The Order’s wounded just kept flooding in through the warehouse doors. If the soldiers could walk in on their own, they did so, but most were brought in on stretchers by medics draped in white, but stained in red. Other medics directed these souls towards different triage areas. There, doctors, apprentices, and lesser priests and priestesses practiced their healing Skills on the most dire of cases in Area C. Everyone else in Areas A and B only had to rest, letting the healing effect of the statue of Lumina in the middle of the warehouse soothe them in Her care.
Cecilia was there, standing by right beside the statue. Her healing was the most potent, but that was also exactly why she had to conserve her strength for all but the worst casualties.
She spotted a trio of men rushing into the warehouse, two of them carrying a stretcher. The man at the lead, one of the older doctors she’d come to know over the years, waved at her. “Priestess! This one’s really bad!”
She rushed to meet them halfway. Every second counted, at least until she could stabilize the patient. Only then would they have the luxury of counting in minutes, and then the specialists could take over and extend that timer to hours.
Gunning for the stretcher as it skirted the perimeter of the warehouse, keeping away from the main artery of casualties flowing into the triage areas, the priestess met them at a jogging pace. It would be ideal if they could stop for even a few seconds so she could work her magic, but they had to continue moving and bring the patient over to Area C where the specialists and their equipment could scrutinize any wounds and ailments that Cecilia would definitely miss.
Her only role was to make sure this man got there with a heart still beating.
For now, she got to work on this on-the-go emergency surgery. Examining the patient, she recognized the tattered uniform of one of the scout rifle companies; however, she noticed something unusual. The man was covered in dozens of deep blade wounds, but none of them in places that would kill him, and none of them deep enough to reach major organs or arteries. For dozens of cuts to ‘incidentally’ not kill him? This couldn’t be anything other than torture.
“He’s nowhere close to dying,” she declared.
“What? That can’t be right!” the doctor with them exclaimed.
“He has no mortal wounds. I’m applying purification Skills to stave off infection, but he needs specialists for fiber reattachment, pain, and spiritual care.”
That was when she felt something brush up against her hand. She looked down and saw a paper pinched between the patient’s fingers. Looking at the man’s face, he was making a pained, silent cry, and he tried to raise his hand again, moving it no more than inch in the priestess’s direction.
What did this man go through? He was just a lowly rifleman of the Order, paid in wages only marginally better than the royal army. Such a man suffered this much for the sake of that tiny piece of paper.
She took the paper. “Lumina bless,” she told him, slowing down to a stop, watching the doctor and the medics bring the man all the way to one of the makeshift operating rooms, disappearing behind a curtain held up by thin poles.
Only once the curtains were drawn closed did she pay attention to the paper. She drew her finger over the red fingerprints on it, for a brief moment mulling over what efforts men went through just for simple things like this. With some trepidation, she unfolded it.
Within was an authorization letter addressed to the Saintess Abel Cathedral’s building manager, pertaining to temporary use of the cathedral hall as a triage center to be operated by volunteers sponsored by Stave’s Circle of Charters.
A business organization trying to earn clout by throwing money at the Order was nothing new — but the faded characters beneath the “official” text were something else.
There were light singe marks around the faded words, evidence that someone held a flame against the paper — ah, invisible ink, she concluded. How a lowly rifleman could have possibly thought to check for invisible ink, she couldn’t fathom, though it might be that he had smarter comrades with him.
As she read the contents of the invisible text, her heart dropped and beat faster all at once.
— Keep the building clear. We begin at midnight.
She might not have understood what was beginning at midnight, but she understood that someone was using holy ground as a base for nefarious dealings.
She also understood that she was mightily pissed right now.
In the overwhelming majority of circumstances, despite being the de jure and de facto commander-in-chief, she left the real commanding to real commanders — but wasn’t this case a compelling reason to throw her weight around?
She marched up to a nearby knight. “Summon my captain here at once.”
Her voice was so uncharacteristically stern and cold that the knight nearly jumped out of his boots. “Right away!” he saluted — and bowed, and nearly knelt, stopping himself just as he’d bent his knees. He rushed out of there just as quickly, half to carry out Cecilia’s order, but also half because of his shameful display.
The knight ran at a blistering speed, his sabatons hitting the ground so hard that it sounded like an entire squad mobilizing out of here.
He never made it out the door, however, as a halberd impaled him right through his armor. He fell with his sword half-drawn, and the last thing he saw were the lifeless eyes of a shadow.
More of them flooded in through the doors. The brave medics who tried to push the doors closed were cut down. The knights who pulled their swords and cut down one or two shadows were themselves overwhelmed by five, turning into pin cushions for their swords and spears.
