141 Alone Chapter 12 - 3

The Bishop looked between them, a smile coming slowly to his face. "I wish I knew whether to support you or have you killed." Cesare's hand stiffened as it caressed down Alexandra's golden braid. "I've had this trip planned for a while but when I heard about the attack by the Scythians, I made sure to secure an invitation to the meeting."

The Bishops lips spread in a cat's satisfied grin. What better way to gauge the true power of the Furies than when they were poised for the kill? The meeting would reveal the Furies allies and enemies. It didn't matter how personally powerful the Furies were, without backers. they'd have been expelled or killed for daring to challenge the hierarchy of moon shadows. Lady Kali, Elizabeth, and the tacit approval of the Mistress, had allowed the Furies to show their worth, instead of being quickly disappeared. The true power of any group wasn't what it showed, it was what lurked in the shadows hulking and ready.

Students stopped and watched the strange trio walk across the campus. Used to seeing Alexandra and Cesare, their eyes stuttered to a stop on the black clad priest with fear bordering on terror. The Order of the Dragon had hunted their ancestors, burned them in their homes, drowned them in the blood of their children, raped them until death took violated flesh. For most, the Order was a thing of monstrous evil. Faced with the very vision of their darkest imaginings, a priest, hate twisted their eyes.

The meeting hadn't been announced, but the school knew something was up. It hung like a storm over the school, a tension running under the skin, plucking ruthlessly at the soul. Crazed possibilities formed a whirlpool of chaos, bound to reshape the school from this moment forward. The priest added a horrible edge to those possibilities.

Waiting by the stairs to the tower, Anastasia and Elizabeth watched the three approach. The women eyed the priest with suspicion, turning questioning looks on Cesare. "The Bishop secured himself an invitation to the meeting," he said wryly, the women fell into step with him easily, edging out the priest.

Smiling into their skeptical glares, the Bishop inclined his head. "Being Alexandra is part of the Order of the Dragon, I can take the place of her legal guardian. Since I'd be here on pilgrimage, the Mistress was gracious enough to allow me to stand in."

With almost identical grunts, the women gave their opinion of the priest's words. They didn't like it, but they couldn't stop him either. If they couldn't stop him, they'd ignore him. Turning from the Bishop, they focused intently on Cesare, uneasy anger tightening their faces.

They'd blown apart into a furious storm of vengeance when he'd come clean about the hunt. Elizabeth had shaken the school in her rage, reality warping around her as she bent it with unleashed might. Anastasia had ignited in a malevolent display of midnight hatred, shinning like a black sun. Alexandra had thrummed with ancient, physical power, violence bleeding off her with the purity of a blood-soaked lioness.

Cesare was humbled by the power that had risen in his defense. The self-worth he'd buried in the shit and piss others had shoveled onto him raising its diseased head, eyes dead with forgotten pain. It hurt, the way a limb felt when heat violated the sanctity of frozen flesh. The brief flare of warmth faded as the arctic wind that blew from his soul deadened flesh, putting the dead to sleep.

Cesare's soft words held the three women in place. They'd never forgive or forget, but they held back because he asked it. He was the weak link, the sad puppy that got kicked because people could, but he'd live and die on his own. He rejected their pity, the condescending care of the strong to the weak. No one respected weakness, it was a disease more terrible than any sin. Weakness was ugly, birthing contempt beyond any disfigurement in the eyes of the world.

He'd been attacked, and he alone would decide what actions would be taken. Their sour expression said more than words what they thought of his choice to reject their help. If he ever gave into that sweet surrender, if he ever threw away his last glimmer of pride and became something that needed their protection, it would be the death of their friendship.

Cesare walked the winding staircase slowly, the cut on his leg pulling with every step, the ache of the arrow a hot brand burning into the meat of his thigh. He couldn't make the walk easy for Elizabeth, but he would drag his steps if it secured her dignity. It was hard to be around kids that thrummed with the power of strong bodies and young souls, even worse to be a sweating, gasping mass of flesh, weighted down by their disgusted looks.

