Around about fifteen minutes after he departed Serpacinno, Federico returned back at his family’s manor. The heir gently opened the door, his mind clouded in a fog which vacillated his manner toward alternatively rage and concern. The more time he spent alone, and the more he was permitted to stew in his own strange mix of emotions, the more he couldn’t believe that neither of his siblings was in on it. But then, a deeper, more subconscious part of himself refused to even entertain such treacherous thoughts.

  “Dammit, just stop for a second, Federico.” He smacked his temples a few times, trying to coax out anything to help him tell the truth, “Are they really capable of this? You three have been a team for seventeen years. But then, what of the watch? Why did they invite Ramona to our house?”

  Eventually, he gathered himself sufficiently to continue on into the great room where he found his siblings discussing something in a quiet whisper, and his footsteps being on carpet meant they weren’t hearing him approach. He was a scant few feet from them when they seemed to notice, and like cats suddenly awoken from a deep sleep, they leapt to their feet rather suddenly.

  “Rico!” Rosa said, immediately enveloping him a big hug, “I didn’t expect you back so soon - and what happened to cause you such a bruise?”

  “Tell me the truth,” Her older brother replied, holding her at arm’s length and looking her dead in the eyes, “Who was she? Who did you invite here?”

  “We already told you, she’s an investigator! We saw how torn you were -”

  “The truth!” He shouted, a little louder than he should have, “These bruises on my face are from her ‘partner’, I deserve to know.”

  “Rico, I’m telling the truth -”

  With another shout of frustration, he stepped around her, looking at their brother, “Miggy, please. Who was that woman?”

  “Brother, I don’t -” Miggy tried to spit out a lie, but his throat locked up and he felt a lump start to form as he did so, “I can’t say.”

  “What do you mean you can’t say?” His older brother shouted, shaking him back and forth.

  “What’s come over you?” Rosa asked, getting in between the two of her brothers, and looking at the eldest of them all with a worried, sympathetic look, “What’s going on with you?”

  Being unable to contain himself any longer, he produced the watch from his trousers. Letting it fall to full tension in the chain, he noticed the immediate look of apprehension on his siblings’ faces.

  “Why have you both stopped talking?” His anxious voice demanded, not seeing an answer on either of their faces, he started pacing as they looked between each other for a solution.

  “Tell me, Miguel!” His voice had grown to a screaming fever, “Tell me this isn’t what I think it is!”

  “It isn’t!” Rosa proclaimed, trying to divert her eldest brother’s attention, “There must be some misunderstanding.”

  “Miguel!” Federico repeated, and his younger brother couldn’t even continue to look at him, too ashamed and unable to cough out any fib.

  “Federico -” Alejandro walked in, limping on his cane - his health had been falling rapidly, and it wouldn’t be long before he was bedridden, “Why are you screaming, my boy?”

  “Father, please…” The young heir huffed, trying to contain the seething rage that was quickly threatening to bubble over the cauldron of his lips, “Go back to your room. This doesn’t concern you.”

  “My boy, you’re red with anger.” His father said, bringing a hand to his son’s forehead, “No fever, hopefully.”

  By now, his rage was such that he no longer had full control over his vines, and they were slowly creeping out from under his shirt to spread across the room, constricting around anything not bolted down and giving everyone else a great fright.

  “Brother, please -” Miguel said, even as the vines were coiling around his legs and constricting his movement, “You’re scaring us!”

  “You haven’t once said I’m wrong -” The eldest brother pointed to him, “So that only leaves my being right! Why?!” He demanded, screaming with righteous fury.

  “Why what?” Alejandro asked, feebly and cowed.

  “Fine!” Miguel shouted, after his waist was ensnared, “I’ll tell you - after you had come back, we knew something was different; with you, and with father. At first we tried to accept it, but then we couldn’t any longer…” He suddenly stopped speaking, apparently too embarrassed to continue on.

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  “And then what?!” His brother prompted, angrily.

  “And then - we went to that same witch - she wasn’t hard to find - and we had her addle father. We thought it was the only way to be free.”

  His rage only somewhat assuaged by the confession, but his thorny grip remained absolute, “And Valentina?”

  “After you continued supporting father, even through his madness -” He bit what remained of his tongue, he almost feared speaking the words, as though saying them would make it any more real than it once was, “We thought there was only one choice left.”

  It seemed Federico’s anger had subsided. All the vines retracted back to him, and his siblings immediately ran to comfort him as he dropped to his knees and barely restrained himself from sobbing. Then, he rose to his feet, and, looking the two in the eye, addressed them thusly.

  “Is what he says true?” He asked Rosa.

  “It is -” She admitted, not meeting his gaze, “But brother, you have to believe us, it was always for the good of the family!”

  “I see.” The newly freed man said, “What is there left for me to say? I suppose all I can do is wish you a good life. Adios,” He kissed his sister on the forehead, then his brother, then his father, “Take care of the company.”

  —

  “Get back here, Genevieve!” Sally shouted, bowling through and over bystanders in an attempt to catch the angel.

  “Chevalierre Genevieve!” The knight corrected, stopping her flight suddenly to catch Sally off-guard, and then she used the opportunity to take a swing at her, nearly gashing the fencer straight down the chest, “Or have you forgotten?”

