After watching Eomonsa’s ghouls wander around, searching, Kano had gotten bored and killed them off. Though numerous and armed, they were too slow and stupid to put up much of a fight. Without her force field, Kano took them out slowly and carefully, but the result was never in question. Once she was done picking them off, she took her own ghouls and did a sweep of the citadel.

Other than the dead, she didn’t encounter a single one of Eomonsa’s conscripts. It seemed they’d all either pulled out or died while trying to do… whatever they were sent here to do. She still hadn’t figured out what their objective had been. The orb, or something on the same floor, and reaching An, appeared to be two of their goals, but that didn’t explain their presence all over the citadel. Unless that had been a distraction.

Or maybe the ghouls were meant to concentrate on those two locations and most of them had just wandered off? It was hard to say how precise his control over them was, but such a failure didn’t seem all that unlikely from what she’d seen of their capabilities.

Now that the citadel was cleared, Kano left the cleanup to the ghouls and went to see Miusvon. The other natural seemed like she’d scarcely moved from her position outside An’s lab from the last time Kano had seen her.

“Well, that’s dealt with,” Kano said, leaning against the wall opposite. “What now?”

“I’d like to destroy the invaders at their source if possible. Any idea where they’re coming from?”

“Nah, not really. I think I might be able to find out more given a bit of time, though.”

“You do that, then, and let me know if you need anything.”

Kano nodded and moved past Miusvon into the lab. Shooting an idle glance at An, who was still hard at work with her instruments like nothing had happened, Kano went over to where Urick was sitting.

“Get up. I need you to go find Sherp. Tell her I want her to find out where the ghouls behind the attack on the citadel came from.”

Picking at his teeth with his thumb, Urick nodded and walked off. Once he was gone, Kano went over to Nove. “Anything interesting happen with An while I was gone?”

“Not really. She’s been pretty frustrated about the lack of power, but other than that, it’s just been more of the usual, I think. Though she does seem like a nice person.” Kano glared at her, and she hurriedly added, “For a necromancer, at least.”

Kano’s expression softened and lowered her voice. “Just remember who we’re dealing with here. No matter what she says, don’t let it cloud your judgment about what she’s doing. We have to be alert for any possible deception.”

“Right.”

“Speaking of deception, I ran into Himin earlier. She snuck in here with the attackers to take the orb I got from Gresitosis.”

“Oh.” Nove seemed at a loss for how to respond.

Kano didn’t blame her. She’d had a hard enough time figuring out what to do herself.

“But don’t worry, it’s all dealt with now.” Kano sat down on the ground beside Nove.

“That’s good.”

“Yep.” Feeling ill at ease, Kano tapped the sole of her shoe against the floor in a series of rapid clicks.

“Is something wrong?” Nove asked, brows knitting together in concern.

“I don’t know, maybe. I feel a bit jumpy. Things just never seem to settle down, y’know? It’s always one thing after another.”

“That never seemed to bother you before.”

Kano couldn’t remember if it had or hadn’t before, but it was getting to her now. “Yeah, well, maybe I’ve just had enough. Even I deserve a break every now and then.”

“I’m sure you’d prefer that, but…” Nove shrugged. “We don’t have a lot of choices right now. Unless you’re willing to abandon all this for the sake of some peace and quiet.”

Knee jerking up and down, Kano continued to fidget. “And what if I did? How would you feel?”

“I’d be disappointed.”

“But you wouldn’t hate me for it?” Kano felt like she could easily live with a little disappointment.

“No, I could never hate you for something like that. I’d just be disappointed that you gave up when you could still make a difference.”

Make a difference? Nove seemed to have pretty optimistic expectations of her. Right now Kano didn’t feel like she’d ever really made much of a difference. Unless you could call stumbling through life arbitrarily disrupting people’s plans at a whim making a difference.

Maybe she was a fool to have messed up what the necromancers had been trying to do. They were smart, at least compared to ghouls. She could have just let them figure it out among themselves. It probably wouldn’t have been any better, but it might not have been worse. And it definitely would have been easier for her.

“You wouldn’t blame me for turning my back on all this? Leaving it all up to An and Miusvon?”

“No, I wouldn’t blame you. Why? Are you really thinking of cutting and running?” She sounded hurt, her huge eyes shining with unshed tears.

“I…” Kano’s tapped faster and faster, then stopped. “I don’t know. It’s not clear what I want to do, or what I should be doing. I’m not sure it ever really was.”

One of Nove’s meaty hands clapped her on the shoulder. “Yeah, maybe. But like I said, you never seemed to let that stop you before.”

Kano knew she was trying to be encouraging, but her words only seemed to highlight the flaws in her decision-making. “Maybe that’s exactly what I’ve been doing wrong.”

“There’s nothing wrong with following your heart.”

Kano nearly retched. How could Nove say that with a straight face? “Don’t give me that nonsense. What heart, anyway? In case you didn’t know, I don’t have anything like that in the first place.”

Pointing to the left side of Kano’s chest, Nove said, “No, but you used to. And I think that part of you still lives inside you. I think you’re just becoming more aware of that side of yourself. Isn’t that why you’re hesitating so much?”

Kano sneered. “I’m hesitating because all I’ve ever done is ruin things. Would you rather I just continued to mindlessly destroy everything around me?”

