“What are we doing?” I hissed at Revayne. “And how are you still reading?”

“Shh,” was all she said before urging me to keep up with her.

I was tempted to snatch the book and smack her with it, but that wasn’t what a good party host would do, so I restrained myself. We were following the couple I had seen earlier, the youngish woman being led further into the temple by the strangely confident man.

Now that I looked more closely, there was something off here. Where were they even going inside the temple?

I wasn’t sure what was going to make me madder. The fact these two were getting cozier with each other as time went on—were they actually thinking of hooking up inside a temple?—or that Revayne was dragging me along like I wanted to be a voyeur too.

At least I was getting a lesson in being sneaky from the guard captain. She would stop at corners, or farther back in hallways, occasionally holding out an arm to prevent me from straying farther forward and giving our positions away.

But of course, the temple wasn’t that large. We didn’t have to stalk our prey for long.

The couple finally came to a stop at the end of a hallway. I recognized it from my own time walking around. The ritual room where I had performed my first Sacrifice wasn’t far from here. I frowned at the duo. They were getting overly handsy already. I was about to go ahead and tell them off, but Revayne again barred me with a hand.

“Wait,” she said. She was peeking forward over the rim of her book.

“Wait for what?” I asked. “They—”

Hamsik appeared from a side corridor. A door banged open, and the woman jumped away from the man, flushing.

I was more confused than ever.

Hamsik ignored the young lady and strode straight to the man, who was standing his ground and frowning.

“How dare you come here, you mongrel,” Hamsik said, voice so scathing that his words alone sounded like they’d deliver mortal blows. “You’re lucky I haven’t killed you where you stand.”

I almost wanted to ask Revayne if she knew what in the world was going on, but I had a feeling I was going to get my answers soon enough. As the two men confronted each other, the woman stepped back, a look of confusion dawning on her face.

The man wasn’t cowed by Hamsik’s hostility. “Get yourself gone, half-breed

. You have no power over me. A bastard should know his place.”

Hamsik was already pretty angry, so the insults didn’t make much of a difference. “I am warning you one last time. Leave the temple immediately and never show your face again. Or else—”

“Or else what?” Undeterred by Hamsik’s growing rage, the man just stepped forward. “Once I tell the Master that you’re standing in our way, you’ll be disposed of, just like everyone else will.”

He leaned in some more and I couldn’t hear the words he hissed at Hamsik next. But whatever he did say, it made the half-vampire go ballistic.

Hamsik moved so fast, I didn’t even properly see what happened. One second, I was staring at a confrontation. The next, there was a brilliant flash, then Hamsik’s glowing hand had burst through the man’s chest, a splatter of blood striking the temple’s walls and floor before sizzling away.

I was a little too shocked to react. Not so Revayne.

The woman had staggered back at the burst of violence, her mouth opening wide in a scream. But the guard captain got to her first. Just like with Hamsik, I hardly even got to see her move. How were these people that fast?

Revayne reached her target and clamped a hand over the frightened woman’s mouth to muffle the scream. By the time my muscles remembered they were supposed to be working and I had joined them, the guard captain had whispered something in the woman’s ear to calm her down.

“What are you…?”

My question died in my throat. The man Hamsik had killed—the corpse, rather—slid off the half-vampire’s hand, slumping to the ground. The blood that had burst free at the hit sizzled away, just as the man’s flesh was burning off around the blackened hole where Hamsik’s hand had punched through.

“It’s a Thrall,” Hamsik said with disgust. “I didn’t think they’d actually be stupid enough to invade the cult, but it looks like I was wrong.”

“A Thrall?” My heart started pounding. I remembered the one whose head I had crushed with the hammer. “Then why isn’t it…” I looked at Hamsik’s hand. The glow was fading, but I noted the sun-yellow shade of it. “You know how to kill them for good?”

Before he could answer me—which, honestly, was a dumb question anyway, considering I had just seen him kill a Scarthrall permanently—Revayne stepped forward. She was still holding the other woman tightly, and a part of me was scared that she was a Scarthrall too. Everybody here was so pale, that unless I looked really closely, it was hard to tell.

