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cupoftrembling · 11 months ago

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Among the continent of the Shattered Planes, as has been increasingly obvious in my correspondence, the most abundant religious force is the Pantheon of Isosa. This is because, for a multitude of reasons, it is an objective fact. There is no mystery in its worship, no interrogation of why people believe it to be true. They simply have to open their eyes, see the shattered moon that hangs like a watchful eye over their homes. They simply have to look at the tears in the firmament, the stars and constellations that entropy has wrought. They simply have to speak to one of the many spirits or angels that were there at the dawn of time, who fought on either side of the Celestial Civil War. They have to just look at the smile on an old man’s face, or eat a warm meal, or share a laugh to know, somewhere, of the impermanence that The Wolf crept into reality.

The days pass, and it is all her fault. There is no need to wonder if it is true.

However, this is where I disagree with my contemporaries. Dr. Sutioni or Dr. Mya argues that this blatant fact has led to the dominance of the Isosian religion among the various, pious nations of the Askaven Continent. From the Western Wastes, where Wolf Apostates roam under their godhunter’s watchful eyes, to the forests of the Coalition of the Eastern Kingdoms. Even the Empire of Night, with their Adherence to the Everyman, is a form of Isosian anti-theism. They both argue in a cohesive faith, shared by each of these groups.

But look at the worshipers of the Eastern Kingdoms, who’s faith is so commingled with the state that even their kings claim a divine right to rule. Look even further, to the sects and mystery cults of the different divines within the forests of the kingdoms. The Friends of the Lady of Hounds, the Handmaidens of the Winter Queen, Qoonla’s Lovers. The Wolf Apostates border on atavism, more akin to relic-worship of whatever shards left over from the Celestial Civil War they can find buried among the snow of the Western Wastes. The nomadic orcs of the hinterlands have no structured religion, aside from whatever paladin covens they host, instead focusing on a stronger sort of familiar Lare. Even the strongest sense of a state religion focusing solely on the Isosian pantheon places itself as its opposite, the Adherence to the Everyman. More a philosophical guideline in the Empire of Night, the Adherence is a set of strictures and rules to tradition. To list them all would bore even me, but a common throughline throughout all of them is a form of disgust so obsessive that it borders on reverence. A preoccupation with the wrongs of the gods and their followers that were committed on the ‘every man.’ Humanity becomes divine and perfect, and the tools made by them become even moreso.

These are not the hallmarks of an organized religious force. Each of them are about Isosa and her coven in one way or another, but few are informed by her. The dedicated Isosian faithful are demonstrably fewer than the combined adherents of the other doctrines or philosophies. They keep to the wilds or to select, divided neighborhoods. The cities and outposts that Isosa has dominion over tend to be smaller, isolated affairs, who strive to be self-sufficient in all things. It is demonstrably harder to have the same sort of order and communal understanding that these adherents claim in larger settings.

There were few, if any, Isosian enclaves in the lawless monarchy that is Mariposa. Records indicate that a few neighborhoods banded together under the goddess of order during the reign of Queen Mariposa the Maddened. However, due to citysickness and general apathy towards growth by the faithful, those dissipated within one generation. Their temple, nestled deep within the Upper Wards, still stands.

The House of Swinging Trees was a tall, granite building, with a relief of alms being given by Isosa to humanity. It was all harsh edges and awkward lines, each converging towards the sky at slants. Made from holy geometry and mathematical precision. It sat in the center of a large and meticulous garden, with stones lining the center of a massive Babylon Willow. The grass that lay between the stones was some of the only for miles, an enclave of natural beauty in the iron and stone city of Mariposa. As if someone had raised the building from the ground, as if someone had hewn this place from the world itself.

This was what Remiel had been looking for.

He stood in front of the House of Swinging Trees for what felt like too long. It was just before night time, at the edge of winter. On his back, his loaned greatsword rubbed against a heavy bookbag. A gift, stuffed with knowledge, all of it leading him here. It dug into his shoulders, made his neck strain and hurt. If he wore one or the other, perhaps the awkward pain would not be here. But Remiel felt unsure whether he’d need knowledge or the blade and, one to loath uncertainty, brought both.

At the gate, made of pyrite shined to look like gold, stood an ashen orc. He was wearing no clothes of the scholar or theologian, no bag or book of hours. Under his arm on a single point sling was a shotgun. Remiel could hear its bullet singing to him, feel its call on the back of his neck. The orc was young, then. And the blade looked so large in the child’s eyes. The man in front of him wore a bruise under his eye, and several scratches across his face. From his neck, a single, silver broken fang. He glared at the paladin, rolling his eyes in displeasure.

“Need something, sir?” The orc grunted, words escaping from beyond his silver capped tusks. Between his lips and between his teeth, a cigarette. It smelt of sawdust and datura. “Temple’s closed, if that’s what you’re looking for. Healer is out sick, if you can believe it.”

“Oh um,” Remiel grips the strap of his book bag a bit tighter, as if that might protect him. “Are they alright?”

“Huh?” The orc raised an eyebrow. “How would I know?”

“You work, um, here, right?”

The orc narrows his eyes a bit. “Aye.”

“Well-” Remiel pauses for a second, and then thinks better of pressing the matter. “I guess, yeah, I guess it really doesn't matter. I just heard that you guys have a really good library.”

“We aren’t a charity case, kid. You want books, go to Sans Bernadine University.”

Remiel raised an eyebrow in shock. “Didn’t you hear about it?”

The orc chuckles to himself, shaking his head and crossing his arms. “Yeah, I did. Smelt it too.”

“Yeah, real pity about it.” Remiel frowned, knuckles white on his bookbag.

“Real pity.” The orc states dryly. “So, sorry, guess you’ll have to come back some other day.”

The paladin took a step forward, puffing out his chest in a show of strength. “No, I don’t think I will.”

He was face to face with the orc now, each standing heads taller than an average man. The orc scowled and took his cigarette from out of his mouth. “Yea? And why’s that, tough guy?”

“I am a paladin of Isosa.” Remiel continued, hand moving towards his sword like his rector had taught him. Words fail you, Remiel hears on the shivers of his neck, sense fail you, faith in steel. Remiel bites back the thoughts and hopes, beyond hope, that they are wrong. He speaks again. “And I need to know everything you know.”

The orc looks back at the sword on his back, and then back at the almost soft face in front of him. “Huh, real paladin.” This is all the orc can say.

“Can you please just let me in.” Remiel narrows his eyes. “Please.”

The orc smiles, drops the cigarette from his lips, and snuffs the flame out with his heel. “Sorrow is going to want to hear from you.”

The inside of the House of Swinging Trees was just as cold as the exterior. Granite floors and more pyrite light fixtures. It was lit entirely by candle and by wick, none of the halogen lights of most of the Mariposian homes of the day. Most of the electricity in the city came from large, crystalline bullets in power-factories along the coast. The bullet technology, the trapping of emotions and memories into physical, powerful forms, were considered anathema by the most militant of Isosian followers. They did, however, make an exception for weaponry. There were few arms more effective than the bullet powered firearm, and there were always causes for their use.

