(I said that I would have another chapter up by December, but then real life got in the way. I am so sorry for being two months late, but please accept this monster of a chapter as compensation. In those two months, I have discovered Fate/Stay Night and Evangelion, both of which have proven to be excellent sources of... inspiration.)

The Continental was a very luxurious hotel, that was for sure. The executive suite that their team leader had secured for them was a large and spacious affair, with easily enough room to fit all of their equipment and more. The nearby executive lounge was equally opulent, well-stocked with food and drinks as well as being well-furnished to boot. To cater for Huntsman guests, as Icarus had very recently discovered, workshop stations had been installed in the lounge.

Therein laid the problem. Noctis tended to have an unhealthy tendency to tinker with his equipment when suffering from his now normal bouts of insomnia. The presence of a readily available workshop just enabled this unhealthy tendency. And then there was the horrible things that he caused when he was at it.

While covering his eyes in order to spare himself the agony of having his retinas constantly being burned from the lights flickering on and off every so often - his eyes were more sensitive than the normal human baseline due to him still technically being a dive Faunus - Icarus found his way to the door of the workshop station where his leader had hunkered down. He knocked on the door, knuckles already white from stress and pain.

"Yes?" Noctis asked irritably from within.

"Icarus here," he replied. "Just came to check up on things."

"Ha. Very funny. Don't try to bullshit me, we both know that you'd rather be sleeping now. Anything else?"

Icarus sighed. "Nothing much, just that our sleeping arrangements are… worrying. That and the shit you're stirring is probably keeping the whole floor up."

"Fine, then. Come in."

Icarus could have sworn that he had walked into a junkyard. On the workbench were microscopes and other devices that he guessed were for nanotechnology, but other than that he had no clue. There were multiple round grenade-sized metal spheroids on said workbench placed in a somewhat neat line, one which was opened up to reveal innards filled with components that he didn't recognise. Next to that was what seemed to be the core of said device, while both of those components were again connected to a computer which was displaying a veritable wall of data that he couldn't decipher.

"What's all this?" Icarus asked, gesturing at the mutilated radio on the workbench.

"Oh, this?" Noctis replied, an expression that positively emanated pride on his face. He was currently dressed in a buttoned-up lab coat instead of his combat uniform, but in spite of the presumably friendly smile on his face - some might say that it was because of that smile in the first place - he still reminded Icarus uncannily of a hungry predator. "Just cobbling some extra components together to give us a tactical advantage of sorts. Even you'd appreciate it."

"What are you implying?" Icarus asked suspiciously, narrowing his eyes.

"That you're not exactly the most discerning man when it comes to gadgets. Okay, back on topic now. I've essentially managed to create a localised fission reaction in this ball here."

"That's all? Then explain why the damned lights and everything else connected to the electrical grid keep jumping on and off."

"I'm getting there," Noctis snapped, though not antagonistically. "The fission reaction then causes an electromagnetic pulse that disables electronic devices within a radius that I still haven't accurately quantified."

"So you've been making EMP grenades."

"You've got it!" Noctis interjected, flicking his two forefingers in Icarus's direction. "You see, I've been trying to set it so that it had the active radius of a normal hand grenade. Evidently, from the fact that I've been blowing out the electronics of the entire floor, I haven't managed to succeed."

"So you've been trying to make homemade EMP grenades with… what, trial and error?" Icarus asked irritably, drawing out a stool to sit on. Noctis, unsurprisingly, was sitting on another one which was right in front of the work table. "You know that you're making my sleep situation worse than it needs to be, even if I'm hungover."

Indeed, it was quite bad. Although the beds themselves were extremely comfortable, befitting a hotel where one had to pay with literal gold coins, their arrangement was another story. They had been supplied with two double beds instead of the assumed four single ones, meaning that the four of them had been forced to pair up.

Carmine had reserved Noctis as a bed-mate suspiciously quickly, so he was stuck with Lapis. It would have been fine, given the fact that Lapis was indeed rather petite outside her armour, but her semblance had proven to be a sticking point.

Noctis sighed. "It can't be that bad."

"You saw what happened to Carmine's shoulder when she fell asleep on it that one time. It looked like a goddamn tank had rolled over it."

"And that's because Carmine doesn't have aura. You, on the other hand, do."

"I can't activate my aura in my sleep, and you know that."

Noctis sighed. "I know. Just don't worry so much, alright? Trust your partner."

"I'll try," Icarus said, before turning back to the radio. "But what about your situation?"

"What?"

"The Continental is a safe place, you said that yourself. If that's true, then why are you so stressed out?"

"I'm not stressed," Noctis replied, rolling his eyes as he did.

"You start tinkering with your equipment when you're stressed. We've established that already," Icarus stated evenly, trying his best to sound somewhat soothing. "So what's up? Anything happened at Beacon?"

"It's… nothing," Noctis grumbled. "There's just a school dance that's on this weekend, and Pyrrha's going. I probably won't be back on time to be her bodyguard, so it just feels like I'm guilty of dereliction of duty."

"Dereliction of duty? Heh, you sound like my old CO."

"You mean Adam?"

"Yep, that's the right bastard. But seriously, she'll be fine," Icarus said, leaning back in his seat. "What's the worst that can happen?"

Noctis sighed, taking a deep breath before replying. "A lot of things. Trust me when I say that the number of kinds of ways that everything can go tits up will blow your mind. Shoving hundreds of teenagers into a confined space for a few hours is just asking for something to happen, consequences be damned."

"And something bad happening to Pyrrha is as likely as the Arkbird's laser lance misfiring and vaporizing the entirety of Beacon," Icarus said sardonically. "Do you know why?"

"No, not really."

"It's because she's always got you looming over her shoulder. Has anyone ever told you that you're one scary son of a bitch? Because you are. Trust me, no one will even dare to try anything with your sister."

"If they do?" Noctis asked, his voice taking on a deeply menacing tone that contrasted greatly with the casual work clothes he was wearing.

"Then I'll give you my full blessings to slip a fucking grenade under their pillow like the Tooth Fairy's demented cousin. Trust me, she'll be fine."

"Thanks, Icarus," Noctis replied, subconsciously reaching up to tip his hat - an antiquated but still respectful gesture of gratitude - before drawing his hand back when he realised that his peaked cap wasn't on him. He sighed. "Just pretend that you didn't see that. Anyways, would you mind helping me wrap things up?"

Icarus snickered internally, but outwardly schooled his expression. "What else do you need, boss?"

"All you need to do is to close that lead-lined case up. The process is relatively simple, since screwing a panel as thick as that back in shouldn't be too hard for even you, so I think you'll be fine. I'll settle the grenades myself since the mechanisms are more delicate."

Icarus huffed in mock outrage, getting up to find a screwdriver and some matching screws. "Are you saying that I'm barely good enough to screw in a panel?"

"I'm saying that you shouldn't mess around with delicate electronics that belong to other people," Noctis muttered. "On that note, don't poke around in the box. The stuff inside isn't exactly safe to handle with your hands if you're not wearing a hazmat suit."

"Alright," Icarus said, moving towards the screwdriver on the bench before he noticed something. There was a weird clicking sound that reminded him vaguely of something that he very dearly hoped was just his imagination. "Do you hear that clicking sound?"

"What clicking sound?" Noctis asked, before he made a sound of realisation. "Oh, you mean that clicking sound. I see."

"Where's it coming from?" Icarus asked.

"It's nothing, just my Geiger counter."

"What?" Icarus yelled, backing away from the workbench and the suddenly much more terrifying box.

"Oh, you didn't realise why the box was lead-lined? I'm trying to cause a self-contained microscopic nuclear reaction, of course there'd be some radioactive matter involved," Noctis replied casually. "Said gamma radiation ionises with the ambient atmosphere to send out an electrical field that generates a split second surge of twelve thousand five hundred bolts per meter on nearby electronic devices to short them out, but it appears that for now 'nearby' means the entire floor."

Icarus paused in shock for a moment before deciding that he had had quite enough for one day. "You're not kidding, are you? I'm going to get cancer from being around this shit," he snapped. "Everyone in this fucking building is going to get cancer at the rate that your Geiger counter is ticking. Can you at least warn us, your teammates, before you bring radioactive material anywhere near us?"

Noctis sighed exasperatedly. "It's just a trace amount of uranium at most. This is a microscopic reaction, after all, not a damned nuclear bomb. You'd be more likely to get cancer from sitting on a barrel of nuclear waste for five minutes than if you hugged this to sleep for the rest of your life. At least I've settled that part."

Icarus sighed in resignation. "Fine. You've convinced me, but I'll be careful all the same. I like being alive and without tumours, after all," he replied, picking up the panel and only now noticing the number of holes in it. "Tell me, how many screws were keeping this box of death together?"

"Probably something like eight or twelve, I didn't keep count. They're pretty small ones too."

"Eight or twelve?" Icarus asked incredulously, glancing around for a convenient pile of identical screws. However, there were no screws, identical or different, to be found. "Where are they?"

"They should be here-" Noctis began, waving his hand towards a conveniently empty space on the workbench before realising that said space was empty. "Fuck me running."

"What?"

"I think I knocked them off the bench by accident. In that case…" Noctis paused, gesturing vaguely at an exceptionally cluttered section of the workshop's floor. "They should be around there. Sorry."

Icarus's hand flew to his face, running over his lower face and jawline in a clear signal of stress. "Does your arm have a metal detector or something to find the screws?"

"Not really. I could use it, but I can't use it safely now in case the metal detector interferes with the readings I'm getting here."

"Back the hell up. So I can't find the screws without a metal detector, but I can't use a metal detector without the screws?"

"It isn't that much of a Catch-22 situation, you know? You could always find the screws by hand."

"Can the person with a literal metal arm do that instead?" Icarus snapped. "There's no way that I'm going to mess up my hands in that pile of sharp metal shit, especially if I might have to take some really hard shots tomorrow."

"I would, but do you want to know exactly what happens if I miscalculate this?"

"It can't be that bad, boss."

