The Abbey of St. Petronia

A young woman stood in the middle of a vast and empty hall.

She wore a woolen tunic, scratchy against her bare skin, with a cotton tabard over it. Her dark hair had been cropped close to her head in a jagged bob. She had done it herself, with a sword blade, not three days ago; her bangs had been falling in her eyes when she fought. She had contemplated shaving her head, but something stayed her hand. When she was little, her mother had spent hours brushing and braiding her hair. She'd always told Teysa how beautiful it was. Such vanity ill-became a paladin of the Order of the Golden Ray... but still, Teysa could not bring herself to sever those last few strands. It was out of her eyes now. That was what mattered.

She couldn't remember how she'd gotten here. The moon shone through the high, arched windows, painting the floor in crisscrossing lines of silver. The torches had all been snuffed and the chapel floor was chilly against Teysa's bare feet.

She wasn't alone. A woman stood before her at the center of a clearing. Pews had been shoved aside to create a rough circular space. The woman was pacing around Teysa, and when she stepped into a beam of moonlight, her face came into relief.

Prelate Vespasia was not a lovely woman. At some point during her lengthy career a mace had shattered her jaw, and one of her cheeks still had a caved-in look. The eye on that side twitched from time to time and wandered when she spoke. Her hair was thin and brittle, her nose crooked, her lips thin and bloodless. She limped when she walked, but she was still the finest combat instructor Teysa had ever known. More than that, she was the only one of the regular staff who had lived the itinerant paladin's life. Novices flocked around her and hung on to her every word, each hoping for some story of inspiring heroism. Certainly she'd demonstrated enough of that. Her name was famous in seven countries: slayer of the dragon Virissit, conqueror of the orcs of Fallen Star Vale, Lichbane. She was gruff in class, but in person Teysa had always found her warm and matronly. She had no children of her own and doted on her students.

"What are your values, Teysa?" she asked as she limped around her. Her walking stick, a polished length of ivory, clicked across the tiles. Step, click. Step, click.

"To- to defend the innocent, to uphold Agamor's justice, to--"

Vespasia thumped the stick into the ground. "No! Those are the Precepts of Agamor. Every novice learns those. I want to know your values."

"Prelate I... I don't understand..."

Vespasia stepped into a moonbeam and stood still, looking at Teysa. She seemed taller than the young paladin remembered, more regal. Her hair flowed down across her shoulders in an avalanche of white, crowned by a silver tiara. That certainly wasn't any part of the prelate's regalia that Teysa could remember.

"Why are you here, girl? Why do you want to be a paladin?"

Teysa swallowed. "I-I want to serve Agamor, and glorify Him, to thank Him for His golden--"

The thok of the stick against tiles echoed across the room and silenced her again.

"Don't tell me what you think I want to hear, girl," Vespasia snapped. "Don't lie to me." Her voice softened. "Just look inside yourself. Why are you here? You can serve Agamor in a thousand ways. We could always use more priests. You get a fancy robe and nobody tries to shove a sword through you. Or a hammer through your face."

"I-I-I..." Teysa trailed off. She took a deep breath and closed her eyes. Her ribs hurt, but she couldn't remember injuring them during practice, and there was a terrible itch on her face as though from a bad sunburn. She tried to ignore these distractions.

"I want to serve Agamor because... because... because the world is full of darkness, Prelate. All of our little towns and farms and cities are just islands of light. I want to serve Agamor because my brother Tobyas can shoe a horse in ten minutes flat, but he faints at the sight of blood. And my sister Lyndretta bakes the finest cherry pies you've ever tasted, but she's scared of dogs and bees. And my mother raised seven children in a tiny farmhouse and never complained, but she's never held a sword in her life. All these people... they all make the world a wonderful place with what they can do, but none of that matters if they can't defend it. So if we need a neighbor who can bake, and a neighbor who can sew, and a neighbor who can shoe a horse, then we also need a neighbor who can hold a mace and a shield and stand in between them and the darkness. Everything we've built, we must defend, or we will lose it."

Vespasia smiled. It was crooked, her smile, but full of warmth. "Good answer," she said. "But I wonder if you are prepared for the obvious conclusion. The world is full of horrors, but if you take your vows, everything they don't do to your mother and your brother and your sister, they will do to you. Are you prepared?" As she spoke, the flesh of her face ran like wax. The sunken jaw and broken nose flowed and reformed into an aristocratic face with high cheekbones, ripe lips and deep-set, soulful eyes.

"P-prelate?" Teysa asked. She reached out, but all at once her arm felt terribly heavy.

The room dissolved.