On the table next to Remiel were at least half a dozen of these firearms. Their handles and stocks were made from pure alder wood. Harvested in the depth of summer, the season supposedly closest to what the Fractal Fields of Isosa were. These weapons, they are true. They seem more real than the table around them, more situated in their place. Shotguns, pistols, small arms adept in the city style close quarters fighting that one would be familiar with here in Mariposa. There were no long rifles, no things of distance. Remiel had, at one point or another, thought of trading in his long, curving blade for such weapons. He had gotten into a scrape or two here in Mariposa, and while his sword is an effective mark of his station within the paladin’s of Isosa, it did not suit itself for the alleyways that Mariposian combat, often getting caught on the walls and bars that made up the city. He would rely on his words and, when those failed, the gifts his faith and birth had given him. And, throughout this, he felt loath to give up the sword.

The pistol besides his hand did seem all that more alluring, however.

On the table, next to these weapons of war, were books. The very thing that Remiel had been seeking. The dust covers were still on them, and it had been clear that they had never been opened by the inhabitants of the House of Swinging Trees. The room he was sat in had a window on the far side of it. Through it, he could see the courtyard with the Babylon Willow. He saw a small cambion man, blue with tall, straight horns, pruning a hibiscus bush. His clothing was a white skirt, with the little laces on the edge of it. On his head, tucking in his braided, brown hair, was a large sun hat, keeping the dusk sun from his eyes. The area of the city they were in was not as tall and grand as some of the others, as ambassadors and other men of power tended to like this neighborhood for its simplicity and safety. In the distance, one could see the whole of Queen’s Court, with its titanic skyscrapers covered in equally as mighty rose petals. One could see the sun setting behind the Concordat of Miracles, see the feral angel straining in vain against the iron nails driven through its wings. Out there, that is Mariposa. Towering and true. Above it, Imperial Warballoons cover the city like a dense haze, with little mechanized men flying between them. Green and gold banners hang from the edge of the balloons, each denoting a crescent moon with a sword driven through them, lest Mariposa forget who now rules it.

But here, in this temple, this could not be Mariposa, not really. The House of Swinging Trees was grand, certainly, but did not extend as far as the buildings around it. The gardens were manicured and delightful, each fit to burst with fruit that did not taste like sickly sweet perfume. Each of the blades of grass are the same length. Each of the doors are the same size, just a bit too short for Remiel to comfortably fit in. Each of the people housed here are all the same amount of driven, keen and sharp in their direction.

They’re all so like his home growing up. A little cabin in the fields somewhere in the Eastern Kingdoms. Always with three logs burning in the fireplace and small bushes in front of the windows. There was a scent of aspen on the breeze, despite there being no such forest near by the rolling fields of barley and grain. His father had described it as paradise after the hell of the Ibi-Vujčić Conflict. Where that was fire, this was calm, where that was storm, this was peace. He would sit in the dirt for hours, marveling at the sapphire beatles sitting on the leaves. Remiel once, and only once, saw Ferdinand, his father, reach his hand towards one of them, as to join them in their commiseration before his mother placed her hand on his shoulder. The beatles flew away, the moment over. They even had a babylon willow shadowing the house. Remiel would sit under its branches, trace his hands along its weeping branchlets like parting water. The leaves were always dryer, like it was a land of always autumn. A secret, private little enclave, just before the winter made them hunker in. Remiel never remembered the winter ever arriving, or the sweltering heat of summer. It was always in that secret liminal space, incapable of moving beyond or backwards.

Remiel placed his hand on the cold stone of the windowsill. There was no insulation between the walls and the outside, as it was made entirely out of stone and faith. The building was drafty and inhospitable to any of those not touched by Isosa’s constant contentment. Remiel felt a shiver fall down his spine. There was a biting, and blood in the mouth, and a shattering. And then it was over.

“It is quite a view.” A voice came from behind him. It was not a cold voice, but distant. Authoritative. It sounded, for only a moment, like his mother’s. He spun around, half convinced it was her. It was not, dear reader. She was shorter, first of all. Her skin was green and from her this infernal heat arose. Her tail curled around her right leg like a snake, a sign of piety and respect. Her horns were backswept and her hair was in a bun with a silver spear through the back of it. She smiled plainly, leaving dimples in her cheeks and no creases in her eyes. A cambion. Remiel fought the urge to look disappointed, a battle he did not win.

The woman winced in a sort of ego-pain at the paladin’s face, quickly dropping the smile. Remiel noticed her discomfort and brought his hands in front of him, fingers splayed in some sort of deference. “Oh my god, I am so sorry, miss. I j- I just thought you were someone. Someone I knew, someone else.”

“Ah,” The woman regained her smile, placing her hands behind her back. “No offense taken, paladin. I would, too, be disappointed if I thought I knew someone in this city, only for the truth to rip such comfort away from me.”

Remiel let out a sigh of relief, clearly believing whatever this woman was saying. She stood tall, with an impeccably straight back. Her hooves clopped against the floor, her gait was measured and disarming in its grace. “Your doorman, Clovis. He said you were the Abbess.”

The cambion nodded. “Mother Superior Brightwind, but please, Sorrow will suffice.”

“Brightwind?” Remiel repeats. “I know of a Vera Brightwind in Varak, I met pilgrims traveling to her abbey.”

Sorrow sucks air in between her teeth. They are sharp and the air tastes like holding onto a rosebush so hard you bleed. She exhales such violence and looks towards the floor. “My half sister. When my father remarried, he moved to the hinterlands.”

“Is religious leadership in your family then?” Remiel asked with a genuine curiosity.

Sorrow blinked once, and then twice. She was not used to personal, prying questions. It was not in the nature of her order to truly care. “My mother ran a paladin school in Karnata, before it's fall.”

Remiel smiled. “I see, you come by it honestly, then.”

“Truthfully,” Sorrow responds in a moment of un-vigilance, looking out towards the city. She stares at the space where the Sans Bernadine tower once stood, now a smoldering ruin. “This is a relatively new position.”

“I heard stories of the House of Swinging Trees from my rector. I thought it was abandoned years ago.” Remiel follows her eyeline, looking at the Concordat of Miracles. Both think they are looking at the same thing. “I’m really impressed by how you rebuilt it.”

“I’m.” Sorrow’s breath caught in her mouth. “Thank you, Ser Fey.”

Remiel looks back at her. “Remiel.” He pauses again. “Please.”

“I’m not too used to a paladin complimenting me, is all.”

“Yeah,” Remiel looks back out the window, this time looking at the now setting sun. “I don’t think a lot of people get compliments from us."

“That is my experience too.”Sorrow looks back at him with a face unreadable to me. “Why are you here, Ser Fey?” Sorrow asks what should be a question, but the words in her mouth can’t help but form a demand.

Remiel looks at her and frowns. He paces back towards the table and begins to flip through a book awkwardly. “Have, um, you heard from Isosa. At all, in the last couple years?”

Sorrow looks at the pages he is flipping through, unable to tell what he is looking at, if anything at all. Her fists ball in absent flame for just a moment. Is it a challenge? Is this an inquisition? Has someone questioned her faith? The air lionized with truth, she can feel Remiel’s magic begin to worm it's way into her mouth. It tastes like apricots and, somewhere distant, Remiel’s eyes glow.

