Michellin

Wanderers

Myka tucked her hair behind her brow that had begun to stick to her temple from sweat. Sid looked like she was managing better in the heat here than she was. “Yeah. Unfortunately,” she said, when Sid asked if she meant something else other than the injuries and trances. A healer went to her and she spoke to him in Taakalon for a few moments before returning her attention to Sid. “I’ll let you finish up, step outside afterward.” From the impression she had gotten of Sid, Myka figured it would be easier for her to deal with bad news when there was work to be done first. The fact that Sid didn’t ask any other question besides what she was supposed to do the moment she appeared told Myka as much.

Not long later, Myka looked towards Sid as she came out of the tent. “Okay. So.” Myka wiped her brow again, then pointed in the direction of the forest. “You see the line of trees over there? Yeah. There wasn’t a forest there a few days ago. It looks like a goddess from your world had shown up here, causing all sorts of magical aberrations. It gave these Amrians the power to wield fire, though they don’t know shit about how, or why. But that wasn’t all She did.” Myka frowned. “Ruli’s there right now, trying to get Envy back. Kire and Gavin are trying to find a way to get answers, too. We don’t know how it happened, but it looks like that entity spirited Envy away. Now, I don’t know what Ysaryn’s trying to do, or why she didn’t tell you, but I’ll assume you being here will help us in some way.”
The pirate captain let out a deep sigh. “Fuck, it’s a mess.” She gave Sid a wry smile. “I thought waging a war against mages with our own sorcerers and seeing Kire with her Paladin magic would be the extent of the magical shit I’d find myself involved with. I’m a mercenary, a pirate, a commander. But this sure makes me feel tiny.” She chuckled, though there was worry in her eyes as she fell silent, letting the information sink in for Sid.

--

Kire didn’t look Risa’s way when she left to fetch them tea, though the corner of her mouth did twitch, almost smiling. Though when Zeltzin started talking about Solaralai, she tried not to frown. “I….see.” It was an understatement, certainly. It was one thing to step from darkness to light, and quite another to suddenly wake up on fire and strange dreams. At the mention of tithes, though, she raised a brow. Her gaze flickered to the statuette before looking back at the priestess. “Yes. I retrieved this from Ziad. Along with other items. What kind of tithes would be considered ‘correct’?” Kire asked, ignoring the food. “And does the Goddess—punish nonbelievers? You can probably imagine, my people have their own gods and spirits they’ve worshipped. Will this Goddess bring her wrath upon them because of this? Or if harm came to the temple, things of that sort.”

Wanderers

Myka rolled her eyes when Sid started imitating Zeke. “Men,” she said, shaking her head. “Though I have to admit, I’ve met Zeke, plus I’ve heard a bit about him from the others. Can’t quite imagine him and that person you just described being the same fellow.” She nodded along when Sid explained how healers’ minds worked. “Sort of like being around warriors and fighters. You see how their minds work, calculating their odds. Even during peacetime it never stops.” She grinned. “But at least healers do a whole lot of good. I’m a fighter, myself, but hats off to healers, I say.”

She liked this woman. Sid had that no-nonsense air about her, but she wasn’t completely humorless. A trait often found among the crew of the Wench, but also what had drawn her to Kire. Myka observed her politely, hands behind her back as the healer busied herself. “Ehm,” Myka cleared her throat. “After you’re done with the immediate tasks, you’ll probably need to be told what’s going on here. Properly, I mean.” She could almost here Narda chastising her to behave.

--

Kire ignored Risa’s tone, waiting for her to introduce the priestess. When the woman finally came out, she was both what Kire had expected, and not at the same time. Priestess Zeltzin looked so ordinary, besides the slight strangeness of her priest’s garb. And given what Kire had been told by Sireen about worshipping Solaralai, the easy, warm smile that creased the priestess’s face was also unusual to her. Kire bowed her head slightly in greeting, though she didn’t feel like smiling back.

“Thank you for seeing me, Priestess Zeltzin.” The way the woman asked Kire her question gave her a chill. Like they were all just puppets for this goddess to use. But then again, all priests talked this way. “I want to know why she is—gracing my world with her warmth,” Kire said, biting back her frustration. “My people have been getting visions. Riddles. None of us understand fully what the Goddess wants. I just don’t want my people to get hurt.” She debated on telling her about what happened to Envy, but she didn’t want to bring that up in front of Risa. Especially not in front of Risa.

