Since my meeting with the Guilders had been derailed by the destruction of the Whale’s Song restaurant, I asked the Magistrate to notify the Guild Heads about a new meeting scheduled after the dinner gong, tonight at his estate.

He didn’t even bother arguing with me. I had quite masterfully orchestrated his total subjugation to my goals. We took the Magistrate’s private flying whale to his estate - a high-walled castle carved from one the higher mountain peaks upon the uneven shell of Boundless Chorus.

Arianna sat next to me, looking at the passing clouds. Her expression undulated between a very sour face and an irritated look, but when I glanced her way, the faintest hint of a smile showed.

“Thank you,” she finally whispered to me after staring at my enormous grin.

“You’re welcome, princess,” I replied casually, barely concealing the giddiness that was trying to claw its way out of me. Arianna thanked me for something! Wowza! I was practically breaking new ground everyday. At this rate she might even give me a hug someday.

I decided not to wait for a hug and rotated 90 degrees on the couch, putting my head on the lap of Celes while stretching my legs across Arianna.

“What are you…?!” The highborn blustered.

“Just getting comfortable,” I replied, enjoying her frustrated expression.

“This is highly inappropriate,” she hissed.

“Don’t care. I got the biggest ring, therefore I make the rules." I showed her my thumb with the Magistrate’s ring.

“I swear, I will throw you out of this carriage,” she threatened.

“Oh no, I’m soooo scared, anything but that.” I stretched. “Please, your highness, don’t cast me overboard.”

“You aren’t moving,” Arianna hissed. “Sit down properly!”

“Make me, if you dare.” I yawned and pretended to close my eyes. “Wake me up when we arrive.”

Celes smiled at me.

“I can see why she likes you,” the Magistrate said from his couch across ours. “Nobody managed to make my Aria bow, except for you… Lady Sparks.”

Arianna’s face turned red. “I do not like her! Grandfather!!! You think I wanted to give my Dantian to her? This engagement was one of convenience! I did it because I didn’t want to die!”

“Really?” Traetorius sniffed.

“Really!” Arianna growled.

“Then why are you putting up with her antics?” He inquired.

Arianna’s face couldn't turn any redder at this point. She refused to reply to Lord Manning, huffed and turned away.

I snickered from the lap of Celes. Life was good. I couldn't believe it. In just a few days I had acquired a best friend, a highborn fiancee and a powerful grandfather to boot.

Now all I had to worry about was a cult hunter trying to capture me, plus a murderous Surgeon Barber leader. How much trouble could one old man make anyways?

I thought about it and sighed. The answer was - a lot. Someone with an ancient ghost in their head could make heaps upon heaps of trouble for me.

Getting engaged to Arianna Manning was a wise move. Had I not done that, the Guilder would probably have already found and chopped me up into little meat cubes.

I sunk deeper into the serenity radiance of my geisha, trying not to worry about the Immortals plotting to capture or execute me. I looked up at the lovely, perfect face of Celes. Sweet, simple, innocent Celes Rada. The one person in this city I could trust wholeheartedly. The one person that would never, ever lie to me or betray me or stab me in the back. A pure, perfect, loving companion whom I didn’t have to bind with pacts or threaten into submission.

My eyes closed on their own, soothed by her radiance.

-=[Traetorius Manning, Gold City Magistrate]=-

Traetorius didn’t like making mistakes. He made a grave mistake in thinking that his granddaughter was in charge of Ash Sparks. The truth was that there was an Ancient memory living inside the scrawny thief, one that he had greatly underestimated. The Ancient had forced Traetorius to accept a lowborn into his house.

The sentient memory living in an urchin girl had cast aside all of the Magistrate’s plans, placing the Manning family into an incredibly dangerous position of facing the cult’s and the Guild's wrath. The stability of the future teetered on the blade of a celesteel knife where a single wrong move meant death. Traetorius had made a promise not to harm Sparks, but he said nothing about her companion geisha Rada. Since he laid his senses upon the geisha, a deep sense of foreboding wrongness was festering in his mind about her.

