Lefiya was still stewing over the way she had reacted a moment ago.
Then a dull, booming roar rolled out of the night sky wheeling above them.
"Whoooosh—!"
A violent downdraft came through like a huge invisible hand, and the monster ash still hanging over the street spun up and scattered in every direction. The wind pressure stung their cheeks.
"Watch above!" Tione snapped the warning the instant she noticed, without a heartbeat of hesitation.
With a ring of steel she tore the [Zolas] shortblade free from the sheath on her outer thigh, the muscles of her legs winding tight.
Three enormous shadows came down out of the high dark, the faint moonlight sliding off them as they fell.
Thud!
A pair of sharp stone talons hammered into the blue brick and stamped spiderweb cracks straight through the paving.
It was a dragon-type monster, better than two meters tall.
Ash-black rock scales sealed its body from head to tail. Its thick hind legs gripped the ground, and the vast pair of wings on its back had not fully folded yet.
Right behind it came a griffin sheathed in golden feathers, and a harpy with sharp bird claws.
In the Dungeon, dragon-types had always been another word for catastrophe, the nightmare no adventurer ever quite shook off.
Especially that stone dragon, which gave off raw brutality just by standing there.
And yet.
Just as Lefiya raised her staff, nerves drawn tight, the attack she braced for never came.
Instead, what happened next hit these battle-hardened members of the [Loki Familia] with another wave of that same staggering wrongness.
The stone dragon, all two-plus meters of it, halted only a few paces from Haimer.
"Krrk…"
Then, with enormous clumsiness, it folded those heavy stone wings.
Its right leg drew back half a step, the hard kneecap grinding down into the loose gravel.
And then its head sank, low and deep.
Behind it, the griffin and the harpy dropped to one knee in eerie unison.
"Lord Haimer." Grosse knelt on one knee, one foreclaw laid flat against his chest, his voice a low rumble.
"I have already sent the rest of our kind to sweep the skies above this human city."
"But there is a thick scent coming off this place, and to monsters without reason it is a fatal lure."
"And the source of that scent is very close to where you stand."
"Someone must be hiding in the dark, meaning to move against you."
"So allow me to carry you up to high ground, out of danger, until the worst of it has passed."
After all, this might be the only god in all the endless years ahead who could truly shelter the Xenos and bring them up to the surface. Grosse would not gamble even a ten-thousandth of a chance on leaving Haimer standing in the middle of a bloody riot.
"..."
"Until the worst has passed?"
"Whose worst am I supposed to be avoiding?"
Haimer raised an eyebrow at that.
He lifted his right hand slowly.
Wrist turning over, palm up, fingers spread just slightly.
The next second.
"Hmmmmm—"
The silver spear he had tossed off-hand to kill the frenzied beetle in a single stroke, the one still buried deep in the half-meter-thick brick wall at the end of the street, began to shudder with a violent ringing hum through its whole shaft.
Whoosh!
It ripped itself backward out of the split brickwork, turned into a streak of silver across dozens of meters, and settled neatly back into Haimer's open palm.
"What is that…?"
Seeing that impossible sight for the first time, Shakti, Grosse and the others could only stare, eyes wide.
Ais, Tiona and Tione looked faintly thrown as well, as if it had not occurred to them that Haimer would give the spear the same automatic-recall property.
"So Lord Haimer uses a spear too, like Finn?" Tiona blinked at the sight, curiosity plain on her face.
With the silver spear back in his grip, Haimer spun a crisp flourish with it and brought it upright, the point angled down at the ground.
"Grosse, your offer comes from the right place, but you've got one premise wrong."
Haimer lowered his gaze to the huge shape kneeling in front of him.
"Grosse. The greater the power, the greater the responsibility that comes with it."
"Orario has turned into this hellish mess overnight."
"And if, at a moment like this, the first thought of the specially appointed Constable is not to put the chaos down, but to tuck his tail and hole up in some safe district…"
"Then what right, what face, would I have left to keep sitting in the Constable's chair and giving orders?"
Haimer said it lightly enough.
Then his gaze left Grosse and settled on Shakti at his side.
"Miss Shakti."
Hearing her name, Shakti's hand tightened without her meaning it to.
"Lord Haimer. What do you intend to do?"
"Since the source of this monster-drawing trouble happens to be me, half the responsibility for tonight is mine as well." Haimer paused.
"So."
"For what comes next, I'll take command of the operation myself."
