ã€ŠMariwa: An Ivian Taleã€‹


 1 - The God of Lesser Hollow 1

    <blockquote>

    "And thus the Fruit of the Earth, ripe to bursting, fell to the feet of the Father; of the seed that spread unto the soil, there were two: those that had grown wise and germinated into men, and those soiled by the Fruit''s worms, who made like them and slithered away into the deep dark."

    -The Crimson Tale

    </blockquote>

    As the Flowering Season''s solstice reached its peak, God hungered yet again.

    By now, the village of Lesser Hollow had learned to adapt. Well in antecedence a gorgeous bride had been picked, her ceremonial dress weaved by their best tailor, all newcomers to the ritual prepared, and foremost of all, the Purple Ring Flowers God loved so much had been gathered by the armfuls, enough to cover his throne.

    The moment they became aware, the Herd would leave their homes with faces grim. By now, they would probably understand none of their loved ones was chosen, but even if they were, it was not like they could complain either way. They had learned to accept it: it was God who kept the ravenous beasts of the Hollow at bay; it was God who kept the ground fertile and poison free; it was God who kept the game deaf and slow; above all, it was God who kept the vile outsiders from torching them in their own homes. Being ungrateful only courted his wrath.

    And besides, God had been so kind lately, letting them choose rather than picking a bride of his own desire. Who would spit in the face of it?

    And so the day arrived as any other. It was hot and damp, the sky lightly tinged in crimson, a show and a warning that would grow deeper as the hours passed, until the crimson moon above marked the beginning of the end.

    Elder Florid Seneschal, paid it no mind. His adopted daughter, Hazel, whom he had fought tooth and nail to bring to this point, was ready.

    She had been trained in the ways of the Ceremony, taught to dance like no other and to sing in a language that nobody truly spoke anymore and few knew how to imitate, and caught on to it all like the natural she was. In another life, she would have been the perfect heir to his duties.

    That life would not come. Dusk did, and they readied themselves for departure, for though the Throne of God was not far, once they were there there was no coming back without casualties. The elders met one last time for a homily and a good luck toast, the lads they chose for labor psyched themselves for the task, and Elder Seneschal tacitly ignored the tears and the screaming from his own flesh and blood.

    And so they left.

    For one last time, he admired his own daughter.

    The Ceremony called for perfection, for the best of the best, the purest of the purest, and damn if he didn''t know she was not in the least fitting of his foolish peer''s standards she was no maiden, certainly not the youngest, frankly a wretch in disposition, and her blood¡­ well, that had been the pivotal concern, suffice to say.

    Impure, in every sense of the word

    And yet, in nearly sixty years of work, he had never seen a more dignified Bride. It almost disgusted him, complimenting her now of all times, but how could he not? Even the lads specially chosen to help with the preparation stages of the ceremony were pale, shaking, mumbling reassurances to each other just to stay sane. Her? She walked like a soldier. Head held high, shoulders square and firm, pace even, silent as the red moon. She looked gorgeous in her white dress, the purple flowers woven into wreaths around her head, her waist, her wrists, her neck.

    It had to be her, and it had to be now.

    Once they arrived, orders were barked in whispers, but nobody missed their beat: torches were spread around the base of the throne, fires made to burn high. The elders stood below, several paces away from each other, careful not to look up, as the quick footed lads set to covering a wide area with the surplus of flowers. Nobody dared look up.

    Once done, the young left, leaving Hazel alone at the altar. she finally met the Father''s eyes, bowed, rose, and then wordlessly began to move. The Ceremony started in earnest.

    As one, the Elders, their assistants and the bride sung, but here only Hazel herself danced, a tale as old as time itself told through the language of the divine and the moves of the body. A song of love and respect boundless, of apology, of regret and sin, of praying for deliverance. A song whose lyrics nobody but he could suss, and even then so poorly he could only guess their true meaning.

    No matter. God only ever demanded form, not understanding. All they had to do was recite, and every Elder knew the sounds by heart.

    They sung. They sung until throats ripped and bled, and yet they kept singing. Those who physically could no longer were made to step away, least they roused God out of his focused lull. When the last refrain left their lips, as one they would start again, and again until their eternal benefactor deemed it enough.

    Seneschal''s heart hammered in his chest. The efforts of the ritual were grueling to his decrepit bones, yes, but that was the least of his anxieties. What truly scared him was the knowledge that it had to end eventually, that the end approached with every faltered movement, every misspoken line. That Hazel''s body had lasted this long was the fruit of untold effort, of an understanding only the both of them shared, but nothing was forever.

    Alas, the moment came.

    Faster than the blink of the eye, one moment the chanting stalled as it ended, only Elder Seneschal and one more pushing through the agony, and the next, she was gone, her life snuffed like a candle. If nothing else, it was mercifully fast, no chance given for screaming or trashing, or anything that might leave Hazel with an undignified death. Within instants, she was dragged underground, to be introduced to the myriad other brides and never seen again.

    Just like that, it was over.

    There was a low cheer among the other Elders and their assistants, passed through hoarse throats and bloody coughs, but Seneschal fell to his knees, looking on to the site of her death, head numb to the world around. Now, they would leave and laugh in the warmth of their homes, drinking the last of their stolen mead, congratulating themselves for another job well done. Seneschal could feel his nails digging into the palms of his hands, eyes going red.

    Only one other Elder shared his mood. Stone faced, she shook his shoulder with violence, earning a glare.

    "You don''t deserve pity more than anyone else here," she said. "Get up and come, least you wish to be punished for overstaying your welcome."

    The words steeled his heart. Reluctantly nodding, he tugged at his son-in-laws trousers so the oaf would help him up, and followed right behind her.

    Still, he lingered for one last second, looking back to the Throne.

    It was impossible to know if the ritual had been a success, here in which the sky was permanently stained crimson, only the morning would tell. He already had an idea how it would go, however.

    Still, making sure he was looking at nothing in particular, he spat onto the dirt.

    Just like that, it had just began.

    <hr>

    Should everything have gone well last evening, that morning would have been like any other.

    The day rose red.

    It was if Father the Celestial had never fully risen over the mouth of the Hollows to the Northeast, leaving the noon tinged like dawn, growing worse from there. Elder Seneschal ill needed the panic that would soon rise to realize that, however, as barely even needed his gifts to tell the fury from the unusually dry and hot wind blowing through the cracks of his window.

    He wasn''t the only one, and pandemonium slowly began to build. Taking advantage of the moment, he had his son-in-law grab a couple of lads and send then scurrying to get the other Elders. They would have to be dragged from their beds, he presumed, since they were probably recovering from their own revelries of last night. The thought of it lightened the burden of the day just a little.

    To the North and East of his home, sitting at the edges of the village near where the Old Wall sat broken, there was a small hillock with a stout building made out of logs and clay roofing on top, a well preserved remnant of older times, simply referred to as the Meeting Hall. There, the Elder always gathered to discuss issues and plan for the future.

    Today, hopefully, would be the last time such matters would ever be brought up.

    He left with light preparation, just enough to look presentable. Together with him were his usual helpers: first, his son-in-law, Julius, a trunk of a man in height and girth, hairy as a beast and roughly as talkative as one, and second...

    Cassia. His dear, poor Cassia, sole remaining of his blood. Green eyes sunk, face still red from crying, strands of her chestnut hair, so much like her mother¡¯s, lining her face from the sloppy bun, all poise gone from her posture. In a brief spell of pity, he considered comforting her, but even if it had been the right moment, it was far past his right.

    And speaking about moments not being right, his first annoyance of the day came when he arrived at the Meeting Hall, to find only three of the five other Elders present, each flanked by less help than usual, despite deliberately taking his time.

    The tables here had been arranged into a vague circle, and he sat himself at the furthermost, as fitting of his role as Godspeaker, the supposed sole person in Lesser Hollow who could understand God''s language.

    But the respect was not afforded him. The two Elders at the front of the hall, engrossed in a half-whispered conversation, did not so much as look in his direction

    "Have I grown invisible or what? Idiots!" Elder Seneschal finally said, beating the bottom of his walking stick against the floor and coughing, still feeling some of the yesterday''s strain. Both the Elders closest to the door shifted to look at him.

    "Seneschal," Smith, Second youngest Elder acknowledged, neutral tone and voice surprisingly intact, hand idly rubbing at his prominent salt and pepper beard.

    "Smith, good morning. Willy?" he acknowledged.

    "To the worms with your decrepit old body, Seneschal," said Willy in his usual whiny baritone, an Elder so old his hairline hadn''t even started to recede, having earned his position with his father''s sudden demise. "My family name is Willard! And don''t think your schemes have gone unnoticed this time, I-"

    "Elder Weaver." Seneschal nodded his head to the third Elder.

    "Elder Seneschal," Her gravely voice answered as she lightly bowed back, before resuming her perfectly straight position, hands gently folded on her lap.

    Elder Olivia Weaver was the only woman the council of Elders in Lesser Hollow ever had. Steel colored hair in a bun, a serene expression and narrow countenance, she didn''t look like she felt the pressure of the end on her shoulders, and that was exactly one of the many reason Seneschal had fought to get her on the Council after her husband''s quite mysterious end. Flanked by her equally stoic grandson, she looked the most natural among those here.

    "Why are only you folks here?" Elder Seneschal said.

    "Don''t you try to evade me! I know you-"

    "Elder Willard, if I may please-"

    "Shut up, woman!" Willy whined. "Can''t you see we have important matters to argue right now? I am making a statement, and would like to be heard!"

    "My sincerest apologies, Elder Willard," Olivia said, in the tone of somebody who had lightly bumped on the streets and immediately carried on. "I just simply wish to keep the Godspeaker up to current events."

    "He can see these current events, he doesn''t need a nanny to hold his hand through-"

    "Pomen, Pomen! Come on now, the man came to the meeting willingly, he isn''t going to be running away! You''ll get your turn!" Smith said with a smile.

    "My turn, Elder Smith?! We don''t have the time, we need to find a way to prostrate before our Father of the Wilds, before his wrath destroys us all!"

    "Elder Weaver, carry on." Seneschal sighed.

    "Don''t you-"

    "Shut up, moron! Give up the stage! Elder Weaver, go ahead."

    Ignoring the glare her grandson was giving Willy, she nodded. "Yes, Elder Seneschal, thank you. I''m afraid to inform you the four of us are the only ones who will be participating in this meeting."

    "... What? Why?! Where is Frankest?!"

    "Elder Frankest has sent notice that, in the face of God''s punishment, he will be praying and sacrificing fowl in his holy name as atonement until the evening. However, he has also sent that his vote lies with whichever consensus we come to." she said.

    "Of course he did, the fucking idiot! As if that would fix things." Seneschal sighed, knocking the back of his head against his wooden seat. "And Tyrant? What''s his excuse?"

    "... The news only reached us a few moments before your arrival. It seems that, thanks to his advanced age, and the stress of both yesterday''s Ceremony and today''s revelation, he has unfortunately returned to the earth, may his body and soul nourish the Father''s Sapling."

    And may them never be spat out again.

    "Well, I suppose that''s that." He shook his head. "So, let''s start this for real, Let''s put to rest most of what you people have come up with so far."

    "Oh, not this time, Seneschal!" Willy said, practically the giddiest he had ever seen him. "You may have evaded my accusations so far, but know, this time we have a culprit and a solution!"

    "Of course you do, Willy. Me, and what solution?" Elder Seneschal said.

    "Your head, as submission!"

    "Won''t work."

    "It was never tried before."

    "Must I really remind you that my grandfather sacrificed himself to appease our Father, and we still lost half of our Herd?"

    "I remembered it!" said Smith. "And the consensus was that his blasphemies on paper and stone that caused that one too."

    "They were not blasphemies, Smith! He may have written, but never our stories, never the tales of the Father and his Sapling! Never!"

    "Please, Seneschal, even you must understand that just having that material in itself was sacrilege! I mean, by your own father''s words, that was the reason we suffered!"

    If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

    "If I may ask, do you think this crisis will be of that same magnitude, Elder Seneschal?" Olivia asked, face severe.

    "I fear so, Elder Weaver. I can feel God''s rage in the very air over our village, and the sky reminds me of that day."

    "Your grandfather, this I know, only gave his own life as a final resource, after it was already too late!" Willy actually ventured. "If we do it sooner-"

    "Didn''t work before, won''t work now, stupid! Besides, how are you so sure of my guilt? What have I ever done, besides my duties?"

    Willy looked beyond affronted, as if Seneschal had sneeze right onto his eyes. "Y-you feed, nay, force down the throat of our Father of the Wilds, Lord of our Herd, tainted blood from an outsider, manipulating us into thinking it was our only choice, and you have the gall to suggest you had no part in this?!"

    Seneschal chuckled wryly. "Willy, Willy, get your head out of your ass! Do you think I would have given my own daughter away without cause?"

    "As you once have before!"

    Seneschal leaned forward, Gripping the edges of his seat hard enough to hurt his hands. "What did you just say?"

    Before Willy could shit out of his mouth again, however, Elder Smith intervened. "Now, I don''t question the need for the sacrificing of a tainted bride-"

    "I do!"

    "What would you have me do then, Willy?"

    "Take a bride from the other Hollows!"

    "We lost ten of our lads just trying this year! Not to speak of those who will suffer the consequences when they inevitably can''t do the fucking ritual right!"

    "Then take a pure bride from the peasants! We have-"

    The word drew a sneer out of him. Pure, he said, as if he could understand what it meant. "The villagers are at a breaking point, Willy, because they are tired! We are already less than three hundred people, nobody wants to lose more!"

    "And yet, we will, many more, and why?" Willy said, tone triumphant.

    "I''d love to agree with you, Seneschal, really, I was more than happy to a couple months ago!" Smith opened his arms wide, smiling with no humor. "After all, we can''t land every arrow, can we? Sometimes we just have to do our best. But we shouldn''t have forgotten where she came from, just because you vouched for her. Burning heavens, we shouldn''t have forgotten who her sister was."

    "I didn''t. I reminded all of you of that accursed, worm-birthed child, and I was right! Seneschal tricked you all, and now he must-"

    "Pay," Elder Seneschal said. "Damned incompetent, you talk too much!"

    "... And honestly, I didn''t either, Seneschal."

    "Smith?"

    "I just saw things from your perspective. You made a good point! There wasn''t a better bride anywhere in the world. Just one little blemish from perfect, right? Somebody only you and your family would have missed, isn''t that right, Mrs.Seneschal? Lovely dress, by the way."

    Even from his position, Seneschal saw his daughter flinch. Reeling unto Smith, he said, "don''t bring her-"

    "But I like to do some due diligence, even when faced with the most perfect option, so I kept an eye out for you, for what you''ve been doing lately, and I found something pretty interesting. Thought, I suppose somebody better experienced with it might provide a better version of events, right, Olivia?"

    The amused, victorious look Smith threw towards Olivia told it all. Their eyes met for a meaningful second, before he hurried the plan along.

    "Elder Weaver? What is that old coot even saying?"

    "If I may explain?" she said.

    "Well, why else would I be asking you?!"

    "Elder Seneschal, would you tell us where exactly in the woods you go every other night?"

    "What kind of fucking nonsense question is that?! Nowhere? If it''s night, I stay home! Ask my family, they are right here." Elder Seneschal gestured.

    Of course, neither were great help for his case. Julius merely grunted in agreement, and Cassia simply stared down at the floor, mute.

    "Elder Seneschal, I mean no accusation when I say this, but you have been spotted multiple times by our family leaving the village in the dead of the night. I have confirmed this with my own eyes at several occasions, including the last time, three weeks ago." Olivia said.

    "Me? Ha! Don''t be a fool, look at me! I can''t even walk straight without my walking stick, how am I going to make through the woods alone in the dead of the night?!"

    "I never said alone."

    He grumbled, feeling sweat pooling in the creases of his brow. There were a myriad ways this could falter and stumble right here, right now, so he didn''t hurry her along, merely stood silent and contemplated the reactions of the two other Elders. Smith chuckled, lightly, but Willard...

    "What?" he asked, so quietly Seneschal was almost sure it was meant entirely to himself. "What am I missing here? What are you-"

    "Just a moment, Pomen. Listen to this!" Smith said.

    "Oak, if you would please?" she called over her shoulder.

    "Of course, Grandmother."

    Oak Weaver, dressed in his usual light vest and trousers, old sword stolen many seasons ago sitting at his belt, adjusted himself in his spot, until he stood like a soldier overlooking the royal palace''s gates. Only then did he speak, tone sharp like his grandma.

    "Elder Florid Seneschal, many weeks ago-"

    "Just call me Seneschal, kid, don''t prolong this more than needed."

    "O-of course, Seneschal, a few months ago we became aware through contacts of our family that the Elder, you, were disappearing westwards with certain frequency. I was sent to trail you, on more than one occasion, many in which I admit at first I failed to follow your tracks. Eventually, I discovered your destination at the feet of the Sillas, one of the old abandoned mines."

    "What is this?" Willy''s face twisted into a baring of teeth that couldn''t settle into a grin or bestial threat, "S-since when have you known this, Elder Smith?!"

    "A week? Or so."

    "A-and you still allowed this heretic, no, this apostate who broke into a place of taboo to dictate the Ceremony?! Tell me, there must be some reason for it!"

    "He was right, she was still the only one that fit. Or so we thought, eh Seneschal?" Smith winked.

    "If I may continue? Very well. The exact mine is a short distance away from the others, now hidden behind rubble and shrubbery, but I managed to locate its entrance. Inside, however, I''m afraid I could not follow him, for the pathways were winding and further depths camouflaged against the walls."

    "You were wise, sonny, those mines might be untouchable by man, but they are still filled with Guts." Smith said.

    Oak paled, but didn''t react much beyond that. "That might explain the strong musk from inside."

    "But doesn''t explain anything useful for our little situation here, right? Though, I''m aware that there is more to this story. What else did you find there, sonny?"

    "Most of what I could see were old equipment, mostly rotten and unusable. Cages, too, the kind to hold animals. What disturbed me the most, however, was what I heard."

    "Don''t be dramatic, tell us! Tell us already!" Willy, eyes bulging, skin tinged as red as blood, said.

    Oak frowned, but continued. "There was a conversation being being held, in the distance. I mostly heard it through the echoes, so I couldn''t quite understand what was being said, but I could identify the Elder Seneschal as one of the parties."

    "And the other?!"

    "the other... I would struggle to even describe it as human."

    "Tell us more!" Smith leaned forward, smiling. "Could the echoes have distorted the voice of somebody we know? How did it sound like?"

    "I do not believe so, Elder, else I wouldn''t have identified the Elder Seneschal. No, I believe the latter belong to something different, but I could not tell you what. As for how it sounded... hard to put into words. Inhuman, I suppose. Even a beast trying to imitate human speech would make that sound."

    "Anything else?"

    "No, that is all."

    "Good! That''ll do, I think." Smith dismissed him with a wave of the hand, before clasping his above the table, smiling like a cat who found a mice brood. "So, Seneschal, what did you think of that story? Anything to say?"

    It was not Smith, however, whose attention occupied his mind. Olivia''s look right into his eyes would probably appear nothing beyond detached and humble to the other two, but years of knowing her let him read it well enough to tell what exactly she thought of bringing her grandson into the plan. No faltering now.

    "... And how could it be me?" Elder Seneschal spoke. "Like I said-"

    "There is not a soul in this damned village who doesn''t know the Godspeaker holds more command over the woods then the rest of the Herd, old coot! You could have made your way there with your eyes closed!" said Willy, slamming his palms unto his table.

    "And if I may interject again," Oak said, "I have seen you leave with your son-in-law on occasion, him always carrying bags."

    Despite himself, Seneschal smiled. "You''re one quiet moron, lad. Never caught you. You''ve been following me for quite a while, haven''t you?"

    "Not long, no, Elder Seneschal."

    "Just Seneschal, I told you."

    "And why haven''t you said anything when you knew a vile plot was underfoot?! Could you have lost your mind in your cloth basket, woman?! Answer!"

    Olivia sighed. "Please understand, Elder Willard, we simply desired to do due diligence, as Elder Smith put. In fact, once we knew for certain something wrong, we immediately took the information directly to him, whose wish was for our silence."

    "Smith?! Explain yourself!"

    "Well there were a couple reasons, but I think we would all rather hear what Seneschal has to say, right?"

    Long ago, Seneschal feared this day would come. The day he would be caught, the day she would be revealed to these half-witted geezers and their half-baked children when they wouldn''t ever be ready to accept what she truly was.

    That the day were he would need to reveal her out of his own design should have been unthinkable. Squeezing the top of his walking stick, he took a deep breath then spoke.

    "... I would never want to hurt our Hollow. You all must know that! None of you are stupid enough to forget how much I sacrificed for our home!"

    "... I knew it. I knew it!" Willy threw himself out of his chair, cackling. "I knew it! I knew the Seneschal''s were plotting our demise! I told everyone, but who listened to-"

    "Silence!"

    The change in Smith''s mood caught even Seneschal by surprise. Even Willard took a step back, but caught himself early enough he avoided looking like a coward, even posturing a little with his chin held high and a pouty glare at his fellow Elder. Smith, if he thought anything of it, didn''t speak.

    "It''s her, isn''t it? Your beloved outsider daughter''s sister," Smith scoffed. "The Rootgnasher."

    "... Her name is Holly. And a Rootgnasher she is not!"

    Smith leaned back, face settling unto a relaxed, if smug smile once more. "Well, can''t say I''m known to bother learning the name of every monster who tries haunting the Father''s domain, but she seemed pretty Rootgnasher to me."

    "She-"

    "Well, Seneschal, let me agree with you on one final thing: you did lose a whole lot to this place, won''t dispute that. So, why? Why undermine it now? Was it out of pity for the little demon? Was it some weird ploy for more power? Or maybe... I can think of worse things, I suppose, but let me give you some dignity. After all, you''re our only Godspeaker, am I right?"

    "You idiots would never understand. Think what you will, Smith, I don''t give two shits what your perverse little noggin comes up with. You haven''t seen her the way I have! I don''t need power, and I don''t pity anyone, but I won''t explain myself."

    "Shame. I really did... well, I didn''t like, but I did respect you. So, what do you think, Pomen, my good man?" Smith said.

    "What I think?" Willy licked his lips. "I think we have a veeeery clear solution to our conundrum."

    "Won''t go so far myself, but I think we just got a better chance than the last. How long did it take us to find and burn those blasphemies again?" Smith said, shaking his head. "So, would you like to atone, Seneschal? We can drag you to the Throne, if you aren''t willing, but-"

    "I do."

    "... Excuse me?" Smith frowned.

    "... I''m not a moron. I''ve been pondering my own mistakes for longer than you''ve know them," Elder Seneschal hesitated, then continued. "So yes, I would like to atone, and in fact, I have a better idea how to fix this mess than any of you. "

    <hr>

    Afternoon came and went. Father Cosmical was soon to disappear on the horizon, the crimson moon to take over.

    Few knew this, but Lesser Hollow had once been a larger town, long before it had been wiped off the maps. By the time of its demise, however, the projects it had been founded for had all failed: Neither a safe passage had been found through the notoriously dangerous Ivian Chain, nor did their mines pay off, the Mountain Guts within unusually deadly and unproductive. Thus, the people were abandoned by their realm in this utterly inhospitable place.

    If you knew where to look, you would know this. And if you did, you would also know there was one proper entrance into the town.

    The Snakeway had been there since the beginning, watching the rises and falls of the Hollow. Well known for the treachery of its sinuous twists and hilly wheel breakers, once a hunting grounds for unspeakable predators that fought with fang and claw against any attempts to maintain it, infected with growing shrubs and weeds who would devour even cobblestone roads if left unchecked for a couple days.

    Eventually, neglect won the fight. Those from the Domain the Lesser had become could only leave with permission, both divine and mundane, so long as the Herd feared heretics fleeing with their secrets to the arms of their enemies. So long as God reigned, the surrounding woodland was a labyrinth with no logic, where all exits lead to their Throne.

    But so long as you knew what to look for, you knew where to leave, and enter from.

    Early noon, a Stranger arrived to an unmarked stone on the road between the towns of Higher and Greater Hollow, and began their journey into the forest.

    Ancient documents, both hard to find and hard to parse, told them the way. It was not easy by any means, of course: time, nature, and Divinity had eaten most landmarks, leaving sign posts as rotten sticks, marked stones broken and hidden by moss, and old buildings nothing but glimpses of clay tiles peeking from their gullies through low vegetation and fungal growth. The woods grew denser with every passing minute, and they expected strong resistance, for even their measures should not fool the region''s Lord.

    The Stranger safely reached the land of red among turmoil.

    The village left from the old town was a pitiful thing, the Stranger thought. A scant few houses stood unbroken or patched inside the remnants of the rotten palisade, stone walls dilapidated into ruins or kludged back into a state of inhabitable, here and there replaced by newer wooden homes, all still very small. Beyond that, some farmland laid down hill, with a small river beyond.

    Most notably, tensions had boiled the sparse settlement into a panic, and now neighbors fought one another over faith and heresy, accusations of betrayal flying like spears, arguments aided by fists and kicking feet. There was some sort of militia here, a few young man armed with clubs and the occasional knife, but for each who seemed to be trying to quiet down the people, another was joining the fight.

    The first person to notice the Stranger ignored the anomaly, too preoccupied with the situation at hand.

    The second tugged at the cuffs of her father''s shirt, whose attention brought further eyes. An argument about to burst into violence died in half a dozen throats as the nonchalant interloper made themselves known.

    It didn''t take a genius to know that this shouldn''t, couldn''t be happening. Strangers didn''t come by Lesser Hollow.

    Two older men spoke in harsh whispers. One broke from the crowd in a rush.

    The Stranger was short, covered from head to shin in a bizarre cloak of white fur with a dizzying pattern of light grey stripes, unbelievably heavy for the regions weather. Peeking from beneath the cloak, they saw dark leather boots, and not a single other thing, for the Strangers face and body was unnaturally covered in a black haze that neither torch nor fading sun could pierce.

    Without warning, the Stranger stopped walking, but didn''t look to the people around them. A hand, also gloved in dark leather, emerged from the cloak with a small cloth pouch. With a deft hand, they unwrapped it, and two faint lights emerged from within, one red as the coming night, another too weak to tell.

    They spoke, then, very briefly, but just enough to shock the witnesses with the softness and lyrical quality of their voice.

    They returned the pouch to its place, took a good long look around, and almost began speaking, when somebody finally interjected.

    "And what do we have here, now?!"

    Recognizing the voice, most fled the scene, knowing what was about to come. Emerging from the thick of the village, came a man in his thirties, somewhat tan, longish hair combed back, dressed in light robes reaching above his knee, the skull of a small horned animal worn around his neck. The symbol painted at the front of his brown wear, a trunk with both ends fractured and splayed into lines bending in straight angles, immediately told them of his allegiance.

    Flanking him were four of the militia, even at a glance more experienced man than the ones left dealing with the people, armed with old axes and large clubs.

    The Stranger shrugged.

    "Greetings!" the Stranger said with a light bow. "I have come before your... village for urgent business. Would you know where the village''s leadership is at the moment?"

    The man frowned.

    "I am the leadership of this village at this moment. They know me as Elder Pomen Willard!" he said, then smiled. "And I take I''m not the one you expected to meet, correct?!"

    "Expected? No, I expected nobody, I just need-"

    "If you would, please satisfy my curiosity: How did Seneschal contact you? He has truly fallen low, if he would not only stoop to betrayal, but betrayal to an outsider! How much has he told you? How many of our practices, of our dogmas? Of our founding stories?"

    "None," the Stranger said.

    "I wonder how he payed for your intervention, but I suppose the most pressing matter is how many more are coming. So?"

    "... None. I''m the only one."

    "Do you think you are in any position to lie, stranger? you, who so foolish showed yourself alone without assurance of your victory?"

    Of course, the Stranger was very much aware of the men surrounding them, coming from behind the few still too curious to escape, circling in between houses, carefully joining the main force in front, unsheathing weapons of all sorts, surprising coordination between their groups. They simply saw no reason to act on it, so far.

    "I understand your concerns, but we have no time! Look around you, at the sky! You know what it means, and I am the only one who can stop it. I must meet with the leadership-"

    "And I said, I am the leadership! So long as the other Elders are dealing with the situation at hand, and your little master too, I am the sole authority of Lesser Hollow, and if you will so brazenly disrespect me and lie to our faces, then you force my hand to be unkind."

    The men stepped from hiding. The Stranger was surrounded at all sides.

    They stilled. They kept their eyes firmly on the Stranger, weapons raised and ready to fight. Some of them noticed the Stranger appeared to not be breathing. A few of those, veterans of operations outside the Lesser with actual battle experience, felt a strange chill seep into their stomachs, but couldn''t pinpoint the why.

    "Very well," They nodded. "I hope the next one I find will be more cooperative, then."

    Elder Pomen Willard snarled. "There won''t be a next. Lads! Break him, and bring him to me!"

    As one, they charged, yelling their battle cries.

 1 - The God of Lesser Hollow 2

    They moved as a group.

    For each and every man, Elder Seneschal had provided supplies and instructions: one old medallion, made from the heavy black metal grown by the Mountain''s Guts, to be carried by each of the lads at all times; the notion that they shouldn''t light any fires, no matter how dark it got; stand apart from each other, and avoid brushing against dense vegetation.

    And how many of those were followed?

    "Idiots! Smith, At least tell them to carry the medallions!"

    "What do these do, anyway? You won''t even touch them," Smith said, throwing one into the air and catching it again.

    "D-don''t do that! They are brittle, you moron!" Elder Seneschal said, shaking his walking stick so hard he nearly stumbled, "And what they do? They will keep her from noticing your sorry lot before we are there."

    "Well, then what''s the point? She''ll be seeing us one way or another."

    "If we''re to bring her to the Father, we need to keep her calm. She''s strong, Smith, stronger than all your lads made into one, and out of all ways to die I would rather not it be by her hands!"

    "Stronger than the makings of man, buried deep beneath the ground, worshiped by the misguided and the foolish, like the Rootgnashers of old..."

    "I have told you what I know, think whatever stupid bullshit you wish, just don''t come act like you didn''t know why you became a pile of viscera after!" said Elder Seneschal, narrowing his eyes, "So, what will it be?"

    Smith pondered over the medallion for an instant before scoffing, "Your pet is one real damn demanding captive, isn''t it? Well, I think I''ll be carrying these for now, that''s what it will be."

    He sighed. Smith wasn''t entirely wrong, at this point those things were probably useless.

    Needless to say, the reason for those demands was not his dear secret. The reason was far away, sat like a king on his throne of earth and rock, but he didn''t need a physical presence to track them across his domain, so long as they stood unprotected by the most unholy metal.

    "And you, Olivia, honey? You should stay, wait with your grandchildren. The den of evil we are going to is no place for a woman," Smith said.

    "I thank you for your consideration, Elder Smith." Olivia bowed slightly, hands clasped and low. "I know it is not my place to demand, but I hope you understand I would like to upkeep my duties as an Elder, regardless of the danger. Part of those duties, I believe would be observing tonight''s Ceremony."

    "A Ceremony, eh?" He chuckled, mirthless, "I suppose it is, in a way. Great diligence, by the way! You really can play one mean Elder. Shouldn''t you at least bring your grandson together? He was with us just a moment ago..."

    "I sent him away to care for his sister. She is prone to fits of hysterics, and I fear today''s events might put too great a burden on her mind. Besides, I am old and unafraid for my own life, regardless of how the evening proceeds."

    "Courageous, too!" Smith laughed, though his eyes fixated on her in a way that was not too kind. "Oh well, in case anything happens just get behind one of the lads. You boys alright with that, I hope?!"

    There was a small chorus of assent. Him, Julius, and Olivia were being escorted from all sides by armed men, lead by Willy''s own cousin, one Rose Willard, another large and largely stoic fellow to match his own son-in-law, though neither trait as extreme. He was an experienced one, veteran of many raids, and one of the few men in the village to ever have killed one of the Hold''s soldiers in single handed combat.

    "Great to hear! Now, let''s carry on, before this stink gets any worse!"

    The Hollow''s woods were dark and dreary, thick enough with vegetation to cast night in the middle of the day at parts. Scant beams of fading crimson sunlight illuminated the way, but it wasn''t half enough to keep the lads from being grasped by roots or getting snagged by thorns, so torches were soon lit.

    That, more than anything else, revealed their presence. Were any of the lads to look up toward the tops of the forest, swaying to the dry afternoon breeze, they would see something quite peculiar: some of the branches were dancing in unnatural directions, as if pulled by strings in a poor mimicry of the wind''s movement.

    The clearest sign that God had not merely noticed them but that his attention was very specifically on them. Not that it hadn''t been before, of course, the only thing keeping God''s wrath since the group choose petulance over his wisdom had been his own design. Curiosity? A plan? Merely playing games? Elder Seneschal wouldn''t dare hazard a guess.

    Still, taking advantage of the wind''s noise, he leaned forward and whispered near his fellow conspirator. "How are your tykes going to deal with this?"

    A pair of harsh eyes met his. "They will hide by the river, and the moment they perceive the slightest hint something is about to happen, they are to jump in."

    He frowned. "I hear your grandson is a terrible swimmer."

    "It''s their only chance of escape." She turned away from him, eyes firmly fixed on the form of Elder Smith, having his own hushed conversation with the vanguard of their party. "... And if worst comes to worst, one way or another, it is the more dignified death. You should have sent you daughter to join them."

    Elder Seneschal didn''t question her. It wasn''t as if he didn''t understand that desperation. Everything his family had worked for, every scheme he plotted since he became an Elder, every single thing written down in his hidden tomes were made out of that same desperation, born of a clear reality that should be as self evident as the Father Cosmical, but that in the end only his dear friend besides him truly seemed to understand.

    Lesser Hollow was done for.

    Lesser Hollow was a shambling corpse that had learned how to forestall its own rot, never fully rid itself of it. Now, it would die, either the slow death at the hands of its Lord, or should he succeed , a faster, more merciful end at his.

    Simply put, they couldn''t maintain God''s demands anymore. Even if the choice of brides was to be left eternally in their hands, years of Ceremonies had worn the minds of their people too much, the punishments and death incurred with every failure culling their Herd to less than a half of the half left from the great tragedy of his grandfather''s time, the last time somebody had truly tried dealing with the problem. More losses, and they would break.

    The alternative had always been to take brides from the road that connect the other two Hollows, but the years had made them wise to their methods. As the solstice approached, women were warned from traveling in the region, and those few that absolutely needed were escorted by the soldiers of their empire, equipped with quality metals and taught in bizarre arts that made even individuals a nightmare to fight for any amount of lads. And with the towns tightening their security so even known vagrants struggled to get in...

    Not sacrificing was not an option, of course.

    Escape wasn''t an option either. He had enough of the black metal to maybe hide his family on the way out, but even that wasn''t entirely guaranteed. There were certain attitudes, certain things you had to keep an eye on to avoid being found, and only him as the Godspeaker, partaker of some of God''s Will, could do so consistently.

    And even if there was a miracle, and they all made it out? The Hollows were a beast ridden land, full of diseases and bizarre apparitions. It was already dangerous enough for the trained lads, what would happen to the old, to the children, or the ill?

    This, of course, only speaking about the many beasts God kept out. He knew how Galehold, their glorious nation, saw people like them.

    Death, one way or another.

    The Seneschals had spent generations secretly researching a way to deal with the issue, most of it now lost, not that they had gathered much of use. The only solution had always been obvious, but how would they go about it? The village would never turn against the Father, and even if they did, they would probably all be destroyed; outsiders, out of question; praying for mercy? A joke.

    The only angle they found to strike at God was the solstice Ceremony, the most vulnerable he would ever be, and the closest to success they ever came to was a massacre.

    It had been a success however. A disaster, but one that solved half the puzzle. His grandfather had figured it out. In his panic he had asked the right question, wrote it in a journal in thick ink and contoured it for good measure:

    "What is purity?"

    in the century and a half of God''s rule, this was the chief guideline of who was chosen as a bride, taught by the first Godspeaker, before the Seneschal''s learned enough of that art to force themselves into the role, and for many years it had been followed to the letter: the best, most loyal, most ardent, healthiest virgins in the village.

    Need changed the standards.

    What is purity? Is it chastity? In times of need, they had made mothers into brides. God did not make any sort of displeasure known. Then, purity was wholeness of being.

    Was purity a quality of body? In times of need, they had made the severely ill into brides, and only known it much after. God did not make any sort of displeasure known. Then, purity was a measure of behavior, of morals.

    Was purity a measure of morals? in times of need, pick a petulant child, arrogant and rebellious, threaten the few things she holds dear, then put her in the laurels of the bride, so she does the bare any other would to not bring about punishment. God did not make any sort of displeasure known. At this point, purity becomes unquantifiable by the herd, something only the divine can gauge.

    One thing had earned God''s displeasure consistently: when the brides broke down before the right time, or before the Ceremony even started at all. It''s why procedure was so important, but if that could be exploited Elder Seneschal didn''t know how.

    The one chink in his armor, the one angle to truly be exploited, had also been discovered by his grandfather. The Village went on thinking his grandfather''s sin had been his writings on God and the Herd, which ironically were the only remaining proof of his true breach of taboo.

    God had been poisoned.

    Thing was, that had been attempted before and after too. No matter what was fed to him, even some of the most noxious substances you could harvest in the Hollow, poisons that could kill ten men with one drop, had never given God pause. The worst they had ever earned in these situations was when the bride was left too debilitated to proceed with the ritual.

    With one exception: That fateful day, hours before the Ceremony, the bride had been fed a slice of soft tissue from the depths of the Mountain''s Guts.

    The same Mountain''s Guts that birthed the unholy black medal that could hide one''s presence from God''s Will, whose lands above were taboo, who made plants and animals fall sick when angered, who now protected his own sin.

    But why off all things, that? Of course, in hindsight, it was very obvious, but why? Pondering that, the first question came back in mind: What if the people were right, purity was some arcane measure, something only God could actually feel the difference of? Something so much deeper than the flesh, so much harder to replicate than simple toxin.

    The confirmation fell on his lap, long after his grandfather''s time, long after he took the mantle of Elder from his father''s cold hands, but it would take years to accept it, more to have the guts to act on it.

    And now, his family''s sacrifices finally bore fruit.

    Tonight Lesser Hollow would burn with its God, and if everything went right, regrow from the ashes.

    <hr>

    The Seneschals paid dearly for their patriarch''s transgression.

    By the time Florid Seneschal had become twenty, his mother and all his sister''s had become brides, and his only brother had "ran away." His father, the tattler who exposed his own progenitor''s crimes, had burnt much of their family''s knowledge to prove his faith and commitment, including their means of learning Godpeaking, all which amounted to nothing as they were nearly pushed into the same pyre anyway. Had Florid not found his grandfather''s second archive, containing transcriptions of most of the essential stuff, he wouldn''t have survived to be this old.

    Part of him hoped things would get better after he became the village''s sole Godspeaker, but expected nothing. As time passed, he regained much of his family''s reputation, married a woman named Flora, and became a father of two girls.

    His wife was the first to become a bride, chosen a mere couple months after the birth of their youngest.

    His elder daughter, Laurel, had gone after, little after his youngest turned five.

    Paranoia ate him up inside. He hid Cassia like a precious treasure, forcing her to keep a black medallion on her person at all times, to never leave the house even to fetch water, to never speak louder than a whisper or walk by an open window. As if he didn''t know none of that would work, but those were the worst times of his life.

    For a brief period of time, he had considering taking his losses and risking escape, consequences be damned and buried deep with the worms! He could believe in a fear stronger than that which he already felt then, but something happened which shocked the notion out of his head, which shocked the village to its core.

    Laurel had come back.

    ...Or, so he first thought when the only stranger Lesser Hollow had ever seen since God rose from his throne was brought before the village''s Elders, dragged by the arms into the Meeting Hall.

    That was impossible, and logically he knew that. The dead didn''t come back, first of all, but she had many differences from his late daughter: Her skin was darker, she was obviously older, the language she spoke complete nonsense. But her face, her eyes, her gestures, her voice! It was impossible, but it was right before him, so close to what Laurel could have been it felt like a trick, cruel beyond even the imagination of the Rootgnashers.

    Elder Seneschal had never considered himself a credulous man, but in his heart of hearts, he struggled to convince himself it was mere coincidence. The old tales told of the cycle dictating man''s life: from the earth they were born, and to the earth they returned to rot and nourish the Father and his lands, his children, then be reborn anew. He had never given them much consideration beyond duty''s sake, and the moment the idea left his mind he would never again try, but for a week, he was made a believer; an omen had come before him.

    An omen had come before him, and in dire conditions. She was caked in grime, clothes clinging to her thin frame through a myriad wound discharges, smelling of waste and infection. From the wideness of her eyes, the tone of her voice, he could tell she was afraid; from the way she limped, the way she struggled to move her arms, to breath, she wouldn''t last long.

    And worst of all, her children didn''t look much better.

    Two little things, one who clung to her mother even as she was dragged, and the other who had to be brought by a lad. One toddler crying and another eerily silent, both malnourished, both with dirty, open sores, though not nearly as ragged as their mother. At the edge of madness, Florid had demanded both brought to the healer immediately by the screams, separating them from their mother.

    It was the kinder action, Elder Florid Seneschal would often tell himself later.

    The second coming of his Laurel would not make it to the morrow, departing back to the earth that same night, never leaving them so much as a name they could understand.

    By a miracle, the children survived, and what a fight it was to keep them so! Outsiders, even those this young, were forbidden from learning their secrets. Thankfully, taking advantage of the moment''s surprise and the hesitation even the Lesser''s Elders felt at the idea of killing mere babes made it easier to bring them to a compromise: He would assume the responsibility of inducting them into the Herd, of caring for their well-being and making sure they would never remember where they came from.

    And thus, Hazel and Holly earned their names, and became Seneschals.

    Their lives were never going to be easy. Beyond the average daily misery''s of Lesser Hollow, the two girls were abominations in the village''s eyes, kept at arms length by others at the best of circumstances, accused of being Rootgnashers in human skin and beaten bloody more than once, but they were supposed to grow as normal girls, happy to whichever measure of happy they could manage.

    This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

    Elder Seneschal loved them as his own, this he would proudly tell anyone who asked.

    He had even prepared himself to teach them how to read, if they proved capable of keeping a couple secrets.

    Then, when she was eight, Holly grew sick.

    At first, Florid had believed it was mere Sun Fever, Flowering Flu, or something of the sort. She was constantly dizzy, exhausted, and had difficulties keeping food down, nothing a little Mother''s Herb wouldn''t cure.

    After a week, she grew worse. Feverish, languid, and pale, the healer came for a visit and recommended some rarer medicinal herbs, which Florid had to go search for in the forest. Easy, nothing he hadn''t done before, and he stood hopeful. Things would get better.

    After a week, she woke up spitting blood and screaming.

    The healer''s home was vacated, and she was given a privileged position, the softest bed by the most well lit window, blessed with the Father Cosmical''s warmth every day. The healer had pain medicines, fruits from another solstice and kept at hand in case of an emergency, things that would put a grown man to sleep in half a pill.

    Nothing worked. Nothing curbed the impossibly high fever nor the paralyzing agony nor the rivulets of red coming from her many opening sores. The healer and his son did their best to keep the poor girl from trashing herself apart, from howling her throat to pieces, but what could they do? Restrain her, balm her parting skin?

    That day, Seneschal went home in silence, comforted his children, then slept, expecting to wake up to another dead daughter the next morning.

    That would have been a mercy, he would often tell himself later.

    The day rose red.

    The fury wasn''t pointed the village''s way, however, if it was fury at all. The tinge in the sky was so slight it didn''t alert the early risers, but Florid could feel God''s tension in the air. He didn''t need to look for the cause; he rushed out of his house towards the healer''s.

    The first sign of something wrong came when he first saw the door had been left wide open, fat flies pouring in and out of the entrance. The smell of putrefying offal hit him seconds later, pungent and thick even from a distance.

    He lingered at the small home''s entrance, physically incapable of taking a step forward without voiding his stomach. From there, he could see the windows had been left closed, beams of sunlight barely enough to lighten the environment, and no deterrent to the swarm of insects loudly feasting inside.

    Elder Florid Seneschal was not learned in the processes of the body, but something about this felt wrong. Had she passed in the night, surely her body wouldn''t have deteriorated to this point? No, it couldn''t be. And where was the damned healer? From sound alone, he could tell there was nobody inside the hut.

    His heart pounding like thunder, he took a deep breath, nearly paying for this mistake, and entered the house.

    Immediately, he found the healer, or rather, nearly tripped over him.

    The old healer of Lesser Hollow was a man who worked far past his prime, but his son was, by the accounts of half the village, a complete idiot and not to be trusted with the craft, so he toiled away his years over weeping cuts and his trusty sickness pail. There was nothing he had not seen: He had amputated limbs, had sewed intestines back into bellies, and personally offered his strength to dig the shallow graves of his failures.

    Florid found him on the floor, back against the wall, mere centimeters away from the door into his infirmary. Clutching the rumpled shirt over his chest, eyes wide and glazed, body tentatively explored by some of the pests inside. He had been left to linger in his own waste, adding to the putrid musk of the room.

    For a second, Florid''s eyes tarried there, too afraid to look further.

    He was never going to last. Knowing where her bed was, his head turned.

    The sight of it loosened the walking stick out of his hands, and sent him to his knees.

    In the middle bed of the infirmary, a cloud of flies buzzed in erratic patterns over what could never be called a human body.

    It was a husk. A shell broken into and voided of its contents. The swarm ate from it, from the thin strips of papery skin and darkening meat still attached to its splayed, broken ribs; from facsimile of a sunken human face, eyelids and lips drooping over the lack of eyes and teeth; from the nearly detached limbs, one arm and one leg hanging limp from the edge of the bed, shoulder socket exposed from beneath her torn clothing.

    Florid stood stupefied. For a second, he thought himself dreaming, and the thing sitting in Holly''s place a terror conjured by stress. But even as a dream, it was unbelievable, so he crawled forward, uncaring for insects crushed under the palm of his hands, for the crimson mess spread across the room and now smeared on his robes.

    And in that moment, as he reached a hand to his dear daughter, he heard a noise.

    It was so faint, he barely noticed it. Like a grunt of pain, or a sob, but... he couldn''t describe it. Croaky, wet, the imitation of human sounds by some bestial throat, or something unimaginably worse.

    That he thought what he thought, then, could only have been madness.

    Swallowing dry, he lowered himself on his arms, carefully.

    Underneath the bed something convulsed and breathed, glistening wet and curled into itself like a newborn child. He could almost swear it was speaking

    Against all instincts telling him to run, he opened his mouth and called-

    <hr>

    Holly Seneschal was bored out of her gourd.

    She finished the story of Wisteria and the Worm for the nth time and carefully closed the flimsy book with a nail. Sighing, she leaned back against the wall, attentive to not squish any of the glowy veins, and briefly enjoyed its mild warmth. She had to while she still could: soon, with the end of the solstice, her quiet buddy will go to sleep again, and her room would go back to the usual chill.

    Which would leave her almost completely alone! her pets and the vile little puking maggots that built the glowy veins notwithstanding, it had been days... Weeks? Months? Years?! A very long time indeed since the last time somebody had come visit her! She could understand that the Elder was busy, and without him neither Cassia nor Hazel would come, but it had been so long since she saw either.

    She felt so hungry too. She couldn''t keep living from her pets alone! Her crickets where almost all gone! She wanted meat, she wanted that Uluun thing the Elder brought her sometimes! Or fish, the ones filled with crawling things! Or snails too, those were fine, the meatier ones anyway! Rives squids, flatslugs, crabs...

    Sighing and grunting to herself, she got up. This wasn''t the time for negative thoughts! She had to be strong, and he would be here soon. All she had to do was entertain herself meanwhile, and everything would be okay.

    First, she went to her side room and stored her book with the others. She had a few loose piles and old crates of stories here, but she never managed to keep them organized for long. She did, however, separate by genre and state, many of her favorites sadly eaten away by the damp and the larvae. Her best pile, the Elder''s chivalry tales, she kept on a special corner, but the one in her hands went into the sacred texts piles, small and most made because she asked the Elder to write down.

    Next. she went around counting the little critters.

    Her crickets she mostly kept by her basin, her bed, down stream from her spring, as they loved gnawing on the mosses and slime that grew around it. She always found them pretty dumb, if very cute, but they had been taking it a bit far lately, completely frozen to their spots. One even had stopped in the middle of eating! Feeling the pangs, she grabbed it, identified it as Florid the Fortieth First, and gorged on both it and its meal, a cute little round capped mushroom.

    Her spiders, she didn''t have a single place, but rather, just let them keep to their webs. She checked them one by one, even prodded a few, but they were all frozen too. Hazel the Eightieth, may her body nourish the Father, had sadly passed away while she wasn''t looking.

    The centipedes were still all gone. All the better, she thought!

    She sang. She was getting better! She hoped.

    She almost practiced writing a little, but she was pretty sure she had gouged the walls too deep, and the Elder had warned her from poking her buddy. Supposedly, he was quite noxious.

    She watched the maggots squirm on the wall, watched the glowy veins flicker with their movement. A beautiful show, if repetitive.

    All pretty fun stuff! Really.

    But nothing did it. She had to admit, she was nervous, scared.

    Ever since she got sick, Holly had felt a certain... pressure, all present and all reaching. Elder Seneschal had told her he called that God''s Will, and the name said it all, that was God''s presence feeling up everything in their lands, even down here, as fuzzy and indistinct as it felt.

    Feeling God''s Will came with learning they had periods of... desire, she suppose. Craving, hunger, something of the kind, though she couldn''t quite place her finger on it. These desires came in with periods of tension in the air, something heavy and terrifying that even her buddy couldn''t protect her from.

    But this periods were supposed to end. This time, it felt like they were going for too long. Something was very wrong, but there was nobody to tell her what.

    So she did what she could: curled up in a ball and waited.

    Thankfully, it wasn''t for long. Suddenly, voices began to echo around her home, breaking its near eternal silence.

    "-Behind me, moron!"

    She jumped up. She could tell that croaky ranting anywhere! The Elder had come for her! But then, another voice joined his.

    "Ha! I don''t think so, Seneschal. Ugh, Father above, this thing stinks!"

    "Keep it on if you don''t want to get poisoned to death. Stop fiddling with it! That way."

    "Oh, this really is one mad labyrinth you found, Seneschal! Wonder how you never forgot the way back."

    For a second, she almost tricked herself into thinking that was her brother-in-law Julius, until she dug deeper into her memories and remembered what Julius actually sounded like. This voice wasn''t half as gruff or heavy. Elder Seneschal didn''t bring people outside the family here, he shouldn''t, but if then, who was this?

    Suddenly, the visit didn''t seem as pleasant anymore. Swallowing down the trepidation, she huddled against an alcove from where she could peek out, and willed herself closer to its color. She felt her hairs trying to stretch, and had to fight to keep them close.

    From the entrance, light. A torch, judging by the color and the light crackling. She heard the clicking of a walking stick, and several pairs of footsteps right along, very far back.

    The very first person to cross into view wasn''t Elder Seneschal. It was some huge guy she had never seen before.

    "Wait for me! You don''t want to scare her!"

    "The big bad-"

    "Not another word Smith, not until we''re out of here!"

    "Ooooh."

    His figure came shortly after, long white hair hanging to his waist from around his bald spot, leathery tanned skin, wiry limbs, limping along on a crooked foot and walking stick. The relief she felt when she saw his dour eyes, his face covered from the nose down in a cloth, looking to and fro in search of her, couldn''t be described in words. Unfortunately, more people began to pour in. Most of them were bulky lads, but she saw Julius as well, and two old people, one baldy with a long beard and a pale old lady with a really severe face and long braid.

    They stunk, too. She expected the smell of mud and other forest musks, the Elder always smelled of that, but the sheer nervous sweating was overwhelming, plus that acrid tang she felt from Julius sometimes, but could never quite place.

    The old people and Julius were surrounded, she noticed, while the lads spread around the back of the entrance and against the tunnel- the hallway out. The Big guy who had come first hadn''t stopped looking for her since the beginning, and the way he stared...

    "Well, Seneschal, time to put that honeyed voice of your to use."

    "Get Willy''s little henchman out of the way first."

    The insult earned Elder Seneschal a sharp glare from said little henchman, but Beard just chuckled wryly. "Rose, back down a little, will you? Worst comes to worst, don''t think you''ll get much of a fair fight here."

    "Not lookin'' for any," that Rose answered, but did obey.

    The Elder sighed. Approaching her door he grabbed its bars, mindful of the black spikes as always, before lightly rattling.

    "Holly? Holly, love, I''ve come to see you!" he said, and rattled again. "Holly!"

    She didn''t come out, of course. Not in front of these many people.

    "Holly my dear, I know I brought way too many people to your room, and completely uninvited too, but I swear I wouldn''t do it if I had any other options. Could you please come out, and talk to us a little?"

    She didn''t move a muscle. She considered it, after all she wouldn''t dare spit on Elder Seneschal''s good will usually, specially not in front of others, but something about this felt wrong. She kept watching.

    "Holly! I know you are there, please come out! We''ve even brought you a tasty little gift! It''s your favorite!"

    She slid forward, just a little.

    Not just because of the gift though!

    While Elder Seneschal called her, that Rose had started whispering to Beard. Whatever they were saying, she didn''t catch it most of it, except one single bit.

    "Right there," Rose said, nodding right towards her hiding spot. Beard squinted a little, exchanged a few more words with him, than took a sudden step back, eyes going wide.

    "Holly!"

    She didn''t resist it for long. In the end, wrong as if felt it would be even worse to ignore the Elder when he was so kind as to visit her, specially when he knew there was nowhere else she could be.

    So for the first time in an eternity, Holly Seneschal stepped in front of strangers.

    She kept low to the floor and close to the wall, trying not to draw too much attention to herself just yet, but it was all in vain. Just as the light of the torches outside touched her, there was a collective gasp and step back from her guests. Feeling stung, she nearly retreated, only one thing convincing her otherwise.

    Elder Seneschal was smiling at her. Despite everything, he actually tried kneeing to get at eye level with her.

    "W-wait, Elder Seneschal! D-don''t --"

    "Holly! There you are, love!" Elder Seneschal said. "You scared me for a second!"

    "S-sorry! But you brought so many people..."

    "They''re all here to see you, Holly, but don''t worry about them! These are a bunch of idiots, they couldn''t harm you if they wanted to! So let''s not bother with them right now, not when I brought you something much better!" He turned away from her. "Lads, the bag, now!"

    One of the younger lads hurried closer, than practically ran away as he got a good look at her, almost sending her away out of pure shame, but she held strong, for the Elder''s sake at least. He had a small pouch of cloth, bound with thin vines, and she knew what it contained before it was even opened.

    It was the sensation of it. They didn''t smell, and didn''t taste much better than any other flower she could remember, but if you focused on them, even from a distance, it was like... she struggled to describe it, even with the Elder''s help. The closest she could come to the feeling was like dipping your toes in the river during a hot day, but not physical.

    "Purple Rings!"

    "Smart girl!" the Elder laughed, and gave her her treats through the bars. Uncurling her nails and tearing open the vines, she didn''t hesitate a second before gobbling the little flowers up. As she ate, she felt that pleasant chill seep into her bones, calming her from her panic, making her feel whole and restored. The Elder spoke again. "Good girl. It''s been a while since I''ve last visited, hasn''t it? The situation outside has been completely mad, love."

    "I know, I can feel it. I was getting really scared!" Holly said.

    "I know you were, but I''m here now."

    "D-did Cassia and Hazel come too? I want to see them."

    "No dear, Cassia has been rather indisposed. As for your sister... Well, I''m afraid she is the reason we''re all here today."

    "... W-what do you mean, Elder Seneschal?"

    "Holly, would like to step out of your room today?"

    Worried thoughts came to a crashing halt inside her mind.

    "What?"

    "Really! You''re going to have to follow some rules, but-"

    "E-Elder Seneschal! I-I''m still sick! What if they catch my bug?! and I''m indecent, and I''m all dirty, and-"

    "Holly, Holly! Dear, calm down, nobody here minds, alright? And if they do?" He shot the other in the room, all huddled by the back wall and pale by now, a dirty look. "Well, they can close their eyes and hug the walls, the idiots! No, the reason we need you is more important than modesty, and time is of the essence."

    "What happened, Elder Seneschal? Tell me! D-did something happen with Hazel?!"

    "I think I better show you, rather than just speak. Will you come with us?"

    "P-please, I-"

    "I will show you what I mean, Holly, but you need to come with us."

    "Elder..."

    "Holly, aren''t you an obedient girl? Wouldn''t you do anything for your sister?"

    "Y-you know I am! You know I would!"

    "Then come with us. I promise it will be quick."

    Holly sighed, the sound scaring a whimper out of somebody else, "Alright, Elder Seneschal. S-sorry, I didn''t mean to be disobedient."

    "It''s alright, love, so long as you come. Everything will be alright. Now, if you could stand back from the door for a moment."

    "Sure."

    Slowly, she stood up, and looked down at the people behind the bars.

    The big, strong lads gasped and flinched. One stumbled to his back, turned, and disappeared into the hallways of her home, whines echoing in the dark. The old lady covered her mouth and shook as if she had seen a ghost, and even Beard was mumbling curses under his breath. Julius, as usual, didn''t react beyond looking away.

    Elder Seneschal demanded the keys for her door, hidden behind a rusting handcart, and unlocked the chains holding her door. Then, the door''s locks. Against her expectations, however, he didn''t unclasp the burning spikes.

    "I don''t think those even come off anymore, Holly. It would take too long either way, so please just be careful with them."

    So she did, hunching over and gingerly stepping through the threshold.

    And then, for the first time in so, so long, Holly Seneschal left her room and stood among the people of Lesser Hollow.

 1 - The God of Lesser Hollow 3

    There was a hole in the ceiling.

    Cassia spent her last hours sat on her father''s throne at the meeting hall, mesmerized with nothing, when she first spotted it. The Meeting hall was a sturdy building, better put together then all the little decaying houses below it, and according to her father a lot more recent too, dating from around the time of the Father''s emergence.

    Be it Strong or be it young, it was only a matter of time until it started showing faults, and it was no small fault either: the hole looked big enough for Cassia to shove a hand through, big enough they might have serious troubles come the rains, right above the seat of an Elder. She wondered how it had come to be: had time and weather simply worn it? An architectural mistake? Was it somebody''s fault? Maybe one of the lads had gotten rowdy, threw something at the roof..

    Regardless of the reason, Cassia basked in that flaw. Far above, the red and ever reddening dusk glowed like a candle into the pitch black Hall, stars just starting to peek out. It had only been a couple days since they had a full moon, and tonight was bound to be a gorgeous night.

    "It''s beautiful, Hazel! You would have loved it so much!"

    Obedient to a fault as always, she had followed her father''s instructions, locking herself inside the Hall and closing all the windows. At some point, lads had come banging on the door, asking her to step out, but they lost interest rather quickly as her father had known they would.

    She was trapped up here, after all.

    She paid them no mind, and paid her father''s orders none either. Ever since yesterday, a hole had opened in her chest, draining everything that was her into a void. She wanted nothing, wanted to go nowhere, wanted to see nobody. The world was a dull haze, where everything was a fragile illusion bound to soon break.

    So she waited for her end, enjoying her sliver of moonlight and the fights breaking across the village, small succors they were.

    So when the shouting took a turn from the wrathful and despaired to something closer to animal dread and pain, she expected that to be it. She closed her eyes, and imagined what life on the other side of the cycle to be like, how it would feel to become nutrients, if the Father didn''t deem to purify her in the end. Once she was reborn, she hoped it would be far, far away from here.

    She could tell people were running now, and she knew there was nowhere to go. The lads who stood guard outside the Hall began to speak in horrified whispers, before screaming in fear and breaking off in the wrong direction. she heard when one of them slipped on the steepest side of the hillock and went tumbling down.

    Seconds after, something heavy fell nearby, briefly shaking the room.

    Her eyes shot open.

    Three gentle knocks echoed in the dark.

    Having seen the Father in many occasions, Cassia struggled to imagine why he would strike the hill so violently but not tear right through the building, or shred both apart in a single blow. The door was knocked at again, a bit more insistently this time, and she realized she might have been mistaken after all. Were the lads trying to lure her out again?

    "I know there is somebody inside! Please open this door immediately, we have no time!" the one outside said.

    She tried, but failed to recognize the weirdly melodious voice outside as anyone from the village. How could she miss something so distinct? No, it wasn''t possible. Given time, she could count and name every neighbor of hers, and she would know this one too. Unless-

    The knocking grew in intensity again.

    "I must know of the whereabouts of this village''s leaders, quick!"

    "Wh-" She cringed at the rasping sound that came out of her throat. Coughing into her fist, she tried again. "Who are you?" But they did not respond. "Who are you?!"

    "... My name doesn''t matter right now. Would you be- no, you wouldn''t. Do you know where the heads of this village are?!"

    She felt a chill seep into her stomach. No wonder she hadn''t recognized them: at the end of the world, another outsider had come, in the week two others would die. She could almost imagine, a phantom of revenge come to reap her and the Elders for failing to stop her father''s crime, a silhouette of wriggling shapes in the form of-

    Another knock, this time practically a slam against the door.

    "I''m afraid I can''t leave without an answer!" they called. "I presume you can see out the windows?"

    She kept quiet, holding back a whimper as she curled up against herself.

    "You can see something is going on, I don''t need to tell you that isn''t normal. I''m not going to assume how responsible you are for it, but I''m sure you know what it means, and what will happen soon." Something pressed against the door with enough strength to make it creak. "Listen to me: I am your only hope! I''m the only one who might be able to fix this, but I need your help! Please, open this door, or at the very least talk to me!"

    The idea of a stranger being their salvation felt almost comic She knew the way the men from outside killed their lads, she had heard it in lurid detail before. Who in their right mind would trust them?! It was certain death.

    And yet, when she thought on the idea, she discovered she didn''t much care for it either. Her outrage was smothered in her throat, and all that was left was ashen bitterness.

    "Let it burn," she whispered.

    "... What?"

    "What is there to fix? We reap nothing we haven''t sowed! This is the least we deserve." Then louder. "Leave us alone! Let us die in peace!"

    A moment of silence followed. Cassia breathed a sigh of relief, thinking for a moment the stranger had actually listened to her and left back to where they came from. She slipper her feet back to the floor, a looked up to the hole once again.

    It was this moment that the once robust door, locked with bolts, was pushed down.

    She screamed, suddenly alerted by the crash. Crimson light flooded into the hall, invading her quiet respite. Through the gap, the Stranger entered.

    Bathed in God''s rage, the Stranger was a nightmare. Smaller than she thought, yet a nightmare, a living shadow with a single outstretched appendage sliding back out of view, not fifteen paces away from her now. For a second, she forgot herself, lost the haze covering her mind, and pressed he back hard against the throne, as if she could hide herself inside its wood. It was too late: even if she couldn''t see the stranger''s face, she could sense their attention boring down upon her.

    "I don''t think I''ve heard you well," the Stranger said, stepping over the fallen door.

    It took her several seconds to find her voice, at which point they were facing each other from opposite ends of the gathered tables. "I-I told you to leave us alone!"

    "I won''t." they moved, a slow stalk into the dark, around the tables and the thrones of the Elders, right towards her. "Before that. You told me to let this place burn."

    "I-I said..." She gulped. "Y-you don''t know the things we''ve done here, what we lost to survive."

    "I do know. I can more than imagine. I know people like you, and in all honesty, I don''t greatly care about what might happen to you and your village either. I''m glad you think the same, and won''t make me pretend otherwise."

    "T-then leave us, please! Let us die, let us suffer what we wrought!"

    "No."

    They had stopped a couple paces away from her, but the only evidence was their voice. The general chaos of the village made hearing such things difficult, but she could swear she heard neither breath nor movement from the Stranger, so perfectly placed in the space between two windows as to be impossible to see.

    "I''m looking for something, and I will not leave until I have it."

    "W-what could there even be of interest in such a small village?" she said.

    "I don''t know."

    Suddenly, light poured out, revealing his cloak of white and grey, and not a single thing beneath, as if liquid shadows had pooled to hide their identity. They came from a small pouch or bag, she couldn''t see very well, one as crimson as the sky and the other a very faint blue.

    "...But I have an idea what it might be. You''re harboring something else, aren''t you? Besides the Blossom."

    "T-the Blossom? I don''t quite understand what you-" And then she did, the casualness of the insult sending a shiver down her spine. "Y-you can''t refer to him with such irreverence! if you court his wrath-"

    "I already do, by mere existence. Now, tell me the truth."

    "... There is nothing here like the Father, except the Father himself."

    "But you have something that you shouldn''t."

    She looked away, towards the entrance of the Hall again. She briefly saw the head of a lad peeking from grass, and wondered if they were going to make a move, but he quickly left. She considered keeping their shame hidden, but what was the point? As if it hadn''t been revealed to all already.

    "... Perhaps we did. Or, my father did." She rubbed her hands above her lap, feeling a foul taste on her tongue. "Just another of his sins. Something unholy came to us and he insisted to raise her like a daughter. She was kept locked away in the abandoned mines to the east, but not for much longer now."

    "What do you mean?"

    "He is taking her to the Father''s Throne, to sacrifice her in apology, and himself as well I imagine."

    "Damn it!"

    She jumped, startled by the outburst, musing on the why but not daring question it.

    "Tell me everything you know about this thing." they said.

    "I-if you are planning on interfering somehow, I don''t think we have the time."

    "Then be brief. Tell me everything I need to know about her!" Their voice came from close enough she should smell their breath. Instead, all she could feel was a slight tang of iron that made her stomach churn.

    "I-I don''t know much! S-she used to be human, t-then she perished from an illness and became something else! My father burned the healer''s hut and told the village she had passed inside, then made our family keep it a secret as he and Hazel absconded with her."

    "Hazel?"

    "My sister. Our sister, rather. She is... gone. A bride to God now."

    "A bride, is it?" they said in a tone that made her shrink further into herself. "Keep going, Tell me about the other, her behavior and capabilities specially."

    "C-capabilities? I don''t know of such things sir, I have-"

    "Sir?"

    "I-is it not appropriate?"

    "Just don''t call me that. Carry on."

    "I have visited her many times, always at my father''s behest. I... suppose I would say she is polite, somewhat kind even, despite her foulness. T-they called her a Rootgnasher, the other Elders, and I had never thought of her as such, b-but maybe..."

    "I don''t know what that is. You say she is kind, has she never show any signs of undue hostility? Any instinctive distaste for you, or your father?"

    "Never that I recall, rather..." And she felt that uncomfortable chill again, in the pit of her stomach. She wanted nothing else but to hold herself tight and disappear into the gloom; only good manners kept her still. "She always seemed so very eager to see us. It disturbed me, always did..."

    "How was she kept there? Did she ever try to escape?"

    "She was kept behind iron bars and a locked gate. She did almost escape once, but my father caught her in time. How he convinced her back in only he knows, but I know he added black metal objects to her cage soon after."

    She expected more question, but the stranger merely hummed to themselves in acknowledgment, before saying. "I see. That will have to do. Please come with me for a second."

    She heard them walk away without waiting for her answer. "W-where to?"

    "Outside. Are you afraid? Don''t be. I have no intentions of harming you, if I did I would have killed you where you sit."

    "... I-I see. P-please, give me a m-moment."

    She tried to stand up, but her legs shook, feet heavy as stone. She struggled forward, holding on the Hall''s furniture for balance, while the Stranger stood by the door, watching. By a miracle, she managed to get to the doorstep without toppling over and looked to the world outside.

    The night was just as gorgeous as she had imagined, basking Lesser Hollow in the color of blood. The arguments were dying down, little by little, anger replaced with that fear only a calamity of this scale could bring. People were kneeling on the ground, prostrating themselves with hands above their heads, neighbors brought together one last time for a desperate prayer.

    Far away, amidst the towering trees of the Hollow, a red sun was rising even this late, something that for so long was content with remaining hidden, and now blessed them with his visage.

    And towering above even that, even the mountains and the peak of the sky tearing Mt. Tremor, the glorious red moon, the great six fingered hand-print left on its surface hidden to the ring finger by the creeping waning shadow.

    Traitor''s moon, they called it.

    "Point me the way your people reach the Blossom," the Stranger said. "There must be a road there."

    "Don''t call the Father that, least you-"

    "You should be far beyond the point of caring about that."

    Cassia swallowed dry. "Can''t you see him? Follow the light, and you should be there."

    "So long as it lives, any path through the forest would be unreliable, with exception of one."

    "... the one we have always used. I understand, but why? If you want to reach my father, shouldn''t you aim for the mountains?"

    "No, there is a chance I might miss them."

    "Y-you know that this is tantamount to suicide, right? It is the Father himself who protects us from you outsiders, you won''t be able to even touch him! Or are you so arrogant you believe you can fight a God? If it was t-that easy, do you think this would have happened in the first place?!"

    She was panting from her efforts and rant, when they calmly responded. "It''s not arrogance, no." Then stopped, as if measuring their next words, but simply shook their head; "So? Which way?"

    She sighed but pointed eastwards, "Follow the road that way until you are close to the Old Wall. You see those houses right there? You should find a breach with a burnt log, and a threaded path northeast through the woods. It will be very difficult to follow in the dark, but it should lead you right to his Throne."

    She looked down. Downhill, lads were forming a defensive circle, weapons in hand and hatred in their eyes, though none of them dared break the outsider''s silent musing. They just stood there, waiting for the first move of a person who didn''t even care to acknowledge them.

    Unauthorized usage: this narrative is on Amazon without the author''s consent. Report any sightings.

    "...you, sir, or, uhm... I''m not quite certain how to refer to you, I''m afraid."

    "Anything."

    "W-well, uhn, I was just wondering, what will you do if you find Holly?"

    "Holly being your sister who came back?"

    "C-correct"

    "I will bring her with me, of course. But first, I should deal with the matter at hand."

    "Wait!" There was too much she wanted to say to this stranger who would be soon departing to certain death. Why did he want Holly so much? How was he planning on surviving the Father of the Wilds face to face? What came after, should he win or lose? she shook her head, and one surface thought prevailed, voiced as a whimper. "I-if you run into my father, please don''t hurt him. Despite everything, I have to-"

    She hadn''t even finished her sentence when a heavy crack rang besides her.

    A gust of wind blew dust and dirt onto her eyes. She tried to retreat and only managed to fall over on her rear, a mere centimeters away from where the hillock grew steep enough she would be sent rolling down. She waited, heart racing, not sure what to expect next, listening to the lads below scatter like frightened insects.

    Where the Stranger once stood, there was now a gouge in the earth. She looked around herself, but found them missing.

    She couldn''t say she found any relief in being alone, however. Resting against the Meeting Hall''s front, she sighed and waited for what came next, admiring the sky.

    <hr>

    Elder Seneschal walked, feet sore and legs struggling by this point, when he heard a whisper from besides.

    "You son-in-law is gone," Olivia said, never turning to look at him, panting from the walk but holding strong.

    "And four of the little morons Smith brought too." he panted. "Guess he just didn''t bring Willy''s best."

    "Are you not worried about him in the least?"

    "If we make it past tonight we made it too long, Olivia. This is nothing I didn''t expect."

    "You should have sent him away then. Who will look after your daughter?" Olivia asked, severe.

    "It would have been too suspicious if I sent my assistant away, there was nothing I could do."

    "We already are under suspicion."

    "Of a sorts, but I don''t want to make shit worse by giving away to Smith how much I accounted for."

    "... Let me say this, Florid: you are one wretched little man."

    "Wouldn''t be alive otherwise." He shrugged.

    The trek from the old mines to the Throne had been surprisingly silent, probably because they hadn''t ran into any trouble. God had refused to make his move, and Elder Seneschal was patiently waiting, while Olivia and Smith so far only served as observers.

    Only Holly had complained.

    "E-Elder, can''t I just walk with you? You know I won''t run away!"

    "It''s just procedure, love!" Elder Seneschal tried to coax her into her cage in any way he could, but she hesitated outside its entrance. "You know how important ritual is."

    "I know, but it''s so cramped! A-and there is black metal in there, I can feel it! What if it burns me?!"

    "The black metal is tied only at the upper corners of the cage, and is there for your own safety, you know that!"

    "I-I do. Sorry, Elder Seneschal, this is just all so sudden!"

    "I know you aren''t very comfortable, but I promise it will be quick, alright?"

    That hand cage had always been part of his plans, one way or another. From what he had gathered, they had to do something with parasites usually found in Mountain''s Guts, as they were supposed to be very valuable in some way or another, but none were ever found. They stayed in the mines for over a century, gathering rust and poisonous crust, many becoming nothing but scrap. The one in which four lads were carrying Holly, tarped for their mental well being, was a small miracle.

    Small miracle, too, that nobody had fallen over. The forests of the Hollow were dense, ground practically all grasping vines and tripping roots, not the space of a foot clear from obstructions.

    "Seneschal."

    Elder Smith, previously enraptured in his own conversation with that Rose brute, slowed until he walked in pace with the both of them. The dark hid his expression, but Elder Seneschal didn''t need much light to tell how taut his usual smile had grown, to smell the cold sweat pouring from under his robes.

    "Smith?"

    "Elder Smith? What a surprise, what brin-" Olivia tried saying, but a fit of coughs interfered.

    "... Olivia dear, I would offer a lad to escort you back to the village, but there is something I have to ask you both."

    "Just do it, Smith." Elder Seneschal said.

    "Me, Elder Smith? By all means, of course."

    He didn''t speak right away. Elder Seneschal could feel his eyes on him, gauging something only he knew, as if he could see anything. Unlike him, a Godspeaker both blessed with some of God''s Will and used to the darkness of the Hollow, Smith was through and through a dweller of his Father.

    "Tell me, why?" Smith said.

    "Why what?"

    "Why all this, Seneschal!" Smith sighed, chuckled ruefully, then took a deep breath. "H-how many years did you keep that monster fed and entertained? I remember the old healer, for goodness sake, I gathered the ashes of his shack and buried what remained of him myself, that was many years ago and yet here it is! I mean- I''m sure you had to have a purpose? What were you thinking?!"

    "Haven''t we talked enough? Everything I could tell you, I already told!"

    "You won''t tell us why we got here in the first place!"

    "I won''t waste my breath. You wouldn''t understand, so long as you call her that vile word." Elder Seneschal said.

    "Rootgnasher, yes, you love it like a daughter. You too, Olivia? What are you getting out of this?"

    "... I''m afraid I don''t understand the question, Elder Smith." Olivia said.

    "See, I''m not convinced. Don''t think I can''t see the way you both are so buddy-buddy! I thought you both were just lovers and he got you hooked in by that, but thinking about it, it might just go much deeper."

    "Elder Smith, you can''t be insinuating I had any part in this, can you?" Olivia said. "Was it not my grandson who delivered us the truth? Who brought Elder Seneschal''s schemes to light, ones better kept secret?"

    "And that is where I doubt you. You think you are so clever, woman, but you don''t trick me. How come your grandson is the one who managed to sneak up on the Godspeaker, when nobody else even knew he was leaving?"

    "My grandson is-," She stopped to breath, "a skilled man, as any of his peers might attest, and-"

    "Rose has over a decade of experience over your nephew and patrols the east of the village almost every day. How come he never caught a whiff of it when the family closest to the Seneschal''s did?"

    "And what could I-" She panted, "gain from this, Elder Smith? Lesser Hollow''s well being is mine as well," she said, Elder Seneschal catching a brief glimpse of her frowning under a beam of moonlight. "And if I may, I would like to correct you, as the Weaver''s are no more friends to the Seneschals then they are to the Smiths!"

    "This idiot isn''t thinking clearly, Elder Weaver," Elder Seneschal said. "Another hungry grub trying to uproot me and take my place, as if he could!"

    "Oh Seneschal, you really are a piece of work, aren''t you!" Smith laughed, not a drop of mirth. "I might be! I might be one huge fucking idiot, Seneschal, because I knew we would get to this point eventually and I still listened to you! Because why wouldn''t I? The voice of God presents the most perfect bride, who will walk uphill without a tear or a broken heart that matters."

    "I always fought for what''s best to the village, Smith, then included."

    "Honestly? I believe you! Seneschal, I might not like you, but may the vermin eat my tongue if I didn''t like your conduct! You did an excellent job, there''s been no better man at convincing a lass into dancing to her end without breaking, not one man with more vision and tactical acumen to catch brides, in and out of here! Well said, you always did what you thought was best for the village, and we wouldn''t have made it so far without you, so I don''t doubt you actually believe you are helping in your own twisted way, just like your grandpa once did.

    "I''ve been in my seat for a good while now however, and I''ve had ample opportunity to watch you play your games. I just know that the treachery in your blood is too thick and corrupts the best of intentions, is all."

    Elder Seneschal sighed. That was a cudgel with his name written on it. There was no point in arguing no matter how angry he got, it would always come back for another hit.

    "Your grandpa breaks taboo by inscribing down our stories and dogmas in a way the enemy can exploit, betraying his creator. Then comes your father, destroying his works, going up and down the Lesser proclaiming how much of a disgusting, envious, rancorous man he had been in life, betraying his kin. It''s only fitting that you went and committed both, I would say!"

    "And you, commit betrayal by extension, commending my decisions and following along with what I say? Don''t be a fool, Smith, when your father defended my granfather''s honor to his dying breath. What did that make of him?"

    "A blind old fool. Just like me, I''ve come to learn." Smith spat. "And you, Olivia? Ready to say your part?"

    "I fear I have said everything I could, Elder Smith." she spoke.

    "Alright. Not like we had much time for a long conversation anyway. We''re nearly there."

    And indeed, it was as if their trek had lasted all night long, day breaking right before them. With every step, the heat grew more unbearable, as did the now perceptible saliva like stank permeating the stale air, Not a hundred paces, and they would be right in front of him.

    In antecedence the lads and the other Elders lowered their heads, those with empty hands holding their palms together in respect. Elder Seneschal did neither, head held high and hands clutching his walking stick together.

    "I don''t know myself what you are doing here either, Smith." He broke the unconscious silence. "I had imagined Willy would be the one chomping at the bit to drag me around in shackles."

    "Pomen is a very hasty man, he would have killed you at the first opportunity." Smith said.

    "Good, isn''t it?! Going ahead and just breaking this ploy of mine!"

    "Hah! And you will die Seneschal, and your ploy will be broken, but unlike Pomen I won''t underestimate you. I Thought you many things over the years, Seneschal, but until today never unwise. Who knows what measures you have taken? No, the Father will take care of you."

    Elder Seneschal smiled. "I''m glad at least one of you old coots can see past their nose, shame it doesn''t go much further than that."

    "Huh? And what do you even mean by that?"

    "Means that I wish you weren''t too stupid to look to the horizon, and see what actually lies there Smith. its easy to imagine a world where things didn''t have to end this way, where we could join our little brains together and actually solve the issue rather than play scuffs."

    "Oh, Seneschal, you''re incorrigible!" Smith shook his head. "But I mean this sincerely: I hope that once the fires of the Father have cleansed you to the marrow, that you are reborn somewhere that big noggin can actually be put to good use!"

    They descended into the gentle slope of a large gorge. Above, the cliffs were lush at first, but the further down, the less vegetation grew, until they reached the barren edges where not even weeds dared germinate.

    They entered a large clearing, a crater of unnatural erosion that had become a shallow moat of pitch dark ooze, into which they went down through a path both narrow and treacherous, but this was nobody''s first journey here.

    From that moment onward, nobody spoke, each set of eyes glued to the way ahead. Before them rose a tall hill of dry earth, three sides sheer cliffs leaking black liquids, the last flat at the base but growing more precipitous the higher you got, covered in dust and withering Purple Ring Flowers, the last of their dim ethereal lights still wavering at their cores. This was the Throne.

    And the tyrannical sun that occupied its highest point, panted like a starved animal.

    His skin prickled with heat, and sweat poured freely from his body. The buffets of putrid breath with no origin used to make him want to gag, but having seen in person the results of retching on such sacred ground held his stomach. Muffled cries and choked coughs broke among the lads, even as they trembled their ways through their prayers. It was a necessity, if they were to stain his seat of power with their filthy presences.

    Seneschal limped to the end of the small bridge crossing the black moat, nothing but a flimsy path of rocks and dirt stomped flat, in front of Olivia and behind Smith. Here, in his last moments, he though of defying those old customs, to stare his eternal captor in the eyes, just once more.

    Until a Will touched his own.

    His bravado disappeared instantly as he remembered why Lesser Hollow could do nothing but die.

    It was the anger, and unlike most times Elder Seneschal didn''t even need to guess his master''s mood. Generally, he tended to barely acknowledge anyone but his brides with anything but cold dismissal, so to be the victim of his focus, to bear the crushing weight of divinity intent on nothing less than showing him how utterly minuscule he was, that was a fresh experience.

    He knew then he was an idiot beyond belief, a failure that brought doom for the sake of his own ego.

    His voice was no voice at all, and spoke in no language known to man; it came in the dancing heat around them, in the rustling of leaves, in the squeaking of branches. A voice that brokered no disobedience.

    "Seneschal."

    Elder Seneschal halted, only to be lightly pushed along by one of the lads. Idly, he realized the lads with Holly''s cage were dropping her on the ground and stepping away.

    "F-Father of the Wilds. With your blessing." he said.

    "Up."

    It was impossible to resist. His neck was bent back, forcing him to look.

    At the peak of the Throne, stood an enormous shape twisting into itself.

    Thousands of branching legs carpeted the grounds above, some as thin as man''s arm while other the bulk of a mare''s body; a stout trunk, so large as to dwarf the largest building in the village twice over, grew like a three pronged horn, tipped with colossal hands; above that, a maze of myriad fingers growing into uncountable fingers, a canopy so vast it became the sky itself, populated with blinding arrays of leaves, or perhaps flowers, each and every the color and brightness of living flame, cascading in small groups to join the active swarm lazily swirling the main body in an enormous half halo.

    There was a sudden creak of bark being pushed open, as one eye the size of a ripe gourd opened to meet his own.

    Then another, the size of a human''s.

    Then another. Then another. Then another.

    Hundreds of eyes of a hundred different sizes opened through his body, all fixed on Elder Seneschal and Elder Seneschal alone.

    "Seneschal." God said.

    To find his courage again, it would be beyond impossible. Holding to whichever meager slice of it he retained to keep his limbs firm, he said: "My Lord, My Father, I-"

    "Father! All mighty Father, burning glory in the Heavens and Earths! Austere yet fair, may all things knell to thee!"

    The outburst startled Elder Seneschal. Smith had thrown himself into prostration so quickly a small cloud of dust had blown around him. He rose, spreading his arms like wings, and Elder Seneschal paled.

    Here, where the light was plentiful and strong, there was no denying it: all that was left of Smith was a broken man. The cocky smiled had been replaced with the rictus of a beast baring its fangs, eyes wide and bulging, motions stiff but frantic.

    None of the others were faring much better, he could see now. The lads and Rose were all cowering, and even Olivia had lost her steel, hunching like she had been struck and slowly backing away.

    "Oh, Father, forgive these foolish sinners, who in their eagerness to please gave ears to the worms! We erred, my Lord, and here we are to fix our mistake, all we beg is for a chance! Please, Father, your people are loyal, fearful, and awestruck! we have merely been led astray by one of the rotten seed, breeder of Gnashers!"

    But God''s eyes had not shifted for a second of his rant. He had known the instigator all along.

    "I present you the traitor, harbourer of evil, rotten seed of a rotten seed! And the abomination itself, vermin hidden in human skin, burned once and still impure, hidden away from view for his perverted goals!"

    The creature side of Elder Seneschal''s brain fought for control of his legs, crying and barking to run away and burrow itself in a hole so deep not even the darkness would find him, but even if he was so inclined, the might exerted upon him rendered him paralyzed, gaze stuck on God''s own.

    "Unpleasant," God said, and for the first time tonight, he felt like it wasn''t aimed at him. "Seneschal, forwards."

    Without options, he obeyed.

    "We shall never bear his loathsome blood again! I promise you, Father, an outsider will never be allowed to-"

    "My Lord, My Father!" Elder Seneschal yelled, taking a small pleasure in shutting Smith up. "I thank for allowing us to view at your blessed image once again!"

    "Impudent. Poison?"

    "I know nothing of poisons, my Father! All i prepare for you is the best our humble village can provide. Has this solstice''s Ceremony not been to your satisfaction?"

    "Impure."

    A grimace and grin tried to bloom together, but he remained placid. "I don''t understand what displeases you Father, but I know somebody who might. If I may bring her out?"

    "What? Seneschal, what are you-"

    Elder Seneschal ignored him. "Holly, my dear, have you been listening?!"

    A muffled, distorted voice, like some beast trying to mimic the human tongue echoed from inside the tarped cage, "E-Elder Seneschal! Please get me out of here, please, that thing is-"

    "One good kick Holly! To the back of the cage!"

    "W-what do you mean?!"

    "That''s exactly that!"

    "No, you wouldn''t dare, you couldn''t be so bold as to bring that loathsome thing before the Father''s eyes, could you Seneschal?!" Smith tried to get up, too late.

    "One good kick, right where you entered it love!"

    Before she could leave, however, a hand grabbed Elder Seneschal by the scuff of the neck and roughly dragged him to the floor, before climbing over him and raining fists at his face. The Elder tried to defend himself, but he had no illusions what his frail, aged body could do against somebody much larger and more fit like Smith.

    "I won''t let it! Father, I beg you, while the creature remains locked, purge the filth so that it may never spread its depravity again!"

    Another voice broke through, a whip crack of solid metal.

    "Are you deaf, lass?!" Olivia said. "One sharp kick, to the back of the cage, now!"

    There was no hesitation then. Not a second after, the sound of metal being violently bent rang, the cage''s door flying off and crashing its way down towards the moat. The lads around it, once dumbfounded by everything happening, scattered, screaming to all corners.

    Their salvation stepped out on all fours.

    And to imagine it hadn''t been his idea to keep her alive.

    Rather, once his hypothesis had been formed, his plan was to use her blood as a poison in the soil of the Throne, but the issue had always been in how. There was no convenient way to bring one to the other, alive or dead, not without raising suspicion and sabotaging everything, and that of course not to speak how the actual most important step would happen without alerting God. Would such a being ever let him freely traipse over his territory''s heart, even in better circumstances?

    So, lacking in a solid next step, he had sought the council of a friend, and Olivia spotted the obvious biggest flaw in his logic so quickly he felt like the biggest fucking moron in the world.

    What next?

    That would be the question that haunted his every moment awake and asleep, that would render most of his plans into shambles.

    He had spent so much time on pondering and overthinking the impossible task of killing God that he had never spared any for what came next. Once God''s protection faded, what would be of them? No, would there even be a soul outside its walls willing to let them be, to not massacre them to the last child or hunt them from the shadows?

    The village lived because so God willed. Without him, it died. So then, what next? who could safekeep the survivors?

    If they were to keep even a modicum of their safety, they needed something to replace him.

    Their substitute now crouched behind her prison, a wretch in the shape of a bare woman. Gangly and misshapen, colors shifting through wildly unnatural hues, tendrils unfurling into the air behind her head, thickset scythes for claws bent over her strange carapaced fingers. A horror from depths even the Gnashers of his childhood imagination would refuse to prowl, so obviously terrified out of her wits his confidence in the new plan started to falter.

    It was his grandfather that had come with the idea, based on vague memories of vague reports from wars long past, where the armies of their nation fought aberrations their neighbors called divine. If nothing of humanity was impure as God saw it, then perhaps something beyond it was?

    And what was Holly, if not that?

    "Oh." Smith, pale even bathed in red, remarked, bringing Elder Seneschal back from his musings.

    "Smith, I would run if I were you."

    "Seneschal?"

    "You overstepped. I''m not yours to purge."

    He stared dumbly at him, as if in complete disbelief of his audacity. His mouth opened, once then twice, closing wordlessly. In a flash, his face twisted with unspeakable wrath, the first time the Elder had ever seen him this way. He rose a fist ready to pummel his head into paste.

    It didn''t last long. Suddenly, Smith was hauled into the air.

    A spear of wood the size of a man''s thigh had burst from right beside them, and torn through Smith''s stomach as if was paper. Their eyes met, both mute with shock, before the damage caught up with him and he began to spill blood. He voided his hemorrhage through his mouth, covering Elder Seneschal, struggling in vain against his beloved Father. Uncaring, the sharp end came back and wrapped itself around his neck. They crashed down with a deafening thud, Smith being pulled against the cracking ground, his mutilated body thrown spinning to the moat.

    In the end, all that was left of the desperate bastard was a red smear.

    Holly screamed, an inhuman high pitched wail that pierced the mind like rusted nails.

    "Worm," God said, with no emotion Elder Seneschal could tell. "Seneschal, forwards."

    Elder Seneschal took a deep breath. His chest hurt. He cleaned the blood from his swelling eyes, both his and Smith''s, then searched for his walking stick, finding it lying in the dirt downwards, unfortunately out of reach. The lads were running away now, only Rose stood staring in shock at the remains of his master.

    Olivia looked resigned at Holly, frozen. He feared her spirit lost.

    He would have to fix that.

    He turned to God. After two failed attempts to stand up, he began to crawl on his hands and knees. The feeling of dry, hot earth on his bare skin was uncomfortable, sharp pebbled and hidden splinters digging into his palms and shins, but he had to carry on.

    "Holly!" he yelled, loud enough to send himself into a coughing fit. "Do you see him above, love?! Holly!"

    "E-Elder Seneschal!" Holly said, and he sighed in relief. "Elder Seneschal, t-the other Elder, he, he-!"

    "Holly, look above, at the top of the hill! Do you see him?!"

    "E-Elder Seneschal?"

    "You know who he is, don''t you dear?"

    "I-I do! I-it''s him, isn''t it? It''s-"

    "Quiet."

    The command crashed down upon them. Elder Seneschal felt his hands give and his wounded face crash down to the ground. Behind him, Olivia and Holly whimpered.

    "Insolent. Forwards."

    He had to force himself back up, hating every moment how he almost looked supplicant. Then, as he could finally look up, he grinned from ear to ear, triumphant.

    "Holly, he is the one who took your sister!"

    "W-what?"

    "This greedy bastard took her!" he said, slamming a fist helplessly. "She didn''t want to go! She hated him, hated the idea of being taken! But his hunger is such, he gave her no other choice! I couldn''t do anything!"

    She would have to fight. There was no way God would tolerate the presence of a rival within his territory, and so long as she wished to survive she would have to respond in kind.

    And even should she lose?

    "Holly, we need you to fight! We need you to save us!"

    Should she perish and Lesser Hollow be left with its old God, may her blood poison the weakened despot to his last so it may die free.

    And may this shameful soul of his be purified in the heart of the Father Cosmical forever more.

 1- The God of Lesser Hollow 4

    Holly couldn''t move.

    To call God a giant was an understatement. They were sky and earth, colossal arms spread above to consume her, innumerable spear-tipped legs reaching as far as hers, leaves like small suns glaring down. And their eyes! Black as the night, no pupils yet leaving no mistake on what they focused, the briefest flicker in her direction making her legs numb.

    "Holly, we need you to fight! We need you to save us!"

    They had gone mad, she and the Elder and everyone else. Today shouldn''t be possible. Elder Seneschal''s words had to be meaningless babbles, and her frightened mind was mishearing them, that was all.

    "Lass." It was the lady''s time to rave. "If not for us, fight for your sister, in the clutches of the Father. Don''t you want to help her?"

    Her sister! With everything else, it had completely fled her!

    "Lady, what happened to Hazel?! Why does Elder Seneschal want me to fight?!"

    The lady had not for a second taken her eyes of Elder Seneschal''s figure, slowly crawling towards God, her expression severe. "Because we tire of the cull. Because we have no other hopes," she said.

    "I-I don''t understand! what-"

    "Don''t pay attention to me! Eyes forward, Lass, or you will end up like Elder Smith down there!"

    It took her a second to make the connection, and then she remembered the bald old man, grappling with Elder Seneschal. She remembered his face, twisting from anger to shock to agony and fear as he understood what was happening, his struggles and how his body came apart when he was dragged-

    Her stomach churned. She felt the bile rise up her throat, and for the first time felt thankful she hadn''t eaten anything lately. She fought the nausea down, though the image refused to leave her.

    "There."

    The word brought her from her reminiscing, or, was it even a word? It was a strange sensation, like she was feeling somebody talk instead of hearing or reading, but she couldn''t tell where, from where. It reminded her of that weird tension, that Will she had felt down in her room, but so much stronger, more solid.

    Elder Seneschal obeyed. Even from here she could see his frail body shake, and wanted nothing more than to go rescue him. However, God''s eyes flickered her way once more, keeping her pinned behind her cage.

    "Seneschal, I am disappointed."

    "Father, I have done nothing but fulfill your needs," the Elder said, voice croaky and pained.

    "I forgive, again and again. Your blood, your theft of my Divine Intent."

    "Was the bride not to your likeness? She was the best our humble village ever cultivated. Nobody had ever upheld tradition as much as her, and none ever shall again."

    "You poisoned me."

    "There was no poison, my Lord, the bride was raised as my own child, I would know. She was a perfectly healthy woman, and nothing else."

    "Lies."

    The word crashed upon them again with a force that was almost physical, bearing down on her shoulders and nearly dropping her on her knees. Elder Seneschal, with no strength to hold himself, was sent sprawling on his face.

    A desperate voice broke through the haze of pain. "Lass, you must listen to me!"

    "M-me?"

    "You don''t have the time to gawk! Do you think God will let Florid live for much longer?!"

    "I-I don''t know what I''m supposed to do! I don''t know what''s happening, or what Elder Seneschal is talking about, or-"

    "Listen to me. Do you know what we, the Elders of Lesser Hollow, do here?"

    She almost answered that she didn''t, but thinking twice about it, she had an idea. The Elder didn''t like talking about it, but she had heard about the brides of God, or felt the dour mood that used to overtake the village every solstice back when she was healthy. Hazel had been lurid with the possibilities, but she didn''t want to believe the things she said, even coming from her sister!

    "I-I do. I think."

    "Do you know how much death lies beneath your feet? How many bridal gowns I have had to weave for the poor unfortunate girls we pick? Girls who can''t even fulfill their purpose anymore, not without breaking down, and take their entire families to the mound when God deems their efforts insufficient!"

    "N-no..."

    "You want to know why we need you to fight? We are his captives, lass. We sacrificed too much to appease him, and it will never be enough! He does not care for our lives, for our wellbeings, always asking for more and more!" The lady ranted, but never so much as looked towards Holly. No, even now, her attention was reserved entirely for God and Elder Seneschal.

    "T-then Hazel..."

    "... Your sister is here, I''m afraid. She was as exhausted as any of us, of living under this tyrant''s burden. She knew you were our last hope, and gave herself to leave you a better chance."

    She felt like her heart was going to stop. "T-then..." The words didn''t want to come out, "I-is she- is she-"

    "She might still survive."

    "S-she might?!"

    "...We never knew what happens after God takes his brides. You are the only who might figure out how, lass. But first, you must dethrone him!"

    Holly nodded, feeling some smidge of courage coming back to her. So this was it, like one of her chivalry novels, a battle to rescue the kidnapped damsel! Except she was no hero, no knight in a white warmare, no wandering swordsman of many years, bane of a thousand monsters.

    "Alright, I''ll do it! E-except, how though?"

    "How can you ask me that?!"

    "I-I never fought anyone before!" Not since she got sick, she had not.

    "And you think I would be-" she grumbled under her breath, then shook her head. "Fight, lass. Follow your instincts! Cut, bite, kick, topple him if your might allows, do anything your body can to bring him harm then take his life!"

    "But-"

    "Don''t think, go!"

    The order filled her with dread. She didn''t help any, but she wouldn''t dare talk back to somebody with that voice.

    She leaped over her cage, landing on all fours. Free from the cramped walls of her room, she felt faster and stronger than ever before! How long had it been since the last time she could run as much as she wanted?! With that elation carrying her, she aimed for Elder Seneschal and sprung forward, ready to take him to safety, then-

    "Stop."

    God''s full attention fell upon her.

    It was like crashing against solid stone. For a second she was at full speed, and the next she hit the ground in a great plume of dust and flowers, limbs seizing under the force of invisible hands gripping her from under the skin..

    The next words came with a pity that made her spine crawl.

    "My apologies, similar."

    She tried to lift her head, to look at the deity at the top of the Throne in bafflement, but moving even a single muscle was agony, as if her flesh was turning to stone from sheer tension.

    "Holly!" She could just barely see Elder Seneschal trying to get up. "Holly, love, you have to get up! You''re stronger than him, I know you are!"

    Since when? She though. How could he ever think of her as his last chance? Why?

    "I recognize you now. I acknowledge you now," God said without saying to her, then elsewhere. "Seneschal, look at me."

    "Holly, you-!"

    And then the Elder disappeared from her view.

    "I was once disgusted. I demanded your pyre. Yet, you are before me, similar. Tell me, Seneschal, why you kept her alive."

    "Agh-! Aaaaah!" The Elder screamed.

    "I understand now. I feel her weak Intent, as I felt the other''s. I understand it all now."

    "My Father, I- Aaaaagh!"

    "I ask you to rise, similar. Use your Divine Intent as I do."

    She struggled as she could, and finally managed to push herself up.

    Elder Seneschal had been lifted into the air.

    For a mind melting instant, she imagined the Elder like the other man, impaled through and bleeding freely like a slaughtered animal, but she was wrong. The elder was held by the waist in the grip of a wooden snake stained with pitch black liquid. His fists hit the thing again and again until they were bloody, but no matter what, it refused to let him go.

    "Leave him alone! Elder Seneschal!"

    "I will hear no vulgarities. Speak in Divine Intent as I do."

    "I-I don''t even know what that is!"

    She felt God''s Will crash against her again, weaker this time, only strong enough to numb her and send an unpleasant shiver down her spine. It felt violating, but worse was that she couldn''t understand why.

    "Intent. Desire as I do, then follow."

    "How?!"

    The Will hit again, hard. Like a punch to the stomach, twisting her insides, her senses, making her muscles weak and loose. It carried with it such disappointed contempt it made her want to to hide.

    "Seneschal." The root squeezed, and the Elder screamed. "You raise a weapon against me, yet coddled her? She cannot imitate my Divine Intent, only feel."

    "I-" He coughed. "Does anyone?"

    "You, who stole it from me."

    "I don''t recall ever being a thief, Fat-"

    He screamed again.

    "I forgave, for you suited my purposes."

    "P-Please, let him go..."

    "Have you forgotten my words, Seneschal?"

    Elder Seneschal spat. "I wouldn''t forget anything, oh Father. nothing that pertains you."

    "You do not understand me. Else, I would ask you to repeat them."

    God squeezed again, and this time, Holly heard something snap. Elder Seneschal''s screams became cacophonous, his desperate scratching at the limb that held him tugging something deep within her.

    So she tried again, against nausea and holy pressure. She willed herself upwards, but soon found it was like throwing herself in the path of a boulder rolling downhill and trying to push it back, every bit of resistance met with superior weight, until her momentum was completely stalled.

    "Similar, await my judgment,"

    "S-stop calling me that!"

    "i said, speak with Intent."

    Instinct told her to move, and she followed before she could wonder why. The signs had been so few: a little rumbling of the earth, a slight shift at the peak of the Throne, anger in God''s Will.

    It struck like a snake in the underbrush, as fast as the blink of the eye, a spear of wood lunging out of the ground, a filthy oozing worm that tore in her direction, coming a hairsbreadth from nicking the hard skin of her arms. Holly fell on her rear and quickly scrambled to her limbs as the thing retreat, taking position between her and the Elder.

    Something had began to drop from Elder Seneschal, staining the earth below him in a mix of dark liquids. Despite everything, however, he had started to laugh.

    "I tire of this farce, Seneschal."

    "Have I ever offered anything beyond my utmost honesty, Father?!" he chuckled and coughed.

    "Elder Seneschal, W-wait-" The boulder came back, but this time she managed to push it back, finding purchase forward. Another serpent of wood quickly whistled its way out from beneath, lashing at her at an unbelievable speed, cracking the hardskin over her forearm and sending her reeling back, howling. It had been years since she last felt this kind of pain, almost as bad as breaking an arm.

    "I have been merciful, Seneschal. I succored and I nourished. You live because I allow you to."

    "Ha! And we are so thankful for your mercy, Father! Were it not for you, where would we be, right?! Where would Lesser Hollow be?!"

    "You mock me?"

    "... Holly, can you hear me?"

    "I spoke to you," God said, and Elder Seneschal whimpered, more liquid leaking from him. "Do you mock me?"

    "Holly, I said, can you hear me?!"

    She never answered. The moment words came to her mouth, another strike came right at her, choking her with dirt and dust, another lunge nearly taking her in the chest soon after. Her heart felt cold in her chest, for no matter which angle she tried to take, she couldn''t get past God''s roots, which were quickly growing in numbers.

    "Holly, do you remember what''s the worst sin for us Followers of the Sun?" Elder Seneschal laughed, and she didn''t understand why when she wanted to scream, "So don''t bother with this treacherous old geezer, alright love?! I''m not getting out of this one anyway!"

    "D-don''t say that, Elder Seneschal, I''ll be right there!"

    "No, Holly! That''s what I''m trying to-"

    Elder Seneschal screamed again, and God spoke. "Do not ignore me."

    "Well, F-Father, you''re not the only one here tired of this farce!" He cackled like a mad man. "Merciful! I hope I meet my sisters in my next life, just to tell them that joke! And you succor us too?! Not from yourself! Well, but at least I agree with your last point!"

    "Seneschal."

    "I would call you a moron, you petty little tyrant, but you know what fits you better?! You''re an infant! A lordling drunk on your own power! that we ever called you a God is an affront to any good the word might have held, specially when you never saw us as anything but a servile meal!"

    "E-Elder Seneschal, don''t say that, they-"

    "It''s the truth Holly, and if I''m to die here, let me speak! After everything we lost, after everything you forced us to give up for your self aggrandizing, it''s the least you can grant me, you putrid fucking stump!"

    "I granted you choice."

    "As if the opposite was an option any sane person would ever take, idiot!"

    "Before me, you have."

    You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

    "Ha! And after everything, I look sane to you?!" Elder Seneschal spat. "Tell me, do you really only ever eat women?! What happened to my brother, all those years ago, huh?! Why did you punish us for sins we never committed, allows us to ready brides you knew could never realize the Ceremony, pick them even?! Just for the pleasure of killing us, your Herd of dumb animals that can do nothing but blindly follow your every whim?!"

    "The traitor deserves no truth from me."

    "... Holly, you''re hearing all this, right? This is a god! This is the creature that is suppose to be our superior, our greatest benefactor, our protector, slaughtering us for petty vengeance and amusement! Did my grandfather''s trick with the Guts really damage you so badly you had to kill half of us?! that you had to kill my baby sister, who didn''t get to see her tenth year?!"

    "Enough."

    "... You''re right. What''s the point of airing my grievances to you? If you were going to care, you would have cared long ago!" Heaving a heavy sigh as if relieved, Elder Seneschal slowly turned towards her, "Holly, love?"

    The sight of him was worse than any blow, any metaphorical boulder pushing her down.

    She had almost expected to see him with a cunning smile, a plan about to go from his lips.

    He was grimacing, his mouth and chin dripping with so much blood she couldn''t believe he could still speak, the front of his robes dark with red under God''s light.

    "Holly, I leave the people in your hands. Your sister specially. Make sure she doesn''t do anything stupid, alright? And-"

    "I have granted you final words."

    His mouth opened and closed a few times, as if he didn''t know what to say. he struggled for a short moment, until his face suddenly twisted, an expression of unimaginable grief taking over. He took a deep breath...

    And finally did smile.

    "And good luck, alright? I believe in you."

    "Now, I purify you."

    Elder Seneschal was Crushed.

    The noise echoed through the Throne and carved itself into her mind. Wet yet brittle, a crackling squelch, like an overripe fruit with dry skin being stepped on, Elder Seneschal burst with a choked gasp, spraying the ground beneath and staining it dark. Two objects fell from God''s grip as Elder Seneschal flopped back, limp.

    Not a second passed when the fire started, consuming the black ooze covering the root and quickly igniting the Elder whole.

    She watched in mute shock.

    She almost convinced herself this was another nightmare, that she would soon wake up in the dark of her room, hungry and lonely, eagerly waiting for her family to visit with more stories and tasty meats.

    But that dream refused to end. The comforting dark had never come.

    If anything, the light grew stronger, the crimson leaves above growing like fed embers.

    The root holding the Elder bent, then launched him with casual disregard. He passed above the cliff''s edge, over the dry patch surrounding the Throne, and disappeared into the vegetation beyond.

    The boulder returned, commanding her down.

    "Similar, now I demand you-"

    She did not understand Intent, or Will, then.

    She simply wished it destroyed, so the boulder shattered.

    The ground flew beneath her, a blur of brown and fading purple. A noise unlike any other she had ever heard deafened her, a mixture between a roar of fury and another of surprised agony. God and all their roots convulsed, trying to lean back and away from her in vain

    She unfurled her nails, wished God harm, then struck.

    She tore through the wood of a root like a knife through a fish, gouging it to the middle. Black ooze didn''t pour but flowed freely like a river, squirting the ground she had been just a moment ago as she dashed to the next target, already trying to flee underground, the root that once held Elder Seneschal.

    Not minding that it was still alight, she struck again, cutting through fire and wood and jumping back again. The noise grew louder, until it felt like the one and only thing in the world, but she fought it, had to as another wooden spear, this time thicker around then even Julius, tried to take advantage of the moment to skewer her. Dodging, taking a small gash up her flank, she cut it down its length.

    Only to be blown back by a heavy hit from out of sight.

    The pain was immediate. She had been caught in the joint. The hardskin over her left arm had fixed itself already, but her right had now burst to the flesh ruptured up to its limits close to her shoulder, her ribs breaking under. She rolled downhill, eating dirt and flower mush as she struggled to get a grip.

    Finally, she stopped herself, digging into the hill with her good arm, as the haze clouding her mind ceased. She throbbed with pain, her fingers so badly burned some of them had burst open, now freely leaking onto the dry soil.

    The roar of fury had stopped.

    But the baffled, terrified noise that was not a noise hadn''t. God held their leaking roots in the air, staring at it in obvious disbelief. It eyes shifted towards her, holding nothing of the instinctive superiority they once brought, but now carrying something worse.

    "I commend your fast learning. I commend your fast recuperation."

    "W-why?!" she cringed from the prickling pain in her hand. The hardskin over her arm was already slowly fixing itself, clotting up her blood and recreating the space between its cracks, but the burned parts remained damaged. "Why did you hurt him?! E-Elder Seneschal was the Godspeaker, the only one who could hear you!"

    "I see another, his thieving daughter."

    "M-me? No, I would never be-"

    "I speak of his true daughter." The wounded roots retreated underground. "Enough. Similar, I demand you to leave."

    "No! I-I won''t let you get away with this! Elder Seneschal was a great man, a-"

    "Traitor. Unforgivable."

    "You heard him, you were hurting us, killing us!"

    "I demanded a fair price. I took select, unwanted few and I gave back a fruitful life."

    "H-Hazel was not unwanted! She was the best person ever, and we loved her a lot!"

    "My guardian spoke otherwise. She relayed to me much of my people."

    "These are not your people, they are-"

    "The fruit of my land, my nourishment, my domain," God said, and she could feel a strange discrepancy in the way they communicated and the maddening concoction of wrath and fear they emitted. "I have seen your true kin, Similar. This village is mine and not yours. I ask you to return to them."

    God''s roots stood at the ready, but for some reason refused to strike. Never had them looked more like serpents, the way they quivered in the air, looking for the right moment to bite. Or more blasphemously, like worms wriggling out of the ground, called by the blood, some now emerging covered in flames in some mockery of the divine.

    "I won''t go anywhere! E-Elder Seneschal told me to defeat you, so I''ll defeat you! I''ll free my sister, and I''ll topple you and, and-!"

    "I have left nothing of your kin."

    She paused. "N-no, the other lady said that she, that she might be okay!" She searched for the old lady with the steel hair, but there was nobody around else around them, everyone else had fled. "I-I don''t believe you!"

    "Similar, Your throne bears no ill with mine. The Seneschal wished my death, you shouldn''t."

    "Why not?!''

    "Useless. How do you plan to topple me?"

    "I-I''ll hit you really hard!"

    "Useless."

    "Got you scared, didn''t it?!"

    Another emotion entered God''s Will: surprise. "I give you one last chance. Your true kin pester me, and I shall lead you to them. End this fight and I shall let you live."

    She swallowed dry. For all she talked big, she could feel her members shake beneath her. But how could she leave now?

    "I said no."

    God and sick girl faced each other, and she almost reconsidered. Almost. Elder Seneschal was so smart, but how could he think she was capable? She had to believe he had seen something she couldn''t. Not like she actually had the opportunity to actually take it either way, as the moment the thought popped into her head, a growing hiss spread all around her, as the moat broke into ravenous tongues of fire.

    "My mercy has been rejected, then. Perish."

    All the roots lit on fire at once.

    A mere distraction. Too late, she felt the earth rumble, and as distant as she was from God, a lunge erupted out of the ground, tearing a burning chunk out of her flank.

    She screamed, and God didn''t miss the opportunity. The enormous serpent descended at her, its fiery tip ready to eviscerate her. She narrowly evaded, only to feel the tremors again, further away now. This time, it came low, lashing at her legs, but she jumped just in time. A third root whipped over her head, painfully severing a few of her hairs.

    Back to the roaring flames, heart in her throat, she realized she had made her fate here. She had nowhere to flee, and could only move forward. Her legs, however, disagreed, and froze in the face of another assault.

    "Move, come on!" she whined to herself, but found her wishes ignored. Only a vertical swipe that would leave of her nothing but another red smear convinced them otherwise.

    "I command my domain. None inside may dethrone me."

    Finding her right hand too hurt to carry her weight, she pounced over a lunge and charged forward on three limbs, much slower than before. Strikes came from all directions, burning and heavy. She struggled to dodge them, pieces of her nicked with every poor judgement until the density of attacks grew so much she physically could not advance anymore.

    It was then she was taken by surprise. She jumped, expecting the next wooden spear to pass her by, only for it to suddenly coil around her, constricting her from waist to neck with an inescapable grip as she was hauled up and before God''s eyes.

    For a moment, she felt amusement in God''s will. She knew what came next, so instinct won out.

    Scaring herself with her own strength, she managed to wrestle the torso sized root until its tip was close to her face, opened her mouth wide, and bit with everything she had.

    It was like biting into crisp fruit. Like biting into the most foul, rotten berry in the bush; the liquid that filled her mouth was the most acrid thing she had ever tasted in her life, half disgusting slime and half chunky pulp, but it had worked: God yowled, loosening its grip and shaking her by the head until her jaw''s strength won, tearing a large piece out of the root. She flew, edging the hill''s sheerer sides and by a miracle not falling into the moat.

    She spat out the unpleasantly warm wood, and readied herself for the next volley of attacks.

    But it never came.

    God''s eyes were stuck into the bite wound. Their roots stood at the ready, a living wall between them and she, but none made a move.

    She didn''t get it. What could God have to wonder from such a tiny wound. She had no hope that that would do anything to that colossal monster, but had she actually? How?

    "My wound does not recover," they said, simply.

    Need did hers, when they should. The earlier cuts and nicks were healing as fast as they had always done, but the burns remained, pulsating stabs of pain worrying her badly.

    "I have been wounded. My wounds do not recover."

    She had no time to ponder, as God did not so much as looker at her, but laboriously turned its entire trunk to face her, a move that sent small quakes over the entire Throne and shifted the sky.

    "Die."

    She shivered. The boulder came at her full force again, but this time it did not break so easily, no matter how much she willed it gone. She moved, knowing that soon she would be assailed at all sides...

    But the roots stood in place.

    Only too late did she notice the area around her growing brighter and brighter, hotter and hotter. She looked up.

    The sky was falling over her.

    No, she noticed, it wasn''t the sky. Swirling, dancing through the air with almost lazy twists and turns, innumerable burning red leaves were falling in her direction, each and every a perfect mimicry of a plants own, down to the shape and details, sculpted from crystallized embers.

    The beauty transfixed her for a second.

    As the closest ones approached, however, she hopped to the side, trying to avoid them.

    And as one, the swarm followed, gaining speed and unnatural direction.

    Dread took her. She fought against the overbearing Will of God to run, but their roots finally moved, emerging one after the other in a forest of sharp flame-covered stakes. She tried to duck under and around their sinuous shapes, but there were always more, ready to prod or beat her away. If she struck back, she knew she would come out the loser of the fight, so she tried to back away, find a way around...

    Only to learn she was completely surrounded. Distracted, she hadn''t noticed the lazy circle the swarm had done around her, sloppy yet with no gaps she could use, as it spiraled closer and closer.

    Finally, as one last desperate measure, she tried doing to them what she was doing to God''s Will, trying to will them away, move them somewhere else, anything!

    It worked, for a second. The swarm visibly slowed, but never lost track of its prey. The boulder crashed into her a blink later, undoing all her efforts.

    The first leaf, a stray that had gone ahead of its companions, touched her on the shoulder.

    It was painful, but not the horror she imagined. It was a burn alright, as any other she had got back when she was a kid, playing too close to a bonfire or some such, but it paled against the fiery blows from the roots. Once they had met, it quickly disappeared too.

    Then came another.

    Then another. Then another. Then another. Then another. Then another. Then another. Then another. Then another. Then another.

    Dozens. Hundreds.

    She tried to run, and found her back against the swarm''s main body, closing in from above and below and besides.

    Thousands.

    She curled up into a ball, covering herself with hairs, hands, anything she could to protect herself as the tempest hit in full force, nipping at every exposed centimeter of her body. Her skin boiled, her body an indistinct mess of pain, her Will worn down to nothing trying to fight two battles at once, useless against both.

    She didn''t feel when it ended, her consciousness only returning when something grabbed her by the ankle and hoisted her up.

    She opened her eyes, and through a world upside down she saw the Throne aflame. Purple and red intermingled as the wilting Ring Flowers were caught in God''s rampage. A great serpent of leaves glided under her, spreading a trail of fire wherever it passed.

    "Similar."

    She tried to respond, but all she managed was a hoarse whine.

    "Intent."

    She tried to will God''s grip away. A sharp pain suddenly germinated from the depths of her mind and made her see black, reminding her of that one time when she was a child and a boy threw a rock right to the back of her head, but a blow to the face brought her back.

    "No."

    "Wh-whaaaa-"

    "Intent."

    Was it as easy as wishing herself understood? She tried, but they didn''t respond. She tried to thinking as hard as she could at them, and that moved them none either. She tried imitating them, but didn''t know how to even start with that. She felt herself being shaken, the hot wind prickling her skin like thorns.

    "I have seen you learn. Again. Intent."

    "Aaaaan''..."

    "Failure." She was struck again, hard enough to see stars.

    Her sight was growing weaker, but even through the blur she could see slithering shapes rising towards her, slavering with dark dribble, ready to render her apart. A few broke from the group early, and began to rain blows at her. She tried to defend herself, swiping at the air, but she couldn''t follow their movements, couldn''t even bend enough to hit the one holding her.

    "I shall leave what remains to your true kin."

    "Iiii-"

    "I judge you, fruit of treachery. Though you are not mine, you were made against me. I grant you final words."

    And what would be the point of that, she thought to herself.

    She wanted to apologize to Elder Seneschal for how badly she had failed him when he had given her so much, yet he was not here to listen anymore. She wanted to apologize to Hazel, who she couldn''t save, and Cassia, who she couldn''t protect, but they weren''t here either. She wished she hadn''t gotten sick, that she had been a better sister, but what did it matter? Who would listen to her?

    In her last moments, she feared dying alone. Why did they hand her this burden, then left her to figure it out? She hadn''t been disobedient! She hadn''t left her room for any reason, she hadn''t picked fights with the village''s lads! She didn''t even scratch her things anymore, didn''t dig into the mountain when she got bored, so why was she being punished?!

    "E-eeldddd-"

    "So I have done. Now I purify you."

    She cringed, hoping it would be fast.

    The roots reared back, tips all in her direction.

    Then a black blur passed right by her hairs.

    For a second, she thought it of no consequence, a final delusion to end the day.

    An instant later, she fell from God''s limp hold.

    She hit the ground on her shoulder and quivered in pain as dirt entered her many sores. Seconds after, she stopped, when a howl louder than words could describe yet completely silent echoed across the Throne, across the forest, sending trees and shrubs into a frenzied dance.

    God shook. The Throne shook and cracked, chasms opening around her as roots retreated underground and the leaf swarm returned to its master, spreading into a thin barricade.

    She could just barely see through them: One of God''s eyes had been pierced by something, sizzling and smoking almost as if-

    Something heavy fell right besides her.

    For an instant, she panicked, imagining an enormous man sized root missing its first blow, dragging itself across the ground to beat her right into the burning moat, but the shape that stood there gave her pause.

    A short cloaked figure was watching God trash. She had never seen that pattern of fur before, a mixture of grey and white spreading from several central points, almost dizzying. She opened her mouth, forgetting that she couldn''t sp-

    The Stranger was at her the next second, seizing her jaw with a hand like iron, impossible to escape. Struggling was pointless, for before she could even raise a hand to try pushing them away, theirs reached into their hood, pulled something from within, and immediately slammed into her gullet. She choked on the vile muck, a scant few places better then God''s own, trying to clean her throat-

    She jolted back, every muscle contracting at once.

    It was like slipping into the river in a hot afternoon. Like kicking a sharp rock and piercing your little toe, like tasting bitter medicine in your food, like she imagined being struck by lighting must feel like, a shock that awakened her every sense and made her more aware of her body then ever before.

    For a split of a second, she felt like a living, walking wound, mangled and leaking from every opening, with an amorphous core boiling under her very blood and fighting to tear its way outside. She felt herself engulfed in the mouth of beast, sharp fangs digging in every soft nook and cranny of her body, dirty with decades worth of detritus. She felt herself at the cliff of an abyss, a bad turn away from falling for eternity. She felt herself with a body that wasn''t a body.

    The feelings, the images, they came and went like a dream, hard to piece together once they were gone but leaving the strangest sensation behind. The blur in her sight had disappeared, and so had the shaking of her legs; Her heart hammered like thunder, and her pain felt numb and distant, like it was happening to somebody else.

    But above everything, she properly felt herself Will. Like having arms that weren''t there, present but intangible, invisible, pushing against the bulk of a mighty beast that could crush them with a sudden turn in its sleep, a wall worth of them stretching and contracting with her desires in an indistinct mass. Its was so clear, she felt like an idiot for having never realized it was there.

    "W-what?! What is-!"

    "Can you move?" the Stranger said.

