"You have done well, returning the Lance of Ruin to its rightful owners," Rhea praised Byleth with a smile.

"Thank you, ArchBishop," Byleth bowed to her but something felt wrong. There was a pit in her stomach, something that told her she hadn't really accomplished her mission.

"We must thank the goddess for giving you the strength to win against Miklan, and the horrid beast he became."

Oh yes, Miklan, that was why she felt wrong about this victory. Seeing Sylvain sob over his brother's hollow corpse, how he pleaded for Miklan to come back to him, it made Byleth feel as if even after winning the fight, she failed.

Byleth disliked the emotion of sadness.

"Is there something on your mind, professor?" Rhea asked.

"Lady Rhea...is it possible that Miklan isn't the true villain here? That he was simply a victim of circumstance?" Byleth asked back.

Rhea's head tilted her head in confusion.

"Sylvain told us about how his parents disowned Miklan when he was found to have a crest. Is it possible that the reason Miklan became the way he was because of his parents abandoning him?" Byleth explained further.

Rhea stalled for a second, before confident and sternly shaking her head, "No, Miklan went against the will of the goddess. Only people who are truly wicked would do that."

That just sounded wrong to Byleth. She couldn't put her finger on why it did, or why she cared so much about it, but it sounded wrong. Nevertheless, she dropped the subject, starting an argument with the most powerful woman in all of Fodlan was probably a bad idea.

"Now, your next mission will be—"

"RHEA!"

Rhea silenced herself when Seteth sprinted into the room and skidded to a halt in front of her. His hair was disheveled, his breathing was ragged, and he was sweating like he had been running all over Garreg Mach.

"Seteth, what is wrong, you look distressed?" Rhea's face contorted with worry.

"It's Flayn, she and Eri have gone missing!" Seteth desperately explained.

"What do you mean they have gone missing?" Rhea asked in a clear panic.

"I've looked everywhere and I can't find her. I believe someone took her," Seteth said in a quivering voice.

Rhea went from panicked to enraged in a split second, "Professor, tell your students and the other professors to forgo their current missions, all that matters right now is saving Flayn and Eri. Seteth, I want you to put all of Garrag Mach on lockdown, nobody leaves until they're found."

"Forgive me but, who is Eri?" Byleth asked.

"A young girl we rescued from an island of savages off the coast of Akatani. She's been staying at the Monastery for a year now but she refuses to talk to anyone but Flayn," Rhea explained.

"Understood. I promise you, well will find whoever did this and make them pay with their lives," Byleth said, placing her hand on Seteth's shoulder.

The man took a shaky breath, "Thank you professor. When you find who did it, just tell me and I'll come running with lance in hand." With that, Seteth took off to place the town under lockdown.

"So where do we start?" Tenya asked grimly.

"Manuela's been missing all week. I say we go and search her room," Izuku answered.

"Do you really think Manuela would do that?" Eijirou sighed.

"No I don't. But right now the only people we can trust are the ones in our house," Izuku said.

"As much as I don't wanna say it, you're right. Let's go," Mina grumbled.

The four of them stood up from their table and made their way up a flight of stairs and slipped past a rather suspicious looking Hanneman undetected.

Getting into Manuela's room was easy, just a little bit of lock picking on Mina's part and they were in. Izuku nodded to the rest of them, "Fan out, don't leave a single stone unturned," he ordered.

The next half hour was spent going through all of Manuela's belongings, dumping her draws out onto the bed, rummaging through her clothes, even going through her personal bathroom, much to Mina's protests about privacy.

"Nothing, not a single piece of evidence that points towards Manuela having kidnapped Flayn," Tenya sighed.

"That's a good thing though isn't it? That means Manuela is still on our side," Mina pointed out, clearly trying to lighten the mood.

"It also means we're not any closer to finding Flayn and Eri," Eijirou countered.

"Maybe not entirely."

Izuku stood up from his kneeling position by Manuela's wardrobe, showing off an elegant white and red mask.

"Hang on, doesn't that belong to that Jeritza dude?" Eijirou asked.

"You don't think that…?" Tenya trailed off.

"Manuela and Jeritza boned?" Mina suggested.

"Mina!"

