Mary was no one. Insignificant, disposable, a discarded orphan left on a church steeple. Now wearing a nun’s habit she prepared to fight in the name of the church. In the fourth row, seven places from the right, and 4 places from the left Mary stood with her sisters. All girls raised by the church to be cannon fodder in the endless struggle with the necromancers. The blessed holy mother, Abbess Faustina Kowalska ruled the girls with severity. The hierarchy was clear. The Holy Mother was second in importance to the Pope himself, and it was debatable if she was more important than even a cardinal. However Faustina and her subordinates were subject to luxury, with Faustina taking several wagons to load her caravan with her belongings that she took into battle. Her subordinates likewise were severe enforcers of Faustina’s rule. Beatings and starvation brought a swift end to all but the most headstrong people.
Mary’s shoulders stiffened as the old crone Abbess Faustina slowly stepped to the hastily erected pulpit. The abbess’s footsteps echoed faintly across the courtyard and her body swung with a tired weariness of an old man stepping up the gallows. At the top, she leaned over the pulpit, her face partly obscured by her habit but what could be seen marked a terrifying visage. She seemed as undead as their enemies, eyes devoid of warmth, a face devoid of smoothness, a mouth devoid of a smile, and large manly wrinkled hands devoid of the softness one would expect of her station.
The old woman eyed the bright shining youth before her like a rich man eyeing coin. Mary was one of an endless supply of resources for Abbess Faustina to spend at her leisure. To be an unwanted girl in Christendom was to be lower than the shambling corpses that the enemy wielded against them. Mary felt a chill travel through her body but fought every urge to tremble before the Abbess. The holy matrons in her service wouldn’t hesitate to beat her brains out where she stood for such a show of disrespect.
The Abbess began, “Ladies of Christendom, lend me your ears...” she said, her old crackling voice needed no aid to project across the entire compound.
“Soon you will see the true nature of the enemy you face. We will finally have the chance to eradicate another member of the Unholy 7! We will find Eriam the Heretic and send him straight to hell! His crimes?” The Abbess inhaled and looked around.
She continued with furious scorn, “Necromancy! Homicide! Attempted Deicide! And Blasphemy! We have finally located his domicile and we will advance, until we grind his bones into dust, rend his flesh asunder, and set his soul alight for all eternity! You will face certain death! But rest assured that God has a plan for you.”
The Abbess’s speech turned somber, “During the forthcoming battle he will call most of you home to him, to the eternal salvation than man has denied you here. So look to the sisters on your left and right. She probably won’t survive. Likely neither will you. Accept God’s grace into your heart and accept your deaths as His will! And perhaps for a few of you, God has greater plans.”
The Abbess sounded tired but none would ever dare test her strength. It was known that she’d survived several clashes with Master Vol himself. “You are all but faint candles alight in a maelstrom. So do your duty and be guiding lights for future generations. Before you’re inevitably snuffed out you should endeavor to burn a path to the enemy! Scorch the flesh of your enemy, burn away the filth of his thralls, and alight the way for your sisters! And die humbly with the quiet grace of a faithful Christian woman. Prepare yourselves for we leave at dawn tomorrow.” The old crone turned and walked away.
Mary realized she was shaking. This time, this one time most of the girls were. And the older battle hardened nuns simply left them there. Some girls cried, some sobbed. Mary brushed past all of them, heart pounding in her chest, determined to survive. If death was inevitable she’d outlive them all. Not because she feared the inevitable, but because of her competitive fighting spirit and insatiable curiosity, unsatisfied to simply die at the start of battle. The nuns who struck her always said that Mary was selfish and self important. It wasn’t cowardice or narcissism that drove her. It was her ardent desire to become the most valuable note of the Catholic treasury. Mary refused to accept her death until she could one day rival the Abbess herself.
***
Mary was in the third wave. She pushed up the treacherous path into Eriam’s lair, rolling stones and narrow passages had slowed their force but the Abbess herself occasionally emerged from her caravan to deliver a decisive blow to any obstacle in their way. Mary walked into a massive cavern with a floor of square tiles, not unlike a checkerboard. Alternating tiles of white marble and grey shale stood between Eriam and the lesser nuns of the church.
“You girls found me after all...” He said. Eriam was a tall well built man of an indeterminable age. The church archives had little information on him, compared to the legendary Donatien Gagne or Jerome Vollwrath. Eriam’s face seemed young but his frizzy hair was a light grey that extended down his back in a haphazardly braided ponytail.
