by Adam Watson
“At this stage, I think she left here, was taken to the castle, somehow escaped the slaughter there, made it back into the streets and headed for the West Gate.” Volantia nodded in agreement - she already knew the reasons why.
“It makes sense, but doesn’t get us any closer to finding her.” Solitaire frowned, no it didn’t. She looked down to the ash covering the ground and moved some with her foot, uncovering the bright mosaic beneath.
"Now I'm certain that this is where the Mediation Chamber used to be," she said. "We need to sift through the debris and find something that was hers."
"Look," exclaimed Volantia, pointing. Solitaire turned her head. To the side of them, towards the centre of the room, half covered in a pile of broken stone and ash, was what appeared to be the remnants of a throne. Smashed almost to the point of being unrecognisable, the arm of the throne remained intact. "That has to be part of the High Seat." Calista although far from the other two, could hear the conversation as though it was happening right next to her, she turned her head in their direction.
"Then we should concentrate our efforts there," she said, as she started walking towards them, the other two nodded their agreement.
***
The next few hours were spent sifting through the ash and rubble and moving some of the bigger pieces in an attempt to get further down into the debris and hopefully find something useful.
In the end, it was Calista that found that useful something. The three women stared at the object, they all knew what it was, and they all knew that it would definitely lead them to their quarry. Solitaire could tell from the eyes of the others that they were smiling; even though their mouths were covered by their veils. She was smiling too, this was the breakthrough that they had been searching for.
The object was damaged, half of it was missing. What was left was covered in dust, smashed, twisted and scratched beyond reason. Solitaire was sad, she had seen it in its full glory once, a long time ago; on the Oracle before this one. It had been so beautiful, so majestic then, but there was no mistaking what this broken remnant was.
It was part of what used to be the High Crown of the Oracle of Tempus, and what’s more Solitaire was certain that the Oracle would have worn it on the same day of the attack.
Calista turned the crown over so that they could examine the inside, she wiped the dust away. Immediately the all telling glow became visible. They had found it - the presence of the Oracle. Now they knew exactly what they were looking for.
"No-one escapes us." They all knew what Volantia's comment meant, and it was a catch cry that all the Sisters used when on the hunt. It was known to be a derivative of Solace’s own ‘Nobody escapes me’. “Come Sisters, to the West Gate.”
***
At the West Gate it was more of the same, except this time instead of searching through stone and ash, they were searching through congealed blood and rotting carcasses. A massacre had taken place here, many hundreds of villagers lie dead. A film of dried blood painted the street, crows and ravens had feasted for weeks. It was a dangerous place to be if you were human and it wasn't just the things that you could see that could kill you – it was also the unseen.
It was known that being around the dead could make one sick and that the sickness could bring death to humans. So, it was a good thing that the Sisters weren't human - well, not normal humans anyway.
It didn't take long to find the spot where the Oracle had fallen off of the horse. There was blood on the ground, clearly visible to the Sisters now that they knew what the Oracle’s presence looked like. The presence in the blood clearly matched the traces left on the inside of the crown. Solitaire knew she was on the right track.
The ability to follow a person’s 'presence' was another gift from the huntress to her siblings. Each one of the Sisters of Solace had the ability to follow a person by their presence. Whatever a person touched would leave a remnant of themselves upon the object. Using their gift from Solace, the Sisters were able to see these remnants as a glow. The glow was like a written language that only the Sisters could understand. Every person had their own unique glow, the Sisters could see them all and their minds had the ability to bring individual glows in or out of focus, so they could either see a jumble of many tracks or they could focus on one track in particular. Once they knew which track they wanted to follow, there could be no mistaking it.
Solitaire, Volantia and Calista had done a sweep that emanated from the West Gate itself. The guards there were easily avoided and moved like cumbersome old ladies when compared to the stealth of a Sister. The Oracle's trail stood out like a beacon’s flare, even amongst the thousands of others trails, and even amongst the carpeting of dried blood.
The Sister’s had seen this before, a trail that starts out of nowhere and begins with a rough splattering - someone had fallen off a horse. The trail that led away was haphazard and erratic, whoever made it was injured. Solitaire smiled, and even though her mouth never moved, the smile did reach her eyes. There was no doubt in her mind that they had found the Oracle’s trail.
"Looks like she didn't make it out of the city after all." Volantia nodded her agreement to Calista's comment.
"That could be either a blessing or a curse, Sister." Even though they all looked identical, Calista was the youngest and least experienced of the three by far. She looked at her elder Sister puzzled as she had done many times in the past - Volantia had a habit of answering cryptically.
"Of course it’s a blessing, it means she’s still in the city, it means she's not far, and if she's not far away, then we will find her quickly. Volantia ‘tched’, it was a sound she always made when she found fault in Calista's logic.
"Look around you, Sister; the city is half destroyed. We can lose the trail again as easily as we found it."
"I doubt we can lose a blood trail." Volantia tched again, too much time had passed to be confident in that call.
"We will see," she answered. Solitaire remained silent, but in her mind, she agreed with Volantia. She had done enough missions in her lifetime to know that even the clearest of tracks could end abruptly.
