Fuck, fuck, fuck!

I hadn’t been in Dakheng in literally over a decade. I hadn’t been involved in noble affairs—events of last night excluded—in that same period of time. I hadn’t the faintest idea of what had happened, where Jasmine was, and even if there was hope for her to still be alive.

Step by step. Assess the situation.

The Varga estate—or what was left of it, rather—was on fire. Whatever had done this had been pretty damn thorough, because the structure was not a fraction as tall as it had been earlier. The upper floors had been completely destroyed to the extent that I couldn’t even recognize anything left in the burning first floor. The building had collapsed in on itself, the upper floors fallen to the ground. Burning wood and shattered glass had been scattered across the estate.

It looked like a primordial of fire had been spawned inside it. Barely a single room was left untouched, the first floor the only part of the entire structure that had recognizably survived. The rest had been reduced to little more than ash and dust.

At some point, there had been flower fields surrounding this place just like the Alzaq and Rayes’ manors had, but now there was nothing but blackened dirt and the smoking remnants of what had once been the plants.

Had this been Jasmine? I knew that Jasmine had a fairly strong oath to Igni, which definitely had the potential to cause this level of distruction, but I didn’t know why she would’ve burned down the Varga household. Unless Alex had suddenly turned on us, there was no reason for Jasmine to have suddenly up and ignite their entire home.

That meant a number of possibilities. Possibility one: Alex did, in fact, turn on us, presumably also involving Lukas, which had caused a conflict here. Unlikely, but something that was to be considered.

Possibility two, and the one that I was fairly certain was far more likely to be true: outside conflict.

I would go with that theory for now. If there had been a betrayal, I was more than a little confident that Jasmine would’ve been able to handle it just fine. Since there was no trace of Jasmine, Alex, or Lukas, I could assume that there hadn’t been a betrayal. If there had been, Jasmine would’ve been looking for me or waiting for me, which she was far better at figuring out than I was, and there would probably also be the burnt crisps of one ex-noble and his bodyguard. As far as I could tell, nobody had died on these premises, so that was another point against that.

Okay, if I ran with the outside attacker theory, there were still more questions to be answered. Namely, who the fuck had done this? Potential enemies included the currently Orchid-less House Alzaq, House Tempet, and any of the other smaller houses that were allied with those two.

What had happened? There were a few main cases that could’ve happened, I was pretty sure. First, Jasmine and the rest could’ve defeated incoming attackers and then decided to evacuate the premises. While I wanted that to be true, I that almost definitely wasn’t the case here. Jasmine was strong, yes, but not this strong. Not enough to entirely raze a manor and leave so little left standing.

No, the more likely case was that they’d been defeated or displaced. One possibility was that they’d been forced to retreat away from the building when under attack from too many trained enemies, but if that had been the case, there almost certainly would’ve been signs of damage to the surroundings. Apart from what I was pretty sure had once been the Varga manor, there were no other areas that had been similarly burnt down. Conflict likely hadn’t spread past that.

Defeat, unfortunately, was the most likely. There was a nasty pit forming in my gut at that thought, but I tried to put it aside for now. It wouldn’t do to be emotional when I needed something sharper.

Defeat wasn’t enough of an answer, though. Even if that had happened, there were still more specifics to be considered.Of those thousand little things that I could have—should have—paid attention to, I found my focus being drawn to just one.

Was Jasmine alive?

Well, that applied to the others, too. Couldn’t keep adventuring without a strong party to do it with, right?

I stepped past the still-intact wall that surrounded the estate’s boundaries. In one step, the ground beneath my feet changed from springy, well-maintained dirt to hard, ashen earth. I glanced downwards, noting the difference. The ground before the boundary had given way to my feet, my steps trying to create prints but not quite succeeding. Here, though, the ground had been baked, and it was hard, pieces of it cracking as I put more weight on one foot.

The feeling in my gut was rising again. Just as before, I inhaled deeply, pushing aside that pit as I breathed out. Not something I need to deal with right now.

