The guard patrols near Avalon’s palace were lighter than Edric had expected. He’d never seen a map of the city and hadn’t had too much time to explore while he chased after his subordinates through the semi-deserted streets of what was technically an enemy city, but the towering edifice built into the cliff face that loomed over a large swathe of the city couldn’t be anything other than a palace. It wasn't much on the grandeur scale when compared to other palaces he’d seen, but this one had existed for a much shorter period, and it more than made up for the lack of gold trim and extravagant features through sheer artistry. The structure dug into the stone was beautiful just from how it blended with the natural stone to form a breathtaking unison of artifice and nature. Still, beyond the beauty, the lack of guards was suspicious.

Or perhaps not? He’d followed the trail of his subordinates past a section that was heavily guarded, and from what he’d briefly overheard, that was one of the shelters holding many of the city’s civilians. Perhaps Avalon’s leaders just didn’t care that much about the palace, or maybe they just weren’t expecting anyone to try and infiltrate during the battle. The last one was less likely, given the patterns of how the guards he could make out were patrolling, but it was possible. The trail led directly toward the palace, then cut to one side to avoid the open area around the entrance. It was an obvious kill zone, a place to take out any intruders without civilians or other buildings being in the way. Edric could make out a few spots where guards could watch from above, all of which were empty. He assumed that meant there were less visible outlooks that were manned, and he was glad to see his subordinates had thought the same.

There were always side entrances to any palace; there was just too much going on in central government buildings to funnel all traffic through one door, no matter how large, and Edric caught up to his people right outside one of them. In defiance of his training, no one was watching their backs, so he grabbed the rearmost member with a hand around their mouth and dragged them back around a close corner. They jerked wildly, trying to throw him off.

“Who, exactly, is watching your back right now?” He asked quietly.

The person he’d grabbed stilled when they heard his voice, and through the edge of their hood, Edric could see them go suddenly pale.

“That would be me, sir.” Someone whispered from behind Edric, “I was drawing a guard away and just got back.”

Edric glanced over his shoulder and saw another of his subordinates, a stealthy type named Diane, crouched behind him. “And does that mean that…” He glanced down into the hood of the person he was holding, “Neely could afford to not be watching behind while you were occupied?”

“No, sir.”

Neely shook her head no as well, and Edric decided that only a little more lesson was necessary. “You’re lucky it was me and not a guard or one of Avalon’s high-tier people.” He let Neely go and pushed her back toward the hunting team.

She carefully checked around the corner before sheepishly looking back and gesturing them forward. When Edric cleared the corner, he found two of the team halfway up the nearby roof on ropes and the rest scanning the area with weapons out. They all stiffened when they saw Edric, and the two that were climbing began slowly lowering themselves down.

Leon, the team’s leader and one of the Shatterplate Order’s best, sighed deeply in resignation, “You shouldn’t be here, sir.”

“I’m not sure if you’re right or wrong, but I’m here now. What were you thinking?”

“The note explained-“

“They did not explain what you’re doing.” He hissed, “I want to know what you were thinking. Or what you are thinking right now. What’s the plan you came here with?”

“I think…” Leon took a deep breath and slowly let it out, not making eye contact. “I think you’re fallible like everyone else. I think that it being your daughter in this situation is making you think that you have to treat her just like you have everyone else’s sons and daughters over the years, or you’ll be betraying them with nepotism.” He took another deep breath and continued in a rush, “But if we don’t at least try to see if what these people are claiming is real, that will be the real betrayal. I’m in this; we’re all in this to save people, not to destroy. Killing the monsters and stopping people from becoming monsters has been the best option we’ve had, but what if there is a better way? What if we can stop people from becoming monsters and keep them alive?”

They were all lucky that there weren’t any guards in earshot as Leon’s speech rose in volume with the furor he spoke with. Edric sat there, faintly shocked, as he and Leon stared each other in the eyes, not from Leon “daring” to speak to him like that, but because of how true it was, and that he hadn’t accepted it till that moment. Leon was completely right; part of his own insistence on being so stuck to the path of killing Alice, or the vampyr she’d become, was because of every other person he’d had to order killed. Not just members of the Order or relatives of members but the random victims of vampyr after every incident. If he let a monster in his daughter’s body escape because of his own feelings, wouldn’t that make him a hypocrite of an unacceptable level?

