A Table Already Set (Part 1)

Nothing would have betrayed his non-human nature if not for the slitted pupils and the claws at the end of the fingers holding a communication amulet.

"Dead?" The creature looking like an old man echoed in disbelief. "All of them?"

"And at the same time." The man behind the desk could hardly contain the grief in his voice. "Do you know what this means?"

"Either they were rounded up and slaughtered or they killed themselves." The old man pondered. "Since there's been no rumor about a sudden mobilization of the army, it must be suicide."

"Which means they faced an enemy they knew they couldn't defeat or even escape from." The ordinary-looking man flipped the communicator in his fingers, counting the missing runes.

"Could it be another of those weird elite soldiers the Mage Association sent after us in the past months?" The old man asked, unknowingly referring to the members of the Queen's Corpse.