“Uhh, Liina, today is the right day, is it not?” The guild master finally asks. The adventurers in the area are starting to get impatient and annoyed. We've been waiting for almost a whole day, and no one has showed up...

A few scouts have made rounds, sweeping the whole area almost every hour just to make sure we don't miss each other, but this is the only ruin in the area, we decided on it by name. They're definitely coming here. There's no way we could miss each other by accident.

But no one has seen a single human approach.

“I would say yes, I actually think it was yesterday at this point...” she answers uncertainly. “Rothol was ridiculously strong, it's not like anything could hold him up...”

“Maybe there was an incident in Thanifa that kept him from leaving on time?” I try suggesting.

She considers it briefly. “Maybe. Should we give him more time? I can't imagine anything keeping him occupied for more than a day when he knows he has such an important meeting to make it to.”

“Do you think he changed his mind?” Brialc asks. “He is a human, he might have just...” he waves a hand. “Went back on his word. Decided not to bother.”

“Maybe he only sent the invite to drag us all out here and wait around. Make us feel stupid,” Veshic proposes. “Or, Karshis is pretty small, it could just be a ploy to draw as many adventurers away from the city as possible.”

He shot out the idea almost like a lighthearted guess or a joke, but Brialc jolts. “That couldn't be it, could it? It would be just like a human to draw our main force away and attack the town.” His head snaps to Master Liina. “You don't know anything about this, do you?”

Her hands go up immediately. “Woah, no, definitely not. He wouldn't do that.”

But now that the thought is in his head, he immediately presses on, starting to connect dots that don't exist. Jumping to one conclusion after another. “You were away for two whole months. You've seemed fine, but the humans didn't break you, did they? Turn you on us?”

“Woah woah woah,” Master Liina stumbles back a little. “No sir, it's not like that, I swear! Look at me, I'm fine!” I think this is the first time I've seen her start to panic.

“How can I believe you? Your story about humans changing was implausible in the first place. If I can't trust that you weren't compromised, how can I believe your story?” Slowly, the lion rises from the ground, and Master Liina starts to retreat.

“Sir, sir, please, just listen,” her hands up placatingly, “you know what the broken ones are like, I still have my own slave!” His look doesn't change. If he can't trust her, how can he believe her explanation?

Only half-rising from the ground myself, I keep looking back and forth between them. What do we do? Where is Rothol? Why is he still not here?

Everything would be fine if the guild master could just meet Rothol!

“Your slave? The one you're so dedicated to? How should I know who the real slave is?” Brialc demands.

“N-n-no, no way! Show Slave Status!” Scrambling away from the advancing man, even taller than her, we're starting to draw the eyes of other adventurers camped nearby.

Brialc finally hesitates, blinking rapidly, before he looks my way. “Where did an adventurer like you get a slave like that?” Veshic perks up at the comment, but still isn't interfering.

“I trained her! I trained her myself! Just like my mother taught me!” She waves a hand to me and I practically dash to her side. “Look, please, we'll go look, try to find Rothol. Maybe something went wrong. You'll understand as soon as you meet him, I swear. If, if you're worried, send half the adventurers back to town!”

Even as she speaks, Master Liina grabs my shoulders and starts to pull me away. “We'll just get going now!” With her final words, she takes the opportunity to grab my hand and pull me, running away from the lion-altra during his moment of uncertainty.

We run for a while. Straight out of the ruins. When I'm too exhausted to push my body any further, Master Liina grabs me up and carries me, and just keeps running.

“Shit!” Master Liina eventually curses, practically dropping me as she doubles over, panting and gasping. I think she ran herself way too hard, because she actually sinks to her knees, hands on the ground, her whole back shaking as it rises and falls with her rapid, rasping breaths.

Looking at the time, I think she just ran for almost five hours, putting as much distance between us and the paranoid guild master as possible.

It takes a few minutes before she recovers enough to accept the water flask I offer her. She drinks slowly, taking small sips until she finally brings her breathing under control again.

I've never seen her so visibly shaken before, even when she was facing down death back in Thanifa...

We end up sitting for a while, because we're both completely burned out.

“I'm sorry, Yumi,” she suddenly apologizes. “I had no idea it would go like that. What is Rothol doing?”

“He wouldn't just blow the meeting time, something must have happened,” I remind her immediately.

“Yeah, you're right. We have to get to Thanifa, see if we can find out anything. We'll either run across him on the way there, or they'll tell us he left. It'll suck, meeting the guild master without us, but I'm sure Rothol can pull it off.”

“Yes, Master.”

So we go. Not our normal, leisurely traveling pace. It's a three day walk from the Thek Ruins to Thanifa. We do it in one. I'm long past the point of collapse, Master Liina carrying me again, and even she looks about ready to fall when we reach the outskirts of the city.

We pass through the light forestation nearby and...

When the town comes into sight, I slip out of her arms, and we just stand there, staring.

Thanifa is a crater.

What...

What happened here...?

