Sal lifts her machete and beats on the door with the hilt. She's followed garbled gossip here, over the course of the winter; the temple of the Mother of Beasts, goddess of livestock and the predators which snatch them both, profaned and invaded, occupied by an unnatural thing that walks and talks like a man.
"Open!" she bellows. "Open in the name of the gods! I am the Worldlost Wanderer! Brought here from my world by a trickster spirit, and charged with cleansing the world of seven times seven of the spawn of monstrosity to earn the aid of the gods in returning home! Face me, die cleanly, submit to the inevitability of fate!"
Theatre, of course, they never want to come out and have a fair fight; but the rumours are sufficiently confused and contradictory that she wants to stake out what's going on really clearly for the benefit of the priestesses who, allegedly, voluntarily stayed.
Bystanders — interfering people with whatever convoluted, godsworn stake of their own — are a perpetual problem.
The door cracks open.
"There's nothing here for you, Wanderer," a nervous priestess type says through the gap.
"Walks and talks like a man? Unnatural?" Sal says wearily. "Living in your temple?"
"You're mistaken—" the priestess starts, and tries to shut the door in alarm as Sal shoves shoulder-first through the crack.
"No," Sal says. "You've got a story why I shouldn't kill it. That's not mistaken. You know what? Most of the damn things have someone with a reason to defend them. Your gods are sickos, is why. I'm cursed to kill seven times seven monstrosities to go home, you understand? I don't care. I don't care if you've been cursed to love it, or defend it, or it's your niece's dogwalker's seventh cousin's polycule's ex cursed to be a werewolf. It's getting the fucking machete."
She's marching through the temple as she speaks, swinging the blade to show she means it, the priestess fluttering around after as though she'd like to grab and halt her, but — machete.
It's not flattering, but it's better than the reception she's had some places.
"No, no, don't go in there—" the priestess says, as Sal shoves aside the curtain across a doorway and stalks into a room where a gaggle of sacred attendants are clustered around—
She stops. Nearly drops the machete. Stares at the furred head, the unnatural staring eyes. Keeps staring as the figure rises, hands clawing at its own neck. Finds her voice as the temple's mystery beast begins to claw its own head off.
"That's a fucking fursuit—"
