The walk back to the barn was different. Lilian walked beside him now. His old sword, the one he'd carried from Stormbridge, hung awkwardly at her hip, secured by a strip torn from her ragged dress. She clutched the grimoire to her chest, a terrible new responsibility. Bastet's own hand rested on the hilt of Folly's Edge. The forest was still a place of deep shadow and unnatural silence, but the primal fear that had haunted their steps was gone, replaced by resolve. The monstrous shapes still flitted at the edge of their vision, but they no longer felt like predators hunting them. Perhaps their minds really were not intact, and some madness had seeped into them, after all. They didn't speak. There was no grand strategy. All he could think of was setting fire to the barn to burn the priest alive, but he doubted it would really be able to spread in these damp conditions. They had to face him head on.
They reached the edge of the clearing. The barn looked smaller now, hunched against the clearing like an animal pretending to sleep. A wet wind pushed through the trees and set the loose boards creaking, as though the place itself was breathing. They crossed the clearing together, each step a drumbeat in Bastet's skull.
He pushed the door open. The hinges gave a soft groan, and the barn's foul stench washed over them. The smell was somehow even worse now. Candlelight bled across the rafters, and at the far end of the room, hunched over his cluttered table, the priest was writing on the human-pale parchment. "You've returned," he rasped, a slow smile stretching his thin lips. "Early again. How… interesting."
Bastet said nothing. He only stepped forward, the creak of wood loud beneath his boots. Lilian followed, clutching her grimoire so tightly her knuckles were white. The priest's gaze lingered on the tome in her arms, then flicked to the sword resting against Bastet's hip. "Yes," he breathed. "I was right. You two were required in order to tame it. Tell me, what did it want?"
Bastet opened his mouth to say that the Baron demanded the priest's remaining leg, but his tongue betrayed him. "It wants you dead." It seemed that Ariadne's oath would not let him lie to the priest. Not while his own heart wrestled over what truly served Wesia's best interest. And for that, he needed the final piece of the puzzle.
The priest's eyes narrowed. "Did it? And what words did the void dress its hunger in? What promises did it make?"
Lilian's voice cut in, thin but steady. "It said it wanted freedom. To heal the decay of the world."
The priest gave a rasping laugh. "Its power is remarkable, no doubt. But not to the point it could do something like that." He lifted a hand, and a long shadow spilled through the window with a clicking sound. The centipede poured into the barn and coiled lovingly around him. "Not all that you felt was real. It is a fragment of insanity. And deception falls under its domain." He shook his head, stroking the centipede. "But this… rebellion is a good step. It must struggle. Only then can it really accept that there is no other way to exist other than in this garden, and through my will. And that will… require your cooperation."
Bastet's fingers clenched around Folly's Edge. "You… call yourself a gardener. But what gardener breeds weeds that strangle the soil? Can you swear, here and now, that you will be able to control what you've created here? That the Baron will never turn on you and become a threat greater than any asset you could ever provide to Wesia?"
The priest paused, weighing his response. "Would it still be chaos… if it obeyed my word as law? No. Control should not be possible, yet that is the artist's task. To attempt the impossible. Only such a will is worthy of the divine throne."
"And if it refuses your orders?" Bastet's growl rumbled low. He flicked his chin at the centipede, at the pale children's hands twitching in its joints. "How many lives are worth your masterpiece? What cost is too great?"
"The paint is not as important as the painting," the priest said, his voice devoid of all emotion. His bulging eyes held no fanaticism, only a cold, absolute certainty. "None."
And in that instant Bastet knew. The serpent of Ariadne's oath unwound, loosening its grip at last. The path was clear. This man was no servant of Wesia, no asset to its survival. He was a hazard without bottom, a gambler who would play until everything was lost. Even if the Baron bowed today, tomorrow he would summon worse. And the whole world would pay the debt he incurs.
The priest saw the decision in Bastet's eyes. His posture tightened. "You would side with madness? Without me, the Baron will break free. Without me, the blight would spill from this temple all the way to Shimmering Falls!"
