The People in the Cracks

[Alydia Ettermire]

This is unseasonably harsh weather, even for Salvar...

Having finished her business in aiding Izvilvin against Step, Alydia Ettermire had decided to push some of the things she had learned to the back of her mind and work on something far more important: finding her missing men. Out of all the people she could call on to help her pull off heists all over the world, there were four missing. Dex T. Rous from Scara Brae had gone missing nearly five months before, and her three Raiaerans, Sintta Ilya, Hyanda Lindir and Kelvar Maliaya, had vanished a month before that.

Actually, they hadn't so much vanished as decided to remain in Raiaera, despite all the danger that particular choice entailed. At least Kelvar had sent his wife and children to Corone before things got too bad; wife Vakha, daughter Alasse and son Uial had all fled to Corone almost two months before word of the Raiaeran team had dried up. They, at least, were safely housed with Paige Turner, another of Alydia's associates.

Normally she heard word from all her boys (even the girls) at least once a month. She knew how their families were doing, if they had families, and what they'd been up to. She knew that the man she had in the town up ahead, Ruka Inoga, had a young baby in the house she hadn't met yet, and that his wife and other son were doing well. She had sent notice to him that she'd be dropping by.

She wished she could skip Salvar altogether and go over the pass from Alerar directly into Raiaera, but the war-battered land of the fair Elves still kept a close watch on their darker skinned neighbors. Though it was the long way, the nation of Salvar was friendly with Alerar, and not openly hostile with Raiaera. It was the best way to go.

Alydia pulled her scarlet coat closer over her pointed ears. She had it buttoned closed in a rare move; she couldn't reach inside like that. But the sturdy cloth kept the worst of the frigid bite away from her body, and that was the important part.

The town came into view as she crested a low hill, and immediately she could tell something was wrong. She could see the glint of armor from where she was, and the soft snorts and neighs of horses told her ever more that someone, probably a stuffed shirt greedy nobleman, had come to pillage the town with his men. They would take anything of value from the people that were settled there, leave them with so little food that surviving Salvar's harshest winter in living memory would be almost impossible.

Aly's blue eyes narrowed sharply beneath the broad brim of her hat, and the gentle puffs of condensation that had marked her breath billowed out like smoke from a dragon's mouth. Whoever it was that had come here had chosen the exact wrong day to pick on one of her men and his family. She was in town, and it was her town.

She wasn't going to stand for it...even if it meant she had to literally squash a man like an insect.

There wasn't much Aly would kill for. There wasn't much WORTH killing for. But in defense of family... Nobody screwed with Aly's boys.

A ten minute jog brought the slender thief to the door of her old friend and helper, and she didn't have to see inside to hear the commotion within. Serce, Ruka's wife, was pleading with the armored grunt who had come to plunder her home.

"Please," she begged, the clear, warm voice that had made Aly feel at home a couple of times each year cracking with fear and strain. "We have a baby. We need -"

"You need to be good subjects to King Iorlan," scoffed the soldier, "and the King requires you to make certain sacrifices for your own safety." He swung the door open, arms full of Ruka's clothing and the food they had worked so hard to save for winter, stepping out into the cold...and found himself face to face with a dark-skinned Alerian. A very irate dark-skinned Alerian.

"Erm..." He looked her over. Though she was a full head shorter than him, Alydia Ettermire was nonetheless an imposing figure, with her frosty blue eye flashing from beneath her fedora, and her coat flaring out in the gusts of wind. "I'll need to see some identification, Miss..."

"Usstan," she hissed, drawing out the first syllable and then spitting out the second, "Usstan tlun S'argt Alydia Ettermire del L'Ettermire Fashka del Sreen'aur." It was her old title, Detective Alydia Ettermire of the Ettermire Police Force, but it sounded impressive, especially to an uneducated oaf whose job was to take stuff and kill whatever he was pointed at.

"You are in violation of King Rathaxea's law. Under the Codex of Salvaran Law, Book four, Chapter sixty-seven, Paragraph twelve and subsections nine through fourteen, it clearly states that no private force may invade any established settlement without a clear and present threat from outside its borders. It also states that for each day he is stationed there, a soldier may acquire no more than two meals from a family without fee. During each day the settlement is not actively being defended by force of arms, soldiers stationed there must work for the settlement in whatever way is deemed necessary. If you have not worked for this lady, you have no right to her possessions."

