DreadWolf

◈ Chapter 69:

Lyra watched in dismay as Rain stumbled into the mansion, his paw pressed up against his side in clear and obvious pain.

They had found him near delirious in a side street, a small lake of blood around him. He had come down amongst the warehouses away from any house and out of sight so by some fluke had avoided attention. It had taken a long time to get him standing, luckily having eaten such an absurd amount his healing was already starting to slowly push and pull his bones and flesh back into place. Still, it had been a gruelling trip back through Lynthia with Rain limping from corner to corner, one where Lyra had fainted twice from holding her invisibility up. Then there had been the struggle of climbing the wall. Rain had needed to push his shoulder up against the stone until his dislocated arm popped back into its socket, then once again for the other side. He had nearly passed out from the pain more than once.

It had taken half a dozen attempts but eventually he had crawled over the wall and then together they had slowly trekked back through the forest as the sun peeked over the horizon.

Rain stumbled into the Ranker's bedroom and collapsed without preamble onto the bed. Opal hopped up on top with him leaving Lyra standing awkwardly beside them.

He turned his head and eyed Lyra out of the corner of one eye.

"...What happened to the two prisoners we let free?"

Lyra bit her lip. "Uhm. W-well, after you disappeared with the S-Succubus the Satyr snapped a Goblin slave collar around the Elf's neck. I tried to stop her from leaving with him, I really did! But the Satyr was too strong, I'm not a combat Class... I- I couldn't do anything. "

Rain closed his eyes.

"You think she will say something to the town?" said Rain, his voice was quickly fading as exhaustion crept up.

She hesitated. "I... don't think so, she's an escaped prisoner, she won't want to be caught again, but more importantly, well, that was a Succubus, a Succubus! She's likely already as far away from Lynthia as she can possibly get! ...It's a Succubus! You don't seem to get it!"

"A demon or something, demons are bad, I know that..." murmured Rain sleepily.

Lyra ran her fingers through her fluff in frustration, as much as Rain used to be a leveler and had more of an understanding of levelers than any other monster he was still quite unknowing. That was just the nature of having been trapped in a small town and forced to remain at the absolute bottom of society, more concerned with day to day survival than vanishingly rare existential threats.

Lyra knew. She had grown up with endless stories of the dangers of the world from people who had experienced them first hand, from the darkest monster to the grimmest demon, she knew all too well that this was something special. A Succubus meant something to levelers in a way that monsters or other demons did not. It was simple really, a Succubus couldTake Your Levels.The very thought of such a concept made Lyra's skincrawland an involuntary shiver ran up her spine. She hunched over subconsciously as though to somehow protect her own levels from some unseen threat.

She needed to do something. As much as she couldn't let Rain in a mindless state of hunger be loosed on the town she could not let the town go completely unwarned about a Succubus, she just couldn't. Just as she had been taught to put aside differences when it came to greater monster threats she had been taught the same when it came to succubi.

"Rain?"

Rain didn't answer, he was already asleep.

Opal was lying spread eagled atop him and cracked an eye.

"Stop fussing sheepy. "

"I- I'm going back to Lynthia..."

"Why?"

"W-well, shouldn't we know if we managed to get away with it?"

"Get away with what?"

"Got away with eating all the livestock and horses in the entire town! Rain's not going to be moving again anytime soon, it might be important!"

"Oh. Right."

"Well?"

Opal waved her hand noncommittally and yawned.

"I'm not going to stop you, do as you like sheepy. If some levelers want to come bother us then Rain can eat them. Simple."

Lyra curled her hands into fists and fumed at the Goblin girl. She was just so, so, well, she had different priorities, clearly mostly consisting of finding ways to make Rain larger. She really needed to sit down with the Goblin girl and try to change her entrenched views someday, just as she had inadvertently done to her.

As Opal got comfortable and closed her eyes Lyra gathered her things and prepared to return to Lynthia. That mainly consisted of washing blood from her wool and securing her bribery bag, er, Dimensional Bag with Rain's hoard in it. She had collected the gold from the floor of the cultist's building after the Satyr had fled not knowing what else to do. Putting a stop to Red's very loud and very indignant complaining about using gold incorrectly had been a bonus.

By the time she got back to town it was midday and the sun was high in the sky. She approached carefully, and having somewhat rested was able to use her invisibility to hide herself as she peeked from the forest edge. The town seemed... fine? No, wait, where was the guard? The front gate was wide open and completely unguarded!

She waited ten minutes wondering if someone would turn up to replace the missing guard but no such thing happened and hesitantly she stepped from the treeline. When nothing continued to happen she relaxed slightly and headed toward the gate, then tensed up as she entered below the portcullis, just waiting for the penny to drop.

Again, nothing happened, and she was free to enter the town completely unimpeded.

As she went deeper into town the reason why there was no guard soon became clear, the entire population of Lynthia had descended on the market and were throwing a full pitched many sided screaming match. Several dozen fights had broken out, magic and Skills being thrown freely and the already undermanned guard were on the verge of being overwhelmed by the furious levelers, none more furious than the merchants who looked ready to physically explode they were so red in the face with anger.

Lyra kept back and kept invisible and watched and listened carefully. There were a lot of accusations going around, a lot of incoherent confusion too as the logic of such a vast quantity of livestock and horses vanishing into thin air while leaving blood violently and liberally painted across their pens didn't quite square with any one idea that was being suggested. There was talk of some kind of monsters getting in, but the sheer numbers needed to eat so many in one night defied belief. There was talk of thieves too, but the violence with which the animals had died didn't fit, and why kill the horses when they were so much more valuable alive?

