Camille looked down at his arm with a squint, watching the acid burn over his skin before shaking it off.
"Hmm. This strange goop feels a bit itchy, like some bad skincare product."
"Tsk tsk tsk! You don't have to act like you ain't like the results though. If you flex your arms for me a little bit, I could even help you get rid of your smelly pit hairs!" Tenoch said with a grin, whipping through the air with a fighting stance.
"You want to see Chevreuse's armpits?"
The seer's eyes opened wide as he nervously shook his hands in the air to clarify, "No no. I didn't mean it like that. I was just trying to say that—"
"That Chevreuse's armpits must have been unwashed for the past couple of days? Hmph! Unfortunately for you..." The man stood up right, his head raised to the sky as he laughed proudly.
"Chevreuse's Aspect keeps his body as fresh as morning dew!"
Tenoch couldn't sort out his words fast enough for Camille to interject. "But enough about my unstained body, what is taking your friends so long? You people better not have gotten me excited for nothing."
The angry augur spirit, Papalot scoffed as she ordered more clones to charge at the believer, albeit yielding the same vein result, "A smart Prophet would have chosen to get rid of the weak masses individually, before they pile up and become unstoppable. Your hubris will be the end of you, haughty brat!"
Both sides endured a bit of back and forth, with the clones being treated as nothing more than slight inconveniences. But it was clear at this point, that this Believer was choosing to participate in Tenoch's waiting game. And who was Tenoch to ask him to do otherwise. To the main man, only results mattered. If his weakness had caused his opponent to drop down so much guard, then it was actually a strength. Better yet, his opponent's fault to be exploited.
Speaking of faults, Tenoch continued to think long and hard if he could find any weaknesses in Camille's abilities. Luckily, his Totem was very useful in this aspect. His observations so far were that Camille was severely lacking in mobility, and that he seemed to have an aversion to the slightest dirt; not to mention the obvious one of Sansa's Totem negating Bloodstained key completely.
"As soon as Sansa comes back in with enough essence and cancels out that pesky Virtue of his, he'd be sitting ducks! Hehe... ah~ what about that other teleport Virtue he has though? Come to think of it, why hasn't he used it to fish me out yet?" Tenoch squinted in thought from atop the white tree's branch.
Could it be that Privilege of the Resplendent requires its user to see what it would summon? That was a very likely possibility. But it could also be that Camille simply did not want the fight to end so quickly, so he wasn't fishing the Seers out.
"Relax, second fiddle. Have you forgotten you have a mighty 'Augur' spirit by your side? The more this fool draws the fight out, the more time he gives for me to completely analyse and discover his abilities."
The same could be said for the vice versa, but trading his secrets for a Believer's was a much more worthwhile offer. Especially when Tenoch still had three other people to back him up.
'What's taking the others so long? It's barely been an hour, yet this guy's about to drop my essence down to zero!'
"Set the 'roots' loose then!"
"As soon as the others come around, I will."
———
Her body was riddled with scars, and Isola wore them on like an epic mural telling of the journeys and calamities she had braved. She had a playful smile on her face as she poked Hippolytus's cheek while he rested on her lap.
"This place is so serene and calm, Isola." Sansa stretched her limbs, surrendering to the strange gravity of this place and floating in the air. "Ah~ it's great."
The two of them were inside Isola's sanctum Totem, recuperating and perhaps busy forgetting what they were gathering strength for in the first place.
The scene around them was a very bright recreation of the crimson forest. There were trees all around, but they had white stems and branches with cyan leaves attached, the earth they were fixed into covered in lush green leaves that bent according to wherever the wind decides. But the leading winds clearly had a direction they favoured most— the beam of blue light rushing into the white sky.
"By the way, didn't you say you could only bring two people in here a few days ago?" Sansa swam towards her friend.
"Yeah..." Isola's poking finger paused as she recalled Hippolytus telling her that his aspect allows it so his presence wouldn't cause any burden to her Sanctum. "He told me to get you so you can change forms into something more suitable for fighting."
"Huh? How'd he... Hmm." Sansa frowned. Hippolytus even knows what her Totem is capable of. What sort of clairvoyance did this man have? Or perhaps it was actually a Virtuous virtue that he was using. A regular Virtue can not possibly influence another individual as directly as this.
Sansa had always had a bad feeling about this man's abilities. However, he was so genuine, like a man being influenced by the clarity of the Lokahs with no sinful thought behind his gaze. She once again shook that bad feeling to the back of her mind as she asked,
"Why do I need a fighting form again?"
Isola grimaced. "My fault. I can't seem to turn off the effects of this Totem yet. Then again, that's why you're recovering essence so quickly. Ugh! Whatever." She sighed, explaining,
"If you look far into the forest, you'll find faint shadows of people in combat. That's the guy we're with, helping us stall the enemy, and the enemy himself who wants to take Hippolytus for some reason."
Sansa turned around, still trying to understand what Isola was talking about, but to no avail.
Seeing this, Isola chuckled nervously, now pinching Hippolytus's cheeks lightly so he wakes up as soon as possible.
"Good job, Tenoch. Just hold on for a bit until..." Isola's eyes gleamed as she noticed Hippolytus's eyelids shaking. He was regaining consciousness.
———
The First prince of Troezen, a child at the heart of his kingdom, and the kingdom's heart himself. They say when he was born, he wiped the tears from his mother's eyes and comforted her to sleep. The show of compassion at such an age was so touching, it warmed the king's heart enough to establish a peace treaty with a century old enemy kingdom.
The brilliant prince of Troezen, a boy in the mind of his kingdom, and the kingdom's brain himself. They say when his father became ill, he led an army against the traitors who had betrayed the treaty and dared attack their city at its lowest point. Despite the officials that had defected to the enemy's side, leaving the kingdom in a miserable state, the First prince used his wits and cunning to deliver justice to his foes and bring prosperity to his homeland once more.
The savior of Troezen, a man at the soul of his kingdom, and the kingdom's soul himself. The First prince found light in the eyes of the slave species, the same tools that have been gifted by the gods themselves for the amusement and comfort of man.
He abolished the rights to subject the servants to inhuman treatment and pronounced himself enemy to whoever went against his laws in all of the kingdoms in his realm. They called him foolish for saying 'tools' should not be used as 'tools' and then turned against him. He was cast out a fool, a prospect that had lost his way.
What had gone wrong? Well, they say the king had a acquired a rare servant indeed, a thing so beautiful, it had captivated the prince's heart, messed with his mind and corrupted his soul. The First prince had fallen in love... with an object.
Virbius did come back, wielding a profane power, the likes of which the gods had forbidden. He says the fate of the realm had been placed into his hands by the gods themselves, and that the people continue to lie, to ignore his wishes and treat him with disdain.
"Lend me your trust and I swear that I shall deliver to you once again, heights never reached, wealth never witnessed, happiness never experienced, and love never grasped before!"
"Is that all it would take for you to stop murdering our people? To let you sit beside the throne again?" The people asked, rejoicing at the possibility that they might be spared from his unholy retribution.
But the First prince had one more request— that they bring to him the one who had captured his heart so that they may be wed.
And so, after days of deliberating, the people, hesitatingly dug out two corpses with a letter and lay them before him. One of those corpses was a woman who had hanged herself after killing the other, and the letter was an apology to her most beloved son, explaining why she had done it.