The Homunculus Knight

"The unfortunate truth is that our efforts to tutor the nobility in being better rulers has exchanged one set of problems for another. For centuries, we sought to cultivate the great families of Erebu into exemplars of leadership and governance, and to a certain extent, we've succeeded. But, the inevitable problem with aristocracy is that there are more claimants than thrones, and successful houses will produce cadet branches desiring their own lands and titles. While in theory, this grants us a large crop of worthy prospects, it also results in a large population of capable, if constrained nobles, who feel entitled to a position of power and have the skills to take them. The near-constant feudal warfare that has infested the western League is the most infamous symptom of this problem, but arguably not the most damaging.- words of Henri Gaspar, Priest of Father Sky and member of the semi-heretical "Kingsmith conclave"

The captured vampire stared at Natalie in shock, incomprehension warring with confusion upon her withered features. Voice dry and brittle as old coffin wood, the prisoner managed to rasp. "What?"

Stepping back into the sunlight, letting its itching warmth wash over her pale skin, Natalie held out her hands, letting bloody claws grow from the nailbeds. "I will consume you like I have other vampires. You'll be trapped in my cistern, withering away as I extract everything of value, leaving your conscious husk to languish eternally."

Red eyes wide, the prisoner looked between Alukah and Paladin as incomprehension slowly settled into cool calculation. "The cost of molek is great. Surely negotiating with me for this information is safer for all of us than risking damage to your mind."

A deep sigh escaped Cole then. "She doesn't believe you."

Natalie looked at her partner, noting the nimbus of holy frost emanating off of him. He could literally see the captured vampire's emotions while in this state, and apparently, the armless moroi wasn't feeling what they'd planned for her to. Stepping over towards the prisoner, Cole cocked his head to one side. "She thinks you're mad, and hopes playing along in some way will offer an advantage."

Flinching from both his words and approach, the vampire looked at Natalie. "It is an… extraordinary claim, but one I could be convinced of."

The Alukah realized that she might have overestimated the amount of knowledge about her circulating in the Duchies. This maimed leech before her wasn't Wolfgang, not a voivode's courtier, she wouldn't be privy to any of the dirty and not-so-little secrets that Natalie found herself in the center of. Which meant it was time to change tactics, and not rely on her reputation, but instead on a demonstration. The only problem was that, outside of showing the prisoner her cistern or cannibalizing her, there was really only one way to prove what she was.

"There's been something I've been meaning to experiment with for a while, but haven't had an opportunity to."

A small mist bank rolled off Cole as he regarded her warily. Staring at one hand, Natalie continued. "It shouldn't be dangerous, but I still wanted to warn you."

After letting one taloned finger slice open her palm, she rushed forward, grabbed the captured vampire, and forced the open wound against her mouth. Rivulets of black blood flowed past half-desiccated lips, and Natalie could watch in the prisoner's eyes as she felt the power of Annoch fill her. When she pulled her hand back, the leech struggled, trying to drink more of the ichor, feral desperation taking hold. But, even empowered by the Alukah, the prisoner was pitifully weak, unable to do more than spasm and squirm.

Licking the last droplets from her mouth, the prisoner wheezed. "What was that? What are you? Wh-what-"

Cole grabbed onto the vampire's ankle and finished yanking her into the sunbeam, muttering as he did. "Don't make her repeat herself."

A shriek escaped the prisoner, and she flinched away from the light before realizing it didn't burn. Slowly, cautiously, the vampire sat up and stared out the window at the sun shining overhead. For a long few seconds, the prisoner just peered up at the heavens, unblinkingly drinking in the blinding light. Sparkling rivulets then slithered down the vampire's cheeks, her withered body somehow sparing the energy to cry.

Forcing herself to look away from the sun for the first time in decades, the vampire instead stared at Natalie, her expression a strange mix of haunted and hallowed. "You… made me a daywalker."

Shrugging, the Alukah squinted up at the bright blue sky. "That's the power of my blood."

Collapsing onto her side, the vampire returned her focus to the sun. "What do you want to know?"

Natalie exchanged looks with Cole, her own surprise meeting his cautious uncertainty. This was not exactly how she'd anticipated this, but… gift horses and all that. "Why were you attacking the river barge, for starters?"

Unwilling to look away from the sky, the vampire said. "My squad was dispatched across the Alidonar to hunt for potential resistance before it could coalesce around Crowbend."

