Bet a Nickel in your Dreams?

by Ad Terrorem

What does an unstable bodyguard, a disillusioned assassin, a resentful hammer, and an aspirant knight all have in common? They have been tasked with ending the hideous war of survival that has been raging for millennia, in a definitive and elegant manner - a decision that could result in mankind's greatest victory, or [SALVATION] from its own beastly idiocy. Bloodborne/Lovecraft AU

28. Deus Ex Machina

(Same late timing - a month late, again, and the same excuse. IRL stuff like exams got in the way, and I actually had to revise what I was planning to happen, but here it is - what should be the last of the Argus buildup chapters. Here goes...)

Exhibit 5 - a voice recording from Amber, one of the previous Fall Maidens; most notably, the one who was hidden away in the vault underneath Beacon Academy. She had been mortally wounded by a hostile attack, and was thus kept in a life-support machine donated by former Lord-General James Ironwood (at the cost of Atlesian tax dollars, more notably). Therefore, she spent most of her time at Beacon in a quasi-comatose state.

In her rare moments of lucidity, she served Headmaster Ozpin as one of his only sources of intelligence in arcane matters. This particular recording is regarding one Lapis Ferrum - better known as the physical source of Vale's [SALVATION].

It's like... two minds, wired together. One wants to go one way, but the other is driving them. Controlling, but not in control. The puppet.

She's kind of like the puppet, but not as much. The other mind isn't as focused, and she directs it. Like a choir, or a chorus. A conductor, but they need an orchestra. The maestro.

The other one… a savant. There is a music like nothing I've heard before, a divinity, the deafening presence of a messenger. The sound itself is power incarnate. But a message… its song… it needs a tune to resonate with, and it searches for one. The angel.

Their hymn, their choir... it seeks a soul for musical notes. A semblance for lyrics. That will be the song that they shall proclaim to the heavens.

/-/

Argus, despite being a very colourful city, certainly had a rather dreary repertoire for late-night television. While Noctis hadn't exactly pulled out the stops for the television - in fact, it was safe to say that he hadn't pulled out the stops for anything in this flat - it was still able to receive the general set of about nine free-to-air channels that were being broadcasted.

However, out of those nine, seven were in Mistralian. The two that were in English could be summed up as a rock and a hard place, as one was airing seemingly endless reruns of a soap opera that had a mind-boggling number of episodes, and the other was a news channel. Decisions, decisions…

'Look, Lapis," Bardiel's voice said in her mind. "We can't keep skirting around each other forever-"

"Shut up," Lapis snapped helplessly, remaining slouched on the sofa and rooting her gaze to the inane goings-on happening on the screen.

"Oh okay, sure. I'll leave you to continue with episode seven hundred and twenty one of whatever you're watching," Bardiel responded. "You'll probably be able to catch up by the next hundred."

"What's wrong? Bored out of your… well, our mind now that you don't have anybody to kill and eat?"

"Well-"

"Lazuli would never have done that. Never! And now you've taken his place!"

Bardiel let out a deep sigh. "The thing you call Lazuli was a fragment, broken off after my forced separation from the Allfather shattered the greater whole. It was a figment of your imagination, nothing more. You now speak with the blessed gestalt."

"Lazuli was my friend…" Lapis said softly, though with an underlying current of iron in her voice. "You're just a monster stuck in my mind."

"A monster? Me? You dare to call my divine self a monster? You… you should be honoured-"

"Honoured?" Lapis yelled, getting up from the sofa. The whole scene honestly looked ridiculous, with her screaming at herself in an empty house clearly too big for one person, but she honestly couldn't be bothered. "Should I be honoured that you used my body to kill and fucking eat people? Should I be honoured that you tried to kill my friends? Should I be honoured that you're whispering in my head, using me like your puppet?"

"Lapis-"

"You took my aura, my semblance, my goddamn soul! You're speaking with my friend's voice, in my head! What more do you want?"

"Lapis!"

"Oh, I know what you want!" Lapis continued. "You want to twist my body, to corrupt my mind until what's left is the husk that the Troupe Master pulled out of you!"

'I can explain-"

"Then explain! Explain what happened to the Allfather! My God, the state he was in…"

Bardiel went silent for a while, before beginning with "You might want to sit down for this one. This might prove a bit… shocking."

"How bad can it be, huh?" Lapis asked, her tone accusatory. "You're probably some kind of Grimm…"

"If you shall not take me at my word… very well. Prepare yourself."

Something made a sound, vaguely resembling human fingers being snapped, and the scene changed.

/-/

If one looks up into the night sky, they will usually see nothing. This is because of light pollution. If they were to move out of the city, away from all the lights and into the countryside, and look up again, they would see the stars.

When people look at the stars, those countless pinpricks of light shining out of the abyss of the night sky, one thing they usually forget is how far away those stars are. The closest star to them would be approximately five light years away, whereas the most distant star that could be seen with the naked eye would be around sixteen thousand light years away. The rest are somewhere between those two figures.

Consider, for a moment, that a single light year is about nine point four six trillion kilometres.

Imagine, now, what lies beyond that great distance. Beyond the faintest glimmers of starlight that can be caught even by the largest optical devices in mankind's arsenal, there is nothingness. The dark between the stars. A void, a darkness where light doesn't dwell and where only the things that are in between lie.

Beyond even that, there is nothingness. A metaphorical ocean, infinitely deep, stretching out as a single plane so far that the horizon seems to stretch out forever. There is no sky, for there is no meaning of direction here. In fact, meaning is a transient concept at best here. Causality is something adhered to only because of an unfathomable sense of something akin to propriety, and willpower dictates the tune to which the infinite underlying currents and eddies dance to.

Yet, even here, there is life… for life has an uncanny tendency to find a way.

The shoals of creatures, taking flight with membranous mockeries of wings, scour these depths like great schools of bait fish. With their ivory-white armour, their rounded and hunched cetaceous heads, and their long two-pronged lances in their grasp, they travel in vast groups in search of prey. Anything remotely edible that crosses their ire receives an innumerable number of spears released in their direction, the monomolecular tips piercing skin and flesh alike before uncountable sets of sharp maws begin to rip and tear.

In fact, the sheer spectacle of this shoal might even be formidable enough for one to miss the shoggoth that the school seems to be giving a wide berth. That is, if not for the drowned forms of their fellows within, due to be slowly crushed and digested by the gelatinous mass that envelops them. It is rather fitting, then, that these mockeries of angels are situated right at the bottom of the food chain. For, while they feed upon everything, everything also happens to feed upon them.

Those more enlightened among humanity have given this place many names. Some refer to it as the Dreamlands, while others claim that this is the plains of Leng. Regardless, it is a cold and dark place… an abyss where any glimmers of light had died out long ago.

There are things here, indescribable things. A general rule of thumb, in this place of madness, is that the flora and fauna - insomuch as they could be considered flora and fauna in the first place - tend to get less 'understandable' in human terms as you go up the food chain. The things that could merit the title of apex predator have spent unknowable eons in this old darkness, their entire lives tucked away in corners where space met time at odd angles… and the less known about them, the better.

And then, in the centre of everything, there is Nyarlathotep. The true Nyarlathotep, not some mere avatar or one of its thousand Masks.

It is vast, far larger than any mere mortal could hope to conceive of. Even the most astute of humanity would only be able to glean faint glimpses of what truly laid at the centre of this veritable Charybdis. Perhaps the calcified tissue, with how every muscle and sinew seemed to be caressed by the gleaming white of glazed porcelain? Perhaps the legion of faces covering it, each bearing a different and alien visage, and numbering precisely to a thousand in number, until one worked gradually inwards to find the unmistakable death mask of a human face at the core of it all?

In the end, it is a monster beyond description, beyond conceptualisation, beyond ideation. Even the Mi-Go, beings which function on a totally alien axis to humans, and the only way that they can be perceived is whether or not their actions hurt people, worship it for the knowledge that they themselves do not and never will know.

However, he is not an evil god. He is a god of knowledge willing to teach you anything you want to know. He would teach a good person naught but good things, but he would teach an evil person evil things. And what man can say he has no evil in his soul? He is worse than an evil god. He is a god who does not care.

There is a fine line between not caring and being apathetic, though. Although he might not care about the repercussions or the reasons of what he does, he does whatever he does for fun - because he genuinely enjoys causing chaos and madness wherever he goes.

Therefore, the reasons why it does what it does now are truly impossible to understand. One of those thousand masks glows with light-that-is-not-light, gathering in intensity before the energy lances out with impossible speed, piercing through the shoal of angel-creatures and scattering them like leaves. A twist, a turn, and mass, insofar as one of those creatures has mass, is compressed. Space is transitory, it does as it wishes. With a submissive whimper, physics helplessly closes an eye to the Crawling Chaos's irreverence to its laws. It batters weakly at what is being done, but that proves as easy to ignore as a speck of dust.

The light-that-is-not-light dissipates, revealing its source as the blank human face - the expressionless porcelain death mask, the central core surrounded by nine hundred and ninety nine of its fellow visages.

The angel-creature, the insect from beyond the stars, is propelled through space at a speed that even light itself would balk at. Planets, stars, the detritus of the cosmos become stretched out blurs as it hurtles toward a singular planet - one with a single shattered moon.

It lands in the middle of a dying hope, one which the locals would regard as Mountain Glenn. The angel-creature, slowed by the same force that propelled it across time and space fast enough to tear a gash in its fabric, still collides with the mountain with enough speed to punch through the solid rock and enter the cavity of the underground settlement within.

As if by fate, the creature is found by a grieving father and husband. His name, Mihaly Ignatius Argent, will soon become irrelevant. They negotiate, and reach an accord - the creature's eldritch power matched by the man's sheer strength of will. The man sacrifices himself for himself.

