Each one of my human party members had an armored ground sloth to carry their luggage and supplies, so we were able to bring just about everything that we wanted. Deldes actually went to pick up the mounts from Raeran’s and led them to the outlet of the tunnel connected to the Treefort. We had already said our goodbyes and Galan and Leirin planned to meet us in Eastern Tear in a couple of weeks, so we didn’t have any further business in town.
I collected Jim, Karen and Kelly from my former apartment on the second floor of the bookstore and moved them quickly into the Treefort. Everyone filed into the basement and we synchronized timepieces. They all began moving their baggage to an illuminated staging area relatively close to the exit. Delirin was stealthed in the tunnel to ensure that nothing unexpected hit the team. I immediately exited the Treefort into the alley behind the bookstore and started moving around from one familiar haunt in the outpost to the next. I stopped into all of the board game cafes, played some games, ate some snacks and generally made myself conspicuous enough that if you were looking for me there was no way that you wouldn’t find me. Then in the biggest crowd that I could find near the main intersection of the Emerald Sea, I went full stealth and dodged my way out of the city.
The idea was to have everyone in constant motion once we left the safety of the Treefort. Deldes would pick everyone up from the exit of the Treefort tunnel. The group would move slowly and steadily in an arc that took them away from the Emerald Sea and then bent in the direction of Eastern Tear. I would be highly visible in town and try to pick up and distract any tails that may be out there looking for us. Only Deldes would be leaving by the gate and she had done so much earlier, so we thought she might not be followed even if someone was watching the gate. I also believed that with just Deldes and the mounts it would take someone with considerable skill and patience to track her to her rendezvous with Jim, Karen, Kelly, Sarah, Queakers and Delirin without ending up in a shallow grave in the taiga.
I knew that everyone would forget about me when I pulled my disappearing act in town, so we tried to coordinate everything with timing. I was trying to hit a specific spot on the trail at the same time that they were. It was a part of the plan that they would follow, despite them likely not remembering why at the time. I was going to drop down to a lower aspect of my stealth skill shortly before the planned rendezvous to meet and connect with them without missing a step, or them trying to kill me. If I missed them, I would proceed to Eastern Tear on my own and try to catch them in the village if I didn’t catch them on the trail.
This plan should put me out of range of any tracking skills or equipment that we’d expect to be up against before I dropped down from my maximum level of stealth and if things went poorly, well, I had made a similar journey under worse conditions. I was lightly armed and equipped, but I had essentially been training for this type of thing for approximately six months. The rest of the team thought that the three of us were crazy. I couldn’t blame them, as based on what they had shared, their training had been very different, but a trip through duck country would certainly toughen them up.
***
Elen hadn’t been able to get a line on the tutorial participants that hadn’t aligned with her, Phraan and Ruven. She had spotted that useless hunter wandering around town from time to time. In desperation, she had followed him, but he never led her anywhere interesting. Today she had followed that fool across the Emerald Sea at least two times over. Was there a baker or snack vendor that he didn't know personally? Some of them had only been in town for a week. Truly pitiful.
As Elen rounded the corner she lost her train of thought. She had to find her former students. She had goals and she wasn’t going to let the likes of them interfere with her plans, even if her allies were so incompetent that she had to handle the dirty work herself.
***
Amrynn wasn’t sure exactly what was happening, but when Kelly and the others disappeared, their curiosity was peaked. Clearly their student and her companions were laying low somewhere. Amrynn wasn’t really sure how they could have pulled something like that off, given how isolated they had been within the tutorial training. Amrynn’s instincts as an assassin said that the tutorial participants had to have outside help. Since they only knew one person, that meant that Harris, the party member that had left the training to hunt, had to be the key. Who did he know that could be helping them?
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In tracking his movements during the past few weeks, Amrynn got the sense that he may have connections with the brownies that ran some of the local business and, of course, the magic artificer shop in Emerald Sea. Amrynn had no desire to get mixed up with the brownies, curious or not. Those little maniacs were way more trouble than the whole tutorial was worth. Since her students were humans, brownies were the best bet, but that wasn’t even the worst of it.
