This whole situation was a mess.

This was not what she had been led to expect. Where was the plush, red carpet? Where were the jellies and feasts? A cold, hungry, scared city was not the threat that Guan Po Daiyu had been told she was going to quell.

Things had become confusing quickly in the territory of Guan. The chaos of the attack on the Jiaoduo was like a bad memory but one carried upon every scornful look and silenced conversation. She had leapt at the opportunity when her uncle had suggested it. Getting away from just about every aspect of her life had sounded ideal.

Ostensibly she had been sent to search for her father, her cousin and any other information regarding the destruction of the Guan vault. She had embellished the story to the marshall but the foolish demon had decided not to do as he should have. Letting Ah Dan speak was the problem. That boy causes nothing but chaos.

Frigid air and the final trickle of snow met Po Daiyu as she left the dull looking lump of rock which served as Allusia’s military command quarters. She looked back at the building with disdain as she made her way down the large, busy street. With each step, she felt herself unsheathe a little, the mana within sliding forth. People stepped aside, as they always did. Whether they could see the snowflakes being torn apart or not, even the untrained could see that she was dangerous.

Good. She needed to remind herself of that power. Practitioners are differentiated in the Guan lands because that is all they know, yet here there are strange magics and abilities that don’t fit the same mould. Seeing that her power was still just as strong, despite the differences, was a comfort. Those had been few and far between for Po Daiyu.

Though she had never been to Allusia before this trip, she knew where she was heading. The avenues and pathways between buildings were disjointed and unpredictable. One alley might take you down an incline and expose a whole neighbourhood of paths, another path a road over might instead take you up to a more clear vantage point. It was one of these paths which Po Daiyu was seeking now, her legs tense as she strode along.

The church of the empty god is pervasive to the entirety of Jaia and Allusia is no different. Stood in immaculate condition, detached and alone in the crowded city, was a pristine chapel to the empty god. While it stung to follow an order from her brother of all people, it was he who had made the connection with the priest during his time in the Shin capital.

Brother Oblax Claré was exactly the type of man that her brother would have made allies with, Po Daiyu thought as she took a deep breath before entering the building. She had never cared about religion but she knew her prayers and quite liked the iconography that the church used. The chapel was gorgeous, deep brown wood which would have been imported from the forests of Guan. She could tell, it looked like home.

“Ah, welcome. She finally returns.” Speaking to no one in particular, Oblax Claré effused in an effort to annoy her. It worked. “Did you find Fa Lian?”

“Not quite,” she answered, kicking a pew aside to make it easier for her to move down the aisle, “however I did find something interesting. Tell my brother that I’ll be here a while longer.”

“What did you find, Lady Guan?” Even the way he said her name infuriated her. While Oblax may be part of her brother’s scheming, and somehow positioned themselves to enact the church’s will, he was still a subordinate in all forms that mattered. His attitude could not worsen her mood, so she ignored him completely.

“Do as you’re told.” She did not spare him another look or another word. She had not come to this chapel for him, for the feeling of home (which was now causing her skin to itch) nor did she come for religious enlightenment.

She came to enter the secret room beneath the church. She needed to confirm it with her own eyes, even though she had done so earlier that day. Making her way down the hidden, unlit and unwelcomingly steep stairs cut into the stone of the church floor, Po Daiyu continued downwards. The stairwell, if you could even call it that, was more ancient than the church above and now known only to those connected to the church itself.

At the end of the stairs came a small hallway. She was deep under Allusia now, in the labyrinth proper. The hall ended in a large door, covered in glyphs and spellcraft which had been wrought in the past few days. She found the intricate series of wards still intact. Content to trust her eyes, she left the wards alone and slid open the viewing slot of the door.

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There it sat.

Clutched in the nearly desiccated body of Guan Yo Shen was a brand new soul relic. It could not be removed by force, even as weak as he was Yo Shen could destroy any who tried to battle him. The spear afforded him that strength. Po Daiyu wanted that for herself. She needed it.

And she had just had an idea how to finally remove his grip on it.

———————————————————

Yurie sat and watched as the fancy lady walked off in a huff, never once stopping her consistent chewing of the sweetroll in her hand. The thing was basically a loaf of bread soaked in honey, and it was taking some effort to get all of it down.

The paths had led her here though, so she managed it.

It had been a strange few weeks for Yurie. Ever since she got on the boat, her paths dried up. The whole time she was there, Yurie could only use her natural wits, rather than her magical ones. It had been an experience, for certain, but not one she’d be very happy to repeat. Luckily, since arriving in the docks, her sight had returned.

