Arcarius felt no fear. If he was to be punished, so be it. He turned to face this Sindara. He looked her deep in the eyes. There were little flashes of lightning in them from time to time.

‘There isn’t one,’ he said. ‘But I want to thank you.’

‘What for?’ Sindara asked and cocked her head.

‘For opening my eyes.’

The next moments were a bit hazy in Arcarius’s memory. Sindara said something he didn’t catch, there were sounds of movement behind him, a green light flashed and the next thing he knew it was evening and he was lying on the forest bed.

Did they knock me out? Why spare me?

Arcarius dragged himself from the ground and looked around. He was alone. He considered going back to Zel-Vyme and acting like nothing had happened. What would he do then, though? Vanek would not relent. Go back to the headquarters? They would hang him for being a deserter.

‘There you are!’ he heard Halveck shout from the direction of Zel-Vyme. ‘We’ve been looking for you Arc.’

Arcarius turned to face him.

‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘I went on a walk and lost track of time.’

‘Come on back then. The Inquisitor wants to head out first thing tomorrow.’

Maybe I can curb some of his worst excesses at least, and then report him to the Grand Master. And if another Dan-Hem happens I’ll kill him myself. This I swear on the Light.

‘I’m still not sure leaving the guy alive was a good idea,’ said Caei after we left the unconscious Arcarius far behind us. When we noticed him wandering around, I snuck up behind him. It was pretty easy, the guy was so distracted that a tank could run him over, especially once we baited him. I caught his attention and then Caei used the Sleep spell on him.

‘Don’t get me wrong,’ I shrugged. ‘I don’t like the idea either, but in my world killing cops is probably the worst thing you can do. Because his buddies WOULD come after us.’

‘Cops?’ Caei asked.

‘Oh… Police… Law Enforcement… Militia? I have no idea what the local equivalent here is.’

We looked at Aki.

‘I think in Ror-Bhyk they have City Watch,’ she responded, somewhat unsure. ‘In Dan-Hem Elder Matis handles most disputes, and there are three militiamen he can call upon. Usually, they break apart bar brawls.’

Why do I have a feeling at least some of them are dead?

‘About that Aki…’

I told my suspicions about something terrible happening at Dan-Hem. I felt bad about it, but it was still her home. Predictably, she didn’t take it well.

‘It’s because of me…’ she cried.

‘No,’ I refuted her. ‘It’s because of the asshole who denounced you to the Inquisition.’

Caei gave her a reassuring hug and threw me a “you’re sleeping on a couch” look.

‘Thank you for telling me,’ Aki said once she finished crying.

‘Do you want to go there?’ I asked. ‘Check if everyone you cared about is okay?’

‘No… no,’ she said. ‘I’d rather not know…’

I nodded.

‘Let me know if you ever change your mind.’

Aki went on ahead of us. Caei slowed down to talk with me in private.

‘Why did you tell her this?’ she asked.

‘I didn’t want to keep it from her. If she found out from another source and discovered I was keeping it from her…’

She sighed.

‘There was really no good option here?’

‘I’d rather she learned from a friend.’

Caei took my hand in hers. It was a response enough.

We’ve decided to head northeast from Zel-Vyme and bypass Ror-Bhyk for now, as we didn’t want an encounter with the Spanish Inquisition. Once we covered we were far enough past the city we would head South and try to find a river crossing, and from there head to another city-state. Hopefully, the fuckers after Aki wouldn’t get the same idea. That meant finding this Naevud guy would have to wait.

We walked for several hours, and as the sun was beginning to set, we found the crater. At first, we thought it was just a clearing in the forest, and it was one after… a fashion.

‘What the…’ I muttered upon seeing a hole in the ground that when I checked my map later turned out to be one hundred metres in diameter and ten metres deep.

The bottom was overgrown with grass and there was an odd tree there or two, but there was no mistaking what it was.

A meteor crash site? I wondered.

‘I’ve never seen anything like it…’ Aki said, amazed. ‘What is it?

Caei’s expression seemed neutral but she was eyeing the crater up and down.

‘Looks to be an impact site,’ I said and explained how those usually formed on Earth.

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‘I’ve heard stories about stars falling to the ground,’ Aki said with barely contained excitement. ‘I never believed them. Can we explore it? Can we? Can we?’

I was planning on doing that anyway, so I agreed.

‘THANK YOU!’ Aki shouted and hugged me.

We carefully walked around it looking for any clues as to the reason behind this mystery. Aki wanted to go down to the bottom, but Caei said the walls of the crater were too steep for her Floating Disk spell to safely work. Truth be told, I think we were all disappointed by that, but our spirits were lifted when I noticed there was another clearing slightly to the northwest from where we came from. As we walked there, Caei saw a third one roughly equidistant from the crater and the second clearing.

All in all, we have discovered a total of three craters. They were roughly the same shape and size, which pointed at the same cause behind all of them. Our maps confirmed they formed almost a perfect triangle, which meant that the chances they were a natural occurrence were basically zero.

What could have caused them though? Magic? Artillery? Magical Artillery? Orbital Strike?

I suggested we should acquire some rope and try to descend these, but none of us knew how to rappel. Still, I entered a note with the craters' approximate location in my notepad. I really wanted to get to the bottom of this mystery.

We decided to walk a couple hundred metres from each of the sides of the triangle to check whether there would be some clues there. We came in from the south, so our first destination was to the east. After maybe two hundred metres we came upon a long and even gully running through the forest bed.

That’s not a gully, I realised after coming closer. That’s man-made.