With that, Alydia reached out and took the things the soldier had taken from Serce, dumping them back in the relieved housewife's arms before turning back to the soldier. "I suggest," she resumed frigidly, "that you inform your comrades of the law before your lord gets in trouble for your behavior."

"I can do whatever I want here, lady," spat the soldier. "I declare you an enemy of King Iorlan Lord Rathaxea I, and you are under arrest."

He grabbed Aly's arm with an iron grip and started dragging her toward the square. The less than amused thief pulled the brim of her hat down over one eye, red lips curling down in a scowl. "Let's think this through," she began in a sinister purr. "Would you risk the alliance between Alerar and Salvar over abuse of an Alerian citizen?"

"You're on our land, and probably in the Sway's paybook," he muttered; clearly dogma to give him reason to go back to doing as he pleased. "An enemy of Salvar."

"All right. I'd hoped not to do this, but..." Alydia's hand slipped so that her fingertips brushed against the soldier's pants. In an instant, the thief was a mere wisp of darkness, out of his grip and standing in the shadows of another simple wooden house, not ten feet away.

The guard's jaw dropped, and he was about to yell something when all of a sudden everything from his waist down started tingling painfully from the bitter cold. He yowled, looking down to see himself exposed to both view and weather in all his shame, and all he could do for modesty's sake was to cover himself with his hands and run off.

"Can't do much of anything with no pants," muttered Aly, rubbing her sore wrist. She walked back to Ruka's house, letting her sensitive ears tell her the stories of other families suffering. She was greeted halfway on the dirt road by Ruka's six year old son, Gordy.

"Is there really such a law, Aunt Aly?" His bright blue eyes sparkled; Alydia always had a present for him. The Alerian smiled and bent down to ruffle the boy's hair.

"No, Gordy. Aunt Aly made it up! Just don't tell anyone. It ought to be a law. Come on."

She got him back into the little house that was warmed by a small fire, and was immediately wrapped in a tight embrace.

"Ruka...good to see you again." She grinned, and was released to smooth out her hat.

"You showed up in the nick of time...don't know what we would have done without you." Ruka had a rugged face, his light brown hair flowed down and wrapped his chin in a grizzled beard, and his brown eyes spoke much of hard work, constant vigilance, and a warm home.

"It was all I could do not to drop a boulder on him." Aly looked over the little house. There was a door at one wall, where a tiny, separate room existed for Ruka and his wife, but the cradle and Gordy's bed were in the den where they could be warmed by the cooking fire. It was a tiny, crude house, but Aly had fond memories from each visit she had ever made. "Gordy, I do have a present for you, and one for your brother...but I'll give them to you when the men are gone. We want you to keep them."

She went over to the cradle and leaned down to inspect Ruka's new arrival, who looked back up at her with his mother's soft blue eyes. "Four weeks old and just too precious." She smiled, and then straightened up, her face growing more serious.

"Expect to hear from me soon," she told her man. "Until then...stay here and protect your family. I'm not going to stand for what's happened here."

With that, she stepped out of the warm hut and into the bitterly cold world. The bottom of her coat flared out in the same wind that tossed her black hair, and the ice on the river wasn't nearly as cold as the expression on her face.

She was Alydia Ettermire.

And she was on the war path.

[Taskmienster]

The problem with the hacker was one that was, in the long run, something that was more of a personal issue that would probably never be resolved. Head strong, stubborn and a short temper at times made him a volatile person apt to blow. The fuse was lit with the rude attitude that had been so forcefully pushed at him; it was a mere few steps before another issue arose. His hands were twitchy; his head shifting side to side as if a thread was going to appear out of the thin air around him. Adrenaline was a powerful ally in the heat of battle, a blast of strength that was self-fueled by the unreal coding that controlled the world of Althanas. Outside of battle, it was a hassle that was one that he had to put aside.

“You there, halt,” the words made the adrenaline spike and fall. It was a feeling that sent a shiver through the hacker’s body. His hair stood on end and the feeling of the daggers up either sleeve was the only comfort present. The shrill winds of the yet lingering long winter swirled past him, dancing without a care through the landscape. The ever present assassin, the bone biting cold; Lars took a deep inhale through his nose and let the sharp scent overtake him as he closed his eyes. “In the name of King Iorlan, I command you to stop.”