The youngest girl stepped forward nervously, “E-Eriam… Eriam the Heretic, by the orders of the Holy Roman Church you have been excommunicated. As a result we, the proud sisters of the Brides of God convent will carry out your execution!” Mary was disgusted, the little girl speaking was barely a teenager, had no threatening aura and the policy to announce oneself and your intent to fight to the death with no other recourse wasn’t good strategy, nor even particularly honorable. Mary had heard it served a different purpose. Abbess Faustina would have a lot less mouths to feed tonight.
“I don’t wish to kill you girl.” Eriam stated bluntly. “But I’m going to defend myself. I’m not so skilled a practitioner of the necromantic arts that I can defend myself and not kill you. So tell me little one, do you truly believe in your heart of hearts the things you say? Do you truly believe you are willing to die to take my life?”
The young girl hesitated and seeing all the eyes of her sisters upon her shouted “Yes! I do!” Behind her many sisters nodded earnestly.
“Then… be with your god little one.” Eriam turned his back to her as an arrow shot out of the darkness striking her in the chest. She was dead before she hit the ground. Past Eriam a skeleton with a scythe emerged and it knelt down offering him the weapon. Eriam turned holding the scythe’s blade by his feet and roared a challenge, “Come! I’ll give you the death you all desire!” Several skeletons appeared behind him with crossbows and opened fire. As planned the other sisters drew their weapons and charged headlong into the fray.
Mary watched with horror as her sisters fell in droves. The crossbows fired with inhuman efficiency for their bearers were no longer bound by the constraints of flesh. The wounded first wave was being trampled beneath the second as the sisters ran over the dying, slipping on their blood. The cavern tiles crumbled away under their and the girls fell into pits of spikes hidden below. The shrieks of pain and cries of despair shook Mary into action.
As the third wave advanced to further soak up the thralls’s supplies of arrows Mary broke ranks and ran to the cavern walls. She nimbly stepped across the dead and tested each tile before continuing. As her classmates began to fall too Mary discovered a secret passage guarded by three skeletal warriors in light armor. She drew her dagger and it alit with the ferocity of her faith. Mary ran forward and swung. The skeletons were tough but Mary was faster, easily dodging their clumsy strikes and destroying each with a single fiery cut.
Mary’s surviving classmates engaged Eriam in close quarters but the crossbows kept him relatively covered. With a dancer’s grace Eriam swung his scythe while dancing around his own traps, leading more sisters to their doom, letting the crossbows cut down the rest, and easily overwhelming and bifurcating those who came in close.
Mary ran across a natural path overlooking the trapped platform and shouted for the 4th wave to join her. The sister leading them ignored her pleas and lead her group into the butchery ahead. Too many girls merely wished to do their duty and die obediently, Mary thought. Many hadn’t even bothered to draw their weapons, dispensing with pretense and willingly throwing themselves into whatever direction would lead to the most painless death. Eriam’s skeletal forces emotionlessly obliged them. Seeing the carnage the 5th wave leader waved her group to follow Mary’s path while the 6th finished their final prayers before charging to reinforce the front.
Mary dropped down behind the skeletal bowmen and began to cut them apart. Her sisters continued to try to overwhelm Eriam by sheer force of numbers and with his bow support dwindling they were starting to drive him back. He glanced back and saw Mary cut down the last of his bowman thralls and rushed towards her. Mary threw herself under his massive swing and he blew past her deeper into the cavern. As Mary stood up waves of her sisters ran past her into the maze of caverns beyond.
“Wait I saw where he went!” Mary shouted in vain. The sisters split across the labyrinth of caves and judging by the ensuing screaming and the occasional flash the various pathways too were trapped. Thralls, spike pits, and firebombs awaited the careless. Mary ignored the commotion and a small group followed her deeper inside on Eriam’s trail. Mary cautiously matched Eriam’s footprints and saw various tripwires and carefully concealed pit traps. This is bad, she thought, the longer this takes the further he can run or worse the more he can prepare.
“Stop!” Sister Athena shouted.
“What is it?” Mary asked, freezing and almost falling over.
“The next step is older! It’s gotta be a trap.”
