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ANDREA DORIA

After getting me cleaned up, fed, and dressed, the colonel and brigadier, along with the rest of my unit, gathered in the brigadier's office. There was also a cat woman curiously checking us out.

   Hendrik and Rudolf sat in the corner taking notes from a book while the cat woman peered over their shoulders.

   "These notes are—Achoo!" Rudolf sneezed.

   "You've been sneezing a lot. Are you sick or something?" the cat woman asked.

   "No. I'm just allergic to cats."

   The woman sniffed herself. "Only my tail and head have hair. How severe is your allergy?"

   "Very."

   Hendrik and Rudolf shot a desperate look at the colonel.

   "Can you ask that woman to leave the room?" Camaro whispered. "We can't just invite people to this."

   Clegane shook his head. "She's a friend. Your unit is made up of people you trust. She's someone I trust."

   "Yeah, but she's not in the military."

   "The last I checked, you said Dr Creed told you not to trust anyone in the military. My friend isn't. She's safe."

   "Nya! Let me talk to him, Czeslaw," the cat woman went up to us, twitching her ears. "I've heard about you a lot, Colonel Camaro, so let me introduce myself. My name is Chris Lalatina. I was one of the finalists for this year's State Jynxist Exam. I was good friends with Ilias the moment the exam started."

   Camaro nodded. "So you're the girl he told me about that dresses in a lewd and revealing outfit."

   "I do not! This is for practical reasons!"

   "Let her stay," Clegane insisted. "Trisha's boy is good friends with her, same as me. And you said this was a mana incident? She almost became a State Jynxist, and unlike you, Ray, she can perform any type of jynx. She might come in useful."

   She raised her hand. "Ilias was a very nice kid. Colonel, I can sense from your voice that something has happened to him. I want to help in any way I can."

   The colonel sighed. "Fine."

   Everyone except for Hendrik and Rudolf, who were still preoccupied with that book, gathered around me.

   Camaro held my hands. "Take your time. Tell us everything that happened."

   I had been doing patrol when the skies started to change. At the beginning of my shift early in the morning, it was a normal blue. But as the sun rose, the more the colours began to change.

   There was something off about the feel of Gilead that day. The closest thing I could compare it to was the air feeling heavy. But it wasn't air. It was something else.

   By noon, Gilead was right under the eye of this swirling storm of colours and a compact bright light was building up in its centre.

   "Lieutenant Doria!" Colonel Fundin called out. "Something's wrong."

   "I know. My body is feeling all weird."

   "This has something to do with mana. I just know it. Find Ilias, he might know what this is."

   I removed my sword and pistol, leaving them behind at the library so I could get to Trisha's house faster. I did morning runs every day, but the sense of panic running through me caused my breaths to run short.

   Halfway through the doctor's house, I had to stop and catch my breath.

   "Are you okay, Lieutenant?" Enyaba the seer asked. "Something about that sky is going to set off a chain of events that will change this country. I can feel it."

   "I need to find Ilias," I panted. "He might know something about this."

   "Ilias? I saw him and the elf girl leave the village. I think they're doing some training."

   Training? If they're headed to where Heloise and Ilias trained, that's a twenty-minute walk from here!

   A Rohan Company building was down the street, so I turned on my heels and ran straight for it. I could rent a horse and get to them much faster on a set of hooves.

   But about a block before I reached the building, the light that had been gathering at the eye of the storm exploded into a beam that shot downwards. I could've ran, but I didn't. I just stopped and accepted my fate as the light devoured me.

   The next thing I knew, I was swallowing water. Salty water. When I opened my eyes, they began to burn. I unclasped my armour, pulling myself up and up and taking a breath when I reached the surface of the water.

   I managed to grab ahold of floating driftwood.

   For a moment, I thought I was out in the open sea, but on one of my sides was an estuary with a thriving city.

   Port Town?

   There's absolutely no way I'm in Port Town.

   But I was. The light that engulfed me had somehow transported me here. Floating in the water, I tried to call out for help, but the longer the day went on, the more my energy was spread thin.

   By the time the sun began to set, I had swallowed so much seawater that my skin began to blister and dry. The only taste my mouth remembered was salt.

   With the last of my strength, I managed to call out to a passing ship. The captain picked me up and took me to Port Town where I was promptly arrested. No one recognized me and they found it suspicious that someone in a soldier's uniform was floating out at sea.

   Everyone suspected me of being a pirate, but thankfully Brigadier Clegane recognized me as part of the colonel's unit.

   But he didn't help much as he threw me in the dungeons under suspicion of desertion.

   I made multiple escape attempts to get back to Gilead, but they all ended with my capture. I was locked in that cell for two weeks until the colonel came to break me free.

   "Lieutenant, I give you my sincerest apologies." Brigadier Clegane bowed. "You are a part of my friend's unit. I should have had more trust in you."

