This is a travesty. Must we truly stand for this indignity?

Like so many things, a simple excursion into Lizaną should have been effortless for the likes of them. Despite their mission's requisite secrecy—given the inclusion of a respectable high noble who couldn't be needlessly left exposed to potential harm while on the road—Tō had been given a method to contact the Prince directly should they need authorization to cross the border. An honor the man objectively did not deserve, given Tō's utter irrelevance, but it was convenient nonetheless. Convenient enough for his betters to let it slide and set their pride aside, if only for the time being—they would certainly make their displeasure known once they returned to Grēdôcava.

The usage of said method, however, was precisely how they had gotten into the Republic while following yet another one of Tō's maps. Time and time again, they led only to scattered evidence—why a paper filled with doodles allegedly made by the Executor's son had ended up in Lizaną was anyone's guess. While the matter of more dedicated trackers being unavailable was understandable, this situation deserved to be handled by someone who actually knew what they were doing. Unfortunately for all involved, Tō was all they had.

"I am a treasure hunter," the man had spoken of his occupation as if it weren't an embarrassment. "I am doing what I can."

Joshua fon Burgī would have hidden his distaste if Tō had been a noble he merely heard of in passing. Every House had eccentric members, and all who knew what was good for them learned to simply ignore those.

However, Tō had forsaken that right the moment he chose to get involved in something this high-profile. He was now bringing shame to their entire caste with every second he failed to lead them to the boy, yet he kept acting as though this were not his fault simply because he had been called upon to do this.

So what? Refusing to admit responsibility was unseemly. Of course, Joshua had despised the man from the moment he first heard of him, so it was probably par for the course. A man who did not deign to correct people when they addressed him by a noble title he was unworthy of could not possibly be trusted. Tō was about as further down the line as Joshua himself was, yet Joshua had never demanded their fellow nobles call him Burgī hlāford.

The door to the small cottage they had been granted access to opened, and the burgundy-haired man of their nightmares shut it behind him, two large twine bags thrown over his shoulder.

Liggjan hlāford groaned audibly, his expression one of disgust as he eyed the bags. "Those plants are delicate. Could you not have inventoried them like a normal person?"

"If I wanted to lose them, sure," Khödan didn't even give the herbalist the respect he deserved, simply eying everyone in the small area as if a glance would be all it took to make sense of whatever they had done since he left. "Either of you going to come get these bags or…?"

Joshua would have bothered trying to put the man in his place had this been months ago. Now, they all knew better than to waste their energy—the commoner was unteachable, and he had only gotten more brazen since they crossed over to the Republic.

The sole silver lining to it all was how the Foremost's father only seemed to grow more agreeable the more they avoided arguing with him. It was humiliating to think he might be thinking he had won, but someone needed to run their errands, and Joshua might have been next on the chopping block if that fool stopped cooperating.

It took Joshua a moment to realize the man was looking at him, eyes narrowed. He met his gaze, crossing his arms to show the commoner how little he cared. "What?"

"I got the herbs you asked for—I'll admit it was a pain, given how neither of you bothered to tell me what they were called around here."

Joshua's master scoffed. Liggjan hlāford had never been a patient man. "Are you serious? They have to know the Grēdôcavan names for these things," he muttered. "They could not possibly be so incompetent as to not know so. How else would they make a sale?"

"By selling to Lizanąns," the commoner deadpanned. Both Joshua and his master ignored him, having grown too wise as to fall for the provocation.

Sighing, Khödan walked towards the table that took up most of the disgracefully limited space and unceremoniously placed the bags upon it.

"Careful!" Liggjan hlāford rushed over. "They have to be handled properly!"

Khödan just complained again. "You were both sitting there like idiots not coming to pick them up!"

"How can you be this incompetent! Do you treat your employers like this?"

