The faint light shining from the windows of Ianthe’s office, the only light in the administration building after dark, went out.
Inside, the room was still bright, but all the windows had been covered with a thin layer of opaque black ectoplasm. The air, carrying the scent of old books and leather, was now tinged with a sea-like saltiness as another batch of the same substance bloomed to life and began to swim in rivulets along the floors, walls, and furniture, probing here and there with thin tendrils as it investigated the surroundings.
The source of the ectoplasm, Iphis, stood with his hip and one hand leaning against Ianthe’s desk, watching as the tendrils began to rifle and pry through all of Ianthe’s belongings. He let out a contented sigh, flashed Ianthe a gentle smile and said, “This is nice.”
Ianthe was sitting in a big leather chair, her cheek resting against the flat surface of her desk and both of her arms hanging slack. She didn’t reply, as she was busy being unconscious.
“Thanks for inviting me, I really like your office. I wish I had one this big, but if I’m being honest, I’d probably just fill it with junk.”
He suddenly perked up and turned around. On one of the walls a particularly thick swarm of tendrils were now prying at nearly invisible gaps in the stone, attempting to wriggle their way into the hidden area he’d discovered.
“You’ve got a secret room, too? I love those, that’s classic.”
There was a sharp crackle of electricity and a flash of light as the tendrils triggered something, and all them within about a ten foot radius convulsed violently and then disintegrated.
“Hmm… you don’t mind if I borrow some of your mana, do you?” he asked, reaching towards her.
For a moment his gloved hand hovered over her cheek, smokey black magic flowing around his fingertips as he searched for something invisible. Then he abruptly hooked his finger, catching a collection of wispy strings of cerise light out of thin air. He pulled back, stretching them out, and Ianthe jerked along with this motion like a fish on a hook. With his other thumb and forefinger he pinched the strings like taming a strand of yarn, and when he’d judged it was long enough, snapped it off with a flick of his wrist.
“It’s probably better you weren’t awake to feel that,” he told her, winding the mana into a glowing coil and pocketing it. “That spell makes my teeth hurt and I’m not even the one I’m doing it to, ahaha.”
Death magic was very good for stealing things like vitality or mana from other people, but it was not known for making the process pleasant.
He had, just a little bit, been hoping it’d bother her enough to wake her up.
“Ahh, come on, are you really this sleepy? Do you have any idea how long I’ve waited for this moment?” He bent over to rest his elbows on the desk so he could speak to her at face level. “Don’t you think you’re making this too easy for me? Where’s the effort?”
He couldn’t help but feel like things would have gone differently if the real Ianthe hadn’t been digested or oppressed into oblivion.
Five years ago, when Saint Calliope had pitched the assignment to him, she’d been canny enough to emphasize what a great danger Ianthe was to the Temple, how wily and unpredictable an enemy she would be, and how he and Moros were the only clerics she could trust with such a vital mission.
He’d known she was bullshitting him, of course. Not about Ianthe being dangerous, but about Calliope’s true purpose for sending him, which was to park him somewhere harmless for as long as possible so he’d stop getting into fights and using abilities she didn’t approve of. He didn’t understand why she cared whether or not he ascended, or why she always dragged her feet when it came to using him for what he was good for, but she was Calliope so he’d agreed anyway.
It was just that he really had been looking forward to fighting Ianthe. Like a cookie he’d been promised for sitting still and being quiet, only to find once it was handed to him that it turned out to be oatmeal raisin.
Then again, there was always the chance that…
“You stay there for a moment, alright?”
He gave her a pat on the head, then straightened up. The remaining ectoplasm exploring the room, having failed to find anything else of interest, ceased its movement and snapped back towards him, vanishing beneath his feet.
He started to head towards the secret room but paused midstep, remembering something from earlier, and walked instead towards the decorative plinth he’d been looking at during their conversation.
Anyway, where he was going mattered less than the fact that he’d turned his back to her.
Frowning down at the artifact, brows crinkling, he muttered to himself, “Is this one the ‘choch-kes’?”
The new Ianthe kept using words he didn’t understand, so he’d been guessing a lot recently. He picked up the artifact and scrutinized it.
So a ‘chochkes’ was some kind of antique mana scale? Huh.
He shrugged, then pocketed it since she said he could have it anyway, and even though he took his sweet time doing all of this, nothing fanged and horrible took advantage of his carelessness to abandon playing dead and suddenly attack him.
He turned back to Ianthe, unable to wait any longer.
“Oh, seriously, you’re really out?”
Like a cat afraid it’d killed its mouse too quickly, he rushed back to her side and gave her a few frustrated pokes on the cheek, chiding, “Didn’t you see how distracted and defenseless I was just now? Do you think you’re going to get the same opportunity twice?”
Sometimes, if he was lucky, his targets played dead and tried to jump him later. He liked it because then it would be his turn to surprise them and they always made such funny faces when he did.
