Chapter 512: Red.
It was twenty feet tall and equally wide, rendered in oils so dark and potent, they seemed to absorb the ambient light.
The central figure was a man— a Templar—clad in crimson armor that gleamed with the hue of fresh blood. His helmet was held in his offhand, revealing a face that was both beautiful and terrible, with eyes that burned with the light of utter scourge.
In his other hand, he held the severed head of a demon by the hair.
The demon’s head was enormous, easily the size of a man’s torso. Its flesh was black and pustulent, covered in hundreds of eyes that stared in every direction. Even in death, even rendered in paint, those eyes seemed to watch with boundless hatred.
The gaze of a true fiend.
The man’s expression was one of triumph and madness in equal measure. Blood covered his armor, his face, his handguards...
Beneath the painting, carved into the stone altar, were words in the old tongue: "Through change, strength. Through strength, salvation."
The Red House contained many other facilities such as barracks for the Templars stationed in Liedenstorm, an armory filled with weapons and armor, a library containing Church doctrine and tactical manuals, kitchens, dining halls, training rooms and meditation chambers for monks.
But beneath all of this, accessible only through a single guarded staircase, were the holding cells.
The cells were carved directly into the bedrock beneath the city. Each was perhaps eight feet to a side, with stone walls two feet thick and iron bars as thick as a man’s wrist. They stank of mold and human waste and fear.
These were where the Red House kept its prisoners. Captured Abominations, chained and sedated for study. Heretics caught practicing forbidden magics. Criminals arrested for illegal possession of Relics or trafficking in corrupted goods.
Very few who entered these cells ever left them.