Isil scratched at her head as she walked out the numbness. The information dump had left her slightly overwhelmed, but it was reliving memories, rather than learning it. It was more personal, more experienced. As she stepped out of the trees and into the clearing, she seriously considered doing something to Erickson, who had been the one to rudely call out to her, but stopped herself from being petty. She did not hold back on throwing a disapproving glare over in his direction once she spotted him.
She walked over to join Cinda and three other knights, who were gathered around a table with a large sheet of paper on it. Where they got the table, Isil wasn’t sure, but she didn’t really bother thinking about it. The four turned to look at her as she approached. Cinda seemed to shift his feet around as he struggled to maintain a neutral expression. One knight waved her over, while the other two went back to studying their paper.
“What did I miss?” Isil asked as she approached.
“Nothing much,” The knight who waved her over said. “Lief Argus, by the way.” He extended a hand.
“Isil, pleasure to meet you.” Isil defaulted to pleasantries and shook his hand.
“These two are Chris Gaven, and Lude Hamm respectively.” Lief pointed at the two next to him in turn.
“Lude Hamm? Like a perverted ham? Just how much did your parents hate you?” Isil couldn’t help but ask.
“My mother died in childbirth and my father attempted to kill me the same day.” Lude said, not looking up from the paper.
“Noted. Sorry.” Isil instantly felt guilty about asking.
“Don’t be, it’s a perfectly legitimate question. I would ask myself the same question, but it’s already been answered for me.”
“Still, that was rude of me. I apologize.”
“Don’t get hung up on it. I would suggest we get to work instead.”
“Yes, I agree.” Cinda said, then moved his finger to a place on the paper.
Finally looking down at the paper, Isil realized it was a map of Ashiron and its surrounding area. The city was the main focus of the map, taking up roughly 80% of the map itself. Cinda had his finger on the Northern gate, which was where they would enter if they were traveling normally. Isil listened to what Cinda had to say next.
“My original plan was to slip in undetected while Vernon entered and then tail him as he met with his contact, but that plan has gone out the window.” Cinda explained.
“Sorry, I didn’t know you were there when I killed them.” Isil said, exasperated.
“It wasn’t my intention to blame you for that. In fact, this is probably for the better. While Vernon was the liaison for them, this is a big operation. This isn’t your run-of-the mill black market slave trade. We already know it’s connected to Ghent’s noblesse, at worst, even reaching the sovereigns of the Confederation members. Ashiron is a capitol city, so our slavers have to be able to conduct their business with the king breathing down their neck.”
“Hold on,” Isil interjected. “Before you go any further, I need to ask. Do you suspect Samil in this?”
“Samil?!” Chris spoke up for the first time. “Who the hell calls a king by their first name?!”
“Someone who knows them well – but don’t bother with that. He probably doesn’t even remember me. Keep going.”
“Right. Leaving aside your lack of due respect, I haven’t excluded him, but he isn’t high on the list.” Cinda continued.
“That’s treading closer to lèse-majesté than calling a king by his first name, but keep going.” Isil grumbled.
“… Right! Being able to both hide themselves from King Darvos and kidnap a diplomat’s daughter means they can only be someone extremely important. My prime suspect is Duke Ausker. His family has had a long history of conflict with His Majesty Bassel, and the current Duke Ausker isn’t as… subdued in his discrimination of elvenkind as his forefathers.”
“… I can’t say I know much about him, but I can agree with you on that,” Isil smiled wryly, thinking back to her personal experience with the Duke, a few of her memories of him bubbling up at the same time. “However, the man isn’t a fool, and he likes the Confederacy. He wants it to continue existing, but this incident, if not properly resolved, will damage relations with Eberheim. This doesn’t work in his favor. In my opinion, this is more likely to be the work of Prince Jotunn.”
“Prince Jotunn? I’m not familiar with him.” Lude asked Isil.
