Tokuda looked like a total maniac. But, there was no alcohol, so Kelly gave him that.

He found him in the training room of his Spire. Hair disheveled, bags under his eyes. Still wearing his bloody tank top from the day before.

Papers lay scattered on the wrestling mats around him and his comm was flat on the ground. He'd projected the screen to full size, and sat cross-legged in front of it like a monitor, scribbling notes as he scanned through digital documents. Kelly caught glimpses of old photos, news reports, and Tokuda's own untidy handwriting.

"Well," he said, "Somebody's been busy."

Tokuda jumped. A fabric coil shot out. Kelly ducked out of the way as it cracked the air where his face used to be. Realizing who it was, Tokuda relaxed.

"Oh, Kell," he said, stifling a yawn as he turned back to the screen. "Good morning."

"Morning?" Kelly raised an eyebrow. He checked his comm. "Toks, it's past lunchtime. How long have you been at this?"

"Long enough."

"Did you get any sleep?"

"Does it look like it?"

Kelly shook his head. He was annoyed Tokuda hadn't been answering his calls, but glad it was because he was here, rather than slipping into old habits. Kelly had worried he'd find him drunk in an alley somewhere. Especially after what happened at the embassy.

"How's the kid?" he asked.

He followed Tokuda's gaze to the dirt patch where she slept. She was on her side, Tokuda's ragged cloak draped over like a blanket. Grass had sprouted in the earth beneath her. Ti leaf trees and flowers curled around her like a cocoon, along with several other plants Kelly didn't recognize. A faint light pulsed off of the plants. It was so subtle that, if they had been outside, it might've been mistaken for the sunlight reflecting off of them.

Kelly had seen this before, and still found it unsettling. It reminded him of a funeral wake. But he knew that it helped her to heal faster. There were rules to this type of plant magic that neither Tokuda nor Melia could explain. The most peculiar of which was that Melia couldn't make a healing garden for anyone else. In fact, she couldn't even make one when she was awake. If Tokuda hadn't triggered it during their first major assignment together, Kelly wouldn't be surprised if she went her whole life without ever knowing that she could heal herself.

Three months ago, in the Wilds, Melia contracted a deadly virus. The two of them were so far from civilization that their comms didn't work and their only method of transportation was a borrowed horse Tokuda nearly rode into the ground after forcing it to run nonstop for five hours.

When he finally let the poor creature rest, Tokuda carried Melia into the shade of a nearby plateau. She'd been unconscious for hours, her skin fading from warm brown to something like an ashy gray. He laid her on the red dirt, intending to let her sleep while he tried to get a signal on his comm. But, to his surprise, a cradle of ti leaves and flowers bloomed around her. Startled, he watched as more flowers appeared, light pulsing off of them as they emerged from the ground. The tension eased from her face, and by the time she woke up she was completely healed.

There were still a lot of things Tokuda didn't understand about it, but a few things he knew for certain. Rule number one was that the healing garden only worked when Melia was sleeping. It only came for severe illness or injuries. And if she wasn't directly touching the earth, it wouldn't come, at all.

"She's better," Tokuda said. "The bruises are gone now."

His voice trailed off. Kelly didn't need him to say the quiet part out loud. Yes, Melia was better. But nearly twenty-four hours had passed and she still hadn't woken up. Kelly didn't need him to tell him he was worried, either. He could see it in his bloodshot eyes.

Holy Mages of Mercia, he thought. He really cares about her.

Kelly remembered the day Julian called him in to ask what he thought about giving Tokuda an apprentice. Kelly thought it was crazy–at the time he was convinced Tokuda had more beer than blood flowing through his veins. Besides, with everything he had been through, he doubted Tokuda would want another kid in his life.

And, to be fair, he hadn't. Tokuda had laughed at him, told Kelly he was being pathetic. Even after accepting Melia, Kelly saw the reports of how Special Mage Tokuda trained his apprentice until she threw up from exhaustion. Kelly suspected he wanted her to quit, but she only worked harder. Every time she threw up, she would merely rinse her mouth and come back for more, not stopping until she either passed out or Tokuda simply couldn't take it anymore. She pushed past her limits to make him happy. But, Kelly had a feeling she also ended up proving that there was another human being who could be just as stubborn as Eijiro Tokuda.

