Halls of Ivory

Chapter 6 - Escaped

When the island kingdom of Orr sunk into the ocean, many of the great disciplines home to Orr were doomed to be forgotten. Of what few Orrians managed to escape onto the mainland, only very few could pass on the knowledge that was lost. The Orrian Reaper, the Orrian Berserker, the Orrian Tempest, all schools of martial and magical arts that required a fundamental understanding of their broader field that went beyond their regular peers.

One of those forgotten disciplines was that of the Chronomancer. They wielded mesmeric magic on a much more base level, allowing them not to merely alter people's perception, but to reshape their surroundings and even time itself. Armed with a shield, they could freeze the flow of time in their enemies and split their own continuum into separate timelines, allowing them to perform multiple tasks at the same time independently from the use of clones.

Logan left the city with the same map in hand, scribbled on by the imprisoned servant. And he marched out of the city at as fast a pace as he could. Shaemoor was quiet, people stayed indoors. An uneasy calm hung over the village. A looming precursor of the chaos that was bound for it. Logan sped up and made sure to find a good place to wait for the Charr. He wound up choosing a location very close to one of the landmarks to make sure he actually caught them.

He also had pairs of his more trustworthy Seraph posted at key positions in alternate paths in case the Charr changed their route. He found a good hiding spot far into an overhang covered in vines. The vines were too thick to see through. A reliable means of obscuring oneself, especially since they lasted through the frost in the season of the colossus with little issue. They lost most of their leaves, but the contrast from the bright white snow would make up for that.

It turned out the intel the farmworker gave was solid. Two Charr in the very conspicuous, deep red plate armors par for the course with blood legionnaires wandered casually through the same path. Both with their large, toothy greatswords lazily hung over their shoulders. The moment he saw them, he knew those were his target. It was too specific a set of circumstances to line up if it weren't. He remained in hiding until they had gained some distance and then slowly moved within his hiding spot closer to a position where he could peek out of the last layer of vines. He stayed in hiding, only occasionally checking their position and listening for their movements very closely in case they came closer when he wasn't looking.

The Charr never turned around, he didn't draw their attention. When they passed a certain point where the slight curve of their path left them out of Logan's sight even when he wasn't in hiding, someone did actually come his way, but from the other direction. He hadn't noticed until a confrontation was imminent so in the shock of hearing someone from this close, the captain reached for his sword and almost drew it.

He stopped when he turned towards his assailant and realized it was the same noble the peasant was working for. Lord Aldryn stood pretty close to him, dressed in his slim but opulent get-up designed around his expensive-looking tailcoat.. He carried a bag and was armed with a strange, asuran-looking sword with an edge Logan knew could turn on to glow with bright heat from similar things his Asuran friend Zojja had.

The one piece completely out of place was a shield that matched the sword in design. The Asuran weaponry was strange enough, but Logan hadn't seen Krytan-trained mesmers bring shields into battle before.

The noble didn't move and didn't make a sound, but slowly brought his index finger to his mouth to make a shushing gesture. He subtly nodded in the vague direction the Charr were going. Logan understood this as a silent invitation to trail them together. Careful to not let the snow give away their position, they moved after the Charr. From time to time, the noble turned invisible and snuck ahead to make sure they hadn't lost the two legionnaires. Their entire means of remaining undetected hinged on not being in sight if and when the Charr turned around. Which in turn meant that they couldn't see or hear the Charr themselves most of the time either.

Trailing the Charr together would make it much easier. The servants and Seraph posted along the route helped them take turns keeping track of the Charr until they got to the city. Here, between the walls of the densely arranged buildings the task was less cumbersome, but they also knew that the Shining Blade had more eyes there. The Charr turned left, into the western commons.

Once they had passed the steep path down to the streets below and into the square , the noble turned to Logan. "Behind that building, fast." He quickly made the motions of an invisibility spell which affected both of them when it was finished. Logan understood that it would only last a few seconds and ran along with the noble until they had both vanished into the alleyway behind a building not far from the ascent.

