Vestibule

With a worried gasp, Claire knelt next to Taylor, hands reaching out to wrap around him. "Taylor! No, no... hey! Hello? We need help!" she called out, trying to lean the young man on his back. "Don't move... alright? Are you alright? Speak to me. Speak to me. You're going to be okay."

Taylor groaned.

"Just let me die. I've lost everything, i don't have anything else to give. What do you want from me."

Taylor grabbed at her shirt collar, his grip weak. "What do you want from me. Ive given all I have." His lips trembled, releasing her and reaching for his own chest. He grabbed at himself, fingers digging into the fabric of his shirt and tugging outward. "What do you want from me." His voice trailed off as his hands fell to his sides, leaning back against the statues base.

"I just... want to rest." He struggled to get to his feet. "I saw a room with a cot when we came in" He began walking.

Claire frowned, lines of concern forming at the corners of her eyes. She reached her arms out to help Taylor up, if he let her. Even so close to him, even doing what she could, Claire felt so impossibly helpless. Her heart reached out to him.

Whatever trials and tribulations her Lord put Taylor through, she wanted to believe he would survive through them. God would not abandon him so cruelly, would he?

Her faith wavered with her worry.

"No, Taylor, you need help!"

"Woah there," Adriaan said as he moved in to steady Taylor.

He had seen the man go down, and worse yet, try to get back up again despite the spatter of blood that speckled the floor.

"I'm no doctor, but I've been thrashed about enough to know that coughing up blood isn't something you just sleep off," he scolded Taylor.

"There's an infirmary outside, let's get him there," he added to Claire.

He stayed at Taylor's opposite side from Claire, to make sure he didn't go down again.

A drop of blood slipped from between his lips, curving into his chin and disappearing into the forest of hair that occupied the lower end of his face. There was a time that it was a dark forest, tamed yet bold. It was nearly pristine. Each hair teased into perfection. But over the years, trees overgrow, fires clear marshes, and a lush landscape turns to a baron wasteland. Trees are cut for lumber, soil ruptured for oil, land stripped of its value. All that remained were greying clumps, grasping at dirt and dried blood. Taylor parted his mouth, flicking his tongue across its roof. Where there should of been spit he found only blood.

He found a hand sneaking towards him, grabbing it within his own. He twisted her fingers into a cone, letting their tips sneak out from the edge of his grasp. He studied the swirls that occupied her skin, his eyes leading towards the glossy sheaths of keratin that caught the temples light. His grip was tight, tugging at her slightly.

He let out another bloodied cough. He allowed Adriaan's aid, glancing at him for a moment before allowing himself to be led away. Ready to be sewn up and cast back out to gather more scars.

Upon hearing the answer for her cry of help, Claire threw her head up to gaze upon that which she never thought she would see before. They were in the scriptures. Multiple times. Breathtakingly beautiful beings with white wings.

Claire's breath was taken from her lungs in a long, silent exhale. It wasn't until Taylor grabbed her hand that she realized she wasn't breathing. She sucked in a sharp hiss of air and aimed her attention at him, curling her other arm around his shoulders. Her eyes looked over at the man with the white wings again. She could barely say it.

"Thank you," she shakily breathed. "Please. He needs so much help. He's so sick."

So He was watching them after all.

Meteor has arrived, coming from Temple Infirmary.

Meteor vanishes into nothingness, but you get the feeling they are heading somewhere else.

Suddenly, a swirling vortex appears to the southwest. You can see something appear in that direction.