Chapter 40: The Maw of Sacrifice

Amani tugged Cecilia’s arm, but the priestess dug her heels into the dirt. “I have a duty to my order!” Cecilia argued. “I can’t recklessly charge inside!”

“We’ll be sneaking around while Miss Rainsworth provides a distraction. Isn’t that enough?” Amani said.

“If I am found without escorts, the Inquisition will” —

“To hell with the Inquisition — Jon is going to die!”

Cecilia wrested her arm out of Amani’s grasp, showing her a sour face. “Do not overstep, priestess. I recognize Mr. Fuze’s significance, and not just to you. However, I cannot move in a way that puts me in conflict with my own obligations.”

Amani suppressed the urge to shout. Her ears were flat against her head, and the corners of her mouth quivered, at once knowing what she wanted to say, but also knowing that it would be useless.

Cecilia wanted to help her. She did. Pragmatically, though, they were both useless in a fight, and they would both die in there having contributed nothing with their deaths.

“Priestesses,” Jiraya said with a low voice. When they looked to him, he was pointing down the path — at a squad of knights retreating their way.

Cecilia’s eyes widened as she recognized them. “Captain!”

The knights came to a stop, and the captain came forward. “Priestess, we need to leave! The necromancers are too powerful. We should leave the agents of Ravena to deal with them while we regroup our remaining forces” —

“I’m afraid that won’t be possible, captain,” Cecilia said, earning a pause from the captain.

“What do you mean?”

“The true aim of the enemy this time is the newest agent of Ravena.”

“What, are you suggesting that we throw our lives away for one man?” —

“Captain,” she said sternly.

The captain bowed. “My apologies.”

“Step closer. Take off your helmet.”

The captain hesitantly complied, taking off his helmet and drawing closer, moving forward by just a small step. Cecilia bridged the remaining gap, her cheek just a few inches away beside his.

“In his short presence here, Mr. Fuze has done the Order many untoward favors that we of the light would rather not see,” she whispered. “The things hundreds of our soldiers cannot do, he can do on his own.

“Now, consider: if the enemy is doing all of this just to kill one man, doesn’t that mean his very existence poses a threat to them?

“And, consider: the enemy looks down on us, making our precious soldiers into playthings. We pose no threat to them.

“Allowing Mr. Fuze to die … is the greatest mistake we can make.”

She stepped away. One look at the captain’s face, and she was satisfied with her performance. “Take your best men, captain, and let us be off.”

“Yes, priestess,” he said. Putting on his helmet, he turned around, picking a handful of men and sending the rest to the rear lines with instructions to reorganize the survivors, all the while struggling with the reality of the situation.

He had vaguely known about the priestess’s origins, but for the holy figure he followed to be hiding such a persona behind the veil… She was much too calculating, much too political. Was she really what a priestess should be? Why was such a person following Lumina and not Ravena?

With the way she phrased it, this ‘Jon Fuze’ had also acted under the Order’s interests on occasion, and she’d known of it.

He’d always had a nagging suspicion of corruption within the Order. Was Jon Fuze involved in cleaning that up, too?

— Did he get them all?

He didn’t want to think about it in such unsavory terms.

Well, whatever the enemy was doing inside the cathedral was likely worse.

The group went around the long way, all the while shielding their eyes from bright flashes of magic and bullets being flung back and forth between the cathedral and the field.

They reached the back door to the cathedral. Before they went in, Amani distributed talismans for the knights. Jiraya and Cecilia already had them.

“These are?” one of the knights asked.

“Ties down your soul against death magic,” Amani replied, earning a gulp from the knight.

One by one, they went in: knights first, then Cecilia and Amani, then Jiraya behind them.

The back door led into a break room where preachers and prayer leaders would eat their lunch and change in and out of their vestments.

All they found, however, were dead bodies piled up on one side of the room like they were just discarded there.

Cecilia and the knights had known these people. They were still in their white evening attire, now stained in red.

Fear and vengeance mixed together for each of the Order present here. Beyond the door that led to the main cathedral hall, which one would win over them?

It was already opened. All they had to do was step through.

They emerged from the left arm of the T-shaped hall. There was a foreboding red glow that painted the wall beside the altar. The source of it should just be around the corner.

