“And I’m a fucking Cat 5,” Adrian says. “That’s bullshit.”
Zil shrugs. “You can doubt me, boy, but that’ll go away right quick when you see what they’re doing.”
“I still don’t—“
“Hey,” I tell Adrian. “We’re not exactly alone on this train, so let’s table that, yeah? You’re going to spend the next however many hours complaining about how you can’t trust Zil. Sure. I’ll kill him if he steps out of line.”
I don’t even need Acting to show death in my gaze. I’ve gotten good at scaring Adrian just by looking at him, and he shrinks back once again, unwilling to contest me.
“Ha!” Zil shouts. “Good luck with—“
“Shut up,” I tell him, waving a hand. “Before Adrian changes his mind and we waste even more time.”
There are more people coming, filtering through the train cars ahead of us, but they’re a fair bit off. None of the skills we used were really loud, so I doubt they’ll notice anything wrong until they find the mostly-Devoured bodies.
“We have a few minutes before the next wave arrive,” I say as casually as I can. “I will deal with them when they get here. Before that happens, Zil: explain.”
“I say what I mean, I mean what I say,” the burly Berserker says. “They are making a ritual that’ll make a Titan. I’m no magic man. I can’t tell you anything else.”
“Then we have to stop it,” Sierra says.
We could just ignore it. The thought of fighting a Titan is one of the rare few things that sparks genuine terror in me. Creating one shouldn’t even be possible, but a good enough copy would still be more than I’d like to take my chances with.
Running is sometimes the better choice, I’ve learned.
“When and where?” Sierra asks.
Zil grunts. “Not yet, but soon. They’ll be in the Wastelands. They can’t hold the ritual anywhere else.”
Objective: Eat the (Titan) baby
A ritual begins in the Whitestar Wastelands. Whether it will create a true Titan is yet to be seen, but one thing is clear: there is an overwhelming amount of potential waiting to be consumed.
Kill the creation before or after it is empowered.
Reward: 500,000 XP + ??? (Secondary reward unlocked upon completion of ritual)
Now that’s a reason for me to get involved. After I hit level 50, the XP it requires to increase each level doubled, so five hundred thousand is less than it seems, but that’s still easily twenty to thirty levels alongside a potential secondary benefit.
The system’s fucked me over in the past, mostly with respect to matters involving Sapphire or anyone involved with her. Sierra said that this plan has her aunt’s fingerprints all over it, but I get the feeling that I now might be powerful enough to handle some of what Marie was throwing at me in the Crowned Islands.
Besides, wouldn’t it be a kick to her teeth to break her plan apart?
I can’t let emotion take over me, but the rewards are more than enough to justify it.
“Then we go to the Wastelands,” I say. “The Deadmarked and the Halcyon clan is working together there, right?”
“Sure fucking seems like it,” Zil says. “On that note, we’ve got company.”
Irritating. I’d try to use my newly upgraded Acting and Imitation skills to get out of this situation, but that would mean passing up the chance for XP.
“I have this,” I say.
My Blood Sense is a bit muddled—someone must have a way to block it.
It doesn’t matter.
By the time the first one of them enters the door, making eye contact with me before slowly realizing the dissolved bodies of her comrades lie at my feet, my Abyssal Echo is already working on them.
Five, six, seven of them make it into the train car, each of them stunned by my skill. The eighth, surprisingly, manages to overpower it. He forms a golden bow in his hand, draws it back—but my Mind (Speed) is high enough that time slows down to a crawl. I Siphon the skill away.
“Radiant Recurve,” I murmur. “I like the sound of that.”
At level 20 in the Diamond tier, Siphon enables me to mimic the skills I’ve nullified, and so I do.
The arrow takes him in the throat, and the Smite finishes the job.
I saunter towards the rest of them, acknowledging the panic in their eyes with a simple nod before executing each of them with my fingers. With Body (Strength) now at a remarkable 72, my own hands are deadly weapons, carving through flesh like a hot knife through butter.
Their deaths don’t even get me halfway to the next level. Disappointing. It appears that the higher level I get, the less XP lower-level beings grant me.
“You can come in now,” I call to the people behind me.
At this point, Sierra and Adrian are mostly unfazed. Zil, on the other hand, laughs heartily, the slightest tremor entering his voice. “Blood Reaper indeed!”
“Yeah, yeah,” I say. “No killing innocents, right?”
“Please don’t,” Sierra says. “It’s not our way.”
