Yeskov’s head flopped back and forth. He seemed half-delirious. “It wasn’t supposed to be this way,” he murmured. “It went wrong. Your father- we relied on him and he betrayed us. Reneged on the deal. I can’t blame him. I would have done the same were I brave enough-” He coughed, pink froth at the corners of his mouth.

The monstrous woman in the basement had said something similar about betrayal. “What went wrong, Yeskov? What were you doing?”

“Be careful,” he choked out. “The ritual didn’t go right, but it didn’t go all wrong either. Some of him is here…the King of Doors, the Hypostasis…Leave while you can, Lady Nikha. I’m so sorry…” Suddenly his eyes went wide, as though he was staring at something over her shoulder. She snapped her head around, but nothing was there. When she turned back Yeskov was dead.

“Damn it!” She stood up and gave the corpse a vicious kick. For a moment she felt bad about it, but then remembered what he’d been trying to do.

“Are the other ones-are they dead too?” asked Kemp, voice shaky.

“They cut up the red-haired one, and I stabbed the one with the mustache. I only cut the woman, though-“ She cursed. “I left the gun in there with her!” She checked the load in her rifle and ran back to the kitchen with Kemp on her heels. They found Pleskanina sitting in the corner. Magadan’s gun sat in her lap, but she didn’t reach for it when they came in. She hardly seemed to notice them at all, in fact.

Kemp took one look at Gerontez’s remains and threw up. Nikha aimed her gun and stalked over to the woman in the corner and realized she was muttering to herself. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” she mumbled. “I was just so hungry, and nothing satisfied. So hungry…Oh, I wish I hadn’t come.”

“She’s gone mad.” Kemp had recovered himself and came over to join her. “What do we do?” Pleskanina didn’t react. She just rocked back and forth and clutched her wounded hand, ignoring both them and the gun.

“She’s a cannibal. And she tried to kill us. We ought to kill her back.” Nikha didn’t raise her gun, though. Shooting someone in self-defense was one thing. Executing them, though…

“Are you- are you sure?” Nikha noticed his skin was clammy, his eyes slightly wild. “If-if you don’t want to, I can-“

“No. I’ll do it.” Kemp already looked in bad shape, and it was her idea anyway. She slowly pulled back the hammer on her rifle.

“Wait!” Pleskanina seemed to come back to reality. “I’ll t-take care of it myself. It’s…it’s what I deserve. Oh, Martyrs...” Her fingers fluttered over the pistol in her lap. “I’ve already stained my soul so utterly, I… I s-shouldn’t force more horror upon you than I already have. I’m so sorry.”

“You’re sure?” asked Kemp, voice fraught.

She nodded, too overwrought to speak.

“…Be quick about it. We’ll wait.” Nikha spun round and left the room.

A few seconds after the door closed behind Kemp, there was another gunshot. Nikha checked to be sure she’d done it. She had. She shut the door and flopped down into a chair, rifle across her lap, and made an announcement:

“Well, that was a mess.” Kemp didn’t reply. “Are you alright?”

“What?” Kemp looked up. He’d been staring at his hands. “Y-yes. Fine. I’m completely fine.”

Nikha squinted at him. “You don’t sound fine.”

“Well, I am, so-“ Nikha grabbed him by the shoulders.

“It’s alright if you’re not.” Nikha remembered how she’d felt when she shot Ossoff- and he’d been in the middle of attacking her at the time. Kemp hadn’t been raised by a soldier, either. He had to be a mess inside- and again he’d gotten hurt getting her out of danger. She felt guilty, but he mattered more right now.

He looked up at her and she saw tears in his eyes. “I killed him, Nikha! I never wanted to kill anybody, not once in my life! Am I going to the Blazes, now? I just- It’s just terrible!”

“You did what you could under the circumstances. They were going to kill both of us. They killed their own friend, for Martyr’s sake!”

“I know, I know. But you aren’t supposed to kill people, Nikha. It’s why Merowyn was cast out. And even if he was going to kill us, he was still a person. I’m sure there are people who’ll miss him-“

Nikha had an idea. “Kemp, Merowyn was cast out for killing her husband. But why was that bad? What reasons did the Annoumenos give?”

He sniffed. “Reason and compassion. The Two Gifts given to humankind, and she wasted them, wasted human life.”

This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

She met his eyes. “And if you’d just laid back and let yourself die, wouldn’t you have allowed your life to go to waste as well?”

“I-I guess, but what about him-“

She thought of the what Papa had told her that time in the garden. “You’ve got as much of a right to live as he does. He chose to risk his life, not you. You saved yours- and mine. Thank you for that, by the way. That’s two I owe you.”

He glanced down, looking very distraught. “I-I know. I know all that in my head. I shouldn’t be so selfish, not when you’ve had to do things just as hard- but I still feel so…”

Nikha wondered what her Papa would do if she were feeling bad, and decided there was only one thing. She took her hands off Kemp’s shoulders and pulled him into an embrace. He froze up. “It’s okay,” she said, “I promise.”

“Nikha, what are you-“

“I’m giving you a hug. It’s alright. And don’t feel bad about feeling bad. It means you’re a good person.” That’s what Papa would have said, she thought. She felt rather awkward, but patted him on the back a few times. He relaxed.

