“The who now?” Sofiane asked.

“The Prophet," Joad said solemnly, "is a man who has seen through the veil of this world and intends to rebel against the Yishang to create a new world where we’ll all be equal and we don’t gotta fear re-formatting or dying at the hands of Heroes."

Joad had no idea how lucky he was that it was Sofiane he was professing this to. There were plenty of other Heroes who would have ran to their nearest Pengwu and gotten him re-formatted. As it was, Sofiane knew all the people who were in on that particular secret, and he suspected he knew which one it was.

“Uh-huh. And this Prophet, does he have long black hair? Wears dark clothing?”

Joad nodded. “You’ve met him then?”

Sofiane sighed. “Yeah. I have.”

“And what do you make of him?”

Joad asked this with the pointedness of someone passing judgement on whether Sofiane gave the correct answer. Sofiane could say he thought “The Prophet” was a decent guy, but decided to leave out where he thought The Prophet was out of his gods-damned mind for trying to out the Yishang to Non-Heroes. That he hadn’t already been blinked out of existence was testament to either the Yishang’s charity, or their obliviousness. Now the question was whether he wanted to stoke Joad’s zealotry or try to cool it down.

“I think he’s uh… he’s got good ideas, but he’s too extreme about them,” Sofiane said.

“And when do ya think it’ll finally be time to revolt? Or are you sayin’ we shouldn’t?”

“No— I mean, listen, this is all very complicated, and the Non-Heroes don’t really have the full picture of what’s going on. No offense.”

Joad wagged a finger at him. “The end times is a-comin’, Sofi-boy, n’ you’re gonna have to pick whether you’re with the Yishang or with us."

Sofiane snorted. Of course he wasn’t with the Yishang. He knew exactly the type of greedy bastards they were. But what could you do about invisible, omnipresent gods (with absolutely no “demi” about them) who had the power to bring about the complete destruction of your world with the snap of a finger? Heroes were defenseless against that, let alone Non-Heroes. Same as with Gomiko, he didn’t see the point of getting Non-Heroes riled up and anxious about something they couldn’t do anything about.

“And this prophet—”

“The Prophet, Cap’tal T, Cap’tal P,” Joad said.

“And this The Prophet, what’s his plan? Pull the gods out of their heaven and beat them with sticks?” Sofiane asked.

“No. He places his hope in The Enlightened One,” Joad said.

Sofiane pinched the bridge of his nose. Of course there was gods-damned lore to Pechorin’s little cult, and he highly suspected “The Enlightened One” was a certain bespectacled physicist. Well, at least Joad’s little revelation solved the matter of how he was going to spend his four days away from Gomiko. He needed to go and talk with the two of them and figure out what they were trying to accomplish and potentially get them to knock it off.

“I guess I need a little more exposure to the good word,” Sofiane said.

This mollified Joad and the talk about overthrowing the Yishang died away in favor of some folk tunes. For an old man, his scratchy, sonorous voice was surprisingly pleasant to listen to. Though, Sofiane wondered why the Yishang bothered writing a whole song to put in his head.

“You’ve always sang that, right?” Sofiane asked.

“Nope. Us Bolters came up with it. And I know that cuz we had about five of us and we was all sittin’ 'round the table comin’ up with the lyrics and editin’ and revisin’ ‘til we got ‘em how we wanted ‘em. And I know what you’re really askin’ is if the Yishang summoned the song into our noggins and that just ain’t how it happened,” Joad replied. “And they can’t re-format us to get it out of our heads cuz they don’t know who’s got it in ‘em, so when they try, we just teach it to the others again. Can’t kill a song everyone knows.”

“Huh,” Sofiane said. And here he had thought only designated musician Non-Heroes performed music.

At some point the dirt roads smoothed out enough that the jerky bumping felt almost pleasant and Sofiane found himself struggling to stay awake. Unable to fight it, he let himself doze in and out of a shallow sleep where he dreamt fragmented dreams about being in other places and other times. Mostly about Gomiko, but at one point he was with Natsu, Shui, Pech, and Daisy, and they were all standing around a swimming hole in their swimsuits trying to convince all the others to jump in, but no one wanted to be the first.

“Huh? What now?”

“I said we’re almost at Vermögenburgh,” Joad said.

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Sofiane rubbed his eyes and for a second thought Joad meant they were about to cross the border, but the dark pines and distant, snow-capped mountains told him they were already well inside it. He followed Joad’s gaze and realized he could already see the walled city and its deep moat between the pines.

“Gods, how long was I out?” Sofiane asked.

“‘Bout four hours. I figured by them bags under your eyes you ain’t had a lotta sleep, so I didn’t bother wakin’ ya up.”

Gomiko had been keeping him awake the past few days, but a four hour nap? He couldn’t tell what was more impressive: That he slept that long, or that the steammobile could cover that much distance so quickly. Now on the cobblestone paths of Vermögenburgh, its top speed was twice as fast as Daisy's Peng. And if Sofiane had not experienced enough strangeness already that day, they rounded the last bend and came within sight of the bridge to Vermögenburgh’s city gates and he was presented with an enormous convoy of camels, horses, steammobiles, wagons, dog-sleds, animatron tanks, and more.

