Lesley jerked upwards in her bed for the third time in the past hour, the image of Harley's mangled corpse flashing in front of her eyes again.

Just a dream, she muttered to herself. Just a dream.

Dyrroth's cackle echoed in her head, and Lesley clamped her hands over her ears as the noise faded away as fast as it had come.

She couldn't do this-she couldn't sustain being this overwhelmed all the time. She needed to get Harley back.

Her palms shook and her heart thudded in her chest. The last time she had felt fear this potent was when Gusion had wound up in the hospital-she tried to ignore the flutter she felt even when thinking about him-and back when she was ten, when the house had gone dark and she'd tried to find her father, not knowing whether there was anyone left in the house, and if so, who it was.

The phone buzzed and Lesley's lungs tightened as she struggled for oxygen. Her hands scrabbled around the desk and the phone was knocked off the nightstand.

Lesley smacked the light switch by pure coincidence and fell off the bed, her vision swirling and her breathing erratic.

She grabbed the phone and with trembling fingers, answered the call and pressed the speaker symbol. "Hello?"

"Jesus, I can hear how much of a wreck you are just from one word," Dyrroth's nonchalant drawl, ironically, was the one that calmed her down.

For Harley, she reminded herself. For Harley.

"Where's my brother?"

"Somewhere safe," Dyrroth hissed. "You know, just in case I lost my temper and accidentally clawed his throat out."

A blazing inferno came to life in the pit of her belly, wanting to rip the arrogant swine's vocal cords through the phone, but cold fear snuffed the flames out.

"Going to speak? No? Great. With how efficient you were in capturing Gusion, I wanted to shower you with praises. I asked for his corpse by Tuesday."

"It's not Tuesday yet."

"Yet you aren't even marginally close to him. As such, there's a price to pay, because I am a very angry person."

Lesley swallowed nervously. "Don't harm Harl-"

"Oh, would you stop it, yammering about your brother. I already said he's secure." Dyrroth snapped, irritation lacing his voice. "No, the victim is someone else. You'll find out in the morning. But-" a sudden loud nails-on-chalkboard noise came over the call, and Lesley winced. "-their blood is on your hands."

The line went silent.

Lesley grabbed her rifle. Time to go to work.

Gusion sifted through the vials of liquid Helcurt had found when going through Carmilla's buildings.

"She was one hell of a potioneer," Helcurt whistled appreciatively. "I don't think I even knew about this variant of Shadowbringer venom."

"She made a new venom?"

"This one's more of a poison-slow acting, designed for pain. Ooh, and this is a more corrosive liquid. Nothing here that's useful against Dyrroth, unfortunately, unless we get a hold of his dinner. But there's a few healing potions here-fixes you up from near death to near perfect."

Gusion held up the swirling sea blue liquid up to eye level. "We should get one of these to Rafaela."

"Leave one at the body, it'll be suspected as evidence," Helcurt suggested.

"We then have one, two, three, four healing vials left," Gusion noticed. "You can have these."

Helcurt tucked them under his cloak. "We'll have to get a better container. Anyways, let's evacuate. Sun's gonna come up in a few hours."

Silvanna woke up to a murder.

The murder of her eardrums by Fanny, to be more exact.

And also the one of the elven archer Miya, but more importantly her eardrums.

The moment she stepped on the crime scene, she noticed a lot of things.

A. The dark aura stench was thicker than buffalo skin.

B. The murder was bloodier than any cheesy B-horror movie she'd watched.

As such, the killer was Dyrroth. Easy.

Silvanna turned to Fanny. "Well, why are we still here? It's quite obvious Dyrroth did this."

"Really?"

Silvanna frowned. "What are you not telling me?"

"Carmilla died last night. And Rafaela's saying they both died at around the same time, with a maximum of a three-minute gap."

"But that's not possible."

"Exactly why I called you over."

Silvanna frowned and walked over to the corpse. "Dyrroth definitely killed Miya."

"Exactly," Rafaela walked over. "The razor mark on her stomach is definitely from his razors. But Carmilla's death is also incredibly bloody. I'm not sure whether anyone that isn't Dyrroth would delight in a murder that bloody."

"Show me the body," Silvanna said. "After I finish brushing my teeth."

"And get changed," Fanny looked up and down at Silvanna's pyjamas. "Yep, showing up to a murder scene in your night clothes is not something a good princess does."

"Don't tell me what to do," Silvanna snapped without malice in her tone, turning around. "I rule the place."

Fanny rolled her eyes. "Yes, your Majesty."

Harley had never felt this weak for as long as he could remember.

He didn't know how long he'd been held here. No light entered the room.

"Hungry…" he weakly begged. "Please."

No reply, as usual. The ants eating away at his stomach walls showed no sign of stopping. He'd tried his hat tricks, but it didn't work.

"Lesley…"

Lancelot was stunned when he saw Carmilla's murder.

"Dyrroth can't have murdered both Carmilla and Miya that quickly. Especially Carmilla, she has put up a good fight."

Alucard frowned. "You're saying there's another murderer in town?"

