Chapter 1176: Using Power Differently (Part Four)

In some of the oldest records of the Inquisition that Diarmuid had encountered, or at least, the oldest ones pertaining to their actions during the founding of the Kingdom of Gaal, there were repeated mentions of ’hedge witches’ and ’heretical, demonic shamen’ who had to be purged from the land.

Before he’d come to the Vale of Mists, he’d accepted the teachings of the church that, even when a hedge witch offered healing, she did it for dark purposes that would only corrupt the minds and hearts of the people she turned into her unwitting thralls with her witchcraft.

Since meeting Lady Heila, however, he’d begun to wonder if those early victims of the Inquisition had just been followers of a different path, one they’d learned from the Eldritch who lived here before they arrived. Men and women used the power they could to help their villages thrive in the earliest days of settlers arriving from the old kingdoms. People whose only crime had been to work miracles for their own people without the blessing of the Church.

"It’s simpler for the Church to declare any use of power but their own heretical," Ignatious said with a heavy sigh. "Only one source of power, and they’re kept under tight control. They’re taught only specific things, and they’re bound by shackles they place on their own wrists, never imagining that life could be any different."

"That’s the third time that you or Lady Ashlynn have referred to paying a price that we don’t understand," Diarmuid said. "What is it that’s been done to us that we’re so unaware of? I promise, if we can withstand Sir Ollie’s dark wind, we won’t break under the weight of this truth."

"We’re getting there," Ignatious said. "First, there’s one other piece of the puzzle you need to understand. An Oracle cannot do things the way a Witch does, and the opposite is also true, even when they seem to achieve the same outcome. Because the source of their power is different, the method of using it is different."

"There’s always more than one way to do things," Isabell said, finally rallying enough after facing the ghosts of her victims to join the conversation. The plate full of sweets had helped to take her mind off what she’d experienced, but more than that, Thane’s quiet, reassuring presence next to her, combined with his words in the hallway, had done a great deal to restore her equilibrium and patch up old wounds.

"A crate can be lifted with a lever, or with rope and pulleys, or even a winch," Isabell offered as an example. "The result might be the same, but you need different techniques and different materials. There might be a ’better’ or even a ’best’ way to do something, but if you don’t have any rope, a lever will have to do."

In the same way, the very best thing that Isabell might be able to do in order to ease the strain of the burden she carried from that horrible war would be to dedicate herself to helping the survivors rebuild their lives, but she’d lost that opportunity when she fled the Emerald Kingdom at the end of the war.

Now, she would have to take hold of the opportunity in front of her, to use the power she’d gained as the Hemlock Witch in a way that honored the memory of those who had died in that tragedy, and if she could, to prevent such tragedies from happening again.

"Exactly," Ignatious said, nodding at the engineer as she rejoined the conversation. She’d regained some of the color in her cheeks and she had started nibbling at the edges of a walnut-tart as the conversation flowed around her, but now that they were moving into a more precise, technical discussion about the use of power rather than an abstract conversation about the Church and their doctrines for controlling it, she was starting to come back to life to engage with the topic.

"To use Isabell’s example of levers, pulleys, and winches," Ignatious continued. "Each source of power has its own ’tool’ to use to wield power. For vampires, you can think of that tool as ’death’ itself. It’s more complicated than that," he said quickly as he saw some people beginning to frown.

"We’ve already conceded that words may not precisely fit, so please, don’t let your minds get caught on how ’death’ as you think of it can explain everything that vampires do," Ignatious said. "Unless you become one, the subtleties will never make sense. For now, accept it as a way to understand that a vampire’s ’lever,’" he said, using Isabell’s example, "is death."

"In the same way, a witch’s power is bound to ’nature,’" Ashlynn said. "Just as Ignatious said, it’s deeper than that and tangled up in the flow of the world’s power, but it begins and ends in the natural world, drawn from the most primal, elemental forces of the world. Some things are easier for vampires than they are for witches, and some things are easier for witches."

"I’ve seen Lady Ashlynn’s healing miracle," Diarmuid said as he carefully considered the explanation he’d been offered. "It seems odd to me to say that Oracles draw their power from ’life’ to balance a vampire’s power over ’death.’ Life seems to belong to Lady Ashlynn’s kind and the power of nature to nurture living things. So, if that’s the case, what is the power of Oracles? Light?"

"No," Ignatious said, shaking his head as Diarmuid wandered off the mark. It wasn’t hard to see how he’d arrive at that conclusion. Death and darkness seemed to go hand in hand with vampires, and the only Oracles that the Church venerated were the sun and stars, both of which drew heavily on the power of light. But the truth was much more complicated than that.

"It’s the power of ’fate,’" Ignatious said as his gaze shifted from Diarmuid to Loman and back again. "Oracles manipulate destiny itself, and that’s part of why your powers come with such a heavy cost..."