Chapter 8 - Reckoning; Justice

May had never been blasted before.

Nor was she ever hit by a small missile in the shape of a rat.

The second one hurt more than the first, which was a fact that she would find humorous if not for the awful condition her body laid in, sprawled against one of the walls inside the house they had been tended to. Hitting her back caused May to involuntarily gasp as the air forcefully left her lungs. An awful mistake in the design of humanoids.

If she were in her original body she would only crack a little, not become a blabbering mass of flailing arms trying to desperately suck air in.

Through ringing ears and unshed tears that blurred her vision 一 another annoying programmed response of the body and its sensible organs 一 May could vaguely see a large shape frantically shaking her body. Apparently, Cathy was brave enough to check on her after the impact, taking the dizzy Kreacher from where it hit her stomach and using her hands to fan May.

“I’m fine.” She finally said with a voice raspier than usual. Her breaths still came somewhat wheezed, but there was no pain in her chest beyond what she would expect from hitting a wall with such violence.

May silently hoped her lungs were indeed safe and she wasn’t slowly drowning in her own blood. That would be a grisly way to go.

“Wha 一 what was that?” Miranda mumbled from where she hid behind one of the tables. The young woman’s arms shook like a leaf as she tried hard to hold onto one of the table’s legs, her knuckles white with the strength of her grip.

“The manor…” May croaked, coughing a little. She spat on the floor and checked for blood, finding none.

Cathy just gawked at the young girl spitting like a ruffian; to make it so loud required a skill she did not expect from a girl younger than fifteen. It kind of reminded her of her dad if she was being honest.

“Something blew the manor up.” The girl finally said, pointing to the open door. Kreacher was still beside her.

“Gods!” Cathy said when she got up and put her head outside, quickly seeing the destruction. “The entire left wing… It’s just 一 gone.”

“Don’t joke about it, Cathy!” Miranda panicked from her hidden place.

“I’m not kidding, Miranda! Check for yourself then.”

May let the women ramble in front of her, arguing fruitlessly as if they could change what had happened. Instead, she poked the rat beside her, who gave no response. The small blue bow tie was crooked around their neck.

“Hey, get up.” She called, but the animal just breathed without a response.

“Kreacher, you bastard! This is not the time to faint.” May slapped the animal 一 patience exhausted as the voices of the attendants grated on her ears. Kreacher slowly blinked back to the land of the living, loudly squeaking when they felt May flicking their snout. “Get up!”

“You two, enough arguing!” May barked towards the two woman who immediately looked at her with wide eyes, only now noticing how badly Cathy was shaking as well. She needed to give them something to focus on. “Cathy, did you see anything else?”

“N-no.” The woman mumbled, curling inwards as the adrenaline began to left her body.

“All right then.” Her mind boiled with thoughts on what to do, but nothing came up at the prompt. So she turned to the other person she could 一 reluctantly 一 trust right now.

“Kreacher, I need you to scout the manor. Can you do it?”

“…Alis.” The rat muttered, voice confused as if they were talking on their sleep.”

“What?” May asked, a little peeved by the lack of response.

“…Bel-Alis. She 一 She was…”

Shit. May had completely forgotten about the Priestess, who was inside the blown-up building.

Tsk. No. Empathy. The whispers kept making the sound of clicking tongues on her head, which only aggravated more of her temper. She didn’t even question how they were making the sound.

“Not helping, guys!” May warned them, shoving their complaints deep into her mind. They would still be there if she needed to ask something.

For now, May bit her lips in an attempt to focus her mind, and she reached a conclusion: sending Kreacher to scout ahead and alone would have been a bad idea. With their other body destroyed, she would lose whatever power the Wood-Rank could bring to the table if they were killed again, as May didn’t know what was going on around them.

No, she needed to be smart right now. Like Hector. May had to engage, investigate and approach all of what was happening outside while maintaining her scarce resources.

And her assets were… indeed precarious. Two women untrained and unsuited for combat, a room filled with bathing products, an impertinent fungi-dominated rat that was currently too worried about someone else to behave like usual, and a body able to transform that 一 May checked the connection again 一 was still on the other side of the Plaza.