"Yes, but why here and why now?" asked Cole.

A deep shuddering sigh escaped the vampire. "After the initial battle at Crowbend, the duke's corpse accountants realized we were missing barges. At first, the assumption was they had sunk farther downriver, but after what happened a few nights ago, that theory changed."

"What happened?" growled Cole, his body language now somehow even more tense.

The prisoner shrugged the remains of her shoulders. "One of the duke's new war constructs was destroyed. The bindings on it told the necromancers, potent god-magic was responsible, but they didn't know much else, only the general area it was ordered to hunt."

The paladin shut his eyes and let out a deep hiss of anger. "The duke's court knew the fleet had a large complement of priests. They assumed only potential survivors would have the wherewithal to challenge the rattler."

"Yes, especially with the plague. But, I take it we were wrong?"

Turning away from the leech, Cole bit down a snarl of anger, one Natalie knew was directed more inward than anywhere else. In saving Azyge, he'd accidentally exposed allies to the enemy's predations. This, of course, was an idiotic way to look at events, but that wouldn't stop him.

"What about the shamans?" she asked, unwilling to waste this opportunity. "We know you targeted the shamans on the barge."

The vampire glanced back at her, visibly confused. "We were targeting all the spell weavers. The shamans were just the easiest."

Okay, that made some sense. By the nature of their powers, priests had a better chance of surviving a vampire's attack. Still, this stroke of ill-fortune felt enough like a coincidence to have Natalie's hackles raised. Was this a genuine product of circumstances, or something engineered by the Reaper? No wonder Cole and Argentari could be so annoyingly paranoid; juggling all these concerns was miserable.

"How did you even find the ship? It's protected magically."

After shifting slightly, to better bask in the sunlight, the vampire replied. "We looked for places along the river without stray ghouls wandering around. Then, Diego, one of my colleagues, used his mist to flush out the weak-willed. It only worked properly the first night, but since then we'd been keeping up the pressure, waiting for the defenders to break."

"This mess has jagged edges, but they still fit together," muttered Cole. "Now, tell me why you aren't as afraid as you should be?"

At Natalie's confused look, he elaborated. "Her emotions have been settling down, it doesn't feel right."

"I got to see the sun again," replied the Vampire, her voice barely above a whisper. "One hundred and eleven years of darkness and now… light."

Still frowning, Cole started to say something when heavy hammering started on the compartment's door. Both Paladin and Alukah whirled to face the reinforced wood, as someone shouted from the other side."Sir Paladin! Enemies are approaching."

The sound of faint movement from behind her pulled Natalie's attention back to the prisoner just in time to see the maimed vampire dive through the open porthole. Moving to the window, Natalie looked in shock as the prisoner hit the damp sand below and started running. One of the soldiers outside noticed and moved to intercept, only to be knocked aside by the vampire's sole regrown arm. She'd been lying on it, facing away from them, so they couldn't see what she was doing.

"Oh fuck." swore Cole as he realized what had happened. "We need to go after her!"

Watching the fleeing leech, Natalie slowly shook her head. "No, we don't."

The door to the compartment opened then, and one of Molli's acolytes stood there breathlessly. "Ghouls are coming out of the river!"

Eyes wide, axe in hand, Cole said. "What?"

As the acolyte repeated herself, Natalie raised a hand and reached out through the window, imagining the prisoner to be a doll she could grab in her fingers. As she did, Natalie felt at the tentative link formed by shared blood between her and the fleeing vampire. Closing her hand, she yanked on the bond, much like she once had to Petar of Glockmire. The fleeing leech stumbled and fell, streams of smoke starting to billow off her skin as a faint trickle of power flowed into Natalie's cistern.

Cole's mouth fell open in genuine shock, and Natalie shrugged. "I wouldn't risk sharing my blood with even a maimed vampire if I wasn't confident I could do that."

Nodding slowly, he replied. "She was telling us the truth to buy time, and to distract us from her regeneration."

"Probably. I'll deal with her, and then circle back to you if the ghouls are still a problem."

"She's not dead?"

"Not yet. It will take a little bit for the sun to burn through traces of my blood, I made sure of that."

