The Vampire & Her Witch

Near the refreshment table where they’d been instructed to stand and observe, Cossot’s brow wrinkled in thought before she leaned close enough to her shorter friend to whisper in Roseen’s ear.

”Do you understand any of this?” she asked softly. ”Snowflakes and brittle magic?”

”Not really,” Roseen admitted quietly. ”But I think Lady Heila is saying that Lord Loman’s prayers weren’t very good. She said they were only as strong as frost on the window, and we could scrub that away with a kitchen rag.”

”That can’t be right though,” Cossot murmured, frowning as she tried to follow the conversation. ”The Church’s miracles come from the Holy Lord of Light himself. Nothing in the world should be more perfect.”

”But it sounds like things did go wrong,” Roseen said with a complicated expression on her face as she looked at the tattered figure of the man her closest friend once idolized. ”After all, people died...”

”I think I understand,” Jalal said, forcing himself to remove his hand from where it had been cradling the stump of his arm and pointing at Loman Lothian. ”You call the stars you follow ’the Ascended Archer’ but we have another name for those same stars. We know them as the First Hunter and many of my people follow his ways,” the former Eldritch Lord said.

Sitting next to Heila, Diarmuid’s eyes widened in surprise. He was still trying to digest the diminutive witch’s revelation that, despite everything he knew, Ignatious had survived the Brother’s War and moreover, had become a Vampire like the ones he once studied.

Now, the foundations of his faith trembled beneath his feet as he heard another demon claiming to follow the same ways as the Church. Or, if not the same ways, the same holy figure in the heavens, even if they knew him by a different name.

”When you say that you follow the ways of the ’First Hunter’,” Diarmuid asked hesitantly. ”What does that mean?”

”The ’First Ones’ were the stars that guided us out of the Age of Ice, thousands of years ago,” Jalal began. ”The whole of the world was covered in ice and snow, save for the warm lands in the south and pockets of green here and there where life hung on. But when the ice melted away, it was the First Ones who guided us away from disaster.”

”The First Hunter teaches us to be patient, because our people depend on the game that we hunt,” Jalal explained. ”He teaches us to be certain before the spear leaves our hands or the arrow leaves our bow, because once we have thrown it, we cannot change our minds. He teaches us restraint, to thin the heard but not to decimate it, or there will be nothing to hunt the next year.”

”We learn many things from the First Ones,” Jalal said. ”My people have always held close to the ways of the stars, and we would not forget their lessons, or twist them to suit a thirst for power or greed,” he said solemnly as he looked at the young priest in his tattered black robes.

”When you shot me,” the wounded warrior said directly to the young priest. ”It was the shot of a patient hunter who waited until his prey was calm, relaxed, and defenseless. I let down my guard because we called for surrender, but a true hunter would see that as an invitation. I should congratulate you on an excellent hunt,” he said before lowering his brows and scowling at all three of the clergymen.

”But when you unleashed a rain of arrows that killed indiscriminately, I saw no hunting in what you did,” Jalal said. ”And I cannot understand how the power of the First Hunter can be invoked in such a way.”

”Isn’t it obvious?” Germot muttered under his breath. ”It’s because your ’First Hunter’ is a primitive, heretical icon that only mimics the truth and glory of the Ascended Archer,” he said bitterly.

”Germot, enough,” Diarmuid said, intervening before Dame Sybyll could take action against the quarrelsome priest. ”You aren’t an Inquisitor, you don’t know what it means to dedicate your life to the search of truth,” he said before he turned to look back at Jalal. ”What you just shared with me is a truth that no one in the Church has ever heard, or at least, if we have, then it’s been locked away in vaults that I’ve never entered.”

What Jalal had just shared with him amounted to little more than folklore, and Ignatious was certain that most of his fellows in the Church would dismiss it as such. It was so primitive that, to Diarmuid’s ears, it sounded like the myths and legends that had endured since ancient times, before the coming of the Great Prophet cleansed the lands of the old countries.

A modern scholar would dismiss them as legends, distorted by years of oral tradition that predated writing, and he would pay them little mind. But to Diarmuid, there was always a kernel of truth to be discovered in any story and one of the things he’d just heard reminded him far too much of the origins of his own faith.

”Germot isn’t wrong to point out that the Ascended Archer, Ceslovas Beksa, isn’t the same as your First Hunter,” Diarmuid said slowly, feeling as if he’d looked into the heavens for the first time tonight and seen something greater than ever before. ”But you said that the First Ones, that the stars guided you out of a time of hardship, an Age of Ice, and taught you how to thrive...”

”Disciple Loman probably knows the stories of Ceslovas Beksa better than I do,” Diarmuid admitted. ”But according to scripture, the Great Prophet was followed by thirteen great teachers who ascended to the heavens when they died, preserving their teachings for all time. You say that the stars guided you, and they’ve guided us as well, haven’t they Loman?” the Inquisitor said, turning his gaze on the young priest.

”I can see similarities, if you put it that way, Inquisitor,” Loman admitted reluctantly. ”The Great Prophet was born into a world at war with itself. The Empire of Eternal Waves fell, man turned against man, beasts haunted the night and all the lands were engulfed by chaos and war. The Great Prophet and his Thirteen Teachers led us back from the brink of madness and brought about a new era of peace and prosperity by purging the land of any who could destroy or divide his chosen people,” he said, all but reciting from the oldest scriptures of the life of the Great Prophet.

”But among his Thirteen Teachers, Ceslovas Beksa wasn’t a hunter, he was a general,” Loman continued. ”He did teach patience, just as this ’First Hunter’ did, and he also said that you had to be certain that any battle you fought was truly worth fighting for because once the battle was joined, it would be too late to have regrets.”

”But Ceslovas Beksa also taught us to pursue our enemy to utter destruction,” Loman said firmly. ”He made sure that we understood that the foe we allowed to escape could return to us ten times as strong if he was allowed to find friends and allies. That was why it was so important to be patient and attack only when you were certain that you could achieve victory... Because if you allowed your enemy to live, they would only grow stronger.”

”And isn’t that exactly what’s happened here?” Loman asked bitterly. ”We’ve surrendered, and now, a vampire sits upon a throne where a faithful lord once ruled. A whole barony will now grow crops and raise livestock to feed the demon’s armies. Losing this battle will make it that much harder to win the war...”

”We’re sinners,” he said, looking directly at Diarmuid with eyes that were sunken and haunted by visions of battles yet to come. ”Not because we failed here, but because we turned away from the struggle before us. We saved a few lives, maybe even a few hundred lives... but how many thousands have we doomed by allowing the demons to have this victory?”