Emilia’s plan centered around squeezing some information about the town’s situation from Yulia. She had figured that getting the sheep girl to talk wouldn’t require too much pressure and no one would actually have to get hurt. Getting her to come upstairs was very simple too; Emilia just asked her to bring up some candles for them.

“There you go!” Yulia said cheerfully after lighting a candle for the adventurers. “I’ll leave some sparesies here. I’m going to warm the bath now, so you just wait for a teeny-weeny bit and I’ll call you!” She explained and hopped over to the door. After couple unsuccessful attempts at opening it, she turned back to Emilia and Anastacia. “The door is locked…”

The very tired looking priestess just stared at the sheep girl while she tried to shake the door open once more and started to get very worried.

“C… Could I get the key? I left mine downstairs…” Yulia asked and slowly backed away.

“Why don’t you take a seat, so we can talk about a few things.” Emilia said as threateningly as she could and nodded towards one of the beds.

Yulia kept backing away but when her back touched the corner of the room, she lost it and fell over. Emilia tried to approach her, but the lamb kept screaming, kicking and flailing. “You’re going to bully me, aren’t you?!” The panicked girl shouted and stomped on the priestess’ chestplate to keep her away.

Anastacia had been told to stay by the window to make sure Yulia wouldn’t try to escape through it, and to keep watch on the surroundings. “You’re terrible at this.” She commented over the clanging noise of Emilia getting kicked.

“I don’t coerce information from people on a daily basis, so I’m sorry if my techniques are less than professional.” Emilia pointed out and sat down on one of the beds to rest. She was very clearly not feeling well and pressed the cool metal of her gauntlet against her forehead to ease the throbbing migraine she had suddenly developed after entering the town. “You’re welcome to try…”

Before going within Yulia’s kicking range, Anastacia gave her a second to calm down. Nothing they had said had clearly registered in the girl’s head and she was still freaking out. There was no chance talking would achieve anything. “Alright, I know you probably won’t listen to anything I say but I’ll explain it anyway. As soon as you kick me, you’ll become unable to move. It’s not anything to be scared of, it’s just what I do. Okay?” She explained calmly, but her words had no effect on the poor girl.

As soon as the necromancer stepped closer, she got kicked in the stomach. Yulia cried out one last time before she stopped moving entirely. Unfortunately, Anastacia hadn’t been quite fast enough in stopping the kick, and unlike her armored friend, she felt its entire force and fell on all fours from the pain.

“You’re an idiot.” Emilia sighed as the necromancer cursed on the floor. “What now?”

“We wait… for her to calm down.” Anastacia grunted while still grasping for air and dragged herself closer to Yulia. “I could try hugging her? That calms me down.”

“Yeah, why not. She’s obviously not wholly in on it. If I was trying to keep a secret, I would only give someone like her the bare minimum. Though that also means she probably won’t be too useful either.” Emilia explained and lied down on the bed. “And neither will I… I think someone or something is trying to separate me from Lady Sylvia. I can barely hear her anymore…”

Concerned by her friend’s rapidly worsening state, Anastacia forced herself up and to Emilia’s side. “Will you be alright?!” She asked and measured the priestess’ temperature from her forehead. “You’re burning up!”

“Yeah, but I’ll manage… Get what you can from the lamb and find Gil. You’ll figure it out even without me…” The priestess reassured the necromancer before closing her eyes and falling asleep.

Anastacia paced around the room, trying to figure out what to do. How much danger they were in was still largely a mystery, but for someone to be able to remove Emilia from the equation like that, there had to be something major going on.

She turned to the motionless Yulia and explained the situation. “Okay, Yulia, here’s what we’re going to do: I’ll ask you some questions, then I’ll free you and you’ll give me whatever answers you have. We’re only here to help, so no one is going to hurt you. Okay? Great.” Anastacia paused to figure out what exactly it was that she needed to know. Getting the rest of the party out of the possible danger would be the first thing on the list, followed by stopping whatever was going on. “Alright, are you listening to me? You seem a bit calmer. Where did Gilbert go and why? Is he in danger? I’m also going to need to know everything you know about what’s going on here…” She asked and released the girl from her frozen state.

Yulia gasped for air while making sure all her parts were still there. She still looked like she was scared out of her mind, but at least the crying and flailing had stopped. “Wh… who are you?” She asked and tried to collect whatever little courage she had left.

“Oh I’m just an amateur fire mage. Don’t worry about it.” Anastacia stuck with the cover they had agreed on before entering the town. “Now, answer my questions.”

“I… I’m just doing what they told me… They said I should be really nice to all travelers and send them to the chapel when the sun is setting. I’m so sorry!” Yulia explained and started to cry. “He was so nice, but I’ll get punished if I don’t do it!”

Anastacia nodded. “And who are ‘they’?”

