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Glory to my bum ass proofreader: Solare.
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It's a wonder how different life can be when an annoyingly handsome man walks into your life and takes away your pain.
Millicent thought that as she swung herself up onto the saddle of her spectral Night's Cavalry steed and held a hand down toward Melina. The dark horse snorted out pale mist through its nostrils, its armored shape half-real and half-phantom in the cool air of Liurnia's high road. Its mane moved like smoke, and its hooves made hardly any sound at all on the wet stone.
Melina took the offered hand without comment and climbed up behind her with far more grace than Millicent ever bothered with. Even then, the maiden's movements were tighter than usual. Her body settled lightly against Millicent's back, but her mind was very clearly somewhere else.
'Yeah. Shocker.' Millicent thought as she clicked her tongue and guided the horse forward. 'Your partner gets dragged away by a Demigod with a personal grudge and suddenly you're not in the mood to enjoy the scenery. Weird.'
She didn't say that out loud. She was cruel sometimes, but not stupid.
The horse moved down the path at an easy canter while Liurnia spread around them in its drowned, silver-blue beauty. Mist dragged lazily over the low waters. Half-sunken walls and broken bell towers rose from the floodplains like old bones. Far ahead, the Academy loomed over it all, cold and blue and proud in a way Millicent found irritating on instinct.
Her life had changed too quickly. That was the truth of it.
Not long ago, she had been rotting quietly in that ruined church in Caelid, living one aching day at a time, trying very hard not to think beyond the next step. Then John had arrived like some loud, reckless answer to a question she had long since stopped asking. He had barged into her life, insulted half the world, picked fights with things stronger than him on principle, and somehow made it all work anyway.
Now she had a horse. Friends. A place to sleep that wasn't falling apart. A mother to chase. And even a future, maybe.
It was all very inconvenient. Now she had no choice but to go out there and grab her own destiny by force, didn't she?
Millicent reached down and patted the spectral horse's neck once as it carried them down the slope.
She did not linger too long on thoughts like that. Wallowing was for people with time and fewer enemies. Instead, she leaned slightly to one side, guiding them off the main path toward the ruined church standing ahead on a small rise above the waterlogged road.
Melina shifted behind her.
"Why are we stopping here?" She asked.
Millicent grinned and tipped her head toward the ruin without looking back. "Because Johnny likes collecting Sacred Tears for those flasks you two keep chugging like drunkards, right? I remember him mentionin' they appear in churches."
After a brief pause, Melina answered, "...Yes."
There was a faint, reluctant approval in the word. Millicent could hear it well enough even through the worry she was trying and failing to hide.
Millicent sighed through her nose.
"He's gonna be fine, you know." She said, guiding the horse up toward the church. "Our knight in shining armor is probably out there right now talking some sense into that pissed-off Demigod he willingly enraged."
They both fell silent as a moment later, in the distance, a loud explosion rolled across the hills.
A flash of golden light bloomed somewhere beyond the cliffs to the south-west, followed by a dragon's roar so deep and violent it seemed to shake the morning mist itself.
Millicent slowly turned her head.
Melina gave her the flattest stare imaginable.
Millicent tilted her own head and let out a helpless little chuckle. "W-Well… I'm sure he's probably fine."
"How very reassuring."
That deadpan could have sliced flesh. Millicent chose, heroically, to ignore it.
They rode into the yard of the Church of Irith a moment later. The old place stood quiet and half-abandoned, its stone walls weathered by time and damp. Pale moss clung to the cracked steps, and the ruined roof let shafts of morning light spill down over the interior in clean, soft columns. The whole place smelled like wet stone, old prayer, and flowers trying their best.
Millicent dismounted first and dropped to the ground with easy balance. Melina followed more quietly behind her.
At the church's heart stood a statue of Queen Marika, arms poised in serene divinity, stone robes flowing around her as though the sculptor had once tried to capture the idea of sacred grace and nearly succeeded. At the foot of that statue, nestled in the offering basin, lay the Sacred Tear.
Millicent walked up the center aisle, crouched, and picked it up between two fingers. The liquid inside the crystal vessel caught the light in soft gold.
She glanced up at the statue.
'So that's her, huh?'
Or close enough, anyway. John's mystery head-queen. Melina's mother. The woman who had somehow managed to give birth to enough broken children to keep half the continent in drama for a thousand years.
Millicent narrowed her eye at the statue's face, trying to decide whether she could see any resemblance.
'If that's really what she looks like, then okay. Fair. That explains some things.'
She shrugged to herself and straightened, turning the tear once in her hand before tucking it away safely.
Melina had lingered a few steps back, gaze resting briefly on the statue with an expression Millicent chose not to pry into. There were some family problems you left alone unless you had a death wish.
So instead she jerked her chin toward the door.
"Come on. Johnny told us to move, so we move."
They stepped back outside into the cool air. The mist had thinned a little while they were inside, and Liurnia spread wet and endless below the hill. Millicent mounted first again, then reached down to haul Melina up behind her.
