Sindra and Ven'thur were the ones to give Li a solid rundown of what had happened in his daylong absence.

"It was midafternoon the day before," said Ven'thur. "Right after I had worked out a contract with the Merchant's Guild that would cease their needless threats and grant us both benefit. I beheld a mass number of knights mobilizing throughout the city, even in the northern side where they do not like to make a racket so as to not disturb the more privileged citizens of the city.

That prompted me to speak to a few officials in the city hall whom I have had the pleasure of convincing quite thoroughly to be my acquaintances, but there was mere panic and confusion. No two officials could grant me the same tale.

So, I went to Count Alexei for counsel."

"And how has he been doing?" said Li, curious as to how the count was handling this sudden upheaval throughout the city.

No doubt, if the count had any idea that all of this was coming to pass, he would have informed Li, meaning that the count's own information network had been restricted in some capacity.

"Quite fine, I should say, though quite thoroughly surprised like myself at the activity booming throughout Riviera." Ven'thur adjusted his monocle with his thin, bony fingers. "But, he, as a man of intellectualism and nobleman privy to Lys, had insight into the situation.

You remember the demon rot you purged before you left, yes?"

"I do," said Li. "Do not tell me more of it emerged? I was certain to have wiped out every trace of it."

"No. What you seek to do, you do thoroughly. An admirable trait." Ven'thur continued. "Lys, upon hearing news of the rot, had sent urgent communication to the duchess. Not using Roc messengers, mind you, but the precious usage of a [Message] crystal.

And a [Message] response came from the duchess a day after, when you were in the midst of your journey south. She stated she was aware of the threat, and that there was an incoming demonic threat to the west, and that she would bring the five banners of Soleil to meet them. She wanted the lord to lock the city down and to prepare it to garrison the armies as the first wave of them were but a mere day's march away."

Li raised a brow. "She sent a message as important as that with just a day's worth of notice? What is that, a declaration of war, a march west, an existential threat of an invasion, and a sudden march of five armies all crammed in one simple message?"

"And," noted Sindra. "Considering how vast this duchy is, the armies were no doubt in march for far more than a mere day. She knew already of this demonic threat long before lord Lys did. Before we did, even."

Ven'thur shrugged with prideful flair. "I would not be surprised if that was a matter of incompetence. Oh, how incompetence does flow among the shorter lived."

"I would bet against it," said Li. "The duchess is many things, but incompetent, I doubt."

"Let us see here." Sindra rifled through papers before licking her lips as she found the right one. "Shipments to Riviera for this past month. An increasing influx of food, much of it storable and long lasting. A surge of weaponry and mana crystals."

"All supplies that would indicate the state of a city preparing for siege," said Ven'thur, and Li nodded in agreement, for it was intuitive to note that though Riviera's walls could be impenetrable to all threats physical and magical, that did not mean the citizens within, walled off as they were, were immune to the very primal and basic threat of hunger.

"And yet, all of this is filed away so innocuously," said Sindra.

"One of my good friends still working in the city hall was kind enough to provide me with documents about the city's imports and exports, and here, it is noticeable that the increase in foodstuffs were categorized as surplus from Duvin and the intermediary cities near Riviera. The weaponry, as mass orders from the military for the late general Devaux's desire to improve Riviera's army.

None of this was filed as preparations for war."

"The duchess chose to hide the nature of these orders from lord Lys. From the Merchant's Guild, too, from what I have heard of my conversations with them," said Ven'thur.

"Even from the count. Perhaps, she believed the lord incompetent, unwilling to place these tasks in his care, and took care to not let even his acquaintances know so as to prevent leaks of information to him."

"Perhaps," said Li. "Or, more likely, it is not a matter of incompetence, but of basic trust. She doesn't trust him. I know how Lys is. He's a man easily manipulated. No backbone.

It makes sense that the duchess would keep things from him, and the armies of Riviera, if they are shoddily prepared, probably make very little difference to the overall war effort considering their standing army is less than half the capacity of any of the other four major cities."

Li thought further, thinking of a scenario where the duchess was out to deal with him. She would not want him to know her armies were coming, and with informants like Swift in Riviera, she could easily know when he was absent.

Then, it was a matter of using his absence to threaten his followers, potentially being foolish enough to try and use them as leverage against him.

"Tell me," said Li. "What happened to the followers after lord Lys received this message?"

"The lord Lys stumbled to enact typical procedure for a siege against Riviera," said Ven'thur. "He had to deal with so many things, after all. Activating the city's walls, readying the lakeside for encampments, bringing out supplies and weapons for a westward march, and, of course, bringing in all the outskirts citizens into the city for temporary lockdown."

"And did anything happen to the followers during that lockdown?" said Li. "I can tell that nobody was hurt, but that still leaves me with many details I have to fill in."

"Oh, the whole ordeal was a colossal mess," noted Ven'thur. "Demonrot is no new phenomenon, it has existed for a millennia, deployed in some measure every single time the demons have rattled their fangs and gone about their invasions.

Notably, using it against more formidable foes susceptible to corruption such as forest spirits, faerie royalty, vampire truebloods, high undead, and even dragons.

So, it is no surprise that there is a procedure that the temple of Light follows in ascertaining whether an individual is infected with it.

At first, the Temple wished to thoroughly inspect every single outskirts citizen, bringing them into secure cells within which they would begin some form of thorough personal scrying and cleansing."

"An absurdly foolish decision," said Li. "This is demonrot unlike any they have ever encountered before. They have no means of finding or curing it. If, by chance, I had missed even a tiny bit of it, bringing it into a packed, locked down city would have had unimaginably disastrous consequences."

"Yes, and I was entirely prepared to 'convince' a few high priests of the order's idiocy, but fortunately, further idiocy thwarted their own. The Temple itself had not the time nor the unity, now that Gael has splintered the priests into two factions, to organize into a body efficient enough to quarantine all the people, and even then, they faced immediate pushback from the newly titled general Devaux's squadrons as well as the hero Swift.

That pushback fractured order and communications even further among the temple, and at a certain point, after inspecting but a few of the people, the temple simply gave up."

"And of those few that were inspected, did they report any inconvenience to them?"

"Not at all," said Ven'thur. "The inspections themselves were rather a half-effort, made by clergyman without the stones to stomach the orders of their higher ups and thereby face retribution from the army, heroes, and, of course, you, my good seer."

"I see," said Li, pleased that his followers had gone unharmed in his unplanned absence.