15 Years BGD
South Harbor
“Greatest Grandmother!” Dalton Alexander Theromvore said as Tyrdra came into view. Even at fifteen he still felt like a little kid every time she came into view. It was no wonder; she was the second oldest person he knew, the first being Elyas.
“Dalton, I'm glad to see you are hard at work training. What are you working on today?”
As she moved closer, Dalton noticed that Tyrdra was dressed for battle. This was the first time he had ever seen her outfitted for battle, and the feelings that she evoked in him were a confusing mix to the teenager. Even though she had been around for over seven hundred years, she looked like she was in her mid-twenties, despite worry lines had begun to appear on her forehead. She moved with a grace that he had only seen before in dancers and acrobats, and she was supremely confident in each and every movement. Her red hair that normally flowed down around her shoulders was pulled back into a tight braid. Her armor had obviously been designed to restrain her curves, but it wasn't enough to stop the eye from being drawn to her form. Part of him was sickened by his reaction since she was still in his family tree, but the other part reminded him that that was well over twenty generations ago.
“The Knight Commander said that I favor my right hand, so I am supposed to do left handed sword drills until I am equally proficient with both hands.”
“And how do you feel about that?” Tyrdra said, noticing Dalton's less than enthusiastic demeanor.
“I know she has a reason for making me do it, but I feel as if I'm wasting my time practicing something I'll most likely never need.”
“A lot can happen in a battle; it is very easy for a hand to get injured, and being able to use your remaining hand could mean the difference between life and death. It may never happen, but being prepared for such an eventuality is wise.” Tyrdra put her arm around Dalton's shoulders, guiding him towards the command building. “I thought that maybe you and I could head to the border and see if we could find ourselves some trouble; we can put some of this training into practical field testing.”
Dalton looked at Tyrdra to make sure she wasn't messing with him, and then almost ran off without her to ask permission before he noticed that they were already heading in the correct direction. Trying to reassert control over his emotions, he cleared his throat before speaking. “I think that would be a great idea. I hope the Knight Commander agrees.”
“I think we can get her to come around,” Tyrdra said.
It didn't take them long to reach the office of the Knight Commander, the officer in control of the Knight's training facilities for the Protectorate. Walking into the outer office, a bored looking Corporal looked up from behind a well-worn desk. It took him a moment to register that the people walking in the room were actually important, and when he finally realized it, he shot to his feet and threw his fist over his heart.
“Lady Dalton, we were not informed of your visit. Knight Commander Theromvore is currently in a meeting, but I could tell her that you are here.”
“Is the meeting going to take long?”
“I don't believe so, ma'am, but one can never tell about these things.”
“We'll just wait out in the hall, then. Please inform the Knight Commander that we are here when it is prudent.” Tyrdra reaffirmed her statement by turning around and heading back into the hall they had come from.
Dalton chuckled quietly a moment later when he joined her. “The way people treat you is amazing. I hope that I can command even half that level of respect before I die.”
“It is nice, on occasion, but it is a double-edged sword. When people begin to look at you as if you are something beyond them, it creates a barrier that can be hard to breach. Rarely am I engaged in meaningless conversation anymore. I miss the days when people would talk with me about the weather, or how well their gardens were growing. I have become a symbol to the people of this city.”
As she spoke, Dalton realized for the first time how very lonely it must be to have outlived generation after generation of your progeny. With each generation her legend grew, and the gap between her and them became even greater. She no longer had anyone she could confide in or laugh and cry with. To show them such a weakness as tears might make them see her as something less than indestructible and shake the very foundation of their worlds. Not knowing why, he reached out and tugged gently on one of her earlobes.
The look of shock that crossed her face momentarily almost made him regret his impulse, but a moment later she grabbed his hand and kissed the back of it. “Dear child, you are so much like him, it is no wonder that you were able to pull that memory up. He used to do that when I was getting too introspective, worrying about things that I couldn't do anything to stop.”
