Every beginning has an ending.
Strega was curled up in the Rose Suite with the rats when the keening began.
She had wanted to be with Copia for the Forum rituals, as important as she knew they were to him personally and to the Church as a whole. They had even figured out a way to work her into the ritual, finally adding a female soloist to the set list, but ultimately decided the risk was too high that the Elders would spot her, even as heavily veiled as the costume was, and so she stayed behind. They had regular Doom calls during the tour, mostly on travel days between shows, as well as the occasional night when he came offstage and forgot that time zones were a thing. She never minded being awoken by his ringtone, though he kept those calls shorter as a courtesy - typically just long enough to share whatever ridiculous thing had happened that night to make him want to call in the first place.
The sound that woke her on this particular evening was something that made her blood run cold. The cloister bell when Archbishop Samuels died was eerie, but this was inhuman. With an apology to the rats that she dislodged in the process, Strega flung back the covers and staggered out of bed, crawling back into the clothes she had removed earlier. She reached to pick up the warding stone Matiiya had given her a timeless time before...and dropped it again almost immediately.
The stone was ice cold.
Cautiously, the feeling of dread inspired by the sound in the halls beginning to grow, Strega picked it up again. Braced for it this time, the cold was not quite as shocking, and beneath it she could feel the vibrations that she had come to associate with the link she and Copia shared with the half-ghoul, but they were much fainter than they had ever been before.
The Elders are dead. Matiiya's voice was sepulchral in the back of Strega's mind. My ties to this world are severed at last. Remember me...
And with that, she was gone.
Strega was hard pressed to determine which of the two was the greater shock. Sister Imperator had seemed as strong as any other woman of her years when she left on tour with the Project. But while Matiiya had been used by the Elders to prolong their lives, that of Papa Nihil in particular, Strega never would have thought they were keeping her here, in return.
Then she stopped to consider how cold and unfeeling the world had been to Tiiy. She loved her dearly, of course, as did Alessandro, and that love was reciprocated. But they were only two bright lights in a sea of darkness. With her tail returned to her, and the Elders no longer in a position to threaten those she loved, perhaps it was no surprise, after all, that she would want to leave.
Strega hoped she would be with her Maman again.
Scrubbing her face, she took the warding stone and placed it on her devotional altar, lighting a single black candle. "I will remember you," she promised, looking at the quintessence rune carved on the face of it. "Always."
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