𝐑𝐄𝐃 𝐇𝐈𝐋𝐓

.ೃ࿐ᵂᵉ ᵃˡˡ ʰᵃᵛᵉ ᵒᵘʳ ˢᵉˡᶠⁱˢʰ ʳᵉᵃˢᵒⁿˢ, ᵈᵉᵃʳ.

He would say to his blue, ‘Careful not to shine too bright; your judges can’t praise you if they’re blind.’—A Palace Of Ulric Labyrinths, Elvira Crest.

|Garzabel— July 17, 7425|

|Garzabel’s Sphere Chancery|

THE TWO MOONS of Garzabel whispered slyly tonight. They hummed to the debacle pulses below them; some in warning, others in goodbye, the rest a wish of goodnight, but the remaining few, the sprinkle which concealed under the ceilings of Garzabel's pillars, the moons could only watch curiously.

"We are no different from the Gods," a woman's voice spoke, rippling like loose rain across the halls of the temple. "Perhaps, as it had been argued by our Chair, we are far worse."

"Now please, Gene," a man said, the voice of his shoes chiming across the marble flooring as he strode along two others. There were three of them, two which were decked in great brown robings that stretched out behind them like tails and one in the middle which was wrapped in blinding robes of white. "You don't wish to scare the boy off with your nonsensical philosophy before the first ceremony, do you?"

"She hasn't scared me," the boy in the middle spoke, bordering a whisper. He was much shorter and youthful than the pair, and against all the white slathered across his face, he didn't look any older than sixteen.

The woman to his left pulled a face, an expression of satisfaction and edit as she turned to the man on his other side. "I wasn't trying to scare him off," her words were empty syllables against the greatness of the ancient halls surrounding them. "I was just preparing him for the inevitable responsibilities that would grow on his shoulders the second he drinks from the hands of the Chair."

"What about Mira?" the boy asked, looking forward and at the elongated halls that warped weirdly with the perception of distance. "Will I still be able to communicate with her after I drink from the Chair's hands?"

"That is for the Chair to decide," the woman beside him answered, hand gently grazing the boy's back like a mother would. "But I will not fret too long on the idea that he will deny you from seeing your niece. Separating one from their blood only makes blood boil for the worse."

"But what I would recommend for such a timeless occasion," the man to his right added, parting a lectured look at his companion. "Is that you do not think too much about your niece." He pushed back his bagging sleeve, folding his arms behind his back as they strolled. "Such elevated stress can cause a mighty toll on the outcome of your ceremony, Kal."

"I'm sorry, my padrone," the boy mumbled somewhat sheepishly, turning his white-painted face towards the ground. "I promise to not let personal matters taint the process of the ceremony."

"Padrone," the man imitated, smiling back greatly. "Do not humble me so yet, Kal, I am nothing but a king's congress until you drink from the Chair's hold."

A reflective expression dozed across Kal's smeared face. "Will it hurt?"

"What do you mean, Kal?"

"After I drink from the Chair," Kal explained, unconsciously scratching at his face. He dropped his face, sparing a singular look towards the white on his index before he turned back to Gene. "How will it feel? Will it hurt me?"

"It hurt for Clémence after she drank," Gene clarified, folding her hands behind her back like her partner as she nodded her gelled head his way. "Although, Homar claimed to be able to feel all the irresistible pleasures of the worlds after his ceremony."

"Is that true?" Kal asked, emulating his seniors' powered strides.

"I remember it like it was yesterday," Homar admitted, a minute smile breaking his wrinkled cheeks. "I saw things too, perhaps just as much as I felt things."

"What did you see?"

"Death," Homar revealed, chuckling at Kal's startled face. "An abstract death, Kal, something beyond and over everything I could have ever imagined." He hummed into a brief silence before adding, "Even today, if I had the choice to experience again all the joy that has made me the man I am today or just a flicker of what I felt that day followed by an all-consuming death, I will eternally, again and again, pick to even just skim a fraction what I felt that day."

