The Shadow Falls
“Sister Myne, would you consider taking on a new attendant to replace Delia?”
“Do I need a new one right away?” I wasn’t living in the temple like I had been during the winter, so as far as I was aware there wasn’t enough work to require immediately replacing Delia.
“The sooner the better.”
Now that Dirk was gone, Fran could sleep at night and handle the more physical labor with Gil. Rosina, however, didn’t want to hurt her fingers doing chores, and Fran went on to explain that it would be better for everyone if Delia was replaced soon.
“If I may speak frankly for a moment, I know that you are still worrying about Delia and have a tendency to be soft on those you care about. It would be easier for me to relax if there was someone other than Delia here for you to direct your compassion toward.”
I fell silent, unable to disagree that I was still soft at heart. He must have seen me looking around the room aimlessly for Delia at times, and in the end, Fran was right: it was more important for me to work toward easing Fran and Rosina’s worries than for me to keep worrying about Delia, who was gone and would stay gone.
I sighed and briefly lowered my eyes. “...If I am to pick one from the gray shrine maidens, perhaps Monika and Nicola will do?” They had both helped Ella cook throughout the whole of winter. Wilma had recommended their services, and I already knew they were diligent workers, not to mention that I could entrust both chores and helping the chefs to them.
In reality, since the Italian restaurant was on the verge of completion, all of the chefs except for Ella would soon be leaving. Ella wanted to stay to learn more recipes, and I had already negotiated with Benno to make that a reality. It had worked out for the best anyway since we needed someone to direct the new chefs Benno would be sending our way. Plus, it would be easiest for Ella to work with Monika and Nicola since they already knew each other.
“Monika and Nicola? Sister Myne, would you be capable of taking both on at once?” Fran, knowing the financial state of my chambers, whispered his concerns to me in a low voice. It was true that they might be a slight strain on my wallet depending on the season, but I already had more orders for the games we had made for our winter handiwork, and if the picture books continued to sell well then I would be perfectly fine.
“They both worked hard over the winter, didn’t they? If I only picked one of them to be my attendant then it would be hard to ask the other to help again. Ultimately, I think it would be best to take them both on at once.”
“I do not believe you need to concern yourself with the feelings of gray shrine maidens, Sister Myne.” Rosina gave a bemused smile, but there was a big difference between living in the orphanage and living as an attendant. It would be hard to pick just one while knowing that.
“It will be easier to rest with them as your attendants instead of Delia,” Fran interjected. “Shall I go and summon them?”
“Please do. They have no experience as attendants, so the faster we get them involved the more time we will have to train them. Fran, will you be available to teach them?”
I wanted them to learn their duties before the Italian restaurant opened and took most of our kitchen staff, but Rosina was too concerned about hurting her fingers to be a proper example for cleaning. Either Fran or Gil would need to teach them, but that would be a lot harder to arrange if Fran didn’t have the time.
“Now that I can entrust paperwork to Rosina, I will have enough time.”
“Then contact Wilma and we can go to the orphanage tomorrow.”
We settled our plans for tomorrow, and at that moment there was a knock on the door. My attendants would come in at will without knocking, while temple residents like the High Priest and his attendants used a bell. The only people who knocked were Lutz and Tuuli—people from the lower city.
“Is that Lutz? He’s a bit early today.” Not much time had passed since fifth bell. I went to the stairs and peered down at the first floor while Fran walked down the steps to welcome the visitor.
Damuel opened the door with a tense expression. Lutz was there, as expected, but Tuuli was actually there with him.
“Please, come in.” Fran gestured the two of them inside, and as the door was being shut behind them I heard Gil yell “Hold on a sec!” from somewhat far away. Fran waited with the door open for a bit until Gil eventually came running inside, gasping for breath.
“Tuuli, what happened?”
“We came to get you, Myne. Let’s go home together.” Tuuli smiled as she watched me race down the steps. “Things are dangerous right now, aren’t they? I’ll protect you, Myne!” she declared while thumping her chest.
