Joanne discovered Habondia seated on a marble throne, her grip on the cross pendant so tight it seemed she might bend it.

“I can’t sense Abeona anymore,” Joanne said. “Although, I doubt we need her at the moment.”

Habondia, her eyes filled with tension, nodded as she fidgeted.

“Take it easy. Everything is going as planned,” Joanne reassured her.

“Yeah, I know, but I can’t still shake my anxiety off.”

“You’re overthinking.”

Joanne observed how Habondia stared at the magical chessboard, witnessing the Purples capturing a bishop represented by a priest. Sensing her friend's unease, Joanne extended a handkerchief to dry the cold sweat on Habondia’s forehead. After years of friendship, she could read Habondia’s face like an open book, understanding that despite everyone going their separate ways and facing obstacles, Habondia's plan was still in motion, even when her doubts lingered.

“I’ve been thinking about something,” Joanne began.

“What is it?”

“I've noticed that the five oldest members... have been playing dirty games behind your back.”

“What do you mean?”

“I think Du Bellay, DeVries, Sains, Pippin, and De Hard are planning something big, and I sense De Hard is their leader.”

“What do you mean?” Habondia frowned.

“I eavesdropped on your conversation with Abeona, and Naamaah, sorry about that, but I managed to cement my suspicion. The Time Gazer implied that Lady De Hard can be as powerful as you.”

“What do you mean?”

“I found out that De Hard is an Eternal Jana.”

“I knew that.”

“She’s an Entity of Creation… I think she is plotting something?”

“And what could she be plotting?”

“After you got captured and imprisoned, these old hags vanished and started recruiting people from who knows where. I believe they want to thwart your plans of summoning the Seven Exiles. They want to stop you at all costs.”

Habondia stood up, turned to the redhead, and stared into her eyes. “What do you want to do?”

“It's relatively simple... they must be stopped.”

Joanne's gaze remained fixed on Habondia’s shocking expression, her instincts tingling with anticipation. The tension in the room was palpable, and as the conversation between Habondia and Joanne continued, the weight of her words hung in the air like a storm ready to break.

“Kill De Hard!?” Habondia scowled, her displeasure etched across her face.

“Not her. We can use her for our benefit. Remove her supporters, leave her unprotected and without allies; she will despair.”

The gravity of Joanne's proposition resonated, a strategic move in this intricate game of power. Habondia, torn between conviction and doubt, wrestled with the decision.

“Is this truly necessary?” she asked, the reluctance evident in her voice.

“They’re not the ones we once trusted. You shouldn’t have invited them in the first place.”

“Who is supporting them?” Habondia's gaze shifted to the chessboard, a diversion from Joanne's piercing stare. Uncertainty gripped her, torn between conflicting loyalties.

“Völundr and perhaps, Lord Emrys.”

The revelation of Völundr and Lord Emrys as potential supporters sent a shock through Habondia, a realization that further complicated their already convoluted situation.

“They?” Habondia's strength wavered, the weight of betrayal settling in. “Why they?”

“That I don’t know,” Joanne sighed, her own uncertainty masked beneath a veneer of determination.

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

“Fine. Do what you must. I trust you,” Habondia said.

Joanne's nod signaled both approval and resignation before she vanished.

Joanne was a Jana with a high affinity for the Water element, more specifically its weirdest deviants, lightness, and darkness. With a combination of both, she could hide in the shadows and make herself practically invisible.

She was a silent observer in pursuit of a limping Lady Du Bellay, whose feeble retreat echoed the fragility of their current situation.

Margarita, Du Bellay’s protégée, and Lady Sains assisted the elderly woman, escorting her to a lobby filled with sofas. Exhausted, Du Bellay sought refuge on a deteriorating sofa.

The lobby, once grand, succumbed to the encroachment of strange weeds. Walls crumbled, and the floor of jasper cracked. Frescoes of epic battles on the roof soaked, and the paintings began to flake.

Several feet away and sitting on a wooden chair, Joanne overheard their conversation with keen attention. Sains, concerned, instructed Margarita to seek Lady DeVries and Lady De Hard, and their apprentices, Maria and Katherine. Margarita sprinted away; her anxiety palpable. Sains, now beside the tired Lady Du Bellay, wiped the sweat from her face.

“We're in trouble,” Sains confessed.

“That is, you are in big trouble,” Joanne interrupted a black flash crashing against the sofa. Unfortunately for Joanne, the two ladies deftly dodged the surprise attack.

Joanne materialized. “Why the long faces?” she scowled. “I see Lady Du Bellay is still able to move nimbly to dodge any surprise attacks.”

As Joanne confronted the two other women, her smirk betrayed the gravity of her intentions.

“What are you doing?” Lady Sains asked, her fury bubbling to the surface.

