Soul Merger

Alissa peeled an apple while watching her newly awake roommate paralyze the cat with head scritches. "I hope Sootball didn't cause you too much trouble. Helping us escape that building seems to have given her a big head. Hasn't it, you smug little gremlin?" Sootball just purred in response.

"She only tried to smother me once, so I suppose not too bad for a cat," Alissa replied. "And it is good that she led us to you. Finding anything in that apartment was hard as hell."

"I have to thank you again for that dearie." The woman sighed. "Suppose I should have followed everyone else out. But I was worried the harpies might see an old rosekin like me as a good fruit to pluck from the pack."

Juli looked up from where she was washing vegetables for Sera to prepare. "It's hard to know what to do in these situations. We lucked out by being the safe spot so we didn't have to do anything past 'survive'."

"And I totally get not wanting to leave your apartment unattended," Sera sighed. "Not looking forward to checking under my bed for goblins when we finally get back."

"Want some help with that?" Alissa offered. "Stabbing monsters is still my job, and the guild is paying so...."

Sera blinked. "Maybe. I figure we're going to stay here a little longer. There's a lot of people who need help. And maybe I can ask around about a new job. You'll probably head home first."

Alissa winced. "Yeah. My place is probably lousy with frog people or something. I'll have to ask the team for backup. But if any of you need someone to help clean up later don't hesitate to drop by." She looked at the older woman. "You as well of course."

"Thank you dearie. Don't know how much is left of my place, but I might take you up on cleaning out my shop if the locals are too busy." She shifted a now disgruntled cat off her lap and moved to help with the food prep. "Ah, that's right. Your friends told me your name, but I didn't have the chance to tell you mine. I'm Ethel, and Sootpuff and I owe you a great deal."

"Good to meet you Ethel." Alissa finished peeling and grabbed a carrot to work on. As she started on that she looked over to Juli. "What are your plans for work anyway?"

Juli laughed. "I've got offers from two of the local places that are planning to reopen. I'm good. It's this girl who's looking to move to a more 'stable' job." She lightly nudged Sera who made a rude gesture in return.

Ethel made a noncommittal noise. "Best choose your boss carefully. Make sure they're not connected to those idiots up top. Only get trouble from the rich. All those mansions rot their brains."

Alissa raised an eyebrow. Strange to hear a shopowner so dismissive towards the rich. Sera seemed similarly curious. "The ones that come around here don't seem better or worse than the delvers or the merchants."

"You say that, but look around." Ethel waved her hand towards the club. "The rich weren't running around helping out their neighbors. But I'll bet crowns to hairballs that a bunch of rich fools caused this whole mess. Either by being stupid or by not doing the jobs they rake in money for. Always the reason for this kind of disaster."

A spike of rage and pain stabbed through Alissa's core, and she took a few moments to calm it down. "Suppose that's true," she replied before returning to skinning the vegetables with a little more force than needed.

The group had gathered together for lunch and hashed out a plan. Specifically Alissa wanted to clean up her home and prepare for a day of being miserable and bedridden. And since they were walking out that way they might as well clean out Rosalina's place so they weren't taking up space from the people whose homes had burned down.

Rosalina's house had held up against whatever monsters had wandered by, probably since it was the least interesting building in the area. So now they were following the river down towards Alissa's shack. She really hoped her worries about frog people slipping in through the waterways were wrong.

She decided to focus on something else. "So Rosalina, is an excess of soul really a common problem? I'm glad you had spells to treat it on hand, but I imagine most people have problems with soul drain."

"It's more a package set," Rosalina replied. "The fine tuning spell is needed to finish soul repair. Soul cutting is more used to get rid of the 'murder all humans' parts of monsters for tamers. But they're very similar."

"Seems like it would be nicer to just kill the monster," Alissa said. Cutting the soul out of something was fucked up. Given how much it had hurt to get rid of soul bits that were actually dangerous, she didn't want to think what losing important parts would feel like.

Fili sniffed. "Most legitimate tamers won't even consider it. It's purely for second rate circuses and people who use monsters like disposable shields. If you're fiddling with a soul you should just remove the old one."

Rosalina looked surprised at that, before glancing at Akari. "You never told me that."

The catgirl gave a wry grin. "I'm not a legitimate tamer."

Alissa remembered now. Akari had said she'd trained as a tamer. Which lead to another question. "Why go through all that work to learn a skill you never use?"

"It's part of my duties as a priestess," Akari replied. "Several holy sites have been untouched by death for centuries. It is better to use taming to move the monster outside before killing them than have to repurify an entire mountain."

"Kinda hardcore there," Clara said. "Though I suppose it's those kinda strong traditions that kept your priests unified while ours shattered."

Akari laughed. "We're hardly unified. We just don't fight more than we did before the Fall. You can't break something that was never whole."

"Sounds like a challenge to us," Clara replied. Alissa gave a chuckle. That did seem to be the way of things here.

She turned her attention to the river as they rounded the bend towards her house. There was a lot more flotsam in the water, which made sense given one of the underwater labyrinths had been involved. But she wasn't expecting a problem.

