The key to Cafe Le'blanc stubbornly entered the lock, as if only half willing to open the shop. Ren moved slowly in, the hanging string of small door bells chiming softly in the darkness. He often returned to the cafe in the small hours of the morning, so Sojiro had been forced to give him the key. A key that had not been readily provided to Ren when he'd first secured lodging in the cafe's cellar. But after just one instance of Ren politely rapping on Sojiro's third-floor bedroom window on a moonless night, Sojiro had readily offered the spare key.
Ren locked the door behind him and headed for the cellar stairs, his body feeling the trials of the last 36 hours; grievous wounds, emotional turmoil, mental stress. Ren wasn't sore in the way a human might understand the sensation, as the healing from his vampiric heritage precluded the soreness and other mild pains of the human condition; but he was heavy in a way that a human could not fully grasp. It might be like being wrapped in skin-tight weighted blankets, but both externally and internally, the guts as wrapped same as the body itself. Ren felt his heart chugging; His liver was tight; His mind squished.
Exhaustion. And maybe a slight sun-sickness. Not dangerous at this stage, but Ren knew he wouldn't be at his best until he had a long rest in the dark. He stepped heavily from the cellar stairs onto cool soil. It was tempting to simply flop to the floor and shut down, but then his clothing would be dank when he woke. Humans didn't favor smells associated with dampness, and he didn't want Makoto to smell-
Ren's mind flashed with images of Makoto's face, cycling through expressions: her look of intense curiosity, of determination, of unsuccessfully veiled anxiety; then the common, small smile; then the broad, stunning smile Ren had only seen once or twice; then the pale face of Makoto close to death, bloody on a carriage bench.
Ren flopped into the single chair next to his small table. He felt even heavier than he had a few seconds ago, though he teased himself with the idea of going back up to the Niijima estate to see if he could get past the guards when the day shift came on duty. Maybe he could find an opening and-
No. That was utterly foolish. The daylight guards might not be as competent as those two vile little twin women, but it didn't take much competence to see a person dressed in black crossing a lawn in full sunlight. Ren had to trust to Morganna. He was sure the creature had managed a safe entrence into the Niijima mansion, what with so many staff going about on various duties. Humans didn't notice cats like they did other humans.
For all his desire, Ren knew he could be no further aid to Makoto, and he would cause a distraction if he showed up again. The best thing he could do was empty his pockets, take off his armor, and get some desperately needed rest. That was what.
Ren unlatched his chestplate and pulled out the hastily stuffed documents attained from Madarame's office desk. He plopped them down on the small table, their markings illegible in the darkness. Ren could discern that there was writing on them with his darkvision, but too much of reading was discerning the shapes created by a contrast of colors: black ink on white paper. Darkvision didn't deal in colors, so Ren couldn't read without lighting a lantern, and he wasn't in the mood to try, anyway. But a second search of his chestplate for anything he might have missed turned up the small envelope, the one with the wax seal of the letter 'Y'. The Clan Yaldabaoth envelope.
Ren stared at it a moment, the textured seal plainly visible even in the dark. This was it. This was what Mother had sent him to find, though he himself had never expected to find it: clear, undisputed evidence. In all the wide country of the human lands, Ren had thought the odds of him finding anything like this single wax seal to be astronomically small. But now that he had it, Ren thought he had been a fool to think that. Mother had suspected Lord Yaldabaoth was up to some scheme in human territory, and if that were really true, would not Clan Yaldabaoth's campaign somehow include Tock-Yo, the largest known human settlement in the province? Ren imagined the envelope talking to him with his Mother's voice: Of course. Fool.
Ren realized he had not yet looked inside. There was a paper still inside. A letter perhaps from Lord Yaldabaoth's own hand! Ren scrambled for the lantern and a firesitck, his heavy exhaustion evaporating in a blaze of excitement. This might be a huge discovery! Ren lit the lantern and flipped over the folded letter paper, expecting a page of the dense prose that passed as formal communication amongst island nobility. But to his surprise, it was a succinct and direct missive:
Madarame:
Based on the blood you sent me, this serf boy of yours contains sufficient heritage to meld with this persona, but it was made for warfare of the mind, and he will not be able to control it. You must also implant this symbiote in the human. With its support, you will be able to retain your influence on his him despite the persona's presence within. If you do not, this blade will turn in your hand.
I approve your suggestions as you described to me in your letter. Await my directive to begin them.
