The bishop's face, wrinkled and full of keratoses, lit up at this news.
"But... how wonderful!"
He cooled down rather quickly, however.
"What a pity! Such a sacred gift, given to a pagan. The gods really do walk in furrows incomprehensible to us poor mortals."
"Yes, that's true! But perhaps we were all destined to be here, at this very moment, by their will, so that we could contemplate their work through this young man." Aleone quickly interjected.
The priest nodded in agreement.
"Yes, yes, you're right! You really are a wonderful believer!"
"It's an honour to hear you say that." She thanked.
He smiled.
"And so, how does it work exactly?" asked the religious man, piqued by this information which aroused his curiosity.
"Explain!" shouted Aleone to Yugo, pressing down on his sick arm.
He gasped slightly and looked at her with eyes that screamed murder.
"You dirty b-" he wanted to say, but a slap out of nowhere interrupted him.
"I told you to speak!"
Wiping the blood from the left corner of his lower lip, which had burst on impact, Yugo looked at her furiously. Then, he exhaled deeply and stood up.
"So, to use this..."
He paused, glancing quickly at the audience.
"...This gift... I need an object that comes directly from the place where I want to transpose myself. And you'll need to hold a part of my body, so that the ability affects you too."
He sighed.
Using this moment of respite, Aleone intervene.
"There, as he says. He's already used this ability on me and my maid, so I can confirm that it works. What's more, he doesn't have enough energy left to run away because I drained him by evacuating the entire residence."
The old man shrugged his shoulders.
As he turned to his followers who were still waiting for him in their vehicles, he raised an arm and repeatedly tapped his index fingers on his left temple. He then pondered for a few seconds.
"No... that's too many people for such a small body." he finally breathed.
walking over to the vehicles, which were still humming, the bishop said something to the leader of his cohort. After chatting with him for a bit, the old man turned around, and the cars immediatly started up and drove off in a noisy, black procession that generated a symphony of engine noise at full speed.
He returned, accompanied only by the man who had passed him the bag containing the Negacion's crystal core.
"I've told them to get moving, we'll use your method on him and me." He said, pointing with his sceptre at the man behind his back.
"Good, then!" exclaimed Aleone.
As his arm got squeezed by the woman, Yugo grunted.
"Go on, do your thing!" She ordered.
"I told you, I need something from the cathedral for that!" Yugo objected.
The bishop intervened.
"Why don't you use this?" He said, holding out his sceptre.
Yugo looked at the sceptre for a few seconds, lingered a bit, then picked up the staff from the base of the effigy.
"Now you have to hold a part of my body."
They did as instructed, and each took hold of a piece of Yugo's clothing or skin.
"Good, now take us to our holy house!" urged the priest.
"There's a crucial element missing for that!" contracted Yugo.
"And what's that?" urged Aleone.
"Blood! I need my blood!"
"No problem!" She replied.
No sooner had she said these words than she lifted Yugo's able-bodied arm—
...and tore into the young man's palm with her black knife.
Yugo winced as the blood trickled down his hand, dripping to the ground.
He grabbed his sword, and Aleone tried to stop him, but he signalled with his, raised, wounded hand that everything was fine. He then let the blood run down to the blade.
Runes began to spread along the length of the sword, then on him and finally on the other people nearby.
"Mero Displacium" he incanted.
The red flash of light that appeared in a circle, from beneath them, blinded the bishop and his follower, who closed their eyes.
***
The interior of the cathedral's ceremonial room was spacious, and the domed ceiling was so high that the Negacion that Yugo had beaten could have been stacked twice to reach it. The walls inside were also immaculately white, decorated only with floral motifs, painted here and there in a colour close to gold.
The tall stained glass windows depicted important scenes from local mythology, all in colourful mosaics that contrasted with the almost oppressive white that prevailed everywhere else.
Of all the stained glass windows, however, the tallest and widest depicted a rather striking scene, that of a young woman thrusting the tip of her spear into the black heart of a demon with six horns and four pairs of blackish vampiric wings, while angels in the background caused a shower of light to rain down on what appeared to be a city.
The little group appeared, in a scarlet flash of light, in the middle of the room, as Yugo gasped loudly, sweating profusely.
In the centre of the room was a white altar, about the height of a grown man's hips. At the back of the room, just behind the altar, was an effigy of the winged star, similar to the one on the bishop's sceptre.
"Incredible, we really are in the house of our fathers." exclaimed the old man.
Moving a little away from them, Aleone sat down on one of the benches nearby.
'You, preaching devil. You're pathetic!" she thought, staring at the old man.
