The one in the woods was later joined by another wearing the same robes as him and whispered aggresisvely.
"Why are you still here? Anyone could see you! Let's leave!"
"I saw the Suffered. It is as the High Marquis prophecized, Cassius."
"Yes. Of course he would tell us the truth. Now leave."
"How is everyone at the castle?"
"They're excited about your findings."
"You're always too much in a hurry, Cassius..."
An adult was listening, a bit further. Where the two met up, they eventually discovered his location.
"My, a living one despite the age."
"You two are not human beings!" The man screamed.
"No. But you'll find we are infinitely worse, and you saw us, you clumsy clumsy human."
Ashnael, hair half-green half-white extended his hand towards the man who felt a tingling pain in the lower-right side of his abdomen, then knelt as the spot began to burn in crescendo. Whatever organ was touched here exploded, leaving him gasping for air. Ashnael crouches in front of him.
"You know what I hate the most in life, human? It's not my inherent nature, that I love. It's the fact that I'm a man. Cardinal Sins have females too, and they're extremely pretty. Yet I was made this way. While I am beautiful still, I carry hatred for my appearence, which means I carry hatred for my own person, and that frustrates me because I am not a bad person. What I despise is to have to hate what I am for being something that I didn't choose to be. When I look at them, their perfection, their natural beauty, that only reminds me of what I am. So you see, I'm just existing, and I don't think this should be a problem for anybody. I'll find a way to change that, trust me. I'll be a woman."
He gets up and takes the dirt away from his robes, connects his two index fingers on another and the man's ribs break and crack.
"Now we really have to leave. Ashnael. The High Marquis won't be happy to learn there are decadences outside."
"I know, I know. They have to feel fear, Cassius. They have to resent their own body like I resent mine."
Gloria and Ismael were reading and searching, finding nothing but general warnings about the sins. After three hours of intense work, Gloria fell asleep on the large tables, head in arms.
"I did what I had to do. I'm just a kid, now, but they're all safe at the moment. Alive, safe and sound. Of course it's temporary, but I think I've made the right choice, and they don't really know what happened, they can't remember so far but they do have an idea. That's enough. Moreover, Karin has been very understanding, like everyone else was. I feel like I could fight, in this body, if i had to. Thought I've got to admit, not knowing anything about my enemies is frustrating, let's just hope the other groups have found something, anything."
Karin emerged from the shelves, waking up Gloria now half-asleep.
"We found something! And...you were staring at Gloria, of course, that's your wife, isn't she?"
"Karin, please, just tell me what you have."
"Right. So in old, very old tales, the people deemed the creepiest had dress codes that didn't exactly fit the current criteria at the times, facial expressions that seemed to be unnatural and provoking. Let's say today, you would see some insane person running naked with a gun or whatever."
"Okay so, asocial freaks. Psychiatric patients left in the wild."
"More or less. They were heavily targeted back then. Today you would just get shot, but back then they would make them public and known that these were the enemies of society. And it was clear, they had names thrown at them, and with time, it looks like they stuck to them and wherever they would go, names would follow."
"Cardinal Sins."
"Precisely."
"But not for any dumb reason. Weirdos were everywhere in every world, country and time of history in every society. They were doing more than that." Karin points at a specific part.
"Murder, torture, suicide, cannibalism, slavery."
"Five. Unlike the seven deadly sins of Capucine and Efalis, we have only five this time around. I would assume what they lost in comparison number-wise, they compensate with different assets for each of them."
"From now on, we have to be extremely careful about who we talk to. We'll make sure to not reveal any intel out loud to anyone. Gloria, did you get that?"
"I did...it will be easy to identify them, not kill them."
"What do you mean?"
"Murders don't go unnoticed in small towns. So if you hear about a "tragedy", look no further, the culprit could be the one on tv."
"That's smart, but they could potentially be framing a random citizen and go away with murder. And at any rate, we have enough informations to start phase two. Exploration. We don't know jackshit of this world, parents think we're aware of everything, but those surroundings are new and we need to get acclimated to it as fast as possible."
"Where do you reckon we start?" Gloria asked, interested.
"The deep forest. Something about it doesn't sit right with me."
"Right behind all houses, yet it's all comfy and calm."
"Basically that. And what you said earlier about tales. I was thinking fairy tales. I was thinking maybe this world is demented in a way that old stories became real, and the reality of it made it worse. Something about this is extremely carnal and raw, beast-like. The sins themselves materialized, here. And we'll have to send them back to just writing. Reduce them back to the idea of a concept."
The entire group left, as one of the library-goers moved their eyes from the book they were reading.
"They're onto us, High Marquis. The Suffered have researched on us."
"Send Amphelise to the deeper forest. I want them to experience the world of Perseus."