The Vampire & Her Witch

Ashlynn tried not to let her relief show on her face when Jocelynn accepted the position as Lord Minister of Commerce. The responsibility was far heavier than anything Jocey had ever expected to bear, and Ashlynn half expected that she’d have to plead with her sister to accept it.

"Your sister won’t let you down in this," Nyrielle whispered quietly. "And she has my support if she ever needs it," Nyrielle added when she noticed the subtle shift in Ashlynn’s expression.

"Thank you, Nyri," Ashlynn said softly, giving Nyrielle’s hand a brief squeeze before turning back to address the chamber about the last minister who needed to be appointed tonight. So far, she had promised them order when she appointed Hugo as Lord Steward, and she had promised them prosperity when she appointed her sister as the Lord Minister of Commerce.

Now, she needed to promise them a measure of safety in a world that was changing rapidly and bringing a host of new dangers with it.

"There is one additional Lord Minister we need to appoint tonight," Ashlynn said. "Because the work of the Ministry of the Mysteries is too important to wait."

"You heard, tonight, that the Church rose among humans to control the threat posed by the practice of sorcery," Nyrielle said. "The Church ended the Age of Chaos by claiming exclusive control of this power. In the years that followed, they tortured and burned countless sorcerers as ’heretics’ or ’demon worshipers’ for the simple crime of acquiring knowledge and power that they could not control."

"It is not this way in the Eldritch world," Nyrielle said. "The practice of sorcery is dangerous, to both the sorcerer and those around them. Few people take the risks to master this dangerous discipline, but those who do are restrained by the powerful Eldritch Lords, High Lords and Great Lords who rule over the Eldritch people. Sorcery gives them power, but very rarely does it give them enough power to defy their local lord."

"The lords of our empire are different," Nyrielle said, glancing briefly at Sir Carwyn and then at Lord Garrik Maeril. "Many of them have no understanding of sorcery themselves. Our Wardens, Lord Wardens, and even our Sheriffs would struggle to keep the peace when confronted by a sorcerer who could rain fire down from the sky or curse a neighbor to suffer constant misfortune."

At the table nearby, Reynold found himself nodding along with Nyrielle in easy agreement. After seeing Rastlan’s demonstration at the gates this evening, he struggled to imagine how any lord was supposed to rule over such people if they became a true menace. Capturing them with ordinary soldiers would be all but impossible.

"I have no desire to recreate the Inquisition," Nyrielle said bluntly. "In the Eldritch world, sorcerers aren’t just warriors; they’re also healers, artificers, entertainers and more. Sorcery is dangerous, no one will deny that, but it is also a treasure that humanity has been denied for far too long."

"The Ministry of the Mysteries is charged with ensuring the safe practice of sorcery within the empire," Nyrielle said. "To that end, it will be unique among the ministries as it must raise a force of its own to respond to sorcerers who threaten the peace," Nyrielle said.

"But I wish to see the Ministry become far more than a collection of powerful enforcers," Nyrielle said, turning to the table closest to the center table. "Seeker Diarmuid," Nyrielle said. "You have demonstrated a truly rare ability to seek the truth, and when you discovered it, you changed in response to your understanding."

"It is my hope that you can form a ministry that does the same," Nyrielle said. "It is very easy to say that everything is allowed or nothing is, but it is much harder to ask the question of what should be allowed and what should remain forbidden. I believe that you are a man who can be trusted to find a way to unlock this power for our empire without ushering in a new Age of Chaos. Am I wrong?"

"The challenge you’re proposing isn’t small, your Eternity," Diarmuid said as he finally realized why he’d been placed at the same table as Hugo, now the Lord Steward of the empire. "Do you expect this ministry to police the Church as well as sorcerers outside the Church’s walls?"

"The Church has some very strong beliefs about how power should be used and who should be allowed to use it," Diarmuid pointed out. "If I’m intended to oppose them from the beginning, then I have some concerns."

For Diarmuid, little was more important than the question of how this ministry was expected to interact with the Church. He’d just resolved himself to walk away from the Church in order to find the fundamental truths that underpinned his faith, and he’d come to accept that his faith might not survive an encounter with those truths.

A faith built on half-truths, distortions and lies was no faith worth holding.

But that had been his personal decision. He’d never intended to stand in opposition to the Church, only to walk away from it in the hopes of finding his own path. If he was being appointed to this office to break the Church as a former Inquisitor... That was asking too much.

"Mistress Nyrielle, if I may?" Ignatious said, standing from his spot at the table and waiting until Nyrielle nodded her approval before he addressed Diarmuid’s question.

"The Church cannot practice as it did in the Kingdom of Gaal," Ignatious said directly. "In Gaal, and in the old countries, the Church functioned both as an extension of the Crown and as a puppet master, pulling the Crown’s strings," Ignatious said, refusing to flinch from the ugly truth.

"The Church in Gaal could charge people with crimes of heresy and blasphemy," Ignatious continued. "These were broad crimes into which a vast number of offenses could be swept, and the Church’s investigators prosecuted them directly, without waiting for the permission or approval of local lords. That kind of power is as heady as strong wine, and the Church has been drunk on it for hundreds of years," he said, eliciting a wave of gasps from some of the more devout humans in the room.

"Brother Aubin and I have undertaken a mission to return the practice of our faith to its roots," Ignatious said, nodding at the aging High Priest sitting at one of the outer tables. "Even then, we must reconcile some of the Great Prophet and Saint Teachers’ dogma against the fact that we no longer live in a world defined by the Age of Chaos."

"It is a good thing," Ignatious said. "To struggle each day to do your best. It is also a good thing to help people who are struggling so all may thrive. These lessons have a place in the world for those who would listen to them, but they cannot be pressed on the people of the empire by force the way they have been, and the Church cannot pretend that it has a mandate to control the practice of sorcery in the Bloodroot Empire."

"Leave the Church to Brother Aubin and me," Ignatious suggested. "We’ll do our best to police our own. Some of our brothers who were once Inquisitors may even be of use to you and the Ministry of the Mysteries now that the Church no longer has a place for the Inquisition."

"But the Church will not stand in your way of doing what is right and what is best for the people of the Empire, Seeker Diarmuid," Ignatious said. "On that, you have my word."

"I see," Diarmuid said, taking a deep breath as he felt his heart quake. The ground felt like it had just shifted under his feet and his feet alone, and suddenly, he found that the rift between himself and the Church had widened even further.

Something important, something precious that had defined much of his life just died in a few sentences from High Inquisitor Ignatious... Or, at least, it died within the Empire. Diarmuid had left the Inquisition, but soon, there would be no Inquisition. Not here.

Perhaps he would find some former brothers to join this new ministry... People, like him, who sought the truth even when it defied the Church’s narratives or went against its desires. Unfortunately, he’d seen very little of that from the Inquisition in Lothian March, which meant that the vampire Inquisitor was right... The Church no longer had a place for the Inquisition.

But the mission, the core of the mission to find the truth and protect the people from dangerous powers... If he accepted this position, perhaps it could live on...

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