“During the first few years, I could often hear other girls screaming during the night — the screams came out of the direction of the choir classes and ceremony classes. I didn’t understand what was going on until I was old enough to get into the choir classes. Then I found out that during the nights higher ranks of the church would visit the dormitory, always dragging a few girls out of their beds, and only at daybreak the next day would they be sent back. But sometimes… not all of the girls would come back again.”
Nightingale clenched her lips, of course, she clearly knew what Wendy meant.
“This kind of thing would happen once or twice a month, frequently even two days successively. Then it was the day that I was selected. It was Faria who pulled me out of the room, whispering all the while into my ear that I should just bear with it, everything would become well. I was dragged by her into the corner of the garden where a room was built halfway underground. The room was brightly lit, at one side I could see how the females of the ceremony class being tortured, there were four to five men…” Her voice slightly shook. “When they came over to me, one of the women suddenly broke out from her shackles, grabbing the man closest to her, grabbed him by the neck and killing him just like he was a chicken, easily twisting his neck.”
“She… had awakened?”
“I do not know,” Wendy shook her head, “those men had taken off their clothes, but they still wore their God’s Stone of Retaliation around their necks, but she was still able to kill one after another. One of them she seemed to want to skin alive, tearing one limp off after another, while he was still living. The last words he said before his death were… ‘an extraordinary’. The screams of the men alerted the guards and Faria who stood outside of the room. They immediately opened the iron gate and rushed in, but the scene in front of them rooted them on the spot, while the other woman directly rushed in their direction.”
“Was she a witch?” Asked Nightingale thrilled, “Were the guards also not an opponent for her?”
“The gap was simply too great. I later learned that those guards belonged to the Army of Judges. One of them blew his whistle while the other drew his sword. However, when the first one stopped blowing his whistle, she had already stepped in front of him, and penetrated his chest with her arm. In front of her, their armors were nothing more than a thin piece of paper.”
“Then, she picked up the Judge’s sword, stabbed Farisa, and split the other Judge into two halves, even cutting the guard’s sword in two. However, the whistle had alerted the whole monastery, many guards carrying oil lamps were on their way to us. She then peeled off Farisa’s clothes and wore them herself, then took another man’s weapon and walked in the direction of the rushing guards by herself.”
“I sat in the room full of a bloody mess for a while before I finally recovered. I discovered that one of the dead men was in charge of the keys to the entrance of the monastery, so I went over and dug out the keys from the scattered clothes. At the same time, I also stripped the stones around their necks. I didn’t know what effects they had, I only thought I might be able to sell them for a little money with their crystal clear appearance. The nuns of the monastery, the guards, and the Judges were all attracted by that other woman, and so I could get to the hidden back door without being noticed. There, I had to try several keys before I finally found the right key to open the door and flee from the monastery.”
“Later, I was only able to sell one stone because the rest of them were snatched away from me. Thus I had to rely on the ten silver royals I’d gotten for the one stone during my journey. Two years later, I reached the Seawind Region and had to stop; it was also the time of my awakening,” Wendy paused for a while. “That’s my whole story.”
Nightingale just silently held Wendy’s hands for a long while, until she asked, “What happened to the other women in the church?”
“Perhaps they all died, or they were able to escape just like me. I had asked around, but I only learned that the Church had said that there was a fire in the monastery and that they had to shut it down. No one knew it and even more, no one cared what had happened to the girls. They had all just been abandoned.”
Nightingale used a soothing voice while holding Wendy in her arms, “Now you have us. Everything will become well, so sleep, Wendy.”
After a long time, she finally heard a gentle, “ah…”
*
The next morning, Roland entered his office while yawning, there he saw Nightingale as always sitting by his table, but this time she had a serious expression on her face.
“Well, what happened?”
“Have you ever heard of something called an ‘extraordinary’?” She asked.
