The Storm King

Chapter 712: Investigating Disappearances III

“I think we have something,” one of the investigators informed Leon about an hour after he and his retinue arrived at the central archives.

“What is it?” Leon asked without hesitation, his heartrate already rising in anticipation of finally finding his missing retainers.

The investigator gestured toward a nearby map of Occulara.

“Here, here, and here,” he said, marking three different locations along the Scamander River. “And here, here, and here,” he continued, marking there more locations on the southern edge of the city, deeper in the suburbs and close to the fields south of the great urban sprawl along the Scamander.

“Why these?” Gaius asked from behind Leon.

“We managed to trace several possible IDs that Kassia might’ve used to purchase property,” the investigator replied. “These are all properties registered to the owners of these IDs. The three in the north along the river are within the warehouse district and provide ready access to escape via the river. Of the three remaining, two are far enough south that escape could be easy by fleeing into the fields. The last one is right alongside a private park, also effecting easy escape.”

“Any other ways to narrow this down?” Gaius asked.

“None that we can do from here,” the investigator replied as he turned his attention back to Leon. “With your permission, Lord Hand, we can send out teams to scout these areas and see if they’re currently inhabited.”

“Just ‘Leon’,” Leon corrected. “And don’t head out just yet, all of these locations I can see from here…”

He’d already projected his magic senses once the investigator had started pointing out the locations, though it took him several long minutes to pinpoint the exact buildings that had been identified. The three in the south were easier given the lesser density of buildings, so those he found first despite being further away.

Unfortunately, in the Ilian Empire, nearly every building had wards against magic senses, and these buildings were no exception, so Leon was unable to directly peer inside. However, he was able to see the area around the buildings and noted that all three seemed to be inhabited if the relatively well-kept lawns and gardens were anything to go by. That, of course, didn’t rule out the possibility that Kassia was staying within, but nothing immediately called out to him that she was at of them, either.

Turning his attention to the three riverside buildings, he immediately found them a little more promising. Firstly, they were in a district of the city that wasn’t residential, so when night fell, it would be devoid of people. Furthermore, two of the buildings were warehouses that didn’t appear to be in active use as there weren’t any people around them moving cargo, and the river dock each possessed was empty. The last one was quite busy, however, and had a large river barge docked that was loading cargo.

“If I have to guess,” Leon said, pointing to the two empty-seeming warehouses, “I’d focus on these two. However, the other warehouse is currently loading a barge, and I want that thing stopped from leaving immediately, just in case my people were surreptitiously loaded aboard. Do we have the manpower to secure and search all three at once?”

“It’ll stretch us a bit thin, but we can do that,” the investigator replied.

“Send most of your manpower to the occupied warehouse. I’ll split my retinue between the other two,” Leon ordered. “Send word to other local security teams to lock down the surrounding streets and send me reinforcements.”

“What about the three in the south?” Gaius asked.

“If we don’t find any of the people we’re looking for at these locations,” Leon replied, “then we’ll deal with those buildings. As it is, I think the warehouses are more promising, so let’s concentrate on those first.”

“Understood,” Gaius and the investigator said in unison.

Both then split off to relay Leon’s orders to everyone else, and within a quarter hour, everyone was trooping out of the central archives.

—

Leon glared at the warehouse just down the street. He stood hidden in an alleyway with Alix, Gaius, Anzu, waiting for the rest of the local security personnel to finish locking the surroundings down. Half a dozen teams of Heaven’s Eye security had been called in to each of the two warehouses his retinue were going to raid, all led by either a fifth or sixth-tier mage.

The rest of his retinue, led by Valeria, were preparing to storm the other deserted warehouse. Maia was with them since Leon didn’t want both eighth-tier mages on their side to be storming the same warehouse, just in case—and besides, if anything went horribly wrong, he knew that he always had Xaphan to fall back on. His demonic partner was in his soul realm, calmly watching everything and prepared to jump out if there were any signs of vampires loyal to Amon in the area.