Unfortunately, Ianthe rudely continued to sleep, so he threw his hands up in a gesture of disgust and then sat back against the edge of her desk with a huff.
“Are you really that sick? The Boss said you were in a bad way, but I figured you’d be fine after he treated you,” Iphis said, then grabbed her by the shoulders to lift her from the desk and shove her upright against the back of her chair. He felt her forehead for her temperature, not bothering to remove his gloves.
“Haaa… feels normal, maybe? I don’t know, I’m not a fucking healer,” he grumbled, letting her head slump back to her chest.
He’d had a lot of success in the past subduing people with the spell he used on her. The key he’d found (through a lot of near-fatal trial and error) was to steal some of a person's oxygen, not all of it. It still did the trick, just took a little longer, and usually avoided the deadliest side effects.
Usually.
Just in case, he stood back and swiped two fingers across his eyes, activating one of his blessing abilities.
The world around him lost its color, but now he could clearly see the death energies clinging to Ianthe. There was still a dark cloud of grief around her, but it wasn’t as intense as when he’d first spotted it. In addition, here and there within that cloud were streaks of bloody light, a distinct pattern of scars inflicted upon her by vengeful ghosts. However, at no point could he see any sign that her own demise was imminent, so he fixed his eyes and his vision returned to normal.
Not dying was good, but she still looked terrible. What if she was too sick or exhausted to wake up quickly? The idea of hanging around for hours waiting for her to finish her nap sounded awful.
“You know, whoever-you-are, I’ve never met a spirit or a demon as sickly as you,” he griped, taking her condition as a personal slight.
With an unhappy sigh he reached into his pocket and pulled out a ludicrously expensive golden vial of liquid.
Healing potions that relied on pure magic were far harder to manufacture than ones that relied on physical ingredients. This meant that they cost more, and Iphis had been hoping to sell this one later when his usual boss wasn’t looking. High Cleric Chiron always gave him one before this sort of mission in case he played a little too hard, but he’d gotten very good about not accidentally killing people, so for a long time now he’d been treating them less like potions and more like a cash bonus for being gentle.
Actually, now that he thought of it, there was a distinct chance that’s exactly what Chiron intended it to be, and that he already knew very well that Iphis was selling them.
Huh.
He couldn’t believe it’d taken him this long to notice.
That sneaky bastard.
Regardless, if she wasn’t dying, the idea of using it just to get her to wake up faster felt like a waste, but… then again, she had given him that chochkes, and it looked like it’d probably sell for far more than the potion, so it wouldn’t be a complete loss...
Ah, yes, and this situation was a time-sensitive emergency. Right, right, he’d nearly forgotten.
With some reluctance, he pinched her mouth open and dumped a few thousand drachmas worth of healing potion down her throat.
“There, don’t say I didn’t do anything for you.”
He pocketed the empty bottle and stared down at the entity that was currently inhabiting his other boss.
He’d investigated many cases of suspected possession over the years, but those people were all strangers, and he’d relied heavily on interviewing friends and family who knew them to establish whether or not he needed to intervene.
Now, for the first time, someone he was familiar with became possessed, and he had to admit the experience was a little creepy.
When he’d spotted Ianthe this morning, other than how disheveled she was, he hadn’t noticed anything too strange about her.
Then she’d opened her mouth and he’d had the delightfully chilling realization that he was speaking to a stranger wearing Ianthe’s face.
He understood that head injuries could change a person, but the creature talking to him, while frazzled and exhausted, did not seem confused or hesitant at all about herself. It was as though overnight Ianthe had grown a brand new set of morals and goals, and behind them was a surprisingly solid air of conviction. Compared to that, the smaller things he’d noticed—how she showed more emotion on her face, her strange new accent, her willingness to speak to him at all—felt important, but not nearly as damning.
Even if he hadn’t been able to look at the pattern of her ghost marks to confirm things, his gut would have been enough to know that someone had replaced her, and while he’d love to get to know whoever it was, even after the potion she still showed no signs of stirring.
Giving up, he decided he might as well get to work.
Her defensive artifacts were easy to find and remove, and he had no trouble scooping her up from her desk and re-depositing her in a chair in the center of the room.
From there, he used a spell to summon a set of black ropes—
(Alright, technically they were ectoplasmic tentacles akin to the ones he’d used earlier, but he’d long ago decided it was easier to call them ‘ropes’ in this particular scenario because people who woke up wrapped in ‘tentacles’ either got very upset or very excited, and it was a pain to deal with those reactions when he wasn’t going for them. That said, it really was a top of the line spell for restraining someone, because it automatically adjusted no matter how the person struggled, so he’d never shied away from using it despite the many complaints filed against him.)
