The Waiting

Alkadabuki's arrival in Kia Marun finds the city under siege by a large number of monsters and surprisingly Doom is there leading them, at least it seems that way. Alkadabuki can tell Something is wrong. Nevertheless, she sets her sights on "Doom" as she yells to her soldiers to focus their attention on defending the city gate and walls. Minimizing casualties is her second most important goal, the first of course, being to kill Doom. As her barbarians rush into battle she heads immediately towards Doom. He is in the back, simply allowing his monstrous army to attack in his stead. This means that to reach him she has to get through his army, although “army” is a bit of an exaggeration. There are about twenty of them total, counting doom and they are an eclectic bunch of creatures. As Alkadabuki pushes forward she finds herself having to fight her way through various types of creatures, including punching the head off of a hydra which then regrows until she slices the entire creature in half vertically killing it.

She slays her way through horrors with no name as well as monsters she knows by sight and as she reaches Doom, he immediately turns and begins to run. Her eyes widen and rage grips her. She refuses to let him escape her again. She gives chase, screaming curses after him as he flees. The remaining monsters have turned their attention away from the city, focusing instead on Alkadabuki. A tentacled monstrosity lashes at her from behind, catching her arms and legs, preventing her from pursuing for the moment as the rest of the monsters converge on her.

"Tch... Is this your plan?!" she yells after the fleeing Doom as she yanks her arms forward, dragging the tentacle monster to her and then turning and cleaving it in half in seconds. The monsters surrounding her attack and she fights back, killing multiple with each strike, her barbarians helping out. Some of the monsters start to hit her with status effects, paralysis, poison and even an acid attack that damages her armor and lowers her defense. Surprisingly she has no defense against the status effects, but she barely needs it. The paralysis isn't strong enough to actually stop her, the poison only barely eats into her regeneration by a negligible amount and even with her defense lowered, none of the monsters can even deal damage to her.

It's not much longer before the last monster is slain. Alkadabuki stands triumphant in the middle of a circle of monster corpses. Her only annoyance is that again her clothing was damaged and her body is partially on display. She turns to look for any sign of Doom and is surprised to see him waiting for her. A short distance away. She growls and approaches.

"Did you actually think that would work?" she asks, but he doesn't respond and as she gets close she realizes that this isn't Doom. It looks like him, but she can sense it is much weaker. She can also sense light and her eyes narrow. She knows what this is. Elmeria had spoken about them before. This is a construct, a creation made via an angelic blessing. She doesn't know why Doom would have such a thing. There are a few options, none of them are good, but she doesn't dwell on it, instead simply running her sword through the creature and watching it vanish. "Back to Saluma... Quickly!" She commands her troops and together they set out to return to Saluma.

Back in Saluma Elizabeth has her head in her hands. Rio Maldega is sitting near her, he is holding his hand against his jaw and a bandaged side, "so... you were attacked by... and let me make sure I heard this correctly... Mira Cosmir, who fought you in the prison and knocked you **** and then... you think she also went and rescued the captive hostages?" she says and Rio weakly nods. Elizabeth stares at him.

"This Mira Cosmir thing really isn't just some strange joke, huh? It appears that Mira Cosmir, the lost heir of the Cosmir family really has thrown in her lot with..." Elizabeth hesitates, "Doom of all people..." she finishes and then slides her hands from her face, "what am I going to tell Queen Alkadabuki when she gets back?" she asks and Rio shrugs, prompting her to glare at him, "that was a rhetorical question..." she states and then sighs, "what are you even still doing here? Get back to the prison!" she yells at him and he jumps to his feet, wincing slightly and hurries out.

He is glad he had decided not to mention that he had told Mira where the hostages were, he’s pretty sure he wouldn't have left the room alive if he had.

When Alkadabuki does return she is greeted by a clearly nervous Elizabeth who informs her of what had happened before immediately begging for forgiveness. Alkadabuki sighs as she watches Elizabeth do her best to grovel, "relax... We both knew something like this would happen," Alkadabuki says after a bit and Elizabeth raises her head.

