Seizing of the witch (This will be on the exam)

A trip to a neighbouring Kingdom wasn’t something they could immediately embark on, not with the aftermath of Jane’s incident.

While Harow was forgiven for carrying all the journals straight into the palace, there were still hoops to jump through in getting the army to handle the evidence, talk things over with the vagrants who now had even more reason not to be found, and deal with the chimera, now that she was out in the open.

Rulio III and Harow’s testimony of the situation allowed for Jane to be overlooked for now and merely regarded as an “unusual syhee”, though the king was not too subtle in how his leeway was dependent on her ability to help Harow. In turn, he agreed with Maer and Humei that thus far the quartet of corrupted beings were choosing to be a far lesser evil than this mysterious Liev, who was – at the very least – busily peddling Malevolence unseen.

Nonetheless, arrangements and a wagon were eventually made, carrying Harow ever farther away with home, but not alone – only Humei deigned to remain a guest of Forness, coordinating with Idoy from afar, while the rest of the party chased the leads to Belzac.

All the while, Bao explicated, what with the others being surprised at the amount of vehemence he saved for hating the mysterious “Liev”.

“Last I saw him, he liked playing Good Samaritan, and was tricking people into getting sacrificed to a Malevolence cult, including us,” he darkly reflected. “And now he’s apparently been running my pals ragged as they chase down his little trinkets.”

“Hopefully we’ll find out something concrete about this man while we’re in Belzac Heart,” Harow said, looking out the window to see the towering spires of Lissandra’s old home. “Does your Trudy know we’re expecting her?”

“Well, she’s expecting me, at least,” Bao answered. “I mean, apparently, the University staff have been tearing their hair out trying to root her out. I don’t think she’s really open to meeting anyone else at this time.”

“Is there anything we can do to gain her trust?” Maer asked.

A clear suggestion flashed across Bao’s face, which he quickly silenced with an awkward cough. “I think she’d just get angrier after if you do what I’d do…”

The swordsman remained reticent after that, choosing not to betray his trust, which Harow would simply have to accept, though he found it strange that he still kept Jane at arm’s length. Shouldn’t they be allies…?

These sorts of ruminations kept Harow busy until the wagon wheeled itself into a courtyard, and the quartet stepped out into the ghost town that was the University of Belzac Heart, where the headmaster greeted the Beacon of the Kingdoms with as much gladhanding as they could muster.

“Sir Harow, it is a huge honor to have you here with us,” a well-fed man simpered as he latched onto the warrior’s hand. “I’m sure with you around, you’ll finally help us rid this campus and city of the Malevolence here!”

A flick of his eyes to the side showed Maer was doing the smart thing and quickly shepherding Bao and Jane away, helped by a few other professors who were blanching at the boasting. It seemed, for now, Harow’s job was to be a distraction.

“The pleasure is all mine, sir…?” Harow trod the awkward tightrope of practiced courtesty, all his experience from unwanted parties coming back to him.

“Headmaster Trint; I assure you, I’m just a humble servant of Belzac. That Archhag has been a thorn in our side for too long – investigating without my permission and damaging the University’s reputation! The sooner you exterminate her, the better!”

Well, Trint’s concerns weren’t entirely without merit – a university did live and die on its reputation. Nonetheless, he seemed to want sledgehammer solutions to subtle problems.

“Well, we'd better begin right now,” Harow suggested, as pleasantly as he could. “I heard the Archhag wound up uncovering someone peddling Malevolence, which your sterling group captured? Have you uncovered anything from her?

Elsewhere, a gathering of professors and students at an understaffed cafe listened to Bao, who had asked the same question.

One of the students, who introduced herself as Zelfie, looked somewhat despondent. “Tessy had it rough. From what I hear, she lost her whole family in the war, so she says she started working with this Liev to try and control Malevolence, just to get some control over her life. I mean, research in itself isn’t wrong, but…”

“Oh, don’t be so upset.” Her compatriot, one Constance, sniffed derisively. “Buying into that claptrap is one thing; it’s quite another to use it against you. You were lucky that Archhag had some morals, even if she stole it all afterwards.”

