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An enterprising young thief attempts to win freedom from her life of crime with the daring theft of a particular sword, rumored to be held in the basement of a monastery dedicated to a dark god.

Although this piece was written with brute force rather than my accustomed inspiration, I hope readers will find it somewhat thrilling. Being disciplined and deliberate are important virtues where art is considered, and since I am normally neither, this is my attempt to practice. This piece was also written for the Thursday Prompt on FA: https://www.furaffinity.net/user/thursdayprompt .

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_Well I was made from love

But now I'm far below

And I've so far to go

Yeah I've so far to go._

-The Veils

The Key to a Vixen's Heart

It's sunny when they finally make their way up. Amid the fields of flourishing heather, she and the sisters process up the hill toward the little parish, following the stony footpath. The sisters share gossip with one another, quoting bits of scripture and prayer. The day is fine, and the cool breeze mixes excellently with the hot sunlight, but Linnie is not at ease. She does not belong with these women. Every syllable that passes their lips makes it more apparent, but she folds her paws and processes with them all the same and reminds herself that it's only a few days. Then she'll be back in her Sultan's Vineyard apartment soon, toasting her victory with wine and meat and as many prostitutes as she can hire. Big cats, she thinks. Lions and tigers, with broad scratchy tongues and thunder in their powerful chests.

All that, and the Key, of course. The chief joy. The real prize. More precious than all the gold in the world. Linnie has dreamed of it since girlhood.

"And here we are, Sister." says one of the nuns, a sweet old lop-eared rabbit, taking her by the elbow and directing her gaze to the wrought-iron gates. The parish is at the top of the hill, and it leers down over the rest of the land with narrow windows, high gables and steeple points bearing the triple-cross of the Red God. All of it is made of stone, and each stone was precisely cut, measured, and lain. Linnie gets the distinct impression that everything is in its place here, and has been undisturbed for a very long time. Things have been settled here, independent of the kingdom's will. Its spires press up into the sky like the tines of a great trident, as if to wound the passing sun. The brothers and sisters of the parish, she has been told, kneel to no power and recognize no laws but those of their own Red God, and His appointed servants. Linnie looks back along the stony path, and sees that it is long indeed.

It's a very tiresome walk from the nearest little hamlet. From a distance, the abbey had looked so small to Linnie, but up close it is a looming thing, dark and regal as moonrise.

"It may seem cold to outsiders," says the lop, "but you'll be seeing it through different eyes soon enough. Sister Margaret, why don't you show Sister Linnet her chambers, and give he the petit tour before supper?"

"Yes, Sister," Replies a lean little pine marten with a silky coat. She goes to the great stained-oak doors and throws them wide. "Come now, Sister Linnet." she says, beckoning with one crooked claw and smiling as genially as a marten can. "You're very welcome in this house, I assure you. There's no need to look so nervous."

It takes Linnie a moment. It's bad form to lose composure this early on a job, and Linnie has always prided herself on her poker face. The marten smiles and is patient. Linnie returns the smile in time, and pretends to be comforted as the two of them enter in.

***

"You are a madwoman," Kite declared when she'd told him. "You are a madwoman, and I can't associate with you any longer."

"A madwoman, am I?" She'd said, grinning at him with all her foxish charm. "Not half so mad as you. The drink I'm holding in my hand was paid for with *ducal gold*, might I remind you, and that old striped fart would die before he gave his own daughter a copper bit. If I'm a madwoman, Kite, you are the Prince of All Lunacy."

"No!" the lanky wolf proclaimed, reaching out and touching her nose with a paw pad. "No, I abdicate my title. Filching a little coin from a duke is fine, they'd chop off my tail and toss me into a cell and I'd rot and that'd be the end of it. And that's a proper death for a thief- I'd be proud to go like that." He sloshed a bit of ale at her, and took a deep swig, gasping as he put the tankard back down. "A good death! Yes I'd rather be drunk, yes I'd rather be crushed under a pile of naked women, but what does Father always tell us, eh? Manage your expectations, Linnie! And you'll never be disappointed."

"I have managed!" She said, a little too drunk to keep the petulant vulpish gekker out of her voice. "And this is my expectation: if I keep pinching candlesticks and silver daggers and cutting coin purses, I will be doing it until I am a withered old husk of a vixen, and I blow away in the wind. I don't want to be one of the old shadow-grannies, teaching pups how to pick pockets and whipping them when they get caught. I want to live my own life. I want that Kite, Key." Linnie lay her head down on her arms, giggling. "I want that Keeeey, Kite. I asked Father, and this was his price."

