Corvayne was debating on if he should mend Bi-You to help her stay sane when the woman sprang to her feet.

"How did you know?!" She asked, having produced a shovel from her storage ring and brandished it as a spear. Well, her form was sloppy but Corvayne respected the grit.

"I told you. I literally have a power for finding things. A compass."

"Find her killer!" She shouted. Corvayne looked around slowly, one eye on her in case she took a swing. Besides her breathing, a distant owl, and a faint wind, it was quiet. No response to them making a ruckus in the woods.

He went ahead and applied his compass to looking for Knot-Loop-Lace's killer and found it was hazy sort of blur, a failure. "The level of the power I'm using doesn't cut it. That or there is no killer but one does not bury themselves in the woods."

"What subclass do you have that has such a useful class power? You haven't changed to a level 2 subjob since you arrived."

"It's not a class power.”

Bi-You looked confused, her red tear-streaked eyes blinking. "So it's a bloodline?"

"Don't think so." Corvayne started looking for a handkerchief to offer her, but given what was on the one he had in his back pocket, it was not fit for a lady at all, less one in mourning

"A secret artifact?" Little Spur asked.

"No, thought the pants are an artifact." Corvayne responded, looking for what was around the site they were at. Why did they pick this spot to leave him? Maybe because it was as close to the line of bars as one could go to make sure it was never found?

"Is that how you are not crippled by your gravity choker?"

"It works for me now." Corvayne obviously had been working around it, but he didn't want to let them know exactly what his plans for it were nor how little it really did after a few days of applying essence skills to it.

"Junior greets Senior cheater." The boy bowed and Corvayne waved him away. He suspected they were equals in some way he couldn't put his finger on.

Bi-You, meanwhile, felt like a turbulent cloud of rage and sorrow. Corvayne put a hand on her shoulder and pushed a few Mends through in a moment, somewhat smoothing her feelings out. She didn't know what the effect did, as she pushed his hand away.

"We need to kill Bombay. Now."

Corvayne looked at the body, and on a hunch did a compass check. He pulled a dirt covered and smashed jade tablet phone out of the boys pocket.

Little spur frowned. "Of course, a dead end."

Corvayne placed both his hands on the slip and called on Lythandies. With a single motion he smoothed out the cracked surface and felt the device come alive. She even charged the drained battery to full; that's a goddesses power for you!

He touched the stone screen, but ran into a problem. "Bi-You."

"It's Bayou, you are saying it wrong." Little Spur added, helpfully.

"Sorry. Bayou. His tablet had been smashed, and I fixed it.... however it's locked."

He handed it to the girl. "If we can unlock it, you can probably figure out who lured him out to his death, or at least buried him here if not killed him."

She had revealed the body's face, twisted into a silent scream, as well as that parts of the body were missing. Black veins growing out of a gaping hole suggested magic violence against his heart. Corvayne looked away to see Little Spur still trying to find Gylwin. Good luck. He started walking towards the boy to guide them away from Bayou, to give her some time to calm down or at least process her friends death... then he heard clicking, then a groan. "It locked me out for five minutes. I'll keep trying."

Corvayne nodded. It would act as an outlet for the frustration and might keep her from getting near Bombshell, who seemed to be connected to a bunch of sketchy events.

Little Wing was looking nervous. "We must get back to the bar then... I worry you will get into trouble!"

Corvayne smiled a little. "If I do, I do." He needed to get with Gylwin and actually have five minutes to catch up and see if they were any closer to figuring out how the sect knew to target Kirae.

Love this story? Find the genuine version on the author's preferred platform and support their work!

"Little Wing, can I trust you to keep her safe? I'll start making my way back to the bar."

He nodded. "I still have enough tricks in this broken body to handle mortals or beasts, but this is still safe ground."

Danger was the direction he was walking anyway, it seemed. Gylwin appeared to walk next to him after he was back out of the fence.

"Thou art... I mean you're a pain in the thorax to get alone."

Corvayne nodded. "We'll keep buttering up Big Red Bramble to try to keep it going, maybe make it easier." He suspected that whatever Bombay's game was, it would be harder to put a dent in the old stable master vs the new blood that had previously fallen victim to whatever was around her.

Gylwin looked back. "Not going to add the quiet widow to your stable?"

He shot her an annoyed look. "I have Bell and Spears. How are-"

She jerked her head under the bridge and Corvayne followed. The sound of a car rolling by slowly echoed.

"Spears is currently in a monster holding area. They seem to think she's a familiar and she's downplaying her intelligence. I'm sneaking her fruit to keep all the slime food they are feeding her from hurting her. So that's as close to 'saving' anyone I've needed to do."

Corvayne rubbed his chin. "We knew they are recruiting people they capture... which is why everything seems so scattershot I suppose.”

"Rio Blackfist, whom you got trounced by..." Gylwin's ears witched a little and her tiny extra spider eyes blinked, a sign she was laughing. Corvayne didn't bother correcting her that everyone lost that fight. "... probably kidnapped Kirae for that very same reason. We are still not 100 percent sure it's enemy action, the information they knew when they ambushed us might have been provided by Kirae."

"Did they mis-treat her?"

