Author: Tower Curator

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Illuna’s Happenings

Extinguished

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“It seems as if they are genuinely after some of the monsters. Not to enslave, but to have them work for Yora. Inspired by ‘that hellhound that’s been running around Lyria’ apparently,” Alyssa said with a glance to Fela.

The hellhound looked up from her jerky for a moment, offering a shrug.

“Not sure that I believe that fully, but it is what the Yora intelligencer said.”

Rokien leaned forward, rubbing at the hairs on his bovine chin. Fezzik started to mirror his motions, stopping only once he realized that their poses were almost completely identical. Eventually, he leaned back and looked around the small tent.

Alyssa sat alongside Fela with Brakkt on her opposite side. The prince had not been too happy with their little stunt, but apparently being literally stolen from was acceptable grounds for throwing some weight around. They had deliberately not threatened them into leaving or otherwise interfered with their business in Illuna. Unless, of course, the intelligencer was required for whatever they were doing. But if that was the case, they shouldn’t have stolen from Irulon.

Irulon was back in her room, applying protections to everything. Or doing more research, if she had finished with that already. Kasita was with her, not just to keep an eye on Irulon, but… mostly to keep an eye on her. Alyssa didn’t think Irulon would do anything too drastic, and she seemed to have gotten her head squared on her shoulders a bit better than it had been at any other point recently—a bit of intimidation and throwing her weight around helped get her back to normal. Normalish, anyway.

So Alyssa had come down to the monster camp to keep them fully informed as to what was going on. “Just thought you should know that it doesn’t seem like they’re planning on murdering you all. Which is a sentence that is depressing in how I have to say it at all.”

“It’s unlike the Yora I know,” Brakkt said. “They’ve always prided themselves on keeping their lands clear of monsters. To invite them in now… I’m not sure what they’re planning, but I don’t buy that it is altruistic in nature.”

“Especially because they are still the most likely candidates for the people who were harassing and killing your people and driving you out of your home.”

“But there isn’t much we can do,” Fezzik said, deep voice rumbling in the tent. “If the human leader decides that we cannot stay, we will have to go. We could run again, but that would just expose us to more starvation and exhaustion.”

“And open us up to more attacks from them,” Rokien added. “I don’t have any proof—I haven’t seen or heard anything—but I am almost positive that our camp is being watched from afar. It’s just a feeling I’ve got. And those watchers are almost certainly our pursuers.”

Alyssa pressed her lips together. Without being able to see souls over long distances, she couldn’t back up his claim. Not without further investigation. “Think you could sniff out some humans?” Alyssa said, glancing toward Fela. The draken likely could as well.

They might have to do a quick investigation. If only to ensure that everyone at the camp stayed safe.

Fela seemed eager, if her enthusiastic nod was anything to go by.

“We’ll do a quick round then. Perhaps even now, if there isn’t anything else to talk about?”

Fezzik started to stand, but hesitated and simply chose to straighten his back. Even seated on an uncomfortably short stump, he was still a head taller than a standing Alyssa. “Thank you for doing all this for us,” he said. “We aren’t accustomed to humans treating us well, but you appear to be genuine in your dealings with us.”

“I… would say that it’s just human decency, but apparently not. Regardless of what others think, I think humans and monsters have a lot to gain by working together. On both sides. Ancient wars and lingering animosity from ancestors past shouldn’t get in the way of progress… Well, ancestors on the side of humans. I presume that some of the longer-lived monsters might actually have been around that long. But I also presume that they’re in a minority position relative to everyone else.”

“Probably a safe assumption,” Rokien said, bobbing his head in an affirmative nod. “Though I won’t agree that ancient wars are the only thing causing animosity. Look at what happened to us only a few weeks ago.”

Alyssa winced. “Yeah… That… isn’t a good thing. There’s a lot that still needs to change, clearly. It’s a work in progress and it won’t be instant. But the future will be a better place if everyone can just cut that out.”

“If only it were that easy.”

“Indeed,” Alyssa said with her lips pursed. “Which is why I’m glad you all are giving Illuna a chance.”

“A chance of desperation. It’s not like we had much choice. It is working out so far. As long as this Yora business doesn’t ruin it.”

“We’ll try to keep things from going awry on that front,” Brakkt said. “Though knowing that they actually want some of your people does complicate matters. We won’t be able to simply hand them something else in exchange for leaving you alone.”

“If they’re only looking for a few…” Fezzik said, trailing off as he glanced toward Rokien. The minotaur glanced back, offering a tiny nod in return.

Alyssa frowned, guessing at what small agreement just passed between them. “If you give a mouse a cookie,” she said slowly, “it’s going to want a glass of milk to go with it.”

“What?”

Everyone in the room was staring a her, leading to her simply sighing.

“It’s a phrase from my homeland. Means that giving someone like that what they are demanding will only lead to them asking for more. Or something like that. The actual story turns out a bit heartwarming in the end, but… I guess I’m getting distracted… The point is, don’t sacrifice yourselves unless you’re absolutely sure that it is the only way forward. And even then…”

Alyssa shook her head and focused on Fela. “Shall we go look around?”

“I’ll come with you,” Brakkt said, dusting his tunic off as he stood.

“Can you actually come with us? If these are Yora people, won’t that cause some kind of diplomatic incident?”

“Which is exactly why I should come. Try to not forget that you are essentially representing my family by association. And, of course, if these theoretical people spying on the monster camp are not equipped with any insignia or emblem of a house, and if they are armed to the teeth, I would be remiss in my duties to not handle what are likely brigands and highwaymen preying on travelers and merchants.”

“Ah. I think I understand…”

“Allow me a short time to get ready, meet me at the draken tent.”

“Sure thing,” Alyssa said, watching him head out.

Fela’s ears perked up as she eyed the tent flap. “Is he going to get in his armor?”

“Probably.”

“I like him in his armor.”

“Of course you do,” Alyssa said with a small smile as she turned to Fezzik and Rokien. “We’ll let you know what we find.”

“Take care,” Fezzik said slowly. “We were being hunted for weeks and we never once saw our assailants. We knew they were out there, we could almost feel their gazes on us at all times. Then, without any sign or warning, someone would just… disappear. Sometimes we would find pieces of them. Sometimes someone would just disappear completely.”

“I have some experience dealing with stealthed or otherwise invisible foes…” Though last time she chased someone invisible around Lyria, she had been connected with Tenebrael’s power. She wasn’t sure that she had actually used Tenebrael’s power, but it might have played a part.

It had also drawn the Astral Authority.

Still, even without using her sense of souls, she had been able to detect that man even while Irulon and the Pharaoh had been having a hard time of it. So if these guys were using anything similar, she should probably still be able to see through it. And if they used a more regular invisibility spell—or were just that good at hiding from view—Fela and the Draken should be able to sniff them out.

Bidding Fezzik and Rokien a temporary farewell, Alyssa headed over to the draken tent. It was a bit of a shame that the stables had toppled over. They had been a bit more spacious than this tent. Then again, the draken didn’t really need a roof over their heads. Most of them were perfectly happy to sleep outside. Izsha especially. Staying inside for a few weeks straight, and unable to move at that, probably contributed to why Izsha could often be found lazing about in the sun outside the tent.

Musca was outside as well, but in contrast to the happily relaxed Izsha, the tiger-striped draken paced back and forth outside the tent. With its large body and long tail whipping back and forth each time it turned around, Alyssa was a little nervous about getting much closer.

“Something wrong?” Alyssa asked, already knowing that she wasn’t going to get a proper response. But it did make Musca stop pacing in order to properly offer a glare. “You all want to go on a little adventure?”

“Human hunting!” Fela said, tail wagging back and forth.

“I mean, yes, but maybe we shouldn’t phrase it like that,” Alyssa said with a glance around her. Being a city of tents, others were around. Both monsters and a pair of Illuna’s human guards. A few of whom were close enough to have heard and were now giving strange looks in her direction. “Or at least that loud,” Alyssa said in a much softer tone of voice as she smiled and waved at the few guards. Luckily, almost all of them knew her as one of the people who liaised with the monsters on the regular.

“Do you think Musca’s saddle will fit you?” Both the draken were on the smaller side, at least when compared to the likes of Ensou, but Musca was just a little wider than Izsha. So the saddle should fit, but it might wobble around and be just too loose to properly use.

Musca snapped at the air in Alyssa’s direction, just chomping aggressively on nothing.

“Woah, calm down there,” Alyssa said, raising her hands and taking a careful step backwards. “I’m sure you can go too. I just would rather… I mean, Izsha and I haven’t been able to go out together for a long time. You don’t actually want me riding you… do you?”

The draken snorted as it turned away. It didn’t stop walking, heading off away from the tent and further into the monster camp.

Alyssa could only shoot a look at Fela, raising her eyebrows.

“Don’t ask me. I don’t understand how scaly monsters think.”

“I wonder if she’s feeling lonely,” Alyssa said as Izsha got to its feet. “Irulon’s been holed up in her research since we got back from Owlcroft. Aside from at the ritual on Izsha, I’m not sure Irulon has even seen Musca. And I don’t think they interacted much at the time.”

But even with Musca acting out, Izsha looked quite happy to be getting some attention. With Musca gone, there was no point in not testing out the other saddle. Slipping into the tent, Alyssa found Dasca sprawled out, deep in sleep.

Fela crouched, coiled, and pounced right on its side. Dasca woke immediately and just about clamped its teeth around her head. But she was just a bit too quick, slipping out from between those sharp teeth as they skimmed her fur. As it tried to get up to its feet, she tackled it back down to the ground.

Ignoring their playful wrestling, Alyssa marched right past and hefted up the smallest saddle. Ensou’s saddle was missing, but so was Ensou. In the short time Brakkt had left Alyssa alone in the previous tent, he must have saddled up his draken and taken off.

He had a lot more experience saddling draken than Alyssa did. She thought she was fairly decent at it. Slinging the saddle over Izsha and hooking it around her belly was a practiced motion, but it still took a bit of doing. Were she to race Brakkt, he would be mounted before she managed to buckle one belt.

“This doesn’t look too bad,” Alyssa said after getting all the buckles done up. A few good tugs of the saddle showed that it was slightly looser than she would have liked, but not so much that she thought she would fall off even if Izsha had to sprint a bit. As long as they weren’t fleeing for their lives from the Astral Authority…

And I really shouldn’t jinx it…

Just as Alyssa finished up with the saddle, Brakkt pushed aside the large tent flap. Or rather, the Black Prince pushed aside the flap. He was fully equipped in his dark armor, helmet included. His glowing sword gleamed from its sheath at his hip. Fela and Dasca, still tussling with each other, stopped immediately as he took a few steps into the room. Fela’s pointed ears actually flattened against her head. Not completely, not like a scared cat, but enough that Alyssa noticed.

“Ready to go?”

“Musca?” he asked, looking around.

“Stormed off into the camp. Not sure why. I just asked if I could use its saddle with Izsha. Is Musca normally very possessive? Or perhaps just lonely?”

“Hard to say…” Brakkt said, eying Izsha and the saddle. His voice had a slight tinny echo to it thanks to his helmet. Once upon a time, Alyssa probably would have been pressing her ears flat against her head like Fela was, but now, she knew the man inside the helmet too well to be that scared of him. “I don’t think Musca has ever had something given to someone else like that.”

“So probably… Great. Now I feel bad.”

“It’s something Musca would have to deal with someday… probably. I suppose that day is just today,” he said with a slight shrug. Turning back to the flap, he shoved it aside to reveal Ensou standing just outside. “We’ll stay within eyesight of each other, but spread out enough to cover some ground. Fela, take care. If there are people out there and they are the same ones that have been after the monsters, they likely won’t hesitate to target a hellhound.”

“We’ll stay closer to you or Alyssa,” Fela said, rubbing her large paws all over Dasca’s head.

“Good. Keep a Message spell handy.”

Fela’s lips curled into a scowl. She didn’t say anything, but…

While Fela could use human magic much like how Kasita could, her lack of opposable thumbs really hindered her handling of spell cards. Her paws were quite dexterous for what they were, but flat pieces of paper just didn’t work well. Even as Alyssa slipped a Message card out of her deck and held it out, Fela glared. After a few moments, she clasped it between both of her hands, glaring all the while.

She really did not like using human magic.

“Maybe we can slip it into your belt. Then you just have to touch it to cast the spell.” When Alyssa had first met Fela, the hellhound had been in chains. After that, she often wore nothing but her own fur. It wasn’t until she started working for Lyria that she had taken to wearing a… uniform? Baggy pants and a loose-fitting tunic that she could easily get into and out from, but styled and colored to match the palace guards. Pulling the card out of her hands, Alyssa slid it between Fela’s waist and the belt.

Fela glared at it, but ended up sighing. “Can’t I just stick a little closer to one of you?”

“There’s a lot of ground out there to cover,” Brakkt said. “Especially when we’re going off something as nonspecific as a feeling that Rokien and Fezzik had.”

“Still, safety is paramount. And if someone touches a single hair on your head…” Alyssa ruffled the fur-like mane around Fela’s head as she trailed off. “I’ll stick relatively close to you.”

With Fela, Izsha, and Dasca in tow, Alyssa followed behind Brakkt and Ensou as they moved to the far edge of the camp. To start with, Alyssa pulled out her binoculars and scanned the horizon. It was still quite early in the afternoon. Plenty of time to run around and check everywhere that she could see… probably. They would basically run around aimlessly until Fela or one of the draken smelled a human where they weren’t supposed to be.

There was something odd though, something that Alyssa couldn’t quite put her finger on. She looked from one end of the grassy hills then toward the more swamp-like terrain toward the north. The city blocked off the really swampy area to the west and toward Owlcroft, but… Something looked off about the city as well.

“Do you notice anything strange?” she asked, handing the binoculars over to Brakkt.

“What am I looking for?”

“I don’t know. Just… something. You tell me.”

“Hm.” Taking the binoculars, he started looking around himself.

Alyssa waited, still staring and trying to figure out why the horizon just didn’t look like she expected it to. But…

Fela made a small noise, almost a cross between a purr and a growl. “The sky,” she said with her head craned straight back.

After staring at her looking up for a moment, Alyssa mimicked her and stared. Being still early in the afternoon, the sun was high in the sky. Just a few degrees over dead center. Being almost noon, it was much too bright for the moon to really be visible. If it was even overhead at the moment. For all Alyssa knew, it could have been on the opposite side of the planet. Everything looked normal.

“It’s normal,” Brakkt said at the exact moment that it hit Alyssa.

Normal. “The sky is normal.”

Tenebrael’s ensign was nowhere to be seen. The faint flames in the sky, the ones that had been burning so brightly at Owlcroft, were completely gone.

“When did that happen?” Alyssa asked without looking away.

“I’m… relatively certain that the sky was aflame this morning. Irulon might be able to tell for certain.”

“If she has even looked outside her window in the past five days…”

“What does it mean?”

Alyssa could only shake her head. “I don’t know.”

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Illuna’s Happenings

Intelligencer

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Dignitaries, such as those visiting from Yora or Irulon and Brakkt, had dedicated quarters almost directly adjacent to the manor of the lord of the land. Brakkt and Irulon weren’t staying in it, of course, choosing to distance themselves by housing with the guild instead, but they could request housing at any time. The building itself rather reminded Alyssa of a mother-in-law house. It was attached to the manor by a covered walkway, but was otherwise a completely separate building. It had its own guards and its own servants—though they probably had other duties to attend to while it was vacant.

The interior was furnished better than the manor was. Probably yet another way to display wealth to visitors. The craftsmanship of the walls, crown molding, tables, chairs, was all exquisitely done. And, not only that, but it was all smooth as well. Alyssa wasn’t sure when sandpaper had been invented or if some kind of sandpaper analogue existed here, but it sure looked like it. Only Lyria’s palace was quite as nice. Most things there were carved from stone, so Alyssa couldn’t quite compare it to the wooden furnishings here.

Given the rest of Illuna, Alyssa almost expected something a bit more humble. Was it really necessary to impress visitors to this degree?

Irulon, dressed to the nines in her dragon hide armor—completely scrubbed clean to the point where it practically shined—gave a heavy knock on the door of the Yora visitor’s quarters. Alyssa stood at her side, wearing slightly less clean dragon hide armor. Meanwhile, Kasita looked rather like Oxart at the moment. She wasn’t a perfect copy of Oxart, but she was wearing the armor of a highly ranked palace guard and slightly protruding cheekbones clearly took inspiration from Oxart as well.

The door swung open after only a few short seconds. Their coming had not been communicated beforehand. Either they had a guard standing by or one of Illuna’s guards who were watching over the guest house had informed the Yora representatives of their arrival.

Alyssa was leaning toward the former theory. If they knew that the princess was coming, Alyssa would have expected the most important of them to be the one at the door—or at least standing nearby. Instead, some low-level grunt stood in the doorway, looking first to Kasita before his gaze wandered over to Irulon and Alyssa. The recognition in his eyes was slow to start up, but after a double-take on Irulon, he clearly realized just who was at the door.

“P-Princess?” he called out, half over his shoulder and far louder than necessary. An immediate ruckus started up. Feet hit the ground in the room behind him, a door opened, and some out of sight whispering started up.

“My apologies for visiting unannounced,” Irulon said with a smile ripped straight from a viper. “I have been quite busy these past few days. And yet, I thought it would be remiss of me to miss visiting with such distinguished guests.”

“Princess Irulon!” A man strode forward, still slipping into a pressed suit of red velvet with a small emblem of swords embroidered over the right breast. He was a thinner man with dark hair, somewhat messy as if he just got up from lying down. His hands rubbed together as he stepped right up to the door. “We weren’t expecting you or we would have prepared better to greet you.”

“Of course you would have,” Irulon said as she stepped into the room without an invitation. The guy who opened the door stepped aside for her, but looked about ready to protest when Alyssa and Kasita started to follow. A sharp glare from the thin man had him snapping his mouth closed, allowing them entry. “Rest assured, I am not expecting to be treated as a princess. This is merely an informal greeting… and perhaps a request, if you wouldn’t mind hearing me out.”

“A request from the princess?” His smile turned a little strained. “I… suppose it wouldn’t hurt to hear you out.”

“Don’t worry. It is nothing cumbersome,” Irulon said, hands clasped behind her back as she stared around the room. There were three people present aside from the thin man. Two were men. One was a woman. They didn’t appear to be dressed in an official capacity, not like the thin man, but rather were all in something of a casual dress. They clearly hadn’t been expecting visitors aside from perhaps servants.

The group Alyssa had seen approaching Illuna had been made up of more than just the four of them. These were probably the most important of them all. They were, according to Kasita, the only ones staying in this guest house. The others had been relegated to some of the less opulent inns in the city.

It was a nice place, built for relaxation above all. Traveling in this world was a tiring and excruciating, so the comfortable-looking seats were likely welcome far more than any other luxuries of the room. There was a bookshelf with a few dozen books provided by Illuna for someone to pass time with, but it looked untouched. Which made Alyssa wonder just what a traveler like this group might do to pass the time. Tourism around the city? It wasn’t like they had television to sit around and watch.