Amrynn couldn’t follow Harris. Stealth or no, he just dropped out of sight soon after Amrynn picked him up. Sometimes Amrynn would just find herself standing in an alley, not quite able to remember what they were doing. It wasn’t normal, but it also wasn’t happening right now. Harris was just wandering around buying snacks. It wasn’t exactly out of character from what they had picked up on, but it seemed a bit exaggerated today. He was probably up to something with the brownies.
Wait who was up to something with the brownies? If the brownies are involved, it might be better to just sit this one out . . .
***
Aquilian couldn’t help but be a bit jealous. Harris must have been born under a blessed star: An internship with Tanyl, one-on-one instruction with Grandmaster Galan and almost obsessive attention from Lady Lierin Loramenor. It was inconceivable. He certainly didn’t seem like anything special, but there had to be something more to it.
Harris clearly didn’t understand his place. The way that he spoke so casually. It made Aquilan shudder. Aquilan thought someone should teach him a lesson, but it sure wasn’t going to be Aquilan. Lady Leirin had been very, very frighteningly exact in her instructions for today and Aquilan wasn’t going to deviate one bit. Harris might not be as afraid of Lady Leirin as he should be, but Aquilan definitely was.
Aquilan was also three feet tall and totally invisible, so not getting trampled on the recently much busier streets of the Emerald Sea took some concentration. He couldn’t let . . . Panic filled Aquilian. Lady Leirin had told him to keep an eye on someone, but who? He couldn’t ask her now, but if he didn’t she was going to be even more enraged. He decided to make the call on his communication device. Lady Leirin couldn’t remember who he was supposed to follow either, but she wasn’t really mad. It sounded like she expected this to happen. It was weird, but Aquilan was just happy.
***
Ror was new to the Emerald Sea and this was her first job. Unfortunately, it was an unexpectedly frustrating assignment. Humans were usually easy to track and catch off guard. She wasn’t able to catch the scent of the human woman or the canine. She had mixed feelings about killing the dog known as Queakers, but she was a professional. When the elven mage showed up looking for a contract on his former students, the fee seemed generous for an easy job. Now it seemed like too little for so much time wasted.
Her one lead was the human hunter Harris. He had the stink of magic all over him. She could tell that he used at least one energy armor device even in town. She could also tell that he was always armed and that he at least had an intermediate stealth skill. What she didn’t understand was why her tracking skill kept failing on him, she could feel it take and then nothing. She couldn’t even remember who she was tracking. It didn’t feel right.
The most troubling though was that old brownie. Ror was waiting to tail the human hunter as he left the brownie’s workshop. She was in full stealth with all of her skills and equipment active, but the old brownie looked right at her, like he was making eye contact. His ubiquitous smile dropped and he slowly shook his head. The next moment he was completely back to his broad grin. It sent a chill running down her spine. If he could really see her, then she was in real trouble.
Ror was trailing the human hunter again as we wandered around the outpost. This job wasn’t what she hoped, but she had the contract and she would see it through. She just kept walking lost in her thoughts, not noticing that she wasn’t tailing anyone anymore.
***
As I wove through the needled forest floor, working to conceal any signs of my passing, I thought perhaps we were being a little paranoid. I believed the intelligence that Lierin had shared and that the instructors were up to no good, but I wasn’t really convinced that they were trying as hard as I thought they might. Plenty of people had been following me around the past couple of weeks, but they weren’t trying all that hard to conceal themselves and no one ever made a move. Galan and I both noticed one lupine beastkin that seemed to have taken an almost obsessive interest in me recently, an interest that she kept up even after Galan had tried to scare her off. With the modifications that I had made to my glasses and my perception field generator, she was easy to track even without her always trying that tracking skill on me. If she made her play outside of the city, I didn’t think that she’d get past the ducks, let alone me, Deldes and Delirin.