“I keep reading and reading,” Maud stopped trying to find the Book of Ephesians in Draka’s oversized bible. She left her thumb between the pages, somewhere within the Book of Isaiah, to look at Pierre quizzically. “But I can’t find anything about Draka and, well, you.” She returned to searching through the headings, “I mean, there’s the Levites and all, but that was before Jesus, so doesn’t count, right?”

  “Still counts,” Pierre grinned from the chair across from her. Then, with a tilted head that made his red curls shift over his brows to hide the one brow he had raised, “How far have you gotten?”

  “Pa-hile-mon.”

  “Philemon,” he corrected. “I had asked you not to read ahead anymore. You finished it too quickly. One must…”

  Maud didn’t look up from the thin pages she pressed hard between her finger and thumb to spread, impersonating his voice and rocking her head the way he often does when he is certain he’s right, “…read slowly and reflect upon each verse within its context.’ Yes, I know.” Maud found the page and spread the bible onto the table, “But it’s hard. I keep wanting to know and it’s never there. Nothing. No Paladins, no Lilith…”

  “Don’t invoke the names of the Enemy’s coconspirators,” Pierre warned darkly. “Especially that one.”

  Maud threw her arms down on the bible with a huff. “Ugh, you keep—why won’t you just—is it in here or not?”

  Pierre looked to the side for a moment with a long sigh.

  Maud shook her head with an eyeroll and began reading the short book. He always seemed unwilling to explain anything except what she was reading, but what did this all have to do with Draka? Or the priests? Or the Friars? Paul and the other disciples went throughout the lands…well, most of the lands around Israel…and taught stuff. Ephesians, as Pierre taught her, was how they decided to limit who was worthy to be a leader in communion, within the Church, and so on and so on and so on. Deacons, Priests, women can’t talk in church—which had nearly led to a very heated argument between them that finally ended with him explaining that it was to address the problem of women being the leaders of the Temples of Artemis and Diana, making converts within the church, sometimes blazingly during mass.

  "Why didn’t he just say priestesses of Diana?" She had asked.

  "I doubt Paul expected his letters to be included in the same tome as the works of Moses and Ezekial," he had answered with a chuckle. "Also, he was...opinionated."

  “Fine,” Pierre said finally, closing his eyes for a moment as if what he was about to say would be more tiresome than what they were about to go over. He leaned forward to put his hands on the table, “Turn to the first page of the Third Testament, it’s after Revelations.”

  Maud blinked at him. “But we’re on Pa-hile-mon.”

  “Philemon,” Pierre corrected her again. He motioned with his hand, “We’ll read that tomorrow. Go on, turn to the third testament.”

  Maud shruggingly pursed her brows and did as she was told. The New Testament and third testament were separated in Draka’s bible by a thick page bearing the symbol of a sword in the ground. It was still shaped like a cross, but its blade was unmistakable. Unlike the Old Testament, with an illustration of colorful clouds of pink and yellow with lush greens of the Garden of Eden, or the New Testament, with the picture of Jesus of Nazareth sitting on the side of a hill with a lamb on one knee and surrounded by people raising their eyes to him, the third testament only had the sword and lines to represent the ground it was pressed into. She blinked at it.

  “We don’t study the third testament to understand God or renew our Faith or anything along those lines,” Pierre tapped the corner of the page, his signal for her to turn it. “It isn’t the Word of God. It’s history, chronicling the life of the First Paladin, the reestablishment of the Church, and the wars and battles against the Enemy. Even the ones we lost.”

  “So, it’s not scripture?” She turned the page to find, like the other Testaments, the list of books within. First Book of the Paladinate, Second Book of the Paladinate, Book of The Fallen, Book of Legions, Book of Songs of the Oaths, and Book of Exitium. Pierre hadn’t answered and she couldn’t look away from their names.

  “We will not be going over these in your lessons,” Pierre watched her. “But, I know Prince Draka would want you to be familiar with them, as he is a member of the Paladinate. So, read it at your leisure. But be warned, much of it is considered conjecture by the Church, for scholarly and theological purposes.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means that we consider it to be mostly guess-work about the events, taking a biased and narrow view of the events to allow them to be more—shall we say—religious and less otherwise. My bible only has the Books of Paladinate and Exitium. It does not have the rest because those are not considered scriptural. They’re considered guesswork.”

  “Oh,” Maud pursed her brows. “Why?”

  Pierre drew in a breath, “How about we begin by you listening and then we get to your questions?”

  Maud shoved the bible slightly away from her and folded her hands together on the table to look at him intently. The slight chuckle was enough to know that he knew she was picking at him.

  “There was a time, about six hundred years ago, when mankind was reliant on machines and industry. Machines that could fly, could go faster and further than a horse. You could go from Talkro all the way across the world in a single day. Humans walked on the moon, too.”

  Maud scoffed at that. Sure, I believe that.