“What is it? What the hell do you want now? Haven’t you guy’s caused enough trouble?” Ethan turned around and shook his head, keeping his eyes lowered towards the steel plated boots of the man that had stopped him. Though his words said one thing, his actions spoke loudly in another way. The guard clattered his way towards the hacker and placed a gauntleted hand on Ethan’s shoulder. With a soft squeeze, almost reassuring in its kindness, the oddly dressed man picked up his head.

“Do not fret,” the warm tone of the man made Ethan tilt his head and smirk at the man. The guard smiled, his toothy grin flashing off-white from within the shadowed confines of the helmet. He was hiding behind his soldier’s façade, but the expression was unique. “We are here in the name of the King, here to defend the helpless and root out the ever growing disgusting grip of the Ethereal Sway.”

“And what’s it got to do with me?”

Ethan’s expression made the guard chuckle as he wrapped his arm around his shoulder and clutched him tightly. His voice lowered and his smile faded. “The war itself,” he continued as if breathing on the edge of the hacker’s ears. His hand slowly stroked the back of his short, cleanly cut hair along the back of his head. The fingers slowly moved up to touch the edges of the artificially spiked black and white streaked hair Ethan loved. “The war has nothing to do with you, unless you’re an agent of the Sway. I doubt that though, you don’t look the part. You look like you’re not from these parts… neither are we. Salvar, of course we are from… but it’s been a long march if you know what I mean.”

Ethan shrugged out of the man’s grasp and barely held back the cringe that was budding on his lips. He didn’t want to offend; he also did not want to bluntly avoid what he saw as advances and be labeled an enemy of the invading force. The situation was delicate, and he slowly let a little smile show. “You hide more than just your face behind that suit don’t you? I really must be off though, not sure if you’re fellow soldiers have ransacked my friends house yet… can’t have that happen yet.”

The man sighed and grunted. His broad shoulders shrugged and he watched Ethan turn away. The hacker wasn’t sure if he was watching him walk away. It was flattering, Lars didn’t want to not admit that, but it was a situation that was beyond uncomfortable as well. When he turned the corner he finally allowed himself to turn around and look behind him. The man was not following, so he picked up his pace and trudged through the thin layer of frost that coated the floor. The light crunch of every step calmed him; at least until the noise of his steps was not the only noise he heard.

Behind him the man had followed him, giving him just enough time to get a small distance between them. It wasn’t a surprise; lust was a hard thing to overcome. Ethan turned back around, slowed his stride to a nonchalant walk, and turned a corner. The town was unknown to him; any house could be a safe place or a dead end. Without waiting for a gut feeling to tell him which way to go, he quickly moved towards an opening door.

A dark skinned woman, bedecked in a crimson hat and coat was the furthest thing from what the hacker was expecting. The harsh winds swirled her hair off the nape of her neck, and away from the piercing blue eyes. The edge of her long coat danced with the soft snow that swirled at her feet. There was no way she was supposed to be in the Salvar city, unless she was some strange emissary of the Aleraran nation to the south. Ethan doubted it, even more than he doubted that the soldier was not still lurking somewhere behind him.

“Hey Carmen,” he muttered loud enough for her elven ears to undeniably hear him. His legs moved faster and he nodded to the man who watched the woman walk from the humble home. The eyes of the native were cautious but not confrontational. “Carmen slow up, I need to talk to you.”

Lars caught up with the woman and pushed an arm forcefully under hers. It was uncomfortable, and sudden. He let his green eyes meet her cold blue ones and gave an apologetic smile in place of words. The adrenaline rush that had all but subsided was suddenly giving him a light head and rubbery arms, it was all he could do to continue holding on. There was a chill behind those bright eyes that was more unnerving than the chill of the southern tundra.

“Forgive me, I’m being followed. Play along? It’ll be fun…” Ethan laughed as he turned his head towards her closest ear. Out of the edge of his vision he could see the soldier stopped, watching.

[Alydia Ettermire]

She was going to find the nearest bluff, vanish behind it, and then prowl the town unseen, find out everything there was to know about the invading forces, and then she was going to rend the forces apart, take what they valued, humiliate them, frighten them, and harry them. She needed to get on to Raiaera, each day she lingered put her people there at greater risk - presuming they survived.

