"Could tell things were gonna hit the latrines the moment the damned Bounty Hunter walked into town, so I got the hell out with my whole family right the next day!" - Padrasah Juissem, formerly a guard captain at the Oajib Sultanate, circa 677 FP.

Cal and the rest of the party was not that far from where Ying Xiao was, five city blocks away at most, as after they had spent the afternoon without results they had met back together and pretended to "search" for Ying Xiao.

During the afternoon, she had split off and met with Kino once more, during a time when Ying Xiao was stationary, probably having her lunch, and from her had learned that the remaining merchants - all fifteen of them, as she had ended another one just the previous night - had sought for the Sultan's protection in his mansion. Unless their guess was wildly off, the Sultan himself was likely connected with the whole operation.

Normally, learning that fact alone, that the might of a city-state stood against them, would have deterred most anyone from acting further. Kino was The Bounty Hunter, however. She had not let an empire deter her in the past, much less a mere city-state.

From her Cal had also learnt that there were surprisingly three archmagus in the Sultan's employ, which was a surprising number for a city-state, but he was after all a filthy rich one. One was the Sultan's own younger brother, a known nature archmagus of great prowess, around whom many unsavory rumors were abound.

The other two were mercenaries. A metal archmagus master swordsman known as the "Desert Gale", and a female Orc blood archmagus known to be an excellent grappler. Both had been in the Sultan's service for at least half a decade now, so chances are they would stick with him.

Out of the three, Cal had some worry if Ying Xiao were to face the older, more experienced Blood mage, but didn't put the other two in her sight. Then again, it seemed like a demeaning job to have an archmagus guard over slaves, so the chances of her meeting them are low. She and Kino would likely have arrived before long anyway.

It was near evening before the periodical signal pulse suddenly changed, and Cal brought the rest to an intersection near where people would pass if they were headed to the Sultan's Palace from where she last felt the pulse.

Subsequent pulses had come closer, and then went further again after a couple burly men with a sack on their shoulder passed by, ensuring that they had the right target. Motioning to the girls to keep quiet and stay behind her, Cal then followed them, from a decent distance, far enough away a human won't notice, but close enough that she would not lose the track.

The direction they followed soon allowed them to see the Sultan's mansion - more a palace, really - in the distance, a domed monument of opulence decorated heavily with gold, precious gems, and rare woods, and the signal pulses put the last doubts away, as they pointed straight into the mansion, and then went a bit lower into the ground. Probably an underground dungeon.

Two city blocks away, her sharp ears caught the telltale signs of a commotion from the direction of the mansion's front gate, where they were headed towards. They picked up their pace in response, and a minute later they saw the aftermath of said commotion.

On the thick, metal gates of the mansion, a neat circular hole a good two meters in diameter had formed, and two very nervous-looking guards were dragging bisected corpses of their former comrades away. One of them looked up when he saw Cal approach the gate, but one sharp glare from her, followed by a look to the black-platinum tag around her neck, and he cowered back, letting the group enter without a peep.

Inside the courtyard of the mansion, what greeted them was a complete and utter bloodbath. Over a hundred soldiers in the sultanate's livery and ornate armor, arrayed in neat lines, with scimitar and shield in hand. Every single one of them lying dead on the ground, their heads separated from their bodies. The cut was so clean it looked improbable, and the way they fell in formation suggested that they were all beheaded at the same time.

When they walked into the mansion itself, they saw a similar hole on the door of the mansion itself, and a further path of carnage headed upstairs. Cal didn't follow it. Instead, she followed the signal from the ring, which had pulsed rapidly shortly after she had reached the gate. It was not the emergency signal they had agreed on… but more like how her own magic would flow during a fight.

A few minutes passed - the mansion was quite huge - before they found a stairway leading down into the basement from which a faint smell of blood could be detected. They found nothing on the first basement floor down, save some men and women in rags, shackled in the cells, and oddly enough not a single guard.

It was a very loud hit - as if some giant had just hammered the walls of the mansion - coupled with a sudden flaring of signal from the ring that clued them in to Ying Xiao's location. Another minute of searching unearthed the stairs leading down, and there, they also found where the missing guards were.

Corpses were strewn all over the floor of the underground dungeon. Every one of them killed by either a large blade wound, or from having their heads or organs pulverized by massive blunt force trauma. More cells containing shackled men and women lined the sides, these ones looking at the dead guards with surprise… and something resembling hope.

It was at the last cell down the line where they had found Ying Xiao. She was kneeling on the floor, breathing heavily and trying to catch her breath. On the wall of the cell before her, the body of a naked corpulent man was splayed like an insect on display, pinned to the wall by a halberd through the stomach, and with his head utterly pulverized, the blow that did it so powerful that cracks radiated from the small bloody crater that formed behind where his head used go be.

One glance around the cell, as well as the state of the young, naked woman shackled to a table in the middle of the cell, told Cal all she needed to know, as well as the all-too-likely reason Ying Xiao had gone on an unplanned rampage. The girl must have been reminded of her own sordid past by the sight, and now that Cal looked closer, she noticed that Ying Xiao was quietly sobbing into her hands.

So she gave the girl the best thing she could in the situation at hand: an understanding hand at the shoulder, and an enveloping embrace.