“My duties, I must eliminate you both.”

“Why are you doing this?”

“Acting innocent?”

Du Bellay frowned and gestured for Sains to step back. She removed her eyepatch, revealing an artificial eye made of finely molded gold—a Wedjat, a magical artifact of considerable power. Joanne couldn't hide her surprise, her whistle cutting through the charged atmosphere.

“How come you have such a thing? You didn’t have it before.”

Du Bellay, unyielding, brandished a golden wand, invoking the incantation “Imaut!” as the room crackled with latent magic, Joanne felt as if the gravity pulled had increased. At the same time, Du Bellay's fake eye started glowing.

The Wedjat, the fabled Eye of Horus, a relic coveted for its Aether-storing abilities, now served an unexpected purpose. Du Bellay had repurposed it to store summonable sprights.

The wall behind Joanne began to ripple with spectral energy, and from its depths emerged an enigmatic creature made of shadows—a horse-sized jackal adorned with a regal golden crown and necklace. Its eyes glowed with an otherworldly intensity as it lunged at Joanne, claws sinking into her right arm, imprisoning her in its shadowy grasp.

"Yinn!" Du Bellay shouted. Her command resonated, and her golden eye radiated with an ethereal blue brilliance. Capitalizing on the moment, Sains conjured a silver transverse flute out of thin air and started playing an enchanting melody. As the notes of the tune crescendoed, an amber-hued aura enveloped the elderly woman.

"A catalyst? Is it not enough with your current power?" Joanne scowled, witnessing the unfolding arcane display.

The brilliance of Du Bellay's eye dimmed, but in its wake, a vibrant blue flame erupted, coalescing into the form of a djinn —a bald masculine figure composed of living fire. Burly muscles showed on its chest, together with a long mustache. From the waist down, the djinn was a swirling mass of deep blue smoke, darker than the rest of its fiery body.

"Stop her!" Du Bellay commanded the djinn, its maw gaping wide with saw-like teeth, poised to devour Joanne's head.

The djinn and the jackal ripped Joanne’s body into shreds. Leaving just a disfigured clump of blood, organs, flesh, and broken bones.

The djinn, the jackal, and their suffocating presence vanished in the blink of an eye; Du Bellay's satisfaction was evident. Sains ceased her smooth tune.

Suddenly, the air was filled with cascading torrents of blood, painting the ground in a macabre tableau. Lady Du Bellay, betrayed and stabbed in the back, sank to her knees in agony.

A second Joanne materialized behind her, prompting a bewildered Du Bellay to question, "How is that possible?" Before an answer could be uttered, Joanne's intervention was swift. A kick to Du Bellay's back drove the dagger deeper, and the older woman crumpled to the ground.

A third Joanne manifested where the original lay dead, making the mutilated corpse turn into shadows. Then a fourth Joanne appeared beside Sains, delivering a devastating blow to her midriff.

"You have no shadow," Lady Sains gasped, attempting to catch her breath.

"I've made clones," Joanne smirked.

"How many can you make?" Du Bellay asked through bloodied gasps.

"A hundred," Joanne taunted. "I won’t die just because you killed one."

"We have to tell someone of that weakness," Du Bellay urged, and before Joanne could react, Sains vanished.

Joanne's fingers curled firmly into Du Bellay's wiry hair, forcing the old woman's head to tilt upward. A twisted smile crept across Joanne's face as she spoke, her voice dripping with contempt. "I guess you won’t need this anymore." With swift brutality, Joanne plunged her fingers into the old woman’s eye socket, yanking off the wedjat.

Du Bellay crumpled, thumping her head against the floor. A wail escaped her lips as she clutched the eyehole with her bloodied hand. Undeterred, she traced three circled arrows on the floor with her own blood and shouted a cryptic incantation, "Veho!"

The ground responded, birthing hundreds of black arrows reminiscent of traffic signs, each impaling every Joanne’s clone. A macabre dance of shadows and pain played out in the dimly lit room, as Joannes's bodies were sliced, pierced, and torn all over the place.

Yet, amidst the onslaught, a fifth Joanne materialized next to Du Bellay, wielding another knife poised for the kill. The old woman choked, a desperate struggle for breath, but in a final act of defiance, she managed to draw a dove with her blood on the ground before succumbing to her fate. The drawing twitched and ran away over the surface of the floor, Joanne was simply too slow to catch it. Out of frustration, Joanne stabbed the old woman in her neck.

“I only have twenty spare shadows left!” Joanne gritted her teeth, a subtle frustration etched on her face. She grabbed the dropped Wedjat and absorbed Du Bellay's fading shadow into her own.

“Ah!,” Joanne groaned. In an instant, she vanished, leaving behind the crime scene.