Cassandra's Prediction

Job Details:

Job Sign-Up: Page 17, Post Number 405

-Outside The Ancient Temple, midnight-

Clad in her navy blue attire and armed with Saint Sinner Valentine, Diana had made sure to purchase a sling for her assault rifle and a dropleg holster for her Suppressed Handgun so that she did not have to awkwardly switch between them during this job like she had had to do in Fulci Hospital. On her left wrist was the silver bracelet she had found nearly a week ago. It did not have any special powers, but it was oddly comforting to know that if Diana walked the path of righteousness she was not totally beyond redemption for her numerous crimes in the service of her parents. Diana had left Ami behind and had left her smart glasses because neither of them would be needed for this job. She was also not sure how they would function in a different world and did not want to have to fight malfunction equipment in addition to whatever lurked beyond the portal.

Diana had come here on behalf of Cassandra, the vampire living in the temple who had claimed that she was not the source of the hunter zombies and black-robed men who had been threatening Haunted Village. Diana had initially treated the claim with some skepticism, but once the face in the portal showed up, Cassandra had been proven right. When they had last parted the two had made a bargain. Cassandra had vowed to curtail the zombie incursions into Haunted Village in exchange for Diana's aid in defeating the Dark Mistress on the other side of the portal. Cassandra had done her part and now it was time for Diana to uphold her end of the bargain.

When the huntress had walked through Haunted Village the villagers had noted that the zombie incursions had stopped almost completely and none of the black-robed men had appeared either. There were no hunter zombies and there were almost no regular zombies; what few zombies spotted on the village borders were easily dispatched by the town militia, which had remained on alert ever since the last incident a week ago. While walking the forest path leading to the hilltop temple she had noted that there were no zombies whatsoever. Diana was pleasantly surprised to find that Cassandra had kept her end of the bargain without exploiting loopholes or trying to invoke the letter of the agreement to do as little as she could get away with. Diana would now do her part in good faith.

Diana knocked on the wooden double doors three times. They opened only a second later and on the other side was Cassandra flanked by two of her faithful black-robed monks.

"Ah, welcome. I will admit that I am surprised to see you. I expected you to try and get out of our deal, but here you stand, ready to fulfill your end of the bargain." Cassandra greeted Diana with a slight smile.

"I do not go back on my bargains." Diana replied seriously. Diana had not built a reputation as a quiet but solid worker by backing out of bargains whenever she had gotten what she wanted. The huntress always kept to her end of the agreement and that was why Mister Burke had trusted her with some sensitive work on his behalf.

"I am pleased to hear that. If every human I had met had your sense of honesty, then my body count would be a lot lower. Now please, do come in. The preparations are almost complete." Cassandra bade Diana. The huntress entered the temple and the monks shut the doors behind them.

-Inside the temple, in the main hall-

Cassandra and Diana walked through the foyer and through the double doors leading to the main hall of the temple. As the pair walked towards the stained glass window with the woman in white smiling at them Diana felt a surge of dark energy. The face of the violet-haired woman with the matching eyes had peered through once again. She looked at the huntress and the vampire with curiosity. She probably could not believe that the unlikely duo was soon going to challenge her in her domain.

Seven of the monks rushed forward, raised their hands, and began chanting in unison, firing beams from their hands that converged on one point. It created a shimmering black barrier that forced the face back and made the window return to normal. They remained in place with their hands raised and shimmered black along with the barrier. Cassandra saw this and spoke to the huntress.

"My men cannot contain The Dark Mistress much longer. Thirteen of my faithful followers have already given their lives to delay her arrival. We must enter the portal soon and defeat her before she breaks through into this world." Cassandra notified the blonde that time was running out.

"What will we need to do to defeat her?" Diana asked.

"We must go into her realm and defeat her in battle." Cassandra answered simply. Diana nodded. A monk approached the pair and bowed to them.

"Mistress, the portal has been contained. Let me know when you are ready to conduct the ritual that will grant you entry to the Dark Mistress' domain." He said to the white-haired vampire.

"We are ready to begin. Are you ready, stranger?" Cassandra asked Diana. Diana turned to her and nodded.

"I am ready." Diana replied laconically. Cassandra turned from Diana and spoke to the monk.

"Please begin the ritual immediately." Cassandra requested.

"It will be done." The monk replied. He gathered his fellows and they shut down the barrier. They then turned their attention away from the pair and began glowing red, raising their hands and chanting as a red circle formed beneath the stained glass window. The circle began to fill in and shimmered like the surface of a pond.

This was it. Diana and a vampire she barely knew were about to enter a portal to fight The Dark Mistress, the being purported to be the real threat to Haunted Village. Diana would be cut off from the real world during this mission and she would have to trust that Cassandra would not betray her in any form or fashion.

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"The portal is ready." Cassanda stated succinctly. Diana looked at her partner and nodded. The monks looked at them in anticipation. After thirteen of them had given their lives to buy time for the pair to stop the Dark Mistress the huntress almost felt bad for killing six of them a week ago. She could think about that later... right now they needed to get a move on before it was too late and their target broke through to this world.

"Let us go then." Diana replied laconically. Together the pair walked towards it and stepped through the shimmering red portal with no resistance. After that things got... strange.

-Inside the portal-

Cassandra and Diana had stepped through the portal to find themselves in a shimmering red corridor that seemed to stretch for an eternity. At the far end was a shimmering black void that seemed to beckon to the huntress and the vampire. Cassandra pointed to it with the index finger of her right hand.

"We must get to the other end as quickly as possible." Cassandra instructed the huntress and took off running. Diana followed suit and began following the white-haired vampire as fast as she could go. She was glad that she had went to the trouble of buying a sling for Saint Sinner Valentine because that accessory made carrying the assault rifle a lot easier. It left her hands free while she ran and made sure that the rifle was easily accessible should she need it. That was good because the hallway seemed to narrow as they ran through it.

"The portal my faithful followers made is beginning to collapse! Hurry!" Cassandra instructed. Diana did not bother speaking and kept up with her partner as they reached the halfway point of the portal. Cassandra leaped into the air and sprouted black bat wings, then gave them a mighty flap and propelled herself straight down the hallway, leaving Diana to cover the rest of the distance on foot. Diana saw the walls begin to close in and used a Reaper's Sprint to close most of the distance, then ran normally the rest of the way.

Cassandra and Diana jumped through the shimmering black portal together with only seconds to spare. Once they passed through the shimmering black portal they felt themselves hit cold ground and lay there for a few seconds. After a few seconds they finally stood up and found themselves standing in a very familiar place.

