"We are wasting time," Dimov complained through heavy breaths.

"Are we still on schedule?" Alarion asked.

"Yes, for now. But-"

"Then what is the problem?"

"The problem is that we are wasting time! Time that could have been better spent trying to find a place to rest. If the specialist fails again-"

"He hasn't failed at all, yet. We knew this was going to take some time," Kali said sternly, putting an end to the idea before it could percolate in Dimov's head. "Remember, if this goes well, then it is on you. If it goes poorly, it is on me."

The words seemed to mollify the young Vitrian's as they neared the next village on their list. It was their third stop in half a day and the furthest from their intended position by a considerable margin. The torn-out husks that had once been Shae-Vil-Saad and Shae-Feval had been short detours, only half an hour out of their intended path. Shae-Yomag, on the other hand, was well off the beaten trail, nestled in a secluded valley halfway up the mountainside. They'd had to risk running an hour over hazardous terrain to make the visit work while still being back on target for their next check-in.

It was a grueling run, especially when they were exhausted, but there were no other villages in reach, and Bergman needed his books. Or rather, his text.

"R-remember, only handwritten text. Journals, letters, or n-notebooks work best. No ledgers and nothing printed," Bergman chimed in from the rear.

"I already said I was sorry!" Dimov snapped.

"Calm," Kali said with as much empathy as he could muster. The rising moon marked more than a day and a half since any of them had slept, and tensions were high. "We'll spend an hour, grab what we can, then fortify at the head of the valley and try to get a few hours."

"A-assuming the village is not overrun by fiends," said Bergman. He seemed to realize what he said as three pairs of eyes turned to glare at him and quickly added, "What are the chances it will h-happen three times?"

"High," Alarion told him.

Neither ambush had been especially threatening, but like every other attack they'd endured since they first set out, killing them had never been the goal. Only slowing them down. And in that, they were stunningly successful.

It didn't matter that the Auxilia were looking for personal writings rather than survivors; the problem remained the same. If every building housed a potential threat, then they couldn't afford to split up and conduct a rapid search. Alarion or Kali could handle themselves against any fiend near their UCL, but neither Bergman nor Dimov could boast the same.

It was a frustrating tactic, but also strangely reassuring. Because it tipped the enemy's hand.

While the methods and tactical acumen of individual infestations could vary wildly based on the skills and desire of the most senior revenant, there were certain truisms one could expect. Chief among them was that revenants were not known for their restraint. If they thought they could kill you, they would kill you and feed you to the boil. The only reason a revenant would engage in ambushes, attrition, and delaying tactics was if it believed that it could not win a direct confrontation, or at least that it could not win the confrontation without substantial losses.

Regardless of the unusual number of revenants and the dead, Alarion felt confident that if they could find the boil, they stood a good chance of killing the thing before the infestation grew out of hand.

If.

That was where Bergman and his skill came in.

"A-all I am saying is t-that it is unlikely that you are supposed to be lucky," Bergman protested. "It has to pay off once in a while, no?"

"Blessed mother…" Kali cursed. Not out of anger, but a muttered fascination.

"W-what in the world?" Bergman joined in the choir of confusion.

The world opened up beneath them as they reached the lip of the valley, revealing a strangely picturesque view.

Built on the shores of the lake that shared its name, Shae-Yomag seemed like less of a village and more of an outgrowth of the existing wilderness. Trees flanked every building and road in the heavily wooded valley, a sea of greenery that looked almost untouched by the ever-present blight. It was a distinctly old city, a place far enough removed from the rest of the world that modernity was still centuries away.

And it was still standing as though nothing were amiss.

"Survivors?" Alarion was the first one to ask.

"Not in blighted land. Unawakened, would be sick or dying just by drinking the water," Kali mused. "They could have evacuated?"

"If there were refugees, they would have alerted the authorities weeks ago." Bergman frowned. "N-Nothing about this makes sense."

It was an understatement. Most settlements within infested lands were ruined by the initial attack, with doors and walls torn to pieces by fiends eager to get at the occupants within. Even those that survived, such as towns that evacuated early, were eventually set alight by the revenants to deny the living any opportunity for shelter within blighted land. To find a village that looked pristine felt almost impossible.

"We should report this in," Dimov said.

"Of course, sir," Kali said, his eyes never leaving the village. "As of now, this changes nothing. We go in, search for an hour, and then withdraw. If we find anything unusual, we can report it to the captain, and he can make a final decision."

"That looks like the town hall," Alarion said, pointing to a squat rectangular building near the lake. "Start there and work our way outward?"

With no better idea forthcoming, both Kali and Dimov agreed.

Walking the outskirts was eerie. There were no lights, magical or otherwise, no signs of life or current occupation, but also no signs of conflict. They passed an empty home with the door half open and another where plates and glasses were laid out on a patio table. There were signs of abandonment everywhere, as though the village had emptied in a matter of hours, but no signs of decay save those caused by the boil. There was no overgrowth of vines, no signs of refuse torn open by animals.

"This place feels... wrong," Alarion murmured the obvious as they walked, his eyes scanning for any sign of movement in the surrounding woods. The cobblestone road wound down toward the city center, each switchback turn promising a fiend or a revenant but never delivering. They were alone in the embalmed corpse of Shae-Yomag.