"You know, I find the idea that you've deliberately ignored the likelihood of me being self-employed quite disconcerting. As a rule, people—"

It was then that Joshua himself found his self-control slipping. "Wave take me!" His fists had balled up without him realizing it. "The real question is how you haven't gotten yourself put down yet. Devils know you respect nothing."

"…Ha."

"Enough."

When Tō spoke, both Joshua and his master flinched in unison. At which point their 'leader' had shown up, the apprentice herbalist did not know, and he doubted Liggjan hlāford knew, either. It was as if he had simply appeared, leaning against the wall.

He hadn't sounded angry, and somehow that made it all the more concerning. The man had been quite explicit about his dislike for each and every single one of them throughout their travels.

"Tempal hlāford headed off to the Embassy again—I'm hoping they may be amenable to letting us cross back now that some more time has passed."

"Has our situation ever been dependent on the timeframe, though?" Khödan asked, once again getting involved when he should have simply been quiet. Worse yet, his choice of pronunciation for the last word sounded suspiciously like an attempt at a pun using Tō's name. "I somehow doubt asking one week later is going to change the regulations they're falling back on."

Devils, Joshua hated his man. Even when the things he did weren't an explicit insult to his betters, he had provoked them enough times that absolutely everything now came off as abrasive. A tiny part of Joshua warned him that that might have been the point—their justifiable anger at seemingly innocuous remarks would have looked unreasonable to any witnesses who lacked context—but he refused to give the commoner enough credit to think him that smart.

Luitgarde Maryem fiddled with the object in her hands, her back against the unmarred grass this nameless sector boasted. Even with The Cold descending, she found herself hardly bothered by her surroundings. The ghosts of frost—for all she knew, she might have imagined it all—crawled up each blade of grass before melting and giving way to cold droplets that hit the ground just in time for the cycle to repeat itself.

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All within the blink of an eye, with the puddles on the ground growing for seemingly no reason.

"Tell me, {Sunset}," the true heir to the former mayor whispered, her voice raspy despite her current form. "Do you think they will believe me if I say I forgot where I left my invitation?"

Strictly speaking, she was already close to the grounds—she had simply avoided the event itself, and at the last moment, worst yet. Luitgarde had been right there by the proverbial door when she noticed her invitation wasn't in her inventory.

Or in her person.

Or in her house.

Being an inanimate object, {Sunset} did not reply. Obviously. Still, Luitgarde felt that judgmental gaze. It was most certainly real, even if it came from within her own mind.

An interpretation of an interpretation.

Such was the weight upon an Executor's shoulders.

"Don't start," Luitgarde chided the crystalline object. She still had no idea why it had this form, but expecting otherwise would have been the musings of madmen. And Luitgarde was positively sane.

Her voice took on a lighter tone as she hummed, the changes reflexive. She could change colors and states with a thought, but the finer details eluded her. Her knowledge of anatomy was abysmal and for the sake of her limited attention span she intended to keep it that way, even if that made the cost of using her abilities exponentially higher.

It had never bothered her—and it was now irrelevant, anyway. Before {Sunset}, Luitgarde could not have dreamed of half the applications she could now find for each and every one of her Skills. While still far from being a shapeshifter, her control had grown exquisite. Not only that, but she could now use her dear glass… thing, to help with the cost of anything from healing to simple spells.

She started gigging despite herself.

Oh, {Sunset}—the most fortunate of encounters in her not-so-long life.

Sunset I <Proclivity, Limited>

The end precedes each new beginning, no matter what we may wish. A beginning follows all endings, no matter what we may wish.

This Proclivity may be increased to Sunset II by meeting certain requirements to evolve its core effect. Progress can be further sped up by performing actions to fulfill its Will.

As this Proclivity's current Executor, you may both use and accelerate the gathering of its overall reserves, so long as they are aligned with its Will.

Luitgarde had spent months trying to read into the words. She had looked through so many philosophy books in that timeframe that she was confident she'd put her past decades of reading to shame—not a particularly challenging task, to be fair, considering how much effort she had put into convincing people she was illiterate after Baldur tricked her into losing a challenge to him.