Do not use the persona yourself, nor your wastrel offspring. I created it, and so I am linked to it. If you attempt to use my gifts for private purpose, I will know, and you will die.
- Y
—Madarame: I expect the return of my property. You cannot manage the extraction of the symbiote when the time comes, so send the serf to me. If that symbiote dies. You will die.
Ren read the letter three times, parsing the language. It was a surprisingly direct letter, in that Madrame was clearly receiving marching orders. But it was mostly vague on what exactly he was being ordered to do. Madrame was to give a human boy a persona and a symbiote. And not just any persona, but a war persona, and one Yaldabaoth made himself? Mother said the equipment needed to make persona was long destroyed and lost, but Yaldabaoth was just as old as Mother. Who knows how many old, dangerous things were in the vaults of Castle Yaldabaoth?
Well, there were two less treasures now because they were in Tock-Yo. The symbiote was inside Makoto, which sent of thrill of fear through Ren, and he read the letter again. No. It didn't seem to indicate that the symbiote was dangerous- only the persona. And the persona was-
Shit! The war persona must still be back at the mansion! If someone found it-!
Ren leapt up from his chair and ran back up the stairs, his prior exhaustion a half-forgotten weight just behind his eyes.
The sea air billowed through Ren's clothing with an angsty, wet chill. The sun was rising, but a cloud front was approaching sluggishly from the east, churning the sea into a light froth, and only a dark grey light of dawn was about the world. Despite the dimness, Ren's eyes didn't need any help finding crevices for his hands and feet in the seawall of Madarame's coastal neighborhood.
It was an awkward horizontal climb, but Ren had more than enough strength to get him to the Maradrame property. But while Ren's vampiric heritage provided him plenty of climbing stamina, it gave him no advantage in regards to the slickness of the wet rocks, nor would it help him overmuch if he slipped into the surf which endlessly pounded at the stone rubble of the shoreline below. Ren knew he could recover from drowning, as he'd had a misadventure in a pond near Castle Kurusu when he was a child- but he'd been recovered by a servant and brought inside before sunrise. He could expect no such rescue now, so best not to fall.
The growing sunlight was actually inconvenient to the extreme. Clouds or no- sunlight was damned uncomfortable. And though it didn't help his own eyesight, it would greatly assist humans in spotting him- a harbor patrol boat just off the coast would see him easily, and whether they were aware of the previous day's events in the Madarame mansion or not- a person climbing round the seawall while dressed in black was unlikely to be confused with a local resident out on his daily life-endangering scramble.
A more immediate threat was the city guards sure to be stationed all around the Madarame estate. Since the main road of the neighborhood was long, straight, and wide-open; Ren had opted to avoid it altogether. Lacking a boat himself, the sea wall climb had became the only sealthy option. But Madarame's house was a goodly distance down the coast, and the horizontal climb was agonizingly slow.
He could have taken the road if it were still dark. (A mechanical horse could be pretty quiet if ridden a certain way). But he'd been delayed too long by the need to get Morgana inside the Niijima estate, and waiting for the next night was unacceptable. City officials would surely be all over the house today, so the war persona that might be in Madarame's estate right now could be gone before sunset. And annoyingly, Tock-Yo's people seemed to be an early-rising, industrious lot: so Ren couldn't even dare expect a lazy official to wait until mid-morning to start an investigation.
So Ren climbed onwards and side-wards, resisting the urge to just climb to the top of the wall and sneak through the gardens and lawns of the intervening estates. But even if the city forces were not actively watching the seaward side of the mansion, the people living in the other estates may well be looking seaward for whatever reason- and they would not stay silent about a black-clad dhampir striding through their back lawns. So, Ren climbed onwards and side-wards…
The dawn grey sky was just transforming to the white of sunrise when Ren reached the Madarame property. He needed to get off the seawall soon, though the few boats on the water were rather far out due to the boisterous seas. Hopefully, the sailors had their hands full with the weather and didn't have much spare time for a lazy gaze along the shoreline.
The intersection of the seawall with the border of Madrame's neighbor provided Ren a gap to see into the Madrame Estate grounds without silhouetting his head against the bright grey horizion behind him. A small garden sat stubbornly between the mansion and the thigh-high stone topping of the seawall, which served as a sort of low fence for the estate. A nice place to sit and gaze out over the ocean. Apparently, humans liked that sort of thing.
But while the garden was blessedly small and thus the house but steps away- it was also aggravatingly sparse. Not a tree, not a sizable fern, barely a bush! A stone garden with a rake-traced pattern in it, blurred slightly by recent neglect. A large rock served as the garden's central element, but it was thin and tall- Ren couldn't even hide behind it sideways.
