On the day Manziholet Sylvektor and Gothlow Sylvektor were born, their mother's happiness was disrupted by sounds of screaming followed by a loud explosion.
The tower rattled with all the subtlety of a drunken elephant, and Arin half-expected the chandelier over her head would fall down. It did not, but she wondered if it would have been a better death when a relentless stream of messages materialized in her vision.
[Warning! Warning! This is Amishar Haline. A Body Walker has been detected.]
[The palace has been compromised. Evacuate immediately and avoid everyone else.]
[I repeated. A Body Walker has been detected. Evacuate immediately and avoid everyone else.]
The messages were results of the Miracle <
"I'm sorry," their head physician said, waving at the air in front of him, "are you seeing–?"
"Yes," Foidan said. "They're real."
The man looked at Foidan as if he had just declared the world had ended (which was probably true, on this planet at least), then thrusted the newborn Manziholet into his lap and scrambled out of the chamber. The other servants and guards hastily followed, leaving behind only the pair of parents and their peacefully sleeping twins. The noise, now devolved into clashing metal and dying soldiers, raged outside.
[The Body Walker's last known anchor is the Patriarch,] the Seraphist's message reached them again. [It's walking down the northern hallway from the servants' dining hall. Those in the way evacuate immediately. Help is–. No, the anchor is now a guard with green eyes. He is wearing armor.]
There was only one way to kill a Body Walker: instantly and completely slaying its current anchor. So long as a silver of life remained in the anchor, the daemon could jump to another one almost instantly. Not to mention, it could freely claim the body of the poor sods who came to attack it, wielding their comrades as a weapon and a shield both. No one could be trusted, and no amount of hiding was sufficient since it was capable of turning incorporeal as well.
Seraphists were spared from being claimed because their ArchSouls had been encased in the Circuit, and so were the Church's Redeemers cladded in luminalite. Yet, not all planets were protected by one and not all Seraphists possessed appropriate Miracles to deal with the nuisance.
The planet of Brigium III had been known for its artists and sculptors before a Body Walker played hide-and-seek with its over four billion inhabitants for five days. To maximize emotional devastation on the angry Seraphists that eventually arrived, the daemon chose an orphanage as the final stand. Some twenty toddlers and twice as many children, the last inhabitants of Brigiums III, had to be burned alive. Even Foidan, the governor of Jano who had won wars, felt dread.
"Compose yourself," Arin said and took the baby away from her husband. She cradled both Manziholet and Gothlow in her embrace, feeling their softness. Her last child had died young. The entire planet of Jano being sacrificed would constitute an acceptable loss to keep her twins alive. She trusted that her husband would see to it. "What are our options, Foidan?"
The chandelier's candles were still burning, and the Amishar's message continued to appear in their vision. The Body Walker had gone on a killing spree among the fleeing guards before assuming another anchor. This time, she had no idea who that was. Until it struck out again, everyone was a suspect.
"Our best choice is Amishar," he suggested after closing the doors. "Can you walk?"
Arin shifted her body, which worked, though she could hardly feel her legs. Whatever the physician had given her for the pain had yet to dissipate. "I can, but not run." She realized a pattern. "Its path. The daemon is moving closer towards us."
"I know."
"The doors won't stop it."
"I know." He paused to think, then added, "My final kill on Grissam. Only, we get Amishar to come here instead of me."
She remembered the planet, a horrid place that they had been exiled to due to an alliance with a wrong Republican. Everything that his grandmother, the Twicebornes' Mistress, had gained was stripped clean. Yet, incidentally, the victories Foidan achieved there set the foundation for his governorship over Jano today. "It would work," she said, "if one of us can speak to it using the Forbidden Script, which is punishable by death under Imperial law."
Foidan looked at her, then turned to face the chandelier. His hands flicked and twisted into signs. Amishar might not be able to hear via her <
[No way, governor,], she replied back promptly, [I am strictly employed for intelligence and communication only. I will not fight.]
Yes, you will. We know where your uncle is hiding.
There was a long pause, during which time a man's cry for mercy was abruptly cut short outside the doors. [Fine,] another message arrived. [Fine, I'm coming.]
"Hope this will work," Foidan said with a lot of hissing and guttural intonations. Grey smoke mixed with strings of red floated out of his mouth, a visual effect that took place whenever a human used a language not of this world. Its colors, in her opinion, did not go well with his blue eyes and wild chestnut curls, but still…
"Foidam,–" she smiled "–I ought to report you." The smoke came out of her mouth at each word as well, caressing her porcelain skin and deep black hair, although its red strings were more pronounced in color and number. The increase did not bring about any harm other than as evidence that she had had more practice of the Forbidden Script than him.
Her husband walked to the doors and took hold of the handle. "Ready?" he asked with a nervous smile.
Arin nodded. "As ready as I was when I said yes to you".
He pushed the doors open. A guard was standing right outside. A long dagger was sticking out from his left shoulder while his mouth stretched and curved impossibly high upward to reveal a bloody mouth. His arm had risen up, presumably to knock on the doors and toy with the food.
