It felt odd, being stared at like that. Lukas could feel her gaze upon him, watching his every moment. Every twitch in the muscles of his face, every shift in his eyes, every word coming out of his mouth, it was all being dissected and analyzed.

“The last ruler of all Yokai,” he repeated. “Does that mean there used to be a Yokai kingdom around here?”

Tanya’s lips twitched. Whether that was a sign of approval or not, he couldn’t be certain. “A kingdom, yes. Perhaps not as suffocating as the Asukan Empire, but large nonetheless. We called it Nahmaz. A place where yokai thrived. A haven that held the potential to be the greatest existence in all of Creation.”

Truly a humblebrag of Inanna’s magnitude.

“What happened to it?” Lukas asked.

“Today, that kingdom is known as the Desert of Namzuuhuu.”

He frowned. “Wait, the kingdom is that desert? The one we walked through?”

Tanya nodded. “What remains of it now is an accursed land, one where the Eternal Light of Amaterasu is cursed. That which illuminates the World everywhere forces the Desert’s inhabitants to flee to the darkness. That which is a lifegiver will devour your lifeforce and kill you horribly in the Desert.”

Lukas thought back to Inanna, and how her own realm was seemingly removed from the annals of Creation itself. “What could have possibly caused something like that?”

“A Taboo, certainly. A Sin so deep that not even the World was able to look away. A perversion of the World Order to an extreme that made even the Divine Mother look down at a goddess and curse her. The Asukan Empire basks in her Eternal Light and forces creatures of all species to bow down and worship the power of the Great Goddess. It is the only way she maintains her domain instead of being done away by the power of the World’s wrath.”

“Huh. I’m assuming this… Mentey guy—”

“Meynte.”

“Right,” he waved off. “I’m assuming he was the one who fought off Amaterasu—”

Tanya hissed at that. “Do not mock me, Outsider,” she snarled. “You yourself used powers of the divine back at the anomaly. Nothing else could have saved you from my wrath. An Emperor is many things, but a God he is not. A God is Truth incarnate, but an Emperor only materializes his Truth for the fleeting moment of his ephemeralism.”

Lukas waited for her to continue.

“The powers clashed. Life-giving fire versus life-consuming frost. The warmth of Light versus the cold of Winter. But Amaterasu was— is a Goddess. A Queen of her pantheon. She can be more real than real can be, and more ethereal than Time and Memory itself.”

“Meynte lost,” Lukas concluded.

“He did, but not because he failed. No, it was because Reality and—”

Lukas grabbed her arm, making her pause mid-breath. An eerie sensation flooded through him. It had nothing to do with her words or the topic, nor had his Screen showed up with a surprise notification. Instead, there was this wild instinct welling up inside him. One that told him a predator was nearby.

“What?” Tanya demanded.

“I feel like we’re being watched.” He paused. “Is it the fog again?”

“It cannot be. No wraith will willingly come between me and my prey.”

Lukas shuddered inwardly, but he’d be damned before he allowed her to see that. Focusing on his senses, he looked around and spotted something near the edge of the ceiling, something that moved with feline smoothness and observed him in utter silence. More presences quickly registered on the floor where they stood. And on the far side of the opposite building, even more lurked, veiled by magic that kept him from knowing anything about them beyond their existence.

By his estimate, there were at least twice as many observers present, the ones he couldn’t sense without really buckling down.

“It seems we have company,” Tanya murmured, thin blades of arctic tundra forming in her hands.

Just then, Lukas’s screen lit up.

SCAN [LEVEL 3]

99.99% similarity with Soul Prototype – Svartalfar

“It’s okay,” he assuaged. “Our employers have arrived.”

Like a plug was removed, he felt the tension drain out of her. “I thought we were supposed to escort only a single collector,” he yelled out. “If it's a team we’re guarding, we may need to renegotiate the payment.”

“We had to be certain you showed up,” said a thick, masculine voice from somewhere on the floor. “It could have been a trap to capture one of ours.”

There’s being paranoid, and then there’s this, Lukas decided. What went so wrong for these people to be so wary of Asukans?

He sent a questioning glance in Tanya's way and found her smirking at him.

