Hera sprinted through the hallways, feeling the blood rushing through her body with every motion and hearing her heartbeat with every step. She had to find Blue. She had to make sure she was okay. That should be the case. After all, she had just killed Morgan. He was the one responsible for the tattoos, the same tattoos that were channeling the energy of the Strength Spirits toward all the prisoners.
Logic dictated that now that the Legacy was gone, all those connections would have vanished. But using logic to explain a Legacy was always a fool's errand. After what felt like a lifetime. But in reality, lasted less than a minute. Only then she found what she was looking for, the operating room where Blue was located.
The woman had her eyes closed, sweat dripping from her face, and her muscles were still tensed, but she was no longer screaming. It was progress, at least.
A large glass window stood between Hera and her friend, yet there was no door to be seen. Hera tried to break through, but due to her [All In] skill, her attributes were not as high as they should have been, and the reinforced glass only cracked.
Without uttering a word, she turned to Lurize, hoping he could break the glass.
'It would be better if we didn't do that,' the Royal Tutor replied in her mind. 'The glass might end up hitting Blue or damaging some of the equipment inside. We don't know what everything does.'
"Shit," Hera groaned before continuing her sprint.
She soon found herself in a large area filled with prison cells. Each one held people who had participated in the attack on the centaur homeland. With a quick mental command, she told the snake carrying the camera to capture everything. If people were still struggling to break free from the mind control, this might be enough to do it.
But that wasn't her focus. The people here were supposed to be trapped, not actively suffering. At least not as much as Blue was. Even if they were, Hera was going to be selfish and look for the person she cared about first.
Just by the entrance to the cell block, there was another door leading away at an angle. She took that passage and continued sprinting until she reached a series of operating rooms. They looked similar to the one Blue was in, but these were empty.
With each room she passed, more and more tools could be seen inside. It was clear they were preparing these facilities for use. Proper gurneys, large pieces of equipment filled with strange red liquid, sets of needles, and the ink that would become the tattoos. In the last room Hera passed, there was even a small vat with a Strength Spirit sleeping inside.
But the room after that was much, much bigger. All those tools and devices were already set up, and on the opposite end of the room was a cracked window.
Blue was in the center, bound on top of a gurney. Hera froze the moment she saw her not just because of the blood covering her clothes and restraints, but because her left arm was now only a stump. There was only a small part of it left, about halfway to the elbow. Her face was covered in bruises and there was a chunk of her hair missing on the right side of her head. Almost as if someone had ripped it out.
The wound still seemed fresh, as the arm was wrapped in blood-soaked bandages.
"Blue? Blue, can you hear me?" Hera approached, worried about touching her friend and somehow making things worse.
The former wielder of the Stormcloud Legacy grumbled, but she didn't seem to wake up.
"Blue!" Hera yelled, turning to one of the monitors that displayed her vitals.
Blue still had a pulse, but it was weak, and every other metric on the monitors looked bad, even to someone like Hera, who didn't fully understand medical charts.
Unsure what to do, the Empress decided anything was better than nothing. "Daskka, come help," she commanded, placing her hand on the stump and casting Heal. The Herald quickly shifted into her purple mist form to aid in healing Blue.
Even then, Hera could barely feel anything from her friend. Her spells seemed to be doing almost nothing, but they were doing something. Hera, Daskka, and even Nimbus were doing their best to heal Blue, each focusing on a different part of her body.
Vulcan suddenly stepped forward, having been revived thanks to [Heart of a Phoenix], and stared at the woman with a strange expression.
"But… how?" Forge said, his voice full of confusion.
"What?" Hera snapped, not out of anger, but pure panic.
"I can still sense the mana of a Strength Spirit in her," Forge said.
"What? But we killed Morgan. If they used the Legacy to make it, it should be gone," Crimson said, turning to Vulcan.
"I know. That's why this doesn't make any sense," Forge replied, scratching the back of his head.
"Actually, no. This makes a lot of sense," Viper chimed in, drawing everyone's attention, except Hera and Daskka's.
"Think about it," Viper continued. "The man was the CEO of the company. He probably had better things to do than stay in the lab constantly making new tattoos. They probably created the first few using his Legacy but then developed something from it."
"Could that mean all the tattoos were not part of his Legacy?" Lurize asked.
"No. I can tell the Legacy had something to do with this. Probably because it is still fresh that I can sense it," Daskka explained.
"In that case, maybe the first version was created with the Legacy. Since it didn't take long for you to show up, the second version took a bit more research and no longer needed the Legacy to work. Then we have this, something that combines both the version with the Legacy and the version without it. That could explain why it is able to connect all the spirits together," Viper concluded.
"That makes a lot of sense. How are you able to figure all that out by yourself?" Crimson asked, turning to her twin.
Viper puffed out his chest. "Because I'm an amazing detective. That's how."
Lurize peeked over to the side where the white spymaster was standing and noticed an open folder. "There is a file here explaining all that in the summary," he said in everyone's minds.
"You suck," Crimson said, rolling her eyes.
"You couldn't just let me have it, could you?" Viper groaned.