May wished she had the gall to say all of that was enough to face the unknown, but… she was a doll of facts. And they told her she would need to lean a lot more on her Truth and Gift to get anything done.

It was a good thing then that with every moment she spent thinking and planning, Control seemed to pulse inside her chest like a drum, getting ready for its eventual use.

Turning to look at the door, May decided information was the most present need right now. They needed to know what was happening and where the others were.

Kreacher was the solution then. But she also couldn’t lose them…

May had a sudden idea.

“Kreacher, could you inhabit a body larger than a rat?” She asked, hoping that they would say yes. That way, she could maybe share the body with Kreacher for a while. Although… giving a part of what was hers made her deeply uncomfortable.

“N-Not really.” They said, beady eyes still a little unfocused. May was seriously considering slapping them again. “I could go for a body a little bigger, maybe a rabbit or something. But not larger than that.”

Grimacing, May kept on thinking. She felt that something Kreacher said could be useful, she just couldn’t tell what…

Garden. Animals. The voices whispered, guiding her thoughts and causing a large smile to spread on her face. That was one way down.

"What about the girls?" May stared at Cathy and Miranda, now crying. This might be worse than she had thought. Still, there was something they could do.

“Miranda and Cathy, you guys are in bandage duty.” She said, giving them an easy and sensible task for them to focus on. Pointing at the towels, she continued. “Use the towels to make them. If the damage is as large as we expect, there will be wounded. Use the tub to heat some of the water and clean them, all right?”

The women nodded softly, snot covering their faces. Were it not for the look in Cathy’s eyes sharpening, May might have ordered them more sternly, but the attendant seemed to have a larger control of her emotions than expected.

“All right. Kreacher, with me. We are going to get you some bodies.”

And try to discover what in the Hells was happening. But that, May left unsaid.

***

Bel-Alis's figure reformed from a cloud of mist, the spell Madam Leticia shouted at them being quick enough to take their bodies out of the explosion radius. [Misty Step] was a spell she didn’t expect coming from the old masseur, but considering she was both Gifted and a former servant to a noble household, the knowledge of such magic wasn’t necessarily impossible.

“What was that?” The Priestess asked after using her cane to stay standing. Her foot was still covered in that clay mixture, making it even harder than usual to use.

“Something just attacked the Plaza,” Leticia said, biting her lips. There was a faint sheen of sweat on her brow due to the exertion. “We need to get the others to safety.”

The woman began hurriedly walking back to the manor, and Bel-Alis noticed where they were: in the open garden at the back of the building, standing among the flowers and surrounded by the looming trees that granted privacy to the place.

Bel-Alis’s eyeless sockets darted around, but stopped when she felt a surge of wind coming from her side, a figure flew from the canopy of trees 一 so fast the Priestess only saw a blur appearing in front of her before they continued on their path. Beyond her. Beyond Leticia, who had yet to reach the glass double door that connected the garden to the main foyer of the manor.

By the time the figure stopped right in front of the manager of The Brimming Plaza, a couple of scared faces looking at the garden from the inside of the building could be seen. Wide-eyed workers whose hopes were squashed by not only someone barring the path of their boss but by seeing the old lady being punched three meters back by a fist they didn’t see moving.

Leticia landed among the flowers close to Bel-Alis, spittle dripping from her open mouth as she gasped for breath. The indention on her chest, right along her sternum, made Alis’s hearts skip a beat.

The Priestess of History held her cane like a club, positioning it in front of her as her legs flexed and spread in a battle stance for long unused. Bel-Alis's focus zeroed on the figure in front of them 一 a female human wearing the combination of leather and metal armor she had often seen in the mobility-based adventurers. Her eyes were a deep gray, like a storm cloud, and her skin of a paleness rarely seen in Asden where the sun was a scorching constant all year long.

From the corner of her vision, Bel-Alis saw Leticia shove her fingers into her chest, popping the sunken sternum back into place while mumbling Abilities under her breath. The elder breathed with difficulty, but her domain over healing magic and Abilities gave her more endurance than the ordinary Gifted would expect.

