The People in the Cracks

[Lighthawk76]

Sleep came in fitful bursts to Matthew. The sounds of breathing from the others around him were a welcome sound he would gladly dream to, but the cold which his blankets seemed to fight vainly against and the howl of wind coming at just the wrongs times were unknown things to the warm blooded farm boy far from home. He lied in the massive bed with the boys of the Kettle family, all four of them soundly sleeping through the cold weather.

With being this far south, it was strange even in Salvar to be as cold as it was. The lower areas were normally farmlands and the main source of food for the country. Winter was coming earlier this year and apparently with more fury. The older folk of the village, full of stories of years past, were making daily comments about the strangeness of this winter and the bad omens it was promising.

The winter wasn’t the first bad omen though. From the merchants who had come through, fewer by far than most years, there were of rebellion and war in the capital, traveling armies putting villages to the torch for insubordination, and priest who were condemning whole towns to the pits of hell. There were even rumors of the Sway releasing dread beasts upon the lands to destroy their enemies. Each story was more and wilder than the last and talk was even being made of armies of dead holy men appearing all over the world. “Surely, these are the end-times,” was heard throughout the village.

In all this turmoil, Matthew had chosen to come and explore the supposedly pious nation of Salvar. His travels as a page of the Suffering Servant beckoned him wherever the light of the Servant must be shined. Many who he had spoken to of his faith and his church, said that they sounded much like those of the Salvarans, with their strict church hierarchy and veneration of long-ago heroes. He had been leery of the so called similarities, but had decided to come and see what the faith truly was. Perhaps he would be the first to bring the light of the Servant to these people.

He had not gone far before he had come to the small village he was now living in. It was a relatively independent village, on the outskirts of one of the large southern fiefdoms. A greedy noble had allowed his lands to grow too wide with not enough vassals. Thus the fiefs were large, with much of it uncared for. Officials came to the village infrequently to collect what meager taxes the people could scrounge up. The church had little influence, with an outdoor small altar which saw few visitors during the day. Little distinguished it from the bland altars of Corone and Scara Brae used for the lesser known and worshipped gods. The closest priest and church was a day’s walk to the lord’s manor of the fiefdom. Still, even here, where the faces of the church were absent, much of the same taboos were still observed.

The village had welcomed Matthew kindly. Once learning that he knew how to help on a farm, they grew exceedingly friendly and made him feel as if he was part of their village family. He had denied all forms of payment, believing food and lodgings to be enough. While they were constantly curious about his life at home, his travels, and even a bit about his weapons training, whenever they uncovered some path of his life which opened upon his faith, they grew quiet and uncomfortable. Whatever this faith of Salvar was, it held a firm grasp on the people. The only ones who would truly hear of his faith were the older folk, who nodded sagely but made no real efforts to learn. They simply fulfilled their curiosity. Some of the younger folk were highly interested, having never heard such a tale as that of the Servant. Their superstitious mothers and father would quickly pull Matthew aside though and warn him of the Sway’s intolerance of other beliefs, and ask that he not risk their children with such stories. He had given in to their request, but four of the boys his own age continued hounding him, and the parents, frustrated with their inability to keep them away from such dangerous knowledge, gave in.

Matthew didn’t hold formal lessons with the boys, but they would talk during their daily chores. One, John, was exceptionally bright and had picked up on the highly intellectual theology of the faith within a week. He was know scholastic, but had the budding mind of one. The other three, Luke, Mark, and Mathias, were much more interested in the stories of the Servant and the world he came from. Mark wanted to know all about the man, Mathias all about his culture, and Luke all about the growth of the church. Matthew was an unskilled teacher but he tried his best.

Among the chores of the village and keeping up with boys’ questions, Matthew always made sure to spend some time on his own. He spent his evenings after dinner in prayer and weapons practice. While he spoke of his weapons training when anyone in the village asked, he vehemently refused to teach the boys anything when they inevitably asked. The boys needed to learn how to farm, not go off on adventures. In fact, if not for the fact that he was an unneeded, though much loved, extra mouth to feed back home, he would still be working on his own farm. He only traveled out of a sense of duty.

So while he was plenty comfortable and happy throughout the day, his nights were times he wished he could skip over. He was surprised his constant tossing and turning didn’t wake the boys. Before he knew it, day was breaking. He got up, not refreshed but ready for the day. The boys were still snoring as he got up and dressed. Their mother would be in soon to rudely awaken them and get them moving.

The young man walked some distance out of the village with his Book of the Servant. The morning was cloudy but Matthew felt confident the sun would come through by the end of the day. Finding his small patch of earth he prayed upon daily, he recited his meditations and read a passage from the book.

