Meli can barely keep herself from crying as she leaves the Alerio manor. She's feared this from the start: that the one person who needs to be convinced of the reality of the situation, the princess, would scorn her. She supposes she can't blame the princess, though. It is all rather short notice, and the whole thing does rather sound like the rantings of a hysterical woman. And Meli has little to recommend herself as a respectable authority. True, she does claim descendance from Isaac Lysander, but that is a faint connection of blood that had started to lose authority even before her mother's adolescent years. She's no channeler chosen by the gods, nor is she a sagestress with the wisdom of the seven ages of alchemy. She is only Meli.

Only Meli, who perhaps puts too much faith in silly little stories from primitive minds.

Even before she's left the main promenade in front of the castle, she sees the reason in the princess' words. Of course Thea would have naught but the best of Adepts protecting her. Surely even a small entourage as Thea had described would be enough to fend off Ramesh, because surely Ramesh hadn't truly learned to harness the power of the Anemosian spells, because that would just be...absurd. And as powerful as Meli considers Ramesh's normal powers to be in relation to hers, she is (almost) certain that he would not be able to stand up against a combined force of Thea, Minayo, and the royal guards.

But there must be some sort of danger, or else the Wise One would not have warned me about... Meli stops in her tracks, almost bumping into a little boy walking by her in the opposite direction. She frowns and sighs. She doesn't even know anymore that she really did encounter the Wise One. Even only a day after the incident, it feels only like the product of a disjointed dream. She's certain of what she heard, saw, and felt, but only in the sense that perhaps she could spin an interesting tale of it, if she had any sort of bardic inclinations. But truth measured by the depth of the heart's conviction always leads to ruin, a wise person had once said. She's positive she should remember who said it, but now she can't bring herself to care.

In a gloomy haze, Meli wanders the streets near the castle, trying to find solace somewhere, somehow. But she passes by all her favorite destinations: that one bakery with the delicious sweet cheese rolls, the bookstore run by two elderly Xiannese twin sisters, the flower shop where she bought the potted cactus for her altar. She instead finds herself on one of the stone bridges that cross the Sacred River, leaning against the carved stone railing and gazing at her broken reflection in the water's surface as the rest of Neo Valeriam breathes around her. Meli has the sudden thought that maybe she should have been born a Mercury Adept. Not only would it better fit her personality, but maybe she would have the ability to scry visions in the water, instead of having them appear to her out of the thin air. She could re-check her visions by staring deeply enough into the water, and she wouldn't have to rely on the whims of deities. Maybe.

"Oi." A young girl moves next to Meli. She's dressed in a silk dress of pale gold in the traditional Xiannese style and carries an open wooden parasol on her shoulder, shielding herself from the sunlight. Her black hair is pulled up into a single bun high behind her head, and decorated with a real lotus blossom. Her slanted eyes are lined thickly with black kohl, the eyelids blushed with rouge. Her lips smack of a bright red as well. "Pretty rich girl. You come with me, yes?" The girl speaks with a thick Xiannese accent.

"Er..." Meli is startled. "Is there something I can help you with?"

The girl nods furiously. "You come," she says, and in the next moment she's dragging Meli gently but firmly through the streets.

Too confused and emotionally exhausted to put up a fight, Meli lets herself be led to a dingy-looking pawnshop not far from the river. As they enter, the girl calls out to the owner. "Girl is here! Give room!"

"Sure enough." The owner, a middle-aged man, only points to a ladder located in a back corner of the shop, leading up to a hole.

Meli bites her lip; she doesn't like this. "You must forgive me, miss, but I r-really don't think – "

"Is okay!" the girl insists. "No harm, none at all. Need help." She ushers Meli to the ladder, and Meli feels she has no choice but to climb.

The attic room is small and shadowy, the glass windows covered in dirt and cobwebs and just barely opened to let a little more light in. Boxes of old junk line the walls. In the center sits a small wooden table, a footstool with its cushion bleeding stuffing, and an old armchair.

Upon entering, the girl walks briskly around the attic, peering at the boxes and poking at some of them with her now-closed umbrella. She opens the windows and pokes her head out, surveying the outside world before pulling her head back in and shutting the windows tightly with a painful creak. Once she finishes her strange ritual, she faces Meli. "All right, let's talk," she says in unaccented Yardel.

Meli stares. She recognizes the voice now. "Aren't you...?"

Minayo gives a smile of reddened lips. "Sorry about all the theatrics," she says. "It would be pretty bad if everyone in Neo Valeriam knew that Thea's personal ninja had abandoned her for a moment." She sits down in the armchair, laying the umbrella on the table. "Especially if what you were saying earlier is true."

"You...believe me?"

"Not in so many words," Minayo admits. "Don't really have any way of verifying it until after all's said and done. But like hell I'm letting anything happen to Thea on my watch." She sneezes. "Sorry about that. It's all the dust in here."

Meli starts to dig around in her purse for a handkerchief –

"Don't worry about it, I've survived worse." Minayo sniffles. "I'll try to keep this short, since this place sucks but it's pretty secure for this sort of thing."

