Chapter 52: A Nighttime Conversation

After the Bone-smith's bewildering prophecy, Sassel's days continued more or less unchanged. He either tailed Jeanne while trying to extract historical tidbits from the Temas with oblique questions, exchanged research on outer gods and their broods with Preyne, or occasionally borrowed Astolfo's spear to study the ancient ant-creature Pathway. As for the Bone-smith—after being summoned into this dream-Pathway by Shavazon, she wasted no time. Following a brief conversation with Jeanne, she summoned over a hundred warriors. According to her, there was no need for more; a few priests of Hood weren't worth that much attention. The warriors scattered like smoke and ash through the city, searching for… something.

But Sassel knew that wasn't the whole story. These Temas of Logros showed little real concern for Hood's activities—they clearly had other plans. Despite the relative friendliness of Syll and Shavazon, the Temas were notoriously tight-lipped. Nothing of substance could be gleaned. Apart from Shavazon, the other warriors lived up to legend—unmoving, unblinking, cold as stone. The Silent Army indeed.

"I seriously doubt the Bone-smith is all that moved by those piles of flies," Jeanne said one night, standing outside the residence with Sassel.

"Moved?" Sassel shook his head. "I don't think it's about sincerity."

"Then what is it?"

"It's 'custom.' Not 'hatred.'"

"Syll Ibell may be a Levi-born Bone-smith, and she might look like a barbarian girl participating in her tribe's traditional extermination campaigns against the Snow Demons. But what about Cogh Aevan? What about Shavazon Tulan?"

Sassel raised a brow. "That's not the point, Jeanne. Tell me—how many Celts did you kill during the Somiria conflict? And what did you feel?"

"I felt I hadn't killed enough of them. The terror I left behind wasn't enough either." Jeanne began recounting how she had paid back the British army's brutality with blood. She listed their unit insignias, their crests, their fighting styles—and how she sent their bloodied badges to Artoria Pendragon to delight her with the news of yet another annihilated Celtic legion. "What I learned from that war," she said, "was that in conflicts like that, no one is innocent."

"That's not what I meant!" Sassel interrupted.

"Then what are you trying to say?" Jeanne stared at him with visible irritation. "Don't tell me you're about to critique my command decisions?"

"During that war, were you carrying out calculated slaughter—or was it emotional revenge?"

"Calculated, of course." Jeanne emphasized, "Emotion burns out quickly and clouds judgment. It's the foot soldiers at the bottom who need to go mad with hatred, not the commander."

"Then why would the Temas—who have carried out twenty-seven genocidal wars—burn with passion as they pour most of their force into this city? Or send a third Bone-smith here? When there's only a handful of Hood's priests and Nero's lapdogs crawling around?"

"You seriously don't see how important this operation might be?" Jeanne snapped. "If Hood—"

"Becomes a god again? So what? The gods of this world meddle in worldly affairs all the time. What's one more? Is Hood really worse than the Autumn Worm or the Lord of Plagues? And tell me—do you know what agreement your Church made with Cogh Aevan, leader of Logros? You can't even connect to a Pathway in this damned place, and you're worried about gods and immortals?"

After that conversation, Jeanne grew visibly disillusioned with the Temas. In the following days, she passed messages in her dreams to Taksaal through the increasingly unstable Astolfo—though who knew why he'd become so emotionally erratic. She reported the situation, shared intel, and inquired about the nun named Karen Ordacia in Castle Cass.

Taksaal responded:

Church records show that this particular nun enjoys prying open old wounds and sprinkling salt on them. She has a habit of openly commenting on traumas that normal people would rather forget, as though that brings her joy. If she mocks the Anglo-French conflict, Jeanne should try to tolerate it. Additionally, she has an unusual obsession with money. She once embezzled church funds, but due to her significant contributions to research on the demon Pathway, the Church chose to overlook it. Eventually, they reassigned her—effectively exiled her—to Castle Cass on the Bernachis continent.

Jeanne had Astolfo ask Taksaal whether this was all because he disliked her. Taksaal simply replied that the Church's research into the demon Pathway was far inferior to that of the Roman Empire. And on the Bernachis front, that nun was their only qualified researcher. They had no choice.

Thus, Sassel and Jeanne came to a mutual conclusion: Taksaal simply didn't like her.

At night, the City of Tormenters was shrouded in clouds, like the sky had been flooded with filthy sewage. Pale green lightning flickered in the seams—like dead lizards writhing through the heavens. Yet from any angle, a massive full moon loomed large, like a grinding millstone, radiating a blinding, unsettling light. It hung so low it seemed one could reach out and touch it.

Syll hovered a meter above the rooftop, like a small pebble suspended over an endless abyss.

"Inquisitor of the Church, there's something I've never understood," she said, lifting her head. Her amber eyes looked up at Jeanne, who was several heads taller than her. "Why didn't your gods destroy Hood completely when they had the chance? Why let him return to the birthplace of frost—that terrifying place?"

She paused. Her gaze drifted to the grotesque creatures blocking the street below.

"Was it because frost never decreed his death? Just like it never decreed the death of Laest, the tyrant who nearly enslaved our entire race?"

The streets below were chaos incarnate. Twisted trees burned with pink and deep blue fire like grotesque green torches—dazzling yet sickening. The purplish-black roads writhed like fungal mats, crawling with monsters that looked like heaps of squirming maggots—sometimes slowly slithering, sometimes breaking into sudden sprints, tangling and detangling in grotesque rhythm.

"Asking me that question is meaningless, Bone-smith," Jeanne replied. "Why would you assume I know the minds of our Church's leadership? Do you know the thoughts of your clan leader?"