"As I said," Gene mumbled begrudgingly from the side, facing forward. "'All the irresistible pleasures of the world'."

"As ridiculous as it may sound," Homar piped, slowing his pace as great standing doors came into view, peering against the endless empty of the halls. "I believe I saw today that day."

"You saw today?" Kal asked in fascination, voice losing its echo. "As in the ceremony?"

"As a matter of fact, Kal," Homar grinned, stressing his words eagerly. "I'm pretty sure I saw you."

"Me?"

"Yes," Homar said, grinning wide at the pair who watched him. "And a girl," he added, catching the eye of Gene.

"A girl?"

"Oh yes, Gene, another disciple," Homar affirmed as he sniffed, taking in every emotion that rinsed over the faces of the duo before him. "Chosen by the Chair."

"The Chair," Gene gasped, letting her poised posture plummet. "And you didn't think to inform me, Homar?!"

"I didn't see why I needed to do so," Homar answered, shrugging his shoulders. "Nobody has officially informed me, all I know is from a vision decades ago."

Gene let out a scoff, flattening her hair as she watched him. "It's a simple yes or no trivia, Homar," she barked low, careful not to raise her voice too much, fearsome of the idea that the people on the other side of the door would hear her. "Is there another disciple or not?"

Homar shrugged his shoulders. "I'm not entirely sure."

"Is that even possible?" Kal whispered the question dreadingly, bringing the attention back on him. The liquid paint on his face moved slowly down his jugular, travelling in rivalry with his growing sweat. "Having two disciples for one ceremony?"

"Unheard of, sure," Homar responded, turning to look about the halls. "Impossible? Not completely."

"But--"

"Your padrone is right in his thoughts," cut off a rattling voice, silencing Kal's curiosity. Both Homar and Gene were swift to fall to their knees, heads confronting the marble floors, leaving Kal alone to face the man of the voice. "I'd advise you capitulate to his wisdom, son...he is, after all, the counter of my lack."

A man stood before them, light brown hair that fumed to life a colony of blond tips of hair that slipped off his sharp, yet mildly war-blemished face. His face was slightly wrinkled, not with age as it was for Homar, but instead with a rust of ruling experience that seemed to be settling through a callous cost of inclement eyes and an aloof smile.

"I apologize, my Insegtro," Homar muttered in deep regret. "It was never my intention for my words to offend you."

"Please Homar," the Chair said, raising a silencing hand in his direction. A low chuckle broke the man's lips. "Your curiosity does not offend me in the slightest."

"But—" Gene began, but she too was cut off.

"There is only one disciple here with us today, Skhol Gene," the Chair started, waving Kal to come closer with a leather hand. "And that disciple will be late for his rite at this gruelling pace." The boy did as he was directed, moving in cadence with the taller man before him as the incredible doors before them cracked open with an omniscient groan.

The figure decked in jet sheathing was what Kal saw first. The faceless being he knew was tracking him from behind the black mask that met them, brutal gear rattling with each of their steps as they took a position at the side of the doors, unfurling the space filled with the rest of the king’s counsellors so that the four could walk in. Everyone was dressed the same, drowning in poignant maroon they indulged in their separately hushed conversations. Kal’s eyes fell back to the sword dangling by the masked man’s hip, red handle luminous against the black hole of a uniform that Kal was ashamed to say unnerved him.

"That is my companion," the Chair acknowledged from his side, bowing his head in the soldier's direction. His gaze found Kal from the corner of his eyes. "I would not worry about him, he means us no harm." He turned back to the soaring man, rewarding his presence with a diminutive laugh and a playful smirk. "An apprentice, if you would," he mused, clicking his tongue in contemplative thought as he watched the man. "Wouldn't you say, son?”

An incoherent grumble came from the masked man before them, something that was broodingly reluctant in its depth.

