Arlette Faredin sat back in her chair and rubbed her eyes, momentarily taking her gaze off of the array of screens set out on her desk and hanging from the wall behind it. She felt like she could see their light even through her eyelids, and the headache brought on by hours of staring at their glow was not helping either.

Arlette still wasn’t quite sure that she believed Sofie’s claim that many people from her world spent their entire days doing this. She could not imagine any but the most broken of people ever willingly subjecting themselves to such a life. So, what did it say about her? That she was also broken?

No, she insisted to herself, she was not broken; she was just... getting somewhat desperate. So much had occurred recently, throwing everybody’s lives into chaos, but that didn’t mean her normal responsibilities went away. No, if anything, all that chaos just increased the importance of her role, and she had little to show for herself.

That wasn’t to say that she or the rest of the Ministry of Security never accomplished anything—far from it. They’d been highly successful in a variety of ways, from unmasking and destroying two separate black markets that dealt in all manner of unsavory and illicit goods and services, to discovering multiple embezzlers infesting the administrative ranks of several of the major cities, to locating a series of kidnapping victims and identifying a serial murderer. The problem was that none of these things was her department’s mission. As if to prove the point, the Ministry of Justice had done most of the work on all of the aforementioned accomplishments once Arlette and her team had identified the relevant details. These were all just things they’d stumbled upon while trying to tackle their true task: dealing with the sinister cabal of insurrectionists hiding amongst the public. When it came to that mission, she could only report continued failure.

There wasn’t much she could blame but her own incompetence, either.  They had all the newest and best tools with which to work, including an army of death machines that would do her bidding even from a distance and a surveillance network of flying drones that covered all of the inhabited parts of the country and most of the uninhabited parts for good measure.  With just a few button presses, she could get a somewhat-real-time overhead view of a farm village north of Eflok or the recording of a busy street in Nont from two days prior.  Such an unparalleled ability to watch over such a wide area would cause spymasters of other nations to froth at the mouth with jealousy, and yet her Ministry seemed incapable of performing its most pressing duty.

She could offer no excuses for her failure.  Well, that wasn’t entirely true; there was one area where, at least in her mind, the ministry was quite deficient: manpower.  Arlette had always been a believer in people over machines, a view not held by her employer.  However, staffing a high-security organization like this had proven to be a nigh impossible task.  Most Otharians who could be trusted with such power did not want it, and most who wanted it could not be trusted.  And so, she was left relying on the machines.  Still, it made a rather paltry excuse.

Feeling the need to stretch her legs, Arlette pushed herself out of her padded chair and strode out of her office.  It was time for her to bother her subordinates, anyway—or what few were around today, at least. 

Unlike most of the ministries, with their many smaller rooms, the Ministry of Security was almost entirely one large chamber with only a few offices and meeting rooms attached.  Within the main chamber stood rows of desks, most of them covered with screens much like her own.  Bits of writing-covered parchment covered various sections of the walls, with thin strings connecting many of them to form chaotic webs of suspicions, inferences, and hunches.

The room was nearly empty, as all but a pair of her twenty-three underlings were out on assignments right now.  This was a very rare occurrence, as usually about half of the department was in Wroetin at any one time.  Over the last couple of days, however, Arlette had decided to send agents off to investigate potential leads that the department had originally deemed unlikely to yield anything real or useful.  It was a panicky decision and she knew it, but she didn’t know what else she could do anymore.

Not too long ago, she’d had no doubts that ink was the lead she needed, the one that would finally blow this case wide open.  It had made sense at the time—ink was not common in Otharia; there were few sources of it and getting a large amount of it would require actions that should have been traceable.  Now, after well more than a season spent working that angle with nothing to show for it, she couldn’t help but think that her lead had dried up.

Maybe it had never been real in the first place.  Maybe it had all been in her head, the faulty creation of a desperate mind.  But then, her subordinates would have told her so, right?  It wasn’t like—

No, she could not allow herself to spiral right now.  She had to trust herself and her people, especially after everything she’d said just a few days ago with Blake after the Cabinet meeting.  The sting of Basilli’s betrayal would never fully go away, but she’d put a lot of time and effort into vetting the members of this organization.