As he finished he stood up and was buffeted by a single gust of strong, icy wind. He was cold for a moment, and his eyes were drawn to the west. The clouds were blowing in from that direction, and they seemed to be darker, though held no promise of rain. Cold feelings came over him, and his confidence in the sun waned. He lifted up a prayer as he went back to start his work.

[Taskmienster]

Collin tapped endlessly on the screen in front of him. The new system seemed to have more bugs in it than it did anything else, leaving him with more work than fun. He pushed the headpiece down further and leaned back in his leather seat. “Are you finding everything to your satisfaction?” The words echoed through his thoughts, but the source of the voice was unseen. The programmer removed the headpiece and the blinding white light of the screen he trapped in for hours left his vision foggy. Spots dominated his sight, and he blink to try and remove them. “Is there something wrong?”

“Too much,” he responded as he placed the headset on the ground to his side. His hand played with his messy hair and rubbed his face as if he was exhausted. The office was quiet as it had been lately. Nobody wanted to make too much noise around Collin since he was testing the new technology, nobody wanted to break his focus. It didn’t help much, since the smaller version of the virtual reality program was fraught with problems that still needed to be fixed before it could be trusted. Collin turned his weary face to the President of GramVR. “I’m not sure what to do with half the stuff that’s commin’ up wrong. I can program easily enough, but this shit seems to be mistakes made by the original programmer and the way it was set up. I might just have to go ahead and wipe the way it was programmed and rewrite the entire nonsense…”

GramVR, a virtual reality programming company known for their educational games was using Collin in order to branch out into different realms of gaming. Educational tours of countries, allowing the user of the VR program to not only visit virtual representations of the country but interact with actual people of that culture, was losing interest and in turn making profits slip. It had come time for them to engage in the gaming community and bring to bear a world that no gamer could pass on. Unfortunately for them, the greatest programmer they had on staff was also the only one that had any chance of creating the fantasy world. Collin was alone in his genius, but that was not the issue at hand. They wanted too much, too fast, and he was unable to pull any of it using the new smaller version of the Virtual Reality Pod system.

“Hmm,” George Heartcliff III, the vice president of the company huffed. His arms were folded into his Armani suit, a relic of the past. His wrinkled, aged face was in its perpetual frowning state. Collin stood up and shook his hand, giving a sideways glance at the headset on the ground. The office’s stilled silence was shaken off with a quick glance by Mr. Heartcliff, and was soon abuzz with activity once again. “Do you think you could rewrite the programming soon? We are hoping that we will be able to get these into production as soon as possible. We were also wondering as to how the game itself was doing? Have you made any progress with Althanas?”

“Not yet, I am doing well not to get caught, but until I follow their rules regarding the level system I’m not going to be able to do much. Once I get a few more levels under my belt I’ll be able to worry less about being caught because I’ll have more power on my side.” Collin shrugged and plopped into the leather seat and put his head in his hands. “If you don’t mind I’d like to take the headset on a quick run in Althanas, see if I can work it as well as I can the pods, see if there’s anything to be had.”

“No no, be my guest, I will check on you later.”

~*~

The white entry screen of loading the server dissipated eerily. It was unnerving to the player behind the virtual reality game. Dark colors streaked the white, lines that widened and narrowed before going fuzzy and fading into a complete blackness…

Lars opened his eyes, shaking his head and looking around. Something was in the air that caught his immediate attention. It was like standing in a freezer in the back of some fast food restaurant, stale cold filled the dry air. The small room he was in was composed of worn wood and some sort of slick, apparently never drying black substance lining the cracks. It was assuredly a room of a small in, complete with uncomfortable bed in one corner and a small mirror with a bowl of water in front of it. The hacker stood up and checked his gear, all the daggers were still up either sleeve were they were supposed to be. He looked out the window and saw a rather depressing sea of fog that stretched as far as the clear skies and soft morning light allowed his vision. What he could piece together, looking through frosted glass not yet thawed by the sunlight, was that the land was cold as cold could be and the forceful winds were pushing lightly against the glass…

Wherever the glitch in the headset had brought him he knew one thing for sure, it was not the civil war torn island of Corone, or the broken lands of the high elven people. He was in a quiet and cold land, a land he did not know nor could he place a possible name to. There was nothing to be had but a careful exploration of the lands and an attempt to piece together information enough to take advantage of the glitch or fix it later. “Where the hell am I?” he questioned no one in particular, as he pushed aside the door and stepped into an empty hallway.

[Lighthawk76]

The day’s work began as soon as Matthew returned from his prayers. The only time he had before going out to the barn to care for the animals was for a quick bite of bread, egg, and cheese. Entering the barn, he joined a young girl, Kylie, in tending the horses. She was the daughter of the horse master, and an impassioned girl who had decided that Matthew was to be the next stallion she broke. It gave Matthew no end of grief, especially with her father.