Wanderers

“Ahhh.” Myka nodded when Sid explained her experience with magical burns, as well as her subsequent comment about keeping the exchange between the two of them until Ruli brings it up himself. “I’ve had the, ah, pleasure of trying to interrogate him. From that first meeting, and all our other conversations, he does give the impression of being a secretive person. Not that I can blame him of course.” She shrugged, before introducing Sid to the rest of the other healers in the tent. A less temperamental version of Elva, then, the pirate captain thought, watching Sid get right to work. Or, Elva when she was younger. Myka had been around Wyverns long enough to have seen them change with age—as well as see what Time hadn’t been able to touch. Mostly the Wyvern temper.

“Y’know, healers both fascinate and scare me,” she remarked at some point, grinning at Sid. “You’ve got a lot of incredible knowledge stored up in your heads that’ll help people—but that also means you know a lot about the human body to do some serious damage if you needed to. Not that I’m saying you’d ever do that, “ she added quickly, a sheepish grin on her face.

--

Kire huffed, impatient, when Ysaryn spoke to her in Elvish to tell her what to do with Ruli, but she barely had time to voice her objections when Ysaryn already pounded the door to Risa’s room. Frowning, she turned her attention to the flustered princess, only glancing back at the elf in response to her parting words. She looked back at Risa, then at the statuette she held. She needed answers, and unless she found an enemy she could run through with her sword, Kire had to hold her temper back. There was enough tension in Uvano; anymore and the place would implode. This wasn’t the time for that.

Reverently, she placed the statuette on the ground before Risa, stepping back. “Ziad,” she replied, pausing for a moment to let the fact sink in. “Gavin and I brought back more: a few more statues, some damaged sacred texts or prayer books—not sure what they are. But I’m sure your priestesses will find much of great value.” Her eyes looked into Risa’s, serious and steady. “There are more left behind, as you can imagine. I am willing to bring back as much as possible—though you also know that the Kartaians know Ziad’s location. I have to be careful, and if things get too risky I will stop.” Risa didn’t need to know anything about the wards, nor about Gavin breaking them and, hopefully, greatly reducing the risks Kire was now playing up. “I hope this, and my promise, is enough to be…worthy of a conversation with the Goddess’s followers here.”

Wanderers

The two Amrians glanced at each other again. Why didn’t Ysaryn explain?
Myka raised her brows. “She reminds me a lot of Elva,” she said to Narda in Taakalon with a grin “Though with just the right amount of bossy.”. Narda raised a brow at her. “Behave.” Then, to Sid, “Yes, there are healers already here, but with the new and unprecedented developments earlier today, well, you can imagine more hands are welcome. You’ll find most of what you need in the adjacent tent, and what’s not there can be supplied for you. Aloe...hmm, yes, I do believe there’s some here, but we might need more.” Narda rubbed her chin. “The healers are, understandably, rather wary of their new patients. Magic, especially magic that suddenly manifests like this, understandably unsettles people.” She paused. “Were you aware that Envy, Ruli, and Gavin crossed over with Ysaryn? And—”
“—and Ruli’s somewhere helping investigate all this weirdness,” Myka butted in, making the giantess frown. “Don’t wanna distract you with all that other magic talk, I know I’m confused. We’ll fill you in about the rest later, hopefully after either Kire or Ysaryn returns. Nard, weren’t you supposed to meet with the leaders of these two towns to talk about the situation? I think they’re tired of dealing with ole me, and without Kire, you’re the next most intimidating face around here.”
Narda looked down at her friend, not liking the secrecy, but not wanting to break it either until Ysaryn came back to explain herself. “Alright. I’ll leave you here for a bit then.”

