Wind rushed around me as I sprinted through Gelvurt, only stopping at times to keep some of the unsuspecting guards or townspeople from panicking at my haste. Most had gotten used to the sight of my techniques, thankfully.

Dancing across the rooftops of Gelvurt, my sight sharpened as I channeled Vitae through them, looking throughout the town to search for places that my most active of children would have hid.

Daka was a straightforward girl. She would have hidden somewhere conventional, if not beyond the limitations of a normal child.

I landed near the outskirts of Gelvurt, bending down as my Bloodhound Scourger Technique blossomed, my senses fading as the scents of the world flared around me.

Hundreds of people had come this way, but finding the strong scent of my daughter was an easy task. Opening my eyes and letting the technique fade, I stroked my chin, “She’s probably hiding in the forest somewhere.”

Following her scent, activating my technique regularly to keep on track, I eventually came to the end of the trail, but with no Daka to be seen.

“Her scent ends here.” I looked around, in the middle of a meadow. It was a familiar one, one that Daka and I sometimes trained in, so there were older scents of ours intermingled together here.

Sharpening my sight with Vitae, I examined the trees, trying to see any movement, but…I could not see her anywhere amongst them.

Walking out into the center of the meadow, I kept my eyes up, “Perhaps she isn’t here? Did Daka manage to mask her scent? She’s certainly seen how I track people in the past.”

I continued to walk through the meadow until my foot stepped onto soft earth, my foot plunging an inch or two into the overturned soil.

I looked down, “That’s interesting.”

Sticking out from the grassy landscape, there was a sizable area where the ground had been displaced. I stared at it for a moment, before remembering where I’d seen this before.

The Burrowing Mole Technique, one of Daka’s favorites.

Kneeling down, I felt for the barest of remnants of Vitae within the soil and found what I was looking for. Shaking my head, I readied my own Vitae, “Daka, my little warrior, you’re definitely taking a bath after this.”

Letting the Vitae vibrate through my body, focused on my hands and feet, I whispered, “Burrowing Mole Technique.”

Taking a deep breath, I dove in, beginning to dig through the ground myself.

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Following Daka’s trail underground was not as easy as it was above ground. Her scent was still masked and all I had to go off of was whether the soil I had dug through felt recently disturbed.

A few minutes later, however, I felt something shift in the earth ahead of me. A rumble of earth that seemed to start as I neared. I began to dig towards it, feeling vindicated as the shifting suddenly became even more active and moving away from me.

Picking up my speed, I ripped through earth towards my daughter. She dodged me a few times, a bit more experienced in traversing underground, but I eventually snapped my hand out towards her, reaching through the soil.

With a surprised squeak that I could hear through the dirt between us, I grabbed onto her ankle.

I heard a dull scream of surprise through the dirt as I began to head towards the surface, dragging my daughter out with me in an eruption of soil. Both of us were covered in earth and loam.

“Phhbt!” Daka hung upside down, swinging in the air. Her ankle was still firmly in my grip as she spit out lumps of dirt onto the ground, “Daaad! I swallowed some!”

I playfully shook her a little bit, specks of dirt falling from her clothes and hair, “Did it taste good?”

“Zao’s cooking is better,” She grinned at me, before she easily flipped to her feet as I dropped her. She shook her hair, sending even more dirt flying through the air.

I took the time to shake the dirt off of my own clothing, knocking remnants of turf from my hair, “The maids are going to be cross with us.”

“Not as cross as Natakia.” Daka looked at the hole we had left in the meadow.

I rubbed her head, looking down at the hole as well, “Were you really going to stay down there for 30 minutes? I know you’ve been working on your breathing, but…”

She looked up at me, smiling toothily, “I’m up to 45 minutes!”

My children were truly spectacular.

“That’s incredible, Daka.” I kneeled and gave her a big hug before standing up, “I need to go find your siblings now.”

“Can I help?” Daka danced on her toes, ready to rush out and find her siblings for me at the drop of a hat.

I gave her a smile, before making a show of sniffing her, “How about you go take a bath instead, my little warrior?”

Her pout was adorable, but I held strong.

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Still dirty from my search for Daka, I wandered into the first place I’d expect Natakia to head to in order to hide. I still had 19 minutes from the looks of my hourglass.

“Welcome to Irelia’s Threads, my Lord.” The girl behind the desk, I remembered her name was Eris, was a staple of the dress shop. Natakia always enjoyed Irelia’s needlework, so she’d built a rapport with the store owner.

I smiled, “Yes, thank you, Eris. Have you seen Natakia around lately?”

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“I’m sorry, my Lord,” Eris shook her head, “She hasn’t come by lately, although I did hear she was in a rush from a customer earlier. I believe they saw her heading towards Orion’s general store?”

