Svector and Serena watched as the little girl they brought into their room crawled under the covers. It seemed like she was still upset, despite Serena’s efforts to clear her mind. They had been waiting for quite a while for her to calm down.

  “This level of cloud production is absolutely not normal,” Serena muttered. “What happened to her?”

  Serena had to constantly dissipate the cloud that was forming from Elaina’s head. The substance flew off into the air, to never be seen again, but the girl kept on producing it. Her crying had died down, but it was still forming at a constant rate.

  “Elaina?” Svector sat down next to her. “Mind explaining what’s wrong? If you’re feeling better.”

  “...I just— I just screwed up… a lot.” Elaina said. “And now the whole city wants me…”

  “Want you for what?” Serena asked. “What did you do?”

  “It’s… complicated…”

  “Well, we’ve got a while. Say what happened.”

  Elaina pulled down her covers and looked at the two of them. Svector tried to position himself to look as comforting as possible, considering how young she was. He had to deal with two girls at home with their own problems, so a third isn’t too out of his wheelhouse.

  “I might have… may have… accidentally… cheated in the tournament and went on a rampage through the city—” Elaina said, meekly.

  “What?” Svector said.

  “P-Please don’t tell anyone I’m here! They’re already looking for me—” Elaina immediately panicked. “I… I just took a potion from a girl… it… it was vampiric strength because I wanted the governor’s attention… by winning the tournament… that’s all—”

  “Vampiric strength?” Serena asked. “Are you serious? Did you not have any idea as to what that would entail?”

  “Uhh… no… not really…” Elaina went under the covers again. The black substance began to form above her head, which Serena promptly dismissed with her hand.

  “They really ought to make that knowledge more widespread, so stuff like this doesn’t happen.”

  “Wait, I’m a bit out of the loop, what’s up with this stuff about vampires? My world only has those as a folkloreish concept. Not like it had a ton of magic either, just the bits and pieces I’ve learned from living with Adelyn.” Svector interjected. He was a bit lost on this specific bit of knowledge.

  “Vampires. Creatures that steal from the moon. Mimicking them is a crime. The ritual to be one is sacrilege. Luckily, she only had the former, but that’s still an issue. I guess it’s rare, but because of that the knowledge has been lost I suppose.” Serena looked at Elaina, and shook her head. “That would also explain the rampage, one of the lesser known effects of mimicry is that it messes with your emotions. The power rejects a normal human body, and eventually begins to seep out. If I had to guess, it did the same with you.”

  “And since it’s a criminal act, you’re afraid of the government punishing you, right?” Svector asked.

  Elaina nodded. “Yes… I’m scared…”

  “Well,” Svector sighed. “We won’t tell anyone if it’ll get you in trouble. But finding you a way out of this mess is going to be complicated.”

  “Okay, Elaina. You stay here, don’t try and create any monsters,” Serena said. “Svector and I are going to… go outside and talk. We promise we’ll get you out of this and we won’t tell the governor. You have our word.”

  “I… I trust you,” Elaina nodded. “Thank you.”

  Serena motioned for Svector to follow her out of the inn room. Svector agreed, following along. With a quiet walk, the two of them stepped outside into the empty hallway. With a glance in both directions to confirm the area was clear, Serena gave an okay.

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  “You know, we’ve caused ourselves a lot of trouble by taking that girl in,” Serena said.

  “We’re not leaving her,” Svector stated. He wasn’t going to just leave a crying young girl to be handled by the authorities, especially one wracked with so much regret.

  “I never implied that we should,” Serena sharply responded. “Just that it’s going to be a pain in the neck from here on out. I’ve dealt with people but I’ve never harbored someone wanted by the city.”

  “Then we need a plan to fix her up. I think we can find Adelyn in the meantime, but this isn’t a crisis that we can just ignore. Just… maybe we need to find out how she got like that in the first place.”

  “Vampiric mimicry was her condition. That’s generally induced. She made a mistake, but there was something else to that story she told…”

  “You’re right. The girl who gave her the potion, that has to have something to do with it. If we could find her then maybe we could help out Elaina.”

  “We need to figure out who she is, and then find her. That way, we can at least get Elaina some mitigating factors, at the very least.”

  “I’ll go talk to her about it. Just keep her emotions in check for me.”

  Svector began to go back inside the room, with Serena following shortly after.

  “Elaina, we’re going to help you,” Svector reassured her. “You don’t need to worry about being found. We just need a little bit of help, right?”

  Elaina nodded in response.

  “So, how did you get the potion?” Svector asked.

  “A girl… I dunno her name… she had black hair… kind of blended in with the night’s sky… yellow eyes I think… I beat someone in the tryouts, but I only barely got into the tournament itself…” Elaina recalled. “And I became so… nervous. I didn’t want to be out right away, and I’d be disappointing myself if I didn’t make it through…”

  “So, you cheated?”

  “Yes…”

  Elaina’s cloud of negative emotions began to swell up above her. Serena quickly dissipated them away, sending them off to clear the girl’s mind.

  “I’m not going to sugarcoat this, Elaina,” Svector said, grabbing the girl’s hand. “Cheating was a very bad decision. I think you already know this. You can’t go back on what you did, what you must do is make it right.” Svector calmly held the girl’s hand. The negative cloud spiraled, but luckily Serena dissipated it again. Svector continued to talk. “It feels bad to screw up, but it’ll feel way better to fix your screw up. Because you know what? It means you’ve grown, and you’ll become stronger. That’s worth more than any competition.”

  “But what if they don’t accept that I fixed it? I already ruined so much,” Elaina said. “The city is in shambles because of me.”

  “Because you made a mistake. But you shouldn’t let that define you. Kids always make mistakes, I make mistakes. That’s our way of learning the world,” Svector said. “Next time, you’ll learn from your own mistakes and the mistakes of others.”

  “It’s… not up to me… though…” Elaina insisted. Svector’s experiences when Adelyn screwed up were a little bit different, and a bit messy. But, he had to try his best.

  “It is up to you. The first person who can forgive you is yourself,” Svector said. “And the first step to doing so is helping us identify the girl that put you in this situation.”

  Those words seemed to get through to Elaina, at the very least. With a quiet nod, she looked back up at Svector. A little bit more determined, with a slight glint in her eye.

  “We met in the bath, not too far from here. She seemed to want to get rid of me quickly… I first met her when the tryouts for the tournament happened… I got my results. I just barely passed… and she pulled me aside. She apparently knew my poor work, and convinced me to… to… confirm my victory.”

  “Maybe,” Serena began to suggest. “She was following you. Did you pay anything for the potion?”

  “Yes. A lot. It took a lot of my funds… I haven’t been able to eat much… I thought it would be worth it.”

  “Shoot. So you got scammed too,” Svector said. “Do you know where we should look?”

  “I don’t know… if she read it then… maybe she worked at the government… or the mail that was sending it out through the city…” Elaina suggested.

  “Then we have a search target,” Serena said. “Someone who could access those letters in a sneaky way. They were going to pick on the most vulnerable and scam them into taking their potion.”

  “Was she your age?” Svector asked.

  “Older… around…” Elaina pointed to Serena. “Her age.”

  “Damn. So yeah, I could guess they had that kind of job,” Serena added.

  “Thank you so much, Elaina. Thank you for being strong, for yourself and for us. We’ll try and help you as much as we can. We’ll do our part,” Svector said.

  “...thank you guys… for trusting me…”

  With a quiet nod from all three parties. The two decided to leave Elaina to get some rest in their room. They had a scammer to catch, and all they had to do was start looking.