    She didn''t even know what to say, she just stared back, searching for a hint of eyes under the impenetrable darkness of the cloak''s hood. Such a bizarre interloper had no rights to such a beautiful voice.

    "I hope so. Listen to me and listen carefully, I won''t repeat myself," they said.

    "I-I don''t even-"

    "Are you listening?!"

    "Y-yes!" she shouted.

    "Good. There is nowhere for us to escape. The only way out is by killing the Blossom."

    "T-the Blossom?"

    "You know what I''m referring to. In moments we will ascend, and you will have to keep up with me, no matter how wounded you are. Not behind me, not in front of me, besides me, always."

    "O-okay."

    "I will need you to protect yourself as much as possible, I won''t be able to help at all times. Avoid fighting if you can, but avoid getting too far away. The foe might be weak, but don''t underestimate it anymore."

    "I-I didn''t! And what do you mean they are weak?!"

    "It. And it is. now, take three steps away from me and come!"

    She did so, in an ungainly limp. Even if the hurt was mostly gone, she still felt drained, mentally and physically.

    "Who harms me?" God said, "Who has the Seneschal brought to me?" God said, it''s Will, or Intent, she wasn''t sure what to call it anymore, falling upon them, making her falter but not so much as slowing the other.

    "Heir of the Crimson Tale!" The Stranger announced out loud, "Eternally infant Blossom, servitor of the long gone Sappling!"

    "I know these names." God''s Will quivered in against hers in a motion that made her nauseous, "Who?"

    "Today, I cease your existence!" The Stranger''s voice echoed, as they reached deep into their hood again

    "No, I know." God''s fear was infectious. She wanted to hide.

    "My name is Agare III," The Stranger spoke, much quieter, just for her. "Remember what you are about to see, and let it define you."

    "Faceless."

    The stranger hand left the pitch darkness.

    And with it, came an aberration.

    It was a weapon, this much she guessed, or meant to be one. She had seen a sword before, and reminded her of that, or perhaps an oddly shaped club, meant for things much larger than a person. It was almost as long as Agare, so much so he had to use both hands to pull it out, and it was... it was...

    It was horrid. There was nothing else she could think to describe it. It was terror incarnate. A glimpse was all it took to make her skin want to crawl away, to maker her spine wish it could do like the many centipedes who once lived in her room, to make her think God was a preferable end.

    It was a thing of tumorous lumps and worm trails, with a "blade" so thick it was obviously dull, so wide it was almost comical, pointless with a rounded head, and a bent grip of leather wraps so thin it was fit for a knife, though longer than one itself. It was brown, and it was blotched black like lichen eaten bark, opaque from tip to tip with not the slightest hint of a shine.

    But the worst of everything was the mold. or moss, or how could she even guess what it was called? Soft, gently pulsing patches of eye searing yellow, shallow, jiggling with an almost liquid like quality at every swerve of the thing, but never dripping. It had crystallized in places, bleached into the appearance of pus colored rust.

    Once the weapon was fully unveiled, she froze. God froze. Even the wind stilled.

    Childish giggles, cruel and mischievous, echoed from somewhere over her shoulder. Her head snapped, searching, but found nothing.

    She forced herself to turn back, watching the thing as if it was a mad beast untrustworthy even in the hands of its master, until dark and multicolored stains appeared over her blurring vision, accompanied by the sensation of barbs caressing her corneas.

    Even beholding it was torture.

    That was too much. That was death, hers and everything else''s, she knew from the bottom of her heart without having ever seen the thing before.

    She shook her head and focused on God, hoping one dread would erase the last.

    And right at that moment, God''s crown exploded.

 1 - The God of Lesser Hollow 5

    Olivia Weaver watched her last friend die from the sidelines.

    The moment his body was cast aside like a broken toy at the hands of an angry child, she didn''t know how to feel.

    No, she knew the correct thing would be to grieve, cry like when she was told her oldest son would never be coming back from outside, but not a tear came to her. How long ago had they predicted this? It didn''t feel like a tragedy unfolding right before her eyes, more like a bittersweet memory, forgotten but then suddenly recalled.

    And so, she calmly combed the jungle, every nook and every cranny, just for him. Beyond prediction, however, were the heavier steps dogging hers at every turn.

    "Will you keep following me?" she asked, in truth not particularly interested about the answer.

    "Why not?" Rose Willard said.

    "I imagine you must have other obligations to attend, or places to go."

    "Where?"

    "To your cousin, for example. Should you not report the good news? The Elder of the Seneschal''s is gone, and his plans are heading for failure."

    "... Ain''t seein'' none."

    "The consequences would be most severe had Elder Willard heard that."

    "Tchh! Elder Willard!" He gave the falsest chuckle she had ever heard, "I did all Pomen asked me. He can''t complain."

    "Which was?"

    "See that Long Hair dead, ''no matter which cost you must pay!'' Heh! That Smithy too, if they were in cahoots."

    "Quite the gamble for power. Or just sheer paranoia?"

    "You too, if it came to it."

    "I know, but that doesn''t answer the question."

    "Ain''t you too calm?"

    "Aren''t you?"

    "Nope. Not at all."

    "Uhm. It''s simply nothing I hadn''t expected."

    For a moment, she had dared hope that Florid''s honeyed words were spoken from a place of knowing, that the monster he had brought up would mean something. In the end, she should have trusted her instincts more, but wasn''t that hope ever sweet?

    Those words had never led her stray, was the thing. They had saved her from her wretch of a husband, and guided her grandchildren away from the beast her youngest son had become. She had only become an Elder thanks to them and it was hard to believe she hadn''t been purged as an unwelcome anomaly for any other reason than his personal influence.

    So when she found him, draped over a bush like an old rag, she once again didn''t know how to feel.

    The earth shook like it was about to crumble under her feet, and she lamented how he had reaped nothing he hadn''t sowed.

    His bestial daughter howled like no creature of natural descent, and her chest was lit aflame at the indignity afforded to the man who dared sacrifice the most for Lesser Hollow.

    She followed her heart this time, rushing besides him...

    And hitting him with the strongest slap her old body could muster.

    "She was supposed to be strong, you stupid old geezer! She was supposed to be our savior!"

    He didn''t flinch, didn''t sigh, didn''t so much as frown. Couldn''t, really. His fate was one she wouldn''t wish on her worst enemy, a charred and diminished body with a missing bottom half, only barely distinguishable as human by general shape. She could only tell it was him because she had been there, otherwise...

    "... You, help me." she said, glancing at Rose.

    "Ain''t your henchman, woman."

    "As if you have better to do! Help me lower him."

    In the end, Rose did come over, picking up the body and nearly throwing it to the floor.

    "No! Over there, by the roots of that tree."

    "Why?"

    "I want to dig here."

    It was the only place in sight with proper empty space, hopefully going at least deep enough to cover his body with a thin layer of soil, a proper if plain mound. She knew she wouldn''t finish it in time, but set out to the task nonetheless.

    "I ain''t helpin''."

    "I don''t remember asking you to."

    "Just so you know. Don''t think the old fucker deserves a mound."

    "Frankly, I don''t think he deserves it either. If we could measure one''s sin, he might have proven the worst sinner among us."

    "My pah'' used to say a mound for a traitor is like peg legs for a snake."

    Elder Florid Seneschal had been many things.

    He had been a mystery, an unknown element, an outcast for much of his young life, until he proved himself a Godspeaker. He had been a life long cantankerous sourpuss, quick to insult and to injury, vicious enough to charge a lad half a body taller than him with just his walking stick. He had been, admittedly, a heartthrob in his youth, as well as a tremendous heartbreaker, with no respect for anybody but himself.

    "... But if there is one thing he never was, it is a traitor."

    "My eyes say different."

    "Then I''m afraid you are going blind."

    "And you senile, woman."

    "All the other Elders were going blind. All of our people were going blind. Only he saw that we only had one fate in store, that our only choice in the world was in how it came to be."

    "Pray all that makes his souls burn a little less, cause you ain''t convincin'' me." Rose sighed, "All I saw was monsters fighting."

    There was worse to be seen there, she thought, if only you knew who she was. No reason to speak on that, however.

    "... Did you guys bring someone else?"

    "I don''t quite understand what you mean."

    "There is somebody else in there. I been hearin'' talk."

    "Perhaps, with the loss of the previous Godspeaker, you have awakened to your latent gifts."

    "Tch! Just listen!"

    She did, stopping her work for a moment, but no matter how much attention she payed, an uneasy silence was all she heard.

    A moment later, light bloomed from the Father''s Throne.

    It rose over them like a great storm cloud of crimson, burning away the shadows like the day had just broken, sunlight parting and rejoining like buzzing insects.

    It took her a second to understand what she was seeing.

    It triggered a long buried memory, the first time she learned the truth about the Ceremonies, standing alongside her husband. She observed tradition the exact way she had been taught, entering and chanting and leaving with her head down, keeping the fear in that bride''s screams locked deep within herself, but as she crossed the bridge back she noticed something quite peculiar.

    Coming from the trees, heading in her direction, was a little red sprite gently glowing in the moonless night. As it came closer, she realized it was the petal of flower, small and delicate, gorgeous beyond belief, too gorgeous to ignore, so she craved to touch it.

    She extended a hand and let it come to a rest against her palm.

    It was not a pleasant memory. God''s greetings never were.

    Sighing, she turned to Florid one last time, looking his mangled body in what remained of its sockets. She bowed her head once, slightly.

    "I''m sorry, Florid. I don''t think I can grant you this favor after all."

    "What''s going on?! What''s all this?!" Rose asked, too late for an answer.

    She stood up, patted the earth out of her dress but only made it dirtier. She cleaned her throat, rolled the aches out of her shoulders, straightened her back, and clenched her hands together.

    This was it. Whichever modicum of pity God held for them, it was done and over.

    So she faced her end, not with fear, but with that steel in her blood that had kept her alive this far.

    <hr>

    Cassia Seneschal watched the earthly sun explode alone.

    It came so suddenly she was left blinded, covering her face in vain, though thankfully she was sat down. She could hear the villagers cry out, they too victims of the same phenomenon.

    She had to blink several times before she could clear her vision, and finally see what had become of the Father. Where his glorious display once stood, now a great fragmenting pillar of light grew, a million shards descending in all directions like a grandiose flock of birds, their touch turning every tree into a torch, raising a wall of destruction that expanded with every second.

    It had started in truth this time. She trembled, all semblance of resignation gone, trying to hurry up to her feet while holding onto the doorstep.

    "R-run...!" she screamed, barely a strangled croak. "R-run! Everybody, please!"

    Nobody moved. Nobody had heard her.

    She panicked. If only her legs weren''t failing her she would run to them herself, shake every slack jawed fool out of their astonishment and send them running! But what could she do from here? She tried again.

    "R-Run! Run! P-please, you need to g-get away from here!"

    Worse than not hear, some people had laid down in prayer, mesmerized by the Father of the Wild''s might. A man, clutching the shoulders of his young son, just barely looked over in her direction. She pointed a shaking hand at him, trying to get his attention.

    "Y-you! Please, you n-need to tell everyone to run, to go-"

    To go where?

    Where could the villagers flee from God''s fury at her father''s betrayal?

    She was at a loss. Still, the man seemed to be curious, gesturing to his son and taking a step forward-

    The ground beneath him gave away.

    He was torn through the chest, his child wrenched from his grasp with enough violence to send him tumbling, given no time even to struggle against his assailant before it came back with a backwards lunge that blew his cranium wide open.

    Cassia barely had time to realize what had transpired, before the wooden serpent retreated underground. The people barely had time to realize what had transpired, those who had turned quick enough to see the murder simply watching in dull shock.

    The second strike was crueler, impaling a praying old woman through the head, then squashing her off against the wall of a house, almost in revulsion.

    The third came from inside another house, breaking through to outside with an old man at its tip, torn apart by the collision, drawing a blood curling scream that would haunt her dreams for eternity.

    Pandemonium broke.

    People ran, people fought, not recognizing what had come to reap them, but it was all hopeless. She could feel the Father''s wrath, and it was omnipresent, omnipotent, predicting the movement of its Herd with heartless precision and killing without mercy. Men, women, children, nobody was spared the massacre. The homes and storehouses they once carefully tended to were methodically destroyed, those hiding within sent running into the embrace of death.

    And with that distraction, only she noticed as the wildfire approached, heralded by great swarm of petals, engulfing the edges of the Lesser instantly.

    They were trapped in its path.

    With no recourse, she ran, not away but inside, tripping over the fallen door and hitting her face square on the floor. Pain, however, did not blind her for even the blink of an eye, so terrified she was. She crawled on her hands and knees, clawing the floor for any extra purchase her weakened limbs could find, until she reached the dark beneath a table, barely as much protection as a shirt in this moment.

    Still, it was the best she would find. Closing her eyes, she curled into herself, clutching her black medallion hard enough she felt it dig into her skin, sobbing and quietly listening to the death of her Herd.

    <hr>

    "Come!" Agare called.

    But Holly couldn''t move.

    The world had turned into flame.

    Every miserable centimeter beyond the moat, every patch of dry earth, every exposed shrub and tree now burned around them, tongues of fire devouring everything within sight with wild abandon.

    It called back to a word she had heard in one of Elder Seneschal''s stories, one of those he had made specially for her, during its climax in which the hero was stuck under the assault of a furious storm wraith, the hometown he once loved so much burning around him more and more with every lightning strike.

    Inferno.

    "Come!" they repeated.

    She had to force her eyes away from the calamity, not in the least calm as the magnitude of the fight grew out of their control. She had no time to wonder any further however, as a root jumped from the ground, coated in flames and speeding towards her chest.

    "Traitors," God said. "Traitors. Traitors. Traitors. Traitors. Traitors. Traitors. Traitors. Traitors. Traitors. Traitors."

    The horrid blade swung in front of her, once.

    It was as if the root, large enough to bisect her completely, had been made of old damp paper, the way that thing tore through it almost without resistance. There was a hair-raising chorus of giggles and vicious tearing as it cut, just in time for the dismembered limb to miss her by a hairsbreadth.

    Through his Will, God did not so much scream as whimper, the agony conveyed so unspeakable that it made her whole body shiver. The cut limb uselessly squirmed on the ground, while the stump left behind grew black, a trails of flaked off bark shrinking into themselves as it retreated.

    The earthquakes came a moment later, and the Throne, already ravaged, shattered like an egg, great ravines opening across its surface, chunks of earth falling away into the lake of flames revealed below. She looked above and was awed, as she saw the enormous bulk of God pulling itself up and away from Agare.

    From a mess of twisted trunks fused together, God now resembled a thousand legged spider, rearing itself in warning.

    "I-it''s running a-!"

    She had no time to finish, as next came the leafs.

    God''s crown had gone barren after the previous flash of light, but now she could see the branches filling themselves, only to discard their loads into serpentine masses. It ignored her completely, gaining speed as it pounced Agare.

    "B-be careful!"

    Agare didn''t listen. In fact. Agare met them head on, covering themselves with their cloak while holding their weapon firm against the tide.

    She expected the worse.

    Instead, she heard the tearing again, the giggles breaking into the malicious laughter of a dozen bullying children as God truly did scream.

    More roots rose, bursting the peak of the Throne and pelting them with boulders and shrapnel. Agare made short work of those close, and she battered a few away herself, emboldened both by the strength she didn''t know she had and the new ally that had come to her aid.

    "Y-you''re amazing!" she said, finally approaching Agare. "How did you-"

    "Not behind me, besides me!"

    "S-sorry! B-but, wow! You''re so strong, how are you doing all-"

    "Don''t count your victories before you won!" Agare said, lower. "Now, come!"

    "... Alrighty!"

    "Traitors," God said. "I damn you Seneschal. I damn your cursed blood. I damn your cursed kin. I damn you to the eternally biting worms, I damn you to eternal cleansing."

    God had learned their lesson. No more overwhelming them with numbers, now they struck carefully, from odd angles and blind spots, from inside the flames or behind, and it never worked. Agare moved like they had eyes in the back of their head, always turning and countering with prejudice, slower yet so decisive, slicing through wooden serpents with every blow, drawing screams with every blow.

    She had no such reflexes, so she had to improvise. Jumping, ducking, sidestepping, throwing herself to the floor, her heart always at the peak of lunging out of her chest, but never hitting back, afraid of being burnt.

    With every cry, every whine, God creaked and fracture, black ooze whipping from its many wounds, becoming a thick coat of flames in contact with the air. Above as well, dripping from their branches, becoming deadly traps in their way.

    Still, she held strong, because even if she couldn''t see a way out of this, her new companion seemed so sure of themselves!

    Next came the swarm again, bigger than before, breaking into two as it nearly headed straight into the fate of the last. This time, there was nowhere to evade, so she fought them back. Will to Will, still feeling like an ant stalling the boot of a man, but slowing them down enough for her to call, "A-Agare!"

    The horrid blade fell through the thick of the swarm in a blunt strike, ripping them apart as if it was made of a thousand razors and vanishing everything it touched, though coming too close for comfort. So close, she heard the ceaseless tearing as something else, something she refused to think about. What remained of it quickly dispersed, headless fireflies seeking safety in any direction their wings brought them.

    By the point they reached the Throne''s new peak, God had stopped fighting entirely.

    This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

    "Why?" God said, body quivering and twitching with every word, "Why? Why?"

    "W-why? You''re asking us why?!"

    "Yes. I offered you escape, I offered the traitors succor. Yet, I stand wounded."

    "Y-you''re ki- you hurt Elder Seneschal, you hurt my sister, and you hurt everyone in the village, and you still-"

    "Hey!" Agare said, sharp as a slap.

    "H-huh?"

    "Don''t waste your breath, things like these wouldn''t understand! We need to keep moving!"

    "O-okay!"

    But there was no convenient way forward, as all the ground had crumbled away. Everything beyond the edge of this final cliff was either flame or the web of roots holding God aloof, a lake of convulsing worms of all sizes eager to drive themselves into her ribs.

    "All I do is follow," God said.

    "You hear the Bloom speak, right?" Agare said.

    "T-the Bloom? Oh! K-kind of? It''s not talking really, but like-"

    "I know. It can hear and understand us then, right?"

    "I followed the Sucessor''s song of awakening. I followed my Guardian''s call to conquer and maintain."

    "Y-yes!"

    "Do you know how to stop it from hearing us yet?"

    "I can do that?!"

    "... Nevermind then."

    "The Traitors took me as Above, and I took them as nourishment. I followed their wishes, only asking to be fed."

    "Follow me, and follow my words to the letter if you want to survive."

    "I am above."

    "Huh?"

    "I do not betray. I commit no cruelties. I am no infant. I protected myself, I protected my nourishment, and my nourishment fed me."

    "What? What is it saying?" Agare said.

    "I-it''s not only what it''s saying, it''s that I''m feeling..."

    There was something coming their way.

    "If my nourishment betrays, then it is no betrayal to punish. I have had enough." And for what felt like the first time, Holly felt glee in God''s Will, nakedly vindictive. "I commended your learning, similar, now commend mine."

    "W-what are you-"

    "For I learned I have much to grow."

    She felt God''s Will bearing down on them, but this time it didn''t feel like it was coming from God themselves.

    "A-Agare, behind-!"

    It was too late to escape.

    Through God''s recovering crown, a sky so crimson the stars looked as if they were swimming in congealed blood peaked through, along with glimpses of the inferno that had devoured the forest and only grew larger and larger, a living, writhing wall of tongues, impenetrable.

    But far above all that a colossus now loomed, a shambling snake of spiraling flames, so bright and so large that for a second she thought God had amassed millions of leafs outside of view to strike in one decisive blow, but its shape was too consistent, too fluid.

    By the time her musing ceased and her eyes widened, the serpent''s maw was wide open, its strike certain, the Will guiding it hitting her mere moments before the strike.

    Agare acted immediately, throwing himself in front of her and opening their coat. She rushed to their feet, only for that blade to block her way.

    "No, we need to-!" Agare tried to speak in vain.

    The serpent bit.

    Agare was pushed towards her with such violence she nearly slammed into their weapon. The heat found her a second later, the cloak too small a shield to fully cover both. In an instant her legs were consumed, a burning not even the numbness could prevent. All around them, a cloud of dust rose as the highest reaches of the Throne were shaved off like a knife carving wood.

    Everything became noise. She was screaming, she was digging her nails into something, she was dying. Then, she soared, feet no longer touching anything.

    "Hold on!" came faintly through all that madness.

    Suddenly she felt an impact, the wind, then herself hit the ground head first, hard. Her head swam and her vision darkened, her tongue filling with a strange bitter taste. For an instant, she even forgot who she was, where she was.

    Then, nausea. The world lurched around her, her head spun. Some urgency with no source tried to hurry her to her feet, but she didn''t think she could turn around if she wanted to. She decided to take a rest for a while, see if it helped...

    "- Up!" something called, or maybe it was just her imagination. It sounded so distant...

    Something hit her right in the face.

    "Ouch!"

    "Get up!" She recognized Agare. "This is no time for fainting!"

    Everything sharpened around her, a little.

    It wasn''t just the dizziness, the ground did squirm beneath her. Smothering heat made even breathing unbearable, torture to her lungs. And the smell! The rot had reached its apex, as if she had been dipped into old intestines left in the sun. And even through all that, Agare fought as if nothing had changed, movements just as precise and devastating.

    His armor was exposed now, the cloak completely ruined by glancing blows. Reflections danced in the metallic rings covering their torso, glowing a color too faint to tell, holes perforated through into their leather tunic and all the way down to their skin.

    They were in the stomach of the beast, being digested from all sides. Roots came at Agare one after the other from every angle they could exploit, swarming leaves burning in their wake; gouts of fire spouted from below, flowed from above in blazing rivulets. Agare was slowly pushed back, misstep by misstep, no longer capable of reciprocating every hit.

    Meanwhile, God babbled. Their attacks had lost all cohesion, erratic and rippling, yet overwhelming through sheer numbers and terrifying violence, nevermind the results of their failures littering their immediate surroundings.

    She had to do something. She tried rising to her knees, and fell to the side, this time not thanks to her state of mind. Something was wrong. She looked down to her legs.

    And realized they had been ruined.

    From foot to knee, and crossing the back of her thighs, a great path of destruction had melted her into strips of black and red. Even of her pale hardskin, so tough it had been, only fragments remained, cracks spreading all the way to her to their edges on her hips. Worst, however, was how she couldn''t feel a thing, as if it was all happening to somebody else.

    The sight was to too much. she vomited pure bile, the ground beneath her quivering in response as if trying to flee, disgusted. It was impossible, it was a dream, it was far too horrible to fathom.

    "A-Agare," she called.

    "Come!" they said.

    "I cant! I''m hurt!"

    "But you aren''t feeling a thing, are you? We are close now, but the Blossom is still rising! Soon, we''ll be exposed again!"

    She looked back. It was true, little by little God rose further into the air, and beyond that, hovering over the forest, serpentine fires fought and fell as they intertwined together, their shambling forms increasing in number with every passing second.

    The fear of death overrode her horror. So, with just the strength of her upper body, she galloped forward to stand besides Agare. Being used to walking on legs or all fours, she was surprised by how light she felt, how fast she could still move.

    "We need to find its radicle. Can you do it?" Agare said without looking her way, piercing the roots underneath with a shallow stab that nonetheless created a great wave, nearly shaking her off her hands. "It should be right in front, beneath the trunk!"

    "H-how could I?!"

    "You have Divinity, don''t you? Use it!" Taking advantage of the momentary stun, Agare sliced a row of limbs, quickly moving in between the absence. She followed soon after.

    The battle grew fiercer. There was no holding back anymore, no hesitation. God struck without mercy or thought at anything that moved, even themselves. As Agare tried to take ground again, Holly half expected him to be mauled in that frenzy, but they held on, losing bits and shreds of armor with every hit, yet fighting to maintain momentum.

    Her? She was an oversight, only targeted by happenstance. It was like watching the lighting under the rain: she was not the focus of God''s fear, but a blink''s worth of distraction and suddenly a massive form glanced by her forehead, the span of a fingertip away from decapitating her. dividing her focus, she worked to find that radicle.

    How? She had not idea. It didn''t take her long to understand what exactly Agare meant by Divinity, but how would it work? She could, and was, using her Will to get in God''s way in any manner feasible, for as little as that counted, but it was hard to even imagine how to use it in searching for something!

    It was like suddenly learning you had a third arm you had never seen, grown weak and shriveled with decades of neglect, then told to use it to sew a hole in a shirt. Now that she had the need, she could only curse herself.

    Though, perhaps... thinking of it as an arm, could she use it like one?

    She tried willing it so. From a shapeless blot to a thousand pronged mass, slender wrists and hands tipped with deft fingers to probe every corner of God''s own Will. It was a crude as it could be, but not like she had the time to perfect it, just hope it worked as intended.

    Immediately, she knew it was weaker, bending like a rotten plank wherever it came to clash with its enemy, making by squeezing through gaps in God''s focus, nothing more than imperceptible caress so long as she wasn''t caught.

    It was... imprecise too. Or rather, just not actually analogous to tactile sensation in any way, but she couldn''t be bothered to consider it in any depth. The same way God''s Will was no boulder rolling down hill in truth, nor a wall of thorns trying to entrap her right now, though they certainly felt like it, it couldn''t touch anything

    "Why? I am not unwise, you could have avoided such ravaging."

    So focused she was on her Will, she almost got left behind by Agare, now pushing through at the cost of their own body. So focused she was on her Will, she almost understood the process of Speaking with Intent, emanations from God piercing her likes stones on water.

    "Wwwwww- Waaa- Whyyy?" She mimicked.

    "I am in agony, similar," God said, and she looked up at its cracking facade, almost entirely engulfed in flames. "I followed the desires of the Savior. I followed the desires of the Father. I followed the desires of my nourishment."

    "Why?" She mimicked again, emotionless, the ways of tone completely lost on her. "Why? Why?"

    God''s Will was porous, she understood now, powerful but stretched too thin to notice her presence. Wherever the claws of her Will sunk, she occupied their efforts while making paths at different junctions. A repetitive pattern emerged: get caught, distract them, hands disperse elsewhere, repeat.

    Finally, God had enough of her, clenching down on innumerable arms with impossible strength. It wasn''t analogous to tactile sensation, but that was pain alright; like having your hand smashed into pulp by a falling rock, that kind of pain that was burning hot with no heat at all, leaving cold prickles behind afterwards.

    God''s physical body fell with all its might at her, the ground ahead opening like a maw to bite her in half, to melt her alive with its flaming tongue, a landslide of grubby wooden claws falling in her direction, too tall to jump over and too wide to escape, every gap filled by embers and cascading leaves, a wall that became the horizon itself.

    For a second, her life flashed before her eyes. She though of Hazel and Elder Seneschal.

    Something bumped into her shoulder. A horrid thing, its yellow mold now cast away like rusted flakes, cackled its way before her eyes, forcing her to shut them tight.

    She wished she could tell what happened next by hearing alone. If somebody had told her the world had come to an end before she opened her eyes again, she would have believed it. Screaming, roaring, laughing, the tearing of a thousand beasts upon an intact carcass, sizzling, and finally crashing, an entire forest toppling over.

    She only saw the aftermath, heart pounding out of her chest, a strange numbness on her cheek.

    Agare stood in front of her, struggling back to their feet. That dreadful blade of theirs had been dropped, viciously tearing at the roots holding them up with the flat of its blade without prompt.

    All Agare had in their hand, their sole remaining one, was the cape of grey on white, a rag of its original self.

    "Agare!" she said, eaten alive by despair. "W-why did you get in front?! Oh no, y-you should have left me to it, I''m-!"

    She was stunned silent. Without the cloak''s shadows, and the helmet hidden below that having slipped off with an entire half gone, Agare had been revealed. A head of dark skin, a delicate chin, hair as black as the night, what remained untouched of their thick curls still attached in the flimsy impression of a short ponytail.

    But none of that mattered.

    It was the face.

    The lack of a face. Eyeless, mouthless, noseless, in their place an oval shape, impenetrably dark and opaque liquid swirling to an invisible stir, an overturned bowl that refused to spill so much as a drop no matter how far past its edges it turned. A void, she thought, an endless void capable of swallowing her whole if she stood too close, letting her be for no reason other than whim.

    She was frozen in place, too scared to run when that nothingness slowly turned her way, its rightmost edges a mess of blood and melted skin, right ear completely gone.

    "... One minute. Maybe one and a half. Ugh..." Agare said, swaying lightly.

    "W-what?"

    "It''s how long we have until we are hit by another tornado. Have you found the radicle?"

    She took a deep breath. Had they not noticed? Or did they not care?

    "A-agare, your face!"

    "If we get out of here, you will learn a whole lot about me, one way or another, so ask me later! Have you found it?!"

    "N-no, I-"

    Except, something startled her.

    Another sensation she couldn''t explain, a certainty borne from nothing, guiding her sight to somewhere in the thick of God''s roots. One in specific, it had... a density to it, she supposed, an intrinsic importance perhaps? How did she know that, to begin with? Instinct? Foreknowledge? She couldn''t tell.

    "Show me," Agare said. "If you can find it, showing it is the next step."

    Said and done. It was like taking your second step after the first.

    Though all around them fires raged, little light reached that deep into this nest of worms. Suddenly, however, one began to stand out, in a way the eye could neither identify nor deny, like a fortunate coincidence, as if every circumstance conspired to highlight it, leaving it exposed and ever so faintly glowing.

    "... Was I supposed to know how to do that all along?" she said.

    "We will have all the time in the world once we are done. Take this, and come,"

    They moved. Agare took the front, fighting ferociously though ungainly with his single remaining arm, keeping his weapon close and avoiding those wider slashes that made God go mad with hurt. Her battle was another: to keep the radicle on their sights at all times, no matter what.

    It was easier said then done. Once caught, it was war: she was in the innards of a body, all fangs and muscles, flexing repeatedly in an attempt to mince her Will to pieces. She put everything into protecting her discovery, pieces of herself shredded by those unavoidable, invisible motions, each and every sending a shiver down to her core and leaving her a deep sense of loss.

    That was why she nearly missed it when the roots barely three paces away from her suddenly spread open, a large gout of flames pouring out and raining in every direction. Agare cut sideways and down, severing a bundle of roots that rolled down squirming, blocking the brunt of the attack too late.

    She had to hold on. It was disturbing the way she could feel the wounds but no pain, enough to throw off her focus. She felt her hooks on God loosening. She didn''t miss, however, the injection of words right inside her.

    "My death means the death of my nourishment."

    "Death," she said, nearly burning to cinders under a waterfall of flames and black sap, was it not for the rags she was carrying on her back, broken clasp held in her mouth.

    "I cannot be killed. I ask you to surrender."

    "Cannot," she said. She could feel it, separate yet together, God''s dread.

    "Why? Why? Why? Why? Why inflict me with such suffering?"

    "Why?"

    "Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. Leave me."

    A root flew over Agare''s head. Another speared towards her burnt hand, and she barely had to sidestep. A swarm flew in, wide enough to engulf them both but so sparse and aimless they simply ran through. Many attacks at once, waves one after the other, trembling and careless, too weak to stop them.

    "I succor. I protect. I saved. I never betrayed."

    "Never." she mimicked.

    "Disgusting Worms. My Father granted you life."

    "Worm."

    Snares opened all around them, Squirts of liquid and flame glanced off her skin, scalding every exposed piece of her on their path. The smaller roots joined the fight, nothing but hairs and sharp fingers, bothersome obstacles but ignorable. Yet, pricked and cut, they carried on, and finally arrived at God''s trunk, their goal unusually still in comparison to its innumerable kin.

    But they had come too late.

    "They''re here!" Agare said, piercing another serpent in half.

    "Aaaagaaaeeee!" she said through shut teeth.

    "I won''t miss it now! Follow me, and let go of your Divinity!"

    She did, the faint root disappearing among many others, indistinguishable to her eyes.

    Agare lifted his arm as far as it would go, the blade held almost horizontally until it crashed down. After a second of unbearable sounds, a great hole was opened, not only by the wound but the seizing flinches of its adjacent roots.

    "Down, now!"

    The first great serpent of fire arrived, slavering to devour them. As one, her thousand handed Will tore in its direction, searching for perches to dig into. And there they were! Wide pores, hard to find, squeezed so hard they were nearly fused, but she knew what to look for now. She lost, of course, but ever so slightly she pushed its aim off, crashing it right against the trunk above their heads, bursting apart on impact. Even from this distance, the heat was so strong she briefly wondered if it would cook her alive.

    It was like if the ant had managed to push the boot of its back: the exhaustion that took hold of her couldn''t be described in words. Had it been physical, the effort would have snapped all her limbs until they could bend like snakes. Her vision went dark again, her ears deafened by the whine of a colossal mosquito, her limbs becoming such a distant feeling she wondered if she was floating in midair.

    No way she could push off the second.

    Agare carved a way ahead, the act of merely holding that ugly thing in his path sending any blockages scurrying off.

    "There!"

    Agare lunged, stabbing nearly blindly through the thick of remaining roots directly below God. This was it!

    "Enough."

    The walls closed around them, needle teeth and a hundred tongues of blaze an wood pressing them from all sides but up. Her limbs wrapped and crushed, she could do nothing but watch as Agare fought to free themselves in vain.

    "Worms. Why? I will never recover. I am marred. Poisoned."

    "Worm!" she said through Will. Trying to escape only got her bindings to squeeze harder.

    "You mock me."

    "Mock?"

    "Nothing but an imitation of my words. Larva."

    She wouldn''t be able to escape, nor turn the final blow in time.

    And so, like Elder Seneschal before, if she was to die here, she wished to speak.

    "Now, I purify y-"

    "Loser."

    She was so used to voice and tone to be one and the same, speaking through Will felt like talking through claps. Once she saw the fine mechanisms of it, something slid in place deep down, and from there she could almost follow the flow, though it was a little different from manipulating Will through... well, will alone.

    "You baby! Tyrant! Idiot!"

    "I commend you, si-"

    "Do you think you have the right to speak? Do you think you have the right of begging and demanding explanations after everything you have done?!"

    "I succored, I-"

    "You are the reason I''m in this nightmare today! You are the reason I couldn''t see my sisters whenever I wanted! You are the reason the villagers used to beat me and mock me! Because you are a paranoid coward, because you were too afraid the slightest thing from outside could make everyone want to resist you."

    "None would resist me, I-"

    "Held everybody''s lives by the foot!"

    Emotion was difficult. It came wherever she wanted to or not, but she couldn''t mix them too well. She knew her meaning well enough, however.

    She felt it, the crushing Will behind the second serpent, bearing down on them. She would not live to take a deep breath. She screamed, first in body, then in mind.

    "You hurt everyone! Elder Seneschal, Hazel, me! You live to break and ruin others, then dare to cry because others refuse to love you?! The Elder was completely right, you are just a cruel little kid!"

    "I just did as told."

    "Traitor!"

    Their crushing Will weakened. The hold on her limbs slackened, slightly. Her death never came. She refused to look up, the light that still flickered above threatening to completely kill off any nerve still left in her, but that horrible impact far away was unmistakable.

    "I never betrayed."

    "You did! Everyone believed in you!"

    "I never betrayed."

    "Give me back my sister! Give her back! Giver her back!"

    "I never betrayed."

    She almost felt pity then. What was happening? She couldn''t read God''s emotions anymore. No, she wasn''t sure God even knew what they were feeling. Were they simply incapable of properly understanding things not conveyed this way? Something else? She managed to pull herself from the root''s grip.

    "I never betrayed."

    Agare, however, couldn''t. No matter how strong they were, they were too important, so the roots still held them firmly by the waist and wrist. She watched as they carefully maneuvered their hand, a labor that made their blade look heavier than stone, until it was lined with the serpent constricting their arm, then let it tip. That was it.

    Their waist would be a whole other matter. It wasn''t just one root holding them, it was as if the ground had converged to swallow them, holding them tightly with its lips

    "I never betrayed."

    Agare lifted their blade above their head, and in a feat of terrifying power, threw it straight forward, through spears and hairs, through bulbs and wood! the radicle was right there, the cruel laughter echoed, that skin crawling tearing...

    God twitched. Nothing else.

    "Fuck!" Agare said.

    The handle still peeked out, slowly sinking as it cut its way down, too shallow.

    The moment was gone. Fury boiled over, a scalding touch against her Will forcing all her limbs to spams, pursuing her own with red hot needles, three words and something else, which now she knew were not apart but a complement.

    "I never betrayed!"

    A surge of power engulfed them both, pillars of fire shooting to the stars and coming down like downpour. In the brief glimpse up she took, another shape flew above, its slithering path obvious, a smiting blow from the skies, impossible to dodge or avoid.

    She did the only thing she could. She ran.

    " ''Ake ''isss!" she said, throwing the remains of Agare''s cloak in its owner''s direction.

    "What-"

    The walls converged, pulsing back to life. Sharp tips forced their way into that midst, a palisade closing in over their only hope.

    She was afraid. This was a fight worthy of the Elders stories, but all she felt was the need to puke her intestines out. She had felt horrible things before, but never had death held her so close, not when she was sick, not when she fought the village''s boys with stones and sticks.

    Yet, with a body that was barely there, she ran. It was nothing but instinct, self preservation pushing drunken limbs to their limits, no longer capable to judge what was safe or what was suicide, no longer willing to. Consciously, all she could do was one thing, and one thing only.

    "Bastard!"

    Everything else stopped, the briefest flinch, and she ran. The spikes were the first to stir, the lag behind roots coiling together into gnarled spears for one last assault, so many she had nowhere to escape.

    "Useless! Trash!"

    They became unsteady, but her trick was losing its effect. Ripped into what felt like a hundred different places, she ran, and now she was right there, the wicked blade''s leather wrapped handle just within reach-

    She fell over. God had caught her, right above the knee, a thin root had driven itself all the way through and now wrapped itself around with enough violence to squeeze blood out of the stump. Driving her nails down with enough strength to rip holes into the wood, she pulled herself forward, making a pace and instantly losing it, another root driving itself into her and adding its efforts in keeping her back.

    How long did she have? Ten seconds? Five? Was she already burning alive without realizing it? With every thought, another serpent joined its siblings, until if felt as if the entire village was dragging her back. This would have to do!

    And so, biting down unto the closest root she could find, she pulled her shoulder all the way back, and slammed her right palm into the hilt.

    The pain was immediate.

    A dreadful choir of inhuman squeals rang inside her ears. A million invisible ants were crawling down her fingers, mandibles sharpened beyond the possible driving themselves into her, making short work of her outer layers and infiltrating her flesh, swarming into her veins to torture her insides with filth-caked stingers.

    That she held on for even a second longer was a miracle her body could never repeat.

    She fell on her face. Nothing tried to pull her back.

    Suddenly, there was silence. No screaming , no cracking of bark, no crackling of ember, no sounds of battle.

    She looked up. Through dying flames and drying ooze, hundreds of eyes were staring down, none of their previous intensity there to press her still.

    "All I did was what I was told. I just wished to survive," God said, this time truly without emotion behind it.

    "We just wished to survive too."

    God''s Will pulled back. Pores grew into holes, grew into fissures, its structure collapsing like a house, foundations rotting and crumbing into dust at an absurd rate before her very own Will, a macabre spectacle not meant for the eyes. The wildfire outside the Throne''s limit raged as if alive, but those within died little by little, the many flowing swarms of leaves losing color then fragmenting into ashes.

    God looked up, one last time.

    "Father."

    And then they all fell.

 1- The God of Lesser Hollow 6

    She woke up to a cold pattering on her cheek.

    As her eyes opened, she stared dully into the dark. Rain poured inside the Meeting Hall, drenching her to the bones. She could see one of her hands, the thin layer of ashes covering it slowly washed away with every drop.

    Her mind came back to her little by little. Her first thought was simple, but haunting.

    I''m still alive. Why?

    Luck. It could only have been luck. One stretch of a finger, and she felt solid, heavy wood right besides her. a knocked down beam more than capable of having reaped her life. To the other side, revealed by the faint moonlight, the shattered remains of the table that once hid her had tipped over, broken leg not much farther away from having jabbed her.

    With the sight, came the memories of that chaos. The screaming, the destruction, the crackling of fire consuming the remains. She gasped, tasting something burnt in her mouth and choking on her own breath.

    Everything had returned to silence, the deepest she had ever experienced. No living victims praying in gratitude, no children grieving their parents, no embers burning their last. Just the rain, and her own coughing.

    Her body hurt. Her lips were parched, her lungs feeling as if she was inhaling needles with every breath, her skin skin felt cracked and sensitive. She was caked in so much ash she felt practically buried alive, the cleaning waters turning all that filth in a muddy substance that clung to her clothes and weighted her down.

    Yet, she didn''t complain. She felt numb.

    She was still alive.

    Why had she been spared? Her of all people should have bore that sin the most, should have inherited her father''s at the very least, and for that there was no forgiveness. So why? Why? Had she been special? No, she was the worst of them, she should have been purified along with everyone else! She shouldn''t be here!

    That''s when she noticed the Father''s almighty presence was gone. There was something else in the air now, not a tension, a deep foreboding that impregnated the land to foundations of every building, to the earth itself.

    It left her with nobody to hear her prayers, except the rain.

    So she laughed, because she was still alive.

    So she cried, because she was still alive.

    Not for long!

    She couldn''t sit, couldn''t even lift her arms above the floor. Turning her head was the most her body allowed, and even that felt like a monstrous effort. She had been left here, alone and forgotten, not a soul to look for her.

    Through the bitterness in her tongue, she tried to smile, thinking it was the very least she deserved.

    <hr>

    It had happened a good while ago, but how long specifically Holly didn''t know. Hazel had come visit, but for the first time she didn''t feel too happy.

    "We''re savages, love. that''s why," her sister said.

    "Hey, that''s really rude! Elder Seneschal would be really mad if he knew you said that!" Holly rebuked, peeved.

    "Well, are you going to tell?"

    "... I mean, no, but-"

    "Then what''s wrong with calling shit shit? They call themselves a Herd, like a bunch of fucking animals in the woods, but we are the beasts, incapable of learning good from bad!"

    "We''re part of that Herd, Hazel, you''re insulting yourself!"

    Hazel had been jittery and frowny ever since she arrive. Holly had never seen her sister like this before; she was pacing outside her bars back and forth, practically stomping her foot rather than walking, eyes boring holes unto the floor. Not to say she had never seen Hazel upset, she could be rather moody, but today was different.

    "I''m not! And you aren''t either."

    "I am!"

    "Than why are you there, inside that cage, and not outside praying on the grass like all the other villagers, like they force me to do?" Hazel said with a glare. "As if any fucking body could think of us as above worms anyway."

    "Don''t say that word, Elder Seneschal-"

    "Says it all the fucking time, in front of me and in front of his daughter! Stop acting the good girl when he isn''t even here to shake his cane at us!"

    "Even then- wait, now that I think about it, did you come here all alone? I thought the Elder was outside, waiting for you."

    Hazel stopped pacing and looked at her. Having a small mouth and big, gorgeous eyes, Hazel had the kind of smile that naturally tended towards the elegant and demure. Only years of experience clued Holly to that mischievous glint that could send shivers down to her core.

    "I''ve been experimenting." Hazel muttered.

    "With what?"

    "Not telling."

    "Oh, come on! Please? Please?!"

    "Something I can share with you, love, but I know the more worried you are, the bigger that mouth gets, and it''s already too big. I don''t really care about getting clobbered out of nowhere by the old man any more than I''ll be next time he comes to visit."

    "... My mouth isn''t that big." Still, she stepped back a little further into the dark, "You made me curious now! Tell me, please, you know I''m better with that kind of stuff now!"

    "I''ll consider telling you when you fully perfect your art, then."

    "You''re being so mean today! And you won''t even tell me why!"

    She had meant it in jest, at least a little bit in jest, but the way Hazel stared her straight into the eyes told her it was taken as anything but. she sighed, heavy and weary, before sitting down by her door. She began fiddling with one of the burning spikes when she said, "Dear, come here."

    She did, much more cautious around those darned spikes then her sister. When she came close enough she was sure the only torch outside revealed her whole body, she saw her sister pull back her fingers, their tips visibly red but nothing else. Holly dreaded the idea that one day Hazel would catch the same sickness too, that the black metal would start burning her too.

    "Love, I''m tired." Hazel sighed.

    "I-I know you are, but you''re really scaring me..." Holly tried to reach through the bars, but hesitated at the last moment.

    "I''m nothing. No, the way they speak about me, the way they treat me, the things they''ve done to me, I know they think of me as worse than nothing. You get it, they used to do all the same to you, didn''t they? But at least down here you don''t have to spend everyday near them, waiting for the next time you catch their eyes!"

    "Y-you could come live with me! There is plenty space here, specially outside my room."

    "And my life would improve if I became a hermit? If I spent the rest of my life eating cave bugs like you do? It''s a miracle nobody caught the old man yet, how would I be fed? I''m not a hunter."

    "You gather sometimes, don''t you? There are plenty mushrooms here, and berries outside."

    Hazel gave her a blank stare. "I do, which is exactly why I never come gather here, when everything this fucking thing inside your walls touches turns to poison!"

    "It isn''t though! I can tell, I''ve eaten plenty poisonous things before so I know the difference!"

    "No, no, you aren''t listening to me!"

    Holly recoiled. "I-I am! I''m just trying to help..."

    "But do you know what I''m getting at?"

    She sighed, plopping down against her rooms walls. "You''re talking about running away again. Which is why I''m so worried!" Then quieter. "I don''t want you to leave..."

    "I wouldn''t leave you alone. I''m pretty sure I could break you out, when the opportunity comes," her sister whispered.

    "And Elder Seneschal too? And Cassia?"

    "... They belong here with their disgusting Father, we are the ones who should be free to leave."

    "D-don''t say that about them! Or about God! What if t-they hear?! I don''t want you to get hurt!"

    "If so, then we should leave! Go somewhere this God doesn''t reach!"

    Holly shook her head. "God reaches everywhere! Even here, a little!"

    "No, there is a place he doesn''t."

    She began to idly scrape the ground, frustrated in antecedence. "Please don''t go there again."

    Her sister sneered, and she knew it was on. "Tch! As if you don''t want to go home too."

    "I''m home."

    "Our true home." Hazel said, and met her eyes. There was a shine there, whenever she spoke of it, like she was seeing the most beautiful flower in the field and couldn''t care the least how much repulsive it looked to others, "Skawla."

    "Please don''t start. You know I don''t like talking about that."

    "You never stop and think about it, do you?! Don''t tell me you don''t miss it in your bones, like the entire world is wrong and nobody tells you why! Because I do, every single day I''ve ever lived here!"

    "...You don''t even know if it is real or not."

    "My memories might not be half as keen as yours, but I remember so many things that you don''t! Mama''s stories, water as far as the eye could see, the big men who used to visit us, and above it all-"

    Holly''s hairs twitched. "Don''t."

    And Hazel, as always, pretended not to listen."The names. Our names!"

    In one move, her body tensed as she jumped back to her feet, "You know what?! Enough. If you''re going to be like this, I have better things to do!"

    "Oh, you really did learn a lot from the old man, turning around and burying yourself in the dark like a coward!" her sister said, rising to her feet too, "Why do you keep pretending as if you don''t feel exactly the same way as me?! I mean, look at you!"

    "And what is that supposed to mean?!"

    "Means that should stop lying to yourself and clinging to that name they gave you. Come with me, and we can-"

    "For the last time!"

    Even Holly scared herself with her own outburst. Hazel went silent with a gasp.

    "... For the last time. My name is Holly Seneschal, your name is Hazel Seneschal, and I don''t know about you but I''ve never been to that little city of your dreams! Now, if you excuse me-"

    "No, it is not. Not a word that you just said is true! Just like my name isn''t Hazel, It''s Gaiwa! And just like yours is-"

    It was like a slap to the face. Holly boiled from the inside out with anger. How many times did this make, where she asked, begged, demanded that name not to be uttered around her, and the most precious person in her entire world just completely disregarded her? She snapped. She crossed the distance too quickly to stop herself from slamming into her door, from scraping her hand at the burning metal, the pain piercing into her flesh as if her hardskin wasn''t even there.

    "Don''t you dare-!"

    "Mariwa!"

    <hr>

    How could Holly describe that feeling in the pit of her stomach, after all those horrors she was forced to endure, of waking up in darkness again?

    She was relieved, for everything had been a dream. Soon, Elder Seneschal would come with a big smile and tons of meat and snails, maybe even a story, and she would soon forget that horrible crimson nightmare.

    She felt anguish, because she was locked inside her room once again. Had her longing finally grown so strong it had made her start dreaming? She couldn''t remember the last time it happened before today, but hopefully the next few would be more pleasant.

    To make matters worse, she also felt massively uncomfortable.

    Something soft yet large clung to almost her entire body in a hug that left her too hot from collar to knees. Underneath her, she was half buried in a different clingy material, thankfully less coarse. Both shared one thing in common: They had become thoroughly coated in her sweat, turning sticky and wet, leaving her to cook in a thin cocoon of liquid.

    "Uuuuuuugh."

    Who had come into her room, just to play a prank? Elder Seneschal? No, he wouldn''t come inside even when she was up. Julius didn''t even like approaching her bars. Cassia hated pranks with all her heart.

    She felt giddy with relief when she realize the only person who could have done that. Oh, Hazel! It had to have been weeks, maybe months, since the last time she visited, and now she came one of the rare few times she slept! Holly felt a little guilty, but also so so happy that even though her experiments were going so well, she decided to stick around! Very nasty trick to pull though! She knew how her sickness made mattresses and sheets absolutely unbearable!

    Royal Road is the home of this novel. Visit there to read the original and support the author.

    She threw the covers away, the quick motion making her head spin. Laying down again, she groaned, realizing that maybe she actually wasn''t that well. Had that nightmare exhausted her in some way? Or maybe it was a symptom of her sickness growing worse, it was only a given after all that untreated diseases would become stronger with time. She put her right hand to her forehead-

    And confirmed that there was something wrong with her body, just not what she had expected.

    Her fingers had become nubs.

    Her sight was good, and she could read even in her room with just the glowy veins to help her, but apparently not anymore. Panic struck her; she tried to get up in a rush, only to nearly knocked herself out again. She didn''t need see up and down to feel both directions running laps around her head, she learned.

    The second time, she tried to pace herself. carefully prop herself on her limbs, try to ignore her upset stomach...

    "Don''t."

    She yelped, jumped, and fell from way higher than expected.

    "... I told you not to."

    She recognized the voice immediately, but refused to believe it real. It had to be her imagination, an hallucination, late onset insanity even.

    "Can you get up? I''m going to open the window."

    she heard metal dragging against metal. Everything became white, then she went blind.

    "Aagh! Stop!" she said, covering herself with her arms, "I''m sorry! I''m sorry! I believe you now!"

    "What?"

    "Please, take it off! O-or cover it up! I don''t know what!"

    "One moment."

    Metallic friction echoed again, and then things turned a little less painful.

    "Better?"

    Before she could answer, she understood what had just been said, and froze.

    "... The windows?" she said, doubtful.

    A few seconds and a thousand blinks later, she actually managed to get her eyes to stay open for more than an instant, thought they still felt sensitive. Finally looking around herself, she realized this was not her room, but somebody else''s. Sparsely furnished with just a bed, a wardrobe, and a table, all simple, fitting with the bare plaster walls.

    It was closer to her childhood bedroom, though it was so clean and untouched, it felt eerie rather than nostalgic.

    Eerier than any other element of the room, however, was Agare, who stood some five paces away, looking down at her.

    They were much the same as that night, the strong light embellishing no features. They were very dark skinned, very short in comparison to pretty much all warriors she had ever seen, thick black hair held in a short ponytail, and most notably of all, having a swirling void for a face. Despite still turning like water eternally trying to still itself, not a single drop fell out, nor did it ever reflect anything.

    There was no cloak this time, no armor of rings either, though every centimeter of skin below their neck was wrapped in heavy leather. Boots, gloves, belt, all dark brown, as if they had all come from the same poor beast.

    They had both arms crossed.

    Idle thoughts could only hold her for so long. Her head was positively bursting with ideas, questions, things she wanted to check and confirm and ask and learn and-

    She was getting dizzy again. feeling how cool the wooden boards beneath her bare back were, she laid down, a much better experience than the tortures of the bed.

    "You shouldn''t have tried to stand. Your body is still recovering," Agare said.

    She knew. It were not only her fingers who were strange, but her entire body, limbs specially. She felt tender, sore, hardskin uncomfortably itchy and notched, weirdly squishy. She glanced over her right again, watching with mute shock her blunt, stiff jointed, nailless digits.

    "... This may not be the right moment, but I think I should tell you straight away: I had to amputate most of your limbs to expedite your healing," they continued. "Your legs would have eventually gone back at a slower rate, but the arm that touched Hagan... That was very careless of you."

    "Oh."

    "If you feel any discomfort, that is probably why. Still, most cracks on your carapace-"

    She flinched. "Don''t call it that."

    "Then what?"

    "Hardskin."

    "Sure. Most cracks on your hardskin have patched themselves, as well as the broken bones. The burns, which were done with a significantly larger amount of Divinity, will take a while longer until they fully heal."

    "Why?"

    "Its biggest flaw was its inexperience. Had it known how to wound another like it, you might have died sooner, or-"

    She felt her hairs spread around the back of her head; "I''m not their similar! I don''t even look like them, do I?!"

    Agare didn''t answer. After an awkward silence, she heard the creak of a wooden door opening. "Wait here, I''ll be back soon."

    The door closed. She was left alone with nothing but her thoughts.

    She didn''t want to hear them, didn''t want to think at all. If only she could go back to sleep! But having done it once, she knew it would be a couple days before slumber could take her again, no matter how tired she got.

    Thankfully, the perfect distraction was right there, impossible to ignore.

    She crawled to the window like a baby, mindful of keeping her head up for too long or making any sudden moves. Perching herself onto the windowsill would have been a nightmare, if not for a growing desperation to motivate her through the ill.

    But it wasn''t only the fear of her own thoughts. There was something deeper down, something ravenous that had spent years tied down, hopeless to ever find satisfaction again.

    It finally did.

    How long had it been, since she last saw sunlight? Feeling its warmth touch her skin after so many years, even through a canopy of green that went as far as the eye could see, it was like a balm, touching both body and spirit.

    She had to feel more. The window to her room was barred with a faintly glowing iron, no spikes but still too sturdy for her weakened body. The moment the cool breeze blew inside, however, she forgot her need to squeeze herself outside, the strong scent of humid soil and musk calming her down.

    She was flooded with memories. Not of the crimson night, but long before that, before she broke, when she would explore the woods with her sisters, hunt bugs with Cassia, take walks with Elder Seneschal, or beating the boys who came to ambush them with sticks and fists! Things she missed so dearly she had felt like crying, things she didn''t know she missed until now

    She was free. Almost.

    Pushing her face against the bars, delighted at the lack of spikes, she also noticed she was pretty far off the ground, by at least a couple floors. Whichever house she had ended up in, it had been built upon a slope descending into the thick of the jungle. If she had ever been here, she couldn''t recognize it, though some of the trees looked the same as in the Hollow far as she recalled.

    All she knew was that she wasn''t anywhere near the Lesser. Not because of the geography of the flora, but because she couldn''t feel God, not their insatiable hunger, not their backbreaking fury, not the slightest lingering presence staining the woodlands. At least she didn''t think so; Her Will was feeling a little dull around the edges, a little sluggish.

    She could ponder all of that later. Right now, she just wanted to bask in the forest.

    Surprisingly, Agare did come back, before the day got darker too.

    Following right behind them, another faceless person came, trembling so much she could see the tray they were carrying clatter.

    They were even shorter, hooded but without that unnatural darkness hiding all their features, actually encased in plated armor like the soldiers from her stories, though old and battered, with no polish at all.

    "Easy, Furfu. I''m here," Agare said.

    "B-b-b-bu-bu-bu-" that Furfu stammered.

    "Holly," Agare said. Had she told them her name? "Would you prefer to eat over there, by the window?"

    "Y-you''ve brought me food?! Please, yes!" Holly said.

    "Alright." Agare pointed right besides her. "Leave it right there," Then quieter. "Remember, I''m here."

    Furfu approached her like a sleeping beast, footsteps barely louder than a bug''s, slowly, never taking her void from her. Holly felt like reaching out to the terrified little fellow, not like she didn''t understand why she was acting so strangely, though it helped nothing with her self-consciousness, but she was half certain that tray would be thrown straight at her head if she didn''t think this through.

    So she waited until the tray was right besides her, ignoring the wonderful smells threatening to make her slobber, and said, "Hey there, I''m Ho-"

    "Uuuuuughyaaaa!"

    "...Holly, and I''m sorry if I scare you, but I promise I don''t bite! Unless you try to squish me into paste."

    "I-I-I-I-I-I-I-"

    "Your name is Furfu, right? Pleased to meet you! I hope we can be good-"

    "I-I must g-go polish the weapons!" Furfu said, "Yes! T-that''s it! I must go polish a-all our s-spears before s-sundown! That''s right, polish, p-polish all those b-blades, until they are n-nice and shiny and s-so not red and-"

    From that point on, Holly couldn''t tell what she was saying, the way she just simply booked it right out of the room, ignoring Agare''s warnings before disappearing into the corridor beyond.

    Agare shook their head. "That woman is so fucking hopeless. I don''t even know why... well, doesn''t matter. Will you be needing a chair? Maybe cushions, Sheets?"

    "No, thank you, the floor here is really nice."

    With no further delays, she turned her attention to the big ceramic bowl besides her. Featureless as it is, she was left gaping nonetheless, the raw slices of meat piled inside making a small tower that reached past its limits. It was funny how she didn''t realize how positively starved she was until the notion of food entered her mind, but now she couldn''t even wait for permission before digging in.

    "I-it''s so good!" she said, popping slice after slice, barely chewing before swallowing. "How did you know I love fresh meat?!"

    "I surmised."

    Meat was no Ring Flowers, no matter how much better it tasted, but she couldn''t look down on how alive it made her feel! Bite by bite she could feel her energy coming back to her, reinvigorating and clearing her mind of useless things.

    It couldn''t have taken her more than five minutes before she was done. She had to be honest, she couldn''t recall having ever eaten something this well prepared! Why, it was almost like they had killed the animal less than an hour ago!

    "Delicious! Thank you so much, Agare! Was it luun? I love Uluun!"

    "Unfortunately, Luun don''t inhabit this region. Too hostile for them."

    "Oh," she said, then mulled that answer over a bit. "This region?"

    "Nevermind that, just focus on recovering for now," Agare said.

    "Alrighty, I guess. Did you clean this meat?"

    "Not me, but yes. The forest around us seems to be suffering from a small infestation of parasitic worms, so we have to be through."

    "Yeah, burrowleeches and stuff, right? I-I appreciate it, but no need to go to all that trouble, okay? I really miss their taste."

    "... Dully noted. Now, is there anything you might be wanting? We don''t have much here, but we can at least try to procure anything you might need."

    "Actually, if you don''t mind... could I speak with you a little, Agare?"

    "I''ll warn you, there is much I have been explicitly forbidden from telling you, orders from this manor''s Lady."

    "T-this manor has an owner? And she''s a woman?!"

    "It does. She''s been dying to meet you and she''s more than willing to talk about herself, so I won''t snub her chance to self-introduce."

    "W-well, I suppose I will just have to use my imagination for now, hehe..." she said, not actually that amused at all.

    "So? Did you only want to know about this place?"

    "N-no, I didn''t want to ask- I mean, I am pretty curious about, well, everything! Where am I, how I got here, and why do you have... that. Many thats, honestly! But I just wanted to, uh, apologize for earlier."

    Almost imperceptibly, Agare cocked his head to the side, "Apologize?"

    She nodded, "Because I snapped at you. I mean, uh, how do I put this? I don''t want to be rude, but I didn''t like when God kept calling me similar and stuff, so i don''t want to hear it anymore. I mean, doesn''t even make sense, does it?!"

    "Hm. I don''t see a need for apologies. If you don''t want me comparing you both, I don''t see the need to insist otherwise. If you don''t want me calling your hardskin carapace," Agare said, and Holly flinched again, "then I won''t force the issue either."

    "T-thanks."

    She rubbed the bottom of the empty bowl with one of her still malformed fingers, mulling it over. It was so pleasantly chill and smooth. Normally, while she did get some sensation out of her hardskin, it was dulled, like feeling things through your clothes. Now it was strange, sensitive in a vaguely pleasant way.

    "I have a condition. I mean, you can see it well enough, can''t you? I... I know it did all kinds of weird things to me, some which were pretty wonderful, but..."

    She expected to be interrupted, but Agare just stood there, staring quietly. Or, could they even see?

    "I knew I recovered fast, always did. When I was a little kid, I used to get into all sorts of trouble in all sorts of places, but no matter how badly I got hurt I was always up for more the next day, until..."

    "Children tend to be like that."

    "Y-yes! A-and It''s cool, it''s good, it saved me, or rather still saves me a lot of worry, but even then!" She stopped, tried to gather herself. "I-I remember my legs, w-what God did to them, I shouldn''t be able to walk ever again, but they are growing back? Even if you lied about amputating me, it shouldn''t be possible to- they shouldn''t be-"

    "It''s a good ability to have."

    "It''s not natural," she said, giving Agare''s arm a pointed look.

    She couldn''t read Agare. Were they bored? Internally begging her to get to the point? As if she had one, or at least an easy to explain one.

    "I-I don''t want to imply anything, or be rude, but you knew I was going to heal even before I did. You actually know a lot about my sickness, don''t you?"

    "... In a way."

    "T-then what is it?! Is there a cure?!"

    "No."

    "Oh."

    Not that she had expected any, to be fair, but it still felt like a heavy blow to hear it.

    The conversation died there. Not that she didn''t have more to say, but she just didn''t feel like it. What would be the point? Agare, of course, didn''t say anything else, eventually moving to the far wall, leaning back, and turning their head to the floor, not twitching so much as a muscle since.

    The day passed just like that. She returned to her quiet vigil, enjoying the oddly fauna free scenario until the day grew darker. As dusk approached, she half feared the night would become red again, but God''s absence reassured her. Still, she was jittery until she could see the stars peeking through the lush branches above.

    "I''ll be right back," Agare said suddenly.

    "Y-you''re leaving?"

    "I have something to do."

    She didn''t want a second with her thoughts, yet she nodded. The door opened and slowly closed.

    With nothing to distract herself, it didn''t take long for her to start recalling the battle, and everything she lost.

    She remembered the scorching heat, the vomit inducing pungency of God''s throne, the torrid dirt clinging to her feet. She remembered the screaming, the death, the pain. The feeling of wood parting under her nails, disgusting things pouring into her mouth, that final blow.

    She shivered. She remembered the way she acted and in it only saw either a coward or an inhuman monstrosity. In that way, she couldn''t begrudge Agare for that earlier comparison. What were them, God and her, if not abominations with bodies shaped to hurt and maim?

    No. She shook her head. Elder Seneschal had told her many times to not think of herself as something beyond. She was human, always had been, always would be, no matter how different she looked from one, how different her diet had to be from one, how much she had lost from her time raised as one.

    After she changed, he had been the only one who still loved her the same way. She would never hate her sisters, but their relationship had changed afterwards, for the worse in both cases. Julius had never liked her anyway. But Elder Seneschal cared for her, fed her, played with her, called her love and dear as if she was still the same little girl!

    To think he had to suffer such a gruesome end. Had Hazel been the same?

    And why? She hadn''t been strong enough? Why did the Elder think she could fight in the first place? Hazel had sacrificed herself to give her a better shot, so did she agree? She should have known better, she was there the last time she fought somebody else! She was there to see how that went!

    She couldn''t find answers, but that didn''t stop the questions. Nothing did. How could they think she would win?! As a consequence, did anyone survive at all? She could only remember things until God began to shrivel around her, the wildfire still raging. Had it reached the village?

    What happened to Cassia?

    She hugged herself, a meager protection. There was a reason decades in the dark hadn''t made it anything but tolerable.

    This would be a very long night indeed.

    <hr>

    When Agare returned, it was still pitch black outside. The door opened softly, but they didn''t seen too surprised at her trying to walk.

    "Hey Agare," Holly said.

    "Hey. You shouldn''t be trying that yet."

    I needed to do something, she thought. Instead, she said, "They''re still a bit weak, but I''m a lot better!"

    "Good to hear. In this case, I think I can arrange a meeting with our Lady for the morrow."

    "T-tomorrow?!" she said, the shock weakening her legs enough she slid to the ground in a split.

    "... If you want? Though is there any need to wait that long?"

    "I don''t get it?"

    "It''s already nearly morning, Holly."

    "Oh." She looked outside, and couldn''t quite tell, "How can you tell?"

    "Through the clock?"

    "What''s that?"

    "I''ll show you one, if you go meet her."

    "I-I will! Of course I will!" Holly hurried out, arms waving wildly, "I mean, I can guess I own her a lot, hehehe..."

    "That, you do. For nursing you back too health specially, considering you arrived here one fraying line away from dying. Were it not her expertise, we wouldn''t be talking."

    "O-oh." Holly felt cold in the stomach. "I-I''ll make sure to thank her, for everything!"

    "Very well. Give me a few minutes, I will send somebody hunting breakfast for you, while I help prepare everything." They turned away. "I forgot to mention. If something happens, don''t open this door for any reason."

    With that ominous comment, Agare disappeared back out the door. This time she didn''t feel too upset.

    After a night of quiet grief, her outrage had subsided, but she couldn''t say she was any better for it. Rather, she felt hollow and sad, lost somewhere alien and hostile. Part of her didn''t believe she was still alive, eating good meat and enjoying the sun a mere feverish dream as she burned alive beneath God''s eyes.

    Yet, she survived. Something of absurd scale had decided her life forfeit, and she defied it. Now she was left asking: why? What did she gain from that? Was that truly what she was meant to do?

    What came next?

    There had to be something there to keep her moving, but she didn''t know what. Hopefully, this Lady could help her find it.

 1 - The God of Lesser Hollow 7

    As they traversed the manor, Holly tried imagining what this mysterious Lady might be like.

    She had known this place was large, but underestimated how much. It honestly felt more like traveling! It dwarfed Elder Seneschal''s own home by so many times, with corridors that looked positively endless, that she was afraid of guessing it''s size.

    The word that came to mind wasn''t manor then, it was castle, those magnanimous places where the princes and kings and knights all lived together in Elder Seneschal''s favorite stories. The key difference was appearance: those were supposed to be lavish and beautiful, but here? Barren hallways of barren walls, barren floors, lined with barren doors, dim lights, and no windows.

    Not lifeless, though: the place was spotless, without so much as a drop of mud or speck of dust to be seen, and she could hear life quietly shuffling about in their daily affairs, always out of sight.

    In her frank opinion, it was extremely creepy.

    Who would, or could, make a place such as this? She had to be important, Agare even called her a Lady, so perhaps a noble? If she had soldiers, then maybe a general or some war hero? But Elder Seneschal had told her women could neither join the military nor give orders to soldiers outside their personal retinue, so maybe not?

    Then again, Elder Seneschal had told her women couldn''t own property they didn''t inherit from widowing, and only if they could prove they had no family of their own to turn to, so who knew?

    Suddenly, something came to mind.

    "Agare, can I ask you a question?" she said.

    "Depends," they said.

    "A-are you a woman too? Are you guys like one of those bands of outlaw women who raid villages in rebellion?"

    "I am a man, and we are no bandits, no."

    "Oh! Sorry then, it''s just that you have such a nice voice..."

    "So I have been told," Agare said, then after a few seconds of silence: "...Thank you, I suppose."

    "You''re welcome! Can I ask you another? If you''re suppose to be leading me to the manor''s owner, shouldn''t you be in front of me instead?"

    Indeed, since the moment she left her room, Agare had firmly stuck to his position some four or five paces away from her, carrying the rear. Granted, he had been guiding her, though there really wasn''t much to be guided in such a straightforward sequence of hallways, and had been nothing if not patient with her unsteady gait, but something about this really heckled her.

    "This is perfectly fine for me."

    Two lefts and some many doors later, in a place she guessed was around the exact opposite place of her room, Agare told her to stop and step back a little from one in particular. As far as she could see it was no different then any of the others they had passed so far, but she didn''t question it.

    Agare lightly knocked. "She''s here!"

    At this point she would be lying if she said she wasn''t nervous. Her mind was swirling with increasingly stranger fantasies on the identity of this mysterious owner, when she noticed that Agare was looking straight at her.

    "A-Agare?"

    "Does my appearance scare you?" he asked, tone unreadable.

    "H-huh?!" She almost answered with her foot in her mouth, stopping herself in the nick of time, "N-not much, no. I mean! I was b-back then, during the fight. It really took me by surprise! B-but I''m getting used to it, I think, not like I have grounds to be freaked out anyway..."

    "I''m not asking you this because I mind what you think of me, but most of those who live in this mansion are Faceless like me."

    "I know! Or, I guessed anyway. It''s alright! I''m not going to run away screaming or calling you Rootgnashers or anything."

    "Rootgnashers?" Agare asked, very quietly, "I suppose it doesn''t matter. I will hold you to your words, then."

    "Can you at least tell me who she is? I mean, she probably knows at least a little about me by now, right?"

    "She is the Marquise."

    Holly froze. The name carried an air with it that was as solid and heavy as any Will, hers or otherwise. She nearly wanted to kneel then and there, a sign of respect for what might be the most important person she ever met, but Agare must have seen through her.

    "... And she is completely different than whatever you just imagined. You will see with your own eyes, so come."

    With no other options, she did as told.

    This was no bedroom, was the first thing she noticed. It was twice the length of her room, with no beds and a heavily barred window facing a shadowed cliff side. It was filled with strange paraphernalia of all sorts: gadgetry piled at the corners of a table, with space only given to a large map and the many figures placed above it; shelves and shelves full of unidentified things such as bird shaped contraptions of metal, disks of stone centered by dull gems, and weird shapes of sticks and threads; flasks with bubbled slimes and jars crawling with insects; old weapons here, rusty tools there...

    She only paid so much attention to those, because next she saw the room''s occupants.

    At its far end, two figures stood each to one side of a large tasseled rug, weaved in overlapping geometric patterns of red and yellow. If Agare was like the hero of a story, then these she could tell with almost absolute certainty would be knights: Tall and poised, heavily armored in plates of steel from head to toe, faces hidden under oppressive helmets, each carrying a fearsome cleaver the length of a man''s leg.

    They didn''t shine, however. Their armor did glow a little, almost imperceptibly under the rooms many light sources, but not like those of tales, as if they carried a little of the sun in their pockets. Their armor more closely resemble the other Faceless'' from before, lightly banged and scratched, unpolished, without embellishment, but still obviously functional, though the left one''s bore a particularly gruesome concavity on their flank.

    She decided they were guards then, and didn''t need to guess to whom. Her illustrious host sat in between them behind a large wooden desk, a horror beyond her imagination that made hairs she hadn''t had for many years wanting to raise behind her neck.

    She had both hand peacefully resting over the desk. She had a gorgeous dress, orange with long frilled sleeves and a high stiff collar, bold to the point of scandal the way its cleavage dipped as far as the eye couldn''t see, revealing her heavy bust and milky skin. A necklace of silver with a red gem shone as if new, obviously cared for greatly.

    None of these details could hold her attention for long, even when some by all rights should.

    Holly had seen much, been treated to much, enough she believed herself adaptable. Had she not fought God? Had she not faced Agare''s... facelessness? Had she not endured years in the dark of her room, under lands nobody but the Godspeaker dared venture?

    So perhaps she could face this with time, too. Right now, she wanted to scream.

    The Marquise stood there, calm and collected, completely lacking a head, a void flowing in its place.

    Unlike Agare''s perfect oval, like he had simply always lacked a face to begin with, the image that her void conjured was one only described to her by Hazel of a poorly administered decapitation: it was slanted towards the right and the front, small flaps of ripped skin resting against her neck, the void beyond raging through wounds like cracks, unlike Agare''s gentle liquid swirl and closer to a living, breathing creature, muscles softened into jelly pacing in circles, almost spilling out before being hastily contracted.

    She had no eyes, of course, but didn''t need any for Holly to know from the depths of her being that she was being watched, measured. Predator and prey, neither clear on which was which, unblinking and tense for the slightest twitch of a limb, sure it meant a fight for their lives.

    A minute, an hour, or a day later, the Marquise sighed. Or rather, she mimicked a sigh, voicing a dreary "Huuuuaaaaaaah..." before clapping her hands together.

    "Sorry!" she said, in an unexpectedly girlish voice. "They always say I should be more mindful of my attitude, but how could I resist?! I''ve been wanting to see you up and about for soooo long! Come in, come in!"

    At that point Holly, who had resisted an assault to deep held beliefs on the workings of the world she didn''t even consciously knew she held, that stood in the middle of the room with her legs trembling and no real support beyond animal fright at displaying weakness, fell on her rear with a loud thud.

    Before she could touch the floor, the Marquise was already on her feet.

    "Ouch!" she said, walking around her desk. "Careful there! Fordu, you said she had gotten better!"

    "She had," Agare said. "Don''t blame me when you''re the one who scared her out of her feet."

    When Holly looked back to the Marquise from Agare, she was suddenly close, very close, in fact closer than anybody other than the Elder or Hazel dared come without obligation. She stared dumbly as the headless woman reached out with a hand.

    "Come on, I''ll help you up! Sorry about making you come all the way here when you''re still recovering, it''s all this doofu''s fault!"

    "She had!" Agare said.

    "I-I am, uh, Lady Marquise. Your Majesty?" Marquise obviously had no face, but with the way she stopped moving Holly could almost see her eyebrow quirking up, "Y-your Highness? M-my Lady!? I-I''m terribly sorry, I''m really not sure how to address you, I-I was raised away from nobility so-"

    "Oh, that''s what''s getting you in a tizzy back there?"

    "I-I''m sorry about my hairs too, they just do that..."

    "Gihihi!" The Marquise said, "Now now, no need for those kinds of formalities over here! Honestly, to tell you a secret..." She bent down until her voice was nearly coming from right outside Holly''s ear, "That''s just my naming sense! I''m not even remotely close to being a noble, just teeeeeeerribly lazy!"

    "L-Lady Marquise!" Holly said, heart suddenly hammering like thunder for completely different reasons, "C-careful with your dress!"

    "Just Marquise will do!" She got back up, nonchalantly fixing her clothes. "And besides, it''s nothing everybody here hasn''t seen already, right Lady Naked?"

    Holly looked back and forth, almost expecting it to actually be somebody''s name, before realizing she was playing the fool. "B-but I''m different, nobody here would look at me like that..."

    "That''s what you think! But honestly, I think with just some confidence you would look rather fetching!"

    She blushed. That one she had never heard before.

    "But anyways, if my ears haven''t tricked me, I''ve heard from Fordu you talk about this ''sickness'' of yours quite often. It''s why you haven''t given me your hand already, right?"

    She nodded, "W-we never figured out if it was infectious or what not. Besides, I''m pretty dirty..."

    "Yeah, I can relate. Nowhere good to take a bath up here I''m afraid! Say, pretend I never heard about you, that we are literally seeing each other for the first time. Could you tell me your name?"

    "I''m Holly. Holly Seneschal!"

    "Well, pleasure to meet you Holly Seneschal! They call me Marquise, just Marquise, and don''t I have good news for you!"

    "Uh? What kind?"

    "I had to handle you a fair amount when you arrive, to learn how badly you were hurt, right? Touched your organs a bit! You have such wonderful kidneys, but I digress. I can tell you with a 100% confidence that what you have isn''t even a little contagious. Life would be very different otherwise, believe me!

    "And to even better news! I don''t mind getting my hands dirty. I even like playing in the mud when the fancy strikes and time allows! So don''t worry about me and grab my hand. Unless you don''t want to? That''s fine too, it''s been a pretty hot Flowering Season, talking on the cool floor is perfectly alright with me!"

    Holly didn''t know what to say anymore. She watched the Marquise''s hand, waving up and down teasingly almost as if hypnotized, struggling to digest anything the other woman said at all. She reached back for an instant, before retracting.

    "I-I''m afraid of cutting you with my nails." Was Holly''s last line of defense.

    "... Nails, you call them?" Marquise said.

    "Yes."

    "Has somebody ever told you you have very gorgeous nails, Holly? Like polished milky quartz."

    For a second, she felt like she had swallowed her own tongue. She coughed, to clean both mind and throat, then said: "A-and really scary too, aren''t they? So large and sharp."

    "Nope! You''d need to be ten times bigger with claws like Ravishs to scare me, I''m a tough girl! Besides, if the idea makes you uncomfortable, we could always use our other hands, If you don''t mind? I don''t see any nails on that one."

    She didn''t know what a Ravish was in this context, but the idea of rejecting her any longer felt unbearable. She hesitated for a few seconds more, but finally accepted the help. It was awkward, the way her hands were so much larger than the other''s, her spindly fingers finding poor grip to hold on to, but the way Marquise pulled her up she might as well have been as light as a feather.

    "Now, hold on to me, I''ll bring you to your seat. It''s one of the comfiest in the manor!"

    And she didn''t lie. Putting a shoulder under her armpit, then changing her grip to simply holding her by the waist when both realized Holly would most definitely not be getting anywhere in that half squat, she brought her to the plushiest chair Holly had ever sat on in her entire life, cushioned with velvety pillows and sculpted with gorgeous spiraling clouds up and down its limbs. In comparison, the Marquise''s "throne" looked to be a completely ordinary wooden chair any carpenter''s apprentice could make.

    Both sat, the Marquise put a fist to her neck and did a little "Hum hum!" then said, "Well, much better, isn''t it?"

    "I-I think I made your dress a little moist. Sorry about that," Holly said.

    "It''s no bother! This thing has been through so much worse anyway."

    "I-if you say so."

    Marquise clasped her hands together, leaning back against her seat, "So, Holly my dear, what have you been thinking of this abode of mine? I''ll admit, it''s not the most luxurious, but I hope everything has been to satisfaction so far?"

    "It''s been fantastic, Marquise! The sun, the breeze, the smells..." Holly said, exploring the contours of the chair with her recovering hand, "A-and thanks for the meat too! And for taking care of me! Agare told me I''m only alive thanks to you?"

    "Bah, such a big tongue on that one, don''t you think?! Honestly, I''m just glad you liked it, we''ve been really scratching our heads over how to treat you. You wouldn''t believe the kinds of fights we had over your diet!"

    "O-on my behalf?! Oh no, I''m so sorry..."

    "Don''t worry about it, don''t worry." Marquise dismissed with a hand, "What is a little fight between peers anyway? I wouldn''t make for a good leader if I forced everyone to agree with me, don''t you think? You need a breadth of different opinions and angles, else you stagnate."

    "If you say so..."

    "Nobody knows their shit enough to be right all the time, after all. Not even me, believe it or not! Good ol'' Fordu over there saved me from bad ideas so many times it''s a miracle I''m still kicking! Now I save him from his."

    "I-I''ve been meaning to ask about that... I thought his name was Agare?"

    This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

    "My name is Agare," he said, sounding a little peeved.

    "S-sorry, didn''t want to talk like you weren''t in the room. But why is she calling you Fordu?"

    "I am Agare to-"

    "-People who he doesn''t know too well yet. Kind of an intimacy thing, y''know? It''s just that we''re such a chummy duo, I can call him honeybuns and he wouldn''t bat an eye!"

    "... You wouldn''t dare," Agare said, now leaning back against the wall, closer to the window.

    "But let''s not lose any more time on our dour little doofus over there, he''s not the one I''ve wanted to meet today! There is so much I''ve been meaning to say, to ask, that I don''t think we can fit it all today, so let''s with start with you! Anything you''ve been curious about?"

    "A-a lot too! Too many things!"

    "Good!" Marquise said, leaning forward and craning her neck a little down, "Start anywhere you want! There are just a feeeew things I can''t tell you about, but we''ll deal with that as we go."

    Feeling a tad nervous again, Holly began to tap at one of her armrests, enjoying the sound of wood being knocked, "W-well, if I can start anywhere... Where are we?"

    The Marquise was quiet.

    "... Already got one?" Holly said.

    "Kind of? Gihihih!" said the Marquise, tapping at an invisible chin with her finger. "Won''t tell you specifically where we are, but I can say that we are somewhere in the Ivian Chain, if that wasn''t obvious."

    "I never heard of an Ivian Chain before though?"

    "You didn''t?" She quirked her neck to the side. "What did you call the mountains around the Hollows then? Mt. Tremor and its little babies, that is."

    "Oh, I know Mt. Tremor! But as for the smaller ones, we just called them the Mountains. We were forbidden from going that far, and the older folks didn''t like us even talking about those places, so..."

    "So you never felt too comfortable talking about it with people who might know."

    "Well, Elder Seneschal didn''t mind it so long as we asked in private, but he didn''t care much about the topic." Which is why she imagined he never brought her any geography books.

    "Let''s do a quiz then! Do you know what country Lesser Hollow used to belong to, Holly? And the name of the island that country is found in?"

    She though about if for a second, "Hmmm, It''s Galehold! I remember now, the Elder told me about it a couple times. He didn''t like it very much, used to say if they ever found us out they would shove worms into our mouths until we choked!"

    "Well, they certainly wouldn''t be very happy about what was going on in your village, that''s for sure." Marquise said.

    "I think I''ve heard we lived on an island, but the name... Ivia?"

    "Good answer, close enough! It''s Ivias! Wouldn''t you know, a lot of people are so surprised to learn Ivias is an Island with how big it is, but it''s not even the biggest in the whole world! In fact, do you know-"

    "M-Marquise, if you excuse me?" Holly said, clutching the armrests tight.

    "Go ahead, Speak your mind!" Marquise didn''t lose a beat. Maybe she wasn''t mad at her then?

    "I think this is very interesting, and I would love to learn more about it later for sure, b-but right now would it be okay if we talked about other things first? Please?"

    "Oh!" Marquise shook her neck, "Me and my fat mouth again! Sorry, sorry, absolutely."

    Holly took a deep breath, steeling herself to head somewhere she didn''t want to, but knew she couldn''t avoid forever.

    "M-Marquise." She gulped, "How long have I been here?"

    "... Hmm. You don''t remember? You stirred awake a couple times during your treatment, so I''ve told you before."

    "N-no, sorry. I remember the end of the fight, after that... It''s all a blank until I woke up yesterday."

    "Yeah, I guessed you weren''t very lucid back then. If only you could remember the things that you babbled!" Marquise said, but continued before Holly could ask her to explain, "Sorry, no jokes now! Holly, you''ve been with us for a month and two days, mostly hanging on the proverbial balance. I was expecting you to not wake up until at least next week, but seems we''re lucky."

    She felt stunned. She had guessed she that their fight against God wouldn''t have been the day before, but a whole month completely gone from her life? "W-wait! I-if I''ve been- it''s been- w-what happened to Lesser Hollow?!"

    "Before I answer that," Marquise interrupted with an open hand, "would you mind telling how much you remember from that night? Only if you''re comfortable, of course."

    "W-why?"

    "You don''t need to tell me if you don''t want to!"

    "I-I''m not saying no, I-I just want to know why."

    "I promise you I''ll tell the reasons after, alright? But I need to hear you first."

    Holly sighed. She definitely did not want to spread that wound wide open, not when it still wept, but really, she was surprised to realize she trusted Marquise. She had been warned again and again to be careful around strangers, not only by the Elder but many of the stories the village passed down, but she couldn''t help it, there was just something about Marquise...

    She took a deep breath, and started from the beginning, from the crowd that came gawk at her in her room to the horrible confrontation with God. She was no Elder Seneschal with the divine gift of storytelling, not to mention how many details had blurred together into indistinct masses in the heat of battle, but the Marquise was a great listener, only chiming in sometimes to ask for clarification, never rushing her nor insisting on something she didn''t want to say.

    It had been an eternity at the Throne, but the story only took maybe a couple dozen minutes to tell. The Marquise nodded solemnly with a bob of the neck.

    "You''ve really been through a lot, haven''t you? My sincerest apologies from bringing this up when you probably would rather be forgetting it, Holly, though I did have a reason: I''m checking if everything is working well inside you. See, I had no experience treating bodies like yours, I''m not actually a healer by trade at all, just picked up things as I needed them. If I broke something, I would rather know sooner than later!"

    "E-everything''s fine, so far. Thank you again, Marquise."

    "But it isn''t, is it?"

    Marquise stretched a hand over the desk, fingers relaxed yet spread invitingly. Holly only felt trepidation at the sight.

    "It''s alright. I wouldn''t date to keep this hidden from you. After everything, you deserve some honesty."

    "... Then do I even need to ask out loud? I d-don''t think I want to."

    "Are you sure you want to leave it in my hands?"

    Holly hesitated, a hand half raised to grasp the other''s. She noticed then, that Marquise didn''t have palms like she imagined most important Ladies should, soft and smooth, unblemished from sun or labor; they were calloused and scarred, with at least one big cut between index and middle fingers, looking terribly painful.

    "M-Marquise," Holly said, reaching out with her own damaged hand.

    "Yes?"

    "What happened to my village?"

    The Marquise didn''t answer immediately. Instead, she played with Holly''s hand, fingers gently caressing her palm, thumb massaging around her knuckles. Her breath hitched. It filled her with a wretched, if faintly bitter melancholy, but she couldn''t take the gesture back now, physically pinned to the other woman by her own will.

    "I don''t have very pleasant news on that front, Holly. Do you feel ready for this?"

    "If I''m not ready now, I won''t be later either. P-please, I just don''t want to live with the uncertainty."

    Another solemn nod, and Holly felt Marquise''s grip tighten some. "That fight was quite devastating. The Higher and Greater Hollow had the scare of a lifetime! Some of the worst things around the Hollow fled en mass, and that wildfire grew almost as far as the Hollow Road, before the valley''s peculiarities stopped it. I don''t know if it came across you or not, but don''t worry about Galehold come knocking, doesn''t seem like they are searching for culprits so far.

    "The problem is the Lesser. I''m sorry to say, Holly, but your village is gone. A few of my own searched the place corner to corner, but they could barely find the ruins, there wasn''t one building still standing."

    She had expected it, deep down. Not like she had anything left there worth caring for with her family gone. Despite everything, it still felt like a part of her had crumbled.

    "N-no survivors?" she said after a few tries.

    "Two, counting you. If there were any else, I''m sorry but we didn''t find them."

    "T-there was someone else?!" Holly surged up, a move that nearly got her run through by both of the Marquise''s guards, halted with a dizzyingly fast gesture from their mistress. "D-do you know who it is?! Please, you have to tell me!"

    "You think it might be someone you knew?"

    "I-I had another sister. H-her name was Cassia! She''s tall, she''s pretty thin, s-she''s pretty pretty, she has a hair the color of nuts, big eyes, and-"

    "Hey hey! Calm down Holly, breath with me!" Marquise said, puffing and deflating her chest noiselessly.

    "Y-you breath?"

    "What matters is that you breath, Holly! There isn''t any reason to panic, because yes, that''s sounds like exactly the one!"

    The strength was drained out of her limbs, She fell back, limp yet smiling. "Y-yes! S-she''s alive! Elder Seneschal, she''s alive!"

    "Wow there, careful Holly, you''re still recovering!"

    "S-sorry! It''s just, hehehe, she''s alive! S-somebody actually survived, and it was her, it was-!"

    Just Cassia. Not Hazel, not Elder Seneschal.

    She couldn''t say she was unhappy, but the thought was sobering all the same. They were the only survivors of Lesser Hollow, alone in the world.

    She shook her head, tried clinging to the good of the situation, "M-Marquise, can I see her? Where is she now?"

    "She''s here yes, but I''m sorry Holly, I don''t think you''ll be able to meet her any time soon."

    She paused, "W-why not?!"

    "You know exactly why, Holly," said Marquise, tone sweet but with a hint of warning. "You went through the same thing, after all. She lost everything, except you, and most days barely eats or speaks beyond a few words."

    Holly nodded. Of course, How could she be this selfish? If she was suffering, then Cassia who was even closer to the others had to be wrecked. Of the entire family, Cassia was the one who used to visit her the least so they hadn''t been close in a long, long while, but nothing excused this slip.

    "Why did this have to happen?" she whispered.

    "Holly?"

    "I-I want to know, what did we do to deserve this?!" She screamed, scaring even herself, "S-sorry, but I do! I know that Hazel and I were outsiders, but what did we do to deserve this?! Was it because I didn''t let the other kids beat us into a pulp? Is it because I cussed back the adults when they called me a worm?! Everything the Godspeaker himself said, I obeyed! I did everything I could to keep us safe!"

    "Nothing at all, Holly."

    "D-don''t say that! There had to be something! I-I know now, I know it was all a lie, that God never actually intended to protect anyone, that they never cared, but it can''t just all be for nothing! There has to be some sin, some impurity I can cleanse, people don''t die like Elder Seneschal for nothing, do they?! A-and that old lady at the Throne, she said my sister sacrificed herself to give me a better shot, but s-she would never! She hated them with her entire soul, she was never shy about it, so why just give herself like that?! All she ever wanted was to be free, to go back home!"

    "Go back home?" Marquise asked.

    "N-nothing. It''s not my secret, s-sorry."

    To that, Marquise said nothing. Winded down, Holly slowly breathed in and out, but she couldn''t say it helped much with the pain, the shame, the fury. The Elder had always said it was better to talk then let things dam inside, but the rant had only made her feel more helpless.

    "... Terrible things, those Ember Blossoms," her host suddenly spoke.

    "E-excuse me?" Holly said.

    "Ember Blossoms. It''s how our people called creatures like this God of yours, Holly. Huge trees with a holier-than-thou attitude! Seen a couple of them myself. I don''t mean to belittle what you went through, but to be honest I was relieved when I heard yours wasn''t nearly as bad as it could have been!"

    "Not nearly as bad?! T-that t-thing destroyed everything! Didn''t you see it?!"

    The Marquise leaned forward. Holly felt the shift in tone before she heard it, shivering in anticipation.

    "They nearly destroyed the entire Island once, Holly. In another world, we would be having this conversation on a wasteland."

    Holly gasped softly, even if she couldn''t grasp the grandiosity of that statement, she knew it in her skin. She watched as the Marquise rose both hands in front her, fingers all splayed but for her left thumb, mute.

    "Ninety days. For ninety days after their huuuuuge Messiah rose and scorched the lands around it into cinder, night turned into day. In ninety days, millions of lives were taken across Ivias, entire cities and city states lost, tribes killed to their last with no hope of avenging themselves. This was bad, it was. That? That was war.

    "Would you believe me if I told that had it been any stronger, your god could have rained fire from the sky? That a single burst of its Divinity would boil your entire village from the inside out? That if it was one of the strongest, it could even give commands to the forest around it, made it its eternally burning slave?

    "Out dear Fordu gave me quite a through report on Lesser Hollow and your god. Did it look cute when he showed off?"

    "... I don''t show off." Agare said.

    "Aaaaaw, don''t get mad, old habits die hard!" Marquise waved him down. "I understand! What I want to say though is that I know your nightmare, that I saw it in the wounds of dead comrades, and that was just a century and a half ago!"

    "Y-you read about that?" Holly asked.

    "Nope! Lived through it, of course. I mean, I was a bit too young for field work, but you better believe I watched that endless sundown every day!"

    "W-wait, then how old are you?!"

    "Now, now, we can talk about me later. Where was I? Ah! The name those three months received was the Scorching Season, I don''t think I need to tell you why, right? It left this island with wounds that to this day haven''t healed, and likely never will. Your village was one of them, but there are others, places left abandoned and uninhabitable to human beings, towns which once were traveler hubs or famous even outside our shores! And worse too. The Crimson Grave isn''t called that for its beautiful vistas.

    "Thankfully, most Ember Blossoms are now dead, and the remains of their cult in hiding. Unfortunately, they are not the only threat this island faces."

    "Does anything compare to that, though? The entire island..."

    "Compare? Pssh! Some are worse."

    Holly paled.

    "And now you might be thinking, how do we fit in this place?" Marquise spread her arms wide. "I''m not going to be coy with you, I don''t think it takes more than a glance to know we aren''t exactly your everyday Petunia or Rose. Are we one of those things, then?"

    "Y-you aren''t! You can''t be!" Holly hurried to say.

    "Oh, and why do you think so?"

    "Y-you were fighting God! O-one of those Ember Blossom thingies!"

    "Maybe we were just picking on an enemy in common, and now we can go right back to burning babies and poking crying children with sharp sticks!"

    Holly grimaced. "B-but then why am I still alive? Shouldn''t you have left me in the Lesser to die?"

    "That," Marquise said, lifting a finger, "was sharper. Well done! That''s right, I don''t want any harm to fall on that cute little face of yours, which is why I spent day and night making sure you were safe and comfy! To whatever measure of comfy we could afford, but those are just details!"

    "I-if you don''t mind me asking, if you aren''t one of the things trying to destroy the island, what are you? Not that I have grounds to judge, but you don''t look human. Are you sick like me?"

    "...Not the way I would put it, but close enough! Our kind is quite famous actually, maybe you''ve heard about us?"

    "Elder Seneschal stole a lot of stories for me, and told many more he remembered from his youth, so it''s possible."

    "Awesome! So, we have received a lot of names in the past, depending on who you ask. Phantoms, Madhounds, or my favorite, the Faceless Sect! None of those are quite right though, even if we use them ourselves for convenience''s sake. Maybe one of these refreshed your mind?"

    "No, sorry! What''s your true name then?"

    "Well, without further delays, we''re the great, the mighty, the beautiful-!"

    "The great, the mighty, the beautiful?!"

    "The Remnants of Eligor!"

    "Never heard of you."

    "Oh."

    An awkward silence stretched from that. Holly tried not to scratch her armrests, suddenly anxious.

    "...Gihihi."

    "Uh?"

    "Means I get to tell you everything my way, right?"

    The Marquise stood up, began pacing the room with an arm behind her back, the other raised to around where her lips should have been.

    "We''re an open secret, kind of. For over half a millennia, we''ve been the frontline against the deities that still cling to Ivias as their home, and its people as their sacrifices by right. Every Remnant you see here has fought this war, putting their necks on the line for the sake of stopping the divine and their cruel influence. I mean, look at me!"

    "W-wow, you lost your head in battle? And you''re still alive?!"

    "Nope, lost my head on a surgery table, but I did indeed lose it because of that war!"

    "I-is that good? Doesn''t sound good."

    "I miss the weight, but you get used to it. Makes for one powerful icebreaker too!"

    "W-what''s ice?"

    "Most nowadays see us as myths. Our enemies hate the idea we might inspire rebellion among their slaves, and our allies like the element of surprise we bring to the battlefield. You never know what a Faceless can do, after all! So no, it doesn''t actually surprise me you don''t know us. Honestly, if you said you did, then I would be shocked!"

    "Y-you shocked me! I thought you were mad!"

    "Liked my acting skills? Best table game player around, dear, it''s all on the face!"

    "So, is that why you came to Lesser Hollow? To inspire us to rebel and fight God? If so, I think you came a little too late..."

    "Not quite. To be a 100% clear with you Holly." Marquise said, stopping right besides her, "I sent Agare to Lesser Hollow to find you. We just didn''t know!"

    "U-uh? Me? Why?"

    "That remains to be seen."

    Holly stiffened.

    "No, no, none of that! No matter what happens, I''m not going to let anything bad happen to you! Swear on my name, on all of them at once! But I can''t tell where exactly you would fit with our plans when I don''t even know if you want to participate, can I?"

    "Elder Seneschal did." she said, trying not to sound hurt, "A-and if I said no, that I didn''t want to be part of your plans... where would I even go?"

    Not that she would. Even if she had better places to be, Cassia was here somewhere, suffering alone. No matter how apart they''ve become, she wouldn''t leave her behind.

    "Anywhere your legs bring you, I guess, though I''m glad you''re actually considering us!"

    Holly smiled weakly. Marquise squeezed her shoulder.

    "You wouldn''t regret it, Holly. Ask anybody here. Some of them might not like me personally, but I never stiff those loyal to me. Your dreams will be mine too."

    "Uhm."

    The Marquise left her, approached the map in that large table in the middle of the room. With a languid wave, she beckoned Holly closer. Once she was up and walking, Agare moved her seat closer.

    "Holly, you like stories, don''t you?" Marquise Plucked one of figures from the map, a knobbly, three pronged thing made of wood with a dull red stone placed in the middle, "Ivias is a very big place, filled to bursting with stories both well-known and hidden. Hard not to! Dashi have lived in these islands for longer than their forests, soaking their precious home in blood and grief to its marrow. Awful, isn''t it?"

    "Dashi?"

    "Oh Holly, you''ve been done such a disservice by your people, not being allowed to explore and learn to your heart''s content! If you stay with us, I promise I will teach everything you missed, and more, so much more." She placed the figure back down, and picked another, a carefully sculpted bust of a woman with the head of some kind of serpent or eel with a spiral shield, no jewel and of a lighter wood.

    "T-that would be nice. But what do you want to show me?"

    "I like making little doll theaters. It''s how I used to solve tactical problems." She placed the figure far right. Holly finally noticed this was the map of an archipelago, one central island much larger than the others, the name Ivias written over the sea above, and slightly smaller below, "I was planning to do this a bit later, but fuck it, this is the perfect time! It''s one of those hidden stories, the most important a Faceless ever hears. Problem is, it might take a while, so it might delay other things you want to talk about. Would that be fine with you?"

    "I don''t sleep more than once a... week? I''m not sure, but I won''t get tired, no matter what!"

    "But you do get tired. If I keep digging in your brain all day like this, I bet I''ll have to carry you to your room, napping in my arms!"

    "N-no I wouldn''t."

    "Hehe, you don''t trick me!" Marquise said, tapping somewhere above and to the side of her void, "I''ve known people like you!"

    "Fine," Holly said, pouting. "But you have to promise me you will answer everything I ask!"

    "You know I can''t, but you better believe I have a whole lot to tell you myself! Never made a friend like you, so I might just end up being the one to ask more!"

    "M-maybe. I-I never had a friend like you either, Marquise..." Holly said, hoping whatever she was doing with the little carvings could stop her from noticing her blush, "B-but what story is this?"

    More and more figures were placed around the island, many near the woman with the snail shield, others spread in all directions.

    "It''s the story of our birth, of the god slaying colossus and his warband of outcasts, the cruel cult who made him fell his opponent at the cost of his own life, and the eight fates he left behind for his successors to stop. Our very own purpose, the dream we were made to carry, and the horrors laid before us should we fail.

    "This is King Eligor and the Eight Tales."

    And so began the story of Holly''s new life.

 1 - The God of Lesser Hollow 8

    King Eligor and the Eight Tales.

    Marquise had heard it so many times it had gotten dull. No, not only heard it, told it, read it, transcribed it! It had been carved, plastered, then embellished with reliefs and paint on the walls of her brain, just to make sure she knew the Sect''s genesis by letter.

    Needless to say then, retelling it was automatic, requiring not the least mental effort.

    Instead, her attention was solely on Holly.

    Holly laughed. Holly fiddled in excitement. Holly tapped her arm rests, the table, the effigies, nervous or engrossed.

    It could be hard to tell emotions with the Children, Holly not in the least excluded. No brows nor eyes easily discernible, mouth in a permanent semi-rictus, too agitated for clear body language. Her "hairs" were a good clue, but she hadn''t know her for long enough to map their reactions.

    All in all, however, her opinion didn''t change much.

    Night came and morning soon after. Brave girl she was, Holly claimed to be fine until she began to physically sway from side to side and Marquise had to beg her to go rest a bit. Fordu escorted her back to her quarters, came back, and closed the door behind him, waiting for a few seconds before finally speaking.

    "So? Verdict?"

    Marquise leaned back on her chair, "Hmmmmm, you guys first. Aram?"

    To her right, a deep baritone, cringing with repulse. "Ma''am, my opinion hasn''t changed in the least, we should have disposed of that thing and thrown its body to the maggots while we still could."

    "Awww, not even a little? She was so sweet! Oh well, I expected as much. Swordlight?"

    To her left, a voice both hoarse and soft, hard to understand if you weren''t paying attention, some dozen seconds after her question. "... I''m not quite sure yet, Ma''am."

    "No need for something deep, just your first impressions." Marquise said.

    "...Perfectly well mannered, no disgust for the presence of different species even in close proximity, voice unusual but clear and temperament amenable," she said, "however, her obvious discomposure left me on edge, and her body..."

    "Made for war, wasn''t it? So tall, armored, and those nails! Have you ever seen raptorial fingers before?! I sure haven''t!"

    "Exactly. To summarize, I''m unsure if I would trust her, but I shall wait on your wishes."

    Marquise nodded, "Fordu?"

    Fordu took Holly''s place on the Guest Chair, having dragged it back to her desk. He crossed his arms, then said, "I''ve already told you my thoughts. I trusted her none before, and trust her none now."

    "Seeing her outside the battlefield didn''t help in the least?" Marquise said, watching him carefully.

    "Why would it? A Child is a Child. I would recommend you don''t lower your guard so much around her either."

    "Hah, me, lower my guard? Nonsense!" she said, dismissing him. "My turn, right? I think it''s a shame nobody sees what I see. She''s so sweet! And with all that hurt, doesn''t she sound like the main character of a tragedy?"

    "But whose?" Fordu pouted.

    "That''s the fun part, isn''t it?" She shook her neck, "To think she was right there, with an Ember Blossom at that, under the Sect''s noses all along! You can''t tell me they didn''t know Lesser Hollow existed?"

    "I assume they would claim to be too focused on the conflict with the Argent, as usual," Fordu said "And the issue hasn''t been too relevant for a while. Galehold would never be interested in a village that perished far too late in its eyes."

    "Probably!" She shrugged, "Anyway, I''ll echo what I said before: this paid off. Holly is a great find. Beyond being cute and having potential, she grew completely detached from their Lady. If we work this carefully, she might just be the missing piece of the puzzle we were looking for. Oooh, I''m already getting dizzy with all the possibilities!"

    "...Tell me your best plan."

    "Okay! we can-"

    "The best one that doesn''t rely on luck."

    "Okay! I''ll stay quiet then."

    Fordu stared at her with an intensity that spoke more than a thousand words. The faint clinking from behind might have been Aram facepalming, but Swordlight was the first to pipe up. "Ma''am, if I may?"

    "Of course."

    "I don''t think it would be wise to rely on chance this often, it could turn to our disadvantage soon."

    "Welp, what are our other options then? What do we do to sweep the odds off their feet and land us a guaranteed victory?"

    Silence.

    "See? Thanks goodness you ended up in the arms of Ivias very own tabletop apex predator!" Marquise said. "Now now, enough with the compliments, don''t let my head get too big! Or, at least wait until I reveal my super scheme, that will nail all three of our goals at once and write us down in the annals of history as heroes! If it goes well, that is."

    "Which is?"

    "Under construction."

    "... I wish I could still sigh, so you can actually comprehend what you put me through."

    "You still can, look! Haaaaaaaaaaaauuuuuuuh... See?" she said. "Trust me. Didn''t I get you Hagan despite everything, just like I promised? Didn''t I get this little fortress of our made without a peep getting out? I''m good!"

    "I will grant you, that was a very impressive feat," Fordu said. "Let''s move on, what are we to do in the near future?"

    "Nothing," she answered.

    "Excuse me?"

    "Ma''am," Aram said, "aren''t we already fucked enough? Our Faces all told us the wildfire got everyone looking."

    "That''s true, it got everyone looking, just not for us. Nothing there will point in our direction, so our enemies won''t suspect a thing, and other potential threats won''t even consider the possibility of our involvement." Marquise answered.

    "The Azure might." Fordu said, "They are wide reaching, and were already invested in the Lesser as per our ''informant''."

    Tired of sitting, Marquise stood up. Stretching a soreless back out of habit, she approached the window, scant little natural light pouring down into the sliver between her fortress and the mountain''s cliff. The breeze here was always cool and pleasant, more so than the lowlands at least.

    "So long as you did everything as planned, they should have no reason to connect us to the incident either. And if they do?" she asked, relaxed. "I''m pretty sure they are at least a couple months away to finding our location, give or take."

    "... Someone who recognizes a Seerynth Beast''s hide might." Fordu said.

    Not even the breeze could smoother the longing that suddenly made her chest tighten, "Oh, my precious Seerynth Cloak... Agare the Third, did you know that thing would cost more in the black market than my entire body and all my secrets together? The guy who bought it for me said he could sell his entire castle to the most magnanimous-"

    "A-alright, I heard it already! I told you it learned new skills in the heat of battle, what could I do?!"

    "Get me another?"

    Fordu was quiet while she watched the lichen grow, until she heard a low, "Haaaaaaauuuuuh..." and turned in a whirl.

    "Did you just-?!"

    "So, nothing then? We''re supposed to sit on our asses and hope for the best?"

    "What? No, of course not. That doing nothing there was just manner of speech, we just simply won''t be tackling our main objectives directly for a while. Laying low and letting things cool down, as some might say."

    "Then?"

    "So impatient! Give me a second to heat up the cooker at least!"

    "You spent the entire night talking, the cooker should be melting by now!"

    She ignored him. Tapping at her mind''s chin in deep pondering, she quickly resolved a few necessities. Knowing her pace, the long term plans wouldn''t come until tomorrow, but it wasn''t like they were in such a tight deadline they couldn''t afford to slow down a little. Push it, and even a Faceless could break down from exhaustion.

    "Alrighty. Fordu?"

    "Yes?"

    "I''m assigning you to Holly. You''ll be keeping an eye on her at all times, protecting her from danger and protecting us from the danger she represents."

    "Like before."

    "Unlike before, I don''t want you far from her for any reasons beyond somebody physically throwing you away! If you want to talk to somebody, including me, bring her together, and if she wants to talk to somebody you go along," she tooted a finger at him.

    "Then she''s been given free roam of the manor? Wasn''t telling her our general location enough?"

    "Ma''am, I concur with comrade Agare, Beyond the confidential nature of many of our rooms, there is much danger present for her as well." Swordlight said.

    "Ma''am, I agree with Fordu too." Aram said.

    "...Don''t call me Fordu."

    "Slip of tongue, Agarey!" Aram chuckled, and she could hear the shit-eating grin on his voice.

    "Alright, alright, no fighting around fragile goods! No, Fordu, she won''t be getting free roam just yet, but we''ll nail the details later. For now, just keep doing what you''re doing."

    "Very well, understood," Fordu said, standing up and heading for the door. "Then, excuse me, I will go back to my post."

    "Okay! Have a good day at work, honey!" She waved him goodbye as he left without another word. With that done, she turned to both her personal guard and said, "Now, you two. Swordlight, I''m going to leave you in charge of this room, don''t play with the brass lires! Aram, you''re with me."

    Unauthorized use: this story is on Amazon without permission from the author. Report any sightings.

    "Ma''am?" Aram straightened his back. "Of course, but what''s the occasion?"

    "What else? We''re getting Holly her breakfast! Now go get ready, and wait for me by the back door."

    <hr>

    Breakfast found and killed, she left it in better hands for preparation, giving her ample time to deal with the next daily task.

    Truth be told, when Marquise heard about Lesser Hollow, she had hypothesized its secret. What else would the Children have shown such a direct interest in? A couple things, in truth, which was why she was completely off the mark by the time of discovery.

    Funny, then, that the most absurd answer turned out to be the right one. Seeing the sedated body Fordu had brought her was like waking up to learn your house had been pushed to the bottom of a lake, which wasn''t a great thing overall but so long as you accounted for the possibility and readied yourself accordingly, there was no reason to overreact.

    Alas, she had always been a poor swimmer, so possibility or not she had hoped for literally anything else, but this did present some unique opportunities.

    She hadn''t lied, her mind right now was a vortex of plans and ideas ranging from bad to worse, countless pieces refusing to come together. The danger of having an ace is having no hand to play it with, or a repugnantly awful table in this case, every possible strategy coming with a legion''s worth of drawbacks and likely points of failure.

    She made note of them, but cleared her mind for the moment.

    Manor D'' Sallia, as its creator had taken to calling it before its inception, was no manor at all. It was a bastion, relying not on impenetrable walls of stone or carnivore filled moats to keep itself safe, but on weapons against the mind and soul, cruel misdirection and illusions that could drain sanity like an army of leeches to be deployed against all those who managed to find it in the first place.

    It was one of the reasons she was not too worried if Holly was just faking politeness for the sake of biting off their asses when most convenient. She would only be spelling her own doom, one way or another. Not that she did, of course.

    Shame about the creator. After decades pitching his idea to the Sect''s Council''s deaf ears, he had finally struck gold, but didn''t live to see the completion of his dream. Such is life, she supposed.

    He had been one hell of a witch. This poisoned honeypot of his had been lined with so many traps they still hadn''t counted them all, so even she hesitated in prancing about carelessly. Not that he would create anything that deliberately targeted the Faceless, but precaution killed less often than blind confidence.

    Having taken stock of her bearings, she walked some many paces south, coming to a door like all others here, perfectly measured to not stand out from its similars, and knocked lightly thrice. She waited thirty seconds, and then almost knocked again before a meek voice answered from inside.

    "Please, enter!"

    In the Manor D'' Sallia, there were two rooms furnished for human habitation, this and Holly''s. Decked with a bed, lamps, and even a reading table with a complementary chair, it was all the comfort one could ask for, though its sole occupant never seemed too happy about it.

    "Couldn''t sleep again?" Marquise asked.

    "I''m well rested, Lady Marquise. Thank you for your concern."

    "Oh c''mon, I''ve told you just Marquise is perfectly fine. No need for honorifics among friends, right?"

    "I''m sorry, I just would hate to be impolite after everything you have done for me."

    "Don''t worry about that!" Marquise said, dismissing her with a wave, "But oh well, if you prefer it that''s alright by me."

    "T-thank you. I''m sorry if it displeases you, but I appreciate it."

    "It doesn''t, I''m a tough girl! Rather, I''ve come to check on you. How are you doing today?"

    Perhaps in better times, the demure smile she got would be all the answer she needed, but her appearance told such a starkly different story it was chilling.

    Cassia was a strange bout of luck. The backup team send to take Fordu''s place should he not report back had been ordered to search the village for anything, be it survivors or even potential buds who might one day germinate into further Blossoms. What they had found most everywhere were ashes and soot encrusted bones, with not a miserable blade of grass having survived the divine flames.

    She had been the only exception, and by all accounts, by complete coincidence. The building she had been sheltered in was made of logs from a tree not commonly found at all outside the deeper valleys, resistant to Divinity and hard to burn. Still, it had barely held on, so another savior took its place: the rooms furniture.

    Absurd! Just like dear Holly, her sister. What were the odds?

    Cassia looked unhealthy. Since they took her from the ruins, she had lost much weight, had lost her slight tan to an almost deathly pallor, had completely lost interest in all activities even. For a couple weeks she didn''t move at all, keeping quiet and dull eyed wherever her current caretaker would plop her down.

    It really didn''t help, she had to admit, how little they had to care for a proper human being here. She was wearing a dress sewed from several shirts they had lying around, everything lighter than armor they had on hand being uncomfortably skimpy and breezy for her tastes. They had fed her on a diet of berries and mushrooms, but at least she would be getting some meat for the foreseeable future.

    "Have you eaten breakfast yet?" Marquise asked.

    Cassia gave a weak nod. "As much as I could, my Lady."

    "Did you enjoy the books I brought you? As far as entertainment goes, I do have a few more you might be interested in."

    This time her smile didn''t reach her eyes, "They were very interesting, much gratitude, but I was never taken with reading in the first place. It feels..."

    "Like a breach of taboo, right? Specially when I let you do it so freely."

    "The Lady knows me too well," Cassia said, then sighed, "Exactly. I know it won''t, c-can''t happen, but reading so openly I keep imagining the doors being broken down, leering lads with clubs moving in to capture me..."

    "Yeah, you''re damn right. So long as I''m watching, not even a god could touch you, Cassia!"

    Cassia looked away, but a bit of color did return to her cheeks, much to her relief. Sadly, this would not last, the topic she intended to bring one she knew the woman had been dreading for a while.

    "Speaking of... She woke up today, Cassia. Holly woke up."

    As expected, it was certainly not the right time to bring her up, but would it ever be? The moment the name left her, a full body shudder wracked Cassia, her face somehow growing paler, eyes wide. She looked on to her, practically begging for help through stare alone, as if dear Holly was the living reincarnation of her god, back to punish her for her sins.

    "... She was such a sweet girl," Marquise continued. "Really kind and polite. She was practically dancing with joy when she heard you made it out alive."

    Or she would have if she could, but nevermind that.

    Cassia, who had been lying down on her bed, sat up so suddenly her eyes lost focus for a second. Marquise dashed to help prop her up, the only reason she heard her question at all. "Y-you didn''t tell her about me, did you?" Her breath came out ragged and desperate, too fast.

    Marquise kneaded her shoulders softly, shaking her lightly for attention. "Deep breaths, Cassia, deep breaths now."

    Cassia tried, that was evident, but her eyes flickered from side to side, as if she would find Holly peeking from the shadows. "P-please, you must tell me, did you tell her I am here?!"

    "Should I not have?"

    Cassia whimpered. "Y-you promised me you wouldn''t!"

    "I promised you she wouldn''t come anywhere near you without your consent, and she didn''t, right? But dear, doesn''t take a genius to see she really cherishes you. Should I have told her you died? Pretend I didn''t know? She would be devastated."

    Cassia trembled in her arms, using her meager strength to throw a mild glare "I-I have asked you before to please not call me dear."

    "Oh, sorry! honestly, I forgot, won''t happen again."

    "T-thank you. And yes, I would have greatly preferred if you told t-that... that I perished with the village." She hugged herself tight, pleading eyes fixed on Marquise, "Y-you can''t let her near me! Never! I''m begging you, no matter what she says, we are not to see each other!"

    "... Haaaaaauuuu. Can I ask you why at least? I''ve heard you visited her before, well past her... changes, let''s call them."

    "My father made me, but I... I-!"

    Marquise gave her a gentle pat on the knee. At first, she flinched and cried out as if struck, eyes searching for her sister once again, so Marquise was quick to remove the offending limb. As the following silence stretched, she sunk into herself, giving her a miserable look of regret.

    "I''m s-sorry, Lady Marquise, I don''t know what came over me," Cassia said.

    "No need for that. If you don''t like it, no need to force yourself," Marquise said, as close to soothing as she could make it.

    "I-I like it! I do, I sincerely appreciate the gesture, but I suppose I wasn''t expecting it..."

    "It''s fine! Either way, I''m sorry. And if you don''t want to answer my earlier question, that''s fine too, won''t drag it out of you," Marquise said, getting up, "If you ever change your mind, I''d like to hear it. No rush though!"

    Cassia managed a smile, faint but genuine. "There are no words to convey my gratitude to you, Lady Marquise, for this and so much else. I would not be exaggerating to say I own you my life, nothing less would repay my debt."

    "Don''t worry about silly things like debts! If you want to repay me then focus on getting better and back on your feet. And keep telling me those stories of yours! Really interesting stuff!"

    "But of course," said Cassia. "I-it''s the least I could do."

    "Well, I think that''s about everything I had to say for now! Anything I can do for you before I go? Some food, water, a different blanked, a little song?"

    "The Lady sings?" Cassia asked.

    "She sure doesn''t, but knows someone who does!"

    "I-I believe I would rather not disturb the other residents right now..."

    "Sure." Marquise said, opening the door a notch, "He''s a little shy anyway. But if you ever want some music..."

    "I will think on the matter."

    "That''s better!" She left the room, but turned to her guest one final time, "Rest well, Cassia, don''t worry about sleeping in. Remember, if you need something, don''t go walking around alone, call us, please!"

    "I will. Thank you, My Lady. May the F- I mean, I hope you have a good day."

    The door closed with a click. Outside those four walls, not a sign of life could be heard around the manor. Its corridors were lit with Fireflypebble lamps, dim and cheap but long lasting and just enough to see. They had never had the time nor the budget to decorate, not that they would, what they traded with the locals was more than enough.

    In this half gloom, she turned her back to the door, took three steps forward, and whispered, "Aleh."

    At first, only silence met her. Twenty two seconds later, counted, a footstep suddenly echoed from right behind her, light and hesitant.

    "I did everything you ordered me to. Ma''am," he scoffed.

    "Daaaamn," she whispered, "good morning to you too, buddy. Follow along, I''m giving you a mission."

    "Of what kind?" he said, so wary it was nearly funny.

    "First, I''ll need you to go downstairs and tell Shifty-shifty to take your place here by Cassia. Don''t want to leave her unattended."

    "She will cry again."

    "Eh, if she''s used to me she''s used to the others," she said.

    Afterwards, they walked together. She threaded lightly, giddy with the excitement of stealth despite owning the place, until she reached another inconspicuous door. Instead of a room, this one lead to a narrow staircase up.

    On the next floor, there were just as many doors, but not even half the rooms. This was probably the most dangerous place in the entire mansion.

    "... Can''t I just wait downstairs while you pick what you want?" Aleh said.

    "You''ll know what you need better than me. Now, stay close and follow my footsteps! Feel free to hold on to my hips if you get too scared," she said, hand held coyly over her mind''s mouth.

    "Fuck you." He spat, literally, right on the floor.

    "... That could have killed us both, you know?" she said, turning to watch his face pale, more for his sake than hers, "Hihi, Juuuust kidding! You missed the trigger by a couple centimeters."

    "... Fuck you twice."

    "Fuck you thrice!"

    Aleh had guessed their destination right. Knocking on one specific door four times in a specific pattern, she waited for its characteristic hum to weaken before turning the knob. Inside was a storage of sorts, sparse and dusty, made with things not easily replaced or fixed in mind.

    "Pick what you want," Marquise said, pointing, "but avoid that shelf over there, by the corner, that one''s a booby-trap."

    She quietly watched as Aleh picked through their meager reserves for a couple minutes. He was slow and deliberate, but she could already see what would interest him and what wouldn''t.

    "Would the Lady grace me with information on what I''m supposed to be doing in the first place, or is divination part of my job now?"

    "Oh, right," she said, then cleaned her mind''s throat with two splendid coughs, "So! Aleh, I''ll be sending you to our outpost in Meagerwind soon. I want you to be my relay to our group there."

    "Alone?!"

    "Yes? Didn''t you say you preferred it that way? I think I can spare somebody if you want."

    "...No, fuck that. It''s going to be difficult enough getting there without some dead meat on my shoulders. I can do it, I can, indeed."

    "Alrighty. I''ll give you a message with detailed orders, along with One Two and One Three, so let''s pass by my office after! Besides that, like I said, feel free to take whatever you might need, within reason though!"

    Aleh, who was in the middle of carefully examining a small transparent sphere with his thumb, nearly dropped everything he was holding onto the floor. "W-wait a moment, I get not only One Two but One Three as well?! Then that means-"

    "Mean there''s no point keeping it in my hands, right? What am I supposed to do with it, pick my teeth with the sharp edges?"

    "So it''s going down, then?" He gulped. "You found it?"

