Chapter 206: The Saint I Beat Started Questioning the Church

The theological discussion started after noon. Raven did not participate. He tried not to.

Valeria was checking several small reserves of blood when Elise looked toward her. "May I ask you something?"

Valeria didn’t even look up. "If you say purification, no."

"I wasn’t going to say purification."

"Then go ahead."

Elise pointed toward one of the containers. "Is all of that blood yours?"

"No."

Raven looked up. So did Elise. Valeria smiled. "Animal blood. Some prepared. Some mine."

Elise visibly relaxed a little. "Good."

Valeria raised an eyebrow. "What did you think?"

"I preferred not to assume."

"That was smart."

Elise sat down. "Blood Magic isn’t inherently heretical."

Valeria went still. "How generous."

"I’m not finished."

"Of course not."

Raven returned his attention to the rifle. This could become interesting. Elise continued.

"The Church distinguishes between using your own blood, blood voluntarily given, animal material, and practices dependent on forced extraction."

Valeria looked at her. "And who decided those categories?"

"People with too many meetings."

Valeria blinked. Raven looked up. Elise appeared completely serious, and Roland started laughing. Valeria needed two seconds to recover.

"That was almost funny."

"It was institutional criticism."

"Worse. You’re getting infected."

Elise smiled, then returned to the subject. "Lady Valeria, we should also discuss some of your Blood Magic practices."

Valeria looked toward Raven. "Raven. Kill her."

Raven didn’t look away from the rifle. "Yesterday, I went through considerable effort to avoid doing exactly that. I’d like that effort to accomplish something."

Roland burst out laughing. Elise frowned. "I wasn’t going to accuse you."

Valeria looked at her. "That doesn’t help."

"I only want to know whether you use blood obtained without consent."

Valeria rested both hands on her knees. "Do you want the short answer or the answer that starts another religious argument?"

"The second."

"Of course."

Raven continued working. This could take hours. And, to his growing concern, he didn’t mind nearly as much as he should.

By late afternoon, the Mk.I was operational again. Not perfect. Operational.

Raven started working on ammunition. He no longer hid the process whenever Elise was nearby, not because he trusted her completely, but because pretending the rifle itself was secret no longer served any purpose. Too many people had seen it, and too many reports existed.

The useful secret now wasn’t that the weapon existed. It was how it worked, what it could do, what limitations it had, and what ammunition it used. Those things were still his.

Elise sat nearby while Raven weighed two projectiles. "Are you making another variant?"

"Yes."

"Against me?"

Raven looked at her. "Not specifically."

"That wasn’t convincing."

"I want a round that retains structural integrity after penetrating a mana defense."

Elise went quiet. Raven continued. "You’re the best data set I have."

"That was not reassuring either."

"It wasn’t meant to be."

Elise watched him record the results. "Are you going to keep preparing to fight me?"

"I’m going to keep preparing to fight people stronger than me."

"That includes Champions."

"Yes."

"After defeating one."

Raven put down the pen. "I didn’t defeat Champions."

Elise looked at him. "You defeated me."

"You."

"I’m a Champion."

"That isn’t the same thing."

She frowned. Raven pointed toward his notes.

"I knew how you fought. I knew you protected civilians. I knew part of how your Halo worked. I had prepared terrain, ammunition positions, retreat routes, Roland, Valeria, and days to force you into fighting the way I wanted."

Elise listened.

"And I still almost died." Raven touched the area beneath his ribs that remained sensitive. "Not almost in the figurative sense. Penance Sanctuary activated because my body was already entering lethal failure."

Elise lowered her eyes. She remembered, far too well. Raven continued.

"If I meet another Champion at the same level tomorrow with different abilities, no information, no prepared terrain, and no time to set anything up, I run."

Roland raised a hand from his blanket. "I like that plan."

Valeria smiled. Elise looked back at Raven. "I thought winning would make you more confident."

"It made me more informed."

"That is a very Raven way of saying it."

He raised an eyebrow. "There’s already a Raven way?"