"Yes, yes, indeed," the chair spoke, not seeming too enthusiastic with the man's stale response. "He's an orphan, you see," the Chair added too indulgingly. The man to their side did not even flinch at the disclosure of his personal, only attending to them with a profundity of lacking care. Passed the sweltering of his prickly skin, Kal could sense Hormar shuffle uncomfortably on his soles from his peripheral, Gene's head falling low to the floor. "I took him in under the conditions that he does what he's told and keeps the king's counsellors safe."

"My Insegtro," a sweet voice intruded. A woman made her way through the thin crowd and towards them, bare feet imaging against the cold marble under them. She took a nominal glance at the towering figure in black, limiting the masked man with a honey-doused smile before she turned back towards the rest of the group with the very same delicacy.

"Clémence," Homar greeted tenderly, turning his gaze away from the paolo veronese green robes that fell fragile against her tattooed skin, exposing most of her bronzed skin. She smiled at that.

"Good evening, Homar," Clémence purred back at the man cannily, pearled smile underscoring her ocean-like morale of beaut as Homar detoured her stare. "My, it has been a while, hasn't it?"

"It has," Homar responded curtly, firing down the embryonic spring of their conversation as he turned gingerly back to the Chair. "The ceremony, my Insegtro."

"Yes, I'm well aware of our tardiness," the chair responded, budging Kal forward with a push to his back. "If you would, Kal."

"Yes, my Insegtro."

"Homar?" Clémence called for the man covertly desperate. "May I please have a word?" Homar did not move to follow the leading pair as he bobbed at her, providing Gene with a contrite look.

"I'll wash up for the ceremony," Gene announced, figuring it was not her place to linger any longer. "I'll meet you both by the basin."

"Very well."

"Have you been avoiding me?" Clémence asked shortly, eyeing a departing Gene. She turned back to Homar who was already observing her. "No, why have you been avoiding me?"

"Why would you assume I have been avoiding you?"

"I'm not stupid, Ahmad," Clémence bit, walking to the far corner of the colossal room where a lone door sat. Homar followed after her steps, hands folded behind his back as he took her in. "I know when a man is using me."

"Using you?" Homar choked out incredulously, hesitating in his steps until Clémence latched onto his brown robes, yanking the man along with her. "You really think I'm using you, Clémence?"

"What other reason would you have to keep my expectancies snared so high?" The door yawned to life with a filling croak, exposing the magnificent expanse that sat behind it. Wind billowed leisurely through the open space, tagging roughly along with it the peach curtains of the ajar balcony doors. "Surely, and this is considering our hapless vocations as associates, surely it's not because Homar Ahmad is in need of something finer."

"Finer?" Homar grinned, clutching the flesh of her waist with the hand free from Clémence's delicate hold. "Oh yes, and while we're at it, my darling, how about something more... permanent?"

"Permanent?" Clémence snorted, invested in his words, gazing into the swarthy maroons that attended to her as if they could detect every whip of her scandalous heart. "Oh please, do indulge me, Ahmad."

"Let's leave the king's courts," Homar whispered into the ambience, resting his forehead on hers, watching her eyes scan him as he breathed the words. "Let's run away, Clémence. Let's get married, move to the planet of gold, and start a family without a single fear of war, money or hate."

"I wonder," Clémence mused into the chilled air. She caressed the side of Homar's face, swiping away the hairs that sunk. "If our son will be as much a daydreamer as his father."

"I hope not, Clémence" Homar murmured, seeming bewitched by the woman before him, tracking the skin of his cheek. "What I dream of would be very unseemly for the mind of a mere boy."

"Is that so, dear?"

"Very much so." His reply was low, ravenously hauling goosebumps along the skin of her exposed thigh. Hungry whisper scalding. Steady hum frosted. Though that cold feeling was quickly ousted by the impression of his fingers trailing up and along her flesh, biting into the surface of her skin with a short sting as his eyes took everything in. Her dress. Her skin. The sheen on her lips smudged and stolen, exhales left fluttering. Nails the colour of their dusk pondering lust into the marble ovality he had her propped against—-all just resplendence as he took her in. "But if you are still so curious, I can simply show you.”

