Return to Reilly

Yuna, Lena, Sarah, Victoria, and Maxim were all sitting together on the train to Reilly, which was a few stops north of Rimnan on the line running to Chanan, heading away from the capital itself. Sarah asked Lena and Victoria, “So what should we expect when we get to Reilly?”

“We’ll have to meet up with the town mayor,” Lena replied. “He’s actually a nobleman, believe it or not. I think he’s a Baron, the same rank as your family, Sarah.”

“Oh, really? I’m surprised a nobleman got into electoral politics.”

“Me too. I guess from what I’ve heard, he was really invested in the local community, and he was dissatisfied with the former mayor’s leadership, so he won the seat two years ago. Anyway, we’ll meet with him, since he’s the one offering reward money for the monster hunters who kill these wolves. It’s four hundred pounds per wolf, and eight hundred pounds for one of the Giant Wolves.”

Yuna, curious and also somewhat terrified, asked, “Giant Wolves?”

“It’s basically a bigger version of the monster wolves that are hunting livestock and pets on the town’s farms,” Victoria replied. “These bastards are a good four times larger than a normal wolf, and they’ve even killed a few people who tried to defend their animals from harm. The normal monster wolves tend to run away when people shoot at them with guns or use magic against them, but these ones aren’t afraid at all. These motherfuckers may also have unusual abilities, but those abilities tend to vary depending on what people who’ve seen them say.”

Sarah, to clarify as to what she, Yuna, and Maxim should look out for, then asked, “How will we know the difference between a normal wolf and a monster wolf?”

“The monster wolves have bright red eyes,” Victoria further explained. “They also have longer tongues they can use to grab onto things, as well as fur that’s all-black rather than the usual gray. They’ve run into actual wolves before and they usually rip them to shreds. Same with dogs. The shit they do to them is terrifying. Me and Lena were sent some pictures people took of the aftermath of monster wolf attacks.”

“They’re right here,” Lena replied, pulling out a set of photographs from her bag. “I was given six of these by Baron Rudolph Reiss, the mayor of the town. Five of them are of attacks on animals, and one of them is of an attack on a person. Be warned, they’re pretty graphic.”

Yuna, Sarah, and Maxim all passed the pictures among themselves. All three of them expressed slight disgust at what they were seeing, especially when they got to the sixth picture. Sarah passed the sixth picture to Maxim and told him, “This one’s all sorts of messed up.”

“How so?” Maxim then looked at the sixth picture and saw that it was of a man who had been ripped in half at the waist, his eyes still open and his facial expression distorted in a state of fear. He was clearly terrified of whatever had been chasing him before he had been attacked and killed, and the shock on his face had remained frozen in place, almost as if a snapshot of his final moments remained on his body. “Holy shit… He got fucking ripped right in half…”

“I warned you,” Lena replied as she took the pictures back. “This is what we’re up against. I want you three to be careful and do not leave our sight under any circumstances. We’re about to do a very dangerous hunt.”

Maxim once again thought to the future, Lena’s canonical death playing out in his head over and over again as he wondered if he would even be able to stop it, much less if he wanted to given what happened once Paulo had been saved. His time to make a decision was rapidly decreasing with every passing mile on the railroad to Reilly. Putting on a face of confident anticipation to ensure no one else figured out what he was thinking about, he said to Lena and Victoria, “Maybe I could see if my powers can be used offensively. How dangerous is a regular monster wolf anyway?”

“Be careful,” Lena advised him. “I don’t want you running off by yourself to go fight monsters when we don’t even know the full extent of your powers.”

“That’s a fair point. I hadn’t considered that.”

“Look,” Victoria then told him. “I know you want to get in on the action, guys, but you may want to step back and let us take care of this, especially if we come across a Giant Wolf. Those bastards take skill to defeat.”

“Understood,” Sarah nodded. “We’ll hang back.”

Maxim thought to himself how things would probably proceed, at least based on canon. In the original story, Kana was secretly trailing the group, allowing her to swoop in and save them after Lena’s death. He had assumed that Kana would still be doing the same here.

However, he had assumed wrong.

…

Instead of trailing behind the group, Kana had boarded a totally different train heading into Chanan, aiming to rescue Serena by herself. After the hour-long train ride to the city, she got off inside Chanan Central station and began to walk towards the exit, determined and ignoring everyone and everything around her. A man saw he and tried to offer her a book he had been handing out to passers-by, telling her, “Hey there, you should buy my boo-“

“Not interested,” she coldly replied to him as she walked past.

