039.007

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Back to Basics

Card Games


There were no assassins for the entire night. Not a single one. Kind of a let down after all the preparation that Alyssa made. Disturbing Fela and Kasita to have a slumber party in a filthy jail cell—there was a vacant room opposite from the intelligencer that Alyssa had asked to use for the night—had been entirely unnecessary. Not that either of them seemed to mind. Really, it was just Alyssa who had been grumpy about it all, despite it being her own idea.

The intelligencer hadn’t been all that chatty either. Alyssa did learn her name. Claire. But that was about it. No more big drops about Yora. The mild panic that had led to her spilling all the beans she had spilled went away with Alyssa’s assurance that she would be fine for at least one more night. That wasn’t to say that she had been completely silent. Just mostly.

And most of what had been said had been between Kasita and Claire. In fact, as Alyssa woke up from her light sleep, she found them still talking, making her wonder whether or not Claire had even gone to bed.

“I think I understand,” Kasita said, nodding with her arms crossed. “But did you have the network of contacts built up before entering the city? You had only been in the city for a short time when you… borrowed Princess Irulon’s notebook. Yet that came from one of your contacts? I don’t know that I could build up such a network of contacts fast enough to have people willing to barge into private chambers of the guild—ignorant of the status of the occupants or not.”

“No. No. They didn’t just spontaneously pop up. A little coin to the right people can get you far, but something like that requires a loyalist. The particular individual who got me the book moved here from Yora on orders a long time ago. He had just been living normally, but still retained his loyalty to Yora—sometimes after long stays in a foreign city, they will switch loyalties, can’t really help that. When I arrived, I just sent out the word that I would be interested in knowing more about the monsters at Illuna. He thought he had something related and brought me that damned book.”

“But then you had him killed? Not a very nice way to reward your loyal contacts.”

“Killed?” Claire blinked twice before shaking her head. “No. He is still alive as far as I am aware.”

“No? But I thought I heard…” Kasita trailed off with uncertainty lining her features. “Hmm…”

That’s right, Alyssa thought. She had forgotten until just now, but back when they first heard about the missing book, Kasita had mentioned that they had the man who delivered the book killed. Now that she was thinking about it, it didn’t make much sense to have the man killed if the intelligencer didn’t actually know the value of the book. Irulon had been the one who decided that Claire hadn’t been lying about that. So either she had fooled Irulon and killed the guy or hadn’t killed the guy. In the latter case, Kasita must have misheard or misunderstood.

Was all that relevant? Probably not. Just another item to note about the intelligencer and, possibly, her trustworthiness if even Irulon couldn’t detect the truth.

A long yawn overtook Alyssa before they could continue their conversation. That combined with a long stretch made both of them stop to look in her direction. She didn’t care and, in fact, only stretched harder. The cot she had slept on was perhaps the least comfortable thing she had ever used and that included hard ground out in the middle of the desert north of Lyria. She had just woken up, but she could feel a knot in the base of her neck that would be there for days.

It certainly didn’t help that Fela, as per usual, wound up half on top of her in the middle of the night. The dumb hellhound tossed and turned more than a toddler. One of Alyssa’s legs was so prickly and tingly as she tried to move it out from under Fela’s heavy paws that she actually sucked in a hissing breath of pain.

“Having problems?” Kasita asked with a soft giggle.

“Dumb dog,” Alyssa mumbled. It was a pain deciding whether to move her leg or not. Just bending it was painful, but she had to get her blood flowing again. “She’s going to give me permanent nerve damage one of these days.”

“Aww, but she likes sleeping with you.”

“Yeah, well, she’s a lot heavier than I can take.”

“Ufu~”

Groaning through clenched teeth, Alyssa started to worm her way out from under Fela.

Despite all the movement, the hellhound didn’t wake. Her eyes were closed and her face was slack. If not for the hot air coming out with every breath, Alyssa might have worried. As it was, she was only mildly annoyed.

“This happens every single night.”

“Not a very good guard dog. We would have been dead if someone showed up.”

At Claire’s comment, Fela’s large ears twitched. A narrow column of flame sprouted from the corner of one of her eyes as she glared directly at the offender. Claire immediately shrank in on herself, drifting away from the bars of her cell where she was having her conversation with Kasita. She scuttled back even further as Fela opened her mouth in a wide yawn, showing off those sharp canine teeth.

“We would have been fine,” Alyssa said, patting a hand between Fela’s ears. “Even if Fela slept through an attack, I’m a Rank Six arcanist and Kasita is pretty close to that.”

“I had an ear open,” Fela said as her yawn came to a close. Shutting her eyes and extinguishing her flames, she dropped her head onto Alyssa’s lap. “But it’s so early… Let’s sleep some more.”

“No. No time. Things to do. Got to get up and at ‘em.”

“What do we have to do that can’t wait until later.”

“Knowing you, later would be mid-afternoon. By the time we actually got started, night would be setting again.”

“I don’t see a problem with that,” Fela said after another long yawn.

“Of course you don’t. Come on,” Alyssa said, poking Fela in the cheek. “Up.”

After just a bit more grumbling, Fela finally got off Alyssa enough for her to stand. The tingling in her leg still made her grimace, but she ignored it. Her leg would wake up sooner if she got up and moving.

“Kasita,” Alyssa said. “Would you mind keeping the intelligencer company for a while longer?”

“Gladly.”

Hesitating, Alyssa had to wonder if they were getting to be too good of friends. Claire wasn’t to be trusted. Kasita knew that… Shaking her head, Alyssa decided to ignore it for now. Kasita was just gathering more information. Maybe trying to figure out how to be a better spy judging from their conversation the night before and the trail end of their conversation that Alyssa had woken up to. “There probably won’t be anything major happening. Assassins wouldn’t attack during broad daylight… would they?” she added with a glance toward Claire.

Who shrugged. “I wouldn’t. Guards are generally at a higher level of alertness during the day and it would be harder to escape. Poison is still an option.”

“I’ll pick up some food while I’m out.” Trying to avoid limping as she walked out—Fela, with yet another long yawn, shambled behind her like a zombie—Alyssa headed out to the main room.

A trio of guards were playing a card game with each other at a small table. The actual game was something Alyssa was passably familiar with. It was a common sight around various taverns, playing something like the game of Hearts. The cards were completely different—there were no kings, jacks, or queens and there were only three suits, none of which aligned with the versions Alyssa was familiar with. The few times that Alyssa had tried to play wound up in a miserable failure. There were too many rules to the game, not all of which had been explained to her. For instance, there was a card barring the symbol of the elves that essentially instantly devalued the hand. That it was such a bad card was such general knowledge that nobody bothered to mention anything. There was a way to get rid of it in some kind of Old Maid-style bluffing part of the game, but that had its own rules and regulations.

Alyssa had taken to simply watching when Oz, Catal, and her own mother decided to play the game. How her mother learned to play was a mystery that she had yet to figure out.

“Morning,” Alyssa said. “Anything strange happen since you men got here?”

“No assassins, if that’s what you’re asking,” one said with a small chuckle as he laid down a card in the middle of the table.

The wrong card, apparently. One of the others grabbed it, added it to his hand, and added another five bars to the pile of coins on the table. Both of the others looked a bit miffed at that. One stared at his cards for a few seconds before collapsing the entire hand and dropping them on the table. As he stood, he offered a nasty look at the first guard who spoke—who quickly copied his action of folding his hand—before turning to Alyssa.

“There was something strange,” he said, pausing slightly as he took in Fela’s appearance. For a moment, it had looked like he was going to walk right up to them. Now, he simply stood next to the table, not coming even a single step closer. “When I got in for my shift, found a man leaning against the wall out there. Shooed him away and he left without complaint. Thought I’d mention it since you got all worked up over some assassin.”

Alyssa raised an eyebrow. Had there nearly been an assassination during the night? Could it have simply been a coincidence? “I take it there aren’t normally random people hanging out around the jailhouse?”

“Wouldn’t bring it up if it was normal.”

“I see.” Very possibly something had happened then. Or had been about to happen. Perhaps the would-be assassin caught wind of Alyssa having a little stake-out with her friends.

Perhaps it would have been better to have hidden, ready to apprehend the assassin when he showed up. Alyssa didn’t honestly have any questions to ask him—from Claire, she already had a good idea of why he would be here and who sent him—but it seemed better to have an assassin in custody than not. Would Yora just get another assassin to do the job? Would they try to assassinate the assassin?

If Alyssa captured a dozen assassins, all trying to assassinate their predecessors, would Yora keep trying?

Despite the severity of the situation, Alyssa found herself mildly amused with the thought. It sounded like some Pink Panther shenanigans. But… if this suspicious person was an assassin…

It meant that the intelligencer had been correct. People were trying to kill her.

Sighing, Alyssa watched as the winning guard collected all the coins on the table, dragging them to a small pouch. I need a vacation. Unfortunately, knowing her own luck, any vacation she took would end with angels or demons or just regular mortals causing all kinds of problems. Shaking her head, Alyssa could only wonder how the world had managed to hold itself together before she came along.

“I’m leaving one of my associates here,” Alyssa said with a gesture back down the hall she had just come from. “I’ll be back shortly as well. Keep your guard up and let me know if anything strange happened while I’m gone.”

“We know how to do our jobs.”

“I’m just…” Alyssa pinched her eyes shut for a moment. “Sorry if it feels like I’m ordering you around. It’s just a slightly stressful situation that I would really rather not deal with, but still have to deal with it.”

There were only so many hours in a day and far too many things to be doing during those hours.

Maybe there was something to the idea of hiring on Claire. Or maybe not Claire, but someone else who could help out with doing things. Delegation was apparently an important skill. There were some things that only Alyssa could accomplish. Namely, things involving angels and true demons. But angels, for as much as they affected Alyssa, didn’t even register on the top one thousand problems that an average inhabitant of this world would have. Same with true demons. They were almost literally non-entities to everyone but her. The Astral Authority were slightly more of a concern, but Alyssa was still hoping that they were gone permanently.

Babysitting a prisoner? Anyone could do that. Anyone mildly capable, anyway. Any highly ranked arcanist or even capable fighter could have sat by as a guard. Oz, Catal, or anyone else from the guild could probably have taken watch. Bringing Fela and Kasita along had probably been overkill, but… it might have also frightened off an assassin so Alyssa wasn’t complaining about that too much.

If they were still worried about an assassin popping up tonight—or any other day—Alyssa might just submit a quest to the guild. They could handle it easily enough.

There were other things aside from the intelligencer that could have been handled by other people.

Like delivering supplies to monsters. That could easily be done by just about anyone with a little discretion to them. The oasis could still be kept secret if there was some kind of dead drop method of delivery. Then they wouldn’t need…

Alyssa blinked twice. “Ah shit.”

Fela perked up, glancing around the room, eyeing all three of the guards. “What is it?”

“I forgot the stupid supplies. The intelligencer managed to distract me.” She quickly glanced out the front window. Volta had said daybreak. It was early enough that the light hadn’t quite crested the horizon yet, but it would be close. Less than ten minutes. Could she get there in time?

Even if she could, the supplies she had purchased were all just sitting around, unorganized and haphazard. She meant to go through it all and collect the easier things to carry.

Alyssa did not have any Accelero cards on her. If she had, she might have used one. As it was…

“Come on. Let’s hurry.”

“We’re getting food? I want meat!”

That was another thing. She had said she would bring food for Claire. That was certainly something that could be taken care of by someone else. “We’ll eat at the guild,” Alyssa said, already out the door. Maybe there were some things Volta could take that wouldn’t require a lot of work to gather up. And while there, maybe she could pay Oz a few coins to deliver breakfast to Claire.

“Guild again?” Fela asked, clearly despondent. “I think their usual cook spits in my food.”

Alyssa continued walking, mind racing about all the ways she could delegate if she had more people that she could actually trust. Kasita was great, but couldn’t do many physical things. Fela was great too, but Alyssa didn’t like the idea of leaving a monster alone in the middle of a human city, even one seemingly as nice as Illuna. Brakkt and Irulon were both trustworthy, but Alyssa couldn’t exactly order them around. Brakkt would probably agree to do some things she asked, but he was busy with his own things most of the time. Irulon wasn’t even worth considering for things like watching the intelligencer. She was far too…

Her thoughts ground to a halt as Fela’s words finally registered with her.

“He what?” She whirled, glaring hard enough to make Fela’s ears flatten against her head. Alyssa had to take a breath. It wasn’t Fela she was angry with now.

“I mean…” Fela started, suddenly timid. The tips of her claws clacked together as she averted her eyes from Alyssa. “Lots of human food smells a lot like human, but the guild food is always the worst. Like I’m eating a person… or part of a person.”

“But you keep eating it?”

“Yeah. You bought it all for me and it is still good food.”

“Fela…” Alyssa, sighing, reached out and patted the hellhound between the ears. “I see I’m going to have to have a word with the cook.” Especially if Fela was right. If he was putting stuff in Fela’s food, who knew what he was putting in hers.

“You aren’t mad?”

“Not with you. Never with you.”

“Then…” Fela’s ears perked up again as she started grinning. “Do you think you could get more of that smooth stuff?”

“Smooth stuff?”

“From your world? I had a whole bunch at your house.”

“Ah.” It took Alyssa a moment to remember. “Peanut butter? That’s…” Not something they had in this world as far as Alyssa was aware. She hadn’t even seen any peanuts. If there were peanuts in this world, they didn’t seem to grow in the Lyrian kingdom. She had seen almonds and walnuts—or close enough versions of them. But she hadn’t seen ‘butter’ variants of either. “Maybe someday I can try getting food from home. But that would probably require Tenebrael’s help.”

“And with what do you require my help, Alyssa Meadows?”

Alyssa turned around to find black feathers slowly drifting down to the pavement. High overhead, a figure stood, illuminated by the sun just barely cresting the top of the distant horizon. The light cast her already darkly-dressed figure in a deep shadow, leaving only a pair of luminescent white eyes staring down at Alyssa. Four black wings were spread wide, casting a shadow over the street outside the jailhouse.

The imposing scene lasted but a moment before Tenebrael lowered herself down to Alyssa’s level.

Alyssa just crossed her arms. “If you heard that I mentioned getting help from you, you also heard what I wanted help with.”

“True,” Tenebrael said, mimicking Alyssa’s pose. It was a motion that drew attention to her arms. Normally, they were bare. Today, a single black glove adorned Tenebrael’s left hand, one that extended up past the elbow. Her other hand still showed off her black fingernails, making the glove stand out all the more. “But I always like to hear that I am needed from the mouths of my loyal subjects.”

“I thought you found it irritating to have people relying on you,” Alyssa said, lifting her eyes from the glove to Tenebrael’s face.

“It is annoying to answer prayers. Listening to them is passive entertainment.”

“Uh huh…” Alyssa said, eyes flicking around. No square portals opened up. That was a good sign. “Are we free to talk or are we going to get interrupted by life or death battles in a few minutes?”

A wide grin spread across Tenebrael’s face. “We have all the time in my world.”


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039.006

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Back to Basics

Espire


The intelligencer had been far less useful than Alyssa had been hoping for. She could honestly not tell if she was being lied to or if the intelligencer genuinely didn’t know anything about the group of people. Alyssa had presented the idea that the people were still alive and had simply been detained in the hopes that the intelligencer would worry that one might betray Yora if pressed, but…

In short, the intelligencer had done nothing but deny, deny, and deny. She didn’t know anything. She didn’t know who the people were. And she definitely didn’t know why she was being questioned over the matter.

Seeing that she wasn’t going to get anywhere in the conversation, Alyssa started to leave, only to stop as the intelligencer got to her feet.

“How long am I going to be here?”

Alyssa glanced back, frowning. “How am I supposed to know?”

“I’m only here at the request of your princess. I didn’t do anything against Illuna.”

“Thievery is legal here in Illuna? I was unaware.”

“That’s not— It is my job.”

“Perhaps it is time to find a new job then.”

“Is that an offer?”

Alyssa blinked twice before turning fully toward the intelligencer. “What do you mean?”

“Oh come now. I am well aware that my countrymen are on the way out of this city. One way or another, they won’t be sticking around for another week. At this rate, they’ll be leaving without me. Even your princess has likely forgotten about me.”

Doubt it. Though it was true that Irulon hadn’t so much as mentioned the intelligencer since locking her away.

“I’ll be trapped in here,” she continued, “a prisoner of a petty crime, for the rest of my life. I’ll be lucky if they keep throwing scraps of food in.”

“They wouldn’t forget… would they?” The cell was in a fairly prominent area. Guards could see her while walking down the hall. The jailhouse wasn’t that big, so even if she got forgotten by some fresh guard on his first shift, shouting down the hall would alert others to her problem.

“This is a temporary holding cell,” the intelligencer said as if reading Alyssa’s mind. “If I’m here more than a month, they’ll probably transfer me to somewhere where the sun doesn’t shine.”

“That’s a bad euphemism to use.”

“It is quite literal.”

“That aside… I can’t hire you. You are entirely untrustworthy. I could list a few dozen other reasons why hiring you would be a bad idea, but none of them quite compare with the first and I’d rather not waste my breath.”

The intelligencer let out a long sigh, letting her hands fall from the bars. “Shame. Guess you’ll never find out what happened to those dead men you were asking about.”

Alyssa pressed her lips together. There was no point in pointing out that the woman shouldn’t have known about them being dead. Alyssa hadn’t referred to them as being dead even once. She had been careful to not use any past-tenses that might have given her away either. Perhaps she had slipped up or perhaps her overly careful questions were too obvious.

There were a few other things she had mentioned over the course of their conversation that the intelligencer shouldn’t have known about. According to the guards, she had received no visitors since being incarcerated. Yet she had just mentioned that her companions would be leaving her behind, which fit with what Kasita had mentioned the other day. Not only that, but she had given a fairly specific time-frame of less than a single week. Alyssa hadn’t let that little detail slip by.

So somehow, she was likely getting information from the outside. A Message spell directed at her was the most likely offender. A guard talking where she could have overheard wouldn’t know about the plans of the Yora people. That she had someone still willing to feed her information said, to Alyssa at least, that someone wasn’t likely to forget about her.

Speculation was well and good, but the how didn’t really matter at the moment.

What actually mattered was that the intelligencer wanted her to think that she knew something about the situation. She was either showing off how good she was at her job or simply trying to offer information, something enticing enough that Alyssa would want to know, in exchange for something else. Freedom, most likely.