"No, I don't think anyone would have sex with a creep like Jeritza. Not even Manuela, and her standards are low," Eijirou said with a shake of his head, shooting down her idea.

"I'm sorry, I must have missed the memo that it was 'slander your instructors' day," Tenya scoffed.

"Do you think she stole it?" Eijirou asked.

"It's possible but why? Why would she want Jeritza's mask? It doesn't make any sense," Izuku sighed.

"Come to think of it, I haven't seen Professor Jeritza for a few days now, almost the same amount of time since Manuela went missing," Tenya said.

"Do you think Jeritza is behind the kidnappings, and Manuela knocked his mask off before he could knock her out and take her too?!" Mina asked in a panicked tone.

"We can't jump to conclusion, if there's nothing here, we should go check around Hanneman's room while he's out," Izuku said, before beginning to put the room back how they had found it.

Eijirou looked between Izuku and the door a couple times, "I thought you said you wanted to go check Hanneman's room?"

"Well it'd be rude to just leave Professor Manuela's room like this, we trashed the place!"

"Ugh, we should be investigating, not housekeeping," Mina groaned as she began to stuff clothes back in drawers.

"Look on the bright side, maybe this will teach you how to clean up your own room," Tenya said in an uncharacteristically sarcastic voice.

"Ohhh, low blow buddy," Eijirou chuckled.

"This is the best place to investigate, the knights know everything that happens in the Monastery at all times. If there's information to be found, it'll be found here," Kota confidently said.

"Hey squirt," Catherine greeted as she walked by ruffling Kota's hair as she did.

"How many times have I told you not to call me that?" Kota seethed.

"Hasn't gotten any less funny yet," Catherine shrugged.

Kota groaned and ran a hand through his hair, "It's fine, I'm fine, I'm cool," he said to himself.

"Kota, Ochako, you two go try to pry something from Catherine and Shamir. Me and Setsuna will go talk to the Pussycats," Byleth ordered.

Ochako threw her around around Kota's shoulder with a chant of 'Mage buddies' and dragged him away, as the other two went to the other side of the room

Tiger, the sole male member of the group who wore an orange version of their armour, held a punching bag as the female members took turns hitting it, Mandalay noticed them first and stepped away, greeting the two with a wave.

"Professor, Setsuna, to what do I owe the pleasure?" She asked.

"We're doing some general snooping around, trying to find any clues about Flayn or Eri. We were wondering if you had anything," Setsuna answered.

Mandalay shook her head and sighed, "Unfortunately not. The only thing I could really tell you is that Jeritza has gone missing."

"Missing?"

"He said something about how his time had come, then disappeared without a trace," Pixie-bob explained, she was was the only blonde member of the group and wore a light blue version of their suit.

"Strange," Byleth muttered.

"So, how's Kota doing?" Mandalay asked, grabbing the attention of the other pussycats.

"He's doing good. You trained him well, Kota is one of my best students in battle," Byleth answered.

"Hey, you said you didn't have favorites!"

"Told you," Tiger chuckled as the sandbag moved a little bit under one of Tomoko's punches."Do you mind me asking why you were so hesitant to let him fight? You trained him for a reason didn't you?" Byleth asked.

"His parents were killed when he was young, by a man known only as Muscular. We taught him to fight in case he absolutely had to, but we never wanted him in the ranks of the knights seeing as they never caught Muscular," Mandalay explained.

"Wait, then why would you let him join us Rabbits?" Setsuna asked, "Seems like you picked the class that gets into danger the most to let him join."

"True, but you also have the Professor with you. I know she wouldn't let anything happen to him," Mandalay explained.

"Fair enough, plus it's not like the tyke can't handle himself," Setsuna immediately ducked an incoming snowball, one that was followed by a shout of: 'I heard that'.

Kota grumbled as he turned back to Shamir, who just raised one eyebrow at him before continuing, "Anyway, if you're looking for people to question, I'd say try the crest scholar."

"Professor Hanneman? But why would he kidnap Flayn and Eri?" Ochako asked.

"No clue, but he's been suspicion as fuck lately. I'm not saying he did it, but I'm saying to keep an eye on him," Shamir shrugged.

Little did they know that just outside, Hanneman was already being interrogated.

"Good afternoon, Professor," Kyouka dryly said.