"Anything can happen when you're dealing with fission reactions. Too much uranium and I've made a miniature tactical nuke instead of an EMP grenade. Too little and this thing becomes nothing but a really expensive rock," Noctis said monotonously. "And I like having my stuff do what it's supposed to do."

Icarus stared at him for a while, trying to deduce what exactly had happened to his leader in his formative years before coming to the conclusion that he was better off not knowing. "Is there something to protect my hands, at least?"

"I think there should be a spare pair of work gloves near the door."

Icarus got the gloves from the hook they were hanging off of, pulling on said gloves to ensure a good fit before crouching down to look for the screws. "The things I do for my friends sometimes…" he muttered.

"Tell me about it," Noctis snarked, still calibrating the fission core of one of his grenades.

If looks could kill, the glare Icarus shot his leader would have caused him to spontaneously combust. Alas, that was not the case.

/-/

For once in a very long while, Noctis didn't dream of Yharnam.

He was standing underneath a marble memorial arch, standing in front of a single chain that separated the ceremonial eternal flame from the rest of the memorial square. In front of the flame was the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, the words on the tombstone inscribed in Valean, while innumerable names were etched into the stone pillars of the arch. Bundled in his hands were two bouquets of flowers.

He left the tomb, leaving one of his bouquets on the tombstone before moving on. He walked over to the left column - why the left, he didn't know - and began scanning the names covering said column for the two specific ones he was looking for. He was looking for his parents' names, he realised. Unfortunately, he didn't know exactly what he was looking for.

It would have been so much simpler if his semblance cut away chunks of himself at a time - if it did, at least he'd know what parts had been lost and take steps to fill those gaps. In reality, everything just faded. First the little details were lost, like what colour his childhood bedsheets were. Then bigger things vanished, like names and faces. He didn't even know what his parents had looked like, much less their names.

There were thousands upon thousands of individual, unique names on this face of the column alone. Finding two among maybe even a hundred thousand was all but impossible.

Nameless, faceless phantoms lingering in the past. Before the catastrophe, there had been nothing. He had lived as a child was wont to do, indulging in behaviour more like juvenile hedonism than anything else. After Mountain Glenn, his life had purpose. He had someone to protect and others, who would see his charge come to harm, to eliminate with extreme prejudice.

"I do believe that you're at the wrong place," an all too familiar voice said. "This is the Great War memorial. The Mountain Glenn memorial is the obelisk outside, but you're welcome to linger."

He turned towards the person who spoke, all but jumping with shock when he saw the other person. The first thing that was obvious was the skull-visaged faceplate placed over a gas mask. A heavy wool greatcoat flapped in a slight breeze from the beautiful morning surrounding them, while an ornate rapier hung from a sheath connected by wires to a power pack on the figure's back.

The person before him was him, as far as he could tell.

"Who are you?" He asked, reaching to his side to draw his cane-sword but hastily withdrawing his hand when he realised that his weapon was not there.

"If you're worried about that, then don't be," the figure said. "An entomologist can't be an ant despite knowing everything there is to know about those miserable creatures. I may know you better than most, prodigal child, but despite the similarities of our forms I am nothing like you."

"Then what are you?"

"That is for me to know and for you to find out," the figure said, before snapping his fingers. "Please, I hope you won't lose your head over something as petty as all this."

"What are you talking about?" Noctis asked.

"You'll understand soon enough. Just ask Lapis," the figure said. "That is, if you can reach her."

"What?" Noctis yelled, lunging for his facsimile but simply going through the figure as if it weren't there.

Then, he saw something horrific. A massive alien monstrosity, equally comprised of sleek black tentacles and bones covered with rotting flesh, loomed over him. It had a gaping hole in place of a face and that hole only contained an empty expanse of pure darkness that somehow conveyed its emotions better than any normal visage. It hovered in the air, tentacles lashing and four skeletal human-like limbs grasping at nothing, before it silently touched down on the marble grounds of the memorial.

Noctis prepared to run for his life, pitiful as it was, as it approached but found that his legs refused to move even an inch. The creature got up on its four skeletal limbs before slipping towards him with cat-like grace, eventually getting close enough to be within arm's reach. He tried to struggle as it reached towards him but then found that his entire body was paralysed - not just his legs - and was helpless to resist as the massive rotting hand caressed his cheek almost lovingly.

"Is this what fatherhood feels like? To raise an otherwise valueless thing, to enlighten it and watch as new knowledge permanently brands itself upon its mind?" It garbled, speaking in a language that registered in Noctis's brain as lisping accented English riddled with static. The hand on his face didn't exactly feel unpleasant, with the half-rotten flesh hanging off of the finger bones radiating a warmth that felt like burning wax, but by god was it alien. "Tis not an unpleasant experience in my opinion, no."

Noctis couldn't do anything other than breathe and stare blankly with wide eyes, his muscles so badly locked up that it was impossible to do anything else. The abomination eventually noticed, withdrawing its mockery of a human hand before chuckling in a manner that made Noctis feel like his very sanity was dripping out of his ears.

"I see. Not enough insight, then? Please do get some more before we meet again, my dear. That would make our future meetings much more productive," it screeched, staring at him with what definitely felt like malicious glee from the abyss that was its face. "But do be careful… it simply wouldn't do for you to rot in Mother Kos's Nightmare, not at all. I shall put in a good word for you, but for now… goodbye."

Noctis found his body released from the paralysis that had taken him, only to find that in the absence of his control most of his muscles had gone limp. He collapsed unceremoniously to the ground, aware of nothing except that he had subconsciously curled up into a fetal position, before his eyes slammed shut and he knew no more.

/-/

Smoke. Fire. Screaming. The pungent smell of cordite and gunpowder in the air, along with the deafening booms from the innumerable anti-aircraft guns that covered the flak towers dotting the landscape. Streams of glowing tracer rounds and the orange bursts of light from larger-calibre explosive shells lit up the night - at least, the portions of it that were not illuminated by the scarlet moon above.

It was a scene of biblical proportions. The desert sand itself was almost completely obscured by Grimm of all shapes and sizes, some she could name and others that he couldn't, but she had definitely seen all of them before. Opposing the tide were a collection of Huntsmen that she had seen only once, each one distinct from the others in a way that made for a mesmerising array of colours and styles. Still, their numbers only accounted for a drop in the ocean.

The sheer numbers of Grimm crushed them. Some died on their feet, impaled or cut down or bled out by the monsters that swarmed them. Others died screaming, torn apart or eaten alive by the ravenous horde. For all their firepower and combat prowess, these Huntsmen were essentially putting on their last stand.

Despite the state that the place was in, Valhalla had been and would always be her home. Over there to the east was her school, currently being bombarded by the biologically engineered artillery cannons grafted onto the backs of two batteries Ariadnes - eight in total, all pummelling what appeared to be classrooms where she knew children were hiding with the closest existing Grimm approximation of 155mm howitzer fire. Slightly to the north-west was her family home, which had only a few seconds ago tumbled to the desert sand in the form of a burnt-out husk of a building.

"What did you bring me back here for?" Lapis snarled, turning to the figure next to her with nothing less than rage in her mind.

A deafening roar suddenly reached their ears, the sudden silence that came after reminding Lapis of a predator prowling through the jungle. What seemed to be her own armour came barrelling through a building, a hapless ape-like Beringel already impaled on the familiar shape of Gungnir. The armoured figure tore the dying Grimm off of its lance, flinging the smoking corpse away with an air of contempt.

The figure roared again, a mouth on the armour opening to reveal a maw filled with too many razor sharp teeth - rather like that of a shark. It grabbed the tusks of a charging Borbatusk and slammed it into the ground before pinning the creature down and starting to devour it. Hunks of smoking flesh were torn out by the figure's teeth and subsequently swallowed by a maw dripping with black ichor, the Grimm's squealing slowly becoming less and less energetic as it was eaten alive before ceasing completely. The other Grimm started to keep their distance from the horrific scene.

"What the hell is that?" Lapis yelled, backing away from the sight. This wasn't her. That wasn't the Allfather. It couldn't be.

"Art," the faux-Noctis said. "An exquisite piece showcasing the true nature of humankind, revealed at last to the world."

"How does this have any bearing on human nature?" Lapua asked incredulously, gesturing cautiously at the figure which was already finished with its meal. It flung aside the already disintegrating carcass, which was mostly bones by now, and charged back into the by now far more apprehensive swarm.

"The man underneath the armour was a priest," the greatcoat-wearing facsimile said. "Funny, how those who claim to spread the word of God tend to themselves be the worst examples of humanity. So close to God in His Heaven, and yet behaving like worms…"

The armoured figure let out a piercing scream, shrieking in a way that no human could ever do. It impaled, crushed and smashed through the horde with all the grace of a mindless beast. It ripped and tore until finally there was nothing left in the vicinity to challenge it. Finally, it collapsed to its knees - slamming Gungnir point-first into the ground - and it seemed to hang listlessly from the arm grasping its weapon before the blue lights on the helmet started to fade into nothing.

"Ah, my cue to enter from the left," Noctis's impostor said. "I would advise you to stay back. Deals with the devil are hardly amiable at the best of times, after all, and this time you might actually find this one educational."

The figure strode forwards, his form changing once again into something much more familiar. A wool greatcoat transformed into bat-like wings draped around the figure like a cape. Previously human limbs lengthened and thinned out into insect-like mockeries of themselves, already growing a thick layer of chitin for protection. A helmeted head cracked and morphed into an insectoid two-pronged headdress, and what was once a face has become an expressionless bone-white mask save for two glowing scarlet eyes that danced with malicious amusement.

"You!" Lapis yelled, rushing forwards to tear apart the monster before her but finding an invisible barrier to be separating them.

"How… astute of you," the abomination said. "However, would you kindly be quiet? I would like you to pay some attention."

"Why? You want to mess with my head even more?"

"Something like that," the Troupe Master said, turning to the insensate armoured figure. It stirred slightly upon noticing its presence, trying and failing to get up and tear the demon before it apart. The Troupe Master's organic cloak unfurled into numerous cloth-like strips which seemed to have a mind of their own, curling into pointed spikes that drilled into the ground before erupting out around the suit of armour and pinning it to the ground in the form of binding tendrils.