“You never mindlessly destroyed things.”

Kano gave her a look, and Nove appended her statement.

“Okay, you mostly didn’t mindlessly destroy things. Even if you weren’t aware of it, I think you were still mostly doing the right thing.”

“The right thing, huh? I’m not sure I know what that is. I’m not sure I ever knew.”

Nove shook her head. “I’m sure you did, and I’m sure you will again. You just have to give it time. Time and thought.”

“I’ve already thought about it,” Kano said, making a sweeping motion with her arm. “A lot. I don’t see how more thinking is going to do me any good. Maybe if it had given me even the slightest idea of what I should do, or even what I should be looking for to figure that out, but it hasn’t.”

Deep in thought, Nove idly dragged her claws across the bony plates of her torso. “Then maybe you’re going about it the wrong way. Instead of sitting around thinking about all of this, maybe what you need to do is look for new information or a new perspective.”

“Oh, yeah, great. I’ll just go down to the new perspective store and see what they have.” Kano rolled her eyes. “That really doesn’t help.”

“You haven’t even considered it.”

“Yeah, because it’s a pointless idea.”

“I’m just trying to give you some suggestions. I don’t see you coming up with any ideas.”

“Duh, if I could come up with any ideas about what I should do, I wouldn’t be talking to you.”

Seeing Nove’s dejected expression, which was quickly hidden, Kano felt a pang of regret. She was the one who’d raised the subject in the first place. She shouldn’t be blaming Nove, even if she was useless.

Kano waved her hand dismissively. “I’m tired of talking about this. Don’t worry about it. I’ll figure it out on my own. Somehow.”

Seeing that Nove wasn’t going to argue with her, Kano wandered off into the citadel. She had no idea how she was going to resolve the conflict, but maybe it would come to her later. Or maybe the problem was that she was thinking about it too much. She was convinced that necromancers were a plague to the world. Maybe she should just stick with that, view things through that lenses.

But then what? Wouldn’t that mean she should go and kill An right now? That didn’t seem right either. Combined with what was happening with Eomonsa, who was at this stage practically unknown, Kano seemed to be mired in endless mystery.

She was continuing to mull over her conundrum over food when Urick returned with Sherp.

“What do you need?” Sherp asked, sitting down across from Kano with her eyes fixed on the floor.

Toying with her spoon, Kano replied, “Have you ever heard of someone named Eomonsa?”

“Can’t say I have, no.”

Kano frowned. How was it that no one seemed to know this man? Was that even his real name? As far as she could tell, he may as well have appeared out of thin air for all that anyone knew of him. “Then what about the attack on the citadel? You know anything about that?”

“Uh, not really. I heard there was some fighting here and saw some of the bodies. But a lot of people have been disappearing recently. Is it true the attackers were just normal people?”

“Seems that way. How long ago did people start going missing?”

“Well, people are always vanishing now and again, but the numbers went up a lot about a week ago.”

Assuming what Sherp said was accurate, then Eomonsa had either gotten here a week ago or had arrived earlier and waited until then to make his move. Whatever that move was, exactly. All she knew about his goals so far was that he needed a large amount of electricity and something from the citadel. Unless he’d been lying about that first part too.

“Is there anything else that’s been happening out there? Anything strange you’ve heard about?”

Sherp rocked back and forth in her chair, raising her eyes to stare at the ceiling. “I’m not sure if it’s connected,” she said after a while, “but apparently people have bought up or stolen most of the souls that are on the market.”

“Any idea why? Or what someone might be using them for?”

Sherp shrugged. “Making a lot of new ghouls or something would be my guess. What else do you do with souls?”

If Eomonsa was behind it, as seemed likely, it was doubtful that he’d go to that much trouble just to make some ghouls. He already seemed to have an ample supply of them. Was he making something else, then? Kano had no idea what it could be, but she doubted it was anything good.

It was probably biological if he was using souls, but why would he need electricity, then? Especially so much of it. As far as Kano was aware, making ghouls or other similar beings didn’t require much electricity. “Okay, do you know anything about anyone new arriving in town? Anyone important?”

“No.”

“Then do you have any idea where someone new to town might hole up? It would probably be somewhere that’s large and can handle a great deal of electricity. Know anything like that?”

“One of the larger factories?” Sherp said, furrowing her brow. “I can’t think of anywhere else that would fit the bill, but I’m pretty sure I would have heard about someone new taking over one of them.”

“I see. Still, it seems worth looking into. Think you can handle it?”

The edge of Sherp’s mouth quirked upward in a hint of a sardonic smile. “What happens if I say I can’t?”

“Then I’ll say that’s too bad and you’re doing it anyway.” She did feel a little bad for forcing Sherp to do something that was potentially so dangerous, particularly given the current state of the town. But only a little.

Curling her trembling hands into fists, Sherp got up. “Then I guess I should get on that.” Stained coat swishing behind her as she turned, Sherp departed.

Kano was sorry to see her go, even if it had been at her command. She’d provided a lot more information than most of the people she’d talked to. If everyone else were that useful, this whole situation would’ve been figured out by now.

Maybe she had what she needed already, but all she could be sure of was that she wasn’t cut out for this sort of work. She wasn’t sure how Sherp managed it. “Not well” was the answer that she came up with a moment later, and she snorted at her private joke before finishing her food.