Book 5 - Chapter 36 - Minor Interlude – Sentinel Solace – To Hunt a Predator II (Patreon)

AN: In case you missed the post from ~14 hours ago, book 3's epub is available! Be sure to download it ahead of the book's release currently planned for June 3rd.

tMFUtM will return next week. Didn't get as much done writing-wise as I hoped to, and I need to prep a few things for the next chapter of it still.

War Sentinel Solace prided herself on her ability to serve as an unwavering and eternal paragon of humanity. It wasn’t just essential for the pretty lie that she peddled with every waking moment—it was essential for her own wellbeing. She chose her path and wielded her conviction as both a spear and a shield. Just as she culled the disease that afflicted her people, she protected herself from crippling doubt and other unworthy emotions. She knew what she had to do, so she did it.

It was as simple as that.

And yet, the [Glorious Purge] that she unleashed missed. Worse, it wasn’t even because her target saw the attack coming and dodged. By all appearances, she had caught the disease and its host entirely off-guard. Yet she still missed.

Because her hand was shaking.

She hadn’t seen so much as a minor tremor from her hands since soon after she was chosen to become the woman that she was. Gracea once got nervous and trembled. But War Sentinel Solace never showed such overt weakness.

Not until that damned moment.

To be fair to herself, she hadn’t missed completely—her bolt of Void-empowered Brilliance passed cleanly through the host’s ample and overly exposed chest. Too bad it was utterly irrelevant. Her momentary failure meant that she missed the back of the neck, where the parasitic disease lurked. Her healing undoubtedly suffused the creature’s body, but the shimagu had cultivated a resistance to healing among their forces before she even joined the war.

Indirect healing would never destroy the disease. Not even at her level.

The infected monster released Rani, letting Solace’s reliable peer drop to the ground, and promptly fled into the stalactites. There was no point in further attempts to blast the false human—even if she had enough time to form any useful Skills, she would never manage to land a hit on such an unpredictable target.

Besides, she had a better use for her remaining mana.

Pentera finally set her down next to Rani and she hurriedly knelt to check on the wounded woman. Rani was alive—thank Herculix, she was alive!—but the damage was severe. The common carotid artery wasn’t just damaged, a significant chunk of it had been ripped out of her able assistant’s neck. Solace had no specialized Skills for diagnosing a patient, but she was still a trained [Healer] and a student of the Medical Manuscripts.

At best, Rani had mere minutes before she bled out. Every second counted.

War Sentinel Solace tried to keep the fear out of her heart as she made her choice. Truly, there was no other option. In an ideal world, she would have still possessed elf-made healing potions that could do what her own Skills were unable to accomplish or were ill-suited for. But Pallos was far from ideal, even before her empire managed to somehow forget the threat that the shimagu continued to pose.

There were no miracles or ideal treatments to be had. Instead, she hastily assembled the best mental image she could of her closest ally’s artery being rebuilt and her flesh being restored. Then Solace closed her hand over the bruised, but intact, side of Rani’s neck and activated [Brilliant Mending Light] with the image she had cobbled together.

And before her eyes, flesh and skin filled in the gaps the monster had torn out of her patient.

She had to hope it would be enough. In the best case, she had restored the artery to functionality. But as she studied the rough, scar-like tissue that had formed, she struggled to believe it. It was more likely that she had sealed the wounded artery shut.

She was reasonably confident that Rani had enough vitality and innate will to survive that, but there would be long-term side effects. Granted, there would already be long-term ill effects—Solace had no way to restore the blood that Rani already lost.

But even that wasn’t the worst-case scenario. If there was a single merciful divine being watching over them, Rani would live. But if she was still bleeding under the unsightly patch of conjured flesh…

Worse, Solace had no way to be sure.

There were times that she regretted even her Brilliance class serving as a blunt instrument, but that was part and parcel of being a living weapon. She was designed to eradicate the shimagu. Every single Skill that she possessed was either a tool with which to destroy the shimagu or a comfortable, ephemeral lie meant to inspire hope when all seemed lost.

