Day broke in Saymor. Lakan was moved beside Hark, His face pale and unconscious. Hark's arm had already healed almost completely. He could move it around now, albeit with some pain. Binko and Hark had spent the early hours of the day binding field spells, Sir Manjun insisted they spend the next three days binding more field spells before they moved Lakan, so If anything actually happened, they would have enough firepower to resist their attackers.

By afternoon, in Aku'anda, the Lord Mages had already convened a meeting. Lord Daron asked for space to speak, He narrated all that had transpired over the past few days and asked the rest of the Lords what Aku'anda should do.

"How come only you had all of this information?" A Lord asked. "It's been several days now, Why didn't you think it necessary to inform us as things progressed?"

"My Lords, I'm not sure that's a necessary objection—" Lord Daron began, but he was immediately shut down by several Lords.

"This is a democratic council! Lord Daron!" One Lord said.

"Openly sharing information is a core tenet of the Aku'andan tradition!" Another cried.

"Do you wish to be a dictator, Lord Daron?" Another shouted. Lord Defon, the speaker of the council, sighed as the accusations continued to pour in.

"My Lords, I apologize." Lord Daron said finally, loudly. "I promise it will not happen again." He loved the egalitarian nature of Aku'andan leadership, but oh boy did it get fanatic sometimes.

"I would like for us to consider this."

"You claim Seyrule is poised against us?" A Lord asked.

"Not necessarily, Lord Vikitor" Lord Daron said quickly. "I have reason to believe that certain Seyrulan elites are compromised, but we have evidence that at least three of their war mages are willing to fight against Ganz's men."

"You say your prime suspect is Dimar Sustance?" Lord Kardo asked. "I met his father when he was just a little boy. His family has pedigree. It would be a disgrace if what you say about him is true."

"Well it's clear what we need to do." Lord Fugap said. "If Ganz has yet not attacked, then it's clear to me that he is weak and unprepared for any major conflict. If there is any time to attack, that time is now."

"Yes." another Lord said. "Forget Dimar, We already have a group of mages in Saymor, let's add ten more, overwhelm him while he's weak, root him out of Saymor, kill him on sight."

Lord Daron laughed. "Lords, Lords, I would humbly remind you that the Aku'andan elite war mages are not simply foot soldiers. We cannot simply 'add ten more' to the ones we have there. As I've said before, even getting those five there was hard."

"Well I'm sure the war mages have a stake in this?" Lord Vikitor said. "I'm sure none of them want Ganz running around?"

"Might I remind you, Lord Vikitor," Lord Kardo said. "That their Sungan colleagues were just massacred for doing the very thing which you are now suggesting?"

Lord Vikitor and some other Lords threw their hands up.

"We can't just leave the man to roam about!" Lord Fugap laughed in frustration. "He will retake Pirun, and because power hungry tyrants like him are never satisfied, he will take more, until he has subsumed all of Gan in its entirety!"

That caused another eruption of debates and arguments, Lord Daron sighed. There was no end in sight.

---

It was high afternoon when Roska, Korad and Shiro returned to the office. Mullam had gone home after working on the problem all through the morning by himself. She entered the office and it was a mess. There was somehow even more paper scattered over the tables and floors of the office, they looked around at the mess before Shiro noticed the white board.

Mullam had written a rune sequence on the board in large, bold glyphs. Roska read it and it made sense immediately.

"Oh my God..." She gasped. "He solved it!" She laughed.

"I don't get it." Shiro said. Roska just continued laughing.

"Of course... I'm such an idiot." She said, smacking her forehead with her palm. She dropped her bag and explained how it worked to her colleagues, it was a complicated hack that required the interceptor to be in close range with the receiver and it had to be cast in about three different spells in order to work, but it did.

The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

"Oh that's so clever!" Shiro exclaimed. "Oh my!"

"I had no idea Mullam was this brilliant." Korad remarked. "I couldn't have figured this out in a million lifetimes."

"You don't give yourself enough credit, Korad." Roska said. "But no, this is good. Mullam you genius."

They tested the technique a few times, and it worked. Roska was able to intercept a wave link from Korad to Shiro. It was a difficult spell but it worked. She decided to wave to Mullam but he didn't respond, she decided he was sleeping, then they decided that since that problem had been solved, they would go back to working on the 12 way spell.

---

Lakan woke up the following day, two days after he had been originally injured. He was weak, unable to cast or bind spells, and he remained confined to his bed, Binko, who was sitting by him when he woke up, was overjoyed. She grinned at him as tears rolled down her face.

"Who's cutting onions?" He groaned. Binko laughed.

"Foolish boy." She said, chuckling. "You just survived death. Why are you still joking around?"

"He's awake?" Hark called from the other end of the room. Binko shouted a reply, and he came closer. Seeing Lakan's half opened eyes made him smile.

"There he is..." He said. "Back from the dead."

