What had originally been a trip that she worried would have been for nothing had turned into something that she could have at the very least pointed towards as an indication that whatever was going on in the provinces that were further out from the Church’s point of influence were not to be taken lightly. Rather, they were clearly meant to have been focused on and this was a very good indication of that. Whatever had been affecting Baska, there was no doubt in her mind that there was now at least some degree of influence going on between heretic involvement and whatever was affecting the people and the wild life nearby. It was a recipe for disaster which while she did not care at all towards the people or have any strong feelings about what might have happened to them, what was very clear was that if this contagion, whatever these people were looking to do to the people, it posed a huge risk of spreading, and in that aspect, it was something that they could not afford to allow happen, nor one in which she could have permitted to occur should it have spread throughout the rest of Fiore if given the chance. The main thing in which she worried about, it was not the people so much, but rather how the Church would be viewed if it knew of the contagion and allowed it to spread. Augusta would not have been the one who would take the fault for this as her expedition here was one in which she had chosen to conduct on her own, rather than involve anyone, and therefore, there was no knowledge that she was even here. That was often how things went, her having been given enough leeway and freedom that while there would have been others who no dobut would have bene penalized and would be forced to suffer for their actions, she could carry on and go about them like it was no issue whatsoever. The biggest issue was that if it were something htat more affected the people, eventually those who did not reside in Baska or otherwise travelled to and from there would tell of what was going on, as while it had been contained up to this point, eventually it would get to a point where it could not be, and then panic would spread, and word would travel all throughout Fiore, to the point where the Church might have looked weak, allowing such a dangerous contagion to run wild. It might have cast them in a negative light, or evne worse yet, cause some who might have had mixed feelings about the Chruch as a whole to instead view their own relgion as a more righteous pathway to take. And while Augusta woul have loved the diea of putting every single one of htem to the pyres, that would be too time consuming and would be a drain on Church resources and time than anything else.

500/3000

As had become their per usual basis of contact, Augusta was expecting to have received a letter informing her of what was to happen next, of what the doctor – who she had come to know now as being more of an influential figure within Baska than what she might have originally believed him to be – had planned next. Whether or not things would further escalate or not, it remained to be seen, though it was likely given their discussion the other night regarding what they had noticed near the watering source and of what she witnessed with the two individuals, it was not likely that htings were going to end calmly, ro at the very least, would not efurther escalate tensions that apparently had been ongoing for a long period and had otherwise been kept quiet form the rest of the people. It remained unlikelyt aht things were going to end up calming down though, as things right now had been more centralized and focused in being more a calm before the storm technique, a chnce to test the perimeter defenses and ensure that there will be little as resistance as possible. But it was also the case that the efforts had quickly been handled and dealt with, thereby reducing the amount of information and strength from in which an early strike would hope to provide them with. If a scouting party is killed off quickly enough before they can obtain information or otherwise return, the effort to infilitrate might have worked, but it still would be regarded as a failure due to them having failed to return. In that, both the offensive unit and the defensive unit can look to them as both failures and successes and can then also assess what went wrong, and what did not. From there, they can adapt and work to win when the eventual conflict does come to take place. As Augusta monitored what was going on, whether or not this was such the case or not, she was impressed by how Baska was reacting to these efforts, but the fact that these attacks were taking place, and that whomever these people were, that they were managing to enter and cause as much trouble as they were was far from a comforting sign. If there was no reaction to which the doctor and whomever else would have been responsible for the defense of Baska would react forcefully, it would very likely lead to a scenario in which they would be unable to do anything other than eventually lose the city. That time was drawing closer and closer and if they did nothing, Baska was going to fall. If it came to that, it would be razed to the ground in an effort to squash any resistance by the Church, but again, when taking into consideration the spendature of resources, it was very unlikely that it would have been something by which the Church would have wanted. Augusta might have, but that would come.

1000/3000

The letter did finally arrive, and a part of her was expecting that it was again going to be something cryptic, something that would have led her to believe that things were either far worse or otherwise far more dire than what the doctor had been willing to reveal to her. It remained a huge question mark for her, and she was not overwhelming thrilled by it, but when she noticed that it had arrived by a courier, she realized that things were moving forward, potentially in a manner that she was looking forward to. This meant that he was in a position where he could not have been disturubed, not enough to allow for the right time to subtley drop a letter in a secretative location, but rather it was one in which he had to get a message out to Augusta and could not afford to wait for the right time. Whatever he had planned, it was very clear that it was something that had to happen now, or at the very least, very, very soon. When Augusta did arrive at the hospital, it was very clear that he was annoyed to say the least, angry as a far more realistic interpretation of his behavior right now. The bodies in which had otherwise filled the hospital seemed to have been gone, thought he smell of them lingered about for a long while as Augusta originally entered into the buililng, though as time went, she began to come to find that the smell was fading away. As to what had happened to the bodies, she did not know, nor did she particualry care as to the reasoning why, but she could see the stains of blood that appeared more greenish than it did crimson red like that of a normal body, indicating htat something might have happened to the bodies, perhaps some experiements or something of that nature. That meant that they were trying to learn what they could, which was a positive sign, but it was a question as to if it would have been a little too late for their own good. Augusta was wondering what was going to happen next, if he was going to enetually tell her just what it was that he was hoping to do, some osrt of revelation that might have taken place as to the whole thing, but right now, it was very clear that there were many things that were rushing through the man’s head, mumblings being uttered out from his lips though it not making much sense as to the whole thing. She wondered if it would have been best that she leave and allow this man the time to comprehend and actually get a clue as to what was going on, but that at least right now did not seemto have been the case. Rather, it was more and more looking as though she would just have to wait until whatever panic he was under died down some.

