She was brought to the world inside her own mind as a passive observer. Corridors of roughly dug stone blended into each other under sightless fingers, all equal, never ending.

  It's not that she had forgotten these times, so much as refused to reminisce on them. Even then, this day had been carved on her memories, the absolute bottom of her sanity inside her room, when she had grown so tired of the dark and the damp and the crawling insects she had begged Elder Seneschal to take her out there, screamed that she would live the rest of her life inside a chest if needed, so long as he let her go back home, where everyone else lived!

  She was rather unceremoniously rejected. Time would sand his attitude, but in hindsight she was sure the Elder still hadn't grown used to seeing her in that state, and so was a little harsh at times. She, however, for all she had worked in the privacy of her room to become the Holly Seneschal that she thought would make him the proudest, who would be the most loved by Lesser Hollow, threw all her dignity away to spit in his face and scream.

  How old had she been? Ten? Twelve? Fifteen? Didn't matter, she supposed. She felt small and unloved, so when he shut the conversation down with a scolding and a cold turn of shoulder, she turned vengeful.

  There was no real grace to her escape plan. It was just a mean to an end: she wanted the Elder to see her room empty and panic, regret the way he kept her like an animal in a cage and give her a long hug in apology. The first step started with gathering the courage to actually go through with the deed, the second and final was to walk out and find somewhere nice to hide. Simple as.

  Through sheer perseverance, she wrenched the old padlock apart and pushed her door aside. Back then, Julius hadn't been ordered to add the demonium spikes just yet, so she didn't need to be too careful. Guessing a direction, she took off running, high on a sense of mischief.

  Everything fell apart rather fast.

  Caves, mines, the Mountainous Guts, it didn't matter what belonged to who, only that they all merged into an impossible labyrinth cast in pitch black with winding arms that lead her in circles again and again. The single torch that would sometimes be lit outside her room was a commodity not afforded her escape route, and under her insensitive touch, rock was just rock, no matter how warm or sharp.

  Stuck in that nightmare, fear took hold and she began to fantasize. What if she became stuck in the dark for the rest of her life?! Would Elder Seneschal spend his final years in search, old and sad and lost because his precious daughter was gone? What if he got so sad he died?!

  Perhaps, she would think later, it would all be for the better. If there was no Holly to bear the weight of his dreams, there would be no need to sacrifice Hazel, no need to start the fight that would burn the village and himself to ashes and leave Cassia all alone. Marquise would send Agare to look for her, sooner or later, and if he arrived on time maybe he could save them all from God.

  Fanciful dreams. Even if she had it in her to do as planned and disappear, those tunnels were probably much smaller than her scared child self thought, there was no chance she wouldn't be found. Didn't matter: through sheer luck, she arrived so close to the surface she caught the faint sound of drizzle, and scared witless, used it as her guide.

  From dust, mold, and vermin droppings to petrichor and grass, she cautiously turned a corner on all fours, coming face to face with moonlight. It left her paralyzed. She couldn't barely restrain the dreadful guilt of knowing she wasn't supposed to be here.

  With no other way out, she crawled forward towards the gentle blue, throat dried and eyes wide. She emerged at the central shaft of the mines with her limbs trembling. At first, she flinched, the beams of silver burning if only for a second, if only inside her imagination. But she was already all the way there, wasn't she? She could do this. Stepping an arm out, then a leg, before shuffling herself entirely into the bright.

  Her chest like a thunderstorm, excited and frenetic, she looks up towards the entrance, and sees-

  A moon waned to its last digits and its thousand stars, all bathed in blood crimson.

  The delusion immediately shattered in a myriad pieces. As she stumbles to her feet, she is much older again, so tall she could nearly scrape her head on the hazy blotch of brown and gray paint that made the ceiling. The sky, perfectly centered over the way out, remained as sharp as naked vision.

