Razark was not pleased with the latest turn of events. The simple and easy mission he had lined up for his disciple had gone to shit. He had expected a response from higher ranked communities, but not the level of commitment the three large communities had given. Why would they all throw that much effort towards a single rift in the boonies? Regardless, he was rather sure his disciple was smart enough and strong enough to deal with it. Things had become worse though.

An entire city had been wiped out! The city had been housing several hundred paladins that had gathered there to help with the evacuation, and the city had been full of evacuees. The evacuation site of the order could deal with a number of refugees hundreds of times larger, but it took time to get that many people and their possessions through the portal gates. The gates in small cities weren’t created to deal with such huge numbers of people in mind. You couldn’t just keep the portal open indefinitely, as it took a lot of mana to transport people over large distances. Additionally the formations that ran the portals needed some time to cool down between uses. A large gate system like the one the order had at the evacuation site could deal with it, but the small gates in the middle of nowhere? Not so much.

Besides, some people didn’t want to go. They still hoped to return to their homes and old lives. Many of those hopes had been dashed by the waves of death mana. ‘A bloody death rift of all things.’ Razark cursed silently. Those that still clung to hope remained in the now destroyed city. And the inhabitants of the city had not evacuated either. Why should they? The rift wouldn’t really affect them, would it? Those people didn’t realize the economics of losing all those supporting villages and the living things they hunted and grew for food. The city wasn’t a small one either. Several hundred thousand people. With all the refugees, the number might go as high as half a million. And now they were all gone.

The higher-ups were not pleased of course. Such loss of life was not so rare as to shock people too badly. There were wars all over Pantheon. However, half a million people in one shot raised some concerns. Especially since they didn’t know what had caused it. Oh there were likely suspects, but you didn’t go pointing fingers at the Crimson Witches or The Revenant without some evidence. And if they did get evidence, what could the order realistically expect to happen?

“What are you getting all frowny for?” A female Dragonkin asked. The priestess was one of Razark’s friends and one of the most powerful priestesses of the Holy Orders. She was coming along as a favor. “Worried for your darling disciple? I didn’t expect to see the day!”

Razark also found the priestess incredibly annoying. For a supposedly proud and stern Dragonkin, the woman was way too playful and bubbly. Unfortunately she was also the best healer he knew. “Just thinking about the situation. Hopefully the little idiot can shed some light on matters.” Razark replied grumpily. He was in truth worried about Dee. If the note he had gotten was right, Dee had been right at the heart of whatever had wiped out the city. And she had been horribly injured.

“Little idiot?” The Dragonkin gave a chuckle. “Well isn’t that charming. You’re becoming more like your old master every day.” She was familiar with the old man, and had spent some time learning combat skills from him. Luckily for her, she had not gotten the truly harsh course Dee and Razark had received. If someone asked the old man, she was one of those useless apprentices with lacking potential. Well at least she could defend herself adequately. She was a healer anyway.

Razark simply shot a scathing look back at the woman. He had also picked up some habits from his disciple.

They were met by the leader of the Winter Wolves tribe as they entered the tribe’s territory. Amarog had come to greet them personally for several reasons. For one it showed respect. For another, he was the only one capable of doing something if Razark decided to take his frustrations on the surroundings. Anyone weaker would just be throwing their lives away. “Lord Razark.” Amarog greeted the two with a bow. “I won’t waste time with pleasantries since I can guess you’re eager to meet with your disciple.”

Razark did note the questioning look the beastman Alpha threw at his companion. “Much appreciated. This is my friend High Priestess Shraeska. She’s a healer and promised to help with my disciple.”

Amarog started leading the two towards the infirmary while explaining. “Our healers have stabilized her and she isn’t in immediate danger. She is still missing three of her legs, but it might be best to let her natural regeneration deal with that so that they’ll heal right. We managed to get her to a state where her own regeneration started working properly. Normally we’d try healing her anyway, but since she has the ability to regenerate, why not utilize it since that’ll do better job of it? It might take a bit of time, but she has the blood of a Beowulf, so she’ll make a full recovery.”

“So you noticed.” Razark commented simply. He had expected as much. You couldn’t perform extensive healing without making such discoveries.