Instead of rushing up the stairs, Cesare walked with a noticeable limp, one that had conveniently appeared. Anastasia and Alexandra contented themselves with a shake of their heads at the blatant fakery, refusing to look at the older woman they knew it was for. Elizabeth grinned with the joy of a kid who'd been given a school day off, easing her steps back to a dignified walk beside him. The Bishop watched the interplay with knowing eyes.

The humor faded with each step they took. This meeting was being held because Cesare had been hunted like an animal. The Scythians had carved their names into his flesh, seeking to feed his meat to their dogs. That he'd won didn't make their murderous deeds easier to take.

Grim faced, the group reached the top landing. Cold and uncompromising, the gray stone cared little for the things that came to its waiting area. Stripped bare, the dark ebony door held silent dominance of the room. Leaning on the far wall, Cesare put his back to the stone, giving himself a clear line of sight to the doors.

The door to the stairs opened with Jerold stepping in. Beside him, Sarah gave the group a quiet smile but it couldn't dim the glare that Jerold leveled at them. Jerold oversaw the Thagirion and was head of the staff for the school, second in power only to the Mistress. Hard questions where going to be asked of the man from a creature that didn't abide failure.

Cesare wondered how long it would be before Jerold came for him. You couldn't destroy a man's way of life, shit on what he loved, and think he wouldn't go for your throat. Taking in the seething expression of the arctic horror, Cesare started down grading the time he had from months to weeks.

An older version of Atalanta opened the door, sweeping the room with a close look, eyes lingering on Cesare before letting the door swing the rest of the way open. Following her mother in, Atalanta's face was a wreckage of broken bones and smeared features. Her nose would never be anything but a misshapen thing of shattered cartilage. Wires wound through her cheeks paired with deeply incised cuts where the surgeons bound the broken bones of her face together. Both eyes were bandaged, cuts sewn up from the careful bleeding they'd done to reduce swelling.

Atalanta's walker moved with the slow deliberation of the tortured. Her arm was swathed in bandages, leg in one long cast. Despite the excruciating pain, she'd refused to be pushed in a wheelchair like an invalid. Cesare respected that a little, even as his more rational mind called her an idiot for going through the pain to soothe her pride.

An older woman entered behind her, gently supporting a teetering girl. The girl's crutches made tap tap sounds along the stone, dragging a thick boot of a cast behind her. It was the delicate way she stepped and the simian symmetry of her face that clued him in. She met his eyes briefly before looking away in shame.

The last came in with her mother beside her, the two sharing a liquid grace just this side of human. Face swathed with bandages, her arm swung in a sling across her chest. It would be a long time before she'd speak without pain, and even longer before she could use that arm with anything close to the dexterity she was used too. Mother and daughter met his eyes squarely, an evenness to their looks speaking of simple understanding.

Leaving her daughter with the other Scythians, Atalanta's mom walked across the no man's land between them. Bigger than her daughter with a bluff face and the shoulders of a lumber jack, she'd carved a soldier's life for herself into the meat of the world. She'd never be pretty, but she was handsome in an honest way. Deeply tanned, it was only as she got closer that Cesare could make out the fine scars that ran across her face from past battles. A leather necklace with a pitted black stone hung between massive pectoral muscles. Hard worn blue jeans hugged muscled legs and wide hips, roughed up combat boots scuffing across the ground. A plain blue shirt hugged her hardened body, showcasing hills and valleys of dense musculature.

Alexandra watched the coming woman with narrowed eyes, body tensing in readiness. The others eyed the Scythian with furious eyes as the woman sidestepped Jerold without a look, continuing to close the distance between her and Cesare.

"My name is Bremusa. I'm the leader of the Scythian delegation. I thought we could talk before the meeting." Her eyes ran over the group, stopping on the priest for a searing second before returning to Cesare.

Shrugging, Cesare looked beyond the woman to the group of watching Scythians. "Not sure what we have to talk about. Seems pretty cut and dry to me," Cesare said, eyes coming back to Bremusa.