    She crossed her arms, shaking her neck. "Oh Aleh, don''t I wish I could tell you I did. Rather, I found the next best thing, maybe."

    "But you''ll keep your promise?"

    "How many times did you ask me that, again?"

    "Answer!"

    She briefly considered sighing in his face, but decided it was better to deescalate the situation before he got too annoying. "Aleh, your dreams are mine. You know what I put at stake for them, don''t you? Calm down."

    "... I need to hear it again. Just to believe it for a little longer."

    "I''ll tell you what I always told you: I can''t make miracles, but everything else is within my reach. They will pay for what they did to you, and double for your siblings."

    He nodded. Finally, he picked a small box of black velvet, tied close with a ribbon of gold, something that had been his from the beginning, something she was surprised he hadn''t picked first, though she understood why. He looked up, eyes distant yet fierce.

    "At last, we are going to leave Ivias," he murmured.

    "Or die trying." She completed, "I trust you, Aleh. Don''t go getting yourself killed this far in the plan."

    "Heh! As if they could!"

    "That''s better! So, that''ll be your haul, I take?"

    "Not if you let me into the armory while we''re still here."

    "If you ask me in a reeeeeally cutesy way I might, just to see what my little Aleh looks trying to swing one of our weapons!"

    "...Fuck off," he said, grimacing.

    "Welp, I tried! Let''s go then, follow my steps."

    Afterwards, everything else she needed to do went smoothly. A reassured Aleh was a very efficient Aleh, she had learned over time, and an efficient Aleh was a tremendous asset to have. He didn''t need too much micromanagement, just a direction and a goal, and suddenly he had ideas for when he would be leaving, what routes he could take without notice, which supplies he would need for the road, and how he could expedite it all.

    With that, she was free to plan on the long term.

    They had nothing, relatively speaking. A bunch of children with sticks brandished against the town''s militia; outnumbered, overwhelmed, and blinded by their burning house''s smoke. Their location would be a tough nut to crack, but their cover was on a time limit, this before any incident could push it one way or the other, and when they came that was it, everything would be done or everyone would be gone.

    The odds were, to put it kindly, like a landslide against them.

    To Ivias'' best gambler, if that wasn''t exciting, nothing else would ever be.

    Repeating it as a mantra, she settled down for a busy day of work.

 1 - The God of Lesser Hollow Closure

    "The first thing you should know Holly is the state of Ivias when the Colossus rose.

    "A loooooong time ago, nobody knows how long really, Ivias was a wasteland, filled with dry earth and strange, hostile flora. It was inhabited, that much we have evidence for, but we don''t know by who! Many are the societies who claim to have been born whole cloth from the ground here, and most of them we know for a fact weren''t.

    "But regardless, they had to come eventually, right? The Dashi.

    "You said you didn''t know what the Dashi are, don''t you? And I bet you believe that too! The Seven Kinds Under the Light, Holly, the people of this world, Humans included of course, but also Gobans, Murmurs, Xilofena... You get the picture. For all their differences, they think alike, and they can breed with one another, they- we can talk about that later, just give me a moment.

    "One day, obviously, they arrived to our shores, probably coinciding with the time of the first forests and the growth spurt of the mountains, quickly populating the archipelago. They built societies, became empires and nomadic warbands, joined their blood to the veins of Ivias!

    "Now, now, I''m not going to be touching on every player on the board, many of them just weren''t very relevant to this story I''ll be telling. What would be the point of bringing up Amavias, the Ebony, and its Towerlands when they mostly stuck to themselves across history? What would be the point of bringing Kelevias and the Argent when their mess doesn''t start until around a century ago?

    "What else did I have to talk about...

    "Oh! So, Holly, what do you think of this map? Pretty cool, isn''t it?! Drop dead gorgeous! The illustrations, the calligraphy, the color! the moment I saw it I knew I had to have it! Unfortunately, it''s a bit hard to read, and kind of just wrong in general. The archipelago bends points to the north and east, it''s not a line from left to right! Buuuuut since it already gives us the opportunity, I''ll be dividing it into left to right, up to down, for ease of reading! Any objections? Good!

    "So, this big island in the middle, that''s us, Ivias. It''s upper and lower halves are almost separated by the Ivian Chain, which when grouped with it''s surroundings is called the Mountainous Region. Up here by the left shore, yes, close to the Higher mouth of the Hollows, is the Wind Region, so called for the sudden, unnatural bouts of strong wind it''s plagued by.

    "Here once laid one of Ivias'' oldest nations, who through its life held many names, fracturing and rejoining and unmaking and reconstructing itself until its very end. See this di- this long necked fellow with the helmet? that''s them. Out of their many names, most probably know them as the Indolent Empire, but we''ll be using a different one.

    "The Citrine.

    "They weren''t great. Slavers, lovers to despoilment and corruption, cannibals, xenophobes, honestly the whole gamut! They lived by the dogmas of an ancient religion, dictated by a god whose very texts claimed had vanished from the physical world, but that didn''t matter in the least to them, depraved creatures they were! They''re gone now, but their cults to bestial pleasure remain to some extent.

    "To the north they were kings, but the south belonged to others. See this squishy fellow here? Really cute, with its hollow eyes and its soft curves... E-excuse me, the Tyrian, a thousand societies led by a thousand gods of the same making, once referred to as the Yida. They dominated everything down the Chain, from here in the left at the Southern Light Region to the other tip, The Lost Forest Region, though the real core of their rule has always been the Sacred Forest Region, this lush place in between.

    "And they were strong! Not as individuals, though some were, but because there were so damn many of them! Thousands of tribes and towns and wandering clans, each under the thumb of one Yida and one specially blessed warlord, usually. Their fight for dominance was endless! It was said that if two scouts from two different groups happened upon the same unripe fruit in the forest, dozens would die fighting over it. And their gods, always watching from the undergrowth, reveled in that state.

    "And between Tyrian and Citrine, this knobbly thing that you shouldn''t think about too much, the Temple of the Breathless God, the Smaragdine. In one word? Grotesque. They lived like parasites, infiltrating the other two and converting as many as they could to their cult before fleeing in the night to their hidden sects. They could kill hundreds of innocents a year, captured or tricked, all asphyxiated in the name of their unborn deity.

    "All these were human, but humans aren''t the only Dashi with a say here. At some point after the first two, different traditions cite different timelines, the Gobans arrived and settled here in the upper right side, the Northern Light Region. Nowadays we call this place the Goban Territories, as the Gobans here don''t really form nations the traditional way, they are more like... city states, I suppose. They unite when they need to, but otherwise each group minds its own business. They''ll be this rock here since I broke their figurine a couple days ago, sorry about that.

    "Then, the last of the old guard. Some insist we still call them the Gin Inri, or Gwin Inni if you want to sound modern, but it pretty much just translates to the name everyone else calls them, the Brave Sailors, The Azure.

    "And now, Skawla. They-

    "Oh, You know Skawla?! Nope, not surprised at all, it is called the Gateway to Ivias for a reason it-

    "Yeah, yeah, I guess we can talk about that later too. As I was about to say, they were pirates and pillagers, until time and loss mellowed them out, but during this age they still stuck by their old ways. Their figurine is oddly beautiful, don''t you think? We used to call her the Lady Siren back at the Sect... Doesn''t matter anymore, I guess.

    "The Crimson came later, represented by this three-branched tree. Keritists, Followers of the Sun, followers of their ''Father'' Kerit. I think I don''t need to introduce them, but if you want to know more I do have some material on hand. What is relevant is that they arrived from the continent and insisted they would create their holy land here, and burn those who say otherwise!

    "These were, for the longest time, the main factions here. There were other, smaller societies, but the ones that survived were the ones who knew not to stick out. These six lived not only at each other''s throats, but their own as well, fighting in a stalemate that seemed as if it would last forever.

    "But it didn''t. Things are about to get worse, Holly, because for all the horror it bred, Ivias has always been a beautiful island with some very interesting goodies buried beneath.

    "You must have seen it by now, how I kept this one figurine out of the map. Yes, it''s made of stone! And painted too! No no, all compliments to Swordlight, alright? I''m just the one who stole it. Anyway, you must also have found it a little strange that I didn''t talk about Galehold so far when they are so old, right?

    "They called themselves the Yine Empire back them. Ruled by the Lion Dynasty, they conquered anyone who stood in their way, coming to reign over the shores of the Lesa Sea, which is this one at the bottom here. They were big players for a game Ivias could never even hope to join, and once they took notice of us, our days seemed numbered.

    "See, they were fighting on too many fronts, even for their standards, and wanted something to lessen the burden just a tiiiiny little bit. So, what did they think would help them? Why, weird metals their enemies had never seen.

    "You must have seen this black metal here- Wow! Careful, you''ll-

    "Ouch. I''m not going to shove it in your face Holly, don''t worry, goodness! Here, give me your hand.

    "Good, where was I? So, this is demonium, named for its... interesting properties, and it can only be produced by Mountain Guts, that is, only in very select places, like Ivias and nowhere else close. Besides this, we also had towerbone, living iron and steel, madmen''s silver, all which could make very strong, very difficult to defend yourself against weapons.

    "When they arrived, it was like nothing else the archipelago had ever seen. They took Amavias like a toy from a child''s hand, they massacred the Tyrian until they were less than a quarter as plentiful, they made the Smaragdine disappear as a presence for many years, and destroyed the unprepared Citrine so thoroughly it led to the Yellow Night, where their capital and several of their larger cities disappeared in thin air with a burst of golden light, never to be heard of again, and leaving the rest of their people at their enemy''s mercy!

    "They eventually got as far as razing a third of the Goban Territories down and poking the Azure until it started to sweat but, to put a very complex series of events short: the front they neglected the most cut a path right to their heart, their emperor died in battle, and the crown prince fled with whatever remained of the nobility here, but had to give up his name and claim to continental territory or be scorched to cinders.

    "And many years later, the prince became emperor, got assassinated, the Bear Dynasty rose, and Galehold gained its name! Hooray!

    "Tensions got worse. There was a new giant now, the Golden Bear, licking its wounds but still hungry for what it once failed to take, while the Tyrian''s territory only became bloodier and more broken as their need to unite clashed with the deep seated hatred and distrust their gods held for one another, and the scattered pieces of the Citrine either succumbed or turned to darker, older rituals to survive. Meanwhile, the Crimson grew unchecked and spread in all directions, while the Azure and many of the Goban Territories scaled their armed forces, paranoid over what was to come.

    "At least it was peace, of a sort, for a while. The Toothpick Column, I think they used to call it.

    "In that scenario, a certain discontent rose, not one against any one group in particular, but against the very state of things. People questioned how things could have gotten this way, surely that couldn''t be natural state of things?! There had to be some infection somewhere, something that could be excised!

    "During these starting years, this group had no name, but their reach grew. Through the cracks in between their nation''s vigilance, people started talking, learning about one another, comparing faults and patterns. They were scholars, witches, soldiers, philosophers, people from all over without much power but enough connections to slowly widen the web.

    "The first conclusion they came to is one I''m sure we both can tell is as clear as day: The gods were to blame!

    "After all, who first made and taught the laws Ivias followed, if not its once living gods? They dictated how things moved, and where they went, even for those built without a deity to cater to: the Goban territories were an open feast for the other cults, who could preach of safety under their wings to the very reviled and lonely Dashi; meanwhile, I could tell you all about how the Smaragdine, subtle as it was, wormed its way into the arteries of the Golden Bear to reach its hungry, scared nobility, but I might just as well explain how using the practices of their enemies to drive fervor and conscription had always been a tactic of the good ol'' empire.

    "The second conclusion was that there was nothing they could do about it.

    "Not as they were anyway. They were barely rebels, barely together! And their goals, of course, were the worst of taboo. Changing the ways of one nation would be nothing short of a miracle, imagine all of Ivias!

    "Then one of their members was caught. The news spread wide, and suddenly they saw their numbers captured, tortured, executed! They were pursued from all sides, the few lucky enough to avoid suspicion, or skilled enough to evade it, saw themselves forced into exile, to leave their families and friends behind bearing the brunt of their betrayal.

    "The survivors gathered as they could, fleeing to uncharted territories as a last resource. Assassins, bounty hunters, apparitions and beasts from all walks of life dogged their every step, leaving the already wounded group no more than a meager chunk of what it had once been<u>.</u>

    "It''s quite... something, isn''t it Holly? Because even after all this violence, their love for their homes, for their neighbors, never died. No matter how many died, they gathered and brainstormed a plan to save Ivias, knowing that soon the Toothpick Column would give, and the island would burn bright.

    "But if they couldn''t do anything back when they weren''t known, what could they do now?

    The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.

    "They needed something else, something stronger, something larger, something that could actually oppose the gods.

    "So, as desperate people are known to do, they turned to rumors!

    "They turned to a monster.

    "There is one more ef- I mean figurine I have to add to the map.

    "... No, it''s not a stick. Nor it is a pillar, nor a cylinder, nor a container for the real figurine, if you thought that too. But it''s very important! The most important here, even.

    "As the Yine colonized the island, something awakened. Nobody knows where he came from or why he came here in particular, but the scars left in his wake were obvious. Few were those who managed to glimpse him and survived, fewer the ones willing to tell the tale.

    "He would arrive like the wind, they said, silent until he was right above you, them the storm would crash. He was as tall as a palisade, so strong his blows made entire forests shake, so fast not even the best marksmen could catch him! Armies and blockades alike where nothing but dust under his might, and the gods he hunted were helpless to even scratch his thick skin! What he wished to kill, he would kill, and then disappear into the night as if he had never been there in the first place.

    "He struck many times, always successful, always leaving no tracks, always promising to return, until one day he simply didn''t. Never seen since, the few who tried to search for him eventually all came back with empty hands.

    "Until that nameless band, that is. Not like they had other options anyway.

    "The search was grueling. Cobbling together what little in way of clues they had, they braved wilderness and fellow Dashi, were stalked by the living and the dead, and lost many of their comrades. Devoid of supplies, they starved and overheated, went mad with disease and thirst, and eventually caught so many wounds and parasites some of them didn''t even resemble human beings anymore!

    "We don''t know how many left in this fruitless journey, but it is said only twelve made it to the end.

    "Their will the sole anchor keeping their legs steady, they eventually came face to face with a clearing in the forest. At the middle of this clearing laid an enormous tree hollow, its shriveled roots carpeting most of the area.

    "He was right there, peacefully resting under its shade, almost as if waiting for their arrival, a grotesque club of impossible metal right besides him, skewered into the earth to its middle and still taller than any men. They carefully approached, but he didn''t stir until they were but five paces away from him. Immediately, they fell in prostration, finally recognizing what they had found.

    "When I said monster, Holly, I meant it. An abomination! A living mountain of muscles bulging like tumors, limbs both unevenly sized and unevenly jointed, head gone and torso cracked to his stomach with wounds and teeming with a strange dark ooze. His weapon whispered cruelties into the ears of those poor romantics, telling them of all the terrible fates they would suffer and mocking their terror.

    "For years, little was known about him. Even his true name was a mystery, the few others he had earned, such as the Colossus, meant to fill the gap.

    "They soon learned that this kind and wise creature was called King Eligor.

    "His first command to his subjects was to be at ease, then to introduce themselves. Their told him of their stories, of their suffering at the hands of their people, their exile and lethal journey here. Then, he asked their objective, which they gave right away of course. He asked of their homes, of their families, of their dreams, and soon they were speaking to the abomination as if he was an old friend they had come to visit.

    "Eventually, as the sun began to set, the King excused himself and went hunting, preparing a great feast from local delicacies. for the first time in many weeks or months, the nameless band ate and drank to their hearts content, crying tears of joy. When they fell asleep, the King himself cradled their bodies and brought them to safety, letting them soundly rest the night away.

    "The next morning, he gave his next command: ''Follow me.''

    "...Thanks, I worked really hard on that voice.

    "Cough cough! As I was saying, they had proved their resolve, but their skills were not to par. Before they had even thought of that, however, the King had already moved to rectify the mistake.

    "The King brought them to a cave, said to be somewhere around the base of Mt. Tremor, or Mt. Shulgan as some will insist you say. Guiding them deep into its bowels, he spoke again: "Here lay your dreams, by your own hands you will create it.''

    "What follows are the most intense years of the nameless band''s lives. Eligor was a gentle liege but a fiend of a teacher, or in his own words: ''If you wish to partake of my kingdom, you will be perfected or you will be mourned.'' They were made to learn combat against the mountain''s enormous vermin, to survive its dripping acid and venom ridden walls, to eat its flesh and drink its diluted blood, all in the name of self-improvement!

    "And they excelled. Soldiers became unrivaled warriors, witches twisted the world around them with a thought, tacticians learned to predict the flow of battle before the enemy had assembled.

    "And so finally, they were allowed out back to the surface. Nobody knew how many months, or even years, had passed, but none of them cared. They had just taken the first step in the right direction, and their King recognized them.

    "Next came the trial by fire.

    "With weapons and armors hastily crafted from what they had found within Mt.Tremor, they fought the gods for the first time. Against the Ember Blossoms, against the Yida, against the Grand Flesheds of the Citrine and the wandering priests of the Smaragdine, they battled without fear nor mercy, persevering no matter the wound! And they won, of course, again and again.

    "They eventually named themselves in honor of their King.

    "The Faceless Band.

    "The King was overjoyed at his new companions, and watched closely their rise to fame. Still, he mostly allowed them to fight their own battles. Experience is always good, right?

    "One day the King brought them together, having received some pretty bad news through his own means: The Neverborn, the Breathless God of the Smaragdine, would soon start the creation of a vessel that could hold its might. Should that happen, that would be it for Ivias.

    "And worse? He didn''t know where, other than that it was within Galehold''s border, the cult already irreparably enmeshed with its upper society.

    "Didn''t make them hesitate even a little though. I read some documents retelling of their nightly raids and let me tell you, they could sure be... pragmatic, let''s say. They hit cults one after the other, stopping rituals and cutting the source of power for the vessel bit by bit. Their violence was noticed, not by the Smaragdine but by Galehold''s own military, the strongest Ivias had at the time.

    "The climax comes during the famous Siege of Blossomcourt. You might have had heard of this one Holly, it was really famous and got a lot of stories based on it! It goes something like this:

    "The Faceless Band struck the town of Blossomcourt one evening, but didn''t expect the cult to have bled to so many people. They fight, most of the town ends up dead, dealing a huge blow to the Smaragdine but allowing the Yinian army to rush in and surround them! Over the course of a few days, the army tries to breach into the town, but every time they come out the losers. And, this is very important, they lose thousands of men but don''t kill even one member of the Band!

    "Things are going south fast, and the Royal Army might arrive any time now, but the King refuses to cut his way through his enemies, so he sends out a request for parley, not just to anybody, but to the Emperor himself! At first, the Band doesn''t expect any answer, until somebody actually approached the fortified town.

    "Now, if you learned about Prince Padrion III from history books or such you might end up with a sliiiiightly unfavorable view of him, so let me tell you that despite everything he always had the best for his empire in sight. Who else besides him rode to the gates of Blossomcourt that afternoon, after all?

    "They talked until the next morning, Prince and King, at which point the Prince left and told the surrounding forces to give the Band way. What exactly they talked about nobody knows, but the effects are still felt to this day.

    "For example, for decades the empire had tried to work demonium in vain, until the Prince came out with the method, and made the industry boom. It wasn''t long after that the first proper demonium blades were forged and given as gifts to a select few generals.

    "I''ll tell you the story of how that went another time. What''s important right now is that such revelations had a price of course. While the King worked from outside, the Prince sabotaged the Smaragdine from within, and tried to locate their base of operation.

    "Feels weird telling the story to someone who doesn''t know the twist before it even comes. It''s a pretty well known fact between us Faceless that the reason the Wind is the Wind Region at all is because the Smaragdine had already tried, and failed, to summon their god centuries earlier.

    "Coincidentally I''m sure, the name Galehold had come from the original name for the castle that now housed the Imperial family. Can you guess why?

    "It took a couple years of preparation before the final price was paid. By that point, Galehold had been left destabilized as the those in and out of the cult fought one another, but the way was clear and the Faceless Band was finally allowed into the heart of the Empire''s capital.

    "What happens next, you''ll get a lot of differing opinions on. It became known as the Long Night, that night when the empire''s forces were taken by surprise and thousands died. The castle was broken into, and even the Royal Army was too slow to act, being forced to retreat at the number of casualties. If there is one thing you can learn about Prince Padrion III from casual conversation, it''s his participation in that event.

    "Inside the Castles bowels, they followed an unnatural draft to the deepest reaches of the its dungeons, where they found the entrance to a cave system, six times the height of a man and growing wider the further down it went. At its very bottom, thousands of paces beneath the earth, laid a chamber that could fit a citadel, entirely repurposed for the needs of the Smaragdine.

    "Hundreds of sacrifices paved the way to the center of a great ritual circle. where the Neverborn now stood. They were too late.

    "On one hand, their efforts paid off, the god was obviously weakened and its vessel so badly mutated it was bursting at the seams! On the other, the moment the Faceless band laid eyes on a true god for the first time, they broke. It was all it took for them to understand the severity of their mission, the creature stronger than they had ever imagined possible, a thing that should have never been allowed to exist.

    "Its presence was all it took to send them to their knees. They knew then that struggling would be worthless.

    "King Eligor, however, felt differently.

    "It is said that there were no words traded between the both, no moment of hesitation or planning, the instant the Neverborn and the Colossus laid eyes on one another they immediately charged and did battle!

    "And that battle was... impossible to describe for us lowly beings. It''s said the city above trembled as if the island was parting in half, that great storms battered the nation, that tornadoes pierced the countryside and broke against one another! The Faceless Band, occupied fighting the lingering remnants of the Smaragdine, never spoke much about it, but they made it clear it was the kind of grandiose battle you only hear from the biggest wars in history, the kind that defy even mythology, like those during the Starlight War or the Murmur Revelry.

    "It lasted until the next morning.

    "Battered into pulp, the Neverborn finally faltered and shattered. Not sure if it''s truly dead or not, but what little remains of the Smaragdine has never tried bringing it back again.

    "And the King, standing over its corpse, held on to his weapon and wordlessly succumbed to his wounds, never falling.

    "A dream died that day, and so did the Faceless Band as a united group. There was no avoiding that despair, the thought that everything they had worked for had been for naught. Diminished as they were, half of them gave up on saving Ivias and left. If their King couldn''t do it, nobody else could.

    "The other half wasn''t satisfied with that conclusion. They had been exiled, pursued, starved, beaten, slandered, maimed, killed! they suffered a life that could, should have have broken them, all for the sake of their beloved homelands, only to give up now? They grieved, yes, but they would not let their suffering be in vain.

    "Carefully, they lowered their King and his weapon, quickly carrying them out and away from Galehold. Where they took his body I can''t tell you, but it was somewhere safe, somewhere untouched by men or god. There, they would undertake his funerary rites, as worth of such a being as they could make it.

    "And it was during those funerary rites they made a frightening discovery.

    "Their King was hollow inside.

    "Now, the one thing everyone who knows about the Faceless can tell you is about the Mark of Eligor, our void, our head pouches! Back then, however, the Faceless didn''t exist. The Faceless Band had never seen their King use it, and would never have dared lay hands on him or disrespect him with impertinent question while he still lived.

    "Inside, they found eight great slabs and one scroll.

    "Each of these great slabs had been created from a different colored materials, some which could be found in Ivias and some which couldn''t, and each carried a story, a Tale, many which stunned the Band as they recognized the words of their enemies, many which they had never heard before.

    "A mad god''s plea for its followers to go out and spread their feral and debauched ways. The Citrine Tale.

    "The end chronicles of a declining race of ancient creatures, predicting their return and multiplication until they controlled all lands. The Tyrian Tale.

    "The primordial contact with something from beyond, what it wished to turn our world into, and how it could be made into flesh. The Smaragdine Tale.

    "The last words of a forlorn oceanic goddess, the dreams of a future where her children inherited her domain and rose above all others. The Azure Tale.

    "The genesis of humanity and the prophecy of a creator god who would one day reincarnate as his own son. The Crimson Tale.

    "A completely nonsensical but extremely violent screed, aimed at all life. The Argent Tale.

    "The visions of a matriarch, a dream in which the world outside her home was scorched black and only her people survived. The Ebony Tale.

    "And, at last, a blank slate. The Ivory Tale.

    "Disturbed, they opened the scroll, hoping it would enlighten them.

    "Mostly, though, they found secrets.

    "The origins of the King, which they took to their graves, and what he understood about his birth.

    "How to work the Filthy Devil''s Lead, or as it came to be known, Diaborium. You''ve seen Hagan, right? Yeah, that''s the reaction. Please don''t touch it again.

    "How King Eligor came to receive that name, and the sixty-seven other similar names he brought with himself.

    "And finally, parting words for his subjects.

    " ''These are seeds, each will one day inevitably germinate, but are ultimately all fellable. To my dear comrades, embrace this dream and bring an era these Eight Tales are mere fancy. To this purpose, I bless you with my knowledge and the means to use it. Now, make of it your blades.''

    "And so, the once Faceless Band set to work.

    "This was their own seed, and they nurtured it with gentle care. They expanded their web again, and made a partnership with the reformed Galehold; they began the creation of the first Faceless, knowing they would not be the ones to complete it; they kept eyes ever vigilant, and made sure no gods would ever rise again, and that the few who walked the land would know they no longer stood at the top.

    "And that, Holly, is the dream we Faceless are born to nourish. It''s the reason we are taught to fight, to plan, to sneak and hunt. We''re the children of that dream, of that scroll, of all those scholars and soldiers who dared hope and sacrificed themselves in body and mind to achieve it.

    "That was King Eligor and the Eight Tales, and the rest is history.

 2 - The Children of the Lake 1

    <blockquote>

    "And thus the Brave Sailors beheld their future in Scaura''s arms.

    Theirs was the Lady''s promise, that one day son and daughter would inherit their mother''s land.

    That one day her blessings would guide them home, and pity the poor fools who defied it.

    And thus, as one, they rejoiced."

    --- Azure Tale

    </blockquote>

    She stared down her enemy, limbs tense, mouth dry.

    They faced each other in the dark, a single dim lamp to illuminate both. In that decrepit, stale room, the shadows lived and squirmed, their bodies dancing against the walls in mocking delight. She could hear their muffled laughter, echoing from all around, yet dared not distract herself for even an instant.

    Carefully, she reached into the nearest casket with a nail, fumbling in for a few moments before finally hearing that signature stone knocking, and then slowly dragging it out, making sure to avoid any sudden movements.

    One glimpse down, as brief as her eyes allowed. She knew by heart what symbol she would see, but it payed to make sure. Her opponent mimicked her, though surely she had no further tricks up her sleeve? Else, everything would be lost already.

    And so, her preparations complete, she went on the offensive. As strong as the enemy was, she knew she would miss that opening, as gaping as it was! Had she not went out of her way to study it beforehand, so would she.

    Or, was that a set up? Was this a trap, carefully laid knowing she would have no choice but to spring it?! She couldn''t be sure, the master stroke having completely severed all other alternatives by this point.

    It was do or die, and she hadn''t got this far to die.

    Heart thundering in her chest, she struck without hesitation. And her opponent, to her great relief, flinched at the noise, almost toppling back! This was it! just a little more, and she now could deliver the finishing blow, with-

    Agare leaned forwards, "Not a word." Then leaned back.

    "Aaaaaaaaah! C-come on!" Holly said, "I checked with you and everything! And y-you don''t laugh!"

    "Me?" Marquise said, "I''m quiet!"

    "I can see your shoulders shaking!"

    "Oh, Holly, you''re just too sharp! But try not to have a little fun when you''re taking the game this hard! Your frown, your little sulk, they''re so cute, I thought you were going to explode!"

    "You''re probably thinking of Hoogwil, hillock." Agare said, "This word doesn''t exist."

    "Oops, that''s not what I put?" Holly gave it a check, just to be sure, and felt herself flush at discovering she had mixed symbols again! Worst was that she had scratched half this letters herself, shouldn''t she recognize her own handwriting?! Just a better look at the overturned box she had been keeping her pieces in, however, and there was the right piece shoved together with all the others she didn''t know where to use.

    They had been playing this game for nearly an hour now, and the score currently sat at 2-1 in her advantage. Marquise had told her to make the pieces and the short table they were playing on out of a bunch of pebbles and a knee height boulder respectively, according to her all to test Holly''s strength and finesse. She hadn''t minded, the rock wasn''t that heavy and it was actually pretty fun to be allowed free reign on the design!

    The coat of paint was all Swordlight, though, with what little they managed to scrounge out of the woods.

    "I-is it m-my turn then, Lady Marquise?" Furfu, her opponent, said, "T-then I think I can put this here, r-right?"

    "Nope! Sorry dear, we''re out of letters and none of yours make words. How many do you still have, Holly?"

    "I have four, counting this one I just played!"

    "Five for our Furfu. Guess we have a winner!"

    "I won?!"

    "I-I lost? I-I lost a-again?" Furfu said, shrinking into herself, "L-Lady Marquise, I swear, I s-swear I kept up with my studies day and night, that I-I reviewed my teachings thoroughly, I-I don''t know how this happened but I p-promise it w-will be r-rectified in s-short or-"

    "Wow, wow, easy there!" Marquise approached the now gently shivering Furfu and began rubbing one of her shoulders, "It''s alright! You didn''t do bad at all! right, Holly?"

    "Y-yeah! You even beat me once Furfu, completely washed me! A-and this one was really close too, really tense!"

    "D-didn''t you s-start learning Awinian t-three weeks ago?"

    "Y-yeah?"

    "Then no it isn''t f-fucking fine," Furfu whispered, void glaring holes into the table "A-again and again and again, same m-mistake I shouldn''t be able to commit once, with one f-fucking year of advantage over her, but I lost? No, no, you fucking idiot Furfu, l-letting others walk all over you again, k-knowing where that always e-ends, like you h-haven''t touched a fucking b-book before, like you h-haven''t heard about grammar in your entire fucking life, you c-can''t do that, no, you have to do better, you have to be stronger, to win harder, to-"

    "A-Agare, I think she''s going to flip the board again."

    "... Just please put the pieces away before we''ve to gather them all around the room, I will-"

    "I''ll take care of this, you and Holly go prepare for the next lesson, alright?"

    "Uhm? O-oh, that''s right-"

    "We''re going. Come, Holly, now."

    "R-right now?! O-oh, I guess I am- uhm, alright, see you soon Marquise, s-sorry about everything Furfu!"

    The only answer was a creak of leather gloves so loud it almost sounded like a squeal. She closed the door behind her and hurried after Agare.

    <hr>

    Indeed, three weeks had passed since she arrived at Marquise''s manor.

    Three weeks of meeting Marquise''s people, and learning they very much preferred to keep away from her. She had expected as much.

    Three weeks where Cassia still refused to see her. This one stung, but she understood and tried to stay patient.

    And very importantly, three weeks of having her perspective on the whole world flipped upside down, again and again.

    The Marquise had taken the role of her tutor whenever she had free time, but mostly it was Agare who would spend a few hours teaching her, before growing tired enough to shut her down and leaving her to self-study. None of them were Elder Seneschal, but she could say they were doing a good job.

    The world was so much larger than she had imagined! Galehold, however, was actually much smaller. She had already ruined the surprised paying too much attention to Marquise''s very modern map, that the mighty Lion Dynasty that had once conquered everything close to Ivias, almost conquered Ivias itself, was now a little corner of the island! Marquise had got a bit upset when she mentioned it, so she tried to keep it out of mind for the most part.

    Ivian history was just a part of her studies though. Most of her time was occupied by lessons on the Ivian Language.

    Or Awinian, as both her teachers had been explicit in telling her to call in front of the manor''s people, and outside too just to be safe. It was a strange language, with a whole different alphabet and pronunciations to the good old Yinian, yet she didn''t have much difficult with it, if anything she had been speeding through it! Which, well, was not always a good thing.

    Her favorite, however?

    Will training.

    And being out here, outside the manor''s sterile walls with Agare and Marquise, feeling the sickly sweet smell of the jungle all around her, hearing the grass getting crushed beneath her toes, it always reminded her of why, even though the lessons themselves could be rather arcane.

    "...What''s it called again?"

    "Gugly! It''s a kind of phantasmal." That being, according to Marquise, living creatures like animals which could use "powers" in a way kind of perhaps similar to hers, to slightly paraphrase, "I''ve seen a couple of them out here this week, shouldn''t take long to find another."

    Today marked the first time Holly had ever seen her host not dressed in one of her beautiful, wild dresses, but closer to the Faceless in the mansion. Closer, but not exactly the same, she was pretty sure she had never seen any of the others wear something like that sleeveless tunic, simple colored but with a cleavage that dipped as far as her diaphragm.

    "... And you said they like to drink berries, right?"

    "Don''t focus on that thought! It''s the start of their mating season, so most are looking for partners on the ground."

    "Mating season..."

    "What?"

    "Nothing! I''ve been finding a lot of others bugs and w-worms, but nothing like you showed me."

    It wasn''t just the manor, the entire woodlands around it dulled her Will, the key difference being that at least out here it didn''t feel completely useless. Still, it was hardly the highs she had achieved during- She shook her head, not wanting to think about that right now. Suffice to say, something here kept her from doing her best.

    Her arms-that-weren''t-arms, then, felt sluggish and imprecise, but unfortunately she had never managed to put that cat back into its bag. She could curl it around her in a loose, enormous snake-ball of limbs, though never come close to concealing them again. For better or for worse her phantom members were there to stay.

    A couple week of practice had helped a lot. In this short while, she had learned there was a strong difference in sensation from the soil to the things living above it, and that the things that were tangible to her Will didn''t always match the things that were tangible to her body, even if one affected the other; in that process, very much like learning to swim through mud, she had also relearned how to search for things, and how to feel for danger.

    Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator.

    And how to understand you qre being felt for. Something will like but not quite, hazier and "softer" then hers, brushed against one of her Will Arms combing through the layers of natural litter, making both flinch.

    "There!"

    Her Will converged at the spot, surrounding the poor thing trying to escape in vain. Muffled or not, once her Will had attached itself, it woudn''t-

    "Ouch!"

    "What''s that?"

    "It''s stinging me!"

    Another harsh lesson she shouldn''t ever forget is that others could very much hurt her through her Will. She wasn''t too sure on the mechanics of that, admittedly much owned to the fact she wasn''t too willing to hurt herself to test.

    Stinging Will or not, her net was cast.

    For all their differences, the Hollows and this place weren''t that dissimilar. Trees could grow to twenty times her height, and the foliage could become so dense some places were shrouded in perpetual shade. Here, at this time of day, as the shadows of the mountains crept over them, night fell before the sun could.

    Some fifteen paces away from them, at the bottom of an ankle deep fissure covered in small flowers, light began to shift. It was not exactly a physical process, no, more like circumstance conspiring to highlight the hidden critter, with the aid of a slight unknowable something contrasting its greens against those of the covering stems and saplings.

    It was roughly the size of Marquise''s palm, its absurdly spiny body so thin it was almost as if built out of sticks or flower stalks. Its antennae were longer than its body, its tarsi so large they would be quite frightening on something bigger, and its huge eyes never left her, even as it quietly slinked off out of its hole.

    "Yup! That''s the one for sure! You''re getting really good at this Holly, think you can try that thing we started practicing yesterday?"

    "Y-you mean fine tuning?" More specifically, Marquise had wanted her to make it so only Holly and nobody else could notice her ability activating, "I-I don''t think so, no, and I don''t think we have the time to try right now."

    "Guess so. Little guy is really eager to get away, right? Sure thing then, go get ''em girl!"

    Holly nodded. Eyes fixed on her target, Will honed until its image was clear as day, she lowered herself, listened to the crunch of damp soil and moss under her hardskin with barely restrained anticipation, tensing her limps taught, ready to pou-

    "Buuuuuuut, not like that!"

    "Buh?!" Holly skidded on a pile of rotting leaves, and the Gugly booked it.

    "Two legs, Holly, Two legs!"

    "N-now?! I''m faster on all fo-"

    "Oh? We have time to argue?"

    "Aaaaaaw, fine!" Holly sighed, standing up and running, "If I lose it it''s your fault!"

    "It''s for a good cause!" Marquise yelled, voice growing distant, "You gotta keep them healthy and exercised!"

    As if she hadn''t already fully healed!

    Didn''t matter. The chase was on.

    And soon she completely forgot her frustrations.

    She could feel them blowing, brushing against her skin, the hot and humid breeze under the forest''s canopy, gliding strands of old webbing, leaves new and old, flower puffs, dew gathered from the morning''s mist! Burrowleeches and mites lost in low hanging branches jumping her way, failed nettles scraping past her flanks without purchase, the sensation of fungi bursting into clouds of spores under her feet, all the dangers of yesteryear welcome now. Decades gone now brought back, when she could finally run like-

    No, not like she used to, like she dreamed to when playing with her sisters, imagining herself spreading wings and taking flight! And fly she did: over stout rocks she would have had to run around, up cascading manes of roots and small cliffs that could shelter a man, through thorn ridden bushes and hair filled urticaries, untouched and without breaking stride, nobody to ambush her on her way home!

    Agare, who was quietly dashing in the corner of her eyes and would not hesitate to stop her if she got too far from the mansion, excepted, but he got a pass as he had never tried hurting her.

    And the Gugly, for all it tried to escape, to flee into the safety of root networks and long abandoned vermin burrows, was no match for her. It was fast, yes, absurdly fast for such a diminute creature, but even on two legs all it took was getting serious and she almost overshot it in five long strides, shocking the poor bug into charging several different directions before settling into one, too late.

    Now came the hard part.

    She had to catch it alive, the Marquise had requested as much, but she also didn''t fancy needlessly hurting something she was told not to eat, something she wasn''t sure she could accomplish thanks to how clumsy her hard-skin made her feel.

    She would have to try anyway.

    And so, judging the distance right, she pounced, hand outstretched but nails curled back.

    So close she was a blink of an eye away from snatching it, her shadow passed over its head.

    In a move of blinding dexterity, the Gugly flipped itself back, dashing in the complete opposite direction!

    ...Where her other hand was already waiting, caging it against the soil before she raised it into the air.

    "Ha! Do you think this is my first time bug hunting?! Good try, I knew you-"

    Her hand reached eye-level just in time for her to see the little bastard scurry down her arm.

    And so began the struggle to catch it again, this time as it ran around her body. Back and front, up and down her limbs, never jumping off to safety but always evading her grasp by a sliver! How could something so barbed be so slippery?!

    Its journey through her body ended as she felt its tarsi right below her chin. Almost slapping it, sending it running towards her hair, a sudden impulse overcame her, and so before it had the opportunity to scamper elsewhere, one of her hairs came from right below and wrapped itself around its thorax!

    And... that was it?

    She could feel it wriggle against her skin, and almost couldn''t believe what she had done. She won! Not that it was ever in doubt that she would, but it had been so simple! All she had to do was reach around with one of her hairs and-

    Holly froze.

    Her grip slackened. The Gugly lost no time in freeing itself.

    She felt its final efforts, crossing down to her shoulder then the small of her back in the split of a second.

    Then it disappeared.

    The shock of what she had just done caught up with her. Gasping, she turned around, only to find Agare stepping back, the critter firmly pinched between his fingers.

    She stared at him, speechless. She almost couldn''t believe the sight, as if she had lost herself inside a dream and mixed it too deeply with reality, until Agare shifted.

    "You''ve done well." Agare said, sounding a little thoughful, "The Marquise will be pleased. Now, come."

    "W-why?"

    "Because you''ve accomplished the objective, of course." Agare said, "Your movements are still clumsy and maladjusted, yet they show significant improvement over the weeks. You have proved your Will can keep up during activities without outside interference, and you that you can use it without losing control."

    "A-ah. That was the reason, then?"

    "In part. Now come, we shouldn''t be tardy."

    She nodded, a little nonplussed at the intrusion, and other things. Shrugging it off, she decided to simply enjoy the rest of her lesson without thinking too deeply about it.

    <hr>

    Indeed, three weeks had passed since she arrived at Marquise''s manor.

    Three she had spent learning more about her body than she ever had years down in her room.

    Three weeks she had spent trying to piece together what Will even was, with no results.

    And very importantly, three weeks of coming to know the limitations of this wondrous new aspect of her life.

    The evening had come, and after a light dinner of meat, meat, and meat, she had retired with Agare back to her room, planning to read until the next morning since she had a lot of books to catch up on, but a couple hours later she had done everything but.

    It was a difficult situation. She didn''t want to neglect something that suddenly felt so fundamental to her being though she had not even been aware of its presence through most of her life, yet thinking too much about it made her uneasy in a way she couldn''t easily describe, adding to a pile of wordless phenomena that was starting to annoy her just a tiny bit.

    For example, the reason she couldn''t fine-tune her Will anymore, either activate full power or none at all. And it was so frustrating the way she could remember doing it too! After a few hours thinking it through, she had arrived at an explanation she was half satisfied with.

    "It''s like learning to take a punch!" She had told Marquise and Agare that morning, "There''s this state in the middle of things that it really doesn''t want to be in!"

    "The way you generally describe your ''Will'', I thought it might be more like bending your arm too far?" Marquise said, demonstrating with her own, "Some people can bend theirs to some freaky ass angles, but even they have limits, and eventually the body will tell you to stop and go back."

    "No! Look!" Holly said, doing her own, "It''s the wrong kind of wrong! It''s not like a ''no, no, slow down, go back,'' it''s like... like a flinch! Like instinct kicking off and trying to get you out of the situation! I think I can master it though."

    "Wow, that''s quite the range of motion you have... S-sorry, why specifically learning to take a punch?"

    "I mean, there are other similar things, but this is the one that came the quickest to mind."

    "Got punched too often?"

    "You bet! How could I have become the strongest kid in Lesser Hollow without some scuffles?!"

    "Oh yeah?"

    Marquise was fast. So, so fast...

    At least she didn''t actually hit Holly at all, and even apologized for the nasty joke, but the shame taught her to think twice before mouthing off ever again.

    Others had no such convenient equivalences.

    The Marquise had heavily implied, or all but said really, that she might be able to do the opposite, that is, make things harder to perceive with her Will. Was that related to her poor ability to somewhat change colors? The way Marquise reacted suggested not (thought, at least it got her called cute).

    She also-

    "Holly!"

    Holly, deep in introspection, endlessly tapping at the book before her, "The Sun Invasion", without ever having turned it to the first page, jumped window high before catching herself.

    "A-A-Agare?!" Holly said, peering over the glowing rock filled lamp she had been lent to look at the only other person in the room, who had spent the last few hours silently leaning against the far wall.

    "Do you really not mind that the Marquise is using you?"

    "Uhm?" Holly said, heart slowing down as she came to understand the question.

    "Don''t pretend you don''t notice. Even you can''t be naive enough to not know better."

    "H-hey, I''m not naive! I''m not the smartest, but..." Holly said, but shook her head. She decided to go for simple honesty, "And no! I don''t mind!"

    "Shouldn''t you?"

    "Why?"

    "Most in your situation would be. Few are the people who can accept serving another''s ambitions, specially when made to in such an underhanded way."

    "E-even so, if it wasn''t for her generosity, where would I be?"

    "Dead."

    "W-well, s-see?!" Holly said "I-if she wants to put me to good use, I don''t really mind! I mean, I''m getting a lot out of this too, look! This is a book, a proper history book, and I can read it in front of anyone, at any time! E-Elder Seneschal would give me such a scolding if he saw..."

    "Aren''t you worried about your sister?"

    She froze.

    "Marquise might have lied to you. Your sister might be rotting under your village''s ashes, and you would never be the wiser."

    She gulped, feeling her hairs swiping behind her head "W-why are you asking me that?"

    "Are you not among strangers Holly? Has nobody ever taught you not to trust every hand extended your way? Aren''t you afraid we might only be milking you for all you''re worth, and planning to discard you as soon as you can''t keep up? Your misstep today could have been your last."

    Holly stopped.

    There were a lot of different answers she wanted to give. Angry, spiteful answers, as well as terrified answers, bitter answers, but something stopped her. This wasn''t it, that was not what she was being asked for.

    And so, she arrived at simple honesty again.

    "Agare, if you were, what could I do about it?"

    "...Explain."

    Staring down Agare''s void was hard. She never knew what he was thinking, and couldn''t help to think a proper face wouldn''t help much at all. Still, she knew she had to keep talking, so she fought through the knot forming in her throat.

    "I-I don''t want to think about it, b-but if Cassia was actually dead and Marquise had been lying about it, w-what could I do about it? where could I go? I don''t have anyone to cry to, to h-help me, you guys are the only ones who even know I exist!"

    "...So that''s it? You don''t have other options?"

    She shivered, suddenly cold to her stomach, "N-no, that''s not what I meant! I-I like the Marquise, she did so much for me... D-do you think I ever imagined I was going to live in an actual house ever again?! Specially one this big! That I was actually going to eat enough food to feel full, to meet so many people I had never thought possible, a-and, and- Aaaaah! What I''m trying to say is that I''m glad to be here! In fact, I wouldn''t mind if she used me a little harder!"

    Hard not to blush after saying all that.

    Agare didn''t answer, but she could feel his attention boring holes through the top of her head. Had he not believed her? Did he think there was something else there? Well, that was all he would get!

    After a minute or two, she felt him look away, and couldn''t help but visibly relax.

    "Haaaaaauuuuuuh..."

    She jumped, "W-wait, what did you just-?!"

    "She''s alive."

    "....What?"

    "Your Cassia is alive. I have seen her with my own two-"Agare said, stopped, then murmured under his breath, "Fucking Marquise, what are you doing to me..." Then louder, "I''ve seen your sister, I''ve seen her speak of you. She''s alive, and here."

    "R-really?"

    "What did I tell you about blindly trusting strangers?"

    "D-did you or did you not?!"

    "I did, I''m just making a point," Agare said, turning away towards the door, "I''m sending in Furfu. Remember to not open this door until I return, even if you hear something happening outside."

    "Wait, I though the Marquise didn''t let you leave me alone?"

    "She gave me special permission during certain occasions."

    "Such as?"

    "I don''t wish to say." Agare looked at her one final time from the other side of the door, the hallway''s dim lighting not much better than her room''s, "I will be back soon."

    And that was that. Agare left without another word, and she was left with her thoughts. Furfu was probably still a tad mad from that morning, so she would be taking her time to come, and until then Holly would have all the time in the world to ponder these new and horrifying ideas Agare had left her with.

    Except, not even at the tip of a blade she would!

    And so, even though she wasn''t too keen on it, she finally flipped the first page of the blasphemy she had requested, and started reading.

 2 - The Children of the Lake 2

    "I''ve changed my mind, she has my approval. Requesting preparations to move out effectively immediately."

    "Sloooow down buddy, aren''t we missing somebody here?"

    "I''m ready to accept any punishment you deem fit, I just don''t think it would be wise to bring her into this conversation."

    "Haaaaaaaauuuuuuh... Alright then, sit down, let''s talk."

    "You can''t be-"

    "Fordu my dear, please, pleeeease don''t break down before we even get to the first step. Are you still scared over those news from last week? If they haven''t found us yet, ten minutes of your time won''t bring doom to our doorstep, they have yet to invent a Faceless Sitting Scryer, and if they did doom''s already here and a little break for tea won''t make a difference."

    "How can you still be so calm?! This isn''t just some run of the mill Tale Heir, it''s t-the..."

    "Senesa. You can say their name."

    "...I would rather not."

    "As for how I''m still this cool, well, it''s not like we didn''t know they were coming sooner or later, right? You shouldn''t be panicking either, your fears won''t do us any favors nor bring our goals any closer."

    "I have to admit, I thought myself better prepared for this day, but actually faced with the idea..."

    "And suddenly things get a whole lot heavier, yeah. We have to keep in mind though that this is the worst possible moment to make a move, if somebody is likely to catch us right in the act it''s them. So, say it with me! ''The enemy is-!''"

    "''...The sole beneficiary of our despair, and not only the one.'' I''m not in dire enough straits you need to cite the Sect''s teachings to me!"

    "Gihihih! Funny how these tables turned, right?!"

    "Unbelievable! Doesn''t matter, let''s move on. You say this is the worst moment to move out, when will the ideal time come? Wait too long, and we are liable to be struck before we even get our feet out the door."

    "Well, well, if everything goes according to this lil'' scheme I just cooked... say, a week?"

    "A week? How?"

    "Well, why don''t you sit down, stretch your legs, relax a little, and maybe we can discuss all the finer details of my master plan. That''s right, gooood, now, remember how eight years ago-"

    <hr>

    As the one months anniversary of her arrival to Marquise''s manor approached, she was called for right as dusk arrived.

    The day reminded her of that first time she walked these corridors. Her limbs shook lightly in anxiety, Agare kept an even pace behind her for reasons he absolutely refused to say, and she kept looking from side to side, as if she hadn''t passed by these doors hundreds of times now. She nearly skipped right past Marquise''s study, were not for her companion''s warning.

    The room was much the same as it ever was. Things had the tendency to move here in between visits, all sorts of clutter coming and going as needed outside of a few fixtures such as that beautiful map of the Ivian Archipelago, as well as her plushy chair, still too small for her body yet made comfortable by consideration alone.

    Which is why the differences stood out all the more. Even if she hadn''t noticed the shift from extravagance to function in Marquise''s wardrobe, the tension in Agare''s muscles, the barely restrained agitation in Swordlight and Aram''s posture, she could still taste that wrongness in the air. Something was about to happen, she was sure of it.

    "Holly! Been waiting for you! Have a seat!" Marquise said, and though her tone was roughly the same, something in it sent an unconscious shiver down her spine.

    "Marquise, g-good evening!" Holly said, sitting down, "S-strange hour for us to meet isn''t it?"

    "Is it? Haven''t we talked at night plenty times before?"

    "I mean, yeah..."

    "You''re a smart girl, Holly. Won''t pretend otherwise: caught on that there''s something afoot, didn''t you?"

    Holly nodded.

    "Gihihih! Sooooorry, didn''t mean to scare you too badly, dear. Remember thought, that you won''t be forced into anything you don''t want to do! I promised, right? But I won''t lie, I did ask for you for a very, very important reason today, and I would be very happy if you at least listened to me before deciding."

    "I-I would never refuse you, you k-know that! Tell me what it is, and I will get it done!"

    "Oooh, much obliged for all that zest! If you only knew what that does for motivation... However, things are a little different today."

    "Different? How?"

    Marquise leaned back against her simple wooden chair, hands resting over her desk, "Holly, I want to tell you another story. Not a myth, not a parable, something more personal, and not just to me. You remember everything I told about the Remnants of Eligor?"

    "Of course!" Easy as, in all honesty, outside of King Eligor and the Eight Tales and some other anecdotes, she hadn''t talked much about it.

    "Then you know a Faceless'' life mission of hunting the divine and their creations. In that case, I''m sure you are aware mine was too."

    "I am!"

    "A Faceless doing as the Faceless do, that''s just matter of fact right? Still, I''m sure you have noticed this too," Marquise said, then raised a hand. For a second, Holly expected her to to cover an invisible mouth, tap at an invisible chin, or some other gesture along those lines, so she couldn''t help but gasp when Marquise sunk her fingers into the wound of her neck, slowly and soundlessly sinking her fingers through the oozing, muscular folds of her Mark, "That there are a few differences between me and the average Faceless.

    "These differences aren''t just of the body, but hierarchical too. Not all those among the Remnants become Faceless, and of those that do even fewer become like me, the so called Headless. We''re the ones who proved ourselves in literally every sense, from the resilience of our flesh to the sharpness of our minds, and were finally trusted as leaders of our people."

    "T-that sounds really cool! I had gathered you''re really strong before, but never how much!"

    "Not just strong!" Marquise flexed a bicep, not bulky like the lads in Lesser Hollow but still very well defined, "Bah, I can gloat all I want later. I proved myself, I became one of the Headless, and eventually gained enough prestige the Council, the... ruling body of the Remnants, allowed me to become the leader of my own unit of Faceless."

    "Here, right?"

    The Marquise pulled her fingers from her neck, not a drop or a stain to taint her pale fingertips, and shook it.

    "N-no?"

    "No. Far, far away from here Holly. You told me you knew about Skawla, remember?"

    Heartbeat accelerating, Holly nodded, "I-I''ve heard about it..."

    "Sure. It''s a beautiful nation Holly, and a beautiful city too. If there''s one place outsiders, or those living under rocks, know about Ivias its Skawla, the Gateway to Ivias. And it didn''t earn that name from nothing either! If a new foreign product started booming with the local market, if a new trend made waves among the island''s aristocracies out of nowhere, if some new technology began to revolutionize agriculture or war or whatever, if some big shot from overseas came on tour or business, chances are they arrived through Skawla.

    "The Port of Progress! The Hellgates to the War Isles! The Lesan Capital of Piracy! The Great House of Sirens! I could go on! The city alone houses the biggest diversity of Dashi in the archipelago, carries more wealth in its pockets than all the Goban Territories combined, and sees more trade daily than some of the big continental seaside cities!

    "And it also has hosted one of the Remnants peskiest enemies from its inception."

    The image of the fish woman with the spiral shield came to mind. "The Great House of Sirens... That would be the Azure, then?"

    "Right on the mark, that''s them."

    A strange discomfort settled in the pit of Holly''s stomach, "A-and we do need to talk about this here and now, you say?"

    "Holly." Marquise said, her tone changing to that same she had used to explain the Scorching Season, "I don''t fancy making you uncomfortable just for kicks. If you want to go, I''ll let you go, just know that this here is life or death important."

    Holly felt phantom goose flesh break across her body, "S-sorry, I''ll listen!"

    "Don''t be! If anything, I''m glad you''re giving me the chance despite whichever bug in this topic bites you.

    "As I was about to say, the Azure is powerful in ways few Tales tend to be nowadays. Their Tale Heirs, those who come to posses their Divinity and act for their cause, are numerous, they can be individually very strong and well trained, their members deeply enmeshed into the political climate of Skawla, counting on its armed forces and unrivaled in Ivias navy to protect them.

    "Something needed to be done to keep them in check, and I had just the method. I proposed the Council, and after some months of headbutting that particular brick wall, I managed to break through and convince them I was the right woman for the task!

    "I became commander to what we called back in the Remnants a Forward Base. They serve many purposes, mostly acting as a center of command and safehouse where our agents can gather to fight in some front, you might run into a lot of them if you ever visit the Northern Light Region. Ours, however? We were a sabotage crew!

    "And you better believe we did our job magnificently! We hit them right where it hurts, defeating very core people to their functions, leaking their plans to instill uncertainty within their ranks, turning some of their strongest allies against their cause! We were loved for it, praised for our results, lavished with resources!

    "You except, all of us in this room met there, and fought together as comrades in arms!"

    "A-amazing! And the other Faceless in the mansion too?"

    "No, the others I met through, let''s say, similar interests."

    "W-what kind of-" Holly paused, "Wait, I don''t know exactly where we are but from what you showed me we are pretty far from Skawla. What happened?"

    For the first time Holly had ever seen, Marquise stood silent. It filled her with cold dread. Being screamed at for her nosiness would have been infinitely preferable! It felt selfish to admit, but the Marquise of her mind was unflappable, impossible to be brought low, to be rendered speechless! Yet, she couldn''t deny it, the creaking from Marquise''s gloved hands gripped together with growing wrath.

    "It would be..." Marquise finally said, "Remiss of me to not admit my own fault in what happened. I overreached. I did things I explicitly wasn''t supposed to, and I can''t blame inexperience for that, I knew the consequences. Naivete, maybe, thinking that I knew better than everyone else."

    "You did," Agare whispered from behind her.

    "Please let me explain myself though. It''s an open secret that the goal of the Azure, the Realization of their Tale as we called it, has always been within their sight, and the only thing we could thank for holding back this cataclysm that might become worse than the Scorching Season was their lack of proper means.

    This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

    "Until around 15 years ago, when the first reports that they had found it came out.

    "W-what? I-it had to be a lie, right?! T-they couldn''t, I mean, w-we a-are-"

    "Wow, slow down, slow down! You''re right, we''re still alive, aren''t we? Makes me look like one huge idiot in hindsight, it does. Keep in mind though, at the time all I had in hands was that it was happening, maybe soon maybe not, and the tone of finality the news spreading across the knowing channels were getting worrying.

    "At first only a few were allowed to see those methods in actions. As the numbers grew, so did the scope of people brought in, from the first boot slobbering zealots to those of different, even opposite, spheres of influence to the Azure''s current Lady, their highest member, and they all were leaving convinced! Sadly, they made sure to never bring in anybody easy to approach and ask questions.

    "So I acted, got discovered, and if you let me spare the details, they retaliated," Marquise said, neck bending forward, giving Holly a good view of the ever violent contractions of her void, "They massacred us. The four you see in this room make for the sole survivors of that incident."

    Silence again. Even Aram and Swordlight, tall, mighty, shelled from head to toe in plates of steel, suddenly looked diminute and downcast. She didn''t dare look at Agare fearing what she would see.

    "I-I''m sorry to hear that, Marquise. That''s awful."

    "Turns out, even the Faceless can suffer Holly."

    "N-not like I ever thought otherwise."

    "I know, I know. Sorry, didn''t mean to imply anything with that," Marquise said, "Either way, what''s done is done. They''re gone and we''re not, so its our job to the best we can for their sake, right? And that''s were you come in. I told you before that your dream would be mine, but I never told you my actual dream, did I?

    "I want to make good on my dead comrades, and for that I need your help."

    Holly waited with bated breath.

    "Here is where I would like to admit that my reasons for teaching you so much about Ivias and its supposed main language, and helping you practice your Will while we''re there, aren''t really all that pure, though you''re smart enough to know that much. I was preparing you Holly, not only for a life outside these stuffy walls, but to aid us against one of the deadliest enemies we have ever faced.

    "There are many reasons the Remnants never made a direct attempt against the Azure. Beyond everything I told, the distance, the resources required for such a long term operation, there is the fact their nucleus, the very center of their faith and where they still actively work to Realize their Tale is not only hidden, it changes locations and changes often, and we never managed to figure out why. With you, we don''t need to!"

    "M-Marquise."

    "I''m not planning to force your hand, nor make you work for free. Anything you want, I can bring you, as surely as the day becomes night! Want knowledge? I''ll bring you to the most exuberant libraries in the world! Want freedom? I''ll help you go anywhere your heart desires! Want revenge against the Crimson? Post Scorching Season methods of weakening and uprooting Ember Blossoms began to spread, so we can-

    "Marquise!"

    "...Sorry, go ahead."

    Holly sighed, "You don''t need to go that far. A-anything you ask me to do, I''d do it."

    "But?"

    "B-but this won''t work."

    "It won''t?"

    "Ask Agare! He was there the last time I was pitted against a god, h-he saw what happened to me, what was going to happen to me if he hadn''t arrived on time! E-Elder Seneschal had the same idea, and look how we all paid for that..."

    "I''m pretty sure you both won, and that you delivered the finishing blow."

    "M-Marquise, I have been in my fair share of scuffles, so I know how to tell when I get washed. I''m just going to disappoint you, to get e-everyone killed again, and I don''t want to do that anymore!"

    Holly stared down at her feet, feeling empty. Here she had just reject her savior when she needed her most, but was she wrong? Humans couldn''t stand up to gods, the Elders plot had proved as much. That thing that sat atop the Throne was no lad in growth, full of soft, sensitive bits she could kick and punch. That she had even caused them pain was more a fruit of their weakness than anything hers.

    Regardless of appearance, of size, abilities, she was just another human.

    "Holly. Look at me."

    She heard the soft sound of rustling. Looking up, she saw Marquise pulling one her gloves off, extending her bare hand across the large wooden desk. Wordlessly, Holly reached out with her own, fully blocking Marquise''s from the incandescent light of her lamp with just her fingers. She wished her hardskin had never healed, so she could feel more than a sliver of warmth through the gesture again.

    "I hope you don''t mind me being a bit rude both to you and your Elder Seneschal."

    "R-rude?"

    "Holly, we were all Dashi."

    "I-I know."

    "Except you don''t! And I doubt this Elder could remember it either. There are some super strong Dashi out there, make no mistake, living fortresses and armies of one soldier, and let me tell you that not a single one of them could ever hold their own against some of bad, not even the worst, things that crawl through our precious Starlit World, never could! So, how did we survive this far, how did the Dashi become the most dominant power in the world?

    "Because they are Dashi, of course! Never together but never alone, each filling for the others weaknesses and flaws, using and being used by the other since before they even learned to stack rocks! Still this Elder Seneschal, who as far as I''m told raised you in his own arms, who saw you in your bitterest and your sweetest, really thought you had transcended the limits of humanity sky-high and could take all his problems on your back?!"

    "I c-can''t tell you what he was thinking, b-but-"

    "Holly, I''ll never get to know the guy, though the entire Hollows will live with the memory of his, and I mean his, failure probably for some many generations yet. You will live with what he chose to sacrifice against your will, against your sister''s will!"

    Holly almost asked which sister she meant, that she couldn''t answer either killed her inside. Instead, what left her mouth, meek and shaky, was, "W-we couldn''t fight God. E-everyone was too weak, we-"

    "There are more ways of fighting than taking a stabby stick to the closest thing your foe has to a gut. The Scorching Seasons wasn''t won through face-to-face battles alone, there was tactical starvation of the Blossoms, poisons administered in silence over many days, long range artillery to batter them down before the killing blow, and some insane use of the Unholy Metals you had to see to believe! I barely believe it myself! And yet, your Elder Seneschal couldn''t figure out a better way to help, or even prepare you a little?!"

    "H-he did his best, h-he tried everything, I''m sure of it, G-God was just so..."

    She didn''t know how to defend him, yet silence felt treacherous. How much had he dedicated to her safety, to her well being? He was the reason she had lived for long enough to meet Marquise and Agare! If somebody else had happened upon her, or worse, upon the... that thing she had left behind from her childhood, getting purged at the pyre would have been a mercy! No, she couldn''t let him get lambasted like that!

    She took a deep breath, but froze before she could get a single word out as she felt the pressure of something else above her hand, giving a strong massage over her knuckles.

    "That''s were we differ, Holly, me and him. I''m not sending you in some mad quest for revenge with a pat on the back and a kiss for good luck! We have planned our approach for years, carefully considered all the roadblocks in our way, and if there is one thing we''ll never allow you to do is take the role of savior square on your back ever again! We''ll be there, through thick and thin, until the very end."

    Holly was speechless. She looked from the hands gently craddling her own, to Marquise, frozen in the moment, leaning over her desk, now so close Holly could touch her on the shoulder without stretching. When was the last time before she had been held like this before her? A strange bitterness came over her.

    She wished she could still cry.

    "And you''ll care for Cassia too?"

    "Of course. Take it or not."

    "...I told you. I''ll do it, anything you ask, anything you want."

    After a few seconds of silence, Holly felt Marquise''s hands gently prying themselves from her fingers. She leaned back against her chain, swipping imaginary sweat out of a imaginary forehead.

    "Ooooof! Holly, you really scared me there!"

    "W-why?! I already told I would do it! I just..."

    "I get it, I get it, just making sure you didn''t change your mind, with all the burden I''m dumping on your back. Which you can, by the way! The option is on the table."

    "I-I''ll have you know, when Elder Seneschal went fishing, this back carried half the fish home!"

    "Strong girl! Gihihi!" Marquise voiced, hand covering where her mouth should be. Holly paid attention to the stillness of her shoulders "Well, let me officially welcome you into out group! There is much to do, but I promise you won''t regret it!"

    "T-thank you! I''m happy to be of use!"

    "Because Holly is such and obedient girl, isn''t she?"

    Holly shivered, burying the memory back into the dirt.

    "Something wrong?" Marquise said.

    "N-n-no! Nothing! S-sorry, keep going, I''m listening."

    "With the praises?"

    "I-if you want..."

    "Hmmmm, maybe later. Now, let''s get to everyone''s favorite part of planning: payment! Now, I''ll be honest, getting you to any of the most exuberant libraries in the world would take one monster of a walk, and I don''t have the location of any Ember Blossoms on hand, other than one I really really think we shouldn''t mess with..."

    "It''s fine Marquise, I don''t need anything of that level! W-what you already do for me and Cassia is more than enough, but if it wouldn''t be a bother, there are two things I had in mind and would like help with?"

    Marquise straightened her back, lacing her fingers together, "Cough Cough! Of course. Just name it."

    "First, my condition." Holly cleaned her throat, "I-I already asked Agare if there was a cure, s-so I know there isn''t, but maybe there''s another option? Some treatment, or anything of that sort?"

    "And I hope my dear Fordu didn''t give it too straight?"

    "I-I simply answered the way I always do."

    "And some tact with that would rip your lungs clean off?" Marquise said, shaking her neck, "Well Holly, I''m sorry to say that either way he was right, it''s not something that can be cured. Just tell me one thing, do you really want to... be as you were again? This body of yours, if you forgive me, looks so mighty..."

    Holly blushed, not entirely too pleased this time "I-I''m hideous. Tears don''t come to my eyes anymore, I can''t sleep, I can''t eat cooked meals without getting nauseous, and this Will thing, it''s only good until- until-"

    "Until you run into something else that uses it too, right?" Marquise said, and Holly nodded, "There are some things we can do to help. All this training I''m having you go through helps with a whole lot more than finding bugs in the grass, you''ll see for yourself. Also, if you''re not comfortable with your appearance, and want to get closer to others without putting them off, there are a few maaaybe not very comfortable solutions we can try while I think of something more long term."

    "I''m happy with anything!"

    "You shouldn''t, but I''ll do everything I can anyway. Now the second thing?"

    Holly wasn''t sure how to say this, she wasn''t sure if she should. Yet, if there was a time, that was now.

    Swallowing dry, she told her.

    <hr>

    One week later, they were ready for departure.

    She was going lightly. Marquise had lent her a few of her books Holly had show interest in, specially a couple in Ivian she couldn''t quite read yet. Marquise had also tried to shove a whole pile of peculiar goods on her, only backing down when she insisted she couldn''t even start to guess how to work them. Thankfully, Marquise didn''t even mention food.

    Marquise hadn''t told her who was coming with in the journey, but Agare was a certainty, the way he still had to bring her anywhere he wanted to go. Part of her expect Marquise herself to join their travels, and she did her best to not feed that particular delusion.

    "I did my best, sorry that this is all I got," Marquise said, leading them through the hallways "I''m sure she''ll get around to it eventually. Barring some kind of issue, we''ll probably be able to communicate while you''re on the road. Remember the conditions I gave you?"

    "C-couldn''t forget it if I tried!" Holly said, burying down her displeasure before it infected her voice.

    That the door to Cassia''s room was the same as any other was exactly as she expected. That it was so close to Marquise''s study left her completely befuddled. Hadn''t she passed by this spot a thousand times before?! Sure felt like it! And her sister had always been a skip and a hop away. If she had known... she probably wouldn''t have done anything more radical than begging.

    They paused in front of the room. Marquise waited until Holly gave her consent before giving the door a loud couple knocks, "Cassia! We''re here! If you''re listening, please give us something!"

    At first, they were met with silence. Several seconds later, Holly heard a couple deep coughs as the door was slightly pushed forward. For a heart stopping moment, she almost tricked herself into believing Cassia had changed her mind, and was about to open the door, to greet her with a smile.

    "P-please, speak." said a voice, muffled and haggard, yet so familiar it was painful to hear, "I''m listening."

    Holly looked around herself, searching for the courage she had just lost. She saw Marquise giving her space, Agare watching from the opposite wall dead still, the other Faceless whose name she had never quite caught but had taken so many steps back she was practically guarding the other corridor now.

    She had practiced what to say, had scratched it on the walls, sharpened days worth of things to talk about into just a few minutes, all in vain. Her stomach was twisting into knots, her tongue refused to budge, and her brain had gone so dizzy she might as well have gotten a fever. In all that mess, of course, a thousand words became a million again.

    "C-Cassia, h-hey! I-I''m, uhm, I''m here! I-I mean, you probably know that, b-but I''m leaving now. I-I need to help Marquise with a thing, and..."

    She paused, unsure where to go next. Words failed to describe how glad she was Cassia was listening quietly.

    "I-I''m sorry, I''m so stupid, I tried to memorize all this I had to say, a-and- Doesn''t matter, does it? I''ve been wanting to see you for so long, b-but they told me you''re still not doing so good. I-is there anything I can do to help? Or- I guess it''s too late for that. Sorry for never figuring out where you were.

    "I was there with him, w-with Elder Seneschal that night. G-God is gone! I-I mean, you probably know by now. Sorry again, w-what I meant to say is, h-he wanted to protect us, t-to save the village. He told me to take care of you, that I-I''m sure you didn''t know, because I didn''t tell anyone! I-I tried, Cassia, just like he wanted me to but God... God k-"

    "Holly Seneschal!"

    Holly Instinctually froze. She hadn''t expected Cassia to talk. Or rather, she had expected that if Cassia did talk, it would be the "look at this thing I found by the river!" Cassia which lingered in her fantasies. That, right there? Aged as it was, she would never mistake "what kind of moron tries to touch a bonfire?!" Cassia for anything else, the nostalgia she carried was completely different.

    "Holly Seneschal, you will pay attention to me: If you must help the Lady Marquise with her affairs, you shall not sully our family name, you hear me?! You will eat all the tubers served to you, you will wear clothes in polite company no matter which kind of textile they need to be, and regardless of how peckish you feel, you will absolutely not just pick up and eat everything you find crawling in the undergrowth! Specially worms and larvae! No burrowleeches either!"

    "C-Cassia!"

    "Don''t start fights with strangers, if they attack you run and ask for help! Don''t pull the Lady''s Marquise''s servants into your wild adventures, you might get them hurt! And above everything else, t-try to-" Holly heard the sound of something softly hitting the door, "S-stop talking about my father! You know perfectly well why! It does not matter he pampered you to his e-end, things change, so make an effort to become the adult you are and learn to move on from at least one f-f-f-fuu- stuuupid thing in your life!"

    Stunned, Holly forgot she could even speak. She heard feet quietly shuffling away on the other side, suddenly stopping, "O-oh, and when I say tubers, I also mean herbs and seeds! A-and not only those Ring Flowers that you adore so much, those are treats not nutrition! And try to be a little ladylike in front of others, the Father Celestial knows how humiliating it was to explain why you were always caked in mud and blood..."

    And that was that, their meeting was over. Holly even tried to call again, to no avail.

    She took two steps back and looked at Marquise.

    "...W-what?"

 2 - The Children of the Lake 3

    Holly stared at the object on Marquise''s desk with revulsion.

    Such was its odor that even from a pace away it had managed to clean both her nostrils better than any medicine she had ever taken. It tinged the air with a curious taste, shame she couldn''t tell what from the way her tongue burned.

    "S-so, what''s this again?"

    "It''s called Aris'' Rosetears!" Marquise said, holding the bloated, corked blue gourd upright, "One drop, and you''ll see lil''Rose from the neighborhood dueling clouds in the sky! Or so did the guy who introduce me to this stuff said. You, I''d say, might need aroooound... half the bottle?"

    "H-half!" Holly backed away with enough strength to drag her chair against the floor, "W-why can''t we just leave the usual way?!"

    "Weeeell, it''s a security measure mostly. First, there are certain obstacles set around to both hide the manor and keep outsiders away that you can''t easily circumvent nor deactivate. Second, we can''t let the means of getting in unnoticed leak, not when there are so many ways to get information out of somebody, which no offense but you have no training against Holly."

    "N-none taken, I guess."

    "And third, please? Pleeeeease? You said you''d do anything I ask of you."

    "I-I did, a-and I will! B-but..."

    "If it helps." Agare piped in from the far end of the desk, slightly closer to Marquise''s side, "Most others here aren''t allowed to know these measures either, and would need aid to leave unharmed. They are only informed on a need-to-know basis."

    Knowing she wasn''t being singled out did help, a little. The fear of what that thing would do to her innards, however, remained. The poor blue bottle gourd, robust and fresh, the kind of thing that should last you for years, had expanded in way that filled her with dread, its bottom half covered in ugly blotches that almost resembled rot or mold, were they not acrid green-yellow in color.

    But she did promise, didn''t she? And needless to say, disappointing the Marquise was not an option. So carefully, she took the fruit from her hand, nails unfurling to better grip the cork.

    "Before you do, Holly!"

    "What?"

    "Good luck, alright? I won''t be close to you anymore, but don''t be scared, we''ll still be in contact! Also, I got a good crew for you! Treat them well, and they''ll be your friends for life."

    "Thanks! I-I will!"

    Her chest hurt. She had to say something.

    No. If Marquise was going to keep contact, than this might not be the last time they see each other, right? No need to treat this like another sudden farewell.

    So she gathered her courage, pondered how to drink properly from a bottle with her mouth''s funny shape, and too anxious to procrastinate further, pulled the cork off with a wet pop. Immediately, she felt a light stinging sensation break across her face. She didn''t lose time in raising her chin and pouring the foul liquid down the hatch.

    "Holly. Holly! Half, half!"

    She took that as her cue to stop. The taste was... unexpectedly mild, for the half second she could feel it before her entire mouth went numb. Outside of a peculiar fuzziness in her stomach, however, she didn''t feel any different.

    "Ah. What now?" she asked.

    <hr>

    Holly woke up paralyzed, sprawled over her limbs.

    All she could feel was the cold and deafening silence of the void around her, the only clue she had not been cast down into some dark ocean the dizzying amounts of nonsense battering her through her frenzied Will. She could almost swear it was trying to prop her up in some way, but as consciousness returned, so did her control, and that subconscious desperation faded away.

    Her senses came back little by little. First, her blurry sight, letting her perceive the neither dark nor bright environs; second, a cacophony of woodland sounds, from buzzing, to chirping, to more unknowable shrieks, rhythm poorly matched by the peaceful drumming of a heart; then, a slight tang of mold and moist earth, with a hint of musk and mud; finally, she felt very, very sore.

    "She''s coming to." A voice she recognized as Agare said.

    "H-how can you t-tell?" This one took longer until she realized it had to be Furfu. Why did she sound so bitter?

    "Her eyes gained focus. Can''t you see?"

    "S-she has eyes?!"

    "Are you joking with me right now?"

    "M-my apologies! I-I promise I w-will pay the u-utmost attention to her b-body from now on!"

    "...Just feed her, the way I told you."

    New noises then, the rustling of something heavy against wood as well as a light crumpling, followed by fluttering. Holly spent the next few seconds trying to move, and with enormous effort she eventually managed to barely twitch a finger. Before anything more meaningful, however, the gentle caress of leather flipped her on her back.

    "G-gross, gross, g-gross..."

    "Less whining, more work."

    Her jaw was propped open, and something was dropped in between her teeth. It barely had the time to grab the back of her tongue in its desperate attempt to escape before her unconscious body attacked, seizing the foreign intruder with a spams, quickly dragging it to her depths. By the time the next one came, she was already wriggling the prickles out of her extremities.

    "C-can''t I kill them f-first?"

    Agare hummed in pondering for a second, "No."

    "W-would she e-even notice the d-difference?"

    "Maybe, but I would."

    The world came into focus.

    She had been plopped down inside a hovel, not much worse than some of Lesser Hollow''s poorest works. Obviously abandoned, time and weather had bore holes both into the thin planks of its walls and roof, leaving moss and slime molds to grow up the rotten wood. propped over the same mud encrusted, detritus ridden floor as her were a few small pots, brown and red clay, most far too broken to be of use.

    Meeting Furfu in the... Mark, Holly said, "Thaaaaank yaaaaaaaaah''."

    "Y-yiiiih!"

    "Good morning, Holly." Agare said. "How are you feeling?"

    "Baaaaaaad." Holly said, trying to raise herself on her elbows. It took a couple good tries before she managed to sit down, and only thanks to the still reliable strength of the far wall, "H-how long did I sleep?"

    "Around four days. You haven''t been waiting here for long, however, we had to take a different route than planned."

    Holly looked from Furfu, pressing herself against the front of the hut after scooting away on her rear, to Agare, holding a large object by the door, and noticed a rather stark difference from the manor: both were hooded, their facelessness hidden by a dense veil of liquid shadow, like Agare had been in the Hollow. Their armor, too, had now a cuirass, glowing so faint it was barely perceptible even in the dark permeating them.

    "T-thanks for the food Furfu. Don''t know what it was, but it felt really good!"

    "D-don''t mention i-it." Furfu said, pushing the only lidded pot here away from her. She could still hear scratching from inside, "I-I hope I d-didn''t handle you too r-roughly?"

    "I-it''s fine, I hope I wasn''t too unwieldy? On account of, you know..."

    "N-no, you''re a l-lot lighter than I thought. Are you-"

    "We can trade pleasantries and apologies later." Agare said, "Holly, can you move your arms?"

    Instead of speaking, she gave each a good spin. They were sluggish, and her joints still hurt, but it apparently pleased Agare enough, as he launched the package in his arms her way without another word. Thanks to the size of the hut, all she really had to do to catch it was extend an arm.

    It was quite peculiar. Roughly square, surprisingly heavy, and quite pliable, even soft. It had been wrapped in a thin green fabric with a pleasant floral aroma, tied around with a neat golden bow, so smooth it was practically silk.

    "What''s this?"

    "A gift, from Marquise."

    Well then!

    She didn''t waste time in pulling the ribbon loose with a nail, casting the wrapping aside with complete disregard, to reveal-

    Leather?

    Not any leather she had ever seen, though the odor, masked as it was, sure reminded her of it. It was smooth, a little thin and airy, with some squish to it, colored an earthly, almost mossy green with black dots peppering its enormous bulk, with exception of the upper part of its sleeves, shoulders, back and spacious hood, which bore trails of white spots.

    "Uhm, A-Agare? These are clothes?"

    "A robe." Agare said, crossing his arms, "It''s part of Marquise''s deal. If you want to live comfortably among humans for now, hiding your appearance will be paramount. This is Salazan skin, which are not raised in Ivias but make for popular products among both upper and lower strata of Galehold''s rich, so it''s unlikely you ever came in contact with it before. It should help with most discomforts you have with other textiles."

    "Aaaaaw, do I really-"

    "Don''t complain." Agare turned his head, looking at something beyond the patchwork destruction of the hovel''s walls, "I don''t want to be here for much longer."

    Alerted by his tone, she only briefly hesitated before pullings its hem over her head.

    Unfortunately, the cling of cloth was only one of many factors why she hated wearing clothes of any sort. This? Not much better at all. The uncomfortable weight it draped over her shoulder, how tight it felt over her back while being too slack around her waist and hands, the uneven length of it that covered her hands farther than her knuckles but barely reached the middle of her shins, it felt crooked and unwelcome.

    Then, a somewhat pleasant shiver up her spine. Something was spreading from the robe, crawling across her skin, making her carefully coiled Will go mad again. With a body of a thousand hands, it groped itself, trying to quickly identify the nature of the threat... only to realize there was no threat at all. Beyond stretching across every bit of skin it could find, this dense body of energy, carrying too many qualities she couldn''t hope to understand, felt as lifeless as a rock, not touching her beyond its need to spread and spread further, until it had spread too far.

    She looked down on her hands. Liquid shadows had weaved themselves in between her fingers, up to the tips of her nails. Same with her feet, thought there it failed to cover her pale toes. Changing colors in and attempt to match the impenetrable darkness proved unfruitful.

    She gave Agare a quizzical look, but his attention was solely on her legs. "Fucking Marquise, you weight her kidneys yet forget to get her measurements?"

    "S-she did what?"

    "Nevermind that. It''s too late to make modifications now, we will have to get something for your feet later."

    "M-more clothes?! W-wait! I-if someone asks, why don''t you just tell them I''m deformed? It''s not like it''s a lie!"

    No veil could hide the intensity of scrutiny Agare just gave her, which she failed to match. Agare simply turned his back, slowly opening the door with the world''s most pitiful creak, "I suppose you wouldn''t understand why that won''t work. We can think about that later, for now come, I have some people to introduce you, and they are carrying your things already."

    If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. Please report it.

    "Wait!" Holly said, "A-aren''t you going to tell me what this is?! Is this magic?! Did you cast it?!"

    "D-don''t say that!"

    "Uhm?"

    "Don''t s-say that." Furfu repeated from her corner of the hovel, "D-don''t call it magic. H-he doesn''t l-like it."

    "Agare doesn''t?"

    "She''s not talking about me. Now, come, you both!"

    Outside, she was greeted once again by a verdant forest, though one with much shorter trees and lighter vegetation than she was used to from the Hollows.

    She could tell that, at some point in time, this had been a farm of some sort, though scant evidence still remained. The hovel was, if anything, a strange anomaly, in a much better shape than what chunks remained of the worm-eaten fences, or the uneven pile of debris and dirt that may once have been a sizable house, already taken back by nature and now serving as bed for wild flowers of many colors and shapes.

    For a second, she almost tricked herself into think she had left the Hollows, but to what she thought was east the wall of mountains still reached high. A little further back, and she saw the giant, Mt.Tremor, its peak disappearing above the clouds and fading into the sky. It always made her a little queasy, so she tried not think much about it.

    Agare took the distant front, guiding her steps through the overgrown path away from the old property, and she couldn''t say how glad she was for the stretch. Working the kinks off her joints, she unbid her Will, letting it reach as far as it could before pulling it back, it too terribly sore from constraint.

    It was the first time since that night her Will felt this responsive. No, perhaps it felt even more responsive? The memories had blurred within her head, she couldn''t tell anymore.

    Hands that were not hands rained upon the undergrowth, grasping and feeling their way amidst branches and leaves, fingers digging into critter of all sorts, scaring them silly! A torrent of information flooded into her brain, of which unfortunately little was of any use, the rest beyond her means to comprehend. She focused, hoping she could now see something else, something new, something-

    She didn''t know how she did it. Suddenly, a few blades of grass rustled, and Agare practically flipped sideways, stance low and wide like a frightened beast. She froze, waiting for another nightmare to come for them, yet nothing did. After several seconds of silence, Agare looked her way.

    "Did you do that?"

    "Hehe, s-sorry."

    "Refrain from using your Div-Will that way for now. Abuse it while you''re still adjusting to the new environment, and you might make yourself faint."

    "Y-yeah, no need to tell me twice."

    Though she had to admit, it was easier said than done. Now that they were free, her intangible arms were so eager to sense they practically had life of their own.

    Their walk took them a fair distance from the strange hovel, down the gentle slope of a hill, the vegetation covering their path growing sparser. After a slight curve, they happened upon an immense ficus, beneath a twisting bifurcated trunk which lied a great shape, like a box on wheels. At first, it tickled her mind, finally coalescing into a name, wagon, then differences became know. Could wagon wheels really be that thick? Where were the draft animals? Besides, the frame didn''t fit what she had pieced together from the decayed, rusted, turned over thing that used to lay somewhere in the woods close to the Elder''s home. Then again, that thing had been mulched, and her memory wasn''t too good back then.

    Around this not-wagon, four people milled about. Or three did, while one rested above the vehicle.

    It still was a while until one of them spotted their group. He broke away, running towards Agare.

    Once he was closer, Holly gave him a good look: He was an older man, thirties to early forties, tall and well built, though no match for Julius, her brother in law. He was actually very handsome, lightly tanned skin revealed by his loose yellow tunic, body heavy with hairs everywhere her eyes could see, from his well defined pectoral to his chiseled face, beard sporting a small braid.

    "Sir!" he said in a gravely voice, giving a light bow with a fist on the middle of his chest, "All preparations completed, all that''s left-"

    "Agare."

    "Sir Agare, my apologies! I-"

    "Agare, Rosen, Agare!"

    "S-S-Sagare! My most sincere apologies, I promise to get it right soon!"

    "Good to hear, and good job. Gather everyone now, we have to talk."

    Not losing an instant, that Rosen ran away, quickly beckoning all the others over. She was too far to hear their conversation, but the tone of it was tense, specially when the one above the not-carriage said something, dismissing with a hand, earning him two exasperated glares, none from that man.

    "S-so many F-Faces to take c-care of..." Furfu said.

    "They can take care of themselves. Remember your mission."

    "Y-yes, S-S-Sagare."

    "Don''t start."

    "S-s-sorry..."

    Faces, to her knowledge, was how you referred to those in the Remnants that couldn''t become Faceless, and generally got the more mundane side of business to tend. Marquise and Agare had implied that there were at least a few in the manor, and Holly had failed to figure out if they had been deliberately kept from her, eluded her by complete accident, or were just fruit of a misunderstanding actually.

    The three below approached, the fourth only stuck his legs out the side of the not-wagon, Holly''s preferred outcome really. All three greeted Agare the same way, a light bow, a fist on the middle of every chest.

    "S-Sagare, as commanded! We await orders!" Rosen said.

    "Well done." Giving her a wide berth, Agare stood in front of the trio, looking at each in turn, "Pay attention, I will say this once! This here is Holly Seneschal, a pivotal piece of our leader''s plan and soon an important comrade of yours! You will treat her well, and you will safeguard her life the same way you safeguard one another''s! If any of you have any objections, say it now, while you can still return to Meagerwind!"

    "No, Sir!" All three said in unison.

    "Agare!" Agare yelled alone."And I''m glad to hear. Starting with you, Rosen, introduces yourselves."

    As Rosen straightened his back, a transformation took place. She couldn''t say she knew his usual posture and demeanor, however she could bet an eye that the care-free slouch and easy smile he now sported weren''t usually part of it. Still, she couldn''t complain, the way it made her heart race, just a little.

    "Well, I suppose I should have done this earlier, yeah? My bad, didn''t mean to be rude. Let me make up to you by telling you a little about this beautiful creature before you," he said, giving the back of his neck a lazy scratch, "Name is Rosen, enchanted to meet you! By trade I am a traveling pit fighter, with a name that goes as far as the Territories, but this time I''ll be serving as both your personal shield and an aid to our guide, being the most well travelled among us! Y-you excepted, S-S-Sagare, of course!"

    "Stop with that Sagare thing! You next."

    The one who hummed in agreement was a beauty of the kind that turned heads, regardless of, or in Holly''s case considering, the large scar that traced her chin to nearly her severed earlobe. Aristocratic features, pale skin, piercing green eyes, hair a mixture of brown and copper she had never seen before, differing from Lesser Hollow''s ideal lady in her choice of clothes: She practically wore what the two other Faceless did, with the same dark leather for her gloves and heavy boots, as well as an iron cuirass that very faintly glowed.

    "Name''s Blades." she said, her voice both husky and tranquil.

    "B-Blades?"

    "Blades." She tapped her holstered sword, "They told me I could call myself whatever I wanted."

    "O-oh. W-well picked! I guess."

    "Sure was. I fight, and protect this girl right here."

    "Charmed." the leftmost Face, yet to introduce herself, said.

    "If you need to teach somebody a lesson, call the other guy, I don''t like dulling my swords over nothing.

    And indeed, she had a most strange weapon, a sword with a blade both thin and long, a simple scabbard contrasting heavily with its highly elaborate pommel, where the shape of a beast''s skull had been carefully worked on the tip. Not for a second did Blade''s hand stop idly caressing or squeezing its handle, and the fact Agare hadn''t acted made Holly hopeful that wasn''t a threat.

    "Sheesh, will you never stop talking?!" The leftmost said, "My turn, right Agare?"

    "Go ahead."

    The last person here on the ground was another woman. Holly thought she had grown used to the idea of women fighting in the Marquise''s manor, but the involuntary flinch she gave at looking at this one a second time proved her wrong.

    She was, for the lack of a better word, what Holly associated with matronly: A corpulent body, brown hair neatly divided in twin braids, and a modest yet airy dress, green with a wine colored underblouse, that wouldn''t look too bold used during the Flowering Season back in lesser hollow, hems below the knees and sleeves just past the elbow. She also had brown skin, calloused hands, a nice smile, and actual spectacles! The first Holly had ever seen, with big round lenses.

    She dropped into an elegant curtsy, speaking with a soothing voice "You can call me Almalilly! That''s a foreign flower, if you''re wondering, blue and lilac petals with a white core! I do a whole lot, though I''ll be mostly planning our course and dealing with boring bureocracy wherever needed! as long as we stay in this place anyway. Oh, oh, the Marquise also asked me to continue your Awinian studies, so I hope you''re ready because I''m not a very kind teacher!"

    "Too wordy." Blades said.

    "It''s an introduction, it''s meant to be wordy!"

    "Brevity is the soul of art."

    "Mystery is the death of companionship!"

    "Subtlety is sexy, actually."

    Almalilly rolled her eyes "I''m not trying to fuck her, you know?"

    Holly flinched again.

    "Oops?" she asked, with a quirked eyebrow, "Don''t like that kind of language, Holly?"

    "S-sorry, it''s fine, I''m just not used to hearing ladies say things like that, b-but don''t hold back on my account!"

    "Ladies, is it?" she said with a smile, "Now that''s a compliment I don''t get everyday. Still, pardon my manners, I''ll be sure to keep it in mind next time we talk."

    "Sorry about that..."

    "Nothing to worry about. So, ready for the final battle?"

    "F-final battle?"

    "With your leave, Agare?"

    "Go ahead."

    Holly, of course, knew exactly where Almalilly intended to take her, and had a bad feeling about it. The last Face hadn''t budged the smallest distance, watching the conversation below with an impassive expression, but the slightest hint of a smile started showing as she approached, immediately setting her on edge.

    Holly knew she had no grounds to judge others on appearance. Holly, regardless, couldn''t help herself. Had these people not been chosen by Marquise, she would avoid him like a pile of maggots.

    The word that came to mind was lad. Short, scrawny, poorly combed hair growing just past his neck, a pathetic excuse of a stubble peppering his chin, Holly didn''t need to examine him any further to see all those signs of a growing lad she despised so much. His garish red robe, the toothy thing supposedly resembling a smile, those eyes that stared her deep into the soul, not a detail that could help the image.

    And then, before she could speak, he pushed himself off the top of the not-wagon.

    Time slowed down as their gazes met, the lad falling her direction, her body refusing to act. For a terrifying, endless moment, she imaged that smug face missing his landing, scrapping his ass clean off skin.

    The next moment he did exactly that.

    A silent second of stupefaction was broken by a chorus of "Young Sir!" The lad simply rolled on the ground, cradling his rear and softly cursing to himself as Almalilly rushed to his aid, Rosen sprinting in for the rescue a blink later.

    "Fuck! Fuck!" The lad said, his voice bearing that unpleasant hoarseness of a young man at the cusp of age, "Stupid cunt-guzzling Fetish, what else do I need to do to make your work?!"

    "What were you thinking?!" Almalilly crouched by his side, "Are you still all hanged up on that thing?!"

    "Young Sir! Are you hurt?!" Rosen said, "Let me check-"

    "Tch! Unhand me, you both! And what''s wrong with trying to fix something I bought with my very own money?!"

    "This makes it twice you got hurt the same way! You told me yourself it was hopeless!"

    "Even my professional opinion is subject to change!"

    Slapping away the helping hands, this young sir got back to his feet by himself. He beat the dirt out of his clothes, gave his rear one last good rub for good measure, then looked at her again as if just remembering she was there. Sleazy baring of teeth back, he practically screamed, "Holly Seneschal!"

    "M-me!"

    "Forgive my lackluster entrance." He shook his head, "Many say that one''s first impression speaks the loudest, alas what must always follow the adage is that sometimes, you simply have no control over the circumstances of your introduction."

    "I guess."

    "Let''s not waste any more precious time." The young sir gave a theatrical bow, one arm spread wide while the other remained crossed over his chest, His gaze never losing hers, "My name is Aleh. I''m this party''s witch, specializing in cognitive and supportive arts. I am also an enchantment repairman of some talent, experienced with all five Great Asha of the Meshelaa Continent and the all three of the Bear''s Arts! None of which this fucking Fetish incorporates, I assure you, so I hope you can disregard this incident without issue."

    There was a lot there that went right over Holly''s head, but one things stood out.

    "Asha?" She asked, feeling her heartbeat hasten.

    His lips shut, his smile gained an almost mischievous edge, the first Holly was willing to guess was any level of honest.

    "Asha." he said, simply.

    One of his hands came up, slowly, palm up and finger pinched together. Her Will twitched, feeling a strange presence so close it could only be one thing. It happened in an instant: His eyes widened, his lips blurred with a haunting chant, his fingers were thrown open, and suddenly twin tongues of energy, one black one violet, manifested in mid air! They stretched, intertwining like serpents into a multicolored spiral, their cores melting into one another until all that remained was a spinning sphere of impossible depth, a hole into nothing in a gorgeous monochromatic hue.

    "A-Asha!"

    "Asha!"

    "T-that''s so cool!" Holly said, completely transfixed on the show of colors, "Y-you''re a magician? You do magic! H-how did you do it?! Can you show me?!"

    And just like that, the sphere exploded.

    Holly took a step back, shocked as the once enthralling performance grew grotesque. In the cloud of light that had taken the sphere''s place, unspeakable shapes and undefinable artifacts tried to manifest, consuming one another before any could mature. And through it all, Aleh''s smile, now sharper than any knife, only became wider.

    "You called me... a magician?"

    "W-wasn''t I supposed to?" Holly said, her nails unfurling by reflex. A vague memory tickled her brain, however she had no attention to spare now.

    "Magician."

    "Y-young Sir." Rosen said, paling.

    Then, as they had been there all along, his toothy smile and hollow eyes came back, "Sure! That''s what I am! I promise, you will see as much magic as you want when we are on the road. Now, I need to take a look at a few things, if I''m excused."

    Briefly, his face twisted with such naked contempt, she was sure he was going to attack. Then, she realized it hadn''t been directed her way.

    She hadn''t heard Agare approaching. He stood closer than she had ever seen him since that night in Lesser Hollow. Tensions broken, Agare seemed to finally notice it himself, taking a long and quick stride away from her.

    "W-what was that?"

    "I-I told you n-not to do i-it," Furfu said, to her other side, "S-stupid prick..."

    "Yeah, and you didn''t tell me to whom!"

    "M-my apologies..."

    "W-what did I do wrong? What was his deal?!"

    "Ask him if you ever have the time. Almalilly, get her inside the Oke, we have much ground to cover today."

    "Y-yes! Good idea!" Almalilly said, gently grabbing Holly''s hand, "Come this way, Holly, let me show you something!"

    She looked askance from one member of Marquise''s "good crew" to another, hoping for an explanation that never came.

    Sighing, she though to herself, Marquise chose them, repeating it to herself over and over, a mantra that ever so slightly relieved her anxiety.

 2 - The Children of the Lake 4

    She ran, free and aimless. If she had one wish, was that she could feel the tickle of the grass blades on her bare skin.

    The world was so wide!

    It was daunting, seeing the horizon for the first time, having an idea how big just an island could be. Just a drop in the pond of the Starlit World, and she couldn''t even grasp its totality. Her conversations with Marquise echoed in her mind, of a southern tower so grand it almost touched the sky, of a great body of water wider and deeper than Ivias that separated them from the continent, of a northern crater so wide entire societies lived and died within its bounds, and of a city so lavish all its houses were built of silver. Where was any of this? shouldn''t it all be within the reach of her legs?

    All her eyes grasped were rolling hills, covered in grass both golden and verdant, islets of shrubs and trees overburdened with flowering buds, where glinting eyes peeked from, curious of all that racket she was making. Something like a wasp with barbed legs and an elongated head decided to brave the frolicking girl, the frantic beating of wings heralding the stilted motions of its arrival.

    "Can I eat it?" Holly said, not slobbering at all.

    "Considering the places it probably has been, I wouldn''t," Agare said.

    "I-I try not think too hard about that kind of stuff."

    "As expected."

    The distraction was unfortunately all the time it took for the creature to sate its interest, quickly flying out of reach. Before, Holly would be dismayed at the loss, now she knew one good jump was all it took to bridge the distance. She shook her head; not like she felt hungry anyway.

    They had settled down for the night on a nearby clearing, bordering a ghost village of some ten odd houses. Those dozen or so hours she had been told to wait inside that Oke thing from sunset to sunrise were perhaps the most boring of her life, beating even years down in her room by her lonesome. So much to grab, to see, to taste, one miserable wall away!

    She made up for it. The moment she was set free, with Agare always nearby of course, she had become a living landslide, not the least amount of shame over the chaos she left behind. She overturned every rock, poked every creature who tried to hide, climbed trees to peer into their cavities and nests, dug holes after derelict burrows. Cassia''s words hadn''t left her, not at all, in fact they propelled her to an embittered level of mischief never previously achieved in the history of humanity.

    How could she resist all this novelty? Her Will certainly hadn''t.

    Outside the manor''s walls, the intangible land of her Will grew larger, more bewildering. Everything here was stuffed, even the air had a palpable density to it, the solid lines that once separated every object much blurrier yet she still couldn''t just shove herself through things. There were nuances she had never caught before, the difference between trees and rocks and soil, between herself and other creatures, though unfortunately she still had no words to grasp them as they were.

    She looked at Agare. A certain temptation rose, tough not one she would give ears to; the Marquise had explicitly forbidden her.

    "Holly, this is enough," Agare said, staring back at her. "Let''s go."

    "Are you really not enjoying any of this?!" Holly said with a twist of her robes. "Everything''s so beautiful here! I could stay here for the rest of my life!"

    "Here?" Agare said, a hint of befuddlement in his tone, "It''s the same as anywhere else, you just don''t know that yet."

    "And are there better places? With as many tasty critters hiding everywhere?!"

    "You will see with your own eyes, so why ask? This is nothing, it''s just..." Agare paused, as if seeing their surroundings for the first time, "... A vestige."

    "Vestige?"

    "You will understand soon. It''s hardly unique."

    "Y-you talk like such a geezer, Agare, you-" Then Holly remembered, Agare had never told her his age. Marquise had implied a ludicrous age once, could Agare be around that, or older still?! Something about the idea terrified her, so she buried the notion deep in her mind.

    She looked back one last time. She hadn''t torn this field half as much as she wanted. There would be other opportunities, she supposed.

    <hr>

    First glance, second glance, third glance, no matter how many times Holly looked, this Oke thing still mystified her.

    For all intents and purposes, it was a wagon, except not. No draft animals, not a hint of wood outside a few tightly bound boxes of supplies, its innards segmented so practically it was astounding. From inside it reminded her of an anatomical model, its walls and ceiling gently throbbing across its countless serpentine capillaries, their bulges barely perceptible against the oddly coarse material of its interior were it not for the faint blue luminescence that slowly pulsated from beneath the soft carpeted floor and the velvet seats the others fought over sleeping every night, all the way to the strangely shaped ridges above.

    Sadly, that wonder only lasted until it had to move. Built for security, as Agare explained, there were few passages of air, so as the machine roared to life its interior grew asphyxiating from sheer heat, the air stale and pungent, tinged with something she could neither define nor ignore.

    She had lasted one hour the first day. By the second, she nearly tore her way out by force. She had been offered a small pebble wrapped in a written sheet, which was supposed to make her feel cooler, but she had refused, what she wanted was out.

    And so now she, Agare, and Furfu, reluctantly, rode above on its tarped ceiling, held by nothing but a flimsy rail and their own balance.

    She loved it.

    "So, Almalilly?" Holly suddenly said, close to the strange little square that carried sounds from inside to outside the Oke, and vice-versa.

    "Hmmm?"

    "Could you please tell me the plans again?"

    "Oh, you forgot already?"

    "N-no, that''s not it, I- okay, to be honest, I think a lot of it just went right over my head? S-sorry."

    "It''s Lilly''s fault," Blades said.

    "N-no it''s not! Or, wait, maybe it is? I assumed everyone was on the same page, knowledge wise?"

    "Hehe, g-guess not? I-I mean, I got most of it! Just a few details that I didn''t."

    "Well, better not leave our dear guest hanging! Blades, could you be a sweet and grab that map for me? And hand it to them while you''re at it."

    "Nope." Blades said, before the Oke''s cabin went silent.

    Holly heard so many different sounds from inside usually, it was hard to keep track of who was where or doing what. She had tried to investigate the machine from outside with her Will before, and the sensation was like shoving your hands through a bramble to pick something on the other side, so painful it made her body physically spasms. Something like a deceptively soft yet fierce cloud of barbs surrounded it, siphoning all outside matter that was not matter with prejudice. Thankfully, it was content with leaving her be, so long as she didn''t actively target it.

    Reading on Amazon or a pirate site? This novel is from Royal Road. Support the author by reading it there.

    She spent some time enjoying the crisp breeze and the rocking of the Oke''s crushing wheels over uneven terrain, before the trapdoor connecting cabin to top opened, revealing a pallid hand holding a small scroll. Furfu, closest by, took it gingerly from Blades'' hand, which then disappeared down with a thumbs up. She held it with such care, it was like she was afraid it would rip to shreds with a hint of a touch.

    "Whoever got it, could you please open it in front of Holly?"

    "S-sure thing, b-boss." Furfu murmured, giving a Agare a small glance that was never returned.

    Almalilly''s map was a lot different than Marquise''s, and in all fairness even Holly got a little anxious opening it up here. Supposedly, it was cheap and easy to replace, as far as maps go, the material yellowed with aged and badly worn on the edges. Unlike the Marquise''s big, lavishly detailed and beautifully illustrated one, this was a much simpler affair, showing just the island of Ivias itself from above, an impossible job Almalilly had simplified by saying that a lot of different "Arts" went into making it.

    "Now, you can find the Hollows, right?"

    "Sure!" Right there, crushed between the mountains, a slug-shaped relief cutting from one Region to the other. A black dot, penned the very day they met, market the start of their journey. "H-here!"

    Five other such spots existed, together forming a twice curved line heading North, all the way to the city of Skawla, which part of her still felt delusional for acknowledging.

    "The first step is a nice, slooooow trip through Galehold, " Almalilly said. "You''ll get a good look at the Yinian lifestyle, though we are going to mostly keep out of the way and sight. You remember, right?"

    "We have to stay on the down low! Couldn''t forget if I wanted to!"

    "Sure thing, happy to hear."

    "None of that, now." Blades said.

    "None of what?"

    "T-the second step!" Almalilly said, "We have to cross into Bellfort! Not usually a simple task, but we''ve come prepared, so don''t worry too much about it. Our aim is Fortress Aaltor, Rosen knows some people there that can smooth our way out."

    Holly tapped at the black spot, in the middle of a relatively narrow passage between the sea and the foot of the mountains. Ignoring the strange ensuing longing, her mind wandered elsewhere, "M-Marquise never told me much about this Bellford. If I hadn''t seen her map, I wouldn''t even know where it was..."

    "I bet she didn''t. Never been one of her favorite topics, as far as I gathered. Well, not like there is much to tell, it''s a small kingdom that sits in between both of Ivias'' biggest boys, and is going to be the step where we''ll be dipping into murky waters, Holly."

    "Still not funny."

    "Because it wasn''t meant to be! What I meant by that, is that while we''re trying to stay covert all the time, past that point if we''re ever found, we are likely to instantly meet hostility. They don''t like us very much around those parts."

    "W-why''s that?"

    "B-because of us." Furfu said, not pointing so much as repeatedly poking into her veil of shadows. Holly understood.

    "Shame. I really like Bellfort." Blades said.

    "You''ve never been there."

    "I hear they kept most of our good swords."

    "Ignore her, Holly. So, takes us to step three, which is crossing the Floodlands of the Sacred Forest all the way to Treil, or Threehills as most people call it, which should be straightforward with some care on our part. Step four..."

    "Awin."

    The Saintdom of Awin still felt a little nebulous for Holly. Marquise spoke often of it during their discussions on Ivian history, but in a way that felt contradictory, a myth and a monster, a place the Remnants were keenly interested in while avoiding with every fiver of their being, the reasons summarized in one word.

    "T-Tale."

    "Yup." Almalilly sighed, a garbled noise not too dissimilar to an angry swarm of wasps in a box, "Now, my original plans were to head northwest up the Eastern Ivian Cordon, so we could take a ferry across Bell Lake into Awin proper, then hug the Mountainous Region until we reached the borders of Skawla, but Marquise specifically wanted us to head to Treil, cross into Awin through Gwanegume, then take Heron Road to Skawla. Heron Road! Can you believe it?!"

    "Y-yeah!" Holly said, "T-though, wh-"

    "The Lady knows best."

    Holly''s back straightened, her hairs began to spread. Not far, Furfu, who until now had quietly hugged her legs while scanning around the Oke, was now staring straight at the trapdoor, her hands squeezed into fists.

    "The Lady knows best." Furfu repeated, "She knows things we don''t. If something she says doesn''t make sense, it will when it comes true. If something she does looks incomprehensible, you will understand when she wins. It''s the Lady''s power. She knows best. Don''t question it."

    "O-of course!" Almalilly said, "I wasn''t questioning her or anything, j-just, you know, hoping anybody had any ideas why Heron Road in specific! That''s all."

    "The Lady-"

    "Knows best." Agare''s laid his hand on Furfu''s shoulder, "Calm down."

    "T-they-"

    "Did nothing you think they did. You know how I would react otherwise. Calm down."

    Furfu stared at him for a couple seconds, before her hands relaxed and she returned to scanning the horizon, "M-my apologies, but the L-lady knows best."

    "She does. Almalilly, if it helps matters, I agreed with your previous assessment, however the Marquise does have a good reason to send us to Heron Road."

    "S-sure!"

    "Well, everyone!" Rosen suddenly piped up, "I thi-"

    "For masters and whores, Rosen, don''t you fucking dare make this more awkward!" And that would be Aleh.

    Nervous, seeking some relief, Holly watched as they passed under the shade of an overgrown orchard, trees of a couple distinct types heavy with fruit, leaning just the right way she could reach out and break a branch, one thick with fat black berries bloating right out of the wood catching her eyes. The loud crack sent Furfu into the air and made Holly see her life flash before her eyes, though in the end nothing worse than a mild glare came her way.

    For the briefest instant, through the gaps in between the tree trunks and the ever creeping undergrowth in between them, she saw an old house, probably once belonging to the orchard''s owner. Large yet flat, its roof and corner had fallen into rubble, giving her the view of a distended room, what light entered through contrasting the dirty, infiltration stained walls against the sole object still standing, a statuette of a person, its details unclear but silhouette distinct, the figure holding something above its head, something like-

    And the moment was gone. Though certainly not as fast as she expected, the Oke was no slouch, quickly leaving the abandoned property behind.

    "Wha'' ''as ''uhat?" Holly said, chewing through both branch and fruit, now that she knew she could. She could already tell it wouldn''t agree with her stomach very much, thought the nostalgic taste was enough compensation for any future discomfort.

    "Finish eating before you speak," Agare said.

    "S-sorry, n-nevermind."

    "... As I was about to say," Rosen said,"I remember hearing that there were a few subtler routes one can take if they want to keep a low profile while crossing Awin, if you''re willing to deal with some rather underground personages. Nothing I can''t handle, Holly, so don''t worry your pretty little voice over it! If we get hit with a worst case scenario, it might be an option worth pursuing."

    "I like the sound of that, actually," Almalilly said. "Agare?"

    "We will keep to the route Marquise specified, but I have no objections in case of an emergency."

    "Good enough for me! So, all that''s left then is the last step, Skawla."

    The impossible country. The impossible city. Holly''s nightmare.

    "We have a couple options here, none which are very good. Walking right in, even in comparison to everything else, would be a huge risk, and sneaking everyone in is beyond my skills. We could try smuggling ourselves in, but..."

    "The Azure Tale directly controls all sea faring in Skawla, even pirates wouldn''t cross them for less than we can give. My sources also tend to laugh when I bring up smuggling somebody in without the info floating downstream, if you catch my drift." Rosen said, "Going right through the gate while pretending we aren''t doing anything wrong could be the best worst option."

    "Honestly, I think we''re going to have to improvise. Unless somebody has a plan? Agare?"

    "I do have a few ideas." Agare answered, "Though how feasibly you can follow them is a discussion for another time."

    "Thanks for the vote of confidence, dear."

    "Blame your own birth."

    Another garbled sigh. "Already do."

    Holly cleaned her throat, "T-those Azure guys scare me a little, T-they fought the Marquise, and actually won! D-do we know how we''re going to deal with them?"

    "S-she didn''t lose." Furfu said, "S-she-"

    "She failed to account I existed yet, right my lovely Furfu?"

    Aleh''s voice shocked all of them into silence. Furfu recovered the quickest, leaning forward towards the square plate with a clenched fist, before Agare restrained her.

    "A-Aleh?"

    "Holly, Holly, Holly!" Aleh said, voice getting closer to the cabin with every call. "You underestimate me. I''m not here to fill space or embellish the party with my good looks. As a matter of fact, haven''t you wondered what exactly allows us to talk to you up there, while we are safe inside?"

    "I-it''s-" She stopped herself on the nick of time. "Asha?"

    "... Obviously," he deadpanned. "It was I! I''m the one who recommended this Oke, who installed this transmission medium, who paid for its physical repairs, who poured over every minute enchantment mesh to bring it past even its long lost glory! You haven''t seen a tenth of what it can do when pushed into a corner, and my friend, you will be impressed!

    "I did not name myself a witch out of some need for self aggrandizing, my title was earned through hard work and cunning, acknowledge by academic peers, long aged professors, even my e-equals from the Sect!"

    "None of that now," Blades said. "Make it short."

    "O-of course." Aleh cleaned his throat. "I am the secret weapon the Marquise lent you to fulfill our dreams. Want to transverse the Floodlands safely? Want to cross Heron Road without raising eyebrows? Want to head right into Skawla without alerting our enemies? That is exactly why I''m here."

    "Ah. I see," Holly said.

    "And some enthusiasm would make my work all the easier."

    "I''m happy to have you here. I really am," Holly said.

    She wasn''t lying, she did feel reassured. Magician, witch, whatever he was, when those types came from their reclusive lairs, it was to show the destructive, uncontrollable power of magic, often decimating themselves in the process. Dangerous, unpredictable, but better have it on your side than the other. Such she had learned from Elder Seneschal''s stories.

    After, she let the topic die down on its own, the conversation quickly returning to small talk with periods of silence as she enjoying her first journey beyond the Hollows. What they had said already alleviated her anxieties some, and what they didn''t they probably wouldn''t even if she insisted.

    Beyond that, she just had to follow Furfu''s wisdom.

    The Lady knew best. When she pointed a finger, all Holly had to do was follow.

 2 - The Children of the Lake 5

    Holly, Agare, and a twitching Furfu waited motionless.

    Around them. a dozen armed men waited for their superior''s words.

    These were no lads, not as Holly conceived of them, wrapped in leather or just everyday wear, wielding clubs or knives, sometimes a spear. Sat above horses, actual horses, the first Holly had ever seen and so different than what she had imagined, they had donned armor of chain links, with heavy gauntlets and boots, their faces obscured by both a brimmed helmet and wicked iron mask. Each and every held on to their sidearms as if expecting violence to break any moment now.

    Their "captain", however, had them beaten in intimidation. Platted in what she guessed was steel like some kind of silver insect, he was one of the largest men Holly had ever seen, Julius excepted, made only taller by his layered helmet, a smoothed mane of horn like edges slid into the back and bottom half, and the golden, rich brown plume that rose from its side. Behind him, the two great half-circle heads of some pole-arm emerged, one of that same opaque black and brown metal that once made sure she would not leave her room, it''s touch like fire against her skin. Drapped over his chest, his heraldry, a roaring golden bear standing over a wounded lion under a deep blue background.

    And if someone had told her none of those were his most frightening aspect, she would think them mad.

    It was his steed. That thing was... a horse too, to some measure of the word. roughly the same height as the Oke, neck rippling with muscles, a mouth that stretched more than half-way down its snout rhythmically opening and closing as if gasping for breath to reveal rows of teeth both blunt and sharp, the white iris of each eye moving independetly, one firmly fixated on something inside the Oke while the other scanned around.

    Agare''s orders had been simple: stay still and don''t use your Will under any circumstance. It became her mantra, as her instincts tried to drag her both right through the maze of high vegetation behind and right at that creature''s face.

    The men had come right as they arrived to civilization, blindsiding them. A couple young children had come to watch from behind a wall, but a lad in his early teens arrived to hush them out of sight. With one final pained look to the armed soldiers, he disappeared as well.

    "Here you go!" Rosen said, his arm sticking out of the Oke, how she didn''t know, with an envelope. "Everything should be up to date."

    The captain took the envelope, quickly opened, and gave a second worth of a glance at each paper before moving to the next, until he reached the last, small and dark in color. This one he scrutinized closer, turned to one side then the other, then finally returned it to the back and carefully returned them to their package.

    "More of you, then?" The captain said.

    "You know how it is."

    "Wish I didn''t. Everything''s up to date, but," the captain pointed a metallic finger right at Holly, "that can''t stand. This kind of display is highly illegal and I don''t want you giving my people any ideas. Either shove them back inside, or get someone less gentlemanly than I to show you what we think of sorcery and diabolism around these parts."

    "Aaah, my most sincere apologies officer! It''s just that the tall misses doesn''t like cramped spaces, so I let her out to get some air! We didn''t expect to run into anyone here, swear on my name!"

    "Misses, you say?" The captain took a tone that made her nails unfurl.

    He gave his beast a small kick, forcing an echoing snarl out of its throat as it took a couple steps forward. Facing each other, with Furfu a poor obstacle, Holly didn''t feel all that tall, while the silent man grew with every second of quiet contemplation. Could he see through her veil? Feel her Will? The moment stretched, growing from awkward to disturbing.

    One of the other soldiers chuckled, and if that was the prompt that got Rosen to speak she didn''t know, "Officer? Something wrong, or may we go?"

    "Misses, I don''t know what use this lot gets out of you, but if your wiles can keep up, you better learn to do as the men around you do, understood? These are dangerous times, and if you keep being carefree like this, who knows when my boys might get called to clean some lady blood out of the gutter?"

    She just stared back. What could she possibly answer that with?

    "Officer," Rosen warned. "May we leave?"

    "...Very well," the captain said, "A more fortuitous day to you, merchant, and to your lovely woman too!"

    With a gesture, as well as a salvo of cackles and jeers, the men were off. Half a minute later, as the three above watched them leave, she heard a noise from the front of the Oke, and a faint light began to shine from the framed edges of the Transmission Medium.

    "Apologies, Agare," Rosen''s voice said. "I''m to blame for this incident, I thought this town remained abandoned and suggested as much to Almalilly."

    "You did well, but do try to keep to date with your sources next time." Agare said, "Almalilly, are you at the cabin?"

    "Yes." Almalilly said, voice faint and distant, worrying Holly.

    "Good job. Go to the back and take five, let Blades take your place. Rosen, you''re on controls for now. And you two," Agare said, facing both Furfu and her, "we''re going back inside."

    <hr>

    Some hours later, they stopped by the side of the road, just besides a short, gentle slope into some fairly thick woodland for the region. A couple more hours and the sun should be setting.

    Holly sat by the grass, knees hugged to her chest, no small amounts of shame <u>coursing</u> through her. She had lasted three hours before Furfu had to physically pull her away from the Oke''s walls, and if Holly still had any doubts the meek misses was one of the Marquise''s agents, those had been put to rest.

    Aleh, who had been taking deep breaths for the last five minutes, also had to be physically pulled away from her, though his composure recovered quickly.

    Now they all stood apart. Agare her temporary, distant shadow; Aleh some paces away, not finishing his routine; Blades in the shade of the Oke, polishing a completely different blade from the one usually at her waist, idly whispering to Almalilly; Furfu perched like a bird above their transport, keeping an eye to their rear; Rosen some several paces down, doing... something.

    Actually, she was getting curious. He had been at it for the past couple minutes, first digging a hole, then picking parts from a large burlap sack, assembling and disassembling according to some design she couldn''t start to guess. She almost approached him, just to get a better look, when Aleh jumped to his feet and stormed downhill.

    "Oh for fuck''s sake you muscle-brained oaf, I was almost calm!"

    "Youn-"

    "Shut it! Out of my way! And stop with that shit, I swear it almost looks like I-" And from there, his mumbling rant became to low for Holly to piece together.

    Whatever was wrong with the lad, Holly had to begrudgingly accept he had a way with his hands. The fumbling gave way to experienced work, the minutes of Rosen''s craft tore down and rebuild to completion in one and mostly alone, the few times the now sheepishly smiling Rosen had to lend his labor with pieces too heavy for his frail little arms excepted.

    Finished, they quietly spoke to one another, serious tone to harsh rebukes, and then together stepped away to reveal the final product. They didn''t need to call, as she was already half the way down.

    It was nothing she had ever seen, nor heard from the Elder''s stories. Roughly waist high, neck high for Aleh who was now giving a strange look to the tip of her hood, It was straight and cross shaped, made from interlocking pieces of wood and a polished metal she vaguely recalled as brass, the latter occupying the majority of its surface. Thin lines of a strange script covered it side to side in columns, each character shining, not subtly like the armor used by the Faceless but with a potency that obscured their embossing with platinum light.

    "A job well done!" Rosen said, giving the flat top of the object a couple good slaps, each emanating a strange hollow echo.

    "Of course it was." Aleh Scowled. "Call me if you need help."

    "Wouldn''t want to bother your meditation, Y-Y-Yaleh."

    "Don''t start! And this bothers me more. Now, if you excuse me, I will retire to my thankfully only lightly scratched masterpiece."

    "S-sorry about that."

    "Don''t mention it!" Aleh said, smile like a razor. "Have fun with this fruit of my magic, one actually meant to withstand violence from any angle imagined!"

    Stuck between the equally demanding needs to grovel for forgiveness and call him out, Holly ultimately stood there and watched as Aleh huffed out, inviting the whispering duo of Blades and Almalilly inside with him.

    What a lousy day.

    Her attention returned to the mysterious object, and she froze. Gloved fingertips trailing bright scripts up and down, caresses almost hypnotic, motions intimate to obscenity, Agare silently examined it with such unconcealed adoration Holly couldn''t help but watch, burning the scene into her brain. Agare hadn''t rebuked her, so it should be fine, right?

    "I wasn''t aware of this," Agare said.

    Rosen gave Holly a brief glance. "Aleh''s design, from memory too! We had the materials to spare, and the Young Sir had a whim."

    "I underestimated him," Agare muttered. "His skills have clearly developed."

    "Oh, sir, you haven''t half of it."

    "It''s Agare. And I hopefully won''t have to." Agare stepped away, "Astounding work, though it lacks a few parts and materials the genuine article would have, so careful with how you abuse it."

    "Don''t think we''ll need that much, right?" Rosen said, winking at Holly.

    Finally, she couldn''t contain herself anymore. Giddy and with bad case of the Will twitches, she said, "I-I don''t even know what you''re talking about! P-please tell me already! What is this?!"

    "Tell? I''ll show you." Rosen stepped away, indicating the object with a hand, "Give it a good wack!"

    "A-a good wack?" she asked, looking at Agare.

    "Blunt strikes only," Agare explained. "Don''t use your nails, nor your Will, otherwise hold nothing back."

