Miles

Let's see what, if anything, it found.

That figures.

That's not entirely true.

There is one more test we can conduct.

My dear Miles, are you suggesting we start a bonfire with some children and use the flames to burn down the black fungus?

Uh, that sounds a little... extreme?

Doesn't it?

Not to mention the lack of children.

The basic principle behind the burning ritual seems to concern moral purity.

Perhaps there are other sources or even symbols of moral purity that could achieve the same or similar effects.

Even the ridiculous ones.

I'm not sure what kind of morality requires the burning of children to defeat evil.

I think you two may be getting ahead of yourselves.

While I'm certainly no scholar of Mephitaka, I've come to understand something of the beliefs that compose it.

Specifically...

The damned are damned through no fault of their own.

They're born as such.

I'm not sure that makes me feel any better.

I'm even less of an expert than you are, but as I recall, while there's plenty of discussion about hell, sin, and the indestructibility of the soul, there's very little said about the creator god itself.

Only that one is implied by the wording of the codex.