“But that amount of Malevolence should be easy to detect, especially if she’s contending with the University,” Maer wondered, perplexed.

One of the professors, Yardham, shrugged helplessly. “I hate to say it, but she’s been schooling us in that regard. Perhaps her mastery over the material is letting her suppress its presence? Both I, the rest of the faculty, and various students have tried searching this city, but we haven’t been able to corner her. Every time she drops by, she always singles us out instead.”

“What does she do?”

Zelfie gave an uncertain laugh. “She makes us pay for dinner.”

The priestess scrunched up her face in distaste. “I suppose there are worse things to extort out of you, though I’ll be making sure she pays you back.”

Jane hummed, before blinking in confusion. “Wait, hold up, are we looking for Trudy or Liev?”

“Trudy, because she might help us find Liev,” Maer was quick to answer.

“Still, I think this tells me that it’d be best you just let me meet her first,” Bao nervously advised, rubbing the back of his neck. “I’m getting the impression from everyone here that you guys wanna kick her butt more than anything.”

“She can’t stay underground any longer, either,” Maer warned. “Liev’s our true enemy, so we can’t have her causing more problems.”

“Look,” Bao interjected, hands outstretched, I’ll try to reach out to her first, alright? Jane can listen in – just, can we not have everyone breathing down her neck without a peace offering?”

“What, so if we had said peace offering, she’d one-eighty?” Jane scoffed. “What’d she fall for?”

“I don’t think I should say…” Bao uneasily answered, looking away as more eyes began staring him down. “I mean, it’d be really embarrassing if I told you all–”

“–Her weakness is beer,” Harow blandly repeated, hours later, in the dead of night, while holding an especially large glass bottle of lager in his hands. The premium material only further highlighted how much money the group had to pool together to buy it, even after they managed to convince Trint to pitch in, with the Beacon couching it as “bait”. Well, not that he was wrong.

“Well, alcohol in general, to be precise,” Jane corrected, since Bao was too busy squatting on the ground with his hands in his face. “Relaxing is apparently her great vice.”

Night had fallen, allowing the streets of the city to be cleared out and provide some privacy. With only cobblestone lit by orange lamplight, Harow insisted on taking charge of the next meeting, now that he was armed with their secret weapon. It was apparently enough that Bao and Jane reacted in surprise when Trudy apparently mentally replied that she would be falling for the trap, if only out of amusement.

Harow grimaced at an unbidden memory of an old friend. If Jane had Sylvat’s body, and Bao had Yulien’s, then the pattern suggested…

“I…knew a spiritualist from this university. Lissandra. She was a bit of a wine aficionado,” he said, surreptitiously hunting for any reaction from the two.

Jane merely looked at him with some confusion. “That’s nice?”

Nothing, then. Harow sighed, lips pursing tightly as he looked askance into the dark.

“Never mind.”

Bao jerked, looking up with some surprise, before turning around. “Trudy?”

For a woman purportedly able to hide her presence, the sudden spike in Malevolence that Harow felt to his very bones painted a very different picture. Wind swirled momentarily in a sharp and cold breeze, before the gusts started catching twisting violet streams emanating from thin air so that the street before Harow became filled with a twisting vortex that terminated with the appearance of a woman in a black dress, who held out a hand so that the Malevolence compressed itself into a sphere. With the twitch of an outstretched finger, it came to hover next to her shoulder.

Harow clenched his jaw. He knew it. Lissandra’s face, but in all the wrong ways. A flashiness Lissandra would never indulge in, with her self-assured ease. Her hair, black as he remembered – but too much so, seeming nearly invisible in the dark. So alike, so unlike, and – a thought he suppressed as his hands tightened – no hope of remembering.

They had all died that day. What had the Menace done to them?

Behind him, Bao spluttered and laughed in disbelief.

“Dude, when did you get so extra?”

Jane hummed. “She wasn’t always?”

“She was kind of a dork, honestly.”