With 60% of the votes, the story continues on the first path. The group splits up and tries to find out more details about the archives and about the other village that disappeared.

By the end of the episode, four choices will be presented to you. Vote on twitter or on theheartpyre.com for whichever path you want the story to continue on.

Intro music: Lonely Dusty Trail by Jon Presstone

Logo Design: Mars Lauderbaugh

Rodrick had been right when he had said that this inn had comfortable rooms. It was nowhere near as big as the room she had been in just that morning, but the bed was the softest thing she had ever had the privilege of sitting on and she couldn’t stop herself from running her hands up and down the fresh linens. She was sharing a room with Asha this time around, while Rodrick and Logan had a room further down the hallway. 

Rena got up from her bed and wandered across the room, taking in the abundance of decoration the innkeepers had plastered all over the walls and furniture. Whoever was responsible for these rooms seemed to be extremely fond of marbled ducks and red carnations. On the singular nightstand between the beds there was a bouquet of the flowers although Rena had already touched it and figured out that they weren’t real flowers and made of tissue instead. Surrounding the flower pot were figurines of the ducks, in various sizes and shapes, ordered in a circle from biggest to smallest, leaving almost no room for anything else on the nightstand. 

While Asha was unlacing her arm guards, Rena walked over to the window. From her standpoint on the fourth floor she could see over most of the city, although she could only really see the houses surrounding them, anything beyond that were just spots of dim light in the darkness. She opened the window and leaned out, looking over to her right to see the lights outlining the shape of the fortress.

“Careful with that,” Asha warned her, unlacing the front of her tunic and sliding out of it. 

Rodrick had given them all simple cotton robes of his so they wouldn’t have to sleep in their dirty clothes. Asha slid hers on and its formlessness looked, quite frankly, ridiculous on her, the fabric tight around her upper arms while the chest and skirt were loose and too short.

Rena turned around to lean against the windowsill, observing as Asha rolled her shoulders and moved her arms, frowning at the straining fabric.

“I’m sorry we had to drag you into this,” Rena told her.

[Asha] “I’m using you just as much as you’re using me to get into the archives. There’s nothing to apologize for.”

[Rena] “Still, I’m sure you had other things planned for this week.”

[Asha] “You don’t have to worry about how I plan my time. If you worry about everyone else’s decisions all the time you won’t get anywhere in life.”

Rena nodded, unsure how to respond to that. She had simply wanted to be polite, she hadn’t expected Asha to dismiss her like this.

“Your uncle mentioned you were from the Grey Isles, right?” she tried again, hoping that this at least could lead them towards a normal conversation.

Asha folded her clothes together on the bed before walking over to one of the two chairs standing against the wall on the opposite side of the room and laying them down in a neat pile. Rena started to get nervous when Asha didn’t reply.

“How did you arrive here?” she continued, desperate to fill the silence in the room with something. “You mentioned something about a takeover earlier, has it something to do with that? I’m sorry if I sound ignorant but I didn’t hear anything about such events before.”

Asha took in a long breath and sighed.

[Asha] “We don’t have to talk about this. You can concentrate on what you want to get out of the archives, and I will concentrate on what I want to get out of them. There is no reason for us to discuss our backstories.”

[Rena] “Ok.”

Rena pressed her lips together and looked down at the ground, feeling the heat rise in her cheeks. She had already sensed that Asha was not the most talkative person, but she hadn’t expected her to outright rebuff her like this.

[Rena] “I’m sorry if I offended you.”

Her fingers dug deeper into the wood of the window frame, expecting Asha to put her in her place again but the room remained silent.

After a while Rena dared look up and saw that Asha was standing next to the chair, staring at her. Rena’s breath caught in her throat when their eyes met, a cold shudder running down her back.

“We should go to sleep,” Asha finally said, turning away from Rena and leaving her in utter confusion. 

Rena didn’t know what Asha’s look had meant, if it had been a confirmation that Rena had in fact offended her, if Asha had wanted to tell her something but thought better of it, or if it had meant something completely different. The cold night air creeping in from the open window finally made her stand up and close the window behind her. She silently walked over to her own bed and picked up the robe Rodrick had given her, slipping out of her own dress.

                                                ~~~

“If we split up, we can cover more ground,” Logan suggested as they sat around a table in the inn’s tavern, enjoying the freshly made potato omelettes the innkeeper had just brought them.

“I don’t think we should wander around the city on our own,” Rodrick replied, darting a quick glance towards Rena. 

[Logan] “Ok, but we can still split up. You two go check out the archives and me and Rena here go talk to the people in town. And then no one’s in danger of getting lost.”

He winked dramatically at Rena and the discussion instantly made her feel like she was six years old again and her parents were discussing whether she was allowed to go to her friend’s house at the other end of the town by herself or not.

“I can look after myself,” she replied and shoved some of the omelette into her mouth.

“I agree with this plan,” Asha said, having already finished the bowl of food in front of her. “It would just be a waste of time if we all stayed together. Splitting the tasks up can ensure that both get the needed attention. We should meet up again here for lunch to discuss what we have found.” She got up and looked straight at Rodrick. “We should leave now before we waste too much time doing nothing.” 

Rodrick’s eyes widened in surprise as she simply walked out of the room and he had to gulp down the rest of his food before following her out the door, almost forgetting to make sure that the dog was following him.

“Always so eager,” Logan muttered into his mug, his eyes still fixed on the door the others had left through.

Rena kept her head down, bringing smaller and smaller pieces of food to her mouth so she wouldn’t run out and have to find something else to look busy with. She would have preferred it if she could have gone with Rodrick, at least she felt somewhat safe with him. Logan looked like he could get her into a lot of trouble and she didn’t know what she should think of Asha and her cold disposition. She dared to glance over at Logan but he seemed lost in thought, his eyes staring into the middle distance while he was absent mindedly biting at his bottom lip. Suddenly he perked up and turned to her.

“Ok so I think we should ask around with older people or at least those that have been here for a long time, because they are the most likely to have heard about the fires. Maybe try to find someone that’s from around where the villages burned down or has family there. Do you know where these other fires were?” He looked at her expectantly and she simply shook her head. “Yeah, me neither. So, we’ll have to start at the very beginning and figure out if anyone has heard of anything like that at all. Maybe ask some people who come into contact with a lot of folks or who wander around a lot. We can start here and then go to some other taverns, maybe some messengers, merchants if we’re lucky, but we also don’t have all day so we should concentrate on those who are more likely to know something.”

Before she could answer he had already stretched his arm out and was calling over the innkeeper. She was a stout woman with wrinkles and freckles covering her tan skin. As she walked over to them she wiped her hands off on her apron.

“What can I get you guys?” she asked when she came up to them, picking up Asha and Rodrick’s empty bowls.

“Hi, we’d love some more of your fantastic omelette,” Logan told her with a wide smile although Rena definitely wasn’t hungry enough for a second bowl. “I didn’t know they had such delicious traditions in the south, I definitely have to remember your establishment when we travel through these parts of the kingdom again. Also, I was wondering if you could help us out with something. Me and my friend here are apprentices to the great Master scribe Daelavic and we are on tour of the kingdom examining the humble heritages of our dear members of the royal council and their consorts, as our Master is working on an extensive history of our beloved country. Well, I don’t want to bother you too much with the details, I’m sure you are too busy for my ramblings, but as our Master has an audience with the administrator today he has asked us to investigate some other matter for him. Our research into the family history of Queen Harion has led us to these parts of your lovely province but we have hit a bit of a wall in our investigation. We know that her ancestors lived in a small town around here and that apparently some of her extended family still lived here up to a few years ago, however we don’t know the exact name of the town, we just know that it probably doesn’t exist anymore. Maybe due to ransacking or a fire or something of such sorts. I was wondering if you had heard about anything in that direction before, any towns that were destroyed in recent years? Although, when I say recent years this might have even been ten to twenty years ago. You can imagine how it is to operate on a scale of hundreds of years for your research.”