It was that moment that the Knight Commander came into the hall alongside a young Mage. The pair stopped when they saw Dalton and Tyrdra standing in such an intimate exchange. Knight Commander Theromvore tilted her head slightly, a small grin showing on her features before she turned to the young man next to her.
“Mage Skyhammer, I will look over your proposal for these new Battlesorcerers and tell you what I think in the morning.”
Understanding that he was being dismissed, Leodric Skyhammer nodded. “Thank you, Knight Commander Theromvore. I hope we can work together on this in the future.”
As the Mage walked down the corridor, the Knight Commander gestured towards the door of her office. Tyrdra squeezed Dalton's hand softly before letting go and gliding past the Knight Commander. As Tyrdra entered the room, the Knight Commander raised an eyebrow at her son.
“You two are getting chummy.”
“It's not like...” Dalton began to say as his mother's eyebrow rose to greater heights. “One of his memories came up and I did something that reminded her of him, it wasn't a big deal.”
Nodding, Knight Commander Theromvore told her son, “It is okay, I understand. I've been through more than one awkward moment because of something I knew that I shouldn't. Just be careful, okay? She's not as strong as she pretends, and if you let too many of those memories free it could be bad for everyone involved.” She placed a reassuring hand onto his shoulder as he entered the outer office. He knew that the action was tantamount to a hug from most mothers, so he appreciated it for what it was. She had worked hard for her position, and as one of the first women to assume the role of Knight Commander, she couldn't afford to do anything that might be misconstrued as weakness to the officers above her. “So, what does your venerable great, great, great, et cetera, grandmother want today?”
“Oh! She wants to take me out on a border patrol.”
Year: 3045 AGD
Month: New Year
First Eighthday
Continent of Terroval
Mine
He awoke from this latest dream moments before the Goblin's foot hit his midsection.
“Time for another day of work, Tunnel Rat.”
Tunnel Rat. For as long as he could remember, that is what he was called, and he had been okay with it. Somewhere during the last Eightday, however, it had turned into a vile term. Something about these people that he kept seeing in his dreams made him want to fight back against the term. The problem was that he didn't know what exactly it was that he was supposed to be called.
Every time he was called Tunnel Rat, it drove the fact that he didn't know his own name deeper into his psyche. Over the last few days, he had tried out some of the names in his head that he had heard during his dreams, but none of them felt right. Even though the view through which he saw his dreams could be male or female, he was fairly certain that he could rule out most of the names of the females from his dreams. That still left him with a lot of names to eliminate, and over the last Eightday he had done several things to try to narrow down that list.
First, he drew the name in question in the dirt, trying to feel how naturally the letters came to him. Depending on his success or failure doing that, he would then move on to saying the name quietly to himself. Some of the names felt familiar to him, but he didn't think that any of them were his name. He didn't feel like a Dalton, Ranadin, or Lagelion. In fact, the only names that had any resonance at all within him were Theromvore and Daystar, but he knew from his dreams that those were last names, and he couldn't be both, could he?
As he trudged into the end of the line of Goblin-kin leaving his cell, he muttered the names to himself. He didn't miss the look from the Goblin in front of him, nor had he missed many of the looks that the others had been giving him lately, either. They thought he was crazy, and they were giving him space until they figured out just how crazy he was.
The first night that he found his half of the cell more empty than usual he had hurt. He didn't want to be isolated from everyone else; he just wanted to know who he was. As the dreams continued to intensify, however, he was glad for the distance that the others were giving him. Some of the dreams were so intense that he was sure he must be moving or speaking during them. During the last Eightday, he had been in more battles than he could count. He had attended a half dozen lectures ranging from mathematics to battlefield tactics.
When the dreams had simply been short flashes or sensations it had been much easier to ignore them. Now that they had become so long and vivid, he was having trouble telling what was real and what wasn't. There was so much detail and sensation in the dreams that he was beginning to wonder if they were something else entirely. In this latest dream, Dalton had eluded to possessing memories from someone long dead, and if that was what was going on, it was happening on a much larger scale than it had happened to that young man.