Only one of her trusted subordinates was present at the moment: Fidsel Aigars, the department’s bookish aide.  Though he didn’t perform inspections or investigate things on his own—that last raid in Cellvas notwithstanding—he filled the much-needed roles of administrative assistant, secretary, and communications coordinator.  Arlette was about to ask him where Gvido—the other person still around—might be, but he was too busy feverishly scribbling away on parchment to even notice her approach.  She realized quickly that she was deciphering a message.

Knowing the importance of speedy communication when it came to matters of security, Arlette had convinced Blake to create a way for her agents to send and receive messages from around the country.  Given that he already had a whole system of flying machines that communicated across the nation, it had been a simple request for him to fulfill.

For such an easy task, however, convincing him had been harder than expected.  He hadn’t liked the idea of giving people who he didn’t know direct access to his technology, which was why the machines were very limited.  They only could transmit text, and only to a central receiving machine in the department.  To add to the security, Arlette had insisted that all messages be sent in code; this had been after she’d realized that the enemy had their own crystal technology but well before the recent acquisition of hard evidence.

Arlette’s heart beat with a mix of anticipation, curiosity, and dread.  Given the effort needed to encode a message, agents did not usually resort to using the machines unless they had something important to send, something that couldn’t wait. 

“What do we have, Fidsel?”

The man looked up with a start.  “Minister!  I did not hear you approach.  Yes, this just came in from Agent Berzina.  One moment, I’m nearly done.”

Arlette frowned.  “Where did we send her, again?”

“Breah, why?” another voice informed her.

Gvido Gailis, the brusque stone Observer who’d accompanied her on her last failed raid, strode across the room, a bowl and spoon in his hands.

“Is it time for lunch already?” she asked, more to herself to bemoan the slippage of time than to the others.

“Yeah, I tried to ask if you wanted anything, but you didn’t respond.”

He shoveled a large spoonful of something past his lips, but that didn’t stop him from talking.

“So, Ramune?” he asked, his voice mushy from a full mouth.  “Something happening in Breah?”

“We’ll find out in a moment, I suppose,” she returned.

Breah... a rather unique town, and one she had never visited.  She glanced over at the large map of Otharia they had hanging on a wall nearby.  Down at the bottom, along the southern shore, was a bit of land that could almost be called an island, if not for the thin isthmus that connected it to the mainland.  The isthmus was low enough that it thinned even more during most high tides, and even became submerged completely for a short while when the three moons aligned in just the right way.  Breah stood on the southern half of that sometimes-island, nestled into the hillside.  The seaside town was not too large, by her understanding, but had been a favorite vacation destination for the most wealthy and powerful of Otharia’s old guard.  She wondered how it had fared since the takeover.

Fidsel cleared his throat.  “It’s done.  Let’s see here...  ‘Requesting immediate assistance.  Likely source of ink found.’  Oh my...”

Arlette’s heart skipped a beat at the words.  Was this it?  Was she finally getting her break?

“‘Received tip from local, investigated location discretely but did not enter.  Signs of very recent activity outside, possible enemy forces still inside.  Require backup as soon as possible.’  End of message.”

Arlette was heading for the door before Fidsel had even finished reading out the missive.  “Gvido, meet me at the transportation bay in a quarter-hour.  Bring everything you’ll need for a fight.”

“Understood,” he responded, his voice tight.  He wasn’t a terrible combatant—she made sure to test them all every so often—but he didn’t enjoy fighting as much as some others in the department.  That was fine; he wasn’t in the department for that, anyway... but when the time comes, you have to use what you have on hand.  “Just us?”

“I’m going to call in a big gun for this one,” she told him.  “Fidsel, you’re on your own until somebody returns.”

Quick, long strides carried her through the halls.  Arlette didn’t quite know where to find her quarry.  Usually, her first inclination would be to follow the sounds of mischief and destruction, but the source of said racket was currently floating somewhere above Stragma or thereabouts.  Lacking any better options, she simply headed for her target’s rooms and hoped she got lucky.