There was so much shit to sort through. The first level hadn’t survived completely intact, but it had survived. Half of it had largely fallen in on itself, the collapse of the floors above it too much for it to handle, but it looked like another half of it had held its structure. It had been covered in the charred ruins of the rest, but there were still spots here and there where I could see the whiteness of the manor’s original walls.

Still, it didn’t seem promising. It looked like the fire had been caused from above, given that the bottom had survived, and an unshielded fall, combined with this fire?

I knew Jasmine and the others were competent enough to survive this, but knowing wasn’t the same as believing. On an intellectual level, I was mostly certain that Jasmine was alive, if not well. On a baser level, though…

I felt alone.

The feeling was back, now, and I let it stay. It was distracting, yes, but it was something I could use.

Magic flowed to me, and it flowed freely in a manner that I recognized all too well.

Alignment.

Fallen beams and shattered artifacts from the detritus of the floors above weren’t going to stop me.

Not a bad time to get some practice in. I formed a magic missile, and the frame came to me easily. That annoying little shit that had taken me so long to get right the first time formed like I’d been born to it.

Fuel and spark came just as quick, and I’d never been bad at those two. My dark ray of destruction soared straight into a pair of beams, annihilating them in an instant.

Another missile. Another.

I should’ve started doing this earlier. The emotion in my gut had warped into something colder, now, a frigid core of something I couldn’t quite identify. It felt awful, emotion made manifest as a physical sensation, but it was a tool, and I couldn’t give that up, could I?

I combined my spell with hints of unstructured magic, and it flowed like that was how oaths were meant to work. Flickers of ruin sparked out from the edge of the spell, licking away at the wood surrounding the hopefully-an-entrance that I was making my way towards. Wood fell, precariously balanced broken beams dropping when the support beneath them disappeared and it disintegrated as it hit the products of my oath.

I used ruin to eliminate the last traces of another’s ruin, and after a few minutes of clearing out the debris, I’d broken my way into a path wide enough to walk through.

The ground was a different shade beneath my feet, my magic having torn the ashes and baked earth away, revealing the crumbling patches of dirt beneath.

And the door… it wasn’t a door. I’d blasted my way across enough of the ruins to make my way to a mostly intact wall. I’d thought that this would be a door, given the placement of where I was relative to the entrance, but then again I’d never been to House Varga’s manor before, so it wasn’t like I knew the layout or anything.

Well, I might’ve at one time, but the assassin we’d sent to this household all those years ago hadn’t been me. I’d just been involved with the planning phase of it, and the glimpses I’d had of the map eluded my memory now.

Whatever. That wasn’t the issue right now. The important thing was that Jasmine might be dead and there were so many fucking things in my way—

And then the wall was no longer obstructing me. Unstructured magic lashed out, my mind only half-paying attention to what I was drawing from my oath, and the wall in front of me faded away.

The inside of the manor’s remains didn’t look much better than the outside. Though the structure had kind of retained its shape, it had still fallen in on itself in places, the roof collapsing at an angle that wasn’t visible from the outside. The inside was no less covered by ash than the outside was. Rooms that must have been formerly grand and gilded were destroyed now, the fallen roof burying parts of it in debris and casting black ash over the rest.

“Is anybody present?” I shouted, forming magic in my hands. If there were people hiding out in the ruins and they weren’t friendly—not an impossibility if I accepted that Jasmine and the rest had lost their fight—I wanted to be prepared.

I was pretty sure the room I was in had once been a sitting room. Light shone into one part of it where the roof had wholly fallen in, burying half of one of those unnecessarily opulent couches. Not so opulent now, covered in ash and smashed in half as it was.

Nobody responded to my query. No voices, no movement, not even a single quiet footstep or breath of one trying to tiptoe behind me. Either there wasn’t anyone here, or they were quite competent at hiding themselves.

The latter possibility couldn’t be discounted, especially since they’d been good enough to take Jasmine down. I’d only cleared one room so far, but this place didn’t show signs of a struggle, no scorch marks or esoteric damage that could’ve originated from a fight involving oathholders. I would clear the entire place, of course, but I was fairly sure that there had been no fight taking place on the first floor, the entirety of it relegated to the area above. Even though that indescribably sour feeling still lay just beyond my grasp in the pit of my stomach, it wasn’t one that told me that they were dead.

