The Woodlands Run

[Etheryn]

Set a few days after this. (http://www.althanas.com/world/showthread.php?22900-What-a-drunken-mongrel...-%28%28Planned-to-be-closed%29%29&p=185119#post185119)
“Are we there yet?” Dan was careful to spare that nagging tone of a child in the back seat.

“Not too far. Once we crest the next hill, should be in plain sight for ye,” Alfonse answered.

Dan stretched his arms over his head and yawned. The front of a rickety old cart wasn't the best place to nap. The first thing he noticed after waking up was his sore backside from hours on the hard seat, which was actually no more than a "bench." Earlier in the day he'd argued with Alfonse for close to an hour on the topic. Dan was simply not convinced that a plank of wood nailed perpendicular to the front wall of a cart was enough to qualify as a seat. Some cushions were needed for that title. Maybe a cup holder. No, definitely a cup holder.

The bumpiness of the narrow, winding highlands track they'd been traversing for hours made it even more uncomfortable.

"This a bench, Alfonse. Not a seat."

"Shut yer bloody yap! I'll not tumble words with ye again, boy-o!"

The next thing he noticed, as he squinted to the sky, was the murky black and grey clouds warning thunder and masking the twinkling where stars ought to be. The glow of the full moon had been swallowed whole. He looked around, taking in his surroundings, unsure now how long he’d been asleep. A ghostly noise unsettled him, the voice of wind blowing through a mixture of spruces, oaks and wattlebarks that blanketed the rising hills either side of the track. As the gusts increased then subsided, so did the television static sound of rustling leaves on creaking, old limbs. In the dead of night the trees looked nothing short of eerie, like massive timber dancers performing a slow, hypnotic choreography. They made Dan feel very small.

Although he felt tiny, he didn't look as such. Standing just below six feet, Dan was two hundred pounds of muscle built through years of manual labour. He was shaped like a fridge and made a lot of men think twice about crossing him. Set atop his broad shoulders and bulldog's neck was a cleanly shaved head, a solid jawline punctuated by a scar from a boating accident, with deep brown eyes and a somewhat small nose and ears. He skin was dotted with dark freckles, and otherwise had a deep layer tan as if the solar bronze had been burned into his skin permanently.

He remained that colour all year round despite wearing a long sleeve brown flannel shirt and olive drab worker’s overalls as regular daily attire. He’d always tuck and blouse the legs of the overalls at the top of his tannin leather, steel toe work boots, giving them that bell-flared look like military fatigue pants.

Dan would habitually offer a handshake when meeting new people. It was in that customary exchange, when they felt his vice-like grip, that most acknowledged his quiet strength. His thick forearms were patterned with thin and faded scars, and ended in large, calloused hands with prominent knuckles. His fists were like sledgehammers when balled up. On his left forearm was a steel knife, black handled with a nine inch blade and gutting hook on the reverse side. The tip was shaped for slashing, more round than angled. Butchers called it a sheep’s hoof point. It was sheathed in brown leathers, strapped with a leather band and buckle at both the top and bottom to keep it steady.

Apart from the steel on his arm Dan wore only one other accessory. A simple leather pouch, tied with a yellow-white braided drawstring, the drawstring then bound to his brown leather belt with a half hitch knot. It looked plain and uninteresting to others. To Dan, it was incredibly important. The pouch was part of a gift received on his eighteenth birthday. The channel for a talent within him.

Someone told him things about that talent. Important things. Right now, that was as much as he knew. Dan pushed the thought down. Rattling his brain for a memory that just wasn’t there anymore would do nothing but frustrate him now. Maybe later.

“You’re gonna stay once we”--Dan paused, unable to stop another yawn--"get to Nelligin?”

“I'll not take ye to the town, only near to it. Gonna take me chances in the bush, boy-o. I can handle highway robbers. Empire soldiers, on the other hand…” Alfonse’s gruff voice trailed off.

“You don’t know what to expect.”

“It’ll be occupied. They’ll start askin’ questions about me stock. I’ll drop you off out of sight and double back. Yer on yer own from there."

Dan looked over his shoulder at rattling steel in the rear of the cart. Alfonse was a weapons dealer, and his dangerous looking inventory would surely attract attention. Swords, knives, axes, even some strange jaw-like mechanic contraption that could somehow be used as a weapon. Or a trap.

“What am I supposed to say? That I just walked from wherever it is I came from, through the middle of the night?”

“Say ye fell out of the sky, lad. Matters not. This journey I’ve taken ye on has been enough. If yer decent enough as ye seem, ye’ll ask no more of me,” Alfonse finished. He looked ahead.

The usually merry dwarf seemed surlier than usual. His stout frame was drawn in, all crouched and retracted, as if he was trying to expose a smaller surface area to the winds. Alfonse was made of slow-twitch muscle with a comfortable layer of "padding," as he called it. He was almost as wide as he was tall, but he stood only as high as Dan's midsection. Like the draught horse compared to the buck deer, it seemed he wouldn’t be able to move very fast, but could move for long time carrying a load that would break a regular man’s back.

He wore a thick black leather chest guard, shaped like a sleeveless singlet with one strap over either shoulder, decorated with riveted metal studs. Beneath it, a long sleeved brown shirt that tucked into his forearm bracers. The bracers were secretly loaded with lethal blades that sprung out from beneath Alfonse’s wrists should he flick his palms upward in a certain manner. His powerful, sausage-fingered hands were inside full length leather gloves, seemingly ambiguous in purpose, perhaps for warmth or work or both. His penchant for leathers wasn’t present in the lower half. His patchy green-grey trousers fell over the tops of stiff canvas boots that could've been any colour beneath the mud.

Alfonse’s most distinctive feature was his blazing beard separated into three triple braids and tied off with black bands. The beard seemed to just be a continuation of the barely maintained mess of short red hair on his head, now covered in a white traveller’s bandana stained yellow with sweat and tied in a knot to the rear.

Usually, Alfonse looked relaxed. Calm. Tonight, he was tense like a coiled spring.

Dan shared the feeling. The night was narrated by deep cooing of nocturnal birds, the repeating rise and fall of the wind speaking through the trees, and the rhythmic sound of Alfonse’s two black horses towing their cart along the rocky dirt road. Still, something made him feel it was too quiet. Just a little bit off.

Dan looked around again, trying to figure out what was making him feel apprehensive. Hills rolled up on either side, almost armoured in trees and bushes. The road they travelled was like a valley bed between two rising peaks on the left and right. Anything that wasn’t on the road would be looking down at Alfonse and Dan on the cart, through the cover of the thick vegetation. Their only light was a dimming oil torch, just enough to keep the horses calm and trotting straight. It seemed more like a beacon than anything else. A giveaway to their location.

That’s why Alfonse is in a stinking mood. We’re vulnerable, Dan thought to himself.

Dan saw Alfonse’s flintlock pistol in his lap. The hammer was pulled back already, primed to fire in an instant. Dan started to feel worried as well and it snapped him out of his weariness. If highwaymen began loosing arrows from the hillside, there would be no cover. It’d be target practice. Every sound seemed to become louder as he realised the potential danger, and Dan pictured evil men hiding behind every tree that shook in the breeze. His senses pricked up. He could hear the stretch of Alfonse’s leather bracers and gloves as he manipulated the reins. The silence was oppressive.

“This track should open up and go downhill, takin’ ye back down to sea level. It should be clear enough between there and Nelligin. It sits by the river. Ye’ll need to take a covered route to the town boundary if ye walk in alone, or attach yerself to another travellin’ group. Suggest ye do, if ye care 'bout looking less suspicious."

Dan nodded in reply to Alfonse's suggestion and those were the last words spoken for thirty minutes. A very tense, anxious thirty minutes.

The terrain they travelled through was at least a hundred and fifty metres above the banks of nearby Niema River. It wasn't quite a mountain range but a significant enough rise in the geography that it could be seen from miles away. They’d been navigating the pass for about six hours, the final leg of their two day journey east from Radasanth’s borders.

Dan's face hurt. He touched at it and felt the lumps. They were like braille for a blind man, telling the story of what happened in Radasanth. Dan and Alfonse were chased out by four murderous horsemen after Dan’s involvement in a plot to sabotage the 42nd garrison of Corone's Armed Forces, a detachment of soldiers shoehorned into roles as civil police. The whole company of 42nd garrison, excluding two, were violent drunks. The swelling and bruises on Dan's face had gone down surprisingly quick, yet they still reminded him of what happened there. A cut on his lip healed over to just a scab.

Suddenly, the twisting pass gave way to a rolling downward slope, rocky crags and precarious falls in place of trees. The bottom of the slope eased out to flat grasslands that continued for tens of miles in almost every direction. Despite the lack of light, Dan could make out the shape of the Jagged Mountains to the east, and to the right of them the Comb Mountains in the south east. There was a puffy topped shape to the south that could've been the canopy of Concordia Forest. Alfonse reined in his horses and stopped the cart.

“There it is.”

Dan looked out. Through the dark, he could only see pinpricks of light in the distance, like a cloud of unmoving fireflies. He assumed that was where Nelligin was supposed to be. A brief opening in the thick cloud cover allowed a full moon to illuminate the surface of the Niema River. Dan had only moments to look at the lay of the land before the clouds obscured the moonlight once more.

Nelligin stood a few hundred metres south of the river banks. He couldn’t be sure because of the long distance, low light and short time he had to peek with the moon shining down, but the town looked small. Something of a great barn in the middle of the township was the only structure over two levels high. The rest of the buildings were much smaller in comparison, and all Dan could see was a mixture of brown and red roof tiling. They were somewhat uniform, as if one was built first and the rest cloned from it.

“Do I just follow this road?” Dan looked at the narrow track before him as it snaked down the hill. It was framed by long, thick grass that looked scratchy and uncomfortable. It leaned and folded in the wind, looking just as alive as the trees from moments ago.

“Yes, boy-o. Walk the sides of it. Ye’ll be more of a sitting duck than we are now if ye walk on the road proper." Alfonse was looking over his shoulder at his flanks, suspicious of anyone or thing who could be behind.

“So I guess this is it,” Dan said as he moved off the cart.

He walked to the rear and pulled out his canvas rucksack, still light as ever excluding a slightly heavier bag of coin. He checked the rest of the contents, laying them out one by one then packing them back in to make sure everything was there. Straight razor, check. An old bit of soap, check. Some cured, way too salty ham. Check. Bits and pieces, none of it precious or really that important, apart from four rolled parchments that were bound with string.

Dan unraveled them all to make sure he hadn’t lost anything. The first was an intelligence dossier freely distributed by Corone’s Armed Forces to Radasanthian citizens. It was full of maps, reports on associates, past crimes and potential dangers, and it all focused on Dan’s brother. Aaron James. They hadn't seen each other for over four years now. Aaron was once a Sergeant of Corone's Armed Forces, until defecting to climb through the ranks and become a senior lieutenant of the Rangers.

The Rangers were originally their own part of Corone's military until around two years ago. They took up a cause to overthrow Corone's allegedly corrupt governing body, the Assembly. The civil war started and had raged on across the continent since then, a consuming fire fuelled by rivers of blood that'd been spilled by both factions.

Dan had decided to cut a path through the fighting, to seek Aaron out. To make things up to him. To even the debt, for leaving Aaron alone to face difficult questions he couldn't possibly answer. Questions about strange things that happened in Dan's home town of Baitman's Bay on the south west coast. Things that happened on Dan's eighteenth birthday. Dan was twenty-two years old now. Time smudged the edges of his memory.

The dossier pinned Aaron’s location as somewhere within central Underwood. It was Dan’s current destination. He rolled up the intelligence brief and stuffed it back into his rucksack.

He unrolled another two parchments that were bound together. Two Empire certified identification scripts, one in his real name--Daniel James--and one in the name of Arrundir Elkhood, a gift of forgery from the only two men of 42nd garrison who Dan could tolerate. It was to cover Dan’s real identity through Empire checkpoints, to prevent being jailed and interrogated over any information concerning Aaron. It was part of the payment for Dan's assistance in the Radasanth plot.

Dan pocketed both identification scripts, making note of which pocket held which identity. He briefly daydreamed like he often did. He wondered if Arrundir was a real person who was sorely missing the paperwork to prove rightful ownership of the name. He wondered further if people would think the name didn't quite fit him. It was a bit too fancy.

The last parchment was a travel pass on an inland stagecoach that ran a route south from Nelligin to the Underwood borders. Another piece of the payment. Despite the civil war and randomly flaring hotspots of fighting between the Empire and Ranger factions all across Corone, this particular company – “Prester’s Escorts” – continued to do business. Dan assumed the prices would’ve gone up, and wondered what the ticket cost, considering someone else paid for it.

Satisfied his belongings were in order, Dan closed up his rucksack and slung it over his shoulder. He offered his hand to Alfonse who shook it firmly. The dwarf had been patiently waiting for Dan to sort himself out, but they didn't have all day to tarry. Dan didn’t need to put words to his gratitude for Alfonse's help. The dwarf knew it well enough.

“This is it, boy-o,” Alfonse said. His expression was serious, almost concerned. Alfonse secretly worried than Dan was about to enter conflicts he wasn’t yet prepared for. Alfonse hid the sentiment well.

“Keep yer swollen, shiny bald head outta sight. Someone might cave it in if yer not careful. Might be an improvement if ye ask me.”

“I’ll see you ‘round, Alfonse.”

“Bloody hope not. Take this and get get going," Alfonse said. His grim expression had broken into a mischievous smile and he looked happy once more, the way he usually did.

"What're you smiling about?"

"Seeing the arse end of ye. Nothin' but a pain since I met ye, boy-o. But I like ye anyway," Alfonse answered while rummaging around the back of his cart, stretched awkwardly over the top lip of the driver's seat. Or, properly named, the driver's bench.

Alfonse handed Dan a length of carved hardwood, something like a short quarterstaff about five feet long and three inches wide, with a uniform, cylindrical shape. It was crowned by a small metal brazier, something of a lattice-work bowl, that was stuffed with oily rags and soaked with a strong smelling accelerant. Alfonse flicked a pocket match and lit the torch for Dan. It momentarily puffed black smoke and then burned clean.

“Cheers. I’ll be able to bonk a bandit on the head and melt marshmallows at the same time,” Dan joked. He raised the torch as if he were toasting Alfonse’s gift, and gave a short nod. Alfonse returned only a nod of his own, as he busied himself with the task of turning the horses and cart around on the narrow track.

After completing a very slow three point turn, Alfonse gave an over the shoulder wave and started trotting away. They’d known each other for only a short time yet been involved in situations that even lifelong companions never have to face together. Their escape from Radasanth, frenzied killers hot on their heels, had almost ended in a gruesome dismembering had Dan not made smart use of his magic. Alfonse involved himself where almost anyone else would’ve just not bothered. Something made Dan think he’d be seeing Alfonse again. Perhaps in a different time, location and circumstances. Perhaps they could be real friends.

Shivering and scalding himself for not wearing more layers, Dan started descending the winding track. Without the added cover of trees the cold was cutting him to the bone. The sound of Alfonse’s horses trotting in the other direction slowly faded away until there was nothing. Nothing but the crunch of gravel beneath Dan's boots, a soft moan of mountain winds, and the crackling of his torch. It offered a little warmth, and just enough light to navigate the uneven ground. The flames blew sideways in the gusts, burning a little brighter each time.

Dan continued down for about fifteen minutes, tripping occasionally, until the ground flattened out enough for him to walk in the cover of long grass at the shoulder of the road. He snuffed the torch before entering the thickets by emptying the lit rags from the brazier and stamping them out. It wouldn't do to start a bushfire. He waited for a few minutes for his eyes to adjust, and continued on. A further thirty minutes passed, seemingly hours in empty silence. Even the birds weren’t around now. He felt very, very alone.

Without the distant points of lights to guide him, Dan would’ve been lost in the thick darkness. They eventually grew larger as Dan moved closed to them, and he could see them as torches held by armoured men with red feathered helmets. Soldiers of the Corone Armed Forces, commonly abbreviated to “CAF.” There were four of them standing together at what looked like a brick and mortar wall, bridged with a thick iron gate that looked like a picket fence. It spanned twenty feet. It seemed they were having a casual conversation, inattentive to their surroundings.

Dan thought of how to approach. There wouldn’t be another way to enter Nelligin, at least not from the western side. It’d be impossible to circle around to the eastern entrance without being seen and even then he’d just be facing more guards. He couldn't climb over the walls without risking getting shot down by archers, and even if he was successful he couldn't play secret squirrel inside the town walls.

Suddenly, Dan became aware of something behind him. A new sound of footsteps, continuous, and slowly getting louder. Closer to him. He froze and dropped to a knee in the grass to obscure himself. He listened intently, hoping the person making those footsteps continued on past without ever knowing Dan was there. Dan remained utterly still. He became acutely aware of the rise in his breathing, the rushing of blood in his ears. The fight or flight response was winding up to move him into combat or in the opposite direction.

He waited to hear the jingling of plate mail and swords, expecting it to be a roving patrol of CAF soldiers about to find him, and jail him overnight on suspicion. They'd find the documents in Dan's rucksack that suggested his blood relation to a wanted rebel outlaw. The footsteps came closer but that distinctive noise of clunking metal didn’t come with it.

Minutes passed and Dan could now hear voices but not what they were saying. They seemed hushed, quiet, not loud and belligerent like the guardsmen he’d met in the past. Perhaps they were just dutiful soldiers who cared about maintaining a low profile when walking the beat.

Dan waited. Another minute passed and he didn’t move from his hiding spot. In a few more moments, he could distinguish the rhythms of only two pairs of feet. The wind gusted with more intensity, almost bending the grass down far enough to expose his cover. The two pairs of footsteps were just sounding too close for Dan to do anything but keep still, unless he wanted to be found out. The mumbling conversation became clearer.

They've got to be less than ten metres away. Time was running out for Dan to make a decision, a plan of action, that wouldn't involve him getting into another fight.

The voices stopped. So did the footsteps. Dan worried if they were they looking at him through the grass and knew he was hiding. The silence was agony. Dan's heart beat rose in a crescendo, almost punching a hole in his chest.

The footsteps resumed, as did the conversation. It did nothing to calm his nerves, strung tight as piano wire. He could make out the words of one voice, but the other sounded like someone with a sore throat speaking through a mouthful of hot ash.

“… Just act casual. The last thing we need is getting turned over by the guards,” a strangely accented male said with finality. He had a polyglot of some foreign, exotic language. There was no response from the other ghastly voice.

They’re not trying to sneak through the checkpoint. Whoever it is, they’re not going to make a fuss. I can follow them in.