For once, fate was on her side.

“Hey Sofie, I need your help.”  Sometimes it was better to just get right out with it.

“Huh?”

Sofie looked up from the mess of documents strewn across her bed, eyes bleary and unfocused.  The bags beneath her eyes and her sallow complexion told Arlette that her friend hadn’t gotten much sleep recently.

"Shouldn’t you be, like, working or something?” Sofie grumbled, rubbing her eyes.

“I do.  I was hoping to ask you to help me, but I’m getting second thoughts.  Are you alright?”

“I’m fine, I’m fine,” the Earthling repeated, perhaps to convince herself more than Arlette.  “I was just working on lesson plans for tomorrow.”

“You don’t look fine.”

“I’m just...”

“You’re worried about Pari, aren’t you?”

The way she glanced away was all the confirmation Arlette needed.

“Why are you still so worked up about this?  We already talked about it two days ago.  Gabriela will keep her safe.  She won’t even let her off the airship, I’m quite sure.”

“But what if she gets out somehow?  You know how she can be when she gets bored.  What if she’s raiding a giant bee’s nest for its super-honey, or fighting a pack of raving dire muskrats, or—”

Arlette cut her off before she got caught in a spiral of worry.  “You know as well as I do that Gabriela won’t allow any of that.  There’s no way that she would ever allow a child like Pari to do anything dangerous.  Not a chance.  Now, I need you for something.  Would you be willing to do me a big favor?”

Sofie leaned back and raised her arms high in a full body stretch, letting out a tired grunt.  “What is it?”

“I need to take you to Breah, down south.  There’s somebody down there I want to question, and I need to know they’re telling the truth.”

Sofie frowned.  “Arlette, I’m going to say this now to make sure we understand each other.  I do not want to turn into some magical truth-detector, running around wherever people need me to mess with somebody’s head.  I did it for Chitra for obvious reasons, but even that I still have regrets over.  This can’t become a trend.”

“But I—”

“I’m serious.  A temporary restriction on somebody’s behavior, one that is removed right after... that I can talk myself into.  Stuff beyond that, it’s just... too much.  Not unless you’ve exhausted every other option.”

Sofie slid off the bed and crossed the room to a dresser, whereupon she started pulling out an assortment of clothing.  “Give me a few minutes to get properly dressed.  It’s windy down south, right?”

Arlette paused for a moment, thrown off-balance by the seeming about-face.  “I thought you didn’t want to come.”

“I’m just trying to lay out the general ground rules now before expectations get set, you know?  That doesn’t mean I won’t do it this time.  This is related to those bastards, right?  And it’s important?”

“Right.”

“That’s enough for me this time.  I need something to get my mind off of other things for a bit, anyway.”  She paused for a moment, considering two different shirts.  “Oh, one more thing.  I’m not wearing that damned collar.”

“Sofie, Blake instructed—”

“I know what he told you, and I could not care less.  I’m not dealing with that thing anymore.  You all tell me I’m soft and wimpy—you, Tehlmar, Blake, all of you.  Well, that means more than just being willing to be violent.  It means I need to stand up for myself, and so I will.  Starting with this.  It’s demeaning and insulting, and I hate it.  I’m done with it.  So, make your choice.  I join you, sans-collar, or I get back to work on my lesson plan.  What’s it going to be?”

*     *     *

Arlette had always found her employer’s long-legged transport machines to be fairly unsettling, but she understood why they were as they were.  Being so high up allowed them to traverse through the many still overgrown areas of Otharia in ways that a more conventional low-to-the-ground method of transport, like a wagon, could not.  That came in handy here in the south, an area that, from what she could tell, had not been considered important even back in the pre-Blake era.  There were no cities of note down here, nor even very large towns.  The roads were fewer, thinner, and less maintained, and it barely needed saying that Blake hadn’t bothered to build a railroad line in this direction. Needless to say, they had been traversing a good number of overgrown areas on their journey, the transports showing their utility once again.  Arlette just wished they didn’t sway so much.

