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The monsters had stopped chanting.
Eon looked at what remained of the clearing. The Blinding Light hunters were distributed across it in the configuration they had died in, most of them still with their palms pressed together, the prayer position held past the moment of death. Saffron fabric among the darker uniforms. Drake at the center, the armor the only identifiable thing.
"His armor," Needle said, from beside him.
"It is a pity," Eon said. "Drake was not a piece Hood could replace quickly."
Needle said nothing. He had known Drake was the target before Eon selected him. He had chosen this clearance team with that in mind.
"Hood will connect this to Azareth," Needle said. "He's too careful not to."
"Then Father needs to move before he finishes connecting."
Eon looked at the treeline where the last of the column had gone. "Your presence here made the difference, Benefactor Needle. This humble monk is grateful."
Needle turned to leave. Eon raised one hand.
"May Mahakala bless you, Benefactor Needle."
Needle paused and turned back. He bowed once.
"May Father bless you, Sir Retractor."
He walked into the trees.
Eon pressed his palms together and bowed his head.
"Namo Mahakala," he said, to the clearing.
He left.
. . .
Desmond Vane had been Vice Guildmaster of the Blinding Light for eleven years. The morning whiskey was nine o'clock sharp, two fingers of single malt, the window open regardless of weather. It was not indulgence. It was load-bearing.
He poured the glass, sat down, and looked at Crestfall.
"Vice Guildmaster."
Harlan never opened the door without knocking.
"Sit down," Desmond said.
"I can't, sir."
He looked at Harlan. The man had delivered casualty reports and budget failures and the Azareth border closure without visible distress. Something about his face now was different.
"Tell me," Desmond said.
The gate team was eleven days in. One hundred hunters, three S-ranks, Drake commanding from the ridge. Communication had dropped. The recovery squad had gone in.
Every hunter was dead.
"All of them," Desmond said.
"Yes, sir."
"Including Drake."
"Sir Drake's armor was identified on-site." Harlan stopped. "The skull was destroyed. Something drove through it. The armor was the only way we confirmed it was him."
Desmond set the whiskey down. He picked it up again.
"How did the others die."
The hunters were found in formation. Most of them bisected, the standard aftermath of large-scale monster attack. But their hands.
All of them had their palms pressed together.
Both halves. Upper and lower. Dead, hands still in the prayer position.
"Their eyes were open," Harlan said. "All of them."
"And the expressions."
Harlan looked at the floor. "Smiling, sir."
Desmond held the glass and looked at the city.
Smiling. Hands pressed together. Eyes open.
He had read an intelligence summary from Azareth six weeks ago. Flagged it. Put it in the regional file. Azareth's quarantine, Azareth's problem, not something Victoria needed to spend resources on.
The name Mahakala had been in that summary.
"Sir," Harlan said.
Desmond set the glass down. "If this spreads like Azareth." He stopped. Started again. "We're not talking about one lost operation. We're talking about—" He made a short gesture. It meant: cities. Infrastructure. Something that does not stop.
He stood up.
"I need to see the Guildmaster."
Harlan's expression did not change. It said everything anyway.
. . .
He knocked.
"Come in."
The office was what it always was: large, precise, the paperwork in three stacks of equal height, the window closed. Gregory Hood did not look up from the document he was reading.
Desmond stood in front of the desk and said: "Drake is dead."
Gregory turned a page.
"The entire gate team," Desmond continued. "All one hundred. The recovery squad found them—"
"How."
"Bisected. Most of them. By monsters, or something using monsters. But their hands—" He stopped. "Sir, their hands were still pressed together. All of them. The pieces of them. Praying."
Gregory set the document down. He was still reading it when he set it down, or had been, and now he was not. He looked at Desmond.
"And Drake."
"His skull." Desmond kept his voice even. "Something drove through it. We only confirmed identity from the armor."
Three seconds passed.
Gregory picked up the crystal ashtray from the left side of his desk and threw it at Desmond's head.
Desmond moved right on reflex. The ashtray caught his temple instead of his face, opened a cut above the eyebrow, and shattered against the wall behind him. He felt the blood run.
"Eleven days," Gregory said. "Eleven days and this is how I'm finding out."
"The communication drop was flagged at day nine, sir. The recovery squad protocol—"
"Stop." Gregory stood. The gold markings on his neck had brightened. "Do not give me protocol. Drake is gone. Do you understand what that means? Do you understand what he cost to build?"
Desmond held still.
Gregory walked to the window.
He was quiet long enough that Desmond started to think the conversation had moved into a different register. Then:
"Mahakala."
"Yes, sir. It appears in the Azareth summary from six weeks ago. I shelved it as a regional—"
"I read the Azareth summary." A pause. "I read it twice. I called it a regional anomaly." Another pause. "I was wrong."
He said it to the window. Desmond did not comment on it.
"Something is moving across two sovereign territories," Gregory said, "using a mechanism that bypasses rank entirely, leaving no trace, no intelligence record, no sighting. That is not improvised. That has been built." He turned. "How long has it been building."
Desmond had no answer.
Gregory looked at the blood on his face, the cut above the eyebrow, the way Desmond was standing with his hands at his sides and not reaching up to wipe it.
"Every report in the last two years. Mahakala, buddha kingdom, monks, mantras, mass prayer behavior in gate environments. Everything." He turned back to the window. "Tonight."
"Yes, sir."
"Desmond."
He stopped at the door.
"Day seven," Gregory said. "If communication drops, I want you in front of me on day seven. Not day nine. Not after the recovery squad."
"Yes, sir."
He closed the door.
Gregory stood at the window and looked at Crestfall. Thirty years of work. The city below organized the way he had organized it, the factions where he had positioned them, the power moving through channels he had built. A system so precisely constructed that most of the people inside it did not know they were inside it.
Something had been operating in the same city for what appeared to be years and he had not seen it.
He thought about that for a long time.
He did not reach any conclusions he was satisfied with.