CHAPTER 37

She finally heard it; a sound she could not describe, except that it was... rubbing, or perhaps clicking. A dry grinding, squealing noise that grated on the nerves and turned her spine to ice. Fear and adrenaline chased through her veins. Where had it come from?

"There!" Dillon shouted suddenly, raising his bow.

She turned and dread swept through her. It was ghastly, unholy, and disgusting. A skeleton with black, rotting strips of flesh clinging to it was standing there, a rusted longsword awkwardly clutched in its bony grip.

The rubbing sound was coming from it as its individual bones ground and squealed against each other, the clicking was its teeth as its jaws rattled together. It didn't seem to notice her, shuffling awkwardly through the underbrush towards Dillon, leaving an obvious trail behind it.

She drew her gun carefully, and then frowned, looking at it contemplatively. Would it kill a skeleton? Fouled dead were notoriously difficult to kill, depending on the type. She reholstered her gun, but the skeleton must have heard the noise somehow. It turned towards her, and her breath caught in her throat as she saw its eyesockets flickered with a faint green fire. She drew her own saber as the thing shuffled forward, sword raising. She met its awkward strike, turning the blade. She knocked the blade aside, and lunged forward. Her blade slid between the things ribs easily, basket clattering against its sternum, but did nothing. She cursed and recovered her guard, yanking her sword back. One of Dillon's arrows clattered against its ribs.

The thing lunged forward, she knocked the sword aside again and kicked the thing in the chest, sending it tumbling backwards. It flailed about in the leaves, seemingly incapable of righting itself. Katarina advanced, carefully timed her swing, and one blow shattered the thing's arm and sent the rusty sword flying. she swung again, and the other arm disintegrated. She similarly destroyed the thing's legs, and finally severed the head and sent it flying. The body immediately stopped flailing about uselessly.

She approached the skull, which was opening and closing its jaws rhythmically. She drew back her foot and stomped until the skull shattered under her bootheel, leaking a foul grayish green sludge that squelched over her boot.

Her skin crawled and she shuddered and struggled with her gorge. The thing was offensive to her very core. She had fought the undead before, and every time she was overcome with disgust and revulsion.

She turned back to the body, which had gone still. Apparently destroying the head was its vulnerability. She grabbed a handful of leaves and wiped her blade and sheathed it. The thing's trail was easy enough to follow, but it wasn't her nature to plunge ahead without getting a clear picture of what she faced.

She spent some time thinking. One undead typically meant more. She'd never encountered a situation where there was only one, and never did the dead rise of their own volition, which meant that there was a mage at work somewhere ahead. A thrill went through her at the prospect. Corporeal undead were rumored to be stupid, only capable of the simplest of functions. Animated skeletons were nimble, but lacked strength and resilience. Zombies were slow but powerfully strong and could take all sorts of punishment. The spectral forms of undead were both smart and wholly lethal, only susceptible to magical powers and clerical authority.

She was all set to follow the trail of the undead, when Dillon spoke up.

"Milady? The cave?" He reminded, and she drew up short. "Of course." She replied, and turned back to the horses.

"Whatever we find up there, I'm going to chase that backtrail." She advised, and he nodded.

They scaled up the cracked and fissured mammoth boulder with little difficulty. When they reached the top, Dillon showed her a crevice that one could slip through that opened into a small cave below. Suiting actions to words, he dropped through the crack with the ease of long practice, and barked a shout of surprise when he hit the cave's floor. Katarina could hear sounds of a struggle, and when she managed to drop through the crack, she found Dillon locked in combat with three skeletons. He struggled with a chunk of firewood as a weapon, unable to break away long enough to grab his weapon.

Katarina herself snatched Dillon's club off his back and charged forward, knocking the head off of one, and splintering the ribcage of another. Dillon hurled his chunk of firewood at the third, stepped back and pulled out his hatchet.

The skeleton with the shattered chest swung a rusty axe at Katarina, who awkwardly parried with the club like a sword and cursed. The weight and balance were all off.

"Two hands!" Dillon shouted at her, and she pulled back to a two handed grip as Dillon darted forward with his hatchet, hooking the other skeleton's weapon with his, jerking it towards him, and punching it in the neck. The skeleton chattered at him and he shoved it away.

Katarina swung two-handed at the skeleton with the shattered rib cage, crushing its collarbone and shearing off one arm.

