A New Star Chapter 120 (Patreon)

Xera

After investigating the two the mayor was most concerned with at present, I left the building through The Dark and moved to trace more paths through the sewers, which I was not exactly thrilled about. The sewers were not the nicest place in the city, and I had to keep alert for both rats and insects down there, as I did not want to get bitten by something living in such conditions and develop the plague or something similar. I was going to try to trace the movements of the smugglers more fully today, but I was interrupted, thankfully, before I had done more than find a point of ingress.

Fran contacted me with the communication stones I had managed to secure for the group, and I pulled the little item out of my belt pouch and answered. She had, apparently, discovered a secret location rather far from where I had been investigating that was quite suspicious, if one thought that a room full of corpses, strange magics, and odd tools set just off the sewers was suspicious. I made my way over to the location, having to backtrack at least once as I got turned around by the outer streets of Cambria being a twisting maze, before finding the place Fran had used to enter the sewers. A slightly nervous and rather dirty Fran was waiting there for me, only jumping a little when I emerged from The Dark.

“Alex,” she said with a small curtsy.

“Enough of that,” I waved her off, moving past her into the small maintenance building. “Don’t wait somewhere a casual observer can see you next time. Whether it’s the people we are tailing or the guard, you looked rather suspicious and could easily set off a firestorm. Wait inside or find some place nearby where you can observe the entrance to whatever building is of interest, though with that sewer stink on you…”

“Yes, it’s not pleasant,” Fran said, wrinkling her nose, likely both from the rebuke and from the smell. “I’ll make sure to keep out of sight next time.”

“Good. Show me the room,” I said, drifting down the ladder without touching anything, simply using the shaft to guide me. I could hear Fran muttering from behind me before she caught up at the bottom and stepped past, moving down the tunnels. She was very direct, heading right for the passage to the lower level and right for the room in question, but that saved us some time and effort.

“I didn’t touch anything,” she said, opening the door and stepping inside.

‘There’s necromancy in there. The taste of death is strong and strongly twisted,’ Alex whispered in the back of my mind.

I grunted in response, stepping into the room and scanning the bodies and implements inside. Someone clearly had some dastardly plans for this place and these recently deceased; I was able to get a feel for how recently the people had died thanks to Alex’s death affinity, and many of them had only died within a few days. They had also already undergone some kind of preparation already as I could tell they didn’t all have all of their organs or tissue still intact. Beyond that, they had some kind of basic death magic used on them, though even that was corrupted, as it was meant to prepare them for the reversal of death. Overall, it looked like this was a room to store and prepare bodies to be use in some kind of necromantic ritual, though it was only a small area, all things considered.

“Alright. Let me think,” I said, pacing around the room as I both did as I said and as I scanned everything. I was being careful not to touch anything, much in the same way Fran had been careful with her exploration of the room, but I was using my greatly enhanced senses to look at everything very closely, as well as relying on Alex’s death affinity to detect various changes to the bodies and other factors. My conclusions weren’t great, and I knew we needed to call in some others, just to at least get people prepared for what was happening and have them understand what was going on.

“Here’s what we’re going to do,” I said, beginning to lay out the plan. “Call Cain and divert him from what he’s doing. Call Angela and move her to standby, though she should stay with the guards. She can watch the response of the city guards at a lower level. Get Cain over here and the two of you watch over this place. Don’t let anyone in, no matter what they say, until I return. If they give you any grief over it, use force; you have my full authorization, though let’s try not to kill anyone. Not yet, anyway.”

“Right. And where will you be?” Fran asked, pulling out her communication stone.

“I’m going to get several people to bring back over here and look at this. I needed to meet with a few people, anyway, and this might set the proper tone for those meetings,” I replied with a mirthless smile, moving over to the door and stopping, listening and sensing the tunnels around the area.

I waited until Cain had confirmed he was on the way before slipping out, barely moving the door before I strode off down the tunnel, heading towards the path back up. I didn’t walk through The Dark because I did not want someone to focus on Fran if they were already observing us; I would much rather lure someone into following and even attacking me than have them confront my other team members at this point. Fran and Cain were competent and moderately skilled, but they still had a lot of growing to do, and their current ranks were not particularly impressive. Sure, they were much better than the average citizen, but that wasn’t saying a whole lot, and we weren’t going to be confronting and fighting regular people off the street here.

Nobody jumped on me before I emerged from the sewers, nor did I detect anything as I left, and Fran didn’t put in a call for help, so I assumed everything was still on track. I quickly headed for the city center, walking through The Dark just briefly at one point to get the small amount of sewer gunk that was on my boots off; a handy little trick I had picked up a year or two ago to make things stop clinging to me, though it worked better for some things right now versus others. I circled the city center a bit as I approached, as I didn’t want to move by certain buildings, and approached the Count’s estate from the rear before circling the block in the direction away from the city hall. I was now recognized by one of the guards, though I still couldn’t just walk straight in; noble protocols and all that, with the servants wanting ample time to inform the count, prepare a room, and so on.

“None of that will be necessary today,” I informed the guard coldly. “See if Count Milton is up for a little walk. Tell him to wear some solid boots.”

The guard gave me a perplexed look, but he still relayed my words inside; normally, they would have had me wait a minute, a shorter time if the household didn’t mind me arriving in the room we would meet in before the Count, and longer if they wanted the Count to be present and seated first. Now, though, I had thrown them into a bit of a scramble, and even had a servant come out to ask me what was going on and what was needed. I explained only that I had something to show the Count and that it would require us to walk across part of the city.

