True to his word, GM Dave was able to deposit Hirrus back in the streets of Denstaad. It took a moment for him to orient himself, as he wasn’t anywhere near where he had been picked up. Instead, he was within the city walls, and as soon as he was able to discern north from south, he recognized that he was somewhere in the Upper Town district.

He was outside of a modest bakery where GM Dave had explained that a “quest NPC” had gone missing.

“Convenient.”

Considering how upscale the rest of the immediate neighborhood looked, the simplicity of the shop made it seem all the more comforting and welcoming. It made Hirrus homesick for Yenon and the simple life he’d had there. Even just that brief moment of connection made what he found inside that much more personal.

Hirrus felt himself reminded of Yenon again when he stepped inside and smelled smoke. There were signs of a struggle, but not a large one. Several pounds of flour had been scattered over the establishment, a rack of cooling bread loaves had been knocked over, and coins were scattered behind the counter… but nothing was broken.

Footprints in the flour told a story of five people.

Two appeared to be the baker and their assistant, but the other three were clearly adventurers from the strange patterns their armored boots left in the powder over the floor. It was obvious from the footprints that the struggle had been brief, the adventurers muscling their way around the counter, shoving things out of the way in their pursuit, but no sign of an actual fight when the footprints met.

The baker and assistant had not been marched or dragged out.

Their footprints simply stopped where they were caught and vanished. They had been picked up and carried.

Hirrus picked his way through the room, following the smell of smoke. The oven at the back of the shop stood open, and a row of baguettes was turning a shade of brown that was much too dark.

“Hm. This happened recently, then.”

Long enough ago that the bread was burning, but not so long that it had entirely burnt.

If he could track the attackers, he might be able to catch them before anything happened to the bakers.

Despite that time constraint, Hirrus took a brief moment to grab the large wooden peel near at hand to the oven. Using the long-handled paddle, he quickly removed the half-dozen overdone loaves from the large oven. They were likely too burnt to sell, but he didn’t want the whole building to fill with smoke and possibly catch alight.

It was only a few moments of work, but if it saved the bakers’ livelihood, it was worth the time.

Once the business was safe, Hirrus set off after the adventurers.

Their trail was almost painfully easy to follow.

For the first block there was a light dusting of flour here and there from the scuffle in the bakery, and by the time the flour trail stopped, he’d learned enough about the perpetrators to identify other signs. Whoever was carrying the two bakers was off-balance and clumsy, and so any time they cut through a narrow alleyway, things got knocked over or moved, especially near corners. One of the other two wore some manner of long accessory, either an overlong belt or weapon sheath and whenever there was puddle or bit of damp soil on the ground, it picked up a little of the damp and trailed it for a good fifteen to twenty feet.

It was only about twenty minutes before Hirrus followed the trail to a narrow alley and found his targets. The larger of the trio was a man with biceps almost the size of Hirrus’s head, wearing a grass-green gambison that barely contained his bulky midsection. The sleeves had likely been even more ill-fitting, as they had been torn off to leave his arms bare. He wore an off-white hooded mantle over it, but it barely covered his shoulders.

This man was holding two people thrown over his shoulders.

They were unmistakably the bakers, from their white smocks and thin coating of flour. Both appeared conscious and healthy, but the pair were still as statues, frozen with their legs braced and arms outstretched defensively.

The other two adventurers were hefting what appeared to be another man, some sort of illicit hawker, trying to load him on the larger man’s shoulders without disrupting the delicate balance of the bakers. As they tried to wrestle him into a secure position, bits of jewelry tumbled from his coat.

“Halt,” Hirrus barked. “Explain yourselves!”

The two adventurers immediately dropped the hawker. Fortunately, he was also frozen with his arms out, so he didn’t land on his face. All three whirled to face Hirrus, though the shortest of the three cursed and pitched over sideways against the nearest wall when one of the frozen bakers’ feet caught him in the side of the head as the larger man turned. The smaller man cursed, though he seemed more concerned with the styling of his shock of moss-green hair. His hair contrasted with his red coat, decorated with a flame pattern on his sleeves. He wore it over a gleaming silver breastplate that looked like it had felt more polish than blades in its lifetime.

The third adventurer was wearing a glossy blue and purple leather cuirass, but with a knee-length periwinkle skirt with white petticoats poking out beneath it. A headband holding the hair out of her eyes was decorated with two round discs, and Hirrus couldn’t identify their purpose. She was the one leaving the trail, as she had a long costume tail poking out of the skirt and trailing to the ground. Despite the bold choices in her outfit, she was either incredibly skittish, or recognized Hirrus for what he was on sight.