“It’s so empty,” Sofie remarked to the wind as she looked around at the passing scenery, her neck notably exposed to the air.

Arlette was a somewhat worried that Lord Ferros would take issue with her decision, given how very definitive he’d been on this particular subject, but he’d also tasked her with hunting down the underground resistance, and she knew which of those was more important.  In the end, she needed Sofie and she didn’t have time to waste.  The choice had been a simple one.  He’d understand.  Or, perhaps it would just be better if he never learned of her choice at all.  Yes, that attitude is what had caused him to snap just a few days ago, but he’d slept a bit more now, so things would probably be alright. 

“You thought, what, there’d be more people around here?” Gvido Gailis inquired.

“Well, yeah,” she admitted.

“Look around you.  See any decent farmland?”

“I guess not.”

“And there you have it.  Can’t have more people than you can feed.”

“But what about fishing?”

“Fishing?!  How could you feed a whole population with just fishing?!”

“You can’t here?  It is quite common where I’m from.”

“There’s no leviathans where you’re from?!”

The man looked at her as if he couldn’t tell if she was joking or just stupid.  His expression reminded Arlette that Sofie was still largely a mystery to those outside the tiny circle of her friends and others from Earth.  Everybody knew of her thanks to her efforts to teach the nation’s children, but nobody knew where she had come from or just what she was capable of.

“She grew up by an inland sea well up north,” Arlette cut in.  “No leviathans.”

“Ah,” he simply said, accepting her word.  For once, the Otharians’ lack of interest in the outside world came in handy.  There was a good chance he’d never once seen a map of any land beyond Otharia’s borders.

“Leviathans make it impossible to fish?” Sofie asked, slightly subdued.

“Not impossible, no, but they limit what you can get.  The way it works is pretty simple.  There’s a line off the shore, an invisible line that you have to know by heart.  If you cross that line and venture out of the shallows, you die.  If you don’t, you’ll be fine... usually.  The problem is that most fish live out past the shallows.  There’s not enough of what can be caught in the shallows to feed a town on its own.

“Sometimes, in times of hardship, somebody would get really desperate and row out past that line and cast their nets.  Sometimes, they’d even make it back, nets teeming with thousands of wriggling fish.  In those times, they’d be hailed as heroes.  But those people were the lucky ones, and they’d only managed to come back once.  A rare handful were able to do it twice in the last few generations.  Nobody has ever survived going out there three times.”

“You seem quite familiar with all of this,” Sofie noted.

“Grew up in a place like this, just much further out west.  Different place, same problems.  Once I became a stone Observer, I got out of there as fast as I could.”

“I see,” she stated with a sage nod.  “And that’s why you were willing to join Arlette’s group, isn’t it?”

“Huh?”  He eyed her warily.  “What nonsense are you spewing?”

“You feel like you and your home were ignored and neglected by the old regime, don’t you?  That’s why you’re able to take this side instead of working to put things back as they were before or just stepping aside.”

He smirked Arlette’s way and gestured with his head in Sofie’s direction.  “Where’d you find this one?”

Arlette rolled her eyes.  “In a city burning to ashes.  It’s a long story and not one I feel like telling any time soon.”

“Well, I guess you’re right, at least in part,” he admitted, returning his attention to Sofie.  “We weren’t exactly welcomed and respected by the Church, I’d say—more like tolerated at best, abandoned at worst.  It always felt like they would rather we just not exist in the first place—like we were a problem or a mess that they didn’t want to bother with... other than Breah, I guess.  I’ve never had the love for them a lot of people still hold.  You’re pretty perceptive.”

“I just find it interesting what brings the people in your department to do what they do, is all.  You’re really putting yourself out on a limb in a lot of ways.  I doubt that I would have the courage to do the same.”

“Yeah, well, we all have our reasons,” Gvido said, preening under the praise.

“Alright, look sharp,” Arlette cut in.  “I can see the land bridge.  We’re close.”