“Yes, though we couldn’t make heads or tails about her entire heritage. Here we go.” Amarog commented, while opening the infirmary door.

A single healer was still monitoring Dee’s status, but the latter was simply resting on a bed in her kitsune form. On the outside she looked banged up, but beyond the missing legs she didn’t look too bad. “Oh that’s what you meant by missing legs.” Shraeska commented.

“Yeah, that form offers the strongest regeneration and protection from attacks to her, so I assume that’s why she took the form.” Razark commented. He had assumed that Dee had used the form and her holy powers to defend against the attack that had leveled the city, with the regeneration of the form keeping her alive afterwards. The extent of Dee’s holy powers had always been a slight mystery.

The Dragonkin priestess put her hand on Dee’s resting form. The hand glowed with golden power as she applied her powers that could heal almost anything. “The nerves around her waist seem damaged, apparently due to a strike from something like a sword. Her body has recovered pretty well with the healing she has received, but there are still small tears in pretty much all of her soft tissue. I assume some extreme trauma caused the damage. I can wake her up if you want. She’ll be in fairly large amount of pain though. I can do my best to alleviate it, but I can only do so much to reduce it without affecting her judgement.”

Razark frowned. “A sword wound? So she was in battle. How serious?”

“Not that bad anymore, but at the time the blade would have gone through her back completely. She would’ve been mostly immobilized due to the attack. A large sword, a two-hander. I’ll take care of the nerve damage.” Shraeska replied.

“Wake her up. I need to know what happened, and I need to know who wounded her. I need to know if they will be coming after her. She’s dealt with worse pain. Under the tender care of the old man she dealt with more every day.” Razark made the decision.

“I can assure you that she will be safe here. We can give her more time to recover.” Amarog commented from the side.

Shraeska looked at Razark who simply nodded at Dee. “Alright, it’s your call Razark. Waking her up.” A stronger glow surrounded her hand as she channeled the power within her soul space.

After a few second Dee was racked with a coughing fit, which brought her to consciousness. Not a pleasant way to wake up. With a quick glance she found a nearby bowl, which she then grabbed with her single functional paw and then proceeded to vomit a large amount of black dried blood into it. Her head hurt, her body hurt, and her missing legs hurt like hell. “Bloody hells, that’s a nasty way to wake up.” She cursed. She seemed to remember several much more pleasant wake-ups in the past.

“How are you feeling?” Razark asked firmly, bringing Dee back to focus.

“Like I had just lost a battle. I’ll live.” She looked around. “I think. I see some new faces.”

Amarog stepped closer. “You’re with the Winter Wolves tribe. My son Shunkaha found you. We brought you back for some healing while we contacted Lord Razark. This lady here is a healer he brought.”

Dee looked at Shraeska. “I guess I’ll have you to thank for the pleasant wake-up then.” She said sarcastically.

“Oh it was my pleasure.” Shraeska replied with a grin.

“Are you up for answering some questions? We have some things we need to figure out.” Razark asked a little impatiently. His worry for Dee was waning, but there were still matters to deal with.

“Fire away. I’m not feeling all that hot, but I can still talk. Oh, before that.” Dee materialized the two hands she had stored inside Croestia. They looked rather grisly, but that wasn’t the point. She shifted forms while holding on to the two arms, and supplied a lot of healing holy power to help things along. Shraeska noticed her plan and helped with her own healing power, which were much more effective.

Once Dee was back in her normal form, the two arms had been reattached. They didn’t work or even move, but they were attached. Her plan was the let her regeneration take care of the rest. It would take some time for the regeneration to do its thing, but less time than regenerating new arms would take. Although she was still missing one, so there was that. Shraeska noticed the problem, so she used her healing to finish the recovery of the two hands. She had wanted to let Dee’s natural regeneration return them since they would come out just like the old arms that way, but she could heal the issues of the already attached old arms just fine. That was just a little help instead of rebuilding them as a whole.

Dee gingerly tested the functionality of the two arms, and they worked fine. “As good as new. Thanks for the good work.”

“You’re welcome. I could return the missing arm to you, but it might not come out right.” Shraeska suggested. Returning a lost limb was especially difficult because the healer had to basically create a new arm out of nothing. It could be done, but the new arm would not be exactly like the old one, since it was based on the imagination of the healer. A healer that wasn’t entirely familiar with the old arm, usually.

