The wind was nearly as strong at ground level, and Cadryn found it a soothing balm upon his skin. The sounds of the birds and earthy scent of the forest wrapped him like a cozy sheet as he hiked in roughly the direction the flag had gone. He didn’t hold out that much hope in finding it, and was pretty sure Sefton wouldn’t actually punish him for its loss (that was Gita’s doing, after all). He suspected Sefton knew that he would appreciate the hike. As he paused at a wide, but shallow, brook for a drink, the wind brought something he wished it hadn’t.

“I wouldn’t, friend.” Nine’s disembodied voice whispered to him.

Head snapping up, the sudden motion startled the massive buck that had been enjoying the water upstream, whilst relieving itself into the same. Cadryn let the water slip between his fingers, and shook them off.

Nine approached from the woods opposite him, gone was the painted face of the fog, in its place pure sun-kissed skin that almost distracted from the black-in-black eyes. The Fae’s full lips creased upward, but did not part.

Cadryn sighed, grateful, if even more unsure of this strange companion’s nature. “It’s good to see you, Nine, how are your woods today?”

“These are not mine,” Nine answered, and pointed with a slender arm. “Only the oak and other hardwoods, these pines are too short lived for my tastes.”

“Naturally,” Cadryn managed, “I’m out here looking for a flag of our nation that Gita managed to cut loose.”

“Your nation,” Nine corrected, and bowing slightly, aimed his unslung bow downstream. “I think I saw it pass this way, shall we walk together?”

“Why not,” Cadryn replied, and crossing the brook, joined Nine. They worked their way downslope in amiable quiet for half a league before Nine broke the tranquility.

“You’re a strange one, Cadryn.” He said.

“How is that, this time, exactly?”

“Your kind is usually so full of questions that they spill out of their lips without restraint. Yet, despite having given you ample reason to question, you ask me nothing, why?”

Cadryn chuckled, pausing in the shadow of a young pine whose lowest branches forced him to duck. “I guess I figured you wouldn’t much care for questions.” He patted the rough bark of the pine at his back, “if trees can be too young, I can only imagine humans are worse.”

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“Trees do not ask anything, Cadryn Bence, they are trees.”

Cadryn almost hit his head on the branch, “Ok, that.” He said, snapping his fingers, “I never told you my full name.”

“No,” Nine replied, and reaching up to the second set of branches on the tree, used them to stretch, joints crackling. “I have seen you in mortal peril, for my kind that moment tells everything about a creature. Their very potential.”

Despite the unsettling proportions, Cadryn found himself gawking a Nine’s uncanny form, “and what did they tell you of mine?”

Nine smiled, and the teeth were comfortingly human. “That you are worthy of asking questions of me, at least a few.”

With that, Nine was off again, a habit Cadryn was somewhat bothered by, but wisely did not waste a question inquiring about. Their path diverted from the course of the stream, following an opening between pine and oak woods. Animals that normally would flee a human, did not, and instead stood in awe of Nine’s passage.

“Why did you choose to serve the Emperor?” Nine asked suddenly, stopping mid-step.

Cadryn blinded, “It was what my father recommended, said it made him the man he was.”

“A rapist and a conqueror?” Nine replied, and before Cadryn could draw his blade added, “Ahh, I misspoke. I forget that sometimes the conquered choose to give themselves to the winning side, willingly.”

“They loved each other,” Cadryn ground out, hand still on his sword.

“I’m sure they did,” Nine replied.

“What of, you, then,” Cadryn said, “Why do you serve the Emperor?”

“He defeated me in single combat, along with the rest of my number. I was the first to fall.”

Cadryn felt his ears begin to ring, if what Nine said was true, then.

“Yes,” Nine said, pulling back the hair from his ears, “the man himself, the Master of Ten Blades, Breaker of Kings, and Vanquisher of the Fae Lords . . . he took my tips, spared me the sword, and gave me a new name.”

“And you accepted life, on the winning side’s terms?” Cadryn said.

“Only after the greatest of us fell, and refused . . . paying the price. We believed ourselves immortal you see, to discover otherwise is-”

“Humbling?”

“Enlightening . . . Come, Cadryn Bence, I think that’s enough talk for today.”

Less then five minutes had passed when they came upon the flag, an indigo field with silver Gauntlet, flapping from the middle branches of a lonesome pine on a rocky outcropping. Climbing up to it, Cadryn saw the camp beyond.

It could have been mistaken for a forester’s worksite, if not for the lack of felled trees. Amid a copse of densely packed, mature pines, a dozen tents stood in a haphazard circle. At their center, by the fire pit, was a corpse Cadryn recognized.

“Ahh, Dagmara the Great . . . I guess his attitude caught up to him.”

“He’s been tortured,” Nine observed, turning over the body.

“Not for the whereabouts of his valuables,” Cadryn said as his survey of the far side of the camp revealed the merchant’s intact carriage just over a rise, cargo laid out around it.

“No,” Nine replied, crouching by the fire. “Information.”

Rejoining him, Cadryn’s breath caught in his throat.

It was map of the tollhouse carved into the dirt, with a fairly accurate guess as to the number of guards on duty.

“We need to hurry,” Cadryn said, and took off running in the direction of the Neeft.

“You do, friend.” Nine replied, and the wind shifted, leaving only the corpse of Dagmara the Great within the camp.