“I get that you’re purposely trying to be an ass,” Jaid called after Drim, panting a bit between her words. “But could you actually slow down a bit? I can’t say I’ve been properly trained to power walk in heels.”

“Well I’d say to ditch them then,” Drim sounded serious, though he did stop walking briefly to let the woman catch up. “But they do go rather well with your dress. And it’d be a shame to ruin the ensemble when you look so beautiful.”

Jaid, who’d been steadily approaching, suddenly took a step back, her face flushed red. She hadn’t been expecting such a compliment from her sworn enemy. It was obvious he was just toying with her, but she also wasn’t going to take the swing without retaliation. “It’s rather unfair, I’d say,” she chose her words carefully. “Us women have to suffer for our looks, but you get to be so handsome while staying mostly comfortable.”

Her words were effective, slapping him in the face better than her hand ever could, and he reeled back in embarrassment. “How interesting,” she followed up. “You have so many fawning over you all the time, I’d have thought you’d be numb to such praise by now.”

“Well, it’s not really like that,” Drim admitted. “Of course I notice people taking an interest in me, but the only mention of my appearance is usually how scary my face looks, whether that’s good or bad. It’s pretty rare for me to get an actual compliment.”

“How sad,” Jaid almost pitied him, but the fleeting feeling quickly passed. She’d stop her own teasing there. It didn’t seem like he’d take it well, and she didn’t want to give him the wrong idea.

“You know, I’m surprised you’re not actually here in your armor,” the man mentioned. “Given your history as a knight, I’d imagine that’s what you’re used to wearing to formal events like this. Like how I saw Laquet wearing his uniform.”

“Believe me, I tried,” Jaid’s mind wandered back to her earlier arguments with her superiors. “But I suppose they agree with what you said about creating a more relaxed atmosphere. I guess they think an armored knight would be too imposing. At least I still have my sword.”

“You do?” Drim gave her another once over. “Oh it must be in that small purse you’ve been carrying around.”

“Yes,” she held it out for him to see and opened the flap. The very tip of the pommel was all that existed in plain view. “This purse is just a wrap for the pouch. It’s harder for me to pull it out like this, but hopefully I won’t have a reason to. Unless you’re planning on giving me one.”

Drim held up both of his hands as if to express his innocence, he then turned around and resumed walking, though at a much more relaxed pace then before.

“And just where exactly are we going?” Jaid finally asked after being led around almost the entire castle, her feet getting sorer by the second. A Fiend might recover faster from blisters, but even her thicker skin didn’t stop the heels from rubbing.

“Uhh, I’m trying to find the study,” Drim clued her in. “My intuition is telling me that we’ll find something interesting.”

“Oh that?” Jaid remembered the room and then scowled because of its location: all the way back on the other side of the castle. “They led us past it when they brought us in. It’s in an offshoot hallway that’s been closed off for the event, and the room itself has been additionally roped off. But that’s not going to stop you, I assume.”

“Not in the slightest,” Drim answered shamelessly. “And that’s even better. It means I, or I guess we, won’t be disturbed. Now if you’d lead the way…”

Jaid sighed internally once more but acquiesced, guiding him back the way they came. If she didn’t, he’d figure it out anyways eventually. And at least with her there, hopefully her presence would dissuade him from stealing anything.

“Ehhhhhg.”

“You seem displeased,” Jaid held herself back from making fun of how annoyed he looked, grumbling ever since they entered the study.

“Is this really all there is?” Drim frowned at the small room. In any house, it would be considered a rather large study or even a decently small library. But Jaid had to admit that the room seemed ill fitting of such an enormous castle.

“It’s the only one I’ve come across,” she informed him. “And the plaque outside even blatantly labels it as the study.”

“But that doesn’t really make sense,” the man refused to believe what was right in front of him. All that was in the room were bookshelves lining each wall and two chairs used for sitting and reading. “There’s no way this is everything.”

