The afternoon light beat down as Art and 3 teams of knights-in-training arrived at Hoster Crossing. The 4 houses there that did not answer their summons were the prime suspected hideouts of whoever orchestrated the kidnapping of Coun Taliesin and the attack of Art herself. While the knights were at the crossing, the city guards were sent to Tumbler Yard to try and find the Aleynonlian delegates.

‟You have your assigned houses. Split up!” She told the teams. ‟Use your wands to send up a flare if you run into trouble.”

‟Yes, my lae!” the knights-in-training bellowed back with a salute.

The teams split up on their orders, and Art headed alone to the house that she had assigned herself. It was the one least conspicuous. A first floor apartment in a building of three levels, the dustless door handle and perfectly blinding draped curtains denoted neither abandonment or disrepair. She wasn't sure, but she might have even glimpsed the curtains moving while approaching the building. Yet, according to the neighbours, they had never seen anyone enter or leave openly in seasons. But on the night of the attack, there were sounds of scrambling and rustling.

With time not on her side, she was not going to be gentle. Open first and knock later would be her policy that day. And she did just that as she raised her boots to where the latch of the door would be and gave it a firm kick. Wood splintered and cement chipped off bricks as the door swung apart from its latch and lock.

Yet the knight-commander was greeted not with stunned faces or hostile vengeance at the fallen door. Rather a room darkened by the curtains yet lit by flames from lamps found her.

There were no normal furnitures. Four tables joint together in the middle of the apartment formed a war table of some sorts. Maps and scrolls, boxes and stationeries, daggers and blood, all marked part of the scene. The only two chairs were unceremoniously pushed the side of the room to be with barrels of swords and sealed crates.

Art immediately summoned her weapon. A greatsword in a cramp space might be difficult to swing, but she rather that than step into obvious danger unarmed. Besides, she was strong, and she knew it.

But speaking of it, where was the danger?

The apartment was obviously the hideout, but there were no signs of life. It was deadly quiet and without movement. Yet the flickering lamps meant that there were life there recently, so where did they go?

She stepped past the door and immediately got her answer.

A metallic glint caught her peripheral and she turned in time to swat the dagger away with the bracer of her arm. With her right hand, she swung her sword instinctively at the figure in the dark.

It ducked, but too early, and she easily angled her sword down mid-swing, slamming the heavy weapon into the figure and cleaving its head bloodily into the wall behind the door, the force of the attack splattering blood in gushes and even blowing the door close with a loud slam.

‟Monssster!” An angry yell came from opposite the room.

Two lizardkins jumped out of hiding, swords in hands. They rushed over furnitures, clambering like raging animals at her.

Open first, knock later.

With both hands on the handle of her sword, Art took a step forward to anchor her footing and swung back. The weight of her swing cleaved the leftmost attacker in two and smashed into the second lizardkin with enough force to knock them out of the air and onto the ground.

The down lizardkin gasped painfully for air while staring in fear at her dead coconspirators. From the way a bone stuck out of from under their abdomen, they likely had a broken rib. No, they definitely broke a rib and then some.

Art grinned as she stepped over the top half body of the fallen kin, the dead eyes still tracking her with the last light of their life even as what remained of their torso stopped moving.

Without mercy, Art put her boot onto the open wound of the last remaining lizardkin, and rested the point of her blade against their heart.

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‟Who sent you?” She growled.

The lizardkin hissed bloodily, but with a defiant smirk. ‟Why don't you asssk your whore queen?”

Not one to take an insult to her friend and liege lying down, she mercilessly pushed her blade through the kin's heart, keeping eye contact all the while watching the light leave their pupils. And when the kin stopped moving, she pulled out her sword to a spurt of blood.

‟Urgh...” she sighed, tired. ‟I really need to start keeping some of these alive for interrogation.”

There was something odd about the lizardkins she could not entirely put her hand on. Something familiar, yet threatening. Was it due to her experience with Lands Lord's tribe that brought up a sense of deja vu?

Art considered a moment if she should use her wand to send out a flare. But she was safe, and the threat neutralised as far as she could tell. Perhaps there were other hideouts the other knights were investigating.

She decided to continue on her own. A few questions sat at the forefront of her mind. Where did the lizardkins come from? Are they working alone? How did they enter the city unnoticed? How was Lands Lord involved? Are they from the same tribe?

There were two rooms in the back, and she felt her questions would be answered there.

She would be proven right when she opened the first room to find dirt stacked around a hole in the ground that lead down into a visible tunnel. Art took a quick stock of the apartment to make sure it was clear before jumping down.

There was only one dark path in the tunnel that seemed to lead north-west out of the city. She took out her wand and let loose a red flare that whistled for hundreds of meters through the passageway for as far as it could before fading away. The walls were as smooth as a makeshift tunnel could be, and straight as an arrow. Likely the work of an earth mage.

Having confirmed it as empty as she could, she climbed out and back into the room. She would send a team down later, but she needed answers now to bring back to her leaders.

She left the tunnel room and turned a corner, approached the second door in the back, and immediately she smelled it. The stench of dried iron permeated the atmosphere. It wasn't like the bloodbath she left behind. Those were fresh, still waiting for the air to carry the stench through the room. But whatever was behind this second door had saturated.

When she opened the door, it lead to an obvious torture room. To the wall on her right was a rack of torture equipments. Whip and lashes; torches and pliers; blades and hammers. A metal table in the middle was caked in dried blood. But it was not fit to the shape of any of the other races of Tearha. No, it was slightly larger around the limbs, and the buckles around the joints were stretched out, as if the subject could wiggle out a odd angles. But what clued in Art to the identity victim that had laid there once was the hole in middle where the rear would be, as if a tail would need to extend out of. It could have been a drakin, sure, but Lands Lord's lance sitting in the corner of the room finalised it. The tribal lizardkin that had come with her had fallen victim to its own kin.

There was a table to her left where notes dotted with blood were kept. But standing out from those was a velvet book, custom bound with golden inlets - the colour of The Council.

She opened the book and recognised the name within. Each entry was signed off with Coun Taliesin's signature. Most of the pages were uninteresting diary entires of sort, speaking of worries within The Council and the direction to which to take the country.

Inpatient, Art flipped to the last pages and her heart skipped a beat.

The keep is low on defenders. I do not know what happened, but the queen ordered a sweep of the city. Soldiers and guards are sent in masses into the city.

It seems they are looking for our hideout. At this rate, our operations will be found out. But it might be our only chance to enter the keep with little resistance. Infiltration teams are being assembled as I write.

Tomorrow, we enter the keep.

Tomorrow, we kill the queen.

Immediately, she rushed out of the apartment without a second look back. Once out and back in the afternoon Twins, she threw her sword into the ground and opened up its light-sail board as a patrol of three town guards walked by.

‟You three!” She commanded hastily. ‟Guard this apartment until I return. No one is allowed in or out! If other knights approach you, tell them to meet me back at the keep!”

The three guards exchanged confused glances before the sole female saluted with a deep croaked voice. ‟Yes, uh, Lae Pendragon!”

As she got onto her board, she heard the taller male guard muttered, ‟I heard she was bad with names and faces, but isn't this a little ridiculous?”

But he was quickly hushed quiet by the shorter male guard.

Art had no time to worry about her public perception with an assassination on the queen's life on the table.

The sail to her board unfurled and brightened up with the full energy gathered from the daylight, glowing a shining star even without the night. The board lifted off the ground, and she sailed off into the sky and towards the keep.