Chapter 105

Katarina explored the ruins of a once great city, thousands of years older than the entirety of the Anglish Empire. The site of the first empire; the site of the first Purge.

This was her second visit. Her first had been with Ollara and Elizabeth as they journeyed across the continent of Rothgar. They’d first passed south through Katarina’s ancestral home of Ardeal, then cut east across the idyllic countryside of Montesilvano, up through the ruins of Lyonesse, across the hellish Sarkomand Plateau and through the Black City; then south again, changing horses, hunting bandits and monstrosities until arriving here, in the first homeland, the forgotten homeland. This time she was alone.

Before, she would have struggled with the sensation of powerlessness, but things had changed, and she knew it for what it was, a true dream, a vision. Part dream, part memory, she could sense her body asleep just as much as it was awake in this strange half-reality.

Burning embers fell from the sky like snow, tiny coals winking in the night like stars. The air was thick with char and smoke. Above the threads of rising smoke, the sky burned for miles, raining fire.

No history book remarked this place. No memory, no song touched this place. It was as if it had been cut off from time and thought and memory itself, cursed to an eternal burning at the limitless fury of the Goddess. The thick, searing clouds ensured the sun never shone, no moisture gathered. Tens of thousands of years had gone by, and the city still burned to atone for a sin no one was alive to remember save for the Goddess.

Katarina had been here once before, had walked the burning streets that stretched for miles in every direction.

Her boots crushed embers underfoot, tiny curls of smoke squirting from each step. The Goddess had wanted Katarina to see this. To understand that this was the only path open to the Anglish. Time and time and time again, the Goddess would select from the peoples around the world, and they would come together in their love of Her. They marched forward into the primordial, they tamed the forests, built roads, subjugated livestock, built farms, taught learning and the Goddess with each breath. With more people came more blessings, but the Goddess was not diminished, for in blessing her people with Her holy gifts, they in turn rewarded Her with their devotion, their faith, their love.

It was here that Katarina slew an immortal.

There was no need for Katarina to walk these streets. This city was not her city. She stopped in her tracks, closed her eyes, and concentrated.

When she opened her eyes, she stood next to a riverbank she’d once whiled away an entire day by. Not knowing what she was doing, or how she was doing it, Katarina reached out her hand, reached out with her heart, captured a memory, and brought it forth into this dream world.

She watched a younger version of herself lay on the riverbank, back against a free, a fishing pole comfortably propped in her hand. The sun shone here; the area was filled with the new growth of spring. The fish were swimming upstream to spawn, a mystic cycle coded into their brains to mate, birth their eggs and die, the eggs would hatch, the fish would journey downstream and grow, and when it was their turn, they too would fight up the stream to return to the place of their birth to repeat the cycle. This too was older than the Anglish empire by countless years.

A tiny meadow, next to a babbling brook, in full sight of the glory of spring. In this strange sense of dreaming and yet waking, this was a moment etched into eternity.

The forest was new growth, the trees all perhaps twenty years old or less, spreading their branches eagerly to the sky. It was spring, the birds and squirrels and small creatures scampering about. Katarina could easily wrap an arm around the thickest trunk if she felt it necessary.

However, the younger version of herself had a higher priority on her list of things to do than hugging a tree; catching fish.

She idled on a riverbank, her back to such a tree, leaning against her saddle, a sapling cut, peeled, cured, threaded and hooked and cast into the water beside her.

She sang quietly to herself, stringing words together while she waited for lunch to come nibbling on the hook she’d baited.

"To the green-eyed goddess (You see she is a green-eyed goddess),"

She sang, idly stringing words and phrases together.

"Her hair is spun heaven’s gold"

She paused in thought, watching a leaf drift out overhead towards the river.

"And she moves with the grace of falling leaves. When she dances the spring shines greener and my world becomes peaceful."