"How o-old is this village?" Bergman asked as they emerged from the woods into the town square. A few dozen buildings dotted the manmade clearing, all of them old. Ancient, really. Even the most remote villages Alarion had visited during his time in the Auxilia had been a mixture of the old and the new. People moved, they expanded, and married. Each generation built something new alongside something old, but Shae-Yomag appeared to be an exception.

"It is an aesthetic," Dimov said confidently. "Like Old Vitri. Even when they build new, they make it look old."

Alarion wasn't so sure. His fingers trailed along moss-covered mortar as they passed a two-story building. He could see parts of it that were newer than others, places where a window frame had cracked and been replaced, and others that bleached white from decades under the sun. He opened his mouth to contest the point, but thought better of it. There was nothing to be gained from arguing.

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The town hall was the largest building in the square. Three stories of stone, brick, and tile, it was the only building that crept above the surrounding woodlands, giving it an air of authority and purpose. Even so, it looked at home in its environment, with each of its four corners built around a still-living redwood.

He wondered if they'd have to tear it down when all this was over. The trees were sick through with blight, their roots dark and angry. He knew a lot about killing fiends, but next to nothing about how an area recovered after the fact.

Alarion pushed open the heavy wooden doors, wincing at the groan of ancient hinges. The lobby stretched before them, cavernous and still. Moonlight filtered through tall, narrow windows, casting elongated shadows across stone floors worn smooth by footsteps. Wooden benches lined the walls, interspersed with unfamiliar tapestries whose colors had been muted by age.

A central desk dominated the space, with papers still arranged in neat stacks and an inkwell left uncapped. Alarion's fingers brushed against the ledger, flipping through it. There was text inside, but it wasn't what they were looking for. A nearly empty visitor's log.

"Found something?" Kali asked.

"Mm," Alarion replied. "We will check the top floors if you hold the entrance?"

Kali looked at Dimov, who gave a sharp nod. "Go. We'll search the lobby and the side offices. Be quick."

They ascended together, Alarion's hand gripped tightly around his mace, Bergman a half-step behind. A twinkling light circled each of their heads, courtesy of Alarion's [Flare] cantrip, each stair creaking beneath their weight, announcing their presence to the empty building. The second-floor landing opened to a corridor lined with offices, doors ajar as if inviting them in.

"It f-feels like it should be d-dusty. Doesn't it?" Bergman asked.

"Yeah," Alarion said quietly. It felt wrong to speak at full volume, as though it intruded upon solitude. "Like the Old City."

Now that he recognized it, the connection to his old home was uncanny. Not in the particulars, for Ashad-Mundi had been much more modern and far more damaged, but in the atmosphere. That deep emptiness, the sense of loss. There were people here, and now there weren't.

The sooner they were gone from this place, the happier Alarion would be.

"Start here, I will take a look upstairs," Alarion said after he peeked into each of the six offices. They were sparse, each composed of a desk, an easel, and several storage cabinets with nowhere for a fiend to hide. They were safe enough for Bergman to search on his own.

The stairs to the third floor were narrow, so narrow, in fact, that Alarion doubted even the smallest of fiends would have fit through the stairwell. His mace certainly didn't, the implement tucked away with Kotone before he entered the claustrophobic stairwell.

A small window was set into the wall at the halfway point. Only slightly larger than his head, the thick glass let in a trickle of moonlight and completely distorted the view of the village below. Some buildings looked too tall, others too short or too deep. Just looking through it caused an odd ache in Alarion's eyes, and he would have ignored it entirely. If he hadn't seen a flicker of movement.

"Orphan to Kali," he said sharply. The simu clicked once in his ear, a sign that his message had been received, "I may have movement outside. Right-hand side from the entrance."

"East?"

Alarion paused as he worked out the twists and turns he'd made since entering the building. "Yes. Around a hundred yards out."

For several long heartbeats, Alarion received no response. Then the device in his ear crackled. "I see nothing."

"A trick of the light, maybe," Alarion said as he stared through warped glass once again, then looked up at his orbiting flare. "Proceeding on."

The simu clicked again in confirmation, and Alarion turned away from the strange window as he ascended the remaining stairs.

This time, he was not greeted by six offices, but one. The mayor's office. Or was it a provost or perhaps a headman in a place this small? Either way, the office was fit for its occupant, demure and practical, without the ostentation of true royalty. A semi-circle of chairs sat opposite the broad desk that took up the far end of the room, with bookshelves lining the walls. There were hundreds of them, all the same. Brown leather bound thrice around with another thin strip of the same. Another similar volume lay open on the mayor's desk, with strange writing that glistened under the light of Alarion's [Flare].

The words weren't Ashadi, Imurian, or Vitrian. They weren't even in the Celesian alphabet, the common ancestor of most of the continent.

These were sharp lines, some thin, others thick, with each stroke purely horizontal or vertical. The language looked blocky and unnatural, like something made by a printing press, though it was clearly written by hand.

Alarion tapped his ear twice, cutting off the feed to his simu as he asked, "Do you know this language?"