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“Well, well, well.” The woman smiled under the gray cloth hiding her lower face, a bandit headdress Alis would expect from a gang on the roads outside of Crystalia. Her wrapped fingers moved constantly as if fiddling with an unseen knife at the highest of speeds. “I didn’t expect one from the Unseen Eye here. Fortune truly smiles upon the hard-working.”

“The Unseen Eye…” Alis thought for a moment, the unfamiliar name bringing memories of the basic lessons she had years ago about her patron, along with the accent full of vibration the woman had. “You’re from Freiniard?”

The woman nodded more times than necessary, head bobbing up and down in what the Priestess would call childish behavior were it not for the glint in her eyes. “That’s where I was born, yes.”

Bel-Alis squinted at the woman. “And what is it you think you’re doing?”

“This?” She pointed her thumb over her shoulder, not even turning back. Her head tilted left, then right. “This is a reckoning, of course!”

“And for what?” Bel-Alis engaged, keeping the conversation. Leticia sweated under the expenditure of mana, slowly rising from among the squashed flowers.

The foreign human squinted at the Priestess, noticing the old siren getting up. “Tsk, tsk, tsk. You really can’t trust the Faithful.”

She raised her guard and gave two small jumps, fists high. Her body went completely still. “But that’s expected. Come, blight, I’ll harvest you as well!”

Bel-Alis didn’t even have time to get confused by the odd curse before the woman flew forward, fist moving to meet her face.

Using all of the agility granted by her [Constitution of the Deep], the Priestess managed to step sideways, using the limp she had to lean her body more than the brawler could expect. The woman twisted and rose her leg in response, connecting a kick with Bel-Alis’s side. Not, however, before the Priestess managed to raise her cane and hit her chin.

The woman’s head turned upwards by the impact, a minor blow filled with stunning energy. One of Bel-Alis’s few combat Abilities.

The Priestess of History, however, took the kick with far less grace 一 the force behind the blow making her roll on the floor a few meters away, creating a trench among the flowers. Her ribs ached with the impact, and her arm dangled uselessly for a moment before Alis pushed through the pain.

Her Ability made her sturdier, stronger, tougher, but she feared it wouldn’t be enough if she received another blow like this. No matter how much mana-enhanced your bones are, they can still break.

Still, the blow did teach her something. She would not win through strength, so Bel-Alis had to use finesse.

And there was nothing more panache than magic.

“[Earth Spear]” The Priestess whispered, casting a basic shaping spell from the ground. The lance of packed dirt rose in a flash, making the woman take a step back to avoid it. The textbook spell would be almost harmless to a mana cultivator like her, but her [Geomancer’s Affinity] helped pack a punch.

A pity then that Bel-Alis was not, in fact, a geomancer. But a beginner enchanter with an edgy obsession for divination as her second school of magic.

Both of them contained spells that either could not be used for combat or that required more time to prepare than the Priestess had at hand.

Silently regretting her lack of offensive magic and the unsuited Ability she got on the new Step, Bel-Alis kept on casting the simple spell to keep the woman away, praying that what the woman had among her Abilities wouldn’t be enough to harm her from a distance.

Between spells, Alis covertly called for [Knowledge is Never Alone], hoping against hope that she would be fast enough to summon one of the magical inks and papers for some quick enchantment. A simple repel rune could very well save her life right now.

Unfortunately, her plans were foiled when she noticed her mana stop being able to affect the garden’s soil after a few more backward dodges by the fighter, who grinned behind her mask when she noticed the Priestess’s limits.

One of her arms aligned with her hip, pulled back, the fighter took a deep breath and concentrated. Bel-Alis could feel the mana being sucked from the air by the woman’s lungs, turning the wind into something more, something hers.

By the time she exhaled, Bel-Alis had already bunked under a hastily built wall of dirt; another simple manipulation spell. With a speed born of desperation, the Priestess dipped a finger into one of the inkwells she managed to produce and shoved a finger into it, forgoing the papers.

With broad strokes and a lack of finesse that would make her professors faint, Bel-Alis drew the simplest of defensive runes on the wall itself; the exertion of brute-forced mana needed to make the dirt smooth enough for the ink to adhere left her winded, but it was enough. In the time it took for the foreigner to complete the channeling 一 the seconds needed for a single breath 一 the inscription was already complete.