"They fucked up, I won't debate that or make excuses for their actions." Grimacing with distaste, she continued in a low voice, "The Scythians don't condone hunting children, even the thought is disgusting. We may only allow women into our ranks, but that doesn't mean we hate men or that we hunt boys. We revere Cybele the Mother of Mountains; it would be a sin to hunt a child. That my daughter would engage in this perversion is a shame for me and my people."

Sighing, she looked back at the girls, each of them dropping their eyes, unable to meet the woman's hard look. "No matter what happens today, you have my word they'll pay for what they did." Grim and set, the words were threaded with truth. "We've come a long way, but incidents like these only reinforce the idea we're an extremist group of black widows."

Bremusa stopped, when he only met her eyes with an impenetrably neutral expression, she continued without a hitch, "I know this incident needs the attention of the Mistress, but I hoped we could work out a deal beforehand." Taking a step forward, her shadow swallowed Cesare.

"The girls are young and stupid, this whole thing got away from them." Her smile twisted as she shook her head. "We've all been there, when common sense is drowned by shit reasoning. I don't think they ever meant for it to go as far as it did. Scare you, sure, but nothing more. It was stupid, monumentally idiotic, but it was never meant to be anything but a prank. I hope you can see past the incident and have the compassion not to ruin their lives over a joke gone wrong."

Eyes the black of a sinner's heart, Cesare's smile was a scarlet wound across his face. "Where did the dogs come from?" The quiet words warped and twisted through the room Cesare's shadow deepened into an obsidian blot, stretching across the room, it devoured lesser shadows. Treacherous as black ice on an open highway, cruel as the jagged smile of drug dealer, as needy as the rat like gleam in a hooker's eye, his words slithered through the air.

Bremusa stilled, smile dropping from her face, eyes hardening. The illusion of the bluff and honest woman shattering as the wily leader showed herself. "I think this was a planned engagement, not a kids joke, but an orchestrated allotment of resources to achieve a stated objective. The weapons, dogs, uniforms, and training speak of a paramilitary force trained to engage in operations. This wasn't your first time using them, it wasn't the first time you've used them at Primrose." Quietly venomous, the words drew the eyes of the room. Jerold watched with stark horror on his face as Sarah's face turned into a mask of pain filled understanding

"We've never killed anyone at the school." The words rumbled through the room.

"Because after being hunted, I should believe you, right?" Cesare said, shadows skittering and trembling at the words. "It was a too well planned. The dogs made the perfect way to get rid of my body, and after I disappeared, who would benefit the most? You'd be able to come into that moment of instability, filling the vacuum with connections and soldiers already on the ground. Instantly gaining the gratitude of the Furies, your daughter would be a Fury in a matter of days."

Bremusa stood still, face carefully blank as he rattled off what he suspected was her plan. The Scythians had too much to gain for it not to be planned by the higher ups, and Atalanta was too good of a soldier to go that far off the reservation.

Rolling her shoulders, the woman sighed. "I'm not admitting anything but say you're right, where does that leave us?"

The temperature spiked as the Ebon Flame shouldered its way into reality. Eyes like black sun's, Anastasia glared with a sadist hatred at the woman, tendrils of black corruption winding around her fingers. Alexandra flowed onto the balls of her feet with a low, vicious hiss, hands clenching into flesh rending claws. Elizabeth stood to the side, eyeing rest the Scythians.

For the first time, fear ate at the edges of Bremusa's eyes. Anyone of the girls could annihilate the Scythians. With all three of them together, there wasn't a pizza's chance at fat camp of getting out alive.

"Easy." The quiet words stroked the air, settling the three down with its velvet caress. Silky smooth with a husky edge, his voice darkened the room with a violating, malevolent touch. Bremusa stepped back, eyes locking onto the thing that had uttered the word of command, shocked at the simple control he had over them.

