Mrs. Perdu had me sit at their kitchen table while she fidgeted and tried to go over what happened over the last few days. I want to listen, however, my eyes keep moving to the window that would normally show our smithy’s walls and instead I can see more of the night sky, the devourer taunting me due to my missing home.

“A couple of days after the three-sorry four of you left on that requisition, your dad was out at a bar drinking and came back to find that the Smithy was ransacked…”

I muttered under my breath that dad only ever went drinking on the day mom was taken from us. It seemed odd that he’d go drinking when it was not that awful day in winter yet.

“It was searched through, but no weapons were taken, even ‘Ness was left behind.”

“Wow, he’d not take that insult lightly.” I say while urging Mrs. Perdue to continue.

“I’m not sure if that upset your father more than the place being ransacked. Both of your rooms were torn upside down. He went to the guild to file a complaint and put in a requisition after spending the entire night putting your room back together.”

“Your father came back after placing the req when he found the place was torn up again in his absence. Your room, that he spent all night and morning putting back together was in shambles. Someone had gone and cut up your pillows and mattress searching the place.”

“Your father was livid, absolutely seething. He came over to discuss with Adam and then left to give the guild a piece of his mind. Adam tried to calm your father down some. Later that evening, your father had not come back and we went to go search for him. I had made him some home cooked food, but he was not at the smithy and Adam checked where he might go to get a drink. We went and checked with...”

I’m doing my best to pay attention to the story and now that I finally look at the Perdu couple I can see that they are both haggard, Mr. Perdu more so, their eyes dark with not having enough sleep and constant worry. I reach out with a mana tether, curious and see them more fully. They do not react but I see overlaid a dozen red scars on Mrs. Perdu and several dozen more on Mr Perdu. I reach out to Zoe and Jessica and they are absolutely pure, without a single mark on their souls. I realize wandering thoughts and return to paying attention to Mrs. Perdu.

“...we couldn’t find him and then we too went to the guild and once they confirmed that he had not returned, they became a bit anxious.”

“They were more concerned about a requisitioner going missing and how that would sully their reputation.” Mr. Perdu chimed in, interrupting his wife.

“Shush Adam. Anyways, now the guild was in a bad place and the guild master sent out captain Davis with us to see the smithy. However, when we got back, the place was surrounded by people that were desperately trying to put out a fire.”

“There was nothing left, just a fire tornado in the middle, having consumed everything. Captain Davis was not happy and summoned a bunch of sand to smother it out. Once Davis managed to smother it, he pushed all the sand into the backyard and we went in to see that the sand that smothered it out had turned to molten glass in the middle. A perfect ring and Davis started swearing like nobody I’ve seen.”

“Davis left back to the guild and later that night we got a knock on our door, someone young from the guild told us that there is a suspected dark guilder in the area and that we should take precautions.”

“Adam went to the guild to deliver some salves to mage Larse. Despite us three being bronzes, mage Larse is better connected. She mentioned that there were some silvers that were picking up some fire ointments and that she was just depleted of almost all of her burn salves. She was able to find out that your dad’s requisition is now posted as a silver and gold dark guilder requisition.”

“But since then, nothing else has happened. No other disappearances or any signs of a dark guilder since then.”

I just sit there, digesting what happened. My heart aches at hearing that dad went drinking and warms at the idea that he tried to put my room back together first. However, the more I sit and stew the angrier and angrier I get. I’m angry at whoever did this, I’m angry at my dad for going out drinking, I’m angry with the guild for being incompetent and not taking my dad’s request seriously. I’m mad at what Mr. Perdu said, how the guild seemed more concerned about their reputation.

I’m so mad at everything and I don’t want to lash out at any of my friends. I relax my jaw, not realizing that I had been grinding my teeth for a while now.

Should I go find an inn for us for the night? Should I start patrolling the streets with Akira in the shadows, waiting to see if someone will come to cause trouble? Should I go try and raise hell at the guild? The other guild seemed to want us badly. We could find Augustus and get back and involve the other guild, I’m sure they’d be happy for us to owe them a real big favor.

“Why don’t you go rest in Jessica’s bed for the night.” Mrs. Perdu interrupts my inner brooding and then hesitates as she looks at Akira and Zoe.

“Zoe it is possibly not safe to head back home at night, why don’t you stay the night as well with the girls… As for you young man…” She turns to Akira, but Mr. Perdu pulls her away and doesn’t let her lay into Akira.

I make my way into Jessica’s room and just collapse on the bed, hugging a pillow, breathing in Jessica’s scent as I try to muffle my sobs. I can hear Mrs. Perdu wanting to know everything about our trip as I hear the door open and close behind me.