Dan stepped out of the grass, slowly, making plenty of noise to give away his position. He raised his hands up in a gesture of surrender, suggesting he wasn’t a threat. He hadn’t really thought of what he was going to say to whoever it was and could feel himself about to get tongue tied.

“Hi. I, uh, er… Yeah. Nice to meet you. Can I follow you to Nelligin? I couldn’t help overhearing you when I was, uhhh”–Dan paused to run one of his meaty hands over the back of his head, as if trying to rub together a sentence that didn’t sound stupid–“Yeah, uh, hiding in the bushes there. CAF soldiers would be suspicious of someone walking into town by himself in the middle of the night,” Dan finished lamely.

Dan hoped he hadn’t made a fatal assumption in revealing himself. Although sounding sheepish in his introductions, he stood with confidence and did his best to look friendly. Cheesy smile and all. It didn't work. The first thing he saw was a black giant, now standing only ten feet away. The massive brute reached over his shoulder, and with a brief "shhh-ting" sound, flicked a massive claymore sword from its scabbard. Dan couldn't even move before the blade flew with lightning speed towards him.

There were only inches between the sword tip and Dan's nose. Somehow, it hadn't carved his skull in half yet. It wasn't moving. It all happened too fast for him to even realise what happened, and his first reaction was a silly one. The mind does funny things, sometimes.

Should I be proud I didn't just wet myself?

[Etheryn]

“That’s a very pointy sword you’ve got,” Dan said.

“It is indeed. I don’t take well to strangers jumping out of the bushes, especially in the middle of the night,” the man said with a calm voice. Dan couldn’t quite figure out his accent; the "E" sounds were exaggerated and syllables involving "S" were shortened.

Dan's smile wavered. It’s hard to look cheery when a man mountain has cold steel shoved in your face. Dan was fixed in place and he couldn’t help feel intimidated by the tower of muscle before him.

At least six and a half feet tall and over three hundred pounds, the man wore ragged grey trousers rolled up at the ankles, leather sandals, and something of a sleeveless chain mail singlet that gave clear few of the rippling physique beneath. The kind of definition that speaks of raw strength. His skin was almost charcoal black, void of body hair and covered with contrasting pinkish scars that were empty of the melanin so present in the rest of his skin. Some looked like arrow or spearhead punctures, others long and thick as if they were old slash wounds, and a few patchy ones that could be burns. They formed their own irregular patterns like tribal tattoos.

The most distinctive scar was a neat, vertical line spanning from the man's jawline, over the left eyelid and brow, and onto his forehead. That left eye was missing. So were the eyelids. There was only an empty socket. The other remaining eye was pure black as well, bar the whites of it. His hair was shaved clean, save a neatly braided black ponytail at the rear of his head that coiled twice around his neck. Red and brown beads were tied into it.

A very long, plain red scabbard was slung diagonally across his back and strapped tight to him with two leather bands around the upper and lower halves of his torso. Dan wished the man would put his sword back in it.

Without taking his eyes from the point of the claymore sword, still inches his nose, Dan firmed his voice.

“You think I’m a threat to you? If I was going to try rob you I would’ve brought friends, and, uh”--Dan pointed with his right thumb, hands still raised high, at the blade on his left forearm--“something bigger than this toothpick.”

“Your friends could still be in the grass right now,” the scarred man said. The sword tip moved another inch closer to Dan’s nose. Dan didn’t move to compensate. He noticed its wielder held it with only one hand, and despite all its weight, kept it perfectly still.

“Then look around,” Dan offered.

“My friend will look around, but not in the grass. Find out if he's lying!” the scarred man barked.

Dan had been too focused on the sword and its owner to notice the other figure standing some ten metres further behind. He'd completely forgotten he'd been hearing two sets of feet on the dirt, not just one. It wasn't that he was unobservant, but the great girth of the scarred man's torso took up almost all of Dan's field of vision, and the looming threat of sharp steel had kept Dan's mind preoccupied.

The scarred man stepped to his right, still keeping his sword trained on Dan's face. There was now an open line of sight between Dan and a hunched over, black cloaked figure. Gnarled, almost corpse-like hands protruding from the sleeves, were the only thing to prove there was a person beneath it. Or a thing. It barely looked human.

Dan was out numbered as well as out muscled. What should've been a neat trip into town was getting very, very messy. The only other choice at this moment, apart from standing his ground, would be to turn and sprint towards the guards while screaming and shouting for help. Something made him think he'd have a gut full of metal before he got close. Dan's mind raced frantically.

Find out if he's lying? What the Hell does he mean by th--

Dan's brain shorted out. Those pale, sickly hands beneath the black cloak snapped together with a clap, palms in and fingers up like a gesture of prayer, and suddenly there was an invasive pressure in Dan’s skull. It was right behind his eyes and throbbed like a brain freeze from drinking something too cold. Dan reeled, stumbling back as the pressure amplified. He could feel it slowly working its way around the circumference of his head until it settled at the rear, just above his neck. His eyes blurred. There was no thought, no mental function, only a dazed sensation like he'd been struck with a brick, and a rapidly rising nausea in his gullet.

Quickly as the sensation came on, it faded. Dan felt like throwing up. He knew he'd just been the target of some kind of magic.

“Truth,” the cloaked figure rasped. His larynx seemed full of gravel, sandpaper and thumbtacks. It sounded painful for him to speak.

Dan’s vision came back in focus and he tried to concentrate on taming the queasiness. His head felt absolutely wrong, in simple terms. It was like his memory of the last minute had been replaced with the memory of an empty, groggy haze. His understanding of how time had been passing didn’t quite add up and he felt like he may have just been standing in place, staring blankly in a daydream, for an entire hour.

“Good enough for you to follow us in, stranger. You should reconsider your approach for next time. Had my friend not been around to confirm your intentions”--the scarred man pointed to the black cloaked figure with the tip of his claymore, as if the oversize blade weighed less than air--“you’d be dead.”

“Point taken. Thanks for, er, not killing me… I guess."

Dan wheezed a breath of relief. He thought about voicing his unhappiness about whatever the cloaked figure did to make him feel so sick and strange, yet knew it would get him nothing but an evisceration. He kept quiet and towed along behind the scarred man and his cloaked companion, as they walked on ahead like nothing happened.

In my head. My head… What did he do?

They moved in silence, Dan maintaining a good distance, getting closer to the checkpoint at the western boundary of Nelligin. Despite the torches held by the soldiers and the soft glows from what he assumed were candle lit windows and street lamps, it was still too dark for Dan to actually see the town proper.

Dan shivered, a quick blast of frigid wind from the caps of the Jagged Mountains reminding him of how cold he was. With only a chain mail singlet to protect the scarred man from the elements, he should've been at least shivering. As it was he paid the cold no mind. Not only was he big, but he was tough as well.

He’s probably killed more people than I’ve had warm meals, Dan thought. Yet he cares about avoiding trouble with the soldiers? He could carve up dozens of them without even blinking. What is he even doing here? And what the Hell did that freak in the cloak do to my head?

They continued walking on in silence until four guards standing at western entrance checkpoint to Nelligin turned to face them, staring through the slits of their helmets with scrutiny, if not apprehension. Two were standing directly in front of the iron entrance gate with a firm stance, feet planted squarely and one hand resting on their sword hilts at the hip. The other two were leaning casually with folded arms on the wall.

None of the soldiers were holding their torches anymore, instead had them jammed into the dirt to keep both hands free and ready to draw arms should they need to. It seemed they hadn't expected anyone to arrive at Nelligin this late at night. It would've also been plainly obvious, from a mile away, that the black skinned, one eyed man was very dangerous and very armed.

Dan thought that the four soldiers could pass as quadruplicates of one person. They were of completely uniform height and shape. Their red feather plumed helmets were almost fully enclosed, with only small gaps for the eyes and mouth. All of them wore several days of stubble. Apart from that that, every inch their skin was covered by a full suit of polished plate mail armour. The torchlight reflected in a blurry glow off their chest plates, and the metal clinked together as they adjusted their postures idly.

As Dan, the nameless scarred man, and the black cloaked figure, came close enough to be seen properly in the dancing torchlight, the four soldiers snapped to attention. They stood up tall and tensed. The two leaning against the township walls stepped forwards to the sides of their two comrades in front of the iron gate. The guards formed a single line, four wide.

The intimidating size of the scarred man had whipped them into alert. There was a weighty pause--something of a standoff--as each side waited for the other to speak first. One of the soldiers, his armour a little more dented and scratched up than his comrades, stepped forward again.

He must be the veteran of the group, Dan thought.

“Halt, gentlemen. Nelligin is occupied by the Corone Armed Forces and none enter or leave without our screening. Who are you and why do you come here?”

Dan opened his mouth and almost spoke, but the scarred man got in first and stepped forward to meet the soldier who questioned him. His mammoth sized arms were folded firmly over his chest. The muscles and veins were bulging, accenting his already impressive shape.

“I am Arx. My cloaked companion is Rendel. We are hired protection for the convoy travelling south to the borders of Underwood,” he answered.

You're kidding. Bus buddies. Awkward.

Arx stepped closer and passed over two pieces of parchment. The seemingly older soldier stood his ground, while his three companions took a half step back, flinching retreat. It seemed more involuntary than a conscious decision. New recruits.

The veteran soldier examined the paperwork and returned it, a visible kink in his neck as he looked upwards at the giant before him. He looked back at his three fellow soldiers, quietly disgusted the couldn't hold the line despite the fact a sword hadn't even been drawn yet.

“My bald companion, here…” Arx offered, unfolding one arm and stepping aside to point to Dan who stood quietly in the background.

Dan took the cue when the introduction trailed off. There was an unspoken understanding, despite meeting with hostility only five minutes ago, that no one wanted to tumble with the CAF.

“Arrundir. Here, check my paperwork,” Dan finished. He steped forward to produce the false script from his pocket.

The soldier took a lot longer to examine this one, looking back to Dan then back to the script repeatedly, as if cross-examining each detail. The pause went for too long. Dan hoped on his life that there wasn’t some giveaway to the forgery.

“Arrundir is an elven name. You don’t look anything like an elf,” the soldier quizzed. His voice took a sharp tone. He was suspicious.

Dan felt a quick pang of worry. He was never good at thinking up excuses on his feet, and generally got caught out whenever he attempted deceit. He'd thought about this situation not too long ago, but never came up with a good alibi.

“Don’t remind me. Mum was a bit of a nature lover. Always had this obsession with elves, druids, fairies, all that crap. Thinking about changing it to something manly, like Barry, or Bob, or John, or Warwick, or Trevor, or Glen, or Simon, or even something cool like Maximus…” Dan said.

It was lame, but it would have to do. Sometimes its easier to forget about pride, and just make yourself look silly to get away with things.

Dan continued rattling off strong male names until the soldier got tired of the verbal diarrhea, and stuffed the false identification script back in Dan’s hand.

“Whatever. Get inside before you freeze to death, gentlemen,” the veteran soldier said.

He signalled something to his troops with a brief wave of his metal plated hand. One of the other three other soldiers opened the iron gate with a loud squeak and grind of rusty hinges. They stepped aside and opened the path for Arx and Rendel, who walked through and disappeared wordlessly into the dark. Well, Arx walked through. Rendel more so glided and bobbed over the ground as if he was floating upon a cushion of air, his cloak trailing behind all mystic-like.

Dan waited, not wanting to push the temporary friendship and follow the two around now they’d gained entry to the township. Their purpose in associating with each other was finished for the time being, it seemed.

“You're not with them?” said one of the recruit soldiers who'd been too scared to stand strong with the veteran of the group. He'd been silent until now. He sounded young, with a particularly cocky "I-know-something-that-you-don't" tone about himself, despite his involuntary show of cowardice.

“Yeah, uh, sort of just followed them for a bit of protection. Safety in numbers and all that,” Dan said.

He came clean. He didn't want to dig himself into a lie about being some kind of mercenary for a convoy he knew nothing about. Still, with a powerful build of his own and plenty of scars to match, he could've pulled off calling himself a wandering killer for hire.

The soldier paused to look him up and down, quietly amused at Dan's response to the question. Dan decided he didn't like the recruit's arrogance. Without the uniform and swords, the man beneath would've been soft as a wet sponge. It didn't matter.

"And what're you doing here?" the soldier pushed.

"Got a ride south with Prester's Escorts to Underwood."

“Whatever, man. I’d have taken the chances on my own. You're gonna get caught up in the war. People around Arx and Rendel tend to lose their heads, or if they're lucky just get vaporised." There was warning in his voice. A subtle hint.

Stay. Away.

“What’re you getting at?”

“You heard the big man. ‘Hired protection.’ They’re mercs. Good ones, too. The problem is they tend to just kill people who piss them off, if they're not already being paid to do it.”

“Sounds good. So, if someone teases me again about my mother’s penchant for wussy names, I can pay Arx to chop ‘em in half. Or Rendel to turn them into a toad. And then Arx can chop the toad in half. Excellent,” Dan joked.

The soldier laughed but not at the joke. He laughed at Dan, who was coming off more than a bit simple. The alibi worked, it seemed. Dan grinned widely, and walked through the open gate. With another loud squeak and rattle, it closed behind him. He'd made it into Nelligin.

[Etheryn]

Dan felt the tension wash away. All the apprehension of traveling through the wilderness, very much alone and in the dark. He'd done it for years before, but never under an assumed identity and on the way to commit treachery against the Empire for the purpose of helping an estranged brother.

The potential consequences for failure were like a heavy sandbag on his shoulders. Now he'd made it to the perceived safety within Nelligin's walls and Dan felt he could put the sandbag down until he needed to carry it on. He was lighter. He walked through the township aimlessly, much as he did during his first day in Radasanth, to gain a lay of the land.

There were no roads, no cobblestone. Only tracks that had been worn down into the wet grass through thousands of repeated footfalls. Wheel tracks from carts and wagons could be seen dredged into the mud, punctuated by hoof prints from the horses and other domestic beasts that helped keep the township moving.

Dan could see fairly well despite the dark. At almost every corner was a permanently fixed iron post shaped like a 'T', each side of it holding a single kerosene lamp. In the black spots where the streetlamps didn't illuminate, were oil torches mounted upon splintered wooden stakes. It seemed the townspeople made an effort to keep the place well lit in the dark. Dan was grateful.

Nelligin seemed like it was built upon fertile lands, as the grass was vibrant and green, in spite of the scorching summer and contrasting freezing nights. It didn't seem the high quality lands translated into prosperity for the workers, though. The general state of things in the town was one of disrepair. Everything was shabby, old and rusted. There were no signs of any measurable wealth. Taxes must be high.

While walking and considering the new environment, Dan noticed Nelligin's homes were very much uniform. All single level, simple cubes and rectangles of stacked mortar and brick. They were a mixture of deep reds, browns, and otherwise earthen colours. Absent of stairs, decking or even doorsteps, the simplicity of the structures suggested they were for function only. There were no windows, so they looked more like oversized crates than places where people live.

Everything was unevenly placed. The front doors to each box-like house faced in all different directions as if their construction wasn't planned and they'd sprung randomly from the ground. Because of this, it was impossible to define a street by which way the front doors faced. The irregular order made the main strip of the town, if it could be called that, wind and bend like a serpent. Dan accidentally doubled back on himself once or twice because of it.

More or less, it seemed like the campsite at Woodstock '79. You took up space where it was available. Still, Nelligin's people made their own haphazard order in the place.

Dan walked past a fleet of upturned wooden boats on the grass and stopped to look at them, touching a finger to the wet coat of black emulsion paint on the hulls. He remembered the noxious, tar like smell of it. He'd spent many days in his youth applying it to dry docked schooners in Baitmans Bay.

The vessels before him were presumably a common mode of transport from Nelligin to Radasanth. The town was only a few hundred metres south of Niema River and considering the difficulty of the hilly pass he'd just crossed, it would be far easier to float upstream if one wanted to visit the capital. Next to the boats were old and tangled nets, oars, coiled ropes, boxes of lead sinkers and hand reels. The amount of equipment piled up said the fishermen did it for a living. People here got by on the sweat of their brow.

Dan remembered seeing a barn as the moon briefly shone down onto Nelligin, just before parting ways with Alfonse. Dan paused to think where it could be, unable to see it through the deep night, even with all the dancing glows of street lamps and torches. He walked for a few minutes more and eventually halted at the eastern boundary wall. He'd crossed the town without dissecting the centre.

Dan thought about finding someone to ask for directions but the town was absolutely empty. The kind of dreaming tranquility that one only finds in rural lands, where the shadiness of midnight dealings just aren't a concern for anyone. No one stays awake through the night in places like that. They were all tucked away in bed. The next day of labour demanded it.

Despite knowing why the place was so still, Dan could feel it again. The oppression of a great emptiness surrounding him, peeling away that veil of protection offered by the town's walls and reminding him of how he was truly alone in his journey. It was like the constricting presence of thousands of strangers in Radasanth's trade squares, but flipped in reverse. He'd feel better come morning. Sleep would be good.

Another ten minutes of aimless walking and Dan found the barn he'd seen earlier. The structure was old redwood, and had a great tower on the roof. A vantage point from which one could see for miles in all directions. There was a faint glow from the crow's nest of that tower, and Dan assumed someone was up there with an eyeglass, keeping a lonesome night watch, on the lookout for incoming bandit raids or any other potential threats.

The barn doors were massive and looked like they'd need two men to open. There were already slightly ajar and there was a sliver of light filtering out. Someone had to be inside but Dan was unsure if he should look. It was just too quiet. It could be private property, and in the middle of the night he'd look like a trespasser, or worse a thief.

Technically, he was trespassing.

All he could hear was that constant drone of mountain winds, a few crackling oil torches, and distant jingles and clanks from the armour of patrolling guardsmen on the town perimeter. There were no voices. He sucked in a deep breath and decided to squeeze through for a look.

He'd taken half a step forward before the door rattled with a cracking impact. It flung open, pushing a wall of air and dust onto Dan's face, as if the door itself was an oversize smithy's bellows. Dan had to take several quick steps backwards, almost tripping over to avoid leaving his teeth in the wood grain. He looked over his shoulder to make sure there was no one behind him. The surprise shot his veins full of adrenalin, preparing him to defend himself. Dan looked forwards once he'd regained a steady footing.

There was a mountainous silhouette standing square with his arms folded, seemingly relaxed despite an incredible feat of strength. The barn's interior lighting cast masking shadows over the figure. There was only one man in town that big and that strong.

"Arrundir. What is it you want?" Arx rumbled.

Even with a running start I couldn't bash these doors open like that. The man is a freak.

