Sláine had to admit, she was expecting more dark, gloomy stone hallways, not the upper floors of an eerily lit amphitheater.

It was tiered in structure, like a coliseum, each level filled with figures that Sláine couldn’t see clearly due to the peculiarity of the lighting — well, if the gemstones casting their glow over a back-lit audience could be called that. They were rendered into lumpy masses of unsettling, faceless silhouettes, those gathered figures, their white hair painted in shifting arrays of color by the crystals set into the walls. Beyond that, there was darkness, aside from a circular platform of raised white marble at the very center of the structure.

It looked a bit like a full moon, Sláine realized, and the gems reminded her somewhat of stars.

From below, she heard singing, a strange chorus that reverberated up the chamber in disquieting dips and falls. Sláine stepped closer to the balcony, and looked up to see that there was no ceiling to the place, but she also couldn’t see the sky — spires of rock jutted from the roof of a cave instead, one of them glowing and casting a floodlight-esque beam down onto the central stage below.

Interestingly enough, the people around her parted without resistance when she pushed, not even looking at the woman. It was almost like they couldn't even see her.

Or... no. Like they couldn't even detect her.

...Hm.

Regardless, her ultimate focus was Red — and there she was.

At least, there was a figure wearing her mask, though she was still in those bizarre clothes, and her hair wasn't the purple color that Sláine associated with her. It was white instead, which made sense, Sláine supposed, it matched everyone else in this place and she hadn't really ever thought her hair color was natural. There were more people around her, all white-robed and many with their arms spread out, and while it was hard to see anything clearly from this far away, she could only guess it was they who were producing that strange, awful singing.

[ Threat Detection ].

Oh, ow.

Everything registered as dangerous, those people down around the circle most prominently, but also every single member of the audience, and something... else, something that felt worse than anything else was on the lowest level. Sláine would have to be careful. She didn't want someone grabbing Red and pulling that disappearing trick again, though this time she hoped to be more prepared for it.

…Maybe before, she shouldn’t have hit first and asked questions later. Oh well.

"Wait, that doesn't make an sense, how did we…? How is this…? This isn't supposed to be happening for months, at least!"

Sláine turned sharply towards the sound beside her and furrowed her brow in confusion. There was Janus, leaning against the balcony railing and staring down at whatever was going on below. He looked just as confused as Sláine was, thought it was for an entirely different reason.

"Uh, why are you here?”

He looked down at her then, perplexed. "Ah, well, at the moment you seem like my best chance of getting close to the Princess, even if you are a bit... homicidal," he ventured, and then offered her a smile like this was all quite normal to him. "Especially since we seem to have jumped forward in time, or something along those lines."

"Not that. You weren't supposed to — I guess they were right," Sláine said, sighing. "You are weird."

"...Um. Thanks? But we have bigger problems at the moment!"

On closer inspection, Sláine could tell that Red was right in front of a stone structure quite similar in shape to the temple altar from before, and everyone else was gathered around her. There seemed to be someone… strapped to it, a person lashed down with thick straps attached to every single limb, and Red had something in her hand that she was bringing closer to his body. He started screaming then, an ear-piercing shriek that made Sláine want to fold her ears down, and was Red — pulling his fingernails off?

"What the fuck is going on," Sláine said, low. Level. "And what do you mean by 'problem'?"

Correctly interpreting that she was going to threaten to beat him up again if he didn't answer her question in a prompt enough manner, Janus cleared his throat. "It's the ritual to become a priestess, where a prisoners is, um, sacrificed in the ways dictated by the Weaving Dark, as the offering’s cries of agony will help aid the moon with its inevitable hatching. Um, I would really prefer it didn't happen.”

"...To hatch. Like an egg."

"Ah. Yes."

"Hatch what, exactly."

He gave her a peculiar look. "Er. Spiders?"

"Wh— you’re all expecting the moon to hatch into spiders?"

"Well, yes, obviously," he said, eyebrows raised as if somehow Sláine was the crazy person for thinking that sounded absolutely absurd. “What else would hatch from the moon?”

Sláine opened her mouth, closed it, opened it again. She knew that time was of the essence here, getting distracted and forgetting about the goal of escaping was exactly what that stupid spider monster wanted, but she really did need a moment to process the idea of torturing people to death to make the moon hatch spiders.

