Yidril looked different than Darron had been expecting. He couldn’t quite put his finger on it, but something was off. It was a small, quaint little village, surrounded by rows upon endless rows of corn. Corn was somewhat of an odd choice; it was notoriously difficult to grow in the plains due to their temperature and water needs, not to mention how easy the stalks were for omnivorous monsters to poach. Successfully raising the corn to the point where people could eat it was a herculean task, but Yidril seemed to be managing somehow. That was odd, but fine.

No, what bothered Darron, he quickly realized, was that there was too much corn. Yidril looked similar in size to Borns, meaning it housed maybe a couple hundred people at most. Though it was feasible they could raise all this corn, especially if they had mages, they certainly couldn’t eat it all. Perhaps the excess was raised under the assumption that most of it would be devoured by monsters? A reasonable farming strategy, under Northern Plains conditions, but if that were the case… well, some signs that monsters were eating anything should be apparent.

Darron, Shara, Adgito and Arina were not accosted as they made their way through the cornfields, so there was no automated trick to protect the food. At least, none that he could detect. The sun had already set when they arrived, but no lights cut through the darkness and no watchtowers were set up to gain early warning of danger.

“The town seems completely undefended,” Shara said, putting voice to his thoughts, “but the fact that it’s still here means it must be protected by something. Any ideas what that might be?”

“I do not feel anything out of the ordinary,” Arina reported. “There are animals and insects around, though none of them seem to be eating the corn.”

“I inspected some of the corn, but it’s nothing unusual.” Darron admitted. “It’s genetically engineered, but not in any way I haven’t seen before; they they probably just bought a biomancer-touched strain when seeding. There’s no hidden disease or poison in them.”

“The animals all just have normal animal minds,” Shara added. “I’m not sensing any minds under the ground, which is kinda strange but could be any number of things.”

The three of them turned to Adgito.

“W-what?” he stammered defensively. “What are you looking at me for? I don’t have any freaky sensory powers like you guys! I mean, not currently. It’s dark and we’re in a cornfield, okay? That’s all I got.”

Adgito currently resided in his base male form. He had been some kind of four-armed bug man for most of the trip over, but he’d opted to tap Darron before rejoining civilization.

“Alright, well, stay on your guard, everyone,” Shara ordered. “Arina will keep an ear out and I’ll keep a brain out, but we move under the assumption that this is a trap and the enemy knows we know it’s a trap. Whatever comes at us is going to be hard to predict, so just be generally ready, okay?”

“Maybe the trap is that there is no trap,” Adgito said sagely.

That would be kind of pointless, in Darron’s opinion. The appearance of a trap, but no trigger? He supposed it could be used to stress them out and cause them to make a mistake later, but said mistake would probably be the trigger for another trap which would render the entire premise moot. Maybe if–

“Darron, stop humoring him,” Shara butted in. “We’ve got a town to investigate.”

Does it really count as humoring him if he can’t hear it? Darron wondered.

“Who’s humoring what now?” Adgito asked out loud.

“Yes,” Shara answered Darron.

“What?” Adgito asked.

Adgito wouldn’t even know about it if you hadn’t said anything, Darron pointed out.

“Would everyone just shut up and focus?” Shara growled.

“You’re the one talking to yourself,” Adgito mumbled.

“Someone is approaching,” Arina intoned, immediately ending the argument.

Sure enough, a middle-aged man dressed in worker’s clothes emerged from between some stalks to glare at the four of them.

“Whater ya’all doin’ out here this time o’ night?” he drawled at them. “Get.”

“Ah, sorry sir,” Shara smiled. “We’re just making our way into town. Could you direct us to the inn?”

“No,” the man growled. “We don’t got one. Ain’t nobody ever stop by, don’t need one. Now get.”

“Oh, well, we have a few goods we could trade for a night’s stay–”

“No,” the man said. “Ain’t nobody here fool enough ta let ya inta their homes, girl. We keep ta ourselves an’ expect everyone else ta do the same. Now begone wit ya.”

Shara’s mouth twitched.

“I think I’d like to talk with somebody else. I’m going to head on into the village, okay?”

“No matter what yer lookin’ for, girl, ya won’t find it here,” the man warned.

“I’ll look regardless,” Shara said, turning away and continuing on, leaving the man to shake his head in irritation.

“Well, that wasn’t ominous at all,” Adgito commented when they were out of earshot.

“Yeah, what a weirdo. I couldn’t read him either,” Shara said. “I’ll try to track down somebody normal for us.”

“What if the normal people can’t have their minds read, and we’re all the weird ones?” Adgito wondered.

“What is with you today?”

Adgito shrugged. “Just trying to contribute.”

Yidril had no walls. The cornfields simply ended and houses began. Nearly every building seemed to be a personal residence, with the exception of a large, unmarked storehouse in the center of town. Darron had little doubt that Shara would end up breaking into that before the night was done, assuming she failed to learn its contents from somebody’s mind.

