Running through the city on Izsha’s back would have been far more freeing if not for the need for stealth. Even though night had fallen, people were still out on the streets. Not as many as during the day, but this was prime time for farmers to visit taverns and inns for a quick evening meal and maybe some entertainment. Unfortunately for some, one particular tavern was missing their rock star of a lute player tonight.

“Find anything? Oxart is asking again.”

“Not yet,” Alyssa said, holding the phone up to her ear. “I think Izsha thinks there is something in the air. We’re near the Observatorium, but heading further east, away from it.”

“Stay safe Alyssa, don’t go charging in without reinforcements.”

“I know, mom. I learned that lesson already.”

A three-way call let them stay in communication with each other without the possibility that one group got ambushed before they could type out a text message. And it was faster in general. She hadn’t known it was possible with the semi-outdated phones that Jason and Chris had, but Jason had suggested they try. It was nice, but sometimes they started talking over each other. Still, better than nothing. In fact, it was drastically better than nothing.

“This is Oxart,” came the stiff voice of the former guard captain. She sounded a bit distant and some background noise had sprung up. Chris had probably changed to speakerphone. “These… phones,” she said slowly. “How difficult would it be to procure more of them?”

“Nearly impossible. The way I got them was…” Tenebrael had provided them. And Alyssa had Tenebrael’s power at the moment. It might be possible to get more.

Especially with what Iosefael had told her. Tenebrael’s power was finicky. But it wasn’t based on the whims of the angel, apparently. Whether or not a miracle manifested was solely down to willpower and the verbal prayer that Alyssa had to speak. The times when Alyssa had failed to create a miracle hadn’t been because Tenebrael was denying her—probably, Iosefael had said—but because something in a prayer or her own mental fortitude had been missing.

So, theoretically, she could figure out exactly what she needed to say to conjure a few phones. And now that she was thinking about it, doing so for Kasita, Irulon, Brakkt, and a few others like Oxart would probably be a very good idea. But, she had a feeling that Oxart was asking about something else. Perhaps giving a phone to every single one of the guards under her command. If Alyssa could magic up a whole crate of phones, that might be possible. But if she had to go one by one…

It might still be worth it. She had to admit that much. Though they had better make her wealthier than the Pharaoh if she did. However, she had been thinking in the short term a lot since arriving in Nod. Half the problems she had gotten involved in were her own fault for thinking in the short term rather than viewing the bigger picture.

Alyssa wasn’t going to be around forever. She had no intentions of dying anytime soon, but she did still want to return to Earth. Or, if possible, create a connection between here and Earth. Originally, she had wanted to leave completely, but now, she had people whose company she enjoyed. It was disheartening to think that she might never see Irulon or Tzheitza ever again, among others. However, even if she lived out her entire life on Nod, she highly doubted that there would ever be someone who could replace her in terms of acting as Tenebrael’s proxy. If her mother had been able to see Tenebrael, she would have suspected that it was a genetic ability. But that wasn’t the case.

“Talk to Jason,” Alyssa eventually said. “He is a guild scrivener currently working with Guillem, the elf blacksmith, on a few projects. Ask him if he could come up with some way to make telegrams.”

“Telegrams?”

“I’d explain more, but…”

“Right. Focus on the current situation.”

“Speaking of, what is further east of the Observatorium? I don’t think I’ve ever really been in this whole quadrant of the city before.”

“There are several upper class markets along with wealthy but non-noble dwellings such as those of merchants. Public works buildings also primarily occupy that section of the city including the primary city inlet for the aqueduct, the largest bathhouse in the city, the Eastgate Guardhouse, several storage warehouses for both food and goods, and the amphitheater. In addition, there are several goldsmiths and silversmiths operating in that area, along with artist workshops, the primary papyrus supplier for the city, and a particularly notable silk weaving guild.”

“Great.” Alyssa had already identified food and water as being possible targets for poisonings. She had already informed Oxart of her suspicions of the cargo the intruders might be carrying. The bathhouse could also be targeted. It would have to be a slow acting poison in order to hit as many people as possible. Gold and silver sounded like they would be targets, but probably not to someone like the Juno Federation. Precious metals were more for the common thief than international spies and assassins.

However, papyrus might be another big target. All spell cards were created from specially manufactured papyrus-based cardstock. Targeting that wouldn’t instantly cripple the city, but it would make things much harder for arcanists. Even if only temporary, supply would become limited and prices would skyrocket. The Observatorium and the students within might not be able to afford to continue their lessons and practice. Alyssa imagined that the palace kept a private supply of papyrus. A ruler seemed like the kind of profession to run through paper like crazy. Irulon and the Pharaoh might not be hit that hard by a sudden lack of cards, but the city guard would probably have to be a lot more discerning in what they cast and how often.

