We followed the direction of Captain Revayne about not sending every single member of our cults to attend the interrogation. Nobody at all came from the Wind and Fire Cults, and from the Sea Cult, only the young leader himself arrived. There was the annoying girl and one of her companions from the Earth Cult, and for us, we went with me and Hamsik.

“Where’d you go after we got back to the temple?” I asked my fellow cultist.

Rude bastard didn’t even bother responding. One of these days, I was going to up and disappear on him too. That’d show him.

I had to put my petty revenge planning aside because we were at the guardhouse in Ring Three soon enough. And we weren’t alone. Apart from the representatives from the other cults, we apparently had other visitors as well. Attendees whom Hamsik recognized and was recognized by in turn.

“Well, well, well,” the vampire said. Her fancy dress and careful makeup didn’t make up for the wateriness of her strangely crystalline scarlet eyes or how her blonde hair looked more like candlewax. There was a certain presence from her, an aura that made my spine tingle. “If it isn’t the wayward son of Kalnislaw.” She bared her fangs. “Or should I say, wayward bastard.”

Credit to Hamsik, he didn’t bother responding to her either. I wasn’t sure how I felt about being lumped in with a stupid vampire.

“Pay him no heed, dear,” a Rakshasa said. I recognized him with a frown. He was one of the bastards at the temple, whose carriage I had crashed. “I should have brought you to our meeting back in Ring Four. He was even more docile at that silly temple of his.”

Both he and vampire lady snickered at that.

“You really should have brought your bloodsucking girlfriend,” I said, my eyes departing the two nobles to look at their carriage parked outside the guardhouse. “It was such a wonderful sight, seeing your carriage go wild and crash into the neighbourhood. Who knew nobles made such poor drivers.”

The Rakshasa had gone mad as soon as I had started referring to his carriage, and by the time I finished, his pinched face ballooned to tomato proportions. While the vampire lady was looking between us in surprise—clearly, she hadn’t heard about their accident—Hamsik gave me a sharp glance.

Good thing too, because it felt nice ignoring the bastard in turn.

I was almost wondering if it was going to turn into an extended confrontation, what with the Rakshasa glaring daggers at me and the other cultists looking on in amusement, but the guards came in next.

“Please, come inside,” Revayne said. Her eyes peeked over the edge of her book, stern like a school headmistress. “And please maintain proper decorum.”

We followed her inside, soon arriving at a larger room with a single table and chair. A Thrall was on the chair, a man with shaggy hair and bloodied beard, terribly beat up and wounded all over, and also tightly shackled. I started to realize I had seen maybe one or two women Thralls, even during the temple invasion the other day.

It made me think about the demographics of Ring Four. I had seen a disproportionate number of men around our neighbourhood, so it made sense that they were the ones being preyed on more by whichever Scarseeker was turning them into vampire minions.

“Gold-ranked chains,” Revayne informed us. “So you needn’t worry about him breaking free.”

“Is there any point to this?” the Scarseeker lady asked, looking with undisguised disgust at the Thrall, who was also gagged to not make unnecessary noise. “This thing is a base creature. It won’t reveal anything useful, I’m quite certain. That’s just how they are.”

“I agree,” the Rakshasa said as well. What was his name? Lord Brasvay, that was it. He was looking at the commander of the guards, the muscular Ogre who had visited the temple that time and was present for the interrogation. “Would it not be better to get to the real root of this problem? These cults have allowed even a Scarthrall infestation in their locales.”

That was a heinous reversal of the problem, but before I could respond, the commander answered first.

“Please, Lord Brasvay, Lady Drihawk,” she said. “Let us continue with the business we are present here for.”

“Regardless Commander, we agreed to attend this interrogation as you requested. I hope you will keep your end of the bargain and sponsor our bid to the Council to reallocate the temple to us.”

“What?” I couldn’t keep my voice restrained. “That’s why you’re here?”

“We—”

For the first time, Hamsik finally spoke. “Funny, how you speak of the real root of the problem.” His eyes held no room for mistakes. “When it’s standing in the room right here with us.”

Great. Stupid half-vampire opened his mouth only to set everything on fire. The worst thing was that a part of me actually appreciated

it.

“How dare you, you vile half-blood!” Lady Drihawk scowled at Hamsik. “Know your blood-cursed place!”

I could see why she was pissed. It was a Scarseeker that was causing the main issue, and this Lady Drihawk—and it made me wonder how House Drihawk was related to Hamsik’s House Kalnislaw—would be particularly sensitive to Hamsik’s insinuation.

“Spread your silly lies all you want,” said the Rakshasa noble. He sounded calmer, but the anger burning in the pits of his golden eyes smouldered like coal in a fireplace. “But don’t think this isn’t the fault of the Council and their atrocious insistence on allowing any old mongrel to come into Zairgon with no oversight at all!”

