Chapter 365: Losing Control

"Put the weapon down! Now!" One of the guards demanded as he pointed his weapon at Frey.

"My wife is missing and you're wasting my time!" Another voice yelled out.

Frey huffed, his narrowed eyes darting from person to person. "That doesn't mean you can just search through my stuff like you own me! Back off!" He swung his poleaxe in an arc to keep them back, a warning.

Elero turned to Doevm. "Say something," she pleaded. "You always have a plan, don't you? I don't want to fight people who've just lost their loved ones. Olpi doesn't either, isn't that right?"

Olpi hesitated: "L-let's just calm down."

Doevm's glare was fixated on the threats in front of him. His hands clenched and unclenched. "If those swine dare to lay their filthy hands on any of us…" He spat. "It's taking all I have to keep still."

Elero sighed. "I hope Thomas is doing better than we are."

Meanwhile, in a ruined estate…

With his weakness still fresh in his mind, Thomas forced himself to turn away from the entrance. When push came to shove, he fell. The worst part of it all? He had no excuses. He prepared in every way. He had dreamt of glory, been trained to kill, and fought in battles, yet that was all on paper. He failed in the swamp, dying alone in a cave. He failed on the battlefield, nearly getting killed by the demon king. He failed in the ruin because he couldn't even bear the possibility of losing for a third time. His stomach let out a painful grumble that put him on his knees.

He took a deep breath to steel himself, picking up faint scents as he did so. He pushed himself off the pillar and forced a smile. 'The only way is forward.'

He sniffed the air again. Among the dozens of scents littering the room, he focused on the clear trails. Of those, some vanished beyond doors in the back wall, and others darted up the stairs.

Thomas had heard the lycanthrope clamber up the side of the estate but he chose the stairs, because those scents were the thickest, the closest. He pressed his body against the stairs' diagonal and crawled up. It was ridiculous but at least it worked for a novice assassin. He paused as a lengthy creak rang out.

He frowned because he was in between steps. It couldn't have been him. It was someone else. A person! The scent was so strong he could practically taste it. He skipped up the last two steps and slipped around the corner, strangely eager to find a living, breathing mea...person.

He emerged in a narrow corridor, where the scents both expanded in number and branched out. Thomas took a few steps forward, then a few steps back. It was as if he had walked into a painting; he couldn't feel his distance change relative to the stone wall looming at the end of the corridor. He pressed onward while sticking to a lengthy, moth-eaten rug to quiet his careful steps.

Some of the doors were already open, while others were locked. They sagged from their rusted hinges. If he pressed them inwards, they screeched against the hardwood. Of his discoveries were bedrooms' stained mattresses, bathless bathrooms, nails and holes within the outlines of missing decorations, and closets. The hall never ceased to disappoint him, until he opened the sixth door and found a murder of crows.

A rat's motionless remains were hungrily knocked from beak to beak. A circle of beating black feathers. A particularly gluttonous crow flapped away with an eye dangling from its beak, the rest squawking insults at it before gobbling their fill of the feast. Sideliners, awaiting their turn, shifted their black eyes towards the uninvited guest.

The Shadox's stomach grumbled. It leapt into the crowd and snapped at the nearest crow, its jaws missing by a hair's breadth. It reached into the mass of flapping wings and its claws wrapped around a straggler's leg.

The bird pecked and cawed in a desperate attempt to free itself. A line of drool escaped the Undead's mouth as it watched its meal struggle in vain. The crow scratched its hand but wounds healed. It cocked its head to the side and threw the bird down.

The crow let out a painful screech and flailed on the ground; helpless. Its wing was broken and broken toys weren't fun, so the Shadox finished it.

The creature swallowed the last bite, then stared up at the ceiling. Its eyes twitched, as did its entire body. Its mouth stretched into a beak. A wave of black feathers crawled out of its spinal cord and spread through its body like a plague. Ten toes stretched into eight claws. It let out an ear-piercing screech as air rushed out of its shifting lungs. In an instant, it returned to its human state and collapsed.

Thomas blinked.

He was standing in front of a closed door while staring at a bloodied feather, which he twirled between his fingers. He scanned the corridor. It was as empty as he found it. 'When did I get here?' he thought. He closed his eyes and listened. The normal, ominous silence breathed reassurance into his ears. He frowned. 'I can't think about the small things. I need to keep moving.' He sniffed the air. There was nothing.

There were no faint trails, nothing apart from the ruin's innate stench: decay. He frowned and tried again, then again. Both attempts earned him nothing. 'What the hell is going on with me?' he thought. 'First I froze up, and now this? Where did I even get a feather from? Why am I standing in front of a random door?' His hand flew to his stomach. He wasn't full but he wasn't as hungry. He suppressed the urge to curse. 'I guess nothing bad happened. It was just a crow.' He took three deep breaths. 'I'm ok. I'm ok. I'm ok.'

'Why am I standing in front of this door again?' He racked his mind but came up with nothing. Since he didn't have a reason not to, he opened it, stepping right past the deep claw marks matching his slowly receding claws.

He walked into a study, which was much cleaner than the other rooms. Patchwork stitches kept cotton inside the three-cushion couch, opposite a fireplace, as well as the reading chairs to his left and right. The dust, dirt, and decay had been swept away from a simple desk, which sat under a boarded up window and between two empty bookshelves. Lying in the middle of it all was a living, breathing bear.

'Wait a second,' Thomas thought as he crept around the couch. The bear's chest bulged in awkward places, and life was gone from its open eyes. "Hello," he called out. The bulges shifted but nothing more. He unsheathed a dagger, one of two given to him by master Alexander, and with his free hand grabbed the pelt. 'I won't be caught off guard again,' he thought as he yanked, revealing three people huddled beneath it.

Their emaciated bodies rose and shrunk with each labored breath that passed through their cracked lips. They were as pale as snow. They stabbed at him with fire pokers.

Thomas raised his dagger and deflected the first strike. He hadn't put much strength into it but the poker was knocked out of the man's grip. He stepped back before the other two strikes could reach him but he didn't have to. The other two were a boy and a girl, who tripped over one another and fell to the ground coughing.

"Wait, wait!" Thomas exclaimed but the man came at him in a feral craze. He threw himself at Thomas, who squirmed out of his weak grip and slammed him on the couch. He didn't use life essence or he might have killed him. "Stop, I'm not trying to hurt you."

"Sinners!" the man screamed as he leapt back up only for Thomas to shove him back down.

"What's with you people? Ah-" He glanced down at a poker, stabbed clear through his knee by the girl he had neglected.

The boy reeled back but as he took a good look at Thomas, he let the weapon fall from his grasp: "Wait, father stop!"

The man called father was as stubborn to stand up as he was to listen. He reeled back for a wild haymaker. Thomas thought about using life essence but he would likely break his hand. He couldn't duck either, not with a fire poker lodged in his knee. Luckily, the boy tackled his father and held him.

All that was left was the girl. Thomas may have been surprised by her stab since she had given her only real weapon up, he simply pushed her down.

The father saw this and growled like an animal but the boy held strong, still pleading for him to stop.

The study's occupants took a few moments to breath and assess the situation. The boy released his father, who plopped down on the couch and put his head in his hands. "I'm sorry. I heard something trying to break in and I thought it was that creature...I was prepared to die. I cannot apologize enough, yet I have nothing to offer you."

It was true. The three of them had nothing but rags and things they had found within the ruin, such as the fire pokers.

Thomas leaned forward. "Actually, there is something you can give me."

"What could that be?" the father asked.

Thomas smiled: "Information."