The Holy City of Cegran was located some 690-ish leagues west from Planedia, the capital of Lastria, crossing fields, three massive mountain ranges, and five large rivers, should one decide to go by land. A full trip from one to the other, going by train, usually takes a full week, should one decide, of course, to go through the scenic way; which wasn’t unusual for the many pilgrims that often travel there every year.
Cegran was a city-state, located in the border of the Republic of Tarana and the Kingdom of Rothlem. It was a grand place, once the center of the old empire, it still had many, if not all, the great monuments and ruins of the time, but, after it was restored by the Lady of Light to its new glory, it had become in quiet place full of expansive parks, old palaces, theaters, and of course, temples. Cegran was the seat of the Church, and while it had no longer any central authority, the place it considered to be its most important temple, the Cathedral of the Sword. Pilgrims flooded the city for both the Day of Waters, at the end of the highrain season, in which the old spirits are thanked, or punished, depending on how bountiful the rains have been, and the Day of Light, at the start of autumn, which according to the legend, was the anniversary of the slaying of the Demon King.
The first of these events had passed four days ago, and while she walked through the city, Clare was thankful that it was finally returning to its normal state, at least for a few months. And she needed the tranquility, desperately. Not only she had a horrible time managing to escape Hemblem with a wounded Hil after being attacked in the middle of the street right after the entire team vanished, which was enough of a massive problem on its own, but her dumb straight-laced sister at the capital, who had just joined the constabulary, wasn’t able to house them for more than a couple of days, enough to realize that Olive was also nowhere to be found. Something that, of course, would have terrified her, if it wasn’t because she left a note calling her a moron and stating that they got scammed by Yadesh and that his supposed office was a private apartment; and, that she didn’t want anything to do with the fallout of whatever Clare was in, so she was leaving the city and going home for a few months. And then, just two days earlier, Clare got herself the magical surgery back to her original looks, and having neglected to tell Hil about it to avoid more explanations to a girl who was mentally not all there, she ended up getting herself attacked by her when the Elf saw a woman with far lighter skin and a broader nose enter the apartment unannounced.
In summary, she really needed some peace and quiet.
As she ascended the staircase to her apartment, located on the fourth floor of a fairly normal residential building, which was a converted urban palace from the times of the Lady of Light, one of many, she began internally recapping inside her head.
She had spent all day, as she had during the last couple of weeks, between the library and the archives, trying to get information in everything that happened, although there wasn’t much to go with, but still, the little she managed to get pointed to something much deeper than she was even expecting. Whatever she had involved herself in went much deeper than being scammed.
To begin with, the eagle Yadesh, or whatever their actual name was, wasn’t his. It belonged to a noble House from Tarana that had fled the republic a generation earlier then things got worse for heritage aristocrats; they had been for decades already in the falconry business so they established a private eagle service for extremely minor nobility who could not afford the maintenance and training of their own and wanted things to be more sophisticated than using telephones or sending around messengers. Supposedly, they weren’t used with the House’s coat of arms, but fabricating a forgery of it wouldn’t have been too hard.
That was a mystery solved, but it opened a new question: Why didn’t Otto Danlavius know that?
Sure, Clare hadn’t been with him for too long, but he had proved himself to be a cautious man who would plan and triple-check everything before making any important decision, no matter the situation. Enough for it to be annoying to her. However, while getting a hold of books on noble heraldry nowadays for the general public was difficult, as it’s far from a well-selling topic, or interesting for any real scholarship, there were officers who could check coats of arms in every guildhall. He could have just asked, and she knew for a fact, painfully enough, that he was picky at picking employers.
Then, there was the problem of the magically faceless assassin. They had followed the team to Hemblem and after their mysterious disappearance, they had shot and wounded Hil. Fortunately, when left to it, Elves healed themselves frighteningly fast, but they need rest to do it, and thus getting out of that city unseen and then getting to the capital was a nightmare she didn’t want to remember. But the issue was, that they didn’t seem to have followed them to Cegran. Hil and her had been at the city for a month already, and despite their paranoia, nothing had happened. There were two explanations for that in her mind, either the mage had no intention of killing them, which could be for a myriad of reasons, or they just hadn’t fell into their trap yet.
Clare opened the door of the apartment, closed it behind her, and as it was already almost customary, was met with the end of Hil’s blade dangerously close to her neck. Both of them blinked, and the very distraught Hil sheathed her sword.
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“What’s wrong?” Clare asked, caressing her neck to check that the wasn’t any injury. “I know that we still haven’t had the time to process what happened back them in peace, but you look… As best like you’ve seen a ghost.”
“I was doing what you asked me to do, Clare, check the newspapers from Lastria, all I could buy in the day, and taking note of everything interesting. And it was interesting, there’s a lot of royal drama right now but…” Hil said, her voice was quiet and throaty. She pointed to an article open over the desk.