“Maybe the owner wasn’t big on reading,” all Jaid could do was shrug at the idea.

“No, he wasn’t like that at all,” Drim declared boldly. “Bastion’s founder was a Drazah general as you probably know. But he never saw battle. His actual role was their official scribe. He was an expert in law and handled all their legal documents. From treaties to governing ordinances and everything in between, he was the man behind it all.”

“That’s why he was able to secede and make his own nation. He used all that knowledge and influence for his own personal gain. As their scribe, he also knew the ins and outs of all their plans, as well as every deal they’d ever made behind closed doors. It made him the ideal turncoat for the united armies after the Cosmic Boon, and also let him keep his head.”

“So it makes absolutely no sense that this is all he’d keep,” Drim started walking around the room. “No, there has to be more somewhere. It could be all in a storage room. But he certainly didn’t turn everything over, or there would have been a lot more arrests and plea deals. I’m guessing he kept it somewhere hidden, saving it for the day he could use it for blackmail or some other advantage.”

“Do you have any insight to provide?” The man wasn’t talking to Jaid, but rather staring down at his own chest for some reason.

“You know I’m not speaking to you right now,” a woman’s voice filled the room.

And then a sudden memory flashed in Jaid’s mind, causing her to clutch her head in agony as she started to remember. “Wait, that’s right… I remember now. Eleen Drazah is conscious. Oh wait, zjik.”

It was at that moment that Jaid realized she could have kept her mouth shut. “Uhh, I never told them, I swear. Seriously, I just remembered right now. And I promise I won’t mention it. Please don’t erase my memories again…” The girl instinctively undid the flap on her purse, ready to fight her way out if Drim tried to capture her for this.

But the man just huffed and snickered. “Heh, it’s fine. If you didn’t tell them, then they figured it out some other time. At least a few of the top brass at the Central Peace knows for sure. I got a threatening email from a scientist saying he’d reveal it all if we didn’t surrender Nathym to work for them as an indentured servant.”

“Naturally, I ignored it, and as far as I’m aware, nothing’s really come of it. They haven’t spread the news, and if they did, I like to believe at this point it wouldn’t matter thanks to our public opinion. As for how they found out, who knows. She’s been a lot more brazen and openly chatty lately. A scout could have overheard her at some random time.”

Jaid breathed a sigh of relief and let her purse rest back by her side, thankful that the situation hadn’t escalated. But it was still distressing in a way. The man in front of her held no more fear of the Central Peace or anyone discovering their secrets. Did he think that there was no one left who could stop him? Maybe one day it would come down to her alone.

But for now, she was glad that Drim was still acting aloof. And in this situation, there was an extra layer of doofusness on top of it. “What are you doing exactly?” Jaid had to ask since the man had started doing something bizarre.

“Playing it safe,” he continued his actions unfettered. Drim was prodding around the various shelves, wiggling any books that looked suspicious to him. But he wasn’t walking around and using his hands. Instead, he was standing in the very middle of the room and sending vines out to check.

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“I wouldn’t put it past this guy to have installed some kind of secret passage that’s hard to discover. But I also wouldn’t have put it past him to have installed traps on these shelves to destroy any sort of confidential evidence or punish those who are rifling through his things.”

Jaid decided to move closer to the center of the room, right next to Drim, after a vine whizzed right past her. So she opted to get out of the way, and thought he had the right mentality to stay as far away from the shelves as possible if they were in fact rigged.

“Ah, that sounds promising!” Drim smiled with anticipation when one of the books slid out partway with an echoing click. There was rumbling around them, and they glanced around to see where the secret passage would appear, trying to guess what bookshelf it was hidden behind.

But neither of them suspected that the trap door was right beneath their feet. Both Fiends plummeted down into a dark hole before they realized what was happening. Jaid stuck out her arms, trying to grip whatever she could. The hole was fairly small, so she could press against walls on either side. It seemed Drim had the same idea, spreading his own limbs. Eventually, the two of them came to a stop at some point in the middle of the vertical shaft. But since they were about the same height, they fell the same amount, and now their bodies were clinging to each other with their arms and legs intertwined.