As he waited, he kept his attention squarely focused on the warehouse, trying to see if anything at all that could be seen. The only windows he could see were small and high up, so they were just about useless. There were two doors—a large one in front for moving goods, and a smaller one on the side of the building for people—aside from the main doors on the river, all of which were closed. The warehouse had an attached concrete yard that doubled its footprint, which was surrounded by a fifteen-foot-high concrete wall. The wall wasn’t enchanted, only the building was, and even then, aside from the wards against magic senses, there wasn’t much within the warehouse that Leon felt could stand up against him. If he wanted, he could channel his lightning magic and get through the warehouse walls like they were made of wet paper.

As he watched the warehouse, he watched Valeria leading the rest of his retinue to get set up around a nearly identical warehouse about half a mile away. Like his group, they were waiting nearby as a number of security teams rushed about blocking adjacent streets.

As he waited, a sixth-tier security officer ran into the alley from the far side.

“We’re set up!” he declared as soon as he reached Leon.

Leon nodded in response and turned to his retainers. “You three ready?”

“Ready,” Gaius declared.

“Same here,” Alix responded.

Anzu chirped and flexed his wings; he was ready.

“Good,” Leon said. “Then we’re going in.” To the security officers, he said, “If anything comes out of there, take them into custody, but don’t hesitate to use force if necessary.”

“We’ll, uh, do that, then,” one of the officers replied a little awkwardly.

Without further ado, Leon burst out of the alley and ran for the warehouse, his armor summoned and his body inundated with lightning. In less than a second, he hit the warehouse’s bigger doors, breaking them right off their rusty hinges. They hit the ground with a tremendous crash, revealing to his eyes exactly what was behind them.

And Leon saw an empty warehouse. No missing retainers, no hordes of vampires just waiting to use their demonic magics upon him and his, not even a stray eddy of demonic power in the air. No goods, not even empty shelves, either.

But Leon wasn’t deterred. “Fan out!” he ordered as his retainers followed him in. Gaius went left and Alix right while Anzu backed Leon up directly. There were a few small offices just off the main floor, and Gaius burst in, his sword drawn and armor gleaming.

A moment later, he poked his head back out and shouted, “Nothing but dust!”

“No one’s been here in a long time!” Alix responded as she kicked at the dust that caked the floor.

Leon frowned behind his helmet, his heart sinking. “Then we’re at the wrong place…” he muttered.

As if on cue, he heard a distant explosion, and he turned his attention back to the rest of his retainers at the other seemingly-abandoned warehouse. He saw that they’d breached the place at almost the same time, but instead of finding nothing, the door they’d tried to breach had instead exploded in their faces. Anshu and Anna had been knocked to the ground while the rest of his people were suddenly under a great deal of fire—literal fire that poured from the warehouse as if one of Jormun’s Flame Lances were within.

“We need to move!” Leon shouted, directing his people back outside. “The others hit the right place!”

Without a word, Alix, Gaius, and Anzu sprinted after Leon.

“Fly!” Leon ordered, and in a moment, both of his human retainers donned their flight gear and took off, Anzu just in front of them. Leon only took a moment to channel his darkness magic and order his security teams to move toward the other warehouse, and then he was rising into the air right after his retainers.

As he rose into the air, he blazed with lightning and accelerated hard. He could see his retainers in the distance answering the fire they received with their own magic, and one of Maia’s water dragons even charged right into the door. Not a single spark of flame got past it into the warehouse yard.

Valeria and Helen then rushed forward and grabbed Anshu and Anna, helping them back to their feet. Leon was happy to see that his people were fine, if a little dazed.

Maia’s water dragon continued to rampage within the warehouse, while Leon and his group bolted across the sky, the laws against flight utterly ignored.

Half a mile, at their power, was quickly crossed. Leon hit the yard like a lightning bolt, the concrete beneath his feet shattering and burning black from a few stray arcs of lightning that erupted from his legs once his feet contacted the concrete. Anzu, Alix, and Gaius made much more graceful landings a couple seconds later.