“No.” Is all Sorrow ever could have said. She is not strong enough to lie.

The aura of truth fades, and so does the light in Remiel’s eyes. “None of the leadership I’ve talked to. It's been about twelve years since anyone mortal has heard from her. Same for the angels.” Remiel lets out a sigh. He hates using that. It is like holding a breath in his stomach, in his veins. To force a compulsion, it is like having air in your blood, or a dagger at your neck. “That's why I’m here, in Mariposa. It’s like she’s just gone.”

Sorrow blinks again. She fights the rising feeling of relief in her. Her mother always told her of hearing their goddess’s voice, guiding her, showing her the Grand Weft. Sorrow had never heard such things, not even in her childhood. When Sorrow looked to the sky, pleaded for some sort of guidance, she heard nothing. Only sweet, mortal silence. How lonely, how dreadfully lonely, Sorrow thought. She felt the bile of anger, or maybe resentment, rise in the back of her throat. Remiel stood before her, gleaming and resplendent in Isosa’s light, locs braided so tightly that it must have been divine. There must not have been a moment in his life that he had ever felt so alone, where the comfort of Isosa’s voice was not there to guide him.

Sorrow clenched her fingers a bit tighter, the room got just a bit hotter, and a bead of sweat began to roll down Remiel’s brow. He was everything she had ought to be. Servile and guided, never left in the abyss of having to make his own choices, or live with his own mistakes. To choose between a daughter and husband would have been no choice to him, even as the flames of The Wolf licked the back of his neck. He would not look at his daughter's eyes and wonder if he made the right choice. He would simply know, and that would be all he could ever need.

And then, she remembered.

He was just as lost as she was. He heard no divine choir or voice. Isosa had condemned them all, the powers of the church, to that cruel silence. His hands gripped the table, he had sought Sorrow out on his own, just as unsure as she was. There was no guidance here, no path to follow. A commiseration of grasping in the dark. A concordat of loneliness. And then her hands relaxed in un-vigilance. But the room still felt just as warm, burning in absent flame.

“Sorrow?” Remiel asks in genuine concern. He takes a step towards her, hands out in front of him like she was a wild animal. The room is spinning, the world is spinning. “Hey, hey, are- hey are you ok?”

“Huh?” Sorrow responds uncharmingly. She grasps the bookshelf next to her. “No, I'm ok.” She sucks in air. “Why?”

“You look like you just saw a ghost.” The paladin responds, stepping towards her again. And, on the back of his neck, he sees her for how she really is. Knees are bowed, the wind blows through her, her hands shake and try to find purchase. A cruel part of Remiel knows she is weak, and a voice that sounds like his mother almost commands him to excise the weakness from his church. These voices are ghosts, dear readers, shivers of a dying world. Remiel sucks air in through his teeth and forces these ghosts back into the past. “I just wanted. To make sure.” His voice is similarly shaky.

“Citysickness gets the best of us, I’m afraid.” Sorrow lies. Does he know? That she, for a moment, doubted him? Resented him? Had that moment of unvigilance disguised his aura of truth from probing her mind yet again? Did he feel her call on that absent flame? She sees the bead of sweat on Remiel’s brow. “Please, for my own sake, pay it no mind.”

Remiel nods, and the perspiration falls from his brow. “Then I will, Miss Brightwind.”

Sorrow lets her borrowed breath out, centers herself, and is relieved. “You mentioned Mariposa. Why here?”

Remiel takes the sword from off of his back, rolls his aching shoulders, and then places a heavy book on the table next to him. His bookbag swings lightly against his hip. It is a worn, orange covered text, with gold lettering just barely starting to fade. It is a worn copy of Contemporaneous Reports of the Celestial Civil War from its Veterans by Dr. Blair Allcott. “This text, it guided me here.”

Sorrow walks to the table, footfalls more sure now, and places her hand on the cover of the text. It was… academic. There were no other words that Sorrow knew on how to describe it. And she was equally unsure of why a Paladin of Isosa would care for it. “What… did you find in it?”

“Truthfully, not much. An interesting read, but most of the discussions were, um, really dry. And not at all really relevant to Isosa’s disappearance.” Remiel flips the book open, skimming through the well worn pages. A faint smile on his face, a wind from the west. His father has it open on one knee, Remiel on the other. Better times. “I couldn’t use any of the techniques in the book, but it led me to Dr. Mya.”

“The author?”

“Yes! I met her, she’s a delightful woman.” Remiel beamed this smile so warm it almost made Sorrow blush. He flipped through the pages again, until the book was back on its front. He frowns, and the room goes cold. “Unfortunately, her research has been destroyed.”

“The Sans Bernadine riots.” Sorrow blinks. “I’ve… heard about them.”

“Yea, she told me they were all in the spire when it went up in flames.” Remiel sighed. “All that knowledge lost, all that work destroyed. Centuries of books. It’s a shame.”

Sorrow stares blankly. Does he know? If he does, the only way to survive is to strike now. Strike true, Sorrow. Trust not your senses, trust not your eyes, faith in steel. These are the words her mother taught her. The maxim of the Paladin’s of Isosa. She could get one, maybe two shots in before he would be on her. But, ultimately, he would break her, dash her on his sword. And he would be right to. She was there, at the burning of the spire. She tasted his work turn to ash on her tongue. He smiles at her, and she did nothing to stop them. Kill him, he threatens Order. Past the window, she sees the feral angel, and thinks she hears her voice. Anathema, he is as lost as you are.

“It is a shame.” Sorrow responds blankly. Her hand trembles. Her fingers reach for her trigger. He knows.

“Yeah,” Remiel sighs, not even noticing his companion’s trembling, doesn’t even feel the knife at his throat. “But, it wasn’t all fruitless.” He looks up at her, beaming smile. It is radiant and scouring and even Sorrow could not interpret it as something it was not. “I spoke to her, I think I have an idea of what we need to do.” All Sorrow can do is look at him, her eyes squinting against his radiance. He hurt to look at but there was nothing else she could have done. He was resplendent, she knows this. Next to him, she is dim. Behind him, the sun halos his hair. In her mouth, all she can taste is apricots and pride.

She fights the urge to retch.

“What do you need of me, Ser Fey?”

“The first step is to get a relic of Isosa’s, something she personally touched.” Remiel produces a small journal from his bookbag. Green leather cover, with a small, segmented chrysanthemum embossed on the front in gold. It is new, there is no crease in the hardened leather from use. It cost thirty-six Imperial Thalers, from a small hawking stand somewhere in the Upper Wards of the city. Remiel produces a small pen from his pocket and flips the book open to one of the first pages. His speech becomes clear, his eyes dart between the illustrations on the pages. He is focus, assurity. “And something that had met her before. An angel, maybe. A construct from the war. Something sentient, but not mortal.” He looks down at his own hand, at the pores in his skin. His light fades, just a moment. “I’m, uh, not sure why, but it can’t be mortal.”