And what little light was left had already vanished, the trap door above them sliding closed. “Well this is just great,” Jaid tried to move one of her legs down to see if she could feel any sort of floor beneath them, but there was nothing, just empty void that quickly caused her to retract her limb and wedge it back into the wall.

To add to the unpleasantness of the situation, the man pressed against her started to snicker. “I don’t know if we’re a cursed duo or something, but it’s only with you that I ever end up in situations like this.”

“Oh is that supposed to be funny?” Jaid groaned. “Where’s your face so I can punch it?”

“Well hold on, I’ll give you the chance.” Glowing moss appeared on the wall behind Drim’s back, illuminating their situation, which was much more compromising than Jaid had first realized. If they weren’t desperately clinging on for their lives, it would look like they were clinging together in a passionate embrace instead.

The shaft they were in was obviously designed for one person to traverse at a time, and was a tight squeeze. It explained why she could so clearly feel Drim’s body pressed up against hers. But some of what she’d mistaken for his body heat was actually his breath. Since they were roughly the same height, they’d fallen the same distance.

And now their faces were just an inch apart, a single nod away from another accidental kiss. Jaid started glancing around desperately for some escape, but mostly she wanted to look at anything other than the man’s fierce green eyes staring intently back at her. Luckily, her vision quickly landed on the metal rungs that were embedded into one of the walls. It wasn’t quite a full ladder, but it was a way out.

“I’m heading back up,” the woman declared. It would be too much of an agonizing and writhing effort for the two of them to try and untangle their bodies. So instead, Jaid made a clone directly on top of her soldiers and then swapped herself into it, grabbing onto the rungs. Even though she’d warned him, Drim still had to scramble to reorient himself and adjust his grip since he no longer had her body to cling to. But before she started climbing, she had a realization about her dress. “If you look, I’ll kill you.”

“Hmm, well I could turn the lights back off if you want.”

“Please don’t.” He was clearly jesting, but she also wouldn’t put it past him to do it for a second just to mess with her. And fortunately, he was in fact enough of a gentleman to look down into the black nothing beneath them.

Jaid made it exactly two rungs higher before one of them snapped and she was sent plummeting back down. As she fell, she stared up at the black ceiling, wondering what she should do. If she shot up another clone to try and grab on, that added force would probably cause the next rung to break too, likely weak from years of neglect after the death of Bastion’s founder. She had to think of some way to get out of this, but her mind was too busy being shocked and terrified.

“Gotcha!” Her body was enveloped in warmth again as Drim wrapped an arm around her back and pulled her close. She wasn’t even right back where she started, clinging on for dear life. Instead, she was now simply floating in the air, held up entirely by the man’s strength. It felt oddly safe and securing.

“Okay, what do we do now?” Jaid asked once she had a moment to calm down.

“Well I’m heading down,” Drim’s conviction hadn’t wavered. “A hidden passage like this has to be hiding something interesting, right? It’d be a shame to turn back now. You’re welcome to come with me, unless you also want to explain how you broke the floor getting out of this shaft to the staff.”

“Down it is then,” the woman accepted their path. “I guess if you hold me steady, I could keep spawning clones down until I reach the bottom. However far that may be.”

“I actually have a simpler idea, but I’ll need a free hand, so I suggest you hold on tight.” Drim didn’t give her time to argue before he started acting, so she did as he asked reluctantly. The man spawned a vine which dug deep into one of the walls of the passage. They then repelled down deeper into the shaft.

It didn’t take them long to reach the bottom, though it still seemed like they’d descended quite a distance. Lights suddenly flashed in their eyes when their feet touched the ground, set up to have cut on automatically when anyone reached the cavern.

