7. Chapel of the Mysticet, Part 2

Catherine and Rosalyn had arrived at the Church of the Mysticet. It looked out of place amongst the gothic towers of the rest of Fogport - instead, the duo were standing in front of a quaint, humble chapel overlooking the sea on the edge of the Island. It’s exterior was so ghostly pale it almost glowed, illuminating the mosaics of strange oceanic scenes depicted in the stained glass windows. It was smaller than Rosalyn expected… she had anticipated something far more sinister, angular and brutalist, but the handmade edifice seemed oddly inviting.

In a way, that made it more uncanny.

Around it, patches of lush seagrass were growing on the rocks, the only plant life Rosalyn had seen since she arrived, and behind it she could get a view of the Misty Sea stretching far into the horizon. The Chapel sat on the edge of a rocky cliff-face, and beneath it Rosalyn thought she could see the faint edge of a beach.

The Detective took another look back into town - it was like there was an invisible between Fogport and the area around the Chapel. “The Mysticet own this real estate. They’ve been keeping us from actually doing something with it for years.” Catherine grumbled as she approached the wooden double doors and placed her muscular hand on the knob. It didn’t open.

“Catherine, I don’t know if this is a good idea. I agree they’re suspects in this, but we haven’t even gotten the chance to actually talk to one of them yet. Maybe we wait till morning, and we can get their side of the story.” Darc pleaded.

“Are you nuts? If Elliott’s trapped in this place’s basement, I need to get him out now.” Catherine pleaded back. She looked like a wounded dog as she stared into Rosalyn’s eyes.

“I… uh… I know, but what happened to keeping peace on the Island? We haven’t solved this mystery yet Catherine, now’s not the time to go in guns blazing!”

“I think you have solved this mystery, Roz. Henry told me what he thought after you were done talking to him, and it makes sense that they’d want to target Elliott. And one of the last people to see him alive is one of their members, and he was FLEEING us!” Catherine said, before pulling her Cannonhammer off her back and pointing it at the door. “I can’t risk him any longer. Cover your ears.”

BOOM.

Rosalyn looked back at the Chapel once the dust had cleared to see that the ornate wooden doors had been blown clean off their hinges, lying in a puddle of splinters in the Church’s entryway, alongside an iron cannonball sitting in a dent in the floor. Rosalyn sighed, as Catherine crossed into the Mysticet Chapel.

A layer of vapour had settled over the marble floor of the Church, like a legion of ghosts crawling across the ground. The air was dark and thick, with an eerie stillness even though an explosion had rocked the building just moments ago. The duo passed into an entrance hallway, a long corridor lined with more wooden doors and paintings of what looked like religious scenes. Depictions of the Misty Sea, strange creatures, transcriptions of unrecognizable texts…

Rosalyn passed a portrait of what she guessed was the current congregation, lined up in front of the Chapel. There were a few dozen members, each dressed in white robes that gave them the appearance of phantoms. She passed a few individual canvases too, paintings of members young and old in occult headwear and draped in the bones of dead animals. One, a young girl covered in bandages, especially stood out to her, but they all set her nerves on edge.

A brisk wind whistled through the dark Church as the Detective and the Knight crossed into the main temple. It seemed somehow bigger on the outside. There was a high ceiling with odd markings carved into the roof, overlooking rows and rows of empty wooden pews that faced an ornate altar at the end of the Church. Behind the altar was an enormous mural, so vast and detailed Rosalyn couldn’t take her eyes off it, depicting an unmistakable beast.

A Ghost Whale.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

The thing sprawled across the entire breadth of the canvas, its unnaturally long body depicted hovering like an angel over the waves of the Misty Sea. It was swimming through the sky, its skeletal form carried by an ominous spectral glow. Other creatures hovered in its wake - Lampfish, eels, and schools of sardines and minnows basked in the Whale’s glow and flew alongside it. A pale liquid, like ectoplasm, was dripping off the bones of the Ghost Whale into the sea beneath.

Ghost Whale

Monster Type: Undead

An enormous spectral whale that lives deep in the Misty Sea. With almost God-like power, these great beasts guide the fish of the Misty Sea through the dark and the fog, protecting migrating schools from predators and shepherding them with their ghostly light.

While they interact often with other beasts, they avoid humans, choosing to live in peaceful coexistence. Despite rarely crossing paths, some humans in the Misty Sea choose to worship them, harnessing their powers and using their influence to protect them from human hands.

In the left hand corner, barely visible against the tremendous scale of the painting’s focus, were a few droplets of paint seemingly representing a person. Standing on a white beach, staring piously up at the undead titan.

Rosalyn’s wide eyes drifted to the altar that stood in front of the fresco. A thick tome bound in leather sat on the pedestal, flipped open to a page with dense text scrawled across it. The Detective walked up to it and began to curiously flip through it, unable to resist the lure of a mysterious book, until she reached one passage that caught her eye.

“What are you doing?” Catherine asked as she scanned the room with the focus of a soldier in enemy territory, cannon at the ready.

“One night in the village, the hunters and fishermen of the Island began to hear a strange sound rippling across the rocks. A sad, lonely song. The villagers would hear it everywhere they went - for days on end the singing continued, until the people were too frightened to leave their homes. Terrified, the villagers prepared to hunt down the source of the singing, suspecting a Siren or Witch lurking on the shores. But one girl remained unafraid… she followed the singing until she reached the Northern Beach of the Island, where she saw a strange beast trapped on the sand…” Rosalyn said, orating the passage in front of her.

“The girl found a Whale, stuck on the beach, flapping and splashing to try and get back in the water. The girl had not seen such a beast before - it was massive, made from bone and white light, but she recognized the pain in its song. The song of a child, calling for its mother.” Rosalyn continued.

“The girl tried to push it into the waves, but failed. Eventually, as night fell, the mob of villagers appeared behind her, ready to put the singing to rest, but the girl convinced them to spare the beast. And instead, they pushed it into the waves. The Whale began to glow with ghostly power once it touched the water, and it rose out from the mists of the ocean to fly overhead. The villagers, terrified, readied their weapons… but instead, the Whale sang a happy song. And in the singing of the young monster, the girl heard the name of its kind: Mysticet.”

Rosalyn looked over at Catherine, expecting some kind of commentary on what she had just read. “Just an old legend.” Catherine said, dismissively, before returning to scouring the rows of pews.

Then, with a loud and sudden thud, the heavy doors leading into the main Chapel slammed shut. And then, a strange song began to fill the chapel. “What the hell is that?” Rosalyn shivered as the choral chanting rose in pitch and fervor, until it felt like it was all around her. It wasn’t the kind of singing Rosalyn read in the book - it was sinister, and dizzying.

“My head feels… funny.” Catherine winced. “I think we tripped some kind of security system.”

“I told you we shouldn’t come in here!” Rosalyn hissed as she ran around the altar and back towards the double doors, gripping her hands on the handle and pulling forcefully. Without any luck. “CATHERINE! Help me break this thing down!”

But Rosalyn heard no answer. Spinning back around, she scanned the ominous Chapel again… but saw no sign of the Cannon Knight. “Catherine? Oh fuck.” she whispered as her eyes locked on another doorway, off to the right side of the room. It was creaking open, as if someone had just passed through it.

But then it slammed shut.