If reality and the Inverted Sanctum were separated by a thick barrier — one she could only cross through the Diving Ritual — then reaching the Sanctum from inside the Nightmare was, for Thea, no harder than strolling home from school.
She closed her eyes. No ritual, no descent. She simply arrived.
Three lit candles now stood on her altar, their flames bowing together into a single ring of light. And caught within that ring was the shape of Grew Lawrence.
As her gaze fell upon them, the three candles guttered out one by one, leaving only three small orbs of light hovering where the flames had been.
In the same instant, a screen of light bloomed before her eyes.
Sacrifice: Spirit
Source: Grew Lawrence (Nightmare)
Path: Mercy's Blade
Sequence: 9
Offering received — choose one of three.
— Thorns at the Back(one-time / Mercy's Blade 7)
Price: Your back is sheathed in thorns; the pain is exquisite.
Effect: When an attacker of Sequence Seven or below strikes you from behind, they suffer double the damage in recoil.
— Cursed Bullet(one-time / Mercy's Blade 7)
Price: A curse winds about your shoulder blade; your left arm becomes unusable.
Effect: The first attack made against you in combat is rendered void, and the attacker receives a Sequence Seven Rot Curse.
— Hunting Soul(one-time / Mercy's Blade 7)
Price: Your actions must result in a living creature's death, or you receive a Sequence Seven Curse of Blindness.
Effect: Fix a target in your mind. If the target lies within a fifty-kilometer radius, a controllable Sequence Seven spirit-creature manifests in its vicinity. The spirit-creature endures for twenty-four hours.
These rituals were less like knowledge and more like items — single-use, disposable.
The upside, of course, was that they required no materials at all. She could invoke them on the spot.
Thea didn't hesitate. She chose Hunting Soul — an offensive ritual was exactly what she lacked most right now.
Just then Vera's voice reached her ear. Thea opened her eyes at once and withdrew from the Inverted Sanctum.
Vera clapped her twice on the shoulder. "Get ready to head down. The templar-knights are here, and we need to move fast. I overheard the knights saying they found a cult hideout on some street up north — they're planning to bomb the place and scrub it clean."
Thea followed Vera down the stairs, nudging her in the ribs with an elbow. "Antonio's people?"
"Who the hell knows. When I was in school, the teacher never mentioned anything about cultists during the Nuremport Fire!"
"Plenty of things they never mentioned. The precinct boys run smuggling, too."
"You serious?"
"Where do you think all those big-bore weapons on the black market come from? You think a beat cop pulls down seven, eight gold pounds a month and feeds a family on that?"
Vera stopped mid-step, eyes wide. "And nobody investigates?"
Thea smiled. "Smuggling means kicking a cut up to the superintendent. The superintendents owe the director gifts every year. Superintendents cover for their officers, directors cover for their superintendents, the Grand Constabulary covers for the directors, and the Crown covers for the Grand Constabulary. So tell me — who's going to investigate?"
It had never occurred to Vera that the rot ran so deep. She made her way down to the inn's ground floor, marveling all the way.
Outside the door, a towering power-armored knight was in the middle of handing over with Scarlett, while the innkeeper stood beside them spraying spittle and flailing his arms, pouring out the horror of what had happened upstairs.
Scarlett told the knight that "Sophia" and "Daphne" were helpers commissioned by the late precinct captain — Alexei — and that Miss Sophia had even worked at a Suppression Bureau in another county.
The innkeeper's account was far more inflamed. These three women, he insisted, were nothing less than demons — devils that did not belong to this world, who cast magic, who'd slaughtered all four men in an instant. Surely they were hiding some unspeakable secret. Perhaps they'd come to destroy Nuremport itself! It was too terrible to contemplate!
The knight was plainly not a man to take a single voice at his word. After weighing the testimony of Scarlett, the inn's guests, and the innkeeper, he went upstairs to examine the bodies. When he returned, he saluted the three of them.
"Fugitive suspects of the Black Fire Gang — confirmed. We've been hunting them a long while. I never expected the three of you to take them here." He paused. "And these two valiant women are…?"
"Sophia. This is my sister, Daphne."
Thea pulled Vera over and gave the templar-knight a brief account, then had Scarlett carry little Vera down.
The knight couldn't help asking, "And the child?"
"Infected with the Foul Blood," Thea said. "We need the Holy Church's help. I've heard Bishop Canthus is at the Cathedral — we need him."
At the words Foul Blood, the innkeeper and the guests recoiled in terror, scattering away.
The knight kept his composure, but Thea still caught the flinch of his face behind the visor.
"Infected with the Foul Blood?! My Lord above — how long ago was she infected?"
