You hand the holy sword to Ivona

You draw the blade and feel a rush of righteous fury surging through your body. The sword is trembling for your attention, demanding that you wield it now and strike down your closest friend. And that fury, that need to kill Ivona, decides what you must do.

You spin the sword in your hand and rest the blade on the flat of your palm. You hold it out to Ivona grip-first. The blade screams through your muscles as if angered at your betrayal.

"Take it," you say. "If I cannot trust you, Ivona, then I can think of no one left in this world to trust."

Ivona takes the sword and her eyes flash purple again and a sinister cast comes over her beautiful face. It only lasts a moment and she returns to the Ivona you have always known.

"Watch, sister," she says. She draws the edge of the blade across her palm and opens a wound that wells with her blood. She holds the sword up to you and shows you the blade. The smear of Ivona's blood on the steel begins to bubble and smoke. It gives off a foul odor of brimstone. The unmistakable smell of a daemon. The realization hits you with a great weight. Ivona, who you have shared all your struggles and secrets with, is a daemon. Or part daemon.

Ivona turns the blade in her hand and offers it back to you. The sword seems relieved to be back in your hands. Returning the sword to you is evidence enough that Ivona is not out to destroy you.

"That proves your heritage," you say softly as you watch the last of her blood burn off of the blade. "And you have convinced me of your story, sister, but I suspect the others will not be so easily swayed. Not after what happened at the abbey. Do you have some proof of the rest of it?"

"I have evidence," she says and turns to her pack set out upon the bed. You find yourself noticing the lovely roundness of her bottom in the breeches she has chosen. You admire the way her hips widen and appreciate the tight fabric clinging to the perfect peach-shape of her mound between her thighs. Goddess, she must be a daemon to have this effect on you. Is that her intent? To seduce you to her cause?

She stands up, wiping the questions from your mind. In her hands she holds two thick and ancient tomes.

"One is a firsthand account of the battle, it refers to St. Magdalena and Hecata again and again as 'the lovers' and describes the magic Magdalena used to hide her child within a stone. And this book," she hefts the other volume, "is much more recent. It describes excavations at a holy city of our order and the discovery of a pink stone with white veins that was warm to the touch. It was transferred to the abbey - our abbey - shortly before my birth."

"The War Mother... she..."

"Yes, she gave me over to a family as an orphan to raise me and took me into the order when I came of age. My life, along with the history of the order, has been a lie that even I believed." Ivona presses the books into your hands. "I came from a daemon rock. That's pretty weird, right?"

The joke reminds you of the old Ivona and you are suddenly struck by the feeling that it is the old Ivona. The one you've always known. She may have a daemonic heritage, she may be partly responsible for what happened at the abbey, but she is the same sometimes-awkward, often sweet and funny girl you have been friends with. You look down at the books in your hands.

"So do you have a daemon form?"

She flashes those purple eyes again and her cleavage seems to grow deeper and more luscious. Her hips broaden and her face, already beautiful, becomes more bewitchingly feminine. She even sprout a beauty mark next to her full lips. But the change is still very subtle. If you did not know her so well and left a room, you would not notice a difference when you returned. Except for perhaps those purple eyes.

"There's more," she says, "I can feel that there is more now that I know it's there, but I don't know how to express it. Sort of like, um, a pimple."

"A pimple?" you laugh.

"Well, it doesn't hurt, but it's this pressure beneath the surface. Maybe it's spiritual, sort of like how you feel the Burning Rose inside you."

"You hear Hecata?"

She shakes her head.

"No. Not like that. Just a feeling." She sighs and sits down on her bed. "Look, Sabine. You can take those books to the high mother at the high abbey, but you and I both know that they won't believe them. Not with Thoros and his minions spreading out from our corrupted abbey."

You sit down beside her, keenly aware of her body and the way her hip rubs against your own. Her smell is sweet and she curls her dark hair behind her ear with her fingertips. You fight the urge to touch her, touch press your lips to her neck and to her ear.

"W-what can we do?" you ask her.

"There is a sword, I found it mentioned in the same book as the stone, they keep it at the high abbey." She looks at you. "It is my mother's sword, Sabine. They keep it as a trophy of her defeat. I know if I held it I would feel the same power you feel with St. Magdalena's blade. Together... we could cleanse the abbey. If we did that, then they would believe me."

"Fight Thoros?" The idea is mad. He is a lord of the abyss. It took fifteen sisters to banish him back to his realm the last time he was defeated. But Ivona seems to mean it.

"I always knew you were something special, Sabine. It was not chance that you made it out of the abbey. Nor chance that we befriended one another. It was destiny."

You are distracted from her words by the passion in her eyes and the shape of her soft lips. She takes your hands and you remember all those clumsy nights together at the abbey, innocent exploration that left an indelible impression.

"Do you believe in me, sister?"