Emil

The slew of gore before him would normally have his stomach in knots.

But Emil had enough.

He had been running across the city the entire morning, dancing to Vigil's tune as he tried to disarm as many of the Borealis bombs as possible. He placed everything on the line to save as many people as he could who came to Isarelle to celebrate the Aurous Festival. Yet in the end, his efforts were all for naught.

Thanatos, one of the prevailing symbols of the royal family's authority, had been destroyed right before his eyes. The collapse of the ever-present spire had demolished nearly a quarter of the city. From what he could tell, most of the Administrative District and the northern portions of the Black Shoal had been buried beneath its rubble.

How many people were dead?

As if to add insult to injury, a number of Thanatos inmates had survived the fall, likely thanks to Kleine's intervention. Emil had inkling that the leader of Vigil didn't let himself get caught without purpose. He had no idea how, but the man somehow was able to bypass being injected with Archanum and stripped of Azurite. Emil soon realized that the bombs placed throughout Isarelle also served a second purpose—to create additional entrances into the Canticle. Most of Vigil's Borealis detonated atop of Canticle reservoirs built for storing excess water. The reservoirs were dug closer to the surface and became accessible after the bombs stripped away earth. These makeshift entrances would later be used by Karni's rats to laid waste to the ruined city. Now they served as exits for the inmates of Thanatos to escape.

Emil would not allow it.

Vigil had achieved everything they had sought out to do in Isarelle thus far. They had the entire city in the palms of their hands, tugging and maneuvering pieces like the strings of a marionette. Emil felt powerless. No matter what hard he tried, Vigil was always several steps ahead. Just once he wanted to deal the notorious terrorists a crushing loss.

Maybe it was selfish of him. Maybe his efforts were better served trying to rescue survivors from the wreckage. Maybe his hunt of the Thanatos inmates was meaningless in the grand scheme of things.

He didn't care.

He vowed to put an end Vigil's indomitable streak of victories.

Two of them survived.

He glared at the remaining inmates who evaded his initial assault. One of them was already in a combative stance. Mana poured from the Azurite accessory wrapped in his hands. Emil had gotten extremely lucky with his ambush. Most of the inmates before him had already been weakened from prolonged confinement and died with little resistance.This one, however, seemed prepared to fight.

It doesn't matter!

"Fragment!" he shouted. The stone missiles levitating around him shot forth with murderous intent. He held nothing back and attacked only to kill.

The Thanatos inmate opened his arms. Mana from the Azurite accessory climbed sprouted out like tendrils as they latched onto the bodies felled by Emil's ambush.

"Obey."

The command felt heavy. The word carried an otherworldly authority as the mana tendrils buried themselves into the corpses. Emil's eyes went wide. Wraith-like apparitions were suddenly extracted from the deceased.

"Praeveni noxa!"

The apparitions shrieked in response to the esoteric tongue. As if compelled by the command against their will, they stormed towards the Thanatos inmate like a whirlwind. The wraiths draped themselves over his body, bestowing the haggard man with a macabre appearance. Mana glowed with a demonic irradiance as the Thanatos inmate's form suddenly turned translucent.

Bulwark's fragments arrived shortly after. The stone missiles passed through his immaterial form uselessly as though he was hollow.

Wraith armor. Emil recognized the distinct appearance of this ability. If there was one thing that Hortensia did not let him forget from her instruction, it was the monikers and Gifts of all the dangerous Thanatos inmates.

"Spirit Alchemist," he muttered with disdain.

"I'm flattered you know of me," the Thanatos inmate replied, his voice sounding like a distant reverberation to the backdrop of the wraiths' haunting screams. With the apparitions wrapped around his body, Spirit Alchemist was like a demonic revenant. Dark malicious miasma danced in his vicinity. Spectral projections of arms and legs protruded from the black mass. Teeth and eyes lingered grotesquely on the boundaries, whispering and probing with malevolent intent.

Emil felt his sanity slipping just staring at the revolting construct. His guts twisted with disgust. His bloodlust stirred, propelled by an innate revulsion to the Exalted in front of him. More than ever, he felt a powerful compulsion to kill the Thanatos inmate. An abomination of this calibre should not have been allowed to exist.

