Although she assumed the church was maintaining communications with Remire, messengers stopped coming close to the end of the month. It didn't assure her, at least, and she hadn't heard anything from Thales either.

Edelgard didn't quite want to look, but the silence convinced her she might as well. Using his people's magic to get there, she surveyed the village from a distance. Certain sounds came through, but she couldn't understand them—there was fire, but it was hard to tell if it burned freely.

She walked along the edges of the village, finding some pity for the people living there. She wondered how many chose to stay, despite what seemed to be chaos seeping in—if the threat of losing their home encouraged them to leave, or protect it. The longer she stayed, the more she understood; a lack of news wasn't good, in this case.

Edelgard ventured a little further away—deeper into the mountains and forests—and found what she had been looking for: a small encampment of mages, hidden in the shadows like his men usually were.

She'd seen enough of this. She won't hold anything back.

Byleth didn't intend to be the one to tell the students about Remire; due to some lack of communication, however, she was the only knight going that wasn't given further instructions. She had the professor teaching them call out all of the Black Eagles that had already agreed to come.

"Things in Remire Village have gotten worse," Byleth explained simply.

"How worse?" One student ventured to ask, visibly concerned about the answer.

It wasn't her job to lead them to believe it better than it was; if anything, they shouldn't have false hopes about the coming battle. "The people are starting to attack each other, and fires are springing up uncontrolled."

A few students shuddered. One murmured, "How can she say that like it's nothing?"

Byleth didn't respond, carrying on. Sothis made a quick comment along the lines of "That doesn't help your reputation any, you realize?"

"At least two dozen of you have to come. Get ready and gather back at the entrance hall; we're leaving in the next few hours."

Most of them gave an agreement and left; a few others went to collect anyone who wasn't there—among them Edelgard, whom Byleth had seen in the training area before dawn again, likely because she was there so early for reasons she explained as 'trouble sleeping' without further elaboration. Byleth went to find any other knights assigned to the mission to relay the information.

They left as soon as everyone was ready, and moved quickly. It only took a few days for them to get there, and only a couple of minutes was spent trying to assess the situation before they decided on acting. Strategy was only relayed to the students by telling Edelgard—Hubert and Monica by proxy, considering they were with her—and otherwise they weren't forced to do anything.

Byleth fought among the students, if only because some of them looked so terrified. No one looked unfazed—they were scared, disgusted, or furious—and she wasn't quite comfortable leaving them alone. The people they were fighting were those of Remire, with a few exceptions further in the village.

She didn't like that she could recognize a few familiar faces, even if she had never really spoken with any of them. Muscle memory alone guided her through the village; nothing looked the same. It was hard to focus the resulting anger on anything but the mad villagers.

Fortunately, just because the villagers fought didn't mean they were skilled. The students were directed further in, where someone was watching alongside a few mages. Byleth only came close enough to hear the students shouting about it.

The watcher was apparently the monastery's librarian; after some time fighting, a 'Death Knight' came as well, effectively keeping all students on the other side of the village. The librarian…changed, into someone else when a handful of people got close to him—one of the knights fought him and made him retreat. The Death Knight, and anyone else fighting that wasn't a villager, left as well.

The battle died down, and Byleth went to speak with some of the survivors without being asked. The dozen or so that weren't hurt very much were moved to the entrance of the village.

"I'll speak with the knights to see if you can come back with us to Garreg Mach," Byleth promised them. She still hated whoever wanted to do this, but she knew it didn't show in her voice, for better or worse. "The place isn't exactly suitable to live in after this."

"Thank you for protecting us," one of the older ones said, recognizing her. "Does that mean your father's mercenaries are here as well?"

"Unfortunately, it's just the knights and Officers Academy students as far as I know," she replied, frowning a bit. "But speaking of, has Jeralt been here recently?"

"He left a little before things started to get out of hand," the villager answered. "He received a well-paying job, and we insisted he take it. A few mercenaries stayed behind, but haven't come back after taking a look around the village."

That was likely what happened to the messenger, then. Unfortunately, Byleth had no way of knowing Jeralt's plans for jobs were beyond that—at the very least, she knew that the Ashen Demon fighting alongside knights and students of the church wouldn't go unnoticed. He would hear about it one way or another.

Byleth nodded as a form of thanks, then went back to the knights.