- Chapter 9 -

Masks, Part I

The days passed, each and every one indistinguishable from the one that came before.

Every morning, before the break of dawn, the overseers would burst inside the overcrowded shack to drag the men out of their cots, shouting and forcing them to make their way to the mine under the threat of the lash. The deed was easier said than done, as each slave was shackled to another, making their progression slow and cumbersome. The first days Heinrich had been detained here, he'd been chained to a quiet, sickly man whose body was constantly racked by coughing fits. Whenever he'd collapse to the ground, hacking and choking, Heinrich would be the one who would have to yank him to his feet. If the overseers were to find them, there'd be hell to pay, and Heinrich did not care to share another man's punishment.

(He had had enough of the lash to fill nightmares for a lifetime.)

The man was long gone now. One night, Heinrich had woken up to find the bedsheets they were forced to share stained with sweat, and the man mumbling and thrashing in his cot. When they had all been neatly lined up outside, the overseers had immediately noticed him as he shuddered on his spot and struggled to stay on his feet. They'd dragged him away from the line—taking care of keeping him within eyesight of the dazed slaves in their shackles—and then neatly lopped off his head from his body.

(The bloody spot had taunted them for a good week, and only a sudden rush of summer rain had washed the red away from the pale sand.)

It had also been one of the rare occasions where Heinrich had gotten a glimpse of the owner of the mine and his son. The two always hovered nearby whenever the men went to the mine, never coming too close, but on this particular morning, the duo had briskly made their way over to the supervisors who had killed the sickly slave, adding to the captive workers' growing uneasiness. The son was a grown man, with limbs thick as trunks, but Heinrich knew, for having seen his face once, that his features were smooth and surprisingly childlike. The father, in contrast, had a back hunching over like a broken tree, and he was even shorter than Heinrich himself. But whenever the old man was willing to put his foot down, it was his subordinates who seemed to shrink on the spot.

"What's the problem, sir?" one of the overseers had asked, his voice barely carrying over to where Heinrich stood. "He's been ill for a while, sir. He would have made the whole bunch sick too."

"Then, why do I find out about this now?" the old man had barked. "He could have contaminated all the others already, for what we know." There had been a pregnant pause, then he'd continued, snarling. "You know how slow the market is, these days, with all the fighting going on up north. I can't just afford to lose men so easily. Next time one gets sick, use your damn brains and keep him away from the others! Or kill him from the start, for God's sake!"

By then, the remaining overseers had not so gently commanded the chained workers to keep moving. Heinrich had followed suit, his gaze never leaving the ground (he would never take the chance of accidentally looking one of the overseers in the eye, he knew perfectly well what it would have earned him) but even then he hadn't been able to stop himself from glancing over to where the old man was berating his underlings. It had been hard to see from this distance, but the son's attention had been clearly on the line of slaves as it advanced. In the instant of an heartbeat, Heinrich had passed by him, and instinctively he had raised his head. Heinrich had found himself holding the younger man's gaze for a mere second, and he'd seen the son's pale eyes widen in clueless curiosity... then promptly, he had looked away as though Heinrich's scrutiny somehow frightened him. Heinrich's face had remained a perfect mask of indifference throughout the encounter. It was only when he was safely in the darkness of the mine that he had allowed himself a soft smirk, the first he'd felt gracing his lips in several months.

A possible epidemic had been thus averted, and life followed its course. And the slaves dug. With a pickaxe, with a heavy mace, with their own bare hands even. Each day, Heinrich's weary arms would raise the instrument above his head, repeating the motions until a fiery pain would start to scorch through his muscles. He had lost count of the times when the too thin skin on his palms (still scarred from that battle with the spider that had happened a thousand years ago) would break; the rocks would then be smeared with his blood. Heinrich would bite his tongue to keep himself from crying out—after all, the overseers were always watching, always.

(And he would not give them any more reason to give in to their baser instincts; they were constantly on the prowl, like a pack of feral dogs, watching for any sign of weakness in their prey.)

Once, they had made an example out of Heinrich, when he'd accidentally crushed two fingers of his right hand under a boulder. One moment, he had been trying to pry a loose piece of ore from the bedrock; the other, the world had gone blindingly white. When his sight has returned, he'd realized he'd been screaming and screaming, and he had tried to tear his eyes away from the sight of the bloody puddle accumulating under the rock, but the pain had been too raw, too searing, to ignore. He had been all but certain that the bones had been ground to dust from the pressure and the weight. Two other slaves had pushed the rock off his hand as quickly as they could, but it had been too late. When two supervisors finally reached him, he had been reduced to incoherent pleading and sobs. And, trapped in a haze of pain, he had made the mistake of protesting when they'd tried to haul him back to his feet.

