Chapter 159: Book 4 chapter 5

Annabell ran through the darkness, her heart thundering in her chest as she heard distant screams. 

I have to get away! was her only thought as she stumbled. Her hands sinking into the coarse sand as she caught herself.

She could feel it getting closer as she scrambled to stand, her body feeling sluggish as it sank into the sand. No matter what she did, what she tried, she just couldn’t seem to get up. It was like she was fighting against the darkness itself as she tried to move.

Then she felt it. A chill that cut her to the bone as the screams that surrounded her were replaced by a faint giggle. Her entire body froze as someone appeared before her, two dirty feet standing in a swirling pool of red as the figure crouched. 

Annabell didn’t want to look, she didn’t want to see whatever this thing was…

She clenched her eyes shut as something grabbed her chin, forcing her head up as she tried desperately to not look. 

Against her will her eyes opened, and Annabell found herself face to face with a smiling girl. The entire lower half of her face was covered in blood, the almost playful smile twisting into a full blown grin as she cocked her head as if inspecting Annabell. Her eyes, two dark orbs that seemed to shift in the darkness, slowly scanned Annabell’s every feature before she spoke, her mouth cracking to reveal sharp teeth, “I caught you.”

Annabell screamed.

Annabell scrambled to sit up, her heart thundering in her chest as fought back the bile rising in her throat. Her entire body shook as she sat there, covered in a cold sweat clenching her chest with a trembling hand. 

Slowly she looked around the small decrepit hut she was in, her eyes lingering on a dark corner of the room as if the blood covered girl was going to jump out of it. And there she sat, for hours, shivering in the darkness until finally the first rays of the sun illuminated the cracked wooden walls.  

And with the sun she slowly, painfully, got up. Her horror fueled trembling slowly fading into the shaky fatigue that always lingered after the nights she had the dream.

The dream… the one that haunted the young woman… “Just who is that girl?” She tentatively asked the empty room as she got ready for her day. 

The dream has been one of many mysteries in the young woman’s life for the past few months, though thankfully it was… less frequently than when she first arrived wherever she was. When she first arrived, she had the nightmare nearly every night, always waking up screaming as she tried to run from the darkness; now it was only once a week or so. 

Though it was because of that she found… them. She didn’t know who, or what, they were but she was thankful they didn’t seem hostile. The large wolf-like creatures had found her the first night, taking her back to their village and giving her a place to sleep and food! Sure, it wasn’t anything great but the soup like gruel is filling at least.

She couldn’t understand them, but they seemed… nice enough. They weren’t eating her at least, though she still couldn’t be comfortable around the enormous lupine creatures that looked… vaguely like humans. 

They didn’t seem to be bothered by her, after the first night she was brought before what she could only guess was their leader who, after growling and sniffing her, had taken her to the hut she now sleeps in and… well left her there. She wasn’t sure if the door was locked but… well where would she go?

Annabell may not be the smartest girl in the world, but even she could tell that running away from the pack of wolf-like people into an unknown forest was a bad idea. Besides they give her food and a few of them have been trying to… well talk to her… maybe. 

Every day an older woman comes to get her and Annabell spends the day following her around as she works, mainly gathering food in the nearby forest with what she assumes are children.

She can even recognize a few of the sounds now, like when they point at something and make the sound “carry” they want her to pick something up and bring it with them, most of the time it’s a basket full of strange fruit. Or when they call out “human”, that means her. 

It has been… slow. But it’s not like she has anything better to do, she didn’t know where she was or how she even got here. Annabell was confident she wasn’t on earth any more given the massive wolf people, but wondering about how she got here or even where here even was gave her a headache so…

Just like always the old woman arrived, opening the door without preamble like she has every day since she got here. The woman glared at Annabell, her large golden eyes narrowing as she jerked her head to the side, “follow”. 

And she did. Falling in line behind the woman Annabell made it a point to not look around, having learned the people here don’t like when she makes eye contact with them. but… something was different, they weren’t headed towards the forest like normal.

No, she was leading her into the town? Had… had Annabell done something wrong? No, she was sure that wasn’t it… but why?

Then she saw them, and Annabell’s heart nearly stopped. Standing next to the pack leader was a group of relatively small people, the massive lupine man dwarfing the group as they exchanged words in the strange language. 

Are… are those humans! She nearly cried as her eyes landed on the man who was handing the massive wolf what looked like a wrapped-up piece of paper. 

 

Ethan couldn’t help but sigh as the man took the letter from him, the small piece of parchment looking nearly comical in the man's massive, padded hand. 

“And this,” the man held the paper up. “Is from the Queen of Crown?”

Ethan nodded, “Yes. She had asked us to deliver this to your tribe on our way to our next destination.”

It… was really stressing the guilds noninterference treaties but… well he was just doing his job, a job that he was happy to be done with given that he was sure the contents of that letter were well beyond anything the guild should be involved in. Then again, their other requests were also skirting the guilds rules but that’s just the risk when one of your party members is a high noble of a nation.