Once they were settled, she leaned forward and rubbed the spectral mare fondly along the neck.
"Good girl, Café~..." She whispered. "Let's go out and explore that village Johnny talked about, yeah?"
The horse snorted as if in agreement.
Then Millicent kicked her lightly onward, and the three of them rode out together toward the drowned roads and the hidden village waiting somewhere beyond the mist. The low waters of Liurnia lapped quietly around Manhattan Café's spectral hooves as Millicent guided her through the drowned roads with careful pressure from her knees.
The mare moved smoothly through the flooded shallows, black and elegant against the silver-blue spread of the lake country, her ghostly armor catching the morning light in dim glints. Ripples spread outward from every step and broke against half-submerged stones, rotten fence-posts, and the occasional chunk of old masonry jutting from the water like the bones of a long-dead road.
Millicent kept her one hand low near the reins, her posture loose in the saddle even as her eye swept the misty horizon.
Behind her, Melina sat still and balanced, one hand lightly braced against the back of the saddle.
After a while, the broken spread of Laskyar Ruins emerged ahead of them through the mist.
Melina leaned slightly to one side, peering past Millicent's shoulder. "These are the Laskyar Ruins. They were marked on the map."
Millicent let out a low hum. "Yeah. Looks ruined, all right."
The remains of the place lay half-swallowed by the flood. Broken walls jutted out of the shallow water in pale gray lines, and shattered archways stood like old teeth over stretches of drowned stone. There were things moving there too, pale little shapes hunched low among the rubble.
Wraith Callers.
Millicent's lip curled faintly. Creepy bastards. Half-hidden in rags, with that sickly corpse-look and those ugly little summons that always made the air feel wrong.
Melina tapped her lightly once at the shoulder and pointed. "Left side first. Then angle right. Keep moving."
Millicent followed the instruction without question. She guided Manhattan Café between two low walls, through a path that looked almost accidental to anyone who did not know what they were looking for. The Wraith Callers on either side stirred as they passed, some of them lifting their heads slowly, others only twitching beneath their robes as if sniffing them out.
None moved quickly enough to matter. Then one of them did.
Millicent heard the wet, dragging movement before she properly saw it. She turned her head just enough to catch the shape of a Wraith Caller mounted on some half-rotted undead thing, shambling after them through the water with enough persistence to become annoying.
"There's trouble."
Melina did not even sound tense when she answered. "Keep Manhattan Café steady."
Millicent did, she kept the mare continuing straight through the ruins at the same pace, sure-footed and silent.
Behind her, Melina shifted. There was no chant, no dramatic warning, no buildup beyond the sudden swell of heat that bloomed against Millicent's back. Then Melina turned half around in the saddle and, with all the pent-up irritation and silent worry she had been carrying since John vanished, released it in a single wave of overwhelming flame.
The world behind them turned orange.
A roaring sheet of fire swallowed the rider and mount whole, blasting outward in a broad arc that lit the ruins, boiled the surface of the floodwater, and turned the mist to steam in an instant. The shriek that followed did not last long.
Millicent stared ahead for a second without turning around. Then she gave a small, nervous chuckle. "...I've mentioned how much you scare me sometimes, right?"
Melina turned back around with complete composure, folded her arms beneath her cloak, and sat straight-backed like she had not just incinerated a mounted undead for existing too loudly behind her.
"Once or twice."
Millicent laughed under her breath and shook her head, though her grin sat slightly haunted around the edges. "Yeah. Good. Just checking."
They left the ruins behind them and rode deeper into Liurnia.
The flooded stone gave way to stretches of soft earth, wet roots, and swampy forest where long-limbed trees leaned over the water. Moss hung from half-dead branches. Strange birds called somewhere in the mist. Every so often, the wind carried the smell of wet bark, stagnant reeds, and cold mineral water across the road.
And somewhere far off in the distance, there would come another thunderous crash. Or a pulse of golden light. Or, once, the unmistakable sound of thunderous clashes loud enough to shake birds from the trees.
Millicent did not look in that direction anymore after the third time. Melina, on the other hand, looked every single time.
Millicent noticed that and said nothing for a while.
Eventually, as they passed beneath a long rocky overhang where shadow pooled beneath the cliffside, she squinted ahead and clicked her tongue.
The cave-mouth there was large enough to matter. The poison swamp pooled beneath its shade, greenish and faintly iridescent where the foul water sat too still. Mushrooms and rot-fed growths clung to the stone.
Millicent frowned. "Huh... Johnny forgot to mention the poison pit."
Behind her, Melina made a soft sound that might have been an agreement, though it was distracted. A second later, Millicent felt two fingers poke lightly into her side.
She glanced back with a curious hum. "What?"
Melina looked... odd. She didn't look frightened or annoyed. Just slightly bashful in a way that sat strangely on her face. She could not seem to look Millicent directly in the eye, and that alone was enough to make Millicent immediately suspicious.
"What's up?" Millicent asked again.
Melina hesitated.
