A summary of a short story, The Cardinal Mother, that I'll finish and upload in a few months:
In a kingdom with facets characteristic of the Elizabethan era, Kassandra Agatha attends an academy of witches and warlocks who must adhere to strict routines of repentence and ritualistic punishment. Instead of punishing those who harm others, the kingdom punishes the victims. Whenever rituals that punish the victims are not obeyed, horrifying events carried out by a morbid curse, marked as the ‘Unspeakable’, befall the kingdom. Kassandra never knew her mother, Aritha, but upon a chance encounter, she learns that her mother was a sacred figure revered by a forbidden faith. Forced against her will to act as a living shield for warlock soldiers, Aritha runs away from the academy and is granted gifts by the Cardinal Mother, a deity who is worshipped by a dark cult that offers its acolytes the means to enact revenge, yet revels in inflicting death and pain, even to those who do not deserve it. After Aritha uncovers the sinister history behind the Unspeakable’s existence, she becomes devoted to using the Cardinal Mother’s powers to judge the sins of others as fairly as she can, believing that she can stop the Unspeakable without requiring the sacrifice of innocents. As Kassandra delves deeper into the past, she unmasks the truth of what really happened to her mother on the night of her disappearance...
