After the performance ended, Lumière made sure to divide several small portions of the funds for each of the members of the quartet. Although they were more than excited to just be involved in the actual performance, rather than a background accoutrement, Lumière felt bad about using them to use others. So, to ease his guilt slightly, he made sure to give them a fair share.
Then, Lumière found himself changing in a dressing room within the show hall. As he buttoned up his shirt, the door to the room opened with a soft creak. Raised silk shoes echoed tapping sounds upon the tiled floor, and a woman taller than Lumière stepped into the room. She wore a bright yellow gown, which matched well with her eyes like a blue sky. Her stark auburn hair was braided behind her head, and every part of her that would usually draw attention was littered with expensive jewelry.
She was a beautiful woman, but Lumière Croft was not the sort of man that would allow such a thing to stir his emotions. His set of principles did not include bowing to instinct. He had decided after reading a multitude of novels that he was to portray himself in the calmest fashion, like a character in a poorly-written novel. Of course, even he couldn't stop his witty nature from flooding over his intentions.
As the Madame, the woman adorned in regalia approached him, she spoke out.
"The donations weren't on behalf of our show hall, Mr. Croft. I would have never authorised such a demeaning act. The jobs of the quartet's members were never at stake. You used such a somber atmosphere to move the hearts of the audience members. It wasn't a performance, it was more akin to taking hostages…"
"Will you arrest me for this crime, Madame?" Lumière shrugged, his self-satisfied smile unwavering.
"…and you set another of my handkerchiefs on fire. Do you know where that silk comes from?" The Madame scoffed. "It may take weeks, perhaps even months to import another… if my status doesn't remain befitting of my standing, then I'll become the mockery of the industrialists's wives… even the wife of Leiden's financier seems to think she can use any small point to demean another. You really make life harder to live in comparison to how much money you bring in, don't you, magician?"
Lumière shrugged again. "I'm no magician, merely a career-liar. If you wanted a real magician, you could have asked one of those minor religious sects that practice out of the hilltops outside the city."
"And then the Goddess would strike me down." The Madame chided. "One should not delve where one does not need be. That treacherous realm of magic belongs only to the churches. Neither you, I, or the show hall need be involved with those matters."
Leaning against the wall, the Madame pulled out a cigarette from her ornate handbag. "I'm not going to pay you for this show, considering you've already collected from the audience more than I would have paid you anyway."
"What makes you so confident I won't report this to a representative of the Trade Commission?" Lumière spoke calmly in return, leaning his head on his hand.
He watched as the Madame lit a cigarette at the end of a cigarette holder before releasing a hazy cloud of smoke into the air. "It's a preposterous assumption that you've made to assume that I haven't already paid those men to ignore certain things." Lumière saw the Madame steal his self-satisfied smile, looking down at Lumière as if she remained the victor. His eyebrow twitched, but he kept his calm demeanor.
"You're an evil witch."
"I'm also your employer. I hope you won't forget that, magician."
After a short while, the Madame put out the cigarette in an ashtray on top of a countertop, and without looking back at Lumière, stepped out of the room with an exhausted huff.
'It's not like I actively try to make your life harder, Madame. It's just that my benefit weighs much more than I can consider yours.' Lumière's expression grew sorrowful, his gaze falling towards the floor. 'I'm not the only person that depends on me…'
Lumière pulled the top hat over his messy head of hair and stood up, stepping out of the room. When he had exited the show hall, the money he had obtained from the show tucked discreetly in his interior pocket, he began to walk.
The rain fell harshly on the flagstones that littered the dusty pathway of Leiden. The city was sprawling in its architecture that seemed to try desperately to pierce through the smog of the stormy sky, with towering buildings made of brick and mortar by the Goddess of architecture's design. Gears could be heard whirring in the distance, of mechanical contraptions that powered the city, and of the giant clock tower that rested in the distance of the middle borough, constantly chiming to remind everyone that time was always moving forward.
