Shaula observes the two men holding the pregnant woman. Shaula cannot see the expressions on their faces. Are they expressionless? Are they calm? How exactly do they rationalize what they’re doing? Are they people with no will except to follow orders?

One can understand the symbolism of their clothing. The white stainless souls of innocence. Their souls must be pure, right? In order to give judgment they also must be blameless, right? Let he who is without sin cast the first stone…

But, are they sinless? The voice from earlier, Siristine, had called them all sinners. Was that just towards the audience? Are there only sinners in the audience? The rich ones who came here today in order to see this… they are not sinless.

Neither are the men on the stage. The only one that Shaula would even consider to be sinless at this moment might be the pregnant woman. In tears, she stands here, forsaken by God and forced to die…

“My beloved brothers and sisters. Today, we have before us a child of man who committed sins against the almighty. Her name is not to be spoken. She has given up her name as of the moment of her sin. Her father and mother are in the audience today to bear witness to her forgiveness. They will be here to witness the moment she takes back her name.”

Shaula pauses for a moment. What is this… What is all of this right now before her? It feels detached from reality. Here she stands here watching an absurd story and struggling to respond. Absurdity upon absurdities. This is forgiveness?

What are they about to do to her?

The men in white say some words to the woman on the stage. The audience cannot hear it but Shaula can.

“Fear not. Your suffering will be over. You will be reborn. For now, please, sit.”

The woman doesn’t move for a few seconds. Then she takes a seat on the stage. Her heart is beating very quickly. Even if Shaula could take the words of the man in white with her at face-value, she couldn’t simply ignore the deep levels of fear that the woman is exhibiting.

Suddenly, a man appears. Shaula notices him land on the ground from above. She hides behind someone in the crowd as he surveys the audience. It is a man wearing a mask. It is the head of a red feathered land dragon. Shaula had never seen one of them with red feathers before.

It looks almost as if a white one of them were dipped in blood. Of course, that’s not the case since Shaula cannot smell the ferrous smell of dried blood on it at the moment.

Rather, she considers how she didn’t hear him move earlier. Something like that must have been incredibly obvious and loud. He climbs up to the top of the stage, but Shaula hadn’t heard his footsteps, then he jumps onto the ground from there.

She didn’t notice him until he landed with a thud on the ground. Perhaps she was distracted?

“Welcome to the Bloodshed. I welcome you as emissary of the divine hero Rurik Grishin. I apologize for my lateness. With that out of the way, let me introduce the real person of importance here at this moment: This woman sitting beside me.”

The man, Siristine, is a very strong looking individual, tall, and wearing a black suit. It is as if he came from the 1800s while everyone else in the audience is still living in the middle ages.

Siristine was the one talking. His voice… it still echoes but Shaula doesn’t see a microphone or anything that could be a magic version of a microphone. He walks around and his voice carries across the entire auditorium.

In fact, Shaula notices that the intense sound of his voice is coming directly from his mouth. There are no other speakers than his voice… Sound magic? Perhaps that also explains how he was able to climb and land without Shaula noticing. Was that also magic?

Shaula wants to continue down this line of questioning but she notices Siristine. Right now, he’s in her way.

His hand is on the shoulder of the pregnant woman right now. The woman feels even deeper fear at this. Shaula hears her heartbeat grow even more rapid. Shaula feels that this isn’t a problem. She’s certainly the fastest human alive as far as she knows.

She should be able to make her move right now, kill all three of them at once and…

But, no… this man… he’s not so stupid that he would allow her to waltz in and take his useful hostage. If she made her appearance right now, Shaula would put the woman’s life in jeopardy. Although… would these holy men dare to be so hypocritical and take her as a hostage?

Too many unknowns right now. Shaula takes a breath. Meanwhile, Siristine continues his speech.

“This woman has sinned against our Lord. She has allowed a beastkin man to impregnate her. Her lover has been found and executed already. As her first punishment, she has buried him herself. As her second punishment, she was given forty lashes. And tonight. Tonight is the night of her third punishment. After this third punishment, she will be forgiven and she will be taken in by the church to serve by Sapiora’s side for all eternity, in this life and the next.”

Shaula feels confused. Aren’t they going to kill her? Wasn’t that what Dalm had told her? Pregnant women who bear beastkin children are killed in a truly gruesome manner, Shaula didn’t forget the details. Both her child and then her would be killed, right?

“This woman has refused to willingly accept the punishment for her sin. She tried to escape from her family so that she could bear this child. We understand the desire to bear your child. Of course, you should bear your children safely. But, what she is giving birth to is not like you or I. It belongs to the servant race of the beastkin. As the child of a female human and a male beastkin, it is deemed unholy by our Lord. Its existence should not be. Through its death, it will be purified and join Sapiora as a blameless soul with its tainted bloodline sanctified.”