"That is…"
At those words, Shakti's brows knotted.
This was a matter of the entire city's survival, after all, and handing supreme command wholesale to a god… by the Guild's own rules, that was thoroughly irregular.
But then she thought it through again. She remembered the casual, thunderous ease with which Haimer had cut those monsters down a moment ago.
She looked at that army of Xenos who hung on his every word, whose combat strength was in no way inferior to first-class adventurers.
And there was yesterday's ruling from the Denatus on top of it.
Every chip on the table was already in this god's hands.
The mess in front of them left her no room to stand on rank and argue.
Besides… "the greater the power, the greater the responsibility."
A man who could say something like that, she believed, was not a man with evil in him.
"Understood."
Shakti drew a deep breath and nodded firmly.
"From this moment on, every guardsman of the Ganesha Familia is under your command, Lord Haimer."
She laid one hand flat over her chest in a textbook knight's salute.
"There's no need to make it so solemn, Miss Shakti." Haimer laughed softly and tapped the butt of the spear against the flagstones.
"There's just one small problem left."
"Before I go deal with the odds and ends out there, I have to make sure nothing filthy and blind wanders into our own home base."
At that, Haimer lifted his head, his gaze crossing the high wall to lock onto the tall brick chimney in the distance.
He raised his voice a few notches, enough for it to carry on the night wind.
"I'm talking to you four gentlemen hanging up there taking in the breeze."
"Stop standing around enjoying the show and come down here to help."
"Hold this courtyard for me. Anything crazed that tries to get near this house, monster or man, you keep it outside the gate. How's that?"
The words hung there.
Night wind swept past.
The whole ruined stretch of street fell into a dead silence.
Lefiya was still blinking, staff clutched in both hands, with no idea who Haimer was shouting at.
Only then, as she looked around—
High above.
Bang!
With the crunch of brick under heavy landings, four short figures of near-identical build, clad in heavy standard-issue armor, dropped straight out of the darkness.
Four Pallums of matching height, each hauling a different piece of crude heavy weaponry — spear, war hammer and the rest — landed in a single line, half-crouched, on the street not far from Haimer.
The senior officers of the [Freya Familia]!
The "Four Warriors of Flame Gold" — the Gulliver Brothers!
"How unexpected."
"We thought our concealment was flawless."
"To think that at this distance, my lord saw through us at a glance."
"Still, since my lord asks it himself."
"Then today we shall of course accept."
Tiona's eyes went perfectly round, and she jabbed a finger hard into Tione's arm.
"Hey, hey, did I hear that right?"
"Those are the 'Four Warriors of Flame Gold' of the [Freya Familia], the Gulliver Brothers, aren't they…"
"The Gulliver Brothers, taking orders from Lord Haimer like good little soldiers?"
"Did the sun come up in the west, or did these guys who only ever see Freya finally crack their skulls?"
"Shut your mouth."
Tione slapped her idiot sister's hand away, irritated, with no intention of picking up such a pointless thread.
Because it was obvious enough.
The Gulliver Brothers had never once acted on anything but Freya's look.
That bunch stared down their noses at everyone, gods of other Familias included.
If they were willing to obey Haimer's orders so meekly, then their mistress had already handed down a very clear instruction about him behind the scenes.
As for why — the water under all this ran deep, and Tione had no interest in wading in blind, which was exactly why she had cut Tiona off.
Snubbed, Tiona simply turned her head and fixed on Ais, standing up ahead of them.
"Hey, Ais."
Tiona leaned in and dropped her voice.
"Isn't this a bit much?"
Before she could finish—
"Do what Lord Haimer says. You won't go wrong."
Ais's eyes stayed calm as she tossed the line out flatly, apparently seeing nothing at all wrong with ordering around the officers of the Freya Familia.
"Uh…"
That perfectly earnest answer stopped Tiona cold, and it took her a good while to find her voice again.
"I'm just saying, Ais." Tiona grumbled.
"If Loki were here to hear you talk like that."
"She'd probably figure it's only a matter of days before Lord Haimer becomes your real patron god."
"Is that [Sword of Despair] of yours really that good after Lord Haimer reworked it? It's practically bought your whole soul."
With the complaint out of her system, Tiona's gaze wandered. She craned her neck and let her eyes stray toward the blade at Ais's hip.
Beside her, Tione rolled her eyes so hard it hurt.