The three women followed the trail down the street. It was clear that the Oracle had been bleeding at this stage, the trail wasn’t travelling in a straight line but would meander from side to side; sometimes it looked like she must have been crawling.
Solitaire knew the Oracle had been badly injured, most likely from the fall and was now weak and on the verge of unconsciousness. Solitaire could also see from the other trails that there was much chaos going on around her at that time. It told her that the Oracle was not weak-willed; despite the danger all around and despite being heavily injured, she was still able to push forward.
The Oracle's trail headed back into the city, and they followed it. They could see that the Oracle had paused several times, most likely to regain some strength. In these places, the blood was darker, and the presence glowed brighter. The Sisters strode forward with cat-like grace. Up ahead Solitaire could see a stable, the tracks went in, but none came out.
"I do hope she's not dead," commented Volantia, on the fact. The sun was shining bright, and Solitaire squinted her eyes trying to get a better view. Dying in a stable would be an unfitting end for an Oracle of any god, and although she herself was undoubtedly devoted to the goddess Solace, she did feel a certain fondness for Tempus - certainly over every other god and goddess besides Solace.
Inside the stable Solitaire almost breathed a sigh of relief, there was no dead body, at least none that was the Oracles. There were, however, the bodies of approximately twenty-five dead horses, mauled and mutilated; prompting her to think what might have happened here to cause such brutality. These weren’t people, these weren’t citizens, they were only horses. They were innocent bystanders, tools used by a superior species - their hostile actions weren’t their own. She felt saddened by the sight.
Through the hay, dirt and destruction, they followed the tracks to a pile of hay on the far side of
the room. The blood and presence pooled greatly here. This was the spot where the Oracle had collapsed, this was where she had lost consciousness, and this spot was also where her tracks ended. Solitaire pondered what this meant, the end of a trail with no body presented them with a new puzzle to solve. Calista walked over to the pool.
“Well this is where the trail ends,” she stated. Volantia grimaced and walked over to join her - it seemed to her that Calista liked to point out the obvious. “I guess you were right, Volantia. We can lose a blood trail.” Volantia tched, sometimes Calista’s statements really got on her nerves.
“You can’t be so sure about anything yet, Calista, and you’ll never go beyond being a novice if you don’t start thinking about what you are doing!” Calista stood in silence, she had grown accustomed to Volantia berating her. When she had first been assigned to Volantia, she had been scared of the older Sister and truth be told she still was, but over time Calista had come to realise that the harshness was just the way Volantia was. “For starters …” but before Volantia could get into her full tirade Solitaire cut her off with a hand signal. The Sisters went silent, they all knew what that signal meant - someone was coming.
Calista and Volantia drew their respective cloaks around themselves and disappeared into the shadows of the stable. Solitaire always did the initial parlay, and now she did what she always did in this situation - she waited.
***
The five guards were talking as they walked into the stables, but they came to a dead silence once they saw the figure of Solitaire standing alone in the middle.
“I told you I saw someone enter,” one of them said. Solitaire was a statue, her black cloak draped around her. The hooded veil covered her face, but her eyes were as wide as they were intense.
She watched the guards approach but remained silent. They were human guards, from the walls. They have strayed into dangerous territory, she thought. What they didn’t know was it was much more dangerous than they could ever have imagined.
“You there,” shouted the Sergeant, standing in the middle of the group. “What are you doing here?” Solitaire stared at him intensely before answering.
“I’m conducting an investigation,” she answered. The Sergeant snorted, to him the answer sounded like a joke. He warily stepped forward, she appeared alone, but her demeanour unnerved him.
“What kind of an investigation?” he asked. Solitaire smiled, a mist had entered the room, creeping across the ground, discreet and barely noticeable. It made her feel safe and secure, the ‘Huntresses Mist’ turned foreign ground into their own. “I said, what kind of investigation?”
“One that will certainly end in your deaths,” came a voice from behind them. The guards turned to see that the black-cloaked maiden was now behind them. The mist thickened and rose, the shadows darkened; female laughter echoed all around them.
A dagger flew unseen from the shadows, its chain whistling through the air behind. Plunging into a guard’s neck, it whipped back into the shadows as quickly as it had come. The guard fell to the ground, his throat ripped open.
The other guards looked all around, unsure from where the attack came. When they looked back to the mysterious cloaked figure, she was gone.
"I don't like this," commented one of the men. "We're fighting shadows."
"Back to back men," commanded the Sergeant. "Keep your eyes open." The Sergeant scanned the stables, it was a large area, full of shadows. He peered into the darkness trying to make sense of the shapes inside. His gaze drifted from corner to corner. Nothing there ... Nothing there ... Wait, what's that? Did he just see a glint of light?
He moved his head forward peering into the darkness. What is that? Something was moving in the shadows, his eyes adjusted and he gasped as a cold, hard realisation hit him. He had just enough time to scream before Volantia's spear ploughed through his skull, the force knocking him backwards into the matted hay.
The three remaining guards held their swords out in front of them, wary of all directions. The attacks had stopped momentarily, and silence reigned supreme; filling the room with an unnatural quietness. Then out of nowhere, something dropped in between the guards and a thick, green smoke began to fill the room, causing them to cough and choke.
