"Oh?"
Vincent was mildly surprised, then said: "Is it because of your own soul's incomplete state? Or the effect of my body?"
Bernadette said: "For the 'complete' Bernadette, I am technically a partial soul — but within your body, I'm relatively whole. Beyond that, I also don't believe unicorn blood could have any effect on my soul."
That tracked.
Bernadette's soul carried the divinity of a demigod.
"Hm."
Vincent pinched his chin and thought it over. "So — is it my body that was affected?"
"No."
She denied it again. "If unicorn blood targets the soul, then there's a problem here: your soul, while incomplete, is in my world right now — only your physical body remains in my world. And my soul doesn't need unicorn blood. So why would I have felt a craving for it?"
Vincent stopped and thought.
"Either my read on my own soul is wrong — that even in your world my soul is incomplete, and unicorn blood can nourish it — or there's some unknown reason I haven't identified yet."
"But I've already ruled out the first possibility."
"How did you rule it out?"
Bernadette's expression was perfectly calm. "I tasted some unicorn blood."
"???"
Vincent nearly stood up straight. "So does that mean my body has now been cursed?!"
"Relax."
She said, unhurried: "I didn't take the blood by killing the unicorn. I found them, communicated with them, and obtained a small amount willingly. Blood taken that way doesn't carry the curse."
Vincent let out a breath. "That's a relief… wait — so unicorn blood has no effect on your soul. What about my body?"
"It helped. But not much."
Bernadette said: "The phrase you use — that Father used — would be: treats the symptom, not the cause. In the instant I drank it, I did feel a momentary comfort. But there was no substantial effect after that."
"And the core question isn't whether it works on the body — it's why I craved it in the first place. Though, that said, it's possible I'm overthinking it. This might simply be a residual influence your soul left on the body. Nothing more."
"But this body is mine for now — so I'll keep looking for the reason." She paused, and a slight smile crossed her face. "I hadn't known where to start before. Now I have a direction."
Vincent wiped imaginary sweat from his forehead. "You're going to research Horcruxes?"
"No immediate plans to make one. Research first."
"How are you researching it?"
"Voldemort's diary."
Her tone was even. "When I first got hold of it a few days ago, I was curious why I could sense the presence of a soul from inside a diary. Now that I think about it, this is almost certainly one of Voldemort's Horcruxes."
This woman was unreasonably perceptive.
But at this point nothing surprised Vincent anymore. She'd pieced together George III's Black Emperor ascension plan from scattered clues alone. A Horcrux in a diary? Child's play.
"Vincent."
She looked at him steadily. "You know where Voldemort's other Horcruxes are, don't you?"
"???"
...
Back in reality, Bernadette was breathing steadily in bed, still sleeping soundly. Vincent decided not to disturb her, and would update her in the morning.
Tap.
The sound, in the silence of the night, was unnervingly clear. Bernadette came awake instantly. She reached out and called her clothes to her, dressed in moments, then flashed into the sitting room.
On the window: a fingernail-sized hole, perfectly clean, its edge beaded with fresh red blood. On the floor, a trail of bloodstains — and a tiny, twitching piece of flesh crawling slowly across the floorboards.
"What on earth is that?"
"Rose Bishop's blood-flesh magic."
Bernadette's voice was flat. "It's Mr. Z."
"Wait — you mean that lump of meat is Mr. Z?"
She said nothing more. She took one step out through the Spirit World and reappeared in a pitch-black alley a dozen metres away. A heavy smell of blood hit her immediately.
On the ground lay a shapeless mass of dark-red flesh. Around its edges, two shadow-like points resembled eyes. It dragged itself along, splitting, spilling small droplets of meat across the cobblestones.
"What happened to him?"
It was something of a pointless question from Vincent — clearly he'd suffered catastrophic damage, but by whom was the real mystery.
"Can you still speak? Who did this?"
Bernadette looked at the mass of flesh and asked, without inflection.
The dark-red mass immediately reacted. It began hauling its scattered pieces back toward the largest cluster, working to reconstitute a body. But after barely forming the outline of a head, it collapsed again. It tried several more times, then gave up — and instead worked the flesh into the shape of a mouth.
"La…ne…vus."
The mouth forced out a name.
"Lanevus did this to you?"
At his power level, there was no way he could have inflicted this kind of damage on a Sequence 5 Shepherd.
"MI9…"
Mr. Z forced out a few more words, and the name landed like a surprise — just that afternoon, Xio had told them MI9 was also searching for Lanevus.
And now, barely hours later, the same two names arrived together from Mr. Z's direction.
Bernadette frowned. "Was it MI9 and Lanevus working together that left you like this?"
"No…MI9…took…Lanevus…away…"
He rasped the words out with everything he had, then: "Lanevus…Master…descent…"
Bang.
At that, the lumped-together flesh burst apart again — shredding back into a scattering of twitching pieces. But it was clear Mr. Z wasn't dead. The blood-flesh ability of the Hanged Man Pathway was truly tenacious when it came to staying alive.
"MI9 has Lanevus in custody?"
Vincent was puzzled. "Why would they take Lanevus? Handing him to the Aurora Order to complete the ritual is what they should want, isn't it?"
Bernadette was quiet for a moment, then said: "I believe Lanevus's fate is still going to end as a vessel for the True Creator's descent… but it seems MI9 — the Loen royal family — has other plans now."
Vincent's eyes went wide. "You're saying they're not going to hand him to the Aurora Order. They're going to perform the descent ritual themselves?"
Was that even allowed?
He thought about it and realised — actually, why not? Unlike the Orthodox Gods, an outer deity like the True Creator wasn't exclusive to devoted followers. Any properly constructed ritual and activated altar would be enough to draw a response. And with a walking descent-vessel like Lanevus? Even easier.
"Well — George III really does play the game."
To be continued…
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