Instead of immediately leaving the store, Jean beckoned for Roth to follow him behind the counter.

“Come, we’ll grab a few pieces of food to snack on as we search. We must find the Lord’s offenders, and it may take hours.”

Roth tensed a bit but still followed the baker back behind the counter. The walls were covered in cabinets of various sizes, and there were two large ovens off to one side. On one countertop, Roth could see what looked like the light dusting of flour left behind after making bread.

In one corner of the room, there was a huge pile of hard tack. It was stacked columns of wooden crates and packed so tightly together that there was nearly no space in between the rows.

“This much should last us the winter, with the grace of Lord Enthenglem.”

Instead of reaching for a piece of hard tack, the baker instead pulled open one of the cabinets next to the stacks of tough bread.

“Here, crackers. I made a few, just for occasions like this.”

Jean handed Roth a small handful of crisp, buttery wafers. Just with a single glance, the young man could tell that it would taste endlessly better than the hard tack.

Is this baker secretly still making good food just for himself? Maybe he isn’t as devoted to this Lord Enthenglem as he seems…

“Come now, let us search for the thieves of the night.”

Jean Farsue led Roth back outside, and they began heading for the eastern street. Jean wasted no time starting up some small talk as they walked.

“So, a cartographer. A master of maps. It is quite an impressive profession. Have you done much mapping of the sea?”

Roth coughed into his arm.

“Ehm… not really. I made some maps of the previous town I lived in and some of the other places people requested, but I haven’t spent much time out at sea yet.”

Jean nodded his head as if he completely understood something bigger.

“So you have not been with your companions for long, then?”

“A few months. Enough time for me to learn the basics of sailing and navigating, but not enough to be confident. Right when we got lost, it was the first time I was in charge of the ship…”

Roth’s head drooped a bit as he remembered Holl shouting at him when they first encountered the misty island. After everything that happened afterward, he knew that he hadn’t deserved the scolding, but it still stuck in his mind.

Holl might’ve directed them to head out during an intense storm- an extremely questionable decision- but the captain had taught Roth a ton over the past few months. Even with the guns he and Cundy had apparently brought with, and some of Holl’s slightly odd behavior, Roth still felt like he was the person he could trust the most.

“The first batch of bread I tried to bake here came out as charcoal. Even the next few I baked after that turned out poorly. You’ll adapt.”

Jean shifted his flintlock’s carry position from a shoulder carry to a two-hand carry as they turned onto the easternmost street.

“What do you plan to do in the future?”

Roth shrugged.

“I will probably move to a slightly larger city, then try to make a living by creating maps. It’s nothing against this place… but there are only so many people here to sell to.”

Roth lied through his teeth, but Jean waved away his concerns.

“A lot of merchants stop by here in the warmer months, and if you had a good map of the updated safe routes in the north, it would probably be an easy sell.”

Jean opened his mouth like he was going to continue speaking, but paused before he could say the first word.

“Do you smell that?”

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

Jean Farsue raised his head into the air, taking another whiff of the foul scent.

“It smells like death.”

Roth glanced up ahead, right where the faint breeze was blowing from. Tolus’s house. Right where he’d seen the red dot when he looked at his map earlier.

“Wait, shouldn’t we grab more people before we investigate?”

Roth tried to stop Jean from advancing, but the baker’s pace had already increased.

With the clear, rank stench of death wafting down the street, all of Roth’s courage quickly fled him.

Death. Someone is definitely dead in that alley. The red dots are death… but it was moving, and so was that other red dot.

Roth shivered.

How could no one have smelled this already? It’s stinking up the whole street, there’s no way none of the townsfolk have noticed it.

Roth’s nervous gaze flitted between the stinking alleyway and Jean’s back, which suddenly seemed a lot less reliable. If none of the other townsfolk were reacting to the stench, why was Jean? Maybe… was the baker just luring him to a quiet place, so that he could-

“By the Lord, it’s Raymond!”