“Good morning, oh holy one,” she spoke in greeting. Her smile carried both sarcasm and mischief, and the tilt she gave to her body carried something completely different.

“Good morning, Kylie,” responded Matthew, going about his work and trying to keep the girl to his back. Kylie was a healthy girl, with a body kept strong by hard work and thick by hearty meals, curvy at the best of places. She was blond, blue-eyed, and had a temperament which should have belonged to a red-head. And every time those thoughts passed through Matthew’s head, he had to recite his future oaths and dwell hard on his path in life.

He was a young man, and Kylie was definitely what a young man wanted. The knight in him knew he couldn’t. His order was cause of more than enough bastards in his homeland, and he didn’t need to leave any here.

“So, who’ll you be riding this morning,” asked the girl.

“Thunder here, but I won’t be riding him. We need to bring that wagon out to the field to help with carrying in the crops. Hopefully we’ll need someone big and strong.”

“I know I do.”

Matthew let the comment pass as he quickly quelled his bemused smile.

“Maybe I’ll see you later.”

“Oh you will. Maybe you can help me bale some hay later.”

Matthew got out with Thunder in tow before he began showing. He crossed with the large horse over to the Kettle’s house. John was already preparing the wagon and Thomas Kettle, his father, was coming around the corner with the hands he was using for the day.

Matthew slowed a little as he saw the family wasn’t going to be quite ready yet. Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed a strange face looking out from the small inn. He had lodged there for a night until the Kettle’s decided to house him. The face there now looked to appear from another outsider. Matthew hadn’t seen his face in the few weeks he was here. His hair was high and spiked, and a ring hung from his lip.

Curiosity came over the young page as the face disappeared. He quickly jogged over to the wagon, left Thunder with John, and returned to the inn. He couldn’t make out anything in the windows.

“You know I have a window to my room. You should check it out tonight.” Matthew turned and scowled as Kylie passed by on her horse. She sported that same smile.

Matthew stepped into the inn. Off to the left he saw the strange face again, wrapped up in a white-furred jacket.

“Hello,” said Matthew tentatively.

[Taskmienster]

The hallways were void and his voice resounded off the blank walls. Silence overwhelmed him, and a sense of unease descended over him. Cautious steps brought Lars through the lonely area. His boots clicked against the worn wooden floors, each step bringing with it an ungodly loud creaking noise that made him want to wince. Instinctively he brought his hands to his chest, pulling out a small pack of cigarettes from one pocket and steel lighter from the other. The butt of the cig found its common place between his chapped lips, a feeling that made him calm down and brought with it a sense of ease and comfort. Ethan didn’t light the stick of tobacco but let it linger and dangle as he moved away from the room he had woken in and towards the end of the hallway.

The soft, never worked hands of the hacker slid along the walls of the hall as he took careful steps towards the end of the hall. He was trying to take in everything at once. The ends of his fingers caught bits of peeling plaster, the flakes falling like snow with the lightest of touches. He could hear his footsteps as if they were the only noise to be heard. But truth be told, there were other noises on the edges of his hearing that he could make out. Children laughing and playing, horse’s hooves clicking against a rough ground, and the sound of adults calling after the kids in an attempt to relay some sort of verbal order to the chaos of the early morning… the clamor was almost as relaxing as the cigarette. The frigid, still air was a sharp contrast to what he was used to in Corone, much less Scara Brae. It had the lingering taste of frost, mingled with something stale like a room without circulation.

“I must be on the mainland,” Lars mused as he pushed aside a door along the wall. It opened to the chill morning air and the lackluster sun with its false promise of warmth. The hacker looked both ways, seeing women and men atop stout horses and waiting wagons lingering in the background. A few people looked his way, their heads turning like confused dogs before he closed the door after himself and retreated back to the void and silence. They all looked as if they knew each other, their faces had been full of glee and his appearance obviously did not fit with what they were accustomed to. “Fuckin’ cold out there,” he mumbled.

Obviously he was lost, and not really liking where he was at. He pulled his jacket close and put the two sides of the zipper as close as they would go. Unfortunately the leather jacket was more a sense of fashion than worn for any practical use… the thick white fur lining kept his neck warm, but the leather did very little. As he turned and began to walk the world ‘twitched’. Lines broke his vision and caused the hallway to sway and shift as if he had just finished a drinking binge. It was the virtual reality headset though; the bugs were creeping in and jolting the server’s sense of reality. If the hacker was not a product of a computer programming mind, and a normal character on Althanas like any other, he would have undoubtedly thought himself sick.

