“Did you catch something, Marcy?”

  That question and shoulder tap had startled Marcille, effectively snapping her out her thoughts. If she had not recognized who’s voice that was, she might have reacted violently on instinct.

  She turned her head, finding Tansy’s warm brown eyes watching her with clear concern beneath that unruly sweep of short orange hair.

  Marcille blinked, then shook her head to answer the question.

  “No, it’s nothing. Just drifted off a bit. Pardon”

  Tansy observed her for a moment before the curve of her lips softened into a warm expression.

  “Don’t think too much, it’ll make you age faster and wrinkle your fine looks. Take it from me. I should know”

  She said cheerfully while pointing a thumb at herself. But what she said wasn’t true at all, at least not the part where her beauty got wrinkled.

  Compared to her, Marcille was slightly average in terms of looks, while Tansy on the other hand was a diamond in the rough. Her tiny stature and mild mannerism only added to her charm.

  If anything, Marcille was a bit envious of her.

  Noticing that the young girl was not saying anything, Tansy decided to add to her statement.

  “Marcy, your thoughts will still be there when this job’s done. Right now, I need you focused with us. You’re the heaviest hitter we’ve got, after all. Me and Toby, we’re counting on you”

  A smile danced on her lips as she walked past Marcille. In her hand she held a crystalline rod etched with runes. It was a special item called the Lantern Shard, it cast a pale silver light into the suffocating darkness.

  This made it easier for them to navigate freely around this cursed chapel.

  From the side, Tobias gave Marcille a slow nod in full agreement with what Tansy just said. Even though tinted lenses of his long beaked plague doctor visage hid his eyes, the small gesture was reassurance enough.

  “Right, of course. I’ll focus solely on the mission now”

  Marcille let out a breath and smiled bitterly.

  ‘Tansy, I really wish you wouldn’t put so much faith on a useless fool like me’

  Slapping both cheeks with her palms, she forced the fog out of her mind. She didn’t do it hard so it did not hurt, but the coldness of her hand stung enough to bite.

  She pulled her Ashsteel Spear close to her chest, then hurried after the pair. Tansy was right, at present she was their most capable fighter. If any Fallen Soul were to suddenly attack them, it was up to her to take care of it.

  As such, she had no business daydreaming.

  The insides of the drowned chapel of St. Vicar opened before them like a gutted carcass. Once it might have been a grand hall of worship, but now it laid as a forsaken ruin.

  The warped plank floor jutting upward like broken ribs was half sunken in the same black water they left outside. Shattered glass clung to rusting frames and half used candles still clung to iron stands corroded with rust.

  There was a row of chandeliers hung crooked on the ceiling, but their chains were just as corroded with rust as well.

  The smell of salt and mildew tangled with copper polluted the air. It was foul, but Duskfall had been exposed to a lot worse, so this was manageable.

  They split up to cover more ground quickly, each with a Lantern Shard guiding them in three directions.

  Duskfall had been tasked to investigate this place and bring back something of value, or at least something valuable to the client.

  And so, they pushed through the wreckage, their voices echoing inside the vast expanse of this empty structure.

  “Nothing here”

  Tobias was the first to confirm, kicking aside a waterlogged pew after he found nothing but rot beneath.

  Marcille pushed aside a fallen tapestry sodden with smear.

  “Nothing here too. Crypts are empty. Not a bone or scrap left behind. It’s like nothing ever lived here”

  Tansy checked what remained of a side chamber, her Lantern Shard throwing light across the ruin and just like them, she also came up empty.

  “Client swore there’d be relics or texts left behind. So far, I’d call him a bloody liar. Storage’s bare, and I can’t even find traces of that damned cult”

  With a huff, they regrouped by a fractured pillar. They had searched under broken pews, behind collapsed stones, and almost every part of this chapel but they didn’t find anything.

  This was starting to be frustrating. If they brought nothing back, did that mean they were not going to get the full amount of the request?

  “The Sun-Clad must have done a thorough job. There is not a single sign of struggle, other than that done by age”

  Lingering on Tobias’ words for a bit. The cult that had inhabited this drowned chapel was called the Mouth of the Starving God. They used it as their base of operation for an undisclosed amount of time, until they met their end at the hands of the Church of the Cruel Sun’s strongest sword.

