{-Kaylin-}

It wasn’t that she hadn’t been prepared before, or that the extent of Rennyn’s fears had rubbed off on her. No, she’d expected to encounter them eventually, and she knew that it wouldn’t end as badly as he feared it would. But that didn’t mean she stopped thinking about Dhymos’s minions, wondering what they were there for and what they’d done when it looked like all they did was stand there.

She and Rennyn took opposite sides of the room, looking through the papers to try to find anything that could help. Noa, Seldir, and Lyrei were quiet enough—caught in their own conversation, sounding like small talk—not to be a bother. Xarena, on the other hand, either wanted everyone to know she didn’t want to be there, or desperately wanted something interesting to do.

“What can you learn from this stuff, anyway?” she asked. At least she was better than Allyna, in the way that she stayed out of their way.

Kaylin, at first, wondered if it was worth answering. But she had to prove a point to Rennyn—she couldn’t exactly tell him to pay more attention to their teammates if she didn’t put in the effort either. That didn’t keep her from trying to figure out the easiest way to say it, though. “We know this language. It’s possible they used it so that only a handful of people who stumbled across this place would know what they were doing.”

“They could also be trying to trick us, somehow,” Rennyn mumbled. “Dhymos must know that we’d try this…” A thought seemed to cross his mind and he looked up at Kaylin to ask, “You don’t think they’re going to do something in the city or another town, do you? While we’re not there to do something?”

She never thought someone could look so frozen in place, yet ready to spring into action at a moment’s notice, like he did at the thought.

She shook her head, though. “It wouldn’t make sense. That would be the same thing as provoking us—and it doesn’t seem like that’s what Dhymos wanted them to do.”

Seldir offered his help, as well. “There’s plenty of guards in every town on a normal day, and Queen Vaeri probably has a lot more around since the fire in the Archives. Especially once the others report what we found here, they’ll be ready for whatever they come across.”

“I’ll take your word for it…” Rennyn mumbled.

It took a couple of moments before Lyrei asked, “So, those were Dhymos’s minions? How much do you think we’re going to be seeing them?”

His answer was simple, and likely barely helped the nervous edge to her tone: “I think that, now, it’ll be more suspicious if we stop seeing them. They know we’re out here and we know about them, too. Even if we might’ve been able to call that encounter a coincidence, I doubt anything going forward will be.”

“Don’t suppose you’ve got fancy powers of your own, then?” Seldir asked in a half-serious manner.

“Oh, yeah. That sword looks pretty fancy—does it do anything special?” Xarena questioned in a much more casual way. “I mean, it’s got all the looks of it. And it’ll make sense if Lord Aymer really thought the three of you were ‘let them do whatever they want’ worthy…”

“I don’t know,” Rennyn replied simply. “It… probably does something, if any of the other swords I’ve gotten across my lives were any indication, but… I haven’t exactly tested it out yet.”

Kaylin got the feeling that, ultimately, he didn’t want to know what else it did. It put a new set of weights on him—having to manage a power that only a chosen one was meant to have. So in that regard, she nodded, because she knew he barely seemed to handle the responsibility he had now. She didn’t want to find out what happened when their hero cracked under the pressure.

“Lord Aymer never mentioned it doing anything special,” Noa recalled. It would’ve been casual if it weren’t for a slightly nervous edge. “Then again, I’m pretty sure it was just in storage all that time…”

“I hope it does,” Lyrei remarked with a dreamy sigh. “It’ll perfect the fairytale—the hero with his magical sword and four loyal companions.”

Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

Rennyn’s tone was much darker when he pointed out, “Well, this isn’t a fairytale—this is reality. And that distinction couldn’t be clearer.” He paused after he flipped over one of the papers. Kaylin understood what it must’ve been about immediately, cautiously walking over to read it for herself. “I think I figured out what they were here to check on.”

On its own, it might not have meant much, even to the two of them. But there were hints scattered throughout it, seemingly random pieces that told the complete mission objective… a mission that, frankly, she barely wanted to acknowledge as being possible in this life.