I cleared room after room, smashing apart wood and brick as I went where fallen debris blocked my path. Sitting room, personal study, a few closets, a servant’s room… the purposes of the rooms I went through were things that I had to guess at, but given the standard composition of a noble’s manor, I was pretty sure I was getting them right, and I was clearing them fast. Even focused as I was, I couldn’t feel the familiar pull of another’s oath in the area.

Was there just nobody else here? I was almost done clearing out the only parts that had stayed standing, and I hadn’t found so much as a single body within the wreckage. That, along with the fact that I couldn’t feel any oathholders in the area, indicated that I probably wouldn’t find anyone here.

Fuck. That wasn’t necessarily a good thing. If they weren’t in the immediate area, that meant that they were elsewhere. The region just around the manor had been largely untouched, which indicated that they hadn’t fought. Either they hadn’t fought, or they hadn’t been able to fight.

Assuming that there was hostile action here at all, but I was pretty sure that was a safe assumption to make, given that the entire manor had been burnt down.

Had they been captured?

That was almost as scary a thought as her—or them, rather, there was more than one person—being dead. I knew all too well what it was like being in captivity. I’d spent nine long years in that position, under the control and influence of one of the worst nobles I’d ever had the displeasure of knowing.

I didn’t know if nobles were involved in this current issue. There were too many variables. It could’ve been the Alzaqs, but it might’ve also been the Tempets, the lesser Houses, even the godsdamned commoners that had been fucking around in Dakheng like they owned the place.

I was almost back to where I’d started from, now. Not a single dead person found amidst the debris, and no indication that there was anyone still alive in the area.

Shit. I was going to have to track them, and I had no idea how.

With a final burst of my oath, I removed one final wall from existence and stepped out.

I must’ve annihilated something load-bearing, because I heard the rumbling crash of a few tons of building collapsing down behind me. Oops.

Further ruining the remains of the manor might not have been the best idea, I was beginning to realize. There wasn’t much outside that I could go off of, and any potential clues in the manor had just been kind of erased by my latest efforts.

Well. That was an issue. I had had basic education in the art of investigation back when I’d been a Byron proper, but that wasn’t nearly enough for me to piece together what had happened and who had been involved. To be fair, it wasn’t like I had much evidence. The level where I presumed all the fighting had been on was wholly destroyed now, if not by the fire then by my own magic.

I was going to have to return to the jester. Kyle wasn’t guaranteed to have any tools to help out with the issue, but two minds were better than one for this.

And an issue this certainly was. My heart felt like an iron ball in my chest, far too heavy and suffocating within me, and that heaviness came with emotion. It took me a moment to identify what it was.

Not quite hope, not quite despair. The feeling was more pitiful than the former and less resigned than the latter.

A plead. As I thought about it more, I found a single refrain passing through my mind, and once it had sunk its hooks into my thoughts I found that I couldn’t let it go.

Please be okay.

Jasmine was going to be fine, I had to believe that, but that sentiment grew harder and harder to buy into the more I thought about it.

“Look at yourself,” I whispered bitterly. “Pining for companionship, getting attached to a fucking noble of all people. What a worthless hypocrite you are, Lily.”

My principles were really that loose, weren’t they? I’d thought they were unwavering, and yet the first time a noble—one who just so happened to be the prettiest girl I’d ever met—showed true kindness to me, I’d fallen for her. I couldn’t deny the fact that that had happened any longer. Yes, I still wasn’t admitting it to her, but the fact remained that I had fully violated the principles that I’d claimed to hold so dearly.

I was in love, and for all the training I’d endured, all the hardships I’d suffered, I had never learned how to deal with that.

I wasn’t sure how long I stood there, wallowing in my messy soup of emotions, but I could’ve been there for just a few seconds and it would’ve already been too long.

At length, I gave myself a mental kick ito the ass and got moving again. Though Jasmine was one of the few people I would trust with saving herself, I couldn’t rely on that right now.

I had a noble girl to save.

