When the man named Tom realized two living people were hiding in the basement, his brain completely froze. He stood there rooted to the stone floor, his mind a total blank.
Nearly twenty seconds ticked by before a bloodcurdling shriek burst from his throat. Panicking like a cornered rat, he turned and bolted for the exit.
Jeanne and Skadi were undeniably beautiful young women, but Tom wasn't paying any attention to their looks. The moment his brain restarted, he recognized the simple truth: he had walked straight into a trap, and he needed to put as much distance between himself and these strangers as possible.
Unfortunately, escaping wasn't an option. The heavy cellar door had already been bolted shut from the outside, and the two women inside had no intention of letting him slip away so easily.
"We'd like to have a little chat, Mr. Tom," Jeanne said casually.
With effortless grace, she reached out, grabbed the front of his coat, and yanked him backward, tossing him onto a nearby stack of grain sacks like a bundle of dirty laundry. Her face, however, held not even a flicker of warmth.
The dim lighting of the cellar cast deep shadows across Jeanne and Skadi's expressionless faces, creating an oppressive aura that made Tom's skin crawl.
"I... I don't know anything!" he stammered, backing away on his hands and knees until his shoulders hit the wooden wall. "What are you trying to do? I'm just an ordinary civilian! If you do anything to me, the Inquisitors won't let you off!"
Seeing the massive greatsword strapped to Skadi's back, Tom immediately suspected someone had hired these mercenaries to silence him. With no other leverage, he resorted to invoking the terrifying authority of the Inquisition.
It was almost laughable. A shady dealer who despised the High Inquisitor and his officers was now using their title as a shield. Even Tom felt the dark irony of it.
Unsurprisingly, neither woman showed the slightest hint of fear. They exchanged a look, shrugging off his empty threat with cool detachment as Jeanne reached into one of the burlap sacks at her feet.
"Don't kill me! Please, don't kill me!" Tom shrieked, backing further into the corner. He assumed Jeanne was reaching for some brutal interrogation tool to end his life cleanly in the dark.
He began to piece things together in his mind—the thugs sent to hassle the two sisters hadn't been defeated by that strange, strong child upstairs. They had been wiped out by these two dangerous women! Or perhaps that girl was simply part of their group, stationed upstairs as a guard.
"We aren't going to kill you just yet," Skadi said, her cold voice echoing off the stone walls. "At least not until you spill every single detail you know."
She held no affection for anyone tied to the ocean monsters.
"I doubt anyone carrying cargo like this can be called innocent," Skadi continued, pulling a sea urchin-like mass of pulsating flesh out of the sack. She held it in front of his face, waiting for an explanation. "You had better speak the truth if you want to leave this room alive."
"That thing..." Tom gasped, his eyes widening as he recognized the biological mass. He had come to this basement specifically to retrieve this payload!
"I know what that is!" Tom blurted out, a sudden shift occurring in his mind as he tried to bargain. "I didn't realize you two were here for the same score! Look, I'm willing to hand over everything I have. You can take this shipment for free—think of it as a gesture of goodwill! If possible, I'd even like to meet your boss. Who knows, maybe we're already business associates... Gagh!"
The moment he brought up business, his old merchant arrogance flared right back up. He assumed these two young women were like every other smuggler he dealt with—mercenaries hunting for illegal contraband to sell on the black market. If that was the case, they could easily come to an agreement!
His arrogant pitch pushed Skadi over the edge. Her crimson eyes flashed with dangerous rage as her pale hand shot forward, clamping around his throat and hauling his body straight off the floor.
Tom's vision swam as oxygen was instantly cut off. In his fading consciousness, he swore he could see his deceased parents waving to him from across a distant bridge, and he was drifting uncontrollably toward those two old folks he had never particularly liked.
Just as he felt ready to accept his impending demise, the world spun wildly around him. Skadi tossed him aside like trash, slamming him hard onto the cold stone floor. His internal organs throbbed with intense pain from the impact.