Valeria answered from behind him. "Yes."

Roland added, "Definitely."

Elise smiled. "I’m starting to recognize it."

Raven decided that was concerning too.

That night, they camped near a secondary road. Elise was still there. Raven still hadn’t invited her. Both of them appeared to have accepted those two facts without accepting what they meant.

Valeria lay near the fire and watched Elise arrange her blanket, not far away, but not too close either. Exactly the distance of someone trying to demonstrate respect for boundaries while ignoring the primary boundary.

She isn’t invited. Valeria closed her eyes. That was objectively true. It was also irrelevant.

Elise had cooked, healed Roland, helped Raven with the residual damage, discussed Blood Magic without immediately condemning it, and spent several hours trying to understand Predation instead of simply calling it corruption. That was progress.

The worst part was that Valeria was beginning to understand why Raven hadn’t killed her. Elise was dangerous, stubborn, and deeply indoctrinated in certain areas. But she wasn’t cruel, false, or opportunistic. That made everything much more complicated.

Valeria opened one eye. Elise was looking at the stars. Raven was still working on an ammunition component several meters away.

"You’re not sleeping?" Valeria asked.

Elise turned. "In a while."

"You’re thinking."

"Yes."

"Bad habit."

Elise smiled. "Raven said something similar."

Valeria looked toward him. "He’s affecting you too quickly."

"I think that works both ways."

Valeria looked back at Elise. "What are you thinking about?"

Elise took a moment. "That I may have been asking the wrong question."

Raven kept working, but he was listening. Valeria knew it too. "Which one?"

"I thought I needed to determine how much of Raven had been replaced by Predation."

Raven stopped the tool. Elise continued.

"Now I’m not sure replaced is the right word. Every Trait seems to become part of him without erasing what was there before. That doesn’t mean there’s no danger. But maybe I’m trying to classify a new process using categories that are too old."

Silence. Raven looked at her. "That’s considerably different from ’come with me or I may have to kill you.’"

Elise winced. "When you put it that way, it sounds bad."

"It sounded bad when you said it."

Valeria smiled. Elise sighed. "I still believe Predation can be dangerous."

"So do I."

That surprised her. "Really?"

Raven put the tool away. "Anything capable of modifying my body, rewarding me for consuming organisms, and expanding what it considers assimilable deserves monitoring."

Elise went still. "Then why do you never say it like that?"

"You never asked like that."

She watched him for several seconds. From Elise’s perspective, that answer changed something important. She had spent days assuming Raven refused to acknowledge the danger because Predation already influenced him too strongly. But Raven did acknowledge it.

He simply refused to accept that recognizing a risk meant surrendering authority over his body to the Church. Those were not the same thing at all.

Elise looked toward the fire. Maybe she really had been trying to save him from something he already knew needed watching. The thought was uncomfortable, but less uncomfortable than another: maybe part of what needed to change wasn’t Raven.

Elise didn’t say that. Not yet.

Valeria watched her and saw the doubt. Not weakness, but real doubt. For the first time, she thought that perhaps having Elise nearby wasn’t completely terrible.

Then she remembered Elise had been asking about her Blood Magic practices. No. Still terrible, just in a different way.

Raven was the last one to sleep. Before putting away his notes, he reviewed the conclusions from the battle one more time.

Elise Veyra. Champion. Result: conditional victory.

Dependencies: extensive preparation, prior intelligence, allies, controlled terrain, specialized ammunition, prior enemy mana expenditure, automatic activation of Penance Sanctuary, critical target error.

Probability of reproducing result in an improvised encounter: He didn’t need FORGE to answer. Bad. Very bad.

Raven closed the notes. That was the useful thing about nearly dying. It removed the temptation to become arrogant remarkably quickly.

He looked around. Roland was asleep. So was Valeria. Elise lay several meters away, still there.

Raven slowly shook his head. Defeating a Champion had been difficult. Getting her to leave was somehow proving worse.

And for the first time, Raven was beginning to suspect that maybe he wasn’t trying very hard anymore.