Irulon’s examination of the room came to a close as she looked back to the thin man. “It’s just a personal request of mine. But I’m afraid you have me at a disadvantage. You know who I am, of course, but I don’t believe you’ve introduced yourself to me.”

“Ah! Forgive me, Princess Irulon. I am the Chief Retainer of Savorous of Yora, Deezer.”

“Chief retainer,” Irulon said with a nod. Stepping further into the room, she moved up to the bookcase and looked the titles up and down. “A high station. How is Yora as a city? I’ve never been.”

“Um…” Deezer looked over to one of the others in the room, only to receive a shrug. “Beautiful, your highness. We have lush, fertile land and the highest mountains. An impressive sight for anyone to see?”

“Really?” Irulon looked toward him, violet eyes piercing. “You don’t sound too sure of yourself.”

“No… I mean yes! It is very impressive. But… I’m just not sure where this line of questioning is going.”

“Just curious as to what kind of place it might be,” she said, turning away from him. “How are the people? Do you have much problem with crime?”

“Crime? Your Highness?”

“Lyria doesn’t take too kindly to criminals. You might not be aware of this, but just recently, we, along with some help from guests—” Irulon waved a hand toward Alyssa. “—rooted out one of the largest gangs in the city. Most are dead. Some wish they were dead. The rest might be able to be rehabilitated, but that is someone else’s job.”

“Um… Congratulations?”

“Thank you!” Irulon’s voice turned from unnecessarily chipper to a sinister drawl. “Which brings me to my problem here today. You see, someone entered into my private room last night and pilfered a private journal of mine. For anyone else, they might never see their journal again. But you see, my journal calls to me.”

Deezer blinked. “It—”

He didn’t get a chance to finish. Irulon snapped her fingers together, a motion that left her pointing directly at the bookcase. Kasita moved, crossing the short distance through the room in an instant, moving straight to the bookshelf where she said she had found the notebook in the first place. After sliding a few of the books to the side, she pulled out a much smaller notebook.

At the same time as she removed it from the shelf—a tricky bit of slight of hand in actuality, having stored the book within her body—Alyssa cast a series of Spectral Chains. In an instant, all four of the Yora representatives were wrapped in ghostly chains. The one closest to the door lost his balance and fell to his knees, but the other three managed to remain on their feet.

“The favor I am going to ask,” Irulon started, voice perfectly neutral once again, “is for you to explain yourself. I’ll give you one chance to deny that you know anything about this. One chance to claim that you are being framed right now.” Deezer opened his mouth, eyes wide, but Irulon clamped a hand around his face. “Lie to me and I will know. Lie to me and I’ll see you hung from your ankles off the walls of Illuna’s highest building under the effects of Rigor Mortis for twenty-four hours. But… tell me the truth and I might have a modicum of mercy.”

She waited a moment without drawing her hand back, looking around to the other four in the room. She paused on each of their faces before moving onto the next. “You are all welcome to speak up. If your leader refuses to answer or has an answer that I don’t like, you’ll all be joining in his fate unless you decide to tell me what I want to know.” Turning back to Deezer, she slowly removed her hand from his face, crossing her arms in the process.

Deezer didn’t even wait half a second before he opened his mouth. “I don’t know what that is or why it’s here! But when word of this… this indignity gets back to Savorous, you’ll regret ever approaching me!”

Irulon gave him the flattest look possible. “So,” she said slowly, drawing out the word. “You have chosen death.”

Alyssa raised an eyebrow, but decided to not comment on the tone with which Irulon spoke. At least not now. Perhaps later.

Deezer’s mouth clamped shut, face turning a paler than it had been. “It really wasn’t… I didn’t…”

“Does anyone else wish to make an application to save their own hides?” Irulon said, looking around to the others. Her eyes locked onto Alyssa for a moment as she turned and, pausing, she gave the slightest shake of her head. “Or shall I send you all to Tenebrael’s embrace with all due haste.”

That slight shake of Irulon’s head had Alyssa frowning. Deezer was telling the truth, at least as far as Irulon could tell. And Irulon could tell quite a bit.

Kasita seemed to get the message as well. Standing just behind the sole woman among their chained party, she nodded her head toward the woman. At a raised eyebrow from Irulon, Kasita nodded again.

Irulon didn’t immediately walk over to the woman. There wasn’t a direct path to her with the chains in the air. So she clasped her hands behind her back and slowly stepped around the room, stopping at the man who opened the door. “Have anything to say? Perhaps you saw how my book found its way to the shelf in this room?”

“I—I don’t know, your highness. I was at a tavern last night, drinking with some of the others. I only woke up a few hours ago,” he said with a slight grimace.

But Irulon nodded her head. He couldn’t see it, not with how he had fallen on his face. “I see. I believe you,” Irulon said.

The tension drained from his shoulders as she stared walking away. His large body practically melted into a puddle in her wake. Both Deezer and the woman gave him rather nasty glares. The other man probably would have as well, but he had his own problems at the moment.

Irulon stood in front of him, not speaking this time, just staring.

He blinked first, ducking his head to avert his gaze.

“Hm,” was all Irulon said as she walked on to the woman Kasita was standing behind. Again, Irulon didn’t say anything, but rather than stare as she had previously, she slipped the notebook into her satchel and reached for the tome chained to her hip. Slowly, deliberately, she started paging through it. Alyssa couldn’t see the spells from her angle, but the woman could. And the woman clearly had a background in magical knowledge.

Irulon stopped on a page, tapped it twice as if considering it. The woman’s eyes widened as she looked down at whatever spell Irulon had stopped at. When Irulon moved forward after one more tap of her finger, the woman almost sank to her knees in relief. She was obviously trying to keep her composure, but the relief leaked out…

That composure lasted right up until Irulon stopped on another page.

“I…”

Irulon looked up. She couldn’t meet the woman’s eyes; the woman stared only at the spell. “Yes?”

“I might know how that book came to be here.”

“You what?” Deezer shouted.

“Silence,” Irulon said. A card appeared between her fingertips, aimed directly at Deezer, as she spoke. It burned up before the word even fully got out.

Deezer tried to shout something, but no sound came from his mouth. A fact he only noticed after trying for several more words. Looking down at himself, he started struggling against the chains binding him, but failed to get anywhere at all.

“As you were saying?” Irulon said slowly, staring without having ever broken her gaze with the woman since she spoke.

“I… The book…” Her head lifted just enough for her to shoot a look around the room. “Deezer,” she started, focusing on him.

He tried to shout, but the silencing spell was still in effect, resulting in him looking like a scene from a horror movie on mute.

“And just what does he have to do with this?” Irulon said, tapping her foot hard enough to make loud thumps echo through the room. Each one made everyone but Deezer wince. “Spit it out. I’ve already been forced to come down here while I have other work to be doing, stand around and talk, and now you’re making me listen to your hesitation while you try to think up a good cover story, while you try to think of how to phrase stealing the princess’ private journal in a way that makes me less likely to kill you where you stand? Pathetic.”

“I didn’t know it was the princess’ book!”

Alyssa had seen flat looks on Irulon’s face before. But this… It set a new standard. As soon as the woman spoke, Irulon’s entire face lost all emotion. She just stared, no longer glaring, but simply flabbergasted.

“Ufu~ Ufufuwahhaha. I don’t think that was the right response.”

“Look. I’m an espire. My job is to keep us and our interests safe by knowing everything.”

“Clearly not very good at your job,” Alyssa said.

“I received word that someone had been holed up inside the guild for weeks without being seen. Someone who might be a threat. The book was supposed to be back where it came from before morning, but… I… misplaced it.”

Alyssa shot a glance at Kasita. That had probably been her doing. If not for her, Irulon could have looked around her room and… well, Irulon probably would have noticed even a slight misplacement of the book—and, as long as she noticed soon enough, Retrograde Cognition would have shown someone placing and stealing the book—but someone else might not have noticed.

“So you ordered it stolen?”

“No! It was… offered to me by one of my contacts in the city. I didn’t realize it was yours or I never would have accepted it.”

“Hm.” Irulon stared at her for a moment before lifting her gaze ever so slightly.

Kasita, still standing behind the woman, shrugged.

“I see,” Irulon said, turning. “I appreciate your cooperation thus far, Retainer Deezer. I believe we will be relieving you of your espire for the time being.”

“W-What are you going to do?”

“For now? Simply talk. And if I like what I hear, perhaps you’ll return to Yora in more than just an ash box.” Looking to Alyssa, Irulon gave a slow nod.

Three of the four Spectral Chains ended. None of the three formerly chained representatives moved, though Deezer looked as if he was about ready to march forward and give Irulon a piece of his mind. A glare from the princess kept him at a distance.

“Come,” Irulon said. “You can walk under your own power… or would you prefer if I brought—”

“I can walk!”

“Good.”

Kasita dropped a hand on the woman’s shoulder and started leading her out of the room. If the woman actually struggled, either Alyssa or Irulon would have to step in, but so long as she didn’t, Kasita was perfectly capable of directing her through the city.

“Deezer was shouting after us as we left,” Alyssa said as soon as they closed the door behind them. She kept her voice quiet. The woman was several paces in front of them with the way Kasita was leading her, so she shouldn’t be overheard…

“I know,” Irulon said quite a bit louder.

“Shouldn’t we have removed that silencing spell?”

“It will wear off. In a day. Maybe two. I always forget these things, you know?”

Alyssa could only raise an eyebrow. Being so overly stressed that she half-slept through someone breaking into her room? Possible. Forgetting the details of a spell? Shaking her head, Alyssa asked, “What are we doing with her?”

“She’s an intelligencer. As she said, it is her duty to know things. Perhaps we’ll find out some things that Kasita was unable to.”

“Sounds good, but—”

“After I make her regret being born.”

Alyssa pressed her lips together, shooting the princess a glare that went completely unnoticed. “Can we please find out why they are here before you render her incapable of speech?”

“Hm. Maybe.”

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<– Back | Index | Next –>

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<– Back | Index | Next –>

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Illuna’s Happenings

Thief

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“I see,” Irulon said, scratching down a few notes in her notebook. Izsha, resting in a pile of straw within the monster camp, simply stared patiently.

It was the third such interview session between the two since Izsha’s awakening. Alyssa had sat in for all three thus far, and all three had been roughly the same. Irulon had a list of questions which she posed to Izsha. Most were simple yes or no questions that Izsha could answer with a nod or shake of its head. Some were a bit more complex. How Irulon managed to distill Izsha’s intentions from the draken’s movements or occasional noises was beyond Alyssa. Even looking over Irulon’s shoulder, Alyssa couldn’t actually tell what Izsha had said to any of the non-binary questions. Irulon’s notes were all in her cypher.

But Irulon seemed satisfied, nodding to herself as she circled something she wrote down earlier and drew a line to a bit of text that she had just written.

More importantly, Izsha didn’t seem opposed to these interview sessions. Which had been one of Alyssa’s main concerns. Dying seemed like it would be a traumatic experience. Combine that with having its soul torn out of its body, placed into Alyssa, then torn out of there and put back in its normal body, and it seemed like a recipe for the ultimate version of post traumatic stress disorder. Draken body language was difficult to completely translate to something that Alyssa could understand, but she had been around Izsha enough to guess at how the draken was feeling.

At ease. Content. Even pleased with the situation. Izsha’s tail gently swished from side to side, even while sitting. Not in the predatory way that a cat might before pouncing, but in a calm, almost happy way. Perhaps Izsha was just excited that it could finally participate in conversations again instead of simply being talked to.

And Izsha had been talked to. Every word that Alyssa, Brakkt, or any of the others had said while Izsha had been comatose got through. Which was probably a big reason why Izsha wasn’t a shell of its former self. Being able to experience at least some outside stimuli, not being trapped in its own mind completely, probably helped a great deal.

Another factor was probably just how good Izsha’s body felt. Irulon had performed a full inspection before the first interview yesterday morning. Apparently, Izsha was in almost perfect health. Better than Irulon had ever seen before. That probably came from Iosefael. The angel had healed up Izsha’s body completely. It had been lying roughly still for three weeks, but that hadn’t caused so much atrophy that it had regressed beyond what Iosefael had done.

“And,” Irulon said, looking up from her notebook, “just to clarify, while you were housed within Alyssa’s body, you had no sense of anything. No feelings, no sense of sight or hearing, but also no pain or discomfort?”

Izsha started to nod its head, but paused and let out a few chirping noises from the back of its throat.

Irulon’s eyes flicked black and white as she nodded her head and started writing. “Nothing at all then? Some kind of stasis effect?” They were questions, but the way she spoke with them under her breath clearly meant that she wasn’t expecting a response. She was just thinking aloud. “Interesting. And Alyssa, you didn’t feel anything either? No changes from your usual state of being?”

Alyssa blinked. That… was the first question directed at her since these interviews began. The surprise kept her from responding despite it being a relatively easy question to answer. “There was something. A warmth. A feeling that I normally associate with coming into contact with angels or even Adrael’s staff. So you’ve probably felt it too, but it was a bit more intense than I am used to.”

“Interesting,” Irulon said, making a note. “But nothing more mundane such as double vision, hearing voices or other sounds that weren’t actually there, seeing what you might have thought were hallucinations or illusions?”

“I don’t think so,” Alyssa said after considering for a moment. “I wasn’t exactly looking out for such things, though. And I don’t suppose I would know if I had seen something unless it was obviously unrealistic.”

“I see.” After writing down a few more notes, Irulon nodded to herself and snapped her notebook shut. “I believe I’ve got all I need for the moment. I shall let the both of you know if I have additional questions.”

“Figured out what that other thing that Tenebrael gave you dreams about is yet?”

“No. Not quite. At this point, I can only assume that it was my own mind constructing something I had hoped to see that merely blended into the revelation.”

Alyssa stood soon after Irulon, brushing her pants off as she moved. The monster camp didn’t have much in the way of chairs. They had some cots, thanks to the few of them who had been working for the city prior to Yora’s arrival asking for them. But they hadn’t been able to get enough for everyone. It wasn’t a problem of the humans being stingy. Rather, the real problem was supply. None of the humans had expected needing a hundred cots on hand for emergencies like this. There weren’t any department stores around that had warehouses full of beds, cots, and blankets.

Apparently the few that had been brought to the camp were being rotated around and usually given to the elderly among them.

And Alyssa was not elderly. That wasn’t to say that one of the gremlins hadn’t offered, but Alyssa had declined. The hassle of moving it out to Izsha’s straw pile or bringing the large draken into the small tent had seemed like more work than necessary. She simply sat on a small wooden stump instead. A bit dirty, but at least it didn’t have sap oozing out from its knots.

Irulon looked over with an eyebrow raised. “You don’t need to accompany me everywhere. I’m just heading back to my quarters to organize my thoughts,” she said, waving the notebook she had been writing in. “And, while we’re on the topic, you can call off your pet mimic. I don’t need to be observed at all times.”

“Kasita has a name,” Alyssa said, tone a little harsh. “And she hasn’t been watching you. Rather, she’s currently on a mission. She hasn’t been around for a good two days now.”

“Mission.” Before Alyssa had a chance to explain, Irulon nodded her head. “Ah. Yora. I could have sworn that I spotted Kasita in my room last night.”

“She sent me a Message last night letting me know that she was alright and that everything was going according to plan. If she slipped away, I’d have imagined that she would have just given me an update in person…” Alyssa bit her lip, staring at Irulon. “How certain are you that you saw someone there?”

Irulon didn’t say anything for a moment. Her eyes flicked back and forth between their normal violet and the black and white of the dragon. “Why don’t we head back,” she said, already moving. “I need to check some things.”

Alyssa shot a glance to Izsha before chasing after the princess, leaving the draken. “Someone was in your room and you just ignored them? You’re Irulon! You don’t do things like that.”

“I’ve had a lot on my mind,” Irulon said without looking back.

“It could have been an assassin!”

“I think I would have noticed that level of hostile intent. We have yet to determine if anyone was there at all. I don’t suppose you saw anything amiss over the last few days?”

They were rushing through the monster camp now, probably startling half the monsters. Irulon wouldn’t do anything so undignified as break into a sprint, but her power-walking drew eyes. There had been a tension over the past few days, ever since Yora’s arrival. Alyssa and Brakkt had kept Fezzik and Rokien informed of the situation, but they had decided to keep the exact details a secret from the wider group of monsters in the hopes of preventing any incidents that might sway Illuna toward throwing the monsters to the wolves. Even still, rumors had spread. Anything strange would always breed rumors, but some were frighteningly accurate. Enough so that Alyssa had to wonder if the group hadn’t been keeping a few members secret. Ones with abilities along the lines of Volta and Kasita.

Then again, some rumors were wildly inaccurate. One of the prevailing theories that Alyssa had overheard was that the city of Illuna was in trouble with other humans because they were helping out monsters. Another posited that Illuna was only being nice to the monsters to keep them docile while they arranged to sell them off to the highest bidders. If not for Fezzik trying to dampen the more outlandish rumors—such as them being kept for live sacrifices to Tenebrael—there might actually be some conflict.

Regardless of what theory any given monster ascribed to, seeing a pair of humans rush through their camp was cause for concern. And Alyssa didn’t have time to sit about and calm any of them down.

Had she noticed anything strange? Nothing particular jumped out at her. The guild building had a number of people coming and going at just about every hour of the day. There were the actual guild members eating, accepting quests, resting, or just hanging about waiting for something interesting to happen. Then there were the customers, the people offering quests and asking tasks of the adventurers. A few administration personnel who didn’t qualify as customers or adventurers also were in and out of the place. Pinpointing one person who might have been suspicious was beyond impossible.

So Alyssa shot back with her own question. “Have there been other nights when you thought Kasita was around but she actually wasn’t?”

“That’s certainly a question.”

“One you can’t answer?”

“Hm.”

“Who has been sneaking into your room?” Alyssa practically shouted at the unobservant princess.

“Retrograde Cognition will uncover the answer to that.”

Alyssa was about to complain about how Retrograde Cognition wouldn’t even be necessary if Irulon had just looked a little harder at whoever had been in her room. Izsha running up alongside her stalled her complaints. And her running.

As Alyssa slowed to a stop, Izsha bent down just enough for Alyssa to climb on if she wanted. There was no saddle. Not at all. It wasn’t just that Izsha had been unable to equip a saddle on its own, but that Izsha’s saddle was lost somewhere near Owlcroft. Possibly destroyed, even. Brakkt had to specially commission the draken saddles, so getting a replacement wasn’t an easy thing at the moment.

Alyssa only hesitated a moment before hopping onto Izsha’s back. The draken scales were somewhat prickly, but Alyssa trusted Izsha not to skewer her backside. More importantly, Izsha had been laid up for a full month, probably hearing about various things that Alyssa and Brakkt had talked about. Things like Alyssa riding on Musca for a while.

