“Should you really be going out now?” Alistair asked as Liliana double checked her equipment. She looked up at him, then back down, still not sure how to respond to him. She’d discussed heading out to find the flowered serpent, or its remains, with Sergeant Amelia and Jason the day before. Alistair and Emyr had invited themselves into the command tent and the conversation.

The camp had been set up a bit differently from normal. Amelia wasn’t comfortable staying in the village with tempers hot as they were. So they had camped out two hours’ ride from the village, to give them space from the villagers but close enough to get to the village if they tried something. Trees had been cleared and moved within several hundred feet of the camp, and they had set the camp up on a hill.

Liliana was beginning to feel like she’d been pulled into a war camp, rather than a guard camp. There was an aura of readiness about the entire camp. Everyone was high strung. Ready to fight. Laughs were far fewer, and watch duty had been tripled. Every guard was on a watch now. What that implied, that Amelia thought there was a legitimate chance of the villagers trying to sneak up on them and attack them, was unsettling.

Liliana was already aware that Amelia had reached out to the Duke about the interaction, and reinforcements were being readied to head out if necessary. The village potentially had more high leveled people in it than originally expected, and if the entire village could match the levels of who they’d already seen, then their force would not be a match. They might win, but there would be casualties. It didn’t help that there were three nobles traveling with them who would need to be protected or evacuated if it came to blows. If they were evacuated, they’d have to take a force to guard them, which would further lower the force left here to face the villagers. What Liliana knew of the plan so far was if the villagers attacked and were shown to be too large of a threat, they were to retreat and a portalist would send reinforcements to their location.

But that also meant now was probably the only time Liliana could go out. If this potentially came to a full-blown battle, she wouldn’t have the time. She’d be evacuated for her own safety. It was unlikely, by Amelia’s own admission, for the villagers to mount an attack until closer to their deadline at the end of the week. Likely, they would be stuck arguing amongst each other until it drew close to time for a decision to be made. They might be high leveled, but they were still villagers. They had no experience facing off against a trained force of guards. Once their tempers faded a little, they may even see that their position was a hopeless one, as there was far more the Duke could throw at them if necessary to subdue them.

Liliana would go off the assumption that the worst-case scenario would come around. She had to, otherwise she may lose the only chance she had to save the flowered serpent. So she’d discussed it with Jason and Amelia and gotten their agreement. She’d have three days to find and bond with the serpent before she needed to be back in camp. She’d have a few guards with her for protection. A scout would go with them to help locate the beast sooner. Not that Liliana thought she’d need him, with Lelantos having his own tracking skill. Still, any aid would be welcome, as she didn’t know the area, nor did any of them know where the serpents had nested originally.

Liliana grabbed onto Lelantos’ saddle and swung herself up. Lelantos pawed at the ground, his claws digging deep gouges into the earth. He was ready to get out and finally do something after so long of being held back. Liliana could feel the thrill of the hunt humming in their bond, leaking into her blood

“This is the only time I can go, you know that,” Liliana finally responded to her stepbrother.

She didn’t look at him, but she could feel him staring holes into her back. He had argued against this very thing, but Liliana had won out with logic. It was dangerous, yes, but she had known that from the start. They’d all known that. Unlike other nobles, she didn’t get to have new beasts shipped to her from the adventuring guild, sedated and chained down for her to bond with. Both because she doubted her father would ever spend so much on her, and because such a thing felt dirty to her. Wrong. Her way was more dangerous, but at least she didn’t have to feel like she’d gotten her bonds through drugged coercion. She could say her bonds had agreed to work with her because they saw her as someone worthy of them.

“It’s dangerous,” Alistair spoke up and Liliana shrugged.

“Life here is dangerous. You don’t become strong without spilling a little blood,” Liliana retorted. She nudged Lelantos forward and the big cat nearly flew through the air as he was finally allowed to move. The guards she’d be traveling with were mounted up, Emyr among them. Alistair had tried to go with her, but had been shot down by Amelia.

The sergeant had said it was because he needed to be here, to see how something like this was handled first hand. What went unsaid was while this task wasn’t too dangerous for the non-heir to undertake, it was far too big a risk for the heir of the duchy. Losing Liliana would be a smirch on Amelia’s record, but ultimately wouldn’t cause her to lose her job. Losing Alistair would see the woman stripped of rank and possibly beheaded. It was a simple fact that Alistair was worth more than Liliana. She might hate that fact, but she could admit it was the truth.

Emyr going was harder to get permission for. Liliana hadn’t wanted him to come. She had wanted space from both of the boys to try to figure her feelings out. Yet they seemed determined to leave her no peace. They were clinger than a bur and twice as irritating.

Emyr had ultimately been allowed to come as he’d said it would be best to split up the nobles in case the villagers did attack. They’d be safer away from the camp and obvious target, and it would leave more guards to protect Alistair. Liliana thought it helped that he wasn’t the Rosengarde heir and wasn’t even the heir of his own family. He wasn’t even the spare, being the youngest child.

