Red rode through waves of wind with increasing familiarity. At first, the feeling of letting an external force dictate your movement was alarming to him. Inside the house, the steps were small, but in the open air, he felt like it was possible to ride a current for over a hundred meters at a time. At times, it took him all of five seconds before he touched the ground again. He even felt somewhat compelled to see how far he could float, as curiosity encroached on him.
Yet he reined such stray thoughts quickly. It was no time for experimentation, and he reminded himself the lack of control was relative. Sure, once he stepped into a wind current, his path was set, but he was the one who needed to pick the right gale and also the one who could step off of it any time. All he needed to do was make the right choices and keep aware of his surroundings, and in that way, he could derive the right path and soar to any place he wanted.
Such deliberate choices made his trip slower, but safer from detection.
The city night of Carlhanne was far more active than what Red was used to. Whether it was night patrols or people drinking and partying far into the night, there were people everywhere, and it was harder to sneak around. Thankfully, in this rich neighborhood he lived in, few people hung around the rooftops, and with his crimson sense, he avoided the ones that did.
This was to change soon, though, as he approached the suburbs. Here, houses were built on top of each other haphazardly, forming layers of interconnected buildings and creating a part of the city that couldn’t be seen from the ground. Or from the outside either, for that matter.
This meant that even the rooftops were alight with activity. Yet, there were fewer guards and Lesser Ring Realm Cultivators in this part of the city, not to mention the labyrinth of stone and wooden buildings could provide with cover for sneaking around.
He landed on a rooftop at the edge of the suburbs, letting the energy of his Gale Drift disperse. Then, he turned his attention to his Spiritual Sea.
‘About sixty percent left.’
Just on this little over ten-minute trip, he had already spent almost half of his energy on this movement technique. There were, of course, a lot of wasted movements of his part, not to mention he was still just an early Lesser Ring Realm cultivator, but this expenditure wasn’t small. This Gale Drift didn’t prioritize sustained action though, so perhaps he shouldn’t be surprise.
He was sure as he got more proficient with the technique, the amount of energy he would need to use would be far lower.
“You’re going on foot?” Aurelia’s disembodied voice asked.
Red nodded. ”I need enough energy for the return trip and in case of accidents.”
“Gods, I forget how pitiful you rogue cultivators are. Even an early Lesser Ring Cultivator at my sect could keep up that technique for over an hour!”
The youth ignored her comments and made his way into the suburbs. He chose to sneak through the upper-levels, of course, since even if there were plenty of people there, there would be far more on the ground level.
This next leg of his journey wasn’t too difficult. Although he wasn’t familiar with the paths, there were only mortals in his way, and none of them were sensitive enough to detect his presence. He climbed over buildings, jumped over shoddy bridges, and even sneaked through houses at times. Whenever he found a dense concentration of people or a strong cultivator, he made his way around them patiently.
No one spotted him. Yet, his deliberate route and lack of use of the movement technique made this part of his journey take almost an hour. The difference was night and day, even though Red moved around the same distance.
‘I need to focus on accumulating more energy next time.’
Now that he knew the benefits of a movement technique, how could he settle for any less?
Still, he reached his destination all the same. The suburbs were full of inns and taverns, and at first Red was worried about how he would find the exact one he was looking for. Thankfully, though, these places had their name written in plaques at their front, and the one he was looking for just happened to be a particularly popular one.
‘There it is.’
Waking Horse Tavern. Red read it from atop a rooftop across from the building.
It was a large for the cramped the suburbs, being three entire stories tall and as wide as three houses in the neighborhood. The first two stories were where the customers were being served, while the third seemed to be where the bedrooms could be found. The whole place had a run-down feeling to it, being built mostly out of wood and decorated with furniture and ornaments that had seen better days.
Yet, judging by the amount of customers, this wasn’t a deterrent. The place was almost full to the brim as peasants occupied these long tables set in rows, drinking from tankards and speaking obscenities to each other. It was about what one could expect from a tavern, and nothing Red wasn’t used to.
With a rough outline of the place figure out, he focused on the crimson sense and started to inspect the customers.
‘Mostly peasants. Few practitioners, most of which have perhaps opened a few veins at most. No Lesser Ring Realm cultivators.’
This was good news for him, but Red wasn’t immediately relieved. The Empire and the Golden Hand could use normal mortals as spies as well, so it was hard to pass judgement from just their fluctuations. Right now, his best option was to find the girl and keep an eye on her.
