The direction that Hook had led us to the Duchy of Elderwyck hadn’t been on one of the main roads in Herztal. We had primarily been taking game trails, and when that didn’t work, going over land. He had deliberately kept us away from the more traveled paths, in order to minimize our profile.

That was looking to have been a good decision, as the road we had exited onto was packed.

There must have been hundreds and hundreds of people occupying the road. Dozens of wagons loaded down with furniture and belongings stretched out as far as the eye could see, while cages filled with livestock trundled along behind them. Curious, and yet despondent young eyes peeked out of wagons at everyone they could, but did not speak out. Individual travelers trudged along the road with heavy packs on their backs, looking to be carrying their entire lives. An air of misery and desperation hung heavy over the entire ghastly procession.

This didn’t look like the flow of travelers I would have expected for a major trading hub in the Kingdom.

No, this looked like a trail of refugees.

Luckily, we blended right in with them after we had stowed our masks. Safely ensconced within the masses, Hook gestured down. Sylvia and I got his message, sliding off of our horses in order to huddle closer to him.

“I don’t think the barn was being watched,” He said to us, only barely loud enough to be heard over the murmur and rattle of the procession. “Which is sloppy, but good for us. But now we need to find Dusk, which would have been impossible for you two. Thankfully, I’m here.”

I rolled my eyes at him slightly, but I understood his reasoning. “Because you can ask HQ to link her locater coin to yours, yeah I get it.”

Hook gave me the evil eye. “Don’t spoil my fun, you brat. But yes, I already messaged Headquarters on the ride here. I can already feel the direction it’s leading me in. Unfortunately, it leads in the direction we’re going.”

“And this road leads into Elderwyck,” Sylvia picked up with a frown. Said frown turned into a grimace. “I dearly hope she’s not already within the city walls. That would…complicate matters.”

Hook shook his head. “I don’t think she is. I know that girl, and she knows me. She wouldn’t have expedited her infiltration unless she was in extreme danger. She knew we were coming. She wouldn’t abandon us.”

I frowned, another thought crossing my rings. “What about the rest of the Division? Are they fine? I thought that barn was supposed to be our meeting point?”

“No, that was just my personal meeting point with Dusk,” Hook said. “Everyone else is either assessing their own way in, already within the walls, or not here yet. However, I think I know where Dusk is. Just follow me.”

We elected not to climb back up onto our mounts for a variety of reasons, instead blending into the crowd on foot. The first was that, frankly, our horses were a bit exhausted after the breakneck pace we had put them through in order to get away from the burning barn.

I…could actually see a small wisp of smoke over the horizon, in the direction of the fire. It was the talk of the road, with multiple travelers pointing to it and murmuring to themselves. I didn’t like how fearful they sounded.

Listening to the travelers was one of the other reasons we didn’t try and move faster. This seemed like a good opportunity to catch up on the regional news, which was something hard to get over the coin communication network.

As I had thought, a majority of the people on the road were refugees fleeing the horde. Despite the Order’s best efforts, they hadn’t managed to keep the attention of the entirety of it. From the fearful conversations that were occurring all around us, I discovered that there were now packs of monsters beyond the ones we had seen roving the countryside, drawn to each little village and town they could find like moths to a flame. Almost every settlement in Vereden had some form of monster repellent going on, whether it was a shabby wardstone, a fighting force, or some kind of alchemical solution.

But none of them were good enough to keep out the numbers these people had been seeing. Almost universally, the towns and villages that occupied central Herztal were emptying out, and fleeing for the larger cities. There, they hoped to find safety within the much larger, much stronger, and far better-warded walls of places like Elderwyck.

Unfortunately…

“It won’t work,” Hook sighed to himself, regretfully. “Elderwyck can’t support this many refugees. It would buckle under the strain. I guarantee that they’re being turned away at the gate.”

“Is it going to be a problem for us getting inside?” I asked him, frowning.

Hook shook his head. “No, Dusk and I have another entryway. You’re going to hate it, though.” With those ominous words, Hook clammed up and refused to elaborate.

Goddamn cagey old dwarf.

I guess I’d just have to find out later.

Hook’s prediction turned out to be prescient. As we got closer and closer to the massive walls I could see growing on the horizon, the crowd around us grew thicker. In fact, it got so bad that our progress completely halted miles away from the actual city.

Hook cursed. “Damnit all,” He said irritably, before turning to me. “Hangman, get up that tree, take a look around, and report back. I want to know what’s going on.” The dwarf pointed to a large tree on the side of the road, which already seemed to be occupied by a number of curious children. They were hanging from and sitting on the branches of the tree, watching the milling crowds below them.

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

I nodded sharply at his direct orders and started squirming my way through the mass of bodies between me and the tree. Once I reached it, I didn’t even bother with Thorn Grapple. I just clambered up the tree in a few well-practiced moves. I had done quite a bit of tree climbing by this point, in my scouting.

When I reached the middle branches, one of the kids sitting on a much higher branch and kicking his legs called down to me. “Whatcha doin’, mister?”

I cast an eye up at him and flashed a quick smile. “I’m trying to get a better look at what’s going on up ahead!” I answered up at him.

One of the other kids that was hanging upside down on another branch snickered at me. This time, it was a particularly feisty looking little girl. “Ain’t nothin’ goin’ on, stoopid,” She mocked me, her pigtails swinging back and forth with her. “That’s why we’re up here.”

I just rolled my eyes at the little brat and stood up on the branch I had reached. When I did, the view that greeted my eyes surprised me.