A slightly concerned expression crossed Cole's face, and then he nodded. The couple left the improvised interrogation room, heading to the deck, where they found the barge's crew rallying to deal with a growing crowd of strange corpses rising from the river. These weren't normal ghouls, Natalie could tell that at a glance. Their skin had a slick, rubbery texture akin to a frog's, and was so thin in places you could trace the burst blood vessels beneath like lines of blue on a motled canvas.

Cole lengthened Requiem into a halberd. "Drowner ghouls. Not much worse than normal ones on dry land, but miserable to deal with in the water. The leeches were probably gathering them to make sure the barge crew didn't try to leave by the river."

"Will they be a problem?" asked Natalie as she started heading in the prisoner's direction.

Shaking his head, Cole started to clamber over the boat's side. Pausing, he looked back at her. "Be careful."

Kissing two of her fingers, she tapped his lips with her own. "I will be."

Leaving Cole to help the soldiers deal with the ghouls, Natalie ran and leapt off the barge. Landing with a puff of sand, she stalked towards their escaped prisoner, mind abuzz with conflicting thoughts and emotions. She found the vampire lying less than a meter away from the river, smoke billowing off her rapidly disintegrating skin. Yet, despite being slowly burned by the sun, the leech was still wriggling towards the water, dragging herself forward using the ghastly thin arm she'd regrown using Natalie's offered power.

Squatting before the vampire, looking into the panicked red eyes staring out from a mask of burns and blisters, the Alukah asked. "How you reacted to the sun, was that real?"

Ashen scraps of flesh that had once been lips parted. "Yes, damn you, yes."

"I just don't understand then. Why cooperate after seeing what I could do, and then try to run?"

Hate blazed in the vampire's rapidly drying eyes, but she said nothing. Letting out a sigh, Natalie gently gripped the dying monster's face, ignoring the sizzle of sparks against her fingers. "I guess I'll find out the hard way."

Then, as fast as a striking adder, she sank fangs into the dying leech's neck and drank. Raw ecstasy flowed into the Alukah, a pleasure she'd forgotten how much she missed. A noise half between a moan and a growl escaped the greater vampire as her victim withered away; all that was the lesser vampire now belonged to her. As ash and bone tumbled onto the sands, Natalie slowly stood up and smiled, uncaring of the soot smearing her face.

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Rocking back and forth on her feet like an excited child, she rode the wave of bliss sloshing around inside her. Every instinct told the vampire to run, to hunt, to fight, to fuck, to drown herself in the world's joys. Sucking in a great lungful of pointless but sweet tasting air, she held her hands and stared up at the sky.

"Fire-and-fucking-iron!"

Slapping her own cheeks, trying to get this wonderfully mad energy to settle, Natalie fought down a giggle. "Okay, okay, I'm handling this, I'm in control."

Not entirely sure if she was lying to herself or not, the Alukah did a few useless stretches and then decided on what to do. The soul she'd consumed could wait; directing the power of molek before it overwhelmed her could not.

Black blood burst out of her nailbeds and wrists, flowing over pale skin to enclose her hands in clawed gloves. Looking at her ichor-forged weapons, Natalie couldn't help but find them… lacking in some way; she needed some style, some excitement. Forcing more blood into the construct, she let the gloves grow into gauntlets, covering her entire forearms in sharp ebony.

Still not satisfied, she tried growing a few spikes along her ulna, but found them clumsy and ugly. Reshaping the spikes, she turned them into rows of small blades; now even glancing blows from her would hurt. Deciding she would need to play more with this power later, but content for now, Natalie shot forward like a black-tipped arrow, coming around the barge's side and joining the fight.

Cole stood amidst frozen sand and broken bodies, his halberd tearing apart ghouls with every blow. At his flanks were two squads of soldiers and priests, each working hard to keep the wave of undead from washing them all away.

Letting out an excited whoop, Natalie leaped over the soldiers and landed right atop one of the ghouls close to Cole. Driving her Fingers forward, she cut its spinal cord with a clean jab and then conjured her wolves, setting them upon the drowned dead. Flicking some viscous fluid from her claws, she smiled at her partner. "Hi! I did the thing!"

Getting up and then waving one sharp-edged hand at the shocked defenders, she proclaimed. "Don't worry, I'm here to help!"

Frowning, Cole paused in his grim work to whisper. "Your eyes are fully red. Are you in control?"

Natalie nodded. "Trying to stay that way! Now, anything I need to know about these ghouls?"