Shaula looks at the man before her with unbelieving eyes. She doesn’t exactly understand the words that he has spoken. It sounds so reasonable, the manner in which he’s speaking. He’s speaking eloquently like an evangelist, like a preacher. He’s not yelling, he’s not riling up the crowd.

Shaula observes the audience of human spectators.

They have their hands clasped and their eyes closed in contemplation of the man’s words. It is clear from their actions that all of them want this to happen. The killing of this woman’s child… they merely accept it with closed eyes, closed hearts and bleached souls.

They are all beyond redemption.

“P-Please…”

Shaula hears the woman speak softly. No one, not even anyone on stage can hear her voice.

“P-Please... Please don’t…”

She speaks slightly louder. The two men in white notice her words.

“Please!”

A lone shout comes from the stage. Siristine ceases his oration.

“Please! Please, don’t do this! This is my child! This is my child!! Please!! Please let him live! H-He will serve Sapiora! He will serve the ch-church! He will love our Lord! Please, Sapiora, please forgive him! Please show me your favour, Sapiora!! Please! Father! Mother! Please, help me!! Father!!!”

Silence pervades the environment for a moment. Then--

“You must repent, harlot! You must repent for your sins!”

With that lone voice, dissent springs forth from the audience like a wave.

“Sapiora does not forgive those who commit such transgressions against Him!”

“Sapiora will forgive your child in death, not in this life!”

Words of abuse and anger flood from the audience. They did not appreciate her plea. To some of them it felt like the woman was stopping both herself and her unborn child from being saved. Her child would lose the right to salvation as soon as it is born, why would she want that?

Why would she willingly sentence it to damnation? Meanwhile, others in the audience do not appreciate an act of such vileness to go unpunished and they won’t stand for her being unpunished. This is justice to them, this is their righteous judgment of her sins.

A great deal of the audience simply doesn’t want one of their women bearing the child of a beastkin man. Since long ago, beastkin women have been treated as sexual slaves. They are allowed to bear the children of human males. It doesn’t go the other way around.

They view the beastkin as a servant race, a subjugated race. Their women bear children from their human masters, not their men. Perhaps they’ve been freed recently but they haven’t lost their status as a servant race. Not on their watch, not in their eyes.

“My brethren, please, hear me today--”

The audience becomes more belligerent. Siristine tries as hard as he can to quell the outrage of the audience towards the blasphemy of the woman on stage. She continues to cry. She wails. Shaula moves closer to the left side of the stage. She has a plan in mind but she has to be careful of the timing.

She has to wait a bit longer…

“My brethren, I know you did not come here today out of anger, out of hatred. We do not hate this woman here. We hate her sins. We do not hate her husband. He has repented before he died. We have absolved him already. We do not hate this child either. This child is bound to this world by the sins of its mother and father.”

The audience starts to quiet down slightly at these words of Siristine.

“My brethren, tonight is not a night of anger. It is a night of celebration! The reason we hold this bloodshed is to do all that we can to ensure that our Lord will return to us. That is why I have some news that I would like to share with you all tonight.”

Shaula doesn’t exactly understand what all of this means right now. A lot of the details are the same about this festival but some are different. This festival is more complex than she had given it credit for. She does understand why though.

After all, it’s possible that even people like these who are clearly racist towards demihumans have a line that they won’t cross without rules. It is probable that even for people as far gone as these, they still need rationalization, justification, and permission to behave this way…

Shaula does have some confusion however. Like this thing about Sapiora being asleep? From everything she has been told so far, Sapiora is supposed to be awake. She had asked Angelidis and Gren about the teachings of Sapiora. She had asked them where he is supposed to be in all this and neither of them knew.

Of course, none of them went to the churches in the area to see what the church was giving as an explanation for why humanity was being in such dire straits against the demon race. Shaula merely didn’t care about Sapiora that much. Even if He was real, He has nothing to do with her.

Let Him and his heroes do whatever they want, it’s not her problem. The demons seem like they have it coming.

But still… this group of nobles is trying to say that he’s not awake at the moment? What is she missing here? This festival though… does it actually have any ability to bring him back to consciousness? Again, simply too many unknowns. It’s just a distraction right now.

“My brethren… The slumber of Sapiora since his final confrontation with Azazelin has been disastrous for the human race. The commoners believe him to have forsaken us. They believe that he has left us. However, we know the truth. He suffered damage himself after defeating the bitch goddess and exterminating the dragons. However, we have not been forsaken! We will prevail against the demons. I have received news from the divine hero, Rurik!”

Oh? Shaula perks up her ears to this. She is considering whether Siristine is speaking nothing but cult myths. However, if he knows the divine hero Rurik, a name that she has also heard before a few times (on the streets of Linis too), then even if what he’s going to say is sweet religious nothings in her ear, there will be some utility in listening.