"By any chance, would you allow me to pass by? All I want is to get into the Canticle and exit this city," Spirit Alchemist asked, trying to sound nonthreatening, "I understand my appearance is traumatizing and my Gift is…distasteful. But well, what can you do? It's not like I was able to choose the form of my Awakening."

Emil scoffed at the pathetic attempt to negotiate. "Not a chance."

Spirit Alchemist let out a heavy sigh. The hollow reverberation in his voice grew even more pervasive. Emil tensed up, his instinct sensing danger.

"Well! It was a worth a try!"

Without warning, the apparitions clinging to the body suddenly spread. The black miasma opened up into the form of a pair of wings. Spirit Alchemist dug his foot into the ground and lunged. The screams and cackles of the malevolent spirits swelled as he got close.

Emil formed gauntlets. Light on his foot, he stepped to the side while sending mana into the earth. A row of stone projections shot up from the ground in Spirit Alchemist's path. The man's body glowed with an ebon gleam as he phased through the obstacles undeterred. Like a rabid beast, he was upon him in an instant. Emil swung with his right while his left prepared the next barrage of stone missiles. To his surprise, Spirit Alchemist met his strike head-on this time.

A palm strike blasted his right hand out of the way. Emil winced, the force generated by the spirit armor was heavy despite its phantasmal appearance. Spirit Alchemist followed up with a swipe of his own while Emil unleashed the stone missiles gathered by his left. The Thanatos inmate's body immediately turned ethereal. Emil ducked. The apparitions shrieked into his ears as the ghastly strike passed by his head.

Squelch!

An icy pain shuddered down his spine. Emil felt his head tremble with alarm. His entire body suddenly felt drained. Something had sunk its teeth into the back of his neck. It took a second for him to realize it was an apparition from the armor.

Before he could remove himself from the attack, his mind was overtaken by malefic visions.

Cataclysmal flames flooded his view. The flames crackled with a vengeance, threatening to devour everything in its path. Out of the ashen smoke was a disfigured silhouette. A figure that Emil had seen over and over again in his nightmares.

It was the crazed Exalted that destroyed his safe haven in the slums of Lower Dannan. The madman who placed him on this tumultuous path. The one who destroyed everything that he had built and slaughtered all of his friends.

Suddenly, he was a kid again. Ordinary. Powerless. His legs had been crushed from an earlier war with the Red Fangs. His broken ribs had punctured a hole in his lungs. He struggled to speak, only able to make garbled unintelligible noises. And then he saw it. His friends, led by Raz, discovered his location amidst the wreckage and the flames. They were supposed to have escaped. They weren't supposed to be here.

He screamed. He thrashed. He tried everything he could to convey the dangers lurking amidst the blaze. But no sound would come out. His limbs would not obey. His friends ran towards him, oblivious to the raging flames that awaited them.

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"Enough!"

The vision shattered. Blood trickled down from the side of his neck from the bite of the apparition. Blaze engulfed his body, forcing the apparitions back and putting an end to the terrible nightmares.

Spirit Alchemist was taken aback. The Thanatos inmate looked dumbfounded as he stumbled backwards incredulously. "Two Gifts?"

Emil pounced like a feral animal.

"You dare tamper with my memories?!"

The malefic vision might have disappeared, but the grief and terror etched in his heart refused to cede. Instead of fighting against it, Emil drew on those wretched emotions. Blaze burned with an unholy fervor. Spirit Alchemist tried to go immaterial again to evade his attack. But flames lacked substance to begin with. They were simply energy—there was nothing physical that could be dodged by turning phantasmal.

Spirit Alchemist and his apparition screamed as Blaze devoured them whole.

When Emil finally stopped to catch his breath, the Thanatos inmate was no more. Not even a single speck of him remained. Not even a trace of ash. Only a scorched earth, blacked with char, littered the spot where he used to be.

Emil grabbed onto his chest, suddenly awash with exhaustion. The inside of his body felt hollow and lethargic. Likely a consequence of the attack landed by Spirit Alchemist's apparition. The side of his head throbbed. The mana in his Azurite pendant had been depleted to half of its capacity. Despite the fight's conclusion, he didn't relax.

"Stop hiding like a rat," he suddenly ordered.

Spirit Alchemist wasn't the only enemy. There had been two inmates of Thanatos who had survived his initial assault.

