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The abbess races to the dais and up the steps. She falls to her knees before the altar, ignoring the sudden pain as she slams against the marble and launches into a prayer at breakneck pace. The power of her words crackling on the air like lightning. Her eyes closed and her shoulders quaking, she doesn’t flinch as the intruder flings a full row of pews toward the dais, the wood crashing past her to topple the altar, gone to splinters and kindling as it smashes into the enormous cross that towers over the altar, the wooden carving of the Redeemer crucified to its length watching from on high.
She doesn’t stop praying as the thundering footsteps of the intruder come slowly up the steps after her, they in no hurry now she’s stopped running.
“You can’t keep it from me,” they whisper in a voice that carries effortlessly through the soaring height of the transept, echoing back like a crashing wave around the two of them, threatening to pin the abbess to the floor in its undertow.
The abbess completes her prayer and opens her eyes as a golden light floods up and out from under the marble. The entire church subsumed with it, that light pouring out the soaring clerestory windows – out toward the city, making day of the night.
“What have you done?” demands the intruder, coming to stand before the defiant abbess, and lifting her easily in one massive hand.
“Put it beyond your reach,” she chokes out past the intruder’s crushing fingers around her throat.
“Then what further use are you?” asks the intruder, before they break the abbess’s neck with a flick of their wrist and fling aside her corpse without a second thought. Then kneel to examine the floor of the dais. They close their eyes and splay one hand against the marble. Power boiling off their flesh. They frown as it fades, bleeding into the floor.
“No,” the massive figure whispers. “No!” they shout as they rise to their feet. And roar with impotent rage.
When they’re done, they steady their breathing and shake a small wash of blood from one arm – the only remnant of the other nuns of the cloister, who gave their lives to buy time for the abbess to flee. “I will have it,” the intruder whispers. Adding, “however long it takes,” as they stalk back down the dais steps. The lifeless body of the abbess, her blood staining the altar as the pool of it grows, already forgotten as the intruder slams open one of the massive doors at the end of the nave and ducks their head against the howling wind as they wade back out into the storm.
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Two Hundred Years Later
