'Lucid, I have analyzed him thoroughly,' Alice reported, her tone calm and analytical. 'He seems to be entirely reliant on an external thread of fate like that veiled women from earlier.
'I would be careful, but it is nothing you cannot handle.'
'What is he?' Lucid asked mentally while circling to the right.
'He is at an enlightened stage of the initiate rank,' Alice answered.
Lucid glanced back toward the harbor and the distant sky.
He had just narrowly avoided an economical and universal collapse inside a divine domain, and now a foreign priest wanted to convert him by force.
The irony.
The acolyte stood upright despite the gaping wound in his abdomen.
White light knit his torn robes together and sealed his flesh, drawing upon the external thread Alice had detected.
He raised his staff high above his head, causing the sunlight breaking through the clouds to intensify over the plaza.
"Murder you say? You are harboring a beast!" the acolyte said, gesturing toward the collapsed settlement where Ayame lay among the shattered timber. "The Kingdom of Vex has fallen into corruption under its new queen. She sends unbelievers and monsters to defile Port Vexis."
"She did not send us to debate," Lucid replied.
Lucid flexed his newly regenerated fingers. The Chain of Heart pulsed inside his chest, pumping dense fate essence through his limbs. He could feel the eighty percent loss from the black hole encounter dragging at his stamina, yet his physical body remained responsive.
He still harbored twenty percent of his vast power.
Arthur forced himself to one knee, wiping the blood from his nose with the back of his gloved hands. His he blue hair rain and grime.
"Lucid," Arthur said, his voice steadying. "Do not let him initiate another area blast. His staff acts as a focal point for the sunlight."
"I see it," Lucid said.
Ayame pulled herself out of the splintered debris of the shop wall. Her dark robes were torn along the hem, revealing the pale skin of her shoulder. The single horn at the side of her head had lengthened further, signifying the elevation of her internal anatomy.
She spat a mouthful of blood onto the wet stones and gripped her dagger with both hands.
"He hits hard," Ayame noted bluntly.
"He uses borrowed fate essence," Lucid told her. "Aim for the connection above his head, not just his body."
Lucid stopped.
"Domain control, none of you guys can use it!" he blurted.
The young acolyte stepped forward, his bare hands glowing with the same destructive radiance that had shattered Lucid's arm.
"There is no connection to sever," the priest proclaimed. "The light of Ateris is absolute. Mother Alisia sees every corner of this wretched harbor, and she demands cleansing."
The priest thrust the staff forward, releasing a lance of concentrated heat toward Lucid's chest.
Lucid dropped low, letting the beam scorch the air above his life jacket. His bare feet gripped the wet cobblestone as he launched his body forward, ignoring the exhaustion burning in his muscles.
He had survived the judgment of a Monolith. He would not be reduced to dust by some preacher.
He closed the distance in three strides, his right fist coated in a dense crimson glow as he aimed a blow directly at the acolyte's throat.
The priest slammed the staff to the ground.
The floor started to shake violently.
"Wait," Arthur yelled over the tremor. "There are civilians!"
"Non-believers," the acolyte said.
Lucid wrapped a white chain around the shaft of the staff, halting its downward vibration. Arthur and Ayame moved from the side like shadows, ready to subdue the priest at any moment's notice.
Suddenly, the acolyte was cornered.
Lucid had a red grip on his throat, ready to clamp down and splatter his red blood across the stones.
"You dare?" the priest screamed.
Lucid looked around. His slightly active fate essence coursed through his Chain of Heart, sensing the structure of the air. There was some kind of domain control in here. Every citizen's collective consciousness was gone.
Suddenly, the priest grinned and grabbed something from his belt.
Before Ayame could move to intercept his hand, a word so beautiful and entrancing echoed across the square that it sent them momentarily into a trance.
Lucid took a step back and almost succumbed.
Suddenly, he fell backward onto a pair of warm, imminent hands.
It was dark.
The room was dark, but a faint green hum could be felt around him.
He lifted his eyes toward her.
It was Alice.