There were almost fifty people in the tavern and plenty of women, so Red assumed it would take some time to find Yrsa. Yet, no sooner did he start to inspect these fluctuations more closely that he felt something odd.
He frowned.
‘… What is this?’
A fluctuation, belonging to a girl. At first, he assumed it was an older woman, but upon closer inspection, he found that not to be quite right. Her signals seemed to move at an irregular rhythm, something Red first misconstrued as advanced age, but now understood were signs of irregularities in their body.
In other words, these were the signs of illness.
Red never quite experienced such a weird fluctuation. Most of the time, people’s fluctuations moved in his crimson sense at a constant rhythm, which allowed him to discern information about them. When that didn’t happen, it meant something was physically wrong with them.
The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.
Illness and old-age were often the principal causes of these irregular rhythms, and both of them were often correlated. This girl’s fluctuation, though, was so erratic that Red started to wonder how she was even alive in the first place.
‘Is it really her, though?’
To be safe, he examined all the other women in the tavern. A few of them seemed to match the age he was told Yrsa had, but none of them displayed irregular fluctuations.
Red was now almost sure he had the right woman, but he needed to get a better view of the tavern to confirm.
After making sure the path was clear, he jumped over to the building right next to the tavern. This allowed him to have a clearer glimpse into the establishment and hear their conversations better.
He focused on the direction of that weird fluctuation first, which was on the second floor, and his suspicions were immediately confirmed. A pale girl, dark hair, brown eyes, freckled face, maid clothing, and a sickly complexion that would otherwise form the appearance of a lively and graceful young woman. On top of that, there was a strange sense of familiarity as Red peered into that worried expression of hers as she carried around a tray full of drinks.
‘She looks like him.’
“Yrsa! Yrsa!” Another older woman approached the girl. “What are you doing?! There are more orders on the first floor!”
The young woman seemed flustered as she looked around. “I-I haven’t finished here yet-”
“Here, just give it to me! Go help Tulley on the first floor! People are tired of waiting!” The woman grabbed the tray out of her hands and pushed her in the direction of the stairs.
Yrsa seemed unsure at first, but under the woman’s prompting, she nodded in a hurry. “Y-Yes, ma’am!”
She started to walk over towards the stairs. Her stride, however, seemed skewed, and she seemed to lose her balance with each step forward. No one in the bar seemed to notice it, too engrossed in their conversations and work.
No one, other than Red, that is.
‘Is she…?‘
As if to answer his question, Yrsa finally reached the stairs. Then, as soon as she took her first step, her legs seemed to give beneath her and was sent tumbling down.
“Ahhh!”
Her scream and the subsequent crashing sounds echoed above all the conversation in the building. She rolled all the way down the stairs, bellowing in pain until she finally fell to the bottom floor on her back.
Suddenly, all the conversation and laughter in the tavern died down as everyone’s attention turned to the girl. She was moaning in pain, but was still trying her best to get up. The expression that greeted everyone was a heavily bleeding nose and tears streaming down her face.
“T-Tulley…” She said through gritted teeth. “W-Where ish the order…?”
A bald and heavy-set man sitting behind a counter looked at her with an aghast expression.
“Yrsa!”
He ran over to her, helping her to her feet.
He then looked over at another barmaid nearby. “Quick, come help me!”
With their help, they brought Yrsa up towards the third floor. It took a while, but the conversation in the bar seemed to resume like nothing ever happened.
Red was watching this all through the window with a frown. He had noticed that her fluctuation became even more unstable in that short period.
“Her disease is flaring up.” he said.
“Do you figure she has no more medication?” Aurelia asked.
The youth didn’t know, but he decided to check. He climbed further up the neighboring building, up to its roof, where he could get a clear view into the third floor. The windows were covered by curtains, but Red was able to see the sillhouettes behind them and hear their conversation.
“What happened with you?” The voice of the man named Tulley asked.
Yrsa responded with a weak voice. “I-I… I don’t know, I just suddenly felt weak and…”
“Damn it, get another one of those pills!”
“A-Another? B-But I took one just last week…”
“What does it matter? Would you rather die, stupid girls?!”
Yrsa fell silent at this.
Red couldn’t see what was happening behind the curtain, but a few minutes later, he felt her fluctuation somewhat stabilize. This, in turn, made him even more curious.