  “They did, supposedly. Anyway, in a war, humanity destroyed the earth and nearly everything on it. Free will enacted in the most human way imaginable. That’s what caused the demons to rise, to spread their corruption, because we, humans, freed them to become corporeal—skin and bones, if you will.”

  Maud’s eyes narrowed. She had seen owls become feathery winged harpies, felt the powerlessness of facing Lilith herself. Corporeal, able to do more than possess a man or pig.

  Pierre’s eyes glistened with the weight of what he was saying. He cleared his throat. “Once the First Paladin began hearing the Holy Spirit and doing His works, everything changed. He was able to reform the Church to reflect, for the first time since Jesus Christ and Saint Paul, exactly what the Almighty intended it to be.”

  “So why isn’t the Paladinate and the Church just called The Church?”

  “Because God chose the Paladins to hear the commands of the Holy Spirit in battle, not to lead masses in communion. He chose us to do those and all the other sacraments. The Paladinate—being of Paladins, Clerics, and Monastic Knights—are a replica of Heaven’s Legions and are commanded by the Holy Spirit and the Holy Spirit alone. Every time the Church Diocese Cardinals have attempted to take control of them it has been…bloody.”

  “If the Holy Spirit commands them, then why would the Diocese think that they should? Wouldn’t that be—I don’t know—blasphemy or something?”

  Pierre scratched his cheek. “The Paladinate uses our churches as barracks, eat our food, require our sacraments to create their ointments and oils. Without us, they would be unable to fight back as well as they have. And the Cardinals have always been the voice of God to the masses, even before all this. It seems fitting that they should have a say as to where those supplies go.”

  “Cause the Holy Spirit isn’t enough of an authority for you?”

  You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

  Pierre’s face hardened. “Whether it is the Holy Spirit commanding them against the undead, Unsainted, or demons, is unquestionable. Whether it is the same when they’re slaughtering villages and laying siege to cities, is entirely different. Do not always assume a Paladin is following the commands of the Holy Spirit. They are also men with the same sinful nature and ambitions as any other. The First Paladin was righteous and only stood against those that stood against God. But the others, following him…well, many of them were just as corrupt as any other warlord, only with the most powerful manmade army ever to be created at his disposal.”

  “Draka isn’t like that.”

  “Prince Draka isn’t like that, yet.”

  Glares met as the two stared each other down. Maud crossed her arms, “You’re biased.”

  “And you’re still na?ve and uneducated,” Pierre shrugged at her, “Which is the only reason I’m still sitting in this room.”

  “I think the Diocese are just jealous that God talks to the Drakas and not you.”

  Pierre let his eyes fall to the opened page in front of her. “We teach the Word of God. We spend our lives learning it, understanding it, forsake all things for Him. But when one of our leaders oversteps, gives a whisper that a pope should be elected above the Cardinals, there has always been a Paladin,” his eyes seared into hers when he lifted them, “…who didn’t devote his entire life to learning the scripture, learning those sacraments, understanding the Word as closely as we must—some are completely illiterate, mind you—that appears and murders them in cold blood without punishment. The Paladins are the Wrath of God personified. We are the shepherds of God’s people. We should be one Church, not separated into factions.”

  “What’s stopping you?” Maud met his glare.

  Pierre softly shook his head as he thought. “Because Ephesians states what is required for a man to become a Cardinal and there has yet to be a Paladin or Cleric who meets those requirements. Like the Paladinate, we will not compromise the Word to appease them. And recently, the divide between the Diocese—as the Prince will likely use to refer to us when he speaks to you about that—and the Paladinate has grown, especially since what happened in Jerusalem.”

  Maud cocked her brow at him.

  Pierre lifted his red skull cap and set it on the table, revealing that he was completely bald where it had been sitting. A patch of smooth skin pressed into curly red hair like a stamp. Maud stifled a snicker because of how serious he looked.

  “There was rumor that the Cardinal of the New Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem, whom had been recently elected to his charge, had done so through corrupt dealings like blackmail and the like. There’s no proof, but the Paladinate protested the election. The Council, in retaliation, decreed that until the Cardinal was recognized, that the Paladinate would receive aid and supplies only when deemed absolutely necessary by the Council.”

  Maud listened haughtily but intently as he spoke. This was something Draka was part of. No matter what, she knew Draka must have been right. If the Holy Spirit commands them, how could the Paladinate ever be wrong?

  “The Paladinate openly denounced him and the Church, claiming that we were trying to command them in place of God,” he drew in a long breath with a frown. “Fighting broke out at some point between the people who supported us and those for the Paladinate. In the end, the Paladinate stormed the Church of the Holy Sepulcher and murdered the Cardinal and the priests who supported him. The blood that was spilt corrupted the Church of the Holy Sepulcher and the relics within—many relics, of Saints—and created nine Unsainted—powerful undead who can raise other undead—ghouls, skeletons, anything that was once alive—as abominations to fight for them—who opened a mouth into Hell beneath it. It took less than three days for the city to fall to the Enemy.”

  Maud’s mouth gaped. Her eyes widened.