Dan paused in confusion for only a moment, forgetting he'd introduced himself earlier under an assumed identity. Dan's belly filled with frustration before he answered.

"You could've just opened the damned door like a regular person," Dan replied.

Although there was absolutely no chance he could defeat Arx in any kind of physical combat, Dan was fast becoming impatient with the repeated dramatics. Strength commanded no respect if it was demonstrated without modesty, without restraint. Perhaps it was needed in Arx's profession but Dan wouldn't swallow it.

"I knew you were approaching but not why. This is the second time you've snuck upon me, stranger. Explain yourself," Arx warned.

With a quick flash of steel Arx drew his claymore sword and held it by his side, perpendicular to the dusty floor. There was a pause. They stared at each other without challenge, gauging each other's intentions and calculating how their second meeting would play out.

Dan analysed the environment and the inside of the barn, looking around and past Arx for other threats. He found nothing. The broadside walls were over seventy feet long. The roof cavity was latticed with thick wooden support beams. Lit kersone lanterns hung in even fifteen feet spacing on the broadside walls at around shoulder height. They didn't give off much glow, but there was just enough for Dan to see the barn was almost completely empty. There was nothing obscured from his view.

The coast was clear, apart from the stairs to the tower and a single table piled with papers. It wasn't what Dan expected. Barns usually housed animals, produce, farmer's tools, at least some kind of clutter that made sense to the man who made it. This was simply a cavernous empty space.

"I'm just trying to find somewhere to stay. I need to go south with some caravan run by Prester's Escorts and I'm assuming they only go during the day," Dan explained. He was matter of fact about it.

He didn't try the nice guy routine. It didn't work twenty minutes ago and nothing had changed since. Arx didn't seem the type who laughed often, if ever. Dan opted for being straight up and honest. Hard men seemed to respond to that more.

Arx was silent. His only reply was to sheath his sword, turn around and walk away towards the staircase landing. Dan quickly flicked his eyes around, checking his peripheral and looking for any moving shadows. He expected Rendel to blindside him at any moment, yet there was nothing to hide behind. Nothing stirred.

That creepy little bastard isn't around. Probably off terrifying children.

Dan remembered the freezing cold pressure in his head. Mind magic. It seemed dark. Wrong. Rotten. He still felt a bit nauseous from it.

Arx paused and turned back to face Dan once more.

"You'll be traveling with my cloaked friend and I. Step inside," he offered sternly. Dan wasn't sure if it was Arx's strange accent and twisting of the "E" syllables that made it just sound like it, but it the invitation seemed like a command as well.

With a cautious pause to consider the limited options --Refuse and die, or accept and die, he thought--Dan gave a curt nod. He stepped over the threshold and into the barn but moved no further, still wary.

"That's why you're here. You two are part of the defence outfit for the trip to Underwood," Dan surmised.

"We're not part of it," Arx responded.

"You said it yourself to the guards. 'We are hired protection for the convoy traveling south.'" Dan was careful to avoid the mockery of imitating Arx's accent while quoting him.

"As I said. We're not part of it," Arx's voice trailed off, leaving only a quiet echo bouncing about the empty barn.

He still stood at the base of the stairwell, one hand gripping the railing and the other rested on his quadricep. He was impatient to return to the lookout post.

"Then what did you mean?"

"We're all of it. The protection detail."

"Just you and Rendel?"

"Yes. Find somewhere to sleep. The convoy arrives at daybreak and will not stop. We leave with them. I'll keep watch for their arrival," Arx finished.

He started climbing up. The staircase rattled and groaned beneath Arx's weight. Dan didn't move an inch until it fell silent and the one-eyed giant had resumed his post.

Dan walked a few laps, trying to find something to use as bedding for the night. He was very, very tired. He picked up a pile of dirty blankets from the far corner and spread them about the floor. He rolled about fitfully trying to get comfortable and eventually found the right position on his side.

The table full of parchments and scrolls occupied his view. The one next to the staircase. He was curious. Dan approached the table. One piece of particularly oversized parchment, resting in the middle of the table, was a map. Coloured stones like markers were dotted over Corone's geography. Blue over Radasanth as well as Serenti in the south eastern corner. Red over Underwood and Gisela. White over Akashima.

He'd never seen the shape of the continent drawn in such detail. He'd never known where Akashima was and never knew it was so close. He paused, looking over it, taking in the information. He looked to the south eastern peninsula then to the mouth of the Bradbury River.

The map reminded him how far he was from home. He committed it to memory.

Dan figured the coloured stones meant something. He picked one of the blue stones and rolled it in his hand. He felt an etching on the underside. He turned it over to look. There was cursive print, in a font so small it was almost illegible. "Battalion 4."

It clicked. Dan was looking at a tactical overlay of the factions in control at different places throughout the continent. There were obscure lines and arrows drawn across it, signifying what Dan assumed were the known movements of military forces. Considering the presence of CAF soldiers in Nelligin, Dan assumed the map belonged to the them.

Seems they left in a hurry. What the Hell is going on?

Arx's voice bellowed out from above, as if directly answering Dan's thoughts. "Save your questions 'til morning. I'll explain everything then."

Dan didn't reply. He walked back to the lumpy blanket on the hard dirt and laid down. It smelled of sweat, grease and something else he couldn't quite figure out. It stank. He considered the other scents in the air, and noticed that strange smell in the blanket was also set into the dirt. Into the walls. It hung in the air. Slightly toxic, like the heady fumes of varnish on newly laid floorboards.

Polish. Alfonse carries buckets of it in the back of his cart. "A clean blade is a sharp blade is a good blade!"

The way the smell was set into the floor and sides and dirt of the barn spoke to Dan. Like the smell of tobacco smoke stains the carpet and tells all who visit of the owner's habit, this space gave away that it was used by a great number of troops. Perhaps as a briefing room, a staging area, even a temporary armoury. They'd left in a hurry and spared only a skeleton crew for the town.

Dan closed his eyes and pondered about where they'd gone. He lost his train of thought, and his head filled with sleepy nonsense. It wasn't long before he fell asleep.

He dreamed of standing with Aaron in a faraway forest, dark and wet with tendrils of fog wrapping around their ankles. They were both waiting for something. A demonic battle roar blasted in their ears and kettle drums beat furiously. The ground shook and a thousand steel soldiers charged them down from all directions, eyes glowing yellow through the slit of the helmets, hands full of murderous hatchets and swords. A torrent of wicked arrows rained down from above. There was no way for them to escape and they knew it. Dan didn't wake up before the first arrow plunged into his stomach.

An uncanny premonition. He didn't know it.

[Etheryn]

The morning was going to be glorious. The sky was shades of soft pink, peach and orange as the sun peeked over the horizon, bringing with it a toasty warmth that raised Dan's spirit. The thick clouds and howling winds of last night were gone, replaced with birds overhead chirping a song of the pleasant summer day to come. The air smelled sweet, crisp and clean.

Dan stood in front of the barn, yawning and rubbing at his eyes and deeply inhaling the new dawn. He stretched out the stiffness from an awkward sleep, and looked back at the doors. Arx had left without a sound. Dan's guts rumbled, just to remind him of their existence.

Food. Gotta get food.

While Dan thought on how to satisfy his belly, he looked on as droves of workers passed by. Some were on foot and some in horse-drawn carts. They pushed barrows full of grain for cattle and carried heavy lengths of split lumber planks. Four burly men held a twenty foot fisherman's punt over their heads, unencumbered by the weight, and marched toward the banks of Niema River with synchronized steps. Another two men followed with crates full of rope, netting, hooks and bait.

Nelligin seemed busy and alive in comparison to the quiet night when Dan first arrived, and the human presence was enough to give him some relief. He wasn't scared of the dark, but a belly full of worry while creeping through tense midnights, eventually got tiresome. Especially when there was all sorts of nasty waiting to take a stab at your back.

For a moment, Dan watched the fishermen. It reminded him of home and the simpler life he'd given up. Instantly, he felt some regret. He almost wanted to throw his lot with those men, even work without pay. Anything for a taste of that salty air, for a day on the rolling swell.

Dan watched the fishermen trudge out of sight, and kept still to watch other people begin their day. They gave polite nods and smiles and he replied with the same. He pondered the niceties of Nelligin's people and why they seemed so cheerful.

A decidedly good looking young lady--in that wholesome, innocent farm girl sense--crossed his view. Dan thought he'd been caught with his mouth agape. She was more than thirty feet away yet Dan could tell she was grinning at him, her blushed cheeks and deep blue eyes framed by thick blonde hair that cascaded down her front and back, accenting some interesting curves.

She wore a plain white dress that finished at the knees, and a brown apron pocked white with corn flour and starch. She carried an armful of bread sticks. The only thing stopping Dan from charging her down like a feral dog and going ballistic was his dislike of tight spaces, like jail cells, for example.

Going ballistic on the breadsticks, that is. Get your mind out of the gutter.

"Ma'am! Hey, hey! Over here!" Dan called out to her. "Where do I get some of those?" He waved his right hand and cupped the left to his mouth to better direct his voice and catch her attention.

She stopped and faced Dan, stepping forwards and out of the way of another fishing crew hauling an even bigger boat than the last. She came closer to avoid shouting her reply.

"It's the building closest to the south gate," she answered. Her voice was soft and high pitched like a child's. She giggled. "My father only sells to men wearing clothes, I'm afraid."

The baker's daughter looked him up and down again. Her giggle blossomed into a great, rich laugh, deep from her belly. She shook her head and continued on her way while Dan paused to think. He suddenly realised his feet were damp. He couldn't remember getting his boots wet; it hadn't rained last night. He looked down.

"Real smooth, Dan."

Dan rushed back into the barn, jogged over to his makeshift bed in the corner and found all of his clothes piled neatly beside it. He'd risen and walked outside in a sleepy fog without remembering to get dressed. Unwittingly, he'd been showing off his impressively muscled, two hundred pound frame to the farmer's wives and baker's daughters of Nelligin. The public was now well educated on the details of Dan's 'tightie-whitie' underpants.

He expect pitchforks and a lynching within hours. It just wasn't proper to show off like that in rural communities.

Dan quickly dressed, almost beetroot red with embarrassment, and slung his canvas rucksack over his shoulder. He walked back to the barn door while strapping on his knife. He drew the retainers tight. Once he stepped outside again, Dan's nostrils homed in upon the scent of fresh bread. He followed it through the winding grass pathways and walked quickly, hasty to sate his newfound hunger.

Dan needed to fill his gut before leaving town. There may not be another opportunity until Underwood. The journey might take days. Weeks. He had no idea.

Dan meandered about, still exchanging short greetings with the townsmen--happy enough to spare the time despite his paining tummy--as he followed the bakery scent. He was a bloodhound sniffing out a rabbit. Eventually, Dan came to a squat, cubed building, much the same as Nelligin's typical homes except made of white and grey sandstone slabs. Two asymmetrical and lopsided chimneys rose from the brown tiled roof. The chimneys puffed away in bursts, like great tobacco pipes, with an even greater lung at the base.

There was an open archway to the bakery in place of a door. Dan stepped inside and saw two dome shaped brick ovens standing side by side, each with four shelving trays that were lined with mounds of dough, some long and some thin, some flat and some round. Each oven had a deep fire pit beneath, glowing red and orange with embers. Like the barn in which Dan spent the night before, there was dusty earth where the floor should be.

There were tables and shelves all around, each loaded with the morning's effort. It looked delicious. Almost intoxicating. Dan stared into the spiral of a cinnamon bun, which looked like a hypnotist's pinwheel. It may as well have been one. He was entranced all the same.

Dan could see the back of a heavy set man in a white baker's uniform kneeling down in front of the fire pits, thrusting at them with an iron poker. Dan waited what seemed like minutes. That was as far as his patience went. Gut first, everything else later.

"Hello? Sir?"

"Name's Dorrahy, stranger. No one calls me sir. Gimme just a few more seconds to"--he leaned lower, grunted with effort and jabbed harder--"sort this bloody thing out."

Dan stood quietly and watched the baker work. He was overweight yet moved comfortably as he leaned to turn the unburned firewood. With a bellowing "Aha! Got ya!" Dorrahy stood from his prostration before the fire pit, and tossed the iron stoker aside.

Dorrahy was about the same height and weight as Dan yet all fat instead of muscle. His arms were thin in comparison to the rounded bulge of his belly. He was hirsute like a dwarf yet had the big, round blue eyes of an elf, set beneath a wrinkled and bushy brow. The baker had seen many years. He wore a white baker's uniform, complete with toque, buttoned jacket and slacks. His half length brown apron, made of cured hide, was dusted with flour. His only footwear were open toe sandals.

"Do I pay first?"

"Fill your boots."

"I would if I didn't have to wear them," Dan answered while sliding his canvas rucksack from his shoulder.

"You're stocking up, eh?" Dorrahy asked.

"Sure am. Got a long trip ahead."

Dan busied himself with loading cinnamon scrolls, bread sticks and cheese pastries into his rucksack. He walked two full circuits of the shelves before finishing. They exchanged coins and if Dorrahy's hands weren't sticky with flour and dough Dan would've offered a handshake. Instead, he started inhaling bread like a man possessed.

"Mmmph"--Dan tore a warm chunk off with his teeth like a wolf on a carcass--"I'll tell ya what," Dan said. He chewed through the words with pauses to swallow.

"I'm the best?"

"Pretty much," Dan complimented.

"Who do I owe the compliments to, stranger?"

"Arrundir."

"And where are you headed?" Dorrahy asked, in that manner which suggested he wasn't really interested but owed the feigned nicety, given the compliment he'd just received.

"Going deep south. Not sure how long it'll take me."

Dorrahy's expression sharpened. He gave Dan an examining look. If he wasn't interested before, he certainly was now.

"You don't look like a soldier," Dorrahy challenged.

Dan stopped chewing, swallowed and put the half eaten piece of some unnamed soft pastry--Dan could've cried for having to do so--back into his rucksack. Dorrahy's change in temperament was noticeable. Dan regarded him with discrete wariness.

"That's because I'm not."

"Then why are you going south?"

"Please. I have my reasons," Dan acquiesced. He didn't want to offend and did his best to maintain a friendly, civil tone.

"Suit yourself. All I know is south belongs to the Rangers 'til the Empire guts the lot of those filthy, traitorous bastards. Bloody business. My bet is you'll get killed if you're not on the Empire's side, stranger," Dorrahy warned.

The baker was suspicious and the violence of words didn't fit the vernacular of a jovial, pudgy baker wearing a funny hat.

He's an Empire supporter. Knew there'd be folks out of CAF uniform who back their cause. Better be careful.

Dan felt aware of the risks he took under the disguise of the name Arrundir. He knew he was likeable enough, but didn't delude himself into thinking he could measure a stranger's loyalties upon first greetings. Full-time deception was the game of politicians, not simple fishermen.

"The Rangers be damned for all I care. Have a good day, Dorrahy."

Dan turned and a walked back through the arched entrance, waving over his shoulder with one hand and resumed stuffing pieces of warm bread into his mouth with the other. As a whole, what would've been a pleasant meeting turned sour. It didn't matter. The food was all he needed.

Dan walked back to the western gate and offered some formal nods and acknowledgements to the four guardsmen standing post at the gate. Although all soldiers in plate mail generally looked the same, Dan could tell these guardsmen weren't the same from last night. The scratches and dents in their armour didn't match up and they seemed more attentive, standing straight and ready as opposed to slouching against the walls. They greeted him with "Good day, citizen" in a formal tone.

They reeked of greenness. It was too fake. Their apparent diligence and professionalism was to avoid getting reamed by superiors, not out of real passion for duty. Someone must have gotten in trouble and was trying to keep out of hot water. Besides, there's got to be some rubric for choosing who gets the sucky job of staying back, while everyone else gets to have a grand old time getting killed on the battlefield.

May as well be the guys who get in trouble who get to stay home. What a punishment they endured, indeed.

Minutes past. He looked up at the steep, winding path he'd navigated the night before. In full daylight he could now appreciate the precariousness of it, and wondered how he'd traversed the rocky crags without tripping. Without anything to really do while standing at the gate, Dan felt stares from the guardsmen poking at the back of his head. Dan fiddled idly with a handful of nothing in his pocket, and adjusted his rucksack even though it was already set right.

A slowly rising sound approached from the north west like a regiment of cavalry, horses at full galloping pace, racing with purpose, rattling wagons bouncing along behind them. There were too many individual hoof beats to count the horses in the team. One charged ahead, the sound growing louder until Dan could hear the rider barking syllables of command.

Arx burst through the long grass aboard a magnificent warhorse that looked like it belonged to one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Jet black and rippling with vascular muscles, it's hooves were shod with spiked metal and its torso draped in chainmail with interspersed metal plating. It wore an almost fully enclosed head casing with three more metal spikes. Each was almost a foot long and ended in a mercilessly hooked barb. They were arranged in a vertical line and angled forward like a rhinoceros horn. The first was between the eyes, the second midway down the face, and the third just above the muzzle and nostrils.

The stallion had been at full sprint with significant weight upon its shoulders, and any lesser example of fine equine breeding would've been absolutely spent. Arx's mount had used barely a portion of its energy and was stamping at the ground, almost hungry to keep running. The beast was massive and fearsome, clearly the alpha male of its herd. Arx was imposing enough figure standing on his own feet, now even more so atop the mighty steed.

"We leave in minutes and we do not stop for anything. Have your proof of payment ready," Arx said.

Dan searched through his rucksack and at first pulled out only crumbs. He tried again and fumbled out the receipt for his journey south aboard Prester's Escorts. He held in his fist, not sure whether to offer it to Arx or someone else.

The rumbling sound of wagons had caught up, coming closer until three of them came through the grass as Arx did. The wagons were more like tanks than anything else. Each had a closed roof, topped with a raised bump--presumably an escape hatch-- and stalwart armour plating that looked incredibly expensive.

Like a mobile mini-fortress, fifteen feet long and ten feet high, the wagons looked almost impregnable. The timber was painted matte black, the armour was weaponised with wicked steel, spikes and long blades that spread out to the sides like wings. If the wagons were in motion, anything stupid enough to approach it would be sliced to meaty ribbons.

There was a thick wire mesh grate at the front of each caravan, the only viewport available for the driver. The design was like a shield allowing the driver to remain protected and hidden from view while steering the wagon onwards. There was one similar opening to each side of the wagon, allowing any passengers to see their immediate flanks without being too exposed.

There were no doors, only what looked like a slightly depressed panel on the right side of each wagon, like a roller door with runners at the bottom and top. It would slide inwards and set into the wagon's wall itself, preventing anyone but the occupants from opening the door. There was no exterior handle to pull on.

