[Hm… should I tell you… ooh! Let's do it the fun way.]
"So what's the fun way?" Alesha asked, feeling a sense of trepidation.
[Ding! New Quest Available!]
[Quest: Mystery of the Broken City
Goal: Find clues as to where you are, what happened here, and why!
Quest Conditions: Discover 3 significant clues and form a logical hypothesis as to what happened in this city
Reward: 100 XP, 2 Chaos Energy
Penalty: None
Failure Condition(s): Fail to find enough clues OR come up with a stupid hypothesis even with sufficient clues]
Alesha felt surprised. This quest was actually … reasonable? Since when did Rogork give her quests that 1) aligned with her goals, 2) had reasonable conditions, and 3) lacked a penalty? Since never!
While she felt kind of delighted at the development, it also made her feel incredibly wary. Rogork was not the kind of being to give out freebies. Just why was this quest so lenient, when even her very first quest had pretty much been designed to make her fail? What was Rogork's ulterior motive?
[Heh, no ulterior motive, just helping you out~] Rogork claimed in a sing-song voice.
Yeah, right. Rogork was never helpful for no reason.
[Hey~ that's no fair!] It complained. [What about when I hinted to you about the Banshee's scream? Or poured Korak directly in your mouth for you in your moment of need? Or put the laundry basket into your inventory when you were feral, hmm? I did all those things out of the pure goodness of my heart! I am offended!]
Alesha rolled her eyes as she navigated the rubble, searching for clues. "Alright, so you've been helpful lately. I'll give you that much. But you could have warned me the earring was cursed as soon as he put it on me, then -"
Pausing at the painful recollection, Alesha gulped. She continued more quietly, "- All that followed could have been avoided."
[Sure, whatever.]
When the System didn't add anything else, Alesha decided to move on.
There were many strange things to be found amongst the broken buildings. Looking around, most of them had been broken at least in half, if not disintegrated entirely. The weird part was that there seemed to be no consistent method of demolition.
Some of the buildings looked to have been burnt, others were knocked down with blunt force, and still others simply vanished from their places. There were even a trail of them where some gigantic creature (were they called Kaiju in old Earth media?) had passed through, tearing them down with claws.
"Just what the hell happened here?" Alesha muttered.
In her heart, she had a theory already.
She could faintly feel it. Lingering Chaos Energy in the air, on the rubble, in the streets. But she didn't want to admit it. Why here? Why had Toltura's Army come here?
Still, she couldn't be certain. Was it really them? Sure, nothing else really made sense, but she had a gut feeling it was different from the other cities somehow. She had no evidence for that, but looking around, it somehow… felt different. Like the Chaos Energy here had a different parent source than of the ones she'd seen through the streams.
As she wandered the rubble searching, this feeling only grew. But why? What was different here from the other cities?
She saw traces of alien creatures everywhere. Strangely shaped footprints, a few piles of multi-colored dung, large scales that couldn't have been native to Elantris, and a giant feather stuck near-vertically amidst a pile of stones. Had that landed there naturally? Or was it propped up on purpose? Upon investigating, there were traces that humans had camped there a while ago but no one was nearby.
Sitting on a cement pillar that someone had dragged over somehow for a bench, Alesha propped her elbow on one knee and her chin in her hand. She tapped her cheek in contemplation.
So far, she'd found evidence that some sort of disaster (caused by something or somethings with Chaos Energy) had destroyed the city. The path of the "kaiju" beast, the traces of alien creatures, the lingering Chaos Energy all around. Yet something kept nagging at her. Where were the bodies of the deceased? In the streams she'd watched before, people were dying left and right under the assault of the Chaos-attuned creatures. In this city, though, there weren't nearly enough corpses. There had been one or two so far, but the streets were far too clear. In a disaster like the ones she'd seen streamed, people would have been funneled into open spaces, then likely attacked by the invading creatures.
So why were there no corpses in the streets?
Why were the corpses limited to being among the rubble?
Had the people actually had prior warning this time? Had they been able to evacuate?
None of this made sense! It felt more like a demolished ghost town than a heavily populated city struck with a sudden disaster.
Alesha felt confused. She should feel relieved that she wasn't seeing corpses everywhere, but instead she found herself feeling more distressed because of it. If the people had indeed been given enough warning to evacuate, the question was why. For what purpose would a Goddess of Chaos, who (as she had heard from Udon the "Beast Succubus" back at the Academy) delights in sudden destruction and terror, give prior notice for an invasion?
To spread panic? Overcrowd other cities with refugees?
Or was there some other purpose entirely?
----
Somewhere else on Elantris, at the same time
A young man in a military uniform sat at a desk, leaning backwards in a rolling chair as his gaze scanned the dozen or so display screens in front of him. He yawned lazily, closing his eyes and stretching.
"Private Smith," a grumpy older man barked.
The young man instantly sat up straight in his seat. "Yessir, it won't happen again," he apologized, examining the screens diligently now.
A moment later, he stood up in shock. "Sergeant, sir! Movement spotted in Sector C! It appears to be a mutant human."
The older man grunted and approached, adjusting his belt. He scrolled back through the feed to find out where she had come from. At that point, he discovered something strange: rather than crawling out of some hidden underground area, the girl appeared out of thin air. He zoomed in on the image. Though the quality of the video feed was significantly lower than he would have liked, it was enough to confirm his suspicions.
It was the girl who had been reported missing the day before Iritia went to shit.
He quickly reported as such to the higher-ups, attaching the appropriate video segments and assigning an additional officer to surveillance duty -- with special instructions to keep track of the girl's whereabouts at all times, without exposing the drones' existence. They couldn't let the girl know she was being watched.
Shortly afterwards, in an upstairs office, a man in the highest-quality military suit available leaned back and propped his feet up on his desk. He stroked his peppered goatee as he replayed the videos. "Alesha Jane Williams, we've got you now," he mumbled with a satisfied grin.
After decades of work in the Alliance Loyalty Division, Jared Milligan's instincts were tingling… the girl had secrets -- and they were juicy ones.