The scent grew thicker as I pushed deeper. Weak traces of foxkin, wolfkin, tigerkin, and many more, but most potently—dogkin became evident.
The city might’ve tried to make them vanish into the background, but their scent told me the truth.
They were here.
Packed together.
Trapped.
Waiting for salvation that may never come.
My steps slowed as the walls closed in. The air grew heavier, more humid, more suffocating. A mass of sorrowful scent lingered like an invisible fog, clinging to my nostrils. It wasn’t just sadness but despair.
Then I saw it.
Pens.
Not houses. Not prisoner cells. Pens.
Cages meant for farm animals.
The same ranch-like enclosures I saw in Emberfang, where they kept the elves, humans, and dwarves they ate. Barbed wire surrounded the compounds, wooden walkways ran overhead where lionkin guards patrolled, and food troughs were placed on the dirt floor in insulting likeness to livestock feeding zones.
<…They were butchered.> My voice was no louder than a breath. <That’s why Blossom didn’t smell them here. The others. The ones who lived in these pens before.>
<They made space…> Kitsara muttered. <Blossom… the lack of elven, dwarven, and human scent… They purged them to make room, didn’t they?>
<Yes…>
A bitter wave of nausea rose in my throat. My ears flattened, and my entire body trembled. Not from fear, but rage. I was enraged at the knowledge of the lives cruelly discarded and the sight of so many of my kind crammed into pens like they weren’t even worthy of being placed in prisoner cells meant to hold humanoids.
I circled along the outskirts of the ranch with my nose twitching, heart hammering.
Then I froze. I knew that scent. No, I felt it before I even processed it. It hit me like lightning.
A soft, soothing scent, like lavender and freshly baked bread. A mature, calm presence. Natalie.
And the second, made up of wildflowers and mischief, energetic and unfiltered, like wind through a summer field. Poppy.
My knees buckled for a second.
<They’re here!> I whispered, with my voice trembling as I instinctively began rushing toward their scent. <They’re alive… They’re alive! Master!!>
<Wait!> Kitsara hissed sharply in my mind. <Don’t move. Look.>
I blinked through blurry vision and glanced around.
Detection wards. Everywhere. Dozens of them. Enchantment sigils carved into the dirt, magical tripwires crisscrossing the air, illusion arrays hidden under pebbles and leaves.
<They’ve turned this place into a net,> Kitsara muttered grimly. <You trip even one, the whole district goes on alert.>
<But I’m invisible,> I argued weakly, still desperate to rush to my mother’s and sister’s side.
<These things don’t just see you. Some sense mana flow, body heat, spiritual pressure… hell, one of them’s probably cursed to trigger if anyone’s happy or excited within ten meters. You’d set them off, Blossom.>
I bit my lip so hard I tasted blood.
But then, Kitsara chuckled.
A quiet, smug, silky chuckle.
<Guess it’s finally time for Lady Kitsara to shine~> she purred haughtily. <Stand back, you sexy void mutt. I’m going to show you why Nine-Tailed Sorceresses are the apex when it comes to the art of infiltration.>
I blinked.
<You’re only at three tails.>
<Details. Minor. Inconsequential. Witness greatness instead of barking arguments.>
…
With a dramatic spin in midair, her tails flared out as she began gathering mana. Her illusions, while not overwhelming like Yoruha’s, the true Nine-Tailed Sorceress’s, who was probably snoozing at home, they might still get the job done.
Kitsara’s silhouette dissolved in the air, and in her place, a sleek little rat blinked into existence.
Her fur was ash-gray with a streak of white running from snout to tail, and her whiskers twitched as she stretched experimentally, making her tiny paws scratch against the ground.
<Oh, Kitsara…> she snickered mentally, smug satisfaction oozing from every syllable. <You absolute, gorgeous genius of a woman. Honestly, Quinnie doesn’t shower you in enough affection for how awesome you are.>
<Shush.>
This wasn’t just an illusion. This was [Perfect Form], a morphing technique refined by the Nine-Tailed lineage, a fusion of illusion and transformation that let her become what she imagined, both in mana signature and physical form. And right now, she was the world’s most fabulous rat.
Her tiny claws pitter-pattered against the stone as she scurried toward the fence, weaving around detection wards with the ease of someone who saw mana like a spider saw web lines.
<These wards weren’t meant to alert for rats,> she muttered with a toothy grin, explaining to no one in particular. <If they were, they’d go off every five seconds.>
She darted through a small gap in the fencing that was barely wide enough for her little rat body and emerged into the ranch.
Her nose twitched.
Cages. All of them. Not grouped together in one massive pen, but segregated, both racially and sexually.
The first held foxkin men, many dozens of them. Their lean bodies were stripped down to rags and their eyes hollow.
Next, wolfkin women. Huddled together for warmth, eyes darting every time a lionkin passed by their cell. Kitsara paused just long enough to scowl before moving on.
It was like a cruel, twisted bestiary. Bearkin cubs separated from their mothers. Catkin girls sleeping in piles to keep from freezing at night. Every pen was a new little corner of hell.
And then, there it was.
One massive pen, the largest she’d seen yet, was crammed wall-to-wall with dogkin women.
They were everywhere—sitting, sleeping, pacing, some just staring off into nothing.
<I’ve found them,> Kitsara whispered through the link.
<Do you see them?! Mama and Poppy?!> Blossom’s voice cracked in her mind, full of hope and the overwhelming desire to see them with her own two eyes.
<Well, probably, but I don’t know ’cause I got no clue how they look.>
<Oh! Right. Natalie has long brown hair… It’s always kept very neat. And she’s tall and calm and beautiful… Poppy’s short, red-haired, a little fireball! Her tail’s fluffier than Blossom’s, and she always had scraped knees from running around too much!>
Kitsara grumbled. <Alright, hold your void-stalker panties, I’m looking.>
She scurried in, weaving between bare feet and twitching tails, scanning every face she could see.
But then a hand came for her.
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