“Most people aren’t. He’s the third prince of Ashiron, and is a staunch Royalist. By Royalist, I mean the political faction that advocates for Ashiron’s withdraw from the Confederacy. He’s a cold, unfeeling brat, but he’s got a keen mind. This kidnapping incident would lower trust in the Confederacy, and bring more supporters for the Royalists.” Isil explained.
“But what would Ashiron have to gain? Since they’re a part of the Confederacy, Eberheim won’t discriminate in their blame. Moreover, what does Eberheim have to do with the Prince’s beliefs?” Cinda noted.
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“Jotunn doesn’t care about Eberheim, he just saw an opportunity and took it. He couldn’t do anything too big that would bring Eberheim’s wrath on to the Confederacy before Ashiron left, and he couldn’t do anything too small that it was disregarded. A murder would be too big, and an assault would be too small. Kidnapping brings in revenue, and achieves his goals at the same time. I don’t see anyone else that could be behind it.”
“We’ll make him our prime suspect,” Lief stated. “But we can’t cross out anyone yet. Instead, we need to work on a plan.”
“Right, we’ve gone off track.” Chris agreed.
“Indeed. Here’s what we’ve got so far...” Cinda began to explain.
-_-_-
“No plan survives contact with the enemy. Any more and we’re just setting ourselves up for failure.” Isil pushed off the table lightly, arching her back to stretch.
“You can never be too detailed.” Lief rolled his neck and retorted.
“Plan for every eventuality, and you make waste of time. There is such a thing as too much.” Isil shook her head, ears aching from the discourse.
“I still can’t help but feel like you know something more,” Cinda said. “For one who’s never lived in the Confederacy, you seem quite well informed on one of its member nations.”
“I was there about seven years ago, during the Necromancer’s War. Fought in the Battle of Sybans. Saw the Coward King turn his back...” Isil muttered out the last sentence.
“You were a veteran? Who did you serve with?” Lude’s head snapped up to ask her.
“… A friend.” The answer was curt.
“My condolences.”
“Hah! How the tables turn.” Isil chuckled.
“All rise!” Chris called out to the knights who hadn’t taken part in the discussion.
The knights stood up with a snappy salute, making crisp noises as their clothes and armor rapidly moved.
“Pack up – we’re headed for Ashiron in twenty minutes!” Chris ordered.
The five knights ended their salute and rushed off to their tents. Two donned their armor while the other three focused on taking down the tents. They moved quickly, and once the two were done with their armor, they assisted in taking down the tents with the other three. The tents that belonged to the slain knights were bundled up and tossed aside. They didn’t seem to have any intention to bring them back.
“Aren’t you going to keep the tents? And what about the extra horses?” Isil asked Lief.
“We’ll issue a retrieval order to a Confederate barracks when we arrive in Ashiron. The horses, we bring with us. The barracks stable can hold them.” Lief answered.
Isil nodded in understanding. She looked over at her destroyed tent and sighed. She would have to grab a tent from one of the discarded and inscribe the same enchantments on it. She didn’t even know if the material could handle the magic. This was not to say that the magic was strong, just that the material was common and without any special properties. It was not terrible for her though, she could bear to sleep in a tent without anti-insect wards for a day or two.
She glanced over at Ella, who was talking with Cinda with a worried look on her face. Isil stared in their direction for a moment, then looked away and started moving towards her own belongings. Despite the fact that she had only been with Ella for a day, she cared about her more than she had expected. Caring about someone like that…
… It wasn’t as bad as she thought.
-_-_-
Isil sat on a brown-spotted white horse, consistently battling an itch on her nose that seemed to come back every time she scratched it. It was mid-morning, and the sun provided little warmth. Although it was cold, it was not enough for snow or heavy coats. Back on Earth, it would be mid-winter, but the browning leaves of the trees and mildly cold air seemed to suggest it was autumn. She knew that winters existed in Kalixkto, traveling North to Necess would allow one to see what eternal winter looked like.
