A Lack of......

As they walked down more streets passing buildings that presence never left them no matter where they went. "Xilo isn't even reacting." She thought she would have seen something from him by now with his usual detecting skills which meant he was aware of it and ignoring it or clueless. Regardless of what it was, she was curious to find out. She had grown quite a lot stronger since the last time Xilo had seen her and she was eager to see how much better she was from before. She had always felt Xilo was never much weaker then her however now it might be a tad bit different.

"Hey Xilo do you notice anything weird or strange?"

"I don't think so, at least from what I can tell. Did you find anything yourself?"

"Ehhh, no I think it's just my imagination."

Choosing to not bring it up anymore Xelfia let them walk in silence with occasional chatter as they navigated the streets to the city exit. Once they were there they exited onto a bridge on the opposite side they entered the first time around and began to cross it. "Still here." The whole time that presence had never left them but no matter how hard she looked she couldn't find it. Talking with Tearia Xilo perked his ears up as he crossed the bridge. "It's fading." The presence he felt following them had begun to fade, finally leaving him an opportunity to pull some tricks. Scattering some darkness around him and the group he looked around for anybody as he hid all their presences from them.

"There we go, we should be safe now. Sorry about that Xelfia, I didn't want to alert them if possible but this bridge should have given us enough distance to lose them along with my darkness."

"What does your darkness have to do with it."

"I learned quite a few new tricks with it, one of them being able to make it harder to detect others. There's a few others but we can save those for later. For now we can travel in peace."

"So it's your darkness that makes you so hard to detect, I always wondered why you seemed so difficult to sense sometimes."

"I suppose it's just a natural perk of it though that means whoever is following was probably latching onto you three."

"Did you want to do anything about it or leave it alone for now?"

"For now just leave it alone, we have more important things to do."

Stepping off the bridge, the four of them continued in peace with no one else trying to follow them. They still had half the day left which Xilo hoped to arrive near the end of the day. "Which means we need to stay the night but that's fine." If Tearia could help them he assumed it might take a day or two until it was finished. After that was over they would come back and move on to the next job. Right now he really didn't want to think about what he would do if Tearia failed. He knew Tearia said she might not be able to help but he had hope.

Keeping up their darkness they eventually came across a small town a couple hours away from the city. It was smaller than even his hometown though which took him by surprise. There wasn't even a guard blocking the entrance anymore to stop people. "All sick or something else?" Taking some caution in his step he increased the darkness that encased them as they snuck in. He didn't want to take any chances so playing it safe was his best choice.

"Even the streets are empty."

"They look like they haven't been walked on in days."

"How did they let it get to this..."

Hearing the girls whispers from behind him he placed himself next to a wooden building. "Anyone home?" Sneaking his Astral Energy in he tried to see if he could find any people inside but as far as he could tell it was completely empty. "Weird." Moving on to the next building he went down the street checking the rest looking for signs of life however he found nothing. Walking to the center of the street he removed his darkness since he couldn't keep it up anymore. "Too much power to keep it up longer." Looking around he looked at all the buildings, thoughts flew through his head.

"Maybe we went to the wrong place?"

Tearia tried to stay positive as she said that.

"No, the sign in the front said this was the place and these were the directions we were given for the job.

Xilo knew for a fact he saw the same name on the job paper.

"Then where are the people here? This place isn't too far from the city right, so not much could have happened without them knowing or in the time we tried to get here."

"You'd be surprised, Xelfia. A town full of sick people that can't defend themselves. A lot can happen no matter how close help is."

"So you think they were attacked then Tearia?"

"I'm not saying that but it's not something we can write off either."

"We still have a lot of the town left to explore so let's not jump to conclusions just yet you two. Let's check some more."

Xilo found it a little weird but there was still more to look over in this town. "There is no way it's just empty." Trying to stop even himself from jumping to conclusions he calmed himself as he walked forward. There were still places that had to be checked and this was a good distraction. "Bandits?" If someone really did attack this time though he was ready for it. Keeping his guard up along with the others they bounced from building to building looking for people.

"....Nnn."

Eventually Relia felt a large group of presences nearby.

"Over...here...."

Telling the others she brought them together and pointed in the direction she felt people in.