Simone was reading prose to the children for their education. Mia was making a face and looking like she was about to pass out. “Come on now… Even Lewis likes this one. He is even repeating it with me.” Mia perked up a bit. She was always interested in their relationship. Maybe if even a brute like Lewis likes poetry and prose that Xeik would. What Mia didn’t know was that Lewis liked Simone’s ability to read aloud and bring the prose and poetry to life. It wasn’t the poetry and prose itself.

There was a look on Simone’s face and she shut the book. “I… have to go. Mia will you tell Xeik I need Rhenakos. Immediately.” Ezili and Lucas looked worried and by the look on Simone’s face, she also was worried.

She changed into her clothing she wore when she went on jobs with Lewis. She had to remain calm. This had to be a mistake. Maybe he just turned off her resonance. Sometimes they did that… Then… nothing. She waited for Rhenakos in the parlor and the kids were peeking in with Mia.

“Thank gods you are here,” Simone had worry in her voice. “About an hour ago Lewis cut off all contact with me. He doesn’t do that. Not normally. He would cut off his vision and other senses but generally, he would still answer me. He’s ignored me for the better part of an hour. That’s not like him, Rhen. He normally answers me.”

There was worry in her eyes. “No one sneaks up on Lewis… It’s normally not possible… Unless he’s distracted but I don’t understand what could have distracted him so much that they would get the drop on him. Please, help me find him… Maybe you can use our resonance?”

Rhenakos had been dealing with attending to Reva. Surprisingly, the baby girl was calm in his arms as he cradled her. There was a half smile on his face as he playfully booped her nose with a finger, and she giggled. When Xeik came in, he barely noticed.

“Rhenakos,” Xeik said, trying to get his attention. “This is important.”

The hunter sighed, “And so is this. You saw what happened to Izzy.” He looked up with a sad look on his face. “I don’t want to mess this up.”

“Simone is asking for you. The way Mia was acting…it was urgent,” Xeik replied. “I’m sorry…”

Rhenakos sighed. “Fine…” He nuzzled his daughter, “Daddy has to go now.” She was not happy, and started to cry. “I know Reva…Mommy can take you for now.” He looked to Osiria. “I’ll be back. No idea what’s going on, but it sounds really bad. I’ll let you know what’s happening as soon as I can.”

Xeik and Rhenakos made their way to the Terrowin Castle, and immediately Simone was on him with a barrage of information and questions. The two listened as she spoke, and at her question, Rhenakos shook his head. “I told Lewis the same thing when you were missing, but I can’t track your magical signature like that. If you’re cut off, then there’s no way I can pick up a trail.” He glanced to the side. “Most of the time, we just track the last known location and go from there. Do you know where he went?”

Simone was panicking now, “No…” She frowned. “He didn’t tell me. He just kissed me and smiled. Told me he loved me beyond death. He’s never done that before.” Why hadn’t she noticed it. She recoiled in fear. “You don’t think he actually left me do you?” No, she shook her head. “No, no he wouldn’t. That’s dumb. That’s not like him.” She hugged herself tightly. He would never leave her.

If he could not find Lewis then she looked at Xeik. “We need to see Angela. We need to see her now. She might be the only one who can find Lewis.”

However, once they got into the temple Angela held a frown. “He’s not on the ground. I can’t find him.” She huffed a bit. “There are islands, sky fortresses… There’s no telling where he is… He’s alive obviously because Simone is. He hasn’t left you either… That was rather dumb of you to fear. He adores you.”

Simone gave a thankful smile. “Just the worries of a housewife…”

“I can relate,” Angela got up. “Come with me. All of you. We’re going to see my husband.” Simone froze a bit as she had heard a little about the Dark Kaiser. She looked to Xeik and then looked to Rhenakos. “Hurry now. Time is ticking.”

Once they made it into the halls of the Bastion Angela flagged down Maalik. “Maalik, we have a problem. Simone’s husband is missing and I can’t find them. Can you bring us to Nemesis? Tell him it's urgent.” Once they were in front of Nemesis Angela paced in front of him. "I can't find Simone's husband Lewis. You remember me telling you about them? Lewis is the one I punched in the face and brought back his wife. Is there anyway we can borrow someone in the Volkov family to find them? You are all so very skilled."

Maalik was perched onto a window sill, casually reading a book of poems when he glanced up to see Lady Angela and a pair that were strangers to him. The man looked impartial at them before turning his sights to his master’s wife. “I suppose I can”, he spoke, shutting the book with one hand and beckoned them to follow. Whoever these people were, they must have been in Angela’s good graciousness in order for her to be asking a favor on their behalf. He leads them up the stairs but his words did carry some weight towards the couple. “Be wary, Nemesis is tending to important paper, and also has to deal with Ivan due to the man pulling some idiotic stunts earlier. So I’d advise you not to entice his temper any further.