They waited for a while, then Lord Aldryn cast another invisibility spell that only affected him. He came back after a few seconds. "They're turning left, if we go through these gardens we will meet them." Logan got the sense that they were close to an altercation. If their destination was a Shining Blade hideout, there were going to be more people. But going on the street and marching in plain sight to stop a Seraph's patrol would draw the Shining Blade's attention.

They ran along the shortcut the noble proposed. Up a higher street far off from the square and then through the gardens along the houses lining the base of the outer wall. They ran as fast as they could and stopped behind one building next to a street leading out of the square. Lord Aldryn pulled the same trick as before, made himself invisible and ran onto the street and back. "By Lyssa, they're close." He whispered. "I almost ran into them. But they're about to go inside. I have to go again." He vanished one more time. When he reappeared, he was more confident. "I know the exact house now. Wooden door."

"So if we wait until they think they're in the green, we can just kick in the door."

"The house will only be an intermediary location. They will be hidden further inside if we wait too long."

"We don't have a choice. We only have one shot at this." So they waited as Logan suggested.

Then the noble showed Logan the building and shrouded the two of them again so they could run to it. When they arrived in front of the door, they charged to it to try to bust it in. But they didn't quite hit it simultaneously, so while it did give in, it didn't break open. The noble swung his shield causing a strange wave of white light to shoot towards the door. When it hit the door, it gave it a white glow. "Again!" Once more, they ran up to the door and rammed it, but it didn't move. At least at first. When the glow wore off, the door ripped itself out of the frame and launched itself far into the room behind it.

"What just happened?"

"I suspended the door to focus your force into one moment."

"You can just 'suspend' objects?"

"I can suspend people too."

The door was on the floor. It had almost reached the wall opposite from its frame before it it hit the ground. Something was beneath it and when Logan pulled the door off, he saw a Shining Blade member. Bloodied and unconscious. "She's still alive."

"No problem." The minister pulled a rope out of his bag, undid the straps holding the plates onto the unconscious woman's arms and tied her hands together behind her back. He had a gag made of cloth ready to keep her from screaming too and then carried her upstairs. With the guard stowed away, they proceeded to look around the house. They knew had to hurry.

The building was a commoners' house. Small rooms, walls without decorations, very simple and rough furniture. A hallway with a staircase, a kitchen, a living room, it would have looked like an ordinary person's home to an unwitting observer. Perhaps an ordinary person that liked to read a lot, as one room was a study with several bookshelves filled to the brim with random literature. But since it was the Shining Blade they were dealing with, it was clear that there had to be some hidden door. Logan began flipping and pulling back random books. "The Shelves can't be a coincidence, there's got to be a mechanism in there somewhere."

"The shelves are a distraction." Aldryn reached for one of the mountings a lamp hung off of and tried to turn it. It didn't budge.

"What makes you so sure of that?"

"Because they always are. Check the lights. Lamps, candles, anything attached to the ceiling or the walls. Try turning them, that's how you open the door."

"How do you know that?"

"The Shining Blade are far from creative."

Logan continued trying the books for a bit before joining Aldryn in checking all the lights. Eventually, the mounting of a ceiling lantern in the cellar actually did give in and allowed Logan to turn it. The sound of stone grinding against stone summoned the minister to him and by the time he arrived, a double door into a downward staircase had opened before them. They wandered down those stairs and the noble remarked: "Nothing says 'we are good people' like hiding where no-one can hear the screams."

The bottom of the stairway ended inside a mausoleum. There were rooms to both sides, all of which had rows of coffins in them. The only thing Logan could hear down here besides their own steps was a stream of water drops tumbling into a bigger body of water. The caves and catacombs beneath the city housed entire creeks and little lakes and moats. He urged Logan to speed up. "Hurry. We don't know how far they got." Luckily, this place was very linear. Even the end of the mausoleum only ended with a staircase further down into a cave, with a stream of water running down an elevated riverbed. It was technically possible to climb up the walls to their left and right, but the path forward was noticeably man-made and led into another crypt like the previous one.

