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T he High Priestess visited for the first time in days. Her smooth, glossy maroon mask hinged at the jaw, moving as she spoke. It gave the mask an unsettling, skull-like feel.

“I assume, by now, that you have deduced your options?” She offered no other greeting.

“I’ve deduced that I am to receive no trial. And that you’re a lunatic,” I said.

I braced myself for the blow of her divine power, and it followed without hesitation.

Force cracked into my face, once, twice.

It bit with the sting of electricity, like lightning discharging into my bones.

My cheek split, and I felt warm blood begin to trickle from my nose.

I wanted desperately to strike her back, but she remained on the opposite side of the cell, out of my reach.

I knew she’d knock me to the ground with ease before I could reach her.

“I was put in this realm to protect and unite my people against the threat of the shadows. I was made to defend them from the evils of the dark, and I will accomplish my vision. No matter what darkness and monsters you summon.”

“You protect nothing but the house of cards you have built,” I said. “Your mission is a lie designed to exterminate those that get in your way on your path to absolute power.”

This time, her magic came as a shocking grasp of my whole body.

My nerves sang with pain, my muscles spasmed, and I fell to the floor.

I could not inhale as the pain gripped every cell of me.

It obliterated every other thought, any other sensation.

My world became only one moment of pain to the next.

When she finally released her grip, I curled into a ball, shuddering on the floor.

“You will receive a trial if you should request one,” she said.

“But I will tell you, right now and with certainty, how that trial will end. I will cut off your head and mount it on a pike at the city gates. I will burn your body in the Bright Square. And your friend Eilith will join you. You’ll find the same fate if you attempt to escape. ”

“I am entitled to a fair trial by law,” I coughed.

“You are entitled to nothing, you dirty, half breed fae bitch.” She spat the words with hatred.

“You and your cursed people have no place in this world anymore. It is by the goodness of my heart and the grace of Lord Enos that you live at all! So no, you are not entitled to a trial. Furthermore, if you do not give yourself to the Lord of Light and convert yourself to His service, you will perish, slowly and painfully. Either avail yourself of the honor and privilege of joining the Paragons of the Light, or you and your friend Eilith will die.”

“Why don’t you show your face?” I asked. I had no response for what she had said, but I didn’t want to give her the last word.

“You test my patience,” she sighed and I braced myself for the agonizing grip of her magic. But it did not come.

“If I’m to work alongside you in your calling, I should know who I am working with,” I pressed.

“Ha! Knowing my face is a privilege. Most people in this Temple––who work alongside me with much more diligence and commitment than someone like you could ever muster––have never, and will never, see my face. My face was divinely crafted by the Lord of Light himself. My face is a blessing I bestow only upon my most trusted followers, reserved only for my Deacons and my sovereign. Even my lovers do not see me maskless. If men can bed me without the privilege of seeing my face, you can work in devotion to this Temple without seeing it either.”

She rose to leave, but turned back to me at the door. “Choose soon, Halja. My patience is not eternal.”

∞∞∞

“Hello, sweet lamb.” The rumbling, dark voice.

“Go. Away.” I snarled.

I was standing in the void again. I had been so close to sleep. So close.

“I only offer you help…” he began.

“No, you don’t! You only offer tricks and lies. You only bring sleepless nights and tormenting memories. Leave me alone!”

His patience for my resistance shattered. “You listen to me, you little bitch!” he roared.

What felt like a huge, clawed hand gripped my throat and slammed me into the wall, knocking the breath out of me.

He snarled, “I saw what you did. I know who you are, inside. I know your disgusting, fickle secrets, your shame, your insecurities.”

Images began to flash through my mind, quickly, randomly, as if he was rifling through my memories like a stack of parchment.

I could feel his cold fingers in my mind, flicking through my internal life as if it were nothing.

Eilith and the steading, my mother laughing in Mureal’s kitchen, Noirin crying, El smiling, the woman I killed with the ice as blood sprayed from her mouth, the wolves trotting down a wooded road, Byrgir kissing me, Byrgir dancing with me, Byrgir pulling off his shirt in the inn room in Skeioholm…

I gasped, scrambling for any handhold on reality.

