A covered operation

Waking up the next morning, Jay got surprised he was alone. Through his habit he normally woke up early and long before most others, so this was new to him. He didn't fear that Sira had tried to flee as he not only knew from their slavery bond, but also because he could hear clanking noises coming from the kitchen area.

The sight as he peeked into the kitchen was somewhere between shocking and comical. The cute Sira -still nude and in her human form- seemed like she had never tried cooking before:

The eggs in the small pan looked like they'd catch fire the next second and of course smelled like that as well. At the same time the brown fluid she'd probably call coffee had spilled all over the table.

There was no way Jay would taste any of that…

Greeting her with a wide grin, he took over before she burned down the whole tent. After dumping whatever she had tried to produce, Jay fetched some new ingredients and went to work.

Sira only stuttered a silent sorry to that but Jay still thanked her for the thought. She would have to practice a lot if she'd ever want to make edible food, but preferably not with him as recipient.

While Jay got their breakfast done within a few minutes, Sira had decided to at least clean the bedrooms. Surprised she really offered to take care of all, even that slightly devastated room as well, Jay could only smile at her exclamations during the work. From simple "Urgh"s to a nearly screamed "Eeeek" there were all kinds of funny noises coming from the different separations.

Jay was long done preparing the food when Sira finished the last bedroom. Slightly astonished by her neat work, Jay learned that there were spare sheets and blankets in the storage crates of each room.

As for the lump of dirty ones, Sira had stored them in her pouch she got back from Jay to later clean them.

Seeing the three portions of food prepared by Jay she leaned her head slightly to the side and asked about it. When Jay stated it was one for Aranthir and each of them he nearly dropped the plate the next second because of her following words:

"Oh, I thought I'd get my special diet for breakfast…" S.

She didn't even hold back licking her lips to that comment, nearly getting Jay in the mood to resume where they stopped last night.

But they had no time right then and a possibly strenuous day coming up. Like this they left the tent and as nobody was around, Jay stored it back right then and there.

The male elf had already been awaiting them in the log house used as meeting hall where had spent the night. He thanked Jay for the served meal and while eating they once more talked about what had happened before.

Even Sira had been unaware of the schemings in Westfield and the slave trafficking.

Once they were done, the three left the small settlement and rode along the cliff further towards the east. Whenever the narrow path made it possible, they talked about how the Stonewatch tower was the most probable point of where the Defiers' remnants kept hiding. With the docks directly adjoining and quite a distance to any inhabited settlement, it seemed perfect.

From the experienced Elf they also learned that the tower had once belonged to the army, so they had to be careful as it was bound to be guarded and hard to infiltrate. He sighed as he continued that during their last attempt to free it from bandits, the group has had quite some losses even though they had been with way more people.

When Jay inquired he learned the whole story from back then:

Quite some time after the tower got abandoned, a group of bandits drove away some hunters using it and settled there. At first there was not much problem with that -better they were there than close to any city- but after some time, the group started plundering and burning down the first settlements not too far away. They soon targeted small towns like Lakeview in the north and east as well, terrorizing the whole region.

At that point Arantir had went with a small unit there to get rid of them, but the result was anything but good.

Due to perfect overview and solid defense of the tower, the small unit of eight men had no chance and in the end he was the sole survivor. The tower did get freed from their attack, but not long after it still got occupied by bandits once again.

At least there never were attacks in vicinity later on...

The docks were equally enforced as those had been the main way of support for the whole close by fort. If this really was the transition point they had to expect a tough fight.

As he had mentioned the fort, Jay hinted that there might be orcs close bye to what Aranthir looked displeased and a bit surprised. He had heard of such sightings, but hearing it like that, it was more or less certain if the information came from the youth.

Their talks soon drifted to the question how such a thing could be not known or ignored by the one responsible. But the region really was far off and thanks to the bridge having broken down, there was no real threat.

Still, it irked both men that such a huge piece of land remained unguarded.

Sira's muttered comment that it wasn't only the orcs that had used this blunder was was gladly only heard by Jay. He nudged her to keep silent about it and stop such comments as long as they weren't alone.

A short while later, the tower became visible on top of a cliff head on. Thanks to the coastline making a slight arch they could see it sticking out, but the docks kept hidden behind another lower cliff reaching into the lake.