“Oh fuck… Decia!” Pentera looked a bit green as she stumbled back from the other body.

A crushed skull was hardly the most gruesome thing they had ever seen during the war, but Solace supposed that most people were affected more severely when they had some connection to the deceased. The loss of their tracker was a shame, but Solace’s eyes remained fixed on Rani as she watched—and hoped—to see signs of the woman regaining consciousness.

Rani was still alive, and that was great, but with every moment that passed…

“What happened?!” Tarla’s voice preceded her arrival, and she had Hestia slung over her shoulder like a sack of grains.

Solace was about to answer the woman when Rani finally let out a weak groan. And from there, her one and only assistant began to stir!

“Did… you get the bitch?” Rani forced the question past her lips almost the very instant she first opened her eyes.

Herculix must have blessed her. Rani had always been durable, but it felt miraculous to see her back on her feet within a minute of regaining consciousness. She had managed to crack one of her spears while she tried to fight off the inhuman monster that had nearly killed her, but she still had its twin. Which meant she was ready to move.

The very moment Umbra’s group rejoined them, they set off in pursuit of the parasite-infested monster, with Rani leading the way.

They just had to hope that they could catch up to whatever that monster was. Perhaps Solace should have sent Pentera after the disease. But with it possessing enough raw power to overwhelm even Rani, Pentera would have fared poorly facing it one-on-one. Though admittedly, Solace hadn’t even thought about it—not until Rani thanked her for not sending the fastest member of their team in pursuit.

They weren’t in any sort of sensible formation—Rani had organized them for speed above all else. The courageous woman was visibly pale and clammy, but she continued to act as if she was unfazed by what had happened. Instead, she led the way, clearing their path to the best of her ability. At her recommendation, Solace had removed her shoulder pauldrons, cape, and some of the less critical segments of her armor so she could ride atop Tarla’s left shoulder, while Hestia and a bag of essential equipment balanced the weight atop their shield-bearer’s right shoulder. The others were able to keep up well enough to run alongside the group as they sprinted after their quarry.

“It looks human, but it isn’t. I think it might be a changeling, but we can worry about that after we eliminate the shimagu. Don’t get fooled by its level and don’t get careless. Once we catch up, we fight it together.” Rani offered advice while they moved, though she took longer pauses than she normally would between each sentence.

Solace had her doubts about it being a changeling, and not just because most reports of changelings were infamously unreliable. Still, it didn’t really matter. Changeling or not, she refused to tolerate the continued existence of the disease that infected it—even before it managed to truly incite her fury by harming Rani. So long as Rani continued to recover and remain hale, Solace was determined to do everything in her power to see the parasite destroyed. And she was more than a little tempted to purge it slowly.

She was so angry that she wanted it to suffer in its final moments.

For once, fortune smiled upon them. The tunnel never forked, which meant they had to be on the infected monster’s trail. Then, even better, their singular path began to curve upward once again. Had the tunnel continued to lead them downward, they would have likely been forced to eventually reconsider their pursuit. In the depths of Pallos, monsters unlike anything that stalked the surface lurked. The deep regions were so hostile and perilous that even the insufferably smug elves considered it to be a death sentence. Their relatively short journey underground was unlikely to lead to such peril, but it was still something of a relief to know that they wouldn’t have to become concerned.

But the fresh air that soon followed—rich with the aromas of plants and animals—was far less welcome.

Her team perked up as they each recognized what the fresh air clearly meant, but from her place atop Tarla’s shoulder, Solace ground her teeth in frustration. She refused to accept that the blighted thing that, at the very least, grievously harmed Rani might escape! But she also knew that Decia had been the best tracker among them by a wide margin. The problem was further exacerbated by the simple fact that they had grown somewhat reliant on the deceased’s talent—no one else had really bothered to learn or level whatever Skills they might have. Why would they need to?

Fearing the worst while desperately hoping for the best, Solace joined the others in looking around once they finally exited the cave. The area they had been in wasn’t mountainous, yet they were undeniably in a modest valley that was surrounded by jagged rocks. It was a natural depression in the world, caused by the erosive power of water, some long forgotten classer(s), or by some whim of the spiteful creator gods. But the why was both outside of her knowledge set and was wildly irrelevant.