Possibly a job if she had been serious about that.

“What do you know?” Alyssa asked, wondering how much free information she could get out of the woman before she started making actual demands.

The intelligencer turned away, not fully, just enough to put her side to Alyssa. A slight turn of her head made it difficult to see her face.

“They aren’t from Yora. I’ll tell you that much.”

Alyssa frowned. If true, that shot half of Alyssa’s theories full of holes. “Where are they from then?”

“Hmm…”

“You don’t know?”

“Of course I know. It is my job. I’m just wondering if I should tell you.”

“Don’t believe it,” Alyssa said instantly. “I’ll call your bluff. You’re just trying to get some concessions.” This time, it was Alyssa’s turn to turn away. She had really nothing to lose from just walking off. The intelligencer seemed to think that none were alive. Yet the one in the hospital was still around. Between him and Volta’s efforts with a possible monster, she would discover what happened sooner or later.

And if all else failed, there was always the angelic route. Iosefael or Tenebrael might know what happened and, if they didn’t, they could probably find out without too much trouble. Barring the Astral Authority resuming their efforts against Tenebrael following the annihilation of the demons and the falling of the Justice, Alyssa was expecting someone with wings and a halo to show up any day now.

But until then, she wasn’t the kind of person to just sit around waiting for answers to fall into her lap.

“They were bounty hunters,” the intelligencer said just as Alyssa reached the end of the hall.

Turning around, Alyssa found the woman back up against the bars, practically pressing against them to see down the hall. Both her hands were clamped around the bars tight enough to turn her knuckles white. Alyssa had to stop and stare for a moment, wondering if she was actually that frightened about being left and forgotten inside some dungeon.

If the intelligencer knew that she had accurate intelligence and thought that Alyssa wouldn’t figure it out on her own, the correct play would have been to allow Alyssa’s departure. Later on, a theoretical more desperate Alyssa would have come back, far more willing to agree to whatever demands the intelligencer had. The intelligencer couldn’t have known about the angels aspect, but her desperation here probably meant that she knew there was more information out there. She might even know about the one survivor…

Or she just trusted that Irulon would be able to work it out if Irulon actually set her mind to it.

Regardless of the why, the power dynamic had shifted. So Alyssa slowly turned back. She pretended to ignore the flicker of relief on the intelligencer’s face as she approached the bars again. “Bounty hunters? The guild said they weren’t aware of anyone out there.”

“Not guild aligned. There are other bounty hunters out there. Annoying to find and even more annoying to hire, but plenty of people don’t like their dirty work going on the guild’s records.”

“People like you?”

“Of course.”

Alyssa nodded, not at all surprised. “Then these particular bounty hunters were also hired by you?”

The intelligencer pressed her lips together, staring for a long moment. “Look. The higher-ups back home want things done. Things that we aren’t equipped to deal with out here in the middle of nowhere.”

While Alyssa would hardly call Illuna the middle of nowhere, she somewhat understood what the intelligencer was getting at. And what their plan was. “Your friends want to kidnap a few monsters for whatever reason. You can’t do it yourselves and you can’t hire the local guild—they probably want to keep on good terms with the government here, after all. So your friends pack up and leave, disappointed in Martin’s decisions and possibly threatening retribution. Meanwhile your bounty hunters go kidnap a few monsters. You get what you want without having to get your hands dirty or come into any real conflict with Illuna, Yora leadership gets what they want, and Martin is left with some threats and some angry monsters on his doorstep.

“Except the plan has failed. The bounty hunters are dead. So what is the next step? Yora goes home empty handed?”

“The retainer? Disgrace himself with failure?” She scoffed, looking off to the side. “He’ll be getting desperate after this. Maybe even make a fool of himself in front of Steward Martin. I was supposed to be our key to getting what we wanted. A bit of dirt here, a bit of blackmail there. But here I am, trapped thanks to a foolish blunder on the part of my contacts in the city.”

“You expect me to believe that you don’t have a way of getting information in and out of this cell? I already know that you know a lot of things that have happened since you’ve been locked up.” Blackmail surely didn’t need her physically present. In fact, being trapped in a cell seemed like a great alibi for not having anything to do with the situation. Though the alibi fell apart entirely by saying all that…

Just what is her angle.

“I’ve been stripped of my spell cards. None of the guards here are on my payroll. Getting word out is not as simple as you might think. But information in? In is easy. I have a ton of contacts constantly feeding me information via Message spells. Most don’t even realize that I’ve been incarcerated. Or… at least… didn’t realize. The information coming in took a sharp drop over the past two days. I’ve… started worrying that the next thing I get in is going to be a knife across my throat.”

“You’re going to be assassinated?”

“I know things. I told you, it is my job to know things. Plenty of the things I know would politically harm Yora as a whole, maybe even enough to put Valorous and Decorous in a precarious situation over in Lyria. If Retainer Deezer got word that the bounty hunters were wiped out and put the word out that he suspected me of betraying them, it would certainly explain the information cut-off.”

“So you decided to tell me all this, preemptively betraying them just in case. Again, I find it incredibly difficult to find you trustworthy at all. This conversation really hasn’t done you any favors if you’re still trying to get hired by me or Irulon.”

“I know Princess Irulon by reputation. She could keep me safe from whatever they might send my way. And being under the protection of the royal family will dissuade a good number of assassins. If I have to spill everything I know, I’m fine with that. But I would prefer to go sooner rather than later, if it is all the same to you. If this were Lyria, I’m sure I would have been dead on the first night. I should thank Tenebrael that Illuna isn’t full of cutthroats and murderers. I should also thank Tenebrael that you showed up at all. I asked the guards the other day if they would get into contact with Princess Irulon, but I do not believe they did.”

Alyssa didn’t think so either. She had checked in with Irulon every single night since the research started, and was pretty sure she would have heard something about that. Unless, of course, Irulon hadn’t bothered to tell her. She was once again deep in her research to the point where Alyssa wasn’t sure that she was consciously answering questions when Alyssa showed up to ask them.

“How long would you say you had?”

“Hard question to answer,” she said, glancing to the thin barred window high in the cell. The sun hadn’t set yet, but it was quickly approaching the rings of the planet. “I would be surprised if they could find someone by morning. Things like this take a bit of planning. It isn’t easy to just walk into a place like this. It was designed with only one entrance. As long as the guards do their jobs and don’t accept bribes, it could be a few days. Were I in charge of assassinating myself, I would probably want to wait until I’m being transferred elsewhere. Moving targets are much softer. But knowing that I have lots of damning information in my head, I might be willing to take a few risks.”

The intelligencer spoke calmly about her own impending demise, but her hands were still gripped around the bars. It was enough to make Alyssa sigh. She couldn’t just let someone possibly get murdered. Probably not today was a terrible way to talk about her own death.

There was still the possibility that none of it was true. The intelligencer could be making the entire thing up in order to get out, upon which she would drop a smoke bomb and disappear like some kind of ninja. Or maybe even not disappear, but rather stick around and spy on Irulon for Yora. Not that Alyssa thought there was much to spy on at the moment. In fact, since entering Illuna, Irulon really hadn’t done much aside from magical research.

Which might be fascinating to spies, but was probably useless research in general. As far as Alyssa knew, Irulon was singularly unique in having two souls within her body.

“Poison might actually be the best method for assassinating me,” the inquisitor said, apparently thinking aloud more than actually talking to Alyssa. “In fact, yes. If I were in charge of assassinating me, I would definitely pick the food vector. A little nightshade leaf mixed into the slop they feed me would be hard to detect and would put me in the ground in a single meal. Even if I didn’t eat it all, the delirium and memory loss would ensure that I wouldn’t be able to effectively communicate.”

“Alright,” Alyssa started to say, only to get interrupted by the intelligencer.

“You’ll get me out?” she asked, perking up.

“No. I’ll get you food and—”

“That’s just the way that I would carry out this mission. But I’ve always preferred the more subtle touch with the least amount of failure points. If that boorish oaf of a retainer is directing things, I wouldn’t be surprised to find an arcanist standing outside my cell with an explosion spell in hand.”

“Which is why, if you’ll let me finish a sentence, I’ll be spending the night here.”

The intelligencer’s eyes narrowed. “So you can die too when an assassin shows up?”

“Hardly. I’ve decided that I am rather tough to kill. Especially when I’ve got friends around. All I have to do is call up Fela and Kasita and we’ll be untouchable.” Mostly. Alyssa wouldn’t let her guard down. Fela, with her sense of smell and hearing, would be able to notice people approaching. As long as she didn’t fall asleep. Kasita never seemed to sleep much at all so she could stay awake on a more permanent basis. Her ability to detect invisible or otherwise cloaked individuals would be handy as well.

This could all be some sort of trap in addition to a regular assassination attempt. Alyssa couldn’t discount that possibility.

“Why not just take custody of me, imprison me at your own place.”

“At the guild?” Alyssa tapped her knuckles against the bars. “This seems pretty sturdy. Don’t know that I can say the same about the guild rooms. They have windows without any glass and big doors that don’t have locks.”

“I won’t try to run.”

“We just established that you are perhaps the least trustworthy person I’ve ever met. And that includes Cid.”

“Who?”

“Doesn’t matter.” Alyssa shook her head. “I’m going to step out for a moment and contact some help. And maybe have Kasita bring us some food. Tomorrow, maybe, if you behave, I’ll speak with Irulon about your situation.”

“Why not tonight?”

“You’re lucky I’m not asking tonight. She would undoubtedly tell me to quit wasting my time.”

If she didn’t try to assassinate the intelligencer herself. But Alyssa doubted it. The intelligencer wasn’t an issue anymore in Irulon’s eyes. But she probably wouldn’t bother to stop an assassination.

Alyssa honestly didn’t know what she would do about the woman in the long-term. She couldn’t spend every night at the jailhouse. Maybe it would be better to simply release her. Let her figure things out on her own. In a world like Nod, it would surely be an easy task to disappear to elsewhere, create a new identity, and probably go right back to spying on people. If the intelligencer knew half as much as she implied, and had as many contacts as she seemed to have, getting a new identity probably wouldn’t even be an inconvenience.

But for now, for at least this one night, Alyssa could sit around.

And if the intelligencer happened to let a few more details slip, all the better.


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039.005

<– Back | Index | Next –>


Back to Basics

Better Bestiary


“Going somewhere?” Alyssa asked as she tapped her knuckles on the open door of Volta’s office. The doppelganger was inside, placing some items into a large trunk. Most of the items seemed to be raw materials. Rolls of cloth, mostly. There were a few other odds and ends as well. Cardstock for spells as well as vials of ink, a fairly thick blanket, and a few changes of clothes—which was somewhat strange as Volta’s clone appeared with clothes already on it. Then again, maybe the clothes were for Volta’s actual body.

The cursed sword stood by, watching her from the corner of the room. Alyssa hadn’t even entered yet, choosing to stand in the doorway until she actually got invited in. It was only polite, even though the door was wide open. Most importantly, if Volta’s bodyguard did decide that there was a need to do some guarding, the extra step between them could mean the difference between getting a cast of Spectral Chains off and getting her head lopped off.

At Alyssa’s question, Volta looked up. “Ah, Alyssa. Good evening to you,” the fake body said as it rolled up another bundle of cloth. “I take frequent sabbaticals. It has been a while since my last one, what with your presence and all the… other excitement that has been going on around our city.”

Alyssa’s first thought went to the Astral Authority, only to realize that Volta was probably referring to the monsters. As a monster, other monsters would probably be a much higher priority to work with than a one-off night of strange beings appearing then disappearing. Even demons weren’t much of a concern, in all likelihood. They were the duty of the city guard. Volta, as the court arcanist, advised on magical matters and could sometimes defend during particularly bad instances of plagued incursion. Most news of an infected approaching the walls would arrive too late for the court arcanist to handle though.

As for the sabbatical… “Off to the oasis?”

Volta’s smile didn’t flicker, but there was just a slight pause before the cloned body next spoke that made Alyssa wonder if she should take more care in speaking. There wasn’t anyone in the hallway at the moment—she had been let into the manor and found her own way up to the office without needing the assistance of a guide—but who knew how thin the walls were.

“Mind coming in and closing the door?”

Alyssa promptly complied. “Sorry,” she said a little softly.

“No matter. I’ve never had anyone request to join me on my little trips. Even if someone overheard, I’m sure they wouldn’t pay it much mind.”

“Ah… but you are heading to the oasis?”

“As I said, it has been some time since I was last there. I should make sure nobody has burned the place down in my absence.”

“I have most of the supplies you asked for. The non-perishables, at least. They’re just kind of sitting in a guild storage room. I hope nobody has taken them,” Alyssa added as an afterthought. “Sorry they haven’t been delivered yet. I honestly didn’t know that we would be spending so much time here. If you wanted to take them yourself, I’d be happy to hand them over.”

“That might be possible. As long as we can do so with some discretion. As I mentioned previously, heading off on my own with a bunch of supplies will bring unnecessary suspicion on me. As I also mentioned, the oasis is doing fine and the supplies I asked for are mostly supplementary. We are not in urgent need of items and equipment. So if we cannot transfer the supplies, I won’t be overly upset about it.”

“Still, even if you only take part of them, that might help things. And we could take more later on. Assuming we ever leave. Irulon has decided to finish her work here rather than at the palace, so we might be here for some time yet. Truth be told, I’d feel a little strange leaving with Yora still around and that incident with the dead humans… Speaking of, will things be alright without you advising Martin?”

“Martin has elected to deny the requests of Yora and support the monsters, no doubt thanks to your little discussion with him the other night. I feel comfortable leaving matters entirely to him for at least a short amount of time. This won’t be an extended trip. Just a quick day or two to check on things at the oasis before I head back. I also plan to visit the site of this incident you brought up. Just to see if we can’t glean some information that a human might not notice.”

“Do you have a quick way of getting there?” The oasis was a good three days away by horse. A day or two would be very quick indeed.

“A quick day or two plus travel time, I suppose I should say.”

“Ah.”

“But I assume you didn’t come here just to chat about my travel plans,” Volta said, resuming the folding of clothes.

“You would be right about that. I was wondering if you might have a way of sending a message—not necessarily via the spell—to the monster that might have caused the attack. We have a name of a suspect, so I could send a Message, but we might also be entirely wrong. Since Message doesn’t let the user know if the Message was actually delivered, I was hoping you might have a more reliable method of getting into contact with an unknown.”

“You have a suspect?” Volta said, raising an eyebrow while pausing the packing once again.

“Some giant snake. Apophis, I believe the species was.”

“Hmmm… Haven’t heard of such a creature.” As she spoke, Volta’s clone body reached down to the desk, pulled open a drawer, and pulled out a fairly thick tome. Upon opening it, Alyssa spotted a number of drawings and sketches quite similar to the one Catal had drawn of the Justice. All were accompanied by text. Flipping forward and back, Volta eventually landed on a page.

There was a snake drawn on the page. Being a drawing, Alyssa really couldn’t tell its size. Not until she noticed the little drawn human in one corner. The stick figure was little more than a dot in comparison. If this was a copy of a guild bestiary, they either had the same bad information that Brakkt had or there really were snakes that could reach from the city walls clear to the monster camp.

Rokien had said that this particular apophis wasn’t that large. But Rokien was a giant in his own right. His perspective might be completely off-base compared to Alyssa’s. His definition of small was probably much larger than what she would expect.

“Interesting. Somewhat frightening as well if I only consider what is written here. The guild is prone to exaggeration, however. Magically resistant scales? Toughness on par with a dragon? I doubt that very much. According to this, only four have ever been spotted, three of whom were killed by Rank Six arcanists at the Fortress of Pandora. Given that it doesn’t mention a full army being required to slay them, I find it hard to believe that anyone at the guild would even write this, let alone distribute it.”

“I knew the guild had books like that, but they distribute them? Like, anyone can go up and buy one?”

“Not quite,” Volta said, looking up from the thick tome. “There is generally a copy at each major guild outpost. Additions or changes are communicated magically to a dedicated scrivener at each location. Drawings vary widely between branches simply because descriptions are given in words which don’t always translate the same way for different people.”

“There isn’t a way of magically communicating pictures of something? Maybe books that update themselves when a master copy updates? Or a Message spell that can send a picture instead of words?”

Volta hesitated in answering, slowly shaking the double’s head. “I don’t think so? I was not traditionally trained in magic at the Lyrian Observatorium, so there may be plenty that I am unaware of. But I feel I would have heard of such things.”

Alyssa made a mental note to ask Irulon. It was unlikely that such a thing existed currently. The guild would surely use it if that were the case. Still, it might be good to ask. Even aside from the uses it would have for the guild and their record keeping, spotting something and then immediately sending a mental picture to Irulon or Brakkt could be valuable.

But having a book that updated itself would be neat too.

“I might have to see about getting a copy of that book,” Alyssa said. She had her own little bestiary in her notebooks, but that was a retroactive book. It only got additions after she had encountered monsters. Knowing in advance whether a salamander was really dangerous or just mildly dangerous might help.

Though if it was as exaggerated as Volta suggested, maybe it wouldn’t be all that useful in the end.

“Guild members are free to go in and view it whenever they wish, but it isn’t supposed to leave the premises. I had this particular copy specially commissioned from our local branch of the guild several years ago, so it is likely out of date. It was… quite expensive, but I thought it would be good to know what the humans think they know. And it has been quite amusing to peruse as well.” Volta paused to chuckle before speaking with obvious amusement laden in every word. “They still think doppelgangers need a corpse to take over for our outward appearance. Ha!”

Alyssa smiled along with Volta’s amusement, though it was more of a polite smile than any kind of actual humor derived one. “Even if the book isn’t completely correct, it at least got the part about the apophis being a snake correct. Rokien said that it was small enough to fit into a hut however. Maybe it is just young? Stunted growth? Or maybe it coiled up so much inside its hut that there was no room to move.”

“I doubt that last one…”

“Yeah. Me too. I’m hoping for a creature of a far more manageable size. Though it was strong enough to take out a good ten to fifteen people, leaving only the one survivor. And he likely only survived because he had been rendered unconscious in a semi-concealed area.”

Nodding, Volta looked back down to the bestiary. After reading a moment, she tried flipping to the next page, only to find it describing something called an arachne. A spidery-human hybrid by the looks of the picture. Eight legs, large abdomen, spindly limbs, human torso on the front end like it was some kind of centaur. Lots of eyes on the human face. Alyssa didn’t get a chance to read any of the text before Volta flipped back to the apophis.