"You laugh," said the wolf, leaning in. "You laugh all you please, but think it through, love. Father wouldn't let you go for a trifle."

"It's not a trifle, but I'm not trifling either."

"No," he said. "No, you're the best I know, but you're not good enough for this."

"Then who is?"

"No one who's anything less than a master," said Kite, tapping his claw on the wood of the table. "And a sorcerer, too. And possesses no fear, no sense, no dread and no love of their own wellbeing." His expression turned drunkenly concerned, even sentimental, which looked unusual on the wolf. "They're butchers, Linnie. They cut an eye out of old Hobb. Theo's left hand is a hook because he tried pick-pocketing a deacon in a crowded market. Father says they see in the dark with those red eyes of theirs."

"Father also said this would pay the rest of my ledger in one go. The man doesn't want to waste talent, Kite- if he says it'll pay me off, he thinks I can do it. And then I'll be out, Kite." She found the wine was losing some of its delightful buoying charm and took another long pull. It was good and smooth, but their conversation was threatening to sour it. "I'll be free. I can work or not, as I please, for the rest of my whole life. Isn't that worthy, Kite? Shouldn't I have my Key?"

Kite was silent, brooding over his ale which he licked at absentmindedly. At length, he said "Just don't you end up a pelt, hung out on the parish walls as a warning. I'm running out of friends."

"Then you're well on your way to being a proper thief." said Linnie and finished her wine.

"Did he at least give you any advice?"

"He said not to touch it with my bare paws."

Kite snorted. "Father's well studied. 'The Sword of the Dead' they call it. 'And the Dead wield it'. It's a ghastly thing to be keeping in a church."

"It's a ghastly church." She tried to give him the charming little vixen smirk that had made them such good friends in their mutual puppyhood, just a decade ago. But Kite looked back at her, his deep yellow eyes glinting with candlelight, and Linnet saw that all her companion's drunkenness had fled, and only cold sobriety looked out at her.

"Yeah." was all he could say. Linnie arranged for her habit and the forged initiation papers the next morning.

***

Sister Margaret is a sweet woman- a little grey in the whiskers, and a little stern, but that is to be expected of a nun. She shows Linnie to her quarters, taking her down the long stone hallways with their oil portraits, footsteps dampened by the soft red carpet. They are beset on all sides by altars, candles, and iconography depicting the old pontiffs and bishops of the church. Miracle workers all, Linnie is assured.

The parish is larger inside than she'd expected, and Linnie takes a number of mental notes. The number of doors in the nuns' quarters, the number of windows, and how many steps it takes to cross. The location of the bishop's chambers, though he's out traveling, and the kitchen and dining chambers. On their way to the cellars, she stops, feeling suddenly cold.

"What is down that way?" She says, pointing her index claw down a hallway where the candles burn low, the walls are bare of crosses and icons, and there is no carpet to warm the bare stone.

"Ah," says the marten, folding her ears with patient concern. "Chilly, isn't it? Put that way out of your mind, sister. If it is the will of God, you will walk it one day. Now, we are expected at supper."

The both of them turn and walk down a different hallway, and the carpet drinks up the sound of their footfalls. Linnie turns back just once before they turn the corner, and stares into the dark. 'That's where it is,' thinks the thief, and when she turns away, a pair of eyes shine out of the dark, and watch her go.

***

"It was made by the lapish smiths long ago," Father explained, brushing a claw along the fur of her jawline, trailing it down her neck. Father was always touching, but Linnie had learned to become very still, and neither a twitch nor errant facial expression disclosed her revulsion. "They named it 'Elil', which in their tongue means 'enemy'. It's a lovely thing, Linnie. Slender and deadly. Just like you."

She giggled in the way she was supposed to and flickered her ears coquettishly. "You old flatterer. What would you give me for it?"

The old jackal grinned, and Linnie could see by his expression that it was the right question to ask. Father had been a great thief once, and he often boasted that there wasn't a soul in the vast eastern lands from which he had fled that did not want him in a grave or on a rack. He loved exotic treasures more than he loved any of the orphans he collected, and Linnie knew he would just as happily barter for them in lives as in gold. He told Linnie she was special. Linnie, after all, tended to come back alive.