His woman for the gloaming.

"Only if it's exceptionally lucid."

His.

His second kiss was not temperate. It was hungry, razing as if it had been refuted all the world's lure. He was greedy, burningly desperate, yet so far from negligent. She was tamed, bullying him with every second she ripped away to breathe. The steaming scent of poignant wood and bergamot practically surged her into pleasurable submission. The thought of some part of him finding its way inside her, albeit only the resinous scent of his cologne, excited him.

The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

A lot.

But it was not as exhilarating as the sound that had escaped her lips as he pulled her closer to him, her chest pushed into the rugged brown of his ceremonial robes as he held her in place. His hand found amenity at the base of her throat, sterling chains softly grinding against his fingers as his other hand intertwined with the hand she had left spread flat against the palatial marble, unconsciously holding upright the cravings of their moment as she met his gaze once more.

"Tell me what you want me to do to you," he spoke impossibly soft, words fanning the neck his lips grazed. "Tell me everything you want me to make you feel, Clémence."

"Homar." Clémence daintily drew away from his grip, awarding Homar with a tiny caress to his lecherously-red cheek. "Don't be so gluttonous, Homar," she uttered, beaming playfully as she pried out of their feverish suspense. "We have a ceremony to work."

"Why do you even care?" Homar grumbled, furrowing his brow as he watched her collect herself, the discontent on his face only falling a second as Clémence lent him a stare of blurred sore. "I meant why do we have to care about it so much?"

"We're the king's—"

"Counsellors, yes, I'm reasonably aware," Homar cut her off, folding his arms. "But we don't need to tolerate this stringent when we'll never see these people again."

"We drank from the Chair's hold, Homar," Clémence reminded him. "To opt-out so far along would practically be treason."

"Treason?" Homar scoffed, dissecting her with a glare that seemed to almost pass through her entire being. "Murderers run teeming in our system, Clémence." He strolled close to her, pacing around the circumference of her personal space. "I've heard stories of faceless cowards who, as we speak, commit atrocities beyond anything discernible. I've seen ministers and envoys alike rape the tossed-out girls of their metropolitans." He paused before Clémence, facing her with a stricken expression. "I've seen children get dragged out of their family homes and across the very same grounds the bodies of their parents laid degraded, towed by their vim so that they could serve in some war that would once again be responsible for the demise of what? Another couple million people?" Homar chuckled out his mute revulsion, latching onto the forearms of the woman before him with a vice grip. "Tell me, Clémence, is betraying one deplorable king's oath worse than the elimination of some indefinite lives?"

"That's not what I meant," Clémence snarled hurt, glaring back as she took a weak tug at his latching hands. "And you know it."

"Treason," Homar sighed back, relishing their interloped strain. "Is it really treason if you were never truly aligned with the one who assumes you've betrayed them?"

Past the composition of their stillness, the sinfully furtive rasp of their dithered drags, she could just make sense of it. Screams. Cries for liberality, the shrill racket of fear-lust. And finally, that. The ripple of stuttered words against Homar's sorrowful and pulled lips as cognition unfolded on Clémence's face prudently.

No.

"What have you done?" Her question trembled in her vocal cords. "No, no...oh Homar, what have you done?"

"What was asked of him," came a new voice, demoralizing the sultry tension of the room with a juxtaposition of coldness. The mask that faced her was an all-besetting wraith of death, flickering in fiendish brilliance against the attestation of the nighttime sky that ran through the room. A briefly darting flash mirrored through Clémence's pupils as the masked man twisted his head, looking at Homar as he spoke. "Your master calls for you."

"This," Clémence spluttered looking absolutely fear-stricken. The attention bent to her. "This is treason."