When I stepped outside of the estate, my steps once again treading on fresh dirt instead of baked earth. Outside, not much had changed. There was a servant or two off in the distance, standing just a little in front of others’ manors. Sent by their noble masters in an attempt to identify the source of the sound, most likely. They would’ve spotted me.

I didn’t care. The servants had no reason to know of my existence, let alone the details of my physical appearance. Let them tell their coward masters that there was a strange woman destroying buildings out front. It wasn’t like those nobles were getting their hands dirty like Jasmine and Alex were. If I scared them, I scared them, and all the better for that.

Besides, if I attracted enough attention, there were decent odds I could draw out whoever Jasmine was being held by.

If she’s alive, that is, that part of my brain that wouldn’t fucking shut up whispered. If she’s gone before you can even tell her—

“Shut up,” I growled under my breath. It made me feel a bit stupid, talking to myself, but the thought did cut itself off.

Fuck me. I wasn’t going to get anything done if all I did was think about what was at stake.

Alright, what could I do? First things first—

I didn’t even get past that stage. As I watched, the servants withdrew into their estates only to be pushed back outside to observe more. I panned my head around, looking to locate what they were looking for, and I saw him.

No, not him. Them. Kyle had come to me, and he was dragging another man along, a strand of magic connecting his fingers and the other’s arms. If I squinted, I could kind of make out the other man’s face, though it was obscured by a thin veil of Kyle’s signature multicolor magic.

“Seb?” I asked, raising my voice so that Kyle could hear me. The observing servants could probably also hear me as well, but whatever. If someone wanted to come out and take action, then they could do it.

Besides, it wasn’t like these nobles had any clue who Seb was.

“A good afternoon to you as well,” Kyle replied, raising his voice in kind. “I did bring the vagrant along, in fact.”

He got closer to me before speaking again. Looked like at least one of us was somewhat concerned with the security of this operation. Kyle and I both glanced around, oaths flaring up, and with that little flare the servants disappeared almost like clockwork.

“Gotta feel for the poor chaps,” Kyle said as he arrived. “I might’ve been one of them had my life taken a few fewer turns. Wish there was more to life in store for them.”

“…I do too,” I got out. I knew my view of commoners was warped by my upbringing and my general detachment from the Syashan locals, but it was still so hard not to view them as lesser. Still, Kyle was proof that a low birth didn’t need to mean a low power, and they did share my struggle of having their lives controlled by the cruel nobility above them. “Wish there was more at the end of the road for them.”

“No time like the present to make that change,” Kyle said, cocking his head. “But it appears we have other issues on our hands.”

“That’s understating it a little.”

“We appear to be missing a building or two.”

“We are.”

“And from the sounds of it, part of that was recent.”

“That’s… true.”

“I came here because the smoke had risen so far that I could see it from way back at the warehouse.” Kyle stretched, the magic he wielded moving with his hands. It was a little amusing to watch his ring of spheres change its pattern of movement as he did, I had to admit. Full of fun tricks, this jester was.

“That bad, huh?” I said, pushing down the pit as it tried to rise once again.

“This is the Varga manor, isn’t it?” Kyle asked in lieu of an answer. “Weren’t—“

“The others supposed to come here?” I finished. “Yes. That’s why I’m a little worried.”

Kyle must have seen something in my eyes or realized what we were dealing with, because he straightened, the mirth in his voice disappearing immediately. “We don’t know what happened?”

“I don’t.”

“Then let me assist,” he said, casting a hand forth. One of his spheres left its ring, drawn to the palm of his hand, and it gained color, resolving into something black and white and red, and it popped like a soap bubble in an instant, particles flooding forth from it.

“What was that?”

“An investigative spell,” Kyle said. “A Naan’ti one, borrowed from an Oloje oath I knew years ago. I’ve been holding onto this last use of it for some time.”

“Thank you,” I said, meaning it. A fellow oathholder, willing to give up a treasured resource for me? Thanks to Jasmine, I was slowly growing used to the sensation, but it still felt like I was receiving a gift I didn’t deserved.

“Don’t worry about it,” Kyle said, closing his eyes and focusing on his spell. “We’re going to get you back with your—“

“Don’t you dare say it,” I said, half-jokingly.

“We’re going to get you back with Jasmine.”