He reignited Blaze as he stared at the makeshift passage created by the ruins of a collapsed building. After a short silence, a figure sheepishly stumbled out of hiding. "Ah, here I thought I could get away unscathed."

The haggard man spoke with a casual tone as though he was greeting a familiar face at the tavern. Unlike Spirit Alchemist, this inmate had a visibly unhealthy complexion. His body was paper-thin; his skin sagged loose against his frame, revealing haunting vestiges of his rib cage and bones. His punishment at Thanatos seemed to have left him deliberately malnourished.

Despite his feeble appearance, however, the man betrayed no sense of fear. His movements seemed weak and fragile, but his eyes gleamed with an unwavering confidence as though he was in complete control of the situation.

An Azurite accessory was strung around his wrist.

"I really didn't expect Spirit Alchemist to fall," he said, glancing forlornly at the blacked marks on the ground where the battle with Spirit Alchemist took place. When he raised his head again to match Emil's gaze, he smiled. "My, my, the world really has changed since I was imprisoned, hasn't it? To think there are Exalted with two Gifts running about."

Emil felt the fringes of his mind tugged and pulled by the man's words. His combative instincts somehow dulled. His body began to relax despite the presence of an enemy before him. Alarmed, he circulated mana to his brain. The calming effect on his mind faded without any resistance as though it had never been there in the first place.

Is he manipulating me with his Gift?

Or is this his natural charisma?

The invasive feeling made him shudder. Not daring to find out, Emil was about to attack when the man suddenly turned around.

"Come out, would you please?"

A gentle request, but it carried a strange authority. Then on a command, a shadow emerged by the ruins where the inmate originally hid.

A woman?

Emil narrowed his eyes, discovering a coat of mana in the shape of a collar around the woman's neck.

Goddammit.

He closed his eyes briefly to collect himself. Malice raked his guts. The remaining Thanatos inmate had somehow managed to find a hostage during his battle against Spirit Alchemist. The woman was staring at him with haunted eyes. Dried blood painted her scalp. The hand-made clothes on her body had been reduced to dirty rags. She looked like she had barely survived the fall of Thanatos, only to be pulled into another dire situation that she had no control over.

The man placed his hand on the woman's shoulder. It looked like a soft gesture, but the woman shuddered as though every nerve in her body recoiled at his touch.

"You want to save this woman, don't you? Look at her, so pitiful. So unlucky. Her entire neighborhood was buried under Thanatos's collapse and now she suddenly finds herself in a villain's grasp," he said with an expectant look.

It was clear that he wanted to negotiate. Emil sighed, letting his combative spirit and bloodlust fade. The mana radiating from his body slowly began to quell.

I need to remove his hand from the hostage. His Azurite accessory is the bracelet on the other arm. I don't know his Gift, but I can probably stop whatever is threatening the hostage by severing his connection with the stone.

"…What do you want?" Emil asked, clenching his jaws as though it pained him to ask. He put on the mask of a desperate savior.

I just need him distracted for a second. Have his guard down. Make him think that I'm relenting to his control. And then strike while hiding my intent.

"Indeed, that is the question, isn't it?" the Thanatos inmate said with visible delight. His eyes rolled to the side as he put on a contemplative air. "Let's see, I want safe passage into the Canticle and—"

Squelch!

Without warning, two spear stones erupted from the ground beside the Thanatos inmate's feet. One of them stabbed into the forearm of the hand resting on the hostage's shoulder. The other slashed at the wrist where his Azurite accessory was worn. Blood rained from the severed hand as it cleanly plopped to the ground with a thud. Emil closed the gap in an instant. With a vicious kick, he sent the Thanatos inmate flying into the rubble behind him as he secured the hostage.

"Well damn, I surely wasn't expecting that."

To Emil's surprise, the Thanatos inmate was staring at him with a gleeful smile on his face. Blood poured from the open gash on his head. A wooden spike from the rubble protruded out of his chest, appearing to impale his vitals. It was obvious at a glance that he didn't have long to live.

Still, his instincts were full alert. His body trembled in alarm, his unconscious seemingly picked up on something his mind hasn't perceived.