They ran further and further and took the turn left. There was only this one path, everything else was walled off. And lamps hung to at least one side all the way through. They were definitely on the right track, they just had to catch up. After another turn, they finally saw the two red oafs wandering through the hallway. But Logan and the minister were way too loud to not be heard down here.

"Someone's coming."

"Now?" The other Charr sounded more annoyed than alarmed and turned around. "Listen here, lady - wait, you guys aren't Shining Blade."

Logan pointed at them. "Drop your weapons! You're under arrest for conspiring to commit six or seven murders."

They weren't impressed. "Really now, Captain second-fiddle? Putting Charr behind bars, how's that going to go over? Not very well I think."

"Why?"

"'Cause I have it on high authority that you have orders NOT to do that."

"And whose authority would that be?"

"Isn't it obvious? Same redhead that runs the show here."

"So you WERE hired by Anise?"

"Any idiot could have seen that one coming. You only didn't notice because the moment you see a girl in charge, you fall on your knees and worship her like she's one of your gods. It was the exact same with Jennah."

Logan drew his sword. "I won't let you use her name in vain like that."

"Case in point. No hard feelings. Other humans aren't any better. Kryta as a whole is all mice and no men."

"Not all of it." Minister Aldryn stepped closer to the legionnaires. "I dare say that there are plenty of humans not so easily intimidated. You just need to know where to look."

One of the legionnaires burst out laughing. "Maybe, yeah. But none of those are calling the shots, are they? Just a bunch of bandits hiding in mountains and caves."

Aldryn didn't seem to approve of the Charr's words, but he didn't show much of a reaction regardless. "As of yet, you are right. If you plan on living to see that change, I would recommend that you leave the city for the next few months."

The soldier he was addressing held his sword in a more upright direction. "Is that a threat?"

"I'd rather call it an offer. I offer your survival in exchange for your cooperation."

"Fat chance." Logan could practically hear the Charr's smile through his words when he answered. The other legionnaire readied his weapon as well.

With one more step to the side, the minister raised his shield and swung it, much like with the door upstairs. The wave he conjured phased right through both Charr, leaving them frozen in motion. The minister wasted no second rushing straight to the closer one of the two, turning on his Asuran sword and cutting right through half of the Charr's throat.

The wave turned around and traced its original path back to where it started, freezing them again less than a moment after the first time wore off. Giving the mesmer more time to step back. When the suspension ended for good, the neck of the Charr he attacked burst right open and he could only stand for a second before collapsing. All this armor did nothing to protect him because the neck was still exposed.

The other Charr roared and raised his sword. With a slow but powerful swing, he struck at the minister. But all he hit was the ground and the sparks and swirls of a mesmer's spell. Aldryn had blinked out of harm's way. Far behind enough that Logan was now the closest to the remaining enemy. The captain charged at the Charr with sword and shield in hand and summoned a barrier around him when he was up close. The physical pressure of the bubble expanding around Logan launched the legionnaire backwards and left him falling over. Before he had time to get up, both humans stepped on him and Logan buried his sword in the Charr's throat.

Just like that, their enemies lay defeated. Two Charr, taller than most of their kin and they died within seconds. The moment Logan had it in him to attack his enemies, they fell with ease.

The Charr were dead, but they had a set destination and Logan worried about what might happen if they didn't get to it fast enough. "Come on, we can't waste any more time."

The minister walked up to the bodies and shrugged. "As a matter of fact, we can."

"What if the Shining Blade decides to do it themselves? What are we going to tell their families?"

"They won't. The executioners had a point. The Shining Blade lack moral fiber, but they are still humans. They are too squeamish. They won't do the deed themselves if they think they can avoid it. That's why they brought in the Charr to begin with." He grabbed one of the two legionnaires' greatswords and stepped on its late owner's arm for leverage to pull it out of his hand. "This just might come in handy if we run into more Shining Blade."