Dillon shouted his approval and, remembering Katarina's fight outside the cave, knocked the skeleton's weapon arm to the side before shearing it off with his hatchet. The skeleton slugged him across the law with its free hand and drove him back.

Katarina in the meanwhile, struggled with the skeleton she'd engaged. Its rib cage was shattered and one shoulder was completely gone, arm included, but she was in a cramped space with a weapon she wasn't wholly familiar with. It rained blows at her, and she ducked and parried the best she could as she backpedalled, seeking more room with which to maneuver. She could sense Dillon somewhere behind and to the left of her somewhere; when the skeleton drove forward, flailing its remaining arm, Katarina stepped back and pivoted right, letting the momentum of the skeleton's fury carry it past her. She then swung from the hip, bringing the two-handed club in a straight, smooth arc that shattered the skull of that skeleton to dust. As Katarina looked to Dillon, she could see the skeleton alternatively thrusting at him with the shattered remains of one arm and swinging a bony fist with the other. She brought his club up overhead and brought it back down, crushing the skull and dropping the skeleton into a clattering pile of individual bones.

"Well." Katarina exclaimed as she took deep breaths.

Dillon shook his head. "I saw." He said by way of reply, gesturing further into the cave past the fire pit. He staggered over to a shrouded area of the cave. She kindled a light in the firepit, and she could see an older man surrounded by several skeletons that had been similarly defeated.

"Your brother, I assume." She observed, and he nodded.

"Dillon." She spoke gently, and he looked up, surprised.

"I hold the rank of 'Lady of the Church'." She informed him. "I can perform his last rites and commend his soul to the Golden Lady."

After a long moment, he agreed.

"We'll wrap him in his bedroll, hoist him out of the cave, and burn his remains." She suggested, and Dillon nodded after a moment. "I'll do it."

Dillon removed the corpse of his brother while Katarina collected deadwood, making a pyre. After a second's thought she also added the bones of the skeletons Dillon's brother had dispatched before he died. Let the bones of his enemies provide the fuel to spirit him on his way to the Golden Lady.

Katarina's own prayers were usually short and to the point, but for Dillon and his grief she'd perform the full Requiem Æternam.

She prayed and sang, and gave Dillon the man's belongings.

"Your forgiveness, Witch Hunter." He spoke for the first time in hours. "I'm going back to Norn."

She eyed him carefully at this. His dirty face was tracked with tear streaks.

"We can track the fouled dead to their lair." She urged. "You could have vengeance against the one that killed him."

He gave her a slow shake of his head. "No. I've lost too much." He finally admitted. "I lost Apopka when my brothers- my fellow Wardens were away. I lost most of my family when the village was attacked. I lost my Warden brothers when we hunted centaurs for vengeance, and the vengeance we got didn't bring anyone back." He said with a pained grimace. "All we got was more death." He shook his head. "Now I've lost my brother. I'm done. I'm through." After a long moment he raised his eyes and met hers.

"I thank you, Witch Hunter. Lady Katarina. Light of the Goddess shine on you." He paused, and gave her a pained half-smile. "I won't tell anyone you talk to yourself. I used to do it myself, in the woods." He added, and Katarina flushed hotly, embarrassed.

He gave her a respectful bow, fist across the heart, mounted his horse, and headed back the way they'd come.

Katarina tended the pyre throughout the rest of the day and into the night.

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Olivia didn’t normally remember her dreams, but this one stood out with vivid clarity and an unusual lucidity. There was this strange sense as if she was just on the cusp of sleeping and waking, looking up at the canopied interior of her bed, comforter pulled to just below her blue-gray eyes.

There was a feeling of warmth and weight in the bedding near her, as if she wasn’t alone in her bed, which didn’t bring any sense of surprise or alarm. Hers was the unspoken scandal; she often seduced her maids and sometimes a pretty young acolyte or two.

She eased out of bed, letting whoever it was she had decided to bed with sleep, and blinked owlishly at the pre-dawn surroundings of her bedroom.

Immediately there was a bizarre, alien sensation of doubling; she could feel the thick, fuffly strands of the rug beneath her feet, could see dimly the contents of her room, but at the exact same time she could feel herself burrowing deeper beneath the covers in her bed.

At the far end of her room was a set of glass doors leading to her patio; framed by billowing, gauzy curtains in the summertime, and thick, plush curtains during the winter. These were open, and an errant wind blew a swirl of leaves against the cool tile floor. Outside, it was darkly night, faint illumination from the moonlight filtered through the thick clouds that hung low over the sky, pregnant with thunder.