-On the other end of the portal-

Cassandra and Diana were standing in the main hall of the temple, but it was remarkably different from the one they had left only a few minutes ago. The area was lined with torches in wall sconces that burned violet but still somehow put off enough light to see by. Diana assumed that The Dark Mistress' realm did not operate on the same rules of logic that the normal world did. As the huntress looked around she noticed that violet torches were not the only thing that was different about this version of the temple.

On the altar lay the body of a black-robed monk with his chest cavity open and the heart missing. Cassandra frowned deeply as she put away her bat wings. She approached the altar and spoke to Diana while facing forward, the acoustics of the hall carrying her voice to Diana.

"The Dark Mistress enjoys blood sacrifices. She does not need them to survive or to power her magic. She simply enjoys killing people." Cassandra reported grimly, pointing to the side of the altar that faced the double doors. In front of the altar lay more black-robed bodies, all with their hearts missing. It was a grim scene, one that got the huntress to thinking before she ventured to ask a question of Cassandra.

"Is that what you meant by your followers giving their lives to buy us time?" Diana asked. Cassandra grimly nodded.

"Whenever I led a ritual to temporarily block her portal in the stained glass window, The Dark Mistress would try to claim me with her dark magic, but my followers always put themselves between me and her." Cassandra answered with regret for the lives that had been traded for her own. Diana remained silent as she looked at the bodies of the monks. The white-haired vampire turned to her

"The struggle to keep her sealed away has gone on for decades. It ends tonight. I will avenge my followers and put an end to The Dark Mistress." Cassandra vowed to Diana. Diana did not say anything and looked at Cassandra. After several moments of silence the huntress finally spoke to the vampire.

"I will keep my promise to help you stop her." Diana made a vow of her own.

"I feel that my story will end here. It will end tonight." Cassandra said. Diana recalled the origin of the vampire's name in ancient mythology from another civilization and recalled how the prophetess of Troy was not believed whenever she made a prediction. However, the prophetess was always right but was never believed thanks to a curse placed on her by the god she had promised to marry but had backed out after receiving the gift of prophecy. The blonde mage thought over what she was going to say before speaking.

"Considering the origin of your name, I can only hope that you are wrong." Diana said diplomatically. Cassandra smiled a little.

"For once I hope that I am wrong too. But it is not up to me." Cassandra said fatalistically. Diana knew that feeling all too well. Try as she might to play the heroine and do good with her particular skill set, she felt that in the end she was still destined for darkness when she died. Doing her best to avoid that particular thought, Diana went silent and stared ahead at the double doors in the distance. The Dark Mistress was not going to come to them.

They would have to find her instead.

"I suggest that we go through those double doors over there." Cassandra said to Diana, using the index finger of her left hand to point towards the doors. Diana nodded.

"I agree." Diana replied laconically. Together the pair walked towards the double doors, their footsteps echoing in the hall. Diana did not know what to expect from this place other than danger, so she brought up Saint Sinner Valentine and loaded it with Silver Bullets. She would start out with those and see if the mayor's words about bringing a silver weapon still held true here. If Silver Bullets did not work she would try the Anti-Mage Rounds... if that did not work then Diana would use her death-dealing magic.

If the magic gifted to her by Death itself did not work then there was no hope of stopping The Dark Mistress.

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-Inside the foyer-

Cassandra and Diana stepped into the dark temple foyer and found a door to the left and a hallway that led to stairs to their right. In front of them was a blank wall where the double doors to the temple were back in the real world. The entire foyer was lit by violet torches just like the main floor they had left behind. The pair immediately faced the left room and decided to enter it with Cassandra taking the lead.

Diana watched the vampire's back while the latter opened the door. Cassandra peered inside and shook her head, then got back out and faced Diana. Diana waited silently for the vampire's report.

"Nothing. Only an empty storage room just like in the temple in the real world." Cassandra reported. Diana was not terribly surprised to hear that. Many parts of the "dark world" temple seemed to correspond with the layout of the temple in the real world. However, the pair had better not be complacent because The Dark Mistress was sure to have made some sinister changes to the layout in order to thwart intruders into her domain.

"Let us go up the stairs." Cassandra suggested their next move. Diana nodded and together the pair walked towards the stairs that led up and around the corner to the right. If the layout was the same, soon the pair would be in a gallery that faced the main floor of the temple. The pair walked up the stairs and turned right, facing a door that Cassandra opened and Diana went through.

-Inside the gallery-

Cassandra and Diana found themselves standing in a gallery that overlooked the main floor of the temple just like it did back in the real world. To the left were two wooden pews that were so rickety that just touching them might cause them to fall apart. To the right was a stained glass window of an armored knight bearing a sword and shield and looking down on the viewer. Diana's eyes were drawn to the shield, which was painted gray and bore a red cross just like the notebook she had found in the monks' quarters a week ago. The huntress wondered if that was coincidence or not.

"I will try the door up ahead. Watch my back." Cassandra requested. Diana nodded and stood a meter ahead of Casssandra while watching for either The Dark Mistress' minions or The Dark Mistress herself. Moments later Cassandra turned back to the blonde and uttered an update.

"The door is locked. We must find a key." Cassandra stated. Diana looked around for a carpet that might conceal the key but did not find one this time. The vampire immediately turned around and helped Diana search the gallery for the key. The pair looked under the pews, around the pews, and even next to the stained glass window but did not find it.

"I suspect that we must return to the main floor of the temple and search there." Cassandra opined. Diana nodded and together the pair left the gallery behind to return to the main floor below. Diana wondered if the locked door led to a bell tower or something else entirely.

-Five minutes later, back inside the main floor-

Having made their way back inside the main floor, the pair began to search high and low for the key that would unlock the door in the gallery. Diana began to search around a pristine pipe organ while Cassandra searched around the pews. The huntress searched all around the pipe organ and even under the seat but found nothing except a few dust bunnies hiding behind the pipe organ. Meanwhile Cassandra had finished searching the pews and turned to face Diana.

Diana showed her hands and shook her head to indicate that she had found nothing and Cassandra reciprocated. Neither of them had found anything, so they would expand the search area. Cassandra flew towards Diana in the time it took for the blonde to blink and landed just a meter in front of her, retracting her wings with a slight wince.

"I will search near the altar. You search near that podium." Cassandra requested, pointing towards a wooden podium about three meters to the right of the altar. Diana nodded and the pair split up to search their assigned areas. Diana walked past the bodies of the vampire's faithful servants who had sacrificed their lives to keep her safe and made her way to the podium. Meanwhile Cassandra remained to search the bodies of her servants on the off chance that the key had been hidden in such a grim hiding place.

