This situation was quickly spiraling out of control.

Shara and her friends could have gotten a nice bath in a hot spring and been on their merry way, but no. There was this killer her brother decided to help, then it became this murder mystery they decided to solve, and now there’s this Elpis military official sipping tea with a smug, exceptionally punchable grin on her face. Who was this lady? Wait, she said her name was Marisol. Marisol… the Elpis military commander, Gadiel, mentioned her in his mental monologue. She seemed important to him.

Should Shara kill her? No, that wouldn’t solve anything. Gadiel may like her, but she wasn’t Gadiel.

“Nadia,” Marisol spoke up, looking at the maid, “I’ve said this before, but it bears repeating. This tea is exceptional. You simply must go and fetch some for your new guests.”

“Of course,” Nadia said with a slight bow, before turning to Isabella. “By your leave, mistress.”

“Er, yes,” Isabella said. “Thank you, Nadia.”

With another bow, Nadia ducked out. Shara dipped into her emotions, trying to get a better read on the situation. Regarding Marisol, there was… respect, admiration, gratitude. A bit of intimidation, but not as if she was coerced. It was more like Marisol was an important or famous figure, and Nadia was stunned to be in the same room as her. A tidbit of worry was left for Isabella, but it was just general motherly worry; Nadia didn’t believe that Marisol was dangerous. At least, not to Isabella.

“Now then,” Marisol said, taking immediate charge of the conversation, “I feel the need to express my condolences to you again, Miss Cornwall. The primary reason I came here today was to speak with your father, but it seems tragedy came between us. In his absence, however, I assume you are the de facto leader of Oinos Springs?”

Although she was talking to Isabella, Marisol’s eyes were locked on Shara’s face as she spoke. Unable to tell what she was thinking, Shara could only assume that Marisol recognised her, and was studying her reactions. She had been, if Shara recalled correctly, the person that suspected her of being Aletheian in the first place, all the way back in Terranburg. Which brought up the question: how did she get here so fast? There were only two real options: she must have either made it through the mountain after Shara, or teleported… and the implication that Elpis could afford to teleport people after her was not a pleasant one.

“Actually, one of my father’s assistants held the title of vice-mayor,” Isabella said, sitting down at the table opposite of Marisol’s chair. “He is the acting head of Oinos Springs’ government while we organize the next election.”

Darron, who was tired of standing anyway, found a seat at the round table exactly one chair away from Isabella and two chairs away from Marisol. Adgito shrugged, and nonchalantly sat down in the seat closest to her, which happened to be next to Marisol. Shara remained standing, arms crossed loosely to keep her right hand as close to her sword hilt as she was politely able.

“Yes, but your Father’s assistants work for the Cornwall household,” Marisol droned, as if slightly irritated she needed to explain it, “And you are now head of the Cornwall household. From a functional standpoint, you are in charge. Regardless of what government you claim by name, your father has set up a thinly-veiled dynasty. I see no reason to waste my time speaking with your subordinate about matters they will run by you anyway.”

“Um, I’m sorry ma’am, I don’t know what kind of person you think my father was,” Isabella said, offended, “but I don’t… really know what I’m doing with this governing stuff. I have every intention of declining the position if I’m voted mayor. Any agreements you make with me will likely be under someone else’s jurisdiction by the time you attempt to enact them.”

“Really?” Marisol said, seemingly surprised. “I was not under the impression you had the infrastructure necessary to perform a town-wide electoral vote.”

“Of course we do! We have votes every two years!”

“Yes, but they are all rigged,” Marisol responded condescendingly. “No one actually counts the votes, dear. Did you honestly think your father won fifteen consecutive elections legitimately?”

“Of course I did!” Isabella roared. “And I still do! My father was a great man, and I will not allow you to slander him inside his own home!”

The chubby woman huffed indignantly, glaring daggers at her guest. Anything that made more allies against Elpis was fine by Shara.

Marisol sipped her tea, looking thoughtful.

“My sincerest apologies, Miss Cornwall,” she eventually said. “It was not my intention to speak poorly of the deceased. If you do seek an honest electoral vote, than I and my nation wholeheartedly support and encourage that decision. I will happily suspend negotiations on the economic matters I came here to discuss until you can finish establishing your head of government. And, should you find that your people lack experience cataloging these votes, I would be more than happy to offer the expertise gathered from an older republic nation like my own.”

“We won’t need it,” Isabella insisted.

Marisol tipped her head, presenting a wry grin.

“Then I look forward to being pleasantly surprised.”

Isabella fumed silently at her end of the table as Marisol resumed sipping her drink, teacup in one hand and saucer in the other. For a negotiator, she seemed awfully rude. If anything, she seemed downright pleased at how much she’d irritated Isabella, although Shara still couldn’t tell for sure.

She was probably right about Isabella’s dad, though. Isabella herself knew nothing about it, having only seen the part of her father he had wanted her to see. However, it was fairly clear from Arina and Dr. Nalar’s memories that there was a darker side to him. Shara didn’t trust Marisol further than Darron could throw her, but she couldn’t deny that the woman probably knew more about Gregory Cornwall than his own daughter did. Not that it seemed terribly difficult to outsmart Isabella in any particular category.

