Panta looked at the bag placed on his desk, then looked up at Quineeta with a slightly raised eyebrow, silently commanding her to explain her actions.
His Prefect had barged into his offices with a haggard, dirty woman following on her heels. Before his door was slammed shut, he saw a line of legionaries in the hallway.
There were always at least two of his personal guards outside of the room he was in and usually two more inside. It was far from common to have what sounded like a century outside his doors. And it caused his two guards inside the room to tightly clutch at their hilts and stiffen from where they stood at the door.
For a moment, the thought of Quineeta trying to remove him from command passed through his mind, but he dismissed it. Besides the fact he was no longer in the Isles, she didn't have the air of betrayal around her.
Not that he had experienced such things in the Isles himself, but he had heard that it occasionally happened, rare that it was.
Removing a Legatus was not a local affair, as the Senate would likely get involved, bringing too much attention to whatever local scheme was being enacted.
No, if his Prefect was here with that many guards, she thought they were needed. Which means… trouble was inside that bag, and she was about to dump it all onto his lap.
Panta held back a sigh as he just watched his Prefect, patiently waiting for her to do something. There was no need for him to rush into trouble because, eventually, it would all come to him.
Quineeta didn't answer his silent question with words, instead moving to open the bag. As the rough hemp fell to the sides, Panta's back stiffened, and his breathing hitched for an instant as surprise overwhelmed his self-control. He let out his breath in a long exhale as he slowly leaned back.
His eyes were half closed as he raised his arms, placing them on his armrest and clasping his hands over each other in front of his chest, slowly tapping his right index finger against his left knuckle. His eyes roved over the head, taking in every detail.
The ears were sharply pointed and narrowed like an elf's, but they were too short and angled more up than out. They were longer than a human and half-humans, but still not quite as long as all the elves he had met. The skin was also dark, almost a light violet. The skin wouldn't be the same when he was alive compared to when he was dead, as the blood leaking out and decomposition changed it, but it still wasn't typical of elves. The canines were sharper and longer, like fangs, and the other teeth also came to a slight point. The hair was a bright silver, where it was not stained a too dark red with his blood. Even the nose, cheekbones, and forehead were sharper and narrower than he was used to seeing, giving an alien feeling to the head. But more than anything, the eyes were like nothing he had ever seen, a pure, empty black taking up the eye sockets.
Slowly, he broke his hands apart and leaned forward, letting two fingers brush and poke into the waxy, cool skin of the once-living creature. He had touched dead bodies before, and that was precisely what this was.
"So," Panta said, pulling his hand back and clasping them together again, "dark elves exist."
Panta knew logically they would. There was no reasonable way for the events to be playing out the way they were without a hidden force being the scenes. But that secret power could be any number of things, and a hint of doubt had remained in the back of his mind.
That doubt was gone now.
"Yes," Quineeta said, then gestured to the woman standing to the side of the room next to one of his guards. "She can give you a verbal report if you want, though I have a written one here." She slapped a pile of papers onto the desk that she seemed to pull from nowhere.
"No need for that," Panta said, gesturing toward the door while reaching for the stack of papers. Grabbing them, he started quickly flicking through them, seeing the legionary move to leave from the corner of his eye.
"Wait," he said, causing the woman to stop. "Disregard that order. We might need you." Then Panta turned to look at his Prefect, "Send runners to call our Tribune Latic and Legatus Hellieous. We are going to have to brief them on the situation. And order the legion to be on alert."
Quineeta saluted, then stepped to the door, quickly stepping out.
Panta continued to flip through the report as he offhandedly said, "Make yourself comfortable, Scout Kathren. You are going to be here a while."
The young woman jumped as he spoke to her, then no doubt frantically tried to figure out how her superior knew her name, a fate some would rather die than achieve. Panta felt his lips twitch in a faint smile at her distress.
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Her uneasy shuffling stopped a moment later as she no doubt concluded that he had read it in the report before she hesitantly moved to the closest side of the room, where a leather couch sat against the wall with a small table in front of it.
She paused at that moment, no doubt worried that she would stain it. "Humph," Panta snorted with slight amusement, "There is no reason to worry about running it, scout. It has undoubtedly seen far more than what you have on you."
Flinching again like he had whipped her, the young woman jumped into the seat and tried her hardest to look relaxed while mumbling, "Thank you, Legatus."
A few moments later, Quineeta came back into the room. She poured herself a goblet of wine from the table in front of the scout, then moved to the seats on the opposite side of the room from the couch, where two chairs were on the sides of a small bookcase.
Panta finished the report, then moved on to finishing up some other business before everything started going to shit. They settled into a companionable silence as they waited.
