Nevin's eyes narrowed until his eyelids nearly touched. He studied the unwavering form of the man in black, his brain chewing the evidence.

Could I have really been so clueless?

Thinking back, he remembered smelling smoke earlier that day, almost immediately after waking up inside the fallen silver maple, but the strangeness of his predicament - added to the proximity of two of the baron's soldiers - had distracted him away from prying too hard into the source of the smell. Even Aidux had tried to tell him, when he spoke about following some soldiers onto a local farm. The cat had claimed to overhear the soldiers talking about burning down the farm, but Nevin's mind had apparently been elsewhere.

“No,” he said, shaking his head so hard his neck muscles ached in protest. “That's not possible. Elbin's a part of the barony. We might be way out here in the sticks, barely worth sending a tax collector to every few years, but we're still a province under the protection of the Lancowls. Why would the baron, our baron, send his men to torch a village he's responsible for? That doesn't make any sense at all.”

“Does if you assume the baron didn't send them.”

Nevin hugged his chest, careful not to exacerbate his injured shoulder. The muscles were a little stiff, but didn't otherwise complain. He was impressed by how quickly it was returning to normal. “No, but...but I heard them talking myself. One of them specifically made mention of being the baron's soldiers.”

Theis nodded. “Some are. Some are conscripts I'm sure, or even soldiers in training. Mercenaries too, possibly. Not the baron's best though, but sufficient enough for the area. Ran into three of them out in the woods less than an hour ago. One told me the baron assigned their group to a man named Vincht, a man he claimed wasn't a soldier in the Lancowl's employ.

“Now, I don't know who this Vincht really is, but after dealing with him here, listening to the way he spoke and how he carried himself, I have my suspicions. Doubt the Baron had any idea what he was sending his men to do. Likely owed a debt to either Vincht himself or an organization he's a part of, and was obligated to offer support when requested.”

Aidux picked his teeth, his silvered peepers moving back and forth between Theis and his friend. Nevin did his best to ignore the pointed slurps, not wanting to add the idea of the lynx casually dining on human flesh to his already troubled thoughts.

Theis matched Nevin's stance, folding his arms beneath his cloak. The motes in his eyes swirled tightly around their pupils. “It's the 'why' that concerns me.”

“Why what?”

“Why they're here, boy. Or more specifically, how they knew what they were looking for was here. Been trying to figure that one out all day.”

That got Nevin's attention. “You know what they're looking for?”

The man in black nodded, slowly, deliberately. “Man I interrogated showed me a drawing. Crude, but unmistakable. They all carried one.”

The younger man took a hesitant step toward him, glass crunching underfoot. “And you think it's here?”

“Mmm.”

“Like...here here?”

Again, he nodded. “Problem is, the old man could have hidden it anywhere. Buried it beneath a tree. Stuffed it in a hollowed out log in the walls. Tucked it under the cabin itself.”

He sighed, annoyed. “It's here, I just don't know where.”

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

“What makes you say that? Why here, in Ishen's cabin, and not anywhere else in Elbin?”

Theis stared long and hard at Nevin, the motes in his piercing blue eyes jerking this way and that as he considered his next words carefully. “Because I'm the one that brought it here.”

Ishen. Nevin glanced down at the gap in the floorboard, trying to picture just exactly what was hidden inside that shadowed hole. He knew something was down there alright. He could still feel that cold, an unbearable chill that burrowed through the flesh and blood and bone to freeze him to his very core. A wave of gooseflesh tore down his arms at the memory.

Vincht wanted it, whatever it was, badly enough to kill. Theis wanted it too. Ishen had gone to some lengths to keep it hidden, and for how long? That mold-crusted blanket bore stains and growths likely years in the making.

