Shadow Slave AU: Fluid Fate

[42]Lurking Shadow

Andel's POV:

Today was turning out to be a good day. His party was almost finished gathering their spoils. Andel packed up the last of his meat when he heard it.

Coming from the entrance of the building, Andel heard the sounds of the entire pack of Blood Fiends roaring. The hairs of Andel's neck bristled, but that was yo be expected. Actually, the Blood Fiends were later than he thought they were. If the kid was going to hold them back for this long, Andel almost regretted setting the dumb kid up.

'Well, no point worrying about it now. Guess it's time.'

Andel turned to his right hand, who had worked under him for over a year now. The man instantly understood, and turned to the wall behind them. It was not a boost as powerful as monsters like Effie, but this guy's Aspect let him harden his head and arm's skin to a similar texture to stone. The Sleeper took a running start, and barreled straight into the back of the building. It was a weak section of the wall that Andel had surmised would be collapsible after proper scouting. The wall was weak enough that it had a low chance to be load bearing, or else the building might have crumbled long ago.

Just as Andel planned, his friend tore through the wall relatively alright, and Andel's crew followed right after. The group reached the back garden of the building fairly easily and immediately followed along their designated route to the castle. Andel had already set up all kinds of traps that slow down the creatures or make noise, which would draw attention from all of the Fallen creatures in the city. Andel's job was to make sure that his men would make it to the checkpoints he set up without dying.

Andel ran for a few minutes when he caught up with his splinter party, and a wide grin broke out on his face when he realized that his plan was a success. No sooner than he did, though, did the splinter party report.

"Sir, I believe we have a problem."

Andel had finally realized that the group of Blood Fiends had not yet chased them out of the building, so he whistled, and his party took up a slow advance formation, where he could lead them at a slow pace instead of barreling through the city. As the party members began a slow skulking formation, moving through back alleys and buildings, the leader of the splinter group spoke in a whisper.

"Sir, I think some of the outer settlement rats saw us setting up that trap for the kid."

Andel immediately turned to his Hunter underling.

"What. Did. You. Say?"

The Hunter's face paled, but he sheepishly and dutifully reported to Andel how Jubei's party had been in the area, all armored and looking to be in the middle of a hunt themselves, when the splinter group of Hunters had sacrificed Caleb and set up the tripwire when Caleb activated his ability.

Andel scowled for a minute as they walked, but eventually broke out into a grin when he decided that it didn't matter. He reached out towards the timid Hunter and roughly clamped his hand on the guy's shoulder.

"Oh, don't worry about all of that. Those fucking retards will just go and get their heads cut off if they try anything funny. What the fuck can they even do without evidence, huh? I'll kill off whoever the Spell I have to in order to get my debts paid off. It's not my fault that that kid fell for such an obvious ploy. Why would I ever let a filthy fucking rat like that into the Bright castle? I mean, what a joke, right?"

At that precise moment, Andel caught his foot and almost stumbled on a rock about the size of his hand. Cursing, he kicked the thing into a dark alley to his left, and continued walking. A few minutes later, when the whole party of thirty had passed, a pair of eyes opened up seemingly from the darkness itself.

A figure walked to the edge of the shadows of the building. A hand reached out from the shadows and picked up the rock Andel kicked, before dissappearing back into the shadows of the alleyway. Nobody was around to see the figure's unnervingly cheery mood.

Nobody was around to hear the faint whisper that echoed from that alleyway either.

"Ha, I guess I didn't have to kill the bastard myself after all. By the Spell, Gemma or Harus will probably do it for me."

***

Sunny made his way back to Caleb, after barely deciding to spare his life for now. Honestly, If Sunny hadn't wanted to ease the grudges of the Sleepers in this cursed city, he would have killed that whole party of scumbag "hunters".

Still, Sunny had a good beat on Gemma and Gunlaug's personalities by now. Even if Tessai or perhaps even Seishan could overlook the blatant betrayal to fellow humans, Gemma and Gunlaug could not. Gunlaug would at least hold some semblance to fairness just to keep the peace of the castle's residents, and Gemma would not stand to leave the lives of his subordinates in the hands of an arrogant and incompetent Pathfinder.

Perhaps he could look the other way and allow Andel to stay in charge of a group if Sunny had not recorded the fool's words with the ordinary rock, but now Andel had no chance to lie to Gemma about his misdeeds. There was evidence, which meant that Andel would not go unpunished this time. Especially not with Sunny's way of going about things.

The trip back to Caleb didn't take long for Sunny, but unlike Andel, Sunny and Caleb weren't going to make it back to the settlement by nightfall. This resulted in Sunny having to explain his ability to see in the dark to Caleb as he contiued to drag Caleb back to the outer settlement of te castle. 

Caleb was a little reluctant to part ways with the Venomous Slasher when Sunny had come for him again, but what choice did he have but to give it back? Was he going to fight the scary, short kid that was his only shot at finding the way back to the settlement? Yeah, right.

When  Sunny and Caleb did finally make it back up the road to the settlement, they saw Changing Star herself, standing on the platform outside the settlement.

Two people Sunny knew as patrollers stood behind her anxiously as she stared blankly into the night. Sunny realized that her arms were crossed under her armpits, and as he got closer, he heard the faint sounds of her lightly tapping her foot, as if she was waiting for something. It soon became apparant to Sunny what she was waiting on. 

When she finally heard the sounds of footsteps, she turned and watched as Sunny came closer to her with Caleb in tow.

"Alright, What's going on Sunny?"