Somehow she had traversed the intervening space between bed and patio without any sense of movement- one moment there the next here. How had that happened? Such was the nature of dreams, she supposed, but it seemed so vivid and real she doubted her own sensations. In her bed, she wanted to reach out to her partner, whoever it was, gain comfort and strength from the touch of another, and yet there was a sense that it was impossible, an aching sadness that gaped like an empty socket after the loss of a tooth. She was asleep in bed with someone she could not touch, but desperately wanted to, and the ache of longing filled her to tears.

And yet, she stood at the entry to her own patio. [********’s] bedroom led to a conservatory, but she had no such desire for plants or the like, preferring a simple balcony. She touched her forehead and the dream wavered, rippled. The sense of duality increased. Olivia was at one side of her mammoth bed, her partner had moved yet further away. She put both hands on the patio table, a bean-shaped wooden table heavily and richly carved with dense tangles of vines and flowers that were gilded, gold-edged.

Several jagged patterns seemed to glimmer up at her in the dim light of the patio, and she shivered in the chill. Back in her bed she burrowed under the comforters completely. Who had the conservatory? And why was it so important?

Suddenly the air was split with a heavy sound without sound; the apotheosis and antithesis of sound, it struck her from behind like a physical force, it pulled the air from her lungs, hurled her from her terrace, flinging her out into open space. Night became as day as the sun bloomed in the sky behind her. As she hurtled through the air she spun, whirled, flipped and twirled through the air. It was impossible to make sense of anything. It was as if the Alstroemeria, the Grand Cathedral of the Golden Lady, the seat of the Anglish Empire had suddenly become a star. A billion billion crumbles of stained glass whickered by and through her as she finally hit the ground, rolling and tumbling and incapable of stopping.

She felt everything. Her bones disintegrating, her viscera splattering, everything liquefying and yet she still saw, she still thought, she still felt herself laying in bed with [********] the woman she loved, the woman she had betrayed.

What? She didn’t understand where such a thought could have come from. She was a Lady Cardinal, only second in rank to the Grand Cardinal, the ruler over the entirety of the Great Anglish Empire. How had she come to love someone? And betrayal?

Eventually, her body, or perhaps could gently be described as the remains of her body came to a halt. The Alstroemeria was gone. In its place was a shaft of brilliant sunlight, connecting sky to earth. Three smaller specks of light rotated around the column, spiralling downwards as the blastwave reached the city and erased it.

What in all of the lands of the Anglish Empire had the power to do such damage? She wondered, and then the blastwave collapsed in on itself, and air rushed in to fill the empty pace, dragging her along with it.

As she hurtled towards the heart of what used to be the largest, grandest, richest and singularly the most powerful building the world had ever known, ash and dust swirled around her.

A thought created two. Two created an idea. The idea took shape, and Lady Cardinal Olivia opened her eyes on a shattered hellscape. Insensate, mindless screams battered her ears, peals of utter panic and horrified despair. Voices she swore she could recognize, though she couldn’t for the life of her think of any time when she had heard anything screaming with such vehemence. She too, wanted to scream, and yet discovered she couldn’t. She couldn’t scream. She lacked the capacity. She couldn’t move, couldn’t feel, couldn’t think. Everything had happened too quickly for her to process. It was a long time before her mind came to any sort of awareness.

To her left and right, beautiful, pure, clean green emerald statues, seven in total, in a ring, each presenting the Staff of Rule boldly forward. She froze. She couldn’t freeze, she was frozen. She couldn’t move, she couldn’t breathe. Her soul had become irrecoverably bound to an emerald simulacrum. One by one, the voices died out. Six emerald tablets, each a dozen feet tall, covered over and over with golden script were in the center of the circle.

Four angels with wings of golden flame lounged in the circle beneath the gazes of the seven. Olivia knew them, just as she knew the faces and minds of the statues in the ring. Each of the statues was a representative of the Book of the Golden Lady, the ruling council of the entirety of the Empire. Each emerald face was a perfect replication of the Lady Cardinals Yuriko, Constance, Gabrielle, Phoebe, Celeste, and herself. The Grand Cardinal was also in the ring as well, though she’d never actually learned the woman’s name. To Olivia, she’d always ‘Her Highness" or "Her Grace".

The Angels below were the stuff of legend, the Saints of old. She could name them easily enough; she had been raised on their adventures as a child. Had taken in their stories, their parables along with her mother’s milk.

