"Wait wait!" cried the man Ragnar was menacing with a knife. He must have looked, and smelled, like demon out of Ghenne, filthy with drying oudur and with white teeth drawn back in a snarl. The guardsman tried to hold up his hands in a placating guesture as Ragnar ground his face into the cearacrete floor.

"Look, I don't know nothing about no al-Malik priest, but Lord Engel had us grab the Inquisitor, said he was plotting against the Duke," the guard blurted, he seemed to grow hesitant but Ragnar encouraged him with a cuff across the back of the head. The guard yowled and cursed before blurting out the rest.

"We took him down into the lower level, there are hundreds of disused rooms down their, ruins really, Lord Engel said that it was the closest and safest church to confine the Inquisitor!" Though the guard obviously believed the explanation even a passing familiarity with Cannon Law would have told him such a thing was ridiculous. Priests could be and sometimes were arrested like anyone else, though their trials had to be conducted in Ecclesiastical courts rather than in civil ones. 

"Good," Ragnar rumbled and then looked hopefully at Orion, "Can I kill him now?"

___________________________________

Annika stilled her mind. It was merciful that it was dark, to do what she was about to do in bright sunlight would have seemed even more of a sacrilige. Part of her mind told her that she shouldn't attempt the feat, that as a Daughter of the Church she should wait for the Pancreator to send some other form of deliverance, but what if this was the Pancreators will? Was it more of a sin to pass up his bounty, didn't that smack of hubris. The stilling of her mind obviously needed more work if she was pondering such theological questions. Though the warding circle had been broken by Mobian, she was still securely changed, and whatever the Avestii had seen on the altar had put him deep into the merciful embrace of unconsciousness.  Psychically free but Physically chained was a paradox Estakonic pondered in their meditation, a way of thinking about the limitations of the flesh rather than an expectation of being in this exact position. The trick was to make the psychic physical which was, unfortunately no mean feat. As gently as she could Annika stretched out with her mind, finding the warm center of Mobian's being as he lay across her on the bier. A litany poured from her lips in hushed whispers as her body dissasociated and she seemed to suddenly feel as though her whole body were asleep the way a limb sometimes did after sitting on it while reading. A moment later she felt Mobian's body in the same way. Prickling pain shot up two sets of fingers as nerves cross connected in a way never imagined by the begin forces of the Pancreator's design. Annika opened Mobian's eyes and the Avestii came to his feet, his motion jerky with the muscule memory of a smaller woman. For a moment Annika toppled, disoriented in the darkness as she groped along her own body with calloused fingers to find the cuff on her right hand. With clumsy fingers she undid the claps, fumbling the attmept several times with the large graceless fingers, trying to ignore the screaming pain and mental alarm bells that were roaring in her mind. As her hand jerked free the psycic link broke and Mobian's body, once again animated by its proper spirit collapsed to the floor, his head striking the bier with an unmusical thunk.

"Blessed Panc..." Annika turned and vomited as her stomach churned at what she had just done, a thousand thousand biological impulses briefly doubled by the grotesque mental puppetry. In the back of her mind her Dark Twin capered and danced with delight. Wiping away the bile with her freed hand, she fumbled open the remaining cuffs and then slid from the bier, body aching from the uncomfortable pose into which it had been contorted. Her fingers found Mobian's pulse, strong despite the beating he had taken and she was pleased not to add his death to her sins this night.

"OK," she murmered and then, not quite believing she was doing this for this frothing bigot, she looped Mobian's arm over her shoulder and lifted the man as best she could, half carrying, half dragging him toward the door. What was she doing, she should leave him, he would only slow her down, better yes she should kill him, he would certainly do the same to her if their positions were reversed. If there was even a chance that she could save Orion she should... With her free hand she reached in and found her Jumpgate medallion, pulling it from her shirt and holding it before her. Her Dark Twin screamed at the interuption but she was able to, barely, ignore it long enough to grasp the polished symbol of her faith.

"Blessed Pancreator, Illuminate my path as your worlds Illuminate our passage through the Empyrean," she beseeched. A pale glow, just enough to illuminate the way infront of her sprung to life. A woman dressed in black stood in the doorway, a sardonic expression on her face and her arms folded.

"I take it you have decided not to join us," the woman all but purred. Annika drew in her will but in the blink of an eye tendrils of icy blackness sprang from the woman's back like an Urth Angel of lore. Lightning fast they lashed at her, a rind of frost forming at the womans feet as the black charnel power poured through her. Annika dropped Mobian face down onto the flagstones and dived out of the way, barley avoiding the strike. She scrambled behind a pillar, amulet still gripped tightly between her fingers and determinedly keeping her eyes from the Altar. Her hands felt around and found a lose flag stone, she pried it up and hurled it at the antimonist as she stalked towards her. A tendril batted the missile away even as others lashed out. Annika scrambled away, scarping her palms on the edge of a ceremonial window as she ducked back behind the bier on which she had been imprisoned. Desperately she lashed out with her own mind, though it was an instinctive blow rather than anything planned. SHe felt it strike the antimonist's mind like a boulder impacting a glacier, a momentary curiosity, devoured an eyeblink after it appeared. Annika and her Dark Twin screamed in thwarted frustration and very real fear.

"There is only one way this ends," the woman sneered, "either join us or make it easy on yourself and ill end it quickly." Annika cast around for an idea and then, suddenly, it hit her.

"That is actually two ways," she called from her cover behind the bier.

"How very pedantic," the antimonist sneered. Annika sprang from behind the bier, diving over the stone box. The woman slashed her tendril down to protect herself, but it wasn't an attack, she dove past the woman, evading the tendril of icy cold by millimeters, tucking into a roll. Her assailent spun to deal the death blow, delayed for but a few heartbeats, but Annika's finger swept in a curve on the flagstone, closing the circle with blood from her pricked finger. The tendrils of dark vanished in an eyeblink leaving the woman looking shocked and furious.

"How did you..." she demanded and then her confident sneer returned.

"Very clever Priestling, but I have but to step over the threshold and..." something flashed over Annika's shoulder and struck the woman with a sound like a meat hook striking a slab of beef. The antimonist let out a choked gurgle as she clutched at the metal shaft of the candelabra which now protruded from her chest like a boar spear impaling a kill. She reached towards Annika, staggered and collapsed to the ground in a spreading pool of blood. Their was an agonized scream somewhere else in the catacombs an Annika felt queasy spill over of a psychic link being severed. The third of the three women she had seen in the park was here, and she knew what had happened and where.

"Blessed Pancreator... purge the... purge," Mobian gasped before sinking to his knees.

"NO! no stay with me," Annika commanded rushing over to the Avestii and turning him away from the altar before he accidentally glanced at it again. He stumbled uncertainly, his skin clammy and unhealthy feeling to the touch. 

"We have to find a way out of here," she told the half conscious priest. Much as she hated to admit it, she wished he had his flame gun right about now...