All that mattered was what was—and wasn’t—within the valley.

The valley was dominated by a singular tree that stubbornly claimed much of the exposed sky. An impressive specimen, to be sure, but it was little more than an obstacle to their line of sight while they sought their target. The day had ended while they lingered in the cave, and the tree occluded much of the feeble light that the waxing moons had to offer.

Quiet. Stay together. Rani gave her orders through hand signs before the group could spread out into a familiar search pattern. Instead, they remained in close formation as they circled around the tree, moving far more slowly than they had in the caves. Rani’s wariness was sensible.

Yet War Sentinel Solace’s frustrations mounted by the moment. She kept her face utterly neutral, but hidden behind her lips, she ground her teeth with enough force that at least Tarla and Hestia had to be politely ignoring it. Stealth was a luxury—and something that they had no time for! The valley was cut off from the world, but any half-decent physical classer could conceivably climb the jagged walls and there was a plethora of tunnels that their target could have escaped into. She wouldn’t be able to stand it if the damned thing got away from them, but she knew that she’d have to choose between pursuit and seeing Rani delivered to a [Healer] that could properly treat her.

And she had no desire to find out whether her all-too-human heart or her duty-bound mindset won that contest.

Wait. There. Despite Rani’s position in the lead, Tarla was the one that signed for their attention, after she stopped Rani. Sure enough, the thing was exactly where she indicated, slowly creeping up one of the sides of the valley like some sort of horrible insect. It seemed to be fully focused on new prey, namely what seemed to be a young sheep that was grazing on the grasses above.

The waxing moons made it hard to be sure, but the lamb appeared to have an oddly colored coat—almost golden in hue. Not that Solace paid much attention to it. Unusually colored animals were almost as common as counterfeit iron coins, and they were seldom much more useful.

The moment Tarla let her and Hestia off her shoulders, Solace gave her own order: bring it down.

No one was confused by the lack of specificity about the target. Her team wasn’t a pack of bumbling fools—they were hand-picked elites, each of them was once a Ranger of proven mettle. If not for Solace requiring their services, Rani would have undoubtedly become one of the greatest team leaders their organization had ever seen. The others weren’t quite Rani’s equal, but they would have also had illustrious careers—even if none of them were Sentinel material. Even Rani lacked the ‘uniqueness’ that seemed to be required for that promotion, but highly competent Rangers were almost as valuable.

Hestia and Axia didn’t hesitate; they both knew the order was truly directed at them. Hestia bombarded the pale creature with a barrage of searing Radiance—startling the lamb—while Axia formed her own Skill. Axia lacked the overwhelming speed of Radiance, but her Mountain and Sand build delivered an outsized effect. Moments after the stone spike slammed into the rocky terrain above the creature, the entire section of jagged rock collapsed into sand.

Had the lamb been any slower in its escape, it might have come down too.

The monster that the disease controlled was surprisingly dexterous, but there was nothing it could do without a single handhold. It fell, even as Solace’s [Mages] continued to convert their remaining mana into destructive force, scattering sand and turning it to glass as they kept up the pressure.

The rest of her team was just as proactive. Rani, Tarla, Pentera, Umbra, and Prima raced forward in an impromptu combat line, reminiscent of the Legions. Pentera and—to a much lesser extent—Rani could have outpaced the rest, but Solace’s melee combatants seemed to have come to a silent agreement that they needed to present a unified front as they faced the threat. Ordinarily, they could be reasonably confident that Hestia and Axia dealt enough damage to cripple almost any ogre or lesser creature.

But no one was surprised when the pale thing lunged out of the pouring Sands, determined to fight back. Blood trailed in its wake and there were more than a few chunks outright missing from the body, but the shimagu weren’t bothered by the pain of their hosts. And whatever the infected creature was, it was proving to be surprisingly powerful and resilient—even if [Identify] continued to insist that it wasn’t even level 400.