Myka turned and beamed at Sid. “Okay, follow me to the other tent. I’ll introduce you to the other healers and the attendants you can consult for your resources. We’re honestly just as confused as you are about what’s going on here, but right now we’re focusing on looking after these people.”
--

Kire pursed her lips as Ysaryn explained the restriction she had put in place, while Gavin frowned. He looked like he wanted to say more, but instead nodded with a huff. “I’m comin’ back with you to help Ruli later. I’ll wait here till we cross back over. But if you want to keep our trip to Ziad from Ruli, we can’t go looking like we crawled through the dirt and ruin,” he pointed out.
The Paladin paused, looking down at herself then nodded. “We’ll clean up at the inn. Though, with the way we left him, I’ve a feeling me might not even notice.” She looked at Ysaryn. “Alright, let’s go to Risa.” She picked up one of the items they brought with them, a statuette similar to the one they had found in Amria, though this exhibited signs of other damage besides the wear and tear of time.

Wanderers

Narda and Myka had been talking with Daryll about what had just transpired in the Holly and Lyta’s village as well as Kire’s orders for Daryll to investigate it when Ysaryn appeared momentarily, accompanied by a woman Narda recognized. From the look on her face, she seemed just as surprised to be there as they were to find her here. But the woman only took a few moments to get her bearings and she was already ready to work.
Myka cleared her throat. “Introductions first, yes?”
After Narda stepped forward to do so, the giantess turned to Sid. “I don’t know how much you’ve been told, but for now…” She pointed to a newly set up tent, where the villagers who had ‘attacked’ Kire in the forest were now being held. “Those people seem to have just come out of a trance that had lasted for—well, we’re not really too sure, but let’s say a couple of days. They’re still dazed, and their skin seems a little scalded from, well, suddenly bursting into flame. Long story,” Narda added quickly.
“Short version,” Myka put in, “some magical—entity, thing, I dunno, kinda took them over and their bodies are adjusting to whatever the seven hells had been taking over their bodies these past two or so days.”

The two Amrians glanced at each other. Should they tell her about Envy? Or what Ruli was doing now? “Where’s Ysaryn?” Narda asked.
--

Gavin stopped, blinking in surprise when Ysaryn barred his way. Kire frowned, looking the elf over, noticing how she looked ready to jump into battle. As she spoke, Gavin, too, stepped back to watch her.

“Danger? Are you talking about a coup?” Kire asked, crossing her arms. She moves fast. “Without both Envy and Ruli, who else is tied to the wards that sense magic-users? If stealth is what you need, we can skip the gate. I can portal us without setting foot in there.”
Gavin was quiet for a few moments, looking at Ysaryn, then down at the weapons she carried. Part of him looked distressed; though he did raise that same concern himself earlier that day, that Envy’s disappearance would upset whatever order they had established in this shared city, it disturbed him to see how fast things progressed. He had seen takeovers before, as Itallo’s unwilling right-hand man. People jockeying for power, leveraging their advantages and their opponents’ weaknesses. The familiarity struck him, especially after he’d had to be back at Ziad and reminded of that period in his life.
“A Chieftess must act quickly and decisively,” Kire said, nodding to Ysaryn after glancing at Gavin. “Alright. I trust you’ll know how to handle things.” She looked down at the items they had dug out of the rubble of the temple. “When can we see her?”
“And what about Zeke?” Gavin said, his eyes shifting, as if afraid there were ears everywhere.

Wanderers

Kire pouted when Ysaryn laughed at her comment about destroying part of the temple. “Hey, that was the day I met Ruli, and he was being a real piece of shit that time.” she muttered. “Besides, my first impression of Ziad, seems like the gods hadn’t really returned the favor.”
“We should tell Ruli we’re going, though, right?” Gavin asked.
Kire shook her head. “He’s devoting all his will to Envy at the moment. Divide and conquer. And besides, he doesn’t really want to go back there. Understandably.” She sighed, running a hand through her hair. “Risa is expecting a visit from me any day now, anyway.” She gave Ysaryn a small smile. “I know you don’t really back down from challenges, but thank you all the same. We look like we’re going to have a lot on our hands. I just hope we find Envy,” she murmured, looking in Ruli’s direction. She turned to Gavin. “What do you need to break the wards?”
“If we swing by Envy’s chamber, I can get everything we need,” he said, determination replacing the worry and despair that had threatened to take him over earlier. “What I can’t find there, I know how to get.”