Her and Shoji had Hanneman backed up against the wall of the stable...well really Shoji had him back against a wall, as he could probably easily push past Kyouka given the height difference.

"..Good afternoon, Kyouka. I don't suppose we could have this discussion in a more civil environment, preferably with several more people around and numerous exits around?" Hanneman asked.

Ignoring him, Kyouka pressed on, "You know, Tomas told us something interesting earlier. That you'd been sneaking in and out of Garreg Mach in the dead of night, I wonder why that is?"

"That would be none of your concern," Hanneman countered.

"Two little girls who have just barely hit puberty are missing. Right now everything is our concern," Shoji growled.

"I assure you, I have nothing to do with that. Now if you'll excuse me, I have a lecture I need to get to—"

Hanneman was cut off when Shoji slammed his fist just an inch to the right of his head, "Listen to me closely. If you don't speak up now you won't even know what hit you, you will just be dead, now speak up if you value your life."

"Shoji!" Kyouka wormed her way in-between them and pushed the large boy back a foot or two.

"I'm sorry professor—"

Hanneman stopped her with a raise of his hand, "It's fine, Kyouka, I understand. Tensions are high."

"Just tell us why you've been sneaking around, and we'll leave you alone," Kyouka said.

Hanneman sighed, "I have recently met a woman that I am interested in, romantically speaking. I have been sneaking around to see her as she doesn't believe in the Fodlan gods. Nothing more nothing less."

"Thank you professor. You can go now."

As soon as Hanneman was out of earshot Kyouka whirled around and lightly flicked Shoji in the chest.

"What is your damage? Do you realize how fast we could've gotten expelled for that?" Kyouka asked.

"I'm sorry I just—" Shoji stopped himself.

"You've been like this all week you know. You've been doing nothing but seething about this, probably more the Seteth. Anything you want to tell me?"

"I don't want to talk about it," Shoji said, sitting down on a crate.

"Fine then, I'll just tell Professor Byleth not to let you investigate anymore," Kyouka threatened as she crossed her arms.

"What?"

"Well you can't go around threatening to kill every suspect we won't really get anywhere, will we?" Kyouka asked.

Shoji glared at her for a few seconds, before slowly lifting a finger to his face and pulling down the blue mask he wore on his face.

His mouth stretched almost all the way to his ears, he lacked visible lips, and his teeth were sharp and pointed.

"My whole family was born like this: my dad, my little sister, my two brothers, all of them. The town we lived in was disgusted by us," Shoji tighted his fist, "They called us mutants, they called us monsters. When I was thirteen, a couple of kids chucked a torch onto our house...I was the only one who made it out."

"Goddess," Kyouka whispered as she joined him on the crate.

"I've seen her face before. Not many have but I've seen Eri's face," Shoji said, "God she looks so much like her...she looks so much like my sister."

Kyouka moved her hand on top of Shoji's, "We're gonna find them, you have to believe that."

"Hey guys, Professional Byleth sent me to get you, the houses are meeting up to compile evidence," Ferdinand said as he rounded the corner, stopping as he noticed their joined hands.

"I'm not interrupting something, am I?" He asked.

Kyouka sighed, "Yeah, you are. Lead the way."

"So, what have you found?" Bereto asked.

"There's no evidence of Flayn and Eri being in the town," Edelgard answered.

"We found nothing on the edge of the town, or in the Monastery," Dimitri sighed.

"The Knights seem to be clean. Although Alois could barely even talk to us because he was so busy blaming himself for not protecting them, and we couldn't find Jeritza" Claude said.

"Hanneman's clear," Kyouka said.

Izuku tossed the mask on the table for all to see, "We found that in Manuela's room. She's missing too."

"The Pussycats told us that he simply walked off a few days ago," Byleth explained.

"Huh, so you just found all the evidence," Felix scoffed.

"We're all thinking that Jeritza probably took them, right?" Leonie asked.

"Oh definitely," Caspar answered."And we're about to break into his room, aren't we?" Sylvain asked.

"Oh absolutely," Raphael growled with a crack of his knuckles.

Hubert knocked the door down with a Miasma and he, the Eisner twins, and the four lords burst through, only to find Manuela laying unconscious on the floor, and a stone staircase in the wall leading down.

