The Vampire & Her Witch

There was more to Owain’s nature than the passive desire of an Ancient Oak to nurture a child born beneath its boughs, and to that, Ashlynn’s attention turned to the other vision the tree revealed to her, a vision of a freshly carved throne and a pair of men who looked enough like each other to be brothers and enough like Owain to be uncles.

One of them was dressed in a fine tunic in an antiquated style that Ashlynn was used to seeing on Thane, while the other wore heavy white and gold robes covered with symbols of the Church that were every bit as archaic as the ones on Ignatious’s robes.

They were standing in this very Great Hall, though the beams still looked fresh and new compared to their current weathered state, and the walls had yet to accumulate as many tapestries displaying proud moments in Lothian history. As they spoke, neither man seemed able to take their eyes away from the newly made throne placed before them.

”We could still burn it,” the man in the richly embroidered tunic said as he scowled at the work of art in ancient wood before him. ”You aren’t the one who will have to sit on this... thing we’ve wrought, Leon. It makes me... It makes me more uncomfortable than I thought it would.”

”The march paid a high price for this, Odhran,” the priest replied stiffly. ”The Church did too, in blood and death and treasures that aren’t easily replaced. The time for second thoughts was long ago. The tokens have already been sent across the entire march by now, and half the kingdom as well. If you stop here, you throw far too much away.”

”And it’s not like you to have doubts like this, Brother,” he said in a softer tone as he finally looked at the other man. ”What’s troubling you?”

”It feels like witchcraft,” Odhran groused without taking his eyes off the wooden throne, as if it were a serpent that would leap up and bite him. ”Witchcraft and blood sacrifices, and...” his voice trailed off as his gruff protest withered under his brother’s knowing gaze.

”And I don’t like the idea of telling Gracie that we’ll never have a daughter, nor will any of our sons,” he admitted with a heavy sigh. ”I put off marrying her until the war was done. Now, after years of waiting and worrying if I’d ever come home, she’s giddy to paint a nursery and... and the thought of disappointing her hurts me more than I thought it would.”

”I wish I had a better way, Brother,” the priest said sympathetically as he placed a comforting hand on his brother’s shoulder. ”But we cannot defeat the Demon Lady of the Vale as we are,” he said, his hazel eyes flashing with conviction.

”Even with all of this, your children may not be strong enough to kill her either,” Leon said, pursing his lips together as he returned his gaze to the wooden throne that he’d turned into far more than a seat from which his brother would rule the march. ”To kill a truly Undying Demon requires more, and even if the Holy Lord of Light gives us the tools, he demands we pay the price for invoking his miracles.”

”I know,” Odhran said as he rested a hand on the smooth, polished wood of the throne. ”I said that I’d pay any price to avenge our father for what she did, and I meant it... But now that I’m standing before it... It’s hard to set a price that my children and their children, and every generation after them will have to pay.”

”But your children will never be alone,” Leon reminded his brother gently. ”One to fight and one to pray for him... By sacrificing the chance for daughters, you will ensure many strong sons. Brother Ignatious already proved that even the mightiest of Inquisitors cannot hope to defeat the Demon Lady of the Vale.”

”The writings he left behind revealed the truth of how terrifying an adversary we faced in this war, and we’re lucky to have survived it,” Leon said flatly. ”Carrying away one of the demon’s own sacred trees to craft into our weapon is both proof that the Holy Lord of Light is aligned with our cause and a miracle that we will have to spend generations repaying. But if our family can’t raise up an Exemplar to accompany a warrior stronger than any Templar...”

”I know,” Odhran said as he drew a knife from his belt. The Lothian crest on the pommel caught the candlelight. He laid the edge across his palm and drew it slowly, opening the skin from the base of his thumb to the heel of his hand, and Ashlynn watched the blood well up dark in the lamplight before he closed his fingers into a fist and pressed the cut against the wood of the throne.

The wood drank it in.

Where his hand pressed, the blood didn’t pool or smear on the on the surface. Rather, it sank into the grain like water into thirsty earth, and the greenish-gold light that had drifted around Owain in his cradle now glimmered faintly along in the shape of lesser-known constellations, flashing brilliantly before reforming into the patterns that humans called the Ascended Swordsman and the Ascended Guide, the ones held most sacred among knights and priests.

Then, the lines and dots of light faded away, leaving a throne that felt not only majestic but also complete in a way it hadn’t just moments before.

”I just hope,” Odhran said, his hand still pressed to the throne and his voice rough with emotion. ”I hope when our descendants meet us on the Heavenly Shores, they can forgive us for what we’ve done...”

”So that’s what it was,” Ashlynn whispered as the vision began to fade. ”All of this, because the boys she spared from her massacre couldn’t put down their hate...”

Leon and Odhran Lothian, the sons of Cellach Lothian, who had started the Brothers’ War to avenge their fallen father, hadn’t just taught their children to perpetuate the cycle of hatred that had plunged the march into a new war against the Eldritch with every generation. They’d used the sorcery of the Church to turn it into an inescapable fate!