Rime came through. Or rather, Frostbite did. Upon receiving the call, our ally combed through the local information sources and got us a location for a recent fight matching the parameters we gave her. She wasn't able to actually locate Celine, but she told us where the elf girl HAD been, and that would be more than enough for me. Eye of Revelation would let me track her if I had a place to start.

Just as she said, Callie wasn't pulling punches either. Aside from Rime, she also called her uncle to ask him to lend us The Four, and with Randall thrown in that gave us SIX F-rankers. Which was good, because when we arrived at the address we'd been given...there was a lot of damage. Like, someone blew up the house levels of damage, except instead of craters and ash, there were mostly trees.

Branches and roots had torn the place apart, and I saw the twisted forms of huge tree golems, though the ones around the house were dead and partially rotted away. "Um..." I looked at Jessie, who was currently sitting on Randall's back, her F-ranked green cloak drawn around her for protection. "Can Celine do this? Because I feel like I'd have noticed."

Benny shook his head from my other side. "No. Cel is more on the political side of things. A lot of her Skills are aimed at reading tells and remaining composed, she does have some nature manipulation stuff, but it's all either small scale or very slow. This...this is not slow." He looked at Jessie. "Could you do this? Even just in terms of growth rate? I know that you can't really control plants like this given the direction your power has gone."

She shook her head. "This isn't G-rank plant manipulation. I don't know if it's closer to F or E, but this kind of power is way beyond what I can do within any reasonable period of time. But that's not what's bothering me...there isn't any life in these plants. At least, not much. It seems like whatever killed the golems sucked it out maybe? Or the plants tried to defend themselves. The plant user wasn't the only powerful person here."

That gave me an idea of what we were dealing with, and it wasn't one I liked. I walked up to the nearest damaged section of tree and used Eye of Revelation. Under the view of my new gaze I could see a few clues I hadn't before. Specifically enough to confirm my guess. "Cultists." I spat. "This was Black Sorrow. Pietro used something like this. Some weird kind of conceptual darkness that twists the world around it."

Callie made an angry noise. "I remember. You think it's something like Fist of the Red Revenant? That stuff creeped me out, but there's no way someone like Pietro could be a direct descendant of Black Sorrow. Not if his dad is only D-rank. Now that I know you can create Skills like that...maybe he mixed his with a shadow power? Doesn't matter. This is a lead. We just need to find them now."

She was right. If Celine was being chased by cultists, we needed to help. "The question is, where do I start?" I asked sheepishly. "The plant stuff isn't Celine, so I can't use it to track her. I can only track over short distances, so I need a location to begin my search." Twenty feet wasn't a short distance in battle, but for tracking, it seriously limited my options.

"Here." Said Benny from off the side. I turned to find my friend kneeling next to one of the trees, pointing to something I couldn't see. "This is an earring I gave her. I have a matching ring that heats up a little when it gets close. I bought it for her as a joke, because she told me she didn't like surprises. I figured she'd like it, since she'd always know I was coming. I...I'm surprised she's still wearing them."

That was a surprisingly touching story, and it made me realize that Benny and Celine probably had a lot of those. Just because I only saw them around each other for a little bit didn't mean they didn't have a whole relationship that none of us were aware of. This was the first real clue to exactly how much my friend had been mourning, and despite having no option to learn more without him telling me, I felt bad that I hadn't understood how much Celine meant to him.

Well, the only way to fix that would be to help find her. I approached the earring, which Benny was smart enough not to pick up, and flexed Eye of Revelation again. The earring glowed a soft green, and beside it, a set of foot prints shone the exact same shade. "Got her. I can't really see who might have been with her or following her, but I can tell you which way she went."

I started to track her. The residential area around us was shockingly quiet and unruffled for a place with a giant tree tearing apart one of its locations. I ignored it all though, following the foot steps behind the house and past a small lake to a strip of woods. "I think this was a safehouse or something." I said as we entered the trees. "No way the cultists are stupid enough to bring them somewhere this close to the woods. The elves had to have picked this spot."

Callie made a noise of agreement. "That was my guess too. Based on the amount of power thrown around, I think this might have been where Celine's sister Nalia was staying. Which means the cultist around here is at least E-rank. Which is...less than ideal."

I could try to get in the way of whoever it was, but if they attacked anyone but me we were screwed. Still, the E-rankers seemed to be gone at least. I made sure to take the lead anyway. For one thing I was tracking so I kind of had to, but for another if some E-rank asshole was waiting in the wings to attack I'd be the one to get tagged.

