A Wolf's Howl, A Fairy's Wing

A single werewolf raced through a mountainous region filled with taiga forests. His clawed feet thumped on the cold, snowy ground with methodical, almost mechanical steps.

His gaze was dull, and pointed straight ahead, his eyes focused, yet unfocused, as if he was trying to accomplish single goal, while constantly wondering what goal that was.

This was Victor.

His mistress had given him the command to scout ahead, and he couldn't even think of a reason to disobey.

He had left Erik and his group behind about two hours ago, while they stayed back and waited for news about Frostvik's current situation.

Two hours worth of distance was enough for them Erik and the others to stay out of Frostfang's grip, should the man still be hanging around the place.

Naturally, Erik had used his link to Nora to hear what she knew on the matter, but it hadn't helped much.

Apparently, Viljar had ordered her and Anne to get Olaf to the nearest camp for medical treatment, while he stayed behind to see how the fight between Frostfang and Björn played out. Not long after that, Viljar had joined them, saying that Björn had simply keeled over, an hour after the fight started.

When it was over and Björn fell down, Frostfang had let out a deep sigh, but otherwise remained still as he stared at Björn's crumpled up corpse with an unreadable expression. After a few moments of silence, Viljar tried to approach him to talk about what happened, but Frostfang simply ordered him to rejoin the others and check on Olaf.

So, the slightly concerned werebear was forced to leave him there, and that was the last Nora knew of Frostfang's location.

Still, with the war going on, Erik doubted Frostfang had remained in place for the last few days, not to mention that the third-ranker likely wouldn't expect Erik to return to this place. Of course, doubt was not good enough, thus, Victor was sent in to scout out the situation.

The enslaved werewolf finally had Frostvik in view, but didn't slow down. He kept sprinting on all fours until he finally stood still in the middle of an empty town. Or at least, the remains of one.

Most of the houses had been turned into frozen ruins, as they had been first demolished by the physical struggle between Björn and Frostfang, then hit by their ice-related abilities. Only two things remained relatively intact: the graveyard, and Erik's house.

While Frostfang couldn't have known which house had once belonged to his teacher, he simply assumed it was the one those girls had come running out of.

Clearly, Frostfang had made extensive efforts to draw Björn away from these two places during their fight, as he didn't want to destroy the places that were most important to Runa.

Still, it had been a battle between two third-rankers. This was a kind of battle that a town like Frostvik couldn't withstand.

The only reason there wasn't more damage was because grand-scale destruction was usually the domain of Arcanists.

Victor moved robotically as he straightened himself to stand on his legs, and looked around for any sign of movement, naturally relaying all the information to Emily.

It seemed empty, but that wasn't good enough.

He took a sigil crafting tool from the pocket of his stretchy pants, and bent down to start drawing on the ground.

While Victor himself had some minor ability with sigils, this was all Emily, who was simply using Victor as a medium to create this sigil.

It took a little while, as this was a complicated sigil, and Emily was not only inexperienced in general, but this was also her first time drawing a sigil with someone else as the medium.

Still, half an hour later, the sigil was done, and it flashed shortly, before a subtle wave of power quickly extended itself in a circular radiance. It extended further than Victor could see, but mere moments later, the wave quickly returned to whence it came, and a flood of information entered Victor's, and thus Emily's, minds.

This was a detection sigil with a high range, but a serious limitation: it only worked once.

After it was drawn, this sigil would gather information about anything and everything in a large radius, but then lose its power, forcing the sigil-crafter to create another one if they wanted a continuous stream of information.

Luckily, only once was enough. They just needed to know if Frostfang was close enough to notice what was happening in Frostvik. Naturally, there were ways to circumvent this sigil, such as a third-ranker covering themselves with their omnisense, but from what Elora had seen, there was no way Frostfang was proficient enough with omnisense to do what Katya had done.

After the sigil revealed no Frostfang in the surroundings, Victor began drawing the sigil a second time.

Meanwhile, in the place where Victor had left Erik and the others, Emily opened her eyes. While she didn't need to concentrate on her connection with Victor like this the whole time, she did need it for drawing the sigil and receiving the information.

Luckily, with the method for drawing the sigil now stuck in Victor's brain, she wouldn't need to keep concentrating anymore, and would simply receive a signal from Victor if the sigil found anything out of the ordinary.

In front of her, was a mildly heartwarming scene of Erik and Astrid training together with Alice as they taught her everything they knew about being a Runebound. Their surroundings were slightly destroyed, as they had interspersed their training with sparring, which Alice would witness with bated breath and shining eyes.

Next to Emily sat Emma in the lotus position as she explored her glyphs and filled her aetherium storage.

As soon as Emily opened her eyes, Emma noticed, and looked at her big sister with her signature bright smile. "Welcome back, big Em! How did it go?"

Emily's heart warmed every time she saw that smile on Emma's face. And perhaps without realizing it, her gratitude towards Erik increased at the same time, as she knew who was responsible for putting that smile back on Emma's face after London.

She offered her sister a small smile and answered. "Looks like we're clear, little Em."

At the same time, Erik came up to them and overheard Emily's answer. So he nodded, "Good. Did you tell Victor to keep checking as often as he can?"

Emily turned her attention to Erik and nodded, trying to make it as non-deferential as her new Bond of Service would allow her. "Of course!" she snorted. "As if I'd forget!"

Erik had noticed Emily had become a little more feisty lately, likely in an effort to compensate for the enforced feelings of obedience towards him that flowed from her Bond of Service. Erik chuckled as he actually enjoyed seeing her like this.

Unfortunately for Emily, he enjoyed teasing her even more.

So he patted Emily's raven-black hair with a grin, and uttered a phrase that made Emily groan: "Good girl."