Emerald Alchemist, Ch 27: Crushing Renzer (Patreon)

Verse pulled back his hand and looked at Renzer across the room. As soon as he’d broken down the soul dagger, he’d instantly become aware of his surroundings again, as well as everything that was happening.

Throwing Renzer across the room was about to be the least of the man’s problems.

“Impossible.” Renzer’s eyes widened as he struggled to breathe under the emerald claw that was still pinning him to the wall. He stared at Verse across the room. “You should be dead!”

“That is not for you to decide,” he said as he walked toward Renzer. “And don’t worry about the seal on the walls. It will last long enough.”

As he stepped forward, he let the silver scales on his body disappear, until there was only golden skin and emerald flame visible. They were an instinctive reaction, but not one he needed to show off.

He also noticed the green bracelet on his wrist, which had to have come from Vesana. There was a cool and pleasant green energy rising from it, which had been helpful in speeding up his recovery. It made it easier to break apart the soul talisman.

He slipped the bracelet off as he passed it back to Vesana with a nod and then he focused on Renzer.

Verse blurred as he leapt forward.

Renzer was able to handle a regular Aligned realm cultivator and oppress them with his aura, but he was still poisoned and at a huge disadvantage against Verse, who could fight a Primal Spirit cultivator blow for blow.

A wave of emerald flame covered Verse’s fist as he slammed it into Renzer’s face. The branch manager’s body rang like a bell as he was embedded halfway into the wall.

Verse grabbed his neck with one hand and ripped him back out. Then he hurled him across the room. He followed after him with a quick step as Renzer struck the ward on the far wall, which let out a boom like it was a massive drum.

Renzer wasn’t a Primal Spirit cultivator for nothing, however.

As he was flying backward, streams of smoky red energy circled around him as he struggled to shape his aura into a new technique. Using an aura alone for techniques was rare, but it was better than trying to use his unstable cultivation.

As soon as he struck the wall, he unleashed it.

A field of burning oaks spread across the room, making it seem like Verse was plunged into a raging forest fire. The smell of smoky ash and the tang of hot oak was accompanied by another wave of Primal Spirit pressure that tried to crush him to the floor.

It looked like the room in front of him had been swapped out with a forest, and the upper half of all the trees here was blazing, their branches alight with swelling waves of flame that soared into the air.

The sky above was a wash of orange and red as it mixed with clouds of smoke, and it was slowly spiraling around into a vast firestorm, which was concentrated on Verse.

In reality, he could still sense the room around him, but the overlay of spiritual energy gave it an odd doubling, one that made it feel like the firestorm and forest were just as real as the desk that was still faintly visible.

Renzer was slumped against the wall where he’d struck it, but he ignored his injuries as he focused on the firestorm, trying to make it spiral faster around Verse. Bit by bit, he increased the pressure.

But with each moment, his complexion was getting a little worse. He was trying to delay until the antidote had time to work, but his expenditure of energy meant the poison was once again getting the upper hand.

Verse focused on the Dao of Fire as he studied the forest around him, sensing the waves of heat with some curiosity. It wasn’t every day that he got to study the aura of a Primal Spirit cultivator who used Fire.

Except for some of the sects that focused on Fire, the Alchemists’ Guild was the only place it was possible to find this many Fire cultivators gathered together. Everyone here used Fire and Wood in one form or another, making it a sort of holy land for those two elements.

If someone asked where they could find the best cultivation techniques for those daos, if the guild wasn’t the number one place in the empire, it would at least be in the top three.

After a moment, however, Verse shook his head.

Renzer’s version of the dao was different from his. They both had a connection to the primary element of Fire itself. It was interesting, but it was too far away from his own path to be that useful to him.

It also didn’t match up to the memories he had of the Jade Scripture Sect. The masters there had developed many elemental paths, all of them attuned to the greater dao of the heavens.

Compared to those, Renzer’s aura technique was mediocre at best.

Verse looked up toward the firestorm that was crashing down toward him. Then he took a deep breath as he gathered his bloodline energy and the crimson light of the sunset. When he breathed out, a torrent of emerald and crimson flame roared upward to meet the firestorm.

With his bloodline energy radiating outward, it created an aura of his own.

The two types of flames crashed against one another, and in the midst of it Verse continued forward. Streamers of flame rained down around him and massive oaks tried to collapse on him, but he knocked them aside with a flick of his hand as he continued on toward Renzer.