  “What do we do now, Tansy?”

  Marcille asked the leader, and she tiredly exhaled a long breath. Then, she set her Lantern Shard into a crack in the floor and up to the far end from the entrance.

  “That leaves one place left”

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  Marcille frowned, the spill of the special item’s glow shading her weary face.

  “The sanctuary”

  Tansy nodded, then gave a wry smile.

  “Yep. I’ll be honest with you two, I was hoping we wouldn’t have to step foot in there. It gives me the creeps”

  The sanctuary looked even creepier than the rest of the chapel. Massive thick vines slithered down the walls through broken windows, their roots drinking deep from the black water that pooled across the cracked floor.

  The mosaics behind the altar fared no better. The saints’ halos dulled and their faces gouged out as if they were a sore sight.

  What really drew their eyes was the chest at the center of it all.

  It sat on a raised plinth of stone as though the chapel itself had been built to cradle it. Granted, it wasn’t a simple chest. Its surface was alive with intricate engravings of wings, suns and swords. Twin figures with faces hidden beneath veils were carved at its sides, each bearing a tome pressed to their chest.

  This thing was a relic, a holy relic wrought in gold and ivory. This was exactly what they were looking for.

  However, something was off.

  The lid of the chest was pushed slightly open, and from the crack spilled a constant pour of black liquid. It trickled down the plinth in rivulets and spread like veins through the sanctuary floor.

  Marcille’s eyes widened once she recognized what it was.

  “...A Sacrament?”

  Sacraments are ancient artifacts that were once wielded by the Testamentals, god touched beings whose existence predates recorded history and the rise of formal Mysticism.

  Their existence spans over to the creation of living species and have made considerable contributions in the founding of civilizations.

  Unlike special items which are man-made, these ancient artifacts are tools or weapons of myth and legends given form, they are not fully divine nor mortal. And as such, they cannot be wielded freely.

  They require the wielder to fulfill a condition just like a Sealed Technique, the difference here is that the Condition had to be connected to the Sacrament’s origin myth. Anyone who has managed to do that will be granted access to powers of the divine.

  However, prolonged use can warp the wielder’s mind or lead to other devastating consequences. This is especially true if the wielder were to go against the origin myth of the Sacrament.

  This was one of the reasons why Marcille wanted that cursed artifact expelled from her little sister’s body.

  The second was that some Sacraments were powerful enough to be worshiped as holy gifts in churches. And that has incited a lot of entire wars in history, even owning a single one could legitimize a dynasty’s rule.

  She could not deny the massive improvements it had on her blindness. Lately, Yor had been doing a lot better than before, she couldn’t actually navigate on her own with confidence without needing someone to guide her.

  That did make Marcille happy because the blind are often viewed as objects of pity, fear or seen as freaks. There was also a circus in Salva Cress she knew that displayed disabled people for public entertainment, labelling them as freaks.

  Thanks to Marcille’s efforts, her little sister was not exposed to such cruelty. But Yor has faced stigma and then some, but lately, she has been smiling more.

  ‘The Sacrament…maybe I should let her keep it’

  Marcille considered that but immediately scrapped the thought. It was reckless not to mention stupid.

  There was no bloody way she was going to gamble with her little sister’s life. One of the primary objectives of this job was to get it removed, that’s the entire reason she even allowed her to come.

  Removing the Sacrament from Yor was going to happen one way or the other.

  Marcille drew in a long breath, cleared her mind and focused back to the ancient artifact before them.

  “...The Covenant of the Sun”

  That was its name. It didn’t just have a majestic and elegant design, nor was it just a chest. It had the function of banishing and binding any manner of evil spirit inside of it, just as the sun drives shadows from the earth.

  Its Condition was as cruel, it required the blood of an unblemished line offered to it in every generation to renew its seal. Without such a sacrifice, the seal would loosen and what was cast into its depths would seep out again into the world.

  And by the looks of it, whoever sealed the evil spirit inside failed to maintain the seal. It was not completely broken, but it had a narrow enough gap that black liquid poured into the sanctuary.

