-=[Pikoss Rhondarius, High-Inquisitor of the Temple of Inquiry]=-

The three Inquisition squads had arrived above the Magistrate’s castle as the midnight gong resounded across the city. Pikoss looked at the shining wards below them with Qi-sight. It looked like the castle's wards were fully armed and ready for an attack.

How curious.

He spotted the distinctive kitsune figure of Geisha Rada in the back garden and descended towards her along with the first squad.

“Do you have my letter of Amnesty?” Rada asked, her voice trembling.

Inquisitor Rhondarius threw a scroll at the geisha. She caught in it the air and unrolled it, quickly glancing at the words, his signature and the stamp of the Temple of Inquiry.

“Thank you.” Geisha Rada bowed and unlocked the door behind her.

Pikoss saw that the corridor beyond the door was dim and free of ward shields unlike the rest of the shimmering castle. The Magistrate was indeed true to his word and was on the side of the cult in this matter.

“Second and Third squadrons - find and bring Ash Sparks to me. Dead or alive!” The High-Inquisitor barked an order at his warriors. The two squadrons descended and rushed into the open doorway.

“You may now live out the rest of your natural life, geisha,” Pikoss said as Celes walked towards him with a peaceful, happy smile.

One of the Inquisitors next to Pikoss lifted an arm revealing a small celesteel sphere within it - the Inquisition's weapon of choice.

The geisha’s eyes grew wide as a ghostly servitor arm lifted the celesteel ball into the air and flung it right through her face with a sonic boom. She spun and fell forward, blood gushing from a large hole where her right eye used to be. The hole went all the way through her head and out the back. The geisha's skull was weak.

“I thus absolve you of your sins,” Pikoss spat in the direction of the dead girl, turning away from her. He hovered a few elbows above her, waiting as the two squadrons would return with Ash Sparks. If they didn’t emerge in the next five thousand heartbeats, he would go in himself to deal with it personally.

One pathetic, mortal girl could not oppose an Immortal like him or a squad of seven high-cultivators, even if she consumed six seven-hundred star beast cores! The geisha's letter was obviously an exaggeration - consuming a beast core simply unlocked a new cultivation path. Eating raw power didn't instantly turn someone into an Immortal! It took centuries of training and meditation for a cultivator to reinforce their body, gain physical strength and Dantian power. Pikoss only bothered to bring three squads in case Sparks was able to convert a number of idiot mortals to her cause.

-=[Inquisitor Illia Contagea, Second Squadron Captain]=-

“I’ll head upstairs, check the catacombs just in case the girl is hiding there,” second squadron Captain Contagea ordered the third squadron Captain Kraze.

“Acknowledged,” Inquisitor Kraze nodded, taking her team down.

Captain Contagea led her squadron up the very dim stairwell, which was becoming darker with every step.

She felt as the castle shook slightly and stopped momentarily as dust sprinkled her from the ceiling. As she looked up she noticed that hundreds of dim servitor lamps were covering the ceiling and the walls of the stairwell.

“What the...?” Contagea squinted at the lamps curiously.

“Lights on, max!” The Magistrate’s voice sang and a thousand beast-core lamps ignited all at once with blinding radiance.

Contagea and the other six Inquisitors screamed, trying to cover their eyes to no avail.

“Defence-ward disarm-disable-person!” The Magistrate ordered and thousands of servitor arms sprouted from the walls, grabbing at her armour, snipping away everything off her and her warriors. She flailed blindly, trying to fight off the endless arms to no avail. A phantom arm snipped off her primary servitor bracelet and pulled it away. A thousand ghostly pincers stabbed at her body from all directions, driving her crazy with shocking discharge.

Contagea fortified her skin and blindly rushed up the stairwell, burning through her Qi and leaving a trail of blood behind her.

The Magistrate’s palm connected with her forehead and the Captain could no longer remember where she was or why.

-=[Inquisitor Jillius Elentin, 4th Squadron Captain]=-

“In the name of the Temple of Inquiry, I order all of you to disperse! Ash Sparks isn’t a Saint of Lord Boundless! She is not an official, chosen disciple of High-Administrator Han!” Inquisitor Elentin repeated for the hundredth time this evening as he and his men stood beneath the archangel of Lord Boundless near the market fountain.

“You can’t deny the truth! Thousands have seen her talk to an archangel and live!” Magnolia Milliard, the Head of the Builders, suddenly shouted from the crowd.

“Yeah! We know that the Temple isn’t supporting her fully! We won’t be fooled!” Another person yelled.

“Saint Sparks is prophesied to save us from the Deathstorm Convergence!” A third voice cried.

Inquisitor Elentin rubbed his face exasperatedly. He was done arguing. These idiot mortals weren’t listening to him at all. He was about done trying to be reasonable. If he had to kill a few of them for the sake of the truth, he would. The midnight bell resounded from the compound. It was time. Ash Sparks would soon be dead. All he had to do was teach these fools a lesson.

“Listen up!” Jillius pulled his large, shining sword from his scabbard. “If I hear another one of you utter these filthy lies, I will strike them down where they stand, I swear!”

The tide of men and women retreated away from him.

“Not so tough now, are you mortals?!” Inquisitor Elentin laughed, aiming the sword at a young girl that tripped and fell in front of him. “Let this be a lesson to…”

An invisible bone-mesh needle went through the Inquisitor’s right eye. He gasped as his right arm failed to respond, his sword clattering to the ground.