I hurried over there and crouched beside the ditch to get a better look. Its walls were perpendicular to the ground and just high enough so a grown man could crouch behind them and lean out when needed.

A trench.

‘What in the world? What the fuck is a trench doing here?’

I could see remnants of wooden supports still somehow allowing this segment of the trench to retain its shape, though I slowly backed away from the side and signalled to the girls they should do the same. There was no telling how stable this thing was.

‘So you are saying a battle was fought here?’ Aki asked after I finished explaining this.

All of this must have felt like a wonderful journey of discovery to her. Personally, I was just feeling an ever-increasing dread.

Not wanting to risk getting dirty, we followed the trench from the ground level. Large parts of it collapsed and I could see sinkholes where once some dugouts were. After half an hour or so, we gave up as there wasn’t anything useful to be found.

We started to head back towards the craters. Caei and Aki were discussing the findings in excited voices, while I was trying to figure out what to check out next.

So… I have a trench and three craters. Let’s look at this from a trench warfare perspective. You would only build one where you expected to defend. The problem is… from which direction? The craters could be no man’s land, I guess? Or they could be from a strike at the logistics and/or artillery emplacements. Based on the size of the craters it was an overkill either way. Maybe some dread machines that got blown up? But that wouldn't explain the triangle pattern.

The sky was almost completely dark, so I checked the time.

Current Time: 19:27 Local Time

The clock is no longer showing me time on Earth. Interesting. Probably because I stopped caring.

Even though me and Caei had Darksight, and Aki had her Abyssal Spark spell, I wasn’t terribly keen about exploring a fucking battlefield at night. There was this, likely irrational, fear of UXO and landmines here, and, more sensible, one of various pitfalls. So I suggested we give it half an hour more and stop for the night. I really didn't want to leave the place unexplored. As luck had it, we discovered another trench maybe twenty minutes away from the craters, confirming my theory that we were walking through a former no man’s land. Luckily no poison gases were used here, given how a forest was growing here. Then again, I would probably take mustard gas over orbital bombardment. At least you could protect yourself against the former. This being a no man’s land also meant we were likely walking on top of a graveyard. That thought made me shudder.

How many people have died here? I wondered.

Like with the previous trench, we started to follow it, to see if I could find any clues as to its history. We were about to stop for the day as it was almost completely dark when I heard a rustling of leaves from the other side of the trench. I realised that it was the first noise not made by us I’d heard in a while. The battlefield was another of these pockets of quiet. I scanned the treeline, but could not see anything. Aki and Caei also didn’t seem to have seen anything.

I wonder… Do all of these pockets hide secrets like this? Then again Aki would have mentioned it… unless the one near Dan-Hem was never found. Not every relic from an ancient time would be as spectacular as this. Something also could be hidden underground, like Y-Ram.

Just as I was about to turn back, I saw something unusual in the trench below. There was a small pile of white rocks lying on a heap of detritus. I confirmed I would have an easy way to get back out of the ditch and jumped down. I crouched next to the heap and examined my findings. Those were fairly decently preserved small bones. They looked human, making me think those were once someone’s fingers but my level of forensic knowledge could have been described as “has watched a lot of Bones and CSI”, which, if social media was to be believed, made me a world-class expert on the issue. At least that's how Anti-Vaxxers operated so why should I be any different?

‘What did you find?’ Aki asked.

‘Just some bones,’ I said, a tad disappointed.

I turned around to get back to them when I saw that there was an entrance to an uncollapsed dugout a bit further from us. I motioned to my companions to get down to me, in case any fuckery was afoot. Something must have made that noise. We carefully walked to the entrance and Aki moved her Abyssal Spark inside so that all three of us could get a look.

At first glance, there was nothing out of the ordinary there. There was a quasi-bed/cot dug into each wall, with some room underneath it, likely for personal belongings, plus in the middle of the room there was a table and three chairs. They were all in amazingly good sh…

Oh, fuck.

‘Magic,’ I hissed.

Caei nodded.

‘Is it safe to enter?’ Aki asked.

‘I wouldn’t risk it,’ I said. ‘While those were meant to provide cover during bombardment, I have no idea how stable this is. And what the spell is doing.’

‘I could support the ceiling with the Disc,’ Caileera said. ‘It should provide some extra breathing room at least.’

‘Go ahead then,’ I shrugged.

A tense minute later Aki emerged out of the dugout with a disappointed expression.

‘Nothing,’ she said. ‘Still, it was fun to check it out.’

‘So it was still worth it,’ I said with a smile. ‘Let’s find a place to camp.’

We were very careful during our watches that night. That rustling had me spooked. To be sure, we chose a place outside of the pocket of silence. But nothing came at us. During the day we returned to the dugout and, pushing our luck, this time I entered it. It was another cloudy day so the outside was survivable for me, but, that being said, the inside of the underground chamber felt like paradise. The visit was more out of sheer curiosity than anything. I always wanted to visit one of these. Having also found nothing, I left the dugout and checked my map, as something was bugging me.

The trench line we were currently exploring was positioned in a way that it roughly defended Ror-Bhyk. Meaning… the attackers came from the direction the other emplacements were. Having nothing better to do we went that way and after two hours of walking found something even more perplexing. It was a massive red brick structure. The central part was three storeys tall with a four-storey wing on each side. There were biforas evenly spaced on each floor, each likely indicating the location of a room. A large black double door was in the middle of the central structure. The building was in poor shape: glass was missing from the windows, there were several holes in the walls and I could see that parts of the roof were missing. It honestly looked like the building was shelled at some point. But one thing that was still intact was a sign over the entrance which read: “Akh’Ret’s Mercy Hospital”.