The next day, they were all travelling towards the Astar town as a group. It was the first time they were all together like that outside of the clearing since coming to these strange misty lands and despite their individual stealthiness and the obscuring fog, Zalia couldn’t help but feel they were much too easy to spot.
While the young cats were still the only ones to acquire a passive that allowed them to see in the mist, Zalia had given Ember and Aylie some Adastem Juice to drink, the tingly liquid making their bodies adapt temporarily. This allowed them to see in the mist, if only for a few metres more.
As they approached the Astar town, Zalia’s nerves felt like they were being stretched further and further like a bowstring about to snap. She was maintaining a ritual across all of her family members that made them more stealthy, yet it would only take one of them being spotted now for things to go terribly. An extended flight back home could prove disastrous if the Astar had any method of seeing or detecting them in the mist.
Instead of focusing on that, Zalia tried to go over the plan again and again in her head. She and Boreal would go into the town and try to learn something about the Astar, Boreal hiding in the shadows while she pretended to be one of the slaves herself. Ember, Aylie and the young cats would hide just across the border to the town in the mist, ready to lend help if needed.
That was all if Aylie didn’t see something that warranted a change in plans when they got there.
Zalia had made the fake power-subduing bracelets the night prior as everyone slept, her memory of them from her time as a prisoner stark in her mind. She had also made a pair of manacles for her legs from iron sourced from the ground. Natural Matter Alteration was becoming quite a useful ability, especially so due to the years of practice she had manipulating things on a finer level. The decision to start doing that long ago was paying out now. That had originally started out as woodworking but the ability had evolved to include all natural matter, which encompassed a very large range of things she had discovered. Iron was one of those, though it didn’t stretch to materials like steel which while it could theoretically form naturally, it realistically happened on such a rare basis that it could be considered a made material.
She tried to distract herself with thoughts of how the abilities decided what was considered “natural matter” while they walked, yet found herself dragged back to reality once they reached the town.
Aylie noticed they were closing in on it first, her ability to see on the astral informing her somehow. She signalled to the others and they slowed down, approaching at a crawling speed now. The younger cats stuck close to Boreal, while Aylie and Ember stuck close to Zalia.
With a gesture, Zalia told the others to stay back a good distance while she and Aylie moved up to the border of the town and looked through. Aylie stared towards the town, tilting her head in confusion and scrunching up her face as she tried to discern something. Her eyes traced around the odd barrier around the space that kept back the mist, then back to the enslaved humans. Zalia could see anger there in her expression. She felt that emotion mirrored in her own mind.
They didn’t know how the Astar rationalised the abducting and enslavement of Endarian people, whether it be through a sense of superiority, them seeing humans as nothing more than animals or a wrong that the Endarians committed against the Astar long ago but there was nothing Zalia could think of that justified what they were doing here.
Aylie turned to Zalia and shrugged her shoulders a little.
“There is definitely something strange going on here, something that has been done to those people. I can’t figure it out from out here though, so I don’t see no reason not to go ahead with the plan.”
Zalia nodded her agreement and they went back to the others.
With some real basic pants, a shirt and worn workboots that she had in her vault, Zalia looked the part. She had to store away her armband that protected against teleportation but that wasn’t a concern where they were going.
Ember helped her put on the fake bracelets and the manacles, which she would be able to remove using Natural Matter Alteration in an instant if needed, then gave her a passionate kiss.
“Good luck in there, don’t take risks, learn what you can and get out.”
Zalia nodded her assent, then stepped away towards the town. She had to remind herself a few times that if things went truly wrong, Aylie would be able to create a portal through her and Ember’s bond to bring them both out instantly. That was, if her own teleportation ability failed somehow in addition to the many other ways of getting out she had, slaughtering a bunch of Astar being one of them.
Boreal sat with her as they waited by the border for an opening. She had a sack with her, filled with pieces of chopped wood. She planned to pretend to be carrying it to the home of one of the Astar, as many of the other slaves could be seen doing at that very moment. The only issue was that they didn’t leave the bounds of the town, ever, as far as she could see. If she could get into the town without being seen entering, they should be alright.
Deciding against just teleporting in, as Astar could be attuned to that kind of thing, Zalia circled around the edge of the town until she found a section that was less populated. Once there, she waited until there was a break in people and shuffled out to one of the buildings as quickly as she could. She put her back to it and waited, hoping that she hadn’t been seen or heard.
There were no shouts of alarm so she slung the sack of wood over her shoulder and shuffled out from behind the building and into the street, head down and eyes cast to the cobblestones beneath her boots.
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Astar floated past to her left and right, yet didn’t say a word. She had all of her passives restrained as much as they would go such that she had the appearance of having her abilities subdued and it looked like it was working.
She shuffled past another human and tried to catch their gaze but the man’s eyes were empty, soulless like there was nothing inside the body as it shuffled past. Concern filled her as she found similar dead eyes and emotionless expressions amongst the other humans there. With a quick glance around, she tried to find Boreal but couldn’t see or hear the feline, a good sign. If she was unable to find her, it was doubtful any of these Astar would be able to either.
The town was larger than it first appeared from the borders, stretching far enough that after a good twenty minutes of walking, she still couldn’t see the other side. Over the course of the walk, she made sure to keep her expression as blank as the other humans, eyes down. It was hard to observe the city around her that way and so she allowed a single passive to function, that passive being Enhanced Vision. With it, she could see all around her as her vision didn’t require her eyes any longer.