Taking a stabilizing breath as a weight sits down on the bed beside me, I don’t turn around but address them through a muffling pillow.

“Akira?”

“I’m here.”

“What do we do? What can we do?”

“We’ll do what your guild has failed to do, we’ll find those in question and we’ll find out what we can about your father.”

“But they said that a dark guilder is involved.” I whisper.

He scoffs before replying. “Huh. If they are stupid enough to use fire, then any of you three should be able to easily take care of them.”

“How!?”

“You’ve been using and experimenting with mana tether? Same thing. You just need to reach out and tip the scales. If they are able to cast this kind of spell away from themselves, then you’ll need to learn a defensive application of mana tether.”

“Defensive how?”

“You soak the area around you with mana. That way they cannot conjure fire within your lungs or stomach. To prevent an earth mage from using your bones against you, or to prevent a water mage from grabbing hold of your blood or to prevent a wind mage from summoning bubbles within your blood, or ripping the air out of your blood.”

“That sounds gruesome.”

“If the area around you is saturated with mana, let's say just five. Then they need to reach the distance costing however much it does, and then they need to increase their starting amount by fivefold so that they can pierce through your saturation. But that now six mana is needed to be doubled at every step in the journey, making the end cost too much for them to bear, and if you perceive them pushing or drilling through your mana, you just need to increase it and let them burn themselves out.”

“Akira… I know with the bandits, I told you to not kill anyone. I don’t want that anymore. Err… What I’m saying is that it is. No. I want whoever did this to pay. If I cannot do it myself can you help me?”

I struggle to get my thoughts in order and if it is even alright to ask such a thing. But deep down, I’m burning, I’m so angry and want to find the party responsible to vent. If it is a dark guilder, then they deserve it all the more and there’s even an open request. I’ve never wanted to hurt someone else as much as I do right now. I’m seething and livid with nobody to vent onto.

I thank Akira and he says that he’ll stay in the house and watch over us. I agree without really paying attention as I turn inwards, focusing on my mana and trying to flatten or stretch my mana tether out. At first, I can get it to coil around my hand, and still nothing happens until I hold my intent and start pushing more and more mana, it starts to flatten out after I push ten mana into it and it slowly coats my arm and then shoulder.

I hold my breath as I keep pushing and it covers my face and mouth. I take a hesitant testing breath and despite having it covering my mouth, I don’t feel any resistance as air fills my lungs. My mana is draining fast and once I am covered from head to toe, I feel the second skin jump off of me and extend out a meter in all directions. I feel something click and take a look inside my grimoire to see what I’ve achieved.

I was too focused on the feeling of mana crawling across my skin that I failed to see how much of my mana it was eating. My anger boils over now at myself. If I’d known it was going to be this expensive, I would have pushed for all of it to possibly help along my mana depth or ripple.

I bite at and then scream into the pillow, frustrated at how everything costs exorbitant amounts of mana. However, I start to chuckle to myself as I am lamenting my mana woes into my little mana glutton of a grimoire.

“Interesting, so only a minute?” I say to myself, not feeling anything different. After the feeling of the mana second skin crawling across my body leapt away, I’m no longer feeling anything or seeing any difference. I’ll have to ask Jessica to see if they see anything.

I settle down, patiently waiting for my mana to regen. It takes over a half hour and I’m left with nothing but my thoughts, worries and insecurities during this time. After finally getting enough mana to try again, I hold onto my rune stone and force it to snap into position and expand it to the utmost limit, draining my mana immediately. There was no sensation of mana crawling across my body this time, I just feel the exhaustion of all of my mana disappearing immediately and the use of my runestone for any remainder is not necessary.

I easily slip into the comforting darkness of the void. Nothing new has appeared within the void and I’m kind of happy that I’ve not gotten any more soul parasites, or whatever they were. I give the iron grass the side eye while thinking this before I go over and try to examine it more carefully. Trying to figure out what makes it iron grass instead of an iron prickly weed or serrated grass.

I’ve only just begun poking and prodding at the various moving pieces when out within the void beyond the veil that is my giantess’ body another giant appears all of a sudden, launching through the air feet first at me.

The giant crumples or comes to a stop, sitting in the air perpendicular to the ground when a second one crawls up from my feet to my chest before they nestle around me in a hug. Both giants’ souls are pure and unblemished and I just know that they must be Jessica and Zoe. Zoe most likely the flying one who jumped onto the bed. It takes me a bit to realize, but I finally realize that my up and down here are not the same as out there, beyond the bounds of my giantess’ body.

