Zalia reacted immediately, focusing Healing Presence on the man. He stood up a bit straighter but seemed uninjured already.
The guards came running up but Faian raised a hand.
“Don’t worry, we will take this from here.”
Still alert, Zalia checked the skies and positioned herself close to the rest of her family. Ember stepped forward to check on the man with her diagnosis ability.
“Who did this to you?”
The man shook as fear passed across his expression.
“Th- The Astar, they attacked us. Councilman Tillman, he’s… he’s dead.”
Faian stepped forward to grab the man’s shoulder.
“Dead? How?”
Zalia wanted to interrupt Faian and allow the man some room but his next words stopped her.
“A Gold rank. Appeared next to us and… and slaughtered them. I… I ran. I saw the monster and ran. That’s the only reason I survived. Oh gods, I was meant to protect him… oh gods. What can I do against something like that?”
He dropped to his knees, tears streaking his face.
Zalia could see Ember’s abilities going to work, healing the fresh emotional wound. It would be most effective straight after an event like this, guiding a traumatic memory to a less painful place easier when it wasn’t scarred over by time.
Faian crouched down next to the man and grabbed his face with her hands, careless of the tears and blood mixing there, and raised his eyes to look at her.
“You did good, you hear me? You survived and you got this to us. We can help. Tell me, where did this happen?”
“I… I…”
His eyes dropped again but Faian tightened her grip.
“Where soldier!?”
He looked up, the firmness of Faian’s tone and Ember’s emotional healing working towards his next words.
“Outside the city to the north. We… we were back from helping a town up north. We were so close to safety… so close.”
Faian looked at Zalia with a question in her expression. Zalia nodded.
She went and found Hildebrandt, bringing her up to speed on what had just happened as quickly as she could. Hildebrandt agreed to come with and after giving Ember a promise that she would be safe, Zalia used the flight ritual on Hildebrandt.
They soared out of the city on winds summoned by Zalia to make their journey quicker. She should have guessed that something had happened to the councilman when he hadn’t showed for the meeting but Faian hadn’t seemed worried. They had probably learned he had left to help whichever town he had gone to up north and not been concerned about it.
This was off for the Astar, a change in how they acted. Usually, they kidnapped the people they targeted, intending to use them as slaves. Killing the councilman was different.
How had that man gotten away?
The thought came to her as it occurred to her that he had said it had been a Gold rank Astar. The man had somehow escaped from a Gold rank Astar?
“It might be a trap.”
She sent the thought to Hildebrandt who looked at her and nodded.
There were only two reasons they wanted that man to get away. It was either a message to the council of Endaria or it was a trap for whoever they sent to investigate.
Zalia put her armour on and swerved in the air to give Hildebrandt an anti-teleportation bracelet, though she probably wouldn’t need one. It was highly unlikely that anyone would ever get close enough to teleport Hildebrandt, even a Gold ranker.
They flew high, using Zalia’s incredible eyesight to scout the ground until she saw a patch of deep red just off to their left. She banked in that direction, Hildebrandt following as she noticed. Zalia’s heart beat harder as the dipped from the sky and the details of what they were about to see became clearer.
She landed amongst what could only be called a massacre.
It wasn’t the first time she had seen things like this but there were a few key differences here. Where an animal might tear something or someone limb from limb in a rough and violent war, the people here looked like they had been carefully chopped into pieces. Each cut that had severed a limb, head or bisected a torso was made with perfecting precision, a clean, smooth slice.
“Fuck.”
She looked back at Hildebrandt.
“Yeah, that’s a pretty good assessment.”
They stood in silence for a moment, both still on guard for an attack.
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“Which one is the councilman?” Zalia asked, gaze shifting from one mixed body part to the next.
Hildebrandt just shook her head, unsure.
“Should I bury them?” Zalia asked.
“I don’t know, can you see anything that might give us a hint to where the Astar went?”
It was Zalia’s turn to shake her head.
“No, I’ve never seen one walk on the ground and even if there were tracks, they would disappear when they teleport away. It’s impossible to track them now.”
“Do your thing then.”
Zalia stored a mental image of the scene, then began roiling the earth using Natural Matter Alteration until the scene had vanished into the earth. Going off a whim, she pulled some stone from the ground and formed it into a gravestone with the words, “Here lies Councilman Tillman and his retinue.”
She didn’t even know any of the other people's names.
“There’s nothing else to see here.”
They turned and took flight again, leaving the fresh patch of earth behind.
When they returned to the capital, Faian was waiting for them. Zalia gave her as many details as she could, even going so far as to send the mental image she had stored when asked. Without more information about the Astar who had done this or any kind of lead towards them, there wasn’t really anything they could do.
