Chương 13: By Moonlight

Lance dropped into the worn wooden chair beside the desk. The room was unexpectedly clean, well-furnished for what it had cost, with a window that let in the right amount of cold air. The only problem was that it had been designed for one person, not for two teenagers.

"Only one room... For two? Never mind, we can... Share it." He remembered the expression he'd worn at the front desk when he'd asked for it: shell-shocked and politely incoherent.

"I should talk to Jeanne... She knows this place way better than me." He glanced back at the bed. She was asleep, still in her work suit, rolled into the thick sheets like something hibernating. The corner of his mouth moved. He turned back to the book. A large, heavy volume with a black leather cover stamped with the NOIR emblem in white, pages yellowed and dog-eared.

"This is the tenth book that Monica and Lucas gifted me... I should thank them for not leaving me to die of boredom!" He caressed the skin of the immense journal.

"Reading is such a privilege, I only have to thank these pieces of paper for making me less ignorant." He found where he had stopped with two fingers and opened it. The book was a compilation: research notes, experiment logs, and theoretical frameworks contributed by every researcher at NOIR and the Ruther Institute. Under ordinary circumstances, a document like this would have been classified at the highest level." I guess that being the Commander has its own advantages..."

"I remember quite well all the various terms... But why are they written in Northest's language!" Lance sighed, lowering his eyes to one of the many parentheses.

"I don't envy everyone who had to write this..." The sheer volume of the work was starting to take a toll on his mind. He licked his lips, deciding to read once more."

Kontrolle (Abilities capable of manipulating the flow of another's Frequency or their own, to seize their senses or produce an effect from them) — Änderung (Abilities capable of manipulating Frequency in the surrounding environment, or specific forces within it, to inflict damage or regenerate) — Stärken (Abilities capable of amplifying the user's Frequency or modifying it to grant significant offensive and defensive augmentations)— Hybride (Abilities presenting traits of more than one category) — Verwirrend (An extremely rare class of ability, with limited research available; abilities in this category may span multiple categories like Hybride, but unlike that class do not suffer incomplete control, and in some cases can deviate entirely from established frameworks, becoming true anomalies.)""Where would mine fall into?" He cleaned his glasses against his sleeve in the weak light of the oil lamp. His ability was unusual.

"Well, I can augment myself, that's for sure... But how do I explain the spheres and the shards?" He kept wandering." Abilities originate from trauma or desire." A cold current moved through him as he recalled one of Lucas's findings on Frequency.

"My powers work by stealing from other people. I kill their Frequency and use it as my own..." He looked at his hands. The calluses and scars he'd carried for years were gone. His palms were smooth now, like a child's. A short, dissatisfied breath left him as he let himself sink back in the chair. His mind wouldn't organise the pieces he was trying to assemble. He pulled the collar of his work suit away from his neck and studied the scarred skin beneath. Bit the inside of his lip. Let the fabric fall back.

"One day," he said, quietly.

"I'll have my answers, and I'll find you again." He opened the book and continued reading. The following pages were filled with dense equations and formula notation, offering nothing that caught his attention. His eye drifted. A margin note in black ink. Scrawled fast, in a hand that had been in a hurry. The ink had bled into the yellowed paper, half-crossing the adjacent text, but the word was legible: August. It appeared directly beside the description of Verwirrend. The handwriting resembled Lucas's notes.

"August... That name keeps appearing in the most illegible places." He remembered it from Lucas's notebooks, the same torn pages, the same ink-blotted passages that seemed to destroy every fragment of information relating to a specific series of experiments.

"... And then there's my file." He pressed two fingers against his eyelids.

"Whoever wrote it has done something to my sister and me, I am sure! There is no way for me to remember it if not for..." A sense of nausea spread through his abdomen, making him sigh." The night is young. Giving yourself a headache won't solve anything." He lifted the book with both hands and opened it to the section on Stärken.