Each of the wagons were drawn by two downsized versions of Arx's warhorse, a tandem team set in one shared harness. They were all grey and mottled whites, each decorated with a uniform armour of interlinked chainmail and plate. They swelled with muscle that spoke of speed and endurance, and despite this they seemed drained by the effort of towing the wagons. Second rate, it seemed, to Arx's charger.

The middle wagon in the column of three pulled to a halt in front of Dan. Close up, he could see even more brutal steel protruding from the rim of each wagon wheel, designed to mince any man or beast that approached while it rotated. There was a muffled, tinny sound like barrel locks being manipulated from the interior. A sliding side door opened.

Dan heard a voice come from inside the horse-drawn tank but couldn't see the face. "Get in. Now."

"Only if you promise me the inside isn't as sharp as the outside."

"No time for small talk, funny man. Get in."

Dan froze. The grave tone, by which his sarcasm was rejected, drew his attention to several thick lengths protruding irregularly from the wagon. There were trimmed feathers on the ends. Flights. The wagons had been pelted with a barrage of crossbow bolts, fired with enough force to puncture and buckle some of the armour. Dan wondered how the horses had been spared in what seemed an intense assault.

That's why Arx said "We're all of it." Everyone else got killed.

Dan paused. Instinct said this was actually a bad idea.

"I won't say it again. Get in."

Dan looked up at the rosy morning sky, and sighed deeply. Every day seemed more dangerous than the last.

[Etheryn]

The wagon interior was spartan and absent of anything that didn't exist for self-defense, seeming more like the barren inside of a milk crate than a mode of transport. There were no seats apart from one small, stool-like fixture at the front for the driver. The only things to grab hold of and steady oneself, should the ride become bumpy, were a set of rings and handles that came from the ceiling and walls.

Seats would only be hurdles to anyone trying to move about quickly. In fact, despite the flashiness of the wagon's exterior, the interior was completely empty. A box, full of nothing but right angles.

The single wire mesh viewport at each side allowed only a small amount of light. If there wasn't enough space for light to filter through, there was less for air. It'd be like riding in an oven with wheels later in the day. Safety before comfort was the goal for Prester's Escorts.

Worst of all, something stank. Badly.

"What's that smell?" Dan asked lamely. Really, he already knew the answer and sought only confirmation.

There was an elf standing in front of Dan who didn't yet bother to answer. The elf simply stood next to the driver, looking forward, and seemed to whisper something. He was dressed strangely and held a beige-yellow yew recurve bow in his left hand.

Dan seated himself against the back wall of the wagon and drew his knees up, resting his elbows on them. The elf turned around and wordlessly tapped on the driver's right shoulder, all the while leveling his eyes at Dan.

The tap on the driver's shoulder must've meant "go." The wagon shook and the convoy set off again, at a much more relaxed pace than when they'd first arrived.

The elf remained upright and seemed to balance himself upon the rocking floor like he was a surfer on a wave. He didn't need to make use of the many handles and rings about the ceiling and walls. Had Dan been standing without grabbing on, he would've likely tumbled over. The elf oozed skill, and idly thumbed at the drawstring of his bow.

"You know what the smell is. How far are you going?" the elf asked. His voice was serious and decisive. Something about his mannerisms suggested he was in charge.

"Underwood. Prester, right?"

"That's me. I'd ask your name if I didn't already have it on your ticket," Prester quipped.

Prester was an elf of slight build and average height, all sleek lines and wiry sinew, with stereotypical pointed ears and long platinum white hair. He wore it tied in a messy ponytail that looked like frayed rope. His eyes were deep emerald green, with a coldly intelligent, predatory gaze. They were framed with dark bags almost like he wore makeup.

Dan saw it as the physical symptom of exhaustion and sleep deprivation. Something about Prester showed he had no interest in the frivolities and spirituality of his elven kin. In fact, he wore no decorations or adornments at all. A real hard liner. No hang ups. One of those non-human folk who'd abandoned their traditions because they were too cumbersome for progress.

Prester wore a short sleeved cotton tunic, a mixture of navy blue and black, that was half tucked into what would described best as a pleated leather kilt. The kilt finished at knee length. His boots finished half way up the shin and were dark scaled hide with soft rubber soles absent of treading. There were no laces, as if they fitted well enough to simply slip on. There were mottled stains over his clothes, and they looked dirty and wrinkled. It didn't take much thought to assume the stains were blood, given it was ingrained in the walls as well.

A thin slice beginning from Prester's lower left earlobe, crossing his collarbone and finishing on the right side of his chest confirmed what his battle-torn clothes suggested. The cut looked almost surgically clean, as if whatever made it was razor sharp. The wound was superficial and shallow, and although it may need stitches it was clotted well.

If the crossbow bolt graffiti on outside chassis wasn't enough, Prester's appearance confirmed it. There had been some serious fighting and his convoy was part of it.

"So. Stupid question number two. Will this be dangerous?" Dan said.

"There are no stupid questions. Just stupid people," Prester said.

"Maybe I should elaborate. Is this going to be more dangerous than those crossbow bolts, and the great big scratch you've got on your skinny little chest, might indicate?"

"If we keep up a good pace, no. If we stuff around, yes," Prester said.

The elf leaned his head back against the wagon wall and rolled his eyes as if Dan was foolish for not already knowing the answer.

"I went through the entire pass before Nelligin, and before that the main tracks from Radasanth. Not even a sniff of bastardry in the hills," Dan countered.

He didn't want to give up that he'd actually been knee-knocking scared pretty much the whole time. Hey, it's only natural.

"We rode through the night in an open top cart full of brand new swords and steel and didn't come across a soul. Why would anyone attack you? Especially when your wagon is a freaking pin cushion on wheels?" Dan asked.

"Right place, right time. For someone to attempt to screw us, that is. Robbers know the soldiers are focused on the front lines, not protecting empty roads. They see our shiny carts and think we're loaded with cash."

"These robbers. Did they get anything?"

"Two wagons and most of my men," Prester answered.

Whoever tried them was good enough to take out the entire security detail and stop two of the wagons. Professionals. With that ability, why lowlife roadside piracy?

"And I suppose you expect more if we slow down. So, what you're trying to say is"--Dan's sentence was interrupted by a nasty bounce as the wagon hit a pothole--"they're following you to finish the job."

"Probably. We got away and we got ahead. The men we lost stayed back to give us time to put distance on them. So, we've got a head start, but our ability to retaliate is almost non-existent."

"Non-existent? Then why have I paid, uh, whatever it is I paid, for you to safely take me where I need to go? Without getting murdered?" Dan said indignantly. He felt tricked, like someone forgot to put the cheese on his cheeseburger and even gave him too little change.

"Your two thousand coins"--Holy Hell, that's a lot of money, Dan thought--"has no effect on how many people are taking advantage of the civil war to plunder everything they can," Prester said.

"That's fair. But, if you're already a target, why shouldn't I just get out and find my own way?" Dan persisted.

"Because if you knew you could pull it off you wouldn't be here. Simple as that."

"I've gotten along fine so far," Dan said.

"So far you haven't stepped foot into a warzone where the Empire and Rangers are trying to tear each other apart. The northern borders of Underwood are nothing but killing fields," Prester explained.

Prester's lips curled into to a self-satisfied smirk. The elf knew Dan was flailing to control his own destiny but just couldn't.

"And you're the best to get me through. With only two men to cover us," Dan sighed.

"I am. I know the safest route, I have contacts in every town, my equipment is top quality and my men are some of the most fearsome warriors on the continent. I wouldn't ask so much otherwise," Prester finished.

Prester turned, and resumed his post with the driver, standing still despite the rock and tumble of the wagon, and that was it. Conversation over.

Dan looked at the wagon floor, resting his chin upon the steeple of his fingertips. He was expecting a quiet, enjoyable journey where he could relax, have a nap when he wanted, and resume his light-hearted persona.

There were two good words to describe the situation, Dan thought. God. Damn.

Dan looked at the thin scars on his muscled forearms, each limb thick and hard like an oak bannister, hands knotted into fists. The skin stretched tight over his fingers and the ligaments of his knuckles pulled taught. He'd beaten a strong man not too long ago. That man, who Dan literally crushed, was feared by almost all who knew of him.

It won't be easy. Suck it up. Aaron hasn't been living easy either. You owe it to him.

Dan stood up and awkwardly stepped over to Prester who was still facing to the front, still whispering to the driver. Dan stumbled again on a pothole, and bounced back up from the left wall. With his left hand he gripped an overhead handlebar, and that was enough to keep steady.

At the sound of Dan stacking into the wall, Prester turned around once more. Dan extended his right hand, without making the assumption that elves may not understand the spirit behind the custom, or what it even means.

Prester looked down at Dan's hand, then back up. The elf's smirk had faded from his lips and left only a thin, neutral line. He waited for an explanation.

"Shake my hand, Prester."

"Why would I do that?"

"It's what you're supposed to do when you've got to work with someone, whether you like them or not," Dan explained.

Prester mirrored the gesture yet limply pressed his palm against Dan's, without wrapping the fingers around to complete the grip. It was commonly and disapprovingly called the "fairyshake" among the circle of salt-dried and hardened fishermen in Dan's hometown.

You can tell a lot about a man from their handshake. If they labour with a pickaxe or a pen. If they're quick, slow, or both. A lover or a fighter. Weak, strong, whatever. Someone who tries too hard to squeeze your hand in reply is over compensating. Someone who squeezes your hand as if it were a delicate flower often seems like a wuss.

Dan knew what to make of Prester. At least, he thought he did. He couldn't help it. There was no dam strong enough to hold back the flood of mirthful laughter. Dan cracked up, and Prester snatched his arm back defensively.

"Relax, relax. This how you do it," Dan explained.

They shook hands properly this time, once Dan gave some pointers, of course. Without trying, Dan's vigorous shake wobbled Prester's entire torso like an autumn leaf.

"A few more baked dinners, some heavy lifting, and you'll shake like a man in no time," Dan chided. It was own brand of friendly humour. Prester was more insulted than anything else.

With a satisfied sigh, pleased with the feeling of a good laugh, Dan resumed his seat at the rear of the wagon.

"So, 'Arrundir.' Why haven't you introduced with yourself using your name yet? Wouldn't that be simpler? Where I come from, we simply use something like, 'Hello, my name is…'" Prester said with buckets of sarcasm. Now it was his turn to embarass Dan.

"Yeah… Er…"

"You wouldn't happen to be using someone else's name, would you?"

Dan tensed up. "You know what things are like out there. The guardsmen are suspicious of everything. Everyone gets harassed. I'd prefer to travel unmolested. No harm done, you know."

"Who says I wouldn't report you?"

"I says! And so do these!"

Dan, shameless as he was, struck a double armed bicep flex. It was just as ridiculous as it sounds. He could see that Prester was trying really, really hard not to crack up like Dan did moments earlier. The line between professional and inhumanly boring is a fine one sometimes.

"Fair call. I was just hoping you'd make my day a little brighter, that's all," Prester said, barely able to maintain composure.

"I haven't already?"

"Well, had you actually tried to say your name was 'Arrundir'--my middle name, that is--I would've loved to hear you pronounce it. You don't seem sophisticated enough to manage the syllables," Prester jabbed.

"Get bent, Prester. Your, uh, 'creative writing' skills. They're part of your fee?"

Prester slapped his forehead with an open palm. "Next you'll tell me the sky is blue."

"So, a coachmaster who also commits forgery. How much of this operation is legal?" Dan said, tentative in his query. He'd never been one for lawbreaking.

"Considering what your two friends told me when paying for my services, you've got bigger worries," Prester said, folding his arms and raising an eyebrow.

Dan felt a little defensive. Despite barely knowing Bart and Kerrigan--the masterminds and coordinators of the plot which ended in Dan's escape from Radasanth--he'd trusted them with certain secrets. Big secrets. It stung more than just a little to know they could've divulged those same secrets to a complete stranger, despite how necessary it might've been at the time.

"And what'd my two friends tell you?"

"I know as much that your name is Dan James, and you're no longer welcome in Radasanth after attracting the ire of certain... Let's call them officials and leave it at that, eh?" Prester said with a wink full of mischief.

It wasn't even close to that kind of endearing, cute mischief, the one you attribute to a puppy tearing apart your shoes. It was more or less the kind that suggests "I know something that you don't, and I know it's getting on your nerves." Although this particular elf had given up the usual trappings of his ilk, he still had their stereotypical arrogance and aloof temperment.

"So, did Arx know it too?"

"Of course he did. Why do you think he kept watch over you while you slept on the barn floor?"

"Because he's a genuinely nice, loveable guy?" Dan said, trying his best to sidestep the sheepish embarrassment.

"Because part of my fee pays his wages and he's on duty every minute of the journey," Prester said.

"So it wasn't my own affable nature that won him over," Dan said.

Prester rolled his eyes. "If I told him to do it he'd lop your head off, scoop your brains out and use your skull for a coffee cup." It was a bit of thinly covered dark humour, delivered with tones and inflection which obviously suggested it was a joke of his own. Still, it was up for debate if Prester really meant it, should push come to shove.

"Warning taken. So, how many men have you lost?" Dan asked.

"Eight. There were two for each wagon, one on the outside and one on board. Melee and ranged specialists. Arx and Rendel are all that remains of the ten."

"Where's Rendel?"

"Where he can keep a good eye on us," Prester said. Dan hadn't seen a sign of him since their first meeting, and was thankful for it.

"You think they're good enough to cover all three wagons?" Dan said. He was skeptical. No matter how much devastation Arx could cause with his immense sword, or what kind of sickly magic Rendel could weave against his foes, Dan wasn't confident they could be everywhere at once.

"They're not the only two capable of fighting. Me, you, and a few in the other wagons will be helping if needed."

"Raw deal, mate. I thought this was supposed to be Prester's Escorts, not Prester's-You-Pay-To-Fight-And-Get-Killed-Escorts," Dan said.

"Your issue is you didn't pay. Your friend paid for you and so your complaint is moot," Prester retorted. He moved his recurve bow from one shoulder to the other, and once again signifying the conversation was over, returned to stand with the wagon driver.

"So you're gonna drop bandits with the 'twang-twang' noise? I see you're severely lacking arrows. Maybe you could pull out some of the ones in your hull and shoot 'em back. Poetic justice, I think," Dan said. He remained seated in fear of a grand faceplant come the next pothole.

"Don't worry about me. I'd be concerned about the tiny thing you're packing, if I were you," Prester said, still not looking back.

"Hey. That's nasty. I always say, 'It's not the length of your wand, it's the magic in it!'"

Prester waved a shooing motion over his shoulder. Dan relented.

He dug around his canvas rucksack and drew out a few innocuous looking items. A single metal coin. A pocket matchbook. A dull, spent straight razor. He stashed each into one of the many pockets of his now dirty and stained olive drab overalls. Just confirming that he still had it, his left hand rested upon his father's simple leather pouch. He gripped the exterior and pressed inwards to make sure it was empty. As his fingers closed around it, there was a familiar hum in his ears. It comforted him and gave him strength.

Prester slid the side door open once more and poked his head out to the front, barking commands to the driver of the first wagon. They were still the middle link in a chain of three, and the thunderous hoofs of Arx's stallion thumped the earth as he charged onwards then slowed down until the convoy overtook him. He was scouting the front and then dropping back to cover the rear.

Dan could see the grassland of Nelligin's surrounds, picturesque plains of verdant green, and the now light blue sky, for only a short moment. Prester slammed the door tight and locked it. Secretly, he wished to see Underwood by the time it opened again, and to be rid of this tension, this anticipation of an attack by marauding bandits. He didn't know how long it would take.

[Etheryn]

It was dark again, in that all-pervading sense like when Dan and Alfonse first crossed the highlands path to Nelligin. The night was cold in contrast to the blistering day, and he welcomed it. The Nelligin plains had given way to a deadened stretch of Concordia forest.

Gnarled stumps, burned trees, and thick mud. Everything that was once alive had been burned away, or killed off by the cancer of war. A young deer wandered about the trackside, displaced and lost and alone, as if it'd been plucked from his home and dropped on an alien planet. The forest canopy was burned away and only skeletons of trees remained.

Dan was glad. Had there been a full canopy, the moonlight couldn't have shone through to guide their way.

There'd been fighting. One faction or the other had set everything alight to root out the enemy. It'd rained and stormed, the fire drowned out, and left everything grey, brown and black. Dan saw brief glimpses of the casualties through the viewports of the wagon. An arm or two, a few legs, an occasional bashed in head, mostly belonging to Empire soldiers with a few members of Ranger aligned militia thrown in for measure. The militia wore only rags and looked like they belonged in a farmer's field, not a warzone.

It was scary. Truly, places like Concordia are scary at night. Throughout the folklore of all different cultures, forests have been places of spiritual significance, where one can find creatures and things of great beauty or great horror. Beautiful flowers of all colours, hidden waterfalls and retreats, sunny vales full of friendly deer and fluffy rabbits.

The beauty is almost always just a fairytale. What's almost always real, on the other hand, is the horror. The spiders big enough to eat a bird, the poisonous snakes, the treacherous footing where the next step could drop you ten inches or ten feet and as far as you know, you're standing on flat ground. The forest is full of things that go bump in your night, that crawl against your skin, that set your teeth on edge.

It's even worse when it's littered with corpses. Right now, Dan felt more than a little uneasy. There was nothing to do and nothing to take his mind off the sinister surroundings. It seemed that even Prester felt off. Perhaps it was more the constant, looming threat of a bandit onslaught, than a superstition of what was hiding in the dark.

Dan thought he'd feel better if he could at least see what was around. He strained and squinted as if the effort would force enough light onto his retina. A torch would help. He reached around blindly for the quarterstaff Alfonse gave him when they parted ways, the one with a brazier for torch-rags fixed atop it. He couldn't find it. In fact, he couldn't remember ever carrying it out of Nelligin's barn.

Left the freaking thing behind. Good work.

The dark would remain.

Eventually, they came across what would've been a main battleground. There were long walls, footed with razor wire and arrays of wooden pikes and spears. Anyone who charged against it would be impaled. Plenty were silly enough to try, it seemed, and corpses hung limply with bugs and carrionbirds picking at them hungrily.

Dan had been travelling south with Prester's Escorts for nearly ten hours. They kept hidden, off the track and parallel to the South Road itself. It was too risky and open to use the highways. Not once had they stopped for a break.