Mary looked closer and the soil of the footprint was a slightly different color, “Bastard!” Mary said frustrated. The sounds of battle were fading in the distance and for all Mary knew they could be the last. As she turned the corner to her surprise was Eriam in the distance with one hand holding his scythe over his shoulder and the other on a lever. Between them was a puddle that smelled of oil. With one hand Mary threw her habit aside and with the other drew her dagger as she rushed forward with explosive force. She tripped a wire and she barely dodged a spiked gate crashing behind her with enough force to penetrate the cavern wall behind her. Eriam yanked the lever and a torch fell off the wall into the oil. Mary leapt over the spreading fire, her leg’s burning from the heat and crashed into Eriam with all her might. Behind her the other sisters shouted incoherently through the roar of the flames.
Mary’s flaming dagger collided with Eriam’s scythe and pushed him back. She swung a blazing trail as she slashed from multiple angles trying to overwhelm him. On the backheel Eriam retreated once more while grasping her wrist to redirect a potentially fatal swing. He let his scythe catch onto a rope and with the toe of his boot he pulled the scythe back cutting the counterweight to a portcullis. Mary yanked backwards with all her might before the sliding door slammed down to crush her arm. With a terrific clang the portifullis slammed shut and sealed Mary between the two gates. Eriam pulled another lever on the wall and burning hot oil began to pour into the room from above. Mary lunged at the gate and began to climb as the oil slowly covered the dirt floor with a sickening hiss. Eriam removed the blade from his scythe and used it as a shortsword to stab at her through the holes of the portcullis. Mary let go and leaned back with her right hand almost fell into the churning oil before throwing her dagger at him. The dagger sailed past him harmlessly before breaking numerous flasks behind him.
Eriam turned around and saw a roaring fire before turning back to look at Mary with stricken eyes, “What have you done?!” he whispered in a quiet panic. Eriam’s room exploded into a fireball and blasted him into the portcullis. Mary held on with a one handed death grip as searing flames burned her left hand and Eriam’s smoldering body blocked the worst of the explosion. Mary cried in pain before her burning hand could no longer hold on and she fell backwards toward the burning oil.
Rough hands grasped her safely. Confused, she looked into the eyes of her savior and saw the cold tired eyes of Abbess Faustina gazing down at her. Mary wretched at the smell of the Abbess’s burning feet and with a single kick the Abbess smashed down Eriam’s portcullis and watched as the gate crushed his dying body. The Abbess stepped into the blazing room and with a gesture the flames flickered out.
“What do you know, mother?” Eriam said in a pained choke struggling to breath. “It wasn’t you that killed me, after all!”
The Abbess replaced a rosary back into her robe and hoisted Mary over her shoulder like a disobedient child. “Were that it were me Eriam and I’d have ended you quickly. Deservedly or not.”
“This time it really was my way, Ho-Holy Mother.”
“A stubborn boy until the end.” The Abbess said as she watched Eriam tremble desperately and gasp a pained death rattle. Mary would never forget his terrified eyes. She never knew that Necromancers felt pain or feared death.The Abbess set Mary down as she sobbed in pain as some feeling returned to her left hand. The Abbess grasped it and emitted fire from her own hand. Mary almost blacked out as the Abbess burned the pain away and left severe scarring but her flesh now covered her almost charred bone fingerbones.
Mary struggled to breath through the pain and said “Thank you for saving me Holy Mother.”
“Spare me the pointless epithets girl, You know the truth now.”
“The truth?” Mary cried out, “What truth?”
“Of what it really means to be a bride of god.”
“I don’t understand.”
The Abbess mercilessly grasped her still painful left hand. “Suffering girl! Suffering. Be it through childbirth, the brothel’s bed, or the Abbey; a woman’s lot is to suffer.”
“So many have died,” Mary said in a pained voice, though which was worse, the fourth degree burns which had exposed bone or the emotional trauma of watching so many friends and acquaintances get slaughtered.
The Abbess seemed unfazed by the loss, death, and smell. “This is our way. People have more daughters than the stipend can afford. Therefore the weak sacrifice themselves so the strong may live.”
“That’s crazy! How could you let this happen!” Mary cried as footsteps echoed behind them. Through a blasted gate the sisters who followed Mary appeared.
This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.
“Thank God you’re alive!” one of them shouted.
“Holy Mother! Will she be ok?” another asked humbly.