When resistance thinned out after the first few crucial seconds, the shadows fanned out and began massacring the wounded couldn’t limp fast enough, and when they were all dead, the wounded on the stretchers who couldn’t flee.
All Cecilia saw were great arcs of blood flying across the air. She couldn’t breathe.
A gauntleted hand yanked her back to reality. She turned around to face the owner of the hand. “Priestess! To Lumina’s visage!”
She nodded. Her mind was filled with silence, and her ears, with brave and terrified screams. She passed an officer whose arm was in a cast, as he pulled a pistol and shot a charging shadow. The bullet blasted out a huge hole through the shadow’s chest, yet it still powered through without so much as a shout of pain, stabbing a dagger into the officer’s chest. The officer fell, and the shadow continued running — but its wound leaked too much shadowy mist, and after four steps towards the priestess, its body scattered into the air, leaving only a pile of clothes torn by a single gunshot.
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She and the knight regrouped with a mixed blob of terrified doctors and hardened soldiers. Riflemen from various companies, variously dressed in greens, golds, and blues, intermingled with knights and their silver armor, forming a loose defensive line.
The shadows ahead of them were tide. Cecilia looked to the doors, hoping as each shadow came inside, that that one would be the last — but they just kept coming and coming, dragging her hopes down with the sheer weight of their numbers.
She didn’t even know what they were. Even so, she put her hopes in the one weapon she had that could achieve dramatic results.
Producing a small cylinder from her pockets, she held it to the air, and it extended through both ends into a long staff, the same staff that took out hundreds of undead by a miracle of Lumina’s grace.
A rough sergeant, one who had served with her back then, saw this, and he decided that he was going to spend his life here to make sure her shot counted. “The priestess needs ten seconds!” he shouted above the chaos, giving signals to the few riflemen under him: 9 in all. “Break it open! Cartridge in! Close it!” he shouted, forcing them to recall the traumas of their basic training.
Motivated by fear of their sergeant, the riflemen reloaded the fastest they had ever had in their lives.
“Take aim! Fire!” the sergeant shouted, and nine rifles popped off in the general direction of over there, blowing away a surprising number of shadows all at once. Their volley fire, no matter how meager, was still as good as any sound of unity in the face of overwhelming odds. The knights complemented their gunfire with war cries, both to inspire the people behind them with hope, and to steel themselves against the incoming tide.
There were 7 riflemen with fixed bayonets, 2 riflemen wielding their weapons like clubs, 5 knights, and one scout sergeant who thought he’d lived long enough.
Even if for only a moment, they felt like a hundred-man company. The sergeant kissed his whistle — and blew hard.
The first shadows clashed with the defense line. The riflemen charged with bayonets forward. Swords skewered guts, and rifle stocks smashed down on wooden masks.
The engagement lasted the whole of five seconds, and they were down to 4 knights and 3 riflemen.
Five seconds had been enough.
The priestess finished her prayer, both her hands over the golden cage of the staff. Lumina hadn’t spoken this time, but even without Her intervention, the staff on its own was a potent one.
It pulled in Cecilia’s mana — neither too fast nor too slow — and a gentle glow emanated from the jewel in the golden cage.
The main body of the shadows arrived. Right before they were about to slam into the remaining soldiers, the movement of the ones closest started to slow, as if they were moving in thick muck. They even started to fizzle, giving off thin wisps of smoke that seemed to be blown away by a gentle wind coming from the golden cage.
Given enough time, the shadows would eventually die — but that wasn’t enough. At least they were slowed, and the remaining soldiers could dispatch the closest ones with ease.
Still, the defense line — if it could still be called that — were faced by a wall of shadows. Even with the help of the staff, they slowly had to give ground, fighting all the while.
Cecilia clenched her teeth. The staff would only remain active for as long as she had mana, and though she had far more of her life to spend than the typical human, it wasn’t unlimited.
Even if she could feed the staff indefinitely, they were still getting squeezed into a smaller and smaller circle.
Would she die standing here?
Well, that didn’t really matter. This was all she could do; this was the only place where she could be.
She could only hope for a miracle.
Petals fluttered from the ceiling.
What a beautiful way to die … petals?
One of the petals touched the shadows, and it crumpled like a house made of toilet paper doused in water.
She and everyone watched as the wall of shadows collapsed in waves. It was as if Lumina pulled the plug on everyone in the room, just like that. If it were Lumina, however, Cecilia should have heard something about straight from Her.
In ten seconds, all had gone deathly still. It was like everything that had happened so far was just a bad dream, but the blood on the floor and walls — the stretchers, the doors — they were still there.
