“Prepare the medicine,” Mirabelle, the Red Cardinal, commanded, beckoning to her manservant with a flick of her slender hand.
She sat perched high above the arena in a section that jutted out from the walls and hung over the cheering audience below. The height and size of her overhang cast a large shadow over part of the audience, much like the royal seating on the arena’s opposing side.
The section was open-roofed to the sun cresting its apex and was rimmed with a waist-high stone railing. At this vantage, she was able to easily witness the events at the arena’s center even without magic to magnify her vision. Perhaps thirty feet to her back, at the furthest spot on the section, was the exit, framed with stone slabs carved with depictions of hundreds of years of the church's history and scenes of past heroes from the kingdom's many wars.
Unlike those of her following who filled the emptiness of the section and wore drab black robes with high white collars and a pair of golden wings adorned right above their hearts, the Red Cardinal was herself covered in a pure and thick red robe and was seated. The robe flowed with her every movement as if a living being. If she were to believe the words of the Pope and the Saint, it likely was alive to some extent. Her red robe and moniker were succinctly matched by her blood-red hair that curled around to her mid-back and the set of bright red eyes that peered out with an otherworldly glow set with diamond-shaped pupils.
Her manservant bowed, his lesser black robes billowing in the wind of their open section before he moved to adjust the parasol blocking the sun’s rays from hitting her marble-white skin. He bowed again and moved with purpose out of the section. As she had promised, she would allow the Selenian to be healed. It was a waste, honestly, to expend a precious elixir on a lower life form like a Selenian. But alas, she was a woman of her word and as a Cardinal of the Priestess of Life, she would not go against an oath.
She couldn’t. But that didn’t mean everything would go the way the slave girl expected.
“Your Eminence,” a member of her entourage, Draven, said with the same steady caution all her followers approached her with. He bowed in respect and deference, and likely a bit of fear, as she turned her gaze to meet his bowed figure.
“What is it?” Mirabelle drawled, a natural tone of light and beckoning seduction dancing dangerously in the word. She could see the man visibly swallow his nervousness.
“I…I do not believe the life of a mere Selenian is worth the elixir bestowed upon Your Eminence by His Holiness the Pope.”
The Cardinal sighed and tapped a polished hand against the wood of her chair upon which she sat. No other chairs filled the near-empty platform save for a perfect gold throne to her left, though none but the Pope or Saint would ever dare to sit upon it. “Yes, you are correct, Bishop. Its life is not worth the expenditure of such a valued elixir.”
“Then…?”
“It is simply fate,” she answered and leaned casually against the back of her Blackwood chair. “Perhaps the Fates have arranged it such for a reason.” While the elixir was precious and a gift from the Pope, the Cardinal hadn’t had any use for it in over a decade and it wasn’t the only one available to someone of her position. “What had transpired with the Saintess candidate was…” she shrugged, “unforeseen.”
The large orb in her left hand flickered to life and the scene of a young girl brutally slaughtering one of the Church of Light’s Shieldmaidens started to play within it.
“Unforeseen indeed,” Mirabelle muttered. Even she had underestimated the Silverwater girl. She’d forgotten that unlike the previous Saintess Candidate, the girl did not truly believe in the Church’s plan - that much was fairly obvious. There existed in Lilliana no faith that the Church was leading her along the right path; and so she fought like a wild beast. Tooth, nail, and all.
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The trial the girl had gone through earlier was supposed to have been, as all first trials were, a planned event. As an Administrator of the System, Mirabelle had upgraded the Selenian to a Soulbound, binding his life to whatever destiny she predetermined within the jurisdiction of Orpheus’ power.
He’d played his part in the show, the System forcing him into a near death state through a minor quest to protect the girl. Unfortunately, the historic reenactment had been ruined when the Seer had gone awry. Still, the entertainment value of the trial had been quite magnificent even if it was not historically accurate as the festival managers had wanted.