"My ability resembles this type more than anything else, the augmentation angle, at least." He kept on reading, with his head lowered toward the paragraph." Starken abilities can manifest in many forms: increased muscle mass — amplified regeneration— superhuman athleticism and reflexes — exceptional physical performance — elevated bone density — and so on. What distinguishes Stärkens is the capacity to push the body well beyond the limits already granted by standard Meta mutation.

Beyond the physical enhancements already noted, Stärken can manipulate Frequency within their own tissues, hardening and reshaping them while the Frequency remains in contact with their own tissues. Although augmentations can in certain cases be shared, the majority of Metas from this category differ significantly from one another. To conclude, following research by Dr Lucas, it has been presumed that the Stärken category is more susceptible to emergence in response to trauma and inferiority complexes.

The absence of strength or will, hatred of an illness, and the inability to fulfil one's own desires may lead a Meta to develop an ability of this type." He lowered the book and looked at his arms.

"Well... I really don't know what I used to dream about before Jude..."

"All right," he said, low.

"I want to test something." He reached into the pocket of the travelling cloak hanging on the side of the desk and withdrew a small black cube, which settled into his palm with a faint vibration. A minimal charge of Frequency, and it expanded, resolving into a knife.

"So this is the technology Maverick was so happy to show me? I guess it's cool to have shrinkable tools. They would have helped me a lot on the outskirts." The blade caught the lamplight and was throwing a dim violet glow across the desk. Lance breathed slowly and opened his palm. A single clean motion drew the blade across his hand. Blood welled immediately, running down in thin lines, dripping into the handkerchiefs he'd laid out on the surface." How sharp is this?!"

His mouth opened while seeing much more blood than expected gushing through the not-so-small wound.

"Well, whatever! Blood is a tissue, if I am not wrong. In the fight with Roman, I hardened it without thinking about it. Maybe with intention, I can work it more deliberately." The blood was already covering his cuff. He breathed slowly, concentrating on channelling Frequency into each drop as it left his body. The flow began to thicken, to cohere, crystallising into a stalactite shape against his palm. He tapped it with his fingertip. It was firm and flexible.

Lance pushed further, drawing the blood still attached to his skin back upward. It wrapped around his wrist like a bandage and hardened almost immediately, the surface cracking slightly at the abruptness of the change.

"Look at this!" His eyes brightened. He shook the hand, deeply satisfied. He kept shaking it, trying to peel the hardened material free. After a few minutes, it softened back to liquid. He cleaned the arm with a handful of tissues from the bathroom, balling them and dropping them in the waste bin. The blood staining the tissues looked unchanged." As I thought, once it loses contact with my body, it becomes unrecoverable... Following this logic, I should be able to make my body more resistant and adaptable."

He was still pleased with himself until he noticed he'd forgotten to close the wound on his palm and had bled across his forearm again. Something else caught his attention. The scar tissue on his forearm had lightened significantly, nearly imperceptible now." I don't understand that either."

"Lan... ce?" A thread of voice from behind him. He turned, dropping the arm below the edge of the desk.

"You should... Be sleeping." The second half came slightly louder. The sound of covers moving, a dry rustle.

"Why are you bleeding?!" Jeanne was already upright. Before he could assemble an explanation, she had him sitting on the edge of the bathtub, while she pulled open cabinet doors in search of gauze. He stood and put a hand on top of her head, startling her. He held up the palm. Not a mark on it.

"I'm fine." He let go, dropped his arm to his side with a genuine smile. Jeanne looked at his hand for a moment. The alarm left her face.

"Right..." She said.

"We're... Different, the t-two of us." A small smile turned toward the floor. She closed the cabinet and moved to leave the bathroom." Is she alright?" He tried to speak, but words failed to come. She got back onto the bed. The rise and fall of her chest was uneven. Her eyes had lost some of their colour. Her fingers, when he could see them, were trembling under the sheets. She tracked him from the corner of her eye as he came through the door. He sat in the chair beside the desk, keeping his own head down.

Leaned his chin into the crossed hands.

"I'm sorry, I didn't wanna make you worry." Jeanne lifted her eyes. Her hands moved under the covers. When she raised her head, he caught the motion, gave a short smile, careful and unhurried. She hid her face in the heavy blankets.

