting, looking out for any extra dangers to be wary of or weaknesses to exploit.

If you did the latter, you'd also need to choose what form to spy in. The more unobtrusive the form, the more you might be able to overhear... but the more costly in terms of Lust it would be, switching back and forth again before the meeting.

Current Lust: 190/240