After Kire told Narda, Daryll, and Myka where she and Gavin were heading, Gavin asked her to Portal them into Envy’s alchemy chamber, where he quickly went through the supplies, muttering under his breath, only pausing now and then to think over the next item in his mental list. Once he had everything, he asked Kire to Portal them a certain distance from the Ziad ruins. The Paladin squinted up at the burned and crumbling walls. “Forgot how hot it was here,” Kire said, her eyes looking over the ruins, though she knew very well it wasn’t the heat that she wished to forget. She looked at Gavin, who was staring ahead, a grim expression on his face. He swallowed thickly after a few moments of silence, shutting his eyes and waving his head as if to ward off some waking nightmare. The last time he was here, he had still been in Ikegai’s thrall. It was here that he had found Kire’s hunting knife. It was before the gates where he had been taken and enslaved by the blood mage.
“We don’t have to now,” Kire said, a hand on his shoulder. “We can go back, or I can just go in during the day—”
“We’re doing this,” Gavin said, glaring at the walls as his hands fumbled with the satchel of supplies he had brought with him. “I’m fine,” he insisted when Kire stared, about to ask again.

With Kire’s help, Gavin walked the perimeter of the city, trying to ignore the heat as he familiarized himself with the wards again. They circled the whole city, with Kire portal-jumping them both forward now and then to shorten the time. At certain places he etched a rune into a pebble he had brought with him. Finally, when they had finished circling Ziad, they returned to the spot where they had emerged. Gavin murmured under his breath, drawing the knife he used to etch the runes, then slashed through the imaginary circle they had drawn around the perimeter with the pebbles.

Kire looked up, feeling the sensation of the wards breaking and the signatures tied to it dissipating at the same time. “We’re going straight to the temple, right?” Gavin asked quietly. Kire nodded. Besides wanting to spend as little time and leaving as little a trace of their presence as possible, both of them didn’t want to be around the corpse of the city, seeing what had become of the remnants of carnage there.

What was left of the temple was in an abysmal state. “So you really punched a hole through it, huh,” Gavin remarked.
“And made it cave in on this side, yeah,” she replied. “Be on alert. We have the sun on our side, but it pays to be paranoid.”
“Can you sense the Kartaians? That thing you do with your nose and magic signatures?”
“Yeah. And a bloodlusty Kartaian’s signature is rather hard to forget.”

It was a long afternoon’s toil, sifting through the ruins. Kire had insisted on doing the bulk of it, wanting to spare the lad any more painful recollections, but Gavin’s pain, it seemed, paled in comparison to the need to get closer to finding Envy. They worked mostly in silence, and the few times they spoke to each other were in hushed whispers. Kire wasn’t sure why; perhaps it was a combination of not wanting to disturb what remained of the temple, wanting to make themselves scarce in case there was an unwelcome ear listening for intruders, or just some irrational compulsion not to let the goddess know they were rooting around in here.

When they returned to Úvano late afternoon, Kire and Gavin carried with them a badly-damaged tome, parts of a statue and candles. Kire remembered Sireen mentioning the catacombs, and she knew a longer search would yield more results. But for now, perhaps these would be enough to make Risa or Solaralai’s other worshippers more pliable. “You did good back there,” she said to Gavin as they set down their burdens. “That must have been hard, going back.”
“Y-yeah,” Gavin said, swallowing again. “I’m gonna go wash this off me, drink some water.”

Wanderers

Narda shook her head. “We have to bring these two,” she muttered in reply to the elf. “Don’t want the villagers to tear them to shreds when they realize what’s been happening, or if the messengers catch wise and take them. Something else is going on around here and I don’t like it one bit.”
The husband and wife just shifted their gazes nervously between the giant Countess, the otherworldly warrior-woman with the strange accent, and the Wyvern cousin looking intently at them. Though as frightening as this turn of events were for them, they were even more unprepared for Shadow-Walking. All Narda had given them was a curt explanation in Taakalon of what to expect, but even then, the sudden plunge into absolute darkness, and the cold shock that came with it, overwhelmed them so much that Holly emerged looking pale as a sheet in fright. Narda was about to warn her not to send everyone to sleep when she saw the woman faint in the mayor’s arms.

