The crescent moon is still watching over Alice and Indigo when they make their first move, and follow the stream down toward the ocean. “I sure hope that mage didn’t take them all out,” Alice whispers—the deep-purple piece of cloth, they both insisted on wearing to cover half their faces, smothers her words. “Or else I swear I’m leaving you behind.”

Though he is aware that, no matter what, Alice will probably always be one step ahead of him, it’s difficult for Indigo to hold his thoughts back and directly speak his mind. “I don’t think he did,” Indigo mutters as he pushes a branch out of his face and away from his newly healed wounds, courtesy of Alice’s top-tier healing salves. “It looked like he was being sent over to interrogate them. Not to mention he surely knows the implications it would have for us if he were to murder them all.”

“A full-fledged war, ain’t it?”

The hint of amusement sparking within Alice’s eyes is one Indigo finds quite unsettling. He raises a brow, then bends down behind bushes alongside her, while they search the area for potential enemies. “That your thing?” he asks.

Alice snickers. “Wouldn’t it be exciting, though?” she whispers. “Wouldn’t you like to hear them all scream and squirm in pain after all they did to us?” Her smirk is driven by her lust for murder, and Indigo realizes he’s made a mistake for thinking they were at all the same.

“I…” I don’t know about that, he thinks, before cursing once he remembers she’s heard the words just as clearly as if he’d spoken them aloud.

“It’s fine.” Alice waves him off. “Not like I care what you do as long as you don’t get in my way.” She gazes up to the horizon in sight. “One day, Indigo,” Alice says, “I’m going to lead a rebellion for all those who were oppressed in our history. And I will be the face of that revolution on the day we take back the power that was stolen from us.”

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Indigo parts his lips to reply, but his breath is stolen from his lungs as a harsh kick lands against his spine. His eyes go wide. He gasps and immediately coils up on the ground before coughing out bile.

Once he’s stopped choking on vomit, he turns around—yet his expectations of being confronted by another person are short-lived, for Indigo is met by the sight of a single foot, whose decaying toes wriggle and reveal its pierced flesh, filled with squirming maggots.

He freezes, horrified as the taste of puke threatens to crawl back up his throat. Alice shouts things he does not register. And perhaps, he thinks, that just like his own thoughts, her words did not make perfect sense either.

Alice dashes in the direction of their common enemy who stands across the river. She grabs a tiny marble of glass from her pockets; it is filled with liquids the color of saplings. With one swift throw aimed at their attacker, Alice has the bottom of his cloak melting away in seconds, as it is eaten up by the acid spray now free from its prison of shards.

The cloaked figure takes a step back. It gives Alice enough time to check in on Indigo, who has barely started to rise. She reaches for her belt of emergency potions and tosses one to him. “Drink this,” she says. “Quickly! It’ll help with the pain.”

However, as Indigo gulps down her concoction, a hand rises from the ground and grabs Alice’s ankle. The hand shakes her leg until she trips and falls to the ground. In a fit of panic, Alice desperately attempts to free herself of the cool, rotten skin now attached to hers—but it’s no use. The hand refuses to let go.

Before them, the cloaked figure cackles. “I believe it’s time for you ladies to hand yourselves over.” From his back, he unsheathes a dagger with a crooked blade and draws a small movement across his neck that slices the air. “Unless you’d like to join the other heretics in the void?”