Her younger self nodded. She hadn’t been given an assignment in a couple of months, but she wandered the woods anyway. It could take days or sometimes weeks for a Witch Report to make it to a Hunter, and even if one did arrive, she lived in a world filled with Witch Hunters, and competition was fierce. A Witch Hunt was hot coin, coin meant food, a bed, a place in the city. Katarina had no desire for such things. It was spring, and the forest at turns cool and warm. She had weapons, she had tools, she had her horse, she knew how to live and exist comfortably outside of the light of civilization, and-

Katarina could see the younger version of herself, could see her thoughts somehow, could see when her thoughts turned dark and a shadow cross her youthful face. There were just- just too many things in the cities to remind her of things she desperately didn’t want to think about. Her heart twisted in her chest anyway, and she forced the feelings down and back into the corners of her mind. Her Master was dead. Her Teacher was dead. Both by her hand, one unwillingly, one in the heat and hurt of betrayal.

She watched as her younger self refocused her attention on the clear river flowing alongside her, the sounds of birds twittering in the trees. Her vision cleared; spring seemed to return. What had she been doing? Ah, singing. She tried to find her voice.

"The fire inside is a warm light that says all are welcome (she always has a smile for me)"

When she’d returned from her survival exercise, her treasured friend Frederika Edelweiss had returned to her home country of Nauders. The bed they shared was too large, too empty. She couldn’t even stand one night in that thing, and moved her few things to the Apprentice Witch Hunter quarters, despite the fact that she was no apprentice. She had never felt so alone then at that moment.

"That is why I sing to the green-eyed goddess." she sang softly, "Praying that for a moment, I can use words to summon the sun into my darkness." Her line twitched, but went slack. A nibble perhaps, but nothing more.

"That I can see her smile one more time, and know that the world is still at peace."

The world was far from at peace. Wars always raged. The Empire of the Golden Lady, the Goddess of the Dawn had many enemies, many unbelievers. Still, she could sing of peace, even if there were none, couldn’t she? How should she finish off her little song?

"Her hands were made to create, so I will use mine to protect."

She shook her head. A martial end to a song about the Lady of Spring? Pithy. She wished for her Master to cuff her; call her a stupid girl. She would have welcomed it, but he was years dead.

She paused in thought.

Just how long had it been since he had died? A year? More? Certainly no more than two. She eyed a squirrel chewing on something a few feet away from her. It eyed her with eyes like beads of black tar, seemingly unafraid.

"Humans spend a lot of effort into marking time," She told it, "but you don’t care about such things, do you?" She asked. "Best hurry along before I give up on fishing and decide on squirrel for lunch." she warned.

For a moment, it seemed as if the sun shimmered in her vision, becoming two. She blinked a few times, turning away, but it hadn’t been a distortion of the light; a second orb of light, perhaps as brilliant as the sun hovered and bobbed over the water briefly, and then drifted into the woods behind Katarina.

The young Witch Hunter was up in a flash, her gun out, hand on the haft of her axe. Her sword was with her saddle, and her axe had been closer.

A young woman, perhaps no more than twelve or perhaps fourteen stepped out between two trees, golden light radiating from her skin. She radiated an unearthly beauty, her hair spun gold, her eyes featureless emeralds. A pair of wings sprouted from her back, and she wore a simple white dress without seam that left room on her back for her wings. She moved between the trees gracefully, confidently.

"I am Katarina Pavlenko, Witch Hunter in service-" the younger Katarina began warningly, but the girl simply waved her hand.

"We both serve Her, Lady Witch Hunter." The girl announced in a melodic voice. Small green things sprouted and flowered around her feet.

The younger Katarina was struck dumb with shock and wonder. What she was seeing was impossible, by the Holy Churches’ standards. Celestials did not simply decide to visit the world of mortals, unless-

"Be not afraid." The girl announced, coming closer. Plants grew and blossomed in her wake.

"Wh-" She began, but cut herself off. Who was she to ask questions?! Who was she to even look upon- She scrambled to her knees.

"She wants to know, Katarina daughter of Bianka, if you need anything."

The younger Katarina jerked her head up confusedly.

"What-?"

"Do you need anything?" The girl asked curiously, melodiously. The whole forest had gone quiet as if everything was holding its breath in hushed reverence.