“Oh, hello there,” Lars responded pleasantly with a smile that was slightly offset due to the precariously dangling cigarette and shifting lip ring. He turned around back towards the open door and shivered slightly as the morning draft slipped through the opening and whipped through the narrow hall. Intelligent thought was all but forgotten and in its place he said the only thing that came to mind. “What’s up?”

[Lighthawk76]

The appearance of the young man before him, more specifically his dress for being so far north, was somewhat intriguing.

His jacket was also a strange choice of attire. The black leather may be a good buffet against the wind, but the garment would need to be much thicker to properly protect one from the constant permeating chill. One would also need a jacket large enough to cover one’s torso for it to be of use.

His mouth also intrigued Matthew. The ring about his lip was normal enough, a fashion trend the page would never understand, but the small white stick protruding from his mouth was very strange. It appeared as a grain of wheat would from farmer’s mouth, or perhaps a pipe, but it seemed too unnatural to be anything like the former and too useless to be anything like the latter.

Many sights had come across Matthew’s path however, and a man dressed strangely was nothing terribly jarring, though clearly intriguing. If stories were to be believed, there were men walking about with clothing apparently tailored perfectly by unknown agents, and women who went about in chain small clothes.

What was jarring to Matthew was the man’s greeting.

“What’s up?”

The larger man blinked a few times as he thought of the question. His eyes looked above him to see nothing out of the ordinary, and a glance out the doorway revealed the same. He patted his head to see if anything sat atop it, and glanced at the other’s spiked hair to see if anything was there.

“Well, I’m not sure what you’re asking,” was all Matthew could say in response, “I have work to get to, but I’m an outsider, as I believe you to be as well. Please feel free to come and get me if you have any trouble.”

With another questioning look, the page turned toward the door.

[Taskmienster]

The man’s build was stout, full and heavy set. He had the look of a farmer, or more a farm hand, the ones that did something on the farm instead of just giving out orders and watching from a distance. The bland yellowish eyes of the man were fitting to his overall visage. To Ethan, he looked like nothing more than another silly character created for the sole purpose of filling space on Althanas. However, his intrigue had brought him inside the inn instead of overlooking him. That spoke volumes for his intelligence, which was undoubtedly non-artificial. His curious nature caused him to remain and ponder as Lars waited for any sort of greeting, much less a response along the lines of ‘hey’.

Looking around was a sign that the man was as naïve as most of those on the server, either that or Lars had said something that wasn’t quite right. Instead of responding cheerily with a greeting the man stated the simple and factual. He had work to get to, the hacker was interrupting his daily monotony, oh how fuckin’ rude of him. Lars didn’t take kindly to rude or short people, and whether the man meant to be one or the other was unsure. What was well known, to the hacker at least, was that the farmhand was stupid and had angered him. “So damned sorry chap, carry on with your tedious boredom, don’t want to be the lively wind of change that sweeps through this cold fuckin’ place.”

He brought the lighter to his cigarette and lit the end. It ignited like a small ember and with a quick puff he spit out a puff of smoke. The flavor lingered, the nicotine gave him an almost instant buzz, and with the start was an instant reprieve from his riled state. “Don’t mind if I join ya’, do ya? The name’s Lars, well Ethan but everyone calls me Lars. I’m an outsider, as I suppose you know by now.” The hacker took another puff of his cigarette and concentrated on his clothing and the coding surrounding it. Within a split second the cold, grating winds that slipped around him were all but forgotten and his clothing was suddenly warmer than any wool coat could hope to be. “Got off on the wrong foot, I don’t want to intrude on your chores, but I’m kinda bored, you know? What’s there to do around here?”

[Lighthawk76]

The odd man’s sarcastic tone pulled Matthew back from exiting the inn. Matthew was brisk with his wording, but he was quite sure he had treated the man relatively evenly. He could think of no reason why such hostility would pour out the man, some frustration perhaps, but not such hostility.

As Matthew paused, pondering the man and thinking he may not get along with the unconventional aspects of his attitude, he watched as a small metal box was brought up the stick in the man’s mouth. With a flick of his thumb, a small tongue of flame appeared, apparently being sucked into the stick. As he finished his sucking, the man puffed out a bit of smoke.

It was like a pipe! It was the strangest pipe that Matthew had seen, and seemed, with its lit end slowly disintegrating, to be non-reusable, but a type of pipe it clearly was. And the metal box was clearly some kind of magic. Perhaps this man was a kind of wizard or sorcerer.

As the man introduced himself, Matthew felt a small, well, something, and the man, Lars, was no longer shivering. In fact, he appeared quite comfortable. With the clothing he had, there was no other explanation besides some form of sorcery. Matthew would have to watch his step, there was no telling what kind of power such a man possessed.