[Innkeeper] “Hmm, I’m not sure, don’t think I’ve heard of any villages just disappearing like that.”

[Logan] “Not even rumours or whispers.”

[Innkeeper, chuckle] “No, I’m pretty sure I would have heard about something major like that.”

[Logan] “Alright, thanks a lot, I guess we’ll just have to keep asking around then. It’s probably a dead end for our research anyway. Don’t tell our Master this, but in my opinion, there are more interesting stories to investigate than just having a list of family trees for all the royals.”

[Innkeeper] “Don’t disregard our small part of the kingdom. We’re more interesting than you Northerners could ever imagine.”

[Logan] “Oh no, I wouldn’t dream of it. I didn’t mean to imply that nothing ever happens here. How this whole city came to be, for example, is fascinating.” He waved his hand around vaguely.

[Innkeeper] “Mhm.”

She raised an eyebrow while holding the bowls in one hand and picking up the empty mugs with the other.

[Innkeeper] “I’ll bring you your food right away.”

“You didn’t have to lie to her,” Rena mumbled as the innkeeper walked away from their table.

“It’s always better to lie at first,” Logan answered, intertwining his hands and placing them in front of his mouth so that only Rena could see his face. “You can always apologise for lying later. You can’t make someone who wasn’t supposed to know the truth just forget about it.”

[Rena] “It’s still rude to lie to someone without a good reason, and I don’t think we have any reason to lie to these people. What would they even do with that information?”

He shrugged and looked away for a second.

[Logan] “They could rat us out.”

[Rena] “Why would they.”

[Logan] “Money. Favours. Information. Spite. The list goes on and on.”

She rolled her eyes and sighed.

[Rena] “I don’t know why you guys all think that the guards are going to throw us into prison just for wondering what happened to these villages. I’ve got a right to know what happened to my family.”

[Logan] “Yeah, sure, if the universe was fair they’d let you find out what happened and have closure, but that’s not how things work, and if something’s actually amiss here they won’t like it if you’re poking around.”

Rena looked away, her eyes drifting over the other people in the room enjoying their breakfast. She still believed that if they would just try to ask the guards for help, they certainly would help them, or at least leave them alone if they couldn’t help, but the others were so obsessed with thinking that even consider talking to the guards would mean doom for them. Before she could reply the innkeeper had come over again and placed two bowls of food in front of them. 

“Thank you kindly,” Logan answered, his demeanor shifting instantly to the charming scholar he had played before.

Rena looked down at the steaming potato omelette in front of her and wondered how she was supposed to eat another bite of this, no matter how delicious it was.

“I just remembered,” the innkeeper said, frowning down at the table as if in thought. “When I was little I lived in a town east of here, North of Hollowtooth. There’s a bunch of small towns scattered across the land there near the border and since no one ever cared enough to put them on maps we had these signposts on the road that told people in which direction all of those towns were. This was about thirty, fourty years ago. I haven’t lived there in a long time. But I remember that over a year ago I went to visit my cousin because she was sick and I noticed that they had redone these signposts. Don’t ask me why or who is even responsible for these posts, but I remember that one of the names was missing. I kind of remembered it from my childhood because it was something silly. Miller’s Knee or Farmer’s Heel or something like that. It definitely had something to do with a body part. When I saw that it was missing I didn’t think much of it though. Some of these towns only have five people left living there, the town might have just died out. I just thought that if someone can find out what happened to it then it’s you folks.”

[Logan] “Thank you so much. That is great information. Definitely something to look into. If you don’t mind me asking, where are you from? So we could potentially go there and try to find our way to this missing town.”

[Innkeeper] “I’m from Dessta. You won’t find it on a map, but if you go up from Hollowtooth and follow the small roads you’ll stumble upon some signposts leading you to the town. Good luck finding a town that isn’t marked anywhere though.”

She knocked on the table twice and nodded to them before turning around and getting back to her work.

Logan rested his chin on his intertwined hands and looked over at Rena with a smirk, raising his eyebrows twice.

[Logan, whispering] “Told you it would work.”

[Rena] “I’m not exactly sure how this information is supposed to help us though.”

[Logan] “If we find out who is responsible for remaking those signposts we might find out why they had to be redone. And also, now we can go around asking more specific questions about this mysterious town that is suddenly missing. Maybe find a wandering merchant who goes to these small towns and see if they noticed anything about the signposts or the town.”

Logan started eating again while Rena warily eyed her bowl, dividing the omelette into tiny pieces before hesitantly bringing one to her mouth.

[Logan] “I think I saw the caravan of a merchant on the outskirts when we were coming into the town yesterday. We could try our luck there, hope they’re still nearby. Even if they don’t know anything, they can probably send us to someone who knows more.”

                                    ~~~

It took them at least two hours of being sent from one wandering merchant to the next to find someone who had operated in that part of the province before. They landed in the shop of an old cheesemaker who used to wander from town to town to collect milk from the goat and sheep farmers. She hadn’t been on such a tour for a few years, so she couldn’t comment on the new signposts, but she did remember there being a small town called miller’s knee. She hadn’t gone there often, especially not in the last decade since the only goat farmer in town retired, so she didn’t personally know what had happened to it, but after pressing her a bit on the subject, she seemed to remember that one of her contacts mentioned that something happened to the town. She couldn’t exactly remember what though. Something about a plague destroying all crops or a fire spreading from haystack to haystack one dry summer. Something that would have led the remaining inhabitants to leave their homes behind and move to a safer place.

[Rena] “So someone survived?”

[Cheesemaker] “Well I hope so. Wouldn’t that be a tragedy if everyone had just died. I’m sure they must have gone to live with their families somewhere.”

[Logan] “But you don’t know that for certain?”

[Cheesemaker] “No of course not, I didn’t know these people personally, I’m definitely not keeping up with their lives.”

[Rena] “But maybe you’ve heard about one of them relocating?”

[Cheesemaker] “I don’t think so, but also I don’t think that’s information I would remember. I come across so many people on a daily basis, I can’t keep track of all of their names or faces.”

[Logan] “The person who told you about this, do they live around here?”

[Ding of a bell]

[Cheesemaker] “No, no, he lives on the other side of the province now. Said he wanted to be as far away from this shithole town as possible. Now either buy something or let me get back to work.”

                                    ~~~

They tried one more spot on their way back. A message delivery service that advertised itself as servicing even the tiniest corners of the province. When they came in there were three people in the room, an older woman dictating a message to a younger woman to their left, and a guy who looked a bit older than Logan and who was sitting behind a table rifling through some papers to their right. Logan strode right up to the guy to their right, putting on the same bright smile he had used on all the other people on their journey.

[Logan] “Hi, my wife has sent me here to send a message to her great-aunt. She lives in a small town west of here near the border, but it’s so tiny I’m not even sure your service would deliver a message to it.”

“Which town?” the man said, barely looking up from his papers.

[Logan] “Miller’s knee. I believe it should be somewhere around Dessta.”

[Runner] “Yeah, that town doesn’t exist anymore. They tore it down about two years ago. Well, they tore down what was left of it.”

[Rena] “They tore it down?”

[Runner] “Yeah, yeah. Retrieved all the material that was still useful to build something else. They do that sometimes if the stuff isn’t needed anymore.”