Alyssa had to purchase her own spell cards from the market. So she would be affected too.

If Alyssa were strategizing for the long-term, papyrus supply would make for an excellent target. Especially if she could ensure that supply remained low, maybe by burning, poisoning, or otherwise destroying the papyrus plants themselves. After a year of limited access to spell cards, Lyria would be a far softer target.

“I hope you’ve sent a decent amount of guards to… Hold up…”

Izsha slowed down as they reached an intersection. The why wasn’t immediately apparent. It was a normal intersection as far as Alyssa was concerned. There were buildings at the corners. Shops by the look of their large windows and signposts. Over the roof of one, she was fairly certain that she could see the bathhouse Oxart had mentioned right beneath one of the larger aqueduct veins.

There was no sign of any intruders no matter the direction Alyssa looked. There were tracks from carts, but there were tracks from carts everywhere. One of the streets at the crossroads had a particularly large pile of horse droppings—whose smell was just now reaching Alyssa, forcing her to wrinkle her nose—but even that wasn’t unusual. For all the magic they had, this was still a medieval society. Where horses traveled, there was evidence of their passing. At least Lyria had the benefit of sanitary teams going around to clean up such things.

Even with being unable to tell how fresh the smell was, Alyssa was leaning toward that being the direction they should head. It had to be relatively recent. And unless Izsha was way off the mark—a possibility as she was pretty sure that Izsha had picked one among a myriad of smells to follow—evidence of a horse recently passing was as good of a clue as they were likely to get.

But Izsha looked from one side to the other, seeming just as confused as Alyssa. Draken were hunters. They knew how to track targets. Two had tracked Oxart clear across the desert using just a small sample smell from the fairy and Oxart. Then again, the desert probably had far less smells to get confused about. It was a wide open area without a lot of people.

Alyssa blinked, then blinked again.

Thinking about the desert reminded her. The draken had gotten confused at one point while tracking Oxart. It had taken Irulon using some post cognition spell to discover that the Society of the Burning Shadow had captured Oxart and the fairy. They had used that smoke-mist stuff to do so, which had interrupted the draken's tracking.

But the mist had come from an angelic artifact. One that had been destroyed… right? Perhaps they had excavated the collapsed church building and recovered enough of it to use. Or maybe Adrael popped up again and simply gave them another one. Maybe neither had happened and they simply had a small supply of the mist in those canisters that Morigan had used on the very first fairy that Alyssa had ever seen. Either way, the doubt in Alyssa's mind made way for certainty that the Society of the Burning Shadow was, indeed, back again and that it was their mist making Izsha confused.

She promptly conveyed the results of her logic dive over the phone, resulting in a swearing Oxart.

“I don’t have any cards of Irulon’s post cognition spell,” Alyssa added. It just wasn’t a spell she had ever thought she would need. “I think it was called retrograde cognition?” And Irulon wasn’t around either. Oxart had gotten in contact with the palace, but Alyssa hadn’t met up with them. Not yet, at least. Without Messages and without them having phones, her ability to communicate with Irulon was severely limited.

Alyssa looked down at her fingernails. They were normal at the moment, not Tenebrael’s particular shade of black. There were several options she could try. From a portal to bring Irulon here, a miracle to the effect of Retrograde Cognition, a miracle to track the intruders better, and about a dozen other things.

But she was wary.

It had just been that one Kindness so far, but that one was proof enough that the Astral Authority was present on this world. Unless she completely broke off her connection to Tenebrael, she would likely draw their attention sooner or later. But hoisting a neon light in the sky above her head while in the midst of another crisis seemed like a foolish and small-picture way to go about things.

“Where was Irulon’s last known position?”

“She was on her way to the gate to investigate the murders for herself.”

“Great.” One hundred percent in the wrong direction. “Where are you at, mom?”

“Southern part of the city. Not far from the gate. Oz, Lumen, Catal, and I can head there if you think that’s the best option.” There was a slight pause from her. Her phone didn’t have the same background noise that Chris and Oxart’s phone had, so it probably wasn’t on speaker, but there were some voices. Oz, possibly. Alyssa couldn’t hear what he was saying, but her mother made a few noises of agreement. “Right. We’re not finding much around here anyway. We’ll see if we can’t meet up with Princess Irulon.”

“Thanks. I’m going to continue looking around here with Izsha. Maybe we’ll pick up the scent again.”

“Stay safe.”

“Yeah. You too.”

