Chapter 52: Night Talk

After the inexplicable prophecy of the Bonecaster, Salser's days continued as usual. He would either accompany Jeanne and subtly probe the T'lan Imass people about their historical knowledge, or he would exchange research materials on the Outer Gods and their kin with Prinn. Occasionally, he would use Astolfo's spear to to communicate with the Warren of the Ant monsters. The Bonecaster, summoned by Chavazon into this Dream Warren, acted swiftly. After a brief conversation with Jeanne, she summoned hundreds of warriors—the Bonecaster informed them that it was unnecessary to concentrate too much on one or two priests of Hood—and they transformed into smoke, scouring the entire city for an unknown target.

But Salser understood it was not merely that. The T'lan Imass of Logros did not pay much attention to Hood's actions; they harbored other intentions. Despite Si and Chavazon's display of friendliness, the T'lan Imass people remained reticent, and they could not obtain any crucial information. Furthermore, aside from Chavazon, the other T'lan Imass warriors—all as silent and cold as stone, as the legends depicted, truly living up to their title of the Silent Army.

"I ain't buying the Bonecaster's sincerity about chasing those flies," Jeanne said one evening, conversing privately with Salser at the entrance of their residence.

"Sincerity?" Salser shook his head. "I don't think it's a matter of sincerity."

"Why not?"

"Because it's a 'custom,' not 'hatred.'"

"Yeah, Si Yibel's just a Bonecaster who used to be a Rhivi; she looks like a barbarian little girl, just following her tribe's ways in the wipeout of the Jaghut. But what about Kig Aven? What about Chavazon Turan?"

Salser raised his eyebrows, "But that's beside the point, Jeanne. Enlighten me, how many Celts fell by your hand in the conflict at Someria? What sentiments stirred within you at the time?"

"I felt like I hadn't offed enough Celts, and the scare I put in them was barely a pinch," Jeanne recounted, detailing how she'd used butchery to settle scores with the British army in her mind, laying out the insignia, badges, and attitudes of their different units, and how she'd snagged the tags off their corpses to send them to Artoria Pendragon, just to crack a grin at the total wipeout of another Celtic legion. "One thing I really got from that war," she said, "is that in those kinds of conflicts, ain't nobody innocent."

"I wasn't talking about that!" Salser interrupted her.

"So what're you getting at?" Jeanne shot him a look of scorn, "You wanna critique my command abilities?"

"During that war, were you carrying out a cold and calculated slaughter, or a passionate revenge?"

"Naturally the former," Jeanne emphasized, "Passion don't stick around, and it's a cinch to make folks lose their marbles. The ones who gotta go nuts with hate are the grunts, not the commanders..."

"Then consider this—having orchestrated twenty-seven genocides, why would the T'lan Imass passionately deploy the bulk of their forces to this city? Or dispatch a third Bonecaster? After all, there were merely a handful of Hood's priests and Nero's minions lurking about..."

"Can't you see the weight of their mission ?" Jeanne also interrupted him, "If Hood..."

"What could his return to godhood achieve? The gods of this world are always interfering in mortal affairs; what significance could another bring? Could Hood be more dire than the Worm of Autumn or the Lord of Calamity? And ultimately, are you certain you grasp the agreement your church's high-ups have reached with the clan leader of Logros, Kig Aven? You can't even tap into the Warren in this locale, yet you're preoccupied with Gods and Ascendants?"

After this conversation, Jeanne somewhat reluctantly gave up her expectations of the T'lan Imass. In the following days, she communicated with Taxar in her dreams through Astolfo, who was emotionally unstable—Gods know why his emotions suddenly became so unstable—discussing the intelligence of this place, inquiring about their experiences, and asking about the nun named Caren Hortensia in the city of Cast.

Taxar told her:

In the church's archives, the nun was known for enjoying tearing open old wounds then casually sprinkling salt on them, and for freely commenting on painful pasts that normal people would rather not recall, as if this brought her pleasure. So—if she were to mock the conflict between France and Britain, please bear with her a little. Additionally, she had an extraordinary obsession with money and had even embezzled church funds in the past, but due to her contributions to the research of demonic Warrens, they chose to turn a blind eye. Later, she was directly transferred by the church from Lether to the city of Cast on the continent of Genabackis as a form of indirect banishment.

Jeanne asked Astolfo if this was because Taxar disliked her. But Taxar told her that the church's research on demonic Warrens was far inferior to that of the Roman Empire, and the researchers they had in Genabackis—currently only that nun—was a choice made out of necessity.

Thus, Salser and Jeanne reached a consensus: Taxar simply disliked Jeanne.

At night, the City of Tormentors was shrouded in dark clouds, as if the sky was filled with filthy sewage, with green lightning flickering in the crevices, resembling dead green lizards. Regardless of the direction one looked, a full moon, massive as a millstone, emitted an unsettling, dazzling glow, appearing so low that it seemed within reach, as if one could simply extend a hand to touch it.

Si stood in the air a meter above the roof, like a small stone hovered over an abyss.

"Inquisitor of the Holy Cross, there's something I've never quite understood," Si raised her head, her amber eyes looking up at Jeanne, who was several heads taller than her, "Why didn't your god completely destroy Hood back then, but instead allowed him to return to the place where the Frost was born, to the place that terrifies all." A brief pause. Si then shifted her gaze back to the monsters clogging the streets at night, "Is it because the Frost did not seal his death? Just like how the Jaghut Tyrant Raest had almost enslaved our entire specie in the past."

The bizarre scene on the ground were like a grotesque feast of dancing demons, with twisted trees burning with pink and deep blue flames like green torches, bright and dazzling, yet inexplicably repulsive. Upon the purple-black streets that squirmed like a fungus mat, the dancing monsters moved like a dense pile of maggots, sometimes crawling slowly, sometimes racing swiftly, sometimes twisting together, sometimes scattering abruptly.

"Bothering me with this ain't gonna get you nowhere, Bonecaster. Why would I know what the church high-ups are thinking? You got a line on what your clan boss is thinking?"

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