Now that we had horses, Hook wanted to push them harder in order to reach Elderwyck quicker. The normally even-tempered dwarf seemed to have a strange dislike for the equines, even if it was a genuine boon for us to have them.

I put a stop to that. There was no reason to push perfectly good horses to the brink of death, when most of the Nocturne Division apparently hadn’t even reached the twin cities. Hook grumbled about it, but didn’t put up too much of a fight. I think he knew how unreasonable he was being.

Still, we didn’t exactly move at a slow pace on the way, to my chagrin. It turns out that I wasn’t quite as good at riding a horse as I was driving a wagon. I'd only dabbled in it during all of my travels. I may not have been falling off all the time, but the saddle was rubbing me raw. I wasn’t quite bleeding, but it wasn’t pleasant.

I knuckled down and bore it.

At the pace that we were riding at, it took us another three days to reach the territory that belonged to Elderwyck. Along the way, Hook filled me in on the unique legal status that the city resided in, since we didn’t have much more to do than take out the occasional monster or dodge larger packs along the way.

The thought occurred to me that not everyone was as fortunate as I was, to be able to do that. But I squashed it every time it came up.

As I’d been told, the twin cities of Elderwyck and Tlatec belonged to the Kingdom of Herztal and the Orcish Empire of Xilochtlan respectively. The Empire only owned the land that the comparatively smaller city of Tlatec sat on, while the much larger Elderwyck belonged to the Duchy of Elderwyck. This Duchy was ruled over by one of the major figures of the Loyalist cause, and possibly one of the people who had arranged Grey’s kidnapping.

Duke Quentin Olsen, of House Olsen.

Apparently, this guy wasn’t quite the clown show that Duke Graden had been. And while he wasn’t as hated as Graden, he wasn’t liked either. According to Hook, the man was one of the most shrewd businessmen in the Kingdom. While he was no great Cultivator or mighty Mage, he was still a force to be reckoned with because of his grip on Elderwyck.

The city was the undisputed financial powerhouse of the entire Kingdom, outclassing even the capital. It was the largest trading hub in Herztal, and arguably one of the largest on Vereden. To my sour surprise, I learned that Vittolia was one of the only contenders. No doubt propped up on the backs of thousands of slaves.

Damned Savoy.

Anyway, the Duke had thrown his support in with the Loyalists pretty early on, as he had been one of the major manufacturers of the Sculpted. In the days before they had started to come to life, Quentin had seen a major opportunity to diversify his city’s holdings by investing ungodly amounts of gold into production facilities. At its height before the Second Initialization, Elderwyck had been producing as much as half of all Sculpted that were in existence.

Which meant that the city was absolutely stuffed to the gills with them, even to this day.

This was a bit of a shock to me.

“Why didn’t they leave?” I asked Hook one night, baffled. “They have to know that the Uprising would take them in.”

It was Sylvia who answered me, frowning into the small campfire we had lit. “They were not allowed to,” She said sourly. “Before the Uprising had even declared their intentions to revolt, Elderwyck clamped down hard on their Sculpted population. More than any other city in the Kingdom, my people are treated as little better than tools there. They are not acknowledged as free-thinking individuals, and are given no rights. A Sculpted within the walls of Elderwyck has no more ability to speak for themselves than a broom does.”

I frowned, growing a little concerned. “Then…” I said slowly. “Is it safe for you to even go there? Wouldn’t all of your movements be constrained by what you are?”

Luckily, Sylvia didn’t take offense at my words. Instead, she smiled slyly at me. “Oh, not to worry. I am an illusion specialist, after all. It shouldn’t be hard for me to craft a human-seeming veil that I can maintain for long periods of time. The knowledge of Cultivation that Honoka gifted me was enough that I can manage this much at least.”

Suddenly, I wasn’t concerned. Instead, I was very curious about what a human Sylvia would look like.

Intensely so.

Sylvia must have seen something on my face, as her smile took on a mischievous tint. She winked at me.

Across the fire from us, Hook rolled his eyes and grumbled into his dinner of cooked oats. “Ugh. Kids.”

…………………………………………

Hook told us that we were only about a day’s ride away from the city of Elderwyck by now. However, he also told us that we were not going to be heading straight there. Instead, there was a meeting point being maintained a few miles out in an abandoned barn.

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Half a day’s ride later, we reached our meeting place.

I initially didn’t pay much mind to it myself. My focus was more on leading my horse along the small side path that Hook was leading the three of us down. Once we had reached the farm that the barn was abandoned on, he had veered away from it and up into a small forested hill that overlooked it. Below us in the fields, I could see a number of Sculpted ‘workers’ tending to the crops.

Fuck it, why mince words?

Slaves. Those were slaves down there. Just because they weren’t human doesn’t mean the word didn’t apply. The familiar sight of people held against their will and working on a plantation threatened to send me into a rage that I hadn’t felt since I was in Marrowmist. As I felt the rings of my mind start to go cold and my lips curl, it felt like my focus on the world was narrowing.

