CHAPTER 124

Sasaki blinked a few times and surveyed her surroundings in baffled amazement. There was so much left unexplained, but Sasaki could set that aside for the time being. She needed to understand exactly where she was, and that, for the moment, held the highest priority.

There were swaths of scorched and charred pines, stands of trees that had been reduced to cinder and ash. A tower was off to the side and looked to have been partially rebuilt and then destroyed again. Sasaki and Kuroyuki had appeared against the wall of the house Armilla had described. Sasaki herself felt drained and dizzy and husked out, and not entirely from the purge her body had suddenly forced on her.

Where was she? A scant handful of heartbeats prior, she was in her tiny room in Darnell with her daughter.

"Okay, then what happened?" She muttered to herself.

Her daughter had taken her hand and pulled, and the glossy darkness of Kuroyuki's immaculate black kimono seemed to swallow her up. There was a portion of time she couldn't reconcile- it could have been a heartbeat, it could have been an eternity- getting tugged through a blackness that was beyond black, beyond a shadow at midnight, a yawning, endless gulf of nothingness where clumps of strange colors that glittered and pulsed frolicked and played.

Her mind turned away from that strange journey. She didn’t want to think about it. She didn’t want to think about the dark strands of nothing that brushed at her face like cobwebs, trailed against her eyelashes, brushed across her lips like nightmare kisses. Her whole body felt defiled, filthy. She didn’t even want to think about those colors, even as her mind replayed them.

She forced herself to stare at the wall of the house she had somehow ended up next to, focusing all of her concentration on the grain of the stone, the roughness of the mortar. Whatever happened had happened, and she was going to put it out of her mind, She thought determinedly.

Forest. House. Crumbled tower. Scorching everywhere, as if a great fire had been through here not too long ago. She picked up a handful of grass that crumbled away to soot in her fingertips. The ash and soot were here, but the scent of the fire was gone. A week perhaps? maybe two, or longer.

What was it Kuroyuki had just said? "Your target should be close."

Alsabet! Sasaki cursed.

She dropped her sword from her shoulder to her hand, and looked to her daughter, who was eyeing her curiously. A feeling of strangeness washed over Sasaki as she met her daughter’s golden eyes. Who was Kuroyuki? What was she?

"I-" She began, and stopped, and took a moment to tidy herself up. Luckily she hadn’t messed on herself, and better, she hadn’t fallen into her own waste, either. What an inescapable indignity that would be.

Kuroyuki merely waited calmly, patiently as Sasaki saw to herself. When Sasaki stood, Kuroyuki pointed.

After tidying herself up, Sasaki followed Kuroyuki’s pointing finger.

The front yard of the place had a massive spell circle. A young woman in a simple blue dress circled it carefully, stooping at times to examine it in detail. Sasaki immediately noticed the similarity to Katarina.

"As you have committed to killing Alsabet, I will wholeheartedly support you, Sasaki-sama." Kuroyuki offered. "To that end I would suggest killing her before she enters the circle. Once she does so, you will be powerless to affect her with the weapons you carry." She advised. "I will distract her."

Sasaki looked from Kuroyuki to Alsabet and back again. What?

"What do you mean-" She began, but with that statement, Kuroyuki stepped out from the side of the building.

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"It appears my advice was useful." Kuroyuki observed in a loud voice, and Alsabet’s head jerked up.

"You!" She exclaimed in outrage and shock, but then nodded.

"Unbelievably useful." Alsabet exclaimed and spread her hands to indicate the spell circle. "With this I will Translate myself so far away it will take Katarina ten lifetimes to find me!" She exclaimed.

Kuroyuki realized she would be in Sasaki’s line of fire, so she began circling around the outer edge of the spell circle, towards Alsabet.

"I have a question, Alsabet." Kuroyuki offered, but Alsabet took an involuntary step backwards, hands crossed across her chest in a protective gesture.

"No! No more of your ‘experiments’!" She demanded, face red.

Kuroyuki immediately burst into laughter. "Ah, yes. I apologize. I was perhaps..." She trailed off, searching for the right words to soothe the mage. "Overzealous in my explorations. My deepest apologies." She offered contritely. "But that’s not what I wished to ask you about. Nor do I wish to continue that line of experimentation." She continued, moving closer. "My question is motivated out of simple curiosity."

After she reached the taller woman, she folded her hands at her waist, and looked Alsabet in the eye.