They might not have been in a fairytale, but that didn’t mean what was seemingly-impossible couldn’t still happen.

Kaylin translated the gist of it, since she realized Rennyn wasn’t going to. “They’re planning to summon something. There must’ve been something here they could see to track their progress—and it could’ve been something that we just overlooked.”

“Do we need to figure out where that thing is, then?” Xarena asked. “Is whatever they checked on the same thing that’ll do the summoning stuff?”

Rennyn, surprisingly, shook his head. “No. That’s just the timer. Whatever it’s counting down to is happening somewhere else.” He was already walking back out; he mustn’t have been paying close attention, because he walked right through as if the others didn’t need to move out of the way. “It… would need to be somewhere with a clearing. There’d need to be dirt, not grass, in the center. There couldn’t be any lakes or rivers nearby, even a small one…”

Kaylin tried to think of something else to add, too, but there was nothing he hadn’t already mentioned. Honestly, a bit of her was surprised that he’d picked up on those subtle similarities—a lot of them had happened in a life where she wasn’t there to point it out.

“We’re in a forest right now and there’s plenty of surrounding woods nearby,” Lyrei pointed out with a frown. “I don’t think that really clears things up at all.” She glanced at Seldir, who seemed to be deep in thought. “Unless you’ve got an idea and are about to prove me wrong?”

Noa nodded. “You mentioned being a mercenary, right? Do you know this area better than we do?”

Seldir shrugged off their admiring tones. “Maybe not the specifics, but I can make a couple of guesses. Do you think they would all still be around this area?”

“They should be,” Rennyn mumbled. “I don’t think the ‘timer’ can be much further than whatever it’s counting down to.”

Kaylin shook her head. “If it’s too far apart, it’s going to end up being inaccurate.”

“I think I have a good guess, then,” Seldir announced. “We should be able to get there in a couple of hours.”

“And along the way, I need to know how this summoning thing works,” Lyrei added. “Only spirits get magic, I guess aside from Viragi, Kharis, and Ether, so does Dhymos do something special or—”

“Later,” was the extent of what they all knew Rennyn was ever going to tell her. He looked at Xarena instead. “I think you should head back to Zaitha and report what we’re doing here. No need to come with us, we can take care of this ourselves.”

“I’m not about to leave you guys on your own!” Xarena argued. “I get it, you’re probably just as reliable as you said you were. But I’m the one that’s actually a part of the guard here. Do you remember what I said about it not being a game? Do you know who’s at fault if something ends up happening to you?”

Rennyn, just as confident, stated, “No one else is going to get involved in this. Already there’s three more people than I’d like there to be. I’m not about to add on a fourth.”

“I’m not the one—”

“Just stay out of the way,” he repeated. “You’re not getting involved in this. This is our problem. Dhymos isn’t here for you, he’s here for us. And I’m not about to let you get tangled up in whatever hell he has planned for us.”

Kaylin tried to give him a reminding nudge, but it didn’t seem to make that much of a difference. She understood, in part, what he was trying to say… though she knew there were probably plenty of better ways to say it.

Xarena looked about ready to say something else, before Seldir interrupted her.

“I think Rennyn has a point,” he remarked. “I don’t want you to get hurt, either. How about this: I can tell you where we might be headed, and if we’re not back in Zaitha after a while, you’re allowed to go there. If we move somewhere else, we can make a note for you.”

Her frown deepened. “I’ll have you know I don’t like a single bit of this…”

“Well, there’s at least me and Rennyn. I’m used to protecting others—you know I won’t go down without a fight. Be assured in that, at least, and trust us. Just get your supervisors on the same page. If this turns out to be something more serious, we might need the extra manpower and the queen’s attention.”

She sighed and nodded. “Alright, you win. Where do you think you’ll go? If you’re not back by sundown, you better believe I’m getting people together to look for you. And I expect all of you to stay safe—even if I only really know two of you.”