“They are they. They used to be people from here, but they found something in the forest and changed. Now almost everyone is gone and we can’t leave and if I don’t do what they tell me to they’ll take me and my friends too and…” The frantic sheepfolk tried her best to answer. “They come from the river at night and take people!”

“Okay that’s something… Did they also flood the town? I don’t think it’s supposed to be like this.” The necromancer continued interrogating.

Yulia grabbed Anastacia’s shoulders and pulled her closer. “The water! Don’t touch it! That’s how they know where you are!” She warned and shook the necromancer.

“Got it. Don’t touch the water.” Anastacia repeated and walked over to the window. It hadn’t been opened in a while, so she had to push on it with all her weight before it crashed open. “I feel like Gil needs to know this, so I’ll go find him now. Can you look after her until we get back?” She asked and pointed at the sleeping priestess.

Yulia nodded and wiped her tears.

“Keep the door locked and only open it to anyone if they say ‘crab people’, even if it’s me or Gilbert.” Anastacia instructed her and hopped out of the window onto a small ledge that could be used to reach the roof. Trusting Yulia to not hand over Emilia was a bit risky, but she had just told Anastacia what she knew, and the alternatives would have been either tying her down or throwing her out – both of them a bit too mean for Anastacia’s tastes.

The moss growing on the roofs made the tiling slightly more slippery than the necromancer had hoped, so running was out of the question. Luckily the houses were built close together and jumping between the rooftops was easy.

In the middle of the town, she could see a silhouette of a steeple that towered over the other buildings and no doubt belonged to the chapel Gilbert would hopefully be at. Getting there along the rooftops wasn’t going to be quick or silent, but at least she wouldn’t touch the water that way. She would also get a good look at the streets while at it, and hopefully get a glimpse of one of ‘Them’ – whatever ‘They’ were. The remaining people of the town had hid in the second floors of their houses and were probably scared to death by Anastacia hopping onto their roofs. She tried to keep count of any people she could feel but lost it every time she almost fell over and rolled to her death. In the end she came up with 34 people still left in the town, assuming they were all still people and not ‘Them’.

In the moonlight, the streets appeared as pitch black gorges into the abyss between the buildings. There were no lanterns lighting the shopfronts, nor did a single window illuminate them with candlelight from the inside. While kicking some moss down just to make sure the street actually was still there, Anastacia realized something interesting: the water didn’t reflect the moonlight or the stars. “I mean… If you build a town entirely out of black wood, you’re just asking for this stuff to happen. Might as well build it from pure evil.” She joked and jumped over to the next roof. “What am I saying? They ran out of evil while building Mournvalley! And even that was finished with bullshit…” On every jump, she felt a sharp sting on the spot Yulia had kicked and was only able to carry on unimpeded thanks to the ruby ring.

She stopped on the roof of an empty building on the edge of the town square, that now appeared as nothing more than a pool of dark tar with a well in the middle. As with most towns and cities, the local place of worship loomed over it. The chapel of Ebonywatch was somewhat crude and small for a temple, but its black steeple was still an imposing sight against the night sky. Anastacia could feel four people inside, but all of them were too small to be Gilbert. He wasn’t anywhere nearby either, making Anastacia worry that he and King had already been caught and taken somewhere. Just as she was about to leave to check on Emilia and Yulia before doing some more scouting on the roofs, the chapel’s door opened with a loud creak. Unable to see what was happening, Anastacia kneeled down and had to rely on necromancy to figure out that two people had left the chapel. Their conversation carried well over the town square and Anastacia decided to stay and listen instead of escaping before she got noticed.

“I can’t believe he got away. Someone that big would have made an excellent sacrifice.” A deep male voice exclaimed.

“Don’t worry, we still have spares. And I already sent someone to keep an eye on Yulia’s tavern. If they go back there, we’ll know.” A female voice said. “Whatever it was that helped him, was way too much for just us. They can’t hold it against us – after all, we did deal with the priestess already. With the man and the conjured machine on the run and the priestess rendered powerless, the little girl is the only one left. What could she possibly have that would cause us problems? She’s probably the guy’s grandchild or something.”

Having heard of Gilbert and King’s escape, Anastacia did a small celebratory wiggle. Suddenly the tile under her foot broke and started to slide down the roof. The necromancer fell over and pulled off several more tiles trying to stop herself from falling off into the slimy water. Only centimeters before the edge, her slide came to a halt thanks to her arm sock getting caught between the planks under the tiling.

The commotion didn’t go unnoticed by the two, presumably evil people below. “Who’s there?!” The man yelled.

Anastacia did her best to lie very still, but that’d only help for so long. As a couple more tiles slid off the roof and crashed into the dark water below, she closed her eyes and cursed very silently.

“We know someone’s there! Show yourself!” The man kept demanding.

“Meow...” The desperate necromancer tried as her last attempt to deceive them.