Prisoner Day 4
When Amy awoke the next morning, it took her a moment to realize that she was in her parents' house, in one of her brothers' beds. And Sammy was in the other one, snoozing away. The one window in the room faced east, and Amy could see the clouds being painted by the newborn sunrise.
It didn't take long to wake Sammy, even though she moaned and grumbled and looked like death warmed up. "I'm fine!" she said. "I... need to wash up before I'll be any use, is all." Amy was impressed. So Sammy could do it if she tried.
Amy, naturally, knew where all the supplies were in the house, though she only needed one or two additions to the supplies that Astoria had provided them to make a good breakfast. Astoria's packs were extremely effective and complete. Once Sammy had washed up and eaten, she was back to normal, like she had insisted she would be. "Ready to go?" Sammy asked, pulling her own pack on.
Amy blinked, then nodded. "Give me a minute to put things away first." It wouldn't do to leave the house in any state other than spotless. Her mother would kill her. Once that had been taken care of, she pulled on her own pack, and the two of them left just as the sun started to peak over the eastern hills.
The two young women may have been underway early, but they still didn't beat some of the farmhands. A lot of the same men and women that had been working in the fields the previous day stopped to watch them pass again, though this time both of the traveling young women waved or bowed or otherwise acknowledged them.
Once they had left the farmlands, the two didn't see anyone else on their route.
Amy and Sammy talked about various unimportant things as they walked. Things like the latest scandal regarding someone cheating on their spouse ("I couldn't believe he could ever do anything like that! But it apparently doesn't even stop there!") or Sammy needling Amy about Alex ("Don't you think you should visit him first when we get back?"). It was... relaxing. Being able to recover from the stress over the past couple days with a walk through well-known landscapes.
They reached the great lunch spot quite a bit after the sun had reached its daily zenith, but it was too good of a lunch spot to eat before they got there, so they just had a late lunch. They didn't linger long after finishing their lunches (and the last of their provided food from Astoria). It wasn't that they felt like they had to hurry so much as they wanted to report the good news over dinner with Astoria, and that required arriving by dinner.
The sun hadn't quite started to turn the sky from the traditional pale blue to reds and oranges yet when they left the confines of the trees and started to approach the main road. Or at least, it shouldn't have been. Amy glanced up at where the sun was. It was about halfway down, like she expected, but... there were definitely reds and oranges and a gray and black plume adorning the sky... above Sallah.
Oh, no.
"Amy..." Sammy said, coming to a stop. "Do you see what I see?"
Yes. "We need to get there now."
"No use in hurrying if we're going to be any help," Sammy pointed out reasonably. Though the last thing that Amy wanted to be at that moment was reasonable. "We need to have energy to spare to do anything about… whatever might be happening."
"No use in lollygagging either," Amy said, and she started ahead again at a slightly more brisk pace. Sammy took a moment to catch up to Amy's new pace, but was able to keep up with it once she did.
It took more than an hour to get to the town, and the daylight had begun to fade, as well as the firelight that came from the town. While there were certainly people around, none of them were responsive. Sammy and Amy both checked all of them for breathing or pulse… but found none. Amy recognized most of them and had to swallow her own feelings as she searched among the buildings - a lot of which were in far better shape than she had been expecting - for the people she wanted to find. Needed to find. But they weren't what she found first.
She spotted two of them just as she was about to come around the corner of Astoria's shop in order to enter it, but jumped back into the alley before either of the people in the middle of the street saw her. Or so she hoped, anyway.
"He's all mine now, of course," the further away and male voice was saying. "Just like many before him. And many after him."
"Perhaps not so many," the closer and female voice replied, though it was clear that she was tired. "Fewer devils, fewer lost souls."
"Don't be so sure, girl," the male said with some laughter, though it was lower than any voice she ever remembered hearing. "Devils are everywhere. Quietly making sure that everyone is tempted every day. And multiple people fall to said temptation every day. We're very good at this. And this town is no exception."
A new female voiced Amy's desperate thought. "There are more of you here?!" Amy thought she recognized this voice... and the more she thought about it, all of the voices rang bells in her mind... All of them were voices she should be able to name!
"What do we do?" Sammy whispered.
Amy shook her head and held her finger to her lips.
"There are lots of us," the male voice said easily. "What did you expect? Anywhere where there are humans that can be tempted, we will be also. Wherever there are sins that can be done, we will be also. If there are more opportunities for sins or temptations in a particular place than most, then there are probably more of us there than in most places. That's how this works, girls. Evil is everywhere."
"No," the first female said. "But since you deal in lies as quickly as sins, it's not like we're going to believe everything you say, anyway." Sounds of familiars fighting each other suddenly sounded, as if they were resuming from a cease fire. Amy chanced a look around the corner, but snapped back after getting an instant's picture of the scene. On the far side of the street was clearly Gertrude, though Amy had to think about it for a moment since the last time she had seen the young woman she had been in the holding cells beneath the Magistrate's building. Amy hadn't gotten a good enough look at the other two, but it was clear that the two women were working together against the man with the red skin.
Red skin? They had been talking about devils… but they weren't talking anymore. Now was simply the familiars having it out against each other. There was no way for Amy and Sammy to get into Astoria's shop without entering the street and risking either being spotted or even being targeted by one of the familiars that were fighting in the middle of the street. Amy and Sammy stared at each other, both aware of how much danger they were in.
Sammy shrugged. Amy figured that she meant that she didn't have any idea as to what they could do.
Amy and Sammy stared at each other as the sounds of familiar combat resounded out on the street. "We need to move," Sammy finally said quietly.