‘What kind of pill exactly is she taking?’
“Has she broken anything?” Tulley asked.
“Her nose seems to be broken.” The voice of the madam from earlier said. “Other than that, just bruises.”
“That’s for the better. Go to sleep, girl. We’ll manage the tavern.” The owner of the tavern said.
“B-But I…”
“Just go to sleep! What use do I have for you dead?”
Yrsa fell silent once again, offering no protest. Soon enough, she was left alone in the room as they turned off the lantern. Red, however, was able to hear the conversation between this Tulley and whom he assumed was his wife just outside.
“She’s getting worse.” The woman said. “Nothing like this has happened in the past… At least not this often.”
“I… I know.” The man said with a worried voice. “There’s not much we can do other than keep giving her medicine, though.”
“Tulley, I know you don’t like to talk about it, but have you considered that she might be…”
“We’ll keep caring for her as long as we can. There’s nothing else to be concerned about.”
“You always say that, but how can we keep paying for her medicine when it’s not even work-”
“Enough, woman!” The man cut her off. “I won’t have this discussion again.”
They both fell silent, and the last thing Red heard were the man’s angry footsteps down the stairs. The woman followed him a bit later, and soon enough Yrsa was the only one left in the third floor.
Red was left wondering about what he heard. Wasn’t Rimold the one who had been paying for her medicine? Did his money already run out?
‘Not to mention… Her situation is worsening?’
Right when Rimold was no longer able to send them money for the medicine, of all things. It was fortunate that Red didn’t try to delay his visit to this place any further.
He waited for a few hours as he observed the tavern. Movement started to die down, and eventually the owner called for closing time. Another hour passed by as they started cleaning and organizing things in the now empty tavern, before Tulley, his wife, and a couple of other girls all went to sleep in their bedrooms on the third floor.
Red then waited one more hour to make sure all of them were asleep before he moved. He jumped onto the side of the tavern, grabbing onto the eave of Yrsa’s window. It was locked from the inside, but this was not an issue to the youth.
He made a gesture with his hands, and a small gust of wind entered through the slit in the window and pushed the latch up without making even a bit of noise. With his way open, Red entered the girl’s room like a ghost as he parted the curtains.
She was sleeping under covers on the bed by the side of the door. Although she seemed to be moaning in pain under her breath, her sickly complexion had clearly improved since she took her medicine.
The first thing Red then did was look for the bottle of medicines. Although he didn’t see where the man kept it, there were only a few drawers in the rather empty room, so he had no problem finding it. They were white pills kept in a glass bottle, and Red counted 12 of them left.
He could feel the slight Spiritual energy emitting from them. These couldn’t even be called proper Spiritual Medine, but the youth couldn’t judge their effectiveness from that alone. Without hesitation, he picked out one of them and put in his pouch before returning the bottle to its place.
He didn’t have a proper replacement to ensure no one discovered the missing pill, and even if he did, it would be unwise to place some false medicine in there in case the girl fell ill again. Red could only hope that at least for now, no one would notice it.
Once this was done, he approached the woman in her bed. Then, he touched his moonstone core in his pouch.
“Can you inspect her?” he asked through his consciousness.
“I can’t see anything from the outside.” Aurelia said. “You need to touch her with the core for me to do a more thorough inspection.”
Red frowned at this. “Is that wise?”
“What, you don’t trust me?”
“Couldn’t she be infected by the moonstone energy?”
Even if the Moon being was still dead silent, it was always a possibility that it would come back at any time.
“You don’t need to worry.” Aurelia said. “I’m controlling the energy, so I can assure you I won’t let any of it remain in her body.“
“Fine.” Red nodded.
He couldn’t find a reason to mistrust Aurelia’s words right now after all they had been through, so he decided to do as she said. Red picked out the core and moved it closer to Yrsa.
Thankfully the young woman had left one of her hands outside of her cover, so Red had an easy target. With as small of movements as possible, he touched the core over the back of her hand, barely making contact in fear of awakening her.
As soon as he did that, though, something happened. Red’s crimson sense detected it first, but it was too late for him to react.
Yrsa’s eyes shot open in confusion, and in less than a second she seemed to be fully awake. Looking around in confusion, her gaze was quickly drawn to the masked figure looming over her.
For a second, their gaze locked and neither of them knew how to react.
Then, Yrsa face twisted in terror and she made to scream.