Although I don’t agree with her reasoning, I agree with her conclusion. The civilians on this train are likely barely worth any XP, and killing them will just be more trouble than it’s worth. As I’ve learned recently, murdering someone leads to consequences. I should probably be more wary of that.
“I’ll handle this, then,” I say, stepping over rapidly dissolving bodies to get to the door to the next car over.
I use Ethereal Tempest, creating a barrage of misty weapons, then Hemokinesis, providing more substance to the skill, and I strike upwards.
“If you could punch the ceiling, that’d help,” I tell Zil idly.
He laughs even harder at that, and he punches the ceiling. I swear I feel the entire train vibrate from the impact. Metal crunches under his fist as if it’s nothing but paper to him, and half the ceiling flies off.
My skills remove the remainder. I hear screams in the carts further down. Didn’t evacuate them that far, huh?
Someone bangs on the door between cars.
This is going to be annoying.
“Hey, listen up,” I say. “We don’t want it to be known that we were here, right?”
“That is correct,” Sierra says. “Especially since it appears that you have gained some infamy.”
“Follow my lead, then.”
I explain my plan as I smear the blood on my fingers all over my face and clothes, tearing up my shirt just a bit and adding a bit extra gore to my body for dramatic effect.
When I step into the next car, my posture has changed, as has my body. If I’m following Acting correct, I should look just like a terrified, shell-shocked young woman. Shapeshift makes me significantly less conspicuous.
Keeping in lockstep with the skill’s suggestions, I open my eyes too wide, my head flicking around as I limp towards the other passengers. At the same time, I “hold my breath,” doing what I can to ease myself back into the pseudo-cloak.
“H-help,” I stutter, blinking a few too many times to force my eyes to tear up. “T-the monster—the men in the back—the guards—“
“Shhh, it’s going to be okay,” Sierra says with feigned softness, stepping in alongside Adrian. She puts a hand on my shoulder, and a useless blue glow appears around me. I use Hemokinesis to give the impression that my nonexistent wounds are closing.
Zil steps in last, his head almost bumping against the ceiling. He stands to his full height, crossing his arms. “Passengers, do not fear! There was a bandit attack on the train, but rest assured! They are not coming back!”
He is remarkably bad at acting.
Still, the passengers are scared and he’s a big authority figure.
“Remain calm!” he orders, and the passengers start whispering amongst themselves, shouting, and basically doing everything other than remaining calm.
People start to stand up, demanding answers, and Sierra answers them. All of her answers are total bullshit, of course—nobody’s “still investigating” the back, since they’re all dead. The non-answers she and Zil provide are enough to silence the crowd some, though I catch more than one person muttering something about “the Halcyon toughs bringing trouble.” That’s an unexpected side benefit.
All in all, it goes without a hitch. When we return to the car whose ceiling we destroyed, nobody tries to enter the room.
“Well,” Zil says. “That was an exciting entrance.”
The rest of us just look at him.
“Anyway!” he shouts, a little too loud. “We’re not going to get to the Wastelands on this train. Lucky for you, I know a way to it.”
Sierra puts her face in her hands, and Adrian just sighs, walking to the other side of the trashed train car as the night air whistles above us.
“What’s the way?” I ask.
“If he ever says ‘lucky for you,’ you know he’s about to do something stupid,” Adrian calls to me.
“You have any better ideas?” Zil asks.
“To my great dismay, no,” Sierra says.
And that’s how we find ourselves standing on the twisted edge of the shattered ceiling just about six hours later, the sun slowly rising to the east. We’re still traveling through mostly-empty sand dunes, but the ocean is nowhere in sight and neither are the cliffs that mark Tsubera’s boundaries.
The only sign of civilization for miles around is something that might be city walls on the horizon. Either that, or it’s the glint of the sun off a particularly reflective patch of sand. Our path goes nowhere near it.
“We jump,” Zil explains, gesturing off into the distance. “That city’s a border town. They’ll have transport to the Wastelands.”
“You have got to be fucking kidding me,” Adrian sighs. “Do you have any plans that don’t involve—“
Zil jumps off the side of the train, leaping so far and high that I almost think he has a flight skill.
Adrian follows, which honestly surprises me. His jump is nowhere near as powerful, but he rolls gracefully on the sand, slowing to a stop maybe twenty feet from the train tracks.
Sierra makes a face, stepping daintily off the edge of the train. A blue disk forms under her.
“Join me?” she asks.