"I-" She began, but she couldn’t think, her mind was too jumbled.

"Say what you need, Katarina. The Goddess will hear you and answer." The girl encouraged.

Incongruously, her fishing pole at that point decided to fall over from its perch and clatter on the side of the riverbank.

"I..." Katarina breathed, "I could really use a fish for lunch." She blurted, distracted. "I haven’t eaten since yesterday." At the words coming out of her mouth, her head jerked up, and the young girl- no- the angel smiled down on her.

"So shall it be." She replied. "You have been purified. Take nourishment from your meal, and be strengthened for it."

The celestial turned, becoming fuzzy, indistinct, losing its human shape, reforming into the glowing orb Katarina had seen earlier. It zipped through the trees and then shot straight up into the sky.

The younger Katarina stared up at the sky for what seemed like forever, but movement at the corner of her eye caught her attention. Her fishing pole was teetering on the riverbank, threatening to fall into the stream. Katarina bolted towards it, casting her gun aside in her haste, throwing herself down in a slide that allowed her to catch her fishing pole before it was lost. She yanked back, and was startled when it fought against her, nearly jerking itself out of her hands.

She yanked back and rolled backwards, heaving with all her strength.

A fish, a monster of a trout practically flew out of the water at the end of her line and hit the bank. It immediately flopped back towards the water, but Katarina twisted around, finding her footing, and jerked the fish back.

How much did the thing weigh? Fifteen, twenty pounds? If asked, she would have said such a thing was impossible, but so was seeing an angel on a riverbank.

Quickly snatching up her axe, she relieved the fish of its head with a single blow and stared at it in numb shock.

The memory faded; the dream complete. It was strange to witness herself, so young, so ... alive. To stand there like an impartial observer as her younger self struggled to find food. Still, she considered, this had been a miraculous moment, a peaceful moment.

She was back in the burning city. Embers sifting down from clouds of fire. The Im Adad were Celestial Spirits of the Storm; the Id Amar were Celestial Spirits of the Earth, and the Ig-Alima were the Celestial Spirits of the Waters. Something else had been created here, something with intent and purpose, something that raged and screamed and boiled with furious hate, flinging fire down to punish a city that hadn’t known life for tens of thousands of years.

"What is this?" Katarina complained. She knew the Goddess was nearby. She wasn’t certain how she knew; she just knew that if she asked the question, the Goddess would be there to answer.

YOU KNOW.

"As ambiguous as always." Katarina replied, and turned to face her Goddess.

This time, the Goddess had taken the form of a woman, though She was twice the height of the Witch Hunter. Golden light seemed to seep from every pore, creating a shimmering, golden haze about Her. She perched on the foundation of what was likely a grand building once, but was now a meaningless pile of smoldering rubble. Here, even the stone burned.

THIS IS WHERE YOU TRY TO CONVINCE ME TO SPARE THEM.

"Spare them? Why should-" She cut off. Nadette. Cyrillus. Frederika. Alayne. Olivia. One by one, names and faces unspooled in her mind. That girl from Higgenfall with the skin like chocolate with a dazzlingly brilliant smile, filled with hope and life and light. Her great-grandmother, Mother Swan. Araya. More and more, they unreeled in her mind.

"You can’t." She blurted.

I CAN’T? The voice, so melodious, so soothing, so invigorating, so sultry, so amazing, glittered with tones of surprise and anger.

"Fuck." Katarina spat. She shouldn’t have said that. There were other ways, better ways of-

I CAN.

"But that doesn’t mean you should." Katarina argued. "They’re not beyond hope. There are good people who just need to be led back into your light."

THEY DO NOT LISTEN WHEN I SING TO THEM. THEY NO LONGER PRAY TO ME.

"They can learn again." Katarina affirmed, racking her brain. "You called me a torchbearer, someone who brings light to dark places." She struggled, and said, "You also said to me, ‘do not forget hope’. So I argue that if it’s my job to bring light to darkness, I think I should remind you to not forget hope. Don’t give up on them."