"And there's the creepy dungeon entrance," Claude smiled.

"They're down there for sure," Dimitri growled.

"What is all this— Manuela!" Hanneman burst into the room and dropped to his knees by his fallen co-worker.

"Edelgard, Hanneman, get Manuela to the infirmary. Hubert, you and the rest of your house are to guard this door. Dimitri, Bereto, guard all the other town exits. Claude go get Seteth. The rest of you are with me," Byleth ordered.

The houses broke off immediately, with the Rabbits charging down the stairs in a fervour, weapons in hand.

The Rabbits marveled in disgust and horror at the massive dungeon under the Monastery, chains rattled in the wind, the sound of water leaking from the ceiling echoed through the halls, lit only by wooden torches.

"Look!" Mina called.

Head whipped around to where she was pointing, finding a knight is black armor standing a few feet away from them.

"It's that guy from the Mausoleum," Eijirou realized.

"I got him!" Kota yelled, dressed in a black and blue dark mage outfit. The young boy sent a ball shaped blast of wind from his fingers, only for the Death Knight to catch the spell with his scythe and throw it back at him, launching Kota back a few feet into Izuku.

"Intruders. This should be fun," Death Knight cackled, his voice distorted by his helmet, before he snapped his fingers and warped away in a flash of purple light.

"He's gone!" Tenya yelled.

"Not gone, he's just moved locations. We need to fan out and look for him," Byleth said.

"Hey guys! What do you think this thing does?"

The group turned to Setsuna just in time to see her disappear, then reappear a second later in a flash of green.

"Holy shit!"

"What the fuck?"

Byleth crouched down and inspected the tile Setsuna stood on, it was glowing green, and instead of just flat stone, it had a design of a circle with a diamond shape inside.

"It's some kind of teleporter," she said.

Their professor stood up and turned to the class, "Izuku, you and me will see where this leads, everybody else, push through the other way. We're gonna try to flank him."

"Yes ma'am," the Rabbits echoed, before whirling around and charging down the hall.

"You ready to get bloody?" Izuku asked.

"Always," Byleth responded, gripping her sword hilt.

The two stepped on the tile and it instantly warped them to another long hallway. They were greeted by a short spear flying I between them, imbedding into the wall.

A man in black and red knight armour twirled a lance in his hands atop of his horse, his face completely shrouded by a maroon helmet.

"For the Flame Emperor!"

"You go high, I'll go low."

Byleth grabbed the sword of the creator and slashed forward, it went into whip form and hit the back wall, ricocheting off and slamming into the back of his helmet.

Meanwhile, Izuku jumped up above the horse and punched the knight in the stomach. Combined with the force from the sword, it caused the knight to fold in half, falling off his horse in the process.

All the commotion around it must have made the horse nervous, because it began to buck wildly, its hind legs flailing so much that they came down directly on the Knight's skull.

The two continued on, rounding a corner into another hallway where they met with a hail of arrows.

Izuku warped his arms around Byleth and blocked and arrow heading for her neck with his gauntlets, Byleth nodded in thanks and he nodded back.

"They're firing over the walls, we need to get out of range," Izuku yelled.

They took off running, Izuku using his gauntlets to block any potentially fatal arrow while Byleth had her shield.

The two were forced down the corridor until they accidently stepped another warp tile and suddenly were face to face with the archers that had been attacking them.

Once again Izuku held his gauntlets up to block incoming attacks as he charged forward. When he was close enough, he grabbed an archer's bow from him, broke the wood in the middle. Using the string, Izuku wrapped the ends of the bow around the archer's neck and threw him over his shoulder, colliding into another archer

Byleth jumped off of the archer pile and threw out her whip-sword once more, it ricocheted off of one wall to the next, boring through the last three archer's bodies as it did.

"Here," Izuku called once she was able to pull her sword back, she just barely caught the key thrown at her.

"I found it on one of their bodies, we might need it later," he shrugged.

Sure enough, I'm the next hallway there was a set of wooden double doors. Unfortunately, between them was a large, muscular man in maroon colored brawler gear.

"I got him," Izuku said, shedding the steel gauntlets.

The other brawler did the same, and the two exchanged a right hook, they stumbled back before going at it again. Izuku hit the brawler in the center of the jaw with an uppercut, before taking a punch to the gut himself.