He had to be exaggerating, but on the other hand, attaining citizenship for myself had been extremely easy. The smoothness of the process was nice, but I wasn’t blind to the potential problems that could cause.

“Funny again,” Hamsik replied. “That you denigrate the Council even while you plead with them to give you what you want.”

“One can do both!”

“Certainly. But do both successfully? I wonder how the Council will take that sort of criticism…”

Brasvay and Drihawk kept on scowling, and probably would have kept on arguing too, but the commander cut in.

“Let us take care of the real business, please,” she said insistently. Without waiting for an answer, she flicked a gesture at Captain Revayne, who nodded at her superior first and then at a couple of other guards. “The others will be arriving soon.”

Huh. I had thought it was going to be just the ones who had arrived already, but apparently, there would be more attendees. They didn’t take long to arrive, either. Moments after the guard commander was done talking, more people were led into the interrogation room by other guards.

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I didn’t recognize any of them, though almost all of them looked important. Not as rich as the two nobles we had, but clearly people of a certain level of standing. They reminded me of the Rakshasa merchant whom I had helped move with my first Mage Guild job.

“We are all here,” the Ogre said in an even more formal tone than before. “To conduct an interrogation of the captured Scarthrall and determine their source. We captured this one after several of its fellows conducted a daring yet foolhardy assault on the temple of the Sun Cult in Ring Four.”

Several people muttered darkly at that.

“An assault?”

“Several, she said…”

“How brazen.”

One voice cut through it all, echoing shades of the nobles, despite not being one. “Do we really need to perform such a formal interrogation such as this? It’s just Ring Four, after all.”

Naturally, it was a Scalekin, not a human. I wasn’t surprised. Angry, but not surprised. Why would someone who had never even lived in Ring Four care it?

“At this rate,” the commander continued in an even voice. “If the attacks continue, if the rate of growth of number of Scarthralls keeps on rising, we will need to lockdown Ring Four entirely.”

More mutters at that, shocked ones this time.

“We can’t have that,” someone else said. “Terrible for business.”

Several agreed with murmurs of assent. My opinion of Zairgon just sank lower and lower.

But I could appreciate what the guard commander was doing. She was appealing to something others did care about, even if that wasn’t empathy, as would have been ideal. Garnering support was what mattered, not the how of it.

“Now that all is settled,” she said. “Can the potionmaker please step forward?”

A man dressed in a cloth mask and thick white robes did so. “I’ll need some help to continue restraining the subject.” He glanced at the commander. “This is one of the last batches we’ve got, so make it count.”

Revayne assisted him in the undertaking, stepping forward and finally lowering her book. She tore off a page and placed it on the table. A second later, my eyes widened as literal chains shot out of the page, black as ink, and wrapped themselves around the Thrall as if he wasn’t secure enough already. The real reason for that became clear enough a second later.

As the potionmaker stepped forward, the chains moved like marionette strings, and the Thrall was forced to open his mouth as Revayne pulled the gag away.

“Praise be…” he belched out with a gurgling murmur. “The Woven… Way!”

There was that slogan again. The more I heard it, the more I was just plain old curious what in the world was it actually supposed to be signify. Woven, as in the Weave? I didn’t get it.

The potionmaker uncorked a small vial and dumped the translucent green contents down the Thrall’s resisting throat.

“Shush, Scarthrall,” the commander said, stepping forward. Now she was stern, hard and unrelenting, bringing her entire intimidating bulk as a buff Ogre to bear on the Thrall. “You will answer my questions and nothing more.”

“No… such… thing!”

The commander glanced at the potionmaker, who shrugged behind his mask.

“Answer me,” the commander said, glaring at the Thrall. “Who turned you?”

“I… will… not…”

“Who was the Scarseeker who converted you into a Thrall?”

“I—”

“Who was it?”

The inky chains tightened. “I don’t know! I swear… I got no clue!”

Everybody else called that out as a lie. But no one blamed the potionmaker for possessing and administering a faulty truth serum or whatever it was he had used. Then again, the Thrall had been resisting from the very onset. Clearly, it wasn’t a magical tincture that would make everything the drinker said a truth.

“That isn’t a truth serum, is it?” I asked Hamsik.

He spared a single frown at me. “Truth serum? No, it’s just a compliance draught.” His lip curled as he looked back at the Thrall. “Distasteful, but these Thralls deserve worse.”

The commander held up her hand to stop the murmuring. Her questioning continued, getting more and more specific. It made sense. A Scarseeker going around turning people to vampires was unlikely to be so careless as let their identity be discovered so easily.

