The Vampire & Her Witch

The Saint’s audience chamber gleamed brilliantly in the light of hundreds of lamps reflecting off polished stone floors and gilded, fluted columns. During the day, the stained glass windows would dye the light red and gold as it filtered through scenes of the rising sun on the eastern walls, the setting sun on the western walls, or the radiant sun set in the center of the domed ceiling above.

Now, however, it was flickering lamplight that illuminated the venerable figure sitting behind a stately oak desk on a gilded chair that would have been called a throne by anyone who hadn’t seen the pontiff’s actual throne in the great temple.

”Your Holiness,” Domas said, dropping to one knee and bowing his head before the living embodiment of the Cleansing Fire of the Sun and the spiritual successor to the Great Prophet himself.

”You may rise, Domas,” the Saint said in a deep, resonant voice that possessed none of the frailty most would expect from a man of his advanced years.

Saint Primus IV, fourth of his name, had been born in the years following the Second Crusade almost a hundred years ago. Despite this, he looked like a man of only half his years with hair that had faded from golden to gray and skin that had only just begun to wrinkle around his eyes, brow, and blade-thin lips.

To most men, he resembled a wise and seasoned ruler, little different from a mortal king. That was, at least, until you met his eyes. The eyes of the Saint of Cleansing Fire burned with an inner light like no other, and even in a darkened room, their reddish-golden glow would shine. Like two captured wisps of the sun, nothing could hide in darkness before their gaze.

Lies would crumble and burn away under that gaze, leaving only the bitter truth of the world as it was, no matter how mortal men might wish the world to be.

”Your arrow has found its mark,” Saint Primus said with something that could almost be mistaken for a smile gracing his lips. ”Now it lies broken and lost in the mists.”

”Then all is as you have seen,” Domas said, barely suppressing a wince of pain before it could display on his face. ”I’ll leave at dawn to retrieve him for you...”

”No,” the saint interrupted before Domas could finish making his offer. ”He is lost and broken, but he must still ferment before he can be of use to me. It remains to be seen whether he will survive the test ahead of him and return to us, or rot away to nothingness.”

”Your role ended when you fired him from your bow, Domas,” the saint said firmly. ”It was enough for you to place him in harm’s way with enough power to struggle for himself. Now that he has failed, his feet can begin to walk the proper path. Concern yourself with him no longer,” he commanded.

Domas’s left hand clenched tightly, as though he was gripping his Bow of Stars, but he knew that raising an argument with the Saint would be as useful as raising an argument with the sun itself. He’d sent his brightest student to the frontier, not to grow and thrive, but to be destroyed by a storm the Saint had foreseen.

Nothing that had been written in the heavens was written in stone. Domas had done his best to give his student the tools to survive the trial ahead of him, and to thrive if his feet could find the start of the right path ahead. There was even a chance that he could take Loman across the sea one day, to meet with the Saint of Guiding Light...

But those paths had been lost now. If the Saint spoke the truth, and he always did, then Loman had been shattered as surely as if Domas had fired an arrow into stone.

”I see,” Domas said, bowing his head in acceptance and submission. ”Then, since my work with him is done, has your need for me reached an end? It’s been twenty years since I last set foot on the Isle of Light, and I would like to return home to see...”

”Just because one arrow has found its mark doesn’t mean your quiver has been emptied,” Primus interrupted. ”You should know this by now, Domas. The Darkness grows ever stronger as we struggle against its taint. If we are to survive the Calamity to come, we must sharpen our every sword and prepare our every spear.”

”There is nothing left for you on the Isle of Light,” the saint said as he turned his gaze to the eastern widows, looking out at something only he could see. ”Soon, they will know only winter and ash will fall like snow. You cannot change their fate, no matter how many arrows you rain down.”

”Your teacher knew this when he sent you to me twenty-two years ago,” Saint Primus chided the Exemplar. ”He saw the signs then, and he accepted them. It’s time that you do the same. You still have a place in the Grand Design, and I require your strength now more than ever.”

”I understand, Holiness,” Domas said, bowing his head because there was nothing else he could say or do. ”What would you have of me?”

”Seek out Exemplar Caeso Scaevola. The Keeper of the Flame,” the Saint commanded. ”Place your bow at his command. He will direct where it strikes.”

”Holiness?” Domas said, unable to hide his surprise as he stared at the saint in shock. Placing an Exemplar under the command of one of their peers was unusual in the extreme, but placing the vessel of the Ascended Archer under the command of the man who led the Inquisition was something else entirely.

”Is there a demon threat that must be eliminated, Holiness?” Domas asked as he tried to understand what could have prompted the Saint of Cleansing Fire to make such an extraordinary move.

”The time to face the demons and the witches will be upon us soon enough,” Saint Primus promised solemnly. ”Before that time arrives, we must winnow our own ranks of weakness. Those who would break under the pressure of their struggles must not be allowed to cause our downfall, or we will find ourselves lost in darkness for a thousand years or more with no one to venerate but the dead,” he said, as though he had already walked the streets of the dark world that only his burning eyes could see.

”Caeso will provide your targets,” Primus commanded. ”See that your arrows find their marks...”