“So Riki, how did it look?” Desmond asked in a serious tone, and not at all trying to change the subject.

“I took a quick look around the Lodge,” Riki replied. “There are no other groups watching the place, but it has been pretty thoroughly destroyed. Desmond, why would anyone attack the Lodge? It just doesn’t make sense.”

“Someone is trying to start a war,” Desmond said gravely. “And they probably just succeeded. Let’s take a look at what’s left and see what we can find out.” Desmond set off walking in the direction of burnt down Lodge.

“Shouldn’t we just report this back to Gateway City?” Riki asked. “This isn’t our problem. We could just, let them handle it.”

Desmond turned back to Riki with some anger showing through his expression. “They made it my problem when they burned down my home!” Desmond took a deep breath to calm himself before he continued. “Besides, you are one of the best scouts in the Empire, and the Lodge will no doubt pay a king’s ransom for any information we can bring back. We aren’t going to be picking a fight with who did this, just having a look to see if we can find out who they are. So, are you in?”

“Fine,” Riki replied with a sigh. “You would just get yourself killed without me. Now this is a stealth mission, so you have to do what I say. I don’t want to end up fighting a whole damn army.”

“So, it’s same as usual then,” Desmond said with a chuckle. “Lead on, our oh glorious and mighty leader.” This got a light chuckle out of Riki.

***

Desmond walked into what had once been the lobby area of the Lodge. The room was completely destroyed by fire, with the ceiling having collapsed in and only the north wall still standing. The whole room was covered in a thick layer of ash. It looked like the fire had been out for several days now, and Desmond could see no recent activity throughout the room.

Desmond moved through the lobby and out into the main courtyard where he could get a good look at the whole compound. It would seem that whoever had attacked had been very thorough, as there was not a single building left standing.

What really stood out though, was what looked like some kind of singularity hovering over the noble district of the Lodge. It was a meter-wide blueish sphere that hovered over where the Library had been. The sphere was exerting a powerful section force downward onto the collapsed buildings, but the spell was clearly fading. At this point, it was only sucking up dust and then expelling it upward, for it to then fall down and get caught in the process again. It looked like the sphere had a magnetic field of dust around it as it slowly dissipated.

This meant that the noble district was off-limits. The singularity being over the Library was concerning. The Library was where the emergency portal had been located. Had they been able to use it to escape? Then again Garrick was known as a powerful Arcane mage, so this could be his handy work.

Desmond moved on, walking towards his own residence. The areas outside of the buildings were remarkably undamaged. It didn’t look like there was a large fight here. It looked more like someone had just come through and burned the buildings down.

Desmond entered his residence to find it a smoldering ruin. It was even worse than the lobby, as it looked like his particular living area had been hit with a large-scale attack spell. Desmond sighed as he looked through his courtyard. This had been the place he had called home for the past several years.

“Those bastards must have looted it,” Desmond cursed. He was unable to find his burden armor anywhere and suddenly regretted not taking it with him. Desmond had no idea why Barco made his training gear look so nice, but it seems to have backfired on him here.

Desmond continued his search of the Lodge, finding nothing but burnt ruins. From the looks of the damage, the outpost had been hit by long-range magic artillery. This was something that only well-equipped armies would have.

Magic artillery played a pivotal role in modern warfare but was something the Lodge wasn’t prepared to handle. It was a facility for hunters and not warfare after all. The Lodge would have had a shielding array to protect the facility, but they had no artillery of their own to attack back. With the Lodge’s importance on the continent and history of neutrality, someone would have to be crazy to attack them. Yet it had just happened.

“It looks like the attackers are camped out to the northwest of here,” Riki said from behind him. “I found tracks but there weren’t that many. Maybe thirty or so.”

“Hmmmm, if I had to guess,” Desmond said looking at a large crater in the middle of a courtyard. “They hit the outpost with long-range magic artillery. Waited for the defenders to evacuate through the portal. Then sent people in to burn everything down.”

“But why?” Riki asked. “If they attacked shouldn’t they try to kill as many as they could?”

“Not necessarily,” Desmond replied. “Attacking the Lodge is fundamentally stupid for any nation, and this doesn’t look like some kind of first strike to weaken the Empire. So there is some other purpose to this attack that we are missing.”