A semi-circle cut equally by three vertical lines.

Shoving as much mana as she could, Bel-Alis saw the ink glow and prayed.

What the Priestess didn’t see, however, was the way the overcharged air left the fighter's lungs, a blueish cloud that surrounded her positioned fist like a snake coiling around its prey.

“[Wind Punch]!” The woman extended her fist with a snap of air, propelled by a gale that was not there before. The air she shot forward grew in momentum as it converted more of the atmosphere around with its mana, subjugating the wind to impact the wall of earth like a siege weapon.

The rune held for just a moment; ink evaporating as the mana consumed it in return. By the time the wall crumbled, all that could be heard was Bel-Alis’s scream as the force of the wind sent her flying to one of the trees at the edge of the garden, hitting it with enough force that a stray branch pierced her back like a dagger.

The Priestess felt her [Constitution of the Deep] trying to hold her body together, but the force was too much for an Ability that wasn’t a true defensive one, leading her ribs to break like twigs and one of her arms 一 the previously injured one 一 to break a little above the elbow.

Looking down from the haziness and pain, Bel-Alis noticed the bone peeking from where it had ripped muscle and skin. The nausea the sight caused almost made her puke, were it not for the blood already coating her internals.

The fighter grinned harder at the sight of the broken Priestess, giddy with the idea of harvesting another scourge upon their world. It was truly a blessing that the variable the Faithful represented wasn’t enough to harm their plans but instead served as an unexpected profit.

So excited was the fighter that she didn’t sense the older siren using [Misty Step] to close their distance until it was too late.

“[Shape Muscle]!” Leticia said when her body reappeared behind the foreign woman, two hands extended like blades as they pierced the woman’s flesh with no issue. One of her hands entered the skin of her right shoulder, while the other was aimed low, diving into the muscles of the fighter’s left leg.

When inside, Leticia used her mana in ways that went against her Truth. She could feel the Relinquishment happening 一 the pain building with every rapid movement of her fingers 一 as her hands scrambled the fibers under the woman’s skin, setting fire to her nerves and forgoing all Care.

So intense was the agony felt by the fighter she screamed at the feeling of her muscles being ripped and scrambled; the backhanded slap she gave Leticia, as she turned around with her left arm extended against the new enemy, being enough for the elder to lose her concentration. The wet sound of her fingers leaving the fighter’s skin was all that was heard around the garden after the resounding blow.

That and the sound of something being dragged away.

The young warrior limped with a grimace on her face, snarling towards the elder woman 一 who was writhing in pain as Leticia’s Truth tried to flee her body 一 as she approached.

Using her left hand to take the elder by the throat felt awkward for a moment, but her grip was strong enough to suspend the woman.

Leticia noticed the woman’s eyes were a gorgeous, stormy gray 一 now tinted with the lightning born of rage.

“You have fallen, elder.” The fighter said, rolling the consonants on her tongue as she squeezed the siren’s throat.

“[Take Your Breath Away]” She whispered close to Leticia’s mouth and inhaled the very air in the siren’s lungs, not letting the woman breathe under the grip and Ability. It took less than a moment for Leticia to feel lightheaded, her lungs squeezing on her chest as they desperately emptied themselves.

Just before her consciousness left her to the breathless darkness, Leticia saw a small shape fleeing the garden; a rabbit being dragged away by unseen threads, pulled by a familiar girl with sunflowers on her sleeves.

The expression she made before her vision turned dark was resigned; sympathetic to the burden and suffering of the young.

Still, Leticia went unconscious knowing the old adage remained true in the end: the Gift keeps on giving.

***

May and Kreacher left the house with cautious steps and met a scene that wouldn’t look too displaced on a battlefield. The once pristine area around the lake, surrounded by gravel paths and perfectly manicured bushes now was a sight infested by smoking debris and holes of different sizes.

The explosion sent enough stone and glass to impact the entire area around the left side of the manor, even reaching the place they were previously bunkered down 一 the third most distant house on the left. Beyond the cracked glass of the windows unable to support the force of the explosion, the walls and ceiling were affected by the flying roof tiles and rocks with the intensity of small meteorites.

