Vertin used the map of the building she was in, old paper marked in a hand too neat for the crumbling building it belonged to.
She traced the lines of it with one finger, matching corridor to corridor until a single room near the deepest part of the compound stood out as the only reasonable place Arcana would have taken anyone she meant to keep.
She set out for it at once.
The Manus Vindictae members she met along the way had stopped being people somewhere between one hallway and the next, faces crystalline and beast-like, movements jerking in ways that owed nothing to training and everything to whatever the masks or Arcana herself had done to what was left of their minds.
She fought her way through more of them than she wanted to count.
The corridors past that point stopped matching the map entirely, turning and doubling back on themselves in ways that made no architectural sense, and she nearly lost the thread of her own path twice before a single green root, thin and patient, curled out from a crack in the floor and simply waited for her to notice it.
She followed it the rest of the way without question.
It led her to a small, close room, and at its center a cage of woven roots, the same craftsmanship she’d seen once already in a fog-thick forest and was cornered by in a labyrinth, slowly loosening and pulling back as she approached, opening for her as if it already decided to trust her.
Schneider was inside it, propped against the bars, breathing shallowly around the pain of a broken hand and a leg that had clearly been set at some point but not well.
Vertin knelt beside her and pulled out what little she’d been able to carry, a small bottle of medicine and a wrapped slice of cake she’d taken off an abandoned tray from her ruined dinner, and got to work helping Schneider as gently as she could manage.
“What was that thing, my lord?” Schneider asked, wincing as the medicine went to work.
“The wolf.
You didn’t seem to know it either.”
“I don’t,” Vertin admitted.
“I’ve never seen anything like it before.”
“What happened after she took you?” Vertin asked, working the last of the bandage tight around Schneider’s hand.
Schneider let out a short, humorless breath.
She told it plainly, without much drama in her voice, the incantations Arcana had tried first, the guns, the blades, every single one of them stopped cold by some faint orange barrier that flared up around her the instant anything got close, until Arcana had simply lost interest and left her there to sit with the injuries she already had.
Vertin listened without interrupting.
A single flower bloomed out of the remaining roots as Schneider finished speaking, pale and quick, unfurling in front of them both to reveal a small folded slip of paper tucked inside its petals.
Vertin opened it.
“tmr 10am.
Heavy fog.
Relief Shelter in the woods.”
They discussed what that message meant, the same understanding passed between them, that whatever Druvis’ intention actually was, and whatever reasons she had for any of this, she was on their side.
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Arcana stood near the window of a different room entirely, Forget Me Not a careful few steps behind her, his composure thinner than usual.
“Is it wise to let them go so easily?”
Arcana didn’t answer him directly.
She murmured something under her breath instead, low and half-formed, and though most of it slipped past him unclear, Forget Me Not caught enough fragments to recognize it, old lines from a poem he half remembered, something about a raven, something about nevermore.
“May I ask what that thing we saw was?” he tried again, visibly shaken in a way he clearly disliked showing.
“The beast.”
“Attend to thy duties,” Arcana said, and nothing more.
He obeyed, reluctant, and left her there alone.
“And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor,” Arcana said quietly, to the empty room, “shall be lifted—nevermore.”
A single crow landed on the sill beside her a moment later, something small and dark clutched in its beak.
It was a lock of hair.
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Schneider ran through the trees with three Manus Vindictae members close behind her, none of them able to close the last stretch of distance no matter how hard they pushed, something was turning them aside every time they got close.
She broke into the clearing where Sonetto, APPLe, Sotheby with her servant, and her own sister had gathered, breathless, and the first question out of anyone’s mouth was where Vertin had gone.
She told them Vertin was still with Manus, cooperating with them for now, and the group regrouped quickly after that, contacting the Foundation the moment they had a clear line.
It was through that contact they learned the Manus Vindictae were moving supplies meant for refugees, clearly some sort of ploy and a detail that changed the shape of the whole night.
Madam Z’s voice came through an old, arcane letter meant for exactly this kind of distance, flat and folded, telling them their priority now was stopping that shipment, with more people already on the way to help.
Sonetto opened her mouth to argue, to insist Vertin came first, but madam Z assured her that Vertin knows what she’s doing, and she couldn’t argue further as the Manus Vindictae members chasing Schneider had finally caught up to her.
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Cormac watched from a tree far from the gathering crowd of refugees and reporters, high enough that the noise below reached him only as a low, indistinct hum.
The refugees had been handed something to drink, a supposed cure, and moments after ingesting the unknown substance, they began exploding from the inside one after another, Forget Me Not’s voice carrying some mocking commentary Cormac was too far away to actually hear.
What struck him more than the explosions themselves was where the reporters’ attention went the instant the screaming started, every camera and every voice swinging away from the carnage and towards the woman he met at the forest instead.
‘Storm Sickness,’ he thought, remembering that phrase from some Manus agent’s mutterings.
‘That’s probably it.’
Vertin stood near Druvis, trying to console her through what looked like genuine tears, and Forget Me Not’s frustration was obvious even from this distance, the invisible barrier clearly keeping him from doing anything about Vertin directly, which only seemed to sharpen his temper toward everyone else in reach.
He gave the order, and his disciples turned on Druvis instead.
Sonetto’s group arrived at almost the same moment, only to be stopped cold by a thick wall of fog that was prepared beforehand.
X and Regulus showed up not long after that, already unpacking something mechanical between them.
‘Well,’ Cormac thought, watching the pieces gather.
‘I guess the climax is almost here.
Everyone’s here.’
He reached into his pocket and planted a single flower that he took from the ground of his divine kingdom at the base of the tree he stood in, unhurried, and turned to leave before the fighting properly started.
On his way out he caught sight of a crow perched in a neighboring tree, watching, and chose to ignore it entirely.
Arcana arrived on the scene just as the fighting below finally slowed down.
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Vertin lay on the ground afterwards, one arm thrown over her eyes, her whole body heavy with an exhaustion that went past the physical, her companions busy with their own business while Sonetto led the treatment of the wounded with brisk, practiced efficiency.
‘Six hours left,’ she thought, the number settling into her chest like a stone.
She remembered Arcana’s long, winding speech from earlier, most of it lost on her, tangled and strange, but one line had cut cleanly through all of it and lodged itself somewhere deep in her mind.
‘Art thou curious about thy birth?
Thy family…’
She’d wanted to ask more.
But Arcana had already gathered her people and sent a wall of living shadow against Vertin’s team before she left, giving her no room to ask anything at all.
She wanted to sit with the thought longer, think it over properly, but time wasn’t something she had in excess right now.
“How shall we spend…
the last hours?” she asked, to no one in particular.
“And what can I do?”
Footsteps approached, and an umbrella opened above her a moment later, blocking out the grey sky.
“My lord, you’re actually lying here defenseless,” Schneider said, crouching close, her voice low and teasing under the umbrella’s cover.
“…
Heh heh.
We have been with you for a long time.
No reward?
No way…”
Vertin was startled at whatever Schneider had done next, hidden from the others by the umbrella’s shadow.
“Schneider, what are you doing!
Don’t suddenly get so close to her!” Sonetto’s voice came out, sharp with alarm.
Schneider pulled back soon after, unbothered, and settled instead beside her.
“This time,” Vertin said, sitting up slowly, “I want to hear everyone’s wishes.”
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________ only 1 or 2 chapters left until the end of volume 2, we got to 100 stones so if i finish the one after this that’s great but if not then i guess 2 chapters tomorrow