While Ruli was drawing runes, Kire and Gavin had returned to the edge of the forest after their conversation with Myka at camp. Sensing Ysaryn’s arrival, she nudged Gavin to walk with her to meet them and saw the three, along with a portly man carrying a sleeping woman in his arms. Kire raised a brow. “I take it the lethargy wasn’t coming from Lyta, then?” she asked after Ysaryn left to talk to Ruli.
Daryll nodded. “Seems like this woman—Holly’s her name—has at least some control over it, but still needs guidance. They’d caused quite a mess back at their town.”
Narda snorted at that, before recounting what they had learned, and what had happened while they came to fetch the woman. “They don’t know anything about a goddess, or visions. Looks to me like magic is seeping into Amria whether this Solaralai wills it or not,” she said, crossing her arms. The mayor looked like his tongue had been glued permanently to the roof of his mouth, realizing who the blonde with the scarred face was.
Kire looked at him, her expression stern, though not too angry. “Daryll,” she said at length, her gaze already weary. “Work with Narda. Find out if there’s any sort of significance as to why two people from the same place had acquired magical abilities. If it’s their blood, or the place, or both, or something else. If there’s a way to anticipate the appearance of others like them, I want to know. The Lyta lead was slim, but we got more than we had anticipated.” Both Narda and Daryll nodded. They could see the weight of all this uncertainty in her eyes. They felt it too, but both knew that the burden would be hardest on the Empress. “But first, see to it that these two have accommodations. The inn would suit them for now, till we figure out where the best place is for them.”
The giantess looked at the forest behind Kire. “Any leads?” she asked, even though they hadn’t been away for too long and the answer was a likely ‘no’. Kire didn’t respond, thinking something else over. “Could you take care of these two?” she asked Nard, gesturing to the mayor and Holly. Narda nodded, then practically hoisted the unconscious woman up, muttering to the mayor in Taakalon as they walked off.

Kire turned to the young mage beside her, not speaking just yet, still pondering on the question she was about to ask. “Gavin,” Kire she said at length, softly. “How were the Kartaians able to track me down at Ziad?”
Gavin, who had been glancing at the forest now and then, thinking about how best to try and track Envy down, looked sharply up at her, eyes wide. “Wards.”
“Can you break them? How long will it take you?”
Gavin thought it over. “Yeah, I probably can. As for how long, with help, maybe two hours, a little longer than that by myself, but I still have a vague memory of their placements. But why?”
Kire saw Ysaryn approaching them and waited till the elf had rejoined them. “I need to go back to Ziad. I’m going to look for something in the catacombs under the temple. All I need is for the Kartaians to not know I’m sniffing around, and in any case, I will only be searching under daylight. I’d probably still need to speak to Risa first, though, along with the goddess’s worshippers she says she’s been meeting with, if only to ask where their sacred texts might be buried, if they don’t already have some hidden with them when they fled Ziad. If they don’t have them, at the very least, maybe bringing back something from the temple would appease Solaralai enough that she’d, I don’t know, grant a favor. I have not worshipped at a temple since I was a little girl,” she added, frowning. “But I do know that as much. Gods love their offerings.” She smirked, though only briefly. "Maybe she's fucking with me because I punched a hole through the temple during my last visit.
Gavin glanced at Ysaryn, uneasy. “Did you talk to Ruli? What’s he doing?” he asked. When Ysaryn gave her answer, he nodded, eyes downcast. “What are we gonna do, though, if we don’t find Envy soon?” he asked in a quiet voice. “The people back home—humans, elves—they might start asking questions.”

Wanderers

The woman shook her head and trembled before this strange woman sent by the Crown. Was she some sort of demon? Somehow, she couldn’t quite picture the Empress as merciful. “She had a whole village slaughtered, and that was when she was a young girl,” she said, her eyes flitting from Ysaryn’s burning glare to the frightening blades she wielded, as if expecting any minute to be decapitated. “H-how could you blame me for being afraid of her?” Whatever defiance she displayed in making these remarks left, however, when the pink-haired warrior told her to lift the sleep from the village and confess to the giant Countess.

“If I wake them up, everybody wakes up,” she said. “Even the messengers the lords had sent. We had heard about these men. The village will pay for ou—for m-my mistakes. And the villagers will make my husband pay. Will she—will the Empress make sure nothing bad happens?” But another look at Ysaryn and the woman knew she was out of options either way. Swallowing, she nodded, and meekly walked back with her to where the other two had fallen asleep.