If they were indeed memories from his ancestors, perhaps he could get an idea of who he was through figuring out who they had been. That was no simple task, however, because each person he had been watching the memories of thought in different ways. Sometimes the differences were subtle, but occasionally the manner in which they perceived the world was vastly different. It wasn't as simple as how differently Humans and Elves see the world, for each Human and each Elf saw things slightly differently than others of their own race. The differences seemed to be greater along the racial divide, but not always in the ways that one might expect.
Of the three Elves that he had dreamed of being, two of them had held very rigid mindsets. Once they came to a conclusion on something, it became very difficult to change their minds. The third Elf had taught him to question many of the things that his people held as fact, and found that there was a lot of room for debate amongst these beliefs. Knowing how his people felt he had kept those thoughts mostly to himself.
The Humans seemed to be the exact opposite of the Elves, the majority of them constantly questioning what they knew. If someone came up with a new fighting technique it was quickly adapted or discarded after weighing the benefits and drawbacks. New ideas about how the universe worked seemed to be changing constantly; some found it difficult to give up their old theories, but given enough information they would usually come around to this new way of thinking, often enthusiastically. There were, however, a few Humans that thought in much the same way as their Elven counterparts. Those people who decided—or were told—that something was the way it was, and nothing anyone told them would change their mind.
Then, there were the Dragons. He had only dreamed about two of these so far, but their thoughts were so divergent from the Humans and the Elves that he had come awake with a massive headache each time. Where humans and Elves saw one reality, the Dragons could sift through a multitude of ways in which to view the world, often looking upon multiple layers at the same time. Looking wasn't really the right word either, though, because some of the ways in which they could view the world seemed to be an almost instinctual knowledge of how the smallest particles could work in tandem to create something larger.
When he had been inside the Dragon, the boy could feel the air around him and the bonds of the particles that formed the rocks beneath his feet. Everything was something else in disguise; the world itself was fluid, malleable. How could any being that knew just how fragile reality was hold anything as hard truth? This was not the case, however, for in many ways the Dragons seemed to be even more set in their ways than the Elves. They knew how things worked or didn't work and trying to change their minds on anything would be like trying to pull a planet out of its rotation around the sun. It was possible in theory, but the forces involved were mind numbing in their complexity.
He thought that he would be happy if he didn't have any more dreams as a Dragon, but he knew somewhere deep inside that it was a vain hope. His mind had even begun to hallucinate that he could feel the particles that made up his clothes and the pickaxe in his hands. Allowing himself to be caught up in the feeling of the particles that made up the material of his clothing, he saw the image of a young woman. She was working on yet another set of clothes for the slaves in the mine. The only happy thought in her life was that she wasn't one of those poor sad creatures.
Slaves? Try as he might, he couldn't get the word out of his head. The more he thought about it, the more he realized that was indeed what he and the Goblin-kin he was working with were. For over a year, he had been quietly doing what he was told, because he didn't know what else he should be doing. It had never occurred to him that things should be different. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he heard an outraged roar of defiance, and then the world started shaking.
It started out small, the pebbles around him bouncing, but soon a crack began to form in the rock in front of him, and people started yelling.
“Quake!” the closest guard yelled. “Everyone head towards the cells!”
Several guards ran past, easily outpacing the chained miners. Some of the larger Goblins were hurrying along several of the smaller members of the chain gang that were not moving quickly enough for their tastes. At the front of the group was a young boy, trying to move his feet quickly enough that he made progress but carefully enough that the chain between his feet didn't make him fall. Several of the Goblins were catching up to him when something told him to stop. He held his hand out trying to warn his fellow miners of the danger, two of them listened long enough to save their lives, but sadly, the rest did not.
He was just beginning to feel tension on the chain from the rest of the group moving forward when a large portion of the tunnel's ceiling imploded. Dust filled the air, making the goblins choke. Opening his eyes, he saw a thick coating of dust about two inches from his face. Reaching out to touch the dirt, it fell to the ground as soon as his finger punctured the invisible barrier. Deciding that he had enough worries at the moment, he put thoughts about whatever it was that had kept the dust away from him to the side.
