It was the tug on the shoulder that woke her up. She was in such a deep sleep that she woke up with a jolt.

“Huh” she mumbled, still disoriented, it took her a few seconds to get back her bearing, and then she saw a maid standing by her side.

“Mistress Alice, are you alright?” the maid asked with concern.

She closed her eyes once again and nodded. “Yeah, I am fine.” She then sat up straight “Ugh… My neck! I should be more careful about where to sleep.”

The maid then put a letter in front of her. “This came for you a few moments ago.” After putting down the letter, the maid went behind her back and started massaging her neck, and she was very grateful for her service…

The gentle hands of the maid worked wonders on her neck, and she eventually loosened up. She looked around the room, her office was a mess, there were stacks of papers on her table, multiple maps opened around the room, and there was a half-eaten chicken in front of her which still looked appetizing to her.

While going through some documents last night she fell asleep on her desk, which resulted in her sore neck. She needed to go through all the stacks of papers around her, it was a lot of work and would need a lot of late night late-night candle wax.

As a Saintess of the church of Great Tibba, she was not meant to do grunt work like this. Usually, the scribes under her would do this work, but she refused to hand over these documents to those incompetent fools, this matter was too sensitive to be handled by mere scribes.

UMMM

She moaned from pleasure. ‘What kind of magical ability this woman has? It is as if the Great Tibba himself blessed this woman with such healing hands. One day I should get her to massage my whole body. I should probably assign her under me, she would serve me well.’

It was then she glanced at the letter that the maid brought with her, it was a simple white envelope with a simple red seal on the back, curious about what it held, she tore the seal up and took out the paper concealed inside. It was a letter from one of the scouts that she had posted near the Mediterranean Sea.

________________________________________________________________

To

Saint Alice,

I, your humble servant Henry Joseph wanted to tell you about strange phenomena is taking place on the island where I was assigned. The place is called Hearthgrove Island, it is a very remote island from the mainland, and it matches the description of the phenomenon that you told us to look for.

A few months ago, the island started experiencing a sudden drop in temperature, which was weird considering that this is the summer season, and the temperature should rise during the period. And it is then things only got worse from there, from what I have heard, the temperature on the island has dropped so significantly that it has started snowing in some regions of the island.

From what locals have to say about the place, snowfall never happens in a place like that.

I wanted to investigate the root cause of the phenomena personally, but I couldnt do so as there seemed to be a monster lurking around the island, it had sunk any ship that sailed in the direction of the island or came to the island.

There were a few survivors found by the beach of the mainland. According to them, the temperature has dropped so significantly that most of the crops have died, and people have started starving.

With so many testimonies, I tried contacting the communication towers of the Royal Family, which seems to have gone offline out of a sudden.

As the birds couldnt travel that far and come back, it is really hard for me to understand what is happening on the island. But this island suits the criteria

I will be keeping an eye on the situation from here, if you have any further instructions, please relay them to your humble servant.

Yours Truly

Henry Joseph.

___________________________________________

She felt like a jolt of electricity hit her, she immediately put down the letter and glanced back.

“Do you know where Bishop Yuriel is?”

“I think that he was scheduled to attend the meeting with the Pope.”

“Leave me be.” The maid nodded, came forward, bowed, and then left her office.

As soon as the maid left, she immediately jumped on her feet, there were huge stacks of maps on one side of the room, and she started looking through them, trying to find the one that she needed. It took her a few seconds, but she finally found the one that she had been looking for.

She grabbed the map that she needed, came back to her desk, and unfolded the huge thing. This world map before her had various marks positions on it. These marks represented the remote places in the world where the Ulaspas Family could attack, without alerting and being caught by the church or the Joint Mage Association. All these places were so remote, that if they were to attack there, news would not come until it was too late.

She made this map a long time ago, as she could not physically be in all these places at once, she chose around 2000 small-time priests to act as her eyes and ears if something weird happened in these areas, but till now nothing has surfaced that could remotely help her track down the Ulaspas family, until now.