“Well,” Isabella said, standing up, “if that will be all, then I suppose our conversation is finished.”

“Actually, there is one more thing I was wondering about,” Marisol claimed.

“I will have Nadia get you the recipe for her tea on the way out,” Isabella responded dismissively, which evicted a chuckle from Marisol’s throat.

“No, no,” Marisol insisted. “I mean, yes, please, but that’s not what I was wondering. I was actually far more curious as to why you’re assisting three of the most wanted criminals in Elpis.”

There it was. Shara tensed up, ready to spring into action at a moment’s notice. She checked around the area for other minds she couldn’t read, or any hostile thoughts. There were a few other minds in range that she couldn’t decipher, though they were on different floors of the house and not getting any closer. Everything else was calm. Adgito, for her part, not-so-subtly scooted her chair a little further away from Marisol, whereas Darron did nothing. He had apparently long since zoned out of the conversation, and hadn’t even heard Marisol’s accusation.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Isabella said truthfully, although she wasn’t quite dumb enough to not suspect Shara’s crew given the context. “Who do you mean?”

“Well, the three people you walked into this room with, of course,” Marisol explained calmly. “Shara, of the Aletheians. Wanted mainly on suspicion of involvement with the Nuxvar massacre, although she’s managed to add far more charges onto that since. Darron, of the Bornssons. Wanted as an accessory to Shara’s crimes, but he’s also managed to rack up a few charges of his own in the meantime. Adgito… of undisclosed heritage. Poor thing got caught up in this whole mess, and ended up being strong-armed into helping these criminals. A problem that I’m sure we could work something out for, should she be cooperative.”

The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

“Wait, seriously?” Adgito asked, suddenly hopeful of returning to a saner life.

“Don’t trust her, Adgito!” Shara butted in, “The crimes she’s pushing on me aren’t real in the first place! Do you seriously think I’d help wipe out a whole town?”

“Oh, right,” Adgito said, standing up. Her brief trip into Shara’s mind had been a mixed bag of emotion, but Adgito was definitely certain that Shara wasn’t going to stand for something like genocide.

“Yeah, sorry lady,” she said, “You’re so full of crap it’s probably why your eyes are brown.”

Darron, at this point, noticed something important was happening and stood up as well. Marisol remained sitting, a puzzled and somewhat disappointed expression on her face.

“Adgito, dear, think about it,” she said, “If your friend didn’t help her family attack Nuxvar, why would she resist arrest? The truth would have come to light and we would have released her. Elpis only holds people responsible for their own actions, not those of their family’s.”

“Because neither me nor my family ever attacked in the first place!” Shara growled. “All of those charges are made up, so of course she can’t assume you’ll be honest with them! Elpis attacked my family unprovoked!”

Marisol briefly looked surprised, but that surprise quickly morphed into what seemed to be pure disgust, like Shara had been talking about slitting children’s throats.

“Oh, I see,” Marisol said coldly. “So after all that talk of ideals, all that posturing your family insisted on, the last Aletheian resorts to lying after all.”

“It’s not a lie!” Shara insisted. Posturing? This was their first conversation! Maybe she know Shara’s family? Marisol only looked a few years older than Shara.

“Of course it’s a lie!” Marisol roared, actually setting down her tea as she suddenly stood up. “You have no excuse! You, of all people, literally can’t be ignorant about this! And yet the one thing…” Marisol trailed off, huffing out a deep breath. Her face returned to its default blank state, and when she spoke again it was calm and level, like the outburst never happened.

“I suppose it doesn’t matter,” she said. “I am neither strong, nor fast, nor tough, nor a particularly powerful spellcaster. Considering how you plowed through an entire squad I could not arrest you if I tried. I expected you to have left town by now, so I did not… prepare accordingly.”

“Yeah, sorry to ruin your plans there,” Shara growled.

Marisol and Shara stared each other down for a while with cold expressions. Then, a smile slowly formed once again on Marisol’s lips. Titans, Shara wished she could read this woman’s mind.

“Shara…” Marisol muttered thoughtfully, “Shara, Shara, Shara. You are… nineteen years old right now, correct? And you lived in Borns for eleven years?”

“It’s extremely creepy to me that you know that,” Shara responded.

“Knowing things is my best skill,” Marisol said dismissively. “Anyway, I think I’ve come to a decision. When the main force catches up to me, I believe I shall inform them of your plans to head to Yidril.”

“...My plans to what now?”

“To head to Yidril,” Marisol repeated. “You know, the place your family destroyed eleven years ago? As I’m sure you’re aware, the ground there is still fertile and it was re-settled by new people shortly afterwards. No doubt you intend to destroy it again. Your plans for Hydronia were clearly a ruse, so I will inform the army that you are, in fact, going to Yidril. A detour that will place them another week behind someone who is actually going to Hydronia, or vice-versa. A clever ploy on your part, but you can’t fool me.”

“What are you–” Shara started, but Darron interrupted her.