She could almost visibly see Cole weigh his concerns and then decide they should wait. "Their bodies are a little more durable than normal, and they can kind of swim. Oh, they also prefer to drown their victims, and are very good at doing so."

Well, at least that last part wasn't something she needed to worry about. "Got it!"

Springing into action, two wolves at her side, Natalie attacked, lashing out with a flurry of blows. Cole was right, the ghouls were harder than the ones they'd faced outside of Azyge; their bodies had an element of slimy gelatinousness that made landing clean strikes tricky. But unfortunately for the undead, an oily coating wasn't enough to even slow down Natalie, especially now.

Steadily, they drove the ghouls back to the sandbar's edge, paladin, priests, soldiers, and vampire working together with shocking effectiveness. As the remaining undead were corralled into the water, a shout of alarm went up from one of the squads. "They grabbed Alwin!"

Both Cole and Natalie moved towards the cry, catching sight of a clear struggle in the water. One of the soldiers had gotten too close to a drop-off point at the sandbar, where the gentle slope into the river turned into a deep plunge, and a trio of drowners had grabbed him. Struggling madly, but weighed down by his chainmail, Alwin fought to keep his head above water as clammy arms pulled him down towards an ugly end.

Wasting no time, Natalie bounded through the shallow water and literally dove into the fray. Claws lashing out, she tore at the ghouls, trying to weaken them while not hitting the frantic soldier. The water turned into a frothing mix of fetid tissue, fresh blood, and stirred-up silt. Even Natalie's senses couldn't make out much of this mess, and she was forced to rely on touch more than anything else. Grabbing a handful of chainmail, she hoisted the attached body up towards the shallows while cutting at the grasping corpses. Other hands, warm living ones, joined her grip on Alwin, hauling him onto the shore, leaving Natalie to struggle against the ghouls.

Rubbery arms and bony fingers wrapped around the vampire, doing more to disrupt her leverage than anything else. Disoriented and disgusted, Natalie attacked wildly, kicking, punching, slashing, flailing, in every direction, sending her tumbling through the murky water and away from the ghouls. Half-floating, half-sinking, blind and deaf to anything but swirling brown and sloshing groans, she tried to right herself, but ran into a problem; she had no idea which way was up. While a mortal could just follow their bubbles to the surface, an unbreathing vampire found navigating a bit trickier.

A strange pressure suddenly pulled on Natalie as she spun about pointlessly, a pushing sensation coming from one direction. She'd gotten out of the sandbar's lee and into the Alidon river's current proper. This was a problem, especially considering that as a mountain-town girl, Natalie had never been the strongest of swimmers. Cursing wildly, and in the process inhaling a lungful of riverwater, she tumbled head-over-heels, frantically seeking anything to hold onto. Strands of clinging reeds and kelp slithered along her, and she grabbed hold of them, only for her claws to shred the damp riverlife. Unmaking her claws, furious at herself for not realizing what would happen, Natalie tried to sink, as the river bottom seemed her best bet now.

Then, before she could make any headway in that plan, she slammed into something cold and hard. There was a wall in the river, a gnarled, painfully chilly wall. Finding a grip on the strange structure, she fought against the current, trying to pull her away from its questionable safety. Something tapped against her side then, a sturdy, tubular shape that she quickly grabbed for; it was a long oar. After wrapping herself around the shaped wood, she was hauled up and out of the water, onto a slab of cold stone.

Blinking away riverwater and muck, Natalie looked around her, realizing where she was and what had happened. There was a small iceberg in the river, or accurately, an ice jetty, sticking out from the shore, a good five meters. A trio of barge crew alongside Alia, Yara, and Molli stood around her, wearing expressions that ranged from fearful to worried; the oar they'd used sat on the icy ground next to them.

Alia said something that might have been "Are you alright?" but it was hard to tell with waterlogged ears. When Natalie tried to answer, a deluge of water spilled out of her mouth; she'd swallowed enough of the river to drown a mortal thrice over. After frantically coughing up a few liters of water along with some seaweed and what might have been a minnow, the vampire let out a gurgling groan. The spike of energy molek had given her was well and truly spent.

"Shit, I've heard couples like to match, but this is stupid."

Looking up at Alia, from her crumpled spot on the ground, Natalie managed to warble out. "W-what?"