For multiple reasons.

In the distance, perhaps only a few miles away, I got my first look at the twin cities of Elderwyck and Tlatec.

It wasn’t quite what I was expecting.

From the position that I was at, it looked like the two cities were up farther on the hill, so the view of it them was being blocked by the absolutely massive wall that dominated the scenery. It must have been as big as Helstein’s, rising at least fifty feet into the sky. This was a surprise to me. Helstein had been a city meant to block off an entire half of a continent, and here was what looked to be a coastal trading hub which had an equivalent.

And the wall itself wasn’t even one uniform mass at that. I could see the clear dividing line that marked the difference between Elderwyck and Tlatec. On the left side from my position, the wall was built in the Herztalian style that I had seen several times by now, just thankfully not quite as bleak as Helstein’s had been. It seemed to be grey stone with crenelations dotting the battlements, from which I could see the tiny forms of Loyalist soldiers manning it. It seemed particularly well defended, with a surprising amount of siege weaponry all along it, from catapults to ballista to even worryingly large pots on a swivel. The road led to an equally massive set of wooden doors, which had a large metal portcullis dropped in front of it.

The fact that the gate was doubly closed didn’t speak well of our chances of getting in that way.

But far off to the left of the Elderwyck portion of the walls, I could see them curve off just out of sight and immediately change style.

It was decidedly not Herztalian, or even human to my eyes.

That must be Tlatec.

I don’t think their portion of the wall was hewn from the same stone as the Elderwyck side. For one, it was an entirely different color. Instead of a uniform grey, it was a reddish tan of some kind. And where the wall for Elderwyck was mostly unadorned except for its crenelations and armaments, the Orcish side was decidedly…not.

It was far spikier, for one. Polished iron spikes ran not only all along the edge of the wall, but almost up and down the front as well, with some pointed downwards, as if to deter people from climbing it. Tall towers in an almost meso-American style rose from the top of it, every hundred feet or so. Distant figures filled the towers, far enough away that I couldn't make them out. Curiously, I didn’t see any of the siege weaponry or armaments along its length that I did for the Herztalians. Probably had something to do with the massive fiery crystal orbs that I could see at the top of the towers along the wall. Even from a distance, I could almost feel the amount of Mana within them.

It made my teeth itch.

I couldn’t see a similar gate for the Tlactec portion of the twin cities, as the combined wall curved far out of sight. But what I did see in front of the Elderwyck portion caused my heart to drop even more.

There was a massive, sprawling shanty town just outside the gates of the city. It looked incredibly ramshackle, to my eyes, as if it had been thrown up in a small amount of time with little care about lasting. It stretched out a pretty good distance and even had its own fragile driftwood walls. I don’t think they’d even be able to stop a punch, though, much less a monster.

Certainly not the horde.

Inside the shanty town, I could see hundreds of people milling about, with a large gathering of them right up against the closed gate to the city.

I let a breath at the sight.

God, I sure hope Hook wasn’t blowing smoke up our asses about being able to get in. I was certain the Loyalist guards would be on high alert with this many people crowding the gates.

One of the children above me laughed at my dumbstruck exhalation. “Yer gonna die out here, mister!” He said cheerfully. “We all are!”

I blinked incredulously up at the morbid child, who seemed incredibly uncaring about his own potential death. I turned away from him to gaze back out at the chaos, my eyes narrowing. “We’ll see,” I said lowly. I shook my head, a thought crossing my minds. I looked back up at the children higher up the tree than I was. “Hey! Have any of you seen a Gnoll? A girl one, with white fur?”

A few of the children looked at each for a moment, before shrugging and looking up a boy child. This one was higher up in the branches than the other. I…guess he was their boss?

Said child boss crossed his arms and shrugged noncommittedly at me. “Dunno,” He said slyly, with a smirk. “Maybe, maybe not. Can’t rightly say, wit’ the way me stomach is growlin’.”

Yeah, yeah. I get it.

I rolled my eyes at the…enterprising little urchin, and reached into the pouch at the small of my back. Grabbing something, I took it out and jingled it at the child. “Two silvers, and that’s me being generous, mind,” I said warningly.

The eyes of the pack of what I was suspecting were street rats (tree rats?) lit up. The pigtailed little girl scrambled down the tree like a monkey to stand in front of me with an arm outstretched. I dutifully took out the two silver coins and lay them in her palm, to which she snatched them away as if I was going to take them back. She scurried away up to her apparent leader and handed the move over to him. The little shit had the audacity to bite the coins before making a satisfied little hum. He looked down at me, seeming much friendlier.

“Yup, we saw yer girl,” He said, nodding along with his companions. “She came out o’ the trees yesterday just like you and yers did a bit ago, lookin’ a mite roughed up. Only saw her for a mo’, though. Faded away real quick inta the crowd.”

So, Dusk had survived the assault on the barn. It was a relief to get confirmation, even though Hook had seemed sure she had.

“And you didn’t see where she went?” I called up.

The urchin shook his head. “Nah, but she probably disappeared inta the Stacks,” He said, jerking his head in the direction of the shantytown.

I nodded. “All right. Thanks kid. See ya around, I guess.”

The tree rat shrugged, and went back to watching the crowd below us as I clambered down the tree.

Hook was unsurprised about the news I relayed to him, but I still saw a little tension disappear from his shoulders. “Very well. Then she’s definitely in these ‘Stacks’. We just have to find her.”

Wonderful.

I’m sure it wouldn’t be a pain in the ass to navigate those ramshackle ‘streets’ at all.