But she also couldn't leave Ruka and his family at the mercy of these charlatans. These days, she seemed to be spending more time keeping her people out of trouble or saving their hides than she did looking for interesting things to steal and interesting people to draw into a chase. She hoped that would come to a stop soon, that things would quiet down and she could return to grand theft...but as long as her boys needed her, she would be there with coat flaring and every trick she had at her disposal ready to defend them.

Her prowl was interrupted abruptly by a man grabbing her arm and asking her, in short, to help him shake a tail. One of the invading force was pursuing him at a respectful distance. If he couldn't shake him at this rate, what hope was there for this strange kid?

Still, she couldn't work with this bumbling outsider - for this man could not have been Salvaran, in his impractical attire - and the soldier he had led right to her. And it was only a matter of minutes before the one whose pants she'd stolen came back to exact his revenge.

The click of a heavy boot not far behind her told her that Ruka was watching from his door, ready to defend her if she felt threatened by the lanky youth who had stopped her, and her left hand spread flat at her side, reassuring him that she could take care of herself. His door swung closed, and inwardly she breathed a sigh of relief. The lower he kept now, the greater the odds of his family coming out of this misfortune without too much damage.

Aly didn't know how far she could trust this man with a lip ring, but if it turned out she couldn't trust him far...she had been pinned beneath a serial killer bent on her destruction before and had still managed to evade him. Numerous times.

The thief etched a smirk on her red lips, echoing the easy, if nervous, grin on the young man's face, but her visible eye never lost its frosty glare. "Come then, Qlovanth. If we must talk, we must also walk and not clog this narrow street."

He had her arm, and she grabbed onto his wrist, almost pulling him down the street with her. Her boots resounded firmly on the frozen ground, and her eyes scanned for the exact turn she wanted. Though she didn't have a native's intimate knowledge of the townspeople, Alydia had enough familiarity with the layout to know exactly how she was going to shake this tail.

They hadn't gone far down the street when she whipped them around a corner abruptly, going between two low houses. There wasn't any way out; the walls of the houses were solid, and between them was an ancient stone wall that rose almost ten feet straight up. It was the only part that remained of a wall that had protected a much bigger city once, but that city was long gone, destroyed in some skirmish or other. It was gone and forgotten.

Before the boy could so much as stutter a "but Carmen!" or some other inanity, Aly led him up to the wall, put her hand on it, and took a small part of it, just enough for them to get through. She didn't wait for him to gape, just shoved him through, followed him, and replaced the part of the wall she'd taken so that it was like it never happened.

On the new side of the wall was a stable where almost a dozen well-bred, hardy horses milled about their stalls. Each of them looked up at the intruders, but they knew Aly's scent and step, and turned back to their oats and hay with little more than an accepting snort.

Dropping his hand, the thief led the young man with stark black and white hair up into the loft and situated them snugly behind some bales of hay. They'd have plenty of warning if anyone else tried to join them.

For a minute, she just looked at him, regarding him. Obviously she reminded him of someone called "Carmen," but she couldn't find much to place him. His lanky build could be Coronian, but his accent was too different from either nation that claimed Tradespeak as its principal language. The Coronians also weren't typically into so much modification as this man, that was more common in Fallien, and the hair was more of a Dheath influence. But the accent...she knew most Althanian accents, and this didn't match any of them.

So what was he? She'd heard tales of "otherworlders," but she'd dismissed the rumors as hearsay out of hand. But was it possible? Was she in the presence of one?

No sense to let him speak first and thus gain the upper hand; she'd stared him down long enough. Time to find out what his deal was.

"Who are you, and what is your purpose here?"

[Taskmienster]

She played along almost more quickly than the hacker had suspected she would. Surprisingly she did not pull away, ask questions aloud, or turn to him in any manner suggesting surprise. If there was one thing that Ethan had learned quickly about the denizens of Althanas, it was that each one had its own personality quirks and the improbable was never quite out of reach. He shifted to a more comfortable position as they continued walking, her words finally being spoken in a determined tone that matched her icy blue eyes. “Sounds fine to me,” he said as he let his grin broaden and the slightest glimmer of teeth show. “So long as we can get away from this guy, I’m cool with whatever you’ve got planned.”