Diana looked around the podium and found an open book sitting on top of it. The book had a light pink cover and the text was written in blood in a language she did not understand. The book gave off an unholy feeling to the huntress, who did her best to ignore the feeling and focused on searching the podium. She found nothing of interest save for the book. Diana noticed that the spine of the book was slightly arched, which led her to lift up the unholy book with her right hand and reach under it with her left.

Diana's fingers touched something cold and metallic. The tips of her fingers quickly found the edge of the object and they scrabbled on the wood of the podium until she got enough of a grip to pull the object off of the podium. A small metallic object fell to the floor and made a CLING noise, rattling on the stone until it stopped. Diana bent down and picked up a gleaming silver key.

"What did you find?" Cassandra inquired, abandoning her search of the dead men and walking towards Diana to see what the huntress had found. She approached the blonde and stopped at the latter's right side.

"A key." Diana answered laconically, presenting the gleaming silver key to the vampire. Unlike the keys she had found a week ago, this key was not helpfully labeled with an image corresponding to the door it unlocked. The pair would just have to try locked doors until they found the right one. Cassandra took it out of Diana's palm and examined it closely.

"It is not labeled. This complicates matters because it could unlock any door." Cassandra reported what Diana had already determined. Diana's eyes turned back to the book and Cassandra's eyes turned to it as well.

"What a blasphemous thing. It is bound in human skin and the text is written in blood. It has no place in this world or any world. I can barely stand to look at it." Cassandra opined. Diana readily agreed with her. However, they were not here to destroy blasphemous texts but instead destroy The Dark Mistress, the entity who was most likely responsible for their creation.

"Are you ready to return to the galley and try the door again?" Cassandra asked, her red eyes meeting Diana's green eyes.

"Yes." Diana answered laconically. Together the pair headed down the aisle and towards the double doors that led to the foyer. Hopefully they had found the key that would unlock the door in the galley.

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-Five minutes later, in the gallery-

The pair had returned to the gallery without incident and were now standing in front of the locked door from earlier. They had found a key concealed under a book on the podium and were hoping that it would unlock the bell tower. Cassandra had the key in hand and was inserting it into the lock.

"I hope that this key is the right one." Cassanda said aloud what Diana was thinking.

"Me too." Diana replied. Cassandra put the key into the lock and turned it left. The key met with resistance, so Cassandra turned the key right. It still refused to turn, so the vampire returned it to the starting position and took the key out of the lock because it was not the right key. It seemed like a return trip to the main floor was in the cards.

"It seems that we must return to the main floor of the temple. Perhaps this key belongs to one of the doors there." Cassandra said. Diana nodded and the pair set out for another return trip to the main floor of the temple. Diana had a feeling that this would not be the last time they would have to make the lengthy trip up and down the stairs to reach the gallery.

-Five minutes later, back on the main floor-

The pair stepped through the wooden double doors and were back on the main floor of the temple. They walked down the aisle between the pews and made a right turn as soon as it ended. They faced a nondescript wooden door that led to the library... at least it did back in the real world. Cassandra took the lead with the key in her right hand.

"Here goes nothing." Cassandra said to Diana. She placed the key in the lock, turned it left, and then turned the doorknob. This time the door opened without resistance. Cassandra returned the key to the starting position and took it out of the lock, smiling widely enough for her fangs to be visible. Diana was glad to see that there was some progress being made.

Cassandra went through the door first and Diana followed with Saint Sinner Valentine at the ready.

-Inside the next room-

Cassandra and Diana entered the next room to find that it was a library just like its counterpart in the real world. Violet torches lit the area. The far wall was lined with bookshelves filled with all sorts of books and most of them were not bound in human skin. Instead most of them had dark covers and had their titles written on the spine in the same language as the text in the book on the podium. Cassandra frowned just as Diana felt a wave of dark energy emanate from the area.

"More blasphemous texts. They pertain to the dark arts of necromancy, demonic pacts, and other subjects that no sane mortal should study." She commented to the huntress. Diana looked to the stairs to the left and expected a small army of black-robed monks to descend on the two intruders, but no one had come downstairs to greet them. Cassandra faced the stairs and started up them without a word to the blonde. Diana walked briskly to catch up with her companion.

-Upstairs-

Diana caught up with Cassandra upstairs and found her staring at the upstairs portion of the library. Just like in the real world it was lined with wall-to-wall bookshelves full of books and scrolls. Unlike in the real world the stained glass window to the right was not plain but instead depicted an image of a long-haired woman in violet clothing staring down at the viewer with a sinister smile.

"That is an image of The Dark Mistress. This must be her personal library." Cassandra surmised. Her eyes studied the far wall and must have spotted something because she ignored the single writing desk in the center of the room and made straight for the far wall. Diana's eyes turned to the writing desk, which had an unfinished book sitting on top of it. The huntress tried to read the text but could not begin to decipher it without some sort of translation guide. She realized that trying to read the unfinished book was a futile endeavor and instead turned to Cassandra, who was pushing on the bookshelves just like Diana had done a week ago.

Diana watched the vampire's back while the latter tried to find whatever it was that had drawn her attention to the area to start with. As she stood watch Diana heard Cassandra push on the shelves, pull on any book that might have stood out, and anything else the white-haired young woman could think of to open a secret passage. So far Cassandra had found nothing out of the ordinary. The huntress could tell that her companion's patience was wearing thin because she could hear whispered curses coming from the vampire as she continued her search.

Diana continued to listen as Cassandra searched a while longer before the latter groaned in frustration and threw her hands up.

"Nothing." Cassandra reported. Diana turned to face her.

"Perhaps there is nothing here after all." Diana suggested. Cassandra was not buying that and quickly resumed her search as if to prove her companion wrong. Diana shrugged her shoulders and turned back to face the stairs in case someone showed up to stop their progress.

-Thirty minutes later-

"I do not understand this. Something caught my eye earlier and I suspected that something important was hidden here, but I have nothing. I have pushed on every bookshelf, pulled on every book, pushed on every book, even examined every inch of every bookshelf for a hidden button or lever, but there is nothing! NOTHING!" Cassandra fumed, her red eyes glowing ominously. Diana wordlessly walked towards the writing desk and began to search it for anything that could open a hidden passage such as a switch. She slung Saint Sinner Valentine around her right shoulder and felt all around the front and sides of the desk.