Which they soon did. There were no more open caves from here. This crypt only led into more crypts, all lined up in a zig-zag pattern until one hallway showed more signs of life than the previous ones. One of the many entrances to the side rooms lined with coffins was guarded by two Shining Blade members and a makeshift door had been set up in the frame. They drew their swords upon spotting them and braced themselves for combat until they recognized Logan. One of them was Parah. The same Parah that had kidnapped the first victim and then pressured Logan into not asking more questions when confronted about it. "Captain Thackeray! You shouldn't be here! Leave at once."

"It's over. Hand over the children. Let them get back to their parents."

"There are no children, Thackeray. Stop spinning theories about some conspiracy to abduct nobles or whatever else."

Several very young-sounding voices, some still with their voice-cracks in full swing shouted from behind. "Thackeray? Captain Thackeray! Help! We're in here! We can't get out, they locked the door."

Logan had neither a reason nor the patience to play along with how Parah wanted this to go. "The Shining Blade is all about covert operations and working in secrecy. Wouldn't those be conspiracies, too? How is this any different?"

"No matter how many times you assert this, the Shining Blade is not going around kidnapping people…"

One of the younglings screamed: "We're right behind this door!"

Parah grumbled in annoyance. She seemed to really expect Logan to just accept her premise even when the same people she asserted weren't there were calling out from only a few yards away. "All right, there may be a few, but that isn't your concern, Logan. Walk away."

"You know I can't do that. It's not right and I can't just walk away knowing what is going on here."

She became more aggravated as this went on. "As opposed to what? Interfering? Putting your fingers in a pot that isn't yours like a rowdy boy?" The way she reacted was a very Jading experience for Logan, all the more with how worked up she got. "You should start recognizing your betters for what we are and leave important matters like this to us. No-one asked for your involvement, nor do we need it. The Shining Blade has this situation under control."

She was taking offense again, but this time, the offense was sincere. She was genuinely appalled by the thought of Logan having a say in it when the Shining Blade was out and about dragging away innocents to murder them, acting on orders Anise had given in the midst of an emotionally charged fit. Not just that, but this was a low-ranking member of the Shining Blade talking down to not only a lieutenant of the Seraph but the captain of the Seraph. And the other guard didn't appear the least bit shocked or surprised at Parah's attitude.

Did the Shining Blade generally think this little of the Seraph? Did the centuries of work, risks and sacrifices alongside them mean nothing to them?

He wanted to give her one more chance. "Please, don't make this harder than it has to be. Just step aside so I can open this door and lead these people to safety."

Parah scrounged up her nose and shouted at him with her teeth borne in an unseemly grimace. "What in Tyria's name has you assuming to order me around like this? You two are going to walk away RIGHT NOW and learn to act as is appropriate to your place in this if you know what's good for you."

Lord Aldryn raised his new greatsword as high up as the crypt's ceiling allowed to and walked towards Parah. Logan's expectation of her leveling with him left her so captured by blind rage that she didn't notice until he was only a few steps away. "I cannot believe that you are so arrogant, SO PRESUMPTUOUS as to assume you were anywhere near a position to argue with me like this! This will have severe conse - wait, back off - wait."

She tried to back away, but she was already standing against a wall, Aldryn positioned himself specifically further to the side to ensure this. "Stop! I order you to sto - HELP! HELP!" With a powerful swing, the noble slammed this giant sword into her with enough force for the blade to crush its way through her armor. A giant blade like this, buried half-way through her torso, including part of her head. She died instantly.