Mentally he sighed, bothered by the way he had phrased his response. Ethan was no slouch when it came to battling, having taken many days to himself within the Citadel and taken the position of the Warrior rank in the Pagoda. In the frozen lands of Salvar, threatened with invading forces of the state, it was no place to start a battle though. Instead of being able to dwell on what he had said, however minor the phrasing was, the woman grabbed his wrist and pulled him suddenly.

Lars felt helpless while she pulled him along. The woman had a strength that the hacker had not expected. He could feel his wrist throbbing slightly while her thin, dark fingers held tight. They were warm and made his skin tingle, despite the chill that enwrapped his entire body. His head turned to her side, trying to see if the boots that he heard in the background still belonged to his lustful tail, but his head was pulled away from his attempted covert glance. A whirlwind of movement filled with turns that Ethan’s flat converse could barely keep up with, and he had turned enough corners to lose himself much less someone following him. However, the place that the woman had brought them was a dead end.

“Perhaps I was wrong to pick the only person in this entire village that looked as odd as I do. I should have picked a cute girl, or gone with Kylie to avoid getting turned around and lost between two old houses and an impossibly ancient wall.”

Surprisingly, the woman was not without a plan. In a poker setting the hacker would have called their three sided cage drawing dead, but his escort through the buzzing town had her own outs. She put her hand on the wall and did something that Ethan could not have ever thought to try, despite the ability to rewrite the world around him. The rough shove put him nearly on all fours, barely able to catch his balance before she closed the gap in the wall and lead them up a small ladder.

The hacker was never one for hay, the sharp ends pricking him as he nestled into them and let the warmth they offered fight the chill of Salvar. The woman sat across from him, staring at him as if he was going to turn into some monster suddenly. His interest was not in his savior though, despite how thankful he was for her unique skills. Instead his hiding place was where his thought lied. It was a farm scent that filled the air, dusty horses and their intolerable feces made his nose turn up and his face cringed.

“Not one for subtle small talk, are you?” Ethan chuckled as he wiggled into the hay and crossed his legs to be more comfortable. He looked at the bright red lips of his counterpart and grinned. “No worries love, I’m just kiddin’ around. My names Ethan, though I’m also known as Lars to others. Qlovnath or whatever you called me is as good a name as another though, and has quite a nice ring to it. As for why I’m here… you can call it an accident, though it’s turned into quite an adventure. How about yourself? Your name isn’t Carmen I assume, and I can’t imagine what someone with such a loud set of clothing would be doing in such a monotone world like Salvar…”

[Alydia Ettermire]

Lars' explanation of how he happened upon the town was both refreshingly brief and annoyingly vague, but Alydia's years of experience as a detective told her that whatever his real motives, he wasn't lying. Carefully honed intuition told her that he meant no harm to the town and had no connection with the invaders. Granted, a large part of that feeling was that the young man was so out of place in the town...but she was sure she'd be able to pick up insincerity on his part.

The scarlet thief let her lips curve back into a smirk. "I'm afraid small talk isn't really on the agenda today, Lars," she told him in the sultry purr she used in all but the most serious of occasions.

She stood up abruptly, dusting away the clinging bits of straw from the back of her coat, flicking them out of her long, thick tresses, and then brushing off her shoulders to ensure she was clean. With a gesture, she motioned Ethan forward, deeper into the loft.

"My name is Alydia Ettermire; I don't know anyone named 'Carmen.' And Qlovanth refers to that thing in your lip." Introductions were done, and she could hear light scraping and knocking against the stone wall; apparently the man who had been after Lars hadn't quite given up yet. The horses hadn't startled yet; that meant that no one else had invaded the stable yet, but it was only a matter of time, really. Horses were valuable, and if the troops were allowed to take their spoils from the defenseless little village, the sturdy animals would not be left behind.

"While you may have arrived here by accident, I am here by design. I have come a long way and have farther still to go...with some very treacherous terrain ahead. I have some friends in this town, and I hoped to get a good night's rest in before continuing on. Instead I found this, and though the business I'm on is urgent, I'm not going to leave my friends in this sort of trouble."

By the end of her explanation, which matched his in brevity but managed to be precise, they had reached the end of the loft, where some old bales of straw laid as buffers against the cold. Alydia pulled these aside, revealing a rather plain-looking roof - just some wooden planks laid over wooden beams and held together by caulk. However it seemed, she gestured Ethan into the low, cramped space the bales had hidden, pulled them back again without a word, and then pushed up a pair of planks that formed a small door that she pulled herself through. Instinctively she pulled her fedora a little lower, not for the mystique of the thing for once, but for the protection it provided against the harsh glare of the sunlight. It was the price she paid to see in the dark; her eyes were terribly sensitive to sudden light change.