“Yes, I believe we did get off on the wrong foot, Lars” responded Matthew, leaving his belief in the man’s judgmental and sarcastic speech as the source of this “wrong footed-ness” unspoken. “Forgive me for my somewhat blunt demeanor. You’re initial question puzzled me. ‘What’s up’ must be a local saying I don’t quite understand.

“I can’t offer much of anything to do at the moment. As I said, I have chores that need tending to. I’m sure we could use an extra hand, or one of the families around here.”

The sound of clip clop signaled the sudden approach of a horse just outside the door, and Matthew winced visibly, knowing who it was before he heard her voice.

“Yes, Kylie?”

“My father said I needed to get someone to help me bring in some water from the creek. Just a wagonload. I’m sure the Kettle’s could do without you for an hour.”

Without turning around, Matthew smiled somewhat wickedly.

“I’ll need to help the Kettle’s but I’m sure this young man would love to help. Interested Lars?”

Feel free to bunny me if you take the bait. Just have me go off to help with the Kettles.

[Taskmienster]

Little towns were full of droll tasks, and it seemed that the man – who had been un-obliged to offer a name for himself – was pulled into them nonetheless. Lars shrugged and pulled on his cigarette. There was little else for him to do to keep himself occupied, so menial chores would have to do for the time being. He let out the smoke slowly and watched the pungent aftermath dance in the small draft that was pushing fitfully through the hall. It caught his eyes and made them water, but it was nothing a few quick blinks and a shake of the head did not fix. “Since chores are all there is to do I’ll be happy to help for a bit… maybe get to know the locals a little better. Don’t want to be an outsider for too long.”

The hacker was a jovial fellow, bordering egocentric. Charismatic as he was, he enjoyed little more than to plunge headfirst into other’s affairs. At the very least he’d probably find a few drinking buddies for later. Surely they were not all stuck up, rude people like the one man he had so far seen. Lars followed him out and listened to the small talk that passed between a woman outside and the farm hand. She had a melodic voice. It was sweet and soft, but with a playful undertone that made the hacker’s face warm and his loins shift. An hour to get water? It must have been a ruse of some sort to drag the farm hand out with her for a good bit.

When the conversation dragged Lars in, he could not help but smile. He shifted the heavy belt buckle to his left hip, straightened his V-neck shirt, and slowly walked towards to door to see who the voice belonged to. “I’d be more than willing to help,” he said in almost a purr, “Getting to know the locals a little better is what I said I wanted, and who better to help me with that chore?”

He exited the door past his first companion and smiled to the woman before him. The horses she held back were heavy set, built for work and little more. He sighed as he slipped the cig from his lips and exhaled again, puffing out small circles with the skill of a patient smoker. The winds caught them and dragged them away, but left the effect that he wanted. Kylie giggled at the odd sight, and nodded to him approvingly. “So, where’s this water at?” He said with a gentle smile crossing his enthusiastic visage. “And wouldn’t it be frozen over by now? It is quite cold.”

“Hop up with me Lars,” she said as he extended a hand. It was slight, just like her frame, and no doubt offered more as a chance for the two to have contact than to actually help him up. He put his hand in hers with a gentle grasp and with his other hand pulled himself up to the seat next to her. The wagon shifted slightly with his weight on the spoke of the wheel, and she giggled in her enticing way. “It is not far, and we shall see about it being frozen over. It is unusual cold this year for southern Salvar, but I am sure you and I can warm it up or break the ice…”

“Now you are speaking my language. I’m quite skilled at breaking the ice, and warming up a cute girl is second nature.” He turned to the farm hand and smiled sheepishly. “I suppose we shall meet again in an hour or so, thanks for giving me something to do in the meantime.”

Kylie snapped the reigns against the back of the horses and led them away from town and towards a rather lackluster, frozen forest. Green was not a prevalent color, or so it seemed, and Lars wondered if the lands of Salvar were being freed from a cold snap or just coming under its grasp. The two talked and laughed, never getting too close or overly friendly in a suggestive way. Within ten minutes they had found the edge of the quiet creek. It was slightly covered with ice in the few places the water was not running, patches off to the sides that could not have been more than an inch thick.

“You can get the skins and pots,” Kylie said as she hopped off the seat and landed in the fallen needles that littered the ground. “I’ll tie them down and follow shortly.”

The two worked slowly, chatting back and forth about the weather and the town. Lars learned a good deal about where the glitch in the VR headset had forced him. A quiet town on the edge of the map, it was hardly touched by the outside world and nearly forgotten by the powers that rumor held were locked in a civil war of sorts. That changed while they were alone.

