Novel Full Chapter 1521 Mass Exodus
Chapter 1521 Mass Exodus
Dorian had jumped down from the platform the moment Quinlan mentioned valuables and was striding through the crowd toward the residential district with his brother Havel scrambling to keep up.
“The good dishes,” Dorian was saying as he walked. “Mother’s ring. Father’s tools. The strongbox under the kitchen floorboard.”
“I know where the strongbox is!” Havel protested.
“You didn’t know where it was when you were alive. I hid it after you spent our savings on that horse.”
“That horse was a sound investment!”
“It died three weeks later, Havel.”
“… pure bad luck, I’m telling you.”
“Bad luck? No, it had an ‘eating moldy grain because you couldn’t afford a stable’ condition. Left! We’re turning left. The shortcut through the tanner’s alley.”
Maren’s mother had taken her daughter by the hand and was pulling her toward the eastern quarter with the brisk efficiency of a woman who had packed for trips a hundred times and intended to pack for one more. “Your father’s letters are in the chest by the window. Don’t forget the quilt your grandmother made. And for the love of the Goddess, wear layers.”
“Mama, I know how to dress myself.”
“You once left the house in sandals during a snowstorm. I will never trust your judgment on clothing.”
The old officer’s son was riding on his father’s shoulders as the officer marched toward their home, the boy’s legs dangling against blue-skinned collarbones, chattering about which toys were essential and which could be sacrificed. The officer listened with the gravity of a man receiving a military briefing.
“The wooden knights are essential, Papa.”
“Noted.”
“And the catapult Uncle Tomas made.”
“Noted.”
“And Mr. Whiskers.”
“The cat is not negotiable. Mr. Whiskers comes.”
Across the square, the exodus was organizing itself with a speed that surprised even Quinlan. The soul soldiers moved through the streets alongside their living relatives, their blue-skinned presence serving as both comfort and motivation. As the Elite Souls needed to be at a certain strength to be considered Elite and not Lesser, and thus be upgradeable, many of them were old.
Most of his soul soldiers gained today were more akin to ancestors than fathers and mothers, separated by many generations from the living. This meant that, yes, not all of the dead were turned into Elite Souls today. Some among the defenders were below the threshold, which seemed to be around level 50, and thus remained dead. Or, rather, were used in the [Soul Fusion] as upgrade materials. Quinlan had to empty out all his reserves to turn the newly gained Elite Souls to rank 5, at which point they unlocked the ability to speak and converse as humanly as they did while alive.
However, to limit the permanent deaths of lower-leveled defenders, both his soul soldiers and allies were instructed to do their best to keep these people alive, only knock them out.
That’s why many of them were currently unconscious or recovering from injuries in the cathedral.
Quinlan watched one such ancestor herd three descendants toward home while lecturing them about what to pack with the relentless authority of a woman who had managed a household for hundreds of years and saw no reason why death should change that.
Vex had taken the western district. Ayame coordinated the merchant quarter. Lucille covered the northern residential blocks, moving from family to family with a cheerfulness that was either infectious or deeply suspicious depending on your temperament.
Count Aldren stood at the center of the square, directing traffic with the sharp gestures of a man who had found, in the logistics of evacuation, something he could actually control. Officers fell in around him. The city’s administrative structure, battered but functional, creaked back to life with a new purpose.
“Families with young children through first!” Aldren’s voice boomed across the plaza. “The soldiers will carry anyone who can’t walk. If you have a wagon, load it and bring it to the square. If your neighbor is elderly or infirm, you help them. No one is left behind. This is still my family’s ancestral city, and I will be the last man to cross it!”
Velara had dispatched her healers into the crowd. White-robed men and women moved between the families, tending to injuries from the siege, distributing what supplies the cathedral had, ensuring that the wounded could make the walk.
The Arch Priestess herself stood near the gate, her staff casting warm golden light across the families approaching the threshold. She stood where her flock could see her, and the message was clear.
‘It’s safe. Walk through.’
Quinlan watched from the platform as the first families approached the gate.
A woman with two children stepped up to the threshold and hesitated, her hand tightening on her son’s shoulder. The gate was opaque from this side, a wall of pale energy that hummed at a frequency you felt in your teeth. Stepping through a tear in reality was not the same as stepping through a door, and her feet had opinions about the difference.
Her dead husband, a soul soldier in blue skin and spectral armor, walked up beside her. He squeezed her shoulder once, then stepped through without a word.
The gate swallowed him.
A second passed. Two.
Then a blue-skinned hand pushed back through the energy, followed by a face. Her husband’s face, grinning, his arms extended toward the children.
“Come on, you two. It’s nice over here.”
The boy grabbed his father’s hand first. The girl followed a heartbeat later, both of them disappearing through the pale light with the fearlessness of children who trusted their father more than they feared magic.
The woman stood alone at the threshold. She looked at the gate where her husband and children had vanished, and the tension in her shoulders loosened. A breath left her, and the faintest flush crept up her cheeks.
Her husband’s hand came back through one more time, palm up, waiting.
She took it.
Just like that, the exodus began.
Slow at first. A family here, a pair of siblings there. A young couple with a single sack of belongings between them who held hands and stepped through together with their eyes shut. An old man who crossed the threshold with his dead wife’s arm looped through his, muttering about how he’d followed her everywhere in life and apparently death was no different.
Then the pace picked up.
The flow found its rhythm as the crowd realized the gate didn’t bite, didn’t burn, and didn’t collapse. Families filed through seven abreast, guided by soul soldiers or Quinlan’s girls on both sides of the threshold. Quinlan stepped down from the platform and made his way toward Velara.
The Arch Priestess stood near the gate with her staff planted, watching the exodus with an expression that could have been pride, concern, or gas. It was hard to tell with holy women, Quinlan reasoned.
“You know,” he stopped near her, “I’ve been watching these reunions, and I can’t help but notice a pattern.”
Velara glanced at him. “What pattern?”
Her eyes instantly narrowed into fiery slits, suspicious by default.
“The wives.” He nodded toward a woman who was walking through the gate with her arm linked through her soul soldier husband’s, her cheeks pink and her eyes very deliberately not meeting anyone else’s. “Look at their faces. The blushes. The way they keep glancing at their husbands when they think no one’s looking. Or the living husbands. Don’t their eyes travel to the blue skin of their women with more than innocent curiosity?”
Velara’s brow furrowed.
“It makes me wonder,” Quinlan continued, his voice carrying the idle thoughtfulness of a man observing the weather, “how many soul virginities are going to be claimed tonight.”
Velara’s staff cracked against the stone.
“You foul, depraved, irredeemable barbarian!”
“Thank you.”
“That was not a compliment!”
Velara’s face had gone red enough to match the crimson veins on his armor. Her grip on the staff trembled with what Quinlan could only describe as holy fury, the kind that made the golden light at its tip flare twice before she wrestled it back under control.
“These people have been through the most traumatic day of their lives!” she hissed, keeping her voice low enough that the passing families couldn’t hear. “They’ve lost their city, their homes, their sense of safety! They have been conquered! And the first thing your mind leaps to is carnal degeneracy?!”
“Arch Priestess. I’m just observing and voicing my findings.”
“Well, your ‘findings’ stand as proof of your depravity!”
“Is that so?” Quinlan mused with a grin. “Their partners came back from the dead and still remember their anniversary. If anything, tonight is going to be the most romantic evening this city has seen.”
Velara’s mouth opened. Closed. Opened again.