After throwing him outside and ripping the clothes off his back, they had made disparaging comments at the still fresh marks that already crisscrossed Heinrich's shoulders.

(They incorrectly believed they'd been the ones to mark him that way, and so they jeered that they'd have to teach him how to behave from now on, their laughter mingling with the crack of the whip.)

Heinrich had been on his best behaviour since then.

The overseers did not know that they were not the first. Before he had been brought here, the people back at the garrison had assiduously worked on him, searching for anything incriminating in-between the stubborn silences and the screams. Where were the rebels now? What about their numbers? How did you communicate with them from inside the city? Are they planning an attack? What have you told them? they'd ask, flashing a knife and caressing his cheek with the cutting edge of the blade. At first, his pride kept his mouth shut, and he only glared at them, the only words leaving his lips forming questions of his own.

(Were the children alright? Has Isla survived her wounds? Where have you sent them?)

That had been his mistake.

Once they'd glimpsed those well-guarded worries, their smirks had grown, and they'd dug and dug in that figurative wound. They told him about some desecrated sack of flesh they'd dumped in the dunes as an offering to the vultures ("Killing her was a mistake, she would have fetched a good price. There might have been people with the same kind of sick taste as you, Heiss"). And when the children's names escaped his lips in a fevered whisper, they'd started to circle around him like a group of scavengers, their words merely hinting while their grins alluded to something that was certainly far crueler than any of the stories they spun.

That had hushed Heinrich far more efficiently that any blow ever did.

From this point on, every sound they had managed to wrench out of him were the results of his body betraying him rather than the conscious products of his thoughts. They had never noticed, however, so gleeful they were that he was apparently responding to their treatments. They revelled in the torpor that clouded his eyes, blind to the infinitesimal drop of hatred hidden by the apathy.

That had been their mistake.

He'd built his shield upon layer upon layer of self constructions. Sergeant, Father, Heiss. The first strata he would allow them to see, to break; they weren't truly part of him anyway. And while they would rejoice in destroying the decoy pieces of his self, the parts he had to protect at all costs would stay safely hidden. Prince, Uncle, Heinrich. As long as he grasped these three aspects close to his heart, they would not have him.

When they finally relented and sold him off—in perfect secrecy, of course—to a copper mine somewhere to the east of Skalla, Heinrich polished his shield. When his hands scraped against the rock, he would remember the cool comfort of fingers plunging in the fresh black earth of his now long-lost garden. When at night the proximity and the stench and the noise of the other slaves triggered a bout of inexplicable panic, he'd recall the peaceful solitude of the castle library and the nostalgic smells of old paper and burning candles. When sometimes in the sizzling oppression of the tunnels he feared he would just drop dead, his existence forgotten and unmourned by the outside world, he'd see in his mind's eye Ernst's grinning face and the boy flinging his foil in a parry before preparing himself for the riposte.

He would retreat to the deepest trenches of his self. He would stay concealed in the confines of his memories. He would redirect the humiliation—not to fuel his anger as he once had before, but to a growing will to survive. And he would get out of here.

('And then it'll be my turn, my turn, my turn,' the will of his vengeance would say, always creeping to his mind unbidden.)

Still, the constant pain and fatigue made it impossible to use conventional means to cast spells. The Cygnan slave traders, upon years of practise, were aware of this reality, and so every slave who was known to be capable of magic was branded with some sort of symbol above the heart. Those unfortunate enough to bear this mark were tasked with the most arduous chores, and were granted only a very few hours of rest. Under these circumstances, an average person would not be able to regenerate their Mana.

(It was a death sentence as sure and swift as a king's command.)

But Heinrich—although a part of him still loathed to admit it—belonged to a grand bloodline, one that had been specially bred to manipulate the very fabric of magic. He had always been far from average.

The work in the mine was tedious, but redundant enough for him to slip in some of the exercises Isla had taught him without being noticed by the overseers. At first, every time he would retreat within his mind—steadying his breaths, cutting himself off the thoughts and sensations of the outside world—he'd perceive nothing except the occasional flash of green flaring out of the corner of his eye. Heinrich was too stubborn to be deterred, and he persisted, sneaking in practises whenever he could—when he'd bring the mace down on yet another piece of rock, when his ears would ring from being shouted at after a long day, when he'd lay awake at night watching the moon through the hole in the roof directly above his cot—and yet he was no closer to finding that supposedly powerful reserve of Mana that Isla had glimpsed within him.

