“...can you… can you carry me? Take me…” Juno spoke up, insomuch as the wheezing whisper she emitted could be considered speech. She stopped short of saying something, the start of the word “home” almost audible in its absence.

  “I can take you to a grafter. Get you fixed up,” Krahe suggested.

  Juno turned towards Krahe. “That… Would be better,” she said with an unsettling clarity. A strained, stiff smile. “My parents mustn’t see me like this.”

  Krahe looked the girl over, taking note of her numerous small injuries, of the small cuts and countless bruises, the cigarette burns, and of injuries that are best not detailed. Both of her legs had been severed — one above the knee, the other below it. The same was the case for her left arm, gone below the elbow. All done in a surgically precise, yet also crude manner, clearly intentionally. There were also the missing teeth, of which Krahe was sure there were more than could be seen at a glance, and her earlobes had been cut off as well. All in all, Krahe came to the conclusion that Juno could be moved safely. She brought a large coat out of her Kenoma Sack, draped it over Juno, and soon enough had the girl on her back, barely noticing the weight.

  It was a matter of some effort to walk through the other room — not to carry the girl, but to stop herself from burning the skin off of Aldritch’s body right then and there. The odds of him dying from it were too great.

  “You three stay put or the formation collapses — I made sure it won’t kill you, and that you’ll wish it had. I’ll be gone ten, twenty minutes at most, good luck trying to defuse it without arms in that time,” she said, throwing a truly hateful smile Aldritch’s way as she walked out into the hallway.

  “Wait…” came a choked sound from the girl on her back. Krahe considered if it had been a bad idea to pick her up after all, freezing in place, but she didn’t feel anything amiss. Juno’s heartbeat and breathing seemed stable. The girl shifted in place, leaning forward to rest her chin on Krahe’s head. She drew in a long, ragged breath, and spoke in a voice turned to a whisper from screaming, yet still managed to give it enough volume that it echoed through the silent house. “Later… I want to put his eyes out. Could I…?”

  It was flat, barely a voice, more of an articulated wheeze, but Krahe felt the malice radiating from it. She was entirely willing to put it up to mere projection, to assume she was placing meaning into the void of a mentally broken woman simply looking to lash out at her violator, but as she walked down the stairs and Juno voicelessly chuckled on her back, Krahe couldn’t help but feel an unsettling sensation from her — a kinship of sorts.

  The reception she got at the Seven Spokes shrine wasn’t the warmest, but she couldn’t hold it against the priest. He was aghast at the sight of her, recognizing her by her grave reputation. She didn’t bother with pleasantries until he led her into the inner sanctum, and kept it simple even then.

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  “I require direct communion with the Central Temple, specifically Razem. If at all possible, I also wish to request Inquisitor Yazata Heptaxia’s services as an interrogator. I act as the representative of the Crow and Raven Agency. Tell them I’ve encountered a case that is highly likely to have direct relevance to the matter from last time. They will understand. I also need to contact Grafter Firminus — you can guess why. As you can see, it’s urgent. I will prepare my messages now, please return in fifteen minutes.”

  “Ah- Yes, of course. I understand,” the priest nodded. He seemed a touch too eager to leave her presence, or perhaps he was preturbed by Juno’s state. She was sure he would report that detail when he opened the connection, but that was, if anything, desirable — it would more naturally convey the urgency of the situation.

  Krahe wrote the most extensive request for Razem, and used one of her eyebox’s more obscure features to directly “burn” an abbreviated transcript of her findings onto a separate sheet of paper. It was a simple power surge into the projector lens, intended for specially treated paper, but it worked on any paper with the minor downside that it caused some slight charring. Besides the general specifics of the crime scene, the perpetrators, the victim and the crime, Krahe also included some notes on Aldritch’s grafts. She made three copies in this manner, one for Razem, one for Yazata, and one for Firminus. She also included the location of Aldritch’s house and that she would be waiting for them there. While she didn’t want to take Juno back to that place, tradeoffs had to be made for the sake of keeping an eye on everyone that needed watching.

  The priest brought a large, bronze basin into the sanctum, full of black sand and with three long incense sticks burning within it. The smoke they gave off formed the names of their destinations. Krahe just had to place the letters into the smoke, and in an instant, the incense stick burned all the way to the base and the letter vanished in a cloud of embers. One after the other, Krahe sent off her letters, and then made her way back to Aldritch’s family home, carrying Juno on her back. Krahe had prepared herself to explain, even to calm the girl down in case she panicked, but she remained completely calm the whole way to and from the Seven Spokes shrine.

  Around forty minutes passed. In that time, Krahe had retrieved her cogen from her Kenoma Sack, used it to write a cleaner version of her report, and produce several copies. Juno seemed to enjoy the white noise, dozing off.

  Three Red Hoods riding upon silver motorcycles surrounded the house, and a black-haired witch upon a fourth vehicle of the same make pulled up in front of the building. The click-clacking of metal feet on cobblestones preceded an unsettlingly rhythmic series of knocks on the door. Krahe had expected an agent of the church, not for Yazata Heptaxia to show up as if she had been called.

  She opened the door. Yazata’s owl-like countenance stared straight through her.

  “Blackhand. It’s good to see that you have recovered,” Yazata said. The witch-inquisitor’s burning-purple eyes shifted to peer over Krahe’s shoulder at Juno, and with them, so too did the eye-like symbols seemingly bleached into her hair. “I presume that is the victim. And the perpetrators?”

  “Upstairs.”

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