With a startled cry, Bastet spun around, nearly losing his balance, but there was nothing behind him. In the distance, yellow and blood red lights blinked into existence in the oppressive shadows, only to vanish when he tried to focus on them. Then the plea to not go inside repeated, and he realized the whisper had come from the girl on his back. He gently lowered her to the ground, propping her against the trunk of a dead tree. Her eyes were wide with a feverish, cautious terror.
"How long have you been awake?" Bastet asked, holding his hands up to show he meant no harm.
A branch snapped in the darkness to their right. Lilian flinched, ignoring his question. "Who are you?" she rasped. "Where are we?"
"Bastet. A prisoner from Stormbridge, like you," he said, his voice a low, urgent murmur. "I'm your father's friend."
Lilian's fearful expression shifted, replaced by a sharp, searching look that reminded him instantly of Kreil. "My father? Is he here?"
"He can't be with us, but he sent me," Bastet said, the half-truth weighing on his heart. He saw the hope and fear warring in her eyes and gave her the only anchor he could. "I promised Kreil that I'd take you to the Academy of Grand Arts."
She stared at him for a long moment, the exhaustion plain on her face. Her eyes welled up, and she started shivering, her skin pale and clammy.
A low, guttural growl echoed from the trees, much closer this time. Bastet's blood ran cold. The chaos beasts he had glimpsed were closing in. They couldn't stay out here for another second. "Inside. Now," he said, his voice a harsh whisper.
Lilian dug in her heels, her eyes wide with terror, fixed on the strange building. "No. That place… feels wrong. The things in this forest are afraid of it."
"We must," Bastet hissed, his eyes scanning the dark shifting shadows of the tree line. "Whatever is in that barn is one thing. What's out here is many. We take our chances with the one." He didn't offer his hand this time; he pulled her by her small, cold wrist, and together they scrambled toward the barn door. "I promised him I'd keep you safe," he grunted, more to himself than to her.
They walked closer. Bastet stopped speaking once he noticed a yellow glimmer akin to that of a candle coming from the small window of the barn. There was someone inside. He had a feeling that there would be people around given all the dead stumps he'd seen along the way, but it was peculiar how the shed style roof had no chimney. And the barn was small in size; there was no way that all those trees were cut down to construct it. They were so deep in the forest, so where was all that wood going? He moved closer with unsteady steps while holding Lilian's hand. There could be a Wesian inside, but he had no choice. The walls were eerie; there were traces of mud all over them that looked as if they were drawn with a single stroke of a very large brush.
The wooden splinters of the old knob cut into his palm. He pushed the door open, and the rusty hinges squealed as if they were giving a warning. They were met with a putrid smell of sweat which was only amplified by the dampness of the air. The long and swirly muddy traces were present in the interior as well. On the table in the center of the room was a piece of parchment, some tools whose purpose Bastet did not know, and a single long candle which was currently lit. When he got closer, he could make out some symbols with a bizarre structure drawn on the parchment, following shapes that no sane mind would conceive of. On the left of the table was a skin stretcher, likely for making parchment, and right next to it was a shelf and a bed. But before Bastet could examine all the strange items placed on the shelf, his gaze was drawn to the long, slender silhouette that was sitting in the far corner of the barn. The figure remained silent, so Bastet picked the candle up and cautiously approached it.
He was a thin, stoop-shouldered man with a long narrow head and jaw that was pushed back. He stared back at them with bulgy eyes that seemed like they would fall out of their sockets. He was mostly bald with a few patches of greasy gray hair curling out, and there was something off about the color of his skin, he seemed almost yellow. Bastet stopped coming any closer in fear that he would contract some contagious disease. He seemed to have double the normal length of neck, and his long fingers were curled around the handle of a saw. "Visitors? But it's not time yet," the man turned his body towards them, revealing what the saw had been cutting. The teeth of the saw were deep in his own thigh, having sliced half of the bone already. Bastet felt sick to his stomach when he saw that the man's foot had already been sawn off. The half-closed wound on the stump looked like it was being eaten by worms. "I'm afraid this month's shipment is not ready. I'm having some problems, you see." The man looked down at the saw. "Why are you so early?"