Sofiane squinted. “What in the hell?”

Joad puffed with pride. “Here for The Prophet.”

Joad parked his own steammobile with the others, many of them painted with the purple lightning bolt symbols of the Purple Bolt, and hopped out. Dismounting from their own modes of transport were al-Nuwban tribesmen, Shikijiman rebel samurai, Tianzhounese dissident scholars, Bolters, Sibe-Lander barbarians, Cascadian anti-royalists, and more.

“When did all of this start?” Sofiane asked, dumbfounded at the magnitude of something he’d been completely oblivious to.

“The Prophet’s been preachin’ for a while now, but the call to the congregation happened three days ago.”

The timing of it made Sofiane anxious. Firstly, that so many Non-Heroes were ready to come to the call, and secondly that Pechorin and Shuixing might have stumbled onto something that made them think it was a good idea. The closer they got to the city gates, the tighter his stomach felt. There was no way this density of Non-Heroes would go unnoticed by the Yishang.

The entry plaza swarmed with more people than the card tournament and the atmosphere was almost like a carnival. There were tents set up distributing food and ale and some people were dancing, others talking about the teachings of “The Prophet,” and still others babbling like their minds had been broken. Among them, Sofiane couldn’t see a single Vermögenburgh native, and those that had shop stalls out in the plaza had packed them up.

“So, The Prophet, where’s he at exactly? Up at the Mage’s College?” Sofiane asked as he and Joad waded through the sea of people.

Joad shook his head. “Man’s a wanderer and a nomad. No tellin’ when or where he’ll pop up, but the call went out that he’d be in Vermögenburgh, so we all came. Dunno when he’ll make his appearance.”

“Thanks for the heads up, Joad. And the ride. I’ll catch up with you later.”

Joad clapped Sofiane on the shoulder and turned to join a group of Bolters toasting to the apocalypse.

Towards the Mage’s College, the crowd thinned enough that Sofiane could look down at the rest of the city and see the full scale of the gathering. All of the streets in the lower part of the city had been filled, and the incoming Non-Heroes had even found their way into some of the buildings. The Devil’s Cut had its doors thrown open for a throng of faithful coming and going with drinks in hand. Eyeballing the crowd, Sofiane guessed there were a couple thousand, and possibly more coming.

“Pechorin, what the hell did you do?” he muttered.

The Mage’s College was locked up tight when he arrived so Sofiane banged on the door and when that garnered no response he smashed the door down with his sword.

“No! What are you doing!?”

A wizened professor in the same blue robes Shuixing wore came flying down the hallway towards him.

“Opening the door, what’s it look like?” Sofiane said.

“It looks like you’re trying to kill us! Did you not notice the anarchy going on outside!?”

The professor stopped in front of him, not daring to do anything more to a Hero than a light reprimand. Stitched into the breast of the robes was the name, “Dr. Cox.”

“I might have caught a glimpse. So, what, you‘re holed up in here expecting a siege?” Sofiane asked. “A locked door wouldn't hold them back if they wanted inside.”

“It wasn’t meant to stop a siege, it was meant to keep us separate from those anti-Yishang hooligans! Myself and my colleagues and our students will not be reformatted by being confused with those reckless fools! Going against the Yishang, honestly. It’s like they wish to hand Po-Lin over to the Entropic Axis.”

For the first time since hearing about them, Sofiane felt the slightest hint of sympathy for Pechorin’s weird little cult. The Entropic Axis was, after all, another of the Yishang’s creations. It was all the same thing. Though given what he knew about “reformatting," he found himself sympathizing with the scholars as well.

“Right. Well… you’re all smart people, right? I’m sure you can fix a single door,” Sofiane said.

“It’s a double door,” Dr. Cox replied.

“That’s twice as much data to work with! Anyway, are there any Heroes around? Particularly one in a dark trench coat and the other in blue… well, is Shui here?”

“Dr. He is here, though she has secluded herself and is not seeing anyone at present. Not even the faculty. Aside from that, there are currently no other Heroes in residence.”

Sofiane pursed his lips. Was it worth disturbing Shuixing to ask her what was going on with Pechorin’s weird cult, or would it be better to go find Pechorin and ask him directly? Knowing her, the chances were non-zero that Shuixing had no idea any of this was happening and it was just Pechorin running around using the information she gave him about Po-Lin and the Yishang for his own designs. If his goal was to figure out what was going on and potentially put the breaks on it, finding Pechorin first seemed smarter.

Sofiane was halfway down the hill when the crowd began cheering and screaming. Wanting a better vantage point, he zipped up to the roof of the Vermögenburgh Cathedral and posted himself on the belfry where he could see the rest of the town. From there, he watched as a crowd of Non-Heroes formed a bubble around an honor guard of Sibe-Lander horse archers flanking a black-cloaked figure with his hood drawn up. Sofiane watched him approach a collection of tables pushed together to form a stage and mount it. The crowd went silent, anticipating Pechorin’s speech. Sofiane considered popping down there quickly and pulling him off stage so the two could have a chat, but, in a morbid way, Sofiane found himself just as curious as the assembled Non-Heroes.

But as the speech began, Sofiane watched him draw back his cloak, and the person underneath was not Pechorin.