Janus had already gotten distracted, though. "Hold on," he said, leaning out further. Either he had no fear of being noticed, or he'd picked up on everyone else here ignoring them too. "I absolutely saw you kill that man. What is happening?"

Sláine followed where he was pointing, trying desperately to ignore the agonized screaming coming from below. Yes, one of those white-robed, singing figures did have the same haircut as Lycosidae, who she definitely had killed, though she couldn't be sure from this distance.

Made sense, she supposed, if he was just part of a different memory.

"Don't question it," Sláine said. "Do you believe that?"

"Believe what?"

"That the moon is going to crack open and reveal a bunch of moon spiders. You actually expect that to happen?"

The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

Janus squeaked, pulling himself back and staring down at Sláine like a startled mouse. "You — you can't just ask — " He looked around furtively, as if expecting someone to grab him by the ears and drag him to jail.

...Well, to be fair, it did sound like that had maybe happened to him already.

"Well, if we're being frank here, then no,” he whispered, “I also think all of this is abhorrent and won't fix anything, but I'm also not one of the Spiders so it's not like anyone cares about my opinion, aside from them getting to decide whether or not they feel like having me fill a heretic’s role.” He gestured to the… display down below. “It's best to pay lip service to those sorts of things, especially if you want to live long enough for a chance to stop them."

"Right. Okay." Priestess — she'd heard Red use that word before to describe Amoena. So after it, would she grow a giant spider torso too? Become some weird spider-filled piñata? But the Red she knew definitely looked… bipedal, at least so something must have happened in this memory to prevent that from occuring.

Could that something help her? What would it be…?

Sláine swept her gaze over the building again. The man was still screaming, and Red had moved on to another implement which seemed a bit more like a... walnut cracker? That she was using too —

Oh.

Sláine couldn't quite repress a shudder.

It wasn't like the idea of it upset Sláine or anything. Torture, that was, it wasn't something she'd do, wasn't something she'd ever been ordered to do but she knew that sometimes, war meant certain tasks had to be done, and if a spy or a captured enemy combatant had valuable intelligence then… it only made sense to perform the necessary actions in response.

It was nothing personal, nothing emotional driven by hatred, it was just a fact of life that some people didn't want to share what knowledge they had and some — like generals, tacticians — really, really needed to know it if they wanted to command their soldiers to victory like the country required.

Sobs echoed throughout the theater, and Red moved on from his hands. Sláine found herself covering her mouth.

Okay, so maybe she did care, but what about this was upsetting exactly? Pain didn't matter. It was there and then it was gone. Was it how everyone was watching her do it? Was it something about how that noise cutting through the air reminded her of a different time, a different place, a different voice piercing through her head?

Was it the pointlessness of it? The pageantry? How these weren't honorable wounds, nor was there any real purpose to the entire business beyond… what, hoping this ephemeral agony would somehow hearken a birth in a strange religious rite?

Or maybe it was just that it…

…Didn't very much seem like the kind of thing Red would ever want to do or be seen doing, because as prickly as she was, the woman was nice and seemed to care about people and had put far more value on Sláine’s life than Sláine had ever put on her own. What was worse — the thought that Red was being forced to do this, and right at this moment, she was dying inside?

Or that she hadn’t had a problem with it at all, and that she’d have to bear the guilt of these actions forever?

"You're, um, not from around here, are you," Janus said beside her, voice soft and expression concerned. She gave him a look that communicated absolute volumes. "Right, right, stupid question. But why exactly are you here? If you're this squeamish, you can't be close to Princess Agriope. Which is strange, because earlier you were definitely..."

"I said, don't question it."

"Right, fine. Forgive me for my curiosity. But you do want to prevent the ritual? We're on the same side, there?"

"You could say that."

"Fine, okay, then we need some kind of plan to — hey!"

Sláine turned away, stalking into the darkness. This was pointless. She just needed to find Red, smack her out of whatever memory-fugue she was trapped in, and then they could both get out of here and they would never speak of all this again.

Ugh, except she could barely see. She bumped into someone, grunting, who looked around baffled as they were pushed back into the light. So maybe she wasn't totally immune to notice here if she caused too much of a commotion. That would limit the kinds of things she could do…

Sighing, she began repeating the [ Inventory ] trick again.

