Seeing little in the way of options, Iris peacefully followed the guards into the guild offices, which seemed to be off limits to all adventurers at the time. The inquisitor in her immediately began surveying the lobby area and trying to parse how the guild itself operated. Though the new inquisition and its spymaster obviously had its sources even within Valor – which might sound surprising, but considering the entire city was build around money hungry weirdos, it didn’t take that much out of their meager Mournvalleyan budget to occasionally buy some insight – but even then, the inner operations of the guild itself weren’t known by anyone. Inside the lobby, the large spider-like simulacra seemed to be inspecting the copious number of quests lining the wall, by the looks of it, doing its own information gathering, much like the inquisitor. When their eyes met for a brief moment, the spider seemed almost excited to see the necromancer, but that was quickly followed by disappointment, as if it had thought it had seen someone it knew, but was mistaken.

Before she had time to see too much, Iris was escorted along several long corridors, each one appearing less and less like a normal building of the period and more akin to the ancient machine fortresses littered throughout the lands. The wooden floorboards changed into grey stone slabs, as did the walls and the ceiling, the lanterns stopped appearing along the walls and the only remaining light came from the blue-tinted lines of light running along all surfaces of the corridor. Eventually they came to a wider chamber within the dungeon, about as large as the common space inside the inn, but entirely without furniture or any type of detail to focus on or describe. On one side of the room, the six stone knights stood motionlessly in attention, staring across the chamber at the somewhat nervous line of guild guards, who equaled them in number – something they probably thought as lacking precaution. Directly opposite to the corridor Iris and the pair of guards had come from, was a heavy stone door with a glowing blue seal glimmering across its surface.

“I assume confiscating any weapons you might have is pointless?” The guard leading Iris to the door asked.

“Unless you plan on decapitating me, there isn’t much I can bring in that would be more dangerous than myself.” Iris joked nervously.

The guard chuckled. “Fortunately for you, they need you with your head on.” He said, stopped by the door and tapped the ground twice with his halberd.

This caused the seal of blue lights to quickly unravel and the door to split open in the middle, revealing yet another room the necromancer was hastily escorted into. Inside, three guild officials were sitting on one side of a long table that split the room in two. Opposite to them, were the armored official with the orange horn, and the bandage-covered being with violet crystals growing from its head.

“Thank you. You may leave us now.” One of the officials said to the guard pointing at the necromancer they had found, and waited for them to leave and the door to seal once more behind them before continuing. “Necromancer, thank you for joining us today, on such a short notice as well. We do not know how long this will take, but you’ll be compensated based on the rates you can find from form 3-777-B. This meeting has been decreed to require level five specialized expertise and your status as a non-guild entity is temporarily revoked, granting you access to what relevant knowledge we might be able to share, without wait times or limitations up to and including designation C, as well as all files containing a selected set of words relating to our subject today – the full list of these words can be arranged, should you need it.”

“O… okay?” Iris uttered.

“Be seated.” Another one of the officials ordered and pointed at the only empty chair at the end of the table. After waiting for the necromancer do as she was told, he then continued. “Recording of the meeting 000-302-9A, beginning now. Present in this meeting are the following: three members of The Avarice Core, a single member of The Wrath Core – accompanied by an entity designated as ‘Trauma’, as well as a single member of the Inquisition of Mournvalley, designated as ‘Iris’. In the order mentioned, would our guests confirm their presence vocally?”

“Oh, death take me and save me from this shit…” The orange-horned official grumbled and lifted her feet onto the table. “Unit Twelve of The Wrath Core, present and annoyed at all this faff.”

“Hello! My name is Trauma. I enjoy tea, cake, apple pie, chocolate cake, blueberry pie-“ The bandaged being started listing off baked goods but was cut off by one of the officials.

“Simply your name suffices.” The official said curtly and expectantly turned to Iris.

“Inquisitorial Saint, Iris of Mournvalley, present.” The necromancer introduced herself.

One of the guild officials made a small mark on the paper before him. “Very good. We may now move on to the matters we gathered here to discuss. Unit Twelve, you may proceed, as you were the one to bring this to our attention.”