"How did you find me?" Meli asks, feeling herself sweat in the still, hot air of the attic. "Did you follow me?"

"Sort of. I've got dogs that can sniff down anything. All I had to do was give a description of you and I could practically retrace your movements since you left the Alerio manor. Trusty ol' Yzades down below was the one who spotted you going towards the bridge. But forget all that, we can't have a bubbly-headed rich girl blabbing the kingdom's secrets, yeah? Here's what I wanna know – what are you gonna do from here?"

Meli tests the footstool with a hand, making sure it isn't going to fall apart beneath her. She carefully sits down on it and frowns at the lumpiness of the torn cushion. "I will be in the Mud Quarters. I don't know that I have the ability to prevent something from happening to her Highness, but I feel as though I must witness this to its end, whatever it may be."

Minayo grins. "Good. Maybe I can use you."

"How?"

"Still working that out, but since I wasn't able to convince Thea to get more guards, it's good to know I can drag you along. If anything, it's good just to have an extra pair of eyes floating around. Got anything special I should know about?"

"Nothing noteworthy. I'd like to think that my healing and defensive Psynergies will be useful enough, however."

"Ha! You don't see a lot of Mars healers around. They're either Mercury or Venus." She sneezes again, covering her mouth daintily with the tips of her fingers. "Whoo. Sorry. I was hoping you were packing some firepower under those skirts of yours, but that's just as well – the royal guard, including myself, runs on the theory that the best defense is a damn good offense, yeah? It'll be good to have a specialized Adept along."

"If I may make a humble suggestion," Meli says, "you will want to surround her Highness in as much Venus Psynergy as possible, to best counteract Ramesh's Jupiter element."

"Oh, yeah, he's one of the windbags. I'll deal with the bastard well enough. Is he any good? Ah, never mind, even if he was Ivan himself he still couldn't stand against me and four other Venus Adepts."

Meli can't help but laugh softly. "That's quite a claim to make."

"Wouldn't make it if it wasn't true. You got anything else I should know about this guy's plans? Like maybe where in the Mud Quarters he would attack?"

Meli frowns. "I hadn't thought about that, I'm sorry to say." It's a good question, but Meli can't think of an answer to it. "Ramesh lives on the second floor of a tavern called The Swindling Angel, but I highly doubt he's going to attack the princess so close to home – he wouldn't want his sister involved."

Minayo wrinkles her nose as she leans forward to sketch something in the thick layer of dust on the table. "So that would be around here, right?" she says, marking a spot with an X.

Meli peers at what Minayo has drawn. She eventually recognizes it as a rough map of the Mud Quarters. "No, more north. It's not quite that deep into the Quarters."

She makes the necessary adjustments. "So you don't think he's going to show up anywhere near here."

"I don't believe so. But...I must confess that the Ramesh I knew would never even think about killing another person, never mind the princess, so perhaps my prediction of his behavior is flawed at this point."

Minayo sneezes again. "Damn. All right. We'll just have to keep on our guard, then. I've got a couple of dogs down in the Mudhole that might be able to track him. What's he look like?" Meli gives a description. "Orochi's balls, he's a Contigan! That's not suspicious at all."

"He's Valerian-born. But he will be counting on his appearance and his element to give the impression that Contigo is plotting against Neo Valeriam."

"What a crazy bastard, yeah?" Minayo lets out a sigh and rubs her nose with her knuckles. "Argh...I can do things by the throw of a stick in a storm, but that doesn't mean I like it or that I feel any more confident about my gut feeling every time I have to do it."

Meli bows as deeply as she can, contrite and feeling slightly sheepish. "I'm terribly sorry. I haven't been much help, have I?"

"Don't be stupid! You've given me enough to work with, both for planning things out and for working on fleet feet. This'll be fine! Really!"

But a tense, uncertain silence settles over the two young women like another layer of dust in the room.

Minayo speaks again. "So, I think I should apologize for Thea, a little," she says. "That she was kind of, you know, rude and stuff to you."

Meli shakes her head. "She had every right to answer as she did. I realize how foolish I must have looked and sounded."

"Thea's a nice girl, really. It's just that sometimes – or all the time – she puts her people before herself." Minayo gives a sniffle. "Makes her a better leader than her father, which is good and all, but it causes a lot of grief for those around her, yeah? And she's so damn stubborn. It's going to get her killed one day. If this thing tomorrow doesn't kill her, that is."

Meli parts with Minayo with a feeling of goodwill and trust towards her and a bit of reassurance that someone else is willing to take her dream visions seriously. But as she steps out onto the street again, she expects the gravel to fall away beneath her, as though her very presence brings destruction to everything around her. Every time she hears a child laughing, she wonders if it'll be his last, and whether his mother will be gone or will live to mourn her child's death. Every time she passes a building she recognizes, she can see its ruins clearly in her mind, more real than the reality in front of her.

The lantern flame of her altar, meant to chase away the darkness of doubt, fades in Meli's memory with every step she takes towards home.