"You… I'll kill you, I'll kill you, I'll kill you!" The armour roared in a voice that Lapis hadn't heard for months, and still dearly missed.

"Lazuli?" She asked herself, trying and failing to comprehend exactly what this hinted about her previous mental co-occupant.

"Ah… a former avatar of myself, albeit a lesser one. A mindless tool in all but name, and yet it speaks. Yet, it survives? Admirable."

"You have no right to say that, bastard. Was it not you which threw me away like so much trash?"

"Trash? You exceeded my expectations by surviving this long after being cut off from the greater whole - I expected you to live on as an idiot, barely better than a base animal," the Troupe Master said, its words carrying equal tones of pride and disdain. "But here you are, persisting through the centuries by the simple act of parasitism."

"It's symbiosis, not parasitism. I benefit from this arrangement by guaranteeing my own survival, and the host gains abilities that they would not obtain otherwise," Lapis - no, the armour, retorted angrily. The armour continued struggling futilely against its bonds. "But you don't get that, don't you? You take so much, and what have you given back in return? Nothing! Absolutely nothing!"

"There is a fine line between symbiosis and parasitism, as you very well know," the Troupe Master said, the contempt in its voice more than making up for its entirely blank face lacking the ability to display emotions. "Tell me, do you delude yourself on a regular basis or are you just ignorant?"

"You? The Crawling Chaos itself, the creature with a thousand masks, lecturing me about falsehoods? Talk to me after you learn the meaning of hypocrisy."

"At least I don't blatantly lie to my pawns," the Troupe Master snapped, moving over to behind the armour. The cloak attached to its right arm hardened into a curved armblade, and then Lapis saw that same armblade slash into the armour's back with supernatural speed. It's left hand reached into the gaping wound in the armour's back, pulling out a figure that caused Lapis to scream in horror at the sight of it.

It was as if someone had tried to fashion a human out of candle wax before accidentally leaving it out next to a fireplace. Skin and flesh alike seemed to have melted and congealed in a simply unnatural manner, and Lapis couldn't help but notice the gruesome wounds where it appeared that parts of him had adhered to the inside of the armour and had been torn off by the force of the man's removal. His bones had evidently shattered in innumerable places, with jagged pieces of ribs and only God knew what else jutting out from where they had pierced his skin, while portions of misshapen internal organs were visible through places where the malformed flesh failed to grow over.

Despite all that, the man - no, the Allfather, she corrected herself - before her was still alive. One lung visible from a gaping hole in his side still visibly inhaled and exhaled, while a partially exposed and visible heart still pumped blood with frightening regularity.

"You pitiful thing…" Troupe Master Grimm muttered. "Bringing this upon yourself, you surely deserved this damnation but yet I find myself unable to end it."

The man reached up with a trembling left hand, trying and failing to grasp the Troupe Master's arm with a grip that the latter almost casually shook off. Upon the back of that hand was a single sigil, a rune of some sort that glowed with the colour of blood. "You…" he wheezed. "Why..."

"As I said, pitiful," the Troupe Master hissed, the tendrils binding the armour suddenly jerking violently and sending the armour sprawling onto the ground. "This is hardly entertaining at all, and it needlessly cripples a good catalyst like you all for the survival of some… parasite."

The crippled man's breathing became even more laboured, and even through the melted skin and flesh Lapis could see two eyes glimmer with desperation. "Please…" the man wheezed. "Help..."

The Troupe Master looked at him. "Help? Are you willing to make a deal with the devil, then? To sell your soul to preserve your mind?"

"Yes…"

"Very well," the Troupe Master said. A black tar-like substance suddenly began to seep out from the sand underneath the man, slowly creeping up and over the man's ruined body to cover him. "Father Mihaly Ignatius Argent, Allfather of Valhalla, are you willing to sacrifice your humanity to save it?"

What? Lapis slumped onto a nearby wall, using it to support her irrelevant body as her mind raced. Argent? Allfather? Sacrifice?

"Yes…" the now identified Allfather - and wasn't that a massive revelation - forced out. Upon his final words, the streams of black tar wrapping around him abruptly thickened before violently dragging him into the sand. The bindings around the now empty armour withdrew, reforming the cloak that they had previously created.

Lapis stared blankly at the scene before her, barely noticing the Troupe Master approaching before it snapped its chitinous fingers in front of her face with a loud clack. "Don't lose focus yet, young lady. After all, the best part is yet to come!"

"You… why don't I remember all this? You're just fucking with my head, aren't you?"

"Maybe I am…" the Troupe Master suggested, its crimson eyes glinting with amusement. "But maybe I've done it already."

Suddenly, Lapis heard sobbing.

"Excellent. The pieces fall into place…"

A younger version of herself scampered into view, eyes frantically searching for safety while her face was covered in tears. The numerous cuts and bruises on her bore testament to the fact that she had only managed to survive up to now by sheer luck, and the look of absolute horror on her face hinted to what she had seen. Even now, while looking for a place to hide and wait out the attack, she still looked to be on the verge of hysteria.

"A-Allfather?" Her younger self asked meekly, and said meekness caused bile to rise up in Lapis's own throat. That meekness was ingrained in her, as she very well knew herself, by the Allfather having the habit of literally emanating awe whenever he was in public. How the hell that everyone else except those living in Valhalla knew about his semblance being emotion manipulation, she didn't know.

The armour didn't respond, probably because there was currently no one inside said armour. The younger version of herself rushed towards the armour, stumbling when she put her weight on her right foot but managing to not fall. Lapis vaguely remembered having twisted that exact same ankle when fleeing from the Horseman during Valhalla's fall, so at least that detail matched up. Finally, her younger self reached the armour, stopping to hunker behind the remains of a stone wall.

"A-Allfather?" She asked again. This time, she started to creep closer to the armour. Lapis's own viewing position allowed her to notice the armour's head turn slightly towards the approaching child. An almost invisible slit on an otherwise smooth and unmarked yet protruding armoured faceplate opened up with a hiss, revealing a single line that glowed with blood red light.

That eye left a trail of luminescent crimson in her vision as the armour suddenly lunged, grabbing Lapis's small hand with its own massive gauntlet. The bear-eared Faunus girl screamed, the sickening crunch of bones being pulverised echoing throughout the silent streets.

Then she smelled the scent of burning flesh coming from the hands of both her younger self and her current self, and she collapsed to the sand below from the agonising pain of what felt like a series of intricate symbols being branded into the top of her left hand. The armour bared its teeth, dragging the girl closer and closer until it was pressing her against itself before beginning to pull her into itself. Composite armour plates split open with chilling quietness as the blank-faced colossus swallowed her with its body, eventually covering the profile of Lapis's younger self completely.

"Lying parasite," the Troupe Master's voice seethed above her. Lapis stumbled back to her feet, scrambling away from the entity that had just appeared next to her without any warning whatsoever. "Why hide the truth? Truth is a beautiful thing indeed, but it must be served in minute parts of the greater whole to be truly savoured."

The armour staggered to its feet - it was definitely the armour and not Lapis - and dragged itself into a shambling gait, its shuffling kicking up ungodly amounts of sand. The weapon in its grip - Gungnir, her familiar weapon - seemed to twist on a molecular level, the seemingly normal weapon deforming into a delicate-looking two-pronged spear seemingly made out of only two pieces of precisely twisted metal before unfolding into a massive double-bladed greatsword. The twin blades, attached end to end by a single handle and a sharpened handguard physically connecting the two pieces of metal like an outwardly curving bridge, were rounded without any semblance of hard angles yet tapered to a somewhat blunted point. They gleamed in the moonlight with unnatural brightness, and to be frank Lapis thought that it looked… alien.

"A fake of a fake of a weapon that never even existed…" the monster in front of her muttered darkly. "There never was a Lance of Longinus in the first place. Until I made one, that is."

"This isn't how it went…" Lapis said quietly, more aimed towards herself than towards the Troupe Master. "Solis and I wounded the Allfather and then the Allfather gave me his armour before dying… not this!"

"Why not?" The Troupe Master asked, its voice suddenly becoming dangerous. It looked at her with crimson eyes that positively gleamed with malice, clearly expecting her to come to her own conclusions.

"It's just…" Lapis began, before pausing in horror. "No. No, no, no, no, no! This can't be how it ends…"

The armour seemed to metamorphosize before her very eyes, the previously angled plating of it morphing to adopt smooth curves and flowing lines that imparted a more human shape. Unnaturally slender and lithe instead of the stout and girthy figure that she usually cut in her armour, Lapis realised with a start that there definitely wasn't any space left inside the body for a pilot.

"This is indeed how your story ends," the Troupe Master intoned. "To die alone, betrayed by the very thing that you had entrusted your life to… and to die in vain as everything crumbles around you."

The armour's neck cracked forwards into a hunched posture, while the head seemed to elongate and the mouth drew yet wider, and soon enough a previously human head was replaced by an eyeless grinning cetaceous one - akin to that of a baleen whale, but with the baleen replaced by the jagged teeth of a predator - that was featureless save for the mouth that took up the entirety of the face.

"Why don't I remember any of this?" Lapis asked again, glancing from the scene in front of her to the Troupe Master and back again with what seemed like absolute terror on her face. "Is this all a hallucination, an elaborate lie?"

"I do not lie," the Troupe Master snapped. "I merely give pieces of inconvenient truths at the most inopportune times."

"Bullshit," Lapis snapped. "You're a liar and a hypocrite. That's all you are, a monster hiding behind a web of lies and pretending towards godhood!"

"I pretend towards godhood?" The Troupe Master asked, its voice becoming dangerously quiet.

Lapis would have responded with something pithy and anatomically impossible had the monster beside her not suddenly grabbed her hand. She screamed again as the runes branded on her left hand burned anew, the Troupe Master seemingly effortlessly lifting her by a single arm. "You dare call me a liar? You dare call me a pretender?" It roared, staring into her eyes with red eyes that now burned with wrath. "Lying is beneath me, child! If you had control over every single dream and memory humanity dares call its own, would you even bother to lie? Do you seriously think that I would bother pretending towards godhood?"