Then, with the pained care of someone attempting to walk barefoot across broken glass while still pretending they were dignified about it, she said, "Were you... serious? Earlier. When you said you wanted to join Johnathan and I during our... nightly routines?"
Millicent stared at her blankly for one long second.
Then she blinked and asked, with complete bluntness, "You mean to ask if I was serious about wanting to join you two in bed when you're getting freaky?"
Melina's entire face went crimson, and Millicent could almost swear she saw imaginary smoke curling off the top of her head as the maiden locked up from embarrassment. After a moment of silent suffering, Melina gave one tiny, shaky nod.
Millicent's mouth split into a wolvish grin, sharp and delighted. "Oh, I was absolutely serious~! I think both of you are hot, for starters."
Melina made a tiny, strangled noise.
"And…" Millicent continued with entirely too much enjoyment. "I'm curious what it'd feel like. That, and the thought of Johnny and me kissing you until you're all mushy in the head sounds really fun~!"
Melina nearly combusted.
"Millicent!" She hissed, scandalized beyond bearing as she hit her back lightly. "That is incredibly rude and forward!"
Millicent barked out a laugh.
"And you take after Johnathan far too much!"
That only made Millicent laugh harder.
Behind her, Melina groaned, covered her face with both hands, and seemed to consider whether she could simply dissolve into Grace and flee the conversation entirely. Sadly for her, that would have left Millicent steering the horse alone and probably laughing herself into the nearest poisonous ditch.
After a few moments, Melina slowly lowered her hands.
Her face was still bright red. Her voice, when it came, was softer and much more hesitant than before.
"I know…" She whispered, then stopped and visibly gathered herself. "I know Johnathan is... too amazing for other women not to want him."
Millicent's brows rose.
Melina looked away as she spoke, clearly unable to bear witness to her own confession.
She was thinking, Millicent realized, not just of herself. Her expression had the peculiar misery of someone mentally listing other women she was trying very hard not to be threatened by.
Nepheli, probably, if the way she looked at him on that tower was any indication. Fia, maybe. Roderika, certainly in some harmless way. Irina too, if that stolen kiss was still bothering her.
Millicent had to bite back another grin as she saw Melina exhale slowly.
"But..." She faltered, then tried again. "I would not mind if it were you, at least."
That made Millicent go still.
"I think I..." Melina swallowed as her face somehow deepened another shade. "I think I like you enough that it would not bother me much to share him with you."
For once, Millicent genuinely had no immediate smart remark ready. She just stared with evident shock.
The marshland around them suddenly felt very quiet. Even Manhattan Café seemed to sense something odd had happened and kept moving at a smooth, steady pace through the shallow water beneath the cliff.
Millicent recovered first. Slowly, very slowly, her shock curled into a broad, deeply entertained, absolutely shit-eating grin.
"Well~..." She said, dragging the word out with almost painful satisfaction. "I'll be taking you up on that offer, then."
Melina made another helpless little sound and looked like she regretted every choice that had brought her to this exact moment.
Millicent, meanwhile, sat taller in the saddle and patted Manhattan Café's neck.
'Damn, Johnny…' She thought with bright, wicked satisfaction. 'Your maiden just accidentally gave me permission. This day's getting better by the minute.'
Millicent guided Manhattan Café down into the poison swamp with the kind of wary resignation one reserved for hazards that felt deeply personal.
The mare kept going without the slightest complaint.
Green filth lapped around her spectral legs. Poisonous bubbles rose and burst beside half-sunken roots. Oily vapors drifted low over the swamp like breath from something diseased and sleeping just beneath the surface. None of it mattered. Café trotted through the muck as gracefully as she had through clean water, her ghostly hooves barely seeming to disturb it.
Millicent blinked, then looked down.
"Huh."
She gave the mare's neck an affectionate rub. "Look at you, girl. Too good for poison, are you?"
Café snorted smugly, or close enough.
Melina, seated behind her, glanced down at the untouched spectral barding and the utter lack of rot, then quietly said, "That is... useful."
"Damn right it is." Millicent gave the mare another pat. "Good girl, Café~. Best horse in the Lands Between. …Just don't let Johnny and Torrent know I said that, 'kay?"
The spectral steed carried them under the great overhang where the cave-mouth widened into shadow. The air changed there. Outside, Liurnia's wet breeze had still carried open sky and reeds and water. Inside, it thickened with the smell of damp stone, stagnant poison, fungus, and old decay.
The path narrowed into a raised strip of rocky ground that wound through the swamp like a natural causeway. Water dripped steadily from the ceiling above, and the sound echoed in irregular plinks that made the whole cave feel deeper than it looked.
The walls were uneven and slick, mottled with strange pale growths and hanging roots that had pushed down from the earth above. Here and there, broken bits of wood and old tools half-sank into the sludge, as though villagers had once tried to make this place livable and the swamp had patiently taken offense.
Millicent kept them moving at a careful pace. The path bent once, then twice, hugging the inside of the cavern until it opened toward a broad alcove at the rear. Above that alcove, old wooden walkways and carved supports climbed into the stone, leading up toward daylight and the hidden village John had pointed out on the map.
