Fogging breaths fell and joined the shallow sea of writhing mist. The crackling fire cast an auburn hue to the vaporous blanket wherever the spirit’s gloom failed to darken.

Mist churned where it met fire, circling the room’s single source of heat and light like the eye of a whirlpool. Every twist of Daisy’s tail cast waves. That slipped under her cloak and sank through her shoes to numb her feet and ankles.

Two had never seen the mist so deep.

Daisy circled Deadra, surrounding her in loose coils of muscles and threat. They stopped behind her and, with a bright smile on their lips, laid her lands on the trembling girl’s shoulders. All the while red tinted mist danced about them. The young noble didn’t flinch though it was clear how badly she wanted to.

Dread dripped from her. A potent blend of panic and despair, that stood out despite all the other essence. Hope dangled in the mix. A spot of sugar in an ocean of sewage.

And Daisy, smile saccharine was joyous. “Deadra, Deadra, De-a-dra it seems I must give you away.” Daisy sighed but her smile never faltered. “Oh, but we never had the chance to know you.”

Two wondered how wide Daiy’s smile would stretch if she could smell the fear evoked by those words. She didn’t understand why she chose to twist the knife. It served no point. All it did was hurt

Still, she continued to choose and each choice brought chuckles and whispers from the crowd. And pushed Deadra one step closer to voicing the sobs that wracked her, to breaking.

The noble watched, masking boredom and annoyance behind a disapproving mask.

Two scoured the room and her thoughts but found nothing to halt or even stall the proceedings. Nothing that would not be a creative form of suicide. She was reduced to a tight-lipped observer amidst the grinning crowd.

There was nothing left for her to do.

A patch mist of tumultuous mist stilled and thickened and glowed. Stark white and near blinding a pillar of light blooed from the still mist. Darkness was banished into shadows and gleeful muttering died as all looked at the light and the person that stepped up through the mist.

An angel entered the room. Two certain of that fact. For what could wear the shape of a person so well? Who else would have wings o bold and feathers so shite without the slightest sign of avian blood?

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Clad in a blue suit decorated with white and possessing wings so bright they hurt. They stepped into a stunned silence. Two facts struck the room’s occupants. A figure from fairy tales and children’s stories had arrived. Said figure, icon of judgment and catastrophe, was scanning them with a quizzical look.

“Y’know I was expecting a bit more chaos. Shouts, screams, maybe a bit of begging.”They smiled. It was a sight that drew her in. “This works too” She turned to the girl held in Daisy’s slackened grip. “Are you Deadra?”

Not a thought visible on her face. Nor did a sound escape her gaped mouth. She nodded.

He smiled impossibly brightened “Wonderful.” He said and opened his hands as if encompassing the room.

Daisy lunged and a thought clicked into place. Most of those old stories ended with death. A great many deaths. That was her last though before he clapped and the world was rendered white.

For a brief instant, all was wiped clean. Her thoughts, her senses trickled into a place they did not belong.

There were times in her life when she’d seen things she ought not to. When she fled into tunnels beneath the slum and found the taint it harboured. The time she’d peeked through a brothel’s windows. Misery she supped from smiling faces. The little tragedies that pocketed the slum.

This she felt was one such time. This time she stole a moment that was not hers.

Light was all sh should’ve known. But her senses keen as always took more.

Taut grey lines crisscrossed the white abyss. Creating a frame of the room, but she could not feel the floor or the cold. Her fingers weren’t, she had no skin to feel light press against. Had no spine to shudder with the realization.

But those details, enough to terrify at any other time, fell moot. For an eye took the angel’s place. One more massive than the castle’s tall walls. A thing orders of magnitude to fit the wireframe room.

Yet it did.

A single eye composed of white marble. An iris of wires and sheet of steel ticking and flowing with clockwork precision. Undulating layers of metal slid seamlessly past each other each unpredictable yet all falling in perfect order. At the eyes centre sat a pupil so blindingly bright it rendered all else grey and dim.

And though she knew she should she couldn’t look away.

The eye took notice.

It turned to her and its flowing clicking shifting metal iris slid to a seamless halt. She stared at the white abyss that was its heart. Terror flourished in her and fs she had a heart it would have deafened her. It grew and grew until what she felt could only be described as awe.

The thin lines of steel that drew the outlines of her world shifted. Twisting and shifting along impossible contours. Until they slid into the outline of different scenes. Despite the nauseating wonder of it all, she couldn’t tear her gaze away from the impossible eye.

The lines clicked into place and that ceased to be an option. Stunning white was replaced with tendrils of fading grey fog. Two found a different floor under her. Different scents littered the air and the oppressive cold was replaced by a balmy chill. Distant stars twinkled through twisting mist.

She rediscovered the breath and the certainty of gravity her gaze fell to the fire that had been dragged with her to wherever here was.

Along with Daisy, who held Deadra tightly bound in her coils and her hand had grabbed the angel, once wrapped in skin. The angel stared at Two with a tilted head and curious smile. Despite everything it looked kind.

Two’s recovery from the shift was completed. The sound of her confused fellows pounded into her awareness competing with her homering heart to deafen her. She remembered to be afraid.

Before the man’s confusion could clear Daisy pivoted and heaved. The mass of her tail and her strength as a cultivator united to lift him into the air and fling him into the floor. Two didn’t see the impact, she was already running away.

She did however feel it. The sound of abused and broken stone was secondary to the sharp thud that shot from her feet to her head and the piercing crack that stung her ears. She let neither stop her as she shoved and slipped through the gang away from the duelling cultivators.

She was free when the gang’s confusion turned to panic and the screams started. Two didn’t slow down, she didn’t look back. She just ran as the world turned to chaos behind her and the drifting mist descended to once again blanket the floor.