She was a decent liar, of course. A lie, followed by a bit of misdirection. Unfortunately, she was a bit too eager to send me elsewhere.

I nodded, “Could I perhaps check in the back?”

The girl flushed, looking caught, “Ah, well, perhaps? Irelia doesn’t really...”

Moving before she could begin to really put up a token resistance, I stepped into the back hallways of the dress shop, feeling my time ticking with every step taken.

“Natakia? My desert flower?” I opened up the doors as I passed by them, until I came to the dressing room. “Natakia?”

There was a soft sigh behind the door, “Come in, Dad.”

Smiling, I opened up the door, revealing Natakia taking a sullen sip of tea from a nice porcelain teacup of Irelia’s collection. The room had a large full body mirror set up, but my daughter sat a distance away from it in a comfy chair.

“I see you got comfortable,” I came over to kneel next to her.

Looking away towards the wall, Natakia took another sip of her tea, “I thought Eris would be a better liar. I guess I should have been more careful.”

“She’s not quite as experienced as you, Doh,” I gently took the teacup and plate from her and put it aside.

My ‘daughter’ nodded, before she paused, “Uh, what was that, Dad?”

I pointed over to the mirror, “When Natakia’s disappointed in herself, she looks towards the closest mirror, not the wall.”

‘Natakia’ blinked, before she frowned, “That can’t be healthy, you know? I’m worried Macy’s going to be spending half of her time as a shapeshifting mirror for the girl when she grows up.”

The concern was legitimate, my daughter certainly well-acquainted with vanity, but I was suitably unimpressed by my child's double.

“And yet, you still took her form to help her hide?” I’d considered the idea, Natakia and Doh were certainly close, no matter what my friend had to say about my daughter's self-possessed interests.

She blushed, gesticulating with her arms wildly, “She’s persuasive, ok!? Besides, she knew I liked trying to get one over on you sometimes.”

I chuckled, shaking my head, “Get back to the keep, Doh. I need to go find my daughter.”

As she grumbled, taking one last gulp of her tea and stomping off with her head held high, I began my search anew. Unsuccessful as it was, the trickery had been time consuming.

I only had 16 minutes now.

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“I know she’s here, Richard.” I said, coming up to the bar of Gelvurt’s old tavern. I’d rushed around the town, talking to Orion and anyone I’d thought I could trust information from.

A few misleading accomplices were understandable, but I was beginning to wonder how Natakia had managed to bribe everyone so quickly to work with her. Lydia would have loved how capable her daughter was at knowing how people ticked.

Richard grunted, “Took you long enough. Charlotte got talked into keeping her company in the back until your time ran out.”

Curiosity pushed at me, “And how exactly did she convince your wife?”

He shrugged, “She congratulated her about our wedding anniversary next week. Frankly, I’m not even sure how she knew about it, but she certainly bought my silence with the reminder.”

I nodded, “My daughter must have talked to your wife about it before.”

Not wasting any more time, down to my last 9 minutes for this little game according to my hourglass, I wandered into the back and found my daughter frowning as I came in.

“It’s not fair,” Natakia huffed. She’d never been fond of the smell of this old tavern, the last place I’d ever look for her if Orion hadn’t mentioned it as an option. “I tried to get Daka and Dalton to work with me, but she ran off and Dalton…”

I gave her a hug, “You did wonderful, Natakia. Now, I need to go find your brother.”

With how difficult Natakia had made finding her, I only had 8 minutes left to find him.

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Dashing across Gelvurt, I thought quickly about Dalton’s tactics. I almost considered that he would pursue Natakia’s route, convincing others to aid him, but he wasn’t quite the social spirit that his sister was.

No, he was clever and thought outside of the box. I’d told my children to stay around Gelvurt for the game, but I had never outlined what those words truly meant.

In hindsight, I could see Dalton salivating over the vagueness of that rule.

I started back at the keep, catching his scent with my technique, before beginning to head in his direction as quickly as I could. Dalton was certainly the stealthiest of my children, but purely in a conventional way.

He had never trained much with Daka and I, which would always be his choice.

And then, having followed his trail far beyond the line I would have said ‘around Gelvurt’ ends, the trail suddenly split. Two distinct scents that were both Dalton’s and yet went entirely different ways.

“Interesting.” I followed one of the trails, before it also split again, this time into three separate scents. Now truly taken aback, I looked around, “Dalton, how did you manage this?”

Putting my son’s hidden skills aside, I let my Vitae begin to vibrate. I only had 5 minutes left before Dalton would win this game.

It was time to make this a little more difficult for my clever child. Perhaps I could draw out more of what he'd been hiding?