"If you think the big blade Lord Haimer reworked is such a disappointment, then stop using that beat-up double-blade of yours. I've been meaning to find an excuse to change weapons anyway."
Tione folded her arms. "I'll just sell your double-blade off at a discount and pocket the money."
That did it.
Tiona panicked on the spot.
She grabbed the great double-blade [Urga] — a good deal wider than she was — in both hands and hauled it against her chest.
"Absolutely not! Nobody gets any ideas about my Urga!"
Tiona shook her head furiously, guarding it like a dog over a bone.
"After Lord Haimer took it and reforged it, my Urga got really, really strong!"
"The weight sits better for putting force behind it, and the swing feel got smoother by a whole lot more than a little."
"Last time I went down into the Dungeon I chipped it by accident, and then it absorbed some of the broken Magic Stone fragments that fell—"
She patted the thick blade and lowered her voice, showing off. "Just like Ais's Sword of Despair, it's got self-repair now!"
At the words "a weapon that repairs itself," both Shakti and Grosse turned to look at the outrageous greatsword in Tiona's hands.
Because up to this day, in Orario and in the whole Lower World, no one had ever heard of a smith who could forge a weapon with self-repair.
Even a first-tier armament with the [Indestructible] property would eventually be wrecked beyond saving if pushed past the load it could bear.
"There's more to what your Urga can do, actually."
As luck would have it, Haimer caught the conversation and turned his head toward Tiona.
"Urga itself is simply enormous, so to fold the effects in cleanly, I mixed in no small amount of those deep-level ore materials Loki sent over."
"Really?"
Tiona's eyes lit up and she abandoned Tione entirely, closing the distance to Haimer in a few strides.
"Lord Haimer! Besides the better feel and the self-repair, does this greatsword have any other amazing tricks I haven't found yet?"
She looked up at him, pressing eagerly.
"Tell me, please, I'm dying here!"
Watching her fidget with impatience, Haimer narrowed his eyes a fraction.
"You want to know?"
He dragged the syllables out deliberately, dangling it just out of reach.
"Mm-hm, mm-hm!"
Tiona nodded like a woodpecker, hair bouncing with it.
"Then you can work it out for yourself, slowly, in real combat with real steel."
"You have to trigger it with your own hands anyway. Think of it as an extra little surprise I left you."
"Ehhh!"
"How can Lord Haimer bully people like this…"
Watching the answer get swallowed back down before it reached his lips, Tiona deflated and let the whine drag on.
She planted [Urga] back on the ground, shoulders slumped.
Haimer did not keep bantering with her.
He turned instead to the stone dragon Xenos still pressed flat to the ground, waiting on orders.
"Grosse."
"Here, my lord." Grosse answered the summons at once.
"Take your companions and get back to the rest of the work."
"I have these four holding the gate now, and with them there, nobody crosses it easily."
"And with my own strength, I hardly need bodyguards at my elbow."
"Tonight, you have exactly one mission."
Haimer's voice hardened.
"Save as many trapped surface residents as you possibly can, and kill every frenzied monster that was brought up out of the Dungeon!"
"And while this battle lasts—"
"Even if, once the storm has passed, your exposure forces you to fall back into the Dungeon and stay hidden for a while."
"Tonight, I require you to take every single eye in this city!"
"I want every surface resident shivering behind their window to remember it clearly, plainly, beyond any doubt!"
"That the ones who dragged them back from the edge of death tonight were precisely you — the ones they curse and hunt and call monsters every other day of the year!"
"As you command, Lord Haimer!"
In that instant, for that one word of acknowledgment, he would have gone off and died on the spot.
Not another second wasted.
Grosse sprang up off the ground and loosed a roar that shook the sky.
The great wings on his back spread to their full span.
With the griffin and the harpy behind him, he climbed back into the night and scattered into it.
At the same time.
"My lord! Are you all right?"
Just after Grosse took off, the harpy Fei came beating back down through the air, feathers ruffling, and looked at Haimer with some urgency.
"Relax. A scratch, nothing more."
Haimer shook his head, resigned, and shifted the silver spear to a level grip in his right hand.
"Actually, Fei, your timing is perfect." He looked at her.
"Fly over and take hold of my left arm with your talons. Get a firm grip."
He pointed up at the night sky.
"Take me to the highest point of this sky."
"I want to look over the whole state of this city from an angle nothing on the ground can see."
As he spoke he raised his solid left arm.