I do so gladly. The speed of the train means we take a few extra seconds to join them. It continues chugging along without us, soaring off into the distance.
Compared to the first time I jumped off a train, this is much easier. I have so many mobility skills that the drop down isn’t anywhere close to threatening me, and the attributes for my durability are high enough that I’m fairly sure I could faceplant into the desert and still be fine.
“That city has to be three or four miles away,” I say. “We’re walking?”
“That’s right,” Zil says. “Keep up.”
He takes off, kicking up so much sand that it almost looks like a train is driving through the dunes.
“Fucking hell,” Adrian grumbles, sprinting off after him. He moves at barely half of Zil’s pace, but he goes anyway.
Sierra and I look at each other. I could use Bloodpath, which would require a lot of magic power but will propel me there pretty fast, but I think Sierra has another idea.
“Hey, uh, Evelyn,” Sierra says, her cheeks reddening. “I have Personal Telekinesis, but I can’t use it on you. Also, I lost your Blood Magic again, and…”
Given how forward she’s been up until now, her embarrassment is a touch uncharacteristic.
I grin. “You want to carry me?”
She averts her eyes. “If you allow it.”
I lean into her open arms. “To the border city, then.”
The Wastelands
“They’re not here,” Rin grouses. “I predicted too far.”
“Of course they’re not,” Sy replies, putting his face in his hands. “You have to start thinking before you do these things.”
“Then do you want to go back?”
“We’ve already violated protocol,” Sy sighs. “We may as well commit.”
He doesn’t want to admit that he wants that demon dead just as much as Rin did. She’s been working with him for far too long for someone to almost snuff her life out like it’s a candle. Sy knows that if he follows the proper protocols, he can bring a detachment of UCC soldiers to contain her for further research.
But that’s not what he wants. Here, he can unleash his full power. Here, the limit is Category 2.
Protocol states that any operator who engages with an anomaly that threatens their lives or the organization is permitted to use lethal force. Protocol states that any operator who’s involved in a life-threatening operation against a hostile anomaly—even one that’s not been permitted to execute—can approach the situation in whichever way they decide is best.
Protocol states that any punishments from broken protocol will be nullified if a sufficiently threatening anomaly is neutralized.
The standing order for A-CI-1926 is to bring it in alive, but a dead anomaly is better than one running in the wild.
Which makes it rather frustrating that they’re not engaging in combat yet.
“Can you track the anomaly?” Sy asks. “I’ll recon the area.”
Rin nods an affirmative as Sy closes his physical eyes, opening his Arcane Eye. His sight expands, encompassing the entirety of their dingy hotel room, then the entire building. Then the hastily-constructed village.
Then a mile around them. Two. Three.
Soon, his sight encompasses half the area that the Whitestar natives call the Wastelands.
He sees neither head nor tail of the targets that he and Rin are chasing, but hidden away in a larger city about fifteen miles away are people that he recognizes.
Not in the sense of having spoken to them, but as one of the few assigned to clear the Crowned Islands’ UCC sites, part of his duty has always been knowing the few relevant people from that godsforsaken place.
“Rin,” Sy says, still in his Arcane Eye, “I found something.”
“Good,” she complains, “because I don’t have the trail. I went too far.”
“It’s not the demon,” Sy says. “It could be nothing.”
“Show me, show me, show me!” Rin says, popping up from the bed, excited. She grasps his hand, and he passes the snapshot of another city to her.
The familiar stomach-twisting sensation of her Timeslip grips him, and then they’re elsewhere.
As soon as they arrive, eight separate weapons train themselves on the pair of them.
Before any of their potential foes even try striking, Sy’s already scanned all of them. Rin surely has, too.
“Oh, you’ve got us into a fuckin’ riot now,” Rin says, grinning. “I see what you’re doing, Sy.”
“Who the hells are you?” asks Lady Ashley Kane, their obvious leader asks.
“Peace, Lady Kane,” Arthur Halcyon replies. “They have not fought us yet. Travelers, what is your purpose?”
“A buncha guys from the Crowned Islands, huh?” Rin asks, looking around.
“And a Whitestar elite,” Sy confirms.
“No trade here. No reason why you lot should be here in the Wastelands,” Rin says.
“Unless you’re hunting,” Sy completes.
“You’re a sharp one,” the Halcyon says, nodding. “I will ask again. What is your purpose?”
“I can smell a demon’s traces on you,” Rin declares, spreading her hands. “Why don’t we talk about how we’re going to kill that bitch?”