—To bind her arms behind the back of the chair, and then her waist and legs as well for good measure. Then he removed her eye patch, tossed it onto her desk, and proceeded to pull two solid-looking silver bracelets from one of his pockets. He slipped one around each of her wrists and, once activated, they magically shrunk down to size.
Finished, he put his hands on his hips, looked down at her to survey his work, and said,
“Damn. I missed this.”
Even though he’d only been permitted to work as a cleric for the Golden Shield because a lot of people were hoping it’d kill him, he really enjoyed it. He considered the high stakes, deadly enemies, and near-constant mortal peril far more fulfilling than his current role.
Teaching itself wasn’t the issue. He actually liked it a little, fondly regarding his students as a collection of big dumb puppies who needed to be beaten until they learned not to die so easily, a responsibility he took to heart.
The problem was Aegis, the problem was boredom and how it made time flow less like sand and more like sandpaper. The irony was that five years of quiet routines and unimportant dramas felt more like a punishment than any brutal mission ever had.
But now? Now the wait was finally over!
Not only that, but he’d managed to bag an other-worlder!
Fuck, was it his birthday? It felt like his birthday.
“I’m really happy you showed up, you know,” he said, grabbing a chair for himself and plonking it down in front of her with unconcealed excitement. “You’re such a surprise! Of all the things I thought might happen to Ianthe, getting possessed wasn’t even on the list!”
She still didn’t reply. Now in a new chair, she just slumped slightly against the ‘ropes’ and continued sleeping, her head tilted towards one shoulder and her face mostly covered by a curtain of blood-red hair.
Damnit.
“You’re not as fun when you don’t talk,” he complained, sitting down across from her.
Even working for the Temple, running into beings from other worlds was a very rare treat. If this were any other situation Iphis would have ignored his orders, squirreled this foreigner away somewhere, and peppered her with questions about her past until either he got bored or Chiron caught up with him.
Unfortunately, an unidentified entity showing up from the same world as the current Young Saint was as terrifying as it was statistically improbable. He hadn’t been lying when he told Euphrosyne the game wasn’t their only weapon, but it was nevertheless a ridiculously important one. While the possible futures it presented were bound to change, they still provided critical clues about the Order’s goals and movements, and it also identified major players on both sides while providing a great deal of personal information that could be used to control or eliminate them.
Right now, whether or not they were all in a great deal of trouble largely depended on what this being was.
If she was a spirit they’d probably be fine. The Order had a long history of cruel treatment towards spirits, which meant that even if one was unfortunate enough to work for them, they wouldn’t be able to do it unscathed. To that end he’d checked Ianthe for seals and binding magic when he’d been arranging her earlier, but hadn’t found any.
The real issue would be if she was a demon, as they were famously hostile towards the Temple and were notorious for being summoned by and working with the Order.
Based on the Temple’s intelligence, the real Ianthe had disappeared a few days ago, and the new one had only come out of hiding yesterday morning. That meant they had no way to guarantee this entity hadn’t shown up early and communicated with the Order during her time alone, so if she was indeed a demon, the Temple would be forced to assume that all of their assets had already been compromised, and that would be such a colossal fucking headache on so many levels that it made him dizzy just thinking about it.
“I hope you’re not a demon,” Iphis sighed, leaning his cheek against his fist as he stared at her, his boredom growing. “You’re so funny, it’d be a shame to have to kill you.”
She was grumpy, and weird, and ridiculously suspicious, but so far he liked her, and he didn’t really want to test her. Unfortunately, liking someone didn’t mean they couldn’t be a demon, a lesson he’d learned the hard way on one of his earliest missions.
Back then he’d rolled into a small town with no suspects in mind, just a vague report that there might be demonic activity in the area and an order to investigate anyone suspicious. There he’d quickly befriended a charming little innkeeper, and had resolutely believed that nobody that hilarious could secretly be eating people.
He’d believed that right up until he’d woken to find his new friend oozing under the crack in his door in the hopes of digesting him in his sleep.
It was embarrassing to remember, but in those days he’d been awful at reading people, and even worse at detecting demons. He’d gotten much better at the former over the years, but when it came to the latter, he was honest enough to admit that he hadn’t improved much.
Calliope could tell just by looking at the damn things, but if he wanted to figure it out he had to get creative.
Too bad the fake Ianthe probably wouldn’t like what that meant.
Unable to stand the silence any longer, he yawned and slouched down in his chair, then pulled out his receiver and recorded:
“Chiron, I caught her. She’s taking a nap and I’m keeping her in her office. She said she wanted to give us information about the Order, but only if she can talk to the Saint.”
Normally he and Chiron didn’t get along very well, but since Chiron was the one who’d grown suspicious of Ianthe and assigned Iphis to deal with her, he was currently feeling very favorable towards his rather grumpy boss.
Chiron’s sharp reply quickly arrived:
“Took you long enough. Did you use the mana cuffs?”