[Logan] “So do you know what happened? Why did they tear it down?”

The man shrugged, rummaging through his pile of papers.

[Runner] “People got old, famine, sickness, a flood. Who knows.”

[Logan] “What happened to the people who lived there?”

[Runner] *sigh* “I don’t know, you’d have to ask the guards about that. I don’t keep track of every tiny town that suddenly disappears around here. Do you know how many of those there are? People don’t want to live in a town where they know the name and entire family tree of everyone else who lives there. They want to live in cities where there’s actually something going on. Same reason why you are here and why I am here. I bet you didn’t want to take over your great-grandfather’s goat farm either. Also, shouldn’t you be the one who knows what happened to their own family members?”

[Logan] *nervous chuckle* “Well, it’s on my wife’s side, so I definitely wouldn’t know. They’re a complicated family, a lot of fighting and arguing, you get me. I don’t think my wife has talked to her great-aunt in almost a decade, but we’re expecting our first child so she wants to get all the family back together.”

The man looked over at Rena and mumbled his congratulations. Appalled, Rena only just now realised that this situation must look like she was Logan’s wife. Didn’t she look way too young to be married and a soon-to-be mother? Reflexively, she violently shook her head to deny the allegations, too stunned to say anything.

[Logan] “Oh, no, no, this is my sister. My wife’s at home in her bed, she definitely shouldn’t be walking around anymore with the baby coming any day now. No, no, we’ve just been promoted to her errand boys for the time being.”

“I’ve got another question,” Rena blurted out, desperate to change the subject.

[Runner] “Uhuh.”

[Rena] “Have you delivered any messages to the South lately, around Mattak or Halvint?”

[Runner] “Not me but one of the other guys was there recently.”

[Rena] “Did they pass through a town named Oceansthrow? Did they say anything about it?”

[Runner] “Hmm, no I don’t think he mentioned anything about that town.”

[Rena] “Is he here? Would it be possible to talk to him?”

[Runner] “He’s out on business.”

“Thank you so much for your time,” Logan said before Rena had the opportunity to say anything more.

He grabbed her by the elbow and gently tugged at it, turning them around to walk out of the building.

“That was risky,” Logan whispered into her ear when they had exited the shop.

“I had to ask,” she hissed back and pulled her arm out of his grip.

[Logan] “Sure, but you could have been a bit more subtle about it.”

[Rena] “I’m not a professional liar like you. I can’t just come up with another random reason why I would be asking about the town in an instant.”

[Logan] *sigh*  “Fine. So, if the other guy didn’t mention anything about the town, then it means the news hasn’t gotten out yet. And he didn’t seem to even recognise the name. If anyone had heard about what happened around there then it would be these guys.”

Rena frowned down at the ground as they kept walking to their inn. It had almost been two days since the fire, did news really travel this slow? She supposed it could be possible. That since she hadn’t notified the authorities about it, that no one else had bothered to do it either. That the people in Halvint had decided to deal with the situation on their own or that they had just been too busy to contact anyone else about it. She wondered if they were still cleaning up the ruins at the moment. If they were uncovering the bodies and burying them. If they had found out what had happened to the town, to her family. She wrapped her arms around herself, holding on tight, unable to keep herself from imagining what the town looked like in broad daylight. What her house looked like, what her mother and father and siblings looked like. She stopped in the middle of the road, her jaw trembling as she struggled to breath. She had abandoned them. She hadn’t even been able to stay long enough to bury them.

She had followed the first people who had talked to her on a wild goose chase instead of making sure that her family was laid to rest. As if the ruins of the town would just disappear if she didn’t see them. That none of it would be real if she wasn’t in the middle of it.

[Logan] “I suppose that he could have been forced to keep it quiet by the authorities, but I’m not sure how likely that really is. Seems to me that would take a lot of money and effort to keep people silent like that. But if they really don’ w…. Are you alright?”

He was already a few steps ahead of her, only belatedly realising that she had stopped. He turned around to look at her, waiting for her to say something, but when she didn’t move or answer he rushed towards her, grabing her forearms, crouching down to look her in the eyes.

[Logan, softly] “What’s up? Talk to me. What’s going on?”

[Rena, gasping] “I left them alone. They’re still lying there and I just ran away. I ran away because I didn’t want to see them anymore and I just abandoned them and let someone else take care of their bodies. No one deserves a daughter like me.”

[Logan] “No, no, no, listen, listen, you didn’t abandon anyone, ok? We’re here for them. We’re here to find out what really happened, so they can find peace in their death. This matters. What we’re doing right now matters. You didn’t run away, you’re running towards the truth, and that’s important. Don’t let your brain tell you that you’re not doing the right thing. There’s nothing more important than the truth.”

[Rena] “That’s rich coming from someone who keeps lying all the time.”

She wiped her eyes with the side of her hand, forcing herself to take deeper and slower breaths.

[Logan] “Yeah well, there are small lies you can tell people that aren’t going to change anything about anyone’s lives and then there are the big, evil lies that are trying to hide what’s actually important. I dabble in the first. The second ones are there for us to uncover them.”

[Rena, chuckling] “That makes no sense.”

[Logan] “No it totally makes sense. That guy I just told that my wife is about to have a baby isn’t even going to remember me by tomorrow. The Innkeeper might wait for a deep-dive into the family history of the royal council to come out at some point, but even if she waits all her life and nothing like that ever comes out her life won’t be different. She can just learn about those family trees some other way. But if the administrator or whoever is fabricating stories about what happened to these towns to cover up what actually happened then that will have serious consequences, because they wouldn’t cover it up if it wasn’t anything damning to them. Which means that thing can happen over and over again and more towns might disappear and no one will ever try to stop whatever’s happening because they just don’t know about it. You do see how that’s different, right?”

She pressed her lips together, nodding and, slowly looked up into his eyes.

[Logan] “You’re not abandoning them. You’re just making sure that nothing like this can ever happen again.”

[Rena, softly] “Yeah.”

[Logan] “Alright, let’s go back to the others. We’ve got things to discuss.”

                                    ~~~

When they strolled back into the tavern Rodrick and Asha were already sitting at a table, pouring over a pile of different papers.

“What did you find?” Logan asked as he let himself fall onto the bench next to Rodrick.

[Rodrick] “The staff at the archives were very helpful. They gave me a list of all the different departments and which kinds of decrees one would need for them. I had to insist a bit to get all of the information for the more classified records but I think I now have everything we need.

There are some departments that we might not get access to because they are restricted for anyone outside of the fortresses staff but I don’t think we would need to look through those anyway.”

“What did you find?” Asha asked, nodding in Logan’s direction. 

Rena sat down on a chair opposite Rodrick, bending down to pet the dog who was sleeping underneath the table before sitting back up and craning her neck to look at the papers. One document seemed to hold a list of all the departments with their location, level of access and the name of the person who was responsible for it. The other papers were more detailed lists of what exactly could be found in each department. She carefully slid one of the papers closer to her. It was a list for the department of horse trading, and it contained a numerical list of districts under which different villages and towns were indexed. She hadn’t even known that the authorities kept track of horse sellers or that their province was divided into districts. What else had she never known about? How much did the authorities keep track of? If they knew about who bought and sold horses they also had to know about every single town that existed, no matter how small.

“So,” Logan sighed and leaned forward, interlacing his hands on the table. “There was a town called Miller’s knee east of here near the border that still existed a few years ago but doesn’t exist anymore now. People don’t seem to know or really care about what happened to it, also because apparently it was tiny and only old people lived there, but the guards came in to dismantle it and changed the signposts, so they basically erased it from existence. It’s not much but it’s a beginning. I’m sure they have the department of signposts or something, so we could hit that up, find out what it says. Maybe see if they have a town demolition department. If we’re lucky they’ll have a department of towns that were mysteriously destroyed and that we want to erase from living memory now.”