With a pair of headphones, looted from the house, Alyssa was able to slip the phone into her pocket and still hear if Oxart, Chris, or her mother had anything to say. Unfortunately, the headphones lacked a microphone. She would have to fish the phone back out if she wanted to respond. But being hands free allowed her to point toward the horse droppings. “Let’s head that way, Izsha.”

Izsha seemed a little reluctant, looking back down the opposite street before following along with Alyssa’s suggestion. Alyssa couldn’t be sure why. It would be handy if the draken could speak, but…

For some reason, she pictured herself flying on an airplane, groggily waking up to Izsha calling out her name with its raptor-shaped mouth. The thought actually made her laugh.

Even with how silly it would have looked, the utility of it would definitely have been worth it. Once again, Alyssa found herself glancing down to her fingernails. Could Tenebrael’s power grant Izsha the ability to speak? Or even just allow Alyssa to understand. That would work to roughly the same effect. And, if she did something to herself, it likely wouldn’t be that big of a neon sign. Or rather, she already had a neon sign above her head in the form of her connection to Tenebrael. Adding one more neon arrow wouldn’t be that big a change.

Closing her eyes, Alyssa let out a slow breath as she concentrated. Just like Iosefael taught her. When she opened her eyes again, her fingernails were black. It was a bit of an odd sight to suddenly have colored fingernails. It was like those science fiction movies where makeup could be applied instantly with the touch of a button. She wouldn’t have picked black, but there wasn’t much she could do about it.

Rather than consider what color of fingernail polish she would prefer—Alyssa had never been one for such things—she tried to think of exactly what she wanted. A way to communicate with Izsha? She already had one-way communication. Izsha was plenty smart enough to understand English. That would more than likely change something about Izsha, which was not what Alyssa wanted. Asking for understanding would be the best way to put it in such a way that it only affected Alyssa. Hopefully.

After mentioning the words Alyssa had spoken to create the portals between her home and the stables as well as the portal to Tenebrael’s dark room, Iosefael had gotten a little upset. She had been dissatisfied with Alyssa’s requests to Tenebrael. They were short, insincere, and lacked specifics, which could easily result in unintended effects. Alyssa really didn’t care about the insincere aspect of her requests, but the others she could understand. Applying a miracle to herself had the potential to go drastically sideways. Given angelic nature to avoid harming mortals, she doubted that a malformed miracle would kill her. There were still plenty of things that might go wrong.

That was easier to see with a portal than a comprehension miracle, but Alyssa was sure that something could go wrong. Like, what if she traded her ability to understand other people for the ability to understand draken? That would probably not be the best result.

Izsha’s casual trot picked up to a swift pace before Alyssa could decide on exactly how she wanted to word her request to Tenebrael. Thinking the draken might have picked up the scent again, Alyssa dedicated her concentration to watching their surroundings. She could always try to communicate properly with Izsha later.

It wasn’t shadow assassins, fairies, horses, or any other kind of intruder that caught Izsha’s nose. A group of eight marched down the street in a loose formation. All of them wore the darker armor of the palace guard, though rather than a violet trim, theirs was a deep red. A plague containment team. At their head, Fela trotted along on all fours, obviously sniffing at the air around them.

Watching them march was an interesting experience. The few people on the street gave the group a wide berth. Fela had become fairly well known among the populace given how much she was on the streets. Even though she hadn’t once harmed a human, that didn’t stop anyone who spotted her from taking whatever cover they could. A few people even detoured into the buildings that were probably not supposed to be open to the public.

It was nice to see that there was far less panic compared to her first week out on the streets. One man even walked by nodding his head toward one of the guards, who nodded in return. He didn’t seem concerned about the hellhound in the slightest.

The guards had changed as well. On Fela’s first week out, all but Trik had been on guard to the point where they had looked more ready to attack Fela than demons. Now, even though she was at the head of the group still, they looked more like they were walking with her as comrades. Their eyes hardly stopped on her as they observed their surroundings for external threats.

External threats like Izsha barreling right next to them. From their perspective, it would have looked like it had popped out of nowhere, so Alyssa could forgive shouts of alarm, reading of weapons, and even a few spells. It helped that the spells wound up nullified thanks to Adrael’s staff. Trik, at the head of the group alongside Fela, quickly calmed them down with a few shouted orders.

“Sorry,” Alyssa said, giving Izsha a light thwack of her hand. She didn’t even know if the draken could feel it through the tough scales, but Alyssa’s hand sure stung.

“I’d appreciate a little warning next time,” Trik grumbled. “We’re a little on edge at the moment.”

“Yeah… Sorry about that.” Izsha probably deserved a bit more than a small whack upside the head for jumping into the middle of them immediately after they had just lost a few people to an ember at the bedehouse. “I heard about what happened.”