The front and left sides of the desk had nothing, but Diana felt something odd on the right side of the desk. Her right index finger tapped something and a tiny portion of the desk gave way. She heard the sound of metal grinding against stone behind her and Cassandra sighed.

"I would have never thought to check there." Cassandra said to Diana.

"I just got lucky." Diana replied. She was no great detective. She had just gotten lucky at the right time, but being lucky was not a bad thing to be. Luck had kept her alive when a lot of other people would have died by now. She just hoped that her luck would stay with her and get her through this adventure in one piece.

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"Lucky is not a bad thing to be, stranger." Cassandra chimed in as Diana turned around and faced the opening that her serendipitous discovery had revealed. Diana could not argue with that. Cassandra had just stepped into the newly uncovered passageway when Cassandra turned around and spoke to her.

"If I may ask, what is your name?" Cassandra asked. Since the partnership had to be built on trust, the huntress decided to tell the vampire her name.

"Diana." Diana replied laconically. Cassandra gave a slight smile.

"So you too have a name based in mythology. So you are a huntress." Cassandra said to the blonde mage. Since it was technically true, Diana decided to just run with that.

"I suppose that you could call me a huntress... among other things." Diana replied calmly. The vampire smiled again.

"Come now, Diana. We must not delay any longer. Let us explore this passage you have uncovered." Cassandra said before continuing deeper into the hidden passage. Diana was about to protest that they would need a way out if someone tried to trap them in it, but then she saw a hitherto hidden lever to the right. With a way out all but assured, Diana took a deep breath and calmly followed her job partner into the passage now that they had a means of escape.

-Inside the hidden passage-

Diana followed Cassandra through a passage that was just tall enough to accommodate them standing up straight but was so narrow that they had to travel single file. There was no light, but neither the vampire nor the huntress needed any because they had special vision modes to help them see in the darkness. Other than being dark and narrow, the passage had a few cobwebs in the corners, suggesting that it had not been used in quite some time. It had not been cleaned in quite some time either.

The pair continued in darkness and reached a left turn, then followed it down another straight and narrow hallway that had a glowing red light at the end of the tunnel approximately 50 meters away. Diana did not like the look of that. The pair could be walking into a trap set by The Dark Mistress, but they had no choice but to proceed through the hallway and find out what was at the end of the tunnel.

Diana quietly readied Saint Sinner Valentine and kept her finger off the trigger to avoid shooting her ally by mistake. The end of the hall was coming up fast and she needed to be ready for a fight. Cassandra suddenly sprinted ahead of the huntress and she hurried after her partner so that she would not be fighting alone. It was a good thing that she had.

-At the end of the tunnel-

The huntress emerged to find Cassandra fighting some cultists that looked like they had been conducting a ritual of some sort. The room's floor had occult patterns scrawled on the floor in blood and what looked like human remains lay in the center of the patterns, but now was not the time to try and decipher their meaning. Black lightning was flying around along with crossbow bolts and Diana needed to help Cassandra fight the cultists off. As it turned out, the vampire had the situation well in hand.

Cassandra lunged at a cultist frantically reloading his crossbow after a missed shot and seized his shoulders, then bit into his neck with her gleaming fangs. The man screamed as he struggled to push the vampire off of him and two cultists wielding gleaming greatswords hurried to his rescue. Diana ducked under a discharge of black lightning and shot one of the men in the back with a five-round burst of Silver Bullets, giving Cassandra enough time to drop her first kill and swipe at the second man's throat with the claws of her left hand. They connected and ripped the man's throat out, causing him to drop to the floor almost instantly. Diana rolled to the right to avoid a storm of crossbow bolts directed at her head and watched Cassandra disappear for a moment in a blink of red light.

Diana shot back in the direction of the cultists but missed and nearly received a bolt of lightning to her chest for her trouble. She dropped to the ground and Cassandra reappeared next to the offender with a hand that glowed red. She formed the hand into an edge and brought it down on the man's neck, decapitating him in a single stroke. The other cultists saw this and began to retreat in fairly good order; the crosssbowmen whose weapons were already loaded fired one last volley at their tormentors before joining their fellows in retreat. Diana killed one of them with a five-round burst to the chest while firing from a prone position, but the rest were too fast to track from her position.

Diana got off the floor and tried to aim at the back of a fleeing cultist running down a hallway that was in front of them, but he had vanished by the time she could get a good shot on him. She faced Cassandra, who was busy wiping the blood from her first kill off of her mouth. Diana had spells and weapons that would let her take on vampires, but the huntress was glad that Cassandra was on her side.

"It seems that we have interrupted a ritual of some kind. Perhaps it was a ritual meant to strengthen their mistress. Perhaps it was a ritual to summon demons to aid them. I do not know nor do I care. I only care about killing The Dark Mistress." Cassandra added. The huntress remained silent and saw Cassandra point a finger towards the hall in front of them. Diana noticed that there were two hallways, one in front of her and one to her right. Cassandra pointed down the hall in front of them.

"We must follow them quickly!" She said, barely giving Diana time to brush off her clothing before hustling down the hallway with inhuman speed. Diana tapped the reload button on her weapon and hurried after her partner. They had won the first battle with the cultists, but there was no telling what unpleasant surprises they had in store for the vampire and the huntress. The Dark Mistress herself was bound to take umbrage to intruders killing her men and appear in person to put a stop to them, so the pair had better keep moving and hope that they would fight her in a more favorable location than a hallway.

-Down the hallway-

Cassandra and Diana pursued the cultists through the hallway they had used to flee and found themselves standing in a medium-sized square room that looked like a chapel. It had an altar on a raised platform near the back of the room, a single wooden pew about five meters front of it, and a dozen cultists ready for a fight. The violet torches lighting the room lent the chapel an air of darkness... and desperation. The cultists knew that they were not leaving this room alive and were determined to sell their lives at as high a cost as they could exact from the intruders.

"We must stop them here, brothers!" A cultist armed with a greatsword bellowed to a small group of other men, some armed with swords and others wielding magic. His words were met with enthusiasm.

"We will not leave this room alive, but by sacrificing our lives we will buy time for The Dark Mistress to prepare for battle and avenge us!" A second reminded the others what they were fighting for. His words were met with the same enthusiasm as the first man's.

"FOR THE DARK MISTRESS!" One of them called out. His call was soon taken up by the others and it rang throughout the chapel. They then threw themselves into battle against the vampire and the huntress. The pair readied themselves for an intense close-quarters battle to the finish against the cultists.