“About time.” Unit Twelve grunted and stood up. “So, as you cowards know, Erratic Judgement was attacked recently. The Wrath Core suffered some minor losses, namely everyone besides me is dead, but the fort was held and we kept the interloper a prisoner for quite a while before some outsiders intervened and set the bastard free – though some Mournvalleyans up top did manage to end him once he got to the surface… But that’s all well and good, what isn’t is that the fucker had this one with him.” She said and pointed at Trauma. “I’ve sealed their connections for the time being, which is why you can’t tell, but they’re one of us! Or rather, made with methods way too close to our creation.”

The three officials nervously glanced at each other, absolutely caught off guard by the information. “But… That’s impossible!” One of them exclaimed. “Every record was purged, every note turned to ash, every aureun killed, every fortress scoured for the slightest hint…”

“Well, it clearly didn’t work, now did it?” Unit Twelve frustratedly flailed her arms. “Somehow this ‘sect’ knows how to create more, and according to Trauma, there’s at least a dozen or so.”

The official sitting closest to Iris suddenly stood up, rushed around the table to Trauma and touched the crystals on their head with his horn. A mere second later, he stepped back with tears in his eyes and nothing but absolute horror on his face. This experience was quickly transmitted to the other two officials, as their looks darkened in the same way and their quills fell from their shaky hands.

“So yeah, I figured it’s time we eradicate this sect.” Unit Twelve decreed.

“We… we need to contact the other cores!” One of the officials said, unable to take her eyes off the bandaged being in front of them.

“Already did. Did you nerds seriously think you were my first choice on this? Sure, you have the numbers on the rest of us, but come on now…” Unit Twelve said and let out a haughty laugh. “Terror Core said they’re done with the surface, and both Apathy and Vanity are even more useless in a fight than you losers – so it’s just going to be us.”

“What about the great ones?! Surely Erratic Judgement can convince them to join forces with us?” Another official asked, with quite a lot of desperation in their tone.

Unit Twelve shrugged. “Uncanny Comprehension, Wrongful Punishment, Misspoken Lie, Tormented Mind and The Lone Watchman are about as mobilized as they can be these days, the others didn’t seem to care or didn’t answer as far as I know.”

For a while, Iris had simply watched the situation develop rapidly for reasons entirely unknown to her. She knew about Erratic Judgement, but past that not a single word had made any sense to her. “Excuse me, but why is creating beings like Trauma the thing that immediately decided the matter? I’m all for destroying the sect, but mostly because we know they’re planning on destroying us as well…”

The three officials stared at Iris like she had just asked the stupidest question ever conceived by a functional mind, as did Unit Twelve, but she found it simply humorous.

“I thought you would be at least a bit up to speed, but I guess not.” She chuckled and leaned towards the necromancer. “Let me tell you a tale: once upon a time, the aureun decided that it was up to them to defy the world and create life that was free from the cycle. Their first attempt was to capture souls into machines, which worked to a degree, but could hardly be considered life. Their second attempt was to splinter a grand soul, but that grew cancerous and the second artificial children declined into something they despised almost instantly. Both of these actions alone were crimes against everything and justified their deaths a thousand times over, but that was not enough for the aureun. Their third and final attempt used methods so unforgivable that they have been erased from history, but resulted in undying souls, unfit for the cycle – just like they had hoped. Their third artificial children were the peak of their creations, unparalleled achievement of every type of art, science and magic they knew of – and created largely after the image of their creators. This meant that they were born with nothing but disdain and hate in their dark hearts. The third children could not understand why they were created, what purpose was there in an existence that was disgusted by the world it had been forced into? The only answer they ever received was that they were as they were designed to be – from which the conclusion was drawn: the third artificial children were intentionally made to be flawed. The knowledge of this corrupted their collective knowledge with hatred for themselves and resulted in approximately ninety-seven percent of the children created afterwards to disconnect themselves by tearing their own horn off their head immediately upon achieving consciousness – not that it stopped the aureun from creating more.

“This also allowed them to find out about a delightful little quirk of their collective minds, inherited directly from the first children with such abilities. As a member of the collective is disconnected, their final thoughts and feelings are recorded into the collective as an undying scream, without fading, without ever ceasing – this too, was found out to be as designed. To this day, each and every remaining one of us is plagued with an intentionally flawed personality, one which takes immense effort to subdue – as well as the ever-echoing screams of disgust and hate towards themselves in the back of their mind from the vast majority of their kind, who had the good sense to escape this purposeful nightmare we all share.