A loss was embarrassing, certainly, but it would be even more of a shame for a grown man to seek to defeat an old lady who couldn't even read! His reputation never recovered from that one.

Or from any of the things he did to it all by himself, really.

At the edge of her consciousness, Luitgarde felt it again. That judgment. Amusement. But mostly judgment. She stared right back at {Sunset} through narrowed eyes.

"It's not like you can read, either."

As she continued her staring contest with the object, Luitgarde found herself growing more comfortable in the grass. It had been a long time since she had last napped on grass.

Perhaps losing her invitation had not been that much of a loss anyway—it wasn't as if Baldur would be there, and she had next to no need for a social life if it wasn't going to undermine that thief.

She set {Sunset} down on the grass besides her and smirked. "See what I mean?"

The object did not comment on the grass or how comfortable it might have been, but it certainly didn't stare at her for it, either.

Upon a chair some would mistake for a throne, rested a woman with pale hair—not quite white or blonde, but seemingly purely devoid of color, even as it shimmered to reflect lights that should have influenced its appearance.

The fact that she was upside down, her legs against the wall and her mane wrapped around the chair's legs, was entirely irrelevant.

"My lady… are you well?" The voice was unfamiliar, but that was to be expected. The circles housed within Grēdôcava had a high turnover rate when it came to servants and staff, as few people could adapt to dealing with the Saints' unrepentant nonsense.

"I am well," Khaiman assured whomever had asked, slowly opening her eyes. That was not to say she was pleased. "Why would I not be well?"

A lanky man wearing a plain suit took several steps back, shooting the exit a glance. He would have likely made a run for it had he not cared for appearances—it wasn't as though anyone would bother trying to fire him before he inevitably quit. "I did not mean—"

"I could not care in the slightest for what you did or did not mean—you asked a question and I answered it. There was no offense to it," Khaiman scowled. Despite her strength and status, sighing dramatically while upside down proved too difficult for her to pull it off. "Is it time to receive the representatives yet?"

With Henrietta holed up in her chambers, dealing with the fallout of their completely justified takeover even months after the fact, someone had to deal with all the Saints demanding an explanation. They had ambassadors and many a cabinet member that could have handled this, certainly—but Saints did tend to suffer from a bit of an ego problem.

It would be best for them to be briefed by someone they knew better than to talk back to.

"Not yet," the man said as he shook his head. By now, he had almost reached the door. "I have set your alarm for fifteen minutes before they are set to begin filing in… my apologies for disturbing you."

You are no fun, Khaiman pouted, while the servant wasted no time booking it out of there. She really missed Marcus, but she had known she had to lend him to Henrietta for the poor girl's sake—someone had to move all those tables around for her workspace to stay clear, and no one was better at the task than him.

Unfortunately, this left Khaiman with no one to annoy. Oh, my. I fear I am becoming him, am I not?

Time had dulled the hatred she'd once felt for her late mother's former husband. Certainly, she doubted she would ever forgive him. How could he just accept her choice to die? Khaiman and her brother had been far too young and weak to intervene back then. But he could have done something. No matter what anyone told her, Khaiman remained unwilling to listen. Even if her mother decided the time to part ways with Existence was upon her, the prick who called himself their father should have stopped her.

That was a wound that would never heal, but Khaiman would never be too weak to fulfill a task again. Never again.

Still, she was not blind to his influence. She had very much grown used to playing around with people's egos. Her nature as a Cambion born of {Vanagloria} might have played a part, but she would at least give him the credit that was due. In his own words, he would have gladly gathered power for their Proclivity for free even if his so-called children hadn't needed it.

It wasn't until her mind wandered to the matter of what else she would do in the time it took for her alarm to ring that Khaiman realized the servant had neglected to actually say how much time she had left.

That's it—I'm making an honor position for him just to stave off the inevitable resignation… as soon as I find out who in any of our names he is.

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