"Come on, Fei."
"Y-yes, my lord!"
Handed an order to carry a god into the sky out of nowhere, the harpy Fei swallowed hard from sheer nerves.
She edged forward with enormous care.
With those sharp bird claws sheathed in hard horny scales, moving as slowly and gently as she possibly could, she even deliberately drew back the hooked points of her talons.
Terrified of so much as scraping his skin, she locked her grip onto the thickest, sturdiest part of Haimer's left arm.
Once she had confirmed the hold was secure—
"Hah—!"
Fei's wings drove down in one full-strength beat.
Powerful lift exploded from beneath them.
In the gale it kicked up, she tore Haimer's body clean off the shattered blue brick.
They punched through smoke and dust, climbing at speed like an arrow shot straight upward into a black sky stained crimson by the fires raging on all sides.
The wind blew the hem of Haimer's long black coat up behind him.
Down below, Ais and the others tilted their chins up, watching in silence as the harpy carried his back into the heights.
"All right."
"Time for Captain Shakti to pass the word down."
Tsubaki looked at Shakti.
Shakti looked back at Tsubaki, and nodded.
Not long after, Haimer's voice rang out over the whole of Orario.
"Listen well, adventurers of the Lower World!"
"I am Orario's specially appointed Constable, patron god of the [Haimer Familia]."
"I trust you all have some idea of what has happened today!"
"So let me ask you to remember this: the core of this riot lies with the Familias who smuggled monsters prone to going berserk up to the surface, dodging the Guild and the city guard's oversight to do it."
"And remember this as well — every monster with a bright red cloth tied around its wrist."
"No matter how frightening its fangs and claws look, no matter what old grudges you carry against monsters that look exactly like them."
"They belong to me. Right now they are out on your streets clearing away the danger, digging your parents and your children out of the rubble. They are my children!"
"And if anyone at a moment like this gets itchy hands and raises a weapon against a monster bearing the red mark…"
Haimer paused, and the cold murder in that pause raised gooseflesh on everyone who heard it.
"Then it will be treated as a challenge thrown in my face!"
"The same as declaring war on me! On my [Haimer Familia]! And on my office as Constable of Orario!"
"However!"
Then his tone turned on a coin.
"Tonight is also a carnival night for every last one of you to show what you can do!"
"As of now, I have consulted with Royman, Guild Master, and declare the following!"
"Every monster on the streets of Orario that bears no red mark and is attacking indiscriminately in its frenzy!"
"Is hereby formally entered onto the Guild-issued city-wide extreme-danger bounty list!"
"Further! I swear this in my divine name!"
"Anyone in these ruins tonight, whatever Familia you belong to, whatever your standing!"
"So long as you cut down a single frenzied monster, bring the Magic Stone and materials it drops to the Guild, and claim payment for your kill!"
"So long as you can prove the drop came from a frenzied monster you killed tonight!"
"Then even if what you carry in is the smallest, poorest Magic Stone of them all!"
"The bounty you walk away with!"
"Will be, at minimum, a third-tier piece of divine-forged equipment made by my own hands!"
"And beyond that!"
"For every additional Magic Stone dropped by a frenzied monster, I will add five hundred thousand Valis on top as a bonus!"
"And even if you are gravely wounded!"
"So long as you can kill one frenzied monster and bring in its Magic Stone!"
"Even with one breath left in you, the Guild will provide the finest potions free of charge and treat you until you are whole!"
"A nobody, or a name known across the world!"
"The chance is here, laid out in front of you, and this is the only time it truly will be!"
In every corner of Orario, countless Lv.1 and Lv.2 low-rung adventurers hiding in the shadows stopped breathing.
For men and women who could not bring themselves to spend a few thousand Valis on a plain, unenchanted blade—
Killing one frenzied monster meant, at worst, a third-tier armament worth hundreds of thousands.
Plus five hundred thousand Valis paid on the spot.
It was a fortune enormous enough to overturn a life in a single night.
Especially in this Labyrinth City, where adventurers lived off the Dungeon.
Nothing pulled at an adventurer like money and top-grade gear.
And at a time like this, the Guild stepping forward to guarantee it all was without precedent.
So.
Heavy coin has never wanted for brave men.
Least of all a crowd who licked blood off the knife's edge for a living.
"Kill!!!"
With countless blades ripping free of their sheaths, Orario's counterattack began in earnest.
