Michael
The night had not been a good night, the morning had not been great either with everyone avoiding his eyes and the knights of House Grim giving him overtly hostile stares, which didn’t help his mood after not sleeping all that much. His brain was jumping from thought to thought, everywhere but where it should.
Now he was stomping through the forest, glad of being rid of most of the others and just surrounded by his guard and Pan. She had mostly kept to the background and away from House Grim to avoid any problems with her race or talents.
Michael wasn’t the only one with a bad day though. Their target for the trip was Eydis’s old village, Michael had been against the idea of them going there but he could barely argue against the logic that Eydis knew the area best, and when she also agreed he had no leg to stand on. He knew there was next to no chance that the army or anyone was in that village and that he was mostly directed there because it was safe. It felt like something Eydis needed though even if she didn’t seem certain behind her facade.
Their march was quiet, they were on a mission, so the knights weren’t in a talking mood and Pan wasn’t the small-talk kind of person on the best of days. Michael and Eydis had their own things to chew on so they both appreciated the silence.
Pan was the first to speak up as they approached their destination, “The mana around here is stale. I don’t think that anyone has been here in a while, and definitely not an army assembling. We should look out for increased monster activity though.”
It wasn’t a surprise. The clan that had lived here was dead so there was little reason for the Rangda to assemble here.
“Alright, let’s get to the village and take a look around before heading back,” Michael replied, his own thoughts pushed into a dark corner.
They reached what must have been the village an hour later, even after years of abandonment it was still quite clearly recognizable. The palisade had been barely damaged in the attack, but the houses had been burned down. The village was a sorry sight with the burned-out husks of the houses that were overgrown, and it was clear that nature was taking back what was hers. It was also clear that not many had been here in a while if any.
“Let’s spread out,” Michael said and deliberately joined Eydis on her exploration.
He stayed in the background as she took a straight path to one of the burned houses. There she stood gazing at the ruin without any reaction.
Michael finally stepped next to her and asked, “Your home?”
She nodded, “We moved a lot, in winter we would stay here, closer to the border, and in summer we generally retreated deeper into our territory. Many good memories were born here with my parents and siblings around the fire.”
“I am sorry what happened to your family, Eydis,” Michael said empathically, grabbing her hand.
She smiled and took his hand firmly. “Thank you. I have had a lot of time to come to terms with it but actually being here after so many years hurts,” she signed with one hand.
“I know what you mean,” Michael answered, and they stood there in companionable silence until Lance’s voice broke them out of it.
“Milord, I found relatively fresh graves over there,” he said after a quick salute.
“Multiple?” Michael inquired and the knight nodded. They went over and found a neat row of graves in a large space between two buildings. They weren’t exactly fresh but definitely newer than the devastation that had befallen this village.
“I doubt that my lord uncle or his men would have bothered to bury the dead of this village,” Michael said more to himself than anyone else, but Zeke answered anyway. “I agree, milord, which means that someone else must have done this. Maybe survivors of the clan?”
The knight looked over to Eydis who inspected the graves and the little sticks that indicated who was buried there. Her face got darker when she found who she was presumably looking for, Michael guessed parts of her family.
She then got up and took a quick glance over the other markings before suddenly hurrying back to the center of the settlement.
Michael shrugged at the questioning looks from Zeke and simply followed her. He managed to catch up when she stopped at the toppled totem which symbolized Father Death and Mother Life, the gods of the Rangda people. It showed a beautiful woman with long hair and a middle-aged man in a loving embrace.
Eydis was climbing over the totem, seemingly looking for something and when she didn’t find it on top, she stuck her head down under to see better.
“What are you looking for?” Michael questioned her but she wasn’t able to answer with her hands preoccupied. With his question unanswered, Michael resigned himself to wait until his friend had found what she was looking for.
It took a few moments before she finally sat up from her position lying over the totem with a thoughtful expression.
“So, what did you find?” Michael asked again.
“I know where they are,” she signed with a distant look in her eyes.
Michael peered down to the spot she had been inspecting but couldn’t see it without ducking down. “Was there some kind of message down there?”