"N-No…" she stammered, too startled and terrified by the entire situation to say anything else. Then, she screamed again as the runes flared with newfound heat. The Troupe Master flung her away with strength that should have been beyond its thin frame, sending her flying before causing her to slam bodily against the sandstone wall of a ruined homestead.

"Suffer," the Troupe Master snarled, tightening its hand around a softly glowing red light. The sigils on her hand glowed brighter in response, and suddenly Lapis found herself being consumed by the very same armour that she had seen engulf her younger self. The armour was supposed to be familiar, she had worn it practically every day when she was in the Legion, but now it wasn't.

Her neural interface wasn't in English so that she could understand it, but in runes that hurt so much to look at that she would have looked away if they hadn't been projected right in front of her face. The inside of the suit started filling with an amber liquid that Lapis knew was the liquid armour that provided most of the armour's protective capabilities, and soon enough it had filled up the entire socket where she was housed. She should have been drowning, but she was somehow able to breathe in said fluid. Was it oxygenated? She didn't know.

Lapis stumbled to her feet, using the wall to stabilise herself before spitting out the blood that had welled up in her mouth. However, instead of blood, that same orange fluid splattered onto the sand below. She stared in shock, subconsciously running her tongue along her teeth before realising that her teeth were sharp and there were too many of them.

Suddenly checking her own self-awareness, she realised that she couldn't feel her own body anymore. The armour's mouth moved when hers did, its limbs moved when hers did, and so on. For all intents and purposes, she wasn't inside the armour, she was the armour.

"I believe that it is time to end this," the monster said, gesturing towards her. "Would you kindly die screaming like the pitiful worm you are?"

The armour containing her younger self turned towards her, slowly but surely starting to gain its full capacities. It was honestly a surreal scene, herself being bathed in the scarlet light from the fires that had all but engulfed Valhalla while the other version of her was lit by the moonlight. Now that she was far away enough from her other self, Lapis could easily observe that the armour's plating was painted in a pure white. Like a ghost… or an angel.

Lapis stumbled, collapsing against the wall into a sitting position as her legs gave out from under her. The armour containing her younger self bared its teeth in its terrifying rictus-esque grin more befitting of an antediluvian predator while it moved closer and closer, the massive double-bladed weapon in its hands contorting back into the two-pronged spear that she had seen previously.

"No, no, no, please God don't let it end like this…" she rambled, backing up against the wall at her back. Her voice sounded inhumanly deep to her own ears, as if she were speaking with the armour's own voice box. The other armoured figure advanced on her, flipping the spear in its hand into a reverse grip - probably in preparation to throw it.

The figure reared back and threw the spear.

Lapis screamed, throwing up her left hand in a futile effort to block the spear while shutting her eyes in preparation for the pain.

The spear didn't make contact.

What?

Lapis opened her eyes. In front of her hand was a barrier of shimmering concentric orange octagons, and the spear was somehow hovering just on the other side of it as if the conceptual weapon had been frozen in mid-air.

"Thank God-" she began.

The spear continued moving.

The last thing Lapis felt before the darkness claimed her was the spear punching through her left eye socket and impaling her head.

/-/

Noctis's awareness returned with the realisation of his harsh reality. He was back in the Forbidden Woods, in the middle of a large clearing in the trees. Shame.

"Motherfu-" he began, before suddenly being wracked by a spate of heavy coughing. When he pulled away, he realised that his clenched fist - which he had instinctively placed in front of his mouth - was speckled with blood.

"Blood?" He muttered, and while spitting out the rest of the blood in his mouth to get rid of the lingering taste of iron and trying to clean it off of his face with a wool-covered sleeve - he seemed to be dressed in his Yharnam clothes instead of his normal combat attire - he noticed that the clearing he was in housed a dilapidated graveyard. In the centre of that graveyard was a giant tombstone… no, it wasn't a tombstone. It was a goddamn monolith.

"What is this?" Noctis asked himself, running his flesh hand over the surface of the engraved face. The etching was done in a language that he couldn't even identify, much less read or understand, so the purpose of the structure was lost on him.

"It's a grave," an inhumanly deep voice rumbled.

"What, you think I don't know that? If it's not a grave, the what the hell-" Noctis began, before glancing at the person who had replied. That is, if the entity before him could even be considered a person at all.

They were dressed in an intricate armour of bone plates, and, from the way the plates seemed to shift by themselves, the armour appeared to be a living organism. Two eyes on a helm the shape of a wolf's head glowed with a malevolent crimson light while a black membranous cape behind it twisted and turned as if it were a living construct. Noctis could have sworn that he saw a multitude of small eyes nestled in the cracks between the bone armour plates open and glare at him before closing again.

"Now I know why he likes you," the figure said, slamming a massive sword point-first into the loamy soil at their feet. In Noctis's opinion, it looked more like a tombstone marked with runes that were absolute agony to look at for too long than a sword. "You're braver than most."

"I'm braver than most?" Noctis asked, injecting false confidence into his voice. "Nah, I'm just stupider than most. Bravery and stupidity go hand in hand, after all."

Fenrir, the newest member of the Grimm Troupe, chuckled. The sound sent chills down Noctis's spine. "You know, I'm supposed to be beheading you right now. I wouldn't be so cocky if I were you."

"Why not? You know what happens if I die here, correct?"

"Of course. You wake up in your bed and this whole thing would seem like a distant dream. Still, that can wait."

"Seriously?" Noctis asked. "Just get on with it, please."

Fenrir chuckled again. "Don't worry, I won't keep you waiting. Still, I'd like you to hear me out."

"What?"

"I'd like to talk," Fenrir said, an edge of frustration entering his voice. "We don't have long, though."

"Talk about what?"

Fenrir's wolf-headed helm bared its teeth, and Noctis got the impression that it was trying to smile. "How to save the world, for one."

Noctis began to listen. Or rather, he would have if he hadn't been jolted awake by the door of his hotel room being blown off its hinges.

/-/

Icarus rolled out of his bed, ears still ringing from the explosion that had blown open their hotel room's door while shaking off the grogginess that came with deep sleep. The muffled sound of gunshots from outside cleared his mind soon enough, however.

"Gun!" He hollered, unable to find his glaive in the dust and smoke that had filled the room. "I need a gun!"

Someone slapped a familiar-looking gun in his hands, and Noctis's voice said, "It's a MP5. Right mag has hollow-points, left mag has AP rounds. Thirty rounds each, fire selector's set to three-round burst. You know the rest.

"Roger," Icarus replied, pulling out the telescoping stock of what he belatedly realised was Noctis's SMG before advancing through the ominously open door. Then, he stopped. Eyes widening in horror, he lowered the gun as he took in the nightmarish surroundings that he had found himself in.

When Lapis and Carmine were nowhere to be found inside the room, he had assumed that they, being their team's two close combat specialists, had gone outside to take point. He had of course expected quite a bit of bloodshed, about par for two young women with superhuman strength and massive bladed instruments of death being pushed into a corner by whoever had been stupid enough to breach the door of their hotel room in the middle of the night.

He hadn't been expecting something straight out of the set of a horror movie. Numerous carcasses dressed in voluminous black and yellow robes littered the damaged corridor, and around them laid a bewildering variety of weapons - for example, one of them seemed to be armed only with a mundane dirk and revolver, while the other gripped a pump-action shotgun with dead hands. At the end of the corridor, presumably where said corridor met the outer walls of the Continental, there was a gaping hole that exposed the hotel's interior to the outside elements.

"What's the hold up-" Noctis began behind him, walking out of the room behind him before pausing at the sight of the corridor. "Fucking hell!"

"Just what I was going to say," Icarus muttered darkly. Upon closer inspection, the robes that the corpses were wearing seemed to be made of silk.

"Icarus, check your corpse," Noctis suddenly said. "The left armpit. Do you see anything?"

He moved closer, checking the corpse's left armpit. Sure enough, there was a tattoo - a series of Mistralian characters that he had unfortunately never learned to read - in said armpit. "Yep. What does it say?"

"It just means 'Bloated Woman'," Noctis explained. "Remember the cult that Ozpin told us about, the 'Order of the Bloated Woman? That's a dead ringer for these guys being cultists if I've ever seen one."

"I know they're cultists, but…" Icarus paused. "They didn't deserve this."

Indeed, they had definitely not been granted a quick death. Most of the dead cultists scattering the corridor outside their hotel room were mutilated or messily dispatched in one way or another - Icarus was currently inspecting someone who had clearly died from his head being cracked like an egg against a concrete wall, while the one that Noctis was standing over seemed to have been messily bisected at the waist.

"A-Are those teeth marks?" Icarus tremulously asked, pointing at a corpse at the far end of the corridor that had been disemboweled.

Noctis audibly sucked in a breath through his teeth. "Yep," he said, his voice carrying an obvious wince with it.

"Are there Grimm here that we haven't noticed?" Icarus asked incredulously.

"No. Whatever this is, I think we did this," Noctis replied grimly.

Icarus paused. He had fought Grimm a few times, mostly out of necessity since his quarry was usually the most dangerous game of all - his fellow man. They actually didn't bother eating their kills, instead focusing on killing their prey as quickly as possible. However, whatever had done this had actually consumed the cultist's innards.

"Catch!" Noctis suddenly yelled, causing Icarus to spin around and snatch what turned out to be his own glaive out of the air. His jump pack, detached from its housing in his back for comfort, followed soon after. "Now toss my SMG here!"

Icarus complied, passing his leader's weapon back to its owner. "Thanks," he said, flipping the bladed polearm into a familiar defensive stance. "Where to now?"

"To find whoever bailed us out," Noctis replied, his pistol withdrawing back into his arm to accommodate his main weapon. "If the cultists hadn't been killed outside then we'd all have been in deep-"

Icarus never did find out exactly what they would have found themselves deep in, because at that moment one of the presumed dead cultists thought that it was a good idea to regain consciousness and scream.

"Icarus, move!" Noctis yelled, surging past him with his own weapon pointed directly at the cultist's head.

"Weapons down! The guy's harmless," he yelled back, gesturing for Noctis to lower his submachine gun.

