Chapter 92: His War Council

Lucian said nothing for five whole seconds.

Lara didn’t either.

The torch sputtered once and the corridor returned to silence.

“Ammo,” repeated Lucian, as if the word weighed on his tongue. “Are you telling us the crystals we saw upstairs are…?”

“Extracted Gifts, concentrated and sealed,” confirmed Raziel.

“The crystals travel to the war front in boxes with the Saint Sofia seal and the Church calls them ’Field Medical Supplies’.”

“But they aren’t,” said Lara.

“No, they are charges that soldiers can break on the battlefield to release the Gift contained inside, a soldier without mana can use a healer’s Gift as if it were his own for a few minutes, enough time to survive or to kill.”

Raziel looked at his wrists, where the chains had left red marks. “Saint Sofia is a factory.”

THUNK!

“And Celestine knows we are here,” he said.

“She knows I am here. She doesn’t know about you two yet.”

“For how long.”

“Not long.”

Lara pushed herself off the doorframe and entered the cell. She sat on the dirty floor without thinking twice, with her knees bent against her chest, and looked at Raziel.

“So tell us the plan,” she said.

Raziel nodded.

“Three phases. First: go down to Level 3 and find the Oracle, she is in the cell at the back, I saw her before Celestine caught me. I need her blood, not much, enough for the Purification Ritual.”

“Is she going to cooperate?” asked Lucian.

“She already did before.” Raziel paused. “She trusts me more than she should.”

Lucian didn’t ask what that meant. He learned not to ask certain things.

“Second phase,” continued Raziel. “While I go down with Lara to Level 3, you go up to Level 1 and talk to the other prisoners. The ones who are awake, the ones who can move, you need to recruit them.”

“Recruit them for what?”

“For the third phase.”

Raziel moved to the center of the cell. On the dirt floor there were scratches, thin lines someone had traced with a stone, a crude map of the sanitarium with three marked levels.

Three days chained up and he had been tracing this.

Lucian looked at him and said nothing.

“Third phase: when Lara and I have the blood and have completed the ritual, we need an exit. Celestine and her Sisters control all the stairs and sealed doors, but we can’t fight them head-on, not in the state we are in.” Raziel touched the map with his foot, pointing to Level 1. “But if the forty-seven prisoners move at the same time, on all levels, Celestine can’t be everywhere at once.”

“A rebellion,” said Lara.

“A distraction.”

Lucian looked at the map on the floor, then at Raziel.

“Forty-seven prisoners against Celestine and her Sisters,” he said. “Those are bad numbers.”

“The prisoners are weakened, drained, and scared.”

Lara closed her eyes, she was listening, extending her Gift upwards through the ceiling and the stones, searching for what was beneath the silence of the Level 1 cells.

She found them all.

Forty-seven presences.

Each one was different, some glowed like almost extinguished embers and others pulsed with something darker and tighter.

Most felt fear, but the fear had layers and under the most superficial layer there was something else.

Lara opened her eyes.

“But not broken,” she said. “There is rage under the fear and they just need a reason to use it.”

Raziel nodded. “Then let’s give them a reason.”

“I go up to Level 1,” said Lucian, and it didn’t sound like a question anymore. “How do I convince them?”

“With the truth,” said Raziel. “Tell them what the crystals are, tell them where their Gifts go and the rage Lara feels needs a concrete target to become something useful.”

“And if one of them warns the Sisters?”

“That is the risk.”

Lucian let the air out through his nose. “How reassuring.”

“You know how to convince people, Lucian. Better than anyone in this room.” Raziel looked directly at him. “Trust that.”

Lucian nodded, once, dryly.

“Lara?”

She was already standing up. “I coordinate from below, when the Level 1 prisoners move, I’m going to feel it before they make noise. I can warn Raziel if something goes wrong.”

“And if Celestine comes down before we finish the ritual,” said Raziel, “I need you to use what you did to the Sister in the corridor.”

Lara looked at him.

“I would have to be close to her for it to work,” she said in a low voice. “Very close.”

“I know.”

Raziel picked up the torch from the floor and gave it back to Lucian.

“Go out through the north corridor, turn left at the second crossing and go up the service stairs. Avoid the central one, the Sisters make rounds every twenty minutes there.”

“How do you know the patrol schedule?”

“I counted the steps for three days.”

Lucian looked at him for a moment, with that expression he had sometimes when Raziel said something that left him without an answer.

Then he turned on his heels and left the cell.

His steps moved away down the corridor, fast but not running, the rhythm of someone who knows where he is going.

Lara and Raziel listened until the sound disappeared.

Lucian turned the last corner before the service stairs.

***

The torch cast his long shadow on the wall.

And there, standing in the middle of the corridor with her hands crossed over her chest and a warm smile on her wrinkled face, was Sister Elena.

Lucian stopped dead.

The two looked at each other.

The corridor was silent.

“Visiting your sick little friend, Lucian?” she said sweetly. “How cute.”

She turned around and walked down the hallway without rushing, with the short and calm steps as always.

Lucian didn’t move until the gray figure turned the corner and disappeared.

On the other side of the corridor, out of reach of any torch, Angelina stopped walking.

She took out from the inner pocket of her tunic a small crystal, the size of a thumb, with a red light pulsing in its center.

She squeezed it between her fingers.

“Mother Celestine,” she said, with a different voice. “The Nyxian knows where he is and wants to get him out. Do I let them?”

The voice on the other side of the crystal was soft. “Let them play a little more.”

Another pause.

“I want to see what the new guy does.”

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