"I thought I already told you that this is not treason," Homar murmured sad, having the gall to look somewhat disappointed. Homar grabbed onto Clémence's tattooed bicep, and after some ineffective attempts of her trying to drag away from his hold, hauled her past the looming man who only watched and out of the room.

"Blasphemy then," Clémence spat, choking on a sob that demanded to feast as Homar dragged her along and into the wide-stretching ceremony chamber. "Heresy!"

"Now Clémence," the hiss held a slight duplication as Clémence whipped her head to Gene who was bleeding and kneeling in the centre of the expanse, huddling close to the white-face teen Clémence remembered from their welcome. The maturing sob from early burst ugly from Clémence's lips as Homar pulled her passed the limp bodies of her adjoining counsellors, shoving her forcibly to the ground by the fumes of the deceased and next to Gene and her teary disciple. "We need to calm down."

"Be careful," a sapped voice tightened some span away from them, mask stoic as he watched Homar’s grip. "Your deal is no good if you kill her."

"Kill her? What are you stupid?" the venom spilt from Homar's lips and through to the holes of the man’s mask. "I vouched for her, so why in God's name would I kill her?"

"Feeble men in their most feeble states," the mask rattled, unchanging as Homar's face spiked into a scowl. "Tend to make the most feeble of mistakes."

"Now you listen—"

"Children," a different voice precluded, drenching the kneeling group in compound sentiments. "Now is not the time for hissy fits."

"My apologies," Homar pleaded almost mournfully, eyeing the man lounged on the ceremonial chair with a deciphering stare. The reactions to the man's presence ranged. Gene had turned her head to the floor, not with the same respecting regard from before the rite but with something of displeasure, of break. Their white-face disciple contrasted Gene's dismal display; Kal watched up with big teary eyes that scarred clear the porcelain paint from his skin. And then there was Clémence, stuttering and muttering incoherently all the disarray from her thoughts as she wept her queries.

Him? Why? How? Was this real?

"Take off your mask," the Chair demanded, suggestion faint but still cruising as he took in the masked man. "It's only fair they get to see the face of their killer."

"What about the scripture?" The man questioned with a nod towards Clémence, no retaliation against the Chair's decree, only mocking curiosity. "I might have to kill her, Rlee."

"Surely Pyxis has already equipped you with a Class V contraband," the chair said, seeming a bit bored with the resilience. And with an agreeable hiss, the mellow mask of jet horrors fell to the floor, revealing the face behind it.

"You," Homar blurted, looking alarmed.

"Me," the young woman replied, smirking devilishly. Her face was lightly drenched in sweat, curls mildly moist and sticking to her golden face as she surveyed the room with oxymoronic eyes. Clémence supposed her smile was a perpetual thing that had been hidden behind the darkness of her mask for the entirety of her presence. "Me what, Homar?" It was cruel, childish, daunting and inhumanely distant.

"Tempest," the Chair called, raising his scarred hands as if he were addressing another one of his loyal subjects. "It's time for the ceremony."

"Oh yes, my Insegtro," her response was tepid, twisted harshly to pry all respect or esteem out of its syllables. "Who do you choose then? Her?" She spoke, nodding her head towards Gene. "Or him?" She turned towards Kal, darting through his soul as his eyes erred to meet hers.

"Her father's sacrifice was futile," the Chair murmured, voice indiscreetly echoing against the ceremonial chamber as he waved a hand towards a body sprawled across the light flooring. Gene shook slightly from the left of Clémence, palm clasped tight against her mouth as she stifled a sob. "What makes you think his offspring will have anything more to offer?"

"Surely 22 counsellors are more than enough to frighten Killian," Homar added in discontent, facing the floor below him as the pair turned his way.

"22 hardly works the message I'm being paid to send," The Tempest responded, nearly grinning ear to the ear. "At best it's the verbal greeting of some sewer-dwelling vermin."