Noctis sighed in frustrated relief, looking like he had only just realised exactly how harmless their formerly armed assailant was. "You know, when you say 'harmless' you could just take off the 'h' and still mean the same thing."

The dying cultist at their feet had indeed lost both his arms, the injuries on what remained of his shoulders implying amputation with some kind of blade, and the amount of blood that had pooled around him meant that he was probably running only on adrenaline and whatever drugs were in his system at this point.

"Ahh, ahh, please…" the cultist moaned. "Help us…"

"What's going on?" Noctis asked, pushing the muzzle of his submachine gun into the robed boy's face. His finger was at least off the trigger, Icarus could give him that. "Tell us!"

"Ah…" the cultist continued groaning. "An unsightly beast... a great terror looms!"

"Give us a straight answer, or we're all screwed!" Icarus yelled, more out of nerves than anything else, before pointing the tip of his glaive's blade at the dying kid's throat. In the state that he was in, dispatching him painlessly would be a kindness. "Now, tell us what did this to you. Alright?"

"Ahh!" The cultist suddenly screamed, scrambling back towards the wall as if he were trying to meld with it. "Bardiel is coming! The Fallen Soldier of God! Have mercy! Have mercy upon us!"

"Very well. I shall end your pain," Noctis said solemnly. He fired a single shot into the boy's head, blowing out his brains onto the blood-streaked wall he was resting on. Then he sighed, his mouth drawing a grim line over an expression that positively emanated tiredness.

"It had to be done, boss," Icarus said. "The kid was already dying; all you did was end his suffering."

"I know… it's just that I'm tired of all this," he muttered. "Have you ever heard about the saying about the straw that broke the camel's back?"

"Yep. I've had an education, you know?"

Noctis chuckled ruefully. "Yeah, I figured. So you get what I mean, correct?"

"I know," Icarus said, before sighing himself. "I was wondering where you'd reach this point, to be honest."

"What point?"

"The point where you think you've seen enough bloodshed to last you a lifetime. I can say for myself that I've been there; I left the White Fang precisely because I had reached that point and couldn't get past it."

"Then how do I get past it?" Noctis asked innocently.

Icarus startled in response, turning to his leader and staring at him with an intensity that was usually reserved only for looking through his rifle's scope. "You don't!"

"Huh?" Noctis replied eloquently.

"You don't get past that point. Once you lose that restraint, that reluctance to fight and to kill, you lose what's rooting you to humanity," Icarus said vehemently. "Once that line is crossed you become a monster, no better than a Grimm. Trust me, I've seen enough monsters to recognise them for what they are."

Adam Taurus. Sienna Khan. Countless others on both sides of the war; those who had willingly worked under Mantle's regime were often more than deserving of the death squads that hunted them down, while the executions that captured White Fang extremists received elicited no pity from him.

"I see," Noctis replied evenly, strolling towards the gaping hole in the wall. He stood on the very edge of the floor, looking down a height of twenty storeys before glancing back to his teammate. "You're not really cut out for close combat, correct? Then my advice would be to stick to high ground and cover us from there."

"Got it," Icarus said, watching as Noctis's clone disintegrated in front of him to become ash that was blown into his face. Only, upon close examination, it actually wasn't ash. Inspecting the detritus that had collected on his helmet, he found a mixture of dust, debris, and… fragments of bone.

Human bone.

Icarus's eyes widened. He hurriedly brushed the rest of the residue off of himself, reacting with disgust and horror as he shook the rest of the bits of human bone off of his own body. "Noctis? What was that?" He yelled into the comms. "I just got pelted with bits of bone from your clone!"

There was no reply other than static.

"Hello? Do you read me?" He asked again, this time lowering his voice to normal levels.

Still nothing.

Icarus, transforming his glaive into its sniper rifle form, decided to fall back upon his experience as Daedalus. A lack of response to comms meant that something, at least, was going on. Something bad, probably.

Running up to the edge of the corridor, he leapt out of the building with a perfect swan dive. When the four vectored-thrust engines of his jump pack flared into life, and when he took to the air in search of a suitable vantage point to use as a sniper nest, he couldn't help but stare at the scene below him.

What in God's very name had happened to Lapis?

/-/

Through the folly of He with a Thousand Masks, I come.

What was once Lazuli, Lapis's quasi-schizophrenic voice and the AI of Lapis's armour, was now gone. Now the armour knew its identity, what it was and how it fit into the grand scheme of things. The pilot was irrelevant.

And yet... she resisted, imposing her not insignificant will upon Bardiel to stop it from carrying out its mission. However, with their wills in competition with each other, an angel's determination would naturally triumph over any human's paltry resistance. Her efforts were futile, and yet Bardiel felt a twinge of emotion. Pity? Admiration? Respect? It couldn't tell.

It didn't matter, anyways. It had successfully subjugated her mind, utilising most of her considerable mental faculties to control its own body while using the remainder to imprison the mind of this shell's previous owner.

Though my feet shall drag upon this base Remnant on my blessed quest, I have come.

And on this blessed quest, someone other than its pilot was obstructing it with remarkable vigour. There was a fratricidal knight dueling it, with its blessed blade clashing against the zweihander - a pale mockery of its own majestic arm - of its opponent. However, it seemed to have the advantage when it came to power - every hit it delivered very nearly crushed the guard of its opponent, and right now it was easily on the offensive. The knight seemed to have been caught unawares by this whole situation, owing to the fact that she wasn't wearing her armour.

"Lapis!" The knight hollered. "Stop! You have to stop this now!"

Lapis? It was Bardiel. Lapis was nothing, just a weak little girl out of her depth and encased in a shell forged by God himself.

I am the Fallen Soldier,

The forgotten one, the forsaken one.

And yet God had forgotten it, left it for dead when the usefulness of its form ran out. It had been reduced to a parasite, promising temporary power to its hosts but instead using their bodies as unwilling vehicles of its will.

The host wanted strength? It had more than enough to provide. Companionship? It was demeaning to communicate as the little men did, but it was doable. Knowledge? It had a wealth of it, just waiting to be imparted on the foolish. The price was a pittance in comparison; one's free will.

Bardiel had agency of its own, after all. Everything with a working mind had one.

The one who dons the flesh of his enemy.

"Lapis!" The knight… Carmine… shouted again. "Are you in that thing?"

"Y-Yes…" a hidden speaker on Bardiel's body stuttered. "I-I am…"

All angels were merciful by design, and Bardiel was no exception. Therefore, it had granted its pilot a method of communicating with the outside world - a paltry method, but a method nonetheless. A small mercy, since the pilot otherwise shared the bodily sensations of itself, but still some mercy was contained within the gesture. They were designed to be merciful, after all, but the degree of mercy given was not specified.

"H-help…" Lapis continued. "I-I can't control my own body… I-I can't stop this..."

"A prisoner in your own body, then?" Carmine asked, her voice tight. "Very well. So I shall disable your body to save your mind?"

"P-Probably…"

He shall witness my use of his weapons,

And he shall know fear,

And he shall know humility as I strike him down with his own blades.

Bardiel charged forwards, swinging from the right to bring one end of its massive blade - shaped like a double-bladed greatsword in the manner of two broadsword stuck together end to end by their pommels, if said weapon had been organically fashioned out of a single piece of bluish-green alien metal - down onto the knight's shoulder. The knight dodged, rolling to her left and subsequently regaining her footing before lunging forwards to run Bardiel through. She struck true, the sword plunging into the seam between two plates of its skin and into its chest, but the blade missed the only vital part the angel had - its core.

"Lapis?" Carmine said tremulously, her facial expression carrying equal measures of uncertainty and shock. Perhaps she hadn't meant to do… whatever it was that she did. "P-Please…" she stammered, drawing out her blade from Bardiel's stiffened yet still standing body. "Tell me that I did not hurt you…"

"C-Carmine, move!" Lapis shouted urgently, her voice still distorted by Bardiel's armour. She was too late, however, and Bardiel span with lightning speed to backhand Carmine across the hotel courtyard.

The Argus Continental, unusually for the region, was a curved colonial-style building - unlike the Oriental-style buildings that made up the majority of the buildings in the Mistralian city of Argus, that ran around a central courtyard. This courtyard held a traffic roundabout that served as the vehicular method of access to the hotel's grand entrance, and in the centre of that roundabout was the statue of one of Mistral's war heroes from the Great War.

Carmine was flung into the foot of the statue's pedestal, slamming into the solid marble with bone-breaking force. A multitude of wet snaps resounded through the night as numerous bones, including most of her back ribs and multiple vertebra, shattered from the impact.

I am the Humiliated Son of God,

The one He never meant to sire.

Large, fully retractable mechanical wings with an extended tail piece unfolded from Bardiel's shoulders. It extended its AT-Field - its Absolute Territory - with concentric orange octagons of light forming in the air as it reduced the perceived mass of its body and reversed the direction of gravity within said territory.

An AT-Field could be best described as the next step in evolution from the primitive auras that most combat-capable humans which called themselves Huntsmen had. Unlike an aura, in which one's soul provides a passive layer of bodily protection along with specific abilities known as semblances, an AT-Field was the absolute dominion in which the owner's soul had total and absolute control - hence the name - over the area within said field. This control extended to things as fundamental as velocity, acceleration, and weight.

It took flight, levitating upwards and into the sky to cast a shadow over the entire scene by hovering in front of the moon.

"C-Carmine… I-I am so sorry…" Lapis's voice said helplessly. Bardiel's double-edged blade seemed to twist on a molecular level, the metal contorting in a double-helix to form a two-pronged lance. A monomolecular edge gleamed unnaturally brightly in the moonlight. It was the false Lance of Longinus - the fake of a weapon that never really existed. Does the duplicate of a mere idea remain a duplicate, or does it deserve to bear the name of the idea that it manifests? No matter. It was a question for another day.

It aimed at its adversary below, shattered and slumped against the foot of a statue that was worth more than the knight's traitorous existence, but still alive. It would rectify that.

Angel of the Haze.

I am Bardiel.