"No," Bastet said, his voice quiet and steady as he drew Folly's Edge. The blade did not gleam; it drank the light. "It doesn't have to be you. They will find someone else."
The priest's face did not contort in rage. It went utterly still. The insult was not to his person, but to the core of his being. To call his art, his life's work, his divine struggle… replaceable? It was the one heresy he could not abide.
The twelve-foot centipede surged forward, a chittering wave of children's hands and armored plates. Bastet met its charge, the dark blade of Folly's Edge a strange comfort in his hand. The creature was fast. Its body was twisting and coiling as the human hands grabbed at his legs and his sword arm. He parried a lunge from its mandibles, the impact jarring his bones, and spun away from a grasping hand that was missing two fingers. He was outmatched. For every hand he batted away, two more would grab at him.
In a moment's misstep, a hand caught his ankle, yanking him off balance. The centipede's head darted in, and he felt a searing pain as its mandibles punched through his clothes and into the meat of his shoulder.
Drawing Bastet's old sword from her hip, Lilian charged, not at the beast's head, but at its segmented side. With a desperate, two-handed thrust, she drove the blade into the soft joint between two armored plates. The centipede shrieked with a sound both insectile and human, and as it recoiled its grip on Bastet faltered. "Get back!" Bastet yelled, shoving her away as the monster writhed.
Lilian stumbled back, her eyes wide with terror. She glanced toward the open barn door, expecting a tide of other chaos beasts to pour in. And they were there, frantic, desperate to get in, clawing over each other… and yet, they held back. And in that moment, she saw it. In the deepest shadow on the edge of her sight, there it was: the faint, shimmering outline of a boy with bright blue eyes. The Baron was watching. Whatever frenzy had driven the creatures to the barn, none of them would cross beneath his gaze.
Bastet, bleeding and enraged, swung Folly's Edge at the centipede, making its form shudder with each pass. If no other monsters could interfere, she knew what she had to do. She brandished her sword and broke into a sprint toward the priest. But the priest's smile didn't falter. He made a gentle, shooing motion with his hand, and the centipede, despite its engagement with Bastet, whipped its entire back section around like a colossal tail. It slammed into her, throwing her across the room. She hit the wall next to the doorway with a sickening thud and slid to the floor, with no breath left in her lungs.
The priest raised a hand toward her, and the air crackled. A shard of solidified darkness, like a piece of the void itself, shot from his fingertips. Lilian couldn't dodge. Instead, as the lethal dart flew toward her heart, she did the only thing she could think of. She raised the grimoire, and held it open, facing the priest, revealing a page of terrifying, but beautiful complexity. And the shard of darkness struck the open page and sank into it, just as parchment would soak up a drop of ink. The runes on the page glowed faintly for a second, and then faded. The casual, arrogant confidence on the priest's face finally cracked, and was replaced by a flicker of genuine fear.
The centipede reared back as the clicking mandibles snapped. The dark blade of Folly's Edge seemed to come alive in Bastet's hands. Its shimmering, blurry edges were making it almost impossible for the creature's eyes to track. He was no swordsman, but he fought with the desperate strength of a cornered animal. He leapt forward, driving Folly's Edge into one of its segments. The blade sank through the armor, severing a jointed limb. The creature howled, thrashing violently. Bastet spun, narrowly avoiding a grasping hand, and swung again, cutting deeper.
The bulging eyes fixed on Bastet. The brute was ruining his art. He would not allow it. Ignoring the gasping girl on the floor, the priest raised his hand again, aiming for Bastet's back. His fingers curled into a claw, and from them erupted a cord of pure night, a serpent of negation meant to sever Bastet's soul from his body.
Pushing through the pain, Lilian scrambled on her knees, the grimoire held open before her. She threw herself between the priest and Bastet, thrusting the open book into the spell's path. The cord of darkness struck the page. The grimoire shuddered in her hands, its pages fluttering violently as if in a hurricane.
