Through the group home.
Through the courtyard.
Through the chapel building.
The blue-haired problem child was nowhere to be seen. Watching her world crumble at her feet like that left a sinking feeling in my gut. The message alone wasn't proof, yet even I would be a fool to deny the coincidences piling up one by one, forging a truth no one wanted.
There you have it, Rinne, this is why I lie.
Ciel's goal was making more sense by the minute. Our encounter started with him trying to get me to act impulsively towards his words, but the moment Lilas showed signs of instability, she became his new target. I doubt that the message was meant for Lilas to read, but circumstances favored him.
I stopped at a pair of large brass doors that hid a room of overwhelming brass. This was the last place I wanted to set foot. But it was also the last place I hadn't yet checked.
"Ah, Sinner." A voice shifted from surprised to sinister in the same breath before I could even knock. "No need to toy with the thought of needless pleasantries. You and I both know that now is not the time."
I took that as an invitation and placed my hand on the door. From touch alone, I could feel how cold and heavy they were. Something told me this feeling would last for a while.
With more effort than I wanted to put in, I slid one of the doors open, and an artificial breeze brushed against my face. It carried the scent of metal and the sweet aroma of coffee.
A large gash in the floor was the first thing I saw. Exposed piping leaked steam into the air, giving the room a misty look. A bright light shimmered through the steam from what used to be the stained-glass windows, now a large hole in the wall. I closed the door behind me and walked slowly through the room toward the desk where the saint sat.
The closer I got, the more the damage worsened. Papers, metal, even scraps of clothing lay sprawled on the ground. My heart tugged at my chest. Blood scattered across the ground. Fresh blood. Strands of blue hair lay on the floor, held in place by the blood.
At the desk was the old saint himself. A large cut was on the side of his face. He seemed unbothered as he sipped coffee. He stared at me as he set his cup down on a stack of unused carbon-copy paper. Next to the mug was a bloodied eye patch that belonged to Lilas.
"…"
"Those eyes, are you, a detective, really concluding a false truth without any evidence?" The saint said in jest.
The mist, paired with my poor vision, made it hard to see everything in the room. There was carnage, yes, but there was no body.
"Good." The saint sat up in his chair. "Keep a cool head like the previous Golden Steams. Now then…do you believe in fate?"
"If fate were real, then I would have killed her the moment I was forced to kill Rinara," I said. "Fate is just an excuse to justify something beyond our control."
A grin lined the saint's face. He leaned forward in his chair, looking at me with amusement. "That was a rhetorical question, Sinner. Fate is real. Whether your impure mind can understand that is not my problem. But know this: while fate may be real, it's not something set in stone. The gods above us laid out the board, but it is we who roll the dice. Even the gods roll the dice for themselves. They too are mortal. You should know, since only two gods remain watching over this plane of existence: the Void God and the Goddess of Steam."
"Saint Edmond—"
"Hush now!" Edmond shot a paralyzing glare at me. I gulped in response. "Everything happens for a reason. A grand plan is laid out for us to follow like gears in a machine. Old humanity died this way. They got entangled in the puppet strings cast by the Void God. Even we, the last remnants of mankind, are dancing to the melody of the end. But you, that cursed child, and even that bastard are the stray variables able to flip the script. That is why the suffering matters. Sure, Mother Lilas had her chastity ripped from her at such a young age, endured years of scorn, and was ripped from the one thing keeping her sane, but all is necessary to end the reign of the Void God."
"So Lilas was nothing more than a tool to you. Is that what you are saying?" I bit down on my lip after finishing. Edmond grinned before shaking his head.
"We are all tools; have you not been listening to my lecture?" he said before standing up. He reached into his vestments and pulled out a pale blue blade of strange design. It hummed with power. Was this an old-world artifact? He pointed the end toward me. "Mother Lilas, find her. Otherwise, I will hunt you down and tear you limb from limb for failing this world."
For a moment, I froze in place. This gaze was nothing like the fierce gazes that Margaret would flash at me from time to time. I felt every inch of malice pouring into me. He was serious; there was no mistaking that. He might be old, but without an eye patch over my bad eye, my vision wasn't at 100%, so fighting him wasn't an option. I wasn't confident enough to keep my eye closed in a fight.