She had started following the golden footsteps when she saw them. At first, she had wandered the port town their ship had landed in for a while until someone noticed she wasn’t doing any of the empty god stuff and told her to get lost. That was fine with her, they were all just gathering around and shouting mostly, sometimes with armour and sometimes without.

Not really her normal scene. No, the footsteps placed her right on the back of a wagon. That wagon just so happened to be bound for a connecting town between the port and Allusia itself. While no travellers were being allowed to head to Allusia from that direction, the guards seemed to get confused out of nowhere and let their small group pass. The others hadn’t asked too many questions and Yurie herself just knew it was her luck coming in when she needed it.

After reaching Allusia, she had fell backwards into the job of a guard. There were any number of reasons why Yurie could have been turned down but it turns out when you say yes to pretty much everything, people will look past anything.

Almost anything.

“Sinner.” A man said, spitting on her as he passed. Yurie looked down at her shoe and saw a flash of red, which she decided to follow. Her foot planted right on the red footstep in her vision and she knew what came next. With the leverage gained from holding onto the pole of the bakery she was no longer interested in, Yurie swung the foot with the filthy man’s saliva on it right into the back of his head. An acrobatic kick, Yurie cleared the ground with her own momentum for a moment before landing back ready to throw another blow.

She didn’t need to, her first had been enough. A stunned silence seemed to cover the crowd around her. Throwing her shoulders into a grand shrug, Yurie laughed amongst the quiet and said “These steel-toed boots really work!” A quick, fast combination of things occurred in the crowd at once and the most natural course of events happened.

Everyone went about their day.

This was Yurie’s only saving grace usually. Most people didn’t want to interact with the people around them. This lovely unconscious man was expecting Yurie to be the same but clad in the colours of the local guard or militia or whatever they were afforded a level of respect that Yurie normally couldn’t take advantage of.

Still, people were staring. She decided that it was time to move on. With a face like her’s, staying anonymous was basically impossible. She propped the man up in a place to one side, leaving him slurring his words at her but otherwise seeming okay. The baker had watched the whole thing with a mouth agape but shut it when Yurie walked by.

It was a shame she had done that. It might cost her the job she had managed to get. It wouldn’t be the first time her temper did that but sometimes she just saw red and had to jump on it. She didn’t blame herself for this, it was just how it was. As a punishment, Yurie did not follow the golden footprints this time. They seemed to be leading to the barracks no matter where she went, but when she got inside they vanished. It seemed as though she just needed to be around there at all times, but she couldn’t handle sitting still for that long. Instead of the gold, Yurie followed the green. Greens and blues meant peace in Yurie’s vision. Peace seemed like a sensible choice, right now.

Sometimes the footprints went on for hours, and Yurie often gave up on a path if it never seemed to be finding its way. Fortunately, her path this time was a short one. She was surprised she had never seen this place before, but then she supposed that she was often just looking at the ground. She would have to try and stop that. The park she had walked to was a construct of magic. Nothing too impressive but it would require maintenance by a plant grower wizard. “Is it a… drod? A dood?”

“Do you mean a druid?” Asked a girl’s voice. Yurie realised she had stumbled into a lover’s picnic, one which her magic had said would lead to some peace for her. She shrugged, both to the girl and to herself. The girl was smaller than Yurie, with twin buns on her head and a studious look about her, partially helped by the book in her hands.

“Maybe?” She answered, ready to make some new friends. “Do druids do tree magic?” The girl’s book was open to a confusing looking page and the boy was licking away sugar from his hands.

“I think so?” The girl’s answer wasn’t convincing, and Yurie was going to keep calling them doods in her head until she heard someone else say it. “There’s all kinds of magic in the world, isn’t there?”

“Uh… I suppose.” Yurie was a little off guard. There was no hint of recognition in either the girl or the boy’s face towards her scars. The boy was clearly finding them hard to look at, but not in the same disgusted way that most tended to. She shifted her weight from foot to foot, having a rare moment of awkwardness and uncertainty. “I’m Yurie, by the way.”

“Nice to meet you, Yurie. My name’s Xiaomei and this is Hyun Soon.” The girl smiled brightly and the boy waved, grunting instead of speaking due to a mouth full of sausage roll. “Maybe you could help us with something?”

As though light decided to change how it worked, the whole world seemed to change colour. All at once, every single pathway that Yurie could see was a brilliant gold. There was no avoiding excitement now that she had started this conversation, apparently. Shaking her head a little at being tricked by her own magic, Yurie said that she would of course help with absolutely anything.

Then the three teens planned a ridiculously risky heist.