Chapter 682 (1/2)

The carriage driver had stopped and was staring down the track with a pale face when Lucretia carried Alta back. When he saw Lucretia’s state of dress, he blushed further. “Miss, the mounts, they can smell-”

“I know.” Lucretia cut him off with a sharp glance. Being reborn into the body of an attractive young woman was a complicated experience, and in important moments like this, she was unwilling to humor other’s reaction to her. “Do you know anything?”

“No,” He shook his head furiously.

The door to the carriage opened, and Darcy came out with a wailing baby and a frown. “Why have we stopped? If Dalmanica is forced to starve, so help me-”

“Shut up the baby,” Lucretia said bluntly. In her arms, Alta was trembling, and she was looking around with glassy eyes.

“Creta, something feels bad. Everything… everything is so bad…” Alta mumbled.

“How DARE you!” Darcy bellowed, setting off an even louder set of wails from the baby. Mother of the year, right there. “Do you think for a moment that I wouldn’t-”

Luckily for Lucretia, the noise brought on the first wave of attacks more rapidly. The beast stood up amongst the tall grass of the fields and roared, their strange facial pustules oozing. They were shaped like bears, but their torsos and head were largely without hair and instead covered with boils and worts.

Lucretia pressed her lips into a thin line. With a firm hand, she reached up and covered Alta’s eyes. What was about to happen would still be too much for the girl.

Darcy began to scream as the first two dashed forward to only a few meters away and more were worming up out of the woodwork. As Lucretia’ channeled Randidly’s strength, her mind was quickly calculating the likelihood that a band of half mutated Soulless could coincidentally end up here, deep in the countryside of the Spriggit elite.

Obviously, that wasn’t very high.

“Growth,” Lucretia whispered. Her three-meter talons trembled, and then as energy flooded into them, they sprouted outwards. First five meters, then ten. And as they grew, offshoots sprouted outward like branking courses of a river. Soon, there were a dozen talons flashing left and right. The Soulless were helpless before the attacks and the first way was mincemeat before the second arrived.

The reinforcements fared no better.

Within a minute, the area was clear and silent, aside from Darcy and Dalmanica’s screams. As the energy left her, Lucretia’s talons shrunk to their normal size. Fat drops of black blood fell off of them. The carriage driver had enough presence of mind to fumble his sidearm out of the holster but had made the intelligent decision to freeze up rather than embarrass himself by shooting it.

Slowly, Lucretia kneeled and set Alta on the ground. What surprised Lucretia was that it seemed the baby read the mood, and slowly fell silent.

“You shouldn’t look around,” Lucretia said as she took her hand from over Alta’s eyes. The karma in her chest was spreading thin tendrils outwards. It was all she could do to refrain from pouring her own energy into the girl’s body to feed it. What was it about this moment that was important, however…?

Of course, Alta looked around anyway. And as she did so, she grew pale. But after biting her lip, the girl seemed to firm her resolve. She looked straight at the shredded bodies of the Soulless. “What… what are they?”

Lucretia sighed inwardly. It would be too much to say they were the sad and desperate children that the Creature had left in Randidly’s Soulworld when her incarnation had been burned away. “...they are debris from an older era. From an old war.”

Abruptly, Alta’s eyes widened. “If we were attacked, do you think daddy and brother…?”

Lucretia said nothing, and instead stood and looked at Darcy. The woman was weeping silently, holding her baby to her chest. She was doing everything she could to not look at the bodies spread around them. In a way, it made sense. Darcy was a pampered and pretty daughter. What would she know of death? What did she know that two of the seven lands were engulfed in constant warfare, and the Spriggits were the merchants of death for both sides?

On the back of the founding Bounty’s invention, Spriggits had been able to control trade amongst the lands on a scale that none could replicate. This was not the first attempt on the lives of the Bounty family, and it would not be the last. If she wanted to survive in this family, Darcy would need to toughen up. Perhaps imitate the maturity of Alta, for example.

Without even Lucretia’s answer, Alta came to the correct conclusion by herself. Several small tears formed in her eyes and ran down her cheeks. But it was with an even voice that she said. “Go. Find them. Protect them. You are strong, right? That’s why- that’s why daddy takes you sometimes. Out. Please, Creta.”

Lucretia nodded, watching the slow and gradual shifts in Alta’s chest. Was it simply that she would mature here? Well, perhaps that was fine too. It wasn’t as exciting as Lucretia wanted, but it would be enough. Her time wasn’t wasted, not as long as she felt that constantly growing connection between Alta and Randidly.