Apart from their initial exchange when Dan boarded at Nelligin, the elven coach-master Prester had been tightlipped through the journey. Dan knew he wasn't interested in chatter and made no attempt. Trying to hide his own inexperience with combat and death, Dan kept the questions to a minimum.

The answers didn't matter anyway. All that mattered was getting to Aaron in time to warn him of the Empire's encroachment on his hideouts. It'd been so long since they'd seen each other that Dan could barely remember his brother's face.

A smoky image, features all blurred and more like a silhouette than anything, was all that swam before his mind's eye. Four years of vicious fighting for the rebellion would've changed Aaron. The image solidified into one covered with scars, rough like sandpaper and hard as rock. The face he saw didn't belong to his brother. It was just a supposition.

"Straight trip?" Dan asked.

He was becoming genuinely curious as to how the convoy would maintain combat readiness without rest, food or sleep. The horses that drew the wagons were young and fit but would have to give out eventually. Arx patrolled a wide perimeter around, intermittently closing back in to give a passing nod that the area was clear. The one eyed warrior never once showed a sign of fatigue.

"We keep going. By my guess we'll make enough ground by morning to have a rest. We're too hot now."

They were quiet again for uncounted minutes. One of those absent, empty-headed breaks where the mind dreams while awake, and sorts out the subconscious thoughts floating just beneath the surface. One of those montages where those barely restrained worries bubble to the top, and make you jump.

Dan's trigger was the stuffy heat. The recycled oxygen. The faint taste of soot in his mouth. The acrid taste of a campfire where there wasn't one around.

Too hot. Hot. Fire. This place…

The charcoaled bark of the trees, the blanketing layer of ash, even Prester's idiom in using "hot" as a word for "dangerous," all reminded Dan of fire. He couldn't stop the thought that everything around him was not long ago a blazing inferno, intentionally lit to kill. He saw the dramatic highlight reel before his eyes, staring vacantly at nothing in particular.

It brought back another waking dream, a terrible and fresh memory, of things he was forced to do during his escape from Radasanth. Traumatic things that young men of twenty-two years should never have to do.

Another face--not the featureless mask of his brother's--floated through his thoughts. A snub nose, piggish features. A sweaty forehead, beady eyes, and yellow teeth clenched between an animalistic, sneering grin. It was Private Rulgh, a primal beast of a man who glutted himself on booze and violence. Surely not deserving of any pity from Dan.

Suddenly Rulgh's face burst into flames, spewing from his mouth and nostrils like he was a mythical dragon. The skin peeled away, the eyeballs shriveled and boiled in the sockets, and the greasy mop of hair singed and coiled. His features dripped away like candlewax leaving only a blackened skull, the jawbones and teeth still clacking together in place of screams.

Dan shook his head. He never thought that when he set out on the journey that he would kill a man, let alone by means so horribly gruesome and violent as full-body immolation. He couldn't stomach the thought and physically felt sick.

He was sitting with legs crossed at the rear wall of the wagon, and stood again to look through the side viewport, hoping to see something that would take his mind from morbidity. If there was any scenery to calm the soul, this surely wasn't it.

Despite their rag-tag appearance and lack of uniform, the dead Ranger militia all had some kind of fabric strip tied around the upper arm. He couldn't tell what colour it was with all the mud and ash. Still, it was a common identifier. Dan hadn't actually seen a Ranger-aligned fighter during his travels and he assumed the fabric strip was like a badge of honour, a sign of membership.

He pigeonholed the information in his brain, and reminded himself to look for something tied about the arm in the future, just as he'd look for the red plume of feathers on the helmet of a CAF trooper.

"You've been looking at bodies for hours, and only now you look pale. What's difference about these ones?" Prester said, not really expecting a response.

There hadn't been anything said for ages. Dan preferred to keep it that way. He dodged the question.

"I'm fine, man. Just hungry," Dan lied.

The images of Rulgh burning were plastered everywhere, like the wagon's interior was a projector screen and the film was stuck on an endless loop.

A concussive blast, still louder than thunder through the muffling of the wagon's walls, interrupted Dan's reverie. It rattled him to the teeth. A brilliant white light flashed through the viewports like an angry god had thrown lightning to the earth. It was strong enough to sting his eyes and he shielded them with his left forearm, using his right to break a fall as he tumbled forward and rolled to his knees.

The horses halted suddenly and reared up, baying and crying out with fright, and the wagons stopped sharply with them. Heavy pieces of timber clattered and fell from above, amidst a rain of smaller splinters, bouncing from the wagon's roof and then into the swampy ground. Metal crashed down on the wagon roof as well with a report like big-band cymbals.

"GET MOVING! GO!" Prester barked. The driver whipped the reins furiously and the wagon took off with a rush.

Somehow Prester was still upright. Before Dan could even process what happened, the elf was climbing through a roof hatch with bow in hand. His feet dangled down and hooked onto some of the rings and handlebars Dan used earlier to stand upright. The elf took a solid footing, braced himself, and Dan heard the whistle of arrows. There were flashes of green light each time Prester fired.

Dan scrambled to his feet, and craned his head to look through the viewports. He saw the flaming carcass of the wagon that'd been ahead of them for the entire journey so far.

"What do you want me to do?" Dan called.

Prester didn't hear him. The arrows just continued to whistle, loud, with a consistent green flash. He must've been busy. Still, Dan couldn't hear or see Prester was shooting at. Perhaps he was just blindly loosing everything he had with hopes of getting lucky.

"Go! Go! Go!" Prester shouted again, slamming his fist with a thud to the rooftop like it would inspire the horses to run faster. Arx's charger sounded its own rage, more of a lion's roar than a typical neigh. Dan caught a brief glimpse of Arx speeding in the complete opposite direction, back towards the column's rear and presumably straight for their pursuers.

It was as real as it'd ever get. It seemed Prester had already decided the fight couldn't be won and that the better part of valour would be to flee.

Dan unsheathed his knife from the holster. He held it with a reverse grip, blunt side parallel to his forearm. He was more likely to cut himself than anyone else, but having something pointy in his hands felt good and right. It was either that or sit still and wait. Or strike a karate pose. This was the less ridiculous option.

Must be coming from the rear. Think, think, think… Dan wracked his brain for a plan. Something, anything to contribute, to help himself out of the ambush. He needed to see what was going on. With no experience in combat tactics it was hard to envisage the flow of the fight through the little stimulus he'd had. He fumbled with the locks of the side door and forced it open, cautiously poking his head out to see.

The spindly outlines of dead trees whipped by in a blur. Their wagon moved quickly over the now level ground, stirring the mud into a fine mist. Their path was straight and they picked up speed. He saw the source of the strange, baleful green flash that'd accompanied Prester's shots.

It was the arrows. Thin, green rods of light. Humming, whistling missiles that streaked a shimmering trail in the air like the rising air from a hot bitumen road. There was no wonder Prester carried no quiver. He didn't need simple wood and arrowheads, when he could shoot ethereal energies. The bolts lit up the forest around them, and gave brief glimpses of humanoid shapes in the far distance. The bandits, it seemed.

All were on horses, without a ton of timber and steel in tow. They closed in fast.

The blanket mist upon the ground swirled and puffed behind them like the salty wake of a powerboat. Preoccupied with watching Prester's shots, Dan looked about the wagon's exterior, and noticed there were even more crossbow bolts driven into it. There'd been a barrage of them and Dan never notice the telltale thud, thud, thud of impacts.

The bolts must've been fired and landed at the same time of the initial explosion. A shock and awe strike with precision timing. Far out of the league of simple road pirates.

They now had pole position in the convoy of two, and Dan looked back to see the other remaining wagon about fifteen metres behind them and matching pace. Prester was sending as many light arrows as he could into the engulfing dark, directly over the top of the tailing wagon. The perpetual volley was for suppression and any bull's-eye was a bonus. It would've been impossible to take a direct shot with his comrades obscuring the shot.

"Who the Hell are they?!" Dan shouted out, trying to catch Prester's attention while at the same time examining the empty black forest behind them. The sound of air moving over them at speed, like they were in a wind tunnel, sucked away Dan's voice. He was unheard. Prester kept shooting. Dan repeated his shouts until he heard the padded footfalls of Prester dropping from his perch atop the wagon.

"We're clear of them! Get inside, get inside!" Prester snapped and grabbed at Dan's shoulder, pulling back with all the force he could gather.

Dan didn't move an inch. He was almost two hundred pounds of muscle slabs, set onto a wide and staunch frame. His eyes were narrowed, focused, squinting. Dan looked for the attackers. A silhouette, a shadow, anything. His only movement was a brief shrug of the shoulder, readjusting his canvas rucksack to make sure it was still secured.

He was lingering his view upon the rear for a few short moments, trying as best he could to make out the attacker's identity. Nothing to see here, just invisible ninja assassins about to cut your head off. Move along.

Something wasn't right about these so called bandits. Dan's own gut feeling, that special hunch someone gets when they're being truly screwed, told him Prester was holding out.

Dan retracted his head and slammed the side door shut. He locked it, checked it, double checked it then checked it again. Whoever had been attacking never once revealed their position or identity. Some kind of improvised explosive device had shredded the first wagon and its occupants to pieces. A precise, ranged assault with no intention to rob, only to kill and destroy.

It didn't match up with Prester's earlier explanation. It was too good for bandits. Too hard, too fast, too deadly. It didn't match up.

This prick is a liar. There's too much riding on this. If someone takes you out, Aaron dies too.

Not more than a week ago, Dan flagellated himself in the Old Horn Tavern about what selflessness was. He'd thought back to times when long forgotten strangers told him, "You're one of the good guys."

Good guys do good things because that's just what good guys do. They don't do it just to get a medal, to hear songs about their heroism, or make ladies love them. They just do it because they're good guys. It's a roundabout reasoning, but it makes sense. Good guys do good things just to keep being good guys. That's all there is to it.

It was time to be a good guy with a little twist.

Dan told himself again. Prester's lying. There's more to it.

The whole world went away. All that mattered, at this very point, was a little wooden box bouncing along in a dark and nasty forest. Dan was going to start a fight inside the wagon, to make Prester spill the beans on why there was a fight outside the wagon.

"Listen up and listen well," Prester chastised. He shouldered the enchanted bow and glared a challenge, frustrated with the liability of keeping Dan alive, and having to do the simple things like ensure his head didn't develop more holes.

Dan turned around to face him, holstered his knife on his left forearm, and rested his back on the locked door.

Prester continued, "You stick your fat head out like that again, and it won't be my fault if…"

A nerve tweaked in Dan's eye. A synapse snapped. The thought of someone else purposely endangering Dan's last living family, while at the same time dishing out lectures, sent him spiraling into a deeply unfamiliar and foreign pit. A pit of rage. Prester was still talking and Dan didn't listen. All he could hear was the sounds of the wagon as it rolled on.

Dan's wide hand shot out like the paw of an angry grizzly bear, in a flare of adrenalin fuelled anger, and closed around Prester's throat. Without so much as half an effort Dan turned and rotated his hips like a boxer throwing a punch, simultaneously dropping to one knee, and choke-slamming Prester to the floor with such force that his legs were the last thing to touch the ground.

"You'll what? What're you going to do, little fairy? You're going to give me some straight answers, before I snap your neck and pound your brains into paste?" Dan snarled.

There was a mosquito-pitch buzz in his ears and his vision blurred. The magic energy, a familiar yet now sinister pressure, welled up inside of him again. He was a kettle, blood boiling and steam billowing from his ears.

It wasn't the same. Before, the magic inside of him felt righteous. Now it was wrong. It made him feel sick. The malice he forced into his words and actions was corrupting it. Yet, it needed to be done. Prester was too crafty to submit to wordplay and his deceit was bringing Dan to the brink of an early grave.

Like a sentient disease spreading through his entire body, Dan's conscience manifested into physical pain, the force within him fought back. Dan's magic wouldn't let him beat on Prester without provocation.

Dan was alert enough to hear the thud, thud, boom of projectiles hitting their wagon and explosives tearing trees apart and shaking the very ground. Things were getting far too close for comfort. Dan had to get this done quick.

"Grrghh… Let… mmhhmpphh… Go!"

Dan relaxed his vice-like grip enough for Prester to garble out a few words.

"Talk and I will. I know these aren't regular highwaymen after your piggybank. They're trying to kill all of us, and I want to know why," Dan menaced.

"Rangers…"

"Why you? You're a civilian."

Dan looked like a maniac now. His teeth were bared, veins bulged from his neck, and his chest swelled with breath accelerated by bone-deep fury. He could feel the blood vessels bursting in his eyes and turning the whites a demonic red as his magic struggled to stop him.

"CAF"--Prester's face was turning blue, so Dan moved his grip from the throat to the lower jaw, pulling up on Prester's face and bringing it closer to his own--"Commander. There's a CAF commander in the wagon behind us."

"Why?" Dan ignored everything around him. He was trying to concentrate on taming the nuclear reaction spreading through him, and at the same time understand Prester's story. The world passed by in a blur of grey, black and whites.

The sound of something breaking off from their wagon caught both Dan and Prester's attention momentarily. Once both were satisfied it wasn't a wheel, axle or something else crucial to keep rolling on, they returned attentions to each other.

"Rangers and Empire fight through Concordia, north of Underwood. Rangers took out CAF leaders and now the Empire is aimless, waiting to get massacred," Prester chattered. He gasped a deep breath.

"There's in-fighting about what they do next. Reinforcement units left from Nelligin and this guy came from Radasanth to lead them in. Guy is a decorated genius. Empire is paying me a year's wage to get him there safely. I took them up on it… Ranger stealth ops found out, tailed him… They're chasing him down and us too," Prester finished.

It was like the words were a hot potato burning Prester's tongue, and there was no way to spit it out fast enough. The elf spoke fast and high pitched. His life depended on convincing Dan to let him go. Presently, Dan looked like a feral animal in a cage.

"What happens if you succeed?"

"The Empire can fight again. Probably cut the Rangers to pieces."

It came together. The barn from Nelligin had been the quarters for reserve units that were stationed at a middle ground, ready to deploy west to Radasanth or south to Underwood. They marched south to join the battle against the Rangers on hearing word of the peril their comrades faced. Prester had come east from Radasanth with reinforcement leader on board, under attack the entire way from Rangers who somehow knew of the CAF's movements.

"Why pick up and carry civilians on a military mission? Why get those other people killed? Why almost get me killed too?" Dan interrogated.

It didn't make sense for something so vital to the Empire's success to be contracted to a civilian, who for all the CAF knew, could be a double-agent for the Rangers.

"Rangers won't kill civilians. Good cover. Meat shields."

Another fragment slotted into place. The story seemed to make sense. Dan felt better. New, like he'd just taken a hot shower after weeks rolling in filth. If only he actually could.

Since intentionally bullying answers from Prester, Dan's magic had been feeling wrong, like he'd swallowed rotten meat and it soured in his guts. He'd subconsciously believed that beating and intimidating Prester for information, no matter how necessary, was wrong on a base level. Dan's magic turned on him to keep him on the straight and narrow.

Now he'd learned that Prester was actually a deceitful, selfish being with no qualms about dragging an innocent into bloody war in return for gold, Dan knew he'd made the right choice. He'd thrown up the spoiled meat and purged it from his system. The magic agreed and was righteous again.

Dan was full of strength instead of weakness. Everything was pin-point clear. The smells, sounds and sensations of the moment were multiplied and he truly felt alive. The mosquito buzzing in his ears and around his head was gone. The rising temperature in his blood, along with the almost bursting pressure in his gut, had settled. All that was left was a deep, rhythmic thud in his ears like a subwoofer speaker. It was the tribal warrior's battle drum, bringing up his spirit with every beat.

Something caught Dan's eye. A corpse's hand, bent and crooked and spotted with warts. It held the reins of their wagon and belonged to the driver who'd been absolutely silent and still throughout the entire attack and the ensuing hands-on questioning between Dan and Prester. It was like an impossible veil had been obscuring Dan's ability to acknowledge the driver's presence as more than a piece of furniture. It wasn't that Dan didn't see the driver. He just didn't pay heed, like one can't remember the face of extras from Monday night sitcoms. The mask lifted.

Dan turned his head away from the terrified elf pinned beneath his forceful grip, and squinted his eyes. The hand looked familiar. A lot like Rendel's.

Concussive blasts sounded all around, followed by swelling plumes of flame and smoke and gunpowder smelling fury. The pursuing Rangers had some kind of launcher which could hurl explosive projectiles like pebbles from a sling shot. Their aim was adjusting each time, and eventually they'd land one right beneath Dan's wagon.

There was another kind of explosion, this one without accompanying flames, that sent a mist of timber shards and splinters in all directions inside the wagon. Some of them cut Dan's cheek and neck and he felt the warm trickle of blood run along his skin.

The great steel of a claymore sword looked awfully familiar as well, as it burst through the wall and missed the back of Dan's skull by merely inches. Awfully familiar to one he'd seen wielded by Arx.

The only two remaining guardsmen for Prester's Escorts, fearsome enough to still be standing when all the others were dead, had pointed their interest to Dan.

[Etheryn]

Dan released his hold on Prester, ducked his head instinctively to avoid Arx's sword, and with an ungraceful ukemi tumbled over and into the rear wall of the wagon.

Arx's sword bit into the wagon's timber and steel and caught in place. Were its wielder an average man, it would've been a long two handed effort to pull it out. Being three hundred pounds of terrible muscle, with a minor grunt and twist of the hips, Arx needed only one hand to pull the thing out for another blow.

There was a great split in the wagon's wall. Dan stared down the one-eyed hulk of a mercenary who just stared back. Both Arx and the impressive black stallion beneath were coated in a layer of fresh blood. They were wild, frenzied, berserk with a common purpose and thirst for battle. Wrapped in plated armour, chainmail and the gore of his enemies, Arx looked just as beastly as the creature beneath him.

Dan didn't have a second to drop his jaw and look impressed. Still, the image was almost the very definition of the word wrath. Biblical style.

Prester scrambled up from the floor and pressed himself into the wall opposite Dan. Before Dan could do anything, the enchanted yew bow was drawn tight with, an arrow of solid green fire waiting to be unleashed.

"Are you stupid?! You nearly stuck me with your freaking sword!" Prester snapped towards Arx.

Prester hadn't fired yet. Dan puzzled on this. All he was doing was shouting for all his worth, barely audible over the rushing wind.

"Should I look the other way when the next man tries to crush your neck?" Arx bellowed back, claymore sword now raised and slung back over his shoulder, undecided if it would return to its great red scabbard or strike once more.

"You can do something better than trying to carve up everything that moves, dolt!" Prester replied, pausing twice through the sentence to gather his breath and keep shouting.

