The Vampire & Her Witch-Chapter 1180: The Bargain (Part Two)
"When a person is born," Ignatious said, picking up an uneaten rosemary shortbread cookie and crumbling it in his hand. "Their sky is full of stars," he said, scattering the crumbs across the table in front of him as if they were the stars in the night sky.
"Not everyone is born under the same stars," he continued, speaking words that might as well have come from the Saint Teacher himself. After all, the Church had long taught that people were born into this life as a result of their successes or failures to meet their struggles in their past lives, and the station they were born into had a great deal to do with the shape their lives would take.
"Some have skies filled with countless stars," Ignatious explained. "And some of those stars are very bright. Others have dimmer skies, but still a vast number. From birth to death, we chart our way through the heavens, following the stars that lead to a destiny that is, at least in part, of our own making."
"Think of the stars in the sky as the most significant moments in your life," Aspakos added as he placed a cookie on the table in front of him, smashing it with his taloned fist before scattering the crumbs across an area roughly the size of a dinner plate.
"You’re born here," he said, placing a talon at the center of the crumbs. "Your parents send you away to a good school here," he said as he traced the tip of his talon to one large crumb. "Here, you meet your first love, but it goes badly," he continued as his talon kept moving through the scattering of crumbs.
"You leave home to escape memories of failed love," he added, building on the tale as he drew his talon to the far edge of the field of crumbs. "You become a soldier, fight in wars, win fame, glory and wealth," he said, moving between a cluster of large crumbs that were close together. "Then you find true love, love that leads to children, and grandchildren, all with skies of their own," he said, tracing several lines radiating outward from the figure he’d drawn in the crumbs.
When he was finished, the figure he’d drawn didn’t look like a random collection of lines. Instead, it resembled a figure that couldn’t be more familiar to Loman, Diarmuid and even Hugo if it had been a portrait of their own fathers.
"The First Warrior," Hugo whispered, staring at the pattern that represented the constellation that humans called the Ascended Warrior and the Eldritch called the First Warrior. It had been that very symbol that Lord Jalal invoked on the night of the battle in Hanrahan to help Hugo find the courage to march with Dame Sybyll’s army, and later that night, to prevent the common people from rioting as the Eldritch occupied the town.
"Our destinies were painted in the heavens long ago," Ignatious said solemnly. "It’s only at the end of our lives that we can see the shape it took, and the choices that we made, or that others made for us, that made it so," he said, placing the tip of his finger in the collection of crumbs in front of him.
"It’s different for people like me, Diarmuid, and Loman. Aspakos, too, in his own ways, and Erkembalt as well," Ignatious said. "When you practice sorcery in the ways of the Oracles, you can make small changes in fate easily enough, but the ability to make large changes in a person’s destiny requires sacrifices."
"A person is born," Ignatious continued, repeating Aspakos’s demonstration. "But instead of being sent to a good school, they’re sent to the Church. They learn many things, but they also make several vows," he said, turning his gaze to the far end of the table where Loman sat stiffly, his one eye wide as he processed the implications of the lesson.
"How old were you, Loman, when you took your vow of celibacy?" Ignatious asked bluntly, though he did his best to keep his voice gentle.
"Sixteen," Loman answered in a tone that was flat and dull as he realised where this was leading. "I was sixteen years old when I swore to sire no children, take no lands, and to dedicate my life to the service of the Church."
"Just like that," Ignatious said, wiping away a quarter of the crumbs that represented stars in the sky. "Your destiny will never include children, nor will it include any of the things your children could have done. You will not form alliances of marriage between your family and another, you will not gain influence in the Royal Court..."
"You didn’t just take a vow when you put on the robes of a priest," Ignatious said with downcast eyes that remained fixed on the crumbs before him. "You sacrificed dozens of possibilities to make a bargain with the Heavens. In exchange for that, you gained a greater ability to work ’minor miracles,’" he explained.
"You sacrificed a portion of your fate that could have contained happiness and joy for yourself and others for the ability to prevent the suffering of others," Ignatious said. "Or to smite the enemies of the Church, extinguishing the lives of those who still had many years ahead of them before you intervened."
"This is the bargain that sorcerers who follow an Oracle’s path must make," Aspakos said, placing a taloned hand gently on Loman’s shoulder. "The greater the power you desire, the more stars in your sky you must snuff out."
"You gain more by sacrificing happiness than by sacrificing sorrow," the dark-feathered sorcerer added. "That’s why your Church tears so many of you away from the ability to have a family of your own. It’s one of the simplest, most obtainable forms of joy a person can find."
Ignatious had told him about other vows that different orders within the Church would take. Vows of poverty. Vows that included suffering and mortification of the flesh. Traditions that involved fasting and living a meager existence, or retreating from the world into sacred enclaves where the faithful would attempt to pierce the veil of the heavens, to read the fates and futures of others in the hopes of achieving greatness or preventing calamity.
Each holy order within the Church had its own traditions, and they made their own bargains, but the bargains made by the most powerful among the faithful also came with the greatest costs to their futures.... And few sacrifices made by the faithful could compare to the sacrifices made by those who became Disciples of the Exemplars.
"My sky is dark and empty, young Loman," Aspakos said, looking directly into the remaining eye of the man who had lost so much so quickly after trying to break his vows by returning to his family and contending for the position of heir to Lothian March. "I gave up all of my hope for a brighter future in order to chart a path to safety for the Sorcerers of Sundered Earth."
"That path led me here, but it also led me to you," Aspakos said. "Your sky is already growing dark, much darker than your companion, Diarmuid’s," he said. "But it isn’t too late to find a way out of the darkness. There are still bright stars in your sky, even if they’re harder to reach, but if you’re going to find your way to them, then you will have to stop following the path that others have charted for you and find a way to navigate by the few stars you still have left..."