The geisha smelled of death, not just of her own but many others. The Magistrate wanted to know why that was. He leaned slightly towards the kitsune girl and inhaled deeply, focusing all of his Qi into his mental prognostication to witness the most probable outcome. A vision of the near future slowly painted itself in his mind woven from rippling patterns...

Geisha Celes Rada passed through the South gate of the Boundless Chorus compound. She glanced at the alcove of the low-cultivator guard. He wasn’t at his post. She licked her lips. The gate was standing wide open, unprotected.

Celes walked into the cobblestone courtyard and found herself face to face with High-Administrator Han.

“Been out of the compound, have you geisha Rada?” Han spoke. “You were supposed to be by my side for the duration of my healing!”

The Enforcer of the will of god was dressed in his full battle regalia as were the rest of the high-cultivators surrounding him. They were ready for a slaughter.

Celes bowed to Han, not saying anything.

“Things have gone rather... interesting while I was gone, haven’t they?” Han spoke. “I’ve been told you’ve acquired an apprentice?”

The geisha nodded.

“You have grown in power rather quickly, geisha Rada. Why is that? There are rumours of a girl who talked to an archangel in the city, wild rumours of a Saint that match the description of your apprentice,” Han spoke coldly. “There are signs all around the market. The mortals somehow know about the Deathstorm Convergence in two days' time. They’ve been preparing, hiding in the catacombs, organizing a defence.”

Han slowly walked towards Celes.

“Someone betrayed me. Someone told the mortals the date of the Deathstorm convergence ahead of schedule. Someone that I foolishly believed was my companion and friend.” The Immortal shook his head. “The temple of Inquiry has concluded its investigation. All paths point to you, geisha Rada. You! I raised you myself! I loved you like a daughter, I was going to make you Immortal! Do you know what I do with people who betray me, geisha?”

Celes slowly nodded, shaking in fright.

Han now stood in front of the Geisha. “No more radiance of serenity for me, I see?”

“You do not deserve it,” Celes answered, looking him straight in the eyes. “I’m not your property.”

The Enforcer’s face became skewed with rage. His hand moved faster than the speed of sound. A boom of displaced air resounded in the compound. He held the beating heart of the geisha in his fingers now covered in blood.

Celes looked down at the hole in her chest.

The Enforcer crushed her heart in his hand, blood spluttering over his battle robes.

Celes stood upright for a second more and then fell.

“Should we have not interrogated her, your eminence?” One of the gathered cultivators inquired, glancing at the fallen geisha.

“I know enough,” Han spat, waving his hand at the high-cultivators behind him. “The Temple of Inquiry had put it all together while I fully recovered from the explosion of the core.

“My own geisha betrayed me! She and Ash Sparks stole our seven cores. They sabotaged one of them to explode. One of the stolen cores was used to make geisha Rada stronger. The rest… Likely that Ash Sparks used them on herself to ferment this rebellion of the people. We need to stamp out this… vile uprising. We’ll make Sparks tell the truth, make her confess her crimes in front of the gathered crowds! I am the enforcer of god’s will, I am this city’s sole protector, not some sixteen-year-old urchin child!”

Celes stared up at the conversation with dead, unmoving eyes.

“What shall I do with her body, your eminence?” One of the cultivators inquired.

“Burn it,” Han replied. “Such high treason against the cult should not be rewarded with immortality.”

“Very well,” the cultivator reached down to the corpse, forming a spiral Qi pattern in his hand to set the body of Celes on fire.

It was in that very instant that the kitsune moved. She released a pulse that she was building up with her last breath. A single divine tone. The high-cultivators gathered around her froze, suspended in time.

Celes rose, bleeding out. She arched her body up towards the cultivator that was bending down to her and bit through his throat with her sharp kitsune teeth.

She moved like a shadow of death towards the next closest cultivator, the world painted red with blood frozen in the air. A rapidly flickering tail woven from numerous blood-threads fluttered behind her.

Surprise became slowly painted on the Immortal’s face as she leapt at him, teeth aiming for his neck.