There was Alicia the Silverthorn, the one who had freed the Church from the corruption of evil men. There stood Andrianna the Blind, the woman who was compassionate and wise beyond her years. Then there was Celestine of Alhambra, the Apostle in Triumph, the first to be so loved, so cherished by the Goddess that she rose to angelhood while still living; the first living Saint in known memory. Lastly, finally, [********] the Relentless, the second Living Saint, only just revealed.

What? Olivia wondered, goggling at the line of thought that had slipped through. Celestine was the most recent Saint, a feat that happened nearly eight hundred years or so ago, right?

What had happened? Everywhere, the shattered remains of the Grand Cathedral. The city of Darnell itself was so much dust and ash.

Saint Alicia spoke, her voice sweet and gentle. Like Olivia herself, she was slim and delicate, petite.

"For the Crime of Heresy, there can only be one end, only one result, only one solution. Death. May the Golden Lady grieve for only a moment, as she yet searches."

Saint Celestine took it up. "For the Crime of Blasphemy, purgation by holy flame. As it was in the times before, and will be in the times anew: pain cleanses the body. Prayer purifies the soul. Let the lands of the Anglish be overthrown and seeded with salt, so that no living thing may grow there."

Saint Andrianna nodded. "For the Crime of Laxity, banishment. No shelter from the terror that flies by day, or the horror that hunts by night. Let no stone stand one upon another. Let no Anglish live, for time and time again they have proved wicked, vain, and selfish."

[********] looked from Andrianna to Celestine at that last statement. Celestine was Anglish. For that matter, so was Alicia. Or at least, they had been before the Goddess of the Dawn had welcomed them into her sanctum. She turned about in a slow circle, her wings flexing. Her eyes, like the others, were green, the deep green of emerald, of new spring growth, of life and fertility. Her hair, like the others, was spun gold.

Unlike the others, the sainted legends of old, she seemed more vital, more there. The others were so cool and indifferent. Distant.

"So I guess it falls to me." The unknown Angel muttered, with a wry twist to her mouth. Olivia would have frowned, had she been able. That seemed a very un-angel-like thing to say.

"The Golden Lady has decided to seek the faithful elsewhere. Perhaps there is another land, with another people, where another hope can bloom." She began, and scuffed the toe of one of her boots in the dust. "The Anglish Empire is no more. Shall be no more." She looked to each of the emerald statues. "As you were the leaders, you will remain, doomed to protect the Emerald Tablets."

She suddenly swung to one of the other statues.

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"You deny your crimes?" She sneered, and barked a half-laugh, half sob. "She came to each of you, in Her own way. She warned you, did She not?" The angel shook her head in disappointment. She looked to what had once been Gabrielle.

"To you, she gave the gift of maternal love, which you shed with indifference." She turned to another.

Olivia realized she could recognize them individually, now. The name of the angel which frustratingly slipped from her mind every time she tried to think of it- that Angel addressed Phoebe, now.

"To you, she gave the tongue of true prophecy."

To each, she laid crimes at their feet. Crimes to which they had participated in directly, crimes of negligence, of indifference. She spoke clearly, calmly, to each of them, speaking their sins to them. Olivia knew what was going to happen, and desperately wanted to wake up from this horrid dream. She didn’t want to hear it. She didn’t want to hear her own sins spit back in her face. She couldn’t turn away. She couldn’t even close her eyes.

She closed the eyes in her mind, thinking, concentrating on the suggestion of her laying in bed. It was faint, but still there. It wavered, like it didn’t want to appear. She knew it was there, however. She knew it was a dream. It was real, oh, certainly. It was as real as the mole on her inner thigh. But it was a dream. She knew it. She felt it. She denied its reality. Please let me be free of this twisted nightmare! She begged silently, willfully ignoring the angels as they shouted condemnations at the Last Book of the Golden Lady, condemning the death of billions.

She ignored them, focusing tightly on the sensation of laying in bed. What color of sheets were on the bed? Were there fleur-de-lys on the inside, or the outside of the bedcurtains? She was almost there, she could just feel it. Now, if she could just open her eyes-

There was a long silence, then.

"Look at me." [********] urged in a low voice, thick with pain, thick with the bewildered sort of furious hurt that could only come from the loss of something infinitely precious.

Olivia’s eyes sprung open. The angel looked up at her, tears streaming down her face. "I loved you. I trusted you. Why did you betray me?" She whispered.

