His hands scraped some of the dirt up, and moved it up to his nose. He sniffed it once, and then, when that produced no results, put it against his tongue and tasted it slightly before spitting it out again.

"Demon Blood," the boy said. "There was a fight, here."

The girl looked down at him, and then her eyes drifted along a small red trail.

"Her lapdog probably passed through here." The boy continued, his hood hiding his eyes. "Before he found a portal and traveled back to the Nexus."

"I don't think so," the girl said. "I don't think he was involved in this."

"Why?" The boy looked up, his hood slipped back, slightly, and showed the bronze mask beneath it. A long nose-like attachment came down from it, past his chin, like a vertical doctor's mask.

"Because whoever fought these demons was mortally wounded," the girl said. Blonde hair surrounded her face. In back, it was tied up into elaborate braids. Her own mask was white and unadorned, and her face was otherwise uncovered.

The boy followed her gaze and saw the trail of blood, saw how it was buried underneath rubble, but nonetheless there, and was far too much for any normal human to survive.

"It's not worth following," he said.

"We have to be thorough," she said, and walked after the trail without any further conversation.

He sighed, stood, and followed her. They wandered into an alley, and heard the voice right away.

"H-help..." the knight called out.

They looked, and saw a man in armor lying against the wall. He was stil alive, very much alive, thought injured.

"He's used miracles to heal himself," the boy said. "He'll live."

"Guess this wasn't a waste after all," the girl said, and then approached the man.

"Thank the lord. Thank Umbasa," the knight said as she approached.

When she was right in front of him, she reached over, and pulled his helmet off.

"What are you-" he was cut short by the dagger that she planted into his skull.

She held him down and shushed him as he squirmed, spasmed, and finally went still.

"You were right. Best to be thorough," the boy said.

"I'm always right," she withdrew the dagger from the body and flicked the blood off of it.

"Ornea, Vecelles," they heard their names called behind them. "You're wasting time."

"We killed an augment," the boy, Vecelles, said.

"He would have died anyway. This place is crawling with demons, and in his state they would have devoured him."

"Better that they don't get his soul," Ornea said.

"We have more important things to do, like find that mage before he wreaks havoc."

"Our trail ran cold," Vecelles said.

The woman who had called their names grimaced harshly, "follow me, then. You're young. You're bad at tracking. It's to be expected."

"Fine," Ornea said. "Lead the way."

Mephistopheles turned, and moved swiftly through the piles of human and demon bodies, deeper into what had once been the Boletarian palace. Her pupils had to run to keep up.

They moved on without speaking. The Soul Society discouraged small chat, it discouraged most anything that wasn't essential to completing missions.

Mostly, they avoided the demons. Mephistopheles was known wide as the mistress of stealth. Occasionally, she would hold up her hand, and listen for sounds that neither of them could hear. When she did this, they froze. But though they stood completely still their breaths were still louder than any sound they could hear.

"Come on," she would inevitably say, and urge them to run forward silently.

"Are we still on his trail?" Vecelles asked.

"Yes. Silent."

"I was merely wondering-"

Ornea elbowed him. He turned and glared at her, then realized that it had slowed him down. When they turned and looked back at Mephistopheles, though, her eyes were turned to a row of burnt bodies lying on the ground. She looked down at the body of a mother cradling her baby, protecting it from whatever came next.

"Is anything wrong?" Ornea asked.

"Nothing," Mephistopheles said, harsher than before. "Don't get distracted."

"It's horrific, though," Vecelles said.

"These people deserved everything that happened to them. This entire kingdom did," Ornea reminded him. "Our goal is to contain the fog, and eliminate all survivors."

"Right."

"Starting with the dangerous ones. Like that wizard," she said, and then turned to Mephistopheles. "Right?"

"No chit-chat," was the only response she got.

She opened her mouth again, closed it, and they continued to follow Mephistopheles through what had once been a town for the rich and elite. Vecelles saw more bodies, and reminded himself as he did that they were the bodies of the enemy. Even the many dead children would have turned to the soul arts later on in life. The enemy, and not an enemy to be taken prisoner. An enemy to be killed.

Every one of them. Without mercy.

"Feel that?" Mephistopheles said, suddenly.

"What?" Ornea asked

But Vecelles stopped, and heard it, felt it. Like a whispering that ran through his entire body, not just his ears. A darkness that seemed to be leaking out of everything around them. It gave him the weak, but specific impulse to curl up and die as quickly as possible.

"There's a very powerful demon nearby," he said.

"Shouldn't it be hiding behind dark fog?" said Ornea.

"Yes. Unless it's him," said Vecelles.

Sage Freke.

Almost. I am almost ready. Just a few more prods and-

Sage Freke froze. His hands, delicately lifting a soul, lowered, and placed it back, gently, where he had found it.

He turned, and glanced around the seemingly empty room.

"The first thing that you should know," he said. "Is that you can't sneak up on me."