Now that he was closer, Leon could feel strong currents of demonic magic from within the warehouse, indicating at least a handful of vampires.

[Can you feel it, demon?] Leon asked Xaphan.

[Feels like Amon, along with at least one other demon of a different element,] Xaphan responded.

“Heads up!” Leon shouted, Valeria and her group falling in without question now that he was here. He informed them of what he and Xaphan could sense, and then started moving on the obliterated warehouse door.

Leon led the way, Maia just behind him. Her water dragon had ripped the place apart, but he treated the situation as if there were still many hostiles active within.

However, as his retinue spilled into the wrecked warehouse, broken boxes and various wares spilling out onto the ground, no magic was fired at them.

[In the back,] Maia whispered to the retinue, pointing to the offices on the far side of the warehouse. [I’ve found locked three vampires within.]

“Anshu, Anna, Helen, Gaius, Alix!” Leon shouted. “Secure the rest of the warehouse!”

Those five spread out among the stored wares as Leon, Valeria, Maia, and Anzu moved on to the offices, which Maia’s water dragon had completely surrounded.

“Let us in,” Leon said to Maia, and the water dragon dutifully contorted itself until the office door was accessible. However, no sooner did the water dragon do so than a shadow came peeling out and darted across the floor.

It moved with extreme speed, but to Leon’s eyes, it may as well have been at the speed of a relaxed stroll. With a flash of lightning and boom of thunder that shook the warehouse down to its foundations, he intercepted the shadow and punched into the shadow. He felt the dark barrier resist, but lightning erupted from him and shattered it effortlessly. His hand continued on until he felt it come into contact with something: a human, as far as he could tell.

His fingers enclosed around this person’s arm, and with a wrathful yank, he ripped the mage right out of their shadow, revealing them to be a young woman matching Kassia’s description, her body radiating demonic power, inky black darkness rising from her form like smoke. She wore one of the most terrified expressions that Leon had ever seen on a person. But fury poured from Leon, and before the woman could even scream, he slammed her back down into the concrete floor as her shadow dispersed, cracks spiderwebbing from her point of impact.

She groaned, raised her hand, and tried to get up, but Leon just stomped her arm back down to the concrete, snapping bones in her forearm. He followed that up with gauntleted strike right across the woman’s chin, and she fell back to the ground, unconscious.

At the same time, a blast of fire erupted from the office door, but Valeria simply raised an icy shield, and as soon as the fire dissipated, the shield shattered into countless razor sharp shards of ice that were flung with terrific force back into the office, hitting the wall only a few feet behind the doorway. No more fire followed.

Silence descended upon the warehouse for a moment, but Leon then charged into the office, expecting more hostile magic.

Instead, he was greeted with the sight of a ruined office room, Valeria’s ice having torn everything around the door to pieces, including a rather pale woman dead on the ground just to the right of the door where she’d been trying to get some cover, Valeria’s ice having cut her nearly to bloody ribbons.

Further into the offices to the right of the door, however, Leon finally saw who he was looking for: Marcus and Alcander, both chained to the floor, covered in blood, bruises, and dirt, and neither conscious.

Leon rushed over and called upon the power of his tau pearl, feeling its light rush through his armor and to his fallen retainers as they laid on the ground.

“Get these chains off!” Leon shouted, and Maia immediately severed those covering Alcander with a water blade. Anzu tore into the other, his sixth-tier claws making quick work of the cheap, only lightly-enchanted iron.

As the tau pearl healed up his people, Leon realized that while their more superficial injuries were healing quickly, his retainers had been rather systematically tortured, and there was a lot to fix. Their bones were broken in more than a hundred places, nearly all of their organs were bruised and battered, and they both showed signs of hasty healing that Leon guessed was just designed to keep them alive for a little while longer.

Even with the tau pearl, Leon didn’t think they were going to wake up any time soon.

