Shara awoke to such a cacophony of conflicting emotions she immediately decided to sleep in for a few extra minutes, doing her best to ignore them and praying it would all sort itself out. It was too early for this. She’d just had a dream about… stabbing herself in the face and disintegrating, or something? Dreams were tough to make sense of, even when they were her own.
Though Shara pretended to sleep, it was clear Arina had noticed the change in her breathing and was well aware of Shara’s consciousness. Arina sat by the unlit fire pit seething in rage, and perhaps more startling, a twinge of fear. Shara hadn’t felt Arina be fearful like this before. It was as if she’d come across something so far outside her realm of understanding it forced her to entirely rethink her position in the world. So, Adgito, probably.
Speaking of whom, he or she (Adgito felt like a “she” right now, Shara supposed) was, according to Shara’s mental sense, floating directly above her. Adgito’s emotions were surprisingly refreshing, a positive overall feel with a twist of schadenfreude, and while that certainly worried Shara a bit she resisted the urge to peek deeper into Adgito’s mind.
“Boo,” Adgito said, prompting Shara to open her eyes, and see only the sky.
Arina was up in an instant, thrusting a palm towards the area above Shara’s face and launching a microburst of air over her head, which only seemed to have the effect of making the invisible Adgito laugh as the location of her mind moved effortlessly out of the way.
“Good morning, Adgito. Good morning, Arina,” Shara groaned. It was going to be one of those days, wasn’t it? “It’s good to see you two are getting along.”
“Apologies, master, but I feel the need to inform you that we are not getting along,” Arina growled.
“Yeah, she stabbed me in the eye!” Adgito happily exclaimed.
In the eye? That didn’t sound right. Arina might be a bit overprotective, but she wouldn’t actually try to hurt anyone that Shara liked. Just to be sure, Shara peeked into Arina’s mind, and… oh. It was true.
“What?” Shara snapped.
“The sometimes-man specifically requested that I do so,” Arina calmly explained.
This was apparently also true.
“What???”
“I mean, not really!” Adgito countered. “The situation wouldn’t have come up if you didn’t threaten to impale me!”
“Okay, everybody stop!” Shara commanded, sitting up. “Adgito, are you made of air? What happened?”
“Yeah, I am! It’s totally sweet!” Adgito gushed. “New favorite form, by far. Totally worth pissing off your creepy assassin maid. Here, let me...”
Some thin wisps of mist began to float in, eventually coalescing into the mostly-translucent form of Adgito’s female body. It appeared as though the mist existed only to pillow Adgito’s actual form: a transparent, person-shaped compression of air. The mist gathered around to give Shara something to look at, but even it was barely visible.
Far more interesting than simply being hard to see, however, was the fact that Adgito’s ghostly feet didn’t touch the ground. She swirled and swayed in the air, rotating as minor breezes pushed her off-course. Her face was locked in a big grin, happier than Shara had seen her since Terranburg.
“Ta-da!” Adgito said, opening her arms wide and shaking her outstretched palms. “Air form! Windy form! Misty form! Whatever you wanna call it, it’s awesome! I can fly, and nothing can touch me!”
As if to accentuate the point, Arina summoned a vacuum blade and slashed through the area Adgito’s voice was coming from, which passed harmlessly through the mist.
“Arina, please stop trying to kill Adgito,” Shara muttered. “Didn’t I already order you not to kill anybody?”
“I have not killed the sometimes-man,” Arina clarified. “Were I attempting to, I would have eaten it. My attacks have been exclusively attempts at maiming.”
“...Okay,” Shara said, rubbing her temples with both hands, “Until further notice, you’re not allowed to maim anyone that you’re not allowed to kill without my express permission. You are officially in maiming time-out. This also applies to disabling, dismembering, disfiguring, mutilating, mangling, or any other similar actions.”
“Those are all fundamentally the same action,” Arina helpfully pointed out.
“Yes, Arina, thank you. Why did you stab Adgito?”
“As I stated previously, the sometimes-man told me to,” Arina responded. “I believe its exact words were ‘do it, bitch.’”
“Adgito, don’t actively goad known assassins,” Shara sighed. “And Arina, don’t call Adgito an ‘it.’ Use ‘he’ or ‘she.’ While we’re on the subject, why don’t you refer to anyone by name? You respond to your own, and you remembered Isabella’s.”