Aranthir took to the left and led them into the light woods as a cover. From there the trip went on a bit to the north and then parallel to the cliff.

As they continued on, the Elf suddenly asked Jay what he knew about the thieves and where his knowledge came from. Not to reveal too much, Jay explained he only knew that they once secretly controlled many lands and governments from the shadows.

It was said they took care of the citizens and were the opposite of what they are thought of to that day, but somehow had lost their influence.

Nodding to his narration, Aranthir gave away some bit of information Jay really welcomed. The Rogue explained that the Thieves demise started with the fall of a prince way before he was born. All he knew was that the kingdom not long after said princes disappearance ceased all contact and so did most others on this continent as well. The only stronghold they still had was Ravencrest Manor from where he had learned those truths and everything else.

Welcoming this information, Jay played it as if there was nothing new to him in this and from there they traveled on in silence, riding behind each other as the forest had gotten more dense.

After they closed in on the tower a bit more they dismounted and Aranthir bound his horse to a tree. Jay simply dismissed his horse and earned envious stares from both others.

The tree carefully continued and first of all checked the vicinity of the tower.

What they found from their hiding spots were numerous bandits on watch around and on the tower, as well as stairs leading down towards the pier next to it. Though they couldn't get a glimpse down from where they hid, Aranthir told them it led to the docks.

From there on the real operation started.

Jay and Aranthir went ahead as their (Hide) skill was higher than Sira's. Together they closed in on the first bandit patrol and hid in the high grass growing everywhere on the cliff around the tower, until the two men got in reach.

With a shut held mouth, slit open throat and dagger to the heart both bandits died nearly simultaneous.

After pulling them back and hiding them in the grass, the two men went on towards their next targets. In the same style they took out two more patrols until they reached the guard at the stairs.

This time the Elf went solo and took him out in a split second, just to vanish out of sight right the next moment.

On their way down the stairs Jay inquired about the skill and heard it was something Aranthir had learned in his education back then. But it was a skill he rarely had use for as the cool-down it came with was quite long.

They then continued down the stairs together and Jay was glad he had left Sira on lookout up above when they encountered the first bandits in their path. Any less advanced hiding skill would have blown their cover the moment they went around a turn and nearly bumped into them.

After getting rid of the three bandits on the stairs, they continued down without any issue, though their descend was a bit slower as they took more care.

What they found at the end of it was a really wide and long pier with gladly only a rowing boat docked and no big ship or ferry.

To the left side in the cliff under the tower was a huge cave to which the pier connected. After giving it a short glance, Jay and Aranthir decided to check it out and silently sneaked in.

The cave was way deeper than they first thought but even before they reached the point where no daylight fell on, they encountered the next opponents.

With no trouble they silently took care of the man and hid the corpse in the shadows to the side. They crossed the wide cave to the other side where Jay had spotted some crates and what looked like cages in the dark.

On their way they had to take out two more bandits, Jay with his bow and Aranthir close up with his dagger.

The moment they got closer to the cages, Aranthir and Jay saw completely worn out people stuffed inside. Jay used (Analyze) on most of them and learned they all were slaves, and even human ones. He carefully got closer to them and signaled them to keep quiet once he revealed himself.

This time he was lucky and everyone remained silent, though he had the feeling most of them couldn't have shouted even if they had wanted to. Aranthir went to the next cage and both of them promised the captives to free them, but they had to check the cave for more bandits first.

The Elf would stay with the slaves for the moment and guard them while Jay went to the deeper parts of the mine. If he couldn't come back within 10 minutes or some problem arose, Aranthir was to flee with as many Slaves possible. Otherwise they'd set them free together and guide them up to safety.

Jay then continued to the even darker back of the cave alone. Only some sparse torches had been set up there until he found a wide tunnel that was brighter illuminated by torches. It wasn't a long one, but it still bore the risk of getting spotted, even with (Hide) active. The room he reached on the other side was about half as big as the first cave.

A group of four bandits was chatting between two tents at one side, but Jay ignored them at first and gave a look over the whole area. Not having found any other passages or more enemies he went back and carefully closed in on the group.