“I might have a way of getting into contact. We—that is to say monsters—have something of a message system of our own. Not the spell, but signs and shapes left around the world to inform those in the know of nearby sanctuaries or safe resting areas within human territory. The oasis, for example, has a number of shallow marks cut into rocks that all point the way. We’re careful to keep them looking natural. Only someone with an eye for the patterns should notice under most circumstances. Even then, they might miss half the signs or simply not know of them in the first place. If this apophis went and killed a number of humans, it may have followed after the monsters in the camp only to have smelled those that attacked its home nearby. If so, it may still be in the area. On our way out,” Volta glanced up to look at the cursed sword, “we can drop a few signs saying that entering the camp may be alright.”

“Would it be?” Alyssa had to ask. “We’ve got half the guards on the lookout now for anything that might have killed that group of humans. A giant snake showing up a few days later might lead to some trouble.”

“I don’t imagine it would… No. You might be right. Unless that group can be confirmed as brigands and raiders, I don’t imagine a monster showing up who might have done it would be tolerated let alone celebrated. I’ll see about directing it toward the oasis.”

“If the humans were actually innocent, and I don’t necessarily believe that… I don’t know how much I can condone sheltering a murderer.”

“Even with as generous as Martin and Illuna as a whole is being with the monsters in the camp, handing a monster over to the city as a suspect in a crime will likely lead to it being lynched before any real truth can be uncovered.”

Alyssa pressed her lips together. Lynching wasn’t any kind of justice. But neither was sheltering a murderer. The justice system in this world was cold and brutal. Spells such as Rigor Mortis proved that without any context needed. Add in an undercurrent of racism—speciesism?—and mitigating factors such as self defense would be completely ignored. Alyssa could only imagine what might happen. Ultimately, she slowly nodded her head.

“Let’s discover what happened before we make any further decisions.”

Though she said that, she had a feeling that, should it come out that the slain humans were just regular travelers, the apophis would quietly disappear from the oasis and out of Alyssa’s hands. Assuming there was an apophis in the first place. Volta dropping messages to direct a monster somewhere might just end up with an entirely unexpected monster showing up.

Which also assumed that the monster would follow the directions. It might just choose to leave, wander on with its own life. It might not even be around anymore, having exacted revenge on humans for what happened at the monsters’ former home.

And even that assumed that whatever attacked the humans was related to the monsters down in the camp. More than just the apophis and Rokien’s brother had gone missing without a body being found, so there was a good chance that someone else survived. But it could have been a random passing monster, or even an animal. Alyssa doubted that they would know for sure unless the old man woke up. Until then, everything was speculation.

“I shall keep you informed of any developments while I am away, should our mystery guest make an appearance.”

“Alyssa Meadows,” Alyssa said. “Messages do not work on me if you only use Alyssa.”

“You have two names?” Volta said, eyebrows up with genuine surprise.

“A quirk of my homeland.”

“Truly? Fascinating. Where are you from? Somewhere with a sizable elf population?”

Blinking, Alyssa shook her head. “I don’t think so?”

“Elf culture typically has a public name, the name they offer to others and the name that most humans likely know, and a secret name. One that is given only under exceptional circumstances, either to impress upon an enemy or for private use with a lover.”

“My last name isn’t anything so special. It just… identifies who my family is? Except tons of people who I’m not related to probably have my last name.” Who knew how many Smiths were in the world. “But it is something like that.”

“Interesting. The closest humans have is solely within the Houses. Martin, for example, is sometimes referred to as Martin of Illuna.”

If Alyssa remembered right, that was how a good number of last names got started back home too. A few at least. Most were from professions or… she honestly had no idea where Meadows had come from. Perhaps an ancestor of hers owned a meadow and was well known for it? It was probably so long ago that she doubted it was at all relevant back home, let alone in a whole new world.

Perhaps this world would eventually follow along a similar path. The man in the markets who baked pies with the monsters might one day have descendants known as Bakers. Or Piemen, if that was a real last name. Even if it wasn’t, it might be here.

Puzzlings on the origins of names aside, Alyssa did have one other group she wanted to check in on. Or, more specifically, a certain prisoner. “I’ll head over to the guild later and start collecting some of the smaller supplies in an hour or so. Are you leaving soon?”

“Not until morning. I’ll stop by before leaving, right around daybreak.”

“Good.” That would give plenty of time to talk with just about everyone that Alyssa wanted to talk to. “I’ll see you then, Volta. And… Uh…” Alyssa threw a glance toward the cursed sword in the corner of the room. Since Alyssa had entered, the sword had stopped paying attention to their conversation and started staring down at her own sword, still wrapped up in the same brown cloth that covered pretty much all of the woman. “You as well?”

“Red will be coming too.”

“Ah… Do people really not find it suspicious that you’re always accompanied by a strangely cloaked person?”

“The lay person does not care about a random walker wearing a hood. Many people do. As for Martin, servants, or guards who we see frequently, I have simply explained that Red’s skills as a bodyguard are unrivaled, but she suffers from quite severe disfigurement. They have not asked to see underneath the cloak since then.”

“Huh…” That seemed quite… irresponsible. But this was a completely different era that had completely different values and ideals. For example, Alyssa would never have been able to walk up on the guard post of a military installation back on Earth. Yet here on Nod, she had done so several times both in Lyria and in Illuna.

She wasn’t completely regular, what with her association with Irulon, but the guards didn’t always know that. Her first interactions with Decorous outside the Lyrian royal palace were evidence enough of that. Only Oxart knew her and Oxart really only knew her at the time as the girl who had seen the monster army on the horizon.

Even right now, leaving Volta’s office, Alyssa was heading to another military-run section of the city. The dungeons not far from Martin’s manor.

They weren’t really dungeons in the way Alyssa would have pictured the word. They weren’t even underground. Walls had been built from stone and metal bars partitioned off the windows, but otherwise, it looked more like a jailhouse from an old western movie. And the guards let her right inside to see the prisoner she had brought in with Irulon.

The woman who had been with the Yora group.

“Hello, Intelligencer.”

Sitting in the back of the cell on a pile of straw, the woman perked up at being addressed, only to narrow her eyes once she saw who was standing on the other side of the bars. “It’s you. What does the lapdog of Princess Irulon want with me now?”

“Just a few questions that I hope you might be able to answer.”


<– Back | Index | Next –>


039.004

<– Back | Index | Next –>


Back to Basics

Questions and Answers


“The old man hasn’t woken up yet?”

A… person—Alyssa had trouble referring to anyone in this world as doctors—shook his head. “Not yet.”

She had been a bit nervous about bringing the bearded man to the so-called medical professionals of this world. Her memory of the field hospital after the Juno Federation attack was still far too fresh in her mind. Leeches, no sanitation to speak of, people lying in the dirt with open wounds, people throwing up on each other, filthy blankets and bandages… She had spent twenty minutes inside that tent and the list went on and on.

As a city that had to deal with infected on a fairly frequent basis, Illuna had to deal with injuries wrought by the stronger and faster demons on a regular basis. They actually had a building for recovering injured soldiers. Lyria apparently had a much larger building, but it had been full after that fight, thus requiring the tent. Still, Alyssa was mildly happy to see actual beds for the wounded.

That was about the extent of her happiness. The rest of the place wasn’t anything to write home about. The beds were not the clean white sheets of hospitals that she was used to. The attending staff wasn’t at all better than the doctors she had seen in Lyria. Patients were still grouped up all together in a large room—though it was mostly empty at the moment thanks to the lack of plague incidents and infected assaults. And, if all that wasn’t bad enough, she was fairly certain that she had seen a little family of rats living around the corner of the building. A corner with a small hole in the wood, just the perfect size for a rat to squeeze through to get inside.

Seeing that made Alyssa wonder just how poorly the Black Plague would go over here. Her initial thoughts were fairly dark, until she realized that while the actual medical practices and knowledge of this world were quite abysmal, magic and potions could make up for a lot of things. Alyssa wouldn’t find herself surprised to discover Tzheitza creating a cure for it before the end of the day. The potion master had been trying to concoct a way to fix demonic infection. Compared to that, a run-of-the-mill virus was probably child’s play.

Maybe.

Alyssa had to wonder if Tenebrael had done something to all the Earthlings. She was fairly sure that she had read something one time while trawling the internet before bed back on Earth. It said that going into the past or future more than about fifty years would be deadly simply because of how the immune system works. The time traveler would bring bacteria and viruses with them unknowingly and would be exposed to new or old diseases that their immune system wouldn’t be able to handle. Yet Alyssa hadn’t even sniffled since arriving in Nod, a whole completely different world with a vastly different ecology, and she doubted that her mother, Jason, or Chris had been sick either. And they certainly didn’t seem to be spreading any plagues among the local populace.

Angelic intervention was the only thing that she could think of that would have stopped such things.

Not that she really wanted to test her inability to get sick by sticking around in a run-down hospital.

“Have there been any complications with feeding him using the spells I provided?” Alyssa asked the doctor.

He had as scraggly a beard as the patient. Which just made Alyssa wince at how unsanitary it had to be, hanging over injured people all day. This man, the doctor, was the one who stitched up and bandaged the wounds on their patient. There wasn’t much to be done about the broken arm or twisted ankle without resorting to an expensive and rare potion.

According to the doctor, some of his ribs felt loose too.

If he woke up anytime soon, he was going to be in some serious pain. But at least he wasn’t wheezing anymore. Aside from being unconscious, he looked fairly good. Much better than he had the day before when Alyssa brought him in. His breathing was steady as was his heartbeat, so as long as he didn’t have brain damage, Alyssa had decent hopes in her own medically deficient opinion. Unless his wounds got infected, of course.

“We only have one arcanist on staff. He was having a bit of difficulty yesterday, but managed to work it out this morning. The man didn’t die from the liquefied bread, so I assume it went well.”

“Guess that’s as much as I can hope for. I know I said this before, but it bares repeating: I want your arcanist to Message me the second he wakes up or if his condition begins to decline.” Despite the dead bodies, Alyssa hadn’t seen an angel since Iosefael tossed Adrael into Tenebrael’s prison. She wasn’t about to kill this man just to talk to an angel, but if he did die, she wanted to be nearby.

“Sure. Sure.”

His response was not reassuring, but there wasn’t much Alyssa could do about it. Not unless she wanted to sit around and babysit the coma patient. As much as she wanted to find out what had happened, she had plenty of other things to be doing around the city. Bidding the doctor farewell, Alyssa headed back outside.

Only to find Izsha half sticking out of the alley behind the hospital. Clearing her throat got the draken to slowly back out, revealing a bloodied maw.

A few things ran through Alyssa’s head. First, was Izsha alright? It looked like it. The armored skin was unbroken and undamaged as far as Alyssa could tell. The blood wasn’t from Izsha. So if it wasn’t from Izsha, where…

Glancing down the alley, Alyssa spotted the tail of a rat. No body, just a tail lying out in the middle of the road.

Alyssa looked back to Izsha with a mild grimace on her face. “That has got to be filthy,” she said. “You’re going to get sick.” She might be immune to diseases thanks to Tenebrael, but she doubted the same applied to Izsha.

The draken, of course, didn’t seem to care. It just gave Alyssa a shrug. Not a literal shrug—it didn’t have shoulders that could shrug—but Alyssa was good enough at reading draken body language to translate that much. So far, the Astral Authority seemed to be well and truly gone. Perhaps that was just because there was nothing around to draw their attention. However, if they were gone for good, perhaps Alyssa could return to her idle thought about getting some real communication going between her and Izsha.

“Let’s get back to Brakkt, shall we?”

The previous day, while Alyssa had been bringing the old man into the hospital, Brakkt had gone out with Fela to investigate the site of the incident. They had managed to find tracks, but not tracks that made any sense to Alyssa. They were basically one long trail. Like someone had rolled a massive boulder around. Maybe even to cover their actual tracks. Given that some of the trail was bloodied, it had been assumed that whatever tore apart that group of people was not the Astral Authority or even demons, but rather monsters. Alyssa had asked him whether it could have been simple animals, but he dismissed the possibility.

Among the bodies they had found someone with some Rank Four spell cards. An arcanist of that level should have been able to deal with any regular animals. Rather, from his rudimentary reconstruction of the scene, it looked as if the arcanist had been targeted first. Something that indicated both intelligence—knowing that the arcanist was a large threat—and fear—worry that the arcanist would be able to stop the attack.

An actual reconstruction of the scene was, unfortunately, impossible. By the time Alyssa had returned to the city with the injured man and delivered him to the hospital, stopped by Irulon to grab a Retrograde Cognition spell card, and returned to the incident, it had been too late. Retrograde Cognition worked backwards, playing events in an accelerated manner. But the longer the spell was active—the longer Alyssa sat there watching what had happened—the more the spell degraded. Alyssa had seen a bunch of bodies lying motionless for a few hours before she could see nothing but a static-like fuzz. Perhaps if she had been able to use the spell the second she had arrived, things would have been different. But now, it was too late.

Retrograde Cognition, being both highly ranked and a Fractal spell, was not used by anyone aside from Irulon as far as Alyssa could tell. Unfortunately for this world, there really wasn’t much in the way of forensic spells to fall back on. Or mundane forensics, for that matter. Fingerprints were a foreign concept. DNA was obviously right out. The best they had was blood color—humans all had the usual red blood, but some types of monsters apparently had green or blue—or wound types. It was fairly easy to tell the difference between claws and a blade, after all. One sliced, one ripped and tore.

Based on that, Brakkt and Alyssa were almost positive that none of the monsters in the camp had done this. Despite that, Alyssa and Izsha found Brakkt on the edge of the camp, asking questions of the guards and most of the monsters.

“Been here every day since these things arrived,” the guard said as Alyssa arrived. He was a human, one that she had seen around on occasion but never actually spoke with. Most of the guards around the camp were like that, actually. “Have seen a few of ‘em leaving and coming every now and again, but none headed away from the city.”

“I see,” Brakkt said, checking off a hand-drawn box on a sheet of paper he had. Glancing over to Alyssa, he gave a small acknowledging nod of his head before looking back to the guard. “And your shifts last from morning until evening?”

“That they do.”

Nodding again, this time to the guard, Brakkt scribbled down a bit more. “Thank you for your time,” he said as he finished.

“Lots of trouble these things cause. But it’s an easy job, so I suppose I don’t mind. Better than being out on the other side o’the city.”

“I don’t think anyone from here caused trouble. At least not this time. Just asking to be thorough.”

“Nothing?” Alyssa asked.

“Not so far. Still have…” Brakkt trailed off, glancing down at the paper again. “Five more guards to ask. They won’t be showing up for their shifts until later, however. I did ask around a few of the monsters as well. No one mentioned seeing anything.”

“That doesn’t surprise me,” Alyssa said. “Do you suppose we should…” Trailing off, she threw a glance to the guard. He was still just standing around, watching their conversation. Alyssa fully admitted that this was probably a relatively boring assignment. Especially once the novelty of being around so many monsters wore off. But… didn’t he have to at least act busy?

Shaking her head, she hopped off Izsha and gave a small gesture for Brakkt to walk with her. Brakkt was a tall man, taller than she was, but it felt a little awkward to be so much higher on Izsha’s back. Although she considered him a pretty good friend, he was still a prince and looking down on him just seemed a little off.

Far enough away from the guard, who thankfully had taken the hint and not followed after them, Alyssa said, “I wonder if we shouldn’t talk to the Yora people. The steward or retainer or whatever he was might not know anything about the people out there, but I bet the intelligencer might.”

“You still think they’re from Yora?”

“I think it would make sense. We didn’t find any insignia or other evidence that they were from Yora, but if we’re operating under the assumption that the people chasing after and watching the monsters were from Yora, this group could easily have been them. There were no wagons, so they aren’t goods vendors. They might be travelers from somewhere else, I suppose. But people don’t really travel that much unless they’re merchants or important. Important people generally wear clothing or carry banners bearing their symbols,” Alyssa said with a pointed look at Brakkt’s chest. He was wearing his armor at the moment, sans helm and gauntlets, which had a prominent symbol of the Lyrian Royalty over the left breast. “Judging by the rough clothes, heavier gear, and weapons, I doubt they are simple travelers anyway. They are either a clandestine group from Yora or a party from the guild.”

The guild hadn’t reported anyone missing. It was possible that they were a group who had been heading here from Lyria or elsewhere, somewhat similarly to how Oz and his crew had been on their mission to escort Raugis. According to Oz, it was generally considered polite to inform via Message a far off branch of the guild of their impending arrival when setting out. There was a communications failure if the listed contact of one branch had died or otherwise was absent and other branches hadn’t updated their records to reflect that change in position, but it wasn’t a thing that happened often. If someone died, someone else from the branch would send out Messages all around to inform them of the name of whoever had taken over the position.

Sometimes smaller branches got left off the list.

Still, that would take a lot of different failures going on. Alyssa thought it was far more likely that they were from Yora.

In which case, it was also highly likely that this had not been an accident of any sort. The monsters from this camp might not have done anything. In fact, Alyssa highly doubted that anyone here would have risked their tentative friendship with Illuna even if presented with the opportunity for revenge. If they even could take revenge. The gremlins didn’t look too threatening on the best of days. Honey bees had fairly sharp looking stingers on their abdomens, but using them had to be awkward; if they were anything like normal honey bees, those stingers might be one time use only as well. Two lizardy people, Fezzik, and Rokien were really the only threatening ones. All four of whom had been accounted for over the past several days.

Speaking of Rokien… The minotaur was slowly approaching their group. Although Alyssa and Brakkt had moved out of the camp for their brief conversation, none of the guards tried to stop Rokien. One even gave him a respectable nod of his head. Most of the monsters were generally free to come and go. Aside from immediately following the incident with the Astral Authority, during which the monsters were to stay in the camp, they had been more or less free to leave whenever they wanted. Most didn’t. A few of the curious gremlins liked to explore the city and Fezzik worked as a guard around the western gate most days, along with one of the two lizard people and a few others who had barely higher than human-level abilities. But for most, their curiosity did not overpower their wariness of humans.

“I’ve asked around those who have their eye on our number. None have left except to the city. Whatever this was, it wasn’t us.”

“I didn’t think it was,” Brakkt said as diplomatically as possible. “I merely wanted to be sure.”