“Don’t die,” Alistair called out, and Liliana paused, finally looking over her shoulder. Her stepbrother looked back at her with worry clear in his eyes, even as the rest of his face tried to pull off being blasé.

“It would look bad on the family,” Alistair added on. Liliana sighed and ducked her head before he could see the small smile tugging on her lips. Her heart was tangled with uncertainty and warmth. Every day, he made it harder and harder to not trust him.

“Do you think this is it?” Emyr asked as they all dismounted.

The scout had traced the villagers’ rampage to here, and Lelantos had agreed. The entire area was coated in the scent of Nature even if it was old by his reckoning. They'd wasted a day tracking the original garden to here, the tracks marred and the trail almost a month old. But something could be said for the magic of System given skills. If they were high enough, even rain couldn’t obscure a trail from someone with a tracking skill.

“Unless there were two gardens of serpents, this is the place,” Liliana said, laying a hand against Lelantos’ head.

The tiger chuffed quietly, but she could feel the taunt energy in his muscles. He was in another creature’s territory, and based on the left over scent, some of the serpents had been well over his level. Lelantos was uncomfortable, his instincts telling him to run from this place. He stayed, though, keeping close to Liliana as she started to walk. Three guards and the scout ranged ahead of her. Emyr and Jason stayed by her side and four more guards trailed behind.

It was perhaps more than necessary, but Liliana didn’t complain, her own nerves frayed from her Bond. His anxiety was leaking through and her own instincts were telling her this place was not for her. It wasn’t for her to trespass here, and if she kept going, she’d regret it. She pushed past the sense of foreboding. She knew that whatever had left their scent around here was long dead, only a single serpent left from the garden. And it needed her help, if it lived.

“How did a bunch of villagers kill an entire garden of serpents? The levels of what lived here are high enough to spook Lelantos, even being a month old.” Liliana murmured as they ducked deeper into the thick copse of woods.

She’d expected to find the serpents’ home in a network of caves, as was common with snakes. But it seemed the information she’d read was correct, where possible flowered serpents preferred to nest deep in wooded areas. Their Nature affinity let them manipulate the area until they had a comfortable and defensible home.

She could see where trees had bent almost entirely sideways and thick branches woven together to make an almost wall, and where they’d been broken down. Cast all across the ground were splinters and fragments of wood from destroyed trees, as if a great explosion had happened in these quiet woods. The scout hardly needed to lead them deeper. Here it was harder for rain and a single month’s time to hide the evidence of what had happened. The scout stopped ahead of them and wiped something off a tree, feeling it with his fingers and sniffing it before he scoffed.

“Firepowder, they probably used their entire stock of it to blast their way through the woods and to injure the serpents,” the scout spoke aloud, projecting enough for them all to hear. Disgust was clear in his voice and the other guards murmured quietly.

Liliana rubbed her hand against her arm. She imagined how that would’ve felt to those poor serpents. Feeling safe in their home, not fearing the humans bearing down on them because humans had never come after them before. Only to be faced with powder that lit up their home grove and coated them in painful heat. Firepowder was something similar to gunpowder from Earth, but not quite the same. She knew guns didn’t exist in this world, though they did have magical cannons and fireworks. Firepowder was common, made from a plant that grew like weeds across their continent. It was kept in most houses because it lit incredibly easily if mixed with another compound. Powdered flint.

Kept separate Firepowder wouldn’t ignite unless you applied live flame to it. But it was favored because it easily started fires, and in villages it was even more useful. Mages and elemental affinities were very uncommon in villages, most could only get classes that usually matched their work. So having skills or spells that could generate fire were rare, as they wouldn’t be able to get the affinity to unlock such abilities. So they made ample use of Firepowder to keep their homes warm in the winter months, and she’d heard they used them to make fireworks for festivals and holidays.

Typically, Firepowder wouldn’t be useful against anyone of a high enough level to deflect it. She doubted unless an entire barrel was lobbed at her, it would hurt her. But if a village had used their entire stock on the flowered serpents and it had taken them by surprise, it likely would’ve injured, perhaps fatally injured, several before they could respond. Especially the young, low leveled ones. Liliana felt sick to her stomach, acid climbing her throat as she imagined it. As they proceeded further, she hardly needed to imagine it.

The guards ahead of them froze and Liliana approached slowly, stopping when the scent of rotting meat and flowers hit her nose. It was the most sickeningly sweet smell she’d ever experienced, and her nausea increased.

“Lady Liliana may-,” one guard started, turning to her, intending to move her away, but it was too late. She’d stepped past the guards and could see it clearly now.

It seemed the villagers hadn’t been able to move the gigantic serpents entirely. Their dead bodies lay rotting, their flowered manes wilted and dead, petals blackened and folded inward. Her eyes took in the scene of the massacre. The smaller serpents had been practically torn apart. She couldn’t tell if the missing parts from the serpents were from the villagers or scavengers, but not a single corpse was left whole.

