Cut from the Same Cloth
"......Hero. Rean Galef violated me."
Serina slipped off her coat and leaned forward slightly, baring the nape of her neck so that Frai could see. The bite mark Rean had left—deliberately preserved until this very moment—would be plainly visible there.
Frai reached out a hand with perfect calm, but before his fingers could even touch her, a faint light bloomed at her nape. Its gentle warmth made Serina's brow crease. These days, so much as brushing against light that carried Rean's trace was enough to turn her stomach.
He said nothing. The silence held only one meaning: the cardinal, too, had recognized whose power this light came from.
Serina bundled herself back up in her coat at once. There was no longer any need to sit there in her disheveled habit—not when the marks of her violation had already served their purpose.
The cardinal's clenched fists were trembling, and the wait that followed was short.
"What in the world did that beast of a man do to you?!"
There was not a shred of exaggeration in his fury. Serina's shoulders hunched slightly at the shout that filled the room. Even so, hope stirred in her. Frai was agitated to the point that the muscles of his face quivered—and that meant the possibility of dragging the Hero down was real.
Sharing a festering wound with another person demanded a great deal. It mattered whether there was someone willing to open their ears and listen in silence, and it was just as essential not to come apart while reliving something that had torn her soul to shreds. This conversation, as it happened, took place in a setting where both conditions were properly met.
Throughout the long talk, whenever Serina showed the faintest sign of distress, Cardinal Frai offered her warm tea or a brief rest, doing his utmost to be considerate. Each small kindness seemed to wash a little more of the old wound away.
Soon the conversation drew to a close. Her body was shivering—perhaps because she had dredged up her own shame with her own mouth. Serina sat quietly, watching Frai's hands. When his glowing palm swept lightly over her coat, she felt her heart settle, if only for an instant. She moved her right hand to her nape to check: the healing had taken hold, and the bite mark that had been so vivid was gone without a trace.
"So it was a holy law that stirs a woman's arousal. I knew he was a despicable man, but I never imagined he would stoop to such a thing."
The answer was not the one she had expected, and tension coiled inside her.
"Ah, but do not worry. The Hero will never set foot in this place. I will be sealing off the light of the Holy Sword from this moment on, so you may rest at ease."
"What a relief."
Serina caught a familiar smile on Frai's face. Brothers truly did take after one another. Just as when she faced Galef, kindness radiated from him as well.
"And so—how was it?"
"I'm sorry? What do you mean?"
"What it was like, taking the Hero while you were in heat. That is what I'm asking."
That was why, right up until that moment, not a flicker of suspicion had crossed her mind.
Silence fell.
"............Why would you ask me that...?"
It was a needless question. Hadn't the answer already been decided? Even so, she wanted to clutch at this last flicker of hope—wanted the hand extended toward her not to carry the intent she could so easily imagine, wanted that gentle smile not to resemble Rean's. She wished, and wished again. This place was her best option and, at the same time, her only one. There had never been a second choice to fall back on. This was the Church, after all—the very institution even Galef had trusted.
"No matter how good that may have been,"
His hand shot out.
Serina looked down at the fingers clamped around her coat.
"—it was only to tell you that far better things await you from now on. So do look forward to it."
With those words, the clothes Lartel had given her dropped to the floor with a thud.
Her hopes shattered to pieces.
They were in it together.
Serina swung her right arm—or tried to.
"Eek!"
Before she knew it, two believers had taken position on either side of her, each seizing one of her arms. The mace she had failed to swing in time dissolved the instant Frai's hand drew near. She tried to conjure it again, but the moment they pinned her with their palms interlocked over hers, the light began to smother where it stood. The familiar surge of helplessness rose in her.
"Saintess. You won't be needing to handle weapons like this for a while. Your education will be focusing on other parts, after all."
Her arms were forced up above her head. When Serina's chest heaved with her unbroken resistance, Cardinal Frai's true face finally showed itself. The face, creased with deep lines across the brow, seemed to hold a desire even thicker than Rean's.
"Let go of me! Let go!"
"As I said before, it will all be quite pleasant. Here, rather than relying on cowardly methods like the Hero's, we devote ourselves to drawing out pure instinct. Every nun who has received this education was satisfied with it, so I am certain you will find it to your liking as well, Saintess."
