Chapter 158: Ashes (Part 2)
“They are the Church’s greatest weapon against us,” Ashes said. “The God’s Punishment Army. Their strength equals mine. Their speed equals mine. And they have no conscious thought left.”
She was still at the window. Outside it, Border Town was beginning its morning.
“When I fought one of them — managed to cut off his right hand — he struck at my eye with the left without a single moment’s pause.” The scar above her brow caught the light when she turned. “Not courage. Not willpower. Willpower you can feel; it changes the rhythm of a fighter. This was something else. When you lose a hand, your balance shifts. You compensate. Even the most disciplined fighter in the world compensates. He did not compensate. He moved as if the hand had never existed, as if the body didn’t register loss.”
Wendy was quiet for a moment. Then: “I’ve only heard of the Army of Judges.”
“The Judges are soldiers. The God’s Punishment Army is something the Church does to soldiers.” Ashes pressed her thumb against the windowsill. “Before the ceremony, they’re Judges — the best ones, apparently. It’s voluntary, they say. The success rate is better when the candidate consents.”
“What does that mean? Voluntary for what?”
“For whatever the transformation requires.” Ashes shook her head. “I heard this from a presiding Judge I interrogated later. He didn’t know the full process. He knew that the outcome was no longer quite a person.” A pause. “I think that’s why they don’t deploy them openly, the way they use the Judges in normal campaigns. When you lose yourself entirely, you become indistinguishable from the things we’re all afraid of.”
“You went back,” Wendy said softly. “To the Old Holy City.”
“I couldn’t let them go so easily.”
She said it without particular feeling. She had spent months hiding in wells and sewers during daylight, emerging at night to move through the believers’ quarters. She had been systematic about it. When the Church launched a citywide search, she had left — covered in blood that had dried stiff against her skin, barely recognizable as human-shaped. She had not felt monstrous. She had felt clean, in a way that nothing before or since had quite replicated.
Something touched her shoulder. Wendy’s hand, warm through the fabric.
“That time doesn’t matter anymore,” Wendy said. “Here, you can live like an ordinary person. After the Months of Demons, after the battle against Longsong’s forces — most of the townspeople have accepted us. This place, the place we searched for.” She said it simply, without theater. “It’s this.”
Ashes looked at her — really looked. The woman in front of her carried almost no trace of the girl she dimly remembered from the monastery: hollow-eyed, still, enduring. What remained was something Ashes could only call settled. As if Wendy had found the location where she belonged and had simply stayed there until it fit.
“I’m not staying,” Ashes said. “That’s not why I came.”
Wendy’s expression held.
“I came to take you away from here. All of you. To somewhere actually safe.” She kept her voice level, not persuasive — she had never been good at persuasion and knew it. “Tilly has gathered most of Graycastle’s witches. There are islands in the Fjords, difficult terrain, sparse population. The Church’s reach there is minimal. No soldiers of the God’s Punishment Army on the islands. We’re building something.”
“The Fjords also have Churches.”
“Weaker. Scattered across the archipelago, unable to coordinate. And if they sent the Army—” She didn’t finish. The witches would move island to island; the Church would follow and find nothing. You hunt the hunters the same way they hunt you.
“Wendy.” She kept her voice even. “The Association’s rumors have already reached Silver City. Which means they’ve reached the Church. They will come here. They never allow witches to organize — not anywhere on the continent. And when the God’s Punishment Army arrives, the Prince will not die for you. No secular lord in the history of this world has chosen to die for witches. He may believe his promises now. In the crisis, he will abandon you. I don’t say this to wound you. I say it because it is the pattern and the pattern does not change.”
Wendy was silent for a long time.
Then she said: “If I left the town to avoid danger — if I left him when the danger came — what would be the difference between that and what you say he’ll do to us?” She exhaled. “I don’t want to be that person.” Another breath. “And I don’t believe he’d do as you predict. Nightingale already asked him the same question. He said he would make this town a place where witches live freely as ordinary people — even if it made him the Church’s enemy.”
Ashes said nothing. She had heard promises like this from lords before; she had heard them from men who meant every word in the moment they spoke it and were gone by morning when the Church arrived. Words were not armor. Words were not swords.
But she had come here for the Witch Cooperation Association, and the Witch Cooperation Association had apparently dissolved itself into Border Town so thoroughly that extracting it would require either a compelling argument or a sword she was not yet willing to swing. She needed to understand what Roland Wimbledon had done and how he had done it.
“I want to speak with him,” she said finally. “With Roland Wimbledon.”