They hung from the peak of Mountain Glenn, hung there for nine nights. Their side was pierced by a spear of bone, a javelin from the impaler cannon of the Grimm cataphract, otherwise known as the Nuckleavee, which wounded them gravely. The winds clutched at them, buffeted their body as it hung. Nothing did they eat for nine days and nine nights, nothing did they drink. They were alone there, in pain, the light of their now combined life slowly going out.

They were cold, in agony, and on the point of death when their sacrifice bore dark fruit: in the ecstasy of their agony they looked down, and the runes were revealed to them. They knew them, and understood them and their power. Their will broke then, and they fell, screaming, from the top of the mountain-that-was-now-a-tomb.

Now they understood magic. Now the world was theirs to control.

This was how the Allfather was born.

/-/

The scene reverted to what it was before - the safehouse, the television with its soap opera reruns ad nauseam, and the suddenly very comfortable large sofa. However, what was within had been irreparably changed.

Lapis came back to herself, huddled on the welcoming leathery softness that supported her body. She was breathing hard and fast for some reason, her skull felt like it was being split open from the inside, and there was a nagging itch behind her eyes that just begged to be scratched…

"I warned you," Bardiel said solemnly. "So now you know."

Lapis subconsciously wiped at her nose with the back of one hand, only to react with shock when it came away bloody.

"W-What… what are you?" She asked tremulously, realising only now that she was trembling. The slight trickle of blood now coming from her nose, along with the agony wracking her head, was worrying but dismissible in the long run. "What is all this?"

"Something you were never meant to know."

"Where are you from?"

"Hmmmm… it is hard to explain the concept with language. With your language, that is. My method could work though, as you saw only just now."

"No!" Lapis burst out, a little bit too hastily to have been a considered response. "I mean… no. My head already feels like it's going to explode..."

"Ah. I shall not risk it again then, lest your head actually explodes. It happens, you see?"

"What?"

"Never mind that. So, as to where I come from? Imagine a lot of nothing."

"So, like space?" Lapis replied quizzically. "I've seen sci-fi, you know? I know what space is."

"Something like that, but at least there are stars and planets to break up the monotony. My home has none of that, but a lot of nothing that goes on forever."

"That sounds… awful. Like, really awful. It sounds like prison."

"It was hardly a lonely place, though, mark my words. There were others there for company. Conceptual things, floating around in the ether. Things that would be termed most accurately as… unknowable. Though they weren't exactly the friendliest, as you can very well imagine."

"Yeah, I can imagine," Lapis said unhappily. "What was that… thing? The creature with the mask?"

"God."

The only response that Bardiel's statement got was its host body mutely staring at the television.

"Are… you okay there?"

"God as in the Biblical God? The 'created the world in six days and took a break on the seventh' kind of God?"

"If you say so, yes."

"The one God that, oh, I don't know, most of Remnant worships?"

"I think so?"

"Well… he didn't really seem godly to me, you know?"

She couldn't see Bardiel's face, what with it being essentially a voice in her head and all that, but its response then sounded positively dry. "You know, if you said that to His face, he'd be happy to prove you wrong. Well, mostly by making you not exist, and altering space-time itself so that you for all intents and purposes never existed, but you get my point."

Lapis smiled. "Yeah, maybe," she said, the small grin on her face not managing to distract from how empty her voice was.

She got up from the sofa, stretching to loosen up her muscles before ambling over to the now stocked fridge. Opening the door, she rummaged around a bit before her hand emerged with a bottle of locally-brewed beer.

"An ethanol-water solution with various other contaminants. Should be sterile enough for consumption, but not advisable for a main medium of liquid intake."

"Of course it's safe, it's a damned beer!"

"And what would mandate, to use a figure of speech of your kind, breaking out a cold one?"

Lapis didn't bother replying, only returning to the sofa and plopping herself onto it before opening the bottle with her bare hands. She took a deliberately long swig, seemingly deciding to ignore the entity sharing her headspace.

"Lion Rock brewery. A local brand?"

"Shut up."

"Okay. Maybe we got off on the wrong foot? Perhaps we should introduce ourselves again, and see how it goes from there? I am Bardiel, Angel of the Haze, Fallen Soldier of God-"

"And I am Lapis, the person whose body you hijacked."

Bardiel sighed, somehow managing to do so without anything resembling lungs. "Okay, look. I've only had around one hundred operational capacity since last night. It's like waking up from a drunken bender, completely naked, in a place that you've never been before. I'm sure you know the feeling, from personal experience even."

Lapis flushed out of embarrassment. "At least now I know that both of you have the same memories…"

"Yep. Would you like me to go through them with you, just in case? Though your head is a remarkably dirty place, my word…"

"Yeah, make yourself comfortable, why don't you?" Lapis snapped venomously. "You won't be Lazuli, you can't be Lazuli-"

"But the point still stands that we need to work together from now on. You need my powers, and I need your cooperation."

"I know… it's just that… the Allfather."

"What about him?"

Lapis mumbled something that Bardiel only barely heard. She then took another swig from her beer, before she put the bottle aside in favour of hugging her knees to her chest.

"Ummm… pardon me?"

"W-Will I… will what happened to the Allfather… happen to me?"

"What do you mean?"

Lapis swallowed uneasily. "The moment we split up, will it kill me?"

"None could foresee that the history of the two would become one. But… to be honest, I do not know."

Lapis took a final long sip from the bottle of beer on the coffee table, draining the last of the bitter liquid, before slamming the now empty bottle back down.

"Lapis?"

She stood up and began to laugh. It was a high and clear laugh, bereft of all humour, a laugh that hinted at hysterics and that particular brand of exultation that only came from madness.

Striding to the front door of the flat that was their safehouse, pulling it aside with gusto, she walked over to a large boarded-up window at the end of the corridor. With a twist of the semblance that was now hers, the orange octagons of not-light that had become an expression of her very soul burst into existence.

"Lapis? Are you okay?"

The field of orange octagons lanced out - literally, bursting out from the middle to form a long, thin lance - and pierced through the plywood boards with such overwhelming force that the shattered pieces were thrown clear of the window. The splinters that pelted Lapis in response, a veritable backblast of wooden shrapnel, didn't even seem to faze her.

"What the hell," she said, in between bursts of suspiciously deranged-sounding chuckling. "I'm not going to live long enough to regret this."

She began to lift herself up, barely managing to avoid cutting herself on the numerous rusty nails sticking out of the interior frame, and seemingly climbing out of the seventh-storey window in preparation to jump.

"Wait, what are you-"

Then, she leapt out of the window.

Lapis raised her left hand, grasping at empty air even as she fell. The runes on its back glowed blood red for a moment, before even that was swallowed up by ivory-white plates and a binding pseudo-skin that seemed to be made out of sticky tar. The large membranous wings erupted out of the housing on their back, and with another plucking at the strings of physics with her semblance, quite literally turning the force of gravity to their favour, the two of them - the angel and the girl - silently took flight into the cold Argus night.

It would have been a rather peaceful and relaxing flight, too, if they hadn't accidentally collided with Icarus in mid-air.

/-/

The cold draft coming in from the now open window at the end of the hallway - the boards covering it seemed to have been violently torn off their nails during her absence - only managed to sneak in through the visor of Carmine's helmet. Sure, the swirls of gritty dust caught in the wind stung her face, but it would take far more than that to distract her from her current task.

The past two days seemed to have been a bit too much for her poor leader. He had fallen asleep in the back of the ambulance that had been their getaway vehicle, and both Ginseng and herself had been loath to wake him up - the former because he was afraid that Noctis would gut him if he did the deed, and the latter because she honestly didn't want to disturb his rest.

Besides, the arrangement that they were currently in - Carmine carrying her partner in a bridal carry, while Noctis was curled around his hat that he was holding to his chest like a soft toy - wasn't without its certain benefits.

The young man she was currently cradling snored softly, and Carmine couldn't help but notice how slight his build was. He seemed small now, a child grown large, except for the faint lines that were all that remained of a rictus grin - more like a grimace, a pale mockery of his genuine smile. She had seen that grin before; it was the fierce grin of all men singed and driven back by flame. Even now, while he was asleep, she could see that fiery smile still vaguely gripped by his face muscles. It never went away, that smile, it never ever went away.

His unique fashion sense, his frankly overblown personality, the monster that he sometimes became, the enigma that was her commanding officer was all starting to make sense now.

Noctis was projecting, she realised. He was cultivating a larger-than-life image, a persona, a mask, a facade. Now that begged the question… what was hidden behind that facade?

That grin on his face hinted at something; it all but declared that the child he used to be - was supposed to be, at such a young age - had perished in flames long ago. Under what circumstances, she could hardly guess, but they were most probably horrible to experience firsthand.

Weirdly enough, after months of association with her team, Carmine had come to think of this team as her siblings. Although she didn't have any siblings of her own to compare the experience to - she should probably ask Noctis about that sooner rather than later - there was still some kind of connection there that was best described as a feeling of kinship. The fact of the matter was that she now viewed her teammates as extensions of her family.

"Weren't you an assassin, partner?" Lapis's voice said faintly, laced by a metallic overtone that sent chills down Carmine's spine, and barely audible behind the closed door of the flat. "So why is the hyper-competent killer in front of me blubbering about a skinned knee?"

There was a soft grunt of pain in response, before Icarus said "Assassin or not, applying rubbing alcohol to an open wound isn't exactly fun. And I wouldn't even have this problem if you weren't taking a joyride in whatever the fuck you're inside now!"

"Oh, come on. It can't be that bad."

"It is that bad! You're five metres tall right now!"