The Scarthralls I had fought against had been obviously inhuman but only because their grotesque bodily deformities had been visible on the exposed parts of their bodies. This one had clothed himself very well, however.

“Do you realise what you’ve done, Kalnislaw?” Revayne said. “You just killed a potential key source of information.”

Hamsik scowled. “That thing deserved death. Deserved worse. It’s lucky I wasn’t in the torturing mood.”

Revayne flipped through several pages on her book like she was finding a response from the story she was reading. “That’s not the point! Had you waited just a few more minutes, had you asked the right questions, we would have come out of this confrontation with potentially enough information to get to the very source of this corruption.”

Hamsik’s eyes sharpened. “Are you telling me you were alright with this creature traipsing about on cult premises just so you could attain information?”

This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.

Both of them seemed to be forgetting the very real threat of the poor young woman nearly getting her blood sucked dry. Or worse.

“We don’t have time for your bickering,” I said, cutting Revayne off before she could bite back at Hamsik. “What’s done is done.” I looked down at the corpse of the Thrall. This wasn’t one of the ones Aurier and I had fought against. Shit. “If there’s one of them here, that means there’s very likely going to be more.”

Revayne nodded. “We need to proceed fast. But carefully. These are tricky opponents.”

Hamsik made a dismissive noise. “Tricky for the likes of you.” He sighed. “You go on. I’ll take care of this one’s body and join you.”

Revayne looked reluctant to leave Hamsik with the Thrall’s corpse, but I couldn’t care less. Now wasn’t the time for arguments. Plus, the Scarthrall was dead.

I headed back pretty quickly. The guard captain followed, leading the woman who was still in quite a bit of shock. I hadn’t heard her speak once. Revayne was more or less making her walk like a puppet. I felt a bit sorry for her. The only reason I wasn’t as taken aback was because I had already seen the Thralls in action. I had fought against them.

If this had been my very first encounter, I probably wouldn’t have been handling it as well as I was.

Or maybe I would have. The cult was in danger. Those bastards had specifically targeted Escinca’s little party. Now I was starting to feel like Hamsik. Like punching a hole through their chests was better than they deserved.

“We can’t create a fuss,” Revayne said. Her open book still hid most of her face, and at this point, I couldn’t even question it. “We must be careful, or things can unravel rather quickly.”

I nodded. Good point. “Were you expecting something like this to happen? Is that the real reason you accepted Aurier’s invite?”

“I suspected the Thralls might target a party where lots of people were being actively invited.”

My mouth soured. Right. The Thralls would never have been able to get in if they hadn’t been asked to enter, and we certainly hadn’t been discriminating in sending out the invites.

The party was still in full swing when we got to the courtyard just outside the temple. Everything seemed fine. Peaceful and enjoyable. Normal. It was hard to believe that not far, a Scarthrall lay dead. Or a woman would be lying dead if Hamsik and Revayne hadn’t found something suspicious.

“Wait.” I swallowed, looking around, trying to see if anyone else looked off. “If we already had one of them trying to attack this woman, then there might be more of them already doing just that…”

Which meant we needed to scour through the temple, explore every nook and cranny, make sure that someone else hadn’t been abducted or—

Revayne squeezed my upper arm. “Don’t get overwhelmed. I believe this is part of why your friend remained within the temple.”

I was too distracted to even claim that Hamsik was far from my friend.

Nodding, I headed off to Escinca. It was basically impossible to determine the existence of any other Scarthralls just by looking. There were a few people I considered overdressed, like they were hiding their bodies, but confronting them in the middle of everyone was going to put people in needless danger.

“Do you already have a plan to deal with this?” Revayne asked.

I nodded. “Why, did you have ideas you wanted to share?” I scowled a bit. “Ideas like how you were going to deal with the last Thr—the last one?”

Revayne didn’t even look embarrassed at being called out. Although, I supposed I only got to see her eyes, so. “I’m curious how you intend to respond.”

I grunted. Escinca hailed me with a smile, though it dipped when he saw my expression. I took a quick breath and tried to mollify it. If the Scarthralls were smart, there would be one or more of them keeping an eye on us, so I couldn’t yet give away that we had discovered something was wrong.

“Everything alright?” Escinca asked. He glanced at my companions, frowning at the woman. “Oh dear, what has happened?”