“Rokien,” Alyssa said before pausing for a moment. She was about to tread on possibly sensitive ground. While the minotaur was a fairly hardy man, she didn’t want to cause more strife than necessary. “Your community used to be much larger. Were there any members who got left behind? Perhaps they had been thought dead or were out hunting and foraging or just otherwise unaccounted for while your group marched here?”

The answer didn’t come immediately. It was hard to read Rokien’s face—he had the body of a man but the head of a bull, being a minotaur—and she really hadn’t spent much time around him relative to the likes of the draken—who she thought she was relatively good at reading. Still, she got a distinct impression of discomfort. A slight tightening of his fist, a movement in his jaw, the way his large brown eyes looked from Alyssa to Brakkt.

“We do need to know this, Rokien. We’re not against you or trying to trick or trap you. But there is a group of humans dead not far from a human settlement. If they were the ones chasing you, then I really don’t care. But if that survivor wakes up and claims to be a simple traveler who got ambushed by a monster, we need to do something. But we can’t figure out what that something is until we have a full grasp of the situation.”

It took another minute of somewhat awkward silence, but eventually, he spoke. “A third of what we once were are not here today.”

Alyssa had expected that much. They had spoken before about how their leader had lost their head and a few of their number went missing seemingly overnight.

“Yes. There were some left behind. There were some that couldn’t keep up while walking. There could be… thirty, perhaps. Thirty that I never saw a body for.”

“Were any capable of causing the kind of damage we described?”

“One, perhaps,” Rokien answered after another long pause. “You may have been correct in your assumption earlier,” he said with a bit more enthusiasm. “We did have two people out of the farm on the day of the first attack. Two hunters. My brother, a shorter ‘taur…” He held out his hand well over Alyssa’s head, but quite a bit lower than his own. “By minotaur standards, anyway. Clumsy sort, but he was strong. He could carry two fully grown bull elk. One over each shoulder. Though his hunting partner would occasionally consent to carrying the load.”

Alyssa grimaced as Rokien’s tone turned to a fond reminiscing. She hadn’t wanted to give possibly false hope that his brother was still alive, but… as Rokien mimed holding carcases over his shoulders, she couldn’t really bring herself to interrupt either.

“He wasn’t really a hunter,” Rokien added with… a smile? It was hard to tell on a bull’s face. “He would carry the bodies and load them up, but he wouldn’t hurt them while they were alive. Worrik didn’t do this.” Rokien’s tone turned serious once again and even shot a glare in Alyssa’s direction as if she had suggested such a thing. “He was a clumsy boy. Wouldn’t be able to even if he could.”

“You said there were two hunters? Who was the other?”

“An apophis by the name of Lueta. She was the real hunter.”

“Apophis?” Alyssa asked with a glance toward Brakkt. It wasn’t a species she recognized or heard of.

But Brakkt’s eyes lit up. That alone told her that it was probably something with scales.

“An apophis? Really?” He didn’t even answer her question. “North of Pandora? How did it—she? I wasn’t aware… I guess I’ve never even seen one, just heard tales from the guardsmen at the wall.”

“Always kept to herself,” Rokien said. “Don’t know why she stuck with us. Only seemed happy while out hunting or smoking from her pipe while lazing around in one of the larger huts. Bit testy too. She would snap at anyone who dared to bother her during her smoking sessions. But she provided food and didn’t bother anyone, so we didn’t raise too big of a fuss. Though her venom did do strange things to the animals blood.”

Venom, Alyssa thought, trying to remember if any of the bodies had bite marks on them. In their dismembered state, it had been difficult to tell. “What is an apophis?”

Brakkt looked to her with a half-smile on his face. “Imagine a snake that could reach from here to the city walls!”

Grimacing again, Alyssa looked toward the city. It was… far off. A good few minutes at a light jog. Probably not a mile, but she wouldn’t be surprised to find out that it was. “I really don’t want to.”

“She wasn’t that long,” Rokien said. “Never seen another. Maybe she was a runt. Or you just heard exaggerated tales.”

“Still, just imagine!”

“Still don’t want to.”

“We have to find it,” Brakkt said, looking from Rokien to Alyssa. Something seemed to come over him as he looked at her. Though the enthusiasm in his eyes didn’t dampen, his posture stiffened. Giving a light cough, he said, “For the good of the city and the monsters here, of course.”

“We still don’t know if this apophis thing actually caused the attack.”

“I…” He trailed off, stiffening further as a completely serious expression crossed his face. “I let myself get a little excited a moment ago, but it would be neglectful to ignore such a lead. If the stories I have heard of these beings are even remotely true, one running wild could be a danger to everyone. Not just the humans here.”

Alyssa sighed. “I still want to talk to Yora. And Volta.” If anyone had a way to contact a suspected monster, it would be Volta. Alyssa could use a simple Message spell—they had a name—but Message spells were inherently human magic. A monster wary of humans would absolutely not follow any directions given by such a spell. Assuming this giant snake really was their suspect. If not, she would be sending Messages out into the aether for no reason in particular.

Volta would be good to talk to again anyway. She had already paid the doppelganger a visit immediately after delivering the old man to the doctors—the cursed sword had actually been one of her first suspects, but more than one servant claimed to have seen it around the manor over the past several days and no guards reported any suspiciously cloaked individuals leaving the city. The sword could have hopped the wall or gone some through somewhere unwatched, but Alyssa liked to trust that Volta wasn’t lying when she said it wasn’t either of them.

So to Volta it was.


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039.003

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Back to Basics

Watchers in the Distance


The threat level of the city decreased over the following week. No new instances of demonic incursion appeared. That included both infected coming toward the walls and newly infected individuals within the city itself. Fela made frequent rounds to confirm that nothing strange was going on even in the far corners of the city. No giant pits had formed in the swamp or anywhere leading toward Owlcroft, at least not as far as Alyssa was aware. That was despite the massive amount of pentagrams accompanying every deceased corpse. Irulon speculated that the Astral Authority had closed off the pit permanently, but also commented that something else might be needed to activate a formation of a pit.

Such a thing had only happened once in the history of this world. That one occurrence was over at Owlcroft and it had only happened a twenty or so years ago. Recently enough that Tzheitza and the Taker had been in their primes. Although the pit itself had been studied in its early days, its formation was a largely unknown event, mostly due to all the people in the area being dead or infected at the time. The suspicion that the formation occurred because of the pentagrams came about after investigations by the Observatorium found heavy similarities in some kind of magical nonsense that Irulon hadn’t fully explained.

Part of the problem in researching the pit was that no one actually wanted to go near it. A side effect of its aura of oppression combined with the large amount of infected wandering the area. Visits to the pit were often aborted part way. Only a few brave researchers ever made it all the way there, and there were often casualties among their guards. Apparently, the massive amount of infected climbing their way out of the pit that Alyssa had encountered was highly abnormal. Even without that, the presence of infected and the loss of life in such research excursions had actually caused the guild to reject most every request involving the whole area of Owlcroft. A policy that had further hampered research.

It really made Alyssa wonder what really had happened to that gaunt. It was supposed to have been dumped in the pit. She wondered if that had been some kind of joke or euphemism, or if Decorous had ordered it not knowing that his men would likely abandon the gaunt out in the middle of nowhere—which was what had probably happened. According to Martin, no caravan from Lyria had passed through with any gaunt, meaning that it had never even reached this city.

It probably wasn’t a problem. As long as the guards had dumped it far enough away from the city, anyway. With as slow as the gaunt moved, carrying it two weeks out from the city might take it a year to return. Assuming it started heading back immediately and didn’t simply fall into hibernation as Irulon said they were supposed to do.

Though that wasn’t here or there. What was here was a whole bunch of nothing.

“Find anything yet?”

“I don’t smell anything out here,” Fela said, sniffing at the air a few times. “I mean, yes, there are traces of humans, but we’re still close to the human village. Humans come and go all the time.”

“No smell of camps or food?” Alyssa asked, looking around the relatively flat plain to the far east of Illuna. Fezzik and Rokien had mentioned feeling watched quite a while ago, but between all the infected cleanup and the Astral Authority, Alyssa was only now getting around to actually investigating their worries.

The night before, she had spent a good several hours up on the eastern wall, just watching in the distance for any lights that might have been campfires in the distance. She hadn’t spotted any. And, thinking about it, she wasn’t sure that she should have expected any. She wasn’t calling Rokien or Fezzik liars. Far from it. It was just that their entire camp had recently been on the run from unknown pursuers. They were bound to be a little on edge even after a good few weeks in relative safety.

More than that, if there had been watchers, they would have needed food and supplies. Maybe they had several weeks worth of food on them, but knowing the preservation techniques in this world were lacking, Alyssa doubted that they could possibly have gone without resupplying throughout all the time chasing the monsters and then the few weeks of watching them. It made more sense for them to enter the city, maybe even disguising themselves as merchants, and keep up their observations from a point of relative safety and comfort.

“It’s hard,” Fela said, rubbing the back of her paw against her nose. “My sense of smell is all mucked up from that.”

“Oh…” Alyssa grimaced.

That.

The bodies of the infected had to be dealt with somehow. Nobody wanted to simply bury them in the ground and leave them to fester. A large pit had been magically dug far north of Illuna, well away from the city. All the body collectors who went around grabbing the marked deceased carried the bodies all the way up there. For the last three days, there had been a thin haze wafting over the city.

A cloud of incinerated infected.

Alyssa hadn’t been up to the actual burn pit and she had no desire to get near. The black plume on the horizon was disturbing enough just to look at. It thinned out to the point where she couldn’t really see it very well around the actual city, but there had been a faint smell. On its own, the smell wasn’t that bad. The real horror came from knowing where that smell and that smog had come from.

She did not want to know how much dead body dust she had breathed in.

Though it couldn’t have been as bad as what she had breathed in after dealing with the Justice. Luckily, most of that had been plant life. Wood, predominantly. Probably plenty of insects as well. Still, relatively little people… or things that used to be people.

“Well, we’ve done our best, I think. Unless you’ve noticed anything, Izsha?”

The draken sniffed, snorted, and shook its head. Alyssa took that as a no with a small addendum that the air quality was messing with its senses as well. Giving a few comforting pats on Izsha’s side, Alyssa looked back toward the city. They were quite a distance out, though they had been traveling for a lot longer than it would have taken to get here had they moved in a straight line. There was just too much ground to search. Even moving in a wide arc, zig-zagging the entire way while looking for traces of a camp, hadn’t helped them find anything.

If people were out here, they could easily have spotted the large draken and taken cover. They might even be able to use invisibility spells if any were arcanists. Just in case, Alyssa had used the soul observation spell. The same one that showed off Irulon as a dragon. It wasn’t as good as being able to close her eyes and see every soul around, but it was a close second. More importantly, she had been hoping that it would let her detect invisible people by way of seeing their soul.

Either it didn’t work or no one was out here.

“Let’s head back for now,” she said with a light sigh. Finding nothing would probably be a whole lot less reassuring to the monsters than finding something simply because the absence of observers wasn’t proof that there weren’t any. Still, overall, finding nothing might be for the best. Less to worry about that way.

Fela, still rubbing at her nose, gave a light nod of agreement as she climbed back onto Dasca’s back. The way she actually climbed rather than hopped or pounced was just evidence toward how much the bad air was affecting her.

As far as Alyssa understood the situation, the vast majority of the bodies in the immediate vicinity of Illuna had been collected and delivered already, so hopefully the smoke would blow over sooner rather than later. The first expedition had just left to go further into the forest. Two more were scheduled for tomorrow morning, both of which would start circling the affected area in opposite directions. They would not be dragging the bodies all the way back to Illuna, but rather gathering them up over the course of the day and burning them all at once.

She did not envy them in the slightest. Not only were they off on a long and slow march to find corpses, but they had to drag them and then burn them in close proximity? No thanks. No thank you.

“Wait,” Fela said, ears swiveling. Her head followed their swivel a moment after.

Alyssa tried to listen, figuring she had heard something. But her own ears couldn’t detect a sound aside from a gentle rustling of the sagebrush, grass, and scattered trees in the gentle breeze. Neither did she see anything in the direction that Fela was looking.

But apparently the draken did. Both Izsha and Dasca perked up, turning to face the same direction.

“What is it?”

“Don’t know. A noise. Not a natural noise either. It stopped though.”

“How unnatural are we talking? Like Astral Authority levels of unnatural or just a wagon wheel grinding against the ground?”

“I don’t think it was a wagon.”

“But it was closer to a wagon than the Astral Authority, right?”

“I guess?”

Alyssa stared off into the distance, not sure if she should be feeling relieved or not. The Astral Authority would have been bad, but they probably would have ignored them. The same might not apply to some random mortals of any type that were wandering around. “We’ll check it out, but let’s take care. If someone in the distance was setting up a weapon or a trap, we don’t want to run afoul of it.”

As soon as she finished speaking, the draken took off. Alyssa wasn’t sure how good their hearing was in comparison to Fela’s, but they had clearly noticed something that Alyssa had missed. Given that Fela hadn’t told them to slow down, whatever she had heard must have been a good distance away.

The draken only ran for a minute. Maybe not even that much. They came up to a small hill with a single tree on top. It wasn’t a very tall hill, but it was quite wide in diameter, if somewhat lopsided in shape. The slope was much steeper on the further visible side than what was closest to them, but the draken didn’t seem to care. Their charge slowed as they ran up the slope.

“It might have been further out,” Fela said. “But it was somewhere in this direction. Maybe…” Her voice trailed off as they crested the top of the hill.

Alyssa drew her pistol and spell cards upon seeing the other side, both down and pointed away from her friends. She flicked the safety off.

Bodies were strewn about. Humans, but it was hard to tell how many. Most were torn apart. Some looked completely crushed, flattened as if they had been run over by a road roller. It was similar to the scene of the plague house she had entered with the Pharaoh, except done in an open area. Two horses had clearly been mutilated as well, though not quite to the same degree as the human bodies. Her first thought was that a demon or infected had happened across this group, given its similarities to the plague houses. But no matter where she looked, she couldn’t find any mostly intact body that might have been an infected. Nor could she find any pentagrams, true demon created ones or otherwise. At the plague house, the infected there had laid out the body in a pentagram pattern.

A wild animal then? Perhaps a monster? If it was the latter, it wouldn’t have been one from the camp. This was quite a distance away and the human guards would surely have noticed and reported some monster wandering off and returning covered in blood.

And whoever did this had to have been covered in blood afterwords.

“What kind of noise did you hear here?” Alyssa asked, voice a terse whisper. Although she couldn’t spot a threat, something about the area made her tense. The bodies, probably. Seeing a bunch of inexplicably dead people would make anyone tense. For that matter, seeing a bunch of explicably dead people would make someone nervous if they came across them unexpectedly.

Fela didn’t answer immediately. She looked left to right, ears swiveling around and around as she turned her head. The draken were alert as well, taking their time in prowling around as they searched for any threats. Alyssa felt far more at ease than she otherwise would have been just knowing that she had three dependable allies to count on should anything go wrong.

“Still not sure,” Fela said softly after a long few moments of looking around. “Seeing this adds a little context, but not much… Maybe a knife against rock? Or a hardened claw. Not striking it, but scraping against it. It was just a sharp, high pitched noise that made me wince a bit.”

Like nails on a chalkboard. Alyssa frowned, looking around. The bodies were recent, but not five minutes ago recent. The blood and gore had the time to dry, but carrion feeders had yet to move in and start feasting on the corpses. Whatever had done this was probably long gone unless it had been injured. “There might be a survivor,” she said, looking a little closer at the bodies, trying to spot one that wasn’t quite as mutilated as the others. “Don’t spread out too far, but let’s split up a little. Just enough to search this area a little better. Keep each other in sight. Shout if you spot anything. And I mean anything. I don’t care if it is your long lost draken sibling or a little green man from Mars.”

“Mars?”

“It’s a… never mind,” Alyssa said with a shake of her head. “Izsha, let’s head around and see if there are any tracks. Either from survivors that might have been dragging themselves away or maybe whatever did this in the first place. Fela, stick with Dasca. Prowl through here and see if you spot anything that might be a clue. But try to avoid disturbing the bodies as much as possible. Don’t touch them, don’t step on them.”

Orders given, Alyssa sent off two quick Message spells. One to Irulon then one to Brakkt, just in case the princess decided not to inform her brother of what Alyssa had found. Brakkt was out on the western side of the city, making rounds and keeping up observation of the area even though there wasn’t much to observe. Irulon was still sketching out some grand plan and would probably resent being interrupted, but if she could think up any monsters or creatures that might have caused this massacre, Alyssa would welcome a response.

As soon as she finished sending Messages to the two, Alyssa called out. “Is anyone here? Anyone alive?”

It might not have been the wisest idea to shout for people, but Alyssa was relatively confident that she would be able to Spectral Chains anything that might try to attack her. When even angels couldn’t escape—except for Tenebrael—Alyssa wasn’t too worried about some mortal creature. Of course, she did have to be wary about a creature too large. Something as big as the Justice, or even Rokien and Fezzik for that matter, would turn her chains against her.

Still, she had a few more volatile backup plans for anything that couldn’t be chained.

“Anyone?” Alyssa shouted again, scanning the ground. There were obvious footprints pressed into the dirt. With probably ten people—though she still hadn’t been able to accurately count the bodies—they went this way and that while walking around the area. Some looked like they might have been trying to either retreat or attack, a guess mostly based on the heavier presses at the heels and scraping trails from side to side, but that could just be Alyssa’s own imagination coloring in what was otherwise just a trail leading from their camp to their latrine. Had Irulon been present, the princess would surely have been able to reconstruct the entire scene simply from a glance.

Alyssa didn’t even have a Retrograde Cognition spell to use… not that she would really want to use that spell at the moment. Retrograde Cognition left the user vulnerable for an extended period of time. Fela and the draken might protect her from most everything, but if something outlandish happened, like Adrael escaping from her prison and attacking, they would not be able to react at all.

A wheeze from a large bush made Izsha stop. Alyssa held her breath, straining her ears to hear as it started again. A low squeak of a breath of air, accompanied by a faint groan. There was definitely someone there. Or something.

Following her own rule, Alyssa immediately shouted for Fela as she directed Izsha to approach.

The bush was a yellow-brown thing filled with hundreds of thin grass-like strands, reaching up to about Alyssa’s shoulders had she been standing on the ground. She had seen several similar plants around the swamp, so it was probably the same type. This one lacked the luscious green coloration though. Probably a result of the lack of sufficient water up here. Because of its yellow-brown coloration, Alyssa could easily spot a pair of black boots sticking out from one side.