Gil planted his feet firmly on the ground and puffed out his own chest as if competing with her. “I’ll protect you Sister Myne! I’m your attendant!”
“I appreciate the enthusiasm, you two, but I think this will just make things harder for my bodyguard.” I looked up at Damuel, who would need to guard all of us kids, and he gave an exasperated shrug.
“...Yeah, the more people there are for me to protect, the more dangerous it gets.”
“Right? Please forgive them just this once, Sir Damuel. Tuuli didn’t know.”
There was no going back now that they had all arrived. It was a bit sooner than expected, but I decided to go home with everyone. Rosina helped me change and quickly prepared for my departure.
“Fran, please send word to the orphanage. I will be hurrying home now.”
“Understood. I await your safe return.”
We left the temple, walking down the street with Lutz and Gil in front, me and Tuuli behind them, and Damuel behind us.
“I appreciate the thought, Tuuli, but you really shouldn’t walk me home like this,” I warned.
“Why not?”
“If something dangerous happens, Sir Damuel will have to focus on protecting me. He may not be able to protect us both at once if you’re here with us.” Damuel may have been a knight, but he couldn’t do everything. And naturally, he was here to guard me, not her; my safety would be his priority in an emergency, and there was no guarantee he would be able to save Tuuli if anything happened. He might have to abandon her while fleeing with me, and worst-case scenario she might be taken as a hostage to be used against us.
“If anything, you’re in more danger here than I am.”
“...Okay.” Tuuli puffed out her cheeks and frowned at me, pouting. I knew that she wanted to say she could protect me too, but not even her cute face would change the facts. Me being in danger was one thing, but I couldn’t let Tuuli put herself at risk like this.
We passed through the central plaza and headed south to Craftsman’s Alley, then took a turn that would lead us home. We headed down a side path with fewer people than the main road, and there we saw Otto, of all people. He was holding a spear and looking around as he walked, entirely as if patrolling the city.
“Hi, Otto. It’s been a while.”
“Myne!” Otto’s face lit up the second he saw me. “I’m glad you’re safe. Seriously. Now I don’t have to worry about the captain beating me to death.”
The fact that this was his reaction to seeing me was more than a little unsettling. Had he done something that would encourage Dad to beat him to death?
“...Otto, what did you do?”
“Hey, it wasn’t me. It was the commander of the east gate and the guards on duty,” Otto replied with a shrug. Apparently he had been inside doing paperwork when the guards standing at the gate and the commander made some mistake that would be worthy of Dad beating them to death; he had just been sent out here to try and clean up their mess. “It happened this afternoon, when the captain contacted the commanders of every other gate and went to the center of town to tell them something important.”
“Wha?” I widened my eyes. That important something was probably the fact that the archduke was absent and there would be no new permits given. I had a really bad feeling about what was coming next.
According to Otto, despite Dad being on afternoon shift, he had gone to work at the east gate long before it was time to switch shifts. He immediately went to the commander, explained the circumstances, and had him organize a meeting with the other commanders in the center of the city. There he told them what Damuel had told him—that the archduke was absent and that there might be forged permits—before returning to the east gate.
“By the time the captain came back, they had already let a noble’s carriage train through. The commander of the east gate hadn’t told the guards anything, so they never even considered that the permit might be fake. The captain only learned of their mistake when it was time for his shift. He blasted the heck out of the commander for not telling all of the guards what he’d said, then ran off to the temple to make sure you were okay. You didn’t see him there?”
I instinctively looked up at Damuel, more concerned about the fact that a noble’s carriage train had been let inside than the fact I had missed Dad on the way here. His eyes were open wide in disbelief.
“They let carriages through?! Don’t tell me, was it the same noble from the other day?”
“Yep. You sure know a lot—it was the one and the same. Right now all the guards at the east gate are looking for them, but nobody’s found them. Maybe they’re already in the Noble’s Quarter? I would have thought that knights at the north gate would have caught them there, though,” Otto wondered aloud. It seemed that despite the archduke having forbidden the entry of nobles from outside the city into the duchy, not all soldiers shared the same sense of danger and urgency.