  “I haven’t forgotten a single thing.” The blonde snarled, and although her foil found purchase on her foe’s armor, its durable craftsmanship ensured it was undamaged, “Give it back!”

  “Oh, silly girl~” Sally heard a voice behind her, and turning around, saw the same Genevieve flanking her. She already knew well enough that it wasn’t real - she already had experience against her gift - but the temporary distraction meant that the knight had the chance to knock her flat on her ass with the blunt end of her scythe, “This is where we part ways.”

  Genevieve raised her weapon above her head, truly uncaring for whether or not she would cleave Sally in twain. But, as she brought it down, the fencer rolled over, managing to only get her marinère snagged. When she stood up, she revealed that she had scooped up a loose cobble from the ground, and smacked it against the knight’s helmet.

  “I said - Give it back!" She was about to use both hands to bring the rock down upon her opponent’s head, but she was stopped when said opponent used her own leg to kick Sally in the knee, forcing her to drop to one leg.

  “It’s not yours anymore,” Genevieve said, getting up and taking a few steps back to reassess the situation, “You need to accept that.”

  “Shut up!” The fencer screamed as she threw the stone she was holding. She made it before the stone did, and came within inches of managing to get her sword in the gap between the knight’s helmet and collar.

  Still, the winged woman was already starting to fly away, and leaving a peculiar sort of… dust, or perhaps powder behind. It shimmered in the sunlight as it floated to the surface. When enough of it accumulated, however, a most strange thing occurred - the dust began to reflect the sunlight, and twist it in such a way that it appeared as though a misty, ephemeral hemisphere enclosed the immediate area around Sally, trapping her in a cage which seemed to have multiple images of the knight projected onto the surface.

  “I know your tricks!” The long-haired woman shouted. She started into a dash, having the knowledge to state that the walls of the dome were no more real than her own dreams. However, she couldn’t pierce them. She could start to penetrate, and push, almost like walking through a membrane, but never emerge from the other side.

  One of the projections flew towards her, but it merely dissipated as the fencer continued her futile pounding at the dusty surface. A few more projections came, and Sally briefly wondered when the actual attack - the real movement which was always accompanied by the sound the illusions lacked - was going to come. With little time to ponder it, lest her target get away from her, she threw caution to the wind and poked a hole with her saber and used the sword’s cutting edge to open a hole in it.

  “You’ve done well, making it this far.” Genevieve’s tone was gentle, almost caring in a way that Sally couldn’t quite place, but her body language (which was the first thing Sally saw as she exited the dome) was far more cold and cruel, with her scythe reflecting sunlight at just the right angle to blind Sally as it came down, “échec et mat.”

  In less than a second, Sally fell backward, spasming and twitching as the weapon cleaved not only her prided, luxurious head of hair, but also her body, opening a massive wound that spouted blood freely and swiftly.

  As the woman, with whom she clearly had a past, lay there broken and bleeding, Genevieve pulled a watch out and checked it. “Shit!” She exclaimed, “That took nearly thirty whole minutes!”

  —

  This feeling, Serpacinno thought, leaping between the walls enclosing the thin alleyway, staying high above the pink mist pooling at the road, It’s… Euphoric!

  Normally, she would’ve been annoyed. The Shah had been put at bay, whether it was because the water the strange beastman she was fighting was secretly holy, or simply that ghosts really were weak to running water, she couldn’t say. Regardless of those trivialities, the rush of endorphins and adrenaline in her system, as well as the general awe with which she observed her own acrobatics, meant she was as happy as a clam right now.

  She landed behind Pedro, sword pointed forward like a jousting pole as she rushed forward. He managed, with a shocking swiftness belied by his bulky, pudgy appearance, to keep the back of his trident handy to slide the blade along, before he twisted his body and used Serpacinno’s own momentum against her to knock her into one of the adjacent walls.

  “Stay down, won’t you?” He asked, not waiting to see if she was even momentarily stunned before he turned his attention to the ghost, spraying him with another dosage of water.

  Such carelessness immediately bit him, as she got a good lick in with her sword, and he was only saved from death (or at least permanent paralysis) by his thick, scaly, shell.

  “Argh, detestable wench!” If the Current’s first mate had one weakness at the moment, it was acute tunnel-vision. She barely even registered anything as her opponent drove his trifurcated armament into her shoulder, piercing her subclavian artery and phrenic nerve. Whatever pain would normally have reached her thalamus were overwhelmed for the moment and shoved aside.

  “That’s -” She shouted, bringing her sword down and leaving a great big gash across his chest, “Enough!”

  He lay there twitching for a few moments, and she did her best to dress his wounds (after all, she was trying to adhere more to the guidelines Paracelsus had set) before she sheathed her weapon, reluctant to part with such a feeling.

  “Urk -” She choked out as the power drained from her body. The first symptom was the mass emesis her body deigned, and she could’ve sworn she’d never tasted bile as vile. Then was the pouring of blood from her wound, which most would’ve expected with such a primary blood vessel ruptured. And then came the final symptom, a great pain that caused her whole body to reel and shiver, leaving her to write on the floor.

  Before shock, or pain could take her consciousness from her, however, she had the good sense to retrieve one of the flare-sticks given to her and break the seal, causing a spout of flames to rise into the sky.