Once she was standing in front of them, she took a deep breath, closed her eyes, and pressed her hands to her chest. Nothing happened for several minutes, but after a while, both Narda and Daryll began to stir.
“Ugh,” Narda grunted, pushing herself up from the ground. “Feels like that time we stole barrels of wine from smugglers.”
Daryll cursed in Taakalon as he rubbed his face, then looked up to see Ysaryn and the mayor’s wife. “Ah.”
“Back to your house,” Narda said. “Tell me everything from the start. The truth,” she said, looking pointedly at the woman, who nodded fervently. Around them, the town, too, began waking up, accompanied by noises of confusion and distress. “I want to know everything before we take you anywhere else.” None of them had reacted to the four of them, but Narda knew even before the woman could divulge her fears about how they would behave that they would be demanding answers and reparations for this. “Oy, Daryll, shake it off,” she grunted, shaking the scholar by the shoulder.
“I’m up, I’m up,” he insisted, straightening up on shaky legs.

Back at her home, the mayor seemed to have also just come to. “Holly? What’s happ—oh!” His face went beet-red at the sight of all three of the strangers back in his home. Holly started sobbing.
“They know. It’s over.”
“Again, from the beginning, or I will throw your husband outside for your fellow villagers to deal with,” Narda growled, still irritated from having succumbed to the spell and from wanting to get back to Kire with the information.
“More importantly, we want to know if anything else had happened alongside the emergence of your magic,” Daryll put in. “Voices, visions, strange sensations, unexplainable impulses, that sort of thing.”
“Voices?” Holly sniffled. “N-no. No voices.” She shook her head, then turned to her husband. “Did I?”
“No, milord,” the mayor put in. “Just that, I was the first to feel it. And then eventually more and more people succumbed to the sleepiness. Holly wouldn’t hurt anyone on purpose, she’s a good woman, but the lords’ thugs—er, sorry, messengers, they frightened us.”

“The more I fretted, the more it happens. It’s—will I really get help?” Holly asked. “Or will I turn out like that Lyta girl?”
Daryll frowned at that question. “’Turned out like that Lyta girl’? Right now, you’re on the same boat,” he began. “Except you had backed yourselves into a corner, and you let everyone put the blame on that poor girl. Didn’t you?”
“I will deal with the ‘thugs’ you mentioned,” Narda said, eyes narrowed at the husband and wife. “You leave my lord father to me. As for the other lord, I assume you meant our neighboring province’s liege. Fret not, goodwife, the Crown isn’t singling you out for persecution. Her Majesty has other pressing problems, you know, and if there will be others like you, you will be of great assistance.”

Holly merely nodded her head meekly, tongue-tied. At her husband’s prompting, she retold what she had said to Ysaryn. Narda was quiet for a few moments after that. This village was lucky, in a way, that it was so far from the center of the Wild Meadows and the next territory, and that it was so small compared to other towns. Else, the disappearances of these messengers would have caused a bigger stir. Still, this is odd. There should be other reports about this town reaching us by now. Why haven’t the neighboring noble families taken bigger action, or at least given us word?
“Nard,” Daryll said, tapping her arm to call her attention. “Time to go back to Kire.”

Wanderers

Ruli had nothing.
Kire frowned, seeing the helplessness creep into Ruli after he reacted to what she had seen in the forest. Ysaryn looked the way she felt at the moment. How could Ruli just give up on Envy now? And yet, Kire remembered how she had first met him, the self-imposed, guilt-ridden exile, closing himself off for the ‘sin’ he had committed of letting Akuma in. A shadow of a man. Gods, she did want to snap at someone, something—but not yet. Not now. Gavin, too, seemed like he was about to be lost, himself, seeing how one of his mentors had disappeared, and the other wasn’t putting his foot forward to get on top of the situation. But from the look in the lad’s eyes, he at least wasn’t as ready to stop thinking of solutions.
“I’ll hunt down something. His hair, maybe his pipe, something. I’ll comb his room if I have to,” the young Gemini said.