“You contacted the Knight’s Order, didn’t you?!” Damuel shouted, his eyebrows shooting up in anger, but Otto put a hand on his chin and had to think before answering.
“...Who knows? Maybe the commander did. The captain ran off straight away, so maybe they don’t know yet.”
“You should have reported this immediately, fool!” Damuel immediately took out his shining wand as he yelled at Otto for his lack of urgency. He ignored Otto—who was murmuring “Huh? Wait, you’re a noble?” after seeing the wand appear out of thin air—and shot the red light signaling a call for aid into the air.
The knights should be coming now, I thought to myself in relief while looking up at the red light shooting upward—only to see Tuuli disappear out of the corner of my eye.
“Wha? Tuu—” Before I could even turn around, something prickly covered my face and made my vision go dark. I felt myself be lifted into the air, then started bouncing up and down. “Eek?!”
I could tell from the arms wrapped around my legs and back that someone had picked me up and started running. In a panic, I tried flailing about, but the best I could do while restrained was just weakly hit my hands against whatever rough thing was covering me. Judging by the streaks of light poking through the holes in the cloth in front of my face, I could guess that they had pulled a bag over me then picked me up.
“H-Help...”
“Myne! Tuuli!”
“Give them back!”
I heard Lutz and Damuel yell behind the veil of darkness, with several pairs of footsteps racing after me. Tuuli had been kidnapped as well; I could hear what sounded like her screaming. Given that the bustle of the main street was growing fainter, the kidnapper was probably running the opposite way down the alley.
“Captain! Myne’s in that bag!”
“LET GO OF MY DAUGHTER!”
I heard Otto yell, then my Dad roar with anger, and suddenly my body was spinning through the air. I assumed the kidnapper had thrown me aside to defend against Dad’s attack. In the darkness I couldn’t tell what was happening, and could do nothing as I hit the stone ground and rolled across it.
“Ow!”
“Myne!”
“Sister Myne!”
Just as I heard Lutz and Gil let out panicked cries, the bag was tugged, forcing me to sit up. I blinked in the darkness, and seconds later the bag was ripped off, giving me my vision back. The sudden brightness made me squint.
I kept sitting on the ground, looking around as I tried to adjust to the light again. Lutz and Gil peered at me while Damuel scanned the area, standing protectively by my side. Behind him to the right was Dad, his spear drawn, and Otto.
“Where’s Tuuli?!”
“Over there,” Gil replied, his eyes full of anger and frustration. I followed where he was looking and saw Tuuli being held hostage—a man had a knife at her throat and was backing away to escape. Tuuli, her eyes locked on the knife, was frozen in terror.
“N-No...” she choked out, the blood draining from her face as she trembled, tears welling up in her eyes.
All of the mana inside me immediately boiled over, coursing through my body. In a single instant, something inside of me snapped like a twig.
“Myne?!”
“Sister Myne?!”
I slowly stood up. My body was hot enough to boil water, but my mind was as cool and composed as an icy river. I had spent about a year in the temple offering my mana on a regular basis, including during a large-scale ritual, and apparently I had gotten much better at controlling my mana than I thought. The Crushing that had hit all those in eyesight back when I was furious at the High Bishop could now be directed at a single target—my instincts made me certain of that.
“Hey. What do you think you’re doing to my Tuuli?” I asked, glaring at the man pressing his knife against Tuuli’s neck.
His face immediately changed. Before it had been red with anger and adrenaline, but now it was a darkish purple as though he had been stopped from breathing. He tried to twist out of the way of my Crushing, but he could barely move at all. His face stiffened, eyes wide open.
“Get your dirty hands off of Tuuli and get out of my sight or else she won’t be the one dying here—you will.” The world around me slowed, and as the man began to convulse and foam at the mouth, I gradually strengthened the force of the mana hitting him more and more.
“Ngh... Ah!” His mouth moved, and a second later something sharp whistled through the air and stabbed through the man’s arm.