"So what?" Homar spoke tentatively, raking a hand through his hair. "You're just going to murder a nation's entire judicature because you want to scare some fool who can't see over the size of his crown?"

"Scare?" She repeated, dropping the strain of her smirk. "Scare? Do you think so lowly of me to think that I get turned on by scaring some satyriasis capital-hogger?" Her smile returned, only momentarily and lacking in its fear-inducing thrill. "I don't want to scare people, Homar. I want to kill them, physically. It's the thing I'm most superior in, what I get paid the most for." She took a step closer to the raised floor on where the seat of the Chair rested, making it so that she stood before the kneeling trio like a starring executioner.

"22," she scoffed softly as she gazed down at the three, pointed canines razor. "Have you always been such a churl, counsellor?"

"He can't help it," a new voice intruded, a voice that spiked fearing vigour into Homar's skin the second it registered. The man stood to the left of the room, veiled weakly by the shadows of the structured ceilings so that you wouldn't notice him unless he made himself know. His presence rattled about the particles of the room as he treaded. "Did you know that the word 'Counsellor' in outmoded Sevgi translates to 'the weak mouth of opposition'? It's one of the reasons the members of the Sevgi tribunals refer to themselves as the faces of the diadem instead."

"You took your sweet time," The Tempest told him, watching disinterestedly as he made his way towards her, decked in the very same jet armour as her, pin-straight black hair doused in the wrangle of diplomatic troubles.

Two, Clémence’s thoughts mourned, there were two of them.

"Mongolie, Fen, Tiberion, Lambeth, Dou, Birming, Natly, Kaung and Solanas," he listed, every word deathly blows to the kneeling counsellors who recognised the names of their friends. A small smile graced the man as he asked the towering woman before them, "How many is that now?"

"Acceptable," the Chair answered for her, contesting The Tempest with a glimmer of his eyes. Her stare remained clashed to his for a beat before a smile broke her cheeks once again.

"Acceptable it is then," her strained grumble ran about the space as she moved. The woman had latched onto Kal by the back of his neck, heaving him up into a stand with absent struggle before she shoved him forward. He let out a startling squeak, weeping something intelligible as he tried to push back to Gene. She shoved him again, this time with enough force that he collapsed to the floor, head hitting the marble steps as he fell.

"Hey!" Homar rushed, stepping between them with a soon-to-wither bravery. "What is wrong with you?! Are you crazy? You're going to kill him!"

She ignored him as he watched Kal. "Do you not know how to use your legs?" She questioned, her ample smile replacing her apathetic look though this time there was no recreation in it, only a surfeit of something unkind. "Because if you don't, I might just have to improvise...maybe I'll cut them off, see how much that motivates you."

"I-I so-sorry," Kal's pleads were slurred as he stood, eyes squinting as blood drizzled down the side of his face and into his eye. "Please--no, no-- Please don't hurt me."

"Hurt you?" The Tempest spoke. "Why would I want to hurt you, Kal? I'm not a monster."

"Hurt him? You’ve already hurt him!" Came a miserable shout. Clémence stood, making her way towards Kal despite the desperate tugs of Gene at the feet of her dress. The Tempest did not make any action to stop her, merely watching like she was blessed with a first-class seating at the theatre. "And you are a monster. You could've killed him."

"I didn't hurt him," The Tempest said as a matter of fact with a passive shrug, resting her hands on her belt as she watched Clémence touch Kal's face. "He fell."

"Clémence," Homar called, as if he were anticipating something about the crouched woman he did not want to be seen by the spectating murderers before them. "Clémence don't—"

But the sight that produced easily silenced him; blood as red as the most hateful crimson evaporated from the face of the injured boy before them, slithering like an invigorated snake up his soon-bruised skin and into the open wound on his head. Kal hissed as his skin joined, any signs of his pain displaced by fresh and seemingly untouched flesh. He could still feel something inside him, the hot pressure inside his head created by the impact of marble slowly retracing and mending.