“And I’m a fucking Cat 5,” Adrian says. “That’s bullshit.”
Zil shrugs. “You can doubt me, boy, but that’ll go away right quick when you see what they’re doing.”
“I still don’t—“
“Hey,” I tell Adrian. “We’re not exactly alone on this train, so let’s table that, yeah? You’re going to spend the next however many hours complaining about how you can’t trust Zil. Sure. I’ll kill him if he steps out of line.”
I don’t even need Acting to show death in my gaze. I’ve gotten good at scaring Adrian just by looking at him, and he shrinks back once again, unwilling to contest me.
“Ha!” Zil shouts. “Good luck with—“
“Shut up,” I tell him, waving a hand. “Before Adrian changes his mind and we waste even more time.”
There are more people coming, filtering through the train cars ahead of us, but they’re a fair bit off. None of the skills we used were really loud, so I doubt they’ll notice anything wrong until they find the mostly-Devoured bodies.
“We have a few minutes before the next wave arrive,” I say as casually as I can. “I will deal with them when they get here. Before that happens, Zil: explain.”
“I say what I mean, I mean what I say,” the burly Berserker says. “They are making a ritual that’ll make a Titan. I’m no magic man. I can’t tell you anything else.”
“Then we have to stop it,” Sierra says.
We could just ignore it. The thought of fighting a Titan is one of the rare few things that sparks genuine terror in me. Creating one shouldn’t even be possible, but a good enough copy would still be more than I’d like to take my chances with.
Running is sometimes the better choice, I’ve learned.
“When and where?” Sierra asks.
Zil grunts. “Not yet, but soon. They’ll be in the Wastelands. They can’t hold the ritual anywhere else.”
Objective: Eat the (Titan) baby
A ritual begins in the Whitestar Wastelands. Whether it will create a true Titan is yet to be seen, but one thing is clear: there is an overwhelming amount of potential waiting to be consumed.
Kill the creation before or after it is empowered.
Reward: 500,000 XP + ??? (Secondary reward unlocked upon completion of ritual)
Now that’s a reason for me to get involved. After I hit level 50, the XP it requires to increase each level doubled, so five hundred thousand is less than it seems, but that’s still easily twenty to thirty levels alongside a potential secondary benefit.
The system’s fucked me over in the past, mostly with respect to matters involving Sapphire or anyone involved with her. Sierra said that this plan has her aunt’s fingerprints all over it, but I get the feeling that I now might be powerful enough to handle some of what Marie was throwing at me in the Crowned Islands.
Besides, wouldn’t it be a kick to her teeth to break her plan apart?
I can’t let emotion take over me, but the rewards are more than enough to justify it.
“Then we go to the Wastelands,” I say. “The Deadmarked and the Halcyon clan is working together there, right?”
“Sure fucking seems like it,” Zil says. “On that note, we’ve got company.”
Irritating. I’d try to use my newly upgraded Acting and Imitation skills to get out of this situation, but that would mean passing up the chance for XP.
“I have this,” I say.
My Blood Sense is a bit muddled—someone must have a way to block it.
It doesn’t matter.
By the time the first one of them enters the door, making eye contact with me before slowly realizing the dissolved bodies of her comrades lie at my feet, my Abyssal Echo is already working on them.
Five, six, seven of them make it into the train car, each of them stunned by my skill. The eighth, surprisingly, manages to overpower it. He forms a golden bow in his hand, draws it back—but my Mind (Speed) is high enough that time slows down to a crawl. I Siphon the skill away.
“Radiant Recurve,” I murmur. “I like the sound of that.”
At level 20 in the Diamond tier, Siphon enables me to mimic the skills I’ve nullified, and so I do.
The arrow takes him in the throat, and the Smite finishes the job.
I saunter towards the rest of them, acknowledging the panic in their eyes with a simple nod before executing each of them with my fingers. With Body (Strength) now at a remarkable 72, my own hands are deadly weapons, carving through flesh like a hot knife through butter.
Their deaths don’t even get me halfway to the next level. Disappointing. It appears that the higher level I get, the less XP lower-level beings grant me.
“You can come in now,” I call to the people behind me.
At this point, Sierra and Adrian are mostly unfazed. Zil, on the other hand, laughs heartily, the slightest tremor entering his voice. “Blood Reaper indeed!”
“Yeah, yeah,” I say. “No killing innocents, right?”
“Please don’t,” Sierra says. “It’s not our way.”
