“Heh, looks like you live up to the captain’s badge, a blade catching light in a dim hall.” Ment praised Lev, then his voice slid like smoke. “As you said—why avoid the simple path and walk the thorny trail? If our guess holds, there’s one shape in the fog: this Dark Deity wants to absorb us both. She’s Nirael’s hired hand, but not a loyal hound—more a partner in a moonlit bargain, with her own knife tucked in her sleeve.”
“Right, right.” Clarity flushed through Lev like dawn spilling over rooftops. He leaned forward, heartbeat drumming like rain. “If we’ve mapped the possibilities, what do we do next?”
“What do we do? Hah, isn’t it written in the ash?” Ment’s smile was a hooked crescent. “We feign alliance, a lantern held high, while we lay a curse in the dark. When the hour ripens, even if she senses it, cutting it loose won’t matter—the fruit’s already picked.”
——
“If he confirms the latter?” Desty spoke after Lucimia unrolled the first thread, her tone a pebble dropped into still water.
“If he confirms the latter, all the better.” Lucimia’s words drifted like frost. “A Dark Deity sly enough to trip Nirael won’t trust his first glance. He’ll comb other paths like a fox tracing prints in snow. I didn’t scrub Nirael’s curse—this stain bends his thinking like wind bends grass.”
“When he tags me as Nirael’s likely helper, then notices I didn’t peel off the curse, his first lantern will cast me as mere collaborator, hungry to take in the power of you two.”
“I see.” Desty’s eyes cleared like mist lifting, but doubt still clung like damp. “Sounds sharp, but what does all this analysis buy us? How does it tilt the board? What follow-up will Ment play?”
“What follow-up? Isn’t it carved into the bark?” Lucimia smiled, then turned to Nirael like moon to river. “What’s Ment’s aim?”
“Mm… to settle the smoke, send it rolling like silt, kill my Evil Entity with that fog, then trumpet his deeds like banners in wind, go settle other Cross sites, and tighten his grip over the empire.”
“No. Not quite.” Lucimia cut gently, a fan closing with a soft snap.
“Huh?” Nirael blinked, whiskers twitching like reeds.
“You’re naming Ment’s strategic goal. I’m asking for his tactical aim.”
“Tactical?”
“Yes.” Lucimia nodded, voice steady as stone. “Tactically, Ment’s goal is to stop your Evil Entity from breaking the wall, not to settle the smoke first.”
“You mean Ment could choose to erase me, then spend more time settling smoke?”
“Yes. But he can’t find you, and his smoke’s settling is blocked for now like a river dammed. So he’ll come to me, lantern in hand, pretending to cooperate. He’ll hunt you quietly, like a cat in shadow, and drop his curse on you or me. His alliance will be frost-thin. He might try to bind me—taking down a Dark Deity costs blood and bone.”
“So you’ll feign cooperation too. He thinks three hearts split like scattered leaves, but we two move as one blade. We catch him off guard, cut down Lev or the body Ment rides, and then we break the wall.” Nirael lowered her mouse head, thoughts rustling like dry grass.
“Mm. In theory, yes—but I won’t choose that path.”
“Eh?” Nirael and Desty stared, their surprise flaring like sparks. Desty spoke, breath quick. “That won’t do? I think it’s good. Honestly, since you blocked the Mystic Return Smoke, odds flow our way. Without the smoke, this god of curses isn’t so towering—his weakest seam is time and ritual.”
Lucimia only shook her head, her gaze a cool spring. “All that was a surface plan, a paper screen. Not my true plan.”
“Ah?” The word left both of them like birds startled from a branch.
What? Lucimia had read the enemy’s mind like ink on silk and laid out counters like stones on a board. They thought it perfect. To hear it’s only the surface shocked them like thunder under clear sky. So what’s her true plan?
One woman and one mouse traded looks, eyes spinning like lanterns in wind, feeling downright foolish.
Seeing their faces, Lucimia exhaled slow, a long breath like mist, and explained. “We can’t marry our first plan. We need a second net. What if Ment holds a hidden card, a blade under his sleeve? Do we truly hold all the threads? If he flips the board with a twist we don’t know, what then? Don’t forget—his curse can lock my Reversion. If Reversion fails, the river freezes, and we’re trapped in a dead end. Which means our duel with Ment can’t fail, not even once. We must win on the first stroke—no reversals allowed.”
By the end, Lucimia’s face sharpened like a chisel. Nirael and Desty straightened, their calm settling like stones.
They had believed Reversion raised their margin for error like a wide road. Hearing this, they felt the path narrow like a cliff trail.
Nirael had burned her own power in the last Reversion to shatter the smoke and free Lucimia. Reversion won’t return spent energy or scrub away taint. If the game deadlocks, there’s no other escape.
“Then what’s your true plan?”
“On the surface, I’ll stall him with talk of cooperation, penning his thoughts inside that fence. In truth, we keep pushing the wall-break. We don’t kill Lev or Ment’s puppet—we hold them in thorns, and breach while they’re tangled. I don’t trust I can truly kill two who can trade injuries and swap hosts.”
Lucimia picked up a pen, its tip gliding like a swallow, and drew on the map. “In the old plan, you spread a virus like fine rain to drink in energy, then gathered worms behind the Count’s manor to the right. You chose that because you had to wreck the Mystic Return Smoke’s production at the same hour. Now we don’t need to smash the production. We can gather worms from the empty forest on the left, a shadowed grove with no eyes.”
“But,” Lucimia’s tone turned, a fan flicking cool air, “what we see, Ment will see, mist for mist. While he seeks my cooperation, he’ll still fear your worm gathering, a net waiting in the grass. In my misdirection, he’ll think I stole the energy—so in theory, you can’t absorb it. In truth, everything I Devoured flows to you like a hidden stream. Even so, he’ll judge your worm gathering harder, and he won’t drop his guard, not with frost on the leaves…”