Then, a woman saw her as she walked up the giant ramp to the main entrance and exit and asked her, “Excuse me, can you tell me where th-?”

“No,” Kana replied to her, brushing her question about directions off. “I can’t help you.”

When she got out onto the street, she turned her head to her right and saw an entrance to the Chanan Underground Railway, the city’s subway system that had been built just a few decades prior. She ran to the entrance and raced down the stairs, bumping into a man who yelled at her, “Hey, watch where you’re going, asshole!”

Kana ignored him as she walked down to the platform level and paid at the gate with a single coin. Just as she walked through, a train pulled up. As soon as the doors opened, she ran inside and secured a seat, checking the route map that had been painted on the ceiling of the subway car she found herself in. She sighed and said to herself, “Get off in three stops and switch trains… Get off in three stops and switch trains…”

As the train began to move, she turned her head and saw that two men had gotten on board at the same time as her. Both men were dressed in normal attire, but one of them had a yellow shining sun necklace that made Kana suspicious. The two men saw her looking at them and began to whisper among themselves, occasionally turning to look at Kana as the train carried on along its route. When it stopped, both men hopped out of the car and ran to another car, with Kana close on their tail. This time, Kana stood instead of sitting, and the three of them were the only people in the car.

As the train moved again, both men looked at each other and nodded, putting their hands together for a few seconds before they vanished from view. Kana muttered, “Shit, I can’t see them now…” However, their cloaking spell had no effect on any sounds they made, and when the doors opened at the next stop, Kana could hear them walk out. She closed her eyes for a few seconds and then opened them, her sclera changing colors to a rather intense violet as she walked out of the train and walked two cars behind her to the very end of the train. When she entered the car, she heard both men get up, but before they could exit, the train doors closed and it began to move down the track again.

The spell she had silently cast allowed her to temporarily see beyond what was normally possible and look at things that existed on a different plane of vision, albeit tiring her out if she did it for too long due to how taxing the spell was on her mind and body. This included people who had cast invisibility spells, which was also itself a rather taxing spell if done for too long. Sure enough, both men became visible again, startling the other four passengers in the end car. One of the other passengers yelled out, “Holy fuck, how did that happen?!”

Both men got up from their seats and told Kana, “You can’t run from us forever, you know.”

“I’m not running from you at all,” she sternly told them as she blinked and rubbed her eyes. “I’m running towards you, if anything.” She then opened them fully again and told the other passengers, “You guys might want to stay away from me and these two. Things are about to get a little messy here.”

Both men produced knives from their shirt sleeves, causing one of the other passengers, a woman, to yell, “They have knives! What the Hell are you guys doing?!”

“Don’t get involved if you value your life,” said one of the two suspicious men to her. “This is between us and Kana Demas.” Both men then charged at Kana, who immediately pulled out a knife of her own from her jacket and counterattacked. When one of the men tried to stab Kana in the abdomen, she deflected the attack with her left hand before managing to slash the man across the chest with her own knife. This man yelled out, “Agh, fuck!”

The other man called out, “You bitch!” Before he could stab Kana, however, she ducked down and then grabbed his free arm, pulling him down to the ground and making him strike a metal pole in the process, knocking him out. Finally, the first man charged again at Kana, who proceeded to dodge the attack by jumping up onto a seat and running past him before kicking him in the chest when she jumped off. This knocked the knife right out of his hand just as the train came to a stop, the stop she needed to get off on.

The other passengers, having been left stunned by what had just happened, remained still as Kana ran out of the train and hid her knife away, leaving the two men bloodied and bruised but alive. The two men were clearly from the Order of the Shining Light based on the necklace one of them had and the fact they both knew her by name. She walked down a flight of stairs to the next train she had to board, which took a slightly deeper set of tunnels than the first one, and ran aboard just before the doors shut. She took a deep breath and said to herself as she sat down in a seat, “They must know I’m coming. Good… I’ll show them all what I’ve been doing since I left.”

…

Unaware of what was happening in Chanan, Lena and the others had gotten off at the Reilly train station and walked right to the town hall a few blocks down the road. As they walked up the steps, Yuna said to the others, “I haven’t been back in this town in six years, not since the… The Incident at Reilly.”

“That’s why we’re here together,” Maxim pointed out. “I know this place brings up bad memories for you, Yuna, but this is something we have to do.”

“He’s right,” Lena nodded. “Let’s head on in and meet with the mayor.”

The town hall was rather small, more akin to a larger house if anything, and as the five of them walked in, they immediately crowded the small lobby. The woman at the front desk looked up at the group and asked them, “Hello there. What brings you to Town Hall?”