"I think," said Father. "For a blade like that? I think I might give it to you."

With one claw, he slid back the silk fabric of his shirt. It glowed against the dark fur of his chest, gay and golden as the dawn. The Key. Something like hunger welled up in Linnie every time she'd seen it, ever since she was a little fox kit, dreaming of the day she could go into business for herself. Do anything for herself. Dreaming of the day she could be called and refuse to come.She stared just a little too long, and he caught her. "You want it, don't you? My little chicken-thief. How often you've asked for this over the years... Well, pull this little pullet home and it's yours. You and I can finally part ways."

His pearly fangs glowed with the same light as the key, and Linnie took a deep breath, tried to compose herself. "Oh father. You've taught me so much over the years. How could I ever want to leave you?"

"Pups leave the den when they're ready." said the jackal, rolling his paw in the air and waving off the thought. "If you're ready, you'll leave. And if not, well... Do try to die outside the parish, won't you? I don't have any other Linnies to come retrieve you."

'Retrieve the sword, you mean', thought the fox as the scarred old thief pressed a kiss to the wet pad of her nose. The little magical locket that bonded her spirit to his will made her wrist itch.

***

It's taking longer than a few days. Their eyes really are sharp. They are attentive, productive. They mill about their parish by day, and by night their ears prick up at every noise. Linnie tests them in little ways. Moving candlesticks, dusting paintings and leaving them crooked, switching silverware. They catch her and correct her with gentle firmness, and it is always immediate, and always without any malice or frustration whatsoever, which unnerves her. They smile at her. When they speak of their god, they do it with rapturous serenity. No fat friars, these. They drink ale but are never drunk. They pontificate on virtues and philosophy and are never distracted. Zealots, all of them.

At night she can hear someone other than her stalking the halls. They have a tread like a spider's whisper. It is not lost on her that she has seen neither the bishop nor the priest since she arrived. Now, nearly a week has passed and her disguise will soon wear thin. She has secured only one victory, but she is certain it will be enough. Linnie has seen the door, and she has seen the key that unlocks it.

The door is at the end of that long, bare hallway. It twists and turns, snaking through the building, threatening always to cross the path of some more gentle way. The air within it is always cold, and she has seen things. The triple cross of the Red God, inverted, profane symbols scrawled in a shaking hand, candles that burn with a black flame and give no light. Why they are here, she cannot ask, but the cold-iron door is at the end, and it has a brass lock.

There is a brass key around the neck of one of the women. A short rabbit who speaks easily but sternly and whose left sleeve flutters behind her as she walks. Her arm is truncated at the shoulder. "Lost it while I was out inquisiting and I never picked it back up." said the sister when Linnie asked, her head bowed in humility. As she did, a glimmer of brass glinted between her humble breasts, and the vixen saw it.

That was a night ago. Tonight, Linnie pads out of her room by moonlight, still wearing her habit. In her sash is her dagger. She carries a set of tools, but no lockpicks- it's a simple enough thing for a cheap conjurer or apprentice of wizardry to enchant a lock to scream at the touch of thieves' tools, and there can be no chances taken. Linnie could pick it, sure. Much like removing the locket, however, there is simply too much peril in the attempt.

The thief's nose tests the air as she darts down a carpeted hallway. A fox's nose is sharp, and her instincts are sharp too- she does not feel the lurking presence, and allows the night to guide her along the hallways. Sometimes she steps out of a shadow into light thrown down by stained glass windows, their colors all silvered by the full moon above. Sometimes she creeps past little bubbles of candlelight, only daring to breathe once the shadow enfolds her once more. Her heart beats. She's stolen a hundred keys from around the necks of a hundred sleeping victims, but the stakes are higher here. Though they have treated her as a true sister, Linnie has never forgotten that she is in the house of the Red God. The stories of their violence follow her through the dark, and it takes a conscious effort to keep them from retelling themselves in the back of her mind as she opens the door to the room of the one-armed rabbit.

Soft breathing. A little splinter of moon lain across her neck. Quietly, her black-gloved paw finds the chain buried in the fuzzy dewlap of the sister, and with utmost caution, she lifts it back, and pulls the key into the light. Rabbits are light sleepers by nature. She holds her knife at the ready.

She almost plunges it in when one eye cracks open.

