General Drakon was wearing only his breastplate and helmet, both quickly donned when the horns rang. Built like a wall, he stood two meters tall, with broad shoulders and an impeccable physique for his fifties. He looked at the fallen beast as he pulled back his sword from its neck.

"This is a distraction attack. Tell everyone to keep their positions and enable the curfew," he barked at one of the officers accompanying him. Twisting his head, he looked at a priestess in a porcelain mask of an acolyte moving towards him.

“I told you to stay!” He looked at the priestess again. “Fine, stop idling. Get to the wounded! Alfred, don't move away from the priestess." One of the knights reacted, standing as a bodyguard next to the priestess.

The general moved towards the wall, looking at the broken guards, most of whom were heavily wounded. A few civilians lay dead, a teenage noble mage convulsing from a magical backfire, and fires licking a house next to the burning stables. A dozen or two damaged houses, five or six collapsed buildings, including a three-story jewelry shop, stables, an inn, and a few residential buildings.

If not for the coincidence of him being so close at the moment of the attack and the guards shooting the eyes of the beast, the damage would have been far worse.

"Mother of Mercy", the priestess began a long incantation to patch up several of the wounded guards at the same time.

A shadow passed next to Drakon. "Someone tried to enter the previous location of the facility. They exploded on a trap before we could apprehend them. The current location is still secure." The man in the shadow was almost invisible.

"It's your failure, Wraith." The general glared at the hidden man.

"True. Our western 'friends' decided to be generous and spent a fortune on this after previous attempts fell short. It looks like we will have to speed things up. I'll see you in an hour in the war room. King's orders." The man hiding in the shadows merged into them, disappearing from Drakon's view.

The priestess stood next to a short-circuited mage in a fetal pose. "Noble kid?" She assessed Ledas based on his outfit and the glowing runes on his fingers. She grounded the excess magic with her staff, making the mage go almost completely limp with a loud, painful inhale. She prepared a full healing spell. "Mother of Mercy, grant me strength," she began, but the mage, now limp, moved his hand forward, pointing his twisted index finger at a commoner in terrible shape next to him.

"Make life flow, cease the pain, and close wounds," the priestess saw the gesture and shrugged, pointing her staff at Olaf. "Through my staff, life perseveres." Red and green energy moved from her staff to the unconscious strongman. In a couple of seconds, Olaf's bleeding stopped and the wounds closed. He started to breathe normally.

"Your choice." She moved towards the next wounded, casting stabilizing spells on them.

Within minutes, the place was filled with citizens removing debris and half a dozen priests from the nearby Temple of Mercy. Lying on the ground, Ledas could see people on the rooftops overseeing the scene. He was put on a stretcher and moved towards the Temple.

Poor people were laid on mattresses in the main hall, but he was taken further. The corridor had a few clinic rooms. Ledas couldn't move, or maybe he could, but he had no will to try.

On the opposite side of the room lay a man with a deformed chest plate that two doctors were trying to remove. Another priest of Mercy entered and looked at Ledas.

"What's with him?" he asked his colleagues.

"Stable, in shock, nothing life-threatening. Help me with the helmet."

Ledas' eyes didn't move. Only one word played on repeat in his mind as he observed the surroundings without shifting his gaze. "Why?"

In time, the sounds of pain stopped. The officer in the bed next to his was freed from his armor and partially healed with magic. Ledas's fingers were set back in place, bandaged, and left to heal.

The candles burned low, casting flickering shadows when a knight entered the room. He looked around, and another figure entered—a feminine figure in a thin navy cloak.

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She looked at the sleeping officer. "Mercy upon you. May sleep cure your wounds." The voice was familiar, echoing and sharp. It was the priestess from before.

She turned around. "Oh, the mage from before! Alfred, any idea what's with him? He looks like a dead fish." The knight moved to the bed and passed her the notes.

"Oh." She read the short note and crouched in front of Ledas. Without the mask, she was a young, pretty girl with dark hair and blue eyes.

"I'm practicing healing, so be a good boy and fall asleep." She smiled at Ledas, positioning her face where his gaze was.

