It was Pierre who kicked in Hosea's chamber door, the wood splintering inward with a resonant crack that made them all flinch in startled unison.
She sat there amidst the rubble and detritus like a malign queen holding court, seemingly unbothered by their furious intrusion.
Long legs crossed primly at the knee, Hosea continued meticulously applying kohl liner to her lids as if they'd simply strolled in on her morning routine.
When that first cloud of sawdust dissipated enough for Pierre to meet her gaze, her expression remained serene, unfazed - everything from her sculpted brow's infinitesimal arch to the subtle curl of her full lips projecting an aura of unflappable grandeur.
"You little shits..." Hosea clucked her tongue in a mockery of chastisement, voice all honeyed reproach. "Is this how you greet a proper hostess in her own chambers these days?"
She set the makeup pencil down carefully on the bureau's polished oak surface as if conferring some kind of knightly accolade upon a squire.
Only then did she spare Pierre and their bristling entourage the faintest sliver of attention, chin angling to let those crimson eyes drift over each rumpled, wild-eyed figure with naked contempt.
"Honestly, Pierre," she drawled with exquisite indolence. "One would've hoped a man of your...cultured background, shall we say?" That lipsticked mouth twitched with mordant amusement. "Would possess enough self-restraint and grace left to at least have the decency to knock before barging in on a lady."
Impossibly, she moved to smooth the fabric of her gown, elegant fingers fluttering over the rich brocade as demurely as a virgin making herself presentable for an evening's chaperoned entertainment. When she spoke again, it was with a lilt of honeyed condescension that made Pierre's jaw flex with incandescent rage.
"What dreadful bit of mischief has gotten your danders up this time, hmm? Did someone track a bit too much muck on the imported Kashmiri?" A delicate pause as she pretended to inspect a loosened thread along one flowing sleeve cuff. "Or perhaps the cuisine was simply too rich for your delicate constitutions again-?"
"You miserable snake!" The accusation whiplashed from Pierre's lips like a dog's bark, cutting off her feigned airs. "You put on quite the show for that unholy son of a bitch you worship, eh?"
He took a shuddering half-step forward, shaking hands clenched around the mace's rusted flanges hard enough to ache.
All around the periphery, their own ragged weapons leveled to bear on the lounging beauty amidst their disarrayed formation. But Hosea didn't so much as bat one of those improbably long sooty lashes in reaction.
"Genesis's defiled remains are still cooling in that unhallowed pit of your making, yet you sit here preening like some Babylonian odalisque awaiting her next titled conquest."
This close, Pierre couldn't miss the way her nostrils flared slightly with each inhaled breath, ripe with her patent disdain for their incursion.
It fueled his own mounting wrath like bellows stoking a raging furnace into blistering incandescence.
"Don't bother denying it either, bitch.
I saw your shadow slithering away from that basement with my own two eyes." One step closer, the mace's heavy iron head swaying in time with his trembling rage.
"If you think we'll let you waltz away without answering for your desecrations, you're as poisonously deluded as your warped beliefs-"
"Tsk tsk, my angry little friend." Hosea cut across his tirade with that same syrupy, maddeningly condescending tone reserved for scolding misbehaving pets. "All this unpleasantness over a harmless spot of religious fervor?"
She clucked her tongue again, letting her gaze drift dismissively around the disheveled assembly before refocusing on Pierre. "You disappoint me, Pierre. After all the...enlightening conversations you and I shared, I'd hoped you of all people might finally rise above the stultifying dogma and witness my humble offerings for what they truly are."
One elegant hand drifted up to caress the sanguine gem nestled above the swell of her cleavage, and Hosea's smile took on an ecstatic edge that made Pierre's stomach roil uneasily.
"Art immortalized in sacrifice. A profane celebration of the universe's most cherished muse - bliss and torment given carnal form through flesh and rendered down to a single transcendent moment." She inhaled deeply through her nose, as if savoring the lingering perfume of some exalted offering.
"Shame Genesis died, he was quite a handsome man..."