"A new Living Saint has been anointed by the Church of the Golden Lady. She has been Blessed by the Goddess, and dreams of the Divine." She announced. "If I could find you, how much longer will it take for Katarina to accomplish the same thing?" She asked, and Alsabet froze, abject terror creeping across her expression.

"Her? Katarina?" She yelled incredulously. "A Living Saint?" She threw up her hands and took a few steps away from the circle. "Un-fucking-believable." She stood there, hands dangling limply for a moment.

"You’re telling me that-" She began, and stopped. "She can follow?" She blurted and then stopped again and frowned in thought for a moment as she worked it over in her mind.

Finally, Alsabet nodded. "Of course she can, of course she’s a Living Saint, of course she’s going to follow me anywhere I go." She muttered. "Fuck it."

"I beg your pardon?" Kuroyuki asked, head tilted to one side. Why hadn’t Sasaki taken the shot? She wondered.

"It means," Alsabet began patiently, "She might be able to follow me, but I’m going to get as much of a head start as I can." She finished. "I thank you for the information." She added, and then stopped. "No, wait." She amended, and curtseyed, bowing her head. "I sincerely and gratefully appreciate the information you have provided." She thanked graciously.

Kuroyuki frowned irritably. Should she hold Alsabet for Sasaki? Should she dispatch Alsabet herself? What was the holdup?

Alsabet rendered the questions academic by striding into the magical circle, which by its nature wholly protected everything inside of the circle from harm. Kuroyuki sighed. Sasaki had lost her window of opportunity. There were no shadows nearby for her to use her own peculiar method of transportation; she turned back and began moving back to the house, towards Sasaki.

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Upon arrival, she eyed Sasaki severely. "Why did you not shoot, Sasaki?" She asked testily.

Sasaki eyed her and sighed. "I could have. It just..." She trailed off and looked to the side.

"Yes?" Kuroyuki asked, a dangerous frown on her face.

Sasaki blew out an irritated breath. "It didn’t seem right, taking her out without some sort of..." She trailed off.

"If she had known you were going to shoot, she would have moved into the circle, in which case she would have been protected. If the circle wasn’t there, she likely would have protected herself with magic." Kuroyuki reminded her, and Sasaki nodded.

"It’s just..." She remarked with a sardonic twist to her mouth, "Unfair."

Kuroyuki’s eyebrow twitched, but she refrained from commenting on Sasaki’s definition of fairness. Instead, she chose a different tactic.

"Would Katarina have taken the shot?" She asked, and Sasaki grimaced. "If it were anyone else besides her sister... probably." She allowed. "Alsabet is family; Katarina would want to be certain Alsabet knew who killed her." Sasaki replied, which made Kuroyuki blink.

"Alsabet is not your sister, Sasaki." Kuroyuki replied gently. "And you decided to do this for her sake, did you not?" she asked, and Sasaki grimaced.

"Fine, fine." She replied shortly. "Can you do that thing again, where you followed her?" Sasaki asked curiously.

Kuroyuki eyed Sasaki. "You did not seem to... enjoy... the experience." She warned.

Sasaki nodded. "I know. I’m prepared." She replied, and her mouth twisted wryly. "Besides, it seems like my body’s already ejected everything it can." She joked.

Kuroyuki nodded. "As you wish. Prepare yourself." She warned, and took Sasaki’s hand and pulled her into the shadow cast by the house.

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When Kuroyuki opened her eyes, they were in a forest. The trees were simply titanic, massive, enormous. The superlatives that drifted through her head simply could not encompass their size and splendor. The trunks themselves were at least as big around as a palace, and the lowest branches themselves were hundreds of feet in the air.

Kuroyuki turned in a slow circle, taking in the view, awestruck with wonder. Sasaki panted and groaned in the pine needles next to her, but for the moment Kuroyuki was breath taken by the sheer size of the forest. It loomed, it towered, it made her feel small and insignificant. For a moment, for an eternity, she considered the possibility that they’d somehow been shrunk down to the size of insects, but that was impossible. Still, the sheer size, the majesty... she couldn’t find words to comprehend it.

"Mother, Alsabet is getting away." Kuroyuki murmured, spotting the mage as she gaped, wide-eyed, at the massive pines.

"The lights..." Sasaki muttered vacantly as she glanced around. She hadn’t vomited, but the transition had left her groggy and disoriented. "They were alive. They saw me." She whispered, numb horror suffusing her expression.