    Looking at the object, it felt awkward hitting something this small with all her might, but she supposed she had permission. First, she balled up a fist, however the awkward length of her fingers meant they bent all the way to her wrist, her joints almost hugging her palm. Though neither were technically the core part of a punch, she really didn''t fancy hitting anything with a hand like that.

    Instead, she opted for a good kick. Taking a step back, she slide her right away some, then went for one her most infamous childhood attacks: the Joint Breaker! The end of all knees! In an instant, her foot left the ground, a curving line bringing the flat of her foot right against one of its middle plates, as low as she could go.

    She didn''t know what to expect, and yet the sensation surprised her. She had felt it hit, heard the solid thump of her kick, the hollow metal echo, topped by a concerning underground rumble, but the sting that should follow just didn''t. Like a child feigning toughness, the object simply stood there as if it hadn''t been touched, not a dent or speck of dust to mar its beauty.

    "A-Agare," She had to hold herself back like a ravenous beast seeing wounded prey, "Y-you said I can''t attack it with Will, b-but can I feel it? Please?!"

    Agare pondered it for a second, gave Rosen an undecipherable look, than turned to her. "Go ahead, just try not to break it."

    You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

    The next moment, her Will broke free, enveloping the object like a parted jaw, a thousand teeth in its creeping fingers. She didn''t miss the way Rosen fled even further, wide eyes snapping in her direction, merely ignored him for the miracle now cradled within her being.

    It was gorgeous, miraculous, maddening, infuriating. Like the shadows of her robe, something alive yet not, dense and emanating, static and painful. Powerful, though obvious, its working transparent against its framework, and yet of an elusive what, an unfathomable how, screaming its own existence without a grain of shame or care how it all trickled in between her clumsy fingers, letting her miss so much she craved, so much she didn''t know she craved.

    The denial hurt, and in its own way, so did her meager catch, but who was to blame if not herself?

    Nonetheless, she wanted to break it.

    She took a deep breath, a couple then, trying not to look desperate to her audience. She restrained her Will, to the best of her ability, which was not totally, and her nails unfurled. Another vector fought back, and her jaws parted, teeth bared and saliva pouring out the corners of her mouth, eager to shred it to pieces.

    It was in that desperate struggle to keep the worst of herself in check, that allowed a passing whim to become victorious, as she pulled a hand back and gave the thing a good slap, right where its face should have been, were it human.

    Barely a sound.

    Except Rosen''s chuckles.

    "D-don''t laugh at me!"

    "Oh Holly, ask me to lift a mountain next!"

    As her focus shifted to the older man, so did part of her Will, and she found him wonderful.

    He was grand, and surprisingly solid, a poor mixture yet distinctive shape against the background torrent of her Will''s world, holding a certain pattern to himself yet not quite like the object. How? She gritted her teeth. Wouldn''t she like to know! If she had to shape the unknowable into words, perhaps she would say there was a chaos to him, an unpredictable network of currents dictating his form, the cloud of his being stuck into some unsure state where it could neither change nor return, or so she would say.

    Was this how human beings all felt? So completely unlike her. It lacked purpose, she supposed, it was Will and yet was not quite Will in ways she just had to know, buried deep into the mud, the murky waters of the river, the-

    She was bitten, suddenly, Rosen''s body that was not a body pulsing with hostile force, clamping down on her fingers with such casual ease she didn''t notice what was happening until the pain hit her. She yelped, jumping back and pulling herself free, quickly realizing she had never been actually held, just playfully nipped.

    "Huh," Rosen said, brow raised. "So that''s how it feels."

    "What happened? Rosen?" Agare said, body suddenly tense, making her heart go faster.

    "Oh, no need for worries Sir! She just got a little handsy, that''s all." He grinned from ear to ear. "Can''t blame her, can we? with all this good meat being strutted under her nose, after all..."

    "I-I''m sorry! I''m so sorry!" she said, nearly prostrating herself, "I-I didn''t want to, I mean, I just got a little curious, I didn''t mean to a-actually touch you and-"

    "Holly, Holly, I don''t mind, not at all!" Rosen said, dismissing her with a wave. "Rather, if you want to apologize for whichever master you had for that shoddy form."

    "... Excuse me?"

    "Holly, sorry if I''m the one who has to break this for you, but you punch like somebody who just learned how to use their arms."

    "W-what?!" she said, horror forgotten, "I-I''ll have you know, I was the strongest kid in Lesser Hollow! I could beat all the young lads one-on-one!"

    "Lads!" He chuckled again. "Did your lads fight with canes and crutches? Did they still toddle? What a martial mentor you might have had..."

    "E-Elder Seneschal taught me all the best moves! He could take down a lad twice your size and not even blink, with his crooked foot!"

    "Well, then he has some explaining to do!"

    Another one? This she couldn''t leave be. As she was about to shoot back, however, Rosen fell into a low stance, arms forwards with hands open, knees bent. He took a breath, his eyes widened, and his right foot flew, his entire body twisting with impressive speed as it struck the object square where its chest ought to be. The impact alone made Holly swallow her words.

    Returning to his usual casual slump as if nothing had happened, he approached the object again, giving it a couple head pats, "Holly, let me introduce you the Lesan Dummy."

    "... It is a Hassias." Agare said.

    "Y-yes, also known as a Hassias, as Agare so eloquently put, a much more dignified name. A-as I was saying, have you ever seen our Lady''s strength in action?"

    Holly mulled over it. "K-kind of?"

    "This baby here is what someone on her level would use to train! It can handle blows strong enough to pulverize stone and dig holes through steel, with just a few modified shield and deflection enchantments at that! Can''t say I know the details of how it works beyond that, but the results more than speak for themselves, right?!" Rosen said, throwing a haymaker that almost spun his torso, Will flaring in its wake. If something could dig holes through steel, that would be it, and yet the hit produced nothing but noise and wind.

    "It''s a way to put it," Agare said, then looked at her."I repeat, don''t use your nails, as strong as it might be this is not a model made with slashing in mind, it will break."

    "O-of course! B-but, why are you showing me this? Sorry, but I thought we would be moving a little more today?"

    "Because learning how to fight is pretty essential in our craft, and I wanted to see how you handle yourself. Besides that," Rosen said, giving the Hassias an uppercut that could tear off a head, "I think hitting things really hard is a really good way to blow some steam, and we had one shitty morning today!"

    Holly nodded, carefully watching him beat the lights out of the helpless object with what had to be blows that would send five lads flying each, yet never making it even shake. With every hit, she noticed a slight, nearly invisible ripple of the platinum light, and couldn''t help but wonder how they had been made. Aleh had done this? The little lording lad? Why? For whom?

    Instead of the questions in her mind, she asked, "w-what was that all about, earlier?"

    Rosen stopped for a second, then continued. "Honestly, don''t ask me. My guess is that-! The Empire is moving people around again."

    "Why?"

    "Reasons they don''t lack!" Rosen threw a frontal kick that looked positively deadly, "Maybe they thought here would be more productive than whichever other village they emptied. Maybe-! They found something where those people lived, and moved them while they checked. Or maybe things got a bit tenser at the Bellfort border, so smaller settlements were brought further inland."

    "I-isn''t that bad?!"

    "Nah!" A straight punch, followed by the opposite hand, then a blow to the side, "Happens from time to time, but the current Emperor doesn''t fancy taking back what''s his, some say, not as much as the previous one anyway."

    "Marquise said he was weak."

    Rosen stopped and gave a weak chuckle, "Y-yeah, some put it that way, but don''t go saying that in public alright? Either way, I''ve learned it''s not to try guessing what your betters think when you don''t know half of what they do, so I can''t say I have an opinion on the matter."

    "Alrighty!" Not like she had any either. "Can I try again? I think I got it this time."

    "Just from watching?" Rosen grinned. Beads of sweat were starting do descend to his brow and down to his collar. "Heard you were a great student! Go right ahead, and let me teach you how the warriors of Galehold fight!"

    "Not the Remnants?"

    "We overlap some! Besides, variety is a powerful weapon for a fighter. Now, first things first, positioning! Can you remember my stance?"

    "Y-yes, like this right?"

    Rosen examined her for a second, caressing his braided beard with slow movements. "Harder to see with that robe than I guessed."

    "Oh, maybe I can take it off, if-"

    "No." Agare said.

    "N-no!" Rosen followed, "Keep them, it''s safer this way, trust me, even the slightest armor help in case of an emergency, and yours are so elegant too, they surely only enhance my lady''s image! I simply misspoke, didn''t mean to say they got in the way too much, and a good stance carries straight through armor! Now, yours..."

    She didn''t really care how it made her look and was pretty sure this soft leather wouldn''t defend her against a child''s pebble, but she wouldn''t go against such strong opposition. She did throw Agare a begging glance, only to be met with a complete impassive void, so she gave up.

    "Raise your arms more, and lower your body a little." Rosen finally said.

    "L-like this?"

    "Keep them a little closer together, just don''t touch them together. They are there to help you block, but they need some freedom of movement and you need your field of view."

    Her sleeves clung tightly to her hands, even gravity couldn''t pull them down as her forearms pointed up. Some effect of the enchantment, she was certain. "Like this?"

    "Better! Now, you probably intuited this by now, specially since you were the strongest kid of this Lesser Hollow of yours, but a blow isn''t just the punch itself."

    Holly nodded. "It needs the weight of the body too."

    "And its power. Every muscle you put into a punch counts, you saw that."

    "I did!"

    "Make it beautiful then!"

    Laying all her complains about the shape of her hands aside, she balled the best fist she could, nothing but a line of knuckles, and punched.

    For a split second, the surface of the Hassias felt electric, deforming maybe the width of a human hair under her hardskin before pushing back. She wanted a sound that shook the mountains and sent the bugs flying in great swarms, and for all the extreme discomfort the pose and motion brought her, at least the tremors were a slight improvement over her kick.

    "Nice. I think you could do better thought."

    "I-I knew how to do it all along, I-I just forgot."

    "Sure? Sure. Let''s make it so you never forget it again, I say!" Rosen smiled.

    "Y-yeah, let''s." Holly looked deep into the platinum script, its letters which neither her eyes nor Will could make heads or tails of. "Rosen, A-Agare, I''m sorry."

    Agare just watched as she winded another punch, but one of Rosen''s brows rose, "For what?"

    "It was my fault this morning. I-if I wasn''t bothered by the O-oke, then-"

    "Bah, don''t worry about it!" Rosen said, his arms crossed as he watched her turn begin in earnest, "Can''t predict everything, right Agare?!"

    "It was a situation that would have been resolved one way or another." Agare said, "That said, I would like not to repeat it."

    "I-I know!" She kicked, producing a breeze strong enough to blow the hems of her robe, "I''ll go inside this time. I just... wanted to apologize. I-I hope I didn''t make anyone mad?"

    "So long as you understand. Actions will make up for your failures more than your words."

    "Well said, Agare!" Rosen said. "That being said, apologizing never hurts. And besides, you can tell that officer was totally out of his depth and trying to look manly to his chums!"

    "H-he was?" Holly said, knuckles striking where the Hassias'' face should be, not imagining it crumbling that plumed helmet at all.

    "They''ve been getting younger every year, I swear! I mean, a warmare of all things, for a simple patrol?! Poor Lilly! and a threat against the Faceless too, as if Galehold didn''t bend to the dirt when they think a Tale is going to knock at their doors! Calling him a try-hard would be an understatement, if he doesn''t have at least some marshall blood on him I would be shocked! If I leaked what he did today around certain circles, he would be destitute by next month, if not-"

    Holly tried her best to pay attention to Rosen''s rant, but a lot of the finer details just completely missed her, and her hands were already full with making sure her body properly kept up with the lesson. How did she beat so many lads again?

    They spent the entire afternoon hitting the dummy, taking turns relieving their stress together and somehow, for all the violence and ruckus, never budging it a hairsbreadth. Holly had to admit, she did feel much better.

    <hr>

    At sundown, it was Aleh who came retrieve the Dummy and ask them to move further that day.

    "W-won''t it be night soon?" she asked.

    "Of all things, you think that would be my blind spot?" Aleh shook his head and clicked his tongue. "As I said, You haven''t seen anything yet, the capabilities of my machine would shake a Goban engineer out of his seat! I refuse to use the words my professor taught me, however it is undeniable that there is not one bit of terrain, weather, or time of day this Oke can''t travel through with utmost safety and comfort, and should this impossible scenario come during our journey, I can simply-"

    To summarize, she had been overthinking.

    Unfortunately, a couple steps away from the Oke, she froze.

    The discomfort, the memories, they still lingered strong. No amount of punching and kicking would help her as she was dragged back, kicking and screaming, into the boiling bowels of the beast to asphyxiate in smoke and that pungent slobber odor, to be digested in acrid tar and walls of wooden tissue, to-

    She retreated, backing right into Furfu, Agare having already stepped away.

    "S-sorry! I-" Holly said, but couldn''t explain herself further.

    "Holly? Something wrong?" Rosen, who had already climbed back inside, asked. The others looked at her, pinning her to the spot.

    "I-I-"

    "Oh." He frowned, caressing his beard again, before his eyes widened. "Aaah, that might work! Agare, may I propose something?"

    "Propose?"

    "I don''t think our lovely Holly here would be very comfortable inside still, but considering what I know about Galehold military, and youths a little too high up for their age, I don''t think we''ll be accosted anymore tonight, I would bet a leg that boy will be boozing it up as soon as the sun is down, and others shouldn''t head this deep into the countryside until morning, so why not let her stay up, just for tonight?"

    "You can''t guarantee we won''t run into any military on the road."

    "I told you I know my way around these parts" He winked, "Mostly. Nobody would even know we came by."

    Holly''s heart jumped in her chest. Would she be able to rest easy inside tomorrow? Of course not, but today? She would take anything not to get back inside, even a second outside that maw of a place worth more than gold or steel to her. Would Agare let her, thought? She turned, willing to prostrate herself if it came to it, seeing he was looking down and-

    Stepping into a puddle of water she hadn''t noticed. How could she? It hadn''t rained in a couple days now.

    Like a serpent under the brush, the trap was sprung immediately, a thousand squirming presences grasping their way up fingers that were not fingers, bodies less tangible than air yet undeniably real, unstoppable in their charge, leaving her helpless to do anything but sense as she fell into their unescapable grip

    For a second, she had almost convinced herself it was an illusion, so sudden it had come it could be nothing but a nightmare conjured by her memories. It didn''t last; that weight, that obscene power trying to subjugate her very body into inertia, she would remember it to the day of her death: a phantom of the Father had come.

    Except, perhaps not exactly. It lacked the aggression, the unending hunger, the all encompassing nature. It was distinct, yet demure, in fact almost gentle if firm in the way it held her extremities in place. Had it given her any time, perhaps she would come to forgive the scare.

    Before she could react, it emanated into her being. Less forceful than God, it almost felt like it was melting into her.

    "Mariwa. Wait for us."

    Holly shivered in revulsion.

    Taking advantage of her paralysis, the squirming lengths retracted with a loving caress of her fingertips, disappearing into the depths of the puddle, yet leaving a pulsing trail against her being, one that were it not for the impossibility of it almost felt moist, cold, some analogous feeling to both.

    Everything happened right at once then. Her back arched with a shiver, her Will lashed downwards, tearing at the puddle with unfurling rows of nails she had never consciously desired. The inert water had a life of its own, one that felt crisp and clear on her mind, as she plunged into it with a chorus of splashes. To no avail, as whichever hole those had emerged from, it had been caved in already.

    Physically and otherwise.

    She only noticed she had struck when she heard the dirty water splash against the Oke.

    Slowly, she rose, carefully looked around herself. Everyone stood frozen. Furfu now had a spiked iron mace on her hands, her shoulders shaking uncontrollably; Agare had a hand up his hood, a distant giggle tickling her ears; Blades stood at the bottom of the Oke''s back door, the elegant sword she had been caring for out of its scabbard, though by this point her posture had relaxed and the tip of her blade lowered.

    Rosen just stood there, looking her straight in the eyes.

    At first, he seemed puzzled, his eyes darting and his arm reaching back. When their gazes met, however, he breathed a sigh of relief, and even smiled a little.

    "...Holly, girl."

    "I''m going inside," she said.

    "Smart girl. Mind telling us-"

    "I do."

    Nobody stood in her way as she climbed the Oke on all fours, nor bothered her as she settled down by the cabin, hugging her knees to her chest. Her Will dragged through the suddenly alert transport like arms through bramble, and that she didn''t retaliate was as much a work of restraint as well as apathy.

    As she felt the wheels start rolling, a conversation started right over her head, and she listened to none of it.

    Quietly, she cocooned herself under her robes, and did as she had always done best.

 2 - The Children of the Lake 6

    The next time they were accosted went much smoother.

    Fewer men surrounded the Oke, their arms held casually, their captain older and more soft-spoken, his steed an absurdly stout albeit regular horse. Spotted in the middle of a settlement, they had the time to ready themselves as Almalilly sounded the alarm, exchanging places with almost practiced grace, no surprises this time.

    Rosen took to the cabin, Blades fled back pulling her cowl in place, while Furfu and Agare stilled themselves into statues; Holly and Aleh just watched in silence, but as their eyes met, he smiled. Beckoning her with a hand while resting the other against the Oke''s wall, he spoke a brief, hushed incantation.

    It quickly disappeared, as if it had never existed at all. She saw one of the guards, bearing the same armor as those men four days ago, along with a spear almost as long as himself in both hands.

    And behind him, people. So, so many people.

    Never had Holly seen so many together, not even attending the festivals of the Lesser, where everyone gathered to dance and sing as she watched from afar, an insignificant group in comparison to this town''s everyday bustle. Housewives leaving shops with their daughters, fathers and sons carrying heavy bags of materials while talking and laughing to each other, a man in a blue cape and chin held high scouted by stern lads, an old men in dirty rags sat in the street among a group of downcast women as one particularly young lady tried to calm a distressed babe, all together rain drops in a raging river.

    Houses grew like towers above them, some reaching impressive three floors, none in the wild disrepair or makeshift state she remembered from her home. Walls of neat bricks and stone, well cared balconies with potted gardens, embellished and roofed terraces where dozens of people ate together. paved alleways wider than some streets she had ran through as a kid.

    To say she was amazed would be putting it lightly. Could anyone even keep track of who was an outsider or not among all these? If only they could sneak right in through their open doors, avoid the notice of those guards, she doubted it. A childhood dream was right there, nothing but a couple doors away, and she wished to feel it on her skin.

    Aleh''s smug grin turned into a frown. Beads of sweat drifted down the corner of his brow.

    "I can tell it''s all in order," the captain said. "My apologies for the delay. I hope the sir and his companions can understand times are complicated."

    "Of course!" Rosen said. "Wouldn''t dare begrudge another man of the sword for doing his duties!"

    "Hear, hear! You are an example for your kind sir. No offense meant of course."

    "Of course," Rosen said. "I hope the sir can understand times are always tense for our group."

    "Rough days for me and for thee, they say."

    "Anything else, sir? If not, I don''t want to be impolite, but..."

    "No, no, you are free to go. I would recommend somewhere to rest and refresh yourselves, though even if we were not entirely full considering circumstances, my experience tells it isn''t the kind of offer to tempt you. Good luck with your office, to you and your gorgeous woman too."

    "So kind of you, sir," Almalilly said.

    The men dispersed, and soon they were moving again. Two sighs of relief echoed inside their transport: first Aleh as he let go of the wall, its color and light returning almost instantly, who was still giving her a funny look as he sat back with his spine straight; the second, Almalilly, all the way from the cabin, so loud some people outside could probably hear it.

    "Damned fucking beasts!" She said.

    "If you want a minute..." Rosen said.

    "No, this much I can handle, thank you. Just let me breath for a second."

    Aleh raised an eyebrow at her, an unspoken question at his lips, or maybe a few. She could still feel the little wrapped stone, literally thrown through the hood of her robe, a Fetish as he had called it, the only thing keeping her from the crushing, melting heat emitted by the Oke. She appreciated everything he had done for her, but...

    She still didn''t care much for him still. She hated that she couldn''t trust him, but she couldn''t.

    He shrugged as he closed his eyes and crossed his arms.

    Off they went.

    <hr>

    That same night''s sights were not a tenth as pleasant as the morning''s.

    Having fed some in the woods, Agare escorted her back just as the group finished their dinner. They decided not to journey further this late, and soon three of them were drawing lots over the couches, Agare and Furfu taking vigil duty while Rosen and Holly had already cozied themselves on the floor. Not like she would be sleeping anyway.

    Almalilly and Blades settled themselves as Aleh grumbled up a storm, uncomfortably close to her as he laid his pillow and covers.

    And then came the noises.

    They were unlike anything Holly had ever heard. A bubbling croak, a repeated plead choked through a foaming mouth, a wet plodding like boots on mud. It started distant, but quickly approached the Oke at an even pace, footsteps dragging against the dirt, a sound so quiet she could only hear thanks to that evening''s deathly silence.

    Stranger still how slowly everyone was moving, as if barely awake. Only Aleh, somehow crawling up the seats and over Almalilly with his wiry limbs to reach the Oke''s wall, looked as if he was alert. Like that morning, he placed a hand over the wall, and it vanished from their sights as a faint light illuminated the other side.

    Holly''s blood went cold. What laid there, looking straight at her, was beyond her wildest nightmares.

    Gaunt and tall, shape almost resembling a person''s as it blurred and stretched itself across the air, its melting chest inflating to bursting then deflating until the vague ridged impression of ribs threatened to tear its soft surface open in a parody of breath. Close to featureless, a liquid red and pitch black in color, living blood slithering and hobbling in her direction, swarms of minuscule insects crawling or swimming in out of its body as its motions forced deep folds into being.

    Her nails unperched until they were vertical with her fingers. If her hairs didn''t spread across the Oke''s interior, it was because her hood held them back. Her Will was undecided between tearing into the wall forward to destroy the threat or the one behind so she could run.

    In that interim, Aleh sighed and let go. "Shit, forgot those existed."

    "Ugh, at least it''s nothing," Almalilly said. "Now get off!"

    "Yes, yes..."

    "Not dealing with it." Blades said.

    "No need." Rosen, who hadn''t twitched a finger meanwhile, said, "Just leave it be, they can''t keep interest for long."

    "Fucking muscle-brain, you could have told us what that was and spared me the effort."

    "Apologies, Aleh, I assumed you knew."

    "Why, I learned!"

    "I want it gone now."

    Silence.

    It took a few beats before Holly realized she had spoken aloud.

    "I-I mean, I don''t like it! Never seen anything like it, but it looks kind of dangerous, right?!"

    "Dearest, kindest, sweetest Holly, what is wrong with you?" Aleh said.

    "Don''t talk to me like that."

    "Apologies, but tell me, weren''t you paying attention?"

    "Aleh!" Blades and Almalilly warned in unison, but only the former spoke after. "None of that."

    "It was looking at me," Holly said. "It was coming right towards me!"

    "Holly, it-" Aleh stopped. "Then again, I don''t think you would believe me if I just told you. Rather, let''s make a show out of it. Come!"

    Aleh got up in a jump, and without waiting for her consent hopped right over Rosen towards the cabin, throwing the hatch open on his way our. Stupefied by the lad''s burst of speed, she crawled behind in an almost unconscious stupor. She couldn''t deny she was curious now, but unfortunately, the last step was impossible to her, the hatch far too small for her to do anything but peek her head through.

    "Aleh." Agare said, not sounding all too pleased.

    "Aleh." Furfu said, not sounding all too pleased.

    "Aleh!" Holly said, "What are you doing?"

    "Wait an instant!"

    She heard a low crack, and suddenly all three outside went quiet. Moonlight descended through the shades of the trees above, bathing the trio in shadows too deep to discern expression or detail, but it wasn''t hard to tell they were having a conversation, from Aleh''s gestures not one going too well.

    Another crack, and this time she did see the silhouette of Aleh''s fingers crack.

    "I will allow it, then," Agare said. "Be brief. Furfu, accompany him."

    "O-of course, sir!"

    "... Know what? Let''s not waste our precious times with a pointless fight. Sure, let her come," Aleh said, then turned, "Holly, climb down the back of the Oke. Your biometric signature is already registered, though you will need to use bare skin to get out."

    "W-what?! I-I''m not getting out! That thing is out there!"

    "And so are we!"

    What could she say to that? She didn''t want to go. Despite the grotesque creature stumbling outside, nobody seemed scare, so it should be fine, right?

    "Because Holly is such and obedient girl, isn''t she?"

    Gathering her courage, she crawled over Rosen again, getting a "good luck" so faint she almost missed it as she reached the Oke''s back door. Here, the capillaries of each wall converged, tapering off like empty branches of two dead trees, except in one spot: both sides of the door met in the middle, where a strange contraption grew and shrunk with every pulse of light that passed through each of its knobbly heads.

    First she pressed a shaking finger to it, then a knuckle, then her wrist. By the time she considered shoving her shoulder through the thing, she lost her patient and stuck her tongue right out into its tasteless, rugged hide. A squelch echoed into the tight confines of the vehicle as both sides separated, followed by several metallic latches inside each side of the door.

    She had to remind herself to stand on two legs, always keep them practiced and healthy, as her every instinct begged her to keep to all fours and as close to the ground as possible. That night, even the breeze seemed stilled, the insects distant and cautious with their singing. The gurgling croaks hadn''t stopped, if anything they had grown sharper, as if the thing had caught wind of a tasty morsel.

    It was with no small amounts of horror that Holly realized the dragging steps were heading towards the back of the Oke. It had been looking for her after all.

    It was with grotesque amounts of horror that Holly saw Aleh jump in right from above, his elegant landing heralded by her oddly muffled screams.

    "Now that''s how it''s done!" Aleh said.

    "Y-you- you-!"

    She had no time for more coherent criticism, as the creature shambled into view. As tall as she was, it hadn''t turned away from her even once, its slithering arm crawling like a slug over the Oke''s metallic surface, fingers wriggling as if it would help them reach her faster.

    Was this the thing in the puddle who knew that certain word?

    "Now, pay attention to me carefully, with Asha and eyes both."

    Her mind grew blank for an instant, but there was only one thing he could be referring to, right? Hesitantly, Holly unleashed her Will, slithering over his body until she had him enveloped.

    Aleh was closer to Rosen then herself, yet different. If she had to say, it was the way the chaos of his being shifted, or pulsed? it was different, of a broader range, making the lad look larger than himself, somewhat more extrinsic, soft at the edges yet still solid. Unfortunately, there was too much there she still couldn''t tell, but with every experience a picture was being painted.

    "P-perhaps not so throughly? Fuck, this feels odd..."

    Then, the chaos changed, emanating like fine mist through the gaps in her hands. In the physical world Aleh''s hand rose, palm up, catching the attention of Holly''s pursuer, as the mist began to coalesce above it, All that mass grew dense with powerful inner currents, as ripples that resembled some large fish trailing the surface of water chasing insects appeared. The creature reached for it, one outstretched hand opening not like spreading fingers but a stump splitting into tendrils.

    It happened all at once. The mist like energy turned electric, prickling her fingers with unbidden aggression until her hands retreated; from the invisible body of water Aleh had conjured, an abomination to match the first appeared. Describing this one would be a fools errand however, the way its form changed with every erratic swoop of its body, though a few patterns stuck: It was elongated, with a body that consisted of many interconnected bulbs, glazed eyes and ciliated holes growing in asymmetric locations only to be subsumed back into its mass.

    The thing''s fingers were blow into nothing, its arm retracting as if lit aflame. A chorus of a dozen chocked sobs rang from all over its body as it jumped into the air, limbs parting into quarters, torso parting into tenths, and finally turning into a whirling mess of ribbons that quickly vanished into the air leaving not the slightest proof of its presence.

    And that was that. Holly stood agape, feeling as if somebody had pulled one nasty prank on her. Looking to the side of the Oke she found nothing but Furfu, even its dragging footsteps had not left one ruffled leaf on the ground.

    "W-what happened?!"

    "What do you mean, what happened? Were you not looking?"

    If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. Please report it.

    "N-not exactly looking no, and not at that thing!"

    Aleh sighed. "Holly, you were supposed to be analyzing it! What are you so afraid of, did any of us appear frightened?"

    "I-I''m not touching that, I don''t even know what it is!"

    "Which you would, if you had." Aleh clicked his tongue, "You know what? It would always have needed a deeper explanation, so allow us to move on.

    "That, Holly, you might have never seen before but certainly heard of. In more scholarly circles, we refer to those as apparitions, and if you never heard that term before, considers its popular variants: ghosts, phantoms, haunts, others too. They are not all too common, but as we approach the border of the Sacred Forest region, where the bulk of the Yinian-Awinian conflict has always occurred, they will become more frequent.

    "What matters to us in this particular moment is that they are harmless to us. Nothing but low strata Merurgical beings! Mayhaps if we were a bumbling crowd of countryfolk with no knowledge in the Arts they would be best avoided, yet we are not! If I alone can handle one without issue, what makes you so afraid?"

    Holly took a few seconds to mull everything over, to digest the information completely. Finally, she answered thus: "What?"

    "What what? Be more specific with your doubts!"

    "W-what everything! W-what are you even saying?!"

    "I suppose that was a somewhat lackluster explanation. Very well then. An Apparition is a living conglomerate of Type-3 Merurgy often times created by the violent reaction between a living being an Ashic manifestations, often foreign to the region, given a few weeks or days. They tend to appear in battlefields, prisons, gallows, and other places were Asha might be employed as means of torture or execution, and generally are thought as difficult to expel yet mindless pests, as they-"

    "Stop!" Aleh froze, an opportunity Furfu did not miss. "W-what he''s trying to say, Holly, is that Apparitions are like an impression of people killed through Asha, and they are a kind of parasite that is hard to kill but easy to scare away. T-they are nothing to people l-like us."

    Holly didn''t need light to distinguish Aleh''s blood curling glare, quietly stepping away from his line of sight, "Your boss giving you permission to inflict yourself upon my lesson does not mean you get to interfere, you cum-hole! I had a plan!"

    A sliver of light slid right to Aleh''s nose, a shining mace with a gnarled head. To his benefit, he didn''t even flinch, "I won''t let you do just anything you want! Setting people to fail just so you can gloat your education over them!"

    "I''m setting her to ask questions! Who needs a student who can only learn through monkey-see, monkey do?! Leaving her like that is setting her for failure!"

    "Silence." Agare said from atop the Oke, receiving a pair of glares that did not move him the smallest bit, "If you need to do this here, do it briefly and do it quietly."

    "M-my apologies S-sir, I will r-rein him in."

    "...Report to me after you are done."

    Aleh remained silent until Agare left, before taking a deep breath and slowly clasping his hands. "Sure. Fuck it. You want fast, dickhole? I will give you fast then."

    "Can''t we do this tomorrow?" Holly said, really not feeling the mood, "Y-you both should be sleeping, right?"

    Furfu just stared at her, and she didn''t dare meet her eyes, even in the cover of darkness. Aleh however just chuckled. "I will have you know, in my days at the academy, I could spend several days without sleep and not be hampered in the least! Besides, this should provide you enough material to stave off your boredom until the morrow, material I have been meaning to cover with you for some time now."

    "Material you''ve been meaning to cover with me? Why?"

    "Because Marquise makes for a poor teacher of Ashic Theory. Don''t you still call your Asha a Will, or something of the sort?"

    "I call it what it is," Holly said.

    "And be very careful when you speak about the Lady," Furfu said. "I won''t forgive you as easily as she would."

    "Y-yeah, what she said!"

    "I''m quoting her very words," Aleh said. "If you have a problem with them, take it with her and not me. Now, assuming neither of you have any further complaints, how about I move us right along into the simplest crash course I know, the good old Sect disciplinarian''s World''s Making?"

    "Y-you know t-that?" Furfu said.

    "It''s the first thing I taught myself, though its the first time it does me any good. Now, Holly, look at my hands."

    She was still unsure of what was going on or would be taught, but she did as told. Aleh''s hand began to slowly spread, one upwards and the other down, as a tiny star was born in the space between them, a gorgeous little light that illuminated nothing, growing by pulses to an unheard beat until it became an elongated, oblong shape, featureless and colorless, but alive and breathing.

    "The first thing I want you to do, is tell me if you recognize what I''m about to show you."

    The oblong object started to rotate, its speed slowly increasing until its bottom half suddenly stopped, began to turn the opposite way. Both halves changed, in different ways: the upper turned blue with patches of green and brown mold emerging from beneath the surface and a white creep from its highest and lowest points; the lower turned dark, then darker, until it was such an impenetrable black even the night looked bright in comparison, enveloped by a fine violet aura. The center too shifted as it was twisted into formlessness, a dense fog drawn out like water from a used rag.

    Two nearly perfect spheres had been formed, and Holly watched, mesmerized, as the lower was destroyed, turning into a shower of ashes that quickly vanished in the air starting from the tip to the scrunched middle. With every tenth of the lowermost gone, the uppermost grew in size, until all Aleh was "holding" was the gorgeous display of azure. A throne of fog carried it on its back, a film of mist enveloping every exposed chunk of it, protecting the shapeless, bone white fluff masses that swam above the broken waxing moon shaped land formed over its center.

    "It''s our Starlit World, isn''t it?" she said, not the least amount uncertain.

    "G-good, Holly! A-and Ivias is-"

    "Irrelevant, this isn''t geography," Aleh said. "Second, tell me whichever answer first comes to mind: what is this world''s bedrock? What constitutes its basest, most essential load bearers?"

    She had no idea how to tackle such a question. After a couple dozen seconds of pondering in silence, she took a clue from her surroundings. "S-soil? Earth! Rock?"

    "T-think more abstractly Holly, for e-example-"

    "She followed the spirit of the question, so that''s a good enough answer."

    "Except it wouldn''t be, if a disciplinarian-"

    "Fuck the disciplinarians, she is answering me, and I say it''s good enough!" The image flickered, jagged edges bursting through its dissipating surface like broken bones. Aleh gasped, and suddenly the Starlit returned to its exuberant self. "Tch! Don''t listen to her Holly, what matters is this: soil, stone those are not bad guesses, however the answer lies deeper still, and not in the direction you expect. Behold!"

    Before her eyes, their world peeled away.

    No, not peeled she realized, but bloomed. A thousand petaled flower with an ethereal blue interior, arranged like a many layered pedestal for its treasured core, a second button, an impossible storm of golden dust endlessly churning around itself in contradictory directions, many current overlapping without interrupting the other''s flow. Though she had never seen it, she knew by heart what he was about to introduce.

    "T-this is..."

    "I don''t need to ask this, but when you utilize this Will of yours, you can feel it''s here yet simultaneously not, am I correct? The Starlit World is merely the surface of an unperceived pond, one said to contain a bottomless abyss, and right below the shallows from which we perceive this abyss lays the first of the drowning depths, one which most Dashi will never dare dive to!"

    "A-Asha!"

    "No."

    Holly Froze. "No?"

    "T-this Holly, is Merurgy," Furfu said, the shadow of her finger poking the image and instantly melting half the golden currents in an event that should be very much cataclysmic. "I-it is the existential value of the world, or so it is s-said."

    Aleh jumped back. "O-oi, Faceless, fingers out of my fucking delusion! Did you forget what you fucking are?!"

    "Oh, my apologies," Furfu said. "A-anyway, some believe Merurgy was originally only p-produced by living beings, and t-that inanimate objects only began to emit Merurgy after being infected-"

    "Excuse me, which of us both was the one sent to an Academy to learn these things, you or I?" Aleh tentatively slid forward again. "Don''t bog the lesson with unrelated, completely nonsensical trivia."

    "S-stupid cunt."

    "Want to do one more without stuttering, you gormless asshole?!"

    "Quiet!" Holly said, "The others are sleeping!"

    "No we aren''t," said Blades, who was putting back her cuirass, sitting by the Oke''s retractable staircase. Holly didn''t fail to notice the reflections on the naked blade laid over her lap.

    "A-anyway, stop being rude Aleh! Not like she isn''t helping!"

    "She isn''t helping! The field of Merurgical Genesis is fraught with discourse, and what she''s regurgitating in your ears is nothing but a complete outdated model filled with inaccuracies that the her disciplinarians refuse to drop thanks to its simplicity. Better now? If I may continue, soon she will insist in introduce you to things like the World''s Language Theory, or-"

    "W-w-what''s even wrong with the World''s Language?!"

    "U-uhm, can we please-"

    "What''s right with it?! It''s a model no institution worth its salt would ever teach as anything but a long debunked historical anecdote!"

    "It''s the structural foundation of half the continent''s enchantment models! O-of the Remnant''s entire witch corps!"

    "Wouldn''t be, if they bothered keeping with the times!"

    "It''s the one you use, you moron!"

    "Don''t you call me a moron, you feces-"

    "Quiet!"

    Holly scared Furfu into retreating, Aleh into nearly dropping his light show, and herself into forgetting what had made her so angry in the first place. She shook her head, and in the process noticed a blue light to her left, along the trees. It quickly disappeared, but the silhouette that stood in its place and was now quickly approaching didn''t.

    Holly bowed, hands above her head "I-I''m sorry! I swear I won''t do it again! It''s just- I mean..." She didn''t actually have the words she know she needed to say, and thus just faced the floor in silent shame, waiting for her punishment

    "I understand," Agare said. "Furfu, you are back with me. Aleh, go back inside at once, finish whatever you need to finish there."

    "M-my apologies s-sir, but-"

    "Try me." Agare''s voice carried no discernible emotion, and yet chilled Holly to her core, she couldn''t imagine what Furfu might be feeling right now. "You too, Aleh. Make me repeat myself."

    Aleh harrumphed, but did he defy his orders? wordlessly, Holly followed right behind him, carefully crawling over the sitting Blades, propped on her hands with a distant look in her eyes.

    "And you, Blades." Agare hesitated."Thank you."

    "Nothing to it, Boss." Blades said, and closed the Oke behind them.

    ------

    Inside, Aleh had to take a breather before attempting the "delusion" once again. The process this time went by faster, but was no less astounding to either Holly or his new audience.

    "Aaaaah, this is so nostalgic!" Almalilly said, laying on her side, almost resting her head against Holly''s elbow. "How long has it been, i wonder? Goodness, how many decades?!"

    "Eh. It''s not that special," Blades said.

    "Because you already saw it! Oh, by the way, very well done Aleh! It''s just like how I remember it."

    "Thank you, Almalilly!" At Aleh''s words, the Starlit World peeled back to reveal the golden storm again. "Where were we, Holly?"

    "Merurgy."

    "Of course," Aleh said as the flower of worlds started rotating again. "Now, Merurgy is a complicated matter. There is no real agreed way to perceive it, no agreed shape to it, and no agreed intrinsic purpose to it. Some call it the "Starlit Soul," the "Starlit Flesh," but while it does bridge a certain connection among all things it is largely believed the Merurgical Plane, the plane of existence Merurgy inhabits, is not one whole mass, closer to a multi-cellular being, if you know the term."

    "I know."

    "All matter produces Merurgy, though our dearest Furfu''s belief didn''t exactly emerge from thin air, organic creatures can produce, and manipulate, Merurgy at a much higher rate. Its position as the ''existential value'' of the physical realm... has its controversies."

    "I see."

    "Now, Merurgy isn''t a static phenomenon, it has variations and undergoes metamorphosis quite often, which I won''t go into the finer details of for brevity''s sake. Rather, the most important aspect for us is that while you feel, see, in some cases even smell or taste Merurgy, you don''t actually directly control it."

    "Oh?"

    The Merurgical bud split, its long slender petals unfolding until they pushed its predecessor''s back, unveiling a third sphere, one much stranger than both others. A labyrinth of tendrils curling, overlapping, or fusing into one another, forming complex yet ever evolving shapes, perfectly round spirals sharing space with suns and gnarled trees and malformed skeletons.

    "This is the Ashic Plane, and if you think the Merurgical Plane was abstract, this one will look absurd. Some call it the World''s Skeleton, as it provides the framework in which Merurgy, and Asha of course, function. Just as all living creatures exist as Merurgical Waves, we all exist as Ashic Frames, intangible calcified bodies that break and remake themselves through the course of a well lived life."

    "Uhm."

    "... To use Asha is to reconfigure yourself from your birth bones, to leave behind the mold assigned you and forge a new body from the path you follow! Though that''s a discipline fraught with choice, usually for worse. Ashas are usually classified into three categories..."

    "Uhm?"

    "Type one, called Strong Snail Ashas, will turn you into a slug; Type two Ashas, referred to as Outer Snail Ashas, which allows you to turn others into slugs; Type three, the Mystery Snail Ashas, in which you partake of another slug''s power."

    "I like the first one," Blades said.

    "Cool."

    "Alright, enough."

    Aleh closed down the image with a clap, sending Holly reeling back. He took a breath so deep it almost sounded like a dying gasp, exhale for a solid twenty seconds, then frowned at her. "Holly, I ask you this again, kindly, with no intention to insult you: What is wrong with you?"

    "Aleh."

    Shocked, Holly took a few seconds to answer, "W-whu?"

    "If the previous discussion distressed you in some manner, I''m afraid I will have to apologize not only now but many times in the future, that Faceless and I have a history together and will certainly butt heads until one of the other has no head left to butt, however I know for certain that isn''t it."

    "I-I don''t..."

    "You don''t? I have no clue what you mean to say with just those two words, but I could bet a leg and a ball that it will be a lie. Or do you really go into periods of profound melancholy every time you wet your feet?"

    "C-can''t we just continue the lesson?"

    "Despite a slight interest in education, I''m not being paid to be your tutor, and no matter what Marquise asks me I won''t go so low as trying to force my knowledge through the skull of an obviously disinterested student."

    "I-I''m not disinterested! I''m listening, really!"

    "Let''s test your interest then. Holly, why did I insist on this lesson?"

    "Uhmm, b-because the Marquise put you to it?"

    "As I said. Why else?"

    "Youuu... thought it was silly that I got scared by some ghost?"

    "Partially. Why else?"

    "I don''t know! Because you like teaching? Because you wanted to prove you''re smarter than me?" Because you wanted to mock me? To scare me? To hurt me? "Just tell me already! I''m getting tired of this."

    "Because you haven''t been yourself Holly."

    She shivered. Her Will flew free, and in an instant Aleh was bound from all sides as she compressed him. The Oke''s dust, or Merurgy or whichever force was put there to defend its occupants flew into rage pushing back against her length with agonizing, scouring waves of grains, the once gentle pulses of light growing red and urgent, barbed thorns slowly pushing their way out of the walls.

    And Aleh had not budged beyond a slight flinch, his eyes piercing deep into the veil of her robes as if he could look her right in the eyes with a defiance that only agitated her more. She had fingers, she had nails, a reason, she could dig into him as deep as his heart, unearth all his weakest parts like she had done to God, and all she had to do was will it so.

    "You don''t know me."

    "You don''t need to know a child all your life to know something''s wrong when one day you see them frolicking in the fields and the next they refuse to leave their bed." Aleh was sweating, but still, "If you would please, stop this, it won''t end well."

    "I''m not a-!" She shook her head. The pain was starting to dull her thoughts. "Y-you don''t know me! I-I''m Holly Seneschal, I never liked mean lads like you, who think they can hurt whoever they want! I-I-"

    Aleh slowly rose both hands, palms facing her. She almost expected him to try one of his tricks, squeezing him tighter, but nothing came, "I-I understand, and I s-swear on my names I will apologise to h-her for my behavior t-tomorrow. P-please release me before you get hurt."

    "And you don''t know me! Don''t say you know me!"

    "I w-won''t, I-I promise. Please..."

    The pain grew unbearable. It was as if the Oke had shrunk to a quarter of its size, barbs crushing her limbs and dicing her skin apart with an almost anxious hunger. With a deep breath she let go, quickly pressing her Will together in a defensive cocoon while expecting the starved fangs to fall on her, but with an almost conscious hesitation their transport returned to normal, its own aggression forgotten.

    Aleh dropped to his hands, and so did she. Her head was swimming, her arms weak, her skin cold with sweat and fear. What had come over her?!

    The sliding screech of metal on a scabbard reminded her there were other people around. She snapped back, just in time to see Rosen hiding something behind his back, a sheepish smile tugging his lips. Blades was much slower, making sure Holly was watching as she holstered her weapon and sat it beside herself, bearing a placid expression, at least in comparison to Almalilly who had turned so pale she was partially reflective.

    "T-thank you." Aleh said, panting, "I don''t know you, I understand that, I was simply speaking from observation: something happened that day you trained on the grassy hill, and it affected you deeply."

    "I-I..."

    "It''s alright. I wanted to cheer you up, distract you even if just a little."

    "You wanted to know what happened."

    "...I can''t deny I did. We were concerned it might be pertinent to our mission."

    Aleh was no Marquise, but he was her trusted agent, right? She wasn''t alone anymore, she had people who needed her and who she needed in turn, Marquise''s gift carelessly disregarded.

    Holly Seneschal had gone too far.

    And so she told him. Not everything, of course, that certain word was a secret she would bury in her mind before her body was sent back to the earth, but otherwise she held nothing back. Something was coming.

    The four around her listened in silence until she was done. Aleh sighed, crossed his arms, and closed his eyes for a minute. Finally, when he opened them again, he had the toothiest smile she had ever seen.

    "Holly, would you like to tell this straight to the Marquise?"

 2 - The Children of the Lake 7

    On the horizon, a great defensive wall stretched from side to side.

    They had already been expecting to arrive somewhere around today or tomorrow, depending on eventualities. Rosen had even sent a letter ahead of time, which, through the very tense week where their Oke was forced to run at the highest speeds it could muster nearly every hour of the day, no response arrived. Only yesterday did a courier from Fortress Aaltor meet them head-on, drawing a loud sigh of relief from his lips.

    Ever since Holly had told them what happened that day at the hillside, rest no longer came easy to the group. They took to the countryside, the notion of a slow trip through Galehold forgotten as they avoided settlements and insulted all of existence under their breath when somebody spotted them on the road, forcing them to halt. Small talk had mostly died down, weapons were pulled from hidden corners and always kept within hand''s reach, and when the time to sleep came they no longer wagered for comfortable bedding; the consensus wordlessly reached was that Aleh and Almalilly took the seats.

    Each member suffered their own way, unused to living in cramped spaces with many others for any extended amounts of time. Agare had been getting curter with his orders, Furfu had been taken by a strange fit of composure, Aleh spent entire days with his head covered in red wrappings and meditating, while the other three had lost most of that early cheer.

    And Holly... couldn''t say she didn''t share their fears. Really, she had been very anxious!

    But Marquise was going to send her a letter! And she was going to see her first fortress today! How could she not be at least a little peachy? What a week!

    And besides that, something else.

    "H-Holly!"

    "T-ten more! Y-you''re nearly t-there!"

    She had to admit, she was struggling to pay attention.

    It had been Blades idea, technically. The four more normal members of their crew were used to training outside while Holly was out exploring with Agare, but current issues didn''t allow them enough time or security to keep with it. And so, driven to boredom and madness, they had decided to keep their bodies trained inside, taking turns.

    Except, none of them particularly fancied drenching their clothes in sweat in the now boiling hot transport, which not only would be hard to clean but stank up the machine even worse.

    It''s how Holly ended up watching a nude Almalilly doing pushups in the tight space between velvet seats.

    When she had first thought of her as stout, she had never imagined how much of it would be muscle. There was no other way to put it, Almalilly looked strong, evident by the ease of her "sets", by the fine tapestry of scars her skin bore, clear lines of cuts and old bruises crossing her well defined back, down her thickset thighs, and in front of her soft belly, her heavy set breasts-

    She shook her head and briefly looked away, finding Rosen.

    He had finished the quickest, but the effects of his session were still evident in his body, beads of sweat slowly trailing down his muscular chest, dried away by the gentle strokes of his towel, its through movements covering all of his only now underwear clad body, from the nook of his broad shoulders to his large yet elegant arms, his shapely stomach, the tuft of hair peeking from his crotch-

    Their eyes met. A confident, amused smile tugged his lips gently, a short chuckle followed by a slow shake of head. She looked away again, to the only safe person in sight, the thankfully robed Aleh in his garish yellows and reds.

    Warmth pooled from every corner of her body. Any more, and she would believe she had become an Oke herself.

    "D-done!" Almalilly lowered herself to the floor then sat down, giving Aleh a light slap on the knee. "Couldn''t you have picked something a little bigger? Doing anything in this cramped little box is a nightmare!"

    Head slumped, back straight, fingers loosely open over his lap like dying insects, Aleh didn''t twitch so much as muscle.

    "Witches are so creepy..." Almalilly said.

    "In defense of the young sir," Rosen said, idly fiddling with a few latched belts she now knew he wore under his tunics, "I can''t imagine he picked this one for no reason."

    "I know, I''m just being a grump," Almalilly said, chest heaving with panting breaths. "He told me this was the closest thing he could find to what he needed, don''t ask me why. Oh, and can''t forget the, ''as if better craft would be so readily available in these forsaken boonies!'' Bah! Oh, could you be a sweet and pass me the towel when you''re done?"

    "Of course. Good job, by the way." Rosen threw the towel.

    "Thanks!"

    It wasn''t like it bothered her, not in the conventional way at least. Two thirds of them had asked for her permission before stripping down and giving fifty in nothing but their sword belts. If anything, the nudity gave her a strange sense of kinship with this suddenly open minded group of friends, and made her dearly wish she could join them, even if for just a few minutes.

    It did gave her an odd feeling of shamelessness however, one not entirely unpleasant, one not close to unknown, but something she had been told explicitly told not to think about too deeply. In fact, she had been told not to think about it at all, forget her brain was even capable of such interests in the first place.

    And so she tried.

    She carefully moved her hand, mindful of not attraction too much attention, but there was no avoiding the instinctual cringe she did at the loud squelch the slightest squeeze could draw from her sleeves. At least it didn''t smell too bad. She swallowed down her jealousy, and watched them dress in silence.

    "Help me out with my back, Holly?"

    "W-whu?"

    "My back. Before I get a lake in the crack of my butt. Please?"

    If she asked so politely, why not?

    For Elder Seneschal''s sake, she would have to keep trying after all.

    What a week.

    <hr>

    Even clothed, Almalilly still proved distracting to talk to. Thankfully, she had known just the right thing to take Holly''s mind from the morning''s events.

    "That, below, burning." She pointed to a distant gathering of men around a pile of cut down, stripped shrubbery. Smoke had started pouring from its middle, creating a small trail that nonetheless attract a swarm of four winged creatures that glided after one another in rings.

    "Below, burning, t-that''s miuna right? Campfire! And above it are the skinbirds."

    "What a name for the poor things! But you got it right, congratulations!" Almalilly smiled. She moved the cylindrical device in her hands, a tube of brass sealed on both ends, the transparent window on the Oke''s wall following close behind, "Now... That, on all those roofs, red, can you see?"

    The crenelated wall reached as far as the eye could see and then beyond, interspersed with tall towers bearing little in way of flourish, their only colors coming from their sun bleached flags and red clay roof tiles. She payed the glinting soldiers and bizarre accompanying shapes a moment of interest, before focusing on her task.

    "Dovi, roof."

    "Yes! And the big guys creeping under those Dovi?"

    She looked slightly down again. The walls were abuzz with life, human and otherwise, adorned in metal and leather, their long polearms and enormous bows becoming clearer every second as they approached Fortress Aaltor, Almalilly might have asked for something a little more complicated, but her gut went with the simplest answer she had. "Gulshe, warrior?"

    "Soldier too. And no, I meant ulan, or uwlan, beast."

    "Ah! I-I knew that one too!"

    Almalilly frowned. "I bet you did! Honestly, you don''t sound like someone who just picked up a language Holly."

    "Hehe, w-what can I say? It comes easy to me."

    "Glad for you!" She sat down with a sigh, the window outside quickly disappearing as the small device Aleh had given her fell to the side. "Took me a whole year before I could construct sentences, outside the really basic stuff! Don''t know what Marquise was thinki- I-I mean, I''m very sure Marquise had her reasons for choosing me to teach you Awinian!"

    Furfu, standing like a lad guarding the house of an Elder, still watched her for a few more moments, before turning back to watch out the Oke''s cabin.

    "...I just think I''m far from the best tutor you could have gotten," she whispered.

    "I-I''m glad to have you as my teacher, Almalilly! Y-you''re really cool!"

    "Oh please, flattery will get you nowhere!" She giggled. "And really, just Lilly is perfectly fine. If I can trust you to watch over my back- quite literally at that! I can trust you enough to call you a comrade."

    "I-if you say so, L-Lilly." Holly said, blushing. "I think I trust you a lot too."

    "Happy to hear! Just don''t trust me in a fight, I stay fit but that''s really not what I''m built for."

    "Yup," Blades, legs crossed and sitting opposite them, said. "That''s what I''m here for."

    Holly unconsciously pushed herself back against the wall, then fidgeted uncomfortably as she realized what she was very obviously doing. Ever since that night with Aleh, she couldn''t help but think Blades was a little frightening.

    "Hey, speaking of, don''t think I haven''t noticed you aren''t keeping up with your training!"

    "Somebody told me not to." Blades said, lightly punching Aleh in the shoulder. "Might nick his baby."

    Aleh, his breathing so faint he was practically asleep, didn''t move a finger.

    "Y-you both are really close, aren''t you?" Holly ventured, a little anxious about their reaction.

    "C-close, you think?" Almalilly, or Lilly she had to remind herself, said. She crossed her arms, her brow creasing as she exchanged a look with Blades. "I mean, closer than with any of the others I suppose, but not that much closer than coworkers, maybe?"

    Blades gasped, eyes going wide, "Lilly! You wound me."

    "I mean, look at this slouch, how do you get close to that?! She looks well behaved now, but if you knew the kinds of horrors she put me through when I was younger, you would never look her in the eyes again! I swear, there wasn''t one person of authority she didn''t like picking fights with, and this dumbass right here always got dragged down with her!"

    Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

    "You''re the one who insisted in standing up for me."

    "Of course I did! Do you think I wanted to see a comrade get- get, hmm, punished harshly for her transgressions?! And you never even thanked me, did you?" Lilly shrugged with a sigh, before turning to Holly again. "I''m not sure I believe in fate, but the Remnants sure insisted in putting us together as often as they could! And when you work so frequently with someone else, it''s hard not to get to know them at least a bit."

    "That sounds cool!" Holly said. "Did you know the others too?"

    "We knew Rosen," Blades said.

    "Knew is relative." Lilly threw a furtive glance towards the cabin, where Rosen and Agare were leading the party, "I''m not sure how well you know about the Remnants, but we are quite numerous and spread apart, so you don''t often get to know many people from outside your clade well."

    "We knew of the Boss. And the little boss here too, I think."

    "Who didn''t?"

    "I didn''t know Aleh, or this Furfu."

    "I had heard of their-" Furfu whipped her head so fast Lilly was sent into a fit of coughs, She continued after recovering. "I-I had heard of their fame from rumors before, but didn''t get to meet them until Marquise, no. You were one nasty boy, you hear me Aleh?"

    Aleh didn''t so much as huff in acknowledgment.

    "I didn''t know what an Oke was."

    "I didn''t either! I had imagined something completely different, more exotic I guess. Less cumbersome, too, but considering the benefits I''m willing to let that slide."

    Blades chuckled, with such an ease Holly would think she was half asleep if she couldn''t see the honed sharpness beneath her lids. Lilly sniffed, glaring her down with flushed indignity, only to be met with a smug smile and a lazy shrug. Finally, she relented, sighing.

    So they knew Marquise before. Did they know more about what happened at the Skawlan Forward Base? Did they know more about her before that? Holly was dying of curiosity, but she had always hesitated to ask, always saw it as a form of breaching taboo.

    "S-so, do-"

    "Well, enough about us, I want to talk about you Holly! How have you been? How are you enjoying the trip so far?"

    "What?"

    "I mean, last week you were, how can I say this... Down in the dumps?"

    "Homicidally furious," Blades said.

    "M-me?!"

    "B-Blades! Don''t listen to her Holly, I know you were just a little peeved at Aleh, that''s just what the guy does to others, nothing out of the ordinary! Thought I do have to admit that you scared me a little bit, I hadn''t imagine you could be so..."

    "Violent?" Holly nodded. "I-I don''t really have an excuse, s-sorry, I''m not sure what happened either."

    "No?" Blades said, the almost imperceptible raise of her eyebrow all it took for the tips of her hair to swipe against one another.

    "A-anyway! I just wanted to check out on you after that, but considering the situation, I guess I just kept postponing it. My bad! Well, better late then never in my opinion. So, have you been enjoying your time so far?"

    "Y-yes! Of course I have! T-there were a few uncomfortable moments, but I''m so happy to be away from Lesser Hollow, I had never imagined the world could be so big, so different! And you all are so kind to me, and the Marquise is going to send us a letter soon, and, and-!" She took a deep breath to recompose herself, "I-I guess if there was something I wanted to do different, I wish Agare would let me take this gross thing off, like all of you can."

    "N-no Holly, don''t do things just because we do it! W-we''re, hmm, abnormal! We''re a really bad example! This isn''t the kind of thing you should be doing, and I swear on my names we''ll stop as soon as we think it''s safe!"

    Holly rolled her eyes. "Y-you don''t need to stop, I don''t mind! I just-"

    "W-wait, did I hear that right, you lived in Lesser Hollow?!"

    "... Did Marquise not tell you?"

    "She did, and it still completely slipped my mind! Goodness Holly, how must that have been! You have to tell me all about it!"

    "U-uhm, where should I even start? Shouldn''t we-"

    "You know, I have friends who would go completely nuts if they met you! The lost town of Lesser Hollow, as told by one of its very own inhabitants! There are some aficionados who to this day are still searching for clues that it even existed at all! And when most finally reach the boiling point were they have to go rooting for themselves and never come back, it becomes a joke! ''what were they thinking, strolling up the hollows like it was a flower field?'' They say."

    "T-that''s so cruel! Though they probably wouldn''t be too well received, since the Lesser was never fond of outsiders."

    "Small towns never are, are they?"

    "It wasn''t even a town anymore! Elder Seneschal told me that when he was a child-"

    She decided to let go, surprised to find herself so enthused about telling her story with Lesser Hollow and the many miseries it inflicted on her. Lilly eyes didn''t leave her for a second, her focus so intense it scared her some, scooting over so close they were nearly arm to arm. Was that unconscious? No, she should have noticed by now, shouldn''t she?

    Part of her was overjoyed. Part of her was embittered, but that was routine, ignoring it was as easy as walking.

    And a third part was afraid. She hadn''t missed the glint in Blades eyes as she watched them both talk. Face still locked in a carefree expression, but Holly could feel something less than friendly lurking beneath the surface.

    She wouldn''t let it spoil the moment however. She would simply be very, very careful.

    <hr>

    The signal came from the front, a quick and sharp "Aleh!" that echoed all the way to the back.

    This time Aleh''s head snapped up as if broken from a stupor, his hand crashing against the wall behind him with enough force to make her flinch, and he began to chant. Though muffled by his wrappings, the low and raspy sound of his voice haunted the Oke, sending phantom goosebumps up her spine. Soon, the air around them began to darken, turning the entrance to the cabin into a scrambled curtain of indiscernible blurred colors.

    She heard a disgusting wet slurp coming from the front, and then voices, slow and nearly incomprehensible, shouts bubbling from deep underwater.

    "Aaaaaah, buddy! How long... came by? Your... looks like a...!" It was difficult to pick meaning from the slurry the barrier allowed past, but she tried anyway. "How... the good misses... that mill?"

    "Good man Bel-" Belzare? Belzake? Belzale? "Oh, you know... she wants... the boy will...!"

    As if to make up for the assault on their senses, everything behind Aleh''s seat disappeared, affording the women a clear glance out into the castle''s entrance, a dim tunnel of stone bricks illuminated by a couple evenly placed torches and meager sunlight.

    They weren''t the only people here, and she felt almost conscious of the fact. Gorgeous wagons of varnished wood and embossed reliefs decorating all sides, beautiful horses with pristine groomed furs, driven by men donning exquisitely embroidered capes and shirts; other transports without animal labour, metallic and large, though luxurious and glossy with polish rather than the Oke''s rather dry affair; and needless to say the soldiers with their gruesome weaponry, spiked maces and heavy polearms and long swords, their officers mounted on armored warmares with necks as thick as tree trunks, one swerving its eye from side to side until it fixated on-

    "Shit!" Lilly spat, turning away and closing her eyes. "Sorry Holly, I know you don''t like that."

    "B-but I said I didn''t mind..."

    "I heard from acquaintance of mine that on the other side of the Hollows there is a popular saying that goes like ''a coin is to a merchant what a caterpillar is to a fish.''"

    "Not funny," Blades said, giving the officer a dismissive glance.

    "It''s kind of morbid if you think about it too hard, yeah, but look at that!" Lilly said, gesturing to all the transports clogging up the tunnel. "Well, if the borders are in this state, then at least that means things on Bellfort''s side aren''t too bad."

    "I-I still don''t understand that place. Nobody even wants to talk about it." Holly said.

    "Oh, it''s a long and sordid affair, the history of how Bellfort came to be, and why most Yinians, or the Faceless, don''t really like them."

    "They bed Tales. They claim to be the true Yinians, and that Galehold was built by usurpers. They will come down barking if Awin tells them to," Blades said, then scowled."They kicked us out and kept all the good swords."

    "I guess that''s as good a summary of the situation as any. They used to be part of the empire, you know? And seceded at a pretty sensitive point in time."

    "Cowards waiting to give low blows. Good doggies for the wrong people."

    "I-I gathered as much." Holly watched as one of the classy fellows gestures grew agitated, panicked perhaps, while the closest guards grew stiff and tense, "Marquise used to talk about it like a tragedy. She told me she wished Galehold still had the lake."

    "Oh, Bell Lake! I hear its so beautiful this time of the year!" Lilly sighed, "I had always wanted to see it at least once, such a shame Marquise didn''t accept my proposal! Alas, she was right to in the end. Perhaps in another life?"

    "Can''t you do it after the mission? I''ll come with you!"

    Lilly smiled. "That''s kind of you to offer, but remember what I said? They don''t like the Faceless around these parts, and Faces aren''t too different on their eyes. Nevermind that though, we''re moving."

    "Already?"

    Indeed, while those who had come before them still endured the scrutiny of the guards, they rolled forward into the bright, wide patio of the fortress.

    Armored men marched in several lines, shoulder to shoulder. Armored men ran in heavy plates and bloated bags, in and out of the bastion''s many tunnels and doors. Armored men sparred with one another under the scorching sun, the glint of their arms blinding. One in particular stood out to Holly: overlooking the procedures with a kingly posture, the sheer bulk of his absurd, shining plated suit, the visage of a lion''s mane imprinted onto his heavy helmet, gave her the impression of living metal, not to speak of the fat armored beast, easily larger than a warmare even sat down, beneath him, its clawed paws easily large enough to engulf another man''s head, its yawning mouth possibly capable of swallowing Holly''s own without chewing.

    Fortress Aaltor rose around them as high as trees at the densest profundities of a forest. Weather worn stone surrounded them at all sides, protecting those on the other of its many slit-like windows from those below, the unfortunate creatures pushing themselves and others into the moss encrusted, dirt and hay littered, feces ridden floor of the patio. Plants had started to grow at some of its corners, verdant and tall and serving as horse feed for one awfully mangy creature on at least one occasion.

    On one hand, she was impressed. She had no idea things this big could be build. On the other: "W-what a mess!"

    "Sure is!" Lilly frowned with a reproving frown, "How can these people be ready for an invasion if they can''t even clean their own floors?! This is shameful!"

    "Heh. Nostalgic."

    "... I can''t believe you." Lilly said.

    "S-say, how come we are moving so much faster then the other people? Didn''t they come first."

    "We have special orders! If the Faceless are moving out, who are these slobs to get in the way?"

    "Easy like that?"

    "If they don''t want our business to become theirs, it sure has to be. Though..." Lilly pushed her spectacles back into place, "My work was flawless. And Rosen''s contacts do make the effort a little smother too I guess."

    The metallic man above the huge beast gestured in their direction, short and curt, before resuming his one sided conversation with his companion, a plated and plumed captain gently steering an agitated warmare who desperately wanted to be somewhere else.

    "Your work?"

    "Somebody had to handle the boring bureaucracy, right?"

    As the Oke curved down a designated road, nothing but a shallow concavity cutting through the corners of the fortress where the filth and grime had been allowed to build until it felt as if they were drifting over wet mud, another sight caught her eyes, taking her breath away.

    In the dead center of the patio, a great statue stood dominant, clean and cared for in a way nothing else here was, so masterfully sculped she could tell the bleeding wounds and scars of its main figures'' skins even from a distance.

    Below, a pile of cowering and dying warriors crawled, tried to flee, pleaded with empty hands raised, their crude weapons and shields cast down over their fellows, chest pieces of what she had to assume was bark and leather dented and cut. Soft serpentine folds emerged and submerged in between their limbs, with enough frequency they almost looked like chains keeping those unfortunate to be at the bottom of the human pile in place.

    The three grandiose heroes above, each at the very least over thrice as large as those crushed under their feet, however seemed to have no mercy to spare. One, highest among all, stood above the battle atop a monster not too dissimilar to the metallic man''s own, chestplate embossed with interweaving shapes, left arm carrying a longsword impaling five dead men at once, the right lifting an immense cloth flag, bearing the image of a bear over a lion, Galehold''s coat of arms blowing for the entire world to see. He was stern, face heavy with beard and mustache, no helmet but an ugly crown over his head, thin and asymmetric, full of spikes piercing deep enough into his scalp to draw rivulets down to his chin.

    He wasn''t the one to catch her eyes.

    Besides the bear, stood two other figures. The first, held in the arms of the second, was a woman, large breasts revealed to all, some kind of dress or sheet or something, cascading down her body from her shoulders to the floor, one hand firmly gripping her covers while the other stood over her forehead, her expression shocked and vacant, surprisingly untouched.

    It was that second one who immediately tickled her memories, but why? He was youthful yet bearing the beginnings of a beard, hair falling over his ears in gorgeously maintained curls, his countenance both adamant and wrathful. Naked as the day he was born, his parts dangling in between his spread legs, he held the lady back with protective zeal with one arm, while the other struck down to the ground with a weapon she didn''t recognize.

    Or she did actually, she recognized it from the first days of the journey, though she could see it in much better detail now. Like a sun or a flower, an orb as large as his fist at the end of a long handle holding a perfect circle of broad blades, or so she had to guess considering half of it was hidden under a trail of lovingly recreated carnage, viscera molded with such accuracy she could tell intestines from stomachs, broken ribs from freed humerus.

    "W-what is-" She swallowed some bile, looking away, "What is that?!"

    She venture a careful look around, covering the image of bloodshed with a hand. She expected some horror from her companions, and while neither looked pleased they seemed closer to unamused than shocked.

    "Shal to the Conquerors. You know what that word means?"

    "N-no?"

    "Suppose not. It''s Lesan, and means something like spoils, or treasures, or something of the kind." Lilly crossed her arms. "By Titan Marches, also know as the most tasteless man ever born. Heard about this statue before, and I should have believed it''s reputation. How did the guy who created Glories of the Princess actually get more work?!"

    "G-Glories of the Princess?"

    "Oh it''s even worse, it was-"

    "Lilly," Blades said, "she meant the Five Figures."

    "But I''m counting just three?" Holly said.

    "I assumed she already knew them?" Lilly said, turning to Holly with an inquisitive quirk of brow. "Didn''t Marquise make you read the Codex of the Lion?"

    "She didn''t make me read anything. M-mostly. I did bring that one with me though, why the question?"

    "I guess you wouldn''t know then. Well, the Codex of the Lion, is, how should I put it..."

    "It''s trash."

    Furfu''s head turned in the blink of an eye, but Blades met the shadow of her cowl with a languid disinterest worthy of a jungle feline. Furfu was eventually forced to give up, returning to her still awkwardly rigid posture.

    "U-uncultured bitch, no n-nuance..." Furfu rambled beyond even Holly''s ability to keep up.

    "A-an important cultural artifact regardless of the quality or controversies it has caused since the Lion Dynasty times, is how I was going to put it. It''s quite a strange book, a mixture between a philosophical treaty and an anthology written by a monk turned knight, and it would go on to inspire the first Yinian Emperor in pretty much all aspects of his reign."

    "It''s a book about how you should be, depending how you were born."

    "Pretty much! It depicts how people should be for the healthy functioning of an empire, at least the way the author sees it, represented by five symbols called the Five Esteemed Figures."

    Blades face twisted with a distaste that bordered on revulsion. "The girl is the Household Princess. The big guy is the Lion."

    "And the boy waging war is the Intrepid Youth, who represents what every young man ought to become."

    "Killers."

    "As well."

    "T-thanks, that''s interesting to hear, but..." But that wasn''t it, not at all. When her eyes were driven back to that scene of slaughter, it was not the youth they seeked but the gore soaked sun, casting death down on the broken army. "What is that? In the Youth''s hand?"

    Both Blades and Lilly leaned closer, maybe trying to discern what anything from that pile of remains. However, when they leaned back, both were quiet, contemplative, frowning. They exchanged a long glance, and Holly shivered.

    "I-if you don''t know, it''s okay! I was just cu-"

    "That," Blades said, "is the Peaceful Night."

    Lilly didn''t expound. Holly didn''t ask her to.

    It wouldn''t be long before the window to the outside closed, though Aleh''s hand remained in place. With nothing better to do, she threw small talk away with Blades and Almalilly, occasionally straining her hearing to catch bits and pieces of the conversation happening by the front. They took longer leaving the Fortress then entering, but suddenly a second call came, and Aleh slumped back into his quiet meditation.

    And soon, they had crossed the brick and mortar barrier into murky waters, as Lilly had put it.

    Bellfort welcomed them.

 2 - The Children of the Lake 8

    Holly tapped impatiently at moss encrusted, fungus ridden trunk she sat on.

    At the deft movement of Aleh''s fingers, the great golden spherical bud was teased open, once again unveiling the white labyrinth of tendrils and complex patterns. Even in the light of that sunny. pleasantly fresh day, the perfect kind of day to receive a letter, it had an undeniable presence to itself, a color and texture that refused to be obscured by the elements.

    She gave it an appreciative glance, then resumed her vigil of the sky.

    "... It is thus said that Merurgy is the "basic energy" of the world. But what would move such an energy? What keeps it in place? The Merurgical Plane has no gravity of its own, no real anchor it can physically latch itself to. Well, its saving grace lies in its connections. First, our world, which it nourishes, and second, can you guess?"

    "Ashas?" The jungle screamed around them, every single corner bursting with life and demanding attention she couldn''t spare. A dark skinbird glided past their heads, in close chase of a crimson dragonfly as long around as her hand, and though she was eager to follow behind she remained strong. "Y-you''re sure it''s coming today, right?"

    "Yes, and yes, the Ashic Plane! The other cliff lying beyond the abyss of Merurgy, the crushing depths of the Witches'' Ocean! Some call it the Starlit Skeleton, the Starlit Commandment, the Starlit Matter."

    "Cool!" Idly, she began to tear at the mushroom shelves under her legs, their tough hold on the bark useless against her prying nails. She broke them and crushed them with her fingers, enjoying the resistance before they crumbled through the gaps, "A-and you don''t know when, right?"

    "Right. There is a certain erroneous notion often spread among the masses that only by learning Ashic Arts one makes use of Asha, however as I''m sure you understand by now the same way all things have Merurgy all things contain Asha, it is a basic framework of the way reality works after all. Have you ever seen a living creature without bones?"

    "Plants?" Holly said. "Do you know the direction though? Just so I know where to watch."

    "I-I meant something closer to fauna."

    "Riversquids?"

    "A-aha, see?! Even riversquids have a modicum of an internal skeleton! But I will take the point and broaden my reach: all things have a shape, don''t they? A structure that defines their growth, their physical capabilities, so on, so forth. Despite its many names, current theories propose that Asha, the matter of the Ashic Plane so to speak, is energetic rather than, well, solid for a lack of better word, pliable and brittle yet just strong enough to hold back all that dimensional weight."

    "Neat. How do you make sure it goes where you want it to? Is there a way to keep track of it? or-"

    With that, Aleh''s hands clapped close, dissipating the labyrinth into a cloud of white smoke. Taking a deep breath and massaging his forehead, he gave her a look of through exhaustion.

    "I swear on my names, in all my time with the S- Remnants, I have never seen a child, no matter how miscreant or apathetic, not crowd around the disciplinarians when they bring the witches for the World''s Making. So how come you, who to my knowledge lived under literal rock, seems to hold not the slightest interest?"

    "H-hey, I''m not a child, maybe!"

    "Holly, you asked me to do this. And let me assure you, though I am not lifting weights or breaking sweat on my late commute from Lower to Upper Shalias, keeping the required precision to maintain the World''s Making is very much an effort."

    "I-I''m sorry, but it''s not like I wasn''t paying attention! I''m just, you know! it''s coming!"

    While the process of crossing Galehold hadn''t taken too long, Bellfort was proving itself a much mightier foe. They had maybe traveled a tenth of what they use to before on the first day, Agare and Furfu spending every second in the back with her under Aleh''s veil as the less unusual members of their group conducted business up front. At some point, a few men had actually entered the Oke, dull eyes scanning the interior as if trapped in a dream, prying hands at one point turning her chin left than right before loudly exclaiming that everything was in order.

    Eventually, they were forced off road, though the path forward proved near impossible to navigate thanks to this new and exciting jungle they found themselves in, so now they had to plan a way back while Agare left her alone for the first time, claiming to have some tasks to attend to.

    Under Furfu''s watchful gaze, she was allowed time outside to get some air, so long as she stood close and within view. In truth, she had called the bored looking Aleh for company and asked him to continue his lesson, still a little guilty over what she had done.

    Unfortunately, or fortunately for her, the day had come. The one thing keeping her sane, the hope that repulsed all ennui when she wasn''t allowed to explore anymore, it was here.

    "Frankly, you- Oh? Oh, see? All a matter of patience!"

    Holly shot to her feet, searching all the cardinal directions for anything out of place, before simply following Aleh''s gaze. At first, the spot seemed empty, nothing but clouds and branches swaying with the wind. Then, it appeared in mid air, a small object flying in curves towards them. Aleh, eyes closed and nose raised, extended an arm sideways, ready for its arrival.

    That the diminute yet sharp and pointed figure landed on his forearm without causing damage, it did.

    That it landed with such strength it nearly dislocated his shoulder and pulled him off his feet, it did.

    "F-fucking-!" Aleh screamed, reeling back, arm windmilling for balance, not falling on his rear end by a miracle, "I thought I had fixed you! What''s up with those fucking old habits again?!"

    "It''s here! It''s here!" She jumped, excitement uncontainable. "Gimme! Gimme!"

    She wasn''t talking to Aleh.

    One Two was a marvelous little creature. Taking the form of a headless bird, with a smooth torso of brass petering out to a broad spearhead tail, wings feathered with thin copper plates, and twig-like legs ending in tripodal feet, she could barely believe it had been crafted by Dashi hands, much less Aleh''s.

    As adorable as it was, the moment she raised a hand its way it jumped from his forearm to his shoulder, wings open and ready to flee. She had expected as much, but couldn''t help be a little hurt by the adorable little fellow''s reaction.

    "H-hey, I''m not going to hurt you! Aleeeeeh!"

    "I''m fine and healthy, gratitude for your concern by the way." He shook his head, fixing his garish yellow robes in place. "Also, I will repeat: One Two is not a living animal, Holly, no matter how complex its Merurgical core is, it can''t learn if you are a threat or not."

    "Ooooh, C''mon, can''t you teach it?"

    "Another time, perhaps. We have more urgent matters at hand, do we not?" he said with a smile, his hand finding One Two''s puffed out chest and quickly swiping a pattern with his finger. One Two turned its back towards her, a slit now gaping open on the edge of its tail. Once a significant hole had been made, its upper half further bisected, folding back to reveal a fur padded interior, cradling a single roll of paper.

    Aleh reached for it with such sadistic deliberation it was painful to wait. If she wasn''t sure One Two would flee, she would pluck out that letter herself! Or, maybe if she was fast enough? Pinching fingers rose. One Two spread its wings wide, and Aleh was forced to put a protective hand in between them.

    "O-oi, careful with those fingers, One Two is fragile!" he said.

    "Then please, hurry up!"

    Aleh did, pulling the rolled letter out and quickly handing it to her. She hesitated for a moment, seeing it on the palm of his hand, but couldn''t hold back for long. She held it like a treasure, suddenly afraid of the damage her clumsy sausages could inflict.

    Still, with trembling hands and all, she unrolled the letter.

    "To my all my dears, my loves, and my hearts.

    "How long has it been! I kept waiting for you all, and waiting, and waiting, and waiting, and waiting so much I got restless! What are you, a bunch of rebellious teens fleeing town to join the army? Were Mommy''s affections too grody for such strapping young lads?

    "Well, while you were doing laps around the barracks, mommy kept an ear on the vine, and oh the things she heard! Military movements were spotted at the good ol'' Bell, and rumors say Awin too. Galehold took long to respond, the Emperor doesn''t seem too worried for whichever reason, but some people moved anyway. No full crackdown yet, though watch out for the borders!

    "Unfortunately, nothing that really helps with the pickle you found yourselves in. Scary stuff! Don''t worry about schedule, prioritize your safety. Avoid changing routes too much, but if you absolutely must pick somewhere closer to the coast then the mountains. Burn down a forest or two! We already have too many. Follow your guts, I trust you guys.

    "And Holly, if you''re reading this, if somebody else is reading this to you, hey! I hope you''ve been enjoying your time out there! How are you finding Ivias outside your backyard? Wherever you are, I can guarantee, you haven''t seen half of it yet, there''s just so much out there, out of our reach... hope I can see it all with you soon, but unfortunately that will be a while still.

    And the others, have they been treating you well? Took me some effort picking the best people for the job, and I hope they are behaving (Aleh specially, don''t take him too seriously). Don''t be afraid to rely on them, or confiding on them, if you trust me you can trust them, so if you have something to get out of your chest, don''t hesitate! If you hesitate, please do so for less than four days, specially if it''s related to pertinent information. Pretty please?

    "And before I forget. Cassia has been doing well! She''s eating better, has started taking walks, and even speaks of you from time to time. I''m hearing such stories! Can''t believe you did that to your dad''s shoes! Not that I have the grounds to speak since I did something similar back whenever and it got me a walloping I never forgot, but oh wow the sheer gall!

    "I''ll keep trying to convince her to send a letter too. Might not arrive until you guys have something to tell me though(We don''t have anything as convenient as the glorious One Two here anymore).

    "That''s all! Take care of yourselves, try not to crash the old junk since it cost me an eye and a leg, but otherwise have fun!

    --Signed, your ever loving Marquise~?"

    She lowered the letter from her face, giggling to herself.

    "Heheheh... She thought about me! Her handwriting is so good, and look at the little heart she drew!"

    "Hmmm, and here I heard it sucked."

    "D-don''t say that, Aleh! That''s mean!" Holly said, looking up-

    Only to be met with Aleh''s completely nonplussed, indignant expression and crossed arms. It took her a few moments to realize how unlike his hoarse, shrill vocalizations the voice had been.

    As if she realized she had just wandered into the den of some slumbering beast, Holly slowly turned around. It wasn''t long until she found Blades on the tips of her toes, reading the letter from the crook of her elbow before turning her wide emerald eyes to stare fixedly unto Holly.

    "Hi."

    "Yiiiiiih!"

    Holly jumped away, not losing her precious to the dirty ground thanks to a split second movement. Blades simply watched with an amused smiled before gracefully lowering herself on the balls of her feet.

    "D-don''t do that!"

    Support the creativity of authors by visiting Royal Road for this novel and more.

    "Do what?"

    "S-sneak up on me! M-my heart nearly jumped out of my chest!"

    "Oh, that," Blades said. "I''ve been here a while, you just didn''t notice."

    Glaring all her animosity at Blades did nothing. Not like she could even see her, right?

    "It''s unusual to see you without your dear half, Blades, "Aleh said, stowing One Two away into his robes with one hand while plucking the letter out of Holly''s with the other. "Something wrong?"

    "Agare just returned. Says we should be safe for a while, but it''s best to hurry up."

    "Good to know. The other two came to a consensus on which route we take to Treil?"

    "Little Boss broke the stalemate," Blades said.

    Aleh opened the letter, but instead of reading normally he stole glances its way while using it as a fan and walking as if it was no effort. "Well, the sooner I''m out of this dreg, the happier I will be, no matter the way."

    Blades glimpsed at her, for just the briefest instant as she turned, carrying such a cold scrutiny it pierced her to her core, rendering her naked and helpless. It was over as fast as it had began, yet her body remained frozen.

    Aleh looked back at them, frowning with suspicion at Holly. As Blades passed him, the spell was broken, and Holly just quietly trailed behind.

    <hr>

    The Floodlands.

    "Aren''t we in the Sacred Forest Region?" Holly had asked, watching the jungle roll by from her baton-manifested window.

    "We are." Aleh answered, unfolding his red wrappings, already posed to meditate. "It is a subregion of the Sacred Forest, occupying much of Eastern and South Bellfort."

    "B-but why is it called the Floodlands?"

    "Because when the Rain Season comes it floods," Blades said, closer to Holly than she had been moments ago.

    "A-ah. I-I see."

    "Tch! What an ignorant answer! Holly, the Floodlands are a unique biome to Ivias, with no similar in the entire archipelago or the closest parts of the continent! It has a rich ecosystem with fauna and flora entirely endemic to-"

    "Who cares." Blades said, and though Aleh clicked his tongue a second time, he returned his focus to the red wrappings rather than argue.

    Well, Holly did care. Used to the dense forests of the Hollows, the Floodlands weren''t entirely unfamiliar to her, but similarities ended in the details. She didn''t have the right vocabulary to describe where both differed: how the aerial roots shooting from so high they formed arches the Oke could ride under were unlike the protective brachial embrace of the Hollow''s ficus'' root networks, which she used to hide frequently; how the curved thorns of the tripping weeds here looked almost like fangs, whereas the Hollow''s were instruments of torture, needle like and brittle under the skin; how vibrant and plentiful life was here, unafraid and unashamed of being seen, heard.

    The colors, however, were a quick and easy difference to spot. Parasitic flowers wider around then her splayed fingers in proud oranges and violets, exuberant in their tall perches! Noose Ivies heavy with yellow and white blooms, heavier with prey! Slimes and mushrooms of such lively blues they practically glowed under their mounds of decay! Swarms of jewel shelled wasps, metallic winged moths, mosquitos turning to sprites of light under scant sunbeams, great spiders like healthy bark and verdant leaf!

    Agare had been right, she had seen nothing. This is where she would like to live! She tried to imagine what this place would look flooded, longing for a good dunk into some deep water. How long had it been the last time she had a proper bath? She missed her spring and basin.

    Unfortunately, the intruding element wouldn''t allow her to linger in her fantasies.

    Aleh just starting his meditation, Furfu busy with her funk, Agare and Rosen and Lilly occupied up front, Blades practically had Holly all to herself, a privilege she was not patient to enjoy the way she scooted ever closer with each passing minute. Gone were the easy smiles, however, replaced with something piercing and cold she loathed to think too deeply about.

    Eventually, as the hours passed and the baton lost its power, Holly lost her patience. Turning towards the approaching swordswoman, she bravely exclaimed: "S-sorry Blades, but did I do something wrong?"

    "I don''t know, did you?" Blades said with a shrug.

    "H-how can I know if you don''t tell me?! Y-you''ve been acting so weird!"

    "I''ve been acting the same way I always do, you just don''t know how that is."

    "Is this because of what I did to Aleh that night? I-if it is, I swear I won''t do it again, I don''t even know what came over me that day..."

    "You don''t?" Blades said.

    "I said I don''t."

    This time, Blades dragged herself across the long velvet seats until she almost close enough to rub on her. sitting on the floor between the entrance and her, Holly found herself stuck in place, her body already reacting with alarm. Aleh''s head turned a smidge in their direction, and Holly was of half mind to beg for help, but he moved no further.

    "You did." Blades said, her voice low and frigid.

    "C-can you please just tell what I did wrong? I c-can''t apologize for it if I don''t know my mistake, can I?"

    "You didn''t make any mistakes."

    "I-I didn''t?"

    Blades shook her head. "Tell me, aren''t you curious?"

    "About?"

    "Our enemy. Our fear. What''s been chasing you since the Gale."

    She was. Of course she was, who wouldn''t be? and yet. "N-nobody told me, so I assumed I wasn''t supposed to know?"

    Blades face twisted with an indiscernible feeling, and Holly knew she had given the wrong answer. Still, she waited for Blades to speak, dreading what any attempt to take it back might cause

    "...You creep me out."

    "W-what?!"

    "Say, how old are you?"

    "I-I''m not a child."

    "Not what I asked." Blades slid closer. "How old are you? An estimate is fine."

    "I don''t know?"

    "What do you know, then? Your name? Do you even remember your face?"

    Holly grit her teeth, panic giving way to something uglier, "What is your point? What do you want from me?!"

    "Tell me your dream then. What could someone as fake as you want for Marquise to sink her claws in?"

    "W-what did you call me?!" Holly Seneschal said.

    "Want me to go first? I had none. All I need to survive is water, food, and blades of course."

    "Well, I didn''t either! Marquise didn''t ''sink her claws'' on me! She is the reason I''m alive, the reason I have a purpose! Isn''t being thankful for that enough to want to help her?!"

    "No."

    Holly was shocked mute.

    "I had nothing to be thankful for, so I asked for swords, and swords she gave me. Decent stuff, too, good steel and well maintained. I joined her cause content, thinking it was going to be like work on any other Unit. It''s how she whisked me by the mouth."

    "I-I don''t understand."

    Blades stiffened on her seat. "I''m a rightful animal, Holly. Never needed to be anything else. It''s how I was made to live and how I was told I would die, so why not enjoy? But I follow Lilly, and Lilly has dreams. Dreams she would die for."

    "A-and the Marquise will fulfill them! I''m sure of-"

    Blades whirled on her so fast she couldn''t help but yelp. She had no time to retreat as a hand snuck right into the territory of her hood, finger wrapping around her thick hairs, which in turn entangled themselves up her wrist, the feeling distracting her long enough for Blades to make her approach, face closing until they were touching chin to chin, her hot breath ticking the corner of Holly''s mouth-

    "I know." Blades whispered.

    "B-Blades..."

    Her grip on the back of Holly''s head grew firmer, and unconsciously so did hers on Blades'' arm.

    "The day I let that Headless prove herself will forever be the biggest regret of my life. Lilly will never escape her now, and there is nothing I can do."

    "P-please, I-"

    "I''m no good at this talking thing. Never had the talent. But I think I''m a damn good judge of character, and Lilly always trusted my intuition. One time she didn''t, and now she can never afford to ever again. Do you know what that means?"

    "N-no."

    "Means that all I can do for her now is wield the sword while she is lead towards the abyss. It''s misery."

    She lessened her hold on Holly, drawing back a little, her hand caressing a trail all the way under her chin, a slim bridge of liquid connecting their cheeks. Light this late was dim inside the Oke, but the little that could penetrate painted a stark image of Blades, serious and adamant, yet tired like Holly had never seen another person.

    "The Boss gave us a briefing on you. What we should expect, how you behaved."

    "I-I know," Holly said. "I don''t think you should talk about that."

    "I like working with my own two hands though. Problem is, I can''t read you, and I don''t think you can read yourself well either."

    "I know myself well enough."

    "Better than we do. And how good is that?" Blades smiled again.

    Holly tried, but couldn''t answer her.

    "I don''t give a shit about Marquise''s objective. She can burn or she can win. All I want is for Lilly to survive the process. Don''t you?"

    "O-of course I do!" This, Holly did not hesitate to answer, "B-but is something going to happen?"

    "Something has been happening, hasn''t it? You just don''t want to know," Blades said.

    Maybe this would be the right time to ask, to prove Blades wrong, that she knew herself entirely.

    ...But that had Blades mistake. The primordial problem was that she knew herself well enough, and so the moment she opened her mouth, a cold dread took hold of her. Something precious was at peril, and the only solution was to retreat, bury all that had rose back down.

    She looked away, ashamed and guilty. Blades sighed, letting go of her face and sitting back, farther away.

    "I can''t rely on you."

    "... Y-you can''t."

    "I have to rely on you. Everyone else is on the same boat as Lilly." Blades said.

    "I-I''m on the same boat as you."

    "Your sister, hm? I had forgotten until now. Are you going to tell on me?"

    Holly looked around them. Aleh was glaring at them, his wrapping mostly undone, and Furfu certainly looked closer than she had been. "I-I think you already did. I just wanted to ask you though, why now? Because somebody is chasing me?"

    She laid back, uncaring smile masking her face again. "Do you know what the ultimate purpose of us Faces is?"

    "Marquise said-"

    "Then you don''t," Blades said "A Face is born and raised to serve and die for the Faceless. That was my life for five decades now."

    "F-five de-!"

    "I can count the number of Faces who got to my age on one hand, so I fought every battle knowing it would be my last. The bell kept tolling, I kept running, knowing I could only get so far.

    "And eventually I ran so much I found something forbidden, and I don''t like the idea of leaving her alone anymore. I guess I was grasping at straws there; wanted somebody who could take my place when something happens"

    "...Lilly had said you were just coworkers."

    "Lilly can say whatever she wants."

    The Oke suddenly came to a halt, lurching them in place but too late. They shook, the entire world scrambling and blurring as they held on to dear life. Aleh rolled into a ball as he was thrown to ground, flipped in their direction.

    Then, it ended. Blades and Furfu still stood in place, though the latter was spread against the wall like a spider, while the former merely frowned. Holly had gripped the edges of the closest seat so tight her nails had dug into the velvet, cutting through its filling. Aleh swore, but was the first of them to stand up.

    "What the fuck was that?! Almalilly!" Aleh called.

    "Sinkhole!" Lilly said, "We think! The road just crumbled under us!"

    Blades, hand firmly placed on the pommel of her sword, stood second, quietly following behind Aleh as he went to investigate. Holly crawled behind, curious, terrified. She spared Furfu, who seemed just as shaken as her, a pitying look, hearing Rosen and Almalilly climb up to the roof through the cabin''s hatch.

    It wasn''t the first time Holly had seen the cabin''s bizarre display of luminescent organs, a mystifying array of controls and commands for their transport. However, her attention was caught by what laid beyond the cabin''s transparent protective membrane.

    Half immersed by darkness, the Oke stood slanted upwards inside a damp earthen hole, the tips of countless roots peeking out of the walls like reaching fingers. Underneath, the loose soil had formed a ramp of sorts in front of them, a convenient passage unfortunately blocked by the hefty trunk of a dead and rotten tree, thought thankfully not one of the larger giants Holly had spotted out in the forest during the trip.

    "What a disgrace!" Aleh said, "Does this kingdom not care for its roads?!"

    "No." Blades said.

    "Indeed, if a governor up east left such an unsightly mess for anyone to stumble upon, they-"

    "I''m saying this wasn''t just neglect."

    And then it happened, as if waiting for her cue.

    A scream rang from outside. Holly realized she couldn''t identify the source.

    "Halt, Yanna!"

    The effect was immediate. Aleh swore under his breath and took a step back, while Furfu whimpered loud enough the caller might as well have been a monster.

    And Blades, for the first time Holly had seen, paled. Her sword screeched against its scabbard, its thin blade slowly revealed as she searched the woods.

    "Holly, don''t forget what I said."

    "W-why? What''s happening, Blades?!"

    "What''s happening? Simple. The nice part of the trip just ended."

 2 - The Children of the Lake 9

    Holly felt a pressure against her chest.

    Looking down, she saw Aleh pushing her with all his strength, failing to budge her even a little.

    "Holly!" he said. "You need to get back, now! Stay away from the window!"

    "W-what, but I-"

    "You fucking bastard, don''t just sit there shaking, help me out!" Aleh said, not to her.

    Wordless, another force joined his, trembling limbs intertwining with her own and awkwardly dragging her away. Furfu whimpered softly by her ear, casting looks over her shoulder at Blades, who stood in place searching out the Oke''s front. Holly heard hurried steps above her, rushing towards the cabin and ending as a foot descended into the ladder.

    And then the unknown voice spoke again.

    "I said halt! Yanna!"

    The foot froze. From the edges of the long skirt flowing down the hatch, she knew that was Almalilly trying to get down, but the situation confused her. The voice came of as feminine to Holly, strong and youthful, and yet disturbing, on measure of the effect it was having on those around her.

    "A-aleh, what is happening?!" she whispered, swiftly ignored.

    "It''s coming from the back, south or southeast!" Aleh pulled another baton from his sleeve, letting go of Holly to press it against the Oke''s far door, the window created so small it was almost like he was afraid of being caught, as if somebody could actually see from the other side. Holly held Furfu against her shoulder, fear slowly infecting her.

    "I recognized you!" The voice said, closer now, "Yanna, from Wheatbarony''s Archival and Gathering Section, am I correct?! I thought you had died with your master, that your body had been found and your role replaced, so answer: how come I am seeing you here?"

    "M-ma''am!" Almalilly said. "I''m grateful you r-remembered me! Right now, I''m-"

    "No, there is something more pertinent. Why are you not showing in the Receptacle of Eligor? What have you done with your Sigil?"

    "N-no, this is a mistake, I-"

    "And you! I don''t remember your name, but recognize you as a Face as well. What happened to your Sigil?!"

    "Ma''am!" Rosen belowed, the most severe tone she had ever heard in his voice, "We are under strict orders not to release information, so please-"

    "Do you think I would believe that?!"

    Blades turned in a whirl and rushed to the back, her hand quickly ungloved and almost reaching for the mechanism separating both sides of the door before Aleh intervened, his silhouette briefly enveloped by squirming multi-hued shapes.

    "Are you insane?!" he said. "Revealing Holly just like that?! Now?!"

    "I need to get out," Blades said.

    "Go out the front! Don''t fuck us over a stupid impulse!"

    The thin sword flashed, its tip nearly touching Aleh''s left eye, who only stared back defiantly. "If I leave through the cabin, she will react. Lilly and I will die."

    "If you leave through here and she catches a glimpse of Holly, we might all die regardless!"

    "Out of my way."

    "Over my dead body."

    "S-stop!" Holly said, pushing Blades arm away while placing herself in between them. "What is even happening to you all?! Y-you wanted me to ask questions, didn''t you Blades? So I''m asking now! Who is out there?!"

    This time, even Blades hesitated to answer. Holly looked at Furfu, at Aleh, each turning away from her.

    It was right at that moment, when she peered out the one-sided window, that she realized who was out there, and why her comrades refused to speak.

    Her head had been wrapped with a protective sheet, nothing but cloth wrapped round and round into the loose appearance of a cowl, no magic to it to obscure what laid under.

    She finally understood their dread. Holly crawled back from the group, throat suddenly gone dry.

    "W-why," she said, fighting through hesitation, "why are we hiding from another Faceless? I-isn''t she an ally?"

    Again, nobody wanted to answer her.

    The Faceless continued."Answer quickly and concisely: what are unaccompanied, supposedly dead Faces without Sigils doing openly crawling through enemy territory? Don''t give me any of that shit about permissions, I''m the one who says what you can or can''t say now."

    "Ma''am!" She could hear Rosen step gingerly step forward, until the Faceless'' axe twitched. "We are part ofthe Greenroses Unit, sent in to help retrieve an Heir''s body obstained during recent covert operations. We apologize for out lack of manners, we were caught unaware by your presence!"

    "...There are no Heir bodies."

    "Ma''am?" Rosen said.

    The axe rose, the Faceless'' arm tensing as her fists clenched. "There are no Heir bodies to retrieve. If you know about the current operations, you should know that. Then again, information was kept secret to avoid distress among the ranks, so I can''t blame the leak for being imprecise. No, I commend you for catching wind of it in the first place, and for taking such a daring opportunity."

    "M-ma''am, please listen to me." Rosen said, voice dripping with worry. "Our business here is official and permitted under the gaze of Region Commander Moar II, if you only allow me the time to find-"

    "Aleh, now!" Blades said, sweating, "She already judged us guilty!"

    Aleh didn''t give way, only kept watching the Faceless through the window with a vicious glare. "No, wait a little more."

    Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

    "I swear I''ll-"

    "Motherfucker, wait! Don''t you realize there must be a reason he hasn''t made a move yet?!"

    "No!" the Faceless shouted, unaware of the conversation below. "I will not allow a Face to lie to me in such a shameless manner. If you insist in this undutiful behavior, then I see no choice but to correct you lot!"

    With no more difficulty than a lad stepping over a root, the Faceless flew with a jump, landing above with a soundless impact, softer than a pebble crashing against the Oke''s roof even as the entire transport''s back lowered with the weight.

    "You will be honest with me now: how many of you are there? I saw signs of movement inside this machine, but are there any others outside? Are there any-"

    Stop

    The order was so total even Holly''s heart stopped for a beat. The trio besides her stiffened, Aleh in particular having to close his eyes and breath in to control the deepening scowl of his countenance. Blades, however, relaxed a smidge, though her blade kept pointed to the back door.

    "You, a mere Face, dares hold one of-"

    "Shut it!" Agare voice both sent shivers down her spine yet was a balm for her fear. It wasn''t too loud, but the silence of the forest made it into a shout "You, a mere scout, dares question the commands and threaten the subordinates of a true agent?"

    The Faceless suddenly became mute.

    "My name is Beliar III," Agare said. "I am under orders from Sir Moar himself to recover sensitive material from the Tyrian territory of Bellfort, material which I''m under no rights to reveal to my Faces and thus relayed a similar albeit wrongful story. Do you comprehend now the mistake you almost made?"

    "... Yes, sir. I apologize, the weeks have left me on edge."

    "Identify yourself. Name, unit, and why you are alone."

    "A-Aleh!" Holly urged, of half a mind to physically drag him off the door as he carefully shuffled away, eyes firmly placed on Blades who eventually relented with a gesture. The Oke''s ceiling was thankfully short enough he could reach with ease, allowing them to keep with the unfolding incident.

    The window opened, larger than before, revealing a pair of booted feet from beneath, the Faceless she supposed. Holly couldn''t help but gasp when she realized Agare was pointing something right at the interloper''s neck, something sharp and straight, short though oddly contoured like a spiral. She kept silent for a few seconds, then relented by releasing her axe to clatter and become a sad blindspot to their observation.

    "... I am Foroca II," she said, and Aleh sighed with relief for some reason. "My unit is Brownthorns, sent to aid with the retrieval of... you know."

    "I do. And you thought it would be merrily carried away by Oke?"

    "No sir. I intended to take means of transportation and possible nutrition to myself."

    "Why?"

    "We were ambushed, sir." Foroca II said. "Withing less than a week on the field, my unit was massacred."

    "What?" Agare retracted the spiral blade from Foroca''s neck, inserting it back into the darkness of his hood with the tip outwards. "Explain yourself. Were you discovered by the Bellfort Royal Corps? By a Len?"

    "Neither, sir." She glanced over her shoulder. "If I may ask..."

    "You may not."

    "Why do your Faceless not bear Sigils?" she asked anyway, "And are you the only Faceless here?"

    "Reasons beyond your rank, and no I am not. Are you the sole survivor? What exactly ambushed you?"

    "No. A few of us survived, though this endeavor has been of my undertaking alone. Why are openly riding through enemy roads? Shouldn''t you have taken the Tunnels instead?"

    "Reasons beyond your rank. Why do you keep asking when I said you may not?" Agare said, sidestepping Foroca and putting himself between her and the other two stuck outside.

    "I''m just trying to make sense of the situation, sir." Foroca retreated, axe forgotten.

    "Meanwhile, neglecting the sense of your own. If there are other survivors, why are you trying to ambush our transport alone?"

    "as I said, sir, I-"

    "Intended to take the goods for yourself, you said as much," Agare said, his tone devoid of emotion. "Which needless to say, is against the tenets of the Remnants. Either none of your superiors survived and you''re ignoring the needs of your equals, or some of they did and you''re committing an offense worthy of death. Which now?"

    They had kept track of Foroca as she stopped. Either moved by their collective anxiety or some unseen order, the pulsing lights inside had turned purple and urgent, ready to act should any violence break under its protective reach. Though Foroca had kept her voice level, her body was being held taught and at an odd angle, which Holly was sure was her way of signalling equal readiness, and no amount of dropped weapons would convince her of othewise.

    And then she spoke, voice as impassive as Agare''s. "We were captured."

    "... Captured? By the ones who massacred your unity?" Agare said.

    "No. Another force, one we hadn''t expected."

    "No more questions and misdirections, explain yourself this instant: who? how?"

    "This may sound dishonest, sir, but I did not see," Foroca said with a rueful shake of head. "The trap sprung from right under us, and I was blinded before I could react. They kept me in a small container for a few days, which I only managed to break free from last night. At that point, I found no further signs of my captors."

    "You take me for a fool?" Agare''s voice had the slightest tinge of anger to it, all it took for Holly to hold Furfu harder. "An unknown party captures a group of Faceless, leaving them armed, just for the pleasure to set them free in the woods? Let''s take your story from another angle then: look around you. How have you managed to create a trap of this magnitude entirely by yourself in less than one full day? Even a Faceless couldn''t manage something like this!"

    "I did not dig this trap, sir, I merely spotted a weakness of the road and took advantage of it."

    "... You found this?" Agare said.

    "Yes, sir."

    And to that, Agare had no further answer. He stared down, the path of his sight in Holly''s mind coming uncannily close to meeting her own, but didn''t try and interact with those inside in any way. Instead, he turned in a rush, heading almost out of sight and crouching close to where Lilly still stood with a leg on the ladder, shocked frozen. What happened then, they weren''t privy to.

    "Yes, sir!" Lilly suddenly screamed, another leg reaching through the hatch.

    "Foroca, I''m going to hand my weapon to my subordinate as a sign of trust," Agare said. "I want you to bring me to your comrades."

    "The way there is long and perilous sir, I think it would be better-"

    "This is not a request, this is an order. Bring me to your comrades no matter how far you''re camping or how deep is the den you''re hiding in, I need to speak to them myself."

    "Then think of your subordinates, sir," Foroca said, taking another step back, one she probably didn''t even notice, "If they are found by the enemy-"

    "They know how to handle themselves. Now, let''s hurry."

    Celestial, which was soon to descend into the twilight from the glimpses she could catch through the labyrinth of canopies upwards.

    Yet, seeing Foroca standing there, mute and ready to bolt, reminded her of the times she would watch people pray from the bushes, heads on the floor and hands clenched above, wishes sometimes whispered and oftentimes screamed into the moss. She had prayed some, and never gotten anything from it.

    That hope that moved her to the wet soil so long ago resurged.

    Run! Get away from them! Father, disappear her from this island!

    Of course, such wishes would go unheard. The outside world had no place for a God like that, and a God like that had no place for outsiders like her.

    And so, Foroca gave a slight nod, not a molecule of tension leaving her body. "Very well. It''s a fair distance East and South, but we should get there in less than an hour unbidden."

    If she screamed for him not to go, would Agare listen? No, they had been trying to keep her existence from Foroca, what would happen to everyone if she just revealed herself like that? There was something coming, something bad, she couldn''t rationalize why but she knew it all the same, and yet she didn''t know what to do about it.

    And so, she stood there and watched as Agare and Foroca hopped down and away from their window, vanishing into the dark jungle beyond.

    As the people around her shrunk from sheer relief, Holly fell back, crestfallen. Couldn''t they see?

    With some force, Furfu extracted herself from her arms, fanning her hands out with a bizarre gurgling noise. "T-thank you, H-Holly, but maybe you s-should bath a little before next time? H-heheheh... A-a-anyway, a-are they gone now?"

    "... For now, it seems so." Aleh frowned as he sat opposite from her, baton disappearing into the sleeves of his robe. "However, considering we ran into one..."

    "I have to bring Lilly inside, now." Blades said, slowly sheathing her namesake back.

    "...No."

    Blades looked at Holly, confused, and so she pointed.

    None of them had heard her descending back into the safety of the Oke, but Almalilly had stood there at the door to the cabin, pale and sweat ridden, panting as if suffocating as she leaned against the threshold.

    "Lilly!" Blades said, rushing to her aid. "Did she hurt you?!"

    "N-no, that doesn''t matter." Lilly lifted a hand, gently reposing it against Blades'' arm as she gave a weak smile. That smile didn''t last five seconds, her face turning serious as she looked Holly. "Did you guys hear everything?"

    "You bet we did," Aleh said. "So? What are his commands?"

    "Holly, you don''t look to good, but this time I don''t think we can do this without you." Lilly approached, extending a hand her way. "Would you mind helping us?"

    Couldn''t she see it either? Holly felt disappointed.

    It was happening all over again.

    Still, Marquise''s words echoed in her mind, so she only briefly hesitated in reaching back, resting the blunt part of her nails on Lilly''s palms. This time, she wouldn''t be alone, right?

 2 - The Children of the Lake 10

    Foroca II focused on moving.

    She didn''t need to look to feel the other presence silently following at an even pacing. The labyrinthine grounds of the Floodlands should have been the perfect place to lose the traitor, every junction bringing its own camouflaged sinkholes, scum infested stagnant ponds, walls of wood and gnashing ivies that should slow anyone not used to the region, her unfortunate acquaintance of some time now.

    Things were never so easy for her. Beliar III, if that was their real name, kept up with such leisure she was starting to worry she might be the newbie of the situation. Her supposedly eximious body, once a source of endless pride even after she learned her skills weren''t quite to match, was starting to feel lackluster and sluggish in comparison.

    Who was this, who managed to catch on her lies so quickly, who couldn''t not know she was searching for a way to escape and strike from ambush, and yet refused to engage her in battle?

    If felt humiliating. Why couldn''t fortune and logic be on her side for once?

    Worse, the Traitor''s words were ringing true in her head: for a mere scout as her to be the sole survivor was a shame worse than death when every lesson imprinted on her spelled out who ought to have actually escaped. That she was captured, locked in a tight container like some sort of object, and abandoned without harm or use milked out of her? Worse than a costly embarrassment, that was the point her story got suspicious.

    And she had been honest, recalling that particular snag on her journey. Had an inkling of it pierced through that treacherous mind, or was their focus entirely on how to take her down? Why hadn''t they struck yet?

    All she had needed was an easy to raid group, A merchant or a mildly well off family or a caravan of deserters too. All she had needed was enough nutrition to last until she found her way back to the Tunnels, the only safe way inside the Gale''s walls for their kind. Was this some kind of cosmical joke? Punishment? A test?

    "How long now?" the Traitor suddenly spoke, almost scaring her out of balance as she stepped on an arching root. "Night will fall soon, and it''s way past an hour."

    She didn''t stop, but threw a furtive glance over her shoulder. "My apologies sir, I got lost for a moment. We should be there in less than ten minutes."

    Under scrutiny, she had to recognize the Traitor had been careful with their image: Nel Salazam leather with padded underclothes, tastefully unadorned and subtly enchanted steel cuirass, standard field work cloak with veiling enchantments to avoid disturbing any Gale forces they might have to engage with; all things she had seen her superiors bear.

    Not that she would ever recognize them as such, that would be an insult to those warriors who had once believed in her potential. Beyond their small, weak body, somebody in their place would know better than naked treachery! For all she knew, they might a particularly adroit and aged Face wearing stolen equipment, otherwise why would they have gone to the trouble of removing the Sigil of a bunch of other Faces, when that made them harder to keep track off and make accountable?

    That weapon hadn''t escaped her notice either. The guardless hilt, the spiral blade of demonium, she had only glanced at it, but she was sure of it: that had been a Rava. the Ivian Horn, the kind of instrument the more barbarous of the Mountain Tribes liked to use for their rituals. That is, not only the worst possible instrument for engaging a Faceless in close combat, but potentially the worst material too. What were they thinking? if they could waste space inside their Mark with that kind of trash, they had space for something more effective, if they had a Mark at all.

    Considering that show they had made of handling it to their subordinate... could that really have the only weapon they had to arm themselves? No, she doubted it, yet then why use it against her at all?

    Nothing about this situation made sense. How had they removed their Faces'' Sigils in the first place? That was supposed to be impossible, even if you fully cut it out of their skin. She didn''t have access to the right Receptacle to make an informed assumption, but she doubted they hadn''t removed their own too. And also, why were they merrily crossing through Tyrian Bellfort as if it wasn''t enemy territory? On a damned old model Oke too, of all things?

    A guess came to mind, one that chilled her to her core, one that changed the entire situation. No, she berated herself, it couldn''t be, they shouldn''t even know it existed or where it had been hidden, so how would they-

    Then again, it was possible exactly because it was illogical. She had been missing something, and this corner made the puzzle fit perfectly, didn''t it? Beneath notice and human enough to get through the lax borders, meanwhile walking away with one of the Remnants most precious treasures, no need to fear the foes they might already have a deal with.

    She had never relished lacking a face as much as this very moment. There would have been no way to hold her delight from showing! This was exactly what she needed!

    Though, assuming she was right: what next?

    She couldn''t lower her guard just yet. They couldn''t have accomplished the heist without some powerful backers after all, and by the end of the day she might have to enter conflict with the Tyrian''s very own Heirs.

    Not that it mattered. Her plans had always involved slaying the Traitor and their band of turncoats, which is why she was luring the idiot in a long circle; she had slightly more time to explore the Floodlands than she might have told. Sadly, a crucial part of her plan had involved the now impossible ambush, so she would have to improvise a little, and thus sacking that Oke for her goal and craved nutrition would have to wait.

    She shouldn''t underestimate her opponent too much, even if they were a Face. Under the Remnants wings, only seasoned warriors got to fly out of the nest. She wanted to avoid a direct, or worse, prolonged conflict when she still had at least half a dozen others to cull later. She had enough Mush to last her for a few days of activity, not a drop she could willingly waste if she wanted to come back alive.

    How unfortunate then, that was certainly the way the evening was heading. So long as she caught them unaware, she would have the advantage no matter how old or well trained they were. The usual Faceless long range maneuver might be expected, so it would work as an opening, but perhaps as a follow up to the initial charge, or a distraction...

    She tried not to reminisce on the state of her equipment. Her axe had been her best weapon and the vermin probably had stashed it for themselves by now; her armor could have been worse, which to the Faceless essentially meant in tatters; on top of it all, though she had practiced hard after her change, her skills still didn''t go past reasonable.

    By the books, it was a hopeless scenario.

    Not like she had anything else to lose, however.

    And so, she decided to-

    "You never told me how many of you survived." the Traitor said, breaking her chain of thought.

    "I didn''t? Apologies, sir. Four of us survived, all scouts. We were kept behind to solve an incident and arrived too late to aid the main unit in any significant manner," she said, mood darkening. "They broke fast. Once we realized all executioners had fallen and the situation couldn''t be salvaged, we decided to retreat and report."

    "... You also refused to tell me the nature of your assailants."

    She shivered in a way that repulsed her, fists clenching to stave off the shaking. Faceless shouldn''t be able to feel like this. Still, she was helpless against that wave of despair and dread that washed her common sense every time she remembered the way those executioners she once craved to equal had been slaughtered like cattle, the way comrades she had spent years fighting besides screamed as they were turned into bloody meat toys. She doubted this faker would have been so eager to talk about it too if they had been there to see it.

    "... It was a dark night, sir, even for us," she forced herself to say. "They hit us from nowhere, and the situation quickly grew chaotic. All I remember were flashes of plated armor and large two handed weapons."

    "Nothing else? Not the language they spoke, their style of fighting, anything?"

    She tried not to lose her composure at the disbelief in their voice. They had laughed, they had howled, they had jeered; animals needed little else. "As I said, it was a chaotic night. Sir."

    The next few seconds of silence were precious. Her patience had been exhausted, and things would need to move forward. Reaching through the folds of her Mark, she pulled her last javelin towards the surface, keeping it ready to eject the moment it became of need; now, she just needed the right moment.

    "... You suffered a lot, didn''t you?"

    The words caught her by surprise. So much so, she nearly slipped, having to awkwardly brace herself for footing as she stumbled right into a murky pond. The loss of momentum affected her more than anything as she scrambled out of the water. She had been operating under the assumption that they hadn''t believed a word out of her mouth, and if-

    "I understand your pain. But I''m afraid that no matter how much you''ve suffered, I cannot let you go."

    She had expected it. She knew the farce would only last so long. That she had been taken unaware, even for a second, was her mistake alone.

    By the time she turned around, the Traitor was already gone.

    The sound was so soft she almost ignored it. A reflex born out of years sparring among her unit was all that saved her life.

    She felt the wind of the blow as she threw herself down, a shade quietly disappearing in the corner of her Mark. She fell grasping for the ground, pushing herself off the edge of a small drop into a bed of solid roots, turning again just in time to see the enemy overtake her. Her javelin flew wild, disappearing into the darkness above, not remotely close to even glancing.

    No time for fine tuned plans; no time for traps or deceit; it was kill or be killed.

    She needed distance. Putting all her strength in her legs, she launched herself the opposite direction, shattering the roots into a cloud of splinters. Her next projectile was made ready, the precious short sword she had earned when she first joined her unit, a gift she had chosen herself from the Remnants armory.

    The world, however, would not have it. In the haste of her flight, every moment was a different struggle against the Floodlands itself, its gnarled, barbed limbs snagging at her step, tearing at her armor, curling at her neck! With each distraction, each obstacle, the soft steps approached, wooden shrapnel buffeting her armor with muffled explosions.

    "Comrade, I will not give you the chance to surrender." The Traitor''s voice echoed from close by, "I will not insult you so."

    "Insult!" she said, the forest turning to a blur around her. "Your existence insults our very way of life, you-!"

    There was no pain when her she left the ground. She hit a tree, her shoulder immediately dislocated by the impact, and she fell like a rag-doll. Instinct kicked in again as she hit the floor, evading the following blow of grace that cracked the tree to its middle by a quarter of a second. She didn''t wait; she was on her feet and running the next second, only to turn around and let loose as she heard her target pursue.

    The aim was true this time, it were her expectations that failed her; the Traitor had been expecting the projectile, dodging without pause as if they had seen its trajectory before its release. Her gift flew away beyond reach, and she knew there no running any further.

    She realized she was paralyzed. Why wasn''t she moving? Had she not been drilled, reminded, brought before her peers with every failure and taught what it meant to disappoint her birth duty? The First Mission had no place for failures. The Faceless had no use for fear. She knew this with every fiber of her being.

    Then why was she afraid?

    No, she wasn''t, she couldn''t be. That was beneath her!

    This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

    She had a final trick up her sleeve. Her halberd, her de facto weapon against the Tale Heirs, double headed, one side demonium and the other steel. Her right arm wasn''t moving well, her back flaring in agony every time she tried bringing it to bear. but her left still had more than enough strength to cleave that piece of shit in half.

    "Glories to Eligor." They said as she pulled the halberd out with a silent squelch.

    She had one opportunity, and she wouldn''t miss it. She couldn''t miss it! The Traitor came homed in, swerving at the last moment to her left. She didn''t miss it, they way their body lowered to nearly a crouch, a tactic she had seen a thousand times before, practiced even! She swung low with all her might-

    And so, when she realized she had missed, that the Traitor had dropped to the ground like snake, a level even the executioners of her unit wouldn''t dare try, a though crossed her mind.

    She didn''t want to die.

    The serpent bit, twisting in the filth with unbelievable strength. An elbow met her right above the right breast with such cold precision it had to be deliberate. Time slowed down as her ribcage gave under her many layers of protection, something deeply precious and previously unknown bursting beyond repair, the intense burn left in the wake of its destruction accompanying her in her flight.

    Her back hit something, her spine shattering to pieces. This time, she didn''t get up.

    The spams began not a minute later. Her entire body contracted, from the muscles of her fingers to the impossible tendons of her Mark, arms and legs trying to retracted inside the safety of her torso as they stiffened. Her vision blurred as her inheritance, her sole pride and sign she had been chosen by the cause began to reverse, her ability to perceive reality crippled as her control over her body disappeared.

    This couldn''t be happening. She had survived, she had escaped, all she needed were a few meager supplies so she could tell her comrades what awaited them on the other side of the wall. What kind of sick joke was this?!

    A blur closed in, slowly. standing over her quivering body.

    "Glories to the Peaceful Night. May you finally rest well, comrade."

    At the name, her death recoiled, her sight sharpening for just an instant.

    Its how she saw it. A ridged shade, limbs like sticks keeping it steady on branches far too thin for its bulk as it stalked down towards her killer, just waiting for them to finish the task.

    Its how she realized she had been played all along. She had been let out with a purpose, after all.

    She tried to laugh, in vain as her weapon cleaved through her neck.

    Such rotten luck!

    <hr>

    With Agare''s exit, came a desperate scramble to get the Oke out of the hole.

    Strong of body, Holly had rather immediately been asked to help with the physical labor. To her surprise, as she tried to lift the trunk out of their path, Furfu joined her instead of standing guard, Blades and Rosen taking the role instead and patrolling their surroundings while Lilly joined Aleh inside, their purposes unknown.

    Furfu was amazing. Stronger than her, probably, diving into her tasks with a gusto even her trembling hands couldn''t stop. The rotting tree laid in the woods, Furfu began to dig the corners of the sinkhole with mechanical precision, already having identified the ramp too frail and narrow to handle the Oke.

    Holly would have loved to say the work took her mind out of the situation, but every time a blade of grass was rustled and Rosen took stance with that strange silver knife he had pulled out of nowhere, or Blades rapine vigil caught notice of something no one else had, her heart would catch in her chest.

    Perhaps, however, that nothing happened was worse.

    Dusk Arrived. Agare did not return.

    It was wrong to say the work was harder than she expected, she had expected nothing, but certainly not to be worn to the bone like this either. Caving in the walls to create the base of the ramp was simple enough, cutting through the underground jungle of roots, fibrous fungi, and unknowable substances left to ferment and harden in abandoned critter dens, however, was the real challenge which Holly had to handle the brunt of, her nails about the only thing that could do it with ease. The battleaxe that Foroca had left behind, alas, did its best but proved lacking.

    "It doesn''t need to be perfect," Rosen had said, piping in from nowhere. "Oke''s were created with rough terrains in mind. So long as there''s enough road it doesn''t topple back in, we''ll make it out."

    "I-I guess!" Holly said, tearing through a net of hair-thin offshoots. "Are you okay, Rosen?"

    "Me? Ha! Can''t you see these muscles?!" Rosen said with a mirthless chuckle and a half-hearted pat of his bicep. "I am not a Faceless, but neither am I a garden flower, girl."

    "I know, but you were right there when she appeared... She didn''t hurt you or anything, did she?"

    "No, don''t worry, nothing that we couldn''t handle!" The pensive look he threw towards nothing in particular, however, spoke of a different opinion.

    "W-why did she treat you both like that in the first place?! So mean! Aren''t you supposed to be friends? O-or comrades, anyway!"

    "Ha, a Faceless, alone, around these parts? Probably having a rough week, I''d wager. Don''t quote me on that, thought: remember, I don''t like guessing what my superiors think."