Before they reached the rise, Millicent saw movement.
They were Albinaurics.
Several of the first generation sat or slumped along the path leading up, gray-skinned and broad-faced, their heavy lower bodies sprawled where they had fallen. Some still clutched crude weapons. Others looked like they had simply tried to crawl and failed. Blood darkened the boards and stone around them.
Millicent's mouth tightened.
"...Yeah." She muttered. "Something happened."
Melina looked up the path, her face growing still in the way it did when she was angry enough to stop looking human and start looking like a saint painted before a war.
"Yes, something did..." She confirmed quietly.
They rode the last stretch upward into the alcove, and there, farther up the slope beyond the first bodies, stood Nepheli Loux.
She was crouched beside a corpse, one hand resting against her bent knee, the other lightly touching the dead man's shoulder as though trying to confirm something that did not need confirming. Her axe was strapped across her back. Her posture was tense enough to snap.
Millicent called out first.
"Nepheli!"
The warrior's head snapped up at once. For one sharp moment she looked ready to kill whatever had spoken. Then she recognized them and the fight went out of her shoulders just enough to become exhaustion.
"Oh, it's you..." Nepheli rose to her feet and looked between them with a grim expression. "Well, what do you make of it? What's happened to this village?"
Millicent dismounted in one smooth motion and held a hand up for Melina to follow. Once both of them were down, she brushed her fingers across Café's neck and dismissed the mare in a whisper of pale mist.
Melina looked around the lower rise, at the bodies, the blood, the silence pressing down from above.
"Something vile. Even from here... I can almost smell the massacre."
Nepheli exhaled through her nose and turned away, starting up the path. "Come, then. See it for yourselves."
They followed, and as they climbed, Nepheli spoke without looking back.
"I witnessed a sight much the same in my infancy. The oppression of the weak. Murder and pillage unchecked. A waking nightmare, made by men."
Her voice was flat at first, but the deeper into the village they walked, the harder it became.
The main village opened before them in a wide, ruined shelf carved into the cliffside. What had once been a hidden refuge was now a graveyard. Burned houses leaned in on themselves, some collapsed entirely into blackened timber and ash. Broken carts and shattered jars lay scattered between the stilts and platforms. First generation Albinaurics were everywhere.
Some lay sprawled in the open, cut down while fleeing. Some had died in doorways. Some still clutched one another.
Millicent stopped as a cold, familiar sickness slid under her ribs.
She had seen rot do worse. She had seen scarlet horror devour entire stretches of land and leave them bubbling. But there was something uniquely ugly about this. Rot was a curse, a plague, a God's disease. This was ordinary cruelty, the cruelty of human hands and deliberate choices.
Melina's breath caught softly beside her.
She looked stricken in a quieter way. Not shocked, exactly. John had dragged all of them through enough blood that surprise came harder now. But the village had been hidden. Small. Defenseless. The sort of place that existed only because it prayed no one important would ever bother to find it.
And someone had.
Nepheli's fists clenched at her sides.
"But this time…" She growled, voice low and vibrating with anger. "I'm a woman grown. And though the suffering cannot be undone, I can still mete out justice. Justice to the oppressors, and vengeance to the oppressed."
Millicent felt something in her own chest answer that immediately.
"Yeah…" She whispered, gaze traveling over the dead. "I'm with you on that one."
She did not know these people. Had never spoken to them, never even seen one alive before today. That changed very little. Some things did not require personal attachment to feel intolerable. She already knew herself well enough to know she would think about this at night if they let it stand.
Melina stepped forward, and though her own face had gone cold, there was still control in her voice when she spoke.
"Then we punish the guilty. But not in a rage so blind that we fail the living. There may still be survivors."
That checked them both just enough. So they searched.
They moved through the ruined village together, house by house, platform by platform. Millicent checked corners and under walkways with one hand always near her blade. Nepheli ranged wider, moving like an executioner waiting for an excuse to chop off heads. Melina called softly for any who still lived, and where she found them, she knelt and worked healing through her hands in warm gold.
There were survivors, though not many.
A wounded old Albinauric man hidden beneath a collapsed floor. A young woman barely conscious behind a water barrel. Two others huddled together beneath a half-burnt awning, shaking too hard to speak. Melina tended them all with a grave gentleness, sealing cuts, cooling burns, easing shock where she could.
She had to work around fear at first. Some flinched from her. Others stared at the Erdtree gold in her hands like it ought to belong to the people who had done this to them. But pain was pain, and relief was relief, and that won quickly enough.
Millicent stayed nearby each time, watching the paths and muttering occasional reassurances in the least reassuring tone imaginable.
It was while circling one of the larger ruined houses near the far side of the village that they heard voices.
One was weak, hoarse, and trembling.
The other was smooth, almost cheerful.
"Come now…" Said the second voice. "It needn't be unpleasant. Tell me where the medallion is and I shall cease asking."
Millicent and Nepheli looked at each other once and moved.