Rounding the bush, Alyssa saw the body in its entirety. An older man, bearded and clothed in torn scraps, lay on top of the bush in just such a way that looked as if he had been thrown on top. One arm was visibly broken and blood leaked from large gashes in the holes of his clothes. But he was breathing. He had a knife held limply in his hand, arm stretched to try to reach the dirt. It looked like he had been trying to carve some words into the ground, but hadn’t made it very far before passing out. The stiff branches of the bush didn’t help his knife-work. Between his sunburnt skin, gaunt cheeks, and dehydrated lips, he must have been lying there for a while. He might have woken up just long enough to try to write something before he passed out again.

That must have been what Fela had heard.

“Don’t worry. We’ll get you to the city. You’ll be fine. Fractal Lock will keep you safe until we can get you medical attention,” Alyssa said, not knowing if the man could hear her at all.


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039.002

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Back to Basics

Discussions Over A Drink


“Prince Brakkt, Alyssa, Kasita.” Martin greeted them in the manor’s foyer, wearing a comfortable robe instead of the more militaristic garments Alyssa had seen on him recently. Although he looked about ready to turn in for the night, he appeared to be in a good mood. He was far more relaxed than he had been at the wall the night before and was even smiling as he looked to Fela. “And hellhound. I apologize, I never actually caught your name.”

“Fela.”

“Fela, excellent. I do believe the children are awake,” Martin said, pointing over his shoulder toward one of the closed doors leading off from the foyer, “and they still won’t stop talking about you. If you…” He trailed off as Fela ducked behind Alyssa, half hiding.

“I’m fine here.”

“Sorry if we woke you,” Alyssa said. It wasn’t that late, but she knew that he had not gotten much sleep the night before. By the time Alyssa had returned and headed in for the baths, he had still been up on the wall, keeping an eye on the situation. Since she had immediately gone to help Irulon, Alyssa wasn’t even sure what time he had ended up leaving.

It really had been negligent on her part to have just left like that. Sure, there hadn’t seemed to be any Astral Authority or infected about—and in hindsight, there had been no problems with her leaving—but as basically the only expert in Astral Authority matters, she should have stuck around. Even if expert was a completely relative term in this situation.

At her apology, Martin’s smile did wane. “Just don’t tell me that there is another big emergency.”

“No. No emergency that I know of,” Alyssa said with half a glance toward Brakkt. He wouldn’t know about an emergency that she didn’t, but she still felt the need to glance to him just to double check that he hadn’t received any Messages or anything. “Just a few comments, questions, and maybe suggestions to help keep possible future emergencies at bay.”

“We’re referring to the monster camp. This has little to do with the events of last night.”

“Ah. Excellent. The more I hear about that, the less I like it. I read the preliminary report your friend left with the guild…” Martin’s eyes drifted over to Alyssa, making her wonder just how much the report talked about the Justice and how much it talked about her and Irulon.

“If it is any consolation,” Alyssa said with a gesture toward Brakkt, “we were talking earlier and think that there may be a chance that the pit at Owlcroft is completely closed. You’d have to send someone to check to be certain, but… I give it good odds.”

“That would be good news indeed, but… not what you are here for.”

“No. We’re here about the monsters.”

“I see. Should have guessed. Shall we adjourn to the study?” he said, taking a step back and waving toward a different door than the one he had pointed to earlier. Without waiting for a response from either Brakkt or Alyssa, he started walking toward it, pausing only at a servant standing near it to ask for some drinks and refreshments.

“What would you think about granting the monsters a small plot of land nearby?” Alyssa asked as they walked. It was just a short hallway to a rather large room. The doors were quite opulent, as were all official sections of the manor. Whenever important people visited, they brought them here. Alyssa had actually been inside it before, once or twice. Once without having even seen Martin, back on her very first day in Illuna. “Somewhere close enough to fall under your protection,” she continued as she took a seat on what was obviously the guest side of the large rectangular table. “But not really close enough to be in the conscious mind of the people.”

“Is there something that brought this on?” Martin said as he rounded the table. Even though he was still in just a robe, his posture and countenance gave him a rather regal appearance as he took his seat.

“Should there be any kind of strife, the monsters will likely be the first the people turn to as a scapegoat,” Alyssa said as a servant placed a glass in front of both her and Brakkt before filling it halfway full of an amber-colored liquid. “A famine, for example. Even though the monsters are only using a fraction of the city’s supplies, should something disastrous happen, there will likely be friction between the people and the monsters. Even with as well as they seem to be getting along at the moment,” she added, thinking back to her stroll through the market earlier in the day.

“Is there something making you think such a calamity is on the horizon?” Martin said, leaning forward in obvious alarm. He just about spilled the glass of alcohol that his servant had just poured for him. As it was, only the quick reactions of said servant saved it from his elbow.

Brakkt answered before Alyssa could speak. “Only the amount of spell cards we used today to mark bodies. We were concerned for their total supply and what it meant for farming.”

“Is that all…” Martin took a moment to regain his proper posture before continuing. “We have a generous supply of spell cards. I will make a note of it to ensure that we can produce more well in advance of the next harvest and planting season.”

“That was really just an example,” Alyssa said. “Any kind of strife or hardship that might possibly be the fault of the monsters might lead to friction. So keeping them at a distance, close enough to foster an alliance but far enough to be out of the minds of the people, would probably be a good idea.”

Threat completely out of his mind, Martin leaned back in his chair, losing some of his regal posture in exchange for a small drink from the glass. “My advisers,” he said as he placed the glass back on the table. He set it down carefully enough that it barely made a sound. “They want me to get rid of the monsters sooner rather than later, citing such claims as they cannot be trusted not to run rampant throughout the streets of Illuna or they are spying for a larger invasion, just playing the victim to gain sympathy. Let our guard down around them and such.”

“Having spent a great deal of time down in their camp, talking and interacting with all of them, I would be overwhelmingly surprised if they were being subversive in their intentions,” Brakkt said.

“Same. I’m not going to say that every monster out there is a paragon of virtue, but there is nothing to fear from this group, at the very least. Instead, I think there is a lot to learn. A lot to gain. For both human and monster.”

“Mhm.” Martin hummed as he took another small drink. He sipped so little that Alyssa wasn’t actually sure that he was drinking. He could simply be letting the alcohol touch his lips, perhaps wanting to appear as if he were drinking in a social manner but without compromising his faculties.

“There is one small problem,” Kasita said. Alyssa glanced to her with an eyebrow raised, but did not interrupt. “Yora wants to run off with a few or all of them for slavery purposes. If you allow that, the monsters will likely think that they are merely being held until the highest bidder comes along and wants to buy them. I believe that any attempt at an alliance at that point would be completely futile. And there are many benefits that would probably outweigh increased tensions with Yora. I have personally spoken with a number of potion crafters here in the city that have expressed an interest in heading down to the monster camp just to bottle a few hairs from beds. You would have allies with the strength of ten men in the form of those like Rokien should something happen, such as a resurgence in infected from Owlcroft if the pit hasn’t been closed. Or any other threat that befalls Illuna.”

Alyssa nodded along with Kasita. “It would probably be the moral thing to do too,” she added. “No sense causing harm unnecessarily.”

“No. No, of course not.”

A long silence followed. No one seemed ready to break it. Brakkt simply picked up his own glass and drank a visible amount while Martin stared. He wasn’t staring at anyone in particular. It was more of the distant gaze-type of look. One deep in thought. Seeing the serious look on his face was heartening. Alyssa was glad he was giving the situation the consideration it deserved.

Although she hadn’t interacted with him too much, Alyssa found herself rather fond of Martin. He was an older man, obviously with years of experience behind his leadership position—even if his son was technically the true leader of Illuna—and a good head on his shoulders. He didn’t jump into action, considered his advisers without kowtowing to their whims, and otherwise seemed… well, wise.

Alyssa could only imagine what a nightmare staying in this city would have been had it been led by someone more of Decorous’ temperament. What would he have done had a bunch of monsters popped up on his doorstep? Given that representatives of his home were wanting to enslave them, probably that, but probably not without a lot of violence to start with. Some measure of cowing the monsters. Or perhaps he would simply panic at learning of their approach, assume they were assaulting the city, and launch his own army to combat them.

The thoughtful silence shattered along with a glass.

The sudden noise made Alyssa jump. Her hands found her weapons in an instant, but she realized just what had caused the crash before actually drawing either her pistol or the deck of cards.

Fela sat in her chair next to Kasita, glaring with fire burning from her eyes at a shattered glass at her place… or perhaps at her paws, which looked like they were holding a piece of the glass. She, like everyone else at the table, had received a glass and some alcohol. It didn’t take much to figure out what had caused the incident.

Lacking opposable thumbs, Fela had probably tried to pick up the glass with both hands and either pressed too hard or hadn’t been able to maintain a grip, resulting in it sliding out of her paws and shattering before she could grab it again. The same amber liquid that was in all their glasses was now spreading across the table.

“Sorry,” Fela said, mumbling more to herself than anything else. She quickly put her arm against the table, both mopping up some of the drink and keeping it from dripping down onto the rest of her, the chair, and the floor. The servant was quick enough in reacting with a small towel to keep her from needing to get completely soaked to save the upholstery, but her arm still dripped a bit as she moved it away for him to wipe the table.

“My apologies,” Martin said, standing. “I should have thought to have a mug, or something else with a handle, for you.”

“I should have known better. I’ve been around humans long enough.” Taking the towel from the servant, she quickly dried off her forearm.

“Would you care for something in a more suitable container?”

“I’ll just get a drink back at the tavern. They have nice big mugs that I can grasp easily. Sorry,” she said again, this time to the servant.

He didn’t respond much aside from a shallow nod of his head. Alyssa got the feeling that he was at least mildly annoyed with what Fela had done, but didn’t want to express that annoyance in front of Martin.

“I believe we have said about all we had in mind,” Alyssa said, considering standing to leave. She had so far not touched her drink. It felt a bit awkward to grab it and drink it now, but at the same time, it seemed a bit rude to just up and leave a full glass behind. Martin had offered it as a kindness and she highly doubted that it was any kind of cheap swill given that he had served it to a prince. Picking the drink up, she asked a quick question for Martin, mostly to give her a chance to drink it. “Did you have any questions? Maybe about monsters? Or anything, really.”

“No. Not that I can think up at the moment, anyway. I was planning on visiting with our… visitors? Wasn’t sure when, exactly, but I thought it would be a good idea to walk among them. I am getting daily reports from my watchers and guards, of course, but some things simply need to be seen for oneself. Truth be told, I haven’t interacted with them much since their initial arrival, having gone through intermediaries in the time since when I’ve needed to interact with them. My advisers recommend that I avoid putting myself in more danger than necessary. Yet, as the acting leader of this city, I feel I should meet with the leaders of those who might be our future allies.”

Alyssa couldn’t really argue with people needing to see things for themselves, though she bet that Catal could. She hadn’t seen him since Lumen dragged him out of the baths before the angels showed up, but he had been pretty unsteady at the time.

More importantly, from the way Martin was talking, it sounded an awful lot like he was going to end up siding with the monsters over the likes of Yora. Perhaps it was something he had been thinking about for a long while. Perhaps having Brakkt here had helped to sway his decision. Were Alyssa in his place and the Pharaoh’s son showed up with a suggestion, she would probably be inclined to listen.

“If you wish, we would be happy to accompany you,” Brakkt said after a short moment. “I’ve personally spent a great deal of time there and know my way around. Alyssa has as well.”

“I am sure having a warrior of your renown at my side will put their fears at ease.” Martin stood before any of them, making Alyssa feel much better about getting to her feet even though she had only drank half her glass.

It was just a bit too syrupy for her tastes. The thickness of the liquid was just a tad higher than expected. It had a bite to it as well, a bit of a cinnamon-spice aftertaste like she was sucking on a hard candy. As fancy as this drink probably was, Alyssa thought she enjoyed the watered-down tavern ale a whole lot more.

There were a lot of weird alcohols in this world. From this stuff to the overly sweet Tyrian wine that Irulon favored and the drink that Decorous had offered her during their little dinner date—which she hadn’t touched but smelled vaguely of nail polish remover. She hadn’t really been a connoisseur back on Earth, but she was pretty sure that they had nothing like this stuff.

She wondered if it would fetch a high price back home. She didn’t know the price here, but if she could eventually export some to Earth, it might be an interesting business opportunity. Doubly so if she could claim that it came from another world.

If she ever did get a way of meeting up with her father and brother again, of crossing over between the two worlds at will, she could easily become one of the richest people in both worlds. And that was just cross-selling certain items, including potions maybe a select few of the tamer spell cards, and food and drink. If she and Irulon could maintain a monopoly on portal control—assuming they told anyone about other worlds in the first place—even more so.

But those were all so far off that they really weren’t even worth thinking about. She was closer to opening a pizza parlor in Lyria than she was to becoming some kind of multi-reality transportation baron.

Brakkt and Martin shook hands after Martin walked around the table. Bare hands. Brakkt was still in most of his armor, but he had taken the gauntlets and moderately-sized pauldrons off.

“Always a pleasure to meet with you, Martin.”

“Indeed. And you as well, Alyssa, Kasita, and Fela, was it?” He didn’t offer to shake any of their hands, but Alyssa didn’t mind. And Fela still had a bit of the alcohol on herself.

“We’ll let you get some rest,” Alyssa said. “We need to get some rest as well. Been a busy two days.”

“I appreciate all you’ve done to assist in the wake of last night. My men will be run ragged for weeks. Every little bit helps.”

“I’m sure we’ll be doing more in the coming days.” At least so long as Irulon was back at her research. When she was ready for Alyssa, things might change. Or if they found it time to return home. That would obviously disrupt matters. But at least for tomorrow, Alyssa was relatively confident that they would be back out in the west, marking corpses with a fresh load of flare spells.

As Alyssa and Brakkt headed out from the manor, with Kasita and Fela in close tow, Alyssa had to look up to the prince. “I think that went rather well.”

“Martin has always been a close ally of Lyria. Given his son’s comments and support of my father, I imagine that relationship will continue for some time.”

“I do hope you’re right.”


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039.001

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Back to Basics

Bring In The Dead


Alyssa couldn’t believe that she had been kicked out of the planning process for Irulon and the solution to the soul problem. Sure, she might have been less helpful than she had thought she would be—which had already been low to start with—but kicked out? It had something to do with Irulon’s latest idea.

The princess was excited. Beyond ecstatic. She had gotten some idea overnight that would apparently solve everything for everyone—referring to herself and the dragon, of course—but needed some time to work out exactly how to go about doing the actual solving. Given that she was working on magic, Alyssa had little that she could directly contribute to the project. All that had been asked of her was to get back into Tenebrael’s ‘good graces’ and then practice her flesh-shaping.

A term that made her shudder. It sounded too… wet and gooey.

But in order to even test at such a thing, Alyssa had to reconnect with Tenebrael. Until she got confirmation that the Astral Authority had been dealt with, she was somewhat loathe to make any attempts. If Irulon needed her right this moment, she would of course take the risk, but Irulon still had her own idea to work out and still had some time beyond that.

So for the moment, Alyssa was taking a casual stroll through the streets of Illuna with Fela at her side. Kasita was taking the time to do a quick check-in with the Yora representatives, checking to see what they thought in the wake of the Astral Authority and infected humans appearing out near the walls. Guard had been doubled on the Owlcroft side of the city. Aside from a few guards still stationed around the monster camp, the eastern wall was practically empty. Apparently. Alyssa hadn’t actually gone out there to see for herself just yet. She just had the report from Brakkt.

Despite the increased presence of the guards on the walls, life inside the city continued more-or-less the same. It was something like what Brakkt had been talking about. There wasn’t an immediate cause for alarm, so most of the general population didn’t worry over anything. They had too much else on their plates to worry over. Food on their literal plates, for instance. Another city might have been concerned over an increased guard presence, but even that wasn’t all that strange to the people of Illuna. They regularly had infected attacking that side of the city. Increased guard was business as usual.

Mostly usual, anyway.

Walking through the market with Fela got her a few looks. Nothing too surprising. Monsters were somewhat commonplace around Illuna. None right now. Martin had asked that all those monsters who were working in the city to remain in the monster camp while the city was on high alert. Just a way to prevent any high tensions from causing incidents. Alyssa was fairly certain that they had passed the word to those monsters who had been sneaking into the city because Alyssa hadn’t spotted any of them.

Not that they were doing that great a job of sneaking anymore.

“The little kid not here today?” a passing customer asked as the pieman handed him a pie.

“Nawp. Daughter’s a bit touchy about it too. Think she’s gotten used to a bit of help around.”

“Thought I saw the little red monster running around earlier, but maybe it was my imagination.”

Not sneaking at all anymore, apparently.

“Good riddance,” another customer said with a hefty grumble. “Pies ain’t supposta have strange hair in ‘em.”

“The kid has blue hair Ed, that strand you pulled out was grey. You’re the only one with grey hair touching your food.”

“The hair was blue, you just couldn’ta told with all the dough baked innit.”

“It was grey,” a seemingly unrelated customer shouted.

“Blue!”

“Grey!”

The entire crowd around the pie stand quickly devolved into bickering and arguing. Seemingly everyone started shouting out colors, including some people shopping at nearby stands. Blue, grey, blue, grey. Even a green thrown in there for good measure. Shame they couldn’t all live in simple peace and harmony, but at least it wasn’t a riot. If anything, the arguing seemed almost in good-nature. Like they were enjoying the little distraction from their morning meal.

Alyssa skirted by, trying to avoid getting herself and Fela involved. The giant flames coming from Fela’s eyes acted like something of a beacon, but she was just unintentionally intimidating enough that most people didn’t like to approach her. At least, she was intimidating toward people that hadn’t seen her chased around the streets by a bunch of children. Luckily for her, that had happened near Martin’s manor, around the wealthier sections of the city. The markets were far from slums, but they weren’t opulent shops either.

And they couldn’t really stop.

Despite their casual stroll, they did have something of a mission. No time to get into an argument about a hair in a pie.

Past the market and through some homely homes, Alyssa and Fela finally reached the wall. The same wall that they had watched the Astral Authority from. Most guards recognized them. One of the guards even tried to escort her up onto the wall itself. But the wall wasn’t their destination for the day.

Brakkt and a trio of draken were already waiting at the nearby gate. He was fully armored, though he had his helmet off. It hung from a hook on the side of Ensou’s saddle.