They would see for themselves once the second floor was reached and he approached the office door. A few knocks were given before he let himself into the room. At the lavish office was a large desk and Nemesis was at work, muttering to himself as he flipped through several parchments rapidly. Many of them were dealings that needed to be signed, leases towards the expansion of more churches, some business deals that needed to be checked for in both Kurayo and Vilpamolan, and some arrangements that were needed for Graylhope. Despite that, he could memorize every word seen from them with the magical glasses he bore. Out in the farthest corner of the room stood Ivan, facing the wall for his latest bumble, softly groaning with boredom.

“My lord, Angela has some people that request your assistance”, Maalik started before he backed off and the goddess took control of the conversation. Nemesis, in his part, glanced up momentarily as he was signing the last of the arrangements for Kurayo and placed his quill down before removing the glasses. “Vaguely, darling. But if you need someone to seek him out…”

“PAPA! I CAN DO IT!”, Ivan shouted in excitement as he went to turn around.

“Stay!”, he shouted, nearly baring his fangs at the fool. Immediately Ivan ceased and stood straight up again. “Oh come on, how much longer you gonna be mad at me?”

“Perhaps if you stop sneaking onto ships and detonating ships with combustibles in order to fish out your target”, Maalik suggested with a shrug. “You ended up blowing up plenty of trading ships, so that’s why you are in time out. Ivan pouted and Nemesis shifted his attention to the woman most likely to be Simone. “Do you have something of his?”

“Papa, that means you change your mind?”, the redhead fool continued.

“Not unless she wants her husband brought back dead. Go and get your sister. She will collect all the information and go instead.”

Ivan frowned and sulked quickly out of the room. Within minutes, he came back holding Yelena sideways like she was a wood board. “Found her.”

“Good now place her down and go back to your corner.”

With that out of the way, the god turned to the family spy and spoke in a more affectionate tone. “Dearest, we need you to find someone. I know you can track him down, a man by the name of Lewis.”

Yelena had been enjoying a nice romantic date with Reaver. He had worked hard on clearing his schedule and her schedule had been cleared for it. They were having a nice little lunch. She was laughing at a joke she had heard and was trying to repeat it. She was so young and vivacious.

She was in the middle of putting the food in her mouth when Ivan swooped in and picked her up like a board. She struggled to swallow her food. “IVAN PUT ME DOWN!” She went to beat on him but couldn’t.

“She’s busy now,” Ivan smiled goofily as he carried her.

“I’m so sorry Reaver! Raincheck?” Yelena gave him a silly smile as her idiot of a brother carried her off.

Once she arrived and was in front of her father her eyes grew happier and she hugged him. “Yes Papa of course.” She looked cute.

“Oh,” Angela frowned. “Your date with Reaver…”

“It’s okay. We rain checked it. I didn’t realize it was a job for Papa. I’m much happier knowing it wasn’t something stupid like finding Ayla.” Yelena was a cute little vaewolf compared to her brother. She was short with long chocolate curls and red eyes.

Simone produced his assassin’s cloak. One of many that he had and gave it to Yelena. “What’s his job, age, looks, and anything else that might help me. I’m Yelena Volkov. I’m the poison master and spy for the family. I normally would exclude the last part but you are friends of my stepmother. I can take it that I can trust you just a bit to understand that I can and will kill you.”

Simone looked up to Angela and smiled, “I’m the wife of an assassin, the thought is mutual.” Yelena actually smiled and liked this woman.

“Good, so mutual trust.” It was odd but Lewis and Yelena both worked in secrecy so they moved in a lot of the same networks.

Yelena got all the information she needed from Simone. “Give me a few moments to move along my networks and I’ll be back. It could… be an hour or two.” Yelena got changed in front of them since she was a vaewolf and didn’t care. “Papa I’ll be leaving now,” she ran up and kissed his cheek before shadow stepping. She disappeared like she was nothing.

It took her an hour but she came back. “Hoja Mesto, book store called The Epic.”

Simone tilted her head, “The Epic? That’s a poetry shop from the sounds of it.”

“Yes, it’s quite famous in Hoja Mesto. We can head there when you are ready to ask the shopkeep.”

Despite his time with Angela and raine, somehow Xeik had never made it to the Obscure Bastion, and as he stepped into the plane of the god, a chill went down his spine. As he looked around the room that they had entered, he couldn’t help but feel as though he were in a place that Mia would fit right in with, and be at home. These two, almost contradicting feelings, made it almost impossible the gauge the situation at hand.