Masking the results from [Identify] was possible, but it was more than a little unlikely that any shimagu would bother with a Skill to mask the level of their host—it wasn’t exactly the most useful effect for a soldier in an open battle. Which meant that it was, aggravatingly enough, almost certainly some Skill of the host. Most unwilling pawns of the shimagu had enough sense to cancel what beneficial effects they could, often permanently weakening their Skills in the process. They were still conscious in there, after all. They knew what horrors their body brought about under the control of the disease. Yet whatever the monstrosity was, it just didn’t care!

Solace hardly needed any additional reasons to hate the thing, yet it continued to oblige.

The infected monster lunged directly at Rani, fangs bared and claw-like nails held ready. It was inhumanly quick, but Solace’s team had impeccable coordination—Rani fell back and Tarla narrowly interposed herself in the monster’s path, even as Pentera, Umbra, and Prima fanned out to surround their foe.

Sparks and shards of metal flew. The monster was even stronger than they had expected—even with Tarla’s impressive vitality infusing her equipment, the claws still managed to tear shallow channels through the metal. Too bad its commitment to the strike cost it dearly.

Rani had dropped into a crouch and drove her spear upward, piercing it deep into the monster’s belly, just as Pentera and Prima made their own attacks on its sides. Umbra was a step too slow to join in—she was still trying to get behind the monster. Pentera favored twin slashes, one just below the pale flesh of the shoulder, the other across the ribs.

But Prima’s strike was the most important. She stabbed her sword between the monster’s ribs—which meant she had leverage to channel her Skills through the blade. She and Umbra had a crucial role in bringing down the most powerful shimagu. They were cancellers, able to disrupt buffs and drain mana from the enemies of humanity.

An ear-rattling screech of fury passed through the monster’s wine-colored lips. For the first time since Solace first laid eyes on it, their target stumbled and wavered.

But it wasn’t defeated. With a crazed expression distorting its once-comely features, the thing twisted, heedless of the spear ripping open its belly as it lashed out at Prima. Claws tore through Prima’s upper arm, scattering blood and flesh, before she could pull clear of the strike. She stumbled back, raising her shield to ward off any follow-ups, but Tarla slammed into the monster—shield first, of course—before it could pursue.

The impact ripped the monster off of Rani’s spear. Umbra was forced to hurriedly backpedal as the thing fell toward her. Once it was down, Umbra lowered her own spear and switched to conjuring stone chains to try to bind the creature while Tarla contested its strength, shouting nonsensical fury as she tried to keep it down.

“Axia!” Rani shouted, as she hurriedly drove her spear through one of the monster’s legs.

“I’m tapped out!” The [Mage] answered. She had switched out to her backup weapon—a short bow—but she lacked the confidence to fire arrows into a tight melee.

It was obvious enough what Rani was calling for. Solace ripped one of her bracers off and plucked one of the few gems that still glowed from its place within.

“Inferno gem! Use the sand!” She shouted, as she threw the faceted cinnabar.

Pentera zipped out to catch the gem before she rejoined the others. More weapons pierced the monster’s flesh as they tried to pin it down and bury it in the sand. Covering something that thrashed with such ferocity, heedless of the damage it inflicted on itself, was an act of futility, but soon enough Rani activated the Skill-imbued gem at the same moment Tarla rolled off the thing. The sand melted into a crude glass that should have had their enemy howling in agony—had it not been infected by a shimagu.

“We can’t hold it! Get your golden ass over here!” Tarla wasted no time; she made her demand even as she buried her own sword into the monster’s shoulder.

As if Solace had been idle during the fight! She had been sprinting toward the melee since before it even began, channeling for another [Glorious Purge] as she went. If not for [Effortless Awareness], she wouldn’t have even been able to keep track of the battle or offer one of her last remaining Skill-infused gemstones.

Heedless of pain and its host’s fate, the disease fought on with every moment. Pentera and Prima were nearly thrown off as it thrashed. Molten glass shattered, revealing charred skin. The entertainer’s costume that the thing wore ripped apart as it broke through stone links, forcing Umbra to burn more mana.