“Good morning,” he said with a smile and a nod of his head. “Sleep well?”

“I should be asking you that. I had a bed, you’re still out on that makeshift cot in the monster camp. Is that even comfortable?”

“Well enough. I enjoy the rougher nights. Sleeping in the palace always felt too… soft.”

“Fair enough. I guess,” Alyssa said with a half shrug.

Fela, after letting out a truly massive yawn that had a few of the nearby guards taking a step back from her sharp teeth, shrugged. “I slept great, but someone woke me up too early.”

“If you’re left alone, you’ll sleep as long as Irulon.” Though at least it wasn’t as difficult to wake Fela up. A bit of light shaking of her shoulders would do the trick.

“Shall we head out?”

Alyssa’s smile faded somewhat as she looked out through the open gate toward the swampier side of Illuna. There were a lot of corpses out there. Bodies of the infected slain by the Astral Authority. Alyssa had checked the corpses of a few on her way back, using the scythe to try to pull out a soul. None of them had possessed souls, but there were a lot of corpses out there.

Illuna already had a few teams of guardsmen scouring the land for any sign of pentagrams, with Trik overseeing or maybe just observing them. Trik was the leader of the plague containment teams back in Lyria, so he knew a thing or two about infected and clearing them out, but Illuna had a decent amount of experience in dealing with such things as well. The symbols had to be destroyed or simply disturbed lest Illuna become the new Owlcroft. However, they essentially had to comb the swamp. With Fela, their team could go directly from corpse to corpse, following the scent throughout the area. With every body they found and every pentagram they destroyed, the dire situation grew less perilous.

Apparently. Alyssa wasn’t sure how they knew the exact mechanics behind the formation of the pit. Perhaps arcanists back when it had first formed used Retrograde Cognition or other spells to diagnose the problem. Regardless, the belief was that demoniacally formed pentagrams contributed to the pit’s existence. Alyssa had no reason to doubt them.

So she hopped up into Izsha’s saddle. Brakkt slid into Ensou’s saddle while Fela more literally hopped onto Dasca.

And they were off.

Illuna’s teams already scoured the area nearest to Illuna. Luckily. They didn’t have to trudge through the actual swamp much at all, sticking to the path as they headed further into the drier sections of the forest. Alyssa felt bad for the poor guys who were going around with a meat wagon, hauling up all the corpses left behind by the teams. They had to go wading through the murky water to find bodies. At least they didn’t have to search much. Small magical flares burned bright over checked bodies, both alerting Alyssa as to where they could ignore as well as drawing the body collectors to the corpses.

Fela did spot a handful of infected bodies that the initial teams had missed in the swamp. Most of the missed ones were fully submerged with the water too murky to spot the faint glow from the pentagrams. How Fela managed to smell them from beneath the water was anyone’s guess. Perhaps some small gas bubbles escaped or maybe they just left a lingering scent from before they died. Regardless, Brakkt and Ensou went around trampling the pentagrams while Alyssa, using spell cards provided by the city, cast the flare spell to mark the bodies as found.

They continued like that for a good few hours, following Fela, trampling, and marking. It was surprisingly relaxing, considering they were dealing with dead bodies. There was just no sense of danger out in the forest. The Astral Authority had been thorough and effective. Randomly, Alyssa would pull out a scythe just to make sure that there were no bodies slipping by with souls still intact, but so far, every body had the pentagrams next to them and lacked souls.

Something Alyssa had been mildly worried about was the Astral Authority. They seemed to be gone, but were they really? So far, she hadn’t spotted one. All the ones around Illuna were gone, but she thought there was a possibility of finding an injured one out in the forest, left behind. But as long as their portals were working, they probably wouldn’t leave any behind unless they had completely died. At which point, given that it had been several hours since the action the night before, the bodies probably would have disintegrated.

There was too much ground to cover for one day, unfortunately. Owlcroft was several days off. Assuming that infected fled roughly evenly in every direction, there would be miles upon miles of ground to go over. Fela was just one person and Alyssa was not equipped for a full expedition at the moment. Neither was Brakkt. Even Illuna’s guardsmen were mostly sticking within a day’s walking distance. There were preparations to perform a more extensive operation, but nothing that would happen by the end of the night. It would probably be a few days. At the moment, they were just trying to mitigate any potential threats near Illuna.

The full expedition would probably be quite the ordeal. Even if they weren’t going that far from Illuna relative to somewhere like Lyria or even the distance between Teneville and Lyria, it was going to be a long and hard march. Without someone like Fela with them, they were going to have to comb the forests and swamps by hand.

Perhaps another of the monsters inside the camp had the ability to sniff out demons. There were a number of gremlins in the camp. If they could somehow detect demons, having a few of them in the expedition would surely speed up how soon those guards got to return home.

Something to check out once she returned to the city this evening.

Roughly four hours later and Alyssa found herself out of the flare cards. She had even been rationing them. If two bodies were close enough, she would place the flare between them with arrows drawn into the ground or a nearby tree. Doing that, she had been able to mark a good forty bodies with only thirty cards.

She could hardly believe just how many there were. Granted, there had been tons of them when she had been at Owlcroft. But even with her using Annihilator to decimate armies plus whatever forces they lost to the Astral Authority before they started fleeing, there were so many. Had they just been building up for one massive attack on the entire world? It wasn’t impossible. Taking that into consideration, despite the trouble they had caused, the Astral Authority might have been something of a blessing for this world.

It would take Illuna weeks if not months to scour the entirety of the land where the infected could have fled to. Alyssa did not envy them.

With no more spells, their little group started heading back to the city. On the way, she did drag a few bodies to already marked corpses using Spectral Chains. In retrospect, she should probably have been doing that in the first place to group up five or so bodies at once. It would have let her flare spells last a little longer.

“Shame,” Brakkt said as they neared Illuna. “They’ll have people working constantly to create more spell cards. Any supply of ink and paper is likely to run down because of this.”

“It isn’t all bad,” Alyssa said, looking around the swamp. Most of the flares that were dancing around the surface of the water when they had left were gone now, cleaned up by the body collectors. “There aren’t likely to be any demons attacking the city in the near future because of this. I doubt the Astral Authority missed any. They might have even been able to close the pit. Illuna will have to send out some surveyors to see. Or I could ask an angel if I see one anytime soon.”

“True. So long as they don’t come under attack from any other forces in the time being, they will likely have time to restock before any major calamities strike. Hopefully they will have cards reserved to continuously propagate their farms. A famine would be disastrous at the moment with the monsters still at their doorstep.”

“The camp does have a lot of people in it, but relative to the rest of the city? They can’t be taking up that much food.”

Brakkt glanced over. His helmet was still off, giving a clear view of his face. He hadn’t worn it at all since they set out on their errand. There just was no need to do so. Although dreary, the swamp and forest weren’t dangerous at the moment.

Unfortunately, that lack of a helmet gave Alyssa a clear view of his knowing look.

“You think that will matter when the townsfolk are starving and looking for anything to blame? At best, the monsters will be run off. At worst?” He shook his head.

“Perhaps a suggestion to Martin about moving the monsters off to somewhere else. Give them a plot of land near enough to still be under Illuna’s protection, but far enough away that the general population doesn’t worry too much about them all.” As long as the monsters remained allies with Illuna, a dedicated community could even serve as a beachhead into becoming more recognized and accepted as a clique of human society.

Of course, Alyssa wasn’t sure at all how well the camp could grow into a proper community. There were less than a dozen of any given species of monsters. Barring strange reproduction methods, growing a community would require an influx of monsters from elsewhere. For that, Volta could probably step in. Alyssa had no doubt that, as both the leader of a monster community at the oasis and as the court arcanist for Illuna, Volta could get some word out. Whether or not anyone came was another matter entirely.

Still, that was a long-term problem that, while Alyssa would try helping with it, would probably not actually involve her that much. They had spent a lot longer in Illuna than expected. While Alyssa didn’t particularly mind the vacation—she had grown rather fond of Illuna in general, it being a smaller city without wars or attacks helped her fondness—Oz and the other guild members were still trying to get a job for the return trip and Trik was supposed to have returned a long time ago. Brakkt didn’t seem like he was in much of a hurry, but the royal siblings probably shouldn’t stay away forever.

The real question at the moment was about Irulon. If moving back to Lyria interrupted her research and spell crafting, they would be sticking around for the foreseeable future. If she thought she could make better progress back in the palace, they might just be leaving as soon as tomorrow.

Near the gates to the city, Alyssa spotted a familiar face. Kasita stood by, chatting with one of the guards like she knew him her whole life. The moment Alyssa got close enough, she broke off the conversation with a terse smile and practically ran up to Alyssa.

“Mild problem,” Kasita said with no hint of amusement in her tone. “Apparently last night has spooked the Yora goons. They want to leave as soon as possible and were sending off Messages all day about getting away from monsters, demons, and Illuna.”

“That sounds like a good thing. Where’s the problem?”

“From what I gathered from my spying, Yora wants a ‘sampling’ of the monsters. If they can’t get them all, they’re going to try to take a few. And they’re planning on taking them in chains.”

“The camp is still under the protection of Illuna. They aren’t planning on kidnapping some monsters, are they?” Alyssa asked, glancing from Kasita to Brakkt.

The prince put a hand to his chin, considering for a moment before answering. “Martin may choose to go with what ends up easing possible tensions between Illuna and Yora.”

Alyssa pressed her lips together in a tight frown. “Perhaps we should go see Martin? See if we can’t sway him toward keeping the monsters all together. And perhaps make sure that Yora doesn’t kidnap any. There is still that group out in the wilderness that Rokien and Fezzik thought were watching them.”

Even in the wake of a crazy night, something just had to crop up.


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038.001

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Interlude

Irulon


The world was a strange place. Or perhaps it was reality itself that was strange. The world seemed so much smaller than she had once thought. With Alyssa, she had empirical evidence of other worlds. Theoretically, she had even been to another world, though having been locked in stasis at the time, she hadn’t even breathed a single breath of another world’s air. A missed opportunity to be sure.

There was something wrong with the world. Irulon didn’t know what, even now. But ever since she was a child, she had this idea in the back of her mind that something was just… off. It had been an obsession of hers ever since she could remember knowing what obsessions were. Without anything to compare it to, figuring out just what was wrong would have been impossible.

Had it something to do with magic? Magic had been around for as long as there were humans to wield it, as far as Irulon knew. The first arcanist was said to have received inspiration directly from Tenebrael. Through a dream, perhaps. That would make the most sense given recent events. The form of magic had changed over the centuries of its use. The current use of spell cards was actually fairly recent. A brilliant arcanist found a way to compress the spell patterns down to the size of a card only a few hundred years ago using a formula of ink and paper along with minor alterations to the patterns themselves. Prior to that, every spell cast had been using the much larger designs that had to be drawn into the ground itself. Arcanists would spend hours, days, or even weeks carving out their designs. Villages of the past tended to have small fire pits with permanent runes etched inside just to keep the town fire going. Some might still have such relics.

If there was a problem there, Irulon couldn’t see it. Magic had been given to mortals by Tenebrael. From there, mortals had found more efficient ways to use it. Everything sounded fine, so…

Perhaps it was magic itself. Maybe something about it had simply felt unnatural from the start. According to Alyssa, Earth had no magic to speak of. Given all other worlds were supposedly overseen by a being similar to Tenebrael, she doubted that any other theoretical world had magic either. Not unless the angels had gone rogue as Tenebrael apparently had.

Monsters fell under the same category as magic. Obviously they hadn’t been given to humans the way magic had, but if Alyssa was right, they were a unique feature of this world. They weren’t what Irulon had found off about the world as a child—she really hadn’t had much interaction with monsters prior to Brakkt bringing the draken home—but they were certainly a factor now.

The problem could have been neither element.

Thinking back, trying to identify the first instance of her obsession was impossible. She hadn’t had her companion at the time and thus lacked the perfect memory that she had now. But perhaps it had been around the time that she had started truly worshiping Tenebrael.

Nobody liked to talk to her as a child. She was the princess. That was intimidating enough on its own. Demonstrating talent as an arcanist at a young age only further pushed people away. They said she was blessed. Holy. A child of Tenebrael. And refused to speak to her unless absolutely necessary.

The only people who had were men of the cloth. Clergymen. Tenebrael’s most ‘devout’…

At first, Irulon had enjoyed the attention and the discussions. Talking with someone was nice on its own. Discovering more about the world she lived in didn’t hurt. However, that enjoyment had turned to scorn once she realized that they were mostly using her to rub elbows with her father and otherwise elevating their legitimacy through having a princess at their side. Tenebrael didn’t need proselytizers. Tenebrael didn’t need mass worship. The Festival was for the benefit of humanity. Not the other way around. Everyone would greet Tenebrael in death regardless of what they did while alive.

So she had cut ties, branding her face as a sign of devotion before isolating herself further from any who called themselves preachers.

One thing was certain, she had come out of the discussions with the preachers as a more powerful arcanist, capable of using higher ranked spells. At the time, she had thought she had simply matured, grew older and more powerful as arcanists tended to do. Now, she had to wonder if the discussions hadn’t spurred her growth.

Irulon looked over to Alyssa. The girl was powerful. Theoretically of a higher Rank than six. And she had seen Tenebrael. Physically seen her. Touched her. Interacted and spoke with her. Irulon had to wonder if she might be the same if she ever saw Tenebrael. It was true that Irulon had seen Tenebrael through the medium of the phone, but there was little doubt that seeing her on a flat screen couldn’t compare to witnessing Tenebrael’s glory in full.

In addition to being powerful, Alyssa was also asleep. Completely and totally asleep.

Irulon stood from her desk in her quarters, walked around to where Alyssa had been writing down everything she knew about souls, and gently poked the girl in the cheek.

She didn’t even stir.

Shaking her head, Irulon looked down at the paper the girl was half-lying upon. Shimmying it out from under her arms, Irulon looked it over. It was disappointingly yet not unexpectedly blank. Not completely. There were a few lines up at the top. But only those few.

Souls appeared as abstract shapes. Souls interacted with nearby souls, sharing and taking pieces of themselves. After being removed from a body, a soul could be crystallized through an unknown process for an unknown purpose. Everything sapient seemed to possess exactly one soul, except for Irulon.

All information that Irulon already knew from talking with Alyssa. The poor girl had been struggling for a good three hours, trying to think of more to write down before finally falling asleep.

Irulon didn’t bother waking her up. There was no need to. From experiments Irulon had already performed on herself, she knew that the two souls within her body were far more entangled than they once were. Disentangling them without causing harm to either would be a long and arduous project. Perhaps that could be bypassed should Alyssa regain Tenebrael’s power, but even then, Irulon would be nervous about having her simply dive inside and pull one of them out. If doing so resulted in the remaining soul becoming desynchronized with the body, Alyssa would not be able to fix the problem on her own.

When the time came, all the pieces would have to be in place well in advance. Any spell that Irulon couldn’t cast herself would need a detailed set of instructions. There would have to be contingencies in place as well, complete with conditions for their use. There couldn’t be any interruptions, whether that be from the Juno Federation, infected, monster attacks, the Astral Authority, or even angels. It would be difficult to plan around the latter half of that list, but steps could be taken to mitigate risks.

Eyes moving away from Alyssa, Irulon looked to the staff that leaned up against the wall. From Irulon’s perspective, Alyssa had pulled the staff out of the air while engaged in a conversation with nothing at all. That obviously wasn’t true. Irulon had managed to piece together the missing portions of the conversation even before Alyssa filled in the details. But that was what she had seen.

Picking up the staff, Irulon looked it over. It was the same staff, just as unnatural as when she had first seen it. Alyssa said she felt a warmth while touching it. Irulon felt something, but whatever it was, she doubted that it was as intense as when Alyssa picked it up. Warmth? Maybe. Not in the sense that a flame provided warmth, however. Perhaps it was just an illusion of the mind. Metals normally felt far colder than wood, leather, or cloth. The lack of that chill might just be the trick required for Irulon to feel as if it were warmth.

Hard to say.

But the feel of the golden metal was far from the only strange thing about the staff.

She didn’t have a background in smithing. However, since first seeing it, Irulon had visited nearly every blacksmith, goldsmith, and silversmith in Lyria to observe how they worked and the products they created. She had suspected it before, but knew with absolute certainty now that it could not have been forged through any process that smiths, human or elf, use. There were no forging marks, no stress on the metal leftover from cooling or heating, no remnants of impact, carving, or filing. In Irulon’s admittedly inexpert opinion, it was far more likely that the staff had grown as if it were a living creature. It obviously was not a living creature.

Which only served to further the divine nature of the tool.

~We’ll have to test with it soon. See if we can get a glimpse of other worlds.~

“We have other things to worry about,” Irulon said, speaking softly to keep from waking Alyssa. “More immediate problems.”

~Judging by the information we received, our situation is hardly immediate. We have at least two months before we have to decide on a course of action, let alone actually act.~

“Are weeks not mere minutes to long-lived creatures? I’m surprised that you aren’t more concerned than I am.”

~Time is time, even to someone such as your father. The future will come as it comes. It is our memories that turn events into ages or instants.~

“Hm. Regardless, I would prefer for our situation to be resolved as soon as possible, one way or another. It weighs on my mind and distracts me from other important matters.”

~I am mostly aware of what goes on in your mind. To say you have been distracted would be putting it lightly.~

“My point remains unchanged,” Irulon said, placing the staff back where she had got it. Soon. Soon she would test with it as her companion had mentioned. With it, she might just discover what about her world bothered her. What was different about it compared to Earth and any other world that might be out there.

She might find out exactly what had spurred her obsession with other worlds.

But until then…

“What would you do if you had a body of your own?” Irulon asked as she took a seat on the edge of her bed. Leaning back, she clasped her hands over her chest and waited for her companion’s response.

~I suppose that depends. Human body or something more akin to my old dragon body?~

“You want your dragon body back?”

~It would be nice to be what I once was, but if I had it, I would likely feast and then hibernate until I got hungry again. Not exactly the best life, I can tell you that from personal experience. But aside from the illness that overcame me, it wasn’t the worst life. It was far less stressful of an existence than you have had, I can say that much. And I do enjoy a lack of stress.~

“I am still unsure as to whether you do want it back or not.”