1500/3000

Augusta finally got the attention from the man that she felt that she had deserved from the moment that she had entered the hostpital. At this point, this was becoming something which she realized was proably a worthless effort, given how much it was that this man had worked to ignore her time and time again. The attention ghtat she deserved, and it was a large amount of it, was not something that she was going to have gotten out of this man, and some of that might have been attributed to his status within the city of Baska. Some of it might have been panic or worry, but either way it was very clear she was expecting too much out of him. The doctor explained that whatever this group had been doing in the past, whatever differences there might have been between them and the people of Baska, there was no tolerance towards their actions now. They had been going too far this time around and it was time that the people of Baska were allowed to live without the fear and concern for what these people might have tried to do next. As a sort of last desperate effort, he was hoping that Augusta would be able to serve as a sort of mediator, to provide them with a chance to see that things could have been resolved, though that was a huge question mark in itself. To Augusta’s dismay, the doctor gave her the address of where this gang was located, which made her wonder just why it was that he did not give her the address earlier. With everything that he had appeared to have known about these people, that they might have been involved in cultist affairs, and yet, even in spite of this, he did not tell her that. Augusta heavily wondered about going about and killing the man right there as he stood, but she restrained herself with as much restraint as she was able to, though her anger was apparent throughout her face and this man knew it too. He hoped that htings would end peacefully, but that was not clear if it would happen. Leaving, Augusta headed towards the address that the man had given and itw as certainly a more distant area in which the would have been sought out directly lest someone end up getting lost as a result of the whole thing. She didn’t worry about that so much, and when she came towards the entrance of the area, she was stopped by two guards who she entertained by allowing them to check her, though it was very clear that the two of them could not have stopped her if they had made an attempt to stop her. After a few seconds, the men allowed her into the area deeper within the location, but they followed right behind, as though they were worried about her. She said nothing, but she knew that they very much should have been.

2000/3000

Being followed by the two guards who eere out front, Augusta was not very worried, though she was annoyed by just how little the lighting was, and the fact that with the little light there was, there were no shortages of places in which she could have ambushed the two of them. There were numerous points in which she had almost twneyty or so feet in which there was nothing more than darkness for her to take advantage of. And even with those that were illuminated by the scarce amount of torches around there in this pathway, it was very apparent that she could have killed them there too if she were so inclined, but she figured to play around instead, feeidng into the idea that she was defenseless but in reality was in far better shape than what they could have imagined it to be. Within a more central area of the cave that was shaped more like a central chamber, with a small colessium like structure built around it as to give it the appearance that this was some sort of arena in which the people could fight, and in the middle of it stood a singl eman, clearly the leader of the clan, and his attitude and arrogance was radiant throughout the entire place. Augusta immediately could tell that she was going to take joy out of killing this man when she had the chance, but that was not yet. There would be a time for this. As right now she was supposed to play as a sort of negotiator, but what she was interested in was not trying to make peace, but rather instead to find out about any heretics that might have been nearby. For as much as she sought trying to figure out where it was that the people and infidels were hiding, he would not give her any sort of information. Rather, he insisted that the fact that she was here was enough of a reason that she should have been killed, just like the ones who had come before or stumbled upon their area. The two men who had been behind her seemed to tense up, their movements loud and obvious enough such that she could tell that they were drawing weapons, and from her eyes forward she could see four other men who were standing about drawing weapons themselves in hopes of obliging their leader in killing her. To their own dismay though, they were about to get a rude awakening that was far unlike that of what they might have encountered. Perhaps if they were smart, they would recognize this and maybe try to tell her what she wanted to know. Maybe then she would give them at the very least, a merciful death, rather than a dreadful one. However, when she repeated her question one last time, they all refused to convey any information, their opinions showing hta tthey were clearly more afraid of the man than of her.

2500/3000

The two men who were behind her got hit first, as immediately as the main leader left out of the area and the others began to move towards her, the two of them immediately ran into swords that materialized around her, two of them tow the back such that they would have walked heart first right into the blades, killing them instnaltly. Even if they lived through the very first strike, they would have already been pierced through the heart, leaving them with no option other than to either back up so the blade would no longer protrude through them or otherwise walk forward and die as it further cut into their bodies. The other four, they suffered at the hands of the other six blades that she had materialized around her, one of which had slit the man’s head clear off, while one of htem had made the mistake that the two in the back had done, walking right into a blade tha tmaterialized, though they died right there, without any effort to try to get out of the blade’s path. The other two, it was a combination of the remaining four blades which did them in, cutting deep into them leaving them in a position where they were esentialy stuck, unable to move and only able to watch as Augusta departed, a wicked smirk on her face as they slowly died out. With no ifnoramtion from any of the men that she had spoken with, she found that there was no further to have worried or bothered with this whole process and began to head back towards Baska. This had not worked out how she wanted it to, but there was clearly blood that had been spilled int eh name of the Church, so she took that as a small moral victory, though not one that left her statisfied. When she returned to the doctor, she relayed what she had found out, or the lackthereof of what what she had come to learn, and while there was a bit of disappointment to his words, it was clear that he appreciated what she had done up to this point, and they both had seemed to come to the conclusion that things were not done yet. But Augusta was excited now and looked forward to killing that man in the center, the one who reeked of arrogance and unwarranted prestige. Really, the only question that seemed to stand at this point was what they were going to do, and if it would have bene ca case of them striking first or if they were going to aloow these people to build up their offensive some more. In this case, Augusta had come out and won, the offense that Baska displayed defeating their defenses, but it was also very clear that the game was not yet over, and there had to be a winner and a loser. Augusta smirked, as she was not one known to pick the losing side. Ever.

3000/3000