Retrograde Cognition was an interesting spell. It forced the caster into a coma-like state. But only from the outside perspective. Inside Retrograde Cognition, Alyssa felt like she hadn’t even moved. She stood right where she had cast the spell. Though standing was a relative term. She didn’t really have a body. Or her body was there, but she was no longer directly connected to it. Irulon was still next to her, as was the Pharaoh. Izsha and Fela too.
The cart as well.
And the bodies.
The cart had a driver and two horses. All three were dead. It didn’t look violent. At least, not demon-violent. The infected that Alyssa had seen tended to tear apart their victims, dismembering and decapitating them. The driver looked like he had been strangled by a garrote wire. He had a bright red mark around his neck and even a few cuts along the line that had bled. Not a lot of blood, just enough for the small cuts that were there. The poor horses were in a bloodier state. Both had their throats cut. A large pool of their combined blood covered most of the street. But even that wasn’t close to what she had seen among plague victims.
All the cargo Irulon had described was gone. Completely. No trace of it remained. If Alyssa didn’t trust Irulon, she would have suspected that there never had been barrels with pentagrams or already deceased bodies in the back of the cart. It was completely empty. The cart itself wasn’t damaged either. Not the wood frame or the hide cover stretched over the back.
It really made her wonder just what the poor guy had been thinking. Had he been some hired merchant to deliver goods, only to be disposed of after outliving his usefulness? It certainly seemed that way from first appearances. She couldn’t imagine someone agreeing to be murdered at the end of the trip.
Retrograde Cognition played the scene backward. For several minutes, there wasn’t much action at all. Irulon and the Pharaoh walked around, investigating. None seemed to come to any conclusions.
Then they started watching the sky. Irulon tried speaking on the phone several times. But only the first time succeeded. Or the last time? Keeping causality in mind was a bit difficult. Both Irulon and the Pharaoh started—or ended?—casting spells. None had much effect that Alyssa could see, so she assumed that they were analytical in nature. Every so often, Irulon would try saying something into the phone.
Alyssa actually felt a little bad that she hadn’t responded to anything. Granted, this had likely been right in the middle of her discussion with Tenebrael. Still, watching the two grow more and more panicked—from her rewinding perspective—just made Alyssa feel sorry for them.
She wondered what they were saying. What they thought about Tenebrael’s face appearing in the sky. Irulon hadn’t bowed down as Alyssa might have expected, but that was probably because she had warned them that something strange might happen. She had thought it would be a statue, but she hadn’t explicitly stated as much.
There wasn’t much that they could do about the moon. It worried them, especially the city guard and nobles who saw Alyssa as a powerful arcanist who showed up out of nowhere and made friends with the royal family. But there wasn’t much they could do. It was too much of an out of context problem for them to deal with. She had been a little worried about assassins immediately after bringing her mother to Nod, but after weeks of nothing happening, she had decided that they probably wouldn’t try to attack her.
Now this.
She would have to keep an eye looking over her shoulder constantly for a while.
Eventually, the circle above the city vanished. Irulon talked with her father, came out of Retrograde Cognition, went into Retrograde Cognition, and arrived. In that order. The pool of blood from the horses was much smaller at this point. The Pharaoh cast spells, more analytical ones, in an attempt to determine what happened. He arrived just a few minutes before Irulon.
Then he was gone. Or had yet to arrive.
Retrograde Cognition was a temporally annoying spell, but at least it wasn’t giving her a splitting headache.
The blood from the horses continued to flow back into their bodies. Alyssa watched closely, waiting for the moment when they had been killed, looking for any sign of what might have happened.
The horses uncollapsed, wobbled to their feet, and reared back in panic at having their necks slit.
But there was no sign of what actually cut them. Both their necks had been cut at the exact same time. The coachman was already dead, though it looked like he was reviving with the way the playback was rewinding. Something gripped his neck, but she couldn’t even see a wire.
What was it? A shadow assassin? Alyssa tried to cast Unseen Sight. She wasn’t in her real body. Looking down, she couldn’t see herself at all. It was more like she was in some kind of strange astral form or a lucid dream. As such, she didn’t have her spell cards with her. Nothing happened.
Tenebrael, she thought—not having a mouth meant no speaking. Grant me eyes. Give me the ability to see what is unseen within this vision of the past.