A few heartbeats pass. The lower rim of the sister's iris glitters, but the pupil does not swivel to behold her. She's still asleep. Linnie says a prayer to any god but theirs that she will stay that way as she lifts up the rabbit's chain. The sister turns in her sleep, and with an expert tug, the fox lifts the necklace away from her head. With a noise like a night breeze at the window, she is gone, back into the dark.

***

"Why can't I just take it off?" Linnie sobbed and pulled at the locket. Kite, who was only a year older than her, batted her paw away and grabbed the chain, pinning it to her wrist. He held it so hard that it ached, and the little fox cub winced. "I want it off! I didn't know, I want it off!"

"Shut up!" Snarled the wolf, although his heart ached for her. "Just shut up, he's gonna hear you!"

"I hate this. I hate him, I hate this, I hate you!"

It was the third night they'd had this conversation, and Kite knew how she felt. But he was the older one of the two, and Father would come down on him if the new kit disturbed anyone with her caterwauling. He bit back the urge to shake her and instead dug down to the little kernel of compassion he'd been cursed with, determined not to hit her, but fearful of the beating that awaited him if she didn't shut her muzzle.

"I know, I know," he said. "It's a hateful thing but just be quiet, ok?" He put his finger to her lips to shush her, and was almost surprised when she choked on the sob, staring up at him with her green, overbright eyes. Her slit pupils looked unrepentant into his round ones, and the wolf took a deep, steadying breath.

"You can't take it off." he said.

"I know... I know that. Why?" she whispered back.

"It's the magic."

"The magic?"

Kite tugged at the chain. "Right now... it lives in here, right? And when Father says something, it makes you do it, right?"

She nodded. She knew this, and all it entailed. Father didn't like having to use the magic, but he would if he needed to. Little Linnet was learning this lesson swiftly and early.

"Well, if you break this chain, if you ever even try to pick the lock, Linnie, then the chain goes away... but the magic stays." Kite poked her on the shoulder with a cold claw. "It stays right here in you. And it never goes away. Do you understand? Never ever."

Her eyes grew wide, and Kite watched her do the calculation of 'never ever' just behind that foxish stare. "You'll never be free." He whispered. "So you have to keep it on, until Father gives you the Key."

Linnie was silent. He could hear her choking back the sound of her despair in the dark. At length, she asked him "When will Father give us the key...?"

"Someday soon," Kite said. "If we're really good."

It hurt Kite to lie like that. He spent the next ten years looking out for the little fox, by way of apology.

***

She feels no presence tonight. She had been certain it would arrive at the worst time- she's been lingering at every corner, assessing exits, going over the route in her head again and again, but whatever it is has yet to surface. Linnie is beginning to think it isn't really a presence. Maybe it is the breath of this place, aspiration and suspiration of the dreadful essence that lurks in the bare hallway. It loiters in the dark corners and the edges of her perception, immaterial. That doesn't make it any less real. A thief's instincts are honed to feel intangible things like watching eyes and killing intention- but feelings don't kill you. Only overconfidence, knives and Father have that power. So she makes her way to the bare hallway and begins to creep down it.

Soon she stands at the door, and she finds the lock with practiced ease. She oils the hinges, turns the key, and lets the heavy iron thing swing open. The air washes out like a dusty breath, and it takes everything in her not to cough. Linnie takes only a moment, and treads down into the shadows, feeling her way down a long series of spiraling stone steps. The air is cold, colder than it is in the hallway, and she fights off the urge to shiver. Somewhere, water is dripping.

The stairs give way to a chamber. Blind, she crouches and listens. She has a candle and pinch of alchemist's fire to light it with, but it's a last resort. When only the dripping of water comes to her, she begins to feel her way through. There are pews down here. She touches them, slides around them, nearly knocks over something tall and metallic as she passes, catching it just before it can crash to the ground. She should be silent, but something down here is distracting her. The dripping of the water. The chill. And the smell.

Linnie is a killer, and she knows what blood smells like. This place reeks of it. At first the scent was faint but now it assails her, and her fox's nose tells her it's all around. Smeared into the walls, slicking the floors. The basement is redolent with it, and she must feel her way in the dark labyrinth, because now her ears and her nose are as blind as her eyes. Her paws shake with unaccustomed tension, her eyes are wide in the darkness. Until now there has never been any gloom that could drown her vulpish night-vision, but here it is. It eats her, and she slides into it both of and against her own will.