Eydis nodded and replied, “My father once told me that if the clan was scattered then they would carve directions to find them into the main totem pole. Someone has been quite diligent about updating it.”
“So, where are they?”
“The last message says that the remains of my clan have ventured to the sacred grove. That is where the clans meet to exchange news and decide things so it makes sense that the army would assemble there. It is even possible that they haven’t even decided on attacking the kingdom yet, the message is quite fresh,” Eydis explained and looked into the distance.
The sacred grove had been near the top of their list for likely staging grounds of the clan army. It was the center of their faith where the druids communed with their ancestors and gods. Eydis had described it as a ring of the oldest trees in the whole forest with another small ring of boulders in the clearing and one large crystal in the middle which was used as a podium. Michael wanted to see it from the moment he had heard about it even if that prospect had always been an unlikely one.
Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.
“No unit has been sent so deep but with this new information, we will have to scout it out to find out the stage at which the Rangda are,” Zeke said while thinking. “It will be more dangerous to get a squad this deep into enemy lands without a fight though.”
“Maybe it would be better to send someone alone or multiple someones. Makes them harder to spot and more maneuverable,” Lance suggested.
“Would also put them at a bigger risk if they get confronted though. Five augmenters can fight their way out of most situations if needed but one alone not so much,” Silas interjected with a grim expression.
“We will discuss this later at camp with the rest of the force,” Michael decided and then turned to Eydis to ask her if there was something else, she wanted to do here. He didn’t get to it as he saw her expression which told him that she had something to say.
“There is another way,” Eydis signed slowly. “I will go. If there are people of my clan then I will easily be able to infiltrate them and maybe even convince them to not attack.”
A wave of hesitation rolled over all of the knights and even Michael didn’t know what to say for a moment.
“Is that … wise?” Zeke asked carefully but everyone knew what he meant. Should Michael allow someone with intimate knowledge about the kingdom and shaky loyalty to go to her own people?
“Obviously not,” Silas said much less diplomatically. “Lord Rowan you can’t allow this, it is too risky.”
“Are you doubting my loyalty,” Eydis signed angrily but the knight didn’t even pause.
“I am doubting that you are in the state of mind to make the right decision,” he instantly shot back. “Or are you going to tell me that you weren’t agonizing over the decision if you should return to your people for the whole of our journey here?”
Eydis was taken aback by the heaviness of the knight's words, Silas had never been one to hold back but right now he was not caring in the least about her feelings. The thing was that Eydis couldn’t even deny his question, it would be an obvious lie, and lying now would not help her in seeming more trustworthy.
Michael jumped in before she could regain her composure, “Eydis, do you want to go there to gather information for us or do you want to return to your people? If it is the second option, then I will not be angry about it. If you want to leave, then you can, I always made that clear.”
He obviously didn’t want her to leave, she was like a sister to him and even if it would break his heart, he would not break hers because of his selfishness. It wasn’t easy to keep his displeasure about the situation away from his face, but he managed it somehow.
“I want to see my people again, just to see who is still alive and tell them that I am still alive too, but I don’t want to leave. I have made an oath, and you have treated me like family so I can’t leave you. So, my main goal will be to convince them to not attack the kingdom and gather information,” Eydis finally replied, she seemed a bit firmer on her opinion, but Michael could sense that she still wasn’t sure.
They looked each other in the eyes for a couple of seconds before Michael sighed, “Fine.”
“Milord,” Silas protested but Michael looked at him with an exhausted smile.
“What do you expect me to do? Lay her in chains? Again? Order her to walk away from her people?” The knight was taken aback and didn’t reply so Michael simply continued talking. “No, I trust Eydis.” He turned toward her, “I trust you. Do what you have to, whatever that might be.”
Michael smiled at her broadly and she smiled back, though weaker.
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Erhen
Everything happened fast after this. Eydis got some extra rations, gave away parts of her armor and weapons that would be too easy to recognize, and was gone in a matter of minutes.
Erhen hadn’t really understood what happened as he missed most of the discussion, but he understood that the others were very unhappy about Lord Rowan’s decision, and even Lord Rowan seemed to be on the fence about what just happened. Erhen wasn’t, he hadn’t spent a lot of time with Eydis apart from their duties, but he knew that she had always been trustworthy and single-minded in her pursuit of keeping Lord Rowan safe. Of course, Erhen hadn’t stated that opinion, Silas always had a short temper, but he seemed to be even more on edge now than usual.