Instinctively, before she even rose to her feet, she looked around the rooftops rising like sharp, steep little hills that made up the town's skyline, and at the town itself, at its serpentine roads and the houses, but most importantly at the people. No one around was paying any mind to her, so she stood and turned to look at Ethan.

"My first agenda is to learn everything I can about this private army. Best place to do it is from the rooftops. No one ever looks up. Come along; we can't keep the door open all day and freeze the horses."

While waiting for her unlikely cohort to get himself onto the roof, Aly scanned the horizon and the landscape surrounding the little town. She wanted to know if there were other soldiers on the way or encamped beyond the fringes.

She didn't see any more Loyalist troops. What she did see made her clench her gloved hands into fists. Horses and men were bearing down on the town; they would arrive in no more than an hour or so. Though they were so tiny as to only be specks to the naked human eye, Alydia could see the banners five men proudly displayed - one at each of the corners of the mass, and one at the front.

"The Sway is coming," she let out through her teeth. "Everything just got a lot worse."

The encounter between the Loyalists and the Sway over this tiny and seemingly insignificant town was likely to turn very violent and very bloody, prospects that Aly detested for the senseless loss of life. And Ruka, his wife and their two young children, along with the community they had been part of for generations, would be caught in the middle of it.

I need a plan. And I need one fast.

[Taskmienster]

Lars listened carefully to the words of the drow without actually focusing at all. His eyes were roving and moving, trying to get a better picture of where he was compared to where he had come from. The entire town was something new to the hacker though. He could think and search through high windows all he wanted, but in the end all the turns he had taken with Alydia as well as his own wanderings had left him directionless. The incessant tapping on the wall behind the two continued to bother Ethan, but was slowly dying away. A driven soldier was peskier than the most persistent do-gooder in the Citadel.

“Rooftops?”

The wind was sharp, though not nearly as strong when the houses and curved streets were present to block and redirect it. On the roof of what Ethan assumed was one of the taller, if not tallest, building in the town, the breeze would be bone piercing. The woman’s words made sense though, since the horses would undoubtedly become sick if the doors to their warm abode were left wide open to the cold. It would also offer an interest to any soldiers looking for either horses, or people that may have escaped them in the beginning of their miniscule invasion. Lars shook his head and spun his lip ring back and forth on the top of his lip with his tongue.

The rooftop of the stables was not as bad as the hacker had previously assumed. He gripped the edges of his faux-leather jacket and pulled them as close together as the fashionable coat allowed. It was never meant to close fully, and the thin layer was not meant for such chill weather protection either. Instead of looking into the distance with the woman, scanning the depths of the frosted and slowly thawing land, Lars looked at the town itself.

There was nothing special about the small world beneath him. The colors of the Count were slowly working their way through the town, from house to house and stopping anyone still out in the open. Other soldiers were milling about, resting against building walls, and chatting in small groups with one another. None of them had weapons drawn, apparently attempting to use their armor and posture to push their agenda. The small town was not full of soldiers, but it certainly had enough to cause all but a very few denizens back inside their homes.

“Say what?” Ethan turned his attention away from the lackluster down and to the distance where he could see nothing more than a small black blur. Silently he cursed, his anger coming from long since having lost the sight that could rival an elf’s. He mentally noted that he would have to reprogram a code for his character and add the ability to see at great distances to his already numerous hacked codes. “The Sway? What the fuck is going on? Is there something here that’s of use to either side, or did they just coincidentally decided to shit on our parade?”

Ethan knew the answer, because it was the way of Althanas. Whether or not he was placed in this place by his wireless VR headset, or if he had somehow found his way there by way of the wired VRpod, it wouldn’t have mattered in the end. The gaming server always seemed to make an adventure or a battle out of every log in, the walls of peace that were falling around him was nothing more. “Should we warn the people? Maybe the military so they can fight out there and not here? I don’t want to have to deal with saving civilians because two parties of idiots wanna fight over some useless patch of land.”