Solace’s team cancelled every buff, negated every Skill, and drained the monster’s mana with every moment that passed, yet the thing was still constantly on the cusp of escaping. Tarla was bleeding severely, spilling blood onto the thing’s face as the flow escaped her armor. Umbra’s ankle got bit at some point, forcing her to rest more weight on her hale leg. Rani looked shaky and was pouring sweat like a plague victim. Prima’s wounded arm was bleeding profusely as it hung limply at her side.

Axia and Hestia aside, Pentera was the only member of Solace’s team that wasn’t hurt. …Or worse.

Solace once again acknowledged the loss of Decia as she closed the final steps. She took one final look at Rani.

“And I shall never forgive the vile atrocities of that which I purge!” She couldn’t make the disease suffer. It was too dangerous to let it linger, so she had to settle for vitriolic words—embodied in the most important line from her [Oath].

With that, she leveled her fingers—and the glowing bow that had formed from her wrist—directly at the thing’s pale throat and loosed her [Glorious Purge]. The blinding beam of energy crossed the scant distance between her fingers and her target in an instant. Brilliance gave her apex Skill speed and power; Void gave it the ability to consume and erase. Together, they formed an attack that couldn’t be dodged. Not at that range.

Which was damn good, because she lacked the mana to cast it again. Draining her arcanite after the first—and the mana that went into mending Rani—had helped, but [Glorious Purge] required an obscene amount of power.

That was the trade-off for a Skill that was truly guaranteed to destroy any shimagu.

[*ding!* One (1) disease has been removed from Pallos. Continue your work to eradicate what remains.]

[*ding!* The shimagu have gone extinct.]

It… By Herculix, at last…!?

“Criiiiiimson! Lord Crimson, please!” The host immediately screamed, reaching upward as if it was pleading to some deity.

And in doing so, it nearly dislodged all of Solace’s team. Stone chains cracked and crumbled. Blood flowed as deeper wounds were torn through its pale flesh. And her team had to have seen the same notification Solace did—for a precious moment, they relaxed their guard, and they very nearly paid the price for it.

Her team was at their limit. Hestia and Axia were out of mana. Solace had almost nothing left and Umbra had to be in a similar state. Rani still looked half-dead and neither Prima nor Tarla were going to be able to pretend to be fine for much longer.

Besides, Solace had little patience for the ill-conceived monstrosities that the oft-cruel gods created, even when they lacked the sheer gall to wear the mien of a human.

“Put it down!” Solace gave the order.

And one by one, weapons raised and were brought back down with lethal intent, with Rani’s spear piercing through the soft flesh of the monster’s chest to strike its heart.

[*ding!* Your team has eliminated a non-shimagu.]

“Fuck…” Tarla stumbled to the side and fell to her knees, even as Hestia rushed to her.

“[Enthralling Predator of Men] and [Dancer of Countless Blades]. It… it was actually somehow really level 361. What the…” Rani tried to give her report, but she stumbled.

Solace managed to catch her, throwing decorum to the wind.

“We did it! That notification was real, wasn’t it?!” Axia had a broad smile on her face.

“Yeah… Fuck me though, that changeling hurt.” Tarla winced.

The chest of her armor was covered in small punctures. The damned monster had bitten through it repeatedly, savaging her flesh beneath.

Solace reached over and touched Tarla’s arm, activating [Brilliant Mending Light] with the final points of her mana. They needed Tarla intact.

They needed to move. Soon.

“It wasn’t a changeling.” It was time to share what she had figured out. Solace swallowed whatever uncertainty or hesitation lurked in her thoughts and committed herself. A skin tone so pale that it approached the white of newly fallen snow and red eyes… Humanity had a large breadth of skin and eye colors, but that specific combination was spoken of in the Medical Manuscripts.

“Tell us.” Rani raised her gaze to meet Solace’s.

They had been just as close before, but it had always been in the privacy of their shared tent. Solace felt her cheeks color, but she tried to set her tempestuous emotions aside and focus on what needed to be said.

