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"Ah, so it’s come to her has it?" Amahle said with a heavy sigh.

With a series of clicks as she used her spider-like limbs to stand, Amahle walked across the room to a bookshelf, sorting through some of the least used tomes on the top shelf before retrieving an old and dusty leather-bound book and returning to the table.

The book itself bore no title and the leather cover on the book looked like it had suffered a number of abuses over the years.

From the scars and creases on the cover that had worn smooth with time, Ashlynn guessed that it was more of a notebook than a formal publication of any sort.

But to be kept around for so long and from the reverent way that Amahle handled it, it was clearly no ordinary journal.

"I always intended to tell you about her," Amahle said as she took her seat. "Maybe not as soon as you came back from vacation, but certainly before you could leave the Briar. This isn’t a secret that should be kept from you after all."

"You can’t escape confronting these things once you return home," the older witch added. "I wouldn’t ask you to, and if I thought that you had any hope of living the rest of your life away from other humans, I would ask you to avoid getting involved in these matters."

"I know that’s impossible, and unreasonable to ask as well," Amahle said with a heavy sigh.

"You have unfinished business in human lands and family there as well.

Staying apart from this is impossible, so I will tell you everything I can in the hopes that the knowledge will help to keep you safe when you return. "

"Then, did you know her? The human Mother of Trees?" Ashlynn asked. Amahle had never revealed her age to her, but the Kingdom of Gaal was as nearly the same age as Nyrielle. It had been the First Crusade, launched by Charles the First, that drove Nyrielle’s parents from their homes to seek shelter in the Vale of Mists in the first place. But even though Nyrielle was almost as old as the Kingdom of Gaal, she had yet to be born at the time of Claire du Gaal’s death. If Amahle was even older...

"I didn’t know her," Amahle said with a shake of her head. "She can be considered my ’big sister’ in the same way that you’re my ’little sister.

’ We were both taught by the previous Mother of Storms, but Sister Claire died decades before I was born.

It was a long time ago," she said, brushing her fingers across the surface of the ancient book before she opened it to reveal page after page of precise eldritch script in an older dialect than Ashlynn had seen outside of Nyrielle’s library.

Ghosts danced among the many pupils in Amahle’s eyes and her gaze grew distant as if she could see the steel-haired woman of the Gull Wing Clan who had patiently tutored her in much the same way that she now tutored Ashlynn.

She had always found the meticulous precision of her teacher’s methods at odds with the wild, often chaotic energy she commanded but that very contradiction had helped her to understand that as the Mother of Thorns, she could define for herself what it meant to surround herself with sharp, often deadly power.

The power didn’t have to define the kind of person that she would become.

"Tell me," Amahle said quietly, her crimson eyes never leaving the words written in her teacher’s neat, precise hand. "What did you and Claire talk about? If she’s preserved a portion of her spirit and her power, she must have had some purpose in doing so."

What Claire and Cecile had done was certainly possible for members of Amahle’s coven. Thorns could dig themselves into the earth and take root just as easily as trees, though it was hard for many to endure as long.

The difficulty, however, was so great and the price was so high that even Amahle couldn’t imagine something that would drive her to use such a dark ritual.

For a human raised in the traditions of their Church to do so, knowing that they were binding themselves to a land far from the Heavenly Shores.

.. Surely there must have been a powerful reason to go to such lengths.

"I don’t know about her purpose," Ashlynn said slowly. "She told me that if I wanted more answers, I would need to find the forest near her family’s lands in the Kingdom of Gaal. She did give me a warning though. About the Church, the Saint, and the people she referred to as ’Oracles.

’ Do you, do you know what she was talking about? "

"So it really was the Church that took her in the end," Amahle said, closing her eyes and sighing heavily.

"We thought as much but the Church keeps their secrets close. By the time my teacher learned of Claire’s death, it was both too late and far too dangerous to search for answers in human territory. "

"This book," she said, tracing a finger gently around the edge of the well-worn journal. "It contains all of my teacher’s notes, everything she was able to learn about the Church before she passed the task on to me."

"The latter half of the book contains my notes," she added, opening her eyes and flipping through the book.

"I spent years interrogating a captured Inquisitor before I began to fill in the missing pieces.

Lady Nyrielle has brought me the occasional Templar or High Priest over the years as well as part of our bargain.

In exchange, I tutored Zedya for a number of years. "

"Nyrielle captured people from the Church and gave them to you for... interrogation?" Ashlynn said, shaken by the concept. The entire time she’d spent with Amahle, she’d taken her for a kind and nurturing older sister who worked hard to keep her coven safe.

Now, however, seeing the cold look in the other woman’s crimson eyes, she wondered just what had happened for the Mother of Thorns to harbor so much hostility toward the Church.

Perhaps it shouldn’t have surprised her.

With as much hostility as Amahle’s coven had reason to have toward vampires in general, there must have been some kind of basis for cooperation between them or Zedya would never have studied here and Nyrielle wouldn’t have left Ashlynn alone with Amahle as easily as she had.

But to think that their relationship had been forged through an exchange of prisoners.

.. It was the kind of cold, calculated move that she expected of the Nyrielle who had ruled over the Vale of Mists through generation after generation of Lothian wars.

The Nyrielle who had lost many of the feelings that once gave warmth to her heart could certainly do something so calculated.

The Nyrielle that had won her heart, however.

.. Ashlynn couldn’t help but wonder if today’s Nyrielle would be capable of making the same decisions.

"We are called Mothers of the Earth, and we are born as Children of the Earth," Amahle said, pulling Ashlynn’s attention back to the present as she flipped through the book until she found a page that looked like a map of the night sky.

"As Mothers of the Earth, we hold the power of Witchcraft.

But there are others who hold a different power," she said slowly.

"In times long past, they were called the Children of the Heavens," Amahle said, her voice growing darker as crimson energy began to flicker along the tips of her spider-like limbs. "They were the Oracles who held the power of Prophecy."