"Arcane tools are just that: tools. They exist for the convenience of the practitioner or the people at large. The stylus, stellascope, and the adamant are arcane tools. The autobeasts are arcane tools. Pneuma sensors are arcane tools. Infernal instruments, on the other hand, are curses given physical form. Be they creations of long lost Void sorcery or cutting-edge arithmancy or anything else, one uses an infernal instrument at their peril. There is always a price to pay, and many fools will find themselves unable to afford the cost they exact upon their wielders. Those few who can bear that cost are fearsome indeed, and in my view best avoided."

-"The History of Esoteric Invention”, a lecture course conducted by Arcane History Professor Maaseti Boro of St. Melantha’s University 

It was a busy spring morning on the streets of Coine, with the promise of a warm afternoon wafting through the air. It did nothing to brighten Sai-em’s steadily darkening mood. Putting one foot in front of the other felt like an utterly cumbersome endeavor with his godfire spent as it was, making him move as though he waded through molasses. More than one pedestrian had pointedly sped past him as he stumbled his way through downtown. His fingers curled around a crumpled telegram. There was no sender listed, just an address to a bookshop he did not recognize.

He could not think about anything else. Three days ago he had finally, after over a week of careful trekking, reached the end of the Road in Ewald Vale. And in a single blink, he then found himself on a cot in the infirmary room of Nova Hall with no sword, no memory of what had happened, and a very irate Healer vah Ukam lecturing him about proper godfire management during battle he could not parse in the slightest.

Had someone taken his sword with the intent to steal it? Dame Paladin Wyr Enide-neth was in repose at her usual seat in the meeting chamber and would not answer him or anyone else. The few knights in attendance that day knew nothing of what had happened to his sword, but had a lot to say about giant birds and how he had gotten back that made no sense to him. Perhaps a powerful thief had been waiting for him at the end of the Road, ready to spring a swift and brutal trap on unwary travelers for their goods. His frown deepened as he crossed a street, near heedless of traffic. Somewhere in the distance, a horn blared.

Regardless of what had happened, he could not let the insult stand. If whoever had taken his sword intended to put up a fight for its ownership, he would show no mercy.

It took quite some time for Sai-em to reach Books On 8th on foot. He had not really processed the address on the telegram or even knew where he was going, but simply followed the nauseatingly familiar fizzling hum of power. Eventually, he found himself staring at a non-descript two-story brick building sandwiched between a deli on the corner of 8th and Priory Street and a little café. The sign above the door declared it as his target location in plain, blocky letters, and there were no books or posters set out in its small display window. Wariness rising, he opened the door and strode inside, the hum of the sword now as clear as a bell in his mind.

He took in, briefly, the store's interior. There was not much to see. Despite all the shelves filled with books, the atmosphere made it feel strangely abandoned. No signs in the aisles that indicated which genre was placed where, no place to sit and peruse books in comfort, no paintings or anything else on the walls indicating a love of reading and readers. No other customers. The air was too still.

And between the aisles of that uncanny facsimile of a bookstore, leaning against a long counter as she stared him straight in the eye, was a human woman he did not remember but knew by the most visceral instinct he had met before.

"Hello, sir knight," she said. She had been waiting for him. The Behemoth Calling Sword lay on the counter right behind her. "I wasn’t sure about dropping you off at Swordhand's Square rather than an actual hospital, but it seems my worries were unnecessary. Glad to see you've recovered."

"You have something of mine." Sai-em approached her, slow but sure.

"And you will get it back," the human told him in prim Tet. "After you answer a few of my questions."

"What makes you think I cannot simply take it from you and leave?"

The woman shot him a severely unimpressed look as she stood up from her easy pose against her counter. Sai-em swept his gaze over her and immediately regretted the way it cleared some of the sword's haze from his brain. He always had trouble telling whether a human was tall or short for their kind, but she was built quite sturdy and notably full figured by either of their species' standards. A generous amount of dark freckles covered her brown skin from head to toe, and her clothing was loose and colorful in the striking style sported by New Yambans. She would have turned his head had they merely passed each other at a market.

Sai-em blinked, a little taken aback by the thought. His ferocity drained away like sand in a sieve as she fiddled briefly with the hoop of a gold earring that peeked out from the dense, tightly curled strands of her hair.

"Don't make this difficult for either of us, please," she said. The woman had a decisive voice, bordering on impatient. "I'm not a swordswoman nor a thief. I do not want your infernal instrument. And it doesn't want me, either."

She showed him her palm. It was painfully red. Sai-em bared his teeth at her without thinking.

"You tried to unsheathe it!"