Kasita had talked about similar things. Being unable to act while others needed help irritated and made her feel worthless. Alyssa hadn’t really been in such a situation before, but she could empathize with the feeling. If Izsha felt the same way… How could she not accept Izsha’s offer for help?

Together, they charged forward for only a split second. Irulon had not stopped when Izsha pulled up, but her little human legs couldn’t carry her fast enough to outrun a draken. As Izsha paused alongside the princess, Alyssa held out a hand.

Irulon pressed her lips together for just a moment before accepting the offered hand. She hoisted herself up and settled in right behind Alyssa.

“Do take care, Izsha. You are not equipped with a saddle.”

“Riding back to Lyria is going to be a literal pain in the ass,” Alyssa said, trying to keep good humor in her voice.

She would have to find a thick slab of leather to pad the ride before leaving. Something to add to her shopping list. But for now, she just grit her teeth and bore with it.

With Izsha’s speed, they made it all the way up to the city walls in an eighth of the time it would have taken to run. And with far less sweat and exhaustion. The gate guards, being used to the draken coming and going for the past few weeks, didn’t protest their entry into the city proper. From there, it was only a few quick minutes to get to the guild hall.

Irulon sprung from Izsha’s back. Without stopping at the door, she marched inside like she owned the place.

“Thanks Izsha,” Alyssa said, hopping from the draken’s back to follow after the princess. Heading into the guild building, Alyssa started straight toward the stairs, expecting Irulon to have gone directly to her room. That was where the incident had taken place. But, halfway to the stairs, Alyssa spotted Irulon standing over the table that their little group had effectively taken over since arriving in Illuna.

Sitting in the seat, waving a small book back and forth, Kasita smiled up at the looming Irulon. She was in her usual form as Alyssa’s twin, looking like nothing was amiss.

In contrast, Irulon glared down with piercing eyes. If looks could kill…

“You were in my room?”

“Ufu~ Mad about something?” Kasita said, smile unwavering despite Irulon’s glare. “I’ve been in your room lots of times. You know that.”

“That’s my notebook you’re waving around.”

“I know. The words are impossible to read, but I recognized your handwriting the moment I saw it. Thought you might like it back.” Placing the book on the table, she hastily slid it across.

Irulon’s hand clamped down on the notebook fast enough to make a thump echo through the room. But the moment she did, her eyes softened. She took up the notebook and slowly started flipping through the pages, checking over each one fully before she moved on to the next.

Alyssa slipped past Irulon, sliding up against the wall next to Kasita. “What did you do?”

“Nothing~ Just found a little something someplace where it shouldn’t have been.”

“Yora,” Irulon hissed. “It was them, wasn’t it? They brazenly walked into my room while I was there and stole a notebook?”

“Ufu~ Maybe if you weren’t such a heavy sleeper, you would have noticed them.”

“What were they doing, stealing my notebook?” Irulon shot back, ignoring the perfectly valid criticism.

“As far as I understand things, Yora knew that there were monsters here, but were unaware of your and Brakkt’s presence. They’re trying to figure out what business the Pharaoh’s children have in Illuna.”

“And they thought the best way to do so would be to barge into my room?” Irulon’s grip tightened “I’ll see them all locked into Rigor Mortis by evening…”

“The guy who actually did the stealing is already dead.”

“Really?” Irulon said, raising an eyebrow. “I’m impressed.”

“Oh, it wasn’t me. They somehow convinced some poor local guy to do it. Offered a fairly pitiful amount of coin too, but I guess desperation can drive people to do crazy things. I don’t think he even knew who you were. They kept themselves secret at the same time too, so that if he did end up caught, it wouldn’t lead back to Yora. If not for me…” Kasita trailed off, puffing herself up in pride as she spoke.

“Yes, yes,” Irulon said, completely offhandedly. “You did very well. Did you learn anything else? Anything regarding why they’re here at all?”

Kasita’s pride deflated in an instant. Her straightened back slumped as she leaned over the table. “Not so much, no. In contrast to all your movies, they did not sit around discussing their diabolical plans with each other. Rather, they hardly spoke to one another. I think there is some station difference. The main guy views himself as so much more important than his attendants that he doesn’t bother with them.”

“So nothing at all?”

“I will say that they seem to be getting impatient with Martin’s lack of response. I almost think it would have been better to spy on him. At least he is supposedly discussing his options with his advisers. There’s actually something to spy on with him. We could change his mind or just have advance notice of what he might think about everything.”

“You can’t be everywhere at once,” Alyssa said, patting Kasita on the back. “Recovering Irulon’s book seems like a pretty good use of your time regardless.”

“There are pages missing,” Irulon said, flipping back and forth between two pages. “At least three. The contents were…” Closing her eyes, she paused for a moment. “Unimportant, as far as I can remember. This was my personal journal and contains none of my research or spellwork. I hardly even write in it at all.”

“Which is how you failed to notice it missing?” Alyssa said. At Irulon’s nod, she continued. “Might be a mistake because of asking some random person to steal the first book he saw. But they might also be able to use it still, sending them off to someone who could better break your code? Or something like that.”

“Yes. I’ve considered that option.” Lowering the notebook, Irulon sighed. “I’m going to have to rewrite all my books in a new code. Perhaps I could steal a language from your world. One of those with backwards or sideways script? I’d like to see them crack that.”

“I’ll lend you my phone, but… you should probably check over all your books. Make sure they’re still here. And do you have books back at Lyria? Will they be safe until we go back?”

Irulon let out an even longer sigh. “I’ll contact Tess after checking over my room. And then… How about we pay our friends from Yora a little visit?”

 

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<– Back | Index | Next –>

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Illuna’s Happenings

Demands

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“They’re what? I’m not sure I heard you correctly.”

“Claiming ownership of the monsters.”

“Ah. I did hear you properly.” Alyssa rubbed at her hair. It was getting a bit long again. She had only cut it once since arriving in Nod—Kasita had done it upon her request. A ponytail might do it good for a while, but she would eventually need to get it at least tidied up and trimmed. She might be living in a vaguely medieval world, but that didn’t mean that she had to ascribe to their standards of cleanliness or personal hygiene.

And she especially didn’t need to resign herself to their standards of morality. She had fallen into a bit of a mental trap when she had first arrived, thinking that one person might not have the power to change anything major and that she should just help out where she could. But now…

“Where is Yora?” Alyssa asked Brakkt, looking over their table in the Illuna guild hall. He had just returned from a lengthy meeting with Martin, Volta, the other Illuna advisers, and the visitors from Yora. The meeting had gone on almost as long as it had taken to get through her own meeting with the gremlins, plus get Izsha back and settled for the evening in the monster camp, plus get back to the guild hall for a full meal, and let Irulon know that Izsha would be up for questions in the morning. She had been in the middle of sketching out Split Reality spell cards for herself, using the design captured on her phone, when Brakkt finally walked in. She had finished four cards in two hours, and she was pretty sure that only two of them would actually be usable.

Despite having been sitting inside a meeting room for that entire amount of time, he actually looked a whole lot more worn out than she felt. Brakkt normally kept his back straight and his shoulders squared no matter the situation. But at the moment, he was somewhat hunched over the plate of dried jerky that he had pilfered from the guild’s storeroom—the cook had gone to sleep and Brakkt hadn’t been feeling up to cooking for himself. The slight hunch didn’t make him look defeated or anything so drastic, but it was notable because of how different it was from his normal posture.

Kasita, at Alyssa’s side, stared back and forth with a faint smile on her face. Considering the bad news about the visitors, she looked to be in a surprisingly good mood. At least now. Her initial scowl upon first hearing the news was gone.

“There is a mountainous area a dozen weeks southeast of Illuna where Yora has made their home. They spend a lot of manpower quarrying the rock there, selling and providing it to the rest of the human lands, and also fighting with the elves who don’t particularly like their mountains being chipped away at.”

“Weeks… ugh.”

“You want to visit them?”

“Maybe,” Alyssa said, leaning back against the wall. “Maybe I just want to throw a few Annihilators around and tell them to cut it out.”

“Cut… what out?”

“Ufu~ I think she just means that she wants to get them to stop trying to claim ownership over monsters.”

“Ah. Well… officially speaking, I can’t condone threatening one of the twelve great houses into intimidation.”

“And unofficially?” Alyssa asked, raising an eyebrow.

“House Yora is an older house with a lot of allies to call upon. It is likely that even Lyria—my father especially—will have to respond to someone threatening one of the great houses. We’ve already garnered a lot of dislike recently; letting someone go around threatening those we are supposed to be bringing together and uniting for protection would make us look extremely weak. And if it is found out how close your ties to myself, Irulon, and even my father are, I can foresee a disturbing amount of discontent raising among the other houses and people of the land.”

Alyssa slumped. “So that is a no unofficially as well.” If it were anyone else, Alyssa might consider it anyway. She doubted that any army would want to march against her once they saw a single spell obliterate a mountain… except maybe the elves. So she wasn’t too afraid of their retaliation. But putting Brakkt, Irulon, and the Pharaoh into such a sticky situation would just be an asshole move against people who had helped her so much. If they were jerks or obviously evil, it would be a different story.

Also… Alyssa thought, wincing in memory of her first encounter with the Pharaoh. Time magic is probably the one truly frightening type of magic around. Without Adrael’s staff, she could easily wind up dead before she knew what hit her if the Pharaoh used something like Chronosphere or Accelero.

“I’m sure we can find another way to keep them out of Yora’s hands,” Kasita said. “They’re a long way away and the monsters are right here. I doubt they actually want them anyway. As Fezzik and Rokien said, most of them wouldn’t even make good slaves. This is probably some human political problem that the monsters are just being used for because their presence is convenient for whatever the humans really want.”

“I concur. Kasita is most likely correct,” Brakkt said, looking toward the mimic. “I’m surprised you have such insight into political matters.”

Kasita puffed up—not literally, which would have been something she was perfectly capable of doing—and nodded at his praise. “I’ve sneaked into a few meetings ever since meeting you people. Might have heard Irulon talking on more than one occasion. Might have just spent a lot of time around humans.”

“Whatever the case, it might be more prudent to find out what their actual designs are before you start doing something so drastic as blowing up the quarries around Yora.”

“And,” Kasita said with a much wider grin. “We have the perfect person here to infiltrate them.”

“Is that what you’ve been so happy about? A chance to show off your abilities?”

“Ufu~ Who is saying that I haven’t already shown off my abilities?”

“Today? Or other times? Because you definitely haven’t already gone to spy on them…” Alyssa trailed off, frowning as the dumb mimic just smiled a little wider. “Have you?” It was true that Kasita hadn’t been with her here at the guild hall the entire time that Alyssa had been here. But… “No. They just arrived and their meeting just ended. There wouldn’t have been any time to go spying.”

“Not on the people inside the meeting. But they weren’t all in that meeting.”

Brakkt sat up a bit straighter, leaning forward with obvious interest. “You actually learned something?”

“One of them kept a journal in his luggage. I might have had a peek through it. The recent entries are all pretty much just grumbling about how much he hates having to go on this journey at all. But…” She slumped slightly. “It seemed as if he didn’t quite know why they were interested in the monsters. And there is some genuine interest there.”

“You were the one to suggest that they weren’t interested in the monsters,” Alyssa said, tone flat.

“Yeah… That’s because the journal also mentioned that some son of Yora is interested in that girl we escorted here.”

“Raugis?”

“Yep.”

“Not Decorous, is it? He’s like twice her age.”

“The book didn’t say,” Kasita said with a shrug. “It didn’t even refer to him by name, just as ‘my lord.’”

“Ugh. I hope it isn’t Decorous’ father or anything…” She started saying it as half a joke, but the more she thought about it, the more it seemed like it could actually be a thing. “These are the middle ages,” Alyssa said with a groan. “It might even be Decorous’ grandfather or something. Ugh.” She shot a quick glance to Brakkt, remembering that his family was somewhat screwed up as well. Octavia was the eighth child born—though there might have been stillbirths, childcare and pregnancies were absolutely not going to be safe as her mother had mentioned the other week ago—and there were more after her. And each of the children that Alyssa knew had different mothers. It was possible that none of the royal siblings shared a mother.

Shaking her head, Alyssa tried to force her mind off the topic. Different era, different society, different culture, different values. She might be able to threaten a few people into not enslaving a town of monsters if she absolutely had to, but changing societal values like that might just be a job for someone else. At least women like Oxart and Irulon held positions of authority, unlike her own world’s past.

“Sonorous is dead, I believe,” Brakkt said, thankfully interrupting that train of thought. “Passed away a few years back.”

“Decorous’ grandfather?”

Brakkt dipped his head in an affirmative nod.

“Well that’s a relief,” Alyssa mumbled. “So we’ve got some Menelaus over in Yora using the monsters as an excuse?”

“Menelaus?” Kasita said, arching an eyebrow. “I didn’t know you knew anyone in this world.”

“Sorry. I think Rokien has Greek mythology on my mind. In my world, Menelaus was some ancient king who started a war ten years long over a single woman.”

“I hope that is not the case here,” Brakkt said, tone utterly serious. “There hasn’t been a war between the great houses since my father was a young boy. It nearly destroyed Lyria when the Juno Federation attacked at a moment of weakness. A hastily prepared truce was all that saved us.”

“I… don’t think it would actually happen. As I said, that was mythology. There might have been a war, who knows, but over a single woman?” Alyssa shook her head. “I mean, such a thing might have been a factor, but there had to be other socio-political elements. Maybe land or territory disputes, previous conflicts, ongoing animosity…” Getting a bad feeling she looked back to Brakkt. “Yora wasn’t fighting against Illuna in that war you mentioned, were they?”

Brakkt shifted slightly as if uncomfortable before offering a much shallower nod. “Illuna, or rather, Martin’s father, saved my grandfather from the assassination attempt that started the conflicts. Yora actually tried to stay neutral, but wound up occupied by a now extinct house. Many of their people were forcibly conscripted and sent to die. Technically, the people of Yora were not ideologically against the people of Illuna, but with an arcanist at their back saying to fight or die, there wasn’t much they could do.”

“Sounds… complicated.”

“Mhm.”

“What about more recently?” Kasita asked. “We know Illuna has fairly close ties with you guys,” she said, waving a hand toward Brakkt. “They don’t mind monsters that much and the whole reason we escorted Raugis was because her father was worried that she might be used politically against him after he voiced public support for Fela’s presence in Lyria. This might be related to that. In addition, we also know that Decorous, at the very least, was conspiring against your family.”

Jerking half to his feet, Brakkt looked down at Kasita. “He what?”

Alyssa blinked, not at all sure why Brakkt was so surprised. It took her a moment to realize what must have happened. “I overheard someone in the palace, who I am mostly sure was Decorous, talking about what sounded an awful lot like a coup against the Pharaoh. I don’t recall the exact words—this was more than two months ago, the same night my mother arrived here—but I’m sure you could ask Irulon for details. I told her that very same night and she told me not to worry about it.”

Letting out a long sigh, Brakkt threw his gaze up toward the ceiling. “That girl,” he mumbled. “She probably looked into it on her own, but she should have told someone.”

“Sorry. I figured that she would have done so. Otherwise, I would have mentioned something to you. And probably your father as well.”

“No, no. You told someone who you thought would handle it properly.” He shook his head again. After one last glance aside, he turned back to Alyssa. “Regardless. Taking that information into consideration, whatever they are truly attempting to do here might be simply to weaken Illuna’s position and influence, thus taking away a valuable ally of my father.”

“I still think it is about Raugis,” Kasita said, crossing her arms. “I suppose I’ll just have to go back and take a look around.”

Alyssa shot a look at the mimic. “Kasita…”

“Going to protest?”

“No. Just be careful. You have your spells. You have allies. If you get in trouble, get a message out. I’ll be there in an instant if you need.”

“Of course you will. I wouldn’t have it any other way. But I won’t be caught. Not unless these humans decide to start using Unseen Sight for no good reason.”

“If the guy with the diary somehow notices that you went through it, they might do just that. Be careful. There might be other ways to figure out what they really want. You don’t need to put yourself at too much risk for a little knowledge.”

“Ufu~ You worry far too much.” With that giggle, she turned to Brakkt. “By the way, did those guys in the meeting offer any kind of ultimatum or time frame for when they wanted their demands met?”

“They weren’t demands, exactly. More of a negotiation. From the way they were talking, it was as if the situation was more like Illuna captured a few brigands that have been harassing both houses and Yora wants custody of them for prosecution. They even offered a reward for the capture in terms of building material and manpower, something I imagine is quite lucrative to Illuna. Their population has expanded to the edge of their walls and beyond. Being able to build more walls, especially with the demon threat, must be appealing.”

“But the demons should be done with,” Alyssa said. The true demon had told Alyssa that they wouldn’t be able to hold on forever. Even if Tenebrael stopped the demonic massacre by booting the Astral Authority off the world, the demonic force would be weakened and diminished… probably. Alyssa wasn’t entirely sure how demonic souls or the demon’s mentions of immortality worked. But if the Astral Authority was to win, they had to have a way to eliminate demons on a more permanent level. Otherwise the war would continue forever. “At least the external threat should be gone,” she ended up saying. “We can’t do much about preventing new demons from cropping up in the city… Though none have done so since our arrival as far as I have heard. It’s probably too early to call the demons a non-problem, but their threat rating can’t be as high as it used to be.”

“Which Yora will likely be unaware of. It will decrease the value of their incentive.”

“What was Martin’s reaction to all this?” Alyssa asked. “And how likely is he to agree to hand over the monsters? I’m obviously against it, but I doubt I really have that much say in matters if I can’t go threaten them with an Annihilator.”

“He didn’t give a direct response. Said he would consider their offer in private with his own advisers as well as after contacting his son in Lyria—he is only regent, after all. I was acting as a neutral observer and am not being included in any private deliberations. Perhaps if he were to request my presence, I might be able to offer some words, but I doubt he would do so. He’ll stick with those closest to him.”

That meant Volta. So things would probably not turn out terribly for the monsters. Not unless Yora came back, changing their incentive into actual demands. Which was not out of the question given what they knew. And if their demands to too great, if Yora was actually willing to go to war for whatever reason, Martin would probably give in just to protect his own people.

Unless, of course, in the case where Martin also wanted to go to war. But Alyssa hadn’t gotten that impression from him during their few encounters.

If Yora really was willing to spark a war over nonsense but got what they wanted, they would probably be back for more or for another war later on…

Alyssa sighed. She hadn’t wanted to get involved in politics back when she first met Irulon. That hadn’t changed. “Have you let the Pharaoh know what has been happening here?”

“He knows about the monsters. He did not mention approving or disapproving. I imagine he will wait to see how the monsters act after being exposed to humans for some time. But, I suppose I should go and draft up a Message to inform him about Yora’s actions here. Tensions between two houses will have ramifications back in Lyria as well.”

Brakkt snatched up the few remaining scraps of dried jerky as he stood. “I’ll be upstairs if you need me.” He started toward the stairs, but paused and looked over his shoulder. “Is Irulon…”

“Asleep,” Kasita said. “She sketched out a bunch of designs in her notebook. She was into it enough that I thought tonight would be another long night, but she fell asleep well before any of those humans arrived.”