“Red eyes and pale skin… We’ve all seen this before. First, there’s albinism. It’s a known condition that affects both animals and humans. In humans, the most severe expression is the rarest—an utter lack of pigment, resulting in red eyes and pale skin. The main side-effects are an increased sensitivity to light and a higher risk of sunburn, with skin cancer screenings becoming more important for affected children. Vitality helps offset most of the effects. But albino humans are rare. Sentinel Dawn claimed that only one in twenty thousand would be born with the affliction, though I have no idea how she figured that out.

“But that number doesn’t match what we really see, does it? And lately almost every ‘human’ we’ve seen had similar features. Add in the fangs and the frankly inhuman strength…”

Solace fell silent for a moment to let the others chew on her words, though she didn’t stay silent for long. She needed them to process, but she didn’t want them to interject until she was done. It was a delicate line, but she knew her people, and she’d been trained by the best speakers that Remus had to offer.

“Something else has been hiding amongst humankind. Monsters that wear the appearance of albino humans, but they aren’t human. None of them are. And if albinos didn’t exist in every other species of animal, I’d think that every last one was one of these things.

“And one of them is dangerously close to us all. There’s one man in particular that you should all be thinking of.” Solace stopped there. She knew her team, she trusted them to follow her logic.

“War Sentinel Night.” Pentera spoke first, a scowl on her face. But given the unpleasant expressions that the others wore, she wasn’t the only one to piece it together.

“Grey too, maybe.” Hestia worried her lip as she whispered her guess.

“Should we talk to Night?” Rani asked.

“No. First, we’ll return to Spearpoint and let the [Healers] check everyone. But everyone on Pallos should have seen the announcement. We’ll make for Ariminum as soon as possible and meet with the empress—or whoever took over after her. So long as they don’t have pale skin, they’re our best bet.

“While we’ve been fighting the shimagu, we’ve been unaware of another enemy hiding in our midst. No longer!” Solace stood with that, pulling Rani up alongside her.

“No longer.” The others chanted in agreement, as they glared one last time at the nearby corpse.

…Perhaps, had any of them looked in the direction the deceased had been reaching toward…

Crimson let out a soundless sigh as he watched Pulse die. He had expected to feel something more profound—he’d known the girl for almost a thousand years, after all. But in truth, all he felt was a distant disappointment. The disappointment of yet another plan failing at the very moment that it should have come to fruition.

And after nearly five thousand years, he had grown somewhat numb to such a common sentiment. It was always annoying, but he had more than learned his lesson not to rely on any single plan.

As one of the three remaining true sires of all vampires, Crimson was a simple man with a simple dream—he aspired to step out of the shadows. His peer and rival, Night, was content to skulk around and try to play the role of a gardener, snipping out unwanted growth and keeping everything firmly bound in an upward direction of its current trajectories. But he had grander dreams. He had seen what ambition and opportunity could become, and he was tired of seeing his children languish within the restrictive confines of their assigned roles.

Why should he guide humanity when he could instead reign over them and his own kind? What could they achieve if they finally unified?

Night was mired in the past. He alone was convinced that there was some unpayable, eternal debt owed to humans, just because their distant ancestors agreed to their recommendation for mutual survival. Humans watched over vampires by day; vampires watched over humans by night. In Crimson’s eyes, humanity always received far more from that arrangement than any vampire ever did.

After all, there were only three vampires left that had been there when the agreement was made. Humans had failed every other peer that Crimson once possessed. Hundreds of vampires, reduced to three survivors.

And Night still refused to see that living within humanity’s shadow was a mistake!

Crimson didn’t want to force the issue. Instead, he made plans to show the third that another possibility truly could exist. And War Sentinel Solace—one of Night’s most blatantly disposable pawns—had once been one of the most promising threads of those plans. The woman worked tirelessly to eliminate the dregs of the shimagu. She never cared that they were already doomed. She had her head overfilled with the rhetoric of politicians that had fallen out of favor decades ago and continued where no one else would have bothered.

