A suffocating pressure came at her, and Marilou felt as though she had woken and slept and woken again countless times over.
It was thanks to the Sorrow of the Sun flaring repeatedly at her chest that the searing pain slowly faded.
The pendant also seemed to hold some natural hostility toward the darkness around it, trying to drive the surrounding mist off with its power. But before long the Sorrow of the Sun, which had been shining, appeared to exhaust its mana.
It dimmed gradually into an ordinary pendant.
Lying quiet against her chest.
Marilou's awareness returned in the same moment. She looked around and noticed that the guests were all women in masks of every kind, their features impossible to make out.
Their occupations could still be read off their clothes, though. Some wore magnificent court dress; others the garb of a hunter, or a judge.
And what she had on, by comparison, was nightclothes?
"How is it we have this many people this time?"
The girl who said it, teasingly, had a noticeable drawl at the end of her words, and wore a magnificent set of court clothes.
A little of her fire-red hair showed past the hem, and though her tone was rather free of ceremony, nobody dared take her lightly.
"Several more of our companions have woken."
The woman in the corner turning a crow card spoke up; she counted as the first here to lay her card face up.
The others held cards in their hands, and not one of them had shown hers.
"Let us introduce ourselves again. My identity is the Hanged Man, and you may also call me Crow. I generally act for the Assembly. Here everyone may speak freely, and there is no worldly etiquette. Though it is best not to inquire too far into anyone's identity."
Raven shuffled the cards in her hands and dealt one shaped like a sword hilt to the red-haired girl who had just spoken.
"Speak as recklessly as you like. Every voice in here is processed; nobody will hear your real one."
"So I'm first? How very unexpected~"
The woman cleared her throat lightly. "You may call me Justice. This is hardly my first Assembly."
The judge, who hadn't shifted in her seat, accepted a card and said with a smile, "I am Judgement. The collapsed scales, is it.
"I imagine some of you have seen my clothes. We may all be witches, but if I catch hold of something on you, I will still find you guilty. Do take care."
A girl holding needle and thread stopped what she was doing and laughed softly. "I'm the Star. If you have any medical questions, you may ask me."
"Is this everyone?"
"The others seem to be absent."
The talk went back and forth. Marilou listened without daring to cut in, and stole a look at the card in her hand: the Sun.
So Marilou spoke up and introduced herself.
"My name is the Sun. I am devoted to carrying light into the darkness."
Marilou copied the sort of thing a Sun Cult follower would say, a line of patter that gave nothing away and cost nothing.
At that, several gazes settled on Marilou, held for less than a glance, and were quickly withdrawn.
Seeing that several seats remained empty with nobody arriving, Raven had to break in. "It appears this is all of us for the moment. I am not the chair of this Assembly; each of you may speak and trade information as you like.
"You will all have heard about our little sister being found?"
"We have. But Raven, you said our little sister is in the Temple, and we can't get in there."
Justice spoke up at the right moment, her tone relaxed.
The others, seeing that even Justice said so, wore looks of surprise behind their masks.
"It is not yet clear how this will go. In any case, nobody startle the grass and alarm the snake. I am only suspicious."
Raven released no further information. Of what was said at the Assembly, she only ever dared give away most of it.
There was no shortage of interested parties in here.
If someone else picked the peach off her tree, wouldn't that be a considerable loss?
"Then what do you propose we discuss?" Justice asked archly.
"The usual rule. Everyone's difficulties, for discussion among us."
"I need an item that can mask my presence for a short while. If it is done, I am willing to give you an item connected to order, or an inheritance from a Tier 4 healer."
Judgement spoke, and her terms settled into the eyes of everyone at the Assembly.
The Star's mouth curved. "A Tier 4 healer's inheritance as the stake? Miss Judgement is spending blood this time."
The scales mask Judgement wore trembled once. "I'll be honest with you. I am tracking a band of swindlers operating under the name of witches, but my own ability is far too violent, and rolling straight over them would likely leave the hostages badly wounded.
"So I want to buy something rather good that can conceal a presence. If it is done, there will certainly be a heavy thanks!"
"Official business, then. As it happens I have a pendant here that can veil a presence. But I've no interest in a healer. Could it be exchanged for a Tier 3 scout's inheritance?"
Justice spoke unhurriedly.
Beside her, Judgement bit her lip. "It could. Scouts are rather hard to find, though. I can look on your behalf as far as I'm able, and I'll tell you the moment I have word.
"Until then, I can give you several fine magic stones. You could use them to forge a divine artifact."
Justice only made a sound of assent.
Off to the side the Star sniffed. Those were magic stones capable of forging a divine artifact, and here these two were trading them like sweets.
How was it that the poorest person in here was her...
The Star moved her gaze over to where the Sun sat. She attended nearly every Assembly, and could plainly tell that the Sun and someone sitting silently further off were both new. The Sun had made her introduction; the other one had not spoken at all.
The Assembly didn't compel anyone to speak, so this sort of thing happened often enough, and the Star, Nightingale, thought nothing of it.
Before coming, she had heard from Raven that the card had already been handed to their little sister. As for what identity their little sister held, she had no right to know.
Could it be the silent one in the corner? At any rate, she looked at the Sun sitting there in nightclothes.
And concluded that one was probably not their little sister.
The little sister in her mind was certainly a great figure renowned across a whole region, with at minimum the bearing of Justice or Miss Judgement.
Very likely it was the silent one, who thought them all beneath conversation.
Then she looked at the Sun again, sitting like a primary school pupil. Everyone else was holding forth about everything under the sun, and when Marilou's turn came, all she did was ask a question.
"I wanted to ask what the curse of the blazing sun is. I came by a treasure recently, but it makes me draw close to the sun without meaning to."
"That is a restriction. You may understand it as this: anyone marked as a suspect person will be sought out by a treasure of the sun's domain. It amounts to a walking set of ankle irons."
Judgement said it briskly, as though it were common knowledge to her.
Nightingale went still. She hadn't expected the Sun, whom she'd rated lowest of all, to be dangerous enough that a divine artifact of the sun's domain had come knocking.
She knew what that meant. She had once had the good fortune to meet a master of the sun's domain, and she knew how formidable such treasures were, and what became of these people afterward.
She found herself withdrawing the contempt she had felt for Marilou a moment before.
Marilou turned Judgement's words over and counted them as confirmation of her earlier guess: the Sorrow of the Sun had come to her of its own accord, wanting her to learn some magic of a wholesome sort.
In a certain sense it really was an electronic ankle monitor.
"As it happens I also have a request, and I'd like to put it to Miss Hanged Man."
Miss Justice, who had been quiet for a long while, spoke again.
"I've encountered a kind of monster lately that doesn't die even when its magic core is destroyed. I wanted to ask whether any of you have a lead."
From the shadows, Ellie said it sweetly, and her gaze came to rest on the Sun, some distance away.