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Kuroyuki didn’t have the slightest idea what Sasaki was talking about.

Sasaki looked up from her curled position in the pine needles at Kuroyuki’s feet. "Are we...?" She began, and then pushed herself to her knees. Her feet didn’t want to work properly, and she wasn’t sure, but she thought she might be sick again.

Her eyes moved around, and widened in shock and baffled amazement. "Is this... a forest?" She asked.

"It appears so." Kuroyuki allowed. "Although I have never seen trees of this size before." She added.

Sasaki nodded, and pushed herself to her feet. Kuroyuki pointed at Alsabet, who wandered slowly away from them a hundred or so feet away. Alsabet likewise seemed taken aback at the massive forest.

Sasaki eyed Kuroyuki. "We didn’t... we didn’t shrink, right? This is real, right?" She asked, and swept a shaky hand around her. "That tree there, it looks to be as big around as the family’s compound." She observed.

"As far as I can tell we are unchanged, Mother." Kuroyuki replied, and one again gestured to Alsabet.

Sasaki eyed the mage and picked up her gun. Her gun. It was made in Yamato, and irony of ironies, it had been destined to be carried by the man she should have married. Fat bastard. Pederast. Yet it was in her hands, and she had a job to do.

"It still doesn’t feel right." Sasaki muttered as she racked the bolt. "There’s no honor in this." She muttered, and remembered her conversation with Katarina back in Higgenfal when she’d held the Witch Hunter’s gun. "That thing is raw malice, Katarina. There’s no elegance to it, no art. Just murder. Who could stand against such a thing?" She sighted down the barrel, just like in training. She took a deep breath, held it, and let it out slowly, as she’d been trained. As she let it out, she pulled the trigger.

The report was loud and sharp; the gun kicked against her shoulder painfully; she could feel her eardrums compress with the force of the gunshot, could feel the soundless thump in her chest.

Alsabet stumbled, listed, and artlessly fell to the side. She likely had no idea what had happened to her.

Sasaki shuddered with revulsion. Sasaki had killed before, and often. All of it, her whole life was the blade. It was the test of will against will, the test of the body against the body, it was the test of steel against steel. It was effort, strength, determination, that was where the honor of fighting lay, the whole of yourself, against the whole of your opponent. Whoever was stronger prevailed. She had fought, she had overcome, she had won.

This was a shameless and contemptuous disregard for those things. This wasn’t anything but murder.

She unconsciously racked the bolt and without thinking, caught the spent cartridge as it ejected. She was empty, hollowed out, a shell of a human. She advanced on the limp body of Alsabet, feeling just as lifeless.

Kuroyuki eyed her mother from her place at her side. All the light and life seemed to disappear from Sasaki’s eyes when she pulled the trigger. She turned her gaze towards Alsabet. She felt no sense of animosity or remorse for her part in Alsabet’s death. Her interest with Alsabet as a living thing began and ended with the conversation at the Nameless Stone. Once Sasaki had decided that Alsabet needed to be killed, Kuroyuki had fulfilled her filial piety and led her mother to her target.

Alsabet wasn’t dead, Kuroyuki noticed as they closed the distance. She could hear the woman’s ragged breathing, could see the woman’s limbs trembling and vague flailing movements.

"Mother-" Kuroyuki warned, but Sasaki’s face was hard, empty, expressionless.

"Hello?" Alsabet called unsteadily, face down in the dirt and needles. Sasaki’s shot had caught her in the spine just below the ribcage.

"Being born a mage isn’t a crime, Alsabet, but turning your back on the Church and renouncing the Golden Lady is." Sasaki replied steadily.

"...who?" The mage asked, turning her head.

"My name is Sasaki. I’m Katarina Pavlenko’s apprentice." She replied, and Alsabet let out a shuddering breath.

"She sent you, did she?" Alsabet asked, and Sasaki shook her head. "No. I decided to do this, to spare her the pain of killing her own sister." she replied steadily.

"I can’t feel my legs." Alsabet whispered faintly. Sasaki nodded, and Alsabet took a trembling breath.

"It’s cold." She complained, and Sasaki nodded again.

After a long shuddering breath, Alsabet spoke no more. Sasaki stayed with her until the light streaming through the tree branches changed into the ambers of evening, and finally gestured to Kuroyuki.