"Did you have a nightmare?" A small movement, just to confirm, and then the face went back down. The covers pulled to her forearms. He stood from the chair. Walked to the bed. Before she registered it, he'd slipped one hand under the covers and drawn the trembling hand out by the index finger, holding it gently in the open air.

"So do I," he said.

"Almost every night." He let the hand go carefully and crouched, bringing his face level with hers. Her eyes were wet, and her lips were pressed shut against whatever was pressing from the inside. Lance's face was flushed with the rush of blood.

"I don't need to know what you've been through..." He said, his cheek burning red.

"... Or what you're going through now. I don't need that to want to help someone I care about." The pause after that was her own." Someone you... Care about?" She lifted her face. A few small drops had gathered near the corner of one eye.

"We're friends." He held out a handkerchief.

"Whatever it is that's hurting you, that's enough reason for me to do something about it." He glanced back at her. Her face had moved in the wrong direction; She was closer to crying than before.

"Don't... Please, don't cry, please!" He felt the floor shift underneath him. The panic of it was immediate and genuine. He hadn't understood, in the moment, that the tears forming in her eyes were not made by grief. After a while, he half-folded onto the chair, going slack against the back of it. Jeanne laughed quietly. Lance caught himself and straightened up sharply, which made her laugh harder. She pressed the sheet to her face.

"There goes my cool act..." He managed, eventually, to laugh as well. The moonlight came through the window and lay across the floor.

"Lance..." She said when the room had settled.

"You should sleep. We can swap... I'll take the chair." She was already pushing the cover off. He raised one finger at her.

"Don't worry, I don't mind..." His voice carried something firm.

"... Not after ruining your sleep."" AND I ABSOLUTELY WON'T USE A BED WHERE A GIRL HAS SLEPT IN!" The thought unfolded into approximately fourteen scenarios, each worse than the last, before he shut the entire sequence down by main force. Jeanne pulled the sheet back up until only her face showed. She was still smiling. She turned onto her side and let her breathing slow." Remarkable..." He thought, watching her fall asleep in what appeared to be under two minutes.

"This really took a toll on me..." He murmured, grasping his chest and ventilating with the free one.

"But now I have something that I need to take care of." He went to the window and eased it open, glancing back once at the room before he pulled himself out and began climbing the wall. The building was small by Arden Ring's standards, making the ascent brief. The pale roof tiles creaked slightly under his weight, and he picked his way to the base of one of the chimneys. The moon was still high. Below and around him, the massed light from the city's various establishments made it difficult to read the sky.

Arden Ring at night had a strange vitality to it: crowds still moving, lights still burning, music and voices rising in irregular surges from the streets below. Ahead of him, the Hotel Fleur dominated its section of the Pink Quarter. The scale of it was extraordinary. White brick walls decorated with pink-tinted bands, lit by a row of lanterns at the base of its garden. The tower-like central structure gave the hotel an elegance that was genuinely inviting.

"I made a promise." He tightened the cloak around his waist. Lance dropped from the chimney, sliding along the tiles. He gathered his legs beneath him and leapt to the roof ahead. The landing was abrupt but manageable.

"I really did get stronger! I am right as rain." He caught the low edge of a parapet and went straight over it into the alley below. Lance surfaced immediately, pressing his fingers to his nose, breathing through his mouth. In his hurry to disentangle himself from the rubbish bin, he tipped it over and struck the ground face-first.

"I take that back..." He said to the alley. He emerged carrying the smell of the bin and a selection of variegated stains on his cloak, the nature of which he chose not to examine. People were giving him space. He walked toward the Hotel without breaking stride.

"Maverick is eccentric, but his genius is indeed absurd." He kept his eyes on the watch's display as it mapped his route. A few minutes later, he was at the Hotel Fleur's garden entrance. The guards were looking at him." I look like excrement, and I probably smell like one too!" A clothing shop stood directly adjacent to the garden wall. He checked the thin metal wallet, counting the notes.