She pushed him forward. He stumbled, and then he was back in the mess.
Arthur lay unconscious.
Ayame lay unconscious.
The preacher was reading from a scroll he had pulled from his belt.
Lucid shook his head.
The words were beautiful. They were almost suffocating.
He looked around.
Everyone in the square was on their knees.
"O citizens of Port Vexis!" the acolyte shouted across the rain-swept harbor. "Shall I save you?"
He preached with such rhythm that Lucid almost found himself wanting to clap.
Suddenly, the priest regarded Lucid and looked him up and down.
"So you are still standing," the acolyte said.
Lucid stood frail and tall.
"What did you do?"
The priest did not answer the question immediately. He turned his eyes back to the parchment unrolled between his hands.
The material was thick and yellowed, smelling faintly of tallow and dried pine sap. Water from the downpour hit the surface of the sheet and ran off without soaking into the fiber, leaving the ink sharp and dark against the grain.
"A hymn of the High Church," the acolyte said. He folded the parchment with two careful movements and tucked it into the wide belt around his waist. "The words carry the weight of Mother Alisia's sight. Those who lack the foundation to bear them simply sleep until the path is cleared for their instruction."
Lucid looked down at Arthur. He was on the ground, his side with his blue hair pressed into the mud between two stone slabs.
His breathing was slow and even, his chest rising against the plates of his light armor without any hitch or struggle.
A few paces away, Ayame lay curled near the broken boards of the merchant stall. Her horn had shrunk back to its neutral size, and her pale fingers were loose around the leather grip of her dagger.
Neither of them had wounds from the sound itself. They were simply gone from the fight.
"You put them under," Lucid said.
"I removed their interference," the acolyte replied. He lifted his staff and planted the brass ferrule on a flat stone.
"The knight wears the colors of Vex, yet his mind is cluttered with secular loyalty. The horned woman is an abomination by her very birth. Neither of them could stand upright inside a consecrated field."
Lucid shifted his weight to his left foot. The wet stone was cold against his sole, but the pulse from his Chain of Heart kept the chill from settling into his joints.
Twenty percent of the blackhole remained. It was a fraction of what he had carried into the golden chamber of the Monolith, yet the density of it felt heavy inside his chest, like a lead weight swinging inside a hollow bell.
He looked past the priest toward the street corners.
The crowd of harbor workers, bakers, and dock hands remained on their knees. Their hands were open on their thighs, their heads tilted slightly upward toward the grey clouds.
Rain ran down their foreheads and dripped from their chins, yet none of them wiped their faces or attempted to stand. They were silent, breathing in the same slow rhythm as Arthur and Ayame.
"Is this your cleansing?" Lucid asked. "A street full of bodies that cannot even speak to you?"
"They will speak when they are taught the language," the acolyte said. "Port Vexis has lived under the neglect of an empty crown for three generations. The old king allowed foreign vessels to dock without inspection.
He allowed shrines to Gasp and the Carpists to stand within three miles of the docks. Now the daughter sits on the throne, and her first act is to send mercenaries into the harbor with bare feet and orange vests."
The priest looked at the orange life jacket strapped over Lucid's chest.
Alice spoke inside his mind, her voice clear and cool against the dull ringing in his ears.
'It would seem hurting him or making him bleed in any way carries great threats from far-away lands.'
Lucid nodded slightly, his chin dipping toward the orange fabric of his life jacket as he kept his eyes on the white-robed priest.
'Ah, so you are not as homicidal anymore,' Lucid thought back to her. 'Great way to think, Alice. I approve.'
A sudden fluster, like the heat of a brief fever, brushed against the back of his neck.
'You are a silly little human,' she retorted.
Lucid leaned forward, his weight dropping onto the balls of his bare feet on the wet cobblestone. The Chain of Heart beat twice against his ribs, sending a thick pulse of fate essence through his legs.
He prepared to close the distance and strike the acolyte before the priest could raise the brass ferrule of his staff.
A voice cut across the rain from behind them.
"Stop."