"Fine…" My standing in this conversation was clear. If the church was really behind Lilas's suffering from birth till now, then there was no way Edmond had not prepared for this to happen. Meaning that me being forced to look for her was planned from the start.
But what did he want me to do once I found her? Kill her? Bring her here?
"Save her from herself." Saint Edmond's expression softened as he lowered his blade. "As I said before, you can defy the will of fate, so please, save her."
I left his office, closing the door behind me, still feeling the weight of our one-sided conversation. A bitter smell of coffee filled my nose. As I turned, I saw a small woman leaning against the other door. She sipped her coffee while staring at me with her baggy eyes.
"Why the long face?" She asked. She lowered the mug, the faint traces of steam drifting over her face.
"…"
I gave her the cold shoulder. I didn't want to involve her. The chapel seemed to be unaware that Lilas had just fled after attacking the saint himself. If they knew, how would they react?
"You know," Kili said without provocation, looking toward the courtyard on the other side of the hall. "The little lamb, I wonder how it was she found you? From nothing but a small letter left by her mother, slain by your hands."
I balled my fists, digging my nails deep into my palms.
Don't let her rile you up, I thought to myself. Too much was going on, so there was no need to focus on one person trying to get under my skin.
"Those markings, who do you think left them?" Her words rang in my mind as I held my breath, waiting for the next words to leave her mouth. "Was it the late Goddess spawn? Father Muller? Or perhaps myself?"
I turned to face her, but she was no longer there. Just two small notes floating to the ground. She was quick, but she left me with more questions than I had before I started my search.
I picked them up. One was a calendar for the current month, written small in neat penmanship. Some of the days had a symbol of the moon phases with…
"Next week…" I muttered. Fewer than seven days remained until the next full moon.
The second note was a strange message on a carbon copy paper. From the feel and how faint the writing was, I could tell this part was a copy. Though slightly sloppy, I could read it.
"Find the Hope."
The message was short, with the word "Hope" written in an encrypted message that Rinara and I used often. To the unknowing, it looked like a strange symbol that looked like a gear with scratched-out wings.
The time was midday. The Rings of the Middle Layer were waking, and the Core was bustling with weary workers. After reading the message, I showed it to Rinne. As expected, she recognized it as the same symbol she followed to find me.
We, being Sara, Rinne, and I, stood on top of a rooftop that Rinne was able to remember the most clearly. A pipe blanketed the area in a dense cloud of steam, making our search harder, and Rinne was the only one without goggles.
Sara and I felt along the walls at Rinne's direction, searching for the message left behind for her.
"Hey…" Rinne said in a low, almost bored voice as we blindly searched the walls. "Are we to believe that message was the truth? I mean, there was no denying that was the image of the woman who ran the orphanages, but was the church really using her?"
"If you have time to believe that, then you have time to worry about other things," I said coldly.
Nothing was definite. Or at least to Rinne. But my talk with the saint more or less confirmed that the church at least had some part in all of this.
"Mister…" Sara called out in the mist. "I found it…I think?"
I followed Sara's voice through the steamy mist. She was standing next to the wall, a message engraved in the metal. Sure enough, there was a symbol there, well, the encrypted word "Hope." Under it, an arrow pointed toward the location of my hideout.
I grabbed Sara's hand and made our way out of the mist to where we found Rinne using a broken skinny pipe to draw lines in the rust. She looked unhappy, with her cheek puffed out. I guess my response was a bit too harsh.
"Sorry," I said while taking off my goggles. Sara did the same to me before going to Rinne's side. "That came out a bit harsher than intended."
"You think…" Rinne muttered.
"Mister?" Sara looked at me. "How is this gonna help us find Lilas?" There was worry in her eyes. She might have hated that Lilas doted on her, but she seemed to care about her, at least a little.
Rinne stood up. "She's right. How is this gonna help us? It's not like she knows about these symbols, right?"
"It's just a hunch." I said, resulting in a confused "ehhh?" from Rinne.
Once again, Lilas's betrayal against the Church might have been planned from the start. Two different handwriting styles wrote both notes. And looking back, the saint was using an unused stack of carbon copy paper as a coaster.
So yes, it was a hunch, one that forced me to play along with the saint's game. But before I returned to my hideout, I needed to make one extra stop to pick up some supplies.