"About two days."
"Two days? How has she lasted?"
With that, he flung open the mobile medical station mounted at his side, reaching for medicine to administer to little Vera.
"I used Blood of the Grail to give her rudimentary treatment," Thea said. "Treatment at that level surely can't cure her, but it's held the illness at bay for now."
The templar-knight's eyes fell on the wound across Thea's palm, and on the few scratches down the back of Vera's hand. At once his voice filled with reverence. "You are a great warrior — and a great mother. My respects to you, Lady Sophia. Please, tell me the child's name, so the Cathedral's clergy may enter her into the registry."
Thea glanced at Vera, then narrowed her eyes into a smile. "I think so too. She's my child. Elvira Salvia."
Vera: "……"
Half an hour later, the Church's carriage drew up outside the inn. The whole thing was crafted of holy wood, breathing a faint scent of citrus and mint.
The driver was a young Sister, perhaps just past twenty, clad in armor with a sword at her side, reins in hand.
When she saw them approach, her gaze turned sharp, sweeping across the three of their faces.
Thea had heard that the Church's Sisters possessed the Arcane power to discern good from evil — that a single glance could read the heart of any worshipper at Mass. When the Sister's eyes had passed over her just now, she'd felt the woman regarded her with something less than warmth.
But when the Sister's gaze fell to the child in Thea's arms, it softened.
"Please, board," she said. "I will see you all to the Cathedral."
Once they'd climbed in, the Sister raised her whip and urged the horses on.
Inside the carriage, Thea asked, with studied carelessness, "Sister — I'd like to understand the matter of the gang that was hunting Miss Scarlett. From what she's told me, it seems there was someone giving the gang its orders. And the knights mentioned they'd found a cult's nest as well?"
Scarlett sat bolt upright at once. "Yes — that's exactly what happened!"
The Sister said, "I'm sorry. I'm only a Sister still in training. Perhaps Bishop Canthus will know something. Why not wait until we arrive and ask him yourselves?"
"Thank you for the answer."
Thea returned the words obediently, gave Scarlett a meaningful look, and traced a long cross over her breast — shelter me.
Scarlett pressed her hand to her scabbard. She had no idea what the look from Miss Sorelle meant, but an order from her commander was an order to be obeyed.
The next moment, Thea closed her eyes.
A slender, pale-white middle finger stirred faintly. Black-violet veining bloomed across the pad of it, and an inverted cross-rune surfaced and coiled about her fingertip.
— Ritual: Hunting Soul.
Beneath her breath she murmured the name Iris-Blossom. The ritual took hold, and Thea's vision rose and rose, until she looked down upon the whole of Nuremport from a hawk's vantage.
The vast city spread itself before her eyes. There — in the northeast, in the North Harbor District, within a sprawl of chemical works — a crimson radiance flickered.
By Hunting Soul's description, that crimson light was where her enemy stood.
The view rushed inward at once, plunging through serried ranks of residential blocks, until it arrived at the factory's outer wall, green vines crawling across the brick.
Beside the wall an unstable shadow pooled. Snick — a milk-white claw tore the shadow open.
The spirit-creature this ritual summoned was rather more revolting than Thea had imagined. It was like a white ball of meat fitted with razor talons, its two eyes set into its chest, its belly split wide — and inside that belly squirmed what looked like a teeming mass of fat, laboring fly-mothers mid-birth, alongside countless writhing white maggots.
In that instant, Thea slipped into the Sequence Seven spirit-creature, wearing it like a second skin.
She extended a claw and dragged it across the iron palings. They parted like a hot carving knife through butter, the metal melting away on contact.
Looking ahead, her gaze passed straight through brick wall and factory shed alike — and there, in an office behind the workshop, a knot of crimson flame blazed, the faint silhouette of a human form just visible within it.
The next second she ignored the barrier of the wall entirely, passing clean through it, hurtling toward the firelight at tremendous speed.
The spirit-creature tore through the air, faster and faster, faster and faster!
There were sentries and guards posted along the way to watch the sheds — at first a streak of white light could still be seen flashing past them, but soon even the white light vanished. As the ball of meat ripped through the air like a fired cannon shell, the very air around Thea blurred.
In the office, Iris-Blossom was dressed much as he'd been at the stone-table council — still wearing that hat set with a peacock feather. Now he sat in a chair in a trim, immaculate dress coat, a book cradled in his arms, his expression mild and faintly amused, like a gentleman of the Kingdom of the Iris. Easy to recognize.
Beside him stood a boy in a black robe, bowing deferentially. "My lord — the Holy Bell, Canthus, is nearly upon us. Bishop Antonio asks that you withdraw from the North Harbor District."