"Oi! Pay attention!" Dan said, pointing his finger accusingly at Prester.

"There's not a chance in Hell I'm swallowing arrows or getting blown up because of you wanted a bigger freaking paycheck! I'd be less of a target with a bull's-eye painted on my head than riding in your horse-drawn deathtrap!"

"You're right, fool. There's not a chance you're going to swallow arrows. There's a certainty"--Prester took an archer's stance, squinting sideways, and tightening his grip--"that you'll swallow mine."

A blur of green shot through Dan's shoulder. It hit he trapesius muscle, the fleshy bit just above the collarbone, and burned a neat hole straight through. Dan cried out and staggered back. His jaw locked up, and he gingerly touched a hand to the wound site, expecting gushes of blood. There was nothing. Instantly cauterised.

"You know what our 'precious cargo' is. I can't be sure you won't run and tattle before we deliver it," Prester said. A cruel smirk spread over his face like this whole thing was enjoyable.

Dan should've known it. You can never trust a man in a skirt. Lessons get learned the hard way, eh?

Arx raised his claymore sword high, and aimed a massive downwards death blow. He swung and caught another piece of the wagon's armour. Sparks flew. Prester readied another phantom arrow, bracing to the wall to steady himself against the irregular rocking and bouncing of the wagon. Dan simply stood his ground, lowering his centre of gravity in more of an effort to stay vertical before attacking. He removed his knife once more and held in a relaxed, reverse grip.

There was a Wild West standoff. Everyone was still, anticipating the first move. A tumbleweed and high noon would've been good finishing touches. Dan grunted through the pain in his shoulder.

Rendel acted first. He turned around and dropped the reins. With a quiet murmured incantation, invisible hands took over and kept whipping them against the horses. The guy could multitask like no one's business, it seemed. His ghastly hands pressed together, palms inwards and fingers up, and only now could Dan see beneath the opening of the hood.

Two milky cataracts of his eyes and a pallid, diseased face. A bump with two small holes for a nose. A mouth full of black, wet ooze that stained his yellow teeth. He was ancient, liver spots and warts and varicose veins all over his gaunt cheeks make him look more like the living dead than a warm-blooded man.

"Sleep," Rendel said, voice all breathy and hoarse and absolutely creepy.

Once more there was a frigid, constricting cold in Dan's brain. It spread until it occupied all of his senses. He could taste the cold. He could smell it. He could hear it. He could even see it, and his vision went double and checker boxed with black and stars. The sensation wasn't painful, more like a full-body numbness after spending an hour in an ice bath. Dan slumped to one knee as he lost control of his limbs and struggled to keep his head up. It was fatigue before pain. A rapid, mental shut down.

The magic within Dan fought back. It buzzed and resonated against the encroaching ice that froze him still, trying to hit the right frequency and shatter it, like Rendel's spell was a cheap wine glass and Dan's will was an opera singer. Once more he couldn't take in the world around him, Rendel's sick magic pulling a blindfold over his eyes and stuffing wool in the ears. Dan pushed with all of his might. He tensed and strained and tried to fire every watt of power inside him at the same time.

It wasn't working. Within moments, Dan would submit. He didn't know what came after. It took all of Dan's resolve to retrieve a single metal coin from the pocket of his olive drab overalls and slip it into his father's leather pouch, hanging open and limp from his belt. Instead of Dan's magic hammering against Rendel's sensory snap-freeze, it radiated through the metal of the coin and into all of the metal within a ten metre radius and made a link. A conduit that turned everything into a tool of escape.

The flashy spikes and blades that formed the wagon's armour. Arx's sword. The bridles of the horses. The heads of the arrows and crossbow bolts which peppered the wagon like a pin cushion. With a quick, gentle tug, Dan drew his will inwards to see which of them offered the least resistance and best effect.

The mind and body is capable of incredible feats under duress. Mothers lift cars off their children. A man can run twice as far and twice as fast when something dangerous is chasing him down. This particular exercise of magical finesse, the economical and instantaneous manipulation of energy, was an example of that. Had Dan tried to do it again, without the exceptional circumstances and danger, he would've found it impossible.

A four foot, scimitar-shaped blade was mounted at the front and middle of the wagon roof. Had it been suffixed with a pommel and cross-guard it would've been a sturdy weapon. As it was now, it was a weakly attached hood ornament. Dan's magic snapped it neatly at the base, levitated it ahead of the carriage, and leveled it in front of the viewport directly behind Rendel. His mind's eye saw an arrow, a cannonball, a storm of buckshot, every kind of thing that moves fast and causes a world of hurt when it stops.

The blade soared towards Rendel, pierced through the wire mesh of the viewport, and like a hot knife through butter directly into his centre body mass. The point showed through Rendel's front, coated with the same black, oily ooze that filled his maw. Rendel turned his blind eyes down to the exit wound. With each drip of muck that fell from the scimitar to the floor, Rendel's psychic hold on Dan faded away. The cloaked telepath fell in a heap.

Dan was free to move again. With a powerful launch, coming all from the hips and legs, he spear tackled Prester and almost tore him in half.

They scrambled against each other and Dan overpowered Prester with ease. The brunt of Dan's thick forearm pressed on the elf's head and rolled his face into the floor. Dan straddled his two hundred pounds over Prester's torso, pinning both arms under the knees. Had all other threats been taken out of the environment it would've been a good move.

It wasn't. He hadn't forgotten about Arx, but Dan's actions were instinctive, not premeditated. His spur of the moment battle plan didn't account for the wagon having a new sunroof chopped into it. It didn't account for anyone else trying to rend his skull. The wicked steel of Arx's claymore burst through the walls several times, opening up a space wide enough for two men to fit through. Dan could see Arx recoiling his sword overhead, and leaning his armoured black stallion towards the wagon.

There was no room to manouvre. No avenue of escape. Nothing to hide behind. There wasn't enough time for Dan to focus his will once more and try something fancy like bending Arx's sword as if he were a stage magician with a spoon. Dan was still tangled up in Prester's lanky limbs, trying to restrain him as he squirmed around. Arx's long scalp-braid flapped in the wind like a lion's tail, and Dan's heart skipped a beat when the warrior aimed his deathblow. The warhorse beneath him neighed and snorted with encouragement.

It seemed Arx got off on looking cool.

If Dan had any hair he would've just received a free trim. The claymore's edge sliced the air above Dan's scalp and he rolled away, off Prester, onto his right shoulder, completing a sideways somersault. When Dan's feet were beneath him once more he sprung upwards into an ungainly leap, out of the wagon and directly at Arx. He hurled himself like a human wrecking ball with the hope his own mass would displace Arx from the warhorse. Dan was airborne and clear of the wagon before he could second guess it.

Dan's shoulder dropped into Arx's chainmail ribs, knocked the air out of him and dismounted him entirely. Both men tumbled over the right side of the horse, still at a gallop pace, and careened into the thick mud of the forest floor. They slid and rolled and sprawled until the momentum ran out. It was dirty business. Dizzy with the impact, both of them fumbled and clawed their way upright to square off.

Prester's wagon never eased off the metaphorical gas. Dan caught a glimpse of Prester nudging aside Rendel's corpse and taking up the reins. He beat the mottled grey horses desperately, wanting nothing more than to get away. The wagon turned a sweeping left on the now widening path, jouncing on until it was out of sight. Arx's steed slowed and double backed loyally, rearing up and punching out its spiked metal hooves with almost a chortling roar of its own kind, like it were shadowboxing.

It was coming back for its master.

The second and last wagon of the convoy--apparently carrying a high-ranking CAF commander and the man capable of corralling leaderless CAF troops to victory in the south--had lagged behind severely. Still, it would bypass Dan and Arx within a few seconds. The pursuing Ranger strike team wouldn't be much longer behind.

"Something told me I'd kill you. Perhaps it was the way you crawled out of hiding in the grass like a spineless jellyfish," Arx taunted, somehow still holding his behemoth sword after all that falling down.

"Something tells me you look like a prick, with your swollen, bulbous, one eyed head. And you're stupid too. You really think jellyfish live on land?" Dan replied.

Arx stormed towards Dan in a berserker's charge, unwilling to let the Ranger strike team take any credit for the kill.

[Etheryn]

With a leonine roar, Arx lifted his six feet of murderous steel above his head with both hands. His great feet thumped craters into the mud as he rushed towards Dan, the fifteen feet gap between them rapidly closing. There wasn't enough for Dan to work with, no time to direct his magic, and nothing to hide behind. The time to make decisions was measured in milliseconds. Dan was becoming familiar with near death experiences. He almost anticipated the slow motion, the elevation of senses, that airy feeling of meeting death and challenging it to a staring match.

Dan backpedalled, less agile on the bracken forest floor, and with less than five seconds spent on his feet he was down again. He tripped over a fallen log, landed flat on his back and tried to scramble up again. Again, he slipped and flailed like a teenager in a slasher film, Arx bearing down like the masked killer. The muck filled Dan's mouth, nose and eyes, and he could barely see anything. It was fitting. Get born clean, get dead dirty.

Dirt.

With a clumsy movement Dan thrust the index finger of his left hand into his father's leather pouch, which somehow managed to stay tied to his belt after all the falling over and wagon jumping and haphazard acrobatics. The focus for his magic could be anything; a scrap of paper, a paperclip, all kinds of junk. What mattered was his personal connection with it. Dan had to own it. It couldn't be shared, borrowed, or stolen. It had to be either given to him or he had to be the first person to claim it.

No one could claim the dirt under Dan's fingernail but him. It was enough. With a reactionary push of will, Dan stuck his entire hand into the pounch, removed the spent coin, and flowed his magic through that very dirt beneath his nail. The magic radiated out and flooded it into the ample mud, clay and filth that carpeted the forest bed. He saw a landslide in his mind, a tsunami of earth burying a village.

What he saw in his mind played out on a miniature scale.

All of the soggy earth within a ten metre radius lifted up into a moving wall, and flew into Arx's front with a wet, sucking thud. The mudslide swept Arx up, carried him away and dumped him like a wiped out surfer. It wouldn't take Arx out. It wouldn't have even hurt him. All it did was extend Dan's life expectancy by another ten seconds.

Dan regained his footing and stared down the quickly approaching and last remaining wagon of Prester's Escorts. It looked identical to the one Arx just chopped up, adorned with exorbitant and dangerous blades and spikes, almost identical mottled grey horses chugging on like twin steam engines. The side door was open.

The timing would need to be absolutely perfect or Dan would look like something between sausages and sliced ham.

Dan started running towards the wagon and away from Arx, who was now standing up and wiping his eyes clean with the back of one hand. The wagon didn't slow down. The driver didn't recognise Dan at all and couldn't care less about mowing him down. The full body paint of topsoil mud and leaves made Dan look like a swamp monster from a B-grade horror film.

With a second equally draining effort, Dan used his magic to fling all the mud from his body directly into the faces of the two horses drawing the wagon. It completely blotted out their eyes, went into their nose, and filled their muzzles with great effect. They shook their heads about, neighed and spluttered, and slowed to an almost-walk despite the renewed whipping of the driver's reins. It was enough.

With an attempt that felt like a flat out sprint, but looked just a bit faster than a brisk walk, Dan ran and leaped, his hands in front like an Olympic diver. He made it through the open door of the wagon, precariously avoiding impalement on a coiled and barbed spike, and slid headlong into the opposite wall. Stars swam for a third time before his eyes. There was only one man in the wagon. The driver.

The driver cried out. "Move! Move you stinking, useless horses! Go!" He acknowledged the incoming hijack attempt, but simply didn't care. There were more important things to take care of. Like not getting blown up.

Getting inside the wagon wouldn't help if the horses didn't keep moving. Dan laid there, dizzy, and recalled the image of the mottled grey horses. Pinpricks of light flashed over the picture. With a third pulse of magic in just as many minutes, Dan swept the mud away from the horses eyes. The horses took off again and the momentum from the launch rolled Dan into the rear wall of the wagon. He clambered to his feet again. Barely.

These things needed seatbelts.

Dan wasn't sure if it was because of his newest bump to the head or his consecutive, draining uses of magic, but it was hard to hold his head up. There was a breathtaking pain beneath his fingernail, like a million tiny paper cuts with lemon juice as dressing. The focuses of his magic tend to deteriorate, their physical structure damaged by conducting the energies. Dan saw his finger literally smoking like a gun, and dripping with steamy blood. There wasn't time to complain.

"If I had a free hand I'd kill you myself," the driver barked. "Instead, it'll be both of us to die tonight! Because of you!" His voice stung with defeat like a wounded animal.

Dan saw only the driver's back and didn't know what to think. A pauper, with a tattered brown tunic and mending patches sewn irregularly into both sleeves. Trousers of coarse, brown hessian, also frayed and held up with a piece of rope tied about the waist. Hide shoes with no laces. A shortly cropped buzz-cut, salt and pepper with grey and black like that of a man approaching retirement. He looked thin but not in the malnourished way, just small of frame without an ounce of fat.

The driver wouldn't turn around, as if he were a famous actor avoiding photographs.

"Why?" Dan said, full of questions but choosing the shortest one to answer.

"Listen!" the driver snarled.

Dan listened. He heard the rhythmic beat of their own two horses towing them on. Rushing air. Arx's angry grunts and snorts of his warhorse, as they saddled up and took off to chase Dan down. Heavy breathing. The plop, plop, plop of mud dripping from his brow to the wagon floor.

It took a second to realise the rumble, slowly increasing in volume, like the great din of charging cavalry when Dan first met the Prester's Escort convoy outside Nelligin. Riders. More than ten and closing distance fast. The strike team. By Dan slowing the wagon enough to climb on he'd sapped enough momentum and pace to let them catch up and close in. He'd given back the only advantage they ever had. A head start.

"Who are you?" Dan asked. The man before him didn't fit the image of a genius military tactician, on a desperate sprint to lead a doomed army to victory.

"None of your business, you blasted idiot! We're both dead!" he growled.

His voice had that grandfather's whistle of old age. He still wouldn’t turn around, fixed on steering the wagon at full pace along the muddy track. It opened into a wide clearing, gently sloped downhill.

"Rangers, right?" Dan said. His questions would've sounded asinine. Instead, they were probes. Feelers to find, out without directly asking, if the man in pauper's rags was the entire reason Prester's Escorts had been chased for days.

"Of course they are, fool! Didn't you get a look at them? They've been on our tails since Radasanth!"

It's him. Incognito. This is what Prester means by "meat shields." Dress the Commander as a civilian, bring a bunch of peasants along as well... Perfect cover.

"Er, I got on at Nelligin. Haven't laid eyes on them myself," Dan said. He'd never been a good actor and his dialogue was wooden, forced, and fake.

"You'll get plenty of time to look while they cut off our bloody heads. Good God, forty years of service and I die alone in a shallow grave…"

Definitely him.

A great many crossbow bolts cracked into the wagon wall with an intimidating thunk-thud-thunk. Within less than a second, Dan heard the sound at least a dozen times more. Two wicked, painfully barbed crossbow bolts pierced the rear viewport and impacted dangerously close to the commander's head. He flinched away, cursing under his breath, and hunkered down to whip the horses with futility.

Arx had caught up. The Rangers would too. An unseen explosive flew overhead and in front of the wagon, launched from a Ranger slingshot. It prematurely detonated in the air with the same concussive blast from before. Luckily, it went off before it could settle beneath the undercarriage and disintegrate the entire wagon. The horses bolted even harder, terrified and no longer obeying the sting of the reins.

Dan knew what he had to do.

Dan marched over, wrapped his powerful arms around the Commander, and drew him into a crushing bear hug. The Commander was small, unarmed and physically no match for Dan. With an upwards lift Dan hurled the man straight out of the open side door, using a belly to back suplex. With a sickening crunch and snap, the Commander smacked into the earth and tumbled to a motionless heap. His bones were brittle with osteoporosis and age.

Everything the Rangers had been after was now discarded ballast. Just another sad heap in the mud, like thousands of other Empire and Ranger fighters. Maybe, just maybe, they'd leave Dan be. They could let him go. He prayed.

Arx's thunderous battle roars kept breaking Dan's concentration. He'd gained plenty of ground and was closer to Dan's wagon than the Rangers were. In turn, the Rangers were now less than ten feet behind Arx. Someone was going to get forcefully disqualified from the race, and very soon.

Dan's horses kept galloping without a prompt, terrified. There were no obstacles to worry about colliding with, the only concern being the now downward slope of the hill causing the wagon to overtake the horses and jack-knife like an eighteen wheel semi-trailer.

Dan poked his head out the side door and looked behind for only a moment, just enough to see but not be seen. There were at eight men, obscured by shadows still, each holding some kind of crossbow, sword or axe. Most of them peeled off the pursuit, dismounted, and stopped to mill about the Commander's body.

They seemed satisfied.

Arx wasn't satisfied. Two Rangers continued on, without stopping alongside the rest of their group, just to take Arx out. They weren't leaving any survivors. It must've looked like Arx was just trying to get away.

Two bolts screamed through the air, straight into Arx's skull and throat. Suddenly, his great mass went limp and sagged forwards in the saddle, bouncing lifelessly until it he fell to the earth like the Commander did moments before.

The incline of the hill was becoming more severe. The ground was too wet for the spooked horses to keep traction, and they slipped as the wagon's momentum overtook them. The wagon would inevitably crash and the Rangers would investigate the wreckage for survivors, prisoners, intelligence documents, anything.

Dan had to eject and make himself scarce. Now.

With hesitation, he braced himself in the open side door, shaking with the increasing speed, and with a stifled cry to steel himself, he jumped. With an inwards tuck of his neck, trying fruitlessly to spare his wounded shoulder, Dan did his best to break the fall. The force of landing sucked the breath from his lungs as he bowled over, head over heels, into a face down power-slide.

Mud tastes bad. Dan knew it more than ever, now. His entire body ached with exhaustion and blunt trauma from repeatedly falling off things with too little skill and too much weight. He felt like a used and abused movie stuntman.

He lay still, unsure about who was behind him, using the slop and filth to cover his position. He blinked away enough mud to watch the last wagon of Prester's Escorts drift sideways, separate from the tandem horses towing it, and flip into a spectacular crash with plenty of debris flying in all directions. With shearing crunches and snaps it came to pieces.

The horses were gone before Dan could even think about taking one.

As he lay still, struggling to control some spasms in his diaphragm, Dan savoured the quiet. There was no sound apart from a lonely cricket and a gentle wind sighing through the trees. It was a stark contrast to the noisy drama of the pursuit.

Dan saw only the base of tree trunks, scraggly thorns and dead brush in front of him. Thirty metres away. A short dash. A very, very long crawl.