“Yes, of course I used them!” he recorded in a wounded tone, as though he’d never in the past conveniently ‘forgotten’ to apply them just to see what would happen. “Would it kill you to give me a little credit?”
“Then just keep her there until you know what she is. I brought Calliope up to speed, she’s already heading back to Eleusis. Bring the fake to the infirmary once you’re done with her.”
Iphis replied in the affirmative and didn’t bother saying anything else. He knew better than to try and entertain himself by bugging Chiron, so he decided to make himself Moros’ problem instead.
“Moros… I don’t have anything useful to say, I got Ianthe but I'm bored because she’s taking forever to wake up. Why don’t you come join me?”
Up on the roof of the administrative building, a man sat curled up in the dark among the eaves. A soft ping chimed from his receiver, and as he activated it, its faint glow lit up his fox-like face and shone off his long pale hair. Adjusting his tinted glasses, he listened to the recording with a frown. Once it finished, he let out an annoyed snort, then stuffed it back into the pocket of his fur-lined robes and proceeded to ignore it.
Back inside the building, Iphis, having anticipated this lack of response, sent ten more short and useless messages in quick succession.
He only stopped once a reluctant reply finally came through, and the defeated party said, “Iphis, stop distracting me. I’m supposed to be watching the perimeter… You know students… If something dangerous is going on, they’ll walk right into it…”
The man spoke slowly in a whispery voice that always seemed to trail off at the end, as though he was one stray thought away from forgetting he was in a conversation altogether.
“Come on, it’s not like they can get through your barrier if you come inside. You’re always saying I never ask the right questions. Isn’t this a good opportunity to do it yourself?”
“I already wrote down the questions I wanted you to ask, don’t you have the list…?”
Iphis did, but on the off chance he could lure Moros down anyway, he lied and said, “No, I lost it.”
“You’re lying...”
“Yes, I’m lying, but you also know I haven’t read it and don’t intend to.”
The response to this was a long recorded sigh, interrupted at the end by a cough, and then Moros continued, “Anyway, I don’t think I can handle looking at blood right now… Unless you plan to tie me down as well?”
Iphis snickered. Oh, he had a lot of things to say in response to that, but another message arrived before he could even get his spell started, cutting him off.
“Don’t! Whatever you’re about to say, just don’t!” Moros hissed angrily.
Pretending he hadn’t been up to anything, Iphis switched gears and coaxed, “Come on, I was only going to say you don’t need to worry about blood. I’ve still got that knife I picked up a couple of years ago from that pervert. You know, the dull one who kept trying to turn people into living dolls?”
It hadn’t happened too often, but every once and a while they’d gone after what they were sure was a demon only to discover their target was just a particularly shitty human.
Iphis was of the opinion that if you were so uninteresting you had to chop people up to get them to pay attention to you, then you didn’t deserve to have fun stuff, so he’d tried that fellow’s tools out on the fellow himself and then pocketed the ones he’d liked.
In this way he’d developed quite the collection of strange weapons over the years.
“Wow… Thanks… And here I’d almost forgotten about that…” Moros mumbled unhappily “Let me guess… you’re pouting because she didn’t put up a fight, so you’re—hkhh—taking it—ackh—out—on—on—”
Moros’ reply was interrupted by an intense coughing fit, which was mistakenly recorded.
Iphis frowned, noting that Moros’ cough sounded much worse than normal. The little bastard had squirreled himself away in Eleusis over their vacation, heartlessly leaving Iphis behind, even though this was what that did to him.
As annoying as that was, he still resolved to help Moros as soon as he got the chance, even though it meant he’d have to find time to head into town to look for candidates. He thought he might have luck at the Kastri Temple Hospice again, but failing that there was always the docks.
“I was saying… she didn’t play with you, so you’re taking it out on me…” Moros continued after his coughing ended, sounding strained and breathless as he tried to avoid falling back into it. “Iphis… It’s better if she doesn’t. What if you got careless, and she killed you?”
The unexpected concern from Moros made him smile, igniting a rare flame of warmth in his chest.
“Moros, are you actually worrying about me?”
“No… I just… don't like to share my food… hehe.”
Iphis was quiet for the few seconds it took for his brain to process that Moros, his Moros, had actually made a joke.
Then he burst into laughter.
It’d taken him years to wear Moros down to the point where he was even willing to consider banter, so hearing this made Iphis puff up with pride.
He quickly sent, “Moros, that was very funny, and also you’re my best friend and I love you.”
The agitated reply came quickly.
“Cut it out! Stop saying-cough-agh—nonsense!” Moros shouted, his words fraying as he nearly lapsed into another fit. “If you’re so impatient, why don’t you just shock her a little…?”
“Shock her? Sweetheart, Chiron’s going to be so upset if he finds out you said that. He’ll say I'm rubbing off on you, won’t you feel ashamed?”
