Later that evening, they all made it back to the Team Tribal headquarters, the mood somber after attending the wall ceremony for the students who’d died during the shortened Purge. With no body, they couldn’t send Graybrew’s last bit of energy to reinforce the walls, but Pax didn’t mind. Even if he weren’t still alive, Pax didn’t think he deserved to be included among the other heroes who gave a last burst of protection to their homes after their deaths.
While the others chatted quietly in the main hall, Turgan made his rounds, checking that doors and windows were closed and locked. Pax admired Phantom, the pet Turgan had finally tamed after all the other Team Tribal mages got theirs. Phantom was an air-based spectralith, and her elongated body, covered in a soft, iridescent feathered coat, was beautiful and striking. She was still tiny, the size of a hand, but Turgan said she should have camouflage and silent gliding abilities in her future that would be excellent for stealth and information gathering.
Now, she clung happily to the leather perch Turgan had attached to his left shoulder as he finished his rounds. Around Pax, a low hum of conversation filled the large room with the occasional chirps and pet noises as everyone discussed the myriad events and changes that had happened since returning to the academy yesterday.
Pax still felt a bit overwhelmed by it all. If he’d thought things would be calmer in the capital compared to the Wilds, he was completely wrong. The Steelshade’s organizer, Mage Lyndara, had spent the afternoon showing them around and explaining their new duties. They’d barely made it to dinner before the kitchen put the food away.
Pax still hadn’t met with Incedis or taken a stab at helping Tasar tame a beast, but maybe he could get to the second one tonight. Tomorrow, they’d have the first day of their adjusted Academy schedule and the auction the day after, on Sunday. He groaned softly. That meant they still needed to work out what they wanted to sell and divvy up the crew funds Tasar had been holding during the Purge. He wasn’t excited about the bookkeeping part, but then again, seeing how much they’d earned over the Purge would be awesome.
Turgan cleared his throat and raised his hands for their attention. Pax pushed aside his jumbled thoughts and focused. When things quieted down, Turgan nodded to an air mage who cast her protection spell.
Pax felt the air still and wondered idly how long she could hold the spell at her level. He was even more grateful for the powered pendant Incedis had given him so he didn’t have to waste a spell slot and his mana whenever he needed privacy for a conversation.
“Welcome home everyone.” Turgan’s smile looked both happy and weary at the same time. “I hope you’ve all had a chance to get settled and adjust to the recent changes.”
There were a few good-natured groans.
“We’ll spend the first bit discussing things we need to ensure stay within these walls.” His expression turned serious. “I know we all know this, but it bears repeating. Nothing, not even a hint of sympathy for the rebellion, can leak out from anyone here. If even one of us comes under suspicion, it puts all of us at risk. Take a moment and look around you. Do you want to be the reason the inquisitors pick up your friends for Interrogation?”
There was a collective shudder that made Pax frown. A vague memory returned of Tansa mentioning Interrogation way back when she insisted he not tell her any specifics about his light magic. He understood it was a skill or spell along the path of Inquisition-focused classes, but that was really all he knew.
He needed to check in with his friends to find out more. With the current climate, he had a sinking feeling that the topic would come up much more frequently. Remembering Langley’s caution that there were severe consequences if they tampered with military missives they were to carry, Pax wondered if he meant they’d be Interrogated. If there was a skill that could plumb the depths of his mind, the process couldn’t be pleasant. Pax could understand the reason for everyone shuddering.
“As you all know, a high enough leveled Inquisitor can rip both personal and dangerous secrets out against your will. Thankfully, those are very rare and unlikely to be used on a low-level student team like us. The typical Interrogate skill, however, can still pull out your surface thoughts.”
Pax exchanged a grim look with his friends. That still sounded horrible.
“For anyone who has faced beasts with mental attacks, you know of one way to protect yourself. First, all of us need to raise our Insight and, to a lesser extent, our Intelligence levels.”
Pax’s brows shot up, surprised to hear the mostly ignored attribute could become very valuable soon.
“Second, we need to work on controlling our thoughts, especially our instinctive ones, when they ask us a surprise question.” Turgan paused, thinking. “What if I asked you who the strongest rebel is that you know?”