“Well,” he replied aloud, “there are no Asukans here.”

“I do not fear an Asukan attack. The contract ensures you will protect me from others,'' said an effeminate voice. One of the svartalfars rose through the floor and stood a few yards away from them. “But nowhere does it ensure my protection from you.”

“You don’t trust the people you hired to protect you?”

“It is common sense to be wary of everyone,” the female svartalfar proclaimed. “Even of one’s guardian.”

Lukas sighed. The Collector looked exactly like the stereotypical svartalfar. That is to say, absolutely different from the ones he had encountered back in the Keep. Lukas was beginning to wonder if it was a part of svartalfar DNA to form mutative combinations for their physical features. He wouldn’t be surprised if svartalfars identified each other based solely on their unique physical features.

ANALYZE [LEVEL 3]

SPECIES

SVARTALFAR

Total Soul Capacity

1,562

Used Soul Capacity

1,489

Total Lifeforce Capacity

917

Lifeforce Production Rate

211/hour

Interesting.

It seemed that regardless of their differing skills, most svartalfars boasted high lifeforce reserves and used up their soul capacity in developing said skills. Either that, or the ones he’d come across were simply ambitious and heavily geared towards self-development.

Still, a detailed analysis of the Collector’s skills was impossible from afar. The Screen quickly materialized in front of him, showing a quick list of the prototype he’d devoured back during his fight at the Keep.

Accessing Soul Prototype : Svartalfar

SKILLS

LEVEL

SOUL CAPACITY CONSUMED

Bladedancer

4

219

Solid Manipulation

3

163

Geokinesis

3

277

Earthwalk

5

374

An interesting collection. Still, it didn’t have anything related to the metal sensing power Tanya had mentioned. Perhaps female svartalfars were bred towards developing an entirely different skill set than their male counterparts? If so, then the existing svartalfar prototype in his Array was not only limited, but also incomplete. No single member of a species, however skilled or specialized, could be called a perfect specimen of its kind.

The scientific way to achieve that would be to harness the souls of a collection of these specimens, each specialized in a different branch of skills, and culminate them into creating a hypothetically perfect prototype for the species known as Svartalfar.

He nodded. Yes, that would be the way to—

…

…

Lukas froze. Had— had he just contemplated murdering his employer in cold blood to gain her skills?

…

Yes. Yes he had.

What the fuck is wrong with me? Is this the Omphalos acting out again?

Maybe Tanya wasn’t the only murderous being hunting in the mists.

“Lukas?” Tanya asked, her innocent blue eyes fixated on him. Just how did her shifting personalities work? Had she retained any memory of their conversation? Or was it more like his khorkhoi transformation when he’d done it for the first time?

“Is something wrong?”

“What do you mean?” he asked, a little flustered. The last thing he wanted was for Tanya to discover what he’d thought of. Things were already complicated enough, being partnered with a murderess with a magical split-personality capable of killing him several times over.

“I don’t know. You just look a little… pale.”

“Ah.” He shook his head. “I just remembered something. Doesn’t matter. Are we ready?”

“Best be moving,” the svartalfar said in what Lukas was certain was a Cockney accent. Or at least the translation spell equivalent of that in their language.

“What about the others?” Lukas asked, guardedly looking at the rest of the svartalfar crew hiding in the shadows.

“They have seen me with you. Should something befall me, they will own your wife and kids.”

“I don’t have a wife and kids.”

“Your woman then.” The Collector glanced at Tanya, but was oblivious to her irritation with the implication.

“Uh, you see—”

“Stop dilly dallying,” Tanya cut him off. “We’re only wasting precious time.”

Lukas sighed. “Fine. So how are we doing this?”

“Simple,” Tanya began, gently grabbing his hand. “Light thinks it travels faster than anything.” She lifted a little finger, and he could feel the lifeforce churning within her. Burning, raging, rushing towards that fingertip. “But it is wrong. For no matter how fast it travels, darkness is always there first. Waiting.”

The tip of her finger exploded in a burst of dazzling white light, and the fog swooped in on them. Lukas could feel it moving, shifting, craving to consume the brilliantly burning lifeforce. An immense pressure threatened to tear him apart from all directions and then—

They were gone.