I ALSO SAID ‘DO NOT FORGET ME’, KATARINA. The goddess argued, settling herself and drawing up her leg so that she could rest her chin on her knee. It was an unconsciously lascivious pose, exposing things that should properly be best left covered, and Katarina couldn’t help but avert her eyes at the feelings churning within her.

I AM A JEALOUS GOD, KATARINA.

"You’re all things." Katarina argued. "So I have been raised to believe. So things like redemption, absolution, hope, and a chance for renewal should not be beyond you." She offered.

AND?

One word, loaded with implication. Boredom and indifference. Her Goddess had not been swayed. The dream of Darnell being ripped apart in heat and light and fire would come to pass. It wouldn’t be just Darnell, either. Five continents would burn. Millions, billions perhaps, would die in the Goddess’ furious anger, because they had forgotten to pray, to give thanks, to ask for understanding, to reach for hope when all was dark. Impatience and fury. Just as the finite could not comprehend the infinite, the infinite could not understand the mundane. For the Goddess, ‘now’ was a fixed point, there was no sense of past or future, there was always constantly shifting ‘now’. In this ‘now’ She was not receiving what was Hers by right, and it infuriated Her.

The Goddess did not often tamper with the world directly. She simply gave Her power to those that would act in Her name, demanded their faith and devotion, and if they failed Her, She would simply start over. Gather a new flock of people, raise and cultivate them into a nation, an army, something to subjugate the world, to fight against the malignant powers and principalities that threatened to usurp Her divine right.

It suddenly came to Katarina in a flash of baffled inspiration. This conversation should not be taking place. If the Goddess decided that the Anglish would burn, then that is what would happen. Inevitability was a force that could not be denied. And yet... And yet...

THIS IS WHERE YOU TRY TO CONVINCE ME TO SPARE THEM. She had said to Katarina. Why? To what purpose? To what end? Can the creation question what the creator makes?

Insight. Comprehension. Understanding. What is a choice without choices? It’s not a choice at all.

"Why send me to retrieve Glory, if the Empire was doomed?" Katarina suddenly demanded. "Why require that I carry it inside me, searing me from the inside out, if the end was predetermined? Why was I to retrieve the Emerald Tablets and translate them so that they could be read?"

IT IS NOT FOR ME TO DECIDE. The Goddess remarked pointedly at Katarina.

"I..." The Witch Hunter began uncertainly.

LONG AND LONG HAVE I HEARD YOUR PRAYERS. YOUR TEARS. YOUR ANGER.

There was a choice, and it was Katarina’s to make. The Goddess gestured with her finger, and suddenly, everything came back in a rush of pain. Every memory. Her sister, the warm comforting presence of her sister, torn away from her at the impossibly tender age of six. Francesca, stealing her away from her family to be stuffed into an orphanage. The desperate need to be stronger, harder, meaner than the commoner rabble she was forced to live, eat, sleep and bathe with. The long years of tutelage under Devon, reveling in his kindnesses, his encouragement, his delight at her successes, only to face the horror of his betrayal. Every slight the Lords and Governors and pastors and priests and bishops and clerics had heaped upon her, forcing her to become more jaundiced, bitter, and spiteful. Her own kin in Ardeal had decided to kill her for some indiscernible whim. How she hated them! How she loathed them all!

But things could change. It wasn’t impossible. All they had to do was understand that the Goddess watched over them all. She could be the one to remind them.

But all she wanted was to walk the path of the Witch Hunter. She didn’t need the church for that.

She looked up at her Goddess.

"For the purposes of this discussion... only I have the power to decide humanity's fate. I refuse that power to give it back to them. People, individuals, are not single things but always tip from order to chaos and back again. Those with order are needed for stability. Those who espouse chaos bring change. Only humanity may balance humanity." She stated, and the Goddess leaned forward with interest.

Katarina took a breath. "You said to me, that the maker should be the first servant, just as the mother would care without hesitation for her child."