[Rodrick] “Asha, do you know which part of the archives you need to access for your investigation?”

[Asha] “It will probably have to be one of the departments with a higher restriction level, but I will have to look at the list to know which area holds the most interesting information.”

“Same here,” Logan said as he slid the list of departments closer to him, biting his bottom lip as he squinted down at the paper.

Asha looked down at the pile of papers in front of them, her fingers tapping against the table, her jaw clenching and unclenching as she considered their options.

She suddenly got up and said, “I’m going to get us some food. We’ll be here for a while.”

---

With 60% of the votes, the story continues on the second path. The group get closer to their goal as they drive to the Malahen where the archives are and discuss how best to access the records they are looking for.

By the end of the episode, three choices will be presented to you. Vote on twitter or on theheartpyre.com for whichever path you want the story to continue on.

Intro music: Lonely Dusty Trail by Jon Presstone

Logo Design: Mars Lauderbaugh

Sayaf had relented and finally written the letter, explaining where they could find his contact in the plains while writing it. Rena thanked Sayaf profusely and said they would repay him when they got back, but he simply waved her off, saying that writing down a few words could hardly be considered work. Asha pocketed the letter and so Rena had somehow gained another companion on her journey. She thought that at least she wasn’t alone, that having company would make the passage of time bearable, that if the grief got too difficult to deal with again at least this time she would have someone to talk to. Although her new companion didn’t seem that keen on talking. As they headed out of Sayaf’s tent, Asha let Rodrick and Rena take the lead on where to go and silently followed them once they had decided to retrace their steps. 

Rena didn’t want to stay in the camp any longer than necessary, but she also didn’t quite know whether they needed to go look for Logan or whether to wait for him somewhere. Who even knew how long it would take him to talk to this Cass person. 

They somehow managed to find Logan’s tent again. Rena looked around and up into the trees to see if they were being observed, whether Kalani was keeping an eye on them or not, but besides a group of kids’ playing down the road, there was no one around.

“Do we wait here or go back to the caravan?” she asked Rodrick, peaking past the tent into the forest to see if she could recognise the way they had come from. “Do you think we could even find our way back?”

“The sun is still out. It might take us a while but I don’t think we would get completely lost. As long as we can find the road, we will find the spot where we left the caravan.”

“Hmmm.” Rena looked back down both sides of the road, unsure about Rodrick’s statement that they wouldn’t get lost. He wasn’t from around here, even if she didn’t know where he had grown up, she doubted it had been anywhere rural, so what did he know about getting lost in a forest. You could walk for hours or even days before stumbling upon a road if you went in the wrong direction, and if you weren’t careful you could end up walking in circles and never find your way out at all.

A figure appeared to their right, coming straight at them with determination. Rena tensed up before she recognised that it was Logan, but the speed with which he approached them and the expression on his face only heightened her discomfort.

“Aah, there he is,” Rodrick said with a smile when he noticed Logan, although his chipper expression quickly vanished.

“Let’s go,” Logan said when he came up to them, walking right past them and disappearing between two tents to their left.

Rena’s eyes met Rodrick’s. She raised an eyebrow in concern but didn’t say anything. Her eyes quickly darted to the end of the road where Logan had come from to see if anyone was following him but no one was there. She didn’t have much time to wonder what was going on, as Asha slipped past Rodrick and her to follow Logan as if nothing was wrong or even out of the ordinary, and so they had to hurry to keep up with the other two, slipping in between the two tents to see that Logan wasn’t waiting for them and had already headed into the forest. 

It took them half the time to get back to the caravan than it had taken them to get to the camp. Rena had wanted to catch up to Logan to ask him what was going on but he was walking with such a speed that she periodically had to start jogging to just keep up with her group, and so she only caught up to him when they reached the caravan. She had to lean against the wagon and take in deep breaths before she managed to talk. 

“What’s going on?” she finally managed to wheeze out.

“We shouldn’t stay here for too long,” Logan replied, shuffling around nervously, his gaze fixed on the spot where they had just emerged from.

Vincent jumped down from the driver’s seat and walked up to them, going from one person to the next to sniff at them. Rena pushed herself away from the caravan again and crouched down to greet the dog, thankful that no one had discovered the caravan’s hiding spot and hurt him. 

“What did you do this time?” Asha asked, her eyes fixed on Logan.

“Nothing,” Logan blurted out, throwing his arms out to the side. “None of your business. It’s a private affair. Why are you here anyway?”

“I wasn’t going to let Sayaf go to the plains with some strangers. Why did you send them to him, you know he’s out of the business.”

“I was meant to come with them, ok, but then Kalani found us so I sent them off without me. Can we open the caravan now? We should really be on our way. And I know that Sayaf’s out of business, but he still knows people so I wanted to get some information out of him, and since you’re here I assume they managed to get that info without me.”

Rodrick was standing next to the caravan with his hands on his hips, breathing heavily through his open mouth. When his breathing had calmed down he rummaged around in his coat and slipped out the key to the caravan. He walked over to the back door and unlocked it with a loud thunk.

“Ok great,” Logan said and bounded over to the door. “The plains, you said? That’s gonna take a while, I don’t know if we can get there before nightfall. Maybe we’ll have to take a rest somewhere. Rodrick, how far can this thing go? How does it even work? Can it just go on forever or does it need a break? I’m sure we can take a break in some village, not sure what you need to refill it though, but if it’s just coal we can find that anywhere.”

“We should be good for the duration of our journey,” Rodrick answered as he opened the door and stepped into the wagon. Logan was standing right behind him and had the doorframe been slightly wider he would have surely tried to squeeze his way past Rodrick. “I have water and coal to refill the tank on my own. We will just have to take a little break on the side of the road somewhere.”

“Why are you so nervous?” Asha asked Logan, coming to stand next to him.

Rena ruffled the dog’s head one last time before standing back up and joining the others. She tried to peer into the caravan to see what Rodrick was doing but all she could see between Logan and Asha’s shoulders was that he had crouched down in front of something that kind of looked like an oven. 

“I’m not nervous,” Logan shot out, turning around to frown at Asha. She didn’t answer, just kept staring at him until he continued talking. “I’m not nervous, I just want to get out of here. Yeah, ok, maybe things didn’t pan out the way I thought they would, and maybe the discussion got heated, and you know me, sometimes I say stuff I probably shouldn’t have, but I was in the right so I’m not going to apologise for it. And if Cass can accept that then Deacon should also be able to, but he’s stubborn and a moron so I just want to get out of here before he gets it into his head that the discussion isn’t over.”

“So we are running away because one of your deals blew up? Why am I not surprised?”

“Will you be ok?” Rena asked him at the same time with genuine concern.

“Yeah I’ll be fine,” Logan replied, waving Rena’s concerns away. “And the deal didn’t blow up because of me. I told Deacon it was unlikely to go the way he wanted it to, and lo and behold, his plan didn’t work out, and now he’s blaming me for selling him false hope, but I literally warned him, so absolutely none of this is my fault.”

“Excuse me,” Rodrick muttered as he slid past them, finally clearing the way into the wagon for Logan, who didn’t miss the opportunity to slip away for the discussion.

Asha eyed the wagon in distrust but slipped in behind him without any comments.

“Do you want to sit in the front with me?” Rodrick asked Rena, leaning down to pet the dog.

“Mhm.” She nodded eagerly, thinking that the long ride would be much more bearable in the front than inside the loud, stuffy wagon, even if the front seat was uncomfortable.

