House of Amarin

When the next day arrived, Lia visited the fairies only in the evening. All of them were obediently sitting in their cells, and when she came down, Melody was the one to speak up first.

"Is it… over?"

"It is." She replied, walking to her cell's door, dragging a stool over, and sitting down leisurely. "But we can't be sure there are no more left in the jungle, hiding."

"Eeek!" Many of them shrieked, not wanting to leave their cells even if the door was left wide open.

"We have a situation on our hands!" Lia continued, raising her voice, looking over the fairies with an authoritative glance. "You all have two options! First is you are going to work for ME! You will be given a bracelet that you can't take off, and you will act as my scouts!"

"Nooooo!" They answered simultaneously.

"Okay, then the second option it is!" She shrugged, standing up, letting herself be surrounded by blue flames, freezing the ground before the cells and allowing it to creep towards their feet. "Die."

Some fairies simply fainted when hearing her words, while the others looked on, baffled and horror-struck. Melody watched as Lia stretched out her flames-covered hand, illuminating the dungeon in a blue light as if they were stuck in the underworld.

"First, first! We will do the first!" Melody wailed, falling to her butt, trying to scramble back towards the wall.

"Nope." Lia answered coldly, "You have already chosen death!"

"No, we did not! We didn't hear the second option! It does not count! It does noooooot!"

"If you accept the first one, you can't back out anymore!" Lia sneered, displaying an evil look like she was worse than the Undead. "Betray me, and you will burst into flames!"

"We won't, we won't!" Melody and the others cried, frightened to the bone, some even sitting in their own pee.

"I will believe you for the last time." She replied after a long silence, acting as if she was thinking it over, secretly happy with the results. She didn't want to hurt them, not even if they were chaotic and somewhat evil in nature. The Undead transformed them, and she believed they could change once the ancient threat had been resolved for good.

"We will be good, good to you, yes? Yes?" Melody nodded like a chicken pecking the ground, prompting her friends to follow suit.

"Good? We will see that." Lia smiled, dispelling her blue flames and summoning a box full of the bracelets, putting them on the fairies, one by one, explaining their functions to them. "Your role will be simple. You are to patrol the jungle, and if you find an Undead, follow him or her unseen, undetected while notifying us! We will come and kill the bastard!"

"We don't need to… fight?" Melody asked, getting braver now that they only had to locate them.

"No, you don't. You just go and play your new hide and seek with them! Now it will be you who do the seeking and them the hiding!"

"Um! Yes, yes!" Many of them answered, easily swayed by the notion that it would be a 'game.'

"Very good! You can go!" She waved her hand, surprising the fairies, and in the end, she had to escort them out of the fortress, shooing them away into the jungle. "What a weird bunch…" She sighed, opening her bracelet, revealing the surrounding area, and watching the little dots representing the fairies slowly disappear as they left her zone of detection.

"Do you think this was a good idea?" Aurora asked, walking up to her sister, leaning against the battlement, watching the last rays of the sun dissipate over the horizon. "They are untrustworthy."

"I know, but I think I frightened them enough to keep them in line! They are a bit simple, and you heard what everyone said… they are incorruptible."

"I wouldn't believe it that readily!"

"I am willing to take that risk!" Lia shrugged, shaking her head, turning back, watching the Misfits still at work, repairing the fortress and cleaning the battlefield as the many undead bodies were still in the middle of being thrown into giant bonfires.

"I'm not criticizing you for it." Aurora smiled as she wrote, gently hugging her sister, who looked like she had grown up already. "What is up for us next?"

"We are going to have to cover a pretty big territory, so we are to split up!" She explained, calling up the region's map from her memory and displaying it via her bracelet. "There are a dozen or so kingdoms, city-states, and we have to investigate all of them! Rinzen will visit two in the north, affiliated with the Berisons, while I am sending Ceiline to those close to the Nerifit's borders. The rest will be up to the rest of the leaders to choose!"

"I think I will head south, towards the Marduks' borders," Aurora said after studying the map. "What about you?"

"I am going towards Honu." She pointed at the eastern side of the map, "They had been hit hard, and there is great turmoil around the border regions."

"Should I go with you?"

"I want the leaders to act alone. It is a lesson I remember from the Silly Fox!" Lia smiled, explaining, "We must grow up and use our skills! Relying on our own judgment! So this will be a test, the same for me! Will have to see it for myself and make a decision."

"You have grown up…" Aurora wrote, rubbing her head with great care, "You are acting more and more like your mother!"

"Our mother!" She immediately corrected her, "Speaking of her, I think she already left to raise Master Rangi up… after all that happened, we need more Ascendri."

"That is still a too-far-away goal for us to worry about!"

