It was a terrible shock to her sisters, but to Evileye, any outcome, even the worst, was a relief because nothing else could happen after that. The weight of years was lifted, the weight of her mask was no longer increased by her isolation, it was now just a mask, a thing she'd need among common humans, but never again with her sisters. Their questions came rapid fire for awhile, but drifted gradually into silence. She was relieved when it happened, but she saw the troubled face of her leader, and could not stop from asking her, "Lakyus...its OK to be bothered by 'these'," Evileye pointed to her two blood red eyes. "You don't have to pretend you arent, I get it. It's enough for me that you're still at my side, sister." Evileye smiled, lighting up her face in spite of the fangs it revealed.
Lakyus shook her head, regretting as she did so, that her sister had been forced to hide such a beautiful smile for so long. "It's not that, I know this sounds bad but I was actually thinking about myself just now."
"How so?" Evileye asked curiously.
"I've been a priestess of the water god for many years, I've held the faith of the gods for my entire life, believing that the undead are irredeemably evil, that humanity had to be kept safe, hell even good demihumans were second in my mind to good humans. Without that part of myself...who is 'apostate Lakyus'? What do I do with that, I have to rethink everything I ever thought I knew." Lakyus said softly, her voice carrying a slight hint of discomfort she felt. "However, I have to say," she continued, "that my rethinking it is long overdue. If you can be as you are, perhaps Ulthis is also as he seems, and if he can be, then maybe the Sorcerer King is more than just an unusually long thinking monster."
"You'll figure it out." Evileye said with absolute confidence.
"Well, I've got my sisters to help me out along the way." Lakyus gave her team a warm and somewhat sheepish grin, and got up. She went and retrieved her sword, and the rest of the team retrieved their arms as well.
"For now though, we have another problem on our hands." Tia said.
"A very big problem." Tina added.
"Agreed." Gagaran said as she hefted Fel Iron.
"Yes, we have to find out what is causing those disappearances. As long as that continues, the city will suffer, tensions will rise, and things will get worse. Protecting the Black Justice citizens while we're there is easy in the short run, but the long run we're better off finding out the cause of the tension in the first place." Lakyus said.
"So, what do we do next?" Evileye asked.
"We're here, so we start checking, we need to look for signs of habitation, movement, anything that could indicate that something is killing the hunters and trappers here, whatever it might be." Lakyus said, her voice returning to its authoritative sense of command and presence.
This was the part of adventuring the bards never sang about, the weary grind of inspecting, searching, the muck, the rocks being turned over and twigs being carefully examined to see what might have broken them. This was the work of hunters as much as adventurers, and in this, the adventurers were hunters, tracking dangerous prey. They moved silent as ghosts through the woods, even the hulking Gagaran was experienced enough at fieldcraft and hunting, and within hours they had found their first clue.
"There!" Evileye said as she leapt down into a small creek, and took up the remnants of a trap. To most it wouldn't have appeard to be anything special, but Evileye knew it for what it was, a stake from a deadfall. "Now...where did you come from..." She asked the wooden stake as she turned it over and over in her hand.
The rest of the team started to look around, with care, knowing that a trap was near. Gagaran ended up finding it, covered by some fallen leaves, disturbed earth. She stomped several times. "This has been filled in. Someone has been sabotaging the traps, they don't want people hunting here."
"But what about the fur trappers?" Tia asked.
"Yeah, this is definitely a hunter's trap, but obviously for meat, they wouldn't want to damage the fur..." Tina added.
"Well, we're not that far into the forest, but let's think about this a moment." Lakyus said.
"What do you mean?" Evileye asked, turning her blood red eyes to Lakyus.
Lakyus's gaze quickly turned away, snapping to some bland spot on the ground. "What wouldn't have done this?" She asked. Without waiting for response, she answered her own question, "Spirits would not do this, they pass over such traps. Some kinds of demihumans might, but none of the ones that are anywhere close to here, and these disappearances didn't start happening until way after the invasion, so it probably isn't any holdouts from the demihuman invasion." She said.
"Heh, you sound like Neia." Tia said.
"Exactly like." Tina added.
"After all this is over...when we go visit the Sorcerer King for ourselves, and see Momon," Gagaran began, pausing to enjoy seeing the naked face of Evileye blush as red as her vampire eyes, "I think we should ask for a visit to this library of his."
Lakyus looked over at Gagaran and laughed, "If we survive all this...and get that chance of course, I promise you I'll ask. Who knows, we might have a talent for this."
"So we can eliminate several possibilities just by knowing which beings would not do this." Evileye said.
Lakyus nodded, though without turning to meet her glance, "Yes. But it's more than that too." She said as she began leading the way through the woods again. The branches creaked and twigs snapped, the leaves rustled and the wind created a peaceful rustling as they moved deeper into the area.
