The Vampire & Her Witch

”In order to understand the Church, and the powers its faithful wield, you need to understand where that power comes from,” Ignatious said, momentarily feeling as though the sands of time had flowed in reverse and he was once again standing before a room full of initiates, hanging on his every word as he preached the scripture of the Inquisition.

Only the words he came to share tonight were the furthest things from scripture imaginable, and the Church would see him burned at the stake as a heretic for preaching them even if he weren’t already a vampire.

”There are three fundamental sources of power in this world,” Ignatious explained. ”Or rather, three types of sources. In the Eldritch world, the first are called ’Children of the Earth’, and the greatest of them, the ultimate source of the power of witchcraft, are called Earth Mothers, or Fathers.”

”They represent the primal, uncaring force of nature, and their power is derived from the energy of the world itself. Lady Ashlynn is an Earth Mother, the Mother of Trees,” he added, gesturing respectfully to the blonde witch sitting at the head of the table.

Around the table, most people simply nodded. This wasn’t new information to Ashlynn’s coven, or Nyrielle’s progeny. Only outsiders like Hugo, Liam, Diarmuid and Loman found themselves leaning forward, their brows furrowing in thought at the way Ignatious described witches.

The Church considered witches to be agents of chaos who twisted the natural order of the world to their whims, but the way Ignatious spoke, he made it sound more like the power of nature belonged to them already.

”The second,” Ignatious continued, drawing a deep breath as he prepared to present the information that was certain to shock the newcomers the most. ”Are called ’Children of the Heavens.’ The Eldritch refer to them as Oracles, and the greatest among them, the ones who occupy a position similar to Lady Ashlynn’s, are addressed as ’Sovereigns.’”

”Oracles derive their power from the celestial bodies in the heavens,” Ignatious said. ”From the sun, the stars, the moon and all the other things that chart their way across the sky each day and night.”

”So their power is granted to them by the Holy Lord of Light, who rules over all things in the heavens,” Loman said, frowning as he followed along with Ignatious’s explanation. ”Does that mean that there is another being that is similar to the Holy Lord of Light who grants powers to the ’Earth Mothers’ like Lady Ashlynn? And another, an agent of Darkness, who grants powers to Vampires?” Loman asked as he extrapolated ahead from what Ignatious had already said.

As soon as he spoke, Ashlynn frowned, as did Heila, Ollie and Virve. They’d all touched the energy of the world in one way or another, and some of them had encounters with remnant spirits or the living will of Ancient trees, but none of them felt like there was a ’Holy Lord of Trees’ or anything similar dispensing their powers.

Only Isabell wondered about the guide she’d encountered during her trial and the warning she’d received not to follow the source of her power back too far, lest she become lost and unable to find her way back to the world of the living.

The guide had been one part Ashlynn and one part... something else that Isabell had slowly come to think of as the collective wisdom of the Hemlock Trees, but perhaps there really was something beyond that, lurking just out of reach of witches like her and accessible only to people like Ashlynn.

”I dare not say that,” Ignatious said quickly. ”I’ve spoken to the Mother of Thorns and to Lady Ashlynn about this at length... If there is such a being, the witches have not named it. As to the Holy Lord of Light,” Ignatious said carefully as he looked from Loman to Diarmuid and back again. ”Whether you believe that He exists beyond the oracles is a matter of faith.”

”All I can say is that the Saint Teacher and the Great Prophet were both Sovereigns,” Ignatious said. ”They were oracles, bound to the Stars and the Sun. But they aren’t the only Sovereigns, nor were they the first of their kind to walk the face of the world. Before the Saint Teacher followed the stars to find the Great Prophet, likely hundreds of years before that, or even longer ago, a different Sovereign of the Stars was born on this continent, and together with the Mother of Forests, he led the Eldritch people back from the brink of extinction at the end of the Age of Ice.”

”This is the first of the Church’s deceptions that you have to confront,” Ignatious said, looking directly at Loman before turning his gaze on Diarmuid. ”There is no argument that the Saint Teacher and the Great Prophet reshaped the world, and I have little doubt that they rescued mankind from the brink of extinction, just as a previous Sovereign of Stars and the Mother of Forests rescued the Eldritch people from certain doom.”

Ignatious had studied a number of the secret histories of the Church. As the bearer of a Holy Flame Blade, there were few things that he couldn’t request access to, though there had always been a line that he couldn’t cross where knowledge was kept that was the exclusive providence of Exemplars and Saints. And, he imagined, a line beyond that which even Exemplars couldn’t cross.

But what he’d read had been enough to give him a much better understanding of the faith than men like Loman and Diarmuid possessed, particularly when it came to the actions of the Saint Teacher. To the common worshiper, the Saint Teacher was enshrined as a figure who guided the Great Prophet in his younger years, and who acted as his advisor and confidant in the earliest days of the Church.

But the sealed texts gave Diarmuid a very different impression of the Saint Teacher. They mentioned that it was Anwir Esau who guided the Great Prophet to each of his original disciples. It seemed strange that the Saint Teacher would play such a pivotal role in selecting the Great Prophet’s most important followers until Diarmuid learned about the Oracles and their Celestial Courts.

Once he did, it became obvious to him that the Saint Teacher wasn’t a lesser man than the Great Prophet; rather, he was a Sovereign himself. And the thirteen ascended disciples who embodied the powers of the stars had never been the creation of the Great Prophet... they’d been chosen by the man standing behind him.

”But for all of their power and their wisdom,” Ignatious said firmly as he pushed down some of his more troubling speculations about the founders of his faith. ”They were not unique. They are part of a mystic lineage that existed long before the Church, and that exists outside of our Church even now, and if you cannot accept that, then what comes next will be even harder to face...”