"The Scythians will come out publicly as allies and supporters of Alexandra, Anastasia, and Miss Raven. You will support them politically, personally, and militarily. You'll get your wish and be counted as one of their backers. But it will be on their terms." Cesare's words slipped into the air as easy as a knife into decomposing flesh.

Bremusa looked at him in shock, Alexandra thumped back onto the ground, flat footed as she gaped at him. Anastasia and Elizabeth stared with a mixture of appreciation and surprise.

"Our support doesn't extend that far for those not of the sisterhood." Bremusa's tone wavered between rejection and acceptance.

"That's why you wanted your daughter to be part of the Furies, it would side step that little rule," Cesare said, one of the pieces falling into place. "The Scythians have money, connections, prestige, and not incidentally, a willing army at Primrose."

"They're students, not soldiers," Bremusa cut in sharply.

"That might work on someone who hasn't been on the receiving end of their hunt." Cesare smiled at the woman's sick look; she was seeing what her plan would cost her. "You don't get that kind of squad cohesion overnight."

Swallowing slowly, Bremusa looked at the girls carefully. "If I chose not to support them?"

The smile faded from Cesare's face, leaving only naked malice. "I'll destroy you. All your girls will be expelled with disgrace. Lady Kali will declare sanctions against your group. I'll insure the story of the hunt's spread far and wide. By months end, the Scythians will be known as child abusing, man hating, boy killing crazies."

Bremusa stilled, even her breathing stopping as she locked eyes with the boy. Cesare saw the slow realization fill her eyes. She'd come here thinking she could trick him as she'd heard the werewolves had. They'd gutted him like a fish, surely if he'd been willing to cut them a deal, he'd let her girls off.

It had been a decent gamble, but it was built on stupid. The Scythian's greed for Anastasia and Alexandra had outweighed common sense. Instead of facts, they'd gone on guesses, and now they were pinned to the ground with his teeth around their neck. They could submit or be destroyed.

Lady Kali was already in place, armed with the best lies and damning truth. They'd paint the Scythian'sas monsters, abusing boys and hunting them like foxes. With Lady Kali's backing, it wouldn't matter if it was the truth. The Scythian'ssupporters would flee from the pariahs.

They'd go to other schools, but it wouldn't be the same, the stigma would stay with them, a skim of dishonor tainting everything they touched. They'd never again be able to have a group of girls at the same school again. The kids would be broken up into singles, left vulnerable to the moon shadows tender mercies.

"Agreed. Our unconditional support and backing, in return for this going away," Bremusa said, shoulders slumping in defeat. "I thought you'd demand we back you."

Cesare grinned at the woman's sick expression. "I don't want a fucking thing to do with you." Brutal, untamed violence saturated the air, eager malice dancing through the shadows. "If I didn't know you could be useful, I'd kill off the diseased fruits of your womb and salt the ground with their corpses. You fucked up bitches make me sick. Your group of degenerates should be staked to the ground and shot dead like the rabid animals you are."

Bremusa stepped back at the raw, black hatred, that radiated from Cesare. For the first time, he let them see how much it had shaken him to be hunted through the forest by a group intent on feeding him to their dogs. The agonizing pain of sewing up his wounds while bleeding out on the forest floor, stripped of help or warmth. Threaded through that night was betrayal that seared bone.

People he went to class with had hunted him like an animal. They'd coolly planned how to dispose of his body with the backing of their parents. Every one of them had chosen to track him down, hungry to feed his meat to their dogs. There was no line that hadn't been crossed.

It wasn't new, and yet it was. He'd had people come for him before, taunt him, beat him, one had even cut him open. But they'd been alone, not a group armed with the help of their mothers. It wasn't a breakdown of school discipline; it was a complete and utter betrayal of everything school stood for. Every school had bullying, but a group hunting kids with the backing of their parents … it was too far even for monsters.

The door opened silently as Bremusa was trying to find something to say. Turning from the woman without a word, Cesare stalked to the open door. There was nothing to say, no excuse that would mean anything to him. Anger cooled with the speed of lava dropped into the ocean under the pitiless presence of the Mistress.