Eventually they came across a tree that had holes in it, they looked around and found discarded wooden planks with nails still in them. Tia reached out and touched the tree and looked at the nails, "This was a ladder. But to what?" She asked.
"That." Tina said, pointing up.
"There's nothing there..." Gagaran replied.
"No, but there was. See the burn marks in the branches?" Evileye said. "Something burned up there, and I'll bet that what was there, was a place for a hunter or a trapper to take down animals from above. Someone burned it down to nothing. and then discarded the planks creating the ladder."
Lakyus frowned, "Well, it was definitely a magic user at least."
"How do you know that?" Gagaran asked.
"If it had been fire from an arrow, then they would have easily burned the whole forest down." Tia said simply.
"But a magic user could target one spot and burn it cleanly." Tina finished for her.
They went deeper into the woods before they found something more. They found a body. Evileye found it first, they were on the bank of a river that wound it's way through the woods, when Evileye spotted him, a fragment of brown cloth rippling in the water, she called out to her companions, but softly, using bird calls, and leaped down the bank, she splashed about as she came closer and closer, eventually finding up close what she'd seen at a distance. The cloth was part of a tunic, and the tunic was worn by a man, he was obviously dead, and had been in the water for awhile.
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Even for the undead, this was unpleasant, but she dragged him back to the bank, and put him up where the team could look him over. "Drowning?" Gagaran asked?
"Maybe." Evileye said.
"Usually when you find a body in the water..." Tina began.
"They drowned in it." Tia finished.
"If you shoot a man with an arrow and he falls into the water and dies, which do you really blame for his death?" Lakyus asked.
"The arrow...even if he drowned, well he wouldn't have been in there more than likely, or could have gotten out at least, if he hadn't been pierced." Evileye said.
"Well, his eye is missing." Lakyus said. "Not many trappers or hunters only have one eye, what if it was shot out, then he fell into the water, died, and floated down here?" She asked.
The blood red eyes of Evileye turned up to Lakyus...and Lakyus suddenly seemed to find some inconsequential part of the corpse very interesting. "Good point." Evileye said numbly.
"So...this man was somewhere upstream, found something he shouldn't have, or met someone he shouldn't have, took an arrow to the eye, and fell or was tossed into the river like a puppet whose strings had been cut, and floated down here?" Gagaran asked.
"That is about the size of it." Lakyus said.
"Then we look upstream." Tia said.
"Carefully." Tina added.
Evileye stood up, "But throw him back first." She said.
"What...why? Shouldn't we bury him properly, or return him to the city?" Lakyus looked at Evileye suddenly, meeting her eyes again, as if searching, she stared intently.
"Because," Evileye said in a pragmatic voice, "If we leave him as he is right here, he could be found, if we bury him and whoever or whatever is responsible for these events might come across the disturbed earth and figure out somebody is on to them, if we try to take him back we'll make enough of a racket to alert the whole forest that we're here. We have to throw him back or we'll give ourselves away and then he'll have died for nothing."
Lakyus frowned, the reasoning was perfect, but it felt inhuman. Though she loved Evileye enough to abjure the very gods she served to stay at her sister's side, the revelation of her vampiric nature was still a lot to cope with, and now, knowing her sister saw everything through blood red eyes, even the most practical suggestions, took on a darker tint to Lakyus.
Her outer frown turned inward as she confronted the thought of her sister as inhuman, she hated it, it was ugly, it was wrong, but it was still there whether she wanted it to be or not. She looked away from Evileye, hoping that those beautiful eyes did not see the ugliness inside her as she did. "I guess, but we have to try to retrieve him later, we'll put him back, but tie him to something so his body doesn't leave the area, this way we can give him a proper burial eventually."
"On it boss." Tia and Tina said, and with the speed of ninjas they darted about the wood, gathering what stones they could, cutting his stomach open, and shoving the rocks inside to add weight to the body.
Gagaran looked down at the now much heavier corpse. "We'll come back for you." She said, and heaved the bloated body back into the water, where it promptly sank after floating just a few feet. "I'll need a bath after this is over." She said.
"Well, we can eliminate all demihumans now." Lakyus said, "They'd have retrieved his body for dinner, and we can eliminate vampires," she conspicuously avoided looking at Evileye, "he hadn't been drained of blood."
"Humans." Evileye said. "There isn't much else left."
They began to move upstream, the babbling water provided music to the forest, and for long minutes even as they scanned the area for traps...of which they found several disabled ones, but it wasn't until they had gone several miles that they found the first evidence of habitation. There were cut trees, they'd been taken down by axes at their base, broken branches from their fall lay strewn about the area.
"No patrols? No scouts? No watch? What is this?" Lakyus asked.