A long moment passed, and the mood darkened as team members exchanged grim looks, realizing what had just happened. Pax’s first thought had been Incedis. He felt himself pale as he imagined an Inquisitor pulling that name right from the forefront of his mind.
“Exactly,” Turgan said with a solemn head shake. “But we aren’t the first people in the empire wanting to keep our secrets during an Interrogation session. I am gathering specific techniques we can all practice to help us in the worst-case scenario. Please see me if you have a line on more. For obvious reasons, they aren’t discussed publicly or available in library books. For now, we will practice what I have as well as work on improving our attributes. When we finish going over everything tonight, we’ll show you all a few methods for increasing both Insight and Intelligence.”
Pax caught Dahni’s head shaking next to him and, when he looked at his friend, he saw the worry lining his face.
Dahni raised his voice to be heard by Turgan up front. “And if the worst happens?”
Turgan looked over their team and pursed his lips. “Then we run. We’ve all agreed to come back here because we think we can do more good undercover than we could as students fighting on the rebels’ side. If we’re compromised, then that is no longer true. That is another item we’ll be discussing tonight. We need team, crew and individual plans ready to enact in an emergency. The goal of these plans is to get as many of us out safely as possible.”
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Pax’s thoughts turned to the escape plan he and his crew had worked on back when the Loxotine’s attack had loomed over the capital. They’d packed bags of emergency supplies down in their training cave, including a stash of coin. The issue was that they’d never been able to get a viable plan to get out of the city, which made hiding in their cave almost useless. The Academy altar could be used to track them once they’d drawn the ire of any leaders.
Sure, the mapping feature didn’t show vertical positioning very well, but once they didn’t find Pax and his friends in the building direction above their cave’s position, it wouldn’t take long for determined searchers to delve underground until they found them. When they’d survived the Loxotine battle alive and with their secrets intact, they’d mostly abandoned their escape plan. Apparently, it was time to resurrect it, and quickly.
“Our acquisitions officer, Aliana, has organized a basic plan we need to get to work on immediately,” Turgan said, waving toward the dour woman who stood and moved toward the chalkboard behind him. “If suspicion falls on us, we may only have minutes or hours to get out of here. We need to practice and be prepared. We’re all getting out of here together, got it?”
Nods greeted his words as Aliana picked up a piece of chalk and prepared to write. She wasn’t a tall girl, and had always been reserved and enigmatic even when forced into the limelight by her duties. She kept her mage student uniform clean and pressed and her dark brown hair pulled up into a no-nonsense bob. Without saying a word, she wrote a list of ominous words on the board: Deadman Warning, Active Danger Warning, Individual Survival Supplies, Stash Location, Exit Plan, Wilds Meeting Place, Travel Schedule and Information.
When she finished and turned around, complete silence greeted her, the rest of the team reading and rereading the words she’d written.
“This is the bare minimum we’ve come up with that is necessary to respond quickly to danger and get us all out of the capital alive. I’ll explain each one and expect you to offer ways to improve the plan. Please mention anything critical you think we’ve missed.”
Pax’s foreboding grew. The list actually started with the word Dead—.
Aliana seemed to treat it like an everyday lecture. “We came up with an automated daily check in method to inform us if anything unexpected happens to a team member.”
“Like if an Inquisitor snaps one of us up before we can warn anyone?” someone asked.
“Exactly.” She gave him an abrupt nod. “We will use the student peg board on each of the three campuses as a central place to exchange information. One of us on each campus will be responsible to post and then collect the filled-out card every day to send it via messenger to Turgan.”
Amil squinted at her, and Pax could feel the confusion of other team members at the vague instructions.
Aliana let out a frustrated huff before turning back to the board. “It’ll look like this.” She drew a rectangle and put a bunch of empty circles on it. “Sometime before the dinner hour each evening, all of you wander by and write your initials in a circle. Doesn’t have to be the same one every day. In fact, mixing it up with little squares or lines instead of circles, writing some nonsense note at the top to blend in”—she turned back to look back at them—“anything works. Just make sure you write your initials on the card before dinner is over. Then the coordinator will check to see that everyone on their campus has checked in. If someone is missing, they’ll send the card via messenger to Turgan along with a note about who didn’t check in.”
