Gary was already waiting for them when they left the tunnel.
"Congratulations on completing your work, you can go now - well, most of you, Alfred still needs to finish his shift."
"I’m sure Tiana won’t have anything against him tagging along with us..." Alison started, but Alfred put a hand on her shoulder and shook his head.
"Gary is right, I have a few things to take care of - I’ll see you all soon."
"Right." Gary coughed to get everyone’s attention again. "Tiana should still be on the farm, apparently the emergency was pretty big."
"Do you know what exactly happened?" Maya asked.
"I think some livestock had corruption relapse, and they couldn’t reach Sylara, so they had to contain it."
Alison’s eyes snapped to Gary in alarm.
"Are they okay? Do they have a squad of guards to help them? We shouldn’t have both come here..."
"Relax Ally." Maya patted her on the back. "I’ve put Gustav in charge before I left, if they needed backup they got it."
The capitan relaxed a little but still looked a bit tense.
"We still should see if we can help them, it doesn’t usually take this long to resolve these incidents."
"We’re going there anyway, no harm in trying to help I guess, but I wouldn’t worry too much - it’s taking them longer because usually Lady Sylara would have already solved the issue at this point."
"Whatever she found in that book better be worth that unresponsiveness..."
"So..." Calen begun. *Where are those farms?"
"On the other side of the city, we’ll have to walk quite a bit."
Calen wasn’t expecting just how big the farm turned out to be - sure, it was a place feeding thirty thousand people, but he was never that good with scale.
"Do you farm all year round?" Elira asked watching the large fields they were passing.
"Yes, one of the unexpected effects of the invasion was the disappearance of seasons - which means that with just a little help of Lady Sylara’s powers we can plant and harvest food continuously." Maya explained.
"The city’s capacity is much higher than our current population, and thanks to that we can self sustain from this one farm." Alison added. "Originally it was meant to just help the city survive in case of a siege and make it slightly more independent, but for us it’s more than enough."
"So you get your food from this farm, and Greenheart uses the divine power from the tree... But what about the other settlements? I doubt an Order of knights secretly has either of those things." Calen wondered.
"Well the Order has their own ways of procuring food, you’ll see when you get there" She shrugged. "The people of Sage’s Summit eat the same thing they did before the invasion - the miraculous fruits of the sacred vine. The Tower is the easiest, with the resources they have stashed away they can conjure up pretty much anything."
"And then there are the Riders..." Maya chuckled.
"Yes - to be completely honest no one knows how are they even surviving, much less what they eat."
"I wouldn’t be surprised if they come up with a way to eat corrupted creatures raw."
"Don’t be ridiculous, they’re still human... I think."
"What about the smaller settlements?" Elira asked. "I assume not all of humanity is gathered in just five places."
"Usually some variation of the things bigger cities do, but farming is the most popular."
"Do you know where we’ll find Tiana? I must say, combing through all the fields doesn’t sound very effective."
"The cattle section is in the far end - see those buildings over there?" She pointed at the cluster of stone houses and barns near the wall. "That’s where we’ll find her."
The animal part of the farm was a hive of activity - people were running, shouting at each other and moving materials between buildings. Alison stopped one of the workers and asked:
"Is Tiana in the containment facility?"
"Yes, she said she’ll stay there until someone can inform Lady Sylara about the situation - now if you’ll excuse me, I need to get back to work." The man rushed off leaving them behind.
"Follow me and try to stay out of the way." Alison commanded.
The ’containment facility’ turned out to be a very bulky and angular building bordering the city wall, unlike all the structures nearby it was devoid of any colour or decorations, clearly designed to keep something in at all costs.
Surprisingly the entrance to the building wasn’t on the ground level, but on an elevated platform almost ten metres off the ground. It led to a small balcony inside, overlooking the rest of the interior.
That was where they found Tiana, she was so busy observing the situation beneath her that she didn’t notice them enter.
"Tiana, we’re done with our job." The capitan called out.
She flinched, and turned around to look at the group.
"Oh, it’s you Alison." She sighed. "Were there any complications?"
"No, you can send the rest of the teams as soon as they’re ready."
"What’s the situation here? Do you need our help?"
Tiana looked slightly annoyed.
"Not unless you can convince Lady Sylara to come here." She mumbled. "Just because it’s only one this time it doesn’t mean she can ignore the problem - if another one goes berserk we’ll be in deep shit."
"Could someone kindly explain what’s happening?" Isara promoted.
"Oh right, I forgot you don’t know much." Tiana apologised. "I assume you already know that we can purify some animals to a degree - well, the fact that it’s not a complete purification is sort of a problem." Tiana pointed outside the window. "Most of the time the animals are like that.
What she was showing them was a relatively normal cow - sure, it was slightly bigger than average and had enormous horns, but it was still undoubtedly a cow.
"But sometimes when the Blight residue in their body flares up, they turn into this." She indicated to what was inside the containment facility.
Almost twice as big as the specimen outside, an absolute monster was trapped in those four walls - it had an additional pair of horns, teeth more suited to ripping flesh than grinding grass, and its red eyes were filled with murderous rage.
"This building was constructed specifically to deal with situations when one or more specimens relapse, but it can’t contain them forever, hence why we need Lady Sylara to purify them again."
"Does this happen often?" Calen asked.
"Once every few months, it’s not often enough to disrupt our day-to-day operation, but it is annoying."
"Maybe it’s a stupid question..." Calen paused. "But have you tried to find a way to purify them completely?"
"We did try a few times, but every time the test subject just died, so Lady Sylara put the project on indefinite hiatus."
The door suddenly opened, and someone walked in.
"Well, that hiatus is about to end." Sylara said as she entered the building.
"Finally done with your book?" Alison huffed.
"Absolutely, everyone should have new handbooks by tomorrow." She put her hands on her hips. "But for now let’s deal with that thing over there."
Sylara snapped her fingers, and countless green tentacles shot out from the ground, wrapping around the monster and locking it in place.
"Come Calen, you’re going to help me with this." She waved him over, and they left the building.
They approached a man standing beneath the elevated platform, leaning against the wall and observing the activity around him.
"Tom, open the door." Sylara ordered. "I’ve already secured it."
The man nodded and placed his hand on a magic circle near the edge of the wall - when it glowed with the familiar blue light, the wall split, and slowly stated moving downwards, finally disappearing seamlessly into the ground.
"So, why did you want me here exactly?" Calen asked as they approached the immobilised creature.
"We’re going to try to purify it fully." Sylara explained. "On my own I can’t do that without killing it - but now I have you, and it just so happens your power specializes on purification."
"That’s all well and good... but powers are a bit destructive, I’ll probably kill it while trying."
"Ah, but that’s exactly what I’m here for - while you’ll focus on destroying the Blight, I’ll be healing the poor thing, so that it can recreate whatever you hurt by mistake."
"I have one question before we start though - why can you only purify certain creatures?"
"As I said before, my powers are ill suited for purification, so the only things I could attempt to cleanse where the ones that didn’t get too corrupted - like the animals in my city, which only experienced the initial wave before I reinforced the barrier with my own power."
"So does it mean that together we could purify pretty much anything?"
"Well, if this test goes according to the plan, then yes, it’s entirely possible that we could." Sylara smiled. "And I have quite a few ideas on how we could use that..."