Kire nodded. “Look, she may be a goddess, but for now she seems most powerful within the confines of the forest. A god with limitations is an enemy with weaknesses. We’ll find it.” She looked at Narda, who had been gazing at the forest, uncertain. “We’ll find it,” she said again, more firmly, both to convince her friend, and, in part, to convince herself. She frowned again as Ysaryn berated Ruli’s lack of initiative. “We need everyone to put their heads together here,” she said to him. “Alright? We’ll figure something out. Narda, Daryll, you two go on back to the town. I have something to take care of here.”

The town was still wrapped in a haze of sleep. Narda and Daryll felt it immediately. “Then it’s not Lyta,” Daryll said.
“The next question then: is it the goddess?” Narda grunted, narrowing her eyes as she did her best to focus through the fog. “I have a feeling the mayor knows more than he lets on.”
“And I don’t think the goddess has anything to do with this town,” Daryll said, similarly frowning as he looked around. “We haven’t had a single vision since getting here.
The sleepiness looked worse this time, too. None of the guards accosted them, and anyone who looked their way had glazed eyes, as if already half-dreaming and assuming they, too, were part of it.

Narda heard a cry. Turning, she just saw a familiar plump figure run away, and immediately afterward the people nearest to where she had been standing slumped over, a few of them even snoring as they sank down onto the ground. “Isn’t that the mayor’s…” Daryll began, before a big yawn interrupted his statement. “The mayor’s…” With each attempt to finish the sentence, Daryll slowed down, until finally he, too, had succumbed to sleep.
The giantess would have helped him up and shaken him awake, but she, too, blinked slowly at the spot the woman had left behind. “Y-you go on ahead, Ysaryn,” she grunted, the words slurred as if drunk. “Bring her…bring her here…”

The mayor’s wife didn’t go far, torn between the fear of being caught and the fear of a harsher penalty. She knew she couldn’t very well go back to her house, knowing that the strangers had just been there. After they had left to fetch the Lyta girl, she had grown so nervous that, upon her husband’s frantic return from the Glenn house, she had put even him to sleep. The effects would normally fade after a while, but she had to keep it up. There was no way she could run from the Crown. And the peculiar woman with the unearthly features that the giantess and Wyvern had brought with them didn’t even succumb to the sleep at all. It was only a matter of time.

Realizing this, the woman stopped running and turned. “Please—don’t be angry at us,” she pleaded, kneeling. “My husband and I—we didn’t know what to do when the—when this thing started happening to me,” she said, sobbing. “It had started happening about a month ago. Not long after Her Majesty got her throne back. My husband, he said I would be taken away. We know what the Crown does to people like the Gemini, t-to people with uncontrollable magic.” She sniffled, and pointed to the direction of her house. “The lords of these realm, even the lady Countess’s own father, they had sent vassals, messengers here. First time it happened, I had put them to sleep by accident. The next ones, w-we, I-I mean.” She sobbed again. “It just got worse from there. We were afraid the next ones that would come would punish us a-and all we could think to do was keep them here.”
--
Heeding Ysaryn’s advice not to go back to Uvano just yet, Kire took Gavin to Narda’s and asked where Envy had stayed the night. The servants had yet to clean and replace the bedding, so Gavin scoured the room for any traces his mentor had left behind. “I almost wish he and Narda really did sleep together, there’d be, er, more to get out of it,” the lad said with a nervous chuckle. Kire didn’t chastise the crass remark, seeing the concentration on Gavin’s face, knowing he was trying to sort through his own desperate thoughts. He found a few hairs, though he paused and wondered if he should just bring the pillowcases and sheets with him anyway.
“Would getting Kartaian blood work at all?” Kire wondered aloud. “Any Kartaian blood? Since I doubt there would be any other Kartaians this side of the gate.”
Gavin’s face crumpled. As Ikegai’s unwilling servant, he’d had more than his fair share of dealing with Kartaian bodies and using their blood to turn them into dolls. “I—it could. But you can’t exactly find that lying around here—or on our side. And it works better if you’re blood-relation. But again—you know.”
“I know.” Kire grunted. “It was just a thought.”

