Duskbound-Chapter 39Book 2,

“I take a three-hour nap, and you guys have a breakthrough in the mystery without me,” Velik said, annoyance creeping into his tone. “Off my kill, no less.”

The five of them—minus Aria—were gathered at the campsite they’d been using last night. She’d promised to catch up today, though she hadn’t specified how, and Jensen had arrived ten minutes ago. Velik had already viewed what was left of Gorlath’s body before Torwin had buried him in a shallow grave half a mile east of the road. His plans to return the body had been set aside for a very simple reason.

If whatever had infected Gorlath and, presumably, taken control of him was in other high-ranking guild members, then giving them the body back would make them want to know where the agent of corruption was. When it didn’t report back in with a new host, they’d know something was up. It was best for everyone involved if the death went unnoticed for a while.

How long that would last for, none of them knew. If Gorlath had some predetermined check in time, they weren’t going to accomplish much, but it might give them a week or even a month to address the issue. That was the question, though—what they were going to do about it.

“If it’s anybody’s kill, it’s mine,” Sildra said. Her voice was still a bit hoarse, but she otherwise seemed to be fully recovered from her ordeal.

“You weren’t even there for my kill,” Velik countered. “Without that, you guys wouldn’t have discovered the corruption.”

“Does it matter who gets the glory?” Torwin asked tiredly. “This could bring down the whole guild.”

“Let it,” Velik said.

“I understand they haven’t treated you well. Maybe this is why. They consider you their enemy, and rightly so. You destroyed that dungeon and killed all those seeds of corruption growing here. Maybe this thing, an agent of corruption, is what they turn into eventually. Picture what happened to the frontier, except they don’t kill their hosts. This one kept Gorlath alive and even expanded his capabilities. How dangerous are they? How many people have they taken over?”

“Alright, I get it,” Velik said. “We have to go save the guild from its corrupted leadership.”

“And doom my financial independence in the process,” Jensen muttered.

“Delay, not doom,” Torwin said. “Those treasures aren’t going anywhere, and even if this particular one does, we’ll find a new one. It might not even need to be in Slokara if this lead pans out.”

Velik shook his head. “I have a feeling this is just a part of something bigger, just like Chalin was. We’re looking at lopping off a branch, not cutting down the tree.”

“Maybe, but it’s got to be an important one,” Torwin said. “Taking control of the organization that hunts monsters would be a great way to spread while remaining undetected. Anytime anyone notices something, they’d bring that information right to the guild. It’s the perfect camouflage for a group of parasitic, mind-controlling monsters.”

Morgus, why did you give me this quest? Velik silently asked. If he’s right, this is too big. I thought I’d be finding some mad wizard or a powerful monster and killing them. I can’t fight an entire institution with thousands of people just as strong as me. I don’t even know where to start.

“We need to know if Sildra’s skill can detect this variant of the corrupted seed bearers while their hosts are still alive before we do anything else,” Jensen said. “Without some way to find them, it won’t matter what we suspect. We can’t prove it.”

They all looked to Sildra, who just shrugged back. “You wanted me to stay away from the guild hall so they wouldn’t get suspicious about what you were doing. I didn’t sense any monsters by the inn I stayed at.”

“You still need them to be outside at night to find them?” Torwin asked.

“Aboveground, at least,” she said. “The skill got better when it ranked up, then slightly worse when it merged with [Lunar Flare]. If someone is in a house, but the door is open, or the shutters, I think I could tell. If they were in the cellar, well, I don’t know. It hasn’t come up much. I can find monsters that are just inside caves, but not if they’re deep enough in.”

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“Better than nothing. I’m assuming your position in or out of the cave isn’t relevant.”

“Correct,” Sildra said.

“So to even find out if you can spot one of these monsters inside a living body, we need to get the guild’s administrative force out on the street at night,” Torwin mused. “That’s… well, for some of the workaholics, we can just stake out the guild hall and check them out when they leave. Most of them won’t stay that late, though. We’re going to have to find out where they live and investigate them one at a time.”