The other guard was frozen in fear, watching as the noble placed one shoe on Parah's chest to pull the bloodied sword back out of her. Once he did, he held it up to its side and faced her with a nonchalant grin. "And as for you…"

The other guard ran for it. She just ran as fast as she could, hoping they couldn't catch her. With a swipe of his hand, the noble enchanted the legionnaire's greatsword and threw it at her. Despite its size and weight, he did it with apparent ease. It was nothing new for mesmers to use their magic to accelerate their weapons' movements. The sword by no means cut into her when it hit. But it caused a major dent in her armor and the force launched her onto her face. In front of her and behind her, two clones of Lord Aldryn appeared, each with a copy of the same greatsword and charged at her, swinging their blades at her one by one. And those attacks actually did break through her armor and inflicted wounds so deep that she bled out within seconds.

"You…you killed them. Both of them, just like that. They didn't want to die, you could have shown some kindness."

The noble only met Logan's reaction with a smirk and a raised eyebrow. "You may call it kindness, I would call it inaction. It got the job done, that's what matters. The Shining Blade can choose to cover this up or have it investigated. The wounds on both of them will point to the Charr. Now then, children! Where in that room are you? Is anyone right behind this door?"

"We're not children, the youngest one here is like fourteen."

"Let's please stick to the matter at hand. Is anyone right behind that door? If we were to break it down, would someone get hurt?"

"No, we're all at the wall on the other side."

"Perfect." The noble stepped aside and gestured towards the door. "If you would do me the honors, Captain."

He did. The door was only very flimsily fixed to the frame, Logan burst it open with a single charge and found all the missing citizens tied to chairs. He cut open the ropes and led them all outside. "Can you all walk, are you all okay?" None of them were injured. Besides maybe the signs of being tied up for hours, they were fine. "Then stay close and move fast. From what I know about how they operate, they'll be taking their time and check on here with a delay to throw off enemy intel for future missions."

"In that case, it will backfire." They weren't so lucky. They didn't lose any of the prisoners, Logan made sure of that, but three men from the Shining Blade ran into them from the opposite direction before they even reached the Charr. Aldryn didn't even give Logan a chance to talk to them, he just killed them on sight. When they were back at the legionnaires' bodies, he placed the sword next to its owner's hands and wrapped one of them around it.

"I still don't get the point of this."

"Planning ahead. With all the hard evidence pointing to the Charr, the Shining Blade have two options on how to move forward: Cover up everything that happened today and pretend like it never did or get the law involved and watch third parties snoop around in one of their favourite hideouts and find evidence of the Charr attacking and killing humans within the city walls. And you and I both know Mrs. Charr-can-do-no-wrong won't be choosing that one."

"They could just lie, you know."

"Yes, they could fabricate evidence and frame us, but that will reduce confidence in the righteousness of their cause within their own ranks and if it is discovered by outsiders, greatly diminish public trust in the Shining Blade."

"'Their cause' as opposed to what? The way you talk about this, I'm inclined to believe you either spent a LOT of time thinking about it or you're talking from experience."

"Perhaps a little of both. Whichever they choose, they can at best leverage it for a pyrrhic victory."

"Come to think of it, the lights in that house, the experience, the fact that you knew about princehood and the executioners somehow - and one of…" He stopped.

"What?"

Logan shook his head. "Nevermind." That one farm worker was a Separatist sympathiser and the only major force opposing the Shining Blade in a long-term capacity like that were the Separatists. "Wait, where are we taking the young ones? With the Shining Blade out for their heads, we can't keep them in Divinity's Reach."

"I've already accounted for this. I have a safe hideout prepared. Way out of the city, off the radar, little to no-one knows it exists."

"Of course you do."

"If you don't believe me, you can come along and see for yourself."

"I believe you in an instant." He knew Aldryn had some kind of hideout prepared because the Separatists had plenty of unknown hideouts all over Queensdale and Logan was pretty certain at this point that the minister was one of them. "But I have some hideouts of my own."

"Seraph hideouts are a bad idea. I hope you have one that your subordinates don't know about."

"I might."