The knights moved carefully so their sabatons didn’t clack against the stone floor. The priestesses and Jiraya followed closely behind.

“Priestess,” Jiraya whispered to Amani, “I would like permission to scout ahead. I make less noise than them.”

“Go. Tell the captain,” Amani replied.

Jiraya went ahead at a slow run to catch up to the head of the line. The knights he passed were surprised that he could move so swiftly and so silently, that he was almost just like a shadow in the corner of their vision.

After informing the captain, the knights decided to stop, while Jiraya moved ahead. He approached the corner, ears perked up and listening for so much as a breath.

— He heard so many.

His hairs stood on end. Those were panicked gasps — dying gasps. He already had an inkling of what he might see the moment he peeked around the corner, but he didn’t want to see it. He wanted to be wrong.

When he peeked around the corner … he was right.

He drew his head back and returned to the others. There was no use lingering for too long and risking detection just because he was a little shocked.

He went straight for the priestesses, moving past the captain, earning some annoyance from the man — though, there must have been some profound reason for it.

“We can’t save them,” Jiraya told Amani.

“Save who?” Amani asked. Cecilia had the same question.

Jiraya hesitated. “They aren’t powering the circle with ambient mana” —

Right. That would’ve been impossible.

— “They’re sacrificing slaves. Hundreds of them.”

Amani felt as if she’d bit into a lemon, but she still took it better than Cecilia.

The thought of hundreds of slaves being sacrificed on holy ground … why was this being allowed? Wouldn’t Lumina Herself do something about this? Why wasn’t She doing anything?

“I’ll inform the knights,” she said. It was better for them to expect the sight.

Cecilia’s words passed, and they didn’t take the news kindly. Their hearts grew heavy as they heard Cecilia’s words, and yet they had to press on without a sound and act as a knight of the Order would. Grief and anger had no place here — not now.

With light feet, they rounded the corner and hid behind prayer benches stacked three-high; they’d been pushed out of the center of the hall to make way for the ritual circle. Parts of the benches had broken off their joints, evidence that they’d been roughly handled, tossed off to the side without regard for their hundreds of years of history.

The ritual circle was so large that all they saw were a spaghetti of lines glowing red, passing under hundreds of slaves, each one bound to wooden frames and lying helpless on the floor. There were sobs and moans of pain coming from some of them — and growing pools of blood under all of them. They couldn’t cry through the gags over their mouths, and telling by just how much blood there was, there was no way, anymore, to save them all.

Maybe a few. Even just a few would do.

The knights were used to death, but this was just disgusting.

Right in the middle of the ritual circle was a hooded figure, mumbling something indiscernible. It was obvious he was the enemy, but should they kill him, or take him alive? Was he a necromancer — something worse, something less?

The knights couldn’t tell. Not even Jiraya, with all his experience fighting these sorts of people, could tell.

No one said anything, but they all shared the same thought: the safe thing to do was to kill him.

As the figure continued to mumble, Amani came to realize what it was he was mumbling: the tail end of the ritual’s incantation. The accent had thrown her off, but it was the same!

She shook Jiraya’s arm. “He’s about to complete the ritual — you need to kill him!” she whispered without pause, and her breathing, suddenly shallow. She knew these feelings well, but this was the first time they were mixed with the iron smell of blood, the wicked, sugary taste of death, and the quieting moans and last gasps of the dying.

Contempt against the man in the middle was her last weapon against the building dread within.

Jiraya skittered to the knight captain’s side. “I’ll take him from behind,” he said. The captain nodded, and Jiraya vanished to the opposite side of the ritual circle.

The knights counted down. The ritual circle was 50 meters in diameter. The enemy was 25 meters away. Their Force Skills had an effective range of about 10 meters. It felt like they were a mile away.

The captain looked to his right. “Throw your sword at him when we charge.” The man nodded.

The captain took the conservative guess that the enemy to be a necromancer, in which case they would have to contend against some kind of magical defense. Guns would be useless. Closing in and putting magic into their attacks to hack apart his defense was their fastest option.

Each knight picked their own openings between the benches. Including the captain, there were just five of them, and with Jiraya, there were six angles that the enemy had to defend against. If even just one of them reached him, it should be enough to take the enemy by surprise and put him off-balance, take away his focus, and allow the rest of them to continue the attack.

