The inquisition was not at all what Shizuo had expected. Holy though the job is, they're forced to camp in dreary conditions- the cons of working a low-paid but noble job- the bishop, Shinra would say, laughing. Shinra didn't look at all like a man of cloth, but neither did Shizuo- he supposed the book shouldn't be judged by the cover, although he felt himself gritting his teeth whenever anyone of them would mention the word monster- because beneath the cover was something worst than the cover itself.

Shinra had patted him with a friendly smile, and rambled on during their walk to the nearby village.

"A long walk, eh, Shizuo-kun?" The bishop had taken to speak his name casually. It annoys Shizuo, but Shinra meant no ill-will, so Shizuo couldn't hate him. The only person Shizuo hates most is none other than himself.

"What's the village we're going to like?" He wanted to ask why the hell a bishop is talking to a sinful being like him, but he suppose being a man of cloth doesn't mean you're free of sins, maybe the man who wore the smiling mask beside him is also, like him, repenting.

Shinra pulled over his robe, white so it won't touch the ground. "A demonic village, people say."

"Demonic village?" Shizuo frowned.

"They say there's a lot of witches there, women sneaking on the middle of the night sucking people's soul like succubuses. They wanted us to come to ascertain whether those women- or harlots, as they so choose to put it in the letters, are witches."

Shizuo's stomach churned uneasily. A witch trial.

The witch trial is the hysteria incarnate of frightened people, turning blindly to shoot any deers at sight. The deers, for the lack of the better word, are the supposed 'witches'. The inquisition are supposed to force the witches to talk, under all tortures. If they die from the torture then they're not witches, and are considered victims of hearsay, but if they didn't die, then the world is rid of another potential malcontent.

The holy script had been clear if not terse about that.

"Do not allow a sorceress to live." Exodus 22:18

"'A man or woman who is a medium or spiritist among you must be put to death. You are to stone them; their blood will be on their own heads.'" Letivicus 20:27

Shinra seemed to have the same disconcerting thoughts as Shizuo, "This is ugly business, Shizuo. But something have to do it. Sometimes I wonder if all men of cloth had wandered to repent for something, because no man with an easy conscience would have chosen so sordid a job."

Shizuo didn't reply, he simply trod on his weary path and Shinra lets out another hearty laugh.

The day was turning dark and the village was still far away. Turning to the members of the inquisition, of whom Shizuo didn't care enough to memorize their names- it was four or five priests, a group of seven in total, him and Shinra included- Shinra said, pointing to a nearby lodge. "We'll stay there tonight. Let's ask its owners for temporary habitation." It was a small cottage, weathered by age, but habitable. Beggars can't be choosers, Shizuo supposed. The cottage owner is an old woman, haggard and tired, yet a sly eye poke itself out when they say they're from the inquisition.

"Why, then, stay sirs. Enjoy your lodging. I ain't taking no money from men of cloth. Why, I'll be damned by the gods if I refuse you a night's rest."

The woman kept sneering, which distorted her wrinkles to be an even more terrifying monstrosity, then she showed her their rooms, dusty but still habitable. She lived alone, she said. Rest of her family lives here too, but beneath the ground which they had previously slept. They're buried already, ain't coming back, the lady puts it, but she kept their rooms intact, for when their spirits decide to visit.

The lady then sneered again before leaving them to their peace.

Everyone slept, except Shizuo.

When the midnight came and everyone's tucked in their beds, Shizuo had felt a dryness in his throat that he went out, and searching for water and not finding any, had headed out the inn. The forests outside had turned and assumed a creepiness which had been shrouded by the daylight.

Yet he was not afraid of anything, of the unnamed beings that lurk in the dark- they can't hurt him.

He was a monster himself, after all.

So lighted by what little of his barely functioning nocturnal vision and whatever light the moon provides, which thankfully is a full moon, he try to remember the basic landscape of his surroundings. There's a lake around here somewhere, he's rather sure of it.

Then his feet felt what seemed to be a wet soil, muddy.

The trees clear around there and the moon shines very brightly. Eerie in a beautiful way.

He was enraptured by the moon when he suddenly felt a pair of eyes staring at him intensely, to which his head immediately turned onto. The figure was almost illuminated by the moon, and by hell, he looks ethereally inhumane. The eyes were scarlet, it reminds him of the muddy blood that had fallen and scatter in the soil, whenever Shizuo had hurted someone badly, glinting of his sins. It was a young man, perhaps of his age, with figure lithe like an elf, but something that pronounced danger above elegance.

"Never seen you before." There was something silky about the voice.

Didn't the lady said she lived alone? Something akin to a chill began to flicker in Shizuo's dim, barely awake mind.

"I can say the same thing." Shizuo replied.

The man before him smirked, his red eyes glinting somewhat ferociously. "I'm Izaya."

A prophet's name? Shizuo remembered reading about a man named Isaiah, but he gulped. "I came with the inquisition." He said suddenly, and he thought he saw deep, black fear in the other man's eye, which disappeared in a flicker- Shizuo hoped it was the moon that had casted the illusion of fear. "My name is Shizuo."

"A man of cloth, hm." Izaya said, pondering awhile. "Weird, I could almost smell blood from you. A man of God shouldn't smell of the scarlet liquor that the adversary was so fond of."

"I-" Shizuo said, suddenly he felt anger. A man who had met him shouldn't be able to judge him, so, "You're not human, aren't you?"

"A monster? Wasn't that what they used to call you? Shizu-chan?"

The term of endearment was easily lost as Shizuo felt blood rushing through his brain. He reached his hand to yank Izaya- to make him disappear, disappear. But Izaya was swift. "A priest who's stained with blood, and quick to violence, Shizu-chan?"

"I shall not be mocked by the likes of you, demon!" Shizuo said- still trying to reach Izaya's hand- to twist and watch it morph to something more dreadful than himself, and the back of his mind was whispering, aren't you just so comfortably projecting Shizuo?

His lips were then sealed with a kiss. "G'night, Shizu-chan."