Although I don’t agree with her reasoning, I agree with her conclusion. The civilians on this train are likely barely worth any XP, and killing them will just be more trouble than it’s worth. As I’ve learned recently, murdering someone leads to consequences. I should probably be more wary of that.
“I’ll handle this, then,” I say, stepping over rapidly dissolving bodies to get to the door to the next car over.
I use Ethereal Tempest, creating a barrage of misty weapons, then Hemokinesis, providing more substance to the skill, and I strike upwards.
“If you could punch the ceiling, that’d help,” I tell Zil idly.
He laughs even harder at that, and he punches the ceiling. I swear I feel the entire train vibrate from the impact. Metal crunches under his fist as if it’s nothing but paper to him, and half the ceiling flies off.
My skills remove the remainder. I hear screams in the carts further down. Didn’t evacuate them that far, huh?
Someone bangs on the door between cars.
This is going to be annoying.
“Hey, listen up,” I say. “We don’t want it to be known that we were here, right?”
“That is correct,” Sierra says. “Especially since it appears that you have gained some infamy.”
“Follow my lead, then.”
I explain my plan as I smear the blood on my fingers all over my face and clothes, tearing up my shirt just a bit and adding a bit extra gore to my body for dramatic effect.
When I step into the next car, my posture has changed, as has my body. If I’m following Acting correct, I should look just like a terrified, shell-shocked young woman. Shapeshift makes me significantly less conspicuous.
Keeping in lockstep with the skill’s suggestions, I open my eyes too wide, my head flicking around as I limp towards the other passengers. At the same time, I “hold my breath,” doing what I can to ease myself back into the pseudo-cloak.
“H-help,” I stutter, blinking a few too many times to force my eyes to tear up. “T-the monster—the men in the back—the guards—“
“Shhh, it’s going to be okay,” Sierra says with feigned softness, stepping in alongside Adrian. She puts a hand on my shoulder, and a useless blue glow appears around me. I use Hemokinesis to give the impression that my nonexistent wounds are closing.
Zil steps in last, his head almost bumping against the ceiling. He stands to his full height, crossing his arms. “Passengers, do not fear! There was a bandit attack on the train, but rest assured! They are not coming back!”
He is remarkably bad at acting.
Still, the passengers are scared and he’s a big authority figure.
“Remain calm!” he orders, and the passengers start whispering amongst themselves, shouting, and basically doing everything other than remaining calm.
People start to stand up, demanding answers, and Sierra answers them. All of her answers are total bullshit, of course—nobody’s “still investigating” the back, since they’re all dead. The non-answers she and Zil provide are enough to silence the crowd some, though I catch more than one person muttering something about “the Halcyon toughs bringing trouble.” That’s an unexpected side benefit.
All in all, it goes without a hitch. When we return to the car whose ceiling we destroyed, nobody tries to enter the room.
“Well,” Zil says. “That was an exciting entrance.”
The rest of us just look at him.
“Anyway!” he shouts, a little too loud. “We’re not going to get to the Wastelands on this train. Lucky for you, I know a way to it.”
Sierra puts her face in her hands, and Adrian just sighs, walking to the other side of the trashed train car as the night air whistles above us.
“What’s the way?” I ask.
“If he ever says ‘lucky for you,’ you know he’s about to do something stupid,” Adrian calls to me.
“You have any better ideas?” Zil asks.
“To my great dismay, no,” Sierra says.
And that’s how we find ourselves standing on the twisted edge of the shattered ceiling just about six hours later, the sun slowly rising to the east. We’re still traveling through mostly-empty sand dunes, but the ocean is nowhere in sight and neither are the cliffs that mark Tsubera’s boundaries.
The only sign of civilization for miles around is something that might be city walls on the horizon. Either that, or it’s the glint of the sun off a particularly reflective patch of sand. Our path goes nowhere near it.
“We jump,” Zil explains, gesturing off into the distance. “That city’s a border town. They’ll have transport to the Wastelands.”
“You have got to be fucking kidding me,” Adrian sighs. “Do you have any plans that don’t involve—“
Zil jumps off the side of the train, leaping so far and high that I almost think he has a flight skill.
Adrian follows, which honestly surprises me. His jump is nowhere near as powerful, but he rolls gracefully on the sand, slowing to a stop maybe twenty feet from the train tracks.
Sierra makes a face, stepping daintily off the edge of the train. A blue disk forms under her.
“Join me?” she asks.