It sat behind the desk, hands resting peacefully and still on the wood. Black eyes as dead as the abyss looked at him with the unrelenting hunger of the void. That need plucked and strummed along his tattered soul, pulling at the loose threads with brutal need. Tearing his eyes off the horror, he looked out the hole in the wall, without even a window pane to keep the smell of the day out.

Jerold was the last to enter with Sarah staying out in the waiting room. As the door shut, the Mistress focused on the cold teacher. "When I gave you authority over the Thagirion, I thought it would make my school safer, not imperil it further. Exactly how did you not know a rogue group of students was hunting their fellow classmates?"

There was no anger, Cesare doubted the thing sheathed in a woman's flesh felt anything like anger. Instead, it was an alien thing, far more lethal than anger, the deliberation of a tornado as it destroyed a house, the unstoppable tsunami that hesitated before consuming a city.

Stark terror filled Jerold's eyes. "I didn't know." Helplessly, he struggled to find the words to mitigate the disaster, but how do you make up for something you haven't done.

The Mistress looked at Jerold, head slowly cocking to the side. "Your job is to know. I created the Thagirion to keep track of the groups, races, and children of this school. I give them the power to inflict anything short of death to keep the peace and prevent exactly this from happening. I've entrusted you with control of the most powerful students we have. Despite all these powers I've given you, the best you can say is, you didn't know."

Pressure mounted with each word. Gasping in the heavy air, Cesare locked his body in place. Anastasia braced herself against the wall, face a mask of determination as the Ebon Flame filled her eyes, buffering her soul from the whirlpool of force. Alexandra gave a low, lethal hiss, face twisting into the cadaverous visage of the dead. Tapping into the blood in her veins, she filled her body with supernatural strength. It was Elizabeth that was the real surprise, unbent and unbending, she stood in that maelstrom of power unblinking, fey forces strange and mad swirling around her, rainbow threads of insanity dancing at the edge of sight.

Standing to the side, the Bishop panted, gasping for breath in the pressurized room. Legs trembling, a low litany of prayer passed his white lips. Clutching his rosary with the desperate faith of a man facing the maggot white face of death.

The Scythians huddled against the wall, girls already on the ground, silent tears running down their faces as the weight of the air slowly strangled them. Pale and drawn, the mothers hovered over the girls, desperately dragging in air for struggling lungs.

On his hands and knees, Jerold shuddered with each breath he pulled into starving lungs. There was no power involved, no demonic force used, it was simpler than that. When something huge beyond mortal ken shifted, reality shifted with it, adjusting to the great weight as it pushed against the strings of existence.

"I do not tolerate failure, Jerold." The pressure slowly dialed down as if a question had been answered. "You are becoming a liability, but you are not yet disposable." It was said with the same casualness as a man telling his wife the garbage wasn't ready to be taken out.

The Mistress watched the teacher for a silent minute. Jerold stayed on his hands and knees, a low tremble rolling over the man in waves. Black eyes turned slowly, finally stopping on the Scythians with a detached air.

"Your kind are like mayfly's, so brief and fluttering, it's hard for me to see you. Picking out a single ant among the tide is impossible. I remember when your people came into being, but everything after that's nothing more than the advances of fleas on a dog, hardly worth noting." She stopped as if consumed by her own thought's eyes locked on the Scythians. The girls ducked their faces, unable to look on the Mistress, the mothers cried silent tears in shuddering sobs.

"I created the Thagirion to take care of things like this, to save you small things from my wrath. There was a race of akatharton's called the Thagirion, they thought they could take what's mine. Thought I was less than what I am. They are no more." The genocide of a race of beings as powerful as Lady Kali and her daughter, gone.

"The world changes for you little things but it does not change for me. There's nothing in this world that can harm me. Nothing that can stop me. Nothing that sparks pity or remorse. I will take your children, lovers, and siblings, everyone you love. Centuries from now, no one will remember your name unless I name something after you." Huddling into a mass, the girls gave off shuddering cries, their mothers trying to shield them with their bodies, legs giving out under the pressure of the Mistress. Muted and weak, even their cries were tortured by the worlds heaviness.