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Diana barely had time to aim Saint Sinner Valentine before two of the sword-wielding cultists were upon her. She fired from the hip and grazed one of them on the right side, who ignored the wound to his side and pressed the attack. Diana jumped back and slung the rifle onto her shoulder, bringing out her Suppressed Handgun and ducking under a bolt of dark lightning directed at her. She then stood up and fired at one of the two men attacking her, bringing him down with seven shots to the chest as his fellow closed in and attempted to remove her left arm with a downward chop. Diana jumped back and barely avoided losing the limb; instead she only suffered a mild scratch on her arm thanks to her quick thinking.

While Diana dealt with him Cassandra was busy dealing with her own problems. The vampire glowed blood red and began to zigzag between men, leaving a red trail in the air and corpses in her wake. The two sword-wielding men who had attacked her were dead on the floor with their throats torn out by her claws and a third soon joined them when she darted up to him and tore his throat out before he could even raise his sword. Cassandra then dodged a black fireball and darted towards the opponent, grabbing him by the throat and slamming him to the ground so hard that Diana heard bones break.

Diana did not have long to admire her partner's deadly grace because she still had some angry cultists to deal with. She ducked under a horizontal swing aimed at her neck and shot the cultist in the right leg twice before raising her pistol and shooting him in the chest another five. He fell to his knees and grabbed for her shirt, but a quick shot to the head stopped the determined man once and for all. As he pitched forward she dodged another bolt of black lightning and saw its source, a robed man standing behind the altar. Diana returned fire and he ducked under the altar.

Diana's first impulse was to use Reaper's Sprint to close the distance, but dashing in was a good way to get a bolt of lightning to the face. Instead she needed another way to flush him out. Then she thought of something.

She could use a Silver Strobe from her new magic to flush him out.

Diana ducked under another bolt of black lightning fired from the same man while the red blur that was Cassandra took care of business around her. The huntress formed a silver sphere the size of a baseball in her left hand, aimed carefully, and tossed it just behind the altar, then hurried to shield her eyes from what was about to happen. The ball exploded into a series of rapid pulses that elicited a yell of pain and the man staggering out from behind the altar with his hands over his eyes. Diana quickly gunned him down with two shots to the head.

Turning from the dispatched cultist, Diana saw that Cassandra was more than capable of handling herself because she had added another three cultists to her tally while Diana had killed only three. The remaining three men, unwilling to back down, continued to attack Cassandra with everything they had in the hopes of buying a little more time for their fellows to organize a defense or for their mistress to take to the field in person. The vampire effortlessly dodged their sword swings and offensive spells and quickly disposed of them in a flurry of darting attacks that tore out the throat of each cultist in a single strike.

Cassandra reappeared and looked at Diana with blood red eyes.

"Now that they have been dealt with, we should press on down the other hallway. But first you might want to tend to that wound." Cassandra stated to the huntress. Diana looked at her left arm and realized that the sleeve had been gashed from the earlier fighting. She channeled silver magic into her right hand and touched it to the wound, causing it to close up and instantly heal with a single application of her Lunar Restoration spell.

Diana took a brief glance around the chapel and felt a pulse of intense dark energy. She noticed that behind the altar was a stained glass window with a depiction of The Dark Mistress smiling down at the viewer. Moments later the image disappeared, leaving a plain stained glass window. Diana looked towards Cassandra and was about to ask the question when the vampire spoke up.

"I saw it too, Diana. She knows that we are here." Cassandra stated. Diana frowned. She had no idea that The Dark Mistress could appear and disappear at will using stained glass windows as portals. She looked towards the hallway that they had used to enter the chapel.

"It does not matter if she knows we are here. We will find her and we will kill her. Now let us go." Cassandra commanded before striding down the hallway. Diana holstered the Suppressed Handgun and quickly followed behind the vampire. Selene was likely fuming that her newest Lunar Guardian was taking orders from a vampire, but Diana did not care. She figured that killing cultists and The Dark Mistress would more than make up for not killing Cassandra on sight.

The pair walked out of the chapel and down the hall, then stopped and faced the door that led right. Diana approached the door and drew her pistol, then put her left hand on the doorknob. Cassandra nodded and Diana yanked it open, allowing the vampire to dart through. Diana quickly followed into the room.

-In the next room-

Cassandra and Diana stood in a long hallway that was just wide enough for people to travel in single file. It was lined with violet torches in wall sconces placed at twenty-meter intervals. Other than the torches, there was no decoration in the hall whatsoever.

In front of them loomed a hallway that seemed empty, but the huntress was not convinced that it was safe to traverse. Neither was Cassandra. Diana wondered why the hall was not packed with cultists willing to fight to the death because the narrow hallway was a good chokepoint. Cassandra spoke before Diana could voice her thoughts.

"I am sure that there are traps both magical and mundane here. Proceed with caution and stay at least five meters behind me so that one trap does not catch us both." Cassandra warned Diana before the former started down the hallway. Being mindful to keep a bit of distance between herself and the vampire, Diana followed Cassandra down the hall and watched her step.

Cassandra moved at a slow pace and watched the floors and walls while Diana followed suit. The pair was not in any hurry because they did not know what waited for them in the hall. They did not know if certain tiles would give way if stepped on or if there were swinging blades built into the walls that would swing out and decapitate them if they made a misstep.

[Post Word Count: 1,197]
[Total Word Count: 6,984/11,000]

Cassandra carefully walked down the hallway as Diana followed suit. They were a quarter of the way through the hallway, but that did not mean that there was nothing there. Diana cycled through her vision modes to look for clues as to the location of any hidden traps but did not find any. Either they were carefully hidden or there just were not any traps and the defenders were counting on the paranoia of intruders to buy them even more time to prepare a strong defense.

Cassandra moved forward and Diana followed at a five-meter distance. The vampire's eyes moved to and fro; there was a good chance that she was using vision modes unique to vampires to search for hidden traps. She was moving without stopping, meaning that she had not found any either. Diana opted to trust in her vampire partner's instincts and keep moving so that the defenders did not have too much time to prepare themselves.

The pair reached the halfway point and still had not triggered any countermeasures, not even a simple pitfall trap. Diana was beginning to believe that this hall had been built just to foster paranoia in intruders when Cassandra suddenly ducked to the floor. A blade hidden in the wall lashed out and would have cut the vampire's head off had she not ducked. Diana figured that decapitation would not hurt a vampire nearly as much as it would hurt an "ordinary" mage like Diana herself. From what little Diana had read about vampires in books of folklore, things that would wound or kill ordinary people were minor inconveniences to vampires.