With some effort I force myself awake and find Jessica nuzzling her head into my back, or maybe that is Violet, while I’m clutching at the one and only pillow.

“You okay? Sorry. Stupid question.” Jessica whispers over and then digs deeper into my back at the small blunder.

I breathe out and then shimmy around and throw the pillow at an unsuspecting Zoe and get her right in the face.

“That’s what you get for jumping on the bed!” I say but regret it immediately as I see the manic grin from Zoe as the pillow is slowly lowered from her face.

“No take backs! The pillow is mine now for the night!” She yells while clutching the pillow for dear life.

I smile and look down and almost impale my face into a pair of backwards facing deer horns that are like a tiny crown on Jessica’s head, as is now burying her face into my chest. I pat her back, consoling her while she tries to console me.

“I’m a little miffed at losing the pillow. I’m angry but there’s nothing I can do. We’ve got Akira who’s confident against a fire dark guilder. He even said that any of us would most likely be able to deal with a fire mage.”

I go into detail describing what Akira and I spoke about and how tomorrow we’re going to need to go do something. I also go about describing how to form the locus of control and tell them what I remember it saying about it being a throne or soul regalia.

“Hey, Jess? Could you try using mana tether and trying to see what you see of me?” I ask her while quickly using up over a hundred mana embers to save me some mana and time for the test.

She pushes away and then a small look of confusion crosses her face after a couple of seconds before her eyes go wide with shock. After a little bit of confusion, I feel something burrowing through the space around me, like a hot knife. I’m aware of it and I can feel it coming from Jessica. Once it touches me is when her eyes go wide with shock.

“Oh, Cara… Your soul is bleeding, well not bleeding, but there’s a red gash across your nose under your eyes.” She says as tears start going down her face.

“Huh!?” Is all that I managed to get out before Zoe chimes in.

“My mana tether isn’t wor- oh! There’s a sphere around you and I need to push extra mana to get inside.” I feel another tether pushing through the area around me.

“Wow, you do have an angry red cut across your nose.” Her remarks have me frowning as I don’t recall ever being cut in the face or how I’d have gotten my soul cut.

“Akira!?” I call out through the door and hear Mrs. Perdu yell out.

“Oh.No.You.Don’t! Get back, don’t you dare enter that room.” She yells out, which just has an embarrassed Jessica run out to berate her mom for embarrassing her and that this is serious. Jessica lets slip that my soul is injured, which just has a very flustered Mrs. Perdu come in to examine and fuss over me.

“How do you know her soul is injured?” She asks, while still fussing and looking at my face that was mentioned to be injured, while she juggles some facial scarring ointment.

It takes us a bit to explain how to form a soul tether and by the time she figures it out my locus of control has warn off and she finally gasps while looking at me in shock. Her mouth is trying to form words but nothing is coming out. She woodenly turns to look at her daughter and with a visible sigh of relief she turns to Zoe, inspecting all three of us.

She then turns to look at Akira and Mr. Perdu in the door. She gives off a strangled gasp while Akira just grimaces at her for the soul intrusion. However, she breaks down and starts crying while rushing over to Mr. Perdu and touching him all over, no doubt tracing the dozens upon dozens of angry red scars on his soul.

Jessica soon catches on and also lets out a small cry while she goes over to hug both of her parents. This must be the first time she looked and saw the wounds on her parents’ souls.

“Akira? What are these red marks and how did I get mine?” I ask and he moves away from that are hugging and crying in the doorway. He sits down on the bed between me and Zoe and mostly directs his comments to the Perdus.

“Red scars on the soul are a form of bitterness that a person has experienced. However, it is more than that, it will form when you’ve made up your mind to possibly kill someone. It is killing intent and your actions that you carry out to fulfill that will mark you.”

“Does Adam have any black scarring?” He asks me, to which I shake my head.

“When you bitterly want to kill someone, another human, someone of your own race, the scar forms. Stronger, deeper and more pronounced the closer that person is to you. A scar turns black when you’ve accomplished your goal and killed your target, staining your soul for the rest of your life.”

“That’s bullshit!” I cannot help but exclaim and get a small ‘language’ reprimand from Mrs. Perdu.

“Just because I want to kill whomever did this to my dad and our home! I get a mark on my soul?” I just cannot fathom.

“The bitterness of hatred scars us all, it shapes us. Letting go is the most difficult. Adam most likely could have attempted to poison anyone that he had formed killing intent against. He’s chosen not to, swallowed those slights, I figure many are due to how ‘plant’ mages are treated.”

