The Vampire & Her Witch

The two men had spoken for hours into the longest night of the year, and gradually, the white-haired High Priest had come to accept that not only was he the younger of the two, but that High Inquisitor Ignatious could offer him something that no one else in the church had been able to for more than twenty years; a perspective that came from a life lived decades longer, facing challenges of faith that weren’t any smaller than his own.

Ignatious held nothing back from his fellow clergyman. Everything he’d suffered at the hands of High Lord Hamdi, the decades he’d spent trapped in literal darkness and the torment he’d suffered for much of his life left Aubin’s heart aching, but the wisdom and knowledge that Ignatious had gained proved to be an even greater balm to his soul.

”So in the end, vampires, witches and saints, or oracles rather, are all facets of the same greater force,” Aubin said as he grappled with what he’d been told.

”I wouldn’t say that to a witch or a vampire,” Ignatious said. ”I may never know the truth. Whether there is one unified power or three separate ones held in tension, who’s to say? And does it matter anyway?”

”No, I suppose it doesn’t,” Aubin admitted. ”But to think that the words of the Great Prophet had become so twisted that we would lash out at our brethren without understanding their roles in the world we all walk... We have become the very thing we were meant to guard against, haven’t we?”

”Haven’t we just seen the greatest demonstration of that tonight?” Ignatious said lightly. ”Power that seeks to serve itself, vengeance taking the place of justice when the Lothians traded away the lives of their vassals for the power to strike down their enemy... Even Abbot Recared provided proof that the Church has made peace with sacrificing the health and lives of our own followers in exchange for the power to strike a mighty blow.”

”If this isn’t the very thing the Great Prophet and the Saint Teacher warned us against, then I don’t know what is,” Ignatious said simply.

”You still believe in them?” Aubin asked. ”Even though you say they’re little different from the Vampire you serve? You still revere them?”

”I don’t know,” Ignatious said with a heavy sigh. ”The current state of the Church is... deeply wrong. Throughout time, Oracles have appeared to guide the people of the world out of crisis, but the Church has bound their power and manufactured an endless crisis that won’t end with the destruction of the Eldritch; it will just find another target.”

”I want to believe that the Great Prophet and the Saint Teacher aren’t responsible for the dark binding that created this tragedy,” Ignatious said. ”But I don’t know where it came from, and I may never know.”

”But I’ve read some of the oldest records that the Church keeps in the Holy City,” Ignatious said. ”Including texts normally reserved to Exemplars and the current Saint. I believe that the Great Prophet rescued people from a calamity that gripped their world after the collapse of the Empire of Endless Waves. I believe that he saw the abuse of sorcery as a scourge that had to be eliminated and that he may even have been right...”

”For the rest?” Ignatious shrugged. ”Those are questions we may struggle with until the end of our lives and never answer. But for now, I believe that the faithful must find a new path forward. The Holy Lord of Light traces many paths through the heavens, and it’s time for some of us to find a new one, or at least a kinder branch of the one we’ve walked before.”

”You want to break the Church,” Aubin whispered, his eyes going wide beneath his white, bushy brows. ”You’re talking about a Schism! It’s... it’s never been tolerated.”

”There’s never been a force that could compete with the saints for primacy,” Ignatious countered. ”Now there is.”

”Saintess Ashlynn,” Aubin said as he began to understand the High Inquisitor’s plan. ”If we rally around her...”

”Don’t,” Ignatious interrupted. ”She doesn’t want a faith forming around her, and she doesn’t want to take the place of the Great Prophet in people’s hearts. She only wants to free them from the oppression of the Church that’s always threatened her for no reason other than the way she was born.”

”Our relationship with the Holy Lord of Light is our own,” Ignatious said firmly. ”And Lady Ashlynn won’t interfere with that beyond revealing the truth of what the Church has done. She may rule above her people as a queen, but that’s very different from being worshipped as a Saintess.”

”Then, what are we to do?” Aubin asked, hoping that Ignatious would have an answer.

”We start by seeking truth,” Ignatious said, resting a hand on the other man’s shoulder. ”And sharing it where we can. We comfort each other when in need, help those we can, and we try to remember that those with greater power have a duty to use it to protect those with less.”

”Other than that,” the vampire Inquisitor said. ”The rest is up to you...”

It wasn’t the message that Aubin had been hoping for, but it was one that he found easy to accept. The Holy Lord of Light called on all his followers to struggle toward the light, and while he felt like he’d plunged into darkness at the beginning of the night, Ignatious had brought him a torch to find his way.

Now, after spending much of the night in prayer, Aubin stood before a congregation filled with noblemen and commoners alike. Many had lost loved ones in the struggle the night before, and many more were lost or in pain. And just as Aubin had turned to Ignatious for guidance in the night, these lost sheep had come to him, seeking the hand of a shepherd to guide them toward the light.

”My Children,” Aubin said, stepping up to the altar as the first rays of true dawn filtered through the stained glass windows to the east. ”Rise from your seats and clasp hands with the people beside you,” he said, starting a service in a way he never had before.

”Last night, we were all touched by darkness,” Aubin said. ”Not of demons or of witches, but born of the hearts of cruel and wicked men. We lost fathers, brothers, sons... some of us lost our way,” he said.

”Today, I ask you to take your neighbour’s hand and look into their eyes,” he said. ”And remember that while we all struggle to find our way out of the dark, we do not struggle alone,” Aubin said, his voice echoing off the chapel’s stone walls as his voice grew stronger.

”Dawn brings a new day,” Aubin said, looking out at a chapel full of people holding hands. They were such fragile bonds, easily pulled apart, but if he could strengthen them just a bit, then perhaps...

Perhaps they could all pull each other up out of the dark, and they could find a new path forward to a destiny that the Church would never have led them to.