"Be careful." Cassandra warned Diana and pointed to the floor tile that had set off the blade. Diana watched as Cassandra simply sprouted wings again and flew down the rest of the hallway, leaving the huntress to trudge the rest of the distance on foot. She made a mental note of where the blade trap was and carefully stepped past the tile, then used Reaper's Sprint to dash 100 meters down the hallway, setting off a series of blade traps set at neck and ankle level without sustaining any harm.

Diana had lucked out yet again. She was fortunate that she did not lose her feet or her head during the sprint, but sometimes fortune favored the bold. Diana was three-fourths down the hallway and moved at a more cautious pace this time as Cassandra watched her partner's progress. About ten more minutes of careful walking later and Diana had rejoined the vampire.

"You were born under a lucky star, Diana." Cassandra commented as she opened the door to the next room. Diana drew her pistol and followed close behind.

-In the next room-

Cassandra and Diana found themselves in another large cathedral just like in the main hallway complete with wooden pews on both sides of the room, an aisle running down the middle, an altar set in the center, and a giant stained glass window depicting The Dark Mistress overlooking the altar as if eagerly awaiting offerings. It was almost a carbon copy of the room the pair had started out in, but the major differences were the lack of a pipe organ, the lack of a podium on a raised platform, the lack of a gallery, and the lack of stairs that led to monks' quarters. Cassandra noticed something sitting on the altar.

"I see something on the altar." Cassandra reported. Diana looked and saw the small gleaming object.

"Does this seem a little too convenient? Where did all those cultists go?" Diana asked her partner and holstered the Suppressed Handgun in favor of bringing out Saint Sinner Valentine in anticipation of a fight. Cassandra nodded her agreement.

"I too am suspicious. Why would that be left on the altar for us to find?" Cassandra asked the huntress.

"What do we do?" Diana asked. The stained glass image of The Dark Mistress looked at them as if awaiting their decision.

"There is not much we can do but take the object. If it is a key to the gallery, we will need it to unlock that door." Cassandra replied. Diana covered the vampire as the latter carefully walked towards the altar and looked around her to check for the missing cultists. Diana followed suit and cycled through her vision modes to sweep for concealed cultists; she swept all around the room but did not see anything out of the ordinary. Cassandra reached the altar without incident and picked up the object.

"It is a key." Cassandra announced laconically, examining the key more closely for anything special about it. Diana slung the assault rifle back on her shoulder and approached Cassandra, but the latter held it up and spoke again before Diana could reach her.

"There are no identifying marks on it. We will just have to try doors until we find the one it is meant to open." Cassandra said. Diana frowned. She was hoping that this would be the end of the key hunt, but then she thought about it a little and hypothesized that all of this was planned to deliberately waste their time. The Dark Mistress' cultists were stalling them so that she could enter the battle at full power whenever she took to the field.

"I believe that the cultists are deliberately leading us on a wild goose chase in order to stall for time." Diana voiced her hypothesis to Cassandra. The vampire nodded.

"I am thinking the same thing, Diana. Why else would they sacrifice more than a dozen lives in a hopeless battle and leave an unmarked key for us if they were not trying to slow us down?" Cassandra repeated what Diana was thinking. Had they stumbled across the hidden passage by accident or had they been manipulated into finding it so that they would waste time on a wild goose chase? Diana did not know, but they did not have time to ask questions back and forth. They had to get back to the gallery and try the newly found key on the locked door.

"Let us return to the main hall and then to the gallery." Cassandra commanded as she led the way out of the carbon copy of the cathedral. Diana wordlessly obeyed and the pair left the area behind to return to the library. Behind them the image of the Dark Mistress faded from the stained glass window. As they had suspected earlier, their progress was not going unobserved.

-In the upstairs library, twenty minutes later-

Cassandra and Diana emerged from the hidden passage in the library and found everything in its place but no force of cultists left behind just to delay them further. The pair wondered what that was as they looked around for anything out of the ordinary but failed to find it. Diana suspected that they were in for a big fight in the main hall, but she was not entirely sure that the cultists had gathered there for a delaying action. Maybe they were instead rallying around their mistress.

The pair took a few moments to search for hidden traps with their different vision modes but did not find any, so they pressed on, going down the stairs and into the portion of the library that led back to the main hall. They took this opportunity to take a deep breath before entering the main hall and potentially stepping into a fight. Once they had taken a deep breath Diana walked towards the door to open it.

[Post Word Count: 1,256]
[Total Word Count: 8,240/11,000]

-Inside the cathedral-

Diana opened the door and Cassandra had darted through to find nothing on the other side, nothing but empty cathedral that stretched as far as the eye could see. The huntress had expected a large group of cultists to fight a delaying action in the cathedral because there were so many places to hide and a lot of wide-open space to turn into a gauntlet, but there was no opposition whatsoever. There was not even a token sentry to spot them entering.

Cassandra looked around and once she was sure that the coast was clear gave a thumbs-up to Diana, a gesture that reminded the blonde of her android companion Ami.

"I have an idea, Diana. Instead of us both going up to the gallery and wasting time going up and down the stairs, I will fly up to it and try the key while you remain here to watch for cultists." Cassandra suggested. Diana did not have to take long to think about that suggestion. It was a good one.

"Go for it." Diana laconically gave her approval to the idea. Cassandra sprouted bat wings from her back and wordlessly took flight for the gallery, leaving the huntress to guard the cathedral floor. Diana brought out her Suppressed Handgun and held it in her right hand as she stood guard over the area.

Diana wondered where all the cultists they had encountered earlier had gone. She thought that they would have all rallied here to fight a delaying action, but that was not the case. Diana surmised that they might have left behind token forces elsewhere to delay the vampire and the huntress while The Dark Mistress gathered strength for the battle, but she had no proof of that, only a hypothesis.

A few minutes later Cassandra landed wordlessly beside Diana with a frown on her face.

"The key does not open the door in the gallery." She reported. Diana frowned a little herself. Finding the door that the key went to was becoming an exercise in frustration.

"Perhaps it opens one of the doors in the area that corresponds to the monks' quarters in the real world." Diana made a suggestion of her own. Cassandra's eyes met Diana's and the white-haired vampire thought on the matter.

"It is certainly worth a try." She gave her verdict after a few moments of thought. Cassandra took the lead while Diana followed close behind and watched their backs. Diana paid particular attention to the gallery because that was the easiest place to put men with crossbows to rain bolts down on the pair and make their lives difficult. After a brief walk the pair reached the set of stairs to the left of and behind the altar and went down them.