A kind of fevered hopelessness had started to creep inside Heinrich's heart—why had he believed the Satyros girl when she had no proof to support her claims?—and he had sunken to a crippling sense of despair when Isla's teachings finally proved true.

It had happened almost unexpectedly. The scorching heat of high summer had assaulted the quarry for a good week now, the stifling and heavy air inside the tunnels having already claimed the lives of many. Heinrich's head had swum all day, and a bout of dizziness had nearly sent him tumbling to the ground; he had managed to stop mid-fall by pushing himself off the bedrock with shaky hands.

Panting, he had cracked his eyes open, and fixed his hazy gaze on his hands as they fumbled against the dust and the rocks in the dark... and had been surprised to see see veins of green light pulsating alongside the pale scars marring his flesh. They blinked out of sight almost immediately afterwards, but it had been enough to send a thrill through his chest and a weary grin to his face.

Soon, whenever his eyes wandered to the other men slaving away in the tunnels, Heinrich would see the dull greyish threads of the Mana that burned inside their bodies. Their weary souls seemed to flicker in the darkness like will-o'-the-wisps. Amidst the shadows that draped the walls of stone, Heinrich would now find bright lights peppering the black. Tiny, pure gems of crystallized Mana like the ones that lit the Royal Hall back home, precious treasures he would then hide under his cot back at the slave-quarters. Under his feet, he'd feel a low hum, like the sounds of raging water—the flow of Mana that ran under the very earth, everywhere on the continent. Never had he noticed that phenomenon, even though it was so intrinsically entwined with his fate as a Sacrifice.

And in the nights, instead of weaving horrific memories into his nightmares, his mind would dream of Historia.

No one was concerned over the gradual disappearances of the rats that used to scuttle the grounds of the quarry.

Nor did they notice the numbers of dead desert critters—spiders, snakes, lizards—suddenly littering the surroundings of the slave-quarters. The harsh summer had already been deadly for man, it was easy to believe it had claimed another kind of casualty.

Heinrich did nothing to dissuade them from thinking otherwise.

He was lucky poison spells left so little discernible marks on their victims. Only a knowledgeable physician would be capable of telling the real cause of death, and the only healer who lived nearby was a fidgety young man who had no real competences other than a natural talent for crude healing spells. The quarry's real physician was a friend of the owner of the mine who only came once a month to inspect the stocks (in the end, that's all they were, merchandise) at the request of the old man. Heinrich was patiently waiting for the man's next visit. When he'd then leave, he would put the next part of his plans into motion.

For now, Heinrich's targets remained in the realm of the small. After all, nothing bad could come from a little experimentation. He was especially keen on seeing what would happen to a few other slaves who had the strange idea of eating some of the rats who had succumbed to his poison spells—would they become sick as well, he wondered? Another bizarre occurrence had taken place while Heinrich had been lying in his cot, holding a captured desert spider in hid hands. He had been utterly focused on the string of Mana quivering inside the tiny creature—observing it, manipulating it, playing with it—when suddenly he had felt it snap, like the chord of an instrument that had been stretched too tautly.

And the creature had dissolved in a pile of sand.

This new possibility had sent a ripple of excitement through Heinrich's skin—what sort of spell was this?—but to his intense disappointment he found he could not repeat this accomplishment. Still, it did not matter; his plans had already been set in motion. He would have all the time in the world later on to study and perfect this strange ability.

Now, Heinrich's most important concern was to gather information. The times and lengths of the patrols, the amounts of supplies he could steal from for the long trek back to Skalla, the location of the keys and all of the other instruments that could help to get rid of the shackles, and of course, the safest way to the armoury—every shred of knowledge could make a difference between life and death. Heinrich had managed to whip a few of his companions in misfortune into assisting him in this endeavour. Some had responded to thinly-veiled threats, while others had not needed much convincing; under a veneer of subdued hopelessness, they had been cultivating a cold, deadly intent.

But one thing remained difficult to investigate: the happenings of the outside world.

Other than the old physician and some Alistellian merchants, few came to the grounds of the quarry. It was easy to tell this lack of news had been troubling the master and the rest of the overseers for some time now, but they were always careful to never broach the subject whenever a slave could be in range of hearing.