I was knocked out of my growing fury by the feeling of a hand shaking me by the shoulder.

I blinked, and the world beyond the slaves below me came into focus once more. Following the hand to its source, I found Sylvia staring back at me with sharp eyes, with her mount Charlie docilely standing behind her.

“Not here, Nathan,” She hissed to me, briefly cutting her eyes down to her fellow Sculpted. Dragging them back up to me, she gave me a short, sharp shake of her head. “You cannot do anything for them now. We cannot afford it.”

Over her shoulder, I saw that Hook had stopped to watch us as well. Though his face was blank, his eyes were calculating.

I wasn’t sure I liked the look in them.

I squashed the almost unnatural rage that was even still roiling around in my rings. She was right.

Later, though. When we were done with Elderwyck…

I nodded to show I understood, keeping my eyes forward. With one last lingering glance, she turned back around and gestured for Hook to keep moving. The master of the Nocturne Division turned his back and resumed leading us through this brush without a word.

I…was really missing Fade, right about now. That wolf had a way of keeping me calm.

I shook it off, and kept to the rear of our procession.

Before long, Hook had led us to a small, overgrown clearing within the thicket. Standing in the center of it was what appeared to be a large, dilapidated barn. Its large front doors hung open and stuck eternally, while the windows creaked ominously to and fro in the wind. At one point in time, this relic might have been painted in a beautiful sky blue paint.

Now, it was only faded and forgotten.

I didn’t see anyone in this clearing, even though Hook had told us we were supposed to meet other Division assets here. Still, he stopped before we reached the treeline, unwilling to step into it just yet. From where we were, we could only barely see through the trees. The aged dwarf visibly scanned the clearing with a discerning eye, frowning as he did so.

“Masks on,” He said abruptly, already reaching for his own stored in a pouch at his waist. I was startled, but did as he said, while Sylvia did the same next to me. I was abruptly glad we had tied the horses up to a tree some distance behind us, while we scoped out our destination. Was something wrong?

I asked him, in as low a voice as I could manage.

“I don’t know,” He murmured back. “It’s just…a feeling. Something is off. According to reports, this rendezvous site was secure up to a few days ago. Whisper, you circle left. Hangman, right. See what you can find. I’m going in.” At that, Hook completely faded from view. I couldn’t see, smell, or hear even the faintest trace of him.

As Sylvia, or rather Whisper, faded into an illusionary cloak and slunk off to the left, I cast Thorn Cloak. Doing my best to remain stealthy, I crept through the trees on the right, circling around the clearing as best I could. Eventually, I clambered up a tree swiftly and silently to get a better look. As I reached the back of the clearing, I frowned at what I saw.

The other side of the barn looked to have been through a battle. There were large gashes in the wooden walls, while the doors looked to have been shattered completely. The dirt leading up it and even what was in front of the barn was visibly disturbed, looking to have been shuffled around vigorously. I was dearly tempted to approach in order to get a better look, but I figured Hook would have been pissed.

I managed not to jump when the tree branch I was crouched on bent slightly and Sylvia’s voice whispered in my right ear. “Anything else on your side?”

I shook my head minutely. “No, just…this.”

The cloaked form of Sylvia was quiet for a moment. “This looks…”

“Like it was assaulted,” I finished for her, in a low tone. “I’m not sure how safe it is to stay here.”

“It’s not,” Hook’s voice said grimly, from a nearby branch. “There were bodies inside. This site is burned.”

Bodies?

“Were they with us?”

“Luckily, no. It looks to have been a Loyalist assault squad,” Hook replied, slight relief audible in his tone. “Dusk was supposed to meet us here, and it looks like they didn’t manage to get the drop on her. She appears to have taken them out and then erased some Division traces here. I think she was in a rush, though. I estimate this might have happened just yesterday, from the traces left. But we need to go, now. I…might have lit a fire in the barn to cover it up better.”

Wait, what?

Sure enough, I could see slight wisps of smoke starting to curl through the windows of the ruined barn. It would only take minutes before the entire thing was engulfed in flame. As swiftly as we dared, we circled back around the clearing and back towards our waiting horses. Once we reached where we had tied them to on the main trail, we abandoned our efforts at stealth in favor of climbing on their backs and urging them on.

We galloped through the woods as quickly as we could, to put distance between us and the burned site.

Literally and figuratively.

I couldn’t help but curse to myself as I clung to Marquis’s back and the world blurred around me. We hadn’t even started trying to infiltrate Elderwyck, and we were already facing roadblocks.

What next? Was the damn horde going to roll over Elderwyck before we could even get inside the walls?

Well…

Better not tempt fate.

………………………………..

Hook led us through and out of the woods, setting a brutal pace on…ponyback, in his case. Poppy was surprisingly fast and strong for such a comparatively smaller creature, next to Sylvia and I’s mount. We must have ridden for at least half an hour, until we were back on a much larger road than the small forest trail we had been on.

The road itself was…way more surprising than I expected it to be.