Silent Noise (4)

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“Now then, shall we begin?”

Vreena commented from her position at the large round table now situated in the center of Emma’s living room. It was a bit surprising to see that they even had something so perfectly suited to the occasion but given the size of the house we were now in, it wasn’t too far-fetched.

There were five chairs at the table, sitting across from Vreena was the man we’d seen earlier today, Owen and on their left was Emma’s mother Beatrice, timidly sitting with both hands resting on her lap. The meeting that was about to convene here made the woman seem oddly out of place despite this being her own house.

“Sorry to keep you waiting, that last patient was in particularly bad shape.”

Julia walked up from behind me, now wiping away the droplets of sweat from her forehead.

“Hm? Since when did you get so close to Emma?” Stopping just ahead of us, she cast a mischievous look over her shoulder.

“.... Emma’s really fun to talk to so it just kind of happened.”

“Ah! Come to think of it I did catch you both sleeping in the hallway earlier....ehe-he....good for you Liam you’ve made your first friend.”

I hadn’t actually considered that fact until Julia brought it up just now.

“Emma...are we friends?”

“Friends.....Heh - Of course we are!” For the first time today, she’d donned that innocent childlike grin she was so accustomed to wearing. I wouldn’t say she’d completely adjusted to the current situation, but she was definitely doing better than before.

“Lady Julia, are you sure its a good idea to have those children here? We’re about to engage in a very serious discussion.” Owen spoke up, clearly perturbed by our presence here.

“I think it’s fine, I’m sure they won’t be interrupting us and we are using Emma’s house right now, it wouldn’t be right for us to dismiss her like that seeing as we’ve even got wounded troops occupying the spare rooms here.”

“Very well then.....Beatrice, I’m really sorry about intruding like this, I know you’re not quite back on your feet just yet.”

Apparently pleased with the answer he’d gotten from Julia; Owen offered that apology to the woman sitting on his left.

“You don’t need to apologize, I’m happy to help you mages in any way I can. Besides, just knowing that my son will survive the night is more than enough for me.”

“You have my thanks.”

Vreena lightly tapped her wooden cane onto the floor, drawing everyone’s attention back to the issue at hand. “Seems like you’re ready now Julia. Originally, Oliver should have been here right now but he’s still patrolling the forest, so I don’t think he’ll be coming”

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Instead of showing any sort of hesitance or even concern, Julia simply smiled upon hearing the news.

“I see. Let’s get started then.”

Julia took a seat at the head of the small gathering, she’d instructed me and Emma to come a bit closer, so we were now sitting on the blue semi-bedding construct known as a ‘sofa.’

“Now then, Captain, how about we start this off with your summary of the events that led up to this.”

“For the past week or so, people have been reporting sightings of the Basilisk that showed up a year ago and in the following days the sightings only kept increasing and the travelers moving in and out of the town were either going missing or getting hurt.”

“Owen, I’ve been wondering about this but, if it was that monster then why didn’t any of you reach out to my husband!? He’s been looking for that thing ever since it re-emerged a year ago, he would have definitely come to help you.” Julia spoke up in a somewhat flustered tone.

“We did reach out to him, unlike a year ago when he hadn’t been around at the time, Oliver had instantly agreed to join forces with us, but there was a problem. The information we were getting was contradicting itself, some of the reports said that the beast was nesting in a cave to the east of the forest, but the other reports said it was hiding in the swampy region up north. People who were traveling through both parts of the forest even had legitimate wounds to show, so we couldn’t just dismiss the entire thing as a hoax, and we couldn’t wait for backup from the capital either, since Basilisks tend to go on a feeding frenzy as soon as they finish hibernating, so we decided to split our forces in two.”

Owen remained steadfast in his speech patterns, perfectly capturing the attention of everyone here with nothing but the meticulous details he had to offer.

“Twenty-Five of us mages headed up north to investigate the swamps, and Oliver made his way to the cave in the East on his own. Whether by luck or by fate, we were the ones who’d ended up finding that monster, or should I say it found us. We were ambushed and our forces were decimated, the last time that thing came here it wasn’t that big or that strong so it must have been hibernating this whole time. If I’d have to guess, then right now it was getting close to B-Rank.”

“B-Rank!? Do monsters that strong even occupy this region?”

Beatrice spat those words in utter shock, the sudden revelation had undoubtedly caught her by surprise. “I can’t say for sure; this one might just be an irregular, but the case still stands, that thing is lurking out there and we need to deal with it, and fast.”

Owen sounded resolute in his conjecture, observing the meeting from here like this made it obvious that he was the only one here that was completely free from all traces of anxiety.

“I agree with Owen, but the problem is, how do we find it?” Vreena interjected, placing her burled fingers close to her mouth as she sunk deep into her own sea of swirling contemplations.

“That’s simple, Elder Vreena. We simply need to find what it’s after, monsters like that don’t just lurk around human settlements for no reason you know, it’s not like we’re the only things they eat, and this place doesn’t even have that many mages anyway. Which means.....”

“It must be after something, right Owen?”

“Precisely, lady Julia. Monsters like that are rarely motivated by anything other than satisfying their own palate, but I doubt the populace here could ever hope to meet that demand, we all know regular humans aren’t very appetizing to them. In that case, it must be after something else, something in the nearby area that possesses an enormous amount of mana.”

After Owen uttered those words, I was suddenly thrown off the rails of the conversation. Everyone gathered here began casting their vision towards Beatrice, and Emma’s expression had once again gone sour.

“Haah....so that’s how it is then....I had a vague feeling it might be something like that.”

Heaving a resigned sigh, the woman in question didn’t seem all that perturbed by the silent message that was now being conveyed.

“So it's after the rune then......”