"No!" the priest shrieked, clutching his head as the link to his spell was violently severed. The centipede, an extension of his will, loosened its grip on Bastet for a single, but crucial moment. It was the only opening he would get. And with a final, grating roar, Bastet planted his feet and plunged the dark blade directly into the cluster of human eyes on the centipede's head. There was no sound of tearing flesh this time, only a gasp from the creature's human mouth. It seemed to deflate, as if the unholy will that held its grotesque form together had been severed. The dozens of children's hands, which had clawed at him with such mindless hunger, went limp. The wide, frozen smile on its face finally slackened, leaving only an expression of empty, peaceful release.
The sudden, absolute silence that followed was heavier than any scream, broken only by the ragged, desperate breaths of Bastet and Lilian. It was over.
But it wasn't.
The candlelight in the barn flickered and died, plunging them into darkness. The shadows in the corners of the barn deepened, pooling together and stretching toward the center of the room. Bastet's lungs seized. It was the same feeling from the forest, the feeling of trespassing in a place where the very concept of human was not welcome. From the converging darkness, the Baron descended. It did not step, nor walk. The infinite, starless darkness poured into existence in the boy-shaped shell. The air grew thick and cold, carrying the scent of forgotten nightmares. His gaze drifted across the ruined centipede, lingered on Bastet's bleeding shoulder, and then found the priest.
"Hello, little artist," the voice said in amusement. "Look at your masterpiece now. What a waste of pretty little hands."
The priest staggered back against his desk, his parchment crumpling under his grip. "You…I made you." His voice faltered. For the first time, there was no certainty in it.
"You attempted to," the Baron corrected sweetly. "And you failed." It turned its placid, void-like gaze to Bastet and Lilian. "Kill him."
Bastet's hands shook. He'd already weighed his options and made his decision. But in the presence of the Baron, the reasons he'd used to justify it seemed so foolish and obviously flawed. He saw a flicker of the Baron's illusion—Maria's face, twisted in agony. Was this the path she had sent him on? To become a kingmaker for a monster? Was this what he had fought to release into the world? He gripped Folly's Edge, his knuckles white. But before he could step forward, Lilian put a hand on his arm. "Wait," she whispered, her voice a thin reed against a hurricane. "Trust me."
She loudly declared "No," her legs shaking. "Not this way." She turned her gaze to the boy. "You want him dead, don't you? Kill him yourself."
The Baron blinked, slowly. His smile froze. The silence that followed was unbearable, as though the air itself held its breath. The shrill choir of children's voices echoed in their heads. It is your role. The one you have earned.
"No," Lilian countered, retracing Bastet's observation. "You can't do it yourself, can you?" The Baron's pleasant smile didn't slip, but the air in the barn grew several degrees colder. "You're bound to him, and you need us to sever that connection. If you kill him, you unravel."
The priest's eyes widened. "Girl, be silent—"
But she pressed on, voice steadying with every word. "So here's your choice, Baron. Devour him, and unravel. Or don't. But would you, the master of insanity, truly rather choose the rational thing to do?"
The Baron stared at her. Its borrowed eyes seemed to see through her, into the frantic, terrified thoughts behind her own. Then, it began to laugh. It was not a human sound. It was the sound of breaking glass and children's giggles, a wave of pure, unfiltered absurdity that made the very walls of the barn seem to waver.
"Perfect," it choked out between peals of laughter. "To be given a choice that is no choice at all!" Its laughter cut off abruptly. The air stilled. It looked at the priest, and all the mockery was gone, replaced by a terrible, infinite hunger. "The artist will be consumed by his art," it said, its voice now a low, grinding stone. "A fitting end."
It took a step toward the priest, who scrabbled backward, his screams muffled. The Baron's shadow wrapped around the priest like a closing fist. He thrashed, shrieking, as the blackness poured into him, until the lines between man and monster blurred. His form stretched and split, and together they collapsed inward, consumed by the same chaos the priest had tried to master. With a sound like tearing parchment, both vanished, leaving only silence and a barn that suddenly felt unbearably, impossibly empty. In the silence, a cold and foreign thought flowed into Bastet's mind, as if being hummed by the sword in his hand. The next clue would come in a dream, where he would meet Maria again.