I briskly hobbled my way over to the table and next to Sera, who looked extremely amused at my current state.

“Yeah yeah, laugh it up” I bemoaned as I took inventory of all of the people at the table. Elina still looked as unhappy at me as ever, but there was one addition that seemed off. It was a soldier, wearing his full uniform and covered in bruises in cuts. Weirdest of all, he didn’t have any restraints on him whatsoever.

Do they trust him or something?

“Is he alright to be here?”

Elm turned his gaze over to the man, looking clearly unhappy. He looked more unhappy than usual, at the very least.

“He’s said he will work with us, since he’s got people waiting for him back home. He’s still an obnoxious little shit, but he knows when to follow orders.”

The sides of the soldier’s mouth perked up into a cheeky grin.

“Was that a compliment, Grayson?”

“Shut the fuck up and tell us where the camps and refineries are.” He barked back at him, who looked completely unphased by the threat.

“Fine. But don’t get mad at me if I give you any information you don’t like.”

The soldier repositioned himself at the top of the map, checking the compass that had been placed on the table to make sure it was oriented correctly. He pointed directly in front of himself, near the top of Corith.

Corith was an odd nation in that it was shaped around the forest. Instead of being circular, the shape of Corith and its forest was much like a square but with rounded edges. There was a small buffer zone that surrounded the Forest of Corith on a certain side, specifically on the eastern side with Nacilia. There were the trees of Corith that grew there, but the actual forest was a defined area. Roads had been carved all around it, but there were a large number leading towards the center where the capital was located.

“I’m pretty sure you can see all the roads. We are currently located at the northern border gate with Boralis.”

I could feel everyone take a short glance at me.

Why must I be named after a cardinal direction…

“There’s three camps in Corith, all located in separate areas. The closest one is located in the southeast, right next to the big lake. The other one is in the south west, but you’d have to go through a few towns in order to get there. And the final one…” the soldier paused as his finger slowly made its way to the center of the map. “Is in Freiweld. Which is also where the main refinery is located.”

That’s weird.

I peered over to Sera to find her looking completely mortified. Something about the information had caused her to express pure terror. Her hand pointed over to the camp in the east.

“I’ve been there before.” she softly murmured.

“You were at a camp in Corith?” I thought I had heard her entire story of the camps, and I never heard her say she spent time in a Corith camp.

“No, I went there before I ended up in the camps. There was a town there. I was on a trip there with my father. And I’m pretty sure that the other mining camp was a town too.”

I placed my hand on my chin and tried to wrap my brain around the information.

“And then there’s Freiweld… maybe it's the other way around?”

Everyone at the table quickly turned to me. I could see that Elm was nodding along as he pondered the information. The magore researcher in him looked to be alive and well at that moment.

“Magore is shitty for animals, right? And all three of those are large towns. So maybe the reason those large towns formed in those areas was because the creatures of Corith avoided them?” It was a spur of the moment theory, but it felt in line with all of the information I’d gleaned in the past few months.

“The kid might have a point there. Doesn’t change much of our plan, but definitely leaves a bad taste in the mouth.” Elm commented. There was a slight unease at that information. Knowing the empire’s practices, the populations of those towns were probably either dead or displaced.

“Anyway, there’s a town in the middle of the camp in the east. The other two have a good variety of towns along the entire way. Both of them have roads that could lead you to the capital if you go to them. I mean, you’ll probably all die before you even get to the capital, but that’s just my opinion.” remarked the soldier with a proud air of condescension.

“No need for the commentary. Just tell us what you know about those locations.” I flatly responded. He looked rather disappointed, but continued.

“Well, both trips are going to take a while. I do agree with what Keagan said about them ramping up security. You guys did kind of fuck up with that thanks to our plan with the soundline.”

“And what was that plan?” I leaned in a bit, even though it hurt.

“Oh, we had a system of sending messages every few hours. If they didn’t get one, they’d know that we lost and that your group was coming…” his voice slowly trailed off.

Fuck. Guess we’re going to have some difficulties. Not like we could have planned around that not happening though.

“Wait, does your rebel group have a name?”

The table fell awkwardly silent.

“Is that a no? I mean, I just thought rebel groups are supposed to have cool names. I mean, you two are from Irebor. Your groups had names, right?”

Elina perked up with a prideful grin. “Yup. I was one of the ‘Warriors of Ash’. Pretty sure that name was what helped us get a lot of our members.”

The soldier nodded his head. “That is a really cool name for a rebel group.”

Is a name really that useful?

“I don’t want to impose, but you may as well come up with one.”

I rubbed my chin, deep in thought about good names. It felt somewhat silly, yet I could understand the appeal of having a cool name for a rebel group. It might also boost morale to have a title for the rebels.

