Siren's Reach - Fallen Lands Book 3

Chapter Thirty-Three

Kittens, Carnage, and Conspiracies

Evelyn

Standing on the prow of the skyship with the wind in my hair was the best feeling in the world. And not just because it was literally living the dream of anyone who'd ever seen a fantasy game or show with airships, either. That part was amazing, but at this moment, my [Windbound Resilience] trait was even better. The rushing wind soothed the constant dull ache in my back and ribs with its unending healing and energizing effects, making this whole 'living the dream' experience come with a bonus magical massage and free caffeine.

From my vantage point, I was able to watch our approach to Sibylla's newest experiment, the Tower of Learning. I had to admit, it was pretty cool, even if she'd missed her opportunity to stand on top of it, looking down on us imperiously while declaring, "I'm a very important person, you know! I've got a tower!" I guess nobody's perfect. At least she was taking full advantage of it now. I could see her and a few others on top of the tower, waiting for us. From what I could tell, she was sitting with Constance, Kira, and, much to my delight, Lilith, having tea.

It hadn't been that long since I'd seen Lilith, not really, but I was really worried about her. It was one of those vague, kind of irrational worries, and I was glad it was gone. Just seeing her back to normal eased my heart, and I couldn't wait to get down there.

Amélie, who was nearby, relaxing and writing in her journal, let out a suppressed laugh. I turned at the sound only to see her eyes flick to me before returning to the page.

"What?" I asked, a little confused.

She hummed, making a flourish with her pen, "It is just refreshing to see you so happy, is all. I am trying to imagine what might be on your mind."

I narrowed my eyes, "Why am I suddenly feeling very concerned?"

She snorted with another quick glance my way before turning the page, "No reason, I am sure. Maybe tonight, after we've had a chance to rest, we can all go down to the beach. It is calmer in the cove and more private than the beaches in Vigilance."

I blinked in surprise before smiling, "That's a great idea! Though. I'm not sure we'd be able to get everyone to agree. Honestly, I'm a little surprised to hear you suggest that."

"Yes, I know. But I think it would be a good peace offering of sorts for Alice. She is very fond of the water."

I perked up at that. "Really? Oh. Well, I guess that makes sense. I'll let you make the suggestion, then. But do you think she likes the water because she's a Naiad, or because she enjoys swimming? Will she be okay in salt water? You know. I'll bet she would have some great pointers for that new mermaid form I was working on."

This time, she laughed for real. "Just listen to you! It is like the sun has come out after a week of rain! It is wonderful to hear that sparkle again!"

I rolled my eyes. "I can't help it! This whole war thing is over, Lilith is back to normal, and just think! We are entirely free from any oversight from all those wet blankets in Lihume! We can really finally relax and have some fun!"

She shook her head, closing her book and putting it back in her bag. "Alright. That is true. I am looking forward to it, too. But I suspect they will send someone to retrieve us before long."

I spun to face her completely, a finger raised in the air. "They will try, but I have a plan! We have done plenty of tutoring. I think we should sneak off and disguise ourselves as adventurers with our friends for a little while. We could head out to the frontier and help secure the roads to West Peak! Maybe we can even visit with Shiori and check in on Sebastian!"

She raised an eyebrow. "You know, that might make some people very angry. They were planning to send us to that academy eventually."

I nodded, "Exactly! We need to escape now, while we still can."

She slowly shook her head at my antics. "Well, I guess for now, we can enjoy a few days of relaxing. I think it will be hard to drag Sibylla away from her new tower, though."

I straightened, taken aback. "I hadn't thought of that! Hm. This will take some planning. Alright. I agree to your few days of relaxing."

She grinned, and we turned back to watch the approach. It only took a few minutes before the ship came to a halt, and the gondola was being made ready to drop. Soon enough, we were descending toward the tower below, and I couldn't help but bounce a little on my heels. It was one of those short rides that felt like it was taking forever.

Everyone seemed abnormally quiet as they stood waiting for us, and somehow, that made everyone around me quiet as well. Somehow, that even included Amélie, but I assumed she was just letting me have my moment. I gave her a quick smile before turning back to the view below.