Using the Vanish spell was the only way to get past this obstacle, although it meant also dragging along the man to whom Heinrich was permanently shackled. The meek Cygnan had protested at first, fearful of what would happen if Heinrich ever got caught, but the others had hinted at a not-so-pleasant encounter with a cave-in if he could not find within himself the will to cooperate. Heinrich, in contrast, had gone all out of his way to cajole him into docility. To his great relief, the combination of the two approaches had worked, and the man now followed Heinrich into every situation, never uttering a sound.

It was no different tonight. Considering how little time they had to accomplish such a task, Heinrich was grateful for the man's newfound will to obey. The three supervisors who stood guard over the slaves as they plowed through their meagre dinners were the sloppiest of the bunch, and as such they were the only ones whose scrutiny they could easily escape. A couple of other slaves motioned over to Heinrich to signify that the overseers's attentions were elsewhere. He then quietly rose to his feet, ignoring the little whimper of worry his unfortunate companion gave as Heinrich's hand snaked behind to forcefully grab his arm.

Outside the shabby dwelling where the master and his son lived, Heinrich could already hear the old man's shouts coming from within. It was an auspicious sign, as the sounds would drown out much of the noise Heinrich and the other slave would make while they skulked around under the cover of the Vanish spell. The two crept their way in, and Heinrich's fingernails dug into the other man's skin to indicate that they needed to stop. Their chains, although wrapped in a few layers of cloth, still gave a little rattle as they came to a stop.

"It freaks me out, the way they look at us sometimes," the son's voice came from the room next to theirs. Heinrich advanced at bit, pulling the other man further in, and quickly appraised his surroundings. "I just think that maybe if—"

"Not this again," Heinrich heard the old man growl. By then, he had noticed a desk covered with papers through the open door by his right, to the opposite side of where the master was berating his son. Was this where the master kept his important documents: letters and maps and all other manners of things that could prove to be useful? "I swear, ever since you've come home from your mother's, you ended up with that annoyingly smug self-righteous streak of hers. There isn't a day that goes by without you questioning my every action."

"Well, um," the son said, sounding even more dimwitted than usual, "it's just that I think treating them that way is kind of wrong, you know?"

"Spare me your misplaced compassion," his father shot back. "You want a job where you can protect your delicate sensibilities? Then try to wiggle your way out to Alistel and see how you fare striking out as an honest man—or whatever is the definition of honest in that gullible head of yours. And then what will you do the day your crops'll start to die out? You'll run home with your tail between your legs, that you will."

"But, Da..."

"You think life's about doing what you want, boy? No, it's about trying not to get every last inch of you broken beyond repair. And they," the old man spat, and through the crack of the door Heinrich could see him point toward the window; Heinrich quickly realized he meant to designate the slaves sitting outside, "are some of the tools you can use to keep yourself afloat. If they were in my shoes and me in theirs, they'd do and say the same damn thing."

The son shuffled on his feet. "Well, you know best, Da, but if maybe if I tried somethin' other than farming, then—"

"Damn it, don't you ever listen to me? You wouldn't even make it out of the country! They say the Granorgite army's been on the prowl around these parts. " At this, Heinrich's ears perked up. The Granorgite army? What does he mean? "And if we don't get invaded by the Granorgites, then we'll be overrun by rebel scums. I need all the help I can get."

"Alright, alright, Da, I get it, sorry," the giant mumbled, contrite like a little boy.

"That's better," the old man replied. "Now, will you finally get your ass moving so I can finish a bit of work here?"

By then, the sound of his footsteps indicated he was making his way toward where Heinrich was hidden. Swift and quiet like a shadow, Heinrich slipped outside, dragging along the man to whom he was chained to; the latter was still so stricken by fear that he was stiff as a rock. They slid back, unnoticed, in the mass of slaves still eating in the dirt, Heinrich's now fuzzy mind struggling furiously to make sense of what he had just heard.

Just what in the world had happened on the war front, up north?

There was more than one hundred slaves working in the mine, with little under thirty men to keep guard over them. And although the influx of new blood had decreased over the months, death was still regarded as an ordinary occurrence, one that was displeasing, naturally, but not worth investigating in most cases.

When one first overseer died, the admittedly furious master could do nothing but grudgingly accept it. The slaves were filthy and weak and prone to every sickness known to man: of course it was a possibility that they could pass some foul diseases to their wardens.