“That’s alright, I’ll let it return the slow way. I intend to avoid trouble for the next few weeks.” Dee decided, remembering the changes the Zabaniya had made to her bones and muscles.

“You better!” Razark scoffed. “Now start explaining, and leave nothing out.”

Thus Dee narrated the whole experience she’d had during the mission, of course leaving out small bits like what happened with the portal and the Astral Plane. The two other people besides Razark didn’t need to know about those. She finished with her getting knocked out by the Crimson Witch and then waking up here earlier.

“So you don’t know what happened with the city either? Any ideas?” Razark asked just to make sure.

“Something happened to the city? I don’t know what could have caused anything like that beyond the witch, but that seems unlikely. She was the type that didn’t care about collateral damage, but she wasn’t the type to destroy a city for funzies either. Or more precisely she wouldn’t have done it because it wouldn’t be interesting. So I honestly don’t know.” Dee replied. ‘Though I have some guesses, and Croestia could probably tell me.’

She sent a silent message to Croestia. ‘Don’t tell me yet. I might need to answer questions under lie detection, and I want to be able to answer honestly when I say I don’t know.’

‘Already suspected as much. By the way, you might want to check on your soul space when you get the chance.’ Croestia replied. She knew what happened, but she also knew Dee would be interrogated, so she would explain the details afterwards.

The story had taken a couple of hours to tell, and Shraeska decided to call things to a halt at that point. “She needs some fresh air and needs to move around to heal properly. Let’s take her for a walk in the gardens. Those seemed beautiful.”

Dee could only groan in reply. Just sitting around was painful, although she could ignore the pain. Walking would be really bad.

-----

The group of five Crimson Witches was closing in on the area in the third circle inhabited by the various wolf beastmen tribes. Unlike many other beastmen types, the wolves were a very united and tribe oriented type. Even the different varieties of wolves stuck together, which was extremely rare among beastmen. Tiger beastmen for example got along with their own tribe, but different tiger sub-species were enemies with each other more often than not. This gave the wolves a level of strength and unity not seen in other beastmen.

Although the wolves had many separate communities, the fact that they all lived close to each other made all the other communities count their tribes as one large community in the rankings. That, and the fact that any single wolf tribe was not strong enough to hold their rank. If one tribe was attacked though, then all the tribes fought together as one. This made them effectively a singular community, even if the wolves themselves didn’t count themselves as such.

That was also a point Anastasia reminded the other four of. “Try not to pick fights with the wolf tribes. I can fight their immortals, but I’d rather not have to fight all of their warriors as well. The tribes are very good at having all their members trained among the best organizations of Pantheon, and we like to take them in because of their abilities. You’ll recall that even the Crimson Path has some of their tribeswomen among our number, and those sisters of ours would be less than pleased if their original tribes were wiped out.”

Suddenly Anastasia sensed something toward their destination that she had not expected. “An immortal almost as strong as me? Since when have the wolf tribes had someone that strong among their number?” The wolf tribes were not the type to obsessively climb the ranks, but if the wolves had an immortal as powerful as Anastasia, then that would go a long way towards helping them get into the second circle. That at least would get the wolves to move.

“Has he sensed us?” Alexandra asked. She was a rather new and weak immortal, so she had not noticed the presence of other nearby immortals yet. She couldn’t even feel Anastasia’s presence to tell the truth.

“I’m not sure. He has made no move towards us, but I would not be surprised if he had noticed us. Let’s approach slowly. We don’t want to provoke them.” Anastasia replied after a moment of thought.

The witches got close enough to see the Winter Wolves compound. For such a powerful community, their living arrangements were rather modest. That’s because the wolves valued comfort above pomp and appearances, and they also liked to keep their buildings easy to move. They weren’t quite nomadic, but they did retain the ability to pick almost all their buildings up and move on if necessary. On the other hand their gardens were magnificent.

Anastasia spotted the immortal she was vary of, and noted the clothes belonging to the Radiant Sun’s scouts. “That explains it. It’s one of the Blades of the Radiant Sun, and probably the strongest among them. I heard he was part of the scouts.”

“How did they already get here?” One of the vampire sisters asked rather peeved. She was rather proud of their ability to gather information.

