Chapter 17: Silver flames

Lumière ran through Cobbler's street, having forgotten any sense of cautiousness within the seeping dark atmosphere.

'Please, forgive my lack of cautiousness, Goddess! You wouldn't let them take your most devoted servants, would you!?' His eyes were wild, desperate. He had been warned time and time again of the approaching danger, but he thought it would directly target him. He had no thought of it targeting the monastery itself. He was a fool.

The sun had faded and given way to the lilac moon, and rain began to pour down without withdrawal. There was a slight murmuring of thunder in the distance, and bright flashes of lightning occurred in the hilltops. Soon, Lumière reached the hillside on which the monastery had been built, and an eerie horror clutched at Lumière's heart. On the hillside, where at night one would have found all the male Dwindlers gathering, there was not a single person present. Small firepits had been left untended under the rain, protected by small awnings that Father Benedict had built for them, with minute amounts of fading embers crackling away at the charred wood.

Lumière looked up towards the monastery that rested past a small stone staircase past a group of trees, only to realise that its door had been left slightly open. He quickly stepped up the steps, steeling his gaze and his quickly beating heart as he carefully pulled the door handle towards him. As soon as he stepped inside, Lumière was assaulted by a thick putrid scent that had a hint of sickening sweetness. He covered his nose and stepped inside, pulling off his hat and setting it to the side.

The candlelight in the monastery had been extinguished, and only a faint glint of purple moonlight shone in from the stained glass window. Lumière walked over to the side of the monastery's main hall, being carefully quiet to give away his presence, and took one of the oil lamps off of the wall. He pulled a match out from his pocket, striking it against the matchbox and using it to light the lamp. He then turned it towards the interior of the hall, illuminating the area in a dim glow.

Lumière's eyes widened with a sense of horror and fear that struck his heart at the same time, sending his mind into a fierce and irresistible turmoil. He stumbled backwards. On the ground in front of him, as well as the walls, pews, and altar of unlit candles which sat underneath a statue of the Goddess of Thorns had been covered in the remains of human bodies.

Standing in the centre of the endless corpses, bathed in a coat of bright crimson blood, a man in a black cloak whose hood had been pulled away stood calmly, revealing his scarred and paled face to the lamplight. He had bright red eyes that seemed to gleam like jewels in the dark, and his smile which was unnaturally pulled upwards seemed stuck in place. He had a thick black aura permeating around his body, so Lumière immediately recognised him to be the eater of rats who had frequently visited the monastery for food.

Lumière grimaced, setting the oil lamp down on a pew beside him, allowing it to continue to illuminate the monastery in a dull-orange glow.

'This man... fuck. I didn't even think for a moment that he would pose such a threat. Are the Sister and Father okay? I'm sure they would've run away... no, I can't assume that. They would have definitely stayed and helped... is he going to kill me too, now that I've arrived? Why? Why has he done this? Why didn't Thomas warn me of him specifically? Did he know that this man would be a threat?'

He immediately abandoned his grief for the time being, focusing on his immediate survival as he let his gaze wander around the hall. He had left his sword in his room before departing for the Blackfeather Group's base of operations. It was no option for him. Countless thoughts raced through his mind, all measuring his survival based on his environment. However, the man in front of him didn't seem ready to let him think of such a thing.

Suddenly, the corpses around him seemed to catch on fire. First, embers began to wisp about on their bloodied, torn-apart flesh. Then, those embers turned a faint silver colour, before growing into thick silver flames that permeated on their clothes, setting the environment around them alight in bright colour. Although, unlike normal flames, they didn't seek to spread, and simply started to char away the flesh of the corpses. Lumière could then see clearly the form of the rat man in a long black cloak, and his unsettling unnatural smile that curved up against his cheeks.

"You did this?" Lumière asked of him, a glaring fury passing through his gaze.

There was silence for a long time, but gradually, the man parted his lips and began to reply.

"Sometimes... we eat them." He spoke with wild exasperation, his manic expression visible as he raised his upturned palms towards Lumière as if he were proselytising. "If we don't get sick from eating them, then it is a good day."

"The rats?"

The man shook his head slightly, his eyes filling with an intense madness that sent a chill down Lumière's spine.

"The people."

