Chapter 383

Alain Beaumon took the first step over the border. The others were at his back, he knew that beyond question. His fingers closed with trepidation over his sword. It wasn't his first time over the border with the Abelion Hills, it was far removed from that. But this was different. Despite the protests of Necran Adama that the demihumans couldn't possibly have organized in any significant sense, field operatives like himself and the rest of the Black knew better.

Behind him, Cedran held his shields in his hands as tight as Alain held his sword. He could read Alain's thoughts as if the back of Time Turbulence's head were an open book. 'If that were really true, they wouldn't be raving about the traitor to humanity and all her various mischief.'

Stepping over the border seemed like nothing, one patch of grass was underneath their feet, they splashed through a creek so small that a human child could have spat across it, and when grass was beneath their feet again they were in another country.

But ten feet of grass and a treeline might as well have been another world. The air felt different, and each of them as they crossed felt the swelling anticipation in their chests as their heartbeats quickened, sweat stung their palms and their every sense went on high alert.

Quaiesse did his part when the last of them crossed, he leaned forward and raced ahead of his comrades, his narrow eyes darted left and right, his short blonde hair whipping wildly in the wind. In moments like this, running alone without his comrades, this was the only time he missed his sister. 'Clementine you idiot. Why did you run off that way? This is so much faster with two people than with one.' He asked the question as if he didn't know the answer. But whether he did or not was irrelevant, he raced for fifty bowshots to the southwest, then round in a crescent that carried him a further thirty out, and then rounding over a large hill which would let him overlook a demihuman town. Then it would be back to the line after having validated that there was no danger, or removed it, or found a way around it.

The Abelion Hills region however, had one more thing he liked. A thing he liked so much that every now and then, away from the others, he would indulge in. The pale trees of an almost honey golden shade swayed back and forth in the gentle breeze, the leaves were thick and ran in a rainbow of shades that from above, put the finest painters in the Slane Theocracy down to mere novices by comparison. But the real gem… Quaiesse stopped at one. "Just a quick breath." He told himself and closed a hand over a very tiny branch that protruded off of a larger one. The little branch snapped off, he plucked away the leaves and dropped them to the ground and then shoved the small stick past his thin lips and put it onto his tongue.

There was an explosion of flavor in his mouth, 'Sweetbark trees are the best!' He told himself, that one little branch would last most of the day and it wouldn't be obvious to his comrades that he had one. He closely guarded the secret of the sweet trees with their explosive honey-like flavor and the long time that could be spent just suckling them for their sweet inner juices.

'The others would never let me live this indulgence down.' He had to chuckle about that one, 'If they only knew.'

The area around the demihuman villages was mostly empty, the villages themselves however, one by one, he saw they were rapidly becoming towns, complete with low walls that controlled entry and exit, and worse… 'Those are stone spitters there… and snake people over there… Meggidians over there… different quarters, but all in the same town?' He kept himself downwind and out of sight, and made sure not to look at any one figure directly, keeping his eyes unfocused to take it all in and not let anyone get a sense of being 'watched'. He moved on quickly, his skin crawling as he watched the orderly comings and goings over an unpaved but very clearly well maintained dirt road with defined borders taking it west toward the Holy Kingdom and north toward the forest.

When he finally reached the tall hill however, he hit his first real snag. 'A tower? A stone tower, not one of those crap wood things knocked down by a stiff breeze and a bronze tag adventurer's drunken swing of a mace.' He wasn't exaggerating. The tower had a wide base in a circular shape that grew somewhat narrower at the top. Four snake people guarded the top, each looking in a different direction, each holding large recurved bows… another new and dangerous thing to see as they'd never used those before.

'That tower has to be fifty meters tall, good stone too, and worse…' He looked around for a possible source, there was none, at least not close by. 'The nearest quarry is a long way from here. The stone had to be shipped.' Quiaesse forced his sense of discomfort down from his throat and shrank behind the low hill before he could be spotted. 'Snake people can take presence in from the air, but if what they say is true then just the taste of a human's presence shouldn't draw their attention, not too much. But we'll have to navigate around that.'

The answer was obvious, the winding track that ran between hills were little traveled and he saw no road between the two areas yet. 'From there we can hit the forest and camp in the Peace Trees before we move on to the capital… and save our Captain's life.' Or so Quiasse told himself.

His return was more roundabout, and he found the party of Black Scripture just where they should be, split on opposite sides of a break in the woods, each one so well concealed that their fastest member could barely see any of them. 'If I can barely tell any are there, then nobody else can see them at all!' It was a prideful thought and it set his other concerns briefly at bay, a short moment's respite before he said, "We're going to take a different route. The risk of being seen is too great otherwise."

A slew of idle grunts answered him with acknowledgement and asked no questions of their comrade, they only followed their skillful scout and assassin, slipping silently behind him and racing along the hidden paths they would need to use to get them as close to the capital of Demalbion as they could without risk.

'Wait for us, Captain Tachoni! Wait for us!' They thought, and raced on silent feet toward whatever the gods had in store for them.