Wanting to distract him, Kelly glanced at Tokuda's holoscreen. It looked like he was reading an old article about a protest led by religious zealots eighteen years ago.

"Learn anything new?" he asked.

Tokuda turned back to the screen. His frown shifted from one of concern to frustration. "Yes and no. I found some similar cases, but no solid leads." He pressed his palms to his eyes. "Honestly, I feel like I ended up with more questions than answers."

"Well, maybe start with that." Kelly said. He picked up a few loose pages on Tokuda's right side, making space for him to sit down. One of the papers he grabbed had a black-and-white photo of the roguelings, an extremist group that hadn't made headlines for at least a hundred years. Flipping through the other papers he'd collected, he realized they all had similar topics. Violent supremacists, racial bigotry, and an article Kelly felt he couldn't read for religious reasons.

He showed the picture to Tokuda. "And while you're at it, you might as well explain to me what cults and rogue hunts have to do with all this."

Tokuda took the stack, thumbing through the papers to remind himself what he had read.

"Oh, that," he said, waving the thought away. "Just an idea I had. But now that I think about it, I'm not sure if this was purely a religious attack."

"Purely?" Kelly asked. "What makes you think religion has anything to do with it, at all?"

Tokuda shook his head. "Come on, Kell. You're smarter than that. Wasn't it you going off on that lance corporal the other day? Something about maintaining principles outside of the parish halls?"

"Yes. A man ought to live by his proposed beliefs at all times," Kelly said, quoting the first order of the Holy Mages. He crossed his arms. "So what?"

"So you of all people should know that everyone has a religion. Even if they're not praying to your Holy Mages."

He fanned out the pages in front of them, pointing to the photo of the Roguelings. "What do you know about this group?"

Kelly shrugged. "Same as everybody else. They were natural magic puritans that were angry about the Purges."

Tokuda raised an eyebrow. "You say that like they shouldn't have been angry."

He had a point. Kelly knew he was being overly simplistic. The Rogueling Purges were a touchy subject in Zaramian history, even today. It was the reason why natural magic had gone extinct.

Before the country of Zaram had been established, settlers lived in tribes. As the tribes integrated with one another, they discovered tribes that had individuals with supernatural powers. Known as the Rogari, these people could do everything from control the elements to cultivate entire fields in a matter of seconds. There were even legends of Rogari who could talk to animals.

For generations the Rogari were treated as gifts from the gods. They rose to power in every village and were seen as the ultimate divine authority. Over time, however, the tribes without magic began to fear them. After all, who was to say a Rogar wouldn't use their power for evil? If left unchecked, the common man could easily be stamped out of existence.

Unbridled fear quickly led to outright contempt. The Rogari began to be mocked for their powers. Rather than treat them as gods, villagers called them roguelings and scourges. They were stripped of all political power, chased from village to village until they were hunted down and killed. Their families were spared, so long as they could prove that they had no magic and were willing to subjugate any future children they had to the same level of scrutiny. As a result, families with the most powerful Rogari were completely wiped out. Those who survived, like the Silverfangs, were unable to bear children with natural magic. Whatever godlike powers their ancestors had had been bred out of them.

"I guess they had a right to it," Kelly admitted. "But they didn't have a right to burn down the country. They're complaining about crimes that happened hundreds of years ago–nobody today is actively committing genocide, anymore."

"Doesn't matter," Tokuda said. "They believed they were right and weren't willing to accept anything else. They claimed to worship Brill, but their obsession with righting past wrongs was their true religion. That's what separates them from Virgil's family."

Kelly nodded, starting to understand. He remembered something one of the victims said to him.

We don't get names.

A cult. Why hadn't he seen it sooner? Of course someone had to belong to a radical group in order to forfeit something so personal as a name.

He waved at the scattered articles. "So all of these people," he said, "the cults, gangs, and supremacists–were hyper fixated on their ideology. Anyone who stood in the way of that deserved to be killed."

"Exactly," Tokuda said, touching his nose.

Kelly suppressed a laugh. He'd never seen Tokuda do that before, but the kid did it all the time. Tapping her nose whenever she was deep in thought or wanted to emphasize a point. In a way it was endearing. Not only had Tokuda accepted his apprentice, he was starting to become more like her. Kelly hadn't seen him imitate anyone like that in years.