Arina frowned.
“I do not understand names. They mean nothing, so they are not remembered.”
Shara sighed again. She’d have to make them mean something, then.
“I’d prefer it if you referred to people by their names instead of whatever titles you think of for them,” Shara told her. It was distinctly not phrased as an order, but she knew Arina would take it with the weight of one. If she still struggled with it, something might be wrong with her memory.
Done with her daily dose of herding cats, Shara turned around and started getting dressed. She had seriously considered sleeping through the night in her armor; she’d certainly done it before, and they were in dangerous enough territory to warrant it. Ultimately, though, the armor wasn’t that important and she’d chosen to try for a more restful sleep instead. The hardened leather Shara wore would certainly stop a wayward cut or errant arrow, but it was a far inferior defense to her natural mobility and rock-hard barrier. She wore it simply for prudence, finding it the most protective piece of equipment to have no impact on her movement speed and flexibility. Not that Shara underestimated the value of prudence; the armor had saved her from nasty injuries before and she suspected it would again. Sometimes, though, you had to let yourself breathe.
Shara removed her nightshirt and immodestly began binding up her breasts. It was nothing Arina and Adgito didn’t have themselves, at least currently, and Darron was still asleep. After putting on the under layers, she waited for Darron to wake up before finishing. Shara had backup padding, but only one suit of actual armor… and it stunk to high heaven. Better to wait for Darron to cleanse it of sweat and filth before putting it on, where her barrier could interfere.
Eventually, her brother woke up, and Shara welcomed him to the morning by tossing the smelly gear onto his face. He’d find a way to get her back for that, she knew, but that was just part of being siblings. With her outfit cleaned and the four of them geared up, they set off for Nuxvar. Shara ended up having to carry all of Adgito’s things, since she was rather questionably tangible at the moment. Darron had a whole universe of questions swirling around his head about Adgito’s new form, though he was having trouble narrowing them down to ones that Adgito might actually answer.
The four of them made it to Nuxvar without notable incident. There was the occasional monster fight on the way, but nothing that really made the team break a sweat. Although Adgito’s air form was basically untouchable, she had issue doing anything more productive than knocking beasts off-balance with the occasional gust. It was a condition that suited her fine, as Adgito never much liked combat in the first place. Shara was glad her friend had finally found a form that made her genuinely happy, as temporary as it was likely to be. The sooner she embraced her natural abilities, the better.
Next on her to-do list was preparing for Nuxvar. Shara had quite the band of misfits with her right now, and while Adgito could look normal Shara wasn’t going to ruin things for her if she could help it. If air form was a serious problem, it could become invisible. The risk of public indecency from a sudden transformation was just par for the course.
Arina was the obvious problem: as sweet as it was for Darron to suggest she not wear the mask, it was probably for the best to do so in a new town. Dark skin, tail, and claws? Maybe a vrochthízo, but it’s not eating anybody so probably not. Pitch-black murder teeth? Definitely a vrochthízo, call the guard.
What Shara hadn’t realized, even once Nuxvar was in sight, was that she would be the one to cause the greatest commotion.
Nuxvar was a large village by northern plains standards, but that still barely amounted to a few hundred people. The town proper was far enough away from the Oinos foothills to lie flat, surrounded by acres upon acres of cultivated farmland that were in turn protected with rudimentary fences, watchtowers, and the fact that nearly every adult who lived there was a member of the unofficial militia. At least a good few of the villagers were liable to be monster-hunting experts like Shara and crew, as otherwise the town would have likely not been able to grow to its current size.
Past the farmlands were the hundred-some buildings that comprised the meat of the village, where people ran their businesses and rested their heads. Back when Shara had lived in the area, Nuxvar had traded with Aletheia and likely Yidril to great success, as her warrior-village lacked the resources and skill sets to make everything they wanted on their own. If Shara were to hazard a guess based on the town’s size, it looked as though trade with Yidril still thrived, at the very least.
