Chapter 623 - Bloodhound

Night held everyone’s captivated attention. His grisly display, along with the casual ease in which he’d managed to slip by everyone and kill so many powerful Classers without anyone noticing, then managing to set everything up, sent a powerful message. 

The way so many people flinched when they saw him was another message, namely one for the younger Immortals here. 

‘This man is powerful.’ ‘This vampire is dangerous.’

My lessons with Arachne were really paying off. Night held all of us captive with the display and force of personality, and nobody said a word during his speech. Not a whisper, not a murmur, heck, some people weren’t even breathing!

I knew I wasn’t the target of his presence, but even I was standing up straight, listening, and more than a little intimidated - and I knew he was on my side! Or, err… let’s be real, I was on his side. Arachne’s threads started to worm their way into the room, spreading out all over. I’d seen how she could fight at a distance. If anyone tried to move on Night, they’d be in for a nasty surprise.

Four of Night’s teammates peeled themselves away from the crowd, and stood next to him.

“Today, we have overthrown the New Remus Empire, those who would dominate the entire world. Elves who would claim dominion over each of us. I would like to say that tomorrow, we will make a better world, but I have not come here to lie to you all. Instead, I would like to invite you all to join me a year and a day from now in Ginza, to help forge a treaty to shape the new era.”

Halfway through Night’s speech, Arachne’s threads rearranged themselves next to me. For emphasis, she tapped me a few times on my toes. Which… fair enough, I had done my fair share of ignoring her messages earlier.

Dawn. The coalition is going to ask for your head on a pike, next to my dear husband’s handiwork. I’m going to try and spin a story about your [Loremaster] training coming into play to prevent a Guardian coming down on us all, but I doubt it’ll work. Casualty percentages are too low. We can’t properly protect you. There are too many of them, and not enough of us, and trying armed resistance will just end with all of us dead. Night can only stall them so much. I strongly recommend you quietly and brisky get out of there NOW. We will have a debrief later, if you’re willing and able to attend. It’d be fairly risky for you. I’ll let you decide if you want to come or not, we can do a private debrief later if you don’t want to.

I didn’t want to run away. I didn’t want to leave people’s fates to the sacking army. At the same time, Night’s speech was turning to the rules we’d agreed on, and making a strong case that it was time we all left the city. A good number of the people here seem inclined to follow his suggestion. A solid third of the elves wanted to step into the rulership vacuum that had recently emerged in Ithil and the rest of the Tympestshard Council. A number of Immortals were satisfied that the job was done, and they could go home and stop being bothered by the New Remus Empire. There was still a sizable fraction of people who probably wanted to continue sacking the city, but the elves who wanted to live in this place now would probably object, and the tides were shifting.

Mission over. I immediately shifted my healing to everyone, no longer excluding certain elves. I couldn’t see the impact immediately in the room I was in - I’d been healing elves I’d seen with injuries for as long as I’d been in Ithil. The impact would ripple through the city. From broken bones to slowly bleeding injuries, from blunt force trauma to sword slashes, from the smallest stubbed toe to elves breathing their last, everyone was instantly healed.

I also popped my [Greater Invisibility] rune and immediately chained several dozen [Teleports] together, most of them moving in random directions. There were enough powerful Classers here that I didn’t want to risk them being able to trace the ripples my teleportation left, or something like that. Classes and skills could start to get really funky at higher levels. It was far more likely that I’d be tracked or found via some esoteric method I’d never heard of or could imagine. Like, I’d been offered a diagnostic spell that involved reading the stars. It could be anything!

It would be easy to just leave. I didn’t.

I found a semi-abandoned building, [Teleported] into a dark closet, then threw up a few privacy spells from my spellbook. I then opened [Portcullis], and stepped into my [Manor].

I loved being a Spatial mage. The skills were life changing.

I didn’t immediately pop up in front of Sara. The poor girl was having a difficult enough day as is, she didn’t need jumpscares to get added in. I [Teleported] right outside her door, knocked, and waited an eternity for an answer. I could see her inside, a little scared, startled, and terribly uncertain.

“Hi Sara, it’s me, Elaine.” I said, wanting to facepalm. I was mildly amused how my name meant ‘healer’, but right now, I did NOT need the confusion. “Can I come in?”

“...yes.” Sara answered meekly. I opened the door and slowly, even by System-locked child metrics, walked over to her and knelt down next to her.

“I’m going to go look for your parents now, alright? Can I get a bit of your hair to help me find them?”

My stomach clenched as I noticed the utter lack of tears in her eyes. On one hand, it was good, on the other… she had no idea what was going on. Her life was probably ruined beyond repair.

She hesitated, running a nervous finger along her brown strands. Her horns had barely started to come in. 

“I just need a little snip. Think of it like a trim at the hairdresser!” I said, taking a blind guess why she was hesitating. It was possibly really dumb, but I wasn’t going to credit small children in a crisis with many critical thinking skills. Most adults lacked critical thinking skills in bad situations, unless they’d been specifically trained otherwise. 

“Oh! Then yes!” She said. 

A quick flicker of a knife into my hands, a quick sweep, and I had a small amount of her hair, and more importantly, her scent.

“I’ll be as quick as I can!” I promised the girl, then sped back out of [Portcullis].

I was sticking to my promise, and pushing myself to my limits. I was flying as fast as I could, moving as quickly as I could push myself, using every sense and every thought process I had available. Ithil was one of the old elven cities, predating the Immortal War, and its unique enchantments had let it skip through the entire war unmolested. A part of me ached that it had returned to reality too early, caught up in the last little ripple of the great war. I disregarded that part of me for now - the important thing was I knew how to read the layout of the city and the street signs - planted trees, marking the roads.