"What-" Sasaki began, and her voice caught. She cleared her throat and tried again. "Does she have anything magical on her?" She asked the younger woman, who gazed unblinkingly at Sasaki.

"Her necklace, rings, bracelets..." Kuroyuki trailed off. "I confess, I do not know the word for this." She added, and then gracefully knelt and pointed out a bracelet around Alsabet’s ankle. Sasaki shrugged. "I’ve no idea either." She replied. "Ankle-bracelet, perhaps?" She suggested.

"That, and her belt, her packs and pouches. Her stockings. Her dress isn’t magical, but the buttons on it are. Her... underthings. I do not know the Anglish term for them." Kuroyuki gestured at her waist.

"I... don’t actually know, myself." Sasaki replied.

Kuroyuki nodded. "We should take her back to Hesperia." She affirmed.

"What? Why?" Sasaki asked, confused.

"Because you will need to take something from her." Kuroyuki advised. "A hand, a foot, her head, something of that nature. They will use a divination of some sort to determine how she met her end." Kuroyuki remarked clinically. "She should die in Hesperia so as to not draw attention to me."

Sasaki frowned. "She’s dead, though."

Kuroyuki shook her head. "She’s conscious, but paralyzed. She’s using her magic to try and regenerate the damage." Kuroyuki replied.

Sasaki scrambled to her feet, her sword out in an eyeblink. Kuroyuki smiled at her panic, and reached out her hand.

"It is time to travel again, Sasaki-sama." She encouraged.

When the world stopped whirling, Sasaki found herself once again next to the crumbling house and yard that Alsabet had recently departed with her Rune of Translation.

Next to her, Alsabet convulsed weakly, streams of vomit gushing from her lips. A rancid stench seeped from beneath her skirt as well. Sasaki had avoided that fate, but Alsabet hadn’t.

Sasaki eyed the woman, and pulled a short knife from her sleeve.

"For Katarina’s sake, I’ll spare you pain." She confided to the blonde woman, and thrust the blade into the base of the woman’s skull.

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Sasaki and Kuroyuki stood next to Alsabet’s corpse for several minutes, each wrapped in their own thoughts.

"Is she-" Sasaki began, but Kuroyuki interrupted her smoothly.

"She’s dead, Mother." Kuroyuki interjected. Sasaki’s mind was a surging tornado of conflicting emotions, attitudes, ideals, wishes and motivations. Kuroyuki couldn't grasp her mother’s state of mind at all. Sasaki was usually calm, with only spikes of turbulence. This went far deeper, however.

"Ah." Sasaki replied indifferently.

Kuroyuki nodded. "Are you going to claim the items she’s enchanted?" She asked, and Sasaki nodded after a couple of slow minutes.

"Think I’ll pass on the underthings." Sasaki advised, and Kuroyuki laughed. "Clothes wash, Sasaki-sama. I hadn’t thought you squeamish."

With Kuroyuki’s help, they stripped Alsabet, severed a hand, and buried the blonde woman in the scorched remains of the gardens.

"Mother, I have a question." Kuroyuki announced as they dug Alsabet’s grave.

"Ask." Sasaki replied after arming sweat from her brow. "You’ve never needed permission before."

"Should we not burn her in accordance with Anglish customs?" the golden-eyed woman asked her mother.

Sasaki froze. She hadn’t even considered the thought. She looked to her daughter, who somehow, despite shovelling as diligently as her mother, seemed to be as immaculate as always.

"Should we?" Sasaki asked. "I mean... I didn’t even- it didn’t even cross my mind." She replied. "Yamato bury our dead. ‘Sky above, earth below’" She quoted. Kuroyuki nodded in agreement.

"She is not Yamato, however." Kuroyuki pointed out, tossing a shovelful of earth out of the hole, somehow making even such a menial movement as elegant as a dance.

Sasaki shrugged. "I’m not Anglish." She stated, and then added, "Technically I’m not Yamato anymore, either." She smiled bitterly at that.

"But we’ve been at this for two hours, Kuro-chan." She observed, and then added, "Don’t you think it’d be a waste to cremate her after all this effort?" She asked, a playful element to her voice.

Kuroyuki let out a small sigh, and bent to her shovelling.

Sasaki washed Alsabet’s clothes in the well, tucked the woman’s hand into them, and rolled up the bundle. She nodded at Kuroyuki.