"Oh, right, the bulky guy will be fine. So, 'Slumber deep, fall into the night's embrace, sweet dreams.'"

As he drifted to sleep a sarcastic thought lingered in his mind: if he got a gold coin every time he was put to sleep with magic, he would have three gold coins. It's not much, but, strangely, it had happened twice in one day.

___

Olaf woke up with the first rays of the sun, painting colorful images through the stained glass in the cathedral of the Mother of Mercy. He looked around confused; maybe fifty or so people lay in 4 rows on mattresses on the ground, but it was warm in the temple. He hadn't had a good night's rest in quite some time, but he had no idea how he appeared here. A dozen or so priests of Mercy were present: some checking up on the patients, others sleeping on benches. A few armed men sat around the place. Some people were moaning in their sleep.

When he stood up, a priest in a mask approached him. "Let's go outside, I'll explain." Once outside, the priest smoked his pipe and explained the gist of the situation to Olaf and another early bird.

From the looks of it, it wasn't the first time he had said those exact words. "You can stay in the care of the cathedral for now."

"Have you seen two ginger twins? Or a thin guy like a stick around fifteen with long coal-black hair? A guy with ashen hair around the same age?" Every time the priest shook his head sideways.

"No gingers, only a couple with jet black hair, but in their mid-twenties and thirties. No commoner blond males of that age. Though a couple had their hair burned completely, let's check if that's them." Each word made Olaf's heart sink a bit more.

At a distance, another priest told a second early bird that his son didn't make it, and his wife would take a few days to recover. Crestfallen he went back and sat next to her, silently weeping. Olaf looked through the lines of people. There were familiar faces of people with whom he had interacted for the last couple of months while they were staying in Tigranakert. But none of his troupe members were there. A lump formed in his throat.

"That's all?" Olaf said with uncertainty.

"Most of the people. Nobles and guards are in the adjacent facility. I guess no need to check there."

"Right, I have to go."

"I'm not going to stop you. Just don't overexert yourself. A powerful healing spell was cast on you; it takes time to fully heal. But you will feel no pain to alert you if you're hurting yourself." The priest was clearly tired; his speech was slow but methodical.

"Thank you." Olaf nodded and left the cathedral.

"May the Mother of Mercy save us in these trying times." The priest returned to one of the benches and put his head down to rest.

Olaf carefully moved towards Vishap's Belly, each step towards the inn feeling heavier than the last. People were still clearing up the residential buildings. A huge lizard-like monster lay collapsed at one of the residential houses. Guards stood on the perimeter around that house and the ruins of the jeweler. The Vishap's Belly inn with the stables had almost burned to ashes.

He asked around if anyone had seen members of his troupe, learning from one of the patrons who didn't get hurt that Ledas had jumped into the burning stables after casting spells left and right. The man offered to help, so together they approached the burned stables and piece by piece removed piled-up rocks and burned wood. Olaf's hands trembled slightly as he moved each piece of rubble.

Around midday, they found the burnt top half of Arty. Olaf turned away to take an uneven breath and steeled himself to continue the task while he couldn't clearly see through the tears blocking his vision. In a couple of hours, a few other bystanders joined them, and the twins' bodies were uncovered. Others, seeing that Olaf bent in half from grief, moved him to sit on a bench near the crumbled jewelry store, while they removed the bodies from under the rubble.

Sounds of a saw were ringing from somewhere above. With a loud thud, something fell a few meters from him. The monster's severed head was slowly rolling towards him. It was big enough to eat a human in one go. Its sharp teeth were as long as daggers.

"So it was you, piece of shit?" Olaf looked at it, clenching his fists. He stopped it with his hand and grabbed one of the monster's fangs, pulling it out with a loud grunt.

"Hey, what are you doing!?" a man who was cutting the monster shouted down.

"Nothing," Olaf grunted. He kicked the head, making it roll back despite its weight. "Brothers, my dear brothers, if I have a chance, I will shove this fang into the guts of the one who brought this lizard here. I swear to you. I swear to you."