                                                ~~~

It hadn’t been often that Rena had travelled this far in one day. She had been at her aunt’s house three times in her life, which was beyond Mellahen, the capital of the province, so technically she had seen the capital and the accumulation of houses surrounding it which everyone called the plains before, but only in passing. People were barely allowed to get near the fortress and her father had always called the plains a lawless place filled with nothing but leeches, so there had never been a reason for her to dream of going there. She wondered what it was really like, the fortress filled with books and documents and the clerks who looked after all of it. No one besides the administrator and her family lived in the fortress, not even their servants, so everyone else had had to build their own residences outside of the castle. People from all around the province and even farther away came to the plains hoping they could get a job in Mellahen, but of course not everyone could get one. The lucky of the unlucky ones managed to find a job in the plains, because people still needed to eat and clothe themselves. The truly unlucky ones had to find other means to keep themselves alive. And according to her father, there were a lot of truly unlucky ones.

The group only stopped once on their way to the capital so Rodrick could refill the tank and they could all eat something. Thankfully Rodrick’s wagon was filled with food, probably more food than Rena’s parents had ever had in their house at any one point. With every new item he pulled out of one drawer or another, Rodrick explained to the rest of them what exactly it was and where it had come from. Rena was shocked that he wasn’t scared it would all spoil before he could eat it, but apparently he had specifically selected all the items for how long they could stay edible and had set up a whole system to remember what needed to be eaten when. In the end, she had eaten a piece of bread Rodrick had bought only a few days ago with a piece of dark sausage she could barely bite through. 

Rodrick hadn’t stopped at only talking about the food. During their ride he told Rena all about his journey. How he ended up in Velashta, the people he had met on the way, how he had initially set out to write down the history of agricultural practices and which tools people were using to help them in the fields. She wasn’t really able to imagine why anyone would be interested in those things, in what was such a mundane, every-day thing for her, but he spoke with such a passion about the creativity and ingenuity of people that she found herself listening with great joy to all his stories.

Night had fallen long before they reached Mellahen so when the road finally widened and they emerged from the woods onto the wide, empty expanse of the plains, the lights of the make-shift city were clearly visible ahead of them.

“Do you think we can actually find the truth here?” Rena asked, staring straight ahead at the orange dots of light that slowly came closer to them. Rodrick sighed heavily before he answered.

“The entire truth? Probably not. But I think we can at least find the beginning of it. Or a few crumbs that will lead us in the right direction.”

“I don’t even really know what we are looking for. Do you think they already have a file on Oceansthrow? Maybe they are still investigating it and haven’t found out much. Do you think we should talk to the guards about it first? Maybe they can help us out after all.”

“We could try, but as I’ve told you, they tend to be rather secretive with all their information, especially towards people they don’t deem important enough. I think they would rather err on the safe side with trusting strangers, because you never know what people’s true intentions are. But who knows, we might find someone who takes pity on us, but I’m uncertain whether it would be a good idea. They might deem you too young and just send you to a relative, and then you might never find out what the actual truth is. I would remain cautious for now until we know more. We can always go talk to them once we know whether the incidents are just horrible accidents or not.”

Rena nodded slowly and looked around, her heart heavy thinking about their journey ahead. She didn’t know what she wished for, whether it would alleviate her grief more knowing the village’s disappearance was just a cruel twist of fate or if someone was responsible for it, if someone deliberately set the fire and watched as they all died. At least then there would have been a reason behind the tragedy, something she could find out about and try to understand and someone to condemn. Even if that would mean someone this evil actually existed in this world. 

“So do we just go to the archives and search around there? Will they let us in if we don’t know what we are looking for?”

“I doubt it. If the archives operate the same here as they do in the citadel there are different levels of confidentiality, so one decree might not allow us to see all of the records. We will probably need to figure out what we are looking for and where we can find it before we head into the archives, but first we need to talk to Sayaf’s contact so we know whether we can get a decree in the first place, and which kind of decree that would be.”

Rena took in a long breath and sighed heavily.

“Don’t worry, it isn’t a hopeless endeavour, we will find a way to these records.”

Rodrick patted her on her knee to comfort her but Rena couldn’t shake the feeling of uncertainty weighing on her. The plan to just find the records and let those tell them what happened had sounded so easy and clear before they were faced with the actual reality of accessing those records, if they even existed. But she had to stay hopeful that they would find something, because the alternative was that they had come all of this way for nothing and she didn’t even know how to approach her quest from another angle. 

As they came closer to the make-shift city she started recognising buildings. Close to the road that led into the city there were larger buildings, although out here they looked fragile and decrepit, as if they had been built in less than a week without any regard for comfort or longevity. Behind these houses, speckled across the grassy field, were smaller houses, although they could barely be called houses, more like shacks that had been built in a day. No road led to these houses and no lights were on in them. Rena couldn’t even see what was beyond those buildings, but she imagined that they looked like the tents she had seen in the city of Rancor, something that could be moved at any moment, inhabited by people who didn’t have anything but who still wanted to try their luck in Mellahen.

Even though night had already fallen the streets were still alive. People were standing around talking and laughing, and she even saw a man get thrown out of a house, the assailant stomping out after the man to continue their fight. Rena’s body tensed and she quickly looked away, feeling grateful that she was in a moving vehicle and not walking past them on foot. As the caravan drove forth she could see things dart away from them in the shadows between the houses, feral dogs and rats and other rodents. On a crate between two houses she saw a fox. It didn’t scamper away like the rest of the animals. It was just sitting there, facing the street, looking right at her. Rena turned around to look at it as they drove past but it disappeared too quickly behind the corner of the house. She wasn’t used to foxes being this unbothered by human activity, but she had heard that animals behaved differently in cities, that they lost their fear of humans and that that was why cities were so dirty and smelled rancid, at least that was what her father had told her. She wondered if foxes here even let people come close to them, whether she could find one that would let her pet it. 

Rodrick drove them further into the city and the street started branching out to the left and right. Rena thought she could see the outline of the fortress in the dark ahead of them, or at least a pattern of lights that might indicate it. The further they drove though, the sturdier the buildings and the road got. By now, the houses facing the road were shops and other businesses, although most of them were closed at this time of day. Some of the buildings were still made of wood, but slowly more and more started to be stone houses, as if people had committed to remaining in this city. At first it looked like life had died down here, that fewer people were hanging around outside, but Rena quickly realised that people had just wandered away from the main road and were now standing around on the side roads.

Apparently Rodrick knew where he was taking them because he took a left turn and continued further down the road until they came upon another fork in the road where they turned to the right and landed on a narrower road. They didn’t stay on this road for very long, however, as Rodrick took another left which landed them in an open square between a tall building and a lower, wooden building that resembled a stable. 

“Have you been here before?” Rena asked and looked up at the high building rising up next to them. She counted four floors, maybe five seeing as the windows weren’t all in neat rows. The wall had different shades of white and beige as if the upper floors had been added over the years. 

“Just for a little while,” Rodrick answered, driving the caravan up to the other end of the square. He pulled a lever and the caravan sputtered to a stop. “But I know that they have comfortable rooms here that don’t cost too much.”

Her head whipped around, her eyes wide.

“I don’t have any money.” She hadn’t even thought about that fact before. She had never needed to have money on her. The few times where she had been out of town she had been with her parents or another relative, and they had always paid for her. 

“Don’t worry about that, I have enough for the both of us,” Rodrick answered, patting her on the knee before standing up. 

“Thank you,” Rena replied, standing up and following him down the steps. “I can pay you back. I can find a job in town here somewhere. Or I can come with you where you live afterwards so you don’t have to wait here for me to have all the money together.”