“That’s good. If she is calm enough to sleep, then we can rest a little easier as well. Tomorrow morning, we’ll have to take her and Izsha out for a private conversation though. As much as there can be a conversation between the two of them, anyway.”

“Perhaps the dragon can help translate Izsha’s mannerisms and intentions. They are related, aren’t they? Draken and dragons?”

“Not that closely related, I imagine, but perhaps nonetheless. Good night, Alyssa, Kasita. You should get some rest soon as well. The next few days might be a bit hectic.”

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Illuna’s Happenings

Bugle Call

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It took less than eight hours before Izsha was up on its feet. Two hours after that, the other draken took Izsha out hunting. Alyssa’s favorite draken was a bit slower than she remembered, but she supposed that was to be expected after effectively being comatose for a few weeks. They would watch out for Izsha. It was just a bit of a shame that Alyssa couldn’t go with them. Although she wanted to, she had promised to look into the missing monster children issue.

Brakkt, surprisingly enough, was with her.

“Didn’t want to go with Izsha?” Alyssa asked as they walked through the monster camp. Fezzik led them through, taking them to the little gremlin person that had found Alyssa earlier in the day.

It was quite surprising how well it was turning out. Though it still was clearly a temporary set-up, the monsters here were making it into their own area. There were makeshift chairs set up that looked like they had been constructed out of spare lumber—they might be able to tear down the stables Izsha had been using for some more, and the city might be happy to let them do so simply because it was an old abandoned building that no one was taking responsibility for.

The tents, all made from some kind of hide stitched together, were set up around a central plaza-like area. Most of the food that the city had offered had been stored in a larger tent. Just outside it, a fire boiled water in a large black cauldron. It seemed as if a soup was up for dinner tonight in the monster camp. Which… had been what they had been eating the last time Alyssa had popped by.

She hoped that they had some variety. But then again, they might not. They were effectively eating the city’s leftovers. Considering their starvation on their journey over, they were probably still happy for anything, but…

A few of the monsters were earning money working as guards. Probably not much. Probably a tiny fraction of what the humans were making. But they might occasionally be able to buy some better food with that. Assuming they weren’t saving for something else.

“Thought about it,” Brakkt said after a long moment. “Decided against it simply because they likely want a bit of bonding time on their own. Ensou will ensure that everything goes smoothly. If something troublesome crops up that they cannot deal with, they’ll get me immediately. They’re not going too far anyway.”

Ensou will ensure? Was that a pun? “Quick question, did you name the draken? Or did they somehow communicate their names to you? Or… how do their names even work? I doubt they can speak their own names, so a translation?” The more she thought about it, the stranger the topic got. It had to be the first one, but…

“I named them, but they had some input. Or rather, I asked them whether they liked the names. Musca was quite picky, but most of the others more or less accepted the first name I offered them.”

“Figures.” Musca was definitely the most temperamental of them all. “How did you end up finding them, anyway? And getting them to trust you? That’s probably the more puzzling question. I’d have thought that monsters would jump on and tear apart any humans that entered their territory. There’s like a dozen of them. Unless you walked in with an army…”

“No army. I’m just hard to kill.”

“They did attack you, then?”

He just shrugged with a fond and almost nostalgic smile on his face. “I don’t know if I would call it that…”

Alyssa opened her mouth to ask just what he would call it before remembering that this was the guy who literally found a snake as a child and decided he wanted bigger versions with lots more teeth. She just shook her head.

It seemed as if they had arrived anyway. Fezzik stopped outside a tent. There wasn’t anything particularly special about it. In fact, it almost looked shorter than all the others. As Fezzik pushed aside the front flap, Alyssa quickly figured out just why it was so short.

It was like a Hobbit hole. Everything inside was a quarter smaller than it should have been. The shoes, the beds, the clothes, and even the packs. It was like a tent designed for young teens. The four gremlins inside matched the size of all the undersized items. One was old and wrinkled, clearly not a teen. For the other three, Alyssa couldn’t even begin to guess their ages. Were they children? Were they adults? Hard to say. One thing was for certain. None looked happy.

“Here you are,” Fezzik said as Alyssa and Brakkt entered. “I’ll be back on the camp edges if you need me.”

With that, he backed away, letting the flap fall shut behind him.

The one that Alyssa had spoken with earlier was sitting on a cot on one side of the tent. She popped up immediately as Alyssa walked in. She rushed right up to Alyssa, barely managing to stop in time to avoid a crash. “They haven’t come back yet!”

“Are they normally back by now?” Night had yet to fall, but it was close. Less than a half hour away, Alyssa guessed.

“They’re always back before the evening meal.”

“The meal that isn’t ready yet?” Alyssa asked, glancing back outside the tent. The path to the central area where the pot of water was being boiled was out of sight, just behind another tent, but they couldn’t have finished it in the short time it had taken to walk around to this tent. “They still have some time, if that is the case. But let me ask, could they have gotten wind of this little intervention? Might they be deliberately avoiding us?”

“I told you that you were being too harsh,” one of the other gremlins snapped. “You’re just driving them away even more. The young ones have to make their own mistakes. It’s how I learned. It’s how my father learned. It’s how all our ancestors learned.”

“But they didn’t learn in a human city,” the lead gremlin shot back over her shoulder. She hissed the word human like she was trying to keep her voice down enough to keep the actual humans in the tent from hearing her. “Who knows what they are getting into? And what if they do something that gets the humans angry at us? We’re sitting on their land, relying on them for food and protection. If that’s all gone, they might get everyone killed!”

“I don’t think there is anything they could do short of murdering lots of humans that would get such a drastic response…” Alyssa glanced over to Brakkt, who gave a moderately reassuring nod of his head.

“Attempting to infiltrate the regent’s manor and guard buildings in search of information might also be seen as an attack. And would likely be responded to accordingly.”

“They’re kids,” Alyssa said. “I doubt they’re infiltrating and spying on anything. They’re probably exploring a new environment. Maybe even having fun. The problem is that there might be humans who wouldn’t really take kindly to them being around. But if this has been going on for a while now, they’ve probably figured out how to get around, who to avoid, and other such things.”

“It only takes once for things to go wrong.”

“Trying to be reassuring right now,” Alyssa whispered to Brakkt. “If they aren’t here soon, we can ask Kasita and Fela if they would wander around the city a bit. I’m sure Kasita can spot even disguised monsters. Fela can smell them. For now…” Alyssa looked over the gremlins in the tent before focusing on the one that had come up to her earlier. “How are things here? Aside from that water issue you mentioned, do you all have everything you need?”

Two of the younger-looking ones glanced at each other, but it was the oldest gremlin that spoke. “My pipe has been empty for weeks now,” he said, pulling a long wooden smoking pipe out from the folds of his fairly baggy clothes. All three of the other gremlins bobbed their heads in vehement agreement. But they didn’t have anything to add. Or if they did, they didn’t say anything.

“So… just luxuries then?”

“Luxury?” one of them squeaked, indignant. “You asked for needs so we gave you our need!”

“Yeah, but smoking—”

“Isn’t luxury! Luxury would be warm blankets! Edible food would be luxury!”

“So more food and blankets? I’ll make a note.”

“Humans have such small ears,” the old one said again in a low and slightly shaky tone of voice. “Shouldn’t have expected them to list—”

The blaring of a trumpet interrupted the old gremlin. All four of the little things jumped a good foot in the air. Even Alyssa hopped a tiny bit. Brakkt didn’t, but he did turn toward the tent flap with a scowl as the trumpet started playing a short tune. It wasn’t quite Reveille, but it was a triumphant rapid ditty of notes.

“I take it that wasn’t the dinner bell,” Alyssa said as it finished.

One of the gremlins shook his head, but it was Brakkt that responded.

“No. If I recognize that tune, it is a herald from… Yora?”

Alyssa pressed her lips together. The name sounded familiar. She was certain that she had heard it somewhat recently. Not since arriving in Illuna, but something back at Lyria?

Brakkt pushed out of the tent. Alyssa started to follow, but paused to glance over her shoulder. “Sorry,” she said. “I’ll be back soon to talk more about your problem.” Hopefully.

The camp wasn’t that large. It took only a few dozen steps to figure out just what was going on.

A small parade of of humans were on a distant hill, blaring their trumpet. They weren’t so far that Alyssa couldn’t see them, but they were far enough that she had to wonder at how their trumpet was so loud. Magical enchantments? Possibly. They were too small from her perspective to see any faces, but she didn’t need to see any. Several of them carried large banners, almost twice the height of the horses they rode upon.

Yora now made much more sense to Alyssa. The red banner with eight swords was quite familiar to Alyssa. She didn’t even have to think hard to where she saw it last. It was the emblem of House Yora, the same house that Decorous belonged to. She had seen a very similar banner in his office the night he invited her up for a little dinner and interrogation.

At a pause in the rapid notes, a return call came from the walls of Illuna. A similar bugle sound, but just a bit slower than the one played by the group from Yora. As soon as it finished, the horsemen started toward the city.

Pulling out her binoculars, Alyssa did note that the banner carried by the men here wasn’t made with quite the same quality as the one from Decorous’ office. The embroidered swords lacked a great deal of the detailing. Finer threads and flairs that Decorous’ had were simplified here. They billowed in the gentle wind of the day as their horses carried them forward at a deliberately slow pace.

“What are they doing here?” Alyssa asked as she handed the binoculars over to Brakkt.

“Likely here to meet with Martin. Or deliver a message to him. Yora is actually a bit south of here. A direct road would have taken them straight to the southern gate. But the angle they are coming in, coming right near this encampment…”

“A deliberate show of force?” Alyssa dropped the volume of her voice down a few notches. There weren’t any monsters too near them, but lots of monsters probably had decent hearing. A surprising number of them had larger than average ears, often times similar to that of cats or wolves. “Were they the ones hunting down the monsters here?”

“Hard to say. From talking with these monsters, their original home was south of here, but well within Illuna’s territory. House Yora shouldn’t have interfered, but they might have decided to do so anyway. Or those who were hunting the monsters were unaware of where the boundaries of the territory actually were. It could be any number of other factors, a coincidence, or even a third party completely unrelated to House Yora.”

“Could be, but…”

The dozen or so horses paraded toward the city. They didn’t approach the encampment of monsters, merely marching in a direct line toward the city gate. She couldn’t spot a hint of wariness in their march past. Even their horses didn’t seem to mind the gaggle of monsters who had heard the trumpet and come to watch their proceedings. The same could not be said for the monsters or the humans here.

For the monsters, their nervous glances to each other and general unease was roughly what Alyssa would expect from such a scene. They were just barely getting settled in, even if they weren’t going to stick around here permanently, and any change had a high potential to be a change for the worse. The actions from the humans were certainly not helping matters.

Illuna had stationed a few guards—volunteers, they hadn’t forced anyone who was against it to associate with the monsters—mostly as a measure to declare to other humans that this camp was not some siege against the city. An approaching merchant would hopefully see some humans with the Illuna emblem and not panic. At first, they had clearly been nervous about their assignment. If the monsters suddenly turned hostile, there probably wasn’t much that they could do. But, as time went on and they got a little more used to the monsters, it probably turned into something of a cushy job for them. All they had to do was sit around and be visible.

But now, with the approaching party from Yora, they were trying to stand tall, standing more like proper guards than baby sitters. One was adjusting his emblemed tabard, straightening it and trying to brush off a bit of dirt. Another was looking up at a planted banner of Illuna as if to check that it was straight and clean as well.

“Is this likely to be trouble?” Alyssa asked Brakkt, not taking her eyes off the representatives from House Yora. “Can we ignore them and go about our day?”

Even aside from the gremlins and their missing kids, with Izsha up and about, Irulon would probably want to get her interrogation in as soon as possible. Alyssa would be sitting in on that. Both to find out more about what was going on with Irulon and the dragon’s soul situation and to ensure that Irulon didn’t go too far in questioning a recently awoken Izsha. Not that Alyssa really expected her to do so, but Irulon was somewhat panicked at the moment.

“I shouldn’t avoid this. The woes of being prince,” he said with a sad shake of his head. “Even if I am not to succeed my father, I’m still expected to act as a representative of royalty.”

“Irulon will be joining you then?”

Brakkt looked over, raising an eyebrow high above his violet eye. “What do you think?”

“I think it’s strange that you got saddled with your moniker instead of Irulon.”

“Irulon generally keeps to the shadows and out of public view. Hard to get a nickname when a large majority of people are only barely aware you exist.”

“Good point, I guess.”

“In any case, I shall leave the gremlins and their problem to you. I trust you to take care of it. I had best make my way back to the city.”

“Let me know if things seem like they aren’t going to go well.”

“Of course,” Brakkt said, already walking away. “Same goes for you,” he said over his shoulder. “And I’ll keep a look out for any monsters in the city as well.”

Despite him leaving, Alyssa didn’t head back to the gremlin tent. She stayed and watched the Yora procession, switching back to her binoculars as they got closer to the wall. Only when they dismounted, handed off their horses to the Illuna guards, and walked out of view did Alyssa finally turn away. She had a bad feeling but there wasn’t much she could actually do. Not right now anyway.

Brakkt would figure out exactly what was going on. For the time being… Alyssa turned and spotted a much smaller gremlin than any of the ones she had seen. “Hey!”

His eyes widened momentarily.

For a long second, he and Alyssa just stared at each other.

Grabbing the hood of his cloak, he pulled it down over his head as he spun around and started power-walking away. But his small legs couldn’t carry him too far too fast.

Alyssa had a hand clamped around his shoulder in seconds.

“Let me go!” he piped out.

“Absolutely not.” He was squirming, but she now had both hands locked onto his shoulders. “Do you know how worried you’ve made… uh, the others?” They were all gremlins, but they might not be his parents. Best to use a more neutral term.

A deep voice interrupted Alyssa before she could ask where he had been. “Something wrong?”

The sudden voice just about made her jump, but it was a voice she recognized. “Fezzik,” she said, looking over her shoulder. “This is one of the ones the other gremlins were worried about… I think. I haven’t actually found out for sure yet, but…” Slowly, Alyssa trailed off as she realized that quite a few of the monsters were looking in her direction.

Slowly, she released the little gremlin, hoping she wasn’t looking like some kind of predator or abductor.

Thankfully, Fezzik intervened. He reached down, large hand practically wrapping completely around the now released gremlin. As if the kid was nothing more than a pillow, Fezzik hefted him up and hoisted him over his shoulder. “So you’re one of the ones who has been sneaking off into the human city.”

“It wasn’t me!”

“Then where have you been all day, Iona? I’ve been standing guard. Haven’t seen you even once. And your mother has been scared ragged.”

“I was here the whole time!”

“Then you won’t mind having a little talk about just what you’ve been doing.” Fezzik said, starting off back toward the gremlin tent. “And I’m sure some of the others have seen you around too?”

Alyssa followed after them. Fezzik was large and loud, so it was fairly easy to go unnoticed while he was around. She quietly followed him to what turned out to be a rather interesting discussion about where he had been. If a rather painful one in actually extracting said information.

But, learning that he had been off baking pies with the humans did put a smile on Alyssa’s face. At first, she had been a bit worried that he had somehow gotten conned into slavery, but it seemed as if he actually enjoyed cooking.

It was perfectly possible for humans and monsters to get along after all.

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Illuna’s Happenings

Eye of the Draken

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“Count. Folly. Lime. Dolly. Day. Sharp. Packed. Harp.”

Even with portals opening all over the place, gunshots going off left and right, and the Astral Authority flying through the air, Irulon continued chanting random words. She hadn’t said that being interrupted would ruin anything, but the fact that she was still going instead of stopping to help defend against the Astral Authority said something about how easily she could stop. Alyssa definitely was not willing to take the chance that her stopping would do anything.

A Kindness hit the ground hard, splattering a few of its endlessly boiling eyes. It wasn’t quite dead, but Fela pounced on it and quickly took care of that little problem.

Another Kindness emerged from the same portal. A bullet through its mask and a fireball from Kasita turned its wings to ash and brought it down to the earth, well withing range of the sharp teeth of Dasca.

It was strange. There were only two Patiences among the group of Astral Authority littering the ground and none of the higher level fake-angels either. The vast majority of the beings that had come through the portals had been Kindnesses. Alyssa wasn’t complaining. Far from it. The two Patiences had been quite troublesome to put down. If not for Brakkt and his enchanted sword, Alyssa wasn’t sure that she would have been able to manage taking them out without resorting to Annihilators.

Alyssa could only come up with two real reason why they were teleporting so few actual combatants here. For one, they might just be too tied up with the demons. Alyssa didn’t have a way of spying on the pit or the battle that was surely still raging around Owlcroft, but she had seen the true demon somewhat recently. They were definitely still fighting it out. Even if that wasn’t the main reason why they weren’t sending more than Kindnesses to Illuna, it was probably a contributor.

One of the other big reasons might just be that they didn’t know what to do. Kindnesses were observers and scouts. They had probably first shown up after detecting a big prayer to Tenebrael, expecting to find either Tenebrael or Alyssa connected to her. Finding neither might have confused them. It was just a bunch of mortals standing around a bunch of Tenebrael’s magic, nothing particularly special about either. At least, nothing more special than most regular spell cards.

Alyssa was glad that she didn’t have to flee because of her connection, but she was somewhat nervous about not being able to see Izsha’s soul. She couldn’t watch the effects of the ritual on it or check to make sure that nothing was going wrong. Iosefael hadn’t shown up yet, so Izsha probably wasn’t dying again. Still, even if she didn’t fully understand what it looked like, watching the soul would have given her at least some peace of mind.

Of course, Alyssa mentally groaned as a much larger than average portal sprouted up just beside the stables, I probably wouldn’t have time to watch the soul.

As the car-sized paw of the largest fake-angel emerged, Alyssa shouted a warning. “Equanimity!”

The second it fully emerged, Ensou jumped. The largest of the draken landed directly on its back and immediately snapped its jaws around the thing’s snake-like neck. Dasca and Musca were on it only slightly slower, both clamping their teeth around its scorpion tail to keep it from harming Ensou. Brakkt strode forward. He wasn’t wearing his full armor, probably not having expected a fight during this ritual, but his ever-present sword was at his side.

Alyssa wasn’t quite sure what she could do. An Annihilator would take care of it, but it would also take care of a lot of the land and probably the monster camp as well. Every other time she had seen one, she had either fled, used Tenebrael’s magic, or both.

A bullet didn’t seem like it would do much. Brakkt’s sword didn’t glide through it like it did with nearly everything else. There was a resistance there that Alyssa had only seen on the Taker in his fully infected form.

Spectral Chains lashed around its legs. Alyssa really didn’t know what she thought she was doing. It was big enough that, even with her unbreakable chains, it would just throw her around if it moved.

It didn’t have a soul, so her scythe wouldn’t do anything. Draw Water might do something. Activating the spell and pulling as hard as she could…

Nothing.

