A woman long since psed from her faith dons the vestments of this nd's priests. It is not like what she's used to, but she admits she cuts a striking figure. One of her companions calls her "Prior" and she feels nostalgia at the old title. It carries a certain gravitas of authority that she's fond of.
Together, they take a car and circle around the grand cathedral in the middle of the city. Around the back corner, and out of sight in the narrow gap between the pce of worship and a parking garage. They ascend the garage and make the impossible floating leap to the top of the cathedral where they slip in through an upper window.
Inside is a great vaulted space of light and air. Their approach would be terribly unstealthy if only anyone thought to look up. No one ever looks up.
The service is ending when they arrive. Once the st faithful stragglers clear out, the party descends to find their target, the middle-aged priest who had been leading the sermon. They find him in a red-capretted side hallway, pushing an elder member of the clergy in a wheelchair.
They wait for the old man to safely get out of the way, deposited in a room and then attack the priest without warning. Bdes of light, conjured ice spikes, and a thrown chair that separates into a hail of splinters all collide against a holy shield.
“You would dare assault a priest in the house of the Lord?!” the outraged-but-unharmed target demands.
The Prior smirks. “You and I both know this isn’t your Lord’s house any more than it is mine," she says. "I’ve seen the thing you keep in the basement, bleeding it dry to paint the halls with runes.”
The battle ensues. The Prior tells her companions to disperse and take care of their other objectives, leaving her to duel the priest. The hallowed halls fill with golden fire, shining swords, chiming bells, angelic feathers, gleaming aegises, and all the other trappings that the people of this nd associate with divine power unleashed in smiting justice. The Prior and the priest, it seems, are evenly matched.
Seeking to tip the scales, the priest chants a new, more ancient invocation in a different tongue, summoning hungry crimson fmes to devour his foe. For a moment the Prior is consumed in a hell of fire, and then a strange wind snuffs the old fmes like a candle.
The singed Prior cracks her neck and wipes blood from her lips with the back of her hand. Charred scabs fall away, leaving behind new, unblemished skin.
"So I guess we're finally going full mask off, huh? Fine. Two can py at that game."
A sharp green light appears in her right hand. She points and the light leaps towards the priest, striking him and inundating him with -
"Healing magic?" the priest asks incredulously as the few cuts and bruises he's suffered in this duel fade before the Prior's eyes.
"It's something no one configures their barriers to keep out," she says. "And why would they?" Her stance is rexed now, her voice increasingly smug with every word. The tone of one who knows she's already won and is all to happy to expin why. "But the thing about healing is that it's ultimately just cell division."
She raises a finger and a mote of green light appears above it. The mote splits into two, and then four, and then eight.
The priest tries to speak but doubles over in a sudden cramp.
"Amplify that enough, let it run wild, and that's how cancer works."
The priest lets out a wheezing gasp. There is a lump in his throat.
"Take that to an even further extreme, and, well…"
By the time the Prior's companions return, an insensate lumpy blob of flesh fills the hallway.
"I've been meaning to ask," one of them brings up ter, "how do you still have power? I thought you said you lost your faith a long time ago."
The woman who was once a Prior makes a toothsome grin. "I still believe in something."
"What?"
"Control. Power itself. Me."
