The Vampire & Her Witch

Chapter 1663: Summoned by the Saint

On the longest night of the year, Exemplar Domas Onaitis kept a vigil, guarding the Eternal Flame that burned in one of the Holy City’s most celebrated plazas.

The Eternal Flame burned in a basin of blessed oil more than three paces across and half as deep, covered in gold leaf and shining like the sun even in the middle of Midwinter’s night. Fat flakes of snow danced above the flame in the complex currents of air, carried upward by the very warmth that would eventually destroy them if they drifted too close to the flame.

Domas could have stood his vigil anywhere in the Holy City of Staigue. Even on a cloudy night like tonight, there was no place within the city walls or for a dozen leagues beyond them that his arrows wouldn’t fall, but this year, he chose the Plaza of the Eternal Flame to keep watch through the longest night of the year.

To the thousands of common folk who made a pilgrimage to the Holy City each year, the Eternal Flame was a source of comfort, stability, and warmth. It was a physical manifestation of the grace the Holy Lord of Light bestowed on his people. There was safety in the light, but it was still a thing of fire, and those who approached too closely found themselves burned by the immense heat that left the air itself shimmering and dancing.

A man could worship the sun, but he could never stand next to it, or he’d quickly be burned by it.

Tonight, Domas felt the warmth of the fire on his face even though he was more than twenty paces away, but the wonder a younger man would have felt at such an impressive, holy sight had long since left his heart... He’d stood too close to the flames for too long, and the wonder had long since burned away.

The Emissary of the Ascended Archer could be many things, but he could never be blind. Domas saw more clearly than most, and the things he had seen in the decades since the Holy Saint of Guiding Light took him in had become the flames that burned away both his wonder and his reverence while they forged him into a greater tool to channel the Holy Lord of Light’s will.

The sound of footsteps crunching in the snow intruded on the silence of the plaza as an acolyte finally worked up his courage to approach the Exemplar who stood like a pillar of midnight in a sea of white, wrapped in black robes covered with neatly embroidered patterns of stars.

"Your Worship," the acolyte said as he dropped to his knees in the snow and pressed his hands and forehead to the frozen ground. "His Holiness, the Saint of Cleansing Fire summons you to an audience."

"Did he send you to take my place, Clothiar?" Domas asked, identifying the acolyte without turning away from the flame. "My vigil hasn’t ended."

"He, he didn’t, your Worship," the acolyte stammered. "But, but I have no other duties. I c-can stand for you until you return."

"I may not return, Clothiar," Domas said as he turned his attention to the city beyond the plaza, sweeping his gaze across the neat, carefully planned streets, the wide public plazas filled with icons of faith, and the dozens of chapels and temples that served as the beating heart of the Church’s many orders of faithful.

The night was quiet and peaceful. In some temples, voices were raised in prayer and even song, but most had gone quiet for the night, resting before the celebrations that would begin at dawn, when the sun’s arrival would herald the dawn of a new year and the end of the longest night.

A few priests, like Domas, kept vigils of their own or prayed for a break in the clouds that would give them a portent of what the future held in the coming new year, but the guides who watched the stars were far less common here than they were in the old countries across the sea.

"Come close enough to warm yourself, Clothair," Domas said as he turned away from the flame at last. "If I can, I’ll return to resume my vigil. If I can’t, the vigil ends at dawn. Watch over the flame, that it may burn forever in your heart," he said formally.

"Yes, your Worship," the young man said gratefully as he stood and came close enough to the Eternal Flame to feel its warmth. "As you command."

Domas said nothing further as he turned and left the plaza, sweeping over the freshly fallen snow like a dark ghost. His long, dark hair had finally begun to show signs of fading to silvery gray, but it would be decades more before it softened to the color of the snow around them, assuming he lived long enough to reach the end of his life.

The stars that had guided his long stride and deadly arrows for the past four decades were dimmer than they’d been before, and many of them had gone dark, leaving him with fewer and fewer paths to take on the road ahead. With each passing year, as the Saint of Cleansing Fire placed greater and greater demands on him, the stars grew dimmer still, leaving Domas with the feeling that he wasn’t meant to linger long in this life before he found his way to the stars above.

"Was it always going to be this way?" Domas wondered as he passed by a plaza filled with young Templars, standing what may have been their first Midwinter’s vigil under the watchful eyes of their mentors. "Did you know, when you picked an unwashed orphan boy out of the crowd, that it would end this way? Or have I wandered onto a path you’d hoped I would avoid?"

The night held no answers, and the man Domas most hoped to hear from, the saint across the sea who had transformed him from nothing into a vessel of the star’s own power, might never speak to him again.

It had been more than twenty years since they’d last spoken directly, and the letters they exchanged had become fewer and fewer as the years rolled by. The last one had arrived more than two years ago, shortly before he’d sent his greatest apprentice away, and had contained only two brief lines.

"An arrow’s field of view is narrowest before it reaches its target. Remember that you are the archer and not the arrow, or you will find yourself blind."