Lancelot wondered how thick Alucard must have been to forget that they'd suspected Gusion, but realised that the demon hunter's gaze wasn't on him. Lancelot turned around to see Saber stalking over to them.

"About time, mech," Alucard walked past Lancelot and clapped Saber on the shoulder. "All the blood was making me a bit sick. You can take it from here."

Saber grabbed Alucard's hand with enough force to make him wince. "You are hiding something."

Lancelot drew his fencing sword. "Take it easy, Saber. We have a message for the princess."

"We're telling her?" Alucard whined.

"Of course we're telling her. Saber, let go of Alucard's arm before you inflict permanent damage."

Saber relinquished his iron grip and Alucard rubbed at the hand. "I will inform the princess now."

He smoothly turned on his heel and walked away.

Alucard clenched his fist and released it. "Hard to hide anything from a cyborg. How did he even find out?"

"Well, if you say that the great demon hunter Alucard is queasy because of blood, no one will believe you. Not your best moment there."

Alucard grimaced. "Point taken."

3 hours later

Most of the resistance knew who did it by noon.

Rafaela was furiously analysing the blue solution left beside Carmilla's body. No fingerprints could be found, but a faint, almost unrecognisable tinge was detected. It would have been redundant, if not for the fact that Gusion had used a dagger imbued with magic which left behind similar imprints.

Lesley wanted to protest against it because she knew Gusion was innocent, on the basis that she was his best friend and she knew him inside out and he didn't have a single traitorous bone in his body.

But who was she to protest? She was trying to kill him anyway.

Traitor, a voice that sounded oddly similar to Gusion's hissed in her head.

Lesley slammed her head onto the dining table. Across her, Harley's chair stared at her, taunting her.

A chair couldn't taunt her. What was she thinking?

She didn't know if she could do it. She didn't know if she could kill Gusion.

She had to try.

It was her only shot at getting her brother back. And she needed her brother.

Lesley picked up her rifle and headed for her bike.

She needed a plan. Quickly.

She tried to think of what Gusion would be doing.

Knowing him, pigging out.

Gusion barely resisted the temptation to moan as he stuffed the sandwich in his mouth.

"This is the best breakfast I've ever had."

Helcurt rolled his eyes. "You stole it from 7-11 and broke into a person's house to heat it up."

"It still works."

Gusion unceremoniously stuffed the food into his mouth and chewed contentedly.

"What's our plan next? I think we can manage enough for the day with this."

Helcurt growled. "Quite simple. Get Zhask, and cross the border into the Cadia Riverlands. We can try causing a bit of anarchy there."

"So we murder Zhask tonight then."

"I was thinking this evening. The faster we do it, the better."

Gusion walked over to the door. "Well then, we'd better occupy ourselves-"

He stopped as the door broke down to reveal seven Imperial Guards.

Silvanna curiously leaned forward, her gaze boring into Alucard's eyes. The left one twitched.

"You're saying Gusion Paxley has joined Dyrroth's side."

Alucard nodded mutely.

"Gusion may be targeting members that defected. Selena was killed by him a few days ago, and Carmilla and Cecilion are now dead. His next target would be Zhask."

The grim tone in which the name of the Kastiyan Warlord settled over the throne room like a smothering haze.

Lancelot was the first to break the silence. "We're not so sure that Gusion is working with Dyrroth. In the course of a month, Dyrroth attacked Gusion twice-once at Lesley's house, and once at his own. Both were definitely intended to kill, and almost succeeded."

Silvanna tilted her head. "And from the looks of it, Gusion was fond of Lesley."

"They were friends, yes. Best friends." Lancelot refrained from mentioning the numerous times he'd had to end up trying to give them both veiled romantic advice with the subtlety of a monster truck.

"Attachments can be faked, princess," Alucard commented. Lancelot wanted to slap him.

"Maybe," Silvanna murmured noncommittally.

Lancelot and Alucard stood there for five more minutes as Silvanna thought.

Alucard finally spoke. "Have you reached a consensus?"

Silvanna's eyes widened. "Oh, right, you're still here. Uh, go hunt demons, or whatever it is that you do. Uhh…" she grabbed a piece of paper from the table on her side, and squinted at it. "You're dismissed."

Lancelot barely covered up his snort as a cough before they both left the throne room.

Helcurt trotted up to the elevator and clawed at the doors. "How do these work?"

Gusion closed the door of the apartment and bolted it shut from the outside, locking in the seven unconscious guards before hissing while holding his bruised wrist. "We'll find that out some other time. Why not we camp Zhask's house?"

Helcurt hummed and leapt down the stairs and Gusion followed him to the car when he realised something.

"Helcurt," Gusion started. "Lesley didn't have backup."

"We're lucky for that."

"Why would she come alone?"

"One thing I learned, Gusion: never jinx a gift horse in the mouth. Wait, no, that's not how it goes-"

"If she was working with the Imperial Guard, she'd have brought soldiers-"

"-never gift a jinx horse in the mouth? No, no, that's not what happens-"

"She wasn't working with Lancelot either…"

"-never horse a-wait, no, horse isn't a verb, I hate this language-"

"She was working alone. Why was she working alone? Does she hate me that much?"

