Cleaver in hand, she walked right up and squatted down in front of him, looking into his motionless face. She was ready to cut him in half the moment he moved, but she was also curious. This one didn’t quite give off the same crusty feeling as the other bugs. Even the Red Mantis had a faint trace of it, but this one didn’t exude venom, only tranquility.

His eyes shuddered open. Pure white, with a single dot each for a pupil. Smiling, he looked up at her.

“They weren’t lying when they said you looked like a walking propaganda poster,” he remarked with a richly accented voice as soft as silk and as tranquil as the dead of night. “I suppose you might wish to exterminate me, is that right?”

“I am to purge this place of locusts, make sure the hive isn’t a threat,” Zel admitted. “But you don’t look like a locust, or smell like one. In fact, you look like uh…”

She looked up to Zefaris for confirmation, “An Orchid Mantis, was it?”

Just as the markswoman got around to directly behind the bugman, she gave a hesitant nod, to which Zel turned her gaze back towards the strange man.

An unsettling, inhuman smile spread across his face, “Correct. My lack of murderous inclinations rendered my existence inconvenient to the Queen, so I was directed to consume the Blood of God until told to stop. Fortunately for me, my current state was the result, even if my mobility was impaired in the process.”

“So you’re stuck,” Zel said. ”Why? And what about all these corpses?”

“Yes, I am stuck. As for those whose shells surround us, they snuffed themselves out willingly,” he said, slowly gesturing around himself. “When a Locust Noble grows dissatisfied with their lot in the hive, they are sent to me to have their fortunes read. Some get their answers and walk away. Others choose to end themselves and give me answers in return, in the form of their death-rattle.”

Zelsys considered him for a moment, then looked up at Zef again, “See if the door will open. I don’t think we need to exterminate this one.”

The blonde backed up towards the door. Both her and Zel saw that the door wasn’t reacting in the slightest, and the Diviner inferred as much from their reaction.

Before either of them could say or do anything he let out a melancholic chuckle, “It can’t be helped, I suppose. Do not attempt to find another way, I knew that I would go out like this.”

Faster than the eyes could see, the Diviner raised his hand to his throat, digging his bladed pinky finger into the alabaster-like flesh and slitting his own throat. From the wound gushed forth milky-white, glimmering liquid, running off his robes without ever soaking in.

He took a gurgling breath, yet remained utterly calm as he spoke, his lungs audibly filling with blood with every word he spoke and every breath he took. Zel felt the blood surrounding her boots, but something compelled her to stay and maintain eye contact.

“I see now that I misinterpreted the others’ death-rattles,” he said. ”The embodiment of the war’s fallout, doomed to rage against the heavens beyond death itself, they said, each and every one of them.”

The Diviner coughed and choked on his own blood, taking another ragged, bubbling breath.

“Thgh-they spoke of a raging monsh… A monstrosity, an Engine of Retribution,” he continued, his voice becoming a reverberating, otherworldly noise. “I thought you would be a mindless killer, or bound by destiny as so many others, but now I see that you are so, so much worse.”

He chuckled to himself, then broke into a bloody, frothing cackle, all the while his own lifeblood flowed forth and pooled around him. When he next spoke, his voice was a wheezing echo, “You are the ideal in the propaganda poster, made manifest through vile alchemy, empowered by the afterbirth of the war. When faced with malicious pursuit, you choose to strike back rather than retreat.”

Another wheezing breath, and his voice became even more ghostly, now a truly horrendous death-rattle. And yet, he remained perfectly understandable.

“My masters know well how dangerous people like you are, they will do all they can to stamp you out. I suggest you seek out one of the ruined Cultivator Families, plunder their remnants for knowledge and artefacts. The dead won’t mind, I assure you.”

His voice fell silent, and the puddle of shimmering-white blood that he now sat in stopped glowing. Staring ahead, empty-eyed and unmoving with a tranquil smile on his face, the Diviner was dead.

Indeed he was dead, as the door’s quick lighting-up and subsequent quiet opening confirmed. Both of the women were more than ready to leave this unnerving scene behind, yet just as Zel stood up, the Diviner’s form twitched back to life. He wordlessly held out his hands over the divination bones, and they floated from the puddle to array themselves before his face.

For a moment he gazed at the bones, then snapped his dead-eyed stare to Zelsys.

“I looghk for-ward to watching youhr path unfhold,” the dead man wheezed. “Gho-o. The do-or will close soon.”

She didn’t need to be told twice.

When they finally entered the next intermediary chamber and felt the door slam shut behind them, they let both let out a sigh of relief. Zefaris leaned against the wall, using the short downtime to make absolutely sure Pentacle was fully loaded and wouldn’t jam, bewilderment evident in her face. In much the same manner, Zelsys mulled over the entire incident with the Diviner. It had only been seconds, and already it felt like a fever dream.

“Y’think he’ll just get back up as if nothing happened?” the slayer pondered out loud, considering how the man could survive slitting his own throat and bleeding out.

“Don’t know. Not so sure I want to know. He could’ve meant that he’ll watch you from the afterlife. Or he’ll just get a new body,” Zef replied.