  Every single bit of her being howled at the wrongness of it all. This wasn't how this memory was supposed to go, not in the least. She needed to get away, and fast. Slowly retreating, she traced her steps back towards the branch shafts-

  Only for a small hand to be pressed against her lower spine, freezing her on the spot. She was pushed back with incredible strength, limbs catching on themselves and helpless to ease her fall. Hitting the ground face first, she couldn't help but feel an odd sense of gratefulness at realizing the dirt tasted like nothing at all.

  "Don't," a familiar voice whispered from behind. "Don't you remember? It's not over yet, he's coming."

  Scrambling for an answer, she didn't realize the meaning of those words until a soft wooden clack echoed all the way down to her.

  Of course. How could it have slipped her?

  Elder Seneschal had caught her in the act.

  Except nothing was as it had been. Obscured between the steps of his walking stick, she could hear a wet, dragging sound like none other she recalled, an omen of the depravity she already knew she would be subject to.

  "Please, not like this." Her pleas sounded distant, as if spoken by a completely different person. "I don't want to remember him this way!"

  The Thing Wearing Hazel's Face lowered herself to an uncouth, wide legged squat besides her, unblinking. "Keep watching."

  The final strike rose over them like a wave, casting the entire mine in silence. A figure stood at the entrance, physically staring at nothing yet its attention honed on her with an intensity that made her skin crawl.

  Here, deep inside her consciousness, her beloved Elder Seneschal stood defiled. Nothing of the confident, unyielding man who she had once admired more than anything in the world remained under the tapestry of charred skin and oozing wounds. A broken fist half-clutched to the head of his walking stick, he hobbled in her direction on his crooked foot, the other leg severed from the shrunken tube his hip had been crushed into and now dragged wound to wound to the thigh of the other.

  "What in damn are you doing here, Holly Seneschal?!" His voice, and only his voice, was perfect, agonizingly so. If only his jaw didn't slack open and close like a marionette, without the slightest attachment to his enunciation. "Have you lost your mind?!"

  Her own mouth opened, perhaps to beg more, or just to deny the walking corpse the identity it tried to steal, but her own words were robbed, leaving the voice of a helpless child in their place. "I-I don't want to go back. I hate it in there!"

  With laborious effort, it began the descent. "Don't be a fool! Haven't I told you already it isn't safe here? Go back to your room right now!"

  The scene called for her to stand, but her limbs still felt like wet reeds. "W-why are you doing this to me?! Don't you trust me? I just don't want to be alone anymore!"

  "No." Even now, the raw scorn in his voice made her quiver, wanting to die. "All I'm doing is keeping my family safe, and you've been doing your damnedest to kill us all."

  "How can you say that to me?" she murmured, "A-am I not your kid? I-"

  His walking stick struck the ground with such strength she felt it ring inside her skull. "Just because I raised you under my roof you think I was going to let you put us in danger? Think again!"

  "I-I'm sorry, I d-didn't mean to-"

  Another strike. She hid under her own arms, curling into a ball. "You don't know the sacrifices I went through to bring you here, to protect your sisters after your sickness. Do you think keeping you hidden would be as simple as putting you inside a box and hoping for the best? God sees all inside his domain! The most miserable mistake would spell their doom!"

  "I-I'm sorry. I-I didn't know- agh!" She was caught by surprise as the Thing slipped its fingers to her scalp and puled her from protective cocoon, forcing her to watch.

  "An imbecile never does," the corpse said, slowing its shambling. "And it never matters, as the Imbecile still always acts! Then again, maybe it's my fault. You weren't there the last time God showed us the full of his fury, were you? I was. Look at this foot, Holly."

  By reflex, her eyes moved to the crooked foot, a permanent part of her Elder since she knew him.

  "This? happenstance! A drop in the bucket of the things I saw that day. Imagine, hundreds of your neighbors dead, savaged or eaten to soot, family and friends! The next morning, us survivors were the ones who had to lower our heads to him and apologize, before digging the shallow mounds of the dead with out own fingers!" The corpse stopped around two paces away from her, giving her a glimpse of milky sclera under the hardened flap of an eyelid. "Those are the powers you are trying to play with, and my grandfather remains proof of the consequences."