"Five hundred thousand Valis, with a third-tier weapon as the floor."
Off to the side, Tsubaki propped [Crimson Rain] against the eaves, tugged at the strap of the patch over her missing eye, and clicked her tongue.
"That's about what a fully equipped party of low-rank adventurers pulls in from half a month of working themselves half to death down in the Dungeon."
"Never mind the Guild's expensive special-issue elixirs backing it all up."
At that thought Tsubaki turned her head and looked at Shakti.
"Looks like your guard corps gets to save quite a lot of sweat tonight putting Orario back in order, Captain Shakti."
"Those adventurers, gone half mad with greed, will probably dig the last stray fish out of whatever nook of the city wall it's hiding in and cut it into a thousand pieces."
Shakti pressed her lips together and did not answer.
A few veins simply stood out on the back of the hand gripping her spear.
Because she was weighing far more than saved manpower.
A riot caused by monsters could certainly be quelled fast with a rich enough reward.
But the old creed that men die for money, in this Labyrinth City built out of stacked desire, would breed chain conflicts far harder to predict than any monster outbreak.
Small, vicious brawls between adventurer parties over a contested Magic Stone, for instance.
Lord Haimer's move looked like a sharp knife cutting through a tangled knot…
But it also poured a new and murkier current into the city.
And as meticulous as Lord Haimer was, there was no chance at all that he had failed to see that far.
So if he had thrown out bait this outrageous, where exactly did the rest of the calculation land?
That was a problem she could not untangle yet.
Her gaze drifted off into the distance at the thought, settling on the handful of adventurers ganging up on a monster at the corner of the street.
…
At that same moment.
Inside the Pantheon, the main hall of the [Guild].
With monsters running wild on a massive scale outside, every oil lamp in the building had been lit, and staff hurried back and forth on every errand imaginable.
In the broadcast room on the second floor.
This was the nerve center wired to the public voice-transmitters of the entire Labyrinth City.
Eina stood beside the control console, the sharp, slender tips of her elf ears peeking out from her short brown hair.
Haimer, having just finished the city-wide broadcast, stood side-on beside the console.
There was still a line of dried blood on his left wrist, roughly bound up with a handkerchief embroidered with a flower-bud pattern.
Eina checked the wound over to be sure it was nothing serious, then gripped a scroll of parchment covered in notes, her fine eyebrows crushed together.
"Lord Haimer, about that city-wide announcement just now…"
"I won't even raise how terrifying the total sum involved is. Just counting the monsters causing this riot outside, there are at least a hundred of them."
"A hundred monsters means a hundred [third-tier armaments]."
"That doesn't only require a mountain of forging materials — someone is absolutely going to bring in old Magic Stones, or even fake ones, and pass them off to claim the reward!"
As his exclusive advisor, her heart had climbed all the way into her throat.
She knew exactly what kind of absurd schemes a low-rank adventurer's hunger for money could produce.
Haimer turned to face her.
"That's short-sighted thinking."
"There's no need for all that worry, Miss Eina."
"As for the shortfall in forging materials, we simply require them to bring materials of their own and convert those against labor hours."
"If you want to walk off with a finished weapon for free, you empty out the stock you've been hoarding."
"That amounts to quietly recovering all the base materials that have been flowing into black-market workshops."
"And as for the worms trying to pad the count with fakes…"
"We just set a cutoff date for redeeming the bounty."
"The Dungeon gate in Babel Tower was sealed shut long ago by the elites of the Ganesha Familia. A freshly harvested Magic Stone and an old one gone grey from sitting in a warehouse for months are not so easily confused — the Guild's appraisers aren't blind."
"Anyone who dares walk through the Guild's door with a counterfeit stone gets taken into custody on the spot under the public order statutes. That's all."
That said, Eina's grip on the parchment loosened only slightly.
The knot in her had not smoothed out.
"But Lord Haimer, the actual Valis this great purge will scatter…"
"Even if every loophole is nailed shut, once the real accounting is done, five hundred thousand Valis per head compounded over and over, on top of the Guild's full coverage of expensive elixirs for the gravely wounded—"
"It will empty out everything you currently have, in one stroke!"
He had only just taken office, true.
But as his exclusive advisor, she knew for a hard fact that Haimer's coffers were scraping bottom.
"Which brings us to the other purpose buried inside this bargain."
"This is what you call shearing the wool off the sheep's own back, and doing it with perfect legitimacy."