Nobody moved. The two assassins stood fixated at the sight, but what happened to scare Clémence most was the penetrating stare of The Tempest, her stillness as if she was both too present and long gone. It was only now Clémence noticed their proximity, the way she clenched the sword strapped to her hip, towering over her and Kal with disgorging emptiness. Her friend, contrastingly, seemed to do all but stay still. His eyes bounced around, from her, to his friend, to Clémence's kneeling friends, to the Chair and then all the way back around, on repeat. It was as if the man was contemplating a response, manufacturing a reaction like it was an alien concept to him.

Those two ideas of unfeeling petrified Clémence.

"Clémence," the gasp broke her attention from them. It was Gene, watching with a thunder of dread, not because of Clémence's show, but rather for her.

"A healer," a satisfied hiss travelled about the space. “Her,” the Chair's demand to the assassin before him ricocheted as he pointed at Clémence like a spoiled child picking out their delights. "Get her."

Something tumbled out of the lips of Homar, something brimmed to the cap with conflicting rage and subservience. "This...this wasn't--this isn't a part of the deal."

The Tempest did not move to heed the Chair's demand or Homar's ramble, only eyeing Clémence before something terrible grew. A smile, so outrageous in its current existence as it met with her partner over Clémence's low head.

"I believe," she spoke so tenderly, startling all who laid below her waistline. This was different to her debasement, worse. "This adds a lot to our deal, doesn't it?"

"It will," the Chair murmured, waving a hand at her to do as told. "And it makes your job easier. No sticking a head in the dark with the hopes of a hand reaching out."

Clémence let a cry out at the cold feeling of a hand gripping her bicep, tugging her up into a stand. She hadn't realised the movements of The Tempest who stood before her as a result of being glued to the words of the lounged man before them. The assassin pushed her forward, not releasing her hold as she guided Clémence forward with a force much more controlled compared to what she had used on Kal. A hold of caution laced with anticipation.

"Kneel," the Chair requested. And regardless of Clémence's anticipated reluctance, she fell to her knees with a single kick to the back of her exposed knees, bones smacking cruelly against the surface below her as her head fell weightless, pointing to the ground.

"Stop it!" Homar roared, pushing forward with a screwed face. "This is not a part of our deal! This is not what I want!" He took another step, stumbling back as a figure stepped in front of him. "Release her! You will release Clémence now!" He boomed at the assassin before him, taking a jab at the man's chest. Though, the assassin’s resort was brisk, a sharp burning that caused Counsellor Ahmad to stumble back and to the floor stricken, palms finding his damp side.

"Homar!" Gene cried out, catching her falling friend as his stab wound oozed horribly across their ceremonial gowns. Clémence squeaked a sob from her unmoving position, eyes boiling as Kal observed silently, sights large with tears.

"Lift her head up, would you?" the Chair's voice came again, expectingly watching The Tempest who, with an irked grumble, did as he asked. She latched onto a fistful of Clémence's hair, yanking it back until the counsellor's chin pointed to the makeshift throne before her, tattooed fingers latching into the scornful fist of the assassin shadowing her. "Yes, that's quite alright."

"Ssss," the woman in her grip hissed out, and it hadn't occurred to The Tempest that Clémence wasn't looking at the Chair despite the strained position of her head; she only watched her. "Séraph," her words billowed helplessly, eyes glazed with something. "Séraph Alchemy," the name seemed to resonate deafness. The Tempest tensed, a twitch that could only be registered at a close level of physical contact.

"Clémence," The Tempest whispered back with equal quietude, responding as if the reveal of her actual name did not unnerve the tension bathing in their air. "Gráce."

"I have," Clémence muttered softly, "been watching you...now, yesterday and tomorrow and I begging of you now."

"Tempest," her name ran from somewhere in a warning. She ignored it.

Séraph pulled at Clémence's hair, gently this time, just enough to look into her eyes. Were her eyes not hazel before? "What are you talking about?" When were they such a swirling brown?