Xeik had seen Nemesis before, but couldn’t recall a time he had ever spoken to the god directly. With Angela, he had dropped the honorifics in about a week, but he wasn’t exactly sure how to approach him. Still, Maalik lead them to Nemesis’ office, and once the group was inside, Angela spoke on their behalf.

Rhenakos, the dumbass that he was at times, was eyeing the whole room with a bit of an envious eye. “Man, this puts Lewis’ place to shame…” He received an elbow from Simone at that comment, which brought his focus back to the conversation at hand. He was not going to ruin this moment, and knew better to keep his mouth shut in the end. He didn’t exactly have the best track record with deities.

It surprised Xeik, though, when Nemesis agreed to help. It wasn’t long before they were introduced to Yelena. Within an hour of giving her information, they had their first lead. Hoja Mesto, a bookshop.

“Wait,” the healer said with a bit of a surprise. “I know that place. We had a dead drop behind it when we ran the streets. We probably ran in once or twice to lose a tail, but never really looked at much in there. They specialized in older, rarer books, but nothing that would sell easily on the black market.” But why would Lewis have gone there?

“It’s a solid lead though. We can leave now.” He had been ready to go for quite some time.

For anyone that remotely knew of Nemesis and his inner workings, they would also know that he didn’t do things free of charge. Typical some sort of tribute would have to be paid to even seek his audience, let alone asking for his assistance. Whether it would be paid in the form of blood, coin, or time spent in one of his churches- it mattered not. The only reason why he was doing it so freely was simply because of Angela. In all honestly, it had been her that asked for his help technically, likely on their behalf. Something about the woman and how she did nearly everything in her power to help people; he supposed that went beyond just her sphere.

One thing was for sure though, aside from his own boys, Nemesis had yet to meet a redheaded male that he had particularly liked. Angela’s son Nathaniel had once been a sore thumb to him (although it wasn’t his own fault per se), Ivan, well, was being Ivan always and now one of the strangers that came here with his wife was a tad mouthy. Aside from a narrow stare, he let it pass by once Yelena came into the room. Or more so, her brother carried her here.

Ivan was still sulking in his little corner of the room while everything was being explained. Not that it really mattered, especially to God as Yelena went to work and he slipped on his glasses once more to finish off the remainder of the paperwork in the meanwhile.

Once the time had expired, she showed up and gave them the lead they needed. The young male that he had yet to focus on spoke up more about this bookshop. He was sure that he had at least seen him occasionally about in Angela’s realm, but as to what he did, in particular, remained a mystery. “Papa, can I go too?”, Ivan whined.

“No. I have another task for you. And I will see to it myself that you do it right this time, or I will be explaining to your mother why your body will never be found.”

“Should I tag along then”?, Maalik offered.

“If they wish it, fine.”

“But… why was he at a poetry shop?” Simone looked confused. They had a nice one back in Benin that they always visited. She had a look on her face.

“I can take you to it…”

“Thank you, Yelena. Once we have a trail we should be fine by ourselves. I’m going to try not to burn everything down.” Simone was worried and it showed on her face. “I hate not feeling him.”

“Is it… all the time?”

“Every waking moment. Our dreams even leak into each other’s sometimes. It’s wonderful… I miss him,” Simone smiled to the young vaewolf and it looked like Yelena was romancing the idea.

“It would probably drive anyone else insane,” Angela chimed in. “You four should get going. I’ll introduce Nemesis and Maalik to you later Xeik. It’s important that you get familiar… Maalik is Raine’s… beau.” She didn’t know the exact way to bring it up. Raine always got shy when it was brought up.

They made it to the streets of Hoja where Yelena was trailing behind them. They seemed to know what they were doing so she was there as a precaution. The shop was quaint and Simone went in first as the bell rang. “We’re looking for a man who was last seen in here,” Simone pulled out her locket instead of describing him. “See?” She showed him the locket.

“I’ve never seen him smile like that… but he’s come in several times in the last month. He purchased a rare set of books for his wife,” the owner said as he pulled out some of the prettiest books she had ever seen. “Had them rebound in leather with lavender silk covers with pink and orange peonies embroidered on them. He was very specific on the color. Said if I got it wrong he would rip out my vocal chords while I was conscious. He was quite pissed when I did it in purple silk and he was quite adamant it wasn’t lavender… so I had to restart.”

Simone was bright red as she took one of the books into her hands, “I… What are these?” She flicked through them. “Poetry?”

“One of the rarest one of a kind poetry books I have. He wanted the whole set, rebound, and everything. He paid a lot of money for them.” He took the book back from Simone. “It was supposedly a present for his wife and their anniversary.”