I do so gladly. The speed of the train means we take a few extra seconds to join them. It continues chugging along without us, soaring off into the distance.
Compared to the first time I jumped off a train, this is much easier. I have so many mobility skills that the drop down isn’t anywhere close to threatening me, and the attributes for my durability are high enough that I’m fairly sure I could faceplant into the desert and still be fine.
“That city has to be three or four miles away,” I say. “We’re walking?”
“That’s right,” Zil says. “Keep up.”
He takes off, kicking up so much sand that it almost looks like a train is driving through the dunes.
“Fucking hell,” Adrian grumbles, sprinting off after him. He moves at barely half of Zil’s pace, but he goes anyway.
Sierra and I look at each other. I could use Bloodpath, which would require a lot of magic power but will propel me there pretty fast, but I think Sierra has another idea.
“Hey, uh, Evelyn,” Sierra says, her cheeks reddening. “I have Personal Telekinesis, but I can’t use it on you. Also, I lost your Blood Magic again, and…”
Given how forward she’s been up until now, her embarrassment is a touch uncharacteristic.
I grin. “You want to carry me?”
She averts her eyes. “If you allow it.”
I lean into her open arms. “To the border city, then.”
The Wastelands
“They’re not here,” Rin grouses. “I predicted too far.”
“Of course they’re not,” Sy replies, putting his face in his hands. “You have to start thinking before you do these things.”
“Then do you want to go back?”
“We’ve already violated protocol,” Sy sighs. “We may as well commit.”
He doesn’t want to admit that he wants that demon dead just as much as Rin did. She’s been working with him for far too long for someone to almost snuff her life out like it’s a candle. Sy knows that if he follows the proper protocols, he can bring a detachment of UCC soldiers to contain her for further research.
But that’s not what he wants. Here, he can unleash his full power. Here, the limit is Category 2.
Protocol states that any operator who engages with an anomaly that threatens their lives or the organization is permitted to use lethal force. Protocol states that any operator who’s involved in a life-threatening operation against a hostile anomaly—even one that’s not been permitted to execute—can approach the situation in whichever way they decide is best.
Protocol states that any punishments from broken protocol will be nullified if a sufficiently threatening anomaly is neutralized.
The standing order for A-CI-1926 is to bring it in alive, but a dead anomaly is better than one running in the wild.
Which makes it rather frustrating that they’re not engaging in combat yet.
“Can you track the anomaly?” Sy asks. “I’ll recon the area.”
Rin nods an affirmative as Sy closes his physical eyes, opening his Arcane Eye. His sight expands, encompassing the entirety of their dingy hotel room, then the entire building. Then the hastily-constructed village.
Then a mile around them. Two. Three.
Soon, his sight encompasses half the area that the Whitestar natives call the Wastelands.
He sees neither head nor tail of the targets that he and Rin are chasing, but hidden away in a larger city about fifteen miles away are people that he recognizes.
Not in the sense of having spoken to them, but as one of the few assigned to clear the Crowned Islands’ UCC sites, part of his duty has always been knowing the few relevant people from that godsforsaken place.
“Rin,” Sy says, still in his Arcane Eye, “I found something.”
“Good,” she complains, “because I don’t have the trail. I went too far.”
“It’s not the demon,” Sy says. “It could be nothing.”
“Show me, show me, show me!” Rin says, popping up from the bed, excited. She grasps his hand, and he passes the snapshot of another city to her.
The familiar stomach-twisting sensation of her Timeslip grips him, and then they’re elsewhere.
As soon as they arrive, eight separate weapons train themselves on the pair of them.
Before any of their potential foes even try striking, Sy’s already scanned all of them. Rin surely has, too.
“Oh, you’ve got us into a fuckin’ riot now,” Rin says, grinning. “I see what you’re doing, Sy.”
“Who the hells are you?” asks Lady Ashley Kane, their obvious leader asks.
“Peace, Lady Kane,” Arthur Halcyon replies. “They have not fought us yet. Travelers, what is your purpose?”
“A buncha guys from the Crowned Islands, huh?” Rin asks, looking around.
“And a Whitestar elite,” Sy confirms.
“No trade here. No reason why you lot should be here in the Wastelands,” Rin says.
“Unless you’re hunting,” Sy completes.
“You’re a sharp one,” the Halcyon says, nodding. “I will ask again. What is your purpose?”
“I can smell a demon’s traces on you,” Rin declares, spreading her hands. “Why don’t we talk about how we’re going to kill that bitch?”