“What happens if we don’t find anything?” Jensen asked. “I recall some of those people being petty enough to not appreciate you digging into their lives.”

“Then he’ll be out on his ass, just like I was back when we were young,” Giller said.

Velik wasn’t sure what the story was there, but he knew it had something to do with why Giller and Aria didn’t get along. Whatever that reason was had been buried under a mountain of petty grudges they liked to drag up in a way that only family could. The sheer breadth of the topics both sides could draw from was staggering, but they’d thankfully agreed to limit their sniping to low-level hostility instead of active fighting after the first day.

“Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that,” Torwin said dryly. Then he sighed and added, “But if I’m right, this could cause the whole guild to collapse. What are the odds that the corruption would be limited to Cravel?”

“One step at a time,” Jensen said. “If you’re right, we need to figure out everyone who’s hosting a parasitic monster and whether we can kill them without harming the people. If not, we’re going to be gutting the guild leadership and we’ll need to cover our asses so we don’t end up on the executioner’s block.”

“So what’s the first step?” Velik asked. He was impressed with how well Jensen was handling the whole thing, especially since the urgent need to deal with this problem had completely derailed his own expedition. Getting funding to try again might be impossible, but if that was the case, Velik would help himself once they cleared out the corruption. He wasn’t rich by the standards of noble families, but they could start small and expand as time went on.

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“To do something about Aria,” Jensen told the group. “She’s a gold-ranked monster hunter, same as Torwin. We have to tell her something, but I’m not sure if it should be the truth.”

“Why wouldn’t it be?” Sildra asked.

“Because if you can’t detect these monsters like you did with the weaker version, then she could be compromised.”

That was a horrifying thought. Velik didn’t know what skills the woman had, but she was capable of spying from a distance and teleporting quite a ways. For all he knew, Aria could be watching them from the comfort of her bed right now. If she was on their side, her skills could be invaluable at figuring out who to trust. If not, it might already be too late.

“Trust her,” Velik said. “She’s going to know something is up anyway.”

“And she’s not stupid,” Torwin said. “If we try to hide things from her, she’ll find them out anyway. All we can do is hope she’s not compromised. For that matter, we can only hope that no one here is, either.”

It was left unsaid that Torwin considered himself, Sildra, and Giller safe. As the trio that had killed the monster, that was a powerful indicator that they weren’t on its side. Presumably, Velik was included in that group as well. He’d been Gorlath’s target and it was obvious that the corrupted group considered him an enemy.

That just left Jensen and Aria from their team. Jensen had gotten the mercenaries turned over and convinced the marshals that they didn’t need to capture Velik, so that was a mark in his favor. It wasn’t definitive, but it was more than Aria had done, which was precisely nothing. She hadn’t been involved in any way beyond being there.

Then again, Velik had spent days alone with her. If she was going to try something, she’d had plenty of opportunity, especially when he’d been fighting that swamp hydra. “I think she’s probably safe. She already had a good chance to take me out when I did the gold trial. Unless she was caught and infected in the last few weeks, I think she’s still human.”

“I’ll get her caught up,” Torwin said. “I know her best out of everyone here who doesn’t hate her.”

“I don’t hate her,” Giller said.

“You don’t like her, either.”

“Well, that’s hardly my fault. She’s not a very likeable person.”

Velik silently agreed, but he didn’t think it would help to voice that opinion. Instead, he steered the conversation back to their upcoming plans. “Can we get back into Cravel without anyone finding out? That would be ideal for spying on the guild.”

“If we’re willing to spend some money, sure,” Giller said. “I’ll have to report back to my boss, though. He needs to know the vault expedition is on hold.”

“Wait a day,” Torwin said. “We can have Sildra vet him first. If he’s clean and feeling cooperative, maybe he’ll let us use one of the Blendstin properties as a base of operations. That would make things easier.”

They kept making plans for another hour, until a patch of darkness spread across the empty air and Aria stepped through. “I thought you’d all be farther down the road by now,” she said with a yawn.

“Something came up,” Torwin said, stepping up. “We need to talk.”