"Tonight, the sudden mass rampage of monsters caused a major security incident. Public property destroyed, countless surface civilians with their homes and families broken."
"There will absolutely be a great mass of adventurers and civilians caught up in it who carry resentment over it."
Haimer turned his face slightly.
"That kind of public anger can't be hidden, and this is precisely the moment we can ride the prestige earned by tearing out the danger at its root."
"Under the banner the Guild has just lit, we investigate every faction in Orario, openly and by the book!"
"We turn the whole of Orario upside down."
"Under the weighty pretext of hunting down contraband monsters and safety hazards, we forcibly seize the underground assets of every faction under suspicion, especially the ones running smuggling operations for years."
"With that confiscated dirty money in hand."
"We can not only plug all the gaps left by tonight's payouts to the adventurers clearing monsters, we can ride the moment and hand a windfall to every honest lower-rung adventurer in the city, which will do wonders for morale that's been dead on its feet."
"More importantly, it further cements the Guild's real authority as the governing body, and the legitimate expansion of the voice our Familia's newly appointed Constable holds in this city."
Haimer finished.
Eina stood there in a daze, her mouth open half an inch.
Her mind, wound tight with worry a moment ago, was buzzing.
"Lord Haimer, the things you think about…"
Beneath long lashes, Eina's pupils widened a fraction, her gaze drifting without permission to the clean line of his profile.
"I thought you were only trying to rally everyone to deal with the trouble…"
"I never imagined you'd already worked out everything that comes after…"
"Lord Haimer, all of a sudden you feel like you see so terribly far ahead…"
"Oh?"
Haimer smiled at that and leaned the smallest fraction toward her, his gaze searching.
"From your tone, Miss Eina, do you think my mind runs a little too dark and deep?"
Faced with that sudden closing of distance, and the faint scent that was distinctly his carried on the air between them, Eina flushed and shrank her neck down.
She waved her free hand back and forth.
"No! I absolutely didn't mean that!"
"I really don't mean I'm afraid of you."
"I just felt that—"
Eina mumbled it, her eyes slipping downward.
"To handle a mess this size, and on top of that to go and seize vaults out of those Familias' hands by force, your days ahead are going to be terribly, terribly busy. And terribly dangerous…"
"I'm only… only a little worried about the position you'll be in."
"Well, on that point, Miss Eina, there's no need to trouble yourself over such trivial things."
Haimer made nothing of that small retreat of hers.
He straightened up and gave an indifferent shrug.
"If I had the choice, I wouldn't have made this much work for myself either."
Then his tone shifted.
"After all, tomorrow isn't only when I negotiate with the major Familias. It's also the day I arranged, some time ago, to take you out to dinner."
"And of all nights, this rotten business had to blow up tonight."
At the words "arranged to have dinner," the conflicted look on Eina's face froze in place.
Red spread fast across her cheeks and ran all the way down to the base of her neck.
"L-Lord Haimer, that was only me agreeing to… to thank you, as a token of gratitude…"
"It isn't… like that…"
"Is that so?"
Haimer tilted his head.
He didn't press her flustered defense any further, only teased in that same perfectly ordinary tone.
"Then I really am a little disappointed."
Had she said something wrong?
Hearing that, Eina's eyes darted away and she bit down hard on her lower lip.
And then, at the exact moment the air between them stiffened—
Noticing the change in her expression, Haimer smiled and moved.
He raised his right hand and brought it, seemingly at random, close to the edge of the ear she had bared by lowering her head.
Snap. The lightest possible click of his fingers.
"Eek!"
Eina jumped, her shoulders hunching inward.
She started to lean back—
And then she saw it.
As Haimer's wrist turned over, a rose of an impossibly rich, saturated red, still beaded with fresh dew, appeared out of thin air at the tip of her ear.
Eina's eyes went round.
The startlement hadn't faded from them yet.
"Lord Haimer… how did you… make that appear?"
She sniffed, reached up and took the flower, and her fingertips could actually feel the coolness of petals only just cut.
"A cheap little trick, nothing worth showing off." Haimer smiled.
"Back in the Heavens, Loki was always turning odd little things into other odd little things to kill the hours."
"Sometimes she'd even turn Divine Wine into something else entirely."
"Watch it enough times and you pick it up."
"All right. Since everything on the Guild's end is arranged."
"I should be going."
"There's a mess out there that still needs me watching it."
____
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