"Don't touch me! Fuck—get your hands off me!"
Unperturbed, Frai went on caressing her thighs.
"You were blossoming into such a fine saint that Galef wished to take you away, and I did everything in my power to dissuade him. Unfortunately, I could not break that stubborn resolve of his, and this is the outcome it brought. So now, late as it may be, I shall simply have to educate you with the utmost devotion."
"You son of a bitch, that gaping hole you have for a mouth—mmph!"
The priest standing at her right stuffed a hand over Serina's mouth.
"How it grieved me, you know, when Galef first spoke of taking you away."
Serina's desperate resistance faltered the moment hands began kneading her breasts through her clothes. This was a different order of violation from the mockery she had endured before. Back then, she had at least been able to hope in the Church; now, escape was the only answer left. And thrown into a position where she could not even attempt it, her whole body seemed to be going numb with a fear greater than any she had ever known.
"You could not have known this, Saintess, but I have been waiting for this moment for a very long time."
Before long, a wrinkled hand pushed into the gaping front of her habit. It explored with meticulous care, less like a man slaking his lust than one taking a measurement of her chest.
"Ever since these plump breasts were still no more than flower buds, I have longed to caress them with devoted care and purify the filth from them with my own two hands."
His other hand slipped beneath the skirt that had been hiked up to her waist. Groping along her hip, it crept slowly toward her crotch. Even with the sensation of insects crawling over her skin, she clenched her thighs as tightly as she could to stop that one thing.
This cardinal was far more practiced than Rean. Even as he fixed his eyes on her face, he caressed her clit with painstaking attention, waiting for the moment she was at her weakest. Her resistance did not last long. This was a part of her that Rean had toyed with and tormented beyond all counting. A woman who had once accepted pleasure to escape violence—to keep herself from shattering completely before hope could arrive—had no hope of mounting a perfect resistance now.
Cold sweat ran down her spine. The feeling of spreading her legs of her own accord, of allowing fingers inside her, was the worst there was.
"I have dreamed of this moment, even in my sleep—the moment I would finally get to touch this prettily closed little cunt."
Frai knelt down between her knees and spread her pussy with both hands, drawing his face close as if to peer inside. Perhaps deciding she had abandoned all resistance, the two priests now merely held her shoulders lightly, each kneading one breast while letting out their own revolting moans.
"Seen up close, you are on an entirely different level from the other nuns. As expected of the Saintess."
Hot breath spread inside her, and her mind went dizzy.
"Before the baptism, I shall have myself a taste of—"
Crack.
Her mind had been so fogged that she had nearly missed even that sliver of an opening. Frai, caught on the back of the head by the mace Serina swung, toppled over backward with a scream full of agony.
Sure enough, one proper blow and his true character came spilling out. Leaving behind his howl of you fucking bitch, she blanketed the room in bursts of light, threw off the priests, and fled.
She had glimpsed the back of his skull caving in, so she judged an immediate pursuit to be impossible, and Serina tore down the corridor, feeling her way through her memory. The precaution she had taken, noting the features of her surroundings just in case, proved its worth. By luck, thanks to the baptism preparations the cardinal had mentioned, not a single believer was to be seen.
I have to get out of here and find help. At the very least, L-Lartel! He said he would be staying here—I know he did.
Serina reached the closed front door in no time and shoved the handle with all her strength, both hands wrapped around it, but it did not budge an inch. Whether some peculiar holy law had been laid over it, even her light refused to obey. All she could summon was the blurry afterimage of the mace.
Biting her lower lip hard, she swung her fist with everything she had, trying at least to shatter a window. She rammed her head against it; she threw her whole body at it. For all her efforts, the glass would not give so much as a tremor.
The next moment, urgent footsteps sounded from the far end of the corridor, and Serina flinched and bolted. She scanned her surroundings, resolved to wedge herself through any crack she could find, but it was useless. The fact that her light still would not listen spread through her as an uncontrollable urgency.
The footsteps drew steadily closer, and Serina, staking her last hope on it, flung open the slightly ajar doors of the assembly hall.
"H-Help—!"
The desperate plea was cut off short.
"Ngh, ahn, too deep... haah..."
".........What is this."
In the very center of the hall, more than a dozen believers stood ringed around a single nun.
"We had no idea you would welcome the baptism so warmly, Saintess."