The room didn't answer.

"Come out, and we'll talk," echoes pulsated in his voice. "There's no harm in talk."

At once, six knives flew toward him from different directions. He murmured a soft word, energy surrounded his body, and they were incinerated before they touched him. Freke's eyes turned toward the sill of the windows above him, a dark figure scurried out just before he could see them clearly. He growled, and ran outside to find the figure leaping away, over the roof.

"I was in the middle of important research," the echoes were louder now, and the Old One's begging voice could be heard just beneath Freke's angry one.

The buildings were organized into a neat row, forming a wall of upper class housing, with no ladder or way of climbing in sight.

That was why the building to Freke's left suddenly collapsed into dark, writhing energy, and reformed itself as a stairway.

"Do you understand the power that I have at my disposal? Do you have any idea any idea what I am capable of doing to the fools who dare to trifle with me?"

As if to prove his point, Freke moved up the stairs and onto the roof so quickly that he seemed to be nothing more than a blur. When he had reached the roofs, he scanned carefully. His glowing eyes seemed to spark as he caught another blur of movement, skirting just behind the arch of a roof.

"I seeeeee you!" He screamed maniacally, and the roof melted away into the same dark energy. But when it was gone, no one was behind it.

He was losing time, and he was losing patience, he shot up to the top of one of the roof arches and looked around, but again saw nothing, whoever this was, they were good at hiding.

There were all sorts of fun things he could do that would go a long way toward ensuring the death of anyone in a half mile radius. The problem, however, was that all of his own research was a lot closer than that. He couldn't stop his studies. Nothing was worth stopping. Not his safety, not his health, not even his own soul. Future generations would be grateful that he'd made these sacrifices, when the results of his research went on to benefit mankind.

And with that, he realized that this wasn't worth it. His research was too important to worry about every would-be attacker. Far, far too important.

He stepped down from the roof, and back down his makeshift stairway. He had been very close, and he was still close. He was almost on to a major breakthrough. Any day now he would know the connection between the Old One, the Human Soul, and its enriching power. The very secrets of the universe, he could feel them, he could taste them, they were-

-Gone.

When Freke entered his room, again, all the souls that he had been experimenting on were gone.

"No." He murmured, quietly.

But no one was there to validate it. He was alone, and it was a whisper in the dark, incapable of conveying the weight of what had just happened.

"No no no no no!" He screamed. Energy flew out from him. Rays of darkness filled the room and grew intense enough that they cut through the surrounding walls. The rays became waves and as Freke screamed the building crumbled around him, stone and wood were vaporized and then he stood in the center of a crater, alone.

"You bastards!" He yelled, and from deep within him came The Old One's sad, begging, desperate voice. "I need that research! I need it!"

Ornea slowed down for a half second, and felt Mephistopheles pull her so hard that she choked.

"Keep running," was all she said.

She took a deep breath and tried to remember all the souls inside of her and pull from them. There was some stamina that she hadn't used up yet, there had to be. She sprinted again before she bothered to find it.

Vecelles, soft-hearted as he was, was better at running, and almost seemed to be outpacing Mephistopheles at various points. But she always pulled ahead in the end. Ornea didn't see why they had to keep running so fast, it's not like they were going to lose eachother. The augites that Mephistopheles had stolen from Freke were glowing so brightly that she seemed impossible to lose.

Finally, after it felt like they had been running for hours, Mephistopheles grabbed them both, and threw them into an abandoned building. Ornea stumbled in, and nearly crashed into the wall.

"You know," she said, once she'd recovered. "Commands are good. Like...stop here? Or you could even imply it with 'this seems safe.'"

Mephistopheles calmly walked up to her, and slapped her across the face so hard that the entire world seemed to shake. She staggered again.

"You're clumsy," she said. "If you continue to be clumsy, you'll die."

Ornea rubbed her cheek and tried to recover, but the slap had been so hard that now the entire world seemed to be shaking. When she finally managed to look up, she saw Vecelles giving her a mean-spirited grin. She grimaced.

"Pick your augites," Mephistopheles said, and threw them on the ground.

"Aren't you going to distribute them?" Vecelles asked.

Mephistopheles walked over to a window and stared out it, crossing her arms behind her.

After all this time, he still expected her to respond, and that was his weakness. Ornea rushed to the augites while he hesitated, but she was still staggered enough by the slap that her hand fumbled a few times before her fingers finally wrapped around an augite. Vecelles grabbed one right after her, and morosely she realized her headstart was gone. It was clear that they were all of high quality, but not the same quality. One could easily be worth ten of the others. But in the frenzy, it was impossible to tell. Ornea knew that Vecelles wouldn't hesitate to leave her entirely without souls, even if it meant her death. She knew it, because she would do the same for him.

She was snatching, and grabbing, and picking them off the floor, and suddenly a leg came at her and she narrowly moved out of the way. It hit her ribs, and she made a gasp that sounded like a choke, but she still kept grabbing. Vecelles wasn't so lucky, it hit him in the head, and he fell onto his side, holding his skull.