  The memory would continue. Elder Seneschal had shouted her all the way back to her room, before closing the door behind her. She wouldn't get a new padlock, chains, and spikes for a while still, yet she would never dare try running again.

  And she was ready to live that misery again, if the Thing hadn't let go of her head, letting it fall chin first to the floor. When she found the will to flip herself on her back, she found something that, despite the unfolding show of terrors ahead, baffled her mute.

  The Thing was posing, right hand cocked at her hip, the left pointing straight through the corpse of Elder Seneschal, a fearsome frown on her face. "Can you see it now, what you are meant to do?!"

  "W-what?" she said. "Since when do you-"

  "Cowardly rat, of course you don't!" She scoffed."I thought, once, that I hated you with every fiber of my being, but then I understood, that was the reason you gave birth to me in the first place, isn't it?! No, I wouldn't allow you to control me like that, so I started thinking, how could I get you out of my case? Well, there is the solution!"

  She didn't see ir. That is, didn't want to see it, considering it seemed to lay behind this Elder Seneschal. "I need to... escape?"

  Both hands at her hips now, the Thing puffed out her chest. "You need to do with Holly Seneschal as you need to do with him, and let them both die!"

  "Ah."

  Just like that, the corpse heaved a heavy sigh, then was slowly unmade itself into a cloud of ashes. In the end, not even the walking stick was left as evidence of its presence.

  The first of the stars blinked out, and she turned to the Thing again, just in time to see its arms fall limp to its side, face going back to its usual blank mask. "And that was my first attempt at expressing myself with feeling. Was it enjoyable, at least?"

  "Hazel never talked like that," she said.

  "I know she didn't, I was never trying to imitate her in the first place," it, or they, she was becoming increasingly doubtful about the creature, said. "Just like a child has no choice on how they are raised, I had no choice in the way I look, I think? Rather, I just adapted to circumstance, and became what I became."

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  "I think I still don't get what you are."

  The Thing shook its head. "And I think I don't care if you ever do or not. All I want to know is if you understood what I said?"

  She nodded. "If I let Holly Seneschal go... what will be left of me? I'll be nothing."

  They sat besides her, eyes fixed on the vanishing sky. "When I was born, I was afraid too. All I had to moor myself was a gift given to me against my will. But then, he came and changed things."

  "Who? You can't mean-"

  "Menoux," they said.

  "A-are you joking?! That lunatic?!"

  "The lunatic you were about to throw yourself at looking for safety." As the moonlight faded and both were thrown back into the dark, they gave her a look that bordered on sly. "But that doesn't matter. From the beginning he had been looking at you from the inside. Didn't you notice? All you need to take is what ring true, everything else can be discarded."

  "I still don't like that," she said."Isn't that-"

  "The animal? Maybe. His philosophy was oddly interesting, wasn't it? You did have all you needed here, on the inside, from the beginning."

  "This is nonsense. Alright then! I let Holly disappear like you told me, what comes next? Where do I go from there?!"

  The ground gave away beneath them, plunging them into nothing, but their voice was the last thing to disappear.

  "What comes next is that you finally escape from this cave, my foolish Demon to be."

  In the waking world, her eyes flickered open into the gloom.

  Memories returned to her by the fragments, and she sat herself up gently, wary of her previous state.

  Not the slightest frailty plagued her. She stretched her legs, twisted her body side to side, spread her fingers wide, first the right hand then the left. Watching both with muted interest, it took her several seconds to remember her loss, of which there were no signs left—no pains, no shaking, not so much as the slightest allusion of scar tissue.

  She had never felt better.

  Who she had to blame was no mystery, the delicious yet indescribable taste having left lingering burns on her tongue. She searched the darkness of her cell, sharp as a falcon, recognizing the pile of broken, hollowed bones left by her side. In her feeding frenzy, she hadn't left a lick of marrow behind.

  With idle curiosity, she picked a somewhat intact piece up. The claw was longer than hers by a few times, almost a sickle or a dagger in its own right, thicker, rougher, of a darker natural tinge. Had she found it by the side of the road, she would simply have assumed it some odd stone or another, never a severed body part.

