The sacrament restores connection with, or faith in, one’s humanity. But undergoing the sacrament is apparently very stressful.
The flesh of the Minotaur is a fragment of its being that has been freed from the constraints that Monarch has imposed by imprisoning the Minotaur in the Labyrinth. The flesh has undergone the metamorphosis and acquired the power to assume different forms, and to adjust its appearance to the nature of the viewer, with the purpose of “saving them from themselves”, by returning them to their humanity in an “elevated” form. This experience is traumatic because being reconnected to what makes us human can itself be stressful.
What form does the minotaur take? Roll 1d8
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A living mirror that reflects the viewer exactly as they are, flawed, care worn, secretive, conniving, and then flickers, showing an image, of the viewer beautiful, wise, resolute, open, resplendent.
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Emerging from the shadows of the Tabernacle like a black hood, the silent face of someone whom the recipient has badly wronged, failed, or let down. The pregnant silence presents a felt opportunity for apology. If offered, the apology will be received with a quiet, understanding gaze.
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As blankets or swaddling clothes, within is a vulnerable child that reaches towards the recipient. The recipient recognizes that it is somehow them, as they were at this age, and memories flood back from this time before all memory.
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From the darkness, on a surface like a bone white platter held on a swaying stalk, a single item from their past. It represents the road not taken, and awakens some part of the humanity of the recipient that they have left behind, suppressed, or that has been stripped from them.
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Blanketed in silver feathers, an angel’s wing. Ruffling they part to reveal a multitude of eyes. Their gaze is hard to meet, for nothing is hidden from them. They see the recipient as they truly are, stripped of all dissembling and misdirection, naked in their shabby humanity.
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A roiling sea that parts sudden as flesh rises like an island. It is recognizably the mouth of a beloved and long-gone caregiver. The mouth moves silently as though singing a lullaby or intoning words of heartfelt praise. In the presence of the flesh, the recipient feels again the sense of being held safely by the love of another.
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A light shining from the tabernacle, as when the sun breaks over the mountains, and the rosy fingers of dawn spread their pink light, softening everything, bringing out the beauty, strangeness and wonder in ordinary things, a wonder long lost to suffering and the press of worries.
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As an item revealed in a harsh light as though a curtain of darkness was whisked back. The recipients associates the item with one of their great temptations or weaknesses. In the harsh light, it looks grubby and pitiful, and the thought that it has exercised a hold over the recipient is nauseating.