"The one thing I can't figure out," Tokuda said, tapping his nose again as he looked to his screen, "is where our sloppy assassins fit into this."

Kelly rubbed his chin, contemplating. This was one of the stickier sides to investigating. Technically, you weren't supposed to come up with theories early on, as it could color your judgment for the rest of the case. But, without any leads, it wasn't like they had much of a choice.

He unstrapped his comm and set it down in front of him, tapping the screen twice to open the holoversion. He pulled up the Taverns, then thumped on the file forensics had sent to him. Pictures of the crime scene came up. Kelly had already seen them. And given that he'd done nothing but stare at screens all night, he had a feeling Tokuda had, as well.

"Anything jump out at you?" he asked, sliding his comm between them so that Tokuda could get a good look at it.

Tokuda held his finger over a thumbnail image, dragging it outside of the file with his right hand while he kept scrolling with his left. He double tapped on another image with his left index finger, then did the same to the other. Two images opened simultaneously, each taking up half of Kelly's comm screen.

The one on the right was from the crime scene. It showed John #8, the kid who started shooting his comrades before eating a round himself. He looked eerie, lying facedown on the plastic grass. A white veil splattered with blood covered his head, a bullet hole marking the kill shot.

On the left was the same kid, slightly cleaned up and lying on a forensics table. The picture had been taken from a bird's-eye view, so the gunshot wound wasn't visible. With the right embalming and funeral makeup, he might've looked like he was sleeping. Instead, he just looked dead.

Dr. Gosling, the chief medical examiner, placed John #8 at seventeen. While the cause of death was undoubtedly the gunshot wound in his head, he said the boy also showed severe signs of malnutrition. If he hadn't died from the bullet, Dr. Gosling said he likely would have starved to death in a few weeks.

The same went for nine other victims. All of them were underfed male teenagers. Ethnicities varied. Some were obviously Gilguran, with their white-blonde hair and delicate facial features. Others were tan with strong chins that could've meant they were Casillian or even Karthinian.

Child soldiers. Unlike the Junior Mages, these kids weren't being mentored by specialists who could protect them in times of trouble. They were essentially cannon fodder–thrown out at Kelly and Tokuda in an attempt to make some sort of statement.

But then, what were they trying to say?

"Report said they offed themselves?" Tokuda asked. "The ones that we captured?"

Kelly nodded. While he and Tokuda had done their best to capture and not kill the unidentified Johns, nearly all of their work had been in vain. Each had a poison pill in their mouths, impossible to see under the veils. When it was clear they were going to be captured, all but one of them bit into the pills and died within minutes. The only one that hadn't, had lost his pill when Tokuda gagged him. That John was currently detained and hadn't uttered a word since his capture.

Tokuda opened up the pictures of John #1, the man who had choked his apprentice. All sympathy drained from his face as he examined his remains. Unlike the other victims, John #1 wasn't a scrawny teen. He had to have been at least twice their age, with the muscled physique of a heavyweight boxer. His cause of death was also obvious, and the only one that wasn't caused by eating a round or downing a poison pill. Judging by the number of holes punched through him, Kelly honestly would've preferred a bullet.

Kelly shuddered, remembering when the kid Grew those giant thorns in the training room. And to think, if Tokuda hadn't intervened, that could've been him.

"What happened to the woman?" Tokuda asked.

Kelly frowned. "Woman?"

Tokuda closed out the picture he was looking at, expanding the screen so that they could see thumbnails of all of the victims.

"There was a woman," he said. "She spoke to me. It was her who started the shooting."

"Okay," Kelly said, feeling skeptical. "How do you know 'she' isn't there already? They all wore veils and baggy suits. She could've been a boy."

Tokuda shook her head. "No, she was a woman. I'm sure of it. And even if that were the case, then there would be twelve victims, not eleven." His frown deepened. "She got away."

He said that grudgingly, as though it pained him to admit someone had outfoxed him. Which, Kelly reminded himself, it probably did.

Melia stirred in her garden. Her eyes didn't open, but her face crumpled in an expression of pure grief. She clutched fistfuls of grass in her hand, hyperventilating as the plants around her started to shrivel. Weeds crawled out of the earth as the ground began to shake.

"Toks?" Kelly asked.