One of the other angels touched her shoulder, but [********] shook the hand off irritably, her wings flaring out and wide.

Olivia didn’t have an answer. She didn’t recognize the woman. She had no idea who she was. The raw hurt on the celestial’s face was so intense, Olivia wanted to look away, to hide her shame at the intrusion into the other woman’s pain.

The angel nodded once, curtly. "So." she murmured as if in agreement, and turned away from Olivia.

She raised her voice and addressed the circle of statues as a whole, her voice cold and pitiless.

"Perhaps in a hundred years, or a thousand years, or five thousand, an Apostle of the Golden Lady will come for the tablets. Till then, you’re charged- all of you- with ceaseless vigilance. Let none take hold of the tablets until the return of the Golden Lady."

With a sudden jolt, Olivia was pounced upon, shoved against the mattress she lay upon. Her eyes flew open as a rope fell across her face and chest, thick and heavy and yet silky by texture. A figure loomed over her, arms like steel bars pinning her to the bed, hands like manacles clamped tightly at her wrists. The figure was unquestionably female, but in the darkness of the canopied bed she couldn’t make out who it was. An assassin? Such things weren’t unknown. But why pin her? Why not immediately slay her?

"Please-" She began. It was too dark, she couldn’t see who it was. "Please, just-" She began, and the figure pinning her leaned close, her lips gently, tentatively kissing, dragging against Olivia’s own. For a kiss, it was nothing, the hint of a kiss, the lightests, gentlest touch, lip touching lip. There was a hesitant, tentative vulnerability, there. Uncertainty. The woman was as strong as a Tyrant King lizard, and was... scared... of kissing her?

"If... If you betray me, I will kill you." the woman stated, and Olivia nodded, her eyes never leaving the shadowy woman’s face, an icepick of fear in her chest. She felt as if she should know that face.

The Angel! Could it have been her? What- who was she? Olivia blinked doubtfully. Angel? The last angel that had been seen was the Apostle in Triumph, Lady Celestine Alhambra, Blessed of the Lady-

Her thoughts broke off as the woman kissed her a second time, more forcefully. Olivia could feel the muscles in the woman’s arms thrumming like plucked strings. Olivia was very good at reading people. This was desire, barely restrained. Unbelievably, the woman’s hands tightened on Olivia’s wrists, and she struggled to keep from screaming as the bones in her wrist were ground together by the force of the woman’s grip.

"I believe you." Olivia whispered, and the woman kissed her again, more forcefully this time. Olivia moved to embrace her, but the woman was up and off of her in a flash. Olivia rolled out of bed and as her feet hit the floor to give chase she was suddenly at her terrace again, looking up at storm-forged clouds, thick and black and pregnant with rain.

Another dream?! She stumbled and would have fallen, but something- no, someone bolstered her up from behind.

A voice at her ear, a voice so familiar she knew without knowing, recognized without hearing, understanding that this too, was part of the dream, spoke warningly in her ear. "Oliva. Look up. Look at the sky."

An arm raised past her vision, pointing to the sky. Olivia studied the arm- had she ever seen a woman with such an arm? She followed the woman’s pointing finger.

Suddenly the air was split with a brassy peal of trumpets, and Olivia leapt back, a startled scream on her lips. She was glancing this way and that, whirling about, trying to spot the sound.

The trumpeting died out, yet somehow neither diminishing nor fading. The sound was unlike anything she’d ever heard before. It held the metallic tang of trumpets, the feathery light sound of woodwinds, and the raw, throat-rending feel of a shriek. An instrument of incalculable proportion but beautiful and terrible, thrumming in her chest, setting her heart aflame.

Trembling, she approached her patio.

Just as suddenly, the air was filled with the choir of angels. It seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere, filling the air with praise and reverence and worship. The air vibrated with the chorus of song, a choir of voices from on high.

Olivia glanced up at the sky and gaped, tears rolling from her eyes as an angelic figure whirled about, rising and falling gracefully, massive wings of fire flapping slowly, coasting on thermals trapped between the city and the thunderheads above with massive golden wings.

She could only stare numbly as the figure, a mere speck in the distance executed a series of aerial maneuvers.

"The arrival of Her angels is never rewarded with good cheer." The voice murmured in her ear. "And why should it be? They are born aloft on wings of flame, and come before man as a scythe before the harvest."