She sighed.
"Well, we can get on with it then!" she said, faking a warm smile.
"Calm down! We have to wait for the others to arrive first." Contradicted the priest.
She advanced towards him and stood beside him.
"Hm. If you say so, but personally, I'd like to see the prophecy fulfilled as soon as possible."
Looking at her quizzically, the old man huffed.
"I understand what you mean, but we're already close to the goal, and rushing could cause us to miss crucial stages in the proper fulfilment of our creators' will."
"I see. But I have a question, Father... if it's not too indiscreet!"
"Go on." Said the old man as he walked towards the altar.
"Um... Well... what I want to know..." dragged Aleone.
The cleric stopped on the altar platform and took out the crystal, which he placed inside what looked like an enormous chalice, but flat and with a hexagonal base.
"When did you start preparing this ceremony?"
Intrigued by the question, but too focused on his ritual action, the bishop paid no attention to Aleone, who was discreetly approaching him.
she continued.
"Because you see, I started preparing myself a long time ago, when I encountered the gods in person on a fateful day."
She stopped for a moment.
"They told me that I was the saint that was meant to come back, but this time, my life should be that of a traitor in the eyes of my people. They also told me that false believers would call me as a snake, the one we call Tyrant Viper. So I accepted my burden and followed my faith!"
A sly grin took shape on her thin lips.
Of course, she was lying.
"Manipulating, pulling strings, betraying and deceiving... All under the purpose of my divine mission" she said, smiling innocently.
As she closed her eyes, letting herself drift off into the depths of her memory and thinking about her childhood, the lump of hair tucked behind her hair went down, cascading back to the front of her face.
***
Two decades earlier, Aleone, just aged of seven, was playing happily in the courtyard of the public school of Toka village.
It was medical examination day, and even though it was the holidays, the students at the local institute had to be present for the exam, though many of the younglings considered it bothersome.
But for Aleone, it was nothing much of a bother, but rather one of the few moments where she would have been able to see her favorite person, the role model she admired dearly: Doctor Mathyas !
This doctor, who came directly from the town of Stravagon, was appreciated by the small local community, and even more so by Aleone.
This admiration stemmed from one day when, while her mother was ill and everyone was struggling to find a way to cure her, Doctor Mathyas, who was just passing through the village, volunteered to examine and treat little Aleone's mother, free of charge, until she recovered, thus delaying his own return home to his family, who were surely waiting for him.
'He's a true hero!' thought the little girl when she saw the devotion with which the man practiced his profession.
And a few months later, when it was announced that the doctor would be coming to the village occasionally to care for the children attending the local educational institute, she was overjoyed, to the point where some of her friends teased her that she was in love with the doctor.
But she knew deep down that what she felt for this man was not love at all, but simply deep admiration and immense respect.
He had become her role model: a person who ignored prejudices and got the job done doing what they like, regardless of the established rules.
This was the philosophy she had also decided to adopt, and had promised herself that she would do everything to respect this line of conduct for the rest of her life.
However, this philosophy very quickly came into conflict with the rather conservative mentality of the region, which was largely influenced by the faith of the Il-Naearâd.
In Toka, as in many other villages, faith and belief took precedence over almost everything, and Aleone quickly felt stifled, especially since faith didn't necessarily go hand in hand with her new philosophy.
Her behaviour even as a child got her the nickname of "queen of vipers", as the animal was known to be one that didn't follow any particular rule in the animal realm. It ate whatever it wanted, and would sometimes go out of its way to capture a prey, sometimes waiting for entire weeks, hiding and without moving.
That was how the inhabitants of Toka saw the "new Aleone," capable of persisting for days to obtain something. Whether it was an answer or an object. Or of running errands for people, here and there, just to obtain something that would benefit her and help her achieve her goals, even if it went against the general rules of the village.
Even though she was still a child, she had begun to detach herself from the general mentality and already saw adults who led their lives without questioning their convictions strangely, especially when this had several times led to deaths, or to the famine that had been raging for a while.
And this clash of beliefs took another turn when, one day when everything seemed relatively fine, except for the small flu epidemic that was raging —and the famine that had raged the previous winter, due to an attack by a pack of double-horned wolves — an explosion resounded through the village.
As if the apocalypse foretold in the holy writ had decided to occur on that day, the sky darkened, and a Negacion appeared out of nowhere.
The creature was absolutely not similar to the one described in the history and information books available at the village school.
It was gray, whereas a supposedly "Normal" Negacion was dark purple, and it had a pair of wings. The most astonishing thing was despite the massacre it was causing, similar to all its kind, it seemed to be aware of what it was doing.