When the fourth and fifth overseers succumbed to this new, mysterious illness, however, the old man's gruff indifference turned to rage, albeit a nervous kind. He sent his subordinates on a swift quest for answers. Was it something in the water, the master and his cronies thought at first? Four and five and six and finally seven more men followed. It was somehow amusing, then, to see them scrambling over to put forth new theories. But none of the slaves are affected by this malady, Heinrich had then heard them whisper, and all our water comes from the same source. They were starting to believe that their food supply had become spoiled when three other, previously healthy guardsmen perished suddenly—too suddenly.

At this point, the master's suspicions abruptly veered toward the slaves populating his quarry.

The overseers were never gentle when it came to handling the workers, but tonight it was with shouts and blows that they assembled the slaves outside of their quarters. Heinrich was nursing a nasty gash to the arm when the old master advanced to face them, already shuddering with what could only be badly contained rage. Some of the overseers drew their swords, their eyes darkly foreboding, while the rest cracked their whips and grinned in anticipation.

From this distance, Heinrich almost believed he could see the spittle flying from the master's mouth as he bellowed, commanding the overseers to charge at the slaves amassed in front of them. In response, a growing sense of fury rippled through the latter's midst, and they roared back at their captors, straightening their bloodied and battered bodies into improvised battle stances.

And the corners of Heinrich's mouth slowly curled into a satisfied smirk.

In the end, they prevailed against the masters.

Their losses had been staggering. Although the few survivors could barely stand on their feet, so exhausted and near starvation they were, they still found within themselves the energy to tear through the belongings of the master and his lackeys with sadistic glee. Some even dragged away a few select cadavers from the mountain of corpses they had piled after the battle. A disturbed Heinrich had made his escape then, unwilling to see what treatment they reserved to the remains of the dead overseers. Instead, he went to rummage through the old man's papers, carefully pocketing most of the maps he could find.

While the others feasted on their spoils (most of them ended up making themselves sick, so hasty they were to devour the overseers's vast food supplies), Heinrich meticulously planned his journey back to Skalla amidst a few rounds of well-deserved rest. Two days afterwards, he was in the middle of preparing his provisions when two of the newly freed slaves came to find him. Their fright made their words near incoherent. Apparently, some of the men who had been serving as scouts had spied a cloud of dust rising on the horizon—a telltale sign that a group, a particularly large one, was making its way over to the quarry.

"We can't see their sigil yet," one of the two men said, worry deepening the creases on his aged face. "Who... who could it be?"

"What should we do?" the younger one interrupted him. Behind the two, a few other survivors were starting to gather, their gaunt faces settling on Heinrich. The latter's spirits plummeted, and he could not help but grind his teeth together. What on earth did they expect him to do?

He had managed to bring most of the men who could still carry a weapon into a coherent formation by the time the first riders reached their location. Their gold flag billowed in the wind, emblazoned by a fiery red symbol. One that Heinrich recognized immediately.

Dammit! The riders had not reached for their weapons yet, but Heinrich did not care. Without so much of a warning for his fellow men, he turned on his heel and fled, using his now replenished Mana to fade from sight. Dammit, dammit, dammit! It had alleviated Heinrich's heart somehow that the approaching party did not bear the silver dragon on a field of red, the standard of Granorg, but still... had Heinrich escaped one master just to find himself in the clutch of another?

Heinrich stormed into the shack that once belonged to the old man and his son, heading to the chamber he had claimed for himself. He hastily threw in a bag everything he could find, keeping out an ear to listen if anyone was coming his way. Outside, the clopping of the hooves mingled with a few muffled voices and the ever approaching sounds of the army as they marched. So far, there seemed to be no fighting.

Clutching his bag to his heart, Heinrich went to stand by the door, fizzling out of view again. He bit down a swear. His heart was pounding so hard he was sure it was giving away his position to anyone who would head in his direction.

Voices and footsteps came to Heinrich's attention, and he sucked in a breath, his left hand coming to rest on the hilt of his dagger.

"I swear I heard someone going that way!" were the first words he could make out.

"He's got some kind of invisibility spell," another man said, and Heinrich's heart hammered into his chest even faster. "He must have sneaked out before you arrived, sir, but he can't have gotten very far from here, really."

"I see," a deep, booming voice—one Heinrich did not recognize—said. "What an interesting ability. Do you know where he might have learned it?"