Shara waved at the closest watchtower to put them at ease as her group of misfits approached the fences. There was a makeshift road (or at least a gap between farming plots) relatively nearby, so the group turned towards that to make their way into the village. The four of them hopped the fence unmolested; it was barely an arrangement of sharp sticks erected in the hopes of slowing monsters down long enough to spot them. The guardsmen on the watchtowers didn’t seem to mind; apparently the group’s calm and friendly approach was enough to confirm the group wasn’t a band of monsters, and that was really all they cared about.
“It seems they don’t have a biomancer here,” Darron commented offhandedly as he examined the passing rows of corn, “or at least if they do, they’re very bad at it.”
“Well, that’s not that weird, right?” Shara asked. “Didn’t Gloria’s mom invent the whole thing like, maybe eighty years ago?”
“Yeah, great-grandmother Daniva did,” Darron confirmed. “Eighty years is a long time, though. Biomancy’s not hugely widespread, but it’s not obscure either. Daniva publicized most all of her work, so most serious mages should at least know about it. You’d think it would be a priority for farming villages to learn.”
“Maybe they don’t have any serious mages?” Adgito posited, causing Darron and Arina to both jump in surprise. Adgito had been floating invisibly behind the three of them, and while Shara could tell where she was just fine the others seemed to have no way to detect her. It was quite amusing.
Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
“W-Well, that’s statistically unlikely given a town of this size,” Darron recovered. “Anyone can become a learned mage, and while it takes a lot of work you’d think at least one person would be willing to put that work in, considering the results.”
That seemed to be the end of the conversation, so the four of them continued onward in silence. Right after a long enough pause for it to be confusing, however, Arina joined in.
“No. Your perspective is skewed.”
“Pardon?” Darron asked.
“I have fought and killed many mages. They are pathetic. It is worth it to them because they will never be skilled. The results they achieve are pittance compared to the mas… Hmn. To your basic workings.”
“His name is Darron,” Shara helpfully reminded her.
“To Darron’s basic workings,” Arina corrected.
“Thank… you?” Darron acknowledged.
“You are welcome.”
As the most words she’d heard Arina contribute to a conversation without prompting, Shara chose to interpret that exchange as reassurance she wouldn’t need to worry about Arina stabbing Darron through the eye. Which was good, because that would actually kill him.
As they approached the town, Shara took a deep breath and expanded her senses. It was a lively town, sort of like a smaller Oinos Springs or a larger Borns, though with one major frustration: the background buzz. As they entered the town proper, Shara noticed that almost a third of the residents had that frustrating kind of mind which blocked her reading attempts. She needed to find out what was going on there, though she had no idea where to begin. No matter how hard she tried to dive into one of those minds, it was just roaring, unintelligible noise.
Far worse than that, however, were the minds Shara could read. Though most people seemed to be having a perfectly fine day, their positive feelings turned to ice the moment they saw Shara’s blond hair and red eyes. As she walked through the market district, buyers and sellers alike would stop and stare in fear before quickly returning to what they were doing, or at least pretending to. Not everyone she could read had this reaction, but most people above a certain age immediately recognized the marks of her clan and besieged her senses with thoughts of tragedy, fear, and death. All around her walked survivors of the Nuxvar Massacre, and each one of them blamed the Aletheians.
Is that… no, it can’t be. Elpis wiped them all out.
Oh titans, she looks just like one of them… it’s a coincidence, right? I bet other people can have hair and eyes like that…
Are… are they back? Titans, why are they back??? I thought… I have to warn the guards!
“Well guys, we might not be staying the night here after all,” Shara muttered to her team.
An almost crippling amount of stress roared out from one woman in particular, as Shara felt her consider grabbing the knife strapped under her dress and plunging it into Shara’s heart. Shara sought the woman out, locking eyes with her. She looked to be in her mid forties, but Shara suspected she was actually quite a bit younger. Her plain, blue dress wasn’t anything fancy but it did a decent enough job of respecting her figure. She appeared to work at a tailor's stall, sewing and mending clothing of similar affluence. A curtain behind her stall separated it from the building behind her. Despite working diligently with a needle, the woman’s brown eyes glared searing daggers in Shara’s direction, as her outraged mind pondered how to seek revenge for her husband and children.
The general consensus of the minds around Shara was, after all, that the Aletheians had not been shy about who or what they put to the sword eleven years ago.
“Well, they definitely recognize me,” Shara whispered to Darron. “Or they recognize my heritage, anyway. Everyone that was there seems pretty sure the Aletheians did it.”