The letter has a lot of similarities that they had recorded from the previous attacks of this black mage family, and for some reason, she had a feeling that this letter might bring her some good news…

As she moved her fingers around the map, she eventually found the island that she had been looking for. ‘Let's see… The island is well isolated, if they were to kill everyone there, then it would surely take some time for the world to get news of what transpired there. Their pet Drake would surely help in containing the news…’

‘And there is also the fact that the island is located near the equator, so there is little to no chance that the island would experience such a sudden decrease in temperature.’

She stared at the map, thinking whether this information could really mean something if she were to go there and check it out herself, it would take her about 9 days to reach the mainland near the island, and then from there, she had to travel all the way to the island.

In a sense, it would take around 11-12 days just to reach the place, which is a lot. She now faced a dilemma, whether to go there or not, after all, she could not just leave her office without concrete proof ‘You know what, I will let Master make this decision. I should first probably inform him of such news.’

After fixing her formal white robes to the best of her abilities, she left the office. The Citadel, the headquarters of the Great Church of Tibba was rather lively that day, probably because the festival of light was just around the corner, and everyone was excited about it.

As she navigated her way through the bright hallways of the Citadel, everyone greeted her with a smile, as a Saintess, she was well respected by her peers and colleagues, it was a pain in the ass, always smiling when greeting someone, even if you are in a foul mood, but this was one of the responsibilities that came with her job.

Eventually, she reached the meeting hall, the guards that were attending the gate saluted her as she came, and none of them tried to stop her when she pushed open the door and barge into the meeting…

All the 50 Bishops of the church were in the meeting, whereas the Pope was sitting in the chair on the far end. The meeting came to a halt as soon as the door was flung open, all the 50 old men and women attending the meeting looked towards the door to see her standing before all of them.

She bloomed her shadiest smile and bowed “Pardon my intrusions, Fathers, and Mothers. But can I please borrow Father Yuriel for a few minutes, I have some matters to discuss with him.”

Bishop Jon who was sitting by the Pope herself, was not happy with this, he looked a bit irritated at such a bland intrusion. “Is this matter so urgent that it couldnt wait for the meeting to end?”

She shook her head. “No.” The face of Bishop Jon became red as a tomato, he was about to yell at her, and she saw it coming. But it is then Pope herself came to her rescue.

With her old voice, the Pope put her hands on Father Jon’s shoulder. “Now Now Jon…” she continued. “I think Alice must have a pretty good reason for such intrusion. Yuriel, go and see what Alice wants.”

Bishop Yuriel who was sitting not too far away from Jon, stood up and started walking towards her, and both of them exited the room…

Old man Yuriel was not like a typical brown skin old man, he had broad shoulders and a physique of a fighter, with greyish-white hair and a mustache, he looked like a general of some army then like a Bishop, and he looked pissed.

“This better be good,” Yuriel said as they came out.

“I think we have a hit on the twins.” The old man’s body stopped working for a second, and then slowly he glared at her.

“Is it confirmed?”

“No, but I am sure.” The old man scoffed at her words. “I cannot fly across the world on your whims Alice. A person in my office cannot leave everything behind and go around chasing phantoms.”

“This one would be different.”

He folded his arms. “How exactly?”

“Well, first of all, we have managed to destroy more than half of their stash the last time. So they would be running out of crystals right about now. So if my calculations are right, they would be harvesting right about now, or they will not be able to survive.”

The old man thought for about a moment. “How sure are you that this is it?”

“About 51%”

He raised an eyebrow “51? Really?”

“We have nothing to lose Master. If this is it, then this is it.”

The old man seemed reluctant but eventually gave in. “How long would be the trip?”

“We would have to travel for about 9-10 days to reach the outpost of the mainland. Then we could proceed from there.” she said, “So about 25 days in all.”

The old man then nodded his head. “Make preparation. I will talk to the Pope.”

With that, Alice turned around and went to make preparations for the trip…