Tim's POV
Half a day of running with *Perfect Unknowable* active and the ring secured in my ring finger.
I had been composing the meeting with Blue Rose in my head during the run back, the conversation I would have with Rigrit when she discovered the ring was gone, the explanation I would eventually need to provide, that all can come later.
The children playing outside the orphanage as I approached were the first signal that something was wrong, because the group was too small. On a normal afternoon the yard would hold significantly more children than the ten or fifteen I could count, and the ones who were outside had the scattered, unorganised quality of children who had been left without supervision.
I went through the front door.
The baby room hit me first. The crying had the sustained, exhausted quality of infants who had been crying long enough to have passed through the early urgent phase into the grinding persistence of pure need. I pushed the door open and counted, twelve infants in their cribs, none of them attended to, the maids who should have been present conspicuously not present.
I summoned the shadow clones immediately. Nine of them, the maximum I could maintain simultaneously, each assigned to a section of the building. We moved through the space in parallel, feeding, checking, cataloguing what we found.
The teachers were in their rooms. The maids were in their rooms. Sister Edna was in her office.
All of them dead.
Peacefully in their sleep, which meant the operation had been professional enough to sedate the building before acting, which confirmed what I already suspected about who had done this.
Hejinmal was in the library, and Hejinmal was missing his head, and the library had the specific evidence of a very fast, and very clean kill.
I took the crystal from the storage pocket I had kept it in since taking it from Gagaran on the road years ago as I walked outside. The tier seven angel unfolded from the crystal's containment, the wings spreading above the orphanage's roofline, the holy light of its presence falling across the courtyard and the street and the faces of the children who had come to see what the noise was.
I told it to revive all the dead here.
It worked through the building methodically, the holy magic of resurrection running at a tier that I could feel but could not yet produce myself, each body receiving the spell and the spell doing what it was designed to do.
Everyone came back.
Except Sister Edna, who turned to ash.
The ash was what remained where she had been, the revival spell having found insufficient levels to work with and the body having responded to the attempt with failure.
Five levels removed by the revival process, and she had not had five levels to give.
I looked at the ash.
The rage came up ever since that had been building for a long time since I came back and had found its trigger. It was cold and very deep RAGE. Someone had come into my home and killed the woman who had named me, fed me and was a mother to me in this world, after I was abandoned here, and did all this out of the goodness of her heart.
I hope they have a very good reason for this.
As They were going to suffer greatly for that.
I was looking at the ash, as my Bloodlust grew, and I wanted to kill something sooo bad.
Small voice. Pulling my leg. Below my eyeline.
A three year old girl with dark hair and the attention of a very young child who had registered that something looked wrong and had decided to ask.
"Are you okay, daddy?" she asked.
I crouched down to her level, as I gave her my biggest smile.
"I'll be fine," I told her.
I patted her head. Told her lunch was coming soon and she should get going.
She ran off with the complete trust of a child who had received a satisfactory answer and had no reason to doubt it.
I stood up.
Hejinmal was looking at me from the library doorway with the careful attention as fear was clearly shown in his eyes.
"m...mr tim....your eyes," he said. "They're dark red. The veins are visible."
I waved it off. Told him I was a little mad. Asked whether he or anyone else had seen who had killed them.
Most of the revived staff shook their heads, they had been asleep when it happened and had woken here.
Hejinmal had seen something before losing consciousness. A young man. Long black hair. Sharp red eyes. Ornate armour. A spear that looked plain.
Only one person that can beat my clone and looks like that, The Captain of the Black Scripture, I going to kill that FUCKER.
I thanked him. Told everyone to maintain normal operations and watch for problems.
Looked up at the tier seven angel, which was still above the orphanage generating significant public attention, and returned it to the crystal.
As I left the city.
---
The Captain of the Black Scripture's POV [level 65]
The report from the 7th Seat landed in the middle of our operational debrief with all of the Black Scripture members.
A tier seven angel had been summoned near the orphanage two days ago. Gone shortly after. Tim's current location: unknown. He had vanished from all of the Astrologer's tracking methods.
I rubbed my forehead.
The operation had succeeded in its primary objective. We had the children. A huge increase in man-power. What we had failed to do was acquire Tim himself, and Tim was the actual target, the children were nice prize.
Tim had not responded in the predicted way. Tim had apparently not been in his room when we arrived, which meant the entire room-capture element of the operation had been executed against a shadow clone, and the World Item need time to re-charge, which meant Tim had known or had been somewhere else for reasons unrelated to us.
Either possibility was annoying to deal with.
The priest came in while I was still working through the implications, with urgency, as he told us.
A man standing on top of the magic barrier of the cathedral.
Every member of the Black Scripture looked at the 7th Seat simultaneously.
She closed her eyes. Her ability extended upward and outward, the scrying reaching the top of the barrier where normal vision couldn't go.
She said it was Tim.
And she thinks, that Tim is preparing to punch the barrier.
The Whole Cathedral shook.
As all the food on the table spilled over.
I gave my orders.
The basement, where the children were held, needed a physical defensive line at the only access point. The head-on fighters went there. Tim was a god-kin by any reasonable assessment of his capability, which meant direct combat from most of the Scripture membership fighters was pointless, I was the only person in this room who had a meaningful chance of holding him in a direct engagement, and meaningful did not mean certain.
The 12th Seat: Heaven and Earth received separate orders. He was our assassin, the best we had, with a poison compound that the Theocracy's researchers had spent a decade developing specifically for killing targets, as that will only slow down Tim. His job was not to win a fight. His job was to be in a position to administer the compound while my engagement held Tim's attention. Distraction, delivery, incapacitation. The 12th Seat nodded without speaking, which was his habit and also accurate communication.
The magic casters began buffing me.
We waited at the basement door.
One hour. No sound from above.
Two hours. No sound from above. No footsteps from the priests who lived and worked in the cathedral above us. The silence of a building that had been emptied of its normal occupants as their most likely dead.
The 12th Seat signalled with his hands. He was going to check.
I nodded.
He converted to shadow and slid under the door with the complete silence.
The silence lasted less than one second.
The blood came form under the door slowly, spreading across the stone floor in the shape of the gap it had come through.
I took my battle stance.
The magic casters started their buffing again.
The door was in front of us.
We waited for it to open.
---
Tim [Enraged]
LeveL: [82] [plus 5 levels]