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Leonce ran a finger along the crystalline writing, feeling it crack under his pressure. He wasn't attuned enough with Pasiap to tell if the material itself was something unusual, but it certainly didn't belong on the wooden walls of this slave wholesaler's barracks building.
He shook his head, turning to Serjeant Cuivringo, the most together of the men who'd been on-site when it all happened. They'd linked up fairly quickly, Leonce taking the rest of the Grand Order north the moment they saw the flickering bonfire of anima light towering over Cat Lake and meeting Cuivringo's men fleeing south from their mission there.
"And you say it was a Forsaken?"
The man looked a little unsure. "I think so? It was the sunburst on the forehead, but it was green, and I thought it was supposed to be gold?" He shrugged. "I don't really know whether or not that matters."
"I suppose it's close enough to call it a safe assumption. We had a green Forsaken two years ago, tearing up north from Krellen Ford. No idea if it's the same one." Leonce hoped it was, better than having two Anathema in the region.
Cuivringo remained silent - he was a subordinate, not a peer, and would only speak to a Prince if asked to.
"What did its host look like?"
"Female, around eighteen. Short, stacked, curvy. White skin, white hair down to the knees. Pretty, features look like she's a half, both Pretannic and Lyric descent."
Leonce nodded. "Thank you, Serjeant." Hm. Not the same host as the one two years ago - that one had been big, broad, and male. Perhaps the Anathema had moved to a new host since then, or perhaps there were now two Forsaken in Pretannia.
Leonce looked out over the wreckage of the wholesaler, shaking his head. Dragons, it'd done so much damage so quickly. Buildings torn open, bodies strewn across the grass, ashes and blood-red crystal everywhere. His men were taking care of as many of the bodies as they could while he investigated, but if that thing went for a city they could be seeing reruns of the Bull's war two years ago.
That was not acceptable.
"Serjeant," he turned to Cuivringo. "Split your fletches. The wounded may make their way to the nearest town. Send an escort as appropriate. You and whoever else you choose to bring are messengers." Leonce moved up to Ichigo, his clawrider, and patted the riding bird's toothy snout as he looked in his saddlebags, pulling out a signet ring and tossing it into the Serjeant's shocked hands. "You may have my seal - you have my full authority in this matter, and may commission whatever aid, rest, or resources you require, barge through any impediment, as if you were me. Take my message, as well as your own account, to the Queen, as fast as you can, no matter what."
Cuivringo pressed the fist holding the ring to his heart. "Yes, Your Highness!" The seal was quite literally Leonce's legal identity. It was not something often handed out to commoners, and the serjeant knew well the significance of being entrusted with it.
Leonce needed to write a letter to send with the man. Aunt Sahula would probably appreciate knowing exactly why she'd be having to soothe the Lochmor over him bringing his troops onto their lands. Also he might end up needing a much larger army, his Grand Order of the Bronze Wire was one of the smaller orders at thirty fletches and he wasn't sure exactly how well it was going to stack up against an Anathema. He should have numeric and equipment superiourity, but he only really had legends and the wreckage of the last war to go by to determine exactly how puissant an Anathema was.
He had to at least try and pin it down, though. He was a Prince, it fell upon him and his family to deal with the dangers - both temporal and spiritual - that an Anathema posed to everyone in Pretannia. If they lost contact with it or it got too deep into lands he couldn't tread on so freely, there was no telling what kind of havoc it could wreak.
And it would be even worse if the Realm decided to handle the matter again.
Leonce pulled the necessary implements from his saddlebags and wrote up the letter in quick, businesslike characters, whispering the words to himself as he did so - he wasn't the kind of gifted druid who could read and write without reference to the actual sound of the words. "Respected Aunt. Anathema attack in Lochmor. Believe it to be Forsaken. Cat Lake wholesaler completely destroyed. Grand Order of the Bronze Wire in pursuit to the northeast. Will seek to pin down or sanitize the Forsaken. This is a Wyld Hunt. Request reinforcement. Please apologize to the King of Lochmor. Loyally, Prince Leonce."
There weren't exactly practiced contingencies for handling Anathema among the Rokan-jin. The closest anyone alive had come to a Wyld Hunt was when the Bull of the North came to them with its mad ambition. There remained scattered half-memories from the Shogunate of how a Wyld Hunt was to be gone about, practiced on rare occassion throughout the Second Age, but no one had any experience in executing them. There was no established protocol for a Rokan-jin prince to engage in a Wyld Hunt, but this was important enough Aunt Sahula would probably understand why he was breaking so many of the established protocols. They had been made without consideration of Anathema - they hadn't had to consider Anathema for centuries.
He folded the letter up, sealed it with wax, and handed it to Serjeant Cuivringo. "Make certain this letter reaches the Queen. Answer any questions she may have."
Cuivringo took the letter and bowed.
Wait. "Ah! Before you leave." Leonce stepped back to the crystallized wall, and tapped a finger against the wood. A block of the wooden wall obediently pushed free of the rest, falling into his hands, and he handed the crystal-coated wood to Cuivringo. "Take this as well. Try to get it to Princess Akaene." His half-sister was one of the comparatively few Rokan-jin children of Pasiap (most of them owed more to Sextes Jylis), and might be able to make a bit more out of the anathematic crystal. Hopefully the matter was moot, but better to plan more than needed.
Cuivringo took it, bowing again, and waited.
Leonce chuckled. "No, that actually is it this time. Go, and good riding."
"Yes, Your Highness." The Serjeant bowed, and returned to his fletches.
"So what's the plan?" Dame Hibiki asked from behind him, making him jolt halfway out of his armour.
He turned to face her. "How do you do that?" She was wearing the same heavy cataphract's armour he was, she had no right to be that quiet in it.
"With care, Your Highness. So, the plan?" Her hair was up in a bun, wire-inlaid bronze mask twisted to the side of her head, helmet still on. Eager for action, she was, he'd taken his mask and helmet completely off to let his skin breathe.
He shook his head, looking out over the wreckage again. "We pursue the Anathema. Contain it, kill it if the opportunity arises." He nodded towards the northeast. "It moved northeast on our wagon. With the majority of the scattered survivors - most likely its thralls by now."
"What about the others? Reminder, Your Highness, the Kingdom's interest in the Cat Lake wholesaler is to provide us with workers, we need people to work the mines and we don't have enough to spare from the fields."
Leonce shook his head once more. "No, we don't have the men to spare to pursue. We can always buy more slaves, an Anathema is a genuine crisis."
"Got it, I'll get everyone mounted. We'd better be out of here quickly, I would not bet against the King of Lochmor having seen that anima flare, and his ambaxtoi are going to have some pretty pointed questions for us if they catch us squatting on the wreckage."
Leonce chuckled, waving a hand. "Half the time they're going to be complimenting us for what the Anathema did, no one but Pretannic kings get to own slaves, so no one but kings likes the slave trade. I'll be along."
She bowed, turned the mask back to cover her face in the fearsome scowling image painted on it, and strode off, barking orders at the Bronze Wire's constituent fletches.
Leonce took a deep breath, and made a quick prayer to the Dragons that they would look kindly on this endeavour.
And then he rose, pulling on his dragon-mask and putting the helmet on over it. Blossoms trailed in his wake as he let himself breathe deeper of the essence of Creation, mounting Ichigo, and preparing to move out.
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