Evileye frowned behind her. "I'm not sure. Either they have magical detection systems in place that we don't recognize, or they're not here anymore, or they don't have enough people for anything but occasionally sweeping the forest and killing those they find."
"Tia, Tina, can you scout the other side of the bank, see if you can find anything...don't engage, just observe and withdraw to report." Lakyus said.
"We can." They said together, and jumped to the other side of the river, as they disappeared into the forest, Gagaran, Lakyus, and Evileye took seats with their backs up against trees to wait for the twins to return.
Evileye enjoyed the quiet they shared, but something bothered her. "Gagaran, could you gather some materials to build us a shelter, we might need to stay here overnight, depending on what the twins find."
"Sure thing." The hulking woman said, "Probably a good idea, I'll get to it now." She said as she stood and began walking away.
As soon as they were alone Evileye turned and looked at Lakyus, her face bare of the mask but wearing ample emotion, her red eyes boring into the side of Lakyus's face as the woman looked down and fiddled with her water skin, pretending to be urgently thirsty.
"Lakyus, look at me." Evileye said forcefully.
Lakyus didn't look at first.
"Look at me sister." Evileye said again.
With visible and poorly concealed reluctance, Lakyus looked over and met the vampire's eyes.
"I thought you were OK with this?" She said softly. "Are you...having second thoughts?" She said, not able to completely hide her anxiety.
Lakyus shook her head, "No..no...not that." She said.
"Then what?" Evileye asked seriously.
"It's just..look...I'd war against the heavens for you as readily as I would beside you, but...this is all just a bit much to take in. It was a shock before, but it is starting to sink in, and I just can't...how do I say this...I can't just turn off all the thoughts I had. I see you look at me and I wonder if you're seeing food. I hear your intelligent suggestions and I think, 'only a vampire would say that'." Lakyus shook her head and lowered her eyes.
"I do accept you, of course I do, I love you. But it's going to take me some time to get used to knowing what I know, I can't just turn it off. I want to. But I don't know how." Lakyus said, deep apology filling her voice.
Evileye didn't answer, she just kept her eyes on the woman she'd lived with for so long.
"Tell me to prove it, and I'd put my neck under your bite, if that is what it takes to prove to you what I promise you, you ARE my sister. I'd even let you take my blood if that was what it took to show that I trust you not to end my life that way...but believe me, it isn't you who is the problem, its just...letting go of the things that were a part of me...THAT is the problem. "Lakyus said in a low but passionately insistent voice.
Evileye looked away as Lakyus was able to meet her gaze again. "I understand." Evileye said, "Perhaps I was expecting too much too soon."
"I guess so. But I'm getting there." Lakyus said, and went to Evileye and gave her a hug again, casually baring her neck to the vampire, trying to still the thought screaming at the bak of her mind, "Vampire! She'll bite you!" she loathed the thought as it swirled around in her mind and forced herself to stay that way for a while longer.
She eventually sat back against the tree, and that was when Tia and Tina returned.
"We have a problem." They said together, just as Gagaran was returning with some materials for improvised shelters. "There are lots of them out there." They said in unison.
"Lots of what and how many are 'lots'?" Gagaran asked.
"Humans, paladins, squires, and others I didn't recognize, probably mercenaries." Tia said.
"Also some magic casters, priests, this is a large group." Tina added.
"And it gets worse." Tia added.
"Worse?" Lakyus asked. "How?"
"They're growing." Tina said. "We scouted the outside of their camp, from what we could tell, it has expanded outwards from a core position."
"How many?" Evileye asked.
"About three thousand strong." Tina said.
"So they've been killing the hunters and trappers to keep their position secret." Gagaran said.
"No." Tia said.
"Maybe they've done that to some, but it looks like they've been capturing them, we saw several holding areas." Tina added.
"How many prisoners?" Lakyus asked.
"Without going inside, hard to say, but at a guess they could hold around two hundred in the ones we saw." Tia said cautiously.
"How many would it take to capture the city?" Gagaran asked Lakyus.
Lakyus thought it over cautiously, "A competent general could take that city as it is now, with five thousand men. An excellent one, with three thousand or fewer. If they have traitors inside, two thousand or less." She said thoughtfully as she scratched her cheek.
"This is starting to make sense." Evileye said.
"What do you mean?" Gagaran asked.
"We know this city is dependent on the forests for their revenue. By setting up in this forest these hidden forces are able to not only stay hidden, but also bleed dry the wealth of the nobility, leaving them less and less to contribute to the wealth of the city. Without the necessary funds, the guard suffers, shifts get skipped, guards get let go, quality declines. Plus they're in a forest, they can catch game, forage, and so on, and their actions incite tensions in the city, its not hard to imagine that they have agents...in...the city…” and a sinking feeling began to grow in the pits of the stomachs of Blue Rose.