Anastasia had seen this particular clergyman before on a number of occasions for he had been a fixture of the church ever since its consecration nearly two decades prior. He had been an elderly gentleman even then and time had indeed drawn upon him in the way that it was so wont to do to those of the mortal coil, but not even the ravaging of time's cruel hand could have dimmed the light that seemed to emanate from his impossibly blue eyes just as it had done all those years ago. They seemed to glimmer all the more in the conflagration of his ire for their destruction of something so remarkably sacrosanct. An apology blossoms upon the cherried pout of her lips, though as quickly does it wither and die upon the curl of her tongue with the urgent biddings of her uncle. The subsequent look of befuddlement upon the clergyman's face might have ushered some amusement from the otherwise stoic Duchess given markedly different circumstances, for had she not bore the same puzzled expression upon first hearing her native language bent by her uncle's foreign tongue? Privately, Anastasia was certain that the Fae found the Russian influence in her French to be every bit as amusing.

But there was hardly time for all of that and, despite the rebuke that surely burned acidic upon the priest's stilled tongue, he seemed amiable to obeying the whims of this mysterious stranger for the moment at hand. His exclamation of surprise and, she suspected, terror was all but wholly consumed by the column of flame that erupted about him. As impressive a display as this undoubtedly was, Anastasia's eyes do not linger upon the pillar of dancing flame- instead do they span the cathedral that is now entirely accessible to her by merit of her dearest uncle's gift. Rasputin's roar of abject ire reverberates about the expanse of the church with such awesome power that Anastasia would later swear that she could hear the very stones trembling within their mortar cradle. The Duchess is unperturbed though, for this was not just the cry of an angered man, but so too was it the cry of a desperate man. Rasputin's confidence had always been a precarious thing, set atremble by the defiance of others whensoever he had been unfortunate enough to experience it. Perhaps that is why the proverbial crosshairs of his rage had always been centered upon her.

In the retreating surge of his darkness do her eyes find him, her gaze unyielding and ironclad, unmoving even as Matteo's urgings rise from the ether at her back. A single hand reaches behind her, slender fingers outstretched in an invitation to the hilt of the sword that she knows shall find it. The ancient weapon seems to vibrate within her hand, moving with such practiced ease that it may well have become an external annex to her very will. It spins within her grasp, Rasputin hardly afforded the precious moment it may have taken for him to register its proximity as he careens towards his centuries-old adversary.

The mangled charlatan pauses as he reaches her, his remaining eye swiveling in its socket to lock upon the glistening sage of her own steadfast gaze. A single calloused hand, its talon-like nails yellowed and unkept, frames the hard line of Anastasia's jaw in a manner that might have otherwise appeared to be one of love and adoration had one been ignorant of the pair's tumultuous history. His eye falls to the sword upon which he has impaled himself, a thick sludge of impossibly dark blood slowly overtaking the immaculate sheen of the blade clasped within Anastasia's hand, before returning to hers once again. "Moya Anya." The utterance is naught more than a strangled whisper, a thin rivulet of blood tracing a curving path from his cracked lips. Whatever more he might have meant to say falls away into the realm of the unheard, Anastasia retching the hilt of the sword to twist within the innards of her greatest nemesis. "Vozvrashchaysya v ad, Rasputin," she commands, her words almost a snarl that brings her teeth to their edges. A single gasp escapes him then, fissures etching themselves across the creased expanse of his unearthly gray skin. And then, all at once, does he evaporate in a plume of billowing smoke and ash.

It is a long moment before Anastasia dares to move and even when she does she does not turn towards the elder clergyman or her beloved uncle, his enchanted sword still firmly within her grasp- merely does she heave a sigh that could have only ever been one of the purest, most unsullied relief.

Anastasia Romanova

Grand Duchess of Imperial Russia