“He is struck down by the archangels! Praise be to Saint Sparks! Lord Boundless judgeth the liars!” The crowd roared.

“Inquisitor Elentin!” An Inquisition warrior rushed to Jillius’ aid. He found that the Captain was barely alive, rapidly losing consciousness, not moving.

“You bastards!” The cultivator screamed at the crowd lifting a celesteel sphere into the air. “Who dares attack an Inquisitor?! I will kill you all where...”

Another invisible needle struck him through the eye and he fell. The remaining Temple of Inquiry cultivators pulled their swords out, swinging at the air in front of them, screaming threats.

A tiny, flashing beast core flew through the air lobbed by a servitor from the crowd. It went into the open mouth of one of the screaming high-cultivators and his face exploded with a sudden detonation of blood and flesh. The man fell, clutching at his bleeding jaw.

Only three Inquisitors remained standing. They grew wings and scales as their servitors intersected their bodies.

A concoction flew from the crowd, chucked by Alchemist Kane. It exploded over the Inquisitors and the motion of their servitors slowed tenfold.

“They are heretics who dare denounce the truth of Saint Sparks! Now! Everyone! Use your servitors! Tear away their weapons and beast cores! They can’t stop all of us!” Magnolia yelled from the crowd.

A hundred servitors wielded by the Builders flashed into existence, heading towards the three Inquisitors that occupied the central market. The crowd saw that the tide was turning. Thousands of servitors summoned by the marketplace crowd joined in the melee, tearing the leader-less Inquisitors apart.

All across the city the revolution of Saint Sparks had ignited, as the rest of the Temple of Inquiry high-cultivators were struck down by the Guilder groups wielding the crowds like a fiddle.

-=[Pikoss Rhondarius, High-Inquisitor of the Temple of Inquiry]=-

“M-my Lord!” An Inquisitor suddenly yelled, pointing a finger down. “An aberration!”

Pikoss looked beneath him. The corpse of geisha Rada was inexplicably moving on the ground. Her lips suddenly emitted a divine tone, a segment of the geisha-song perverted, weaponized.

“Abominaaa…!” The High-Inquisitor yelled, about to order his men to attack the undead monstrosity when the bubble of suspended time caught him in its grasp.

Unaffected by her own song-art, Celes leapt away with the speed of a fox, escaping from the squadron. A small servitor spirit bearing a box flew from the castle towards the High-Inquisitor and a shimmering dome flashed into existence over the entire time-frozen Inquisition squadron.

The High-Inquisitor watched the scene unfold in front of him with stilled eyes. He tore through the bubble of halted time just as the time-suspension effect ended and a box carried by the tiny servitor detonated overhead.

Waves of hellfire cascaded, turning the shield-dome into a furnace, igniting garden flowers and trees, turning everything into ashes, the rocky ground boiling away into a lake of lava.

Pikoss screamed in rage as his clothes ignited. He shaped his Qi to protect himself from the fire, trying to swim upwards out of the lava lake. Just as the cascade abated, the shield-dome popped and another box full of beast cores detonated overhead, slamming the High-Inquisitor back into the lake of molten rock.

This time, his eyes popped and his skin started to flake off. He didn’t give up. He crawled forward, trying to escape the trap, observing the world around him with his Dantian. He was an Immortal and would not be taken down so easily.

Another explosion hammered him backward, vaporising one of his arms. This blast seemed to be targeting him in particular. He crawled forward with one remaining arm, struggling to stay conscious as the world around him burned.

Another detonation flung him sideways, the beast cores on his person shattering from the direct impact, numerous gold bracelets and necklaces melting away under the onslaught of the unending firestorm.

The High-Inquisitor was still alive, his own core deep in his center was keeping his scorched body intact.

“I absolve you of your sins, Inquisitor Pikoss,” a raspy voice, woven entirely from Qi currents, spoke from overhead as a celesteel knife swished through the air, stabbing through his hand and slicing it off at the wrist. Pikoss screamed. Sharp, steel-like teeth closed over his neck and he felt his Dantian draining away.

The High-Inquisitor formed new arms using currents of Qi. He ripped the accursed geisha away from his neck and force-slapped the monstrous aberration into the castle’s wall. Rada smashed into the castle wall and her neck broke. She slumped down to the burning ground below him, twitching, no longer able to fully control her body.

He smiled. Victory was his! Even if the rest of his men were knocked out by the barrage of beast core explosions, nothing and nobody in this world would be able to stop him now.

He suddenly saw a brilliant glow with his third eye - an archangel of Lord Boundless had come to his aid from the city, attracted by the glorious battle.

"You lost, demon!" Pikoss laughed, floating up in the air. "My Lord is at my side now!"

The undead geisha sang one last divine tone, slowing down his movements once again. Pikoss built up the resonance of Qi in his heart, readying his next attack. He knew that he would be able to rip away from the bubble of suspended time in mere seconds and then he would shred her body into pulp with the full force of his Qi-arms.

A strange, partially hollow human ghost manifested itself between the archangel and High-Inquisitor. It shot a tiny Qi spark at the seraphim.

Rhondarius felt as the ghost rushed right through him.

"Pathetic! Do these fools think that a mere humanoid, weakling servitor can hurt me?" The High-Inquisitor thought.

In that very moment the seraphim of Lord Boundless flew right into Pikoss Rhondarius and his heart stopped.