Children lived in the central, heavily-protected district, which made my starting search area tiny. The wards had been thoroughly breached in the city’s invasion. I zipped through Ithil, finding willow trees easily enough. A quick check later, and I found Sara’s apartment. I sniffed her hair and sniffed the apartment, managing to pick apart all the various scents. Four very strong scents, and dozens of weaker ones. The usual members of the household, and guests. They’d been fairly social. Three women, one man. One was Sara, one was probably her mother, and the last one was probably related. They smelled vaguely of pine sap, fresh dandelions, and the first snowfall of winter. Hard to describe, and they all had slightly different ratios. Sara’s mom liked to use a perfume that smelled like honey and vanilla… and I could tell that Sara had tried it at one point, using way too much. A trail went from her room to the kitchen, then straight to the bathroom. It still lingered, to the point I thought even normal noses could tell. It had happened… roughly last week.

I felt like an intruder. The apartment hadn’t been touched, and the apartment was a perfect snapshot of their life. A few toys on the floor, a shelf of children’s books. Bread was proofing for baking later, and the laundry basket was half full. 

I’d apologize if I was wrong and put things back, but I had a bad feeling about it all. I grabbed all of Sara’s things, and placed them into her room in [Manor]. I felt terrible grabbing most of the family heirlooms and putting them in my treasure room… but I had a steadily growing sense that none of the original owners were coming back. 

I followed the scent trail down the stairs and out the door, then flew up and started to sniff around, trying to ignore how many fearful voices I was hearing, how many terrified children were being soothed by helpless parents. Mostly in - people running back to shelter at home. I spent a full three minutes there teasing through the various smells. Hundreds of people went through the door every day, their scents overlapping each other. Then skills were fading them out, and the harsh coppery scent of blood, gore, released bowels, and a million other brutal smells of a city being sacked were overwhelming. I could pick up Sara and her parent’s scents, but there were dozens of them, a new trail every time they walked out of the apartment complex. Finding THE freshest one was tricky, but I was able to find the strongest mix of pine, dandelions, and snow, and started to follow the trail.

It took me about a second from picking up the scent to finding the bodies. Part of me had idly started to wonder how I’d do a funeral. Could I store the bodies somewhere in [Manor] before burying them? Would it give Sara any sort of closure to see them and say goodbye? How ghoulish would it be to store the bodies in the same place as their kid?

Unfortunately, the state I found them in rendered nearly all of the questions moot. 

I went back to the entrance of the apartment building, and teased through the hundreds of scents again, finding the possible-aunt’s smell and following it. 

Fuck. 

It was time for the worst conversation of my life.

I flew up to one of the remaining standing buildings, and cracked open [Portcullis]. When it was open only a hair, I [Teleported] in before slamming it shut. New idea of mine - no need to completely expose the entrance. I’d trade the idea for Sara’s parents in a heartbeat.

I didn’t flash right over to her room. I wandered over to where I’d stored her toys, grabbed a well-loved stuffed dinosaur before heading off to Sara’s room. I knocked on the door.

“Sara, can I come in?” I asked, giving the illusion of privacy. 

“Yes.” Sara’s voice was small and scared. I came in with the stuffed dinosaur.

“Toothy!” She shouted, emotionally whiplashing from frightened to gleeful in the way only a kid can manage. The elf jumped down off the chair and ran across the room, hugging Toothy so tightly I was afraid his head was going to pop right off.

“Did you find my home? Did you find mom? Can we go there now?” Sara rambled off a dozen questions before pausing, her eyes widening comically. “Oh! Where are my manners?” Her cadence was clearly copied off her mother, or someone else close. “Thank you very much for helping me.” Sara did an awkward half-bow. 

Oh fuck. Oh fuck oh fuck OH FUCK. A thousand and twenty four wishes flitted through my mind, before I steeled myself and took a deep breath. I wasn’t going to be a coward, I wasn’t going to run away from the task, no matter how unpleasant.

Where to start, where to start… did she even know what death was? There was no reason to explain it to kids too early, and I hadn’t detected any traces of pets. Which didn’t say tons. But it wasn’t like an elderly relative would’ve passed, immortality was nice like that. She was after the war… but Ithil had been safe from it. The low number of people who’d been in the apartment was concerning… maybe they usually went to visit relatives?

Oh gods and goddesses, I hoped she had relatives somewhere.

Fine. Death. I could do this. It was only the conversation that was going to define Sara’s entire existence. I was going to make it gentle and pleasant. Fuck spying, Arachne’s training was equally good for this sort of thing.

I squatted down next to Sara, and looked her in the eyes. I took a ragged breath, and started.

“Sara, I’m sorry.”

==============

It was beyond the ability of even the gods above for the conversation to go well. The best I could say was it didn’t go terribly.

Unfortunately, Sara didn’t have any other relatives here. The Urwa-style name should’ve given me a hint, but I hadn’t quite put it all together until I talked with her.

“Do you have any other family, friends?” I asked her. There was no light in Sara’s eyes to twinkle, no excitement possible with the news I’d told.

“Aunt… aunty Jasmine.” Sara tearfully said. “But you said she’s also dead.”

“Any other relatives anywhere? Maybe another city?”

Sara shook her head.

“We came from Ur-wa. It was just… just us.”

She looked up at me with huge, tear-filled eyes, and asked the question that broke my heart.

“Can I stay with you? Please?”

I sped my mind all the way up, a thousand thoughts flashing through dozens of parallel minds as I weighed the various pros and cons, my ability to look after a kid, what Iona would say. How important it was to give an answer with no visible hesitation to Sara. How she’d latched onto me, no matter how brief our time together, and what a blow it would be to get torn away again, after I’d so carefully handled things. How Ithil was about to have a gigantic, unnaturally large influx of orphans. I was responsible, in a way. They were alive.

I couldn’t save every starfish, but I could save this one.

“Okay.”