Carmine, as both of her hands were currently occupied with carrying her partner, used her helmeted forehead to gently headbutt the door thrice. That managed to halt the conversation inside in its entirety, her two teammates within seemingly diverting their attention to the front door.

"Who goes there?" Lapis's eerily metallic voice asked.

"This is Ishmael," Carmine replied. "Just so you know, Ahab is with me. Could somebody perhaps assist me in opening the door?"

"Okay, sure," Lapis replied. There was a sound akin to a table being dragged across a floor, before a suddenly resounding thud rang out. "Ow…" she eloquently continued.

Icarus sighed. "Look, you're currently much too big to do much of anything right now. You're going to bust the ceiling lights with your head at this rate, by accident even. I'll go get the door, alright?"

"Fine, go ahead."

"Is there anything you can do about, you know, being a literal giant?"

"Ummm… not at this moment, no."

Icarus sighed again. "Great, so now you're stuck in this weird angel-thing, and you can't even do anything about it. Just great." The former assassin paused, before continuing in a clipped tone, "You know what, I'll be getting the door now."

To be more precise, she thought of them as her siblings. Her stupid, stupid, accident-prone siblings.

Soon enough, the clacking of a bolt being released could be heard from behind the door. The familiar form of Icarus pulled it open from within, and to his credit he only raised an eyebrow at the sight of Carmine transporting their currently unconscious leader in a textbook bridal carry.

"He fell asleep on the way back," she offered in explanation.

'And you're carrying him because…" Icarus began, already moving to relieve the sleeping boy of his cane-sword and helping to remove the combat boots from his leader's dangling feet.

"None of us wanted to wake him up," Carmine continued, shifting Noctis around somewhat so that Icarus could help undo the straps and buttons keeping his greatcoat in place. "The driver was too scared to do it himself, and I did not because… well, you can see why…"

"You know Lapis is going to have a field day with this, right?" Icarus asked again, moving to place the heavy leather garment on the coat rack.

"Yes, and I frankly do not care."

Icarus shrugged, before pulling the door open wider and gesturing for her to enter. "Well, it's your loss. Don't say that I didn't warn you."

Carmine gingerly strolled past Icarus and through the corridor leading into the flat itself, trying not to jostle too much lest it woke up the sleeping boy in her arms, but all that effort was nearly wasted when she turned the corner.

There, curled up and clearly trying its best to remain on the sofa, was Bardiel. Bone-white armour plating gleamed in the light, reflective in the glow of the fluorescent bulbs above, and almost managing to totally conceal the black membrane-like skin beneath. A hunched whale-like head, marked only by innumerable wrinkles and scars on it that looked like literal hieroglyphics, and held in place by a forward-protruding neck as thick as the head itself, twisted in its socket. An eyeless rounded visage with an empty shark-toothed grimace, looking for all intents and purposes like some kind of ancient forgotten deity, turned to look in her direction.

"Well, that's not something you see every day," Lapis's voice said from within the abomination. How it spoke was of note; the mouth of the creature itself didn't so much as twitch, instead, the voice seemed to be coming from a speaker of sorts in the chest… perhaps it was the core that was speaking for her?

"Lapis," Carmine began cautiously. "Is this what it looks like?"

"Bardiel and I have come to an… agreement. Yeah, let's put it that way. He won't try to kill and eat every living thing he comes across, in exchange for me considering what he wants."

"And what does he want?"

"Um… well… shit. I didn't exactly ask him per say, I just brute-forced the whole thing."

The sides of Carmine's mouth twitched upwards. "So you managed to strong-arm the thing into an agreement. Are we talking about the same creature that nearly killed us all at the Continental yesterday?"

"To be fair, to him it was like, and I quote, 'waking up after a drunken bender in the middle of nowhere, completely buck naked, and with the hangover to beat all hangovers ever'."

Carmine paused. "What?"

"Oh, come on! Does nobody here get what I mean?"

"Yes, I do, but… what?"

"We Vacuans party hard. Don't ask."

"I was not planning to."

"Cool. Great. So…" Lapis's angelic form, amusingly enough, seemed to be positively oozing awkwardness now. "You're taking the boss to bed?"

"Indeed, I am," Carmine replied, gesturing with her head to emphasise the sleeping form of her partner - now garbed solely in his dress uniform.

"No, no, you don't get what I mean. So you're gonna make the beast with two backs in there? You know, the ol' in-and-out, that kind of thing."

Noctis happened to nuzzle closer into the grip of the person holding him at that moment, which for all intents and purposes involved him curling up into a close approximation of a ball. Carmine simply stared at Lapis in response.

"Firstly, no," Carmine began. "Secondly, no. Thirdly, hell no!"

"Look, it's the modern day now. It's perfectly socially acceptable nowadays for girls to make the first move-"

"And I, unlike you, happen to not be a fornicatress!" Carmine all but hissed.

"In my defence, there weren't that many other ways for two teenagers in Vacuo to entertain themselves," Lapis drawled in response. "It was either get drunk, get high or fuck. Getting drunk at our age kills brain cells, and getting high no matter the age kills brain cells harder, so no prizes for guessing which option we chose."

Carmine had realised a while ago that the best method for dealing with Lapis and her… insinuations… was a healthy combination of patience and deniability. Someone had once said that if you tell a big enough lie and tell it frequently enough, it will be believed. So that's what she did; she lied, and lied often.

"We are the dead," Carmine said.

"We're not dead yet," Lapis shot back prosaically.

"Not physically. Six months, a year. Five years, conceivably. I am afraid of death, both academically and in a conviction that can only come from being alive."

"Don't you regenerate, though?" Lapis asked in reply, her flippant question belying the fact that her voice had taken on a sudden edge of solemnity. "I'd think that you'd fear it a tiny less than us because of that."

"The dangers of the profession we find ourselves in, doubtlessly. Obviously we shall put it off as long as we can, but it makes very little difference. So long as human beings stay human, death and life are the same thing."

Lapis let out a bark of laughter, her false body's metallic voice turning it into a baritone boom. "Bullshit! Which would you sooner sleep with, him or a skeleton? Don't you enjoy being alive? Don't you like feeling? This is me, this is my hand, this is my leg, I'm real, I'm solid, I'm alive. Doesn't that mean something, at least?"

"That is exactly what I said. Not physically, of course, but to totally deny the eventuality would be solipsism. Personally, I prefer a positive to a negative. In this game that we are playing, we cannot possibly win. Some kinds of failure are better than other kinds, that is all."

It was curious how that predestined intermingling of excitement and apprehension moved in and out of one's consciousness, tinged with the rational dread of the knowledge that this could not possibly last. There the eventuality laid, fixed in future times, preceding death as surely as ninety-nine precedes one hundred: the death of her partner, the death of all things to her, the meaning of everything withering away into nothing.

Carmine was now forced to confront the sickening realisation that they would be separated eventually. She was invulnerable, unalterable, nigh-immortal even. He was, despite all his eccentricities, only human. This attachment could not, and would not, last. One could not possibly avoid this eventuality, but one could perhaps postpone it: and yet instead, every now and again, by a conscious, wilful act, one chose to shorten the interval before it happened.

Then, Carmine suddenly found that she didn't care.

Her current thoughtful reverie was then broken by the sound of metallic, gravelly chuckling.

"What do you have to say now?" Carmine snapped, turning to glare at her teammate.

Lapis, for her part, seemed to be somewhat guilty. The chucking stopped, and now that eyeless cetaceous head was looking at her with… sympathy?

"Well? Spit it out."

"Solis and I, we were at that stage, once, a long time ago. Dancing around each other, both of us too nervous to take the first step. For your sake… I hope that lasts."

"Why do you say that?"

Lapis chuckled again, but without any amusement. "We moved too fast. One day, we were two blushing idiots who had no idea what to do. The next, we were screwing each other's brains out. The problem was that we skipped to the physical side of things without considering the emotional as well."

"I see…"

"My advice to you, from one girl to another? Take it slow. Don't take what I said about sleeping with him seriously. Romance is something to be savoured, not rushed. Believe me, I know how tempting it is to just bulldoze through things, but you'll regret it if you do."

"I thank you for your advice-"

"Oh, this isn't advice. This is regret, plain and simple. You and the boss have something special, so don't piss it all away because you got hasty, alright?"

"Alright..."

"Good. Now, I'd say it's getting a bit late. He's obviously down for the count," Lapis continued, gesturing to the sleeping form in Carmine's arms. "And so I'd suggest that you go to bed as well."

"And as for you?"

Lapis affectionately patted the couch underneath her. "Woman, this is my bed. Remember when you called dibs on the actual bed with the boss man here?"

"Oh, that… sorry, I was not thinking clearly then-"

"It's fine, but again, take it slow. I'm kind of used to shit like this now, so it's all cool."

Carmine let out a deep breath that she didn't know she was holding. "I see…"

"Whatever, just go and sleep. I'm pretty sure we're all overdue for some rest anyways, especially after the shit my brain-roommate pulled last night."

"That could not have been helped, of course. I would personally blame the Order for that one."

"But still… did you not see what kind of accommodation we got? He gave us Room 101! A bonafide presidential suite! Pity it didn't exactly last, though."

"Indeed, a real pity. Though, I must say that I rather prefer this arrangement, to be honest."

"Yeah, I get what you mean. It feels… homely, somehow."

The conversation, after that, seemed to decide to turn in as well.

"Well," Carmine began awkwardly, hefting Noctis's still-sleeping form once again. "Goodnight, then."

"Goodnight."

She then walked off in the direction of their shared bedroom, pushing open the door with her foot as she did so. Placing Noctis gingerly onto the bed, she slowly plucked the peaked cap from his embrace before placing the hat on a bedside table.