Lumière immediately burst into action after hearing those words. Running towards the fireplace, he could feel the presence of the crazed man chasing towards him, although when he glanced back, what he saw was not a man. The shadows of the dark environment seemed to warp around him, growing into a dozen illusory arms whose hands propped him up in the air, pressing their palms against the walls and floors as he cascaded through the air towards Lumière. Lumière foolishly took a handful of ashes from the fireplace and threw them up. In an instant, the space around the crazed man was cloaked in a thick cloud of soot and ash. Lumière shielded his eyes and began to move through the black cloud towards the other end of the room, before pulling out the only item he had in his pocket. It was the pocket watch that had been gifted to him by his closest friends. Ironically, it was what would allow him to buy time.

'Should I use my powers? No- that fear that I sensed within the man before… it's completely dissipated. There's nothing for me to absorb and transmute!'

Lumière reached into the cloak of silver flames of a nearby corpse and pulled out a red-hot poker that he had previously retrieved from the fireplace along with a handful of ash, burying it into the silver flames to heat it up. It now glowed a bright red colour and singed the flesh of Lumière's palm as he stepped forward towards the crazed man. Lumière's heart beat wildly as every instinct in his body screamed at him to flee, but he recalled the faces of those closest to him and took a glance at the charred corpses around him to stoke a wave of anger in his heart that superseded his fear. In an instant, a dangerous ember amidst the silver flames had sparked, and a new blaze was ignited in his despairing heart.

Out of the cloud of soot, Lumière hurled the pocket watch onto the floor of the monastery. Crazily, the man and his dozen shadowy arms lept towards the sudden sound, crashing towards the floor with an ear-piercing howl that shook the foundation of the building. Alongside the thrown pocket watch, Lumière rushed towards the man, allowing his suppressed fear to keep him moving forward. Lumière had positioned himself opposite the hall's exit. While there was a staircase to his left, it was nearly impossible to make it there without being caught by the crazed multi-armed man, and even if he was able to make it up to the second floor, there was still no readily available escape. So, by positioning himself in such a way, Lumière had forced himself to have only one option of survival - the elimination of the mysterious and terrifying being that stood before him.

Lumière raised the red-hot poker as the crazed man was distracted and precisely thrust it forward, spearing it through the man's eye. If he had not spent so much time within the fencer's association, it was likely he would have missed. The crazed man reeled back in pain, clutching at his eye as a thin rush of black blood began dripping down his cheek, pooling on the floor below him. The shadowy tendril-like hands retracted back into him, and he fell to his knees as he cried out in his gravelly shrieking voice. Lumière stepped without caution towards the man, as if in the face of his gradually-returning grief, he had abandoned his own survival. He could hear faint murmurs in the distance, although they were different from before. They seemed to be the cries of the charred corpses around him.

"No... this isn't nearly enough. I need you to feel just like they did. I need you to despair." Lumière spoke with a harsh tone of voice.

Lumière's lips fell slightly, revealing a frown that coupled with his ice-cold stare. Immediately, Lumière's vision began to darken like before. There were countless illusory murmurs in the distance that were just like the ones he had always heard, and horrid bloodshot eyes burgeoned from the dark clouds that pooled against the monastery's ceiling. Although this time, it seemed slightly different. Instead of just losing consciousness, it seemed like he was also losing his lucidity instead. His control over his body began to seep away, and the shadows in the room began to shiver and twitch as small tendrils erupted.

He saw a figure in the distance. It wasn't the intruder, and it wasn't Thomas swooping in to save him. It was him. It was a 'him' that smiled manically. His hair was a stark-black, and his eyes were as dark as the night.

'A persona? A different me…'

As Lumière lost his will over his consciousness, 'he' descended from the shadows, enveloping Lumière in 'his' features. What seemed like a thousand crows in the large hall seemed to recklessly bomb downwards from the shade, spilling their blood in splashes against the air before transforming into a thick viscous black liquid. That liquid rose up from the ground along with the remaining crows, and 'he' was enveloped in a long fluttering black cloak. The figure that wrapped its features over Lumière's had short black hair with small strands falling past its ears, and glistening black eyes that held a fatigued sense of despair. In most aspects, he looked identical to Lumière, apart from black eyeliner which sharpened his gaze, and a sickly pale-white tone on his cheeks.

"Despair." The figure spoke aloud, his hoarse voice echoing through the monastery's halls.