Much of the town was the same as she had seen from the border, buildings made of dark stone formed in odd jagged shapes. The cobbled roads seemed entirely aesthetic as the Astar all floated past, some less than half a metre off the ground, others further up in the sky.
The place she was aiming for was a building that loomed over the others some distance from the edge of town. She didn’t have anything she was looking for in particular, so it seemed a good place to start.
Towards the presumed centre of town, the density of human slaves was significantly decreased. It appeared to Zalia that only a few were even allowed there, so she avoided going directly to the large building. Instead, she found a secluded alleyway and went down it, allowing herself to relax for just a moment. It was hard to keep the churning anger and confusion at the state of the humans here from reaching her face and body, the blank slate expression important to her disguise.
She peaked out of the alley and towards the bigger building and observed for some time. The large gateway entrance to the building was filled with passing Astar, as if the structure was a main thoroughfare for the town. There was a constant flashing light that emitted from the structure and it took Zalia a while to realise that it was the flashing of teleportation. The building must contain a teleportation room, like the one she had found underground. In fact, thinking about it now, it was likely that the underground structure back in the swamp had probably been built by the Astar. Which other race with an expansive knowledge of spacial magic lived out here?
Deciding that she had seen enough, Zalia turned from the building and resumed her blank expression state as she made her way back to where Ember and the others awaited her. She was mostly certain that the Astar didn’t travel via any method other than teleportation between their towns, which provided both an issue and a solution to that very issue. The issue was that there would be no roads or signs of travel between their towns, meaning it would be hard to transport an army from one town to the next should they decide to invade. The simple solution to that, however, was to use the Astar’s own teleportation rooms as launch points. There would undoubtedly be protections in place, but they might find a way around that.
On the way back, she was stopped by an Astar and her heart beat hard in her chest as she looked up at it. A voice pierced her mind.
“Where do you travel, human.”
Luckily, she had seen Astar stop other humans before as well. Following what the other humans had done, she simply pointed in the direction she was going.
The Astar handed off a sack to her and she hefted it over her other shoulder. The Astar turned and moved away, so she grudgingly followed it. It was going in the same direction as her, but had apparently grown tired of carrying its own things.
Adrenaline pulsed through her, a fear of being found out causing an internal struggle so loud she was surprised the Astar couldn’t hear it.
The Astar entered a house and gestured to a long central bench within the entrance room. Desperately maintaining her blank composure, she deposited its things there and then left, hoping it wouldn’t stop her. She managed to regain some semblance of calm as she was allowed to leave without issue.
Zalia was beginning to think that they had been successful as she reached the edge of town once more, ready to be out of this place. It was then that she noticed a group of Astar moving through the border into the mist. A single sentence came to her mind through the bond with Ember.
“We’ve been found!”
In an instant, the manacles on her legs were broken apart, the fake bracelets following a moment later. Her armour appeared on her body and she teleported straight into the mist after the Astar.
It was hard to see what was happening as the vibrations within the mist went crazy. She could see the young cats fleeing in all directions, Aylie and Ember standing their ground against a dozen or so Astar. The bracelets on their arms were active, blocking whatever magic two of the Astar just cast on them.
Zalia’s bow appeared next to her, shooting two arrows that took down an Astar each as they pierced through heads. Ember killed another as her blade slashed through its arm and half its torso. The plants around them came alive under Aylie’s control and two more Astar were torn limb from limb under their strength. Zalia tried to get the zone of anti-teleportation active but was too late, as the spent bracelets didn’t protect Ember and Aylie any longer. The two of them vanished a moment before the zone came into affect, trapping the Astar there.
Then Boreal was there, landing amongst the remaining Astar with an explosion of icy fury. Three of the Astar tried to run but were frozen in place as their fear of Boreal overcame them. The four last Astar held their ground and a barrier appeared around them as they attempted to attack. Zalia felt a warping in the air and threw herself to the side as the very air seemed to rip itself apart where she had stood. Her bow continued shooting, forming a web of cracks in the Astar’s shield.
They were outnumbered by the Astar, but only one of them was Silver rank. The shield broke under Boreal’s next pounce, another Astar freezing into a statue as its fear got the better of it. The two remaining Astar tried to fight off Boreal using their spacial magic while Zalia combated the Silver rank one.
She ran towards it, her arrows being displaced as they fired towards her enemy, the spacial magic somehow getting past her ritual. The Astar flickered as it tried to teleport away but failed and Zalia was upon it. Her sword appeared in hand and she slashed once, twice, cutting a long gash in its torso and removing one of its legs. The physical weakness of the Astar was their downfall as she applied a Hunter’s Mark to the two Bronze rank ones that were somehow keeping Boreal frozen. A Kill Shot enhanced strike felled the Silver rank Astar and the remaining damage bounced to the two Bronze ones, their bodies exploding into mist under its force.
Zalia looked desperately towards the Astar town where she could feel Ember through their bond. She was still fighting in there, somewhere, with Aylie by her side. She looked to Boreal and an agreement passed between them. Boreal dashed off to find her children and Zalia ran back towards the town, terrified and unsure what she could do. It had all gone so wrong.