A cloud of dust was moving down a mountain slope, followed by a haphazardly organized pursuing force that on occasions fought among themselves for some reason. That was of no concern to the originator of the could who was running at his top speed while contemplating his next step.
He intended to avoid coastal battles, his weight was not suited for swimming and he was not equipped with a jet pack. He picked a route that led him away from where he guessed the angry mob of soldiers' main camp was while keeping himself inland. As the result, he ended up crossing some small rivers and slowly turned to the left, following the paved road in the distance.
Kael Gull obviously could not use the road directly, as enemy combat vehicles could come to join the fight at any moment. Judging from the appearance of the soldiers, he did not expect anything on the level of Eldar or Tau, but one could never be too cautious, especially after his encounter with chaos not even an hour after landing on the planet.
"Strangely, the environment does not look affected by the warp at all, the chaos artifact must have been just brought in." The inquisitor passed and plowed through a few fields, scaring the laboring pheasants to death. The complete absence of all advance technology in the region startled him, but he had been much more interested in spotting signs of corruption and was glad he saw none.
"Someone has to be plotting to turn this region into chaos wastes, I cannot simply ignore this situation." Based on his limited information, the prince was involved in the plot and the ruler was ignorant, or involved in his scheme.
"The ruling class has to be involved, the soldiers cannot be ignorant enough to be attacking an inquisitor without explicit orders of their commander." Keal Gull arrived at the most logical conclusion and decided to monitor the situation from afar, as he could not just waltz into the middle of a hostile kingdom with no support.
"The forces of chaos has not taken root in here yet, there should be some force beyond these lunatics' borders that will recognize my authority." He decided and jumped over a thicket, his feet slamming into yet another field.
To the horror of the few laboring pheasants present.
"Citizen, tell me what is this kingdom called." He made two resolute steps towards the nearest woman that stared at him like a dear gazing into headlights. One of the nearby men lifted his leg to make a step towards them, but flinched and put it back the moment Kael glanced at him.
"Our field." The woman said while starting to tremble and Keal knew he had to calm her down before she was able to provide him with anything useful.
"You have nothing to be afraid of, citizens. The inquisition will burn down all heretics following your corrupted prince. Answer my question." The woman gulped and opened her mouth, but there were no words coming out.
"Lordaeron, this kingdom is called Lordaeron." The man nearby answered instead, as the woman seemed to be too disturbed by meeting an inquisitor in person. Keal could understand, there was not a lot of them running around the Imperium.
"Great, what kingdoms border Lordaeron? Especially in this direction." Kael pointed in the way the paved road he had been following was going.
"Turning left, you will reach Stratholme. Straight lies Quel'Thalas." The citizen continued to be helpful with his eyes wandering in the sky, for same reason unwilling to look the inquisitor in the eyes. He had to admit, having his helmet on might be considered rude by some, but peasants were not any sort of nobility to be mirroring their antics.
What strange peasants.
"We are bordering the Magocracy of Dalaran, the Kingdom of Alterac and Wildhammer Clan in the south." The man furrowed his brows, seemingly studying the dirt in front of him as he was thinking hard. "Wait, Alterac is no longer a kingdom and the clans are just clans, not kingdoms. Does the Amani count?"
The man looked at the other peasants for help, but they failed to provide any advice.
The peasant was falling deeper into the process of confusing himself and Kael doubted that his further brooding would provide him with information of any value.
"Stop, keep it simple. There is the Kingdom of Stratholme to the left and this Quel'Thalas if I continue along the road, right?" The inquisitor simplified the problem for the man and he immediately appeared to regain focus.
"Yes, yes, but Stratholme is a city and it is not the best idea to go there now, because of. .. ." The peasant was interrupted by the woman, who suddenly burst into tears, holding her hand in front of her face.
"That is enough, your cooperation is appreciated." Keal Gull was about to turn around, but had a naive thought and asked one more question.
"Does this planet even have an Imperial Commander?" Keal looked into the eyes of each pheasant present, but only blank stares was their response. "As I¨ve suspected. Emperor protect us all."
The inquisitor departed, rushing in the direction of what the peasants referred to as Quel'Thalas. He had no idea where he was, but it was still possible that the planet belonged to the Donorian Sector where he had been conducting his investigation. He could not be unlucky enough to end up entirely outside of Segmentum Tempestus. At least he kept telling it to himself.