The two Goblins that had stopped when he told them to, were now staring at him as if wondering what they should do next. He realized a moment later that he would probably be doing the same thing to someone that had saved his life. The only problem was that he didn't have any idea what to do next. As far as he knew, the cave was a dead end in the other direction. They might be able to escape out of one of the air vents, but if the talk amongst the Goblins was to be believed, the air vents had been created with such thoughts in mind and held plenty of dangers for anyone that should make the attempt.
The first thing they had to do was break the chain that was now under who knows how many tons of rock. The boy realized then that he had dropped his pickaxe when he had begun running down the tunnel, and that most of the others had done the same. Looking around, he couldn't see one anywhere nearby, but the layer of dust and debris could be hiding one right next to him and he wouldn't know it.
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“Okay, we need to see if we can find a pickaxe.” He said using the harsh tongue of the Goblins.
The two stared at him momentarily before the larger of the two spoke up. “You speak our language?”
“Yes, I understood most of what was said when I woke up, but I have spent the last year listening so that I could communicate clearly should the need ever arise.” He didn't realize how strange it was to other people to not talk for over a year when in such tight company, but none of them had ever tried to see if he could speak their language either so some of the blame was theirs. “I don't think that is important right now, though. We need to break this chain if we are going to have any chance of getting out of here.”
It looked like the Goblin was about to say something else, but he shook his head as if to clear the thought away before nodding. They stretched their search as far as the chain would allow, but they were unable to find anything usable within their limited range of movement. Deciding that their best bet was to see if they could find a weak link and break it, he began moving his hands over each link in the chain.
“What are you doing?” the smaller of the Goblins asked after watching him feel a dozen links of chain.
“I'm checking to see if I can find a weak link that we can break. I don't think this chain is very high quality,” he replied.
“Why do you think that?” the bigger Goblin asked.
“Well...” He thought about it for a little while as he continued to make his way along the chain. Something about the chain felt weaker than he thought it should, but he couldn't explain to them exactly why he thought that way, so he needed a reason that they could believe. “Everything else these guys use seems to be junk, it just stands to reason that they would get the cheapest chain that would do the job.”
Seemingly mollified, the two Goblins went back to quietly watching their young companion for a time. He was only a few chain links away from the wall when the smaller one, looking down at the chain at his feet, asked, “How will you know if it is weak or not?”
“Well, I'm hoping to find something obvious, like a crack, or someplace where it has stretched thin, but we might just end up pulling hard and hoping there is a weak spot somewhere I couldn't see.” What he couldn't tell them was that he had found several flawed links, but he wasn't sure that the flaws were large enough for the three of them to cause one of the links to break. There was also the fact that he could very well be imagining his ability to feel the things that made up the chain. If it wasn't for the fact that such a feeling had saved his life and the lives of the two Goblins only a dozen minutes earlier, he wouldn't even have the small amount of hope that it was real that he did.
As he reached the last link sticking out of the wall, he put his head against the rock barrier in defeat. He hadn't found any weaknesses in the chain that he thought were prevalent enough for the small group to exploit. As he closed his eyes, a picture began to form in his mind. The rock wall in front of him no longer felt like an insurmountable barrier. He could see that the rock was not as solid as his body was telling him that it was, and as he sat there exploring the stone with his mind he saw that one of the links under the stone had been busted. It was only four links into the stone, and he thought that if they were able to pull hard enough they might be able to bend it enough to relinquish its grip on the next link in line.
“Alright, I don't see any visible weaknesses in any of these links, but maybe if we all try pulling something will give.”
“I suppose it is a better idea than sitting around waiting to die,” the smaller Goblin said, and the other grunted in acknowledgment.
They were only able to move backwards a little bit before the chain became taut, and they began to pull with all of their might. If anyone had been watching it was probably a funny sight: a skinny little Half-Elf and two Goblins not much larger than the kid pulling on this chain for dear life. No matter how hard they pulled, however, the chain was not coming loose. After their fifth attempt, the Goblins sat down where they had been pulling and let out giant sighs.