The office in the morning light was smaller than she remembered from Tilly’s descriptions — not modest, just functional. He was already at his desk when Nightingale brought her in. He looked, at first assessment, almost like Tilly: the same grey hair, same line of the forehead, same nose. Looking for the similarities irritated her.
He was dressed plainly. No jewelry, no rings, no display of accumulated worth. Sitting still in his chair with the particular quality of stillness that belongs to people who have learned to wait.
That’s the aura of someone who leads, she thought, and was immediately annoyed at herself for thinking it.
“Welcome,” he said. “Ashes, I’m told.”
“It was my own decision to come to Border Town.”
“A messenger by any other name,” he said pleasantly.
She caught the implication and dismissed it. “I could call myself that.”
“Good.” A small, unreadable smile. “Then, Ashbringer — I hear you’ve come to take my witches away.”
Chapter 158 Ashes (Part 2)
“They are the most excellent warriors of the Church and are used as the top secret weapon against us witches” Ashes explained, “they have the same amount of strength as I, and neither are they any slower than I am, also…” she hesitated. “It seems they don’t have their own conscious. When I was fighting against them, I was able to cut off the right hand of one of the soldiers from the God’s Punishment Army. But he didn’t hesitate for even one second to use his left hand to slash at my eye.
“Even when I turned and fled, his movements weren’t affected in any way by the wound I’d given him. This doesn’t have anything to do with having a strong fighting will. Even if they were able to keep fighting after losing one arm, they would still be affected in the end, for example something like losing their balance, it is simply impossible to adapt to that in such a short period of time.
“I’ve only heard of the Church’s Army of Judges,” Wendy whispered. “Since they have such powerful warriors, why did they never appear during the previous fights against witches?”
“That, I do not know,” Ashes slowly revealed, “Even I only heard the name ‘God’s Punishments Army’ after I later returned to the Old Holy City and inquired about it from some of the city’s inhabitants.”
“You… you went back?” Wendy asked surprised.
“Ah, how could I let those dregs off so easily?”
She stood up and went to the window, “later on I attacked several small churches and camps of the Army of Judges. During one of the raids I caught one of their presiding Judges, previously I had actually thought that they weren’t afraid of death. But having to face torture and death, his performance wasn’t much better than that of any ordinary person, he soon showed a look
of fear and began to plead with me for mercy. It was from his mouth, that I heard the name of the God’s Punishment Army for the first time.
“Before their ceremony they were all members of the Army of Judges, only the best of the warriors will get this honor, and their acceptance must be voluntary. It seems there is a strong relationship between the success rate and their willingness. The big difference between the soldiers of the God’s Punishment Army and us are that they do not get their power naturally or because of their natural talents, no, instead they become transformed artificially.”
“…” Hearing this news, Wendy was quite shocked, she became utterly speechless.
“I suppose the reason why they cannot openly use them during wars, like they do with the Army of Judges, is perhaps because of the side effects of their transformation. When they lose their self, then there is no difference between them and the monsters.”
Ashes sighed, “During the time I was carrying out my revenge I would often hide myself within a deep well or sewers during the day, only coming out in the evening to start my attack against the believers. But when the Church began a complete city wide search, I decided that I had to flee from the Old Holy City. On the day of my retreat, the blood on me was tightly sticking to my clothes and my skin, giving me a very grim appearance. Probably, looking at me out of the eyes of an outsider, I wouldn’t have looked any differently than a mindless beast.”
She only stopped her speech when she suddenly felt a hand on her shoulder, “Now, that time doesn’t matter any longer. Here you can live the good life of an ordinary person. Under the Prince, the life of me and my sisters has become very good. After gaining the experience of fighting together during the Months of Demons and later, after repelling the Longsong Strongholds attack, the largest part of the town’s people have already accepted the existence of us witches. This town has turned out to be the Holy Mountain we have always been searching for.”
Ashes leaned against the window and took a deep looked at the woman in front of her. She couldn’t detect any sign of the thin women with dull eyes that she remembered from her life in the monastery. Looking at Wendy it was quite hard for her to imagine that she had ever looked like she did during her childhood. Both in body and appearance, when they were compared with the child of that time, it was completely different. Moreover, the gentle and natural tone of her voice made others feel a peaceful serenity.
However, there were still some words which had to be said, “I won’t be staying here, nor was that the reason that I’ve come to Border Town.” She paused, “I came to this town, to take all of you with me away from here, taking you to a place which is really safe, unlike Border Town which isn’t such a place.”