“So? He’s not my father, and I’m not your sweetheart! No, more importantly—cough—do your job and stop bothering me! I hope she does beat you up… See if I care!”
Ah, really, Moros was too easy to tease. It was so cute it made Iphis want to bite him.
Too bad Moros wouldn’t let him, the hypocrite.
“Don't pretend, you’d be so sad if I…”
He paused. Across from him Ianthe twitched, then groaned, her forehead creasing like she was thinking of something unpleasant.
“Hold on… looks like she might be waking up. President? Could you open your eyes for me?”
He wasn’t sure if she’d heard him, but she did blink a few times, looking around the room in bleary confusion.
Since he’d removed her eye patch earlier, he finally got a chance to see the eye she always kept hidden. Nobody actually knew what Ianthe’s curse was, but that hadn’t stopped anyone from betting on what she was covering up.
“Ha! Moros? Her eye isn’t just green, it’s green and black. That means you were wrong, don’t forget to pay up next time you see me.”
Moros’ reply was a terse, “Just—do your job and fuck off!”
Taking Moros’ advice, he pocketed his receiver and awarded Ianthe his friendliest smile.
“Hello! Did you have a good nap?”
She finally focused on him and that seemed to startle her awake the rest of the way, though judging by her scowl she wasn’t happy about it.
“Hey!” she shouted, immediately straining against the ‘ropes.’ “What the fuck is wrong with you!?”
“I take it you’re feeling alright? You seem pretty energetic now.”
“What!? No!!” the imposter spat, glaring down at the chair she was tied to and then back at Iphis. “What did you do to me, you sick bastard!?”
“Oh, do you mean earlier? I just took some of your air. Don’t worry, I didn’t take it all, and I gave you a really expensive healing potion, so you should be okay.”
“Okay!? OKAY!? What part of ‘I want to cooperate’ made you want to kidnap me, you fucking lunatic?” she demanded, her furious face flushing as red as her hair, and her tone sounding decidedly ungrateful despite that costly potion he’d just mentioned.
“Kidnap? Who’s kidnapped?” Iphis asked, gesturing at the room. “We’re still in your office. All I’ve done is prolong our meeting.”
“By tying me to a chair!?”
“Yes, but is that really such a big deal? Let’s not forget that you’re the one who asked me to meet with you on the last day of my vacation, a day I don’t get paid for, late at night far outside of working hours, with very short notice, only to try and send me off after a few words… If anything, you’re the one who’s been rude.”
Actually, none of that was out of the ordinary behavior for Ianthe, but if anything that just made him even more upset that he’d missed the chance to beat her up.
“You don’t have to apologize, I’ve already forgiven you,” he added generously.
The fake Ianthe just stared at him, momentarily speechless. Then she erupted, shouting, “You motherfucking son of a bitch! You wanna see RUDE!? Untie me and see what I do to you, you…! Wait… What did you put on me!?”
Iphis scratched his cheek, looking away as he lied, “Uh… ropes?”
“No! Not that, ah—!”
She must have tried to use magic because her eyes widened in surprise and discomfort as the cuffs let off the low humming sound they made when they absorbed a spell.
She stopped struggling and grew very still.
“There's something metal on my wrists, and you… I want you to take it off.”
Okay, apparently the tentacles weren’t the problem.
He supposed he could sympathize. Mana cuffs weren’t painful, but wearing them when they activated felt a lot like something invisible was sucking away at your life. He’d gotten used to the feeling over time, but most people never had to experience it, and tended to find it very uncomfortable.
“You’re referring to the mana cuffs?”
Ianthe swallowed hard, then bared her teeth in a grimace and insisted, “I don’t care what they are! Just take them off!”
“Sorry, I can’t do that.”
He personally wouldn’t mind, but Chiron wanted to handle this particular crisis by the book.
Well, alright, he always did, but this time Iphis sort of agreed with him, so it was different.
“Okay, okay, I get it. Ugh…” she trailed off, slowly curling in on herself like she was in pain. “Look, do me a favor pal, can you just take off the left one?”
Curious, he got to his feet so he could stand closer to her and asked, “Why do you want that?”
“Because… you want me to talk, right? I can’t talk if it’s on there.”
He narrowed his eyes and looked down at her, suspicious.
Was she trying to trick him? In rare cases people could survive breaking one cuff, which was why it was policy to use two.
“I’m… I’m being serious,” she continued, but her head was hanging down so he couldn’t see her expression.
He hooked a gloved finger under her chin and tilted her face up so he could try and tell if she was lying.
Ianthe’s eyes were squeezed shut, her jaw clenched, and she’d begun to tremble. Her face certainly looked miserable, all pale and tense with sweat beading on her forehead, but…
Her appearance wasn’t that uncommon considering the circumstances.
It was unfortunate, though. He definitely liked the feisty version of her better.
