In the moments following the Shark Titan's departure, the beach was still. Adventurers helped comrades to their feet while healers kneeled and tended to the wounded. Blood stained the sand and coastal waters, though much of it was mercifully that of the hydra. Soon a contingent of city and Adventuring Corps officials arrived and began forming a coordinated response.
A coalition of healers was quickly formed of volunteers, of which Titus had been one of the first. A middle-aged human man, wearing a brown leather cuirass over dark green linen that appeared to be a uniform amongst many of the officials, stepped up to an area of the beach that had been cleared of people. An adventurer approached and spoke to the man briefly, then dropped to one knee and slammed his fist into the ground, sending pulsating shockwaves through the sand. As the shockwaves settled, a large radius of sand surrounding him was now a smooth, circular slab of sandstone. The healers gathered here to treat the wounded in what quickly became a make-shift medical camp.
"I'm fine," Autumn insisted, as an elf woman in white and coral robes waved a hand glowing with blue magic over her body. Titus, despite initially treating Autumn after the battle ended, had been conscripted to treat patients in more dire conditions.
"I understand that you think that," the woman responded patiently, "but it's standard procedure to check."
The woman, despite her strong nerves as a healer, was startled as Iris suddenly appeared and exclaimed beside her.
"There are you! Come on, Eli says we gotta make it into the city while everyone's distracted so we can beat the registration lines."
"Excuse me," the elf woman said, standing to face Iris. She was much taller than Iris, and her black hair was pulled tight behind her long, pointed ears into a long ponytail, "who let you through? Only patients and healers should be here--"
The elf blinked, then looked around. Iris had disappeared right before her eyes. The woman sighed, shaking her head. When she turned back to her patient, she saw Autumn swiftly making her way out of the camp.
"Smooth escape," Iris said, appearing beside Autumn, "but Eli and Victoria are the other way."
Autumn looked over her shoulder to see the woman glaring after them, "we'll loop around," she said.
After taking the long way around the perimeter of the camp, the two met up with Eli and Victoria. Eli looked at Iris expectedly as they approached. She closed the gap with a superfluous blip, speaking as soon as appeared in front of Eli.
"Titus insisted that he's not being held captive, and that he's staying here to help until he's dismissed," she reported dutifully.
Eli sighed and rubbed his temples with a thumb and forefinger, "of course he is. Alright, we go without him then. This could take hours. Tell him I'll meet him at the city gate at sunset if we don't run into him before then."
Iris disappeared, startling a few adventurers further along the beach before immediately teleporting again. The relatively short range of her teleport power meant that, for the second time, she was briefly appearing and disappearing at various points within the camp searching for her friend. After a moment, a small commotion broke out in the healer's camp, and shouting could be heard.
"It's that girl again!"
"Patients and healers only!"
"Someone get a guard!"
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Moments later, Iris reappeared beside the others, dizzy from low mana, "I think we should go, those guys do not like me."
The party, sans Titus, set off along the beach towards the gates of Giantrock City. They followed the beach until they approached the first of many docks jutting out from the elevated ground behind the beach, there they veered left and up a wide dirt footpath between the roots of two redwoods. The path brought them to an even broader dirt road designed for multiple lanes of wagon traffic that wound through dozens of small buildings constructed in an impressively sized clearing.
They passed stables, cargo yards and warehouses as they followed the road towards the city. As they rounded a bend, the gates came into view. Either side was framed by two full-width redwood trunks, cut and embedded into the ground like giant posts. The gates themselves were made of vertical redwood planks nearly half a foot thick and several feet wide, generously braced by an abundance of horizontal and diagonal planks on either side. Four guards stood in front of the gate, wielding spears and wearing the brown and green uniform they had seen on some officials at the beach.
Massive Giantrock City flags, a silhouette representation of the rock itself jutting out from the redwood forest, hung from the walls on either side of the gate. The walls were of even sturdier construction, with not only vertical trunks built into the design but horizontal trunks along the midpoint as well.
"Wow," Iris said slowly, "is everything here giant?"
"Wait until you meet the locals," Victoria said, "though there probably won't be any in the city."
Before Iris could ask any of the dozen questions she immediately wanted to, a finely dressed man walking away from the gates interrupted.
"Don't bother," he said grumpily, "they're not letting anyone in."
The whole party immediately recognized him.
"Nice to see you again," Eli said without a smile.
"Oh!" the man laughed sheepishly as he looked up, "uh, hi. Sorry, where did we meet again?"
"Dude," Autumn said, "you tried to rob us yesterday."
"Ooooohhhhh," he feigned realization, "that was you guys! Crazy, small world, gotta go!"
Victoria held up a hand and conjured a spread of three cards, instilling fear, dread and hopelessness into the man's aura. He stopped in his tracks, staring at her with wide eyes.
"Who are you?" Eli demanded.
A guard by the gate shouted at them with an unnaturally loud voice, "no powers within sightline of the city gate!"
Victoria swiftly closed her hand, dismissing the conjured cards. The man gasped a single breath, then quickly recovered.
"I'll be happy to inform you of my identity the moment it becomes your business," he smiled and straightened his coat, "good day, then."
Eli glared at the man as he passed them, but didn't make a move. The party approached the gates, which were opened only wide enough for one person to enter at a time. Two guards stood on either side of the opening, close enough together that it was obviously a bad idea to attempt walking between them. They each wore brass badges on the chest piece of their leather cuirass, one of them had a slightly larger, fancier badge than the others.
"No entry at this time," the man with the fancier badge spoke, "order of the Commander."
"We're here for the hunt," Eli said.
"No. Entry." The guard repeated.
"We've come a long way," Victoria interjected.
Any remaining professionalism dropped from the guard's face, "so has every other bloke and broad that's tried to enter in the past half hour. The city is closed. It doesn't matter how far you've come to find that out. The gates will reopen once the Commander gives the order."
Iris leaned to the side, peering past the guards and between the gates to the city beyond. Autumn nudged her with an elbow and shook her head.
"When will that be?" Eli asked.
"Oh for fuck's sake," the guard said, "if I knew when that would be, don't you think I would have told you instead of being ominous and vague and making my job even more miserable and annoying than it already is? That's literally all I know. If I knew more than that, I wouldn't be posted at the gate talking to you, now would I?"
"I heard it was 'cause the hydra attack," another guard said, "some secret orders by shady government types that wanna investiga--."
The guard with the fancier badge turned on his subordinate with a withering glare. The subordinate shrunk back and lowered his head, "sorry corporal."
The corporal turned back to the party, rubbed his forehead, and sighed. "Look, just get somewhere. If you come back and the gates are open, then the gates have been opened. Otherwise, leave me alone or I'll have you arrested."
"Yes sir," Eli said, hurrying his party away.
"What now?" Iris asked as they walked away from the gates.
"Please don't say we're going back into the woods," Autumn groaned.
"No," Eli said, "there's another way into the city we can try."