The guard in the house leading underground was still unconscious. Traversing the city was much more smooth and unhindered with streets full of witnesses. There probably was a Shining Blade member here or there, but they didn't dare to engage them with large amounts of the citizenry watching. The Seraph posted on the city gate asked him what this was about, but he told them to leave it. Spies or not, with anyone he involved in this, he couldn't be too sure about his men not getting cold feet and talking to Anise. Aldryn was obviously a snake and working for the Separatists, but he went through great efforts to keep these adolescents alive and Logan might not have found them in time if he hadn't.

He could even see why he would do that now that he thought about it. The nobles' children were prospects to the throne and witnesses to Kryta's highest and most trusted military force kidnapping its own citizens and setting them up for execution. The more they did to help them, the more sympathetic Kryta's future monarch would be to their cause.

Logan would have felt more certain on what to think of this if he could see Aldryn's reaction to seeing Separatist involvement implied, but the people they were escorting weren't that small any more. Some of them might put it together if he tried hinting at it and who knew how they would react then. He was lucky enough that some of them reeled the others in when they asked to just go back to their families.

The moment they had some relative distance from Shaemoor, the Captain planned for a brief visit to one of the villages south of the dam. They were going to need supplies to last for a long trip with all those young citizens needing something to eat. The moment that was done though, they took deliberate turns off the road and into barely tread paths between hills. There were a lot of old stone structures on their path through the north, so completely overgrown with bushes and vines that even the snow couldn't press it all down. Lots of corners and hiding places and this choice for a path was deliberate. When they came upon a particularly narrow path with a few alcoves along its way, they decided to stop here to make a small campfire within the cover of a stone arc and give the young nobles some rest.

In the morning, Aldryn gestured for everyone to be quiet. They lay in wait and soon, they realized why. There were steps, one set of them. Someone was indeed tailing them. As soon as their pursuer was close enough, the minister jumped them with the same maneuver as with the Charr before. He sent a wave off his shield that froze the enemy in motion and then decapitated them. He rolled the head along with his shoes to present it to Logan and everyone else.

"She won't be telling anyone where we went, but we need to hide her first. Help me cover her." They placed her in the corner just behind a small stone podium and ripped the vines hanging off other places as well as some branches off a few shrubs to cover her completely in green. Then they scooped snow off nearby trees and the top of the arc to cover her. A place completely covered in overgrowth, nigh-unreachable even if you sought it out deliberately.

That way she was off in a corner where people wouldn't look, it was nigh impossible to find her, even if someone came close and combed every foot of the ground. It was by no means a good long-term solution, but it was all they could do for now. They were pressed for time until the newly declared princes and princesses were hidden away.

Logan led the way and he sought out the corners around hills way into the farmland south of the dam, using the shadow of small forests to hide away in the night. Making sure to take a path away from the commoners' sight, they approached one of the smaller farmsteads further west. A quiet, isolated place, not relevant enough for people in the city to mention in day-to-day conversations. Just another patch of farmland like any other.

Out here, everything was really far apart. Enormous amounts of ground to cover just by moving from one notable location to the other. This included the lone farmsteads because the farmers in this area each had their own land to tend to. So no witnesses to see you enter one of the houses unless they were at that same specific house. And one of those - while looking like a regular house on the outside - was a safehouse that Logan had a key to. The interior looked just like that of an ordinary farm house in the area. And it had an ordinary cellar with a clearly visible staircase leading to it.

There was however a second cellar beneath the first one. Hidden beneath several racks stacked with cheap booze and a carpet draped over it and only visible after pushing a brick into the wall. The mechanism to open it was located behind another barrel and looked identical to any other brick throughout the cellar. The entrance was secured with a steel door. The inside was outfitted with dry food to last for half a year - if rationed. Vents allowed the exchange of air and it had its own bathroom with an unmapped connection to Queensdale's rural sewage system.