The scene opened in a broken courtyard behind the house.
A first generation Albinauric woman lay half-propped against a charred beam, battered so badly Millicent could see the swelling from ten paces away. One arm hung wrong. Blood matted the side of her face. Kneeling before her, a glass phial turning lazily between elegant fingers, was a Depraved Perfumer.
He wore the loose finery of his order stained with travel and soot, the strange little bottles and hanging burners at his belt clinking softly whenever he shifted. His mask had been pushed up onto his brow, showing a narrow, too-pleasant face that looked almost offended to be doing such ugly work.
"The medallion." He repeated. "Where is it?"
Nepheli did not wait, she roared and came with single minded justice.
The Perfumer jerked up in surprise and barely had time to fling one aromatic at the ground before Nepheli's axe was already descending. The bottle burst at his feet in a hot flare of scent and glittering vapor. For a split second the air around him turned gold and hard as his Uplifting Aromatic protected him.
Nepheli's first strike hit through it anyway and blasted him sideways through the half-burnt remains of a fence.
Millicent was on him a heartbeat later.
The Perfumer rolled, quick despite the hit as his aromatic negated most of the damage, and flung a second bottle low. This one burst green and Poison Spraymist billowed outward in a thick, choking cloud.
Millicent hissed and sprang back just as the vapor spread, one sleeve brushing the edge of it. Nepheli charged straight through the outer edge like an angry idiot and promptly started coughing.
"Subtle…" Millicent muttered.
The Perfumer stumbled backward, hands already moving for another flask, only for a knife of fire to slam into the ground in front of him and explode. Melina had arrived at a measured pace and was now advancing with one hand raised, her expression calm in the way that meant someone was about to have a very bad time.
The Perfumer recovered enough to sneer.
"More meddlers…" He spat, and shattered another vial.
A Spark Aromatic.
The blast came fast and bright, a crackling sphere of fire and force that would have caught all three of them if Melina had not snapped a barrier of golden flame upward to meet it. Fire sheared sideways across the courtyard. Ash and cinders blew into the air. The Perfumer used the distraction to flee toward the back path.
Millicent gave chase with a grin that had gone all teeth.
"Oh, no you don't."
He was tricky after that. She would give him that.
He kept moving, kept throwing perfume vials in patterns meant to break a charge or punish overcommitment.
One burst in a flash of heat, another in a greasy red mist that made the air feel wrong and fever-hot, as if trying to agitate blood and panic both at once. Nepheli nearly lost a step to that, then solved the problem the Nepheli way by hurling a broken fencepost through the vapor and forcing the man to duck.
Millicent learned his timing quickly.
The bottles had to come from somewhere. His belt hand always twitched half a beat before he threw. Once she had that, he stopped being clever and started being prey.
She slipped around the next Spark Aromatic rather than away from it, came in low through the smoke, and slashed one of his legs open from behind the knee. He screamed and dropped.
Nepheli hit him next, boot first, sending him sprawling flat into the mud.
Then Melina arrived.
She did not strike immediately. She only stepped over the broken courtyard stones, robes untouched by the filth, and dropped a wave of flame at his hands when he tried to reach for another bottle. It burst against the ground beside him in a warning blaze hot enough to blister.
He froze.
Millicent put her blade at his throat.
Nepheli planted a boot between his shoulders and pushed until his face ground into wet ash.
The whole fight had lasted perhaps moments.
The Perfumer was bloodied, limping, half-burned, and breathing in wet little bursts that made Millicent feel exactly no pity at all.
Nepheli raised her axe. Millicent honestly would have let her take his head off without a lick of guilt.
"Wait."
Melina's voice cut across both of them.
They looked back.
Melina had gone to the Albinauric woman first, checked her pulse, and done what little immediate healing she could. Now she stood and faced them, hand still warm with Grace.
"Do not kill him yet. He was questioning her for something."
Millicent's blade stayed where it was.
Nepheli's jaw tightened, but after a beat, she exhaled and lowered the axe.
Melina's eye settled on the Perfumer. "We question him first."
Millicent smiled slowly down at the man pinned beneath Nepheli's boot.
"Well… lucky you. You get to suffer a little longer."
They tried questioning the perfumer first. It went about as well as Millicent expected.
Pinned beneath Nepheli's boot with Millicent's blade at his throat and Melina standing over him with enough quiet disappointment to make saints nervous, the man still somehow found the energy to sneer.
"Pathetic…" He spat, blood and ash staining his teeth. "A pack of dumb broads playing at justice. You know nothing of the real world."
Millicent's eye twitched as Nepheli pressed down harder with her heel until the perfumer choked against the ground.
"Then enlighten us." Nepheli growled. "Who sent you? What medallion were you searching for?"
The perfumer laughed wetly. "You think you matter enough to hear it? You don't even know the game you've stumbled into."
Melina crouched slightly, hands folded in her sleeves as she looked at him the way one might inspect rot on fruit.
"And yet, you are the one bleeding in the dirt while we are the ones asking questions. It would be wise to realign your sense of importance."