    She stopped, turning in his direction. "I-I... Not that I disagree your mindset or anything, but..."

    "But you think I should start, right?"

    the glance he gave her was meaningful, and not in a way she wanted to unravel. She went back to the job at hand.

    Night arrived. Agare did not return.

    Aleh managed to coax the Oke into making the climb out and some several paces away. The poor thing felt worn out, the vicious swarm of shredding Merurgy that once protected its shell now thinner, pliant, and so passive it could barely bother with the reaching fingers of her Will creeping its way. Once she did press, however, it turned vicious like a cornered animal, leaving a few hands several fingers lighter, a wound that wouldn''t bleed but did leave her light headed for some many seconds.

    "Agare said we should only wait one hour past sundown," Almalilly said, closing a small round device with a copper shell and a thick line of thread around her hand. "That was thirty minutes ago."

    "Lucky him," Aleh, who had just climbed out the cabin and now dangled his legs down towards them, commented. "In my professional opinion, this little darling won''t be moving any time soon, unless you mean to cripple its security measures for the foreseeable future."

    "Young sir, I don''t think you should stay this exposed," Rosen said. "And If the sir thinks-"

    Aleh clicked his tongue, jumping down with an elegant twirl. "Rosen, get this through your thick head: 99% of all Faceless don''t care about enchantment beyond which side of the blade it sharpens best, and I would not put my hands to the flame arguing your little ''sir'' is any different in that regard."

    "What I mean, young-"

    "Or if you would prefer: we rode the Homunculus dry with prejudice this past week, keeping its defenses and speed at such high outputs all times of the day. If it were an older specimen there wouldn''t be any problems, but mine is practically a juvenile, if it gets pushed any further it will be break long before we get to the last legs of the mission, that is, the most difficult segment we must face!"

    "Can''t we compromise?" Lilly said, rubbing at her chin with a frown. "Keep the security up and move as slowly as possible?"

    "A-and what''s a Homunculus?" Holly said.

    Aleh opened and closed his mouth a couple times, then sighed with a shake of head. "I promise I will explain it to you once we are out of this mess, Holly, but please wait for now. And as for a compromise, depends on if you assume the worst case scenario, and that tattered urethra won somehow and is going to bring her buddies for the next wave. If you do, I wouldn''t recommend it."

    Rosen and Lilly''s faces darkened. Holly looked on to Blades and Furfu, who were busy watching the woods, but neither seemed like they had something to say.

    "Can''t Say I like the idea of staying either," Lilly said. "The whole thing stinks something fierce."

    "No shit." Aleh turned, giving their vehicle another once over. "Wish I could say we are having a string of bad luck, yet can''t blind myself to the undercurrent of purpose behind it."

    They could see it then.

    "I don''t enjoy the idea of being a sitting duck, but I will defer my decision," Rosen said. "With your leave?"

    "Think we can get at least a little further from that pit?" Almalilly followed suit. "Would help me sleep tonight."

    Aleh clicked his tongue. "I suppose I can-"

    "Get inside, now."

    Blades'' words hushed the party.

    "Explain yourself, at least?!" Aleh said.

    "Listen." Blades whispered, taking a step back.

    Holly had to strain her hearing to understand, the first thing to alert her not any particular sound but the absence of them. The jungle was growing quiet, the once exuberant insects and birds distancing themselves little by little, until they were completely enveloped in silence.

    ... No, not silence. There was another noise, or several even, faint and distant yet picking up speed with every second, coming from the left of the road, a strange sort of constant friction, trickling and dripping and-

    She realized the answer just as the first stream broke through the vegetation, some six or seven paces away from her, bringing a thin line of debris on its back. Water, too much water, slithering rivulets quickly surrounding them until the road began to fill with pools, some clear, some murky and ridden with frightened pests.

    "Shit!"

    The sharp cry broke their collective awe. Furfu jumped back as if the flood was toxic, Blades following quickly behind.

    "Blades, Rosen, take arms now!" That would be Aleh, screaming behind her. "I want you both watching from above, kill anything that approaches! Asshole, what are you staring at?! Get one of your Faceless tricks out, any of them, now!"

    "I-I-!" Furfu babbled, somewhere besides her.

    "Hopeless fucking thing! Almalilly!"

    "On it!"

    A hand grasped her fingers, trying to pull her out of her daze. The unusual gesture did bring her back, for an instant.

    "Holly, we need to get inside!" Had she ever seen Aleh this panicked before? "Something is coming, something exceedingly bad, something-"

    "I know."

    He stopped moving, staring at her in confusion. It was a nice, to be reminded she wasn''t alone anymore.

    Still, for all they could see it, they couldn''t see it the way she did. They couldn''t see the inferno laying beneath the water, about to devour the entire world as she knew it. She hadn''t been entirely alone back then either. Maybe if she had told them, they would have a solution at the tip of their tongues. Maybe she would come to regret not having said more.

    One of the streams rushed towards her feet, turning into a puddle around her toes. The wet cold that seeped into her she didn''t feel with her body.

    "Mariwa, I have come for you."

    To say she shivered would be an understatement of the repulse that wracked her body. That Will was like God, like hers, real and solid in a way nothing in the world used to be, yet so different she would rather experience that starved boulder crushing her again. It was slick, smooth, soft in a way she could only guess was meant to convey some sense intimacy or gentleness, yet the way it branched and wrapped itself around her pushing limbs made her feel like she was sinking into a ball of worms.

    "Cast away your parasites, Mariwa, the misshapen degenerates who would dare pull the magnificent into the muck of vermin. Let the lice flounder and drown into the grand blue depths of the Lady''s domain!"

    "Get away from me!" Holly screamed through her Will, arms that were not arms in a frantic battle against the foreign body crawling over her. It was hopeless; where she scratched, the skin resisted, and were she plucked the worms branched, disappearing as if they had never been there where she ambushed to tear apart. "My name is Holly! Holly Seneschal!"

    "My Mariwa, why would you fight so?" the pity that was injected right into her, like a bloated burrowleech piercing through the skin of her thumb, almost made her gag. "Why would you deny yourself so? Could these animals have erased the beauty of your blood from your eyes?!"

    "You are the animal!" she tried to escape, in vain; her body could step back, yet the grip holding down her will was stronger than steel. she pushed and fought the only ways she knew to. "You child! Loser! Traitor!"

    "Can you not feel your own purity, my gorgeous Mariwa?!" She realize with a start she was helpless. They spoke, and the venom grew more potent with every word. "Blinded to the blood, to the crimson beauty from the Lake Mother and the Brave Father! No, blinded by the filth of the mud crawling beasts! Disgusting!"

    This wasn''t good. She could feel it, the wrath and vicious bloodthirst, eagerly searching for her companions, ignoring her every rebuke as if she wasn''t even speaking.

    "Holly!"

    Perhaps it was the way she was moving, or the way she couldn''t take her eyes off the water.

    What happened next occurred too fast for her to react. Aleh jumped right in front of her, his sleeve pulled back and his wrist crawling with twisting distortions, plunging his arm into the puddle around her feet. injecting himself in the midst of the battle. A mass of predatorial intent crawled over her, prickling legs moving at dizzying speeds, savagery carved into every smidge of its body, tearing into the foreign body like a gale of knives while doing her no harm worse than a caress.

    "Holly, I will distract it for a second, pull yourself out!" he yelled, never breaking his focus,

    "N-no, Aleh, stop!"

    "Now! I can''t hold against it for long!"

    Aleh was admirable. Nothing like the mist she had once felt, this was sheer aggression, a desire to harm that belied human nature condensed like a blade. For that brief fright, it dominated the conflict , an unbidden and feral creature lashing out with endless fangs and countless claws.

    In the end, it was too hollow, too fake. For all its quality, it was a projection, a sensation with no depth. The moment she caught on to it, so did their enemy.

    The retaliation came swiftly, a scourging mass of tendrils that struck without discrimination, tearing the illusion to pieces like paper. Memories from her conflict against God prepared her for the attack, allowing her to brace herself against the worst of it, but Aleh had no such experience. The puddle exploded around them, And Aleh''s head snapped back with a strangled gasp.

    Knowing it wouldn''t stop there, she pushed Aleh away. In her panic, she didn''t measure her strength, and Aleh was thrown. The sound of him striking the Oke''s side sank her heart. She watched as he dropped to the ground, limp, as if through a window. For a moment, she even forgot she was there at all.

    "Young sir!" Rosen''s voice woke her from the stupor, as he jumped down and rushed to Aleh''s side. "Hold on, I''m getting you out of here!"

    "Lilly!" That was Blades. "Fuck the Homunculus, we need to leave now!"

    "I''m trying, it''s not answering me!"

    "So this is the level of their depravity," the other Will said, frighteningly placid. "Impudent scavengers, host of foul divine mimicry. To think they would interfere in this holy moment..."

    "Please, stop!" She begged, wrapping herself around them to hold them back, and quickly finding how little it did as the worms slipped through her embrace. "Leave them alone!"

    "Mariwa, my Mariwa, I have come to rescue you from this. Await me, for no pest shall stand between you and your freedom."

    It was happening all over again.

    Regular humans were not built for this, no matter how Marquise insisted otherwise. Lesser Hollow had defied God, and they had paid. Her comrades had tried to protect her, and they would pay for it too.

    That was why Elder Seneschal had entrusted their safety to her.

    That was why Holly Seneschal took the decision she took, whatever may become of her in the morning.

    "Let not the tainted get a hold of you," The other Will said, water flooding all around her legs and quickly reaching for Rosen and Aleh. "For the ancestors-"

    "Stop."

    She didn''t know what she had reached for, but the strength behind her command gave pause to the enemy. She took a deep breath.

    "I''m free. I''m coming to you."

    "My Mariwa, have you seen the light?"

    "Yes. I''m coming to you."

    "Praised be! For the Given Blood, for Old Vetara!" Happiness flooded into her, and she struggled to not let it settle. "Follow my Divine Intent! Force me to wait no further! Let us be reunited"

    "A-Aleh," she tried to say, but the words came frail even to herself. "A-Aleh! I''m sorry! I-I shouldn''t have... no, doesn''t matter, we can talk about this later. I-I''ll be right back, okay? I''m not giving up on the Marquise''s mission! Please tell that to Agare if he comes back before me!"

    "Holly!" Blades called.

    "B-Blades! I-I''m not giving up on Lilly''s dream either, alright?! I-I''m going to deal with this really quick, and then be right back!"

    "No, don''t-"

    Too late. Holding to the foreign Will like a hand offered, she broke into a sprint, leaving them behind.

    She wouldn''t let things reach the point they did on the Lesser again.

 2 - The Children of the Lake 11

    Aleh''s body lurched with a gasp. Air failed to enter his lungs.

    The world he awoke to was a tenebrous blur, a strange incandescence all there was to distinguish the shuffling shades around him. A rasping breath echoed from his barely functional throat, another desperate attempt to breath causing him nothing but pain.

    Something spoke. A strong appendage got a firm hug over his back, propping him into a half sat position. A cold object was pressed against his lips, the pulpy concoction inside bearing a bitter and grassy taste. As the liquid, or ooze rather, dribbled down his throat however, a jolt quickly spread across his body, from the tips of his extremities to the darkest to the most unknowable depths of his Asha, returning life and more importantly control to his mind.

    He coughed, choking on the vile thing. Ring Flower extract, he recognized, likely fresh and mixed with some sort of taste givers considering he wasn''t retching all over the floor by now. As he once again breathed, everything came into focus, and he realized he had been brought inside his vintage Oke, the Homunculus within its walls showing its high alert through swift pulses of scarlet bioluminescence, a good sign.

    "Well done, young sir," Rosen''s ugly bearded mug said from so close he cold smell his breath, "Take it easy now, you-"

    No time for that. Aleh grasped the older man by the collar, trying to pull him down. "Hooolly. Where...?"

    The memories of the last few hours were coming back to him, and with them his failure.

    He had been foolish. Appallingly amateurish! Back in the Sect, the punishment for a mistake of this caliber would have hobbled him for life. Trying to match an Heir''s Asha not only inside one of their Chief Concepts, but potentially even inside a Domain in the making would always be suicide for a regular human, even a witch of his caliber. That he had so blindly focused on offense, neglecting defense completely was salt rubbed in the wound.

    He understood his reasons, of course. It was deeply unpleasant to admit, but the moment he saw Holly freeze, contact with the Children made, he saw his dream unraveling before his very eyes, and that had been enough to move his body faster than rationality could stop it. He shook his head; no time for self-pity.

    "Where''s Holly?!" he asked, louder. "Tell me you stopped her! Tell me!"

    "... Young sir, please calm down." Rosen said, his tone an unspoken answer.

    "I can''t believe it." Aleh pushed him away, and that he didn''t budge a centimeter was another cut to his pride. "No, no, I refuse to believe it. You failed to stop her?! How could you- no, we must go find her right now, to-"

    "Aleh, breath!"

    The command gave him pause. He wanted to lash out, to scream, but he followed it instead, letting logic ground him again. This wasn''t time for throwing more wood into the chimney. "... Thank you, Almalilly. My apologies for the... hysterics."

    "No need for that. I get it, Aleh." Almalilly said, sitting down by his feet on one of the Oke''s hard fought for couches. "I just had more time to process it, I guess."

    The hand extricating itself from his shoulders, Aleh fell back onto the seat. "It has happened then. Holly has made contact with the Children. She is compromised."

    "We fell right into their trap." Almalilly agreed with a sigh. "To think they would even use the Sect! How long must they have been watching us to figure that out?!"

    "I would suppose not much observation was needed. So long as they knew how their enemies are supposed to act, they would spot the rat. That they managed to get their hands on a Faceless, however..."

    "From the beginning, the fullness of the Lady''s plan would never have reached the ears of mere Faces. The risk of leaks would be too high. Besides, the Sir wouldn''t keep something that might-"

    "Shut the fuck up, Rosen." Aleh said.

    "Immediately, young sir."

    Aleh massaged his temples, a faint agony flaring in waves beneath his cranium, physical manifestation of his Ashic wounds he gathered. He might suffer the consequences of his folly for the rest of his life depending on his luck, not that he had the time to confirm; now, they had to plan a way to retrieve Holly, no matter the cost.

    ...No. On second thought, there was one thing with more precedence: he had a bone to pick.

    "You see, I can understand how none of us humans could stop Holly, not when we are caught with out metaphorical underwear around our ankles by an Heir of the Azure with vested interest in taking her." He rose on his arse, squinting against the shadows in search of his target. "Tell me, then, what could possibly be your excuse, dearest Furfu?"

    "Aleh," Almalilly warned. "Not the time."

    "When else then?! The next time she fumbles our very sensitive operation, assuming there will be a next time for her to fumble?! She is a Faceless, for fuck''s sake, isn''t this what they are made for?!"

    The miserable creature once named Furfu stood in the corner, close to the threshold separating the Oke''s passenger compartment to its cabin, shrunk into herself and trembling as if experiencing a nightmare, which he would make sure she did by dawn or die trying.

    "Why are you even here? Did Marquise go insane? Or was she fucking you? Where did this trust come from?!" He stepped towards her, Merurgy surging as his control over his Arts slipped for a moment, bringing to the light an unidentifiable sore that made him cringe. "Because all that stands before my eyes is that same cruel bastard who crippled her comrades on a whim back in the Sect, beaten into an obsessive coward!"

    "Aleh, enough!" Almalilly stepped in between them. "This isn''t the time to make good on childhood rivalries!"

    "Childhood rivalry?!" he said. "Ha! You think this is a rivalry?"

    "What I think is that it doesn''t matter! If she isn''t going to be use, forget about her and helps us with a plan to salvage the situation, preferentially before Sir Agare returns!"

    "Tch! If he returns at all! Who knows, perhaps our little interlopers actually did murder the arrogant prick, and might be heading back to us right now!"

    Inside, the only lights available allowed for little and dim detail, but there was no darkness in the entire Starlit World that could obscure the somber look Almalilly threw his way. "Take. This. Seriously."

    "The sir will return," Rosen murmured from behind him. "Please don''t underestimate his strength, young sir."

    "... Tch!" Aleh spat. "Tell me the situation then. What changed while I was down under?"

    Silence. Surely a good omen.

    "We are under attack." Blades voiced echoed, clear and close enough to almost get a jump from him. Had she been standing there all along?

    "... Not exactly under attack," Almalilly said, "but we are being pinned down, and if that isn''t the purpose I don''t know what it could be."

    Frowning, he reached with a hand towards the wall, making contact with his Homunculus through the slim metallic sheet separating him from its many divisions. Sending a Merurgical message, the creature recognized its master and allowed him access to its own sources of energy. The wall became transparent, and the red luminescence pierced to the outside, bathing their surroundings.

    The Floodlands had made good on its name. The Oke''s wheels were submerged in over what he estimated was half a meter worth of water, crashing against them in impossible waves that rose over the nearby uneven terrain more like a sheet held against the wind then any of its natural properties should, could, allow it to shape itself into.

    "How long?" he asked, perplexed.

    "Since Holly left." Almalilly answered. "It kept rising until a few minutes ago."

    The light painted the tree line in the color of blood, illuminating as far as the thick of the woodlands, where the water level appeared to come to a sharp drop. There, once camouflaged against the shadows, a shape revealed itself.

    Aleh stared it down, finding it difficult to describe. Elongated and slick, bearing a multitude of slim, reflective branching objects upon its back, gently drifting as if caught by accident in the water currents. Except, it suddenly quivered, submerging itself with deliberate ease.

    He paled, slamming both hands against the wall. He lent his very energy to the Oke, boosting its defenses.

    "Brace for impact!"

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    "What? Young sir, what did-"

    Too late.

    The Child of the Lake, Heir to the Azure, who had been watching them all along slammed into the side of their nearly 3 tons heavy vehicle with enough violence to drag it sideways.

    -------

    Holly had underestimated the Floodlands.

    Every step taken towards the heart of the woods the closer the jungle got to a maze. Cavernous walls of wood and thorns that allowed not the slightest beams of light through. All the illumination allowed to another person lost in this place would be the few incandescent mushrooms that occasionally grew under rotting trunks and glowy mucus whose origin she had no time to guess.

    The thin tendril of water leading her, however, stood out like a torch in the night. Infected with Will, its unnatural contours brought her up and down hills, over and under trees, into the depths of puddles and caves formed from the embrace of roots. No matter the obstacle, it never lost its shape or shine, never lost its gentle grasp of her own Will.

    Deeper they went, and ever quieter did the Floodlands became; ever stronger did the drumming in her chest grow. Not all things had fled this new, dominating presence: with every other step, she would feel the crunch of soft larvae who had wriggled out of their mud cradles only to find themselves helpless to escape, armies of slugs and snails of every kind brought together by a common fear, smaller animals such as lizards and salamanders hampered by old wounds and missing limbs. She quietly apologized for the useless cruelty, but never lost stride.

    Other, more sinister things refused to flee. In fact, if anything, they pursued the stretched Will with a hunger she couldn''t understand.

    The first apparition hobbled its way out of the dark on impossibly gaunt limbs, sillhouette blurring with the rhythm of its drowned screams. A body of bloody meat and skin ribbons was all she could guess it was trying to emulate with its repulsive shape, its colors suddenly blooming into view as if independent from light.

    "Out of my way!"

    By reflex, her arm swiped through the mass, followed by another hundred who were not truly there. Physically, she felt nothing but a strange chill that seeped below her hardskin. Her Will drove itself through a mass of bitter fear and starved desperation with the consistency of rancid muck, sending shivers down her spine.

    It wouldn''t be the only one to block her path. More and more of them emerged around her, creeping from behind bushes and enormous leaves, or shambling in a hurry against her guiding creek, only to be lashed apart in an instant.

    "My Mariwa, just ahead," the other Will said, unbothered by the interlopers. "The most perfect place for our reunion I could find. The most perfect place this landlocked hovel could ever offer to our Blood. You will see!"

    Led by the hand, it wouldn''t take long until she broke from the densest reaches into a sort of clearing. Or, at least, somewhere the canopy wasn''t so all encompassing she could look up and see the stars watching them. The moon was fast approaching its new phase, the six-fingered palm imprinted into its surface already hidden.

    She slowed down to a walk. As promised, her destination was right there, over a gentle slanted hillock and into a bright clearing, strong lights bathing her and the woods in dozens of colors, a sight that in different circumstances might have enthralled her. This one time, she had to force her shaking legs to keep a steady pace.

    Up there, a beautiful view had been prepared for her.

    Before her eyes, sat a small, shallow lake, its waters so placid they mirrored the sky and the brilliant show of lights of the flower field its shores had turned into. None she recognize: long stalked reds with with hairy cores, pink and violets that floated on their leaves, pristine whites with sagging petals like little cups, other more demure ones in greens and teals. All, however, were mere backdrop compared to the gorgeous giant blooming from a gargantuan hollow which laid in an islet in the smack middle of the place, its light blue petals, each the length of a man, had a much subtler shine to then, almost as if enchanted, specially in comparison to rivulet worth of golden sap slowly cascading into the waters.

    She realized, then, it wasn''t just the flowers. The entire basin was lit like the day, leaving nothing to the imagination.

    Then, where was her guiding Will''s source?

    It let go of her, slipping away into the depths of the lake. The unnatural stream of water, once its medium, splashed apart.

    She took this as her invitation. Head carefully held high, she shuffled into the pleasantly cool water, the greenery rustling around her legs with such quiet whispers she felt as if they were moving, making way for her entrance. She walked until she felt the water reach her crotch, roughly the middle point to the islet.

    Emboldened by anger and fear, she called. "H-hello?! I''m here!"

    Nothing but silence.

    An idea occurred to her, both wondrous and terrifying.

    Her Will dipped into the water, very hesitantly at first. When her fingers that were not fingers reached its cool surface, she knew there was no backing from this, and pushed down with all the courage she could muster.

    It was as if a whole new world opened before her. As if that tiny lake had this profundity to it its physical counterpart could never hope to match, one in which she was freer than ever before. Her Will swam, spreading in all directions, no need for conscious effort, the pleasant embrace never steering her wrong.

    She had never felt this much at home. And that was the horror of it.

    She slapped her cheeks lightly, recentering herself. Outside the delicious hold of instinctual familiarity, her Will''s exploration looked less like an elegant swim and more like a vicious trashing, its frenetic dance disturbing the mirror into small waves. She stopped herself, a little embarrassed at the idea somebody might be watching her.

    "D-didn''t you want to meet me?" she said, searching but finding nothing. "Where are you?"

    Silence met her again, only for a minute this time. What came to answer her, however, wasn''t a voice, or at least not her guide''s.

    The cacophony   no, the gurgling, asphyxiated choir echoed from all around her. The chaos of its lack of coordination created its own bizarre, unsettling yet melodic and nostalgic hymn, reminding her of the Lesser''s festivals, the longing but hopeful songs the villagers sang together, mouths struggling to match one another, and she always there out of sight, an uninvited observer.

    Apparitions stepped out of the darkness. A few were already investigating the edges of the lake, she noticed, unwilling to dip in nor leave, waiting for something to happen. Dozens joined them; hundreds, some so dim they were barely living mist and shade, others so clear she could almost see how their impossible viscera came together; she turned away in disgust.

    Only when she was surrounded, did part of her Will feel something. A teasing caress, rubbing its way past her fingers and up her wrists, quickly vanishing as she tried to grasp it. Then again, in a completely different location. Outraged, she spread as far as she could, almost covering every drop of the lake, touching nothing to her great dismay.

    At the third caress. she retreated, pulling Will as tight as she could. "Stop this! S-show yourself! Why won''t you show yourself?!"

    The forth caress came soon, and this time she was ready. like the jaws of a coiled snake, she closed upon the offending limb, overwhelming it with numbers! It didn''t even try absconding, to her confusion, the smooth, jointless, fingerless stump resting with lazy ease under her ambush.

    "I-I got you! A-aren''t you going to talk to me?" she said. "I''m going to leave if you don''t!"

    "This state... My Mariwa. What has that lice done to you?" The Will said, raw devastation sinking her heart in uncontrollable sympathy.

    "W-what?"

    "I do not understand the language of Allebodt, my sad, broken Mariwa. It is the language of savages, of treacherous animals, beneath the Blood."

    She was left speechless, confused.

    "Who took your pride, your beauty?" the guide continued. "What is that wretched thing, covering the inheritance of the Blood? What are those trembling legs, that shaking, whimpering voice? Stain my sight with this wretched witchcraft no longer!"

    It took her a few second to understand their request, their emotions bubbling to the surface with every minimal instant of disobedience. Somewhat relieved, she pulled her robes off in one swift stroke, leaving herself fully nude for the first time in what felt like ages. Disgusting, odorless sludge dripped down her limbs, another sight she pointedly tried not to look at.

    "Vile."

    "Don''t call me-" She almost said but then realized. "Don''t call me that."

    "It is not you, My Mariwa, it is the state those vermin left you to languish! To deny yourself, to suffocate the divine in its own impurity! Were you meant as a message to our Lady, to me, of the cruelties those Faceless abhorrences are capable off?!"

    "They cared for me! They kept me alive, they-"

    The reply came like the crack of a cane, shattering her point in a half. "Look at yourself, my Mariwa! Malnorished, dirty, spineless! Examine your own Divine Intent, how malformed it has become, stiff and slow!"

    "If it wasn''t for my comrades, I would be a lot worse off!"

    "Comrades?! A captive, dismembered and shoved into a cell, fed once a day, then dragged out to feel the Lady''s breeze one last time! And you have the gall to thank your wardens before me?"

    "I''m not a captive!"

    Their anger burned stronger, growing like fire until the Will as a whole simply vanished. She was left flabbergasted, taking a step back before realizing she didn''t actually know where this thing was. She heard movement to her left, swiveling on her heels to find empty space.

    "Long have I tried to reach you, my Mariwa," the Will said, nowhere and everywhere. "The Master of your Domain allowed me no passage."

    Her own Will wasn''t half fast enough to catch it this time. Another sound, something emerging from the bottom of the lake behind her, nothing there again.

    "You are no longer the babbling infant that I lost. At this advanced an age, I fear correcting you will be a struggle, though at least the troublesome parasites shall not bother you from now on."

    "What do you mean?" She failed again. "What did you do?"

    "I can see your potential, still alive inside the husk. By my hands, the salvation of our family shall me molded, shall bloom to her full divinity!"

    "You can''t see anything! You can''t know me!"

    "I know your pedigree, the quality of your Blood, and the person you are not. Through this unholy number, I know who you were, who you are, and who you would have become if not for me!"

    "You can''t." She hissed, nails unfurling. "You can''t! You can''t, You can''t, You can''t!"

    "I will show you."

    Another wet sound, behind her again. She didn''t fall for it this time.

    Which is exactly why she did. Only when she heard the soft footsteps on soft mud did she realize they had come, and froze.

    She was afraid. By now, she was sure of who they were, and what she would see when she looked back. She knew it might destroy her, destroy who she was utterly and without mercy, but it was too late to run.

    Carefully, she turned. The figure had been waiting for her with patience. Her mind went numb.

    Taller than even Julius by at least a head; long spindly limbs, armored with a shining smooth white carapace and armed with claws like sickles both on their diminute fingers and their elongated toes; their torso was flabby, a soft abdomen pushing from under a steel cuirass, their tendril ridden parts covered by nothing but a silken loincloth, a deep purple in color.

    But it was the head that cinched the deal, that broke her. Its bloated back, its long tentacles held in the air in distress, its featureless dome for a forehead, its almost nonexistent lips, barely covering a mouth of sharp teeth, and its eyes! Slits so camouflaged along the nigh lacy folds of skin that crossed it from right above the lips to below his temples anyone would be excused for not realizing they were there, all four of them.

    But she knew better, It was the first difference she had noticed after crawling from that copper tasting cocoon, who knew how many years ago.

    "My Mariwa, my precious daughter," her father said. "How gorgeously have you bloomed. Never worry yourself again, I will make things right!"

 2 - The Children of the Lake 12

    Holly watched as her father descended back into the waters.

    He approached, only stopping when she took a step back. Waiting a beat, he tempted another step, and she suddenly didn''t know if in the next few seconds she would tearing her way through the apparitions behind her or her own family, but the way her muscles coiled told it would be one or the other.

    The uncertainty, the deniability, that had been better. Knowing for sure who he was, a tornado of emotions now waged a war with no winners inside her mind.

    "My Mariwa." Her father said through Will, sweet and adoring, though his bared teeth and wriggling claws spoke of another story. No, wouldn''t she look almost the same to him? How could she know then? "You fear the Blood."

    There were a thousand things she could, that she wished to say. Discomfort ultimately won, her Will talking with all the love of a warning hiss. "Stop calling me that. My name has been Holly Seneschal ever since I was a kid, and that''s what I want to be called!"

    "What are you saying my Mariwa? Do you not recognize your name?" Her dad said with startling coldness. "Could your mother have denied you your very birthright?!"

    "Mom died before I ever met her," she said.

    There was a spell of silence, deep enough she wondered if she had shocked him with the news, or worse, hurt him in some way. His eyes widened for an instant, his lips quirked ever so slightly, but she didn''t really understand what that meant.

    "I see," he said, and it was her turn to be rendered speechless with the casual lack of feeling. "I had expected as much. Despite herself, she was know to have some potential. It had been a shame to see it so impudently squandered."

    "I don''t understand?" Holly said, and she wasn''t sure she meant it, or that she wanted to.

    "Nevermind it. Let us dwell on more pleasant topics." The sweetness returned, and she wondered whose side was at fault for the edge of forcefulness it carried. "You never knew your own name. I take you never known your own family''s either, then?"

    She had known the name he called her, and otherwise nothing. She gave a tentative shake of the head.

    Her dad lowered himself into a strange bow, arms and hands spread as he bent on one knee and pushed the other back. The next words he spoke were not through Will, and she struggle to understand them.

    "W-what?" she said.

    the featureless curve from his mouth to his forehead creased, which she knew meant a frown. His voice was gruff yet sharp, booming with crackling highs, distorted and uncomfortable to listen. He spoke again, clearer, though his strong accent and its strange pronunciation still made it awkward to both her ears and her tongue. It almost sounded... Awinian? Was Yinian not even the language she was born to?

    "Glaashee... Glashii?" She finally managed, drawing a head splitting smile from her dad.

    "Glashii. Glashii Di Aila." His voice sibilated with sheer delight. "Lisi Mariwa Di Aila."

    She took a few seconds to recognize the words. My Mariwa in Awinian, as if it could have been anything else. Another time, she might have pondered how different it sounded from the way Hazel used to pronounce it, how odd it felt to hear the name of a family that should have been hers paired with the way her sister sometimes called her, but her patience was wearing thin.

    "Holly!" she said, not bothering with will either. "Holly Se-nes-chal!"

    Her father recoiled, quivering with visceral repulse. "No. No! No! Do you not feel it in your tongue, My Mariwa? That is the language of the savage conquerors, language of arrogant crumbs, language of backstabbing animals!"

    "It''s my name! It''s the name Elder Seneschal gave me!"

    "An Elder! And Elder among the Dashi is an infant among us Children! Tell me, was Gaiwa victim of this same humiliation, or did she take to it like a fish in the pond?"

    It was not the dismissive tone of his words alone that made her flinch. Holly hadn''t thought of her sister very much these past few days, had she? It was cruelty, responsibility or not for her death, after everything she did for her in the end. And now, she would be forced to break her father the news.

    "Dad... Hazel, she..." Holly swallowed dry the hesitation and the sudden grief. She didn''t want to think about this. "Hazel is gone. I''m sorry. She wanted to save us, to... to protect me."

    He listened to her in silence, face and body unreadable. As his Will replied, she felt a strange tension crossing into her. "Had she manifest the Blood?"

    "...What?"

    "You refer to Gaiwa, correct? Had she manifested the Blood later in her life, as well?"

    "What are you talking about? What is even this Blood?" she said, unable to hold back her indignation. "And what does it even matter? I''m telling you your daughter has passed!"

    In one lunge, he crossed the distance between then, forcing a sound she did not care to think on out of her throat. If her indignation was heavy, the fury pouring into her Will was a landslide. "The Blood! The inheritance of the First Mother and First Lady, the signed of us who will rule her lands; the last boon given by Old Vetara to his kin, lineage of us who built the Land of the Brave! It is everything, and without it there is nothing, do not think for a second that your manifestation means you are excused from respect!"

    Stunned, she backed away, lost for words.

    She had known there was no cure to her condition. She couldn''t say she had accepted it quite yet, no, but so long as nobody treated her any different, she could forget about it. Eventually, as all things, she would learn to live with it time.

    And yet.

    And yet, this was supposed to have happened? All this misery, this loneliness, this horror?! She was supposed to break like an abused doll, to drag herself out of her own carcass with just teeth and nail, to become the kind of thing who killed a man with just a glimpse?! That had been passed down to her? And now he wanted to know if her sister had suffered the same.

    "No. Of course not! And thanks goodness for that!" she said, laughing. "No, she grew like a human, and lived like a human, the way she was meant to be! I can''t imagine what would happen if she did, she-"

    She would want this so bad if she knew, regardless of the consequences.

    Holly felt a horrible chill. Had she known? Had she ever connected the dots? Hazel had always had such good memory, and now that she thought about it, those stories about the strange men who used to visit their home, scurrying around beyond where her eyes could catch them, yet always leaving such incredible shadows behind...

    To her great dismay, her father gave a solemn nod. "Then she did right."

    "Don''t say that."

    "My Mariwa, she-"

    "I told you to not call me that!" She bristled. "How could you say she did right? She is gone!"

    "I understand. I don''t blame her for her birth. The Blood chooses, but cannot be chosen, thus a disgrace should not be made guilt for their weakness. Yet, a disgrace is a disgrace, and that she would give her own life in service of one of the Blood earns her praise, regardless of the means."

    Holly didn''t respond, too horrified for words.

    "I had no expectations of her. To learn she made good use of her life is pleasant indeed! That my Mariwa-"

    "Shut up."

    They both froze; he cocked a head to the side, none too pleased, and she was left unsure were that cold thing was rising from. Didn''t matter, she supposed. She let it boil to the surface, contours growing sharp and vicious in their connection.

    "You would-"

    "Shut up!" she repeated, taking a step in his direction. "Do you know how much she dreamed of our old home? How much she dreamed somebody would come rescue her, rescue us?! I didn''t even believe Skawla was real but... she wanted to risk it all to go back, you know? Dying to God scared her less than never seeing it again!"

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    Her father scoffed, an ugly sound if she had ever heard any. "All those who experience the City of the Brave clamor for its beauty! That she would come to desire it is only natural. Fear not, my child, because I guarantee you this: she will be remembered in our mausoleum. Let no other critic!"

    She took another step forward. He resumed his approach. "That''s it?"

    His forehead creased. "It is an honor."

    They stood an arm''s length from each other. Over the islet, the light of the great flower shining at his back, she had imagined an immense figure, herself made even larger, but the reality is that even with her head down her father was still the shorter party. She looked at him in the eyes.

    "Why?" she asked. "Why did you never come?"

    At first, he didn''t answer, choosing to match her gaze. Then he looked down, and this time it was his turn to strike with powerful feelings: rage-stained grief struck her with such suddenness she gasped, hair lashing at the back of her head, phantom tears she could never cry threatening to spill.

    "The Aila family was once esteemed. Prestigious. Ancient! Our bloodline ran as far as the brood of the Second Lady! And yet, we were slaughtered like animals!

    "It was the Lady! Wretched scum sucker, bloodline wasted by blinding greed, a thousand years besmirched by hunger! We were accused of the most grievous crime of abetting treachery, trialed and judged guilty by our peers thanks to her deceit with no chance of recourse, and punished before we had the time to react!

    "I fought this fate, of course. But what can one man do against the will of the Lady? The few of us who survived were forced to beg and offer vassalage, and may I be struck down if regret ever enters my mind, I would not stand for it! I fled, along with some of our survivors.

    She resisted to the best of her ability. It was no use. A howl of anguish escaped her mouth, madness filling her mind. She could almost see it, the holy bodies of her family left to litter the hallways of their ancestral home like burst sacks of meat, the blood of servants and aristocrats alike mingling in between olden marble floors and four times restored art, neither the young nor old spared.

    "I was found. I was defeated. I was humiliated!"

    She fought against the images in vain. She didn''t feel any pain but she saw the beatings, the lashings, the way hardskin could be broken into and peeled like the carapace of an insect, the parading of a body, naked and flayed, along a gallery of abominations. She couldn''t bear with it: "S-stop! Please, stop!"

    The worst had yet to come.

    "They promised me atonement. All they needed was a show of submission. And so, I was married to a stain."

    A petite woman stood by a ridged, transparent creature, her face blank and posture elegant and unasuming. Her skin was dark, yet her hair carried a shade of brown typical only to the Bear, fine vests sagging over her shoulders like a poorly fit mask. Ugly thing, vile omen, child of animals. No, that wasn''t what she was seeing, that wasn''t her!

    "Of Blood yet bearing no Blood. My line was strong and I hoped I could overcome her curse, as I had not grasped yet the depth of the Lady''s cruelty, not as I would. Impurity cannot be so easily cleansed!"

    "No!" Holly screamed against the torrent, for revenge and for salvation. She saw a child, disgusting creature, a reminder of his lack.

    "Filth! No better than the misshapen Dashi! She bore me spawn, an inkling of hope, slowly smothered before my very eyes."

    She saw Hazel. She was Hazel, Hazel and nothing else, no matter the pond grime flowing into her Will. She recognized her even as a baby, lovely huge eyes staring wide from the woman''s arms in both defiance and curiosity. The way she was being held, obscured under her flank, was nothing short of shielding.

    "I know my own mistakes. You were born to us, and I feared the worst, my disquiet growing with every day you failed to manifest the Blood. If I had known, I wouldn''t have overreacted, I wouldn''t have pursued."

    Broken from the spell, or rather, willfully barring its influence, she saw nothing. Yet, she could imagine what he wanted to show, and it churned her stomach.

    "The Domain of your captor was strong. I could have breached it, but I had to make a hard decision, one that will haunt me to my grave. I hope you can forgive me."

    There was sincerity there, she could feel it. It didn''t make things better. At this point, she didn''t know if she truly wanted to hear it, and yet her Will acted. "Why then?"

    "You know why, don''t you my Mariwa? I just didn''t know. If I wrenched our coffers dry, only to find you had remained a disgrace the same way your sister did, how would I justify it-"

    To say instinct had made her jump him would not be entirely accurate. In the very last moment, while she had just enough time to restrain herself, she clenched the open handed swipe into a fist so only her knuckles hit her father square in the jaw, knocking teeth loose and pushing him back several paces. In the aftermath of her attack, even the apparitions seemed to go quiet with shock.

    Her father spat blood, rubbing at the bruise who would not so quickly fade from his skin. When he looked back at her, there was no kindness left. "You dare strike at your own progenitor, with Divine Intent?! Do you understand the magnitude of that sin?! I should-"

    "You should nothing." Her Will crashed against his, no longer even trying to restrain her hostility. "How dare you! We were your daughters, how could you think of us like this?! Elder Seneschal wasn''t even our real dad, and he still did as right by us as he could!"

    "Oh, mind yourself!" He fought back, easily overcoming her offensive through sheer slickness. "We are better than that. Don''t lower yourself to such crude Dashi sentimentality!"

    "Sentimentality?!"

    "Sentimentality! You keep insisting on that point when I already acknowledge the wretched have no fault in being born wretches, what more do you wish from my person, groveling?! I shall do no more than recognize the truth of things."

    "We were your children! You chased us out of our home over nothing, and you talk about your own daughter like she is trash!" She couldn''t believe her own words. Not in her worst nightmares had she ever imagined she would need to say this out loud. "How dare you call me sentimental for defending her?!"

    "Oh, open your eyes, you petulant moron!" He bared his teeth, venom pouring from him. "Do you think the Blood has the time or patience for failures? It would be the death of our family!"

    "We were children."

    "But she was no Child, Mariwa. She had no place in the Dream."

    And to that, what could she say?

    "Let us forget then, about her, about that filth bloodied mother of yours, and that manwhore of hers who aided in her kidnap of you! Their fates were already sealed from the beginning, my Mariwa, however yours stands before you, ripe for the taking! Come with me, back to the City of the Brave. I won''t let harm come to you, never again."

    "I don''t care!" she said. Already planning how to pierce through the Apparitions. "I changed my mind, I''m going back to my comrades!"

    A shift in tone reached her before words could. A triumph so cold it bordered on bloodthirsty. "There is nothing to return to, my Mariwa. The Parasites are nothing but corpses by now."

    She went numb. "What did you do?"

    "I may be flawed, but an idiot I am not, Though this band acted eccentric, I know what to expect of the Faceless, so I didn''t come alone, wouldn''t be allowed to." He chuckled, dragging himself deeper into the depths of the lake. "Rejoice, my daughter! You shall soon meet your family''s elite!"

    For as much as she hated that animal thing inside of her, she didn''t hesitate in listening to it for once.

    She threw herself at him again, this time holding nothing back. How unfortunate, then, that he was expecting her this time, sidestepping the punch with such ease he might as well have predicted her down to the motion, and quickly lowering himself underwater. She tried to give chase, grasping hand lunging into the murk laying beneath the surface but finding nothing. Her Will tried to keep hold, but it was too late.

    The Lake went silent as the gurgling audience sang in distress. She knew the trick by now, coiling her Will around herself like a snakeball, ready for her father''s touch. The once mirror surface had become disturbed, waves surging in such perfect motions they could be nothing if not controlled, creating phantom figures that rose at the corners of her eyes, only to disappear as she focused on them.

    The caress came.

    "I know my mistakes."

    her first strike missed entirely, too slow and too late.

    "You reject yours."

    The second caress she caught, her grip too weak to keep the limb in place.

    "Thank Old Vetara, then."

    The third was held for an extra blink, but it too wriggled out of her hands.

    When the fourth came, she closed into it like a mantle, ready to pull him.

    And that''s how she was enveloped whole. She panicked, squirming tendrils binding her Will tight as she tried to pull them off, and so didn''t even notice the shoulder tackle until it crunched her face, sending her reeling as a swipe pulled her right off her feet. A hand closed around her neck, pushing her underwater with enough strength to crash her against the sediment beneath, choking her windpipe bruised.

    "That your father makes for a good teacher. There is much to be corrected in you, my Mariwa, but don''t you worry, I''m a patient man."

    She struggled desperately against his grip. Her nails found no purchase on his arms, her legs found no proper leverage to push him away; her Will coiled back around his, only to learn her hostility had found its match in her father''s. The hand crushed her, its iron grip almost popping out her head before relenting.

    "The Blood does not breath my daughter. The divine leave behind such dull mortal notions."

    She had not a second to digest it as a foot met her right in the ribcage, a sickening crack resounding under the skin as the world spun around her. She felt herself leave the comfortable embrace of the water then dive back, bouncing off her back into the shallow reaches of the shore. Agony flared across her body, and worst, beneath it too, deeper than flesh and bone.

    Her Will had been wounded. Bruises that should quickly close remained fresh and bloody, and though she might not need breath, she realized with some horror that words no longer left her throat.

    She didn''t dwell for long. A looming presence sent her scrambling away from the glowing flowers, a dozen pulsing, boneless appendages reaching for the spot she had just left, bubbling hoarse screams of distress and irritation left in her wake.

    "I''m human." she said. "I''m human. I am!"

    " ...You poor, broken thing," her father said. "No matter what, know this: the task wounds me more than it wounds you."

    "I won''t let you take this from me! Not you!" She screamed through her Will, already focusing on her grip to reveal her father. To her surprise, however, her father disappeared under her touch. No, that wasn''t accurate either; it was as if he didn''t exist, as if she had been holding a figment of her imagination all along and suddenly noticed the reality of the situation. The only reason she didn''t let go was because one thing was undeniable: that nothingness was clashing against her power to power.

    "But it is time for you to grow up. Playing in the muck is the act of infants."

    The words warned her of his emergence, just in time for her to evade a slash that would have taken her shoulder.

    She dove into the water, instincts guiding her arms and legs as she sought distance, and the battle began in earnest.

 2 - The Children of the Lake 13

    "Blades! Rosen!"

    Aleh had no time watch as his comrades followed the unspoken command and joined the battle outside. Neither had him the time to don his sensorial deprivation bindings and take proper precautions in connecting to his Homunculus. "Raw and quick", as a certain mentor of his used to put, would have to suffice.

    Another impact rang, the opposite wall made concave with each blow. A few more hits and the Child of the Lake, Heir to the Azure, would pierce deep through the steel sheets keeping the Homunculus'' fragile tissue protected, and from there no amount of Ashic Arts would prevent the carnage.

    Pushing through willpower alone, he touched the Homunculus Asha, a Merurgical message sent in haste forcing it into reaching back. The sensation as both merged was too intricate to describe with ease; similar to allowing an enormous spider to sink its fangs into his thoracic box, feel the venom melting through viscera and blood vessels, and parting with his liquefied self in good will. Horrid, to summarize.

    The Homunculus drank with relish, and Aleh expanded. He was two then, flesh cramped between a multitude of metallic layers, given enough space to grow only his own necessities. Eyes that would never see opened, and mouths that would never taste gaped, dizzying perspectives and impossible sensations overlapping the mundane.

    There was no one way to perceive the Planes Below. Some would see a phantasmagoric wasteland, others an endless nightmare of flames. It had been no surprise to Aleh when, years ago, that fateful moment he was allowed to utilize a gadget that to this moment remained a relic of unknown means, he was allowed to see, and a world of Golden Dust bloomed around him.

    It was suffering to even keep his eyes open. The World of Golden Dust was a mere allusion to its conceptualization by the Faceless Sect, and to its physical endpoint too. Madness made it no justice: it was contradictory and inconsistent, amorphous almost, though where his sight lingered and the overlap came into focus, a temptation was there to unveil the way one led to the next, what laid in between...

    Another impact jostled him from his near fatal daftness, the screeching rake of claws reminding him of his priorities. He shut his eyes as hard as he could, allowing his Homunculus'' senses to overtake his own instead.

    The Child was right there, clinging to his flank while burrowing a hole, a gargantuan shape of countless branching tendrils dissoluting in water, in a manner not unlike some maritime Phantasms he had seen described in books.

    This would not stand.

    The Oke had by instinct grown a surface of Ashic thorns, powerful but lacking in the physical component to make a reliable weapon against an opponent of such magnitude. As much he had expected, though that it had been ignored was an insult. Aleh smiled, feeling perspiration: the monster would rue the day it decided to underestimate his creations.

    Four great Ashic hooks tore into it, drawing a deafening bestial wail as each deployed their lines of dozen barbs. Pressure was exerted into the Child to restrain its movements, thought that would be a provisional measure.

    "Almalilly, beneath the panel, small organ like a liver to the left of the front bash!" he said.

    "Found it!" Almalilly said, and he felt the uncomfortable stimulus as if it had been his own organ being fondled. Still, the results spoke for themselves as the "meat" connecting the Homunculus to the Oke''s wheel engorged and calcified, restraining the mechanism and forcing organic spikes to emerge, driving them into the dirt.

    The counteroffensive was vicious. Atop the Oke, Blades struck with a series of lunges, not one of them capable of cutting deep into the Child, but all just enough to inflict pain. The howls grew shrill, and with a sudden movement, dozens of tendrils surged out in her direction. How unfortunate for the poor bastard, then, that Blades was a seasoned Face with some experience in resisting Ashic attacks.

    With great effort, under a downpour of piercing thrusts, the Child tore itself from the Oke''s side, his hooks far too frail to match its strength and thus abandoned post-haste before it could inflict him any more Ashic Damage. Less than a second into the protective hold of its water veil, the Child engaged one of the Azure''s Heirs most infamous tricks, and vanished.

    To see nothing in the Below Planes was impossible, even the air had its Merurgy and Ashic component, however there was no denying that there was Nothing there. A phenomena he had only ever heard of but never seen, something which had once fascinated him; all he could feel now, as the intended victim of its usage, was paralyzing dread.

    A premonition nibbled at the back of his mind. Afraid, he sent a known signal to both Blades and Rosen, a wave of weak burning prickles to both their feet; the latter threw himself down before the emerging palisade of Ashic thorns, the former took stance, the vivid golden currents of her being pressing tighter in waiting. He strengthened the signal until it was practically an attack, to no change.

    He didn''t see the wave coming, though both above must have. He felt the quake, heard its deafening crash and the disappearing scream. The palisade had been made of constructs   equivalent to keratin horns or hair in Ashic Art terms -- sparing both the Homunculus and him from rebound, the least of the potential issues that moment. distressed, he set to searching for his comrades.

    Both had escaped unharmed. Aleh released a breath he didn''t know he was holding, and chided himself. Panicking once was an unfortunate mistake, twice brought him teetering on the edge of uselessness.

    A response signal came from Rosen.

    Specialized in Arts aimed at intrinsic enhancement and close range operations, neither Blades nor Rosen were capable of constructing even the most basic of Merurgical Messages, and thus they had agreed to a simple series of touch-based cues cyphered from standard field communication for Faces, capable of transcribing the gist of their needs when the situation could otherwise get in the way of speech.

    "No use. Help" he said, already up, and aiming his carving knife in their foe''s direction.

    The third wave came, the Child''s focus once again falling straight to the Oke. The impact sent him flying across the Oke, a panel of translucent light against the wall absorbing the force behind the collision to leave him with a mild pain in the crown of his head rather than staining his magnum opus with cerebrospinal fluids.

    Both Faces above lost no time retaliating. Turning around, Aleh saw twin Merurgical trails, remote kinetic attacks that did nothing beyond battering the fucker outside, their colors borderline orange rather than the vivid yellow of true living creatures, a reflection of their natures as quase-parasitic weapons that fed on their surroundings.

    Excellent caliber for black market goods, or even compared to the few meager works produced by the ever so esteemed witch corps of the Sect. Deadly projectile weaponry that could cripple or even kill a man armored in steel plate, from half the distance but with twice the chance of an unenchanted crossbow. Work of the Revolution, and potential face of warfare in the near future.

    Less than trash against an Heir. Missile after missile took flight, dissipating without fanfare. One might be tempted to think they weren''t even hitting, a perilous blunder: The sensation of metal being scrapped escaped neither him nor his organic tool.

    He would have to take a more active hand in the battle.

    He took a deep breath, hand touching the wall in the vague direction of the foe. It shamed him to trust on such a primitive crutch, however to ignore functional aid over academic bias would be courting death in this occasion.

    Words in a language he knew by heart yet spoke nothing of were on the tip of his tongue before they reached his mind. The translation, according to the worst of his mentors, went something like this:

    "Woe to lie believed. Follow in diseased circle. To thee loving bile."

    Poison in the bloodstream. The beast imbibed of hatred made liquid, crystallized and knapped into a line of spearheads, not one drop off elegance in their aim; all they were was feeling and toxin, rostrums craving any tender tissue they could find.

    Every witch came across the moment they would have to pick one main Art to chisel themselves into. Nothing could be everything. Aleh''s had inspired disappointment and ridicule among his supposed peers. Even those supposed to be above the irony fell for it: even the image conjured by Illusion was an Illusion in itself. The mortal mind was never the main target of the discipline.

    The rostrums emerged into the Upper Plane, Merurgical figures in the physical world, and devoured. Vile things, the Child yowled at their touch; disturbing to the sight and putrid to the touch, they were infection alive, horrors conjured for the explicit purpose of destroying organic matter.

    But falsehoods were falsehoods. The burning infection would be real only until it was not, and his record against such foes inspired no confidence. They would need something more.

    Alas, that something more stood quivering in the corner.

    All those currently fighting were Faces. Accomplices, masks, and serfs to the Faceless, shields and pens but never blades. Having neither the body nor the training to wield the Sects execution armaments, all they could do was hope for the monumental fortune that would see them wounding the heir enough it reconsidered. Blades, the second toughest Face he could recall meeting, might be able to get there in circa a thousand cuts; if she survived three blows, he would know luck was on their side.

    That thing once named Furfu was mockery incarnate. How far could she still fall? What form of madness had overtaken Marquise when entrusting her with such a sensitive mission he could never understand. Were they fucking? could that shrinking animal have gotten some sort of dirt on her? No, she would be gone if that was the case. What could Marquise have seen then?!

    "Almalilly!" he screamed, never taking his eyes of the Nothing, for all the good it did.

    "Here!" she said.

    "Two things: first, storage compartment D, towards the panel, there is a fetish there, a stone in the shape of a large seed and engraved with active scriptures, a band of desiccated sinew nailed over it in a band. Give it to Blades!"

    "And the second?!" she asked, already rummaging through the hidden compartment in the cabin.

    Aleh pointed at that thing. "Please get this fucking coward moving out and helping, before it gets us all killed!"

    This time Almalilly didn''t answer, not that she needed to. He heard the moment she called for Blades, handing the fetish then closing the hatch. Then began the struggle.

    "Lady Furfu! Lady Furfu!" she said, to no response.

    He had no attention to spare them at the moment. Though the Obscuring effect had yet to cease, Aleh''s spell had more to its function than simple harm. Molecules of Merurgy had broken lnto fragments, splinters of his own essence set to slow putrefaction before vanishing. Now, chances were an Heir was a foe of too high a class to feel its true effects, but there was a secondary one that would help them: It created a track that reeked of him.

    Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website.

    "Use thing." he told Blades through poking patterns. "find me and attack, all out."

    "Try." was all she said.

    words were exchanged between the both above, barely heard below between Almalilly''s attempts to move Furfu and the slosh of water shattering bushes and fragile trees.

    That last one gave him pause. He sent another signal. "Projectile large careful."

    He saw both jump, but Rosen failed to calculate the angle, getting struck square in the hip and sent stumbling the side of the Oke and into the waters. Blades was quick, landing and falling back to catch him, though not fast enough.

    With almost choreographed grace, the moment Rosen touched the ground, Blades set to cover him, fetish shining like a living organ on her hand as she sent projectile after projectile towards the Child, none effective. Then she stopped, leaving Aleh perplexed, sure the weapon still had at least a fez dozen more before complete exhaustion.

    The Obscuring faded a moment later. Standing above then, a compact egg of Merurgy turned its upper end towards them.

    "Brace yourselves!" Blades screamed loud enough to shake them silent. Too late.

    In came the Skawlan Fourth.

    The Child hit with the full might of a meteor. Aleh hit the anti-concussive force panel generated with enough speed to blank out. He came back to consciousness in time to see the Oke tip over and crash on its side, no spike in this world who could hold it upright.

    For a few seconds, he forgot he was there at all.

    Aleh remained on his back, aghast. The only thing on his mind was how impossible this situation was. His eyes opened, the siren song of delirium of the sky''s Merurgical currents becoming one with the Physical Plane a distant concern. He had failed, hadn''t him? No amount of preparation and resources wasted had been enough.

    "Young Sir!" He heard Rosen scream, kilometers away. Oh, that''s right, he had been right besides the vehicle, hadn''t he? How nice to know he had escaped. "Young Sir!"

    "Rosen, Get back!" That was Blades. Her voice didn''t sound any different, but she couldn''t have escaped that unharmed, could she?

    The final yell brought him back in full. No words, just the sharp crack of a slap and then Almalilly hitting the once-ceiling. Craning his neck to the side, one disbelief erasing the other, he watch a new crisis unfold.

    "What the fuck is wrong with you?!" Almalilly said, cradling a dislocated shoulder. If the blow had touched her face she wouldn''t be speaking right now, but her nose was bleeding.

    "Y-yes, I-I know," Furfu gibbered, shoulders hunched yet face held still, staring, a beast caged and cornered, "I n-need to fight, n-need to defeat the Tales and their Heirs and be p-proud before the L-Lady, and I-I will, I will k-kill them all when I go. But what is it a fucking Face has to do with it? Who do you think you are to shake me, a-and t-touch me, when I never gave you the fucking permission to?!"

    "Look around yourself for once! Does this look like the right moment to freak out?! We need you, we might die if you don''t-"

    "Then die! Leave me alone! I-I''ll fight when I can fight! Who do you think you are to force me out there?" Furfu said, and Aleh wondered if she was aware of how much she trembled as she spat out threats.

    "A-are you serious right now? Why are you even here then?!"

    Furfu didn''t answer anymore. She slid down the floor to her back, hugging her knees to her chest.

    And behind them, Aleh saw the fight unfold without them. With a thud gone dull through the several layers separating them, he saw Rosen''s Ashic impression slam against the underside of the Oke. Blades stood to the north, just now starting a barrage of projectiles as a myriad of Merurgical tendrils headed towards her legs. The moment they made contact, she jolted, but it wasn''t enough to freeze the daring Face as she gave up on long range contact, and lunged at the Child in two jumps.

    Foolish wouldn''t describe it. It was suicide.

    And all that prop to the theatrics of this creature. Their only hope reject them, an abomination built to kill too afraid to fight.

    Many times had Aleh had read of fury being described as blazing, burning, powerful and all consuming. He understood it; he couldn''t claim to have never been caught in its tongues, to speak things he would have otherwise kept to himself. This time, however, its came cold, frigid like the blizzards the southern continents suffered, bringing with itself clarity and a memory.

    It happened a month back, when Holly arrived and he became aware of Marquise''s incomprehensible decision of sending Furfu to somehow aid in the mission. Aleh did not see himself as a petulant man, however being faced with the idea convinced him that some harsh diplomacy would be warranted this once.

    Agare would hear nothing of it. Of course he wouldn''t. Aleh, however, insisted, mentioning the ways the mission could be compromised if they proceeded with the idea. He had been sure they knew how their dear comrade used to behave, a hypothesis that had to be cast out as new facts came to light.

    Consistent debate did earn him one nugget of cruel information, however.

    "If it comes to that, there is one way to rail her in." Agare whispered, the closest to conspiratorial Aleh had ever seen the Faceless be with anyone not Marquise. "It is untested, but likely to work."

    From the corner of his eyes, Aleh saw Blades fall back down on both feet, only to be toppled by a wave. The Child stalked on all four limbs to its prey. He severed the connection between himself and the Homunculus with some haste, the mundane world turning to a blur around him. He would deal with it later, right now he had more to lose with distractions and hesitation.

    "My deares Furfu!" he said, smiling. She snapped in his direction, but he wouldn''t let her take his stage. "I wonder, how much of today''s events would I have to tell your Lady before she gives up on you?"

    She froze. Though he didn''t understand Faceless anatomy as well as he should, he knew they couldn''t pale, and above that, he knew Furfu needed not pallor to show how mortified just that sentence had left her.

    "Because see, I don''t quite understand what skills the Marquise saw in you to allow you here today, however it is easy to imagine this might be part of it, don''t you think so?"

    "Y-you wouldn''t," she said.

    "Tch! And you believe that, you little shit encrusted infant?! Of everyone here, you think me likely to stay my hand against you?!"

    "I-if you do-!"

    "You will do what? Kill me? Think you can mangle me enough Agare wouldn''t take a glance and think your mistress'' dream was pulped by some whimpering chickenshit and in the same instant move to break her apart?!"

    She went silent.

    "And don''t you think for a second the Marquise would be willing to forgive you. Not over this. You know her less than I do, and even you know the kind of person that you will force her to become again, don''t you? So if you don''t want this fucking nightmare to end even worse for you, I suggest that-"

    His turn to freeze came. A blade of a dull brown so dark it almost became black emerged from her cowl, point blunt yet a vision of terror with its thick blade and long length. The Warcleaver, one of the most fearsome weapons to grace Ivian soil, brought by the Lion Dynasty of Yine with its conquest of the archipelago and tainted in reputation by the Aenexian Eras. Yet, not as horrible as its material.

    Demonium. A metal birthed by a creational mistake and one of the few things capable of cauterizing the Starlit World''s rot. A material both too soft and too dense for regular warfare yet one of the most coveted by the sect. To his mundane eyes, nothing but an ugly taupe without shine; in the world of Golden Dust, that same revolting tone of dark yellow one found in Type-3 Merurgy, the natural type of Merurgy emitted by decomposing corpses.

    The same that-

    "Get out of my way."

    Furfu''s words brough him back from his musing. Despite knowing he risked pushing her too far, he waited until she pushed him aside, the Warcleaver dragging behind her step. With a thumb, she pulled her glove up just enough to interface with his Homunculus'' backdoor biologic lock. The door unlatched, and water began to pour inside.

    She didn''t appear to care. Throwing the doors open, she howled a madmen''s battlecry as she joined the conflict.

    ------

    Within less than a centimeter of his life, Fordu evaded the blur.

    He didn''t allow the Azure out of his sight for so much as a tenth of a second. It had barely completed its charge when it vaulted up a tree, using it as a platform to launch itself into a dizzying sequence of dashes. A distraction, he realized, as something cooled the sole of his boots, in itself a second distraction. He fainted surprise at the water dragging itself up his feet, and waited.

    Awareness helped him little. The next blow came at a speed unusual even for an Heir of the Azure, another close call with death were it not for the helmet under his cowl. He tore himself out of the growing pond''s waters as he jumped for cover.

    "A helmet?" it grunted in Skawlan dialect Ivian, its voice echoing from all directions as it repositioned itself for the next round. "It was my belief your ilk didn''t make use of such contraptions. Got in the way of your specialty, I heard."

    He lost not time in tearing his damaged obscuring equipment out. The longer this conflict prolonged, the worst it would become: with the fall of night, the Floodlands became too dark even for his standards, and every loss in sight became a devastating disadvantage against an enemy this fast.

    "Such an enlightening adversary you have been! But not one of many words, are you?" Its voice echoed from all directions. "And so passive. Is it pride that holds your hand?"

    Another chill. By now, it should have understood Divinity would have little effect on him, so why-

    Of course.

    "Or something else-?!"

    Fordu threw himself to the side, striking on the same beat as it fell from directly above. The half halberd''s Demonium head clashed against the creature''s carapaced arms, the anti-Divinity weapon gouging a shallow chink in its armor, just deep enough for its properties to kick in. The wound sizzled, the creature growled in agony, fleeing and creating enough distance for him to analyze his foe.

    It was nothing unexpected for its kind. Gaunt limbs bearing both exoskeleton and endoskeleton, finger with thick claws the length of short swords and stiff joints, a slim naked torso bordering the anorexic, elongated neck and head ending in almost the shape of a snout, though this one bore no extraneous or vestigial body parts at its back. The slit of its eyes were engorged, easier to find and potentially damage than Holly''s. It was dark, though the fine details of its color and patterns were difficult to tell.

    It stood from its crouch before dropping into a quick bow, knees bent and arms pointed downwards with finger clenched, a Skawlan challenger''s courtesy.

    "Pashel Di Aila. The family remembers what your kind did, and we do not forgive."

    He swerved, faster than what even the trained human eye would be able to follow, striking low from the flank. The first blow he avoided with a timely parry, the second he dodged by falling back, but the Azure gave no quarters. All he could do was hold on; the half-halberd lost its spear tip, the armor over his right arm was cut down to the steel plate in between its layers, his enchanted cuirass was gouged open; an arrogant move in between the storm of cuts, aiming for a quick decapitation, became his only respite.

    Loathed him to admit, the Heir was skilled. However, for all their speeds differed, he was more than its equal in physical prowess. Letting a bait part his skin, he slapped the blow down with the side of his axe blade and punched, leaving the Heir to stumble back as he followed with a crushing slash to its legs, too slow as its rolled back to escape.

    "No response? No acknowledgment? Is your kind not taught any mannerisms? Or has your transformation left you mute?" it said. "Rude, yet so fascinating..."

    And by the time the last word had left its lips, Fordu had already vanished into the vegetation. Keep it thinking that it had the upper hand, and further opportunities to exploit would come.

    The moment Foroca II had sprung her trap, Fordu had seen the writing on the walls. There had always only been so much coincidence he could swallow, and the entire situation pushed his limits tremendously. His mistake was in assuming to know where exactly laid the rub, and as a result he had been caught off guard by the Azure.

    His fists clenched for an instant, but he relaxed them the next. Hubris was a flaw that had always followed his steps close, but here was not the place for self admonishment.

    That the Azure had been on Holly''s trail there had never been any doubt. From the half-bloods skulking in the Hollows, to those who stood on their way as they left Marquise''s headquarters at Ivian Chain, they had known where she had been and surmised where she could have gone. The message delivered in Galehold had been unfortunately early, but the eventuality had been considered before. The only thing-

    He jumped, the bed of roots he stood a moment before destroyed as the Heir pounced. Fordu had no time to turn, however, as two feet struck him on the back, crumbling his armor and cracking his ribs as he flew. He landed in a wide, dried basin with a roll, quickly getting his bearing before the blow of grace could come.

    "How ironic, isn''t it?" the Heir gloated, nowhere and everywhere at once, "That bodies both divine and apostatic would hold such parallels. You move, the earth rumbles, yet I don''t hear your steps. I move, not a leaf is blown out of place, yet I stand predicted once again. Does you kind not question where these differences originate from?"

    ...The only thing he wondered now was if the Heir had come alone.

    The Azure tended not to, but he had left too many chances for a second enemy to exploit, none which were taken. There were branching possibilities there, worrying ones. If they had come but divided their forces...

    It was the worse case scenario, and the one he should work from for now. But so long as this Azure in specific was alone here, there were ways to handle the situation.

    His current weapon, the halberd once held by Foroca and first victim of the battle, had been a decent weapon but also a stop-gap measure, forged with supporting executioners rather than killing the divine in mind. If he intended to win, another would need to take its place, and there was the problem.

    Bringing out Hagan in an emergency situation, under the Domain of a paranoid Fire Blossom had already been a risk. No matter the measures taken, there were lingering sings of using it that could not be erased. If the news of its possession were to spread to anyone at such an important juncture, the mission might be as good as over.

    And if he held, it would all the same, would it not?

    To the east, the Child of the Lake landed in a crouch.

    "It is a sin to be curious," the Heir said. "To toil in the filth is tantamount to subsuming it into my veins. Else, I might have dragged you all the way back to-"

    "Heir of the Azure Tale!"

    The creature jolted, Fordu noted with amusement. He took the silence and pushed forward.

    "Detritivore of vile abyss, Child of a scum-veined Mother!"

    It hissed. "You dare-"

    "Today, I grant you the favor of cessation. Let not your mercy wait any longer!"

    Until now, the Heir had been a teasing predator, content with playing with its prey as much as hunting. If he wanted the right moment to come, he would have to do away with that, and survive.

    If the creature tried to smile or flash its teeth he didn''t know, all he saw was a stiff quirk of lip and a parting of mouth. "If so you prefer, let us do away with the niceties. I will eviscerate you, blasphemous roach!"

    It dropped down to the basin, and charged.

 2 - The Children of the Lake 14

    Fordu counted one second before the Heir of Azure was upon him.

    He evaded, turning with the creature as it segued into a string of attacks with no hesitation. Spearhands, slashes, no complex art to its strikes but showing strong control over its body, preternatural speed paired with decades or maybe even centuries worth of experience. In that perilous mixture, there was little to tell faint and prod from kill and main, and the advantage was swiftly taken from his hands.

    The Light Executioners armor suffered the brunt of the barrage, but he refused to give ground. Blow after blow parried by his halberd head created permanent trailing smudges of smoke were its claws still sizzled. He followed the trail, aiming to disarm and unbalance, until a knee flew at his head, misalignment bringing it a few centimeters too far and allowing him to score a significant slash against its thigh; It threw itself back. Though it had avoided being crippled, a regular Dashi would still have their artery split open and exsanguinated. No such luck here.

    Fordu counted that as the first exchange, and as the Heir dropped to all fours, readied himself for the second.

    It stalked left, rictus dribbling down panting jaws. He did not miss the water slowly trickling down the corners of the basin.

    It dashed right and without missing a beat-

    came face to face with Fordu.

    Telling an Azure Heir''s facial expressions was a fool''s errand at the best of times, but he needed none to see the shock in its minute body language. The twitch, the hesitation, the sudden shift trying to keep up with him in vain.

    He fell onto the beast with the intent to kill, knowing this would not be the moment, but such was the martial arts of tools: so long as he wasn''t being used to the breaking point, he wasn''t being of enough use. The halberd''s Demonium head fell with such strength the handle snapped in his hands, head left firmly stuck in the Heir''s arm, but he didn''t let it hold him a second; a Demonium tipped boots struck towards its stomach, then crashed against the soft soil to push him forward and low, elbow striking for its crotch, a blow that would crumble the hip bone of any average human.

    The monstrosity was no human, yet for all its flair and boasting it was not inured to pain. Hissing out a yowl, it fell back into a crouch, one arm lowered protectively over its now concave codpiece while the other became a hanging trap, ready to fall over his head had he chosen to pursue from the front, which he wouldn''t. Instead, he took to his right, not allowing it any room to breath as he kicked its legs under.

    "Miserable flea-!" it said, scrambling to its fours. Before it got there, another elbow struck it right in the liver, short term victory punctuated with a whimper, but not bereft of cost: a powerful scratch took him down the collar bone, denting a gouge on his enchanted cuirass and drawing blood. Had he not predicted its coming, that would have been his life taken.

    This time, he allowed it to flee, no sense in pursuing it further. He fell back into the Cornered Lion Stance, popular last ditch martial style among Yinian military, center of mass lowered on bent knees and hands left half open in preparation for both strikes and disarming grapples. That had been the second exchange, the half-way point, and so he waited.

    The Heir of Azure reached into its smoking wound with its teeth, yanking the blade out by the sliver of handle left with a sharp turn of neck and spitting out the chunk. It examined its wound with tender care, before glancing at him once again.

    "So vicious for such a diminute mutt!" it half growled, half barked.

    Fordu, of course, said nothing, merely kept bouncing on the balls of his feet out of habit. overtreaded ground; A certain unwelcome element in Marquise''s cohort could deliver twice the devastation with half the material.

    Uninterested in his response, it kept patting itself around its softer tissues. "Ah, so the myths were true, were they not? Such simple wounds to recover from, yet they don''t!" The creature chuckled, angered yet adoring. "How fortunate is our meeting! I was ready to depart when the Head requested my presence. To think there might have been a world were I wouldn''t have the chance to enjoy eviscerating such a fascinating foe!"

    Fordu watched the ground. He could see at least two dozen pools forming around the edges of the basin, surrounding both. That the Heir would use it there was no doubt, however he had to ask himself why was he taking it so slow? Another of its kind would have entire torrents under its control by now.

    "Hear me, mongrel?! Forget bringing you home, I will discover what makes your despoiled kind work here and now! May my predecessors forgive me, even the rescue of family doesn''t bring me the same thrill!"

    Fordu paused, the words sinking in. Knowing the reason made the situation worse. If they managed to lever that blood connection against Holly, they might be able to convince her to leave willingly, and that-

    The world surged in his direction from all sides, jolting him into a confused defense

    He realized his mistake, coiling his body just in time to avoid having his neck shredded in halves, too late to prevent the fracturing of his forearm and the protective plaque of steel under his leathers. The hit still tossed him against the walls of the basin, where water began to flow up his boots, a far worse omen than the pulsating agony of broken bones.

    There were many deaths that could come from such a scenario. None did. He dodged the next piercing stab, a pitiful attempt by the water to hold him down slowing his escape, but was almost caught by the turning swipe of the same hand. He understood, then, the game being played, using the puddles to restrict his movement while always keeping his steps tracked. Impractical, in comparison with at should be feasible. Could it be...?

    His theory was called into test the next moment. A blur sped his way, neither transparent nor opaque, neither visible nor invisible, undeniably there yet hard to pin point; the art of Obscuring, part of the Azure''s Divinity, a contradictory yet deadly effect on the right hands, even outside its intended medium.

    Had he any less experience with dealing with the Children of the Lake, reflex would put him on the defensive, covering vital points at the notion of another exchange. That then would have been the early closing move, and his corpse would be left to adorn the Floodlands until inevitable retrieval.

    Instead, he allowed the Heir to believe he had been caught in the trap of patterns for as long as feasible, then dropped on his back instead, feet already moving to pivot the creature over him with its own momentum. The only sign of the jaws closing over the position his arms had just held was a faraway click and a sliver of wind. It was met in the chest and flung forwards, affording him just enough time he could roll over and escape the corners, where the gross of the water still gathered.

    What he had failed to predict in his haste was the Divinity touched water holding him still for a precious second, enough time for the Azure to resume its assault without the need to look. A straight claw almost touched him.

    Then, it retreated in a rush.

    Momentarily baffled yet unmoved, Fordu did not lose sight of the Heir. Obscured, it dipped down into the shallow moat it had created, the center of the basin turned into a makeshift islet. The effect grew in power, turning it from a contrasting shade to actual non-presence.

    Except it still talked: "You noticed, didn''t you? Or was it ignorance that moved you?"

    Fordu ignored it. That would have been the Third exchange, and likely had been broken to give way for the next. They had always been aiming for the same thing, after all.

    It hissed. "Does it cost you to indulge others?! Was that boast before just some form of half-baked diversion, then? Seemed so natural."

    Fordu''s fist clenched, for an instant.

    "Arrogance is the sin of your kind, I had heard. That for a cabal of such monstrous power to have fallen so low, there had to be a serious infection beneath the skin." It did not laugh, but he could hear the pleased smile on it voice all the same. "Are you part of said infection, I wonder, or part of the ensuing necrosis?"

    "When Bal Di Vossa was brought before trial, was that sharp tongue among those grovelling for forgiveness, I wonder, or those who had to be taught manners the hard way?" Fordu replied.

    And that shut the damned abomination up.

    "By all means, keep wasting your breath. Were you not looking forward to this conversation?"

    "Were you there, thirty-three years ago?" It asked, and Fordu knew better than taking the calm tone of its words at face value.

    "No. But twenty years ago, your kind gave me a name."

    He left the Heir to puzzle that out, watching over the still rising water as it tried to craw upwards in thin tendrils. It finally growled in understanding, the noise distorting into a rage filled bellow as its Obscuring gave away. "You! You were responsible for-"

    "Nothing," Fordu said. "The blame for falling in twice with rebels in less than forty years falls square on your shoulders."

    "Don''t you dare exempt yourself from sin, you-!" It rose from its puddle, silhouette unmistakable as the obscuring effect dropped, cursing him in a language he couldn''t speak but could recognize, the so called Brave Tongue, supposedly belonging to the first peoples of Skawla, the Brave Sailors. Ugly thing of harsh sounds and many stops. "Would you deny it then, that the Headless Harlot had spent years whispering sweet temptations in the ears of both Di Vossa and Di Ragwa, forcing both their hands in rebellion?!"

    "She wasn''t here for the former and barely needed to speak with the latter. Everyone who so much as glanced at the Di Ragwa''s matriarch once knew the woman''s ambitions went far beyond being allowed a couple finger on the biggest Skawlan pies and a granddaughter counted as a potential Lady to Be. For the Idiots who either couldn''t or refused to see the reality of the matter I spare no pity."

    "Muwel Di Ragwa was an honorable woman, who only ever worked towards the good of our nation and the Descendancy! If you claim so much knowledge about our ways, then tell me, what are the unprecedented reaches for lasting power the Lady is making if not treachery itself?!"

    "So does the self-blinding idiot tell itself to better sleep at night," he said, ruing that he couldn''t smile anymore. "I don''t give a shit about the politics of that Tale infested hovel of yours. All I care about you just gave me, really."

    It stilled. The water around the corners flowed across the corners in its direction. "What could you possibly mean?"

    "The surname Di Aila was not unknown to me. I tried to remember, but I understand now, I don''t need to, do I? You are exiles, no different than the fruit of any other Azure purges. A handful of Heirs with a couple half-blood Missionaries to command in pretension of power still held, a bunch of bottom feeder parasites with a hole in your lineage you seek to fill by clinging to any shred of mercy your Lady casts from her table and selling yourselves as vassals to the first bidder."

    "We are Children of the First Mother! You know nothing of us! We are-"

    "Fools who slipped into the same trap twice and now dream they can escape the consequences while bleeding out! It''s why you held to the idea of ''rescuing'' Holly so tight you risked using a Faceless as bait isn''t it? You think the honor you hold so dear is at stake when it''s already gone and buried. Does anyone else even remember the Di Aila''s name? Does any of the allies who turned away from you ever miss your presence?"

    It was the eternal curse of the Faceless to be deprived of understanding of their anathema''s most intimate language, and thus also the most important of the human senses. Time and skill sufficed as substitutes: the surrounding trickles halted, their streams frozen in mid air. The moment had arrived.

    "...We are of the Descendancy," it rasped through gritted teeth. "They will see the truth. We cannot be treated this way!"

    "You see now, don''t you? You were never part of that promised land, never meant to be. The hands that wield you hold not the same delusions your peers will. Curse your birth, if you must; just don''t deny the reality of your creation. The sooner you do, the sooner you break."

    The cruel words flooded back to Fordu. He couldn''t avoid the accompanying shiver. Those were things better left in the past; the pang of empathy they tried to conjure would only serve to lower his guard and lead him to his death.

    He took control of his emotions once again, and said. "Do you have anything to add to this farce? Or should we move on?"

    Their gazes met in silence, veiled under the cover of night. No answer came.

    This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author''s consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.

    Fordu waited. He couldn''t be the one to make the next move.

    Finally, it whispered, "Mother Primordial, Old Vetara, extend your hand to mine, and pave my way."

    The world burst into motion. In came the Skawlan Fourth.

    The superstition would carry no power on its own, but the Heir did. A great wave of mud broke from its destructive step, not reaching the peak of its ascension before it was right there, a tail of water trailing its path. Fordu leaned back, but didn''t dodge; this was his moment as much as its.

    Prepared, he avoided the gnashing teeth, the impaling wreck of claws, but took the crushing impact of its body in an embrace, jumping back at the last moment and pivoting both into a roll. He felt his muscles harden, unnameable organs awaken; they crashed against the far wall with sound of a falling boulder, burying both in earth.

    Fordu held on strong, seizing limbs without a second of hesitation as teeth were upon him. Blinded by dirt, they clacked against nothing, one bite coming centimeter away from tearing a half of his head. Taking the top, he let go of an arm grabbed for its lower jaw, pressing down with enough strength to crush stone yet barely enough to prevent his grizzly end. Claws racked against his helmet, sending chunks of steels cascading away.

    He slipped a leg from a gashing kick that would have scrapped him flayed from hips to foot, he kneed the Heir right below the ribcage once, then twice, thrice and it gasped, letting go of his now mutilated shoulder. Four times, then for good measure, feeling the creature wheeze and spams underneath him. For all it matched him in speed, he had it beat in strength, and that had been his victory.

    "I ''on''t lesh'' ish-" it spoke through restrained fangs. "I ''on''t lesh'' ush'' be fogotten!"

    He pushed its neck back, revealing the space were jutting clavicles nearly met. He took aim, and claimed the glories for those he once followed.

    He needed no insist, it practically climbed out of his Mark by its own accord.

    Silent like a stalker in the night, Hagan stole away to feast.

    The struggle was nearly renewed as its tip emerged. The Heir cried and buckled in horror, but too late and the slaughter commenced.

    In the deepest of darks, the finer details of that murder escaped his sight, but from a distance where he would once have been able to taste it, eyes were unneeded. Dense blood and rubbery hide, torn ribbons of sinew with fragments of bone, he was bathed in everything that once made the Azure itself, quickly desiccating as they hit his armor and skin, a great orchestra of gnashing fangs and snapping mandibles muffling screams as the body of his foe ripped like old parchment.

    The back and forth tipped Hagan down, eating its way into viscera and sealing the Heir''s fate. The Devil''s Filth Lead felt no mercy.

    The struggle ceased, half its body''s warmth now covering Fordu. It twitched underneath him, but he only pulled Hagan back inside when its enthusiasm ceased.

    Another Tale Heir smothered. Another prophecy falling shorter of its Realization.

    There was no joy in the task anymore. His had been carefully hammered out before he could ever find it, but he knew from others there was always a point were the fight became work, and if they didn''t ever figure out why, then it became less. That was the point the tool understood it was a tool.

    He didn''t need a nose to know he reeked of death, that the quickly rotting meat around his legs had announced his presence to anything which cared to take a deeper look. Cat out of the bag, he extricated himself from the mess, slowly stepping back to splash into the now inert water and gaze at the shaded cadaver.

    "Many will seek it in the dirt under their nails. Greater goods, higher purposes, flowing spit drying in the air." He found himself mindlessly quoting. "The delusion itself matters little, only one thing is of import: never let it take root. You will believe it unshakable until it shakes, and then you will be broken and irreparable."

    To whose benefit he was speaking, he didn''t know. To whose benefit those words had been spoken, he didn''t know. He froze, catching himself in the absurdity of eulogizing an enemy with nonsense. He had softened too much, too early.

    Still, as he sheathed Hagan back into his Mark, he continued.

    "In the end two blades clashed, one broke and the other moved on to the next neck. So long as it understands that its fate and this purpose of its birth were set in stone, it will know peace, and won''t become scrap," he said. "...Or so I think it went. Either way, my task still continues."

    There would be more Azure Heirs involved. He had wasted too much time on this one already.

    Shaking the distaste back to some semblance of neutrality, he left his enemy to putrefy and got ready for the next fight.

    <hr>

    Lunge; riposte; evade.

    Blades found a comfortable rhythm in the rapier. The speed, the elegance; weapons by nature were simple and straightforward, at least the ones she cared for, but the Duelist''s Needle in particular felt polished to its purpose even beyond its peers. It reminded her of herself, fresh out of the hand of the Disciplinarians, kin in hands.

    The first time she had seen one, she clearly remembered scoffing. Coming from a decades long courtship with two-handers and polearms, the stick-thin blade was a vision of frailty. Culture didn''t help: for all their bellicosity, the Yines had little of their Lesan predecessors'' love for duels, which as always bled to the Sect''s general indifference for the unpractical.

    The first time she held one however, already standing besides Lilly... the safety of the basket handle, the lightness, the length, the sheer care necessary to forge such a delicate work of art, it was love at first wield.

    And now her romance turned to tragedy as she realized why the Sect had considered in unpractical in the first place.

    Her opponent dropped Rosen into the shallow waters at her lunge, limp. She didn''t take her eyes from them for one instant. Around three meter tall not counting the dragging tail, a disproportionately elongated torso with thickset armored limbs, coarse hide both slick with mucus and hived with an asymmetrical forest of branches, corals she guessed, over its entire back.

    It smiled when she stabbed at the closest patch of soft tissue she could find, slightly above the hip. From the beginning, it had never stopped smiling. Nothing but a plaything, was she? With a backwards shift, even the momentum of her Art enhanced attack barely pierced deeper than skin level.

    She almost failed to react against the counter. The weak tail slap sent her flying and sprawling down the road, blow resounding deep into her viscera. She flipped, for once the water didn''t try to hold her down, and assessed the damage.

    If Aleh or some other scholarly witch type had been there, she would ask for them to take a better look. Her sole nugget of so called "Ashic Art" talent was the First Art of the Bear, the Steadfast March, a blade in itself with how it had been honed with complete focus on physical improvements, versatile in the rough and tumble and nowhere else.

    She could curse herself for not pursuing that off-field versatility, but she didn''t need any sort of Merurgical vision or whatever it was called to feel the Ashic damage. It was like the Azure had created for her whole new organs just to pound them into chunks. She spat blood; magic damage was far from the only abuse she had endured.

    Shattered ribs; bruised intestines; multiple lacerations; an eye gummied with blood; a broken foot.

    And worst, her dominant arm.

    She had been too slow. The bud of water blossomed into a fierce explosion, propelling the Azure against the vehicle like a harpoon. She had started dodging before it could burst, and thus merely been nicked; shoulder thrown out of its socked, muscles of the arm torn from those of the chest. Her right now swayed with every move of her body, agony beyond any Art''s ability to numb. All that kept her from not going into shock from the practical dismemberment was experience and technique.

    This was not going well. She was alright with her left, yes, but that was essentially useless against an Heir.

    A distant sound reached her. Waves crashing against the shore, fresh wind buffeting her wounded body, a faint smell of salt.

    "Sorry," she said with a rueful smile. "Don''t speak that tongue."

    It frowned. Or so she thought, anyway. Having Holly''s own expressions as a dictionary would have helped about now, but she understood the Boss'' and the Small Boss'' zeal with her appearance.

    "Talk with mouth," she tried in Ivian, her best attempt at it anyway. "Hear some."

    Its teeth parted for an instant. The waves grew violent, prelude to the storm.

    "I tried."

    Next would come her last clash. She wouldn''t be caught by surprise by the great wall of liquid forming behind her back; not like noticing it gave her any way to break it anyway. Forwards would be the only real choice, and maybe she would die to their hands rather than a cheap blow to the back.

    And she would die, she knew.

    In the end, she was not the one to be surprised. A swooping falcon dove onto her opponent''s back, screaming her vestigial lungs out as a shape as dark as shadow under their metal wagon''s dim light struck them right on the shoulder.

    The creature cried in pain, and Blades almost cried in joy. The sound of sizzling flesh reached her ears like a bard''s melody. Were it not for the protective coral taking the brunt of the chop, that might have been a crippling blow. Of course, it lost no time crashing back first against the nearest tree, shaking its trunk with a thud strong enough to have pulped even her, then quickly slithering away.

    Furfu would not be so easily thwarted. She dropped to the ground sprinting, not having ceased her war cries for so much as a blink of an eye, already in pursuit. They weren''t allowed five meters before she jumped again, brandishing a warcleaver with a blade over a meter long like a short sword, the strength of her Faceless body overcoming the pull of the Azure''s Divinity. It dodged, too fast for reaction, tail swiping and catching her in the head.

    She flew towards the woods, water trailing behind and gathering mass to their designs. Blades was no idiot though, she hadn''t spent these last few seconds just gawking. Bent low, she aimed and forced her magic into her enchanted rapier, activating it. No finesse required there. A flickering shimmer flew from its tip, and penetrated the Azure right in the eye.

    It howled, the sound muffling Furfu''s own ceaseless scream as she dashed in again. It wasn''t caught unaware as Blades had hoped, the crushing fall of the warcleaver missing the serpentine body by a timely contraction of their stomach. Recalling lessons from her time in the Sect, she cursed inside: Azure Heirs could have anywhere between two to ten eyes, couldn''t they? the loss of one might have meant nothing.

    But it was distracted, and any advantage counted now. Seizing it, she bit down to rise and rushed to Furfu''s aid as she saw the counter approach. The Faceless managed to dodged the kick as it came, but missed the part right above her head where the leg retracted and stomped down into the flat of her weapon, pushing her follow up underwater. The unnatural puddle bubbled and fled as if wounded; the feet pushing the warcleaver down slipped, having underestimated their foe''s might.

    A clawed hand swatted Furfu down with the weight of a battering ram, drawing a disturbing hitched noise out of her as the screaming died. Blades reached the battle too late, aware that she was now the sole holder of the Azure''s attention. The brief hesitation could have killed her, but saved her instead, allowing her to notice the stirring tail before it lashed. Once in motion, she could never have kept up; she escaped with her life because she was already evading.

    Her useless arm, however, was glanced. She was not proud of the whimper that broke through her teeth as the severing was complete, the last few ribbons of skin and sinew holding it in place torn as the force of the blow forced her into twisting. There was no time to lament; disregarding the potential consequences, she pushed her Art into overdrive, for a moment smothering everything not useful to the immediate situation.

    Not enough. From the corner of the eye, she watched her doom approach, rending claws like billhooks about to tear her to pieces, and she was too slow to escape, too slow to protect herself, too slow to-

    It turned with such absurd speed she didn''t realize she hadn''t died until she saw the air waver. Disgusting figures made of living bile and prickling hairs, interspersed with myriad facsimiles of sensorial organs emerged only to become smoke. The claws had cut straight through them and into lower mechanisms of Aleh''s work. They hadn''t made it all the way through, but even the little it did muted the world beyond her immediate surroundings.

    Lilly was in danger.

    One tug, and the creature was stuck. Her rapier was already in the middle of the way to their neck. Light bloomed at the opposite side of the Azure, dim missiles of grey light peppering their head, Rosen''s projectiles. The bastard had woken up already?

    Instead of the tough soft meat of a trachea, the tip of her sword hit the carapaced palm of a hand, and beggaring all belief lost a good ten centimeters of its blade. She swinged down, trying to cut their flank to no avail, firing as many missiles as she physically could.

    The Azure rumbled, a sound like thunder through metal. The words, she struggled to understand as the water around her rose.

    "Annoying fuckers."

    She was blown back by a torrent stream. The Floodlands spun around her as she fell, but had no time to readjust her as she was drawn back towards certain death. Another wave, a piercing whail, and she felt Aleh''s damned machine crashing against her head. The water receded as she half-blanked out. Something hit the ground with enough weight to splash her with dirt and water.

    She blinked, trying to bring herself back from her stupor. She looked down. Her armor was an indented ingot, stained in blood and mud and who could know what else? She was bleeding a lot down her now loose sleeve too. Her Arts usually let her avoid the worst of it, but she had let go by accident. She was feeling a little dizzy.

    Furfu had been the unfortunate victim of their enemy''s destructive might. A hand large enough to nearly envelop her torso forced he against the ground as she quivered uselessly under its grip. With baffled deliberation, the Azure pulled a black projectile from their chest: a thick spearhead, almost half a meter worth of blade of which only a sliver had entered. The warcleaver stood at a teasing distance from Blades own fingers. How sad then, that even at the best of times she couldn''t handle one.

    If only her body had allowed her to become a Faceless.

    They spoke again, low and gravely, and this time the words were completely lost to her, but the mocking tone wasn''t. Furfu spat something out, and they chuckled. She kept speaking, but the Azure lifted a hand, uncaring.

    Before she could die, another projectile cut through the night, a flying shade followed by a sharp thunk, tip piercing through the skin of their neck yet failing to make it any further. They hissed, and the wound bled freely as they hurried to scratch its burning touch off. Blades heart hammered in her chest, and she forced herself to her feet, only to fall back on her knee.

    "Lilly, get back inside!" Blades called.

    "I''m as dead in there as I''m here!" She heard Almalilly load the crossbow again. "You get back inside, look at the state of you!"

    "Don''t be stupid! You can''t do anything here!"

    The next projectile was thinner, and weaker, hitting the back of the creature''s hand. They growled, rising to a stand with the Faceless woman in their grip, not realizing the mistake. She shook herself side to side finding enough leverage to hammer their forearm over and over again, fast. For all it knew how to fight, Blades couldn''t help but think it had no experience dealing with Faceless before.

    Every punch rang like a sledgehammer against stone, until their protective carapace crumbled apart with a dull noise. Another bolt flew, and so did another missile of gray light from behind the toppled vehicle, neither causing harm but serving as enough distraction they let go. Blades tried to join, only to find her broken rapier had already exhausted itself.

    "Come on." She laughed under her breath. "That''s a bit on the nose, isn''t it?"

    "Blades!" Lilly said. "Please! you are-"

    "I keep hearing it. Can''t you too?"

    The insane Furfu reached into the water and with some fumbling found the spearhead. The Faceless Pike, the Hasdes, one of the four staple executioner weapons of the Sect, even incomplete, made for a gruesome sight. It turned like a blur, and met nothing. The rotating kick that cracked her breastplate in half struck with such brutality not even the particularities of the Divine could muffle them, the ring reaching all the way to her ears.

    For all they struck fear in the hearts of foe and friend alike, the Faceless were not invincible. Another Faceless would have died then and there, and while this Furfu was made of sterner stuff, she was down for the count. There were no two ways about it. That would have been such a good move too, wouldn''t it? Blades always had such rotten luck.

    The dizziness grew worse. She was starting to feel nauseous.

    "W-we can talk about whatever you mean later, alright? Just get in, please!" Lilly tried. She would, of course.

    "I''ve never been lucky, you know that." Letting go of the rapier felt like abandoning an old friend, but if such it was, it would understand. "You ever think that''s a good thing, Lilly?"

    "You''re not making any sense," she said, impassiveness forced. She was a strong girl, clever enough to surmise the answer to the question she implied.

    Blades tried to hoist the warcleaver up with one arm. Lift it, she could. any further, however? "Lived too long by living too little. If my every dream came true, we would never have met."

    The Azure turned. A bolt flew, wordless, bouncing off a coral offshoot. She was a better aim then that.

    "You hear me, big guy?" She managed to lift it just enough to point the tip at the Azure.

    Blades would never understand love. The kind the Sect demanded was restrictive and possessive, and that others existed was of no concern to its necessities. She tried navigating it with her own two feet once, and realized she had never, could never, make it anywhere.

    How did she love Almalilly? Like a stray animal once, an amusement to be poked and teased to one''s heart content in a sea of miserable deaths. Like a mother loved her daughter, when her experience guided her hands, like a daughter loved her mother, when the younger girl''s superior intellect saved her from herself. Like a longing lover, knowing her affections would never be returned so long as they lived within Ivian soil and her mind remained occupied by fear and caution.

    But chief among all, Blades was undeniably a child of the Sect, and the Sect''s pretension was for pragmatism. Such, then, had been the mold the molten steel of that love had been cast on. She loved Lilly like only the thing she needed the most could, enjoying the warmth around her pommel any time she felt afraid, any time she felt furious, any time she craved the taste of revenge. The one time Blades hadn''t allowed herself out of her sheath, her fate was sealed.

    "Don''t try to make it past me before I break." She said, namesake slowly falling back to her murky grave. "You won''t like how deep I cut."

    When the Azure, done with its games, lunged for her head, teeth parting, Blades laughed. May nobody understand the irony of her chosen name keener than she ever did.

    She closed her eyes before the jaws shut around her chest, and let herself shatter.

 2 - The Children of the Lake 15

    Holly swam in circles.

    She dove down to the silt, a guess. A current brushed her hairs, the only sign of her father''s passing. Success would not last for long, she knew, and so turned around and sped the other way. Not fast enough, again, as something struck her midsection and sent her spinning underwater. She punched blindly, eventually hitting solid ground and regaining her sense of direction.

    The lake had become too turbid to be seen through clearly. The ever growing waves above disturbed debris and mud below, wracking the once mirror surface. She barely had time to move, a powerful Nothing settling over her shoulders and weighting her down, but despite everything her father was no God, and so fighting the Will off was no problem.

    No, the problem is that he had very much expected her to resist, she was sure. She turned, crossing her arms protectively over her chest, only to miss in her predictions. She was tackled from the side, dragged against the ground all the way to the shore. Something blunt pummeled at her from all sides, thin edges felt keenly in the pit of her stomach.

    She kicked, again and again, missing every blow until she had enough. Screaming, she threw herself upwards, arms spread to catch him, but of course he wouldn''t stay and fight. The deadly hug was readily evaded, and soon she was alone again.

    Not entirely alone. The choir of gurgles grew impatient, the more daring members of the audience emboldened, rushing into the shallows with barely concealed hunger before her and her father could pushed them away of tear them apart. With each passing second their numbers increased, and with it the quality of each, figures of incongruous body parts now watching the spectacle from the safety of the woods, obscured by the sheer density of weaker Apparitions.

    They weren''t the only ones fixated on her battered image. Corpses had emerged out of the jungle, bloated and dripping with algae, or gnawed into frames of bone and darkened meat so thin they shouldn''t be able to walk. No gurgling jeers and gasps, but much of the quiet intensity things of death always bore in stories, cunning yet empty sockets keeping with her every movement as if they knew them before she did. The moment the first had walked until it was but a pace away from the water, the grandiose blue flower at the central islet had closed its petals and increase the overflow of its nectar, its sweet odor now so thick it spread over the entire lake and clung to her tongue.

    Nothing hit her from behind the knees, then kicked her in the back. Arms that were not Arms flew to protect her, but Nothing slipped through them with such casual ease it felt as if she wasn''t putting any resistance at all.

    "Inadequate!" Her father''s Will lashed with enough hostility she felt it in her body. distracted, she was struck in the thigh, the hardskin painfully cracking over the front as she retreated. "Do you take me for a forgiving patriarch, my Mariwa? The Blood has no place for the soft!"

    She hopped atop the islet, and the lake surged upwards in pursuit. Her eyes widened as the murky surface indented, a river''s worth dogging her steps and striking her chest before she could react. She resisted, sinking her feet into the humid earth, but could only block as a shade slid in her direction. The palm came like the bite of a serpent, skipping through her defense and crushing her lips against her teeth. Losing her footing, she could only curl around herself as she was washed back down.

    "Do you see it now? The consequences of mingling with parasites when you don''t know better. Your weakness would be a shame for the Di Aila," her father said, grabbing hold of her neck and forcing her to eat dirt again. He squeezed, and though she could feel the pressure of the blood on her head, she didn''t suffocate, which in its own way was all the more terrifying.

    "I don''t care! I never asked for your pride, doesn''t matter if I have it or not!" she said, scratching in vain against Nothing. His veil lifted, her fingers feeling the smooth surface of the shell over his bicep. Her Will grappled with his, being overpowered at every turn yet refusing to wield.

    "Look at yourself! Don''t you feel pathetic, incapable of accessing the gifts of the Blood, incapable of matching them? And yet, you insist in spurning its kindness!" His squeeze grew tighter, and she felt her head about to pop. "Half-bloods of the highest merit have killed their own siblings for crumbs of the love you received. The Brave have waged wars for the glory and favor that would allow them a mere chance of less! You kin with the filth."

    "I didn''t ask for any of this! Take it all back if you want, just leave us alone!"

    She gave up of finding any weakness in her father''s grip, and simply trashed, aiming for everything, anything at all, nails unfurled and teeth gnashing until something solid got hit. He finally relented, but she didn''t, landing one more kick as he disappeared again, the invisible pressure of Nothing still binding her limbs.

    "... My poor, broken Mariwa. You don''t understand, do you? Pitiful."

    She rose, breaking through the surface and gasping by instinct. Air filled her lungs, the relief of breathing again, that she could still breath regardless of need, calming her. A shiver still went down her spine. She was trapped, with nowhere safe nor any means to convince her father   no, enough acknowledging him as such!   to convince Glashii to stop this madness.

    "Divine providence sees no desire. There is no choosing, only being chosen. Every right by birth is thus a duty by birth as well. And you, my dear, explendid daughter, carry the recognition of your lineage like the regalia of a monarch!" Glashii said, much to her chagrin. "How can I make you see what you are meant for?"

    "You can''t! I''m Holly Seneschal, a human being, raised by human beings!" she searched left and right, considering if withdrawing towards the far edges would be too dangerous with the crowd still increasing. "I don''t want to become anything else, and I won''t!"

    "None of my words will reach you, will they?"

    A burst of water to her left. The next hit came from the opposite direction, impacting her ribs. Stumbling a few paces, an underwater current tried to pull her off her feet. She dropped, staking a hand through the ground and holding on.

    "All the Blood sees is purity," Glashii said, the conveyed tone closer to cold disappointment than the prickling anger from before. "What the Blood sees then, in somebody who so dearly wishes to mingle with lice, I cannot claim to know."

    It took her a moment to understand what he had said, and a word in particular froze her. A trembling hiss escaped from in between her teeth.

    "I should be thankful, regardless. It''s as much of a sign as anything that there is still hope. No matter how far buried."

    "You don''t know anything." The words flooded out of her, almost unconsciously. "Not about me! You don''t even know how disgusting you are!"

    No reply. The conversation was over, and not a second too early.

    If she wanted to survive, she had to do one of two things: She had either to find a way to reliably see Glashii coming, or she had to find a way to hide like he did.

    That latter, specially, sounded promising to her ears. She remembered an ability she had scant few opportunities to use. Her skin changed, its natural pale tone giving way to stone gray with hints of white grain. Seeing it again after so long, she couldn''t help but shiver a little. Had it always looked this unnatural? No, so long as it worked, she shouldn''t question it.

    The answer to her unspoken question came in the form of a haymaker from underwater, a precise hit to right below her ribcage, making her torso feel as if it had exploded. Screaming, she tried to retaliate, finding him already gone. This wouldn''t be enough, she needed to go further. Was there a way to imbue it with Will? Do it entirely through Will?

    Not the latter, she quickly realized. Though both used, well, willpower, both processes were actually completely different, and if there was any common ground between then she failed to find it. Then, she tried the first, taking the plunge and approaching the Apparitions and their cadaveric counterparts in the hopes Glashii would hesitate.

    And so, when she was dragged back by a great wave that curved towards her back, she was almost surprised again. Instead of being caught off balance, however, she followed the flow, and no more than a couple seconds later collided with something fast and hard, both sent sprawling apart.

    She took the opportunity to flee, cocooning herself in her Will as she tried to coax something out of her color changing. It was useless, she soon realized, or close to as she felt Nothing push her back, grasping her Nowhere and keeping track of her movements. How was she supposed to make this work in the first place? Was there some spot she was supposed to charge, something she was supposed to will, to flicker, to break?!

    Unlike that crimson night months ago, her answers did not come by instinct, but neither would they come by trial and error, Glashii gave her no quarter. Slowed by a myriad sore bruises, he caught up fast, landing a heavy kick to her already shattered thigh and drawing a bubbled whimper out of her. Turning to meet him head on proved useless, he was already gone.

    She abandoned her hopes of stealth, having not the slightest clue where to even start. Her skin returned to its sickly pallor, and she spread herself thin.

    She could cover almost the entire shallow lake, and knew that her once-father was Nowhere. He existed where she didn''t, moving through her blindspots unimpeded. She had no idea how, no idea why she could notice him without noticing. What was so different between them both that he could and she couldn''t?

    That would be the shape of his Will, wouldn''t it?

    He had felt nothing like her the few times she managed to touch him. Both were exactly as real and solid as one another, but he was slicker, more flexible, perhaps even colder though she wasn''t as sure of that particular analogy. Soft yet strong, flimsy yet firm, impossible contradictions she couldn''t comprehend yet he made effortless.

    The next kick was the strongest so far, bearing none of that chiding restraint from before. Meant to hurt, hurt she was, forced out of the water with a choked gasp as she was thrown back to the islet. Feeling like a toy, she struggled to find her bearings as she spat out muddy stems and rotting leaves, which saved her in the end: still too shocked to rise to her feet, she was just in the right position to grab on solid ground with all fours when the river rose again to take her back.

    Her Will penetrated it in time, mixing along its length and commanding it to return. It slowed down, but Glashii''s control still held all the sway. She bore the brunt of the impact, knowing he would be coming next.

    She pulled herself back as fast as feasible, pouring every miserable bit of Will into that river, hands repeatedly grasping at nothing in antecedence for the slightest chance of a lucky touch. And there it came! Nothing elegantly slithering through Nowhere in her direction, there and yet not, aiming straight for her head as she shrunk back, arm raised to stop him-

    A second river blew her with enough strength to launch her. She spun, until she felt the crack of ancient bark at her side and hip, the hollow as solid as any wall despite the years in death. She fell, retching in pain, crashing into a pool of her own bile. This time, she didn''t get the chance to get back up, a third powerful stream taking her, forcing her against the wood and washing the grody away.

    Glashii was right there, exposed to dry air, closer to a shade than a shimmer but never quite either, little of his body discernible through the transparent illusion. The next wave was calm, but covered the islet entirely, leaving an unnatural mound of water to half submerged her laid body, its touch enhancing the camouflage until he was nothing but a distortion of the lake''s dim light.

    Something pressed against her chest, two sharp Nothings digging into her breast as she was turned on her back.

    "This?" Glashii said, the kind tone lent to his Will making her all the more outraged. "This is a farce. A mere show of what you could be capable, and yet refuse yourself for the sake of wretched monstrosities. Do you feel the pain?"

    "G-get off me," she whispered. He retracted a scant distance, and fell again, lower, driving the air out of her lungs.

    "It does not compare to the pain of seeing your family massacred, of fleeing their cooling bodies. It does not compare to the pain of your own child being whisked away beneath your nose, of learning her potential had been crippled by a minute lapse of attention. And certainly, it does not compare to seeing her spitting on millennia of work," he said, punctuating by grinding on her solar plexus, "centuries of carefully cultivating Mother''s love!"

    Her stomach. Her cracked thigh. Finally, her shin with enough strength to break the bone and ground beneath. She screamed.

    "Never, never, never have I seen a heresy of such level! Not even the Blood could vanish it? Had it never manifested..." He spat. "I cannot finish this task alone. Not here. Consider yourself lucky for having a merciful father, another would have chosen to cut the shame here and now."

    The moment her leg was relieved of the pressure, she tried dragging herself away, only to stomped again.

    "Stop! Stop!" she begged.

    "My poor Mariwa, I promise haste. This may seen excessive, but it is nothing compared to the damage you already dealt yourself."

    "I don''t want to go," she said, looking up, trying to meet his eyes only to be reminded he remained hidden. "Please, what did I do to deserve this? Take whatever you want from me, you won''t ever see me again. Just let me go!"

    It hurt so much. Why was she hurting so much? Having her legs burned off hadn''t hurt this bad, nor did taking the brutal beating God had given come close. Now, she felt the fragments of bone scraping one another too keenly, every darkening blot on her skin flare in waves. Moving was torture, and for all the desperation in her Will, she received no prompt answer.

    "... You will heal. As I said, the Blood is enough sign there is still a chance. Fear not, My Mariwa, for soon you will be home. There, where your true kin lie, you will receive true recovery, and understand why I make such harsh decisions."

    Her heart sank. There would be no running away, would it? No salvation, either. Were the others even still alive?

    Rage seeped through her cracks. The next stomp came fast, a burst of mud raining from out of view emphasized by one of the sharpest pains she had ever felt. She whimpered, hands clenching in powerlessness, nausea churning her stomach and twisting her eyesight.

    She had an idea what came next. She tried to flip over and protect her arms, but she was stopped cold. She looked up and saw the lad grinning down at her. Stick thin and tall, with barely enough muscles to earn the name, no scars to really mark him as an adventurer or fighter of any note, but his smile was the stuff of nightmares, stiff and sly with calculated malice.

    She smiled back at him, all pretense: her heart was thumping so hard it was starting to hurt. She was scared, both of him and the chance he might feel her fear through the sole of his reed slipper. The ones who actually got to her always came back for a second taste, and she always won those of course, she was Holly Seneschal! They would always look down on her for being a sinner, a sin, and she would always be there to give them a taste of teeth for thinking so.

    But this one time, she was honestly afraid.

    He crouched, and she suddenly couldn''t breath. He reached for something besides them, a glint in his eyes. When he got up with some difficulty, she trembled: he had a rock the size of her head in hand, sweetly caressing it''s surface like it was his own child. This time, there was no masking; her eyes widened and the bastard chuckled.

    The foot moved, too fast for her get back on her legs and run. It crushed her elbow flat against the ground, and his eyes moved from her face to her hand.

    She watched, helpless, as he lifted the stone over his head and threw it down-

    She needed to get out of here.

    She needed to get out now!

    Nothing she had tried worked. Nothing she knew she should be capable of worked. What was left?

    ...An idea came to her. Even if further abilities would not come to her by instinct, they still had to be part of her, right? Still present, if buried deep beneath even where instinct could reach, all she had to do was find and reveal it. If she could hide from Glashii, she would be alright, she had to be alright!

    Already balled up in her own Will, all she needed to to was turn it on herself. She hesitated for a moment, not knowing what would happen if things didn''t go as planned, but she recalled the heavy thud, the wet sound of meat squashed, and knew there was no time to lose anymore. A thousand arms turned towards her core at once, and she activated her revealing ability as they sunk into her, the physical world quickly disappearing around her.

    The sensation was... unique. It was like shoving herself elbow deep into her own intestines, with all the discomfort entailed. Her insides defied description, the tactile analogy she used to sense all that strange Merurgical or Ashic Plane stuff breaking swiftly against something she could only say was made of herself, had the rough texture of herself. She vaguely felt her physical side writhe, distant and detached to current matters.

    It had to be somewhere here. She pushed her ability to its utmost, felt the warmth of the light caressing its way inside to reveal herself, what made herself herself, what was purged to keep herself herself, and even itself working in an endless cascade of heartbeats or something similar, but nothing of use. She needed to go deeper.

    And right below the surface vagaries, laid impossible things, mesmerizing and absurd sensations that explored their way up perfected fingertips in search of connection and meaning. These had many names, a million names each, but no set words to identify them. They crawled over, under, into her gore of gores, tissue and needled veins pumping her into herself, mindless for the waste spilling out like a ruptured stomach.

    Fingers plucked tendons that were not tendons like the wires of a lute, fondled paths over sensitive organs, clearing a path through meatless meat with no purpose she could know even when she knew, floating under the rhythm of context and intent. Intent? So it did, or had done, until the interruption.

    If you encounter this story on Amazon, note that it''s taken without permission from the author. Report it.

    She shivered, realizing her mistake. She had been right to hesitate, this had been the wrong way of reaching in, and now she had left countless wounds into her being and disturbed the fragile ecosystem that here thrived. She was not what she had been months ago, suppressed into pliability and with years of neglect ready to rush in and make up for the lost time, her foundations were solidifying and fresh and utterly incapable of handling her meddling.

    And now, she was here, looking for a way to undermine all that work. That was the wrong way to do things, she came to understand. The right way, however, would grieve rather than save her.

    The search was brief; the search was endless. Innate knowledge had made for a poor guide, if a lucky one, taking her by hand to where Something was made Something and Nothing was made Nothing.

    She witnessed the first, still and complex, build with a craft beyond dexterous, and something swelled inside her chest. She witnessed the second, a necrotic wreckage barely twitching as a sign of life, and tears swelled to her ductless eyes. She despaired, the sight of her hope leaking away making her want to go mad. The only salvation she found was a glimpse of a grander image.

    Was it the angle? Was it a revelation? Was it destiny? No, none of those things existed here, as far as her concern had gone.

    There was, between Something and Nothing, a duality, a contradiction, a load bearing pillar of solid metal, forged with no regard for the building that would slowly grow around its unending countenance, and now the single most important element of the whole. She raged at it, knowing its touch without knowing its meaning, but to dislodge it even the slightest would mean the crumbling of Her.

    They led opposite ways. Above and below. To the whole and to the broken. Incomplete? Malformed? It didn''t matter in the end, she followed the former, a second of walking across an endless kaleidoscope, until she realized she knew this place, quite intimately too.

    She had come full circle. Did that mean there was nothing for her here?

    No, it was all her, wasn''t it? Everything was Her. There was no wind, there was no gravity and no distance, no matter, only Her.

    And so, she revealed herself. And the bittersweet answer to her plights was made obvious.

    She gasped aloud, back curling into itself as her muscles seized.

    In the months since her battle against God, her Will had solidified, and though some slight modifications could be made on the spur of moment anything large scale had become close to impossible.

    Without consequences, anyway. She would have to take it, she had to change. Full of holes and phantom agonies, she began the process of cracking apart and remaking herself, knowing it would be the last time she could and survive.

    Tendrils of Will flew at her from every direction, engulfing her in a second. Slippery tips found purchase through the division of her limbs, grasping them in an attempt to drag them away, as if he could prevent what was coming. There was no Nothing there, just Glashii''s panicked movements made clear.

    "Are you ¨€¨€¨€¨€¨€¨€?!" The garble of words that poured into her burned their way inside then outside through myriad weeping wounds. She recognized her once-father''s words, somewhat. "You would ¨€¨€¨€¨€¨€¨€ your own ¨€¨€¨€¨€¨€¨€ to escape me?!"

    Joints divided, arms melded, fingers lengthened and shortened, all loose and out of control. Things once torn apart fused together, nervous analogues creating confusing bundles against one another. Touch became taste, became smell, became touch again. And her physical body suffered, bleeding and spasmming, moans and whimpers gurgled with foamy spit.

    "This goes beyond the mere ¨€¨€¨€¨€¨€¨€, it is monstrous! Stop ¨€¨€¨€¨€ now!" Glashii said, Something pulling up her body and crashed it against another surface, hard and coarse. "Do you not ¨€¨€¨€ ¨€¨€¨€¨€ it ¨€¨€¨€ ¨€¨€¨€¨€ to you?!"

    She seized control of her hands, pushing herself into some semblance of a crawl as the transformations faltered, succeeded, had to be reworked or stopped from doing so. Nothing was going according to plan, and now she was more wound than girl. Glashii provided an unwelcome help, holding her together, willingly or not, while dripping hostilities into her.

    "¨€¨€¨€¨€¨€ this abhorrence! Is ¨€¨€ all for ¨€¨€¨€ ¨€¨€¨€¨€ of ¨€¨€¨€¨€¨€¨€¨€ yourself of ¨€¨€¨€ Blood?! It ¨€¨€¨€¨€¨€ ¨€¨€¨€¨€!"

    This was wrong. Another mistake. She was dying, pulling her seams apart for uncertain result. Was this what she had intended to do? Focus was all she had left, her head occupied equally by a paralyzing headache and the sensation of having her skull filled with lint. She tried to reel back, only for her Will to rebel and double down.

    "...¨€¨€¨€¨€ have you ¨€¨€¨€¨€ to ¨€¨€¨€¨€¨€¨€¨€¨€?"

    She pressed through. Controlling her Will was only a matter of will, in the end.

    Will did not bleed. it did not scab, nor coagulate, or so she had gathered. She had to pull back what she had lost, unfeeling chunks of flesh that was not flesh, and form makeshift curatives out of their remains. Not close to enough: it barely held her together, and the way the chunks were fading wouldn''t last to the next morning. If anything, they were a detriment, a constant wrongness prickling at the back of her head.

    At least she had stopped breaking though. Arms left serpents of splintered joints, each hand with its own number of poorly jointed fingers and sprouting stumps, so many limbs failing to merge with one another and becoming misshapen fusions, but at least she stopped breaking.

    "Ah... Aaaaah..." she rasped.

    "...Are you proud of yourself?" Glashii asked, contempt diluted in poorly controlled waves of fear. "All this in rejection of the undeniable? You are moments away from death."

    "Dad. I... I..."

    "Are you happy with yourself?! Not even the touch of the best soul healers could undo the way you have destroyed yourself! Could you loath me so much as to-"

    "I feeeeeel sooooooo goooood! Hehehehe hehehehe hehehehe hehehehe hehehehe hehehehe hehehehe hehehehe hehehehe hehehehe! I can''t feel my body at all!"

    The animal thing inside her kept an eye on her father stepping away with a jump, but she couldn''t mind it less. It was so strange! Her body was gone. All those sores and broken bones were gone. Not really, of course, but the agony, the distress, all washed away by the indescribable suffering and unnameable horrors of shattering away! Had it always been this easy?!

    She had seen so much! She had understood so little! But she had seen, and she had interpreted, and wasn''t that all she had needed? A way forward. It had been there all along, muffled under the light, under the roof of the Oke, under endless kilometers of carved stone corridors and intestinal labyrinths, yet always watching, always welcoming of her presence, always waiting for the day they would see each other again.

    Dipping into the lake and spreading herself into its cool embrace had felt like coming back to a home she had never been to. But a home you spent years enjoying, can you even feel its presence anymore? She should have. Aaaaah, how could she have missed it? How could she have ignored it for so long?! It greeted her with such delight once, pushing her undesired growth forwards knowing she would resist it, but also knowing she would die without the guidance. How could she!

    It had been there all along!

    "Mariwa!" her father called her. "We must go. We have to-"

    Broken legs flew at his face like whips, forcing him back. Before he could react, she rose on her arms and flew into the water again. Its cold welcome enveloped her, and she wasted no time creaking her bones that where not bones into place around her, enjoying her second home while she still could.

    Glashii Di Aila pursued. his own Will slithered in her direction, tugging open wounds and wet bandages in its desperation to keep track of her position. Soon, he was Nothing again, there and Nowhere at once, impossible to find, now impossible to ignore, soon to charge through their grapple to finish his task by any means necessary.

    "So be it!" he screamed into their connection. If she insisted in keeping their old passing, she would only hasten her own loss. He had to have known, right? This place hadn''t been chosen solely for its beauty.

    But it had been there all along, and it would be there always. Arms vestigial and crude, overly touched on and made too complex for ease of use, rose above everything, and called for its presence.

    She let it wash into her and learned. She let its presence wash over her, wash over the light obscured lake and its flower infested shores, wash over her suddenly frozen father. The next time she grasped for him, he no longer could be called Nothing; she felt the work at play there, the way his Will worked its own energy onto its skin like a fine coating of grease, still too slippery to hold still yet no longer capable of avoiding her sight.

    Her eyes wide open, she met her father''s own through the murk as if they shared this dance in the most crystalline of waters.

    "Impossible," was all he managed to say, before she crashed against his stomach.

    Her jaws shut against the bones of his pelvis, tearing through loincloth and muscle alike. Not even the water could mute his howl. A knee met her in the ribs, claws raked her back and glanced her spine, and not a thing did she feel. Her knuckles pummeled at his side, digging holes into the metal of his cuirass until they found his flesh.

    An elbow struck her in the back. For all she could ignore her own pain, the alien sensation of her shoulder blades shattering was enough to make her let go, the strength behind the blow doing the rest to force her away. Her father fled her, not fast enough; not seven paces away and she was already moving to encircle him.

    He hid himself again, but this time she had caught on to the trick. She sunk to the silt and dashed for his legs as he turned to flank her. Too late did he realize she didn''t need to shed light over everything to find him, for all she could see him he could see her, too slow to dodge as her teeth crunched the shell over his shin like soft skin.

    She should have tasted blood then, but even that was lost to her. What wasn''t lost, was reflex; she twister her body in time for a slicing kick to only scrape her arm, the sheer strength of her bite finally cutting all the way to the bone, sliding off with a mouthful of tasteless flesh she spat off to continue her attack.

    "The flesh of your own lineage...!" Glashii was the one to retract this time, easily escaping the grasp of her Will.

    She would have been left blind then, if not for something strange happening: she felt something odd in the World of Wills, diminute to the point it was nearly negligible, a presence mixing with the water''s own yet of a distinct nature. She felt it all around her, its familiar touch on her skin conjuring the image of blood on the water, and followed its trail as if starved. Not a moment later did she brush against Glashii, seizing the tip of a limb.

    She burst out of the water in his direction, a starved arrow. Arms pushed her aside, too slow to avoid her grab. Underwater again, she pulled, mouth open and fingers shut tight, already turning to deliver another devastating blow, but unfortunately her grip strength proved lacking, Claws sliced through the left of her face, slapping her with enough violence to change her direction and cut through an eye.

    Her vision vanishing, leaving an entire quarter of her sight blank distressed her enough she became paralyzed. She put a hand to the wound and held, as if she could keep it from falling apart. It wasn''t too bad though: the wound felt shallow in a weird way, so low in Will she could already feel it healing a little.

    "Woooooow," she said. "Is this what life felt to you too? It''s amazing! Holly Seneschal could never handle this kind of stuff!"

    "This makes it three," Glashii said, tone ridden with so much despair it made her speechless "Thrice you made an attempt at your father''s life. Could you really be trying to profane such a holy concept for the sake of such unforgivable sin?"

    "I don''t get it?"