We followed the footsteps into the trees, then down a narrow gully, and through a stream. As we crossed the river the footprints got REALLY faint, and almost flickered out, but I managed to keep with them by slowing down and shrinking the radius of my Eye of Revelation.

I hadn't had much chance to train this one in the field, and the knowledge that I could condense the twenty foot radius to increase effect was damn helpful. It was also a minor change in the skill, which meant my soul was barely taxed by keeping it up. Something that would be necessary on long tracking missions if that became necessary.

"This is weird." I murmured, using the bond to tap into Callie's Stealth Skill to keep my voice from carrying. I still had stored charges of Stealth too, but it didn't seem smart to use them when I had other options. "The tracks are fading out. I'm keeping up, but I can't really figure out why they would be doing that."

"Because." Said a pained voice from up ahead. "I was trying to make them disappear as I left them." We all looked up to see Celine propped up against a tree, hand on her side, and blood leaking between her fingers. She had a black eye and her hair was matted to her scalp with dark fluid on one side. The biggest problem though, would have to be her other hand. The flesh was black, like she'd been frostbitten, and it hung limply off to one side.

"Cel!" Shouted Benny, practically blurring across the space between them. It was jarring to realize that his Might was way higher than mine because of his specialization, something I knew but hadn't internalized really. He stopped just short of grabbing her, looking on anxiously. "Are you alright? What happened?" He looked over his shoulder. "Agria, can you come help patch her up?"

Jessie hopped down from the bear, zipping over to lay glowing green hands on the elf. She winced. "These were made by an F-ranker. This will take a while, Celine, sorry."

The elf shook her head mutely, sighing in relief after a minute. "No." She said with a hoarse voice. "It's more than enough. Thanks. Nalia and her guards drew most of them off. The F-ranker that was left behind was extremely injured. I was barely able to finish him off."

Reaching down to touch the blackened arm, Jessie winced. "This...I can't fix this." Benny's head snapped up. "This isn't damage, it's some kind of persistent effect. Like a curse or something. If it was damaged or even dead I could probably do something about it with enough time, but whatever the force that made this wound is, it's still active, and it's not something I can work against directly."

Celine chuckled. "It's fine. The wound in my side is already feeling much better. I can find a solution to the arm later. We need to get out of the open. There's a cave near here. I've been slipping out to watch for reinforcements, trying to use my Woodcraft Skill to stay out of sight. It's only at Beginner, but my Perception is relatively high." She shot me a wry look. "Though apparently it isn't useful on whatever it is Solomon was doing."

I just shrugged. "I don't play by the rules. It's a character defect." Dropping the joking tone, I frowned at her worriedly as Benny and Jessie helped her stand up. Jessie needed to keep a hand on her to heal, and Benny was clearly reticent to let her out of his sight. "You sure you're going to be ok? That hole in your side looks nasty."

She just smiled. "I appreciate your concern. I admit it feels...nice, to know you all care." Her smile wilted as she looked at Benny. "I didn't...I didn't mean for you to come. I just wanted to say goodbye, and say..." Her cheeks darkened. "That." Benny's smile could have split his face in two, it was so wide.

"Of course I came." He pressed a kiss to her forehead. "I love you too." He hesitated, before saying quietly. "I'm not saying we're good. You really hurt me. I'm not over that. But...it's less important right now than making sure you're safe. We can work on things later. If you still want to."

Leaning her head against him, she nodded, her smile still in place, though quieter and filled with pain. We got into the cave and helped her sit down so Jessie could have better access, and I stepped up to use a combo heal and scan heal. Jessie's ability (being the source of my heal burst) was much more powerful, but scan heal could help target injuries better, and might even be able to do something about her arm.

Sadly, that didn't turn out to be the case. When I apologized she waved me off again. Benny looked concerned, but Jessie had an idea how to help her. She said she needed to check in on a few things but she knew someone whose ability could help. Actually apparently we did too, though with everything happening I couldn't think of who.

"Alright." Said Callie after we'd mostly gotten Celine patched up. "As glad as we are all to see you ok, we need to know what happened. Who did this?" We had a general idea, but we needed confirmation.

Sure enough, Celine immediately responded. "The Black Sorrow Cult. They snuck many more people onto this planet than we expected. They lured me here with a fake information leak and showed up in force, three E-rankers and ten F-rankers. Nalia stalled the other E-rankers, my sister has always been the most martially inclined member of our family, but there were just so many..." She trailed off. "I don't think this was an isolated attack. If they hit us, they probably hit the other factions." I was already sprinting out of the cave for a signal, calling Natalie. If they had F-rankers in those numbers she was in danger even with her guardian. I just hoped my cousin was ok.