200 - March Toward Doom

Plotline: Elemental Messenger (Declining)

Chapter Type: Social

Marching along a single road with a military unit, the trip between the middle and outer walls took a single day. Taking time out to forage for food (because nobody had any food to spare, or sell) and spread the warning of the earth elementals, it took closer to two.

For a time, I thought an owl was watching me sleep in an alley, but when I sent it a mental message, it departed the way many wild animals will. That becomes important later, but I didn't know enough to place its importance at the time.

In any case, I made my way back north, through the noise and clutter and nosy guards, toward Admiral Kwan Lun.

"Oh," said the bureaucrat I ended up speaking to, "I'm afraid the admiral is quite busy, far too busy to make time for foreigners."