  Pierre only sunk, his eyes watering, “Three relics were saved during the fray. Prince Draka and Cleric King Phillip had abandoned the defense of the people with a good number to retrieve two of those and fled. Nearly three million people died or were turned into the Enemy’s vessels. And that’s not including the legions of the Paladinate and the Priests.” For a moment, his eyes stared into blankness. “The entirety of the Second Book of Paladinate is about the hundred and twenty years it took for us to retake Jerusalem from the Enemy because of the Great Fires, and we lost it in a matter of days because the Church and the Paladinate fought each other on holy ground. To this day, King Phillip is campaigning to retake Jerusalem, but as far as I know, he has yet to reach within two hundred kilometers of it. A treaty called The Sacra Carta was signed to prevent such bloodshed shortly after, ensuring that the Paladinate and the College of Cardinals were able to resolve matters more...peacefully in the future.”

  “So many,” Maud blinked. She only learned what ‘a million’ meant a few weeks ago and now, it was striking, almost unimaginable for her that there were that many people in one place, let alone died so quickly. “And Draka was there.”

  Pierre nodded heavily. “Yes, he was. For saving the relics, he was given these lands and his title.”

  “What about his vow of silence?”

  Pierre chuckled, “That was because one of the relics was missing a piece by the time he arrived. A finger, if I remember correctly, and Prince Draka was caught lying about what happened to it. That, and instead of bringing it straight to Sodiulakim, he went North and then into the far east with yet another crusade, which he may or may not have started. Normally, he would have been excommunicated for such a thing—if he weren’t such a high renowned Paladin, I assume—and I’m certain the Paladinate has rules about joining a campaign rather than reporting to their designation, even if they hadn't been the ones to start it, especially with something that would be a weapon of mass destruction in the hands of the Enemy has consequences of some sort. But, I suppose it was one of two things that made them both reward and punish him for it—either he was commanded to do all of it by the Holy Spirit, or he was very good at making confessions. If it had been otherwise, Draka would no longer have the Holy Spirit commanding him and would have been killed long before now.”

  Maud thought for a moment. Draka can be a little shit sometimes. But abandoning protecting someone? He must have been commanded to do it. And what good is a finger? Why is that so important that they punished him for it? Maud wondered. Or was it because he lied about that, too? Draka the liar. Draka the abandoner of his wards. The idea made her sick.

  “It’s only for a year. He’s got eight or so months to go,” Pierre grinned at her as if that would reassure her.

  Maud shook her head, “Draka’s not a liar. He’s good.”

  Pierre’s grin broadened, “I would never say otherwise. Look at me,” He covered her hands, drawing her gaze. “No one could have saved Jerusalem during that by themselves. Even I know that. He prevented two Unsainted from forming, saving so many more because of it. Losing one of their fingers? In six years of travel, of hiding, of fleeing, and of fighting one of the most comparably worst wars in history? He was campaigning in the Eastern Steppes, where people—like those of Talkro, but far more knowledgably and devoutly—worship demons and openly hunt men like him, and that was all he lost?”

  Maud grinned, though her heart still felt an emptiness in it. Draka doesn’t lie. Lying is a sin. Draka’s a Paladin. They don’t sin, do they?

  “Some say the vow of silence was the reward and the title was the punishment,” Pierre’s smile widened at her. “I suppose time will tell.”

  “Paladin’s can’t lie if they have the Holy Spirit,” Maud was certain when she said it. “How could Draka be a liar?”

  “He’s not, but he did lie,” Pierre pulled his hand back so that he could let his back relax in the chair. “And Paladin’s aren’t without sin. You’ll find that out when you read the third testament. I wish they were, and you would think it so, but humans are still humans.”

  “And why here?”

  “Oh,” Pierre smiled wider, “That was because King Phillip was who he lied to the Council to protect. As these were his only lands outside of the Holy Lands, where he is King by marriage, they were forfeit to the Church, who then bestowed them to Prince Draka with heavy handed requirement that the King of Utrecht give him autonomy and recognize him.”

  “Heavy handed?”

  Pierre winked at her, “The Church isn’t only priests and Cardinals who supply the Paladinate and do communion. The power of the Church is greater than any king or government. Unlike the Paladinate, they recognize that power and know that they need it.”

  “So, the Church blackmailed the king.”

  “For lack of a better word, yes,” Pierre seemed unmoved. He reached over to point at the Book of the Song of Oaths, “This one is all the major tenets of being a Paladin or a Cleric, much like Ephesians is for us.”

  “Don’t make light of this,” Maud narrowed her eyes. “That’s deception, the way of the Enemy.”

  “It’s politics,” Pierre eyed her, without moving his finger from the page, “And kings are even less controllable than the Paladinate and far easier to corrupt. So long as the world refuses to allow the Church to govern them, we must use every means we have in order to keep humanity from making the same mistakes again.”

  “Like blackmail and corrupt elections.” Maud crossed her arms.

  Pierre only stared at where his finger was pointing, blinking. “So, about Philemon…”