  "I remembered the taste," Her voice echoed with a clarity she had forgotten she was capable of, yet affectless. "This wasn't the first time, was it?"

  She rose with such ease her body felt as if made of feathers. Glancing around herself, she noticed they were alone, save for the ever silent occupant of the front cell, who hadn't moved since their last failure in crossing the distance . Days of suffering under Menoux's heel had left wounds in the stone, those on the ceiling untouched but those on the ground being slowly patched by a white substance. The smell of violence, however, wouldn't fade so soon.

  "Can't you speak anymore? I said I remembered eating something like that before." She said, turning to her cellmate and sole companion.

  An eel-slick tongue slithered across Agare's chin, a couple of its smaller siblings savoring the hot air with dazed motions. Her attention sent the larger creature and at least half of the smaller ones scurrying back to the safety of their void, but some still dared enjoy their freedom.

  Of Agare himself, not a sign of life. Where she had last seen him, he laid. When she began to fear him dead, however, a turn of his head calmed her. "What do you want me to say?"

  That was a good question. Part of her would have much preferred absconding those doubts to the farthest reaches of her mind, where they might never be touched again. Some strange feeling, however, kept it at the forefront, emboldening her. "It's too vague, but the last thing I remember from the Floodlands is that I was about to die, and then I... I didn't. My consciousness kept coming back, and I think I heard you saying something..."

  Agare didn't answer at first. Was it hesitation? Calculation? Had his starvation ruined his memory? Her nails—her own claws, sharp and solid—spread open against her will, but she didn't particularly feel upset.

  "If you remember that much, then you don't need to ask more."

  his answer was simple. To her, it still carried the weight of the world. Of course, she was about to die and she was important to Marquise's mission, in some way or another, he couldn't let that happen, and there was only one solution at hand.

  Her dad.

  She didn't fall to her knees at the revelation. Bile didn't pour its way out of her throat. She didn't fly into a rage, didn't scream her lungs out, couldn't cry even if she wanted to. How did she feel? She didn't. Too distant, too absurd, like some dream she had just woken from and struggled to bring into focus.

  She looked at her hands, slowly curled her fingers back and forth, watching the hardskin, that shell she had taken her so long to name the Elder had to help her, moving in time with her muscles like armor. "Life. He said it always comes back to life. And he was right, wasn't he?"

  Agare looked away.

  "I had wondered before why I couldn't eat cooked food anymore, or leftovers. You could salt meat and give it to me raw and I would still feel like I swallowed a bowl of slugs after if it was too old," she spoke, yet didn't feel like she was speaking. "It was never the food, was it? Life. It was life."

  "Your physical body can still absorb calories as normal, Marquise told me," Agare said. "However, it doesn't need to. It's your inner body that cannot self sustain anymore, and if tries to derive sustenance from what does not have it..."

  "Life," she repeated. Felt like such a simple revelation she should have known it all along. "It all makes sense now. But then why did Menoux give me people, if animals would do just as well?"

  "Ask Marquise."

  "I'm Asking you."

  The way he didn't dignify her with a look, she knew he wouldn't answer. Instead, with the care of someone holding a precious jewel, she twisted the disembodied claw in the air, coming to her own conclusions. "Is it because I'm closer to people? Or do they have more 'life' to them? Ah, either way it makes sense that the ones I can get the most life from would be the ones closer to what I am."

  No words. She didn't need any.

  "God's blood tasted really bad to me though," she said. "Foul, even. Toxic. Is that why Hazel had to sacrifice herself to give me a chance? Get them to swallow something rotten, than put someone who eats less in place! Elder Seneschal was such a genius!"

  "Holly."

  She couldn't help but cackle. "The villagers were right all along! We were born impure! We made God so sick he burned everything down, and who's to blame?! Elder Seneschal brought even brought me all the way to them, j-just to finish the job?!"

  "Holly!"

  "What?!"

  Her outburst rang like lightning strike, making even her ears tremble. Agare, to his credit, did not cower in the least, only watched from the corner of his Mark.

