CHAPTER 55

"Hmm. Tricky." Katarina murmured to herself from the short cliff. She was laying facedown peering off the edge of a cliff face down to what appeared to be the burnt-out ruins of a somewhat large city. Large enough to warrant paving stones in the major streets, anyway.

It was hard to tell; the city likely could have held anywhere between several thousand to maybe even thirty thousand people within its boundaries. Most of the buildings were tumbled-down, and all of them scorched and sooty. Dust devils of ash swirled down charred streets. Whatever else had happened, the city had burned.

A movement behind her; Katarina moved without thinking, instinct guiding her twist so she came up in a half-crouch, gun out and ready; long knife in her other hand. The barrel of her gun rest across the bracer of her knife arm.

Elizabeth stumbled back against her horse with a strangled shout. "By the Goddess-" She yelped, except Katarina was already moving, rolling forward towards the young paladin, tangling her feet and bringing the other woman down with a crash.

Elizabeth opened her eyes. Her head hurt and rang, she must have hit it. Katarina straddled the young paladin; knife pressed tightly against her skin, gunbarrel jammed under her chin. Elizabeth hadn't even seen the other woman move.

"By the Goddess, girl, are you trying to stand out?" Katarina growled at her. "I was laying down on the cliff for a reason." She left the rest unsaid.

"Sorry." Elizabeth breathed. She was afraid that if she even swallowed, that knife would slit her throat.

Katarina straightened, slipping the long knife behind her belt. "Just so long as you understand." She muttered. "You wanna have a look? That's fine. Don't walk up there. Crawl. Peek between the bushes, there." Katarina jerked her thumb over her shoulder at the cliff face. "Where's Ollara?"

"Setting up camp." Elizabeth replied. Katarina nodded at that and eased herself off the other woman's hips.

"Remember. If you're gonna have a look, crawl and peek. Don't stand up." Katarina advised, and then wormed her way back to the cliff's edge.

After a long moment where she questioned the Witch Hunter's sanity, Elizabeth joined her as instructed, crawling to the edge of the cliff and peeking over.

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"What do you think, paladin?" Katarina murmured from her spot. Elizabeth eyed the city.

"Deserted. Mostly burned to the ground." She assessed. "Whatever happened here, happened a long time ago."

Katarina eyed the dark cloud of smoke and soot that hung over the city, a sarcastic retort on the tip of her tongue.

"I don't think so." She replied instead. "Some places are still burning."

"Gatehouse at the lower end of the city." Elizabeth reported. "It's overgrown."

"Hmm." was all she heard from Katarina's position.

Elizabeth still had no idea how to feel about the Witch Hunter. There was still a part of her that suspected Katarina was a lot more than what she was letting on; an angel clad in human flesh. Katarina had single-handedly killed a nest of cannibal mutants that had captured Elizabeth, and despite the impossibility, she'd brought Elizabeth back from the brink of death- not only death, but had restored her body and cured the infections that were festering inside as if by miracle.

Later, Katarina herself had been knocked from her horse and dragged for miles, leaving a long and garish trail of blood and bits of viscera. By the time Elizabeth and Ollara had managed to catch up Katarina was not only fully healed, she had also managed to burn an entire village of beastmen to the ground. There were times when Katarina would start mumbling and gesticulating to herself, as if having a conversation with an unseen participant. She could be serene and placid, calm and kind, or savage and brutally unrelenting in violence.

Then there was the sword. "The Church of Saint Evangeline". The weapon was forged from metals she'd never seen before, a deep olive green for the blde, the crossguard black and polished like obsidian. The grip was bound with woven leather strips. That at least had the sense of familiarity.

But "Saint Evangeline" was a mystery to her, as much as the strange metals that comprised the sword itself. Evangeline Blackwood was known to her; she was a hero. But a Saint? She was never canonized.

"Katarina." Elizabeth mused as she eyed the smoldering ruins of a city without a name known to them.

"Mmm?" Came the disinterested reply a few paces to her left.

"Are you an angel?"

There was a long pause, and Elizabeth had enough time to flick away a grasshopper from her glove before the other woman responded.

"That's the third time you've asked me that, Elizabeth." Katarina finally replied.

"And?" Elizabeth asked.

"And nothing's changed from the last two times you've asked. I'm a Witch Hunter. I'm a woman." Katarina replied irritably. "I'm thinking we could cut across from the north and circumnavigate the city without too much trouble."

"I don't see anything that could be trouble." Elizabeth argued. "Going around the city will just slow us down. We should cut across."

"No people." Katarina replied. "They would be rebuilding, or planting crops, or doing what they could to put out the fires that still burn. There could be beastmen, mutants, or worse hiding out in there."