Will weaved between the diners that crowded the walkways and tables. Why did Jenny's restaurant have to be this full tonight? Can't people eat anywhere else, especially when there have been so many fires recently?

But as he passed a table with a huge stuck pig being carved into, the smell of the dripping fat wafting right under his nose, he gathered that no one could resist food like that, even under threat of imminent death. He definitely couldn't, at least.

His narrowed eyes darted back and forth, scanning every inch of the crowd searching for the woman. He was certain, without a doubt, that she had been the one to put the stone in his pot. There was no one else who looked suspicious enough to have done it. Call it instinct, or call it jumping to conclusions, but it was the only thing Will had to go on. And he would follow this lead until he reached the end or found a new one. He was not going to let this place, this wonderful restaurant owned by one of his dearest friends, go up in flames. He intended to stop it, and he knew that if he moved fast enough, he could. He had to believe he could.

That was why he hadn't told anyone else of his intentions or his discovery. He knew that if he wasted the time trying to fill them in on what he just witnessed, and the true meaning of the stone, it would reduce his chances of saving the building, and its occupants, from a very small chance to absolute zero. And he wasn't willing to sacrifice his chance.

There! The dark cloak he recognized from earlier had just passed through the swinging double doors to the kitchen, the corner of her cloak just barely visible as the wind carried it up and away before it dropped out of sight. He dashed for the kitchen, still moving as quietly and invisibly as he could so as not to arouse suspicion. The calmer everyone in the establishment was, the more likely he was to fix this. A panicked crowd stampeding in the dining room would also ruin his chances.

He slipped between the doors just as they swung shut, and he saw the woman, surprisingly, calmly speaking with Jenny across the kitchen. In front of the massive cooking fires that warmed the kitchen at least five degrees hotter than the dining room or the cooler night air coming in from the windows, the cloaked woman was holding what Will immediately recognized as a short silver dagger to Jenny's chest. Neither of them had harmed the other, from what Will could see, but Jenny was definitely being threatened.

The other kitchen staff had all stopped working and were watching the scene with fear in their wide eyes, none of them noticing Will's silent entrance. Some of them tried to get their hands on their kitchen knives, razor-sharp and very effective against the woman's tiny dagger, but she shouted, "Don't you dare raise a blade against me!" and brandished something in her other hands that made Will's throat close up.

Curled in her fingers was the neck of a large bottle of an unmistakeable liquid: kerosene. If she threw that into one of the already massive fires, the entire room would explode into more flames. It would burn the tables, the rafters of the ceiling, everything that wasn't stone, which was most things. And of course, it would burn the people there, too. Including Jenny and all the other kitchen staff. Will didn't know if the kerosene had been spiked with any explosive materials, but he didn't doubt the probability, and if it were the case, he would very likely be burned up too.

This result was not something Will wanted to see.

He crept up further through the abandoned work tables, covered in piles of chopped vegetables long forgotten. He knew that once any of the staff saw him, his cover would be blown. As soon as he heard the quiet gasp of the first worker behind him, he stood suddenly and called out across the room.

"Why are you threatening her?"

Both Jenny and the woman jumped visibly; to them, it seemed Will had just materialized out of thin air! Jenny's face shone with a mixture of utter terror and sweet relief at the sight of Will. Her hands were trembling and her chest heaving under the tip of the silver knife. "Will! Please, she's - "

"Stop! I'll burn this place up if you keep talking!" The woman brandished the kerosene higher into the air, waving it dangerously near the closest cooking fire.

"Let these other people go. They aren't willing sacrifices, let them leave. There's no need to threaten anyone here, Jenny has done nothing to you." The woman's face only darkened with his pleas. "Why are you doing this?" Will put both hands up, trying to placate the woman. He didn't look at Jenny - he wished he could, but he had to focus on stopping this woman before he worried about comforting her.

"I don't care who is here, Esus accepts any sacrifice. You would not understand." Her eyes glowed in the bright light, and the bottle reflected the flames in the glass, a foreshadowing of the damage it could do.

Will discreetly nodded to the members of the kitchen staff still in the room. They started back up slowly, disappearing out the main doors and the back door, the only two exits, one by one. The woman noticed, surely, but did not comment. She seemed content with just Will and Jenny there to witness her victory. "Do you worship Esus?" Will had dropped the pot on the floor some time ago, but he still held the stone tightly, which he now raised up to show her. "I know what this stone means, I know what you plan to do."

