I never heard of something like that,” Wendy, closed her eyes and began slowly to tell, “Since the first moment I can remember, I’ve lived in a monastery in the Old Holy City, surrounded by high walls, with no view of the sky beyond. Everything was taught to us with hospitality by the nuns, things like reading and writing or the understanding of maps. I still remember the name of my teacher, Faria. She once gave us a book to read, it was the special introduction about the Old Holy City. There were churches in the city, monasteries, libraries, memorial halls and heroic walls, but I have never heard of a prayer Room in the city. I lived in the monastery for more than 10 years, until the accident happened…”
Wendy had already previously mentioned to Nightingale that the monastery was one day attacked by a witch and many people also died during that attack. Taking advantage of the whole chaos, Wendy was able to get out of the monastery, “Also I don’t know which witch had so much courage to dare to challenge the church alone, but she saved you at least.”
“No, Veronica, the with came from inside the church,” Wendy shook her head, “She was, like me, a member of the monastery.”
“What… do you mean?”
“The girls living in the monastery could be divided into three groups, one group consisted out of people like me, who stayed from early age in the monastery, not knowing their own origins; one were orphans who lived on the streets and were adopted by the local church and afterwards sent to the monastery; and the last group consisted out of girls sold to the church by their own parents. We were all separated by age and placed into different quarters, and even the teaching wasn’t the same. From an early age onward we learned how to recognize the words, from ten to fourteen years old we studied carols and after fourteen we were schooled in etiquette. The early classes were called the literacy class by the nuns, and the older classes were called the choir class and the ceremony class. Once we became adults we would be sent away from the monastery.
This was the first time that Nightingale heard the other speaking about this – before, Wendy had never elaborated on her experience during her life in the monastery.
“During the first few years, I could often hear other girls screaming during the night – the screams came out of the direction of the choir classes and ceremony classes. I didn’t understand what was going on until I was old enough to get into the choir classes. Then I found out that during the nights higher ranks of the church would visit the dormitory, always dragging a few girls out of their beds, and only at daybreak the next day would they be sent back. But sometimes… not all of the girls would come back again.”
Nightingale clenched her lips, of course, she clearly knew what Wendy meant.
“This kind of thing would happen once or twice a month, frequently even two days successively. Then it was the day that I was selected. It was Faria who pulled me out of the room, whispering all the while into my ear that I should just bear with it, everything would become well. I was dragged by her into the corner of the garden where a room was built halfway underground. The room was brightly lit, at one side I could see how the females of the ceremony class being tortured, there were four to five men…” Her voice slightly shook. “When they came over to me, one of the women suddenly broke out from her shackles, grabbing the man closest to her, grabbed him by the neck and killing him just like he was a chicken, easily twisting his neck.”
“She… had awakened?”Reading anywhere else than volaretranslation, you’re stealing the translator’s lifelihood.
“I do not know,” Wendy shook her head, “those men had taken off their clothes, but they still wore their God’s Stone of Retaliation around their necks, but she was still able to kill one after another. One of them she seemed to want to skin alive, tearing one limp off after another, while he was still living. The last words he said before his death were… ‘an extraordinary’. The screams of the men alerted the guards and Faria who stood outside of the room. They immediately opened the iron gate and rushed in, but the scene in front of them rooted them on the spot, while the other woman directly rushed in their direction.”
“Was she a witch?” Asked Nightingale thrilled, “Were the guards also not an opponent for her?”
“The gap was simply too great. I later learned that those guards belonged to the Army of Judges. One of them blew his whistle while the other drew his sword. However, when the first one stopped blowing his whistle, she had already stepped in front of him, and penetrated his chest with her arm. In front of her, their armors were nothing more than a thin piece of paper.”