Since the crimson sun had nearly set, all manners of people had started to make their way home. Those coming home from an exhausting day of hard labour rode on the double-deckered engine-driven street trains, while residents of the middle borough would hire a carriage pulled by well-groomed horses, and the wealthy would ride along the wide streets in their own motorised carriages. Even in the main street, the disparity between the labourers and the fortunate was intensely obvious. If one could afford it, those carriages would be driven by attendants, and for those who owned the greatest wealth, their motorised carriages would be driven by mass-produced human-like automatons.
In place of the sun which had pulled away its light from the streets, oil lamps on posts had been manually lit by the lamplighter that stomped his way through the city. So, the street was basked in a bright orange glow from the flames. Lumière knew that even the lamplighter was prone to losing his work at the behest of advancing industry. More and more had electricity begun to fill the streets with bright incandescent light, and so the flame that had been gifted to humanity took a quiet backseat.
Alongside the glow of the lamplight, the lilac-coloured moon had emerged, alongside a singular green, blue, and red star. A raven had settled underneath its light above Lumière, a terrible omen of despair.
But alongside bad luck was simply the only way one could live. A man would be made to know his worth, whether most of all, or naught in the slightest, and then he would be made to fight against life with the sharpness of his family's name, or bare-handed against hunger and strife. That was why Lumière struggled, both to live, and to lie. If he could make money, then the people who depended on him could also survive.
As he found his way in an empty alleyway, movement stirred in Lumière's jacket pocket. Reaching inside, he grasped hold of a wriggling, soft mass. As he pulled it out, he realised it was the dove he had pocketed during his performance.
'Is this where you went when that rabbit replaced you? I completely forgot about where you would end up after that trick…'
As he looked at the bird, he let out a soft laugh- one that almost completely dispelled the exhaustion that had knitted its way into his body. He held the dove outwards and stared into its empty black eyes.
'I would keep you, but I'm sure someone back home would much rather eat you than take care of you. As for returning you to the show hall, the Madame doesn't mind buying new birds… I doubt she would want you back. Maybe this is your chance to feel the freedom of life, whatever that may be…'
Lumière let out a sigh and threw the dove forward. It began to flap its wings, and before flying away, turned back to look at Lumière as it hovered.
Then, shadows filled the air, as if the sun had finally completely set. Lumière's humoured gaze darkened as he watched a mass of blackish-crimson miasma lurch through the air. A gaping maw that dripped with foul, putrid black liquid enveloped the form of the dove, swallowing it in an instant as Lumière's heart shook fiercely. Confusion was etched onto his face, and all he could do as his body froze in horror was watch as a beast made up of rotting liquid flesh stomped its way past him, ignorant of his presence. Instead, its shaking pupils fixated on two figures standing at the edge of the empty alleyway.
Being approached by the massive creature, Lumière saw a familiar mother and little girl frozen in fear as they stared up at the monster. His heart dropped immediately, and he felt his hand twitch slightly, as if he couldn't even will himself to step forward. As the little girl cried out, her gaze moved to the side and spotted Lumière standing behind the monster. He knew then what expression had found its way onto his face.
It was an expression of shame.
As the monster opened its mouth, the foul liquid dripped off of its many layers of teeth onto the mother and child. The mother hugged the young girl close, and the beast lunged towards the two.
'Damn it, even if I could move, what could I possibly do?' He didn't bother to try and comprehend the situation. All he knew was that the incomprehensible was threatening the lives of the people he had taken advantage of. His shameful heart wanted to walk forward, but his body refused. 'I'm just a liar… if I were really a magician, could I do something?'
The sky suddenly dimmed. The world lost its sense of colour, and Lumière was plunged into black-and-white, his skin growing ice-cold. The beast froze in front of the mother and daughter, their expressions of fear frozen on their faces. Lumière, too, found that he was frozen. However, his eyes were left to dart back and forth, scanning his surroundings, aware of his situation.
For a moment, there was chilling silence. Then, he heard murmurs in the distance, almost incomprehensible. There were thousands of them, constantly repeating both in his head and far away, stacked atop each other like a cacophony of gibberish and madness. It made Lumière's head pulse in sharp, repetitive pain. But he could not cry out, only continue to watch his frozen surroundings until the murmurs coalesced into a comprehensible sentence, echoing endlessly in the distance in a cold tone of voice.
"{To correct your misdeeds, would you sin further?}"