When we touched down, I didn't even wait for the platform to fully settle. I hopped over the gate as soon as I could and made a beeline for Lilith, arms already half-open to pull her into a hug – and then I stopped. Something was completely off. The smile on Lilith's face was tight and strained. Sibylla stood too still. Even Constance was unusually somber, and Kira wouldn't quite meet my eyes.

"...What happened?" I asked slowly, my ears dipping without my permission.

Lilith rose and met me halfway, her hands clasping mine gently. "It's good that you're back, Evelyn."

When Sibylla started explaining what happened, I wanted to leave immediately. Some might even try to claim I had a bit of a panic attack. I think I was acting perfectly rationally, considering everything, especially returning to hear that I had been away for yet another crisis.

Despite the incredible urgency I felt crushing down on me, the others wanted to wait and have everyone stick together and, annoyingly, their arguments were pretty decent. Sibylla had already set wards to alert us if anything attacked again, and given how many monsters had been lost, she doubted whoever controlled them would risk another assault so soon. Hard as it was to calm down and accept, things were under control. If I charged in now, everyone would just stop what they were doing to report to me instead of getting things done.

So, we compromised. I sent Dawn's Light ahead to defend the harbor. We'd follow once we were ready. Alice and Caeda couldn't be left alone again, and they needed rest more than anything. Once the ship was away, we went inside to sit down and go over what had happened. Properly, this time.

Sibylla stood near the hearth, hands tucked into her sleeves. She looked like she hadn't slept, which… to be fair, she probably hadn't.

"Okay. I guess we can take it from the top," she started. "As I said before, the town was attacked last night, and there were heavy casualties."

That immediately cut through the warmth in the room. I stiffened, and even Haunt, lounging near the fire, let out a soft rumble.

Sibylla glanced at me, then back at the others. "Your suspicions about the last attack being led by that mermaid were probably right on the money. Only this time, it wasn't just a mermaid leading a few goblins, and there was no attempt to make it look like a random monster surge."

Lilith's eyes narrowed. "What do you mean? There were more mermaids?"

"No. Worse," Sibylla said. "This time, they brought sirens."

Amélie blinked. "You mean… like singing bird-women?"

Sibylla gave her a long, tired look. "No, they were more like monstrous mermaids. The singing part is accurate, though. They were using magical songs to control the monsters and attack the minds of the people in town."

"Ah," Amélie said softly. "Yes, that makes more sense."

"I heard them all the way from here. When I ran to the town, they were outside the sea wall, singing. Their magic only got through in waves. They were testing it above and below the water, like it wasn't working how they expected, but it was enough to hit the town's defenses hard. From what I heard afterward, the creatures following them surged when the song first hit, then got disorganized when it dropped off."

"How did they get through?" I asked.

"They didn't, at first. That seawall was more than just an anti-ship fortification. Turns out it still carries some old enchantments. They're probably thousands of years old. It blunted the worst of the magic."

Constance raised a brow. "Convenient."

"Very," Sibylla agreed. "Would've gone much worse otherwise."

I nodded slowly. "So what happened?"

Sibylla shrugged, "That isn't exactly clear. Blunted or not, the song still debilitated many of the guards in the harbor over time. They were almost able to put up a real fight before they started falling asleep where they stood, or walking off the wall into the water. The ones who lived only did so because they barricaded themselves inside the fortifications when the monsters finally began flooding over the walls."

That was hard to hear. I'd met or at least greeted so many of them in passing since we'd arrived, and now they were just gone. Sibylla saw my falling face and pushed on before my thoughts could get too bogged down.

"I arrived sometime after that. They'd already taken the wall and the harbor and were making their way into the city. I had no idea what was going on at first, but I followed the song after what you said from the last attack. I expected to find another mermaid that I could dissec- I mean, take out and stop the attack. Instead, I found those things. Insight called them Siren Spawn, but they were all different."

Constance crossed her arms. "Different how? Did they have sub-types?"

Sibylla shrugged, "I didn't have much information to work with, but probably, yes. They looked completely different from one another. They also had names, which was weird. But yes, one was like a merman that could inflate his expanding ribcage that doubled as its gills or whatever and sing from them. Another was a massive, bloated mass of flesh, like a half-kraken or something. You get the idea."