Well I suppose that narrows down our options to either your family actually doing it, or impersonation.
“So, impersonation,” Shara confirmed. “This lady thinks my family killed her baby. There’s no way in hell that happened.”
I admit, you never struck me as the baby-killing type. Darron conceded. But the sheer quantity of skilled illusionists that happen to also be skilled swordsmen needed to pull off a culling of this size is… questionable, to say the least. I suspect there’s still a puzzle piece at the bottom of the box.
“Well then,” Shara muttered, “let’s go digging. Arina, if we’re attacked, you are not to hurt anyone. Protect us as best you can, but don’t leave any injuries.”
“Understood,” Arina reluctantly acknowledged.
With the biggest smile she could muster, Shara approached the tailor woman. The woman’s rage and terror both swelled as Shara got closer, but Shara simply waved politely started a casual conversation.
“Hi there!” she said, “These are some very nice clothes! Do you do mendings? My brother tries his best, but I have a friend that destroys a whole bunch of outfits and we could use some professional work.”
“Hey,” Adgito muttered quietly, “don’t bring me into this.”
“Where are you from?” the tailor asked coldly, having thankfully not heard Adgito’s remark.
It was obvious to Shara that the woman was fishing for an allegiance to Aletheia. It was best to frame things a little more in her favor.
“I’m from Borns,” Shara informed her. “Small village on the southern plains. I was taken there after my entire family was killed, eleven years ago. I was eight at the time.”
Shara met the woman’s death glare head-on with a smile. If possible, she’d like to convince this woman that her family wasn’t responsible for the massacre, but that seemed unlikely to happen. Her main goal was, as cruel as it seemed, to discuss the event enough to look for clear recollections in the woman’s traumatized mind. Shara wanted to see the event for herself, to look for clues.
“You’re an Aletheian,” the woman condemned.
“Judging by everyone’s faces around here, that’s not a very well-liked group of people,” Shara answered noncommittally. “Will you tell me what happened? I’m just… looking for answers.”
The woman continued her steady glare, lines of stress scouring her face. They were eyes used to weeping.
“I don’t have any answers,” the woman spat. “None of us do. The Aletheians came without warning, slaughtered without reason, and left without word.”
Memories flooded through her. Shara felt the woman’s fear as the door to her home was kicked off its hinges. She’d grabbed a kitchen knife, held it in her trembling fingers towards the red-eyed invaders, and forced her children behind her back. Her daughter, barely five years old, clutched silently to the hem of her dress as her seven-year-old son held his sister reassuringly. Her husband rushed forward to defend them, but a mere blink saw his throat spilled on the floor, his body collapsing with it. Screaming, the woman rushed forward with her weapon, but was disarmed with barely a flick of effort. A quick blow to her head knocked her unconscious before her body hit the ground. She awoke to her family strewn dead about her kitchen, the children each ended in a single, instant stroke. Yet the woman’s body had bared not even a scratch, spared without explanation.
Dozens of families were ended this way in the aftermath of the massacre. Some were obliterated without survivors, some lost their spouse and children, and some families were left untouched. To the woman, there seemed to be no rhyme or reason to the killings; it was mere senseless murder, distributed without aim.
To Shara, however, it seemed the killings had clear purpose, she just didn’t know what it was. It had been Shara’s assumption that Nuxvar failed to be completely wiped out like Yidril and her home village because they had successfully fought back their attackers. However, this wasn’t apparently the case: the attackers had actually stormed through Nuxvar without so much as a challenge and spared a portion of the village on purpose. That seemed to be a completely different M.O. from whatever had destroyed the other two villages.
“I see,” Shara said, although she really didn’t. The flashback left her with more questions than answers. “I barely survived the massacre at Yidril myself… I was hoping you had some idea of what happened, but I guess I’m just dredging up bad memories. I’m sorry.”
“Yidril?” the woman grunted in disbelief. “No one survived Yidril, people rebuilt that town from nothing. And you look just like an Aletheian.” She was barely a twitch away from drawing her knife.
“Well, perhaps that’s why I survived?” Shara smiled innocently. “I never understood it myself. Again, I’m sorry. Trust me, I know those memories can be difficult.”