~Irrelevant, I suppose. I’ll be happy to get whatever I get. Keep in mind, I skipped over dying once already thanks to you. If this is where I perish more permanently, I won’t have regrets.~

“Don’t know if I can say the same, but…” Without getting out of the bed, Irulon reached over and grabbed a notebook from the end table. A new notebook, not one of the ones she had brought from the palace. She had not expected to stay in Illuna quite as long as she had and had run out of space in most of the books she had brought with her. Unfortunately, that meant the quality wasn’t quite what she was used to.

This particular notebook contained everything she could remember from the revelation Tenebrael had given her. Every bit of information that she had been able to decipher and put to words. Plus a good amount of inferences and theories, conclusions she had drawn from the information. It was all a mess, hastily scribbled down just to try to put as much of it to paper as she could manage. One problem with the way that Tenebrael had offered the information was that her companion hadn’t seen any of it. Irulon was effectively reliant entirely on her own memory, something that she couldn’t remember being a problem in a long while. Not that she had poor memory, but between that fact and the way the dream had been fleeting in her mind the same way common to normal dreams, there could be a number of errors within.

Which was frightening all on its own.

If she did something to herself based on bad information… well, she supposed that it might be the last thing she ever worried about. In all honesty, Irulon did not fear death. The thought that she was destroying her soul, denying the outcome of death, was what really had her on edge. The Festival’s apocrypha often spoke of Tenebrael waiting for souls. But she did not show up for corrupted souls, such as those of the demonically infected.

Would she appear before Irulon? Or would she leave both souls to rot in the body, something apparently excruciatingly painful, for all eternity.

~Not a concern you should dwell on,~ her companion said with deep chastisement. ~We have an ally now. A friend. One who would not allow such an occurrence to come to pass. Keep in mind that she has demonstrated the ability to remove souls and change their form into those crystallized gems. It may not be your ideal outcome, but it is far from the worst thing that could happen.~

Irulon lowered the notebook slightly, peering over the top to the sleeping form of Alyssa once again. She still hadn’t stirred. Slightest trail of drool ran down her chin to soak on the paper that Irulon had replaced on top of her arms.

Grabbing a small cloth, Irulon swung her legs out of bed, walked over, mopped up the saliva, gently tried to close Alyssa’s mouth, and finally moved back to recline in her bed. The paper might not have anything valuable written on it at the moment, but that didn’t mean that they had to ruin it. Rather, Alyssa could very well receive her own revelation while sleeping and would need a place to write it down once she awoke. It was a small chance. Given her apparent relationship with Tenebrael, it seemed as if she would know about such things in advance of them happening—assuming she would ever have to receive revelation in the same manner that Irulon had instead of just having a conversation with Tenebrael.

“It would be a form of immortality,” Irulon said after a long pause as she settled onto the bed. “I’m not sure that immortality is all that appealing, and it definitely is not appealing if we’re stuck like that for the rest of all time.”

~She would likely try to give us bodies. Even if she failed once, she would try again and again. Eventually, it might even work. She might be successful much faster if you didn’t write in code.~

Irulon’s eyes flicked back down to her notebook. No one else in the world should be able to read it. With a scrap of paper missing from her private journal, someone somewhere might be able to figure out something. The Yora intelligencer had not been not lying when she said she didn’t know where the paper had gone. It was very likely that whoever had originally stolen the notebook had taken that page out to sell to someone else. At least, that was Irulon’s theory at the moment.

The code did represent another problem, however. It was a combination of draconic runes and human script, arrayed through a deep algorithm that changed based on the first letter of any word longer than three characters. Irulon could read it as if she were reading a public notice. But that was due in large part to her companion. If they separated, she would still know how to decode it, but would she be able to simply open a book and start reading?

How many of her tomes back in Lyria were encoded in this way?

Yet another problem with their situation.

Originally, Irulon had thought they would be together forever. A permanent advantage for her and a benefit for the dragon who got to avoid death and see the world through the eyes of a human. Neither of them had any qualms about their situation. But now, even a full month after receiving the initial revelation, a month of exploring options that might ‘just fix’ their situation—as Kasita had put it—it was looking less and less likely that they would be able to stay as one. No human was made to contain more than one soul…

“You don’t suppose a dragon body would be able to house the two of us, do you?” Irulon asked, lackadaisically flipping through her notebook to relevant pages. It was a question asked mostly in jest. Even assuming any mortal body could contain two souls without them tearing out each other’s throats, metaphorically speaking, being trapped in a dragon body would be… There was a reason the dragon was so pleased with their situation even as only a passenger and observer. “Maybe a hybrid body,” she said.

~Not… necessarily an avenue to ignore out of hand.~

“You think we can add a few scales onto my body and we’ll suddenly be alright?”

~The mind is the link between the ethereal soul and the mortal world. So why not create a body with two minds?~

“That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve heard you say and I’ve heard you say a lot.”

~We have a flesh-shaper sitting an arm’s length away. Notions of normality can be discarded, I think.~

“Even assuming that Alyssa can create such a monstrosity, and it worked to the point where our souls no longer destroyed each other, would you be happy with such a thing?”

~Asking me what I feel? Where is the real Irulon I know?~

“I just asked you what you would do with a body.”

~An academic question at best. This feels more personal.~

“Hm.” With a slight shake of her head, Irulon started flipping through pages until she reached a blank sheet toward the end of the book. Once there, she sat up, leaned over her end table, and dragged over an inkwell.

~Inspiration struck?~

“You claim to not care about the outcome of this crisis, but I don’t believe that. Let us be honest with each other as we usually are. I want you to stay because of the benefits you provide. You would be happier with your own body, able to act and interact on your own terms rather than on mine.”

~If you insist on seeing things that way.~

“But your idea has merit, insane as it may be.”

~Two minds in a single body. Designing it so that both minds occupy the same space? Or perhaps one central mind for yourself while my own is spread about the body, connected through arcane rituals? Or are we going the tried and true route of simply having two heads?~

Irulon paused her writing, considering what her companion had just said. Shaking her head, she put her pen back to the paper. “I fear the situation has affected you more than you realize for you to be spouting such nonsense.”

~Hmhm.~

“But perhaps two minds is the way to go… Just not in the same body.”


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037.010

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Lost Authority

Staffing Problems


Every muscle in Alyssa’s body was tensed up as she stared down Adrael. It hadn’t been long since she had last seen the Archangel. Two hours. Maybe three. Back in the field of ash, Alyssa hadn’t been concerned about her. Spectral Chains worked on angels and Adrael clearly had not been gearing up for a fight. The same was no longer true.

Adrael floated above the surface of the water, shield in hand. Her entire body looked almost as tense as Alyssa was. Although the ruby shield obscured her left arm, the muscles in her shoulder were clearly fighting against her skin. Which was odd to think about as Alyssa had seen Adrael without an arm. There hadn’t been any blood, muscle, or bone beneath. Just light. Regardless, her fist was much the same. Without a staff to hold, Adrael simply clenched her other hand as tightly as she could. With her wings spread wide, occupying most of the space inside the bathing chamber, Adrael made for a rather intimidating presence.

Adrael was all the more intimidating because of one simple fact.

Despite Iosefael showing up to ask for help, the stupid angel had put herself directly between Alyssa and her spell cards. Normally, it wouldn’t matter how intimidating Adrael looked. A Spectral Chains would have fixed that. To grab her spell cards now would require her to turn her back to Adrael. Or, at the very least, shimmy to the side, shove Iosefael out of the way, and still probably look away long enough to make sure that she was grabbing in the right spot.

“Step aside, mortal,” Adrael said. Alyssa had never seen the Archangel in good humor, but her tone now hit a new record for implacability.

But Alyssa couldn’t just stand aside. “I’ve seen Iosefael fight Tenebrael before. They destroyed a whole city block. If you think I’m going to let you two slug it out in here, you’re dead wrong.”

“You assume you have a choice in this—”

“Let me ask you,” Alyssa interrupted, trying to keep control of the conversation. “In how many encounters with me have you come out ahead?”

That seemed to pull Adrael up short. She snapped her jaw shut, pursing her lips together into a thin line.

“Every time I’ve seen you, you’ve lost something. Maybe your minions, your centuries of planning, your arm, or maybe just a little dignity. So I’ll tell you what you’re going to do. You’re going to calm down and stand over on that side of the room.”

“Thanks,” Iosefael whispered.

Alyssa just about elbowed her in the stomach. “And you? What do you think you’re doing here? You come to a mortal-populated bathhouse while being chased by an insane Archangel? You come to me for help? What happened to the Iosefael who got angry enough to fight Tenebrael? Take care of your own problems. Or I’ll take care of them for you and not in the way you hoped for.”

“Wha… What do you mean by that?”

“Give me Adrael’s staff.”

“What?”

Iosefael’s eyes widened as Alyssa stepped to the side. It wasn’t that graceful of a step given that she was waist-deep in water, but it was enough to get around Iosefael. With both angels focusing on the conversation, Alyssa was now just a little closer to grabbing her cards and chaining both of them up.

“You aren’t going to give it to her, are you?” Iosefael whispered, leaning conspiratorially. “She used that to harm a mortal. It should really be destroyed.”

“Then why haven’t you already?”

Iosefael shook her head, smug look appearing on her face as if she knew something that Alyssa didn’t. “You can’t just destroy a divine implement,” she said with a tone matching her face. Shrugging with her hands, she shook her head again. “They were forged by the higher Spheres and can only be destroyed by them.”

“In the fires of Mount Doom?”

“What?”

“Never mind,” Alyssa said, glaring at Iosefael. “Just hand it over.”

Iosefael’s smug look turned sour as she looked from Alyssa to Adrael. The Archangel had yet to say anything since Alyssa started demanding the staff. Whether that was because she thought it would be easier to take from Alyssa, because she would rather it be in Alyssa’s hands, or because she thought Alyssa would hand it over didn’t really matter. All that mattered was that she remained there as an observer.

“The staff. Iosefael.”

Although the Principality pouted, she held out her hand. Adrael notably perked up from where she still hovered over the water—she had not gone into the corner as Alyssa had directed, but neither had Iosefael. The two angels glared at each other as a pole-shaped light formed at the tips of Iosefael’s fingers. Slowly, slowly enough that it had to be deliberate, the golden rod formed.

Before the ruby cap even had time to form, Alyssa snatched it from Iosefael’s hands. Iosefael didn’t just let go, of course, but Alyssa had a plan for that as well. Using the staff as a distraction for the angels’ focus, She grabbed her deck of spell cards from behind Iosefael—having to shove through the angel’s golden-white wings in the process. Chains lashed out and wrapped around Iosefael. Another set of chains tried to pull Adrael down from her perch, but the Archangel was clearly ready for it. Using her shield before the chains could fully ensnare her, she shattered the would-be bindings.

Two more chains lashed out, one set aimed at her chest again, the other aimed for her wings.

Adrael smashed through the links aimed for her chest. Before she could swing her arm at the chains behind her, a tug threw her off balance.

That provided the perfect opportunity to chain her up fully.

Adrael crashed to the ground, bound. Because of her movements in dodging the chains, she didn’t land in the middle of the bath. Rather, she hit the ground between the door and the edge of the bath.

Strange, Alyssa thought, reflecting on the situation. She wasn’t dissatisfied with the outcome, but it was still strange. Earlier, Alyssa had kept Accelero active for at least part of the time that Adrael had spoken with her. During that time, Adrael had sped herself up in order to be understood. Given that the relative speed of everything else had been near zero, she had to have been moving and thinking at the speed of light. Maybe. Alyssa wasn’t a physicist.

But here and now, even though Adrael had managed to knock away a few of those chains, she still wound up caught. That shouldn’t ever happen if she could move and think at high speeds. At the very least, she should have been able to run away. Then again, thinking back to how slowly Adrael had appeared back in that dome, there might just be something strange with how angels functioned. They might be tied to the world speed a whole lot more than it seemed and accelerating to the point where she had been intelligible through the effects of Accelero had probably required a bit of effort.

The same was true for Iosefael. In her fight against Tenebrael during Alyssa’s first few days in Lyria, they both had been moving fast enough to have been little more than a blur of light against the night sky. If she could move that fast at all times, she should never have been caught as many times as Alyssa had managed.

The chains themselves might play a part too. Although angels disappeared and reappeared whenever they wanted, none had ever simply up and vanished while the chains were holding onto them.

Only Tenebrael had managed to escape from the Spectral Chains. Whether that was a testament to the power of a Dominion versus the power of a Principality or a Archangel, because of her consuming mortal souls and gaining a power boost from them, or some reason specific to her that no other angel, even a Seraphim, would be able to replicate remained a question in the back of Alyssa’s mind.

Not that Alyssa really wanted to test going up against a Seraphim. She had never seen one personally, but she had no doubt that a being wielding a fraction of the Throne’s power would utterly decimate anything it decided to destroy. Granted, angels claimed that they couldn’t lie, but that didn’t mean that they had to tell the whole truth. Still, those she had spoken to universally agreed that Seraphim were bad news.

“Both of you should leave,” Alyssa said, looking from Adrael to Iosefael. “I’m sure people have been or will be dying. There are souls to collect. As for you…” She turned back to Adrael, frowning, trying to come up with a good reason why an angry Adrael shouldn’t stick around and try to get her staff back, violently or otherwise. One idea popped into her head. “Tenebrael will be here soon. The last Archangel she got her hands on wound up trapped inside a prison so isolated, not even a glimmer of the Throne’s light can make it inside.”

Iosefael visibly shuddered at the mention of Tenebrael’s prison. Adrael just glared harder.

“You think you’re going to take my staff again?”

“Yeah. Pretty much. You shouldn’t have let it fall into mortal hands in the first place. Take some solace knowing that I am not planning on destroying it, unlike Iosefael.”

“I wasn’t going to destroy it. I just said that it should be destroyed.”

“Whatever the case, it is out of your hands now.” The chains disappeared from around Iosefael as Alyssa spoke. Despite her being the first angel to claim to want to kill Alyssa, Iosefael was least impressive angel among the bunch. Adrael was the only angel to have demonstrated the intent to harm mortals. Kenziel had been brazen enough to talk to Tenebrael, even if it hadn’t worked out for her in the end. Tenebrael was obviously Tenebrael; being the most active and most present meant that Alyssa had a much higher opinion of her almost by default. She was the one to have gotten Alyssa into this mess in the first place, but if not for her…

Alyssa would probably still be waking up at five in the morning, going to the same job for eight hours a day, spending an extra hour in traffic, and finally coming home at night thinking that there would be something better or just more interesting down the line of life.

In comparison, all Alyssa could think of when she considered Iosefael was how many times the angel had failed to send her back to Earth. Granted, she was probably going to drop Alyssa in the middle of the ocean a thousand miles away from any humans and leave her to drown or something, but she had failed at even that. And she had failed to keep Adrael busy at the outpost. She had failed in fighting Tenebrael, but that wasn’t unexpected in retrospect. She really just had too many failures to her name for Alyssa to be even mildly intimidated.

It helped that Alyssa had a few more Spectral Chains cards if necessary.

Iosefael looked down at herself. Stretching her wings out a bit, she took off enough to get her feet above the water level, after which she landed right on the edge of the bath, near where Alyssa’s pistol sat. Even though she had been waist deep in the water along with Alyssa, the angel’s skin and gold armor weren’t even glossy, let alone dripping.

Which was lucky for the angel. Since Iosefael had appeared, Alyssa had been standing. She was still wet, but a lot of the water above her waist had run off or evaporated, leaving behind an ashy film covering her. And a chill. It was not the most comfortable of feelings. She somehow managed to avoid shivering—maybe the ash helped give the tiniest bit of insulation against the cold air. Still, she had to ignore it. There would be time to properly wash off later.

“What about her?”

“Either Tenebrael will take care of her or she’ll leave. I don’t really care.”

“You don’t want help with her?”

Can you help with her?” Alyssa asked, not sure at all what kind of answer she expected.

“We’re both on Tene’s side,” Iosefael said with a slight pout.

“That doesn’t answer my question.”

“I can…” Iosefael trailed off, throwing a nervous glance from one side of the room to the other. She didn’t look at any of the myriad mortals standing about—all of whom looked ready to pounce despite the fact that they couldn’t see what they might pounce on—but just glanced from corner to corner. “When you and I had that chat… I might have figured out a way in and out of Tenebrael’s prisons. I wasn’t going to tell anyone just in case she ever tried to put me back, but… She won’t, right? We’re on the same side, right?”

“As far as I know,” Alyssa said with a noncommittal shrug. She wasn’t lying, at least not intentionally. But it wasn’t like Alyssa had a mental connection with Tenebrael to know what the angel was thinking. Even while connected with her, she hadn’t been able to discern such things.

It was entirely possible that, when Iosefael’s usefulness came to an end and Tenebrael got her world back in full, Iosefael would be sentenced to isolation just to keep her out of the way.

Alyssa actually felt a little bad for the angel, even if that scenario ended up being pure fiction. But Alyssa supposed she didn’t have to tell anyone. Angels were not omniscient. If Tenebrael didn’t learn that such a thing was possible, then maybe Iosefael could slip away.

Unless she slipped away to betray Tenebrael…

But that was something Alyssa could think about when she next saw Tenebrael. For the time being… “If you can open a portal there, go ahead and do it.”

“Okay. I can do it.”

“Then do it.”

Iosefael clenched her fists in front of her. Psyching herself up? Was it really that big of a deal? Or maybe she didn’t want to embarrass herself in front of Alyssa by failing to manifest a bunch of miracles again. “I can! I’ll have a piece of cake.”

“You’ll what?”

“That’s the idiom you use, right? When something is going to be easy?”

“Close enough.”

Iosefael, still with her fists clenched, flapped her wings and hovered over to where Adrael was chained up on the floor. Alyssa directed Izsha away a bit with a wave of her hand, not wanting any accidents to happen over in that corner of the room. There, next to Adrael, Iosefael held out a hand.

Mystic circles started forming in front of her arm. “Calculating pathway to the unknown,” she said, causing an explosion of light in the circle.

“What are you doing, Principality?”

“Pathway creation in progress… Complete.”

Alyssa watched with some amount of wonder as the mystic circle expanded out into a ring-shaped doorway. Iosefael’s spell, much like all those performed by angels, sounded technical in nature. They never went into any details, making her wonder just why they announced what they were doing. Some diagnostic feature of their programming? But even assuming that… their words were drastically different from those Alyssa had used while connected to Tenebrael. Had she been creating a portal, Alyssa would have said ‘Tenebrael, create for me a way to contain an errant angel, keeping myself, my friends, and your allies safe’ or something similar. It really made her wonder just how much of the actual miracle she had been offloading onto Tenebrael.

