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.

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  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.

  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 – 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.