There were no mystic circles. She didn’t have fingernails that would turn black. And yet, Alyssa felt the warmth of Tenebrael rush through her. Unseen Sight normally just overlaid a hazy cloud of off-color smoke over the top of an invisible being’s form.
Although she felt like the spell had worked, she still couldn’t see anything. They all just… died. Or came alive, depending on the temporal perspective. The horses had their throats slit. The coachman tried to grasp at whatever was strangling him, but his fingers didn’t seem to find purchase on any invisible wire or hands. They just passed right through it. Alyssa tried to get closer to see, but it was no use. No matter the perspective, she couldn’t see a thing.
Except, ducking underneath the cart’s cover, she did see one thing that Irulon hadn’t mentioned.
Those supposedly dead bodies weren’t quite dead. In fact, they were getting better.
As the coachman struggled, they got up, grabbed the cargo, and started shambling off with it all. Five steps away from the cart, they just vanished. Though, from Alyssa’s perspective, they appeared from nowhere, went and set down the cargo, and flopped over against the bed of the cart. But, ignoring rewinding effects, it looked a lot like they had wandered into an Empty Vessel field, but she would have expected the miracle she had just cast to work through it. Unless it really hadn’t succeeded at all and she was just assuming that it had. There really was no proof one way or another.
The biggest clue first came when the coachman started getting strangled. For whatever reason, he had stopped the cart right in the middle of the street. He looked around, not quite confused about why he might have stopped, but maybe a little unsure. However, he looked off to the side and started talking with a bright smile on his face.
But there was no one there.
For one second. Then there was.
Alyssa blinked, completely bewildered as to where the man had come from. He simply appeared.
The man wore a fanciful suit of white, violet, and deep gold. It wasn’t a modern Earth suit, but more along the lines of something Decorous would wear. The man wasn’t Decorous. His facial shape was more narrow and his chin protruded a whole lot more. Besides that, he was bald and had eyes in such a faint blue that they were more grey.
But he smiled. The coachman laughed at something. They seemed like they were on good terms, honestly. They spoke for a good few minutes before the man walked off and, a few moments later, the cart and horses all traveled out of Retrograde Cognition’s viewing range.
Willing the spell to end, Alyssa lurched. Her perspective jumped from standing up in the middle of the street to lying down well away from the pooling blood with her head resting on Fela’s thighs. She clamped her mouth shut, taking careful breaths to avoid further upsetting her stomach.
Irulon stood above her, staring down with simple violet eyes. She, thankfully, remained silent, probably because she knew well enough how Retrograde Cognition felt upon first waking up. Alyssa distinctly remembered how she had reacted after waking up following the search for Oxart. It was amazing that she had been able to speak afterwords without having to sit around.
But Alyssa couldn’t lie around all night. With help from Fela, she got back to her feet. The Pharaoh stood off to the side, staring at her with a thoughtful expression on his face. And, while she had been out, it looked like Lisa, Oz, Lumen, and Catal had caught up. Her mother was closest to her, looking over her with obvious concern. Hopefully not too much concern given that she had watched Irulon perform the spell not so long ago, but… there was probably more to be concerned about than just Retrograde Cognition. Several city guards were running around the scene as well, doing their own investigations into the cart while trying to find some trail to pick up.
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“Tell me what you saw.”
Alyssa looked over to Irulon. It was another few seconds before she decided that she was alright to speak. “Did you see a bald man?”
“The coachman wasn’t bald. Unless you are referring to the corpses, then no. I did not see anyone.”
“I asked Tenebrael to help me see,” Alyssa said, dropping the tone of her voice to avoid being overhead by anyone outside those already in the know. “Honestly don’t know if it helped because I didn’t see the man for a few more minutes, but if you didn’t see him at all…”
“Assume it worked.”
“Right. You know? I think I missed this.”
“Missed… the city being attacked?”
“Well, not that specifically. It’s just… my first two months in this world had been a nearly non-stop fight for my life. Then, this past month… I thought I wanted it. A nice relaxing life where I just delivered potions and stopped by to see my friends. It should have been ideal. But now, despite the city being under attack, despite the Astral Authority flying about, despite people dying… I think I’m secretly happy.”
Irulon pressed her lips together in what might have been a small smile. “It isn’t a secret if you tell people.”
“Oh. Right.”
“Retrograde Cognition causes a fair amount of disorientation. Don’t talk about random things. Try to stick with what you saw.”
