Chương 40: Back at Silvercreek

The experience of walking through a completely empty village was just as eerie as the last time, but this time the signs of struggle were more obvious than in the previous village. Some of the houses showed clear battle damage: claw marks on the walls, shattered windows, and busted-down doors. There was blood on the ground, too. Luca looked around and let out a long breath. His usually jolly, confident demeanor had disappeared the moment they realized the village was empty.

"Wow… that's… wow." Jasper slowed his steps, then crouched to inspect the dried puddle of blood.

"Very concerning." Evan watched Jasper expectantly.

"Can you tell anything from this blood?" Jasper closed his eyes in concentration, but then he shook his head.

"Unfortunately not. I have a tracking power that works with bodily fluids like blood, but this blood is too old." He stood back up and looked around, still frowning.

"Let's search the houses. I might be able to piece something together from the objects the villagers left behind." Jasper picked one of the more damaged houses first. Both the door and the windows had been destroyed, covering the floor inside with wooden splinters and glass shards. Even one of the outer walls had caved in, as if someone had tried to burst through it headfirst. Jasper stepped inside and let his gaze wander over the scene of chaos.

He slowly walked around the main room, a living room with a kitchen, occasionally stopping in front of random household objects like spatulas or couch pillows. He gently placed his palm over the object and closed his eyes for a few seconds before moving on to the next target. Evan, Oliver, and Luca waited by the door. Nobody spoke. Evan didn't want to disturb Jasper's concentration because he was clearly getting something from touching those objects, although he hadn't said a single word of explanation yet.

After thoroughly combing through the first house, Jasper moved on to the next and then to a third, repeating the process of touching object after object. The rest of the group tagged along in silence, watching him work, unable to contribute anything but guarding the surroundings so Jasper could use his skill in peace.

Finally, after searching four houses, the village inn, and the town hall, Jasper sat down on a low bench in front of the town hall, wiped sweat from his brow, and said, "Okay, I think I have a pretty good idea about what has happened here now."

"You do? Just from touching random junk?" Luca said, surprised.

"It's one of my more powerful skills. I can extract memory fragments of an object's owner by touching it." Oliver's eyes went wide.

"Really? That's amazing."

"It produces a lot of noise," Jasper explained.

"The memory fragment is very short and can be from any moment in time since the object had been in the possession of the owner. Recent memories show up more commonly, but I still get a lot of useless memories of people cooking dinner or petting their cat or tying their shoes. That's why I had to touch so many objects. More puzzle pieces to put together a full image."

"You got memories from the attack on the village from those objects?" Evan asked.

"Plenty, yes. Many of them were very… chaotic. People's memories don't work very well when they panic, so I mostly get scrambled images and confusing noises from those moments."

"Better than nothing. So what did happen during the attack?" Evan said.

"From what I could gather, the village was attacked by a group of three mana users. The villagers called them 'The Beasts', and they seemed to be aware that they had already attacked other villages and that this one might be next. I found memories from a meeting in the town hall where they discussed possible countermeasures to protect themselves."

"That explains why there're more signs of fighting here. If they had been warned, they probably set up defenses and could put up more of a fight, compared to the other villages, that were caught off guard," Evan said.

"The Beasts? Who are they? Are they well known?" Oliver asked.

"I wouldn't say well known," Jasper said.

"But I've heard of them before. Three mana users with animal affinities. One Rat, one Spider, and I think the third one had a Bear Affinity. Low-level criminals who had a couple of run-ins with the Guardians in Stormhaven over the years." Evan rubbed his chin.

"That's strange. A couple of city thugs attacking and abducting villagers in the Rainwilds?"

"I assume they didn't act on their own accord. Someone else probably hired them to abduct the villagers. Who? Or why? I have no idea, and neither had the villagers here," Jasper said.

"Have you found out how they managed to abduct so many people at once?" Jasper's face darkened.

"One of them, the Spider, has a skill to wrap people in a paralyzing cocoon. They immobilized them and loaded them all aboard a cart." You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

"And took them where?"

"I wish I knew, but I found nothing inside the memories that could help us. I discovered something else, though."

"What?" Evan asked.

"Their next target."

"The next village they plan to attack?"

"Yes. A short conversation between the Spider and the Rat while they loaded the paralyzed passengers onto their cart. They talked about a village called Silvercreek." Oliver blanched and stared at Jasper wide-eyed.

"Silvercreek? Are you certain?"

"Yes. That's what they said. I can't say for sure how old those memories were, though. Maybe Silvercreek is their next target, and we have time to warn the villagers there, or maybe they've already been there. In either case, we should—hey, Oliver, where are you going?" Oliver had turned on his heel and started running.

"Silvercreek is his hometown," Evan explained before running after Oliver. Jasper and Luca followed close behind.

"Well, shit," Luca said, trying to catch up.

"But what's the plan here? Does he want to sprint all the way there?" Oliver did not sprint all the way to Silvercreek. He slowed down eventually, allowing the rest of the group to catch up with him, but he insisted they make haste. No more stopping to fight low-level monsters along the wayside, no lazy evenings inside Jasper's cottage. They walked at the fastest pace they could maintain until nightfall, when Jasper insisted they needed to rest before continuing their journey in the morning.