"Naturally,” she said without a lick of repentance, and if she noticed his snarl she did not care enough to comment upon it.

His mouth snapped closed. When he opened them again, he forced himself to sound calm. "What question do you wish to ask of me?"

She narrowed her eyes at him. They were dark, and had the penetrating focus of a raptor in the middle of a dive. "I would like to know what you were doing at the end of the Road."

Sai-em's guard rose up at once. "You were the one that accosted me, then."

"Not quite. Answer my question first," she replied. "What were you doing at the end of the Road?"

"...I was on patrol."

The human hummed and gestured for him to continue. Not good enough, apparently. Sai-em swallowed, and chose his next words with care. He did not consider himself clever or silver-tongued. Everything he said seemed to carry an obvious, telling weight to it.

"You call me a knight, yes? I am Sir Sai-em, Beast Champion of the Order of Nova. We are frequent visitors of Ewald Vale. I had no pressing assignment to hunt down, so I wanted to learn more of the dangers of the Road in my downtime."

The woman stared at him for so long he wondered if she was trying to see into the furthest depths of his heart. He stood as still as a deer listening for the sounds of an encroaching predator, endeavoring to keep his mind blank of any thought that might betray him.

Finally, she turned around. The break in contact almost had his shoulders sagging in relief.

"Know that a very nice Vittoran gentlewoman and a handful of your fellow knights in the Knights Allegiant have vouched for your conduct in their requests for my help just enough that I will not press further. This time."

She turned back around, his sword clutched in her hands, and that was when a memory hit him with the force of an oncoming train. This same human woman several days ago, framed by the never-ending twilight that plagued the Road as she stomped on his chest and tore the sword out of him with a cry of delirious force. Her shoulder bled that curiously bright red life fluid of humans all over her, torn up by his savage claws. He could smell the coppery tang so strongly just then, feel it slicking his fingers. A rush of exhilaration flooded his veins before he could stop it.

His head throbbed. He slapped a hand over his face and shuddered, swallowing down the excitement in deep, vivid shame. Between his shaking fingers, he saw that she did not look the least bit surprised at his reaction.

"A numen had taken exception to your presence at the end of the Road and decided to haunt you in retaliation," she told him, with a touch more gentleness. "I talked the aetherian into retreating but... well, it had quite the nasty personality. You were left in high dudgeon and that, I could not talk down."

"I-I hurt you," he panted into his palm, his eyes still unable to reconcile the woman now and the bloodied, warlike one from their encounter on the Road. They stood together before him in a disconcerting double image, refusing to fully align.

"Think nothing of it. It's an expected hazard of my job, and the battle was more evenly matched than you can recall at the moment. Hauntings tend to scramble one’s mind, so your lack of memory of all this is expected." She pressed the Behemoth Calling Sword into his chest with little ceremony. He took it automatically with hands that felt pathetically weak, despising how deeply it soothed him just to once again hold it close.

She looked him up and down and pursed her lips in dissatisfaction. "Stay here."

Mutely, he watched as she went around the counter and into a back area that, through what he could see from the opening, looked as bare as the front of the store. After a moment, she returned with a glass of water.

"You look like you escaped from whatever doctor sees to you knights a couple of days too soon," she told him as she offered him the drink. "Take a breath before you head back to Nova Hall."

Sai-em took the glass with his free hand and downed it in a single gulp. With his beloved sword in hand and the cool tap water flooding into his system he finally felt himself begin to settle down.

"Who exactly are you?" he asked as she took the cup from him and placed it on the counter. He noted, with a guilty pang, the edge of bandages peeking out from under the neckline of her fluttering blouse as she moved. "Why would my grandmother and colleagues seek you out when I failed to return as I had scheduled?"

She tilted her head a little, once again leaning against the counter. "I suppose you were already on the Road when it happened. Both the Knights Allegiant and the Supernatural Public Guard are notified as soon as possible when the Council resumes activity in Coine. It's a preventative measure against awkward misunderstandings should we happen to cross paths in Ewald Vale."

"The Council?" he repeated, somewhat baffled. He was not one to keep up with happenings outside of the Knights Allegiant, but even among his fellow warriors he had never heard about any kind of council to watch out for.

"Oh." The woman made a strange face at that. "You don't know."

"Clearly not," he retorted. "Enlighten me."

She continued making a face rather than enlighten him. The hesitation was so odd he decided to try what he thought would be an easier question. "May I at least have the name of the one who saved me from the Vale?"

The new question did little to relax her. After some time, in Rhuzic so lovely and fluent it completely knocked the wind out of him, she said, “If I told you my name you would probably make an incredible fuss over me, sir knight."