"No, we don't even know where he's from. Hell, we don't even know his name. He's not one for mingling."

By then, the sounds of their footsteps had grown louder, indicating that they had come very close to the shack. Heinrich pushed the door a bit and took a glimpse through the open crack.

The group consisted of a few surviving slaves—easily recognizable from the dirty, tattered tunics that seemed to float around their skeletal forms—and a rather ragtag bunch that included warriors in mismatched pieces of armour and a individual whose outfit was so well-kept he almost seemed out of place. The one in the middle was obviously their leader. He was a mountain of a man—tall and dark, with muscles rippling out of his tunic and leather armour. Heinrich's eyes narrowed. Could this be...?

"Is anyone there?" the man called out. He sounded genuinely cordial. "I'm not here to hurt you or any of your people. I'm just curious as how you managed to pull out what you did. Very curious."

Heinrich pondered on the newcomer's words. With a sigh, he finally crossed the door in one step, blinking out of the Vanish spell.

"There he is!" one of the now freed slaves said, pointing to him. Heinrich's sudden appearance caused the group of slaves and desert brigands to nervously whisper among themselves, but Heinrich only had eyes for the giant standing in front of him.

King Garland's formidable gold gaze was one that could easily pine men into place, yet Heinrich instead drew himself to his full height as the stare bore into him. For a fleeting moment he was sure he'd see a hint of a smile gracing the lips of the so-called Desert Tiger.

"They tell me you're the one who's made a mess out of this place," the self-proclaimed king announced. His voice, smooth and powerful, brought memories of Victor and Alistel's General Hugo, although the former could never shake the trace of cowardly doubt from his tone, and the latter's had just reeked of artifice and contempt. It was not so with the man standing in front of Heinrich; he was everything the King of Granorg and the Prophet's Voice could ever hope to be.

Heinrich answered Garland's statement with silence. The king's grin grew larger, and he folded his arms across his chest. One of his acolytes, the prissy man who stood out like a sore thumb, scowled deeply, clearly irritated on his master's behalf.

"Didn't you hear, slave?" the man said. Everything about him betrayed a past life as a noble of Granorg: his accent, his style of clothes, his very bearing even. "His Majesty wishes to hear an explanation. How did you manage to slaughter your masters?"

"Peace, Hedge," said Garland. His eyes brimmed with amusement.

"My lord, these men are criminals!"

"These men are bloody ingenious, that's what." Garland glanced down at the man named Hedge, his amicability suddenly gone. "Anyone who finds themselves rising above others should always expect to discover one day a knife planted in their back by the people they've pushed under them. The overseers of this place discarded this golden rule, and they paid the price. I'd say every man here has won his freedom, fair and square."

The man called Hedge was clearly stumped. "Your Majesty, this is folly! These men murdered their masters! Poisoned them! You can't seriously think of letting them live!"

"Poison, eh?" Garland said, rubbing the slight beard that covered his angular chin. "How did you manage that?"

Heinrich withstood the man's gaze. "With magic," he finally croaked.

Garland burst into loud guffaws. "A poison spell! You seem like a man of many talents, mister—?"

"Heiss," Heinrich supplied. The name felt disgusting on his tongue.

"Well, Heiss," Garland continued, advancing and raising a large hand for Heinrich to shake, "you are a free man. And I'll gladly let someone with skills of your calibre join me. Food, shelter, women—or men if that's what you prefer. I offer my people nothing but the best. What say you?"

Heinrich's gaze dropped to the king's extended hand.

"There's one thing that I want."

"Oh?" Garland said.

Heinrich looked up, meeting the king's golden gaze again.

"...Skalla." Heinrich's reply came in a low, hate-filled rasp. "I need to get to Skalla."

This time, it was Garland who went silent. "Is that so? I had plans to go there already, but some of my men were against the idea, since—" The king's voice trailed off, and now he seemed lost in thought.

"What do you mean?" one of the slaves next to Heinrich asked. "What's happened in Skalla?"

King Garland's men shared cryptic gazes.

"Did you not hear?" the man called Hedge said, his tone aloof and sneering. "The Granorgites invaded Skalla three months ago."

A/N: As always, a big thank you to ishouldhavewaitedinsalt/InfernalFantasy for betaing this thing!

And the game didn't give any indication that horses exist in that universe, buuut I kind of find it hard to believe they've build such a civilization without any kind of beasts to ride, so I've gone the easiest and most boring way and gave them horses.