Galloping horses charged through the woods, racing towards where the two were busy. Lars looked up as Kylie gasped, stepping behind the hacker. A company of three men reigned in their mounts and looked over the two, obviously less interested in what they were doing in the woods alone. “By order of the King I am here to protect and serve the citizens of this area. I am Count Girard, and my troops are headed towards the town as we speak. Have the sickly band of the Sway yet come to this land and tainted it? If so I would be remise to have to break the peace in such a… gentle area.”

“Not sure what you’re talkin’ about mate,” Lars responded as he reached out and accepted rather official looking documents. He scanned them and let the woman behind him look them over as well. They were signed and the seal was broken, as if this was not the first place the grand Count had ‘come to rescue’. “But the town’s not held by anyone, and it seems that the peace here is only going to be broken by your appearance.”

“Lowly child,” the man said as he tugged the horses head away from the two and pointed towards the town. “We have not come to make war, but bring peace and security. It would be wise of you to hold your tongue regarding matters you do not fully understand.” And with that the band of men spurred their horses and headed back the way the two had come from. Ethan shook his head and hurried back to the wagon, their task only half done but other issues boding ill will were to be taken into consideration.

[Lighthawk76]

As the girl and her wagon galloped away with the new stranger beside her, Matthew suddenly felt a sinking feeling. He hadn’t wanted to deal with Kylie tens of passes, especially alone and out in the woods. He had an oath he would be taking, and to allow himself to break it before he took it… Well, few were the paladins with chastity problems that appeared after their oath.

Kylie sure had been able to change those feelings quickly when a second stranger appeared. Matthew guessed the man was handsome, in some slimmer way. He had a hard time figuring out how it was that women were attracted to men. It hurt a little to have Kylie so quickly change objects of affection. It would be easier for Matthew, now that she had another man to keep her busy, but he would be lying if he said he hadn’t enjoyed all of the attention.

It wasn’t that which gave Matthew the sinking feeling though. His feelings for the girl, if they were feelings for the girl, were confused by the matter, but nothing which truly made him worry. What worried him more was the fact that her father would not be terribly happy with his daughter gaining a swiftly growing belly.

Any man who adjusted his pants before going off with a girl alone made Matthew worry that he may cause such a problem. The fact that Matthew put him in this position was simply icing on the cake.

The problem was not one he could deal with at present. His concern only finally blossomed into that sinking feeling when the wagon was far and gone. With a shake of his head, he ran over to the Kettle’s wagon, just preparing to make its way out into the fields.

“Who was the new fellow?” asked John as Matthew took his place beside him on the back of the wagon with the four boys.

“Yes, do tell,” spoke up Pa Kettle from the front as he guided the horses. “I’ve never seen such hair as that boy’s got sticking up from his head. Now such tiny clothes.”

“He’s an outsider, came in last night I guess. Didn’t really get along well. I mean we traded…

“Well, uh, he gave me his name, Lars, and I said I had to get to work.”

Matthew grimaced, and shook his head.

“Well, sounded like you didn’t trade pleasantries, if that’s what you were first saying. Boys, what’s the first thing you make sure to know about someone and make sure that someone knows about you.”

“Each other’s names,” spoke up the boys.

“That’s right. Then you’re both on even fields.”

“Pa’s umpteenth rule of social correctness,” whispered John to Matthew. “Kylie came by looking for you. You get to talk to her before she went off with the new guy?”

“Not really, but I knew what she wanted. I sent Lars along trying to get her off me.”

“Look, I may be interested in all this Holy stuff you keep talking about, but I think you’re stupid for not taking Kylie Handler on her offers. I mean, I’d kill for the looks she gives you.”

“You’re fifteen, John. Once you grow up a little you’ll understand.”

“Understand why a man would give up the chance to play in the hay with Kylie Handler? That’s an understanding I’m looking forward to. Pretty sure I know it-stupid, crazy, or a little of both.”

“Does you’re mother know you talk about ‘playing in the hay’ with Ms. Kylie Handler?”

“Course not.”

“Do you want to keep it that way?”

“You can be a son-of-a-bitch sometimes Matthew.”

The page gave the boy a scolding look, than laughed quietly.

* * *

It only took twenty minutes of tilling soil until Matthew and the four boys were taking off their outer jackets. The chill air, which had been so problematic and annoying to Matthew the night before, had now become a cool relief to sweating brows. The younger three were complaining to their father, but John tried his best to take after Matthew.

The older page was happily stoic about his work. Even as he trained to join the order, he had gone off to work with his brother in the fields as often as possible. The work kept him big and firm, and there was something gratifying in having a body made strong by the same work which put food on the family table. Not that he hadn’t complained as a younger man. He remembered acting just as the young three, and having his father acting just as Pa.