Trees and ash covered everything, but it might as well have been an illusion. Between one moment and the next, he closed the distance to Renzer.

The branch manager tried to fight, covering his fists with a flaming aura that felt the same as the burning oak trees. His aura wrapped heavily around him, reinforcing his punches. The air rippled as it ignited.

Unfortunately for him, his movements were much too slow.

It was a quick and vicious fight, but it was over in half a dozen blows.

Verse slid to the side and twisted Renzer’s arm, cracking the bone, before he grabbed him by the neck and slammed him into the ward again, this time face first. Renzer’s teeth exploded from his face as his nose was flattened.

The alchemist wasn’t a body cultivator and his physical strength was low, near the absolute minimum for someone at the Primal Spirit realm. Now that he was weakened by the poison, it was like dealing with a chicken.

Verse’s anger was still raging from the soul talisman and he slammed Renzer into the wall a few more times for good measure, until his face looked like a swollen red pancake.

Then with a series of quick stabs into Renzer’s meridians, he sealed off the flow of the branch manager’s spiritual energy with jade essence, preventing it from cycling through his dantian, and tossed him onto the floor at the center of the room.

Each of the points he touched glowed with a jade sigil. They were similar to the ward on the walls, but more precise and much smaller.

Around them, the illusion of a burning oak forest disappeared, leaving the room untouched except for a faint trail of smoky energy in the air, which made it seem like a forest fire had just been blown out.

At the same time, Renzer’s face turned pale. The ashen streaks of the poison began to return, although very slowly. Without his cultivation to cycle the antidote through his body, it wasn’t working as well.

Across the room, Vesana’s eyes were wide with surprise as she watched the fight, but she quickly shook it off as soon as the aura disappeared.

“Don’t kill him please!” she said quickly as she walked across the room toward them. “I know he deserves it, but it would complicate things. I promise, his punishment from the guild will be much worse than death. I will also make sure that he pays for attacking you.”

Surrounded by her blue artifact shield, she was calm and full of confidence now, even as she glared daggers at Renzer.

Verse looked over at her, but then he nodded once, before he turned his attention back to the branch manager on the floor. He didn’t like the idea of leaving Renzer alive, but he also didn’t mind the idea of him suffering a lot more at the hands of the guild.

Given how confident Vesana was, they had to have some way to make his life miserable and keep him from ever seeing the sun again.

“Tell me something,” he said to Renzer as he leaned down and picked him up with one hand. “Were you the one who sent the sect after me?”

The alchemist hung there limply. All sense of authority that he’d held had been crushed by their exchange. A slight widening of his eyes and the increasing strain on his face told the truth of it.

The silent answer made Verse’s grip increase until Renzer began to thrash around. With a grimace, Verse tossed him back onto the floor, where he landed with a dull thud.

“If it makes things easier for you, I won’t kill him,” Verse said to Vesana. “But he owes us some information about the sect, and I have an idea for how to make him talk.”

He studied Renzer’s condition and then he reached down and poked him in a couple of spots, releasing the jade essence seal in those areas. It wasn’t enough to fully release the restriction on Renzer’s energy, but it was enough that the antidote began to cycle through his body again.

The ashen color once again began to recede from Renzer’s features as he gasped for air.

Verse pulled out a few bottles and pills with crimson markings from his spatial ring, letting them float in the air as he indicated them. When Vesana saw them, her look of shock made him laugh.

“These are all poisons I took from the sect assassins who tried to kill me,” he explained to her, well aware that Renzer was listening in. “There are some similarities to the poison he used on himself. It’s not exactly the same, but it should be proof enough of his connection to the sect if the guild is looking for more evidence.”

At that point, Vesana interrupted him and he had to explain the full story about the sect targeting him. He gave her all of the details about Corpsewind and the attacks inside of town, but he waved away the questions about how he’d survived.

He didn’t plan to reveal all of his secrets to her, and especially not in front of Renzer. Fortunately, Vesana didn’t press for answers. Before long, she was glaring down at the branch manager even more intensely.

“Colluding with a criminal sect in order to assassinate an Imperial Knight is a damning sentence,” she said as she shook her head in disgust. “It’s just as severe as working with the sect to kidnap alchemists as soul slaves. That’s two charges you won’t be able to escape from now. Once the sect enforcers arrive, you’ll be handed over to them. They’ll know how to get the most information out of you.