"I guess these are good enough." He went into the shop and came out with a long beige coat, wide-collared with a row of ornamental clasps. He ducked into the nearest side alley, cut sections from the discarded cloak with his knife, and stitched the Lambdite fibres into the lining of the new coat using a length of thread found nearby. He gripped the patch through the fabric and applied Frequency. The coat shifted, responding to the embedded fibre the same way the original cloak had.

The behaviour was the same, though the quantity of functional fibres was significantly less.

"It works?! I might be a genius too!" He pulled the coat on, modified the underlying work suit into something more appropriate, and stepped back out of the alley.

"A night for one." He said to the guards.

"Twenty million." One of them had his arms crossed. He did not appear to be joking. Lance paid in silence.

"If Mr Clerc is a regular... How much is he getting paid?!" The garden was extraordinary in a way he hadn't prepared himself for: flowers in colours that had no names, perfectly trimmed hedges, symmetrically positioned lanterns. He walked through all of it toward the front doors. At the threshold, a soft rose-coloured light met him, accompanied by a gentle, feminine musical undertone.

The doors opened onto a hall of extraordinary scale: silk banners in the colours of a field in late spring, chandeliers of cut crystal scattering their light in moving patterns. Garlands of roses and wisteria fell from the fixtures above. Orchid petals lay on the mirror-surface marble floor." Are all the people here that rich?" The clientele's clothing was several grades above what he'd been trying not to look at in the street. The staff wore long, vivid dresses.

The men were, for the most part, dressed formally, and several were masked.

"Masks?" He pulled up the hood of the new coat and crossed toward the reception. Before he reached the desk, a portion of the room's attention had moved toward the hooded figure crossing the floor.

"Too much pressure..." He bit the inside of his lip and hit the bell on the white wooden Reception counter. A young woman in a black formal dress arrived quickly, straightened her dark braid on her shoulder, and smiled. If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it." Isn't she way too similar to the waitress at the inn?" He studied the face. Different eyes, deep brown where the other woman's had been green.

But the movement and the poise were almost identical.

"Can I help you?" She asked.

"I'd like to speak with Mary and Leva." He said, lowering the hood slightly.

"Please let them know a couple of young people are looking for them." The hall's murmur shifted. He kept the smile in place.

"Isn't he a bit young to be here?"

"I couldn't say, but he's quite striking."

"I'm not even certain that's a boy." He stood still and let the comments reach him without expression, biting his lip harder. The receptionist nodded and disappeared through a set of heavy drapes. He found an empty section of the nearest sofa and sat." Are these all workers?!" They looked at him with interest. The hood covered less at close range than he'd hoped. He stood and returned to the counter, preferring the wall. The wait ended when the receptionist appeared near one of the lifts and beckoned.

He went in quickly. The doors opened, a pleasant electronic tone sounded, and the receptionist held out a small black metal key with the name Mary engraved across the face.

"Swipe it against the panel. It'll take you directly to her." She pushed him gently inside before he'd properly processed the instruction.

"How much—" He caught himself against the glass of the lift interior.

"Nothing. You're her guest, her word." The receptionist stepped back as the doors closed. The lift was, mercifully, nothing like NOIR's. It moved at a gentle pace." It does take longer..." The doors opened on the fifth floor. Through the large window at the corridor's end, all of Arden Ring was visible and lit against the dark. He found the door." I hope this is right. I've run out of available apologies."

"There you are!" A hand caught his arm and pulled him in. He ended up sideways across the arm of a chair, legs over the end of it. He turned his head. Mary was seated near the low table, pouring hot water through a filter.

"Coffee?" She kept turning the spoon.

"Yes... Thanks." He said and rearranged himself into a normal seated position. Lance kept his head low, hoping to occupy as little space as possible." Yeah, I shouldn't have done this alone... Where is Jeanne or Noel?! This is way too much!"

"Relax," she said, watching him.

"I don't bite."

