Mrs. MacNeil now stood in the very center of the hall.
Seven Spirit Lodging Artifacts, seven Hosted Spirits.
In the basement on the Material Realm, Richard could only faintly hear the Breathing of each Spirit.
Beneath the Curtain, those Spirits no longer hid themselves.
The wolf from the Silver Ring floated over her left shoulder, a beast that stood taller than a horse;
The bird from the Jade Brooch spread its wings, a droplet of water hanging from the tip of each tail feather;
The woman from the Black Ebony Comb, her hands endlessly weaving, hooking, and pulling;
The milky white light around the Moonstone Pendant coalesced into the distinct silhouette of a robed figure;
The Coral Earrings hung from Mrs. MacNeil’s ears, each earring holding a tiny, suspended throat;
The Silver Pocket Watch was draped across her chest, its second hand ticking away;
The Bone Bracelet was on Mrs. MacNeil’s right wrist, and inside it sat the old woman.
"Eight."
Richard counted them in his head.
Seven Spirits, plus Mrs. MacNeil herself, made exactly eight, corresponding to the number of people who had come down to the hall tonight.
"Activate the array."
Mrs. MacNeil spoke from the center.
The "ground" beneath the Curtain bowed slightly, returning the courtesy to tonight’s Caster.
Mrs. MacNeil gave a light wave of her right hand.
The seven Spirits scattered in seven directions, and seven extremely faint silver threads connected them to the center, where the True Name Stone lay.
She didn’t need to draw an array; one already existed in this hall, waiting for a qualified Secretive One to call upon it.
"Beautiful," Mr. Hutton murmured in admiration.
Having been stuck at the threshold of a Practitioner his entire life, he knew better than anyone what the view was like after Minor Mastery.
The moment the array formed, the first sound came from beneath the ground.
The seam held down by the old woman in the Bone Bracelet was gently pushed from below.
The first figure seeped out.
It had no features. The place where its face should be was flat, the same color as its neck and shoulders.
Richard used his Spiritual Vision to identify it.
The first was a man with a stubbled face, a Copper Whistle pinned to his chest—the mill foreman from 1881.
The second was very young, clearly a child laborer under fifteen, with a streak of unwashed coal dust on his face.
A third, a fourth... patches of the ground folded themselves up one after another, becoming her children.
Not just the twenty-three devoured workers, but also the two recently missing children. They were in there, too...
The battle began, and Captain Whitfield was the first to move.
Richard could see the fire in the captain’s chest swell from a small furnace into a great forge.
Deeper within the Curtain, the intensity of an Ether burst was amplified by the environment itself.
Normally, the captain could maintain a burst for ten minutes, but here, it would likely only last for three to four.
But in those three to four minutes, his power was pushed to several times its normal level, and he almost seemed to become a being of pure fire.
"Ready, ma’am," Captain Field’s voice came from within the fire.
"Then go," Mrs. MacNeil nodded slightly.
The two Enchanted Axes from the captain’s waist were already in his hands.
He leaped from the ground, his landing point precisely where the foreman stood at the front.
The axe came down, the first blow splitting the foreman from the top of his head to his jaw.
The axe blade cleaved down, and the foreman’s Shadow split in two.
Against a Shadow beneath the Curtain, a physical "cut" was useless.
The Shadow parted to let the blade pass; after the blade passed, the Shadow closed again.
"...This makes my job harder," the captain’s voice came from the fire.
"You’re only responsible for holding them back," Mr. Hutton chimed in from the side.
"Understood."
The captain changed his tactics.
He no longer tried to cleave through them, switching to the flat of his axe.
He pressed the flat of the axe against the foreman’s shoulder and, using the force of his Ether burst, knocked the foreman and the two figures behind him backward.
"Good. If you keep knocking them back like that, they won’t get through easily."
"Got it."
"Sarah, you’re up."
From the furthest corner of the cellar, the Female Hunter raised her double-barreled shotgun.
BANG!
A Silver-Lead Bullet shot from the muzzle, its trajectory under the Curtain marked by a dark red afterglow.
The afterglow was Sarah’s own Ether, attached to the bullet.
The bullet flew through the air and pinned the child laborer square in the chest.
The child laborer didn’t cry out. Shadows have no mouths.
But its movements stopped.
BANG!
Sarah reloaded with a speed that surpassed her performance in the swamp; she was so fast, it seemed her left hand was loading the third round before the first had even been fired.
The second shot pinned the third figure on the left side of the circle in the chest.
The third shot pinned the second figure on the right in the chest.
BANG! BANG! BANG!
Six shots fired, six Shadows pierced through the heart.
The pierced Shadows didn’t dissipate, but they were temporarily immobilized.
"...Just as I thought." Captain Field’s voice emerged from the flames. "There’s no way to finish them off cleanly this time."
The captain pushed the other Shadows back as well.