As for what requests they were doing… Well there were two “official” requests from the guild along with two much less official ones.

The all-faiths church, along with several other religious guilds, had posed a request asking for someone to find and assist the saintess in her “pilgrimage” across Ecrein. A relatively simple request despite the year and a half timeline tacked to it, though the perks were great. Since they are taking part in a “holy mission” the party has been given several seals that will allow them to receive healing, at a discount, at any affiliated temple or church of a supporting religious guild, along with a five hundred gold reward. 

Of course, as the only A rank party in Navaratna, and have openly shared their plans to travel to Ecrein, they were given the request the moment it was posted in the guild.

That was attached to the request from the Lapidary family to go and safely escort their daughter’s home. Again, the time frame of the request was rather long, but the pay was… well exorbitant. They offered to fully fund the expedition, providing both supplies and gear as a down payment along with a rather appealing reward of a thousand gold once complete.

Both of those requests are what allowed the group to travel unhindered across Ecrein, even other guild halls wouldn’t question them if they happened to stop in a more developed town. 

Of course, the two more unofficial requests were the problem. Queen Irithal had asked the group to deliver a message along with a package to the Timberland beast tribe on the other side of the dragon maw mountain range. As to what was in the letter or package? Ethan did not ask, nor did he want to know. He was certain it had something to do with the war and that was firmly not his business.

They had to kindly turn down the Queen’s offer of a pedigree, given as members of the guild it was frowned upon to receive titles as payment; it wasn’t a really a rule, but noble titles came with a bit more of a headache than they are worth as his group is starting to learn. Then again, she had given the party a sickening amount of gold to retrieve her dear friend’s daughters while they were in Ecrein.

The three requests at least had the decency to be worded in such a way that the guild could officiate them, sending a copy to the main adventures hall and tied to their guild card records. Though they didn’t bother with the queen's request given the war it might be seen as trying to use adventures as spies. 

Official request could be used by a party for several things, mainly for advancements in rank, but it also helped a party standing in the guild as well as bolster their prestige as adventures.

The final request however… well it wasn’t so much that it was explicitly against the guilds rules, a simple request from a concerned wife to bring her lover home. Just… Well one doesn’t just post a request from a “demon lord” to the adventurer's guild, not to mention Saffron had explicitly asked the group to kill any heroes they run into along the way. 

They of course didn’t agree to flat out murder people, they were adventures not mercenaries after all. But they also couldn’t really turn down Saffron’s request given the succubus had been the one to provide them with an enchanted compass that should guide them to Hecatolite… or maybe it pointed to Amethyst’s armor… The enchantment itself was kind of complex and lost on Ethan but it should bring them to the Twins.

They also couldn’t officiate Saffron's request because it didn’t have a reward attributed to it. Well, it did, just none of them were brave enough to accept it. Godhood normally sounded like a joke but when a demon lord offers it to you it really feels more like a threat. Not to mention a sex demon married to a Deity of lust, it was really possible that Saffron could actually turn one of them into a divine being and it really wasn’t worth the risk. 

Besides, it was all really just for show in the end. Even without the deluge of requests there was no way the party wasn’t going to go and get the twins back; they were after all members of the adventuring group. Besides, Fiori has been rather depressed since Amethyst disappeared, the feline woman refuses to admit it’s because of the absence of their youngest member, but everyone knew the two were getting rather close in recent months. 

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Thinking back on the strange requests, along with the literal mountain of gold waiting for them back in the Empire of Crown, Ethan fought back a sigh. It was all a little… overwhelming honestly. 

He didn’t belong here, taking requests from a Queen or an actual church tied to the gods. Sure, he had dreamed of being a Hero, an A rank adventurer that stood at the pinnacle of power, battling demon lords and saving the world… and here he was, nearly 30 just a basic wind magic swordsman. You could throw a stone in a city and hit a dozen men just like him, yet he had just been in the wrong place at the right time. Swept up in the wake of an insane little girl that really had no idea or care how her actions affected the rest of the world.

He wasn’t special, he wasn’t particularly strong nor was he really all that smart; both those facts had been drilled into him in his years training with a real-life dragon slayer. Compared to the twins, Ethan was… dull. 

The two girls’ disappearance had stirred an entire nation into action, and he was just… Ethan. A simple guy with delusions of grandeur. Really, he watched as the massive man before him carefully read the letter. Just when did my life get so out of…

His thoughts were interrupted when something crashed into him. The impact caused him to step back as a… girl bounced off his chest plate.

“What?” Ethan asked out loud as the small woman clung to him, rambling in some strange language that sounded oddly… familiar.

The tribe leader snorted, “apologies adventures.” His gravelly voice seemed to cause the girl to shutter as the man who was every inch as tall as the guild master grabbed her. “She is just some stray we found in the forest months ago.” 

As the man pulled the girl back Ethan got a look at the girl’s dirt covered face, her large pleading eyes along with her matted hair. And something in him ached to help her. 

