The Saintess and the Villainess

Chapter 91

Rain shrugged. "Just don't make me have to do it again. I hate using magic like that."

Agis, who hadn't noticed anything going wrong, clapped Crovina on the back, "Good job!" he said. "Now where do we go from here? What does the compass say?"

Corvina pulled the compass out of her pocket and looked at it.

The needle was going haywire, spinning in circles.

"The cleric is not as careful about magic as I am," said Rain. They looked out over the church complex, glaring. "This whole place stinks of her magic. It's as if her soul aura has expanded to include every corner of the complex. It will be impossible to trace her exact location using her magic."

A heavy silence hung in the air as they all contemplated what to do.

"The abandoned wing!" said Agis, suddenly. "The other day I was looking for Anne and I saw Eva heading in that direction. I think she's the only one who ever goes anywhere near there."

"At least that's somewhere to start," said Corvina. She made a sweeping gesture towards Agis. "Lead the way, then."

Anne was laying on her side in the middle of the magic circle, still bound and gagged. Eva was chanting something in a language Anne didn't recognize, and the magic circle was starting to glow faintly. That couldn't be a good sign.

But Anne was still distracted by wondering how it was that she'd been able to hear a winky face emoji. By all accounts it didn't make sense. But she had, in fact, heard a winky face emoji sent by the Goddess Coris. Somehow.

Which meant that the Goddess was real. But what did she mean by saying she wasn't all powerful? She had to wait for the 'right time' to intervene? What the fuck was with that? If she was really a goddess she should be intervening in way more things way more often. This whole world was a fucking mess. Why wasn't the Goddess doing anything about it?

The magic circle was fully glowing now, and the tesla-ball looking thing was glowing, too. Eva's hair was starting to float out from the sides of her head, and Anne could feel a sense of electricity in the air.

And then Anne could see the spirit of the original Saintess, lurking just behind Eva. Whether she had been drawn close by the power of the ritual or whether she had simply chosen to manifest here, Anne couldn't tell. Her face was twisted with fury and sorrow.

Eva raised her knife and a bolt of lightning briefly shot between the blade and the tesla ball.

The Saintess wrapped her spectral fingers around Eva's neck.

Anne closed her eyes and said another quick prayer.

Any fucking time now, Coris! If you wait much longer it's going to be too god-damn late!

The whole abandoned wing was a maze of derelict rooms stuffed full of musty old books and rotting furniture of all varieties. Some of the rooms led to other rooms without ever connecting to a hallway. Some of the rooms had staircases leading up or down or even sideways. Some of the hallways and staircases didn't go anywhere at all. They just stopped abruptly in dead-ends.

"Goddess' tits!" said Corvina, punching a wall. This was the tenth room they'd checked. They had no way of knowing where specifically in the area Eva and Anne might be, and it was getting harder and harder to see much of anything in the growing dusk. "We're never going to find them this way! Are you sure Eva never said anything to you which might indicate where exactly her secret lair is?"

"No, never!" said Agis. He looked like he was about to cry. "Or maybe she did and I just forgot about it... if only I was smarter, maybe I could have helped more. I don't want my sister to die because I'm too stupid to figure out where she is."

"It's not a matter of intelligence," said Rain. They had their ear up against a wall and they were tapping on it gently. "I don't know who built this place originally, but it was clearly designed to confound. There are secret passageways in some of these walls."

"What?! How are we supposed to systematically check the whole area if we can't even be certain we're not missing secret rooms?" said Corvina.

Rain shrugged.

Ultimately, they decided to split up to cover more ground. It was the smartest thing to do.

But without the others nearby, the dark thoughts that Corvina had been keeping at bay with a flurry of activity began to encroach further and further into her consciousness.

As Corvina dug her way through a pile of abandoned chairs to try to get to a door on the other side, she imagined Anne tortured, surrounded by laughing clerics taking amusement from her pain.

The door was only a closet.

As Corvina followed a staircase that led to a hallway that led to a staircase that led to a hallway, she imagined Eva alone with Anne, having her way with her in more ways than one...

The final staircase led back to where she'd started.

And when Corvina ran up against yet another dead end, she imagined Anne dead already... the spark gone from her lively eyes, her easy smile absent from her lips, the color drained from her rosy cheeks.

The weight of despair was so heavy, Corvina could barely stand.

But Corvina couldn't let herself give in to the sorrow and the hopelessness. She had to keep going. She had to keep fighting. She had to keep searching. She couldn't give up. Not yet. Not when Anne might still be alive out there, needing her help.

"Nothing in there!" shouted Agis, running out of a particularly dark room right in front of Corvina, and immediately running off further down the hallway without waiting for a response.

Corvina was about to press on when... something made her pause. She couldn't be certain what it was. The dark room seemed to be drawing her towards it.

Through the darkness, Corvina could see a faint glow around one of the stone bricks in the far wall. Without thought or intent, almost as if she wasn't operating under her own power at all, Corvina walked towards the glowing stone. When she was close enough, she reached out towards it.

"What are you doing?" Agis poked his head through the door behind her. "I told you I already checked this room! There's nothing in here!"

Corvina pushed on the glowing stone and she heard a small click.

The stone stopped glowing, and a portion of the wall next to it swung open like a door, revealing a set of steps leading down into further darkness.

Before Corvina could even react to what happened, she felt Rain dash past her like a shot fired into the dark, almost gliding down the stairs and out of sight.

"Come on," Corvina said to Agis, drawing her sword and following after Rain as quickly as she could.