Indeed, they were close.  The land bridge twisted its way out into the ocean, all the way to a small ‘island’ about two leagues out.  For some odd reason, her mind likened it to a pimple protruding from a stretch of smooth skin, as unflattering as that comparison might be.  Maybe it was just due to how tired she felt.  They’d been traveling for just about six hours now, and the trip had worn on her.

As they traversed the long isthmus and approached the quasi-island, Arlette slowed the transport and navigated it carefully along the thin, winding stone road.  She couldn’t help but peek at the ocean lapping at the land less than one hundred paces away on each side.  She could spot several small boats out on the water; apparently, this area was shallow enough to be safe—at least, at this tide.  The sea touched the land a good thirty paces below them.  If this thin strip of rock truly became submersed when the moons were positioned just right, then perhaps nowhere was truly safe all the time.

As if to imply an answer, a massive... something emerged from the water—far too distant for her to grasp anything about its nature other than its sheer size—then sank back beneath the surface.  None of the fishermen in their small crafts even bothered to react.

Then, they were over the bridge and upon the backside of the sometimes-island.  Arlette steered the transport carefully along the path that led around the steep side of the land.  The hill that made up the whole of the place was greater than a normal hill, but not quite large enough to be a mountain.  If it were placed elsewhere, it would surely be considered a foothill, but she wasn’t sure the nomenclature worked for this situation.

Finally, having circumnavigated the place and reached the southern side, she got her first glimpse of Breah itself.  Her first thought was both how similar yet different it appeared compared to the cliffside villages she’d known in Gustil.  Both featured architecture that avoided corners, with round, sloped walls to accommodate the winds sweeping in from the sea.  Yet, the Gustilian villages had something to work with that Breah did not: space.  Nearly every building she could see had a compact design.  If more space was needed, it looked like the builders would build up rather than out, but even then, she saw few structures more than two stories tall.  The singular exception was the old Church’s villa, which stood up the hillside above the rest of the village, practically lording the Church’s status over its followers.

A familiar figure stood at the edge of the village, arms folded and a worried scowl on her face.  Seeing that her transport would have trouble fitting in the thin, winding streets of Breah, Arlette slowed her transport to a stop and lowered the cabin beside Agent Ramune Berzina.

“Report,” she commanded as she hopped over the cabin’s side, unable to control her impatience.

The agent cleared her throat.  Arlette could not help but notice the nervousness Agent Berzina seemed trying to hide, though she wished she could; it just made her more nervous.

“Not much to say for the first few days,” Ramune began.  “The trip had no complications to mention, and I arrived when expected.  The people here are largely distrustful of outsiders, but they seemed willing to talk, answer questions, and assist me once I showed my badge.  However, I was unable to find much of anything concerning the mission.  It’s bigger than most places down here, but Breah is, by and large, still just a slow-moving, isolated town.

“Then, this morning, I was approached by a local—an old woman I hadn’t met before—who wanted my help with something.  She said that she was worried that her grandson had fallen into the wrong crowd.  He would sneak off at night and go somewhere, only to return before morning with dark, black stains on his skin—stains that looked like they were from some sort of liquid.  It turns out that there’s an underground trade going on, one that makes use of the squid caught in the nets to make ink.”

Arlette drew in a sharp breath.  Could this be what she’d been looking for?  Still, something seemed off.  “Ink is made with black ash, though,” she pointed out.  “What do these squid things have to do with it?”

“You’ve heard of a squid before?” Sofie asked, surprised.

“No?  Should I have?”

“I guess not.  They’re these tentacled creatures that live in the ocean.  They have long, rubbery tentacle arms with suckers on them.  They’re super gross to look at, actually.  But, one other thing about them is they make ink in their bodies.”

“What?”

“Yeah, there’s an ink sac with squid ink in them.  They squirt it out to blot out the water and escape predators.  Or, at least, that’s what the squids I know of are like.”

“Hold on... with how big an emphasis we put on tracking ink in this nation, and with all the research I did on it’s production, why have I never heard of this?”

