The next morning, they gathered around the town well after they made their preparations to depart. They left the village of Yormgen behind.
The desert was even more relentless in its oppression of them on the trudge back. Karol had thankfully been keeping up with their map, so they were able to stop at the oasis once more to rest and refill as they crossed the scorching hot landscape. After a few days' time, with the moon waning further to a thin crescent, they managed to make it back to the oasis that stood where Mantaic had been, and further on to the entrance of the Weasand of Cados. That cold, dank cave would be a welcome relief from the heat of the desert. Or at least that was what he had thought.
As they prepared to enter the cave, Yuri forced them to a stop. He could hear voices, sharp, clipped tones issuing orders that he couldn't hear from this distance. He and Repede pressed forward to investigate, leaving the rest of the party to wait for them.
Just inside the entrance of the cave, he saw what he had been worried about. Knights, almost half a brigade worth, and with them, a group of mages. They seemed to have the area secured, and as he watched for a few long moments, he could see the mages fiddling with flat canister devices with purple cores and a peculiar emblem that he recognized.
"Hurry up and get those detonators set."
"Don't rush us. The arming features on these are tricky. If we're not careful, they could blow this whole mountain with us in it."
"...Just try to be quick about it. We need to head back to Nordopolica as soon as possible for further orders from Sir Garista."
If Garista had something to do with this, then they were definitely up to no good. The fact that they mentioned Nordopolica also set Yuri on edge. Did they have a foothold in Palestralle's city already? He listened a little longer to try and get more information, but they quieted on the subject, instead favoring news of the Coliseum bouts. He and Repede returned quietly to the party, who were waiting impatiently outside of the cave.
"What's going on, Yuri?" Estelle asked.
"The cavern is full of knights."
"What? All the way out here? Why?" He motioned to Karol to keep his voice down.
"I don't know, but I overheard them talking about some detonators."
Rita sprung toward the cave entrance, but he stopped her. "Let me go!"
"I wanna rush in there as much as you do, but we need to be smart about this."
"They're going to-"
"I know. They're planning on sealing off the cave. The devices they're using look like this." He used a stick to draw a crude depiction in the sand of the device he had seen the mages handling. "Can you disarm them?"
"I'll need a better look at them, but if it's this style, they aren't too complicated."
"Great. Now we need some way to distract them so we can get in there."
Judith looked over at him with a sly smile that he quickly returned with a frown. She thankfully didn't bring up the idea of his distraction tactic from Heliord.
"We could lead a monster in to them." Karol piped up. "It's something Nan mentioned once as a way to distract other monsters. All we need is something strong enough that will keep them busy while we sneak in."
"Great idea, Karol." Yuri ruffled the boy's hair affectionately and turned back to the desert. "How about one of those?" He pointed out to a huge cactus monster lumbering in the distance.
"A Green Spider? That should work great."
"Okay. Repede, Judy and I will herd it this way. Everyone else wait here and get ready to lure it into the cave when we get close enough." Yuri took a running start. Repede sprinted ahead of him, barking at him to keep up, and Judith came up alongside of him although he was pretty sure that with her speed, she could have surpassed him. She just liked playing with him.
They came upon the Green Spider quickly and Repede sprung into action first, nipping at its legs. It responded the way he had intended and simultaneously tried to put distance between them and attack. He led it between Judith and Yuri and they flanked it on either side, feigning strikes at it to keep it moving forward. Once they got the huge cactus-insect hybrid moving toward the cave, it was rather fast. Everyone else moved to allow it plenty of room and as soon as it got near the cave entrance, they circled it, driving it forward into the cavern mouth. Its anger had been building and forcing it to topple into the cave had been the last straw. It reared, crashing toward the assembled and clueless knight and mages. The panic it caused was exactly what they were looking for.
They snuck in through the chaos that ensued and Rita set to work on the two detonators that sat unattended on the side of the cave. She opened the display glyphs and within seconds, they were both disarmed. Rather than leave them as they were, she took one whole, and grabbed the core from the second one so that it couldn't be set again.
The cover allowed them to remain unseen as they passed into the main set of cavern pathways. They wound back through the cave system, Rita disarming the detonators and taking their cores as they continued. Yuri knew, though, that this would likely not stop them, only delay them. But what was the purpose of sealing off this cave? Other than the strange village they had found in the desert, the cave led to nothing now that Mantaic was gone. Or was that the purpose here? To hide the barren and scorched ruins of a town that had been there less than a year before? The possibility sent a chill through his bones and left a foul taste in his mouth. If they were hiding it, they had most likely caused it. Why else would someone take such measures just to seal off a cave that led to nothing? And if they had made it this far, what was the state of Nordopolica?