“Maybe people could make suggestions? Have everyone write down a name on a slip of paper, and we can go through them?”

It was now Ruby’s turn to look horrified.

“Don’t you dare plan on stealing my paper!”

That was to be expected. Ruby had been hoarding all the paper to herself and had been drawing on it or making copies of the map. The last time I had seen someone ask for paper from her, she literally hissed at them to back away.

I mean, we wouldn’t need much.

“Can you at least give us one or two sheets? We don’t need that much. I promise I can haggle for as much as you want when we get to the next town. Just as long as you don’t threaten any violence.”

Ruby pondered for a moment, made a harumph noise and said “Fine.”

Onto the actual work.

“Someone remove the soldier from the room so we can plan.” I commanded. The man willingly escorted himself out of the room, followed closely by one of the penal laborers. A collective sigh came from the table as we were able to loosen from the tension.

There’s two main camps, and then the big one at the capital. Going to the capital would be bad, since that would be the most defended. So we should focus on doing the other two camps, right?

“We can’t do the capital. That’s the worst choice. The primary choice would be the camp to the southeast, right?”

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Elm shook his head, clearly calling back upon his memories as a major now.

“It ain’t that simple. Sure, the closest one would be the best, but there’s less stops. We could maybe recruit from the towns along the way and free them. It might diminish our numbers, but we’d probably have more supplies. Corith doesn’t have many natural stopping points, if what I’ve heard is true. The forest ain’t a place we can go hunting in, right?”

Sera gave an affirmative nod. “You never want to go into the forest. Its wrath is not something you want to mess with.”

“Sure… so it might not be best if we go to the eastern one. We’re a large group now, and that limits our mobility.”

Right, I remember him talking about this. Small size is one of our benefits in terms of survivability. But if that’s the case…

“Why don’t we split up?”

The entire table gave a collective “Huh?”

“Hear me out. The camps are about to get a lot harder to take, and that means we need to move fast. They already know we are coming, but I know that we have the numbers right now to take any singular camp. We have double the people we had at the beginning of the journey, and that means we can split up and take separate targets. Maybe we can have a group go to the eastern camp and one go to the west. Then, we meet back up at… this town and head to the capital with our larger forces.” My finger pointed at a town which was directly south of the capital and converged with roads of both camps.

The table spent a small time pondering my words and whispering between each other. Sera looked fairly satisfied, but Elm was extremely contemplative.

“Kid, that would require us to split up leadership.”

I looked at the old soldier with a smile.

“That’s why I would like you to lead the group to the southwest. I can take the southeastern camp.”

It was a big ask to tell a man who had sworn to never take leadership positions again to helm another contingent of soldiers, but it was necessary. Without him, we would fail. I knew Silva was a lieutenant, but I trusted Elm’s skill.

He grimaced, and I could tell he desperately wanted to groan in frustration.

“Elm, I trust you. I know it’s a big ask, but if we want to win, we need good leadership.”

He finally released the groan that was building in his throat.

“Fine. But you better make this work.”

Ruby raised her deformed hand to catch my attention. “Are they going to be ok without a cartographer? Because I’m sticking with North.”

That is a problem.

Before I could voice my thoughts, Sera decided to take the initiative.

“Silva’s camp had a cartographer. Plus, I’m pretty sure you can make copies of the map, right? And I think that camp had a lot of people with skills which overlap with ours. While I don’t love the idea of splitting up, it does deal with the redundancies in our skill set.”

There was another awkward pause as people thought about the choice of whether to follow me for the foreseeable future or my mentor.

Mell stood up straight, towering over everyone at the table. “I’ll follow North. I think you could probably use some help with the strigs now that you’re a tad less mobile. Plus, Ruby needs her vantage point, right?”

The two of them bumped fists with each other.

“North probably needs me so the entire caravan doesn’t fall apart.” Sera gave me a cheeky grin.

I can definitely agree with that.

I looked over to see Silva and Alex softly whispering between each other, presumably to make their choice.

“I choose to follow North. I believe he could use the guidance of someone more experienced in military leadership.” Silva pivoted to me and beat her left fist above her heart, which Alex had said was a sort of salute in Nacilia.

“Anywhere Silva goes, I’ll go too.” Alex looked me in the eyes and did the same thing as Silva.

Another wave of silence passed over the table as all attention turned to the two Ireborians. Wanderer looked extremely contemplative, his hand rubbing the pommel of his blade.

“I believe I would like to take the eastern front. You have served me well, and I would like to continue supporting your battle.”

I saw Elina look at the swordsman with ire before planting both of her hands on the table, refusing to look up at me.

“I will follow Elm on the western front.”

I could see that coming.

Elina held a lot of resentment towards me ever since the refinery incident, and I had just given her a way to separate from me to follow what she would believe was a more experienced and more wise leader. It wasn’t something worth overthinking, especially now.