“Now this is more like it,” Drim grinned at the abundance of crates and immediately started digging.

Jaid took a look around herself. There were papers, scrolls, books, ledgers—a true treasure trove of history. Yet despite all that, she certainly didn’t share the man’s enthusiasm. The woman enjoyed a good story, happy to cozy up with a book after a long day, but this was all mind-numbing zjik that would immediately put her to sleep. She was built for fighting, surveillance, and quick-thinking on the battlefield. Analytics and studying endless data certainly weren’t her forte.

“I think we’re at sea level,” the woman noticed the faint sound of crashing waves.

“Yes, that seems about right,” Drim agreed, though almost reluctantly since he’d been pulled away from the stash. “I suppose finding the way out should be our top priority. Now that I know this is here, we can come back and retrieve it any time. And given how abandoned it looks, I doubt any of the other citizens know it exists.”

Jaid thought briefly about whether she should allow such thievery. As Drim had speculated, it was almost all history from the Drazah War. Of anyone, he would probably see that it was handled accordingly. And the world had gotten along fine without it all this time, so it wouldn’t miss something it didn’t know existed in the first place.

Finding the exit didn’t take long at all once they found the clearly marked exit sign slightly obscured by a pillar. It led them down another tunnel which led to a fake wall in the rock. “I guess we should be glad that Kada didn’t accidentally destroy the mechanics when she was terraforming this area,” Drim mentioned as they stepped out onto the beach at the base of the cliff beneath Last Bastion.

Jaid took a moment to enjoy the salty air, staring out at the dark ocean that was glittering from the moonlight and stars. She then looked briefly back up at the castle that loomed above them and then returned her attention to Drim. “I guess I should be getting back. If I’m gone for too long, I’m sure I’ll get an earful from my superiors for abandoning my post.”

“And if I need to find you again, I have a feeling I know where you’ll be. Goodnight, Drim. Enjoy the rest of your evening.” The man didn’t respond right away, seemingly lost in his own thoughts as he stared at the ocean.

“Goodnight, Jaid,” he finally said after she’d taken a few slow steps away along the sandy beach. “See you soon.”

Maybe his words were just a common farewell, but they didn’t sit right with her—far too ominous. “What did you mean by that?”

“Huh?” Drim turned to her, confused by her accusation.

Jaid started marching back over to him but got frustrated. After ripping off her heels, she stormed over, aggressively to the point that the man took a step back on reflex. “You said that you’d see me again soon.”

“Uhhh, I guess I did,” the man admitted, still unsure why she was so worked up about it.

“And our day-to-day lives don’t usually intersect,” she pointed out. “Maybe I’m reading too much into it, but my intuition tells me that you’re plotting something.”

Drim let out a single amused laugh. “Heh, maybe I am.”

“And are you going to tell me what it is?” Jaid took another step closer, really getting up in his face.

“Now why would I do that?” Drim didn’t falter and stared right back. “We’re enemies after all. Your words, not mine. But I wouldn’t want to cause any moral dilemmas for you. So I think I’ll keep it to myself.”

“Fine then,” Jaid finally pulled away and began stomping back down the beach. “I guess I’ll be seeing you soon then. I hope it’ll be another chance to wipe away that arrogant look. Don’t keep me waiting.”

◆◆◆

“So what do you think, Phon?” Drim spoke aloud on the beach after Jaid was finally out of sight. “Can we rely on her to do what we need?”

His sister strolled out of the shadows of the secret tunnel and onto the sandy shore next to him. “It’s hard to say,” she answered after some thought. “In my opinion, it still falls more in the hands of the rest. But as to whether she’ll meet our expectations, I wouldn’t count her out. And if she fails us, that’s why we have contingencies in play.”

Drim took a deep breath. “Then I guess there’s really no turning back. We only have a few days before it’s too late to stop them. Let’s get to work.”

Phon chuckled and took a step closer, draping her arms around her brother’s shoulders. “As you command, my king.”