Cesare stepped forward, firming the wobble in his knees. "Mistress." Barely a hoarse whisper, it was enough to draw the brutal attention of the thing behind the desk.

His knees hit the ground as air turned to stale, crusty syrup. Hot and wet, it flowed across his face as he strained to drag it into dying lungs. Cesare's head dropped, attention collapsing to a single point of ravening need.

"All I hear about you is a litany of sins. Tell me man child, what have you done?" Each word rammed into his soul, straining the fractured, broken thing.

"I made a deal. Their support, if I get them off." Cesare choked out, a winding stream of blood seeping from his nose.

"The coin of choice for insects. Petty dealers of influence, you scramble to make meaningless lives for yourselves. I don't care about your small plans child of the mayfly." The words tore and scraped against his soul, etching lines of acid across black glass.

"I'll keep them in line." Cesare gasped, arms trembling under the weight of her attention, straining to keep him kneeling.

"And if they step beyond your line?" Her voice was the pounding of his heart and the rush of life's blood, vision narrowing with darkness.

"Then we take their children. Skin them alive, string their mewling, whining bodies from the willow tree," Cesare whispered the words to the ground, drops of blood sliding from his face onto the cold stone.

The force let up in a sudden benediction from a thing that knew no mercy. The sudden release threatened to send Cesare to the ground in relief. Locking his body in place, he glared at the floor, breath rasping in great lungful's of life giving air.

"That will do." The dismissal was as abrupt as it was final.

Staggering slightly, Cesare got to his feet. Wiping his nose, he left a smear of blood across his face. Surrounding him, the women didn't offer him support. Not with so many enemies around, Cesare couldn't afford to be seen as weak, not when he'd already bled to get this far.

That didn't stop them from clustering close. Alexandra glared at the Scythians as they argued in low voices ahead of them. Anastasia slid over to his side, hands twitching in aborted movements. Elizabeth came up from behind him, reaching out under the cover of their bodies to lay her hand in the small of his back, gifting him with what support she could.

Bunched up around the staircase, the Scythians had broken into two groups, Bremusa facing off against the other mothers. "… I didn't know!" Bremusa spat out, glaring down at the bow wielders mother. "She hasn't been seen by anyone but students in ages! There was no way for me to know she was … that it was still that powerful!"

"It's your job to know," the women said, sibilant syllables rolling together liquidly. "You jeopardized everything in a wild bid for power. The only reason we agreed to your plan was because we thought you had a plan."

"Don't take that tone with me, Cleophus," Bremusa growled, scowling down at the smaller woman.

"You forget we're equal, Bremusa," Cleophus whispered in a hiss of threat. "You have endangered everything in your mad grab for power." The snake like woman locked vicious eyes on the taller woman.

"We can enroll them in other schools," Bremusa said in a rumbling conciliatory fashion, eyes moving from the sleek woman before her to the third mother standing behind Cleophus.

"They'd be torn apart without the backing of their sisters." Cleophus grimaced. "That says nothing for the promises we made the boy. No, you've committed us to this course of action, we can't pull out without losing more than we can afford. Be glad it won't cost us everything. If we must be slaves, we'll wear the collar with pride." The group looked at the black door with a collective shudder.

It was one thing to know there were leviathans in the depths and another stare into hideously ancient eyes painted in the slaughter of races. To feel its malignant touch running over the soft place of your soul. Whatever they'd thought the Mistress was, nothing had prepared them for the reality. To stare into the eyes of a walking extinction event.

"Never again Bremusa." The tone was layered with steel. "You almost destroyed us. My family, sisters, mother, aunts, brothers, and fathers, if not for the boy we'd be bound screaming into the House of the Dead." Her face firmed, anger draining away, replaced by resolve.