Sorrow narrows her eyes and takes a step closer to Remiel’s field notes. There are two sets of handwriting. One is in cursive, with long, connected continents that make the words flow together. It is nigh unreadable at its face, but Sorrow is sure of the contents of every stroke, almost as if the words are laced with some sort of acausal magicks. Meaning is imprinted on the lines of the text, imparting knowledge through observation, but not recognition. It could have been written in celestial script, and Sorrow would have always known what it had said. The other is in shorthand, with scratchy acronyms and unsure handwriting. It is shaky, and doesn’t follow the lining of the paper well. Despite being written, ostensibly, in print, it is much harder to interpret content or meaning. The two texts weave together, adding on and commenting on various different drawings, both equally made in each style. Dissections that look as if they were pulled right from the air, and cosmology that is so convoluted that even a religious woman like Sorrow can not understand them. They are, somehow, in synch at every moment.

Remiel brings his pen down to the page and adds more shorthand script, describing, what Sorrow can only imagine, is whatever content he will glean from this meeting. He dates the top of his notes, sixty-third day of the Third Year of Queen Mariposa the Negligent, and looks back up at Sorrow. It is an expectant look, a look of directionlessness. It is a look familiar to Sorrow, every time she looks in the mirror. He needs her guidance, her grace. Sorrow smiles a bit. It is a litigious grin. A grin made famous by the first queen of Mariposa. A grin dotted on every mural of Queen Mariposa the Litigious, right as she tricks Isosa into letting her guard down. It is the grin of the knife up your sleeve, it is ‘fucking the other guy before he fucks you,’ it is knowing beyond all knowing that the man in front of you must die.

Remiel looks up from his page and does not know. The smile in front of him is genuine, it is guiding. It is all teeth. He smiles back. He thinks of a joke his classmate had once told him, about the smiling abbess. It’s a common joke shared among the orders of paladins. About a ruler with fangs being the only thing that could make an abbess smile. “Everything ok?” He responds, half in jest

“You said it can’t be a mortal.” Sorrow leans forward, eyes shadowed and glowing. “What about a hound?”

And Remiel understands.

Autumn is the season of treachery.

It is the season of guile and of luck. A cantankerous superstition that is held by almost every society on the Shattered Planes. During the Celestial Civil War, the Autumn Court of the Wyld joined with the Wolf in rebellion against a court structure that had long reviled them. It was a simple choice, really. Before the Wolf’s Rebelion, there was only one option. Calm servility under the boot of the fey queens. When war broke out, there was something inviting in the flames of The Wolf. It is only fitting, then, that the element most associated with the Autumn Fey was the treacherous fire. The Summer Court had crackling lightning, the Winter Court’s ensnaring frost, and the Spring Court with their regressive amber. But the Autumn Court, they were hoisted the element of change, forced to mantle a raw, possessive magick even before it was associated with the Wolf.

This is why I balk when scholars attribute the hatred of the autumn season with its fey counterpart. Even before that rapturous flame consumed the Autumn Court, before the cruel hands of the clock had started to tick, the queens and regents of the Wyld had long reviled the autumn season. They were the tricksters in the fairy tales, hucksters and gamblers with stolen names and currency. Their Alder King was shrouded in mystery and in myth, with no face nor identity whatsoever. They were the boogeyman that scared the fey children who were never supposed to grow up. Their fall was predicated on that history, not the other way around.

This fear of the autumn, of the dying of the light, replicated itself across the survivors of the Celestial Civil War. In the Eastern Kingdoms, autumn was a time where no work was supposed to be conducted. Harvest is to be conducted late in the summer and then you are not to leave your doors until the first snowfall. To such an end, social philosophers skilled in accelerationist magicks spend countless days channeling power into the land. Either to keep them from falling or to hasten their fall. They do not allow them to change from green to orange and the sky is filled with stars or snow. And, in the autumn of the 89th year of Queen Mariposa the Licentious, the Economic District burned to the ground. I saw it light up the horizon, flames stretching far and wide into the pillaring skyscrapers that once dotted its land.

This is where Callan knew he could find her.

This is a place once kissed by the Alder King’s treacherous season; it is known that tricksters follow tricksters. The ruined buildings and burned out homes smelled familiar to the outrider knight. The moon hung low in the sky and the air was still, somehow after five years, laden with smoke. If a witch could not be found here, out of all places in Mariposa, then she could not be found anywhere. Callan ran his hand through his hair, shaking the soot from it. It was longer, now, than when his queen had shaped it for him. He had grown it out absentmindedly over the last few months. Let it run wild and fallow. It was a mistake, something that had simply slipped his mind. If he had cared to will it to not grow, he could have. He balled his fist in the flaming scarlet hair, fingers interwoven in his braid. He’d have to cut it before he saw his queen again. Make it more in line with what she wanted it to be. She had given him that hair, it was not Callan’s to change. But he wouldn’t have to change it yet. He could grow it longer. Or shave it all off. He grips the hair a bit tighter, as if his hand was engulfed in a heatless flame.

Besides him, squatters sit in a burned out building. The wall was broken behind them, revealing the rest of the home and, further, the alleyway. Their garb is long and flowing, with their limbs bound in tight fabrics. Their long cloaks were adorned in round bits and bangles that sounded like rumbling thunder when they moved. They made a small, smokeless fire in front of them. They cradled it in their hands like a child and, behind their masked faces, Callan can see an equal amount of glee. They chanted in woeful prayer, litanies against the cold. The flames responded in kind, crackling and breaking in tune. These were the apostates of the Wolf, this Callan is certain of. They were once relegated to the Western Wastes in exile and rarely left it in fear of sectarian reprisal. They are the tricksters of the Isosain, the boogeyman that lurks in the heart of every man. The fall that was the consequence of pride.

Callan looked at them with an unknown feeling in his chest. Pity? Pride? Recognition? He is not sure, and as a consequence neither am I. And both of us revile such uncertainty. If there is a mystery, it must be revealed. If there is a secret, it must be uncovered. We are both cowards in that way. Callan took a step towards them, his figure shadowed in the crumbling doorway. He placed his hand against the ashen wood, flames of autumn reigniting deep in the heartwood for but a brief moment. The apostates, shocked by the sudden intrusion of a stranger, clasped the fire closer to their hearts. Their clothes did not singe, but their skin began to blister and burn from the flame. There were no enemies here in Mariposa, but reflex is reflex.

“Ahoy.” Callan raised a hand in sympathy. A single, lick of flame darted between his fingers. “Friend, not foe.”

One of the apostates lowers his white mask, revealing a stubbly chin and toothy grin. He lowered his hood, his ringed fingers gliding across the fabric with the delicate grace of a dancer. He was, once, back in the Eastern Kingdoms, before one poisoned word drove him west. “You’re a part of no Da’as.” The man motioned to Callan’s clothing, to the large fur coat that hung off his back.

Callan nodded and took a step forward. “I am not.”

“I didn’t know fire was popular outside of our Da’as.” The man’s companion added, visibly relaxing somewhat. “Poor publicity, I suppose.”

“It can be popular in the east, if you look close enough.”

The man with the stubbly chin smiles. “If you go east far enough, you eventually find yourself west.”

Callan narrows his eyes somewhat. “I’ve never been one for the horizon.”

“Could have fooled me.”

