'What?' Noble blinked. The ceremony was still happening.
Someone would notice!
'Go home,' Cassie repeated, 'before it's too late!'
Song of the Fallen removed the Memory from behind her ear and pressed it into Noble's hand.
Wait, her true name was Song of the Fallen. Did that mean…?
Panic rose in Noble. Cassie hadn't said to go back to Ravenheart. She had said to go home.
As Ambrose concluded his part of the proceedings, Noble slid off the end of the row and ducked behind one of the large projector screens that separated the front of the stage from the back.
An aide spotted her immediately.
Seeing the professor's face, the young woman's confusion and annoyance at the unexpected arrival turned to concern.
"Are you alright?"
"Emergency." Noble didn't stop to explain. She blipped out of existence, leaving the aide to wonder what kind of catastrophe could have caused an Awakened to look so pale.
Arriving back in Ravenheart, Noble sped from the palace without her usual pleasantries.
'Home.' Noble spread out her emotional sense to check on her family. Fort wasn't home. By the direction of the pull, he was in a government meeting, most likely with Saint Kai. The Saint's emotional signature had been absent from the ceremony that morning, but he was present here.
It was unlike him to miss a high-profile event, so there had to have been a good reason.
Noble couldn't focus on what that reason might be just yet. She had to make sure her family was safe first.
Brock and Blaze were together. Their emotions were steady, happy even.
That only left...
'Where's Rain?!'
Noble searched for her daughter. She came up empty. For anyone else, that wouldn't have been too concerning. People could get out of her range to the point where she had only a vague notion of them or no connection at all. Not Rain– their connection was too deep and enduring, like a river carved out of a canyon.
And now it was absent. That could only mean two things: either something was blocking it...
Or it was gone.
And if it was gone.
"Rain!" Noble flooded her Ability with essence, stretching her power of perception to its limit.
All of Ravenheart was within her perception in all its emotional detail, but none of the people were Rain.
She couldn't search like that for long, though. Not only would it exhaust her reserves, but it might also alert Ki Song about her Transcendence.
Noble retracted her sense to try a different tack. She focused on Rain and the girl's emotions, which had been part of Noble for over sixteen years. Her consciousness bounced along the colorful emotions all around her like fingers searching for the right string of a harp.
Unfortunately, this method did not yield better results.
Noble felt hopelessness that she had not experienced since before she was a Saint. She had no leads, no direction, and no daughter.
Had Sunny failed to protect her? The moment that Noble went to reach out for his emotions, a fundamental shift occurred.
Noble's flight faltered, and she nearly fell onto the ice bridge that connected the palace to the city. She had found Sunny's emotions, and with them came a sudden release of energy.
'Rain!'
Whatever had been keeping the girl from Noble's detection burst like a bubble, giving the mother the first glimpse of her daughter since arriving in the Dream Realm.
Noble gasped. 'She's alive!'
Unbidden tears streamed down the woman's face. For a moment, the unthinkable had been a possibility, and Noble had felt suffocated with fear that she might have lost her precious child.
Now, knowing that her worry had been unfounded, Noble felt color return to the world around her. She turned in the direction of the pull, and her relief gave way to a new concern. Her keen eyes could see what no mundane could.
There was a cloud of smoke on the horizon. No, it wasn't smoke…it looked more like aerosolized dirt.
'Rain, what did you do?'
The girl was worried, but not terrified. Whatever happened, it was over.
Noble stared for a moment, gauging just how long it would take her to reach her daughter. Rain would just have to deal with her sudden appearance.
However, before Noble could plot her course, Rain's emotional signature disappeared and reappeared many kilometers to the left in less than a blink.
'Sunny must be moving her through the shadows,' Noble chewed her lip.
Rain must have been hidden in the shadows earlier. Her big brother had been protecting her from the danger as he had promised. That was why Rain was worried, but not afraid. Her guardian refused to let anything harm her.
'I never should have doubted him.'
Noble noticed something in the haze. Four wings supported something akin to a dragonfly as it swirled downwards to the source of the mayhem.
'It's a good thing Rain is out of there already.'
Noble could feel that the girl and her mysterious teacher had already made two more jumps across the landscape. The professor was pretty sure he could have made the trip all at once, so he must have been looking for the right spot to stop and regroup.
'Or he is arguing with Rain, and that is slowing him down.'
The girl wasn't happy. That much was clear.
'But she's safe. That's the important part...'
Cassie's concern had been valid. Whatever she had seen must have been terrible. Come to think of it, how would she have known what Rain looked like?
Perhaps like Emer, the contact with Noble had given Cassie insight into the professor's family.
However it had happened, the blind Saint was very worried on Noble's behalf. However, Cassie hadn't accounted for the man hiding in Rain's shadow.
Sunny had made sure everything turned out all right, hadn't he?
'Unless …Rain wasn't who she was worried about.'
Noble had been so concerned about finding Rain that she hadn't even considered the possibility that one of her other family members might be the one who had worried Cassie.
Noble felt for her sons and sped in their direction. As expected, they were at school. They were in class with no danger in sight. No sign of anything out of the ordinary: not a Nightmare Creature, not a disgruntled student...even the teacher seemed to be in a good mood as he taught the science lesson about the intricacies of digestion.
Realizing that hanging out around a window of a school might garner unwanted questions, Noble took off to find the last member of her family. Fort was almost on the opposite side of town, and despite Noble's concerns, she didn't want to draw too much attention to herself. So instead of flying over at top speed, she hurried through the streets, avoiding the busiest ones so she could move with ease.
The dust had started to spread and dissipate on the horizon. If not for the lively marketplace's cured meats, Noble was guessing she would be able to smell the earth in the air by now.
She hurried to the government complex. The two-story building was not small, and it was respectably built and imbued with extra magical protections that an Awakened had designed. The professor wasn't quite willing to rely on those protections just now.
"Master Noble?" The familiar government agent in the foyer furrowed his brow.
"Sorry, Phil. I need to speak to my husband. Now." Noble blew past the man at the front desk and made her way inside to a meeting underway.
What she found surprised her.