“It’s the fuzz!” she snapped to the other two. “Cheese it!”

“But these guys-” the larger man began.

“I said cheese it!” She turned and bolted down the hallway away from Hirrus.

The large adventurer shrugged off the two bakers, letting them land atop the frozen hawker, turning to follow the one who seemed to be the leader.

“B-but we were-” the shorter man stammered. He seemed caught between his desire to stand his ground and fight like a bold half-wit, and the recognition that he needed his friends at his side to have any chance of success.

Hirrus began to stalk forward wordlessly. The little man in the red coat turned and fled without further complaint.

No doubt they would lead an easy enough trail to follow. Hirrus took a brief moment to use his Ancient Stream Arcana on one of the bakers, bathing them in a beam of blue-and-gold light. It was a healing Arcana, but it removed status ailments as well, and as soon as it touched the baker, their rigid body went slack, and they struggled for a moment to untangle themselves from the others and get to their feet.

“Thank you, sir,” the baker said once she found her feet. She offered him a deep bow. “Denstaad is well taken care of, with such strong guards near at hand.”

“No need to thank me, citizen,” Hirrus said, falling back on the old familiar habits - even though they felt like they were coming from a lifetime away. “Just doing what’s right.”

With all of his cooldown reduction gear, it only took a few seconds for Hirrus to be able to hit both the other baker and the hawker with Ancient Stream as well, restoring their ability to move. With them once more able to take care of themselves - their decision trees would be better-suited to see to their needs than Hirrus would be - Hirrus gave chase to the adventurers responsible.

As he came around the corner at the end of the alleyway, Hirrus saw them about twenty yards down the street, arguing about whose fault it was that guards had gotten involved. They were moving at a light jog, and Hirrus could have easily caught them.

If he wanted, he could kill the three of them from here with a few buffs and a hit of Civilization Buster, though it would do untold damage to the city around them.

But he didn’t actually want to catch and kill them. The bakers and hawker weren’t the first townsfolk they had kidnapped. He needed to find the rest, both to ensure that they weren’t being made into more Awakened, and to save them from whatever fate these lunatics were carting them off to.

To that end, he just followed behind them at a brisk walk. After a moment they started to slow down - thinking they had gotten out of range of his pursuit - but when they turned and saw him still following, one of them yelled “cheese it” again and they went back into a run. Hirrus wasn’t sure what kind of catchphrase that was supposed to be.

They didn’t use any manner of speed boost or trickery to try and lose him. They just ran in a panic and tried to duck around corners, and then acted like they had accomplished something impressive and returned to a light jog. It seemed so inane, Hirrus thought that they would walk him right to their home or guildhall if he just trailed them for long enough.

It seemed they were smarter than that, though. After the first ten minutes, Hirrus realized they were leading him in circles. It seemed they knew their base of operations wouldn’t protect them from him. He was almost embarrassed that he had foolishly expected them to underestimate him, and had underestimated them in turn.

There was an easy fix for that, though: Fire’s stealth ability. The invisibility it granted would only be broken by a large number of observers. When he only had to hide from three adventurers, he could have walked shoulder-to-shoulder with them if he wanted. Instead, he just let them “lose him” around a corner, and then invisibly made his way into eavesdropping distance of them as they returned to their jogging pace.

“I th-think we ac-actually lost-t him,” the short man in the red jacket said, peering over his shoulder, his eyes sliding right through Hirrus’s invisible presence. “F-f-for real, this t-time.”

“The boss knows best,” the larger man said gruffly. “Three circuits. If we don’t see a tail for three circuits, then we’re free. That’s the rule.”

“F-f-fuck him,” the short man snapped. “We’ve already g-gone th-three circuit-ts.”

“Shut up,” the woman with the tail tangling from her belt snapped. She reached across and swatted the shorter man in the head, sending him into another flurry of fixing his hair. “The boss is the boss and the rules are the rules. I’m not gonna be the one who brings trouble down on the guild and gets booted. We go around again, and again, and then one more time.”

Hirrus could almost respect her adherence to such a smart rule. Under ordinary circumstances, guards had a strict distance they were allowed to pursue a suspect once they were out of sight. After that, the decision tree would return them to their post. This “circuit” they were running was likely based on that distance.

Fortunately, as Hirrus followed them around the district three times, his decision tree lacked the authority to stop him.

As they congratulated themselves for adhering to the boss’s rules, they took a sharp turn, heading towards their guildhall for a well-deserved break.

Hirrus anticipated giving them a much longer break. But not until he knew where the kidnapping victims were being held.