Bastet's mind raced. He had no idea what this man was talking about, but the word 'early' implied an appointment. The word 'shipment' hung in the air. The fact that he could remain silent despite being asked a question meant that this man was not a Wesian, or if he was, he was not ranked higher than him. And it seemed like this man had mistaken them for his contacts. It wasn't that strange, Bastet thought, since this barn was just a few hours away from Stormbridge. He cleared his throat, adopting the gruff, impatient tone of the Wesian guards he'd overheard. "Yes, there has been an emergency. The Argents attacked Stormbridge."
"Argents, you say?" to the shock of Lilian and Bastet, the man continued sawing his leg off without showing any pain or discomfort on his face "Yes, yes, then it could be good to ship early. But I don't have any children ready. None of those that your masters would want anyway." The man frowned, showing some emotion for the first time.
"Then I will report back as much to the Inquisitor." Bastet curtly replied. "But the forest is dangerous. We weren't told of this. Could you provide us safe passage?"
The man looked from Bastet's hard expression to the trembling girl behind him. "Safe passage?" he rasped. "There is no such thing as 'safe' in a world without laws. You ask for a cleared path, but you do not even understand the nature of the place you walked in. Why would they send you, without telling you?" Very little of his thigh was left, so the man picked his leg up and started twisting it and tugging until it was ripped off. "I am a chaos priest. An artist. And this is my temple."
Did he start to doubt them? Bastet tightened his grip on Lilian's arm. His first instinct was that this lunatic could not be trusted. And they could not go back into the chaos beast-infested darkness. But this so-called priest was wounded, so he should be easier to take care of. Yet… the monsters for some reason were not attacking this place. Would that remain to be the case if the priest was taken out of the equation?
He watched as the priest's bulging eyes followed Lilian's gaze to the table, to the bizarre symbols on the parchment, the strange tools and the skin stretcher that seemed to twitch under her gaze. A horrifying, knowing smile spread across his face. "The soldier sees only a weapon," the priest rasped, dismissing Bastet with a wave of his hand. "But you… you see the tools and the canvas." He leaned forward, his focus entirely on Lilian. "You recognize the art. Tell me, child… what do you think of my work?"
Bastet's hand tightened on Lilian's arm as she flinched under the priest's intense stare. She knew what he was. But she couldn't tear her eyes from the horrifying symbols on the parchment which had begun to glow, as if they were waiting for her response. "Art…" It was her father's word. A word that did not belong here. "Art is the pattern a creator pulls from the noise." She looked up at the madman, her voice doused with defiance which overpowered the terror. "And chaos… is just the noise itself."
Bastet's knuckles went white where he gripped his sword. He was not sure what to expect. But the man turned his attention to his sawn-off leg, and began slicing something into its skin. "A limited answer, one born of the old, straight way," the priest said, a look of pity in his bulging eyes as he went back to work. "You think art is about finding a pattern. But it is about what lies beyond patterns. With no rules to bind you to a single path, and an eternity to explore every direction, you will always find the answer. Here in this temple, I nurture chaos and await that answer to the Grand Contest." The blood from his stump had dyed the wooden floor red.
Bastet's brows creased. "You… nurture chaos? Like a cultist?"
"I am no more a cultist than you are, soldier. You and your masters do the same as me." The priest's smile tightened, his bulging eyes narrowing. He closed his hand, and when he reopened it, a faint flame flickered on the top of his palm. He used it to cauterize the wound. "We both dilute the ink of the world and paint something new with it. That is why your magic expends life force. For we are not truly doing any writing, just rearranging the letters that are already there."
Bastet stepped forward, his voice hard. "Then what are they?" he demanded. "The things in the forest. If you 'rearrange the letters' out here, are they yours?"
"Some of them." the priest coldly turned his gaze to his leg, now wrapping it in parchment. "Touched by the purple sun, when the ink of the world gets too diluted, the very laws of nature crumble away. This temple is such a place, where chaos gathers like blood in a bruise. Outside these grounds, it would seep into your towns and fields. But the temple draws it in and contains it, giving birth to my wonderful children. Let me show you." The priest sat on the leg that he had sawn off, almost as if he was trying to hide it. "Come forth."