"Are you cold?" Carmine asked, more to herself than to anybody in particular. "Oh, good hunter."

Then she pulled their blanket over her partner, tucking him in with every sign of affection.

She could actually still hear the muffled conversation from outside, between her two teammates in particular.

"How did it go?" Icarus asked casually.

"About as well as expected," Lapis replied cheerfully. "We both know that Carmine's not the kind to shrug off advice, after all."

"I know… it's just that… she seems a bit off, if you ask me."

"Hmmm? What do you mean?"

"She acts like my grandmother, when she goes out once every three months to sweep my grandfather's grave and chat with him. I mean, there's still that lovey-dovey tenderness and all that, but the only difference that I'm seeing is that my grandfather is dead."

"And you're saying that Carmine…?"

"She's behaving as if the boss is long gone. I've seen people who act like her before, even from the White Fang, but that's because their loved one died a while ago. They're past mourning and moved on to remembering."

"I mean… who are we to stop her?" Lapis asked in reply, sounding unsure for once. "The boss clearly likes her, and she likes him back, so why should we be getting in the way of all that?"

"You meant what you said to her, right?"

"Every fucking word, my friend. Look, I know you're worried about the boss, but this is not the way to show that!"

"Did you not see what he became after the food fight? After he nearly killed his sister? He adopted this motto; 'prioritise the objective over human life'. Do you know where I first heard this motto? The White Fang. And I for one do not want to go down that path again."

"Man, I can't help it if you're projecting yourself onto him for some reason, but he's our boss. You need to have some faith in him."

"I know… I'm just worried that he'll, well, snap if this falls apart as well."

"Some might say that if you look at the world through the same lens that you always have, you'll get tunnel vision. If you're used to dealing with things at a distance, you won't really know how to deal with things when they're too close for comfort."

"What are you implying?" Icarus asked, his voice becoming threateningly even.

"I'm saying that you need to let them work it out. Neither of us have the benefit of experience in stuff like this, so we should just step back and hope for the best."

"You have a boyfriend!"

"I have a fuckbuddy. That's different, and also irrelevant. Really, all we can do right now is to not get in the way."

"I guess so… there's not much else to it, anyways."

"Alrighty, then. C'mere, you need to pull out the couch-bed now that I'm too big to reach it."

Carmine smirked, letting out an amused snort, before she proceeded to shed her armour. Opening a convenient scarlet portal off to the side, she discarded piece after piece of the platemail suit before, soon enough, the entire suit had been almost silently removed. Now left in the wool gambeson that went underneath her armour, which also happened to substitute quite readily for pyjamas, she decided that it was about time to get some sleep.

She slid into bed with deliberate movement, gently managing to curl up to the only other nearby source of heat - which happened to be Noctis.

"O Flora, of the moon, of the dream. O little ones, O fleeting will of the ancients…" she whispered under her breath, barely aware of what she was saying, all while settling into place next to her partner. "Let the hunter be safe, let him find comfort. And let this dream, his captor, foretell a pleasant awakening... be, one day, a fond, distant memory…"

And so life found a way, the universe be damned.

/-/

In Yharnam, the dead city, is the village of Yahar'gul. It is an unseen village, hidden away from the world, and it feeds the School of Mensis. Micolash, the foremost scholar of the school, the Sisyphean pursuer of knowledge, knows many things. His school controlled the village, and left countless secrets and irredeemable sins in that place. Before the end, he would use whatever knowledge he had to peer into the cosmos, desperately seeking some way to elevate mankind from its bestial roots.

Long after that, after everything was said and done, Mihaly manifested the bone armour that branded him for servitude. Mensis was diminished after all those years, reduced to a single student living in an aged church building. In between, mankind had advanced by leaps and bounds, mastering steel and fire in a way that even the blind men of Byrgenwerth, elevated in their lonely ivory towers, couldn't have predicted.

Valtr would have been amazed, spellbound for a moment, before continuing on his Vermin-crushing crusade. But he was long dead, replaced by Mihaly, then the Allfather, and then Fenrir. Trudging over to Tyrian's rectory, careful to not cause a ruckus with his armour, he lightly rapped on the solid wooden door between him and the wisdom he sought.

He was being watched. The stares of eyes, too many to count, seemed to bore into him. He felt his sins crawl down his back, only to be read like a book under innumerable dispassionate gazes.

A figure opened the door. It was garbed entirely in flowing black clothing, with a voluminous dark cape draped over its shoulders and just managing to brush the floor beneath its feet. Hidden beneath a black hood was an iron helmet, bearing a cage-like visor of vertically alternating metal bars. Behind those metal bars, an eye glowing with blue-green bioluminescent light stared pitilessly at him.

Indeed, the Hunters of Yahar'gul answered solely to the village's founders, the School of Mensis. Hunters in name only, these kidnappers used to blend into the night wearing such attire. Valtr had come to blows with many of them, himself, but that was long ago.

He padded into the rectory itself. Surprisingly enough, given Tyrian's taste, it was almost spartan. There was a simple bed off in the corner, a wardrobe across from it, a desk along with a single chair, and not much else. The entire room was lit only by the faint light from some oil lamps dotted throughout the space, and the gentle aroma of incense played at Mihaly's sense of smell. It would even have been normal if not for the artfully placed portrait of one Salem, Queen of the Grimm.

"What are you here for?" Tyrian's voice asked, behind him. Mihaly whirled around, doing a double take when he saw that the man himself, dressed only in a simple set of white pyjamas, had suddenly appeared behind him.

What was more concerning, though, was the fact that the Yahar'gul Hunter next to Tyrian somehow had his sword. It seemed to be able to comfortably hold the damned oversized mockery of a weapon, with one hand gripping the hilt while the other supported the blade like a tray.

"I am here for insight, Micolash," Mihaly said. "That is all I ask for."

Tyrian… no, Micolash, shook his head. The gold eyes that Tyrian had were now gone from view, lost behind the blue-green glow that seemed to emanate from Micolash's irises. The scorpion Faunus would have been laughing his head off by now. Micolash said nothing, would say nothing; seldom do those who are silent make mistakes.

"We are both Hunters," Mihaly said. "We both witnessed Yharnam, in all of its unholy glory."

"That is not enough," Micolash replied evenly, the blue-green glow of his eyes seeming to bore into Mihaly's blackened soul. "Or have you forgotten how many of the Hunters of Yahar'gul, faithful servants of Mensis as they were, died at your hand?"

"I only need insight," Valtr said. He wasn't Mihaly, not now, not in the face of the last true survivor of Mensis. "With this, old friend, I shall see the truth. Name your price."

"Your eye is my price. Your eye, for the eyes that shall be inside. Your eye, for an eye."

Mihaly would have quailed at that, hesitating to give up a part of himself that he was born with. Valtr, noting the cost with near-total indifference, simply set his face and nodded.

Tyrian's face smiled. He gestured, and the Yahar'gul Hunter behind him placed Gram - Mihaly's weapon, how could he forget - against the wall. It silently walked past the two of them, towards the desk and the single wooden chair, before pulling out the chair and placing it in the middle of the room.

"I can't sleep, not ever," Micolash said, gesturing for Valtr to sit. "So sit here, very, very quietly. A sort of sleepless sleep."

Valtr sat. Almost immediately he was pinned to his chair, paralysed as innumerable glowing eyes blinked into existence all around him.

"What I see here is simply… majestic," Micolash began, his voice one of awe. "Entire segments edited and revised, massive gaps redacted only to be replaced by filler, this is a masterpiece!"

"What the hell are you talking about?"

"Your memories. They have been altered to the point of unrecognizability. But then that doesn't make sense… with such a degree of modification, you should be a gibbering lunatic by now…"

"Hm?"

"Memories. The past controls the present, remember? When you change the past, you also alter the present. It's simple causality. But this isn't changing the past, this is almost like cutting out entire chunks and going over the holes with duct tape. It's a wonder that it worked as well as it did, but… that's what worries me."

Valtr did not ask who was responsible. Even coming to Micolash for help had been a dangerous decision, yet he had been willing to risk the Troupe Master's wrath to do so. He was willing to do more than that for the insight he sought.

"I can try to undo some of the damage, but there are no guarantees," Micolash said hesitantly. It was truly a wonder how different he was from his host's personality; Tyrian would be positively cackling with mirth at this situation. "When I said that this would cost you an eye, it's because I literally need your eye to do this. This body's semblance unfortunately works in a rather weird way, but I make do with what I have."

"Do what you must," Valtr said solemnly.

The eyes surrounding the two flashed once in unison, inundating Mihaly's vision with blinding light, before all he saw was white.

/-/

He hung from the peak of Mountain Glenn, hung there for nine nights. His side was pierced by a Grimm spear of bone, which wounded him gravely. The winds clutched at him, buffeted his body as it hung.

Nothing did he eat for nine days and nine nights, nothing did he drink. He was alone there, in pain, the light of his life slowly going out.

He was cold, in agony, and on the point of death when his sacrifice bore dark fruit: in the ecstasy of his agony they looked down, and the runes were revealed to him. He knew them, and understood them and their power. His will broke then, and he fell, screaming, from the top of the mountain-that-was-now-a-tomb.

Now he understood magic. Now the world was his to control.

It would be worth it. Among the dead of Mountain Glenn was Mihaly's wife and young son. He'd been a Huntsman for his entire life, he'd gone to Beacon Academy and attended for four years, so he had retired with a full and clear picture of the risks that could be posed. Grimm were instinctively drawn towards people who had their auras unlocked, even more than negative emotions in fact.

This was nothing like that. This travesty reeked of betrayal, of sabotage, of mankind betraying its own and leaving them to the wolves.