Constance stared for a moment before asking, "And there were more of them? How did you resist their songs long enough to fight the monsters off?"

"I didn't. I went down to the water and beat the snot out of them until they ran away. They kept making me play whack-a-mole, hiding under the water while the others distracted me, then popping up and trying to sing again. It was super annoying. But after I melted the gills out of the big one and cursed another one to spew spiders every time she tried to make any noise, they gave up and fled, so I went back into the town." She suddenly turned to me, "Evelyn, did you know this town has an orphanage? I mean, it is a big town, but how are so many people dying that they need an orphanage?"

I blinked at her. That hadn't really registered with me either, but Lilith answered. "By road, Siren's Reach is the biggest town for some ways. The ocean is a dangerous place. Many people don't return. And there are plenty of adventurers on these roads, and plenty of things to end a merchant's journey early. All of those children will end up somewhere."

Sibylla nodded sadly, lost in some memory. But after a few seconds, she blinked it away like nothing happened and continued.

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"My fight disrupted the song. That made the effects flicker, but it was too late for a lot of people. A whole section of town got overrun before the guard could rally."

No one spoke for a long moment.

"How many?" I asked quietly.

Sibylla hesitated. "Too many."

My throat tightened. I could feel the guilt bubbling up again, rising fast, like it always did when people died while I was off doing something else.

But she interrupted my thoughts again, "Alice and Caeda were outside town on their way back in a carriage. They finished the dungeon floor and came out to find me missing. Anyway, something killed their driver, and Alice had to take the reins and drive them in herself. Brought them back to the gates while people were still screaming in the streets." Sibylla shifted slightly, suddenly awkward. "Alice… she didn't take it well. Blamed me for not showing up sooner. Thought I'd abandoned them. She let me know with a nice punch to the face."

That snapped my attention over. "She what?"

"Oh, she apologized after," Sibylla said airily. "Which means we're obviously friends now. I think that's how it works. Punching, crying, mutual trauma… the standard bonding package."

Kira let out a soft snort but didn't interrupt.

Lilith gave her a look. "You're not upset?"

Sibylla shrugged. "She was scared. Overwhelmed. And to be fair, I did show up late and immediately start setting things on fire without much of an explanation."

Amélie shook her head, somewhere between exasperated and amused.

"But," Sibylla added more seriously, "she saved Caeda. She got them both back before helping the guards kill a lot of the monsters. She's a tough cookie, but she's rattled, and she needs time. They both do."

I exhaled slowly and nodded. "Then we wait. We stay. And we figure out how to stop this from happening again."

Amélie shook her head, though. "We should save that conversation for when we are back in town and have the input from Septimia and the others who know best how to defend it. For now, perhaps we should tell the others about our own trip. Sibylla especially needs to hear this. She could be a target, too."

I sighed but gave a reluctant nod. I wasn't at all interested in reliving all of that after I'd just forcefully put it behind me. She took over, explaining everything from her perspective. The story wasn't anything exciting until the end. The betrayal and attempted assassination got everyone's attention right away, especially how the assassin managed to somehow fool both Amélie and my traits.

"That's it," Lilith said with an air of protectiveness I wasn't quite ready for. "We need to take this threat seriously. We can't just keep splitting up. You need someone with you who has the skills to see these people coming and stop them. Until we have a better solution, no one should leave the group without someone who fills that role."

Sibylla immediately balked, "Hey, no one? This has nothing to do with me. You may not know this, but my alchemy requires me to go out harvesting materials basically all the time. Besides, I'm not important enough to target anyway. Those Drolian guys have no idea who I am."

Lilith rolled her eyes. "This has everything to do with you, too. Several of the previous assassins were from a cult that intended to kill Evelyn and Amélie because they were Kitsune rather than anything to do with politics."

"Yeah," I chimed in, "and you're our sister. You might not think you're a political target, but I'm pretty sure that fact alone means you're a—"

"Don't you dare!" Sibylla interrupted with such force that I pressed back into my chair in surprise.