"What's the purpose of that, exactly?" Her new tag-along said, following after her with a rattle of chains.

"To give me light to see by," she replied, already exhausted. Maybe she should tell him to stay put? How much use would the man be with his hands bound? Ugh. What could he even do? Would he make a good shield? If she ended up having to fight everyone down there, Sláine didn't really like her chances. The best thing might be run in, grab Red, and haul her into a new (hopefully better) memory so she could bring the woman back to her senses, but...

"You can't see?"

Sláine found that 'withering stare' was becoming her most commonly shown expression here.

"Okay, well! Close your eyes. I can help with that."

Sláine gave him the most dubious look she could muster, pairing it with a single wary step backwards. She might not want to turn this man into an elf-kebab, but that sure didn't mean she trusted him even a little.

He frowned. "Please, I wouldn't dare do anything untoward. I can make it so you can see."

"…How?"

A weary sigh. "I mentioned before that I work in body-modification. Well, I can change the properties of your eyes — "

Sláine took a much larger step back.

" — Temporarily," he insisted, crossing his arms. "It is perfectly safe."

"'Changing the properties of my eyes' does not sound perfectly safe."

"If it has to do with bodies, I am an expert. Please, trust me. It will be much easier for us to reach her and interfere if you aren't hindered by sub-optimal vision."

Sláine did not appreciate him calling her ability to see 'sub-optimal', but he did have a point, as much as she didn't like it.

"Okay, fine, do it."

Sláine leaned back against the wall as she did what he asked, and then tensed as soon as she felt the warmth of his palms on her face. She didn't want the time to dwell, not over her complicated feelings about what she'd just seen or what Red's reaction would be at the end of all this. This situation was such a pain in the ass, and for not the first time, she wished she could be transported a few hours into the past when they'd been stepping on bugs and Sláine had been annoyed by pretentious, overly complicated human bullshit.

She could feel a humming tingle around her eye-sockets and desperately restrained the urge to itch.

"…Honestly, it makes me feel better that you're so uncomfortable with all this," she heard him mumble as he worked, as if he was too scared to say it much louder than that. "I don't know who you are or what you're planning to do, but if you're someone who still has the ability to think those things, then it must not be terrible."

"That," she paused. "Doesn't seem super logical. I could be thinking that assassinating her is the best course of action. Wait."

Sláine reached up, grabbing onto his wrist. "What is it, exactly, that you want to do? You said you didn't want her to become a priestess — why? What are you planning? Are you trying to kill her?

She heard him pause too, freezing up underneath her vice-like grip. "I am not. We have… a similar goal," he said, enigmatic and careful. "And her becoming a priestess is at odds with my hope of getting her heart back."

Sláine only held on tighter. If this 'Professor J. Amytheskos' was the same professor that Amoena had been talking about when she'd been trying to get under Red's skin, it could have meant he'd ended up becoming important enough to Red for his death to bother her. But that wasn't the only conclusion; what if he was just another manipulative bastard like Amoena, who'd fucked around with her life too? Hell, she didn't even have confirmation this wasn't 'that man' Red wanted dead.

Aria said they'd liked him, sure, but she still wanted to hear him say it, say that he had Red's best interests at heart too so she could try to discern some truth in it.

Along with why, because if she heard that, maybe she'd be able to trust him to help her if (when) things went ass-over-teakettle.

"What's your goal, then? What's in this for you?"

“It’s, well, all sort of complicated, alright?"

"Then simplify it. Please."

Sláine heard him take a very small breath and say, in a hesitant tone, "It's because I knew her father, and even after everything… I still believe in the dream that he had."

Janus tried to pull his hand back, and Sláine let him. It felt like cool water had been dropped over her face, and when the world was revealed to her, she found she could see it — her pupils wide and drinking in all the details that she'd missed before. On his skin, there were raised bits that looked like seams, and behind him, every single person in that audience was wearing the exact same clothes. There were carvings on the wall, to the right she could see a set of stairs heading downwards, and he looked down at her then, a small smile tugging at his lips but eyes that looked so impossibly sad.

"Would you believe me if I said that I'm trying to save the world?"

>> Process unexpected information