“I looked into it, and apparently squid ink is only used in the southern coastal region,” Ramune told her.  “It’s inferior in pretty much every way to the usual ink—harder to make, degrades relatively quickly, and isn’t even as good at being ink as other stuff.  It’s only used down here because normal ink is far too expensive for the people in this region and because their proximity to the ocean allows for it.  I’d bet the ink makers elsewhere don’t even know about this little industry, or even consider what they make to be proper ‘ink.’”

“Still... Gvido, shouldn’t you have known about this?”

The southern Otharian shrugged.  “Why would I?  My family was too poor to ever need any sort of ink, and I was a child.  I didn’t even learn to read until after I moved north.”

Arlette frowned, but supposed there was nothing she could do about it now.  She’d have to have a talk with her department later, however.

“Anyway, that’s about the gist of it,” Ramune continued, pivoting back to the original topic.  “I was able to track down the site to a single building near the shore.  It seemed like nobody was inside, so I originally planned on sneaking in to investigate further, but every way in was trapped.  That’s when I sent in the request for backup.”

“Excellent, agent.  Well done.”

But then, why was she so nervous?  Arlette looked around the area and spotted the agent’s ride parked up the hill nearby.  However, that was all she could see when it came to her resources.

“Lord Ferros deployed skitters to Breah, correct?” she asked.  Arlette had decided to forgo bringing her own this time.  They couldn’t move as quickly as transports, and she was still somewhat convinced that her raid at Cellvas had failed in part because of that added delay.

Ramune nodded, her mouth tightening.  “Two.”

“Where are they?”

The agent shifted uncomfortably.  “I stationed one at the other exit to the village and one at the dock to prevent anybody from leaving.”

“A sound decision.  We wouldn’t want any culprits to escape if we can help it.”

“Yes, but there’s another reason.  I knew you’d want to interrogate the woman who tipped me off when you arrived, but... she’s gone.  I can’t find her anywhere.”

A bad feeling started growing in Arlette’s gut.

“At first, I thought that she’d been killed, which would be bad enough,” Ramune continued.  “But, according to everybody else I’ve spoken to since, she never existed in the first place.  Nobody knows this woman, and everybody knows everybody here.”

That foreboding feeling grew heavy within her.  “Take us to the site immediately.  Call in the skitters for support.”

“Understood.”

They arrived at the suspicious location quickly enough.  Placed only a few dozen paces up the hillside from the town’s relatively extensive docks and with a plain, nondescript wooden front, it looked like any of the other buildings standing down near the coast.  Unlike most of the other buildings nearby, however, it seemed unoccupied at the moment, with no movement, sound, or light coming from inside.

The skitters arrived just moments later, so Arlette rounded everybody up.

“Alright, I don’t want to waste any more time.  Something’s going on, and I don’t like it one bit.  Ramune, you’re with me.  We’ll take the lead.  Gvido, you take the rear with Sofie.  We’ll let you know when it’s safe to come in.”

The fun thing about having two large metal murder machines at your beck and call was that it didn’t matter if your adversaries booby-trapped every door and window because you could just make your own.  The robot crashed through the side wall with ease, the wood splintering with only token resistance.  The roof wavered, tilting worryingly towards the newly created entrance, but stopped as the rest of the wall caught the load and held.

Carefully, warily, and with her weapon drawn, Arlette stalked into the supposed ink facility.  With just a glance at the interior, she knew that Ramune’s information was at least partially correct.  Large wooden barrels lined the sides of the long, thin structure, each tall enough to come up to just below her shoulders.  Black stains covered most of them, many of them so heavily that it was almost like they’d been painted black.  The stains weren’t confined to the barrels, either.  Several long wooden poles leaned against several barrels, just as dark as the barrels.  Blotches marked the walls and the smooth stone floor as well.  She’d never seen an ink manufacturing facility before, but she imagined it would look like this.