“Um, thank you. But you can let go now.”

She did and looked him over, hands on her hips. He seemed better. I hope he’ll stay that way, she thought worriedly. She decided to change the subject. “Could you do me a favor, Kemp?”

“Sure, what do you need?” He seemed eager for the distraction.

She looked down, dithering a little. It was kind of embarrassing. “Do you think you could cut my hair?”

His eyes widened. “Ah, maybe not well, but yes. How come?”

“That woman almost grabbed me by the ponytail in there. I’ll be sad to see it go, but it’s becoming a…liability, I guess is the word.”

“Okay, okay. Makes sense. What should I cut it with?”

She pointed to his belt. “My father’s knife should be sharp enough. Just strop it a bit.” She took a seat as he drew the war knife and ran the edge down his shirt a few times.

“Sharp enough indeed,” he muttered, popping a few hairs of his arm. “How do you want it?”

Nikha undid the ribbon in her hair and let her hair fall free. “Just…just get it along my jaw, I suppose. That should be short enough.”

He took a breath. “Here I go, then.” She stayed still while he slowly passed the knife through her hair, the sharp blade cutting without resistance. It was weird, having someone so close to her with a deadly weapon, but she trusted Kemp. Strands floated down like black spidersilk. He got all the way around her head, then inspected his work with a pensive frown.

“All done?” she asked.

“Well, it’s a little uneven over here-“

“It was cut with a knife, it’s going to be uneven! I’m sure it’s fine.”

He raised an eyebrow. “It’s your hair, but my da says to never let shoddy work out of the shop. I’ve got a reputation to worry about, you know.”

She gave a theatrical sigh. “Do what you must.” He touched it up around the edges, then gave her the thumbs up.

“It’s as good as I can get it.”

She went over and peered at her reflection in the polished wood of the table. Her hair now stopped sharply just below her jawline. It hadn’t been this short since she was little. “You did a good job.”

“Think so?” He slotted the knife home with a little flourish.

“Yes. How does it look?” She did an experimental twirl. It felt oddly breezy around her face.

“Good! It suits you.”

“It does? Thank you.” Nikha barely kept the stutter out of her voice. She wasn’t used to compliments of any sort, let alone from boys her own age.

He looked around at the scene: knocked-over chairs, a corpse in the corner, and hair clippings all over the floor. “You know, I don’t expect most barbershops are like this.”

It startled a laugh out of her. “I suspect you’re right. Let’s get out of here.”

“Aren’t you going to take their guns?”

“I’ll take Yeskov’s, I suppose,” she said after thinking about it. She picked up the tiny derringer from where he’d dropped it. It held only two shells, and tiny ones at that. Still, a gun was a gun. “Unless you want it, Kemp?”

He quickly shook his head. “No. No thanks. Um, what about the other one?”

“It’s only got one shot left.” She wrinkled her nose. “And that woman killed herself with it.”

“Wha- But you made me take this one!” he protested.

“That’s because you neglected to bring one of your own.” She turned up her nose and gave him a prim little smile.

“Oh, sure, because I-!” He ground a hand into his forehead and sighed. “Is this really how you thank me for playing barber?”

“If you think you don’t need a gun you can drop it any time you like. Now let’s go.” She took two very confident steps and paused, looking over her shoulder. “Um, which way do we go?”

Kemp got out the pathfinder, grumbling “At least nobody’s killed themselves with this. Probably.” He messed with the gain, turning this way and that. “Okay, we should turn left after we get out the door.” They walked on.

For a while they paced through more of the mundane-albeit filthy-hallways. Once they passed through a stretch where motes of a white, snow-like substance sifted down from the ceiling, just like Nikha had encountered before entering the basement. The stuff wasn’t cold, having a texture rather like silk where it touched the skin. It fell densely enough to dim the phlogistic lights and build up into great drifts that Kemp and Nikha had to kick through, muffling their steps. The false snow stopped soon enough, but Nikha very quickly started to miss it. All sides of the next corridor ran with tendrils of slimy, gray-black mold. Ugly little mushrooms sprouted from the sodden carpet. Green-gray fungal blooms speckled the portraits like lesions upon painted faces. Blackish slime coated even the chandeliers, dimming the light further yet. Nikha and Kemp grimaced as the mold squidged and suppurated beneath their footfalls. The air was tremendously close and stuffy, stinking of mildew and rot and making both of them cough. They trod carefully to avoid slipping, Nikha brushing hanging fronds away with her rifle.

After far too many minutes of this, the pair came upon a four-way intersection. A cluster of broad, low mushrooms squatted in its center, faintly swaying back and forth.

“This-hack!-this is awful!” managed Kemp, already pulling the pathfinder from its holster.

“Quite,” Nikha wheezed, trying to keep her breaths shallow as possible. She had a look at the three ways they could go. Straight ahead looked much the same as where they’d come from. To the left the fungus was even thicker. Glutinous, furry strands crisscrossed the passage, so dense they’d have to hack them down with knives to get anywhere. To the right the hallway changed, becoming an old-looking corridor of dark stone. “Please not left,” whispered Nikha.

“Ah! There it is. Bear right.”

Nikha sighed in relief, wiping sweat from her brow. The mold retreated soon after they crossed into the stone hallway, and the air rapidly cooled.