  “If the Covenant of the Sun’s broken its seal, then whatever’s inside it must be foul beyond words. Makes me sick to think about”

  Tansy said in a cautious tone while cutting across the stream of black liquid with the light of her Lantern Shard.

  Marcille looked over the stream slipping out into the cracks of the chapel.

  “That explains the lake. It isn’t water at all, it’s what’s leaking out of this box”

  It made her wonder how long it took before that steady stream coming out of the Sacrament to become a massive body of black water capable of drowning an entire structure.

  With that, another thought coiled inside her mind.

  “But then…did the Sun-Clad know this was here? The Church of the Cruel Sun would leap at the chance to claim a Sacrament. Why would they leave it?”

  Tansy furrowed her brow.

  “That’s a good question, Marcy. But I cannot give you a straight answer. The only thing I can wager is this. Perhaps it wasn’t here at all, not until recently. A Sacrament’s Condition won’t hold for centuries unattended. And Stars know how long it has been attended. The Sun-Clad purged the Mouth of the Starving God cultists two decades ago…and the Fallen Souls only began showing up in Fens only recently”

  Fallen Souls were drawn to anything with even a fraction of divinity like moths to a flame. In other words, the Covenant of the Sun shone like a lamp in the darkness for them.

  “If the sightings of them are only recent then that means…”

  “A set up”

  Marcille’s stomach lurched with realization as Tobias finished her sentence. A moment passed before Tansy clicked her tongue.

  “Wouldn’t be the first time some bastards used us as pawns. We didn’t stumble across this thing by accident.”

  She drew her pistol from its holster and cocked the hammer back. The Lantern Shard’s glow limned the steel as she leveled it toward the shadows.

  “Marcy, Toby. Be on your best guard”

  Without hesitation, Tobias positioned a hand to his mask’s beak and Marcille raised her spear. The air around them seemed to ripple as she employed the Spirit Mind Art [Aura Sense]. Tendrils of awareness swept out through the drowned chapel, brushing against stone and vines, but she came up empty.

  “No other souls here. It’s just the three of us”

  Marcille said, letting go of the Spirit Art and a shake of her head.

  “That doesn’t comfort me much”

  Tansy looked around where the Sacrament was, taking in the view of the sanctuary a little closer with finer details.

  “If it wasn’t the Church of the Cruel Sun, then who’d leave this here? Could it be the client, Lark Greaves?”

  Marcille reminded herself of the name of their employer.

  “Plenty of takers….”

  Tansy lifted a couple of fingers from the hand holding the special item.

  “The Church of the Immortal Goddess. The Church of Ancient Death. The Orthodox Solar Church. The Church of the Mother of Knowledge. Ember Crown Sect. Flower Eater Cult. The Great Mother Cult. Eden Garden. Moon Secret Order, to name a few. All would claw at each other for a Sacrament like this. Which only makes it stranger that it’s just sitting here”

  Marcille bit her lip.

  “The client who asked for us specifically was not a coincidence”

  Knowing that, she hesitated before asking a question that’s been nagging at the back of her mind since laying her eyes on it.

  “...If we sold it, how much would it fetch in the Underbank?”

  Immediately after Marcille had asked that question, Tansy tapped her forehead with the butt of her pistol. Not enough to hurt but enough to feel it.

  “Greed will be the end of you, Marcy. Remember that”

  Regardless, Tansy walked in a bit closer and cocked her head forward, squinting her light brown eyes.

  “Looking at it? Minimum should be 5 500 Ghost Coins to 10 000 being the maximum.”

  Marcille’s heart almost leapt from her chest. That was wealth beyond imagination. Not only was it enough to lift her siblings from hunger forever, it was also enough to lessen her crippling debt to a manageable sum!

  For a dangerous second, her expression hardened as she pictured herself taking it. But a gloved hand brushing lightly against her silver hair snapped her out of it.

  Tobias was rubbing the spot where Tansy had just smacked, with tender care.

  Marcille let out a shaky laugh at herself for daring to entertain such thoughts.

  “Thanks, Tobias. I lost myself for a moment again. Sorry”

  The masked man merely nodded. Her eyes flicked back to the Covenant of the Sun, sparking one more dangerous question.

  “What, exactly, is sealed inside it?”