Somehow, the enormous opening that had been blasted into the side of the Violet Plate had been repaired before Hirrus had even returned. The sight of it didn’t alarm him, and his decision tree didn’t react to it either. He had never seen such destruction happen in Yenon - until the entire town had been destroyed - and so he wasn’t sure what to expect.

Did someone come and fix it in the middle of the night, and the whole job took only the brief few minutes he’d been gone? Or was it something more otherworldly, like the work of a mystical being like GM Dave, bending the laws of reality in response to some manner of report?

The longer he spent in Inoha pursuing his revenge, the more unsure he was about the underpinnings of reality itself.

None of the drunkards still lingering in the tavern reacted to him walking in the door. No person appeared shaken or alarmed in any way. Were their decision trees keeping them calm and placid despite whatever mayhem the city’s adventurers might produce, or was a building getting blasted open such a normal occurrence that it was no longer worth getting upset about? Hirrus had no answers, but his exhausted brain refused to relent.

Instead of asking, Hirrus went upstairs. No one stopped him.

The room was lit when he opened the door, and Dahlia was seated at the table. She looked up, alarmed, when the door opened, but gave a loud sigh of relief when she saw it was him.

“What happened?” Dahlia struggled for a moment to force herself to her feet. “Are you alright?”

“Keep your seat,” Hirrus said, gesturing for her to stop trying to stand up. “I’m fine.”

Dahlia gestured at him with a distrusting look. “You think I don’t have eyes? Come now, Hirrus. You look like a mess.”

Hirrus looked down at himself. He had to admit, even after his hit points had started to gradually recover on the walk back, he was still missing tens of thousands of hit points. Not to mention the fact that he was a bloody mess.

“I’ll be fine in a couple of hours,” Hirrus amended. “I don’t need any help.”

“Be quiet,” Dahlia said before gesturing to a chair as she found her feet. “I feared this might happen, so I went a bit out of my way earlier today.”

Hirrus saw the look in her eye, and decided not to argue. Julissa used to get this way too, and it was just better to comply. He took a seat at the chair she’d motioned to. Dahlia produced a roll of gauze that instantly filled the air with an astringent smell of disinfectant.

“Where did you get this? And when?”

“I said hush,” she snapped, grabbing his chin and turning his face to the side. “Let me work.”

Despite the lack of tenderness in her tone, her hands very carefully peeled the gauze off the roll, applying it first to the most visible of his wounds - the deep slash along his jawline. As she wrapped his wounds with the medicated bandages, Hirrus gained a temporary buff, increasing his health regeneration dramatically. At first, he was grateful for her concern, but unconvinced that it would be enough to actually get him back in fighting shape. When she angrily gestured for him to change out of his armor, though, and she continued to bandage the wounds on his arms, chest, and back, he found himself surprised at how effective the medicine actually was.

It had only been a few minutes, but he recognized that the duration and intensity of the bandage buff was going to be enough to top off his health bar completely before it was done.

“Thank you,” he said, when she finished.

“Don’t mention it,” she said, waddling back to her own seat and giving a heaving sigh as she lowered herself back into place. “You and Julissa have done so much for me. I don’t know where I would be without your kindness. I may not agree with what you’re doing, but I owe you this much and more.”

“So what happened here?” Hirrus gestured to the wall, where there was no longer a huge hole.

Dahlia didn’t ask for clarifications, and instead shrugged like it was nothing out of the ordinary. “The usual repairs. I don’t understand how it works, but it is something that has been in Inoha for years.” She smoothed the skirts of her nightshirt. “Back when I lived here, my mother used to complain about some specific tax the kingdom leveraged against the city’s merchants. It was used to provide materials to the city stockpiles. Through some unknown Arcana, the city itself consumes those materials to repair any damage to the buildings.”

“Strange.” Hirrus looked closely at the now pristine wooden panels. “I never knew such a thing was possible.”

Dahlia shrugged again with a little twinge of a frown. “And what of your end, then? What happened to you?”

“Adventurers,” Hirrus said simply. “A group of them banded together to attack me. I’m afraid it may not be the last time as well. They spoke of sending word back to someone named Clive so that he could more properly prepare a subsequent group.”

“How did they find you? How did they know you were here? Will they come again?”

“That’s the big question in my mind as well,” Hirrus said, his lips pursed together tightly. “I’ve encountered a man named GM Dave twice now. According to Alric, he is some manner of god, and I believe him to be linked to whatever force tried to reach out to me through your decision tree. He claimed that he can’t find me without the players I’ve killed informing him of my location.” He reached up and carefully rubbed the bandage Dahlia had left across his jawline. “If he can’t find me, how can they?”

