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"In times long past, they were called the Children of the Heavens. They were the Oracles who held the power of Prophecy."

Amahle’s words struck Ashlynn like a bolt of lightning. She had never heard the term ’Oracle’ before, but no one who had been raised within the Church of the Holy Lord of Light was unfamiliar with the term ’Prophecy.’

"You, you’re talking about Berosus, the Great Prophet of the Holy Lord of Light," Ashlynn whispered in a voice that still held a hint of reverence for one of the most holy figures within the Church.

"The Great Prophet who foresaw the rise of mankind and, with his disciples, used the stars to chart humanity’s path to the Heavenly Shores. "

"I suppose I am," Amahle said with a heavy sigh. Her spider-like limbs twitched in agitation but she took several deep breaths and forced her heart to slow, banishing the crimson energy that threatened to rampage as she thought about the human’s ’Church’ and the damage it had done to the natural order of things.

"In the history known to your Church, there was a time when witches and Eldritch clans walked the lands that humans came from," Amahle said slowly. "Has your church taught you what happened to them?"

"The Church teaches that the Great Prophet unified mankind against the evils of the land, purging witches and ’demons’ alike," Ashlynn said slowly.

"Then, the disciples of the Great Prophet founded the seven nations, ushering in more than a century of peace.

There are more than seven nations now, but every king who rules in the old countries claims to be descended from the Great Prophet or his disciples. "

"True enough," Amahle said as she left the table to fetch a bottle of fortified wine and two small wooden cups. Some conversations, it seemed, required something stronger than lemonade in order to wash the bitterness from her tongue. "At least, true enough according to the ones I interrogated. The Inquisitor referred several times to ’sealed histories’, though it seems his access to those records was incomplete. "

"Are you," Ashlynn started before a knot formed in her throat as she struggled to put her turbulent thoughts into words. "Are you saying that the Great Prophet Berosus was like us? That... that he wasn’t an emissary of the Holy Lord of Light, but that he was just a person with strong magic?"

"Oracles have as much in common with Witches as Witches have in common with Vampires," Amahle said, emptying her cup of wine in a single swallow before pouring another cup and one for Ashlynn as well.

"But there is something that should be true of all of us.

How is it you came to be the Mother of Trees, Ashlynn? Where did your power come from?"

"I, I was born with it," Ashlynn said, taking a polite sip of wine before setting the cup farther away from her than the lemonade.

She knew her own weakness when it came to strong drink and she wanted to be clearheaded for this.

"Nyrielle once said that the world chooses us.

She was born a vampire the same way I was born a witch.

No one knows why it happens, only that it does. "

For Ashlynn, that had been explanation enough.

She wasn’t deeply concerned with ’why’ she had the power she’d been born to.

Instead, she directed her focus on how to master the power she’d been given and once she did, what she could do with it.

Questions about why were much less important than questions about what she should do.

"The Vampires believe that they have a role to play in the natural order of things," Amahle said.

"Witches believe that we are part of the natural order but that nature holds no desire for how we shape the natural order. Whether either of them is right, who’s to say?

But there is one thing that we do know."

"Whether it is our marks or the nature of our powers," Amahle said as her crimson eyes began to glow with a trace of lurid red energy.

"There is only one of us at any given time with dominion over our power.

There are many Mothers of the Earth, but for a new Mother of Trees to be born, the old one must die.

The power must return to the world before it can find its way to the next person who will bear it.

There has never been an instance recorded anywhere of two people holding the same power at the same time. "

"So, if the Great Prophet was an Oracle, then he was the person selected to hold whatever version of an Oracle’s power he held at the time," Ashlynn said as she fit the pieces together in her mind. "And he used that power to establish the Church of the Holy Lord of Light?"

"Remember when I said that the Oracles were once called ’Children of the Heavens’?

" Amahle said, tapping the map of the night sky in the well-worn journal with one of her spider-like limbs. "My teacher and I, we believe that your ’Great Prophet’ was the Oracle of the Sun.

He is said to have had a disciple who could read the future in the stars, but we don’t believe that this person was a subordinate Oracle the way Heila is a member of your coven. "

"We think that he was the ’Oracle of the Stars’," Amahle explained. "Why he chose to serve without the recognition given to your ’Great Prophet’, we can only guess.

