‟You three!” Art 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 Watcher exchanged confused and worried glances with Lua Orniter and Joachim Kerr, before Lua improvised, ‟Yes, uh, Lae Pendragon!”

As they watched Art climb onto her hoverboard, The Watcher let slipped, ‟I heard she was bad with names and faces, but isn't this a little ridiculous?”

But he was quickly hushed quiet by the mute Joachim.

The trio watched as Art ignored them and sailed off into the sky, staring almost longingly as the knight became a dot in the air towards the keep.

‟What's got her twisting grieves?” Joachim signed as Lua translated.

Lua suggested, ‟Should we follow her?”

‟I don't know. But I don't like not knowing.” The Watcher replied, turning to the apartment they had followed the knights to to investigate. ‟Let's find out what got her spook first, shall we?”

The trio had been in hiding since the attack on them and Artria. Not only were they hunted by the mysterious third party that had shown up in the city, but the city itself was quick to deem them fugitives. After rescuing Art, they went underground hastily. When the city guards, soldiers, and knights started knocking on doors, their ears were pricked. It did not take long for The Watcher - and a slightly slower Lua - to deduce what was happening, and the Aleynonlian delegates began to make new moves.

The moment the trio entered the apartment, Lua held back a gag and Joachim went impossibly quiet, even for a mute. However, the silence was quickly broken by the crackling of bones, and the two young adults looked down to The Watcher's fists closed tight.

Lua tried to divert the old man's anger. ‟Lizardkins. What are they doing here?”

The Watcher approached the furthest, least damaged corpse, and squatted near them. As he reached his hand out to the body, Joachim stopped him with a hand on his shoulder.

The girl, worried look in her eyes, shook her head. ‟You don't have enough magic right now to save them.”

The Watcher gave the bodies an apologetic look before getting back up to his feet. After a breath, the man's personality took a turn, and he seriously gave out instructions. ‟Look around. Let's see what's happening.”

The trio split up carefully. Lua and Joachim went together to the back of the apartment to investigate the rooms while The Watcher stayed in the main hall, running his eyes over the tables.

There were maps and there were plans. Too many to go through quickly for any normal person. But he was not a normal person. He was the most power time traveller in the world who could bend the flow of time to his will. And while bringing a person back from the dead like with Art and the lizardkins were the borderline of difficulty of his abilities, speeding himself up in relativity was child's play.

From the maps, he gathered they were tracking a person's movements, to-and-fro the keep and parts of the city. There were pieces of paper tagged with timestamps for the pencilled trails of the last two seasons. He wondered who they were tracking. From what he knew of Art having been gone for a while to the town of Grimmel, it seemed unlikely that they were following the knight-commander. But after carefully shifting over a parchment, there was a world map and a note that marked a travel to Grimmel.

‟Were they tracking Art?” He asked himself. ‟But the dates don't match up. Someone else from the keep went to Grimmel earlier.”

He skimmed through the parchments on the table. Even sped up, he had limited time. Even after over a year on Tearha, his body had not yet fully adjusted to the conversion of seither to ether he needed to use his temporal abilities. It took him 6 months - or 4 seasons in Tearha's time - to even have enough energy to access his more ridiculous sets of powers. And even then, he had used most of that during the attack on Rubicum, and another good portion doing the extremely delicate procedure of saving Art. By his estimate, he was currently at about 2% of his full strength. But time waited for no one, not even him, and crisis will continue to fall on the world.

There was not much other information he could gleam from the table. This underground cell had gone out their way to hide any traces of their target. Whoever it was, they had not wanted to alert anyone. But one of the trail was off, as it lead back to the very apartment they were in, which made no sense.

‟Were they tracking themselves?”

A hand lands gently on his shoulder and he snapped out of time.

Joachim was behind him, gesturing with his head to follow. It seems the two found something.

Trailing behind the young man, The Watcher looked into the first room where dirt were piled around the hole of a tunnel dug into the ground. Immediately, he felt something was wrong but could not quite pin the feeling.

‟What's this?” He asked Joachim.

The mute gestured with two dusting swipes of his hands and a motion of a hand going under his other.

‟A tunnel.” While The Watcher did not know much of Tearha's sign language yet, he was able to make educated guesses. ‟Entrance or exit?”

Joachim bobbed his head and squinted his eyes in a ‟Seems like...” gesture, before adding a finger for the first, ‟Entrance.”

‟Watcher?” Lua's voice came from the next room.

The man already dreaded the sight from the smell. Unlike the rest of the apartment, the torture room wasn't unkempt, but instead unclean. The blood that was around the room had dried into the walls and floors, a situation that would be hard to remove without tearing apart the room itself. His brain snapped all the information in a split second.

‟Something's wrong.”

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Lua, holding a violet book, look at him questioningly.

‟That's Lands Lord's lance. But it's dry. No blood. It was placed there after the torture.”

Lua followed with, ‟A bait?”

‟What have you got there?” He asked her about the book.

‟It's Coun Taliesin's journal. I haven't finished all of it, but it seems like last year he followed the queen and discovered something he was afraid to write in here. The last entry is from today, about killing the queen.”

Joachim signed, ‟That must be why Artria rushed off. She's going to stop the assassination.”

‟Keep reading.” He instructed Lua. ‟We're missing something.”

A voice came from behind them, ‟If you don't raise your hands up, I'll make good on that and have you end up missing something.”