“I don't think it’s going to work, we just don't have enough strength to do this,” the smaller Goblin said, and the larger Goblin once again grunted in agreement, too tired to form any words.
The boy stood in place, staring down at the chain and driving his will inside and along its links. His manacles began to warm up at a frightening pace, but he found his consciousness traveling down the chain and into the broken link inside the wall.
“One more try: let’s give it all we've got. If it doesn't work, we can try to find some other way.” His voice sounded detached, even to himself, as if disconnected from the events and no hint of emotion seeping in. His attention elsewhere, he didn't realize that the Goblins had resumed their position until he felt the chain become taut behind him. “Alright, on three.”
“One.”
He focused his will on the broken link, willing the bonds in the broken end to soften.
“Two.”
Feeling the tiny pieces that made up the metal begin to separate, he spread his awareness to the rock and began to tear at the much weaker bonds.
“Three.”
The three of them pulled with everything they had, and the chain came flying out of the rock and speeding towards their heads. The two Goblins had not expected the chain to come loose so easily, and they fell on their backsides, putting them out of the way of the flying chain.
Still connected to the chain by his will, the boy felt the loose end flying towards his head. Detached from the events unfolding around him, he watched the metal fly through the air, feeling how it interacted with the different particles that it was now floating through. The chain was about a foot away from his head when he felt something inside of him affect the metal in some strange way, causing it to change directions, suddenly heading straight down towards the chain at his feet.
He watched, still feeling nothing as the now magnetized metal clung together. Bending down, he tried pulling the links apart and found that he couldn't make them budge. Viewing the links through his new sight, he could see that there was a lot of energy coursing through the metal, making a very strong magnetic field. After several attempts at physically trying to pull the metal apart, he was distracted by the smell of something burning.
It took a little while for his mind to withdraw from its connection to the chain and re-seat itself inside his body. As his mind reestablished connection to his physical form, a pain the likes of which he had never known assaulted him. The manacles on his arms were bright red, obviously hot to the touch and scalding his forearms. Not knowing what else to do, he pressed the manacles up against the cool stone, trying to dissipate some of the heat away from his body. He could feel something inside of him trying to stop the pain and the heat, but each time it was rebuffed by the manacles.
The Goblins overcame their initial awe of the events quickly enough to see that their savior was in pain and moved in to see what they could do to help. Reaching over to try to move the manacles, the larger of the two received several burnt fingers for his trouble. Seeing what happened to his companion, the other Goblin began to trickle dirt onto the glowing manacles. Neither of them understood what was going on, but they were not going to let this strange little boy who had saved them burn without doing anything to help.
As the boy passed out from the pain, the Goblins noticed that the manacles began to cool rapidly. Had their attention not been so riveted on the events in front of them, they might have noticed that the chain suddenly became demagnetized at the same time.
First Eighthday
Serenity Valley
Institute of Learning
Shawnrik was eating lunch and going over the last Eightday in his mind. Only an Eightday before he had been in the Giant village of Tranquility Mist. Going from that quiet, measured environment to the bustling, hectic atmosphere of the Institute had required quite the adjustment. Both places were good in their own ways, but he found himself missing the quiet of the village and the endless expanses for him to explore.
He had learned so many things about this strange valley over the last Eightday, and he still wasn't sure that he believed them all. The first thing he had learned was probably the most obvious to anyone that lived, or had spent any amount of time in the valley. The walls that reached towards the sky and ended in darkness were the inner lining of an ancient volcano. Someone had long ago carved out and restructured the volcano so that they could hide the valley from prying eyes. Whose eyes Shawnrik didn't know, but whoever built it had done a good job.