The mansion being a seaside mansion- it featured a great many windows facing seaward, which meant Ren-ward in this case. Ren was sure he couldn't see them all from his position, and those he could see were made opaque by the reflected white glare of the cloud-obscured sunrise. Reb had two choices- make a break for it and hope he made it unseen through luck; or wait.
Not wanting to void the effort of his climb, nor risk the need to flee from local law enforcement- Ren opted to wait for some sort of chance at infiltration. The weather was working in his favor in regards to passing boats, so he was less worried about that now than he had been. But time was still of the essence: he assumed the real investigation of the house would begin within the next two hours.
Or the next two minuets. He was just making assumptions based on his own hopes. Ren had no idea what might be going on. But the house was big, so even if investigators were inside, there was room enough to avoid them. Ren could keep a few steps ahead and they would-
Into the garden walked two men in black leather armor, each with sword and pistol at either hip. Ren instinctively scrunched down lower, though the men were not yet looking in his direction. They split up slightly and wandered around the garden, apparently looking for something.
Damn! Ren didn't know who these men were, but they looked official with their standard-issue equipment; and they were searching around like men ordered to investigate a location. Look at everything, because they probably were not told what to look for.
But this provided the opening Ren needed: after examining the small garden with nothing really to search, the two men went back into the house. If the mansion was being searched, then it was less likely anyone was paying attention to what was happening outside the seaward windows, and since the garden was just searched, a good chance no one was paying attention to it, either.
Ren scrambled over the wall, rolled over the top, landing lightly upon the gravel of the stone garden. The crunching noise of pea-gravel was entirely devoured by the ambient roar of the ocean- he didn't even hear it himself, though vampire hearing (and half-vampire hearing) was no better than a human's. What vampires did have was a vastly superior sense of human-related scents, but there would hardly be any vampire guards around to pick up Ren's scent- and even if there was, the rambunctious sea air would probably work in Ren's favor.
Ren sprinted across the stone garden to the side of the mansion. With no concealment possible, the best strategy was to minimize time spent in the area, and hope no one happened to be looking in his direction. A few tense moments flat against the side of the mansion did not result in any spreading alarm that Ren could sense. Perhaps he'd made it. Now to get inside.
There was a sort of servant's path alongside the mansions' side. Rugged stones mostly buried in moist soil, squeezed between siding and property wall. Neither the Madarame mansion nor the neighboring estate had windows on this side- neither owner having particular interest in a pensive gaze at their neighbors' woodwork, perhaps. But it served Ren's purposes perfectly. He gazed up at the wood siding. In the middle of the second story, maybe… five meters up… there was a decorative wood scaffolding that presumably gave texture to the side of the mansion when viewed from the front or the back.
Ren jumped. Five meters was no particular challenge, but he feared the woodwork was strictly decorative, so he expected it to not be able to hold his full weight- he snagged the woodwork just long enough to steady his trajectory and then: he kicked against the mansion siding, launching himself up further to the eaves of the mansion's first roof- another easy four meters further up. With momentum to spare, he swung himself up and around and found himself on fancy, but slick, clay tiles. A quick glance around assured him that the various trees of the estate yards hid him from easy view from the street. So far, so good.
Favoring the seaward side of the house, Ren picked his way over the slick tiles until he found a second floor balcony. It was a small, squarish affair- probably a guest bedroom intended for a low-ranking, un-married person. Humans and Vampires were certainly alike in their aristocratic architecture, and Ren assumed the house was build by humans before Madarame owned it, and added in the whole blood-sport arena dungeon. Unless there was a market for that amongst humans? He doubted it, but maybe he could ask Makoto.
Assuming Makoto survived her wound. Ren frowned with worry, even as he listened carefully for sounds coming from the nearby bedroom. He didn't hear anything, but with the sea, the wind, the closed windows and doors- anything could be in there and he wouldn't be able to hear it. He didn't smell anything. He doubted this guest room would contain anything valuable to him, and the human investigators would probably make the same conclusion and pass through quickly. So long as he wasn't fantastically unlucky and arrived in the guest room at the same time as the investigators, he should be fine.
And Makoto should be fine! Morgana was with her. His healing force would make all the difference, and Makoto surely had the will to live. Ren needed to focus on his mission right now: find the war persona before somebody else found it. And get out.
Easy.