"Y... Yes, but you said you trusted me to handle it and... I failed you!" she wails and Alkadabuki places her hand on her head, comfortingly.

"Our enemy outsmarted us. We were both foolish and I specifically acted impulsively. The blame is spread between us, punishing ourselves for this failure won't help, what we should do is figure out where to go from here, or more specifically, what is our enemy's plan," she explains and Elizabeth hesitates then nods.

Alkadabuki herself is already trying to figure that out. With his companions returned to him would Doom simply abandon Alms Amour, it would be the smart thing to do, but she doubts it. The attack on Kia Marun felt strange, she got the idea that he was intentionally taunting her and she believes that he won't flee Alms Amour, not until he has found a way to defeat her, this she feels strangely sure of. Which means that it is even more important that she track him down and kill him before he grows powerful enough to do so.

"Tomoko... I'll ensure your nightmare never comes to pass," she promises internally.

Doom and Prithima are working together to make potions, but Cara is working alone. Gathering ingredients would have been a problem, but this dungeon has been a massive boon. Its production capabilities are unimaginable and with Ginny back running it, it is capable of synthesizing ingredients for them, as long as they feed it a steady stream of raw materials. Ginny therefore has the monsters not spent during the diversion attack, gathering various materials from the surrounding desert. They'd even been able to make new clothes for Vox, Belleza, Gitta and to a degree Kasi. Working on making new weapons for Kasi and Gitta is also underway, Gitta specifically having a special project she has Ginny working on.

She was extremely excited upon seeing the production capabilities of the Dungeon and Cara wonders what kind of object she is making. Vox enters and sits down beside Cara as Cara works making toxins, "heya, Cara" Vox greets her and Cara respond with a nod of greeting.

"So... I just wanted to thank you for rescuing us," Vox says.

"You're welcome. We're friends, I was happy to help save you guys," Cara says, letting herself momentarily stop focusing on her work.

"Yeah.. I was wondering though, how did you escape Saluma?" she asks and Cara hesitates.

"I was still in the medical bay when the invasion happened. I couldn't fight so they just imprisoned me and... Ginny helped me escape cause she wanted to flee the city, but needed help," Cara answers, omitting anything having to do with the Cosmir family.

"I wonder why they didn't put you with the rest of us..." Vox shrugs and Cara responds.

"Well... the only people who had personally seen me fighting alongside you and Doom initially were Ginny, The Queen's Guard, The royal family, The Lich, Malcolm and Triana... Malcolm and The Queen's Guard I don't know about, but as I understand it, Ginny is... well as you know actually this dungeon's core and was helping me out, the royal family are missing aside from Albus who is dead, The Lich left for Mnemaria while we still held the city and Doom killed Triana before we even took Saluma," she explains, "I think likely there just wasn't anyone who knew and recognized me as part of Doom's inner circle," she explains. It is mostly true and she can see Vox thinking it through.

"Guess so... not like the Sun Mage ever saw you and she's the one who seems to have pointed out the rest of us," Vox agrees after a bit. Cara nods, internally sighing in relief that her lie by omission seems to have been accepted. Vox sighs, "since you weren't there at the final battle... I don't know if you're aware, but Raig and Croya died in the fighting," she explains and Cara hesitates.

"That's unfortunate..." Cara says, truly meaning it. Raig and Croya had been powerful allies and with Raig gone, it’s unclear who would rule Alms Amour if they do manage to take it back from Alkadabuki. She doesn't think Doom actually has the required knowledge to run an entire country by himself, "what about Isidora and the rest of Raig's harem?" Cara asks mostly out of curiousity.

"Elizabeth... The Sun Mage that is... mentioned once while torturing us that there was some kind of public execution, I assume some of them if not all of them died then as well," Vox answers.

"Well... We'll have to ensure we avenge them when we take the country back," Cara responds and Vox nods, standing back up and heading off as Cara returns to her work.