Then she saw round the bend and stopped in her tracks. "Well shit."

Her house was still there. But right alongside it was a houseboat, partially beached. Alissa really hoped the damn thing hadn't hit her shack. The damn thing was bigger than her own house and probably a whole lot better built, even with the enchantments.

She increased her pace, taking the lead as her friends followed. Rosalina said something about a renovation, but she ignored the woman. She didn't have time for that now.

Finally she got a good angle and breathed a sigh of relief. The houseboat had hit the bank before reaching her place. She'd probably want to moor the damn thing so it didn't drift into her house with the tides, but for now she was good.

She turned to the houseboat, giving the thing a once over. It was definitely a rich person's boat. Two decks and pretty decently long. Painted bright red with gold trim for extra gaudiness. "Great, some merchant is gonna come whining to me about everything stolen out of his boat." She wasn't sure how much of her irritation was the extra soul still lingering, but she felt it was warranted.

Clara sniffed and shook her head. "Maybe, assuming his corpse isn't the one I'm smelling. Someone didn't get out of there. Human, I'm pretty sure."

"Shit." Alissa felt that summed matters up well. "Mind helping me clear it out?"

"Of course," Rosalina said. "Akari and I will get the stern properly tied up. Can you do the front?"

Alissa nodded. "Fili, do you know knots?"

"No, sorry," the mage replied.

"It's alright. Keep an eye out to make sure nothing creeps up on me," Alissa said before hopping onto the bow.

The mooring ropes were easy to find. But someone had taken a sword to them. Badly too given how frayed the cut was. "Hm." She wondered if it had been done by people who were fleeing on the boat, or from whatever was on it. For now she pulled out more of the line and tossed it to Clara. "Need me to find a stake?"

"Gotta good tree for now," Clara replied, tying the rope to one of the larger specimens. Alissa trusted the former merchant's ropework, so she hopped off.

Rosalina and Akari were back soon after. "Was your rope cut as well?"

"Yeah." Alissa drew her knife. It'd be better in the tight corners of a boat. "Let's see what mess we've found this time."

She stepped into the lower deck and was greeted by a luxury lounge setup. A sofa, a crystal table, a full bar, and two corpses lying on the ground. "Great," she muttered. She moved further in so the others could enter, checking for signs of monsters.

To her great relief nothing burst out of the cabinets or cubbyholes. There was however a trail of blood leading from the stairs up to one of the heads. She carefully peeked inside to find the disemboweled corpse of a naked man. Wonderful. More terrible questions to be answered.

She peeked inside one of the three staterooms that were supposed to be here and her stomach flopped. It was full of human sized cages, thankfully empty, and restraints. What the hell had she stepped into?

Rosalina gave a choking cough from behind her. Alissa turned to see the priestess looking very grim. "One bedroom which is clean. The other room looks like a sex dungeon. And not the fun kind." There wasn't any humor left in the woman's tone. "I don't think anyone's going to be claiming this boat."

"I don't think I want to claim this boat. The only thing stopping me from burning it is the fact it's next to my house." Alissa left the room and solidly shut the door. "Let's see who our corpses are."

Clara and Fili were checking the bodies while Akari had taken position on the couch and was doing some ritual over the area. Maybe trying to get the bad spirits out? The catgirl would need a lot of help with that.

She moved to Fili's side and gave the two bodies a quick once over. Leather armor and shock clubs. Looked like they were second rate guards. The type merchants hired to keep people out of their warehouses or to bother rivals. And they'd both been clawed up. She didn't smell anything odd other than the mint scent wafting off Fili.

"A bird type monster," Fili said. "Probably a harpy, but that's just a guess from the size of the wounds."

"Kinda weird a harpy could take down two guys alone," Clara said. "Fighting in a boat like this she'd be at a huge disadvantage. Figure one of them would have beaten her down before they got killed."

Fili nodded and pointed at the men's eyes. "They've both got first degree burns on their face. I think someone used a fire or light spell to blind them. After that the harpy knocked them down and tore them up."

"So it's possible it was just part of the horde that flew in and murdered some sick rich deviant and his guards?" Alissa said. "At which point it sailed into my house because I have terrible luck."

"Why cut the ropes then?" Clara asked. A good question.

"I don't think we'll find answers to that here," Rosalina said with a sigh. "At least not with far more searching than I want to do today."

They all agreed with that. It had been a very long couple of days, and this bullshit could wait. Akari tossed a handful of salt on the bodies and they got the hell out of there. From there it was a quick stroll to Alissa's house.

Alissa was pleased to see her front door hadn't been broken down, so she felt decently confident her home might be intact as she unlocked the door. Still she forced herself to be alert as she pushed it open.

Standing in the middle of her living room were two monsters. A harpy halfway through eating an apple and a woman with shining wings. Alissa froze for a moment then cursed her own incompetence as she drew her sword and lunged forwards.

"Stop! That's an angel Alissa!"