It was, however, particularly unfortunate that the elixir was needed to bring back the Selenian. Though, the side effects of the elixir could prove beneficial.
“What are we to do with her?” Draven pressed.
“What can we do at the moment but see if she survives her trials and allow fate to play out?”
“But Your Eminence! That…” Draven hesitated as if unsure how to broach the topic considering Lady Lilliana’s noble heritage. Finally, he said, “That girl is not a Saintess. She cannot become a Saintess. Her powers are no miracle. They reach into death, not life.”
“Enough, Bishop Argole,” the Cardinal snapped. “It is not your place to question the Goddess’s will.”
The Bishop, Draven, clenched his jaws and his fists went white against the black of his robes. “It is impossible for that girl to be part of the Goddess’s will. She killed a Valkyrie and massacred a Shieldmaiden! ”
“I am aware that your niece was the slain Valkyrie, Bishop,” the Cardinal responded dismissively. “Though Lilliana’s actions were… unusual, her words were not wrong. We were the ones who insisted on challenging her in that way. The entire point of these trials is to test the Goddess’s favor. Can you truly say she was not blessed on this day?” Even with the Seer acting out, the actual trial had played out rather perfectly. Right up until the resurrection of the trial monsters, which had been unexpected. Her mages had done a proper job in protecting the slaves as they fought the monsters to guarantee the fatal injury of only the Selenian, as per the religious historical event of only one injury to the historic party.
However, Lilliana’s resurrection ability had, somehow, completely evaded her mage’s sense, both those of magic and energy. The method in which the Silverwater girl had done that, Mirabelle had not a clue.
“I believe she was blessed by a demon,” Draven spat, and there was a murmuring of agreement from the other followers. “Or possessed by one.”
“Hmmm,” the Cardinal hummed, and her voice took on an ethereal vibration that silenced the discontent in a second. She extended her charm outward and enveloped the Bishop in an invisible haze until his brown eyes paled with an unseeing glaze. “Bishop?”
“Yes… Your Eminence?” Draven said, his voice enunciating each word with an inhuman tempo. Like he was confused, his mind muddled by her charm.
“I believe you need to enter isolation and pray for the goddess to bestow you a more clear understanding.”
Draven nodded and left without another word. The Cardinal turned back to the images flickering within the sphere on repeat. It wasn’t so much that the Bishop was wrong. Rather, he was actually quite right about the child. She was no Saintess and her resurrections were not Life miracles but a way to cheat death reminiscent of the Necromancers of Larcos, though with some sort of limited free will. Generally, a Saintess of the Goddess Dhalia would radiate their heart energy as a halo of white light and the resulting feeling was warmth and belonging. The power was both seductive and comforting, wrapping those nearby and the user in a loving embrace.
Even an energy user with half the cardinal’s rings could tell the heart energy coming from the young Lady Lilliana was anything but warmth and certainly didn’t create an aura of belonging. It was instead cold and domineering. It didn’t grant life back to the target; it commanded continuing servitude and the resulting resurrection was nothing but a tool to that end.
Where Lilliana had learned that power, or really how she had gotten herself captured as a slave, the Cardinal had yet to discover. What information she’d gathered suggested some scheme by Lilliana’s sister, though the Cardinal couldn’t know for certain until she met with Baron Silverwater, who was watching the events in the King’s overhang section. Where she’d learned to wield such foreboding abilities or even what method developed she’d shown earlier with her heart rings, remained completely unknown. No one knew, not even the slavers.
Despite that, however, the Cardinal felt a great interest in the girl. It would not do to kill such an interesting specimen before discovering whether or not she could be used.
After a moment longer, the Cardinal swept to her feet, and the dozens of followers straightened by her side. “Bring me to our Fallen sisters,” she said as a visible halo of bright white heart energy began to emanate around her and forty heart rings swirled in a hypnotizing rhythm. “Perhaps the Goddess will once more be generous in her blessings on this day.”