“You ever thought about heading to the wastes?” The man’s companion responded, unaware of whatever innuendo was shared between those two. His teeth were blunt, as were his words. His hands were clumsy and unken to fire. But he had kind eyes, and that crease where his smile folds his brow. “I know Isosian’s are not too friendly to fire.”

“I fear only one, and that is not Isosa.” Callan smiles at the man with blunt teeth. “But I will say, I understand the sentiment.”

“Come, sit for a spell.” The man with the stubbly chin slaps the floor next to him, kicking up ash and dust. “I’m Jiro of Da’as Cerena, my forward friend is Martine, of the same.”

“Martine? Mariposian name, no?” Callan sat down across from the fire. “How does it feel to be home again?”

“Ah, I am not home, though.” Martine rubbed his palms together furtively. “I am an outcast even in this place.”

“And yet,” Callan adds his warmth to the fire. “Here you are.”

“You’ve yet to introduce yourself, stranger.” Jiro asks.

“Where are my manners!” Callan smiles. “You may call me Callan.”

Jiro nods. “Pleasure.”

“Charmed!” Martine beams. “What brings you to the Great Butterfly, my friend Callan?”

“I am but a tourist, a visitor here.” Callan gesticulates with his free hand. With it the flames dance and flicker, as if following some sort of conductor. “I could ask the very same of you, my new friends. Mariposa is far from the wastes. I’m sure such a trek was perilous for you.”

“Our wayward brothers, the Isosian’s bothered us very little, actually.” Jiro stares into the fire. He leans against the half broken wall behind him in a show of relaxation. “We had more trouble with the terrain than we did with the lash.”

“Our Da’as moved with us.” Martine reaches inside his cloak and pulls out a smoked peach. He breaks off a piece with grubby fingers and hands it to Callan, across the fire. Callan, unaccustomed to gifts, does not take it. Martine shrugs and brings the dried fruit to his lips. After a moment, he continues. “Cerena values hospitality, if you care to stay with us for a spell.”

“I’ve heard all the wastrals keep such virtues.” Callan nods, closing his eyes slightly and taking in the sweet smoke. This wood had been burnt many times before, by many transients. Its bark was coated white with ash and soot. But yet, it still manages to light just the same. Its heartwood is a deep, burnt orange. Like autumn had seeps deep into its being. It looked like a sky on fire, like a birchwood in the throws of a fall. “If I am to stay with one, I am to stay with all.”

“There are no Isosians here, friend.” Martine sits up a bit tighter, eyes catching sparks like fireflies. “What is there to be afraid of in a hot meal?”

“It is not the heat I fear.” Callan chuffs. “I just do not need such comfort at the moment.”

“Perhaps that is what we seek in Mariposa proper.” Jiro traces his finger along the ashy dirt. The heat of the fire suffused them. Warded them from the cold. It was spring, now, in Mariposa. And yet, after the autumn fires, the Economic District was laden with that sodden chill. The air was thick with that dampness, as if the world itself was attempting to douse the absent flame with tears overflowing. The everburning wood was thick with wet. It was suffused with that lung sticking petrichor and the clouds hung low and dark in the sky.

And yet, even here, transients huddle. Mired in cold and wet rain, they congregate here. Callan looked at his companions, if not in name then in circumstance. Their shoulders were covered in dew, their cloaks were soaked through. But they had traveled miles towards Mariposa on sore feet and a dream. What was Mariposa to them? Callan could not know. To him, Mariposa was an iron cage. A task to be completed and then never thought of ever again. Overhead, the jackboots float their mechanized balloons across the air like lead dandelion seeds. Each with a gun and a will to kill. These facts prevented him from knowing.

“The people who rule this place hate your faith.” Callan grits his teeth. “Hate you. This is not comfort.”

“No.” Jiro smiles, his eyes cast low towards the flame. “But it might be one day.”

“No matter how many times the flames go out.” Martine smiles, too, looking at Callan bright and beaming. “We can always rekindle it.”

Callan brings his knees to his chest. If Lucius could see him, if anyone of the Primrose could see him, would they laugh? Would they chide him? Would they join in? He gritted his teeth, trying to grind the uncertainty out of his fangs. “Would it even be the same fire?” He asks, voice low under the crackle of the flames.

“That doesn’t matter.” Martine leans forward somewhat, as if to hear Callan all the more clearly. Like it was some secret the two needed to share. “As long as the fire burns.”

“Apostasy.” A voice comes from the warped doorway. “I will stand no more of it.”

All three whip their heads towards the voice. It was still, like a nail moving against glass. Each modulation made some deep part of Martine and Jiro flinch. Like a child from a nun’s ruler. They covered their hands, dowering the fire in a moment’s notice. The coals sputter and sizzle, keeping the flame deep in their hearts. The woman in the doorway with the voice that sounded like breaking glass held a gun in her hands. A revolver. A long, fanged barrel, mouth open and dripping with heat. Her finger was over the trigger, thumb on the hammer, both trembling. Her skin was this infernal green and her eyes glowed with a familiar, golden hue. She was an abbess, something about that gun made it eminently clear. It was more real than she was. It was the absence of flame, whereas fire is shifting and impermanent, that gun was sure and true. It was all hard edges and secant lines.

Behind her was a towering man. On his shoulders were a sheath and a bookbag, his hair woven tightly in locs, tight to his scalp and coming up around his shoulders. His dress is plain, for Mariposa at least. A white, billowing shirt. Skin like smooth, polished obsidian. Hair smells strongly of apricot and honey. He looked like he was pulled straight from a bodice ripper. He looked at the woman next to him almost like a lost dog. He looked like a paladin, of this they are all sure. It is in the way the sun seems to halo his head, in the way that the clouds part but the oppressive wet does not. He did not look at the men on the ground in front of him, as if they didn’t even register in his vision. Callan knew, however, that he was under this paladin’s intense scrutiny.

Callan stands up, dusts himself off. This is not his fight. For a moment, he thinks to give Martine a compassionate look. A thanks for the peach, if only in offer. He fights the desire, but it is still there. He continues to look at abbess and smiles a litigious smile. “I was unaware there was a contingent of Isosian’s here.”

“Would that have changed your behavior?” The paladin responds. “We’re a response to the Wolf, not a threat to keep good behavior.”

The abbess glares at the paladin. “Remiel.” Her voice is condescending, barely contained disgust at how wrong he is.

“Is that your name?” Callan interjects. “An odd one.”

“My mother picked it.” Remiel looked at the abbess again, almost bashfully, answering the question implied. “Beyond that, I’m not sure.”

“It's an old name, in an old language.” Callan shrugs. “I’m surprised a learned man does-”

“That is enough, Callan.” The abbess’ voice is steady, authoritative. She speaks and the world needs to listen. “That is enough.”

“Right,” Callan bristles. He motions to the men behind him. They are scared and in their hands are guns. “I take it you’re here for these two.”

“I am not.” The abbess responds. “But I am unsurprised that dogs congregate.”

Callan raises an eyebrow. His hand moves towards the hilt of his sword.

“You two.” Remiel raises a sword at the wastrals behind Callan. They raise their guns in kind, fingers trembling. Their feet are unsteady, the recoil from their shot would knock them to the ground. In another world, if they are to fire, they would certainly miss. “I need you to leave.”