Pierre's growl rumbled from somewhere deep in his chest, primal and menacing.
"You profane whore, blaspheming against everything holy and righteous." He tightened his white-knuckle grip until the rusted links comprising the chain popped with strain. "Rest assured, you'll be given the chance to provide the same obscene 'performance' again soon enough..."
One more prowling step, iron tines leveled squarely at the center of Hosea's breastbone while those crimson eyes slid open in languid disdain. The muscle along Pierre's jaw danced with manic intensity.
"...right before I smash every last one of your remaining teeth down your throat and let the very demons you worship reclaim the sullied remains for an eternity of torment."
A profound silence rippled outward from that bellicose promise - not even the onlookers' bated breaths disturbing the stalemate that had settled over Hosea's sanctum. Then, finally, she broke the stillness with a disappointed moue and weary sigh.
"Oh Pierre, Pierre..." She uncrossed and re-crossed those shapely legs, seeming to make a production out of adjusting the fall of crimson skirts over her thighs. "I'd hoped we could move past these petty melodramatics and begin transcending the wretched mortal coils binding us at last.
Although I believe you are mistaken.
I worship no one.
Calamity is only a business partner."
She assumed that Pierre talked about Calamity, but in fact, he talked about the Joy primordial demon that The Joker seemed to worship.
A simple misunderstanding that would cause a lot of bad consequences to both sides...
With slow precision, Hosea extended one hand towards them all in a beckoning gesture, wrist bent theatrically back at an oblique angle.
The air around her thrummed with sudden, sourceless tension as her eyes bored back into Pierre's.
When she spoke, it was as though an entirely different voice issued from between those plump crimson lips - something resonant and vast, like an arcane bell forged specifically to ring in oblivion.
"Swear your fealty here and now, little mortals.
Embrace the beautiful Truth I have been chosen to birth into reality and perhaps a few of your worthless people might be spared when Calamity at last draws its deserved breath..."
A sudden tremor rippled through the assorted mob, instinctive dread seeping up from their mouths at her words' implication.
"No?" Another rich chuckle, positively dripping with disdain.
The air around her throbbed and distorted as though beholding her true form was an impossibility for limited mortal senses. "Then suffer whatever meager revenges you scattered fools can muster against Hosea, the Unassailable.
My illusions will be the last caress your pathetic souls experience before the precipice finally claims what it's owed!"
With a sudden, violent gesture and hissing roar of inhuman intensity, the entire chamber seemed to come apart at the seams around them.
Reality itself buckled and contorted into a storm of madness while Hosea's mocking laughter echoed from every angle simultaneously.
To her surprise, her Ignis Faatus didn't work on these crusaders.
It was as if they had a supernatural barrier shielding their eyes and separating the fake from the real.
A literal display of The Eyes of The Lord, or was it perhaps something else?
"You think your parlor tricks will work on us?
You fucking witch.
You will burn at the stake!"
Pierre stepped closer, a serrated knife glinting in his fist. "We're crusaders, witch.
Trained by Genesis himself to cut through deception."
"I didn't kill anyone!" Hosea's voice was high, reedy with panic.
She understood the gravity of the situation.
The smoke billowed thicker, obscuring her in a hazy cloud, but the men pressed forward unfazed.
"Then why'd you run?" Another Reckoner barked the question as he grabbed a fistful of Hosea's hair, yanking her head back. "Then why would you run from the basement while your hands were covered in our Messiah's blood?"
Tears stung Hosea's eyes at the harsh treatment. "I swear, I'm innocent! Genesis was my friend, I'd never—"
Her words cut off in a pained grunt as Pierre's skinny fist slammed into her gut.
Hosea doubled over, dry heaving, while laughter rose from the jeering crowd.
"'Course you'd say that." The knife-wielder crouched in front of her, his piggy eyes glittering with contempt. "But we know what you really are, witch.
Just another demon who tried to lead us astray."
He pressed the blade's tip under Hosea's chin, forcing her head up to meet his malicious sneer.
"Lucky for you, we're making house calls to clear out vermin like you..."