She was perfect.

The plan was almost insultingly obvious, just as most successful plans were. Crimson selected a few dozen of his finest hunters, killers, and manipulators and brought them beyond Remus’ borders. His hunters tracked down the dregs of the shimagu. If they were too difficult to reach, he commanded the elimination of parasites and their hosts—quietly, if they had slipped into other populations.

But for the rest, he had his people provide breadcrumbs to lead Solace and her women to them. At times, it came in the form of a few words from a vampire wearing the appropriate Legion armor. At others, he had his people create false trails that led Solace directly to her enemies. Sometimes he had a capable hunter engage the shimagu and withdraw after wounding them, relying on the sounds of battle to draw the forgotten Sentinel.

He hoped to make Solace into a hero once again. And once she basked in the accolades of her people, he intended to approach her himself. The woman was a human-first extremist, but even the staunchest beliefs could be shaken once she truly understood just how much he had done to aid in her quest. He had hoped that she could help ease the path for vampires to properly integrate themselves into human society.

She was hardly the only thread required for his dreams to come to fruition, but the support of a hero that every human knew would have been quite valuable.

Pulse proposed a more direct path. There was a good chance that the latest group of shimagu were the last ones around. At the very least, his hunters had exhausted every other lead that they had found. She wished to weaken the shimagu, then join in the battle once Solace engaged them.

There was merit to the proposal. The bonds forged in battle seemed to matter a great deal to the brief lives of humans and an act of open benevolence “to ensure no human was harmed” could help to ease suspicions. Pulse had proven herself quite capable of manipulating hearts and minds using both her body and her words. Her dances allured men and women in almost equal measure and she had a rare gift for knowing which words to whisper into receptive ears.

Over the centuries, Pulse brought him more than a few interesting things. Preciously rare humans that were worthy of the eternal gift that he offered, secrets that brought him wealth or coveted luxuries, and even tidbits that he ‘graciously’ passed on to Night so that the dour vampire could direct his Sentinels or assassinate a problem before it began. In light of her past successes, he gave Pulse permission.

With the unspoken understanding that she would bear responsibility for her own success or failure.

And fail she did—spectacularly so. Truly, Crimson couldn’t imagine any possible failure more egregious than the one she managed to achieve. First, Pulse completely underestimated the group of four shimagu. Their hosts weren’t in good condition because of mere luck—the four were soldiers of the shimagu army, and each slimeball seemed to have builds devoted to empowering their host’s body. Had Pulse been forced to slay the four ogres by herself, that would have been bad enough.

But even after she inflicted mortal wounds on the ogres, they still overwhelmed her and managed to transfer one of the slimes to her before their hosts perished.

Pulse wasn’t a dedicated [Warrior] or speedster, but her dance-focused build still gave her ample speed. And with the shimagu bolstering her, Crimson’s hunters proved unable to catch her before the coming sun forced them to abandon their pursuit. As if their piteous leveling speed wasn’t enough of a curse, White Dove decreed that all vampires lose access to the System while they were touched by the sun’s light. And many of Crimson’s progeny favored restriction Skills that obligated them to avoid the sun as well.

Pursuing his wayward daughter by day hadn’t been an option. And during that time, War Sentinel Solace caught up to her. As a result, humans and a vampire fought a bloody battle.

When Crimson first laid eyes on the scene from his vantage point within the conveniently sprawling tree, he noted the absence of one of Solace’s women—the tracker—as well as the telltale weakness in Solace’s confidant that came over humans in that had been overly drained of blood. And with that, his aspirations to use Solace died.

But when he heard her share her epiphany with the others, he could only shake his head in an approximation of sadness. He had warned Night that the man’s damned pet god-touched was dangerous. But even after Elaine’s death, her recorded words continued to cause problems! Well, at least Night wouldn’t be able to blame him for the judgment call that he needed to make.

“Eliminate them.” Crimson subvocalized his order, ensuring that only the wary ears of the hunters that surrounded him would hear it.

The women never knew what was happening, not until his finest killers were already amongst them.