Izuku attempted to tackle the brawler, only to be picked up and thrown to the ground in a brutal display of strength. He was about to get back up when the other brawler's head was split open like a watermelon.

"I could've done that the whole time y'know," Byleth said with a smile.

"Yeah I know I was just...toying with him," Izuku lied.

Byleth unlocked the door and kicked it open, fully expecting another fight but instead she found her students waiting for her.

"What took you so long?" Setsuna chuckled as she slashed out an archer's throat.

After another warp tile and another room where they had a small scuffle, they finally reached a set of wooden doors even larger than the last.

Eijirou, Izuku, and Shoji all kicked the door at the same time, causing it to crumble like paper. Death Knight could only chuckle when he saw them, behind him, three bodies lay passed out on the ground.

"Look, it's Flayn!" Eijirou yelled.

"And Eri!" Shoji shouted.

"And...um...yeah I got nothing," Ochako shrugged.

"So you've made it. I'm impressed. However, your corpse won't be very impressive," Death Knight began to twirl his scythe between his fingers, before swinging it forward and creating a strong gust of wind that knocked out all the lights.

With the lights out, the Rabbits could only see two things: the first, the skull helmet of Death Knight, a ghoulish pale green against the black, his eyes glowed like red stars, and black and red bands too turns running up his horns; the second, was the blade of Death Knight's scythe, sheathed in the same haunting glow that his helmet was.

Kota and Ochako went out first, having blocked the former's cantaloupe sized ball of hail, and the latter's jet of flames, he hit them with a bolt of lightning that knocked them down.

Next was Shoji and Kyouka, she tried to hit him with her bow, but the knight moved out of the way just in time and it instead hit Shoji, while his haymaker meant for Death Knight hit her.

Mina and Setsuna grazed his armour with their swords, if the sudden burst of sparks was anything to go by, but the victory didn't last long as Death Knight sweeped their legs and the girls' head slammed against the ground.

Tenya managed to wrap his lance around Death Knight's neck, Eijirou tried to bring his axe down on the knight's head but he generated a burst of lightning that blasted them both away.

"Byleth?! I think we're the only ones left!" Izuku called through the darkness.

"He's too fast!" Byleth yelled back.

Suddenly, a deafening roar cut through their pitch black surroundings. The Death Knight was beaten back by an unseen force, they could only see wisps of white when something would tear through the metal of his armour.

Ochako created two jets of fire from her hands and lit the torches lining the walls once more, revealing a heavily panting Seteth, silver lance in hand, and a bleeding Death Knight with torn armour.

"How...How could this happen?" Death Knight questioned.

"Everybody, keep him in place!" Izuku shouted as he tackled Death Knight. The rest of the Rabbits, even Byleth, began to coil their arms around his body, keeping him still as Seteth raised his lance.

"Enough!"

They were all blown back by a massive blast of lightning, and Death Knight rose to his feet.

"I will not die for ideals that are not my own. But make no mistake, you will be seeing me again."

With that Death Knight disappeared in a flash of purple again.

"Flayn!" Seteth yelled as he ditched his spear.

Seteth picked up his little sister and immediately ran out of the room, not pausing to speak with any of the kids.

Byleth glared at him as he did. She definitely heard the roar of some kind of dragon, but not only did she not hear wings, she couldn't see a wyvern of any kind. She'd leave him alone for now, but she'd definitely question him later.

Shoji then walked over and picked up Eri like you would a sleeping child, allowing all of them to get a good look at her: she had long, straight white hair, much like Edelgard, and a young face, she wore a standard officer academy uniform and a red skirt.

Finally, Izuku threw the third girl over his shoulder, she had short red hair tied in two messy buns, and wore an officers academy uniform with a rose pinned to the right breast.

If they had just paid a little bit more attention, they would've seen a skeleton wearing the same outfit as the mystery girl.

Alright, this chapter was a bit weird I'll admit, I can't quite pinpoint why but it just feels a bit strange to me. I promise I have a reason Eri was kidnapped other than just for the fuck of it. Discord links:

Epsi's Hoard: https/discord.gg/cPWc82QfmD

LoM: https/discord.gg/H9wMNyZRa6

That's it for now, Peace.