'Has my hair gotten longer in this past week?' Lumière stared in the mirror in his room, a little puzzled. 'I don't have time to cut it, so maybe I should resort to tying it back for now.'
Lumière searched through countless drawers before he stumbled upon a spool of twine.
'I've no fancy laces or headbands. This is how I've always done it...' Lumière sighed inwardly. Cutting away a strand of twine, he pulled the excess hair behind his head before tying it away in a small strand. He let out a sigh of relief, no longer having to deal with the excess stimulation as he moved forward with his day.
As he looked at himself in the mirror, he wondered. 'Was that illusion of that figure… of that other me really a hallucination? Thomas once mentioned another me… a persona… is that figure connected to the powers of the Lord Sinner?'
He put the thought aside. Something like that could be asked of Thomas at their next meeting.
After getting dressed, Lumière stepped out of the monastery. Sister Alinde and Father Benedict were out by the hillside, but Lumière turned his head away from them. Even after talking with Sister Alinde the night before, his head felt like a mess, so he wanted to clean up the fog in his mind before anything strange happened again.
'Those visions... I don't know if I've really gone crazy this time. Why had I experienced that feeling yesterday? It felt like a warning of that danger that Thomas and that boy Etta mentioned. But why? Have I gone crazy, or is this related to the powers Lord Sinner bestowed upon me? There's only one way to determine one or the other…'
As Lumière got lost in his thoughts, he had been walking down further into Cobbler's street, which curved along the outside of the stacked housing district, Etten-Leur, and the Steel Wastes. It was filled with every essence of bitterness left behind from the middle and high boroughs, and even in the rot of the lower borough, it was a street not many chose to walk. Dwindlers, as they had been deemed, were not just those without homes. They were those who had been disavowed completely by the Forger Empire.
Their children, their children's children, and all relatives that would follow would be forced into that pitiful life; it was a life of meandering mindlessly in the cold rain. If one fell into debt or committed a crime that was not punishable by death or lengthy imprisonment, this was all they could look forward to. By law, unless they were able to pay off the debts they owed, they would be forced to live the life of a Dwindler. They could never be allowed to take work on themself that would allow them to sustain a normal and healthy life. If they grew ill, they would be thrown into the quarantine zone in the outstretches of the lower borough. If they were hungry, they could only seek help from the churches or turn to crime. Above all, they were not allowed to rent or purchase homes, not that they could afford it anyway.
So, they would wander. They would take work where they could, whether in the dockyards or the factory district, risking their lives and bodies for next to nothing. The Dwindlers who received food from the churches regularly would choose to save that money as a way to foster hope for their futures, but the unlucky few would have to spend every coin earned to sustain a pittance of a meal every couple of days. Unfortunately for the Dwindlers, that existence wasn't their worst fear.
A few years prior, Lumière had witnessed the remnant horrors of the latest war with the neighbouring Eastern continent, Baruunlan. What could have been a more menial job than that of a soldier? As such, all Dwindlers fit to fight did. If they were male, and of a somewhat-acceptable age, they would have been given a weapon and forced into the zone that split the continents in two; it was a horrific sight, of grass that would never grow, and soil stained a permanent red. When the rain fell, of which it did each day, that mud would turn into a horrific sea of blood, which soldiers were forced to wade through- or add to.
It wasn't a choice, either. Conscription hit the lower borough the hardest. There was an option to pay your way out of it, as funding would help the war efforts. But if you weren't so lucky as to have enough money, then you could only pray to whichever deity you believed in that the sights you would witness weren't as horrific as to scar you. Thankfully, as an unofficial member of the Church of the Mother of Thorns, which served the general well-being of the public, Lumière was able to avoid conscription, the same as Father Benedict had.
But as someone who didn't attend to the horror of warfare, his fresh eyes full of sanity witnessed the gaze of those without it. Dwindlers were sitting on the sidelines of Cobbler's street, under stone buildings which seemed to crumble further with every second. Grime and filth had stained the ground, and still, they chose to sit in it. Fires burned upon piles of rubbish and reclaimed pallet wood, giving some sense of freedom from the cold air.
Although, as Lumière walked through the stinking streets, he noticed one man walking parallel to him. He had a seemingly grizzled face underneath the hood of his black cloak, and blood-red eyes which peered fiercely from the shade. His mouth, which was barely illuminated by the emerging ruby sun, seemed to be muttering incessantly.
'Is that the man who eats rats...? I wonder where he's been all this time. If he's going this direction, he must be heading to the church to eat.'
As the man past him, Lumière's gaze darted wildly towards him as his expression grew surprised. That was because he began to hear what it was that the man was murmuring. He was constantly repeating a single word- 'Sinner'.
"Excuse me!" Lumière called out as he turned towards the man, spinning his body around suddenly.
The rat man stopped in his tracks, his head turning towards Lumière as he waited for him to continue. Lumière cleared his throat before speaking once more.
"When you say 'Sinner', what is it exactly that you mean?"
The rat man stepped a bit closer to Lumière, and although he felt a bit uncomfortable in front of the towering presence, he stood firm as he looked upwards. The rat man's muttering mouth seemed to curve upwards suddenly, revealing a crude and wide smile that bared every single one of his chipped and sharpened teeth. His blood-red gaze grew fiercer and seemed to glow an incandescent bright colour as he parted his lips to speak.
"You."
After speaking a single word, and leaving a horrified expression on Lumière's face, the rat man turned his back and began to walk down Cobbler's street once more. While his vision didn't darken, Lumière's heart palpitated fiercely, and his skin grew cold and clammy as if he was experiencing a fever. His hair seemed to prick up, and he felt chills run down each of his bones in unison. He watched the man walk down towards the church while thoughts raced through his mind at high speeds.
'Me? How did he know my affiliations? Who is that man? Is he just another of the strange occurrences? I need to determine if I've really gone crazy or not, quick.'
Multiple possibilities began to race through Lumière's head, but before he began to discount any of them, he quickly shook away the thought.
'It's no use worrying about it right now. I haven't come here to think about it anyway. That man will eat and leave as he always does, I'm sure. It's not the first time Father Benedict has had to deal with a crazed man. There's no way he can invite suspicion towards me...'
Before long, Lumière came to a dilapidated building made of stone bricks that was lit up by exterior lamplight. The windows had been boarded up and the front door was guarded by two men with thick black beards and gleaming blue eyes.
'Twins?' Lumière pondered as he stood before the two men, the tail of his coat fluttering slightly in the morning wind. 'They must be new. I haven't seen them around before. Will it be difficult to get in…?'
"Good morning, gentlemen."
The two men looked towards Lumière in unison with steeled, solemn gazes that seemed to pierce through the entirety of his being. Slowly, their hands began to reach towards the back of their waistbands, and Lumière apprehensively took a step back.
"That's not something you'd want to do." A voice sounded out suddenly.
Lumière's gaze unconsciously shifted upwards and to the right, where a figure with cloud-white hair and light-blue eyes hidden behind a silver monocle held a soft yet characteristically nervous smile- as if his heart couldn't bear to speak so loudly. He had pale white skin and thick black tattooed markings underneath his eyes.
"He's a guest of the boss. He's always welcome past those doors, gentleman." The man smiled nervously.
He was the left-hand of the crime boss Constantine, the 'Silver Fox of the Steel Wastes', Adonis Trinder.
"Thank you, Mr. Trinder." Lumière smiled in response.
Adonis nodded silently.
"Is Mr. Adler in?"