A few days later, a team of four Huntsmen sent by Ozpin had confronted him. Their leader had gone on some spiel about Relics, and how they were too dangerous to be wielded by a single person. Apparently he had come into possession of the Relic of Destruction, and they were there to ensure that he surrendered it for the 'good of humanity'.

Then, he let them know exactly what he thought of the situation. Relic or no Relic, it was less of a battle and more of a one-sided slaughter; unsurprisingly, he had given no quarter and left no survivors.

Among the half-eaten corpses of those who had stood to oppose him, he made his choice. He would create Valhalla, a safe haven for warriors like him, those who had had enough of fighting the eternal war. The runes would keep them safe. His power, and their faith, would keep them safe. Valhalla would ensure that his fate, and that of his family, would not befall others.

In the end, in the forsaken sands of Vacuo's endless deserts, it was not Mihaly who betrayed the ideals of Valhalla. It was the Relic itself, the same thing that had given him the power to create his dream, that had destroyed him. The Troupe Master had severed their bond, and it turned out that, after years of co-dependence, Mihaly's own body had been reduced to an atrophied shadow of its former self.

So it was, then. The Troupe Master had offered him a choice; to survive in chains, or to die free - a slow and painful death as his body slowly shut down. In the same breath that he had used to save his own life, he had damned himself.

In retrospection, he had been a coward. He should have died in Valhalla. Now he was nothing, little better than a slave, a disappointment to the memory of his son…

Wait. The boy he had seen in Yharnam, the Good Hunter. The Paleblood had clouded his vision, but the similarities were there. The grey hair, the dark eyes, even the shape of his face… and the name. Of course! His name, how could he forget?

Noctis Argent, son of Mihaly Ignatius Argent.

He had been blind. A fool. A bumbling idiot. He hadn't failed yet. There was still something left to save.

There was still something left to save!

/-/

Then, his vision started to clear. As the blinding light cleansed itself from his retinas, there was a stabbing pain in his left eye… well, where it used to be, at least. A gentle touch of his face revealed that his left eye socket was empty, and that his eyelid had fused shut as if it had never been there, but honestly it was surprising how it wasn't as painful as he had been expecting.

There were two things of note now.

Firstly, as his sense of sight returned to him, he realised that the sudden loss of depth perception wasn't a problem anymore; he saw further and more clearly with his one eye than he ever had with two. Even with the sudden darkness from the oil lamps being blown out, he could still see clearly.

Secondly, there was a sudden draft of strong wind inside the rectory. A rectory that was inside a solid stone building, and had one currently locked window. One that had pulled Valtr out of his seated position on the chair, and one that only the heft of his Grimm armour allowed him to withstand whilst standing.

"What in the name of Kos did you do?" Micolash asked angrily, holding himself in place by grabbing his bed frame with a white-knuckled grip. "You had a sword, not an Oedon-damned gravitational singularity!"

Indeed, the place where Mihaly's weapon used to be was now an absolute mess. There was a small black orb of absolute darkness, rimmed by a faint outline of light, and reality itself seemed to be in the process of being sucked into it.

Valtr's mind raced, trying to find a way to neutralise the fucking black hole in front of him before it annihilated everything in the immediate vicinity, before he managed to come up with something. Summoning up the memory of a suitable rune, ignoring the searing pain that then streaked behind his now shut eye, he mentally reached out and pulled.

When he opened his remaining eye once again, the black hole was gone. In its place, and in the place of that brutal oversized sword from before, was a spear. It was a beautiful spear, carved with intricate and familiar runes. He knew from sight that it would penetrate anything, and when he threw it, it would always find its mark. And, just as importantly, an oath taken on this spear was unbreakable - a geas, it could be said.

Valtr hefted the spear. All he said was, "It is very fine."

Truth be told, it was very fine indeed. Rediscovering Gungnir, and having it back in his hands again was certainly a boon. Yet, it was only the first step of many.

Reaching out again with the runes, he took hold of his Grimm armour and twisted. With an unearthly screech of pain, the creature's form was contorted into something more suitable for its wearer. The bone armour plates were pulled inwards, to form a layer of defence underneath, while what used to be a cape had been stretched into a cloak. The wolf-headed helm was discarded, thrown inside in favour of a wide-brimmed hat fashioned out of still-living Grimm hide.

"I suppose that you shall require a new name, Allfather," Micolash suddenly piped up, from his place near the bed frame. He seemed unperturbed, somehow, at how close they had both been to the inescapable annihilation of a black hole. "And I suppose that I'll have to call you by that new name."

Valtr pulled the brim of his hat low, to hide his missing eye. "Then what do you suggest?"

"Well, there are many…" Micolash ran off, snapping his fingers as he did. In the same instance, all of the oil lamps simultaneously relit themselves. "Grimnir, Wodan, Odin…"

"Odin will do," Valtr said, the deep growl of his voice brokering no arguments.

"Odin it is, but then again I'll probably just call you Wednesday for simplicity's sake," Micolash said, before pausing. "And in that case, I'm Mimir?"

"I guess so. Wednesday has a… nice ring to it, I guess."

"Excellent!" Micolash said, before noticing exactly what Valtr was doing. "Wait, where are you going?"

Valtr had been using the sharp head of his spear to carve some runes into the doorframe of the rectory. "To tie up some loose ends," he replied simply.

"Oh, you mean Merlot?"

"Wise as always, Mimir. I'd rather not be responsible for bringing about a genocide, no matter what that maniac wants. And besides, he owes me something."

"Mountain Glenn?" Micolash suggested casually, prompting Valtr to stare at him with shock, before he continued in explanation. "Well, there can only be so many people on Remnant responsible for bio-engineered Grimm, and he's the only one psychotic enough to possibly have done the deed."

Valtr began to laugh. It was a booming and utterly humourless laugh, one that went on for far too long to be from an emotionally stable person.

"Wednesday… are you hanging in there?"

"Well… that simplifies things," Valtr said simply. "I was going to kill him anyways simply because he's too dangerous to be left alive, but if your theory is correct… this might even be morally justified."

Micolash chucked, the light in his eyes flickering as he did. Perhaps it was a bit of Tyrian slipping through, but Valtr found that he didn't care. "When do we start?"

"Hmmm..." Valtr mused, finally finishing his task of scratching runes into the doorframe with his spearhead. "A few days?"

"A few days?"

"The degree of permanence of the portal is inversely proportional with the time elapsed between the creation of the runes and their triggering. In other words, we need to wait for a few days for the runes to bleed off some of their power before we set them off, lest our way into Merlot's madhouse becomes a permanent one."

"What's so bad about that?"

"This is your bedroom door, Mimir."

"Ah."

Valtr sighed. "So, we have a few days to plan. I have a general idea of the layout of Merlot's laboratory, and you have a working knowledge of how XOF operates. Does your semblance have any offensive capabilities besides, you know, this?"

Micolash raised his eyebrow as Valtr's free hand gestured to his now missing eye, before a grin broke out on his face. "But alas, not too fast," he began, gesturing towards the chair again. "I still have some questions."

"Like?"

"What in blazes possessed you to do all this?"

Valtr went silent. That single eye seemed to blaze, catching the faint flickering light in the oil lamps, and for all intents and purposes Micolash now looked like a hapless deer caught in the headlights of an oncoming car.

Then, with a heavy exhalation, the one-eyed glare ceased. "I shall not fault you for that question, Mimir, but all I can say to you is that… I had my suspicions," he began softly, flipping the spear around in his hand so that he could use its shaft as an improvised walking stick. All of a sudden, he seemed much older now, as if he had aged twenty years in a single moment of doubt. "But now I know. I have been lied to, ever since Valhalla. Ever since Mountain Glenn. Ever since the beginning of everything, when I lost everything that could ever matter to me. But now… now that I know the truth, I can salvage something, at least."

"So you wish for redemption? An admirable endeavour, and one that I am uniquely qualified to assist in," Micolash said, before snapping his fingers once more. The Yahar'gul Hunter, seemingly entirely unphased by the recent occurrence of a surprise black hole in its recent vicinity, took out a second chair from a far-off corner of the room. "So! Let us sit about, and speak feverishly. Chatting into the wee hours of the night, under the shattered moon… speaking of new ideas, of the higher plane!"

Valtr shook his head, although a devilish smirk was beginning to emerge on his face. "No, no. You're jumping the gun, for now at least."

"Well," Micolash replied petulantly, looking somewhat put out. "Then what do you suggest?"

"Simple," Valtr replied. In the soft flickering light of the oil lamps, his hat cast almost his entire face into shadows - only his pitiless smile was visible now. "In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king. All we need to do is remind him exactly what that means."

/-/

The irony that she was now effectively a prisoner-of-war for a war that had yet to even begin was not lost on Specialist Winter Schnee. Sure, it was definitely a comfortable arrangement for a prisoner, but a gilded cage was still a cage.

She knew very well what this situation meant. She had essentially been barred from any critical areas, and the two shotgun-toting armed guards that flanked her at all times would ensure that she stayed out - the guards weren't for her benefit, but to eliminate her should she prove untrustworthy.

However, funnily enough, she had received a missive directing her to arrive at the bridge at about fifteen hundred - Atlas Standard Time, Navy terminology does three o' clock, conveniently enough.

Winter honestly had no idea where on Remnant they were right now, since most of the time the Alicorn had remained underwater, and even then the open ocean didn't really have much in the way of landmarks that could be seen on the rare occasions that they surfaced.

Her stay aboard the Alicorn had been… interesting. It turned out that there wasn't a single living soul aboard the submarine save for herself, the Bloody Crow and Morpho - her pilot. More concerningly, she hadn't seen hide nor hair of the latter ever since the two of them had split on arrival. As a result, the robotic crew members of the vessel didn't really seem to care about her presence - they weren't exactly friendly, sure, but there was none of the animosity that she would expect from the human crew of an Atlesian aerial battleship.