So instead, the commander focused on what the Thrall absolutely had to know about. It started off with things that could be verified easily. Such as who had captured the man, where was he last before he was captured, if he had attacked the temple, and then going back from that point, further and further in time.

I was starting to see how it actually worked, and the somewhat perfidious nature of it—acclimatizing the subject to compliance with easy questions before the harder ones came in.

Distasteful, Hamsik had said. I could see that.

It took a bit of time, where people around me were surprisingly patient, but we finally got to the very start of the man’s journey as a Scarthrall. The moment where he had become a vampire.

“How?” the commander asked. “Where were you when you took your first breath as a Thrall? What did you feel?”

“I… I don’t know…” He had grown a lot more compliant as time had passed, thanks to the effects of the draught registering properly and the series of easier manipulative questions. “It’s hard to remember…”

“Think,” the commander insisted. “Think back. Where were you?”

The Thrall’s voice almost grew trancelike. “On the street opposite of… of Shanceur’s… and then I…”

I didn’t know who or what or where Shanceur’s was, but Revayne was quickly noting it down in her book all the same, just as she had been doing throughout the interrogation.

“What next?” the commander said. “How were you feeling?”

“I was… was lost, like normal… and I was less lost after… yes, less lost. I had a… goal… a need, a thirst

.”

He struggled in his chains some. Revayne’s Aspect easily kept him restrained, but he didn’t settle down. If anything, the ineffectuality of it seemed to enrage him further.

The Ogre went on, ignoring the Thrall’s mental state. “How? How did you get that goal? Where were you bitten?”

“I… I was…”

“Tell me where.”

“I… my neck…” The Thrall made a choking sound.

The potionmaker stepped closer to the commander, whispering something in hushed but worried tones, but the Ogre woman pushed him away.

“Who was it?” she said. “What did you see? What kind of clothes? What kind of jewellery? Anything.”

The Thrall struggled some more. Even I got a little agitated when I saw foam gathering at the corners of his mouth.

“Tell me now,” the Commander insisted, relentless.

“Same,” he gurgled out. “Same as… all of us… drab cloak, breath like blood… but nice hair… flashing eyes—”

The Thrall began spitting, struggling in his chains like they were killing him. With a note of disgust, the commander stepped back, nodding at Revayne to release their captive. A couple of guards stepped forward, and together with the potionmaker accompanying them, they dragged the seizing Thrall away.

I swallowed. The whole display had left an awful taste in my mouth.

Nobody else seemed satisfied either. The two nobles looked both disappointed and smug at the same time, like they thought they had been right about it being a pointless exercise but were unhappy it hadn’t been even more useless.

I just frowned at Lady Drihawk. Nice hair…

Other mutters caught up to me. People were expressing their disappointment to the guard commander. The nobles just stood back and watched their feelings echoed among the commoners.

“Waste of time,” someone said.

“Nothing useful,” murmured another.

No one was interested. No one really cared about the details that had been revealed. People had held their patience so far, but it was pretty obvious that what little they had discovered from the Thrall wasn’t good enough. That what little support the commander had gained was quickly fading to nothing.

As it did, they lost what little reason they had to care for Ring Four’s plight too.

“It’s just Ring Four,” a Rakshasa was telling to a Plumefolk in a suit. “Let them handle their business.”

His companion nodded. “They’ll find out what they need to and take care of it.”

I was kind of sick of it. And I was really sick of the way the nobles’ eyes raked over me, Hamsik, and the other cultists. This whole thing felt like a show. A mock display to give the impression that these people were doing something, when in truth, this whole thing really had been a waste. What was I supposed to do with weird mentions of nice hair and Shaunceur’s?

Even the other cults weren’t exactly cooperative. Whatever willingness they had shown the other day with Escinca was forgone here as they were more intent on talking with the guard commander.

“That’s right,” I said as I was leaving along with everyone else. “We will. The Cult of the Sun is already working on it. With or without your help, we’ll deal with the Scarthralls.”

Hamsik didn’t add anything to that, but I didn’t care. He was too busy glaring at the nobles. Before we were gone, Revayne caught up to us, reassuring me that they would continue their efforts and share whatever else they found. She would be investigating Shaunceur’s, which was supposedly something like a tavern on Ring Three.

It reminded me that my anger was maybe a bit uncharitable. Revayne and her subordinates had helped a lot the other day against the Thralls. I made sure to thank her before leaving.

A part of me had wanted to ask about her Aspect, but I wasn’t in the mood. But hey, that did that remind me I wanted to use Sacrifice to boost all my training. So, when I got back, I did just that.

I channelled Gravity, weighed down my practice weapons, swung them as hard as I could, and I Sacrificed all my effort.