Which didn’t surprise Alyssa much. The thing wasn’t mortal. She had seen them cut before. They didn’t bleed or have much inside them aside from light. There was no water to draw out.

A narrow beam of pure fire lanced from Alyssa’s outstretched hand, striking the Equanimity in the side. Although they didn’t have much internals, the scent of cooked flesh filled the air. All Shall Burn. Like Annihilator, it was a spell that she had first seen Lumen use. Lower ranked, but that might be just what she needed at the moment. It was a focused stream of white-hot fire.

The Equanimity reared up in silent pain. The motion just about dragged Alyssa long with it. If she hadn’t already been prepared to cancel the Spectral Chains, she would have ended up flung over the stables. Even still, she was glad Fela was nearby to steady her.

“What do we do?” the hellhound asked. “I don’t think my claws are going to tear apart that thing.”

Although her fire spell had done some damage, it wasn’t anywhere close to what the draken and Brakkt were doing to it. They might be able to take it down eventually, but…

Alyssa glanced to Irulon. The princess’ spell tome, still chained to her side, was not in use. At least, not obviously in use. Stepping away from Fela, Alyssa walked right up to the edge of the ritual circle where Irulon was chanting.

Without even stopping her repeated words, Irulon unchained the tome and held it out for Alyssa to take.

A shard of glass formed at the binding of the tome. Split Reality. The Astral Authority were definitely a part of reality. The glass shot out like a dart, burrowing into the hide already burned away.

The effect was almost instantaneous. It wasn’t a bloody mess, but the Equanimity began peeling apart into shards of glass. Both Dasca and Musca had to jump off quickly before the effect started eating at them. Ensou held onto its neck for a few seconds longer as its body started falling apart. When it finally unclamped its jaws, the Equanimity was already beyond saving. There was hardly anything recognizable left of it. Just a pile of vaguely glowing strips of hide.

“I wish these weren’t literally carpel tunnel to draw,” Alyssa said, keeping the spell tome ready to fire off another one, just in case something else showed up.

But for the moment, the air was clear of the golden portals.

“I don’t know what that means,” Kasita said after letting out a small sigh. “But it looks like it’s over?”

“For now. Keep an eye out.”

“No, I mean the whole ritual. Look at Irulon. And the glowing isn’t so glowy anymore.”

Looking around, Kasita was right. Izsha, still painted, was lying on her side in the middle of the ritual circle. All the lines, both on Izsha and the circle, were dim. Not quite back to how they had been when Alyssa first painted them. There was a soft glow there. But it was a subtle kind of glow.

For the first time since its creation, someone was stepping onto the ritual circle. Irulon strode across, not caring at all that her feet were tracking paint through the carefully prepared dirt. Or that her shoes were getting paint on them.

Alyssa, equally uncaring of the paint, rushed up with her, barely managing to breathe as she looked over Izsha. “Did… Did it work?”

“There was no error in the ritual itself,” Irulon said, leaning down and resting a hand on Izsha’s side. “Not even with all the… unexpected excitement.”

“Izsha?” Alyssa said softly. She stretched out a hand, but stopped, hovering just a few inches above the onyx scales. Irulon was rubbing her hands all over the place, squeezing and prodding. But Irulon knew what she was doing… probably. Alyssa was just… worried.

“Izsha,” Irulon said in a concerned tone. “If you can hear me, could you try opening your eyes and looking around? It might be tough so soon after this ritual, but it would go a long way toward letting us know that everything went well. So please try.”

At first, nothing happened. Alyssa glanced between Izsha’s face and Irulon, watching both for any sign that something was good or bad. Brakkt moved closer. Alyssa could see him from the corner of her eye, moving with obvious guard. The draken moved about like predators around him, watching and waiting for any sign of more trouble. Fela was slightly more relaxed, but still poised to launch herself at any portals that might open up.

Movement from Izsha closed off Alyssa’s awareness of the outside world. It was just a small thing, but the lid of its eye twitched just a bit. Slowly, as if the lid weighed ten tons, Izsha opened its eye all on its own. Unlike when Alyssa was massaging Izsha’s soul back at Owlcroft, its eye actually looked around. The slit contracted, focusing in on its surroundings.

“Izsha?” Alyssa said again, this time with a bit more energy. “Are you… Oh what am I saying? Of course you aren’t alright. But… Are you…”

As slowly as it opened, the eye gently closed.

Alyssa sucked in a slight breath, worried.

Only to get a blast of hot air in her face as Izsha let out a long snort.

The somewhat moist air made her start coughing.

“Promising,” Irulon said, completely ignoring Alyssa’s sudden fit. “At least we have some response from it. I expect that you’ll need a good deal of rest before you’re feeling normal again… So, I have a few questions. Just open your eyes for yes and keep them closed them for no. Now then, what was it like? Were you aware of your surroundings?”

“Wait,” Alyssa said, holding up a hand. “Are these questions necessary for Izsha’s wellbeing? Or for your own curiosity?”

“Who says they can’t be for both?”

“Why don’t we wait at least an hour or few. Get Izsha back in the stables on a—”

“The stables have a big hole in them,” Kasita said from over Alyssa’s shoulder.

That made Alyssa stop for a moment. She hadn’t noticed. Had it been her spells? Or, more likely, the Equanimity had smacked into it while it had been around. Its presence would explain why she hadn’t noticed too. The stupid things were awfully large. But that didn’t mean that her point wasn’t valid. “Then somewhere else comfortable for a bit. How would you like to be bombarded with questions after coming back from the brink of death?”

Approaching a little closer, Brakkt slowly sheathed his sword. “Alyssa’s right. I appreciate what you’ve done, Irulon, but let’s take it easy for now. You’ll have time for your questions later. Especially if Izsha is truly alright.”

Irulon pressed her lips together. Alyssa could almost see the argument on her lips. But, perhaps because it was her brother asking, Irulon let it go. She just sighed as she pushed herself back to her feet. “It is quite important to me, brother. I…” She slowly looked from Izsha to Brakkt, Alyssa to the other draken, Kasita to Fela. “But I suppose I’ve lived this long with my companion. We won’t keel over dead anytime soon. There’s just something that’s been bothering me. Something that I dreamed about that night, but can’t quite make sense of. I’m not sure it’s related to souls at all… or maybe it is related to just me.”

“I care about you just as much as I care about Izsha,” Alyssa said softly. “I’ll anger the entirety of the Astral Authority if need be to help you. But you yourself said that the danger isn’t anything immediate. Let Izsha rest. At least for a little while.”

Giving a hesitant nod, Irulon turned. “I’ll be in my room. Alert me should anything happen to Izsha in the interim.” With that said, she started walking up the path that led back to the city proper.

Alyssa watched her go, feeling… guilty? It was hard to empathize with exactly what she was going through. Although she felt bad, Izsha deserved some respect as well.

“Don’t worry,” Kasita said, starting to walk after her. “I’ll keep an eye on our princess.”

“Try not to bother her. It might be best to let her have some time alone.”

“Ufu~ She’ll never know I’m there.”

Not feeling at all better at Kasita’s reassurance, Alyssa watched the mimic stride off. Kasita would probably not do anything too untoward. Hopefully.

Turning back to Izsha, Alyssa knelt again and gently rested her hand on Izsha’s side. There was a difference there. It was so subtle at first that Alyssa thought it might have been her imagination. But Izsha actually moved. Just a slight shifting and bristling of its scales, but that was more of a reaction than anything Alyssa had seen over the past few weeks.

Brakkt was at her side a moment after. He knelt down right beside Alyssa and put a hand on Izsha’s side. He moved his hand around, not quite prodding like what Irulon had done, but not just resting it there as Alyssa was. Leaning down, he pressed his ear right up against Izsha’s side, closing his eyes in the process. For a long while, he didn’t say a word.

The other draken moved in close, but not quite to the point of crowding out Izsha. Ensou and Dasca kept at a respectful distance. Musca, on the other hand, came right up to Izsha and nudged its snout hard enough to lift Izsha a few inches off the ground.

Brakkt, just about thrown off Izsha because of that, promptly snapped at the draken.

Chuckling, Alyssa shook her head.

“Let’s get you somewhere comfortable. Are—” Alyssa turned, only to realize that Kasita was not behind her anymore. “Are the stables structurally sound?” she said, looking to Brakkt. “It isn’t going to collapse on us if we move in there, is it? We can find a more permanent place later, but I’d like to get Izsha on some straw and with a roof overhead. It looks like it might rain soon.”

His eyes, which had been glaring at the tiger-striped draken, flicked over to Alyssa. There was a hesitation in his response, but he nodded after a moment. “Give me a moment to inspect it.” It took a few more moments before he stood, but Alyssa didn’t try to rush him.

When he did finally start toward the stables, Alyssa looked back to Izsha. She let her hand stroke across its scales a few times before she started talking. “I don’t know if you could hear me while you were… well, whatever you were. But, I want you to know that I’m sorry. Sorry for dragging you into that mess, sorry for not being able to protect you, and sorry for not being able to fix you up sooner. Or… at all, really. I stopped Iosefael from taking your soul, but that was about it. Irulon did the rest.”

Alyssa let out a long sigh. Izsha opened its eye again and stared at her, but nothing else. Not that Alyssa really expected the draken to start talking. They had fixed the soul’s resonance, not made a way to communicate properly. And Izsha had to be exhausted still.

That said, Izsha started to move, almost like it was trying to get to its feet… or at least raise its head.

Gently, Alyssa pushed Izsha back to the ground. “You just rest for now. There will be plenty of time to get up and moving when you actually feel up to moving. Don’t worry. I’ve gotten plenty experience levitating you around. I probably won’t even smack you into the ceiling or any walls!”

Izsha gave a glare! Seeing that just made Alyssa smile. It was a joke, of course. She had taken great pains to avoid smacking Izsha into anything when she had to use her levitation spells. It had happened less than ten times. Probably.

“You won’t have to worry about that,” Brakkt said, approaching from behind. “The stables do not look like anywhere good to stay. I kept my distance and I was still worried it might come down on me.”

“Can we go up to the guild then?”

“There’s a lot less space up there, but… it might be our only real option. I doubt they’ll like it.”

“Tough for them. Alright.” Looking back to Izsha, Alyssa got to her feet. “You ready to move?”

A set of heavy footsteps stopped Alyssa from actually casting the spell. Brakkt drew his sword as he turned, but quickly sheathed it again upon seeing who was approaching.

Fezzik, along with two of Illuna’s guards trailing behind him, was quickly rushing up. He had his large stone club out, but it didn’t look like he was about to use it. Rather, he slowed his charge, staring at the slowly disintegrating pile of Equanimity… flesh? It wasn’t quite flesh, but it was close enough.

“Saw some lights and flashes from the camp. Something happen?”

“You could say that,” Alyssa said, glancing around between Izsha, the draken, Fela, and Brakkt. “But I think it is over with for now. You came to help?”

“We’ve been given at least a temporary home here. Of course we would defend it.”

“Sorry for disturbing you. If we had thought anything like this was going to happen,” Alyssa said, waving at the corpse of one of the Patiences, “we would definitely have let you know. And the city too,” she said with a glance to the guard who seemed the least out of breath. Running after a giant was probably hard work. Fezzik’s legs were almost as long as the humans were tall.

“Does that little one need help?” Fezzik said, pointing his club toward Izsha.

Alyssa was about to answer that Izsha was probably feeling far better than it had in a long time, but stopped part way.

With how Izsha had tried to get onto its feet earlier, they probably wouldn’t be able to keep it down for long, even if it was for the best. A day, two at the most. And the monster camp should be a safe spot. There hadn’t been any incidents down there since their arrival. They had food from the city. The guild wouldn’t complain about their stable space being taken up or the horses being frightened.

“Actually,” Alyssa started before explaining just what they needed.

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<– Back | Index | Next –>

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<– Back | Index | Next –>

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Illuna’s Happenings

Symphonic Ritual

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Alyssa skipped through the city toward the exit. Not quite literally, but she was in a pretty good mood. There, so far, had not been any major issues with the monsters. Whoever was pursuing them had not taken any further actions against them. There were guards, both monster and human, set up around their camp to keep watch for any further assassins or general malcontents. From what Alyssa had gathered so far, there wasn’t much reason to be concerned. It was a fairly boring job for both parties.

Just the way it should be.

That wasn’t to say that absolutely everything was perfect. There was a certain level of discontent among the monsters that had them all a bit upset. It wasn’t that they were unhappy with the treatment they were receiving, but there was just uncertainty permeating the camp. They didn’t know what their place was supposed to be or what they should be doing. Martin, Volta, and some advisers were all trying to come up with good solutions—Illuna wasn’t near a famine state but it was still difficult to justify feeding almost a hundred freeloaders. Some were going to be asked to work as guards, but as Fezzik and Rokien had mentioned, not every monster was suitable to such a job.

Alyssa had suggested that they be brought into the city and allowed to live like regular people, even having whatever jobs of a more mundane nature that needed to be done. That was apparently a bit much for them. Having monsters in their own little camp was a bit of a bite to swallow for some, apparently. Martin didn’t have a problem with it, but there was some discontent inside the city. Not as much as Alyssa imagined Lyria might face, but still some.

Still, Alyssa was fairly optimistic about the situation as a whole. She could rest easy knowing that there hadn’t been any major or minor conflicts between humans and monsters.

But that wasn’t all that Alyssa was happy about.

Today was the day.

Irulon had a whole ritual prepared and ready, something that she was positive would jump-start Izsha’s soul resonance. Or synchronization. Whatever it was, Izsha should be back on her feet by nightfall. That was the real reason Alyssa was skipping out to the stables. There were still some things to get ready. Apparently, this ritual required more than just the requisite cardstock and pattern drawn on top.

Hence why she wasn’t literally skipping. Piloting a medieval wheelbarrow filled with various reagents, from bits of monsters to some kind of specialized paint that they were to adorn Izsha’s body with, wasn’t exactly as easy as their modern equivalent. It wasn’t that she was inexperienced in the art of wheelbarrow pushing. Having worked in a home improvement store for a few years, she had pushed around her fair share of carts, barrows, and lifts. It was just… awkward. For one, the wheel was made from wood instead of air-filled rubber. She wouldn’t have thought there would be much difference, but after nearly tipping over and dumping everything all over the ground more times than she could count, Alyssa was taking it carefully. There just wasn’t any bounce to it. Every pebble she ran over could be felt from the tip of the barrow all the way up to her shoulders.

And on unpaved streets, pebbles were the least of her worries.

“Miss Draken Rider?”

“Alyssa,” Alyssa said immediately as she glanced to her side. One of the monsters had sneaked up to her. Or maybe the monster had just walked up and Alyssa had been too distracted to notice. Either way, there was a monster standing before her now.

She wasn’t quite sure what kind of monster it was. Although Alyssa had spent a decent amount of time down in the camp, she hadn’t gone around to meet every single one of them. And some were painfully shy. Especially the children. This wasn’t a child, but it was rather short with a bushy tangly neon blue hair styled up in a failed ponytail.

“Something you need?”

“A few of us have been needing more water than has been supplied.”

“There’s a river that runs almost straight through the city. Can’t you fetch your own? Or…” Alyssa’s eyes narrowed. “Are the guards not letting you leave? They’re supposed to be protect—”

“No, no, nothing like that. I haven’t actually asked. But leaving the camp…”

“Oh. You’re worried about those people who were chasing you? I’m sure a few of the guards would be willing to go with you. And if you go in a large enough group with people like Fezzik, I’m sure you would be fine. Or you could ask a guard to see if they would be willing to deliver more water.”

Although she started to smile, the little monster quickly shirked in on herself, looking nervous and a little scared.

Slightly nervous, Alyssa glanced around, hoping she wasn’t going to be ambushed by anything. She didn’t think there was a need to worry about it, all the monsters seemed pretty nice considering their circumstances and who had driven them out of their old home, but if their pursuers had kidnapped some of them and were putting them up to finding out who was sheltering them, there was a possibility. Without her soul sight, Alyssa could only use her regular eyes. But there didn’t seem to be anyone else around. The camp itself was a fair bit beyond the stables where Izsha was residing and wasn’t exactly visible with it in the way, but she doubted that sixty-odd monsters would be utterly silent, along with whatever guards they had, if something was up.

So Alyssa glanced back to the blue-haired monster. “Was there something else wrong?”

“I… uh… don’t suppose we could get our water from the city?”

“They get their water from the river too, but, I mean, possibly? That would be up to the guards, not me. I really don’t have much authority around here. Though, can I ask why?”

“It’s just… There’s… Some of the younger ones have been going missing.”

Alyssa froze. That was massive news and definitely something that the monster should have led with. “Missing?”

“Every day,” the monster said, refusing to meet Alyssa’s eyes.

“Children have been going missing every day?”

“Three or four of them every day.”

“Three or four children have been going missing every day?” Alyssa felt faint. Why hadn’t someone said something? Were the monsters so afraid of humans that they wouldn’t go to them for help? “For how long?”

“I first noticed them going missing six or seven days ago.”

Three children a day for six days was eighteen children. And that was the low end. From the monster’s tone, she felt like they had been going missing for a lot longer than that. Were there even twenty children among the monsters? Alyssa wouldn’t have thought so, but…

“No one has seen where they’ve gone? Or tried to follow?”

“They sneak off and can keep hidden a lot better than the rest of us can. And we didn’t want to draw more attention to us or them by bringing it up with the guards. There are no walls or proper buildings in the camp, so it’s easy for them to slip out and run off—”

“Wait. Wait, wait, wait. They’ve been leaving on their own?”

“I’ve tried asking where they disappear to during the days, but they claim they’re just in different parts of the camp. I think they’re actually sneaking into the city.”

“So you wanted to go get water as an excuse to look for them…” Alyssa shook her head, pinching her fingers to the bridge of her nose. “They aren’t being kidnapped, are they?”

“Not if I understand the term correctly… they aren’t kids though.”

Alyssa just shook her head again. She should have felt relief. Maybe she did, but it was marred by an undercurrent of irritation in the way the monster had gone about explaining the problem. She had been so worried just a moment ago. Connecting with Tenebrael and risking the Astral Authority just to use some soul-sight to locate a few kids had crossed her mind.

But now…

It was probably still a problem. Judging by how most of the city had reacted to Fela’s presence, Alyssa didn’t think that a few monsters would be in much danger. Especially not if they had been doing whatever they were doing several times over several days. There were still going to be some bad actors in the city that might have ill will toward them so it was important to find out what they were doing and possibly stop them, but…

Alyssa sighed. “They’ve been coming back to the camp every night? And it’s the same few who go missing the next day?”

“Yes, that’s correct.”

“I’ll stop by this evening. We’ll see if we can’t get to the bottom of this. But for now, I’m a little busy.” Alyssa looked down to the wheelbarrow that was not making any progress toward the stables. “Try not to worry too much. If they’ve done this before and have gotten back, I’m sure they can do it tonight too.”

