The Chapel of Many Angles

The air of the chapel was thick, as though a cloud of smoke had seeped its way up from the cracks of Hell and filled it to the top of its high, stone ceiling.  It was here that the father stood ever vigilant over the prince, to whom he had provided sanctuary at his request. The prince kneeled at the altar before him in prayer, shaken over the rumors of the king’s murder at the hands of an angry mob. The father’s eyes remained steadfast on the book he held in his hands as he read a passage that had always given him strength in times of need.

The prince was not a particularly faithful man by reputation - and yet here he was; confessing his life’s sins in what he felt in his heart to be his final moments. The father paid little attention to the man who begged his attention in his hour of despair, unworthy as he was. But it was not his place to judge the man; judgment would come to all in due time.

The door to the chapel burst in suddenly, slamming against the wall with a loud crack. The prince stood suddenly, his eyes pleading with the father to cast his divine protection upon him as the mob advanced before them. They laid their accusations at the prince’s feet and he begged for his life before their tools of justice and strife. It was then that the father spoke, calling upon the wisdom and teachings of his life’s calling to protect the sheep of his flock.

“I stand before you as the Lord’s disciple. His eyes are upon you. It is his will that, for as long as I stand before you, no harm come to this man in His holy sanctuary.”

They ignored his warning with cries of “Blasphemy!” flying from their tongues as they advanced towards him. The prince retreated behind the priest, relying on his faith in his words to shield him from harm. The father clasped the crucifix tightly in his fingers, calling upon the strength of the heavens as the mob drew closer with their weapons raised in malice. His heart fell as the trapdoor to the undercroft slammed shut behind him and the prince fled the chapel, forsaking him. The prince, like the mob closing around him, had failed to realize that there was no escaping the eyes of God.

The father acted quickly, kneeling down to lock the door and pocketing the key in his priest’s robe. His eyes returned to the book that had been his teacher, his protector, and his friend all his life. He read the words as he had countless times before, gaining new understanding in its words as time began to slow and the dull grey halls of the chapel he had walked every day of his life burst into blinding white light.

The book fell from his hands and on to the floor of the desecrated chapel. Just as its pages had given him life, he gave his life now to its blood-stained pages as they fluttered in the breeze flowing through the open door and over his crumpled body. The words of his favorite story, stained forever red, told the final moments of his life - just as they had the man for whom the story had been written.

“Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do…”