“After all that the guild gave you, all the opportunities and resources,” she added, “you betrayed us so easily. Then you took the coward’s route...poisoning yourself and trying to place all the blame on the guild. If you hadn’t done that, maybe you could have escaped here, but you plotted so much that you brought about your own destruction.

“Did you think about what those heritage alchemists are going through right now? Did you ask what was going to happen to them?”

She shook her head again as she turned to the bottles that were floating near Verse. Then she looked at the walls that were lined with treasures and other rich materials.

“All you cared about was gathering wealth for yourself, so let’s start your punishment with that.”

She reached down and pulled the spatial ring off Renzer’s hand. Then she tossed it to Verse, who caught it reflexively.

“That should be the majority of his wealth,” she said. “But you should take whatever you want from the room here too. If there’s anything you don’t want, I’ll personally sell it off and split the money up among the families of those he’s harmed.”

She turned back to Renzer, who was pale as he stared at her. He tried to speak, but he choked on his anger instead and was only able to glare at her.

“Everything you gathered will disappear into nothing,” she told him, “all of it lost in an instant, just like the lives of those you kidnapped.”

With a wave of her hand, treasures began to leave from the walls and float around her. It didn’t take long before the entire office was stripped bare and everything was in a pile in front of them.

Renzer was struggling, but with the poison incapacitating him and the seal on his cultivation, there wasn’t much he could do.

At Vesana’s insistence, Verse picked a few of the things from the pile, but he had no interest in most of it, so he pushed the rest back to her. He only took a few items that were made from spiritual woods and other things that he might be able to use.

The rest ended up in her spatial ring, to be distributed as she saw fit.

When she was done, she turned to look at the poisons that Verse had pulled out. She seemed conflicted, but at the same time she’d just had a sharp reminder of reality when Renzer tried to kill her.

“I don’t like the idea of poisoning someone,” she said as her voice surged with anger, “but since he likes them so much, perhaps he needs some more. It would be justice for him to try some of the sect’s methods for himself.”

Vesana’s thoughts were running in the same direction as Verse’s.

“I’ll give him the option of answering our questions or testing these for himself,” Verse agreed as he made the poisons float close enough to Renzer that the alchemist could read the symbols carved into the bottles. “Every time he refuses to answer a question, I’ll pour one down his throat.”

Renzer’s eyes widened as he saw what was in front of him. Since he was so confident in poisoning himself and framing the sect, he was clearly familiar with the sect’s methods.

The effects in these bottles were wide-ranging and violent.

“Who knows what interactions will appear when these mix with the one he already took,” Verse added. “I have the antidotes, but I can’t say what the side effects will be. They’re probably enough to keep him alive.

“Some of these can melt bones or corrupt his dantian until it’s impossible to cultivate without pain, boil his blood as it leaves his heart, and melt his internal organs. That one on the left will freeze him into a half-alive puppet as corpse toxins run through his veins and rip years from his life.”

He was more than willing to feed Renzer half a dozen of these poisons, but he didn’t really plan to. He’d only do that if he wanted to kill the man. Some of these poisons were horrifyingly quick and the antidotes weren’t trustworthy.

Still, it made for a good threat.

“No, no!” Renzer tried to shout. His voice was half-strangled from the poison and he barely managed to get the words out.

He was a coward at heart, and just the threat of the poisons was enough to send him over the edge. His hand reached toward his desk, as if he wanted to grab something there.

“I’ll tell you whatever you want to know!” he babbled. “The Crimson Shade Sect forced me to help them! I’ll tell you everything I know about the alchemists they took! They’re holding them in a hidden fort near Sylanis Point! They’re using the alchemists to make the Empowering Spirit Pill! They want to grow strong enough to control the whole province!”

Verse’s forehead furrowed as he heard what Renzer was saying. The name and location of the alchemists was new, but the name of the pill wasn’t the same as what he’d heard from Corpsewind.

One of them had to be wrong.

Given what he knew about both sides, the sect had probably lied to Renzer so he couldn’t leak the real details.

“They’re using them as alchemist puppets, but they’re still alive, I swear. They’re more valuable that way.” Renzer continued to babble, spilling out more details of the sect and the alchemists he’d helped to kidnap. “But the sect’s soul slave method is tyrannical. If you let me go, I’ll tell you how to free them. Otherwise they’re doomed to be mindless for the rest of their lives, doing whatever they’re told.”

