- The slayer flees to the shadow of Olympus
Where a mother's tears washes away ties to Rome.
Fear extracts vain sacrifice
Until the raging pyre of the deluge is quenched.Quatrain 64, Century 8
Cade investigates a small town plagued by rain for more than three years.
Tropes:
- Asshole Victim: Glenn Harris, the man in the beginning, escapes the town jail only to be burned to death in a giant The Wicker Man-type structure. He turns out to be an escaped mass murderer.
- Curb-Stomp Battle: When Cade starts asking awkward questions, he's attacked and beaten by a gang of locals. As always when this happens, he seems to accept it as the cost of doing business.
- Gaslighting: The town Cade investigates has endured three straight years of rain. It's a Gua experiment using weather control to investigate human breaking points. Weaponised Seasonal Affective Disorder, basically. The town in question has gone back to their Druidic roots and started sacrificing people out of desperation.
- Revealing Cover Up: The townspeople's vehement denial that Glenn Harris ever arrived in town makes Cade pretty sure he definitely was there.
- Shout-Out: To The Wicker Man, complete with the titular sacrificial structure. Although it ends better for our hero than the film did.
- Town with a Dark Secret: The townspeople have resorted to human sacrifice to try and end the downpour that has lasted three years by this point.