“Who is she?” he asked as the girl refused to let him go despite the tribe leaders’ grasp on her arm.

“We do not know,” he growled, “one of our hunting parties found her running through the forest covered in blood screaming her head off in the middle of the night. Our shaman thinks she may be cursed given she cannot speak, but without identification we cannot tell.”

“If you would like,” Mira stepped up beside them, her voice seeming to pull the girls attention as she looked to her with tear filled eyes. “I can identify her.”

“If you can, maybe then we can request someone from the guild to come take her back where she belongs.” The man replied as the girl who all but pounced on Mira, now full-blown crying as she seemed to beg the mage for something. “We would be grateful for any information.”

Mira nodded as she turned to the girl, speaking softly she said. “I am going to cast an identification spell on you, is that ok?” she asked despite the tribe leaders’ words it would still be rude to not ask. The girl however did not answer, continuing to ramble in gruff language...

I am sure I have heard that before… Ethan couldn’t shake the feeling as he looked at Fiori who was now glaring at the girl. The feline woman hasn’t said a word since they arrived in the Timberland tribe’s territory, which is probably for the best given her aversion to the wolf-kin tribes. It wasn’t so much she disliked them, just something about them made the cat-kin woman… uncomfortable. 

But looking at her now, her golden eyes narrowed as her ears were locked forward, it was clear she had noticed something odd about the girl.

Mira gasped, jerking back from the girl who was now just silently crying before her. Her eyes glowing with the faint blue of her identification spell, Mira reread the girl’s soul page. 

Name: Annabell Miller

Age: Error*

Titles: Error*

Traits: Fractured mind, Error*

Skills: Error*

*Soul page corrupted due to mental deterioration. Until corrected all information will be locked 

“Her page is…” Mira didn’t know what to make of the information displayed. It was clear the “fractured mind” trait had been left on the page so anyone could see it and help correct it. But… Hecatolite had the fractured mind trait, and it didn’t “corrupt” her page like that… did it? Honestly Mira never knew what to make of Hecatolite’s page, but she was sure it didn’t look like… that.

“What's wrong with her soul page?” Ethan tentatively asked.

“It's… corrupted.” Mira answered bluntly, “I can’t see… well anything. She has the trait fractured mind, but aside from that… there’s nothing but her name. Even her age is blocked out. Her name is Annabell Miller…” the girl's entire body jerked as Mira said her name, looking up at her with big hopeful eyes the girl began rambling again.

“Corrupted?” The tribe leader asked.

“Yes, I think it is caused by the fractured mind trait. Something about mental deterioration… I think she forgot all her skills, so they are removed from her page until she remembers them.” Mira guessed, “a powerful soul mage might be able to help her…”

The tribe leader grunted, his hand coming up to his snout as he thought. “That is concerning. Powerful soul mages are hard to come by.”

Ethan nodded, “Even the few I have met haven’t been particularly strong. Outside of the Queen that is. and I doubt the Queen of Crown will be willing to help some random girl…”

“Hecatolite,” Fiori finally added. “She was a soul mage wasn’t she?” 

Ethan couldn’t help but feel it was fate. Sure, he wasn’t a hero, but… he could still act like one. Looking at the girl who stood completely frozen clutching Mira’s robes, he made up his mind. “We should take her with us.” He said simply. This girl needed a soul mage, and they just happened to be traveling to meet up with the most powerful person he had ever met. Sure, traveling across the wild lands with an untrained girl would be… difficult. But no one ever said being a hero was easy.

 

Annabell’s heart sank as she desperately tried to talk to the humans. She had hoped, no she needed them to understand her. To help her… yet they just continued to speak in that strange language she couldn’t understand. 

At one point the woman had done something that made Annabell’s head tingle, but then she looked… concerned. She had said her name, and Annabell had hoped that maybe she could understand her now but…

Then she heard it. A single word that made her entire body lock up, an uncontrollable shiver running down her spine as every fiber of her being told her to run… 

“Hecatolite…” She didn’t know why that word filled her with such dread, but it took everything she had to not scream. 

No, she couldn’t scream even if she wanted to. Her entire body froze, locked in place by deep primal fear as they continued to speak over her. Whatever that word meant, Annabell was positive, it was bad. Just like the smiling demon in her dreams, Hecatolite was… death.

The human man placed a hand on her shoulder and spoke, “don’t worry, our friend can help you.” She couldn’t understand him but something about the sincerity in his gaze made her feel… safe.

And just like that, the former staff of Valor hero Anna, joined an adventuring party headed directly to her worst nightmare. And deep in the void a terminal flashed a happy blue. After all, Me had attempted to drop the girl in the dragon’s nest in the middle of the mountain range but this! This will be so much more entertaining! 

All the way across the world a sleeping Hecatolite was woken to a stray thought. 

I wonder, how I will react? “Stupid whispers,” she hissed, rolling over, “let me sleep.”