Even more alarmingly, the Alicorn had managed to be ignored by literally every pelagic Grimm in existence. The submarine itself was massive, about five hundred metres long when submerged, and there hadn't been so much as a peep from the horrors of the deep that Winter had come to expect from the open ocean. Perhaps it was because, since the vast majority of those on board were robots, the vessel was quite literally soulless - thereby eluding the Grimm by virtue of lacking anything they could detect? It was certainly an interesting question, and one that justified some thought.

"Specialist Schnee?" The Bloody Crow asked suddenly from beside her. She started, turning to her left, and saw her pseudo-captor. He had evidently disregarded the formal suit that he had worn the first time they had met, in favour of his more infamous combat gear. The faceless helmet he wore, made out of some silvery metal that happened to cover his entire head, prevented Winter from seeing his expression. Still, even she could catch his smug tone. "Is there anything wrong?"

"No," she replied, even though there happened to be a lot of things that were wrong. "I was just wondering what all this was?"

They were currently tucked away in some dark corner of the control deck, seemingly isolated from the bridge and its reassuringly large windows. The only source of light in the uncomfortably dark room they were in was a spotlight over their heads, which was currently shining down on them both, and the three monoliths that were also looming over them. She couldn't forget the monoliths, not at all.

They were, for all intents and purposes, large rectangular things about the size of a door. However, that was where the similarities ended. There were three of them, arranged in a concave formation arrayed around the Bloody Crow and himself. The monoliths were made out of an obsidian-like material that generally failed to reflect any light whatsoever, and the only thing that separated them from the rest of the darkened room was the names, emblazoned in blood red light, being displayed on their faces.

The one in front of them was designated 'STARBUCK', while the one to their right was 'FLASK'. The last one, to their left, was 'STUBB'.

"[SALUTATION] Good afternoon, Regent of Cainhurst, and esteemed guest. How may I assist you?" The monolith in the middle said, its voice remarkably gentle even with the electronic distortion affecting it.

"Good afternoon, chief mate," the Bloody Crow replied. "Could you perhaps elaborate to our guest as to the purpose of this place?"

"[AFFIRMATION] Oh, of course. We are the three AIs, or Artificial Intelligences, that jointly operate the Submersible Aviation Cruiser designated as the Alicorn. I am STARBUCK, the Alicorn's core Pod and main AI. STUBB fulfils the role of a Mammal Pod, while FLASK is the Reptile Pod of this vessel."

Winter had heard of those terms before - all her time spent liasioning with Dr Polendina and AIReD has rubbed off on her, at least. Theoretically, the Reptile Pod and Mammal Pod were a pair of AIs that would play off of each other; they were modelled after the human cerebellum and cerebrum, respectively. While the Reptile Pod would be mainly responsible for actually operating the main frame, the Mammal Pod would possess more advanced decision-making capabilities.

"Excuse me, chief mate," Winter interjected. "But I don't believe that I have ever heard of a third Pod being used before. The Mammal and Reptile Pods were designed to operate purely as a pair, if I remember correctly."

"[EXPLANATION] We have modified your model to suit our objectives better," the monolith in the middle replied. "As such, I am the Providence Pod, and it would be entirely reasonable that I am essentially the soul in the machine."

"A soul in a machine?" Winter replied contemptuously. "Preposterous. If it could be done, Atlas would have done it long ago."

"The Mammal Pod is the cerebellum, and the Reptile Pod is the cerebrum. But a brain is nothing without a mind, and a mind cannot exist without a soul," the Bloody Crow interjected from beside her. "As such, we added a soul. You can see the results for yourself."

Winter paused for a while, before she said cautiously, "You don't mean an actual soul, right? That would be… well, it would be heretical…"

"Heresy, you say?" The Bloody Crow asked rhetorically in reply. "If it is for the sake of preserving Cainhurst, I will seize any manner of heretical strength."

"You aren't saying-"

"[NOTIFICATION] Shall I send out the order, honoured Regent?" The monolith to their left - STUBB, the Mammal Pod - asked, cutting off Winter's panicked exclamation before she could begin.

"Yes. Send it out now," the Bloody Crow said. "Make all preparations for surfacing."

Then, the three monoliths dulled for a moment before the rightmost one - FLASK, the Reptile Pod - pulsed with red light. Then, a monotonous metallic voice said, "[ANNOUNCEMENT] Stand by to surface. Repeat, stand by to surface."

The three monoliths then began to retract into the floor, receding into sockets within the deck below their feet, before metal panels slid shut over their housings.

"[QUERY] All clear?" The voice of STARBUCK, the Providence Pod, asked.

"[RESPONSE] Affirmative," FLASK, the Reptile Pod, responded. "Ready to surface in all aspects."

"[CONCLUSION] Very well, then. Surface," STUBB, the Mammal Pod, said. "To the Regent and our esteemed guest, I would recommend that you grab onto something."

"[ANNOUNCEMENT] Surface, surface, surface."

The diving alarm blared once, twice, and finally thrice before the submarine itself lurched violently under their feet. Winter and the Bloody Crow hurriedly grabbed some nearby handrails, just managing to stay on their feet as the ship's bow listed upwards.

"[REPORT] Bow planes rigged in," FLASK's monotonous voice stated.

"Understood," the Bloody Crow replied evenly, pulling himself into a more stable position. "Continue as normal."

It only took less than a minute for the submarine to lurch again, this time seeming to settle down afterwards.

"Open the hatch. Open the main induction. Lookouts to the bridge," the Bloody Crow said, simultaneously clamping his hand over Winter's eyes in a surprisingly gentle grip.

"Hey!" Winter exclaimed, surprised by the sudden touch. "What do you think you're doing?"

"The window shields of the bridge are going to open. We have been in a darkened space for an extended period of time, and it is currently the afternoon in this region. A sudden introduction of direct sunlight to your eyes might result in retinal damage, possibly permanently."

"Ah…"

"Now you see it. Status report, first mate?"

"[NOTIFICATION] All clear."

"Very well."

"[ALARM] Belay that declaration, my Regent," STUBB suddenly interjected. "Incoming contact, bearing three hundred, range five thousand."

"Raise the window shields. Do we have visual contact?"

"[REPLY] Yes, Regent," the considerably calmer monotone voice of FLASK replied. "It appears to be some kind of pelagic creature, sir."

There was a mechanical whirring as Winter caught a glimpse of thick metal panels receding into the window frames, and, even through the gaps between the Bloody Crow's gauntleted fingers, the glaring sunlight still managed to burn her eyes.

"Hold on…" Winter said, rubbing her eyes to get through the worst of the temporary blindness. "Describe this creature."

"[DESCRIPTION] A serpentine body, madam. Considerably large, and it seems to possess wings as well."

"Shit! Just perfect. A Sea Feilong… it's a Grimm, a ship-killer at that," Winter muttered. Indeed, now she saw the creature now - FLASK's description had been relatively accurate, save of course for the black tar-like skin and the bone helm serving to simultaneously protect and highlight its draconic features. "Does this vessel have surface combat capabilities?"

"Really, Specialist Schnee? Have you already forgotten what exactly lies under the skin of Cainhurst's mighty leviathan?" The Bloody Crow asked smugly, before turning back to the console in the middle of the bridge - evidently, the Pods were situated there as well. "Command to Reptile Pod. Battle stations gun action. Main guns only."

"[NOTIFICATION] Deck railguns deploying," FLASK replied emotionlessly. "Gunnery modules and fire control suites are ready."

"Target is hostile oceanic Grimm, bearing three hundred, range forty three hundred. Stand by for battle surface."

"[WARNING] Target closing, range approaching four thousand-"

"Ready three. Fire three," Winter suddenly exclaimed, her instincts as a Specialist taking over from any apprehension she felt at technically usurping command of a foreign vessel. The Bloody Crow turned to her in surprise, but only responded with a noncommittal shrug. "Check fire."

"Main guns commence firing," the Bloody Crow ordered, his voice carrying an air of prideful finality.

A sound like ripping cloth tore into Winter's eardrums, even within the armoured and enclosed bridge of the Alicorn. There were a pair of sources, firing in close succession to each other, which she realised were two turrets on either side of the main hull.

These two turrets fired simultaneously, both firing in the bursts of three that she had herself ordered, and the hypersonic projectiles sent out concentric rippling rings of displaced air as they tore past at multiple times the speed of sound.

Winter could only watch as the projectiles hit home. The Sea Feilong had just been about to take flight when the first projectile managed to get a glancing hit in its side, easily penetrating its hide and tearing a massive wound into its right flank.

The serpent-like dragon creature reeled from the hit, two more hits blowing another gaping hole through its body and ripping off one of its wings, before a final round punched through its bone-armoured head and blew out what counted as its brain in a spray of fine black mist.

The already smoking body of the Grimm fell lifelessly into the water, landing with a massive splash before rapidly sinking beneath the waves.

"Cease firing," the Bloody Crow ordered. "Secure the main guns. Clear the flight deck."

There was a mechanical whirring from outside, presumably the sound of the railgun turrets retracting back into their housings underneath the submarine's skin, before that was punctuated with a metallic clunk as the hatches slammed shut and locked themselves over the internal compartments housing the turrets.

"All clear. Secure from battle stations."

"[QUERY] Understood, Regent. Shall we be continuing with the launch?"

"Yes, STUBB, we shall."

"[ACKNOWLEDGEMENT] Acknowledged," FLASK said monotonously. "Raising two Nidhogg units to the flight deck."