"Walking, is it?" Kuroyuki questioned, and Sasaki nodded. "I think a great many questions would be asked if we returned a day after setting out to kill Alsabet." Sasaki explained, and Kuroyuki nodded.

"Kuro-" Sasaki began, but the young woman raised a forestalling hand, anticipating her mother’s worry.

"You have elected to serve the Golden Lady, Sasaki-sama. I will not intrude upon this commitment, because I am not in the business of shepherding souls. My responsibility is completely different." She advised. "However, the Church as it is now is not equipped to understand my purpose. This poses a problem for you, but I am nothing if not discrete." she finished.

Sasaki let out a breath. "Fine." She gestured at the surrounding forests. "Where the fuck are we?" She asked. "If we’re travelling by foot.... How do we get back to Darnell? Is there a closer city?"

Kuroyuki gave her a level look. "I don’t know."

Sasaki gave her a baffled look. "You don’t know? I don’t understand. You knew exactly where Alsabet was!" She exploded. "How can you not know where we are?"

Kuroyuki sighed. "It doesn’t work that way, Mother." she explained patiently.

"Shit." Sasaki cursed. "We should have prepared, before we left. Food, clothes..." She trailed off, and then added begrudgingly, "...horses."

Kuroyuki nodded sagely in agreement.

Sasaki let out a sigh. "Fuck."

She glanced around the yard, taking in the house, the scorched garden, the rubble of the tower, the partially completed wall.

"That paladin." Sasaki murmured. "She said she fought here." Kuroyuki’s eyes lit up at that.

"Ah. I recall. The paladin Armilla led a force of troops here from Norn." Sasaki’s daughter confirmed. She moved to the forest’s edge near the tower. "I believe we’ll have luck in this direction, Mother."

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Sasaki stared into the fire, her sword in her lap. Too much had happened too quickly, and she needed to process it. Just holding the sword put her in an almost supernatural sense of calm; she’d been conditioned as a child that before she bared her blade at anyone, she first had to be calm. Just touching the handle was enough, but she gripped it anyway.

Sasaki had grown up with the thought that mages weren’t people. She had lived in comfort with that knowledge the whole of her life. Mages weren’t human. They were something less than human. Something within them had whisked their hearts away, and all they could think about was magic. Magic, magic, magic. To them it was everything; even as it poisoned their bodies and corroded their souls, they couldn’t help but want more of it. They were no longer people.

Why was Alsabet different, then?

Sasaki had stowed away on a ship from the Yamato lands, and arrived in Einsamkeit two months later. Dodging Port Authority had been easy enough work. While taking her ease near the Church of Einsamkeit, she’d seen someone in the livery of the church talking with someone with a tattoo on their face. Even new to the continent as she was, she knew what that was; the Mark of Sanctioning.

Why would a person talk to a thing? She had wondered at the time.

She had made her way north to Begierde, to Tannit, and through the jumble of frontier villages and forts, and there she had met... Katarina. A genuine Witch Hunter.

"Are you going to drag that thing around with you while you get mud on your feet, Katarina?" She had asked.

Just so. Mages were no longer people. They were things. Dangerous things. Her opinion hadn’t changed. She’d helped Katarina kill two mages in Higgenfall, and a third in Aston. There was no sense of murder, there. She was just killing things. Monsters. Abominations.

Why was Alsabet different, then?

The conclusion was so easy, so obvious, she would have hit the other person and called them an idiot for dithering over it for so long: Alsabet hadn’t been a Witch to her. She’d been Katarina’s sister. It hadn’t been a Witch Hunt, it had been an honor killing. Something to spare Katarina pain.

How would Katarina have done it? That much was obvious: Katarina was already in the middle of hunting Alsabet down when Sasaki had found her, sick and weakened in some backwater village where everyone stared at you with eyes that were just a little too knowing. Katarina knew her job, and did it without hesitation. She was relentless, implacable, unstoppable.

Sasaki called herself Katarina’s Apprentice, but she hadn't even paid attention to the woman. She should have listened. She should have learned. Alsabet might have been Katarina’s sister at one point in time, but that all changed when the winds of magic blew and stole away her heart. She was a Witch.

Katarina would have casually, indifferently, and indiscriminately dispatched the witch just the same as she had countless others.

Mages weren’t people. She made that mistake with Alsabet, but she wouldn’t do it again.