“Most of them devoted themselves to the administrative duties we are all well suited for, becoming the Avarice core and trying their best to carve out a deserved place for our kind in this world we don’t belong to. Some separated into the Terror core, hiding themselves so deep into the machineworks under mountains and seas that no living soul, aureun or otherwise has been there. A small number became incapable of doing anything, and instead shut themselves into the vaults of our creators, becoming the forgotten Apathy Core. Even smaller number yet, decided to defy their flawed selves and began searching the world for something even they could find beautiful, to this day traveling together as the Vanity Core. Then there were the handful of us, who guided our anger towards the ones who deserved it: our creators. As The Wrath Core, we armed this world against the aureun and engineered their deserved downfall. To avoid all this from repeating and to make sure no other being has to live as we do, we destroyed all mention of our creation, and are determined to keep doing so – seeing that it has somehow surfaced again.” She gave an unusually wordy answer, but understandably so.

Iris nodded. After hearing their reasoning, she could well understand why the officials were so quick to agree, and why any threat the sect posed to the people of the world was barely a footnote to them compared to the tragedy of their own creation possibly being repeated. What she didn’t understand was why she was being treated as an ally in the first place. As far as Mournvalley knew, they were mere steps away from being enemies of The Guild after what had happened months ago. One would think that leading a very high-ranking member of the literal inquisition to such a place withing Valor and carelessly spilling secrets to them would be avoided at all cost, but it was as if she was being treated as something else – someone else.

“We will begin to allocate funds to gather information on our enemy and prepare for confrontation immediately. Has the wrath core gathered anything useful so far?” The official farthest away from Iris asked while the other two seemed to be busy relaying what they had learned to the collective.

“I know a thing or two, and what Trauma has told me. However, they can’t exactly be relied on for several reasons…” Unit twelve shrugged. “Which is exactly why I asked you nerds to get the necromancer in on this. Their kind felled the sect member who attacked us, so they know how to do it at least.”

The looks around the table turned to Iris.

“Well, shortly after the fall of our previous regime, we discovered some writings regarding something called ‘The Violet Sect’, a group of necromancers banished by the inquisition a few hundred years ago, who had seemingly disappeared off the face of the earth, presumably dying in some cave somewhere – or that is what we found out from much older records. However, the reality of the situation is that they merely left this realm behind through arts they had honed over centuries. During their exodus, they were exposed to an unknown but highly corrupt force, which twisted them beyond all recognition. Ever since then, they have been appearing around the world, tempting individuals and beings of great power or importance to their side – which is what they were attempting with Erratic judgement. Before our brief civil war, a few members of the red inquisition were still actively resisting their efforts in secret, which is a task we’ve tried to take on ever since we learned of it – to… varying levels of success. However, what used to be yearly, or even rarer incursions to this realm, have ramped up in frequency far beyond what we can handle. We presume this is because the sect has learned of the red inquisition’s defeat and has become emboldened by it.” Iris spilled the beans in return, figuring that the time for secrets was over, if they ever wanted to rid the world of the sect. “We don’t know the exact goals the sect has, but the destruction of Mournvalley is likely at the top of the list.”

The officials eagerly wrote down everything that was being said. “And what allowed you to defeat the one before, while The Wrath Core and Erratic Judgement failed?” One of them asked.

“Do you know of the spectral castes of necromancers?” Iris inquired.

“Loosely. We know of the significance of the white ones, the red, the blue and presumably now the violet as well.” The official revealed.

“Red, as one end of the spectrum, has always been the one sent to moderate the power of the others, including the other end of the spectrum, violet. We don’t know why, but that seems to still apply to them, to a point where they appear unkillable to anyone who doesn’t qualify as red as per our ancient definitions – necromancer or otherwise.” Iris explained what she remembered of Cobalt’s studies.

“That simplifies things!” Unit Twelve exclaimed. “We’ll just import a bunch of your red necromancers and fuck the violet bastards up in an afternoon.”

