LTSV - Lost & Found 49 (Patreon)

Mira didn’t see this soul very often. She could count the number of times she’d encountered him in all the thousands of lives she’d lived on just one hand and still not use all the fingers. Whenever she did meet him, he was always this type of person; a powerful man who could never be satisfied with what he already had and chose to seize more. It would be laughable if he weren’t so very, very good at it.

“Keep as many of the Princesses First Rank intact as possible,” he ordered, by way of a greeting. “My son and his future wives are to be escorted out of the battlefield and secured in my Palace. I have no need for the rest.”

There was something wrong with the soldiers. Mira realized it when none of them replied to either confirm or deny their orders. They just advanced on the barrier and attacked it, paying little mind to the painful zaps they got whenever their weapons made contact with her shield. They also weren’t blinking.

What was she looking at? Mind control? Necromancy? Possession? If these were zombies then they were fresher than fresh, but she didn’t think that they were. They seemed to feel pain when they got shocked, which zombies never did in her experience. The soldiers would jerk and startle back, like the reflex bypassed whatever the Prince Regent was using to control their actions. They were also processing fairly complex orders, so there had to be living minds steering their bodies.

“Father, what are you doing?” Andrei spoke at last. He cut a heroic figure that probably looked great on a computer screen; chin held high, shoulders back, and a look of noble anguish in his eyes as he held an imploring hand out to his father. “This is madness!”

“This is in your best interests, my son. Don’t interrupt.” Huranel smiled benevolently at his son and it made Mira’s skin crawl. He’d had a look just like that on his face while his men held her down to apply the spellpaint. To the soldiers, he said, “Incapacitate him if he resists, but don’t kill him.”

He didn’t address Princess Millica or anyone else in the room. It was like they were already dead to him and he was just watching to make sure his project was on schedule. No gloating, no premature victory speech; none of that. If nothing else, her dear old father made a chilling Hidden End Boss. 

Although, maybe he wasn’t a Hidden End Boss at all. Mira had been catching glimpses of his tail ever since she’d inherited Violet’s life. Her story might not be emphasized in the Lost Daughter games so far, but he could well have turned out to be the final antagonist in game three. Viola wasn’t a juicy villain and Madame had some potential, but her family made her too ridiculous by association to be truly frightening. Huranel, however…

Mira had changed her mind about letting these people fight their own battles. This man had ruined her host’s life and health in service of his ambition just so that she could be used as a figleaf to legitimate his coup after the fact. Didn’t Violet deserve a little catharsis?

Penny had been lingering in her vicinity, hidden from sight, and mostly keeping an eye on Andrei when she sensed Mira’s change in intent. She felt a little thrill of anticipation from her familiar. After all, from her perspective, Penny had been summoned for ages and had hardly gotten to do anything. 

However, they were all interrupted by the sound of a mellow whistling tune coming from the corridor behind Huranel. Mira heard a leisurely tap of leather shoes and the sound of something heavy being dragged along at the same pace.

Adra had caught up to her.

Huranel frowned and retreated away from the door, using his two bodyguards as cover, just as Adra came around the doorframe. The lovely sage linen suit he’d worn that morning was red now, except for a few places. He’d lost the button on his jacket and it hung open in the front showing his equally bloodspattered ivory waistcoat and botanical-print silk shirt underneath. He’d lost his monocle and his hair had fallen out of its normal sideswept low ponytail. He was dragging the body of a man in unfamiliar splint mail armor that had the look of a standard-issue uniform, but Mira didn’t recognize it from the game or anywhere else. The guards in Avenon all either wore leather with ornamental shoulder guards or full plate. The man had dark hair and a darker complexion than was normal in Avenon. He looked like someone whose ancestors would have come from close to the equator, but not close enough to hit the darkest range of possible human coloration.

Vesper recognized his origin, though. “An Apricol soldier?” she exclaimed. “This far past the borders?

Adra tossed the body he was carrying directly at Huranel and his men. The man’s body plowed into the bodyguards at a speed that didn’t match Adra’s apparent level of effort. They went down in a pile, only just barely managing not to take their master with them. Adra dropped down into a puddle of shadow matter and popped back up on Mira’s side of the barrier, at her side. Mira put a hand up before he could touch her.

“No, you are covered in blood and mess,” she told him in no uncertain terms. “I happen to like this gown.”

Adra looked down, like he’d only just now noticed his state. “Forgive me, my dear,” he purred and snapped his fingers. The blood flung itself off his body like the film of a popped soap bubble, splattering in an arc around him that neatly avoided Mira, Vesper, and the Princess.

Andrei was not so lucky and took the brunt of it, right in the face. He shouted in shock and disgust, but Adra ignored him. 

“Is this better?” he asked, but also didn’t wait to put a proprietary hand around her waist. 