The intruder who had killed the Dwindlers within the monastery suddenly felt the strength in his limbs melt away, the remaining stamina being used to tremble with intense fear. He was forced to stand back up, pulling his hands away from his bleeding eye as he looked up at the newly-emerged cloaked being.

The figure who encapsulated 'Despair' stepped forward. 'Despair' raised his hand slightly, and the intruder's chin lifted along with it.

"Why?" Despair spoke aloud. "Why do all of this?"

His gaze, which seemed sharpened by black eyeliner and pools of fatigue looked on towards the intruder with an intense sense of malice and bloodlust. With all of his strength, the intruder lifted his head and sneered.

"You! You are a sinner!" The intruder smiled maniacally. "'He' wishes for you to fear 'him'. 'He' wishes for you to despair!"

The figure's lips curled up slightly.

"'He' wishes for me to 'Despair'?"

The intruder's eyes lost their crazed look, and immediately filled with a look of intense fear, knowing that he had said something wrong. They shimmered with that apprehension to speak further, and the intruder stumbled a few steps back. In unison, the black-cloaked figure stepped forward slowly.

'Despair' pulled up the sleeve of his cloak, revealing the pale skin of his arm which seemed to burgeon with nearly-exposed veins. With each step he took, the veins began to circulate a pitch-black blood, making his arm seem covered in a marbled texture of midnight. Suddenly, the cloaked figure dashed towards the intruder, raising his arm high in the air with his fingers spread wide.

"If I'm despairing, then there will be no time for you to. In a relationship of fear, one must act as predator, the other prey. Tell me, which one will you be?"

His hand made contact with the intruder's head, grabbing the entirety of the man's skull with his fingers before slamming him into the back wall of the monastery. There was no sound, and only the gleam of the intruder's terrified and slightly crazed eyes could be seen.

With a single movement, the intruder was rendered into a thick red mist that permeated in the air. The remaining flesh and sinew that flew along with shards of bone were plastered against the monastery's wall, dripping towards the floor in heaps of crimson-red muscle fibre and greyish brain tissue.

Then, there was an eerie silence in the monastery, as if all presence of life had faded away. 'Despair' let out a quiet sigh, and then closed his eyes as he allowed his mind to stir with the host's thoughts once again. Slightly, Lumière's senses began to return.

The black cloak immediately fell away from the figure's body, returning to the natural shadows of the monastery's hall. His black hair and pale white face gradually dissipated, and Lumière's features returned along with his lucidity. The darkness in his vision fell away, and the burgeoning eyes that glanced down at him from the shadowy clouds above blinked in unison, and sunk away into the ceiling. In an instant, the scene had returned to normal. Although, for Lumière, he had no idea what had just transpired. He only realised the absence of the intruder and the addition of the massive red portraiture that had been splayed onto the monastery's wall.

Lumière felt his heart tremble. He lurched forward, spewing the contents of his stomach, along with blood, onto the ground. His entire body ached as if his bones had been carved away by hot steel, and his skin felt cold and stiff. He didn't take even a second to consider his pain, however.

Lumière grabbed the poker which had lost its red-hot sheen, and cautiously stepped around the monastery's hall as he checked to see if the intruder was still present. Although taking a look at the bits of clothing around the stain on the wall, he was able to securely assume that the remains belonged to the rat man. Beside his remains, there was a strange rectangular object that seemed to hold a silver sheen around its edges, so he cautiously reached out his hand and picked it up.

When he turned it over, he realised it was of no significance. It was a card pulled from a standard deck of fifty-two cards- the one of spades. There was a shadowy figure on its surface, cradling the black spade gently within its arms. It gave off a terrifying chill, although there didn't seem to be anything else about it. After sating his curiosity, he tossed it back to the ground, and let out a quiet sigh.

The silver flames had burnt away as soon as the intruder had died, so Lumière used the oil lamp he had lit up earlier to locate the other lamps and set them alight. Even as the bright orange glow began to illuminate the monastery's hall, the light shaking of his body and his tense nerves didn't dissipate. His heart seemed to beat a thousand times a minute, and his mind was racing with a thousand thoughts that were unintelligible amidst the noise in his head.

However, one incredibly loud thought rang through his mind.

'Father Benedict and Sister Alinde... I haven't seen their bodies. Does this mean that they were able to get away?'

However, the quiet tension in the air was quickly cut away by more despair.

"Lumi..." A voice called out hoarsely from a room beside him.