The staredown continued as Shara subtly adjusted the shape of her smile and tilt of her head to be more in line with the woman’s happier memories of her daughter. It was a dirty trick, but it was better than getting stabbed. Her results were far from perfect, but it was enough to make the old widow relent.
“Go away, Yidril girl, and never come back,” the tailor told her. “The longer you stay in this town, the more likely you are to die.”
Shara nodded in thanks, and left.
“That sounded like it went well!” Adgito commented from above.
Did you get what you needed? Darron asked.
“Yeah,” Shara said, “or at least I got all I think we’ll get. For now, let’s leave before we start a riot.”
The four of them exited the city out the way they came, to minimize the amount of new people that would see Shara’s face. They left without major incident, the only new person of interest on Shara’s radar being a grizzled-looking one-armed man that gave her an extra stare. He looked like some kind of retired warrior, but Shara didn’t pay him much mind as he didn’t seem hostile. Her attention was already swimming between so many things she couldn’t spare more for harmless strangers.
“Alright, we’re outta there,” Adgito insisted once the group made it to the cornfield. “Now lay it on us! Did you figure out the secret twist?”
“I… no, not really,” Shara said. “I found a few inconsistencies, but they just add more questions.”
She informed everyone about the false assumption that Nuxvar had been spared through their own efforts, and the apparent non-pattern on how some people were and were not spared. Darron had even more questions than Shara, though they were a lot more specific.
“Were there any families where both parents were spared, but the children were killed?”
“Um, no. Not to her knowledge,” Shara answered.
“What about any where the parents were both killed but the children spared?”
“I only recall seeing memories of three outcomes,” Shara explained. “The entire family dead, the entire family spared, or one adult survives.”
Darron nodded.
“Then it’s hereditary,” he concluded. “Well, most likely.”
“What is?” Adgito asked.
“Whatever reason a person was chosen to die, I suppose.” Darron answered. “Actually… now that I think about it, when we were testing people that had immunity to your powers, didn’t it have a similar pattern?”
“Well, yeah, except sometimes the kids didn’t have it.”
“Well, maybe it’s recessive,” Darron positied. “Or maybe the kids were adopted. In a small town like Nuxvar I suspect most orphans would be raised by other family members, but in Terranburg an orphan could be abandoned and raised by someone of no relation, right?”
“Oh, yeah,” Adgito confirmed. “That happens all the time. Couples from Elpis especially would pick a buncha kids up off the streets. It really helped the city out. I was just a bit too old for anyone to actually take me in, and I had Mrs. Garnersworth to help me out anyway.”
“I don’t like where this is going, Darron,” Shara warned. Darron just shrugged.
“I’m just pointing out a similarity. The attackers were hunting something that was both hereditary and, apparently, detectable. They weren’t interested in killing anyone without the hereditary trait they were looking for, so they weren’t just blind murderers. Furthermore, we know there's a likely-hereditary trait that grants people immunity to your mind reading abilities, and best we can tell only mind readers can detect it. Your clan is the only known clan of mind readers, and they are the primary suspects in the case. It’s a fairly damning stack of evidence. I’m not saying the Aletheians did it, but I can certainly see why Elpis would conclude the Aletheians did it.”
“I can’t,” Adgito said. “Didn’t that Marisol lady think Shara could read her mind? If so, wouldn’t that imply Elpis doesn’t know about the no-read-gene? Or at least didn’t eleven years ago? So how could they draw that conclusion?”
Darron blinked.
“That’s actually a good point,” he said, startled.
“Thanks, I think?”
“Look, it doesn’t matter!” Shara snapped. “My family loved people! We went out of our way to fight monsters for them! There’s no way they did this!”
“If you say they couldn’t, then they couldn’t,” Darron said reassuringly. “I’m just looking at things from different angles to see where the shadows fall. Barring sufficient evidence, finding flaws in incorrect reasoning can lead us in the right direction.”
Right, of course. Darron always had her back. There was no need to bite at anybody, here. Shara was just a little on edge. The whole situation was dredging and would keep dredging up a lot of bad memories. Yet no matter what, she was adamant on believing in her parents. There was no way in hell that she’d entertain the idea that they had actually been mass murderers.
Not even when the man in the tailor’s memory had looked and fought and awful lot like her dad.