They had still been chatting but then abruptly stopped as a sword stuck out from one of the men's torso and the others got electrocuted by a (Chain Lightning).

Thanks to this hidden location, Jay had no problem using flashy magic as it couldn't give them away. With this his opponents chances of survival had pummeled down to zero, similar to their heads a few seconds later.

Back in the huge cave, Jay rushed over to Aranthir without bothering to hide. The two of them hurriedly picked the locks of all five cages and freed the men and women inside. They all thanked them and upon inquiring, Aranthir and Jay learned that nearly half of them had been from Westfield or close by at Hilder Forest. A few other told them they originated from other regions as well once the two men checked on them and counted the captives.

All together it had been nearly thirty people that those bandits had stuffed into those cages. It was a wonder there had been no casualties, though this still might have been possible and the abductors had taken care of those before.

Jay was reluctant to ask even the better off captives and went on with checking on the rest.

Some of those had darker skin color and different facial features, so Jay asked them if the slaves could understand the two men. He felt like he was discriminating once again for a second, but as one of the men nodded and answered with a distinct dialect, that thought vanished.

Apparently they all had been brought from further in the south, outside this kingdom. None of them knew how long they had been captive, but it was then Jay got his prior thought proven right. He learned that about half of them had either died during their long travel or been brought elsewhere from the ship.

Aranthir had been silently listening like Jay up to this point and then explained it sounded logical:

The land route got guarded relatively tight and there were more dangers to defend against like animals or monsters. With a ferry along Eldrin River it was no problem to reach from quite deep in the desert all the way to the dock they were at.

From there they could take a bigger ferry or a ship able to travel across the great inner sea and deliver the slaves and everything else wherever they wanted. During their talks they had started to cut the ropes binding those freed slaves wrists and take off some few collars.

"You seem to know quite a lot about this lands and this Inner Sea…" J.

"How could I not? The great sea divides the continent and is the natural border to the Orc's and my homeland. As I crossed it long ago there's no way I wouldn't know at least a bit about it. If you ever go to the Imperial Capital or over to Thelanar, you'll most certainly sail there from Aldebaran." A.

As Jay had seen a map roughly depicting the western part of the continent, he knew that the Inner Sea was about half as wide as the kingdom if he believed it. Reaching from up in the north down to the center of the Empire, the sea seemed the shortest route to reach the mentioned places.

There really was no telling to where the Slaves got shipped from Redridge.

Following their short mental excursion, Jay concentrated back at the situation. They would later have enough time for speculations of where the slaves got brought to. First of all they had to lead those they freed up the stairs and then guide them to a safe place.

For that they decided to once again split up.

Jay was going up to the tower first and together with Sira clear the perimeters of any threats. Following a signal, Aranthir would then guide the slaves up and only after they gained some distance, it was the time to openly attack the tower.

Just as planned, Jay had rushed up the long stairs a few minutes later. He only had to use (Hide) on the last part not to get seen from the tower but didn't encounter any bandits. After meeting up with Sira, he gave her a short explanation and then they proceeded towards the closest patrol.

Thanks to him and Aranthir previously thinning out the bandits already, there was not much to look out for.

After sniping down two more single patrols and hiding their corpses, Sira went to give the Signal. She only needed to go down some stairs and wave at the Elf and the first slaves got send up.

As they were bound to get spotted from up the tower once the slaves reached the last stairs, Jay had taken position to shoot the bandits from the cliff.

Exactly this had been the reason they had split up like this, even if Aranthir still was better at silent assassinations and cleaning the perimeters.

It took the bandits until the third slave wobbled from the long and hard stairs into the high grass that they noticed what was going on. But before the man who spotted him could ring an alarm or even only turn around, a very accurately aimed arrow pierced his left eye and he fell forwards over the balustrade.

Keeping his eyes strained and ready to release another Arrow, Jay waited in the cover of the high grass.

Two more slaves made it up the stairs, then three… at the fifth slave from then, another bandit showed up on the tower and spotted his dead companion.

Even though two arrows hit the man some milliseconds later, he still had begun to shout out. That didn't stop even when he tumbled to the side and over the half high wall on the tower.

His scream was audible until the moment the bandit hit the rocky cliff under the tower, bounced off and fell further into the lake.