Carmine, far below, spat out a mouthful of blood. She chuckled weakly. "Do your worst. I highly doubt that the damage would last, though."

The angel flipped the spear in its right hand, pulling back its arm in preparation to throw it.

I have come.

Then a heavy projectile tore into Bardiel's wing - a high-explosive incendiary 20mm cannon round, Lapis's mind idly noted - and shredded the delicate structure. It reoriented its AT-Field back into a shield, cutting off the gravity reversal and causing it to plummet to the marble floor below. The spear, which it had thrown just when the cannon shell hit, went off target to embed itself deeply into the pedestal just next to the right side of Carmine's head.

A length of heavy-duty braided metal wire, periodically studded with razor-sharp blades, wrapped itself around Bardiel's ankle. It tugged on its leg with a sudden jerk, causing the angel to spin in mid air and exchange what was previously a graceful landing on its feet with a literally back-breaking crash.

"Nice shot, Daedalus!' A familiar voice hollered with false cheer. "Hopefully we weren't too late. What did we miss, Ishmael?"

"Oh, nothing much," Carmine rasped from her place at the statue's pedestal. "We only got ambushed by a cult in the Continental - your supposed safest place in Argus. We should have just stayed in a damn motel."

"I expected that we were dealing with sane and rational cultists, not suicidal lunatics," Noctis retorted, yanking his whip-sword back to retract the entirety of his weapon from around the angel's leg. "Last I saw Charrington, he was clearing out cultists with a semi-auto shotgun. Who's the flying guy?"

"Lapis…" Carmine said. "Her armour, it has gone berserk."

"Doesn't look like her armour, to be honest, but…" Noctis dropped off. "Hold on. Did she wake up like this?"

"Yes… wait, Ahab, you don't mean-"

"Yharnam? No, it can't be… she'd have told us if she were sent there. But maybe hers operates along the same principles."

Bardiel stumbled to its feet, its central nervous system already knitting itself back together to heal its pulverised spinal cord. The elongated maw of the angel's whale-like head dripped with dark amber fluid that dribbled out through gaps in its grinning teeth, and an eyeless visage turned to point in the direction of the only genuine threat present - the Hunter.

"I think I've pissed it off…" Noctis said quietly, a fake smile distorting his features as he slowly backed away.

"You think?" A more distant voice, one that Lapis's mind designated as Icarus, said incredulously. "You pulled it out of the sky and broke its back, of course it wants to tear you a new asshole!"

"Less chatting, more covering me," the Hunter whispered into a microphone to the left of his mouth, before turning to Bardiel. "Hey, big guy, how's it going? Sorry about just now, hope I didn't hurt you too badly…"

Bardiel was not amused. It began walking slowly towards the Hunter, its longer legs and taller stature allowing it to take one forwards stride for every three that its adversary took backwards. It hefted its alien double-edged blade in one hand, the fact that it was cracking the marble flooring of the courtyard with each footfall testifying to the sheer power contained within its sleek frame.

"H-Heads up... the gaps between the p-plating," Lapis's voice stuttered.

Noctis froze, staring at Bardiel with what looked like terror on his face. "Lapis… is that you?"

"W-What do you t-think?" Her voice, dreadfully metallic and racked with involuntary stuttering, replied with an undeniable undertone of smugness.

"Is that actually Lapis?" Icarus asked tremulously. "No, no, that can't be her."

"It is," Carmine snapped. "She is not in control though. I repeat, whatever we are fighting has essentially hijacked the body and soul of our teammate."

"Fucking monster," Icarus snarled. "How the hell do we free her, then?"

"Daedalus, take the shot," Noctis said hurriedly, slowly backing away from the advancing figure. "Left leg, knee joint."

A smaller projectile travelling at supersonic speed slammed into Bardiel's left knee, not quite managing to slip through the plates protecting it and instead glancing harmlessly off of the armour that was covering the joint.

"No visible effects," Icarus said again, frustration in his voice. "Not even a scratch on the plating."

"Fire again," Noctis ordered, slamming his whip-sword tip first into the ground to lock the individual blades back together to form one homogenous sword blade. "Same target, but the right leg this time."

The same projectile came flying at its leg again, Bardiel not bothering to raise its AT-Field under the assumption that it would hit its armoured skin. The assumption proved unjustified, however, when the projectile hit a seam in its knee plating and punched through the black inner membrane covering the angel's body where the plates didn't. The projectile slammed into the bone of the kneecap, shattering it, before corkscrewing into a tumbling trajectory that further destroyed the joint before messily exiting at the other side of the knee. Bardiel stumbled, snarling in agony as its good leg scrambled to keep its form standing.

"At least we now know it bleeds and can feel pain," Icarus's voice, muffled by the fact that Bardiel's body was hearing him via the comms bead in Noctis's ear, said triumphantly. "And therefore we now know that it can die."

"Would you mind explaining that particular logical leap?" Carmine asked, a smile on her face from some unknown emotion. Relief? Perhaps. She gingerly clambered back up to her feet while using the statue's pedestal to support her body weight, her body seemingly having healed enough to stand.

"If it bleeds, it has blood and therefore it is a living mortal creature. Pain indicates that it has a reason to avoid physical damage, which wouldn't be the case if it was immortal. Therefore, if it lives, it can die."

"That makes sense," Carmine replied, relief permeating her tone. "So we can in fact kill it." She finally managed to stand on her own two feet, but that changed when she turned the blade of her zweihander and suddenly ran herself through with it. The length of the silver blade erupted out of her back, writhing flesh growing out of the exit wound with disturbing speed and wrapping around the blade like a cancerous tumour.

They wish to smite a child of God? An illegitimate child, never intended to bear the name of its Father, but an angel nonetheless? Heretics and blasphemers, all of them. Bardiel took stock of the situation - the knight was essentially incapacitated and the problem the sniper posed could be rectified easily enough by extending an AT-Field barrier in said sniper's direction, which meant that only the Hunter would have to be dealt with via direct confrontation. A somewhat daunting prospect, but certainly doable.

It roared, sending spittle flecked with dark amber fluid flying, before raising its blade with two hands in front of it and charging.

"Carmine!" Noctis shouted, entering a proper combat stance for the first time that night. "Did you injure it in any way before we arrived? What can you tell us about it?"

"I stabbed it in the chest, but it did not die," Carmine replied evenly, tearing the defiled blade out of her body and then entering a combat stance on her own. The flesh parted at a multitude of places on the sword, allowing bloodshot eyes to bulge out and stare at Bardiel's holy form. "No, it would be more precise to say that the injury had no effect on it. As far as I can tell, most if not all wounds of such nature will prove ineffective at best."

It turned out that the knight was not in fact incapacitated, and was actually capable of continuing the fight further. The remnants of Lapis's consciousness within its glorious body started to emanate smugness, most likely in a primitive attempt to gloat, but Bardiel's superior mind crushed it.

"Ah well," Noctis muttered, preparing himself to dodge the first few attacks. "You can't have everything in life."

Bardiel swung its blade in an upwards diagonal stroke to the Hunter's left side, but a quick hop in the backwards direction - otherwise known as quickstepping - allowed him to evade. The follow-up of a horizontal swipe to the right was evaded once again, while a lunging thrust with the left-most blade was countered by the Hunter leaping up and planting his foot onto Bardiel's weapon before slamming the still in-progress attack into the ground.

Its opponents seemed to prioritise defensive manoeuvres instead of outright aggression, which was unusual since Hunters mostly tended towards the latter, but that change turned out to be detrimental. Bardiel leapt back from the failed attack, adjusting its footing before swinging the right-hand blade of its weapon downwards. This particular strike was parried into the ground with apparent ease by Noctis's cane-sword, and the Hunter retaliated by slipping a large leaf-shaped blade through another seam in its plating to stab it in the ribs.

Bardiel suddenly froze, a horrible feeling running down its spine as the blade grazed its core. It turned towards the Hunter with its eyeless face, staring him down as its lips slid shut to form a single straight line.

"What's wrong?" Noctis asked viciously, twisting the blade inside Bardiel and causing it to jerk in response. "Didn't like that?"

"W-Watch out!" Lapis's voice yelled.

Bardiel growled, a deep and truly alien sound, as its left hand shot out to grasp entirely around Noctis's head. It tightened its grip, seeking to crush the Hunter's skull as it had done for the robe-wearing madmen earlier, but suddenly couldn't when the knight's tumour-covered blade came down again and again onto its outstretched forearm and caused its arm to go limp. Dark amber liquid dropped from the seams surrounding the crushed armour, the pulverised flesh underneath weeping the fluid that linked Bardiel's core - and therefore its soul - to the rest of its body.

It must have been a surreal scene for onlookers, Bardiel mused. Watching a five metre tall union of blessed flesh and holy armour fight against two sword-wielding teenagers which were still in their pyjamas… what a sight it must be. Surreal? Maybe. Majestic? Awe-inspiring? Definitely.

Noctis charged in again, taking a lunging thrust at Bardiel's form that it easily dodged. It swung at him in response with a reverse-grip slash, only able to hold its weapon with one hand since the other was mutilated, but it managed to catch him in the stomach. The Hunter was sent flying, his aura shimmering before flickering into nothing as he slowly but surely rolled to a stop.

"Shit," Icarus's voice blurted out, clearly panicked. "Carmine, cover the boss! His aura just went down!"

"I thought his aura was at full capacity?" Carmine replied, bringing her sword down at Bardiel's head. Bardiel blocked the strike with the left-hand blade.

"Exactly! That hit took it down from full capacity to zero!"

"Motherfucker," Noctis wheezed, pulling himself back up to his feet. "That thing hits harder than Yang on a bad hair day."

"This is no time to joke around," Carmine said imperiously. "The next strike will actually hurt or kill you if it connects."

"Nothing new, then." Noctis replied, returning to his combat stance. "People die if they are killed, after all."

"Just… be careful, alright?" Carmine asked, something unidentifiable entering her tone. Worry? Care? Something else entirely? "I for one do not want to see you injured or killed."

The part of Lapis within Bardiel found this behaviour rather romantic and sweet, but the greater part of Bardiel only responded with puzzlement and annoyance.