He only turned his head enough to glare at her. "Wise? Little girl, the world is made by wolves and carrion-men. Not by doe-eyed idiots who think mercy means anything."
Millicent smiled slowly.
"Oh, good, I hate it when they start reasonable."
The perfumer gave her a contemptuous look. "You know nothing. None of you do. About hunger. About survival. About what the great of this world demand from the rest of us."
"That supposed to make me pity you?" Millicent asked.
"It should make you afraid."
Millicent's smile sharpened.
"What it makes me want, is to start taking pieces off until you remember how to answer properly."
That earned her a glance from Melina. Not disapproving, exactly. More like weary acknowledgment that yes, this was very much the direction things were about to go.
Nepheli looked almost eager.
The perfumer, for the first time, seemed to recognize that the women around him were not bluffing.
He swallowed, then made the mistake of speaking again.
"Worthless whores, all of you. You'll regret this…."
Millicent exhaled through her nose and shifted her sword just enough to nick skin. A thin line of blood welled up. "Yeah… We're past talking."
Nepheli took one hand off her axe and reached for the perfumer's arm like she meant to pull it backward until the shoulder came apart.
And then they heard something scraping slowly across the stone behind them.
All three turned.
An old Albinauric was crawling toward them from between the ruined houses, dragging himself forward with great effort.
He looked ancient even for one of the first generation. His face was worn and lined, his breath thin, and the weight of years sat heavy in every movement. One of his hands trembled as he pulled himself over the broken earth.
Melina moved first, she crossed the space between them quickly and knelt at once. "Careful."
Millicent sheathed her blade long enough to help him up from the other side, while Nepheli at last lifted her boot from the perfumer's back, though she did so with obvious reluctance.
The old Albinauric gave them all a tired, measured look.
"I am Albus." He said, his voice rough but steady. "Oldest of this village... or what remains of it."
Melina's face softened at once. "Do you require healing?"
He gave a weak little breath that might once have been laughter. "More than you could spare, I think. But I thank you."
Millicent crouched nearby, keeping one eye on the perfumer in case he got ambitious again.
Albus looked between them all, gaze lingering briefly on the dead and the ruined homes around them.
"The cur." He nodded faintly toward the perfumer. "He sought what all of them sought. A band of hounds came to our humble village last night. They slaughtered everyone they found while searching for half of the Haligtree Medallion."
Melina's eye narrowed. "The Haligtree..."
Albus nodded slowly.
"It is the only realistic path left to reach the brace of Kindly Miquella's Haligtree." His voice grew quieter as he spoke, the words carrying grief so old and deep it felt worn smooth.
"A chosen land awaits us Albinaurics. The medallion is the key that leads to the city. It's only a quaint treasure, for we who cannot make the journey. But the hope of our village, dear Latenna, it is needed to fulfill her purpose. My legs will soon fade, and with them, my life. Alas, this is the immovable fate of all Albinaurics..."
Millicent felt her jaw tighten.
Melina lowered her gaze for a moment, perhaps out of respect, perhaps because there was too much pain in the man's voice to meet it directly.
Albus continued. "They came like butchers. Merciless brutes, led by an accursed cursemongerer. They tore through our people in search of the medallion, believing it would lead them to the Haligtree. They were not wrong."
The perfumer snarled from where he lay. "You senile old wretch–!"
Nepheli kicked him hard enough to send him back into the dirt.
Albus did not so much as look his way. "I hold one half, and I would sooner place it in the hands of strangers than let such beasts take it. Latenna knows the path to the other half. She can guide you, if she wills it. I care little for whether I live to see that road. I ask only one thing."
His eyes, old and gray and exhausted, sharpened with the last of his strength. "Vengeance. For my village. For my people. For the slaughter these merciless brutes and that accursed cursemongerer brought upon us."
Millicent did not need to think about her answer. Neither, apparently, did Melina.
The perfumer spat blood into the dirt and glared up at them. "He won't let you worthless morons get away with this."
Melina turned toward him.
"Who is 'he'?" She asked.
The perfumer's expression changed instantly. That simple question was all it took.
Whatever bravado he had left folded inward behind his eyes. His mouth snapped shut. His face hardened with the ugly stubbornness of a man who had suddenly remembered he feared someone else more than the people currently standing over him.
Melina saw it too.
"Who?" She repeated, slower this time.
He said nothing.
Millicent smiled without warmth. "Right. Back to cutting pieces off, then."
But Nepheli's patience ran out before either of them got another word in.
"He's useless."
Then she chopped his head off with a single axe chop, the head flew into the air for a moment before landing a foot away. The perfumer's body spasmed, then collapsed in place beside the severed head, blood spilling dark into the blackened dirt.
Silence followed as Melina closed her eye briefly and sighed through her nose. "Annoying. He was still a source of information."
Nepheli gave the corpse one last look of total contempt. "Not enough of one."
Millicent, honestly, could not disagree. Melina let it go after a moment and turned back to Albus.
"This cursemongerer, and the one who led them. Where are they?"