“Come on Pa, let us have a break.”

“Shut up, and work, you’ll get a break in an hour.”

“An hour?!”

“Want it to be in two? Now get to work before you get a two minute break for me to tan your hide.”

Matthew smiled fondly.

It was an hour into work that the bell began ringing. It was constant randpm ring-a-ding-a-ling-a-ding-a-ling-a-ring, that could only be caused by someone shaking a cowbell. Pa Kettle looked back towards town with an angry look on his face.

“Looks like something’s happening back home. I bet those Handler boys are making some kind of trouble. Where’d such a good man as Handler go wrong and raise up two problem making children and a girl who’s too feisty for her own good. Come on boys, leave the horses and wagons out here. I bet we’ll be back soon as we figure out who’s hide to tan.”

Matthew hoped it wasn’t anything to do with the new guy. He didn’t know if he was trouble, but if he was, then it was Matthew’s fault that the trouble was let loose. And if the man was the source of the trouble, than Kylie was involved, which just made it worse.

It took them another few minutes to jog back to the village, and there they clearly saw what the bell foretold.

A small battalion of mounted men, a meager fighting force but more than enough to lay waste to such a small town, was lining up in what was considered the town square. They appeared to have just arrived, calming down and quieting mounts still jumpy from galloping. Their apparent leader, a portly, greasy haired man wearing armaments which looked impressive but Matthew knew were for naught but show, was in the middle of addressing from a scroll the forty or so collected folk of the village. He was flanked by two heavily armored men. There armaments were not in the least bit flashy.

“…and so, with the kingdom rampant with the filth of the false church and the lies of the pretender Denebriel, I, Count Girard, have been given the honor by the lord of you lands to be its protector and caretaker during this trying time. My men and I are prepared to stand in the face of all who would oppose the god-sent sovereignty of his highness Iorlan Rathaxea.

“We understand the people’s desire to stand up for their king, but we must demand that you allow those given the authority to deal out the king’s just to do handle this matter. You will still be of the greatest help, however. Our men require housing, beds, food, upkeep of our armaments, upkeep of our clothing, shelter for our mounts, upkeep of our mounts, upkeep of our saddles, reigns, and horsing equipment, among other necessary needs. The people of Salvar, out of love for King Iorlan Rathaxea, will be the one’s to fulfill these needs.

“As such, all people of the village will, from this point forward, be confined to their homes, so as to be able to quickly fulfill the needs of the soldiers of Salvar. Do not worry about your well being, the rebellion of the false church shall be quickly quelled and you may then return to you common life.

“For the King!”

With this last remark, Girard gave his men a few curt commands, and they began moving.

The two flanking him immediately moved to the small, meager, bare altar which served as the religious image of the village. One was a slim man, a halberd at his back and his armor placed lightly over his body to allow for movement. The other was a massive man, a huge broad sword strapped to his back. The large one got off his horse, unsheathed his blade, and brought it down upon the altar. In three heavy strikes, the altar was naught but rubble.

The rest of the men began ushering people to their homes none too kindly, or began inspecting houses, some even brazenly entering and coming out with food, cloth, or other items of note in their hands.

“Let’s get back home boys, quickly.”

Pa Kettle took a hold of the youngest two, ten and eleven respectively, and began guiding everyone back to their house. No soldier had made it their yet, and the boys’ mother was standing outside waiting for them with worried expressions.

Matthew was taken aback by the soldiers’ swift and rough implementing of the decree. He moved by instinct, following the Kettle patriarch’s orders as if he was his own father. Thankfully he blended well enough for the soldiers to be blind to his status as an outsider, and caused no ruckus.

Once they were all inside the house, worried glances were exchanged. Ma and Pa kettle stepped aside to talk, and the boys huddled together. Matthew went over to the foot of the boys’ bed, pulled out his bag from underneath, and flipped through his Book of the Servant for a passage on peace. He then paused over a passage on righteous fury.

When he finished, he pushed the book deep into his bag, took off the beads he wore around his wrist and placed them within as well, and pushed the bag far underneath. His hands brushed his weaponry as it came back. He wrapped his hand around the handle of his poleaxe and said another prayer.

He then sat atop the bed and waited.

[Taskmienster]

By the time the two rolled back into the town with only half the jugs of water filled the town was already in a state of chaos. People were being issued to their houses, and those that went willingly were being followed in. Soldiers wearing the colors of the noble had armfuls of linen, food and barrels of ale, as well as whatever else suited their fancy. A few girls were being surrounded by grubby faces, harassed by the ‘liberating forces’ sent by the king. Lars seriously doubted their intent was on liberation. If there was some form of civil war between the king of the lands and the religious faction it seemed to the hacker to be the perfect time for any noble to extend their lands.