"Hey, Hark." Lakan said slowly. "Did I miss anything?"

Over the next three days, Lakan still remained bedridden and unable to chat properly for long periods, the healers from Seyrule told them they couldn't use any aggressive healing spells on him, unlike Hark, because he had many sensitive injuries and he had lost a lot of blood. So while Hark's arm became good as new within two days, Lakan healed very slowly.

On the third day, they decided to leave. They hired a hover caravan with three coaches. Regar and Sir Manjun sat in the front one, Lakan took the middle one, Binko and Hark sat in the rear. All of them except Lakan were armed to the teeth with numerous spells, both defensive and offensive, and as the caravan crossed the threshold, going outside the spell dampener at Saymor, Binko's heart started to beat just a little bit faster.

The Hover caravan trudged along from Saymor, in a south-east direction towards Aku'anda city. After a few hours, they pasted a small town called Erera, which was located near the border of Pirun, a few more hours later, they crossed the giant Ganto River and kept heading south, hitting Sorough by the end of the day. They camped there for the night alongside two other hover caravans. They left their coaches parked and proceeded to the town inn.

After they'd checked in, set Lakan down in the middle of the room, they proceeded to sleep. The room they got had two bunk beds with four beds in total, enough for the rest of them.

Sir Manjun, Regar, and Hark slept peacefully, but Binko kept having nightmares. Nightmares of her engulfed in flames, with the earth splitting open and people around her bursting into flames or instantly freezing. She woke up three times in the night, sweating profusely.

When morning broke, She groggily participated in evacuating the inn, moving Lakan back to his coach. As the hover caravan rolled out of Sorough, she fell asleep on Hark's shoulders.

Six or seven hours later they crossed the border between Seyrule and Aku'anda, and headed towards the nearest town, Tayinadar, famous for it's grape farms and wineries, They could even afford to have a spell dampener installed.

They got there at night and decided to camp in one of the farm inns. Binko had spent the whole day sleeping, Now she couldn't sleep at night While the others drifted into deep sleep, she lay on her bed wide awake, tossing and turning.

The following morning, they loaded up the caravan and began the final stretch from Tayinadar to Aku'anda city. It took almost nine hours and they arrived at Aku'anda at dusk. Lord Daron was at the gates to greet them, standing just behind the border of the spell dampener.

He joined Binko and Hark. "Welcome back home. I take it you made it through safely?"

"Yeah." Binko said, heaving a sigh of relief. "No attacks. I guess they didn't want to take their chances."

"Good." Lord Daron said. "Please go home and rest. Ganz will be dealt with eventually, but for now, you deserve a break." Binko and Hark nodded.

The Hover caravan made its way to the hospital, where Lakan was moved into a room to be treated, and the rest of the Mages alighted and found caravans to their own homes.

Lord Daron was already on his home street when Lord Fugap waved to him.

"Lord Daron, I would have a word with you. I'm at your house now." Lord Fugap said.

"I'll be with you soon." Lord Daron said.

A few minutes later he entered his house and greeted Lord Fugap, then both men entered his study.

"Tea?" Lord Daron asked. Lord Fugap shook his head.

"The plot thickens, I fear." Lord Fugap said. "Prince Karan waved to me just an hour ago."

"Pirun as been attacked?!" Lord Daron gasped.

"Oh, no, no." Lord Fugap replied. "Nothing of the sort. Well, something of the sort, in fact."

"What do you mean?" Lord Daron asked.

"Some unknown men have begun taking over Pirun towns and villages?" Lord Fugap said. "Kefinswa, Alu, Kanam... all taken over today."

"Kefinswa? Isn't that where Pirun does most of their logging?" Lord Daron asked.

"Yes, sixty percent of their paper supply comes from the logs harvested in the forests near there." Lord Fugap said. "Alu is a snail farming community. You know how well the Pirunese love their snails. Kanam... at first seemed random, but no, it's a major town along the Chawbig River."

"The Chawbig trade route!" Lord gasped.

"Yes. I waved to some of my connections at Burden and they confirmed it as well. The route has been blocked."

"What?!" Lord Daron exclaimed. Burden was a coastal town on the south coast of Aku'anda. They mostly traded with Pirun since both kingdoms shared the southern coastline of the Doyia continent. Blocking such a well used route would be economically disastrous for Burden and Pirun as a whole.

Only one person was both smart enough and had enough resources to pull that off.

"Ganz." Lord Daron said, seething with anger.

"Taking back those towns will be difficult. besides Kanam, none of them have spell dampeners." Lord Fugap said. "Things could get ugly fast."

Lord Daron put his head in his hands, thinking.

"I'm headed to Lord Kardo's house." Lord Fugap said. "I will talk about this tomorrow at the meeting, but some of you should know beforehand."

"Thank you very much, Lord Fugap." Lord Daron said. "I certainly will have a lot of thinking to do tonight."