Great, Harn clapped her on the back. Now. Do it better.
Evie gave him a look, one that Harn was likely used to; the look of a long suffering student just utterly tired of his shit. He was, unfortunately, immune.
Evie rolled up her sleeves.
The hunt went well enough. Neither Evie nor Thangle had been available to join him, and Felix wasn't about to go bug Vess just before dawn. He still felt dumb about what he'd said, so the more distance from that debacle the better. Fortunately both Atar and the Tin Ranks were ready to go. Pit had mostly been sleeping anyway, his default setting ever since he'd grown into his big boy body. Felix imagined it took a lot of energy to keep the tenku moving.
They had ranged a bit more northerly this time, pushing a little closer to the Drum Tank. He'd been told that Jacinda and Ignatius had been taken along with many others at the inn, and damn it, he wanted to know more. Atar had protested at first, but Felix wasn't exactly keen on hearing it. The fire mage was left the option to either go back alone or continue onward. Thankfully he stayed.
They encountered several dozen Revenants, all of them zeroing in Felix within seconds of sensing him. Felix made sure to lure them far enough away from the rest, with Pit strafing them with Frost Spears and Wingblades. Even so, stragglers took their chances against the relatively weaker Tin Ranks.
Cade made short work of many, her Apprentice Tier sword slicing off hands and heads with equal gusto. She was a born warrior and she was the only one of them fully tempered into Apprentice. Strictly speaking, she was an Iron Rank the way Guilders figured it, but she stuck with the rest. A mother hen with her chicks, almost.
Stellis was following in her footsteps, though she had embraced earth magic. Rocks erupted around her and tangled feet as she swung her heavy flanged mace, or piled onto her weapon to increase its weight at a critical moment. Sort of like Evie's Trait but it was relatively minor and over quickly.
Merk was a tiny dervish of scripting fury. The tiny Goblin was getting faster and faster at scrawling glyphs and sigils around her, typically drawing a circle whenever they stopped and flinging green-gold sigils in the general direction of monster groupings. The others had learned to stay out of their way, as they inflicted a limited paralysis, but when it hit the Revenants it caught perhaps three times out of ten. Though when it did come through, everything piled onto the defenseless monster without mercy.
Heva, meanwhile, was enjoying tips and tricks from Atar. As a fellow fire mage--if a fledgling one--the guy had taken a liking to her. It was almost sweet, if wildly out of character.
"Yes, now release," Atar said. A whisper thin thread of glowing orange Mana flicked outward and bisected a Revenant's knee. The creature let out a honking scream and fell to the ground, before being silenced permanently by Cade.
"I did it!" Heva gasped, her matronly features lighting up in an equal mix of wonder and horror. "Dear, dark Noctis. I did that."
"Don't think too much on it. They're here to kill you," Atar stressed. "Kill them first."
"R-right. Of course."
Felix didn't like what this invasion had done to many of the people he'd seen, living their peaceful lives around the city. Sure it wasn't always safe, but so many folks lived peaceful lives. Now they were either dead, cowering in fear that they soon would be, or they were fighting and killing to ensure they never would cower again.
Well, when you put it that way, brain, I don't think I mind as much, Felix sighed. Who was he to judge when he'd done the same, just to survive? When he was likely to do worse, in the coming days?
The Drum and Tankard Inn was a charred husk when they arrived. Felix felt his gut clench to see it, and the Echoes of the Maw trembled and vented their clouds of contaminated rage. A few pulses of his Bastion sent its influence reeling backward, but his own fury remained. The place was nothing more than a collection of charred matchsticks, and most of the once-busy market square was the same. Fire had gutted the Dust.
Pit landed next to Felix and nuzzled close, a similar sadness reverberating between the two of them. He'd spent time in this place, helping these people, talking to them. Living with them. Felix didn't see any bodies, but he was sure more than a few died in the struggle. Why were they like this?
Atar knelt by the ashes, some of them still glowing with heat. "This was man-made. There's fire Mana threaded throughout all these buildings. A normal fire would've dissipated by now."
"So the redcloaks burned the buildings down after they took all the people," Felix muttered, his voice too thick for his own liking. He swallowed. "Why? Why bother burning it down?"
"So they can't come back," Cade said with conviction. Her jaw clenched and tusks quivered as her Spirit roared. She was just as angry as he was, if not more so. "It is something done upon the grasslands. Burn their homes, so that they might never return. Then they are yours."
"Jesus."
"They needed our mine, right?" Atar pointed out. "Wasn't that because their mines were dangerous, or unsafe?"
"You're saying--" Heva started, though she stopped when Felix looked at her. He waved for her to continue. "--They're taking people to work in the mines?"
"They're taking people to die in the mines," Merk piped up. "The mines ain't just dangerous. The wards're down. They're lettin' in monsters."
In the distance, another gargantuan scream pierced the morning. Another Ghoul, and it was close. Felix was pretty sure he could take it, this time, but he looked at the others. All of them were getting tired. Their winding path had taken two hours so far, and it'd likely be the same to get back. If they ran into a Ghoul then, so be it, but he wasn't about to risk their lives for his own vanity.
Ravenous Tithe!
The lingering fire Mana pulled form the ruins, swirling into a near visible coil of orange radiance before disappearing into his maw. All around them, the charcoal ruins collapsed into greasy smoke. The Tin Ranks stared, but Atar didn't bat an eye.
They went back.