My (Monster?) Hero Life

Chapter 265: Taboo (1)

Kace pretended not to notice as the infiltration squad left their ranks. He kept their course steady towards the barracks before them. There were too many questions on his mind right now that coupled with the strange atmosphere had him on edge. He sincerely hoped that he was wrong about something being off around the whole situation.

Lively sounds came from within the barracks, which eased the majority of his worries. 'At least they're still ok, for now.' He had half been worried that the situation had only developed recently. Thus, Sophia may have become embroiled in it when they separated at the store. However, that worry seemed to be false.

He could hear the distinct guttural tones of orcs and trolls from within. In the few moments of silence in the rowdiness, he could make out the quieter goblin voices. It seemed like the council had probably sent quite a diverse army to the North. Which was a good thing. It gave them more to work with. 

If it had just been orcs, then they could only really follow basic tactics. Such as, there's the enemy in front of you, now go bash their heads in! Which was not really a tactic if he thought about it. Still, they would be useful for drawing their enemies attention away from anything sneaky that they got up to in the background.

As Kace opened the heavy door that led inside, the whole room became quiet. Slowly, a bunch of ecstatic grins floated across the expressions of the monsters who were present. A raucous welcoming roar resounded when they realised that the Chimera had finally joined them! They all felt like the time for battle would be close at hand now that he had deigned to provide them with his presence.

Kace did his best to warmly greet his new comrades. It would not do to cause a panic, or in the case of the orcs, make them believe that they had a good fight coming just across the courtyard. Kace glanced around as he tried to pick Sophia out of the crowd. He wanted to inform her of his misgivings right away. 

She was nowhere to be seen, though. 'Strange, she definitely said she was heading straight back here.' After a few more passes of the faces in the crowd, his attention was drawn to a figure that came through a door that he had failed to notice previously. In his defence, the door was placed in such a way that you would not see it unless you explicitly knew it was there.

The newcomer was another friendly face that Kace was happy to see in one piece. Grugda grinned at him from the periphery of the crowd. Kace made his apologies as he squeezed through the group who were eager to speak with him. Grugda's expression turned from a happy one to a worried one. Which only served to confuse Kace.

"Glad to see you made it! Have you found Lilly yet?" Kace asked with a hint of awkwardness.

Grugda sighed in response and jabbed his thumb towards the door he had just come through. That alleviated another burden from Kace's mind. 'At least Elderbeard won't kill me for returning without knowing what happened to his granddaughter.' Kace let out a sigh of relief as another question floated to the front of his mind.

"What about Sophia? Has she returned yet?" 

Grugda's expression turned from a worried one to an almost apologetic expression. It seemed like he was trying to avoid making eye contact with his friend. After a moment of hesitation, he slowly and deliberately jabbed his thumb towards the same door. An awkward silence descended between the pair at this simple motion.

"Oh." Kace felt like he was at a loss for words. He understood now why Grugda had looked worried before. Kace clearly remembered the first meeting between Sophia and Vaskra. It was not exactly a comfortable situation to find yourself in. Clearly, Grugda had been forced to play the mediator in his absence. "Sorry about that."

Grugda shook his head and took Kace by the arm. He led him towards the door as if he wanted to talk outside. Kace was inclined to agree with his gesture. If the women heard his voice, any bad feelings they had right now might be directed towards him. It would be better for him, ahem, everyone if they could sort out there issues themselves. 

They quietly slipped outside and only noticed that Shadow had managed to tail them when they tried to close the door. The goblin had a severe look on his face that dared them to try and leave him out of their conversation. They could only relent to his presence if they did not want anyone else to notice that they had disappeared.

"Have you noticed?" Grugda asked in his slow tones, being the first to break the silence between the three of them.

"If you're talking about how off this city seems then yeah. Something doesn't feel right." Kace replied. He was quite relieved to discover that someone felt the same way as him without having it pointed out to them. "I sent a group to infiltrate the palace on our way over. Have you discovered anything on your end?"

"Yes," Grugda seemed reluctant to share his own thoughts.

"Come on. No matter what it is, I'll take it seriously." Kace tried to gently nudge the Eljein into sharing his thoughts on the matter. Thinking that he was just embarrassed to voice them out loud.

"The earth. Is sad. It grieves in. A way. I never thought. It could." Grugda had a pain in his voice that filled his words with intense emotions.

Kace had not expected this answer. 'The earth is grieving? What the hell does that mean?' Kace waited for Grugda to continue. However, the Eljein remained silent. 'You've got to be kidding me? That's all he has to say? Come on, give me something to work with over here!' Kace cast his eyes towards the palace. 'Hopefully, they find something more useful. Right now we're just floundering around in the dark'