"What the hell was that for?"

"Letting your guard down," Mephistopheles said, then walked over and stomped on his chest, just below the amount of force required to crack his ribs. "That was for questioning me."

Ornea grabbed at the augites while Vecelles was distracted.

"She's getting more. She'll be stronger," he complained.

"Yes." Mephistopheles said. "She will."

But Vecelles pushed free from Mephistopheles and suddenly rolled forward, getting to his feet and, in the same motion, kneeing Ornea in the face, she fell back. Some of the precious stones fell from her hands. Vecelles snatched a few from the air and grabbed at the rest when they hit the ground.

"Good," Mephistopheles said. Then stepped back and became an observer again.

Ornea struck back with her elbow, careful not to lose the augites she was already holding. She hit his side, and he didn't react. His fist came out to her stomach and she gasped, but recovered before she had time to fully recoil

They weren't on an even playing field. Men were over twice as strong as women and she had more augites to lose. So instead of relying on brute force, she spun around when he swung again and whirled past him, grabbing more augites while he recovered from trying to attack her, but not keeping her back to him. Mephistopheles had taught them a lot about putting your back to someone. They had the scars to prove it.

Vecelles gave up on fighting as well, and together they snatched up the rest of the augites. After the last one had been grabbed, they both scurried away to opposite sides of the room, watching eachother.

Mephistopheles took one of the augites she had kept for herself, and rose it to the window. The sunlight passed through the glass, but lingered on the swirling mass within it, vibrant and glowing.

"These are people," Mephistopheles said. "Do not forget that. We do this only to fight fire with fire."

And with that, she broke the augite. Her pupils followed her. Ornea felt the souls flow into her. She felt herself be enriched by them. It was easy to enjoy the power, the greater consciousness. To revel in it, but that was not the way they were to approach it. It was a sorrowful, hateful thing they must do.

If they enjoyed it too much, they were part of the problem.

And Mephistopheles would kill them, too.

"Neither of you will last long," she suddenly said. "You're the final students of the Soul Society, and you wouldn't have been my first choice. Either of you could easily have been my last."

They both stopped crushing the augites, and looked at her.

"I hope you die soon. I can make better use of those souls you're wasting."

"We're still alive," Vecelles said. "When everyone else is dead. We survived. That counts for something, right?"

"Luck," Mephistopheles said. "Yurt was better than both of you together."

"What happened to him?" Vecelles asked.

"You are stupid. I told you he died."

"Yeah, but how?"

"He met someone stronger than him."

"Who?"

Mephistopheles let out a shallow hmph at that, the closest she ever came to laughter.

"What's funny?" Ornea asked. Something that got any reaction out of Mephistopheles had to be.

"Vecelles just asked a question with no answer."

Ornea wanted to ask for clarification, but Mephistopheles wasn't fond of conversation, and seemed to have given out as much as she could handle. Instead, she forcused on absorbing the souls from the augites she was crushing.

"Why are we stocking up on these?" Vecelles asked.

Mephistopheles looked out the window again, and didn't answer for a long time. When she spoke, it was so sudden that Ornea jolted.

"There are two people I need dead."

"This is idiocy," Biorr said. "The one thing I know 'bout fighting wars is that the longer ye wait, the stronger yer enemy gets. And we ain't getting stronger, lad, we're just sitting here."

"You're forgetting that we aren't the ones leading the war effort," Ostrava said. "The Monumental and the Maiden have decided that it's worth it for him to be doing...whatever he's doing. I think we should give them the benefit of the doubt."

Biorr grunted. "Ye trust too easy, lad. It'll bite ye in the arse, someday."

"It hasn't yet," Ostrava said.

"Yeh, but someday..." Biorr murmured.

Ostrava looked up, through the Nexus, and saw the Maiden sitting there, and Nameless...Her Champion...whatever he called himself now, sitting in front of her, his legs crossed. For a week they had been like that, silent and motionless. And they didn't show any sign of finishin.

In the meantime, they'd have to wait.

Where are we?

We are passing through worlds. Fast enough that thy mind struggleth to keep up. Thou must allowest it to weaken. Slumberest as we travel. Slumberest.

There's so much. It's too much. I can't...I can't.

Calmest thy soul.

I can't!

One hand reached out and touched another.

I am here. Calmest thy soul.

Where are we going?

To another world.

How will that help?

Thou willst know. I promise. But the answer beith too much to share in words.

That's always what you say. Something cryptic. But there are never any answers. After all this time, I still don't even know who you are, or where you came from.

That beith what thee willst know.

What?

By the end of this journey, thou willst know everything about me.

And you couldn't just tell me? You still can't?

No.

Why? Why is it so difficult?

Thou willst understand.

How long will this take?

It shalt end soon. Be ready.

Told you I'd be back.

Updates will be slow. But they will happen.