The gentleman turned a page of his pulp novel and chuckled. "No need to rush. Bishop Canthus can scarcely save himself right now. I'll stay a while longer — and tell Antonio, while you're at it, that I mean to pay a visit to the Cathedral of Our Lady."
The boy lowered his head. "Bishop Antonio says he'll come to see you shortly. You may tell him in person."
"Very good. Off you go. Oh — and remember to bring me a few more of the popular novels."
"At once."
The boy pushed the door open and stepped out. Not long after, a gust of cold wind came howling through.
Squelch-splat~ Squelch-splat~
A string of inexplicable sounds rose from behind Iris-Blossom. The spirit-creature rolled over a few times and extended a claw, the great clot of maggots in its belly squeezing and bursting with a thick, muffled wet noise.
Hearing the sounds, Iris-Blossom assumed at first that Antonio had arrived. He didn't turn. He held his pose, doing his best to appear graceful, reaching out to lift the teapot and pour a cup of black tea.
"Antonio — those three friends of mine should be about to—"
As he held the cup out toward the ball of meat, those fine, sharp claws received it — and gave the faintest pinch. Snap. The cup shattered. Iris-Blossom turned his head, and the revolting clot of flesh was nearly pressed to his face.
A spirit-creature?
It wasn't that he hadn't considered the three survivors might come to kill him. Nor that he hadn't considered the templar-knights razing this cult stronghold along the ordinary course of history. He'd even weighed the possibility that Antonio, displeased with him, might come to do the deed himself.
— But no matter how he turned it over, it had never once occurred to him that what came to kill him would be a spirit-creature.
Spirit-creatures dwelt in the deep sea beneath the Dive, in waters below five thousand meters. This Nightmare's waters were shallow. Why was there a spirit-creature here?
The spirit-creature lunged forward in a sudden, savage blow.
— Thud! Iris-Blossom was slammed into the wall by the abrupt force.
Before he could get out his next word, the spirit-creature swept out a claw and opened his throat.
Scalding blood went spurting, spit, spit, scattering through the air.
In the span of a single minute, all that remained on the floor was a corpse.
[Blood Runs in Rivers: Kill another ritual participant. +100 points.]
"Mm — done! The last real threat is dealt with. Now there's no question at all about the Advancement Ritual."
Thea hadn't yet released the ritual. She still had one task to carry out — setting fire to the freighter moored in the Great Harbor District.
The Hunting Soul ritual ended the moment its target was slain, but the summoned spirit-creature remained under her control. She had twenty-four hours to set the freighter ablaze and start the great fire.
The whole procedure broke into two steps.
The carriage running from the North Harbor inn to the Cathedral of Our Lady in the Great Harbor District would take, at present speed, at least thirty minutes. Fifteen had already passed. She needed to complete Step One within the next fifteen: locate the freighter, then return to her own body.
Once they reached the Cathedral of Our Lady, Bishop Canthus would cure little Vera, and Vera's several tasks would all be done.
That would be the moment for Step Two: control the spirit-creature to light the great fire directly.
As for the main objective — survive to the third day — that needed little worry. In the Nuremport Fire, the heaviest losses had been concentrated at the harbor and the surrounding factories. The Cathedral of Our Lady itself, by virtue of its distance from the port, had gone untouched.
Once Thea had fixed her target, she passed straight through the wall and fled this cult nest at speed.
Out beyond the factory, she dove once more into the Inverted Sanctum, meaning to collect her spoils.
But she hadn't expected it — this Mr. Iris-Blossom had given her one final gift with his very life.
Sacrifice: Spirit
Source: Marne Cullen (Nightmare)
Path: Forge-Hammer / Mercy's Blade
Sequence: 6 / No Sequence
Offering received — choose one of three.
— Wrapped in Flame(one-time / Forge-Hammer 5)
Price: Flame burns across your body at all times.
Effect: When a target attempts to locate you, they cannot fix your precise position, and they receive a Sequence Five Searing Curse. Lasts twenty-four hours.
— Body Like Iron(one-time / Forge-Hammer 5)
Price: Your neck becomes exquisitely fragile — a single jab will pierce it.
Effect: When an enemy strikes any part of you other than the neck, the struck area becomes the equivalent of a 55mm-thick iron plate. Lasts twenty-four hours.
— Hammer of Judgment(one-time / Forge-Hammer 5)
Price: After each successful attack you receive a non-stacking Sequence Five Searing Curse.
Effect: Against targets of Sequence Five and below, your attacks ignore protective rituals and armor.