And then it happens. Linnie's boot comes down on something that rolls, her leg kicks out from under her and she lands on her back with a wheeze. 'What's wrong with me tonight?' she thinks- she's never made this many mistakes in her life, but something is needling her, something is bringing back the old fears, the dark fears, the things that crept in the shadows of her puppyhood, and against her better judgement, Linnie sits up and lights her candle.

She bites down on her scream of shock.

There's an arm down there on the floor. The frayed end which should have connected to some shoulder is wet and stinking, and it lays in a wide red smear where her boot kicked it. It clutches a knife between two fingers, and she recognizes a scar on the knuckle.

"Came here looking for you." says a voice from beyond the veil of darkness at the edge of the candlelight. It scratches and grates and crows, like rusty iron being pulled across rusty iron, flush with a vile pride. "Found me instead. Bad luck."

Linnie backs away, and her dagger is out of its sash now, flashing in the meager light. She hears a wet noise, and can feel herself breathing faster and faster as she lifts the candle high.

Kite lays still in the arms of his destroyer, his head twisted to an impossible angle, his broken neck offered up to a fanged mouth. One of the arms that held Linnie in her puppyhood tripped her and the other lays not far away. Over him hovers a gruesome thing, long and dark as a dusk-shadow, red eyes shining like the edges of knives.

Its tongue is in Kite's neck. It writhes under the pelt, luxuriates in his life's blood, which pumps weakly out. Linnie has arrived in time to watch him die, and in horror, she raises her blade to do what battle she may.

"Nooo..." Breathes the thing, blood bubbling between its fangs. It lifts its batlike head to her, impossibly long canines stained in bright red, full vampiric regalia. It stands and lets the body of her only companion, her brother, slide to the floor. It pulls from his belly the long blade of Elil. 'The sword of the dead', she thinks, 'and the dead wield it.'

"Not time. Don't move."

It fixes her with a gimlet stare, and because she cannot look away, she sees that the great vampire is attired in the robes of the Red God. He is bound all over, silver tri-crosses dangling from chains that enmesh his entire body. Faint silver steam rises from him as the holy symbols burn. 'This is the priest.' she thinks to herself, and the idea is so steeped in lunacy that she almost laughs, but her mouth and her body are frozen. 'This is the father. Their Father. And that is his Key.' Smoothly, his body moves to her, all fluid nightmare grace. The smell of Kite's lifeblood is on his breath as he leans in.

"Where is Father? Wolf dies before telling."

Something compels her to answer, and so she does, honestly and efficiently. Behind those red eyes, a dark calculation is made. She sees it play out as she feeds him detail after detail. The apartments. The orphanage. The children, Father, the lockets, the Key. She divulges, enthralled, the secrets that she swore would never pass her lips in life. The vampire listens and is patient. Because her gaze is locked to his, she cannot see the tangle of Kite's intestines steaming softly on the floor, or the way the light quietly flees from his eyes when no one is watching.

"Good." Is all the voice says. "Choose now. Eyes or neck."

In this moment Linnie is granted choice, and her will surges. It takes everything she has to divert her brain and eyes from the vampire's. She strikes the thing on its face with a clenched fist. A line of hot blood whips across the back of her arm as she snakes the sword from its gnarled grip and turns, vaulting over the maze of pews. Her candle topples to the ground and she runs, pulling herself around the corner and up the stone stairs, stumbling in the dark. In the shadows, she sees Kite and Father, she sees the noblemen and tavern drunks she's robbed, she sees the shine of gold and the hot, wonderful sun. She passes over her life on the steps, clutching the sword, thinking of the Key. The Key and her long, peaceful future that lay behind the opening of her locket. Clutching the sword in her sash, she runs.

She nearly breaks her nose on the door, unable to see in the dark. Linnie tries desperately to open it, but it's shut and locked fast against her. Through the keyhole she can see the one armed nun, fingering a spare key, that hateful bitch. Frustration sweeps through her. She rams her own key into the lock and twists it too hard.

It breaks, and she withdraws the handle, the little keyhole of light totally dark now.

"Neck, then." Says the voice.

"Good evening, Father," says the rabbit's voice from beyond the door. "And goodnight, Sister."

Linnie feels bright pain on her throat.

Then she feels nothing at all.