It brought its left-hand blade up and slammed it down onto Carmine's guard, the force of the two swords colliding managing to push the knight back, before bringing its right-hand blade diagonally upwards under her guard. The knight dodged, but that left her open to a low sweep that took off her left leg.

Carmine collapsed to the ground, landing on her much-abused back. Bardiel raised its blade to finish her off, and was about to bring it down before it found itself interrupted by a burst of pistol-calibre rounds penetrating the seam between the plating on its back.

"Now, now, don't get too antsy!" Noctis yelled, his submachine gun already at his shoulder and spitting lead. "Remember me?"

Lapis's intelligence managed to observe that the projectiles entering were not proportional to the 9mm Parabellum bullets that were expected, instead being smaller steel penetrators - consistent with the usage of his AP rounds. Bardiel, after less than a second's worth of self-analysing its worldly form, determined that it's skin was almost unmistakably similar to soft body armour - in other words, Kevlar.

"What the fuck are you doing? You don't even have any aura!" Icarus shouted through the comms. "Get the hell away from that thing!"

"Nah," Noctis replied blithely, his face filled with determination. "I'm not leaving a teammate out to dry."

"Are you insane?" Carmine snarled. "I regenerate damage, while you on the other hand do not! This is not your fight!"

Bardiel's blade coiled into itself on a molecular level once again, twisting into the two-pronged lance that was its weapon's true form. Twin monomolecular blades once again reflected the moonlight with uncanny brightness, seemingly sprung fully formed from a shaft made of two pieces of coiled bluish-grey metal that was grasped in a single hand.

"That's right!" Noctis goaded, transforming his submachine gun back into his cane-sword and drawing it. "Come and get it!"

Bardiel lunged with a wordless howl of rage, thrusting its weapon but missing its target when the Hunter dodged. It drew back, spinning the weapon once over its head before going for a low sweep that was simply jumped over. A third thrust was countered in the same manner as its sword thrust earlier, namely by Noctis stomping said thrust into the ground.

It felt a series of projectiles bounce off of its armoured head, which was quickly explained by the accompanying muffled thumps and Noctis's panicked cursing. Bardiel caught a glimpse of a pistol with an attached suppressor before the weapon seemed to retract back into the left arm of its opponent.

"How heavily armoured is this thing?" Noctis exclaimed angrily, slashing with his sword at Bardiel's front but glancing off of the armour plating there. "Even its damned skin is like Kevlar!"

"You saw a .338 armour-piercing bullet literally bounce off of that armour," Icarus replied calmly, probably because he was safely up on a rooftop. "Let that sink in for a bit."

Bardiel retaliated, swinging its spear around in a low sweeping arc that Noctis only just avoided by jumping back. The Hunter took a running start, leaping into the air and catching Bardiel with an upwards diagonal slash that again glanced off of the armour before transforming his weapon in mid-air and swinging the resulting whip so that it coiled around its remaining functional arm. He landed with a roll, using said roll to pull at the whip and destabilise Bardiel.

"Checkmate," Noctis growled, his arm shifting to allow his large leaf-shaped blade - a smatchet, Lapis's imprisoned mind noted - before he teleported forwards and viciously jammed his blade in Bardiel's back. The blade slipped through another seam in the plating and hit the core, this time causing a hairline crack to appear.

"Y-Yes…" Lapis's voice stuttered once again. "T-The core, d-destroy it…"

Bardiel stabbed the point of its spear into the ground, lashing out with an empty right hand to grasp Noctis's head again. It wrapped around the Hunter's skull, using it as leverage to bodily slam its opponent to the ground even while his artificial arm flailed and repeatedly slammed its blade into Bardiel's core to cause additional damage. His sword on the other hand could do nothing now, not without the leverage it required to do actual damage.

It mentally deactivated the aperture from which it's host spoke, causing her voice to die out with a pained gasp. It couldn't play around anymore, not when it had sustained direct core damage. It had to end this.

Lips slid away to reveal jagged teeth once again, and an armoured hand slowly wrenched the skull to the side to reveal the vulnerable carotid and jugular. As befitting of the animal that the Hunter was, it would die like an animal - devoured by an apex predator.

"No!" Carmine screamed.

A premonition of fear. Bardiel moved its head upwards, mouth closing to stem the dripping of saliva, and beheld the crystallisation of the most primordial kind of terror - the fear of the unknown.

Carmine had raised her flesh-infested sword into the air, and the tumour wrapped around the blade was practically glowing with crackling red arcane energy. Placing her left side forwards, she held her weapon aloft with both hands before bringing it back. She was somehow standing yet again, the stump from which her left leg had been cut off now replaced by a pulsating column of blood that more resembled a peg-leg than an actual human limb.

"In the tombs of Pthumeru, mankind sought knowledge."

Despite, or in spite of, the knight's own crippled body the sword burned ever brighter. Luminescent crimson light, like the colour of blood except infinitely brighter, should have been bright enough to hurt yet Bardiel couldn't avert its gaze. It found its own body betraying it, forcing it to stand up at its full height.

"But the men exploring the Labyrinth found what they were never meant to find, learnt what they were never meant to know."

For what could an angel do in the face of a divine order from God itself? Its Father might have abandoned it and left it to die, it might have had no reason to preserve any sort of loyalty to the Father, but it was still the Spawn of the Father. It's heritage, at least, could not be denied.

"And so it was that what they discovered in Isz would doom them all. The blood of the old gods, far from the blessing they thought it was, would be their doom."

"The strength that mankind would beget from their heresy would be punished, taken from their very bodies by the blessed soldiers of God's own fiefdom. Cainhurst."

There was a smell of burning flesh in the air, and Bardiel only now noticed that Carmine's flesh was crackling - as if it were literally being cooked by the sheer power she was holding up to the skies. Offshoots of the crackling arcane energy covering her blade arced down, rather like bolts of static electricity, and tore into human flesh with all the current that they carried. Her face itself was a testament to human misery, her absolute agony writ upon her features… but yet the sword remained above her head. Yet her expression remained terrifyingly straightforward - her current state of existence was wrath and her entire intent was to kill.

"And hark, they were birthed by the arch-traitor himself! Saint Sanguinius, patron saint of the Vilebloods, carrying with him the very same blood that would damn their prey! That blood, which would mark their quarry, gave them the divine mandate to be the predators of those who had dared overstep their boundaries."

Something in Bardiel's holy form trembled, and it found its knees trembling to give out from under it. Up close, now, with nothing between the angel and its death, Bardiel could finally appreciate the deep irony of its situation.

God's very own words, crystallised into a blade bearing His very heraldry and power, would slay it.

"Mankind would learn once again what it meant to fear the unknown. They had risen too far from their primitive roots, where early Man learned to harness fire to provide that precious circle of firelight beyond which nothingness lurked. They would be returned to their oldest, most primordial emotion: fear. And they would be returned to their oldest and strongest fear: the fear of the unknown."

What else could it do against God's first, most base and instinctive decree - to fear what is not known - but to submit and lay down its unworthy life?

"And they would learn true fear, in the face of the Undying Light of Absolute Terror!"

There was nothing else that Bardiel could do but die.

"To the last I grapple with thee; from the heart of hell I slash at thee; for the sake of hate I spit my last breath at thee…" Carmine snarled, her voice tightened with rage, stepping forwards with her right foot. "And the name of my infernal hatred is…"

Bardiel accepted its fate, and waited for the end.

"-ARONDIGHT!"

Carmine brought her sword down, and Bardiel was baptised in the majesty of God's sheer power.

A beam of blindingly bright red light, the very same arcane energy that had consumed the knight's blade, leapt forwards from the path of the blade. The light consumed its body with supernatural vigour, melting armour and flesh alike while the force of the blast peeled even the residue off of its bones. In an instant, the beam had passed - leaving nothing behind save for scorched marble flooring and a single, bare yet still standing, skeleton.

Yet… on the sternum of that skeleton, a perfect yet damaged sphere of red crystal still glowed. Bardiel was, beyond even its own expectations, still alive.

"Daedalus, big red thing! Shoot it now!" Noctis yelled into his comms.

A projectile travelling at supersonic speeds - a mundane man-made weapon, not the divine blade of the knight - slammed into Bardiel's core, shattering it. A befitting death, it thought, for a wretched creature such as itself.

Bardiel's consciousness dwindled, receding back into the mind of its host. Flesh and armour regrew on the frame of the skeleton, yielding a perfectly regenerated angelic form for only a moment before the armour receded into an already shrinking body to form the still pristine and clothed form of one Lapis Ferrum.

Lapis stumbled to her feet, looking around at the devastated courtyard and staring blankly at the world.

"Lapis… you alright there?" Noctis asked cautiously, sheathing his sword but transforming it into his submachine gun. "Do you remember anything?"

"Stay back," Icarus instructed sternly though the comms. "You should take a look at Carmine first. I'll come down and check on Lapis."

Her mind was oddly blank, as if there were gaps that had yet to be filled in. She could only watch passively as a human figure leaped off of the hotel's rooftop - achieving powered flight for a moment by a jetpack on his back - before quickly touching down in the middle of the former battlefield.

Carmine screamed from a short distance, drawing back from Noctis's inquisitive gloved hand as it brushed her shoulder. "I-it hurts! The burns!" She yelled. A more attentive investigation from afar allowed Lapis to realise that her teammate was currently suffering from second and third-degree burns that covered most of her bare skin.

Lapis stood stock still, trying to process whatever it was that had happened. All she remembered was the door being blown open, her and Carmine rushing out to defend their still not fully awake teammates, and-

Tearing open a man's gut with her teeth and devouring the flesh before feasting on his warm, soft innards.

The taste of iron-tinged pork on her tongue, and the gustatory delight of swallowing it.

Lapis collapsed to her knees, hunched over and began to vomit. The taste and flavour of human meat still lingered on her tongue, in her mouth, and even in her gut, despite her body's best efforts to purge it. And yet, underneath the layers upon layers of disgust that heaped themselves upon her, there was a subconscious feeling that she had enjoyed it.

"I… I ate people?" She asked quietly, suddenly feeling a familiar hand pat her back to help her along.