They walked around the mostly-empty town, the night being late enough for everyone to be locked up in their houses. The few people who were out and about gave the lot of them dirty looks, and Shara shook her head at all of them. Nobody readable, huh?

“I’m actually getting close enough to the houses to peek in at the people inside,” Shara whispered, “and there’s nothing. Honestly, I’m starting to get a headache. Everyone here has that buzzy, unreadable thing.”

A headache, huh? Darron thought. Maybe that’s the trap?

“It’s mostly annoying right now, more than painful,” Shara hummed. “I’ll let you know if it gets any worse.” She turned to the rest of the team. “Actually, that goes for everyone. Let Darron know if you feel anything out of the ordinary. Headaches, cramps, any other symptoms, even if they seem benign. I have no idea what to expect here, so we’re assuming the worst.”

This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

“I am fine,” Arina confirmed.

“I have to take a dump,” Adgito helpfully added.

“I feel like you’re not respecting the seriousness of this ‘death trap’ situation,” Shara said to him.

“What? You’re the one who told me to start embracing the cool parts of my powers. Not dying is one of those, isn’t it? So like, I’ll probably be fine.”

“Okay but I might die,” Shara pointed out.

“Nah, I’ve seen you fight,” Adgito responded dismissively. “I’m not too worried about it.”

That seemed to placate her ego enough to drop the issue, to Darron’s surprise. Did Shara just lose an argument? He’d changed her mind before, but never gotten her to simply concede. He made a note to try and emulate the tactic.

The four of them walked around the entire town. It only took a few hours to get Shara close enough to mentally peer into every house, and the results were predictably concerning: every person in Yidril had a mind that could not be read. A solid one-hundred percent.

This of course matched up with the reported percentage of people killed in Yidril during the Nuxvar Massacre, but supposedly the current Yidril was re-founded by totally different, unrelated people. It could technically be a coincidence, but heuristically speaking Darron thought it would probably be an inefficient path to the truth to assume so. Which is to say: “duh, of course it’s not.”

The question of interest was why. The obvious tie-in was Elpis; Marisol had outright admitted that the targets of the massacre had been people from Elpis and they seemed to have a higher-than-normal percentage of unreadable minds. But also far from a perfect percentage; Isabella’s personal maid had been from Elpis and Shara said she’d read her mind fine. Gadiel Halcomb, commander-in-chief of Elpis military had a readable mind. Even the occasional Elpis soldier had a readable mind. Besides, all of that hinged on the questionable assumption that Marisol had even been telling the truth about the Aletheians’ targets.

There was almost certainly a connection between the people replacing those that died in the massacre and those whose minds could not be read. Whether that implied a connection between unreadable minds and those that actually died was a leap of logic, but not an unrealistic one. Darron had quite a few theories, but nothing he could claim definitively enough to be confident in.

“So we still need more information,” Shara concluded for him. “I guess we’ll camp the night. Nobody’s willing to house us, but we can just plop down some sleeping bags in front of their suspicious barn thing and wait until morning.”

“You may all rest comfortably,” Arina said. “I will ensure you are not disturbed.”

“Thank you,” Darron told her, and patted her shoulder, to which she simply nodded. He was trying to make an effort to treat her humanly, because someone needed to do it and he was the only real option via process of elimination. Darron knew he probably wasn’t doing a great job, but Adgito didn’t get along with her at all and Arina wasn’t at a stage where she could interact with Shara as an equal. He should probably talk with Adgito about it, though. As much as Darron loathed to admit it, Adgito had struck a chord in their previous talks about Darron’s social inadequacies. He couldn’t keep relying on Shara to do the talking forever, and Adgito was the next most socially competent friend he had.

Oh god, Adgito was the next most socially competent friend he had. Darron supposed they were friends now, basically. They’d fought a ton of monsters together. That’s pretty much what friends did, right? Darron didn’t really know the answer to that question.

“Shara?” Darron said as he laid his bedroll out on the dirt.

“Yeah?”

“I’m starting to suspect we didn’t have a normal childhood.”

“I dunno what could make you say that, bro,” Shara responded with a grin. “Don’t most people kill monsters when they’re eight?”

“It has been my observation that most people don’t kill monsters at all,” Darron glowered.

Shara just chuckled.

“Good night, Darron. Let’s just figure this out and get to Hydronia, okay?”

Darron nodded, squirming into bed. Two easy-sounding steps, weren’t they? Nonetheless, he would have to complete them. The mystery of Elpis was not only interesting to him, but unfortunately quite relevant. They didn’t seem inclined to leave the rest of the continent alone, and Darron happened to live on this particular continent. Hoping someone else took care of things had never sat well with him, so he supposed he’d have to do something about it himself.