“Wha-What is going on here?” Kylie’s gasped words were spoken in horror. Her eyes were darting about, trying to absorb everything at once. But even Ethan, who had seen so many things in his gaming time, was at a loss. The packed dirt streets were stirred by the men’s motion, sending small clouds of grime all about them. Winds eddied and drifted listlessly, catching the motion and the men alike, twirling the small clouds of dust into miniature cyclones. The hacker hopped off the wagon and extended a half-assed hand towards the woman to assist her down. “Is this what the Count was talking about?”

“’Suppose so,” Lars responded as he held her soft hand. There was no coy caress or flirtatious glint in his eye. “You should get back to your place, I’m sure your family’s going to be worried about you. I’d say just leave the wagon, I’m sure these guys are just gonna take your shit later anyway…”

“And what are you going to do? Go back to the inn? The place is going to be crawling with soldiers. You should go find Matthew and stay with the Kettles, or come back to my place.” An invitation back to a girls pad would normally have brought a devious smirk on the face of the hacker, but it was not the time or place. There was no undertone of possible fleshly satisfaction.

Ethan shrugged and shook his head, he was only half listening. The struggle between soldiers and women was slowing down; the townspeople were standing up for the morality of their daughters and wives at the very least. “I’ll figure something out,” Lars said as he pulled another cigarette from his pocket and lit it. “Hurry home; keep safe, I’m sure we’ll meet again.”

Kylie smiled and hugged the hacker with a small peck on the side of his cheek. She thanked him quickly and hurried off, walking as fast as she could towards wherever her house was. A strange feeling fell over him though as she left, watching her sultry form weave its way through the purple and gold livery of Count Girard. The soldiers stopped their hurried ‘sanctioned’ looting of the houses and their loud laughter when she passed. Eyes of greed and lust followed her, some barely pulling away to look down the path she had come from and make contact with Lars.

Instead of rushing to the inn and attempting to force his way back to his room, or argue to gain a new one, the hacker hurried after her. He shoved roughly through small groups of soldiers, who had but moments before parted like the red sea for Kylie. His hands grasped shoulders and touched the sides of the men as he moved and tried to negotiate his way through. Their armor was all the same. He could feel the light clinking of chain mail beneath their counts colors, stroked the soft brushed steel pauldrons they wore on their upper arms. If push came to shove, Ethan wanted to know where to hurt them the most.

His fears were well placed. As soon as he rounded a corner after the young woman he found her trapped between two men on the side of one of the many simple houses on the street. She was trapped, her hands at her side. One of the men touched the side of her arm and ran his gloved hand up her long sleeves. “Please stop,” she said almost in tears. “I need to be home, my father’s expecting me.”

“You’ll get home, we’ll escort you there,” the man behind her said while the other laughed. “But nothing in this world is free, and the payment is one both of us need after so long a ride to liberate and secure your town. Besides, escorting you home will let us know where to go when we want to collect more payment…”

“Get fuckin’ off of her,” Lars said, the one with his back to him turn with a cocksure smile on his face. “She said she needs to get home. And unless I’m mistaken there should be no need for an escort so long as there is nothing to worry about… right? Come to liberate and secure? Then there’s no worry for a girl to get home alone.”

“And who are you?” One guard said as he pushed her aside and into the wall. Kylie fell to the dirt and gripped her arm, but scurried to her feet. She was prone to run, ready to flee should something bad happen, but waited with a look of concern. “Someone from the mainland come to take over what he can while Salvar is in peril? A spy for the Sway? You know who you are? You are whoever we decide you are, and I think you are in league with the enemy of the King, and therefore under arrest… which you undoubtedly attempted to resist.”

Lars moved faster than any normal human should, a dagger in either hand before the first one could remove his short sword. He pushed forward and smashed the plain butts of the steel blades into the side of his temples. The purple and gold livery was stained the blood dripping from his nose even before his eyes could fully roll back and his heavy armor drag him to the ground. The second guard pushed forward and swung his sword, but caught the wall and dragged the steel edge against the stone. Knives were far more useful in close combat, and the swords were at a disadvantage, giving the hacker the easiest victory against any opponent that he had yet faced in Althanas. The second guard received a heavy hand to his chin, followed by another to the side of her turned face.

“Lars! Hurry away, go find Matthew and stay with them.” The guards head thudded against the opposite wall and opened wide, spilling blood into the dirt streets in pools of crimson. “You’re in danger now.”

“I will, hurry home and keep safe.”

[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?"