There's no trace of the town when we walk on, into the scorched depression in the ground. Fire magic? On this scale? I couldn't pull off something like this in scale. A dozen Synergists working together couldn't pull this off! And firepower? Forget it, there isn't even any stone or brick left over.

I've been to the ruins of towns before, there's nothing left here to constitute a ruin, it's just a god damn hole in the ground!

What about the people who lived here? The adventurers? Rothol?

“Yumi, we have to get back to Karshis. I don't know what happened here, but we need to tell the guild that Thanifa is gone. I... I don't know what that means for the peace they were working on, but whatever did this...” she throws her hands up in confusion. “We have to tell everyone.”

“Yes, Master,” I reply flatly, still staring across the burnt landscape. What kind of monster or magic could possibly lay waste to an area like this? I don't think an actual fucking nuke could do this!

We turn around, and hoof it back. We've only traveled for half a day before we meet someone.

“Veshic?” Master Liina takes a step in front of me, hand going toward her sword as she eyes the man and his contingent of slaves warily.

He puts his hands up. “Not looking for a fight. Not at the moment anyway. Just wanted to confirm all of this with my own eyes. I take it you already made it there? So you didn't meet the guy after all? Did we miss him?”

Master Liina shakes her head. “Thanifa is gone. I have no idea how, but the town is was completely wiped out.”

“Huh?” He doesn't react for a second. “Woah, ok, I need to see this. Show me.”

“We have to get back to Karshis as soon as we can.”

Veshic puts a hand up to stop her. “Bad idea, your guild master is really freaked out. Do you really think he'll just take your word after running off like that? You need a second set of eyes.”

With a dejected sigh, she clearly knows that he's right. “Fine, come on. Keep up, we're moving fast.”

And so we double back to the town, letting Veshic take in the vast expanse of upturned soil, as if the entire top layer of grass and stone was just eviscerated.

He has about the same response we did, until Master Liina calls him, saying we really need to get going.

So we do. Master Liina makes it very clear that Veshic is going to have to keep up if he doesn't want to get left behind, and we rush back toward town. On our way, we swing back through the Thek ruins. There are signs of recent use, but everyone has already left. I'm a little surprised the tracks look as recent as they do, it took us almost three days to rush there and back because we had double back for Veshic.

Meaning that despite their paranoia, at least some people stuck around for a whole extra day and a half, even after we left. They either really hoped for talks, or really hoped for a fight...

After determining that there's no one left, we continue on.

We make it another few hours, reaching some of the small outlying roads with a few farming villages when we spot a cart on the side of the road, it looks like a wheel is broken, the young man on top turning to wave at us as we approach.

“Sorry, in a rush.”

“Don't worry, it'll be fine.”

“Hang in there.”

With those panted comments as we run past, we leave the unfortunate, confused man behind.

Soon after, we reach larger roads, where the foot traffic picks up. Our nearly panicked rush draws a lot of eyes as we dash the last of the distance to reach Karshis. Even the gate guards look at us somewhat uncertainly, but they know me and Master Liina already, and Veshic is a noble, so they end up letting us through without too much trouble anyway.

From there, we fight our way through the crowded streets, straight to the guild.

Stumbling up to the front counter, all on the verge of collapse, the receptionists immediately call out the guild master.

He takes one wary look at us before we tell him.

“What do you mean, gone?”

“Gone, sir, the entire town.” Master Liina finally collapses, sitting on the floor.

“I saw it too,” Veshic immediately backs up her story, leaning heavily on the reception counter while is slaves end up sitting on the floor against the counter behind him. We're taking up a ton of space like this, probably in the way, but everyone's too focused on us to care.

“There was nothing left, Thanifa was a burned out crater. I don't know how-” she has to cut short, body shuddering as she starts coughing from trying to talk right now. As soon as she can recover enough, she presses on. “I don't know how, but something burned away the entire town without a trace. Sorry about everything with Rothol and the humans, I think we can... just forget about that...”

What follows is... weird. We're all exhausted from our mad dash to Thanifa and back, having completed the ten plus day trip in closer to four. We can hardly move, but Veshic demands they send him back to Montheric so he can warn them as soon as possible. Whatever happened it's extremely dangerous, so they have to know.

He even uses his authority as a noble to demand the guild master send us along too, so we can fill in the whole story, any parts he isn't aware of.

Between his suspicion of Master Liina after the debacle in the Thek Ruins and not wanting to piss off the nobility of a powerful nation-state, Brialc immediately agrees, and issues us a quest to go with Veshic. We... aren't in much state to refuse.

Then a Bender is summoned to teleport us all there. Master Liina barely has time to plead for someone to go to her house and grab us some extra supplies, since we're practically out after the unexpectedly long excursion.

Malic immediately takes her house key and runs out of the guild, returning mere minutes later with arms full of spare supplies, surely pilfered from anything he could find in our house.

By the time he's done stuffing our packs, the Bender's long, chanted teleport spell is finishing.

All sitting on the floor in the middle of the guild hall, with the guild master and the crowd of absolutely dumbfounded adventurers watching, the spell completes, and we're whisked far, far away.