The captain put a whistle in his mouth. He locked onto the enemy’s head. His legs tensed up.

The ring of the whistle echoed hard around the cathedral’s volume. Five men raised their cries and their weapons. One knight threw his sword like a javelin straight at the necromancer, even putting in some Force to make it fly savage and true. Jiraya picked up the pace, running with barely any noise.

The necromancer stretched out a hand and gently tapped the incoming sword aside, causing it to violently deflect and strike the floor, cracking the stone, and sending the sword tumbling tip-over-hilt across the floor.

His attackers didn’t even manage five steps in when he said aloud, “Stop.”

It was the voice of an old man. It had no venom, no arrogance — no emotion at all.

However, the knights found themselves stopped. Even Jiraya, who was a little closer to the old man, found himself on his knees, struggling to stand as if his legs were just … turned off. Even Amani and Cecilia, who’d remained hidden behind the benches, found themselves paralyzed.

Their limbs were shaking, and they shook even harder as they realized what magic the old man had used. Their hearts raced as their minds despaired for a way out.

The old man, however, left no time to wonder. “Kill yourselves,” he ordered — then he went right back to mumbling.

Everyone’s arms shook as they fought against an alien will. The knights dropped their swords and halberds, their hands reaching instead for their stiletto daggers. Though they could fight off the urge, it was two steps forward, one step back — and they were the step back. D

One by one, everyone resorted to magic to fight off the command. For a moment, they were the ones taking two steps forward.

The necromancer stopped mumbling. “Kill yourselves,” he said again — then going back to his spell.

The power of the order increased twofold. One of the knights fully unsheathed his dagger, and though he used one hand to fight off the other, the point of dagger came closer and closer to the gap under his helmet.

Amani and Cecilia fared a little better, perhaps because of their respective connections to their goddesses. Still, Cecilia’s hand was glued to the hilt of her dagger, which shook in her hand. She couldn’t take her eyes off the gleam of its point. Amani’s handgun was pointed into the ceiling already; at least she’d stopped its advance. Meanwhile, Jiraya squirmed on the floor, fighting against an invisible enemy atop of him — but it was just his one good hand pressing a sword against his neck, fighting desperately to draw it one last time.

There was a thwack, a gurgle, and then a mound of armor collapsing on the stone floor. One of the knights had succumbed, and Amani had watched as he did.

It spurred her on, however, reminding her that she was here to save Jon’s life.

The necromancer’s incantation was at its end. She pushed her hand forward against invisible threads and sticky webs, shaking as if trying to survive the coldest fringes of the north.

The gun was starting to point forward. From the ceiling, it started to point at the frescos between arches, and from the frescos, it started to point at the stained glass windows near the top of the wall.

— The necromancer finished his spell.

The ritual circle burst to life. A slow vortex of sick-smelling wind rose up from the circle, tendrils of dancing red lights joining the wind to make a prison for the ones trapped within.

“Jon Fuze,” the necromancer said — and the vortex turned into a hurricane.

The slaves’ moans grew louder into a wailing choir. Another knight crumpled down. The other knights and Jiraya cried out in a last ditch effort to overpower the necromancer’s magic on their own.

Amani joined them, screaming to her heart’s content. She could feel her life slipping away, not just from the magic she was putting into taking back control of her own body, but also because of the death card keeping Jon’s soul anchored to his own. Every second that passed, he was being killed — and it wasn’t going to take long for him to really die.

She pushed with all she could; from the stained glass windows, her gun’s lowered to the upper galleries, then the lower galleries — then the fixtures sticking out of the walls, then the top edge of the piles of benches —

Then finally, at the level of the necromancer.

Her hands still shook; the necromancer’s suicide order was still in effect. She couldn’t be impatient, however; she only had one shot.

She pushed her arms up to bring the sights level to her eye. Her hands still shook, but the sight pins were tracing a path that crossed with the figure of the necromancer. Was there a pattern? Was there a way? Her life was draining out of her. Jon didn’t have much time left.

Cecilia’s shaky hand came into view. It shook so much — but it grabbed Amani’s hand. Magic flowed against magic, and the wills of two weaklings resisted the command of the superior,

centering the sights,

firing.

Amani’s eyes witnessed too many things at once.