"Heheh, I know..." Lance murmured, without a single hint of relaxation in his voice. She slid the coffee toward him across the glass tabletop, the small cup clicking against the surface with a sharp note. Then she settled onto the bed. He noticed the room properly for the first time. The entire space was saturated with fragrance, so dense it was almost tangible.

"Your name?" She said. He started, then lifted the cup without yet drinking. He remembered that in the confusion of the previous encounter, he'd managed to leave without giving it.

"Lance Klint."

"Lance Klint..." She repeated it, touching one finger to her cheek.

"That's a good name. Really elegant..." He looked up and set the cup down.

"I have news," he said.

"About Leiva and Antonia." Mary went still. She lowered her head, watching the distorted reflection of herself in the surface of the black coffee. The fragrance didn't change, but something in the room shifted, becoming heavier.

"The last client to visit both of them is also one of the missing persons. A contact has confirmed he was almost certainly with them before the disappearances." He laced his fingers together as he spoke. He looked around the room. Something was missing.

"Where's Leva?"

"She went to meet a client..." Mary said slowly.

"Outside the hotel, but I didn't ask for a name..." Her lips were trembling. Her lashes were moving faster than usual. Lance stood, rocketing the chair. The watch was already pulsing at his wrist with a white message assembling itself on the red-and-black display.

"Lance Klint — Urgent from Noel — ran into a group — after a brief disagreement, managed to get information on the victims — the missing man from the Pink Quarter works at a local establishment — it's called Rafflesia — he rented a companion for the evening — tell Jeanne and get there immediately — I'll follow right behind you."

"Damn it!" He pulled his hood up and moved to the door. He turned back. Mary had understood, from the shift in his posture, that something had changed. She was keeping her expression together by main force.

"Mary..." The smile had cost him something.

"I'll help Leva. I'll bring your sisters back, I promise." She held together. A few tears fell anyway, dropping from her chin to the carpet, darkening it in small circles. He nodded once and ran, almost gliding through the corridors to reach the elevator." How could he move so fast? There was a leak while we were searching?" A waitress saw the boy running, trying to step up to ask something. She was engulfed by a stack of flying cash, hiding the figure in its chaotic movements." Did he hear something?"

Lance went up the outside of a wooden-rail balcony, the boards flexing under his grip without breaking." Impossible. NOIR is a secret organisation. There's no reason anyone at Arden Ring would know we're here—" His thoughts stopped. He was on a rooftop. He pushed back his sleeve and pressed the skin of his wrist, the place where, not long ago, the violet marks had been eating into him.

"Roman talked about an organisation... Could it be them again?" The hypothesis was plausible enough to produce nausea. He shook it off and moved, moving from roof to roof.

"My body is finally getting used to this power! It doesn't hurt as badly as before." Each contraction covered wider ground. Where the jump wasn't sufficient, the strength was there to bridge it. He reached the room and caught the small stone ledge of the balcony with his fingertips, chipping a piece of it by accident. He tried to come in quietly, but his ankle disagreed. He went face-first into the wooden floor with a sound that had nothing quiet about it. Lance rolled, pressing both hands to his forehead.

The skin was undamaged. The pain was still there.

"Ehm..." He looked up. Jeanne was sitting in the same chair where he'd been studying. She was running her fingers slowly through her hair. Her cheeks were full, and her expression had been arranged into something that could generously be described as patient. Her foot tapped the floor in a regular rhythm, but not even once did she lift her gaze." Can she really make such an expression?!"

"Lance..." She said, stopping her fingers.

"Where have you been?"

"Mary's..." He kept his head on the floor.

"... Oh." The expression restructured itself.

"And... why?"

"To give her the information we found. And to reassure her..." She suddenly struck her tongue against the roof of her mouth.

"I-I understand you're young... But we're on a mission... You could at least try to—" The lecture unravelled under its own awkwardness before it could land, trailing into something closer to a confused hum.

"THERE IS A SIGNIFICANT MISUNDERSTANDING HERE!" He stood, catching the cloak wrapped around his ankle. Lance once again lost his footing and went into the wardrobe face-first. Several boxes came down from the top shelf." So he didn't do anything? Am I just simply crazy? No, well that's impossible! I... I" Lance was still on the floor, lamenting." Was I scared of nothing?" The young man, currently rolling around the floor in his own cloak, getting redder by the second, did not match that assumption.

