The air was thick and tasted of aged iron and coal smoke, a familiar, acrid blend that was stronger in the lower parts of Smear Lisle.
Lieutenant Anthony Laroque, tall and lean, burst through the mahogany doors marked 'FIFTH MARINE COMPANY: LIEUTENANT LAROQUE,' his breath coming in ragged, panting gaspsnas he limped into the room.
He still wore the insignia of his rank, the crisp white shirt bearing the Navy logo under a wrinkled red overcoat, each side of the collar pinned with a single, golden star.
His brown hair was mussed, and the monocle usually fixed neatly over his green eye was missing, leaving him far from his normally composed features.
"Lieutenant! What in God's name happened?"
Midori Honda, skinny and sporting a shockingly pink wig that seemed wildly out of place next to her regulation blue trousers and white shirt, hurried after him.
She stopped dead just inside the doorway, her question trailing off as her eyes adjusted to the dimness of the office.
The curtains had been drawn tight, letting in only thin, dusty yellow daggers of sunlight.
The wall was a terrifying collage.
Maps of entire continents; Roma, the Icy North, Vinland were pinned up, crisscrossed by tangled knots of red string that led to newspaper clippings and handwritten notes.
Midori could barely make out the headlines: reports of violent, inexplicable murders and sudden, complete disappearances.
Most of the victims, she realized with a growing horror, were noticed to be hosts.
The scrawled notes were worse;
"Host killers,"
"targeting influential,"
"the Church,"
"cult or organization?".
"what happened to the eccentric cult of Dagonet?"
"Anthony, what is all this?" Midori asked, her voice small. "Are you in some kind of trouble?"
Anthony didn't look up. His distant green eyes were focused on the inner depths of his cabinet, where he was frantically shoving clothes, documents, and heavy glass bottles into a large, battered leather suitcase.
He cursed, the word a rasping sound under his breath, then spun back to the wall.
With a savage yank, he tore every single piece of paper, every map, and every red string from the plaster, wadding the entire conspiracy board into a massive, crinkling bundle.
He smashed the bundle into the suitcase, which already looked overstuffed.
Midori tried again. "The Captain is asking about the patrol rosters…."
He didn't wait for her to finish. The suitcase snapped shut with a violent click. He shoved past her with raw, careless force.
His shoulder slammed into her, rocking her back against the door frame. His face, glimpsed briefly, was a mask of primal fear.
He abruptly turned to her.
"Pretend I was never here, Midori," he hissed, the words devoid of warmth or command. "If anyone asks,tell them I went to Aztec."
Then he was gone,dragging his suitcase and accelerating down the hallway and out of the Marine company base, leaving his subordinate dumbstruck at the door.
Anthony moved through the upper city streets with an urgency that ignored the sharp, jolting pain in his left leg.
His eyes, normally focused on the distant horizon, darted nervously over his shoulder, checking every shadowed doorway and grimy window of the tall, close-set buildings.
For a moment, he thought he saw a figure observing him from a rooftop, but it was just a large black raven, sitting eerily still.
The bird tilted its head, its dark eyes meeting his for a long, unsettling second, before it silently took flight.
He descended quickly into the lower parts of Smear Lisle. The cobbled streets, slick with industrial effluent and refuse.
As he rounded a corner, a desperate, filthy beggar darted out from the mouth of a narrow alley and seized Anthony's coat and hand.
"Alms, Dear sir! For the love of the gods, I'm starving!"
Anthony reacted on pure instinct, a deep, inhuman panic overriding his trained composure.
He didn't just push the beggar aside; he shoved him with a force more than he meant to.
The beggar flew backward across the narrow street, smashing clean through a weak section of a brick wall with a sickening crunch.
People shrieked in shock, dropping baskets and scattering like pigeons.
"My apologies! I'm so sorry!" Anthony called back, already running, the limp an angry, jarring obstacle in his pace.
He didn't slow until he reached the tight, winding maze of tenements bordering the docks.
He stopped, checking the heavy gold watch on his wrist.
07:45.
"The foolish boatman should already be there," He whispered silently
He turned the corner into a dark, cobblestone alleyway that promised a shortcut to the water.
His breath hitched. A flash of a black, gothic gown and a thick, blood-stained green cloak disappearing at the far end.
No! no! no! no! no!
Anthony spun back, his mind screaming in denial. He took a single, panicked step in the opposite direction before reversing course, sprinting directly into the alley.
He was barely halfway down the narrow passage when his instincts screamed a deafening alert.
A high-pitched, metallic ringing sound, sharp and clear, pierced the foul air.
He dove sideways, throwing himself against the wall just as the entire world dissolved into a blinding white roar.
The explosion was colossal. It ripped through the block like a physical hammer blow.
Buildings groaned and crumpled, and the cobblestone ground beneath Anthony's feet fractured and vaporized.
Where he had stood a second earlier, a deep, smoking crater ringed by shattered stone and twisted metal.
The shockwave was indiscriminate.
A young child, playing near the alley mouth, was instantly vaporized, their upper torso blown clean off.
Bodies lay strewn among the rubble, their silence a profound contrast to the sudden, screaming panic that erupted in the surviving streets.
Anthony, though battered and bleeding from a dozen cuts,had managed to shake off the worst of the impact.
He looked up, his ears ringing, to see a figure descend from the air and settle lightly on the lip of the crater directly in front of him.
Anthony groaned as he hissed the name with venom.
"Sept."
The long green cloak billowed around them,the figure a mystery beneath the black hood and the silver mask split by seven thin cracks.
Sept reached down and effortlessly pulled a long golden spear from the spot where Anthony had dodged, the blade incredibly bright even through the dust.
Sept swung the weapon casually, cleaning it of dust.
A symbol of the two silver, crossed swords above the Latin inscription, "Exsurge Domine et iudica causam tuam" was embroidered against the back of the cloak.
"Ah, the regrettable collateral," Sept's voice was a soft, almost melodic hum that nonetheless carried perfectly over the chaotic shrieks. "Such a pity. You could have been a hero, Lieutenant. Taken the full blast and saved these innocents. Is that not the entire purpose of the Wessex Navy, to make martyrs of its soldiers?"
Anthony's suitcase lay forgotten and shredded at the edge of the blast zone. He shook with a white-hot, consuming anger.
"Oh, darling. Sept is being mean again," a new voice sniggered, laced with bitter, manic amusement.