The planet he was on did not appear to have a widely known Imperial Governor and might be a planet lost to the Imperium. It was fruitless to think about it more with his limited information, he planned to uphold the codex of his order regardless of being thrown to only the Emperor knew where by some warp anomaly. The only obvious positive fact was that the reality around him held firm and other than the minor fluctuations around that sword, there were no signs of warp encroaching upon realspace.
The last thing he needed was to defend against demons invading the Materium.
Shaking off the distracting thoughts that would lead him nowhere, he continued to make his way forward thought the expansive forest that had been occasionally felled down to make room for fields and huts of the locals. Due to his speed, he quickly passed the intersection that was supposed to lead to Stratholme and his pursuers had been long left behind him, unable to keep up with his speed.
He saw a few smarter ones rushing past him, using the road, but he was not using the road directly and although his power armor was on the bigger side, he was far from being a vehicle like the Chimera to be unable to hide in a forest. He continued in his direction, undisturbed by what was happening on the road, as the hastily mobilized soldiers had not enough numbers to patrol the whole length of it.
If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.
Finally, he entered a mountain pass that was blocked by a wall with a gate guarded by two figures with distinctively different armor compared to the soldiers of Lordaeron, who were just in a heated discussion with their taller counterparts. Karl waited until the soldiers of Lordearon went away, their long faces clear even from the distance he was observing them.
"Let's hope this will go better than with the kingdom of Lordaeron." The inquisitor emerged from the trees and stepped onto the paved road. After a minute he reached the two soldiers that were guarding the gate and looked at them from up close.
"Eldar?!" Kael stared in shock at the pair of soldiers that were obviously not human and bore the biological signs that could not but remind him of the elusive Eldar race.
"What do you want, human?" One of them asked with the typical arrogance of their race and Kael was almost sure that he guessed right. He had an urge to turn around and solve the mess he had left behind by himself, but he had been an agent of the Inquisition for far too long and had learned to bend the rules when there was a need to extinguish a greater evil by a lesser one.
A long time ago, Kael used to be just a small fry collaborating with the Grey Knights, helping Ordo Malleus to fight demonic influence across the vast regions of the Imperium of Man. He survived many missions and was promoted to an inquisitor. Truth be told, he considered his promotion to be caused more by the heavy casualties of the local organization than his exceptional results. Too many inquisitors fell to the lure of extending the Imperium's borders when the situation in the Caligari Sector looked promising, only to lose their lives like flies when the forces of the Archenemy struck with their full might, emboldened by the great distance of the Astronomican .
Not that he cared much, he was just a single man and would not save the galaxy by himself. He just knew that the presence of agents of chaos on the planet was a more pressing issue than these backwater Eldar that for some reason lacked their iconic ranged weapons and armor. If he had to guess, those people might be Eldar that fled some destroyed Craftworld and failed to save most of their technology.
There were like mice compared to the dangers of the warp.
No, he was not influenced at all by his history with Ordo Malleus!
"As you can see, I belong with the Inquisition." Keal tapped at the large I symbol on his chest, the eyes of the Eldar followed the tip of his finger without much interest. "I need to speak to a Farseer."
"Lialan here can see pretty far, she might hear you out." The male soldier pointed at his female partner while the corners of his mouth shot up.
"What?" She furrowed her brows at him and Keal could feel a coming headache.
Eldar and their twisted ways!
"That is funny indeed, but you know well of whom I speak, there is not many Farseers among your race." The inquisitor tried to be patient, steeling his nerves against the twisted social interaction of the Eldar.
"Ah, that is how it is. Those residing in the Sunstrider Spire can see far indeed. But I do not believe they see far enough to put you in their sight." The soldier gave him a cold smile and Kael habitually checked the magazines of his bolter.
No, he could not make enemies on all sides. That was the way to fight all day long with the true enemies running free of all worries.
"A Farseer." Kael whispered for himself, thinking about a way to solve the situation. "Can I enter beyond the gate?"
"Certainly. .. not. You are not one of us, obviously." The male answered immediately while gripping his slender sword tighter.
"Is there at least some inn close by? I need to gather my strength after a long journey." Keal tried to steer the conversation in a more mundane direction and hoped there would be at least a sliver of humanity in those two Eldar.
"I do not care for your troubles, wanderer." The guard was adamant and the inquisitor pulled out his last card.