Clare scoffed at the talk about royal drama, but the moment her eyes took in the article’s title, they opened like the headlights of a train in a foggy night. She grabbed the broadsheet and began to read at high speed. A large amount of bodies had been found at a farm in the outskirts of Planedia, the case, labeled as ‘deeply strange’ by those involved, including a police inspector who was likely to lose his job due to how talkative he was, was what seemed to be the entire staff of a noble house having been killed and buried around seven weeks after their reported disappearance overnight. The article, which was rather long, described how it seemed like they had just left, with no notice of anything or evidence of force, and how despite the report being made by a party that the police was keeping anonymous, no one in the neighborhood seemed to be aware of or remember anything about their existence.
A shiver went down Clare’s spine.
Then, of course, things got weirder. The address of the mansion in which the mass vanishing had taken place, but it did mention it was in the Willoking Hill district, where the residences in the capital of pretty much all the nobility were. And, there was a picture, which she recognized; the one time she met with Yadesh, it had been in front of that house. Well, ‘met’ was a bit of an overstatement, he was inside a carriage, and she didn’t see him, after their conversation, the carriage went into the property. But, unsurprisingly enough, the article also mentioned that the house didn’t actually belong to any noble family, but rather, it was rented to nobles who wanted to spend some time in the capital but couldn’t afford a permanent residence and were not willing to use hotels like the commoners did.
And what made it worse, the article ended with a call for help from the newspaper itself, promising a monetary reward, and promises of bringing it straight to the police in an anonymous manner, to anyone who had any information about a Marineus Yadesh.
So that was the key, whoever this Yadesh was, he had probably done something extremely bad and had been trying to erase anything that connected him with any of it. The Danlavius company, barring Hil, was more than likely dead and just waiting to be found, if they hadn’t already but no one had been able to identify the bodies.
At this point, Clare only had two leads, whatever was in the box, and a faceless probable murderer whom she absolutely didn’t want to meet.
“Clare” Hil said, seeing that she had finished reading the article. “Do, um, do you think that Otto and the others are…?” She didn’t finish the sentence, but it was obvious that she had also connected two and two.
“I think they are, Hil, I think they are.” Clare answered, her voice quiet. It was better to go straight with it than to beat around the bush. The faster she could get over it, eventually, the better it would be for both.
Hil didn’t cry, not a single tear fell from her eyes. Her ears dropped slightly. She didn’t make a sound.
Clare felt bad for her. She wanted to turn around and hug her and wait for her to finish sobbing in her arms after hours and hours, to let all of it on her, after all, she was the one who contacted them first. No one would blame the Elf if she thought of Clare as the murderer of what was basically her family. But it didn’t happen. She wasn’t crying and she wasn’t even moving. Clare thought for a moment that she might have gone catatonic, or that maybe she had snapped and her body was gathering energy to go all out. But after a few minutes of silence, she just sat on a chair, silent and with an unfazed expression.
She thought, for a moment, that the Elf may have already processed all that grief, that maybe this was a quiet finality, the thing that confirmed her fears, and as such, there was nothing to feel badly for anymore. She had done all of that already, inside. Clare knew that the Elf was strong, more than her, and not only physically, she could probably do that much.
“Clare” Hil finally spoke. “I know I always ask for too much but… Can you give me a hug?”
There it was. In a way, in one that Clare wasn’t willing to confess, she felt glad. She nodded and hugged her. She felt the Elf’s tears wetting her shoulder, she felt her body trembling, she felt pain when she gripped her arms to hold herself. Hil had been holding up to the smallest flame of hope, and even if she had most likely already grieved all she needed to, she still had to let it all out.
While she did, Clare closed her eyes, and thought about the ramifications of all that had happened. She wasn’t going to let go of Hil in a while, and even if she wanted to, she had to get in contact with her parents to sent her there, and communicating through the Stormwall sea was extremely hard, even if she did through Lontenese merchant ships, who were the only ones powerful enough in the east of the continent of Casen to be able to cross through.
Speaking of Lonte.
In a few days the Lontenese religious minority that lived in the Holy City was going to hold one of their ceremonies in a mansion apparently rented by the Monteu family. Apparently, according to the word on the streets, it was some kind of ‘Unification’ thing. The idea was to celebrate their Ascension Festival, something she had never heard about, although she never paid much attention to those cultists, and according to them, it would be the ‘Revelation’ of the coming reunion between their cult and the Church. Much of the local aristocracy of Cegran had been invited, although as far as she knew, most had declined. Probably only a small delegation of the Church would be sent as a polite act of goodwill.
The pamphlets they had spread around the city spoke of it as a joyous thing, but Claire didn’t buy a word, they were always speaking about an incoming apocalyptic event.