Verrian said that the entire ecosystem was self-contained, and that they had regularly scheduled rainfall. The sunlight was channeled and reflected into the valley, and on days that the sun wasn't out, they had large lights that were called Solar Simulators that provided illumination when needed. All of this was handled by something called a mainframe that was housed somewhere on the campus. Shawnrik had the feeling that there was a lot more about this wondrous valley that would stretch the limits of his imagination even further.
Perhaps the most useful thing he had begun to learn this week was also the thing that frustrated him the most. He was beginning to understand the basics behind how a computer worked, but the thing still hurt his head whenever he thought about it. The usefulness of such a device couldn't be overstated, but trying to learn how to use one at the same time you are trying to learn your coursework was a daunting process. That's not even mentioning the fact that even though he could read and write, he wasn’t able to process the words at anywhere near the speeds that his fellow classmates could.
Luckily, many of the computers were able to understand most of what he was saying, so if he was having an especially troubling time inputting a command he could ask the computer how it was done, or simply tell the computer what it was that he wished to accomplish. Many of the students simply told the computers what to do, but he felt like he should learn how to utilize these devices to their full potential, like he would with any tool or weapon at his disposal.
Shawnrik had enjoyed most of his classes. His favorites so far surprised him, with Basic Mathematics and Mythology taking the lead. He enjoyed his other classes as well; he just liked those two more than the others. Any issues in his classes that he foresaw having either dealt with information he might not know that was expected for him to know or problems with other students, Rigael in particular. The young Stroml'Dier had still given Shawnrik no hints as to where all of his ire was coming from, but he figured that Rigael would get around to telling him sooner or later, and in one way or another.
The only class that they had not yet been to was the one called Martial Arts, which took up the entire afternoon of Firstday. Shawnrik had looked up the course in the school's database earlier in the week, and what he had read interested him greatly. Ashur and Dunnagan had taught him several ways that he might be able to use his body as a weapon in a fight, but this discipline seemed to take some of those ideas to a whole new level.
Today was the only day that the two of them had off to themselves, and neither of them knew what to do.
“Do you have any material from any of your classes that you need to go over?” Verrian asked.
“Not yet, I don't think. So far, the concepts have been fairly easy to grasp, or were at least well enough explained that I was able to understand them. I think the only classes I might have trouble in that you don't take with me, are Metallurgy and Basic Mathematics, though I think Instructor Daymarr will be a very good instructor; I looked at some of the things further along in the coursework, and it just seems so foreign.”
“I wish I could tell you that I understood where you are coming from, but I have grown up with numbers all of my life. I'm pretty sure my father taught me to add and subtract before he bothered trying to teach me how to speak,” Verrian said, only partly kidding.
Shawnrik laughed, “Not too long ago I would have had no idea why that was funny, because I wouldn't have known what an accountant even did!”
“That's true; it is still strange to me how different our lives have been,” Verrian said, sobering a little from his friend’s words. “So, what is it you think is going to be wrong with Metallurgy?”
“It is a lot more complex than I ever considered that it would be. They use mathematical formulas for some of their alloys that I don't think I'm even going to be covering in Instructor Daymarr's Basic Mathematics course. At least I understand some of the basic principles from my time working in the smithy with Pedrial.”
“That's your Grandfather, right?”
“Yeah… it's still weird trying to think of him like that. To think that he could have told me about my mother all this...”
A steady swaying of the room caught their attention, steadily growing in intensity.
“What's going on?” Verrian asked.
Shawnrik had no idea, but he heard several people shout, “Earthquake!”
“Quick, we need to get to a doorway,” Verrian stated.
By the time the two reached a doorway that was crowded with half a dozen other students, the shaking had stopped. A moment later, a loud noise was heard, accompanied by a much smaller vibration. They exited the building with the other students who had been eating lunch and saw a giant cloud of dust reaching towards the volcano's walls from the center of town.
“I think the earthquake tore loose a piece of the inner wall. I hope no one died,” one of the kitchen staff said. “Well, there's nothing we can do to help, so either get back to lunch or go find something else to do.”
Like many of the other students, Shawnrik and Verrian continued to stare towards the town. Knowing there was nothing they could do to help didn't stop them from wanting to go and help. After a short while, Verrian spoke.
