All the Dust that Falls

Chapter 286: Following the Breadcrumbs

It took Susan nearly 20 minutes to show up in the throne room. Bee wasn't exactly surprised, though. Susan was a very busy woman, and she felt bad about pulling her away from whatever important task she was taking care of. But this was pretty dang important.

In the meantime, she had called for refreshments. Some of the palace servants who had returned to work after the invasion pulled out a small table and served tea. Harold and the Warden sipped in slightly awkward silence, occasionally broken as one of them had a thought related to their various fields of expertise.

Susan swept into the room with her usual lithe grace. As she took her spot at the table, Bee made some introductions. "This is Major Susan," she said. "Susan has been in charge of the church's intelligence apparatus for a long time. Her counterpart in military intelligence is currently away; otherwise, I would have him brought here, too. You may tell her anything that you would tell me. Susan, this is the Warden and Harold," she gestured to each man in turn. "They have been extremely helpful in taking care of the demons and have certain interests in making sure that they don't resurface like they did in legends before. Warden, would you like to expand on any of that?"

The Warden put his teacup down and looked Susan in the eyes. "It is good to meet you, Susan," he nodded politely. "Before we get into a little bit more detail, I want to recap what I told Bee before she called you here to assist.

"Harold and I have been a part of an underground organization that has lasted for thousands of years to keep the demon lieutenants caged up and in stasis indefinitely. Recently, a little bit before my time, there was a demon in the castle. That Void was summoned to. Had its protections damaged.

"Harold, over the last decade or so, had been in charge of making sure that the protections were refreshed regularly after events. I think we all know too well that protocol has failed, and the demon lieutenant got loose. Luckily, Lord Void dealt with it in time. However, we are aware of several more of the locations that the Demon lieutenants rest. At least eight more.

"We have them under near constant monitoring. And we have ideas of where the remaining three are. Now, we have heard that Lord Void took care of another one, leaving us with a total of 11 lieutenants left and at least one known free.

The information network we use has been a bit disrupted of late with everything going on. I'm getting mixed signals and incomplete information, but there's a possibility of even more being free. Especially seeing that somehow we missed at least one. The one that Void destroyed during the night of the invasion was not on our list of concerns."

Bee broke in, "There was also another one that we were aware of, the one of flame. I'm not familiar with the description enough in the legends to match it to a name. Still, Void fought with it alongside Daedalus's younger brother up in the north."

Susan nodded, and the Warden and Harold exchanged looks as the new information was revealed. "The one of flame," Harold said pensively. "I would have said that was Nazareth'gak based on the description, but otherwise I don't think that was one of the ones we had monitored."

The Warden shook his head. "No, based on legend, I would say that would be Alomar, the living flame."

"I'd never heard that title," Bee frowned.

"That's not surprising. It was one of the nastier demon lieutenants. It didn't have the intelligence of some of the others, so it was less known by its deeds and more as a force of nature. Its presence is concerning but not as concerning as the one impersonating the king, Maraj'ain. She is known to be a schemer, and if any of them would have the guile to free the others, it would be her."

Susan listened carefully and digested all this information. "Okay, I think I have a handle on what's going on," she said. "You need access to my information network. Preferably, we can connect it to yours directly and allow them to interface so that I can get you the reports you need."

Both Harold and Bee nodded as the Warden responded. "Yes. In fact, with the Lieutenants becoming loose, I imagine that my organization will change drastically, and I think now is the time to put every card on the table." The old man's demeanor turned serious. "If we survive this, then the organization may no longer need to exist. Hopefully, if Void agrees to help, then we can destroy the lieutenants one at a time. So I'm all for this."

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Susan exchanged glances with Bee, and Bee nodded. The spymaster inclined her head. "Very well. My resources are at your disposal. We should talk more soon."

The meeting ended after that, and Susan and the Warden went to hash out details while Harold took Bee out of the city to show her evidence of the Lieutenant's trail. As they left the front gates, Bee saw a familiar black disk zip into the corner of her vision. Her master floated before them, hovering with a happy beep. She saw Harold visibly stiffen at the god's sudden appearance.

---

I received Beatrice's message. They had been able to track the Lieutenant out of the city themselves. I was honestly impressed. Whoever did this must have had quite the skill in tracking. Maybe I could learn a thing or two from them.

When I found Beatrice, she was walking out of the city with a man that I had seen before, one of the first men I had ever seen in this world. I was surprised to find him here. I don't think I ever got his name, but Scan informed me that it was Harold. I remembered that he was very noisy the last time I saw him.

Looking back at some of those memories, I saw them in a slightly different light now. It must've been quite a shock for me to turn up so suddenly. Maybe I needed to apologize for startling him. I hadn't been trying to be rude, but maybe I didn't make the best first impression. With how skittish the man seemed, he might have taken my approach the same way my old family's dog or cat did. They always assumed I was about to pounce and eat their paws as I cleaned.

When I approached the pair, the man jumped to an impressive height and began to sweat when he saw me. It seemed like he was still afraid of me. What a shame. To give him some space, I simply floated along on the other side of Beatrice.

I projected a message for the man so that it was private between the two of us. It was a video of him and all his mages running away from the grand hall back in the castle when I had first met them. He watched with large eyes, unable to tear his gaze from the image. Afterward, I flashed up some text.

"Sorry about that."

Despite my earnest attempt, the apology didn't seem to help much. Harold flinched in fear, his eyes going a bit too wide. Oh well. At least I felt better.

A few minutes walk away from the castle. We stopped at a stand of trees. Harold pulled out a few bags of various ingredients that had certain tints of energy flowing in them and combined them in a bowl before sprinkling them in the air. The dust hung in the air before moving slightly and taking the rough shape of a long-legged, bipedal creature.

Slowly, it stepped forward for two steps, taking about 1.9543 seconds before collapsing to the earth.

"This creature was the Lieutenant. Correct?" Harold, his hands still shaking a little, and Bee nodded.

"I believe so."

Meanwhile, I was just trying to figure out what he'd done. I wasn't exactly sure how the dust was working. It was some mechanism that I didn't understand at all. My sensors. It didn't pick up anything from that whole display outside of the usual, certainly nothing that explained its strange behavior. Regardless, I zipped forward, startling the two of them as I went in the direction that the Lieutenant had been walking. It took several hundred yards before I finally picked up Some sort of trace that I could detect with my sensors.

Huh. Somehow, this dust was even more powerful than my advanced sensors. If that was the case, then I really needed to work on them more. If bits of what looked to be ground beetle and other unidentifiable bits of dirt could see things that I could notThat was simply inexcusable. Who would have thought that dust, my mortal enemy would have secretly been plotting such an advancement right under my nose.

I zipped back and called them over. The pair followed me at a much slower pace than I would have preferred. However, when they got to the spot, Harold reproduced the ritual and showed the Lieutenant heading in a new direction.

Huh? It appears that we could track it. This was great. There would be one less demon lieutenant running around making a mess.

"How can we tell how old these tracks are?" Bee asked Harold. "I want to know how far away it's gotten."

But he shook his head. "I don't think so. Not from such old tracks."

She nodded. I supposed it was too much to hope that we'd find out how fast it was going. "We have several days to catch up. Will we be able to catch up with this? Right?"

"If it stops somewhere. Maybe." Harold shrugged. "I mean, we can't really do much else, can we?"

"No, I suppose we can't," Bee said.

I wasn't paying attention to their conversation anymore because I had detected something on the horizon.