She couldn’t sense anybody inside.  Still, though the place was rather tiny, it wouldn’t be smart to assume the whole of the place was empty.  She moved further in, Ramune alongside her.  Some of the barrels she passed were not empty.  Those on the right had varying levels of black liquid inside them, while several on the left contained a rather disgusting soupy mix of water, blood, and chopped-up pieces of white-grey creatures she’d never seen before.  The squid parts—or so she assumed—grossed her out, adding a twinge of nausea to her already tense insides.

Slowly, the pair worked their way deeper into the building, disabling two traps they encountered along the way.  Their designs were nothing special—decent setups, but she’d seen much better throughout her years—and neutralizing them proved to be fairly simple matters.  They continued on, eventually moving into the facility’s only other room, finding little of note—just a simple table and a couple of chairs.

Nothing, again?  She sighed.

“Alright, Gvido!” she called out as she returned to the main chamber.  “Do your thing!”

Gvido came as bidden and got down on his hands and knees, slowly running his palms across the floor.  Sofie nervously peeked her head around the hole in the wall.

“It’s safe?” she asked.

“Just stay away from the doors and windows,” Arlette told her.

Sofie nodded and entered, looking about warily.  She passed by the barrels, grimacing at the sight of the squid guts, and approached Arlette and Ramune.  “That face says you didn’t find anything.”

Arlette spat on the ground and scowled as her way of answering.

Sofie scratched her head.  “I don’t get it.  Too much feels weird.  No offense, but do you usually get normal people reporting things to you?”

“It’s not unheard of, but it is extremely rare,” Ramune admitted.

“And then this mysterious tipster just disappears, and nobody knows who they are.  So, either the townsfolk are lying...”

“Or somebody wants us here,” Arlette finished.  “Why I couldn’t say.  Unfortunately, I’m not sure we can rule out lying locals.  It wouldn’t be the first time.”

“I wish I knew enough to say just how fresh these squid bits are,” Sofie sighed.  She looked around once more, then frowned.  “Miss Ramune, are solid stone floors common for unimportant buildings in a village like this?”

The agent stiffened.  “I—”

“No, they are absolutely not,” Gvido cut in.  “Even for a relatively well-off town like Breah, there’s no way a place like this should have a ground like this.  Something’s definitely fishy here.”

Arlette mentally kicked herself.  How had she not noticed that?  Well, in her defense, it wasn’t like she’d ever spent much, if any, time in poor coastal hamlets.

Wasting no time, she grabbed one of the wooden poles and began to tap the floor, listening to the sound.  Sofie joined in with another rod, while Ramune began moving the barrels to uncover more of the space.  Meanwhile, they left Gvido to do his thing.  She wasn’t quite sure how he used his Observation skills to check for secret passages, compartments, and the like, but it worked.

For a while, they tapped away, working through the room, but found nothing.  They moved to the smaller side room, and just as Arlette was starting to feel like this was another hopeless effort...

“Gvido!  Over here!”

The man entered the side room and Sofie tapped on a spot where the table had stood.  Though the sound it made was still quite dull and muted, it was noticeably brighter than everywhere else.  He knelt beside the indicated spot and pressed a palm against the stone.

“Huh, there’s a space maybe a hand’s width down,” he said almost immediately.  He slid his hand slowly back and forth.  “It goes from here... to here.”

A gap beneath the floor, its width maybe one and a half times the width of a man.  A tunnel.  It had to be.  They’d finally found something after fruitlessly searching for so long.

“Open it,” she told him.

“Might as well go sit down somewhere,” he told them.  “This will take a while.”

Sofie and Ramune took his advice, but Arlette was too anxious to sit down.  And so, instead, she stood nearby, watching and waiting.  Stone observation was always a notoriously slow process; perhaps it was merely an effect of the medium, but even a powerful and accomplished stone Observer would need several days to fully grow a foundation and even more to do the building atop.  Still, with her heart thumping in her chest, Gvido’s progress felt positively glacial.