The night was peaceful. Darron awoke to soft rays of sunshine rather than a call to battle, which was always a pleasant treat when traveling the plains. He yawned, glancing around. Arina was standing over him, two wind blades drawn. A wall of violent air encircled the camp, making almost no noise despite the obvious damage it was doing to the ground around it. The vrochthízo assassin stared calmly at nothing as an enraged mob threw stones and poked pitchforks at the barrier of wind, some nursing nasty wounds they presumably got from getting too close to the gale.

“Good morning, ma… Darron.” Arina corrected. “I trust you slept well?”

Darron sat up, sighing. He seemed to be the first one awake, which meant he should probably deal with this mess. He suspected it was the start of a very long day.

“Yes, I did, Arina. Thank you. What is going on?”

“Some residents here demanded we sleep outside the city,” Arina informed him. “However, you were already sleeping, so I told them I would inform you the next day, as I am doing now. They were not pleased with the prospect of compromise and so I have restrained them from voicing further opinion on the matter until my master has woken. Nonlethally.”

“I… okay,” Darron said. “Good job on restraining them. This is a very impressive wind wall… but I think Shara and I would have both liked to be alerted before this escalated into a mob situation.”

“Mob… situation?” Arina asked. “Apologies.”

Darron thought on that for a moment.

“You can’t sense past your own wall, can you? Since it blocks sound?”

“Y-yes,” Arina admitted. “The utter ineffectiveness of applied resistance caused me to assume there were only casual interlopers. How many foes do we face?”

Darron stood up, stretching as he did a quick headcount.

“Forty-six?” he ventured. “They’re not happy. Probably because your wall is blocking the door to their storeroom? Can you remove the sound-dampening effect from your wall so we can talk to them?”

“Not while my master is still resting,” Arina asserted.

“Okay,” Darron said, and kicked his sister in the shin. Shara yelped in pain and immediately sat up, hand on her blade.

“Can we talk to them now?” Darron asked.

“...Certainly,” Arina grumbled.

The wind roared, startling Adgito awake as well. The mob jumped back in panic, but quickly resumed their assault once they realized the wall wasn’t actually doing anything else. It was difficult to hear them over the howling gale, but Darron reluctantly raised his voice and let himself be heard.

“Excuse me! Hello!” he shouted. ”Sorry about our passionate bodyguard, here. May I ask what the problem is?”

“Get the hell out of our town!” someone in the crowd roared back.

“You don’t belong here!”

“Stay away from our property!”

“Okay, okay, alright!” Shara yelled, pulling herself out of bed and standing as well. “Sorry, we just wanted somewhere safe to stay the night, but I guess that’s not here! We’ll be going. Just one question first, though.” She jabbed a thumb behind her, in the direction of the storehouse. “What’s in here?”

“What the hell do you think is in there?” someone from the crowd roared. “It’s corn, ya daft fool! What else would it be?”

“You haven’t harvested any corn yet, this year,” Darron pointed out. “So unless this is a giant wooden freezer, I find that unlikely.”

The mob stopped clamoring and glared with deadly silence. There was a beat where Darron thought they might simply disperse or come clean about the contents of their storehouse, but it passed. Instead, moving as one, they suddenly leaped through the wind wall. It tore their skin to shreds, tossing blood everywhere, but the damage didn’t go deep and they charged in with weapons drawn.

“Crap in a handbasket!” Shara yelped, drawing her blade and pulling Darron backwards out of harm’s way as she parried a series of blows from four townsfolk. Arina furrowed her brow.

“Is that an order?” she asked.

“What???” Shara yelled back. “No! It was a…”

Interjection, Darron thought.

“Interjection!” Shara finished. “Your orders are to bust open that storehouse and make us an exit route!”

“Acknowledged,” Arina said, and the winds that had been carving up psychotic villagers flowed forward to plow a hole through a wall of wood instead. They swirled around Darron and the others and slammed like a hammer into the side of the barn, blowing its doors off their hinges. Darron didn’t approve of Shara giving Arina orders on principle, but he supposed this was somewhat of an emergency situation.

A musty, unpleasant scent wafted out of the storehouse, but Darron wasted no time in helping Adgito stand up and leading the two of them in, away from the angry mob. Shara was fending them off fairly well, but they seemed to have abandoned any desire for self-preservation and there was only so much she could do to them without killing anyone. The flat of her blade struck heads and knocked them down, but even an unlucky blunt blow could kill one on accident, especially if they were already bleeding profusely.

The floor of the storehouse squished like thick moss under their feet, pink and fleshy in its coloration. A massive hole was gouged into the center of the room, which seemed to be the source of both the musty scent and the pink squishy stuff that had grown across the ground beneath them. Darron and Adgito ran over to it and looked down, the stench worsening the closer they got. The pit was dark, lined with pink stuff, and too deep to see the bottom of. A warm wind rose from it, almost making them gag.

“Is this a giant butt?” Adgito muttered, pinching his nose.

Then Shara grabbed both of them, and leapt down the hole.