In the City of Stave laid a broken path of cracked bricks, smoking craters, and cement-covered skin, making a road between the Theater d’Ravena and the Abel Saintess Cathedral. Even now, small explosions resounded from undetonated traps that the fallen Kinesia Gaelwood had left behind, discovered by haphazard folk.

[Your friend is with my sister’s priestess.]

Jon left Kinesia’s body where it was. The crazed bomber’s words caused discord in him. The true nature and intent of his patron eluded him, but what could he do against a goddess? Nothing.

He followed the conical crater until the foot of the cathedral’s iron gate, finding the knight captain embedded in it. He took the man’s flinching as his being alive and carefully pulled him out. He found a loose cape and used that as a makeshift sled.

He pulled the captain down the road, skirting the perimeter of the cathedral. City guard and volunteer townsfolk passed him in droves from both directions, relaying orders to each other...and giving the reaper wary glances. They were content in letting him pull the knight captain to the field hospital. It wasn’t hard to find. He just had to follow all the other wounded.

The priestess and her knights saw the reaper from a distance. He was scratched and bruised, and his suit was torn at the edges like the coat of a true reaper. They finally recognized the colors and armor of the man he was dragging with him, and the priestess ordered the knights to take their captain off the reaper’s hands.

Two pages approached the reaper with a stretcher between them. Jon stopped pulling, letting the captain’s head down, and while the pages passed him and loaded the captain onto the stretcher, he headed straight for Alyssa’s supine figure by the priestess’s foot. The cloth around Alyssa’s stomach had been cut away to make way for the priestess’s surgical hands.

“I will see to the captain,” the priestess said. “I will return to you two for a proper discussion once things settle here.”

As soon as the priestess was away, Alyssa spoke. “Jon.” Her voice was weak, as if she was about to croak any moment now. Jon knelt down beside her, and she continued, “Change of plans, have we?”

“What now?” Jon asked.

“Mission’s not over.” She coughed. “Lords Bowyer and Wiz will definitely” — she took her time to breathe properly — “make a move, but you can’t do it on your own, and I’m a little...under the weather right now.”

Knowing his performance against Kinesia, he didn’t see why an ample amount of research wouldn’t give him the edge. “Why not?”

“Read and find out.” Alyssa smiled weakly. “More than likely, the two will be together if you confront them. You’ll die in that case.”

It wasn’t as if Alyssa was someone to underestimate him — and he wasn’t a cocky young gun, either. “How long until you recover?”

Alyssa chuckled. “It’s just internal bleeding, and that priestess did a good job, fortunately or unfortunately.” She held up three fingers, resting her palm on her stomach. “Three days.”

Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

Jon considered the situation. Was it likely the Houses would launch an attack on this scale again? No, this was already abnormally beyond their modus operandus. More than likely, they didn’t realize that they’d hired a loose cannon. With the Order around, they’d need to keep their heads low after this incident.

Even if the Order wasn’t keen to aggressively move against the Houses for lack of direct evidence, they had more than enough probable cause to station a small army here and bog down the Houses in an avalanche of audits and investigations.

In doing so, the Houses’ movements would be restrained, and the Theater would be safe to recuperate in the meantime.

Jon scanned the area, and finding no wheelbarrows, scooped up Alyssa. “Huh?” she blurted meekly, clinging to him out of fright.

“No wheelbarrows this time. We’re going back.”

“O-oh, is that it?” In any other situation, Alyssa would have been delighted to be carried like this. As it stood, however, healing magic worked overtime to keep her arteries and lungs from bursting at their stitches and glued seams; instead of a comforting warmth, the priestess’s irksome magic was like being on the verge of being roasted alive from the inside.

With Alyssa in his arms, Jon trekked the way back to the theater. Alyssa made sure to wave to the priestess as they passed her, gesturing in the theater’s direction.

They took the long way back, avoiding the most direct routes between the theater and the cathedral. Even now, unexploded mines were going off, but by now, it should have been the city guard detonating them.

Still, the chaos of those streets spilled into the surrounding city. People were anxious wherever the two went, and there were those with blank eyes who were absentmindedly wandering, covered in dust. The streets, normally busy, were just people hurrying home, now. There were children being tended by their mother to disappear behind their home’s door, and there were children crying, alone.

Gray-colored cotton covered the sky. Smoke rose from the many growing fires left behind in the wake of Kinesia’s madness and resentment. The smoke reached the clouds, and water stuck to each particle, water starting to fall back to earth.

Alyssa watched Jon’s face. There was a slight frown and a wrinkle on his forehead. When he saw those children, he thought of the new girl at the theater. She’d said she was a warrior. She must’ve been no older than 17, closer to 16. He, himself, was around six years old when an orphanage run by the Intercontinental took him in. He didn’t remember anything before then, but he did remember what he felt at the time: empty, desperate, and just going with the flow, letting the world take him on any path, as long as it took him away — anywhere but here, he remembered thinking.

He looked over his shoulder. He remembered everything. This was just like the place where his earliest memories remained. The broken ground, the drizzling rain, the hopeless people walking past him in a daze, and the children looking for the first hand to cling to — he was that child, the corrupted by-product of a world-spanning ideological clash.

When they reached the plaza, they found the new girl kneeling before one of many rows of bodies — hundreds of people, draped with cloth. She wasn’t crying, but her eyes were more white than black. She couldn’t frown, couldn’t shake; she was just there, kneeling before small squares of cloth.

Sitting far to the side was a page of the Order, his eyes red. He didn’t mind the drizzle. He noticed Jon gazing at him, but he didn’t regard him with fear. “They just wanted to visit her,” he said.

Jon turned back to the new girl. She looked to him as he approached. “Anywhere but here,” Jon told her. She nodded. He walked past her, aiming for the theater’s steps. She stood and followed.

***

Her cries haunted him later that night.

He had always rued killing, rued not feeling anything.

Today, he hated death, hated feeling.

Tomorrow...will be different.