“Ya, I can certainly think of a few... But, I would never jeopardize Vicky or Jessica on a fool's errand.” He replies back, recalling some pained memories that he does not hide.

I’m at a loss for words. So if I manage to get justice, my soul scar turns black. But if I don’t I get to keep a red scar across my soul’s face!?

“Is there any way to get rid of it?” I ask Akira and he just sighs and mulls it over a bit before giving a bitter face, like he just swallowed some of the worst medicine the Perdus could brew.

“Forgiveness. Absolute forgiveness is the only way I know of and it is more difficult than you can imagine.”

“Then your soul, it is as black as the devourer and radiates red.” I cannot help but ask with sad eyes looking at him. I hesitantly reach out and touch his arm.

“I’ve killed many, too many. Many I’ve done of my own volition, murderers, rapists, monsters in human skin. Many more I’ve been forced to kill by commands from my previous masters.” He says quietly, afraid that I would judge him and yet I cannot help but shed tears. His soul’s scars are so deeply overlaid that you cannot see where one starts and another ends.

I simply rest my head against his shoulder, his cold leather armor beneath my forehead, as I silently cry for him. I’ve not known him for long, but I know he’s a good person. He’s gentle at all times with us, like an older brother I’ve never had. There’s no judging from him, just care and concern for us.

We’re now in an awkward sobbing mess in the room and everything falls into an awkward silence.

Mrs. Perdu finally starts to shoo Akira off the bed and out of the room before she brings over a winter blanket and rolls it into a log for a giant pillow for the three of us and gives each of us a kiss on the forehead and a silent prayer before she leaves us to try and sleep.

My mind is unable to quiet down and let me sleep. Worrying about where or what has happened to dad keeps plaguing my mind. If I were to fall asleep I’m certain I’ll have nightmares. What I lack right now is control and the only thing that I seem able to control is what happens with my soul.

Looking at my grimoire, I’m unable to see anything with how dark it is. I try to catch some starlight from the window but I’m unable to get anything from it. I don’t want to clamber over Zoe, nor light a candle. I wish I had some form of light, perhaps finding what makes glow bugs glow. If it is like the caterpillar manes or something else that might be able to provide soft light without needing to resort to fire. Devourer knows Akira has been drilling us with how stupid that would be.

I get a sudden idea and reach a tether over to Zoe and she lights up in a soft glow. However, I note that this glow is not an actual glow as it is unable to show anything on my grimoire. I instead reach out a tether to my grimoire. I know that my little glutton has fed enough on my mana over time and its core is that of a rot weed seed.

Brushing a mana tether on the book causes it to light up, though I’m unable to see any text, it is all a consistent soft glow before my blinking eyes. I try to impart my will that I want more mana or soul power to be ingrained in the text and with some shifting, it starts to form under my eyes and I’m able to read my grimoire with my eyes closed. Just seeing the soft white glow of my grimoire pull in muted oranges similar to my mana embers gives me the ability to finally read it.

Oddly enough, I can also see a sphere bisecting my one and only page. Seeing the entire sphere in this kind of soul view or soul perception does not cause the normal nausea of observing it.

I’m presented with multiple options and I try to weigh them and determine what I want to do, how do I want to leverage control? The fact that my mana pulse ability and mana depth are not equal to each other but seem to be tied to leveling with each other irks me.

I don’t really have any means of safely increasing the level of my rampant growth skill. I could continue to stockpile mana embers and silk to make more money. However, if we are able to do bronze requisitions then maybe more power is needed.

Soul storage would be nice, I’m not using it for anything right now besides storing my sword and a bag of Dens. Maybe once I need it, I’ll be unhappy that I don’t have enough space within, but prior to bed Zoe was mumbling by the window while looking at the sky, so I’m pretty sure she’s going to do her best to form her own soul storage tonight and tomorrow.

Mana tether seems to go up easily on its own and as long as I am not terribly far away it seems to be rather lackluster. Another option is that I could leverage my mana embers to either add another page or two to my grimoire. That would not provide any increase in strength or help me find dad at this time.

With my thoughts going bad to my dad and the smithy, I finally settle on a plan. More mana and regen cannot hurt and only help. So the choice is between mana embers, silk, and embers, or locus of control. Eyeing the description for my locus of control, ‘Fortify thy throne. A seat where you judge and rule. Soul Regalia’. It sounds powerful and I saw how it made things more difficult for Jessica and Zoe.

With my decision made, I settle in for a long night of alternating between setting aside some embers and pushing the locus of control. At least I have the soft breathing of Jessica and Zoe to accompany me.