Iris shook her head. “Unfortunately, that’s not a workable solution. Officially speaking, there are no red necromancers at the moment. Unofficially there is one, Maya, one of the inquisitors and the one who actually killed Eminence, the sect member from before. I believe she is currently on the hunt already, but that isn’t nearly enough…” She said, hesitating to continue from there, but knowing that she must for the sake of complete clarity. “Speaking completely off the record… It’s not that we don’t have red necromancers, fairly powerful ones as well… But they are what we refer to as ‘undesirables’. The line between red and completely unfit for society not based on violence is thin, vanishingly so, and most of the functional red necromancers only remain so because of a tether they have to something else – friends, family, loved ones, that sort of thing. Without a strong bond, you are left with a person broken by whatever it is that makes us necromancers. Our Empress handed over the control of these people over to a certain Madame Sanguine, who is not much better to be entirely honest. Let’s just say there’s a reason these people are not spoken of, ever.”

“Perhaps it is better to not rely on people Mournvalley thinks are too dysfunctional.” One of the officials made a snide comment. “But, are you not forgetting someone? Our records state that your Empress, Coquelicot, is a former member of the red inquisition.”

Iris winced. She knew the matter would be brought up from the get-go, but had hoped that The Guild’s immaculate record keeping had somehow missed that particular fact. “Yeah… That is true.” She did her best to avoid having to say anything. “Remember what I said about a tether and it being severed? Coquelicot is currently out of our reach…”

“That does explain why Mournvalley has been represented by one of the new inquisitors in all diplomatic meetings as of late.” The official noted. “Where does all of this leave us in terms of options?”

“Nowhere! That leaves us nowhere!” Unit twelve frustratedly exclaimed. “Which is exactly the same fucking place where we started in. Fantastic meeting, guys, real top notch!”

“That is not true at all.” One of the officials pointed out. “We might not yet possess the means to directly combat the sect, but we collectively know more about it now, which opens up options. The Guild is prepared to offer funds and assistance to Mournvalley for the purposes of scouring the world for more knowledge on the sect – on the condition that the necromancers prioritize the destruction of any means of creating beings similar or related to us or Trauma.”

“Mournvalley agrees to these terms.” Iris immediately accepted the offer without hesitation. Mournvalley was in dire need of allies for countless reasons, and The Guild was not one anyone would scoff at. The promise of such aid was perhaps the biggest victory that would come out of her being in Valor so far. “What do you want us to do if we run into other like Trauma?”

“Handle them with care, if you can. The fault is with their creator, not them.” One of the officials said quietly, receiving an approving nod from Unit Twelve. “Bring them to us and we will see to them.”

Some more details were hammered out in the later half of the meeting. Paperwork was brought to be signed by Iris, and the nature of the historically significant alliance between the two strange nations was defined fully. Unit Twelve as well as her entourage said they would be moving their base of operations to Valor for the time being, but would spend much of their time out, hunting down any signs of the sect. When asked about Erratic Judgement, she simply said that she had left the fortress in capable hands. As they ran out of mattes to discuss, Iris was escorted out along the same path she had come in from, all the way to the lobby, where the guards wished her a good day and began the procedures for opening up the offices once more.

As she was about to leave and head to the blacksmith to finally get her wings back, Iris’s gaze once more met up with the spider simulacrum’s, though this time, the machine didn’t look away. It shyly approached her, keenly inspecting every inch of the necromancer’s appearance. What should have been a fairly terrifying moment of being set upon by a massive mechanical spider, somehow didn’t feel at all worrying to her.

“Can I help you?” Iris asked as the simulacrum stopped directly in front of her.

“The one of Amora thinks the memories are false. It was not you who was found, you did not comfort the one of Amora in the dark! Why have you entered the memories?” The spider suddenly spoke.

“Have we met before?” Iris awkwardly took a step away from the rambling simulacrum.

“No! Yet the memory persists!” The spider yelled almost delightedly. “There is no feeling within the one of Amora, no warmth when gazing at this one. The thoughts of the necromancer kept the one of Amora from the Void, but the memory lies with your image. Eleven thousand four hundred and seven times, I have run the test to search for a flaw, an inconsistency in memory, yet found none – but the feeling can not be fooled. Why is that?”

“I don’t have an answer for you, I’m afraid – but nothing you’re saying means anything to me, so there must be something up with your memory by the sound of it.” Iris said, only now realizing that she was speaking with a simulacrum that spoke back to her, she would have said something but it felt rude to ask about it.

The spider let out what could be seen as a laugh but sent shivers down Iris’ spine. “I knew it! The world is wrong! The one of Amora found the necromancer once, she will find the necromancer again! Perhaps the Venator knows!”

“You do that.” Iris awkwardly cheered on the machine and slowly backed away, all the way out of the building.