There was no celebration. There was just a single question: Why are we still alive?
A young girl stepped through the warehouse doors, stepping over the bodies of the deceased. Some of the riflemen reloaded once more, clicking their breeches shut, while the knights nervously steadied their grip on their swords.
There was a shadow on the floor, its trousers snagged on the corner of a cot. It reached out to Amani with a dagger, swinging it wildly at the girl who was miles away from its reach.
She flicked a card on its head, and it dropped dead, its smoky essence joining the wind.
This only half-convinced the soldiers that she wasn’t an enemy, and for the girl, she didn’t take this personally. She stopped twenty paces away from the frontmost knight, just close enough to be heard, but far enough to not be killed.
“Priestess of the Younger, greetings from the Keeper,” Amani said with a casual bow of the head.
To Cecilia, the casual bow communicated no deference, but familiarity. The girl’s greeting, too, was an old one — and it went with the catkin ears on her head. She could find no other conclusion than the girl coming from an ancient temple, and one which still remembered the Sisters’ words long passed.
“You are…” Cecilia cleared her throat. “My knights and soldiers, lower your guard, and let no harm befall this Sentinel. The Laws inter Templar forbid it.”
Although the knights felt apprehensive, they still sheathed their swords. The riflemen were a little slower, but they still copied the actions of their superiors.
Amani went a little closer. Truth be told, the stench of the place was starting to get to her. It was the smell of blood, pus, and gangrene, and now there was the smell of flare-sand and ozone mixed in, too. She tried not to look at the floor. The scattered clothes and frozen hands sticking out...it all looked too much like her dear tribesmen.
As soon as Cecilia stepped out, however, meeting her halfway, she fought the queasy feeling. She had a job to do, not just as a death priestess releasing these shadows from their personal hell, but also as someone indebted to Jon.
She and Cecilia stopped five paces apart. It was like a village girl meeting a holy saintess with how they were dressed, but between the two of them, Cecilia was the one losing her composure much faster; the girl before her looked so unfazed from all of this, so much that she had to hold herself back from asking just how she was able to stand so tall in a scene like this.
“My name is Amani, death priestess of the Mawit Qwari, apprentice of the Theater,” the girl introduced herself, shocking Cecilia that such a young girl could already make such a long introduction.
“Excuse me for a moment,” Cecilia said. She turned around and called for one of the knights, who briskly walked to her side. Cecilia faced Amani again. “I hope you’re not displeased, but we must confirm your identity.”
Amani shook her head. “I don’t mind.”
“Alright.” Cecilia faced the knight. “Identify, please.”
The knight eyed Amani for a second. “She is as she says she is, priestess.”
“Thank you. Take three men to secure the area here and outside.”
“Right away.”
The knight returned to his comrades, and Cecilia faced Amani again. The confirmation of her identity didn’t help with her shock at all. “Ah, I apologize, but I’m not allowed to divulge my name,” Cecilia replied. “I take no offense to simply being called ‘priestess.’ ”
“Well, priestess, please look at this.” Amani produced a folded-up document from a satchel. Cecilia took it and, opening it, the first thing she saw was a spell circle of some sort.
“What is this?”
“The culprits of this attack have killed many other soldiers on their way here,” Amani explained. “They’ve created a ritual magic circle of the worst kind in your own cathedral.”
The cathedral! “I was already heading there. Wait, what kind of ritual circle?”
Amani glanced behind the priestess — and took a step closer, leaning in with much laggardness. “Assassination.”
Right at that moment, the ground shook and a whiplash of sound passed through them, followed by a thunderous reverberation.
“Priestess!” Jiraya’s voice came from above, through a broken skylight. Those of the Order were startled that there had been someone there all along, but his next words pushed something else to the top of their priorities. “The top of the castle’s exploded!”
Amani looked at the priestess. “That ritual circle is aimed only at killing Jon Fuze.”
That bode ill for the priestess. Without the Theater’s cooperation, they wouldn’t be able to take down the two remaining Houses, at least not without incurring significant casualties.
She even suspected that the Houses and those demonic puppets — whatever they were — were connected in some manner … but she just couldn’t imagine it. The Houses were corrupt, but they didn’t dabble in that kind of magic. The ritual circle in the document, too, was of a foreign design.
She turned around, facing her knights. “Rally reinforcements! Find my captain, and pull the scout rifle companies away from their current duties!”
Catching Damian Quill would have to wait for another day. For now, burning the heretics who defiled the cathedral would have to satisfy Cecilia’s lust for justice.