The Dark Mage

Chapter 26: Father Victor's Ministry

   For more than 800 years, Fr. Victor had served as a faithful monk under all the bishops and abbots that he has lived through. He had lived through the Great Schism of 1224 between the archbishop of Szolsura and the archbishop fo Lunsaro that split Christendom in half until the schism's end in 2096, the Age of False Enlightenment, the Great Apostasy of the most influential heresiarchs of the 16th and 17th century, the War to End All Wars from 1927 to 1957, and even the Szolsuran-American war from 2065 to 2100 waged on an interstellar scale. But what he was not completely prepared for was becoming a priest.

      For all his life as a monk, he rarely had to deal with things outside his monastery that wasn't part of his obedience to his abbot and bishop. He was an excellent theologian whose treatises, capable of being understood by ordinary people, destroyed the very intellectual, moral, philosophical, historical, theological, and rational foundations of many of the heretical movements that spawned out of the Great Apostasy while steelmanning their positions. But for all his wisdom and knowledge of theology, he never truly had a chance to apply it all. And where he did have chances to apply it, it was almost always in close, intimate friendships with his spiritual children as a monk seeking their good and salvation. And one of those spiritual children was Vixie whom he met after she fled from her wealthy family because of their corruption and a terrible and illegal arranged marriage because of her adolescence. And upon learning this Victor had helped her settle into her new home where she met Todd Reddington and eventually married him out of genuine love when they both became old enough and were 3-tails rather than be sold as the property of her father to an unknown spouse she would call master. And from the way Vixie lived her life and how her parents were like Victor's mother, Victor saw Vixie as someone much like himself and felt a compassion that moved him to care about her which scandalized the brothers as he began on something that wasn't strictly under his abbot's blessing. But with the way Victor saw it, his baptism was the blessing to do good works and care about people, and he didn't need permission to at least try to give someone a dignified life. As for Vixie, she was someone who everyone in her new village in the 1400s when she was just a 2-tails considered her one of the most wholesome people they have ever been around and not just one of the elegant yet cold-hearted vixens that the Arctic Fox subculture molds them to be. It also turned out that the Arctic Fox subculture was so cold to anyone who wasn't part of their island that even Inari would rarely visit there and only visit there for official public matters. It was also during this time that Victor was still a 7-tails and felt joy at seeing Vixie become a pious Christian and was in an environment that let her grow into her true self, because seeing how his mother treated him and his twin sister, he wasn't going to let Vixie face the same fate.

      So, Victor took it upon himself to give Vixie a proper education in all manner of things and use his personal relationship with her to cultivate the gifts she had been given into becoming her own person with dignity. And for this, Vixie considered Victor more of a father to her than her father by blood who only say her as living property. It was also during this time that Todd Reddington would also visit Victor frequently, even if he was much more of a socialite and half-Tanuki at heart than Vixie who was known for her quiet, thoughtful, and gentle nature. And because of both Todd and Vixie's piety and love for all people, they never forgot about people outside themselves. And even when Vixie had become one of the 9 executors becaues of her regularly socializing with Victor and Inari when Inari would visit him. And Inari noticed Vixie had a knack for good leadership and so rigorously tested her competence before offering her the rare opportunity to become one of her executors. But out of love for the people of her domain, she never indulged in luxury or extravagance despite being able to afford it on an executor's salary and lived in a house like anyone else. She was so dedicated to the causes of ordinary people that she felt guilt for having a servant despite her desperate need for one. And it wasn't until Vixie collapsed from exhaustion and kept getting sick that her husband Todd Reddington convinced her to hire a servant to handle the tedious tasks of everyday life, and that servant was Dixie. But despite being a servant, Vixie refused to treat Dixie like one but as someone deserving of dignity and respect as that was the example Victor showed her towards all people that she internalized. And despite Dixie being from the Tanuki Republic, Vixie didn't care and treated Dixie as if she were part of her extended family. As such, Vixie gave Dixie a place to stay and even offered to pay for her own house, but after having such a good experience with Vixie, Dixie decided she would live in Vixie's house in the side of a hill. And Vixie treated Dixie so well that when the Tanuki Republic's military tried to use Dixie as a means to get top secret information within the high ranks of the Kitsune government through Vixie, Dixie refused to cooperate and went on living with Vixie as if she were part of her extended family.