Gavin looked at the anger and frustration in Kire’s eyes and shuddered; it almost reminded him of another pair of eyes that had murder in them, red irises like embers, on an eerily perfect face. Kire was, after all, the type of person to hunt down her quarry across two worlds, slaughter her way through an army of dolls, and killed her enemy at the expense of her own life. Even if Kire wasn’t Akuma, Akuma’s own cold hatred had its origins somewhere, a twisted version of something that nevertheless had real roots. “I’m scared, Kire.” He admitted. “Envy’s gone and—did you see the look on Ruli’s face? It’s like he’s just—he’s here but he’s not. And he’s usually the biggest smartass with all the answers.”
Kire sighed, and the knife-sharp anger Gavin saw in her eyes dissolved into something softer. More tired, more worried. “I know. I saw.” She stepped closer to him and lay a gentle hand on his shoulder. “You’ll have to prepare yourself. I know you looked to both of them for guidance, but you might have to take on more of a burden now, yourself. At least on your side of the gate. But you are a capable young man, and a capable mage.”
Gavin nodded, though he didn’t look convinced. “What’s our next move?”
“We wait for Ysaryn to come back with the others, and then we’ll see about trying to get Ruli’s head back into the game for this. I need to talk to Risa and the goddess’s worshippers on your side, and the priests Ysaryn mentioned. And maybe go back to see the Raielwen again.”

They returned to camp, where Myka reported that, oddly enough, there wasn’t much trouble stirring among the townsfolk confined within. The ones they had taken from the forest look more clear-eyed than they had been earlier, and none of them had set anything aflame just yet. “I don’t know Kire. It feels—weird. Eerie,” the Wench captain said. “Like they’re waiting quietly for something.”
“We’ll just have to take advantage of their compliance for now,” Kire said, rubbing her nape. “They’re at least making good on their promise to wait for me to make a decision. In the meantime, perhaps a makeshift temple. Not to her, but to the patron deities of this province. If they pray to them either way, that might be enough of a compromise.”

Wanderers

“I’m not going back until we know for sure what happened to Envy, or until we bring him back,” Gavin said, his voice more resolute now. Kire nodded. “We might need blood magic,” he muttered, thinking aloud to himself. “Could you take me to where Ruli is now?”
Kire nodded. “Ruli’s…not really thinking about solutions at the moment. Not yet, anyway. He’s still in shock. Understandably. I’m not conceding, either.”

“Is there anything I can do? That we can do?” Narda asked. Kire could see the giantess was disturbed, not just because this was Envy they were talking about, but because this was a crisis that needed more than a warrior’s skill to face. Her friend’s question gave Kire pause. She looked over her shoulder at the direction of the forest. She needed to search that whole forest. For Envy, or for any sign of him, or for any clue as to why the Goddess chose this place, out of all the places in this world or the other, to have her newfound worshippers build their temple. For that, she needed more people. But unlike Ikegai and Akuma, she wasn’t just tracking one powerful mortal, and unlike the retaking of the Capital, despite the magic element the blood mages brought, war was still familiar. She couldn’t very well just send the next few people into the forest to search, then lose them too. How do you stop a god?

“The town. Where you found Lyta. I want to know what happened to it. If finding more people with magic is something I need to be concerned about in the coming days, I need to know now. Especially if it has links to Solaralai. And later, I want to talk to this Lyta.”
“She is a very nervous girl,” Narda warned. “Her power is volatile, tied to her emotional state. Ysaryn here seems to be the one that gives her the most comfort.”
“I’ll take nerves over a deity any day.” Kire looked to Ysaryn. “I want to know anything that has to do with gods. Solaralai, the moon god, any god. On this side and on the other side,” she added, looking to Daryll. Then, to Gavin. “Envy was talking about you and Ruli wearing charms to block out the visions. I know Ruli refused it, and I don’t know how he’ll feel about that now more than ever, but I want to see the limitations of this god’s power. I know that sounds like a contradiction, but just humor me.”

Gavin nodded. “Okay. A way to track Envy, and a way to keep her visions out.”
“It’s not just for the visions. You know how you and Ruli kept us invisible during the siege? I want to know if Solaralai can’t see us while we’re in there, or while we’re in close proximity, until we take the charms off.”
Gavin rubbed his nape. “Against a god? I—we’ll try.”
“But first we have to get Ruli to help.” Kire frowned, her mind on the way he looked, rooted to the spot where she had left him. “Something tells me it’ll be difficult to make him move.”