Dance of the Gods

While Veronica was doing the ritual, Suze and James sat down at the table where Alex was talking with a woman.

The woman was well known for everyone. Suze instantly knew who she was, it was kind of obvious since she was very famous... or more like infamous...

'Fierce' Tracy, one of the few female pirate captains in this part of the ocean. There were others, people who had bounties worth 100.000 gelt, but they were also much more dangerous and stayed away from small cities like Hammon.

She was also obviously an ascended, from the Outlaw path. Suze didn't exactly know her order, but she judged her to be of the 7th.

Her hair was short and midnight black, while her eyes were gray almost metallic. Just from one look Suze instantly knew where the nickname came from. Her eyes were like daggers as they pierced Suze's very being, her fierceness was nearly palpable.

The two of them sat down at the table and Alex quickly poured drinks for them as well.

"Is it true? Did that girl went to ascend to Dancer?" Asked Tracy with a bit bewildered and monotone voice. Her eyes kept glancing at the door where Veronica was currently performing the Bathing Ritual.

Suze's eyes narrowed a bit, she didn't miss the glances and neither did the others. "Yes, but don't worry. She knows how to do the ritual!" Her voice contained a hidden danger, at which Tracy just laughed.

"You misunderstood my question and intention. I'm not here to kill her or anything, maybe I could even recruit her, a Dancer would be nice addition to my crew since the last one was killed." Her voice held a bit of sadness and regret. Suze of course had no idea who she was referring to, but Alex was more knowledgeable when it came to pirates.

"Did Merry die? How?" Tracy glanced at the door again, tilting her head a bit, then she looked into Alex's eyes.

"He died like everyone else from the Dancer, Vocalist or Soundless path. He was murdered by some Lawbringer dog! I should really leave this shithole of a country, but that would mean going near the war or entering even more dangerous waters..."

Suddenly her head snapped towards the door where Veronica was in the process of ascending. Her head tilted again, but this time something else happened as well. From somewhere that Suze didn't see, Tracy brought out a pointy, nail-like blade and cut across her palm.

She watched in silence as her blood slowly dripped onto the table, then she cursed silently and jumped to her feet. Before any of them could react, she was already at the door. Suze immediately jumped to her feet as well and went after her.

With a strong kick Tracy broke down the door. Only then did Suze see the black revolver in her hand. She marched inside and put the barrel right between Veronica's eyes. Suze moved as quickly as she could, but even then she wouldn't be fast enough to fully stop Tracy.

As the barrel glowed with fire, Suze managed to push her hand away a bit, but it would still end up shooting into Veronica's left eye.

Suze's breathing stopped. Her heart was racing, she was angry, terrified, sad, but most of all... Relieved...

At her feet, inside the large bath Veronica was breathing heavily. It seemed she woke up just in time to move her head a tiny amount. Instead of killing her, the bullet only made a bloody line on the left side of her head.

"Dammit!... Who is this crazy bitch and why did she try to shoot me?" Said Veronica between breaths. She gingerly touched the bloody line on the side of her head and cringed from the pain.

The woman didn't seem offended at all. She just placed the revolver back into its underarm holster and looked at Veronica with a calculating smile.

"I don't know how you did it, but congratulations on not getting corrupted. If you would've woke up a second later... let's just say we wouldn't be talking right now..." Both Suze and Veronica looked at her with confusion, which made Tracy giggle a bit. As she was leaving, she only said, "Look at your hand Miss Newly Ascended!"

While Veronica was still looking at the doorway, Suze knelt down next to her and looked at her arm. For a moment it looked the same as before, but then she finally noticed a few pointy bumps all over her skin, they were like thorns from a rosebush.

Finally Veronica looked at it as well, then her eyes immediately went wide and she began panicking.

"What is this!? Get it out of me!... Ahh, I can feel it all over my skin..." She was about to go into a frenzy, when Suze went and tried to slap her. Veronica wasn't even paying attention to her, but she managed to dodged the palm with ease.

