Sir Argvald turned to Cormal with a sigh.

“I do not believe Ander killed your men. What probably happened was that they wandered into a monster den, and your friend tried to pin the blame on someone else.”

“You are just going to let him go then?” Cormal said between gritted teeth.

“There is no evidence to suggest he did anything wrong.” Sir Argvald said. “If you could produce a body, or a murder weapon, or even a spot of blood, I would investigate further. But there is nothing. Unless you believe he has a cleaning type inborn ability?”

“No, I do not make such a claim.”

“In that case, Arten, I am giving you a demerit for bringing me into the caves in the middle of the night for no good reason. I am going home. And Cormal? Don’t let me hear about your men harassing Ander. There isn’t enough talent to go around for pettiness to be allowed to run rampant.”

“Yes Sir Argvald.” Cormal replied. His face was dark and stormy in the flickering lamplight. “I will be absolutely sure you do not hear about me or my men harassing Ander.” Sir Argvald looked at Cormal narrowly for a moment before shrugging.

“You and your men will leave first, and we will follow.” Ander was quickly released, but not without being shoved to the floor. Ander allowed it, though he could have easily resisted. Both the men holding him had been level 15, and no match for him at all. But Ander was not going to show his strength in front of Sir Argvald and Cormal. He needed to be rather inconspicuous at this point in time. Sir Argvald turned and gave Ander a long look as everyone else left, but then left behind them with more words.

Ander waited for the last of them to leave earshot before leaving his cave. He pulled out a light orb to guide his way, though he hid it mostly in his cloak. He needed a place to stay the rest of the night at least. He also needed somewhere to leave the bodies. Hopefully a monster den. It took Ander an hour before he found some monsters. They were a pair of oversized lizards which took great offense to Ander being in their den. They were appeased however when Ander flung out two naked bodies in front of them and retreated.

Ander looked at his inventory to find that all of their stuff, including Iskaa’s bloody clothes had been automatically looted, and the bodies sent to the morgue. Ander didn’t even know there was a morgue in his inventory. There seemed to be several hundred slots in the morgue, as well as an attached cold storage that could hold thousands of corpses. It made ander’s stomach boil. Who was the ship made for that it needed a morgue that big?

In any case, that was a problem for another time. Ander worked his way deeper into the caves. He had just gotten to where monsters were starting to make their homes, but even those lizards were pathetically weak. He had to go deeper, maybe even to the ruins themselves to find a challenge. But then Ander reminded himself that a challenge was not what he was looking for at the moment. He simply needed a place to lay low for the night.

The reason was that Ander needed information. These caves were a maze that seemed to extend forever, and Ander needed to know how to get to the ruins. That is where he would be able to find both monsters worth fighting and loot worth getting. The big problem was that the factions would be getting in his way. He had no doubt that they had monopolized all the good spots a long time ago. With that in mind, Ander found a small alcove and sat, unable to sleep for the next several hours.

Ander returned to the sinkhole, peering out of the caves cautiously. Noone was standing guard, noone was watching. Ander had been worried that they would have people right here waiting for him to show his face, but that was not the case. Seeing that the coast was clear, Ander started to make his way toward the town. While he was walking, Ander pushed at his wind sense. It was still not very big, only extending a few yards at best when not confined. But as Ander felt at it, he felt the volume of air that he could sense move at his prodding. It took some effort, but he was able to extend his wind sense a dozen yards in any direction. With even more effort he could sweep his wind sense around like radar. It was useful, but very exhausting. More than moving a sense should be.

Ander stopped dead in the middle of the rocky field between the caves and the town. It was due to a realization. He wasn’t moving an air based sense, he was moving the air itself. It was exhausting because he had to push the air around his wind sense out of the way. Ander thought about the gusts of wind that aided his movements. This was what the Air Elemental had brought to the table, control over a volume of air around the skill user. He could sense in that volume, and manipulate the air to help move him. He wondered if, had he known this, if he would have been able to stop his fall in the chasm. He would have to experiment with this more. If he had full control over the air in his volume, there were so many things he could do.

Ander shook his head. He could do that in the future after he had established a safe base for him to use. For now, he needed to get enough information to secure his immediate future. Ander continued towards the town.

As he entered he felt like everyone’s eyes were watching him, but as he looked around, no-one seemed to care. A few looked at him consideringly, or rather the off white color of his wool cloak, but no-one commented. His cloak did stand out though. Everyone else was wearing cloaks of red, blue, or green. The part that made him uncomfortable was that while there were still more blues and greens than there were reds, the reds were in an obvious majority. And while some of the reds seemed as uncaring as the rest, others glared at him with real hatred. Apparently word had already spread.

Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

“Hey, Whitie! Come here!” A man in a dusky green robe was beckoning him over to a group of his fellows. Ander approached, but left a couple of strides between him and the group. “I heard you offed some of those red cultists the other day. I gotta thank you!” The man raised a mug of beer Ander had not noticed earlier. “To the cultist killer!”

“You will have to forgive me, but I think you have me confused for someone else.” Ander started to walk away.

“Wait! Even if you didn’t kill them, you did something to get the cult’s ire. We like that, and would be honored if you would join our faction.” Ander looked at the man flatly.