Ah, right. Even if I tried to look natural, I absolutely couldn’t make the shocked woman pretend everything was okay. Plus, the Thralls might have been expecting said woman to be lying dead and bloodless somewhere within the temple, not walking out in the company of a cultist and a guard. Well, so much for pretending everything was perfectly fine.

Or maybe I was overthinking everything.

“Scarthralls, Elder,” I said, my voice low. Escinca’s eyes widened a little more at every word I said, but I kept going. “One of them was trying to attack this poor woman. Hamsik stopped the Thrall, and we brought her back here, where she would be safer. We suspect there’s more of them spread throughout.”

Elder Escinca swallowed. A gamut of emotions was running across his face, and the more I looked at him, the older he seemed to grow. My fingers curled into a fist. One that I felt like driving into the face of every Thrall present here.

“We will need to be careful,” Revayne cautioned again. “Chaos and panic will lead to more trouble than we can handle.”

“I’m wondering how we can warn everyone…” Escinca said.

I shook my head. “Elder, we need to take them out. Now. I saw Hamsik use light to kill one. I don’t have an Aspect that can do that, but I’m guessing you do, right?”

Elder Escinca blinked. “Of course.” Despite the realization, his face didn’t clear up. He was still tense. “This will still be extremely dangerous, but…” His expression settled into determined resolution. “I can call everyone in for a Blessing. It’s possible to tie it to the Aspect of Light with Complex Interaction. I’m just still worried about their reactions.”

I wasn’t sure what all that meant, especially the part about tying Aspects together. But that didn’t matter right now. “If you think it’ll work, then it might be our best shot.”

The Elder looked like we had thrust the lives of everyone here right into his hands, which we probably had in a way. He sighed, then reforged his determination. “Alright, let us begin. Be prepared.”

My shoulders were so tense, I figured it would be easy to accidentally snap them if I tried to relax. With visible effort, Elder Escinca modified his expression so that it didn’t look overly distraught, before stepping forward. He raised his glass again, tinkling a spoon against it to drag everyone’s attention to him.

“Apologies for the interruption, friends,” he said. “But I humbly request that you all gather near me for a moment. I would feel incredibly awful if I didn’t get to Bless you all before you left.” He smiled at everybody in genial welcome. “Come please, it will take only a moment. My old bones are growing rather weary, so I’d like to get it done before I’m forced to retire for the evening.”

“We don’t need any Blessings,” said problem girl from the Earth Cult. “Especially not from you sun cultists!”

I growled. There. Just as I had thought. I knew they were going to be a problem.

The other cultists agreed in mumbles and mutters, but that wasn’t the problem. Could their ranks be infiltrated by the Scarthralls? It wasn’t impossible, but it felt unlikely. However, the real problem was that their recalcitrance emboldened everybody else, cultist or not, to reject the Elder’s entreaty too.

“We didn’t come here to receive any Blessings,” one older woman said, clutching a man’s arm.

“That’s right,” said a young man in a tunic that was a few sizes too small for him. “I thought this was a nice little fete, not a conversion.”

Elder Escinca raised his hands quickly with an apologetic smile. “Please, it’s nothing of the sort. Just indulging one old man’s wish to assist his community in any way he can. Believe me, I expect nothing in return. The Cult of the Sun will never bind you to anything.”

Despite his calm, reasonable request and reassurance, more and more people looked reluctant to agree to be Blessed. I silently cursed the presence of the other cults.

Worse than that, things were starting to unravel. There were too many people disinclined against our idea. Casting my suspicions on over a third of the gathering was pointless. No way could there be that many Scarthralls.

Right?

Revayne and I exchanged a quick look. My plan was starting to fall apart, so we would need to figure out something else. Before I could think of what to try next or even ask if Revayne had a plan, someone screamed.

A small scuffle broke out, and then a man—unsurprisingly overdressed—stepped up. With a knife held at Aurier’s throat.

He grinned at us all, frozen in our places, revealing a row of fangs that would put most carnivores to shame. “Caught on, have you?” He laughed, the knife pressing into Aurier’s throat. “Well, I caught one of you too. Praise the Woven Way!”

I cursed. This had turned into a real bind.