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 under. He had lived through the Great Schism of 1224, 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, and even the Szolsuran-American war waged on an interstellar scale. But what he was not prepared for was becoming a priest.

      For all his monastic life, he had rarely had to deal with things outside the 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 foundations of many of the heretical movements that spawned out of the Great Apostasy. 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 so Victor had helped her settle into her new village where she met Todd Reddington and eventually married him. 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 considered her his equal in the world.

     Vixie 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 and 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 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. And for this, Vixie considered Victor more of a father to her than her father by blood. 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 and gentle nature. And because of both Todd and Vixie's piety and love for all people, they never forgot about those outside themselves. And even when Vixie had become one of the 9 executors, out of love for the people of her domain, she never indulged in luxury and lived in a house like anyone else. She was so dedicated to the causes of ordinary people that she even 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.

     And despite Dixie being from the Tanuki clan, Vixie didn't care and treated Dixie as if Dixie were one of her own daughters. 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 clan military tried to use Dixie as a means to get info on top secret information within the high ranks of the Kitsune clan government through Vixie, Dixie refused to cooperate and went on living with Vixie as if she were part of her extended family.

     There was also a long-time friend of Victor named Souzun Yako who had faithfully served under Inari for about the same amount of time that Victor had been a monk. But unlike Todd and Vixie, Souzun wasn't so fortunate. Because unlike Todd and Vixie, Souzun was essentially Inari's slave while at the same time being her right paw-hand man. And although he never understood why, it was only around Victor that Souzun felt safe reveling the depths of his own emotions and where he felt like he could be truly himself. After all, men of the Yako family were expected to be dutiful and provided for their country. To reflect on one's past and emotions instead of fulfilling duties and continuing the traditions regardless of whether or not those traditions were right or wrong was seen as a disgrace for any man of the Yako family line. And Souzun with his connection to his past and deep feelings that had been suppressed for so long, he was one of those to be a disgrace and a dishonor with serving Inari seen as his "rightful fate."