“I don't think I'm hungry anymore, Shawnrik. Let's go to the library.”
Finding that Verrian was right and he no longer had an appetite either, Shawnrik nodded and followed his little friend.
First Eighthday
Continent of Terroval
Ruined City of Asylum
“Report,” Stewart Cantel snapped as the young Sergeant entered the tent.
“Sir,” Sergeant Tanner said, saluting. “We have scoured the area within several leagues of the city, with five teams heading directly towards the most likely taken routes, and we have found no trace of the Princess.”
The High Commander returned the salute half halfheartedly. His fist slammed the table in front of him, resulting in several of the pins that had been in the map to bounce free, which caused a round of cursing as he tried to put the markers back where they had been.
“No sign at all?” Nim said, stepping into the conversation as Stewart Cantel continued his litany of curses towards the map.
“Correct, sir, not even an identifiable boot print. With the wave of refugees that have been going away and back into the city, the ground out there is awash in tracks, and there is no way to tell one from the other.”
“They planned this well,” Nim said. "This was no spur of the moment snatch and grab."
“Does knowing that help us in any way?” Ashur said from his seat at the side of the tent where he was pouring over dispatches.
“Yes and no,” Nim said. “It helps in the way that we know that they have an established plan, thus they may utilize resources that might otherwise be unavailable. On the other hand, it could also mean that they realized that we might know some of those resources, so they may put them in motion simply to distract us.”
“So what does that mean?” Ashur said with a sigh, setting the papers down. “We just give up and hope the Mages can locate her? Or we just wait until someone gives us a ransom note?”
“Again, yes and no. I don't think wasting our soldiers on a fruitless search of the surrounding area is a good idea. Sending out patrols and missives to the outlying townships and cities like Freeport might give us results, however. I also think a small team, or teams, should be dispatched towards likely destinations in order to increase our chances of locating the Princess in transit.”
“Fruitless search...” Ashur stood and began to yell, but the world buckled under his feet and he found himself sitting once again before the chair toppled over and left him staring up at the swaying tent poles above him.
The world settled down once again a moment later. One of the legs on the map table had given out during the brief earthquake, and there was a pile of pins sticking out of the mat that had been laid beneath the table.
“Nim is right,” the High Commander said, staring at the now useless table in front of him, treating the quake like a mild inconvenience.
“But...” Ashur said.
“No, he's right. We are looking for a tick on a Dragon, and we need to look under the scales.”
“Alright, I'll take a team...” Nim began.
“No, this happened under my watch, and I'm taking point,” Cantel replied.
“You are the High Commander of the Protectorate, you can't just run off on a ghost hunt—no offense, Ashur,” Nim said as he picked up the table to see how cleanly the leg had broken off.
“If I have to resign I will, but I am taking point in this search. She was taken not only from a Protectorate city, but from inside my encampment. There is no way that the nobles are going to let me keep my position if I am not the one to bring her back unharmed.”
“He's right, Nim, the nobles are going to have a field day with this. If he goes back to Safeharbor, they are going to do everything they can to undermine his position.” Ashur pulled himself up from the floor to find that the dispatches he had been going through had been scattered by the quake.
“Alright, who do you want to send, and where are you going first?” Nim asked, knowing that his friend leaving would mean more responsibility in the future for the rest of them.
“Send what is left of the Vigilantes into Dracair territory and inform Erin and her group what happened. I know you have her out looking for any trace of Victor, but if her leads don't go anywhere she should divert her attention to finding the Princess.” Stewart Cantel began packing for the trip he was going to take, not looking at the three other men who stood in the tent with him. “If I am gone too long and Elyse and Adrian offer you the position of High Commander, Nim, I want you to take it. I know you don't want it and would rather do anything else, but that is why it should be you. Elyse would do fine at the job, but she doesn't have as devious a mind as we do. At the very least, be there to keep her out of trouble. As for me, I think my first stop in the search will be Freeport.”