Probably a fairly large chunk of it.

If not all of it.

Unlike the square portals that the Astral Authority made, this one had a brilliant white light separating the boundaries of the two locations. Beyond was just a plain obsidian room. The food and other amenities that had been there the last time Alyssa visited were gone, cleared out to leave just the featureless space of the room.

Iosefael notable trembled as she lowered her arm. From the tips of her toes to the feathers of her wings, a shudder wracked her body. She slowly turned to Alyssa with a smile. “See? I did it!”

“Yes yes, very good, Iosefael,” Alyssa said, looking down to Adrael.

The Archangel was just staring at the portal. As far as Alyssa knew, she had never been to Tenebrael’s prison. Still, she must have been able to sense something. Or maybe a lack of something. The Throne supposedly had no access to the interior of that place.

“Sorry about this,” Alyssa said. “Apparently it is hell for angels back there. But you’re too dangerous to leave roaming around.”

“Dangerous? I just want what’s mine.”

“And that’s the problem. As far as I am concerned, you relinquished ownership of this the moment you left it inside my friends. I can’t have you attacking us for it. Especially because…” Alyssa threw a glance toward Irulon. “We might have found a use for it.”

It was a divine implement, an angelic weapon. If the sword of the Cardinal Virtue of Justice could shatter the mirrored dome to reveal the Endless Expanse, surely Adrael’s staff could do the same. Even if they didn’t use it for any of that, it still provided at least some defense against magical attacks. That alone made it worth the effort to keep it.

Letting it slip out of her grasp in the first place had been a mistake, but she had been too concerned with Izsha to care at the time.

Adrael looked furious with the prospect. She started struggling with tenfold the effort. But the chains held strong. For now. Alyssa had never actually tried to keep an angel chained up for too long at once. Although she had no reason to think that Spectral Chains might fail, there was no need to test their endurance.

“Drag her inside,” Alyssa said, looking to Iosefael.

“Me?” Iosefael said with a trepidations glance toward the shimmering hole in the world.

“I’m not going to go in there. If you trust your portal, you can do it yourself.” Besides that, Alyssa wouldn’t put it past either angel to leave her trapped inside. Without a connection to Tenebrael, she wouldn’t be able to escape on her own. Unless Tenebrael suddenly decided to answer her phone, it was conceivable that she would be trapped inside for an extended period of time. Without food…

Despite her momentary protest, Iosefael psyched herself up with a few fist pumps again. Reaching down, she grabbed the still struggling Adrael by her shoulders and started shimmying backwards into the portal. Iosefael dropped her down in the middle of the room, looked down with a sad expression on her face, and quickly marched right out of the black room.

A wave of her hand collapsed the portal, severing the Spectral Chains at the same time.

“If you figured out a way, how likely is it that Adrael will be able to escape?”

“It’s her first time? I don’t think she knew what to look for.”

“I’ll have to keep an eye out for her anyway,” Alyssa said, looking down at her spell cards. Having grabbed the deck with wet hands, at least a few of the cards wound up soggy. Especially the ones against her palm. She would have to go through them and make sure she had enough Spectral Chains. And a few more Accelero cards, if possible.

“You’re really keeping that?”

Alyssa narrowed her eyes. “You have a problem with me keeping it?”

“No! No… I just… should probably get back to collecting souls. You know, before you do anything to muck with them. That’s a phrase, right?” Iosefael didn’t give Alyssa a chance to answer. After wrapping her wings around herself, a flurry of golden-white feathers exploded outward, leaving nothing in her place.

Sighing, Alyssa turned, looking around to her silent companions. It was a good thing that they all knew what was going on. Had Catal and Lumen been around… even they kind of knew about the invisible angels. Anyone else and she would have looked completely insane.

“Well,” Alyssa said, smiling to Irulon as she hefted the staff up a bit, “we got this back.”

“Excellent. It should come in—”

The doors opened once again. Kasita walked inside next to Lisa, mid conversation.

“So then she started casting spells left and…” Trailing off, Kasita looked around the room. A pout slowly formed on her face. “Aww… Did I miss something?”


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037.009

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Lost Authority

Bathhouse


If there was a more blissful feeling than taking a long, hot bath after getting sweaty and dirty, Alyssa didn’t want to know what it was.

Everyone who had gone to the Justice was sitting in a deep pool of water within the Illuna guest house, just relaxing. Not even the slightly murky water ruined the experience. Using the not-quite-power washer spell, Alyssa and Irulon had mostly cleaned out the ash in their hair and from the draken and Fela. It wasn’t perfect, which was why they had all decided to take a bath, but the shower had gotten the vast majority of the ash off them. Their clothes were being handled by servants, with Brakkt watching to ensure that nothing happened to the dragon hide armor. The armor was just too valuable to be left in the hands of unknowns. It would be too easy for it to go missing.

There was one thing bringing everything down… well, two things. The first was the draken. Izsha and Musca took up a lot of space in the relatively small pool. It wasn’t a tiny space by any definition of the word. Not like a modern single-person Earth bath. It had clearly been modeled after the public bathing facilities in Lyria. A good ten people could have sat on the built-in seats along the edges without bumping elbows. But draken were just that big.

The other thing was the mood. No one talked much. Catal hadn’t said a word. He just stared. Alyssa wasn’t sure that he was even aware of being in a bath with a princess and a few monsters. He had followed them in an absentminded state and seemed to have not recovered his wits just yet. The Justice couldn’t have left him in that deep of a shellshock, could it have? It was true that Alyssa had been stunned for a few moments upon first seeing it, but she had gotten over the shock quickly enough to get moving.

Then again, she might have just gotten a little overly used to things like that. She hadn’t seen something as large as the Justice before, but she had heard about it from Iosefael which had softened the blow. Seeing angels, demons, and monsters on the regular, plus a whole new world in general, was a bit desensitizing as well.

As for the princess… Aside from suggesting the rest in the bath in the first place, she hadn’t said a word. At the moment, Alyssa wasn’t even sure that she was awake at all. Irulon sat in the rounded corner of the bath, resting her head in a small divot clearly designed specifically for that purpose while using Musca as a footrest. The way the divot was shaped, she was basically just a face poking out above the surface of the steaming water. With her eyes closed and her breathing slow, Alyssa could only hope that she wouldn’t have to be the one to wake her up.

But a bit of rest would probably do her good. So despite the prospect of having to wake her up eventually, Alyssa didn’t disturb her.

“Hey,” Fela said, splashing a bit in the water as she slid closer to Alyssa. She bumped her shoulder against Alyssa’s before poking one of her sharp claws into that same shoulder. She didn’t poke hard enough to hurt, but it still made Alyssa jump a bit. “Sorry. I just wanted to ask what these meant.”

“These?” Alyssa said, looking down to where Fela’s claw was still lightly pressed against her shoulder. “Oh.” Her tattoos. The large tribal pattern running from around her elbow up and over her shoulder. “It doesn’t really mean much of anything. Lots of people think you have to have some meaning behind your tattoos, but honestly? I just thought the design looked cool. I was going to get a similar piece done on my left side too, and maybe something on my back, but… Good tattoos are surprisingly expensive. And it takes quite a bit of research to figure out who to get to do the work. You don’t want to go get some garbage work done by the local corner tattoo shop only to hate either the design or the outcome. They’re fairly permanent, after all.”

“Uh huh…” Fela mumbled with a bit of uncertain disinterest in her tone. The hellhound wasn’t stupid or anything, but she had consistently shown a fairly distinct lack of interest in most of anything from Earth. Except for food. “So you’re saying that the tattoo is not why your spells are so strong?”

“I don’t… think so?” Alyssa had honestly never thought about it before. As she had found the design on the internet and had not modified it, it was highly likely that someone else out there had the same pattern. Perhaps they were out there, locked up in a sanatorium, called crazy for claiming to see angels… but probably not. It was just a tattoo. “Irulon has seen my tattoo before. If there was something magical about it, I’m sure she would have noticed by now.”

“Oh,” Fela said, large ears drooping slightly as the flames from her eyes diminished.

“Sorry.”

“I just thought that if I have to keep casting human magic all the time, I should cast the most powerful versions of the spells.”

“No,” Irulon said without raising her head or opening her eyes. “Alyssa’s source of power is not her tattoos. I tested it.”

“You tested it?” Alyssa said, flicking her eyes to the princess’ shoulders. Both were bare. Aside from Tenebrael’s tattoos on her face, Irulon didn’t have any tattoos. Which meant… “Tess?”

“Tess has far too many preexisting tattoos that would contaminate test results.”

“Then…”

“Don’t worry about it. It was a failure anyway.”

Not sure if she should worry or not despite Irulon’s assurance, Alyssa just nodded her head. “If you say so.”

“I do, and I also say—”

Whatever Irulon had on her mind got interrupted by the bathing chamber’s doors slamming against the walls.

Alyssa jumped at the noise, reaching for her weapons. Both her pistols and her deck of cards were on the floor just near where she had been resting her own head. Well within reach. Irulon’s tome was next to her bed, also within reach. Fela and the draken were weapons in their own right. Catal was the only one completely unarmed, having left his mace with the servants for cleaning.

But reaching for her weapons turned out to be wholly unnecessary.

Lumen marched in through the open door, glaring with her piercing eyes at everyone until she spotted Catal. For a moment, her angry expression softened. For a moment. Her fury doubled over as she marched right up to the edge of the stone basin. “What did you think you were doing? You fool. We were supposed to go together.”

For the first time since their planning session under the protective dome, Catal spoke. Kind of. He stopped before getting the first word out to clear his throat. After that, he actually spoke. “They were going to leave. There wasn’t time to wait for the rest of you to get ready.”

“So you went alone? Have you gone mad?”

“I wasn’t alone, Lumen.”

“These things don’t count,” she said, waving a hand around the room. It was hard to tell if it was intentional or not, but Lumen’s sweep of her hand stopped at Alyssa and Fela. Irulon, still with her eyes closed, was left out of the gesture. “They would leave you to die if it suited their needs.”

Alyssa narrowed her eyes at the accusation. Things had been hectic out there, it was true, but she never would have just up and abandoned someone.

“They wouldn’t and they didn’t,” Catal said before Alyssa could offer any scathing remarks. “I’m back in one piece, amazingly enough.” Taking in a deep breath, he looked up to Lumen. “If you’re here because the guild wants my report… tell them that it is in my opinion that this Astral Authority organization of monsters should never be antagonized or approached under any circumstances.”

That brought Lumen up short. She leaned back, taking a less aggressive stance toward Catal. “They were that bad?”

“You’ve only seen the little ones around the city. Even ignoring the claims that their numbers might well be limitless,” he said with a nod toward Alyssa, “their leader is truly the size of the palace, wielding a sword just as large as if it were a feather. A single swing of that sword would destroy the entirety of Lyria.”

Alyssa thought that was just the slightest bit of exaggeration, but not so much that she felt a need to interrupt. Irulon, if she was even listening, apparently felt the same for she didn’t speak up either.

“And that was only the one. Apparently they have four leaders?” he said, still looking toward Alyssa.

“Don’t know what they’re like. Hopefully we never have to find out. If everything goes well, we shouldn’t have to worry about them at all in the future.” Alyssa quickly glanced around the bathing chamber as she spoke, half expecting Tenebrael to pop up to confirm that she had indeed finished her actions against the Astral Authority.

But no feathers started to drift through the air.

All the Astral Authority had vanished after collapsing the sliver around the ash-filled crater. From there all the way back to Illuna, Alyssa hadn’t spotted even a single Kindness performing some observation on the area. They had vanished into portals, according to Brakkt and a few others who had been stationed around the wall, leaving behind the corpses of the infected as the only evidence that they had ever been there.

Without being able to close her eyes to see souls inside bodies, Alyssa had performed a quick check on one of the infected corpses. Even before being connected to Tenebrael, she had been able to see souls as long as they were separated from the body. So she had conjured up a scythe and dragged it through one of the bodies. There had been no resistance and no sign of any infected soul. Which she should have expected, given that there were a few pentagrams around the body, but she still felt as if she had to check.

Either the demon had survived or there were more true demons to take up her task of collecting the souls of fallen infected. Both could very well be true.

Alyssa glanced to the side, looking over Irulon as the princess rested in spite of all the shouting Lumen was doing. Despite her promise back in the field of ash, Alyssa had no idea how she was supposed to help Irulon on her own. With her vision, Irulon knew leagues more than Alyssa did about souls. All Alyssa could really do was some legwork. And without being connected to Tenebrael, doing even some manual labor was not much of an option as far as souls were concerned. Maybe she could use a scythe to rip the souls apart, but that really seemed like a poor idea even if there were no other option.

As Alyssa stared, Irulon opened her eyes. It was a slow opening. At first, she didn’t even move her head. Slowly, she sat up enough to look around the room. “Would you two mind taking this elsewhere? I cast a number high ranked spells and am feeling beyond drained. Your arguing is grating.”

Lumen snapped her head over, looking at Irulon. She opened her mouth, but seemed to hesitate upon noticing Irulon staring back for the first time since she entered the room. It was enough to make her take a step back, turning her mildly less aggressive stance into an almost submissive one.

Catal standing saved her from having to respond to the princess. “I would like to get some sleep, so leaving is fine with me. I’m sure the guild wants my report, but they’re going to have to wait until morning. If the Astral Authority truly will be gone soon, haste in delivering it won’t matter.” Looking to the rest of the people in the room, he nodded to each. “Princess. Alyssa… Monsters. If you need anything from me, you know where to find me.”

“Hm.”

With that, Catal headed out of the bathing chamber, followed closely by a scowling Lumen. They closed the doors behind them, leaving the rest to their supposedly relaxing bath. Alyssa half expected Irulon to lean back and close her eyes once again. While she did the former, her violet eyes remained open.

“I didn’t get much of a chance to look at it,” Irulon said slowly, shifting so that both her ears were just out of the water as she leaned back into the divot. “The Reality Sliver changed between when you and Kasita left and when I began the spell casting. After, the entire thing had a layer of ash obscuring everything. I thought to clean some of it off with wind or water, but after seeing you and speaking with you, I decided it would be best to simply leave. The Archangel’s presence contributed to that decision.”

“The demon got slammed into the dome, shattering the mirror. The parts nearest to her darkened,” Alyssa started, explaining the course of events. From the darkened panels to the Justice swinging its sword that shattered the entire dome at once, to what had likely been the Justice slamming into the outside of Alyssa’s smaller dome just before it regressed from reality.

Those had been Irulon’s words, but it was the same thing in the end.

The darkened panels had to reflect wherever the demon had come from. The same place the pit in Owlcroft had lead to, in all likelihood. The golden iridescent locales were obviously the Endless Expanse. That the remaining panels showed worlds beyond Nod and Earth seemed most of interest to Irulon at the end of Alyssa’s explanation.

“No mortal slammed into the reality sliver, shattering portions of it. Correct?”

“The dome had already been reflecting a mortal world. Would that not have been part of it?”

“Hm.”

“I don’t suppose you’re thinking of replicating what happened out there? I don’t exactly know what use it might be at the moment, but it could be extremely useful in the future.”

Not the least because it seemed to be a portal between worlds. Alyssa had been unable to put her hand through the panel, but both Kasita and the demon had been a whole lot more successful. Kasita had shoved an arm into the Endless Expanse and the demon had hopped from portal to portal instantly to launch successive flurries of attacks against the Justice. If one panel did end up showing the Earth and not some strange parallel universe version of it, it might just be the way home that Alyssa had been looking for. Assuming she could figure out a way to cross the boundary.

Angels might still try to kill her, but so long as she had a steady supply of spells… she could spend her entire life chaining them down until… she fell into one of their traps or died of more natural causes. Not the most ideal of situations.

“Doing so might be difficult,” Irulon said. “You recall the first time I used that spell in your presence?”

“While we were chasing after Oxart, right?”

“Do you remember what happened?”

“Um? Trapped a few of the Juno Federation?”

“A horse slammed into it at full speed, hard enough to break the horse’s neck. It didn’t even leave a scratch on the mirrored surface. I admit that I’ve never tried to break one intentionally, but other people have. For instance, we used the smaller version of the spell to seal off the basement of the church back in the Federation’s outpost. While I didn’t inspect it for damage before dismissing the spell, I doubt it shattered. If we have to break the mirror to reveal these other worlds, we might find ourselves in some amount of trouble.

“There is also the possibility that, no matter what we do, it won’t work. Thus far, demonic and divine elements are the only things we have observed damaging the spell in such a manner. We mere mortals may simply lack something required to do so. At least, we mortals might lack that,” Irulon said, piercing gaze turning toward Alyssa.

“You think I can break it?”

“It wouldn’t surprise me. But I also wouldn’t be surprised if you couldn’t. Despite your claims, you are not a mere mortal.”

Alyssa sighed out a stream of bubbles as she sank down into the bath.

“I know. You’re just a regular human who got caught up in strange things. But even if you are what you think you are, there are still some things about you that just don’t fit in the same category as the rest of us. And even if there isn’t an odd thing out… I can think of one thing that could help us out.”

“Oh? What would that—”

Alyssa didn’t get a chance to finish taking. She had to lift her hand in front of her face as a flurry of golden-white feathers slammed into her. The water splashed up, half drowning her as a pair of hands gripped her shoulders.

“What did you do, Alyssa meadows?”

Alyssa shoved the angel off her, coughing a little as she sucked in some fresh air. The water tasted of ash, a filmy slimy feeling. Realizing how it felt against the roof of her mouth just made her cough more. Irulon and Fela were out of the water and the draken were standing upright. But none of them could see the angel in front of Alyssa.

“Get off me you stupid—” Alyssa hacked out a cough again as she shoved Iosefael away. “I haven’t done anything this time.”

“That crazy Archangel just tried to take my head off!”

Alyssa blinked away some of the water, glad that even with as nasty as it felt in her mouth, it wasn’t stinging her eyes much. “Okay,” she said slowly. “I might have done something.”

With the water finally out of her eyes, Alyssa could see those cross-shaped pupils of Iosefael’s green eyes widen in surprise. With a quick gasp, Iosefael said, “She’s here!”

The angel picked Alyssa up and moved her just far enough away from the edge of the tub that Iosefael could slip behind her, cowering. Alyssa found herself face to face with a familiar red-eyed angel.

A particularly angry Archangel.

“Save me,” Iosefael whispered from behind Alyssa.


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