Siristine pauses his speech and the audience perks up their ears to listen while talking amongst themselves. He leaves them hanging for just long enough to heighten the suspense. Dramatic…

“I have come to inform you, my brethren… that we are within a month of retaking the western territories of Reind!!”

The audience freezes. The chattering voices disappear completely. What did he say just now? Reind?

Claps start slowly and then pick up in intensity. The sound of applause crescendos. Soon, Shaula notices the fanatical applause of the audience echo through the woods. Even Ajax must be hearing this by now, right? They’re all ecstatic.

The people in the audience cheer and embrace each other. The weight of the demon race upon them has been quite difficult. Shaula doesn’t understand, but for the humans, living under the threat of the demon race is living under the threat of pure extinction.

The beastkin and draconids don’t share their exact fear of the demon race. They aren’t afraid of the demons coming to destroy them. The demons don’t want them extinct after all. They do have fear however, that upon the entrance of the demons, the humans will simply use them as living shields.

“Praise Sapiora!! Praise Him!”

Siristine looks over the crowd. The crowd is unaware of their surroundings as they cheer in love and gratitude. Their nightmare seems to be coming to an end… Maybe that’s dreaming a little too big but they can at least see hope on the horizon. Even the men in white are clapping fervently at the news. Perhaps even they didn’t know what Siristine was going to say.

An opportunity.

Shaula leaves the crowd and proceeds to the trees of the forest. No one notices her leave. She takes the long way around through the trees surrounding the festival area to the area of the forest directly behind the stage.

She sees the dirt road that the rickety noble carriages must have travelled through in order to get here. She can’t hear any carriages in the distance. She doesn’t hear any weeping in that direction. Furthermore, she doesn’t hear anyone bringing the rest of the demihuman hostages.

From what Dalm had told her, this festival would have multiple demihumans including children, as the entertainment for tonight. Or rather, the religious spectacle.

Where are all of them? She doesn’t doubt that there are multiple beastkin people in peril and to be judged tonight, even the audience seems to be expecting that. Was only that one woman brought to the stage so far? In one carriage?

Shaula wonders why there is only this sole pregnant woman here. Shouldn’t they have brought them in batches? What’s with the festival logistics here? So inefficient. Is it another point of pageantry?

Shaula disregards all that. Just more distractions…

She turns her attention towards the area behind where Siristine is speaking. She sees a number of people, including guards there. She cannot hear any other voices of fright, any other rapid heartbeats, any other crying men, women or children directly behind the stage.

That woman truly is the sole first one…

Shaula listens to the conversation between an old butler looking type and a man in a religious habit.

“...Doesn’t it seem to be taking too long? Where are the other beastkin?”

“I’m sorry, your grace, I-I’m not sure! There should have been at least four more sacrifices brought in but…”

Shaula smiles. She immediately understands. The rest of the sacrifices will not be making it to the stage. Ajax and Arthur must have already intervened. If that is the case, then she can move even more quickly.

Behind the stage is a poorly illuminated area where religious officials are set to speak, while servants and guards remain. The people in the audience are still cheering, Siristine is actually riling them up in celebration even further. The noise level will be just about enough. He seems to be explaining exactly how the war is progressing. Shaula shuts all of that out.

Shaula steps out from the forest in a sprint towards the back of the stage.

“Wha-- Who are you!?”

The elderly servant who was talking to the religious official is killed by Shaula punching him in the face. He is a human being and might have been in his late fifties. His skull is shattered. Serves him right for taking part in this. Before the man in the religious habit can speak, Shaula grabs his throat and squeezes it.

Rather than simply destroy his ability to speak, Shaula snapped the man’s neck as if he was a chicken coming to the cutting room floor of a slaughterhouse.

Three seconds have passed.

Shaula continues her vengeance against everyone else on stage. A few of them scream but the cheering and general boisterous atmosphere of the crowd drowns out their pain, their deaths. Soon, every one of them lay dead on the grass behind the stage.

Shaula is directly in front of the curtains now. She can hear the words of the woman more clearly than ever. Right now, she’s… praying.

“Please Lord, please save me from this fate, please… I have served you all my life, I don’t believe that what I have done is wrong. I loved him… I loved him and they killed him… please Lord… please save me from here… Please Lord… Please… No… this… I don’t deserve this… I don’t deserve this… I don’t! Please kill everyone here today… Please… Please kill them all. The ones who want my child dead, the ones who forced me to bury Bilra. The ones who are in this place right now… Kill them all… Please… kill them all…”

Shaula can hear her whispers. All other considerations leave her. Why was she allowing herself to be distracted by all of this nonsense? The crowd? The rationale? This man named Siristine? None of it was important. This woman’s voice wipes away Shaula’s chattering mind.

A single thought comes to Shaula’s mind. Like a knife, it pierces her psyche.

Your prayers will be answered.