Looking at Mary’s severely burned hand, the Abbess replied, “Her wounds are serious but if God wills it her hand may be saved. Take her and go quickly, back to my caravan!”
“But the traps,” Mary wheezed now delirious,
“All the traps are gone,” the Abbess said. “Now go!”
The other sisters used Mary’s habit as a stretcher and carried her through the cave. Mary glanced behind to see the Abbess closing Eriam’s eyes.
“Damned fool,” the Abbess said quietly.
***
Mary was drifting, but she dreamed of blood and tears. In her delirium she saw the dead and dying, and watched as shadows delivered blows of mercy upon the suffering. She finally awoke in a small quiet room. Only a faint candle flickered soft light across personal quarters that were both spartan and luxurious. Mary winced as her pain returned to her. She looked at her hand against the candlelight and didn’t recognize it. It was smaller and severely scarred, that it even healed this much was a testament to the Abbess’s incredible faith and power but both the sight and the smell made her retch. Mary rolled out of bed onto the floor and struggled to get to a chamberpot in time.
When she was certain she had nothing left to throw up she stood up cautiously and looked around. Outside she could hear the sisters’s camp. Prayers, orders, gossip; such it often was. Through the stained glass window little light came in. Most of it was from distant torches flickering through the stained glass in violets and teals. “Lux in Via,” (light the way) Mary said and the candle illuminated the room. Mary tried to hold her hand to the candle and felt the heat of it and saw it’s shriveled form before gasping and recoiling. She tried again with her good hand but found herself still in a state of controlled panic at the sight of flame. Turning away she saw numerous scrolls placed within a desk and walked over to one. She carefully opened it using one hand and looked inside. Inside was long lists of names.
Leonie - Rome - 1007
Johanna - Berlin 1007
Luisa - unknown 1007
Gia - Stuttgart 1007
“And now you know the truth Mary.” The Abbess spoke.
Mary leapt into the air at the sound of the Abbess’s voice. How did she get here? I never heard her enter? Wait has she been here all along? Just watching me? Mary’s mind raced from one unfortunate conclusion to the next. “Holy Mother!” Mary shouted before landing on her feet prostrating herself before the terrifying old woman.
“If I didn’t know any better I’d say you just took my name in vain...” The Abbess chided.
“My most humble apologies, Holy Mother! You surprised me!”
“Surprised you? Why? Is it not natural for me to be in my quarters?”
It dawned on Mary that she was inside the Holy Mother’s personal caravan, she trembled in utter fear. Few dared to even speak to the Abbess directly unless they were of great rank. Mary was at a loss of what to do.
“Speak up child,” the Abbess said. Mary swallowed nervously, “And look at me when you do.”
Mary turned her head up slowly to reveal the harsh aged face of Abbess Faustina. Indeed she looked like a living corpse in the soft light. Her breathing so faint that it was no wonder Mary failed to notice her. Her dark habit blended into the shadows. “I’m truly, terribly, humbly! Sorry Holy Mother.”
“Did I not tell you to spare me the epithets?”
Mary bit her lip. There was no winning this encounter, the Abbess would likely kill her slow. Mary looked at the Abbess’s feet and saw they were in worse condition than Mary’s hand.
The old crone sighed, “No faithful woman need prostrate herself so fully after defeating a member of the Unholy 7.”
“I’m afraid I didn’t, your holiness.”
“I’d say you did. Not alone of course, no my dear boy’d have bifurcated you and tossed you down a shaft were it not for the sacrifice of your sisters.”
Mary could still hear the screaming of the battle, “Holy Mother, why do you let so many of us die?”
Abbess Faustina pushed past Mary and took a seat at the desk. “There’s too many girls.” On her rosary was a key that she used to unlock the desk and withdraw a feather and ink from the darkness. “So many. Always too many girls.” The Abbess began writing.
Having now resigned herself to be killed by her aging cruel matriarch Mary challenged her, “What do you mean there’s too many girls? What are you talking about?”
The Abbess continued writing whispering names in the middle of the conversation, “Too many girls, Clara! Yes Clara. And so Mary, you know when there’s too many daughters that they are sent to us to be discarded. Ah yes, there were seven Marys this year. Mary, Mary, Mary, Mary, Mary, but one Mary didn’t deploy and the other is behind me. Yes. Yes. One, two, ee, or, five! Five Marys died this day!”
