Thief of Time

Dia fiddled with the letter as the Moon Emissaries continued to stare at each other, dismay written all over their faces. Ignoring the drunken source of blue light — which was by no means a small feat — she glanced at the others, who were trying to look very innocent. Schwarz, in particular, was curled up like a ball, with the corner of his eyes shooting an angry glare at Dia once every few seconds.

It wasn’t her fault, alright?

That said, she did feel a bit bad, because the Moon Emissaries escorting the sleeping Blue Moon of Wisdom were glaring at the bartender every few seconds. If the drink hadn’t been this strong, the Blue Moon wouldn’t have gotten drunk and all, so it really wasn’t her fault.

Why did this idiot take out his absolute strongest drink?

Ugh.

Sighing to herself, she opened the letter slowly, and then pulled out a blue piece of high-quality paper.

“Oh, you’re opening it now?” Nightfall asked.

“Of course. We’re all busy people, after all,” Dia replied, although her main motivation was to stop Schwarz from glaring at her. The Moon Emissaries wouldn’t glare at them either, which was another plus point, and finally, if there were any issues, they could probably attempt asking the intoxicated Blue Moon…

“Very busy, yeap,” Risti drawled. “Wow. Still, that drink is really impressive. Even the Blue Moon of Wisdom just winked out like a candle.”

She glanced at the Moon Emissaries. “What? I’m just telling the objective truth. Also, there’s still some in that bottle. Why not give it a try and see if it’s poison, or just pure alcohol? At least you can justify why the Blue Moon keeled over if you tried it.”

“What are you doing?” Schwarz asked, his question thinning to a hiss. “Why are you egging them on to drink? Isn’t an intoxicated Blue Moon bad enough? I don’t need two more—oh, no!”

The table shook a moment later as two more tri-coloured figures collapsed onto the table, and Schwarz buried his face into his hands. “I’m so dead.”

“Oh, cheer up. With any luck, they’ll all forget about this,” Risti replied, a grin on her face. “Maybe that’ll teach you to stop making so strong drinks. I can’t enjoy the better brews if you’re making them so intoxicating.”

“Blow off…”

“Ahem!” Caroline cleared her throat. “As fascinating as these three are, we need to deal with them. Do we leave them here? Or do we—”

Blue light blazed, and the three figures vanished. Apparently, there was some sort of mechanism that would retrieve the three of them when they were all incapacitated, which was pretty much now.

“Huh.” Schwarz folded his arms. “That’s a thing too?”

“Probably. But did the Blue Moon come here in his real body? Or did he just send his consciousness over?” Dia asked. “Is it the body that was drunk, or the mind?”

“You ask questions I cannot answer,” the bartender replied. “And thank you so much for that recommendation. I totally needed it. Why, I am even going to raise a new signboard proclaiming about how my drinks knocked the Blue Moon out. Your promotion was so effective that I now have a new gimmick. Really, really appreciated.”

“…Sorry.” Dia twiddled her thumbs.

Beth, who was observing the whole thing on Caroline’s lap, slid off and tottered over to Dia, before patting her thigh.

“Wait, why is she comforting you, and not me?” Schwarz asked. “I’m the one who’s in severe danger, alright?”

Beth looked at him, and then spread her arms to Dia. “Hug!”

“Maybe I’m in greater danger instead,” Dia quipped. “Well, they don’t seem to be angry, so I don’t think it’s that much of an issue.”

“Oh, wow…”

“Okay, you two.” Farah, who had been sipping at her tip peacefully, cut in. “Let’s deal with that letter first. What does the Blue Moon want from us? And what are we supposed to do?”

Dia unfolded the blue piece of paper in her hands, and the toddler on her lap craned her neck. The kid, obviously, couldn’t read the words on it, but it was adorable to see her try to look at it anyway.

“Mhm.” Dia glanced at the words scribbled on it. “It’s a commission for us to weed out all forces of the great Dark in the Istrel Sovereignty. Apparently, there are two Dark Heralds operating in the Istrel Sovereignty, and they’re busy conducting random acts of sabotage and whatever. We’re supposed to get rid of them.”

