53

“Where is she?”

“And a good day to you too, outlander,” Sister said and lowered her spear. “You startled me there, popping out of thin air like a kass-khraz.”

Hunter had no idea what a kass-khraz was and no particular inclination to ask. He’d slept like the dead for a few hours, then spent another couple grinding his teeth and drifting in and out of sleep, phasing out of one nightmare only to phase into the next. His mind was on Fawkes. The sight of her being down and out had shaken him to his core, for some reason. It wasn’t just worry. It was… wrong, somehow. Wrong on a conceptual level.

“Safe,” said Brother Aurochs. “Sanctum.”

Hunter gave him a nod of appreciation and set off to find her. He found the Inner Sanctum’s great doors cracked open. Torchlight was pouring out of the narrow opening, warding off the cool darkness of the Halls. There was no whispering, no muted hymns or hushed chants. Just the ever-present heartbeat of the Halls.

“Fawkes?” he called. He didn’t want to startle her.

“In here,” came her answer from somewhere at the other side. “Come in.”

The Inner Sanctum didn’t feel like an inner sanctum at all. Not anymore. There were no torches burning at the ornate sconces that lined the walls, no grotesque-looking faithful mumbling their profane prayers, no sardonic priestess at the dais, and no ominous presence masking itself with illusions and pulling everyone’s strings. It was just another abandoned hall in a long, long series of abandoned halls now.

The only light came from a couple of torches Fawkes had lit. There were bones scattered everywhere, whole skeletons of them, somehow already all dried up and white. A thick layer of dust the color of rust covered everything. The Phage, Hunter realized, all out of flesh to consume and dormant. The feeling of the crimson ooze eating through his flesh was still all too fresh in his memory. A wave of panic rise and threaten to swallow him whole. He tried to ignore it, focus on Fawkes.

She had been in there a while, it looked like. She’d gathered a number of items and trinkets and weapons in a neat pile near the double doors. Hunter spotted his glaive among them, its blade gleaming in the torchlight as if to beckon at him. A few paces away, Fawkes was kneeling beside one of the few corpses that had somehow escaped the hunger of the phage.

Reiner.

Fawkes had pulled the body free from the huge weapon it had been skewered on and had cleared up some space around it, as if to remove it from the rest of the scene of death and carnage.

She wasn’t crying.

She wasn’t showing any emotion.

She just looked… empty.

“I’m sorry,” Hunter said.

“Don’t be. Why lament him? He died as he lived. By the Creed.”

Hunter said nothing. What could he say? He just went and sat by her, hoping his presence would be a comfort rather than an intrusion. Minutes went by like that, the two of them quietly sitting beside Reiner’s body. It was just that now, a body, desiccated and dry and soulless, not the man himself. Hunter didn’t really know exactly who he was to his friend and mentor, but from what little she’d let slip through, he’d really love to have gotten a chance to meet the man. He’d been important to her, that was obvious; this wasn’t Fawkes sitting by him now, only a Fawkes-shaped shell of a person, herself a corpse waiting to happen. Hunter had seen one person wither away already – his mother. He couldn’t bear to see it again.

“So, anyway… maybe it’s better if I leave you to it.”

“No. Stay.”

He stayed.

Fawkes started going through the dead man’s many pockets, laying odds, ends, and trinkets on the floor next to his body with slow and deliberate moves. Hunter watched. Once she’d made sure shed gotten everything, she pulled a couple of familiar flasks out of somewhere inside her sleeve. It was the Phage. She dropped a tiny droplet of the dark brown ooze on the dead man’s chest, then one of the clear liquid that served as the catalyst to wake the Phage up.

“Step back,” Fawkes said and stood up. Hunter followed.

They stood vigil over Reiner’s body as the Phage stirred from its sleep and consumed what little remained of the man. It wasn’t an easy thing to watch, but neither Hunter nor Fawkes turned away. There was no eulogy. No tears came. If it hadn’t been for the Phage and the Halls’ deep heartbeat, Hunter could have sworn time itself had stood still. Then, as the crimson took more and more of the body that once was Reiner, a single bee flew from his chest. It flew around for a while, leaving a trail of haze behind it, the telltale pale blue of aether. Then Fawkes raised her hand, and the bee landed on her palm.

“This is how we go, we of the Lodge,” she said, her voice neutral. “By the sword, or tooth, or claw. By the Creed. And once our time has passed, we pass the torch to the next in line, so that the Creed remains. Only this time there’s no next in line. The Lodge was lost. Now, soon, so shall be the Creed. We were the last two. Now it is just me.”

She carefully caught the bee between two fingers and hid it in her sleeve, along with the Phage Philter flasks, Reiner’s last effects, and who knew what else. Hunter wanted to say something, but nothing came out. What could he say, anyway? That she wasn’t alone? That she had him? He was transient. He could never relate. She hadn’t asked him to be there. She barely allowed him to be there.

She had said so herself.

They waited until nothing remained of Reiner but crimson ooze, tatters, and bones. Then Fawkes simply turned away and started picking up the various weapons and other items she’d gathered in a pile. Hunter went to help.

“So… what now?” he finally managed to say.

“The Creed,” she said and handed him his glaive. “What else? We see things through, do what needs to be done.”

There was no color in her voice. Still, that “we” wasn’t lost on him.

She picked up the last of the loot from the piles, grabbed a torch, and turned for the door.

“Come, Hunter. We got much to do.”