-Downstairs-

Cassandra reached the downstairs area first and looked around the narrow hallway that was lit by violet torches and was just wide enough to travel down single-file. About twenty meters in front of them were two cultists armed with crossbows; the first man was kneeling while the second remained standing.

"Watch out!" Cassandra warned Diana. The vampire put her hands out in front of her and formed a red barrier as the bolts flew towards her, but it was not quite fast enough. Cassandra was hit in the chest and stomach and reeled back with the bolts protruding from her body. Diana hurried past her and spotted the two cultists frantically reloading their crossbows. She leveled her handgun, assumed a two-handed shooting stance, and fired at them, hitting the first cultist in the forehead and the second in the chest six times before he finally dropped.

Once they were dead Diana turned back to Cassandra, who had pulled the bolts out of her body and was bleeding badly. Cassandra was clenching her teeth in pain. Diana holstered her handgun and extended her right hand towards the vampire.

"Let me heal you." Diana offered as her hand glowed silver. Cassandra seized Diana's wrist and pushed it away.

"NO! Holy magic of any kind will only make it worse!" Cassandra protested fiercely. Diana pulled her hand back before it was forcibly removed from her arm. Cassandra raised her right hand and a small red orb formed in her palm. She touched it to her wounds and screamed as she did so. The bleeding soon stopped and the punctures closed up, but the site of each wound was still red.

"I... I will be fine. I will be weak for awhile since the tips of those bolts were dipped in some kind of anti-vampire solution, possibly holy water. As you may know, vampires do not like holy water." Cassandra assured Diana that she would be OK, just weak for awhile.

"Do you think that the cultists who survived the fighting in the hidden passage learned that you were a vampire and brought out their anti-vampire weapons?" Diana asked her companion. Cassandra gave a small laugh.

"I think that is the case, Diana. It stands to reason that since I have been keeping their mistress sealed away from the world they would have made or come across weapons specifically to counter me." She replied in the affirmative. Diana looked at Cassandra and saw where the bolts had hit. The wounds were bright red like burn marks.

"But I thought you kept them sealed away. How could they get new weapons and ammunition if they had no contact with the outside world?" Diana asked. Cassandra fought the pain and gave a shrug.

"I do not know for certain, Diana. Perhaps some of my corrupted followers crafted the weapons and ammunition when they entered the service of The Dark Mistress." Cassandra offered the only lead she had. Without much else to go on, Diana had no choice but to accept what she had been told.

"Now that we know that they have special crossbow bolts, we will have to be more careful." Diana said to Cassandra. Cassandra produced the key and pointed down the hall using her free hand.

"We must try those doors. Perhaps the key opens one of them." She said to Diana. Diana nodded.

"I certainly hope so. We might not have much longer before the cultists arrive in force." The blonde mage said to Cassandra before the latter took the lead again and slowly made her way towards the doors while using the wall to her left for support. Diana followed close behind and watched their backs as the wounded vampire led the way down the narrow hallway.

[Post Word Count: 1,090]
[Total Word Count: 9,330/11,000]

After the brief fight with the two crossbow-wielding cultists and Cassandra being wounded by the bolts coated in an anti-vampire solution, the pair were standing in the middle of a pair of wooden doors. One was on the left and one was on the right. They did not have any special identifying markers on them, so there was no telling what was behind the doors. They could unlock a door to find an empty room, a room full of armed and angry cultists, or even The Dark Mistress herself.

"This is quite the conundrum. Which door do we pick to try and unlock first?" Cassandra asked Diana. The blonde looked at both doors. With no special identifying markers on either one of them, it was really up to Cassandra, but the white-haired vampire had asked for Diana's opinion. Diana was going to give her opinion.

"I suggest that we try the left door first." Diana suggested. Cassandra wordlessly sidled up to the door, placed the key in the lock, and turned it left. The vampire smiled a little as the key turned in the lock and the door opened without any trouble.

"Good guess." Cassandra complimented Diana. Diana smiled a little as Cassandra pulled the key out of the lock and entered the room.

-Inside the room, Left Monks' Quarters-

Cassandra and Diana found themselves standing inside a rectangular room with sixteen beds, eight placed on both the top and the bottom of the room. There was an aisle between the neatly aligned beds where the monks could walk. The beds were made with simple brown comforters and simple, thin white sheets. Under each bed was a simple wooden footlocker for the storage of what few personal possessions the monks were permitted to have. The footlockers looked to be on the verge of rotting, which explained why they were placed under the beds instead of at the foot of each bed like in the monks' quarters back in the real world.

"We are in the monks' quarters. Such austerity can only be observed by either a military garrison or a monastic order." Cassandra commented. Diana looked around the room and spotted a single bookshelf against the right wall that was full of books in various sizes. Those were of no interest to the huntress. However, a gleaming metallic object sitting on the middle shelf was of interest. Diana stood in place and tried to identify what the object might be.

"I cannot believe this. A key left lying out in the open again." Cassandra said. Diana approached the key and picked it up. She examined the silver key and found that this one had a mark on it. She found that a skull was etched onto both sides of the handle, a feature that she found to be rather curious.

"Believe it, Cassandra. You will also be surprised to learn that this key has a marking on it." Diana informed her colleague, handing over the key for Cassandra to examine. The white-haired young woman examined it.

"A skull. I am assuming that this key is for either a crypt or a torture chamber." Cassandra listed what rooms she believed that the skull key unlocked. Both guesses were reasonable ones, ones that Diana could not contradict. She chose to go with them.

"I find this discovery to be a little too convenient, but I am satisfied that after wasting so much time we are finally making progress." Cassandra announced. Having seen everything of interest in this room, the pair exited and returned to the hallway to try their newly found key in the lock of the room next door.

-Inside the hallway-

Cassandra sidled up to the door on the right and tried the skull key. It did not turn in the lock, so Cassandra took out the skull key and tried the nondescript key that had been used to open the monks' quarters. That one did the trick. The door opened without any problem. Cassandra handed the skull key to the blonde.

"Here. I am carrying enough keys already. Keep up with the skull key for me." She requested. Diana nodded, then took the key with her left hand and placed it in her left side pocket where it would not get lost. The pair then entered the room that had just been unlocked.

-Inside the room, Right Monks' Quarters-

"Here is another monks' quarters." Cassandra commented on the room. It was of the same layout as the one on the left with the same arrangement of beds, the same aisle between them, the same bookshelf on the right wall. Even the wooden footlockers under the beds were the same.

