When I returned to the brewery, things were weirdly quiet. Normally, some of the dogs under Silva’s leadership were in the area, making just enough noise to be audible to someone with my hearing. But now, there was nothing, just silence, eerie enough to make me wary.

With weapon in hand and my frozen Shuttle floating above my shoulder, I made my way to the door, silently pushing it open. I heard a noise in one of the rooms and continued forward, pushing my concealment to the maximum when a figure burst from the door and my Frozen Shuttle shot forward. Just before the weapon struck true, I recognised the figure ahead and felt Bullet Time and Overflow activate, allowing me to force a tremendous amount of power into my Ice Magic, pushing it far enough to twist the shuttle aside.

“Mistress?!” Lia let out a terrified squeak, the near-miss of my deadly projectile enough to send her stumbling to the ground. For a moment, I felt truly bad when looking at her wide eyes, especially when tears started to form. I was pretty sure that those didn’t come from physical pain, but whether they were purely manipulative or due to the shock of almost having her head taken off, I wasn’t sure.

Either way, I didn’t like the heavy feeling in my gut, so I stepped forward, offering my daughter minion follower whatever a hand to stand back up. I had to brace myself a little, but it wasn’t too bad.

“So, where are the dogs?” I asked, curious about what had happened here.

“I decided to just walk around this area a little,” I noticed a strange hesitation in her voice, as if she was trying to hide something, “and when the earthquake hit, I came back. The dogs came running past me, but I didn’t want to head out with them, simply because the sun is going to rise soon. I didn’t want to get caught outside,” she admitted, looking down.

“Just walked around the area?” I prodded, causing her head to tilt forward even more, as she studied the ground.

“...the trees,” she muttered something, but her voice was so quiet that I only caught the last two words.

“What about the trees?” I refused to back down and kept prodding until she finally burst.

“I was jumping between the trees!” she yelled, only for her hands to shoot up and cover her mouth. For a moment, I wasn’t sure how to react, but I knew, if Lia were a human, her face would be red enough that I’d start to worry about the amount of blood left for the rest of her body. Her blush would likely be hot enough to cause a heat-flare detectable from outer space, but luckily, Vampires weren’t as susceptible to such physical reactions. Or maybe she simply didn’t have enough blood to support them, I wasn’t sure.

“Did you fall?” I couldn’t help but ask, when I realised what likely happened when a quake hits while jumping from tree to tree. She didn’t answer, only shrunk in on herself, staring at her feet. I really shouldn’t have laughed at that, but somehow, I just couldn’t help myself and started chuckling. My mirth only caused Lia to shrink further, to the point that we were at roughly equal height, quite the feat considering that she started out over a head taller than me until I managed to get control of myself. Reaching out, I pulled her into a hug, trying to apologise for embarrassing her, while also trying to console her likely hurt feelings.

“Are you hurt, little one? Did you fall? Do you need some power?” I asked, gently stroking her back while she started to quietly sniffle, before returning the hug. She didn’t quite start crying but simply buried her head in my shoulder, strangely hunched over as she was.

To a part of me, the act of hugging and trying to comfort her as her emotions boiled over felt completely right, like something I was supposed to do. To another part, the very same act felt alien and uncomfortable, as I really didn’t know what I actually was doing. Was I doing the right thing or was I making matters worse?

For a moment, an image flashed before my eyes, from decades ago. I had just started primary school and there had been some issues with my classmates. By the end of the day that shall never be spoken of again, I was screaming until the anger turned into a rather epic crying fit. Even back then, I had no idea why my body was acting as it did, my mind was struggling to constrain my body, as everything spun out of control. My mother had held me back then, trying to soothe me, sadly with limited success.

Luckily, Lia didn’t go into any sort of epic fit, she merely hugged the stuffing out of me and sniffled a little into my shoulder before calming back down. I kept a hold of her, until she straightened back out, looking at me with a strange shimmer in her eyes.

“It’s okay,” she assured me, possibly realising that I was more than a little freaked out, “And yes, I fell while jumping. Might be the first time that a tree dodged someone, instead of someone dodging a tree,” she grinned, causing me to snort in amusement.

“Possibly, though I wouldn’t be too confident about it. There were quite a few trees on Mundus that could dodge, and many more that would simply club you out of the air. Just because we consider trees rather stationary doesn’t mean that is always the case. Magic, and all that,” I reminded her. She only shook her head in disbelief, something I could readily understand. The only seriously weird creatures she had seen were the Undead in the Dark Slaughterhouse, and even amongst them, only the second boss, aka the Chicken Shredder, had been truly weird. The rest were relatively normal, at least for Undead.

“But in regards to falling, it happens to the best of us. Maybe not quite like that, but unforeseen circumstances can make everyone stumble or fall flat on their face. But I’d still like to know why all the dogs ran off, there’s got to be something important going on,” I grumbled, thinking the events through once more.

“During that earthquake, there was a weird wave of magic, wasn’t there?” Lia asked, looking at me thoughtfully.

“Well, yeah,” I shrugged, “Those waves happened before, though the ‘flavour’ varies, this time, the wave was attuned to Death.”

“And that means what? I mean, when I hear ‘Wave of Death’, I don’t get the nicest imagery in my mind, could the dogs have tried to run away from it?

“Didn’t they run towards the city? That’s where I felt the wave coming from, at least locally,” I tried to remember that moment, there had been a lot of subtle power in the air, nothing concentrated enough to harm, but,” Oh…,” I felt my heart skip a beat as realisation washed over me.

“The Wave wasn’t concentrated enough to harm living beings, not unless those living beings are either incredibly weak or already wounded. So the ancient, infirm or infant. And even infants might survive, I’m not really sure how it works. But I think what the wave did, was wake up all those already dead. Remember what I’ve warned Mrs Wu about?” I explained, before trying to turn it into a teaching moment.

“You mean that the dead don’t necessarily stay that way?” Lia asked, her eyes going wide when I nodded.

“So all the people who died and weren’t properly buried are now walking around as zombies?” she continued, looking decidedly disturbed when I nodded again.

“Scratch the ‘properly buried’, at least I think you should. I doubt that the traditional pre-change burials would be enough to truly consecrate the ground after the change hit. It might carry over, but unless the dead were burned, I wouldn’t bet that they won’t walk again,” I added, causing her to glare at me. Maybe sometimes, ignorance was truly bliss.

“The dogs probably realised that, at least Silva might have, even without her connection to Hecate. She might have led the dogs to escort the people at the Gym, Goddess knows that they might need help to get across the field,” I paused, realising what I had just said and let out a snort, “Yeah, might even be literally, Goddess knows and Goddess sent her canine protector to make sure the people get here. Or maybe not, I’m not sure,” I shook my head, not sure how to take that.

“We can’t really help them, even if we wanted to, right?” Lia quietly asked, knowing that the Sun might rise before we get anyone to safety.

“Not really, no,” I admitted, “We’ve managed to work around our Curse quite well, but sometimes, it truly is a curse,” I complained, hoping that Silva would manage to get the people out. Hecate willing, she would manage.