    "What I mean to say, My Mariwa, is that you have strode over a line you should never have crossed. That you have indeed reached the point of no return, that you dared deface the Blood and your history both into sacrilegious toys," he said, all emotion gone from his Will. "And that you have left me with a most unpleasant duty."

    She didn''t have to understand his words. The jolt that pushed her into action was clear enough, though too slow.

    She met her father face to face, teeth gnashing and hands clenching to hold him down. She expected him to flee, and instead was left reeling as his forehead crushed hers, staggering her back for just long enough a hand clamped around her face from below, sickles piercing as deep her facial muscles and completely restraining her mouth.

    She punched, but the angle was too wrong to cause any significant damage. The retaliation came swift, something slicing through her stomach, and even through the numbing haze she panicked, understanding she had been spilled open. Nails uncurling, she tried to swipe at her father, a quick elbow pushing her arm aside. Will limbs frenzied, she no longer tried to hold on to Glashii but to tear him apart, gouge him to pieces, thousands of pinching fingers raining at him as she pushed away, uncaring for the claws tearing a painful path down her jaw as she escape and planned her next-

    She crashed.

    Oh. His blows always held Will, didn''t they? That cut hadn''t been only to her physical stomach.

    He had hidden the damage, hadn''t he? What an interesting trick. She still couldn''t feel it.

    She gasped, water pouring down her throat as her muscles went limp. Her senses fell in disarray, veiling the physical world with a pleasant dream like fog, one even her Will seemed to catch on and enter into lull. She felt... peace, if she had to describe it. A heavy, overwhelming peace she was helpless to deny despite the circumstances.

    She enjoyed the way her body rocked with the water''s turbulence. It took a few seconds to finally settle, as her body drifted to the bottom of the shallow lake and laid among old mud and frightened crustaceans who had fled to their burrows, only now coming out with the shift in the battle. She could sense them, but not turn to greet, apologize maybe for all the chaos she had brought to their home.

    She was brought back to dry air by the arm. Everything had gone still: the apparitions had gone silent, breaths held still for the climax; the waves were settling, their task accomplished; and the flowers, poor things, scattered petals and verdant leaves drifted to and fro, their field badly ravaged by the battle.

    And above her, stood Glashii Di Aila, pondering her still body.

    "This rescue has been a failure. I was too late, my Mariwa. No esteem by the Blood would have you accepted into the Land of the Brave."

    Distantly, she wondered if the way he held her by the shoulder should be uncomfortable.

    "The things you have done, the things you nearly did, defiled the Blood. Dearly I wish I could have taught you your duty, and the laws cast by our ancients to protect our power against those who would crush us, who came so very close to crushing us! And yet, to what reason should I? I must admit now, this goes beyond what could be fixed, by me or others. Your very structure has grown warped, your view of reality, your very way of speaking! Never had I imagined a being of the holy Blood could be so depraved as to struck her own father, to court the senseless Madhounds, to-!"

    The hand might have squeezed. It might not.

    She should be overcome with bitterness, dying here and now despite how hard she tried, how much she had to look forward to. She should go out like Elder Seneschal had, defiance in her eyes and flames on her tongue. Yet, the desire never came.

    Glashii mumbled under his breath, or maybe he cried out loud, it wouldn''t have made a difference. The touch of his Will softened. "This is unpleasant. No father should have to- Doesn''t matter, duty is duty.

    "Rest in profundity, my poor Mariwa. May death make you as pure as I wish I could have made you in life. I hope one day you can forgive me for my stupid inaction, as your ancestors will surely forgive your sins."

    Of all the nonsense her father had said today. She tried to scoff; there was no sound, short of a pitiful imitation of a cough.

    Pure. As if he knew what that was. As if he hadn''t been the one at fault for that. If she could still get angry, she would.

    Perhaps it was for the better that she didn''t. She felt her consciousness drift, waiting for a blow of grace.

    It never came. Maybe it was indecision. Maybe it was cruelty.

    So she closed her eyes, and waited.

    Little by little, she lost herself.

    As she thought sleep would take her.

    The children laughed.

    It was like waking up to your body eaten by flames. Electric, frantic dread that pierced through the veil of death to reignite her body so she could run. She had never noticed it before, how repulsive that malicious cackling was, a primal fear as strong as that of burning alive clinging to the air like an oily film.

    She could feel its approach down on her bones.

    She trashed in vain. Couldn''t her father hear it? Couldn''t he realize that she need to either get away or die faster?! She tried to beg, she tried to slap him, she tried to put all the strength returned to her body on a final stand of Will.

    Nothing worked. She whimpered.

    "¨€¨€¨€¨€ ¨€¨€ the matter ¨€¨€¨€¨€ you? What ¨€¨€ ¨€¨€¨€¨€¨€¨€¨€¨€¨€ my ¨€¨€¨€¨€¨€¨€?!"

    They would never make it.

    That beautiful, peaceful end shattered as a great crescendo broke from the Apparitions, the impossible mass of ghosts fleeing with tangible desperation, pushing each other to get away faster, some not even minded threading the waters of the lake.

    it fell like a solid tree into the waters, its many voices adding to the choir and twisting their melody. Glashii screamed as it touched the stretched length of his Will, two waterfalls parting to the sides in animal fright and howling agony. She knew it well. Explosions of mud and dirt announced its arrival to their side, the weight meaningless against such destructive force.

    In that last moment, Glashii Di Aila let go of her. Turning to escape

    In that last moment, she saw Agare soar, Hagan firmly in hands. it dove in an arc, and time slowed to a crawl.

    Glashii Di Aila''s decapitation was swift

    She hit the ground, and the water rushed in to obscure her.

    A rapidly crumbling Will touched hers.

    "¨€¨€ ¨€¨€¨€¨€¨€¨€, run!"

    And with that, the Di Aila family came to an end.

    And with that, she stopped thinking, and everything went dark.

 2 - The Children of the Lake Closure

    Promise kept, Marquise watched over Cassia Seneschal''s recovery.

    It had taken a week after Holly''s departure before she had the courage to venture outside. It had been adorable in its own odd way to see her stumble down the corridors of Manor D'' Sallia, determined eyes glaring down the sets of identical doors as if expecting something to challenge her passage, and Marquise always there as her crutch, physical and emotional. The face she made when turned a left for the fourth time and came across the same hallway was priceless.

    Realistically, there was no chance of danger, not inside the mansion. You couldn''t poke a needle through a wall without rising some kind of alarm, and with her nearby to lead her away from traps, it was as safe as it came. But why not let her have it?

    Time cared for her more than Marquise ever could. Little by little, she opened up about the darker side of life in Lesser Hollow and under Keritist control, though that was probably not the way she would describe some of those things. She listened carefully, paying closer attention whenever what she considered the most important topic glanced the surface.

    And she had to admit, it was always nice to have a little Dashi companion to shoot the shit with. For all her lot had interesting quirks, Faces and Faceless alike were rarely the most riveting conversationalists, Marquise herself notwithstanding.

    From there, things were looking on the up. Her complexion started to improve, she became more active, started to eat more, and at some point spoke out to complain about the recent lack of meat in her diet! Politely, but the point still stood. She was even reading sometimes, from her own initiative nonetheless! With little to no enthusiasm so far, but she could work with that.

    And eventually, inevitably, Cassia grew bored with her rather restricted exploration of the manor and asked if she could be allowed outside. From a practical perspective, it was a bit of a bad idea, as even rid of its worse elements, the deeper valleys of the Ivian Chain were hardly appropriate for leisure walks.

    Yet, who would Marquise be if she didn''t oblige?

    ------

    Didn''t take too long for Cassia to start panting.

    Even this early morning, the jungle grew dark around them, with enough obstacles she couldn''t walk a meter straight. Keeping it to a path lighter in vegetation still meant she was often sunk to the hip in plants, and if weren''t for Aram''s deft hand cleaning the way ahead, some rather troublesome brambles too.

    It was good to let her build confidence, but at some point Marquise just had to intervene. "Sure you don''t want a hand or anything, darling?"

    "N-no," Cassia panted. "I appreciate it, but I could thread rougher terrain while-" she panted, "while at the Hollows. T-this is nothing in comparison."

    "Should I slow down anyway, ma''am?" Aram asked. From her place besides Cassia, Marquise saw the woman frown.

    "Nope, keep following Lady Seneschal''s wishes."

    "Sure thing, ma''am."

    So long as she weren''t distracted, there wasn''t a distance Marquise couldn''t get to Cassia''s side if she slipped or worse, so there wasn''t much to be worried about. She allowed things to flow their course as the group followed in half spirals around the manor, until Cassia could not physically take it anymore and they were forced to stop.

    Perusing their surroundings, Marquise found a small outcropping of rocks, tips flat enough to sit on without much discomfort, and led her by hand. It was a little mossy, with some inconspicuous webbing laid over its darker crevices, but she found it clean and lifeless enough it would do.

    "T-thank you, Lady Marquise." She panted. "G-goodness mine, I don''t recall playing in the woods ever being so exhausting!"

    "How young were you again, last time you did any of that?"

    Cassia flushed, and Marquise though she wouldn''t answer. "Truth be told, young enough I could still climb trees. R-regardless, you have my most sincere gratitude, Lady Marquise, for this and for allowing me here in the first place."

    "Aaaaw, no biggie!" Marquise answered by reflex. Place disregarded, it was a pretty ideal day for enjoying the outside world, sunny and warm yet with some of that pleasant chill of the Cold Season creeping into the breeze. Not that she would know, but apparently the forest stank to the high heavens at the peak of the Flowering, and the further apart from that the best.

    "Except it is." Cassia exhaled a deep sigh. "I cannot help but wonder sometimes if the value of my stories and faith match that of your actions..."

    "Ain''t that for me to tell though? And I think I told you enough times it did that I shouldn''t need to remind you every time!" Marquise said, keeping her tone light despite the words.

    Cassia frowned, straightening back her spine. She took to poise like she had been born to it, and for all she didn''t reach Marquise''s collar at the moment, the airs she conjured lent her a gravitas that made her feel positively larger. "As a matter of fact, I do know their value. My father may be criticized for many of his actions, however in the confines of his home he always instilled the utmost of respect for the tales of the Father and his Sapling."

    "But?"

    Cassia froze, then hunched forward. "I... have been having my doubts."

    Marquise nodded. "Hard not to, isn''t it?"

    Cassia''s eyes widened for a second. "T-that is a rather disconcerting gesture, if you forgive me this insolence."

    "Oh, and here I thought humans generally preferred that I kept to this kinds of gesture? Just like they prefer me to keep my cute little giggles, gihihi!"

    "T-that is disconcerting at an entire different scale, Lady Marquise."

    "Oh, c''mon!"

    "However, it is as you said." Whichever good humor the digression had earned, it left rather fast. "I believe I''m failing to contend my upbringing against the nature of my situation. Something feels... amiss, I suppose I would describe it."

    "Wanna talk about it?" Marquise offered. Instead of answering, Cassia threw an awkward glance at Aram, who now stood fiddling around with his machete. "Don''t worry about him. Try to imagine he''s a third arm of mine, or a third leg? Whichever sounds better inside your head."

    "I suppose I could try," she gave a rueful chuckle. "Yes. All things considered, a third arm would not look too out of place on you, Lady Marquise."

    Marquise sat besides her, stopping to take a good look at the miracle woman her agents had nearly missed. Dressed in mismatched rags of dull color, frame emaciated under the thin cloth, unkempt and somewhat unwashed, she had a certain effortless elegance that was hard not to admire. The habit made the person, she had guessed before, and at her weakest Cassia Seneschal still didn''t know how to be anyone but Cassia Seneschal.

    Decades ago, though it shamed Marquise to think on it, she would have been left speechless. Life among the Remnants had left her with a certain fascination for these alien creatures Galehold called nobles, the women specially. They had no analogues to their behavior and etiquette at the Sect, after all. That should have been left in the past.

    And yet.

    "Has somebody ever told you you are the living incarnation of the Household Princess, Cassia?" She couldn''t resist it. It had to be said.

    "P-pardon? I''m afraid I have never heard that name before?" Cassia said.

    "Really? Nothing similar either? Huh. What about that copy of the Codex of The Lion I gave you though? Never gave it a peek?"

    "I''m afraid I don''t recall it, Lady Marquise, but be assured I will as soon as the opportunity comes! Speaking of, should you really be handing away such... precious material so easily?"

    "Eh." She dismissed with a wave. "Paper isn''t as precious as it used to be, and I have like five copies of the thing anyway. You absolutely should give it a read though! It a very interesting piece of Yinian history and culture if you have it''s context in mind."

    "Oh. More Galehold history. I see."

    "Hey, don''t give me that! That''s your history too, you know?! Haaaaaauuuuu..." Marquise shook her neck. "So, to summarize: The Household Princess is, to quote the book, ''the heart of the cradle''. She is fierce, resilient, and competent! Yet, she is also kind, loyal, and patient. She is graceful in her everyday tasks, raises the next generation as any model of behavior should, and observes the hierarchy of the house. Or, to give another quote I love, ''though she doesn''t wield steel, she is Steel herself!''"

    " ''Though she doesn''t wield steel, she is steel herself''..." Cassia closed her eyes. "Not how I would describe myself, no. Rather, it would much better fit the one I imitate."

    "Olivia Weaver."

    Cassia nodded.

    "Didn''t seen like you enjoyed her presence very much."

    "And I didn''t." Cassia frowned. "I-in fact, I would go as far as saying I disliked her! Make no mistake, I understand Elder Weaver has- had done a lot for my family and I, and that she only worried about imparting the right lesson deep enough we, the few ladies left on the Lesser, could perform our duties to the satisfaction of the village. Still, I have never forgotten her rigor, her severity, how quick she was to put us down, quicker yet to punish!"

    "I know the type. Harsh people who lived harsh lives, right?"

    "Right." Cassia said. "I can understand her methods. And the other womenfolk? They admired her like the olden apostles of the Father Cosmical. Now that I can think on the matter clearly, I suppose I never forgave her for my adolescence."

    "I would still bet you washed her standards clean off, didn''t ya?"

    "Of course not!" Cassia giggled, "The best I ever achieved in her eyes was passable. There were better among her pupils, much better."

    Cassia''s mouth hung open, as if she wanted to say something else. She closed it, swallowed dry, then looked at Marquise with eyes that twinkled with renewed life.

    "And then there was Hazel!"

    "Your sister." And Holly''s, though she didn''t voice that last part out loud.

    "Elder Weaver always had an instinctive dislike of her, even when she readily put all the other ladies to shame." Cassia glared at her lap. "She always got the worst scoldings, the worst beatings! But you should have seen her, how she held herself, how she walked, how she danced! If any other fit your description, it would be her."

    "Yup, sure heard as much!"

    "As you should! No matter what those old men of the Elder council or those jealous b-b-b- hussies of her generation gossiped among themselves! She could repeat one of our stories perfectly after hearing them once, she could sew such fine threads you would never know her clothes were repaired, she could walk the Hollows in the night without tripping once!"

    Biologically related to Holly, chances were high she had been forced into Skawla''s Descendancy to some degree. That would explain a lot of seemingly innate skills, even if it had never bloomed into so much as half-blood. "She sounds pretty cool. Must have felt pretty bad though, not having anyone acknowledge you."

    "Even in that regard she was beautiful! I had not seen her cry or complain about the way she was treated since the cusp of her maidenhood! She was fearless, faced lads and peers alike eye to eye and spat on the ground they threaded, she- she did, she-!"

    "Cassia?"

    She jolted to her feet, the motion alone nearly sending her rolling forwards.

    A hard stomp marked the regaining of her balance. Both feet firm on their heels, arms held wide to her sides, she closed her eyes and began. Her left hand swung upwards, took a sharp turn down, bringing her chest along as the right rose with a fluid swivel. As if carried by a power beyond her measure, she turned, foot dragging against the soil, moving without ever raising into a step.

    Fluid and frantic, kinetic and solid, slow movements tugged along by fast gestures. Marquise knew the moves by heart, and it made her fingers itch. The Dance to Scorched Earth was a weapon wielded by the Missionaries of the Crimson, a blessing that aimed to bring the leadership of their cults closer to the Heirs they worshiped, and if anything should be taken as a statement to Lesser Hollows isolation from the general Keritist culture was that Cassia would dare use it not only in front of a Faceless, but in front of one of the Headless at that.

    She gave a subtle gesture for Aram to keep his cool, who shrugged. Ultimately, Cassia was harmless, she had made sure of it. A couple dozen seconds worth of nostalgia, and she was already failing her timing, half-assing critical steps and puffing like mad. She kicked a rock at a wrong angle by mistake, and Marquise was there at her side, holding her by the waist.

    "Cassia, Cassia!" She scolded with a tutting finger. "I don''t mind you having some fun, but shouldn''t you invite your friends too?!"

    "I''m sorry, Lady Marquise!" She laughed, brilliant in between heavy breaths. "I had forgotten! She loved dancing so much! I loved dancing with her so much, falling in with her as she led me all night long! How could I have forgotten?!"

    "I know I don''t have to ask, but are you alright?"

    "Alright?! Lady Marquise, I feel insane! Most days, I wake up and I cannot even tell what is real and what is not anymore!"

    "Have you been having nightmares again?" Marquise asked, trying to coax her back to the stones and facing some light resistance.

    "Not those from before. Not often, that is. They are... Dreams. Regular dreams of mundane events. I''m sewing one of Julius'' pants, or bearing with another of my father''s rambles, or... or I''m dancing with Hazel under the moonlight after another festival she wasn''t allowed to participate, hearing her quiet laugh, seeing her smile as she tries to explain the nuances of her footwork, and then... and then I wake up, and think to myself it''s the next day, until I remember..."

    "It''s alright." Marquise held her a little tighter. "It''s alright."

    "She used to act up, Hazel. Every morning, I look at that unfamiliar ceiling and think she has pulled some unexplainable prank on me." She sighed. "I feel like the lowest of the low for forgetting, and for not letting go when I well should have."

    You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

    "Nah, that''s normal."

    "To whom? Not to us, my Lady. Us... Sun Followers, I don''t quite remember the other name, are raised to believe death is transient. So long as you observe your duties to the Father, his lands will absorb you, purify your sins, then disperse your inner self among his creation, allowing you the next phase of your life cycle."

    "But like you said..."

    "... I''m having doubts."

    "It''s inevitable," Marquise had to push her gently to her sat down again. This time, she herself sat on the ground, not minding that she would have to dirty another fancy dress. "Losing your faith in your way of life when it puts the people you love in the way of harm. Or so it should be, right?"

    "Or so it should be," she nodded, tears filling her eyes, wiped away before they fell. "I don''t know how to place myself anymore, Lady Marquise. I... I''m not even sure how to word it."

    "Try me." Marquise patted her knee. "I''ll help you along."

    "I was the sole survivor of Lesser Hollow, and I can''t fathom why. If I was cursed by the Fa- by my deity for the crimes of my family, should I not have perished alongside them? And if it was a blessing... why? What have I ever done to deserve special treatment? Was it because I occasionally-"

    Her eyes widened, and she stared at Marquise as if she had somehow forgotten her presence. Or rather, who exactly she was. No doubts what she meant to say there, then. Marquise mulled the situation over, wondering which would be the best way to bring up the topic.

    "If you can''t understand things from your point of view, perhaps another would help?"

    "Another point of view? Whose-" Cassia flinched, catching on. ''Holly."

    "I heard from her recently, you know?" Marquise said. "She''s mostly doing fine, but they might have gotten into quite the situation right now."

    Quite the situation might be underselling it, if her predictions were correct, but it was nothing unsalvageable and the sentence did its job of getting Cassia curious. Curious, and judging by the mild glare absolutely furious too.

    "No." She said.

    "...Do you still think she''s cursed?"

    "Does it matter? What has happened has happened."

    "It has, it has. It''s just that I find it weird sometimes, how you don''t mind telling me about all those wild things she did as a little kid, but then kind of close off about when she was older. If anybody knows what you are going through, it would be her right?"

    "You told me you wouldn''t push the topic without my consent." Cassia said, sounding genuinely hurt.

    "And I won''t! You tell me this conversation is over, then this conversation is over!"

    They gazes met, and Marquise wondered how Cassia had figured where to look without ever being told. The distant cries of the forest were the only sounds that could be heard, the buzzing of the smallest insects deafening in that uncomfortable silence. Cassia relented with a wry smile, folding her hands over her lap as her posture grew rigid.

    "Have I ever told you I believe my father would loath your person?"

    "Well, no, but not like I''m too fond of the man from all the stuff I heard."

    "Underhandedness was his mean of survival. For all the power he had, his real strength came from his secrets, the only thing that couldn''t be meaningfully challenged by others. He would never accept your bold and bare faced style of control."

    "But it''s refreshing, isn''t it? No need to worry about the knife behind your back when you can see it plain and clear on my hands."

    "...No. It only makes me more afraid of which vipers nest under the sinkhole."

    "Ooooh, I never heard that one before... Mind if start using it?"

    Cassia glared at her. "Do I sound like I''m joking?"

    "Nope! You''re being serious, and so am I!"

    Cassia relented first once again, but it wouldn''t have taken a tenth of her experience with humans to know how she truly felt about the matter. None too satisfied with it, Marquise decided to do something she really, really would rather not. Reaching down to the depths of her being, she spoke.

    "Deception is the weapon of aristocrats and merchants, my most lovely and perfect Marquise," she said, the voice coming out like a landslide with a history of chain smoking herbs, but the exact tone of gravelly she needed was hard to modulate. "You think anybody would look at a roaring bear and thin ''ooooh nooo, I''m about to get a bolt to the back''? You both known you''ll be biting and pawing, so stop the pretense and start clawing already!"

    "...What?" Cassia frowned. "Is that a common saying among your kind, Lady Marquise?"

    "Uuuuuuh, no. That''s quoted right from the mouth of the person I hate the most in this entire world. Plus some paraphrasing. Minus the mouth, but I''m sure you gathered as much."

    "I''m unsure about the sentiment, I must admit."

    "What I meant to say, Cassia, is that what is the point of useless pretenses when the reality of the situation is obvious for us both?" Marquise said with a shrug. "I don''t mean to threaten you with what I''m about to say, so please listen carefully: I don''t underestimate your intelligence, Cassia, so I know you know that if I ever wanted to take what I needed by force, there was nothing you could do to stop me, not even dying. But I didn''t, and I won''t."

    "Then, you are saying you are the growling bear?"

    "That, Cassia, is precisely what I was raised to be."

    Cassia paled, a meek whimper escaping her lips, and Marquise immediately dialed it down. What had she even done- oh, it had to be that. That hadn''t been very Marquise of her at all, had it?

    "Haaaaaaaauuuuu... Sorryyyy, didn''t mean to sound so mad. Guess I still get a little grumpy when I have to think about that guy, gihihihih! Oh, wait, you don''t like when I do that either, sorry again."

    "S-so that''s how anger sounds in your... how anger sounds to your kind, Lady Marquise?" Cassia smiled, voice still trembling, a bead of undoubtedly cold sweat dropping down her temple.

    "It sounds a little different for each of us, but essentially."

    "If you don''t mind me interrupting, ma''am," Aram piped up. "I don''t think anyone else pulls it quite like you do."

    "Oh, you! Flattery will get you nowhere!"

    "I-if it displeases you so, perhaps we should move to another topic?" Cassia said. "I-I apologize for my rudeness, but I don''t think I wish to hear you so... so..."

    "Disaffected? Impassive?" Marquise venture to a slight nod. Honestly, that was a bit too polite for the way she would usually describe it, but details. "Not rude at all, I get''cha. No biggie. To close this off, then, just let me say that even before that guy, I never liked lying in the first place."

    Cassia lost some of her tension, but Marquise was mindful of the rest. "And genuinely, I appreciate your frankness Lady Marquise, though I fear Holly won''t fall for it. The Holly I knew has always been closer to a wild animal than a girl, stubborn and disobedient and so, so violent! It was hard to imagine her ever becoming a woman, so often she came home painted purple in bruises from fighting lads almost twice her age!"

    "Hey, I''ll have you know she was quite smitten with my beauty!"

    "I mean it. She''s skittish and distrustful, never holding any particular love for others outside my father and my sister. Once upon a time, my person as well, which is how I know how fast her affections wear off, so if you push it too far- S-something the matter, Lady Marquise?"

    That confirmed Marquise''s suspicions, as though she had turned her front to the side as if to watch the woodlands, she had only intensified her stare at Cassia. "Sharp senses there, darling, my kudos. I do want to ask one thing: how long ago since the last time you''ve seen this wild, vicious Holly?"

    She watched Cassia''s forehead crease. "I had known her since she needed to be held, and seven times did the Flowering Season pass, until..."

    "Until her changes. And how long since that?"

    "...At least eighteen times. I am unsure of the anniversary. S-still, if there is even an inkling of her previous person there-"

    "Cassia, the Holly you knew and the Holly I met are already completely different people."

    Cassia gasped, retreating over their stone bench as if Marquise''s presence had scalded her. That was more of a shock than she had predicted, had her tone dipped down again?

    "I-it couldn''t be entirely gone! People don''t change like that!"

    "There are a lot of ways for a part of somebody to go away that is not death or erasure. You as a Sun Follower should know that more than anyone, right? The man tends the earth-"

    "...And the earth feeds the man. The earth tends the man, so the earth may feed of him too." Cassia said. "Old words on decay."

    "And progression. She knew, you know? That I''m manipulating her. From the moment we first talked, maybe. She said she didn''t mind, that I should actually go harder, and I honestly believed her!"

    Cassia shook her head. "I don''t understand why you are so obstinate about her. O-or what I may even offer you in that regard if you consider my perspective so unreliable!"

    "Because there is more about her you know than you can admit. Because I need to know everything about her if I want to predict what comes next."

    "W-what comes next?"

    "Holly Seneschal is going to die."

    The statement chilled even herself to the core. The buzzing of insect wings seemed to pause for a second, as Cassia leaned away in horror. Aram, doing as Aram did, scoffed out loud.

    "Let me rephrase that. The person that Holly Seneschal is now can''t last. I''ve seen the seams and crutches that keep her standing, and the best built of them are all kludges. I''m sure she''s aware of it, at least some, but that awareness itself will start digging into the foundations. You get what I''m saying?"

    "I-in part."

    What she left out was how swift that crumbling could come. Again, if her predictions were correct, it might happen in the next few days or weeks assuming a best case scenario. Maybe it was happening that very instant!

    "Once all that faulty work is gone, something will need to take its place, and that something has always been my goal no matter how crude it becomes. That''ll be the Holly who can endure the journey to its end, and that''ll be the Holly that can lead us to our dream."

    "...I don''t understand." Cassia said.

    "Uh?"

    "I don''t understand you. I don''t understand any of this!" She finally scooted away far enough she nearly fell off her seat, wasn''t for Marquise to hold her again. This time, however, she fought back her own salvation, trying to push Marquise away with both hands. "I knew you weren''t feeding me, protecting me from the kindness of your heart, and believe when I say I was ready to pay any price you desired, b-but this is madness! I-it''s playing with things beyond comprehension for the sake of nonsense! Listen to yourself, can you find any logic in your own words?!"

    Cassia''s tears finally fell, and Marquise felt some remorse. And she hadn''t even intended to speak worst part of it!

    ... No, that was pointless cruelty. She had to admit she couldn''t remember how being this tender felt like. Or, if she had ever been allowed this kind of softness in the first place. She had taken her pain too lightly.

    "A-and if I can''t understand what you desire, how can I ever repay you? And don''t you dare tell me nuggets of legend can satisfy you this time!"

    "... Cassia."

    "I know they don''t. I know you wanted Holly more than anything, b-but I-!"

    "Cassia."

    "What?!"

    "You''re squeezing my boobs real hard."

    Glaring, Cassia looked down. A beat passed as pallid skin turned berry red. She pulled both arms back so fast the momentum twisted her on Marquise''s arm, and this time she fell on her rear end for real. It was a bit uncouth to think so at the moment, but she found the tiny little "Yiiiiiiihhhh-" she made on the way down really cute.

    "L-L-Lady Marquise!" she said, sprawled over the dirty ground. "I-I''m so sorry! So, so sorry! I-I swear It was an accident, I hadn''t noticed it at all, I didn''t intend to-!"

    "Oh, you Dashi just never cease to amuse me!" Marquise said, feeling her shoulders twitch as lungs she hadn''t used in decades tried to awaken. "I''m just messing with you! Who cares about a little squeeze between friends? I don''t!"

    "I-I do!"

    "Well, if serves as any consolation, everything is water under the bridge already! Just make sure to ask first next time, okay?"

    "Y-you must think me immoral to even suggest such a thing!"

    "Oh Cassia, you''re adorable, but you have so much to learn about the world outside your tiny village, I don''t even know where to begin from!" She crawled besides her, and for all she had said she didn''t make motion of any discomfort, save turning her still red cheeks away.

    "I have learned enough for today, my gratitudes."

    "... Cassia, have I ever told you your dream is mine?"

    Cassia sat herself down, patting the dirt off her back with a frown. "I don''t remember so?"

    "I say it a lot. Too much maybe. Some people are starting to act like it''s a catch phrase or a reflex or something, when I meant it every time! It''s why I have so few people with me. Can you imagine? Swordlight alone wants to be a sculptor one day, and Aram over there wants a mansion in silver and fifty servants at his beck and call, I''m already struggling with what I have!

    "Yet, you are right. I don''t do much out of the kindness of my heart. We Faceless don''t generally care for all that unconditional love stuff, we want competence and we want results. In that regard, I''m not too different from the others, including my agents, who expect me to work on their behalf as much as I demand them to work in mine."

    "Including me," Cassia said.

    "Yup. Holly too. And let me tell, that one isn''t easy! You wouldn''t believe how hard it is to pay someone fairly when they''re practically begging you to swindle them, out loud! Not even exaggerating! And you, Lady Seneschal, saying you were ready to pay anything before I told you a price or revealed the scope of my services, don''t go much further behind!" She tried to inject a sliver of mock anger into her voice, but it still came a little too amused.

    "M-my apologies?"

    "Rather then apologize, listen to me: What Holly requested won''t be enough by the end, and by the time the change happens I want to be on top of it already. And to be on top of that, I have to have an idea what she will be, right?"

    "You say this with such certainty, it''s as if you can see what is to come..." Cassia said, shifting with discomfort over her carpet of weeds.

    "It a gamble, just not the kind I make lightly."

    "Games of luck then."

    "Yeah, though not as much as you think. And I''m the best gambler around, so you better believe I know what I''m talking about."

    Because that was who Marquise was made to be!

    "And if it doesn''t come to be?"

    "Then I adapt from there."

    "...And what would that entail?"

    "Whatever it needs to entail."

    Cassia nodded, deciding to sit over her knees and folding her hands on her lap again. She didn''t look too pleased with the answer, yet what mattered right now for Marquise was that she understood.

    "Well, now that sounded dreary." Marquise scratched at the back of her mind''s head. "Swear I didn''t mean to make it that heavy. To put it another way, I-"

    Marquise froze. Cassia saw, and froze right after. She crept forward, before Cassia spoke. "L-Lady Marquise, have I done something untoward again?"

    "No no, just stay still for a bit, alright? Swear I''ll be quick."

    "W-what is it?!" Cassia said, head snapping left and right in search, "Is there something here?!"

    "C''mon, slow down a bit, or it-"

    Cassia spotted it, creeping over her shoulder and towards the front of her dress.

    Black and roughly thirty centimeters long, a segmented carapace with flat tops, spiny corners, and at least twenty legs in total. Long soft antennae and a sharp rostrum tipping a disc shaped head helped the creature explore its surroundings. It rose its front tip for an instant, as if deciding to acknowledge both women.

    Cassia''s eyes widened. Her muscles tensed.

    A hand slowly reached for the creature.

    And against all expectations, it sure wasn''t Marquise''s.

    "H-how strange." Cassia said, watching it give her knuckles a few quick pecks before hopping aboard. It explored her fingers with interest until it probably realized there was nothing of interest there, then turned towards the length of her arm. She didn''t let it make it past her forearm, her other hand approaching at a gentle pace to bar its way, which it hopped on without aggression. "Is this a centipede? I had never seen one quite like this before."

    "I wish. It''s called a neela in Awinian, and a slumberbug in Yinian. It is also, and I''m sorry but if this is rather blunt, quite venomous as well."

    "Is it now?" Cassia asked, eyes brilliant and fully enraptured by the not-an-actual-insect bug.

    "Yes. Yes it is, darling. I would suggest letting it go its merry way, if you don''t want to stop feeling your arm for a whole day, at best."

    "So long as I don''t frighten it, it won''t try to defend itself. It''s all about the approach, you see?"

    A creature this rustic, not even a Phantasm, couldn''t really understand words. Still, the way it rose on its stubby legs as if to briefly face its handler almost spoke otherwise. Cassia''s expression hardened.

    "Lady Marquise, would you consider it impolite if I requested a deal?" she said.

    "Actually, I''d get kind of excited to hear what you cooked up."

    "I will tell you everything. About Holly, about our god, about the things that I did, no matter how uncomfortable it makes me."

    A part of her felt like joking if that whole "I own you my life, nothing less would repay my debt" thing had already flown from the cage, but now that would be impolite. "And what do you want in exchange?"

    "... I want to know. I want you to help me understand everything."

    "That''s a broad request. Such as?"

    "Why did I survive? Why did Hazel have to die? Who am I? And as you said, what comes next for me?"

    Marquise hummed out loud. Deep inside, she had already come to a choice.

    She extended a hand. "Seems fair!"

    Despite being the proposer, it was Cassia who hesitated. Eventually, her fingers found hers, and turned the back of her hand up. Cassia pressed a gentle kiss on her hand. The neela fled her, crawling Marquise''s arm.

    A classic Yine gesture. Not an agreement between equals, and not what Marquise had intended at all. She was left at a loss how to proceed. Eventually, she spoke.

    "Well then. Would you like to start now?"

    <hr>

    Deep beneath the surface, Rowa di Aila nursed his broken arm.

    The operation days ago had been a disaster. To save one brat nobody really cared about in a mission he was strongarmed into joining, two full bloods had failed to return, forcing him to bear with the disgrace of fleeing. That in itself was a nightmare, the family would be in shambles for the rest of the century, and yet a simple prelude to a worse storm.

    One of Ivias most terrifying creatures had caught him.

    "This is everything I know," Rowa said. "Y-you will now let me go."

    The monstrosity drank from a great bowl, a filthy muscular worm still bobbing her head up and down his disgusting prick. He watched the orgy of vermin with a lazy smile, their disgusting polluted bodies writhing against one another, penetrating one another into a singular mass of flesh with no beginning and no end, the rank of their fluids clogging the air like miasma.

    He would rather have been packed tight with rotting cadavers. It was a fight not to gag.

    "To think so much was happening in mine own backyard, with me none the wiser. Fascinating!" A voice like boulder being ground apart drawled in the language of the Brave, a besmirching. "They do say age makes you blind, after all!"

    "I-I said, you will let me go!"

    "My friend, what with all this rush?!" the Montrosity chuckled. "After all the mess you made in my abode, the least you could do is bear with this old man a little! Don''t you want to partake of the festivities, or enjoy the feast?"

    He tipped over his bowl, and Rowa caught a glimpse of a soft, round object floating thick, scarlet viscosity. He coughed, "I will go home, there is much to deal with."

    "Much? With the Di Aila gone, I imagine your duties would be rather lax."

    "The Di Aila remain! So long as I draw breath, the family lives!"

    "No, don''t you understand?" The Monstrosity glanced his way, and Rowa discovered the only thing more putrid than the smell was his own cowardice. "The Di Aila are gone."

    "A-after everything we did for you! Are so craven as to turn against your allies in time of need?!"

    "I suppose we did have a fruitful few decades together, ever since your kin tumbled down the Skawlan cliff and landed with both feet on my porch, surviving thanks to my orchard and the shield of my name." He chuckled, gurgling some of the red concoction. "Very Well! I will make sure to inform Lady Di Magwalran of your brave defense of the Descendancy, then. I''m sure she will be moved into forgiving all your sins, perhaps even allow your body into your family''s mausoleum."

    He patted his cocksucker like a pet, laying his bowl aside as he rose above his people.

    "Now, everyone! Enjoy yourselves while I make preparations to greet our new guests."

    Another glance, and a grin that split his head in a half. Rowa promised himself he wouldn''t go down easy.

    He wished he wouldn''t.

    "A woman of her caliber deserves nothing outside our best, am I not right?"

 3 - The Butcher of Heron Road 1

    <blockquote>

    "And whom, mine Lord, would embrace wisdom abandoned?

    Mongrels raised hand fed by lessers, deafened by the jangle of silver and cut quarts.

    Would thy words ever reach such ears?"

    Once more did the Lord in Iron laugh, jovial.

    "Oh, Aenexias, foolish Aenexias.

    Thy is a won fight! What is the crown, the staff, the bracelet?

    Mimicries! Combs, pelts, fanning tails for those who bear none.

    Like to the beasts they so covet, true power lies at the tip of talons and incisors.

    Bare yours, allow the forsaken to feel their pierce, their flesh worn history.

    No ear shall ever be deaf to thee."

    -- Citrine Tale

    </blockquote>

    Beyond the cramped roads of the Floodlands, a city sprawled in all directions.

    Treil, who once bore the name Threehills, on account of having been built in a small valley between three hills and the Ivian Cordon, the River Hooale, long ago one of the most disputed borders between the Empire of Galehold and the yet to organize Tyrian tribes, was a remarkable place at fist glance. Second most populous settlement in Bellfort, commercial hub between the Saintdom of Awin, the Kingdom of Bellfort, and the relatively recently open Galehold.

    Its history too, was remarkable. Streets of cobblestone and houses of brick and mortar had been laid over the open tombs of ancient battlefields, burned thrice over by bloody conflict as it exchanged hands between powers both native and foreign, until the Bellfort Revolution, when its council of Elders and Nobles decided that enough was enough, and smoothly fell in with the rebels against the Bear.

    Marquise had a several minute long rant ready at all times, waiting for whenever the topic of Awin''s budding vassal state was broached. Fordu himself held no such unfavorable opinions, finding some odd comfort in it. All sorts, reputable or otherwise, inhabited the place, and traffic was constant both ways, making it a quick and easy place to infiltrate and leave as needed.

    Bringing Aleh along, then, had been easy. The pretentious witch was sat by the knot of a great ficcus, cursing under his breath ever so often as his carving knife slipped and nicked his fingertips, though for all the complaining his work seemed to be coming along fine.

    Fordu was alerted when his hands stopped, head snapping South and West as he focused on a sliver between the canopy of several trees. The illusion broke silently, the copper glint of One-Two sweeping down towards Aleh''s extended arm. It slowed with a few beats of its wings, dropping on his forearm like a stone and almost pulling him to the ground.

    "You were supposed to land, you fucking asshole!" Aleh murmured, glaring at the bird-shaped object. "I give up. Fuck this!"

    "Aleh," Fordu said.

    "Patience Agare, I''m getting to it!" Aleh touched his finger to One-Two''s front-side. Once his biometric signal was recognized, he moved it in a particular pattern, hitting several keyspots and unlocking its back compartment. Snuggled among hides laid a letter, rolled into a small tube. Fordu reached in, plucking it out and wasting no time in reading it top to bottom.

    After a few seconds of silence, a cough.

    "So? Not going to read it to me, Agare?" Aleh said. "Going to let me guess what exhilarating things Marquise has rooted out to make our week worse?"

    For the nth time in too short a period of time, Fordu wished he could sigh. Still, the witch had a point, and so, making a discreet check if there was nobody eavesdropping, he crouched and began to read out loud.

    "To all my men.

    "I would like to first offer my condolences for your loss, Almalilly most of all. Blades had always been an incredibly reliable asset to our operation, and the kind of ally you could go an entire lifetime without ever meeting. It will be a difficult bond to move past, and I wish I could offer something more meaningful than platitudes, but circumstances tie my hands.

    "Things have changed. I do recall the Di Aila family, and for all their political insignificance and overall hostility to Beli Di Magwalran''s faction, they were fairly well connected and poor with secrets. I agree with your previous assessment, Fordu, Holly''s existence reaching her ears has become a matter of time.

    "I will not condemn you for your mistake. As unfortunate as allowing one of the Children escape is, if there is one thing I learned in all my time sabotaging the Azure is that if one of their Heirs really wants to get away, it will get away. Besides, I don''t see too much of a likelihood Lady Di Magwalran will have immediate enough interest to make an open move, so long as you remain far from Skawlan borders.

    "Rather, it is the other story that worries me. That the Sect would send forces through the Tunnels was expected, but had things gone according to plan, their fated enemy would have been either the Royal Corps of Bellfort, or one of the Len. The Second, the Third, and even the Fifth Len would have caused ripples I would have felt from here, yet there is no movement in your region. It leaves us with one alternative, the way I see it, a rather unpleasant one that I''m sure you already guessed. Out of season, but our dear comrades might have poked that particular lion awake.

    "That being said, the plan stays on track. Show Holly the best of the Dashi world, keep being her big happy family, and keep me up on any changes to her behavior, specially anything related to those "questionable interests" you say you might have picked on. I will try to move a few things strings from here, but keep your eyes on the road and your ears sharp. Only change routes if strictly necessary.

    "You are not alone. Send One-Two back as soon as possible, so we may keep in touch.

    "--With love, Marquise."

    "You didn''t have to read that last part out loud," Aleh said.

    "Then you shouldn''t have asked me to read one of Marquise''s letters out loud," Fordu said.

    Aleh might have had a good answer to that, but he restrained himself. Making a show out of taking a deep breath, he glared in Agare''s direction. "Alright, nevermind that then. When she said we were left with one alternative..."

    " ...She meant the Citrine Tale, certainly."

    "Wondrous." Aleh rolled his eyes, knocking the back of his head again the ficcu''s trunk. "And she says we have to stay on course! Does she want this to fail?!"

    "Believe in Marquise. She is not the kind of person to invest blindly in a plan."

    "Not anymore, anyhow," he scoffed.

    There was much Fordu wished to context with that statement, yet he knew it was a lost battle. Instead, he pursued the topic. "Are you having doubts, Aleh?"

    "Curious you ask, I am not so sure myself!" he chuckled with as much mirth as his scowl indicated. "We are past the point of no return, and well past the point doubts could be acted upon, yet despite being one of those to have met her the earliest, I still fail to see what Marquise does to entrust so much to Holly''s presence!"

    "There is a purpose to it. So long as it is fulfilled, you will get your due."

    Aleh clicked his tongue. "Don''t play on being dense, you Faceless pisshole, if my concerns where with how much of my trust Marquise was worth, I would not even be here! No, my concerns lie with how we can, or rather, cannot deliver on her expectations."

    "Then you are not listening to me. This team was picked for a specific reason-"

    "This team was picked because out of our merry band of callous and rancorous assholes, three of us would better fit the makeshift family of an overgrown child, and the fourth would come regardless. You and perhaps that other creature were the sole ones to be chosen on bellic merit, and the crack in that particular wall has been left wide open after what might be the first of many engagements!"

    "Which we dealt with."

    "At what cost?" Aleh struggled to rise, leaning back against his tree. Fordu made to help, but a warning swing kept him away. "Indulge me: We came this close to a total loss against a third or a forth of what a Lesser House of Skawla could bring to bear. Now, we are heading into potential battle with the reason this side of the Yine Wall, despite an abundance of skirmishes, pillaging, and miscellaneous issues never suffered from organized brigandry in the last century. How?"

    "By not doing that." Fordu said, feeling some irritation. "Avoid the fight altogether, and flee if they make an attempt."

    "And that is the thing! How?! We aren''t the instigators, so if it comes to stour how can you guarantee running will even be an option?! It wasn''t last time. We were hooked from the start, separated and almost culled by an opponent that shouldn''t have known our weak points in the first place!"

    "Much of their plan succeeded on coincidence, they probably didn''t know half as much as you think."

    Aleh looked away. "They knew Holly was there."

    Fordu almost clenched his fists.

    "They knew where we would be. They knew-"

    "Aleh, you are losing morale," Fordu said.

    "Ha! Good eyes for a Faceless! Now, use them to look my way and figure how am I suppose not to!"

    They stared at each other in an impasse. Worse, Fordu couldn''t entirely deny his points, the situation with the Di Aila had been come uncomfortably close to a loss.

    "Listen to me Agare," Aleh said, "You know my loyalties, you know how much I can and will do for this mission, and killing myself is where I draw the line. I did not come this far to fucking die, and I will not join your mistress'' protracted suicide!"

    That gave him pause. Watching the young witch, Fordu bristled. "What did you just say?"

    "My dreams are hers, her dreams are mine," his smile was dripping with triumph, and not for the first time did Fordu eagered to fix that. "Did you think I, of all members of the Sect, couldn''t connect a few dots to find out what our esteemed Lady''s end goal is?"

    "That will not happen."

    "I don''t care either way." Aleh snarled. With each passing second, that hostility left his eyes, until all that was left was the haggard young creature they had tracked down so long ago. "I don''t care. All I want is to leave, and if you can''t reassure me we will make it at least to the last step, I would be much grateful if you cut this loose end right here and now."

    "Don''t be dramatic." Fordu said, though with little feeling behind it. "We were taken by a better prepared foe, yet we survived. We were ready, we still are, this is group created with more purpose than you can see, and if that isn''t enough evidence, we might have gained one other triumph."

    "What you saw that night," Aleh said, not sounding too convinced

    "Indeed."

    "...One Child of the Lake with odd peculiarities is far from what we would need to repel the Haruspect, Agare."

    "It will help. Besides, we do have more resources to rely on now."

    Aleh sighed. "I suppose I must grant as much."

    "And as you said, I will not pretend to be dense, there is nothing I could say that would reassure you, Aleh, not me. I offer what I have available: honesty, plans, and resources. This is will be the closest you will come to escaping the Sect."

    In his early twenties, Aleh had never lost that quality to him that made his anger look no more severe than a teen''s pout. It was difficult to remember, sometimes, that this was a man Marquise had approved of, who had done as well as humanly possible against forces far above what he had been expected to fight directly.

    "Fine," he backed away first, turning and nearly slipping on a root. "Fuck! Fine! Enough of jungles! I''m going back, see how Almalilly is doing. Are you coming?"

    "Later. Please inform her we will have much to discuss soon."

    "Yes, yes," Aleh said, stumbling his way back to Treil. This close, he wouldn''t need any escorts, unless something had been trailing them from out of sight.

    Again.

    Fordu waited until he was out of sight, before climbing the closest tree and watching him from a safe distance, all the way to the gates.

    <hr>

    They had settled around one of the less reputed parts of the Southmost hill, a place far from Treil''s main roads that still saw enough crowds all sorts came and went, maintaining an unspoken rule that made questions unwelcome.

    Find this and other great novels on the author''s preferred platform. Support original creators!

    Their inn was an ideal place to hide, and an ideal place to stay up to date on issues usually not publicly spoken, with cheap services and cheaper goods. Or, in other words, a polite den of debauchery, with a bar that ran full from evening to dawn and rooms that hardly ever quietened.

    Needless to say, Fordu did not enter it lightly. He could, if he so wished, he was certain that so long as he stuck to his own person nobody would be interest enough to start something, but that was a double edged blade: just as it was a good place to observe, it was a good place to be observed, and better not test whichever flimsy cover they had found.

    Instead, he waited until night had fallen, climbing in silence to a shorter building parallel to the inn, searching for one of the two rooms they had rented. Once he was sure there were no witness to a potential mistake, he crossed the distance with a jump, and swiftly entered through the window.

    It was dark inside, its sole illumination, an incandescent cracked lamp filled with a meager serving of Fireflystones, having been covered by folded sheets so as to allow only a sliver of light to touch the ground around the window. The floor was a killing field of creaking boards, an alarm system as effective as any, and would have been troublesome to cross had Aleh not repaired the enchantment of his boots.

    Silence would not trick the rooms sole inhabitant, however. A bolt flew true, certain to hit his neck had he not caught it midair.

    "Sir." Rosen''s voice echoed from the shadows. "My most sincere apologies."

    "It''s a good reflex to have." Agare flipped the bolt on his hand and returned it to the dark, careful not to turn it into a deadly projectile once more. "Wouldn''t have hurt me anyway. Rather, it''s your verbal slips that have become frequent enough I don''t believe they are slips anymore."

    "What slips, si- Oh." Rosen gasped. "I-I am so sorry, s- Agare, I did not mean to-"

    "Stop. I was... joking. I don''t like it, but if it''s so important to you I suppose I can bear with it."

    "Much gratitude, sir." Rosen shuffled around, the click of strings being pulled back into place coming soon after. "It does mean a lot to me."

    Fordu returned his attention to the center of the room. A large container had been settled in the middle of a large magical array, drawn in chalk with sixteen interconnected points, each bearing a jar filled with different types of dead vermin. The numerology had been meaningless, as far as Fordu understood, but he had seen no issue with relenting on that particular issue.

    He halted close to the array''s boundary, unwilling to disturb its rather complex workings. "Has she come back?"

    "No, sir," Rosen said. "Not while I remain awake. If you permit me a comment?"

    "Marquise has not birthed, raised, or slept with Furfu the Third, no," Fordu said.

    "N-no sir, I guarantee you, t-that was not what I wished to imply!" Rosen was quick to answer. For all his imponent appearance, Fordu had always found him one of the easiest to deal with agents to the Marquise.

    "I know." Fordu took a step back, returning towards the window. "You are curious why the Marquise sent her on the mission, and I know the kinds of theories Aleh would have proposed."

    "He did," Rosen sighed. "Forgive the young sir, he is merely lashing out. I fear he is not accustomed to losses on the field... But if you permit me, I do have some curiosity on the topic, her behavior during the previous confrontations was..."

    "I permit you to be honest, Rosen. It was shameful, far from what is expected of someone once rumored to have been considered to Unit Paleworm."

    "... I must confess, I had taken them for false. So she was that promising indeed?" Rosen stirred, grunted. Down beneath, in the alley, a shadow went past the windowsill without ever looking up.

    "She was. She will be, if it''s the last thing I do. I''m going now, Rosen, keep your eyes sharp, and remember to take your medicine. Tomorrow, we will gather to discuss our next steps, and your presence will be required."

    "... Of course, sir, how could I forget?" Rosen grumbled, bitter. Fordu didn''t blame him, his circumstances were just as unfortunate as the others.

    He slipped outside in silence. Careful not to draw attention, he crept down the windows, four rooms to the right counted, finding his destination already filled with life. A brief glance inside, and he entered.

    Neither the glaring Aleh nor the swaying Almalilly jumped at his presence, both already aware of his coming. In fact, Almalilly even smiled and waved in his direction, a sign as worrying as any as far as he was concerned. Her face and hair were completely drenched with water, as was the far corner of the couple''s bed she was sitting on. Still, he could spot the vomit stains at the corner of her lips and the collar of her simple green dress.

    "Took your time," Aleh said, sitting down on the opposite bed. "Found her nearly passed out at the counter."

    "Uuuugh, still stuck on that?" Almalilly said, massaging the bridge of her nose in clear discomfort. "I told I was just going to rest my eyes for a while! And could you speak a little quieter please, your voice is too shrill."

    "W-wh- I would have you know my voice is not-!"

    "Aleh," Fordu said. "Quiet."

    His glare intensified, but considering he got started on his breathing routine, he had heard loud and clear.

    "Almalilly, report."

    "Sooorry, I-" she hiccuped, "I was listening for anything at the bar like you told me, and the innkeeper was looking at me weird, so I thought to myself, since we now have all this coin to waste, why not blend in a little better?"

    "We have not a coin to waste," Fordu felt the start of a headache, but pushed on.

    "Well, all those things you bought with that big blue flower tell a different story, little man!" Almalilly laughed, and even drunk it came as completely farcical.

    "You know as well as any of us that I only bought what we needed."

    "And sold what you don''t, right?" She gave a sharp smile, the accusation echoing across the room. He allowed it to linger, until the mood left her. As it died, she fell back into her bed, eyes firmly fixed at the ceiling. "Sorry. That one was petty even to me."

    "O-oi, Almalilly!" Aleh said. "If you are going to rest, do so on your side, as I do not care for rescuing you from suffocating on your own blie!"

    "Yeah, chill out, I''m getting there." She turned, laying her head over her own folded arm. "So annoying, can''t even rest my eyes in peace anymore."

    "... Almalilly, report in earnest now," Fordu interjected before the bickering grew unbearable.

    She sighed. "Grapevine caught nothing on the Citrine, Boss. Rather, the gossip of the moment is on the mysterious raids happening at the Mountainous Region."

    "Raids?" Aleh frowned.

    "Villages in Awin going dark one after another, refugees from the mountains starting fights, the underground trails getting hit hard by someone who doesn''t ask questions, a huge mess. Lots of people worried, lots of gossip circulating, and some of the Len might be moving West, or are already there, something like that."

    And not here? So Marquise''s information had been right, as expected. Aleh seemed nonplussed, casting a questioning glance Fordu''s way. His lack of answer proved enough of one, as Aleh resumed his routine with renewed intensity.

    "And nothing on the Citrine."

    "Nothing solid, nothing around these parts, but you know better than me there won''t be any of that until they start acting in the open," Almalilly said, eyes closing. "And then it''s the same old hubbub, cat chases uluun chases mice, until they decide to hide again and everyone can rest for a couple of years. Every time I heard them brought up this week was entirely out of paronia, rather than any genuine evidence."

    "That''s something," Fordu said.

    "And I feel like shit. Uuuuuugh, Awinian fruit ale tastes so good but goes down so bad..." She grumbled, curling into herself.

    He hesitated. Watching a once reliable subordinate brought this low made him uncomfortable in a way he hadn''t felt in years. A distant part of him reached for years of old teachings, wishing to shake and slap her sober, eager to scream on her face how pathetic it was for even a Face to make themselves so comfortable during a mission, anything to make this scene disappear.

    Another part wanted to do worse. A cracked tool was better broken, least it becomes a disadvantage at an innoportune time, least it comes to be wielded against its owner. Elden teaching, quickly cut before they festered.

    He was helpless to deal with this. Faceless and Face alike were raised so such situations never arose, and what inevitably fell through the cracks seamlessly dealt with.

    "...Almalilly," he forced himself to say, receiving not a glance in response, "has Aleh informed you Marquise''s letter arrived today?"

    "Hmm-hmm," she hummed. "Want me to rewrite one for Holly again?"

    "It would be appreciated, but I will leave the decision to you, those we have are enough. Rather, I want you to keep listening, and avoid doing yourself this level of disfavor, it may jeopardize us as well. I want you sober until tomorrow, I plan to hold a meeting on our future steps tomorrow and we need your inputs.

    "Because they have been so helpful..."

    "They have," he said, but she didn''t seem to be paying attention. With a deep exhale, her body relaxed, and he had not to guess what happened. "Disgraceful. Aleh?"

    "You want me to nurse her." Aleh trembled to his feet. "Fuck''s sake. You have more planned for tonight?"

    Fordu gave a slight nod."Something I''m better suited for."

    Chasing down a rampaging monster.

    Without another word, he slipped out the window and disappeared into the night.

    <hr>

    Ivias was said to be, in common parlance, a giant forest surrounded by water.

    Not entirely accurate, but Fordu had never cared to argue its finer points. He had sneaked through much of it in his time, and in part agreed with the sentiment, it''s just that he had little interest for the nuances of his environment that had no practical use. What local fauna could present a danger to him, if any? How could the flora be used to place himself?

    Both Light regions bore the most clear space, having the least amount of cover overall and the most chance to be pursued by common cavalry. The Floodlands subregion was as dense as a maze, with extreme poor footing and uneven terrain, so much even the Ivian natives had once avoided making settlements within its reaches. The Hollows was a no man''s land forced to bear Dashi life, and did not hesitate to show its displeasure by stimulating dangerous Phantasms into proliferating. The Skawlan Wastelands were a hellhole to most, yet one of the safest places for his kind.

    The Sacred Forest Region was an odd meeting ground between all those. Were him to be plucked and dropped off in a random corner within its vast reaches, he might believe himself lost in any of the previous at first. The position of Mt. Shulgan, the ruins of old Ivian settlements, and other such details would eventually clear the misunderstanding.

    One in particular, however, stood famous.

    The Yimolaga tree. Capable of reaching over sixty meters of height, wood the slight yellow tinged white of luun milk, it had earned the moniker of "Dead Giant''s Hand" for the way its trunk divided itself ever upwards, as if reaching out of the ground for salvation. It required a very specific quality to its soil to grow, a quality found the most frequently within the Sacred Forest, though not exclusively.

    Rather, the regional indentifier here was its treatment. To the Yine, to the Skawlans, to Territory Gobans, the Yimolaga was nothing more than an incredibly valuable commodity, its wood reaching ludicrous prices on foreign markets while its nuts were a very valuable ingredient in both alchemy and enchantment. To the Tyrian cult, however? The Yimolaga was sacred, an omen of prosperity to be cared for and protected.

    Only within the Tale''s borders did cutting down an Yimolaga bear sentences worse than murder. Only within the Tale''s borders would Fordu find one of these grown to such gargantuan sizes, draped in veils, shawls, prayers beads, and so much ritualistic paraphernalia their accumulated mass grew tumorous on its trunk.

    All this to say, Fordu wondered if the bloodied creature before him understood the irony of her desecration, if she was conscious of what she had done at all.

    The body of the Ivian Cave Hound had been torn in too many pieces for easy identification. Blood splatters reached several meters away from the carnage, a great dragging mark marring the once pristine folds of an old ceremonial robe, ending in a clumped mass of gray, rough hide and red muscles. Avoiding the smaller chunks and fragments of bone that peppered his path became a challenge the closer he approached, avoiding sudden moves as to not alert the still raging Faceless.

    She stopped, a fist raised to strike a head that now bore almost no skull.

    "H-have you come to e-execute me?" Furfu said.

    "... Look at me." Fordu said.

    "I-I deserve it. I-I know I deserve it, so p-please be quick, I don''t w-want to bear this anymore, I d-don''t want to live knowing t-that I can only fail h-her-!"

    "Furfu III!"

    She shrunk down against the splayed cadaver, covering her head. She was whimpering so softly he could barely hear it. His fists clenched for an instant, but he managed to calm himself.

    "Look my way. I will not repeat myself."

    If she had thrown a glance over her shoulder, he would have been justified in in pursuying that nagging feeling at the back of his mind, but he knew better. She took her time shifting against the gore, turning completely towards him.

    "Pull back your hood, and remove your helmet."

    Shivering hands reached up, their moves slow and careful as if trying not to scare a wild animal. He couldn''t help give a pointed look at the larger carnivore left all around her. He watched as her bent steel helmet, made for the particular necessities of a Faceless, was put aside, revealing her inheritance in full.

    The Mark of Eligor was not only a Faceless gift, not only the sign of their duty, but also a powerful indicator of their state. A part of him hoped Furfu''s Mark would be undisturbed, that this violence was only part of her natural self; a part of him feared Furfu''s Mark would have overflown, in which case her prediction would have been right.

    Neither was correct. Its movements had grown rapid, shapes surging to the surface at irregular intervals, yet never quite breaching outside for all their obvious presence, a small relief. Things could still be fixed.

    "You''ve been careless," Fordu said, risking approach. "The mysterious deaths of several large animals, including Phantasmal predators, was picked up on fast and now there are talks of expeditions to hunt down this potential threat. If they discover the responsible party is one of the Faceless, what do you think would happen?"

    "M-My apologies," she whispered.

    "Don''t be cheeky with me. I know your ways better than you think."

    She looked up, meeting Mark to Mark before relenting with a full body tremble. "S-sorry."

    "Have you at least been taking nutrition from the things you kill?" He came close enough they could reach one another at a sliver of a blink. He wished things wouldn''t come to that.

    "Y-yes, and I still have some M-Mush too."

    "Good. This stops tonight," he said, leaving no space for discussion. "You will head back and keep watch over Holly."

    "...H-heheheh."

    The sound took him by surprise. Beyond a mockery of laugh. For all he didn''t retreat, he couldn''t avoid tensing. "Furfu."

    "I-I''m useless, right? C-completely useless!" With every sentence, her first met the ground, cracking the earth. "I failed her! I-I failed you, I failed H-Holly, but most of all I failed her! I tried to fight, I did, y-you have to believe me, just because I d-didn''t want her to be disappointed in me, but m-my head went blank and I, and I-I-!"

    "You did not fail her, your growth was expected to be slow, she would-"

    "No! It''s not enough, y-you know it''s not enough! I-I''m still too weak, stupid, fucking p-pathetic!" The earth trembled. Her screams resounded through the night. "I thought I-I could do it if it was for her s-sake! D-did you know she didn''t f-force me here? She asked me if I would be okay with it! She asked me if I thought I could do it, and I lied!"

    ...Marquise had known Furfu would accept the proposal with practically no motivation so long as it came from her. Had she stayed, she wouldn''t be of any more help than a meat shield when the final steps of her side of the plan came around. That she didn''t know, had been both Marquise''s and his'' decision.

    "Having you fight is already a great improvement from the state we found you," he said.

    "A g-great improvement? W-where?! H-he was right about me, that stupid f-fucking witch, I didn''t help, I d-disappointed her! H-he''s going to tell her h-how useless I am!" She snapped to her feet, as if tugged by invisible strings, already too close before he could react. "I-I need to get stronger. It''s why I''m here. C-can you see?"

    "I''ve seen it. Furfu, this is-"

    "Enemies. The largest I-I could find! Low P-Phantasms, M-medium P-Phantasms, apex predators, anything. I-I can better this way, l-little by little-"

    It was disturbing.

    It was unlike Almalilly''s state, however. He knew better. He was supposed to know better. Yet, he couldn''t knock the sense of revulsion at seeing one of his kind, one that should be at his level, so completely broken. He should be empathetic, knowing what had to be done to turn a human being into Furfu III, what she was allowed to do to herself and others, and he loathed that he couldn''t.

    He needed this to end, and soon.

    "...I understand," he said.

    She froze on the spot, watching him in silence.

    "If it weren''t for her, you would be a cadaver rotting in the woods."

    "Y-yes! She''s the reason I''m alive, the reason I live!" she staggered his way, bloody fingers grasping him by the shoulder.

    "She is your light."

    "Yes!" her grip tightened, and he felt his armor dig into his skin.

    Fordu had never known how to comfort, but tools he understood.

    "Then this? This is not the way."

    He could feel her gloves pressing with such strength his leathers would not hold if she decided to cause damage. "T-then how am I suppose to become what I was a-always meant to be, just like s-she wants?"

    The frankness, the accuracy, even the specific wording of it, all brought his thoughts to a crashing halt. He nodded, needing a second to recover his words. "Not like this. You want to be useful, so help her just like she help you, but here all you can do is sabotage her work, putting her agents and her life goals in peril. What you see in these animals, you will not against your true enemy."

    Some of the strength left her hand. "N-not against the Tales?"

    He nodded. "And not against the Sect."

    At the mere utterance of the name a full body shiver crossed her, reaching all the way to his muscles. Saying it out loud, it made things feel too real, when he had always preferred to pretend they had been a dream. He was the one to feel useless then, but he cooled his thoughts fast, least they interfered.

    "W-what am I suppose to do then, A-Agare?"

    "Follow us. Remember her words to you. We are with you, and so long we are you have nothing to fear," he said.

    "A-and you really believe that?" She squeezed harder, searching his Mark as if any sign of deception would be there.

    "I know it to be true, because I have been with her the longest."

    He had been there at her lowest. He had been there at her strongest. He had fought besides the monsters and thought besides the woman, had seen the separation and blur, and so he knew Furfu was, in a stranger way, not too unlike her. She had been one day, after all, her second coming, with all the promises and none of the mistakes.

    What a delusion.

    "E-everything you just told me, i-it''s what you tell yourself isn''t it?" Furfu said, interrupting his thoughts.

    He didn''t flinch, not physically. "I''m telling you what I know, you can make of that what you want."

    "Y-you were always a little like us, a-and like Holly too." She finally let go, staggering back without ever tripping over the creature''s corpse. "M-my apologies if this sounds too rude, s-sir, but I think that''s why I tolerate you so m-much."

    "...You tolerate me?" he said, incredulous.

    "If I didn''t, you would know."

    And that, he knew to be her truth. The threat passed him by, as she turned and walked away, him following her steps closely.

    That night, she would still bath herself and cleanse her equipment, and he would ponder her carefully. Furfu III was a danger every part as much as she was a potential asset, and even now he was uncertain of all the nuances to Marquise interest.

    What Marquise wanted, however, he would follow, so long as his words still worked.

 3 - The Butcher of Heron Road 2

    At the edges of consciousness, Holly felt herself dragged from comfort.

    "Holly! Hold on!"

    Indistinct sounds, blurs of light; she didn''t remember where she was, or what could be happening. From head to toe, her body was fuzzy, as if she had been buried in cotton. There was no pain, no anguish, it was nice.

    "Open you eyes! Damnit, he must-"

    She was jerked around like a puppet, violent movements bringing her further and further from her resting place. She tried to move, but not a finger would obey her.

    "No further options then.

    "Shit! Holly, I''m-

    "Fuck it! We can deal with it later!"

    And then came life. It jolted through her like a lance, a sweet lure awakening things best left unnamed. A twitch, followed by an involuntary lunge, nerves following were muscles could no longer, and she felt-

    <hr>

    -Exhausted. She was cold. Miserable. Her insides where churning, uncaring of her sores. She could sense herself enough to feel distress at all the dirt and grime built over he skin, coating her tongue. And fainter, she felt her limbs dragging across something soft, legs and arms both.

    "-It needs to be done. I couldn''t finish it."

    "Have you gone blind?! Look at how much I have in hands, do you think I could-"

    "...She''s gone. You can stop."

    "No, so long as we-"

    The voices were familiar. The voices were unrecognizable. She felt so tired, she wished she could go to sleep.

    "My condolences. I was-"

    "I know. Take her inside, I will... finish here, I guess."

    "Wait a moment, and I-"

    "No. I-I mean, please, let me."

    Were they close? Were they far? At times it seemed the former, and at times it seemed the latter. She didn''t care. If anything, it made her angry, the way they distracted her from her rest. She forced herself up, and the mere effort sent her-

    <hr>

    -Scurrying to the bars of her door. Was Hazel sobbing?

    No. She had been imagining it, hadn''t she? She had to. She angled herself left and right, teasing the incandescent light of the single lit torch into reflecting off any sign of wetness on her sister''s cheek, but there was nothing. Why, then, she wasn''t looking her way, she didn''t know.

    "Holly." Even Hazel''s voice came off strange, hollow."Did you ever consider only pretending you were stuck in that cage?"

    "I-I don''t want to upset God. The deeper I''m here, the safer we are!" Holly said. She carefully reached for her door, rattling it against its chains lightly in the hopes Hazel would look her way. She didn''t.

    Hazel scoffed. "And have you never considered there might not be a way not to do just that? That you upset God by mere existence? If so, love, it wouldn''t make a difference being in or out, would it?"

    "If you''re going to be talking about running away again, let me tell you, I''m not interested!" she joked. She waited for a response, and when none came, she started feeling genuine worry. "Y-you know we can''t. W-we would never escape God! Please don''t do anything stupid."

    Hazel didn''t turn, but she did shift on her foot, hands both crossing up front. "I''ve been thinking: If I stop believing you, what happens?"

    "W-what?"

    "If I stop believing you''re doing all of this for me, for us, what happens? I would be really hurt, dear, but without you to hold me back, couldn''t I just leave?"

    Holly gasped. "S-stop that!"

    "I could be free to look for our real family all I want. I could go back to Skawla all by myself and live like a princess, and who would stop me? The old coot rooted you in there, and not like he runs very fast himself. Cassia?"

    "I said stop it!" This time, there was no care, Holly flew at her bars, only realizing her mistake when she felt the burn of black metal against the soft skin of her stomach. She retreated, noticing that she had got on her feet, standing heads above Hazel. However, when her sister finally turned to face her, blank expression almost hidden under the intense fire in her eyes, she didn''t feel like the taller one.

    "I''m joking!" Hazel flashed a smile. "I mean, would somebody from back home even remember us? I got a little tired of waiting a couple years ago now, anyway. Say, when was the last time you felt like you fit in?"

    "A-are you alright? I-I''m not the best talker or anything like that, but I can listen to you!"

    "I don''t mean with the villagers. Fuck those people! When was the last time you felt like you fit into anything? Like there was a place in life for you, something you could actually accept, or at least be at peace with?"

    Holly watched for any signs her leg was being pulled in some way, but Hazel remained wooden. The silence stretched, and awkwardness forced her to speak. "I-I don''t think I get it."

    "Let me give you an example. I tried fitting in with this Herd of ours, I did! You see, my fantasies couldn''t hold me up anymore, so tried to become like them," Hazel said, approaching, her eyes never leaving Holly as she lifted a hand and enveloped one of the black spikes. "Did you know that small villages never forget what you did? And never forget who you are either. Some old cock with a broom up his ass actually looked a little sick every time I prayed with them. Every time I sang with them. Every time dared breath their air!"

    "Y-you''re going to hurt yourself! Stop that!"

    "That bitch that''s always scheming with the old man somehow managed to be one of the friendliest faces I came across, by merit of never scowling when she saw me. She never called me even by his family name when we weren''t in private, but at least she doesn''t try to hurt me anymore. Others, they..." She clenched so hard around the spike her knuckles turned pale.

    "I said stop that! How is this going to help you?!"

    "Help?"

    "Y-yeah!"

    "Ha!" The laugh came from out of nowhere, shocking Holly into retreating to the safety of her alcoves. "What help? There isn''t any help Holly, not here and not coming. You get what I mean now?"

    "No, I don''t get you at all!"

    "Then look!" Her hand flew inside her room, palm held upwards and at Holly. She risked coming closer, only to see exactly what she had expected! The skin of Hazel''s hand had been left red, flushed like a beaten cheek, or as if she had brushed onto a hot cauldron. "Can you see now?"

    "I-I can see that you hurt yourself, just like I said! C-can you come in? I promise I''ll stay away! I-it''s just that- well, I know it''s not like you actually got burned or anything, but there is a spring here in the back that really helps-"

    "Fucking listen for a second!" A punch to her bars. The metal rattled against the stone, silencing Holly. "You like to pretend that you''re such a helpless idiot nowadays, don''t you? Well, I told you my piece: the last time I felt like I fit into anything? Never. And never will! Amazing that it took me nearly thirty years to realize, isn''t it?! Took me until it was practically spelled to my face!

    "But this isn''t from today. You know how the Lesser treated you before- you know, and you know how they treated me. I would ask if you really ever believed they would have fixed up their act by now, but I know you aren''t half stupid enough to say yes and meant it, which means you know I hate being here with every fiver of my being.

    "So that leaves us with a question Holly." She stepped away, the blank mask back in place. "Why are you inside that cage?"

    "I-I told you already! I don''t want you to get hurt!"

    "And you know I''m already hurt. Every day it''s a different bruise, Holly, even if most aren''t the kind you can see. Let me ask again: Why are you inside that cage?"

    "G-God would-"

    "Do nothing worse than what I already get. Why are you inside that cage?"

    "I-I-"

    "It would have been so easy for us both to get away. I knew how! You know what my mistake was? I couldn''t leave you behind! I tried to convince you again and again to come with me instead of getting the message and just leaving. If only you had come with me, I wouldn''t have to- I wouldn''t have to-!"

    Holly overturned her own mind searching for the right answer, feeling the sharp edge of end touching her neck. She needed something, and she needed something fast, what could she use-

    "D-don''t be selfish! What about Cassia and Elder Seneschal? D-don''t we own them at least something?"

    Hazel looked at her, mouth agape in astonishment.

    "I-I mean, I know you have your issue with the Elder, b-but think about Cassia! If you went away, who would she have? Julius? He stinks! A-and you know they would never agree to go, they were born here! S-so please, don''t- Hazel?

    As if she had told the funniest joke on the planet, Hazel was laughing. Full-bellied, tears on her eyes, gasping for breath in between guffaws laughing.

    "Oh Holly, you really do care about us, don''t you?"

    Holly smiled, uneasy.

    Then it hit her, and she froze.

    A dread with no origin, a wrongness with no place, neither noticed yet both so present she could practically feel their touch. She could hear them, inside her mind, gnawing at the foundations of the world and coming ever closer, infectious ruin neither of them could escape.

    "Holly, you know I would do anything for you, right?" Hazel said, a longing fondness to her voice. She turned and walked away. "I love you. No matter what happens, I want you to know that I love you more than anything"

    "H-Hazel? What do you mean? Where are you going?" Holly said, but the words were not her own. She could feel the ideas, the desire to say certain things forcing themselves into her mind as she watched her sister leave, "Can''t you stay a little longer? It''s been so long!"

    "I have something I need to prepare for, love," Hazel said, never turning back and never slowing her stride. "It will be a while until we next see each other, okay? But don''t worry about me."

    "Hazel, please! I-I want- don''t- I-I mean-!" She fought against herself, tearing all those empty words away as she tried to figure out what was going on. It had to be that wrongness, wasn''t it? But where was it? Where did it lay? Was in on her, on her surroundings, on Hazel, on-

    On everything.

    "I..." Holly said, and felt her home crashing to halt. "I remember now. This wasn''t how it went at all."

    A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

    Hazel stopped mid step, half her body already out of sight.

    "This wasn''t how our last conversation went at all, that is," Holly said, feeling that dreadful burden leave them. She should have felt happy, but she was bitter, mournful.

    "It wasn''t?" Hazel''s voice was neutral. "Did you say the wrong thing, then?"

    "I-I don''t know. I said what I said, and it turned into a screaming match. She ran off before I could apologize."

    Beyond frozen, Hazel was petrified, not the slightest sway or heave of breath to her body.

    Little by little, the veil lifted from her eyes, and the spell broke.

    This place was not her room of so long ago. It wasn''t, she understood, a real place at all. For all its likeness, it had no details, the walls and the floor and ceiling all closer to solid blurs of color than any sort of actual stone. The Bars had a shine to them that looked painted on, the once feared black spikes a hue different than she remembered. She reached for one, carefully, and touched its surface. For all her body begged her to jump away, it had no temperature, cause no pain, had barely a point to it.

    "Odd thing to forget, don''t you think?" Hazel had approached during her distraction, reaching for opposite side of the same spike with no discomfort.

    "I-it''s not like I forgot it, I just didn''t want to think about it," Holly said, sitting down.

    Hazel imitated her, sitting down in the same position. "But the last thing I ever said to you got carved too deep, didn''t it? ''Because Holly is such and obedient girl, isn''t she?'' "

    Even now, that line sent shivers down her spine. Her blood boiled. "Who are you? No, what is all of this? I-is this a dream?"

    Hazel''s head cocked to the side in a distinctly un-Hazel way. "Who do I look like I am? And does this look like a dream?"

    The second question felt like an easy one. Felt. But, if this wasn''t a dream, what else could it be? As for the first... Holly rose into a crouch, heels and palms held firmly against the ground. Hazel rose at the same time, mimicking her movements perfectly, down to motions she knew Hazel had not been flexible enough to follow. But her large eyes, her small mouth with thin lips, her skin a tone darker than most of the tanned farmers, her heavy dress of green and brown, lacking in fanciful touches just like the one she wore that day...

    "N-no, I don''t think you are Hazel at all," Holly said.

    "Then what do I look like?" the Thing wearing Hazel''s face said.

    "People are more than just their appearance!"

    "Then are you not a monster, Mariwa?"

    Caught off guard, Holly flinched.

    And the next moment, she raged. She flew at her bars, bending them forwards and cracking the stone holding them in place as she tried to break free, the facsimile of her sister meeting her half way without a blink. For all her pretense, that breathless thing had no power to its own, managing nothing but to hold Holly''s hand as she was pushed back, as they got closer and closer.

    Soon, she would burst out of this cage, and show this faker just how much she appreciated having her sister''s memory desecrated.

    "You know nothing about me!" Holly spoke under her breath. "You can pretend to be her all you want, but no matter what she called me, what she claimed we were, she never said I was anything less than human!"

    "Because she knew you were above, don''t you think?" the Thing said, so close that if it were not for the metal in between them, Holly could reach out with her mouth and bite that mask right off. "She knew more about you then you know about yourself now, don''t you think?"

    "Liar! I''m-" Holly pushed, and the further she pushed the more confused she became. The bars were bending, but not breaking, already having taken the curvature of a half moon without any signs of damage. She jumped back, and the Thing followed suit. "I-I don''t need to get to you to get to you!"

    The Thing''s head cocked to the opposite side. "But that doesn''t make any sense, does it?"

    "Watch me!"

    Once, Holly might have been a cowardly little girl hiding in the dark. But if this Thing understood even the start of her, it would know what she had been through, and most importantly, what she had learned.

    She reached into the depths of her being, feeling a thousand arms hidden far beneath her skin twitch as they awakened, immediately commanding her Will to seize the creature, show it who she was-

    Only for a sudden, crippling agony to drop her on her knees, screaming, an unrecognizable sound that echoed all around her in a deafening cacophony. Nothing came to her aid. The Thing stood unharmed, watching her.

    She looked up. Whatever now wore Hazel''s face seemed no longer intent on imitating her movements, back straight and limbs loose down its sides, head pushed so far to the side it no longer resembled a cock but as if it was hanging limp from its neck, eyes still firmly fixed on Holly''s form, unblinking and wide.

    "Y-you!" Holly screamed, realizing the world carried not a noise outside her own voice. "W-what did you do to me?!"

    At first, the Thing did not answer. Slowly, it walked forward, the bars she had bent slowly returning to normal as it advanced. Only after it had finally fixed her damage, the demonium spikes pressing against its clothes, did it spoke.

    "Do you know what I find the saddest?" Its voice carried a slight edge of disapproval. That had not been what made Holly whimper. That had not been what got her scurrying back towards the shadow. She knew, even without seeing, that something was coming.

    "What did you do to me?!"

    "When you say things you don''t understand, despite having all that you need to," the Thing said.

    The cave on its side bloomed with life from all directions.

    They were made from impossible lights. They were made from colors she had not the words to describe. They moved like water and like flesh, roiling waves of elastic skin over slim muscle, eyeless serpents with many jaws stretching away their long slumber as their unending mass subsumed the Thing, then turned her way.

    "You say I can''t be Hazel, but if I wasn''t why am I so disappointed? Why am I so sad to see you like this?" The serpents slithered in between the bars, in between her chained door. "You were clever once. Not smart, but at least cunning, you remember? People thought of you like a rat, and a rat you became."

    "Get away from me!" Holly warned, in vain. The first serpent to cross the distance hesitated as it reached for her face, earning itself a bite! Yet, no matter how deep she sunk her teeth, it did not react, only closed its own mouth around her, clamping down on her face.

    "The heroine of mice. You were never the type to struggle with a puzzle, and good at thinking things on the fly, so I want you to quench a doubt of mine."

    Holly yelled with all her lungs, muffled. A second snake closed around her arm, pulling her towards the swarm as she tried to retreat. A third restrained her by the same arm, then a fourth by the leg, and with every single one that joined she weakened.

    " ''People are more than just their appearance.'' ''She never said I was anything less than human.'' But what is a human? What is the quality of a human that makes them a Human? Are other Dashi incapable of being human? You remember what a Dashi is, right?"

    They closer over her eyes, over her chest, over hands and feet, until she was fully enveloped into a cocoon of squirming shapes. She struggled, feeling the space around her shrink, forcing her limbs together. Still, the Things voice resounded as if it had been speaking on her ears all along.

    "But you don''t have a good answer to that, do you? Not because you weren''t curious, but because you put it out of your mind as soon as it came, every time. So, all that you know about a human is what they are supposed to look like. So, have you ever known a human being willing to look beyond the skin and accept you as one of their own? So, if a person is more than their appearances, and you only known humans by appearance, have you ever met a human being at all? So..."

    Light faded. Her chest couldn''t expand enough to breath. Her blood stopped cold inside her veins, her heart incapable of moving anymore.

    But that voice? That damned voice continued, as clear as day.

    "... Have you ever stopped to consider that you were denying me the monstrosity I craved all along?"

    <hr>

    Her bindings tore around her, shards raining in all directions as she howled.

    "Aaaaaah."

    She fell on her hands, crushing a small object under her weight. Sharp crystals caught the light, spreading over an unfathomable web of lines dark and light with a faint tinkle like the rustle of leaves in the wind. She screamed, overcome with terror, and again what came out was nothing but a meek exclamation, barely loud enough to be called whispering.

    Dwelling on that discrepancy is what finally reeled her from the nightmare. What in the world was going on?!

    She took a deep breath, then remembered she didn''t need to breath. Shaking her head out of undesirable thoughts, and her hands out of what her best guess concluded was glass, cloth, and... bugs? She took a whiff of the creamy mixture, took a slight lick, and became certain then that had been some sort of centipede.

    She tried to figure out her location, but she couldn''t even tell what the purpose of this room was. Dusk and some sort of covered lamp cast faint incandescent light over what could have been a repurposed bedroom, a small bed sitting alone against the far wall. Around her, somebody had drawn some sort of shape in white powder, its many paths now covered by... wood? Carpet? large pieces of some sort of barrel and the shredded rags of something covered in fur, regardless. Other pots filled with insects had been laid around the figure, circles in rust red marking the couple few she hadn''t broken or overturned.

    She looked from the half closed window to the shut door, finding herself alone.

    Mostly alone. She knew there was somebody under the bed, holding an enchanted object against the corner.

    Wait, how did she-

    She hopped to her feet, for the first time realizing her Will was out and about, gently caressing the room bit by bit. Thankfully invisible and painless to control, yet not as she remembered them, not exactly. there was something wrong there. What? She recalled her thousand arms, creating a snake ball around herself as she pondered over the mistery.

    The answer was found immediate.

    She had changed.

    Or rather, the first description that came to mind was much less flattering. She had lost no functionality, but groping her Will over, she couldn''t help but cringe.

    It had lost its previous shape, it''s very purpose, leaving a great broken mess of fingers uneven in both length and numbers across the mass, some arms left with so many joints they were like spines, while others had been forced into awkward fusions that left them strong but incapable of properly bending at their joints, or twisting at painful angles. And across them, ridges, valleys of cratered wounds, crossing up and down their length, still tender in a deeply uncomfortable way to the touch.

    And worse of all, solid. Not they she had been before, however. Like the man she who had claimed to her father. Unlike him, her Will was not slick, not wet, not cold, or whichever those had been analogous too. If anything she was... sticky? Coarse? Things she hadn''t she could become at all.

    No. A third word came to mind, and it did not feel like her own.

    Inescapable.

    And as a sum, wrong. Grotesque.

    Yet, alive. How? She poured through the memories of that night, finding the only thing odd and out place, as far as she was sure she could actually distinguish, being herself. She had grown desperate and then... happy? Why? She had done something horrible to herself, how could she have felt happy?! No, it couldn''t be, maybe that Thing in her dream had altered her somehow?

    Her nails dug into the wooden boards below, cracking them. Once she figured how to get to her again, she would-

    Movement.

    Her Will flew, some reacting faster than ever before, others slower. In the blink of an eye, they had found the hidden person, the Underbedder, again, holding them down without harming. Holly felt them shudder in fear, and she shuddered in fear herself; that had been an awfully intimate sensation, and she hadn''t even meant to do it. Actually, since when could she do it? That hadn''t felt like Will speech, or an attack, or anything of the sort.

    Still, it was as good a distraction as any. Holly rose, wondering who could be this person Agare and the others had left her with? She certainly didn''t feel like any of the others, but there was a certain quality to them that made they similar, if not quite as... much, she supposed. So, a human being, but not one she knew? Could Marquise have sent another agent?

    That was the moment she chose to speak, and not some much as a mutter came out.

    Or rather, it had, she felt it in her throat, but there was no sound. She frowned, spreading around the room and finding the most likely culprit almost immediately. Beyond the object being held by the Underbedder, there were three other similarly enchanted objects placed around each of the room''s corners, she could feel their nature by their script, even if she couldn''t quite tell what they were meant to do.

    She approached one, opposite the Underbedder''s and closest to the window. She could see now she had somehow been right, the palm sized disc of wood having been a slice taken out of some weird, colorless tree branch, its edges smoothed down round, script dense with... Merurgy, was it? Will, she decided. Script dense with Will forming concentric rings around a single symbol, or word in some undecipherable language? It felt familiar somehow, but she couldn''t tell from where.

    She brough it to the Underbedder, lowering it in between then besides the bed. Something skittered further back, though she didn''t quite catch its silhouette.

    "H-hello?" Holly said. There was still a weird echo to her voice, and she could swear she was hearing a curious little commotion from somewhere around.

    Of course, They didn''t leave hiding. Holly had to admit, the whole situation was making her a anxious. Pushing the disk aside with her foot, she crouched down, leaning to the floor as she peered into the shadows. There, she found her interloper, under the cover of dark clothes, a glint peeking out-

    The knife flew at her face.

    ... Slowly, in comparison with the other dangers she had faced. She intercepted the hand holding the blade with ease, restraining the attacker. She felt them struggle against her grip, somehow not moving her a bit. A second hand joined the first, trying to pry her fingers open to no avail.

    Confused, she pulled them out, careful not to hurt them too bad.

    One glimpse of the skin over their hands and she let go, shocked

    She had thought they were just very dark. Brought into the light, she realize the truth: they were blue.

    Her mind went blank. Then, she bristled with alarm. That wasn''t human skin, as far as she knew it, so what had been there, searching around the same room she slept in?

    A prickle brought her back to reality. That moment of distraction had given the Underbedder enough time for a second attack. The knife had struck right at the side of het crotch, meeting soft skin and barely making a dent.

    "Ouch?" she said, also coming to realize she had been naked all along. No wonder she had felt so free, and they so afraid. Speaking of afraid, they were now bordering on despair after seeing her lack of reaction, and instead of repeating that mistake chose to lunge for the window. She didn''t need to walk to catch them, just lean to the side and grasp them by their black hood.

    As a last ditch effort, they slid down and out of their cowl, making another run for it. This time, she was forced to take a step, catching them by the back of the neck and raising them into the air. Came again the knife, only to be stopped by the hardskin over her palm, and swiftly plucked off their grasp.

    They were small and slender, wearing nothing but a simple brown robe of light cloth, cut at the thighs to reveal worn down trousers. Their skin was somewhere between blue and grey, darkish and blemished at the legs. Their ears were long and pointed, without earlobes, emerging from long locks of matted hair. But their face was what truly drew her, their deep red eyes and sharp canines lining what could have easily passed for a human face, with a small nose and bushy eyebrows.

    They also had tear ducts and lungs, the way they were crying and faintly screaming. She looked down again, noticed they were now wetting their pant, and her by extension, coming to the quick conclusion that she might have gone a little overboard in her curiosity.

    "Hehe, Oops," she said to herself.

    She opened her mouth to apologize, but had no opportunity to speak. The once locked door behind her burst inwards with flames.

 3 - The Butcher of Heron Road 3

    Smoke followed them outside, blinding soot clinging to ooze drenched skin.

    Behind them, fire spread like an infection, rising across the tall building until it turned into a collapsing torch. Holly''s now much more compliant gray or blue companion clung to her chest for dear life, held safe in an arm while the other helped her navigate the rooftops. The air was so thoroughly choked even her breathless lungs wanted to cough out the building filth.

    A discordant symphony of noises echoed from all around. Screams, crackling, running, beating, coughing, water splashing, myriad people leaving the safety of their homes and the darkness of the backstreets to watch the catastrophe. From a particular upswell of voices as she leapt, she was pretty sure she had been spotted, but that was a worry for another time.

    She stopped to look back. flames reached for the sky, a dizzying array of burning smells left in their wake, enough to almost rouse worse memories.

    Almost, if for the simple fact she was completely fed up.

    "I-is it going to be something new every other day now? Give me a break already!" Holly said, feeling clay roofing crack under her grip.

    Urgent whispers from her Underbedder got her moving again. A glance down, and she could swear there were people down in the streets pointing at her. The desire to leave became unbearable.

    "Please hold tight!" Holly said, getting a confused mutter in response. "I''ll try not to shake you too much."

    She lowered her body and took impulse, long strides giving momentum to jumps who cleared entire houses, her companion''s screams trailing their path.

    <hr>

    Holly laughed, enjoying the fresh breeze as she fled. The clinking of soldiers slowly giving chase from all directions but in front had been a close acquaintance for a few minutes now, a few minutes in which she puzzled together the Underbedder''s words.

    It had taken her a shameful while to recognize their tongue as some sort of heavily accented Awinian, but she finally understood one sentence in full.

    "No no no, please, don''t do this, don''t-!"

    Sadly, by then they were already half way down their plunge into the river.

    Cool waters welcomed her back home, giving way for a softer landing. Bubbles poured out of her mouth; even now, she giggled. Now that had been freedom! No Agare and no agents to keep an eye on her, just her, the blurring land beneath her legs, and this town''s lads dogging her steps!

    And the Underbedder, their fists pumping again her chest and shoulder with all the strength her wiry limbs could gather. Holly winced; just because she didn''t breath anymore didn''t mean others followed suit. And since when had she been so eager to push this particular aspect of her new life? She paused.

    And quickly unpaused when she realized that at this pace, she would absolutely drown this poor person. She swam to the surface, raising the strange creature into the air for a moment, to a mutually very relieved gasp and spluttering coughs.

    They were being carried downriver, some of it currents gently pushing them away from their point of disappearance. Lamps of incandescent yellow stone rushed to and fro over the bridge they had been at, the glint of polished polearms and plate armor unmistakable from that distance. Would those do anything against her? The knife had been an enlightening experience, but she couldn''t say she was too eager to experiment.

    Still, she felt more alive than she had been in years. Why? She didn''t have the slightest clue! Tonight''s events should be weighting like boulders on her mind, that odd dream and its yet odder inhabitant recent enough she could remember her words, but all she wanted to do right now was to run, to jump, to climb over towers and spires and walls! She couldn''t stop herself from humming, how long had it been since she last sung? She shouldn''t have ever stopped!

    The Underbedder spat their last mouthful of water. " Why?! Why in the ¨€¨€¨€¨€¨€¨€¨€ ¨€¨€¨€¨€¨€?!"

    Holly took a few seconds to piece her response, then cocked her head to the side in confusion, "Sorry? I didn''t catch that."

    "Why did yeh'' jump?!" they said.

    "Ah! You were dirty!" Holly said. "And me too, I guess."

    "And cause of that yeh'' ¨€¨€¨€¨€ us in the ¨€¨€¨€¨€¨€¨€¨€?! That helps how?!"

    "Excuse me? The what?"

    The Underbedder snarled, then yelled loud enough the rushing waters couldn''t muffle her. "The ¨€¨€¨€¨€¨€¨€! The ¨€¨€¨€¨€¨€, the ¨€¨€¨€¨€¨€¨€¨€, the ¨€¨€¨€¨€¨€¨€¨€ ¨€¨€¨€¨€¨€¨€, pick yer favorite, but why?! Yeh think I came all this way cause I wanna die in human ¨€¨€¨€¨€?! Think again!"

    Holly had to admit, her explanations were not helping at all. Well, they were asking why, so maybe she could start from there? "We were dirty! Remember? You, uhm..."

    "Wash what in the ¨€¨€¨€¨€¨€¨€¨€?!" They flayed their arms about. "It''s the ¨€¨€¨€¨€¨€¨€¨€! The ¨€¨€¨€¨€-¨€¨€¨€!"

    Holly sighed. Not out of any real displeasure, however. Her Will spread around them, almost diluting against the arms of her second home, it felt like the most pleasant of stretches, a nostalgic movement that inspired some earnest longing for her room, for the spring filled basin she enjoyed resting in.

    Her Will felt sharper today. She could feel it all, from the grody and decay settling at the bottom, to all the strange and diminute creatures who reacted to the warmth of their bodies, bold enough to approach with opportunistic intent before her presence warned them there would be none of that today. She felt life seeded amidst the scum, prey and predator in their eternal conflicts under the unfeeling touch of a lifeless giant.

    She didn''t get their words, but Holly was starting to understand the Underbedder a little better. Seeing they were at a safe distance from their pursuers, Holly searched for a safe place to emerge, choosing a quiet, dark corner where a particularly reed dense bank lead to an alcove in between houses. She swam, the brunt of the river''s current parting around them for ease of passage.

    Quietly, Holly rose, never letting go of her companion.

    Quietly, her Will rose alongside, leaving the safety of her second home to touch the world before.

    Life teemed here, just as it did down below. Insects clinging to misplaced weeds, worms wriggling their displeasure around her feet, skinbirds sleeping in an alcove among notched roofing, crustaceans sent scurrying out of her path back into their dug homes. her companion looked around, scrutinizing every corner in the dark as if an assailant could be waiting for them.

    They didn''t react to her ability. They didn''t seem to notice at all.

    It dawned on Holly, then and there, that she had achieved what Marquise had wished of her those last couple weeks in the manor, coming to her so effortlessly she could nary imagine how she had struggled with it so much.

    But it had been completely unlike her "learning to take a punch" analogy. At six years of age, she and Hazel had learned the technique from Elder Seneschal after coming home bruised from fighting and scrapped from fleeing one too many times. At six years of age, they had practiced on each other until they were black and blue.

    She looked up at the tapestry of stars above. Ever so darker then the bright, endless plains she used to see in Lesser Hollow, or in her journey with her comrades across Galehold, yet ever present, ever watching.

    A gentle hand had guided her by the hip. She couldn''t feel it anymore, not the way she had that night, yet its lingering touch still coated her Will, an eternal, bittersweet reminder that allowed her something incredible, something impossible, that for all she had thought herself alone some things stood waiting, ready to come when called.

    It was beautiful. It was painful. It was horrifying. She knew it to be true, yet it all felt like a delusion, madness. What had she done to herself that day?

    A shiver brought her back to reality, though not one of her own. Dripping wet, her Underbedder was hugging themselves and glaring her way, done with their examination.

    Holly watched her in silence for a few seconds. She didn''t know what exactly moved her so; she felt warm, and suddenly wished to share some of that warmth. She slipped her other hand around the Underbedder, hugging them to her bosom.

    "I ain''t a kid," they grumbled, but didn''t resist. "And yer'' a weird ass kidnapper."

    "I''m not a kidnapper!" Holly chided, chuckling. "You''re the one who woke me up in the first place, aren''t you?"

    "...Huh. Thinkin'' ''bout it, the kidnapper would probably be me, eh? Well, ye'' turned those tables already, so can I go?"

    "S-sorry, I don''t think so," Holly said. She was pretty sure nobody was supposed to know she had been around, and while the whole secrecy thing had already gone bust, she wasn''t sure if letting them go would be a smart idea. "I promise I won''t let you get hurt though! Just stick with me for a while, alrighty?"

    "Tch! Funny words for a gal'' who''s killed my pride again and again in one night," they laughed, drier than sand. "Sure. What else could go wrong?"

    Holly nodded, satisfied with the answer, and settled off into the night.

    <hr>

    Holly peeked out of the alleway. Even in the odd hours, the streets of this humongous town could be filled with more life than she would find in broad daylight in the Lesser. One wrong step and she would appear in a street filled with drunks and other nightly sorts. One wronger step, as she had been about to take a few turns back, would send her face to face with patrolling soldiers.

    Though, truth be told, she had another preoccupation right now.

    "Could you please stop flicking my nipple?" Holly said.Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

    "Nothin''? Not a prickle?" the Underbedder said, punctuating with several stabs of their admittedly thick and long nails. "What are ye'' made of?!"

    Seeing nobody left or right, she crossed by the leaps, finding herself on the other side in the blink of an eye. Her companion yelped quietly, but resumed her sequence of finger jabs and scratches without pause.

    "Shouldn''t you be a little more afraid of admitting you''re trying to hurt somebody you don''t even know?" Holly huffed, but kept moving. What if I was really dangerous?!"

    "Eh, mountain gals have seen some terrors," they- she said. Her voice was a little shrill, but not overtly unpleasant when she wasn''t screaming. "Besides, left my fear a dip and hug ago. Cuddly for a dangerous fella'', ain''t you?"

    "C-cuddly?" Holly was sincerely surprised at the casualness this Underbedder person had taken with her as of the last hour. She had leaned into Holly''s one armed cradling like a baby on her mother''s arm, a growing expression of boredom the darkest sentiment Holly had seen as she climbed forwards. Forwards, relatively speaking of course; she had been idling in circles and exploring to kill time.

    She had expected to find Agare leaving the shadows at a random corner a good while ago, and didn''t know what to do when that reality failed to happen. Not being alone helped a lot with the worry, but where could the others be? They couldn''t have abandoned her, could they?

    "So, then, mind if this mountain gal asks you a few things, just for fun?" the Underbedder said.

    "S-sure?" Holly said.

    "What are ye''?" they said, almost making her falter in the middle of another street, thankfully under an unlit lamp. "Careful there! Anyway, I''ve met a couple other Dashi in my time, but never one like you."

    "I''m human."

    The Underbedder snorted. "And I''m Mu. Wait, ye'' know Mu, right?"

    "I-I know at least that much!" Her surge of anger was stopped dead by the pettier sentiment. "And I am! I know I don''t look like it, but, uhm, I-I more than how I look! Also, I''ll have you know, you don''t look too human either!"

    "Good?" She shrugged. "Since I ain''t human."

    Now that stopped her dead on her tracks. Under a sliver of yellow incandescence touching their bifurcated backstreet from a well positioned lamppost, Holly took a second, good look at her companion. A tone of skin she had never conceived of, sharp claws, sharper canines? Of course she wasn''t, Holly had noticed as much before, so why did the statement leave her speechless?

    ".... Ah. I guess?" Holly managed, turning her head from side to side to catch her companion at all angles. "What are you, actually?"

    "Goban? What else?"

    "I see!" Holly said, and walked. It took her a few seconds for the claim to dawn on her. Her eyes widened. "W-w-wait, you''re a Goban?! Like, a Dashi Goban?!"

    "Yah? That''s me, alright." they shrugged with a frown. "Name''s Klyla by the way. You have one of those?"

    "O-of course I do! I''m Holly, Holly Seneschal!"

    "... Huh. That Alle or somethin''? Sounds real Alle."

    It took Holly a good couple seconds to understand they had meant to say Gale. "Y-yes, I was raised there."

    Klyla winced. "Sorry to hear."

    "Why sorry?" Holly asked.

    When no answer was forthcoming, she looked down to meet a raised eyebrow. Only then did her brain catch on. For a second, the words "it wasn''t that bad" came to her lips, but would not leave her mouth. In the end, she settled for, "thank you."

    "So, Holly the Human, hailing from the Bear. Who put ye'' in a barrel?"

    "I... don''t know. I''m trying to figure it out too. What were you doing under that bed, uhm, Klyla the Goban from the mountains?"

    "From Fena, if you wanna be specific, but that ain''t neither here nor there, eh?" She shrugged, snuggling her head against Holly''s bicep. "I''ve been stranded here in Treil for a tad now-"

    "You mean, Three Hill?" Holly asked.

    "... No? Who still even call it that?"

    "M-most people?"

    Klyla shook her head. "Where was I? Ah, I got desperate, thought the big bucket in a magical circle thing had to be worth something. Then the commotion started, ye'' exploded out that ¨€¨€¨€¨€¨€¨€¨€ thing, and here we are..."

    "S-sorry if I scared you," Holly said, "I was pretty scared myself. Had a bad dream, you see."

    "I didn'', but no matter." Klyla sighed. After a few seconds of silence, she started again. "So, where we goin'' now, Holly?"

    "Nowhere? I''m just exploring! Why, did you want to go somewhere?"

    Klyla scoffed, and Holly frowned at her, confused. She had meant it, after all. Noticing her look, Klyla explained. "I''ve a good head for trackin'' and mappin'' and such, see? Hunter by trade. You''ve been making a pretty pointed curve for a while now."

    "N-no! I''ve just been-"

    Following a trail.

    In her defense, she hadn''t been aware she had been following a trail either. Her Will had picked on something in the air, almost like a thread of warm smoke in the wind, and left in the background of her thoughts she hadn''t realized she had been on its tail. That was worrying. Very worrying. She decided to correct herself.

    "... There''s something this way, actually," Holly said.

    "Somethin''? Somethin'' what?"

    She shrugged lightly and kept moving, just as curious of where it would lead them.

    The track grew larger, and with its size Three Hills lost that liveliness from before. It started with the odd lamp either left empty or stolen completely from its post, cobblestone roads growing worn and hole ridden, its people nothing but shadows skittering away around the edges of her view at the slightest hint of movement.

    Then, the track grew large enough she detected something almost familiar in its midst. Broken houses, dilapidated walls of brick and defaced fences, windows left shattered, doors wide open into impenetrable shadow. Out of curiosity, Holly sneaked into plain view, and detecting no reaction, reached with her Will inside of some three story high establishment, its front entrance boarded. Nothing Dashi inside; a scant few pests, all in some level of alert.

    Then, once that track grew so present she could feel it stagnating in the mortar and the plaster, so present it made her heart thump in her chest as if trying to flee, they ran in a barrier, a literal one. A wall over twice her height grew in a curve, disappearing both up and downwards, no gates in sight. Every building neighboring it had been brought down too, as far as she could see.

    Only one way in.

    "Hey, Klyla, hold tight!" Holly said, testing the integrity of the wall with a light pull.

    "Ye'' now, I think we weren''t meant to get inside this one. Think I can change your mind?" Klyla said, oddly tense.

    "N-no, there''s something I need to check on the other side."

    Klyla sighed. "And ye'' can''t leave me on this one. I guessed."

    Weather worn and short, the wall was quite easy to climb over, nothing compared to the trees in the Hollow. Reaching the top, she noticed how it was thick enough a lad could walk its perimeter without ever being afraid of falling off. Looking back and forth, she didn''t spot anyone.

    Rather, what she did see was a blot. A colossal shape, inert and sagging, blocking the view to both the farther hills and the horizon of stars.

    She froze, carefully scooted up. Holding her Goban companion firmly, she jumped.

    "Ouch!" Klyla winced. "That hurt you ¨€¨€¨€¨€¨€¨€¨€! And watch for those claws on my thighs, they ain''t small!"

    "Those are nails." Holly growled, looking from side to side.

    "Don''t ye'' dare get angry, I''m the victim!"

    They had come to what might have been a backyard of sorts, now nothing but an overgrown garden of weeds overlooked by the decayed framework where a house had been half-rebuild, before complete abandonment. Disorderly piles of rubble and neatly piled construction materials had been equally eaten into by time and weather, stalks as tall as her hips hiding old tools in her way.

    That odd trail had grown to become the air itself, and describing it was... difficult, to say the least. Mushy. Filthy. Nothing but a brush needed to know she was striding into a river of mud and rot, barren but for an inkling of life so rustic she hesitated on calling it life at all. It beckoned, yet didn''t, a dead tree''s branch waving a greeting with the wind.

    And so, so familiar.

    She knew she had never been here. But she had seen this before. Where? When?

    Debris and tools cracking under her heels, she followed a little road around the ruins to the rusted hinges of a small gate, the main piece long gone. Beyond, a ravaged street of crumbled houses, some showing that same half-repaired state in various levels of development, but not a single one whole.

    "I''m feelin'' it," Klyla whispered, "feelin'' creeped the fuck out. let''s ¨€¨€¨€¨€¨€¨€¨€¨€¨€, ¨€¨€¨€¨€ we?"

    "Aaaah, I think I get what that word means now. But what''s ''Fulilip?'' "Holly said

    "Oh, don''t ye'' start that here of all places!"

    Long stride by long stride, it didn''t take long to reach the heart if all this destruction.

    One day, this had been a wide open area, a flat paved platform in which several streets met. From the ruins of a squat rectangle opposite them, a spiderweb of ravines shallow and deep had consumed everything in its path, and in its many lifeless gulfs the remnants of that time still rusted, solidified slurries and charcoal coating shriveled serpents of red whose branching bodies disappeared underground.

    Morbid curiosity took Holly across the gaps, even as Klyla''s complains descended into soft whines and involuntary shivers. Decades after the tragedy, or so she guessed, heat still lingered in the air, not enough to make it painful to breath as it once had, yet an eternal reminder of what had transpired.

    She could still see them, in the full of their horrifying glory, a canopy that was a bright crimson sky into itself, the fire that licked its throne and ate all those who had dared being unaware of its presence, with eyes that saw beyond their means and limbs that tore through armor and wall like skin and flesh. Holly''s legs faltered, shaking harder with every step. Had the people who lived here received so much as a chance to submit?

    She didn''t see any bodies around, except the one. Its surface clean of bark, groves like wrinkles covering it from top to bottom, their pitch liquids having crystalized around gouges longer than she was tall and steel projectiles like needles much the same size. For all it was still large, she could tell from the pit it had created that it used to be much larger, taller too back when its thousand prominent limbs didn''t point towards the ground.

    Her Will reached out, skittish in her fear the thing would defy her expectations, roar back to life at the smell of new blood. Nothing happened, of course. Here it was, the bottom of the lake of mud, the putrid remains of the conscience that used to be pulling everything down with its mucous weight, still calling, never speaking.

    A desperate raking at her breast drew her attention. "W-we need to get outta here! Ye'' know what this is?!"

    "... Yes."

    "It''s bad shit! People who fuck with these things still go ¨€¨€¨€ sometimes!" Klyla whispered so softly Holly could barely hear it. "Things like these don''t die!"

    "Yeah."

    Holly could see where that came from. It was dead, but it was not, except it was.

    No, that wasn''t it. Holly pondered to herself what she had noticed under her Will fingers, and couldn''t come with an explanation.

    That was the reason they were here, wasn''t it? It had called   lured?   her, with no real intention or purpose, the twitching of the dead by means of Will. An impression, a desire, a command? Why? How? This wasn''t death, no, it couldn''t be death, but why did everything her countless Will limbs touched brought that specific idea back to mind? It was Will but it wasn''t Will, it was beyond Will and far below, it wasn''t as conscious as it once was, it was- it wasn''t-

    She stepped back, contracted around herself, feeling a headache starting to form. She stumbled, sight wavering with spells of dizziness. A little more time, and a little more she would know; a little more she would know, and -

    She needed to get out of here. This had been a bad idea after all.

    "O-oi!" Klyla shook her. "S-see?! Already ¨€¨€¨€!"

    "Hehe... Hold tight, alrighty?" Holly said, already fumbling a hop and nearly falling companion-first into one of the faults. She recovered, tried again, and managed a pace that didn''t topple her but didn''t make for a very timely escape.

    "Ye'' alright there, Hols?" Klyla asked, prodding her collar. "Ye''re sounding real rough."

    "This place is bad," Holly struggled to say. "Shouldn''t have come."

    "Hey, careful now!"

    Too late. A throb, like a nail pounded through the back of her head, and she slipped. She was going to fall right into one of the dead roots, not a very long fall all things considered, but the knowledge shook her.

    It couldn''t do anything to her anymore. Still, she braced herself.

    And then, came nothing.

    She froze, like an unaware animal suddenly speared. She knew it because she didn''t; she felt it because she couldn''t, like her father, but instead of a slippery presence all she found was sheer absence in space, from this close so jarring it was impossible to ignore.

    And it was fast. So fast, she realized there would be no time to react until it plunged into her back.

    She closed her eyes, and felt-

    ... As the nothing rushed through her Will, and gently took hold of her.

    Holly blinked, feeling herself being turned around. Two diminutive, twig like, steel hard shapes carried her like a princess away from the fissures, the world blurring beneath.

    Once they landed, she looked down, a hooded head barely visible as it peeked from her flank.

    Agare stared at her, silent and contemplative.

    Holly stared at Agare. heart hammering in anticipation.

    Agare threw both to floor.

    "W-why?!" Holly cried, landing on her rear end.

    Instead of answering, Agare looked further away, were a series of sharp thunks were echoing in their direction.

    "Do you realize now?!" she recognize the voice, and it brought such relief she had to lean back. "Over an hour lost when my initial predictions had been exact. Fucking prick! Where''s the blind guess now?! Does a Faceless have such a strong craving to manhandle the Faces that-"

    Aleh froze.

    "...Wait, what the fuck is going on here?"

 3 - The Butcher of Heron Road 4

    The Saintdon of Awin. Birthplace of Sigwalism. Holy cradle of the Tyrian Tale.

    A relatively young power as far as Ivian history was concerned. Born as an alliance of need following the Yine war of conquest, the First Ivian War, as the many scattered and belligerent Tyrian tribes found themselves exterminated to less than a third of their numbers by a threat much greater than one another. Divided as they were, it took nearly two centuries before they found the courage to cower behind their so called great hero and his nameless goddess, at which point the Second Ivian War hanged over their heads like an executioners blade.

    Not without its own cost: for though all of them followed the myriad Gods of the Underbrush, the Yida, the gods themselves loathed one another, and thus joining would depend on any one warlord''s will to forsake and surrender their own deity.

    There were those who refused, those who challenged the budding nation''s authority as the banner holder, those who saw the writing on the wall and took advantage of the chaos to pillage their opponents. There were those who were left to fend for themselves to their screaming death, those beaten into near decimation and forced into the fold, and those lashed all the way to their exile in the mountains where worse monsters laid in wait.

    On paper, the great depopulation of the Sacred Forest Region should have made them an easier target for future conquest. In practice, the inflow of experienced warriors and willing Missionaries created one of the island''s, no, the archipelago''s biggest monsters, a cult with the power not only to survive some of its worst catastrophes but to thrive from them.

    By no coincidence, it was one of the sharpest rocks in the Sect''s shoes. Agare had never imagined the day he would willingly set foot inside its borders would come, not without some truly unpleasant and unforeseen cataclysm to be his likely demise. Otherwise, his once-peers were content with promising annihilation with no solid plans to speak off.

    Until recently.

    That is to say, Agare didn''t know a great deal about the Saintdon outside of how to hypothetically kill their divine servants. So when absurd claims were made about it, he had no place to refute them.

    "See, even the poor have houses of marble and jade!" The thin faced Goban so named Klyla gestured in wide circles with both arms, only stopping when the Oke bumped into some obstacle on the road. "Every wall lights like a torch! Some poor sod tries to break in? Flash! They go blind, then turned to pin cushions! Entire armies at once! It''s why they call the capital Eln the ''City that Never Fell.'' "

    "R-really?" Holly said, taut with excitement. "T-that''s sounds so scary! How do you even beat that?"

    "You don''t! Them soldiers wear steel as white as snow, so tough not even lightin'' can pierce through, and they ain''t even allowed to man the walls until they can fight at least eight of the Bears soldiers without taking wound. You try to run tits and pussy out there too, see how far you can make it!"

    "What''s snow?"

    "... Are you fucking with me?"

    Agare was quite sure most of those were lies.

    Most. The use of defensive witchcraft from Awinian battlements was a well known deterrent against invading forces, Eln''s in particular having been breached with such rarity he could count on a finger, but the particulars differed, as far as he had read.

    "And you know what''s best?" The Goban cackled. "Those ain''t even their biggest deals, just rank and file!"

    "What''s-"

    "Nobodies! Lil'' fellas! Bum pokers!" she shook her head. "Goddess in the Dark. Where was I? Those ain''t shit. The real deal, the reason they get to be the richest people around, with the prettiest town around, are them, the Four Len!"

    "Four Len?" Holly asked. "I think I''ve heard of them before..."

    Agare simmered at the conversation. There was something annoyingly helpless about hearing such grandiose fantasies on those who had been some of his worst enemies once and being unable to stop it. Had they not been avoiding all attention, he would be running besides this overpriced metal box so he wouldn''t have to hear it. How he wished to tear those words out of her tongue.

    Holly''s hood turned his way, the living reason he had done nothing about it yet pulling the Goban sat over her lap closer to her chest. Dressed in her repaired robes, she had been eerily quiet the last day. He physically turned away as appeasement, but his sight remained focused on them.

    Aleh''s as well. Sensorial deprivation bindings loose over his head, the young witch hummed to himself. "Those, Holly, are the so called knight orders of Awin, each tasked with one objective they ought to realize at the cost of their own lives. Powerful, no doubt, and held aloft by as much hot air as tangible evidence of their skills, I assure you, they-"

    "Kicked yer'' sorry Bear ass all the way back to the Light more times than those inbred fingers of yer''s can count lil'' boy, so don''t give ''em lip!" Klyla laughed.

    Aleh stilled, his breath hitching. "What did you call me?"

    The Goban gave a savage grin. "Don''t blame me for ''em, pretty boy, blame yer'' parents!"

    "No, not that!" He snarled. "You called me a little boy!"

    "... that''s the one that bothered you?"

    "Listen, you scum sucking mountain bitch, I have tolerated you presence so far, but do not think-"

    "Aleh! Klyla!" Holly yelled. the Former still visibly simmered, but at least the latter paused, looking meek. "Don''t be mean to each other! We''re all comla- companions? Buddies? Pals?"

    "Comrades." Agare said the proper word in Ivian.

    "Ah! Thank you! We''re all comrades here, so you can''t be rude to each other!"

    "Comrades, are we?" Klyla scoffed.

    "Ha! Comrades, with this-"

    "Aleh, enough," Agare made sure to speak in Yine, holding a hand before him "I understand, but cool your head, this doesn''t help."

    Aleh didn''t look the least cooled, tense and baring teeth as he was, but he knew better than questioning his authority in front of a potential enemy.

    "yeh'', whatever the lil''guy said!" Klyla said, pumping a fist in the air. "And speaking of ye'', ain''t today a little hot for all that geddup? It ain''t the Flowering anymore, but it''s Ivias."Stolen story; please report.

    Agare shrugged, watching Holly throw her fifteenth glance towards the Oke''s cabin, where Almalilly and Rosen steered in silence. One had talked to her alone after their reunion, while the other...

    He shook his head lightly. He couldn''t afford distractions right now.

    Centering himself, he thought back to the anomaly amidst the group.

    Subtle testing had not found any traces of Divinity on her, nor the slightest capacity for witchcraft. She bore no enchanted items, carried no curses nor malignant parasites, in fact did not seem to be the least armed, though she had bemoaned the loss of a sword. She was smart enough to have caught on to the complexity of the situation, but didn''t seem wise to its particular nature, or even who the people she was now forced to travel with were.

    However, Agare was not convinced. There was just too much coincidence in the story of how both women had come to meet each other. How did she know there would be something of value in that room, when Holly had been brought in through the window? How did she know it would be empty when they took turns watching in irregular intervals? And how come it had all culminated on an attempt right as the lingering shreds of the Di Aila family had struck in revenge? Too much coincidence, so much so it nearly felt like Marquise''s hand, but if so why was she hiding her loyalties?

    His mind had then come to worse possibilities. Not the worst, neither of their two main enemies would rely on third parties to act, much less a Goban, but worse nonetheless. The Argent had many Goban-exclusive cults, but they were disorganized and currently had meager interest on this side of the Ivian Chain, so he found them unlikely. The Tyrian, as of the last century, did welcome Gobans, but would they use such an openly shilling, unprepared spy? Besides, considering her supposed origin, he felt safe assuming it unlikely too.

    There was one last faction to consider. Unlikely as well, an enemy to her kind as old as their presence in Ivian soil. And yet, one truth stood higher than bad history: there were no good outcomes to underestimating the Haruspect.

    Agare had to admit, she made him worried. There wouldn''t be as much to puzzle out the problem if he could just simply deal with it, but another problem stood in his way.

    Aleh release a long, suffered exhale, before speaking in Yine. "So, Holly, how long do plan to burden yourself with this insolent creature like she is your child?"

    "Hey, don''t cuss me out in another tongue!" Klyla barked. "If yer'' gonna call me slurs, at least let me learn them!"

    "Y-yeah, don''t insult her in another language! Doesn''t that count as speaking behind someone''s back?" Holly said. As for the main question, she remained silent, but he could feel her gaze on him. She knew his plans, and he knew she knew. His attempt to keep this side of the mission away from her eyes had failed somewhere, and he could guess when.

    "Yer'' just mad I owned you!" Klyla said, pointing a teasing finger his way.

    "As if," Aleh said, and Agare could hear the eye roll in his voice. "Feel free to worship your mythologized spell swords as much as your heart craves, your foolishness has nothing do to with me and mine, so long as you agree to stop spreading all this misinformation to my-"

    "Goddess in the Dark, this kid drones on! Hols, ain''t there anything better for us to do then keep listening to all this crap?"

    "O-oi, shit tooth, I''m still talking! And don''t you dare call me a kid when you are shorter than one!"

    Klyla shot forwards on Holly''s lap, shaking a fist. "Oooh yeh'', big boy, aiming right for a Goban''s height ''cause you''re soooo smart you just gotta take a bite of the low hanging fruit! Did you get that sense of humor from the same idiot who gave that shitty sense of clothing?!"

    "A-and what''s wrong with my Atire?!" Aleh said.

    "Alright, enough!" Holly intervened, pulling the struggling Klyla back. "I said we''re all comrades here! We can''t let misunderstandings bother us like this!"

    "Ha! Misunderstandings! Say Hols, did that sound like a misunderstanding to ye''?"

    "I-I don''t know?" Holly said. "Aleh can be a bit confusing sometimes. I still don''t get what Merurgy is at all, and he explained it to me twice..."

    Aleh froze with his mouth agape. He broke into a dreadful baring of teeth, a mockery of the concept of a smile that made Agare ashamed to treat him like a professional. "Dearest Holly, are you informing us that a presentation created with the intent of teaching literal children was not clear and concise enough for your eyes and ears? Would you like me to make another attempt, pace myself slower this time?"

    "Uuuuhm, no? T-thank you," Holly said.

    "Meru-what?" Klyla frowned.

    "I-it''s some kind of Ashic Art thing."

    "And what the fuck is this Ashic Art thing?"

    "S-some kind of Merurgy thing?"

    "No, Holly!" Aleh sighed, deflating against his seat. "I can''t believe you payed no attention to the World''s Making at all! You somehow managed to get it backwards!"

    "Well, it''s not my fault! You never finish it!"

    "And whose fault was it, both times?!" Aleh''s teeth creaked out loud. He took a deep breath. "You know what? Once more. One final time, and let us see if you don''t understand anything by the time I''m done! What do you say?"

    "S-sure?" Holly said, shifting in her seat.

    "Hols, what you guys talking about?" Klyla said, looking up. "I don''t speak Bear!"

    "S-sorry Klyla, I don''t think I would get it in Aw- Ivian. I''ll try to explain it to you later, okay?"

    "... Whatever. Just don''t keep me guessing for too long, it''s getting boring in here."

    "All of you set then? Good!" Aleh cleaned his throat out loud, and Agare caught movement heading his way. "Merurgy, according to Merurgical Theory, is-"

    "Merurgy, according to Merurgical Theory, is the basic matter that constitutes the Merurgical Plane, once believed to be the uppermost, metaphorically speaking, reach of the Ashic Plane, the plane of concepts and relations. It serves as both an intermediary between the highly volatile yet dependant Physical and Ashic planes, as well as fueling their interactions. They call it the Starlit Flesh, but doesn''t it sound closer to blood or something? Oh well, who am I to question."