“My dear Alex,” the Count huffed nearly ten minutes later as he walked out into his front garden, and he was not alone. “What exactly is this that you want us to do?”

With Milton was Gorge, as well as an older man that I was guessing was Gorge’s father, and behind them was Miriam, though Anastasia wasn’t present today, or hadn’t come out to see what was going on. I gave the other three a nod before turning to the Count and saying, “Count Milton. There is a rather urgent matter I would like you to see to personally. If you think safety might be an issue, bring along one or two of your best, but I’d rather not have a hundred people tramping across the city to where we have to go, if you take my meaning.”

“Ah, I understand now. One moment,” Milton replied, stepping aside and motioning to a guard. The man ran over and the two put their heads together for a minute, during which I politely pretended that I couldn’t hear every word they were saying while turning to address Gorge.

“I see we keep crossing paths, Gorge. You and Miriam seem almost to be making a habit of it,” I said, smirking just slightly.

“I would say it is you that is turning up in odd places,” Gorge muttered before the older man reprimanded him.

“Gorge! Stand up straight and say what you mean! Don’t mutter, boy,” the older man said. He then turned to me and said, “I apologize for my son. I’m Count Joseph, the father of this young ingrate, and I don’t believe I caught your name in all of this.”

“Alexandra. Grand Duke D'Crough is my father,” I said simply, which let him know exactly who I was. I could from the widening of his eyes the exact moment everything finished working its way through his brain and he caught up to what I had said.

“Lady Alexandra, as I live and breathe. I had heard great things of you, including from Gorge, but now I see they were only half the truth,” the man said, though he wasn’t trying to flatter me. I got the impression Count Joseph was, as some would say, a straight shooter. “What is this emergency that you’ve brought to us?”

Before I could reply, Count Milton had returned to the group, now with a woman I hadn’t seen before trailing him. I tried to take her measure but was stymied by something cloaking her mana, something I had rarely encountered, and never in such a way. I was able to still get a bit of a sense of her, considering no block was perfect and I had several novel affinities at my disposal, but it was only a vague estimate that she was several ranks above me. I couldn’t really get a flavor of what kind of affinities she had or where her power set was focused, but I was guessing she either led Milton’s guards or was a singular retainer of great skill, much like I hoped Cain or Fran to be for me one day.

“We should be able to move without much notice like this,” Milton said, putting on a thick, heavy cloak that lacked the kinds of embroidery or other markers that would normally point to who was wearing it. It was still made of a very fine materially and of a nice cut, so there was no hiding that it was a rather nice piece, but it did much to tone down the Count, and the others followed suit with similar cloaks, though Miriam’s had some embroidery along the front edges. Still, it was better than nothing, and I led the group of five across the city, being sure to both avoid certain areas and to take a slightly circuitous route.

“Here we are. Be careful on the ladder,” I said, moving into the maintenance building and gliding down the ladder before any of them could formulate a response.

“What are we doing in the sewers, my dear girl?” Milton asked in some confusion, eying the area like something was about to jump out at us. “I hope this isn’t a poorly formed prank.”

“I assure you, this is very serious,” I said, turning and striding off down the tunnels for the interconnect.

The rest followed me, if rather reluctantly, though I was impressed with Milton’s retainer. She didn’t ask questions nor get distracted, keeping her head on a swivel and scanning the tunnels as we moved, much as she had stayed alert from the moment Milton had summoned her to join us. She wasn’t distracted by the descent, either, navigating the passage down to the second level while still remaining alert and scanning everything around her, including us, though she cast a much more suspicious eye at me several times. Finally, after another few minutes, we arrived at the room, finding Cain standing outside, the big man only causing any visible reaction in Milton’s retainer.

“Anything?” I asked him as we stopped outside the door.

“Nothing new, if that’s what you mean. There’s something strange about the mana in there, though; be careful,” he grunted out, sliding out of the way so we could enter the room.

Fran was still inside, glancing at me as I led the group in, before going back to carefully examining the strange devices in the room. The others followed me in before exclaiming in shock and dismay, though I could tell Gorge and Miriam were much more affected than the others. The retainer remained cold and had little reaction, though it was much more from professionalism than the fact that she wasn’t surprised or upset by what she was seeing. The two counts were also not all that shocked, though they were certainly upset, and they both strode around the room, examining everything closely, though not touching anything.

“Alex, what is going on?” Milton finally asked, turning to me with a deep frown.

“I take it this isn’t a regular mortuary for the city?” I replied with some mirth in my voice.

“No. No, it most certainly is not such,” Milton replied emphatically, shaking his head.

“Whether or not you can sense it, we detected readings of death mana and signs of necromancy from this room,” I said, getting a gasp out of several of the others. “On investigation, we found these bodies, as well as these strange tools and instruments, all of which reek of death. I had had my suspicions before this, Milton, but now I can guarantee it; the same cult that attacked the capital several years ago is not only operating in your fair city, they are planning something, something big. I think it would be wise to take this threat seriously and bring all our resources to bear; I know I will be calling in the rest of my retainers to help in handling this, and I think you should, quietly, get the guards and others alerted.”

“This is…alarming,” Milton said, seeming a little lost. At a prod from his retainer, he seemed to focus before nodding. “Right, yes. There are some contingencies in place. Still, we aren’t quite prepared for this kind of attack; I’ll have to inform certain people of things.”

“Oh, also, just as an aside, I think the mayor’s working with them,” I said casually, causing quite a response.

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