"If you're not going to fucking help, then fucking leave!" Hera shouted, her anger rising. She knew there was little anyone could do. None of them were proper healers, but hearing them bantering as if nothing was happening made her even angrier about the situation.
"Right," Crimson said, looking toward the door. "I'm going to the cell block."
"I can't give you a quest right now," Hera replied, still casting heal after heal on Blue.
"You don't need to. Just make the conga line. Since everyone in the graveyard is still here, we have more than enough space for that," Crimson said.
"Okay. Go, see if there are any healers there," Hera replied without looking away.
Crimson nodded, and along with Viper, Lurize, and Vulcan, she stepped out. They had no healing abilities and couldn't help save Blue. The titled blades were also feeling guilty for their earlier banter. Trying to distract Hera or make her worry less had been a poor choice.
They quickly rushed to the cells and began searching for keys or any way to unlock them. The people trapped inside couldn't even see what was happening outside. At most, they could hear some of the sounds, but there was no way for them to know whether it was help or one of their captors.
The titled blades moved as fast as they could. After all, they were on borrowed time. The Blade Graveyard could only last a couple more minutes, and the moment it stopped, it would force the Empress to waste her entire mana pool if the blades were still outside her range.
Viper, Crimson, and Lurize were running around like headless chickens, desperately trying to find something that could help. Forge, on the other hand, had a different plan. He used Hera's Sonar spell, focusing it on the padlocks of the cells. After a minute or so, he crafted a key using metal from the doors.
With that, he opened the closest cell. Thankfully, the restraints inside used the same lock as the one outside. Perhaps, due to the sheer number of various chains, locks, and other restraints designed to stop someone from moving or using mana, they had cut corners to avoid losing keys.
Once Vulcan removed the iron helmet covering the prisoner's face entirely, he saw a man with a long beard, sunken eyes, and ashy skin. The man gasped for air, the closest thing to fresh air he'd had in several months. Turning to the person who had released him, the man gave a confused expression.
"I don't have time to explain. I'm here to rescue you, all of you. But we need help. Do you know any healers here?"
The man blinked slowly. He tried to speak but couldn't. Instead, using the fresh blood coming from where his nails should have been, he wrote the word "Michele."
Forge poked his head outside the cell. "Does anyone know where Michele is?"
"Michele?" Viper repeated, looking at one of the cells. Like all the others in this facility, these cells had nameplates beside them. It took the group just a few seconds to find where this "Michele" was located.
She was in the eighth cell to the left, and Vulcan quickly moved there while Crimson helped the man they had just freed out of his cell.
Forge used Sonar again but quickly frowned. This lock was much more complicated, and he wouldn't be able to recreate it in just a few seconds.
"Grab Hera. Bring her here with Blue," Vulcan told Lurize.
The Royal Tutor nodded and rushed back to the operating room to inform Hera of the situation.
"I'm doing everything I can to keep her alive. I don't know what would happen if I moved," Hera replied.
"You don't have to. I can push you. There are wheels on the gurney," Nimbus said quickly, already detaching the stoppers from the bed and beginning to push Blue out of the operating room.
Back in the cell block, Vulcan was still struggling to craft a key, while Viper searched for a guard room or something that might hold the keys. For some reason, this area of the lab was very low-tech. Perhaps someone had designed it this way to prevent prisoners from overriding electronic locks, or maybe Morgan simply had a flair for the dramatic and wanted his own medieval-style dungeon.
When Hera arrived, still crouched on the gurney, casting Heal on every inch of Blue's body, she saw Vulcan working on crafting something. The blades from the graveyard had been dismissed as their duration ended. Soon after that, Forge finally managed to create the correct key and freed Michele.
Lurize quickly grabbed a couple of potions from Hera's pouch and passed them to the healer. It took Michele a few moments to gather her bearings, but her training quickly kicked in. She moved to Blue and began performing emergency first aid. Despite her weakened state, Michele managed to close the wounds on Blue's stump and helped her recover slightly from the internal damage caused by Morgan using her as a filter.
"Blue?" Hera asked as the woman's eyes fluttered open.
"It's me. I'm here," Hera said.
The former holder of the Stormcloud Legacy forced herself to smile. "Tell… my… dad… they… are… safe," she whispered. A single tear ran down her face before she collapsed again.
"Blue!" Hera yelled, but Michele was already working.
A few more minutes passed as Vulcan continued freeing prisoners. Viper eventually returned with a keyring that could unlock the cells, speeding up the process.
About half the group had been freed when Michele turned to the Empress. "I did all I could, but whatever is hurting her now is beyond me. I'm going to help the others. Doing anything more for her would be a waste of effort."
"What do we need to do, then? To save her?" Hera asked.
"Get rid of the connection with the Strength Spirit. Or heal it somehow. Both are things I can't do," Michele replied.
"But I know who might," Hera said, turning to Nimbus. "Griffon form. Now. We are going after Neria."
She took Blue into her arms and mounted the Sentinel before tossing the rest of her potions to Michele. Leaving the prisoners to free themselves, the Empress and her court rushed off in a desperate attempt to save her friend's life.