Crest of the Strongest Knight - Final Seven

Chapter 203 - Ritual

Why would she need my blood...? Viviane was perplexed. She hadn't shot a single arrow yet, devoting all of her focus and attention to mastering the power of the Lake that she was channeling through her knight.

For some reason, she found its power to be amplified compared to usual. Perhaps it was because of her proximity to Merlynne, or perhaps it was simply because she had grown stronger. Either way, its almost torrential flood of strength required a great deal of focus to properly maintain, and that focus now threatened to drift away as she found herself confused by Amelia's words.

Medrauta was the first to feel the effects of Viviane's ebbing concentration. Though it was slight, she felt a fraction of her strength slip away as she parried Amelia's latest blow. She shuffled away from her opponent, opting to take a more defensive posture until Viviane sorted out whatever she was dealing with.

"You're wondering why I need your blood, aren't you?" Amelia smirked, directing her words to Viviane. "All that time you spent browsing those books in the shield towers... You must have seen it."

"I don't know what you're talking about." Viviane said carefully, knowing that Amelia was trying to unbalance her and destroy what was left of her focus. While Medrauta was capable of fighting Amelia even without the power of the Lake, she would be hard-pressed to keep up with the witch if she lost the ability to suppress Amelia's regeneration.

"Oh, you know... The reason behind the Versal Curse bestowed upon the Emperor by Aluvsha himself. The very reason why the church continues to suppress same-sex marriages even to this very day." Amelia shrugged.

Viviane's eyes narrowed. Through her perusal of the books within the shield towers, she had learned a great deal of the history that had been suppressed by the church. The majority of the knowledge she acquired was nothing short of blasphemy in the eyes of the clergy, but it was information that had given her much insight into the true foundations of the empire.

Among the many things that she learned, Viviane had come across something particularly interesting. The truth behind the church's suppression of same-sex marriages was not due to tradition, but rather a result of Soleil's greatest shame which caused the entire world to change within the span of a night.

Before Soleil's fall, all couples were capable of conceiving children so long as their love for each other was pure and true. This was the sole mercy Aluvsha had afforded the humans who managed to survive under the ruinous rule of the Witch Queen. It was only after Aluvsha struck Soleil with the Versal Curse that conception became impossible between all couples until they were married.

More than just a simple ceremony, marriages across the continent had to be officiated by a proper member of the clergy, invoking Aluvsha's will and binding the two lovers for life. It was a ritual that expressed the greatest devotion and allowed them to conceive children, regardless of their sex.

Indeed, it was for this reason that the empire's clergy refused to perform the ritual of marriage for same-sex couples, standing by Aluvsha's decision to punish Soleil's choices by forcibly changing her into a man through the Versal Curse.

As interesting as these bits of history were, Viviane had absolutely no idea what they had to do with her blood or Amelia's ritual, for that matter.

"Ah." Amelia nodded, realizing that Viviane likely hadn't drawn the proper conclusions merely from reading the material in the shield towers. After all, they were records of history and not particularly explicit when describing the nature of the relationship between Soleil and the Witch Queen. "I'm surprised you didn't know about it. Soleil and the Witch Queen had a child. A cursed child, but one who continued to live nevertheless."