"I am only a familiar, responsible for monitoring outsiders and understanding this house," the black cat said in a child's voice that was hard to place as male or female. "But if you wish to ask what my master is... I do not know what my master is."
Jeanne sized up the cat in her hands with a cold, indifferent gaze, then sneered. Completely ignoring the cat's statement, she turned directly to Sassel. "Black sorcerer, do you have a mind-control spell prepared?"
"I'm not sure if it will be successful, but I can try."
"Good enough," the inquisitor nodded.
She gripped the cat's head with five fingers and lifted it. The cat's eyes inevitably met Sassel's gaze. The wide, grim corridor was silent. The windows on either side were covered with wine-red curtains, letting in no light. Only a few blue candles flickered, like the blue eyes of ghosts. If it weren't for the black cat's pupils, which were slowly dilating as it lost consciousness, Jeanne might have thought no spell had been cast at all.
"The principles are a little different from what we're used to," she said, surprisingly without a hint of revulsion.
"Yes, of course it's different from the crude mental spells you use to torture prisoners," Sassel mocked her. "This is one of the soul spells we've constructed. While it's not very effective on certain species, it has the benefit of being simple, safe, and easy to operate and construct."
"Start with how you came to be here," the black sorcerer continued his questioning. He took the cat from Jeanne's hands. Its pupils were vacant and unfocused, as if its eyelids had been pried open in the middle of a dream.
"A long time ago," the cat began to speak, now in the completely different voice of a young girl, "I was going home to weave fishing nets. My father and I—"
The unexpected development took him by surprise.
"...Wait," Jeanne said. "Tell me, where is your home?"
"I live in a small fishing village near Cairn, Mister Knight," the girl's voice said.
"Mister Knight?"
"A fictional interrogator, drawn from the most respected profession in her heart," Sassel answered her. The spell exploited many weaknesses of the human mind.
Jeanne shot him a look, as if she wanted to comment on the spell, but ultimately held her tongue.
"Cairn is very close to the Holy City... Around June of last year, the Third Cohort of the Romans' Ninth Cavalry Regiment passed by that area. One hundred and thirty-five soldiers, and one hundred and fifty-four warhorses," the inquisitor lowered her voice. "All of them died in the wasteland. Most suspected a fugitive black sorcerer was responsible, but your Empress—Nero Claudius—claimed it would become a diplomatic incident and demanded a thorough investigation of all Church members in the vicinity."
"From the sound of it, you investigated?"
"Yes," she replied. "I was dispatched to the scene. All the soldiers' bodies had been torn to pieces, their limbs and organs scattered everywhere. Not only that, the residents of three nearby fishing villages were also massacred. Over four hundred civilians dead. And because the bodies were so mangled, some even eaten by something, we couldn't get an exact count." Jeanne recounted this without a trace of emotion in her voice. "It was summer. The scene, and the smell—it made several of my newly appointed knights and priests vomit all over the place."
"Does this have anything to do with our situation?" Sassel asked, sharing the inquisitor's impatience for matters that didn't directly concern him.
"At the time, we searched every wooden hut in those fishing villages. A few were empty, with no bodies inside," Jeanne glanced at the cat in his hands. "According to the investigation, one of those empty huts was inhabited by a man and a young girl."
"Interesting intelligence, but not very helpful to our current predicament," Sassel commented with a smile.
"The Church suspected at the time that a fugitive black sorcerer was trying to stir up conflict between us and the Romans," Jeanne glanced at him, her expression unreadable. "But your Empress seemed happy to see it happen."
"That's perfectly normal. The Cross Church is an outsider from another continent, but we have lived here for centuries."
The remark seemed to sting Jeanne. A sarcastic smile appeared on her face. "I have no desire to discuss this topic with you."
Sassel shrugged, thinking, And I have no desire to discuss it with you, either.
"Then how did you end up in this place?" the black sorcerer continued asking it, or her.
"Several people in black robes... they brought many malformed monsters. Some people died, some were thrown in here. My father and I followed the gray bird into this house..." she said in a calm tone. "Later, we got lost in the house. Father led me to a kitchen. An unseen person asked my father for me, said he wanted to cook me. But my father refused, so the person chopped him up and put him in a pot to boil. Bubble, bubble. Gurgle, gurgle. I was supposed to go in the pot too, but after my father was cooked, the master of the house spared me and turned me into what I am now."
"...This spell," Jeanne took a breath of the slightly warmer air, meeting the black sorcerer's eyes. "It's unexpectedly a little nauseating."
"Recounting one's past from the perspective of a sufficiently rational observer is the only way to avoid the misguidance of language and emotion," Sassel said, his tone indifferent.
She snorted coldly, which made the black sorcerer feel a bit of satisfaction.
"What is your master?" the inquisitor asked her.
"I don't know what it is, but it always stays on the top floor of the house. It has never once gone out," the cat said. "My only task is to guide intruders. Other than that, I just wander around the areas I can access and eat in the kitchen."
"A question. Have you seen any creatures other than humans fall in here? Like livestock, fish, or—"
"Is eating all you know?"
"Shut up, black sorcerer. I've been hungry for a long time," Jeanne shot him a disgusted look. "I hate eating people, but if you were willing to chop off your own head, I would gratefully gnaw on that thing until only the bone was left."
"A while ago, I saw a white creature with three joints in its legs and arms fall in here. It was followed by several people in black robes... they seemed to be enslaved. That thing just walked down the street, and then, the monsters in many of ahe houses rushed out and started killing each other in a frenzy. The people in black robes all killed themselves, too. It almost got to us... but then it disappeared for no reason. No one knows where it went," the cat continued.
"A Votary..." Jeanne's eyebrow twitched. She seemed to be recalling an unpleasant memory.
"Even an illiterate village bumpkin like you knows what a Votary is?"
"Shut up," Jeanne glared at him again, then lowered her head to meet the cat's gaze. "Never mind the Votary for now. Tell me, is there anything here that people can eat?"
"There are some animals being raised in the back kitchen and the garden..."
"Then take us there."
"But there are guards blocking the way," the cat replied.
"The guards won't find us," Sassel glanced at the cat, his face impassive. "I sensed the vibrations of you walking on the floor from dozens of meters away. The only reason you can see us is because I opened a backdoor for you, not because your senses are sharp enough to pierce my spell."
"How long will the spell you cast on this thing last?" Jeanne asked him.
"Long enough for it to walk through this entire house."
Sassel dropped the black cat onto the floor and ordered it to lead the way.
Jeanne said nothing more. She simply followed behind the cat, stepping on bloodstains invisible to human eyes, and walked away.
After the two of them had left, the corridor was once again silent. Except, within one of the ghostly blue candle flames, an eye quietly opened. It was a ghastly green eye. It blinked once, then vanished.