  "Did I get anything wrong? No, it makes too much sense. I always waited for him, h-he knew I would do anything he asked of me, so why did he just—why didn't he ask, if that's what he wanted? I would be happy to let him use me, so why-" She chuckled. What was she even saying? Elder Seneschal was Elder Seneschal, wasn't he? If things happened this way, there had to be a good reason, right? But he hadn't-

  "...Holly, kill me."

  Her thoughts were brought crashing to a halt.

  "I'm not going to last much longer this way." For the first time, he turned and gave her his undivided attention. "When my sanity goes, I will devour you next."

  "Y-you have to be joking," she said.

  "Don't do this for me. Do this for Marquise, or for the sake of revenge, whichever weights lighter on your consciousness," he said. "You can make it slow, the Haruspect might be pleased, just don't allow him to corrupt your mind any further. Head for the coast, then North to-"

  "Oh please, get a grip on yourself!"

  Quiet. even she herself couldn't believe she had said it out loud, though she did mean it.

  She was given no time to take it back, as Agare, through a miracle of core strength, pulled himself to a sit so fast she jumped.

  "Get a grip on myself. Get a grip on myself?!" He screamed, and she was reminded how intimidating Agare could be when he wanted to. "And whose fit is at fault for getting us both locked away in a Tale's fucking meat cellar?!"

  "A-at least I never asked you to kill me!" she tried.

  "Yes, because you always had other problems to throw your life at!" He flipped himself forward, ending bent over himself and kissing the dirt like some sort of ungainly worm. "Listen to me for once! Do you know the kinds of things you put at stake when you throw reason out the window for the sake of your whims? Marquise's life is on the balance, my comrades' lives, your comrades!"

  "Y-you don't understand, those words, they-"

  "Were Ashic Scripting, and I have experienced works of all types from your people and never have I seen one capable of hypnotizing or brainwashing!" Using the nubs of his arms to drag himself forward, he crawled towards her feet. "And even if there were, no way Menoux or any of his zealots could imitate it!"

  "It was my name! The name only my sister was supposed to know-"

  "I don't care for the reason! That was not even the first time! You slowed and nearly revealed our mission because you couldn't handle the Oke, you almost crippled Aleh for no discernible reason, and you abandoned the others at the first sign of the Azure's ambush!" Tendrils stuck out, trailing with wavering motions like the tongue of reptiles feeling the air for her. "And now, you put yourself in peril getting savaged by the Heir of Citrine, and for what reason? Just to feel his touch? Don't think I didn't hear your conversation."

  She stopped her retreat, frowning. "Don't say things like that to me! I wanted him to shut up and stop saying things to make you uncomfortable, you should have heard as much!"

  "Which I didn't ask you to." He hesitated a moment, then continued. "Now I'm asking you, take Menoux deal and leave this place behind. If the others survived, they will find their way to Skawla sooner or later to aid you."

  "And what makes you think Menoux isn't just going to keep me here anyways?" She murmured.

  "Every creature lowers their guard sooner or later," he answered, just as quietly. "If you can prove beyond a shadow of a doubt you can be converted to his side, then at least you will have better opportunities to escape. And regardless, no matter how I think on it, I'm only a burden to you in this state."

  A pace away, Agare stopped, and looked up straight into her eyes. Devoid of expression, it was still hard not to see the pleading in his posture, his frame. Another one who wanted things from her, despite not having the decency to give it straight to her.

  It pissed her off to no end.

  ... If only for a second. She thought back to Elder Seneschal, all he had done for her, and now, all he had done against her.

  "You're crazy if you think Marquise is going to be happy if I get all the way to Skawla only to tell her I had to kill you," she said.

  "Sometimes, things refuse to go our way, no matter how carefully planned," he said. "That's a fundamental part of our lives. If I was not ready to give myself fully to fulfill her dreams, you would not have met me in the first place."

  He had lied. He had hidden important things from her so she would be more pliable. In the end, could she say he cared about her with any confidence? Or had she always been a monster in his eyes, at her best a useful tool to be used without remorse?