She knew this for true. Angels were portents of danger, heralds of the coming doom. The Goddess would not send an Angel to deliver a message of compassion, but to strike down with furious vengeance that which threatened Her domain. Of course, no one had actually seen an angel since Celestine Alhambra ascended on golden wings to the heavens, never to be seen again. But logically, bureaucratically, it would not make sense to send one of the Angelic Host for compassions’ sake.

Suddenly Olivia trembled. Darnell was burning. Flickers of light lanced from the angel to the city below at regular intervals, and the screams, oh, the screams she could hear tore at her heart. The angelic figure in the sky was joined by another, and still another, a dozen, a hundred whirling golden women with blazing flames for wings, striking and razing the great capital. Great fires roared, thunder boomed, lightning crackled, stone shattered, great wooden beams crumbled, windows shattered in scintillating sprays of color, and with dawning horror in Olivia’s eyes, they were spiralling in tighter, tighter, their focus the great fortress-cathedral the Alstroemeria itself. She was kidding herself if she believed it could withstand an assault from her own Goddesses’ forces. She couldn’t turn away. She couldn’t run.

"Breathe." The voice at her ear commanded, and air seemed to leap into her lungs, life springing suddenly to wooden limbs. Her eyes were dry from not blinking.

So many thoughts and emotions raced through her head, she struggled to focus on something, anything. Her heart seemed to brutally punch against her ribs, as if struggling to break free. She could feel or think no one thing, the pulse in her neck thrumming so hard with each heartbeat it hurt to breathe. A thin, breathy whine rang in her ears. She knew she was on the verge of passing out from terror. She wavered, terror, agonizing, grinding, paralyzing pain bleeding her strength. The room doubled, trebled. Darkness closed in at the edges, as if she were looking down a long tube. A spidery, whispery croak, a thread of pain running brilliant red against the gray,

"I don’t want to die." Rotting dresses in forgotten closets made more noise than she. But it was enough.

"Then breathe." the voice repeated, an amused lilt to the voice. Strange, wispy trails of light crawled at the corners of her vision. The idea, the concept of breathing was impossible to conceive. She had seen the massive blocks of stone quarried for the harbor. No one man could pick them up. It took dozens, perhaps hundreds of mages circling the block, pouring magic into it to make it lighter, to defy common thought and rationale so that it could be set into place. IT felt as if one of those stones rest across her chest now. She could not pick up that stone. She could not breathe.

She would die, a meaningless, empty death in an ungainly heap on the floor. Dry-eyed cardinals would speak mournfully about her whilst passing secret blades to begin the process of jockeying for her position. She had no children. Her family was minor nobility outside of Begierde, struggling to keep from falling into penury.

"Breathe." The voice repeated again. Olivia struggled to look at her interlocutor, but could not move. A dread, hollow pressure on her chest, just below her sternum. The pressure was building, her body was going to explode, collapse, fly apart like leaves, and there it was: She sucked in a breath and screamed.

Suddenly, everything seemed to snap into place. She was laying on the floor in the middle of her bedroom. The curtains discretely covering the door fluttered slightly. Her heart beat normally in her chest, the ebb and flow of her breathing was smooth and automatic. She knew who and where she was.

It was all a dream. She was safe. She pushed herself to a sitting position on the floor.

"You are allowed three questions. Half of six, the holy number of Our Lady. Three, the number of death."

She jolted, arm slipping, she fell back onto the carpet.

"What-"

"Is that your first question?" the formless voice spoke sharply, as if in warning.

"No, I suppose not." She muttered dryly, trying to do something with her hair with her fingertips, which was dreadfully tangled.

"What I saw outside," She began carefully. "It seemed as though the Golden Lady Herself was coming to make war against us, Her chosen." The voice was silent. She hadn’t asked a question. She clenched her teeth.

"Have we fallen so far from Her Divine Grace that we deserve annihilation?" She asked fearfully, looking around her room.

The room was silent for some time. When the voice spoke, it spoke with a thousand tongues, the voices interweaving, overlapping each other, blending into almost a choir-like symphony.

"If I speak in the tongues of men but do not have love, I am nothing. If I can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give over my body to the fires to be burned, but do not have love, I am nothing."

Her eyes widened at this. The Virtues, a thing taught to children. "Are you saying we-" She caught herself, hand clapping over her mouth.

There was no way to be certain, but there was a sense of amusement in the silence at this. So many questions rushed into her mind. Who could- why is- but this- She shook her head to dispel them.

