Leaving the Camp Was a Terrible Idea
"So you lost the kids. And here I thought you were professionals," Sirius said in a somewhat disappointed and mocking tone.
Standing right beside him was Luther, who looked at him for a moment with his arms crossed, thoughtful.
"We used your idea of sending the owl messenger to find them faster. But it seems they kidnapped your pet and ran the moment they received the letter you sent. Is it possible you wrote something that made them suspicious?" Luther asked calmly.
"Of course not. That's impossible. I only wrote 'hello,'" Sirius said with complete calm.
Luther froze for a moment, as if his mind needed a second to process what he had just heard. Then he slowly turned his head toward Sirius.
"Ah, yes. Definitely not suspicious at all to send a letter that simply says 'hello' to a couple of runaway kids," Luther said, shaking his head in resignation.
"What do you want to do? We could continue with the mission while Adrien and the others handle it, but…"
"We can put the mission aside for now," Sirius said immediately.
"Remus can wait a little longer. Besides, we don't have any leads on this side anyway. And he'd probably be pretty upset if he found out I let a couple of kids end up in danger just because I wanted to rescue him first," Sirius added, his tone serious but also slightly concerned.
"Don't worry about that. Just like with Sally, we made a deal so you would join us, and we will fulfill it no matter what. Because we gave our word as knights," Luther said firmly.
"Yeah, yeah, I get it. Though I'm still not really part of you until we find the lost wolf," Sirius said, waving his hand dismissively.
"It would be more helpful if that lady were here with us," he added.
"Lady Elara only came to destroy whoever hurt her granddaughter. It's not like we expected her to stay with us. According to Gema, that's just how she always does things. The three elders can be… somewhat eccentric. Though honestly, having any of them here right now might not actually be that helpful. Especially Mr. Vincent," Luther added while shaking his head.
Sirius looked at Luther for a moment, raising an eyebrow. The few times he had met Vincent, the man had seemed like a typical friendly old man. Of course, he also looked like a monster made of pure muscle, but even so, nothing about him really screamed strange.
At least not strange on Dumbledore's level.
Though, thinking about it, that was probably because he had only seen him a few times, unlike the knights who worked with him regularly.
"Maybe all old men start getting weird once they reach a certain age," Sirius said calmly.
Then the two of them began walking away from where they had been standing.
The place looked like what had once been a laboratory, now completely destroyed.
Everything was blackened and burned, as if a violent fire had swept through the place and then been extinguished far too late. Tables were overturned, instruments twisted by heat, and the floor was covered in dark scorch marks.
Only a few jars had survived the devastation, lined up among the remains of broken tables and shattered equipment.
Inside several of them floated the heads of magical creatures that Sirius recognized.
And others that were completely unfamiliar even to them.
Judging by the chains hanging from the walls and the floor, it was clear that the place had once been some kind of laboratory where prisoners had been kept.
On one of the walls, there was also a massive pentagram painted in dried blood.
…
Meanwhile, in the Veil Office, inside the headquarters of the Knights, Vincent was sitting behind his desk.
"Hahaha! So those kids managed to slip away from the brats," he said with laughter, clearly amused to learn that two kids; or more accurately four; had managed to fool several elite members of his group and escape from them so easily.
"Don't laugh, idiot. There's a worried mother," Elara said with a serious look toward the old man. She stood in front of him with her arms crossed.
Meanwhile, Alaric simply shook his head slowly.
"It might have helped if you had stayed a little longer with the knights who were sent out. You could have been useful," he said while looking at Elara.
"You know I can't stay away for too long. I have to keep an eye on those giants who could launch an attack at any moment. And I also have to watch the foreign dark wizards. We don't want something like what happened with Grindelwald to repeat itself. Even now we still maintain constant surveillance over his followers," Elara added with clear annoyance.
"Though I would actually like to see some of those mythological creatures," Alaric said thoughtfully.
"It's incredible that they're considered even more hidden from our eyes than the wizarding world itself. We only managed to find out about them because, by sheer luck, this idiot happened to have that girl among his people," Alaric added, emphasizing the word luck twice while looking at Vincent.
"Though I'm not sure it's really luck to learn that monsters even more dangerous than the ones we already considered dangerous actually exist," Elara said seriously.
"At least now many of the things we couldn't explain among the objects in the Veil or the disappearances might finally start making sense. Especially… what happened that day," Vincent said, his tone growing more serious.
Alaric and Elara frowned when they heard that. Alaric lifted a hand to the scar on his face, the same one he shared with Vincent. It was an almost unconscious gesture. When Elara noticed it, her expression darkened slightly.
All three of them were thinking about the exact same thing, and the images of that event were far too clear in their minds.
The atmosphere in the room changed instantly.
"No. It may be an estimation, but we don't know if that man was truly from this new world," Alaric said calmly while adjusting the collar of his white coat.
Vincent waved his hand dismissively, as if the topic no longer interested him, even though he had been the one to bring it up in the first place.
"It's not important right now. For the moment, I think it would be best if someone went to help the brats find Sally's children. After all, I made a promise that her kids would be safe while she's part of our group," Vincent said with complete seriousness.
"Are you going yourself?" Elara asked, her expression genuinely serious. Alaric also looked at him closely.
"Of course I am. She works with me. She's part of our family now," he said with a smile.
Though, strangely enough, he looked far too excited for someone who was supposedly just going to look for a couple of lost children.
"Besides," he said while crouching down and pulling what looked like a chest from beneath his desk. He placed it on top of the table with a heavy thud.
"I also need to test the improvements that were made to my weapons thanks to Miss Sally. While I find her children, whom I already consider my grandchildren, it'll be like killing three birds with one stone," he added with his usual smile.
"Three?" Elara asked.
"Of course. We also need to test the strength of those so-called gods to see just how dangerous that world really is," he added, while a battle aura that seemed to leak from his body began to distort the air around him.
For a moment, the knights who were guarding the surroundings of the Veil felt a sudden wave of discomfort.
As if a ferocious beast had suddenly appeared nearby.
Yet none of them could say exactly where that sensation was coming from.
Elara and Alaric looked at their companion of decades and couldn't help thinking that this was, in no way, surprising.
Both of them let out a sigh.
"This man is going to get himself killed," Elara muttered.
But she didn't try to stop him.
She knew perfectly well that doing so would be impossible.
"Just don't start a war with another country," Alaric warned while standing up from his chair.
"I'm going to check on my grandchildren before returning to the castle," he added simply before leaving.
…
While all of this was happening in different places, inside Sally's house Mor stood in the living room with a serious expression, staring at the sofa where Sally was sleeping peacefully.
She had been forced to cast a calming spell on her.
Sally had been ready to run straight to the United States to search for her children herself, even knowing that Zeus might kill her instantly if she crossed certain boundaries.
Mor herself wanted to do exactly the same thing.
But she had a far more physical limitation that prevented her from leaving Europe.
And that only made the anger on her face grow stronger.
"Those boys… I'll give them a good spanking when they come back," she said, clearly annoyed at the two children who had managed to worry both their mother and their godmother at the same time.
Meanwhile, far away from there, the two culprits were traveling peacefully on a train with their partners in crime.
Suddenly, both of them felt a cold shiver run down their backs.
But neither of them had any idea where it had come from.