Alyssa nodded. Focusing, she started relaying everything that she had seen while under the spell effect. The longer she spoke, the more steady she became. At the start, she had been using Fela as a cane, but by the end, she was standing straight on her own. Her words became more steady as well. And her mind. She realized just how silly it was to have said what she did.
She was deliberately avoiding a glance toward her mother.
But then, could her mother really complain? According to Oz, Lisa had apparently decided to run off to adventure as well. Escorting some noble princess back to their home province. Sure, Oz had said that it wouldn’t be that dangerous, but he had also said that the fairy extermination mission wasn’t dangerous. The Society of the Burning Shadow outpost hadn’t been figured into the equation and had been entirely unexpected, but Alyssa still doubted that anything involving fairies could be counted as safe.
“The cause of death for the coachman and the horses is still unknown,” Irulon said as Alyssa finished. “But I suppose that it can be assumed that this bald man had something to do with it. Interesting that you were unable to locate a shadow assassin. I definitely saw the effects of one at the gate, though I admit that I wasn’t able to actually see it.”
“Like I said, I asked Tenebrael to help me see some things, but the things I saw might not have been everything. Those mummies, for instance, they just wandered off and disappeared. I couldn’t see where they went… Hey, speaking of zombies… can your toymaker spells bring the coachman back to life enough to ask him what happened?”
“Such a thing was among my original research designs when developing that line of spells. Unfortunately, as my interest in Death magic declined and my fascination with Fractal magic intensified, such designs fell by the wayside.”
“So… no.”
“Afraid not. He would be as mindless as those goblins you saw me use it on back when.”
Alyssa glanced around, stretching her back. There was an odd kink in it. Probably as a result of having been in an awkward position for the duration of that spell. Calling her phone to her hand, she checked the time. Twenty minutes. She had been in Retrograde Cognition for twenty minutes. Or… not quite. That included the time she had spent talking with Irulon. Still it had been some time.
Those corpses and the cargo they had made off with would surely be long gone by now.
Closing her eyes, she tried to scan the souls around to see if she noticed anything odd. Irulon stood out, her twin souls warring with each other as usual. The first place Alyssa checked was underground. With Waters Street having used elvish engineering to create secret passages and rooms with trap doors, it seemed like a logical place to hide out if they weren’t planning on doing anything immediately. If they were planning on doing something right away… well, the palace wasn’t on fire yet.
There was something a few streets away. Alyssa wasn’t quite sure what zombies—or mummies in this case—would look like to her soul sight, but she knew what demons and the infected looked like. One of those things down there was definitely an infected.
Looking up, Alyssa frowned. There were still five of the Astral Authority up in the air, seemingly investigating the sky for… Tenebrael? That had to be it. But there was an infected right down here. Were they just going to ignore it? If so, that didn’t bode well for Tenebrael’s plan to get them off her back. Come to think of it… “Irulon, just before I did the… thing in the sky, one of those Patiences came down and killed an infected. And then fought with the demon who retrieved its soul. Is Octavia… I mean, I know your father was hoping that Tzheitza’s potion might reverse the infection, but these things aren’t friendly toward demons or infected.”
Irulon didn’t even start to answer. Although he was a short distance away and Alyssa hadn’t been speaking too loudly, the Pharaoh heard. He moved closer, staring with unblinking violet eyes. “Those creatures,” he started, but paused. “My son was attempting to explain them to me when we became aware of the situation in the city.”
“They are demon hunters, though they won’t hesitate to put their weapons through the heads of mortals if we get in the way or otherwise annoy them,” Alyssa said, answering his unasked question. She decided not to mention the anti-Tenebrael aspect of them. Perhaps to Irulon later, but it wasn’t anything they could help with so no need to worry them over divine matters.
Deciding not to bother delaying until later, Alyssa gave Irulon and the Pharaoh a quick rundown of everything she had learned from Iosefael regarding the Astral Authority. It really wasn’t much now that she was restating it. The Astral Authority were constructed to destroy demons and areas of demon infestation. There were several different types, each with their own role to serve, whether that be observation and scouting, direct combat, supportive combat, or defense among others. They were all distinctly inhuman and, while Iosefael had neglected to mention masks, they all seemed to wear porcelain faces carved in the shape of a completely average human.
