Maeve stared at him like he'd just grown an extra head. Or five. The way he was stroking, cooing, grinning, and tickling that damned flower like it was some beloved pet surely didn't help his image either .

"… But what does it even do?" she mumbled.

He looked up, eyes bright like a lunatic's, and hopped down with a flourish only to plop himself right back onto the surgical table, legs swinging like a schoolboy.

"See this here?" He held up his hand, palm out, and displayed the web of swirly glyphs that Maeve had to lean in to see properly. "The chitin plates of the robber fly can inhale to expand themselves, so I carved ninety-nine percent of an 'expand' glyph right here on the palm." Then he made a show of lifting his pinky finger, showing her the final line. "And the final one percent of the glyph is here. If I press it down, it'll complete the entire glyph and send the command to the chitin plates."

"So… you made gloves that'll expand," she concluded. He clicked his tongue at that. It was about the most boring way she could've said. "What good is a glove that can inflate itself?"

"What 'good' there is?" he said, grinning from ear to ear. "Well, you're not completely wrong about that. An inflating glove is pretty boring by itself, but that's where the Gravepetal Maw comes in."

This time, he made a show of tickling the jaw of the flower. It didn't respond as expected. The sedative was doing its thing.

"See, I juiced this little fella up. Strength drugs, toughness boosters, bit of this, bit of that. It's dormant right now, but when the glove expands, it'll stretch the flower from the inside out without tearing it apart because of all the juices it's got running through it. And the stretching's gonna agitate it. It's gonna wake the fuck up, all angry, and when a man-eating flower is angry…" he mimed a snapping motion with his free hand, making Maeve flinch. "It'll start biting. Angrily."

Maeve looked slightly horrified for a moment, but then her eyes rolled up, flipping to white as though she were deep in thought.

"... No way that works," she muttered. "Even assuming your glyphs are carved correctly, how much can this little glove expand and stretch the flower for it to be useful, anyways?"

Gael just laughed, shaking his head as he instinctively felt Maeve pulling up an appraisal interface.

"Appraising it before we can even see if it works? That's boring as hell. Let's do a little experiment first." He scanned the room, eyes settling on a half-empty flask of street-brew sitting on the surgical cart he'd pushed near the door. He aimed his glove at it with glee. "Flower! Fetch that watered-down bottle of alcohol for me!"

Maeve opened her mouth to object, but he'd already done it.

He pressed his pinky to his palm.

Cara's broom scraped in easy strokes, the bristles pushing damp dust across the warped floorboards of the prayer hall.

She hummed the 'Tune of the Golden City' to herself as she worked. Even after all the patching and mending they'd done over the past couple weeks—even with the giant Vile Eater quietly sucking up all the poisonous mist in the building from behind the statue of the Saintess, making it so she no longer had to wear her mask indoors—there was something soothing about the eerie quiet in this former abandoned church. Right here, right now, it was just her and the hush of the prayer hall, fading sunlight filtering through the dusty stained glass windows.

It was peaceful.

It was quiet.

One last sweep and she'd be done for the day.

Should I get dinner at Miss Alba's or whip up something for myself?

She dipped her broom into her water bucket with a soft splash, wrung it out, and went back to brushing, the song still on her lips—

And then a violent explosion cracked through the air above her, shaking loose a few specks of ceiling dust that floated down like pale ash.

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

She snapped her head up just in time to see, with a lurch of disbelief, the front door of the surgical chamber blowing outwards in a splintering burst. The door didn't just fly. It tore off its hinges, slammed into the wall, and struck the already lopsided head of the Saintess hard enough to make it even more lopsided.

No!

Saintess Severin!

She was about to rush to the base of the altar when she heard snarling. A shrill, alien growl that didn't belong in any clinic. And—over it—she heard two unmistakably girlish screams.

"Plagueplain Doctor! The Saint forbids this! What in her name—"

"Calm down! Calm down! You fucking calm down!"

"Just stop it or I'll—it's going for me! I'm going to kill it!"

"You murk my flower and I ain't giving you your allowance this week! Let me handle it!"

Cara swore under her breath, bolting for the stairs.

Up she went, two steps at a time, breath already heating in her chest. She didn't even think, her hand gripping the banister tight as she swung herself around the last step, ready to tear into Gael's hide and give him the scolding of a lifetime—

But then she froze in the doorway.

The chaos in the surgical chamber ended right as she swung in.

Half the room looked like a bomb had gone off. Shattered glass littered the floor, the surgical table lay cracked in half, and teeth marks scarred the wall around the doorway. Kneeling amid the wreckage in the center of the room, however, were Gael and Maeve. Unharmed. Relatively unharmed.

And they were laughing.

Cara blinked.

Maeve's eyes shimmered, wide and bright, as she grabbed Gael's right hand and lifted it to her face—the right hand and glove wrapped with some alien, exotic flower.

"That… was incredible," she said, all eyes on his glove as she turned his hand around and around, studying it with all the vigor of an upper city girl.

"Damn right it was!" Gael cackled, practically bouncing on his knees as he tickled the back of his flower. "I told you it'd work! Look at this fucking thing!"

"I'm not fighting next to it, though."

"Get used to it. I'm never taking this little thing off."

"Then at least sedate it more. That was way too big."

"Heh. That's what she—"

"Sedate it more."

"Fuck no. It's called controlled chaos, controlled chaos. Why stop something that bites like a dream?"

Their squabbling rolled on. Maeve pointed out how he needed to reduce explosive power of the flower, while Gael argued it wasn't drugged enough to begin with. From Cara's perspective, though—one hand on her hip, the other slack at her side as she leaned against the doorway—she didn't feel like stepping in to lecture them both about the door.

Not right now.

It was nice, she thought, to see Gael like this for once. Not just wild-eyed, drug-crazed, and drunk-out-of-his-mind chasing his next high, but genuinely excited to share something he'd made with someone else. And Maeve… the Exorcist was livelier than Cara had ever seen her. Her voice was quick, her gestures were animated, and it was like she'd forgotten how to be quiet for once.

Cara's gaze softened.

… Hmph.

She turned, ready to leave them to it—whatever 'it' was—when a sudden knock echoed from downstairs, all the way across the prayer hall.

She poked her head out of the doorway to blink at the distant door.

A knock?

At this hour?

Her brow furrowed. No one ever came to the clinic this late, not unless it was urgent. Her mind ticked through possibilities, and already, she was skipping down the stairs, curiosity prickling.

Maybe it was a patient.

Maybe it was trouble.

If it was the latter, she'd deal with it. She wouldn't let anyone disturb Gael and Maeve's little moment.

Reaching the bottom of the stairs, she crossed the empty prayer hall and stopped before the front door. She took a breath, steadying, and then pushed the door open.

No one.

The street outside was quiet, empty under the sickly green glow of Bharncair's moonlight. There were no footsteps running away and no shadow slipping into the alleys.

She poked her head out with her broom gripped tight like a sword, peering left and right.

Nothing.

She was about to scoff, muttering something about damn neighborhood brats and their pranks when her eye caught it.

A glimmer.

At her feet, on the stone step just outside the door, lay a small envelope sealed with crimson wax.

A letter?

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