Amélie gently cleared her throat, coughing into her hand something that sounded an awful lot like, "Princess."

Sibylla froze as her gaze unfocused with a notification for the flicker of an instant, and then rage filled her eyes as she turned to face Amélie. For her part, Amélie was obliviously inspecting the back of her hand.

"You! How dare… Oh, you're so going to get it!" Sibylla fumed.

Eyes wide with innocence, Amélie looked up at her sister. "Is something wrong, Princess Sibylla?"

An instant later, she was diving behind another couch to dodge a pillow flying at her with the speed of a cannonball.

"Girls!" Lilith interrupted them. "This affects everyone in the group. Anyone can be targeted, not just the three of you. What if someone decides to kill or kidnap someone to lure one of you out? Besides, Sibylla is likely the only other person in the group with the skills to track down someone actively hiding with powerful skills or abilities."

Amélie's head popped up from behind the couch. "That is probably true. I can see through things with effort, but my skills do not search for people trying to hide."

I nodded my agreement. "Same."

With a monumental effort, Sibylla swallowed down her indignant sisterly rage. "Fine. Yes. I can track assassins and sneaky types, so long as I'm not too distracted. If I were there, I probably would have taken care of the assassin before he'd even finished getting in position. It's a shame he got away."

Amélie grinned and risked standing up from her hiding spot, "Not all of him did."

She stepped over to her bag, knelt down, and pulled the dismembered arm out, holding it up like a prize.

"Evelyn ripped this off before he could escape. I thought maybe you might be able to do something with it. Maybe track him down so we do not have to worry about an assassin hiding in every shadow we pass."

Her look of rage flipped like a switch to something more of curiosity, and perhaps malicious glee. Sibylla stepped forward and accepted the gift. "ooOOooo!"

I stared at the macabre scene of her grinning while she inspected the arm, "You can't possibly find that as interesting as you're making it look."

She didn't bother to look up as she shrugged. "Oh, au contraire, mon cherie!" she countered with a terrible accent.

"… don't do that," Amélie interrupted.

Sibylla continued without missing a beat. "This isn't just interesting. This is an opportunity."

She knelt and started clearing a space on the floor without missing a beat, setting the arm carefully beside her like it was a sacred relic. Her finger began sketching in the dust almost instinctively—no chalk, no fancy tools. Just precision... and probably magic. I didn't remember there being any dust before she started.

"And if I move fast enough," she continued, "I can anchor a sympathetic link before it fades. Maybe even hitch a ride through his dreams. That would be fun."

Before I could question what exactly she meant by that, a small shape wriggled out from the loose sleeve of her robe and scampered down her arm.

It was a tiny white mouse, unnaturally bright against the dim room, with bright, intelligent eyes. It didn't even hesitate. It just immediately started helping, tracing little marks into the dust beside her larger symbols.

Amélie made a soft choking sound. "Is that…"

"Oh, she's not just a mouse," Sibylla said proudly, not looking up. "She's a spirit mouse."

I stared as the mouse diligently corrected one of Sibylla's slightly uneven glyphs with a little flick of her tiny paw.

"Did you summon a mouse to help create rituals?" Amélie asked, somewhere between awe and horror.

Sibylla shrugged. "I didn't summon her. She's a friend from the spirit realm. I knew it was meant to be when I caught her howling at the moon."

The mouse squeaked approvingly, scampering over to nudge the dismembered arm into a better position inside the growing circle.

"And," Sibylla added smugly, "she ate at least two goblins during the attack. So she's practically a war hero."

I opened my mouth, then closed it again. Because, honestly, what did you even say to that? But a moment later, Sibylla froze mid-motion before continuing with a mischievous look on her face.

"You've thought of something?" I probed carefully, and she nodded. After half a minute of waiting for her to reply, I tried again. "What's up? You can't just leave us in suspense."

She finished one last glyph, nodded, and stood. After a quick nod from her companion, who quickly scurried back up to her sleeve, she announced, "All done! Now… just a touch of mana…"

"This isn't some horrifying curse that I'm going to regret witnessing, is it?"

Sibylla froze, turning away from the magic circle on the ground. "OK. That really depends on whether you think Kittens are a blessing or a curse."

