Phony Potions

Chapter 22.5

My vision cleared up. I had been thrown back to the outside of the fence. I grabbed the latch of the gate and opened it. It swung outward. I spun to avoid it. My boots caught in the dirt in the vines of a pumpkin patch. As I tried to pull my foot loose, I saw a figure, darkly dressed. A force slammed into my head again. I fell forward into the pumpkin patch. As I sunk into the pillow of soft dark dirt, I tried to make out anything to help me. Help me find her. But everything was dark...

When I woke, the moon was high in the sky. I staggered, blinking back a headache, into the small walled area where the struggle had taken place. The dirt was churned violently, the wall smashed and slicked with blood where the bricks buckled. But it was so messed up, I couldn't distinguish a single foot print besides Mallow's.

Getting her back this time was going to be harder than showing up on time.

I hoped it was at least possible.

I had to find out where Mallow was. I had to find out fast. I cursed my frailty. She had never failed to save me, and yet the one time I was called upon to rescue her, I had been knocked out without even seeing the assailants.

I tried to investigate the scene. There were footprints in the dark dirt, but they trampled over each other. There was obviously more than one person, since there were different foot sizes. Sure, there was Mallow's compared to the normal feet, but there was also the smaller differences between feet.

I didn't know whether I was relieved or frustrated I didn't find any of Mallow's tell-tale silver blood drying on the walls. If it'd fallen into the dirt, it'd probably be unseeable, but on plants it would be visible, reacting to the moonlight. Nothing. I thought I saw black splashes on the spot of the wall that had been slammed out of place by an impact earlier, but in the moonlight I didn't know if it was blood or the general discoloration that comes with time. Since I wasn't a sorcerer or an Avalon, I couldn't cast a spell on the evidence to see who the blood belonged to.

I was surprised that no one had bothered me yet. I walked up to the front door of the home and knocked. The small glass windows were dark. No one had been inside during the attack; I knew that much from how no one had opened the door. And no one was here now. They must be out enjoying the festival, which means they would be useless as witnesses.

Being careful of my step, I tried to see if they dragged Mallow anywhere. The furrows of where her ankles had rested in the ground disappeared at the fence, as if she had been lifted. I had no leads from the scene itself.

To take her in the middle of the day...

I realized that even if I had been asleep, others would not have been.

However, asking around town to see if anyone had seen her ended up wasting over an hour. Lots of people gave me tips to friends that had seen her, but every single one I did manage to track down (and it was only a quarter, as people's ambiguous descriptions were often applicable to large swathes of the city's population) had seen her when I was chasing her. If they had any idea what I was talking about, they had no idea that said Moon Giant had been attacked. Some who misunderstood thought there was a Moon Giant attacking, and I had to quickly calm them. I kept my temper in check when one older man said that it was a public good that Mallow was now off the streets, as she'd been terrifying children and women.

And that was the good part of my search. The worst was the dozens of clueless faces who hadn't seen Mallow at all during the day she'd been in town and not locked in the dungeon. They were excited, giddy, scared, confused, and skeptical at my claims of there being a Moon Giant in this city. The locals wondered aloud how the Divinis and the Avalons allowed such a breach of security, not listening or not believing me when I said that she wasn't violent.