Whether it enjoyed it, however, was another question.
Aleone ran from the school to her house, hoping that what she imagined would never be anything more than a stray thought, born from all the chaos spreading through the village.
On the way, she saw death and desolation spread. People were crying, others were calling for help or even begging the gods to intervene and remove this evil from their peaceful lives.
She turned an intersection and saw Doctor Mathyas helping survivors out of the rubble.
Bodies lined the path, and the smell of blood and the stench of death were already overwhelming the nostrils of the humans present.
"Doctor! Have you seen my parents?!" she asked in a feeble, trembling voice.
The man looked at her for a moment and shook his head.
"I did not... But I'm sure they're safe!" He exclaimed, trying his best to alleviate the girl's growing anxiety.
She felt a tear roll down her cheek, but wiped it and continued her way, follow by the doctor who just had helped another person get to safety.
They ran for a while, witnessing the misery that had poured on the village, but just when she was about to cross a road, a gravel crashed down not far from her.
Before she could even react, she felt herself being pushed violently forward by strong hands.
As soon as she touched the ground, the crash made its way to her ears and a rubble hit her on the cranium. She sank into a slumber she didn't wanted to enter, while a sharp pain tormented her head.
When she woke up, their were traces of blood on her skirt and arm, and a pain shot through the back of her head.
She rose to her feet — with difficulty, leaning on a nearby rock — and turn her head towards where the debris has landed. What she saw froze the blood in her veins.
The doctor was lying there, with only the upper part of his body out. Blood was flowing out from the side and he struggled to breath.
She ran to him and knelt before the man, tears in her eyes.
"Doc ?.... Doc ?"
He raised his head.
"Don't... worry... I'm fine...." He said, with a voice interspersed with heavy breathing and coughs, which let out blood spurt around.
She cried, grabbing the man's hand.
The doctor raised his other arm and patted the little girl.
"Be a... Strong... Girl and... go on! Your par...ents are surely.... waiting." he added.
He coughed again.
"I'll... Be fine... Now.. Go !"
Seeing the resolve dancing in the eyes of the one she considered her role model, Aleone let go of the man's hand and went as he had asked, to join her parents.
She ran with all her meager strength, to the point where she was out of breath and felt her tongue hanging out as she did so.
She turned at an intersection and ran about twenty metres, but what she saw finished off what little hope she had ever had on that cursed day.
The house where the girl was supposed to live was literally in pieces, and a huge spherical boulder poked its rocky surface out, of one side of the building.
Her mother's body was lying just inside the entrance, but there was no sign of life from her.
Her father was also no longer among the living, his head crushed by one of the sides of an enormous rubble ,which was placed on the upper body of the man as if it were a pillow that someone had amused themselves by placing on the head of a sleeping person.
When this vision of nightmares engraved itself in her eyes, her consciousness let go of its grip and she fainted.
By the time she had woken up, two days had passed, and the village was still managing the disaster.
She didn't felt alive no more, sometimes whispering that she had died with her parents and the current herself was just a body. And that hollowness became more apparent when she also learnt the news of doctor Mathyas' death.
Everything she had ever cherished had been crushed — literally — in a day.
But, things became out of control for her on the day of the grand funeral ceremony for all the fallen victims, where instead of blaming life or nature for its misdeed, the people of Toka started to spout nonsense such as, everything that had happened was the will of the gods, and as such, one should just accept the catastrophe and move on with more piety to avoid angering the deities further.
That was the breaking point.
She openly treated every person of her native town as a fool and soon enough left for the metropolis, accompanied by the curses of the inhabitants still calling her once again the queen of vipers.
In Stravagon, life wasn't all smooth sailing but at least there, she lived by her own free will, and somehow, she had joined a group of people who were either from Toka or had parents and acquaintances who experienced the disaster, but who disagreed with the village's beliefs.
Most of the members were teenagers or young adults, and Aleone quickly ended up at the head of this group, bringing back her nickname of "queen of vipers" because of the sometimes daring but profitable actions that she carried out for the greater good of the group, which was nicknamed the band of red vipers in order to differentiate itself from another group, this one of bandits — called the Blue Wolf — who were raging in the city of Stravagon, but was also from Toka.
And a few years later, the Red viper became a powerful organisation, rivaling with great commercial enterprises of the locality.
It was there that she began to frequent and became engaged to a man she had known before — in an incident — but who was full of promise, although he was called a coward by most of the city.
***
She opened her eyes and sighed.
The bishop laughed.
"What a heavenly coincidence, it's the same for me... well almost!"