When the door burst open a short time later, the scout jumped in her seat from where she had started to drowse off, coming to attention and saluting in instinct. Panta finished skimming the form he was on and then signed it, setting his pen to the side as he looked up and clasped his hand on his desk.
The young woman storming into his office did not look amused to be up at such an early hour, nor did she like being ignored for him finishing his work. And yet, her pride was too much for her to ask why she had been summoned.
At least before Panta spoke first. If he was a betting man, he would put his life on the line that she would die in this room before speaking first. The pride of nobles was never to be underestimated, he thought with scorn, repeating one of his long-held beliefs.
The Legatus that entered the room a moment later looked slightly disheveled but far less concerned about being awake at this time in the morning. He might be part of the Senatorial Guard now, but he was still a legionary at his core, and under the rust inflicted by the festering swamp he worked in, it showed. The question was if he could shake off the rust in time to matter.
Gesturing to the door with his chin, Panta signaled one of his guards, who moved to close it. When it clicked shut, he said, "Thank you for jo—
"What is this about." Snapped his Tribune Latic, cutting him off with a seething hiss. "I was in my bed sl— W-what in Holy Elementals is that!"
The young woman started pedaling back in disgust as Panta turned the severed head on the pile of trash to face her. He found it oddly poetic. No matter what the bards said, there was nothing glorious about battle and death. Placing a severed head on a pile of trash seemed right.
"That," Panta calmly said, "is what our enemy looks like. The one you told the Kin didn't exist. Or wasn't within our walls."
"Wh-wh-what?" The woman screamed, her back hitting the far wall, eyes locked on the severed head. She wasn't paying attention to anything around her.
Her reaction was like she had never seen a severed limb before… Sighing, Panta thought, given her family's status, that is probably accurate.
On the other hand, Hellieous took in the head with little more than a blink and a quick once-over before he stepped forward, acting on his own initiative for what might be the first time since coming to the Triad. "Where did you find it."
Gesturing to his left with a finger and a slight tilt of his head, Panta caused the Legatus to look at Scout Kathren as he spoke, "My Prefect started an undercover operation. This scout worked her way into the slums over the course of a couple weeks, at which point she was able to find and kill one of the dark elves residing within my walls. You can ask her to verify this report, but I think it will be a waste of your time."
"Preposterous!" Shrieked the Tribune Latic Ponpti as she stomped forward, "This head is obviously fake! This woman must be in league with the beastkin, so we are busy chasing our own tails rather than preparing for an assault to push them back while they are unprepared. Like I have bee— Ahh! My dress!"
She screamed, cutting off her little tirade when she tried to pick up the head to prove it was fake, only to have the coagulated blood on the neck drip onto her. There was a meaty whack as the head hit the ground and a slight rocking as it came to a stop.
“…What can we believe from the… Kin?" Asked Hellieous after looking up from the head, though the last part was like he was forcing words out of his throat after they were ground up by stones.
"I'm inclined to believe all of it," Panta stated as he leaned back in his chair. His voice didn't waver, and his eyes never left the man towering over his desk.
"Pifft!" The man snorted, "You would trust the words of savages who attacked us?"
"The number of people I trust implicitly can be counted on one hand. But do I trust them to give us the information to fight an enemy they are fleeing from? Yes. They got our attention and forced us to respond in force. They could have caused far more destruction but remained generally passive. They are what amounts to refugees fleeing from a superior force after centuries of war. An enemy that we have just found proof of, as they infiltrated our ranks." Panta's words filled the room with a heavy silence.
He let everyone marinate in that silence for a moment before he started talking again. "I don't know if the Kin will betray us, but I know the Latarri are making no effort to contact us. They have done nothing to earn our trust and have slunk around in the shadows, hiding from us while they learn about us. If they are not trying to find our weaknesses to destroy us, I fail to grasp what else they could be trying to do. And I would rather have an honest foe I must face head-on than one I must always be searching for, lest they plant a knife in my back any day of the week."
"What do you suggest we do?" Asked a clear, light voice as it rang through the room a moment after Panta finished speaking.
Panta turned his eyes from Hellieous and looked to his Tribune Latic. If nothing else, Panta had to admit she was quick to gather herself.
She was now standing next to Legatus Hellieous, her back straight and hands clasped behind her. Her chin was held high, pointing her nose into the air, and any shame that she might have felt about improper conduct or poor decisions never even crossed her face. Political creature through and through, he thought.
"That part is easy." Panta said, leaning forward and planting his elbows on his desk, the corner of the right side of his lip quirking, "We clean house. And see how far the rot goes."