Rieren rushed through the forest to find the source of the noise. It wasn’t far. But the night was playing tricks with her, making the wooded area feel alien and unfamiliar, like she had never been here before. Or maybe it was the sudden root of panic that had pierced her regular emotionlessness and struck hard. That scream had been of someone dying.
Of a human dying.
Every step Rieren took only reinforced one thing in her head. That scream wasn’t repeating. One shriek, and that was it. Whoever had uttered it was no longer doing so.
It took Rieren too long to get to the scream’s location. She cursed even before she was there, cursing even more when she finally reached the location and found the nightmare staring back at her. If her heart could have pumped and beat, it would have been hammering now.
A dead body lay at the feet of the Arisen who had defeated Amalyse. That strange combination of a Higher Aetherian and a Gravemark Puppeteer. The one who had cemented its place in the next round.
Rieren took one step forward, her furious eyes trained on the monster. “What have you—”
“Curse the Abyss!” someone shouted from the other end of the little grove.
Rieren froze. A man was standing there. Even in the night’s low light, she had no trouble seeing his horrified expression. A horror that was quickly giving way to rising rage.
More people started arriving. Two, three, four, it wasn’t long before there were a dozen various onlookers to the scene of the tragedy. Rieren dragged her mind out of its flailing thoughts just enough to note that they were a mix of people. Not just cultivators. There were a few servants, camp guards, and the ostentatious robes of a minor noble too.
Besides the humans, other onlookers had gathered at the edge of the area too. Monstrous ones. Alerted by the noise, they had arrived to investigate the source of the disturbance themselves.
And now they stood silent watch to the confusing, disturbing scene before them. A distant part of Rieren’s mind wondered what they thought. What their initial reactions floated through their minds. How it contrasted with her own feeling of rising doom. Muted though it was, the fact that it was all she could feel made it seem enormous all the same.
“Has—has that thing killed him?” one of the humans asked. A woman in a servant’s clothes.
“He’s dead,” another man said. A cultivator in the black-and-gold robes of the Arteroth clan. “The scion is dead!”
Scion? Rieren’s wide eyes turned to the bloody body not far from where she stood. She didn’t recognize what she could make out of his robes, though they did look rich enough for the son of some important dignitary or other. Whose scion was he then?
She tried to think of the next steps here. What was she supposed to do? All this time, she had been hammering into the monsters the importance of not ruining their chances of securing their goal by killing other people. But then, active combatants in the arena would have been one thing. This cold-blooded murder out in the open…
At this point, she was just confused. What in the world could have led the Arisen to squander its opportunity, to make a gigantic mess of everything, by killing someone?
She noticed that the monster sported a little wound near what passed for its waist. Was that it? Had the man tried to attack the monster, for whatever reason, and the Arisen had simply retaliated?
Rieren was about to ask just that. She had to quell the initial reactions all these onlookers were adopting as the truth. It couldn’t be the truth. This had to be some sort of setup.
But before she could open her mouth, she caught sight of a new onlooker.
Mercion had pushed his way through the thickening crowd to squeeze into a gap near the front. Instead of looking at the death before him, his eyes landed right on Rieren’s. He was shaking his head vigorously, his eyes wide with warning. A sign for her to stay quiet and keep shut.
Rieren internally debated that course of action, but another interruption appeared before she could come to a resolution. The dead man’s father appeared.
The Aryoventos Clanmaster bulled his way through the crowd. His shrill shriek pierced the air hard enough to make nearly everyone flinch. Hacking out a cry of dismay, he threw himself at the man lying unmoving in his own pool of blood, uncaring that the crimson liquid was now infecting his robes too.
“How?” he yelled. “How? Ermel. Ermel. Don’t leave me, son. Come back.”
Everyone stared at the sight of a father losing his son like that. Gone, in the blink of an eye. Dead at the hands of a monster whose presence he himself had been opposed to for who knew how long.
Rieren’s eyes widened. That was all the more proof that this was some sort of manipulated event. Who else would work as the best sacrifice than the son of the man who detested the monsters most?
But she couldn’t say anything. Not yet. That warning from Mercion was still fresh in her mind.
Remis Sharan made her way through the crowd to kneel at the Aryoventos Clanmaster’s side. A couple of others appeared too, all wearing fur-lined robes of the Aryoventos style. They murmured soothing words to their leader, slowly coaxing him back to his feet. At the same time, they also pulled up the corpse of the Aryoventos scion to carry him away.
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The Arisen had stepped back at their approach. It watched them impassively. Rieren had to wonder what in the world the monster might be feeling. Did it even realize just what sort of a situation it had caused with this single, disastrous act?
“Kill them.” The Aryoventos Clanmaster stared at the Arisen. His eyes flickered to all the monsters surrounding the area his son had died. “Kill them all! They’re monsters. Wild beasts that deserve nothing but death. How dare they encroach on our lands. How dare they pillage our lives. Kill them all!”
His last statement had been shouted so loudly, it made nearly everyone flinch.
The tension rose to a fever pitch. While the Arisen remained standing as it was, the other monsters had bristled at the insults the Clanmaster had thrown. They grumbled and growled. Whatever had occurred here, not a single monster was going to be killed without a fight.
And a fight might just be what all this was leading to. The servants and other non-combatants had fled already. Even some of the guards were retreating. It was only the cultivators who stayed, their hands on the hilts and shafts of their various weapons, eyes scanning the area for enemies.
“Why do you all hesitate?” The Aryoventos Clanmaster tried to free himself, but Remis Sharan and another man was holding him back. “They deserve no mercy. No second chances. All they get is death.”