The more they stood there on the porch, silently staring at the destroyed paths and uprooted plants, the larger their understanding of what happened was. This wasn’t a simple attack, but unrestricted destruction.

What May couldn’t tell was if there was a target or if they were all equal victims of the explosion.

Taking a deep breath, May 一 along with Kreacher riding the top of her head, nestling among the half-done pinned-up curls 一 went around the house they were in, forgoing the idea of striding through the open central area for the more stealthy approach of the woods around.

Leaving the grounds around the house they were in was easy; the distance between the line of trees and the veranda on the back was irrelevant enough that the duo had no difficulty walking among the trunks of various sizes and green, yellow and purple leaves. May knew the name of the colored trees from memories of people praising their appearance during spring.

Ipês. One of Asden’s most adored national symbols.

The closer to the back garden the duo got, the more abundant other types of trees became, ranging from a red bark to a blueish one. The moment they went past the first house on the left 一 now the closest they’ve been to the smoking remains of the manor 一 Kreacher squeaked a warning at something above them.

A consequence of the explosion May hadn’t thought about before.

Above them, hanging from the branches like the most cursed of festival decorations, was what remained of the ones inside the left wing of the mansion at the time of the explosion. Scorched and still bleeding, the limbs and guts covered the flowers and leaves, painting the soil with blood that slowly pooled under her bare feet.

So shocked was May at the carnage, she barely reacted when she took a step forward 一 unfocused by the visage burning in her eyes 一 and heard the wet sound of her toes stepping on a bleeding arm. Ripped from the elbow and missing a couple of fingers.

The sounds of Kreacher’s low squeaks as they tried to burrow themselves deeper into her hair, fleeing the butchery, was what brought her back from the sight; and with that a feeling on her chest that sparkled like fire.

It wasn’t fear… for that was locked deep into her mind. But a disgust more profound than the one she felt when walking the sewers alongside a filthy rat and an unbathed priestess.

And it wasn’t directed towards the blood and gore either. Nor was it towards the victims 一 for them the doll in human skin had only sympathy, as they were subjects of Hector like her and therefore filled with potential to change and grow.

No, the aversion she felt was towards the perpetrators. The senseless, bastardly causers of this carnage.

A part of May’s treacherous mind tried to argue that it was similar to what she had done before, killing George and feeling satisfied by it, a deranged criminal trying to preach about aggression. But the whispers drowned that thought with arguments that May agreed wholeheartedly.

With George, it was not an act of destruction, a frenzied search for the blood of her enemy. No, it was justice. Justice for the precious child he harmed. Justice for the potential he ripped from existence and that was his job to protect as a father.

May would agree her judgment had been quick 一 but when you saw what she had, you had every right to be both judge and executioner. Or so she thought.

A retort tried to form against her, claiming that if not George then the animals she devoured were proof that she had no right to feel such disgust towards the perpetrators. And to that May scoffed and paid no mind.

Her hunting was a necessity that got coupled with satisfaction after a while. She wasn’t actively killing animals as if on a personal crusade against all that walked on four legs.

So with her internal debate almost over, May fanned the emotion inside her chest. Made it a part of her not only because of her aversion, but because the longer she stared at the body parts dropping from the branches and coating the trunks in viscera, the more she felt something anathema was in the air.

An idea that repulsed not her rational mind, but her Truth.

It took her a moment to understand what that was, but the revelation came when her unfocused eyes suddenly reverted after the sound of another explosion. This time low and dull, sounding more like a physical blow than the roaring boom that destroyed the manor.

May looked left… then right… and understanding dawned in her mind. This wasn’t only senseless violence or an unfiltered massacre. No, this was the signal of a loss.

A loss of Control.

And May had the remedy for that.

So, with toes curling against the pooling blood and dark earth, May discovered what to ask for her Gift with the remnants of her Truth. And the logic behind it was simple.

If the world wasn’t going to be under her Control? If the people around her were going to lose themselves to their baser instincts, behaving like beasts and monsters in the search for their goals?

Then May just had to force them to obey her.

The Gift answered her plea with the first step towards her desire and the voices in her mind howled in satisfied laughter at the outcome.