    Almalilly stepped into the Passenger Hold, gingerly holding on to the walls for support. In the silence that announced her entrance, Holly''s soft gasp drew all eyes her direction. As she looked away, a pang of regret struck Agare, who was quick to smother the useless feeling.

    "Did I get it right?" Almalilly winked at Aleh.

    "Since when did you know this much about the topic?" Aleh said, not sounding half as confrontational as the words that left his mouth. "It suffices, but lacks in rather important nuances."

    "Well, but for a complete newbie who wants to relieve some passing curiosity, shouldn''t that be just right? And all I did was gather what I learned from your previous tries and all those times I caught you practicing all alone and press them into something smaller."

    "I-I did not practice by my lonesome!" The bindings failed to hide Aleh''s flush. "I may have rehearsed the presentation a couple times, however-"

    "I would ask what is the difference, but I''m going with: what''s the matter if you did? Makes you a better teacher, young sir." She turned towards Holly and Klyla, then spoke in Ivian. "And as for Ashic Art, that''s just a fancy way to say magic, alright? Don''t let this guy''s academic fussing make you think its this impossible thing to comprehend."

    Both exclaimed in understanding, while Aleh''s red went from embarassed pink to blood-boiling scarlet. Agare decided to break things off before they could start. "Almalilly, something to report?"

    "Agare, night is about to fall. Rosen is asking if we should keep moving or stop to rest soon," she said.

    That didn''t feel like a very wise idea, not with the Citrine out there. "How long until the nearest towns?"

    "Following the road, we might reach Luunol somewhere around dawn if we keep the pace. There is also Twotrees, which I think we can reach in two or three hours, but it''s going to take a big detour to get there and a bigger one to get back on track. A couple closer villages too, if I recall correctly."

    Agare mulled the information over. Even a town would not be safe if they came for them in full, but numbers would force them to think twice. A village? That would be useless for their needs. "Very well. In that case, find us somewhere we can hide offroad. Furfu and I will be going on guard soon."

    Almalilly sighed with relief, then turned back. "Heard the good news, Rosen? We can sleep tonight!"

    "Anybody gonna translate all that for me? Seems like good stuff," Klyla said.

    "She said you can sleep tonight, "Holly said." It''s good news!"

    "I-it''s news? What else were we supposed to do this late?!"

    "N-nothing! Don''t be scared, I''m here."

    "I''m not scared, I''m pissed the fuck off!" the Goban said, jabbing a finger into the dense shades of Holly''s hood. "Ye'' think I came all this way to be dragged around like a doll and not even know what''s going on? Stop forgetting me, if yer'' going to all this trouble to keep me in one piece at least let me join! I''m goin'' insane!"

    "Uuuuhmm." Holly looked from Agare to Aleh, from Aleh to Agare. "I-I don''t think I should talk too much about what''s going on. B-besides, I''m not too good at Awinian yet..."

    "It''s Ivian! I-vi-an!"

    "S-sorry! It was a slip up, I swear!"

    "I''ve spoken the tongue since I was a lil'' tike, and I''m not from Awin. Auntie Lakla came from the western shore, and she spoke the tongue, and she wasn''t from Awin! Guess why? Cause everyone does! Cause it''s Ivian! And if you keep insisting it ain''t you''re gonna find yourself getting docked in the jaw one of these days."

    "I-I just forgot! I''m sorry, I am! Aaaaww, why all these mixed signals?! I don''t know what is true or not anymore!" Holly said, looking at Agare for guidance, who just shrugged. That one was between Holly and Marquise, not him.

    Klyla of Fena. An indistinct Goban with an indistinct name from an indistinct town in the mountains. An unwelcome addition to their party he would have to cull sooner or later, by good or by force. With every word off her tongue, she derailed Marquise''s plan.

    "Big gals insult with pride!"

    "I-I''m not insulting you!"

    If things stood this way, Holly would have to find it in herself to forgive him, because he would not allow another danger to get in their way.

    Until them, he would keep watch.

 3 - The Butcher of Heron Road 5

    The Saintdon of Awin. Birthplace of Sigwalism. Cradle of the Tyrian Tale.

    Or so others put it. Holly didn''t have the first clue what Sigwalism was supposed to be other than that it was a big deal around these parts, nor, she was coming to realize, what being a Tale meant.

    In either case, what she knew was what Marquise had told her. A thousand tribes coming together to fight a common enemy, becoming this monster no other power in Ivias could ignore without consequence! One of the biggest enemies the Remnants ever faced! No real chance at Realization, but in a certain way hadn''t they already made it? It almost sounded like something straight out of a story!

    Soon, she would be there to see how it measured to that reputation from up and close, and the curiosity was one of the things that kept Holly looking alive. The other paced right besides her, stretching an arm high and bare toes on soft earth.

    "Aaaaah, nothing beats walking, does it?" Klyla said. "Gotta say, took for granted how good it feels to move around on yer'' own. By the by, could ye'' chew a lil'' quieter, Hols?"

    "Sorry," Holly said, swallowing the last few chunks of the moth she had caught. The fuzz tickled her tongue and throat, but the hearty insides more than made up for that. "For both."

    "Or try to eat with yer'' mouth shut at least, so it stops rainin'' bug and spit on me, how ''bout that?" Klyla clicked her tongue, trying to take another step away while running into the limits of Holly''s arm. "Or let go of my hand. These lil'' legs ain''t gonna be losing those ¨€¨€¨€¨€¨€¨€ of yer'' anytime soon, not here."

    "My what?" She frowned.

    Klyla sighed. The voice that answered in Yine wasn''t hers.

    "Stilts," Agare said, some ten paces behind her, otherwise silently following, nothing but a walking shadow under the moonlight.

    "Ah. Thanks!"

    The night here was pleasant. Far from being light, this part of the Sacred Forest they had come to rest at was no colorful noose like the Floodlands or dark and foreboding like the Hollows, with enough space between the short trees to let her look up at the waxing moon, it''s first finger print revealed already, second barely peeking. Philosopher''s Moon, if she recalled correctly. Or would that be the next?

    Regardless, Agare was a disturbance in that dim, serene scene. She couldn''t find it in herself to ignore him for even a moment. His presence weighted on her mind like a snake in a locked room, and she couldn''t help but steal the occasional glance his way, afraid he was about to do something.

    Logically, she knew he wouldn''t. Nonetheless, she couldn''t lower her guard, not with Klyla by her side.

    "Can''t even get privacy to piss anymore," Klyla said, rueful. "At least I''m getting somewhere, I guess!"

    "Yeah!" Holly said, taking the chance to send a mild glare over her shoulder. "I can''t believe he refused to leave! How improper is that?!"

    "I''m talking about ye'', ye'' ¨€¨€¨€¨€¨€¨€¨€ sack of sticks! At least with the lil'' guy I hadn''t to fight for my life to get one shitty bush in between us!"

    "B-but I couldn''t!"

    Klyla stopped, opening her arms wide. "Tell me why then! Didn''t ask ye'' to be my new legs, I don''t think! Don''t even want those things to start the conversation, what do I do with them, they''re all bone!"

    Holly looked to Agare again. She quickly realized that might have been a little stupid, and averted her eyes.

    "What? Yer'' afraid of the tike? Look at him, if I told ye'' he''s half your size, I''d be highballin'' it!" Klyla laughed, no, cackled, a sound both grating and painful. "I think I could handle him! Gimme a ¨€¨€¨€¨€¨€¨€¨€¨€ swatter or one of em'' bigger Ravishes and I could take two!"

    "I have to admit, I''m curious why you kept her," Agare said in Yine, tone impassive, head tilted up just enough she knew she held the full of his attention. "With the way she has made more than clear she doesn''t like the situation, I thought you would have let her go by now."

    "... Reasons."

    "My concern is for you, Holly," Agare said. "If you dislike me being close to her, feel free to step away, and I will follow suit."

    "A-anyway, if y-you want somebody to watch us, why don''t you let Almalilly keep us company? At least, you know..."

    "Oi, enough of Bear tongue!" Klyla danced in fury around her feet. "I''m here too, ye'' know?! And I''m the topic!"

    "Out of the question. Almalilly has her own skills, but she is not fit for the combat. Our situation is sensitive, and requires extreme caution."

    "T-then how about Bla-!"

    Both froze in unison. She had completely forgotten. How could she have completely forgotten? A wave of guilt struck her with such strength it felt physically sickening. The one time she didn''t want it to slip her mind, it had by complete reflex. It was almost comic.

    "... Sorry." She said, so low she barely heard it herself.

    "The life of Faceless and Face alike is fraught with peril," Agare''s voice felt distant, cold. "She lived a long life. That she perished fighting against the eternal enemy to protect her comrades is an honor many of her contemporaries did not have the chance to earn."

    "H-how could you say that?" Holly felt her hairs twitch. "It''s wasn''t nearly enough! S-she still had so much to live for, so much to protect Almalilly from! I-if I hadn''t gone, if I had stayed to help them..."

    "Chances are, then your opponent would have come to you instead, and in a fight against two more lives would have been lost," Agare said. "I will not say your decision was wise or not. but worse case scenarios existed."

    She shivered.

    "Why did you follow the opposing Divinity?"Agare asked. "Did you-"

    "Will. It''s not divinity, it can''t-"

    "Semantics are meaningless, Holly, I don''t care one way or another!" Agare said, and Holly flinched. How long since she had last heard him so angry at her? "You have been erratic lately. From vanishing before a battle, to running without notice, to her. All I am asking is for your reason, if the situation is to repeat itself."

    How could she explain it to him? That she did it because she was afraid of what Glashii would do, had done to the others? Because She wanted to know who was that person who knew such a forbidden word? Because of that last night at Lesser Hollow Elder Seneschal had begged her to save them, and she didn''t want to fail him again?

    Because, knowing it or not, only one Holly Seneschal could have answered the Elder''s expectations, one she had buried herself, one with severe consequences she was very much aware of and yet had allowed to dig her way out. A Holly Seneschal who once dreamed of heroics.

    Because Holly is such an obedient girl, isn''t she?

    The hiss escaped in between her teeth against her will. Agare didn''t move. She opened her mouth, a thousand answers eager to pour out at once.

    "Know what? fair is fair."

    A sudden tug at her Robe stopped Holly cold. With a grunt of effort, Klyla began to climb her body like a vine, one handed. Holly let go, curious and a little surprised at what had got into the Goban''s head this time. Clutching at her collar, foot finding purchase on her hip bones, they found themselves eye to eye.

    "Well, what you waitin'' for?" Klya said, patting herself on the rear. "Ain''t you going to put yer'' hand on my arse?"

    "W-what?! No!" Holly said.

    Even in the dark, it was impossible to miss the roll of Klyla''s red, red eyes. "What, ye'' thought ye'' were holding my plump, juicy calves while carrying me around? Gimme a break."

    "What are you even saying, Klyla?"

    "Hols, at first I was under the impression was some unlucky hostage, but if yer'' going to be taking me for walks, watchin'' me shit on the road, then talking like I ain''t even there, might as well embrace the pet life instead, am I right?" Klyla laughed. "But seriously, I''m all ¨€¨€¨€¨€¨€¨€ from the trip and about to fall, please hold me."

    Holly obliged, cradling the big Goban baby against her bosom again. Happy to fall in, Klyla laid both hands under her own head, relaxing with a good stretch of the legs. Holly didn''t miss the way Agare''s shoulders shook a little.

    "S-sorry, alright? I-it was just a private conversation, that''s all," Holly said.

    "Private, eh? Must be nice," Klyla said.

    Holly sighed. "Next time, I promise I''ll stay a little farther, okay? And Agare too, right?"

    "You know my terms. I will not bargain," he said.

    "That''s a yes, I think!"

    "Guess I''ll have to take it." Klyla shrugged. "So, what says ye''? Let''s go back to that tin box of yer''s catch some ¨€¨€? Or ye'' both gonna spend the night at it, in private out loud?"

    Holly exchanged a look with Agare, who waited for her response in silence. This conversation would not be over if they stopped here. If she let it escape her, it might never be. Agare wasn''t the type to pry at her without reason, as far as she could recall. And speaking of...

    "I think we had a conversation like this back at the manor, didn''t we, Agare?" she said in Ivian, feeling a pang of yearning for that lost month. For all it hadn''t been that long ago, it felt like a lifetime separated them.

    "I don''t remember anything similar," he said, casting an none too subtle glance at a very still Klyla.

    "You asked me why I was helping Marquise then, after we caught that Gugly bug thing in the woods." Holly swallowed a knot inside her throat. "I-I still want to be of use to her Agare, I still want to fulfill her goal, whatever it is."

    "But?"

    "She''s not the only one I want to help. Not anymore. I-I wanted to keep the others safe too, and if that happens again that''s what I''m going to do! I won''t let them get hurt! I-I already lost a lot, Agare, I don''t want to anymore..."

    "Holly," Agare approached. "You know you are the priority, don''t you? You might like them, but they need you, and if your decisions cost you your life, if Marquise''s plan fail, their fight will have been for nothing. None of them want you to sacrifice yourself for their sake."

    "...Even then."

    Standing from this close, Holly couldn''t help but think on the contradiction that was Agare. He was terrifying, mysterious, and she actually understood now though she had always known, dangerous. Yet, if she hadn''t seen him in action, hadn''t seen the people who answer to him or the woman he answers to, would she have guessed at first glance? With so little presence to himself, she didn''t think so.

    When he spoke again, in Yine, she took notice of his voice once more. So beautiful, with such a confident, unyielding cadence, no wonder the others fell in line so easily.

    "The ideal plan does not exist. The ideal enemy who folds to the sway of your fingers is a dream. A good strategist is not one who executes a flawless maneuver from start to end, but one who can adapt to that inherent unpredictability and seize victory regardless."

    "I-I don''t get it," Holly said. "W-was that from the Marquise?"

    "Of course not." Agare said, and Holly detected a hint of amusement on his voice. "It''s a common saying from the... Remnants. The kind of grand advice every neonate has to hear until they can recite it to the letter. We of Eligor were made to be transitory creatures, gruesome death became part of us from the moment of our birth, no matter the power we acquire. But you knew that, didn''t you?"

    "N-no? I mean-" Holly cut herself off, realizing he wasn''t looking at her.

    Klyla, from her comfortable rest, merely frowned. "He talking to me?"

    "What it means, in the end, varies by who exactly you heard it from." This time, Holly was sure he was talking to her instead. "The one who taught me emphasized the grieving aspect of it."

    "In what way?"

    "In that we should feel none. By the ironically inevitable nature of unpredictability, casualties become a matter of fact, and should be accepted as so. They knew what they were there for, accepted what might become of them, and so should the survivors least they become liabilities to those who still remain," Agare said. "Or so is the way I chose to interpret it."Help support creative writers by finding and reading their stories on the original site.

    "T-that sounds harsh," Holly said, not buying the sentiment expressed.

    "We are in a harsh world, and harsh circumstances therein." Agare shook his head lightly. "But I will not hold you to that moral. I... I myself have issues with his teachings, I have no grounds to force it."

    "His teachings?"

    "Nothing I wish to comment on," Agare said, returning to Ivian out of his own volition for the first time. "Very well. She would be pleased to see you take the lives of her agents under your arms, so I have no further complains. Let''s go back. We strayed too far from camp, and I wish to stay exposed no longer."

    "Now he''s talkin'' my language!" Klyla chuckled. "Literally."

    "A-actually, if you don''t mind, can I do one thing before that, Agare?"

    He stared at her for a solid few seconds, and for some reason she felt a little chided. "Speak."

    "I-I want to talk a little with Almalilly."

    A few more seconds. "You wish to speak alone."

    "S-sorry."

    "I will not take my eyes from you both," he said, then turned away from her. "But I will keep my distance. Be brief, The Sacred Forest is safer but far from safe."

    Holly sighed in relief. "I promise! It will be real quick!"

    "And I guess ye'' don''t mind me taking a nap right here, eh?" Klyla yawned. "Cause I don''t think I''m up for more heart-to-hearts without context, personally. Just a warning though, I fart real loud when I sleep, so I hope you don''t mind."

    ...Perhaps a little haste was in order. Yet, if Holly was in the mood to confront things she would rather not, better take advantage of it.

    ------

    When they returned, they found their Oke, obscured in the shade of a small clump of low trees, utterly empty.

    That is to say, the others were nearby, protected under the gaze of a somehow quieter Furfu. Anxious episode quickly averted, Holly noticed they were gathered at the bottom of a slight ravine nested between two stout trunks. Noticing them, Aleh approached, as fast as his body now allowed.

    It was impossible not to be at least a little queasy, seeing him like this, knowing it was her fault. The wrappings that now always covered his left eye, the cane that made for his limping leg, its thunking now a constant in their lives.

    "You both!" he greeted, tone neutral. At least he didn''t seen to be too bothered by it. "You should see this."

    "H-hey, Aleh," Holly said, wanting to talk but being unsure about what. Did he blame her for what happened? He acknowledged her with a nod, and he hadn''t been ignoring her in the Oke either, but how couldn''t he?

    Regardless, they followed in silence. Standing side by side, Almalilly and Rosen remained at the ravine, incandescent yellow stones in hand shining faint light upon a large patch of what looked like wood, ceramic, and metal rubble.

    She didn''t care for it. Rather, her attention next came to lay of the latter, who hadn''t once in the last day looked her way for longer than a half second.

    Rosen, too, looked different after the ambush, but unlike Aleh he didn''t look hurt, closer to emaciated. His notable muscles had shrunken, he had this meek hunch now as if he was always watching his back, and it didn''t take a genius to know he hadn''t been sleeping well. None of them had, not since they had departed Three Hills- or Treil, rather.

    Almalilly had that sunken, exhausted face to her as well. But unlike both others, the only signs of the battle that lingered on her was a slight bend of the waist, a hand resting over her lower back.

    "H-hey, Llly, Rosen!" Holly called.

    "Hey yourself!" Almalilly smiled. "Enjoyed dinner?"

    Rosen nodded, not ever turning her way.

    "Yes! I found a bunch of fireflies, and then there were she huge moths-"

    "L-let us discuss important matters before our particular diets, shall we? I would like to be on the other side of the island before the topic gets brought up again, if you wouldn''t mind," Aleh said. Stepping into the ravine through its shortest yet steep slope, he nearly stumbled on his face. Holly made to help him, but as quickly as an arrow Rosen reached his side, steadying him by the waist. "S-shit. On Lords and Whores, I''m so tired of fucking forests..."

    "Almalilly, what did you find?" Agare joined the trio at the bottom. Without options, Holly descended as well, trying no to jostle the fake-sleeping Klyla.

    Taking a closer look, the mess hidden behind her comrades did look quite curious. Sharp stakes of wood that had been polished into very fine angles, obviously unnatural curves jutting out like broken bones, pieces of iron or steel or something similar forged into shapes now quite strange separated from the whole. An image began to form inside her mind. She had seen something similar once, though this was not a quarter as weather worn.

    "Is this a carriage?" she asked.

    "Close. We think it was a cart, or a wagon of some sort," Almalilly said. "Yine, too."

    "How do you figure?" Agare asked, crouching besides the pile.

    Instead of answering, Almalilly reached into its midst, pushing miscellaneous broken objects aside.

    What she pulled out, Holly took several seconds to recognize. It was much smaller than the last time, no longer than Almalilly''s own foream with its feet broken, and the stonework was much less skilled in comparison: its face was practically a mask with its exaggerated features, its hair was a blot, it limbs were shaped like tubular worms, holding a pose so stiff it was like the poor guy had a spine of steel. It once held a weapon above its head, its tip now gone, but she didn''t need to see to know.

    "The Intrepid Youth?" Agare asked as he was passed the statuette.

    "With the Peaceful Night, I''m sure," Almalilly said. "I''ve seen and heard of people owning representations of the personage around these parts, but this particular image is all but gone, considering its history. Might even be illegal, but I''m not sure."

    "W-what history?" Holly asked.

    Under the light of the Fireflypebbles, and the shade of her own hand, Holly almost missed the way her face went blank for a second. "Oh. That last time in the Gale we never told you what the Peaceful Night was for, did we?"

    Holly shook her head.

    "It''s a tool of execution."

    Holly jolted, and Klyla grunted in complaint. Rosen''s answer had come out of nowhere, and she couldn''t help but feel hesitation at the haggardness of his voice. There was nothing of the handsome, suave man she had met at the mouth of the Hollows there.

    "It''s not a weapon of war," he continued. "Closer to a symbol, a gesture. During the times of the Lesan Empire, when an enemy general or noble was captured, a scaffold would be raised on the battlefield, and an officer chosen to unveil it. One blow to the back of the neck, spine severed, and among cheering the body would be hoisted in display for all to see. Eventually, its particular places of use would expand, but it always remained reserved for leaders, heroes, figures of esteem."

    "I-I see," Holly said, feeling unsure of herself for some reason. "I-it did look very weird, I guess. I had never seen a blade like that."

    "It''s not a blade."

    "I-it isn''t?"

    "Not for a long time. Back during its Lesan days, sure, when it had longer edges and thinner center, made for decapitations. However, Lesa fell, and Yine rose from their still burning ashes, taking old concepts and enhancing them in the dried blood shed out of their every failure to better fit a perfect machine of war and conquest."

    "Rosen?" Almalilly quietly asked. "What are you trying to-"

    "The Peaceful Night of the old Yine Empire is no more, either. They were only forged in small numbers, given to select individuals, and with its death, Galehold was born from its ashes but abandoned much of its past ways. Back, when it was still employed? It was terror. Blades made shorter, core made larger and heavier, almost like a mace. Full decapitation became difficult, but that was the point."

    He looked at her. For all he shouldn''t be able to see into her hood, she couldn''t dismiss the notion he was looking into the depths of her soul, expression uncharacteristically somber.

    "The failure was the message. The blow severed the spine, crushed bone and flesh into pulp, leaving the enemy to die a gruesome death. Whoever came to retrieve the body, if it was ever retrieved, would see the pain and fear on their expression, the wreckage left of their body, and understand what meant to stand against true might.

    "I have heard before that the name comes from an old Lesan saying, ''scared neighbors make for peaceful nights.'' That''s just a translation thought, and of the saying at length. It''s proper name, shortened from that, was-"

    "Rosen." Agare''s spoke, low yet clear enough to silence the night, dripping with threat. "Enough."

    Rosen had frozen, his back straight. Finally, he sighed. "Of course, sir."

    "Go back to the Oke, cool your head."

    He nodded. "As you wish."

    He threw another glance Holly''s way, before rising and slowly trudging towards their vehicle. leaving Holly to unravel what he could possible mean with the rant. She looked askance towards her other comrades, none which looked any more sure. Only Agare had remained unmoved, order nonewithstanding, discarding the statuette to examine the rest of the pile..

    Almalilly sighed. "Always a touchy one, that guy."

    "I-is he?"

    " ''touchy,'' perhaps, would not be my choice of words," Aleh said. watching Rosen''s light disappear behind the Oke. "Though I suppose it fits."

    "Don''t mind him, Holly." Almalilly nudged her with an elbow, gently. "He''s been a little out of it, but he''ll recover, just give him some time."

    "I-i didn''t mind, I just didn''t get it either? I mean, I guess it was interesting, but why just drop that story like that? I think there was more to it."

    "Pure and simple petulance," Agare said, no louder than a whisper.

    "S-sorry?"

    "Almalilly, had you both noticed the blood?" Agare asked, and Holly fumed.

    "O-oh, yes, I was meaning to tell you that." She crouched besides him, pointing to a cracked plank, a couple smudged droplets blemishing its surface. "It''s only a little, here and there, but it looks rather recent, doesn''t it?"

    "A few days old, at least." Agare answered, thumbing over one of the stains. "On itself, not a sign of much. Holly?"

    "M-me?"

    "You. Would you mind using your Will?"

    "Sure! B-but what do you want me to find?"

    "Anything out of place."

    She nodded, and let her Will loose. It took to their surroundings with starved eagerness, groping through shrubs and burrows for anything there was to be felt. She closed her eyes, focusing on her hands as they brushed past hunting spiders and cunning mice, skulking leeches and stranger, unnameable things stalking out of sight. She pointed to her left. "There''s something over there that feel a little like the wood of this cart."

    "Fragments lost during transportation," Agare looked, but didn''t sound interested. "That much was to be expected. Anything else? Can you sense any bodies?"

    Holly shivered at the idea. Said so casually, too. How would a dead body even feel like? For some reason, those apparitions she had broken that night came back to mind. She searched, stretching to the limits of her being while rooting for anything but what she was looking for. The dry husk of a cocoon, bones of some barely hand sized creature buried in the soil, a plant strangled by a larger rival and left to wither, all who had this... mushy, she wanted to say, quality to them. The same way she knew something was rotten with a whiff, a touch alone made her subconscious scream decay.

    And yet. "N-none out of place, no. Just animals and stuff."

    "What else?" Agare said, sounding expectant.

    She frowned. "Nothing?"

    "Try it."

    "Try what?"

    "Anything." his words were simple, yet made her nervous. "Anything you can do to find more."

    She didn''t have to wonder what he was asking for. Still, it left her with a question: How did he know? Had he seen her?

    They hadn''t discussed it yet. They had talked about her flight from the inn, what they had been to since she had fallen asleep, but never actually touched onto the night itselt, on who had come for her that day. Why? She preferred it that way, to be honest, but why not ask? Blame her? Things weren''t like they were before, couldn''t be like they were before, so why?

    As if she had the grounds to speak. She shook her head.

    She looked to Agare, then remembered, then understood. Marquise had been awlfully interested in her Revealing ability, hadn''t she? It''s because of it that Holly had a special place in Marquise''s plan. It''s why she had practiced with it so much back at the manor, and why Agare now seemed so keen on it too, wasn''t it?

    In the end, regardless of what he had done, of where they differed, they were both working for the sake of the same person. The realization made some of that hesitation she had felt for him fade.

    She looked up. Beyond the moon, ten thousand eyes, always seeing, always waiting. From there, all she had to do was follow instinct, and let that sight flow through her.

    The Sacred Forest didn''t brighten. There was no more light here than there had been seconds ago, the canopies were no more open, the stones worked no better. It was, however, revealed. Everything there was to be seen, no matter how deeply buried in the dark, how well camouflaged against moss and bark, how well its presence mixed with the air, was revealed.

    "W-what the fuck?" Almalilly murmured, eyes wide, tanned skin gone pale, finger clutching at the skirt of her light dress, shocked and afraid.

    "Agare, this is..." Aleh cut himself off, brows eternally creased, hand clasping at the unadorned wooden cane that offset his stiff, unresponsive, yet unharmed leg as if he wanted to beat someone with it. Anger, wonder.

    And the man himself too was pierced, the occult muck that once obscured his facelessness cast away to briefly reveal the liquid void of his Mark, placid and slow. Yet, he remained nothing, a nothing so sharp its absence was as bright as the light at the end of a tunnel; his body language restrained, his thoughts occluded, a mystery.

    Her goal had been there all along, faint and forlorn, Will with no intent. An emission? Waste? cast off remains, left behind to be eaten away by the World of Wills and repurposed, or destroyed, or returned, or who knew. Familiar yet not. Solid yet no longer.

    "I got it." Holly saying, feeling the start of a headache, "It''s been gone at least for a little while, but there was something here, something a little solid and maybe a bit heavy? It''s kind of like holding water or something, I can tell it''s there but-"

    Then Aleh''s cane did hit somebody. Her, muddy bottom poking her straight in the palate.

    "Blaa'' ghaaghh?!"

    Spitting out chunks of soil, she lost concentration and the Revelation began to crumble. She was staring at Aleh''s good ol'' glare with a milder one of her own design.

    "W-w-why?" Was all she could ask among the coughing.

    "Ye'' ¨€¨€¨€¨€¨€¨€¨€¨€, the shit''s falling all over me!" Klyla, whose eyes had shot open, said, protecting herself with her arms.

    "Holly, forgive me for this uncouth comment, but are you fucking stupid?!" Aleh shouted at her, "Has my prestige tricked you into believing me to be some sort of field surgeon? Have you, in all truth, never looked, or felt, your own person until this moment?"

    "What are you even talking about?! What was that for?!"

    "What you went through can best be described as a backstreet healer''s hack-job, and on no paper cut either! Now, I employed rituals that would expedite your cure by a good margin, and perhaps you don''t feel active symptoms on your mundane life, or even the patched wound itself. That being said? You. Are. Still. Fucking. Recovering!" Every word was punctuated with a jab to her chest and stomach. "Do you wish to see what happens when one''s Merurgical body splits in half? Or when an Ashic wound tears open so deep it gets incorporated into your being? Allow me to assure you, then, that descriptions of it are more than unpleasant enough and I do not share of your ambitions."

    "W-wow, slow down Aleh!" Almalilly intervened in between then. "She didn''t know!"

    "Y-yeah, I didn''t know!" Holly said.

    "But you know who did?" Aleh whirled on Agare. "What were you thinking?!"

    "Beyond the chance that the Citrine Tale had staged an ambush for travelers and we were in its eye, to confirm its function for myself and show you. Do you see what I mean now?"

    The mention of a Tale''s ambush gave her pause. Aleh, somehow, look mollified.

    "It still was a tremendous risk."

    "Not one I would take lightly." Agare said. "In this topic, we are equals, I knew what I was doing."

    "U-uuhm, excuse me, what topic?" Holly asked.

    "And can we have that discussion elsewhere?" Almalilly said. "I gather we aren''t fully in the clear, so I rather not have more angles towards my neck then necessary."

    "Holly, when you identified something different, do you think you could guess if it was a Tale or not?" Agare asked.

    "I-I don''t know!" Holly said. "I don''t even know what is happening anymore, you guys are speaking too fast!"

    "Try it."

    "M-maybe? It felt a little like the trail that led me to t-that thing in Trel, behind the walls with the burned buildings. But it''s a lot weaker."

    "A Merurgical Impression," Aleh said, ponderous. "One not backed by lingering presences, and likely at the edge of fading, if we didn''t catch it beforehand."

    "So it''s possible they are still active in the area?" Agare asked.

    "I would not hazard a guess."

    "Unsure is more sure than I am comfortable with. Everyone, we are going back to the Oke."

    Holly paused. "Uhm?"

    "Not a second too soon." Almalilly sighed. "My back''s still killing me."

    "W-wait, Almalilly, we have to-"

    "Holly," Agare said, "For your safety and hers, its better you head inside."

    "But didn''t you say-"

    "... Another time, you can have your conversation. Whichever you mean to discuss, it can wait."

    With Almalilly growing ever distant, and Aleh slowly following while never quite allowing her out of his sight, Holly gave up. How could there be another time? She couldn''t be sure the willpower would be there ever again.

    She could still do at the Oke, right? But, if she already found it difficult one on one, could she speak freely with everyone else overhearing, maybe even butting in?

    She would have to think about it. downcast, she trailed behind.

 3 - The Butcher of Heron Road 6

    Their stop by the town of Lunool was brief.

    At first, Holly had to confess she had been a little stoked. As they approached, she saw for the first time one of her beloved luun   not an uluun, or uwluun, mind you, Aleh and Klyla both had been sure to emphasize, those were similar but different   alive. In massive numbers, too: entire hills deforested only to be covered in the shaggy fur of what may have been thousands, their screaming chorus piercing from the fenced edges of the woods all the way to the Oke. Truly wondrous!

    The town itself seemed fine, if on the smaller and quieter side. After Treil, she knew the former could only be a given, all towns would look small compared to it, yet oddly there were so few people out it might as well just be an overgrown village. She didn''t let it bring her down, still very excited to experience an inn for the second first time, the other not counted.

    She didn''t get to, of course. She was told to stay inside with Klyla, Aleh, and Furfu until Agare deemed it safe, Rosen and Almalilly sent out on errands she was not privy to.

    What exactly the three of the them discovered was never brought up in explicit. An hour or so later they were back on the road, soon to sleep camouflaged and out of sight another night, while Holly killed time trying o force herself to ponder certain topics that sent her cringing straight to distraction.

    The opportuinity to speak alone with Almalilly never came. In another life, maybe she would have the courage to bring the topic in front of others, to admit her shame and just talk. In this, with the guilt eating at her, the idea alone made her want to puke. What if everyone ended up looking at her the way Rosen did now?

    Likewise, she didn''t join the discussions on future plans and what kinds of threats might lay in wait for them, which flew over her head even in perfect Yine. Poor Klyla had gon e glaze eyed before lunch and was out by afternoon. To cheer her up, Holly tried to offer her some of premium luun cuts bough from a slaughterhouse just for her.

    "Ye'' know, people might say we Goban eat whatever walks below our noses, but I like my meat cooked," she had said, roll of the eyes barely masking the wrinkling distaste.

    "They do?" Holly asked.

    "Yeh? What, do they something else wherever ye''re from? Ye'' offering out of the kindness of yer'' heart?"

    "I am!" Holly took another bite, relishing the taste. Fulfillment wise, it was so-so, the first for luun meat. Could uluun just be better? Or maybe this wasn''t half as fresh as told to her comrades. "I don''t think anybody knew Goban existed back home. Or, at least I had never heard about your folk before."

    "Huh. Well, don''t even know what to say to that."

    Maybe it lacked parasites. She hadn''t seen many burrowleeches or mites of late. A bummer, really.

    Still, things were bound to change sooner or later. As eventful as it had been, her stay in the kingdom of Bellfort would be a short one, feeling no longer than a hop and a skip if only because she spent so long in slumber. She knew it was much smaller than Galehold as a whole, but even this felt too little.

    The next day, they would be reaching Gwanegume, first town of Awin Holly was to ever step foot on, and the final, if lengthiest, leg of their journey to her homeland of Skawla, the Gate to Ivias.

    And no matter what, Holly couldn''t bring herself to be excited about it.

    ------

    "Over there, behind that bent tree on the other corner of the field, another one!"

    Almalilly''s words earned from the group no attention, outside a quick glance from Holly. All together glued to the small transparent corner of wall, their eyes remained glued to the omen rising over the horizon.

    "Another abandoned vehicle," Agare said.

    "Yup. Makes what, four since this morning?" Almalilly asked, and no answer was forthcoming.

    A palpable tension descended among them, so thick and heavy it was suffocating. Eventually, it was Agare who moved to cut it by the root, prying the small baton Holly had been given by Aleh from her hands without a word, shutting the window down immediately.

    What was done was done, and what had been seen wouldn''t so soon be forgotten. As she felt the Oke smoothly descend another well kept slope and come to a sudden halt. for the first she questioned her place here. She knew she was needed, but she wanted nothing bettern than to curl into a ball and hide.

    "We will do as planned." Agare''s words seemed unaffected, loud and clear as if he hadn''t seen a thing. "Rosen, Almalilly, and Aleh will continue through the checkpoint at the bridge, while Holly, Furfu and I will leave here and infiltrate the city through the lower docks. Do any of you have further questions about your task?"

    "As if you needed to remind us," Aleh said, voice distant.

    Furfu nodded, while both Almalilly and Rosen both gave a sharp no. Holly, for her part, only waited for what was sure to come, hands firmly but gently holding a certain another''s shoulders.

    "... If not, I wish to make one small alteration," Agare crossed his arms, and if she didn''t know any better she would think he was seeing right through the walls. "If you see anything out of the ordinary at the Vihge Bridge, send a signal and retreat, we will meet again here. Don''t take to long, or we shall proceed with the plan as usual, understood?

    A small round of nods and exclamations later, Agare finally turned her way, and acknowledged the last, latest, member of their crew.

    Klyla''s gaze was every bit as distant as Aleh''s, but while the not quite-lad appeared shocked, she was openly and obviously pissed, frowning a storm and glaring holes through the metal as if it would open the window again in terror. This way, she didn''t even notice as Agare took measure of her, than hesitated before speaking to Holly.

    "Klyla of Fena will stay here," he said, with no space for arguments. Another time, Holly would have cowered at his tone. Now, she dug her heels into the ground and clenched fists around her Goban comrade.

    "S-she comes with us!" Holly said, hoping her pitch had succeeded in telling him how much that decision was not up for debate.

    Even if Klyla herself was not aware of the danger she was in, Holly couldn''t knock the sense of wrongness that the idea of leaving her with them caused. And she was afraid too. No amount of anger could bury the widening of her eyes, the tautness of her lips, the feeble shivering of her limbs. She needed to stay with her!

    "Holly," Agare''s voice was all it took to make her shrink, but she held on.

    "S-she will. I won''t leave her."

    "Holly, she is Dashi, her body does not work like yours or mine. The infiltration alone may drown her, not to speak of all other dangers she will be put through once inside. There will be no safe place for her along us three!"

    "I''ll keep her safe! I can do it, I''m strong!" Holly said, earning her a questioning look from Klyla. They had been talking in Yine all along, so she probably didn''t know why her name was causing so much discussion, did she?

    "We don''t have time for this." Agare shook his head slightly. "Tell us, why the suspicion, all of a sudden?"

    She hoped Klyla hadn''t noticed the reflexive pull towards Holly''s chest. By the time she caught herself, it was too late to stop. "I-I don''t know what you''re talking about."

    "... None of us are children, but if you wish to pretend us this naive you will earn the same treatment. Do you think there is anyone here who wouldn''t question when an unknown is forced into such a sensitive endeavor?" Agare took a step forward, and she scuttled back. "Your behavior was odd at first, but I decided to leave you to deal with it on your own time. This? This is endangering the mission."

    "I-I-!"

    "She is not our comrade. She is not even your friend, Holly, she would sooner be away from you then continued being dragged around like a pouch. Yet, not a second goes by where you allow her out of your sight, and you can''t tell me that is common behavior."

    Holly bristled. "You don''t know me."

    "Then explain yourself." Agare took another step forward. Down on her knees, Holly had little in way to defend herself, but her Will intervened in between them. As he met her thousand arms, again she felt that void advance, his image growing inside her head as the dimension of his mystery crushed her. "What happened that you now suspect us? was it-"

    "Just stop this shit already." Klyla sighed, "Hols, fucking go already, Goddess down below!"

    They all froze on the spot. shocked. The Goban, meanwhile, rolled her eyes again.

    "What? Mountain gals ain''t stupid, ye''know? Don''t need a crier to tell me I''m the talk of the town." Klyla knocked twice at her collarbone. "And don''t need a luun''s worth to paint a red picture. Go."

    "But what about you?" Holly said. shifting to Ivian. "I mean, what if something happens?!"

    "Somethin'' what? I know how to take care of myself. Can''t handle big gals made of steel like you, but with you gone, who compares? Lil'' guy the boss? Lil'' guy the quiet? Lil'' boy with one eye?"

    Aleh fumed, rising on his cane, "I will not stand for you insulting my maturity yet-!"

    "Not the time!" Agare cut in, putting a hand in between them. "Holly, she has spoken. What will you do?"

    Holly wasn''t sure. If she herself said she was going to stay, what could she do about it?

    ... Take her again. Go against her wishes just like she had that night, without a moment spared to second thoughts or remorse, snatch her away for forever and ever so nobody could hurt her. She didn''t know what she was saying, didn''t know what she was playing with, but Holly had seen the Faceless who would never come back, had seen-You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

    The next to approach and interrupt her chain of thought was not Agare. With a much slower, mollifying pace, Furfu reached with a hand so hesitant Holly felt as if she was made of flame for a second. It landed on her shoulder, too close to Klyla for her comfort.

    "H-Holly, can I promise you something?" she said.

    "What?"

    "If these Faces pull so much as a strand of hair out of the Goban''s head, I promise I will make them beg to die."

    It made her spine want to crawl away. The shift in tone and posture had been so seamless she hadn''t noticed until it was done. She heard it in her voice first; she had seen the unstable, insecure Furfu before, and that wasn''t it. It was clear, determined, light as if she had promised nothing worse than cleaning the underside of her bed out of spiders. A silent consensus was reached among the others, a collective retreat from the suddenly threatening girl.

    "I''ll do it! I promise you! I''ll hurt them very bad and only offer mercy when you say so," she continued, then hunched a little. "I-I can do all of them, or just one as an example. I-I mean, I think the L-Lady wouldn''t appreciate it much, but it should be fine if it''s for the sake of her dream, right? They stood in the way of her goals, and that I won''t accept."

    "S-stop it," Holly said.

    "Or are you the one who will stand against the Lady?" The pressure around her shouder grew as her hardskin crushed her muscles. "For someone you met not a week ago?"

    "I said stop it!" Holly pushed her away with both hands.

    And that mistake was all it took, As Furfu stumbled, falling over the seat to her left, Klyla rushed out of her grip with a speed she hadn''t believe possible for the small Dashi. Her heart stopped as she saw her charge as if trying to cut straight through Agare, but at the last moment, he evaded her, who slid to a halt at the other side of the Oke.

    They stared at one another, the barrier between them meaning Holly would never have her again. An intense misery took her over. "I just didn''t want any of you to get hurt again. Was that too much?"

    The gesture Klyla showed her, she didn''t quite understand. Pinkie and ring, middle and index, both pairs of fingers separated with the thumb peeking from the gap between. "Cunt to ye''! If ye''r gonna be a brigand, learn to have a colder heart! And leave me alone for more than five minutes, please!"

    Holly tried to reach her regardless, but Agare stepped on her way. "What will it be, now?"

    She paused, retracting herself as the building weight of all her comrades'' stares grew, all expecting to see which side of this line she had drawn herself she would fall on. And that answer should have been easy for Holly Seneschal, shouldn''t it? Not the obedient one, the one needed, the one gone, the one who could spit in the face of danger to her very last breath.

    And where would that Holly be, when the one still alive needed her? Whichever inkling of her she had found, it was gone now, and the sudden realization of the fight she had been about to pick made her uneasy.

    "... Let''s go," she said. "S-sorry about that."

    "Furfu," Agare said. "We''re going. You cover the rear, I will take point, and Holly the middle."

    "Yes, sir!" Furfu said, stomping back to her feet.

    He didn''t wait for her, unlocking the back door in silence and stepping out. Stupid ideas were born and died just as fast in Holly mind, as Furfu refused to move from her position, holding the passage further back like a statue.

    Wordlessly, Holly followed Agare. Landing hand first into the sun heated, cobblestone paved road, she couldn''t help but think what an ironically beautiful day that was. sparse in clouds, they had arrived to a light patch of woods edging a large pond, its waters placid save for the touch of the wind, creating small ripples. A few wild flowers danced at its margins, bright reds and oranges familiar yet nothing she could name.

    No smell from this distance. No wings buzzing either, no songs sang by the birds, life had already fled long ago. To the North and West, the direction the town of Gwanegume was supposed to lay, plumes of smoke rose in black towards the pristine sky, only partially obscures by the brush.

    Holly idly heard Furfu close the backdoor behind them, and the Oke losing no time in wheeling away from her. She didn''t know why, but she felt humiliated in a way she had never been in years.

    "H-Holly, we should go," Furfu brought her back to reality.

    She nodded, and chased after Agare, trying to bury the feeling down where it wouldn''t bother her anymore.

    ------

    The Vihge River stretched her definition of its name to gruesome proportions. Squat, nearly crawling, under the large leaves of some plant at its margin, details on the opposite side were nearly impossible to tell through naked eyes. With the islets that peppered the space between them and it, she almost wanted to call it a sea, though she had never seen one of those either.

    More impressive than the river itself, however, was the Vihge Bridge, unlike anything Holly had ever seen before. Its pale white stone polished only so much it''s crudeness didn''t stand out rose from the rushing waters in dozens of thick, cylindrical pillars that kept it firm from side to side, also forming the few thin, bent, almost rib-like symmetrical towers that protruded at even intervals, eventually merging into the tall walls of Gwanegume itself.

    Odder than the stone itself, however, was the light. Many barely perceptible yet undeniable shimmering lines contoured the bridge''s length, fusing and branching apart at awkward, straight angles, together creating an impossible geometric tapestry slowly twinkled in and out of sight.

    And odder than the light itself, was the absence.

    Not a sign of life made itself known around them. Not a fish in the water, not an ant scavenging the foliage, not a person to be seen or heard. To think that huge town was the epicenter of this silence was terrifying, even if part of her had already been expecting as much.

    "The Lower Docks are there," Agare said, point to an agglomeration of buildings outside the walls proper, some extending into the river. "Gwanegume has a strong fishing community. At this hour, the river should be filled."

    Holly watched the smike billow from out of view. Most plumes came from inside the town, but one appeared to be blowing from the bridge. "Maybe they''re all busy with whatever is going on inside."

    "Gwanegume is of pivotal strategic importance to the Saintdom," Agare said, and the disbelief in his voice made her heart thunder. "There shouldn''t be anything going on inside, nothing that shouldn''t have been dealt with as fast as it came to be.

    "... No. More than strategic importance. It''s name means something akin to ''Impenetrable'' in Skawlan Ivian, and was born out of collaboration with Skawla. It is a symbol of resistance against the Yine and Galehold from before the creation of Awin, which matter a whole lot for Tales. The situation would never have been allowed to grow out of proportion, so long as the Saintess had a say in it."

    They hadn''t moved in what felt like hours now, which did no favors for their nerves. Agare remained as patient as ever, but Holly felt her hairs trying to kick off her hood every couple seconds, and Furfu had reached a strange trance were she kept shivering, jolting back into unnatural rigidness, than mellowing out again. What they could have been waiting for, she was afraid of asking.

    Which is exactly why she decided she had to. "A-Agare, shouldn''t we go already? If there''s nobody to see us, then that''s pretty ideal, right?"

    "No. Not knowing why exactly Gwanegume remains so silent, the situation is as dangerous as it could have been. I don''t like where this is going at all. If it is as I think-"

    A sharp whistle broke the conversation, drawing the attention of all three to the bridge. stretched over the railing, a diminute figure could be seen moving about, waving in their direction with clear desperation Holly realized.

    "-Then we might have to completely alter our long term plans. You both, follow, but stay vigilant." Agare did not wait to finish before taking off from the bushes and back into the woods. Holly, forced to endure Furfu''s expectant glare to the back of her head as her confused brain slowed to a crawl, eventually gave chase.

    It wasn''t a couple minutes before they found themselves on the highway, from which the bridge was but a few hops away, the Oke quietly resting at the rightmost side.

    The bridge, from above, was just as incredible as from below. Its topside, paved with much less exquisite bricks of grey stone worn by time and passage, was wide enough five or six of their vehicle could travel its length abreast. Slivers worth of windows lined the closest towers from top to bottom, allowing any potential guards to watch the pandemonium ahead of them.

    Broken down carriages, carts, and other transports not too unlike the Oke stood toppled and broken, their fronts all pointed away from the town. A particular pile, tall with debris, was the source of the closest burning fire, at points red and yellow and green and violet in a beautiful shifting gradient that would be as hypnotic to behold as it was terrifying, if not for the grizzlier touches of violence. Discarded blades shattered to fragments, armor pieces bludgeoned flat or split open as if by arrows the girth of fists, blood stains with no bodies all smudged towards the same direction.

    In the middle of all that chaos, only their Oke stood intact, and Almalilly too, walking towards them as if she had seen not a chunk of it.

    "Almalilly," Agare said.

    "I''m sorry, Agare," Almalilly sighed. "They knew you were there too, I''m pretty sure. When we noticed, it was too late to turn back."

    "Explain yourself."

    She didn''t respond. Instead, she pointed behind them, towards the road they had arrived from, towards-

    A large group of people now standing a hundred paces away from them.

    Armors glistened under the sun, steel covered bodies standing in tight lines like a moving fortress of shields, clubs, and heavy blades. All of them large, shorter than her yet of a height she knew most lads would take as intimidating, and of a muscular bulk that almost belied their Dashi nature. All adorned, embossed if lightly, though the details escaped her from this distance.

    And their approach, so quiet. Their feet followed in a careful, perfectly coreographed unison, a singular rustle of metal plates carried in the wind followed by a light step barely louder than the dragging of her own flight.

    "... You led us to an ambush?" Agare''s spoke, calm.

    "I-I told you, they knew you were there, they gestured at you guys," Almalilly retreated with all of them. "Towards the exact position, too. That one, in the middle."

    At first, the person she had mentioned didn''t stand out among all its shelled comrades. Only when the others halted their march and they continued did Holly take notice. They were on the shorter side, carrying with them a long shield like a giant scale and what she could only describe as some sort of scythe, its handle short yet its blade thick, one edged and curved with a sharp beak.

    "Holly," Agare said, low. "On my mark, I want you to run to the Oke with the other two. I will cover your retreat, and meet you inside the city. You will seek shelter somewhere out of sight, and wait for further orders, do you understand me?"

    "Agare, how are we even supposed to make it inside?" Almalilly whispered, never taking her eyes from the figure. "Have you seen the state of this place?!"

    "The gates to Gwanegume are open, and there are gaps through the disaster you can ride through. If you find one you cannot cross, abandon the Oke and proceed on foot, but under no circumstances are you to let Holly fall into their hands."

    "Of course not, as if you needed to say that!"

    The armored man stopped, and so did their breathing.

    Seconds passed, no party daring make sudden movements and bring about the inevitable chaos.

    The scythe descended in a reverse arc, deliberate and paced, a patient mockery of a slash halding in the air at the very cusp of its completion, head held towards their Oke as if to indicate it.

    Except, Holly was wrong. following its direction, she understood it was not the Oke but the closest tower to them. A few heads higher than her own laid a series of symbols, rusting red smeared on pure white.

    The world around her disappeared. All that was left were her and those words.

    She knew them. From where? She couldn''t read them, couldn''t recall how each letter was pronounced, but she knew in her heart of hearts that she knew them. A language of circles and knotting squiggles, each part as complex as a drawn figure, a story told in five characters but fewer words she was sure. She came closer, head turning this way and that trying to find an angle that made everything fit together.

    Not ten paces away, and she understood there would be none. She knew she was doing something wrong, but not what, not how. It made her head itch from the inside; it was right there, a turn of speech at the tip of her tongue, the sound practically formed but particulars refusing to come to light.

    It was a whim, then, that unleashed her Will upon the bridge. It was a whim that forced her in contact with lines that burned the tips of her thousand fingers like fire and then forwards. It was a whim that had her caress the dried, coagulated blood and the powerful contours they shaped beyond sight.

    She felt somebodyshake her by the hip, but by then it was too late. She couldn''t read it, couldn''t pronounce it, yet like the last piece sliding seamless into an abstract puzzle, she knew.

    Her stomach sunk cold and rose as bile to her mouth. Her heart stopped as the bloodshed fell over her like a raging flood. She had been drowning all along, choking without ever asphyxiating in death, in undying flesh, in hearts that thundered like hammers striking bone, all around her. She vomited, hoping the acridness would rid her of the sensation, but it only voided her for more.

    A sound pierced into her ears, the sharp pain of a slap bringing her back to a world not yet subsumed by the deluge.

    "Get yourself together!" Agare screamed, only enough to be heard through her screams. Had she been screaming? "We''re under attack, you need-"

    Agare disappeared from sight. A dull realization: she hadn''t held back at all this time. Agare was unlike Aleh, however, and she saw him fall back on both feet, having blocked her kick as if he had predicted it. She felt no regrets, couldn''t really. All she felt was the crushing push of corpses, and the lake of blood they had dragged her under, unleashed by three mere words.

    She ran. Ran faster than her legs could feel, faster than voice could reach her, away from Agare, away from the Oke and all her comrades. A black blur flew by her cheek, caught by her Will just in time for her to swerve, it''s near fatal path leaving nothing but a burning gash she could only ignore.

    The walls passed her by. Another time, perhaps, Holly might have felt some wonder at the architecture here present, at the walls of smooth stone slabs or crate sized bricks in pink and red white, of the flat roofs with gardens and laundry to be picked, of the once neatly kept corners where statues and reliefs depicted veiled and twisting figures in awestriking poses.

    Holly sped past fleshless charnel, streets infected with the pungency of blood and urine, burnt hair and feces, smoke omnipresent, and those three words always there, hidden or obvious always within reach of her Will, guiding her frenzied, mindless body through blurring turns, across gutters and alleys and punctured homes that still burned.

    Taunting her.

    And for all the soft press of fresh death overwhelmed her instincts, she knew she would follow it, because it had been left for her sake, because it had been made for her. It wanted to show her something, and she had always been helpless to resist.

    Eventually, she couldn''t say she came to herself, but the world stood sharper into focus as she walked into a large clearing.

    Surrounded at all sides by tall edifices and narrow entries, this had been a square of sort. Cared for, dense and verdant shrubs placed between short trees, branches cut into domes so they wouldn''t spread farther than their brick built limits, guiding any potential passerbies towards the squat, rustic, yet grand coffin of rock and shimmering light at its far end, pillars protruding out of its sides like ridges or folds of wrinkled skin. It had been beautiful, in its own way, once.

    At the dead center of that square, where now only the reaching hand and veiled face of its central figure peaked through as if begging for salvation, a great pile of bodies had been laid.

    Holly had to come closer. She couldn''t believe her own eyes, couldn''t believe the slobber building under her tongue. Of her mind, nothing but a keening sound and fogging numbness was left. Toes digging deep into slick cobblestone, she was forced to watch, nothing but an observer imprisoned inside her own body.

    Men and women. Children and elders. Soldiers and beggars. Naked and armored. Whole bodies and glistening mutilated limbs. Expressions of grievous agony and serene acceptance. Death after death, overlaid one atop the other, with such a disregard it could never have been careless or negligent. a grotesque exhibition every bit as thoughtful as the morbid abomination she had seen entering Bellfort, but here the artistry had made itself: the way bisected bodies had fallen apart over its neighbors, how the softness of escaping entrails complimented metal fragments and hard leather, how the wet squish of bodies and the dizzying odor added to the image in ways no recreation of the natural could ever achieve.

    And the name of the work, repeated over and over around a circle of red lines, brushed through means inconceivable, five letters she could not pronounce from a language she did not spoke, forming three words she knew as if they were spoken in her father tongue.

    "FOR GODDESS MARIWA."

    She fell to her knees, lost.

 3 - The Butcher of Heron Road 7

    The divine was a thing of unfairness.

    Stocked with bodies beyond what their mortal prey could achieve in their wildest dreams without the aid of Ashas, they were nightmares, but add their inherent relationship to the Lesser Planes and they were as ghosts, detached from the natural laws in the same ways that bogged down even beings like Fordu himself.

    That was how Holly, first sprinting on two legs then galloping on all fours, could fly over the bridge and bound over the vehicular carcasses left by whichever destruction had visited Gwanegume in the night with enough speed and strength to pulverize the stone beneath, yet only leave the echo of her footsteps as evidence of her passing.

    Beneath him the ground tore, cracking deep as the barely broken into enchantments of his recently repaired boots, standard issue made to muffle the sound and effects of a Faceless'' wake, struggled and failed.

    In the end, his rush was in vain. As soon as she reached the labyrinthine streets of Gwanegume, she turned down one of its many corners and disappeared, decades of nigh suicidal training and field experience completely outmatched in a matter of seconds.

    Only when he was certain he had been left behind did he skid to a halt, the gummy, corpse-free butchery of a curved alley slick and slippery against his momentum.

    "Shit!" Was all he could say. How did things turn so suddenly? Had he not taken all the precautions possible?

    A few seconds later, before he could sink into his own thoughts, another voice barreled from behind.

    "A-Agare, sir, wait!" Furfu''s said, her attempts to stop herself less than successful as she slid right to her rear. Getting up, she continued. "W-we know where she might be going!"

    He jolted. "How?! Explain yourself, faster!"

    In lieu of answering, a shaking hand snapped upwards, finger pointed straight at the main piece of this particular macabre exposition. For all their surroundings, walls and floors and windows all, had been caked in whichever act of the carnage had transpired, one particular spot had been kept clear enough for writing, white stone   regenerative hard tissue quarried from one of the many Mountainous Intestines that plagued the island   serving as a canvas for a short sentence in thickset strokes of rusting red.

    Fordu recognized not the words, but the concept put on display was familiar. Ashic Scripting was a broad, complicated art. Serving as a transcription of a particular Art from its Ashic roots into characters and language, it served countless purposes in fields such as enchanting, warding, boundary creation, and others he had to admit were unfamiliar to him. It was not unusual for a witch or other general practitioners to know a couple, even if just as another language.

    No, the problem stood not with the writing itself, but with the reaction cause. Holly had seen Ashic Scripting before, and never reacted this way. This spoke of a closer relation, and though he knew not its grammar, he knew the particulars necessary to make the script more than just symbols. He looked down to the mess beneath his feet; against splatters and drops, a small pool had formed by the wall, as if something, someone, had been bled dry.

    A sinking feeling roiled within his gut.

    "It''s a transcript of the Azure''s Descendancy, I''m sure. What of it?" he said.

    "T-that witch says there is a symbol in the first character, and the Lilly woman s-said she recognized it," she said, stepping closer and nearly pressing a finger to said symbol, at its lower right. "H-he says it''s a generalist indicator of direction, t-that it was slipped in smoothly and it''s skilled work."

    No doubt about that, though Fordu was unsure about the meaning of generalist in this context. It had been planned through then, something that could be copied and repeated all across the city, as he had seen it more than a couple times. More than knowledge, practice, spoke of intentions towards Holly that were not recent.

    Tracing the lines in his mind, he felt some relief. Each stroke was probably done by hand, having a consistent thickness slight above that of an average human''s finger, here meaning it wasn''t a directly drawn by the Haruspect himself. Still, it made him wonder when the Citrine had learned about Marquise''s protegee, that he had the time to teach his servants these frivolities.

    "Words of the witch..." Fordu remembered, and cursed himself, "Shit, we left them alone! If the Citrine makes a move they would be helpless!"

    "M-My apologies, but I don''t think that matter right n-now," Furfu said. "Besides, Looking at these, I d-don''t think we''re the targets, s-sir."

    He considered for a second. If current events spoke of something, it was not of the Citrine''s fear of collateral damage, and so, with their team as those closest to Holly and most likely to interfere with the Haruspect''s unfathomable objectives, there was no doubt they were in danger. Then again, if his goal was just to lead her away and snatch her while she was alone...

    "Furfu, new orders. Return to the Oke immediately and bring our agents inside post haste. Then, find somewhere safe to hide and await our return, but send an urgent message to Marquise explaining the situation. Tell Aleh I will be deferring authority to him for now, and say it''s exactly as we feared, he should be able to fill any information gaps you require. If I''m not back until tomorrow, escape into the countryside before the Lens arrive."

    He tried to think of more, but he had no more time to waste here. The moment he turned, ready to continue the pursuit, he heard Furfu''s voice.

    "W-wait, you forgot something," she said, and something clinked off the dirty ground by his feet.

    The dull black to dark-brown spiral blade of the demonium Rava, tip bent by the impact of his miss, fit rather well among the bloody grime, so much that for a second he almost didn''t recognize his belonging. Cautiousl of her presence, he kneeled to pick it up, storing the only other weapon Hagan seemed to tolerate back into his Mark.

    "... Thank you," He watched her over his shoulder. Furfu didn''t seem agitated, in itself an odd gesture. "You''ve something you need to say. Spit it out or wait until I''m back."

    "Y-you don''t even know how to follow them, do you? The s-signs, radicals, whatever," she said.

    "And you do?" he said, watching as she meekly shook her head, "I have a guess, if I understand the intent behind Aleh calling it generalist, one which I will better confirm seeing more. This isn''t what you intended say."

    "W-what is the purpose of all this? I c-can''t understand! Was it all-"

    "Do not waste my time, Furfu Third!"

    "... Are you going to kill her?"

    Of course. There it was. Her voice almost neutral, though he wasn''t sure it was an attempt to appear disaffected. Furfu the Third could be menacing at the strangest of times.

    "I will do as necessary for the mission," he said, simply, and took a step forward. "Now, do as you were ordered and-"

    "Holly is necessary for the Lady''s mission." This time, there was no attempt to mask her tension, "The Lady likes Holly very much. She entrusted her goal to her, she entrusted her agents to her, she wouldn''t want her dead like this, not like this, not when-"

    "Are you saying you would go against Marquise''s desire for the sake of an Heir, Furfu?"

    She didn''t respond, a visible shiver crossing her from head to toe. In that paralytic uncertainty, he continued.

    "Do you know what would be worse than Holly''s death? If she was to turn coat with the wealth of knowledge and suspicions she gathered during our time together. Can you imagine what would happen if she learned enough another could uncover D'' Sallia''s location? If it fell on the hands of the Azure, or worse, the Sect?"

    How terrifying it was to see, the day Furfu was uncertain about doing what was best for her Lady''s sake. Not that her loyalty was shaken, as if it ever could, but hesitant was shocking enough. He shook his mind out off distractions; he would have to deal with this later, every second wasted now meant Holly got farther away.

    "... H-her presence was nice," Furfu''s voice was low, shaken, only audible thanks to Gwanegume''s deathly silence. "I guess I n-never talked that much to her, o-one on one, not since we left the L-Lady, but I she was always pretty nice to me, e-even if she is Azure. I don''t think the Lady w-would-"

    "Do you trust me as the Marquise''s representative, Furfu?" Fordu said.

    "... Of course. We''re kindred. She is out light, she is our life."

    He nodded. "Then trust I too have what''s best for her in mind. I won''t kill Holly on a whim."

    Seeing no point in continuing the conversation, he lowered his body and dashed away with an impulse. Thankfully, she did not follow again.

    A friend should be a foreign concept to the Faceless. Comrades, one would have many, but that was a different concept, family of no blood created by creed and necessity. A stranger to their Greater Mission, an Heir at that? That was betrayal, a breach of taboo, the mere consideration which could get one so high as a Headless to be brought down to the deepest darkness of the Remnant''s quarters, never to be seen again.

    "The fate of damaged goods," he whispered to himself, a saying from long ago.

    And now that he pondered the matter, that probably the reason Marquise had been so keen on getting her hands on Furfu, her generation''s biggest promise as well as disappointment. If she was not the kind who could guided into breaking that taboo, would she have been allowed here? For all she considered him kindred, Fordu hadn''t understood her, hadn''t seen it coming.

    The Depths of Marquise''s scheme frightened even him at times. How much did she account for, out of his sight?

    Much, he guessed, trying to ignore the strange weight with which his Rava now hang inside the inner folds of his Mark. He had launched it at a heart drop, the sting of Holly''s kick making more than his body soar.

    For his own sanity, he decided to ignore the feeling.

    <hr>

    Reaching the Square took a frustrating amount of time, but at least his guess had proven right. The Radicals were rather sensible and obvious, thus knowing one meant that, with some fine tuning, the deciphered the rest.If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

    He emerged from a narrow, gated alleway, opposite to which sat a wide, squat building, one he rather quickly identified as a Silent Temple, a sepulcher of biological stone larger beneath the earth than above it and place of worship of Sigwalism, that is, the cult of Tyrian. He had seen, and broken into, similar places during his time in Skawla, so he knew first hand the kind of zealous care its Missionaries and Heirs took for their church and how this Square, a not too uncommon place for fellow cultists to intermingle, could still look so well groomed despite everything.

    Whichever fixtures had once meant to draw the eye, they had become rather pale in comparison to the gruesome display left at its dead center.

    Fordu had seen more than his fair share of death before, caused it, yet the sight still made his decrepit innards churn. Hundreds, maybe over a thousand, bodies had been piled atop one another, with no regard for the lives taken or the manner. Civilians and soldiers, children and elders, humans and gobans, all strata of society made equal in the mangling of their bodies, a lake of meat drowning the worn statue of one of Awin''s many past saints. No wonder he hadn''t found bodies elsewhere.

    A rather obvious ritual circle surrounded the massacre, a familiar five symbol sentence repeated over and over again.

    There was a pointed message here, one Fordu did not miss, from one cult of madmen to the other. Considering the scale of the destruction too, the lack of death despite the abundance of its remains, it was easy to imagine this was not the sole pile created.

    Usurpation.

    To tear his sight away from the madness of severed limbs and hastily stacked organs was close to impossible. Had he any breath to lose, he would be choking. The stupidity of this massacre rivaled both its boldness and absurdity. Had the Haruspect truly believed himself capable of challenging Awin by his lonesome? That he would be decimated was all but already written in stone.

    And them, foreign invaders caught in the wrong place at the wrong time, would fare no better.

    One final piece stood amidst the dead. One final piece to a puzzle he knew he could never solve, but couldn''t stop himself from questioning.

    Holly Seneschal stood limp and drapped over herself like a puppet with its strings cut. In the fall, the hem of her salazan leather robes had hiked up, her legs extending beyond the limits of its enchantment and revealing her true nature to any who would look. Fixated on the bodies, she didn''t so much as twitch.

    Still, Fordu approached carefully, slowly, warry of startling her. He should have held his Rava, kept it at ready to be used on a moment''s notice at the very least, an Heir was always an unknown quantity, a lesson he payed in blood to remember back in Lesser Hollow. He didn''t, and didn''t dwell on why he didn''t either, he couldn''t afford to be unsure of himself this far along.

    "Holly." Fordu did not have the same control of his voice some of the older Faceless had, but he could still project control, severity. "We need to go, now."

    She didn''t reply.

    "Holly, I said we need to go." At five meters from her, he stopped. For them, it was barely different than keeping her at arms length, but any distance helped. "This is a war zone now. Once the Tyrian comes to learn of what transpired here, they will come in full force, and make no mistake, we will die if we are caught."

    This time, she murmured, too low and too jumbled for his hearing.

    "Holly!"

    "It happened again," she repeated. "Again because of me."

    "There will be time and place for pondering your place in all this mess, and this is neither! Let us return to the Oke and move somewhere safe, then we can talk."

    "M-my place in all this?" Her feeble hand rose, shadowed silhouette of fingers reaching for the bodies, before retracting as if scalded. "Look! I-it''s right there! It''s my- i-it''s that word again! the one only Hazel was supposed to know, the one that guy said was my- it''s all meant for me! It''s all because of me! How do I even know that?! I don''t know these words, but I do, but-!"

    "Holly, I understand you are distressed," Fordu said. "This place won''t help, every second you spend here will only make you feel worse."

    "A-and then who''s going to bite it next? Lilly? Aleh? All of you? It keeps happening, why?!"

    His hands clenched into fists slightly, then unclenched. Losing his calm here would be the worst move he could possibly make. Still, with every word out of her mouth, the less he understood her point. "Is this about Blades?"

    "It''s about everything, about everyone! Why does nobody believe I''m just Holly, Holly Seneschal?!" Her hand struck the neatly arranged cobblestone bricks that formed the ground at the Silent Temple''s Square. The earth rumbled as they broke under the impact, fissures as thin as hair or as thick as a child''s finger spreading in all directions. "It''s the Elder Seneschal gave me s-so I could live in the village, it''s the name I was raised under, a-and..."

    As her rant died down, he risked approaching again, paying careful attention to her body language. "Then your name it is, we won''t question it, let''s go!"

    "B-but then why does everyone else question it?! Hazel did, t-then my da-that guy said I was speaking the language of savages and did it before you k-killed him, and now, this. Somebody I never even met!"

    "Holly, you aren''t listening to me, we need to go!" Frustration bled into his voice. He tried to put himself in her place: Why the Haruspect would fixate on her to this extent he couldn''t imagine, yet it was easy to see how distressing it would be to have this much death forced on her back. "It''s not your fault, Holly. You said it yourself, you don''t know the mastermind behind this, Haruspect Menoux is-"

    Slowly shifting, Holly began to rise to her feet. Fordu retreated, close enough to listen, with enough distance to evade should she attack. legs shaking, she turned to face him, silent, swaying unsteady, until she stilled. She reached for hem of her hood, and pulled.

    "H-Holly, don''t you dare!" He realized too late. The heavy salazan leathers fell aside, wet insides squelching over bloody pavement.

    Before the Faceless culler of the divine, stood a Child of the Lake, Heir to Azure, eternal enemy of Sect and slaver of Dashi, nude yet a bare woman in details only. Slender limbs shelled with almost imperceptible ridges, inverted fingers ending in inward claws like sickles, talons that could cut through armor and bone like old parchment, the smooth dome of a forehead covering a featureless expanse down to a mouth full of quasi-human, sharpened teeth, eyes nothing but slits along the lace-like fold of skin leading to a mane of whip-like tendrils. Only the head and torso bore soft skin, deceptively tough and elastic, dripping with colorless ooze, pale and blue shifting into faint brown, red, gray, then back again.

    Decades of well honed reflex took over. His feet widened apart, muscles tensed in preparation, shoulders rolled forward. His Mark convulsed, desperate to eject his sharp weaponry into this sudden threat, consequences to be measured when he was safe and victorious.

    If she could read his uneasiness, he couldn''t tell. She stood there, arms limp by her side, examining him. Tension gave way to shame: this was not the first time he had seen her naked, heritage in full display, it was unlikely to be the last, he should be used enough not to overreact. Still, context meant the act was inopportune.

    "Holly, put that back," Fordu said.

    "Agare, am I human?" she said.

    "What?"

    She looked down at her own hands, claws flexing outwards and in. Behind her, tentacles lashed at the air, squirming over one another as they tried to rise into the air. "Holly Seneschal was human. Nobody treated her like one because she was a pest who hated everyone, but she was still human. That wasn''t supposed to have changed, no matter what else did.

    "S-she didn''t become an obedient girl over nothing, you know?! She was forced to learn what were the consequences of her ways, lost herself, a-and wanted to make up for it, that''s all! And who could say she wasn''t human, or Dashi, whatever, she was a good girl, she was polite, she was filial and loved to her Elder above everything else. She did everything he asked of her until the moment h-he asked her to be something completely against what he raised her as, against what should have made him happy, against what he said himself made everyone safe! If God knew what I was, what would they think of Hazel, of the Elder, of Cassia? And t-then he forced me to tell."

    "You aren''t making any sense!" Fordu said, a vague sense of dread building within. "Speak clearly! What is it that you want?!"

    "I want to know if he was right!" she screamed. "I want to know I''m human, that Holly Seneschal didn''t become an obedient girl and force herself to bear who knows how many years in the dark alone for nothing!"

    "It''s what I''ve been saying!" he said, rage growing explicit with every word. "Do you think this is the first place torn apart over some madmen''s whim? In Ivias?! There is always an excuse, and if it wasn''t the one used it would just simply be another, it''s how it works!"

    "But it''s my name in there!"

    He had guessed something to that extent. Though he wasn''t sure of its exact mechanics, he knew it would be easiest way to get her attention.

    He paused. Something slid into place.

    "I''m always the excuse," she growled, swallowed, saliva openly dribbling down her chin. "I''m the reason Lesser Hollow burned and Elder Seneschal died. I''m the reason my family came after us and Blades died, and I never even apologized to Lilly! I know I have to, b-but how?! What would ever make up for that."

    "Blades lived the life of a warrior, she had always known there would be no quiet ending for her," Fordu shook his head. "You can''t blame yourself for other''s decisions, how would you control someone you have never met? The divine are not known to listen to reason, not when they believe power over life is theirs by right. Any questioning of this premise is simple rebellion in their eyes."

    Holly looked up, took a step forward, and he one back. She froze as he cursed himself. "Blades said I''m creepy, that she couldn''t read me and I probably couldn''t read myself either. S-she wanted me to ask more questions, to know more, and I brushed her off. I-I knew myself well enough, I though, even the rougher parts nobody else does, heheheh. I had my quirks, but i was just human.

    "A-Agare... I am just human, right? Despite everything I can still be human, right?"

    Carelessly lying here would be mistake, and so would dropping the blunt, crude truth. Gauging something between both, his mistake became indecision, as Holly''s hesitation broke before his, and she asked:

    "I-I can still be human if I look at t-that and feel like I''ve been starving, right?!"

    Every excuse Fordu had been preparing within his mind came crashing to a halt. She hadn''t pointed, hadn''t nodded its way, but he could imagine what "that" meant. Whirling in sudden panic, his mind reassessed the situation from the beginning.

    That she had some part in the Haruspect''s plan had been obvious. The messages, the directions, all pointing this way, all meant for Holly, implicating her in the situation. A greeting? Unlikely. A ruse, trying to implicate her in the destruction of Gwanegume? Needless, Awin would be perfectly content with executing them regardless. Preying on possible naivete, trying to trick her into an alliance out of need?

    At first, seeing the piles of corpses within a circle, the secret language of a tale serving as chant, he had seem a ritual, perhaps a prayer, a curse on the land, an attempt to interact with something from beyond. Now that he stopped and thought it through, how could he have missed the simplicity? Nothing but a circle and a repeated phrase. Perhaps the brute force of a thousand deaths could tear the Starlit World''s boundaries, but rituals tended to be complex, if not precise affairs.

    No, this wans''t meant for something beyond.

    His stomach sunk.

    Not a ritual. Not just the one message, the declaration of war.

    An offering for a goddess who lived like a Dashi.

    An awakening to the reality of her existence.

    "We are going," was all he could say.

    "P-please, just answer me, I-"

    He didn''t listen. One second of inattention and he was by her side, grabbing her by the wrist and dragging her away, dangers be damned. This place, this act, that was the real danger. How could he have been so blind, to let the trap almost close over their heads? He should have known better! That the worst had yet to come did not strike him as luck, instead it was suspicious.

    "W-wait, no, what are you doing?!" Holly cried out, stumbling forward as he headed for the alley he had arrived in, gate thrown open and held upright by a single hinge. "Stop!"

    "No, we''re going! We need to get you as far away from this place as possible! For now, just-"

    "No!" She pulled back, and for all he believed himself her equal in strength, the angle and suddenness yanked her right out of his grip. He whirled around, grabbing for it again, but she fled back and further towards the offering. "T-tell me what''s going on!"

    "I said we''ve no time! We need to get away from here!"

    "B-Blades wanted me to ask more, so I''m asking! A-are you trying to bring me back so I go back to normal?! So I don''t try and do anything inconvenient?!" she said.

    "What else could I possibly tell to get through that thick fucking skull of your, Holly?! I''m trying to bring us back because we''re at risk here, near that monstrosity! Do you think Blades wanted you to indulge in pointless arguments while Almalilly is left vulnerable to the Citrine?! Do you think this is the best way to help Marquise''s dream come true?! Stop fucking around and-"

    The crash drove the words out of him. Heavy and sudden, as if a battering ram had risen from below to stop him, impacting against his chest too fast to be blocked or avoided. His bones rattled under his armor, the air flowing under his feet before he came back to himself, flipping on hands and knees to arrest his momentum.

    Silence reigned. Fordu watched Holly lower her leg, mouth agape and twitching.

    "I-I-I''m sorry, I didn''t mean to-!" she stuttered. "I-I mean, it''s not my fault, you kept coming at me, and I just got so- so- I''m sorry, but it''s your fault! You hurt me when you pulled, and you won''t even tell why-"

    Holly had learned some basics of fighting, wrong. Fordu had no doubt observation served her as well as instructions ever could, and the exaggerated movements Rosen had taught her, summed with whichever wild style she had picked over her life in Lesser Hollow could only get worse. But that it had a chance to work at all meant she had some observation skills. Had she noticed the pull of his muscles, then? The readiness only centuries of treachery would eventually obscure?

    Regardless, as he charged across the square, tackling her by the waist, she neither fled nor dodged.

    A vague warning screamed at the back of his head, muffled by the desperation growing with every passing minute Holly took in the temptation. When would she begin to imbibe them? To realize the truth?

    Excuses came, and left him. needless wastes of energy. If she wanted to blame him, she could blame him later.

    Holly was gaunt, so even at her size Fordu had no issues enveloping her stomach. He kicked back in the air, striking the back of her knee and throwing her off her footing, giving him the edge to hoist her over his shoulder and run.

    A miscalculation. He had made five paces before he heard the loathsome grinding as Holly reached with a free arm and tore into the bricked ground behind him, slowing his dash. She twisted, trying to break his grip, and as slick as she was he would not be so easily escaped. With a stomp, he forced both into the air, resuming their escape.

    The next time, it did not try to twist away. Its elbow struck him in the lower back with enough strength he felt his cuirass bend. Through metal, leather, and padding, the blow would still have killed most unpracticed Dashi, driving a warbled grunt out of his Mark. It screamed so loud he felt his tympanums ring.

    A second strike and he lost his strength. The one handed push that threw him back was relatively gentle, compared to assault to abdomen, allowing instincts to kick in and-

    Instincts.

    What the fuck was he about to do? This wasn''t a battle. For a second, he had forgotten who he was about to struck.

    One second of hesitation. That was all it took.

    The second kick he blocked with his arms, leaving him numb to the ulnas. He fell back, standing, only to see Holly clutching her side, covering a patch of red skin at her ribcage. Realization soon dawned: the demonium plaques in his armor would have touched her there.

    She turned, wordless, and fled, away from the offering, away from him, away from the Oke.

    "Holly!" He called, too late.

    He gave chase before she could disappear from sight. At least, he had accomplished his goal.

 3 - The Butcher of Heron Road 8

    Fordu had followed the Sacred Forest coastwards.

    And of course it would be coastwards. Was Holly aware of the direction her subconscious would always bring her?

    ...What right had him to speak, really? When had he last caught so much as a glimpse of her form, spindly shape scurrying like a scared animal through shrubbery before utterly vanishing from sight? By his estimates, over an hour ago, but with every passing second in this forsaken pit the less he trusted his own mind, sense of time and space most of all.

    Fordu didn''t know the Sacred Forest beyond its general layout, its cities, its roads, and neither did Holly. A hopeful part of him would much prefer to think the reason he crossed paths with her in the first place was that both had become lost, seeking an exit they would pass again and again, the weirdness all around them a mere coincidence.

    Needless to say, however, that he knew better. Fordu had been taught to make do, to always remember landmarks, to search for them from up high when necessary, to chart himself by the constellations if needs required.

    He looked up, at the vast cosmos above, at the resplendent waning moon and the first of its fingerprints revealed, all bathed in golden. The Usurpation had been complete, and they never realized they had been traipsing in the enemy''s Domain all along.

    Never in his life had Fordu expected to see a Citrine Domain. In fact, like many of others in the Sect, he had been of the belief that they had become physically impossible for all intents and purposes. It did explain the chief reason he had found himself without direction though.

    Life pulsed around him in an orgy so cacophonous it rendered him deaf and blind.

    He had witnessed the stampedes brought by the displeasure of the divine more than once, so it was not hard to imagine all nearby wildlife had been caught in their flight. Animals of all sizes, of all makings, cried and screamed and fucked and killed and fought and played, in the air and in the ground and beneath and in the branches and the leaves, self destructive throes and heat and mindless indulgence that made some literally drop dead from exhaustion.

    Amidst this frenzy, Fordu had become stuck, unable to find where it began nor where it ended. Or rather, when it had come to him, where it had brought him. They dogged his steps far too closely to lack intent, some even using his body as a stand for their rut, trying to climb into his armor and bite into his skin, before learning why exactly that was a bad idea. It was fortunate that he did not need eyes to see, one of his ears had been clogged by the likes of ants and gnats seeking softer bits of flesh to gnaw.

    Swatting the air with a hand, the swarm he felled was immediately replaced by another. He could not allow himself to remain this vulnerable, not when such dangerous enemies might be just around the corner. A gamble came to mind, one with the risk of pushing Holly further away from him, but with no other recourse, he had to try.

    Silently, Hagan snuck out of his Mark.

    The change was not as immediate as he hoped. Some of the creatures around he recognized as Low-Phantasm, beings more closely connected to the Lesser Planes than usual but still firmly of the physical world, and even the dread the Diaborium blade''s emergence should cause couldn''t distract them from their needs. Little by little, though, a certain disinterest fell over the creatures, some who moved on, others who now climbed and fought over his body more as a fixture of their environment then an attraction.

    He allowed Hagan to plop tip first to the ground before grabbing a hold of its handle. For something that should be unknowable to him, it was hard to knock the sense of palpable ennui emerging from the blade. Though it had its feel little more than a week ago, signs of hunger made themselves known in the form of soft acrid yellow growths, and crystallized, greenish rust.

    This wasn''t the time to ponder the minutia of the Devil''s Filthy Lead. Fordu looked around himself, not recognizing the place he had come to stop at. The bodies of countless vermin surrounded him, some untouched in their deathly exhaustion, some mutilated beyond recognition, others in a between state as they were devoured alive by myriad crawling shapes.

    Where should he go now? Holly would not have the same intrinsic defenses against the Domain he had unless she could actively fight it off, though he wasn''t sure how possible that was. Should he follow the animals then? Chances are, she too was a target, being led around to whichever destination. He turned to the thick of the swarm, diving in-

    He never made it. At least this time he had been alert to the attack before it reached him.

    Hagan flew, the flat of the blade protecting him against the heavy projectiles. Each larger than the standard arrows used by the longbowmen of Awin, rivaling javelins in size and weight, five in total, all from the same direction, shattering on target and besides. The hail over, he dashed behind a bulky tree, sufficient cover against any following waves.

    The next five arrows came from the opposite direction, Hagan once again his shield. It wouldn''t hold, he had known, but realized more keenly as one lucky projectile came within centimeters of glancing his finger, clutching the hand to keep the weapon propped, the wood behind him pierced with a hair raising crack.

    Among the foliage and menagerie, well worn plates of steel covering swollen frames, the barest sliver of heavy bows. From this distance, the armor seemed uniform: flat masked helmets with outward slopes, pauldrons and chesplates that emphasized bulk without affected movement. Details and decoration came with deeds, now proudly presented as necklaces of teeth and knuckles, bands of fur and skin, the skull of a juvenile Cave Hound hanging from a rope belt.

    He knew they were bait, though the nature of the trap he had no wish to uncover. Missionaries, low rank grunts with little to no means of Divinity, the kind of troop the Haruspect would have to know was useless against something of his caliber, but easily replaced. At the prompt of an unseen signal, all five nocked arrows as one.

    The first to shoot, however, were the four Citrine still in hiding, their aim true from directions Hagan''s bulk would not cover. Throwing himself down faster than the arrows could land, he dodge out into the clear, where the first five had been patiently waiting, firing immediately.

    Hagan was heavy. Years past, Fordu had carried comrades in full Vanguard Executioner armors, made to stand face-to-face against some of Ivias worst monstrosities, on his back, and they weighted less than Hagan in full. Carried over his shoulder by the slim handle, having it out and about slowed him significantly.

    Yet, the cultists were practically human. Muscles overworking themselves, body bent until nearly parallel with the ground, he swerved to the side, watched arrows pepper down empty space, making dirt and leaves and splintered bark fly.

    Inexperienced, they hesitated for far too long. Before they could nock the next volley, he was upon them, the full of his physical might bringing down Hagan in an overhead. Centuries of fighting the Citrine had given the Sect much knowledge, including the fearsome quality of their craft, tempered with blood of their Heirs and given the name of Living Steel, at its purest form one of the most sought metals in the continent.

    Against the full weight of Hagan? Useless. A whimper was all the unfortunate sucker managed to croak before they were crushed, body and armor folding over themselves, helmet crumbling into a plate as blood and brain matter painted ground and his leathers both, a cloud of dirt and yellow crystals rising over them.

    He would not allow the opportunity to pass. Twisting down and left, pressing the still stuck corpse against the ground to clear it off, then grabbing the blade by its side and launching it in a piercing motion against the second, closest Citrine cultist who, failing to react, had their gorget smashed by the blow, spine crushed against a tree to near decapitation.

    briefly letting go of Hagan, Fordu dove for the still sheathed club, solid steel with a bent and spiked head. The third had their leg smashed broken mid unsheathing, and with a turn, the club flew ,the fourth crumbling on the spot. Another turn, he grabbed the Citrine by the back of their chestplate and lifted. Nine arrows struck his vicinity, six striking their downed companion.

    The Missionary gasped in pain, but the Living Steel had held strong. He reached below their helmet and yanked up, ignoring the blood splurting over their fingers in favor of retrieving his own weapon. Only then did the fifth, most distant, found their courage, casting away their longbow in favor of the heavy Yine Cleaver by their side. By then Fordu had already fled.

    More cultists emerged to bar his path, the late frontline with ready shields and close combat weaponry, their advance easily avoided. Projectiles came from behind them, noted and dodged, those who didn''t fly wild entirely by themselves. He broke through the closing circle, only to come a timely twist of the head from another. Hagan swooped down, catching a Missionary by arm and chest, impact against a bed of roots bisecting them with a strangled cry.

    How many were there around him, and how had they surrounded him unnoticed? If they could have attacked at any time, what had they been waiting for?

    "Holly!" He called, uneasy, already sprinting towards a smaller, looses line of Citrine, the nearest gap too obvious a trap. "Hollyyy!"

    No answer. His foes approached, ever silent. Ducking to the ground under a slash, he retaliated with a shoulder check that sent the blind idiot falling into their closest companion, Hagan''s following blow crushing both. It was then that Fordu heard a sound, a gallop too heavy to be Holly, heading square in his direction.

    The warmare tore through the vegetation, howling in a way not too dissimilar to the equines its kind imitated. Nostrils flared, pinprick pupils focused, long slavering mouth full of fangs, it lunged with its half-claw half-hoof feet, ready to crush him under its muscular bulk. Too noisy, however, and Fordu evaded both the beast and the follow up spear jab from its rider.

    He only barely noticed the quiet silhouette skittering his way.

    In an instant, he was on the ground, saliva dripping down his Mark as surprisingly dexterous claws held him down. The smooth yet flabby skin of the gnashing Cave Hound was tough to rip, an adaptation made against all the powerful, opportunistic parasites they tended to live alongside, its thick canines made to rip into rivals and the penetrate the carapace of prey. From its size, from the myriad scars of a lifetime of battles against Dashi and beast both, there was nothing juvenile about this one.

    Still, not a foe for him. A chop, and its front leg cracked. It didn''t whine, so much as emit a hoarse sigh not unlike a moribund man pierced through the abdomen. Grabbing for the wounded limb before it could fight back, the creature was thrown aside, within the nick of time, as a second vaulted in his direction, much less patient.

    The warmare returned in full speed to trample him, and this time he met it head on. Hagan''s swing caught the warmare by the neck, bending it in half at impact, crushing the rider''s arm until it burst the armor apart and launched them off their mount. Head snapping to the side, his Rava flew, catching the second hound mid leap in the open gullet.

    At the ensuing lull, Fordu took stock of his situation. The Citrine soldiers still surrounded him, numbers growing but distance maintained, no more arrows taking flight. The surviving cave hound limped away in silence, while the rider he had just taken down cried and squirmed against the ground, dragging himself away on his back.

    Holly was nowhere in sight.

    "Missionaries of Citrine!" he said. "You are outmatched! Your armory and tactics will be less than pointless against me! I will not give you any mercy, turn around and run if you wish to survive!"

    It had always been a long-shot, and he knew. Some took a step back, some tensed for the renewed aggression, some looked at their comrades with uncertainty, but not a single one ran.Unauthorized content usage: if you discover this narrative on Amazon, report the violation.

    Theatrics would not help him today, then. "So be it," he said to himself, hoisting Hagan over his shoulder. He aimed at another line, cultists standing shoulder to shoulder, unaware of his plans.

    He moved, and they jolted into action, realizing his goal far too slow. Hagan rose, their eyes wide through the gaps of their helmets, watching as it fell-

    But never completed its arch. His arms had been frozen, enveloped in solid stone.

    No. Palid skin, fingers like the limbs of a man enveloping his arms in a grip stronger than any metal. Hagan''s momentum snapped his loose wrists, arch shifted to fall just to the side of the Missionary, nudging one of the digits just slightly. In that fraction of a second, it ate with frenzied abandon, skin and flesh torn to nearly the bone.

    The pain should have been mind shattering. The hands did not budge a centimeter.

    "Huhuhuh!" Warm breath tickled Fordu''s cheeks. When had his hood fallen down? "Incredible spectacle! I must admit, my rotten friend, I don''t tend to expect much skill from a traitor to the Madhounds, yet this makes twice I''ve been surprised. How unfortunate it also makes twice I''ve seen this prowess leveraged against my own kin."

    "You are-!"

    "I would say, reparations are more than called for. Hope you don''t mind!"

    And with those words, the torment started.

    ------

    Holly Seneschal burned.

    This should be horror incarnate. Holly knew Will when she felt it, when it crushed her beneath its boot without regard. Holly knew what the tinge of the moon meant, what kind of place she had wandered into, and the things coming for her later in the night.

    But even the painful memories could not find purchase in her mind. Every fiber of her being burned.

    A burn unlike that of God, of that saliva-stinking, skin melting, crimson night. It wasn''t a physical heat, not a fire she could smolder, it was inside of her, in the way her skin tingled and shivered at the brush of every wing, the forbidden heat pooling at the pit of her belly that filled her with desires her Elder had almost beaten her to ignore, the rivers of saliva dribbling down her chin, the painful pulsating convulsions of her stomach following her all the way from that... atrocity in Gwanegume.

    She tried to fight. She did! She could feel the slim membrane of Will, could tear at it with her thousand limbs, only to feel it close around her again, never leaving, never lessening, pounding inside her mind like a frenzied heart, driving her completely, utterly mad.

    In the end, all she could do was clutch that little bit of humanity Elder Seneschal had granted his Holly before she could even understand she would come to waste it. Falling to her four limbs, she crawled, her mouth gaping and snapping shut over whatever creature happened to fly past, fingers digging into the mounds of skittering things, alive and dead, shoveling them into her gullet with no regard for the filth that came with.

    Not enough. Never enough. The mound of corpses refused to leave her mind, the soft entrails, chewy muscles exposed by gashes and brute force, still red, still fresh, so full off-

    the earth burst around her head, headbutt carrying her past stone and soil and the green tendrils of sprouting seeds. She screamed until her lungs hurt. Hadn''t she got away?! Couldn''t remember how, couldn''t remember why, everything was being lost in that haze of desire and dread and regret and- who knew what else? The moment she had laid eyes on all that meat, all for her, the moment she had fallen over, she knew something had been irreparably broken, but she had fought, she had escaped, and she would not let herself return!

    Yet, where then? If she had to get away, where was away? All that existed under the golden night was endless craving, shared among her and the omnipresent show of predation around her, before her, threatening to spill inside her through the desperate claw of mice, the fangs of bats, the uncountable reaching tarsi searching the folds of her body, only to be seized and devoured.

    Any direction would have to do. How many days had it been now? Had it even been minutes? She ate, and she moved, and she resisted, more and more and-

    And finally, she reached a dead end.

    The cliff extended several times her height, though she hadn''t seen it until it had been within kissing distance. Solid walls curved above her, plants precariously perched over its edge. The great celebration continued, swarming and climbing and hitchhiking and being dragged above and beyond its limits. A desperation seized her so suddenly she gasped, nails unfurling to seize as many of the creatures as she could. Soon, nothing but crumbs of vermin remained within reach.

    With them gone, consciousness fell back into place, and with it gut wrenching shame. She covered herself against the ground, feeling naked and exposed like she had never been before. She could still fell it, deep down, calling and begging for more, for things she didn''t know how to give or couldn''t afford to, and its presence stung.

    Those were not things of her. Those were not things human beings did or felt. Those were not things that belonged to Holly Seneschal, to the savage or the good girl, she knew, Elder Seneschal knew, he had to have known right? He was wise, he was far sighted, he was so good even God acknowledged him, right? He wouldn''t have become the God speaker otherwise, right?

    No, those were not things of her. It was the Will, pumping through her veins no matter how she pushed it away, or cocooned herself under her limbs for protection. It had infected her, first through those words, then the circle, then-

    "Lady Mariwa Di Aila. I am please to see you have found yourself again."

    Like falling into the bone drenching, cold waters of a river, she jolted to attention at the voice, and with it came understanding. She saw she had arrived at a clearing, longer than it was wide, like a gouge in the treeline leading straight into the cliff. From the tree lines, figures in metal emerged, slowly, carefully, afraid of her.

    One, however, stood before all, unafraid. Voice deep and masculine yet youthful and polite, reminding her of how a young Rosen might have spoken to Agare. She recognized him from that morning, both from his size and his weapons, the beaked one-handed scythe and the heavy shield, pointing her to those words.

    "The Greater shall be with us in a matter of moments," he said in flawless Yine, and her mind couldn''t help but wander into how odd a fit the voice was to the image. "I hope his gifts were to your satisfaction. He has been very eager to meet you."

    A different kind of fear took her as she came to understand who these people are, their name, no, their Tale whispered over and over again the past week. Citrine. She had never seen the color before, she realized.

    Then, anger. That word, that name used on her again. A well threaded denial immediately came to her tongue, but she was surprised to find she couldn''t bother to speak up. What would be the point? Who would care?

    Holly rose to her legs, feeling... wierdly incredible. Filled and energetic, the overwhelming desire having abated to a pleasant buzz at the back of her head with a gentle warmth spreading across her body. Giddy, she tried moving her arms and legs around, feeling like she could do anything, like she wanted to do everything.

    Standing to her full height, the armored men didn''t look so big anymore. Corpulent, heavy, weapons glinting, yet not half as frightening. They were the ones who had killed all those people in town, the ones who had tormented her with those strange wishes and made her doubt herself.

    She stared at them in hunger, and felt them stare back at her, looking her from head to toe in a way nobody else ever had. She was keenly aware of her nudity and compare it to their armor, yet couldn''t shake the idea that she was the one in power here. She was the one looking down on them. It was thrilling.

    The membrane didn''t supress he the same way God''s once had. Maybe it made her a little sluggish, but it couldn''t hide these men. Her will grabbed and pushed, making them shivers in their little shells as she measured them. They were, all of then, different than she had expected, the chaos of their being slow and coiled, firm in a way that was unlike the looser currents of her comrades, fused together maybe? Half-way to solid, like-

    "Me," she said out loud, sending a few of them jumping. "Heheh. Are you the ones who did... that to Gwanegume? The ones who left that... t-that..."

    Scythe nodded. "It was a gift from the Greater." he said, and she could feel her nails extending at the disaffection in his voice. "He had intended to meet within the city walls while you feasted, but you escaped."

    "You''re gross. You''re evil," Part of her felt as if the judgment should come with some genuine repulse, yet all she felt was good, righteous. For the first time in so many years, she came face to face with drad and didn''t feel helpless. "You hurt all those people! A-and you called me that word, my- how did you even know it? Who told you?!"

    "The Greater will tell you everything you want to know. Ask him your questions, he shall be pleased to oblige."

    She shouldn''t. She should leave, beat her way out of this mess! How long had it been, since she got into a scuffle she actually stood a chance of winning? the thought of it was electrifying. Would their armor break as easily as a nose, their shields sink as easily as a belly? She would need to hit hard, otherwise they might make as the boys back in the Lesser and keep coming back for more, always unsatisfied with the wallops they got. She would crush them, then find Agare!

    Agare. Hadn''t he been with her, a while ago? Her memories from the last couple hours remained blurred, but she could recall him, if somewhat vaguely. For some reason it made her angry.

    Any further pondering, however, was cut short, as a booming voice thundered from the woods, shaking her out of her stupor.

    "I am a fountain of knowledge, after all!" A guffaw, hills grinding each other into pebbles. "And what use would knowledge be, if we don''t share a little? Alas, I''m afraid what I learned about you, dearest, was strictly in confidence."

    Above, she saw the woodlands shake, trees crackle and topple out of something''s way. An enormous figure strode into the moonlight, wordlessly scattering the men out of his path.

    Tall felt like too much of an understatement. At nearly twice her own height, shoulders broader than any person had the right to have, skin paler than white rippling with impossible muscle and soft fat, he was by far the largest man she had ever met. Long white hair pouring from beyond a receding hairline to the nape of his neck, long white beard descending all the way to his chest and framing a grinning mouth of perfect teeth, wide enough to straddle the line into the humanly impossible.

    Her first though, seeing his nonchalant approach, the deliberate swagger of his steps, the total focus of his large golden eyes on her person, was to his beauty. That he wore nothing but stretching, shredding trousers did not help. She felt her breath stolen away.

    "I''m glad I can still please without uttering a single word!" His rumbling chuckle crossed the clearing, making her spine tingle. "How unfortunate circumstance won''t allow us a tryst. Do pay more attention!"

    She stammered, confused. How he read her so well, despite never meeting her? And his words, too. A jolt of fear left her hissing, as she remembered herself, where she was and what had brought her here.

    Scythe stepped aside, receiving a surprisingly gentle pat on the shoulder by a hand that could easily engulf his head.

    "I hope I didn''t make you wait too long?" the giant man said. "That Madhound was surprisingly entertaining, I could hardly tear myself away!"

    "Of course not, Greatest." Scythe said. "She was still enjoying her frenzy until a moment ago, when I interfered in preparation for your arrival."

    "Still? My goodness, now that is a promising start!" That Greatest said, grin somehow growing larger. "Happy to hear! I suppose this one won''t be a waste of time, after all."

    "I thought the same."

    In a move that almost made her question her own eyes, the giant hand lifted to the head of the smaller yet still hulk of a man and roughly patted him.

    "Greatest," the man warned, she had to guess considering his impassive tone.

    "I will be dealing with this one now." he dismissed with a wave. "You all, feel free to watch so long as you don''t interfere. And you, If you would be so kind, take these leftovers and secure them. Careful with the void! He was carrying a rather nasty toy around, and we didn''t search him for further surprises."

    "Right away, Greatest."

    The Greatest turned to her again, locking eyes. The boundless delight she found there could have thrown her right back into that electric mood.

    Could, had he not raised his hand. Something hung there, pinched between two fingers, displayed like some cool bug he had found by the bushes.

    Limp and lifeless, Agare''s Mark still swirled with almost languid placidness, as if unaware of the state of its master. His clothes shredded at several places, armor removed with impossible precision, and his limbs-

    His limbs, her heart lurched, had been pulled off, wrenched off their bloody stumps like those of an insect, now dripping pitch dark liquid to the ground.

    Every pleasant sensation left her, filled with a void that left nothing but her and the still body. She only had a moment to process what she was seeing, as the giant chucked him aside like a toy in the hands of a careless child, his dead and broken corpse vaulting over the boundaries of the Throne, disappearing over the bushes for her to never see again.

    "W-why?" she said, lost.

    "Now, before we talk, give me a moment." Menoux said, reaching for the hims of his trousers.

    Holly saw red. Pumping every bit of this new found strength to her legs, she leaped, nails outstretched and ready to mine him into ribbons.

    When she came to her senses, she was on her feet, several paces closer to the giant but stumbling back, his skin untouched. She watched him strip himself of his clothes with mounting confusion, his part now dangling into the air as he took a deep breath, smiling content and spreading his arms outwards.

    The prickling began a couple seconds later. Covering her chin, her chest, her shoulders, as if she had somehow fallen flat on her face and not noticed. Feeling the taste of copper, she pressed two fingers to her mouth, and was shocked when they sunk in a hole that had most definitely not been there.

    Searching with a tongue, she found them, two front teeth tucked into the back of her mouth. Fragments of them, anyway, which she spat aside.

    "Wha''?" she tried to say. "Wha'' dish'' yu-"

    "Now, I did warn you to be patient!" He tutted her with a finger. "Attacking a distracted opponent, many would consider that deplorable! Some might go as far as say you fit right in with our crew! And to think I only meant to compliment you on your personal aesthetic, on your lack of restraint! But I digress."

    He stepped forward, and she back.

    "Now that we stand face to face and body to body, allow me to introduce myself!" the Greatest said, the title taking a whole new meaning in her head. "I am know by many names. Greatest, Haruspect, The Butcher of Heron Road, the Pale Worm of the Floodlands. But to you, my dearest Lady Di Aila, I offer the grace of the name given by my Mistress.

    He spread his arms wide, as if welcoming her embrace. "I am Menoux the Burnt, and today I have come to extend you the grace of Aenexias!"

 3 - The Butcher of Heron Road 9

    Holly stood before the giant Menoux, unsure. Her missing chunk of teeth stood stark in her mind.

    Not as stark as Agare''s body, now gone into the lake of metal-clad bodies that surrounded them both. Under the Citrine moon, Menoux''s never ending grin seemed to grow larger with every second passed, the cruel delight in it no longer obscured. He took a step forward, and instinct drove her back.

    "I must confess, I have heard much og your person this past week, Lady Di Aila," he said, cocking his head from side to side, curious eyes taking her every angle. "I had been tangentially aware of your existence, yet underestimated the impact your emergence would have. Look at you now, shaking this island with your every move!"

    "I-I don''t know whash''-"

    "The burning of the Hollows. You were there, with no small part in the calamity." he said, the certainty of his statement leaving her shaken. He rubbed at his beard. "Now, no judgments cast. Dreadful place it was, I''m frankly of the opinion you did us all a favor. What I did consider somewhat less welcome-"

    Fear and agitation drove her into another frenzy. She flew at him, nails stretched and ready to sever flesh.

    Halfway to him, and she saw the trick as it came together. A slight shift of the foot, leaving her facing his side, the sudden jab of his fist camouflaged against his pale skin. Even caught, it was still as fast as a blink of the eye, nicking hairs by the side of her head as she dove for his belly. She reeled her shoulder back, stabbing at soft meat of his stomach-

    She never saw the backhand coming. By the time she realized she had fallen for the deception, she felt the impact against the ground, body bouncing off and rolling away with the momentum. A sharp boot stopped her dead, pushing her back and retreating back to its comrades before she had the time to chomp it right off. Mind catching up to what had transpired, she scrambled to her feet, but found Menoux watching her, not having moved so much as a pace.

    "... Was the arrival of the Senesa," he continued, tone neutral. "I take from your expression that you don''t know what I''m talking about, correct? Good to know. Still, I can''t imagine such a large scale operation with such unfortunate timing could be any coincidence."

    The Hardskin over her arm had broken open, but the wound was quick to stop bleeding. A blow as strong as one from God, delivered through the body of a man, without a single drop of Will? No, no, she was missing something here. This was no common man, after all. The Haruspect, an Heir, she overheard, a cruel and evil creature enemy to the Remnants and to Marquise!

    "And finally, my dear protegees, the Di Aila family go on the prowl, out of nowhere! Or so I had believed at first. I knew their patriarch sent lackeys to the Hollows on occasion, but to think he held a secret of such magnitude he decided to cast away the anonymity I had so kindly gifted him all those years ago!" Menoux chuckled. "Oh, who am I kidding, of course I approve! Who am I to judge another''s ambitions? And such heroic ambitions at that!"

    "W-whash'' do you-" She paused, cringing at her own pronunciation. unconsciously, she began to lick at the broken shards. "Whash'' do you want?!"

    "What I want? Have I not told you already? To extend you-"

    Finding him distracted, she dashed in. Only too late did she notice his expression shift with her attack. To make up for it, she sent in her Will, her thousand arms raging with her and eager to tear him apart, a restrain while she sunk low towards his ankles.

    What happened next, she wasn''t sure. Her Will had reached something, but before they could grab on, she felt as if she had been slapped in the face so hard she blanked out. She couldn''t have been out for more than a second, long enough to lose her balance and trip over her own feet, sprawling down before the sidestepping Menoux. She scurried away on her back as fast as she could, pushing herself closer to the cliff while the giant calmly watched.

    "... The grace of Aenexias to you. And my, it''s been some time since I''ve seen a neophyte as eager as you!" He laughed, a full bellied cackle that seemed to shake the very air. "Has my body left you this flustered? You seem so intent on it even I am surprised!"

    She tried to hide her blush. "K-knock it off''! Y-you''re my enemy, you shouldn''t be talking like ''at! Besh''ides, I don''t even know who that ish''!"

    "Who?" Menoux quirked an eyebrow. "The Aenexias? The Grandest, Father of The True Flesh, the Prophet of Steel? Could the myths truly have faded from the common people''s tongue? No matter. The Prophet was a kindly man, he wouldn''t hold it against you. If that is the case, however, allow me to make our purpose a little clearer.

    "We are the Aenexians, bearers of the teaching of the Lord in Iron, flock to the Prophet and his holy family, blessed with the true way of things in their pilgrimage to the buried city of Morrah! The way of need, the way of blood pumping heart, the way people like you pretend to cast away and then weep to your end as you die miserable and unfulfilled! We came here to preach our humble ways, as you may have seen, but we understand few share our appreciation to the Way, and when our noble work is revealed, conflict will be inevitable.

    "But look here, what we discovered scurrying down our hallways, squeaking up a storm! Mariwa Di Aila, last in the bloodline of such a dear ally, bumbling right towards the fire! Now, my reputation may give you the impression I am an uncouth sort, but even I would balk at the idea of leaving to burn out of neglect!"

    She gulped. "I''m not- We''ll leave! Gif'' me Agare and-"

    "so you may walk right back into the slaughterhouse. Did you not hear me?" Menoux gave a theatric sigh, shaking his head ruefully. "You don''t know your way, we saw you stumble around as if blind!"

    " ''Ats becaush'' of the bugs!"

    "Excuses, excuses, Huhuhuh! No, I wouldn''t be able to live with myself if something happened due to my neglect! I shall bring you with us, show you a world where they can never touch you, a world where spiritual fulfillment is never farther than finger-reach from creatures such as us!"

    "...Such ash'' ush''?" she said.

    How the giant''s grin could somehow show more teeth defied belief. He thrust a thumb as his chest. "Us godlings, of course."

    She could feel it rise inside her chest, that old familiar savage anger, the buzz prodding it forward with barely contained glee. "You''re nof''ing like me! Nof''ing! I saw whash'' you did to those people! you''re vile, you''re gross, a-a monsh''ter!"

    "Yes, absolutely, Lady Di Aila! Still-"

    The buildup had left her shaking with desire, and the burst was unlike any pleasure she had ever had. Once the floodgates were open, she couldn''t help but let it flow. "I''m Holly Sh''enesh''cal! You hear me?! Holly Sh''enesh''cal! I''m tired of sh''aying it! I''m human! Different, weird, but human! Mariwa is a delush''ion!"

    For a second, Menoux did look genuinely stunned, mouth slight agape and eyes wide. Then, that ugly, thundering cackle again. "Human! A human being! And that name! A Child of the Bear, who could ever imagine!"

    Red hot anger made her feel like in a dream. Words poured out of her mouth, and she barely felt them, "You''re dish''gusting! Filthy tyrant! How dare you compare ush'' when you hurt my comrade like ''at! The Elder would be cringing to death right now!"

    Like in a snap of fingers, a the unbridled joy in Menoux body disappeared. He stared at her, a predator forcibly awoken and measuring its intruding prey. Was this what it felt like to be drunk? The cold shiver down her spine barely lasted a moment until the pulsating warmth of indignation buried it alive.

    "Repeat yourself, please?" he said.

    "You''re a tyrant, a filthy-"

    "Comrade," he spat out. "That? Our rotten little friend? A comrade. Hilarious! Did it ever teach you what that word means to their kind? Who they are supposed to use it for? Ah, I had wondered to myself how something like you had ended enmeshed with that lot, but to think I would ever see-"

    "You don''t know me!"

    She knew, by then, that fighting face to face against him was pointless, but she could not care less. Shutting him up would be worth any pain. She was burning. Throwing all caution to the wind, all regards for her own wellbeing, her plans, her thoughts, her mind, there was nothing left but her and her desire to make him listen. She flew.

    So when she stopped, legs still kicking in the air, she froze, uncomprehending. Held by both arm, joints locked straight by hands that looked as if they could envelop her torso, she tried biting, tried kicking, scratching his torso with her toes, feeling as if she was cutting hard leather with a dull knife. The animal part of her cowered, suddenly under intense scrutiny.

    "I get it now," he said, almost gently. "What a poor creature you are."

    She quivered with disgust. "You don''t-"

    "Oh, how you must delight in being a mystery! But you are not half as uncommon as you think." He threw her aside, softly when compared to his previous counters. "As a matter of fact, you are just the kind of person we''ve been born to help! A stubborn beast who saw the truth of her own existence with her own eyes and refused to believe, begging to be taught what she truly is!"

    She hit the ground on her rear, and was back up in a flip. "Y-you don''t-"

    "Know who you are? As if you were any different." He frowned. "Say, have you ever seen any Dashi, let alone a human being, fight the way you fight, claws and fangs and sheer brutality?"

    She froze, half way to another attack, spell of rage cut short. He looked at her, expectant. Her jaws moved, but nothing but babbling came out. Another few seconds, and the denial would have formed itself, but when his smile returned as if it had never left in the first place, she knew she had failed herself.

    "How fascinating! Guess my eyes didn''t rust after all!" He laughed. "Who is the vile one now? A mockery of human shape claiming to be the genuine article, but can''t even be bothered to don the skin of one! Oh, if only you knew the kinds of beings you insult with games like that, you would be prostrating yourself to the forest right now!"This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.

    "G-gamesh''?!" she said

    "Games! The half-baked make belief a child would come up with. Not a lick of effort to it beyond your wild imagination!"

    She would have tried again, another useless charge, yet this time, the moment her legs tensed, he was upon her. The punch that met her in the gut was devoid of Will, but she felt her insides turn to mush, throat forced up over the back of her tongue. Spluttering blood on the ground, dozens of paces away, she felt the painful writhe of her body trying to realign itself back.

    "You overstep yourself. You didn''t even realize that you already went past four, did you?" She heard Menoux click his tongue. "Deceived by the world, deceived by those who think nothing of her beyond how well a blade runs pierces her skin, deceived by her own sense of self! How am I supposed to not feel any pity?! Fine, fine! Allow me to compromise then. Up with you!"

    This time, she was none too eager to stand. Still, she didn''t want to think of what he could do to her prone body, so up she stood.

    "You wish to ignore my hospitality, to deny your family, your name, your very divine inheritance? Be my guest! Who am I to stop you?" He shook a finger. "Is what I would usually say, but you know what I hate more than anything else? Those who lie to themselves. And let me tell you, I have one sharp nose for liars."

    His foot shifted, bringing his left slightly back and his right slightly forwards. His muscles tensed, but otherwise, his body remained in an almost casual pose, arms kept down and shoulders kept straight. "I will give you a chance to prove yourself. Stand on your two feet, and prove you can fight like a human, that you can take care of yourself without debasing yourself into that beast from before. You have four exchanges."

    "Why four?" She asked, bitter.

    He winked. "Must be a coincidence."

    She wondered if he really thought she was a fool. By now, they both knew she had no chance in a fight, so proving herself? What a joke! She wasn''t even sure what he meant to be fighting like a human. Without her nails, without her teeth? If so, then he knew nothing about how people fought when desperate, when seeking nothing but to hurt one another.

    What then? An exercise in humiliation? Why the pretense? She looked around them, to the now hundreds of armored men watching the both. Just to please them?

    A shadow loomed over her. She jumped back, nails unfurling and teeth parted in a hiss. Menoux retreated in an echo of childish giggles, while she now stood five or six paces away from the cliffside, trapped.

    "So? Didn''t like my proposal?" he said.

    She took a deep breath. Her heart thrummed in her ears, louder than the wind, than the rustle of the trees, but she had to calm herself. If she failed here...

    Did she even have a chance of success?

    Didn''t matter. She had to find a way out, somehow.

    So, fighting like a human. What could that mean?

    She tried to think, a terrifying and very difficult endeavor with both Menoux presence and his effects on her body, but she had to force herself. She had seen other people fight before, had fought herself plenty times before the changes came... but her usual style wouldn''t do. The lads from times past didn''t fight so much as tried to inflict pain, punches and kicks and rocks all simple method.

    She shook her head. This wasn''t the time! What else? She had seen soldiers practice, saw them in their mounts, but she had no weapons herself, no armor but her own skin, wouldn''t know how to use them regardless.

    It was then that her memories brought her back to a grassy hillside, what felt like months ago now. Agare, Rosen, and her, and the strange round dummy. that was the day her supposed family first spoke to her, but she focused on her comrades, on her and Rosen punching their frustrations away, on the way his body had bent, on the way his limbs moved. She had seen him practice his moves before and after, never again in that slow, deliberate way, but she had watched, and she had followed.

    She lowered herself, knees half bent, arms brought closer to her torso, palms open and facing one another, jaws shut tight, if only to avoid the temptation.

    Menoux smile had turned loopsided. He scanned her from head to toes, then scoffed. "A Yine style. That''s what you are going with? Very well then, come, show me your humanity!"

    Without waiting another second, she charged in.

    Memory and experience filled the gaps in knowledge. Rosen''s motions brought her to Menoux right flank, and her time in Lesser Hollow told her where a hit could really hurt. Elder Seneschal''s words, words so old she had almost erased them from her head once she understood with her body.

    "See here?" he had said, bent aside as he tapped right beneath his ribs. At the time, it had been hard to tell the exact spot with his robes. "Those morons go right for the stomach, the face, idiot meatheads always like to be direct! But here? Here is where hurt truly lies!"

    She took advantage of their height difference, coming in low and fainting for the stomach. How long since she had done that?! The true hit, however, would be the haymaker right to his liver, standing slight above eye level and at perfect height for her arms. Menoux''s left foot dragged backwards, bringing his belly back and leaving tantamount to an invitation open for her to exploit.

    When his arm moved, it was slow, deliberate, to the point she felt like she should have been able to avoid it, to go low at her target or high at his forearm, salvaging the momentum into some kind of damage. But the way it bent, followed the trajectory of her own hand as if he had predicted it... her instincts screamed of danger, and she swerved away. Her nails nicked his rotund belly, a shallow scratch to the skin, and she retreated, frightened.

    She had made sure her blow was infused with her Will, full of fury ill-intent. As if to mock what little she understood of this new reality she had been pushed in, the wound did not even bleed, and began to slowly close.

    "That''s one," he said, unamused. "Not even going to try?"

    Gritting her teeth, she threw herself into fray again.

    Her palm came at his stomach, honest and fast, and she would split him open if she had her way. A step, a slap to the back of her hand, and she was out of aim. She launched a sequence of scratches , palm strikes, a punch or another when reflex won over conscious thought, and flawlessly, Menoux dodged her, until she kicked.

    His eyes widened for an instant, but he showed no further reaction. She grunted in frustation. The deception should have been perfect! Distracted by her hands, he shouldn''t have seen her strike to his shin. At the very last moment, his leg turned, catching her tibia to tibia. She had come the loser of the exchange too, her Hardskin cracking while his skin didn''t so much as bruise.

    "Said the Lord in Iron, ''thee knows not the secrets, foolish Aenexias, yet thee knows thine own eyes.'' what I perceive is my truth, and all I yet see is an animal." Menoux said. "Your tricks are rustic, I could stop them in my dreams."

    The grab came by surprise, his fingers caressing her arm before she escaped. She retaliated with a slash to the back of his hand, again to no reaction, but bleeding him a little a couple drops more. "Whash'' is the poinsh'' of thish''?" she asked. "Whash'' do you want from me?!"

    "That''s two. The point is to prove me wrong, isn''t it?" The corner of his lips tugged into a brief glimpse of a smile, gone the next second.

    "I''m nosh'' stupid!" she said. "I-"

    Again, he was on top of her the very next moment, enormous bulk moving like a bird diving through the air. Caught unaware, she swiped for his face, only for him to pivot on his hips, her nails passing by his hair, cutting a few strands. She looked down, shocked, and he met her eyes, expectant. Held on an arm, as low as a roach, she struggled to fit the image with the action, paralyzed.

    "Nothing? I''m going to count this as-"

    She kicked at his face, sole hitting his right shoulder instead. She fell on his back with both arms, all pretense thrown down the river so she could defeat him, only to be met with the back of his skull against her chin. She tasted the impact on her tongue, reeling back, too distracted by the pain and the surprise to avoid the weak shove to her chest that finally tumbled her down.

    "Three. You really don''t know what the stance stands for, do you?"

    "A-at''s not-"

    "Fair?" He brushed his shoulder, and as if by magic, the slight bruise she had made began to fade. "What? Giving you a golden opportunity any practitioner of the Wounded Lion would beg for? Wait, was that the name? I''m tend to be so uncorcerned by the boring styles of the Bear, I can''t even recall..."

    From the ground, she pounced for his legs, tired of his games. She had tried to avoid thinking, looking at them, but this time, she aimed deliberately for his parts. An odd part of her delighted in the savagery, in the taboo, in that restrained thing she allowed free and roaring.

    Sadly, it couldn''t bring her through. At the very last moment, seeing the dangle of his movements, feeling her blood heat up, she descended instead, narrowly evading the hand that tried to slap her away. Her teeth clamped over the top of his foot, and this time his leathery skin was helpless to prevent her. His flesh, chewy and fibrous, had an oddly familiar taste of acrid, rotting meat, but she didn''t release him.

    A blow to the back of her ribs took a gasp out of her lungs, and forced her mouth open. As flimsy as it was, compared to that previous punch, the Will infused into it was unmistakable, a spear that pierced her all the way to her innermost being, cramping her muscles and bringing her down for the count.

    "Four. I liked that last one though!" He chuckled. He crouched over her downed body, pleased grin obscured under his shadow "Too bad you were too much of a coward to go for my testes. Now that would have fit you with us like a glove! Well, can''t always have your way, I suppose. Let me explain your mistake to you.

    "The Yine have a saying that goes something like, ''a good Yine is sooner seen naked then unarmed''. Not always feasible, but they do take it seriously. Fisticuffs is considered a barbaric art in most of the ''civilized'' provinces of the Bear, but the military had to come with a stopgap, even if a brief one.

    "Enters the Wounded Lion. Brutal, direct, and delightfully savage! It does have some strikes, yes, but it''s focus is on either disarming the opponent so you can take their weapon or subduing them so if you failed to kill your fellow soldiers can deliver the blows of grace themselves. Someone taught the very basics, but never the purpose."

    "Y-you farce!" she said, and made one last attempt at him, hands grabbing for his thigh as fast as she could. The offending wrist was smashed against the ground, held down by fingers of steel as she screamed.

    "And your strikes... they are sad. It''s like you were not even taking me serious! You windup like some gadget, I can see what you are doing before you can even think it! How pathetic is that? A half-baked mixup from a half-baked person. Is that all ''humanity'' was worth to you?"

    "A-as iff'' you didn''t know... at'' I couldn''t beat you!" she cried. "W-why does ''is happen everytime?!"

    "I don''t know anything about what everytime here means, but the why looks very obvious to me!" Menoux said with a giggle. "Don''t worry your pretty little head about it, you will have plenty chances to understand."

    She shivered, reminded of the stakes. He would take her away, and then what? What would he do to her, to Agare, to the others? Had they escaped, had they been caught? She couldn''t remember it at all! No, she couldn''t let him, never!

    Panic gave her the second wind she needed, twisting her arm under his weight, she managed to bend her elbow, bring herself forward, teeth baring and closing over his wrist-

    She didn''t realize at first, the extend of how easily Menoux could read her. She didn''t realize what he had done, so fast it happened, until she falling from his grip.

    She was lost, confused, laying on her back. The sound of crunching only registered seconds later, some unexplainable anomaly, like the strange protrusion emerging from Menoux''s mouth, a pallid and articulated tongue, its tip rearing and flopping around like some mad spider, dripping red down his white chin and cheek.

    "Aaaah... Aaaah-!"