The Ranger kill team was fifty metres up hill. Dan had no cover. In this frigid, dark bog, he was going to die alone.

For Dan, it wasn't a question of if. It was a question of when.

[Etheryn]

Dan squirmed along his belly towards the outer rim of the clearing, moving slow and carefully, repeatedly checking the peripherals of his vision for anyone who may have spotted him. The Ranger strike team hadn't seen Dan and this was his only opportunity to escape.

The irony was almost physically painful. Dan set out with Prester's Escorts to come closer to the Rangers and deliver an intelligence dossier that would allow them to protect one of their senior operatives. Yet, here he was, slithering like a snake to get away from them. He had no plan, no direction, no transport or food. It would be difficult to make his way through the remainder of Concordia to Underwood on his own.

He was going to die anyway. The futility of his plans for the future didn't matter so much.

Every ten metres or so Dan would stop, lay still and prick his ears up. The Ranger troops uphill spoke among themselves. Dan couldn't hear them because of his own thudding heart, pulsing around one million beats per minute.

Deep breathing--"Whoo-saaa, whoo-saaa"--helped Dan get it under control.

"How do we know it's him?" a high-pitched voice said. "He don't look like anything special to me."

The cover of underbrush was twenty metres away now. Dan stopped as soon as he heard voices, edging ever closer, and made like a statue. His legs throbbed with desire to spirit him away. If he was going to do that, he may as well cut his own throat at the same time.

"It's him. Trust me. Look, see here…" a hard voice said. He was in charge. "Scars. They all fit the description. Check his pockets."

A few seconds passed.

"I found it, Boss," the high-pitched voice replied.

"That's it. We got 'im, boys. He's still alive," a third chimed in.

Their horses trod about and snorted, still warming down from their prolonged effort. The scrapes of sheathing swords, locks and clinks of crossbows unloading, were confirmation enough. They'd finished the job. Dan exhaled with relief and eased on through the grime, now realising he was absolutely freezing. No one would look for him. He scuttled on.

"You ain't gonna look for the elf, Boss?" the high-pitched voice added. There was a sound of rope rubbing against rope, like knots being tied and pulled closed. They were taking the Commander prisoner.

"We didn't come for him. He's got no loyalty to anything but his wallet," The Boss said. "He won't get far by himself."

"Still, it might be..."

"You questioning me, junior?" The Boss snapped.

"No, Boss. Just I swear I saw someone throw himself into this guy's wagon when it slowed down," the high-pitched voice stammered. "It might be good to make sure he's dead."

Ten metres.

"What'd he look like?"

"Big guy. Had something slung over his shoulder," the squeaky voice explained.

Five metres from cover. Dan froze. The sucking sound of boots in the mire grew louder and closer. The Rangers walked down the hill towards him. They spread out and stood in a wide search line to cover the most ground. Dan was transfixed, deathly still. He was a piece of wood with eyes, petrified.

All of them lit some kind of handheld flare, burning like a miniature red sun, much brighter than a regular oil torch. They issued with sparks and billowing clouds of smoke at first, then settled to a hot glowing tip that threw out a dome of light ten metres around.

There would be no way to explain himself before the Rangers killed him. He could see each of them now, illuminated with dancing shadows from the intense glow of their flares that accentuated and elongated their features.

They looked the same. Slim, wiry and pale, faces gaunt and malnourished after a week without eating or sleeping. They wore a full-body kind of leather sneaking suit, a mixture of green, brown and black camouflage patching with not one inch of skin below the neck exposed. It hugged their figures and didn't stretch and strain with the typical sounds of stiff leather. It was pliable like a second skin.

They wore belts and thigh holsters loaded with equipment. Throwing knives, what looked like metallic spheres with draw pins on top, swords, ropes with shackle clips, even flintlock pistols like the one Alfonse carried. Each of them had a kind of slim-lined, compact crossbow of matte black steel clipped to the belt as well.

They were carrying top quality gear reserved for elite special operatives.

They moved with coordination, each Ranger stepping in time with the man next to him, not through conscious effort but the drilled in routine of a thousand hours spent training together. They were a mixture of young, middle age and old.

Dan spotted the squeaky voiced one. Typical enough, it was the wide-eyed teenager with a short black mohawk, centre in the searching line. The one who suggested looking for Prester and the "big bald guy."

Dan instantly hated the kid's gut with every fibre of his being.

Still five metres from cover. If Dan did so much as wiggle his big toe they'd spot him and open up organs that he didn't know existed. If Dan didn't move, the bookend of the searching line would step on him.

"Got a spare firecracker?" The Boss said.

Dan saw him. The leader of the company. A grey bearded and wrinkled man with features weathered by age and a relaxed strength about him. His figure was strong and solid inside the tight fit of his sneak suit. He stood to Mohawk's right side, and pointed his flare to the wrecked wagon.

"Got one," Mohawk replied. The search line stopped and was only twenty metres away from Dan. Mohawk tossed his flare with an underhand lob into the mud beneath the overturned carriage. It still burned bright, despite the damp, and reflected off the polished steel of the carriage armour.

Mohawk swiftly unhooked his crossbow, loaded and drew tight the bolt and string, then screwed on a metallic sphere to the bolt's tip as if it were a designed attachment. He held out the crossbow with a one handed, steady aim around it's pistol grip, and reached the other hand over to release some kind of safety lever.

The crossbow just became a grenade launcher. With a wobbly trajectory, the projectile flew threw the air, hit the broadside of the upturned wagon and detonated. If the thing wasn't destroyed before, it was now truly obliterated. There was a similar concussive wave, like all the other explosions from before, that opened up the earth in a wide circle.

There was more crater left behind than anything else. Broken planks and twisted steel started to rain down after being blasted high into the air.

At the very instant the explosive went off, Dan shot out of his prone position, into the scrub cover and out of the clearing. A shard of glowing molten metal cleaved the earth where Dan would've been had he not seized that moment to flee.

Dan ran, and ran, and ran. He got away. They never saw him.

"Heh. That never gets old," The Boss grinned. The search line did an about-face and hunkered back up the hill.

[Etheryn]

Exhaustion can make even the hardest, most awkward surface seem like a pile of fluffy pillows. After running for an hour without knowing where he was going, Dan felt he was lost enough to avoid anyone who might want him dead. He picked out a hollowed and uprooted tree stump, split in half from a lightning strike and full of soot and charcoal. It was time to get some rest. He crawled inside and fell asleep within half a minute of shutting his eyes.

There were no dreams, only non-existence. It was bliss.

When Dan woke up he couldn't move. His left arm was numb from sleeping on it, he ached and pained all over, and the wound in his trapesius muscle was gooey and filling with some kind of fluid and pus. It could've been worse. Prester's phantom arrow could still be stuck in it. If there was any way to get shot this was the best way. There was nothing for Dan to clean his injury with. It could wait.

Above all his complaints, he was intensely hungry. It was daylight. He'd no idea how long he'd been asleep.

A rummage in his canvas rucksack left him disappointed. Nothing but crumbs and soggy papers. Most of the documents he carried were soaked through and unreadable. Luckily, the most important them wasn't completely ruined. He unrolled it to make sure. Aaron's intelligence dossier was in good enough condition. All the other things were irrelevant.

Dan fell out of the tree stump with a clumsy flop on his back. With an upwards stretch of his arms he saluted the morning and shook out his arms and legs. The sun was directly overhead, masked by a thin overcast, and gave off enough warmth to bring a smile. Even simple things could cheer him up, despite the circumstances as a whole being very glum. His good spirit usually bounced back to get him through. Usually.

He checked out the area. He'd no idea where he'd run to in a mad bid to get clear of the Rangers.

Dan was clear of the burned section of Concordia. The forest seemed alive in comparison to the ashen graveyard he'd been almost slain in last night. The trees were full of bushy green leaves, birds tweeted, and small furry animals scampered around. It would've been a pleasant day for a stroll if Dan had a clue where he was.

The rumble of his guts told him to stop and think. He climbed onto the top of the tree stump, leaned back on his elbows and kicked his legs idly against the flaky bark. Bits of it fell away to the grass below.

Think. The map. Landmarks.

Dan remembered a few geographical features from the map left behind in Nelligin's barn. There would be no way to search for anything to orient himself while on the forest floor. Some mixed breed of pine tree and oak dominated the landscape, and underbrush filled his view in every direction. His view of the sun wouldn't stay clear enough to use it as a compass as it moved through the sky. He'd need to get to high ground, look for the Comb Mountains to the north, pick some reference points, and then continue south to Underwood while keeping track of those landmarks.

Dan set off, keeping an eye out of something edible on the forest floor. A few innocuous, spotted fruits caught his attention but he didn't chance a bite without knowing what they were. An empty belly was better than a poisoned one. Still, it took great discipline to turn down a feed.

He anticipated at least a few bodies, discarded weaponry, arrows plugged into the pine trunks. There was nothing. Corone's civil war hadn't yet touched this part of Concordia forest. If he'd made it here on foot then anyone else could've done the same. For once, in comparison to nights past, he felt comfort in the great empty wilderness. He didn't expect to encounter any roaming travelling groups this far in.

Dan stayed alert and checked his surroundings often. Last night, he'd been ready to quit. Living through it was a message. A sign.

Don't ever quit, Dan thought. It became his mantra from that point on.

Dan settled into a routine. Pick an object in the distance that could be referenced against something he was already near. Walk on, stop, look around. Make sure he'd walked in a straight line and maintained that heading. Mark a chip into the tree limbs as he went, so he could double back with ease and know if he'd walked in circles.

An hour passed until he stopped again, resting at the base of a towering spruce. His head pounded with dehydration, and no matter how many dewy leaves he upturned he just hadn't taken in enough fluids.

The pastel greens, yellows and woodland browns were common in the landscape. White, however, was not. A brief glimpse of it caught his attention. It was gone before he could make out what it was. Dan wrote it off to some kind of bird and closed his eyes once more. There was a rustling of leaves overhead and a distant, high pitched hum. A break in the clouds overhead allowed a gentle sunbeam to flood over his face.

A neat hole appeared in the spruce trunk about two inches right of Dan's ribs. Hot sap bubbled out with wisps of sweet smelling steam, mixed with a tinge of smoke. Dan puzzled at it yet didn't move, unsure what to think. The smell started to waft from in from another direction. He saw another hole further away, exactly the same size and shape, like a white hot poker had instantly vaporised a cavity in the wood.

Dan shifted his weight, utterly confused, and looked to the oozing wound in his shoulder.

"For crying out loud!"

Dan ducked his head just in time, rolled into a run and started to zigzag between trees. Holes followed him. With a cautious look over his shoulder he saw the soaring trajectory of a green arrow. It was almost invisible in the sunlight.

There was another momentary glimpse of white. A hunched over shape, darting in an out of cover just as Dan did.

Prester.

[Etheryn]

Had Dan been under attack from any other archer he would've just hidden and waited for the quiver to go empty. In this case it wasn't an option. Prester's bland looking recurve bow wasn't so bland at all. It self-generated beams of burning green energy and as far as Dan knew, never ran out.

Although the arrow he'd already taken was more of a flesh wound, painful as it may be, it wasn't lethal. Dan wasn't willing to chance another.

Confident in the protection a massive tree trunk, Dan slipped behind it and went still, trying to control his panting breath. He was strong but never much for cardio. When it came to a duel of attrition, a test of running endurance, someone of Prester's light frame would have him beat. Dan simply had too much of himself to move around without tiring. He would get run down. Dan's domain was the oceans, far away from here. Prester was an elf, and he was in his element zipping around the forest.

Running away wouldn't help. Dan had to eliminate the threat. He had a plan.

Despite their incredible speed, Dan could hear the buzzing energies of Prester's arrow each time he fired. In the quiet of the forest it was loud enough for Dan to hear what direction they came from. Through the Dopplar effect he could get a brief measure of their flight time, and thus how near or far Prester was. As long as he maintained the cover of thick trees and moved quickly, Dan figured he could close distance until he was in Prester's dead zone--meaning within ten metres or so, where ranged weapons become more cumbersome than useful--and stop him.

Stop him, he thought. Not kill. Stop.

If anyone could hear Dan's thoughts they would slap him upside the head. In this situation he was entirely justified to defend himself with lethal means. His choice in what force to apply--should he get his hands on Prester, that is--wasn't because Dan was on a moral high horse. He simply needed answers. He also needed help to get out of the forest safely, through Concordia, past the Empire forces and into Underwood.

There was no one else. Ironically, Dan needed Prester's help.

Prester had already proved himself incapable of getting this done, not more than twelve hours ago, but not through lack of ability. Had the Ranger strike team not been involved the trip would've probably been successful and entirely monotonous. Perhaps there would've been some trust between Prester and Dan--there's a kind of unspoken loyalty between businessmen and well paying customers--had Prester not been bought out by lofty promises and loftier pay by the CAF.

Dan intermittently paused for cover between each mad dash across open ground. Whistling, intensely hot green lances flew past his ears and seared holes in the ground behind him as he ran.

The flight time of Prester's arrows was shortening. Dan was gaining on him and ducked behind a particularly out of place boulder to avoid two more burning arrows. The likelihood of getting hit was growing with every second the fight dragged on.

With a grunt, Dan made a running jump and sideways baseball slide, scraping along to the cover of a great mound of packed earth, a natural undulation in the shape of the forest floor that looked like a skiier's mogul. It acted as a shield. Dan narrowly missed an arrow in the neck and it impacted the dirt instead. Although he had a moment of respite, he was stuck behind it.

Dan popped his head up and scanned around like a submarine's periscope. Prester already had a lock and loosed a quick barrage of energy arrows. Dan couldn't see where the elf was, and didn't even see the arrows coming. He heard their giveaway tune as they rocketed towards him. He retracted his head just in time.

Laying on his belly, he smelled something burning. His rucksack had been hit and caught alight. He swatted it out quickly and drew up to one knee, moving himself a little further along behind the mound and poking his head up again, despite the risk of it, hoping for a glimpse of Prester. Dan spotted him crouched atop a tree limb.

If I get too close he'll bolt. I've got to do something from here.

Dan waited. A light arrow impacted either side of him, throwing up more dirt in little clouds and sizzling some leaves. The arrows weren't aimed to hit. They were warnings. Taunts. Prester wanted Dan to know he was incontrovertibly stuck and no matter which way he ran he was going to lose the battle.

For a third time, Dan shot his head up. It was a silly but a necessary move in the scheme of things. He'd taunt Prester right back. Dan bobbed down again before Prester could fire again. Prester started climbing with ease and grace up the tree limbs, hoping elevation would bring a clear shot over the top of the dirt mound and remove Dan's advantage in hiding behind it.

Exactly what Dan wanted. He waited until Prester was at least thirty feet above ground level, aiming down like a hunter in his blind, a clear shot available. If Dan didn't move, he was likely to live out the rest of his life as a dolphin with a new blowhole burned into the top of his head.

Dan had Prester right where he wanted.

Dan clamored up and over the top of the dirt mound, moving his considerable girth as fast as he could. While drawing on his last reserves he bolted towards the base of Prester's tree. A barrage of burning green arrows, like futuristic lasers, pelted down at him. One caught him in the ear and burned a neat crescent shape into the outer cartilage. Another hit him in the left bicep. There was no blood, just a scalding heat and sensation of pressure.

Were the arrows of traditional make it would've been much worse of a wound. The way the barbs stick in and rend flesh, twisting and grinding as you move, is the killer. It's widely known that an arrowhead is much less lethal if it makes it all the way through, and in this case there was no arrowhead at all. Dan continued on.

As he ran, Dan withdrew a pocketbook of matches from one of the roomy pockets of his overalls. They were saturated and longer fit for purpose. He snapped the toothpick shaft of one match stick. It was made of wood. It belonged to Dan. He dropped it into the plain leather pouch tied to his belt once he got to the very base of the Prester's tree.

"You're gone!" Prester continued unleashing arrows, and Dan could see the desperation plastered across the elf's face.

There was a perpetual second, where both men locked eyes.

Dan concentrated, wiped away the pain, and saw every limb of the pine tree snapping like the matchstick in his pocket. His magic made the mental image real. With an audible crack the branches removed themselves from the trunk, and came down hard. Prester came down too, screaming like it was his last breath, flapping his arms and pedaling his legs all the way. The elf's pleated leather kilt flapped like an open parachute.

Like a satellite reentering the atmosphere, Prester returned to earth with an almighty wallop. Dan staggered over to him and pressed two fingers to the carotid to confirm a pulse. A good start. Although the elf was face down, Dan could see the rise and fall of regular but shallow breathing. Positional asphyxia would be entirely possible in that position and broken ribs were almost certain. Dan nudged Prester over with his boot.

Time for a damage assessment.

One well developed shiner, eyelids puffy and black. Prester wouldn't need to squint an eye shut to take aim with bruises that good--the swelling was enough to close it for him. A split lower lip and two missing teeth. More lacerations to the chest, parallel to the diagonal slice that was already on Prester's torso when Dan first joined the convoy. His sleeveless cotton tunic was once navy blue and black. Now, it was more red than anything with coppery, dried blood.

Dan wasn't which injuries he was responsible for. Right now, he didn't feel guilty.

[Etheryn]

Despite the ugliness of Prester's injuries they were all superficial enough. Dan was no medical expert--he probably couldn't tie a sling if he needed to--and wouldn't be able to do anything if Prester was rendered immobile. Hopefully Dan's decision to pit Prester in an unwinnable fight against gravity wasn't too harsh.

The source of Dan's intensely uncomfortable injuries was laying not far away. Dan picked up Prester's beige-yellow recurve bow, very cautiously and slowly, knowing it wasn't ordinary. He tossed it over in his hands yet didn't dare touch the drawstring. At first sight there was nothing special about it. Plain and unremarkable.

With a closer look, Dan saw a mural of intricate swirling patterns and flowing cursive script, half a shade lighter than the yew of the bow itself. From a distance, the inscriptions looked like the natural grain of the wood and were too light to distinguish. Close up, there was a clear display of masterful workmanship.

There was an indefinable sensation when Dan held it. There wasn't a word to describe it. It was like a warm blanket wrapped around him, pressing in gently, making him feel like this very land was his own. It filled him with the contentment one gets when walking in the front door of their family home after a hard day's work. When seeing an old friend for the first time in years. Dan put the bow down, and suddenly the feeling was gone.

It puzzled him. So, naturally, he picked it up again.