Amélie was quick to giggle. "A blessing, of course. How could they be a curse?"

But my eyes never left Sibylla's. "Enough of anything can be a curse. How many kittens are we talking about?"

She blinked innocently at me and tried, "…No less than three, no more than thirteen?"

I continued to stare. "Are there any qualifiers to that? Like, say, Thirteen Thousand?"

Without looking away, she dragged a foot across a rune, erasing it. "Nope."

I crossed my arms, "Maybe we should talk about-" But my words were interrupted as the circle blazed with sudden golden light, the runes flaring like tiny stars. Haunt yelped and darted behind a chair, and Amélie grabbed my arm like she expected a flood of adorable floof to spill into the room at any second.

"Too late!" she replied with innocent cheer.

I rested my face into my hand a little harder than I intended, and just left it there. After several seconds, Kira finally asked, "Was that it? I was expecting something more dramatic after all that build-up."

"Let me see that circle," Constance said, stepping forward to inspect the spell, but with the last flickers of light burning away, even the dust on the floor was gone. "Alright, maybe not. Where did the arm go?"

Sibylla was very pointedly ignoring the suspicious glances Constance was giving her and the now-vanished ritual circle until her ears perked up and she found the perfect opportunity to change the subject.

"Oh! Good morning, Alice! Did you sleep well?"

We all turned toward the stairs to see a barely awake Alice watching us with a drowsy raised eyebrow. She blinked blearily at Sibylla, then rubbed a hand down her face.

"Can't say I'm sorry to've missed whatever mess that was." She leaned against the doorway with a yawn, glancing between everyone still sitting around the non-existent remains of the erased ritual circle. "Judgin' by the looks of y'all, though, maybe I oughta be worried."

Amélie cleared her throat and got to her feet, looking uncharacteristically sincere. "Actually. There is something I should probably say. To you, specifically."

She paused for a moment to shift her weight from foot to foot, suddenly seeming as young as the rest of us for once. She twirled a strand of her hair around one finger, then dropped it with a sigh. Meeting her eyes, she finally said, "I owe you an apology, Alice. A real one. No jokes or games."

Alice, still rubbing the sleep out of her eyes, raised an eyebrow but said nothing, and Amélie pushed on.

"I shouldn't have messed with you the way I did." She winced. "The teasing, the hints, all that stupid harem talk. I thought I was being clever. I thought maybe if I made you laugh and made it seem less serious, it'd help you settle in easier." She hesitated, then finished quietly, "I didn't realize how uncomfortable I was making you instead."

The silence in the room stretched out like a taut wire. For once, even Amélie was feeling the pressure of all the eyes watching her, but she squared her shoulders.

"You deserved better than that. You deserved honesty from the start. I should have told you everything about Evelyn and about me, and I should never have acted so familiar when I barely knew you. I am sorry."

Alice stayed quiet for a few long moments after Amélie finished. Her expression was guarded, thoughtful, and just a little tense. Finally, she let out a slow breath and crossed her arms loosely.

"You're right," she finally said, voice measured. "You should've."

Amélie winced slightly, but Alice held up a hand to show she wasn't finished.

"Look. I already heard why you did it. Caeda told me." She glanced at Caeda as she stepped into the doorway beside her, giving her friend a reassuring nod. "And maybe it was even a good idea, in theory. But the way you went about it?" She shook her head. "You made me feel like an idiot, Amélie. Worse, you made me feel like I couldn't trust anyone around me."

She sighed, looking away from Amélie, and I could see the strain as she forced her voice to soften slightly. "And now I gotta deal with feelin' guilty on top of everything else, 'cause I know you had good intentions." She paused before meeting Amélie's eyes again. "I forgive you, but it might take a minute before things feel normal again."

We stood there for several seconds in the awkward silence, unsure of how to react to the situation. I'd known it was coming, but I hadn't expected it to come up so soon. As I was trying to think of an ice breaker to move us past this point, Caeda's sleepy voice tentatively broke the quiet.

"Just… one minute? That isn't so bad."

