Fahlnem and Desmond watched Miranda storm off to the deeper and more hazardous corners of the abandoned aquarium. Although they sat in silence, and Desmond showed no sign of displeasure or really any sign at all on his face, he felt like he was being judged. Rather than continuing on the topic further, he turned to examine Desmond's loadout. His ragged clothes were mostly unchanged aside from a set of vambraces with yellowed carapace grafted onto them, but he had obtained what seemed to be his magical focus of choice. An amalgam staff of various smaller organisms and deposits of flesh adorning a hollow, bulbous end to it. Fahlnem was fascinated by its construction and poked at one of the dangling portions of fetid flesh and porous bone, prompting Desmond to yank it back away from him. Extricated bone spurs rattled around in the hard surface at the tip of the staff that seemed, to Fahlnem, like a thick-walled hive of some sort that had been molded onto the end of the weapon.

  "It's very impressive. I've never seen a magic of your sort before," Fahlnem purred. "My curiosity was especially piqued in the checkpoint. I heard all sorts of noises heralding what I can only imagine being horrible deaths."

  Desmond nodded and inspected his staff along with Fahlnem while keeping it out of his reach. "Morbovitte," he grunted in reply. "Unrestrained growth."

  "That's a curious concept. I guess the original mages began running out of ideas once they mastered the typical elements, huh? Who was your master?"

  "Self-taught."

  "Ah, got it. That makes it all the more impressive, then." Fahlnem paused. "Actually, I think I recall a Morbovitte mage from my last realm of residence, Ibiriel. He was in the process of creating an amalgamation of creatures formed into one abomination with which to plague the continent."

  "Other guy. Killed him."

  "You were in Quintaris?"

  Desmond nodded with a grunt.

  "How did you end up-"

  "Dunno."

  "...I see. I can't exactly condemn your choice of action with the rival Morbovitte mage. I would have taken a similar course given-"

  Desmond turned to Fahlnem with his bland, brown eyes and accompanying cold gaze. "'s this always what you do?"

  "...Beg your pardon?"

  "Talk fancy. After you get yelled at."

  Fahlnem reeled from the blow. It wasn't necessarily insensitive, he just didn't like being understood. He changed the subject back to something he actually wanted to discuss, while also normalizing his diction.

  "What sort of spell did you use on the guardsmen at the checkpoint?"

  "Not guards." He shook his head. "Wouldn't have made it through the fire."

  "What fire?"

  "The hallway."

  "Oh. The dead guards. Right. So were they Spears that you killed?"

  "Spears weren't there yet. Killed the Rites by putting energy in their organs and flesh. Sped-up growth."

  "Intriguing. Cancer on command." He said the guards wouldn't have made it through the fire, but the Rites must have. Does that mean their new getup is fireproof because of me? "What else can your magic do?"

  Desmond glanced down to Fahlnem's wrapped left hand that had been broken and pressed the tip of his staff to it. The tip of the staff began to rattle in a catchy tune, and Desmond mumbled along with it in what came to be a surprisingly impressive singing voice. Fahlnem didn't understand any of the shamanistic incantations, but he could feel the inner organic machinery of his hand righting itself. The process was a little bit uncomfortable, but not painful. After a few moments, his hand was healed and Desmond unraveled the bandage surrounding it.

  "Like Nature magic. Thanks, pal. How exactly did it do that?"

  "Same as with the Rites. Didn't put as much energy in."

  Fahlnem frowned and tilted his head. "You... could have killed me, then. By putting cancer in my hand."

  Desmond nodded with a grunt. "Unrestrained growth." He tapped his own chest, gently. "I'm the restraint."

  "...Right. Well, thanks still, I guess. Scary, but thanks." Fahlnem hopped up off the table he had been sitting on. "Think you could finish fixing up my ribs, too? My knee, maybe?"

  Desmond nodded with a grunt.

  After a small while of talking intermingled with bouts of awkward silence, Miranda returned. Fahlnem glanced up to her with a broad smile.

  "Welcome back. Cooled off, princess?"

  "Fuck you." She turned and focused her eyes on Desmond. "Let's hear it."

  Desmond glanced up to her with a curious look before nodding in understanding.

  "Exarch's as crooked as he seems. Didn't find any new scandals about 'im that we didn't already know."

  "I figured as much. This whole godsdamned thing was a waste, then." Miranda sighed and pulled up a stool on which to sit and face the two mages. "Still, we have you two," She glanced to Fahlnem. "That is, assuming you're not gonna skip out on us for your virtuous journey of getting home. Not like it's gonna happen anyway."

  "I'm still thinking about it." He gave her a charming wink. Charming to him, at any rate. "Although, now we know that the city's gotten a bit more crowded. When I showed up at the checkpoint, two green bastards with spears and white armor were waiting, along with a fresh batch of the brainwashed fuckers."

  "Green?"