The feeling returned. There was a connection between that bow, its owner, and the surrounding wilderness. Something primal and ancient. Idly, Dan thumb at the drawstring. Instantly he felt a pulsating shock run up through his hand and into his arm. His body spasmed and winced away. As a reflex he dropped the bow. The drawstring glowed hot and green like Prester's arrows.

There was a blister developing on his fingertips. A burn.

The bow wasn't meant for him to touch. He carefully picked it up between a forefinger and thumb, and hooked it onto Prester's shoulder. Dan considered snapping the thing into pieces as throwing it to four corners of the winds. He wasn't sure if his own mind that decided, or some kind of subconscious compulsion from the bow itself.

No. It isn't yours.

Again, a new kind of magic. Even the hills could weave their sorcery.

With a fireman's carry made all the more painful with now multiple punctures, Dan slung Prester over his shoulder and marched on through the forest for a shady spot. The day had become humid. A wide gap in the overcast clouds allowed the sun to evaporate all the moisture and dew in the forest, turning the air sticky and thick.

He trudged on for a further thirty minutes until he found a divot in the soil that pooled water. A miracle on its own. Dan lapped it up eagerly, and with utter disgust in being obligated to do so, cupped some to Prester's lips. Dan directly attributed this entire mess to Prester. It would've been great to fill Prester's mouth with a knuckle sandwich instead of a drink of water.

There was more to it than that. Dan threw his own stone, and this was where the ripples ended. He needed to help Prester, as much as he didn't like it. He gave the elf some water. Prester spluttered and woke up. Dan held him down. Prester didn't struggle back.

"Talk," Dan said. His voice was controlled and hard. There was no need to shout.

Prester's first response was to spit a mouthful of blood and saliva right onto Dan's cheek. "You ruined me. We could've gotten away. We could've made it."

Dan wiped the dripping glob away with the rear of his left hand and fought the nigh irresistible desire to grind Prester's face into jelly. His voice and his hand trembled with anger.

"I said talk," Dan continued.

"Listen to you, you big hard man. I can already see you shaking," Prester snarled again, with that deep seated hurt of a wounded dog. "We're both dead once the CAF catch up. It doesn't matter if I tell you everything or tell you nothing."

"I already heard the important bits from the Commander. Before I threw him out," Dan said. "The Rangers got your man, Prester. It's done."

"Let me paraphrase that. You just signed a death warrant for not only yourself, but everyone you ever knew and any family you ever had," Prester jeered.

It was like something shut off behind the elf's eyes. Any chance, any half hope that Prester could untangle himself from this, was truly gone because of what Dan just said. Because the Commander was eliminated from the equation. Prester no longer had any bargaining chip for leverage against either the Rangers or the Empire.

"I want to know why you've followed me all night to try off me again."

"Why wouldn't I? It's because of you everyone in my crew is dead, I'm down three wagons... Each of which cost more money than you'll ever earn, might I add. My reputation is ruined, and as far as my employer is concerned I sold them out. You think I can just run around the woods in my undies for the rest of my life, man? You think no one will follow this up?"

"I've broken no promises to the CAF," Dan replied. "Not my problem. In fact, they've got no idea who I am. They've got no idea I was even here. The Rangers don't know me. The Empire doesn't know me. It's all on you."

"That's where you're wrong. I run a business, Dan."

"Your point?"

"Businesses keep receipts. Paper trail."

"Again, your point?"

Prester grinned smugly, impatient to gloat about his ace in the hole. "Who made your identification, 'Arrundir'? Who knew your real name, who you really are, and who you are really related to? Certain undesirable rebel leaders? Hmmm?"

"The rhetoric isn't necessary. It was you," Dan said. He saw where this was all going.

"Me! That's right. Who do you think kept the CAF in the loop about the people that'd unknowingly be guarding their oh-so-glorious leader? Me!"

In one fleeting second, the scope of Prester's treachery became clear. Dan's heart did a double backflip, followed by a triple pirouette, before it lumped in his throat. All sorts of conclusions ending with doom and gloom played out in Dan's head in fast forward. He'd been restraining his temper. Saving it for when it'd actually be needed. Clarity of thought was absolutely necessary. Now, once the entire picture was laid out before him, Dan lost it.

"You sold me out before I even met you, Prester. You sold everyone else out too. You took us on board to use us as shields against the Rangers, like repellant to stop them from attacking. To confuse them. You put the Commander in a damned costume so he'd look like the rest of your passengers! So, instead of leaving everyone else alone, the Rangers slaughtered everyone!" Dan thundered.

Alarm bells started ringing. Dan saw fire. Red, hot, lovely fire. Then he saw his years gone by as a fisherman, filleting the day's catch, his hands a blur with his knife as he cleanly dissected and gutted a fish like it was simple as buttering a slice of toast. He saw everything destructive and cruel and sharp in the world coming to rest somewhere between Prester's neck and his face.

"Bart and Kerrigan told you my story, because without knowing why I needed a false ID script you refused to get it! So, you knew it all before you met me. You knew why I wanted a false identity!"

"Spot on. Keep going."

"You told the Empire about what you'd heard with the hope they would offer a reward."

"Correct."

"You were keeping me under tabs," Dan growled through clenched teeth. His mouth went dry. "So you could blow the whole thing open, all of my cover, and deliver me right to the Empire!"

"Also correct," Prester said with a sadistic laugh. "Three out of three! How does it feel?"

"Maybe you should tell me how this feels, first," Dan finished.

He wasn't sure if it was fear or rage. It didn't matter. He could barely hold the steel straight. Dan pressed his knife close to Prester's carotid artery.

"Do it, boy! It doesn't matter! You're screwed! The Empire want you just as bad as your brother! The Rangers are going to think you're an Empire spy, having been spotted hanging out with an Empire aligned convoy and paying money to Empire informants!"

Dan felt the urge welling up in him. The intolerable sting of betrayal made him more than want to snuff Prester out. He needed to do it. There was nothing more logical, more right, more justified. Still, something inside him stopped it from happening. He couldn't credit his own sense of morals.

It was the magic. That special thing inside of him, that in its own way reminded him of what was right or what was wrong. When that murderous passenger took over Dan's brain, it stepped in to wrench the steering wheel back in the right direction. It did it in the quickest, most obvious way. With pain.

Dan's empty stomach tied itself in a painful knot and tried to devour every adjacent vital organ. A shattering migraine headache instantly ballooned behind his eyes. The considerable list of aches, pains and injuries doubled with severity. Dan's pain threshold was high but not limitless. He folded like paper and rolled off Prester. With an involuntary jerk of the arm Dan flung his knife into nearby bushes and didn't even know he'd done so.

Dan's own magic was crippling him, but for a noble cause. It wouldn't let itself be part of a man who could dispense violence when another option was available.

In the middle of dealing with his brain reducing into mush, Dan came to a realisation. He'd skewered Rendel's guts. He'd blasted Arx away in rolling wall of living earth. He'd used magic to snap the tree limbs from beneath Prester's feet, while he was taking potshots at Dan from the forest canopy.

Now, not too long after, Dan's magic was backfiring. It was stopping him from destroying the elf who would do the very same to him, given half a chance.

My magic won't let me strike first. It'll never let me choose to be a killer, unless I have to defend myself...

In that split second opportunity while Dan was incapacitated, Prester clawed up to his feet, removed his bow from the shoulder, and drew back an energy arrow. Its searing tip leveled for Dan's heart.

"I've got my own magic too, you know," Prester said. "You've already felt the bite. You see it in front of you now. Or maybe you can't. It doesn't matter."

Instantly Dan's torture stopped. His magic, his passenger, whatever it was, seemed sentient enough on its own to measure Prester's intentions. It could tell the situation had changed. Now Prester was directly threatening Dan's life. The magic would absolutely allow self-defence. It would protect its host.

Dan kept thrashing and screaming. He was no longer in pain but continued to mime as such. His throat went raw. Prester fell for it.

As Dan rolled onto his belly in a particularly dramatic charade of agony--both hands obscured from view--he removed the spent straight razor he'd put in his pockets at the start of the trip. He transferred it to his leather pouch. Into the conduit, the channel, the wand for his magic. He prepared his force. It reached out and grabbed hold of the first common material it could find.

Dan's magic found his knife laying in the bushes, unseen by Prester, after Dan accidentally flung it away moments earlier. The blade filled with restrained kinetic energy.

"This bow is a predator, an ancient thing of the earth and water and trees and winds. It knows to hunt or be hunted. Unlike yours, my friend, my magic has no pretentions. It has no moral high horse. It's a shame yours did," Prester said.

He unleashed the arrow from no more than ten feet away from Dan.

Dan countered at the exact same instant. His knife flew out of the bushes, leaving a swirling cloud of leaves and dust like it'd been fired from a tank's cannon, and soared at escape velocity and directly towards Prester. The entire thing happened in less than a tenth of a second. The two projectiles collided in mid air. The green light arrow split Dan's knife down the middle, separating it into two pieces of now superheated, glowing metal.

The remainders of Dan's knife continued their course, flying towards Prester like shrapnel from an antipersonnel mine. They pierced the elf's gut and neck. A spout of gore opened up, and the elf's small intestine slopped onto the ground like spilled spaghetti. Arterials squirts sprayed out onto the ground. With his neck mauled open, there was nothing he could say. He simply sagged to the ground, limp, and keeled over.

Dan buckled to one knee. He looked down, and through the narrowing tunnel of his remaining vision, saw Prester's parting gift. Another arrow wound right in the stomach. It was neat enough, like a second belly button, breathing out a foul, fine mist like the steamy vapor that rises from roast meat. He tried to remained standing. It was impossible, and with a drunken stagger he fell on his face.

Dan shut down. His tanks had been on reserve for days, for the last hour he was motoring on fumes alone, and now it was over. Empty. He couldn't help it. There was nothing to be done. It's hard to pinpoint the exact moment when one lapses into unconsciousness. Dan didn't know it about it either, when it finally happened.

***

Another funny thing about sleep is that you don't know how long you do it unless you've got a reference point. The passing between day and night. The hands on a clock. Your significant other jabbing you in the ribs, saying "You're late for work!"

Dan had no idea how long he'd been asleep. An hour. A day. A week. A month. That sort of thing is easy enough to deal with. Hell, some people use it as a measure of how good the night was. "I don't even know how I got home, man!"

Still, things start to get difficult is when you wake up to a bucket of ice cold water poured over your head. When you're in an unfamiliar room, eight by eight feet, all surfaces made of granite. When everything stinks of rotten meat and urine. When you're stripped down naked. When your feet aren't touching the ground, and your hands are tied above your head, chains digging into your wrists and making you bleed, pain and numbness shooting down your arms and spine because your entire weight is borne by joints that weren't designed for the task.

It could've been worse. Blurry eyed, Dan saw the arrow wounds in his trapesius and bicep had been stuffed with gauze and acidic, disinfecting ointment. Some kind of makeshift intravenous line was jammed into a pulsing vein in his foot, the limbs swelling with pooled blood. His torso was strapped with bandages, and thick padding right at the abdomen. It was soaked through with blood and fluid. Every inch he swung on the chains pulled the injured muscles taught, and redoubled the pain once again. His eyes watered.

The stench coming from his own body was absolutely repugnant. Dan tried to cry out. His mouth was stuffed with his own filthy socks. The stink subsided, somewhat.

A man stood in front of him. Dan recognised the eldest member of the Ranger pursuit team. The Boss. Dan heard Mohawk's voice from outside but couldn't make out the words. The Boss was wearing only the lower half of his exotic, camouflage patterned stealth suit. His upper body was bare, letting two freshly sutured cuts dry out. His eyes were like agate.

"We found you lying face down in the dirt and half dead. Sorry about the chains, man," The Boss said.

"Mmphh… Hrmggh!"

The Boss pulled the socks from Dan's mouth. With a short gasp that stabbed pain up and down his torso, Dan gathered the breath to speak. "Where am I?"

"In a world of hurt. It's nothing personal. Your brother, on the other hand… He's pissed."

With an incredible uppercut, The Boss snapped Dan's head backwards and sent him back to that timeless dark.

It was a kind thing to do, all considered.

[Etheryn]

That's it! Had a lot of fun writing this one too, although you'll notice I went through and edited pretty much every single post and changed plenty of things around. I came to an end and really didn't like how it flowed in the later half. So, I changed things around.

One major issue I've had is changing the quest title. At the first post, I was planning on using a plot relating to a big horse heist. That obviously has nothing to do with what actually happens, so I tried to change it to The Woodlands Run. It displays as such on the first post but not in the main forum. If a mod could fix that for me, it'd be really appreciated!

Also, really having issues figuring out a proper proof reading technique. If someone could PM me a link to something that could give some assistance in that area, it'd be much appreciated!

Unsure what kind of rewards would be appropriate. This is sort of a set up for my third quest (won't be a solo), and given the situation Dan has finished up with less than when he started. He even lost his knife! So, I dunno.

Thanks for your time judges and anyone who reads!

EDIT: Okay, LAST round of edits done! Typos fixed! I won't touch it again, promise. :P

[Amen]

A Woodlands Run by Etheryn

As per your request, this’ll be a full-rubric judgment, with full commentary.

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Story: 8/10

Brilliantly done here. This thread had everything I would expect from a good story. There’s a clear protagonist I’m interested to read about, a clear antagonist I want to see defeated, the setting is well done, your introduction served its purpose, the rising action kept me on board and made sense, the climax was exciting, and the conclusion both satisfied what I wanted from the story and left me wanting more.

Strategy: 8/10

I like the ways in which you used your character’s unique abilities. People that write about magic users on Althanas are, in my opinion, somewhat rare, I think because it’s difficult to exercise your creativity in a void while adhering to the rules of common sense, without making your character a mind-blowing demigod. You hit it spot on in a way that I’ve only ever really seen Caden Law do it, and I was intrigued.

I enjoyed your character’s “method” of using his personality to get around. I’ll get into that more in the character section below.

Setting: 6/10

Okay, in my personal experience, the craft of creative writing has these plateaus that I’ve seen myself and countless other writers reach, and then transcend, and each plateau has its own ingrained set of problems. The good news is you’re at a high plateau. You’re a great writer and a terrific storyteller. The bad news is, the plateau you’re at has a series of extremely bothersome issues to overcome. I say they’re bothersome from experience, because this is still something I’m dealing with in my own writing.

You’re painting me a fantastic word picture in pretty much every post. I can visualize the place, the people, and I can place your character within that mental image. The problem isn’t that you’re not telling me enough, it’s that you’re telling me too much all at once. People always yell at me for “info-dumping” to the point that I utterly hate the term, but that’s what it is.

The problem is that it breaks up the pace. Stuff is actively happening, but when you take a couple of paragraphs to describe Prester and the interior of the carriage, for example, it feels like the action has stopped in the meantime and that’s nothing we want. Try to spread the description throughout the action. So, for example, if I want to describe Prester’s thin physique, have him reach out to help Dan into the carriage, and in that moment describe the elf’s weight and slightness. Smooth it out. I sort of imagine it as action and description being two different flavors, and instead of feeding your reader a spoonful of mashed potatoes and a spoonful of peas, mix the peas into the potatoes and make it one spoonful altogether.

Plot Construction Total: 22

Continuity: 6/10

You did really well here, and I liked that you wrote in Corone and took the civil war as part of your character’s story, and you did it well. War on the home-front is devastating and disruptive, and you’ve captured that really well here, in a way that’s going to influence my own writing for Corone. You’ve built upon the region in a definite way – it feels more fleshed out in my mind, more like a real place, and that’s a credit to your storytelling and world-building.

A quick note on immersion, though: you often use real-world examples to describe things, which isn’t technically WRONG, but when you’re writing for high fantasy or sword and sorcery, or even high sci fi, using those descriptors breaks the reader’s immersion. So, for example, when you describe the layout of a city as being reminiscent of Woodstock ’79, I go “whoa!” because the description is apt, but it’s jarring to juxtapose a horde of camped-out flower-children with a small city in a fantasy universe, or the television static with leaves in an elf-y forest.

This is one of those issues where it’s audience-based, not writer-based, because the truth is that your analogies work for your style of writing and they work well (again, it was somewhat reminiscent of Caden Law. I love his writing, and he’s been yelled at for breaking immersion too). And if you had a character that was from Earth, like Relt Peltfelter, it’d be a lot less jarring. Really, it’s a question of genre conventions: it’s not technically wrong; it just bucks tradition, so I’d be remiss not to point it out.

Interaction: 8/10

Brilliant. Love your dialogue; love your attention to cause and effect.

Character: 9/10

Again, awesome work. I feel like I know Dan pretty well at the end of this, I know what makes him tick and I know what would be out of place for him to say or do. More than that, I LIKE the guy, and your attention to detail really brings him to life. His background as a working class guy really rings true. He’s lovably goofy, and that paired with his unflappable good will makes him endearing instead of white-bread boring.

Keep it up. More than that, don’t be shy to rely on your strong dialogue more: get your characters talking! If nothing else, it adds verisimilitude to the story and gives your readers a sense of who these people are without relying on exposition (which will strengthen your writing and help with the plateau thing I mentioned).

Characterization Total: 23

Creativity: 7

I know I just waved a finger at you for breaking immersion with your real-world metaphors, similes, and allusions, but the truth is they were well done and made sense. Find a way to create fantasy or Althanas-specific similes and such and your continuity score will go up, or buck tradition and really own those modern-day metaphors as a natural part of your writing style. Again, it’s not WRONG, but you’ll get fingers wagged at you for it. Up to you, in the end!

Just going to point out my favorite descriptor you used: you described the evil mage dude’s voice as if he had “gravel, sandpaper, and thumbtacks” in his throat. I loved that.

Mechanics: 7/10

The mechanical errors I found were very slight and easy to overlook in editing. At one point you wrote “scalding” where you meant “scolding,” in another you put “threw” where you wanted “through,” and the second to last post had a missing word in it.

Clarity: 10/10

I followed all the action really easily here and I didn’t have to stop and reread anything. Pacing was pretty good, but keep in mind what I said about mixing your action with description: keep things moving!

Writing Style Total: 24

Wildcard: 10/10

I enjoyed this quite a bit! As a last piece of parting advice, because this is something someone told me that really helped me a lot: trust your reader. Cut down on your exposition as much as possible, and if you can leave anything unsaid, do so. Do your best to be succinct without describing any less than you are already – say more in fewer words. Do that, and there’s no reason you can’t be one of the highest scoring people I've seen on Althanas.

It was a pleasure to read this, thanks!

Shoot me a PM if you’ve got any questions.

Total Score: 79

Etheryn gains 1050 EXP and 150 GP.

[Letho]

EXP/GP added. Etheryn, welcome to the next level.