The city warden pointed towards the ice jetty's origin, and the collapsed bulk of Cole lying where ice met sand, Mina tending to him. Managing to shakily stand, Natalie wobbled over towards her lover, her inside now cold with fear, not water. Looking up at her approach, Mina offered a tight smile. "He's alive, but barely; he really overtaxed himself."

Cole let out a long groan. "Never froze that much water all at once before."

Kneeling down to hug him, Natalie whispered. "Thank you."

Leaning into her embrace, the paladin muttered. "You smell awful."

Sinuses now finally drained, she could agree. A mix of corpse and river muck covered her. "I need armor that's self-cleaning."

Sitting up a little, Cole looked to Priestess Molli. "The ghouls?"

"Dealt with. We'll reinforce the wardings closer to the river," she replied, then added. "Strange to deal with so many ghouls in the river, I thought they didn't like running water."

Managing to stand up, Cole looked over towards the barge, where soldiers and crew were laying out the bodies for consecration and disposal. "Those were drowners, a subtype. They're usually created by shipwrecks, but I'd guess a lot of people have been dying to the Alidon recently."

All of them stared at the river and then at the distant form of Harmas. It was easy to imagine dozens, if not hundreds, of desperate people trying to ford the spirit-controlled river, risking its currents rather than the hungry dead.

"I hope Kit and Deborah come up with something soon," muttered Natalie.

Molli nodded. "Your magi says he's onto something, and has been working with Dala all morning. But, for now, I'm more interested in what happened with the prisoner."

Cole and Natalie glanced at each other, the Alukah answering for them both. "She was cooperative until she wasn't."

Natalie stood among red lilies, staring at the small sapling that now sprouted from her mindscape. Glancing over at the larger fang-needled yew she'd almost gotten used to, and then back at its smaller kin, she morbidly wondered if she'd have a forest here soon.

It had been a few hours since the clash with the ghouls, and she was finally getting around to examining her newest victim's soul. As truly fucked up as that notion, it wasn't the source of her current trepidation. The last time she'd done anything with one of the consumed vampires inside of her, things had gone very bad very quickly. Still, learning what they could from the soul she'd devoured was important, and if events started to repeat themselves, Cole, Mina, and Deborah were waiting back in the waking world with quite a few countermeasures.

Kneeling down before the sapling, she prodded a section of freshly peeling bark, helping the prisoner's horrified face come into the open like a hatching chicklet. Resting her own face in one hand, eyeing the withered features of the vampire, Natalie muttered. "I warned you."

Beady corpse eyes stared up at her, confused desperation. Disliking how well she'd adapted to this sort of thing, Natalie asked. "I never did ask your name. I guess I didn't want to sympathize with you if I had to do this. But now, not knowing just feels wrong."

Her voice, a scratchy, pathetic thing, the vampire managed to say. "I am Chevaleresse Cielago Delano."

"Cielago Delano. That's Lusitanian, I think," mused Natalie before saying. "I need your memories to know if what you told us was the truth. I can probably forcibly extract them from you, but that won't be pleasant for either of us, so it would be better to just give them to me."

The chevaleresse stared at her with clear hatred. "You condem me to this hell, and now want my aid!?"

Meeting the captured soul's misery-laden gaze, Natalie shrugged. "I did what was necessary. You didn't need to run, you didn't need to sic a swarm of drowned dead on all of us, you could have taken my offer and faced Master Time instead of me."

"And be consumed by the Dark?" spat Cielago. "Red Night, daywalker, blood or not, you are insane. We are vampires, we are by very definition damned. Nothing awaits us in the Beyond but pain; the gods make sure of that! I don't know what lies the Tenth's executioner put in your head, but you won't escape the Hells either. Our claim on eternal life, bars us from any of the Pantheon's afterlifes."

This brought to mind Isabelle's bitter claims about the cycle of reincarnation, and thinking about the missing countess made Natalie's still heart ache. "Better vampires than you have offered better arguments on this. The gods are far more forgiving than the Duchies would like to think; my nature is proof on multiple levels. Still, you have a point about being damned either way. So let me offer you some hope."

Gesturing around them and towards the larger tree, Natalie explained. "I don't entirely know how all of this works, but I do know the other vampires I consumed are being… used."

To illustrate her point, the ground around them shifted and churned, bringing the sapling right below the big yew's lowest branches, allowing the twisted forms of Baron Sicar and Dame Adalie to come into Cielago's view.

