"Can you focus, Jenna?"
"A nickname..."
"The sun is not going to give you the answer on how to kill him."
"Of course he will. He always did. Let's head north. The cave isn't that far, and Helios is further."
"I don't know how you did this, but fine. I'll follow you."
The forest did grow back again, but slowly, and in that bright drought hell, Genova smelled the treacherous indicator of a nearby enemy.
"Helios is puposefully leaving traces here and there. He can't hide in this desert, so he tries his best sabotage our lives."
"We keep moving, think of those who won't even have a chance to shine in killing him."
"You think this is a chance?"
"A privilege. Most don't try anything in life, they wait and die of old age in a house full of memories, and I think dying of torture by the hands of a country's soldiers for threatening their national security is kinda cool. They lie to themselves and others saying that they want a normal, fulfilling life. But those two things are contradictory. No one can get both. If your life is truly fulfilled, then it won't be normal, there won't be any normalcy in and you will only get true rest when you die."
"That's how I used to live at Cressenie. I trafficked a few weapons for the lore, but I mostly executed missions left and right. I expected more and more, and Ismael moved us all in Perseus."
"How does it feel? The thrill of getting arrested, shot, but always managing to hide and survive every assault, every police tracking. I'm sure this is the most you can get from life, right?"
"It wasn't always as dreamy as you think it was. You have to keep thinking and thinking, how to block the strategies of others. Because you're never alone when you do this, you shoot them down, there's another that waited for this specific opportunity. To take you down."
"I see."
"What about you?"
"I'm a Cardinal. I don't do anything besides what my Sin commands, and not doing so is annoying. It's like an itch you can't scratch because it has roots deep in your soul, and your actions define your devotion to your nature. You embrace the Sin, you keep on living. You deny it, you lose strength and you die. Viscountess of Slavery sounds easy but I can't express it here, and neither could Ashnael, Count of Murder. The more I think about it, the more I realize how right Anaïs was to not take him in for the mission. He's unpredictable and scary. He would go after us more than he'd go after Helios after giving up on catching him."
"Ashnael was the hot-headed one of the Cardinals?"
"Yes. And Faviel and Cassius would have been unable to properly work together. They're asocial freaks, but still good people. Nerida...I hope Nerida is fine wherever she is, I like to believe she's better off without me, able to survive without Loovis, the castle or me."
"We still have Melisa, Theigon and Ismael."
"That's four of us. How Helios could possibly be able to whilstand all of us at the same time is beyond me."
"Well, we'll see. We're here. This id the entrance of the cave. That's quite the death spot."
After a few minutes carefully mapping the place, they used their newfounded knowledge of the area to go the main central way.
A dark, empty hallway of natural rock formation. Amphelise stopped Genova in her tracks woth her right arm, looking concerned. Breathing in fear, she whispered to her.
"The absolute disdain I can feel from here is saddening. How callous."
"I'm sorry?"
"No regard for human life. None whatsoever. I won't life to you, Jenna. Alice, Melisa and June are most likely in terrible shape. Alice is scared shitless, she just won't admit it, she hides behind her wall of knowledge. Melisa probably will use her Sin, but that's only going to anger him even more."
"We have to go regardless, right?"
"Not without a plan. I'm going to let out a flow of my Sin to Melisa. She'll know this is and I'll be able to communicate and maybe see what is happening out there. While I do this, cover me."
Amphelise, backed to the wall on the left, let her right index finger extracted her Sin, passing by the highest position of the cave to elude him.
"Smart. He won't be able to see the trail if it's all the way up there. The problem will be her reaction to it. She's braver than I thought. I understood when talking to her, that she was mature. But this, risking your life so easily...we didn't have Helios in Cressenie. No one was like that, not even me. It's terrifying, what beyond perfection performance looks like. Evading and killing so easily in your own environnement. Had I stayed in Cressenie, I would have ended up like him."
The trail finally reached a large area where all three of them were taken as prisoners. She could see the bodies held in the air by tight ropes from the ceiling and the ground. They were held by the feet and the hands.
They were covered in blood and shaking, the candle lights were flickering and Amphelise took her time to reach Melisa on the right.
The trail took ahold of her hands, and there she knew not to make any sounds, any sudden movement.
"Melisa, we're getting you out."
"How many of you are in?"
"Me and Genova."
"Not enough."
"Seriously? What if I come in and I burn everything?"
"You'll just burn us too."
"And you will all get back to the Structure."
"What about you and Genova?"
"We'll fight him and thid time we'll kill him. That's why we're here anyway, right?"
"At this point, I'll take a definitive death."
"You won't. You will embrace victory."
"Genova. We're going, you'll wait outside for a second as I burn the entire area right off, then you run inside and we kill him."
She grabbed her hand to get her to stand and they discretely walked to the place. The entrance was guarded by a bunch of spines with metal implants to connect into the rocks and form a door of some sort.
Amphelise brust through it and reached her hand on his back, exploding her Sin on him, burning the ropes in the effect.
Once down, Melisa, still alive as well as Alice and June, carried them out to safety outside of the cave.
"Turn around, Helios! Show me your face, this time! Show me the coward you are!"
His grey jacket, or what was left of it, fell off his muscular body. He stared into her eyes that weren't damaged thus time around.
"What? What...are you?"
"I'm the worst thing in Perseus."