But there is something strange about Oracles ever since the establishment of the Church of the Holy Lord of Light.

Within a few hundred years, Oracles stopped being born on this continent.

At the same time, according to the histories of the Church, Witches stopped appearing in their lands. "

"You think that the Church did something to prevent witches from challenging their rule in the old countries?

" Ashlynn said. She wasn’t entirely sure that such a thing was possible.

Rather, she thought that when witches were born in the old countries, they were killed as infants as soon as their marks were seen.

If any witch survived to grow into their powers, the Inquisition would likely hunt them down and potentially erase any record that they’d ever existed.

That felt far more likely to her than the idea that the Church had the power to stop a witch from being born in their lands.

After all, if they had that power, then how was it that she was born as a witch in the first place?

"I think the world is trying to protect us from the Church," Amahle said.

"Because the Inquisitor told me something that shouldn’t be possible.

When a witch dies, our power returns to the earth.

The same is true when a vampire is slain.

But when the Saints of the Church grow old and approach death, a successor is chosen to inherit their power. "

"The reason that your predecessor gave you the warning she gave you," Amahle said after taking another deep drink of strong wine.

"Is likely because of something else I learned from the Inquisitor I spoke with.

If the Inquisition ever captures a witch like Heila or Jacques, they will kill them without hesitation. "

"But if they capture either of us," Amahle added darkly. "They have been ordered to capture us alive at all costs and to bring us before the Saint in their Holy City. Now, just why do you think it is that they would do such a thing?"

The answer seemed obvious. The way that Amahle had explained everything, there was very little room for doubt in her mind about what had happened to the Oracles. What she struggled with, however, was the way Amahle had framed parts of it.

To Amahle, the return of a person’s power to the earth was natural and normal. But Ashlynn had grown up in a world where fathers passed their titles and lands to their sons. Even merchants worked hard to pass on more power and wealth to their children than their parents had handed to them.

So if the Church wanted to pass on the power of an Oracle to a chosen heir, then, didn’t that make sense?

After all, the Great Prophet had died long ago, but he had written that there would always be a chosen few who would watch over the children of the Holy Lord of Light, guiding them to reach the Heavenly Shores and protecting them from evil.

From the perspective of the Church, this must have felt like something that wasn’t just good and godly, it was necessary.

But if they wanted to capture witches like her or Amahle alive... if the Church wanted power that had nothing to do with the Holy Lord of Light, then what could their reason be? Did they want to take it for themselves? Or were they trying to keep it out of the hands of others? Perhaps it was both.

"I don’t know," Ashlynn said, refusing to draw the conclusion that Amahle wanted her to reach without a chance to learn more for herself.

"But I intend to find out," she added in a voice that held all the strength and resilience of a mighty oak.

"And I will not let our covens be subjugated by the Church, no matter what. "

"Good. It’s a good place to start," Amahle said, unknowingly echoing Claire du Gaal’s words. "You’ve only just returned. Tonight, we should have a welcome home feast to celebrate, even though you weren’t gone for long," the Mother of Thorns said as she used her spider-like limbs to stand.

"But after that, it’s time to put a sharper edge on your training," she added.

"We only have a few months left before you need to return home.

Between now and then, I will do everything I can to help you and Heila prepare for what you may face from the Church if they learn the truth of your existence.

At the very least, I expect you to handle something as simple as a Giant Thornback Alligator by yourselves before I let you go. "

"I lost an elder sister that I never knew to the Church," she said in a voice almost too soft to hear. "I won’t lose you to them as well."

"It won’t come to that," Ashlynn said softly, leaving her seat at the table to wrap her arms around Amahle in a gentle hug. "Whatever happens, we’ll get through it together. Your coven and mine, Nyrielle and her progeny too. All of us," she said softly.

It was a simple promise and one that seemed feeble after everything she’d just heard about the powers that shaped the Church, but she meant it.

First, she would return home and deliver her long overdue retribution to Owain.

Everything else, she could only face after that, but when the time came, she knew that she wouldn’t face it alone.