Anathema stared at my empty palm, hurt and confused, not understanding why I would offer empathy to her. She didn’t have a single clue as to why I asked my servitor to spare her life. She had attacked me, sliced my forehead. High-cultivators killed for far less, struck mortals dead for the smallest appearance of disrespect.

The truth was that Ludj couldn't kill anyone - he was still bound by many rules. Coming out of the lantern, biting the knife and holding the girl up in the air for twenty seconds was as far as he could go. We had practiced doing exactly that in the Temple of Serenity with Celes right before we came here.

Anathema needed a push, needed to reach peace, an agreement with me. Needed to cooperate. It was time for some good-old-fashioned information warfare.

I squinted at the shimmering fractal floating above her head, folding it into readable words.

[Anathema Aria - LV 51 Noble, Leader of the Hand Gang]

A noble? What?!

The overprotective behaviour of the Reaper suddenly made sense.

I squinted harder, seeking more information.

[Primary weapon - Hyperosmia LV 49]

Hyperosmia? Hum. A truly powerful sense of smell. She really was a girl that could smell lies!

It wasn’t enough. I pondered the problem, examined it from another angle.

No parent in their right mind would name their child ‘Anathema’. It had to be a nickname given to her by someone in the Guild. Perhaps… Violet Lillian named her that, if I had to hazard a guess. I pushed into the false name with my mind, tried to bend reality with my will to claw precious information from the uncaring universe.

The label danced in my eyes, twisted left and right as I slammed my power against it again and again, my migraine intensifying.

Come on. COME ON, DAMN IT. Show me her REAL name! SCAN!!!

Anathema’s name flickered and warped into spiralling, infinite fractals, unfolding like the petals of a flower without end. I folded and unfolded information with my mind. I had no idea where the data was coming from. Perhaps Qi permeated the Universe and recorded everything down. Perhaps I was somehow accessing the records of Lord Boundless or the knowledge of his archangels that oversaw everything in the Gold City.

I pulled and prodded at the fractals with my mind, multiplying and dividing again and again. A battle of wills between the Universe and an extremely stubborn girl. The gibberish data folded itself back into words.

[Arianna Manning [Anathema Aria] - LV 51 Noble, Leader of the Hand Gang]

[7th scion of the Magistrate]

[Primary weapon - Hyperosmia LV 49]

I tried to hide the surprise from my face. Anathema… No, Arianna was a scion of the Manning house, likely a grand-daughter of the Gold city Magistrate Tratorius Manning, 7th in line to become a Magistrate herself!

It was no wonder she could do whatever she wanted! No wonder she looked better, less starved than these orphaned children. The Hand was some kind of a project of the Office of the Magistrate. Were these kids just minions for Arianna to play with, so that she could level up her Nobility and lie-sniffing skills?!

I looked back at the Reaper, folding and unfolding his name as I had done with Arianna’s.

[Avidius Copperpenny [Niels Barberman] - Level 79 Reaper of the Thieves Guild]

[Level 95 bodyguard]

[Level 3 barber]

[Primary weapon - Servitor Phantom Yumz]

The last piece of the puzzle clicked in my mind. Niels asked me not to kill Arianna for a reason. He wasn’t just a Thieves Guild rep masquarading as a barber. No. He was Arianna’s bodyguard masquarading as a Reaper who was masquarading as a barber! I inwardly smiled at the hilarity of it all.

I looked around the ruined mansion to determine whether any of the Hand Gang members remained. They were all gone.

“Avidius Copperpenny,” I addressed Arianna’s bodyguard with a quiet, conspiratorial voice. “I am well aware that the Magistrate hired you to watch Arianna Manning. Would you be so kind as to leave the seventh scion with us for the night? I promise that not a single hair will fall off her head.”

The bodyguard and the actual-princess looked at me, eyes wide in shock.

“That’s right, I know your secrets, friends.” I continued my charade. “Do you know why you can’t read me properly with your truth-smelling noble nose, Arianna? Because I’m the chosen one, voice of the will of god. People like me are born only once every thousand years - we are unreadable. I know your names because I’ve read your portfolios in the cult archives. I know ALL of your dirty little secrets, believe me.”

“Impossible…” Arianna whispered.

“Check the truth of this statement - I am older than one thousand years!”

“What the hells?!” She blinked.

“I am sixteen years old.”

“How in the hells can both of these things be true?!” Arianna finally broke, realising that something was horribly wrong here.

I gave her my most serene smile. I had utterly crushed her belief in her own sniffer.

“Take my hand if you want to rule this city.” I offered my nemesis my hand once again. “You are seventh in line, it’s true, but I’ll make sure of your ascension to Magistrate... If you join me, not as an enemy… but as a friend, standing on equal terms.”