They hadn’t stayed long after Eydis had left and now were stomping through the forest on their way back to the camp. Erhen was walking behind Lord Rowan who was flanked by the satyr mage whose name Erhen just couldn’t keep and Lance, while Sir Silas and Lord Zeke made up the front.
Erhen sighed heavily, all this walking for maybe twenty minutes of searching. He was glad that nothing else happened, he was no coward, but he also didn’t understand the thrill people got from life-or-death situations. He would be happy if nothing happened at all, and the barbarians were just gathering for a party or something.
Lord Zeke raised his hand to signal them to stop and Erhen instantly cursed himself for tempting fate. He could hear what had caught the commander's attention, something big was moving through the underbrush in front of them. Lance stepped forward to be side by side with the other two knights and they slowly advanced toward the thicket which the noise had come from.
Silas poked it with his sword and a lone dear jumped out of it startled and rushed away from them.
Erhen relaxed as the others put away their weapons and similarly lost their tension. Lord Zeke turned around and then looked around in confusion. Erhen also did but found nothing out of the ordinary until the other knight asked alarmed, “Where is Lord Rowan?!”
The young knight blinked confused and turned his gaze to the spot right next to the satyr mage who also turned to the side just to see that there was no one there.
Erhen’s eyes widened as he began to stutter and frantically look around, “I-I … I have no idea h-he was just there!”
“How in the thirteen hells could he just vanish from right under your nose, boy!” That was Sir Silas roaring with a head red as a tomato.
“Silence,” Lord Zeke snapped at him and closed his eyes to listen. A couple of tense moments passed in which Erhen could only hear the normal noises of a forest before the commander opened his eyes with a frustrated expression.
“I hear nothing, no one could have snatched him from right between us without leaving a trace!”
Sir Silas looked like he wanted to rip Erhen’s head off for losing their lord, so the young knight looked over to Lance for help, but the other knight was busy looking up and checking the ground to rule out some kind of tunneling or airborne monster.
“Miss Pan, did you notice anything,” Lord Zeke asked the mage who was obviously called ‘Pan’.
The satyr hummed for a moment and then shook her head frantically. “This is impossible. The only beings that are making a noticeable disruption in the atmospheric mana around here are us five. It is as if Lord Rowan had never been here with us.”
“An illusion?”
“I don’t think so our mana is calm and focused, there is no sign of anyone messing with our senses.”
Lord Zeke thought for a moment before concluding, “Lord Rowan is gone, we need to find him. We are just an hour away from camp, Erhen I want you to run back there and get everyone available back here to help us search as fast as possible. The rest of us will get started right now.”
Erhen nodded, ignoring the comment Sir Silas made about his competence, and ran. He ran and ran like he never run before.
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Michael
It took only one blink, and he had been alone, in this forest which completely different from the one he had just been in. Here it was autumn already with leaves falling from the thick ceiling of branches.
He had no idea what happened to him or to the rest of his party, were they here somewhere, and where was here?
There was no answer to his question at least none that he could think of. That was not completely correct as he inspected his mana well to check if he might be caught in an illusion or some kind of curse that was working on his senses but if there was then he couldn’t detect it.
Michael didn’t know where he was, but he certainly knew where he needed to go as a clear path lay before him through the dense and thorny bushes all around him.
“Don’t really have much of a choice, do I?” he said to himself as he stepped forward onto the path and followed it.
As he traversed it, he noticed that while he could see the ceiling of branches and leaves for hundreds of meters in both directions, he couldn’t see a single tree trunk supporting them. There was just the path and the thorns beneath them.
This place can’t be real,” he thought as he continued following the path.
It was a winding one and he was sure that he changed direction in such a way that he had to run in circles at least two or three times but after an hour of walking he stepped into a clearing. The same bushes surrounded the clearing, and the ground was covered with yellow and orange leaves. In the middle stood a small hut, something that a hunter would build in the wilderness … or witches had in fairytales.