Jean lowered his gun and dashed over as he immediately identified a dark crumpled figure a few meters into the alleyway. He quickly lowered his hand to the old tanner’s neck, his expression collapsing when he felt the cold skin.

“This- this…”

The baker stammered a few times, and he started feeling around his friend’s body.

“How- With the protection of Lord Enthenglem…”

Jean Farsue turned to face Roth, who hadn’t entered the alleyway.

Wilson’s friend. He’s dead, right where the red mark was.

Roth watched blankly as Jean pulled the body away from where it had fallen, pulling it to where the morning light shone down on the frosty dirt road.

The old man’s expression was torn with a sudden look of shock and fear. The same emotions could be seen in his eyes which were glazed over with a thin coat of ice.

The short, dead grass beneath where Raymond had been laying was perfectly clean, though a bit flattened. Roth’s gaze dragged downward to the body. His eyes avoided staying on the anguished expression, straying down to his coat.

Right on the chest of it, where one might equip a badge, there was a dark burn mark. It went straight through the elder’s coat, searing through his coat and into his flesh beneath.

It was a small, circular hole lined with ridges, and what looked like a small ribbon shape on the bottom. Jean noticed at the same time as Roth, and his fingers lightly pulled the burnt leather of the coat away from the wound.

He leaned in to take a closer look, but quickly jolted away, grabbing his nose.

“T- The Lord’s symbol… it must’ve been trying to save him!”

Roth stumbled backward as he caught a better glimpse of the wound on Raymond’s chest. All around it, his skin was pale and lifeless, a stark contrast to the rotting black of the injury. Even standing over a meter away, Roth could properly identify the source of the rank smell drifting through the air.

Shit! How can this stupid baker still believe that his Lord is good?! That wound is clearly what killed him, so if that’s Enthenglem’s symbol, why can’t he see that?

“This place…”

Jean slowly looked up, focusing on the house in front of him.

“It’s Tolus’s house.”

A shiver ran down Roth’s spine even before Jean looked up at him.

“He clearly must be the culprit behind this, and he’s still out there somewhere!”

The red dot. There was another one right here, the one that kept moving.

“Jean, you said that this is the emblem of your Lord, correct?”

The baker hurriedly nodded, his eyes still concerned as he hefted his flintlock up into a ready position.

It might not be Tolus- I’m not even sure if the corruption can affect someone with a Legacy… but he might actually be the main threat right now.

Roth glanced back, barely catching sight of the tan parchment of his map out of the corner of his eye. It was clearly magical. The moving symbols and lines on the map, how he’d affected reality by swiping his finger over it…

What if, like my map, there is another object in the town with abilities? Alisa said that she’d been looking for months, but if the corruption was caused by this emblem, she might not have noticed it!

Roth rubbed his chin.

And unlike my map, it seems to be sentient, and on the move. It probably took control over Raymond- or killed him first, and piloted his dead body- before parasitizing someone right here.

“It’s Tolus, it has to be Tolus! He’s the only one who would’ve been here!”

Jean’s knuckles whitened as he clenched onto his flintlock. Roth briefly recalled that Raymond and the old baker had been good friends… and it seemed that the corruption still left enough freedom for Jean to feel emotions.

“Roth, go tell your crew what happened! I’ll gather more of the townsfolk. If those cowardly hunters are actively attacking us, we need to group up more to stay safe!”

The young man didn’t hesitate to listen to Jean’s instructions, hurrying back toward the central part of town.

I can trust the captain and Cundy… and we’ll probably need Alisa’s help, too. With my map, it shouldn’t be impossible to track down whoever is parasitized right now. If we can get them isolated from the townsfolk, with all of us there… Can we win?

Roth shook his head, pushing away the fear. If he could help to set up an ambush, that was the best they could hope for. If the target of the corruption did turn out to be Tolus, then they needed to move quickly.

If it could parasitize one Regarded, who says it couldn’t do the same to their crew next?