The neighborhood was quiet, which wasn’t abnormal.

But there was tension in the air.

Thick, unyielding.

That wasn’t what had alarmed Hirrus as he approached their warehouse hideout, however. What alarmed him was seeing the door standing open. With their operation within, Nidra would never allow such a sloppy breach of security to stand.

As Hirrus approached, he found himself gaining speed. No one was entering or exiting the open warehouse door. No noise, no voices, nothing. At the same time, all of the windows along the street were shuttered, as if against a storm. He wasn’t sure when he’d drawn his weapons, but when he stood in the doorway with them, it was already well past the time when they’d be useful.

Corpses greeted him.

Dozens of them.

The place had been ransacked. Dozens of crates that had been serving as furniture were smashed open and emptied. The rows of hastily-constructed mattresses had been cut open, their straw filler scattered.

All of it spattered in blood.

Corpses of adventurers and awakened were scattered across the room.

Hirrus recognized one of the adventurers near the door. The man in the voluminous red cape, with the unnatural square jaw.

That explained what had happened.

Battle Orders had sniffed out their location, and sent a force here to attack them.

Hirrus wanted to feel slightly more vindicated by the destruction of Cerberus and her most powerful followers, but this action must have been taken on their own initiative. If she’d known this was happening, she would have blurted it out to try and distract him and save her own hide.

The square-jawed man only had a single wound. A thick puncture wound in the side of his neck. This was Nidra’s work.

Hirrus felt some relief. She had been here when it happened. Perhaps she’d gotten the others to safety.

If he was lucky.

He quickly set about searching the room, hoping that he wasn’t about to find her corpse among the dead and trying desperately to keep the thought from his mind.

After some searching, Hirrus was relieved to find that Nidra was not among the dead. Hirrus was gratified to see how many adventurers were.

Not enough, however.

Not nearly enough.

The adventurers had won this fight, despite their losses.

As Hirrus reached the back of the room, he found proof enough of that.

A corpse had been split open by the tremendous force of some Arcana. Blood and gore were everywhere. A straw-bristled broom was sticking up out of the opened ribcage. The broom had been used as a brush, crudely writing a message on the back wall in letters two feet tall.

Game over.

Restart? Y/N

The N was circled.

“I’ll…”

But there were no words.

Nothing that would make sense to this senseless destruction and violence.

Instead, there was just anger.

Righteous, glorious anger.

Hirrus had to concentrate on his breathing for a moment.

He felt the monster within him rising, and he knew if he gave into anger, the consequences could be dire.

Mentally he was tapping a finger right next to his Transform ability.

The rage welling up wanted to use that power boost to tear down all of Denstad. He wanted to bathe the city in the blood of the adventurers who did this, and anyone who tried to protect them.

And then every other adventurer he could find.

But he swallowed his anger. Pushed it down. He forced the monster to sit still and shut up. There would be a time to be unleashed, but this was not it. The destruction of the capital would not be a productive or useful use of the extremely limited transformation ability.

And despite the dripping red words on the wall, this game was not over yet.

Nidra was not among the dead, and she had been here during the attack. Many of the adventurers bore mortal wounds from her wide-bladed dagger. As Hirrus looked closer, it seemed that her inner circle of lieutenants had escaped as well - likely alongside her.

So long as Nidra lived, and they had enough extra hands to gather information, the job remained. They would find the members of the Shadow Council, pit Hirrus against them, and destroy them all.

The monsters that perpetrated this massacre would no longer enjoy the benefits of controlling this nation any longer.

Of course, searching among the bodies meant that he recognized the body of the poor soul who had been used as an inkwell.

Cedril’s skin had been rendered ashen-pale by blood loss, but his expression was not a rictus of terror.

In his last moments, he had been fighting.

In pain, but defiant against it.

At the very least, the adventurers had waited for him to die before defiling his corpse to write their nonsense message. Since he had been dragged to the wall, it was hard to tell how much of a fight he’d been able to put up, but Hirrus hoped that the man had been more formidable than he’d seemed when they’d been in that battle by the roadside.