And then there was the method of its discovery. A book he'd never seen before, tied to a set of loose boards with a single strand of black thread. Those boards had fit perfectly into the gap in the floor, flush and functionally invisible to the naked eye. Only someone who already knew of the hiding place could possibly have found it without methodically dismembering the entire room, one piece at a time. Ishen had tied that book to the floor for only one reason he could think of: so that whoever picked it up would also reveal the hole.

As Nevin suspected he was the only other person his old mentor had ever allowed in his study, the only other person allowed to handle his precious collection of books, maybe the only other person in the whole of Elbin that could even read, he could only surmise that Ishen had orchestrated the discovery of the gap in the floorboards – and whatever lies within – specifically with his young student in mind.

Nevin closed his eyes, pinching the bridge of his nose with his fingers as if using the pressure to anchor his swirling thoughts. Then again, maybe he was confusing coincidence for causation.

Bad days happened. Really bad days, days stringing one unfortunate occurrence onto the next, happened less often...but on a long enough timeline, a truly disastrous day – one capable of fundamentally altering a person's path or direction in life - was bound to come along for a certain percentage of the population.

But this day...Nevin felt it would be more foolish to blame such a terrible confluence of events on bad luck or simple happenstance. The timing of it all just didn't add up. So much had happened in but a few hours; his problem with Dalen, the soldiers arriving from Comelbough, the burning of Elbin, the sudden return of the 'infamous' Theis Bane, Ishen's disappearance, and now this.

No, not even coincidence was this...coincidental.

“What's wrong?” Theis said, studying Nevin's face closely.

With a sigh, the younger man brushed aside the scattered shards of glass dusting the floor with the sole of his boot. Aidux hopped up from beside him and padded over to the corner of the room, turning about in a circle before stretching out in one of the few clear spaces remaining in the decimated study.

“Do you believe in Fate, Theis?”

The man in black snorted. “A catch-all for the foolish and impotent to blame their problems on. My destiny is mine to control, through my strength and intelligence, not some glorified librarian and his magic books, half a world away.”

Nevin placed two hands on the angled writing desk and planted his feet. He hadn't really noticed it before, but a number of flattened scrolls were spread across its surface. He recognized the top most slip of paper; a crude map of the peninsula, illustrating only the region's most recognizable features - the Traagen Woods, the town of Elbin, the Hyret Gorge, the southern road and bridge, the Nimmon Thrust to the north, an uppercase 'I' no doubt referencing Ishen's own cabin. In a small space to the north, where the river emerged from the Nimmons, Ishen had drawn an irregular circle, notating the spot with a single word - Narloc.

I already know about your stupid mountain chimeras, Ishen. Not helpful.

Grunting, Nevin shoved the desk aside. It warbled like a snow goose as it ground against the polished floor. Its relocation revealed the gap in the floorboards to the man in black, who couldn't have been aware of its location from his position in the doorway. Like the desk had been placed there on purpose.

Wiping his sweaty hands on his shirt, Nevin peered down into the hole. “You're talking about the Keeper, right? The man charged with reading the Tomes of Fate and directing world events. I always thought he was just a story. He's real, too?”

“As real as any other charlatan.” Theis moved up beside him, staring down into the darkness as well. “Why are you asking me these things?”

“Because I'm beginning to suspect that either someone or something has orchestrated today's events to bring the three of us here. You, me, Aidux. Standing right here next to this hole in the floor. It's just too much to be coincidence.

“And if it's not, if everything that's happened isn't just the result of random chance and bad timing, I'd rather believe it the work of some emotionless force of existence like Fate. I'd rather believe that the slaughter of innocent farmers is somehow the will of the cosmos, or some hateful god, or even some distant librarian, than to consider the possibility that the only person I know smart enough, patient enough, and with enough inside information into my life, Elbin, and whatever it is that everyone is looking for...is the true perpetrator of the day's events.”

Nevin dropped to his knees, the muted thud of bone on wood reverberating through the empty cabin. “Because if I thought for a second that Ishen had put this whole thing together, I don't know if I'd ever want to get up off this floor again.”