I barely got my hand to my face in time to stifle an entirely inappropriate giggle, and had to clear my throat with a small, "um, sorry," when the attention turned to me.

Not willing to let things settle back into an uncomfortable silence or turn back to previous subjects, Sibylla clapped her hands together. "I'm really glad you two worked that out! I guess now that we're all awake, we can get moving!"

Alice, who'd missed our earlier conversation, asked, "Get movin'? And just where exactly are we goin'?"

"Back to Siren's Reach." Lilith cut in. "We were just discussing how important it is for everyone to stick together right now. Apparently, assassins tried to kill Evelyn and Amélie again, and you are likely a target as well, or will be as soon as they hear of you."

Alice nearly slumped. "Great. Assassins. That's just what we need. Guess we will go get ready."

She started to turn back into the stairwell, so I called out, "Alice!" She stopped and looked over her shoulder at me, and I continued, "Thanks for helping protect the town. I'm glad you two are okay."

She nodded with a "Yeah, sure," before continuing on her way.

We all agreed to meet in front of the tower. Sibylla had several soldiers nearby help her prepare the horses for us to ride back into town while everyone got ready to leave. Only she, Amélie, and I were ready to run right out the door, which meant that we got to help with the work, but I think that was for the best.

It gave me something active to do while I digested everything that had happened. I think Amélie appreciated it for a chance to get past the emotions she was feeling over her own situation, and Sibylla, well, I think she just liked horses. I was a little envious of the carefree, happy smile she had the entire time.

The others joined us soon afterward, and we started our ride toward town. Haunt was consistently darting ahead, his nose always searching for the next interesting thing. The group was never quiet, with everyone having their own small conversations about things as we moved along, until Alice asked Sibylla a perfectly reasonable question and we stumbled across the next clue to the source of our problems.

Glancing sidelong at Sibylla as they rode, she raised her voice over the clatter of hooves. "Hey, Sibylla. Mind explainin' why you decided to put your tower halfway to nowhere? Were you goin' for 'mysterious recluse,' or was 'ornery hermit' more your style?" She paused just long enough for Sibylla to raise an eyebrow, then continued with a grin, "Seriously though, did you just like the view, or are you allergic to people?"

Sibylla shrugged. "I like people just fine. They're delicious." After a few seconds of awkward silence, she laughed, "I'm just kidding! Wow. Tough crowd. Anyway, I tried to put it right next to the town, but I couldn't. There is some kind of system-enforced rule about not being able to put dungeons too close together."

Kira's eyes snapped to Sibylla, "There's a dungeon near the town? I haven't heard a word about that, and I've been studying the region at every opportunity I've had. Where is it? How far away?"

"No clue!" Sibylla cheerfully told her. "And I'm not surprised no one knows about it. I can only get a vague sense of its direction with the error message, but with how many times I've felt it, I think my guess of almost directly south of the town is a good one. And maybe a little to the east." After a moment's thought, she turned her gaze back on Alice, "And don't even think of ditching our dungeon for the mystery dungeon!"

Alice snorted, "Wouldn't dream of it."

Sibylla nodded back to her, her concerns laid to rest, but it brought something else to the forefront of my mind. "Maybe that's where the dungeon floor boss haunting Darkwater Downs came from. All that's south for a long way is the shallow sea, and it was some kind of monstrous crab."

A jubilant smile spread across Sibylla's face. "I almost forgot about that thing! I wonder what it would taste like…" She trailed off.

"Are you hungry or something?" Amélie asked, amused.

Sibylla nodded, "Yes. And I think eating the king of the ocean will make me feel better about this whole saltwater ordeal. I've washed my tails a dozen times, and they still feel gritty and wrong. Someone needs to pay."

I blinked at her, "Um. I don't think it's the king-"

"Don't try to deter my delicious vengeance!"

Lilith shook her head, "Alright. We have a lot to deal with in Siren's Reach, but we can see what information or rumors we can dig up about this dungeon, and then, yes, figuring out a solution for that giant crab might give us more clues. For now, let's focus on getting to town safely. We don't know if there are still any loose monsters out here."

Her words were like a bucket of cold water, but a needed one, and we all began to watch our surroundings with more vigilance.