Picking up the handles of the barrow, Alyssa started toward the stables once again. The monster followed along, timidly tapping the tips of her fingers together. “Is that really alright? What if they’re causing trouble.”

“I’ve kept my ear to the ground recently, listening for how the general population feels about your camp being on their doorstep. I’m sure I would have heard about a bunch of monster children running around causing trouble.”

The monster looked down in confusion for a moment before looking back up with some amount of awe in her eyes. “I didn’t know humans could do that.”

“What?”

“What does the ground’s voice sound like?”

“Uhh… I’m sorry, I’m having a hard time concentrating at the moment. Could you get the door?” Alyssa said, trying to dodge the conversation and move ahead with her task.

“Sure!” the monster said, hopping right up to the stable’s main door. It was barely holding onto its hinges, so it took her a surprising amount of effort to heave it open. One of the draken could have simply nudged into it had Alyssa called out a little louder, but… Well, it gave the monster something to do.

She should probably find out the monster’s name. Or at least figure out what kind of monster she was. Mentally calling her ‘the monster’ all the time felt… a bit bad?

But Alyssa didn’t get a chance. Musca stuck its head out the open door almost immediately. With a slight squeak, the little monster fell straight to the ground in fright.

“Musca…” Alyssa said, warning in her tone. “Let’s not frighten visitors who are helping me out.”

The draken brandished its teeth in her direction, but Alyssa kept up her glare. She had gotten a bit used to Musca over the past long while. And, after talking a bit with Brakkt, had discovered the Musca acted a lot tougher than it actually was. A good enough show of strength would cow it, at least temporarily. It probably helped that Musca was one of the few who had seen Alyssa in action before. It well knew that, even without her eyes glowing, Alyssa could use Spectral Chains to tie it down in a snap of her fingers.

“Sorry about that,” Alyssa said, looking toward the monster, holding out a hand to help her back up. She kept watch on Musca from the corner of her eye as she lifted the surprisingly light little monster back to her feet. “One of the draken got injured recently and Musca has been a bit overprotective while Izsha recovers.”

Musca let out a loud snort, making the poor monster jump.

“O-Oh. Of course. I’m sorry for startling you,” she said, bowing fully at the waist. The large ears on her head were pressed firmly against her skull as if to shrink her overall profile down even more than it already was. A tactic to make her look less threatening? “I’ll just… run back to camp then. Sorry for disturbing you!”

“I’ll be along this evening to talk to those kids of yours,” Alyssa shouted after her, but the monster didn’t pause or look back at all. So Alyssa shot another glare at Musca.

“Was that a gremlin I heard,” Brakkt said, stepping up to the door and peeking out.

“Is that what she was?”

“The slight rasp in their throat gives them away. What did it want?”

“Apparently some of the younger monsters have been sneaking out of their camp and into the city to… play? Possibly? Not sure, but I guess it has been going on for a few days now so not too worried about trouble. I’ll worry about it later. For now…” Alyssa carefully wheeled the barrow over the threshold and into the barn. “Irulon will be along shortly. While we wait for her to arrive, she gave me some directions on how to begin preparing for this ritual. Some of it is pretty complex,” Alyssa said, pulling a notebook from the wheelbarrow, “but she assured me that you would know what some of it means.”

“If it is like the ritual with the dragon, then I have some experience. I’m not exactly a Rank Six arcanist, however. I’m sure she took that into account.”

Getting started wasn’t that big of an ordeal. The first task was to clean both Izsha and the general area where they were going to perform the ritual. Alyssa had been keeping Izsha extremely clean over the past few weeks. Unfortunately, Irulon wanted to do the ritual just outside the stables, open to the air. Using a variety of spells, the other draken, and Brakkt, they set to work clearing away underbrush, weeds, large rocks, and other plants. A bit of earth-churning had the dirt smooth and relatively compact after only an hour or so.

On the now clean earth, some lines needed to go down. Essentially a spell card blown up to the size of a small swimming pool. When she had first been told about it, Alyssa had expected to be out with a stick, dragging it through the dirt to create the lines. But that wouldn’t work. The ritual needed to be drawn with the small vat of specially-prepared paint that Volta had provided. Trying to use a paint brush would create a mess, mixing it too much with the dirt.

Luckily, there was a spell for that. A derivative of Draw Water. Brakkt used it instead of Alyssa, just in case she wound up overpowering it and ruining all the paint. It was quite interesting to watch. Much like an angel’s spell, it formed the circle completely in the air. Apparently, a second spell had helped to create the pattern of this spell. Spells to create spells to create spells.

After forming in the air, it all slowly lowered to the ground, soaking in and staining the ground a deep red color in a matching pattern.

Izsha needed to be prepared as well. Aside from just being cleaned, she had to get a paint job. A few stripes to her otherwise uniform onyx scales. There was not a spell for that, however. Izsha’s body was too irregular of a shape to do something automatically. That probably wasn’t impossible. Much like a modeling program could apply a texture to something, a spell could work in roughly the same way. However, it would have to be calculated by hand and would be unique to Izsha. Maybe some day, magical technology would be on par with modern computer programs. Or maybe there would be computer programs to develop spells like that quickly. But for now…

Alyssa drew a horse-hair brush across Izsha’s body, following the pattern Irulon had drawn up as perfectly as she could. Thankfully, the ink was a shade of ruby red almost identical to the paint that was all over the ground outside the stables. If it had been black, it would have blended in with her scales and made it far too easy to miss smaller details. Levitating Izsha helped out too. Alyssa could rotate the body around, flip it upside down, and turn it however she needed to paint where she needed to paint.

“You’ve missed a spot around the left haunch.”

Carefully, Alyssa pulled the brush off Izsha’s thigh, looked over her shoulder, and glared. “Were you trying to startle me into making a mistake? Because I heard you coming.”

Irulon shrugged as she pulled back from being directly behind Alyssa. “I’ve inspected the circle outside. It meets my needs. As soon as you’re finished with Izsha, I believe we will be ready to begin.”

“I think I’ll be ready in a few minutes more. You’ll be double-checking, I hope?”

“Of course. Can’t have anything going wrong. I’m already planning on applying much of what I have learned here to myself. If some goes wrong, I’ll… be in a lot of trouble, I think.”

“We’ll figure out what to do about your situation. Don’t worry. As soon as Tenebrael gives the all clear regarding the Astral Authority, I’m going to try making a new body. We can try shoving the dragon into it.”

“That is certainly a solution, but I haven’t fully decided that that is the course I will take.”

“Well, keep me updated.”

“Of course.” Clasping her hands behind her back, Irulon turned. “I’ll be outside. Alert me when you finish.”

Looking back to Izsha, Alyssa carefully placed the brush back to the line she had started drawing out before being interrupted. Once in place, she continued with a long, smooth stroke of the brush over Izsha’s scales.

Thirty minutes after, Alyssa finished.

Irulon found nothing missing, not even the trickier parts on Izsha’s haunches that Alyssa had been saving for the end.

After that, it was only another twenty minutes to get Izsha’s body all set up inside the drawn circle.

Irulon took over from there. Alyssa stepped back alongside Brakkt, Kasita, Fela, and the draken to watch. And there was something to watch. Irulon started chanting. Not just a single word or short phrase like all other spells seemed to be, but an actual extended chant. It was in English, but the words almost seemed like they had been picked at random from a dictionary.

“Unknown. Master. Stand. Faster. Lean. Training. Time. Feigning.”

There did seem to be something of a rhythm to the words, but Alyssa couldn’t decipher any real meaning from them. But perhaps the rhythm was all that was needed. Irulon called it the soul’s resonance, so maybe the words were helping with that.

Besides Irulon’s chants, there was a bit of a light show. The paint, both on Izsha and on the ground, glowed with her words. Each syllable caused a small pulse of light that then faded. But it didn’t quite fade completely before she spoke again. The circle got brighter and brighter to the point where it almost felt like the rest of the world, including the burning sky and even the sun, dimmed.

And most of all, Alyssa could feel something. Just like when she had handled Izsha’s soul or when she came into contact with something divine, a warmth filled the air. It was a bit muted, only really noticeable because of how much she had been exposed to such sensations. That was possibly because the burning sky was still infusing the world with a similar feeling.

It actually made Alyssa a little nervous. The Astral Authority seemed to be able to tell the difference between Tenebrael’s magic and that of other angels, but Alyssa couldn’t. It all felt the same. And if she could feel it, the Astral Authority would surely notice.

Just as she started looking around, the golden light from the Astral Authority’s portals bathed the ritual circle, drowning out the red light from the paint.

Alyssa grit her teeth, drawing her pistol and spell cards in a flash. The first Kindness out of the portal wound up riddled with bullets.

She might not be connected to Tenebrael at the moment, but the Astral Authority could be killed through more mundane means. If the Astral Authority thought they were going to interrupt Izsha’s ritual…

They were dead wrong.

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<– Back | Index | Next –>

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Interlude

Iona

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Iona tried to make himself look as small and as inconspicuous as possible. It helped that he was small to begin with. Not only was he still young, but gremlins were naturally small. The tallest members of his species generally only reached the height of a human adolescent. If he wrapped himself in a plain cloak and put up a hood to hide his turquoise hair and large ears, he might even be able to pass as a human child.

He didn’t smell like a human, but that wasn’t a problem. According to some of the others, humans didn’t have a very good sense of smell anyway. He still kept his distance from any of the humans around.

They weren’t supposed to leave the camp.

He didn’t know what would happen if he was found out, but he couldn’t help himself.

The others told stories of human cities. Buildings as tall as mountains. People filling every available space. Human magic performed constantly…

The reality of it was a bit of a disappointment. The buildings were tall, yes. Mountain size? He wasn’t so sure about that. Maybe one or two of them. But not all. Fezzik was taller than half the buildings around. As for magic, he hadn’t seen a single spell. Not one. It really made him wonder if the humans really were the magically advanced species that he had heard stories about. The people who were supposed to be second only to dragons in terms of the variety of magic that they could use. He had sneaked into the city, over a section of the wall that hadn’t been guarded, expecting dazzling light shows, levitating objects, people flashing about, and maybe a few spells that he might have been able to learn how to use. Instead, people just meandered about, doing what he assumed was normal for them.

People meandering about was just about the only part of the tales he had been told that actually seemed true. There were so many humans. More than he had ever seen in his life. More humans than he had seen monsters in his life. Of course, he was only seventeen—two months until he turned twenty!—so he hadn’t been around that long to see as many things as some of the others. Still, it was quite staggering just to see so many other living beings around.

He suspected that he had wandered into the middle of some kind of market, mostly because there were roughly two kinds of humans about. Ones standing about trying to get people to ‘buy’ their goods and a much larger collection of humans either buying the goods or passing by to a specific good vendor that they wanted to buy from.

It was a strange ritual that they took part in. He had heard about money before, but actually seeing the concept in action was a strange sight. The latter group of buyers would happily hand off little bits of metal to the sellers, who would happily accept the metal and hand over whatever they had. Metal could be traded for just about anything it seemed. One human traded metal for apples. One traded for fox pelts. Still another received what appeared to be the wheel to a wagon for a fairly large handful of the metal pieces.

At the farm, things didn’t work like that. Everyone worked to help each other out. Fezzik and Rokien kept watch, looking out for threats. Most everyone worked to tend to food, whether that be taking care of the fields, raising the livestock, or preparing meals. Hunters would hunt. Tanners would tan. Carpenters would carpenter. At the end of the day, people would take what they needed from a public stockpile. People didn’t take more than they needed simply because they would wind up kicked out of the community.

There generally wasn’t much to spare besides. Farms and open communities had to be kept small and secret to avoid drawing unwanted attention. Iona had never seen a whole orchard’s worth of apples sitting in one spot before. In fact, he had only eaten an apple twice before. Their farm had a single apple tree and it didn’t always produce much.

Unfortunately, it didn’t seem like he would be getting an apple today despite how many were sitting around in the seller’s cart. From what Iona could tell, the seller was haggling down for every single scrap of metal that he could get, being so stingy as to cheat some poor buyer out of one of his rightfully purchased apples by snatching one out of the buyer’s bag as he walked away. With the human acting like that, he was sure to deny an apple to a poor child with no way to pay. And Iona didn’t have anything but his cloak that he might be able to trade for some of those bits of metal.

And if he traded his cloak, everyone would know that he had left the camp.

Maybe if he talked to one of those draken riders, he could find a way to acquire some metal bits. But for now, he was going to continue exploring the city.

Just as Iona started to turn away, he noticed something. Two young humans, neither much taller than he was, were pushing their way through the crowd of bigger humans. There were lots of children around, but something about them made these children stand out more. They were clearly moving with purpose. Some children, especially older ones, clearly had tasks. Maybe their parents ordered them to go purchase apples or maybe they were just browsing for food. But this pair was rushing through the crowd of humans as if they had been given a mission.

Another thing that made them stand out was their attire. It was, much like Iona’s own clothes, somewhat concealing. Not enough so that people would find them suspicious. At least, Iona hoped he wasn’t coming across as suspicious, but he really didn’t know much about human culture. No one had stopped and bothered him so far at least and he had been inside the city since early morning, so it stood to reason that he was doing something right. It helped that a bit of a chilly wind had started up over the past few days, forcing most people to bundle up a bit more than they otherwise would.

Humans didn’t have fur to help keep them warm.

The human children were headed right toward the apple shop that Iona had been eying earlier. Just before they reached it, they split apart. The smaller of the two broke into a run…

And crashed right into a buyer, knocking goods to the ground.

Both the apple seller and the buyer yelled at him a bit as he tried to pick up the dropped goods. Both adults watched him like a harpy.

But they didn’t watch the other human child, who went up right behind the apple seller and started slipping apples into a small pouch. By the time the first child had gathered up everything that had dropped and started bowing to the adults, the other child ran off with at least five apples, completely unnoticed.

Iona hopped off a leather stand’s roof where he had been watching the market and started making his way through the crowd. He couldn’t quite explain why he was doing what he was doing, but he headed toward where the two boys were meeting up on the far side of the market from the apple vendor.

“What about a pie?” he heard one of them whispering to the other. “I haven’t had meat in forever!”

“We got caught last time. He’ll remember us and be on the lookout.”

“If Maurice were here, he would do it. He’d come up with a plan to slip a pie out from under the old man’s nose.”

“Well, Maurice isn’t here now, is he?”

“And just whose fault do you think that is? If you hadn’t—”

The boys were meeting just outside the main market area, right around a corner where there weren’t too many other humans. Iona, walking around the corner, had not expected there to be nobody around except the boys. It made his presence extremely notable. When the first boy stopped talking, the second quickly turned, clutching the bag of apples to his chest.

Their startled demeanor diminished as they realized that Iona was not some adult chasing after them. Their spooked posture shifted to clear aggression.

“Who are you?”

“Get out of here!”

“This is our alley, kid.”

The slight fear that he had been caught vanished when they said ‘kid’. As far as Iona knew, only humans and goats called their young kids. His disguise was working perfectly.

Though they did seem upset with his presence.

Not really knowing why he had approached them, Iona hung his head and turned to walk away.

“Hey, wait…” one of them said.

“Wait for what? Get him out of here, what if he saw something? He’d rat us out.”

“If he was going to, he would have gone to Hopperhock. And I haven’t seen him before. Maybe he could help us get some pies.”

“Just because Maurice—”

“This isn’t about Maurice. This is about pies.”

“What’s a pie?”

Both boys stared at Iona. His mouth snapped shut, hoping that he hadn’t just revealed his identity by asking about something that all humans knew about. From what they said earlier, it was some kind of meat food. Maybe an animal he hadn’t heard of before?

“Oh, now we have to get some.” At a strange glance from the slightly taller boy, the littler one shrugged. “What? He’s never had one of Dario’s pies before! That’s more of a crime than what we’re doing. You’ll help, right?” he said as he looked to Iona.

“Um? Sure?”

“Great!”

The taller boy pressed a hand to his face, sighing. “Alright. Fine. If we’re doing this, here’s what you need to know…”

Without a word of introduction, the boys started explaining exactly what Iona needed to do. They were quite clear and answered any questions in very simple terms. The way they talked was one of experience. They had done this before many times. Not just acquiring food, but the act of explaining how to acquire it to others as well.

“Won’t the pie seller be upset if he doesn’t get the little metal bits in exchange for his sellings?”

The taller boy shrugged again. “Gotta eat somehow. Unless you’ve got a better way of getting food?”

There was food back at the camp. Not a lot, but enough for everyone to avoid starving. There was surely enough for the two boys… but that would mean taking them back there, they would find out that Iona was a monster and, even worse, the rest of the monsters would find out that Iona had been up in the city on his own. They probably wouldn’t kick him out to the wilds knowing that there might still be those other humans chasing after them, but they might hand him over to this city’s humans. Not knowing what might happen with them, the thought was almost as frightening.

So Iona simply shook his head.

“Great. Then just do what I said and we’ll all be eating like the Pharaoh by nightfall. And don’t forget, if the guy looks suspicious, just start running.”

“Right.” That was something Iona could do. Over the past few weeks, he had gotten a lot of experience in walking and even running. In fact, it sounded like an easier job than what he was supposed to be doing before running.

As for what he was supposed to be doing…

It didn’t take long to spot the pie seller. The seller was in a completely different section of the market than the apple seller. His stand was much bigger than the apple seller’s too. It was practically a whole building on its own. In fact, looking closer, Iona was pretty sure that the building behind the stand actually was part of the stand. A young girl, human of course, kept coming out with steaming hot rolls of bread which the seller then rapidly sold off to a large crowd standing out front.

Despite only seeing bread rolls, there was a definite scent of meat in the air. The scent was mouthwatering. It was easy to see why the two human children were interested in getting some of these ‘pies’. Iona would be lying if he said that he wasn’t also looking forward to it. He didn’t want to think ill of the kind humans who had offered food to the monsters who had appeared at their city walls, but he was pretty sure that most of the food was little more than scraps. Bits tossed aside that the humans didn’t want… or at least placed a lesser value on.

Although he had been happy with it, just glad to have something to eat after days of going without, he might trade it all away if it meant eating just one of these. And he might end up doing just that if he wound up caught.

Glancing over his shoulder, Iona got a thumbs-up from the smaller of the two boys. A slightly ominous gesture. Maybe it meant something different to the humans, but he had heard about the gladiatorial rings where monsters were often sent to fight to the death. He hadn’t actually seen such things for himself, but knew well that the angle of the thumb often determined the fate of the combatant.

But the thumbs up generally meant survival, so… that was good?

Shaking his head, Iona focused.

He walked right up to the stand, pushing through the crowds. He was a lot closer to any humans than he really should be, but the smell of meat and bread was so overpowering that there was no way the humans with their poor noses would be able to smell any difference in his scent.

The seller had just finished handing off a large pie to a portly human in exchange for a small handful of those bits of metal. Looking straight over the top of Iona, he immediately started selling to someone else. He was busy at the moment. So Iona moved around the side to where another younger human—this one a girl with red hair done up in a little bandanna—was bringing out a whole tray of fist-sized rolls of bread.