“Remiel?” The abbess snaps her head towards the paladin. The wastrels back towards the broken down wall behind them. In a moment, they are gone.

“I don’t want to fight if I do not have to.” Remiel glares at the abbess but for a moment. Authority. It is pure and boring. For a moment, he is his mother. And order must be restored. Never questioned, never flinched. He has a ruling and he will be listened to. “Do I have to fight?”

“Only if I have to.” Callan responds. In that moment of distraction, of petty un-vigilance, he has drawn his sword. In his other hand, a curved staff topped with a carved, dragon’s head. The abbess curses under her breath. “Two on one doesn’t exactly seem a fair fight.”

“Isosa is not the goddess of fairness.” The abbess sneers. “I am not surprised you fail to grasp such a distinction.”

“Is- is this the one we’re looking for?” Remiel asks. His hands are gripping his twisted greatsword, one hand on the hilt, another choked up on the blade, just below the parrying hooks. A duelist's stance, to control the blade tighter in the close quarters. Callan knew Remiel was no amateur. It was instruction beat into him. “Sorrow, please tell me this is the right person.”

“He’s the hound you need.” Abbess Sorrow responds. “Trust not your eyes, trust not your senses.”

Remiel closes his eyes. He breathes in through his nose. Out through the mouth.“Faith in steel.”

It is Callan that strikes first, while Remiel is busy focusing himself. He brings his curved sword down against the flat of Remiel’s blade. Sparks fly as metal clashes, steel grinds against steel. There is an ear-raking sound and Remiel’s bladepoint heads down. Soot is kicked up in the air. The room grows warm in absent flame. Sorrow takes a step back from Remiel and smiles a litigious smile. Callan rears his other arm back, drawing the staff like a viper. His muscles contract, tighten like a piano wire.

His foot shifts underneath him, twisting backwards in a moment. Soot and ash and flame kick up in its wake, throwing that pyroclastic flow into the air. He thrusts the head of the staff at Remiel’s throat, an attempt to knock him off guard, disarm the paladin before he can retaliate. This is what Callan has on Remiel, surprise and guile. The tools of the autumn fey. Sorrow can not see through the obscuring smoke. She believes that Callan’s blade will find Remiel’s heart. And that would be just. Anathema.

Remiel can see.

His eyes do not follow Callan’s blade, it is not the deadly weapon in this circumstance. It is in how his muscles contract. Remiel can see the strands that make Callan, sees them tighten, sees the way energy flows in his body. He sees the nestle of flame in Callan’s heart, sees how it channels that fire. He knows the sword is to parry. The sword is the distraction, the rattler on the tale. That cane, that is where death is. That is the object that will unmoor him. It will open him up to what actual hatred this Callan has in his mind. The soot obscures his eyes, burns the edges of his retina. Trust not your eyes. The cane is moving faster now, it would be easy to bring his sword to Callan’s feet. This is what his rector would have done. Callan has left himself open to a brazen counter attack. He has no faith his opponent would be bold enough to go on the attack, let alone a paladin of Isosa. This is what would unmake him. Trust not your senses. This is what his mother would have done. Pressed the attack, take that giant greatsword and unmake Callan right now.

Faith in steel.

Remiel breaks his grip from his sword’s ricasso just as Callan’s cane passes it. He can feel the hot wind from the staff, feels it cut the air to ribbons. At the same moment, he twists his other shoulder, following the bladepoint into the ground. It brings Callan’s blade with it, locked in rapturous sound with the parrying hooks of his blade. His hand grabs Callan’s at the same point his blade’s edge hits the soot. He drops the greatsword, the one thing a paladin is never to do, his bookbag hitting his lower back. His hands divert Callan’s cane away from where it would strike. He thinks to throw the man, to continue his momentum and force this man to the ground. But something about how the energy flowed around the pirate, something about that ungodly heat and warmth that leaks from the edges of him, makes him reconsider.

Callan’s hair stands on edge. The trick his mentor had taught him, the trick that had forsaken many other bladesmen, had failed. His cane flies through the air, now shunned from the kill it so desperately needed. His blade knocked loose from his fingers. His eyes lock with Abbess Sorrow, smiling a familiar smile. It is the smile of Queen Mariposa the Litigious and it is a smile that Callan wears well. In her hand that baneful revolver. She is cycling the cylinder with her thumb. Waiting. Expectant. Like these two are carrion. Like these two are meat.

And Callan refuses to be meat.

He does not know it, but that is the only thought that writhes through his head. How much, at that moment, even beyond Remiel or even beyond Maeve or even beyond his target, he wishes to kill this woman smiling his smile back at him. He knows, for a moment, what it is like to hate the autumn The deception, the guile, the backhanded smile. That is all he has known the autumn to be. And, dear reader, he hates how good it makes him feel. It is a feeling that starts in his heart, a feeling that starts in his gut and in his muscles. It radiates to his fingers, to the tip of his nose, something coiled at the base of himself, desperate for release. Remiel’s back is turned towards his abbess and her hungry, hungry eyes. The air catches fire.

“I knew it.” The abbess smiles.

Arcs of flame smolder between Callan’s fingers, following odd lines and trajectories of travel. They are like birch leaves in fall. White spats of superheated air crackle and singe near the heads of his fingers. His hand lets the sword fall to the ground, knuckles white and fingers balled in flame. They are close now and Remiel can see Callan’s face now. The teeth barred, breath hot and heavy. He looks like he needed to bite Remiel, looks like his teeth grow long. His neck, now exposed from the long of his lapel, looked raw and worn, as if it was held by a cold iron choker. Like whoever held the leash held it tight. Callan is rabid, of this Remiel is sure. The paladin’s feet move backwards, kicking up the dusty ash of the floor.

Callan swipes to the left, the paladin slides to the right. Flame barely misses the tip of his nose. Licks of burning air fly off the edge of the fire, illuminating Remiel’s dark skin like starlight. Dusk and embers whorl around the two of them, caught in the updraft of their conflict. Remiel eyes his discarded sword. Callan eyes Sorrow’s gun. She has leveled it at Remiel’s back and at Callan’s heartflame. Her finger is off the trigger, for now.

“Tired paladin?” Callan asks through ragged breath. Fire takes its toll and the air was laden with ash.

“Maybe.” Remiel’s shoulders heave, the bookbag on his back feeling heavier than usual. His sword is next to Callan’s feet, if he goes for it, Callan can strike him. End him. “You don’t look perfect yourself.”

“The city, it chokes me.” He sneers. “Nothing more.”

Remiel raises an eyebrow. What did he mean by that? Nowhere, not in any scriptures, did Mariposa stand at odds with wolfkin. If anything, this leaden city would embolden agents of chaos. He thinks for a moment to look back at Sorrow, to look for guidance. An unseen fire cracks behind him, the cycling of Sorrow’s gun.