But if he killed his daughter while running from the idea of being a hypocrite and not only ruined any chance for a better option for future victims but also killed his daughter and not a monster, what would that make him? A fool, if nothing else. Among a multitude of simultaneous emotions, Edric mostly felt relief. The thing his heart was screaming at him to do turned out to be the smartest option, too. Without a word, he pushed forward and grasped Leon in a tight hug. “Thank you.”

Leon gently patted him on the back. “Please don’t get your hopes up. There’s still a good chance that it’s all a lie.”

“I know.” Edric pulled away with the barest edge of a smile on his face, “But even if there isn’t a miracle and my daughter is already dead, I’ll be able to look her mother in the eye and tell her I tried everything I could.”

Leon nodded once, and they all went back into their professional modes. “Maurice picked up evidence of her going into this palace regularly, and the most recent traces have her going in and not coming back out.” He gestured at the dwarf at the center of the team, who was also a high-tier Tracker. “The plan is to sneak in, find them, get control of the situation, and then figure things out from there. Keep it simple and adapt as we go. Best case scenario, we can physically control the entire team so we can figure out what’s real, and if things are bad, we can end it quickly without a fight.” He looked at Edric for confirmation.

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Edric waved a hand in the negative, “It’s your team, Leon. Your team, your plan. I’m just a tag-along at this point.”

“Then, after that little mix-up in the rear, I’m putting you with Diane to watch our asses.”

It wasn’t hard to see that Leon was putting him away from any potential fights with his daughter’s team so that he wouldn’t have to kill Alice or her body if it came to that, but Edric was serious about it being Leon’s team, so he drifted to the rear with a nod.

They slipped through a side door into the palace, quietly pushing past a small guard detail that was roaming the halls. They weren’t the red-armored figures of the Blood Guard and didn’t have high enough detection Skills to get past the high-level stealth Skills of the hunting team. The team pushed deeper into the rocky building, the air growing steadily cooler as they went further and further in. The guard patrols were constantly moving but still too light to keep the team out, and Maurice signaled that they were getting close after maneuvering around the third patrol they encountered.

They entered the hallway of what seemed to be a dormitory when Maurice froze in place, the rest of the team stopping with him as he rapidly scanned the ground around them. “Shit, ambush, it’s an-“

The walls blurred, and figures covered in red armor threw themselves at the hunting team as they appeared. Edric cursed as he brought a long dagger up to parry an incoming blow and internally cursed some more at missing the camouflaged guards. It hadn’t been true invisibility, and if he’d been paying enough attention, he should have spotted it. The hallway quickly became a brawl as the members of the Order darted away from each other, trying to expand the sudden battlefield instead of getting clumped up. The Blood Guard outnumbered the hunting team, but the Shatterplate Order was experienced in fighting against the odds. The heavier members of the team played defense and did their best to tie people down while the faster ones danced around the hall, attacking and feinting, switching targets suddenly to try and wear down more than one opponent at a time.

The doors along the hallway swung open, and Edric could make out people sticking their heads out to see what was going on. Many of them were familiar, and even if they hadn’t been, more than one was wearing their standard issue Order gear. Near the end of the hallway, a particularly familiar figure pushed into the hallway. She was paler than the last time he’d seen her, but she had the same eyes, the same hair, and the same look of startlement when something unexpected happened. Except it wasn’t quite the look he was expecting. Instead of a look of complete surprise, it was the look she got when a new twist got added to an existing plan at the last moment, and he realized that Alice and her team had been expecting something like this. An obvious realization was with the ambush, but he was fighting against a group of armored warriors on their own turf, so he had other things to focus on. She’d expected someone to come after her, but as her eyes widened while she stared at him, he knew she hadn’t expected her father to be there.