She paused again. That was easy to say. It was much harder for her to say what came next. "If I have to remind them of your might, then I will. But I’ll also remind them of your love, your glory, your compassion. I will light the way for them so that they may come home, and enter your house again."

YOU WOULD BE THE HERALD?

A herald? She wasn’t sure what that meant. The Goddess had made changes to her, physical and spiritual. Some part of her was no longer completely human, if the Saint’s words rang true. Was this a call to an office? A position of some sort?

"I would champion your cause however was necessary." She replied, and then added, "Though I honestly only prefer to do what I have always done: to hunt the witch, the mutant, the heretic. I don’t need the church for that- I have always done it for you." She answered honestly.

The Goddess stood up and walked towards Katarina. As She approached, She condensed somehow, becoming a woman of a height with Katarina but losing nothing of the divinty and majesty she radiated simply by being there.

You choose to be a Champion, Katarina? The Goddess asked, unfathomable mysteries dancing in her eyes. You slew my first and only Champion here; it is your right by conquest.

A Champion. So that’s what her Goddess meant. There were rumors of such things. Champions were eternal. Barely human, immortal, daring to tread where Angels feared to walk, carrying a portion of their deity's own divinity. The Goddess had a Champion, once. Aadrika, she’d called herself. She’d been trapped, entombed for millennia and she’d been utterly insane. The first to name herself Empress in the Empire of the Golden Lady, some short years after the Long Night of the Void, tens of thousands of years ago. Aadrika had Championed the Goddess for centuries before being executed by her own people. It wasn’t easy to kill an immortal; so she rose again, seized the Empire and steered it back to the path that the Golden Lady desired. But the people again grew mistrustful; jealous, terrified of her, so she was executed. Again and again and again across centuries until they finally sealed her in a tomb, a stone sarcophagus, by dropping the entire Temple of the Golden Lady on top of her.

In order to retrieve the Emerald Tablets sealed within, Katarina had had to go through Aadrika.

Katarina shook her head violently. "No. No, no, no, no, no. Wholeheartedly, no."

The Golden Lady laughed, and pressed herself against Katarina in a passionate embrace, arms snaking around Katarina's neck, warm golden hips pressed against hers, one perfect leg curled around Katarina's. A lover's embrace.

"I have offered you so many things, and you reject them at every turn. What must this Goddess do to satisfy the one she loves?" She murmured longingly into Katarina’s ear. Her Goddess held a possessive, mad, greedy sort of love. If she wanted something, she got it. If she had it already, she would never let it go. The more she got, the more she wanted. For a human, for a person, it was sheer lunacy. For a Goddess... perhaps it was necessary? Who could fathom the mind of a God?

Katarina awoke in her own bed with a sneeze. She parted the bedcurtains and rolled out of bed and sneezed again. The room was dusty. She tugged on the silken rope to summon a maid; but no one came. Where had her maids gotten themselves off to? Whatever, it didn’t matter. Katarina had been taking care of herself since before they’d been born. She didn’t need a maid to see to herself. They were convenient, though.

Though she could see perfectly well in the darkness thanks to the Golden Lady’s blessing, she waved her hand anyway and the lamps in her room sprang to light all at once, and Katarina froze in her tracks.

There was dust everywhere. A thin film, to be sure- but why would her maids stop cleaning? She ran her finger across the top of one of the overstuffed chairs in her bedroom and her finger came away with dust. Two days? Three days? A week? Ugh.

She strode to the closet and tossed the doors open. Dresses, dresses, and dresses. Morning dresses, dancing dresses, courtly dresses, all made to order, all by her lover, the Lady Cardinal Olivia.

"My kingdom for a pair of pants." Katarina growled to herself. Ah. She’d stashed her gear in Olivia’s room, she remembered. She’d planned on spending one more night with her, and then sneaking out and riding away from Darnell just as fast as her horse could carry her.