As the information poured out of his mouth, he suddenly froze up. At first, it looked like he was choking from the poison, but then a strange vibration hummed across the surface of his body, making more of his muscles seize.

Within a handful of moments, his entire body was rigidly locked in place. His veins strained against the surface of his skin. His eyes were wide as he tried to see what was going on, but he coud barely move his neck.

Five dark red runes appeared on his body, one on each of his hands, one on his forehead, one on his throat, and one on his chest. The color of the runes was like shiny blood, and they quickly began to spin, turning into vortexes that drew energy from all around.

They looked like some kind of embedded talismans, similar to what the assassins had, and they had to have come from the sect. It didn’t look like Renzer had even known they were there.

A strange ripple passed through the air, like the runes had rung a bell.

An ominous feeling spread out as an aura that was similar to Corpsewind’s but far stronger suddenly surged out from both the runes and from inside Renzer’s desk at the center of the room.

It was coming from a drawer near the top. The vibration made the entire desk tremble and then the rich wood exploded into a rain of wooden splinters. A bright red object flew out of the debris and hovered in the air.

It was about the size of a palm and other than the red energy pouring off of it, it looked very similar to a communication plate.

The plate circled once in the air above the desk. An even stronger wave of energy built up around it as a series of inscribed runes on its surface began to glow, appearing where nothing had been before.

It looked like they had been hidden on an inner layer, just below the regular communication formation on the surface. As soon as they appeared, the outer layer turned to dust and fell away.

The plate glowed with a threatening aura now, one that was vastly stronger than Renzer’s. If his Primal Spirit aura had been an inferno inside the room, this was like a mountain had suddenly appeared in the same space.

It was so powerful that it was difficult to breathe.

It could only be the presence of an Inspired Aura cultivator.

Verse’s bloodline roared as it circulated, but once again it was pressed down so hard that it couldn’t rise up from his skin. An unsettled feeling ran through his veins, making him clench his fists as a surge of anger rose up.

The runes on the plate flared like eyes, scanning across the room. It was like being stared at by a giant serpent. A wave of energy passed over Vesana, who shuddered even behind her blue shield.

Then the energy moved on to Verse, where it paused for a moment. Its attention was cold and liquid, and there was also something deathly in it, like it was coating him with frozen blood.

“An Imperial Knight is it?” The voice was hoarse, like the man’s throat was made of sand, but it didn’t sound old. “I see the coward has failed...again. I’ll remember you, but I doubt you’ll survive long enough to have the honor of seeing me in person. You should count that as the fortune of three lifetimes.”

The wave of energy turned to Renzer. The runes on the plate flared up higher as they locked onto his position. Five of them began to glow more brightly, each of them matching one of the runes on his body.

Then the plate turned into a blur as it shot across the room toward him. It wasn’t clear what would happen when it reached him, but it wasn’t anything good.

Verse and Vesana were also standing right in front of Renzer, which meant the plate was heading for them at the same time.

“What? No!” Renzer shouted. His eyes were wide as he stared at the plate.

He tried to free himself from the talismans across his body and crawl away, but they kept his muscles rigid. The only sign of his struggle was his tendons writhing as he managed to move a few inches.

The energy from the plate was oppressive, but Verse could still move. On instinct, he grabbed Vesana and pushed her out of the way. The remaining soul talismans circling his arms roared to life.

A series of bright jade defensive shields appeared in front of him, which he layered as quickly as possible. At the same time, emerald flames roared across his body as he sent a claw at the plate.

When his attack met the plate, there was an explosion of red light, and then a brilliant crack as the plate suddenly exploded into fragments, but it didn’t stop. Instead, it split into five sections and continued flying through the air.

Each of the sections was heading straight for one of the red talismans on Renzer’s body. They tried to curve around Verse, each of them approaching at a different angle.

Verse let out a furious roar. Wind accelerated his movements as he reached out and grabbed one of the fragments in each hand, surrounding them in a layer of jade essence as he crushed them in his fists, but he wasn’t able to grab the other three.

As the three shards hit Renzer, the room was enveloped in a bright red explosion.

Waves of searing heat and a strange twisting energy hurled Verse across the room. The wall that led back out onto the corridor disintegrated as he flew through it.