“Child, I’m an old man who spent all his years working in the citadel for the people in power, I have enough money and resources to pay for our room and board for the next few months.”

He flashed her a soft smile and Rena nodded slowly, although she didn’t exactly feel comfortable with the thought of accepting his money and never paying him back. She would just have to keep count of how much she owed him on her own and pay him back once everything was over and she could find a real job.

“Finally! Freedom!” Logan cried out as he threw the door open and burst out of the caravan. “I couldn’t even hear my own thoughts anymore with all that noise.”

He stretched his arms out towards the sky and then bent down to the ground, swinging his arms back and forth.

Asha climbed out behind him and strode right up to Rena and Rodrick, craning her neck from side to side. 

“Why does your vehicle have to be this loud?” Logan whined and joined the rest of the group. “What is wrong with the normal kind with horses? Why can’t you just have one of those? This is torture. I can’t believe that I was intrigued by it this morning. Are you so old that you don’t hear the noise anymore, is that it? And the vibration is good for your aching bones? I’m too young to get shaken around like this.”

“We need to discuss how we’ll proceed,” Asha said stone-faced, interrupting Logan’s tirade.

“Yes, of course,” Rodrick said, looking quite amused by Logan’s misery. “I suppose it is too late to go looking for your uncle’s contact at this moment. Maybe we should take the evening to decide what our next step could be.”

“The straightforward path is to visit Emmson here in the morning and see how he can help us,” Asha replied. “We can form a plan around what he can offer us afterwards.”

“But wouldn’t it be more convincing if we already knew what we were looking for?” Rena interjected. “Do any of us even know the layout of the archives?”

“Never been there,” Logan replied while the others just shook their heads.

“Then how would we know which kind of decree Emmson should give us? Maybe we need to figure that out before going to him.”

[Logan] “What if we pretend we’re some super important person and just request access to the entirety of the records? Rodrick, you’ve got the right face to be some rich merchant who demands to see some highly confidential documents to have the upper hand on a deal, we can just spin something around that.”

[Rena] “Would that work? What if they find out we’re lying?”

[Logan] “You just need to go in with enough confidence and insist that you need to enter the archives as quickly as possible because you’re too busy from being important and whatnot. Just pretend you’re really upset when they suggest they need to check out who you are before they let you in, I’ve done that a million times. You just need to be out before they figure out you’re lying.”

“It would probably take us some time to find what we are looking for so I’m not sure your plan of running in and getting out before they figure things out is going to work,” Asha objected.

[Logan] “Look, we just need to figure out a plan that holds tight for like a day or two. Use some real names and events, something that isn’t from around here so they can’t just ask around in the neighbourhood. And then if we’re arrogant enough they’ll either believe us or be too afraid to offend us and we’ll have at least a few hours to do whatever we want.”

[Rodrick] “We might get a lot of attention if we pretend to be someone important. I don’t want the administrator to be aware of our presence.”

[Logan] “Alternatively, we can just pretend we’re working in the archives. Pay off some folks to get some uniforms for a day and hope no one tries to recognise us. Something low level that gets recycled often enough, like guards or runners or something like that.”

---

With 50% of the votes, the story continues yet again on the third path. The group splits as Logan goes to the Sovereign Outcast with Kalani and Rodrick and Rena go to find Logan’s contact to get a decree to enter the archives.

By the end of the episode, three choices will be presented to you. Vote on twitter or below for whichever path you want the story to continue on. You have until the 14th of March to vote.

Intro music: Lonely Dusty Trail by Jon Presstone

Logo Design: Mars Lauderbaugh

“Why? What does the Sovereign Outcast want from me?” Logan asked Kalani, squinting at her in distrust as he took a small step back. “I haven’t been here in forever. Whatever happened, it wasn’t me.”

Kalani had already half turned around to walk the group to their new destination but stopped in her tracks, staring at Logan with a raised eyebrow.

“They’ll tell you once you’re there.”

They stared at each other for a while, unblinking.

“The Sovereign Outcast doesn’t have to justify themselves in front of you,” Kalani said and finally broke the silence. “If they want to talk to you, you go and talk.”

“Oh yeah, since when do they act like they’re on the royal council? Are we becoming like our enemies now? Next thing you’ll do is accuse me of treason or something like that.”

“Why do you have to be so complicated?” Kalani groaned and rubbed a hand over her face. “Cass just wants to talk to you for ten minutes, it isn’t going to kill you to do one thing someone asks of you.”

“And since when is it unreasonable to ask what they want to talk about?” Logan burst out, throwing his hands out to the side. “I thought we were all equal here.”

“Oh my stars, I don’t know what they want to talk about, they didn’t give me a detailed list of everything you have ever fucked up and all the consequences that came from it. You know yourself best, pick whichever failure of yours is the most recent and most likely to inconvenience Cass.”

“Alright, alright,” Logan put his hands up in defence. “No need to get personal. I just wanted to be prepared for my big audience with their holy majesty.”

Kalani closed her eyes and took in a long breath.

“Just shut up and follow me,” she growled and turned around.

“Excuse me,” Rodrick asked and Kalani stopped instantly, slowly turning around to stare him down. “I wouldn’t want to inconvenience you further but this affair sounds like a personal matter which might take some time to resolve, and we wouldn’t want to be a hindrance to the proper advancement of this debate.”

Kalani didn’t answer, just kept staring at Rodrick, annoyance written all over her.

“And, uhm,” Rena added, desperately wanting to break the tension that was building around them. “I’m sure the Sovereign Outcast has more important things to do than to talk to us. I mean, we aren’t anyone important and if it’s just to give us an official welcome, then I think you seem like someone with a high enough position to do that, and you already did, so I don’t think it would be necessary for them to spend their valuable time on us. And you’ve seen us so you can report to them about who we are if that is what they are concerned about. And if you are looking for us afterwards, we’ll just be somewhere in town, I’m sure we stick out enough that everyone will notice where we’re going, so we won’t be too hard to find. If all that is ok with you?”

“They’ve got a point. Several even.” Logan added, pointing a finger between Rodrick and Rena.

Kalani looked at Rena for a while before blinking and raising her eyebrows in resignation, shaking her head slightly.

“Fine,” she sighed. “But if I hear about any of you doing anything even remotely weird or unusual I will find you and drag you to Cass myself. Are we understood?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Rena answered while Rodrick simply nodded.

“Let’s go,” she told Logan and turned around for the third time.

“Let me just hug them goodbye real quick,” he said and darted over to Rena, trapping her in a tight embrace before she even had the time to lift her arms.

From over his shoulder she could see Kalani stop and her muscles tense, but she didn’t turn around.

“Go find Sayaf, he’s an old man living in a wooden shack near the bakery. Follow the smell of bread and you’ll find him. Tell him I sent you,” Logan whispered into her ear, before patting her on the back and letting go, turning to Rodrick to hug him tight as well.

He turned away from them, jogged up to Kalani and patted her hard on the shoulder as he passed her, not waiting for her to catch up before disappearing down the road.

Rena watched them leave before turning to Rodrick.

“He told me to go look for a man named Sayaf in a shack near a bakery,” she told him.

“Ah, that makes sense of what he told me,” he replied. “He mentioned cornflower blue drapes on the shack and that if the man doesn’t believe us or doesn’t want to cooperate we should remind him of something called Nura’s pendant.”

Rena nodded and looked around, but she couldn’t see anything above the tents surrounding her. She tried sniffing the air but all she could smell was the forest.