Unfortunately, she couldn’t tell the Pharaoh how easy they were to kill. Alyssa honestly didn’t know if they could be killed without resorting to divine methods such as enchanted bullets. Though… That was something that Alyssa wanted to try.
“Hey, Oz!”
Neither the Pharaoh nor Irulon used weapons. Both relied on their own magical talents to get them by. Alyssa was a Rank Six arcanist as well, but she still carried a combat knife and pistols. Too many pistols at the moment thanks to Tenebrael. Still… she figured that they should keep something as backup. The Pharaoh had been operating the way he had for who knew how long. And there was no guarantee that he didn’t have a weapon under his robes.
But Oz’s sword was far more notable and was definitely not enchanted.
“Can I borrow your sword?” Alyssa asked as politely as possible when he neared.
Reaching for it, he started nodding only to hesitate. “Why?”
“Don’t you want it enchanted?” She honestly didn’t know if she could. It felt like something she could do. Maybe even enchant it enough to let it harm the Astral Authority.
Although his eyes momentarily lit up, he quickly backed up with a small frown. “Guillem will literally kill me if anything happens to her little darling weapon.”
“Didn’t you just finish paying it off the other week?”
“That’s another reason. I don’t really want to go back anytime soon to get a new one.”
“Hold on,” Irulon said. “We seem to be getting distracted from the main topic. The intruders in the city?”
“Ah. I think… Well, there is something below us. Not directly below, but off in that direction,” Alyssa said, waving a hand eastward. “But I don’t know if it is who we are looking for or even how to get down there. Short of using an Annihilator, that is.”
The Pharaoh shook his head. “I do not believe we are in quite so dire a circumstance that we should resort to destroying the entire city just yet.”
“Do you see anything else of interest?” Irulon asked.
Alyssa closed her eyes again and started examining souls in the city. Nothing particularly stood out to her aside from the thing underground. Which was probably a good thing. Between several plague incidents, the deceased guards, the draken and Fela running through the streets, and the mystic circle above the city, enough had happened for one night. The city probably couldn’t take much more.
There was definitely going to be a resurgence in protests around the Palace come morning. The only reason they weren’t picketing right now was probably because of a fear about the possible danger.
Opening her eyes, Alyssa started to shake her head in response to Irulon’s question only to hesitate with a blink.
There was one person standing among their circle who was not supposed to be there.
A balding man wearing an ornate suit stood near the cart, among a few guards. None of them paid any attention to him. He just stood there, idly staring at the Pharaoh, then Irulon, then Alyssa.
Something must have shown in Alyssa’s eyes. Irulon’s fist clenched around the tome chained to her hip. She immediately started looking around. But her gaze passed right over the bald man. Once he noticed his daughter glancing around, the Pharaoh looked too. Just like his daughter, his eyes drifted from one side of the bald man to the other without even a hint of recognition.
Alyssa pulled her pistol, flicking the safety off as she aimed.
But that slight motion made her blink. And in that instant of a blink, the man was gone. Snapping her head from side to side, Alyssa tried to find him. But he was nowhere to be seen. She even tried to close her eyes and scan for souls again. Had he even had a soul? She hadn’t been paying attention to the guards investigating the cart. Or any normal souls at all, really. She couldn’t say one way or another whether he had appeared normally or not.
“What is it?”
“The bald man. He was here for a second. Just… staring at us. But… not anymore.”
“The person present in your Retrograde Cognition?”
“No one else noticed.” Alyssa took her finger off the trigger, but she kept the pistol out and at the ready. Maybe they had been too busy to notice. The Pharaoh and Irulon had both had their backs to him. As did Oz’s group. Izsha and Fela should have noticed. Unless they thought he was supposed to be around. That was entirely possible. He looked like he could pass as someone around Decorous’ station.
Looking around, Alyssa spotted him. “There,” she said quietly, aiming toward an alley off to the side of the cart. He was walking away. Casually. Even though she had spoken just barely loud enough for those in her immediate vicinity to hear, he still paused, looked to her, tilted his head, and vanished around the corner of the building.
Alyssa moved forward, slowly and carefully, bringing up a Projectile Reflection as she walked. Just in case. Irulon was on her heels, along with a few of the others, but Alyssa hardly paid them attention. Her focus was on the mysterious stranger.
He did have a soul. One tainted by the plague. It wasn’t heavily tainted, but his soul was just a shade dimmer than those around him.
And Alyssa wasn’t going to let him get away.