Oliver was unhappy about the decision. He wanted to continue their journey in the darkness. Evan put a hand on his shoulder and gently directed him into Jasper's tent.

"I understand why you want to get there as fast as possible," he said calmly, "but if these Beasts are really going to attack Silvercreek, we need to be well rested when we get there." Because one thing was clear: If Silvercreek was the next target, the plan to stay back and observe—to only gather information and not fight—was going out the window. The silhouette of Silvercreek appeared in the distance one and a half days after they'd left the village behind.

Half-veiled by the morning fog, it was completely quiet, not a soul in sight, and for a terrible moment Evan feared the worst. One glance at Oliver told him he was thinking the same. They crossed the last half mile that separated them from the village border as fast as they could. Relief came when Reynold, the innkeeper, appeared from the fog, carrying a wooden crate in his arms. He smiled when he spotted Evan and Oliver.

"Hello strangers. Glad to see you back so soon. I thought you would stay in Stormhaven for a while." Evan was so happy they hadn't come too late he almost hugged Reynold, as sweaty and out of breath as he was, if not for the large crate between them.

"Reynold, it's so good to see you. Are you well?"

"I am. And you? Did you have safe travels? There are some concerning rumors going around. Villages getting attacked, people getting abducted. I don't think the roads are very safe right now. Although mana users like you can probably defend yourselves."

"We know about the attacks," Oliver said.

"That's why we're here. We need to talk to Mayor Sedius." Reynold's eyes wandered over their concerned faces, lingering on Jasper and his iron guild badge.

"You're from the Guardian Guild," Reynold said, pointing at the badge pinned to Jasper's leather tunic.

"Are you here on an official Guardian mission? We and the mayor of the other villages have been writing to the guild leaders in Stormhaven for weeks, but we got no answer."

"I'm afraid your plea for help got lost in the upheaval brought on by a political change within the Guardian Guild. I'm with the guild, but here on my own accord, and I'm afraid I'm not much of a defender. My area of expertise is tracking and investigating, which is how we found out your village is going to be the next target." Reynold gasped.

"Oh my. The Beasts are coming here? When?"

"We don't know. Which is why we need to talk to the mayor right now," Oliver said urgently.

"Do you know where he is, Reynold?"

"I haven't seen him out and about yet. He's not an early riser, so probably still at home, in his bed."

"Alright, we'll go there." Oliver rushed past him, and Jasper and Luca stayed on his heels. Reynold looked after them, face scared, holding on to his wooden crate as if it were a lifebuoy.

"What should I do?"

"Can you fight?" Evan asked.

"No, not really."

"Then hide. At the first sign of trouble, you hide." Reynold looked at him for a moment, then nodded.

"Okay." Evan gave Reynold something he hoped looked like an encouraging smile before hurrying to catch up with the rest of his team. Mayor Sedius's house was one of the few two-story buildings in Silvercreek. Oliver was already knocking at the door, when Evan got there. Actually, he was hammering against it with both fists, as if he was ready to break it down if no one opened very soon.

"Mayor! Mayor Sedius. You need to come out! Mayor!" The door opened just a crack, and a grumpy-looking man stuck his head out.

"What?" he snapped.

"Oh, one of the Detreyo kids, aren't you?"

"Oliver. I'm Oliver Detreyo."

"What do you want?" he said grumpily, opening the door a little wider. He was wearing a knee-length sleep shirt, and his hair was ruffled, sticking up at the back, as if he'd just crawled out of bed. He was pretty chubby, but if Evan mentally removed the saggy cheeks and the double chin, Mayor Sedius looked a lot like his son Crispin. It made Evan instantly wary of the man.

Occasionally good people got cursed with really bad kids, but from Evan's experience the apple rarely fell far from the tree, and pricks like Crispin usually were the way they were because their parents had raised them that way.

"We're here to warn you. The Beasts are coming," Oliver said, still a little out of breath from running into the village.

"They're coming to Silvercreek." As if to prove Evan's suspicion right, the mayor rolled his eyes.

"Boy, do you have any idea how early it is. I'm not in the mood for this nonsense. Go home and do your chores instead of this ridiculous fear mongering." He was about to close the door in Oliver's face when Jasper stepped in. He quickly put his foot in the doorframe, blocking the mayor from closing the door.

"Sir, I really think you should listen to Oliver." Sedius glared at Jasper.

"And you are?"

"Jasper Thon, rank 8, iron member of the Guardian Guild. I'm sorry we interrupted your morning, but you need to prepare your village for an imminent attack by the three rogue mana users known as 'The Beasts'. We have every reason to assume they're going to try to abduct the villagers of Silvercreek." The mayor's gaze lingered on Jasper's guild badge. He leaned in a little, squinting his eyes, as if he wanted to determine if it was authentic.

"How do you know this? Where does that information come from?"

"From me, sir. I have several skills that allow me to gather knowledge."

"You're a tracker."

"Yes." Sedius bit his lip, his dismissive attitude fading away quickly as real concern set in.

"When?"

"We don't know that," Jasper said.

"Which is why we need to use every minute we have to prepare the village. Set up defenses. Evacuate the—" He was interrupted by Reynold's panicked shouting.

"They're here!" he yelled, racing toward them, banging against every door on the way.

"Wake up! Hide! The Beasts are coming!"