But the dozen or so remaining Shadows in the circle stirred. Three of them converged and lunged at the captain’s waist from the side.
Another four Shadows broke from the circle, bypassing the defensive line formed by the captain and Sarah, and rushed toward the outer circle.
Their target was clear: flank the line and deal with Mrs. MacNeil and Mr. Hutton.
The Mother’s children were still young, but they already knew what was the head, what were the hands, and what was the waist.
They lunged quickly.
But Richard’s inspiration alarm didn’t go off.
The four flanking Shadows had just made it halfway to the outer circle when they were stopped by an extremely fine golden thread.
That golden thread hung down from the mouth of the wolf on Mrs. MacNeil’s left shoulder.
The thread, spun from the wolf’s mouth, had been laid out along the hall’s floor as an invisible line.
The four flanking Shadows were entangled in the golden thread, unable to move.
The bird from the Jade Brooch had perched on the highest beam in the hall.
Every one of the slitted eyes on its feathers opened, and countless eyes now looked down upon the entire scene.
The bird was providing the enemy’s position to everyone.
The position seen by each eye was relayed by the bird back to the outer circle.
There was a problem on Edmund’s end.
The Silver Cross on the young priest’s chest began to grow hot.
Richard glanced over with his Spiritual Vision and saw that the halo of light at Edmund’s feet, formed from scriptures recited by generations of priests, was shrinking inward.
Something was gnawing at him.
"Ma’am," Edmund said, at a loss. "I’m going to use Sanctification once."
"Don’t," Mrs. MacNeil responded immediately.
"Why?"
"Using Sanctification once will drain half of your Ether reserves. If you’re drained beneath the Curtain, something much worse will happen."
"But it’s gnawing."
"Let it gnaw," Mrs. MacNeil’s reply was merciless. "It’s not gnawing on you, but on the Practitioners behind you."
"They’ve been dead for hundreds of years. Being gnawed on for a bit won’t make them die a second time."
Edmund frowned deeply, but could only agree.
"Yes."
"Just protect yourself," Mr. Hutton said from the side. "The people behind you can take it. Don’t rush in on their behalf."
Richard silently noted this point.
’All Techniques under the Curtain have their effects amplified, but their costs are amplified as well.’
Shadow number sixteen lunged from the west.
The robed, faceless figure from the Moonstone Pendant stepped forward.
At that moment, Richard’s inspiration was brushed by something extremely gentle.
The Spirit from the Moonstone Pendant was actually "negotiating" with Shadow number sixteen in the Ether Layer.
Richard couldn’t hear the specifics of the conversation.
But he could feel Shadow number sixteen’s speed decreasing.
’It was actually persuaded to stop?’
The time Spirit from the Silver Pocket Watch also moved.
It pulled a second stream of light from the pocket watch and wrapped it around the captain, making him even faster.
Mrs. MacNeil herself still stood at the center.
She stood with her hands at her sides, having done nothing, and yet, having done everything.
The Spirit in the Black Ebony Comb was weaving the children’s paths.
Every inch of her work corresponded to a path that one of the Shadows in the hall had just taken.
Once woven in, that Shadow could no longer retreat along its original path.
The Spirit of the Moonstone Pendant was still "negotiating."
It even split off several copies that floated to the outer circle to negotiate one by one with the four figures trapped by the golden thread.
One by one, the negotiated-with figures stopped moving.
The two throats in the Coral Earrings were still singing.
They sang a song of misdirection.
It made the twenty-five Shadows lunge toward the captain, toward Sarah, toward Edmund’s halo of light.
But they did not touch Mrs. MacNeil and Mr. Hutton in their critical positions.
The old woman from the Bone Bracelet stood constantly at Mrs. MacNeil’s feet.
She was the Anchor, Anchoring the stable support point for everyone present.
Mr. Hutton could stand his ground because she was there;
The captain could burn so brightly because she was there;
Edmund’s halo was being gnawed at the edges but didn’t collapse because she was there;
Richard’s own Shadow was coveted by the children but had not been stripped away because she was there.
Seven Spirits, seven paths, spreading out to form the entire outer defense.
Mrs. MacNeil herself stood at the center, her hanging hands never having moved.
"Ma’am," the stable boy asked, a bit flustered and unable to hold back.
"This Maintenance... how long can you maintain it?"
"Until the second round," Mrs. MacNeil answered casually.
"...There’s a second round?"
"Mm."
"Don’t be nervous," Mrs. MacNeil added. "Mr. Hutton’s Curse Spell will be ready before the second round begins."
"If it really comes to it, I will call the seventh."
"The seventh?"
Richard finally realized that after reciting the names of the first six, Mrs. MacNeil had never named the seventh.
At the time, she had only said, "You’ve arrived."
The seventh Spirit—she had never once spoken its name aloud.

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