One week later, at the Ancient Cathedral…

The elven Lich, Elena de L’Enfer, strode briskly through the hallway with her hood pulled over her yellow hair and the tail of her longcoat flowing gently in her wake as she made her way past the Lightsworn and devatas preparing for morning prayers. Her phylactery had renewed her physical form from its melted state, and held in her gloved hands were letters unsent and a diary. Both of which, belonged to the devata she knew in brief passing as Alyssa de Aintree.

Their room was just around the corner. This room that Alyssa’s letters were addressed to, specifically for one ‘Sister Natasha’ and a ‘Sister Violet’. Based on what she had gleaned from a cursory read of the diary, they were her friends back home that she had left behind for her new life in Wintervale. Where upon those pages and inked words was a whole life with them, now possibly gone forever.

The letters, on the other hand, were left unopened. By her mistress’s grace it had been allowed despite her known hunger and lust for all knowledge however mundane or exotic, and it was just as well. It felt right not to, if anything. And perhaps, the Eye of Elicia in all her eldritch wisdom, understood that feeling in her own way.

Now, the door of that shared room was right before her, its number on clear display upon a golden plaque. Situated alongside others just like it along the common corridor, it was like any other. The Central Church, much like the Lightsworn and the other armies of Elicia’s Archons, had a knack for uniformity in all things.

With a frown, Elena raised her hand into a fist and knocked lightly upon the door, a part of her wishing she had simply dropped the letters off in their mailbox in the common room. And yet, just it felt right to give this delivery a little bit of a personal touch. Felt right that after all that had happened back there, that it had to be on her to see it through to the end for better or worse.

It was what Alyssa would have wanted. Probably.

“Hello?”

The devata who greeted Elena had red hair and blue eyes. She was tall and pretty in her silk pyjamas, so very pretty. Almost like Claire in a way, and a part of her wondered, if only briefly, if the Central Church was as much a beauty pageant as it was the stronghold of Elicia’s faith.

“Are you Sister…” Elena said, pausing as she considered the two names mentioned in Alyssa’s diary while the devata eyed her golden earrings. “Natasha?”

“Yes. May I help you, Vizier of the Eye?”

“Well…”

“Natasha, who’s that at the door?”

From within the room, another devata had joined them. Another pretty devata with long brown hair, also dressed in silk pyjamas of her own. By means of elimination, she was probably Sister Violet. This, Elena noted to herself as she handed the letters and the diary to Sister Natasha.

“That’s Alyssa’s diary,” Sister Natasha remarked. “How did you get that?”

“We heard about what happened in Wintervale…” Sister Violet added worriedly. “Is she in trouble?”

“Yeah, about that…” Elena said grimly, shaking her head as she eyed the confusion forming upon the faces of both devatas. “She didn’t make it. I’m sorry.”

With that, she turned on her heel and left, her footsteps feeling heavy upon the carpet as the sound of tearful sobbing ached upon the tips of her ears. She wanted very much to return back to her apartment, the thought of boiling hot coffee so tantalising in that fleeting moment. And yet, she could not.

There was still one more unsent letter to be delivered.

Later, in in the Studio of Our Ecclesiarch Most Heavenly…

With her hood still pulled over her head, her arms crossed, and her back leaning upon the softness of a velvet sofa, Elena waited as the Ecclesiarch, Iris de Escaflora, unsealed the letter to peruse its contents in silence.

“It was an innocent request that I paid no mind,” Iris remarked as she returned the letter back into its envelope, placing it down upon her desk. “They wanted an elven member of the Central Church, to help ease the humans of Wintervale into accepting elves within their midst. She volunteered without a second thought.”

Elena frowned. There were another set of journals and notes at the abbey that belonged to a man who had infiltrated the Central Church’s clergy and the Lightsworn guardsmen, replacing them with his own. A man, a disgraced occultist whose story was one of hate and rage against a world that had done him wrong, where he would avenge himself with the royal blood of Alyssa de Aintree. With a single dark deed, with a prophecy fulfilled that, in his words, would birth a weapon to destroy Ebondrake and his Black Legion.

Hellbringer. That was what he called it. He thought it to be a sceptre, one created with meticulous care and priceless materials stolen or found from the darkest corners of Melodia, both far beyond and within the grasp of Arcadia. And in that obsession, he had been blind to the truth hidden from him in plain sight by those who sought to string him like a puppet. That the sceptre was merely a tool, a key reforged to serve once again as it did in ages past for Abaddon himself, the last Emperor of the Alyssian Empire. He, the first Hellbringer who had, in centuries past, drawn forth the Hellbourne from the realm of Chaos with an eldritch pact with the Daemonlord known to the Akashic Records as Aria. Bringing, without end, a Corruption unto the world far beyond the darkest fathoms of the prosecution of his Empire’s war against the tribes of mankind.

“Three hundred years have passed since Abaddon’s death and the Corruption,” Iris said after a while. “I held hope that the world had forgotten with Aria banished to her realm, now that we have rebuilt Melodia in our image.”

She paused for a moment, her face cold yet serene as she looked Elena in the eye.

“Tell me, Lady de L’Enfer. Was that too much to ask for? Lady de Aintree came into our ranks willingly, completely unaware of her true heritage. Her father was against it, of course, but not for this reason. Even he did not know. As it should have it been, forever.”

“They would’ve gotten her some other way,” Elena said in reply, choosing her words slowly and carefully. “Y’know how it is with bad guys. I read his stuff while my phylactery was fixing me up, and the lengths that occultist went to finding her were downright… crazy.”

“Perhaps. Perhaps not. But what is done is done,” Iris stated, glancing momentarily at the letter upon her desk. “Either way, I cannot thank you for this. But you have done me a service.”

“Always a pleasure, Iris.”

“Leave me, Lady de L’Enfer. I would ponder this, alone.”

With a curt nod, Elena stood up. She left the Studio, the tail of her longcoat flowing gently in her wake and her footsteps still heavy upon the floor as she made her way back to her apartment. Where the thought of a piping hot mug of coffee brewed completely black felt just about right, alongside the company of Claire de la Lune.

It did indeed, after everything.