"No," ZEKE's voice was unsettled in a way that felt supremely reaffirming. "I don't even recognize the characters."

"That is unusual, right?"

"Very," ZEKE told him. His holographic self flickered into existence on the nearby desk, pacing around the open book. "I am no universal polyglot, but I know more than my fair share. This looks like nothing I've ever seen."

"Maybe Bergman can make some sense of it." Alarion moved to the top of the stairs and shouted down. "Ivor! I need you to look at this."

The other boy came running. Or, well, squeezing. The stairs had been a tight fit for Alarion's slight build, and they were a struggle for the larger boy. In retrospect, Alarion realized he could have brought the book down to his companion, but he wisely kept that revelation to himself.

"So?" Alarion asked. Bergman had spent some time flipping through the first volume without a word, then selected two others from the shelves, finding only similar text.

"It is c-code."

"Code?" Alarion asked.

"You're sure?" ZEKE spoke over Alarion, his miniature digital form standing atop the boy's shoulder. "I had my suspicions, but-"

"What is a code?"

"I have a s-skill th-" Bergman had done his best to ignore Alarion in favor of his more educated tutor, but a glare from those violet eyes told them both that he wasn't going to be left out of a discussion. "It is l-like a personal l-language. A way to h-hide information. If it were anything else, my s-skill should have allowed me to read it."

"It lets you read anything?" ZEKE asked, clearly intrigued.

"Anything but m-magical text or encrypted messages," Bergman said. "The offices d-downstairs are being used for some kind of scribing. S-scroll work, I think. A number of the tools are enchanted. But this, it's mundane."

Alarion frowned at that. He hadn't even considered the option, but when he let his [Introverted Mana Sense] flow over the room, the shelves came back utterly mundane, just as Bergman had suggested.

"An interesting mystery, to be sure. But hardly what we are here for," ZEKE said after a short lull in the conversation. "Can your other skill still work off of these?"

"It s-should. Text is t-text." Bergman said confidently, mana roiling within his body as he concentrated on his skill. "The connection will p-probably be stronger, even."

The skill in question was why they were all here. Why they had diverted time and again from their usual path in search of documents and journals in the ruined towns.

Sympathetic Sight [Exceptional]

Description: To see a thing is to begin to know a thing, and with this skill, you have taken your first step into understanding the ties that bind all things.

Requirements: None.

Type: Active, Observation.

Activation Time: 10 seconds.

Duration: Concentration.

Cooldown: 10 minutes.

Effects: This skill allows the user to visualize the existing sympathetic connections of any creature or held item. The precision and range of these visual connections will vary depending on the strength of the sympathetic connection. This skill provides no direct information regarding the nature of the sympathetic connection. This skill provides no direct information regarding the source of the sympathetic connection other than that listed above. As a Sympathetic Wordsmith, the precision and range of visual connections are massively increased when attempting to track the sympathetic connections of a piece of text, such as a journal or letter.

Cost: Moderate MP cost channeled during activation. Minor MP cost channeled during the duration.

Growths: INT +6. PER +18.

Note: This skill can be resisted, evaded, or deceived by skills of higher rank or rarity.

At even its most basic, [Sympathetic Sight] was a skill any tracker would envy. The ability to locate someone from miles away based on the sight of their ally, a discarded dagger, or a few strands of hair was already powerful. That Bergman could, supposedly, track someone up to half a continent away with nothing more than their private journals felt almost unfair.

All they needed were the belongings of the revenants and of the dead. Journals, letters, poems, as many as they could get their hands on. Each was a datapoint, a rough pin on the map. The strategy would never reveal the boil's exact location, but with luck, it would indicate where the largest concentration of revenants and the dead could be found, which was the next best thing.

"Okay, let's take a look at…. agh!" Bergman shouted as though he'd stubbed his toe, though his hand was on his head.

"Are you alright?" Alarion asked.

"F-fine, I just wasn't e-expecting it t-"

This time, the words were cut off not by a yelp of pain but by a full-throated scream of agony. Bergman collapsed, writhing on the ground and clawing at his face.

"Ivor!" Alarion shouted as he rushed to his fellow soldier's side.

The damage was immediately apparent. Bergman's skill temporarily tinted the whites of his eyes blue when in use, but it was the red that concerned Alarion. Blood flowed freely from each eye, streaming down the sides of Bergman's face as the boy cried in agony.

Alarion didn't hesitate to force a potion down the young man's throat, though it had little immediate effect. Bergmans' eyes were wide and bloodshot, staring not at Alarion or the ceiling, but at one of the nearby bookshelves.

"Close his eyes!" ZEKE insisted before he flickered out of existence. They could both hear the sound of rushing footsteps coming up from below.

The moment Alarion put a hand over Bergmans' eyes, the soldier visibly slumped against the floor, as though disconnected from a live wire. He was still suffering, but it was the pain of damage done, not damage ongoing.

Alarion pushed Bergman's eyes closed, then draped his scarf over the boy's face for good measure as he spoke. "Bergman. Are you with me? Ivor."

"Everything," the boy whimpered.

"What?"

"They're connected to everything."

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