"Prepare them for takeoff. They are to launch ASAP. Our time frame is short."

"Wait…" Winter suddenly piped up, shaking off her stunned awe at the earlier display of power from the Alicorn's main guns. "Why are you launching fighters?"

"No, not launching. Think… deploying. Posting to another location."

"But to where? Anyways… where are we now?"

"The Alicorn is about one thousand kilometres west of the Mistralian port city of Argus. The two flight units we are deploying are meant to reinforce the friendly auxiliary garrison there."

"[NOTIFICATION] The two flight units are ready for takeoff, Regent," FLASK declared.

"Excellent. Launch them now."

"[ACKNOWLEDGEMENT] Launching. Rift-breaker has been activated and is ready for deployment."

Two similar plumes of steam burst into existence as the twin CATOBAR catapults launched their respective cargoes, one after the other. Twin Nidhogg flight units in their fighter jet modes, with their characteristic boxy and angular profiles, rocketed down the flight deck before hurtling into the sky under the power of their own massive engines along with the speed imparted by the catapults. They were marked out in the same black and red markings that she had seen when first arriving... Schwarze Team, was it?

Winter couldn't help but notice, though, that they were both fully laden with a single ALBM - an Air-Launched Ballistic Missile - each, one on the underside of each aircraft.

"Commander Corvus," Winter began cautiously. "Why are those fighters equipped for air-to-ground? You said that they were going to assist the auxiliary garrison in Argus."

"The evolving situation in Argus had forced the auxiliary garrison there to get itself involved in… policing measures," the Bloody Crow replied from his place, hunched over the bridge's core console and staring out over the flight deck. He didn't seem to be acknowledging her presence, not anymore. "Schwarze Team. The 13th Night Fighter Squadron, 6th Tactical Fighter Squadron... the attaché squadron of this vessel. Its primary purpose was to hunt down and eliminate rogue elements like deserters and traitors... but I supposed that they would serve well enough to cow the lowlifes into submission, along with the garrison already there. All in the name of law enforcement, you see."

"And what is the composition of this garrison?"

"A regular armoured division."

Winter stared dumbfounded at him. "Permission to speak freely, sir?"

"Permission granted."

"Are you insane?" She shrieked angrily. "An armoured division, engaging in law enforcement? Did you seriously approve for what is essentially martial law enforced by goddamned tanks and fighter aircraft?"

"It seemed to be the most effective solution at the time, Specialist."

"But you have to know the effects that will have on the populace! Actively deployed military assets in close proximity to civilians, during peacetime no less, not to mention in a sovereign state, will be bound to create a huge amount of negative emotion. And have you forgotten that negative emotion attracts Grimm like sharks to blood?"

"No, I have not, Miss Schnee."

"And even then, even if we ignore the Grimm for a moment, there's still the matter of Cainhurst essentially occupying the city of another kingdom. That, Commander, is the definition of a foolhardy move that could potentially result in adverse consequences - diplomatically or otherwise."

"Ah, you mean war," the Bloody Crow replied evenly, his tone sending shivers down her spine. "No, no. That won't be happening for… oh, for a long time. It will come, don't worry, but you will need to be patient first."

"I will need to be patient? What, are you saying that war between Cainhurst and Atlas is inevitable?"

"Astute as always, Specialist," the Bloody Crow said, finally turning presumably to glance over his left shoulder - that faceless helm of his made it impossible to see his expression, much less where he was looking. "That is what your kingdom's Council certainly believes, isn't it? Or was I hallucinating when I saw an Atlesian fleet make its way to Vale, conveniently months before the Vytal Festival?"

"You-"

The Bloody Crow sighed deeply, cutting her retort short. "I don't believe that they have ever heard of a self-fulfilling prophecy, haven't they? What we wish, we readily believe, and what we ourselves think, we imagine others think also. But I have said this once before, and I shall say this again," he finally ground out, his voice going deadly quiet. "If it is for the sake of preserving Cainhurst, I will seize any manner of heretical strength. I will endure any burden. So… behold the power behind the Undying Queen of Cainhurst."

In the skies over them, two blood-red portals, rifts in space-time itself, tore themselves open. The two Nidhogg flight units banked up, streaking into the rifts and out of existence at close to Mach 3, before the scarlet wormholes soon collapsed in their wake.

"The tragedy of war is that it uses man's best to do man's worst. Even so, tragedies are arguably the greatest artistic expression of human suffering to ever exist… I trust that you have read Hamlet? They need to be staged, to be rehearsed, to be scripted. If your Council hungers for war, I shall oblige them, but it will be on my terms and my terms alone."

"No, I didn't mean that-"

"All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players. They have their exits and their entrances; and one man in his time plays many parts, his acts being seven ages. We are all actors, Miss Schnee, but we can decide what kind of performance we want to put up. Atlas, in its present mood... it shall be the poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage, and then is heard no more; it is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing."

"Commander Corvus, please-"

"I have heard that guilty creatures sitting at a play, have, by the very cunning of the scene, been struck so to the soul that presently, they have proclaimed their malefactions. For murder, though it have no tongue, will speak with thy most miraculous organ," the Bloody Crow concluded unhappily, turning away again to stare out at the endless ocean ahead, before gesturing vaguely for Winter to leave. "Would you kindly vacate the bridge? The guards will escort you back to your quarters. This… will only take a moment."

Winter stared at him. She yearned to say something, anything at all, to defend her kingdom and herself by extension, but she found that her tongue was tied. She just stood there, dumbfounded, before the sound of heavy metal footfalls could be heard just behind her. A padded hand, presumably that of one of her robotic guards, grabbed her shoulder - it certainly wasn't an iron grip, not hard enough to hurt, but it still wasn't a gentle one as well. She got the message. Still in a state of shock, she limply walked out of the bridge.

Once the metal door slammed shut behind her, she could only barely hear the Bloody Crow say to himself, "Oh, there be players that I have seen play, and heard others praise, and that highly, not to speak it profanely, that, neither having the accent of civility nor the gait of Providence, heathen, nor man, have so strutted and bellowed that I have thought some of nature's journeymen had made men and not made them well, they imitated humanity so abominably..."

Almost imperceptibly, as if only now the reality of her situation was sinking in, Specialist Winter Schnee felt the hot streaks of tears crawl over her cheeks. She had realised this; she was now effectively a prisoner-of-war for a war that had yet to even begin.

To be more precise, her predicament was this; if the war actually began, she would die on this ship. It was inevitable, this unavoidable certainty that she could not possibly escape the Alicorn alive. No, what really tore at her was that nobody would ever know that she had died here - nobody even knew that she was on this accursed submarine, after all.

She would die here alone, forgotten, having achieved nothing. That was her reality, and she hated it, but she couldn't possibly do anything about it.

Despair inevitably followed, as it always would.

/-/

Sometimes, Custodian Morgan le Fay regretted the loss of her humanity.

Indeed, while she was among the ranks of Cainhurst's finest warriors, the men and women who had given themselves to the Undying Queen's service, there was still something missing. Like clay they were moulded, and in the furnace of war they had been forged. They were of iron will and steely muscle. In great armour they were clad, and with the mightiest guns they were armed. They were to be untouched by plague or disease, and no sickness would ever blight them. They were to have tactics, strategies and machines so that no foe could possibly best them in battle, but even then… there was something not right.

Or was it simply the death and destruction that inevitably followed in her footsteps? It was as certain as breathing, and as such it could be confronted and dealt with in time. For now, though, she had more pressing matters to address.

She stepped over the dead bodies of two triad gangsters, their ramshackle shotguns having proven themselves inadequate against a determined platoon of Cainhurst's own armour-clad infantry, and easily managed to keep a steady grasp on the throat in her hands. Said throat, of course, belonged to a still-living man.

"Oh, I see now. You want to feed me to my own beasts..." the man gasped, seemingly laughing in the face of death. "Well, I can't say that I don't deserve it…"

The verified triad boss was certainly a striking figure; he was entirely shirtless, instead relying on a collage of colourful tattoos that covered his entire upper body along with his Caucasian features, being understandably unusual in Mistral, to display his identity. However, despite him being an impressively muscular man, he still stood a less than zero chance against a Custodian.

No, what was so special about this particular piece of scum was that he was the one in charge of Argus's pit fighting scene. As a result, he needed to remain alive, if only for a while longer.

"You received a beast from the Order," Morgan le Fay's voice box intoned. "Where is it?"

The triad boss chuckled, despite the hand around his neck. "Ah… you mean that one. The beast."

"Indeed. What do you know of it?"

"And why should I even tell you anything?"

In response, the Custodian lifted him into the air. Despite his certainly very imposing and tall stature, his feet still dangled underneath him. The grip around his throat tightened, and he was only beginning to turn blue when she dropped him.

"Tell me, while I am being nice enough to not tear out the answers I need with my bare hands."

The triad boss stumbled to his feet, coughing in a fit as he regained some measure of control. "Quite a grip, eh? Didn't expect that from a pipsqueak like you."

Neo would have frowned at that, but the Custodian no longer had a face. She would have then killed him on the spot for that, but the Custodian could not. Not yet, at least.

"Lead me to it," she ordered. Her ahlspiess was firmly gripped in her right hand, and she brought the pointed metal spike of the weapon up to hover right at the gangster's throat - just shy of his Adam's apple.

"Alright, fine. I'll lead you to it. But don't blame me if you get nightmares after the fact…" The triad boss said cautiously, getting the message and beginning to walk. The Custodian followed silently behind him. "The shit that's there… some might say that it's impossible."

Custodian Morgan le Fay had lost her humanity long ago, but not so long ago that she had forgotten what it felt like. Lately, she liked to spend time exploring the things that humanity had given up on. She collated cultural myths of cryptozoology, and compared the similarities between civilizations long gone that never knew each other, and calculated the odds of unicorns.