First, there would be a search for her whereabouts. Eventually, that search would lead to her rooms for clues, and that would lead them to the Emerald Tablets and the relics of the Saints she’d retrieved. The call would go out to every city across every continent where the Anglish Empire held sway; Katarina would be a Living Saint, but Katarina didn’t need the Empire. She just needed her horse and her Goddess and her gun. She could disappear into the vast interiors of the unexplored regions of Hesperia and hunt the Witches, mutants and beastmen that lurked there. Word wouldn’t get out everywhere, she could trade for things in the tiny villages that dotted the land here and there. Heck, she could return to the Children of the Goddess if she so chose; likely they’d welcome her. It suddenly occurred to her that her mother held no great love for the Empire either.

Katerina strode to the armoire; naked feet cold on the floor. No bustiers, no shirts, no pants, nothing, not even a decent pair of shoes.

"Fuck." She muttered irritably. She went back to the closet and tugged on a morning dress. It felt bizarre wearing a dress without anything underneath, but she figured it’d suffice until she could walk down the hall to Olivia’s room and put on some actual clothes.

She absentmindedly waved her hand; the lights in her bedroom went out. She stepped out of her room and into her apartments; dust swirled in beams of moonlight.

"The fuck is this?" She muttered.

She checked the maid’s quarters; all empty. She checked the drawing room and the study; nothing. Whatever. She’d just-

She reached the front door of her apartments, and could see a seam of some material, lumpy, between the doors. She eyed it curiously, and then, remembering what Andrianna taught her, closed her eyes and reached within herself. She opened her eyes and gasped- The doors to her apartment had been bricked up from the outside, covered in holy seals and a reproduction of that ridiculous fucking painting she’d had to pose for so long ago-

What in the Void had happened?

She paced the length of the hall in front of the doors to her apartment several times, absently aware of the feeling of the dress against her bare legs. She had enough strength; she could yank the doors open and break down the wall. It would be messy and noisy and violent. She chalked that up to a possibility, and then remembered her balcony. She hurried back up the stairs and through the conservatory to the balcony. She stepped outside and took in a lungful of air that wasn’t dusty and stale. Ahhh.

She glanced to her left- just off to the side was the edge of her balcony, and across a fifteen-foot gap was Olivia’s room. A fifteen-foot gap was doable. She was healthy, athletic, and she was reasonably sure she could jump it, provided she had a good running start. She’d feel more comfortable with her gear; her boots were enchanted to enhance her running and leaping skills.

She backed up to the far side of her balcony and started running; she jumped to the rail and pushed off with her feet; she sailed across the fifteen-foot-gap with arms outstretched and caught herself over the railing, feet swinging over the sixty-foot drop to the paving stones below. She hauled herself up and nearly pitched back over the side of the rail when her dress caught and tangled in her legs. A morning dress was not suited for climbing a balcony.

She hauled herself up and over the railing and lay on the balcony, gasping for air. She’d nearly missed her leap. She looked up at the night sky and muttered a prayer of gratitude, and then pushed herself to her feet.

The door to Olivia’s quarters wouldn’t be locked; Katarina was sure of it. Her hand fell to the latch; the door opened silently on well-oiled hinges. At least Olivia’s maids hadn’t disappeared. Katarina slipped inside and closed the door to the balcony behind her. It was a short walk to Olivia’s bedroom; which Katarina also knew would be unlocked.

She grabbed the hem of her dress and hauled it off; Olivia would have given her a thrashing with her tongue if she'd seen Katarina do it; women simply did not undress that way. Nor did they go leaping from balcony to balcony wearing naught but a dress with nothing underneath to protect her modesty. "Blah blah blah blah blah." Katarina muttered as she indifferently wadded up and pitched the dress on top of the canopied bed.

Of course, if she’d kicked down the brick wall that locked in her quarters, Katarina bet that Olivia would give her an upbraiding for that, too.

Katarina slid into bed next to Olivia and kissed her gently. "There’s just no living with you-" She mock complained and embraced the other woman, and then added, "-and no living without you, either." She’d get a few hours of sleep in before dawn broke. There was a lot that needed to be done, and if she wanted to get it all done, she’d only be able to spend a few hours a night with Olivia. She planned to treasure every moment she could with the woman, even if it was just sleeping with her for a few hours every night.