"Parley," Foidan and Arin said at the same time.
The guard tilted his head sharply to the right. "Interesting," the Body Walker replied in flawless Forbidden Script. "They speak." Sounds were emitted out yet its anchor's mouth did not even twitch a bit. Behind the daemon, along the corridor, many of Amishar's candles had been snuffed out during the fighting. Not all though, and coupled with the chandelier's, she would have a good view.
"We'd like to talk," Foidan said. "We want safe passage." Inside, fear screamed at him to run away or at least suicide to spare himself a fate worse than death. The daemon could wear his skin to kill his wife and his children. But that voice was irrational, so he ignored it.
"Do you deserve it?" The Body Walker ripped out the dagger and brought it up the anchor's left eye, then sliced it slowly along the wide open pupil. More blood drenched its face. It cackled, or something to that effect in the Forbidden Script. "Do you? Do you? Do you?" It stepped closer to Foidan, who flinched.
"There is a story you must know," Arin quickly raised her voice. "It relates to one of your acquaintances."
The Body Walker turned Foidan around to face her then wrapped an arm around his shoulder like they were best friends. "Go on."
"When I first set–"
Before Foidan finished the sentence, the daemon's other arm pressed the dagger through his silk robe and bled his thigh. "Go on!," it roared this time.
"When he first set foot on Grissam," Arin said, "the whole planet was engaging in the subjugation of a Crying Destroyer. I imagine you know one."
"Violence. Tear." The daemon solemnly said a third word as well, one that was outside of Arin's vocabulary.
"It was practically toying with the planet's military. Two local Seraphists were killed easily. Most people had given up, even the planet's governor, until my husband arrived with reinforcement. His force was composed of only mortals, which obviously spelt certain doom."
"Obviously." Its head leaned against Foidan's and nuzzled him with the enthusiasm of a cat with boundary issues. He hissed in pain. So far, she could hardly make sense of the logic behind its actions, but for every second it was not wearing her family's skin like winter coats, their Seraphist was one step closer.
[I'm seeing you. Keep stalling.]
"But the Crying Destroyer had turned complacent," Arin continued. "It had won against mortals and Seraphists of Grissam in every contest of strength. Yet, it did not know that the governor is an honorable woman who favored glory over result while the Seraphists were novice Breakers who just received their Circuits. It did not know the art of non-traditional warfare."
She got off the bed, leaving the twins lying there. Standing up, her legs felt like they belonged to someone else. The act was necessary, however, because she needed to capture every ounce of attention from the daemon.
She remembered watching one of her aunts perform on stage. The woman blinked, and somehow the audience felt compelled to give her a standing ovation. Each gesture must be a hook, line, and sinker in one, she had said while instructing Arin with a view to instilling in her young niece a way to make money in case their family business went bust. Now, Arin weaponized that lesson to the task of stalling a daemon.
So she told the daemon of how her husband chipped away his enemy's strength, while making sure to slow down during suspense and raise voices for climactic moments, timed with each step that the Seraphist took as she sneaked in from behind.
Like captain Holting who pinned down the Crying Destroyer with his traps while Foidan's engineers finished the living poison needle, she kept the attention of the Body Walker on her as Amishar's Miracle, <
It made no cries when the anchor's body fell down in pieces, saved for sizzling sounds as a magical fire slowly consumed the flesh. Amishar, a woman who had lived twice as long as Arin yet whose youth and beauty rival her own, stood solemnly while Foidan went over to support his wife. In the Seraphist's hand was a long silver candlestick, the purple flame of which burned intensively upward to form the shape of a lance's tip.
Amishar had seen the gray smoke and red strings coming from her employers' mouth. The laws that governed the Ariun Imperium demanded her to kill any speakers of the Forbidden Script on sight. "Are you alright?" she asked.
Foidan looked at Arin, who had burned out from the exhaustion. "Yes, I think. Is the daemon really gone?"
"My Circuit is detecting no daemon in the vicinity, so we're probably safe. However, I'd need to sweep through the entire palace and we will need to wait for more help from TerraSol's professional Seraphists. We can't be too sure. After all, it may escape after I, on my own, without your involvement, cornered it in another chamber faraway, yes?"
"Yes," Foidan replied. "Thank you."
"As for the scoundrel that is my uncle, you will give me everything you know of him. Once the professionals finish vetting me, I will leave your service, and we will neither see nor message each other ever again. Do you understand, governor?"
"I do."
"Also,–" Amishar sighed and dismissed her weapon, which dispersed away as a flash of fire "–brace yourself. There is something you should know about your babies. My Circuit has been beeping me."
She sent them a message next, the same thing that the Circuit inside the Seraphist had told her.
[ArchSoul detected: Porter.]
[ArchSoul detected: Breaker.]
Foidan and Arin were not exactly sure what that meant.
"It's simple", Amishar explained, "your family is going back to the home of humanity in glory, for your precious bundles of joy–" she pointed at Manziholet and Gothlow "–are going to bend the rules of reality one day. They are going to be Seraphists."