“Please?” Ianthe asked, her voice small.
Iphis frowned, hesitating.
He shouldn’t.
For a lot of reasons, including the severity of the situation and how upset Calliope would be if she found out he’d taken unnecessary risks, he shouldn’t.
However, wasn’t Calliope the one always telling him to be more merciful? People were usually unhappy about the cuffs, but Ianthe’s distress felt subtly different. She’d been angry and unafraid until she’d noticed them, therefore it stood to reason something else might be going on here.
Even if mercy wasn’t why he wanted to remove them, didn’t it count if the result was the same?
Anyway, if she did turn out to be a spirit, Chiron and Calliope might ask her to stick around. He was already about to upset her a lot to figure out if she was a demon, so if he didn’t score some points now she might get angry and refuse to hang out with him later, and it’d be a shame to lose such a unique source of entertainment.
Sure, he could always either coax or exhaust her into paying attention to him anyway, but who knew how long that might take? Worst case scenario, if she got free and tried to make a mess, he could always just drag her down to the lacunae.
“Alright,” he agreed, as though he were making a big concession and not just doing what he already wanted to do.
To his disappointment, despite the golden opportunity he handed her, she made no effort to break free or attack him while he crouched down and swapped the cuffs from her wrists to her ankles one by one.
Maybe she had some attachment to the body, and didn’t want to risk destroying it?
What a bummer.
“Better?” he asked, standing up and taking a step back.
“Yeah, just give me a second.” She exhaled, slumping in the chair as some of the tension left her.
“Take your time.”
He sat back in his chair and pulled a battered old dagger out of his extra-dimensional storage space. Giving it a lazy flip, he waited for her to collect herself.
Across from him Ianthe took some deep, measured breaths and straightened up. Then she looked him dead in the eye and said, “You know, I was feeling a little guilty for judging you so quickly earlier, so thanks for confirming every bad thought I had about you.”
“You were having bad thoughts about me?” he asked, his smile widening.
“No! You know that’s not what I meant!”
He did, he was just being an asshole.
“Should I get you some water? Your face is a little red.”
“Oh screw you, you prick! Do you think this is funny? Are you having a good time?” Ianthe snarled, the ferociousness from before she’d noticed the cuffs back in full swing. “The moment I get out of this chair I’m going to feed you that fucking knife!”
“God, I wish you would,” he sighed, then shook his head and tried to force himself to focus. “No, sorry, you’re right, I have a job to do.”
Damn, it really wasn’t fair. He hated feeling rushed, especially since this entity was adorably prickly, and the angry little expressions she made with Ianthe’s usually immobile face were so amusing. It really felt like a waste not to mess around a bit before they got to the unpleasant part, but lives were at stake and such, so he had to bite back his disappointment once again.
“Let’s get started,” he cleared his throat and then continued in an obviously rehearsed manner, “I’m Cleric Iphis of House Ephyra, and I’m placing you under arrest for a suspected violation of divine law. You have rights as a citizen of the Cydonian Empire, and if you feel those rights have been violated by any part of this process, you or your surviving heirs may submit a complaint to the Temple of the Nine Divine Pillars’ Judicial Department. If the arbiters conclude your claim has merit, your suit will be tried within the Temple’s court system. Do you have any questions?”
“… What?” she asked, her expression stunned.
“Oh, I have to say that stuff, parliament passed a law about it a few years ago.”
“No, that’s not the problem! Are you a fucking [cop]!?”
“‘Kapp?’ I don’t know what that is, is that your word for ‘cleric’?”
“No, it’s my word for ‘pig,’” she spat, glowering at him with her mismatched eyes.
“Alright… let me try again without the script. Hello, I’m Cleric Iphis with the Temple Defense Department’s Golden Shield unit, under the command of Her Holiness Saint Calliope of Melitaea, and I’ve arrested you for the crime of possessing a Cydonian citizen.”
The Temple was not technically permitted to have a standing army like the Imperial Government, but it did have the gods-given right to defend and enforce divine law. To this end its Defense Department managed units of combat-capable priests called clerics, because calling them soldiers would be too on the nose.
If anyone in the Imperial Government thought that department behaved in a suspiciously militaristic way and tried to object to the arrangement, then the Temple was all too happy to take those accusations to court. This was because the Temple had jurisdiction over any case involving divine law, and could therefore try itself in its own Judicial Department, at which point it would unsurprisingly once again exonerate itself.
“Wait, that sounds more like military… hold on, Golden Shield? Fuck, I know what that is, isn’t that [spec ops]? No, wait, it’d be more [Swiss Guard], right? I… I really have the worst fucking luck, don’t I?” she sighed, closing her eyes and squeezing her eyebrows together like he’d just given her a massive headache.
