After a hectic evening spent chasing Cornelius through the city as he was having a mental breakdown, David and Niala retired to their bedroom. They quietly undressed and got into bed, their minds occupied by a promise made earlier during the day.
He lay on his back, with Niala cupped over his side, her arm over his chest, and his arm under the crook of her neck, his hand stroking her flank.
They remained there, in silence, the world outside slowly ceasing to exist.
He was the first to speak, his voice soft. “You know, it's funny. I never thought about having kids until today, and since you brought it up, I can't stop thinking about it.”
He felt Niala tense, her hand over his chest clenching. “The last time I blabbered about marriage, I swore I'd stop thinking too far out, but I just couldn't. I keep imagining the future, and it keeps slipping away from me.”
She burrowed her head into him, her small voice tickling against his skin. “I don't mean to do it, it's just... I love you so much, and I'm so happy, and when I think about that, my mind runs away with it. I'm sorry.”
He shook his head. “Don't be. To be frank, now that I've had a few bells to... digest the idea, it makes me happy that you think I'd make a good husband and father.”
“The best,” She confirmed.
He smiled, angling his head to bring his mouth close to one of her ears, whispering. “And you'd be the best wife and mother.”
“Hmmm!” She said, squirming her head against him. “Stop, you're making me think of it again.” She said through a smile.
The sound of their breathing filled the room.
A soft breeze disturbed the curtains.
He looked up at the ceiling. “What kind of marriage would you want?”
Niala flinched at his words, her breath quickening. When she spoke, her voice was timid. “Something small. I don't want a big ceremony. I just... I just want to make it official, to swear before witness that I'll always love you, no matter what.”
“Hmm, that's what I'd like as well. Just close friends and family. Not my original one; they can fart on the saints for all I care. I guess we could fit everyone in the yard at the house? If we shove the living room couches into a cargo cloth, we'd have enough space to sit a few dozen people...” David pondered.
Niala's ears wiggled. “That's a good idea! Nice and private! Riverwall's so far, though. We'd have to send invites far in advance... and we'll need a place for them to sleep! I don't think we'll have enough beds.”
They continued discussing their potential wedding's logistics for a while. With every word exchanged, the haze that filled David's mind whenever he thought of the future fell away, replaced with images of what could be.
And he found that those images meant a lot to him, each one warming his heart, and pulling the corners of his mouth up.
They kept exploring further ahead. What they thought their lives would be like in a year, two, five, ten.
Deep into the night, they spun a tale of two lovers, who married, had kids, strove to enjoy life through thick and thin, founding a new dynasty at the edge of the world.
It was a very nice story which, David realized, and Niala already knew, they were both very eager to write, together.
With Cornelius calmed down, the next morning was spent discussing Niala's “potion situation,” as her father called it.
The previous day's testing had revealed that a good portion of Niala's potions were either at the very cusp of being Saints' grade, or right over the line, with roughly one in five making the grade.
Considering the man's reaction yesterday, David guessed that if all of Niala's potions had been Saints' grade, Cornelius would probably have self-combusted on the spot.
This still left a problem: namely, that Niala couldn't keep selling Royal and Saints potions as high-grade ones. According to her father, she would have to reduce the quality to actual high-grade.
Niala, of course, disagreed, stating that many of her customers were adventurers and were expecting, if not needed, her potions to miraculously heal them.
She also refused to tag her potions as Saints-grade and adjust their price tag accordingly, again because this would rob the adventurers of life-saving potions.
Cornelius came up with a third option: creating a new grade, “Adventurer-grade”, and slapping that designation over her current potions, masking their true nature.
After much back and forth, and explaining that continuing as she had would eventually bring unwanted attention to her shop, Niala reluctantly agreed.
She would brew actual high-grade potions, selling them for less than Linzy currently did, alongside her “new” Adventurer potions.
The discussion then moved on to the main reason David and Niala had detoured via Majestic in the first place: acquiring information on how to implement a soul into a body.