A man with large muscular arms and a leather apron suddenly clambered up on one of the market stalls and waved for attention. Lyra recognised him, It was the blacksmith from when Rain had fought Adlen.

"Calm yourselves! If you refuse to calm down then I will calm you into the paving with the back of my hand." The blacksmith's voice boomed out, as solid as planed oak, and the near riotous crowd turned to stare at him.

He scowled, not enjoying the attention, then caught himself and schooled his expression.

"Understandably some of you have questions-"

"No fucking shit! My horse, my best goddam horse is gone with just a big bloody red patch in the stall he was kept in!"

The blacksmith held up a hand. "You aren't the only one to have lost a horse, many-"

"All the horses! How?! How are all the horses gone!"

"And all my sheep! Do you know how hard it is to get needlewool sheep out here?"

Lyra let out a little shudder at that particular memory, seeing her brethren in wool disappear into Rain's jaws had been decidedly not good for her prey complex.

"Listen folks, there's more going on here than you know, there was, well, a number of things that happened last night, and we're not sure if it's all connected or simply a coincidence."

The crowd did not look in any way satisfied by the blacksmith's waffling lack of clarity and it was clear that he was starting to lose their attention. That is until a red headed Elf sprung up onto the stall beside him.

Lyra to her dismay found she knew this one too. It was the Elf that Rain had casually punted on top of a building.

"I found a cult!"

That brought back the crowd.

"Or rather, I found the remains of one. There was a cult in Lynthia, one doing things to people, I found people, so many damned people, like husks, all dried up and nothing left of them! And the cultists! All dead!"

"Yes, it is as Zack so... dramatically put, and more, two prisoners were set free, their cages were seemingly torn apart."

The crowd was murmuring now, and Lyra noticed a few people giving strange looks. If she had to guess there was a certain amount of awareness of that cult amongst a select few, it would be hard not to be the case with the number of people she had seen taken by the Succubus. Not every disappearance could be explained away as just yet another foolish outsider dying in the town's dungeon. She doubted they really knew what was being done however, if they did then they would have left town a long time ago, a Succubus was simply intolerable.

"The town council needs to answer for this," said Zack, waving his arms in the air, "There's no way that cult went unnoticed, and now their incompetence has cost us!"

The words left unsaid hung in the air above the crowd: 'It seems unlikely the Ranker didn't know.' But uttering such a thing out loud wasn't something anyone was willing to do, fear of the Ranker kept that particular statement unspoken.

The crowd stared at him, waiting for his point. He opened his mouth to speak-

"Hey, aren't you that Elf who got stuck on a roof and couldn't get down for half a day?"

Zack wobbled on the stall and flushed red, a match to his hair. The blacksmith reached out a hand and stabilised him.

"That was- I- I- was inspecting the roof! For storm damage!"

The crowd gave him a flat look and he coughed awkwardly into his fist.

"Th-that's not important right now, there's been more than livestock and horses slaughtered, it's people too caught up in this! We need to go after the one who did all of this! Before they do worse!"

Lyra waited with bated breath, this would be where the Elf named Rain as the culprit, she was sure of it. She could see it in his eyes. The scary monster, the out of towner, the unknown factor new to Lynthia, it was the emotional answer to an illogical injury. The mob would instantly latch on to the idea and then everything would quickly unravel. Zack had apparently held a grudge.

Not knowing quite what she was doing she loosed her invisibility and stepped forward.

"Were the dried up husks of these people in metal frames, with milking thingies attached to them?" she shouted.

Zack paused, set off balance. "It- it's y-you-"

The blacksmith caught Lyra's eye at the back of the crowd and furrowed his brow. "Why yes, they were, how did you know?"

Lyra steadied herself then spoke as loudly and as clearly as she could. Fully aware she was about to drop a lake of chilling water on the crowd.

"I know. I know because that's what a Succubus uses on their victims, all of this, from the cult to the livestock, the horses and your prisoners, all of it was a Succubus's doing!"

There was a moment of absolute pin-drop silence. Then everyone lost their minds.

Lyra darted away in the same motion as she activated her invisibility, dodging people as they shouted and bellowed and ran into each other trying to flee. Merchants scrabbled for what little of their merchandise they could carry in their arms and then full on sprinted from the market without hesitation. The blacksmith tried to call order but someone fell against the stall he was standing upon causing it to collapse and the sheep girl induced chaos ran on unimpeded.

It seemed that Rain might just have gotten away with it. If there was one thing that was going to completely push levelers onto the wrong track to follow it was a Succubus. The overriding fear levelers held of them removed basic rational simple questions like 'Do succubi normally disappear hundreds of animals?' Blaming everything on the existential terror came naturally. Not that she could blame them for doing so, the Succubus was just so- well, it was a real danger to people, and this way she got to both warn the innocentandprevent the town from forming a pitchfork mob and hunting after Rain while he slept and healed. She smiled happily, this had been a perfect success, skillfully threading the eye of a needle to achieve her goals. Now to return and-

She suddenly jerked to a halt as something snapped around her wrist.

She turned in confusion and was greeted by a charming Elven smile, perfectly coifed red hair, and a pair of violet spectacles.

"Hello sheepy. I would like to have a word with you."

Lyra looked at him, then down at the steel manacle chained to her wrist, and then back up.

"Uhm, would you like a nice bribe by any chance?"