“What?” I blinked in surprise, coming back to my senses just as Dad leapt at the man, dagger in hand. Unable to dodge due to the Crushing’s lingering influence, the kidnapper took the blade head on.
“Gah!” He screamed as blood spurted from his wound. Dad then pushed him down, and Tuuli went tumbling down to the ground as they fought.
“Tuuli!”
“Are you okay?!”
Gil and Lutz immediately ran over to Tuuli, wiping the man’s splattered blood off of her cheeks.
“...I-I was so scared,” Tuuli said, sitting on the ground in shock.
I started to run over too, but just as I took my first step I saw something flash in the corner of my eye. I spun around and saw that the other man—the one my dad had been fighting with, and probably the one who had tried kidnapping me—was raising his hand. There was a ring on his finger, and its feystone was glowing. I instantly understood that he was pouring mana into it and did the first thing I could think of. I turned to Dad, who was finishing off the other man, and yelled.
“Dad! Look out!”
Dad spun around too, and Damuel roared “Gunther! Get back!” as he leapt toward him to push him away.
“Ngh?!”
Once he had pushed Dad away, a shield-like thing appeared over Damuel’s left hand which he used to block the beam of mana that had shot toward him. The man must not have considered that his attack might be blocked as he looked at Damuel and stepped back, shaken.
“Gunther, this guy has mana. I’ll take care of him! You all get back to the temple and alert Lord Ferdinand!”
“Understood! Otto, get Myne!” Dad yelled before picking up Tuuli, whose legs were too shaky for her to stand, and sprinting toward the main street. Having snapped back to their senses, Lutz and Gil ran after him. Otto picked me up and followed too, heading back to the temple.
“Myne, you’re bleeding...” Otto grimaced in sympathetic pain as he ran. I followed his eyes to my knees, where blood was flowing all the way to my shins.
“That must have happened when I was dropped.” It hadn’t hurt at all thanks to the adrenaline, but the second I saw the wound, a sudden sharp pang of pain hit me. My own blood reminded me of the blood that had sprayed from the other man.
“...Otto, this is a bad situation where, um, we need help really bad, right?” I asked, watching Dad, Lutz, and Gil weaving through the flood of people on the main street. Otto basically shrieked in response.
“What else does it look like?!”
“I just wanted to make sure nobody would get mad if I called for help.”
I pressed my thumb against the bloody wound on my knee, then pulled out the necklace I had made sure to wear at all times so that I could stamp my blood against its black, onyx-like stone.
For an instant, it shone with yellow light, but nothing else happened; the only change was the yellow flame that now wavered inside the black stone. It had probably sent word to Sylvester, or was just a magic tool to broadcast my location. I had no way of knowing despite having stamped my blood on it.
“What’s that thing?”
“A charm. Apparently it’ll help me when I’m in danger.” I slid the magic necklace back under my clothes, still not knowing what it had done. And that was when we passed by the Gilberta Company.
“Tuuli and Lutz, you go inside with Otto and stay at his place,” Dad instructed while setting Tuuli down in front of the door. Lutz looked up at him, gasping for air.
“Mr. Gunther, I can—”
“You’ll get in the way.” Dad shot Lutz down before he could ask to come with us.
“But Gil is going!”
“Gil lives in the temple. You’re different. We don’t need people who can’t fight,” Dad said, slicing Lutz’s hopes to shreds before turning to Otto and giving him a hard look as I was set down. “Otto, I’m entrusting Tuuli to you. I’m taking Myne to the temple.”
“Captain, Myne—be careful out there, okay?” Otto clenched a fist and bent his elbow. Dad did the same, tapping his fist against Otto’s.
“It’ll be fine; the Knight’s Order is out.” His expression still hard, Dad pointed his fist upward. We could see several feystone highbeasts racing through the sky, probably heading to where Damuel was. If so, they would reach him in no time.
“Let’s go, Myne.” Dad picked me up and started sprinting to the temple.
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