Zalia watched as, with spirits low, the council all reconvened in the chamber to continue their talks with this new event hanging over their heads. She had a feeling that the amount of arguing would be lessened now that the council members had a better idea of the dangers they faced, not only to the nation but to them personally.
She left, taking up Faian’s offer of freedom from the talks. Without anything else to do until it was over, she found the rest of her family and left the castle grounds at the top of the hill, making their way down into the city proper.
They wandered for a while, the scene of the massacre weighing heavily on Zalia’s mind.
The implications of being at war with the Astar weighed on her too, the realisation that they very well might be deep within the kind of death, pain and misery that had come with the last war soon enough. She tried to steel her mind and push past those thoughts, but they always came back around.
While not worried about herself in the coming conflict, she was worried about her family. It wouldn’t take much for one of the young ones to be killed and it wouldn’t take much more for Aylie or Ember to be killed either. While they were higher rank, they were still vulnerable to something like a Gold rank Astar ambush. They might stand a chance against such an attack altogether as Boreal, Ember and herself were all quite strong Silver rankers, but it would not end up well for them otherwise.
Eventually, a message came to her mind from one of the telepaths that the council kept. They made their war back up the hill to the castle there and re-entered the grounds to find Faian.
“Well?” Ember asked once they found her.
“Proceedings were much quicker once they learnt of Councilman Tillman’s fate. The members protesting against the war were a little more compliant once they realised what was at stake. We nailed down some details and have decided that we don’t want to take any other actions for now. We will wait on the Morning’s Shade to bring us more intel.”
Zalia felt restless, ready to act.
“And us? What are we supposed to do?”
“You? Well, if you are still willing to listen to what I have to say in this regard then please, stay home, keep your town safe and do some research into further protections against the Astar. We’ll contact you if there is a task we need to do that we think only you can do but for now it is best that you don’t cause any more… warnings from the Astar.”
The words made Zalia flinch like she had been struck. The scene flashed through her mind as she realised, yes, it had most likely been her actions that had caused Councilman Tillman’s death.
She nodded, not having the will to argue against what Faian had said, nor the grounds upon which to form an argument. It had been her actions that had gotten her family in danger and the death of Councilman Tillman was the result of her freeing them. She couldn’t be held responsible for the actions of the Astar but she had been the one to kick that particular nest.
“I assure you that I won’t be doing anything like that again. I think I’ve learnt to be a little more wary of the Astar after everything that’s happened. I let my anger at what they were doing to the people of Endaria get the better of me but I should have realised that the very people that were treating us like cattle wouldn’t allow the cattle to fight back without responding.”
Faian looked at her, eyes flicking back and forth as she inspected Zalia’s. Then she sighed.
“It’s not entirely your fault. This was bound to happen sooner or later. Who’s to say we would be more prepared for this fight further down the line than we are now. The Astar might have just picked us off one by one until we weren’t able to fight at all. We are stronger for the number of people you freed, at least. The past is the past, we need to look to the future now.”
“That we do. I’m sorry, Faian, and thank you. I’ll be ready when you need me.”
She received only a nod in response and with a quick ritual, Zalia and her family took to the skies.
They coasted out of the city and towards home. Concerned at the anger she could feel coming from Ember, Zalia sent a thought.
“Are you alright?”
Ember looked over at her.
“I’m fine.”
Zalia exhaled deeply into the rushing wind.
“You forget I can feel what you feel. What is it?”
There was no response for a moment.
“I just feel like she put the blame for the Astar’s actions solely at your feet. That isn’t fair, considering that they already covered Endaria in demons without provocation. You aren’t to blame for this, the Astar are. It’s their… greed, or xenophobia, that is the cause of this. Whatever reason they have for doing what they do.”
Zalia thought on that and found that while Ember was right, she still could have handled the situation much better. What if she had spent some months working with the council on protections against the Astar instead of rushing off to collect information, only to get some of her family captured and have to start a war to free them? Endaria could be much better prepared, each city protected against the Astar’s particular form of attack. Instead, they would have to play catch-up. Though, they did have years beforehand to prepare for this.
Still deep in thought, Zalia didn’t respond yet as her mind turned to what came next. It would be a tense few days, weeks or months until the fighting started for real.
“You’re right, but I’m not blameless. It’s as she said though, what’s done is done. I’m not worried about being blamed, we must find a way to protect Aylie and the little ones. They might not like it, but their safety comes first.”
She caught Ember’s eyes and received a nod. They were in agreement in that.
As they flew toward Nature’s Reclaim, Zalia heard a voice, Ro’s voice, in her mind.
“We must talk.”