“Maybe if we start strolling through the camp we will find the bakery,” Rodrick said and looked at both ends of the road. “Let’s just start going this way,” he said and headed down the road Logan and Kalani had disappeared down, the one where Rena had seen the group of men earlier, although they must have disappeared at some point during their discussion with Kalani since the road was now completely empty.

Rena didn’t exactly feel safe walking down these streets, especially without a guide who knew the people here and who could tell them which places they needed to avoid. But for now the street was empty and maybe they would find the man they were looking for without bumping into other people. She didn’t even know what to expect from this Sayaf person they were looking for. Would someone who had connections at the provincial guard really live in a town like this? Or was he about to sell them a fake decree? He would probably not give them what they needed without asking for something in return and she didn’t know how they were supposed to negotiate with him if Logan wasn’t here. She hadn’t even thought about how far she would agree to go to get this information but it dawned on her that she would have to make a decision quickly. What could she even offer in return? She barely owned anything, and she definitely didn’t own anything of value. Maybe the man would ask them to work for him and this was how her life of crime started. She wouldn’t be allowed to refuse any jobs and would be indebted to him until he deemed their exchange equal, even if that took years.

She shuddered at the thoughts running wild in her mind, shaking her head to focus back on reality. They could just decline the offer if it didn’t seem fair to them and find another way to access the records. This was just the start of their journey, they would find other paths to take to get to the truth. There was no need to sell her future to some shady criminal.

Rena hurried to catch up with Rodrick, not wanting to be far from him. At first they didn’t meet anyone on the streets even though they could hear people going about their lives in the tents. At one point they passed a tent where the flap had been rolled up and as she glanced inside she saw four people sitting on the ground around a low table. Her gaze washed over them until her eyes locked onto the eyes of the woman sitting at the far-end of the table. Rena quickly averted her eyes, heat rushing up to her cheeks. Logan had told them not to stare at anyone. How could she have let her curiosity get the better of her? Her heart raced in her chest as she waited for the woman to climb out of the tent and yell after them, but no one came and the further away from the tent they got the more she calmed back down. 

Her heartbeat sped up again for an instant when Rodrick suddenly stopped in the middle of the road, thinking that maybe he had noticed her blunder and that he wanted to reprimand her for it.

“Do you smell that?” he asked, frowning and sniffing the air.

She was confused for a second until she remembered what they were actually looking for. She smelled the air in return. She had to close her eyes to truly pick out the sweet smell of bread in the air, but it was undeniably there.

“We’re getting closer,” she beamed at him.

He looked around, searching for the bakery, so she did the same, hoping that she would at least see some smoke over the tents, but she still couldn’t see very far because of the trees. 

“Let’s go this way,” Rodrick said and walked towards a gap between two tents even though it barely looked like a path that was meant to be taken. 

They had to clamber past trees and over some ropes that had been used to anchor the tents to the ground and Rena was horrified at the thought that she might stumble and fall onto one of the tents and break someone’s home, and what the resulting rage would mean for her. They managed to reach the next road without any slips and Rena took a deep breath when she finally had enough space to put both her feet next to each other comfortably again. This road was busier than the one they had been on before. Some of the bigger tents had tables in front of them with people standing around looking at the things that were lying on the tables and Rena realised that those must be stores. As she looked around she saw other tents with letters written on them or signs attached to a tree nearby. The tent they were standing next to proclaimed itself to be a message and package delivery service with various prices depending on which province of the kingdom had to be reached. The tent next to that was selling candles and rudimentary oil lamps.

“Isn’t this fascinating?” Rodrick exclaimed, eyes wide in wonder as he looked over the people and the tents.

“They just look like shops to me,” Rena answered, unsure what was so extraordinary about people selling goods and services. Sure, they might not be in wooden or brick houses like most villages were, but these people had to get all their stuff from somewhere she supposed. It would definitely be a hassle to have to walk out of the forest and to another town every time they needed some pots or new clothes. Especially if the guards were looking for them out there.

She smelled the air again and this time she could clearly distinguish the smell of bread, even if more and more different smells mingled themselves into the scent of the forest. She looked around until she saw a column of smoke rise between two trees.

“There!” she called out, pointing towards it.

They hurried towards it and reached what could be described as a bakery. It wasn’t much more than a small, white dome-shaped oven in between two areas with tables where tarps had been fastened to poles to act as rudimentary roofs. On the tables on the left side three people, two middle aged women and a boy younger than Rena, were preparing dough, while on the other side the tables were covered in baskets filled with bread and rolls and pastries. No one was paying any attention to the few people who walked up to the table on the right and just picked items out of the baskets, as if it didn’t matter if people paid for the bread or not. 

“Blue drapes,” Rodrick muttered as he turned around on himself and slowly inspected the tents around them. Rena kept looking at the bakery, at how the women were telling the boy how to knead the dough, at the streak of white flour on the boy’s face, at the speed with which the rightmost woman kneaded and shaped the dough. The memories of her parents in their own bakery came flooding back to her and suddenly everything was too much, the smell of the bread and pastry, the motions of the baking, the people who just stole the goods out of the baskets right in front of the bakers as if they had no shame.

“There it is!” Rodrick exclaimed and hurried away from her, leaving her standing, staring at what she used to have, what she would never have again, a mother teaching their child how to perfectly shape a loaf of bread and cut flower patterns onto it.

Her mouth felt dry, her tongue heavy and swollen in her mouth, the tips of her fingers ice cold. She blinked and forced herself to turn away, to not think about it anymore, to not wish for it anymore. They had one goal and she needed to concentrate on that. On finding out the truth, and they needed a decree to get to that, and they needed to speak to Sayaf to get to that. Rodrick was standing in front of a shack, its walls made of wooden boards with holes cut out to act as windows, although they were covered with blue drapes so that people couldn’t look into the house.

“This should be it,” Rodrick murmured as she walked up to him.

She nodded slowly in response, hugging her arms tightly around herself.

“It’s going to be alright,” Rodrick told her. “Even if he can’t help us, we can find another way to get to the records. This is just our first attempt, I’m sure we can come up with different ideas to get to the truth.”

Rena nodded again, more enthusiastically this time so Rodrick wouldn’t think she was scared. She wasn’t scared, at least not anymore. She felt drained of all emotions, tired and cold, and she couldn’t get her mind to concentrate on what was right in front of them, no matter how much she tried to force herself. 

Rodrick knocked on the wall next to the entrance. At first nothing happened and then they heard shuffling and muttering from behind the drapes. An old, black man pushed the drapes aside and stared at them first in annoyance, then in confusion, then back to annoyance. His face was covered in wrinkles and he still had a full head of thick, white coils.

“Pardon our disruption, we are looking for a man named Sayaf. Might that be you?”

The man didn’t answer right away but kept looking them up and down before grunting an affirmation.

“My name is Rodrick Hal’Varika, and this is my companion Rena,” Rodrick said as he pointed at her. “I believe we have a common acquaintance who told us you might be able to help us with our current investigation. His name is Logan. I’m afraid I don’t know his family name or where he is from however.”

At the mention of the name the man’s eyes shot up to look at Rodrick with a mix of shock and apprehension.

“What kind of trouble has he gotten into this time?” Sayaf asked.

“None at all, none at all,” Rodrick reassured him, although Rena wasn’t sure if they should mention the situation with Kalani or not. “Would you allow us to enter your home so we could discuss our plan with you?”

“Why are you here?” the man asked, not budging from the entrance.

“We need a specific document to access some official records and we were told you could help us acquire such documentation,” Rodrick murmured.

“I don’t do that anymore,” Sayaf replied and stepped back, letting the drapes fall shut again. Rodrick’s hand shot out to keep the drapes from closing completely. 