His solemn call made the barn shiver. A twelve-foot-long centipede crawled from under the roof, its countless pairs of legs painting a new trace of mud on the walls. It slithered with a disgusting speed, curling around its master in a matter of seconds. From its brown armored body, multiple pairs of human hands—children's hands—were sticking out and grasping around, as if trying to escape. Its head possessed a trace of humanity; its mouth stretched into a smile, and at least one pair of eyes were human, and they were locked onto Bastet, gazing at him with some intense emotion that he could not name.
The priest was supplying Wesia with this? Bastet felt a primal sickness rise from the pit of his stomach. His mind flashed back to the word the interrogators had used, 'Cleansing'. An act of purification. He thought of his father's broken body, of his entire village wiped from the map in the name of that purity. He could never forgive them. But in the face of the horrors he'd seen in this forest, a small, terrified part of him had begun to understand the consequences of letting chaos take root, and accept their brutal calculus: to give a hundred for a thousand souls. And yet… this garden of nightmares existed. Here, chaos was contained, not eradicated. It was a compromise, a negotiation, not an absolute war. The reasons why it was nurtured did not matter. If the war wasn't unconditional, then his family's destruction was no longer a necessary sacrifice. It was just an acceptable loss.
It was then that his gaze snagged on a small hand coming out of the creature's flank. On its littlest finger was a simple silver ring of a familiar shape. It looked just like the ring that Sara, a girl three years Maria's junior, would always sneak from her mother's jewelry box and wear around the village. A sickening possibility formed in his mind. His eyes went wide, his grip tightened around the hilt of his blade, and his lips parted, ready to demand the truth, to scream the name of his village. But the oath slammed down like an iron gate in his mind. The familiar numbness caught the words in his throat, choking them into silence. He knew why. He'd go mad if he knew, and the oath wouldn't risk it. Denied the release of a scream, his mind recoiled. He searched his memory, and remembered that they called him the only survivor. Sara was purged in the Cleansing months ago, and the hand here was not rotten. It was just a ring. A simple twist of silver, nothing more.
A small gasp escaped Lilian's lips, pulling him from his dark thoughts. "I know not all art is meant to be pretty, mister, but this is really pushing it," Lilian said, her voice shaking but laced with a cold fury. She looked down on him. "This is a monster, not art."
"If you are so ready to say that my work is not art, surely you must be capable of telling me what art is, then?" the priest scoffed as the centipede got up, circling around Bastet and Lilian. He drew his sword with an unsteady grip, unsure if he could even pierce the armored carapace. "But I forgive you. You just haven't been taught…" The centipede lowered its head and slithered back to its master. "It is a false assumption of analysis that every notion it splits open could later be put back together. If you dissect art in search of what it consists of, what could you possibly find, other than what you shredded? Restrain it with a definition, and it shall never be entire." The priest then turned his attention back to his creation, dismissing Lilian's outburst.
"It is magnificent." he rasped, stroking the creature's head. "But your masters would not be happy with this one. It is not like the ones they trade for every month. It is incomplete. Unstable. Let's say that the materials your masters provide ran a little short." He gently held one of the hands which were grasping about. "But chance had it that a different child awakened. Much stronger than the others, and much more disobedient to me." Only then did Bastet realize that the priest had not blinked once since their conversation began.
"So, the ones in the forest, they do listen to you, then?" Bastet interjected. "We had a worrying encounter with some of them. Our oath demands we get back to Stormbridge."
"Most of them listen, yes. Except for the one that I just mentioned. He is too powerful, even for me." A light chuckle escaped his lips. "I've been trying to tame him by feeding him. His hunger seems endless, but he seems to have developed a taste for human flesh. When I fed him my foot, that really put him at ease! But you see," the priest was pushing the centipede away, "I cannot go to deliver him the new meal." He clutched his bloody thigh. "So, it's very good that the two of you arrived. I assure you, helping me feed this one is in the best interest of Wesia. He is by far the most powerful being that has awakened in my temple. We can't miss our chance to tame him."