A round wizzes past Remiel’s ear, the air boiling in its wake. The paladin’s skin is warm, almost singing from the momentum of the round. It is like an absent flame, all the oppressive, destructive heat of fire with none of its warmth. None of its purpose. Somewhere, birds fly from their perch. Somewhere, a heart stops. It is the death of all things and it hits Callan square in the shoulder. His eyes grow wild and the force of the shot throws him to the dusty floor, feet tumbling over his torso. The fire, for a moment, dims. Remiel whips his head back towards Sorrow.

“What was that?” He shouts over the ringing in his ears. He stands from his half lurch. In a moment, and without Remiel noticing, his sword is back in his hand. “Sorrow, what did you just do?”

Sorrow canters her wrist, gun tilting at an odd angle. Air sublimates off of its barrel. It is shimmering with that dreadful, baleful heat. Remiel, for the first time, sees it. Sees that gun in her hand. Sees how it catches the light. It is a weapon made of broken glass, dripping with absent flame and refracted light. On the edges of it, rending jagged glass shards stick into the hands of the user. It is a weapon made from the shattering of hope and it is more real than she is. Her hand drips with blood. It is the only thing that is not burning.

“He would strike you again.” She replies. Her feet are shoulder’s width apart, her torso is tilted slightly. It is the stance of a killer. “I would not stand him to do so. Move.”

“You don’t have the authority to tell me that, Sorrow.” His voice is low, furtive. He tries not to sound like a petulant child.

“You waste your time, paladin.” She lilts at the end of her sentence, drawling his title into singsong mockery. She levels her gun towards him again. “Even now, he plots behind you.”

“That’s you, isn’t it.” He motions towards the gun in her hands. “That’s the real you. Whatever’s standing in front of me, that’s just the thing that shepherd's you from place to place.”

“Is it so bad to be something?” She places her free hand under the grip of the revolver. When he moves, that is when she will shoot. Her hands drip with absent flame. She can see it in his eyes, he is lost. He is what will make her lost again. This is just. Anathema. “Remiel, please. I need you to trust me.”

“You burn, Sorrow.” Remiel levels his sword against her, point lining up with the barrel of the pistol. “You’re burning already and you don’t even know it.”

Sorrow sucks air in. Her eyes go wild. Her hands tremble.

The air catches fire.

She is faster than Remiel is. The crack of heat lighting shatters outwards from that gun, gold and amber aurora flashing from where the bullet meets the frame. The air is thick with fire and with heat. The bullet crawls its way into Remiel’s torso, tearing and rending away skin and muscle. Remiel does not feel it. Trust not your senses. He is movement, he is momentum. His sword is in both of his hands and Remiel has broken into a sprint. He will spear her, dash her against his blade. He does not feel it, he can not feel it. He does not feel the bullet rending him, does not feel his muscles separating from each other. His heart beats fast, faster than it has in years. His skin is no longer diseased and he can not feel whatever was clawing at him.

He can not feel it.

The round misses his heart by inches. The recoil of the shot throws Sorrow’s hand into the air, obscuring Remiel in the barrel of the gun. He is fast, but he has momentum. Inertia will kill him. She feints, jerking her body left but moving right. He will move past her, of this she is sure. As sure as the gun in her hand. She cycles the cylinder, rotating the bullet into a stronger position. Energy crackles in her hand. She will have killed a paladin and then a wolfkin. She is strong, and that is purpose enough.

True to her thought, Remiel shoots past her by inches. Her mouth twists and contorts into that litigious grin without her even knowing. She wears, now, the mask of Mariposa. Every bit of hatred and scorn that this city has ever had is in Sorrow. Sorrow wishes she hated this feeling, she wishes it did not feel so good. She levels her gun against Remiel. He is in her sights. He kicked off an errant piece of architecture, forcing his body back towards his murderer. He is fast, but he is not fast enough. Sorrow sees it, sees the glowing amber blood drip from his skin. Sees his heart beating fast in his chest. She knows where she needs to shoot. She moves her finger over the trigger. It cuts her. She bleeds. This is just.

And then, fire.

There is fire between the two of them. Remiel is lost in its conflagration. There is heat and purpose in this flame. It is orange and yellow like birch trees in autumn and Sorrow knows. She looks to her side, her grin leaking from her lips. It is Callan. He is on the ground, shoulder dripping soot from his wound. It leaks out of him like magma, like some great wound in the earth extolling fire as virtue. Hair is in his eyes, and she can see now. See past the soot and the ash, she can see him. His hair is not the color of autumn. It is the color of blood. His hands are wrapt in fire. His face a familiar, Mariposian, grin. An infectious thought crosses her mind. It is luminous. Like a lighthouse at sea. It forces any sense or sensation from her thoughts. It forces her to think how much better it looks on him than on her.

Remiel crests through the flames at a speed that could break bones. Flames dance from off of his skin and off of his clothing, desperate to grab hold of him and tear him down. He hits Sorrow at that speed, the heat of the flames clinging to his skin. She feels a rib crack under the pressure. His breath is hot and damp and smells like rotting fruit. His voice carries that sickly sweet smell of decay and putrefaction. A corruption of the divine. She knows, past the pain and past the violence, what he truly is. He is the death of all things. Of divinity, of peace, of order. In Remiel, she sees what would cause her ruin. Her head is thrown back as they make contact with the wall behind them, and they keep going. Crashing through decaying and burnt wood, the dust and char fills her lungs.

They hit the ground together, his sword run through her shirt and the edges of her stomach. A glancing wound. A goring wound. She looks up at him and sees the auburn hue in his eyes shift from gold to green. His teeth are long and sharp like rows of delicate knives. In him, Sorrow sees a wolf. She grimaces in pain and in disgust, hand grasping for her gun she dropped three feet back. It shakes and rattles, like it tries to return to her.

“Anathema!” She cries out, blood and spit mixing in the back of her throat. “I lay on you anathema!” She tries to spit in his face, but her lips are too dry.

“You can’t do anything to me Sorrow.” Remiel responds in a voice too sure to be his. “I just fucking hate you.”

His blade twists in the dirt, tearing at Sorrow’s skin and muscle. He thinks she is run through, that she will bleed her last out on that blade. That is why it is curved, that is why his blade mimics the stag’s horns. It is not to resemble his goddess, it is to rip and tear and bleed and break. Sorrow grimaces and winces. She feels his own ichor drip out onto her, staining her shirt and mixing his blood with hers. It feels like acid in the veins, like a cruel burning without heat or warmth. She fears, dear reader. In his eyes, Sorrow sees the same hatred she shown him. Revealed, now. He is sharp, razors keened and honed to an edge. Remiel is a blade now, and nothing else. No longer obscured or hidden behind some litigious grin. In his eyes, she sees oblivion, and she would deserve it. It would be her place.

Sorrow refuses to be that subservient ever again.

She rears back her head and strikes Remiel against the nose with her brow. Ichor and sickening bone-crack splatter from Remiel. It drips into his mouth, frothing with spit and rage already. The pain pulls him back, makes him understand that he is a body with meat and with sense, not a weapon. He reels back, hands dropping his sword and gripping his now broken nose. His bookbag slams against the back of his knees. This is when the pain in his shoulder returns to him. Remiel falls to the floor. Sorrow scrambles backwards, brow now covered in blood and gore. It runs into her eyes, staining her verdant green skin a dark, muddy brown. The blood looks duller now, less real, than it did flowing out of the paladin. Like whatever had imbued it with such purpose left it when it had left Remiel.