"I've learned that to control my powers properly, I need to consume the souls of lesser vampires. But that doesn't change the fact this is jagged beyond belief. I'd like to find a way to eventually release or at least numb those trapped by my curse, but I don't really have any good ideas yet. That being said, in my experience, there are plenty of leeches that deserve whatever horrors the Alukah's power inflicts."

Leaning down so she could be eye-to-eye with Cielago, Natalie whispered. "So the question is, will you be among those I offer eventual mercy to, or will you spend gods knows how many centuries in this grove?"

The imprisoned soul was silent for a long time before her eyes shut, and her expression slackened in defeat. "Take my memories then, damn you."

Tears akin to both blood and sap dribbled out of the sapling-soul. Gently as she could, Natalie ran a finger through the tears and drank them down.

* A half-remembered childhood as a lesser scion of a disgraced noble house. Youth spent struggling for scraps of honor and prestige, knowing they'd never match what was owed. *

* An offer in the night. Power, wealth, respect, everything she'd ever wanted, at the cost of betraying relatives who'd long turned their backs. *

* Life ending, unlife beginning. Her skill in swordcraft refined by a stern sire, and accolades earned through strength of will and steel. *

* More than a century of service, a century of honor, pride, and slaughter. Comrades made, enemies ended, positions earned, mortals devoured*

* A mission into contested territory. Priests to hunt, a river to scour, prey to torment. *

* Awakening to monsters, one holy, one not, both demanding her secrets. *

Natalie fell back onto her butt, a shakey breath escaping her as flashes of an entire life slipped through her mind. Reaching out, using a technique Pyria taught her, she grabbed what she needed, letting the rest wash away like rainwater. As the deluge ended, she recovered herself and looked at the weeping soul.

"Thank you."

Cielago opened her eyes, her expression shocked. Unwilling now to meet her victim's stunned gaze, Natalie said. "Being in here won't be pleasant, I'm sorry. But.. from what I saw, you've earned some of this."

Getting up and leaving the trees, Natalie walked over to the rifts in her inner world, the fissures leading down into the darkness of the curse. Staring down at them, she considered what had just happened. Her powers, her magic, her very soul, were twisted, fell things. She'd not wanted to torture Cielago, instead hoping to get what she knew through more circuitous ways. But, now after doing her best devil-at-the-crossroads impression, Natalie was stuck with the strange feeling that maybe sticking the vampire's legs in the sun until she talked might have actually been the more merciful option, all things considered.

Still, she'd gotten results, and if Natalie was being totally honest, there was a dangerous thrill that came from such melodrama and manipulations, especially when it climaxed in the pleasure of molek. But, at the very least, she'd not succumbed to the vain malice that infected her outside of Azyge. That had come from tapping into the curse's power, not sampling her victim's memories. Staring up at the sky of her mindscape, lost in these morbid thoughts, the Alukah wondered what exactly she was becoming.

But before she could stew for too long, a taste touched her tongue: Cole's blood. Nervously, she started to surface from her mindscape. Natalie hadn't expected to be forcibly roused from this investigation; was something happening with her body? That notion bled into another, more frightening one, maybe, the curse had expressed itself differently this time, and was puppettering her while she was busy?

Before that idea could really start to fester, she opened her eyes, finding the cabin roof above her; she'd not moved while inside her mindscape. Yet, any relief such familiarity might bring was quickly snuffed out upon seeing Cole. Looming over her, his face a mask of grim worry, he said that most simple and terrible of sentences. "Something's happened."

Swallowing the last of his offered blood, Natalie asked. "What?"

"Kit did something to the spirit, or at least we think he did."

Slowly sitting up, Natalie looked around the cabin, finding it empty, except for Cole; whatever happened was bad enough to need Mina and Deborah. "What do you mean 'you think he did?"

Cole clenched his jaw. "He was investigating the spirit when it broke through its bindings and… I don't know how to describe it. Deborah and Dala are trying to get things under control, but we have no idea what happened to Kit."

Stomach dropping, Natalie hissed. "He's missing? Did… did it vaporize him?"

Shaking his head, Cole looked away slightly, his expression the telltale rictus of someone about to deliver bad news. "We don't think so, but that's not all. He wasn't alone, Yara was with him, and she's missing too."