They paused briefly at the aer krene for Rita to make a very quick examination and take a few samples of the water, plant life, and rocks. He hated to drag her away from her work, but with Knights surely lurking further in the cave and the possibility of Nordopolica being overrun with them, they needed to make haste. The dragon that had been here still perplexed him, and it had been in the desert, too. He was certain that the voice he had heard in that moment hadn't simply his mind playing tricks on him due to the heat, fatigue and general feeling of helplessness.
"Did you get what you needed, Rita?"
"Yeah. This should be enough for the purpose of my research." She tucked the samples carefully into her travel pack and shouldered it with Estelle's help.
"Good. Let's get out of here before we get caught." Apprehensiveness clung to his every nerve. They could not get to Nordopolica soon enough. It wasn't even about getting there before the new moon anymore. Getting there before the Knights could do something stupid or earth shattering was more important, especially if Garista was the one there issuing orders.
They rounded out of the corridors and into the first cavern and he could see the exit that would put them back on the road that ran the length of the Zadrack Peninsula and back to Nordopolica.
"Halt! Intruders!"
Karol and Flynn skidded to a stop first, Rita and Estelle stopping steps behind them, to look back to a small cluster of knights barreling at them from the desert side. Yuri grabbed Karol by the collar of his shirt, pushing him forward as he swung himself back, sword drawn to fight the oncoming enemies. They were so close to the exit, only yards away, but from the looks of it, standing their ground to fight seemed to be the only way. The hurried march of boots reinforced his sense of urgency as knights coming in from the peninsula side of the pass started to flood in. He heard the scrape of Flynn's sword against his scabbard as he drew it and wondered for half a second if he was still hesitant to fight his own.
"Attention!"
Every knight stopped short, scrambling to lower their weapons and salute in the manner to which they were accustomed. Before Yuri could make the best of this opening, Raven grabbed him and Flynn, spinning them both around. As easy as that, they were allowed to simply dash through the collected knights who stood like statues, awaiting orders.
They didn't stop outside the Weasand of Cados, but continued their pace down the road for as long as they could before staggering to stop in a patch of trees off the main road to catch their breath and get their bearings.
"Hey, Old Man-"
"Did ya see that? Those idiots thrown off as easy as that?" Raven had started laughing, so hard that he was holding his sides and slapping his knee with one hand and fighting to breathe.
Yuri couldn't help but chuckle a little, too. The Knights were characteristically dunces and strict rule followers, but that was ridiculous.
"That was awesome, Raven! You almost sounded like a real knight captain!" Karol high fived the old man who was still fighting off laughter.
While they were celebrating their small victory, Rita had set to work on the detonator she had retrieved from the Weasand of Cados. Using the green display, she was analyzing its contents quietly until Estelle piped up with a question.
"I've never seen a core like this. What type is it?" She picked up one the of the purple orbs carefully in both her hands.
"It's a hoplon blastia core. The formulas they're inscribed with are unique but not indecipherable." She tugged on a bit of her brown hair while she stared at the control glyph, her brow furrowed. "The formula these use allow for a greater aer conductance and convert the aer in a more practical and direct manner than much of the blastia I've ever worked with. In doing so, it requires a greater amount of aer to activate and uses it more efficiently. It's actually pretty remarkable."
Yuri didn't have to guess who had created them. The emblem on the device gave it away, but he still raised the point. "Let me guess. It's a product of Garista Luodor's?"
She looked up at him in surprise that faded after a moment. "Yes. But something about these has me stumped."
"What's that?"
"It's not like he converted a regular core to a hoplon core. Something about this is different."
"Could he have created it?" Judith asked, bending over Rita's shoulder to look at the control panel as well.
"That's impossible! You can't just create blastia cores. They have to be unearthed from Krityan sites. And a hack like Garista just isn't capable of something like this on his own. Just whose research did he steal in order to do something like this?"
"That is an interesting question, indeed." Judith stood back up straight, her eyes still scanning the display.
"Well, we should make camp for the night and get an early start. We're not too far from Nordopolica now, but it'll be too dark to travel soon." Yuri started unpacking his camping gear. Dinner had to be made and his stomach was to the point where it was going to start complaining at him.
"You're right." Estelle looked up to the ever waning moon. "We'll be meeting with Belius tomorrow night.
He didn't want to stop, but the party needed to rest after their trek across the desert and the flight from the Weasand of Cados. He wanted to rush off to Nordopolica, but he held himself back. The knights were likely already there.