Forcing his anger down meant that Hirrus had no emotions left.

Rage had consumed all his other feelings on this massacre, and quieting it had meant a quiet mind.

Staring down at Cecil’s still corpse, Hirrus realized that for the first time in what seemed like days, he could hear his decision tree. He was not forced to obey its orders, but he still grimaced to hear it again.

It told him to bury the fallen.

Wherever he looked, he could hear where their gravesite was.

A part of him wanted to do it. The part that wanted desperately to be the man who deserved Julissa’s heart, and rejected the part of him that was a monster. It said that they deserved their dignity. Burying them was the right thing to do. Just shy of a dozen of them were from Denstad anyway. Their gravesites were nearby.

But there was no time. Hirrus couldn’t afford to spend days digging graves and hauling corpses. Morally, it was the right thing to do.

In a more practical sense, he couldn’t afford to.

“I’m sorry,” Hirrus said. In the silence of the warehouse, the sound of his voice felt deafening. “Your sacrifice will not be forgotten. But I cannot honor you as you deserve.”

The words felt flat. Lifeless. If the fallen did leave spirits behind that could hear his words, he felt as if he could feel them judging his actions.

Thinking of the fallen gave Hirrus a sudden shock. Dahlia. If the adventurers had found this place, had they found her as well? He closed his eyes and took a deep breath, stopping himself from rushing to the inn where he’d left her.

She was safe.

She had to be.

If she was fine and he rushed to her side, it might mean that he led another attack right to her.

If she wasn’t, then-

Hirrus paused, and a thin frown slashed his face. A grimace.

If Dahlia wasn’t safe, then he was going to burn the whole city to ash. There would be no stopping it. And if that was going to be the outcome, he needed to find Nidra and her remaining forces first. If he was going to be methodically destroying everything in Denstad, she had to be told that she was going to be on her own for dealing with Keynes and JudoThrow.

Unfortunately, he had no idea where to begin looking for her. They had not arranged for a secondary rendezvous point, and they couldn’t reach each other any other way.

The only option was to try and find how she’d escaped, and follow her trail.

Focusing on his investigative skills wasn’t doing anything here in the warehouse. There was just too much going on. Too much blood, bodies, and debris.

There wasn’t any sign of a dramatic escape and pursuit, despite it being clear that the adventurers had won, even though Nidra had been here.

How had she gotten out with enemies still filling the room? She couldn’t have escaped through the front door. There was no damage to the walls or even the ceiling. He’d just spoken, so she wasn’t lurking invisibly, or she would have shown herself.

Hirrus went to the office at the back of the warehouse. It was the only place left to check before just wandering out into the city and hoping to blunder into her. The room had been heavily searched, filled with scattered documents and overturned furniture. But there was no sign of combat in here.

When the adventurers reached this space, they’d found it already empty. No bodies, no bloo-

There was a bloody handprint on the back wall.

Hirrus approached it carefully. It wasn’t a full handprint. Just two fingers, the thumb, and half of a palm. He held his hand up to it, to compare the size, and found that it was small. The fingers were slim, but not dainty. He didn’t know Nidra’s hand on sight, but his investigative skills suspected that it was hers, the blood swiped from her dagger before being placed against the wall.

Why?

Carefully, he touched the handprint. It was still wet. But the touch revealed more than that. This part of the wall wasn’t solid. There was a panel that wiggled slightly when pressed. A switch?

As Hirrus planted his hand against it and pressed down, he found that it wasn’t a switch. A section of wall about three foot square just popped out, falling into the alley next to the warehouse. Another red half-handprint was on the street here. The same handprint, but smeared and obscured.

Nidra and the other survivors had escaped this way. She had pushed the panel out and crawled through the opening, and the others had followed behind, smudging the print.

Hirrus crawled out through the opening before replacing the panel.

There was a trail here.

Nidra had left signs so that when he returned, he could find them.

He just needed to follow.