Nick woke up to the cries of crows who were already feasting on the bodies of the dead Qi masters. It took him a few seconds to realize where he was and what transpired before he passed out. The sun was already up, but he hadn’t been out for that long – judging from the sun’s position it should be around half past six or seven in the morning.
‘Damn it, I got to get back fast!’ He thought.
The “Queen Elizabeth” was supposed to set sail at noon and his friends definitely will be worried since he didn’t come back last night.
Nick quickly got up and the scared crows flocked in the air and started to circle around, waiting for him to leave. He didn’t let them down – quickly gathered both swords, then, while trying to resist the disgusting smell, started to search the headless bodies. There was nothing much to find, except the alchemist had the meteorite storage ring on his finger.
‘Oh? So that’s how they transported the boxes over. Elder Jan probably gave this guy his own precious ring specifically to fulfill the task.’ Nick realized. Otherwise they should’ve had a carriage and some helpers from the sect.
Nick took the ring, but didn’t bother to check contents for now, and then once again inspected the pockets of both Qi masters to make sure he didn’t miss anything. After another minute he ran back to the city.
A half an hour later he came over a small brook, drank few mouthfuls of water, washed his face and continued on his way. While running he was doing his best to organize his thoughts and tried to make a plan how to deal with the current situation. On one hand, he kind of dealt with it already, but there was a high risk that the Holy Order has sent narcotics to the other cities as well. Also, there might be something he missed in the warehouse or even on the bodies – he was in the rush all the time.
Then he remembered about the meteorite ring, but after checking the content he got disappointed. There were only some toiletries, few alchemy ingredients and equipment as well as some money.
‘They really were traveling light.’ Nick sighed inwardly and hid the ring in his wristband. To his surprise it turned out to be possible to put one spatial item inside the other, but since he was currently not in the mood for experiments, he decided to postpone this research.
The distance they ran for four hours last night he now covered in only two and a half and that was while he was intentionally leaving some marks on the way.
When the guards at the city gates saw the speedily approaching blond, bloodied figure, they drew their swords with intent to stop him. Nick already foresaw this and, even if they didn’t pay attention to him, he would have stopped here anyway.
“Which one is the fastest of you? Quickly lead me to the governor’s mansion! It’s an emergency.” He took out the silvery token his majesty gave him and showed it to the surprised city guards. They had never seen this token in real life, but everyone serving in the army or even as a city guard knew what this meant.
The squad leader recovered first, waved his hand towards Nick and sprinted ahead at full speed. He got shocked again when after twenty or so meters the youth caught up and even seemed to be annoyed he had to slow down to match the guard’s speed. The squad leader was just a normal Qi practitioner who practiced the standard Qi technique of the army, therefore, even if he did his best, there was not way he could keep up with Nick. But the latter was not annoyed at all – the ugly look on his face was because he was worried whether he could make it on time before the “Queen Elizabeth” anchored up.
Ten or so minutes later they arrived at the governor’s mansion. While the guard felt like he could die any moment, Nick waved the token again and commanded to bring him to the governor. Governor Edward himself had just returned from seeing off the princesses and was surprised to meet Nick, especially due to the way he looked now.
“Mister Nick? Why are you here? Ladies were worried about you and hoped you will be on the ship.” He said.
“Shut up and listen! This is an emergency!” Nick rudely interrupted the overly polite speech and brought out the token again, pushing it close to the governor’s fat nose, “Recognize this?”
“Yes, general! My apologies!” Governor got all stressed out.
It was known that only the most trusted generals of his majesty carried this token and they had almost unlimited rights wherever they went. But until now he was treating Nick as some random aristocrat boy or even a servant.
“Alright! How fast the best of your men can get an urgent message to the capital?” Nick asked.
“Three to four days, depending on …” Governor started to explain.
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“Call him immediately here, also get me some paper and writing utensils.” Nick interrupted, then thought for a second, “No get two people, we will send two identical messages.”
He got this idea from overhearing the conversation in the warehouse. This was not the 21st century and messengers on horses weren’t e-mails. There were too many variables on the way that could ‘move them to the trash folder’.
While Nick was inwardly smirking at his own joke, governor returned.
“My men will be here shortly, what are your instructions?” He reported respectively to the young teenage boy.