She sat up on her knees, staring at my open hand.

“Well? Are you going to sit on that wet, dirty floor all day or join me in the temple of Serenity to make plans to conquer and save the world?” I asked.

Arianna Manning, the seventh scion of the Magistrate’s line, took my hand and stood up. She was older, taller, prettier, stronger, richer and vastly more powerful than I. She was a noble and I was but a street-rat. I had been terrified of her for half of my life. I nearly died again and again because of her brutal actions.

I looked at her with eyes undiluted by animosity and saw potential in her - power waiting to be used for the betterment of humanity. I saw a girl who wanted to be more. A driven individual with a fantastic, useful skill. A noble, a future ruler full of charisma and intelligence that I could lead down the right path, help make the right choices. To help me do something that I as a lonely scientist could not do alone - to take humanity by its collective collar and shake it out of its slumber, make the people stand up again off their collective knees.

To rise up and to bring down the gods.

-=[Celes Rada]=-

There was little more for the geisha to do standing beside the provocateur, a sixteen year old girl forcing greater powers to bend the knee with mere theatrics, falsehoods, and insightful truths. Celes almost pitied everyone involved, their faces trembling with fear or stretching long with shock, dropping loose the dirt that clung to their pores. Dirt that had barely touched Celes for years since she’d lived as a caged butterfly until recent events. Until... she was forced to act regardless of the consequences, which led her to Ash Sparks - the most remarkable person she’s ever met.

Now, beyond the gold-plated compound walls, standing among those she wouldn’t normally associate herself with, at an hour when she was normally asleep, Celes found the situation novel, engrossing, and heartbreaking. The rule of violence was the norm here, the fist-shaped bruises upon the scrawny, emaciated faces and bodies told a tale of a dreadful life.

Celes didn’t truly understand the nature and power of ‘psychological’ and ‘information’ warfare until Ash opened her mouth.

Celes glanced at the girl with the ghostly silver-blue hair, her companion powering through every doubt her targets had in her. She was a hammer that sought to plow through the glass of injustice, letting go of subtlety for immediate and effective verbal tactics.

When Ash somehow named the Anathema girl as the seventh scion of the Magistrate, it took Celes all her years as a geisha to act unfazed by the sudden news. Each glance. Her every breath. The way she stood behind Ash, or beside her, highlighting the teenager as if she was a divine kitsune-creature blessing them with her presence had far greater purpose.

Many didn’t know the power aspects in play when having a geisha involved, backing you, accentuating the power of your existence, informing everyone of your status. Making others want to get closer to the same fortunes that came with having a geisha, one who knew how to compliment their Cultivator.

So, even with the staggering revelation, Celes gave nothing more than a subtle arch of her brow and a nod at Ash’s direction. In truth, Celes was inwardly cringing at Ash’s acting as a high-cultivator. There was a sense of weight that existed with the motions and the attitudes that had been ingrained into an aged cultivator who had earned their position through bloodshed and perseverance.

The geisha had been around them enough, especially Han Axiom Sempiter, to know it well. She was also terribly afraid that the shadowy Reaper would endure their falsehoods no longer and kill them with his dangerous-looking phantom.

Celes had never been involved in such intense situations without a true high-cultivator near. Still, every glance, every breath, her position beside Ash, and the output of Qi delivering her power was measured. The moment Ash recontinued her attempt to reign in the seventh scion, Celes backed her as close as she could and exuded her mightiest showing of her talent.

It was incredible - working with Ash was beyond anything Celes had ever done. Cultivators had attacked other people with their fists or steel, but Ash wielded, weaponized words, events and names. Celes finally understood exactly what Ash meant when she said “the word for crisis is the same as opportunity”. The silver-blue haired teenager used the idea of Deathstorm Convergence as a tool to flip the situation from a negative to a positive one, as a device to demand the impossible - control of the Guilds themselves.

This all made Celes wonder what more could Ash teach her, what more could be achieved by a geisha outside of her pretty cage. To Ash the whole world seemed to be filled with opportunities just waiting to be grabbed. When she offered Anathema… err, Arianna a hand, asking to conquer the world, Celes nearly cried out "Yes!" in Arianna's stead. In that very instance the formerly lonely kitsune finally understood that Ash Sparks wasn't simply trying to survive or to protect people from a single Convergence - she aimed to bring back what was lost a thousand years ago.

Ash Sparks, a sixteen-year-old street urchin and a thousand-year-old ghost bound to her body were trying to forge a better future for all mortal humans and cultivators and even as absurd as that sounded - servitors!