I flung out my awareness and met that of my tormentor, huge and tall as a solid fortress battlement.

Black and endless. I reeled back and pushed hard, trying to shove him from my mind.

But my power was weak, barely a fraction of what it should be.

Separated as I was from the earth, the world, no extra Source answered my call.

I had only what I held within my weakened body.

His laughter reverberated in my skull. And then I saw it there, crouched in the corner of that room at the inn.

Smiling at me with crazed intensity from over Byrgir’s naked shoulders.

Formless, yet corporeal here in this image, this nightmare.

Empty, horrifying white eyes in deep, overly large drooping eye sockets, themselves set in a face of blank white.

A massive smile of black stretched across it.

It loomed in the background of every memory he flipped through. I screamed and thrashed.

He released his grip. I dropped to my knees and vomited.

“You poor thing. Sweet morning lamb...” he began.

“Don’t you dare,” I coughed.

I felt his presence overshadow me in the dark. Yet his voice was right in my ear, intimately close. “Don’t what ?” he sneered.

“Don’t you dare call me that. You have no idea what I am.” I put all my strength into my voice. Everything I could muster into sounding confident.

“Oh, but I do, girl, I do. I know you better than anybody else. I know you better than you know yourself. For I am like you, you see. Like you but older, more potent. Bigger than you realize. I have been here since the birth of your realm, waiting for you. You were made for me. And you will come to me in the end.” He purred, too close to my ear, “You will come crawling and begging, like the filthy whore you are.”

I flinched away, drawing my knees into my chest and hugging them, cowering.

“Pathetic,” he snarled, and was gone.

∞∞∞

I began to add a new practice to my meditations: I reviewed the faces of my loved ones in my memories.

I recalled El’s laugh, Noirin’s face, Eilith’s long gray hair, Crow’s tattoos.

And Byrgir’s smile. That charming, warming, genuine smile that I loved so deeply.

I conjured Byrgir in my mind’s eye over and over again.

I would not lose my mind here. I would not forget what I fought for, what I held on for. I would not forget myself.

The lock turned in the door and it swung open. I heard the unmistakable clack of the High Priestess’s heels as she entered.

“Hello, Halja,” she said, clear voice ringing and energetic. How I despised that voice.

I did not answer.

“How are you?” she asked, looking down at me in the cot.

I kept my eyes on the ceiling.

“Did our last meeting leave a bad taste in your mouth?” she asked, and paused, awaiting my answer.

I did not offer one.

“Understandable, I suppose. But the truth is harsh sometimes, child. The truth can hurt. And it is in your best interest, and mine, for you to come to understand the truth.”

There was a pause as she waited for a response that did not come. I kept my eyes on the ceiling. I hadn’t even glanced over to see what her mask of choice was today.

“There are rumors going around the city that werewolves stalk the Tiverose Forest. The edge of which reaches near this very Temple outside the city, did you know?”

I said nothing.

“Several of Avanis’s citizens have gone missing.

Peasants, mostly. Families out foraging or hunting in the woods.

And one guard who wandered into the forest during his duty one night and never came back.

His brothers-in-arms found his dismembered body in the woods two days later, half consumed, his leather armor ripped to shreds. ” She paused again.

“Locals who live on that side of the city say they sometimes hear the haunting howl of wolves at night. They also say they’ve seen their tracks in the forest, and sometimes the tracks of large men as well.

All signs, in their minds, point to werewolves.

They believe people in the city are being turned and now hunt the woods at the night for their fellow citizens.

I sincerely hope, Halja, that these shadowfiends have not been summoned by your Sourcery to terrorize my city.

But worry not. Our guards will remove the threat soon enough. ”

She was silent a while. So was I.

“Do you hear him?” the High Priestess asked, and a jolt went through me.

“Who?” I could not help myself from asking.

“The Dark One. Do you hear him in your dreams?”

I could read nothing in her tone. I did not answer.