“Like I told the Crimson Stars, I am not interested in joining a faction at this time.” Ander kept his voice flat and uninviting, but the man didn’t seem to get the hint. He was probably a little drunk. Which did not bode well for anyone joining this green faction, as it was still early enough in the morning that sunlight wasn’t halfway down the side of the sinkhole.

“Please dude, we are nothing like the crimson cultists. We with Dusk’s Rangers will treat you right.” The man gave Ander a big grin. Am I supposed to be their recruit, or their girlfriend?

“Why do you keep calling them cultists? They don’t seem all that cult-like.”

“Because they all worship that Cormal guy like the ground he steps on is holy now don’t they? It is disgusting. Wouldn’t be surprised to hear that they scavenge his outhouse to keep mementos of Cormal. I mean, the guy’s a good fighter, and I would be happy to look half as good, but please!”

Ander shook his head and started to walk away, but not before the guy shouted at him again.

“Dude, whitie, if you change your mind, go to our headquarters on Tight Street.”

“It’s Stalactite Street!” One of the man’s friends shouted.

“Nobody ever says the stalac part.”

“No, but it is on the sign…” Ander left the two to their bickering and continued through the town.

As he had seen before, there were numerous buildings dedicated to training some kind of skill or another. This town seemed more or less like a college town, with most of the buildings being dedicated to learning one thing or another. But there were other buildings as well. The one Ander was heading toward was a library. He hoped to find some of what he needed there. As he walked in he saw the very familiar sight of Karsish castled up behind a fort of books. Ander left the man alone, neither wanting to disturb him or really even to talk to him. Instead he approached a librarian, and asked if they had any maps he could look at. When he said they did, the librarian led Ander toward that section.

Ander spent the next hour pouring over maps, but found little that was any help to him. Apparently staff running the pit rarely ever ventured out into the ruins and relied on the factions to volunteer information, which they rarely did. It meant that while there were maps of the town going back fifty years, there were few maps that gave any detail of the surrounding cave systems or ruins. However he did find out that there were three separate ruins, all from subterranean species. Two of the ruins were dwarven in origin, with the other being an odd elf adjacent creature. There was little known about them but what could be gleaned from the artifacts that were collected by the factions. And that was rarely shared. All they really knew was that these were a shorter variant of elf, and had impressive, possibly spider related, climbing abilities.

The dwarven ruins provided the things you might expect from dwarves. Gold, jewels, artwork of the highest quality. The Setic ruins on the other hand generally provided silks. Silks that oddly enough withstood the seat of time. They were very strong, incredibly durable, and highly prized. Both worked and unworked silks were used, though no-one had the ability to work it nowadays. Nobles were want to drape entire rooms in the stuff, and the clothing often was sold as women’s clothes, as they were the only ones who could fit in them. Ander saw a couple pictures of some women wearing the old clothes looted from the ruin. The clothing looked more like something they should wear under real clothes, but apparently they were incredibly comfortable, so Ander wouldn’t judge.

In the end, Ander realized that the only way to get the information he wanted was to steal it from the factions. Which was something he was totally unprepared for. While he wasn’t a total stranger to stealth, he had no specific abilities to use it either. And if he wanted to get the information he would need to be stealthy. But that gave Ander an idea. He had a volume of air under his control. Sound needed air to exist. Would it be possible to use his wind powers to muffle his footsteps, his breathing, or even his fighting? Could he use it to knock people out silently without having to get close? Ander decided to leave the town for now to get a handle on his new ability.

Fortunately for Ander, it turned out that muffling sound was quite easy. He needed only to compact the air around him. He couldn’t compact it much, and there were problems when the compacted layer interacted with solid objects, but it could be done. The rest just needed practice. He also found quickly that multiple layers were far more useful than a layer even more compacted.This helped as Ander noticed a few red cloaked individuals exiting the city and walking in his direction. Ander didn’t know them, but they obviously knew him. Ander had seen his face in a reflection, and knew it wasn’t anything special for people to notice him by. Which meant that it was his cloak giving him away again. Apparently, all the other hatchlings had chosen a faction. Ander slipped behind a boulder and stored his cloak in disgust. There he waited for the three men to come closer.

“Yeah, he was over here.” One of them said.

“I still don’t believe the story that a brand new hatchling killed Iskaa and his men.” Another said. “It really is preposterous.”

“Yeah, but Cormal believes it. Besides, Iskaa was too smart to be tripped up by a couple of monsters, even if they did find the body.”

“The city thinks this is an open and shut case, but we won’t allow one of our own to go unavenged!”

Solidifying air was hard normally. Solidifying it inside three men while extending the wind sense to cover them? Nearly impossible. But nearly was the operative term, as one went down clawing his neck. His friends tried to help him, but as soon as he stopped twitching, Ander started on the next one. The other two were thoroughly spooked however, and immediately ran, allowing Ander to go and steal the other man’s cloak. The man wasn’t dead, and would come to in just a couple of minutes if not sooner. Short of causing brain damage, asphyxiation didn’t keep a person down for very long. He searched the other man, finding some coinage as well as some personal effects which Ander had no desire for.

And so, Ander returned to the town, taking the long way around to avoid the two men who would know that his brand new red cloak was most certainly not his cloak.