He wasn’t entirely back to his usual self. He hadn’t been able to fix his suit and had replaced it with a high-necked, pitch black ensemble with symmetrical glowing red figures on his chest and a flowing cape whose lining shone with shifting red-gold light. His shadow was too dark and pooled unnaturally around his and Mira’s feet. His hands were clawed shadow matter, now, that extended all the way up to his elbows. This was the least human he’d looked all day, including when he nearly had that slapfight with Cecily in the Temple district earlier, but he wasn’t dripping anymore so Mira permitted him to touch her. 

“Adelraaam,” Princess Millica ground his name out, like she had exhausted every last erg of patience left in her body. He must not have been answering his walking crystal. Mira was a little surprised. She’d imagined them having a more professional relationship than this. “Where the hell have you been?” 

He glanced her way, with an insincere smile. “I’m very sorry to have missed the festivities, your Highness, but you seemed to have matters well in hand so I took a turn around the battlefield. Imagine what I found?”

Princess Millica sighed a tired, tired sigh; like she was eighty and not less than thirty. She looked at the dead soldier he’d used to bowl down Huranel’s guards. “I can see what you found. Were there more of them?”

“I would say between twenty and thirty,” Adra replied with a pleased, catlike smile. “I didn’t take a head count, but it seemed to be their entire group. It didn’t seem like they had any hope of being rescued so I doubt they had reinforcements nearby.”

Mira noticed a flicker of reaction chase across the Huranel’s face as he drew back against the wall. He stifled it fast, but that had been real fear. He must have been counting on those men to be his reinforcements.

“I suppose I should be grateful you helped at all,” Princess Millica said, bitterly. “Would you be so kind as to detain my stepfather and his men? I’ll need them in good condition to stand trial.”

Adra probably would have said ‘yes’, but another figure appeared in the open door before he could say anything. Cecily slid sideways as she tried to round the corner, but her knee-high golden gladiator sandals didn’t have much traction on these slick floors so she caught the door frame by one hand. She was a little battleworn and mussed. Her new dress had a tear in the hem and dusty smudges all along one side, but she was otherwise untouched. Mira could hear the distant clank-clank of multiple men in plate armor in hot pursuit of their Saintess.

Mira realized, far too late, what their situation looked like. Adra had cast off all but the thinnest veneer of his cover identity and had her in his clutches again. Not to mention, there was blood all over the floor. Shit. 

Huranel saw his chance as Cecily took the whole scene in. 

“Saintess!” he cried out, falling to his knees. “This monster has taken control of my stepdaughter! She has taken my son and stepchildren hostage and plans to seize the throne by force! I can no longer shield this nation from her madness! Please, help me!”

For a second, Mira thought they might really be screwed. She could normally count on being to pacify anyone in the room, but she still didn’t know what that sword did or why the Veiled Goddess had gifted it to their heroine in the first place. All she could tell was that it wasn’t a duplicate of the Sunblade, which was meant to be the natural counter to Adra’s Noctis sword, but that was all she knew. It was some other mysterious third thing. 

Cecily was visibly torn. Adra had her attention, but something else seemed to be nagging at her. Mira recognized the faint glaze in her eyes from the other time Cecily had been broadsided by her undigested memories of being Melody. Slowly, almost jerkily, she turned to look directly at Huranel. 

He was putting on a good show. Mira had to give him credit. If she hadn’t already seen the reptilian detachment hidden underneath his facade of paternal grief, she might have wavered too.

“I know you,” Cecily whispered and hopped backwards to reset her stance. This time she was facing the Huranel and her guard was up.

Huranel’s expression changed like he’d flicked a switch once he realized she wasn’t going to fall for it. “Take her out,” he told his men. “Then clear an exit for me before the Templars catch up.”

The soldiers in front who had been attaching Mira’s wards switched their focus and charged Cecily. It was a messy, brutal assault and only underscored Mira’s suspicion that these people were being puppeted by some external force. 

Cecily dodged under one sword blow aimed at her head and cut directly at the man’s midsection. The blade passed straight through him and out the other side without pause—or blood, for that matter. 

The man she’d struck staggered forward and shook himself. He looked up, a little absently, until he spotted Princess Millica. He looked at her, then at Vesper, then towards the men still advancing on Cecily, and he shrieked in surprise; looking around the room like he didn’t know how he’d gotten there. It was entirely possible that he didn’t.

Meanwhile, Cecily danced past two other attacks and cut down another two members of the Prince Regent’s forces. One of them hit the ground on his side while the other sagged against the wall. Both of them seemed every bit as thrown as the first man. The first soldier, meanwhile, had got himself back together and dragged the one on the floor up by the shoulder.

“Defend the Princess!” he barked at his two stunned comrades. He didn’t seem entirely sure what was going on, yet, but that didn’t seem to be stopping him from contributing to the fight.

The bodyguards and the remaining mind controlled me charged at Cecily and the three rehabilitated soldiers. Their objective became clear when the Prince Regent used their wall of bodies as cover to dart towards the unguarded exit.

Oh, no, no, no. That would not do.