He slowed his impact on the far side of the hall with Wind, which kept him from slamming into the wall too hard, but the raging flames of the explosion were still bright in Renzer’s office. Unlike regular flames, these felt cold, like they were freezing the air.

The rich wood paneling and desk, the wood paneling in the corridors, and everything else that wasn’t stone corroded as the red flames touched them, turning white and then crumbling away.

The blood-like flames had destroyed Verse’s jade shields and now they were clinging to his skin like tar, trying to carve their way through. They crackled as they met the flames around his body and burned away, leaving behind a coppery smoke, but they were insidious, releasing a dangerous spiritual energy that continued to try.

He growled as he drew on his bloodline and his flames surged hotter, burning away more of the energy. They were most heavily concentrated around his shoulder and hand, where he’d struck the plate. Slowly, the flames began to recede, but they fought for every centimeter of space.

At that moment, Verse suddenly felt a light weight on his shoulder as Leaf let out an annoyed chirp.

The little elemental had been curled up there through all of Verse’s other battles and never made a sound, nor been in the slightest disturbed by the deadly energies, but now he stretched and stood up.

From the grumble in Verse’s mind, he was annoyed that his sleep had been disturbed.

Then the small elemental coiled around Verse’s arm down to where the strongest concentration of flames was and placed his tiny claw on the back of Verse’s hand.

A sudden surge of Wood energy filled Verse’s body, so intense that it felt like an ocean was flooding his veins. It was a world of trees stretching to the end of the sky, its branches rising and falling in waves that were made of endless leaves.

Below, he could feel the roots of that emerald sea connecting to everything, filled with a life force so strong that it felt like he could fall into it and disappear without causing a single ripple. There was a massive drumbeat as a wave of energy rolled through the roots.

The world’s heartbeat was echoing in his mind.

It was powerful enough to sweep him away in an instant, but it was so perfectly controlled that at the same time, it was like he was standing on top of the waves, his feet as stable as the earth.

Leaf let out a chirp of annoyance as he stared at the flames, which were crushed into nothing and swept away from Verse’s body by a vibrant green glow, disappearing completely between one moment and the next.

Leaf let out a grumble of satisfaction and then he quickly climbed back up to Verse’s shoulder, his body spiraling around like a tiny dragon as his claws left a pinprick feeling.

The entire time, Verse could tell that the elemental’s presence was invisible to everyone else. He was shrouded in a tight layer of Wood energy that concealed him.

Once he reached Verse’s shoulder, his presence faded away again, but not before he let out a final satisfied chirp.

Verse looked down at his hand where the flames had been and chuckled, but he didn’t say anything else. He just reached up and scratched at Leaf’s head. To everyone else, it looked like he was brushing back a strand of hair.

“Thanks,” he said silently. “That was helpful”

He’d wondered for a long time what level of strength Leaf had, and that pulse of energy had told him it was exceptional. It also didn’t follow the strict pattern of cultivation realms. It felt like Leaf was part of the element of Wood, a conduit to the Dao.

What he’d done in that moment was open the door to a bit of that concept, allowing it to infuse the air around Verse’s body.

It wasn’t clear why he’d decided to do it right then, since he hadn’t helped with Corpsewind or the other fights, but at Verse’s best guess, he’d decided that this battle had interrupted his nap enough for the day.

It was also clear that he was tired now, since he immediately curled around Verse’s neck and closed his eyes. He’d channeled that massive current of Wood energy, and balanced it out so it barely touched Verse, but it clearly wasn’t something he planned to do all the time.

The red energy around Verse was gone now, and after a few moments, it began to die down everywhere else too, leaving behind a corroded wasteland where Renzer’s office had been.

Verse peeled himself off the wall and leapt back into the office, searching for Vesana and Renzer. The walls of Renzer’s office were gone, leaving massive holes both where he had been blasted through and on the far side, which opened onto an interior courtyard.

After a moment, he saw Vesana’s blue shield in the courtyard, where she must have been thrown by the explosion. She was just standing up, but she looked unharmed. As soon as she noticed him, she dusted herself off and flew over.

Together, they looked down at what remained of Renzer on the floor.

The former branch manager had been completely blasted apart. The only thing left of him was shards of bone and a few twisted fragments of metal that he’d had in his clothes.

A giant white scar in the shape of the explosion was imprinted on the floor and walls around him, outlining where he had once been.