'Impossible' isn't real, however contradictory that statement seems. Improbable, certainly, but nothing is truly impossible. The world - only one side of the multifaceted whole, as Cainhurst's existence had proven - ran on certain laws that were not absolutes, not really. Not as humanity understood them, at least. There was inevitably some variable they couldn't account for, some scenario they couldn't fathom, where even everything they knew as Fact behaved in ways they couldn't anticipate, and where Truth held little meaning at all.

They walked without stopping. They didn't stop when they passed by the infantry, jamming the muzzles of their assault rifles between the bars of the Grimm cages and gunning down the occupants within with automatic fire. To the tattooed man, it was only a loss of assets - nothing worth crying over. To his captor, it was just the extermination of vermin.

They didn't stop when they saw the bodies of those who had tried to resist being fed to the larger Grimm. The infantry units were hauling body after blood-soaked body, still dressed in gang colours that were now irreversibly stained in red, and hurling them into what amounted to a large concrete pit. At the bottom of the pit was a Tyrant - a large carnivorous bipedal Grimm theropod, with a massive bone-armoured head, enclosing a jaw lined with razor-sharp teeth, counterbalanced by an equally large and heavy tail. Each of the now dead gangsters was eagerly snapped up by those gargantuan jaws, some not even managing to reach the bottom of the enclosure before they were utterly devoured by the monster.

To the triad boss, he was witnessing the desecration of the dead. His men weren't even receiving proper burials, instead being fed to the Grimm that they had once imprisoned like so much meat. He almost stopped, almost - only the threat of death walking behind him kept his feet moving. To the Custodian, it was the simple reality of serving the Undying Queen of Cainhurst - sometimes, service required the shedding of unworthy blood and the kind of ugly pragmatism that they were seeing now. She wouldn't be losing any stasis time over this, though.

Eventually, though, they reached their destination. It was a large dungeon-like cell, in the most secure part of the massive sprawling complex that the pit fights had occupied. The entire complex here had been built within the empty shell of an abandoned Great War-era submarine base, and as such it had proved to be an excellent place to house dangerous Grimm, although recent events had proved that it wasn't nearly as impregnable from the outside.

Perhaps it was the inwards-facing nature of the defences that has proved the downfall of this veritable fortress? She had observed a plethora of traps and kill-zones specifically designed to prevent anything from exiting - they had already passed by multiple barricades placed at strategic chokepoints, and those barricades had each sported a .50 calibre heavy machine gun emplacement as well as provisions for other man-portable weapons. The question was niggling on her mind; why had it been so easy for them to take the place?

"You wonder why all our firepower was pointed inwards instead of outwards?" The tattooed man asked offhandedly, raising an eyebrow when Custodian Morgan turned to look at him. "You've seen the Tyrant, we know what kind of shit we're keeping locked up here, and we kind of have a vested interest in not having the city turn to shit because of a Grimm incursion."

"Would that not be better achieved by simply not housing Grimm within the city's boundaries in the first place?"

The bastard, with all his nerve, dared to chuckle. "People need to be entertained. Entertainment is the opiate of the masses, after all, and the withdrawal tends to be worse than the side effects. Besides, the Grimm Troupe came calling a few years back, so people really just want to watch Grimm die. Who are we to refuse them that?"

Custodian Morgan's voice box let out an electronic blurt, intended to be equivalent to an amused snort, and shrugged. She transformed her ahlspiess back into its umbrella form, retracting the metal spike before resting the umbrella's now blunt tip on the ground.

"Well, you understand what I mean," the triad boss continued. "The Matador would kill us all anyways if we fuck up enough for Grimm to escape."

"The Matador? Ah, you mean the enigma."

"It ain't an enigma if it's real. When legends walk, you're better off not standing in their path."

"Indeed. He has evidently returned. However, this time we will be ready for him."

"Hah!" The tattooed man in front of her exclaimed. "You, ready for him? Trust me when I say that nobody is ever ready for him. The Crown thought they were ready for him, and maybe they were. They are dead now."

"It is too bad, then, that you shall not live long enough to see us triumph," Morgan replied, before prodding the triad boss in the back with the tip of her umbrella. "Now, let us see this so-called beast."

"Okay then, but it's your loss."

They stepped forward towards the enclosure. As they approached, walking down an inordinately long fortified corridor, the triad boss pointed out a row of knee-height metal grilles set along the left wall. "Just so you know, behind those grates over there, there's a twenty millimetre auto-cannon set up in that maintenance passage. We really didn't want to take our chances with this thing."

"Our glorious firepower should suffice to annihilate this mongrel, thank you very much."

"Yeah, you keep telling yourself that," the triad boss replied, before coming to a stop a fair distance from the enclosure itself. "I suppose you can see it pretty well from here."

Custodian Morgan looked past him, and saw the flickerings of blue light. Then, looking closer, she saw the… the beast...

Fear is embedded in humanity's collective memory. It's why humans covet light, why they recoil from snakes before they've even realized what they've seen. It's why the edges of old maps were shrouded in fog, with the words 'here be monsters' the only warning necessary. Here was something from that fog, something that looked straight through the courage of armament, looked through the flesh and bones and into the bloody echoes of humanity's collective memories.

Here is what you knew was lurking, there beyond the circle of the firelight.

Here is your death.

Here be monsters.

It was a malformed skeletal creature, not quite as big as the Tyrant from before, but easily worse. It seemed to be undead, in a way, with the only thing separating it from an actual skeleton being the stringy bluish-back strands of hair clinging to its bones. Its bones and skull seemed to bear ornate engravings, but even that paled in comparison to the crackling blue sparks of electricity that its body seemed to constantly emanate. True to its electrical nature, its movements were without question jerky and erratic, but even that couldn't distract from the true horror of it.

It was animalistic in appearance, in the same distorted way a carnival mirror's reflection was still humanoid. Its limbs were too long, its hands just a little too like hands and not paws, its snarling visage too much like a human skull… as it moved towards them, it soon became clear that its claws were human fingers, the bones of its hand elongated and twisted by whatever had created this thing…

Custodian Morgan, her umbrella forgotten, reached for her sidearm. It was a PB integrally-suppressed pistol, chambered in 9x18mm, and with an eight-round magazine. It felt comfortable in the grip of her left hand, at least, even when she pointed it at the triad boss's head.

"What in the name of everything holy is that damned thing?" Morgan's electronic voice box screeched. "Explain. Now."

"I don't fucking know!" The triad boss shot back, seemingly unperturbed about the pistol being pointed at his face. "The Order dumped this thing on us two weeks ago, and we've had to shut everything down because of it! Some people might think that that's a Grimm, but I've been seeing Grimm every day for twenty years, and that is no Grimm!"

Custodian Morgan took hold of the sudden upwelling of fear and disgust in her gut, and crushed it out of her mind. "Did they say anything at all about what it was, or where they got it?"

"They called it a… a darkbeast. That's all I know."

"A darkbeast…" the Custodian mulled over, lowering her sidearm. "That sounds fitting, at least."

She walked over to stand right in front of the enclosure's heavy-duty metal barrier, watching impassively as the creature within clawed violently at said barrier. She stood there, silently, until she heard the sound of laughter behind her.

"What's wrong?" Custodian Morgan asked contemptuously, whirling around to look at her captive. Her multicoloured hair flared out from the rapids movement, the strands of pink, white and brown coming to rest as she took in the sight of the triad boss caught in paroxysms of laughter.

"Oh, I get it now!" The tattooed man burst out, in between laughs. "This was never about the Grimm, and not about the pit fights as well! You were after the Matador this whole time!"

"How astute of you," the Custodian drawled. She would have sneered, if she still had a face to sneer with.

"But, let me tell you that it won't work," the triad boss said. "You can't catch the Matador, and hell itself will freeze over before you can kill him."

"We'll see about that," Custodian Morgan replied, raising her pistol yet again. "Or rather, I will."

The triad boss sighed, before closing his eyes in acceptance. "Ah well, I had a good run while it lasted. When you see him again, tell him that ol' Rutherford said hi."

She fired twice. To make sure.

Turning around, she didn't even see the now identified Rutherford's body collapse to the cold concrete floor. She turned back again to the beast, crackling with electricity, and contained helplessly in its cage. Her memory of Rutherford, of his tattoos, was dragged out of her memory and brought to her mind's eye - her semblance would project it over her true body, like a mask, in time. Then, she began to think.

It was truly a pity that Roman was now gone. If he were here, she wouldn't be alone with only insight to accompany her. She wouldn't be the only one with eyes on the inside, at the very least, if he were here. Still, there was now a chance to avenge him. She now had a name - the Matador. She now had a trap - this place. Finally, she had the tool of her revenge - this so-called darkbeast. She had a plan…

For all their freedoms, for all their immeasurable spirit and incalculable ingenuity, humans were very limited in what they could know. And for all that she envied them this, the Custodian knew, even in the tiniest sparks along her circuitry, that there were things that Custodian Morgan le Fay knew that the old Neo never could, not as they were. Maybe in the future. But for now, she was alone in her knowing.

Sometimes she looked into the night sky, and tuned the sensors connected to her brain just right, and listened to the music of the spheres, and lamented that nobody else could hear it.

Behind the featureless screen that was now her face, increasing slowly by bytes and quickly-resolved error reports, a loneliness was growing.

Only a machine can truly know how many numbers it takes to make infinity.

(Okay, so the Custodian's sidearm here is a Makarov PB pistol - standard sneaky Russian fare. But enough about that. The stage has been set. Now... it's time to wait for the opening lines.)