"Rlee," she said in dissonance, "is lying to you and Scarlet. He's not who he says he is. He is... He's not Rlee, he's something terrible." At the utterance of the Chair's name, they turned toward him, Séraph's grip faltering as everyone eyed the man who watched the two women rageously. "He is an invader to that vessel, a body snatcher."

"Impossible," Gene broke a whisper from behind them, hands clamp on a bleeding Homar as she stared at the sitting man who did not seem bothered by Clémence's shocking reveal. "That's...the Insegtro is..."

"Is not acting like the man you knew?" Clémence's voice fell and rose as it overlapped with another of foreign, a profundity of whichever woman those eyes belong to. "Killing his only source of family without a single bat of his eyes?"

"Who are you?" Came the question, barraged with a newfound boldness. Kal kneeled by Gene and Homar, sitting up as he speared the Chair with his reddened inquiry. "And what have you done with our Insegtro?"

"How dare--"

"He's looking for somebody," Clémence's mixed voice swiftly interjected. "He's planning something, for someone...something without precedent and he will kill many for it." She twisted her head, clashing with Scarlet's gaze. "Billions of defenceless souls are going to die because of him. And if you help him here today, you would've helped him." She twisted again, saying to Séraph, "Both of you."

"I killed you," the words were harshly whispered, turning everyone's attention back to the Chair who gripped his seat until his knuckles whitened. "I made sure to watch your eyes drain of life."

"I thought so too, Lyr," Clémence said, though no longer did her voice resound or interlap with the other woman's. Now only the mysterious spoke, watching the man before her tearfully.

"Kill them," the chair's demand was directed at the assassins. Séraph and Scarlet caught each other's mute thoughts from across the room, deliberating the unavoidable. "You've been paid to kill whoever I please. And as of now, I do not see any life form before me worthy of a sacrifice so you will do as I say and dispose of them!" There was a beat as Scarlet and Séraph did not move. "Now!"

"Please don't," Clémence's natural voice sobbed at the woman above her. "Please don't kill us."

Sèraph did not look at her. "You told them my name," she hummed, looking far.

"Please help us," Gene begged her, hands tainted red from the wound pulsing life from the front of Homar. "He's going to die if you don't help us. Please!"

"Scarlet?" Séraph called, not needing the man to respond as he made his way towards the pair on the floor. Something obscured fell from the bleeding man's mouth, arm reaching up at Scarlet for something. Gene let out a screech as she dove away, Homar's arm dropping as Scarlet's dagger made home a gorging cavity in Homar's torso.

A piercing scream fell from Clémence, muffling the click of the scabbard that sat at Séraph's hip, terror carnivorous as blood gushed horribly from the new slit across Clémence’s throat. Her body fell forward, blood soaking Clémence’s twitching face and ruined dress as she sputtered and choked on the ruby liquid.

There was a thud to Séraph's left, bringing her gaze back to Scarlet who stood in a post-striking posture, watching detachedly as the gelled head of Gene Skhol rolled across the poorly angled floor, her decapitated head stopping to watch Séraph from where she stood unmoving.

An alarmed wail broke the stand. "No! No! No, no, no! Please-I can't! Please! No!" Kal screamed, skirting away from the now deceased with his palms and heels. "Don't kill me! I didn't see anything! I promise! I won't say anything! Please! I-I don't want to die!"

Séraph took a glance over her shoulder, passing on a stare of question caught by the Chair who smiled at the scene disturbingly. He urged them to continue with an amused pinch of his brows, contesting the atrocious points of his smiling lips. Séraph secured her sword back in its casing, not bothering with Kal as the sound of Scarlet's boots made its way across the room, heightening the screams and begs until silence replaced it.

A hum ran from the Chair as he scrutinized the scene behind Séraph, his eyes finding hers after a moment of tranquillity maltreated by the sound of Kal's blood gushing against the marble.

"Marvellous."