Cornelius had to admit, the topic had both interested and horrified him in equal measure when he received his daughter's letter via Violet. In the end, he chose to believe that Niala was not attempting to become a rogue animologist and had gotten into contact with the few licensed ones in town.
A rather abstract and esoteric discipline, animology was also highly regulated, its practitioners having to undergo yearly psyche evaluation and submit to regular inspection of their laboratories and workshops.
Nobody wanted to have a repeat of the verdant soul plague of A.D. 618, that particularly dark period where an unsupervised animologist managed to create a freely replicating virus that could aggregate soul fragments and thus animate whatever it had infected. The virus, which infected plants, had seen entire forests and plantations rise up and wander the kingdom, attacking at random.
The history books also told of how the people were more than reluctant to eat plants that screamed when cooked or bitten into.
The meeting with the animologists answered some of David's questions, but also posed new ones.
One problem was that he couldn't outright come out and say what he wanted to do. As per the animologist oath, animating dead corpses was only allowed in very specific instances, and only for research purposes.
While the oath was directed at soul scraps, and not a full soul as the one he had stored within his mana, he wasn't confident the law would make a distinction, or even believe him.
Along with Niala, they were forced to ask obtuse questions and deduce answers from tangent topics.
In the end, the animologists themselves didn't seem to know of any events where a complete soul had been manipulated. They said that any soul, once it had left a living body, was gone and irretrievable. Even fully isolated chambers, with enchanted walls and lined with arcane materials, did nothing to keep a disconnected soul from disappearing from the physical world.
Their best guess was that a large amount of mana would be the key, as such a thing was essential to manipulate soul scraps in the first place.
Niala and David shared a look, and then thanked the researchers, Cornelius handing each of them a bank note as a “donation” for their respective endeavours.
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Sitting across them in the autocar's cabin, the catkin repeatedly questioned Niala and David with his eyes on the exact nature of their meeting, but as they remained silent to his probes, he sighed and let it go.
After all, it was enough to think about Niala's alchemical breakthroughs. He wanted to sit down with his daughter and have her explain her brewing methods. If he could reliably brew Royal-grade potions... the potential growth his fame and fortune would go through made his ears shiver.
And then, someone outside yelled, wheels screeched, and he went flying inside the autocar.
His head hit the floor, and everything went black.
David's eyes snapped open.
He looked around. He was bent at an angle, his face resting against the side of the cabin, which was now the floor. In front of him, Cornelius was lying still, his head bloody.
Niala was... he couldn't see her.
Groaning, he pivoted and got his legs down and under him. He tested his limbs – bruised, but not broken.
He looked around once more.
No Niala.
With his pulse quickening, he retrieved two healing potions from one of his cargo cloths, downing one and force-feeding the other to the unconscious catkin in front of him.
Leaving him to heal, he flared his mana and Strong Armed a punch into the cabin's roof, which was now its side. His fist passed through the metal-covered wood in a shower of splinters and flowering metal. He imbued Iron Body and Strong Arm, and dragged his arm across the cabin's panelling, opening a straight line like a can opener.
He grabbed the opening and Strong Armed it forward, wrenching the material away and creating an opening to the outside.
There, he looked around once more. Their autocar had been rammed by another one and had tumbled to its side.
He darted around the wreckage, eyes scanning the scene.
There was no Niala.
His mana flame grew to three meters high. His muscles flexed and bulged, his fists squeezing tight, knuckles white.
Where...
The link.
He wrangled his rage and runaway heart back to a semblance of control, closing his eyes, his breath heavy, and felt for that background sense they now shared.
A small tug, to the north.
Movement and sounds, behind him. He swivelled his head, saw Cornelius stumbling around the wrecked autocar, a hand to his head.
The catkin looked around, searching for the same thing David had. Their eyes met, and Cornelius understood; no Niala. His eyes widened, panic threatening to overcome him, just as a veil of controlled rage descended, turning his gaze hard.