[Alydia Ettermire]

"The horses bred in these stables are some of Salvar's finest draft horses, but I can't think of any good reason for either side invading, much less both on the same day, save to try and consolidate territory."

Aly's mind was spinning, trying to devise a way to deal with the combined threats of the Sway and the soldiers. While she may have had a chance, however small, of being able to rout a forty-man unit, even with the entire force of the town behind her Aly wouldn't have had a chance at driving out ninety men. There were barely two hundred townsfolk, and of those only about seventy men. Of the men, maybe fifty were fit for any sort of combat, and most of the women with any sort of belligerent inclination had children to think of.

It was something Lars said that gave her both a sudden realization and hope that Ruka's town would be free and independent again come dusk. The two invading forces will need one to establish dominance over the other first. These ambitious humans will kill each other off. The Sway will probably prevail...but not by much. Not by enough to hold this town.

"We should warn the people, the Council in particular. This way, Qlovanth." Without wasting another breath, Alydia turned them around and started racing nimbly over the town's steep rooftops, rushing from the outskirts toward the center, red coat billowing out behind her.

When they were finally standing on the building she wanted, Alydia paused for a moment to catch her breath and make sure she hadn't been seen and followed. Sure she was in the clear, she nudged the ring of the trap door. "I love this town," she told Lars. "They built me Aly-doors in all the best places."

Without further ceremony, the thief lifted the trapdoor and dropped softly into the rafters of the Council Hall. Mercifully, the only people in there were the members of the town council. They sat around the room's only table, grim expressions on their faces.

"We can't just give away our freedom," wheezed an old man. Aly knew the elder; he'd been a tailor of repute until tremors had made him retire at the age of ninety four. Less than two decades younger than she, he had lived long enough to bury his wife and all of his children, as well as a couple of grandchildren. Ruka's wife was his great granddaughter, and her two children were less than half of the great-great grandchildren he'd seen born so far.

Though age and palsy had bent him, he had a fighting spirit that made him the most animated member of the council. "We have proudly had our independence for eighty years, since this town was founded. And I won't stand for a gang of riff-raff coming in and taking it. Neither would your grandfathers."

The mayor shook his head, despair weighing his motions down. "We couldn't even muster a force to match them. If we fought them, we'd lose two generations of men; the town would never recover."

The trapdoor picked that moment to slam shut, and the five most influential men in town jumped, looking up. When they saw Aly sitting in the rafters with one foot dangling down, they relaxed. Though she wasn't in town often or long, Alydia Ettermire was part of the community, so much that they'd made her an honorary citizen.

Since she'd been seen, she jumped down, landing on the solid table beneath her. "These men are not your biggest problem, gentlemen. They are going to take care of it, and it will likely annihilate them." Aly reached up and yanked the brim of her hat down, securing it over one eye.

"Less than an hour's march away is a force of the Ethereal Sway. It numbers maybe forty-five or fifty. The Sway will not stand for Loyalist occupation, nor will the Loyalists stand for Sway usurpation. They will annihilate each other in the streets of the town."

Chaos erupted in the room, with everyone yelling at once. It took almost five minutes for order to be restored, and when everyone had quieted down, the mayor turned to the scarlet messenger who sat across from him. "Why in the town, Aly? Why not outside the town, in the fields?"

"Neither side will want to wage open battle with the small numbers they have; the odds of individual survival in that situation are minimal," she explained in a tone of voice that held both disgust and experience. "They'll want to use buildings to hide in and behind for the element of surprise, they'll want to build barricades and wage a war of attrition, leeching off the townsfolk in the meanwhile."

The miller edged forward in his seat, brushing his dusty brown hair off of his forehead and away from his eyes. "Then what are we to do?"

Aly smiled, and it was a smile that would make most men uneasy, for it meant both mischief and misery.

"We make things complicated for them."

[Taskmienster]

Lars dashed after the woman in red, following her at a safe distance. One blur over the alleyways and side-streets was something that could be passed off as an animal, two instantly and the shapes would be noticed. The hacker did not want, in any way, to be seen even if it was just someone noticing a rather indistinct shadow on the ground ahead of them. His legs pulsed slightly with the physical exertion, Alydia was quick and nimble. Her background had to be something akin to thief, or possibly a terribly disguised assassin. The man couldn’t pick which one it was, but either way he let his enhanced strength push the muscles in his legs so that the jumps were effortless.