"I need to know if this can be averted." She stated. Silence filled the room. Irritation flashed through her. "That was a question." She prompted.

"It can be averted, Lady Cardinal." The voice replied with a tinge of amusement. Just like that? No hint? No clue how an empire that spanned five continents could survive annihilation at the hands of the Goddess they all worshipped? That was it?

"Try to remember the heart, the flame, and the blade, Lady Cardinal. These will be your signs and portents." the voice mocked gently. "If you can do this... this vision might not come to pass."

She had no idea what the voice was talking about, but she filed it away. Remember the heart. Remember the flame. Remember the blade. She caught herself whispering it.

"I still have one question!" She demanded, trying to struggle to her feet. Again, that sense of amusement from her unseen interlocutor.

"Of course. Ask."

"One last question." She began. "Why am I being shown this?"

The silence seemed to fill with amusement again.

"Because you are the heart, Olivia."

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Katarina awoke with a jerk, surprised and uncomfortable. She'd fallen asleep sitting up. She hadn't wanted to fall asleep, she'd intended to keep vigil through the night until the fire had gone completely out. The Church of the Golden Lady preached cremation for the dead, and she'd wanted to at least see it through the night, but dawn's light was filtering through the trees.

She closed her eyes, took a breath, held it, and let it out slowly. There was a struggle in her; conflicting duties. Should she chase after the undead? Should she return to Norn? If she returned to Norn, she would need to pick up whatever information she could about her sister's escape from the church there. There was no guarantee that whoever it was that had raised those dead was her sister. In all likelihood it wasn't, but that was no excuse to abandon the hunt. She grit her teeth. If she'd been thinking correctly instead of endlessly worrying about the visions she'd had in Aston, she'd've stopped at the church almost as soon as she'd arrived in Norn.

"Fuck." She complained angrily, and forced herself to her feet. She buried the ashes of the pyre, and saddled her horse.

"Water me."

Katarina straightened and glanced around. Who had said that? The voice had been straightforward, calm, imperious. Smooth and rich and filled with feminine authority. Katarina scanned the trees carefully, listening with her whole body, hand on her gun.

"Water me!" The voice demanded, and Katarina whirled, seeking the owner of the voice, gun out and at the ready.

"No answers that way, Witch Hunter." Araya's voice mocked her. "That way does not open doors, only closes them." Katarina whirled again, coat flaring as she spun.

"Reveal yourself!" Katarina demanded hotly. "And we'll see how many doors I can open in you."

A burst of delighted laughter met this threat. "Water me. Put your gun away, Katarina, and water me."

Katarina turned again, and a shaft of early morning sunlight illuminated a single lily plant that nodded in the slight breeze that wafted through the morning camp. A single flower bloomed on the plant's stalk, and that flower was perhaps the most singularly beautiful lily Katarina had ever seen. The petals of that madonna were the richest cream, the palest alabaster, and they deepened into the green of emeralds, of new spring growth as they drew into the center. The anthers were a furry gold that shimmered with reflected light, a thousand thousand glimmering sparkles.

"Water me, Katarina." The plant spoke, and the world washed weak and dim. Katarina herself was buffeted by the power that pulsed out from it. She felt herself growing weak and insignificant and she struggled against it. Dimly, she felt the ghost of a sensation; she was huddled in her coat, her hat pulled low.

"This... is a dream." Katarina decided, and her pride surged up in her, hot and real, stiffening her neck, her back. Strength flowed into her body with the surety of its unreality, and she pushed back with her will.

"This is a dream." She asserted, and the effect from the plant seemed to disperse.

"Good." The flower praised smoothly. "Good. Very good. Now, water me, Katarina." it urged.

"Why should I water you?" Katarina asked, and the flower laughed, a delightfully free, unrestrained laughter. "Because I have commanded it, of course."

Katarina shook her head. "There are many powers and principalities in the world, and I will not give aid and succor to one who is not my Lady."

"Very good, Katarina." the flower replied, nodding in the breeze. "But there is only one power that may reach you here, and only that power can appear to you as I have." it insinuated. "Now, water me."

Katarina considered the plant for a long moment, and picked up her canteen from the ground. She popped the cork and splashed the base of the flower.

"Ahh, that's good." The flower exulted. "Now wake."