Tokuda looked up, unconcerned. He reached over and rested a hand on his apprentice's head. Melia's next breath came up short. Still half asleep, she found Tokuda's arm and gripped it tight. Immediately, she relaxed. The earth stopped trembling and the flowers bloomed back in full force. New ti leaf trees sprouted–these ones dark red instead of green.

"Toks," Kelly asked again. "What was that?"

"Just a nightmare," he said.

Kelly frowned. Not for the first time wondering why Julian thought she'd be a good fit for the Mages. She was strong, quick on her feet, and had an affinity for languages. All of those were good traits for a Mage to have. Plus, she was good for Tokuda. That meant a lot.

But at the same time, she had an innocence that bordered on outright naivete. Kelly had children of his own, and neither of them were this trusting or open-hearted at fourteen. By that age they were more concerned with looking cool in front of their friends, and kept begging their father not to embarrass them. Which, of course, he did. It was one of the three rules of fatherhood: love your wife, provide for your family, and embarrass your children. Such were the laws of the universe.

Tokuda rubbed Melia's forehead with his thumb, erasing the creases in her brow. It reminded Kelly of the relationship he had with his own daughter. Only when he treated his little girl like that she had been much, much younger.

He watched as Tokuda pulled his cloak up around her shoulders. There were so many bullet holes in it that Kelly doubted it kept her warm, but she snuggled into it.

"We really need to get you a new one," Kelly said. That cloak looked less like the uniform of a national Mage and more like a moldy lump of cheese.

But Tokuda shrugged. "This one will do." His eyes flicked from his screen, to his notes, and finally up at Kelly. "What are we missing, Kell? There has to be a point to all this."

"Seven hells if I know," Kelly muttered.

Tokuda's fabric coils flipped up in annoyance. Thankfully, none of them lashed out at Kelly. Instead Tokuda pressed a finger to his nose again, thinking.

"So far we've had three assassination attempts, and all of them failed. First was the sniper that couldn't shoot. Then the swordsman with the crap-made sword. Now a shootout that was more of a massacre than a planned attack."

Kelly nodded. He remembered what Tokuda had said at the embassy. They're amateurs. He'd been in enough altercations to recognize the difference between a trained professional and a desperate noob. This had been neither. Kelly knew people made mistakes when they were in high-stress situations, but this was something else. For Mercia's sake, it didn't take a sharpshooter to realize you needed cover in a gunfight. None of the Johns even tried to hide when Kelly and Tokuda returned fire. That wasn't normal.

Kelly's comm beeped twice and a corner of his screen lit up. Kelly recognized the envelope icon, indicating that he'd received a new message. Half a second later, Tokuda's comm lit up, too. Both men shared a glance before closing the holoscreens and picking up their devices. Kelly tapped on his notification, opening it up. Across from him, Tokuda did the same.

Kelly grimaced. Toks is not gonna like this.

"Not sure what to make of that," Tokuda muttered. He looked up at Kelly. "What did yours say?"

"Um," Kelly grabbed the back of his neck, not sure how to say this. "Well, the embassy has been declared unsafe for the ambassador, as I'm sure you can tell."

Tokuda nodded. "Right. And?"

Kelly winced. "Well, it looks like Julian wants to relocate her and a few members of her staff. Temporarily, of course."

"Naturally," Tokuda's brow furrowed, not liking where this was going.

Sighing, Kelly knew he'd just have to spit it out. "She's on her way here now, Toks. I'm sorry." Technically, the message said she'd be mooring to the rooftop any minute. But Kelly didn't think Tokuda needed to know that now. He'd figure it out, soon enough.

Tokuda looked like he'd been slapped. His mouth hung open, forming words that didn't come out in audible sounds.

"What? But that's...that's..." he spluttered.

Sirens went off. They blared in the Training Room as alarms flashed red, dousing the walls in a crimson light.

Kelly shot to his feet, gun at the ready. Were they being attacked?

But Tokuda wasn't alarmed. He rolled his eyes and shook his head, shouting over the sirens.

"I guess she's here," he said, annoyed.

Melia's eyes creaked open. Her healing garden was gone, a clear sign that she no longer had any injuries. Without it, she looked out of place, laying on her side in the dirt. She stared blearily at Kelly, then at Tokuda. Finally, she cringed from the sirens and squinted against the flashing red lights.

"They touch left wall," she said, breaking into a yawn. "I told them not to."