Albus raised one trembling hand and pointed across the village. Beyond the burned homes and ruined platforms, a hanging bridge swayed gently in the damp wind, leading to another shelf of the hidden settlement farther along the cliffside.
"There, across the bridge. An Omenkiller was among the band of hounds, and he remained to... clean up." His face twisted with quiet disgust. "Those bastards relish in preying upon the downtrodden."
Millicent's hand went back to the hilt of her blade.
Nepheli's fingers tightened around her axe until the leather creaked.
Melina looked from the bridge, to Albus, and then toward the place where John had vanished not so long ago. When she looked back, her expression had gone calm in the way it did when she had already made up her mind.
"We accept."
Millicent nodded at once. There was no world in which she did not. John would want the medallion. He would absolutely want the Haligtree route, the mystery, the loot, and the chance to punch whoever thought massacring an Albinauric village was good policy. Doing this for him barely even counted as a choice.
And beyond that… Some things just needed killing.
"We deal with the Omenkiller." Millicent said. "Then we take your medallion half and find this Latenna."
Nepheli rested her axe against one shoulder. "And I'll see justice done while we're at it."
Albus bowed his head as much as his body allowed. "Then perhaps my village did not die entirely unheard..."
Melina stepped closer and laid one hand gently over his. "No, it did not."
Then the three of them turned together toward the hanging bridge.
And whatever waited across it was about to havea very Bad Time.
They crossed the hanging bridge together in grim silence.
The ropes creaked under their combined weight, the old planks swaying gently above the drop while damp wind climbed up from the cliffside and worried at their clothes. Below them, the hidden village stretched in broken tiers of ruin and smoke.
Behind them, Albus and the survivors they had managed to gather remained huddled among the burned homes, waiting to learn whether justice would truly come to a place like this.
Melina walked in the middle, her expression composed once more, though Millicent could feel the heat of her anger simmering just beneath the skin.
As they advanced, the maiden raised her hand and called on Grace with the ease of someone invoking a birthright rather than borrowing a power. Golden light spilled outward from her in a wave both solemn and beautiful, catching first on Nepheli's broad shoulders and then on Millicent's scarred, one-armed frame.
Golden Vow.
It settled over them like warm sunlight made into promise.
A second later came the deeper, softer blessing, threads of radiant gold falling over their bodies and sinking into flesh, easing weariness, steadying breath, and filling the hollows between heartbeat and muscle with quiet resilience.
Blessing of the Erdtree.
Millicent rolled one shoulder as the power settled into her. The difference was immediate. Her body felt lighter, her blood hotter, her cuts and aches less important than they had been a moment ago. She clicked her tongue and glanced back at Melina over one shoulder.
"Damn, Johnny really did find the best support maiden in the world."
Melina did not smile, but there was a faint twitch at the corner of her mouth. "Focus."
Millicent grinned anyway and turned back toward the far side of the bridge.
The moment they stepped off onto solid ground, the smell hit them.
Blood. Burnt wood. Entrails. Wet dog.
Millicent's grin died.
Ahead, in the center of the far shelf of the village, stood the Omenkiller.
He loomed over the gutted corpse of an Albinauric as though the act of murder were merely another task to be completed before supper. His great horned cleavers hung low in either hand, both heavy with fresh blood. The leather and iron of his garb were fouled with gore old and new, and his broad, hideous mask with its false, smiling face looked almost cheerful in the flickering firelight.
Behind him, a twisted old tree had been set ablaze. Its black branches clawed upward into the gray air while orange fire crawled through its hollowed trunk and split limbs, framing him in a hellish halo. The light from it painted everything in sickly amber and red, and in that glow the corpses around him looked even more obscene.
There were dozens.
Albinaurics lay piled in heaps around the clearing, some butchered and stacked with ugly efficiency, others thrown aside where they had died trying to crawl away. Limbs lay bent wrong. Gray blood had mixed with ash and mud into dark paste underfoot. A few bodies had been opened so cruelly that Millicent had to force her eye away before her own anger slipped into something less controlled.
Two ravenous hounds prowled among the dead, ribs stark beneath mangy skin, their jaws wet as they tore strips of flesh from the fallen. One lifted its gore-slick snout at the women's approach, teeth bared, and a strand of bloody meat hung from its mouth before it swallowed.
Nepheli's breathing deepened beside her.
Millicent did not need to look to know the Loux woman's hands had clenched around her axe hard enough to whiten the knuckles.
Melina came to a stop as well, and for the first time since Millicent had met her, the maiden looked less like a guide or priestess and more like a princess standing before a sight she considered unworthy of her mother's world.
The Omenkiller turned slowly toward them.
He did not seem surprised. He merely looked them over, first with annoyance, then with a detached kind of interest, as if deciding which of them would scream best.
Millicent spoke first, because waiting politely felt obscene. "You've got about ten seconds to explain yourself."
The Omenkiller's head tilted curiously.
Nepheli stepped up beside Millicent and planted her feet firmly. "Who ordered this?" She demanded. "What lord's whim sent you to slaughter villagers hiding in the dark?"