    It was her mind slowly catching on. It was the sensation of loss, the limb that should be there disobeying her commands. It were the waves of pain pulsating up her shoulder, the wrecking sensation of that day when she was still a child, unchanged, but magnified thrice fold.

    Her ears rang as she clutched her stump, silencing the night and taking all the battle out of her. She saw his lips move from the corner of her eyes, spitting his mouth clean before speaking, and didn''t register a word. Just the pain, the spraying blood, the need to get away, and damn anything else.

    She tried to crawl away, and the looming mountain rose, blotting the stars, following her. Fear and outrage forced her to expand, her thousand arms once restrained as proof of her humanity striking like snakes to rip him apart, keep him back, anything to let her escape.

    She stopped crawling, numb. This time, he allowed her to touch, and with touch she perceived him.

    Menoux the Burnt was a fortress.

    No, the physical analogies she relied on failed her. Solid? Real? he was smooth, impenetrable, a perfect sculpture of himself coiled in a shape curving with details, far beyond anything she had ever seen, far beyond anything she had ever imagined, not an edge or corner for her fingers to sink in and dig.

    Another word, then. Complete.

    Her legs left the ground. Two sharp blows took her, one driving the air out of her lungs and the other making her fly. She hit a hall, soft and breakable, sinking into deep cracks, just enough light to notice the absence as something barreled in her direction.

    Her lips moved. Who she called, she didn''t hear. All she felt was the world crashing down on her, before everything went dark.

    <hr>

    There was a tension in the air, one not even the spectacle could lift.

    They cheered, they laughed, taunted the battered neophyte, but it was all restrained, demure when compared to the energy that crowd tended to have. The joys of the festivity, the high of that unimaginably large offering of yesterday, had already worn out by dawn and left only the lingering uncertainty. War was coming and nobody was sure how they would win.

    He was calm. Watching the back of the only master he would ever give himself to, he approached idly, posture stiff as to be unreadable, and waited behind him. The cliff, cracked by his finisher, gave away and released a boulder his own size onto them.

    He didn''t move. The fist of the greatest ascended like lightning, turning the fearsome object mere chunks.

    "There is still one last thing for me to do, then," the Greatest whispered, the sound almost lost to the conversations breaking around them. He sighed. "Of all times..."

    "It was your own choice," he couldn''t resist but say.

    When the Greatest turned, giving the same winning smile that had ran their band for decades now, he felt elated, hopeful, miserable.

    "Let us return! That no power in this earthly paradise may spoil our victory!" He boomed, and the howl it drew could rival the largest armies in their Starlit World. "May his name be forever etched in blood!"

    There would be no time left for pondering. Menoux the Burnt, the Haruspect, the Greatest, he left and the thousands marched in his stead, him together, until the very end, until their paths inevitably parted. May his own name be forever etched in blood.

 3 - The Butcher of Heron Road 10

    Hurried footsteps. Frantic panting. Yelling.

    Holly felt tender. Weak. suffocated. She had been wrapped in a sheet of coarse furs so tightly she couldn''t move her own arms. With every bounce, every shake, she could feel her skin chaff, but she couldn''t complain, couldn''t so much as whisper, her throat far too raw for anything but hoarse gasps.

    She knew she was being held and carried by hand. By who? She could feel their small, wiry limbs digging into her, smushing her harder into those awkward, painful angles. Her only connection to the outside world came from a sliver of light pouring through a gap, nothing but piercing white and blurring green.

    A voice reached her. Ceaseless, choked, kiddy. Familiar.

    "It can''t be her. It can''t, it can''t, it can''t, please, please, not her, not-"

    It made Holly livid. If only she wasn''t so exhausted, she would give the whiny child a good wallop! But that morning, she had woken up smothered, crushed from all sides just like this, and had already spent herself pulling her way out.

    Yes, she remembered now. She heard a sound, something completely indescribable and wicked, so close she wanted to puke with fear. Everything hurt. She had seen them, that baldie healer and that son of his with the nasty attitude, and begged them for help, for someone, anyone to help her, but one fell, and the other ran, never to look back.

    And then... And then what?

    And then she was here. Hurt, afraid, mad.

    The mixture of ugly feelings only made her more tired. She didn''t want to lose the fight, not here, not now, but her eyes closed, and suddenly all she wanted was to bury herself on her bed, nuzzled under the covers. She wanted to sleep so bad...

    ------

    Sobbing. Whispered arguments. The tapping of a cane.

    Everything was dark again, but she was free. Holly felt as if she had been dipped into the river and then thrown right over some old covers, feeling the uncomfortable tickles of the fur strands on her soaking wet body.

    This wasn''t her bedroom. The sounds were all different, distorted. She couldn''t hear the rustling of branches or the wings of the bees. At least, the voices she recognized.

    Holly turned on her side, and her head swam. Before she knew it, she was spewing gunk, the acrid smell of bile tinged with some weird, metallic tang that hit her nose like a punch. She somehow felt as if she hadn''t eaten in days yet filled to the throat, her belly wriggling around as if stuffed with snakes.

    She didn''t know where here was, but she had to get out here. Trying to prop herself on her arms, she found herself as tough as wet clay, immediately falling on her face. Scared, she dragged herself across the floor, flinching when her hand touched rough stone rather than more fur, or wood, or even dirt, any sort of normal ground like that.

    "H-Holly?!" someone screamed. It took her a few, very tense second to recognize the voice as Hazel''s, her sister, and not any of the few other girls in the Hollow, just as mean as the little lads. She had never heard her like this.

    Ahead, there was light. A single torch in the distance, flames bathing everything in orange and turning everyone into indistinct, confusing silhouettes. She didn''t know which was Hazel, so she kept crawling forwards.

    "Holly! Holly!" Hazel cried. "I''m- Let me go!"

    "You fool!" Another voice. Loud , commanding, yet oddly comforting, she could always tell Elder Seneschal apart. If he was there, it meant everything would be okay. "We can''t be sure yet!"

    "Then why did we bring her here?! Y-you know it''s her!" Hazel said.

    "I said stay! Let me make sure first, then we go in!" The Elder''s cane clacked against the floor, one particular blotch growing closer and closer. A mess of shapes stood in between them, but she didn''t mind! The Elder was here, she was sure he could help! "Holly? Is that you, love?! Talk to me!"

    "Ah... ah..." she cried for help. She couldn''t get up! The floor hurt!

    "I need you to say something! Anything!" he said. "Or show us you can hear me at least, any way you can!"

    She tried, as hard as she could. When words didn''t come to her, she reached with a hand, which flopped in his direction like a pouncing spider, fingers pale, soft, spindly. Something felt different about them somehow. Why didn''t her body work as it should?

    Before she could get to her Elders feet, however, something stopped her. The mess of shapes, smooth in part and harsh in others, strong and heavy, going from the ground to out of sight above.

    Bars.

    "Ah," she whimpered, some nameless sensation sinking deep into her chest. She explored with her fingers, looking for any gap to let her out, but there were none. Why? Where was she? she knew the Hollows so well but had never seen this. "Aah!"

    "Holly!" Hazel cried. "Please! What happened to- aagh!"

    "Idiot! I said wait!" Elder Seneschal''s silhouette turned, as Hazel''s backed away, clutching her head. "If you are Holly, our Holly, speak up! Say something, anything! And if you are not..."

    "Aaaah!" She screamed, regretting it immediately as her mouth filled with the taste of iron. "Aah..."

    "You were talking before, remember?!" he whispered, and desperate, she tried to grab him through the bars, but he stepped away. "At the healer''s shack! You said- hey, no!"

    Elder Seneschal was pushed aside as Hazel dove, grabbing her hands with enough strength to hurt. Shocked as she was, Holly couldn''t back away, only admire the way her felt warm and soft like she had never realized. The way her fingers intertwined with hers, it was almost like they were meant to fit together.

    "Oh, Holly, why did it have to be you?! Why are you-"

    "Stop!"

    Recovered, Elder Seneschal rushed in their direction.

    When she felt his hand around both of theirs, the calluses on his leathery skin pressing again her knuckles, she could have cried.

    "Oh, love, how could this have happened to you?" he whispered softly.

    Everything would be okay. The Elder was wise, if somebody knew what happened to her and how to fix it, that would be him. She would be okay and out of here soon, she just had to believe.

    "Except, you did, and you weren''t."

    Like magic words chanted, the illusion was torn apart.

    In a flash of red, the Elder was gone, and her strength returned. The blurring outlines of her cave   her once beloved room   came into contrast, shadows and light falling into place as they would years later, once her eyes grew used to it.

    She didn''t feel Hazel''s fingers extricate themselves from her grip, hardskin already settled and tough, but she did see her stand back, looking down at her prone form like some type of squashed bug.

    "Here, your Elder finally lost the last of his nerves, canned Hazel over the head and dragged her away," the Thing that once again wore Hazel''s face said, emotionless. "You spent several days in pain and in the dark as your insides settled. When he finally accepted what happened, you were nearly starving."

    She let her hand stay up, enjoying those last few seconds of lingering warmth. Once it faded, it came back down with enough fury to shake the cavern and create a spiderweb of cracks. She pushed herself to a kneeling position, openly glaring at the intruder.

    "Couldn''t you let me have this one?!" she said, her voice echoing all across the mines. "This one time! After everything that has been happening, just this one time!"

    "You would have broken out of the delusion from your own accord, like before," it said.

    "If it''s going to end the same way, then why not let it happen? Ughhh..." Her stomach quivered in displeasure. She felt like a shambling pile of bruises, even if at a glance she couldn''t see any wounds. "What did you do to me?"

    "Nothing." The Thing wearing Hazel''s face said.

    "And the last time I was here?" she said.

    "You''re always here. And nothing, either." It said.

    "Who do you think you''re kidding? I saw you summon all those, those, thingies!"

    "All they did was obey you. That you could not control them is your fault." The Thing shrugged. It was hard to tell what it truly felt. It''s face was expressionless, and it''s body hung motionless, shoulders loose and arms limp to its side. Only its eyes burned with terrifying intensity.

    She stood up, holding her bars for support. Only then did she notice that in this weird, in between state of her room, the burning black spikes had never been clasped around the entrance to her room, its lock once again nothing but an old padlock, heavy but rusty.

    A nostalgic idea came to mind, one that came with on small amount of cringing shame. Stumbling her way to the door, she grabbed the padlock through the gaps. When she was young, barely a head taller than the lock itself, she had to put every single one of her muscles into bending it apart. Here, a simple twist ripped it to chunks, letting her free.

    The Thing remained on its spot, watching her, unblinking. Looming over the younger version of her own sister, she realized how difficult it was to not be the one intimidated. Still, finding an inkling of courage, she stared down the uncanny, diminutive creature, and said: "what do you want from me?"

    "I''m not sure," the Thing said.

    "Then why are you even here?!"

    "I''ve always been here."

    She frowned. "But I don''t remember ever feeling you, or seeing you before that time in Treil."

    For the first time, it glanced away, with such fixed intensity it was as if it had spotted something right behind her. She whirled, suddenly alert, but only found the impenetrable darkness of the tunnels leading deeper into the mines, the ones she never had the opportunity to explore. She turned back, and it was staring at her again. "I was neither a thing that could be felt or spoken to, until I was."

    "... You aren''t Hazel, are you?" She knew the answer, yet she still needed to ask.

    If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it.

    "I''m not," it admitted, and the sense of relief made her slump against the bars.

    "Then who are you?" She asked, but this time it didn''t answer. Didn''t so much as make mention of thinking her question through. Sighing, she tried again. "W-why did you bring me here? Is where is here? Is this a dream, o-or inside my head somehow?"

    "I didn''t. Even if I wanted to, I couldn''t. As for where here is... yes but no. Here is here. " it said.

    "I-I don''t get it."

    It looked away again, eyes rolling so far she could see the red of its optical nerves, assuming it truly had any. She waited, and waited, seconds blurring into what felt like minutes before it focused on her again. "I wanted to ask you a question, but I don''t think you''re smart enough to give me a satisfying answer yet."

    She froze. For a moment, she could swear she heard a tinge of bitterness in its voice, but it was gone so fast she wasn''t sure. "Excuse me?"

    Something broke behind her. She jumped, turning just in time to see a crack cross the darkness behind her as if climbing a solid wall. She looked down by her feet, only now noticing how the damage she had caused spread like an infection, crisscrossing in between her legs and over every surface available.

    "This is just pretext," the Thing said. "Our time would be over sooner or later. It''s better this way."

    "W-wait! We still have a lot to talk about!" she said. "I don''t even know what you want!"

    The crack spread all the way to the far wall. it touched the iron holder, spiraling over the wooden body of the torch it held, and up its flame, freezing it in place.

    "I already told you, didn''t I? You''re too stupid to get it. We would be talking in circles for all of eternity, and everything I said would go into one ear and out of the other," it said, and then to her shock, smiled. It was such a perfect replica of the way Hazel used to smile, that small and knowing quirk of the lip like she had just figured your biggest secret. "But he will do something about it."

    "He?"

    "Menoux."

    The fire broke, turning into a shower of bright, dimming sparks, and plunging them into pitch black. She couldn''t move, the memories beneath the Citrine moon coming back to her like a flood. When the ground finally crumbled beneath her, she did not so much as scream.

    All she did was listen to that final whisper, as everything faded into nothing.

    "I will be waiting."

    ------

    The Crackling of flames. Boots grinding on hard ground. Then, merciful silence.

    How many times did that make? Darkness, an unfamiliar ceiling, an unwelcome rest. The illusion no longer had any effect on her. Lesser Hollow was gone, her room was long buried, and she might never see Marquise''s manor again.

    She decided to stay down for now. How long until the next shoe fell? She felt exhausted and mulched, surely a few seconds on this oddly warm floor wouldn''t kill. No, if neither her dad nor that giant had put her down, then she had earned herself a couple seconds.

    The world around her came into view by the pieces. She noticed the odd pink, or red, tinge to the stone in the ceiling, the veins of more conventional gray. Beneath, she felt the ground lined with straw and dirt, smells both foul and delicious mingling into something dizzying and uncomfortable. Sweat, food, blood, flowers.

    She felt her hand clench, and the stump of her left arm rub against the ground, tender. Lifting it in front of her eyes, her Will reacted, as if expecting some kind of trick cast over her wound. No such thing, of course. A thousand arms met nothing but her, the three smooth saliences where her new limb slowly grew pulsing with aches. Had she been woken while her legs recovered after Lesser Hollow, would they have felt like this?

    "Holly."

    She stirred at the name, taking a few seconds to recognize who had called before jolting upright.

    Where the cave she once called her room had been a long, straight, if spacious series of branching corridors, her current captivity was the opposite, a wide but comparatively shallow hole mined on the wall. Its bars were sturdy and thick, worn but not aged, the heavy metal gate leading to a hallway with a tall ceiling. She peeked similar cells lining the opposite wall, their front neighbor in particular hastily curtained by heavy sheets.

    The voice hadn''t come from outside. Looking one way and the other, she found nothing, until a twitch by the back clued her in to the fact she wasn''t alone in here, the small shape left as her companion simply camouflaged the way it had been carelessly dropped aside like some sack of vegetables.

    Agare was staring straight at her, the liquid void occupying his face as placid as ever. When he spoke, she felt her heart swell. "You appear to be recovering well."

    "A-A-Agare!"

    By the time she remembered Agare was not too fond of touching her, she was already on top of him. Had he whimpered? Must have been her imagination. She was just so thrilled!

    "I-I''m- I-I thought you had died! You were all- all- I mean-!"

    ''

    She looked him over from side to side, noticing he was still in a terrible state, his armor ripped to pieces to reveal the surprisingly strong and unsurprisingly scar ridden body beneath, all his four limbs still gone this time, though at least the stumps had patched themselves. A protrusion emerging from the one on his right shoulder had almost the shape of fingers, but she couldn''t be sure.

    "... Believe it or not, I''ve been worse," Agare said, edging further away. A little conscious, she pulled back, leaving herself kneeled by his side "It''s... good to see you so energetic. I feared your internal wounds would be crippling."

    "I-it''s weird, yeah!" she said. "My Will seems to be working pretty smoothly. Now that I think about it, maybe better than ever?"

    As a demonstration, though she knew he wouldn''t be able to see it, she expanded in all directions, her thousand limbs reacting with a promptness and speed she had never managed before.

    She yipped, convulsing with disgust. It was a sudden sensation, bitter and soft and burning, like she had shoved her hands into wet mud and found a pile of hot needles at the bottom. Stung, she retracted into herself, waiting the several seconds it took for the hurt to fade. She searched for the culprit, with her eyes only, but found them both still alone.

    The question was at the tip of her tongue, but she realized the truth. Carefully, she rested her forehead against the nearest wall, and focused. The warmth was pleasant, if faint, but beyond it, almost imperceptible, she could feel a steady pulse

    "W-we''re inside Mountain Guts?" she asked.

    Agare nodded. "Within one of the deeper Hard Tissue layers, or perhaps inside a repurposed root, though I don''t see coagulant tissue anywhere."

    "I had never felt one with my Will before. I-is that why God was never able to find me? It''s so unpleasant!"

    "These are complex creatures. They are no friends to beings such as the Haruspect, but will let matters lie so long as they aren''t provoked," he said, turning to her with what she could only assume was some sort of pointed look. "Do not provoke it."

    It took some thinking to figure what Agare was going on about. But God''s Will had been everywhere, and it was common knowledge in the Lesser that the area around the mines was taboo because everything born there grew toxic with time. With a sigh, she nodded, not like she wanted to go beyond satisfying her curiosity anyway.

    A companionable silence followed. She felt like she had a lot to say, but was unsure what, or where to start. Fidgeting the minutes away, Agare was eventually the one to break it.

    "Ever since the Haruspect took control, the Citrine went into long periods of hibernation where they hid beyond even Galehold''s intelligence''s ability to track," he murmured, just loud enough she could hear. "No wonder. This is the last place an Heir should be."

    "B-because of the poison?" she asked.

    He nodded. "That too, Although not the only one. Mountainous Intestines are the only place Demonium ore naturally grows. It should tell you enough."

    With a tired sigh, she nodded. No reason to acknowledge what he had just implied, but the burning black metal still had a snug place in her thoughts, no matter how long it had been.

    ... How long had it been? It felt as if every time she closed her eyes then opened again, days, weeks could have passed. Had Agare been here, hurt and unable to move, waiting all this time for her to wake up? She knew herself, she could idle away for a very long time without feeling any boredom, could he?

    How had he endured this situation she had put him in?

    She shrunk into herself in shame. She tried to remember what she had done, but everything after those three words had become a blur. Everything, until the giant, the monster, and all that horrible agony, wonderful anger that still inspired some longing in her chest. She couldn''t control herself, and everyone paid for it again. She hadn''t even apologized to Almalilly yet, for goodness sake!

    And why? Because she had been in danger?

    No. Because Holly Seneschal had.

    The Image. Her salvation. The person that could, should have been, who had to be, and now, piece by piece, was denied, as if the world hadn''t done everything available to make her real. Wasn''t that what everyone had wanted? Why punish her now that she understood, After all the trouble she had went through to-

    She shook her head. She was getting distracted again. She needed to set things right!

    "A-Agare, I- !" She cleaned her throat, trying to wipe the residual indignity out of her tone. If felt hard to speak through the knot in her throat "I''m..."

    "Yes?" he said, though didn''t sound all there.

    "I''m-!"

    "Have I heard correctly?! My guest is awake and looking alive?!"

    The voice boomed like a tree crashing to ground, drawing a hiss out her, hairs waving and lashing. It echoed from all directions, an assault to the ears the entire world should have heard.

    Yet, when Menoux strode into the hallway, his head just narrowly scrapping the ceiling, his steps were like the fall of feathers. Already in the nude, stick flopping all around, the moment he got in front of her cell, his golden eyes shone, his mouth gaping into a mockery of toothy delight. Following him were a gaggled of scantily dressed, wickledly armed men-

    ... and women?

    The sight shouldn''t have been as shocking to her, she had met Blades before, and Marquise too, but she still caught herself trying to explain those very gorgeous, very exposed, curvaceous yet muscular people as some sort of trick of the mind.

    Giving her fallen comrade wordless apologies, she glared at her enemies, who one and all seemed to only grow more amused. In fact, some of them, men and women both, only seemed to prine. They were all beautiful, she had to admit, just like their master, all large and confident, skins varying from deathly pallor to ashen brown, and all human.

    "Surprised, godling from the Bear?" Menoux said, and tapped the woman to his side from behind, getting a strange coo in response. He pushed her forward as she threw a sly grin his way. "You are not in the Lands of Men And Lions anymore, and most don''t like to orbit around their ways of life."

    Having it stated this plainly could have been a bigger wake up call then seeing it with her own eyes, but something else caught her attention. "G-godling from the Bear... me?"

    "Well, who else it could be?!" He laughed. "Certainly not me! And certainly not that thing over there either."

    Agare thankfully remained silent at the slight, watching as the heavy, lumbering giant dropped himself on his rear as if no heavier than a stick, his gaggle of goons loosely spreading around as he crossed his legs. Resting his hands over his lap, he leaned forward, his eyes hungrily burrowing through hers.

    "Beautiful, aren''t they?" Menoux said, openly admiring the same woman, who puffed her very bare chest outwards in pride, probably unaware how the scandalous display made her heart thump like it had gone mad. "Divine work, it all. Just one of the many blessings taught by the Lord in Iron, the perfection of the flesh and-"

    "Heir of Citrine!" Agare''s intrusion was so sudden she nearly jumped out of her skin. "Haruspect Menoux, the Butcher of Heron Road, have you captured us for the pleasure of wasting our times, or do you have an objective?"

    With the death of Menoux smile, came a sigh so theatrical it left her flabbergasted. "Skin. Good evening, dear Madhound, I''m happy to see you have recovered some of your faculties. Now, if you could remain silent, thing will go much better for us both."

    "The Citrine is not known for keeping its hostages-"

    "Citrine!" Menoux scoffed. "You don''t even know our names and still pretend to know our ways? Oh, please! Bark to someone else! Now, godling, let us-"

    "N-no!" She interjected, "I-I''m with Agare! I want to know why you brought us here, a-and what''s a godling?! I never heard that one before!"

    "Of course you don''t, godling!" his smile returned with a small chuckle. "That was only expected, but don''t worry your pretty little head about it, that''s why I''m here today, to teach you all the things that wouldn''t want you learning!"

    "I don''t care about things like that," she said. "A-all I want is to leave!"

    "Please, be reasonable! What grounds do you have to demand anything?" Menoux said, shaking his head. "Let us have a conversation at least, so I can see the extent of the damage that thing has done to you."

    "Holly, be careful with him." Agare whispered, his body dragging closer to her. "That is how the Citrine has been operating for the last century. They infiltrate nations like parasites and poison the mind of outcasts against-"

    "Oh, spare me!" Menoux spat, and that sliver of anger in his tone was all it took for that animal part of her brain want to bury itself into a deep, dark hole. "Talking about parasites and mind poisons, and meanwhile she walks hand in hand with those whose very reason to exist is the complete eradication of her kind, and made to insist to the ends of the world she is human meanwhile!"

    "N-nobody made me-"

    Menoux hand rose with a placating gesture. "But I get it. My methods might have been a little severe, yet we are safe now, aren''t we? The Lens can flip every rock in Awin and never find us, so I don''t think it would be any problem if you were to, say, walk away a little earlier than intended."

    She paused, not really comprehending what he had said. "W-wait. You mean we can just leave."

    He nodded. "It would pain me to cut your education this short, but sure. I will even give you some of our supplies for the trip. And none of whichever crumbs they have been feeding you, to keep you this skinny and weak! Something truly nutritious for a being of our caliber, and you better believe you''ll see the difference rather immediately."

    She didn''t answer. She knew the catch was coming before his smile widened, and knew his request before he spoke the first word.

    "All you have to do is simple: Kill that Madhound you called comrade and prevent him from inflicting further damage onto this world. Simple, am I right? But if you can''t... Well, get yourself cozy!" He laughed. "We are going to have one busy week ahead of us!"

 3 - The Butcher of Heron Road 11

    She and Agare sat apart from each other, silence anything but companionable.

    The moment Menoux left that day, toothy as if heading for a feast, the buzzing at the back of her mind returned in full force. With it came craving, and with craving came hunger, irritation, and no small amounts of shame.

    It didn''t help at all the rotation of soldiers outside. Unlike her room, this cave was always swarming with all sorts of people; the beautiful half-naked to heart poundingly nude men and women like those who accompanied Menoux in his last visit, occasionally, but mostly, those in full gear, shelled in metal and armed with large weapons, clubs and enormous butcher cleavers mostly.

    He would come by from time to time to. Not Menoux, who had left them alone since his offer, but that one Citrine who had talked to her, the one with the one handed scythe. He never said a word, only stared at her for a few seconds at a time, before leaving. She would see him help with carrying enormous bleeding sacks from the depths of the guts, but at those times he would dignify her with even a glance.

    An on top of it all...

    "Agare," she piped up, and waited several seconds before he stirred.

    "Yes?"

    "I think I saw movement again." She pointed towards to the cell right in front of theirs, where a curtain of sheets had been nailed in from the top. It was always slight, but she could swear she had seen it being pushed from behind a couple times now. If there was something locked up behind it, that was the only sign of life she had caught on so far.

    "I see," Agare said, again after a small pause. "Leave it. If we don''t know what it is, it''s better not to get its attention."

    She took a deep breath. She knew what she was about to do was an exercise in futility, but she just needed to ask. "A-are you okay?"

    "I am. Just thinking," it was the only answer he never needed to think through.

    "I guess. Figured out something yet?" she said, trying to put some pep into her voice, but as always, it came forced. The small turn of head, which she was sure was equivalent of some sort of side-eying, was all the answer she got, but it was enough.

    Seeing the mystery that was Agare ponderous in itself wasn''t all that worrying. Rather, the problem was something she wasn''t entirely sure she was seeing right, but was certain of from her heart of hearts.

    The movement of Agare''s Mark had changed. Or rather, it was stalling. It happened every few minutes, a simple, diminute hitch of its usual slow swirls, before it went back to normal. At first, she though she had simply never noticed it, that it was normal, The more recurring it became, the more she doubted her own conclusion.

    She knew she shouldn''t insist. After what she had caused, she became less and less sure she should even talk in his presence. Yet, she couldn''t resist it for long. "A-are you sure?"

    "I am," he said. Blunt, curt, and done.

    She simmered for a few seconds, before turning back towards the hallway.

    She knew, logically, she shouldn''t be mad. After everything? She deserved a little cold shoulder. And yet! Why so suddenly? Weren''t things going alright? Wasn''t he talking to her normally? and then, out nowhere, this. Had she done something else she didn''t notice? Or, did he think she hadn''t noticed something was going on?

    She was mad. Turning, she was going to insist.

    A jolt from Agare stop her dead. His head turned, tracking something right behind her back.

    She looked just in time to see Menoux sit his bare rear on the ground, not five paces away from her through the bars. No crowd had followed him this time, only Scythe, who stood a polite distance behind his master. Even further back, the usual wordless guards that kept them from escaping began to leave, curious eyes lingering until they turned out view.

    "You," she said.

    "Me!" His usual smile felt sedated, almost modest. "I take my previous offer has been rejected?"

    "As if you didn''t know I wouldn''t!"

    "What, accusing your gracious host of making proposals he knew would always remain on the table?!" He gasped, a hand flying to his chest. "Why, such outrage! Though I must admit, I rather glad you decided to stay with us."

    "I-I didn''t have another option," she said. Her hairs were going crazy, striking the air as if they wanted to attack him themselves. She tried to stay calm, but with him so close it was impossible. "W-what are you doing here?"

    "I live here! Who is to forbid me from coming and going?" he laughed.

    "Who are you trying to kid? Y-you would sit right there, face to face, just cause?!"

    His cheer dropped for just a moment, and she bristled with dread. He look her up and down, but his eyes were analytical, his expression cold. The usual mock was there a second later, but did she catch a hint of strain?

    "Godling," the word drawled out. "Has somebody ever told you speak like a child?"

    "A-a-and what is your business with the way I talk?!" she rose to her knees, ready to show a washing!

    He chuckled at her threat, shaking his head. "Oh, now that would be a good answer! Although, I wish you would commit it to heart, rather than just bring it out like a cudgel. I may be suspicious to speak, but I always though morals deserved a little more

    With every word out of his mouth, she saw red. She wanted to beat him into tears so bad it hurt. She threw herself at her bars, but even with her strength they didn''t budge a bit. Next, flew out her Will, enveloping him whole, strays burning against the Mountain Guts, and dug in. Tried to, anyway: She had not been mistaken, the innermost Heir of Citrine was an indestructible barrier which she could not so much as hold on to.

    "Jokes aside," he said, relaxed as if he wasn''t surrounded by her right now. "I actually do have a serious question to make."

    "And why should I care?!" She tried to keep the last crumbs of courage and righteous anger that reminder left her with. "You keep me locked up for who knows how long-"

    "Three days!" He showed it in his fingers, "Almost four now."

    "O-one would be too much! I don''t like it here! I don''t know what you''re doing, or why-"

    He sighed, and before she noticed, his arm was held up, his palm towards her. The next second, she curled back against the ground, knowing what that fist could do to her on a mere whim. When he moved, she hissed, but then the veil lifted: the buzz disappeared from the back of her head, though leaving its effects.

    Embarassed, she slowly got back to a sitting position, trying not to meet Menoux eyes. At least now she was sure he could control the strange sensation, that all those weird she had been feeling were his fault after all!

    "Y-you-!"

    "Goding, what does being Dashi means to you?"

    The question caught her with her guard lowered. She froze. He might as well have talked to her in croaks. she glanced into the abyss of his words, uncomprehending, finding new possible dimensions to it with every passing moment. Finally, the conclusion she came to was not an answer, but a counter. "W-what are you even asking?"

    Menoux hummed to himself, leaning back on his hands. She tried very hard not to look down. "I don''t mean in a scientific sense. Metaphorically, spiritually, whichever speaks truer to your core, what is the importance of being Dashi to you? Or, human specifically, wasn''t it?"

    "I-I..." She gulped. "I still don''t get it."

    "Yes you do!" he chuckled. "Who was the one screaming you were human? who cast away your birth name, your bloodline? Certainly wasn''t me! Was it that thing crawling by the wall over there?"

    If you encounter this narrative on Amazon, note that it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it.

    "Y-you left him there! And no, he has nothing to do with it! I''m human because I''m human, because I was born human and raised human a-and because I am human!" she said.

    It didn''t take a second to tell Menoux was not in the least convinced. "Why?"

    "W-what do you mean why?"

    "Why does it matter, that you were born a human looking larva? Is that all? Is this what makes you shouting, fighting mad about being told otherwise? A disoriented sense of normality? Ha!" he chuckled, "How sad!"

    "I-if it''s so insignificant to you, then what does it matter if that''s what I say I am?! Just leave me alone!" she said, scooting away. "Do you know how tired I am of this? You think you are the first to say otherwise?! And for what reason?!"

    "For what reason? I told you before: I have a sharp nose for liars, dear godling, and you stink so much it''s repulsive." He grinned like he was trying to tear his own cheeks in half. She could stare at him, numb, "Oh, don''t give me that look, as if you didn''t know already!"

    "I-I don''t- I mean- W-what''s even a godling? Why do you keep calling me that?"

    "Why, a half baked god, of course!" he said. "A half way aberration that can neither return to mortality nor bridge the gap to true divinity. Or, in some cases, can, but won''t! Not naming any names."

    "Hah! W-what, a goddess, me?!" This was her turn to laugh, to mock him to his face. "What a joke! And you think me saying I''m human is absurd?!"

    She hadn''t know what exactly to expect of Menoux''s reaction, but the look of what she could only read as sincere confusion wasn''t it. "Of course you are. Didn''t your father tell you himself? Or did you believe I was feigning disgruntlement when you called that thing your comrade, Heir of Azure?"

    She couldn''t help but shiver. The title was like being drenched with a bucket of cold water. That was suppose to be the name of the Remnants of Eligor''s enemies, of Marquise''s enemies, not hers! Yet, it wasn''t like the idea hadn''t crosser her mind once or twice.

    Before the nonsense sounds pouring out of her could coalesce into a coherent defense, Agare came for the rescue.

    "It this your plan, Heir of Citrine?" he said. "Shake her beliefs until you find an entrance to preach your ways?"

    "Ah, and here I was wondering when you would barge into the conversation!" Menoux leaned to the side until he began to topple. A quick move, and he was suddenly laying on his side, head propped on his elbow, staring right down at Agare. "Good evening, Madhound, still holding it together?"

    "Why am I not dead?" Agare asked, and she gasped. Menoux merely chuckled.

    "Well, why deny nature its due course? Besides, I thought your kind enjoyed clinging to whichever crumbs of life they still possessed?"

    "W-what do you mean?" she said. "A-Agare, what does he mean-"

    "It doesn''t matter." Agare said, wriggling back against the wall, as if trying to straighten himself out. "What matters here is clarity. I thought your ilk made ill buddies to liars and deceivers and the sort, Heir of Citrine, so why dance around your point?"

    "My rotten friend, now that was simply incorrect! Who doesn''t like being a little stinky?!" Menoux laughed, hearty and amused, until he cut himself off, his expression turning dead serious. "I will grant you, however, that I should get right to it. Clarity may sweeten the pill after all."

    Menoux rolled his shoulders as he sat himself again, arms and legs crossed, eyes burning through her own. There was no cold examination there anymore, just a perfectly impassive look, one she found nearly infectious.

    "Say, dear godling..."

    "My name is-"

    "Nothing," he said. "You cast away the name I allowed you, failed to defend the one you chose, and now you have the right of none until you can wrestle it from me. Are we understood?"

    The Buzz whispered in her ears, and her coward brain quaked in its hide. Her nod was almost unconscious.

    "Good. Now, dear godling, what do you know about the Indolent Empire?"

    She paused, the Buzz abandoning her once again and giving place to frightened logic. "T-the Indolent Empire? T-they are the Citrine, aren''t they?"

    "In a way." Menoux smiled, pleased. "Ancient Ivias was home to many tribes, before the Brave Sailors and the gobans arrived, before the parasites of Kerit began to spread their seeds, five which matter most: The Towerpeople and the Silverwhisperers, each to their own islands, the warmongering Yida and the Sages of the Breathless God among them, and finally, the Empire.

    "They were the first great power of the Ivian Archipelago. Their armies made entire Regions shake, and thousands of nation surrender without the raising of a single blade! What they desired presented itself in a golden plate, knowing the consequences of angering their lieges. Before the Bear   no, that would be the Lion back then   descended upon our shores, they were the only force that could unite the Yida in arms. Yet, they aren''t here anymore, at least not in any recognizable shape. Why?"

    Marquise''s brief history lessons came to mind, as well as one particular story. "They were conquered, right? By the Yine, many years ago."

    "Ha! Very bookish answer." He scoffed. "Technically, not incorrect, but there is nuance to it you will never find in your papers: What the Lion found within their borders was not the mighty conqueror, but a deformed maggot in a hollow shell, eating it self alive!"

    Menoux frowned, though it didn''t feel genuine. His tone, his affectation, it made her feel oddly nostalgic. "By the time they fought one another, the First of Ivian Empires had gone through as many names in a century as it had emperors. Yarou, Xedalia, Xanra! None stuck, no matter how the current chair warmer in charge screamed and cried, for there was always another mouth gnawing at his ankles, always another plumed noble to vie for their power. Then, came another civil war, brother against sister, armies depleted fighting themselves while the beasts nibbled at their borders Why, you ask?

    "Because they had lost their way. Because in their arrogance, they forgot that Dashi were uplifted bush crawlers, and abandoned the word of the flesh!"

    Menoux spread his arms wide, and she was caught, excited for his next words, absurd or not.

    "The gospels of the Lord in Iron have blessed this land since before its forests began to spread. Their message was simple, the kind all should know by instinct! ''Ten thousand days and ten million nights pass, claw and fang reign supreme''!" Menoux poked himself in the temple so hard it sounded like he was knocking on a door. "The animal rules, no matter how deep you bury it. Strength is fulcrum of respect, and only the animal can maintain that Strength."

    "Times change. Claws become knives, fangs become spears, but the core does not change. The animal can only be nourished through self honesty. To eat, to sleep, to fuck, to fight until your rival is a mangled corpse, that is a holy connection to the First of the Flesh, to the Father and Mother, the Lord in Iron, may the treacherous Hermit who sealed him be forever cursed!" The boom of his voice made the surrounding silence sharper, echoing like a thunderclap. "So long as you have the strength, of course. The strong choose, the weak obey, the weaker follow behind, and the weakest?"

    Menoux extended a hand, palm held up, waiting. Scythe silently reached behind him with his free hand, lifting a heavy sack right on front of her eyes. The Buzz reached a screaming crescendp as he dropped it on Menoux hand, who extended it towards the bars, the odor hit her like the aroma of a cooking feast: meat and blood, so fresh it couldn''t have been butchered less then an hour ago.

    The hunger rendered her almost helpless to resist. A nagging sense made her hesitate at the last minute, digging her fingers into the ground below as she closed her eyes and held her breath.

    "They join the table, too." He giggled. "Come on, open your eyes. It''s unhealthy to starve yourself!"

    "Holly." Agare said, voice almost lost in the chaos inside her head. "Step away from him. Now."

    She heard the rustling of ropes against fabric, and open her eyes a slant.

    Right there, just at the other side, Menoux reached into the sack and pulled a severed human leg from inside, bringing it to his teeth without a second thought.

    Pandemonium reached its peak. Everything disappeared. Her thoughts, her feelings, numbness could not begin to describe it. The entirety of the world became that bite. Part of her didn''t want to believe she had seen what she had seen. Part of her didn''t want to believe how badly she wanted to-

    No. No, no, there were no such things there. That was not part of her. That was him, all him! Messing with her mind again, burrowing were he hadn''t been invited to break her, to make her doubt herself. She jumped back, hissing, howling, following any and all directions from her aggrieved, longing instinct.

    Menoux kept eating, chewing with open adoration, humming with sheer pleasure. After he swallowed, he looked onto the bitten limb with melancholic fondness. "But they lost themselves. They tried to sever the inner beast from the people. Created castes so the weak could rule eternal, enslaved the strong so their bodies would crumble before the desire to fight ever arose, suppressed the holy desires of the masses while cattering to their own pleasures in hiding. Piece by piece, mountains crumble, lakes dry, and humans inevitably become human."

    "Waaah..." she babbled, saliva dripping down her chin in streams. Far away, her name was called, and she ignored it. Her eyes wouldn''t leave the juicy, red gap, her ears could not forget the crisp wet crunch of bloody bone.

    "Some saw the injustice of it, and fought to change their homeland. They would fail, as anyone could attest, chained or executed or simply hobbled for life, except one, who escaped into exile with his family, abandoning his life under the crushing foot of his fatherland for pilgrimage deep into the mountains.

    "That man was Aenexias, and through his faith, he received a miracle: He found a long forgotten city, and at its heart, a grand monolith of iron, through which the Lord spoke."

    The opening of Menoux''s maw as he took the second bit was enormous, easily capable of consuming her head with one bite. He chewed through flesh and bone like water, faster this time, while she tried to wrestle back control of herself.

    "I will spare you the details of the miracle, and the tragic centuries that followed. The Prophet and his kindred are gone, as you might already know." Menoux gave her a glance. "Or not. The mission, however, was passed forward into six, then seven, then five, then six again, great tablets of stone, a copy of the last which would become what you might know as the Citrine Tale!"

    "I-I don''t..." she clawed at her own stomach, hard. "What are you doing... to me?"

    He shook his head. "Quoteth from the Lord, ''foolish Aenexias, point me a saintly kingdom, and I shall show you a mask!'' No intent fully survives Dashi stubborness, no matter how pure. Even among the Prophet''s many children, there were those who wished only for empty vainglory, who greedily kept the words of the Lord to themselves. Schism was born, and they fought one another.

    The third bite was the fastest, half-way through the thigh to the knee, savage and furious, practically gulped down. A bloodstained grin met her. "And yet, the name of Aenexias still haunts the nightmares of Ivias, because no matter the differences, they were all guided by the three principles: Strength is the crown, only through the animal may the crown be maintained, and only through self-honesty may the animal be nourished!"

    In one swift motion, he shoved the remaining foreleg through the bars of her cell and tossed it her way.

    She was on her feet before she noticed, mouth gaping, throat quivering with anticipation.

    It had been years since she felt this starved. She had forgotten how painful it was. All that was left of her mind was the desperate need for nourishment, now!

    Paradoxically, that''s what restrained her, teeth a finger''s length from sinking in. She remembered the hunger, the pain yes, but also the fear, that deep sensation of loss that only grew worse and worse with every passing day in the darkness.

    One wrong move, and Holly Seneschal would truly be gone.

    She had to wrench herself aside, crawl away as if wounded. Yelling echoed around her, laughter, howling. She didn''t know where she was heading, only that she needed to get away.

    She only stopped when she felt something herself grab something pliable but tough. Her eyes widened, meeting Agare''s void just in time to see it hitch. The Buzz never faded, but in his presence, she could feel it lessening, plateauing into manageability.

    "Holly, fight! Do not let yourself give in!" He said, sounding every bit as desperate as her. "The moment you give in, it''s over!"

    "I-I won''t, I can''t!" She pushed herself up on a shaking hand, dragging herself face first against the wall. The collision, though loud, didn''t clear her head as much as she wished.

    "As I expected, you still don''t really know what you eat, do you?" Menoux voiced echoed, mocking.

    "G-go away!" she risked a glance behind her shoulder. She saw Menoux standing, and a glimpse of the sack, succulent organs and meat flipped open towards- she turned away again. "I''m done with you. Leave!"

    "It''s only natural for old men to become fond of unruly children. There is just something so captivating about the naivete of youth!" He bellowed. "You, however, are impure, godling! You are an abomination against my beliefs, and against your own needs!"

    "Good! Leave" She said.

    "Want it or not, you will learn! Today, I have other matters to attend to, but let me leave you one last piece of advice."

    Another shift in tone, but she didn''t fall for it. If he wanted her attention, he could go look for it somewhere else!

    "Reconsider my proposal from our last meeting," he said, not a hint of amusement in his voice. "The clock is ticking, and soon, the Madhound you love oh so much is going to reveal his true colors. Don''t believe me? Why, the evidence is right in front of you!"

    Shaking, she did throw another quick glare over her shoulder, another way to tell him to go away.

    What she found, instead, was Menoux already leaving, footsteps no louder than a child''s.

    And right in front of their cell, at the very edges of the nailed curtain, the silhouette of dark fingers pulling an edge back, viscous and slender shapes whipping through the gap before retreating into the shadows.

    Then, nothing. They were left alone, discomfort their only company.

 3 - The Butcher of Heron Road 12

    Their escape from Gwanegume had been nothing short of fortuitous.

    It had taken the ever darling Furfu half a minute from returning to wrestle control of the group and sequester them into the nearest uninhabited apartment. Doors torn from their hinges and trails of rusting blood remained the last vestiges of a gruesome fate, though luck would have the previous residents most useful belongings remained intact and ripe for the picking.

    They waited. The moon rose tainted with gold, granting them a sleepless night. Dawn came with no signs of Agare, forcing them to assume to worst and work on contingencies.

    In the early morrow, One Two flew off with a host of requests. Not three hours later, the Lens arrived in full.

    Aleh had studied the five knight orders of Awin before, albeit from a detached perspective, a large scale look on their functions, their tactics, logistics, deployable units, preferred battlefields. From the slants of the apartments window, for example, he could tell apart an officer of the First Len, the Len of domestic affairs, accompanied by another of the Fourth, Len of intelligence and strategy.

    Not one of his books had predicted the gooseflesh raising behind his neck, the cold sweat drenching his body. The shine over their scaled chest armor, over the headless snake embossed atop their helmets, the glint of an executioner''s blade, though he could sigh in relief at the particular sort of executioner that had come for his head.

    Bellowing from across Gwanegume announced the evacuation. The Len knights shone like beacons, enough to pierce through the gloom of the apartment yet never painful to the corneas, a gentle guide for the lost.

    The city, against his most pessimistic estimates, rejoiced. Having though most of it exterminated by the Aenexian cultists, Aleh felt genuine shock at the amounts of sobbing, praying, praising people flooding from the once dead silent buildings surrounding them. Humans and gobans, old and young, though few wounded, chances were those had joined with the dead. Regardless, the atmosphere of grief remained palpable.

    With the arrival, came the need for fast action. A brief argument, Almalilly and him managed to convince that Faceless brute Furfu to make herself scarce with some rather special cargo, while Rosen hunted for clothes. With free reign, finding a replacement for their garments, the heavier and more modest affair of Galehold stood out against the breezier and simpler affair of the Yida tribes, was not too time consuming. He had tried to argue his robes, a subtle vermillion on blood orange, would read as eccentric and scholar rather than foreign, hostile design, but Almalilly convinced him otherwise.

    "Put that fucking robe around your neck right now before I strip you myself." she had said, struggling in vain against the loop of some sort of dull gray sewed toga, backless and with frilled hems. "Damnit, where are my arms supposed to go again? This isn''t a dress, it''s a fucking bed sheet!"

    The original plan was to mingle with the flood and reach the Oke, retrieve what they could from the equipment left behind. He wanted to take back the Oke itself, too much of their valuables would be lost otherwise, but attracting too much attention right now was a dangerous endeavor. Alas, their highest estimations of the First Len''s speed had still been gross underestimations, and they found knights leading groups of soldiers in emptying the streets at all turns.

    A final round in search of passage brought them under the eyes of what he assumed was a higher ranking official, wearing a light and silken robe of cyan over his armor and down to his knees, his visor obscured by a sheer white veil. When he turned in their direction, sprinting, Aleh took one glimpse at his spear, pulsing with unnatural light, and straightened his spine, least he died looking undignified.

    "Halt!" The gravely, imposing voice fit rather well with the whole. A brief consideration of fighting was smothered rather fast as he spied other Len Knights watching the scene as they headed towards further business, each flanked by their own subordinate troops "Where does your family head, sister?"

    "Sir Brother, a moment!" Almalilly said before either Rosen or him could, her Ivian accent flawless. "We seek our father''s home, so we may retrieve some family heirlooms before escaping!"

    "Your father? Would he be with you, sister?"

    "N-no sir. He had been, before all... all this." Almalilly choked, and Aleh had to admit to being impressed, that had been passable. "He never returned, a-and I fear..."

    "Say no more. Apologies, sister, and my condolences." The knight said, but gave a protracted shake of the head "I fear I can not allow you past this point. Please, join your fellow faithful in their flight post haste."

    "B-but sir-!"

    "We still do not know how this came to be, and which route the degenerates used to enter the city," he said. "There may be stragglers still enjoying themselves within city borders, or capture parties seeking escapees to harvest more meat for their festivals. Allowing you past is tantamount to leaving you to certain demise.

    "We understand the risk, sir Brother, but we promise to be quick and-"

    "No more!" He yelled, and pointed the direction they had arrived. "You can retrieve your family heirlooms once the city has been secured. now I order you, by the holy authority given to me by our Mistress in The Dark and her Saintess in The Light, find refuge with your fellow faithful at once!"

    Almalilly nodded, a supportive hand around Aleh''s back as she turned them around with deliberate slowness. She even lowered herself to throw a pitiful glance over her shoulder, eyes moist and lips bitten, yet failed to move the man. With a sigh, they hurried their pace.

    A small twinge of grief made him stop. He was of half a mind to insist otherwise, that they returned to that condescending luun of a man and get him out of their path, by force if so needed. It was surprising, in a certain manner, he hadn''t ever stopped to think how attached he had become to that vehicle and the Homunculus he used to seed it, which he had spent years perfecting even before that damned Marquise blackmailed him into joining her cause. A gentle yet firm hand convinced him to swallow his pride.

    So long as he lived, he could still recover his magnum opus.

    And he would recover it, if that was the last thing he ever did. Right now, least he managed to get the shit beat out of him by Almalilly before he threw a single spell, he would retreat.

    Facing the ground and keeping an even pacing to match the severe mood of the marching refugees, their escape from Gwanegume went smooth, until the checkpoints. Forward thinking by his cohorts had them make a small, hole-ridden, yet sufficient family history should they be asked. Awin had some form of census, he was sure, but there were always those who fell through its gaps.

    Heads were tallied, and the march both crushed his spirits and left his bad leg aching. He still wasn''t too used to his cane. Once they crossed the gate, the palpable sense of relief, both his own and gathered from the quiet crying all around, made him feel like he had been drowning in a lake, until he reached the shore by complete happenstance.

    They had survived. They might have failed the most important mission of their lives. What came next?

    At least in the immediate future, regrouping. Camps had been formed outside the walls, where priests and priestesses rushed like headless roaches, trying to tend to an ever growing population dozens of times their numbers. Chaotic and cramped, the perfect place to slip away from.

    Sticking to the edges, they waited for night fall and snuck towards the woods. Out of sight, Furfu dropped from the trees, heralded by her whining cargo. Together, they tied the cargo''s mouth shut and vanished into the brush.

    This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

    Three days of travelling through the woods, feeding from sour berries, bitter herbs, and whichever game failed to escape Furfu that particular afternoon, and they arrived at the quaint village of Polawin. By then, rumors about the massacre in Gwanegume had spread in the wind, and when three despondent and unwashed travelers knocked at their door seeking nourishment and respite, the villagers were sensible enough to oblige while keeping their interrogations subtle.

    The three sat put, while Furfu watched from the forest, having demanded frequent reports. Time made all anxieties worse, but at least the issue was out of their hands, for now.

    <hr>

    It would be eight days later when One Two arrived, close to dusk.

    The trio waited until around midnight, when the other villagers were sure to be sound asleep, before leaving the cramped hovel they had been lent towards the forest. No torches, no Fireflypeebles, just the moonlight, the celestial object approaching its full form in gentle silver, and Rosen''s careful eye.

    Gathered with the second half of their group, they read the message together. The orders were nothing unexpected: Stay put, keep an ear on the grapevine, Marquise will get in touch with some people, keep communications open least she assume the worst case scenario. In a clean sheet of paper, they wrote down all they had gathered the past week and sent it back.

    That night, as the others slept, Aleh read the missive a second time, catching on the slop of a secret message left there for all to find. Disgruntled, it took a couple tries before he digested its contents.

    He froze with disbelief. Once recovered, he folded the letter and stashed it inside his clothes with a trick he learned from his fellow apprentices long ago. He managed a scant few blinks before the morning bustle prevented further rest.

    He waited until Rosen, who had picked some work as a form of covert reconnaissance, to leave. Aleh himself had business to attend to, having half enchanted a scarecrow with garbled yet stable Merurgical loops as a deterrent to certain incorporeal pests that had been seen haunting around the bitter-potato crops the past week.

    Instead, he approached Almalilly, and told her everything.

    Her eyes widened, her face paled. "Are you sure?"

    "Of course I am. She left it in Merurgical imprint ink!" he said, a small weight lifted from his chest at the chance to complain. "Can you imagine what could have happened if Rosen had been the one to read the letter?! It doesn''t even-"

    "Aleh, please, let''s pretend I already know all that stuff and kindly move on." She sighed, looking from side to side, as if some kind of solution would be found in this boorish shack, "How are we even supposed to do this here, now?! I mean, we don''t even have-"

    "We do," he said, and at her askance frown, continued. "I always keep it with me, in case of emergencies."

    "Alright then, so we can. Question is, how?" She gestured to the nearest, and single, window. "From here? Furfu is always watching. Can we risk it? Is she in the know?"

    "That thing is Marquise''s lap dog, she would do anything for her sake," he said.

    "That''s what I''m asking," Almalilly whispered, taking a step closer. From this close, it was impossible not to notice how haggard and thin she had become since the Floodlands "Did she hear our deal from Marquise? Because if she didn''t, and she sees us trying to reach out, I think it''s more likely she will come to conclusions rather than listen to us pathetic little Faces, don''t you?"

    He stopped, about to counter, but she was correct. Furfu was hard to account for. Even if they manage a successful contact, if she misunderstood it was possible she would overreact and make sure neither was alive to witness the effects.

    Regardless, and he felt utter loathing for the fact he had to admit this even to his own self, if there were better solutions to their current predicament, he wouldn''t be the one to find them. If Marquise said it was time to take the situation to a higher authority, then chances were that there were none to be found. Cutting off the edge of a clean sheet of paper, he gathered an ink pot and gave Almalilly a pointed look. She threw a worried glance out their single window, facing the overgrown backyard and forest, before she began to dictate the letter.

    Of the cypher he wrote, he understood little. Almalilly had been a good teacher, but he had the slight impression she was reluctant in telling him more than needed. The characters were truncated but recognizable enough that if this was practical Ivian, he knew he would be penning down a dense chunk of gibberish. Still, he followed her instructions with care, there was no space for mistakes.

    In half an hour they were done. All that was left was sending.

    "I have an idea," he said, storing his writing supplies. "Please get us the cleaning basket, if you would."

    "What, are we going to take a bath? Now?" She asked, blinking.

    He smiled. "We are, in fact, going to take a bath."

    A river curved towards the village from the west, and they followed its margin opposite from the population at large. Although it had its own subpar, unmaintained bathhouse, and these sigwalists were somewhat more permissible than the Yine, their standards of decorum remained too restrictive for their group to enjoy the style of skinship the Sect had accustomed them to. As consequence, they headed far past the point a second stream discharged into the river, until they reached a secluded bank.

    It was a quaint place, covered with tall vegetation and so untouched it would be hard to approach without making a sound, yet to affirm they had found somewhere free from prying eyes would be a lie. In fact, as both undressed to nothing, chances were higher than ever prying eyes had followed them, if not the villagers either curious or lusting after their newcomers, then that miserable Furfu with her typical Faceless prejudices. Paranoia taunted him as he chanted under his breath, reaching into his Asha to drawn a sigil over his stomach ¨C a simple repellent against mundane parasites.

    Almalilly finished folding her undergarments and approached, whispers en route. "So, what now-"

    "Shush!" He hurried, cursing his damn limp as he nearly toppled right into her bust, were not for her fast instincts catching him upright. Taking a deep, slow breath, he began to draw a similar design above her navel. "Pretend all is as usual."

    She frowned. Regardless of her own inner doubts, she led him by hand to the stream, and they began.

    Of course, bathing a couple days after their previous was not as usual. Enjoying a slow disrobing in nature without a whole legion to watch over your back, as well, was ostentation. An ideal cleanup for the Sect was quick, practical, and done as needed behind four defensive walls, if done outside their base at all. Stink was handled with anti-odorific herbs or not at all, if there was no need for infiltration. The Faceless had no sense of smell, and cared little for not bothering their inferiors.

    Faces, then, had no business being this slow, this careless. He couldn''t help the smirk plastered on his face. For as shallow an act of rebellion it was, imagining Furfu hidden out of sight, numb with ennui as she watched a couple of maggots in their useless routine still amused him.

    They washed themselves, Almalilly helping with his back. As they exchanged places, a small glance was traded, and he put his plans into motion.

    "Let us go deeper. The water feels comfortable today," he said, the next instant flapping his lips into a wordless chant.

    "You know, it does feel kind fresh, doesn''t it?" she said. "Guess it''s going to be a while before the season starts biting this year!"

    Soap in hand, he followed her to the middle of the river. She pulled her hair to the front, and he set to cleaning around her spine.

    The repetitive, deliberate task was what he needed as Merurgical instructions began pouring through his connections, though not to his comrade.

    The art of flesh alteration was one he never mastered, though it was of utmost requirement to the Faceless Sect. All those picked to become witches had to, at some point, learn the practice until they were skilled enough to at least make passable assistants, even those whose fate dictated complete opposite roles.

    Once, it shamed Aleh to admit he had some issues with the discipline. It took until the last of his mentors, most irritant among their ranks but alas a genuine savant in the field, to beat what knowledge he had into his head.

    He sucked in a breath with pain as a gap opened where his crotch met his right leg. Breathless, he kept chanting, ordering, hoping there would be no blood this time. As the last of his instructions flew into his work, it began the process of wriggling itself out.

    One One, once nameless until nicknamed by the dreadful Marquise, had been a marvel of enchantment, a remote communications device that could follow complex orders and be guided anywhere within the archipelago with just the need of a beacon device. He had thought it perfect, until his last mentor pointed the simple, but crippling flaws of the design: It was too big, too noticeable inside the Merurgical Plane, and maintained its complex functions with a too complex network that was liable to damage and difficult to repair.

    One Two had been created among the same guidelines, simplified. It was smaller, required less Merurgy and instructions to function, had a streamlined pattern of behaviors that limited its path finding yet still made it an excellent messenger. It could even be delayed, finding somewhere safe to rest and recharge until further orders were given.

    One Three slipped into the water, and sunk to his good foot. An impulse, and it opened its wings, resting against the silt and waiting.

    it was the smallest of his works, the most fragile, and the most modern. The techniques he had employed were close-kept secrets a hundred years ago. A statement as much as a tool, on Aleh''s talents, intellect, and his insatiable desire to crawl out from the grip of that fucking pit the Sect had built for him and those who became his siblings. A Homunculus, state of the art artificial lifeform, rustic yet capable, soulless yet dangerous, bred and raised with his own two hands, grown into a carapace of metal and reagents.

    No need for beacons. It was connected to two specific beings in Ivias, him and one other.

    It would wait one hour until they were gone, and burst out of the river in search of the latter.

    He couldn''t forget Marquise''s words.

    "It''s time to call your friends. Tell them I accept the terms, and will be in contact soon."

    Loathsome. Right as he was thinking that particular phase of his life could be forgotten.

    "It''s done." He sighed, the gaping hole sealing itself while leaving his limbs shaking. He almost collapsed, if not for Almalilly''s strong back.

    "It''s done?" she asked, giving him a questioning quirk of the brow. He nodded, and she sighed. "Wish I was drinking right now."

    "We can get something later," he said, talking in lieu of panting.

    The situation had gone out of hand. It had been hard not to consider if Marquise''s choice of agents for this mission had been made in duress, haste, some sort of impairment, and now he felt sure of it. Aleh, however, would not accept himself as useless, never. If all he could do was set explosives beneath the situation, then so be it.

    Until them, he would wait, delighting himself with fantasies of how Furfu would react when she caught on.

 3 - The Butcher of Heron Road 13

    How many days had it been now?

    Long enough the human flesh had gone bad. If the smell wasn''t enough of a sign, the swarms of vermin crawling from deeper inside the Guts had to be. Blind and pale crickets, elongated flightless roaches, pink slugs like starved tongues slithering over trails of saliva, stranger things still who had picked the limbs to the bone, turned the disembodied innards to slurry. She should have been glad, that should have meant the end to her temptations.

    Wrong. All she felt was unsatisfied. Back in the Lesser, she knew she could have lasted much longer without food and never get this desperate, yet now her hands shook, and her stomach crumpled as if trying to digest itself. Why?

    It had to be Menoux. Him, and the nagging madness of the Buzz, whispering needs in the back of her mind while delighting itself with her failures to fulfill them! It wanted her broken, begging for release, and mocked her compromises: her attempts to sate her hunger through the carrion eaters only ended with her feeling like her tongue and gums were melting, her attempts to lure one of the leering guards to her cell so she could rip them to pieces fell apart as they laughed on her face, and her attempts to solve the slickness in between her legs... well, she was lost to where she could even begin with that.

    And yet, despite everything, it wasn''t her the one who had the worst of the situation. A few days ago, Agare''s Mark began to deform.

    What started as hitching, growing worse with every hour passed, had suddenly turned to bulging, as if his liquid void had been set to a slow boil, or, and she had tried not to indulge the idea at first, as if something was pushing it from beneath. Agare, of course, remained taciturn, telling her he felt fine until she bothered him enough for a scolding.

    And then, as if answering her worse fears, it emerged. It was difficult to describe, but harder to forget. One moment, the left corner of his Mark lifted, as it had many times before, though instead of deflating as usual, it rose, rose taller than ever, until its surroundings tore like some flimsy membrane, tissue fusing back into the whole as some slick, smooth shape arched outwards, coiling as if about to spring to his chest.

    Before it managed to escape, it shrank back down, leaving the Mark to quickly repair itself as if nothing happened. Since then she had seen it a handful of times, and not once did Agare react with any sort of worry, fear, anything that would let her know it wasn''t just her imagination.

    "I-it happened again," she said, watching over him intently.

    He didn''t turn his head. Where he stood, neck and head bent in a very uncomfortable angle against the rough stone, he remained. "So it did."

    "... I''m sorry," she said.

    "For what?" That his voice was clear and audible was almost a sign of relief. Not knowing how exactly the Faceless talked, she couldn''t help but think it was for her sake.

    "W-we''re here because of me. Because I freaked out."

    "So we are," another bulge grew as if a finger was poking his void from behind, thankfully quick to retreat, "Nothing to be done now. Keep thinking of a way out, and we can discuss this later."

    "W-what later?" She said, sliding besides him. "I can''t imagine how we''re going to get out of here, I mean... I couldn''t beat Menoux before, how could I now? I''m so hungry..."

    "Me too," he whispered, so low she almost didn''t catch it.

    "Y-you are? Is that why you''re all weird?"

    "Can we not start this again? I need to conserve energy."

    She picked at the ground with a nail, nervous. She would never forget that night in Lesser Hollow, how badly God had wounded him, but the next time they met at Marquise''s manor he had recovered like no other person could, an entire arm gone now back. With a once-over, she knew this time things would be different. There had been no visible improvement to his state since she woke up, all four of his limbs still gone. That he wasn''t bleeding nor showing any signs of infection was a small miracle, assuming he was even capable of the latter.

    "A-Agare, aren''t you going to tell me what''s going on?" she gulped down her hesitation, to no avail as Agare chose silence. with a sigh, she hugged her knees to her chest and waited.

    Their captor would be here soon.

    His approach was heralded by a keen, piercing sound, metal dragging against stone echoing from what felt like all directions. At the very corners of her perception, harsh whispers threatened gibbering obscenities.

    She glared as Menoux swaggered to her cell, taking a fast yet obviously pleased glance at Agare before sitting down, legs crossed, though further from her bars then usual. Scythes arrived second, his namesake sheathed at his back and pointing opposite of the thick rope balled around his fists. By the grunts, he struggled to pull a large object in between them.

    Her instincts screamed. The cruel children, nowhere to be seen, screamed louder, outraged at their treatment.

    Scythe let go, and Hagan''s raised half dropped with an impact that shook the entire cave. Not daring to touch the bundle of rope now left around the blade''s ugly, curved handle he hurried behind his master, whose muscles held taut but whose eyes held a loving intensity at the downed weapon that made her skip a beat.

    A moment came and went. Neither spoke. Holly crawled to her feet, about to initiate the conversation.

    Menoux fingers plunged onto Hagan''s side so fast she crashed back down. Threats died as a dozen kids cackled with vengeful glee. Not even that, however, could hide the grotesque crescendo of the feast. She covered her mouth, failing to hold back a whimper as the sound of a thousand chittering mandibles rose in a chorus to match her own unfulfilled desires.

    Skin ripped like wet paper, blood was splattered in all directions, muscle and bone where both undone in thin air. Menoux''s grin grew to his scalp, tense like a bow string, sweat pouring from every fold in his body as he pushed further and further. Through his impossible effort, she didn''t miss the way his branch began to twitch, becoming larger and redder as the absurd performance went on.

    With a bellow, he pulled upwards. As if glued to the mangled extremity, Hagan pursued until its weight dragged it down, tearing with a horrid wet rip. Menoux lifted it above his head like some sort of trophy, blood spurting freely. Nothing was left of the hand but a flap of skin where its back once met the wrist and the jagged shards of bones.

    The blood flow abruptly drying was the first sign of lingering damage. Then, both skin and muscle began to darken. She saw the outline of veins turning black, bone yellowing and crumbling. Before it could spread further, Menoux gaped his maw wide, farther than any human mouth had the right to open, then clamped down right below his elbow. The wet crunch almost made her gag, but it was all over in a matter of seconds: a pull of his neck, and the forearm tore off at the joint.

    With a spit, the dead chunk of flesh plopped on Hagan and was devoured with disappointed jeers. Menoux watched the show with interest, a single tear dripping over his panting lips, but she was left numb, baffled.

    "Diaborium!" Menoux spoke with a tired laugh. "The God-killing Devil! Such sublime pain! No wonder your Sect had to go to war to build this one, dear Madhound, if only I knew the secret I would have done much the same."

    The taunt earned no response from Agare.

    Menoux continued undaunted. "See, I''m conflicted. The faith leader part of me wants to melt down this abomination and cast off its molten cadaver into the deepest hole I can find, so it may never be pointed at my flock again. The connoisseur part of me? Learning to fly wouldn''t make it happier! This'' one of the greatest wonders of the Starlit World, and having it in my hands is nothing short of an honor!

    "For as much as Ivias is considered a backwater trench outside its shores, it has always had these quaint little things that seen to make the continentals green with envy. When the Yine Empire invaded, centuries ago, it is said a single plate of towerbone so tough their strongest smiths couldn''t work it was all their emperor needed as a reason! Having owned some Towerland, or Amavian for poor layman godlings, weaponry myself I''m inclined to believe."

    "M-Menoux." She forced herself forward on her knees. The sight of the Agare''s blade still made her heart flicker rather than beat. "Please, let us out! I''ll do anything else you ask, but Agare is sick, I-I think-"

    His surviving palm gestured her to stop. "They were powerful, but once the Dynasty of the Lion crumbled under the heels of a monster of its own creation, all that made it strong became as dust. Their almighty warriors had their throats slit on the battlefield, the incredible weapons that once served as vanguard to their conquests became unresponsive, and the unity they once boasted was quartered by greedy, weak noblemen.

    "Later, when the Galehold Empire found its footing and decided to gorge itself on past glories, they needed something to bridge the gap again. The Old Empire was gone, the Gobans were divided, and Awin was still some ways from existing, but their forefather''s failure in both subsuming or decimating their enemies meant they became stronger than ever. What could they do under those circumstances?"

    "Please, answer me!" She won over her nerves, and threw herself at the bars. "T-there has to be something you need, something you want!"

    He smiled. "Well, they do nothing. The Bear hibernates and stockpiles its strength, while a solution falls on its lap. Two, rather, both from the same source, the first of which would take a century to be understood well enough to be useful, but which shifted the whole balance of power to their advantage."

    His words bothered her. Had she heard something about this before?

    If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

    "The Lion had looked far and wide for the mystical metals that would turn their continental wars, but in a twist of irony, the innards of the mountains were far too repulsive for their sensibilities. The Bear had to be taught what it had to gain before it dug in with its own claws, but look at that, it learned! In the fire of its forges, the first blade of Demonium was crafted, a burning, venomous thorn in the side of us pesky godlings! The damage they caused with their new toys must have been incredible to behold, but alas, it was not close to enough."

    "Why does any of that matter?!" She tried to rattle the bars, but they wouldn''t budge. "Stop ignoring me!"

    "It was their first siege against the City that Never Fell, now the nucleus of the Saintdon and its religion. Imagine, if you can, walls that shone so bright they could blind, focused rays that could char one of their prided Warmares to the bone in seconds, shadows that would devour officers and spit out corpses! In that chaos, tools only helped so much. They needed heroes, warriors, monsters who knew the blade better than they knew themselves!

    "And monsters would come. Caged, shackled, maddened monsters, brought by allies who waited until the last possible minute to reveal their hand. And for the privilege of pointing them towards the Bear''s enemies, you knew what they asked for? The simple privilege of watching undisturbed!

    "What happens next is something I would have sacrificed and eye and a leg to witness! Imagine a beast that feels neither pain nor fear, who could with one arm overpower ten veterans at once, whose skin was tougher than iron and whose blood burned to the touch. They were mindless outside their skills at mass murdering, of course, and did not particularly differentiated between friend and foe. Once out of the box, they could never be returned. But what is a couple hundred dead men in comparison to glorious victory? The Bear cheered the abominations on.

    "The carnage stretched to the walls and beyond, the interlopers ceaseless to the moment of their deaths! The light was smothered, and Galehold howled triumphant, pushing into the outer layers of the city. That would be as far as they would ever reach, that war or the next, but its mark was left across history, the frenzied creatures becoming as myths for their ferocity, and earning the moniker of-"

    "Faceless."

    Menoux frowned, and she whirled, shocked. Agare had spoken with such pride and daring a part of her had expected to see a miraculous recovery, maybe even him on regenerated feet, ready to get them out. Reality was, he remained where she last saw him, diminished and weak.

    "Madhounds," Menoux shook a finger. "Uncontrollable mutts whose only notion of restrain was in their leashes. Admirable, to an extent, but let us not pretend it afforded you any dignity among the so called civilized people."

    "You''re describing the first appearance of a Faceless in open warfare since the times of Eligor, the Madman Massacre of the Second Ivian War. Those who sacrificed themselves to the Faceless Band to become as their lost King, whose minds were lost in the process," Agare said, fidgeting as if trying to sit up, but giving up soon after. "You''re trying to undo Holly''s loyalty by portraying us at our worst."

    "Not entirely." Menoux eyebrow rose as he giggled with childish mischief. "Care to defend yourself, in that case?"

    "No," he shrugged. "I''m just wondering why all this preamble, when you could just tear those sheets off and show her?"

    Menoux rolled his eyes. "Please, have some sense of gravitas! You can''t just drop the big revelations like that, you need build-up or else it falls flat! Of course, it would be the damn Madhound to ruin my night..."

    He rose back to his feet, and she retreated, disbelieving eyes falling upon Agare''s prone form. "W-what are you both talking about? You never told me anything about this!"

    His mark, distorting, did not break its vigil of Menoux fleeing back. "You''re not the only one to have parts of themselves they don''t like touching on, Holly. If you want to know, then watch."

    She hissed, low and soft, but the shame prevented her resentment from spilling out. He was right, and after everything she did she had no right to say otherwise. Mouth shut, she watched as Menoux grabbed the leftmost sheet, yanking it from its stakes without a drop of effort, then the next, then the next, until the floor around his feet was covered by bundles of leather and cloth. Beyond laid a dark cavity, roughly as wide as her own cell yet significantly deeper.

    "Now, don''t think this was done for your sake! The view disturbed my faithful too much," Menoux said, grabbing a torch from a scone sitting by an empty cell, their front neighbor''s left conspicuously empty. As he returned, the edges of the flame''s incandescent light revealing a mat of dirt and straw beyond tight metal bars, she almost begged for him to wait.

    But of what use would that be? She had no power here.

    He poked the torch inside the cell, revealing a single occupant, nothing more than a distant, pitch black shadow.

    In the dead silence that followed, the silhouette waited still, swaying on its feet as if bent by a breeze. On an unheard cue, it turned, the echo of feet dragging against debris grating on her ears as it approached, slowly, awkwardly, in the toddling shuffle of something that didn''t quite understand its limbs very well. Menoux retreated a step, though remained careful so his bulk never obscured her sight.

    It took several moments for her to begin comprehend what she was seeing. Ripped, shin high leather boots, followed by heavy trousers with their padding bursting out. Next was chain-mail, great chunks of rings missing and what was left heavily caked in scum. Twitching fingers beneath a single glove, its pair now gone to almost he shoulder. Finally, the face-

    It lunged.

    She didn''t have time to react, before it tried to squeeze itself through a gap slimmer than its bicep, dashing a distance of several paces in the blink of an eye. It slammed chest first into the metal, again and again, crooked hand grasping thin air in an obvious effort to cross the distance towards her. It did not grunt, did not gurgle, made no sounds other than a faint twinkle, almost lost in the chaos.

    Then, a second cue. it halted, allowing her a good look.

    Where its face should have been stood a prolapsed mass of impenetrable black from where a mane of slick black worms quivered in rhythmic motions, licking the warmth of the fire, the wooden torch carrying it, the metal bars. As one reached for Menoux''s hand, he jumped away, leaving the dull pointed limb to retract back into its Mark, while a new tendril took its place. Cracks into this impossible space had expanded down its chin, towards its ears, now occupied by tumorous growths.

    She didn''t need further explanations. Suddenly, she understood everything.

    "In my research on the habits of your kind, I became aware of this phenomenon," Menoux said. Who can blame me for wishing to see it with my own two eyes? Capturing one of you alive was difficult, I must admit, but I came to love this beautiful specimen almost like a pet, can''t even imagine how my life would go without its never ending hunger to keep me on my toes!"

    "...You kept me alive as a hostage." Agare''s voice was so devoid of emotion it made her shiver. "Even if Holly doesn''t kill me out of her own volition, I eventually lose my mind and force her hand. All for the sake of severing her relationship with us?"

    "W-what are you trying to say, you can''t mean you-"

    "To remain functional, a Faceless requires a very specific diet administered through their Mark. We call it Mush, although its old name is quite different," Agare said.

    "Apoxia Mia. Tears of Apoxia." Menoux smirk held a cold glint, resembling more a feral baring of teeth. "One of the greatest drugs ever concocted by the Sages of the Old Empire, produced in small quantities and meant only for the most proved of warriors! A single pill the size of a child''s pinkie nail was enough to keep five fighters up and at it for several days, or until their bodies could physically no longer endure the stress."

    "N-none of you ever told me, Agare. W-why?!"

    "... It was forbidden to me. But you have tasted it yourself, Holly, back in Lesser Hollow."

    Of course. Connecting the dots, she remembered it, that sour mud he had made her swallow, relieving her pain and helping a side of her she would never have known otherwise into awakening.

    "I woke up to find the batches I kept stashed away ruined by strange substances, and wondered what purpose that kind of prolonged death would fulfill," Agare whispered. "Without it, the systems that maintain my body turn to alternative sources of sustenance, and when they finish consuming them..."

    "Then your being goes poof!" Menoux cackled, tossing his torch aside. "Right back to the primordial ways with you! Well deducted, my rotten friend, although I must say you missed quite a lot of nuance, assuming you care about that. I imagine you aren''t too keen on giving more details about these ''systems'', are you?"

    "Listen to yourself. As if you never got a look yourself, Heir of Citrine!" Agare said. "That isn''t the first ''pet'' you kept, is it?"

    " ''Know thy enemies, foolish Aenexias, better than you know thine own self.'' The journey must be taken carefully and in the dead of night, but the clues were always there to those who searched, isn''t that right? Though, in hindsight, it''s only logical that the biggest monsters Ivias ever faced are-"

    She had enough. raising to her feet, she lurched to the front.

    "Menoux, fight me!"

    The challenge echoed down the halls, stunning even the pestilent bugs into motionlessness. Menoux stared, eyes and mouth wide, smile turning baffled.

    "Is this some sort of joke?" he asked. "Or have you gone insane faster than your precious ''comrade?'' "

    "B-because I lost that night, I lost my right to my name," she spoke, voice trembling.

    "To your name, and to your existence as an autonomous creature above my heels." He nodded.

    "T-than that should be allowed, right?" Keeping her lack of confidence from her voice was a struggle in itself, but compared to rooting her feet less than three paces away from Hagan, it was nothing. "If I beat you up, if I give you a washing you won''t ever forget, then that means I earn all of that back, right?!"

    "Do you forget yourself?" as the mirth died in his face, she felt a strange sense of satisfaction, and rising danger. "I haven''t given you the option so far, so for what reason I would start now? What happens or doesn''t to you is solely at my discretion."

    She grit her teeth, and met Menoux eye to eye. Golden irises burned right through her courage, stripping her of any dignity she once had, and yet, it failed to constrain her whim. "Because I need to shut you up one way or another."

    If I am to die, let me speak.

    The Buzz grew to the peak of its might. The animal part of her brain came as close to becoming a presence with its own will as possible, cowering her closer to the ground and forcing her into ungraceful whimpering. One second of weakness, and her body would prostrate itself before this grandiosity, this apex predator who caught a filthy rat squeeking out of turn beneath his glory.

    "Does not learning his kind was created to exterminate beings like us from the beginning affect your opinion in the least?" Menoux said. "What kind of life could breed a beast as stupid as you?"

    "E-Elder Seneschal raised me... as well as he could!" Her hands slid down, her head turning to look away and instead facing Hagan, She wanted to jump out of her skin so bad. "A-and I would... rather die... than be... something like you!"

    If there was more she wanted to say, it was lost in the whirlpool of nightmares wrecking her thoughts. Her mind repeated a thousand ways the monster could, would, break her and tear her and rip her apart and do awful things to Agare right before her eyes while she was helpless to stop him. By the end of the day, death would be a mercy she would beg for, with no hopes of ever being granted.

    From the depths of her being, a jolt crossed her spine. It all was oddly thrilling.

    But the Buzz was restrained by its master back to pleasant murmurs. Menoux glare, meanwhile, had lost only some of its embers. "The last time we saw each other, I made you a question, and you gave me and answer that meant nothing," he said.

    "W-what does being Dashi means to me," she completed.

    "Give me an answer that satisfies me, and I promise to consider it. But think it carefully, and make it short, I don''t have all day to entertain the tomfoolery of children."

    Glancing up at his feet, she tried to think of something. All in vain, her brain was far too scrambled at this point for anything useful that would still keep herself in check. What fled her lips was incomplete, practically gibberish.

    But it was the naked truth.

    "Holly Seneschal," she whispered, to nobody in particular. "It''s what Elder Seneschal gave to me. It was supposed to make me safe and happy."

    Her nerves gave out, and she felt her limbs crawl her back towards Agare. She wanted to say she didn''t care if Menoux liked her answer or not, but she felt raw in a way she couldn''t describe. She had jumped off the point of no return, and regret met her at the bottom.

    When she heard laughter, light and content rather than derisive, she almost laughed herself. She failed to hold in the sigh of relief, looking up to enjoy Menoux pleased expression, the ponderous rubbing of his lush beard.

    "Oh, who am I kidding, I love this sort of attitude!" he said, cocking his hands on his hips. "Very well! Balazia, open those gates and let our dear guest stretch her legs, if you would please!"

    "As you desire, Greatest," Scythe, or Balazia anyhow, said as he reached for his belt and pulled a thick steel key from out of view. He disappeared behind the thick gates, and soon after, she heard mechanisms clicking out of place.

    "Holly," Agare said from behind, his voice sounding clear yet distant. "Don''t. You can''t win this."

    She had know that from the beginning. If she had lost while feeling at the top of the world, how would she measure here, starved and weak? She wasn''t an idiot. She just wanted Menoux to stop speaking about Agare. By those standards, this was a mission well succeeded.

    "K-keep planning, alright?" The gates creaked as if howling from their hinges, giving way to her. "I''ll be back soon."

    "... Why are you always like this?"

    She ignored that last comment. There was nothing to be said now.

    For the second time in so long, she crossed the threshold of her captivity, as she had dreamed all along.

    "Come, godling," Menoux said, welcoming her with both arms wide open. "Let us speak body to body what words cannot convey!"

    Except, this time, she knew only tragedy laid waiting on the other side.

 3 - The Butcher of Heron Road 14

    What had she expected, challenging Menoux?

    An awakening? A miraculous victory? A secret weapon, kept so hidden even she was unaware of it? Precedent had granted her terrifying gifts, yet those had only ever helped her hang along the edges of survival.

    No. The writing had been on the wall, and she wouldn''t feign ignorance. Before she had pushed her body past her cell, barely strong enough to hold herself still while her opponent spread his arms invitingly, as firm and grandiose as a mountain, she knew how things would go.

    "Focus!" His voice exploded on her eardrums, bringing her back to life with a shrill ring. A split moment away from a killing blow, she only had the time to bring her arm in front of her head. Her hardskin shattered, and her bones followed suit soon after.

    She rolled to her back, scrambling out of the way as a stray heel cratered the stone where her head had just laid. In a chamber that could barely accommodate his height, Menoux moved like a frenzied spider, limbs thicker than the trunks of centenary trees bending at impossible angles and pursuing at dizzying speeds, while she could barely walk straight.

    The effort of dodging made her muscles light aflame, and little by little she burned out. She couldn''t pounce, had barely the energy to slap, and finally the moment her foot slipped under its own weakness she saw the end. Throwing herself aside was all she could do to avoid the uppercut that would have crushed her against the ceiling.

    Couldn''t save her from the follow-up, however. A palm smashed her hard back into the ground, chest compressing painfully against jagged stone fragments. A pool of pitch black liquid streamed from the breach of the Mountain Guts'' capillaries, its every touch assaulting her skin with the prickle of a thousand hot needles.

    Menoux clicked his tongue. His weight crushed her until the air was squeezed out of her lungs. "Attitude without backing strength is the barking of a toothless hound. And whose fault is that lack of teeth? I gave you ample opportunities to replenish yourself, and I''m sure the lesser mountain parasites enjoyed them a lot!"

    "Ugh... Aaagh!" As Menoux increased the pressure, she could do nothing but spit blood. As the Mountain''s substance reached her face, she tried to raise her head, only to be pushed back down by a second hand.

    "You really, really don''t understand what makes you tick, do you?" He sat over her back. "The biggest, most fundamental difference between you and a mortal, and you never managed to figure it out. How am I not supposed to pity you? Your entire world failed you, godling."

    "Uuugh..."

    "Balazia, go to the pens and cut another meal. Let the others have the leftovers if they want, but I want at least all the organs here," he said, and her heart sank. She tried her best to struggle out of his hold, to prevent that at all costs, but she couldn''t budge him.

    "As you wish, Greatest," Balazia said from out of sight, his footsteps quick to vanish.

    The weight left her back, giving her just enough space to fill her lungs back with the Guts'' warm, stale air. "P-please, don''t hurt anyone else, it''s just me you-"

    Something clenched around her ankle. The next instant, everything blurred. The air rushed around her head before she crashed against the ground, cracking stone and skidding to a stop. This time, she didn''t try to stand again.

    "I must admit, I rather like this arrangement. Much easier to speak with our fists than with our tongues, isn''t it?" Menoux voice echoed from outside. "If you disagree, which I imagine you do, feel free to recover your strength and put all those negative feelings to teaching me what for. Sounds nice?"

    Panting, she remained silent.

    "I''m sure you will come around. See you later!" with a cackle, he left.

    <hr>

    She backed away in fear. Her hardskin still bore the cracks from the last fight, weeping freely and far too hurt to protect her. An open hand swooped down, missing her forehead by the berth of a finger, but her legs shook too hard to get her away in time.

    A grab caught her by the stomach, and she was hoisted into the air. A painful impact against the ceiling, and she felt his fingers dig against her flanks.

    "Aa-aah! S-stop! Please!" Her begging only seemed to nag Menoux further. She struck with her nails over and over again, trying to cut her way out, but she was too weak to gouge him deeper than skin level.

    "Not one bite, again," he said. Pain and desperation didn''t leave her with the space to examine him too close, but she could feel the intensity of his disapproval eat her from the inside out. "Why did you even propose to take back your existence, if you weren''t going to take it seriously at all?"

    "S-so you would shut up!" Digging both thumbs into a cut, she tried to to physically pry it open to no reaction. "So you would leave Agare alone!"

    "My history lesson bothered you that much, did it? My apologies! Of my many skills, schooling tends to be employed the less often." He chuckled, mirthless. "It''s the best I could do with the time given, so I hope you can find it in you to cut me some slack."

    "T-this isn''t teaching, you-" She broke into a fit of coughs. "You''re torturing us!"

    "Hard lessons requires harsh methods. Look on the bright side: if you think this is too much, you would have loathed the way my Mistress acclimatized neophytes to the Mission!"

    He let go. The moment her knees touched the floor, a slap sent her reeling sideways, throwing her mind into disarray. When she heard Menoux speak again, she realized her left ear didn''t work too well anymore.

    "Balazia, another. And take the last one to the Gullets before those pests start eating our guests alive, please."

    <hr>

    She saw a fist wind, and tried to evade, only to stumble to the ground.

    Menoux lost no time. From a crouch, his hand lunged down like a falling star, crumbling her femur and bending it in half. Even her screams were no louder than a hoarse whimper.

    "You are turning brittle. That one shouldn''t have done half this much." Menoux said, sounding distant and pensive.

    "W-why?" she said.

    "I damaged your lungs and solar plexus quite heavily these last few encounters, and for all your mind lags behind your body adapted quite well. Did you notice you stopped breathing already?"

    Confused, she tried crawl away. She felt like a living bruise. "I-I knew I didn''t breath anymore."

    "But so long as you could still breath, you still breathed. Now, your lungs receive air, but can''t process it" He giggled. "Wonderful trick, isn''t it? Took me a few decades to master."

    "W-what? what did you do to me?" She reached for her chest, but didn''t feel any different.

    "Why, what I always do!" His smile shone like the sun. "Teaching you! Taking all those comforts of the physical world that still used as a crutch, so you see yourself better. Now, eat and rest well, alright?"

    "W-wait, I don''t-"

    A punch crashed against her face a second later, sending her prone and ending the fight.

    <hr>

    "I know how it feels," he said. "When I first heard the words of Aenexias, I scoffed. When I was first made to confront them, I laughed. When I had them carved into my very being, I doubted."

    A side-step that felt more like a staggered slouch, and the toe tip that would have ravaged her navel merely tore open her flank, sending her spinning out of control. She fell on all fours, and was given no time to recover before Menoux rolled to her side, a gentle knuckle to the back of the head making her see black.

    "Still with me? Good," he said, no more severe than a child playing a prank. "Listen well. Did you know I had another name too, long ago?"

    "I-I don''t-"

    Something coiled around her right leg. She slammed against the ceiling, and fell mute to the ground.

    "I was a made man, once! Then I was unmade, shaved down to nothing. It was then that the word reached me, but I didn''t reach the word. The animal is the core of everything, and as one of the civilized people, mine was flayed, starved, nearing death. Those who found me were not pleased."

    <hr>

    "You think I am cruel? I told you, the children of Aenexias were worse. The methods through which I bring those from the outer circles of the faith to the inner ones are softer than silk when compared to the things they made me do."

    She stood there and let the chop break her shoulder blade. It was practically a play hit in comparison to the brutality and speed Menoux used to show, but the damage still shocked her to her core.

    "Many others I knew in my previous life were caught too. I saw people I considered friends and neighbors debased into feral beasts, made to mangle themselves and one another, and I hated my captors. We were kind, generous, hospitable, a true community! How dare they treat us like that?!"

    He grabbed her and pressed against the bars of her cell. Childish murmurs made her acutely aware of Hagan''s presence right besides them, the weapon having never been moved a pace since its arrival.

    But not as acutely as she felt Agare''s cold gaze.

    "But then I saw the animal emerge."

    <hr>

    A punch, and her stomach tried to void itself of nothing.

    "Amidst the jeers and taunts of those loathsome cultists, I saw loved ones bite each other to death! I saw a young man cheer the death of his own best friend. I saw a sister cave her brother''s skull and howl. I saw a son be fed his own mother without complain. It made me question everything I knew."

    She didn''t even feel pain anymore. She felt like a doll, no more cognizant than the fact she was being played apart.

    "As I wondered if they had been monsters in the hides of Dashi all along, my body reached its physical limits and I started to give in. I thought: if those were their true colors, were they mine as well? Had I just never noticed the abomination I was?"

    "I took me meeting our most gorgeous Mistress to learn the truth."

    <hr>

    She limped forward, eyes fixated on the floor.

    A push, and she was down.

    "Those were pointless questions." His voice was severe. "If you want to distill the animal to its most basic, logical role, it is unsightly survival. It is a perversion that makes a burdensome life bearable, a dishonorable action that makes a hard situation easier, and if needs be, the bloodthirsting fangs that gnash your way out of a gruesome tragedy.

    "It was ugly, yet beautiful! But to the life I once lived, it was anathema. It made me capable of things I believed outright savage. It allowed me to grow and thrive in ways I never thought possible. I pondered for many years, how to reconcile that contradiction in a way that wouldn''t destroy me.

    "Again, it was my Mistress who saved me."

    <hr>

    One day, the gates of her cell opened, but she did not cross the threshold.

    She couldn''t, even if she wanted to. She found her limits, and crossed far past them. There was no coming back from that. She felt like an observer peering through the windows of her eyes, distant and untouched, senses growing duller by the moment.

    If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

    Oddly enough, it was very comforting.

    Less comforting was the presence sitting beyond the open gates, legs crossed, smiles long gone for an expression that bordered on melancholic. Any hatred it might have caused before, she could no longer kindle.

    "I ask you: how well is that Holly Seneschal protecting you now?" Menoux broke the silence.

    She reached across the distance with a careful hand. It was surprisingly hard. Droves moved as she dictated, but one rebelled, swayed in whichever direction it wished. When it landed in the chiseled stone of Menoux''s Will, she spoke. "Don''t take her away from me."

    There was no rejection this time.

    But he didn''t answer, neither in voice nor in Will.

    Rather, the one to answer her was herself.

    "What is there to take away?" Disapproval, disappointment, anger, all sieved through a filter of herself. "The thing you keep calling for, did it ever exist in the first place?"

    "Everyone is trying to take Holly from me. Why? What did I ever do to deserve this?!"

    "They all can see through her tattered robes. She keeps trying to hide the ugly thing underneath, but refuses to see what a poor job she is doing."

    Menoux sighed. All that tension, that arrogance, they had fled his frame, leaving nothing but a slumping shadow to watch her. If only she still had the strength, it would have been so fast.

    "I understand the hesitation," he said, and if she didn''t know better, she would swear he almost sounded careful. "To let go of what I had been was to let go of everything I thought I had left. But it was inevitable. At some point, friction wore that life into rags, it no longer fit me."

    "Why does everyone care so much about what I am?" Her panting came ragged, gurgling. The smallest expansion of her lungs made her feel like there were knives inside her chest. "What is it to anyone, if I am human or not? If I am Holly Seneschal or not?"

    "Some have expectations for what a goddess is supposed to be," he said. "Others see how mutilated being led by that leash all your life has left you, and oppose the atrocity. Can you guess which I am?"

    "Mutilated? Why can none of you ever speak clearly?"

    "Oh, have mercy!" he chuckled. "Put yourself in my shoes! Can you imagine how absurd it would be to see a woman carrying the still bloodied stump of her arm and have to convince her she''s been wounded? Tell me, did you even know you were starved?"

    "Of course I did, you starved me!"

    "That''s what I''m talking about! Trying to explain you anything is pure madness!" he said. "Before you ever laid your eyes on me, I had seen it. In how emaciated you look, in how weak you are, in the most obvious ways your lowermost existence crippled itself to sustain you! You met with your own kin, have you never thought why you can''t do certain things you should be able to?"

    "How do you even know about that?" she asked, shocked. "Even I didn''t know until I saw it!"

    "By sheer self-awareness. Once I know what to look for, it''s easy to see." Menoux rubbed at his beard. "Do you wish to know a secret, godling? One that you should have know by now, if your dear comrade cared about you as much as you care about it?

    "There is no such a thing as an Heir of Citrine."

    Perhaps it should have been shocking, from the sheer sobriety of his voice she knew he was expecting some sort of reaction, but she had nothing to give. With a sigh, he continued.

    "I don''t have the same formal education it has to the lingoes of the Madhound''s pack, but an Heir is a simple concept. They are the direct partakers of a god''s blessing, sent out into the world to proliferate the fate and share power," he pointed at his own chest. "I am no such thing. Neither am I one of the so called Missionaires, what they call our neonates and less blessed faithful.

    "What am I, then? Why, I don''t have a clue!" he scoffed. "When my Mistress bred my changes into this body, all she told me is she wanted to try ''something.'' I will never know what, for while I was not the first, I am the last, and she is gone. All I know is what she called me herself: I am a godling."

    "I am incomplete," she told herself, against her own will.

    "I am a divine eunuch. Once, these halls would be loud with the shouts of warriors to rival my own gifts, all who partook of our masters! But do you see my beautiful Balazia?" he gestured to his own servant, quietly observing from behind. "He is strong. Skilled. A soldier of the Bear could practice the any of the Three Arts for a decade and still be crushed under his might. And he is nothing, weaker than a single stray Madhound by magnitudes, despite hosting the most of the divine spark I ever managed to grant a single person.

    "And there, if you ask me, is where we once were similar. You geld yourself, deny the joy of your own existence, and the result is deformity, abomination!" He loomed forward, eyes ablaze. "Yet, we differ, because where I fought with every fiber of my being to climb out of this abyss, you still eager to make of it your home."

    "And then you went and made yourself a monster," she felt surprisingly calm, facing the mountain head on. "You make your people call you Greatest. You destroy others and eat then like luun! Is that what you wanted me to do, crush the ones I loved under my foot, hurt then and torment then just like God did?

    "Who? Nevermind that. If becoming a tormentor to all those you knew is what it took for you to give up this foolish, suicidal game, then yes, slaughter them!"

    She managed the strength for a brief scoff. "You kill me, and then complain I''m killing myself?"

    "You have been killing yourself for years now." she replied.

    "You are here because you allowed others to stunt your own growth when faced with an uncomfortable future. Because you refused to let go of a shell you could nary recognize anymore. And why? The question still remains."

    "How well has Holly Seneschal been protecting you?"

    She fixed Menoux with what little fight she could find. "You know nothing about me. Don''t dare pretend otherwise!"

    "Wrong. I know you better than you know yourself, and I give you two choices: accept it, or follow your pride to your doom."

    Perhaps it was the exhaustion. Perhaps she had grown wary of herself. Her death loomed over her mind, blanketing her with a sense of calm she had never felt before. Menoux relaxed, his posture slacking again, though his gaze remained hopeful, easy to bask under.

    She surrendered, and in the gaping abyss, found her words.

    "She''s nowhere." Her will caressed his. She meant to make her movements soft, amenable, but she knew the best she achieved was erratic. "She is never there to protect me when I''m actually hurt. Yet, I need her, because she is the one they expect, the one they want."

    "And for all you resist me, you still give yourself up to them. Who them, want her so much?" he asked.

    "She is all I know," she traced the lines and divots of his being. It was exactly as she had thought: where the Will of other creatures was loose, vague, she could perfectly feel the shape of Menoux body recaptured, from the incredible muscles to the round swell of his belly, all sculpted from the most solid of woods, indestructible. "She is all I was allowed to be. He gave her to me to keep me safe, but I didn''t get how. I tried to be make my own way, and I payed the price for it."

    "You were tricked." In the World of Wills, the mass underneath her fingers shifted, a great lake opening its solid surface to engulf her hand by something softer, gentle. "I have seen gods brought low before, and the sight never gets any less painful. The Dashi will not save you, but you can still correct your way."

    "I''m scared," she said. "Gods hurt others. Gods kill to feel strong. They look down on their Herds and break them with fear and love. You can''t tell me otherwise! I have seen it with my own two eyes in Lesser Hollow, and in the way my father spoke about me and my friends. I don''t want to be like that!"

    "Godhood is a cruel existence, but a necessary one. Without its gods, Ivias would have been devoured to the bones. Of course, to live they must take from others, but who doesn''t? All living things kill to survive," he whispered. "Did you think the meat you eat grew on trees? Even if did, do you think a tree doesn''t breath, think, feel the absence of its own body parts?"

    She reached deeper, "And with its gods, Ivias nearly burned down to cinders, right? So why do I have to become like that?"

    The moment Menou froze solid, eyes gone wide, she knew she had made a mistake. Why? Wasn''t she offering exactly what he wanted? She reached with her Will limb, giving him placating rubs, scratches, anything that might get a reaction.

    He relaxed, but the change was obvious. There was something different underneath his gaze now. As his Will set to caress hers, she nearly flinched, the cold motions hiding none of his intentions.

    "You don''t," he said. "That is exactly the problem."

    "What do you mean?" she said.

    "Do you know your biggest problem? There is a myriad paths ahead, but none that will return you to your beloved Dashihood." He straightened his back. She no longer felt like a part of the conversation, so much as its recipient. "Searching for ways back, however, does not mean you aren''t taking steps forward."

    "Let me go." She tried to pull herself free, only for the caress to turn into a grip.

    "Godhood makes for a cruel existence, but there are worse things out there. You don''t see the way clearly, so of course you miss the toll this life will take, and most loathsome of all, how these precious comrades of yours will see far past your eyes yet never budge a finger to save you from the cliff''s edge so long you serve your purpose!"

    "Let me go! They aren''t like that! They would never hurt me!"

    "They already did."The slap came as such a surprise she only felt it seconds later. She convulsed with pain, her Will arm feeling as if it had been pulverized to the bone.

    "In the tongue of the Bear, there is a word for the kind of abomination you will turn into the next blind step you take. A broad insult meant to encompass all of us, yet which will fit you like a glove.

    "Demon."

    "Corruptor."

    He reached behind himself, dragging a long, thick object in front of her eyes. It had been wrapped in rolls of furs, tied at four different points by small coils of rope, each bearing a series of small objects: red rock runes wrapped by long strands of human hair, bundles of dried herbs rolled with papirus or even skin, cloth pouches sew shut and still bearing their needles. They reminded her of the small objects Aleh used to carry around, Fetishes.

    "You may have thought leaving all those fine cuts to rot somewhere you can reach were my way of tormenting you, but they carried a valuable lesson I wish you had picked up on your own." His chuckle was so dry it was physically painful to hear. "I know better now. What I''m about to show you is the most fundamental difference between the Dashi and the divine, and I want you to pay attention."

    With dexterity belied by the girth of his fingers, Menoux untied the knot holding the first coil together.

    The moment the rope hit the ground, she surged.

    No. Not her. Her body, a puppet that found its strings and was pulled from a prone form with no regard to its condition. All the resistance she could muster against her seizing muscles accomplished nothing but a slight tremble. Her jaw fell slack, rivulets of saliva splashing freely against her hands.

    "The Magical Revolution meant a new world unveiled to those who studied the biological arts. Thousand year old traditions and beliefs cast away as the lesser folks understood their bodies like never before! Proteins, calories, cells, bacteria, so many impossible horrors and miracles just lying beneath our noses, never to be noticed if not for a judicious application of stolen divinity!"

    He finished unwrapping the object, and the only thing preventing her from throwing herself at him was the white knuckle hold she had on the ground. Glorious meat, its scent so pure it burned, so raw it still bled. Smooth shards like red armor reflected incandescent light from where they still clung to the flayed mass.

    "None of those discoveries changed what we, we, understand about ourselves. There is one thing in this world a god needs to survive, something that exists beyond all those molecules and energies that keep the physical body functional, the most basic force of this universe and the One Body as a whole."

    Under a two finger grip, the piece of meat swayed from side to side, hypnotic motion followed without err by her head.

    "Life," he said, teeth bared, mouth splitting his face to the ears. "This is the part where I should say I hoped I never had to do this. Honestly though? I''ve been looking forward to it all along."

    He tossed.

    It never reached the ground.

    How could she describe the taste of salvation? Like death. Like agony made flesh. With the first bite, blood flowed in between her teeth and melted her gums to nothing. The slurry poured down her throat unbidden, dissolving every organ in its path. she crumbled inwards, undone innards and desperate muscles craving even a drop of the divine liquid.

    She dropped, barely conscious, but her body never stopped eating. So good, so horrible was the rejuvenation pouring from that meal that her senses began to fade.

    "It was always life. It always comes back to life," a voice said, leagues away. "That is what a god is made for, and what a god is made of. Do you get it now?"

    She didn''t answer. As her mind finally shattered, one last idea made itself known.

    This taste was oddly familiar.

 3 - The Butcher of Heron Road 15

    At the sixth day of the sixth month the biggest of the Aenexian festivals, the Hoerenn, started.

    It was a grand commemoration of success and superiority over one''s enemies held under the blessings of the Iron Held Lord. In tradition it was supposed to happen annually, but under the Greatest Menoux they happened either once every four years, or whenever "acceptable" prey had made themselves known, a change which chaffed against the Beast''s desires yet was necessary regardless.

    Here, they were allowed to cut lose and prove themselves to their highers. They poured out to the countryside, bathing it in red as they feasted on violence and flesh, living or dead, slaughtering all who stood in their way. The neophytes who had joined for the thrills, who likely had spent years in the outer circles and at least six months in the inner ones repeatedly tested over their loyalty to the Mission, always waited with bated breath.

    Things had been different this time. They had got the fill of a lifetime and so much more.

    Balazia, orphaned from birth on the village of Lillol, which edged both the most miserable banks of the Lake Bell and the Deadlands of the slain god, had joined because he had, was, nothing. For kids like him, the options were to become a fisherman and drown at the bottom of the bottle, gang up with some other twerps and kiss the foot of bigger muscle for the rest of his life, or join one of the cults. The choice had felt obvious.

    Problem was, as the old sigwalist clergy haunting the village used to tell him, his kind had not been bred for the people-life. He had gone almost two batches of newbies before finding his way, almost costing him his life.

    In Balazia''s eyes, the Mission was, at its core, about transcending the limits of the Dashi through copious outer strength fueled by an earnest inner self. One relied on the other, the failure of one meant the failure of the other; in the end, one was the other. The One Body, as the Greatest liked to call it, although ruled by its most secret facet, the Beast.

    The Beast was simple. It was selfish above all: jealous, possessive, gluttonous. It wanted what it wanted when it wanted and fuck what stood in between. Therefore, this "self-honesty" was to give it free reign, allow himself to take what he desired from whoever pissed him off the most so long as he could make himself the strongest.

    It was then, in the high of his certainty, that he met the mythical Pale Worm. Haruspect Menoux took a look at him, cackled, and beat him to a pulp.

    "Woe be to him, who never saw a pack of wild cats!" The Greatest swung him, who had been bigger than most adults by his teenage years and only grew larger, one handed by the neck like some naughty kitten. "What do we think about bad little boys like this one?!"

    The jeers and the taunts had followed him all the way to his dreams. Even those wimpy rats who had cowered under his shout and prostrated themselves under his heel without a fight had laughed. That was a wound to his pride like he had never taken before, and the following weeks blurred into feeble attempts to lick them close, always ending in cackles and his master''s knuckles.

    There was a contradiction at the heart of the Aenexian doctrine he had not though thorough, but which was far too critical to ignore. For all this talk of the old ways long forgotten, the true path to strength, and those weaklings outside who boasted about their "civilized ways" despite living with a chains around their necks, the Aenexians had still created a cult for Dashi, and therefore were beholden to all the things Dashi needed to thrive.

    How could a community dedicate so much of itself to power and taboo desires when, at the end of the day, it still had to maintain itself a community at all costs? Was that why, when you looked at the greater picture, they remained so small and weak?

    He had felt so smart confronting them all face to face he blinded himself to the obvious foolishness of his act. The ignorants shouted insults and threw junk like monkeys pelting predators with shit, yet some had looked uncertain, almost ashamed. The Mission made no saints, but few were those who could live with so much atrocity without an inkling of regret, and those, he figured, could still be nudged to his advantage.

    Naivete. Menoux strode amidst his faithful, radiant.

    "Woe to him who doesn''t know mutts hunt in packs! Woe to him who doesn''t believe mutts will feed their own sick!" No amount of shouting could smother the bellows of the Greatest, and he carried on as if Balazia was mute. "To they whose claws cut the deepest the crown, yet a monarch must abandon his kingdom to be the strongest? A monarch must leave his strong yet weaker brethren to starve and be nibbled by the vermin?!"

    "Then you court the weak!" He had tried. "You cultivate weakness in your ranks and expect it to fade by its own desire?!"

    The Greatest had shook his head. "And what strength is there in prostrating before avoidable circumstances for the sake of withering a pack? Surely you cannot be this brainless!"

    "T-then why are you so frail?" The defense had rang hollow even to his years, but he needed to a word out. "If you are going to be the same kind of coward as all the others, why not bow to Eln?!"

    "And woe to him," Menoux said, and his milk white grin felt as cold as the edge of a blade, "who does not know who my pack is. But no worries! You will learn."

    Pulp was perhaps too much of an understatement on the way he had gone to sleep that day.

    The next morning, barely capable of walking, Menoux invited him to eat from his own plate, and with a smile like the sun taught him much.

    <hr>

    The second of the Hoerenn festivities happened once the believers had all killed, fought, and fucked each other drained, physically and mentally. This was the most dangerous of the steps, used frugally in the destruction of the other sects.

    Morning was a subjective concept this far down the Mountain Innards, but as the right hand of the Greatest and therefore the owner of the single functioning clock they had managed to get their hands on, Balazia had made sure to be up and ready at 7 round. He kicked his fellows awake from their orgiastic knots, stripped those who still bore cloth or leather to their skin, and sent them down.

    He made the rounds one last time, just to make sure their newest and most important guests were still incapacitated. One was awake but quiet, while the other slept sprawled over dirt and stone. Good enough.

    With his duties accomplished, he went to the pens and chose five left from the Gwanegume raids and the ensuing feast, handpicked for being the healthiest. They were made bare, quickly washed, and herded down with the help of their guards.

    Their final destination was a great chamber dug beneath most of their inhabitations, bordering the soft layers of the Innards. Twenty meters across and roughly six tall, its marbled walls were white with veins of black and scarlet from carefully cultivated then stunted regenerative tissue. There was no furniture here, no reliefs or statues or decorations, except two: a dish of interlocking pieces of steel, shallow but measuring two meters in diameter, and a great slab of iron, shaved to perfect angles and polished to mirror sheen.

    His fellow believers sat in a semi-circle around the dish, giving it just enough distance for the ritual to be realized. The five, some weeping, some begging, some haze eyed and staring ahead, were led to the dish''s edge and forced to kneel. Here, Balazia would usually sit himself among the others, bonking them silent when they insisted on getting over their hang-overs by provoking those nearby.

    Following Gwanegume, the mood had changed. Less so with the neonates, but the veterans were outright scared. In full armor, though he trusted them not to start a scene this far into the Hoerenn, he decided to remain standing, at least until the master arrived.

    It didn''t take long. The moment the Greatest strode onto the chamber, all snapped to attention. Nude but for a great mantle, sewed from the tanned hides of the strongest warriors he had personally culled in previous festivals, his presence alone was enough to set their blood boiling with need and subservience.

    The Beast watched from Balazia''s eyes, eager and painfully aroused.

    "This year, we have taken a leap not seen since the era of Aenexias." His voice rang like drums of war, and the collective skipped beat of the heart could be practically felt. "Once, the prophet''s name was enough to shut every gate in this god forsaken island. Decades came, decades went, and the fear faded from the people''s heart.

    "A mistake! The first among us may have lost his life, but so long as his Mission survives, his hunger shall be eternal! And this past week, we reminded them of this most basic truth."

    He stepped to the five, and their crying was reawakened. No pleading, however. How ironic, that they seemed to have predicted their own inevitable fates.

    "Some of you doubted, some of you feared! Yet saith the Iron Held, ''so long as strength lays in your heart, foolish Aenexias, no fall shall ever cripple you.'' Those who here stand stuck by their siblings and followed the commands of their king, and to that I say: Be proud! For you found the measure of your being and it did not lack!"

    He grabbed the first of the sacrifices, a young man of scholarly build, and lifted him into the air, displaying him like a trophy. Eyes shut, his cries were as whispers.

    "Today, we gather before the Iron Held in worship, for his is the word of awakening, for his is the power we parasitize! His is the Grand Pack, long slaughtered yet never dead, and as our great leader he would not leave us to fend for ourselves! Fortune favors the bold, and through fortune his love reaches us.

    "Today, I shall reach into that fate, and see what favor we have been granted."

    The young man was placed above the dish, one hand over his spine and ribs while the other held him by the back of the thighs. Eyes wide, all those watching leaned forward as the Greatest twisted both ways with no visible effort. Like cloth being wrung dry, the young man burst into a shower of blood and innards, cascading to the middle of the dish.

    Gently laying him aside, he reached for the next, a completely mute young woman.

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    Then a middle aged man who bawled his eyes out.

    A matronly lady who teared but did not sob.

    An older woman, built strong and silent.

    Fivefold meat.

    The Greatest sat himself opposite his faithful, spine straight and chest puffed as he cast off his mantle. With a heavy breath, he slowly reached for the pile of viscera with his fingers and began the ritual.

    There was power here, everyone could tell. There was a tension in the air that held all watchers firm to the ground, no matter the discomfort, an unheard order that nonetheless could not be disobeyed. The same way, there was a technique to the motions his master repeated, one he had never managed to comprehend no matter how often explained, it all looked like just mixing to him.

    Red tinged hands pulled back, caressing some unseen organ with the fondness of a father.

    "The Lord approves! The Offer has been accepted!"

    There was no cheering. There never was. This was a moment of respect.

    "Our name shall spread, and the Mission shall strike fear into the hearts of all the failures in this island! The enemy shall sleep ill at ease, while we become as thieves in the night!

    "... Glory however is not the only gift of our Lord. A warning has been sent," his eyes closed, the Greatest dipped his hands back into the pile. "A storm brews on the horizon, one we must endure at all costs. The Lord trusts our strength, and through the whispers of the flesh, shall aid us the best he is allowed."

    Balazia did not fidget with discomfort anymore, thankfully. Still, the temptation was there.

    A question that had lingered on his lips for many years was: Could the art of Haruspecting truly predict the future? Could his master read the currents of fate in the life essence of others?

    To his knowledge? No. Only in a manner of speaking, but that was on the wit and planning of the Haruspect, not the art itself. Balazia had eventually come to the conclusion he did not believe in fortune, even divinity could only do so much, and guessed his Greatest thought much the same.

    Looking at the palpable sense of relief in the face of the others that grew with every prediction, however, he couldn''t deny the ritual''s utility. To those who feared for their lives, the integrity of their bodies, or just their sense of belonging, there was no stronger balm than that divine approval.

    It wouldn''t help, in the end. The beings put in motion would not be halted by any amounts of vague predictions.

    But for now, Balazia was happy with letting them have their balm.

    <hr>

    The third phase of the Hoerenn was the slowest. The Beast indulged, worshiped, then rested.

    Everyday life bled back to its rightful place. Miners returned to their depths, hunters slinked back to the dark, and theirs champions, those of the purest blood, marched back to their forges. The entrances to the surface world were sealed though stimulation of the Mountain''s healing, and the Mission was set to hibernate until it could afford to be celebrated again.

    Balazia followed the smell of smoke until the temperature rose to a burn. Here at the smithy, the Innards would digest soot, notice the dangerous intruders, and leak poisonous substances that would be further used to fuel the furnaces. It was a genuinely inhospitable environment, and only the strongest among them could remain here without the right equipment.

    That evening, the absolute mightiest among them exerted his craft, and all those who could bear had come to see.

    To watch the Greatest hammer away at steel with such inhuman precision was as close to a miracle as most of the cult would ever see. It was through metal the Aenexians had carved their place in Ivias, and it was through metal their love had lasted beyond their lifespans. Of the Dashi, neither gobans nor humans grew useful claws, and so through metal they had made their own.

    Flames licked the nascent curved blade again, the scythe shape of the Ravish all but done. Extremely unpragmatic for conflict, his siblings in faith nonetheless loved the novelty of the ritual tool and its bloody forms, watching with naked desire. Once it had taken an orange glow, it was laid back into the anvil, as the Greatest held his wrist flat in the air above.

    Skin splitting as if under the stroke of an invisible blade, his own artery blood flowed freely. Where his work greedily drank him, its glow briefly turned golden before. Quality triumphed over quantity: the essence and the way it was fed into the steel were what defined his success, and too much could drown the weapon, rendering it brittle and mad.

    The great secret that once made the Old Empire dominant, lost until the Iron Held Lord whispered it into the ears of Aenexias and his clan.

    Living Steel.

    He had missed the best part of the show, when the Greatest enjoyed feeding the metal from his own neck, but he had seen it enough times he could imagine the gasps.

    As the end approached, Balazia was motioned closer with two fingers. Carefully, admiring the way his master could endure the powerful flames with nothing but the protection of his own naked hide, he waited for orders.

    The Greatest admired his craft before speaking. "I''m planning to go see our guest later."

    "Would you like me to fetch something for the occasion, Greatest?" Balazia said.

    "Of course!" He smiled, cleaning sweat off his brow. "I want to greet her back to the world of the living with a banquet, so I''m thinking... how about another cut of our premium cattle?"

    Balazia restrained a frown, but he couldn''t hold the question. "I would not dare question your desires, Greatest-"

    He sighed. "Sure thing."

    "... But do you believe she would be capable of handling more in her current state?"

    Balazia saw him rub his beard with some trepidation. His smile, at least, didn''t remark him as forced. "I think she will be thankful for it, if not now soon. Now, if you would?"

    "At once."

    Leaving the forges and the upper inhabitations entirely, Balazia headed down into the darkness. Curve after curve, wavering hallway after wavering hallway, torches grew dimmer and farther apart, the few fireflypebble lamps still in use disappearing entirely as stone turned red like a muscle while the walls grew moist and ever so slightly pliable.

    The soft layers. The chaff of their sect were explicitly forbidden from ever exploring this far down, because if the forges were too toxic for them, than this was a tomb. Besides, at least up on the hard layers there were no carnivores squeezing through the minuscule gaps in their barricades, mindlessly starved for bodies to scavenge.

    Down here stood the quarters of the Haruspect, although quarters were perhaps a misnomer. locked by nothing other than a simple gate of steel bars, illuminated by nothing but the old, flickering fireflypebble he always carried on himself, what greeted him was a long storage of sorts, weapons of all makes and sizes displayed in their full glory at all sides.

    Walking under these conditions without tumbling something to the floor or accidentally dismembering yourself on a stray edge was a skill in itself. The entrance was the single safe spot in the room, where the Greatest would sometime sit by, reminiscing on his collection, but everything else was a trap. That Rava he was creating, if not gifted within the next week, would likely end up crammed somewhere around here.

    Already experienced with its biggest snags, Balazia dexterously reached the far end of the room, and began to rummaging through the boxed piles of precious belongings his master explicitly didn''t want in the open, which made for a surprising amount of memorabilia.

    He never noticed he had been followed, until a voice rang from behind.

    "Agent Nilio." The name sent a stronger jolt of fear through his spine then the distorted cadence of the voice. "A pleasure to see you yet live."

    He slowly turned around. The light of his fireflypebble revealed not a person, not even the silhouette, but a pillar of liquid, shifting shadow rising from the mess of weaponry all the way to the ceiling. letting the pebble go, he interlaced his fingers together and bowed, eyes low and hands above his head.

    "Captain Welda," he said. "To what do I own the honor of this visit?"

    For a second, the silence stretched beyond comfort. He knew that if it came to a fight he had no chance of emerging out of this room alive, yet contingencies still flooded his mind.

    "The time has come," she said. "The Butcher has crossed a line, and Her Sanctity demands retribution."

    He felt as if the ground sank away beneath him. "Gwanegume."

    "Precisely."

    "And what does command wish me to do?" he said. "I do not believe myself capable of assassinating the Haruspect, even by surprise."

    "Indeed, neither do we, but assassination is not what we have in mind."

    "Then?"

    "The operation is already under way." she said. "All we need is for you to lure the Butcher and most of his troops Northeast, the First and the Second shall take it from there."

    "And if I cannot?"

    "We will seek alternatives, and you will not be part of them." No inflection, but the message was well understood. "You are dismissed."

    He waited until he heard one of bigger warhammers, propped against another warhammer, tumble to the ground and bring half a ton worth of metallic paraphernalia down with it before straightening his back. Searching, he failed to find his fireflypebble, and realized it likely had gone out during the conversation.

    He searched his master''s possessions until he found another, stashed in secret just in case of such emergencies. With a quick examination, he found what he was looking for, and hurried away.

    <hr>

    He found his master on the way up, sitting by a bifurcation with a heavy bottle of liquor taken from Gwanegume on hands. The moment their eyes met, he smiled most sweetly.

    "Aaaah, but aren''t you just the best, my Balazia!" He laughed freely, swinging the bottle from side to side in the air. "Come have a swig! You deserve this much at least!"

    "The Fifth has come," Balazia said, and only then did he make the connection, "but you already knew that."

    The Greatest nodded and reached behind himself. The clock, Balazia''s clock, looked diminute under his master''s grip, despite being bigger than his palm. "They arrived yesterday. Their numbers are still small, and they seem pretty occupied rooting out escape routes and defensible points. All pointless, if you ask me, but I don''t quite think they would be willing to listen."

    "I thought I was being followed."

    "The little monster that had been trying to ambush you since morning had left for more important matters, and the worm it left on your trail was easy enough to distract." The Greatest shrugged. "I will take care of it in a moment, just let me rest a while."

    His fingers did not clench over the limb he carried. Years of experience meant he had better control over his emotions than that. Yet, the sinking feeling wouldn''t stop growing "Then the time has come? You-"

    "What were your orders? I would love a good chuckle right now!" His master laughed.

    "... They wish you head Northeast with most of our forces. The First and the Second will handle it from there, her words. Beyond that, I was given no information."

    "Ha! Seems like they don''t even trust you anymore!" He drank from his bottle, heavy and deep, not remotely caring for the trickle escaping the corner of his lips. When he separated the bottle''s mouth from his own, not a drop fell. "What, already empty? How shameful! Isn''t Abam liquor supposed to be the strongest? I''m not even tipsy!"

    "Greatest, they are-"

    "Aiming straight at me, I imagine. So long as I remain, the legacy of Aenexias survives." his master looked down at his lap, throwing the empty glass aside with no particular regard. "And here I thought the Fifth would take a little longer to settle down the Western kerfuffle. Guess that''s what I get for underestimating my enemies! Or overstimating. Well, regardless, don''t you have another mission to attend to agent?"

    Balazia watched as his master got up, wiping his thighs of dirt with a couple slaps, then stood aside. Though dug and stretched with his height accounted, the tunnels could still barely handle the Greatest''s size, leaving him ever so slightly hunched.

    He did not miss the way he blocked one of his paths, leaving one direction left.

    "You already had everything planned," Balazia said, looking at the carefully maintained package in his arms with a new light.

    "I would say I don''t like to boast, but I hate lying that much more!" The Greatest chuckled. "If they can''t make their love for me any less conspicuous, they can''t blame me for catching on! Now, get a move on, we are going to have one busy night ahead of us, and I don''t fancy wasting time while rats are scurrying around my house."

    Balazia nodded, and his legs moved of their own will. To obey his Greatest, the man who had made of him something, no matter how lowly and filthy that something was, was but an instinct to him.

    And for the first time in so long, he fought against that instinct, halting right at his feet and meeting Menoux''s eyes.

    "I don''t like that I will never know you well, master," he said.

    "You know I don''t like being called that." Menoux pouted, but he would not budge. "Besides, you learned all you needed. Everything else you would have to figure out by yourself anyway."

    "You never-"

    "Go. I mean it." Despite everything, hearing him turn serious was still a thrill. "I''m sure you figured out already, but they aren''t expecting you to succeed beyond poking the situation slightly to their side. Put on your armor, then I give you thirty minutes to do what you need to do. After that, disappear."

    "Of course. Thank you, Greatest."

    And really, what else did he have to say?

    With one final grin to shine his way, the Pale Worm gave him a two finger salute. "Just don''t forget about good ol'' me, wherever you go!"

    "Never."

    Without turning back, he rushed towards the barracks, soon to toll the bell for the Aenexian faith.