While the Saint was the supreme leader of the entire Temple system, the Golden Shield was the only defensive unit that directly reported to, guarded, and acted on behalf of Her Most Serene Holiness. The small, elite team had originally only accepted divine mages into its ranks, but over the centuries that requirement had been waived in favor of recruiting anyone sufficiently scary enough.
Worried that Ianthe’s expression meant she thought she didn’t count because she was a foreign entity, he encouraged, “By the way, even though you’re technically not Ianthe, please feel free to submit a complaint! As the sapient being accused of possessing her, you’re still considered a citizen by virtue of sharing mana that’s been registered with the Covenant.”
“Yayyy… let me guess…” She opened her eyes again and gave him a weary look. “That complaint process of yours doesn’t actually do anything, does it?”
“No, that’s not true…” he trailed off, thought it over for a moment, and concluded, “It makes parliament members feel better. Also, I enjoy reading them.”
That law was just one of many ways the Imperial Government tried and failed to control the Temple, which it had been deadlocked in a power struggle with for nearly two thousand years.
“Yeah, I had a feeling you’d say something like that. You know, I… I haven’t been here long, but I already hate this place so much. I mean, I probably did a lot of things to deserve this, but still, fuck me.”
“…”
Iphis discarded a few different responses, failed to come up with anything appropriate, and so instead complained, “I’m trying to stop flirting with you, and I feel like you’re making that difficult.”
“Oh, fuck off! If you wanna arrest me then arrest me! Why the hell did you need to attack me, I haven’t done anything to you!?”
“I don’t know who or what you are and you’re wearing my boss like a suit.”
“…”
“Well, one of my bosses, anyway.”
“… Ok, you’ve got me there.”
Pleased to have gotten that nonsense out of the way, Iphis happily continued, “Anyway, now that we’ve covered the basics, why don’t you start by introducing yourself? As long as you answer my questions and don’t lie, you’ll be fine.”
“Yeah, yeah, I get it… this ain’t my first [rodeo]…” she muttered, then blew a few stray strands of red hair away from her face with a petulant puff of air, “Most people now usually call me [Hunter]. [Hunter Benowitz.]”
Iphis nodded, assuming the second name was probably a house or clan name, and thus chose to focus on the former.
“Was that ‘hun-ta’ or ‘hunt-awhr’? I think you said it two different ways.”
“What? Oh, sorry, I got a buncha different accents fighting in my head right now… but you strike me as a [West Coast] kinda guy, so you should probably say it ‘hun-ter.’”
“Alright, ‘Hunter’. That’s not Cydonian… does it mean anything?”
Her eyes shifted away, and her mouth flattened into an awkward line.
“It’s just a name. People pick ‘em ‘coz they like how it sounds.”
Iphis raised one eyebrow and tapped the flat of the knife against his gloved palm repeatedly, letting the soft smack of metal hitting leather do the talking for him.
“Okay, yeah it means something, but it’s—the context makes it sound more ominous than it is, okay!? But it’s not like I chose it, I’m no [fink], going into [witness protection] wasn’t an option for me, I had to buy everything!” She surged to life out of her slouch, pulling at the ‘ropes’ as she ranted, “Do you have any idea how hard it is to get a new identity in the age of [computers]!? Everything’s [digital] now and [Uncle Sam] collects all sorts of data on you, and don’t get me started on fucking modern [printers], its wild how complex just a damn [license] can get, much less a [passport]! It’s not like the old days when you could get by with an [X-Acto knife] and some glue!”
Iphis frowned, beginning to have trouble keeping up with so many words he couldn’t understand, so he cut her off with a gesture and said, “Just explain it in Cydonian, please.”
“Ugh… in Cydonian it means ‘someone who hunts,’ are you happy!?”
An amused snort of air slipped out of him, and he covered his mouth. Across from him, Hunter glared at him like an angry cat.
She was right, though. That name was rather ominous, especially considering the body she’d taken, and the fact that she’d immediately made contact with the Young Saint and one of the heroes after arriving. If he was her, he’d have kept that translation to himself.
“Is that what you are, then? It sounds like this isn’t the first body you’ve possessed.”
“No! No to both! The only thing I am is retired, and for the record, all I took last time was some info. The guy was already dead! This is my first time in a new body!”
“Oh? Well then, congratulations! That must be very exciting for you.”
“Uh, thanks?” she replied, momentarily confused by how sincere he sounded. Then she paled as she realized what that implied and scrambled to correct, “Wait, no, I didn’t take this body on purpose!”
“We’ll get to that. First, when did you arrive here, and have you made contact with anyone from the Order?”
“What? No, I haven’t talked to any of those freaks! Look, I woke up in Ianthe’s secret room yesterday, Anemone found me there right after, and she took me straight to the infirmary from there.”
He nodded, pleased to hear that this lined up with the timeline they’d already put together.
“Alright, and where are you from?”