“You do not want to stay here…” Wendy froze for a moment. “Why?”
“As long as we live on this continent, we will always be threatened by the Church. Because of this, Tilly had gathered the majority of the witches living in the Kingdom of Graycastle and has taken them with her to the Fjords. That is where she intends to build her own country.”
“Doesn’t the Fjord also have Churches?”
“Because of the special topography of the archipelago and its separation into many islands, their influence can only be maintained on some of the bigger islands, and also…” Ashes twisted her mouth, “there aren’t any soldiers of the God’s Punishment Army on these islands either.”
And if they found themselves there, they would soon have to face the wrath of the witches. Going from one island to another, the Church’s forces would be uprooted, just like when they had hunted us witches.
“You and your sisters must also leave, Wendy,” she continued to try persuading her. “It was a mistake to spread those rumors, you should get rid of them as soon as possible. When I could hear them, the Church definitely has also heard of them, and they will never allow the witches to organize themselves. I don’t think that it will be long before the Church’s Army of Judges destroys the Kingdom of Graycastle. When you have to face the God’s
Punishment Army, do you really believe that the 4th Prince will protect you? No secular Lord will ever be willing to spend his own life to save a witch’s. Right at this moment, he may still be good to you, but in times of distress, he won’t hesitate for even a second before abandoning you.”
After Ashes’ speech, Wendy kept silent for a long time, before opening her mouth and declaring: “I do not know what the thoughts of my other sisters are, but I won’t leave Border Town!”
“At the moment, you’re standing at the edge of an overhanging cliff,” Ashes frowned, “and with every day you wait it will become even more dangerous.”
“If you want to avoid the impending danger, leaving the town, leaving His Highness, what difference would there be between your approach and when he would leave us? I do not want to be such a person, and…” She took a deep breath, “Furthermore, in the case that His Highness ever had to face against the pressure of the Church, I do not believe that he would ever act as you’ve predicted. Nightingale has already asked him the same question, and His Highness’s then answered, ‘I will make this town a place where every witch can live a life of an ordinary person, even if I have to become the enemy of the Church.’ ”
“…” Ashes was unable to respond, she didn’t know what to say, she had already heard too many promises such as this, and even if the other party really was willing to protect the witches, in the end, what would that even change? In the face of such an overwhelming power, it would only end up increasing the number of sacrifices.
Until now she still had to grasp the situation regarding the Witch Cooperation Association, more accurately the death of the Snake Witch Cara. It seemed that the surviving members of her former group have all been fully integrated into Border Town by the Lord. Spreading the news of a safe heaven up to Silver City wasn’t done by one of the surviving witches, but rather by one of the Lord’s own guards. Although she did not know what cunning plans he had, and how he had managed to make the witches trust him, but under the threat of her greatsword, his carefully constructed camouflage would all soon fall apart, most likely.
“I want to talk to your Lord, Roland Wimbledon,” Ashes finally said.
…
Her appointment to see the Prince was scheduled for the next morning.
By that time, Ashes was brought into the office by Nightingale, now having to face this disgusting man once again.
Although she didn’t want to admit it, it was clearly visible to her that Tilly and the Prince both shared the same blood. They both had the same long gray hair with a simple beam in the back of their head that during the sunlight of dawn would have a small touch of silver to it. The symbol of the royal family of the Kingdom of Graycastle. His forehead and nose were also somewhat similar to Tilly’s and the more similarities Ashes found, the more she disliked him.
Comparing his previous appearance at the courts with the normal appearance he showed now, she had to say that his dress today was unusually clean. Furthermore, in addition to well-fitting clothes, she could detect almost no signs of wealth, such as jewelry, earrings, necklaces, rings, and bracelets. Even though he was just simply sitting on his chair, Ashes still had the feeling that he was looking down on her.
The aura of a leader.
She couldn’t stop this thought from appearing.
Well, if only taking his outwards appearance into consideration, he really seems to have taken a step in the right direction, Ashes thought coldly in her heart. But it won’t be much longer that you will be able to maintain such a posture.
“Welcome, I heard your name is Ashes?” The other side took the initiative to start the conversation, “You are a messenger sent by my sister, aren’t you?
“It was my own decision to come to Border Town.”
“But you can still be called her messenger, right?”
“…” Ashes frowned, why was he so emphasizing on her role as a messenger? She did not want to be entangled in such insignificant banter, “I could.”
“Well, Ashbringer,” he said, revealing an unrecognizable smile, “I hear you want to take my witches away?”
TN: Anyone here who detects the pun at the end of the chapter?