The house had always been there, but the second cellar was made recently, for the purpose of witness protection. Only Logan, the craftsmen who made it and two or three of his most trusted men knew this place existed. Even most of the Seraph didn't know about it. The sad irony was that it was meant for witnesses who could testify against Separatist sympathizers to assist the Shining Blade. Now he wound up using it for the exact opposite.

He and Aldryn sat down with the princes and princesses and had a long conversation in which he urged them to be patient and to ration their food supply. He went through things that could happen in their absence, like Charr coming through and trashing the house or humans passing by. In all these events they had to keep quiet at all times to maintain the illusion that this second basement didn't exist. He assured them that they would be supplied and taken care of and that they would look for a solution so they could come out of hiding at some point, but that between his visits, they had to hold on and keep it together in here.

With the noble families' sons and daughters safely stowed away, the carpet and wine rack back in place, the captain let himself drop on the couch and almost fell asleep then and there from sheer exhaustion. It was in the middle of the day, but he was already suffering from insomnia on their departure and the short and extremely cold nights during their trip didn't do much to help.

The minister sat on a chair opposite from it. He suffered from lack of sleep too and his eyes betrayed it. Logan pulled himself together and pushed himself back up until he sat upright, if with his back sinking into the soft padding. "Now that they're not listening. Therol, you never struck me as someone too devoted to the queen."

The minister raised his eyebrows. "What of it?"

"You wouldn't happen to have 'friends' who weren't too devoted to her either, would you?"

The smiling minister pulled off his bag and placed it on the table. "How would you come to this conclusion?"

"One of your workers is a separatist sympathiser. You actively sought out a kidnapping case most Seraph would have been afraid to take, you came well-prepared for taking on the Shining Blade and you clearly have some experience dealing with them - in an adversarial way."

Aldryn leaned forward. "Let's assume your accusation were true, how would it make you feel to know that at the most pivotal moment, every body of authority you trusted, actively worked against the Krytan people and the only help you could turn to, were the Separatists? Hypothetically speaking, how would this make you feel?"

Yeah, he was rubbing it in at this point. Aldryn was definitely a Separatist. "Abandoned. Betrayed, mostly confused. Overall, pretty terrible." But he was right. When every arm of the Krytan government failed its people, a snarky noble stepped in and did its job on his own time. "It's like the whole world turned upside down. Everything I held dear went down the drain in a span of a few months."

"Or maybe the world itself didn't change at all. You simply started seeing its nuances. The superficially 'good' side no longer seems quite so good and the superficially 'bad' side no longer seems quite so bad. And all it took was a few wakeup calls. Her majesty was a mesmer, was she not? What delicious irony that upon the death of a mesmer, a great many delusions and facades dissolve right before our very eyes."

Logan wanted to reprimand him for speaking disrespectfully of Jennah, but he didn't have it in him anymore. Now that the younglings were finally safe, all that suppressed exhaustion accumulated from weeks of sleep deprivation came crashing down on him and practically glued him onto the seat. The long-yearned for comfort of being nestled within the warmth of an actual house away from the cold winds of the later Colossus season, only made it worse.

He just laughed. "I can't even get mad at you anymore. I ran myself into a corner. As soon as I look away, you're going to take them somewhere else, aren't you?"

The minister shook his head. "Not really. I know of one far away, but most of the places within reach that I could take them to, are among the first places the countess will search. And I can't keep watch throughout every night all on my own, can I now?" Logan knew this was a problem. But the more he had to fight to just stay awake, the less problems like that concerned him. He wanted to sleep but he shouldn't have.

The minister being here was a problem. But the exhaustion took its toll on him. With each passing moment, his mind came up with another rationalization for why he shouldn't worry anymore. The lights were out, would remain out, the only entrance was locked and this house was one of many, all identical, all spread far apart. Nobody knew they were here. The chance of anyone coming here was miniscule. Seeing the minister get up and giving himself the illusory appearance of an Iron Legion soldier was the last thing it took for rationales to win out and for Logan to drift into long-needed slumber.