“Don’t pick at that,” Dahlia warned, but she paused and tapped at her own chin with two fingers. “I do wonder, though. Perhaps adventurers have resources we can only dream of. Some manner of Arcana.”

“Or perhaps they don’t. It could be that an informant somewhere - some counterpart to Barin - has been following my movements somehow. If I can reach out to some local and uncover their location, it shouldn’t be surprising if they managed to do the same to me, while a figure with literal divine power might think such a practice beneath him.”

Dahlia yawned, and then stifled it with the back of her hand. “Perhaps you could ask Alric.”

“He doesn’t have the connections they have,” Hirrus said, gesturing dismissively. “If he did, he would be with them, and not with me.”

Dahlia fixed him with a sharp look. “He still might have something to say. You should speak with him.”

“Perhaps in the morning,” Hirrus said, standing up and offering Dahlia a hand so that he could help her to bed. “The hour is late. He’d probably be upset with me for disturbing him.”

“I disagree,” Dahlia said, though she allowed him to help her up. She leaned on him as she waddled back to the bed and arranged herself comfortably again. “But if you’re determined to wait, I know how pointless it is to try and change your mind.”

Her behavior seemed strange. Hirrus had to consider why she was pushing. Did Alric say something? Had Dahlia heard something in what Alric had said earlier that he had missed?

“Did Alric investigate the sound of the wall exploding? Did he come by after I left?”

“No,” Dahlia said. “Nobody did.” She fixed him with a pleading stare, as if he was on the right track.

“Perhaps you’re right,” Hirrus said, trying to gauge her reaction. “I should go check on him.” His tone left the words a statement, but he felt the question deep inside his mind.

“Thank you,” Dahlia said, letting out a sigh of relief, confirming that he had caught her intent.

Hirrus was quite confused, indeed.

Perhaps Alric was just a heavy sleeper. Or adventurers went elsewhere as they slept as part of the ‘logout’ ritual.

But Hirrus was not about to voice either of these ideas to Dahlia.

Instead he got her secured and comfortable in her bed before moving down the hall to check on the adventurer. He would just confirm the adventurer was safe in bed and then would rest himself. While his HP was full, there was a bone-deep exhaustion that plagued his every step.

Alric had rented a smaller room, only needing a single bed, and so it was farther down the hall, closer to the common room.

Hirrus found the room a moment later and knocked. He knew something was wrong as soon as his fist hit the door.

The wood cracked open at the impact, revealing that the frame had been broken where the latch would have held it closed.

The door appeared to have been kicked in and then pushed back into place.

“Alric?” Hirrus called into the dark room.

There was no response.

With four different Arcana directly on his mind to help him if some threat appeared before his eyes fully adjusted to the dark, Hirrus stepped into the room. It didn’t take long for the moon and lamplight coming in through the window to reveal that he was alone.

Hirrus wasn’t sure where to begin in surveying the scene. He wanted to depend on his decision tree to give him the normal instructions he would receive as a guard investigating the scene of some sort of crime, but all it told him was to go back to his home in Yenon. Without that input, he was just going to have to make it up as best as he could remember.

The first thing he did was find a light source. The room’s single lamp was covered and unlit, and so Hirrus took a moment’s effort to start the flame so that he could see what he was doing. Once that was done, he was able to get a rough idea of what had happened here.

There had been a fight. The person who had kicked in the door hadn’t done it quietly, and so Alric had been able to defend himself.

There were a few splatters of blood around the room, and several items of furniture had been damaged or broken. The room had featured a low table and chair, and both were in pieces now. A dresser against one wall had a huge gouge down the front of it. The bed had a gash across the mattress, and one of the blankets was in shreds, scattered across the floor.

It was obvious that Alric had been overpowered by his attackers, but he hadn’t gone down without a fight.

On the bed there was another object, smeared with red. It looked like a gray overshirt. Red words were scribbled across the front of it, appearing to have been written in blood.

“Now I have your friend. Ho - Ho - Ho.”

Hirrus didn’t know what that meant - besides the obvious.

When Last of the Strong had attacked, they had also sent another group to look for leverage. And they’d found it, in the only adventurer who had treated Hirrus like a person.

He found the pain and exhaustion he had been suffering from bleeding away, replaced by urgency. Until this point, his revenge had been leaning on his implacable nature. His actions wouldn’t bring Julissa back, nor spare her any torment, and so he had been willing to push slowly and steadily towards his goal.

But now? Someone was in immediate danger. A friend who had been willing to stand by him and provide aid even in the face of seemingly indomitable odds.

Implacability wouldn’t earn him success here. In order to rescue Alric, he was going to need speed as well.

And information.

Casting aside his fatigue, Hirrus snuffed out the light and rushed out of the inn.

Before he hit the street he accessed his inventory and changed back into his armor.

The night was far from over, but he knew where to start.