The woman was genuinely surprised. Her jaw dropped open, and then her eyes narrowed as she saw the stone in her hand, recognizing it. Her gaze flickered back and forth between him and the stone. "I was told to find someone in a dark mottled cloak and deliver the wicker man to him before I made my sacrifice. How do you know about Esus?"

"The what?" The wicker man? What in god's name is that?

"Our symbol." The woman removed the knife from Jenny's chest and drew it in the air, tracing the humanoid figure in the smoke rising from the fires. "Yet another thing you could only hope to understand." The knife whipped back to Jenny who whimpered. Willl put the piece of information in the back of his mind for now, but the words burned themselves into his skull. The wicker man.

"I know all about you, who you are, why you're doing this. Your secret is safe with me, but I will not hesitate to kill you if you don't stop this."

She sneered at him. "I don't believe you, you don't know anything about this. Why should I stop? You cannot hurt me, Esus will protect me as I seal the ceremony."

"No god can protect you from my arrows, just as your god wants you to kill hundreds of people inside this building. Does that sound like peace to you? Balancing the world?" Will's hands twitched towards his quiver instinctually, and she caught the movement with her eyes. A tiny hint of fear bloomed in her steady gaze, and Will felt the satisfaction of her hesitation, but kept it hidden.

"Yes, it does," she nodded sincerely, her tone plaintive. "He asks, and I deliver. It must be done."

"You're wrong. You're brainwashed, but I don't think you have the guts to kill all these people."

Will had been taking short slow steps toward the pair of them, and he was only a few meters from them now. His hands were still out, but that wasn't a problem. He could shoot her or throw a knife at her in seconds, while he knew from her shaking hands and poor stance that she was no fighter. She was a scared old woman with a small dagger and a ticking time bomb given to her by someone else, and he knew she didn't have the resolve to murder all these people after looking them in the eye.

"Listen, please. You don't have to do this. Just put the knife and the bottle down, and I promise we will do everything we can to help you."

"If you claim to understand our ways, then you know full well that I cannot do that."

"But are you prepared to die for it as well? Become a part of the sacrifice? Did the person who gave you that bottle tell you that you would die too? Or did they lie to you, like they've lied about everything else?"

The hand holding the bottle dipped and swayed. "They - they said Esus would save me. I know he will, I trust him!" Her shaking intensified, and her face showed terror now. That's it, I've done it, Will thought. She won't do it now, she's too scared.

"Put them down, and I'll help you. I promise." Will held out his hand innocently, offering her a handshake to seal his deal.

She froze for a moment, before she brandished the butt of her knife, jabbing it into Jenny's ribs, and shoved her mercilessly into Will. He heaved an internal sigh of relief as she refrained from stabbing Jenny. But he also knew that by doing this, the woman effectively blocked every path Will had to stopping her and gave her time to do something with her kerosene. He couldn't shoot with Jenny in the way.

Thankfully, by this time, all the other staff members had trickled out while Will stalled for them. No one was left in the kitchen besides Will, Jenny, and the woman, and no one had tried to come back in. Hopefully the staff had spread the word and helped everyone leave.

Jenny staggered into his arms, tears running down her cheeks and onto the collar of her chef's tunic, her hands gripping him tightly. "I'm sorry, Will, I'm so sorry - "

"It's alright, it's - " He paused as he saw that was about to happen. The woman, after brutally shoving Jenny, had thrown the knife on the floor, ripped the cork off the bottle, and had started flinging the liquid into the air around the kitchen. She didn't just fling its entire contents into a fire, which saved all their lives for the time being, something Will was immensely grateful for. But It created a connected path of splatters, one trail leading to another, tracing a strange pattern across the entire room, Will and Jenny ducked behind a workbench as some splattered behind them. "For Esus!" she screamed, and then she threw the last of the oil directly towards the fire in a deadly line. She turned and ran for her life, managing to reach the threshold of the back door before the inevitable happened. It seemed that after all that, she was unwilling to become a sacrifice to her own god.

Will and Jenny flattened themselves against the ground under the table as the room exploded into flames.

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A/N If you google the name of the chapter you might spoil some of the book, so I'm begging you not to! I promise I'll tell you a lot more about this very soon! Hope you like everything so far! 

Favorite pop music artists of all time (or top 5, if you can't decide)? Mine are Charlie Puth, Sara Bareilles, BTS, Kendrick Lamar, and Jacob Collier. ;)