"I DIDN'T DO ANYTHING!" He announced from the floor, face burning.

"But y-you smell l-like...." Thankfully, there were other sounds in the building, or all the inhabitants would have gone to check who was making that demonic shriek. Everything was resolved with Jeanne apologising for the implication, and Lance accepting while still vibrating with indignation. She caught his head before he could drive his forehead into the wall.

"I'M SORRY! I'M SORRY!" Lance screamed.

"Please stop... L-Lance, I believe you! I was just a bit drowsy..." He regained his composure, nodding his head.

"Noel contacted me." He said, straightening his rumpled clothes.

"Do we have a lead?" Lance nodded.

"Antonia and Leiva's client." He said, already pulling on his cloak. She nodded and moved to the door. The moon was properly overhead now.

"We're going to a local establishment... Rafflesia." He pushed the door open.

"Noel should already be there." She touched her canvas, reduced to a cube inside her pocket. He tucked Supplicium chain beneath his coat and pressed his wrist through his sleeve, feeling the specific cold of Lachesi beneath his fingers." I'd prefer not to use it." He thought of the names engraved in its metal, other people who had carried it before him." I really don't want to know why my name was here..." The two stepped into the street. The crowd had tripled since he'd last been out.

He followed the watch's display.

"Ready? It's just a theory, but..." He nodded her forward.

"D-do you think Roman is involved?" He nodded back, and they moved into the current of heads flowing down the wide road. Getting to Rafflesia wasn't complicated by itself, aside from the detours taken to avoid the kind of encounters that would cost them time. They dropped from a rooftop into an alleyway directly across from the establishment. The building was small, apparently constructed from painted green boards, with a handful of intact windows.

The sign above the door incorporated a spray of red petals and sputtered unpleasantly, throwing sparks whenever it attempted to light.

"This is definitely the place." Lance said, with a tone that suggested it was not a compliment. Jeanne took stock of the surroundings, then raised one arm, pointing toward an adjacent alleyway. Footsteps were audible from within the dark of the side street, partially hidden by venting steam from overhead pipes and the general noise of the nearby road. The people around them at this point were largely drunk or otherwise occupied. The footsteps were getting closer. Lance's fingers tightened on his chain.

"Lance, could you please stop threatening me with that thing every time we meet?" The enormous figure emerged from the alley, cloak stained with dark patches in assorted colours.

"You being so silent while we are all on the ropes doesn't help... It ain't my fault if I want to be safe..." He said and let out a breath, releasing his grip on the revolver in its cube form.

"Shall we breach?" Noel pulled a compact one-handed submachine gun from under his cloak and held it alongside the iron assembly that was his prosthetic arm. In his palm, it was genuinely unclear which of the two qualified as the weapon.

"STOP! The building is empty." Lance moved forward and pushed Noel's arm down.

"How do you..." Jeanne looked at him with the familiar expression of someone who'd stopped expecting his explanations to be normal.

"If I concentrate, I can see the Frequency! It reads like a current, or a series of lines that radiate from—" He paused. Both Jeanne and Noel were nodding with the attentiveness of students who had understood none of the lesson.

"Are you really a Stärken like me? Our aptitude is the worst for sensing outside Frequency."

"The point is that the building is empty, but there's a discrepancy below the structure." He pointed tiredly at Rafflesia.

"Understood! It's like a hidden room, right?" Noel said, pressing his free hand to his chin. Without a word, and without moving his hand from his face, he kicked the door. It dissolved into several hundred fragments of wood, glass, and iron. Lance and Jeanne stared at the gap where the door had been. Noel was surveying the result with visible satisfaction, turning the submachine gun in his remaining hand like a toy.

"Let's search." Noel jumped in with a bright smile, while Lance rubbed the bridge of his nose.