“We, as in, the Seekers of Life?” Schwarz asked. “They’re asking us to get rid of these Dark Heralds? Are they alright? Should I have pulled out my strongest drinks instead?”

“That wasn’t your strongest?” Caroline asked.

“Of course not,” Schwarz replied. “Anyway, we’re asked to deal with the Dark Heralds here, of all places? Are you serious?”

Dia felt her eyebrows twitch, before she passed the letter over. “See it for yourself if you don’t believe me, then. Besides, the Blue Moon noted that the Dark Heralds will be far weaker here. They’re also rather special ones.”

“Mortals that turned into Dark Heralds…” Schwarz folded his arms. “Never heard of such a thing before.”

“To be fair,” Nightfall replied, “I’ve never heard of a Distortion right until they appeared in the city. Not hearing about something doesn’t seem to be a valid excuse nowadays, in my humble opinion.”

“Yeah…”

After the others agreed with that miserable little observation, Schwarz said, “I don’t suppose we can say no to this, can we?”

“We could, theoretically,” Risti replied. “But I don’t think rejecting a divinity is a good idea at all. It’s best if we at least put in some effort in looking for Dark Heralds with mortal origins. The only question is how we need to go about doing it, in terms of finding and defeating them.”

“Defeating them shouldn’t be a problem,” Schwarz replied, before passing the letter to Risti. “After all, the Moons claim that the Dark Heralds will be severely weakened under their barrier, and are unlikely to have a strength of a hexa-folder or even a penta-folder. We can take them if we come across them.”

“Supposedly, anyway,” Nightfall replied. “You lot still need to be quite careful.”

“Yeah,” Risti replied. “I mean, these guys know that they are weakened here in terms of their mana circuits. They definitely brought lots of powerful artefacts and skillstrips as emergency weapons and last resorts. After all, they’re direct subordinates of the great Dark. I can’t imagine them not armed to the teeth.”

“Bah, humbug.” Farah crossed her arms. “Why can’t the Moons just do the same? Is there really a need to ask us normal people to enter the fray?”

She sighed.

“Not much of a choice here, sadly.” Dia rubbed her nose. “We’ll have to accept it, but…we aren’t exactly told to succeed, right? And maybe they just want us to act as bait or something.”

Everyone looked at each other, before sighing heavily. The prospect of taking sides in this war was also quite disturbing; would the Dark order their own people to assassinate the Seekers of Life after they killed off a few Dark Heralds? It was hard to say.

More importantly, though, what was the Moons’ game in all this? Dia couldn’t quite figure it out.

“Why can’t the Moons track down their targets?” Dia asked. “I mean, they obviously know how many Dark Heralds are in the sovereignty, so why can’t they simply dispatch their own people and all? Asking us to do something like this…how pointless.”

“Maybe because they don’t have the exact location of the Dark Heralds,” Risti replied quietly. “The entire request is all predicated around uncertainty. We don’t know where exactly, or how strong they are. All we have are vague directions…maybe the Dark Heralds didn’t use their powers in here?”

“Makes sense,” Farah agreed. “It’s possible that our targets are good at hiding their actual existence. Maybe the reason why they want us to sniff out those guys is due to our familiarity with mortal methods of looking for people and dealing with them.”

“Investigating through mortal means, huh.” Risti placed the letter back onto the table. “It seems that we already have a place to begin investigations from.”

“Where?” Dia asked.

“Farah County,” Risti replied. “Yes, your home, Farah.”

“Hoh?” Nightfall looked at the countess. “Your territory is where the Dark Heralds are operating out of?”

“A bit unlikely, but I suppose we’ll all need to investigate the place first,” Farah replied. “Maybe they just landed there after flying in, and left to another territory…”

“We’ll have to investigate that bit first, at least.” Nightfall shook his head. “Right, if the Blue Moon commissioned us to do things like these…what rewards did Plota promise?”

“Lifestones, territory and even the promise of a new passive skill,” Risti replied. “All of which are quite useful. We can’t really pass this up, given the rewards.”

“…In that case, we should start soon.”