“Then we run?” someone asked.
She shook her head with a disdainful look. “Then we do our due diligence to find them. Check their last class, the dining hall, their dorm, ask their friends. Only when it’s clear that someone took them do we move to the next step.”
“And if it’s the contact person who’s taken, then Turgan would notice not getting the card,” Rin said thoughtfully before giving an approving nod.
“Exactly.” Aliana pointed a finger at her. “And I’ll be meeting Turgan here every evening after dinner for a few minutes, so we’ll know if something happens to him.”
“And it’s called a deadman’s warning, because it only goes off when one of us dies?” Someone else asked in a somber tone.
“Yes, or disappears.” Aliana was back to her abrupt persona. “Understand?”
Hesitant nods answered the question.
She immediately moved on. “Next, we have active warnings. Should things go wrong, we will have three codes to send out via messenger. The first is a warning to watch for anything suspicious, which you should be doing anyway. The second would be to prepare to leave, again something we should all take care of as soon as we leave this meeting. Third would be an immediate evacuation order. Now, can you give me ideas for messages we could send that would sound like something normal from your team leader?”
“Party tonight headquarters at 8 pm,” Amil called out. “Or whatever time and location we need to evacuate.”
“That’s actually good.” Aliana’s brows rose before she turned and wrote on the board. “We’ll add Last Minute to differentiate from any parties we might really be planning.”
A smattering of chuckles broke the tension. Aliana frowned, and Pax realized she hadn’t intended to make a joke.
They brainstormed for the next half hour, making lists and assigning tasks. It didn’t take long to agree on the other two warning phrases. For the first nudge to keep an eye out, they would use, “We’ve got some exciting announcements for our next team meeting. Make sure you come.” And the second level warning to prepare to leave, “We’re negotiating another team mission to the Wilds. Stay tuned.”
The rest of the time, they went through what needed to be in their evacuation bags, necessary in case they ran afoul of officials with the authority and skills to confiscate inventory items and coins. They suggested a list of possibilities for safe stash locations, but left it up to the individual to choose their own. What one of them didn’t know about the others couldn’t be pulled out during an Interrogation.
Luckily, Pax and his friends' earlier preparations meant they just needed to review the supplies in their bags and probably add a bit more coin. The actual exit plan to leave the city safely wasn’t definite. Turgan told them Incedis was working on what they’d need to accomplish it. Pax wondered if he had a way to disguise their identities long enough to get past the altars or some kind of underground escape tunnel that would get them out of the city.
Finally, Besk pulled out her topographical map to show them the two meeting places they’d gather at after sneaking out of the city. They planned to dig protected and disguised shelters at both locations the next few times they went out on missions to gather baby beasts.
The plan, after an evacuation order, was to hunker down in the shelters and wait a full day for stragglers before starting the trek to join the rebels. Currently, none of them had a clue where they would go, another task Incedis had promised to take care of. The tentative plan was to have a few rebels join them as guides.
Pax figured if that didn’t happen, they could head for either Quarrybrook or the light headquarters ruin. He felt a lot better knowing they had options. And they’d traversed the Wilds enough that if he got out with his crew alone, he was confident they had a decent chance of surviving.
The chatter died down as they finished going over all the details and assignments. Everyone put away notebooks they’d filled with cryptic notes to remind them of what they needed to do.
Pax had to admit that all the planning had eased his worry. Just knowing they had detailed escape plans as well as an early warning system in place made him more confident they could actually complete their mission.
“Thank you for all that, Aliana.” Turgan walked back to the front and gave Aliana a grateful smile before turning to face the rest of them. “Now that we’re done with all that, who wants to learn how to boost Insight and Intelligence and resist the Interrogate skill? And then I have a surprise for all of you, if we still have time for some Taming training.”
His eyes met Pax’s, who gave him a firm nod. He was more than happy to help the rest of the Tribal mages gain the skill so he could spread out the work. Beside him, Tasar perked up, sending an expectant look his way. Pax smiled as he imagined his two warrior friends with stonepaw buddies helping hold their front line.