“Well, I can’t say that I’m upset to see you. I wanted to send the men home, give them much needed rest. But…” he trailed off, glancing toward Fela. “Duty is apparently calling us again tonight.”

Aside from a glance, Fela had hardly looked at Alyssa or Izsha. Her nose was in the air as she continued forward with her face set in a deadly serious grimace. Izsha had to trot to keep up. A few of the other guards had actually fallen far enough behind to have left the Empty Vessel bubble. From the outside, it must look like quite the sight to have people disappear and reappear every so often.

Alyssa decided to just cancel the spell. They were in the presence of palace guards. Izsha wouldn’t stand out nearly so much.

“She smells something else?” Alyssa asked as the glass shards dispersed into nothing around them.

“A big one apparently.”

“That’s… I hope unrelated to why I’m here. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but Messages seem to be being blocked at the moment.”

“It would explain a few things.”

“The guards at one of the south gates were murdered and there are likely intruders inside the city. Maybe a fairy, almost certainly a shadow assassin.”

“Lovely.”

“My thoughts exactly. I have a very limited way around the Message blocking and am currently in contact with a few Knights Solaris as well as Oxart… speaking of…” She pulled out her phone. “This is Alyssa. I’ve made contact with Trik, Fela, and their plague containment team. We’re… Where the heck are we?” she said, looking around. Between her thoughts of communicating with Izsha and the sudden burst of speed to find Trik, Alyssa had no clue where they were in relation to the crossroads they had been at.

“Just north of the amphitheater,” Trik said, pointing southward. Sure enough, there was a large and very Roman Colosseum-esque building sticking out over the top of some of the smaller structures.

Chris, apparently having heard Trik, said, “Acknowledged. Oxart is organizing a few of the guards, but I’ll let her know the moment she is done.”

“We’ve reached the southern gate,” Lisa said. “Princess Irulon is in the middle of a… spell to determine what happened at the gate.” Retrograde Cognition, probably. “Will update once she is done, but Alyssa, apparently the Pharaoh is somewhere in your area.”

“The Pharaoh is here?” Alyssa wanted to breathe out a sigh of relief, but… that just meant things were serious or worrying enough that he had descended from the palace to take care of them himself.

“According to one of the guards.”

“I’ll keep an eye out for him.”

“Stay safe.”

“Yeah. You too. I—”

Fela stood fully upright, fur bristling.

“There might be a demon in the area,” Alyssa whispered into the phone. “Gotta go, I’ll keep in touch.”

Phone back in her pocket, Alyssa called out to the hellhound. “What is it, Fela?”

“It’s close, but…” she breathed in deeply and slowly through her nose. “Something was here not too long ago. A few minutes at the least. I think it is inside one of these buildings.”

“It was outside?” Alyssa heard one of the plague containment guards mumble.

“Means it is going to be a bad one.”

“Think that monster is any good at fighting demons?”

“Better it than—”

“Quiet!” Trik shouted. “Get yourselves ready. Ack, Radia, Lerk. Move up. And everyone, for the love of Tenebrael, do not touch anything that glows.”

Despite that comment, the three guardsmen who moved forward to stand side-by-side with Fela all had weapons that glowed. Not as bright or as all-encompassing as Brakkt’s enchanted sword. Theirs was more like someone had decided to tattoo a sword with green glow-stick fluid. Still definitely enchanted.

Alyssa pulled out her pistol, checked the magazine, chambered a round, and rested her finger on the safety. A normal bullet wouldn’t hurt a demon. Not significantly, anyway. But she had something to try regardless.

Unfortunately, she didn’t get a chance.

The house Fela had been staring at exploded. Bricks and rubble blasted through the air. Alyssa barely got a Projectile Reflection up before one slammed into her. One of the guards wasn’t so lucky. He went down to the ground, but he was still moving. That metal helmet of his might have saved his life. Fela punched a rock out of the air with a furious growl. Izsha took several hits to the side, enough to make it stagger. However, its position probably saved several of the guardsmen.

People on the street were screaming and running away. Trik was shouting at his men, trying to keep them organized.

But Alyssa stared with wide eyes.

On the ground in the middle of the street, surrounded by cracked earth, a woman with embers for eyes clawed at a silver spear in her chest. A demon. But the thing that held the spear was what had Alyssa’s attention.

It looked like a crochet doll, woven from silver filigree. There were no features on the life-sized toy. Not even elbows or knees. Its hands were stuffed balls of silver. But it had a shining aureole behind its head and a porcelain mask where its face would be.

One of the Astral Authority. A front-line warrior.

A Patience.