Iona got right in her way and promptly tapped the tips of his fingers together.

“Uhm… how much for a small one?”

The girl tried to step aside, but Iona moved to keep her blocked.

Behind her back, the two boys stole into the shop where the girl had just come from, slipping right through the front door with no one the wiser.

Now he just had to keep the girl distracted for a few moments.

But she was trying to step around him again.

“Just a small one? Maybe half of one?”

Sighing, she gave him a flat glare. “Three prav for the smallest. But you’ll have to talk with my father. I just cook.”

“You cook?” Iona blinked in genuine surprise. “How old are you?”

“I’m in my sixteenth year,” she said, managing to slip around Iona in his momentary shock. She quickly slid the tray of fresh meat pies onto the counter from where her father sold them and took an empty tray back.

“You’re so young,” Iona said, getting back in her way again. She was facing the door now, but he couldn’t really get her to turn away now. She would just slip past him again. “I always thought humans were—”

Iona clapped a hand over his mouth hard enough to make a noise. It drew some attention from the closest customers, but they quickly turned back to buying their pies from the seller who hadn’t even noticed his daughter placing the tray on the counter in the first place. But it did make the cook stop moving and look at him strangely.

“Are you alright?”

“Fine,” Iona squeaked. But the girl was stopped now, so he had to press forward and keep distracting her. The others said it would only take a moment, but… they were still in there. He could see the door out of the corner of his eye. “I just… bit my tongue. I thought cooks needed years of practice to get good, but those smell so tasty…”

Hopefully that covered up his little slip from earlier. Humans were supposed to be entirely useless for the first dozen or so years of their lives, requiring far more care from their parents than any monster that he was aware of. So having cooking skills while being not much older than that seemed like quite the impressive feat. Of course, everything he had heard came from other monsters and some of those other monsters had been known in the past to exaggerate about some things…

“How long have you been cooking these?”

“Ever since I can remember.”

“Amazing. I can’t even remember that long.”

“Uh huh. Look, I’ve got to get back to work. My dad is going to want the next tray in only a few minutes. Mealtimes are high traffic for us and I don’t have time to talk. If you want to buy something, ask my dad.”

“Oh, but… Uhm…” Just as Iona started looking around for a new topic to distract the human with, the door to their cookery opened just a crack. It was only a quick shadow of movement, but both boys managed to rush out. “I guess I’ll let you go then?”

Looking back to her, her eyes were thin points, glaring daggers right at him.

Had she noticed? Had he been caught?

He took a step back, then another. Turning completely, he bolted.

The two human children he was helping had described a meeting spot. Not being familiar with the human city, it took a bit to find. Past the fountain, turn right at the tailor, down the narrow path behind the cobbler’s shop, and down a set of stairs.

But when he got there, there was no one around. No human children, anyway. A small dog ran off as Iona slowed to a stop.

Had he arrived first? They had left the shop before him, but maybe they were taking a long way around. They had run off in the opposite direction, after all. That was just the way the door opened.

Iona settled down to wait for them. There was only the one entrance to the small alley alcove, back up the stairs toward the main market area. As such, there wasn’t much need to watch for the others like a harpy.

And yet, neither of the boys showed up. Iona waited and waited, it was even nearing nightfall and he saw neither tail nor hair of either of the humans. Humans didn’t have tails, but that was beside the point. Iona let out a long sigh as he brought his knees up to his chest.

He really didn’t have anyone to blame but himself. Everyone said that humans were untrustworthy, but…

“They come up with some sob story to get you to help them?”

Jolting, Iona just about threw off his hood as he turned to find the young human cook from earlier. The bandanna in her hair was missing now, letting much more hair than Iona would have thought possible hang down around her shoulders.

“Uhm, what?”

“It’s usually only younger kids who fall for their schemes,” she said, leaning up against the building that Iona had taken watch against. “Stupider kids. You’re lucky that my dad doesn’t notice whether a tray has ten pies on it or eight… Or seven.” As she spoke, she pulled out a small rock.

Or not a rock, Iona quickly discovered, but something wrapped up in crinkled paper. It had the distinct scent of meat coming from it. He had thought the smell was coming from her because of all the time she spent cooking, but it was definitely coming from the paper.

She shoved it in his hands. The paper came partially off with the movement, revealing some bread that was leaking a bit of meaty juice.

Her eyes were locked on Iona’s face, unwavering. “Well? Are you going to eat it or not?”

“Is it alright? I… I’m sorry, for earlier.”

“It’s fine,” she snapped. “I wouldn’t have given it to you if it wasn’t.”

“Oh. Okay then…” Slowly, conscious of being watched, Iona opened his mouth wide. The moment his teeth came down around the slightly steaming bread, flavor exploded in his mouth. It was so unexpectedly juicy that he couldn’t quite contain it all. A bit of it dribbled down his chin. But he couldn’t stop himself from taking a second bite.

“You have really big eyes, you know. Green too. Greener than I’ve ever seen.”

Mouth full of food, Iona couldn’t form a response.

“Your hood moves on its own, especially right at the top. I thought you were hiding an animal in there, but you aren’t, are you?”

Feeling a chill go down his back, Iona started glancing around. The girl was blocking the only escape from the small alley. Her eyes were more like those of a harpy than any harpy he had seen.

“And your teeth are rather sharp. I’ve never seen someone with such pointed teeth.”

Swallowing what might be his last meal, Iona racked his mind for an excuse. “I, uhm…”

“You’re one of them, aren’t you? My father sent food with the guards but the first thing you do is try to steal more from him?” Her hand flashed out, crossing his cheek before he could react.

The motion made his hood fall back, revealing his inhuman hair and large ears. He immediately pulled the hood down again, but it was beyond too late.

“Give me one reason why I shouldn’t drag you to the guards.”

“I… I’m sorry. I’ll make it up to you, I promise.”

“Make it up to me?” she crossed her arms. “You didn’t even have three prav to pay for a lousy pie. How could you possibly make up for stealing our livelihood?”

“M-monsters!”

“Monsters?” she said, cocking an eyebrow up to the brim of the white handkerchief she wore.

“Humans value parts of monsters, don’t they? I can give you some hair or… blood? I don’t know what it might be worth, but—”

“Gross.” Her expression fit her disgusted tone. “I don’t want your blood.”

“Maybe scales? I don’t have any, but some—”

“Stop. I don’t want bits of your bodies.”

“Then what can I give you?”

“Can you work? Can you cook?”

“I’ve put things over a fire before, but…” Iona trailed off as he looked down at the dripping half of a pie still clutched in his hand. “Nothing like what you’ve done.”

“Tomorrow morning. Show up by daybreak. I’ll teach you. And when you’re good enough, you’re going to take over for me whenever I want, got it?” She stomped a foot down, leaning a shoulder into Iona as he tried to back away—but there was nowhere for him to go. “I want to run around the market sometimes too, but I’m stuck cooking for papa all day long. Of course, I won’t cause trouble like those hooligans.”

“Tomorrow morning? But we’re not supposed to leave the camp…”

“Then I suppose I’ll have to go to the guards…”

“I meant that I would be there right on time!” Iona quickly said.

“Good,” she turned and started stalking out of the alley, only to pause and look over her shoulder. “You can call me Susan.”

“Iona… I’m Iona.”

“Don’t be late little beast boy, or your name might slip to the guards.”

“But I’m not a beast…”

She was already gone, stalking off out the alley and around the corner without paying attention to his words.

“I’m a gremlin,” he said to the empty alley.

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Breath of Air

Asylum

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The group of monsters continued on toward Illuna, this time with Alyssa at the head of the group, Brakkt at the rear, and Fela moving about and making herself seen. Brakkt in particular had his eyes everywhere, looking for any sign of the group that was chasing after the monsters. A quick Message to Volta had revealed that Martin, acting as the current regent of Illuna, was willing to meet with the monsters to discuss a possible peaceful resolution to their problems. Which meant that Brakkt actually had some leeway in openly assisting the monsters. This was the sovereign territory of Illuna. Anyone operating here would have to respect Martin’s wishes. The assassination squad included.

Apparently.

Politics weren’t something that Alyssa had delved too deeply into on Nod. She wasn’t sure that she wanted to get too into politics, either as a participant or observer. It was a hassle enough back on Earth. She could only imagine how chaotic an unstructured society would be. Not to mention the difficulty in paying attention to the goings ons with poor communication. Message spells helped, but they just weren’t sufficient for real communication. And they didn’t facilitate mass communication either.

Which meant, unfortunately, that there also wasn’t really a way to communicate to the assassination team that the monsters were under a parley truce. If there even was such a thing. This all seemed rather informal.

At the current pace, the monsters should arrive by evening. As a show of good faith, Martin was going to prepare a small amount of food. Small being enough to feed the several dozen starving monsters, anyway. The prospect of food had put a bit of haste in the steps of the monsters. Alyssa hoped that they weren’t pushing themselves too much. The food would still be there later.

Alyssa kind of wished that things weren’t quite so… tense? Since their initial discussion, no one had said much of anything. The cyclops and minotaur walked on their own. The rest of the monsters were strangely quiet as well. For such a large group to be so silent, it had to be something about how they were wary of the humans in their midst. Even the slight murmurs of excitement from the promise of food had died down. Perhaps it wasn’t wariness, but weariness, exhaustion at having to walk so much. Some relief had to have set in which would further exacerbate matters. The relief would bring in relaxation, which, in turn, would make it a bit more difficult to remain determined. Keeping up the walk was probably about all they could do at the moment.

As for Brakkt, Alyssa, and Fela, they were all spread around the group with Kasita riding alongside Alyssa. But the distance made talking impossible. Between Brakkt keeping watch for other humans, Fela smelling the air for much the same reason, and Alyssa keeping an eye out for trouble ahead, they probably wouldn’t have had time to talk much even if they were all right next to each other.

Several times, Alyssa found herself closing her eyes to try to look for the monsters’ pursuers only to realize what she was doing. Getting rid of the Astral Authority couldn’t happen soon enough. At least they weren’t after her constantly anymore and she didn’t have to worry about little slip-ups. Though it did make looking for people a pain.

Irulon had that one soul-sight spell, the one that made souls appear as symbols or animals, in Alyssa’s case. She did have a picture of that one in her phone, so she could draw a few of them. But she didn’t have any on hand. It just wasn’t a spell that she had ever thought she might need to use on the regular. And she wasn’t sure if it worked through invisibility fields like Empty Mirror.

Thankfully, they made it to the city without incident. The sight of Illuna’s much smaller walls—in comparison to Lyria—was a welcome sight. The array of guards on the walls was less so, but it couldn’t be helped. Alyssa wasn’t sure that they needed every guard in the city up on those walls. There was practically no arm room between them. They wouldn’t be able to effectively fight like that, so it had to be more for show and intimidation than anything else.

Alyssa had to hope that they hadn’t left the western wall completely empty of guards. Someone needed to be on watch for wayward demons or Patiences. But they probably knew what they were doing. Hopefully.

Maybe she would send Fela to check that there really were guards out there.

But for the time being, Brakkt directed the monsters to stop well away from the main walls. They weren’t even anywhere near the farms that sprawled out over the land surrounding the city. The city’s bowmen, assuming they could draw the string while being so packed in with their comrades, would be hard pressed to land an arrow anywhere nearby, let alone hit a target. Arcanists might be able to do something, but… there shouldn’t be any accidents or rogue agents. Volta, as court arcanist, would probably have some influence in who was accepted as a guard. Given Volta’s identity, she wouldn’t select arcanists likely to cause incidents at times like these.

Alyssa stayed behind with Fela while Brakkt headed up to the city proper. She couldn’t help but notice that he stopped by the abandoned stables where Izsha was on his way up. Just a quick peek in without even dismounting from Ensou. There must have been nothing to worry about because he went straight up to the wall after that.

From there, it was a waiting game. Without walking to distract them, the monsters started talking among themselves. The conversations were kept to low whispers, but there were enough of them to create a small level of noise. From that noise, Alyssa gathered two primary feelings. Excitement and fear.

Alyssa had to hope, for everyone’s sake, that there really wasn’t much to fear over. But she couldn’t say that with certainty.

“Hey.” The deep voice of the minotaur startled Alyssa out of her thoughts.

Judging by the slight hop, it startled Musca as well. Of course, the draken tried to disguised the jolt as simply turning around to face the giant of a monster, but Alyssa could tell. The nervousness probably came from the simple fact that Alyssa was still on Musca’s back. If the minotaur or cyclops took a sudden disliking to Alyssa, Musca would probably end up as collateral to one of their large weapons.

But the minotaur didn’t look like he was about to fight. Having the head of a bull, it was almost impossible for Alyssa to read his facial expressions. He had the body of a man, a particularly buff and large man but a man nonetheless. That gave her some idea of his body language.

The fact that he didn’t have his axe in his hand helped convince her that nothing was amiss.

“What’s up?” Alyssa said. As she spoke, she could feel Kasita leaning around her back to get a better look at the minotaur.

Kasita had still not changed back from her lizardy version of herself.

The minotaur looked left, then he looked right, then back to Alyssa. With a slight nod of his head off to one side, he started walking away from the group. For being so large, his footsteps were surprisingly soft. They didn’t shake the ground or make that loud of thumps.

With a glance to Kasita, who shrugged, Alyssa directed Musca to follow.

He didn’t go far. Just far enough to get a small amount of privacy from the others. “Not all of us are useful,” he said eventually, looking back to the group. “Some are wounded with injuries that might keep them from working for the rest of their lives. Some are just small peaceful creatures without much physical strength.”

Alyssa hadn’t had a chance to look over the wounded. She didn’t have any healing potions, knowledge of monster physiology, or even a connection to Tenebrael to maybe get some miraculous healing in. The monsters here would know better how to handle their own injuries. Probably.

Actually, now that she thought about it, she didn’t know much about how monsters handled medical matters. Did they think slapping leeches on things to ‘balance the humors’ was a valid method of curing ailments? Something to talk about with Kasita later. Maybe Jason as well for general medical matters. He might know better than she would about how to disseminate proper medical knowledge to the world. In fact, proper medicine was probably better than farming equipment.

But that was a discussion for another time, she supposed.

As for the weaker creatures, that wasn’t hard to believe either. There were several small and fluffy creatures much like bunny rabbits or even small dogs? Even a few goblins in this group. Alyssa knew from personal experience that goblins weren’t all that impressive in terms of anything, let alone monsters like Fela or the draken.

“Yeah,” Alyssa said, looking back to the minotaur.

“They won’t make good slaves.”

Alyssa blinked. “What?”

“Even still, we discussed it together before even deciding to head to the human city. As long as they are not harmed and are taken care of, the rest of us will do as told without rebellion or complaint.”

“Wait,” Alyssa said, holding up a hand.

But the minotaur ignored her and continued talking. “I alone should be worth a dozen of the smaller ones. And Fezzik, the cyclops, should count as another dozen.”

“Hold on!”

“And if those are not agreeable terms, then—”

“First of all, none of that is up to me. I don’t even live in this city let alone hold a position of authority. You would have been better off bringing this up to Brakkt before he left. Secondly, I don’t think any of you should be slaves. I don’t agree with the practice. And from what I’ve seen of this city, I’m not sure that they agree either. They have few if any slaves.”

“That said,” Kasita added with a small smile, “I don’t imagine you’ll be able to freeload. This city’s guard has been… diminished through repeated interactions with the demons nearby. I’m sure farmland could use tending. Other skills you all might have could help as well if there are any craftsmen or fabricators among you.”

The minotaur didn’t say anything. Again, it was difficult to tell from his facial expressions, but Alyssa guessed that he was somewhat surprised. Probably. She should have realized it earlier, realized just what submitting themselves to human rule might mean for the lesser among them, never mind those like the cyclops and minotaur.

Before the minotaur could speak again, the very air changed. A palpable tension rippled across the atmosphere. The low murmurs of conversation that had sprung up since the group stopped their long march hushed down in an instant. Monsters big and small shifted their stances, some shrinking in on themselves while others puffed up, perhaps in an attempt to look a little more intimidating. Or, taking into context what the minotaur had said, maybe even trying to make them look a little more appealing for enslavement.

It only took a minute to figure out just what had caused the change.

A large group was coming down from the city walls. At least a dozen horses did nothing but carry banners emblazoned with the fleur de lis symbol of the city. More horses moved between those, all outfitted with bronze armor and more emblemed tabards. In the center of it all, Martin rode with shining silver armor on a similarly outfitted white horse. At his side, Brakkt rode on Ensou, essentially in a completely inverted color palette.

They approached without any semblance of haste in their movements. Their horses didn’t gallop or even trot. They walked in a slow procession clearly designed just to show themselves off.

Considering how nervous the monsters were already, the unnecessary parade just made Alyssa frown as she wondered who had come up with the idea. Martin? Volta? Brakkt? Some guard captain looking to curry favor as the idea guy? It wasn’t like Alyssa couldn’t understand the purpose behind it. There were almost a hundred monsters out here. Walking down with his cane and only a guard or two wouldn’t give the proper impression at all. It might even give the monsters the idea that they could just take over the city through brute force. At the same time, Alyssa had to frown at the display.

The procession came all the way down the road, spreading out in loose formation as they neared the monsters. Martin, Volta, the cursed sword, Brakkt, and a pair of identical twins that even styled their mustaches the same way were left in the center, along with several guards. As when Alyssa and her group first approached the monsters, Martin slowed to a stop with plenty of distance between him and the group.

“You and the cyclops seem to have taken charge since our arrival,” Kasita said from behind Alyssa. “Perhaps the two of you should head forward for negotiations? Unless there is someone else here more fitting of the role.”

A harsh breath shot out the minotaur’s nose. “Humans find us threatening. We are threatening. Something smaller and more human-like in appearance…”

“But no one else is stepping forward. No one stepped forward when we arrived. The two of you did. In fact…”

Although the minotaur had taken them to the side to talk about his slavery concerns, the cyclops wasn’t far away. After swiveling his large eye toward Alyssa, Kasita, and the minotaur, he started forward. His movements were deliberately slow as if he were trying to be as nonthreatening as possible. After about five steps, he paused, reached to his hip, and undid the ties that kept his large stone club attached at his hip, letting it fall to the ground with a weighty thump. He paused again and looked back to the minotaur.

With another snort of air, the minotaur followed suit. He tossed his axe to the ground and marched up alongside the cyclops.

Alyssa, after beckoning for Fela, followed just to the side. As she had said to the minotaur, she really wasn’t a part of whatever discussions were about to take place. She didn’t know the politics or even the personalities of the humans or monsters. She couldn’t really vouch for either side, although Martin had seemed the amicable sort in her few meetings with him. But if things went poorly, she had the spells on hand to act as a moderator. She was confident that she could keep the two sides away from each other long enough for the monsters to leave without bloodshed on either side. Hopefully. But she was more hopeful that the monsters would be able to get along with the humans. At least on a surface level. Deeper friendship could come after a time. And if a few words from her and maybe a threat or two could lead to that end, well, that was something that Alyssa had wanted to see ever since meeting monsters properly in the Waterhole.