“This is so…” Simone covered her mouth for a moment. “I feel outdone.” The bookstore owner realized it was Simone and he was sheepish.

“I did ruin it.”

“It’s alright. He’s missing. Do you know where he went after here?”

“Well a group of individuals came in and followed him about but he was muttering something about tea. The tea shop down the road. Some kind of exotic tea I think had gotten imported finally.” Oh, he was going above and beyond.

“I fucking love that man…” Simone sighed a bit and looked at Xeik. “Do you know anything about the tea shop?” Her locket was still hanging open. “Also… the men what did they look like?”

Xeik and Rhenakos were behind Simone the whole way, but both were surprised when she pulled out a locket. The owner had asked for a description, and Simone provided one with a portrait Lewis, Simone, and Everett. It was an older picture of when they had first started their family, but due to their bond, he had seemingly not aged a day.

What was curious, though, was that the store owner stated that Lewis was smiling in the photo. Before Simone could take the locket, Rhenakos swiped it with a look of disbelief across his face.

“It looks so fake,” he said. “Like…it definitely looks wrong.” Rhenakos shook his head. Xeik couldn’t help but take a gander at it, and was a little surprised. Even after all this time, it was hard to imagine the assassin with a smile on his face. He had even seen it happen in real time, but barely could believe it possible.

“That does sound like him, though”,” Xeik said when the man spoke of Lewis’ rather visceral threat. Simone seemed to miss his comment, though, as her entire attention went to the incredible gift that he had prepared for them. Even Rhenakos was impressed at the care that was put into the gift, but ultimately that didn’t help find him.

Simone had realized this as well, and brought up that he was missing. The shop owner nodded, and started to describe the individuals who had followed Lewis as he went to the tea shop.

There were two men, one of them was a bigger built man, a half giant with orange hair, Hard to miss, even for Lewis, but the assassin probably wasn’t looking to be kidnapped in broad daylight. The other one was a halfling of some kind, either a gnome or dwarf. There was less of a description of him, as he remained cloaked the entire time. The only thing that the shop owner could say was that he had a vast, brown haired beard.

At that, Xeik nodded to Simone. “A tea shop. The Venti Leaf.” He looked away. “I may….not be on the best of terms with them. If we’re lucky, they won’t remember me, but we might need to be prepared for some fallout.” He crossed his arms, and refocused on Simone. “Though, I doubt it’s just two men. There very well may have been more.”

The question is why. Xeik was worried. It was looking like a powerful organization that took Lewis. “We may need more than just us to deal with this if we’re not careful…”

Simone was taken back once Rhenakos and Xeik stole her locket, “Hey! Be careful. Lewis had that locket made for me.” She blinked at him a bit and smirked, “He wasn’t going to smile at all but Everett giggled and Lewis always smiles when the kids laugh. The painter managed to capture his smile though.”

The wife crossed her arms and looked at Xeik and Rhenakos, “They don’t want to know what the fuck I’m going to do to them when I find them. You thought Lewis was bad when he had a stack of thirty-two. I’m not so sure there will be bodies to even count when I’m done.” She said this while tapping her foot.

She thanked the owner and stopped, “Is that a gold bookmark?” She saw the intricate bookmark near.

“Hand-crafted. Part of the gift. He had it made for you… Has wisteria carved into it. Said it was important.”

It was the first flowering plant she put on the island…

She just smirked, “He is a good man. Now let’s find my husband.”

Getting to the tea shop she went in and asked a few questions. Once she came out she shook her head. “He never made it to the tea shop.” She crossed her arms. “So that means that they must have gotten him between the store. He must have been pretty distracted.”

Taking it from there she looked at Yelena. “Normally, I would work with Lewis… but do you think you can keep up with me? I’m going aerial to find these sons of bitches.” Yelena nodded.

“I can keep up with you and report back to these two.”

In a blast of blue and black flames, Simone transformed into a phoenix. It wasn’t something she did on the regular but when she had to she did. Taking off she was flying and Yelena was running along the building tops below her as fast as Simone could fly. Which… to be fair was super fast. Once Simone found the pair with her eyes she didn’t even wait.

“Um, I don’t know how to tell you boys… but if you don’t hurry she is going to kill them,” Yelena popped back by Rhenakos and Xeik. “Follow me quickly!”

Once they got to a pub, inside of it Simone had the small one pinned to the wall with four feather-like daggers and the big one was being choked by the heel of her boot, “Start talking or I start fucking burning,” Simone was red in the face and her eyes were azure as she held a black flame in her hand.

It was like death was descending.