“Ancestors…”
Alyssa knew death. She knew destruction on a grand scale. There wasn’t much to destroy beyond the Peaks, but she’d seen a titan’s magic take out chunks of the mountains, throw up enough snow to swallow an army, and shatter the ground. She’d seen hundreds die, had helped carry their bodies home. She’d attended so many Rites she couldn’t look at a bonfire without getting sick to her stomach. The consequences of war were as familiar to her as her red hair or her magic. She thought she was prepared. Thought she could handle it.
But as she looked over the decimated city, Alyssa felt her hardened resolve shake. It was different. The horrors of the north were strictly contained to the wasteland beyond the mountains. Whatever complaints she had about her birthplace, she’d always been comforted by the sight of its enormous walls. They represented safety and stability. No matter what she endured during a campaign, she always knew it was over once she stepped through those gates.
Now, Quest was her home and the war hadn’t stopped outside its walls. It had been waged in the streets. Rather than stupid piles of rocks, homes and livelihoods had been leveled. All the corpses belonged to people. Dumb, arrogant, short-sighted people that had stuffed their heads in the titan’s maw and dared it to bite down, but people nonetheless.
The hunters were the closest equivalent to soldiers the city had, as the guards were nothing but glorified handymen. She could accept them putting their lives on the line and forfeiting them. If only the damage had been contained to them. What truly horrified the ex-knight was the civilian casualties. The families that thought hiding in their homes would be enough to protect them. The oblivious who’d denied the possibility of war till the very end. The greedy who remained in search of opportunity in the crisis.
She couldn’t begin to estimate the death toll but it couldn’t be anything less than several hundred. Possibly thousands. That was death on the level of the worst campaigns in Victory’s long history.
There were two things that Alyssa was absolutely sure of as she surveyed the destruction from atop the city’s walls. The first was that what had happened to the city would have far-reaching consequences. The second was that no one except the king himself would have the daring to challenge Lourianne Tome again. Mayhap not even the crown.
“Blessed saviors,” Lane swore softly. He’d asked to accompany her when she told him she intended to check on the city. She didn’t know what his motives were, as there were a handful of reasons to want to escape the temporary camp, but she had no doubt his mind was entirely focused on the mess before him after seeing it. “What…how…”
“The refugees are saying there was some kind of purple monster behind it.” That’s what they were now. Refugees. The camp created by the Hall was meant to be a temporary measure, intended for a week at most. Now, with half of the city in ruins, Alyssa imagined people would be reluctant to leave their makeshift shelters, both because they had nowhere to go and were too afraid to step foot into Quest’s walls. On top of that, the sudden sickness had ravaged their supplies. Cynthia had to be pulling her hair out while running around trying to secure any surplus.
“You think it was summoning? Some kind of elemental?”
“It has to be.”
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“That can’t be. I mean, we’d know if something like that was possible. Right?”
“That’s the thing. I don’t think it’s supposed to be possible. Summoning is…blessed asses, I’m not an expert, but I know it has to do with give and take. There may be things out there that can do…that.” She weakly gestured at the rubble. “But they ask for an equal price. Or an unequal price. I can’t imagine what someone would have to offer to something capable of doing this. It shouldn’t be something anyone can pay.”
“What are we supposed to do?”
She scoffed, resisting the urge to throw the question right back at him. It wasn’t wrong for him to look to her for answers. His little crush aside, she was his boss and his mentor. She wished she had someone to throw her questions at. Perhaps she would unload her worries onto Dunwayne or her friends later. But right now, she was the one with the highest authority.
“We search the wreckage for survivors. If they’re breathing, we do our best to keep them that way. If they aren’t, we get the bodies back to their families.” That part she was familiar with, as it was no different from returning from a campaign. “After that…I guess we clear the rubble and rebuild.”
“That’s going to take a lot of magic. Or even more manpower. Which makes a whole hell of a lot of gold.”
“The city has money. Saints know that ink-pushing lord taxes everything that goes through the gates, either way. I think the estate is fine. The destruction seems focused on the south of the city.”
“Do you think they did that on purpose?”
“Of course. Lou isn’t…eh. There’re enough brains in that house that I doubt they’d make such a stupid mistake as angering the Hall for no reason.” Before, she would have said it was because they didn’t want to bite off more than they could chew. Now, she was overwhelmingly relieved they didn’t want the extra bother. “If for no other reason than to have someone else clean up their mess.” She doubted very much that the Tome house would have anything to do with the recovery efforts.
“Okay. We can fix this. It’ll take a while and it’ll be hard…” Lane swallowed. “But that’s not the problem. My question is…what’s there to stop them from doing this again?”
“You want the answer the king is going to give, the answer the city is going to give, or the real answer?”
“…why are there three?”
She let out a weak huff of a laugh as she raised a finger. “The king’s answer is going to be a show of force. Royal knights. The army. Something large and noisy. The crown has been looking for a good reason to get a hand around Quest for a long time. He’s not going to let such a perfect opportunity go.”
She raised a second finger. “The city’s answer is going to be gold. The guilds have been dealt a heavy blow, but they’ve been an institution in this city for too long. Unless they’re stomped out to the last man and woman, they’ll run this city. And the first thing they’re going to do is reassure everyone that a monster isn’t going to destroy what’s left of the city. They’ll do what they should have done in the first place and give the big bully from the north their gold. If they pay up, Lou has no reason to attack and everyone can focus on getting their lives back on track.”
“That sounds pretty logical to me,” Lane mused. “Why isn’t that the real answer?”
“Because the real answer is that no one in this city, saints, maybe in this kingdom, can do fuck all to guarantee anything. We don’t know if Lou is done. If she was angry enough to do this, she’s angry enough to fuck with everyone by letting them think it’s over before going on another rampage. The truth is, we’re all going to be sleeping with one eye open and tightly clenched bladders until someone does something to convince that woman to get the hell out of the area.”
“That’s…fuck.”
Alyssa peeked at him. Something about the way he gazed at the city gave the impression of being lost. An emotion she could relate to. They were all lost, caught in the storm of Lou’s temper. Hopefully, for all their sakes, the storm had passed.
If not…Alyssa left the north to escape war. She was a bit too old to be starting again but if the only options were finding a quiet corner of the kingdom to disappear to or death, she’d pack her bags. She might do it anyway. Quest wasn’t going to be a habitable place for the foreseeable future.
Maybe it wouldn’t be fit for decent living ever again.