The trio did not hear the fourth party approach, but they guess the person was armed. The Watcher and Joachim did as they were told, raising their arms in surrender and turning to the knight that stood behind them with blade pointed. But the woman was not any of the other knights-in-training they had seen left at the keep. She wore the full uniform, but had the right half of her face completely scarred across.

‟Let's step out and talk, shall we?” The woman threatened.

As they backed out, The Watcher could not help but notice the knight glancing towards the room with the dug tunnel.

He noted, ‟You realized something's wrong too, don't you?”

She glared angrily back at him. ‟I saw the maps outside. Were you tracking us to Grimmel?”

‟Grimmel?” Lua asked.

But The Watcher had already pieced the situation together in his mind. ‟You're the knights sent out with Art. So I'm guessing you don't know what's going on in the city right now.”

The disfigured knight did not reply, and simply continued with her fierce gaze.

Slowly, the four of them backed out into the main room where awaiting them were two of the knights-in-training that had went off to the other houses, an older female knight with long grey hair, and two civilians in coats - a human male and an elven female.

The Watcher crossed gaze with the female elf, whose tweed hat and pipe she smoked out from immediately threw an image in his mind.

His personality switched again, now excited. ‟You!” He pointed to the two civilians. ‟You're Sherlock Holmes and John Watson, aren't you?” Disregarding the sword pointed at him, he confidently walked by the knight who, through sheer shock at his audacity, was unable to react.

All the other knights drew their weapons at him as he approached the two, who stood by calmly.

‟Doctor John Watson,” John introduced.

‟And it's Sherl Octavia. Who are you?”

Sherl Octavia. Sherl Oct-. Sherloct. It's doesn't always repeat, but it always rhymes. The Watcher was starting to get the hang of the rules of the multiverse.

‟Forget about me. I have a puzzle for you.”

Immediately, the woman's eyes lit up and Sherl exclaimed excitedly, ‟Watson, Morgan, we've got a case!”

Morgan? Going by the Arthurian theme of the knights, could she be Morgan le Fay?

The knight that had just been holding them at sword point seemed to have picked up the lack of threat faster than the others. Her eyes softened considerably once she realized they were not aggressive or an immediate danger.

‟I'm not your sidekick!” Morgan replied exasperatedly, de-materializing her sword. ‟And we're not done here. The three of you do not leave this apartment. Take one step toward the door and I'll skewer you myself. Merylin, I'll leave the outside to you.”

‟Ha! Merlin!” The Watcher laughed. ‟Lua, Joachim, I think it's time for you to do your jobs as diplomats. Let's make some friends, shall we?”

It was slow, but the other knights-in broke out of their confusion enough for Merylin to give them instructions, while the two young adults approached the old knight to explain the situation.

The Watcher lead Sherl and Morgan to the tunnel room and presented it to them with a theatrical wave. ‟Ta-da! What do you think?”

‟Something's wrong,” Morgan bluntly stated. ‟But I can't put my hands on it.”

‟Same,” The Watcher agreed. ‟We don't have much time to figure it out either. There's an assassination attempt on the queen happening.”

‟What!?” Morgan snapped, wide-eyed. ‟You should have lead with that!”

‟These rooms are part of it,” The Watcher quickly interjected to prevent her from running off. ‟I think we'll be doing more harm than help without knowing what is needed. Besides, if it's the queen's life you're worried about, Art flew on ahead. She'll get there long before us.”

Though still visibly worried, the train of logic seems to have halted Morgan's escape for the moment until Sherl piped up.

‟Why is there dirt here?”

‟What do you mean?” The Watcher asked. ‟It's from the hole.”

‟Yeah, but why?” The detective swaggered into the room and confidently jumped down the hole. ‟These tunnels are dug by earth magic. They dig these by compressing dirt aside into the walls. Reinforcement and space at the same time.”

Morgan and Watcher followed and looked down into the deep to see Sherl banging against the concrete hard walls in the cramped space.

‟So there shouldn't even be dirt here,” Morgan agreed. ‟It should all be compressed into the tunnels.”

‟Unless...” The Watcher slowly surmised. ‟This is where you started from. You'll need to clear the corner. This tunnel was dug from the inside.”

‟How?” Sherl asked, grabbing Morgan's outstretched arm as she climbed out. ‟Even with earth magic, you'll need dozens of people to dig a tunnel this long in a reasonable time.”

‟Or dozens of years,” The Watcher surmised.

‟Hey, Sherl!” John came into the room. ‟There's something wrong with the torture room, and I don't just mean the torture.” It seems the doctor had taken a greater interest in the more morbid scenery.

‟Torture room?” Sherl's eyes glinted excitedly again.

The Watcher cut the excitement off. ‟What's wrong with it?”

‟It's the blood. There are so many layers to it. Someone's tried to clean out the stains, but it's seeped in deep into the floor itself. Some splatters have dozens of different layers.” His face grimaced painfully with clear disgust.

As a doctor, he must have seen something that all their untrained eyes had missed. But different layers meant different bodies. That wasn't a torture room, then. It was a serial murder room.

The doctor continued, ‟Not even on the battlefield have I seen a suite that bloody. It looked like the kind of stain in the corner of rooms you can't reach and just forget about. Whatever happened in there must have been going on for a long time.”

Even Sherl's excitement disappeared in solemnity. ‟Would you say a year?”

John shook his head. ‟Try a decade.”

The Watcher's heart sank. ‟Oh no. Art's got the wrong bad guy.”