“What are you doing?”
“You are a refreshing girl. Stubborn, self important, and you actually dropped the honorifics when I told you.” The Abbess glanced over her shoulder to read Mary’s reaction. Mary was terrified but defiant now. Life or death battles and serious injuries allowed one to cut to the heart of the matter, the Abbess supposed. “I am documenting the death of every sister from the smallest to the tallest. Antonella. The youngest to the eldest.”
“Wait. How do you know?”
“My child, I know the names of every single one of you that crossed my gates. My memory is still astute. Nevertheless! Beatrice. My age is catching up to me, already I’ve forgotten the faces of many of the girls I sent to their deaths. So I spend most of my time writing and reciting their names. That way they are not truly dead.”
“Aren’t they in heaven?” Mary said.
“If you asked that outside these walls I’d have to kill you on the spot. But in here, truthfully? Who knows? I’m just doing what I can for them.”
“You kept calling Eriam ‘my boy,’ why?”
“Little Eriam was in my care when I was younger. Necromancy aged him well, but that foul blasphemous power that dares override the will of God is unforgivable. I taught him that and yet he learned it anyway.”
“You mean he was in the orphanage?”
“He was in yours. The Mannheim Brides of God Orphanage. Long before your time. We take boys sometimes, in the event they are truly orphaned. Eriam was one. We keep the boys until puberty and by then we find them an apprenticeship somewhere.”
“How could Eriam have become a necro?”
“A necromancer,” the Abbess corrected, “We sent him to work as a stable hand. Hard honest work. But seeing the mistreatment of animals with a lack of a future turned him. He was officially wanted for horse thievery, but I knew when I investigated personally that he practiced necromancy. He didn’t steal the horse, he brought it back and took it.”
Mary contemplated the Abbess’s story thoughtfully as the Abbess continued, “By the way Mary, you are no longer a novitiate. I want you to swear to me you will uphold the moral standards of a Bride of God. Swear to me you will preserve our faith and serve your master the Holy God and those He has fated to be your superiors.”
Mary hesitated, Can I really serve such a broken organization? Or did God put me here to fix it? Either way I refuse to die for nothing.
“Why do you hesitate girl?”
“Because Holy Mother, I won’t just die for nothing. I intend to live and do good for a long time to come.”
“And that is why I want to promote you. You have ambition, you have fortitude. You won’t throw away your own life. Someone who killed a member of the Unholy 7 cannot be a novitiate any longer. Henceforth name you Junior Prioress. As for your weapon, ask the sisters at the forge for a misericorde, I think it will suit you well.”
“Thank you Holy Mother.”
The Abbess said sharply, “But that is only if you take that vow.”
Mary bit her lip, “I vow to… to preserve our faith, and serve within the Brides of God to the best of my ability.”
“That’s not the oath I asked.”
Mary trembled, her spine feeling like cold steel struck by lightning but she fought her fear, “That’s the only one you’ll get from me.”
The Abbess stopped writing. She began laughing, low at first but quickly turning nigh maniacal. The Abbess whirled around in her chair to face Mary. “I count myself fortunate to have met you Mary. Why I’ve got just the place for you. You are to report to Prioress Sofia Bolotova at dawn. She will be your mentor. She’s a pilgrim from the Orthodox across the midlands and the deserts. Although to me she seems rather unorthodox.”
“Thank you Holy Mother.” Mary said her shoulders relaxing a bit more.
“You obviously haven’t met her yet or you wouldn’t be thanking me. Now that you’re mostly healed get out. I have my works and prayers to finish.”
Mary’s relieved smile faded away into a grimace once more and she nodded solemnly. She marched, nearly running out of the Holy Mother’s caravan.
***
The next morning Mary pulled herself out of bed, still tired her sleep disrupted by stress and searing pain. Her hand was rapidly healing but would be horrendously scarred. She covered it with a cool black silk glove and departed her tent. She received her misericorde at the forge and drew it. The newly forged steel blade shone brightly in the dawn. The misericorde was a dagger designed to put the wounded out of their misery. It’s size and weight lent itself well to Mary’s nimbleness and speed. In confined spaces she’d be extremely dangerous. Open field however could prove to be a challenge. Her misericorde’s blade tapered neatly to a single sharp point that cut her handkerchief with barely a gust of wind for force. It had a small bronze guard and the handle had carefully etched the word “modesty & humility” within. For veteran sisters of rank the Holy Mother would review their records and decide the virtue and it seems that the holy mother viewed Mary as particularly lacking.
