This is a fanfiction piece from the world of Cultist Simulator, by Weather Factory. If you haven’t played their frankly incredible game, I recommend it. It’s like nothing else.

There was a secret to the path a knife followed: just as a traveler followed the best-worn paths on a jaunt over the Continent, so a knife took the path of least resistance. This was the first lesson Rose had learnt in her youth, and as she'd grown into a slim whip of a woman she'd never once had room to doubt it. In her skilled hands, the cut seemed like it was through butter. Soft, easy. Even the drunk seemed surprised by the way his gut was opened--even the writhing ropes of intestines within him, like snakes sheltering the winter, only peeked free in questing curiosity. Rose held the man in her arms as the autumn's cold crept into him, as he slowly came to terms with the position he'd been placed into. He struggled slowly, briefly, rasping out in a terrified gasp. And she breathed deep. The scent of his foul breath and the cheap gin he'd drunk suffused her, became part of her, and filled her behind each soft eyelid. Her partner in the dance leaned on her more and more as his own strength faltered, until he had slumped to the ground in a vaguely human-shaped pile. At last Rose opened her eyes and blew out the breath she'd been holding. The thrill lasted in her veins for a ten-count, maybe two... but it was soon gone. And Rose was simply Rose.

The woman standing there in the darkness of the alley seemed to realize her knife still dripped blood and examined the tool curiously. The knife was a thick and ugly piece of metal, badly-worked wood clamped on steel that fit unnaturally to the hand. But it was hers and she held it like a lover, admiring the slow ruby droplets as they fell to the dirty ground. When the blood had begun to slow, the material to gum, she crouched and wiped the blade against the corpse's coat. Something caught her eye: a slip of paper tucked into his frayed pocket.
Normally, Rose took nothing but memories from her victims. But perhaps she remembered her other half then, or perhaps some stranger force urged her to do it. After a moment of hesitation the paper was hers. After all, he had no need of it any longer.

In calm, confident script, the hand of a scribe--perhaps, an artist--had written the following:
Each scar is an opportunity. Each a gift. A splintered sword still works its way to the heart.
Come with me, and be made whole.
-N.S.

Rose didn't know why, but her hand strayed. It brushed her hip and traced along the long, thin scar concealed beneath her dress. It was hot, enflamed, throbbing. She could feel her heartbeat through it, and snatched away her hand with the urgency of a child who's touched a kettle. And like she had the kettle, long ago, Rose gently touched the scar again

The note led to a whisper, to another, and to another--Rose would have been frustrated by the long string of almost-connections, but each stop before the conclusion seemed to bring her a little closer, another step towards the progenitor of the mysterious message. The "N.S." it was signed by. Every time she spoke with another along the chain they seemed more urgent. They seemed more possessed of a strange energy, a finality, a violence. Sometimes they shared their secrets with Rose willingly, but as she drew closer these chance meetings became more violent. She found herself asking questions with the tip of her dagger, and then at its hilt. The pieces and fragment-forms she heard spurred her on, and before she was aware of it Rose had come to spend her whole day searching. How did one find a single voice within the ugly, sprawling city? How did one find a single sentence among a library? A drop of blood within the veins?

In the end it was by accident she found her quarry. When the trail had cooled her feet had led her on, stepping lightly towards a club of ill-repute. Rose didn't realize her destination until her steps had stopped in view of the pink-and-red curtains, the exact color of flesh beneath skin. There the matron stood, bright eyes gleaming in the gas lamplight. It was strange: although Rose had come here many, many times... before. She had never once seen the woman blink.
Rose was intimately familiar with the scene in front of her: the furtive, nervous, almost regretful crowd filtering from the club's entrance. Perhaps it was because of this she instantly picked out the single, different element: instead of the vaguely Greek mountain of a man the matron usually spoke with, now she was engaged in conversation with a stylishly-dressed woman, all curves and deadly angles. What the conversation was, Rose couldn't be certain of... or if it ended favorably. But when the two parted, she saw enough of the strange woman to recognize the description she'd been given by her last "contact." The woman turned to a nearby alley and entered it with purpose: Rose followed.

Rose learned many things about the woman she followed in the next several minutes. She saw her prey step gracefully along raised cobblestones, keeping her shoes free of the clinging muck. Only once did she deviate from a perfectly straight path: a screeching rat defended its scrap of garbage from the intruder and in a movement so harsh and sharp it had to be admired, the woman's heel slammed down with a furious crunch. Momentarily she paused to clean her shoe.
Rose struck. Or perhaps, would have struck. But she was brought up short by a voice, razor-sharp, like a pen-knife held to her delicate throat. "What do you plan on doing with that ugly thing?" She asked, and turned to fix Rose with her stare. Instantly Rose disliked her: the woman's body was voluptuous, her stare sharp, her posture relaxed. Her hands free by her sides, empty. No less capable for it. Rose hated her smile the most: it was an ugly, sharp expression, thin and red like a knife wound across her face. It reminded Rose of the way her father had looked, once.
"You're looking for me," the woman continued without interruption. "You want to hear what I have to say. You think I might have the answer to a question you're afraid to ask." Rose wanted to spit at her. She clutched her knife like it was a trembling neck and gritted her teeth. It didn't stop the flow of words, sibilant and sharp. "If you want to hear these words, you will kneel. And you will serve." Rose could have laughed, if she had the breath. If the woman's words weren't wrapping around her, cinching her, squeezing tight her lungs. "But first," the woman sighed, "a test. How sharp is the stick in your hand?"

Rose snorted. She found the strength to speak: squeezing her knife like a lifeline she pointed it directly at the strange woman. "Sharp enough," she said, and hated herself for the trembling in her voice. It didn't have the effect she wanted or expected (needed); instead, the woman simply smiled a wicked slash. "We will see," she said, and carelessly stripped from her elegant dress a string of fabric. She held it above the knife and let it drift down. As Rose's eyes were fixed to the strand, the woman grabbed her wrist in an iron grip and turned the knife upwards, sharply, wrenching her half over. And they watched. They watched the string float down, down, down... the middle touched the weapon's deadly edge and it bent, draped itself like a lover over a couch. There was another moment of hope, then, when the trailing legs folded neatly down. But even their weight did not part the strand.

Rose collapsed, her knees knocking into the cobbles amid the muck. She trembled, possessed of a great and terrible sorrow. A mountain-shaped bitterness. A tranquil undertow of rage. It all met at the juncture of the woman's fingers, strong like iron rods, and it all drained out of Rose's veins when the woman dropped her grip. Rose's hand fell lifelessly to the ground and the knife went clattering, discarded and useless. She would have to apologize to him later.
"Well," the woman announced, her sharp voice rimed with disappointment. "Not so sharp, yet. But it will be." She towered over the kneeling woman and spoke the words left unsaid in her letter. In her messages. In her doctrine.
And when it was done, Rose could only call her "Mentor."