Bremusa opened her mouth, stopping as Atalanta laid her hand on her mother's arm. Looking into her daughters pained eyes, Bremusa deflated in defeat. Power shifted in that small movement, Cleophus taking the reins of leadership as the others admitted Bremusa's mistake.

Stepping away from the Scythians Cleophus started across the room to Cesare. Alexandra slipped from his side, blocking the woman's way to Cesare. Grim and fueled by his malice ridden blood, insanity swam naked in her eyes, stopping Cleophus dead in her tracks.

Slowly, the mother snake opened her hands in the universal sign of openness. "I only want to talk."

"Talk from there." The lethal whisper sliced open the air, leaving it bleeding in its wake. She stood aside as he'd made his deals for power bought with his blood and fear, a price she never would have paid. Had had kept herself under control as the Mistress broke him, forcing him onto his knees and bleeding him out in front of her. She'd leashed her temper and held her peace while her Lord was hurt and disgraced because to do anything else would have destroyed what he'd paid dearly for.

Cesare had known this would be a challenge for her more than anyone. Homicidally dedicated to his well-being, it was hard for her to suppress murderous instincts and let him be hurt. She'd held it together for as long as she could, and he'd gotten what he'd paid for.

Cleophus nodded, making no move to push the dangerous vampire that was all too ready to paint the walls with her blood. The woman's eyes met Cesare's from over Alexandra's shoulder. "You kept your word child, and the Scythians will keep theirs." Her eyes ran over the women. "We'll be in touch."

Cesare watched the Scythians disappear down the stairs in furious discussion. "Do you think they'll hold to their word?" Elizabeth asked.

"You can't buy loyalty," the Bishop said dismissively. "Mercenary soldiers always break when they see their blood on the ground. They'll spend every waking moment trying to wiggle out from under the agreement." The others looked between the Bishop and Cesare, unwilling to openly agree.

Cesare started for the stairs. "Mercenaries are worthless, that's a historical fact. Once a man starts bleeding, he suddenly realizes the dead don't need money. They'd be as much help as a plastic sword if I was counting on their word to hold them to the deal."

The steps pulled on already strained stitches, tearing a grunt from Cesare. "Your view lacks understanding of the Scythians or their agenda. They were always going to approach the three of you," Cesare said, watching the stairs carefully. "They're dedicated to women's rights, and you three make up a block of power that can give them what no one else can. Prestige, power, honor, and legitimacy are embodied in an alliance with you. You're highly placed, with connections to both military and political power, there's no way they'd let you get out of school without forging a tie with you." The woman mulled his words over. That they were commodities others would seek to buy wasn't anything new, but they hadn't applied it to the Scythians.

"They're looking to make a down payment on an investment. Anastasia will rule her own Imperium, Alexandra will command her own fighting force if not the entire Order. Better to hitch themselves to your star while there's still room." Cesare leaned against the banister, watching the rapidly descending Scythians.

"The only thing in doubt was who'd be top. Right now, they have a lot to offer you three but later, they'll be nothing more than one among many. All we did today was cement your who bowed."

The rest of the slow descent was done in silence as the group worked over his words. The woman accepted them without surprise, already knowing Cesare. He didn't make long range plans on the flip of a coin, instead using any misstep to enslave his opponents to his will.

Coming down to the ground floor, the Bishop looked over at Cesare. "I came to see the child that our most promising weapon had sworn herself too. I needed to see the boy that has the Order at each other's throats on if they should grant him the Nail of the Cross. I had many questions after spending a morning with you, I have even more." Alexandra stumbled, staring at the Bishop in awed surprise. "You didn't think we were paying attention, we are, and so are a lot of other people."

Turning back to Cesare, his words were quiet. "You'd be the first non-vampire to be granted the honor. Some hope it's the beginning of the Order opening up to the world, others fear it for the same reason. For centuries, my people have fought for Christ against the heathen hordes. It forced us to depend on each other, to support each other against all comers. No one wants to lose that." Looking over the campus with troubled eyes, his words were quiet. "I will pray on this."