"Looks like I read you completely wrong. Those intelligent-looking eyes betray your true nature. So foolish, so abrasive, so arrogant. You think you can just brute force your way out of every situation, don't you?" the Thanatos inmate cackled hoarsely, "Well, you're wrong. Did you ever think to figure out who I was first before attacking? Or why there was a need for Thanatos to exist? There's a reason why I was kept inside that damned place instead of being executed, you know?"

Emil suddenly had a terrible premonition.

He glanced down at the hostage that he had just saved. The woman's face was aghast. She looked dazed as she stared blankly at her own body.

Her right arm had a gaping hole drilled into her thin forearms. Her left hand was missing. The bone protruded out of the stump—the hand itself on the floor, cleanly severed. Fresh blood poured from the side of her head and the gruesome wound engraved in the center of her chest.

W-What the hell just happened?

In the midst of his panic, he missed the thin veil of mana still enveloping the woman's body.

"She and I are bonded. The injuries I suffer, she also suffers. A one-way relationship. Well, she's not my only victim. There were many more spread across the kingdom if they haven't already died," the man croaked, "Before the Lionhearts imprisoned me, they called me, the Blood Father. Does it ring a bell, foolish young man?"

Emil froze in horror at the reveal of the inmate's moniker. Hortensia's warning struck him like a hammer.

"No matter what you do, never attempt to engage Blood Father."

Memories flooded his head as he recalled reading the Blood Father's records. In his prime, the Blood Father was the leader of a cult that peaked over a thousand members in its heyday. The man's Gift, Blood Pact, formed an irrevocable bound between him and his victims. It never disappeared—the mana tether was persistent, seemingly unaffected by normal Exalted limitations like interference range or access to mana. Once the Blood Pact was made, nothing could stop its effects. Lionheart and Steiger never figured out a solution. As a result, Blood Father was imprisoned in Thanatos in perpetuity. His limbs were shackled. His mouth gagged. He was placed in a permanent state of malnourishment to deplete his energy reserves and fed drugs to keep him in a dazed state. Everything was done to prevent him from injuring himself or committing suicide in order to protect him from his victims.

What have I done?

"So you do know!" Blood Father howled in delight, "I didn't plan for this to be my end, but so be it! Your despair will be the last thing I enjoy!"

Blood Father suddenly raised his head and slammed it against a nearby stone. The crunch of his skull fracturing screeched across the earth. Emil screamed. The woman in his arms immediately went limp. The lifeless body in his arms became unfathomably heavy.

Did a thousand members of Blood Father's cult just die?

He didn't want to know the answer.

Rain began to fall as he wept.

Tears and raindrops marred his face as he cradled the dead woman in his arms. He wailed, begging for forgiveness. He had made mistakes before, but nothing on this scale. Nothing as personal as this confrontation where the lives of countless victims were in question because of his recklessness. What should he have done? Was the right choice to let Blood Father leave? Was he supposed to incapacitate him? Emil didn't have the means to restrain someone without injuring them. His Gift were highly offensive in nature. Letting the cult leader leave would have also just gave him more opportunities to add new victims.

Every option felt like a loosing proposition.

When he finally regained some semblance of composure, Emil gently set the deceased woman on the ground. He closed her terror-stricken eyes. Guilt consumed his heart as he stood up to face the sky. The rain sapped his remaining strength with every drop. He was exhausted. All he wanted to fall into an ignorant slumber.

But when was fate ever kind to him?

When he dropped his gaze, he found a familiar face standing before him. A bundle of gray hair, wet and messy, draped to her shoulders. A sullen smile engraved on her face as she stared at him with a pair of mischievous eyes. Despite the frigid rain, Emil felt the temperature of his body climb. Good. He needed this. He needed something to channel his rage and grief.

"Melody," he muttered.

How many times has he relived that their fight at the night of the Clash of Dawn banquet? How many times did he curse his own lack of skill? How many times has he devised a strategy to overcome her unusual strengths?

None of that mattered to him right now. Not after everything that has happened today.

"Hello, Emil," Melody said with a chimelike tone as though oblivious to the malice from his piercing glare, "I really wasn't planning to make an appearance today. My hair doesn't do quite well in the rain, you see?" She twirled her short gray curls like a teenage girl while her eyes shone with a sadistic glint. "Unfortunately, someone has been mucking up the boss's plans a little too much."

Her smile never faded, but her body suddenly settled into a combative stance.

"So, would you please be a dear and die for me?"

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