Almost in a mockery of the horrifying massacre before them, flowers of all different types bloomed across the ground, all the more bizarre for the season they were blooming in. It was as if fall hadn’t touched this singular grove as bluebells, roses, marigolds, tulips, lilies and tens of other flower blossomed like a rainbow carpet under the decaying bodies of the serpents. The contrast of beautiful flowers to corpses shredded and left to rot was almost as shocking as the bodies alone.

Liliana summoned a handkerchief from her storage and tied it quickly around her face to try to block out the scent of death and heavy floral perfume that so thoroughly pervaded this clearing. She stepped forward again, almost drawn to the gore. Like watching a car wreck, she couldn’t stop looking, even as she felt bile leaking into her mouth. Every step caused a rise of sweet flower scents and decaying blood to rise into the air as her feet crushed tender blooms underfoot.

As she stepped further into what had once been a beautiful garden of flowers and serpents and was now a blood-soaked graveyard, she revised her earlier empathy for the villagers. They deserved chains, at the very least, for what they’d done. This wasn’t just the product of rage, it was blatant cruelty in the most vile of ways. As her eyes trailed across the body of a large serpent curled protectively around something, Liliana stepped closer. When she saw the bodies of tiny serpents, no bigger than six feet and shells of eggs, Liliana finally had to turn and let out the contents of her stomach.

As she coughed and choked on the bile, rage curled in her chest. There was a difference between hunting to maintain an ecosystem, being careful to not over-hunt a specific creature or area. And then there was this. These creatures had been left to rot after the villagers had finished letting their rage out on them. Not to protect their home, not to maintain the ecosystem, not because the serpents were a threat. Because they were stupid, idiotic, superstitious savages. Her empathy for their plight was firmly thrown away, no longer able to exist in the same reality as the corpses of younglings too small to even fight back. Empathy wilted before a mother serpent dying trying to protect her children from people she had done nothing but help.

“You don’t need to see this,” Emyr said. Liliana looked up and saw he’d gotten to her side. Lelantos was on her other side, and she could feel grief in him, too. Disgust as well. This went against the natural order to him. To kill for no reason. To kill not to protect oneself, to kill not for hunger, to kill not for survival. It made no sense. Despite the time he’d spent with Liliana, with humans, he still couldn’t fathom why they would do something like this. Liliana couldn’t fault him. She couldn’t truly understand it herself. Not this level of viciousness.

“Someone should mourn them,” Liliana answered, surprising even herself with the words. It was true, though. Who else would remember them? Someone should. They deserved to be remembered, to be mourned.

She wiped her mouth and stood up straight, determination filling her. As she walked through the grove, she imprinted each gruesome image in her mind. She should remember what people, humans, were capable of. This was why she needed power. So she didn’t become yet another casualty to someone’s misplaced rage or fear. By the time she’d circled the entire grove, she’d seen more death than she wanted to, and witnessed the bodies of more juvenile and fledging serpents than should ever exist. More smashed eggs than was right. Behind her, the guards trailed a silent parade of death. All of them taking in what happened here, the severity of the crimes.

The rage, the lack of logic behind it, it reminded her of Earth. Of the inquisitions and witch hunts that painted human history in the blood of innocents. Humanity was easily capable of atrocities, especially in a mob. Easily swayed to do things that defied logical thought or reasoning if someone fed their fear or anger.

As Liliana finished her circuit, she turned to the grove, the graveyard, and bowed low. Tears leaked down her face and wet the grass as they finally spilled forth. She held as much of her composure as she could.

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry for what our people did to you. I promise justice will be done, and the last of your children will be cared for,” Liliana spoke to the ghosts of the serpents who had once lived here, hoping her words would reach them in the void of death and give them some bit of hope. She took several minutes, just bent over as she silently offered her apologies to the dead before standing and turning to the scout, wiping her eyes of tears and settling her face into a cold mask.

“Can you find the trail?” she asked, and the man startled before looking around.

“Maybe. It’ll be harder with this, but I may be able to find it.” He informed her and Liliana nodded before pausing, her eyes widening as Lelantos pushed a feeling towards her.

Poison? How can there be Poison here? Is it another assassin? Liliana felt fear course through her as Lelantos communicated a scent of Poison on the air. It was hard to scent through everything else, but he could tell it was recent, maybe a few days old at most.

No, not an assassin. Earth and Dark create Poison affinity. Liliana realized with dawning horror. A young beast, seeing their entire family killed by humans, would want to fight back. Liliana knew well how a beast’s mind worked. They would pick the option that guaranteed survival. Life wouldn’t do a beast being hunted by the people who had killed its entire garden any good. But Dark would. The ability to hide, to fight back, to escape unnoticed. And eventually, the power to kill, slowly, painfully. To get revenge for atrocities done. Natural born beasts were more intelligent, more humanlike than Mana born. They could feel love, they could feel hate.

They weren’t searching for a Nature affinity beast; they were searching for a Poison one. A Poison beast with a hatred towards humans. Their hunt had just gotten far more dangerous.