Slowly, like wax melting on a lit candle, an opening formed and widened, until finally, at long last, she stared down a vaguely rectangular hole.  Darkness had fallen back during the search and the moonslight could not reach inside, so she observed a small flame to light the way.  The hole—the tunnel—retreated straight down into the earth for about ten paces before taking a hard horizontal turn.  Looking at the tunnel’s side, Arlette was surprised to find that what looked like indentations for hands and feet built into the sides.  She clambered down immediately, the others following quickly behind her.

The tunnel stretched out ahead of her, tall enough to walk down and seemingly perfectly level, for a good fifty paces.  Arlette wanted to rush down the passageway, but forced herself to proceed with caution—there could still be traps.  Yet, as she went, all she found was incredibly smooth rock.

She wasn’t the only person to notice this.  “Whoever made this has unbelievable skills,” she heard Gvido say behind her.

Then, before she knew it, the tunnel came to an end, though not with what she expected.  Instead of another shaft going back up, the passageway simply came to an end at a small chamber just eight paces wide and long.  On the other end of that chamber stood a stone pedestal, and on that pedestal lay a piece of paper.

“What’s this?” Sofie asked.

Arlette did not answer.  She barely even heard her.  Her eyes were locked on the paper, or more specifically the writing upon it.  With a trembling hand, she picked it up and brought it up to read.

To my dearest princess,

Have you been having fun these last few seasons?  I must admit, I’ve enjoyed our little game immensely.  It’s been endlessly amusing to watch you flail about blindly like a child swinging at monsters in the dark, never even knowing your adversary’s true face.  Sadly, all games must eventually come to an end.  I look forward to our upcoming reunion with great interest.  Try not to die before then!

-S

Arlette clutched the note like the reins of a bucking garoph, her body shaking and her mind spinning out of control.  Sebastian Cunningham was alive.  It seemed impossible.  She’d witnessed him getting hit by that massive, tumbling, crumpled door—a door that, even folded in, was the size of a house!  It had happened right in front of her!  Yes, his corpse had been lost in the following chaos, but... there was no way somebody survived something like that!  Not a chance!

And yet... how else could she explain this?  Could it be some impostor trying to pretend to be Sebastian?  But first of all, why would anybody bother?  And second, how could they impersonate him so perfectly?  She couldn’t imagine Sebastian telling others about her and how he used to call her princess, nor could she see how anybody could so perfectly mimic the distinctly precise handwriting she remembered from back in her youth, which she now saw years later on the paper between her fingers.

Suddenly, it all made sense: how the resistance was able to elude her so easily, how she kept finding clues that led to nothing but wasted time, how she’d always had this feeling in the back of her mind that the resistance had had it out for her personally...  She’d always thought it was nothing more than a paranoid delusion, but somehow, it had turned out to be the truth!

What should she do now?  Sebastian’s presence here meant that something more than just an underground resistance movement was in play.  He surely had something more in mind than creating chaos in this place.

She had to tell Blake about this.  That man was paranoid enough that he would believe her without even arguing.  She would need allies for this, whatever ‘this’ was.  She’d learned from the last time when she’d tried to do everything himself.

A loud, pained gasp, followed quickly by a thump, brought her back to reality.  Arlette spun around, hand flashing to her sword on her side, but the chamber still only held four people.  Gvido and Ramune both stared in shock at Sofie, who shuddered on the hard stone floor.  At first, Arlette’s thoughts had jumped to the idea that one of the others was plants secretly working for Sebastian—given everything that had happened to bring this about, she could not discount it, no matter how much she wanted to.  However, they both seemed genuinely surprised, and she could not spot any sort of wound on Sofie’s form.

Quickly crouching down beside the ailing woman, Arlette reached out to her.  “Sofie!  What’s wrong?!”

“I-Inside...” Sofie gasped out, taking Arlette’s hand and shakily pushing herself up onto her hands and knees.  “I don’t—”

Suddenly, she began to cough and wretch.  A moment later, with a loud hack, she vomited onto the floor and Arlette’s shoes—except, it wasn’t semi-digested travel rations that were staining Arlette’s footwear.  It was blood.  A lot of blood.