He glared at her, from his place on the floor. From behind his fingers. Dust and ash mixing with his blood, cascading onto his face like a death mask. That visceral disgust might be gone, but not its purpose. She had attacked a member of Isosa’s holy order with no due purpose. Sorrow Brightwind is a threat, as is her Order of Broken Fang. Remiel bites his lip to stifle his moans. A failure. No steps further. He reaches a hand towards her, towards the hilt of his blade.

“Get out of here.” A voice comes from behind Remiel. It is Callan. He is gripping his shoulder, still leaking magmatic blood. His wound is sizzling, steaming from the wound. As if whatever had shot him was still burning. In his other hand, limp at his side, is his sword.“Before I and my friend find it more fun to hunt you.”

“I will burn you all.” Sorrow scrambles backwards, lurching towards the burned out door behind her. “Anathema. I lay on you all Anathema.”

“It wouldn’t be the first.” Callan smiles. “I will be interested to see if, this time, you succeed.”

Somewhere, overhead. A lighting bolt crackles. For the first time in five years, it rains in the Economic District of Mariposa. Between the moment of lighting and thunder. Sorrow is gone. Squirreled away somewhere into the ash and dust. Remiel sighs and begins to sit up, his shoulder tense and swollen. He brings his free hand to the bridge of his nose, feels the pressure of blood coagulating just underneath the skin. It is building. He is himself again. His disgust smoldered out into mere, and infinitely more harmless, anger. Anger, dear reader, anger is actionable. You can understand what angers you. Change either yourself or the world. Disgust only allows you violence, senseless and all encompassing. In disgust, you must destroy what disgusts you.

Faith in steel.

“Ah, ah.” Callan coos. “Easy, now. Move the wrong way and you might rip something.”

Remiel sighs and keeps his hand pressed tight against his wound. “I’m uh, pretty sturdy.”

“Hells, I can see that.” Callan grins, this time with a genuine smile. His brogue is thick on the tongue. “With how fast you move, I’m quite surprised. Can’t knock you down, can I?”

“Are you going to try to?”

“No, no.” Callan shakes his head. “Something tells me I couldn’t. A gun like that would kill any regular man.”

“You’re, um. Not a wolfkin.” Remiel looks down at the floor, eyes glowered in dejection. “Are you?”

“You’ve been had, I’m afraid. Been the butt of the lark”

“Yeah, that’s what I thought too.”

“Chin up, friend.” Callan sits down on the floor next to Remiel. He twists fire from his wound, drawing it deep from inside of him. Remiel wants to flinch, to run away from such a flame. But, to him, all it feels is warm. “She wore that grin almost as well as I do.”

“I’m uh. Sorry I tried to kill you.”

Callan tuts. “No you didn’t. If what you did to me was trying to kill me, you’d have looked like how you treated the good abbess there.”

“Yeah,” Remiel laughs shallowly, then sucks air in through his teeth. He holds his side tight, clenching some torn muscle used up in whatever magicks Remiel had used to keep himself alive. “Oh, uh. Ow. Don’t- Don’t make me laugh.”

“Noted.” Callan nods. “You did say you needed me for something.”

“I uh.” Remiel removes his hand from his shoulder. The bleeding shouldn’t have stopped yet, Callan thinks. And yet, when he draws his hand back, he is leaking no more. “It's personal business.”

“Far be it from me to pry.” Callan shrugs, reaching into his coat to draw some flask with his good hand. “A man has to keep his own secrets.

There are several moments of silence, as the rain pitters onto the burned out rooftop above them. The wind is not whipping, and the rain is light. A nuisance. Remiel looks over to his companion. “You haven’t talked to Isosa before? Have you?”

Callan blinks twice. “No.”

“Damn.” Remiel sighs as he moves to get up. He winces in pain. Callan looks at the paladin’s shoulder. Healed, already. No more of the sickly sweet ichor that filled Callan’s mind with thoughts of home. His thin, white shirt had been torn open with the bullet, damp with his blood and sticking to his skin. The wound looked closed. Tender, but closed. The flesh around it, however, looked diseased. Thick tendrils of black miasma warped and weaved like roots. Remiel notices Callan’s gaze and moves to cover it with his hand. The pirate looks down at the floor, bashfully.

“You looking for your goddess?” He responds after a slight moment. His own shoulder is not as lucky. The bleeding has stopped, but his arm hangs limp.

“You might not be my target, but that fire doesn’t mean I should trust you.” Remiel mutters. “Sorry.”

“Meant nothing by it, friend.” Callan shrugs with one of his shoulders.

“No, no, eugh.” Remiel pinches the bridge of his nose out of reflex, then flinches away when his hands make contact with the break. “Sorry, I’m just-”

“Worn out?”

“Tired, yeah.”

Callan sits on the floor next to Remiel and starts up his fire, for just a moment. It dances like a friend, flickering shadows cast against the now sodden walls. The fire crackles with moisture and air shimmers with heat, refracting all that is in front of them.

“I’m here, hunting for someone too.” Callan starts back up again. “A witch who’s stolen something from my lady.”

“Not much to go off of.” Remiel shies away from the fire for a moment, his torso turning slightly away, as if a child running from a large dog.

“I’m afraid not.” Callan sighs, his breath shaky. To keep this fire up drains him. But Remiel looks as if he needs the warmth, shuddering in the cold as he is. His grin grows wide, and Remiel does not see.

“I certainly will not stand in your way.”

Callan knows what to do.

“When I was younger,” Callan starts, hands held out in front of him, warm in its embrace. “I understood that was all fire was.”

“Hm?”

“Distortion. When fire, true fire, warms, it distorts the air around it. Refracts it in ways that are untrue.” He pauses for a moment. “Fire was guile, it was trickery.”

“Huh.” Remiel leans forward a bit. Was this the first time he’s been close enough to fire to truly see it? The rector was warmed by steam, his home never needed to keep out the cold. The fireplace had always sat empty and whatever food they needed, his mother had always provided. He had heard stories of it, been taught to fear it. But he had never seen it. He moves his hand to his shoulder again, feels the pulse of his heart in his reforming wound. “Fire was destruction. For- for us.”

“Is that right?”

“Fire marks decay, it marks entropy. The breaking of things down from what they were. A transformation.”

“Do you see that right now?”

Remiel pauses for a second. He knows, somewhere, that there is a transfusion here. Part of whoever Callan is was being destroyed in order to create this fire. He could see, if he looked hard enough, the channels of energy along Callan’s veins. He could see the fire burning in his stomach. Consuming him. A wretched thing. A thing of the abyss, of entropy. These are things he can see.

Trust not your eyes.

Callan can see the fire dancing within them, like a child looking at the stars for the very first time. Remiel’s face is lit up, the shadows grow longer. They are enrapturing, they are obliterating. Upon them, they are the death of all sense. Remiel moves his hands towards them, as if Prometheus grasping for its warmth. Callan’s grin grows just that bit wider, catching the rest of his face ablaze in its glory. A moment, Remiel thinks, a moment could not hurt.

“No.”

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