"Cough... cough!" Tom clutched his throat, gasping greedily for air. Driven past the edge by sheer terror, he found the nerve to scream at them, "What do you want from me?! If you're going to murder me, just get it over with! Keeping me like this is pure torture!"
"First off, we want answers," Jeanne said, drawing out her words as she stared down at the trembling man with cool curiosity.
"Who have you been supplying these things to? How many clients are involved? Why did you use an ordinary grain merchant to move this contraband into the city? And most importantly... do you even know what this stuff actually is?"
Jeanne and Skadi stared into his eyes, waiting. The sudden barrage of questions sent Tom's frantic brain into overdrive, leaving him momentarily unsure of where to start.
"I don't know what it is!" Tom blurted out, his voice cracked with panic. "I just know someone was willing to pay a fortune for it! A price so absurdly high I couldn't even bring myself to quote it first! It's just illegal goods! Hiding them in grain shipments is the easiest way to smuggle anything into the city! The Inquisitors are desperate for food supplies right now, so they don't inspect grain merchants too strictly. Everyone got what they wanted... isn't that the ideal outcome?!"
From the desperate honesty in his voice, Jeanne realized the man was telling the truth—he genuinely had no idea what kind of horrors he was smuggling. He was merely a greedy fool blinded by money, manipulated by darker forces.
"Are you telling us you truly don't know who you were trading with?" Skadi asked, stepping closer as a cold, terrifying aura radiated from her frame.
"I... I can guess a few things!" Tom babbled, scratching his head frantically as he tried to save his own skin. "I don't know the full details! But I swear, I had nothing to do with those girls' parents dying! That fool of a father insisted on hoarding the shipment for a few extra days, and look where it got him!"
In his eagerness to prove his innocence, Tom inadvertently admitted to watching the parents die over the goods.
Before he could offer another excuse, the cellar door burst open with a loud bang. Anne rushed down the stairs, her small hand gripping a sharp utility knife, her face flushed with pure, unadulterated rage. Hearing him talk about her parents' tragic end had broken her self-control, and she lunged forward to kill the man who had abandoned them.
Tom's eyes lit up with sudden hope. This was the opening he needed! He knew he stood zero chance against the two powerful women, but a twelve-year-old Feline girl was a completely different story!
If he could overpower the kid and hold her hostage, he could force a way out. He knew from experience that people like these two women wouldn't stand by and watch a child die. This was his ticket out of the cellar!
Once he escaped, he could report the whole group to the authorities, accusing them of being cultists from The Deep Sea Church. He knew the biological mass was connected to those fanatics, and once that label was stuck on them, no amount of explanations would save them from the executioner's block!
It was a brilliant plan, but reality crashed down hard. Before he could even lift an arm toward the child, Skadi's heavy boot slammed onto his chest, pinning him to the stone floor like a bug.
They didn't allow him to make a single move—though they didn't completely shield him from the furious girl either.
Anne threw herself at the pinned man, slashing blindly with her knife. She managed to leave several shallow cuts across his arms and chest before Jeanne stepped in to restrain her.
"Calm down, Anne. We still need him alive to trace the ringleaders," Jeanne said softly, wrapping her arms around the struggling child.
Yet, right as she pulled the girl back, Jeanne's hand "accidentally" slipped. The child broke free for a split second, bringing her blade down hard across Tom's right hand and neatly severing three of his fingers.
"AAAAARGH!"
A bloodcurdling howl echoed through the cellar as Tom clutched his bleeding hand, the overwhelming pain instantly knocking him unconscious.
Jeanne and Skadi stood over the passed-out merchant, staring at his bleeding hand for a long moment before deciding they should probably cauterize the wound to keep him from bleeding to death.
Actual medical supplies were far too precious to waste on scum like him.
So, Jeanne raised her hand, and a bright, intense flame ignited upon her palm.