"Where?" Amy mouthed, creeping away from the opening to the street.
Sammy shrugged and pulled Amy further into the alley. "Somewhere away from here; away from the fighting."
While Amy knew that Sammy had the right of it: they needed to be somewhere other than where people were fighting in battles that had nothing to do with her, the other side of that coin was a worry. "The church!" she said suddenly, and Sammy nodded after a moment.
"Sure, but it means we'll have to go around the long way," she said. But she went along as Amy took the lead again. This time Amy moved with a purpose but not hurry. It was too important to avoid detection from any combatants that fought among the darkened husks of the buildings.
Light was scarce by the time the pair of young women had reached the stone church, which looked none the worse for wear from the damage wrought on the town while they had been gone. Amy rapped smartly on the door to the sacristy on the side furthest from the main road. To her surprise, the old Rector opened the door. "Yes, my child?"
"Is Al… Deacon Brandy about?" Amy asked haltingly.
"I have not seen him today," the old man said. "I am sorry. I would have thought that if anyone knew where he was, you would."
Amy didn't know precisely what he meant by that, but she filed it away from later. "What happened to Sallah? Was there a fire?"
"Have you been in the woods these past two days?" the Rector asked, surprised. "You must have been, in order to not know. A devil walks the streets, according to the townsfolk here. I have made this place a haven and sanctuary, though I am not sure it will hold against the black magic swirling through this town. If you wish shelter from the sin, I must ask you not to perform your… art… while you are here."
Amy thought about it for a moment, but finally shook her head. "No, but thank you for the offer." The Rector turned to Sammy, who similarly shook her head.
"Is Astoria Waldorf here?" Amy asked, but the Rector shook his head and Amy let out an exasperated sigh. "Thank you," she said, and when she stepped away from the door, it was shut and locked behind her in a bare moment.
"Now what?" Sammy asked. "If we aren't hiding here…"
"Not until we know Alex and Astoria's fates," Amy said, bringing the younger girl up short.
"We won't be able to find anything about him if we're already dead," Sammy pointed out irritably. "I hope you know what you're doing."
"I only know that my friends' lives are in danger, and if I can do something about it but don't, I would never forgive myself." Sammy subsided after that, but Amy was not completely sure what to do next as the two of them walked away from the stone church.
"Do you think it's possible that the battle has ended or moved away from the shop?" Sammy asked, and Amy looked at her for a moment.
"Maybe. It's likely worth a try to approach from a different direction." Sammy didn't have an objection to the plan, so the two of them continued circling around back to the main road on the east to west direction, and then further to go around the inn to not be caught with no cover for very long. They found no one on the trek, the town eerily deserted. It was not silent — the battle must have continued still — but for all that Amy and Sammy saw, it may as well have been. With care, the two of them approached the shop from the other side, this time the battle had moved far enough the street that while they could see it, they couldn't make out separate figures. It was approaching the southern edge of town… where the lab and church were. Amy tried not to think about it too hard.
Inside the shop, everything was in tatters. Sammy's mouth hung open as Amy stepped forward to caress one of the few pots still standing and its occupant. "Astoria?" Amy called, though not too loud for fear of anyone other than her mentor hearing. "Are you here?" Silence answered the young woman, and she exchanged a look with her partner before she carefully mounted the stairs, afraid that it might at any moment collapse under her feet. "Astoria?" she tried again, to the same result. She glanced behind her to see Sammy was picking up some of the less damaged but fallen items and seeing if any of them were viable. Amy continued up the stairs which were holding well enough under her feet that her worries about falling were leaving her.
It only took a glance before Amy knew that Astoria was not there. And hadn't been when the place had been destroyed, either. It was obvious that a creature had done it. A Demon? Amy thought, looking around at the damage. No, Demons were well-known for using their claws when they could, teeth occasionally, and their tails were not strong enough to do the kind of damage she saw. It clearly was not fire, which would have been a Dragon, or any other familiar that Amy knew of. That really only left one thing — the Beast. And, of course, how to tell Sammy about it. At least she knew that there was no blood or anything around the room, only destroyed grimoires and books, which if hard to replace, were at least replaceable. Amy couldn't think of a reason to dally any longer, and returned downstairs.
"Well?" Sammy asked, strangely calm.
"Destroyed, but no one was or is there," Amy said.
"Do you know by what?"
"Know? No. Suspect…"
Sammy's eyes widened. "The Beast."
Amy shook her head. "There's no proof it is… but…"
Sammy took a shuddering breath with her eyes closed, and then opened them to look at Amy again. "We should prepare to be attacked, no matter where we sleep tonight."
"We don't want them to know we're here in the first place… what sorts of defenses can we put up without having also put up a sign that screams out that there are mages hiding out here?" Amy asked.
Sammy tapped a finger on her lips as she thought. "We'll have to have triggers that summon familiars bound to objects. You walked me through doing it once…"
Amy sighed. "Alright. But we should also probably keep a watch. There's no telling what might try to come through the door if we're not careful. And…" Was she really comfortable settling down, when she still knew nothing about where Alex and Astoria were?
"Unless you're wanting to charge out there and attack the people fighting, there's no point to leaving right now," Sammy said quietly. "We can't help them if we're dead."
"We can't help them if they're dead, either," Amy countered, but then she sighed. "You're right; we can't run over there and challenge the fighters."
"Not without getting ourselves killed," Sammy said. "I'll watch first, and wake you when I can't stay up any more?" And so they set up for the night, unsure as to what awaited their searching in the morning.