"I don't mean directly. They MIGHT have a mind gleaner. A low chance, it's hard to hide from me. But no, shes been stuck under one of the quartermasters as the Omega Resplendent Roadhouse."

"I'd say that's a stupid name but I am very aware of my own appellation."

"You mean Strawberry?"

Corvayne made a hurry up motion. It smelled like rotting plants and damp leaves under the bridge even with the cold.

“Fine. Kirae is counting turnips and they are occasionally having her buy supplies they use to produce the arcane hay they stuff into those monsters. With us captured, they've given her a looser leash but she's still doing drudge work.”

He hadn't thought to delve into the essence view of the mountains of crap he was shoveling, but given they were growing specific types of plants to make hay, perhaps it was some sort of mana refinement? It might be a secret he could unravel if he had more mobility.

“Mosh is working in the motor pool fixing the trucks. They know he's some kind of crafter so they are treating him well. Including keeping June nearby, but of our scattered friends I'm the most worried that his boss is going to do something shifty. She has a thing for him.”

What was a third woman at this point? …. hmm. Was Varia and Mosh a thing officially yet?

“Empress in waiting Bellithca Terushi is actually set as an outer sect disciple learning martial arts, riding swords, and gun slinging. Though...” Gylwin scratched her cheek. “I think she's going to drop out at some point.”

“She doesn't have aptitude for their training style.”

“I wouldn't say that. Honestly, it's more pearls before swine. It's something I'm not talking about, you need to go see her and maybe figure it out.”

“She's safe, right?”

“Very. I suspect acting Sect Leader Cumberlin will eventually step in and take her out of the tournament...”

“Some sort of once a year thing or less formal?”

“Big one. One thousand and twenty four participants after the preliminaries. All sorts of people coming to the sect with colorful backgrounds and fighting styles...” She waved a hand that was also a scythe-like claw at the same time dismissively.

Corvayne nodded. It was a lot of work and you had to basically show everyone under the sun all your best moves and you had people who didn't actually fight droning on about your moves, to say nothing of all sorts of intrigue that generally cropped up as you got closer to the finals. Not an ideal situation. That and in books those sort of things dragged on.

“Preshe is masquerading as a novice rune mage, not far from the truth, and thus they put her at the teen magic school.” Another wave of the claw dismissively.

“Never really got why everyone in the village wanted a magic school. Or to go to one?” Of them, Whispers-In-Darkness was the most ardent, calling himself the villages 'Defense against the dark arts' specialist. Up there with him was the Librarian. Keeper-of-Silence might have acted cool but Corvayne knew he liked the wizard school books and kept a few in a stack near his desk.

“Having seen, infiltrated, and founded more then a few scholomances... a lot of it is essentially wish fulfillment. You are better training under a well studied generalist for the first few years of magic instruction.”

“How cutthroat are we talking?”

“More Hogwarts then Sorcere, but not entirely.” Corvayne nodded. He was pretty sure that Preshe would be fine. Totally safe. At least until he thought about how many magical mishaps happened in every story with a wizard school, planting a scowl on his face. Probably fine. He frowned. Maybe okay. He felt a small growl. 'Totally' safe.

Gylwin cleared her throat. “Juggernaut is, as you might guess, stabled somewhere for angry beasts. He's acting less smart then he is and pretending to get 'broken in'. He might show up at the stables soon, but rumor has it Night Rider wants to try to make it into a proper dragon mount and de-truck it. It's not a dragon, it's a living ship.”

Corvayne was thinking it was a dragon, because it could grow wings, there were scales on it, and it could breath plasma. “Would you fight it standing on it's front leg?”

“Yes but that's not the point. Let's see... who else-”

“Lady Blood Claw.”

“You don't want to know about the painted animals?”

“I suspect they are hiding in paintings, which is what they do when they get startled.” The painted horse could also change size. He kind of wanted to feed it magic hay... she was distracting him.

“You know. She's being kept alive by the herbalist sub sect. They have been grafting healing herbs onto the plants growing out of her and keeping her asleep. If Rio ever needs a stick, all she would have to do is stop pumping healing into her.”

“Which would reveal [[Unity]] letting us pool resources to keep her alive.” He also didn't like her being forced to sleep and used as a botany experiment. He didn't think of LBC as a damsel in distress so to speak but part of him wanted to get geared up and get her out asap. “I wish we knew what we could do to break that curse.”

“Keep getting her levels until it's an inconvenience rather then a lethal crippling malady.”

They did share essence with all the synergies between Unity, Growth, and the Essence Pact itself.

“I think I've found people that can help cover me leaving my post. But also, I seem to have attracted bad luck.”

“Hmm. So you think the accidents are related but unrelated?”

“If you see Bombshell trying to get near one of our friends... near our family? Do what you can to redirect her.”

The woman shrugged. “Okay. Hurry back to the bar, your minder is going to sober up a little in a moment.”

He nodded but paused. “Gylwin, is there an address for Preshe?”

“They won't let you communicate until you scramble, I mean, delicately re-align their interests with [[Unity]].”

He wasn't thinking of himself, but instead Little Spur's shredded essence pathways. Something that could be fixed by the right sort of healer, a one of a kind opportunity. “No no. Fake allies will come in time. I want to make a few real ones.”