“What do we do?” He asked.
“I'll find her. It's not going to be pretty.” David answered.
Understanding flew across Cornelius' features. “Go, I'll make sure the authorities aren't a problem.”
Both men nodded.
David's mana flame turned nearly opaque. His imbuements flared through his clothes, burning into them.
He aligned himself with the direction the link was pulling him toward, and kicked.
A blast wave buffeted Cornelius, dust and flying debris peppering the overturned autocar he was partially shielding himself with.
To the north, a blue comet was flying, hopping from rooftop to rooftop.
The catkin pushed his rage down.
Someone had kidnapped his daughter.
David would rescue her. He might have had misgivings about the man, but his love for Niala wasn't a lie, that he knew, and neither was his power.
That man would rescue her, probably kill the people who had done this.
Cornelius turned and marched toward the nearest guard station, retrieving a crystal slate from his pocket and speaking into it.
Him? He would make sure the people behind this had no future.
“Faster!” The man said to the woman driving the unmarked transport autocar.
She spared him a glare. “If I drive any faster, we're going to look suspicious!”
The man cursed and turned his head to look in the back, where two more men were hunched over an unconscious catkin woman. “How is she?”
One of the two lifted his head. “She's pretty banged up from the crash, but we gave her a potion. She'll live, but she's going to be out for a while.”
The first man nodded grimly, returning his attention to the road. “We need to make it to the airport before the authorities investigate.”
The woman rolled her eyes. “Calm down, Karn. We'll be there in 10 minutes. By the time the guards arrive to talk to the witnesses, we'll be on an airship and flying away.”
Karn sent a hard glance at the woman. “You don't get it. That girl's father, he's powerful. He's got connections. The last group that tried to meddle with his operations just disappeared. One day, poof, gone. Nobody knows what happened to them.”
He squeezed his hands together, eyes darting, sweat rolling down his brow. “And that was with his shop. We have his daughter now. We HAVE to get out of town. Saint's love, I shouldn't have taken this job.”
The woman scoffed. “But you did, just like us, because that was way too much money to say no to.”
He gritted his teeth, “No, you idiot! It's because we couldn't refuse. I bet you didn't even notice the crest they had when they offered us the job.”
She threw him a puzzled glance. “What crest?”
“THAT crest! The crest of the royal enforcers! The family that owns the military!” He exclaimed.
She looked at him wide-eyed. “Wait... Wardenfel? Those guys were Wardenfels?!” She shouted.
“Ssssshh!” He waved his hands. “Yes, them. Probably a branch family; the crest didn't have the skull that the main family does, but still, not people you say no to.”
“Right... hey... what's that blue thing?” She asked, leaning forward over the steering wheel.
Karn blinked, turning his head to look in the same direction. “What blue thi-”
A blue fiery comet crashed ahead of them on the street, sending pavement flying, breaking windows and sending people screaming for cover.
The woman slammed on the brakes, Karn swinging forward and hitting his head on the front window. The men in the back were thrown, yelping as they crashed to the floor.
“Oooow!” Karn whined. “What in the pits!?” He cursed, looking at the woman.
She pointed ahead, eyes wide, her hand trembling.
Karn turned his head and froze, mirroring her.
In front of them was a man wreathed in blue flames that reached past the roof of the nearby buildings. He was advancing on them, blue lava dripping out of his incandescent eyes and pooling in small sizzling puddles on the ground.
The ground beneath his feet cracked, blue hairline fractures radiating from each of his steps.
His voice rattled their skulls, hurting their brains.
“Where's Niala?”
Karn and the Woman looked at each other, wordlessly asking each other if they were hallucinating. They slowly turned their head back toward the blue demon, who was staring holes into their souls.
There was only one way this was going to play out. They glanced at each other once more and, with grim determination, nodded.
As one, they flung their hands in the air and screamed. “WE SURRENDER!”
David scary?