Two dull red talismans glowed in the remains from where they were partially embedded in the stone floor. A dangerous and powerful spiritual energy radiated out from them, but it was beginning to fade.

The other three red talismans had been completely destroyed when the shards hit them, and from the slightly unbalanced pattern of the scar on the floor, the explosion had been much less than it would have been if all five struck.

“That was an aura from the Inspired Aura realm.” Vesana said as she looked at the damage and then turned to Verse. There was a cold fury in her voice that she was holding back, but it was still obvious.

“That should have been the sect master,” Verse said as he studied what was left of Renzer and the damage to the office. “It seems like he had a backup plan if Renzer betrayed them. Fortunately the plate was weak to physical attacks or this would have been worse. Those two talismans never activated.”

He pointed at the two remaining red spots that were glowing on the floor.

“Those must match the shards you destroyed,” Vesana said quietly. Her voice took on a commanding tone, a mix of fury and authority. “The sect has crossed a line. Renzer was a traitor, but killing him like this is a direct challenge to the authority of the guild. I will not allow it.”

She pulled out a small translucent crystal disk and began to record images of everything in the room. She was probably planning to give it to her uncle when he arrived.

Meanwhile, Verse silently studied the talismans, memorizing their signature as he searched the spiritual fluctuations in the area. After a moment, he could feel a small thread of that cold and bloody flame heading out to the north.

There was still a connection.

“There’s a trail to the sect master,” he said as he pointed it out to her, his voice calm, “but it will dissolve soon. Do you have anything that can stabilize or contain these talismans? They’re all the evidence you’ll need to accuse the sect. The sect master must have been desperate to kill him, or perhaps Renzer knew more than he was saying.”

“I don’t have anything on me,” Vesana said as she finished her recording and turned to look at the talismans, “but we must have something in the vaults. I’ll take care of it. The guards should be here soon too. Renzer never liked them close to his office and the guild is full of sound-blocking wards to keep things peaceful, but there’s no way they could have missed that..”

She pulled a small silver bell out of her sleeve and rang it, followed by a moment of concentration.

“There. The guild quartermaster is on his way with some sealing talismans. It should be enough to save this until my uncle gets here.” She turned to him, her voice softening. “If you hadn’t broken two of those shards, we wouldn’t have this evidence. Thank you.”

Verse just nodded. As she’d said, he could already sense the guards flooding toward this direction. As he tracked their arrival, he studied the room and his mind turned to a more serious concern.

“It was lucky the plate was fragile,” he said, “but there is a bigger issue. The only reason for the sect to kill him like this is if things are about to reach a critical point, one where they no longer need to hide what they’re doing or worry about offending the guild.”

The entire reason the sect had acted in secret up to this point was so they could avoid the guild targeting them. If they were changing that now...it wasn’t good news.

“It’s also possible that Renzer knew something too important,” he added, “whether he was aware of it or not. We have a location now, both from your tracking plate on the alchemist and with what Renzer said, but we’re going to need more forces.”

He’d felt the pressure from the sect master’s aura. Even with his bloodline, charging into the sect right now would be suicide. They either needed to wait for Vesana’s uncle to show up or arrange for other support.

While he was thinking, Vesana pulled out her tracking plate and studied it for a moment, and then she pulled out a map of the local area and compared them.

“The locations roughly match,” she confirmed, “so I think he was telling the truth.”

“I know where to find some people,” he said as he pulled together a plan, “but the guild will need to cover the bill. It won’t be cheap.”

The local commander of the Azurewind Guard was in the city, and the last he’d checked, she was at the Inspired Aura realm. Ames should also be around. If he could get both of them to help, things would be easier.

“That won’t be a problem,” Vesana promised seriously. Her eyes were bright and clear, and her hands were curled into fists now that she’d put the map away. “If you can find the forces to handle the sect master, the guild will handle the payment. I guarantee it. We’ve never lacked for funds, and we can’t wait for my uncle any longer. The guild’s reputation is at stake. If things are coming to this point, the alchemists could be dead already. We have to try to save them. ”

“Then we need to take a walk,” Verse said as he held out his hand. Without any hesitation, Vesana placed her hand in his.

All around, guards were flooding toward the area, but a few sharp commands Vesana explained what had happened and appointed someone to deal with the clean up.

They only waited long enough for the quartermaster to arrive and start applying sealing talismans, and then they were gone.