When she came to a halt, it took a second for Ethan to follow suit. He was having so much fun letting his legs carry him across the tops of the town, the wind tore across his semi-exposed chest while his jacket flapped at his side. His lightly clothed feet slammed into the solid, brick surface of the final building and he stumbled in order to keep his momentum from forcing him to collide with the woman. She looked at a small, off colored hatch and pulled it open, revealing the common room.

The hacker followed the woman, stepping down through the trapdoor. His soft-soled shoes touched wooden braces, tested their strength, and he finished pulling his head through the opening. After closing the passage behind him he let his eyes pierce through the wooden spider-web that held the roof. It was less than tactful in its closure, forcing all the eyes of the withered men to the ceiling. Lars gave a half-hearted smirk to the men who looked up, unsure of what to say. Luckily, the dark elf woman had words prepared in his place.

After listening to the two talk back and forth he dropped from the planks and landed gracefully upright, a proper wordless introduction. There was little to nothing he could add to the conversation, knowing that the woman’s sight was far superior to his own. The men on the horizon, mere specs of shifting dust when he looked, would undoubtedly follow the same tactics that she had said. The loyalists of the cast out king would defend the town, but there was too much area to defend despite the place being little more than a village. They would have to pick their battles wisely, chose which points to defend and where to attack.

“What’s the plan, Stan?” Ethan stepped forward and bowed slightly, not sure why he did but it felt like a situation where he should. The men that were chattering before their arrival were elders for the town, the high council, something akin to a local supreme court. If they addressed him, he would have probably stuttered to find the correct way of responding. Where they ‘your honors’, or perhaps ‘your grace’? Neither seemed to fit. “I think there’s some plannin’ to be done. Carmen here seems to have something brewing… I’d like to figure out what before those pricks get here and start spouting their nonsense riddles about gods and spirits and how high and mighty they are.”

[Alydia Ettermire]

All eyes turned back to the woman who sat at what had effectively become the head of the little round table. Her head was tilted down a little bit so that the brim of her hat, rather than rakishly obscure one eye, hid her entire face from view. In all the excitement, the plan she had left to simmer was only half-formed, and now the gears of her mind were churning to bring the details into focus.

The expectant silence grew heavy on the men who were sitting and waiting for the action she proposed; if Ruka was to be believed, Alydia Ettermire was never without a plan and never without a backup. Watching her sit and reflect on the situation at hand was discomfiting at best. But they had been stymied by the thought of simply the invading platoon, the Inquisition on top of that was just too much.

Behind her fedora, Alydia was completely isolated from the stares of the six men in the room. The black shield between her eyes and their faces gave her the privacy she needed to refine plan after plan, watch it play out in her mind, then discard or accept it for its value.

Finally she stood up, drawing a pad of paper and pen from within the folds of her coat and beginning to sketch furiously.

"For now, we bide our time. Very shortly now, the Loyalists will see the banner of the Sway approaching from the north. They will rush to prepare, and they will very likely appropriate materials to form a barricade. I wouldn't be surprised if they set it up between buildings to make their job that much easier. Doubtless a few will be dispatched to make sure none of the Sway are coming around to flank. Let them build their barricade, let the opposing forces fight each other to death. After that is done, then the numbers we will be looking at will be a lot more manageable than what we're dealing with right now."

Aly set the pad on the desk. Rather than a diagram of what she had just described, a line ran through the very center of town.

"I doubt all the fighting will remain at the barricade, however. Some will probably spill over into the town, and when it does, if there is still a significant enemy force, we will send the horses stampeding through the fight." She gave a nod to the breeder, Kylie's father, who was on the council.

"That will distract and disorient them, and then we'll be able to move in and capture them. Don't let them take your food or let the fighting spill into your homes."

"And if they do?" The mayor leaned forward, wanting to hear the Alerian's answer.

"If they do...then kill them. I'm opposed to needless violence, and even more to needless slaughter...but these men chose their path a long time ago, knowing that they will ultimately find either victory or death. Defend your homes if you need to, gentlemen...and tell the others the same. Just...make the two invading forces work harder to defend your homes for you."

She looked around the old oak table, into each face, from the jowls and liver spots of the old tailor to the kind but firm lines in the horse master's face, from the iron gray hair of the mayor to the lip ring on her young tagalong.

"Does anyone else have anything to add?"