Diana looked towards the bookshelf in anticipation of finding another conveniently placed key waiting to be collected, but this time there was no such luck. The bookshelf was full of books but did not have a key. Cassandra too had expected to find a key and was similarly disappointed.

"No key? I am surpised." She calmly commented on the lack of a key to be found. Diana examined the room and found nothing of interest, so she left the room alongside Cassandra. The pair were on their way to try the gallery again... if Cassandra was strong enough to fly up to it again.

-Inside the hallway-

Diana shut the door behind them and the pair retraced their steps to the main floor of the temple... or they would have had they not been interrupted by another pair of cultists armed with crossbows standing at the foot of the steps!

Cassandra wordlessly dropped to the floor on her stomach and Diana drew her pistol, then leveled it at the men and fired a single shot into the head of the kneeling man. As he fell backwards his finger twitched on the trigger and sent the bolt straight into the ceiling. The second cultist aimed his crossbow at Diana and pulled the trigger, sending the bolt whistling past the left side of her head as she ducked to avoid it. The huntress popped right back up and caught the cultist on the reload, shooting him in the chest seven times and dropping him to the cold stone floor.

"Nice work." Cassandra complimented Diana from the floor. She calmly stood up and brushed herself off as Diana holstered the pistol.

"Thanks." Diana answered. Cassandra took the lead and gently stepped over the corpses of the fallen cultists. She guided them back up the stairs to the main floor of the temple.

-On the main floor-

The pair re-entered the main floor and took a moment to catch their breath after the ambush. Diana's eyes wandered towards the gallery and Cassandra looked expectantly at the huntress. The blonde took the hint and fished the skull key out of her left side pocket, handing it to the vampire.

"I will return shortly." Cassandra said before using her wings to take off for the gallery, leaving Diana to guard the area just like last time.

[Post Word Count: 1,170]
[Total Word Count: 10,500/11,000]

Diana patiently waited for Cassandra to return from the gallery and watched for incoming cultists who wanted to finish the job they had started in the downstairs hallway, but no one had showed up yet. Diana then cycled through her vision modes to search for concealed enemies trying to sneak into position, but she did not spot anyone that way either. Concluding that there were no enemies just yet, the huntress stole a glance at the gallery where Cassandra was trying to unlock the door and saw that the white-haired vampire was not happy. She turned away from the door and flew over the railing, landing about two meters away from Diana before dropping to one knee. The blonde mage began to approach Cassandra when the latter looked up.

"I am still weak from whatever coated the tips of those crossbow bolts." Cassandra explained, waving away Diana with her left hand. Diana was about to ask her how the attempt to unlock the door went when she answered before the question could even be asked.

"The skull key did not work there. My guess is that we must go down the other set of stairs behind the altar." Cassandra answered and added the place they should go to next to try their new key. The huntress nodded.

"Very well then. We have tried everywhere else, so we might as well try there." Diana calmly replied. Cassandra stood up, brushed herself off, and led the blonde towards the stairs that were behind the altar and to the right. Diana followed behind with her pistol at the ready.

-Downstairs-

The pair walked down the stairs to find a long, narrow hallway with the same dimensions as the one that led to the monks' quarters and lit by violet torches. Down the hallway were two more wooden doors, making where the pair had to go fairly obvious. Cassandra took the skull key into her left hand and went ahead of Diana to unlock the left door.

She placed the key into the lock and turned it left. Diana saw her smile, which must have meant success. Cassandra then opened the door and an overpowering smell hit both of them in the face.

"I believe that I have found their torture chamber." Cassandra reported in a matter-of-fact tone of voice. The smell of death and decay supported the vampire's statement. Diana put her hand over her nose to try and block the worst of it out as the pair entered the room to search for clues and keys.

-Inside the torture chamber-

Cassandra and Diana entered a rectangular room that was as long as both of the monks' quarters put together. The entire room was packed with torture devices like racks and iron maidens that had all seen a lot of use plus two furnaces where iron implements like pokers were heated for another means of torture. The iron maidens in particular had long rust marks where blood had poured from their eyes whenever someone was impaled within their confines. The exteriors had never been cleaned properly; presumably the cultists found iron maidens stained with blood to be terrifying to victims about to be placed inside them. That or the iron maidens saw so much use that they never had time to be cleaned.

Diana did not know which was true and she did not want to know.

Cassandra and Diana remained grimly silent as they made their way through the room and towards a wooden table upon which sat an old ledger, a whetting stone, and a well-worn knife that had been dulled from frequent use. Against the wall in front of the table sat a bookshelf filled with ledgers. Cassandra approached the ledger and turned it where she could read it. When she saw what was written on it she frowned.

"This ledger contains a tally of the number of victims tortured here each and every day for a year. I assume that the ledgers on the bookshelf are decades worth of records. That should be all the reason you need to help me kill The Dark Mistress." Cassandra remarked about the ledger. Diana had little doubt that The Dark Mistress had to go, but this room full of torture devices was concrete evidence that the sorceress had to die for the good of the world.

Diana wordlessly looked towards the bookshelf full of ledgers and wondered who would keep such records and why they would keep them. She then turned away from it and started back towards the hallway. She no longer wanted to be in this ghastly room. Cassandra followed close behind the huntress and closed the door behind them, locking it for good measure.

-Back in the hallway-

"Now that we have tried that door, let us try the one to the far right." Cassandra suggested. Diana nodded her approval. Cassandra moved ahead and sidled up to the door, placed the skull key in the lock, and unlocked the door without any trouble. She opened it and the pair was hit with the stench of death and decay again. Cassandra peered inside and almost immediately pulled her head back out.

"This room... this is where the cult disposed of their victims." Cassandra reported. Diana frowned. She had just gotten out of one room that reeked of death and now she was about to go straight into another. She would need to burn her clothes after this job and buy replacements.

"I have a feeling that we were deliberately led here to show us what awaits us if we fight The Dark Mistress and lose." Diana opined to her companion. Other cults would have thrown every combat-capable member they had at intruders to capture or kill them. Not the one dedicated to The Dark Mistress. Aside from the two teams of crossbowmen, they had not offered battle since the fighting in the rooms beyond the hidden passageway in the library.

"Perhaps. Or perhaps she takes joy in showing off the misery she can inflict on others." Cassandra countered Diana's suggestion with one of her own.

"Perhaps. Since we have unlocked the door, we might as well go in and see what we can find." Diana said to Cassandra. The vampire nodded and led the way into the room and Diana reluctantly followed close behind.

[Post Word Count: 1,054]
[Total Word Count: 11,554/11,000]