Isil held back a sneeze as something in the air brushed by her nose. She sniffled and rubbed her nose, the rough gloves she was wearing irritating her nose even more. They were not the Umber Queens’ gloves that she had been wearing before. She had dressed herself in the garb of the knights using a spare set of armor Erickson had. Considering his previous actions, she didn’t really want to use one of his armor sets and make him mad, but nothing else was her size. She only avoided his wrath due to a comment from Lude about him being built like a woman.
Erickson had surprisingly strong teeth.
“I can see the wall now.” Lief called out from the front of the horse train.
Isil leaned slightly to her left, trying both to see the city and not fall off the horse. In the distance, Ashiron’s gray stone walls rose high up into the sky, with only two spires from the Imperial castle peeking out above them. The gate reached about halfway up the wall, and, from her perspective, was as wide as the tip of her thumb. Although looking at the gate from this distance said nothing about its real size, Isil had already seen how big it was. The gate was about seven meters tall, and the wall itself roughly fifteen of the same. The wall surrounded the entire city, making it dozens of kilometers in length. It was an impressive wall, to say the least.
“I remember climbing that wall. Fell off and most of the bones in my body the last time I tried it. Ah, fun times.” Isil reminisced pleasantly.
“… Did you survive?” A knight asked.
“No.” Isil stated seriously.
“...”
The silence made Isil worried they believed her jest, but she didn’t speak up in fear of making herself look like a fool if they didn’t. The rest of the ride to the gates was in silence. Isil wanted to make some sort of casual conversation, if only to loosen the tension that was starting to build. Feeling a little sweat gather around her neck, she loosened her collar. Suddenly, an idea sprang to her mind.
“Do any of you carry an amulet of a divine with you? I heard that most knights carry the same ones.” Isil asked.
“Hm? Well, I can’t speak for everyone, but I carry one of Sol Jamous. I don’t worship him over any of the other divines, but I’ve always liked his symbol.” One of the knights spoke, pulling a necklace from under his collar.
“I’ve got one of Belleb. My mother made it for me.” Chris chimed in, laughing as he remembered something pleasant.
“What about you?” A different knight asked Isil.
“Me? No, I’m not a believer.” Isil shook her head.
In this context, a ‘believer’ did not mean someone who believed in the religion, as there was physical proof of divinities, but rather someone who pledged themselves to a certain divine. Becoming a believer allowed a person to use some very simple holy magic with their divine’s assistance. Deepening your faith in your chosen divine, and defining the aspect – order or chaos – they represented better could elevate a believer to a priest, where their command over holy power became greater, and they could use stronger holy magic. However, a mage did not need to be a believer to cast holy magic, but they needed practice and experience to compare to a priest with divine guidance.
“Your not?” A third knight asked curiously.
“No, I simply never felt the need to obtain power from a divine. That, and I also had the absurd curiosity to figure out if practicing holy magic could make me a divine.” Isil explained, casually conjuring a reason as to why she never used something that wasn’t available to non-Priest classes in Endless Conquest.
“Did you ever get results from that?” Lief asked, others also mentioning their curiosity.
“I found out that too much holy power, coming from yourself, that is, can make you violently ill. Couldn’t get anything done until a week after that experiment.” She queried her memory supplier before answering the question, but there was no answer. She made something up instead.
“A shame. I always wondered what it would be like to be divine.” Chris groaned.
“Boring, I bet,” Isil shook her head.
“Straighten up, we’re nearly there.” Lief commanded gruffly.
Isil nodded with the cessation of the small talk. Her head turned towards the top of the walls, spotting the steel helmets of the patrolling archers through the embrasures. For a moment, her memories blurred and she remembered the same events through different perspectives. Whether it was her or her, she had quite liked King Samil Darvos II of Ashiron. If she had the opportunity, she was going to meet with him again, and try her damnedest to make him remember her if he forgot.