It left Suze a bit surprised, but instead of stopping she redoubled her effort and after a few attempts she managed to slap Veronica on the left side of her face, which caused the blood to start flowing again. She also yelped with pain and looked at Suze with betrayal.

"Why did you do that?" Asked Veronica angrily. Suze slowly shook her head in relief as the spots were slowly disappearing. When they were finally gone, she answered.

"Because you nearly died. The extreme panic that came over you, restarted the halted corruption process. This was the fastest and safest way to re-center your mind!" While speaking Suze motioned at Veronica's arms.

As Veronica looked over herself, she sighed in relief. At some point both James and Alex came inside as well.

"What happened? Tracy said that nobody died, but there was still a gunshot!" Asked James anxiously and he even paled a bit, seeing Veronica's bloody head, but Suze quickly tried to calm everyone down.

"It was nothing. Veronica nearly got corrupted and Tracy wanted to shoot her before she changed." When she finished the room turned deathly silent. What she said didn't bring comfort to anyone of them, but Veronica was confused about a specific issue.

"But why did I get corrupted?" Suze thought for a bit, but before she could say anything Alex spoke.

"You probably done the cleansing ritual wrong and something affected the ascension. If that's the case you are very lucky to be alive..." He was about to say more, but suddenly Veronica jumped to her feet with unnatural and previously impossible speed. It even surprised Alex a bit.

"I did everything right! I felt the barrier rise around me and even in my last moment of ascension it was still intact!" Her voice sounded angry and scared. It still made her shiver to think back to those strange spikes on her skin.

The three of them who knew more about the supernatural world, looked at each other with confusion. If she didn't make a mistake, that means she shouldn't have been effected by anything outside of the room. This thought was disturbing, since there was only one thing that could've caused the barrier to fail... sabotage.

All of them came to this conclusion at the same time and Alex quickly began to look around, trying to find anything that could lead to the culprit. While the three of them were looking all over the place, Veronica just watched them like they were insane.

They looked everywhere, but even after ten minutes there was nothing anywhere. At some point Suze explained the situation to Veronica as well, so she was looking with the rest of them, but even that didn't reveal anything.

With a lot of disappointment and wariness, they left the bath chamber behind. As all of them moved through the doorway, non of them looked above it from the outside.

If they had done so, they would've seen a tiny drawing there. The drawing was made with a dark brown paint and it depicted a left hand. It was showing its palm, and on the middle of it there was a small mouth with rows of crooked teeth. The drawing was glowing at first with a small light, but it was slowly fading until it was fully gone.

The four of them just went back to their previous table and poured a drink to Veronica too, just by one look everyone could tell that she needed a drink. Slowly and a bit shakily she reached out her hand and grasped the glass, which immediately shattered into small shards.

All of them including Veronica looked surprised for a moment, then Alex burst out in laughter. The others just waited silently for him to stop and explain what happened. It took him a minute, but he eventually calmed down.

"You will need to get used to your new strength. Luckily the Dancer is not that big on physical power improvement, but it's still a lot more than for example, I had."

Finally Suze had understood why the glass exploded. It was still strange to think of Veronica as an ascended, she made a small note to herself to not treat her as a normal human anymore, but she was sure that there will be a few other surprising situations before she fully accepted Veronica's changes.

"Yeah, but the real increase will be in your agility, flexibility and reflexes. Also you should've gotten a large upgrade to your soul, which mostly means nothing currently. It just means that you are better at performing rituals and have stronger defense against soul attacks, plus your divinations will be more accurate."

As Suze spoke, Veronica seemed to be a bit overwhelmed by this whole situation. She stayed silent for a while, then just stood up and with a mumbled goodnight, she walked to her room.

The three of them didn't judge her and her need to go to sleep after a long night like this, but Veronica didn't go to sleep. Strangely enough she wasn't even a little bit tired, so instead she turned on the gas lamp in her room and opened her wardrobe.

After changing into more comfortable clothes, she took out the book on mysticism and began reading it.