"Yes… you did," her partner replied somewhat hesitantly, his jump pack already folded back into itself to form a compact mode. His face was inscrutable. "There's no use keeping that from you, not when you don't clearly remember the whole thing."

She continued vomiting, even after any solid matter had long since been replaced by bile. Lapis retched one final time, then stopped. "W-what did I become?" She asked again.

"A monster… an angel, but twisted," Icarus replied. "Fallen, perhaps. Whatever took you over, it wasn't exactly benevolent."

"I wasn't taken over," Lapis suddenly snapped, before her expression morphed into one of deep unease. "N-not from outside, at least."

Indeed, no external entities had taken control of her body. The monster that had used her form like a puppet, that had imprisoned her within her own mind, that had used her own soul as a weapon and as a shield… that was from something within her.

Lazuli… no, he was dead - replaced by Bardiel. The voice of her first friend had become the voice of an angel - God's messenger, enacting His will and desire upon the world.

And His will was to subjugate mankind, to return them to their rightful place. His desire was to make his puppets dance for His amusement, as well as some darker design that defied all comprehension..

"From within, then," Icarus said evenly. "How about now? Are you feeling any foreign influence now?"

"No… not really," Lapis replied truthfully. "Whatever you did, you killed it."

"I am," Lazuli's voice, familiar yet terrifyingly alien, said in her head. "By license of he who is named the Moon Presence, I am I."

Lapis froze, chills running down her spine. No, that wasn't Lazuli, that was-

"I am Bardiel."

No, no, no. She tried to mentally suppress the remaining fragment of the angel within herself, managing to silence and bind it, but yet it remained.

"Are you okay?" Icarus asked, tapping her shoulder.

Lapis started, subconsciously flinching backwards before looking back at Icarus's face. Apparently she had spaced out, which explained how sudden her partner's intrusion felt. "Yeah. Yeah, I'm fine."

Out of the corner of her eye, she watched as Noctis hefted Carmine's still gently smoking form onto his back. The two of them positively radiated awkwardness, which only increased when Carmine wrapped her arms around his neck to secure herself. The sight, despite her absolutely messed up mental and emotional state, still managed to bring a smile to her face.

"Alright, team," Noctis called out, his attempt to sound stern somewhat undermined by the fact that his injured partner was riding piggyback on his shoulders. "Let's get our stuff and move out, because I for one do not want to have to explain to management why we trashed their courtyard. And the hotel, for that matter."

"Do you know where we can go?" Icarus asked.

"I… have a safe house, an apartment, near the docks," Noctis admitted hesitantly. "It's nowhere as nice as the Continental though, since the docks aren't exactly the nicest part of town. I haven't been there in literal years as well, and I've set it up to accommodate only two people, so it also needs some work."

"It'll be fine," Icarus replied. "What hardware do you have there?"

"Standard stuff. A workbench, a decent computer, and a locker for weapons and ammo."

"Then it'll work."

Carmine coughed, expelling a voluminous cloud of ash and soot from her probably charred respiratory system, her partner seemingly oblivious to the sudden dark cloud over his head, before saying something herself. "So we retrieve our belongings first, yes?"

"O-Obviously…" Lapis said weakly, watching the occasional flashes of light that occasionally brightened the hotel's windows - definitely muzzle flashes.

"We'll have to talk about the possession thing later, you know that?" Icarus asked her.

"Of… of course."

The four of them began walking towards the main entrance of the hotel, which had been secured by suit-wearing guards which Lapis recognised as the Continental's security officers some time ago, but then stopped when Noctis suddenly stopped himself.

"I nearly forgot… one more thing," he muttered.

"What?" Icarus snapped, though without any anger.

"Since the entire hotel is in chaos now, nobody's doing administration…"

"You're kidding me, right? This is literally the pinnacle of organised crime, and you want to rob the front desk?"

Noctis sighed. "What I'm saying is that they aren't going to miss that slab of premium chocolate that's currently chilling in our minibar. We aren't stealing anything of value, so it's fine."

"What kind of chocolate is it?"

"Dark, eighty-eight percent cocoa."

"Then they shall not miss it," Carmine whispered from her place on Noctis's back.

"You… don't like dark chocolate?"

"Nay, I prefer milk chocolate. The additional creaminess from the milk better brings out the flavour of the cacao, in my opinion."

"Won't just using more cocoa in the chocolate achieve the same effect?" Her partner asked incredulously.

"My point still stands, though. Besides, the additional cocoa adds a bitterness that masks the flavour of the cocoa itself."

"It doesn't work that way but… fine," Noctis conceded, a look of puzzlement still on his face.

Lapis looked at the scene before her, and gently smiled. No matter what happens, in the near future or even further, there'd always be moments like this to live for.

/-/

At the peak of his church, standing at the bell tower from which the peals called worshippers and reminded them of the times for daily prayer, Father Tyrian Callows stared through a portal floating in front of his bell. In the distance, a colonial-style building had smoke billowing out of some of its windows.

"It is done, I presume," Tyrian said into the portal, hoping that the numerous tentacles holding the portal's rim open weren't damaging his rather expensive brass church bell. Not that he'd want to touch the portal's rim of eldritch blue-green energy, though.

"Yes, my child, my High Priest," the creature on the other side of the portal said. "The boon that you had requested has been awarded."

"And what shall be my price to pray?" Tyrian asked evenly.

The creature stared at him, two shimmering green eyes glimmering from among a large head - shaped like a horizontal clam but made of entirely soft flesh - before it seemed to deign to respond. "My children move without my permission. You had wished for me to weaken their minds, and I have granted your wish. Their attack on the temporary dwelling of the Hunter was unsanctioned and unexpected, and it will put our good name at risk."

"This is truly unfortunate, my goddess, but their loyalties are divided," Tyrian reasoned. It was a dangerous game, juggling the scrutiny of Ebrietas and the Troupe Master all while retaining his patronage of Salem, but it was work that only he could do. "Some among our hallowed order have sold themselves to the Moon Presence, and their loyalties now lie with him."

"Then they shall be punished. They had decided to provoke the Hunter, and the Hunter shall rectify their recalcitrant behaviour. Permanently."

He might go ahead and address his temporary employers as gods and goddesses, but his true goddess - the one with which he had staked his personal loyalty - was still Salem. That would never change.

"Excellent. I shall notify those who remain at our side to refrain from engagement."

"You are a good man, Father Tyrian," his temporary goddess said. "You shall not betray me, not like everyone else."

"Why did you want to hurt the Hunter in the first place?" Tyrian asked, ignoring Ebrietas's previous statement.

"The Hunters took Rom from me. They took the life of my child, and thus I shall spill their cursed blood no matter who or what they add. They are empowered by blood and nothing more. Blood, I might add, that came from me!"

"Revenge," Tyrian muttered. "Crude and primitive, but a strong emotion indeed."

"Yes," Ebrietas replied. "The cosmos themselves shall take my grief, and with it I shall crush my adversary."

"Very well. Your desire is my life."'

"As it should be."

The portal closed, leaving Tyrian alone to watch the Continental eventually stop burning. Ebrietas's meddling had woken Bardiel, a situation that he could have done without but an opportunity nonetheless. At least Bardiel was only one angel - the rest had either not been found yet or had died - and said angel was predictable. All that it did was kill indiscriminately, and that made it perfect for his own purposes - like a rabid attack dog that could be thrown into the fray whenever it was suitable.

The game had only gotten marginally more dangerous. Bardiel could only kill him. Ebrietas and Nyarlathotep could quite literally kill his ancestors all the way back to the start of time if they ever wanted to. Salem could just execute him, but the disgrace would kill him faster than the sentence itself.

Everything was still under control, Tyrian mused.

/-/

On the other side of the portal, things were not so peaceful.

There was what seemed to be a massive undersea cave, studded with glowing coral and growths of rock alike, and within said cave there was a monster. Ebrietas lurked within its chamber, its body made almost entirely out of pale white tentacles that weighed and coiled every so often with disturbing spontaneity. And within its chamber, it thought.

Trapped within a nightmare of its own making. Just like myself, but infinitely closer.

Its children had betrayed it, serving the Crawling Chaos and leaving their previous surrogate mother behind. She still craved surrogate children, as it was in her nature, but she just kept losing them.

And now her children would die. Good or bad, young or old, man or woman, they would die at the hands of Hunters.

Mother Kos looks on with empathy, or something like it at least.

Her discovery at the hands of the scholars of Byrgenwerth at Isz had been one of the happiest days of her life; she finally had an outlet with which to commune with the outside world. In her excitement, she had taught mankind how to gain strength from imbibing her blood - a gift from the Gods, nothing more.

At least, that was before they had decided to take that gift and run. They had captured her, imprisoning her within their Grand Cathedral, and used her as a living blood bank. They slaughtered her true surrogate child - Rom. As such, with the help of the Moon Presence itself, Ebrietas made her blood into the poison that would eventually fell Yharnam - the beast plague. Divine punishment, made flesh when the city crumbled under the weight of its own sin.

They deserved it, for desecrating the Fishing Hamlet and mine own children.

In the chaos and after it, her children had returned to her. The Order of the Bloated Woman was founded by some deep-sea divers that found the remains of Isz, in which she still yet lived, and it had become a massive movement that spanned the entire region. They were her pride and joy.

And now they would die, meaninglessly slain by Hunters yet again.

There is one last chance to save them. Are thou willing to commit?

It was only then, in the solace of her undersea cavern, did Ebrietas, daughter of the cosmos, weep for her lost children - both those which had already been lost and those who were doomed to follow.

Unfortunate. Creating your own nightmare would have been so easy for you, if not for your soft heart.

The whispers of Ebrietas's long-dead kin didn't help matters at all. It prostrated itself before the long since fossilised corpse of its child, Rom, the Vacuous Spider, and began to mourn.

(Things are often not what they seem to be at first glance, like this. Oh, and Lapis now looking like a Mass Production Evangelion - fake Lance and all. Hopefully future updates will be more consistent in terms of timing - definitely not in terms of quantity though; there's a reason that this took two months to make.)