"I guess that the city is too busy enjoying the night to care about some random shootings..." The interior of Rafflesia was in a state that qualified as genuinely difficult to look at. Mould had colonised the wallpaper in wide patches, and the furniture was rotted and insect-eaten. A close, airless smell occupied the space, and it didn't take long for both Lance and Jeanne to feel it in their lungs.

"It's really old, I think it's even older than me..." Jeanne murmured, looking around while covering her nose. The three agents worked through the structure methodically. They moved tables. Broke apart the bar counter. Found nothing. Jeanne shifted a shelf. A sudden evacuation of cockroaches. Her expression moved through several stages before landing on contained disgust. She stepped back from them quietly.

"I'm tired..." Noel announced, looking at the floor. He plunged his hand through the floorboards. The wood, rotted, half-eaten, tore away in sections. Fragments dropped through into the space below, striking the metal surface of a hidden staircase at various angles, producing a series of small, ringing notes.

"There it is." He held the floor sections with satisfaction. Lance extended a slow thumbs-up.

"Let's go." He pulled the chain from his neck and charged it. Supplicium unfolded into its revolver configuration. Jeanne settled her frame across one shoulder. From inside his hood, Noel produced a long-barrelled rifle with a lateral cartridge assembly. The three moved into the dark of the corridor descending into the earth below Rafflesia. In the corner of Arden's forest, a soldier was dragging himself toward the tree line, driving his remaining hand into the wet earth.

The smell of it was everywhere, not just his own. He didn't look back. His arm, or what was left of it, trailed in a shape that no longer read as an appendage. From the shoulder, blood ran freely across the shattered, twisted bone. He'd stopped feeling it some time ago. Fear had consumed everything else. He didn't turn. He'd already made that mistake once; he'd seen one of his units taken apart by a figure wrapped in a long black cloak. It had come into the camp without warning and moved through it in minutes.

Some of his people had fought back. The results had been brief. The sound of bones, and the sound the ground made afterwards, both of them were still playing in his ears. He lost what was left in his legs and dropped into a narrow channel in the earth. He slid along the cold mud, coating himself in it. His vision was thinning at the edges. He'd been running since he'd seen what happened at the camp. By some accident, the creature had missed his skull, taking the arm instead.

"What was that thing?" He leaned against the earthen wall. In his eyes, the shape of it, the speed, nothing human moved like that. And through the chaos of the skirmish, he'd been certain he'd seen a human arm beneath the cloak, swinging, then human legs splitting a skull right open.

"An attack? We're in a period of peace, goddammit! No, a human being is capable of this."

"Could you..." said a voice at his ear, "refrain from calling me a thing. It is somewhat rude." He turned. A blurred shape resolved, close enough to touch. He recognised the cloak, stained with mud and blood. She lowered the hood: dark hair fell forward over her shoulders, reaching nearly to the ground. Red and green eyes caught what little light existed in the channel. The face was sharp and feminine, and the expression on it was almost gentle. She placed one hand on his chest.

Pressed it lightly, measuring his heartbeat.

"You did well," she said.

"To run as far as you did. I'm sorry it was you here tonight." She drew him in against her, continuing in the same quiet voice.

"You were simply unfortunate to be resting here on this particular night." A pause.

"Changeant cannot afford mistakes." She said, more to herself than to her victim. She set him down carefully. The light had left his eyes already. The body lay in the mud, wrapped in its spreading stain. The moon's reflection moved in the pooled ground beside him. She looked at his face for a moment. Then she pulled the hood back up. Her exhaled breath turned white and vanished in the cold air.

"Good... I should go back to Roman." The woman vanished in an instant, reappearing on the bark of a massive tree.

"The experiment should be finished by now." She increased her pace toward the blaze of light that was Arden Ring. She paused and bit the nail of her index finger. A faint warmth moved through her in a way she couldn't place. The image it had come from was simple: a face she'd seen in the street below, with dark hair and a specific kind of directness in the way he moved and looked at everything.

"Lance Klint..." She smiled.

"Was I right to have taken a liking to you?" She disappeared again, heading for the flickering lights.