“Ah, Yidril,” he deadpanned. “That place we’re going. Yup. Always wanted to go to Yidril.”

Oh. Now that Darron had figured it out, Shara got it too. Marisol was claiming, for whatever reason, that she planned to delay her own troops to let Shara escape. Which just… didn’t make any sense at all.

Shara had no real handle on this conversation, but Marisol was definitely very angry with her for a while there. It sounded like she believed that Shara’s family was guilty with just as much conviction as Shara believed they were innocent. Shara’s denial of their guilt had gotten her downright enraged. Yet here she was, suddenly heel-face turning on that entire opinion and offering help. It was obviously a ploy of some sort, but what?

“Well, I suppose that concludes my business here,” Marisol said, walking past Shara to the exit. “Thank you for your time, Miss Cornwall. I apologise again for my rudeness. If any of you would like to return with me to Terranburg and get this sorted out, by all means stick around for a week. Especially you, Adgito. Otherwise, I will inform my men of your intended departure to Yidril when they arrive.” She stopped halfway through the door, turning back to face the room. “Oh, and if you’re looking into Gregory Cornwall’s death, I suggest you check the basement. Ta-ta.”

And that was it. Marisol walked out of the room like she owned it, disappearing down the hall, her unreadable, staticky mind eventually leaving Shara’s perception range. Shara stood in stunned silence, trying to figure out what Marisol’s motives could be.

“Alright,” Adgito started, breaking the quiet, “Um. So who the hell was that?”

“What?” Isabella asked, startled. “I thought you knew her!”

“What? No!”

“But, but she acted like she knew you! She was way friendlier to you than everyone else!”

“I know! It was weird!” Adgito exclaimed, throwing her hands up in the air. “I’ve never seen her before in my life!”

“I don’t know who that was either,” Darron said. “It looked like she was some kind of military official, though. Shara?”

Darron’s question was twofold: did Shara know her, and could Shara read her? Shara answered both at once.

“Nope. Not one bit. I’ve… heard about her, from other people, but that’s it. If I recall correctly, someone in Terranburg said a lady with her name was an Intelligence Chief, so that could be her title.”

The one you said Gadiel Halcomb was thinking about? Darron thought. The one that identified you?

Shara nodded, almost imperceptibly.

Well, that’s very strange, because it seemed to me like she believed you could read her. Like when she said you “literally can’t” be ignorant. I think she expected you to know everything she knew.

That was very strange. So Elpis had some sort of mental-jamming capabilities, but they themselves didn’t even know about it? Shara supposed that would explain why the immunized people seemed so random, but it wouldn’t explain why it affected a rather disproportionate ninety-nine percent of the Elpis military. How could that not be deliberate? Maybe it was a bluff?

“W-well, um, should we go?” Isabella asked to the room at large. “To the basement, I mean?”

Huh? Oh, right. Marisol’s parting words.

“Yeah, I guess we don’t have any better leads,” Shara admitted. “If it turns out to be legit, well… great.”

And if it turned out to be a trap, she’d smash her way through it.

Locating the basement wasn’t terribly difficult, although to no one’s surprise Isabella admitted she’d never explored it to any significant degree. Her father had always kept the basement doors locked, and a quick interview with some servants revealed the keys to be in his personal study. Isabella fetched a servant for escort, and the five of them took a tour underneath the manor. It was mostly storage: racks, barrels, and refrigeration rooms to hold the various luxuries the Cornwalls indulged themselves in. The only notable aspect to the basement was that, the deeper they traveled, the more the basement smelled like flowers.

“Ah, that’s probably the incense room,” the servant explained. “The scent is dreadfully strong down there, but smell eventually wafts through the house, creating the pleasant background odor the we enjoy on the upper floors. Opening the room at the wrong time can release all the scent at once, however, and it takes ages to remove the resulting stench from the lower floors. Master Cornwall never authorized more than a few people to manage it.”

“Wow!” Adgito exclaimed, “That’s not remotely suspicious at all! I guess we can safely ignore it.”

“Yeah, could we see that now?” Shara asked.

“Erm, well, I’m not actually able to open the incense room for you…”

“It’s fine!” Isabella piped up, “I grabbed all the keys from papa’s room, so I’m sure one of them will work!”

None of them ended up working, so Shara got permission to kick the door down. Sure enough, an overwhelmingly strong floral scent exploded out from the room, attacking the group’s nostrils with extreme prejudice. Faces covered and eyes watering, they stormed into the room. Racks of incense burners were stacked predictably around the room, but nothing else immediately stood out as important. At least, not until Shara moved to the far end of the room, and felt a twinge of something she’d been on the lookout for since she got here.

Hunger. Somewhere below her, right at the edge of her detection range, was a vrochthízo. No... it was a lot of vrochthízo.

“Huh,” Shara began, coughing a bit as she inhaled the room’s thick air, “Well guys, ever since we started searching this dumb basement, I’ve been wondering if Marisol’s advice is legit or if she’s just leading us into a trap.”

“Yeah, and?” Adgito asked.

“I’m pretty sure it’s both,” Shara concluded.