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.

  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.

  Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

  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.