For half an hour the cultist preacher wandered through the slums, stopping seemingly at random to step up and begin to preach to the crowd and to anyone in range of hearing his strident voice. He didn't seem to care about whether or not people stopped to listen to him, maintaining the same level of vigor in each of his sermons no matter how many people were around.

At one point a heckler from the passerby demanded to know just what the preacher’s precious Crimson was, as the man was finishing a sermon that spoke of the beauty of Crimson and how it pervaded everyone, filling them with life. The cultist had responded to this actually, pausing and turning to smile at the person who had asked the question.

Still maintaining that same beatific smile, the preacher pulled the knife from his belt and lifted it up to his face. The crowd had watched, horrified and fascinated, as the man slowly dragged the knife along one cheek, bright red welling up on his pale skin. As the scarlet fluid trickled down his cheek the priest, still smiling though now the smile was unnerving to many who were present, spoke directly to the heckler.

”This, my child, is Crimson. The precious, glorious liquid of life that we all share.” The now bloodstained knife was placed back on his hip, and the cultists lifted one hand up and trailed it along the rivulet of blood, scooping it up and lifting his red finger into the air. ”Crimson is within us all! It beats in our hearts, flows through our veins! It unites us all - what matters differences of race, of class, of wealth, when in the end we all share it? I tell you now, in the Church of the Crimson, they matter not!"

The passion in the man’s voice, the pleading question and the triumphant declaration - it drew back the people who had been put off by the act of self-mutilation. Around him, Nevin could hear other newcomers in the crowd reacting to this - many of them liking the sound of it. A place where nothing outward mattered?

Nevin knew just how enticing that could be. It had consumed an entire village, before. On his part, the Alchemist was trembling in his cloak, suppressed fury boiling in his veins. He was now, without a doubt, certain that this man was a survivor of the cult that had sacrificed a boy and a man to create something else - nowhere else had Nevin ever heard of the Church of Crimson, heard these very same teachings that even now, he couldn't find it in himself to argue with.

He had found them. The person who targeted him for the bounty hunters, the person who had survived the failed ritual to summon something from outside of this world.