Solitaire appeared in the middle, a phantom of the night. She had a sword in each hand, as she extended her arms, black steel ploughed through the backs of two guards, the third one turned around, but by the time he did she was gone. He turned around again, gripped by fear and panic - this was no lady, this was a monster.
"Where are you?!" he shouted, his head turned and pivoted as he tried to look in every direction at once.
"Here." The remaining guard turned again and there she was, the black-cloaked woman, back in the same spot she had been when they had entered the stables. The guard was shaken, he had never experienced anything supernatural before. He had fought the Drakhar, but they didn’t disappear and reappear at will.
"W-Who a-are you?" he stuttered.
"Death!" came a whisper into his ear. He tried to move but suddenly felt a blade across his throat. He moved his eyes, glancing to the side and gasped, her face was right next to his. He looked back to the front, and she was gone. He went to speak again, but the blade slid; slicing his throat and ending his life. His body fell and joined the other corpses on the ground.
Solitaire and Calista emerged from the shadows joining their Sister in the centre of the stable. Each of them looked at the lifeless bodies on the floor as fresh blood leaked onto old. These stables had once been a shelter and a haven; now they were a place of death.
Volantia pulled her spear out of the ground and back through the leader’s head, it had not a speck of blood on it, but it glowed brightly to the Sister's eyes. Looking at the body, Volantia tched.
"An unfortunate encounter, but we all know the rules." The others only nodded. Yes, the Sisters of Solace may be utterly ruthless at times, but they weren't completely heartless. What a waste, thought Solitaire, good men dead because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time. Still, she wasn't about to be the one to break the rules, not when Solace could be watching.
"So where were we before we were ... interrupted," asked Volantia. Calista knew the question was directed at her, and she also knew that Volantia knew exactly what they had been talking about before the encounter. This was another one of Volantia's secret little tests, Calista smiled on the inside, she had become accustomed to this.
"You were telling me how the trail is not lost." Volantia rolled her eyes, the tone of Calista's voice made it clear that she thought the trail was indeed lost. Volantia knew the problem though, Calista was still focused on the Oracle's trail and nothing else - this annoyed her immensely because it was a common mistake made by novices.
"Stop focusing for a moment and take a look around, there are other trails that will tell you what happened here." Calista untagged the Oracle's trail and brought all of the presences into focus – now there were trails going everywhere.
What did Volantia expect her to see? The stable had been a bustling place before the conquest, that much was certain. The silence grew as Volantia waited for an answer.
"Well ... what happened to the Oracle?" she asked. Calista tried to focus, there were several trails that crossed over the Oracle's.
"I'm not sure," answered Calista, and braced herself for a berating.
"You are so busy focusing on the Oracle and trying to figure out what I want you to say, that you can't see what's right in front of your eyes." If she could have, Calista would have blushed. How did Volantia know that is what she was trying to figure out? "You don't need to focus on the presence to be able to see those tracks." Volantia pointed to the heavy footprints that were in the matted mud of the stable floor.
"See how they enter the stables, go past that post there and then straight to the spot where the Oracle collapsed?" Calista nodded, it was pretty obvious now that Volantia had pointed it out. "Whoever was following her must hav
e seen her enter and they themselves were also wounded. You see how the steps are uneven and snake from side to side? That’s because they were injured and their gait was unsteady. Now focus on that track, and it will tell you a story." Calista narrowed her eyes, and in her mind, she concentrated on the trails presence.
The trail lit up like ghostly footsteps in the night, and it immediately became clear what had happened. The footprints lead straight to the spot where the Oracle had collapsed, and then they led away, but what Calista noticed, now that Volantia had made her more aware, was that the prints leading away were deeper, heavier and filled with greater presence. Whoever it was, they were now carrying the Oracle.
"The trail continues," she said with realisation. Volantia just nodded with a knowing smile.
***
Bucos had been trying to find the shrine for the last four hours. Was he wasting his time? He was beginning to think so. He had been in this part of the city a few times, and he had never noticed a shrine there before. Still, he had to find it, didn't he? He had been given an important task to complete, and death would be his reward if he failed.
Who would have thought it would be so hard to find? The directions were quite clear, but when he had followed them, all he had found was a dead end. Now he had to backtrack to the start again and hope that he had made a mistake the first time around - his heart beat faster just thinking about it.
What if he couldn't find the shrine? The General would probably skin him alive or burn him; perhaps both. Burning in front of one’s family was a known punishment and so too was mutilation. Whatever the punishment, it was bound to be unpleasant. Yes, he definitely needed to find this shrine and soon.
Bucos trudged on looking this way and that. The shrine had to be there somewhere. Some parts of Candelier City were like a rabbit’s warren, and other parts looked so similar that it was easy to get lost. The garden quadrant wasn’t like that though, so it was perplexing as to why the shrine was so hard to find.
He stood under the grand oak once more. It was a colossal and yet very beautiful tree, sitting under it on a hot summer’s day could be quite relaxing. Most people in the city had a great fondness for the tree ... well, before they were massacred, but right now Bucos was forming a real dislike for the grand oak - it was the third time he had visited it in three hours.