  "Not-" Fahlnem stuttered for a moment, motioning with his hands. "Not literally green. Like, new to their job." He glanced around, scanning like a vulture for his pack. Once located near the table at which Miranda had him suit up before he left last time, the pack was retrieved and opened. He pulled out a couple of snacks in the form of stale bread. He took a bite and continued. "Speaking of," he spoke with his mouth open, each word muffled by bread, "I'm not the only motherfucker with new shit." He gestured to his staff.

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  "I was meaning to ask about that, actually. The fuck happened to the uniform I lent you?"

  "Well, they saw through it. Or saw through my being a mage. They were actin' all goofy when I showed up, before they even spotted me in the crowd. But either way, they got new armor. Maybe fireproof. It's less religious."

  Miranda made a 'mh' sound of displeasure while Fahlnem continued his report, and the other Bluntear rebels from the day prior walked over to listen. The crowd gathered around Fahlnem and he shared some snacks.

  "So I ditched the costume and gave 'em the slip into the barracks, where I found this mute asshole." He thumbed at Desmond, who frowned.

  "This isn't storytime, Fahlnem. I need to know what you saw. Did the new Spears say anything?"

  "Not really. They had the typical heroic speech befitting a member of the ecclesiarchy."

  "That's not what it's called."

  "Well, yeah. But by definition, it fits. Do you know what ecclesiarchy -"

  Fahlnem's argument was interrupted by a loud knock on the barred door to the aquarium. The group fell silent, and Miranda held up a finger. After a few moments, the door flew open, knocking aside the furniture in front of the door like crates filled with air. Moonlight and a brisk lunar breeze breached the dilapidated safe house, piercing the gentle skin of the inhabitants therein. And standing in that moonlight was a man with twelve stamps and seals of violet adorning the untarnished bulwark protecting his flesh. Lilac Rites dressed in black and purple flooded the room, reaching out at the Bluntears housed inside to grab them. Fahlnem jumped to his feet while Forgo approached him, stepping over broken furniture and debris from the shattered entrance to the aquarium. Miranda ushered a few of the rebels further into the building, likely to escape. Fahlnem couldn't see Desmond.

  "Round two, Forgo?" Fahlnem focused, drawing out his marble rope dart and wrapping it around his right hand, readying the obsidian staff in his other. Forgo held out his arm to the side and the moonlight coalesced into an ivory tabernacle of the Magisterium's litany in his hand. Fahlnem began moving his rope-enwrapped hand in a circular motion, igniting the rope dart and spinning it. He rotated his body on his right leg, slinging the rope dart in the air towards Forgo like a curveball. It rounded him, exploding in conflagrated hellfire at his back. The explosion caused the Twelfth Spear to stumble forward and the rope dart flew back around him to embed in the wooden floor between the two combatants. Another explosion from the tip of the rope dart wrenched it from the floorboards and Fahlnem lifted up his staff, twirling it laterally to his own body once or twice before scraping the lower tip against the floor, drawing up a large amount of sparks into the air before Forgo. He backpedaled away from the Pale Spear while coiling up his rope dart again.

  The Forgotten of Vows likewise kept his distance to an extent, trying to discreetly close the gap and draw the pyromancer into spear range. Fahlnem threw up another bout of disorienting sparks at Forgo and sent his rope dart at the Spear's chest. It bounced off of the metallic plating as expected, so Fahlnem drew it back and threw another curveball at Forgo's opposite side. Forgo, however, turned and raised his left forearm, thrusting it into the halfway point of the rope once the tip had extended past himself. In a risky maneuver, Forgo wrapped the rope dart around his forearm, slinging the tip around to scrape the top of his helmet before landing in his palm. Fahlnem smirked, sending an encantation of ignition down the weapon. The tip of the rope dart and the accompanying line of rope that had wrapped around Forgo's arm detonated, flooding the room further with smoke and upheaved dust. Having learned his lesson from the Fourteenth Spear, Fahlnem immediately backpedaled as much as he could without letting go of his end of the rope while re-coiling it, operating under the assumption that the explosion had dislodged it from Forgo's grasp.

  Suddenly, the rope grew taut from within the cloud of smoke, and Fahlnem was yanked into the blunt end of Forgo's spear, knocking the wind out of his chest as the weapon was jabbed into his stomach with incredible force. An embarrassing noise was extricated from his chest while he reeled from the blow. Time slowed in his perception and he could hear Desmond brutally ripping at his Lilac Rite assailants with toxication somewhere in the room. He could feel the rope lighten with slack and he looked up to see Forgo's menacing visage twirl around with the spear in hand, clearing the smoke with such impressive strength that Fahlnem couldn't help but watch the display. The Forgotten of Vows utilized the momentum built up from the spin and, with perfect precision and power, landed a blow on Fahlnem's head with the blunt end of the spear. Fahlnem's felt his body lighten, and darkness crept onto his consciousness, pressing onto it with a crushing weight that pulled him into slumber as his body hit the floor.

  His last sight was the obsidian staff laying next to him on the dirty floor as he fell into unconsciousness, and he dreamt of the first time he had encountered the Forgotten of Vows.