"I pay well." He reach into the backpack on his back and pulled out a piece of gold. The worlds of the Imperium were diverse, but gold had still some say in many of them. Not that Kael's hope was high considering he was dealing with the Eldar. Yet, they seemed quite poor and stranded on this world and a crisis might have taught them the ways of the local population.
"I think we might do an exception." Both Kael and the male soldier were stunned by the female voice.
"What?"
"Really?"
"You can't be serious Lialan! He is a human outsider!" The male Eldar relaxed his posture and stared at his companion in disbelief.
"So what? He might contribute more to our cause than the arrogant administration of the spire! Have you seen how much they have allocated for the revitalization of the burned forests? How long has it been since the red dragonflight burned it down and it has still not been fully restored! Why should we care about their policies, when they do not care about our trees?! Let's just take the gold!" The female guard began a fiery argument none of them expected.
"He is a wanted man in Lordaeron, have you not listened to their soldiers?!" Kael wanted to follow the argument further, but the two suddenly switched to another language that his universal translator was unable to handle.
"Not in the database again? What kind of a hole is this? I should have their language in my database!" Kael began complaining in High Gothic in reaction to their rude behavior, despite such action would cause many on Terra to frown. The language should be used for sacred rituals and high formal occasions, not to curse at Eldar.
Calming himself down, the inquisitor waited patiently through the argument, hoping that the translator would catch up soon. However, based on his prior experience, a short argument was not enough to provide enough data to map a language.
"What is going on here? What a disgrace to the Farstriders!" Another voice suddenly thundered, again in the common speech of the local humans and a muscular man with a bow strapped to the saddle of his horse stopped in front of the trio, a mustache giving him the air of a serious, middle-aged man.
Keal Gull was amused by the interaction, he was sure that the Eldar would not tolerate his tone, not from a human.
"Ranger lord Nathanos Marris!" To his surprise, both Eldar straightened their backs, not daring to talk back to the man.
"This argument is pointless, where is Ranger-General Sylvanas? I need to speak with her urgently."
"She should be at her Windrunner Spire."
"I thought, she was inspecting the defenses of Quel'Danas." The male guard corrected his companion.
"There is no time, give me as many rangers as you can spare, there is an undead infestation that needs to be suppressed!" The inquisitor watched the interaction with interest, still waiting when the Eldar would end the joke and send the human six feet under.
Surprisingly, that never happened.
"We can spare four squads immediately, but any more has to be approved by our superior."
"That has to be enough for now, send for them immediately!" The man turned his horse around, its hooves restlessly clapping against the cobblestone road while he waited for the reinforcements. The male guard was gone by that time and Keal was left staring at his female counterpart, who was in turn staring at his piece of gold he was yet to put back into his backpack.
"And let that man in, he is clearly not one of the undead! Has the High Elves still not learned that not all humans all enemies?" He stared at the lone guard and she stammered under his gaze.
"Y-Yes, of course, ranger lord Marris." The female quickly ushered Kael inside, even ignoring his gold. "Go, before our commanding ranger lord appears as well and this all turns into . . into. . .just go!"
"Thanks." Kael nodded and swiftly passed the gate, no longer blocked by the guards. Before he fully entered beyond it, he turned around and threw at the female the piece of gold he had been flashing in front of her eyes. "The Inquisition is not a bunch of cheapskates."
He did not wait for her reaction and quickly walked away, following the road deeper into the territory of the High Elves.
Yes, that was how the human had called them and after the witnessed conversation, Kael Gull was sure those people were definitely not Eldar, despite many similarities they shared with them. It was possible that they were distantly related, but no Eldar would take commands from a human as nothing much happened. That was simply impossible.
He slowly entered into the woods that looked different than on the other side of the gate, as if he had entered a different world. Many trees shone with lush, golden leaves, giving the scenery a dream-like quality.
But not all.
Keal noticed that some trees looked dead or their leaves were missing where their wood looked burned black. It looked like scars from a large forest fire at first sight, but the damage was inconsistent with no clear trail of the blaze, as if the fire originated from many places instead of a few, like an ordinary forest fire.
"Trees are just trees, let's get closer to some trading hub, it looks like gold will be more effective than expected." He remembered the High Elf soldier and smiled under his helmet. Gold was also a mighty weapon of the Inquisition, its gold coins no less numerous than its soldiers.