“The wolves probably sent word.” Anastasia replied idly. She was distracted by the white furred fox demon being helped around the garden. The fox looked familiar. And injured. She was most likely their witness. Suddenly a memory of hers clicked, and she waved the other swords to a halt. Instead of going further, she took out a talisman used for magical communication. The talisman was only one use, but it was much more secure than normal magical communication.

The talisman connected her with the leader of their community, her old master and the most powerful sword of the Crimson Path. “What is it Anastasia?” An annoyed voice answered. Anastasia’s master knew of her missions since she was the one who had sent Anastasia in the first place. Mostly because Anastasia was probably the most open-minded of their inner circle.

“I found out what happened to the missing group.” Anastasia replied simply and without preamble.

“That was fast. What happened?” The voice asked.

“They picked a fight with someone from the list.” Anastasia reported.

The voice hesitated for a moment. Her master knew what list Anastasia had meant, but had to check just in case. “What list?”

“THE list.” Anastasia replied firmly, emphasizing her words.

The voice sighed tiredly. “Which position?” She had to find out how bad this was. They could deal with those low on the list.

“Number one. They picked a fight with someone blessed by Eternity.” Anastasia had a weird sense of glee as she was reporting the news. She was excited, and she also got a small amount of enjoyment out of her master’s predicament. She also liked where this was going for some reason.

The voice cursed like a sailor. “Well that explains the destroyed city. How did you find out? I don’t suppose someone blessed by Eternity advertises that fact. Wait! Don’t answer that. I think I remember you reported running into someone like that some years ago.”

“Exactly. The particular girl in question has rather distinctive looks, so I’m pretty sure it’s her.” Her master did read reports after all! Anastasia had made sure to place that particular report on top of the pile gathering on her master’s desk.

“What are the odds that our swords were not the ones who picked the fight?” The voice asked a little hopefully.

“Slim to none. I’m vaguely familiar with the group in question. They’re the type whose aggression got increased thanks to our techniques. They’ve found trouble before, though never something this bad. Also the target is pretty banged up. She probably got wounded before the blessing activated. It seems unlikely someone would pick a losing fight like that against a group of ours without a good reason. Besides, it seems she might be a member of the Radiant Sun. Paladins don't usually pick fights with us.” Anastasia speculated. Some of that was guesswork, but not groundless. Her instincts in such things were usually right. That’s why she was a problem solver.

The voice sighed. “It’s a shame that so many of ours get so aggressive. What’s your impression, could we do something as an apology? I doubt the Radiant Sun is willing to look over a blunder like this, but we don’t need to please them. They can go fuck themselves, the self-righteous pricks. What we need is the good will of the individual with the blessing. We don’t want her coming after us. Get her a gift basket or something.”

Anastasia couldn’t stop a small giggle at the gift basket comment. “I think things might not be as bad as you think. If I’m not missing my guess, the girl in question is the direct disciple of a certain Blade that is already half in revolt against the order. As it happens, they might not care in the least what the order thinks. They might not even mention our involvement. And the person in question is a demon and feels like someone who isn’t a stranger to people dying. They might even overlook things if we apologize for our swords picking a fight.” Knowing such things was Anastasia’s job, so she had a lot of information on even the lower ranked but important organizations.

There was a moment of silence from the voice. “Any chance you might persuade her to join us? We could use someone like her. We could even employ her master if things with the order go south. We can’t make him one of us, but a powerful immortal like that would make for a good ally. Get the gift basket out anyway.”

Anastasia rolled her eyes. Her master was strong but diplomacy was not her thing. “I’ll see what I can do. I have an idea that might work. She might not be willing to join us now, but in fifty years? Especially if things don’t work with her and the order? We could offer her shelter. I can sense all the way from here that she has deep-seated bloodlust inside her. The self-righteous fools of the Radiant Sun will run afoul of her sooner or later. A being of chaos and darkness in a community of light and order? It’s only a matter of time before they clash.”

“Get on it. Build some bridges. We need all the allies we can get. The slot in the first circle will open in a hundred years at the latest. There hasn’t been an opening like that for tens of thousands of years. The whole Day city will go up in flames.” The voice finally said.

“Your will be done.” Anastasia replied with a secretive smile.