The Vampire & Her Witch-Chapter 1177: Terrible Costs (Part One)

"I don’t understand," Isabell said, staring at Ignatious in confusion. Perhaps this made more sense to everyone else in the room, after all, she’d only recently become a witch, and there was still much that she was learning. Yet, she’d witnessed the miracles of the Church before, and the vision she’d faced during her trial included multiple attacks by the Church, yet she’d never seen anything like a manipulation of ’fate’ or ’destiny.’ 𝙛𝓻𝒆𝓮𝒘𝙚𝙗𝒏𝙤𝙫𝓮𝒍.𝓬𝒐𝙢

"I know that the Church can wield light and fire as weapons," Isabell said, attempting to articulate her confusion. "That vampires use the power of death, I can understand and accept, and the same with witches and the power of nature. But the Church using the power of ’fate’ doesn’t seem to fit with the miracles they’re known to perform."

"Ignore the light and flames for a moment," Ignatious said. "In the end, they’re just tools that are comfortable and accessible to the Church. A building isn’t just stones and mortar, even though it might be built using them," the vampire offered. "We can see the stones and mortar, but only an engineer will understand how windows were placed within the wall without it collapsing, or how to ensure the walls would be strong enough to support the roof."

It was a poor analogy, but Ignatious hoped that it would serve well enough for the moment. Glancing down the table at Aspakos, he saw the dark-feathered sorcerer nodding in agreement, which helped to put Ignatious’s mind at ease.

Much of what the vampire had to reveal tonight actually came from the man who led both the reclusive Sorcerers of Sundered Earth and Mistress Nyrielle’s Fourth Army. While Ignatious had read more of the Church’s secret records than anyone else present, Aspakos followed the teachings of a different Sovereign of the Stars, which provided an invaluable perspective on the use of an oracle’s powers that came from outside of the Church.

"I see," Isabell said, nodding at the vampire’s explanation. "The house is the result of the engineering, but many things combined to produce the final result. You’re saying that the light or flames we see from the Church are the result, or rather, that they’re part of the process, but there are unseen preparations or methods that relate to ’fate’ that manifest as light and flames."

"More or less," Ignatious agreed. "Let me give you a more concrete example. Diarmuid mentioned Lady Ashlynn’s healing earlier," he said, looking at the Inquisitor who seemed to be struggling to maintain an investigator’s calm, detached demeanor as the conversation moved closer to the core beliefs of the Church and the powers they wielded.

The ’miracles’ that the faithful were able to perform had one of the Church’s greatest pieces of ’proof’ for their faith for centuries. The Holy Lord of Light bestowed powers unattainable to ordinary mortals on the clergy of the Church, and their ability to perform those miracles was a constant source of validation for the clergy that they were doing as the Holy Lord of Light intended.

After all, they’d been taught that the rituals they used were for summoning the Holy Lord of Light’s attention and beseeching Him for a miracle. If the miracle worked, then the Holy Lord of Light had listened and approved. It was an insidious lie and one that Ignatious had to dismantle for Diarmuid and Loman before the night ended.

"Think of an accident in the kitchens," Ignatious said, painting a picture that he felt most could relate to. "You cut yourself badly with a knife. Given time, there are two basic outcomes. Either your body heals itself slowly over the course of days or weeks, leaving a scar behind, or the wound festers and rots, causing sickness and claiming your life."

It was an extreme example, and one that Ollie looked like he was about to protest before he held his tongue. After all, even the poorest of kitchen boys would scrape together the snips of tin or silver pennies a healer would charge to treat the wound as soon as there were signs that it was festering. But Ignatious was talking about what would happen if the wound was left alone, so, in that sense, the example made sense.

"Vampires are masters of death, and that includes the body’s struggle against death," Ignatious said, continuing his lesson. "If you brought the wound to a vampire, we could use the power of blood to stimulate the body’s own healing, accomplishing in minutes what the body would have done for itself in days or weeks."

"A vampire’s ability to heal others is very limited," Ashlynn added, remembering the state that she’d been in when Nyrielle found her stumbling through the darkness on the ancient road that led to the Vale of Mists on the night that Owain had beaten her half to death. "Even for Nyri, it’s difficult to heal someone whose body has suffered too many wounds, or wounds that are too severe to heal from naturally."

"Witches are much more suited to healing," Nyrielle said, leaning against Ashlynn and taking her hand, interlacing their fingers together as she smiled at her lover. "Especially the covens of the Mother of Trees and the Mother of Thorns. The power of trees to grow back, even when they’ve been cut down to nothing but roots and a stump, is something a person’s body could never hope to match, yet you can borrow that power to heal wounds that a person would never recover from."

"We’re each suited to our own natures," Ashlynn agreed, bringing Nyrielle’s alabaster hand to her lips and giving it a light, affectionate kiss. "There are things that you can do that would be immensely difficult for me, if not impossible."

At the far end of the table, Liam Dunn shuddered to think about what those things were. He’d seen Dame Sybyll’s terrifying strength when she tore Loman’s arm from its socket, like a child throwing a tantrum and ripping the arm off of a doll, and the speed with which she’d done it after blinding the young priest.

Liam had no doubt in his mind that the vampire who had transformed Dame Sybyll from an ordinary woman into such a powerful vampire was capable of the same sort of violence, if not worse, and yet Lady Ashlynn sat there, arm in arm with Lady Nyrielle, playfully flirting with the most deadly person that Liam had ever seen.

But then, if he’d followed the conversation so far, Lady Ashlynn could be that casual with the deadly vampire, in part, because she was just as powerful herself. Those powers might have different natures, and she might be more suited to healing than violence, but that only made the pair of them more terrifying, not less.

After all, Sir Ollie had already given them an example of what a person could do when they combined the powers of a vampire and a witch... so just how much more overwhelming would the combination of Lady Ashlynn and Lady Nyrielle’s power be?

Liam didn’t know, but if this conversation had convinced him of anything it was that he’d made the right decision to offer his loyalty and the loyalty of his family to Lady Ashlynn, and that he should never, ever, set himself in opposition to them!