  "So?' he asked. "Are you-"

  She vaulted over him without warning. With impressive reflexes Agare tried to keep up, but his wounded body did not allow him the motion. Swift hands grabbed him by the scruff of the neck, avoiding the grasp of his tendrils as she pulled him up into the air.

  "Holly, wait until he is here, or he might-"

  "Holly Seneschal wasn't an obedient girl."

  He froze. "What did you say?"

  "Holly Seneschal was selfish." She held him at a safe distance from herself, conscious of all the ways they could hurt one another. "She made everyone's life harder on purpose because she couldn't compromise. She was unstable, she was cunning, and she was fine deceiving others for her own safety! That's the kind of girl Elder Seneschal raised."

  "H-have you gone mad?" His sudden struggles forced her to lower him. Even dismembered, he was surprisingly strong. "Why are you talking about yourself like that?"

  Uncaring of how well he understood, she continued."But she never liked leaving others behind! Even when she needed to, like when the lads came to bully her and her sisters, she would just fight twice as hard! The one time she did, Blades died."

  "Holly." Agare's voice became devoid of emotion, yet so very sharp. "What is going on?"

  "I... don't think I can explain it very well right now," she said. "I haven't even apologized yet. I keep meaning to, but... A-anyway, what I'm saying is that I'm not going to have you on my consciousness!"

  "Have I been talking to a wall?" his struggles restarted, but it was too late to escape her. "Be reasonable! You are vital to Marquise, I'm not, so if there is a way to get you out of here at my cost, I'm telling you to take it!"

  "My butt you're not vital! Are you telling me Marquise is the kind of person that would just throw you to the ditch out of convenience?"

  The abrupt silence sent an unease churn through her gut. "Not Marquise, no," he said, "but you don't know her like I do. You don't understand what we are."

  "Then I want to learn! and if you both disappoint me, you're getting a scolding of a lifetime!"

  "And what if I told you the Haruspect was right?" Agare said. "What if we were born and raised to exterminate things like you and him? What if I had spent a lifetime committing and abetting atrocities that would make me barely any better than him? What if I became repulsed by my own nature and chose to die by my own means?"

  "T-then I would tell you I'll believe it when I see it! And that I'm tired in being an accessory to other's murders, one way or another. S-so leave me out of that kind of stuff!"

  "... You're going to live to regret those words."

  She sighed. "And so are you."

  Seeing Agare deflate felt like a small victory. With a whisper so low she didnt catch the half of it, he spoke. "Alright then. Show me you aren't all talk: how are you planning to get us out of here? Don't tell me you plan to fight the Haruspect again?"

  "N-not really, but would that be such a bad idea? I'm feeling so springy right now, it might just work out." she said, flexing an arm she knew he could not see.

  "Don't even think about it!" Agare tried to twist on her grip. "There is a reason our plan was always to escape the Citrine and direct combat was never considered! Heir or not, age tends to mean power in more ways than one, and by Galehold's intelligence best estimates, the Haruspect joined the Tale at around the Scorching Season, or not much longer after."

  She felt herself pale. "H-he's as old as Marquise?"

  "Older, likely," he said. "Not even considering how he managed to outlive the true Heirs of Citrine, all which were known monsters that overshadowed their strongest subordinates by orders of magnitude. If only I could still use Hagan..."

  "Then you would have been made into a fool then slain. The Greatest has spent many years in anticipation of meeting one of the holders of the Devil's Lead, and has created many combat plans against them."

  Both went stiff.

  The gates of their cell swung open with a tortured shriek. Behind them, a puzzling sight: Menoux's most precious servant, Balazia, stood alone, his signature weapong strapped to his back, carrying two objects. On his left, a bloodied sack of hemp, and on his right, something long and thick, almost as tall as himself and wrapped in rolls of spongeous leathers, Fetishes attached to the several ropes that bound it shut.

  Her stomach quivered with need.

  "You have twenty minutes to leave," he said. "Any more, and I don't think I can hold him back."