Hymns of Struggle

7- Through the Red Sea

Author's Note: As of 4/28/2019, this is the first chapter of around 80 that will be added to this updated version of my fic. More information can be found at the first chapter, and I highly recommend starting from the beginning if you've only picked up this incomplete Wattpad version and not the caught up versions on AO3 or FF.net before this date. 

The art for this chapter is by MetallicArtist on tumblr.

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"The people remained at a distance, while Moses approached the thick darkness where God was." - Exodus 20:21

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"I...I..."

Her wrists came forward in front of her, similar in the manner this person had obsessed with their arms the past few hours.

Free.

...Free?

The word addressed two perplexities at once. The first being...was she really free?! Wait, wait- what even just happened? She entered the studio only for it to come to life before her very eyes. It swallowed her, and soon she was found by...them. They battled to take her and succeeded, followed only by the memory of a flickering man opening the curtain to a play of vomit and relief. After all that, was she just...released from this?

The second seemed to disagree:

Until the day he sets us free.

"Who?" she asked.

The watery man appeared reluctant to answer.

"All in due time." Smooth and airy, more for his own thoughts than her own, a drawn-out mumble lost and resigned to forces beyond himself. It was in sharp contrast to a louder, demanding inquiry that echoed the room.

"Can you stand?"

With great reluctance, she moved her wary gape from him in order to center herself. A throaty groan signaled her start; unsteady arms tossed to the ground to lift her body from the floor. Most would have responded to the visual cues by offering aid, but not he. Eventually she stood before him, knees bent and ready to collapse, an arm leaning fully against the beam to which she has been tied. It appears restoring life does not mean to restore physical capacities, he noted.

"Come with me."

Without even a gesture or a look, he trudged towards the gaping hallway that had held the shadow man of her dying nightmare. Confoundment widened every opening of her face. Panic. Realization her turmoil wasn't over.

"I...! I need to leave! I need to-"

"If you don't come with me-" He interrupted her excuses as a schoolmaster scolds a child preparing to cup a brown recluse in their hands. "-you won't be permitted to exist as you are for another minute."

After that, the chamber was audience only to the dripping of pipes. She never noticed the pentagram that had encompassed her for the entirety of their stay.

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Fatigue in every step, she followed him into the void, fingers and palms clinging to the wall for support. Keeping up with him, even as slow as he was, was an ordeal. There was doubt if the pulse she felt against her fingertips was just her own. But so far, this was the same as the first room of the studio, only filtered through extreme shadow-

A stench bit at her nose and she saw something move. Just up ahead, ink gushed from the pipes overhead and swamped the floor. A gigantic statue with the same face as the rest of the studio proudly oversaw the incubus in front of them as the mass grew and bubbled like a cancer eating the corridor inside out. The shepherd was unphased and walked closer and closer, about to enter this convulsing, living shade. The soft thump in her fingers became faster.