Katarina jolted forward, coat falling from her shoulders. She hit the ground as a wave of nausea assailed her. Her gorge suddenly heaved, and a stream of vomit jetted across the smoldering ashes of the pyre and hit the embers with a hiss. A horrible buzzing filled her ears and a ghastly feeling like ten thousand tiny spiders crawling across her skin from head to toe assailed her. Shadow-shapes flitted across her vision and her gorge heaved again, bringing a weak trickle of bile to her lips. She tried to spit and discovered she couldn't muster the strength to do even that much.

"What's happening to me?" She muttered through numb and chattering lips, before unconsciousness took her.

When she awoke, there was a curious ache to her bones, but she attributed that to sleeping in such an ungainly and undignified posture. Aside from that, she felt fine.

Why was this happening? She wondered, rising to her feet. This went beyond dreams and visions. A jolt of adrenaline sent icewater across her heart chilling her with numbing horror. Unexplained nausea, vomiting, bouts of weakness... these were symptoms of magical poisoning. What if there were some corruptive magical influence in the forest that was affecting her somehow? She extended her antimagic field by reflex. What if some unknown mage was affecting her with malicious magics? There was no sense of anyone nearby, and she existed comfortably with the knowledge that one of the abilities that she had gained early on as a Witch Hunter was immunity to scrying, so magics that didn't require line-of-sight like curses and hexes shouldn't affect her either.

Katarina quickly shed her clothes and carefully inspected every visible surface of her body. There didn't appear to be any visible sign of mutation or corruption, just the usual intaglio of scars, though to be absolutely certain she would need to have a properly trained priestess examine her thoroughly.

She could return to Norn and go to the Church. Norn was near Darnell, likely it was staffed with women. It was only when you got further away from the capital that men were in positions of authority. She froze, remembering the lack of priestesses or even Ladies of the Church at Norn. She would have to go somewhere else. Landeck, Aston, Darnell.

That clinched it: She dressed quickly, braided her hair, buried the embers of the pyre, brushed and saddled her horse, and headed deeper into the forest.

She turned south, and began following the trail, alert for anything. It didn't take very long at all before she encountered another group of skeletons. Remembering her encounters with them before, she rushed forward and brought her sword down in a brutal overhead strike, shattering its skull atop its neck before it could turn around and see her. The thing fell apart into its constituent bones, but she was already moving, a grimly triumphant smile on her face as she dispatched the others, relying on speed and flexibility to overwhelm them. She chopped through arms holding weapons, performed sweeping kicks to knock them off their feet, and crushing blows to shatter their skulls.

She took a long moment to examine their weapons. Here a club, there a rusted iron axe, there a warped and battered bronze knife, green with corrosion. Likely a weapon they were buried with. If this mage had stumbled upon some army's graveyard, she needed to be prepared to face an army's worth of undead.

She headed south again, and nearly ran straight into another skeleton. She threw herself to the side as the thing swung, rolled, and came up in a guard stance as it lurched towards her. She dispatched it quickly, and frowned, disappointed. these things were weak. It didn't seem likely that these were what killed the missing men.

She considered that the skeletons were the men that had been sent to investigate, but dismissed the notion outright. It would have been more effective for the mage to resurrect them as zombies rather than stripping flesh from bone and animating the skeletons. In addition to that, the bones were desiccated, dry, and old.

She continued south, and dispatched more skeletons. She'd covered sixteen miles and nearly dispatched three times as many skeletons. They showed up in irregular intervals, singly or in groups of three to five. All had some sort of rusty or near-useless sword or axe. None wore armor.

She stopped to consider the implications. That many fouled dead... certainly the work of a powerful mage of some kind. How many dead were there?

She rummaged in the cart until she'd found a map. she measured with finger-widths until she judged where she was, and made a mark. she went through and marked on her map everywhere she had killed a skeleton, creating a gentle, sixteen mile arc. It seemed like they had been arranged in a rough perimeter. She grimaced as she triangulated. at her rate of travel, and assuming the skeletons were indeed arranged in a circle, it would be days before she reached the heart of whatever it was that had raised them.

She stopped. What if, by killing the skeletons, she had alerted the mage? Skeletons made terrible sentries. What if they were but scouts of a larger force? She frowned. She considered that rough arc. She'd been travelling for three days. She could dig deeper into this arc for at least five or six more days and still be far from the heart.

Should she continue? She dipped into her blouse and regarded her holy symbol in the fading light.

"I'll pray on it and sleep." She mused, and whispered a prayer, before crawling into her bedroll for the night.