Several of the monsters roared against that. The cultivators were stepping forward too, ready to do battle.
This was spiralling out of control. Rieren saw no way of quelling the impending violence. She exchanged a look with Mercion, but his glance was helpless. He had no ideas either.
Talk. That was it. Conversation was the only thing that could work to stall things.
Rieren stepped forward, ready to run her mouth and prevent a fight from breaking out, but she was spared the effort. An Avatar appeared, landing from the sky like he had been flung from a catapult to their exact location.
“There will be no further killings here,” he said. He turned to look both at the cultivators behind and the monsters standing farther out in the other direction. “Stand down. Now.”
“Avatar,” the Aryoventos Clanmaster said. “That creature has killed my son. My own son. We must redress this immediately, force the monsters to pay for this. Do you understand? My son is dead.”
The Avatar bowed his head a little at the grief-stricken man. That little gesture quelled much of the anger in the area, among the humans at least. Maybe not the Clanmaster, but the other cultivators certainly understood the little bow’s significance.
It wasn’t often one saw an Avatar bowing at anyone. After all, they acted with the will of the Emperor himself. Them bowing was tantamount to the Emperor bowing.
Grief trumped any notions of social hierarchy, in the end.
“Please, Clanmaster,” the Avatar said. “I understand a grave transgression has occurred. The loss you have suffered can never be matched. But we must conduct matters with rigour, not emotion. So I ask once more that you allow us to investigate the matter. Rest assured that the right punishment will be meted out to all offenders.”
His ceramic mask brooked no disobedience, nor did his posture. The cultivators backed down. Even the monsters listened. Their angry growls quieted and several began retreating into the darkness they had emerged from.
Despite the clear wrath on the Aryoventos Clanmaster’s face, he backed down as well. His eyes fell on the corpse of his son, fresh tears preceding a look of dismay.
Rieren walked over to the offending Arisen. It looked down at her once she was close enough. She jerked her head with pointed harshness, and it finally began to move, following the rest of the monsters out of the clearing. The Avatar had granted them an opportunity to get out of there. It couldn’t just keep standing there like an Abyss-cursed idiot.
Before she followed her own kind, Rieren caught Mercion’s eye. He raised one hand. Something glimmered lightly in his grip, white and ridged like a shell.
Rieren’s eyes widened. The Comm Shell they had used during the first round. Of course.
Nodding to say she understood, Rieren headed out in the direction the other monsters had gone. Angry mutters and low growls spread throughout the area the farther she got from the clearing. The monsters clearly didn’t appreciate what had occurred.
She was tempted to find the Arisen and demand the truth out of it, but first, she got a hold of the Comm Shell. The monsters could wait.
It took a little bit of time before any sound came from it. Longer than Rieren liked. The more she waited, the more she wanted to confront the Arisen who had caused this whole mess. Bute every time that impulse arose, she was sure she would end up missing some vital communication from Mercion. Missing an important update about the situation wouldn’t do.
Her fears were justified when the Comm Shell finally activated. Voices emerged, and Rieren moved away from the other monsters so that any listeners on the other side of the shell wouldn’t hear any noise.
Because it was clear—from the way the sounds were emanating from the shell—that Mercion had sneaked up to a meeting he wasn’t supposed to be attending.
“We cannot allow this to go on,” someone was saying. An older voice, one Rieren had heard briefly before when the Avatars had tried to prevent her from participating in the tournament and had called the Clanmasters to judge the situation. “They must be brought to face justice for their crimes.”
“There has only been one criminal,” said someone with a more reasonable voice, not one bristling with anger as the last one.
“It doesn’t matter. Do you think it will end here? More incidents like this will keep cropping up, more murders and killings. How long are we going to allow this?”
“The Emperor has decreed—”
“I frankly don’t care what the Emperor has decreed.”
The silence that followed was riddled with heavy tension. One didn’t go about saying things like that in public without grave retribution. It seemed the first speaker’s audience wasn’t too exacting.
“Your words do you a great disservice.” That voice was the Aryoventos Clanmaster’s. “Enraged that I am, even I agree that we shouldn’t bypass the rule of law.”
“After your own son?”
“Enough!” Another familiar voice. Clanmistress Avathene. “A grave tragedy has occurred. Please, have some respect and cease trying to use it to further your own agenda.”
“This wouldn’t have occurred if—”
“Didn’t I say enough?”
Everything turned quiet for a moment. Rieren wondered if Avathene’s firmness had scared off everyone’s voices, but then the real reason appeared.
“We have investigated the matter,” the Avatar said. It was the same one who had prevented a fight breaking out back in the clearing. “Now, we will head to the monsters and mete out our judgment.”
“What judgment, exactly?” the Aryoventos Clanmaster asked.
“The Emperor has concluded that the monster who committed the murder must surrender its life as well.”
Rieren didn’t hear anything further. There was no need to. Some of the Clanmasters and dignitaries would no doubt argue that one monster’s death was nowhere near enough to make up for the death of an Archnoble’s scion.
But they would all go with it eventually. No one argued against the Emperor’s decision. Not for long, at least.
What actually concerned Rieren was how the monsters would react to this judgment. She had to make sure things didn’t worsen. With the immediate chaos of the incident now long gone, Rieren didn’t feel as much urgency as she had before. But there was a pit of anger still burning deep within her.
This was a setup. She was still certain of it. But instead of finding the truth of the matter, she would be busy ensuring the situation didn’t deteriorate further.
Curse whoever had truly caused this. Rieren was going to find them eventually and make them pay.