“You will know the details when you’ll copy the letter I will write in a minute. I don’t have time to write it twice.” Nick quickly said, “The main thing you have to know is, that yesterday I uncovered a base of the Holy Order sect in the city when they were preparing for a large scale poisoning of your citizens. I can’t tell you the exact address of the warehouse I found them in, but you’ll be able to find it in approximately ten minute walking distance towards south-west from the docks at the end of a two hundred meter long alley. There will be six bodies in the warehouse – check everything and, if there is an additional information, inform his majesty. Also, send a couple of your best trackers towards west, starting right out from the western city gates. At approximately three to four hour running distance from the city they will find two bodies of Qi masters from the Holy Order. I couldn’t find anything useful on them, but maybe I missed something or they hid some stuff in the dark before I killed them.”
“You … you killed two Qi masters?” The governor stuttered in shock.
It was unbelivable enough that this child had the silvery token, but him being capable of taking on Qi masters was definitely too much for the governor to process.
“Why would that matter? During the time we are chatting, people might die in the other cities – quickly give orders to your men while I write the message to his majesty.” Nick angrily retorted.
Although he usually was polite, the stress from yesterday was still there and was amplified by the running back to city and fear of missing the ship.
Governor quickly left to give out commands and meanwhile Nick sat down to write the letter to the king. He thought about the contents already on the way back, therefore it didn’t take that long to finish it. It did turn out to be lengthy, but Nick was confident this was the right way of doing things. Him staying back in the Sun kingdom wouldn’t change anything – the king had his own special forces to deal with situations like this. So for now Nick did everything he could and would continue to enjoy the holiday trip after doing some hard work.
Nick read the letter one last time, then signed it ‘Nicolas’. Only king called him like that and it would accentuate the importance of the content this way as well. Then he took out two small packages with the dark green paste.
“Edward, listen! As I said, you will copy this letter and learn everything you need to know while doing it. Regarding Ravi, act according to your judgment, but these two letters must reach his majesty as soon as possible.” Nick explained and passed the two small packages to governor, “Also, give one of these to each messenger. Under no circumstances they are allowed to open and even touch that stuff – they will just die. You will know what this is when you read the letter. As for the rest of the stuff I confiscated, I will dispose of it when we will be in deep waters, so there are no accidental casualties.”
“As you command, general! I’ll put my best men on this.” Governor promised as Nick was leaving the room.
“Oh, right. As soon as you are done with your investigation, burn the bodies of all the Holy Order’s members outside the city. They might have some poison on them that activates after their deaths, we can never be too careful when dealing with those freaks. And don’t forget to inform his majesty if you find out anything else!” Nick waved and sped off.
He ran through the busy streets while trying to avoid bumping into pedestrians. When he arrived at the docks, he saw “Queen Elizabeth” already had few big white sails on the front mast fluttering in the wind.
‘Damn it!’ Nick cursed and looked around if there was a way to get a fast boat to bring him to the ship.
Since there were none around, he decided to get aboard the easy way. Although he didn’t want to show off before, he had no other choice now.
The dock workers watched with open mouths as a blond youth jumped on the water and ran into the sea, leaving behind only circles on the water where he had stepped on. Some workers in shock dropped the things they were carrying, some were pinching themselves to wake up, while others swore to never drink again.
Nick caught up to “Queen Elizabeth” after ten or so minutes. While the dock workers were amazed by the sight, on the ship no one even noticed the small stature climbing up as they were focused to watch the beautiful pair of escort warships in full sails. He climbed on deck close to the bridge when he saw Kate, still dressed in white, arguing with her uncle.
“Sorry, I’m late.” Nick said while approaching them.
Kate was about to start scolding him, when she saw his bloodied clothes.
“Fooling around the brothels is not the right way to spend your time!” Clayton Evans angrily said.
Although he had a good impression of this young man before, the arguments with Kate during the last two hours made him dislike the kid. As a captain he didn’t allow any disobedience on the ship and, despite Nick being Kate’s friend, it was extremely improper to let few hundred people wait. He was so angry at the moment that he didn’t even think of how Nick got to the ship.
Nick looked at them, then just took out the token he was waving left and right all day, “I was busy! And now I am dead tired. Let’s speak tomorrow.”
Then he turned and left the stupefied Evans family pair behind him. Only now Clayton noticed the blood all over the youth and the fact that he actually showed up in the middle of the sea.
Nick was really dead tired. During his last sprint towards the ship, he even used three very expensive elixirs that allowed person to replenish large amounts of Qi in a short period of time. And he still almost couldn’t climb up on board.
After the short conversation with the captain, he finally made it to his bead where he passed out.