Leaving Miusvon to go to the lab and wait until An was finished, Kano went to see Nove and the children. After the ordeal with Werisah, she deserved a bit of a rest. There were certainly more relaxing ways she could spend her time, but their company would still be quite pleasant compared to what she’d just been through. At least with the children she didn’t have to pay that much attention. That alone was worth a great deal to her right now.

Approaching their new quarters, she spotted a small patch of slime on the floor. Of course things couldn’t be so easy. Why had she ever assumed they would? She broke into a run, already dreading what she might find. Had the children already been reduced to mindless thralls bound to Eomonsa’s will? Or had the mad necromancer’s creation devoured them entirely?

Hurtling around a corner, she collided with Nove, who’d been lumbering in the same direction. Deathly pale, the abomination turned to regard Kano with dull eyes. “Kano?”

“Obviously. Where’re the children?”

Sinking to the floor, Nove’s head swung from side to side at regular intervals while her torn and bloody hands lay at her sides. “They’re gone, all gone. I tried to save them but…” She trailed off, looking at her feet.

Seeing that Nove wasn’t in much of a state to provide useful information, Kano left her for the time being and hurried off to see what had happened to the children for herself. If a search was in order, then she’d start from the last place she’d seen them. She ran into their room and stopped just inside the door. There was no need to look for them. They were all right here. Encased in a thick layer of slime, just transparent enough for her to make out their faces frozen in an expression of terror.

She struck the slime covering the nearest child, but all she accomplished was rattling her bones. The slime had turned to steel. Was that it, then? Was there nothing she could do? She could feel despair welling up inside her like a black cloud, threatening to overwhelm her as it had Nove. But she couldn’t let that happen, not while there might still be something she could do to save them. With a great effort of will, she set aside her emotions. There’d be plenty of time for that later. Right now she needed to think clearly.

By the looks of them, the children might already be dead. But there was still a chance they weren’t. Kano drew energy from the citadel. She wasn’t sure how much help it would be, but it was the only tool she had on hand that stood a chance of freeing them. She’d just have to make it work somehow.

Once she’d concentrated a significant amount of energy, she stood there wondering what she was supposed to do with it. What even was the problem? The children weren’t short on energy like Ren had been, so she couldn’t just save them by renewing their supply. Nor could she use it to free them from the slime directly. What options did she have? Impart energy into the slime and hope for the best? She didn’t see what good it would do, but it was at least worth testing.

Taking the smallest amount of energy she could control, she bid it to enter the closest bit of slime and watched. The slime exhibited no visual reaction, and from what she could sense, it simply absorbed the energy and dispersed it amongst the larger mass it was part of.

Though not too remarkable on the surface, the fact that it distributed it like that struck Kano as noteworthy. Did it have a particular reason for doing that? It might just be how it shared energy, or did it not want to have too much energy in a given part at once? If it did, that might have some kind of negative effect, perhaps even a fatal one. There was no guarantee it wouldn’t harm the children inside, but it was the best idea she could come up with, and time was running out. If it wasn’t too late already.

She poured all the energy she’d collected into one of the outermost parts of slime, doing what she could to keep it there. Filled to capacity and beyond, it shone, filling the room with dark-gray light. Blinking against the brilliance, Kano tried to keep a close watch to spot any change, no matter how minor. But just as suddenly as the light had appeared, it vanished.

Perplexed, she reached out with her senses to find that the energy she’d imparted in the slime had vanished with it. Had the energy been defused throughout the slime? But no, she would still have been able to sense it if that were the case. Had the slime consumed or expended it somehow? There was no way the light alone had been enough to use it up.

She was looking over the slime, thinking she must have missed something, when she saw the closest of the children’s eyes move within their prison. At first she thought she must have been mistaken, yet there was no mistaking them looking back at her. That probably meant they were alive, at least, but beyond that, she no idea what it indicated. Had the energy affected them somehow?

She was still standing there, trying to fathom what it might have done to them, when the slime fell away from the ghoul within it until all that remained was a gray coating on their head and parts of their face, giving them a sort of half mask. Glancing around to see that the others had similarly been released, Kano knelt down in front of the one she was closest to. “Are you okay?”

“We are well.”

“We?” Was this one just weird? Or had the experience messed up their brain?

“Yes, we. For we are many, and we are One.” None of the other children spoke or made any move to. That alone was enough to tip Kano off that something was wrong. Normally they’d already be swarming and making so much noise that she could hardly think straight.

“Uh-huh. So are you being controlled by Eomonsa now or something?”

The children all cocked their head in unison. “We are under no control other than our own.”

“Right.” Was Eomonsa trying to play some sort of stupid trick? She couldn’t fathom why he’d bother, but he was insane. Maybe this made sense to him somehow. There was an easy way to check if he was behind this. None of his ghouls had been able to speak without his direct control, so all she had to do was ask something only the children would know. “What did you call me after I rescued you all from Gresitosis?”

“Kano,” came the immediate reply.

Kano rolled her eyes. “Okay, yes, but what else?”

The children looked around at each other in confusion for a few moments until their speaker finally offered an answer. “The savior? Or something?”

Well, that sealed it—she really was talking to the children. Probably. Somehow they’d formed some sort of collective. Had they done so on purpose? And if so, why? “So you’re One now or whatever. Is that, uh, useful?”

“Um, we’re still trying to figure that out. Maybe? It makes communicating easier.”

Kano didn’t see how having one person speak for a large group made communication easier, but she didn’t care enough to argue the point. “All right, well, let’s go see Nove.” Even if they’d changed a bit, the abomination would still be glad to see them. Kano was still too confused to feel much relief.

They found Nove where Kano had left her, slumped over in the hallway. Kano called her name, and the armored head slowly turned to face them. There was a moment of stunned silence, then Nove shot to her feet with a cry of joy. She rushed toward the children and embraced as many of them as her arms could reach, which turned out to be most of them. The response of the children was more measured, though no less joyous.

“We’re happy to see you again,” their speaker said. “It didn’t seem like we were going to get another chance to.”

That was nice and all, but there was something about their words that bothered Kano. “Wait, what about me?”

Nove and all the children stopped what they were doing and looked at her.

“Oh,” their speaker said after a while. “We’re happy to see you too, of course.”

Kano glared at the ungrateful little creatures. This was how they treated her after she’d gone to all that effort? Not to mention all that worry. She was in the process of storming off when Nove caught her from behind and lifted her off the ground.

“Let me go,” she said, struggling in vain against the abomination’s iron grip.

Nove ignored her, only putting her down when she was in the center of the children and wrapping her arms around the beleaguered natural. What did this oaf think she was doing? Her mental protests only increased as the children followed suit.

And as if that wasn’t bad enough, for some reason her eyesight got all blurry.