Although the cyclops and the minotaur were not mounted, Martin remained on his horse, rubbing a gauntleted hand down its neck in what was likely supposed to be an attempt to calm it down. A few of the others, one banner carrier in particular, were a little less successful in keeping their horses from breaking ranks. They didn’t turn around and sprint back like the Lyrian guards had upon seeing the gaunt, but it looked like a close thing. Though Alyssa could honestly not tell whether the horses were more frightened of the monsters or of the draken. Those horses closest to Brakkt seemed far worse than those further away.

With Martin on his horse, he still only came up to the cyclops’ stomach. The minotaur was a bit shorter than his companion, but not by much. So it probably wasn’t that bad a thing to have him still mounted. It meant that the two giants didn’t have to duck quite so much to be on his level.

And they did duck down. It obviously wasn’t a bow or a kneel or any other respectful deference, at least not further than moving down to eye-level was respectful.

“Monsters,” Martin said, voice a neutral greeting. “I understand that you are short on food. After speaking with my advisers,” he said, gesturing toward Volta and the two twins, “we have purchased supplies from agreeable merchants. I have men currently loading them up to deliver down here as fast as they can.”

Both the monsters looked to each other, surprise evident on the cyclops’ face—the minotaur was hard to read, but Alyssa was pretty sure he was surprised as well. Even she had to blink. Opening with a promise of food without even introducing themselves? Brakkt had said there would be food, but Alyssa expected for there to be some terms and conditions set beforehand, using the food as a bribe to keep the monsters from doing anything complicated.

Volta, Alyssa noted, looked to her with her real body. It was sluggish and slow, but she did wink.

So Volta had something to do with that decision. Alyssa wondered how she had framed the proposal to the others. A way to keep the monsters docile during the meeting? Or maybe just appealing to morality of the situation, arguing that leaving the poor things starving and wondering if they would continue to starve was just too inhumane.

She would have to ask later. For now, the discussion continued.

“I am Martin, regent of Illuna while my son is in the grand city of Lyria. These are my advisers, Holbrook and Holland. My court arcanist and a trusted source of advice, Volta. And I believe you are acquainted with the Second Prince Brakkt, visiting from Lyria.”

When Martin fell silent but neither of the monsters spoke, Alyssa, off to the side with Fela and not really part of either group, tried to make a subtle hand gesture. Just a little wave from the monsters to the humans. She didn’t think they were stupid or couldn’t understand social cues. In contrast to Volta or even the bunyip at the Oasis and Kasita at the Waterhole, they just lacked the initiative that Alyssa expected someone in their position to have.

Unless someone else in that group of monsters was willing or ready to step up as a leader, it was up to them.

“Fezzik,” the cyclops said. “No fancy titles. I am not even a… Our leader was killed over a week ago.”

“We’re standing here because we seem to have been nominated as representatives,” the minotaur said with a glance toward Alyssa. “I am Rokien.”

“We… thank you for your generosity with your food. Most of us have not eaten in weeks.”

“Far be it from us to starve others. We need not be enemies.”

Alyssa sat a little straighter. She wasn’t sure whether it was Volta’s influence on Martin or if he was just a genuinely kindhearted man even despite the racial tensions between humans and monsters, but everything seemed to be going well. Quite well.

Taking her eyes off the meeting, Alyssa started glancing around at the gathered monsters and guards, wondering just how it might go all wrong.

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Breath of Air

A Long March

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“They don’t look like an army,” Alyssa said, lowering her binoculars and handing them off to Brakkt.

They were a few hours away from the city now. Still well away from the Plains of the Dead, but close enough that the greenery wasn’t quite as omnipresent as it was around the city and the river that ran next to it. They had stopped at an old ruin of sorts. Some watchtower, perhaps. It once sat upon a hill, but now was only rubble save for a single flat wall that looked like a stiff breeze might send it down into the valley.

The valley that the monsters were currently marching through.

Brakkt took the binoculars, raised them to his eyes, and tried looking through them only to realize that he had them backwards. A quick flip had them the right way around, affording him a view of what Alyssa had already seen.

Forty might actually have been a rather conservative estimation. Fifty to sixty monsters seemed more accurate, though she hadn’t tried counting them individually. Like the monsters working in the whorehouse or the those at the oasis, they were a mishmash of species. Tall ones, small ones, big ones, thin ones, humanoids and… those more classically monstrous. There was such a wide variety of colors as well, from things with greenish scales to blue fur.

A few of them, Alyssa recognized. She was fairly sure that there was a group of honey bees down there, but their features were a bit sharper, so they might be some distinct variation. A lizard man, much like Rizk except with green scales instead of red, trailed behind the others, walking like he hadn’t had water in days. In fact, most of the monsters looked to be in poor shape. Many monsters didn’t wear clothes at all, either relying on their fur and scales to protect their modesty or simply because they didn’t have human normative values of modesty in the first place. But those that did had worn and torn clothes. Hair and fur was matted, scraggly, and unkempt. Some monsters looked a lot thinner than it felt like they should have looked.

“They seem more like refugees,” Brakkt mumbled as he handed the binoculars over to Kasita. “Definitely not an army.”

“Why would they be heading toward Illuna? Do they not know that they’re heading for a human settlement? Not just a settlement, but a city. Surely they don’t think they can fight in this state and hope to win?”

“They might not be trying to fight,” Kasita said, voice soft and somewhat sorrowful as she accepted the binoculars from Brakkt. “I’ve never seen it happen with a group this large, but I have known some monsters that run out of hope and options to submit themselves willingly to human control, assuming the life of a slave might be better than no life at all. But… I would have thought that a group this large would try to form into a community. Rather like those monsters at the oasis or the mysterious farm Volta mentioned that’s been facing a famine.”

“Could they be from that farm? Did they run out of supplies sooner than Volta expected?”

Brakkt shook his head. “They look more like they’ve been through a battle. They’ve got wounded with them.”

“Wounded?” Alyssa said, taking the binoculars back from Kasita. It took a moment, but sure enough, Brakkt was right. A group at the back, not far from the green-scaled lizard man, had a number of monsters covered in bandages. The bandages were soiled with blood and bile and were clearly in need of changing. And that wasn’t even taking into consideration the amount of dirt covering all of them, wounded and uninjured alike.

“Perhaps they are from that farm,” Brakkt continued, “but they aren’t here because they ran out of food. It seems likely that they were driven out. Probably by a local city’s guardsmen. And probably in an ambush at that. Assaulting a group of monsters this large would otherwise take far too many men. I’d even go so far as to say that their community wound up razed to the ground. If they had any arcanists capable of some inferno and flame spells, they might not have needed to get too close.”

“So we should help them then, right?”

“They might still be being followed. And if they are… it puts me, at least, in a complicated situation.”

“Can’t openly show support for monsters?”

“It isn’t quite that. My father is trying to change things, open the people up to monsters a little more. The real problem is, if they are being chased, I’m expected to side with the humans. Failure to do so and I doubt I’ll be the Second Prince for much longer.”

“I don’t see any humans. They would presumably be mounted, right?”

“Depends entirely on who is driving these monsters out and what their overall strategy is.”

“Still, none in sight. We could go meet with the monsters and find out exactly what is going on. It might be possible to help them out a bit and get them out of here before any humans arrive.”

“If they’re open to help,” Kasita mumbled. “A big group like this is probably going to try to rely on their own strength. Though I’m still curious as to why they’re heading toward a human city. I guess we just have to ask.”

“Should we send you in first?”

“I think they’ve already spotted us. While looking through the binoculars, I noticed a few pointing toward us.”

“They’re still marching forward?”

“They might be confused about the draken and Fela, if they could see that clearly. Then again, we might just be silhouettes on the horizon to them. They’ve already been spotted by scouts, so might figure that there is nothing to gain by panicking over us. And if we attack… well, there are only a few of us compared to how many they number. They won’t know that you can Annihilator them all in one blast if necessary.”

Alyssa frowned, shoulders slumping slightly. “I hope it isn’t necessary. They look like they’ve been beaten down enough already.”

“Let’s go,” Brakkt said. “All together. We’ll keep slow so as to not startle them into attacking, but I don’t want to split us up just in case they aren’t going to be friendly toward monsters in the company of humans.”

Alyssa slipped her binoculars back into her satchel just in time to grab onto the prickly scales of Musca’s neck. Riding Musca was… an experience. Given that they were both draken, it was quite amazing just how different Izsha was from the more volatile Musca. The ride wasn’t nearly as smooth and, at times, Alyssa almost felt like Musca was trying to throw her off. It wasn’t anything overt like a bucking horse, but Musca would take a turn just a bit sharper than Alyssa would have expected from Izsha or maybe Musca would angle down a bit more during a long sprint. Little things that just threw off what Alyssa expected, leading to her almost losing her balance on occasion. Given that Irulon found Musca’s movements smooth enough to turn the saddle into a makeshift writing desk, Alyssa could only imagine that the dumb draken was doing it on purpose.

Musca’s scales weren’t as pleasant to grab either. Where the sides of Izsha’s neck were smooth, Musca’s scales jutted out just a bit more, presenting their sharp tips to Alyssa’s palms. Even with gloves on, it felt like grasping a bag of razor blades.

At least they weren’t rushing down to the group of monsters. At a more sedate pace, Alyssa didn’t have to hold on tight. But she was not looking forward to the ride back to the city.

While the group of monsters had continued moving forward despite being watched, the moment Alyssa and company started their approach, they started readying themselves. More vulnerable-looking monsters moved to the back while the larger and beefier of the group stepped out in front. With Unseen Sight activated, Alyssa could tell that there weren’t any Shadow Assassins or the like. Nothing setting up an ambush.

Musca, at a motion from Brakkt’s arms, slowed down even more. Dasca and Fela did as well.

“They’re wary,” Kasita said from over Alyssa’s shoulder, pointing out the obvious. “It’s strange. I would have expected them to act a lot more aggressively. Either in an attempt to frighten us off or even just to give some confidence to the smaller members of their group. And the children.”

From their vantage point, they had spotted children right in the center. While the group as a whole looked pitiful with their torn clothes, ragged appearances, and wounds, the children had it the worst. One of the smallest, something bunny-like, was being carried on what Alyssa assumed to be its mother’s shoulders. The rest had to walk. Some walked next to older monsters. Some… walked alone.

They all looked like they had been walking for far too long. Every step was more like a stagger. They only kept going because those around them kept going. If one collapsed, Alyssa had to wonder whether someone would pick them up or simply leave them behind.

“I wonder when they last ate,” Kasita said in such a soft tone of voice that Alyssa wasn’t sure whether or not she was supposed to have heard it.

“Illuna, despite the troubles with their demonic neighbors, has full stocks of fruit, grain, vegetables, and even meat. If we can convince everyone to get along, we could get them food before nightfall.”

“Fela and the draken, vouched for by the Second Prince, are one thing. Even a city as ignorant to monsters as Illuna might not be so welcoming to others. Especially not this large a group. It’s… scary for humans.”

They drew to a stop at fifty paces away with another motion from Brakkt. Hardly any distance for a draken or a hellhound, probably not much distance for most of their group either. But it was enough to give Alyssa time to cast spells if necessary. She didn’t have nearly enough Spectral Chains to tie up the entire group, but the ones most likely to attack them could be taken out easily enough.

“Hold, monsters,” Brakkt said, deep voice loud and commanding without really being shouting, “before your caravansary proceeds to spark an attack from the human city of Illuna. We’ve come to ascertain your intentions and, if need be, deliver a warning that further invasion into human lands will not go unanswered. Who will speak for your group?”

Alyssa winced a little at Brakkt’s words. They were a bit more volatile than she thought a group like this deserved. He hadn’t said much back at the oasis. Hearing him now, that was probably for the best. Then again, he had probably done things like this before while not having barged into a monster sanctuary. They were related, but still different situations. The sanctuary monsters may have fought to the death. The oasis was their home and, judging by the presence of the former Waterhole monsters, some kind of resting point for those traveling through human lands. If it was compromised, it would be trouble for a great many people. These monsters were different. They weren’t in a home. If told to leave, they might just do that if it meant leaving without conflict.

At Brakkt’s command, a murmur of conversation started up among the monsters. Their discussion, or perhaps argument, went on for several minutes. Voices raised. Some of them started pointing at others. Even within their own group, some monsters started backing away, like they didn’t want to be a part of the strife.

“This is bad,” Kasita said. “Every group of monsters that I’ve ever been a part of has had a leader. Whether someone deliberately took charge or whether everyone else just looked toward one person—usually the oldest or one who had been at a particular location the longest—someone would wind up at the forefront of a group like this. I…”

Amid the arguing, Kasita hopped off Musca’s back.

It wasn’t until Kasita took a few steps forward that they hushed down again. They didn’t instantly quiet down, but one person noticed Kasita’s approach and alerted their neighbors, who nudged the monsters next to them, and so on until there were only a few of the most heated monsters left talking.

And that was not a pun on the one monster that looked like a walking cross-section of a volcano. It was actually toward the back of the group, staying quiet even during the loudest parts of their argument. Given its physiology, Alyssa wasn’t even sure that it could talk.

“Who is the oldest among you?” Kasita said loud enough to address the group. As she moved forward, she shifted her form. A ripple ran over her body and, after a moment or two, a far more monstrous version of Kasita was standing in her place. She still looked superficially like the sisterly form that Kasita usually wore around. It was clearly inspired by Rizk, having red-orange scales running up and down her sides and back with a little tail poking out from under a longer shirt.

Given that she had pulled this trick before, Alyssa well knew what she was doing. She was putting the group of monsters at ease. Or trying to, anyway. With Fela and the draken, one human turning into a monster might even plant an idea in their minds that both Alyssa and Brakkt were monsters as well, just in disguise.

Kasita walked right up to the largest monster, a sort of minotaur-like hulk of a man, with the confidence that only someone without fear of physical attacks could muster. Even though she only came up to his waist, he immediately ceased arguing with the one-eyed giant that was the only one of the group that could match his size. Both looked down to the approaching mimic.

“What happened to your group?” she asked, voice a little softer but still loud enough for everyone to hear. “Why take the risk of marching through human lands in such a large group? You had to have known where you were heading…”

“We’ve been on the run for weeks,” a cyclops said. Being roughly the same height as the minotaur, he had to squat down a bit to be more on the level of Kasita. But he was still at least two heads taller than she was. “Every time we stop, thinking we’re safe or that we’ve run far enough, we get ambushed in the night. Humans. A whole group of them that never stops chasing us. Stragglers get picked off, disappearing without a word or cry for help.”

“You have no leaders?”

The cyclops didn’t answer right away. His hand clenched into a tight fist as his knuckles ground into the dirt at his feet. “We woke up to find Xefawks’ head sitting in the center of our camp one morning weeks ago. As well as the heads of his family.”

“I…” Kasita actually stepped back, grimace plain on her face. Her tail drooped ever so slightly as her shoulders shuddered. “My condolences,” she said through grit teeth. “But… You can’t fight them off? With a group like yours…”

“They rarely show themselves. When they do, they always run away. Can’t fight what we can’t catch.”

Brakkt, with Alyssa next to him and Fela trailing slightly behind, rode forward. They closed the distance from a good fifty feet to only about ten, stopping just behind Kasita. “Have you seen any colors or emblems on their outfits, armor, or gear? Anything to distinguish them?” Brakkt said, voice slightly softer than it had been when he first addressed the monsters.

The cyclops shook his head, large eye in the center of his face swinging over to the minotaur as soon as he finished.

But the minotaur was shaking his bull-like head as well. “I’ve seen them more than others,” he said in a voice even deeper than Brakkt’s. “Never seen any branding on their hides.”

“Hmm,” Brakkt hummed, drawing a gauntlet-covered hand to the chin of his helmet.

“What is it?”

“Very possibly a roaming squad of assassins,” Brakkt said quietly so that only Alyssa would hear. “At least judging by the prolonged harassment and hit and run tactics. The royal family doesn’t use them—not openly anyway—as we usually only march armies to meet armies. But some of the great houses do use such forces to keep their lands clear of monsters. It’s psychological warfare as much as it is physical. They probably don’t even intend to kill this group to the last, leaving several alive to warn other groups of monsters away from the lands they’ve been driven out from. Or possibly to find out where they are heading to reveal other hives of monster activity.”

“So even if they would all fit inside the oasis, something I doubt, sending them there would wind up hurting everyone.”

Brakkt nodded twice before looking back to the cyclops. “Regardless of my sympathy for your troubles, I still need to know your intentions in heading this direction. Attacking the city will not stop your pursuers. You’ll likely be throwing away your lives on their walls, which might be their intention if they’ve been herding you this way.”

“We’re not stupid. But we’re out of options. And food. We’ve been out of food for a while now.” He turned, large eye sweeping over the group of monsters. “Some of us haven’t eaten in days. Maybe longer. And we don’t know where to go. Without Xefawks, we don’t know somewhere else that could support us and wouldn’t just meet the same fate that we have. You humans have driven us out, but the human city here is the only place that might be able to feed, shelter, and possibly protect us. Even if we have to… submit ourselves.”

Getting off his knees, the cyclops drew himself up to his full height. Even with Musca taking several steps backwards, Alyssa still had to crane her neck just to keep him in view. As he stood, Alyssa noticed the thing at his side. A… club? It looked more like a chunk of a paved road that he had torn from the ground and hooked to his waist, but it had to be some kind of stone. One hand, about as big as Alyssa was, reached down for the hilt.

“But if the human city is going to attack us too, we may as well fall upon our swords here and now.”

“Wait,” Alyssa said, trying to sit upright even with Musca feeling like it was getting ready to sprint away from any chance of that weapon swinging in their way. “That might not be necessary. Knowing your intentions, I think we might be able to help—”

“Alyssa,” Brakkt said, slight warning tone in his voice.

“What? You don’t have to do anything. I’ll just have a few words with Martin. I’m sure his court arcanist will be willing to see things my way. And if they don’t listen…” Alyssa trailed off, not sure what she intended to do if they didn’t listen. She hadn’t been able to help Izsha. Not as much as she wanted, anyway. But these monsters didn’t need to be brought back from the dead. The ones that were dead, like their leaders, had likely already had their souls ferried off by angels. There was nothing she could do for them even if she was willing to try what she had done with Izsha a second time.

But, glancing toward the sky, Alyssa decided that she wasn’t just going to sit by and let this group die. There were children here. Starving children at that. She doubted that even everyone in this group was completely blameless. Several of their number had probably fought and killed humans in the past. But letting them get hunted down when there was nothing they could do to defend themselves just wasn’t right.

As long as the monsters weren’t going to cause trouble for the people of Illuna, there was no reason to turn them away.

The moon wasn’t visible at the moment, but, if Martin and the rest of Illuna had some problems with sheltering a few monsters who might even agree to help defend the city should the demons and infected return to assaulting their walls…

She might just have to disagree with their policies.

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