"-always jinx a horse's gift?"

"No…that can't be it."

"You're right, that can't be it. Never-"

"Never look a gift horse in the mouth, Helcurt."

Helcurt clicked his claws. "That's exactly what I said! My genius is astounding."

"I'm sure," Gusion dryly replied. "Come on in."

Helcurt clambered into the car. "Where are we going?"

Gusion pushed the gear stick forward. "Lesley's house."

Helcurt's protests were muffled by the starting of the engine.

Lesley drove forward, her head muddled with thoughts.

She knew Silvanna had suspected her. Silvanna might have placed someone to watch over Lesley. Lancelot, possibly.

She only had a few more hours left to finish Gusion off.

Dyrroth might kill Harley early, he was certainly unstable enough.

The weight of her rifle felt ever so heavier.

It wasn't until the honking of the car horn filled her ears that Lesley realised she hadn't been paying attention to the road.

Gusion slammed the car horn and the head of the rider of the bike jerked up and she swerved to the side and there was a brief moment where Gusion and the bike rider who he just missed locked eyes as she drove past him and oh no how did I miss the pink hair?

"That's…your girlfriend," Helcurt muttered in a half-surprised tone as the bike swerved around and Gusion floored the accelerator, as "The Sound of The Police" came on the radio.

He checked the rearview mirror and saw Lesley gaining furiously on him, her eyes flashing with determination and something else he couldn't quite place.

Gusion turned the steering wheel and a magic dagger flickered into his hand as he rounded the bend.

He threw the knife down, pulse racing, and it embedded itself into the ground as Lesley followed him into the empty road.

Gusion checked the rearview mirror and saw Lesley's eyes visibly widen as she noticed the dagger poised to pierce the tire of her bike.

Helcurt saw it too. "Ooh, diabolical," he commented, propping himself up on the seat to watch.

Lesley swerved right and the tyre narrowly avoided the knife in the ground, and Gusion's eyes widened as he realised she might fall.

Then the bike skidded to a halt and Lesley stumbled off-slightly disoriented, but unharmed.

"Go, go, go, go," Helcurt chanted as Gusion accelerated down the empty road.

Lesley unhooked the sniper rifle from her back, gritting her teeth as the car began to get further away from her.

She couldn't fail. Not now.

She raised the scope to her eye, took aim, and fired.

Gusion heard the crack of a gunshot and turned back instinctively.

"She missed," Helcurt dispassionately said.

Gusion turned back, fear trickling into his veins. Lesley never missed.

He turned right to avoid the wall in front of them, then slammed the brakes to slow down. Only then did he realise what Lesley aimed for.

Lesley watched as oil spilled from the severed brake wire and the car banked a hard right.

I'm sorry, Gusion.

Lesley watched on helplessly as the car skidded into the wall and hit it with a sickening crash.

Lesley ran closer, guilt festering in the pit of her stomach as her fingers went numb.

Gusion's world spun as he pulled his face out of the airbag.

"What was that? Did you forget to drive?" Helcurt growled from the back.

"She shot the brake wire," Gusion blinked and a frenzied laugh escaped his mouth as he kicked open the door of the car before staggering out.

He looked to his left and saw Lesley standing there, gun pointed at him.

Lesley stared dead ahead into Gusion's unblinking hazel eyes and a nasty feeling pooled in her gut, the gun in her hands feeling heavier than ever.

It wouldn't be the first time she killed. But it seemed harder than ever.

Harley's face appeared in front of her. Dyrroth's voice resounded in her head.

Pull the trigger, Lesley. Pull the trigger.

"I know something's not right, Lesley," Gusion's voice was laden with terror and concern. "If you explained the problem-"

"Shut up," Lesley snarled.

"To hell with this," Helcurt snarled from behind Gusion, before shadows exploded from behind him.

Gusion's panicked shout filled her ears as Lesley furiously backpedalled, activating her camouflage. She'd fought Shadowbringers before. When the darkness came out, you didn't stick around to see what comes next.

Lesley got out of the black fog, expecting to hear the sharp skittering of claws on cement, or the demented hiss before she was caught. Instead, she saw the fog moving-away?

Helcurt hadn't used it to attack, she realised. He'd used it to help them escape.

Snarling, she ran after them.

"Helcurt, you might not want to go this way-" Gusion started, as the Shadowbringer bolted into a neighbourhood Gusion was familiar with.

"I KNOW WHAT I'M DOING!" Helcurt yelped, and leapt up several different flights of stairs.

Gusion really questioned his life decisions sometimes.

"Helcurt-"

Helcurt snarled back, going up to the eighth floor. "I've been here before, this place seems familiar!"

Gusion had to restrain himself from shouting. "Yes, Helcurt, we both were here before, when we murdered Selena, to save-"

"Me," Karina stood in their way at the top of the staircase as both Helcurt and Gusion stood.

"Meow?" Helcurt tried.

Gusion swallowed a ball of air as his throat went dry. "We're screwed."