   "It's fine, Sir. As bad as the situation I was in, I looked suspicious no matter which way you looked at me. But that's been dealt with now."

   "Lieutenant," Camaro pulled a chair and sat directly across from me. "So, you're telling us you weren't paralyzed when you got sent out to the water."

   "Colonel, let's be serious now. I would've drowned if I was paralyzed."

   "What about your gates? Did you feel weak? Was your body sore?"

   "Sore of exhaustion. I was holding onto driftwood and treading out at sea for the entire day. But the soreness of my body was fatigue."

   "So other than being spooked, you were completely fine?"

   "That's it. I had a lot of nightmares during the night."

   The colonel held onto my hand to comfort me. "I'm so sorry you had to go through that."

   "The lieutenant was in great shape. I'd say she wasn't exhausted enough," Clegane chimed in. "She tried to escape multiple times and assaulted my men. She even kicked me down to the ground. My knee still hurts."

   "Sorry about that."

   Camaro rubbed his chin in thought. "And Czeslaw, you said there were other Gilead villagers you've found that were completely mobile as well?"

   Clegane nodded. "We found a few after I sent you that letter. We thought they were pirates. The ones we found consisted of adventurers and villagers that had a diverse set of gates. Yet, none of them claimed to be paralyzed."

   "Then why was Abel paralyzed?"

   "Who's Abel?" I asked.

   "He's the first person we found that got teleported. He's an adventurer that was staying in Gilead when the incident happened."

   I squinted my eye. "I don't remember an Abel when I dropped by the taverns. Did you check the check-in book? His name should be there if he's an adventurer."

   Camaro just stared at me dumbfounded.

   "You didn't check, did you?"

   The colonel chuckled awkwardly. "Hendrik! Why didn't you suggest that?"

   "Colonel, you already have me working overtime!" Hendrik cried. "And now you want me to decipher this cookbook. Please give me a break!"

   I giggled. "So I'm gone and you can't even try to gather evidence?"

   "It looks like it," he said. "You're my adjutant for a reason after all."

  "And did Hendrik just say decipher a cookbook? Is that what he and Rudolf have been playing with this entire time?"

   "Yeah," the sergeant said. "This Abel guy was found near a hut just outside of Gilead. When we searched the place , we found this hidden in a latrine pit. That it means whoever was there wanted to hide this really bad."

   "Can I see it?"

   Kaiser took the book from Hendrik and handed it to me. Rudolf was sneezing this entire time and Gama kept getting mad at him for not covering his mouth.

   I flipped through the book and found notes on various dishes from all over the country. Each settlement at least had a page dedicated to a dish that originated from there. The name of the settlement was bolded with what looked like a small dot beside them. On other random pages were random lines drawn about. Sometimes, these lines and bolded words were on the same page.

   "There are lines on random pages," I said.

   "Yeah. The hut was small so the person who made this might've used scrap paper," Hendrik said. "We're wasting our time on that book of recipes. You can rip it apart and you won't find anything."

   Rip it apart?

   The book wasn't actually a book. It didn't even have a cover. They were just notes tied together with binding. I pulled at one end, causing the binding to come loose and scatter the pages all over the floor.

   "Doria! What are you doing?!" Hendrik cried. "Why would you do that? Be more careful."

   I knelt on the floor, scrambling through the pages and setting them one over another in a pattern.

   "What do you see, Lieutenant?" Camaro asked, grabbing a handful of the scattered notes and handing it to me.

   "Taking it apart and putting it together. But in a different way."

   "In what way?"

   "You see the random lines on every other page? It's not random. You can connect them."

   Everyone began to connect the puzzle. It took us around an hour of arguing, but by the end, we had a giant picture cryptically made up of cooking pages.

   "It's a map," Clegane said. "Of Armestis."

   "There's only one dish per settlement," Kaiser pointed out. "It's because the bolded words represent the settlement on the map."

   Rudolf sneezed, scattering the pages that represented the southeastern area.

   "Cover your mouth!" Gama pleaded. "It's disgusting!"

   "Hold on, what are these runes?" Clegane asked.

   There were five runic symbols in certain areas of the western region.

   "Let's try connecting them," I suggested.

   "No, there's no pattern if you connect them," Camaro said. "There must be something in those areas that are hidden. I mean, look at how they're all outside of settlements and in hard-to-reach areas. And look at how far they are from Seraphim and Gilead."

   "You're right, these five runes are all gathered in one part."

   "If there's something in those areas, why don't we investigate?" Clegane suggested. "Look at how close this one is."

   He pointed at the rune right beside the village of Lalatina.

   "Oh, that's near my home village," Chris said.

   Beast people's last names were always named after the place they were born in. Many beast people shared the same last name because of this, but that didn't always mean they were related by blood.

   "It looks like Lalatina is our next destination," Brigadier Clegane said. "Let's see what these runes really are."