Several members of the hunting team collapsed as they were focused down by the defenders, and the fight began pushing closer together. Edric saw the look of determination flash across Leon’s face, and then he moved. Up and over the person attacking him and across the ceiling using the enchanted boots he’d commissioned once upon a time, Leon went up and over the battle in less than a second and was on the floor in front of Alice before another had passed. His hand came up from his side with a weapon in it, and before anyone could react, a blade plunged into Alice’s chest.

Edric could only watch as his daughter collapsed in place with a dagger sticking out of her sternum. Her friend Zeia kicked Leon away with a ferocious snarl on her face, and he could only stand there. He was frozen when the rest of Alice’s hunting team piled on top of Leon, and he was frozen as he saw the red mace swinging at his head from one side. He just watched it come out of his periphery, his gaze locked on where his daughter had just been.

He was knocked back out of range of the swing by Maurice, who slammed into his legs. Spinning around over his prone body, Maurice brought up his small dagger to block the follow-up attack.

“Stop!” A voice rang out over the din of combat. “Fucking hell, that hurts like shit. Everybody fucking stop!” Through the gaps between people’s legs, Edric made out movement at the other end of the hallway. “Blood Guard, I know I’m not in charge of you, but do me a favor and hold for a second. And you lot, get off of Leon. Zeia, stop biting him!”

Everyone stood still as Alice pushed her way past the pile of bodies on top of Leon, the green-hilted dagger still in her chest. She looked around at the frozen tableau of bodies until her gaze locked onto Edric’s. “Blood Guard, back up, please.”

The red armored figures slowly pulled back against the walls, leaving Leon’s team and Edric staring at Alice. Hope bloomed into the first flowers of joy inside Edric’s chest as he recognized the weapon stabbed into his daughter. She reached up and grabbed the dagger, and with a deep breath, she yanked it out of her chest, leaving a gaping wound that started to slowly heal as they watched.

She turned the blade in the air, showing off the unmistakable sight of one of the weapons the Order called “Banes”, the few enchanted weapons they’d found that could definitively kill a vampyr in only a few hits. No one knew what enchantment they had that let them do that, or how to replicate them, and the vampyr hunting organizations were constantly searching for any hint of another one popping up at auction or in a black market somewhere.

“I hope this is enough proof that I’m not a vampyr to open up a dialog?” Alice asked, shaking the dagger and using it to gesture at her visibly healing wound. “It isn’t a lie. Vampires are a real thing, and so many opportunities come with it!” She held the dagger aloft, “We’ve even figured out how to make more of these! Well, not these specifically, but similar weapons.” She pulled out a completely red dagger that looked incredibly similar to the weapons carried by the Blood Guard. “We’re set to gain so much thanks to Kay and what he knows, so can we please not try and kill him. Or me? Or the civilians we saved?”

Edric had slowly raised himself to his feet as she spoke, his eyes locked on hers. As she plaintively asked her last question, he took giant steps toward her. Weapons came up along the walls as he moved at speed right up to her, but he ignored them all as he grabbed his daughter and pulled her into a giant hug. Tears streamed down his face as he sobbed into her hair.

She hugged him back for a moment but quickly began struggling in his arms. “Ow, ow! I love you too, Dad, but chest wound!” She pushed him away, keeping hold of his arms as she looked up at him, tears in her eyes, too. “Hi, Dad, I missed you.”

“I missed you too, sweetheart.” His tears were thick enough to block his view of her face, so he reached up to wipe them away. “I’m so…. So…”

She smiled up at him. “Me too. Everything just got so much better. But if you’re on board, we should probably go stop the battle outside before things get out of hand. Hopefully, you can convince the Crusade to back off long enough to listen to the truth-“ Alice suddenly spun in place, her skin going even paler as she stared at the wall in the direction of the battle. “What the fuck is that?” Her eyes dilated massively, and fangs dropped down in her mouth, long enough to be seen even if her mouth hadn’t been gaping in shock. Edric saw her eyes dart to the side, reading a message from the System. “What?” Her eyes darted back and forth as she read it again. “That means…. Fucking shit, we need to get out there right now!”