“Building secure!” Gaius shouted from outside the offices, and Leon sighed as his anger left him.

“Let’s get them out of here,” he said.

—

Several hours after the raid on the warehouse, Leon and his retinue found themselves in a Heaven’s Eye hospital with Marcus and Alcander being seen to by the guild’s best healers. Leon, Valeria, and Maia were in a small office meeting with the leaders of his investigators and security teams, but he’d stationed the rest of his retinue in Marcus and Alcander’s room, just in case any of the vampires returned.

And Leon knew that there were others still out there, for none of the vampires they’d dealt with in the warehouse were even remotely powerful enough to take on his retainers in a straight fight—or, as far as he was concerned, keep them imprisoned. They had to have some kind of support from other, more highly-placed demon worshippers.

“… and it seems like while they’re still unconscious, they’re not in any serious physical danger anymore,” a healer explained to Leon. “Whatever healing powers you used on them were thorough.”

Leon nodded in acknowledgement. “How much longer until they wake up?”

“We can’t say for certain,” the healer replied. “However, I’d estimate they could wake up anytime in the next couple of days. It seems like they fell unconscious from physical trauma, and it’ll take some hours before their bodies realize that they’re no longer injured and can stop trying to save themselves.”

“Thank you.”

The healer had nothing else to relay, so he quickly hurried out of the room.

“Now,” Leon said as he turned his attention to his investigators and team leaders, his voice tinged with still-simmering wrath, “what did we find in there?”

“The woman you took alive,” one of the team leaders immediately said, “has been confirmed to be Kassia. She’s in pretty bad condition, but as far as I know, she’ll make a full recovery.”

“If we let her…” Valeria whispered.

“If we let her, yes,” the team leader agreed. “Given her crimes, the best she can hope for is a swift execution. She would’ve already been put to death if Lord Hand didn’t want to take her in alive.”

“Just ‘Leon’,” Leon responded, his tone a little tired at having repeated it so often in the past couple of days before growing much more passionate as he launched into what he was much more concerned about. “She knows more than we do. If we’re to root out other vampires, then we need what’s in her head. And she’ll tell us, even if we have to rip it out of her.”

One of the investigators them spoke up, “We know more now than we did a few hours ago, though. There were a few things that we found while searching that warehouse.”

“Such as?” Leon asked.

“Most of the goods stored in that warehouse weren’t marked,” the investigator replied. “A few, however, were, indicating that they were imported from abroad. We’re running down who marked them and who paid their import duties. That’ll give us some leads as to who might be a part of their network.”

When she paused, another investigator added, “We’re also running IDs on the remains of the others in that warehouse. They don’t seem to be particularly important, otherwise they wouldn’t have been there keeping watch over just a warehouse or died as quickly as they did, but they’ll give us more leads, as well.”

Leon nodded. “Marcus and Alcander, when they wake up, will probably give us some information, too. But…”

He silently trailed off as he thought about what he considered the problem. Xaphan, in the wake of the raid, confirmed that some demonic power belonging to Amon was present in the warehouse. Given that Kassia was contracted with a shadow demon, that not only meant that they were now looking for followers of at least two different demons, but it also meant that Leon already had some information on their probable network.

“Where did those imported goods come from?” he asked. “Did they come from the northwestern Kingdoms?”

“They did,” the first investigator replied.

Leon nodded again. “Keep your eyes open for anything, but focus on the Cortuban Alliance. This isn’t my first run-in with vampires, but my most recent encounters were during and immediately after a visit to the Cortuban Alliance.”

“Understood,” the first investigator responded.

“Is there anything else?” Leon asked the assembled group. When no one spoke up, he said, “Then let’s get to it. Run down these leads and keep me informed.”

The group then disbanded, with Leon resigned to wait. He had his people back, at least, so his wrath was starting to calm down, but now came the worst part: waiting for others to do their jobs.

But when, or if, they found anything else, he was going to rain all the wrath of the heavens down upon these vampires.