“Uh, [New Jersey]—wait, you won’t know where that is, that’s in [America]—no, you guys probably don’t have an [America]! Shit, I don’t even know what your continents look like, or if I’m even in the fuckin’ [Milky Way] anymore. Hey, do me a favor, do you know how many planets are between us and your sun?”
“I… ah… I’m not sure?” He blinked a few times, trying to figure out if that was something he’d ever known. Astronomy was a popular field of study among abyssal mages, but personally, beyond learning the equations and theorems necessary for spells, he’d never had too much interest in it.
“That’s fine, I was just trying to figure out if we were on [Mars] or something like that, but if we were on [Mars] there’d be two moons, but I’ve only seen one—or, hey, are you guys hiding a second moon?”
Iphis tilted his head. Was that something that happened where she was from?
“Not to my knowledge?”
“Damn, that’s—hey, does that make me an alien, do you think? Does it count as space travel if only your soul went? Or…” She frowned, her brows furrowing in concern. “Would that make me some kind of space ghost?”
He was starting to get the impression that, not only did she have no idea where she was, she’d also been bottling these questions up for a while.
He couldn’t help but find that strange. Maybe it was theoretically possible that she’d come to this world by accident, but a coincidence that big felt a lot more like fate.
Since she’d paused in her rambling, he observed, “You talk a lot when you’re stressed, don’t you?”
He didn’t mean it in an insulting way, but she took offense regardless, sneering at him as she replied, “And whose fault is that!? If you wanted a calm conversation you shouldn’t have attacked me!”
“True, true,” he conceded without a hint of guilt. “However, if I’m not mistaken, I believe what you were trying to say is that you’re from another world?”
“Yeah! Of course, that’s what I said!” She paused, then gave him a suspicious look. “So… why don’t you seem too surprised by that?”
“Oh… you run into it from time to time, in my line of work.”
“Wait, really? You’re not bullshitting me, are you?”
“Why would I?”
“Because you’re an asshole.”
“… Ok, you’ve got me there.”
He bit his tongue and looked up as he counted on his fingers. “But no, I’m not bullshitting you, as far as I know you’d be the fourth entity I’ve met that’s admitted to being from another world.”
“You’ve gotta be fucking kidding me, really!? Holy shit, that’s like, half the reason I was afraid to tell anyone, and it’s just… normal here?”
She wilted lifelessly in her chair, as though this realization had sucked the space ghost right out of her.
“There’s no need to be so upset. To most people, that sort of thing only happens in stories… Actually, with that in mind, I’d strongly suggest not telling anyone else if you can help it.”
“Why?” she asked, her eyes narrowing in distrust.
“Knowledge from other worlds can be very valuable, and there are people out there who’d snatch you up just to wring technology out of you.”
There were also people like him, who were more interested in benign subjects like culture and daily life, but were nevertheless absolutely willing to demand that information in a way that couldn’t be refused.
“Oh, okay… I didn’t even think of that,” she murmured. “It’s hard being an alien.”
“What’s the other half of the reason?”
“What?”
“That you didn’t want to tell anyone?”
“Oh? The Order, I guess.”
“Is that so? I find that a little strange, considering the body you’ve stolen.”
Offended once more, she tossed her hair and declared, “Hey, buddy, I’m not some fuckin’ cultist [schmuck]1contemptible loser, okay? And for the record, I didn’t steal nothing! Ianthe was gone by the time I got here!”
Iphis leaned forward, genuinely surprised to hear that, “What do you mean, ‘gone’? Are you saying Ianthe’s dead?”
“What!? No!” Hunter shrugged against her restraints, making a skeptical face as she continued, “She like—I dunno—used magic to fuck off or something! I don’t know where she went!”
“And you’re saying you, what, occupied a vacancy?”
“Yeah, basically! I, uh, ya know, died in my last life, ran into that spider goddess of yours, she was like ‘hey free real estate’ and like, [bada bing] now I’m this woman or whatever.”
Iphis blinked a few times, trying and failing to process what Hunter had just said.
“Spider goddess? Do you mean to say you met the Dread Lady? That you died and She sent you here!?”
“Uh… Yes? Unless you have any other weird spider goddesses I should know about?”
“That… you… hmm.” Iphis hunched over and rubbed one hand across his mouth, trying to get a hold of his own turbulent emotions, before he said, “Hunter, by any chance, do you think you’re human?”
“What!? Of course I’m human! What the hell did you think I was?”
“A spirit or a demon.”
“No! They don’t even have those where I’m from, I… I don’t think…?”
“But that’s not possible.”
“Well, it must be since I’m here! I swear, I’m just a normal guy, okay?”
Iphis leaned back in his chair. It was his turn to stare listlessly up at the ceiling, as he was beginning to feel a little dazed.
A human soul sent by the Dread Lady Herself, huh?
Wow.
What complete and total bullshit.