Chapter 92 – Distant Memories

As soon as the doors to the temple closed and Mirian dropped the illusion spell on Arenthia, the entire room of waiting priests burst into cheers, and the high priestess could hardly move as every man and woman of the cult rushed to hug her and welcome her home. As they did, a pang of sorrow flashed through Mirian. Everyone gathered had only known her a day; to them, she was a miracle, but a stranger. The deep connections these priests of a heretical God felt for each other—would she ever be able to form that with someone? Her sorrow threatened to turn into anger.

“We thought we’d lost you forever,” Lecne said, tears welling in his eyes as he smiled.

The moment passed. Even if they didn’t know her, she knew them, and the joy they felt was contagious. Mirian found herself smiling with them.

“I don’t understand,” Arenthia said, as the crowd gathered gave her space. “We agreed that the sanctity of the order outweighed the risk of saving one. If it had gone wrong—we’d have lost everyone. I told you not to—”

“Wasn’t their plan. It was mine,” Mirian said. “And I had as many tries as I needed.”

And Lecne said, grimly, “The age of Prophets has come again.”

That brought silence to the room, and Arenthia’s gaze settled on Mirian. “You?”

Mirian handed her the amulet focus she’d been wearing. “Look for the hole,” she said.

After Arenthia had seen it, Mirian gave the quick summary version of her situation. Like with the other cultists, it didn’t take much explaining to get her to believe. “And you’ve told the Luminate Order before?” Arenthia asked at the end of the explanation.

“I have,” Mirian said.

“Damn those fools. How blind they have become to the very scripture they repeat…” She trailed off. “Well, back to work everyone! This temple isn’t going to run itself!” she told the gathering. Quieter, she said, “And my blessings to you all.”

Lecne stayed, but the other priests departed. High Priestess Arenthia led them down to the ritual room, muttering something about, “It’s where I do my best thinking.” Unlike Lecne, whose eyes often wandered to the great painting of the unnamed corpse-God, Arenthia liked to pace around the sarcophagus in the center of the room. Often, her finger would trace some part of the relief, or rest on the stone lip.

After some of this pacing, she said, “There was a detail you mentioned. How this Specter person was resistant to arcane magic. It’s not a glyph sequence. It’s a material.”

“You know about this?” Lecne said, surprised.

“That’s because you don’t listen half the time!” she snapped. Then, “Sorry, still a bit high strung. I thought for sure I’d be meeting Zomalator an hour ago. Yes, material. One of the things the Luminates started working with the Arcane Praetorians on. Their first heretical break with a long tradition of non-interference. Damn Archbishop Yohan! Sorry, bit of a tangent. My mother always said I had the mind of an old lady, and now here I am as an old lady and it’s only gotten worse. In the lead-up to the Unification War, all the kingdoms, republics, principalities and other states all had a problem with arcanists. This is pre-spellward barriers, if you’ve forgotten your history, so moving about from city to city was incredibly dangerous. The guilds had gone exclusive, and were leaving too many competent arcanists out of their ranks, so rogue arcanists started popping up everywhere. Am I rambling?”

“You are rambling again,” Lecne said.

“Oh dear. Long story short, the Luminates and the Unifiers under King Ghautleimane established the Arcane Praetorians. Called something else back then, don’t worry about it. Anyways, if you’re going to try to bring magi under heel, you don’t want the fights to be equal, so the Luminates helped develop a spell resistant material that wasn’t a focus.”

Mirian could finally follow this last bit. “A spell-resistant material. One that hinders attacks, but not your own aura.”

“Precisely. And they kept it a secret, a very close secret, and continue to keep it a close secret, one enforced by the Deeps, and they don’t much care if it’s a citizen or foreigner who knows. Plenty of people figure it out, but then they also figure out how to stay quiet.”

“And how do you know?” Mirian asked.

“Because I was part of them,” she said. “You’ve picked up on that, I assume? How everyone here has a closet that’s packed with skeletons?”

“I’d gotten the idea.”

“Have you told her?”

Lecne looked at Arenthia. “I have no idea. Remember what she said about the cycles?”

“You should probably just tell me now,” Mirian said. “That was a bit too cryptic for me to know either.”

“Very well. Zomalator fought against the Ominian in the Gods’ War.”

That took Mirian aback, and her heart began to hammer. Had she made a mistake, dealing with these cultists?

“Zomalator has more blood on His divine hands than any of us. But He changed. He became a turncoat. A traitor to his own cause. And when it was most important, He did stand by the Ominian. All of us here, we embody that. Redemption is what we offer. But—!” she snapped, suddenly whirling to face Mirian. “Redemption is something one must walk to, willingly. You can only offer your hand. If they spit in it, withdraw it. Not everyone wants to wash the blood off their hands, and only the fool tries to clean their hands for them.”

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There was a gravity to her words, and Mirian felt she’d learned something important not just about Arenthia, but about the whole cult. It explained, for example, why Maruce didn’t much like talking about his past, and most of them liked to only jokingly allude to it. She hated to break the silence that lingered after the high priestess’s speech, but she was growing impatient.

“And the special material?”