Unable to move his body, Han released all of his Qi at once as he had done many times to destroy the most dangerous abominations of hell.

All-consuming hellfire burst from Han’s aura ripping apart the bubble of stilled time, igniting the world. It tore through the geisha’s flesh, boiling and melting away ligaments and muscles, leaving but a ossified, scorched skeleton behind. Waves of hellfire flowing from the Enforcer of god’s will threw aside other high-cultivators, melted the cobblestones, toppled statues and set the nearby temple buildings and trees aflame.

The entire compound of Boundless Chorus shuddered as a mushroom-shaped smoke cloud rose over it.

The enforcer’s hand grabbed the burning remains of the geisha.

The skeleton held by Han Cempiter didn’t disintegrate fully. It now looked far less human. A ossified, scorched, impossibly slender, millipede-like creature woven of thin, black, steel-like wire-bone-flesh thrashed in his grip.

“Die, monster!” Han growled, crushing the aberrant creature in his hands as the compound of the cult burned.

-=[Arianna Manning]=-

The phantom whale came to a rest at the landing spot of their estate. Arianna slid out from under Ash’s legs, angrily rushed to the unfolded stairs heading down from the whale’s back towards the front entrance. The rest of the party followed, with Ash slowly descending from the carriage last, yawning.

Arianna’s disappointment and anger was boiling over, she was barely keeping herself contained. Her grandfather had betrayed her trust, meddled with her memories. She had no idea how much of her life was cut away, how many memories, dreams, ideas or passions she had lost to the Thread Breaker.

Was she even herself anymore? Was she just a half-erased sketch of a person, an obedient, well-trimmed tool shaped by her grandfather for the purposes of reinforcing the Manning family through a marriage pact? Had she been a more caring, kind person once?

She had not cried once in her life, as far as she could remember... not until she met Ash Sparks. Through the ancient, alien logic that could break people, Arianna had learned of her grandfather's dark deeds.

Everything she had ever questioned, everything odd suddenly began to make sense in her mind. The once great power of the Gold city Magisterium was but a colossus on thin, half-broken legs. The Magistrate’s office bowed to the Guilds and the cult Immortals. Her grandfather was weak, unacceptably so. He was just a figurehead that barely clung to the supposedly highest office in the land. An old, pathetic, useless…

“Celes Rada,” Magistrate Manning suddenly spoke at Celes. “I cannot allow you to go further.”

Arianna perked up, staring at her grandfather, sniffing the air. Her grandfather looked tense, concerned.

“What’s your problem with Celes, grandfather? Surely, you aren’t afraid of a mere geisha?” She asked.

“Be silent, Aria. This creature is not what she appears to be,” Lord Manning whispered to Arianna, pulling her away from Celes.

“Archers, ready!” He yelled at the castle.

The golden eyes of Celes flashed at the Magistrate.

“Say what?” Ash Sparks sleepily inquired from the coach stairwell.

Arianna refused to be silenced. “What’s going on? What creature?!” She looked between Celes and the Magistrate.

Avidius standing next to the Magistrate tensed up, shielding Arianna. A short, curved Reaper-style sword appeared in his hands, pointed at the geisha.

“Volley! Kill her!” The Magistrate ordered, pointing a hand at Celes and a volley of arrows shot from the castle battlement, going through the body of Celes Rada.

Ash Sparks cried out something incomprehensible.

An inhuman growl came from the throat of the geisha. Arianna saw a shimmering tail swaying back and forth behind Celes, made entirely from pulsing currents of Qi as she fell.

“Defence-Ward!” The Magistrate barked. “Hold beast!”

An enormous rune ring etched into the marble blocks forming the front entrance to the castle lit up. A cage of ghostly servitor arms sprouted around the thrashing, bleeding Celes.

“Grandfather, no!” Arianna yelled. Celes hissed as a multitude of ghostly hands slammed her down into the ground.

A cold, invisible hand closed around the chest of Arianna Manning, stopping her heart.

She failed to protect Celes Rada.