“We’re here to meet with the Mayor,” Lena replied as she pulled out a small identification card that all nobles were issued. “I sent a letter to him regarding his request for monster hunters to assist with an infestation.”

The clerk read the card and immediately recognized the name. “Your Grace, are you really one of the monster hunters Baron Reiss hired?”

“I am,” she nodded. “These people with me are my friends. We intend on hunting down as many of these monster wolves as possible.”

“I’ll let Baron Reiss know you’re here.” The clerk then got up and walked to the stairs to the second floor to get the attention of the mayor.

As they waited, Yuna looked at a wall and noticed a rather large plaque with a variety of names listed on it. She shuddered as she read the names, realizing she recognized some of them and also knew the date that had been stamped on it. Sarah also saw the plaque and patted Yuna on the shoulder, telling her, “It’s okay. We’re here.”

Victoria, curious, turned to the same plaque and quickly realized what it was for. “Wait, is that… It is…”

“A memorial plaque for the Incident at Reilly,” Maxim said as he began to silently read the names on it. “And the names of everyone who was killed… Including Yuna’s uncle and his family.”

“I haven’t been back here in so long,” Yuna remarked. “I don’t even keep up with anything going on here anymore. Is there even still a fair?”

“There is,” Victoria nodded. “They brought it back a year after the Incident at Reilly. There’s apparently a larger memorial at the fairgrounds. Why do you ask? Do you wanna go see it?”

“I don’t know if I could bring myself to even go near the fairgrounds,” she admitted with a sigh. “It brings back too many bad memories, but we may have to go back.”

Then, the mayor of the town himself, Rudolph Reiss, walked down the stairs. Upon seeing Lena, he smiled and extended his hand to her for a handshake. “Good afternoon, Your Grace. I’m glad you could make it out here.”

“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Baron Reiss,” Lena replied with a smile as she shook his hand. “I’m keenly interested in the infestation of monster wolves around Reilly, and I would love to help you take care of it.”

“Thank you for stepping up,” he replied. “We’ve had quite a few monster hunters around here already, but it seems like every time they kill a bunch, they somehow return. Maybe you and your friends can solve the problem once and for all.”

“We will certainly try.”

Rudolph then noticed Yuna and Sarah among Lena’s friends, recognizing them as both being part of noble families. “I see you’ve made friends with members of the Miller and Grisha families. How fitting.”

“This is actually Yuna’s first visit to Reilly since… Well…”

“I see,” Rudolph nodded. He turned to Yuna and told her, “I was there at the fair as well on that day. I know several people from the Miller family were among those who passed away, and I’m terribly sorry for your loss, Miss Miller.”

“Thank you,” Yuna replied, calming herself down with a deep breath. “It was hard on all of us. Truth be told, I never thought I’d come back to Reilly after what happened. There are too many bad memories associated with this place, but I’m here to help my friends.”

“Excellent. Is Duchess Vale teaching you and Miss Grisha well in the art of hunting monsters with magic?”

“Sort of,” Lena replied to him. “Right now, they’re just observing. Between the two of them, Sarah is probably the most likely to do it.”

“You bet I am,” she replied. “I’ve been doing a lot of reading ever since I became friends with Lena earlier this month. Maybe I’ll get to actually do something this time instead of standing on the sidelines.”

“Calm down there, Sarah,” Victoria warned her with a chuckle. “Don’t go acting all confident when you’ve never done this before.”

Rudolph laughed, finding the interaction funny. He then turned to Maxim and asked Lena, “And who is this young man with you?”

“I’m Maxim Ranka,” he replied to him, shaking his hand. “I’m just a commoner, but I’m also a student at Rimnan Castle School. Recently, I found out that I have magical abilities, so I’m hoping to use them tonight in any way I can.”

“Very good, very good,” Rudolph nodded. “I used to be a monster hunter myself when I was younger. Alas, life got in the way, and being the mayor of Reilly eats up a lot of my time. That said, if push comes to shove, I can still put up a Hell of a fight. Now, let’s head upstairs so I can give you guys a rundown…”

As the gang all walked upstairs to Rudolph’s personal office, Yuna began to think back to that fateful day six years ago when everything in the Town of Reilly changed. As she did, she began to recall how and why she had met Kana, having previously buried the memories due to the trauma associated with them. She also thought about Kana’s one-woman mission to rescue Serena in Chanan, hoping that she would pull through and not only survive, but rescue Serena alive.