"It is. For starters, I don't know when I will reach the 6th Tier!" She groaned, rubbing her temple, "It feels so arbitrary…"

"Not everything is about having more mana." Aurora smiled, opening her arms wildly, "It will come to us one way or another! No, Amarin got stuck at the 5th Tier indefinitely!"

"I'm not afraid of that!" Lia winked at her sister confidently, "I'm just impatient, teehee!"

…
….
…..

When the situation was resolved, and Keily was tasked with governing and leading the fortress while the others were away, Lia hopped on a carriage with Lorin and Louise and set out to travel eastward. On the back of their carriage laid multiple enchanted boxes, bringing along resources and aid for those who would be in need.

Back at the fortress, the bulk of the Misfits were on standby, ready to dispatch the moment one of the leaders sent back a request. They were gifted multiple airships from the House of Marduk and could now deploy more rapidly than ever before. It didn't take long to use them as the fairies did send back a notice of discovered Undead bodies, still lingering around, looking dazed and unresponsive. Keily quickly took to the second-in-command role, dispatching groups and overseeing their cleansing.

"Why aren't we using one of the ships?" Louise asked, sitting between Lia and Lorin while their carriage was rocking along a path, heading along a canyon-like route where all the surface was covered by vine-like plants. Going by the map, they will soon reach a river and take a ferry from there, bringing them down to Cathalica.

"Because we want to arrive as adventurers," Lia said with a smile, leaning back, enjoying the change of pace. "I don't want them to know anything about why we are there! Lorin will act as a merchant-"

"I am a merchant." He cut in with a smile.

"Weren't you an alchemist?" She countered with a grin.

"That too! I have many faces, girl!"

"Well, you will have opportunities to display some of it!" Lia joked before continuing, "The city of Cathalica is a city-state and a commercial hub. It is the first stop before entering or after leaving the territory of the House of Honu!"

"How bad is it?" Louise asked, going a bit more serious, waiting for Lia's answer.

"Bad." She bit her lower lip. "The city is built on the bank of the Coluna River that flows through here, and the Undead came from it."

"Shouldn't we brought Koa along?"

"This is not the only place with a body of water that needs her!" Lia immediately replied, then she pointed at Lorin with a grin, "Plus, we have a water mage!"

"I am not as proficient as Lady Koadriana," Lorin smiled reassuringly, "But I am still someone who also reached the 5th Tier! I am from the Academy, after all!"

"The city was hit hard… they had walls facing the river, but it was not as reinforced as their eastern gates." Lia continued, "Some of it collapsed into the river, and many people were killed, washed away… There is a great chance that the people who disappeared in the chaos, later reappear as brainwashed or outright possessed! Trying to infiltrate and cause trouble later on..."

"Will we…" Louise gulped, already thinking that the city may very well be put to death.

"It is a possibility. That is why I chose it… I want to see it for myself and make the decision."

"..."

"..."

The silence that fell onto the group was heavier than Louise ever thought possible. It was weighing on her soul, but it was something that was unavoidable. She thought about asking how many people were living in Cathalica, but ultimately, she decided it was better not to know. Especially if Lia comes to the decision, the city must be purged.

"The city itself is or was governed by a family going by the name of Tzikachi." Lia spoke up, breaking the silence, continuing to explain what she learned about their destination, "The family is supposedly very close to some middle-sized branches in the House of Honu and has been in power for the past 700 years. They are rooted in tradition of this region and by what I read, they worship fire."

"What do you mean?" Lorin asked as worshipping things were not foreign, but the most widely spread customs were about honoring the ancients and praying for the Ascendri Heroes of the Dark Ages, asking their souls to protect them even after their death. Worshipping others, old gods, or beasts was frowned upon and often came under suspicion to be under the sovereignty of the Undead.

"They worship fire." Lia repeated, "They think of it as the manifestation of a God, here to save the world from the Undead. Well, this gave them a great disposition against Undead so there was little to no interference from the Honus in stopping it. Not that it ever spread far… but in the city fire was and is sacred."

"Weird," Louise murmured but could see why, especially after what happened recently.

"What I wanted to say is that we don't know if the leading family is still there or did they perished. They had one or two Tier 4 fire mages, so they could have put up a fight, along with the regular army. What we know is that when the Honu's army entered the sub-realm at the river's source and killed the Intelligent Variants in there, the horde here also dispersed."

"Are we expecting a destroyed city?" Lorin asked with a heavy heart.

"Sadly, yes. I was told this place must be a priority to visit first. The House of Honu has its hands full in its own territory; it falls to us to reestablish order here! Whatever it takes, got it?"

"Yes." They answered, nodding heavily.

"I just hope putting them under quarantine will be enough…" Lia murmured, closing her mismatched eyes, her face betraying her nervousness momentarily. She knew that around 200,000 lives depended on her now. Will she become their executioner or their jailer? It would come to light in the following days.