Melina's voice followed theirs, quieter but no less sharp. "Answer, and do not dare lie when you stand amid the proof of your guilt."
For a few moments, only the crackle of the burning tree and the wet chewing of the hounds answered them. Then the Omenkiller gave a low, ugly chuckle.
"Guilt?" He repeated. "A strange word to fling at a butcher for butchering."
Millicent's hand drifted lower toward her katana.
The Omenkiller went on, voice rough as gravel dragged through a furnace. "These things were lesser from the moment they were made. Alchemical refuse. Manmade scraps. They were not born right, not shaped right, and not blessed by grace or blood in any way that matters."
He spread one gore-dark cleaver slightly, gesturing to the dead at his feet as if they were livestock after a long workday. "So why would the Golden Order view them as anything else? They are worthless cattle. To be culled, slaughtered, and discarded at a lord's whim."
The words landed like acid.
Nepheli looked like she was about to launch herself forward and tear him apart with her bare hands.
Melina's face hardened with sudden, dangerous offense.
"That…" She hissed, voice rising with disbelief and anger both. "...goes against everything Queen Marika envisioned for the Golden Order!"
The Omenkiller turned his false smiling face toward her and gave a humorless sound through his mask.
"I do not expect a young girl such as you to understand."
The heat that came off Melina then was almost physical. Golden light flickered at her fingertips, thin and sharp, and Millicent recognized at once the signs of a maiden about two seconds from turning a moral disagreement into spontaneous cremation.
So she moved first. Millicent lifted her one hand slightly, not enough to block Melina, just enough to pull the maiden's attention.
"Hey." She whispered, voice light. "Don't lose it."
Melina drew a breath through her nose, visibly forcing herself back from that brink.
Millicent nodded once and stepped forward.
"That's enough talking, then. I'm gonna kill you now." She stated bluntly.
With one practiced motion, she drew the first of her katanas with her single hand. Steel whispered free, clean and hungry in the smoky light.
The Omenkiller sighed, almost disappointed. "Mutts always bark and nip at their masters and betters. Best you back down before you're collared and put down."
Millicent did not even bother pretending to be offended. Instead, she laughed. It was a bright, sharp sound, entirely too cheerful for the slaughter-yard they stood in.
"A Mutt, huh?"
She shifted her grip, caught the hilt of the first blade in her mouth, and with her now free hand unsheathed the second. The metal flashed crimson-gold in the burning tree's light, one blade in hand, one between her teeth, her stance lowering naturally as her body remembered exactly what it existed for.
"This Dog's already been spoken for, I fear."
The words came a little muffled around the hilt, but the meaning was clear enough.
Her blood was already rising. Her pulse quickened, not from fear, but from that bright, ugly joy only battle ever really gave her.
Johnathan had saved her from a lifetime of suffering and agony. He had given her a path, a place, and a reason to move forward that did not begin and end with rot or sorrow. He was chasing lordship with both hands and all his teeth, and she had chosen, without hesitation, to run beside him while he did it.
She would see him crowned if it killed her.
Hell, especially if it killed her.
Millicent lifted her chin slightly and stared the Omenkiller dead in his false face.
"I've got a Dragon counting on me. He's gonna reach the height of lordship. He'll become Elden Lord, even if I have to die making it happen first."
That made the Omenkiller go still. He wasn't frightened, or impressed by her words. He was obviously interested.
For the first time since they had arrived, he seemed to look at her as something other than another woman to dismember.
Millicent felt it in the way his stance shifted and in the slight tilt of his mask. He recognized something in her, some answering strain of zeal and chosen violence that twisted close enough to his own creed to earn attention.
"You speak like one who has a true lord of her own."
Millicent grinned around the hilt of her blade, wolfish and bright and just a little unwell.
"Yeah~... I guess so, huh?"
Her eyes narrowed.
"I can't let my master down, right?" She rolled one shoulder and spread her footing. "So how about it? Will you lay down and die for me? For him?"
The Omenkiller's answer was wordless.
He rolled his shoulders once, thick cords of muscle shifting beneath bloody leather, and raised both cleavers into guard. At his feet, the two hounds lifted their heads from the corpses and began to growl, low and ravenous. Their hackles rose. Their mouths foamed red.
Beside Millicent, Nepheli slid her axe down into both hands with a sound like judgment being made solid.
On her other side, Melina's fingers curled with golden flame gathering between them, her face once more perfectly calm in the way it only became when she was ready to burn someone alive with righteous purpose.
The burning tree crackled behind their enemy, showering sparks into the gray air like fireflies born from a funeral pyre.
"If you're gonna get in his way… then Die!"
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Author's Note:
POWER STONES!
Yeah, it's a lil mean to give ya'll a pov shift chapter after the latest cliffhanger, but I js couldn't help myself!
At any rate, I hope y'all liked the extra Millicent, but we get a rematch between John and Margit next chapter!!
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Next Chapter Title: It Won't Be Tamed
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