“Like what?” Riki said sounding frustrated.

“I don’t know,” Desmond replied calmly. “Maybe someone wants the Theocracy and the Lodge in conflict, but I’m guessing at best here. You said they moved off towards the Dagger Mountains? Let’s go have a look, shall we?”

***

Desmond followed Riki through the forest. The terrain got more rugged and hilly as you approached the Dagger Mountains, though the area still had dense forest coverage. They had been traveling at a good pace for the past half hour or so.

“There are people ahead,” Riki said as she came to an abrupt stop. “A lot of them. More than a hundred. They had cleared a wide area around their camp of all trees and obstacles.”

“Let’s see if we can get a look,” Desmond replied.

Desmond followed Riki as she moved to the edge of the clearing and started to climb a rather large tree. From the top of the tree, Desmond could see the whole clearing. There were two different camps set up in the wide open space in front of him.

One had what looked like hastily erected stone walls with patrolling rell guards on top of them. Even from the top of the tree, he couldn’t see inside this camp so he would have to go off Riki’s scouting ability. But, it was the other camp that really caught his attention.

It was maybe a little over a hundred hide tents set up out in the open with what looked like goat people walking between them. The people all looked to be warriors with different weapons and armor. It was clearly some form of mustering camp, but Desmond’s eyes were drawn towards the center of the camp. There stood a small stone archway covered in runes with a purple portal in the middle. From the portal walked out a steady stream of these goat men in single file who would then join the camp.

Was this some type of invading army? Desmond remembered seeing the runes on the stone archway before somewhere, but couldn’t quite place it. It was no common runic language that was for sure. No, he had seen this runic language on the array pillars in Ben’s storage ring. It was also the same runes that had been used on that spell in the middle of his village when he was a child. How did this all relate?

“They are building an army Dez. Don’t tell me you want to go in there?” Riki asked with some exasperation in her voice.

Desmond stifled a laugh. “No, now we go back and report. But first, can you tell me what you see inside the walled camp?”

“I can’t see inside the camp itself,” Riki replied. “They have some type of magic obfuscation spell active, that I would really rather not test. But I can still look over the walls with my magic. I would guess there are around 300 rell inside the camp, all of them awakened.”

“So, a small elite force,” Desmond replied. “Anything else?”

“They have four of those magic artillery things set up in the main courtyard. I can’t tell how many high-tiered people they have because of all the buildings. I can only see a few tier 6 rell walking around the camp. This is way beyond what we can handle alone.”

“Yeah,” Desmond said in deep thought. “Is there any of those goat men inside th-”

Suddenly Riki was beside him with her hand held up to shush him. Soon after a veil of shadow fell over them. Desmond followed Riki’s vision down to see one of the goat men approaching their tree. It was sniffing the air while walking directly at the tree they were on top of. From this distance, Desmond could get a better look at the goat man.

He was about the average height of a human male around 5 foot 10 or so, but looked far more burly due to the long bristly fur covering his whole body. The goat-like head made him think of a minotaur but with the curved horns of a ram. The stupidly large and dumb-looking goat eyes would have made it seem almost comical if not for the massive 2 handed war axe it was carrying. Desmond would guess it was around upper tier 2. Not a problem for them by any means, but killing a scout could lead to other issues.

It reached the bottom of the tree and after sniffing the air again, looked right up at where they were hiding among its branches. Riki’s spell was clearly effective as the goat man looked up with confusion and bewilderment on his face. It reminded Desmond of a puppy with how it tilted its head side to side while looking up at them, a very ugly puppy. After a few moments, the mini-minotaur seemed to lose interest and walked back off into the forest.

“A scout. Should I kill it?” Riki asked in a whisper once the goat man disappeared.

“No,” Desmond replied. “Your spell fooled it. No need to take the risk. They clearly have a heightened sense of smell, so spilling blood so close to their camp could be bad.”

“I can deal with the smell,” Riki said with confidence. “They will never know. I won’t even leave a body behind.”

“They will know when the scout doesn’t return,” Desmond replied. “Come on, let’s get out of here. We have seen all we can for the moment.”