The bullet exploded on the necromancer’s defense. A shadow coalesced far above him. A figure unknown, whether ally or enemy, fell upon his back, one hand silencing his mouth, the other, thrusting a dagger up his back.

The command became null, and the knights, Jiraya — Amani, Cecilia — staggered as they became free.

They couldn’t rest, however. The ritual formation was still active, deathly winds whipping around droplets of blood, and Amani could feel the last of the life she’d allotted run dry in Jon’s death card. Least of all was the not-friend, not-enemy standing over the figure of the dead necromancer.

They could tell, somehow, that this one was a necromancer, too.

Aji pulled back her hood, showing her face and her catkin ears. The knights were wary of her, and Amani and Jiraya, a little less, but she couldn’t care for that right now. She judged herself useless in the fight going on outside, and in that very same fight, someone was already knocking on death’s door.

She’d realized something about the green lights outside: they were empowering the enemy. They were able to use magic with reckless abandon, and so she’d suspected all that mana to have to come from somewhere.

She was standing on it.

Getting on a knee, she pulled the dead necromancer’s head back to show his face. Before the knights or anyone else could make the wrong assessment and the wrong move, she puppetted the dead man’s mouth.

“Alyssa...Rainsworth…almost...dead.”

She let go of the head, letting the puppet’s words linger and keep the unhelpful people frozen on their feet. Meanwhile, she skittered over to one of the inner sections of the ritual formation, taking a knife to it, stabbing the glowing red lines as forcefully as she could. The sheer density of the mana flowing through those lines repelled her attacks, but she ignored this. She wouldn’t let up.

Cecilia snapped out of the shock of hearing that her one friend in the world was about to die. She took one look at the part of the formation that Aji was attacking, and she recognized it, affronted, but also in denial. It was part of a mana empowerment formation used by the Order for large battles, and it was somehow incorporated into what Amani originally described as an assassination ritual circle. Right now, it was being used to empower their enemies outside.

She turned to Amani. “You have to destroy the empowerment circle!”

For a moment, Amani was confused at her words, but then they made sense as she looked at the alien portion that Aji was attacking. Even if the inner formation’s architecture was different, it wasn’t any more difficult to sabotage the connections grafting it to the same mana veins that the assassination circle got its power from.

There was one problem: she didn’t have enough time.

She didn’t want to argue with Cecilia on this, so she wordlessly ran to the closest weakpoint for the assassination circle. Being miles away from the empowerment circle, however, and it was obvious to Cecilia that Amani was choosing Jon.

She ran up to Amani, grabbing her by the arm, forcing her to turn around and look at her. “Alyssa is about to die!”

Amani said nothing, but Cecilia saw it all: from her bitter eyes, her clenched teeth, her rapidly graying hairs — especially her graying hairs.

— If Jon dies, Amani dies.

— If Amani dies, Alyssa dies.

These were her mistaken thoughts, but with them, she convinced herself to let go — to allow Amani to choose Jon instead.

In little more than ten seconds, the circle broke, dispelling the vortex of sweet death. Amani felt the draw from Jon’s death card lighten up, but it was still going somewhat. He might still die.

She hurried to disable the empowerment circle, which was still drawing power from the slaves’ desire to live.

A short moment after the empowerment circle broke, several blasts outside shook the cathedral — and then all went quiet.

Hurried footsteps broke the quiet, echoing around the cathedral’s hall. Cecilia was already halfway to the door when the knights noticed, and they gave chase after her.

Amani turned to Aji. “Are you an ally?”

Aji nodded.

“Can you take me to Jon?”

Leading the way, Aji ran, and Amani followed.

They left the cathedral, running under blue moonlight. The once-grassy field smoldered with body parts and small craters. They passed by Cecilia who sobbed as she cleaned an unmoving friend’s wounds, Wiz and the knights surrounding the two.

Perhaps Amani made the right choice. Even if she did, the right choice killed Alyssa. Would it have been easier if she didn’t have a choice at all?

Jon stood on an island plateau. It was just a flat plain of grass, but a sliver of blue was visible on the horizon; the taste of salt wafted in the air, and the crashing of thousands of waves melted into a sound like pouring sand.

At the end of his sight was a woman clad in black, sitting under a parasol beside a tea table for two.