“I guess we can ask everyone else who they want to stick with. Sera, could you maybe work a way out to balance out the size of the groups?”

Sera nodded before grabbing her notebook, and I could see everyone start to relax. The next thing we would be doing would be much less tense.

At least, that was what I thought.

***

“STOP PLEASE! NO MORE!” Ruby cried as another sheet of paper was torn from her grasp. We were running out of paper from how many people had lined up to make suggestions. It was in the same room we had done the planning, but now there was a long line of people stretching outside all hoping to give suggestions.

I guess people really want to make suggestions. I guess naming something you’re a part of must be kind of fun.

“Last piece, we promise. It’s going to be a while going through the requests…” I groaned as I stretched in my seat. I expected a few people to make requests, but it seemed as though around half of the caravan was intent on making suggestions. We had set a rule of only one per person, but some were very clearly cheating by asking another person to write a name they came up with.

Eventually the line thinned out and we closed the door to the room to sit around the table. Sera, Alex, Silva and I were all holding pieces of paper and scanning over names while Mell attempted to console Ruby in the corner.

My eyes were caught by a name at the top of the list which stood out to me for how absurd it was.

“The Abyss Stares Back… who would even suggest that name?”

Mell’s head perked up with a wide grin. “That would be me!”

My mind seemed to lock up as I tried to connect the over the top and edgy name with the extremely friendly and polite Asarnian who was in front of me. No matter what I tried, the two of them just wouldn’t connect.

“Sir, I’m going to take that as a no?”

Now I just feel bad.

“Shadow Pickaxe? Doesn’t sound too bad.” noted Alex as he talked with Silva. The two appeared to be going over names together to decide which ones were of interest.

“I don’t think that would work. We’re hoping to free slaves in general, right? Miners are our main focus, but not all of the people here worked in the mines.” Silva shut down Alex’s suggestion rather quickly. It seemed her words alone were enough to change his mind.

“The Miner’s Dagger, Slave’s Dagger, Slums Dagger… why are there so many dagger names? We’re not a group of assassins.” Sera announced, completely baffled.

My eyes turned back to the page as I scanned over a few more options.

“Deadly Radiance doesn’t sound too bad.” I muttered. It fit with my light attunement, which had become a topic of discussion for the caravan after the battle of the border. “Light Unbound, Warriors of North, North’s Army… are people really creating names after me and my attunement?”

Sera casually shrugged when I went to look up at her. “I mean, you’re the leader. Makes sense to use you for that.”

I just don’t like the idea of the group being only centered around me.

“Warriors of Ash… Elina had to have put this one. Does she really expect us to name ourselves after another rebel group? From Irebor, no less?” Alex seemed completely baffled at the suggestion. It seemed that some of his natural distaste for Irebor still lingered.

“Originality is not something Irebor is known for.” Silva gleefully added.

I simply shook my head in disbelief. I didn’t expect the process of naming a rebel group to be this extensive or hard.

“The Revolutionaries, The Retribution, The condemned… all of these names are just really simple. And ‘The Condemned’? A good portion of us didn’t commit a crime.” It was just really baffling to me as I reviewed the names.

“I know right? I even have names like ‘The Vengeance of the Damned’. I get it, but it just feels so over the top.” Sera added. “I even have a bunch of names from the nations people come from. Blades of Boralis isn’t the worst name, but not a lot of us are from Boralis. I know our camps were located there, but it feels off.”

I took another glance at the list, and a name caught my eye.

“Edge of Freedom…”

The room paused for a moment after I said the name. For some reason, it appeared to click with me.

“That sounds really dumb.” Sera unabashedly responded. Silva and Alex both nodded in confirmation.

“Yeah…. it's definitely not the worst name I’ve seen today though. I do like the word freedom in the name of our group.”

“North, you are able to make your own suggestions.”

I just liked that name.

“Ok, get this one. Collective of the Executed.”

Alex and Silva seemed bemused by how over the top the name was, and I could even hear Sera snort after hearing the name. While it was tedious, there was clearly some fun to be had.

Edge of Freedom. Maybe I can do…

“What about Freedom’s Edge?”

The room paused again as everyone pondered the suggestion. I felt pretty happy with it.

“It’s not bad. I could see it working.” Sera said as she rubbed her chin.

I took a moment to check on Mell, who gave me a nod of approval while continuing to comfort Ruby. She still looked extremely distraught at the loss of paper.

Alex sighed and stood up from where he was sitting. “If it’s the name you want, we’ll go with it. I’ve heard worse.”

“Thank you?”

“Just have fun announcing it to everyone. The reactions are sure to be enjoyable.”

I froze in place and realized the mistake I had just made. I had ignored all of their suggestions and gone with my own.

This is going to end badly…