Mary sheathed her misericorde carefully and stepped out into the thoroughfare of the camp. She reached a unique red and black tent amongst a sea of white and burlap. Mary called from outside her new superior’s tent. “Excuse me? Prioress Bolotova? This is Mary Ward. The Supreme Mother assigned me to serve you as junior prioress.”
There was no response. Mary continued, “Prioress Bolotova? Would you be home?”
“Enter,” came a response with a deep slavic accent.
“I’m coming in.” Mary pushed aside the tent flap and entered to find Prioress Bolotova grinding something with stone and pestle.
“There’s no need for that.”
“Beg your pardon ma’am?”
“I told you to enter. So you will enter. No need to announce the obvious.”
“Forgive me sister, I am not…” Mary said as she thought frantically “accustomed to the orthodox way of doing things.”
“It’s what you all say. It would seem standards elude the sisters of the western church.”
Mary remained silent. She’d taken enough beatings as a child to recognize an unwinnable battle.
Prioress Bolotova turned and looked her in the eye, her voice rising with curiosity, “Do you approve of me mocking your sisters?”
Mary waited, if I talk back here I lose. I’ll be beaten or worse. Even the Abbess warned me about her…
Bolotova’s features scrunched with annoyance, her voice revealing a deep pool of malice, “I know you are not a mute and that you have not taken a vow of silence. Therefore answer my questions honestly or perhaps it’ll be your bones in my pestle.”
“Sister, with respect… I agree.”
Bolotova stopped grinding away. Her full attention was now on Junior Prioress Mary Ward. Flatly, Bolotova asked, “What do you mean by this? You agree?”
Mary had learned there were times in life someone is looking for a confrontation and perhaps Bolotova wanted to put her in her place. With no other way but forward Mary sighed, steeling herself and stepped forward into an inevitable confrontation. “Sister Bolotova, I am saying that I agree concur with your declaration that we, the sisters of the western church have no standards.”
“Why do you say this?”
“I trust you heard of our fight against Eriam of the Unholy 7?”
“I did. A guest from across the wastes is not obligated to die in local squabbles, so I don’t fight the necromancers as you do.”
“I was there. I witnessed girls throwing their lives away.” Mary said softly before her whole body stiffened and the tears crept in, “It was pointless! Those girls weren’t sacrificing themselves for the greater good! They weren’t devoured as sustancence for wolves, nor were their lives bricks that paved the road to heaven. They died pointlessly. It was all incompetence from top to bottom, from the strategy of our superiors to the losses of our lowest and weakest.”
“You don’t see honor in sacrifice?” Bolotova asked, her voice careful to not betray her own opinions.
“There is honor in sacrifice, but not suicide! Half of our number was resigned to death and was merely trying to die as painlessly as possible.”
“Is that what you think?”
“It’s what I saw. It’s what I know. I didn’t see soldiers of the cross fighting the impure. I saw frightened children stampeding into the abyss.”
“I see now why the Abbess sent you to me.”
“Oh?”
“I am allowed here to learn your ways to ‘civilize’ and reconnect the church to the Orthodox, however I am not impressed. I have remained here not to learn your inferior customs, but to teach you mine.”
“What does the holy mother think of this?”
“She permits me to try but offers little help. I’ve sent other girls away because they were as you say. Frightened children looking to die. But your heretical opinions aren’t stated in hopes I will kill you. They are spoken with conviction. This is good. I have much I can teach you.”
Mary allowed herself to relax, to imagine a life without fear for a moment. At that moment Sofia was on her, as fast as lightning and a sharp thwack echoed outside the tent. Mary’s face exploded in pain. Bolotova had delivered an open handed slap with extreme prejudice.
“What the hell?!” Mary shouted and reached for her dagger.
“A naughty sinful girl. That is what you are. But your sin isn’t questioning. It’s not your dangerous ideals or your coarse language. It’s that you dared to relax. I am not your friend. I will make you the warrior the Abbess asked me for. However you will be more than a potential elite sister. I will make you the future Abbess. That will be my legacy. But to do so I will never allow you to know peace, I will beat and scold you into perfection, or into dust. Come into my pestle little child. Let’s see if you survive the grind.”