“Logan told me to mention Nura’s pendant to you,” Rodrick said, pulling the drapes back open.

The man turned back around and stared at Rodrick’s hand before looking back up at the both of them.

“That boy can mention my wife’s jewellery as much as he wants, I still don’t do that work anymore,” he told them.

“I’m sorry, sir,” Rena said, rushing forward, stopping right at the threshold of the door. “I know that this might be an inconvenience to you, but it is extremely important to us that we get access to these records. I don’t know if you have heard of it, but my village burned down and I might be the only survivor. Oceansthrow. It wasn’t too far away from here. Maybe you’ve heard of it before. But it’s completely gone now and I don’t know why that happened or who is responsible, but apparently there have been other fires like that one all over the kingdom, just that no one ever hears of them or what exactly happened, and that’s why we need access to the records, because we don’t think that the guards are going to help us find out what happened, but someone has to uncover the truth. For the sake of those who died.”

He looked at her for a long while and Rena didn’t know if her speech had worked until he sighed heavily and stepped aside, waving them into his home. The room was dark and tinged in a blue light from the drapes and an orange light from a candle on the table. A woman was sitting at the table, staring at them, one leg crossed over one knee, her left arm draped over the back of the chair while the other was lying on the table holding a mug. She was older than Rena, maybe in her late twenties or early thirties. She had the same skin tone as the man, with a shaved head, and piercing brown eyes. Her ears were pierced with golden jewellery, some just dots and other dangling chains. Her clothes were tight fitting, blue, white and gold, almost too elegant to fit into such an environment. Her upper arms weren’t covered while a leather arm guard covered her lower arms. She was muscular, more muscular than most men Rena had seen in her life, like she could compete with anyone from the royal guard. 

“This is Asha, my niece,” Sayaf said, groaning as he sat down on the chair next to her, in front of the second mug that was on the table.

“Nice to meet you,” Rena mumbled, nodding slightly in her direction. The woman nodded back, not taking her eyes off of Rena, but didn’t say anything in return.

“I was serious when I said that I don’t do that kind of work anymore,” Sayaf said, taking a sip from the mug. “I wouldn’t even know which names to put on the decree to make it look official. They might have even changed the words on the decree, who knows. But I know someone in the plains who can make you one. I’ll have to bring you to him because he doesn’t just work for anyone.”

“You are not going all the way to the plains,” Asha interjected, her head whipping around to look at her uncle. “You just spent three weeks in bed with a bad lung, I’m not letting you leave this place for some random people.”

“I was sick, and now I’m better. I can take my own decisions on where I go.”

“You absolutely can not. I’m not riding all the way out to the other end of the province to drag your corpse back home.”

Sayaf clicked his tongue and waved her off.

“I’m not a fragile little bird that just hatched. I can take care of myself.”

Asha stood up and towered over Sayaf, staring down at him. 

“You will stay here. If I have to lock you up then so be it, but you are not leaving this town unless it has to move.”

The air grew heavy as they kept staring at each other, so much that Rena was about to say something, anything to alleviate the situation, until Sayaf rolled his eyes and sighed.

“Not even your mother was this stubborn,” he muttered and took another sip from his mug. “So what are we going to do about their problem?” he asked, throwing his hand out in Rena and Rodrick’s direction.

“You could just write a letter for your contact that we can deliver and hopefully that will convince them to help us,” Rena interjected, hoping that that would quell the argument.

“He’s not going to just trust some random letter,” Sayaf dismissed her. “You could have just faked it or forced me to write it.”

“I will go with them,” Asha told them.

“Why would you do that?” Sayaf asked, frowning at her. “Cass isn’t going to like you just running off with some strangers and abandoning your duties.”

“Cass doesn’t own me, I can go where I want. And if they are breaking into the archives I want in.”

Sayaf closed his eyes and ran a hand over his face, shaking his head slowly.

“There’s nothing there for you, child. They aren’t keeping records about the grey isles in the capital of Vellashta.”

“You don’t know what these people keep or where they keep it. If the takeover was a joint venture they will have records of those accords in the archives.”

Rena wasn’t exactly sure what they were talking about. She had heard about the grey isles before, the group of islands to the south of Vellashta that were usually surrounded by mist. She didn’t know much about them but she thought she might have heard something about a new commander being assigned to govern the islands. She had thought it had just been a normal change in ruling family. Sometimes that happened when the current family didn’t have any heirs interested in the role or when they wanted to sell off the lands. Sometimes the families agreed to an exchange just because both wanted a change in scenery. She hadn’t heard anything about a takeover or anything else nefarious.

“You need to let it go,” Sayaf said, eyes heavy and tired.

“I won’t,” Asha said and turned around. She walked over to a bag that was lying on the bed that was standing in the corner of the room and pulled something out before walking over to the table again. She put a rolled-up piece of parchment and a wooden box down on the table.

“Write the letter,” she told Sayaf.

---

With 50% of the votes, the story continues once again on the third path. After having accepted the stranger’s help, Rena and Rodrick accompany him to find someone who can get them access to the records about the mysterious fires that destroyed the other villages.

By the end of the episode, three choices will be presented to you. Vote on twitter or on theheartpyre.com for whichever path you want the story to continue on.

Intro music: Lonely Dusty Trail by Jon Presstone

Logo Design: Mars Lauderbaugh

By mid-day Rena found herself inside of Rodrick’s caravan, sitting on the floor with her back against the wall to the driver’s seat, the dog’s head in her lap, facing the stranger that had said he could help them. He was also sitting on the ground, back against the door, one arm propped up on one knee. They stared at each other for a while as the caravan shook them around from side to side, the pots and metal vials and tools that were dangling from the ceiling clanking together. She wasn’t staring at him because she mistrusted him, not exactly, she was just exhausted, her perception clouded by a thick fog. 

“You guys some sort of investigators or something?” Logan asked and it took Rena a moment to understand what he had said over the noise of the caravan.

“No, why?” she asked back and frowned.

“I thought, ‘cause you’re looking for those other villages that burned down,” he replied, waving his hand around vaguely.

Rena shook her head at him. 

“I just want to know what happened to my village,” she said.

His eyes narrowed at her in confusion before they opened wide. 

“Oooooh, wait, are you from Oceansthrow?” he asked and winced.  He leaned forward and crossed his legs.

She nodded, pressing her lips tightly together.

“Ah man, I’m sorry,” he replied with a rueful expression. “That really sucks. My condolences.”

“Thank you,” Rena whispered in response and looked down at her hand that raked through the dog’s fur.

“So is he your dad?” Logan asked, nodding towards the front of the caravan.

Rena shook her head without looking up.

“Uncle?” he asked, tilting his head to one side.

She shook her head again.

“I just met him yesterday,” she replied, forcing her voice to be louder than their surroundings. “He’s been helping me out.”

“Huh, alright,” he replied, nodding his head slightly. “How noble of him.”

“Yeah,” Rena breathed out, burying her hands deeper into the dog’s fur. Vincent stretched his neck out, obviously enjoying the special treatment he was getting.

“Why are you helping us out?” Rena asked, finally looking up, realising only at that moment that they had never asked him about that before accepting his help. They had been so eager to have a potential plan to get more information about the fires that they had just gathered all of their stuff to be on their way without questioning Logan’s motives, and he hadn’t asked them for anything in return yet. 

“I was going to the camp anyway,” he answered with a shrug. “And since my informant is also there in all likelihood I thought I could connect the both of you. Do my good deed for the year and all that.”

Rena didn’t reply, just nodded slowly, sensing that that might not be the end of the answer. 

“And, well,” Logan continued, a smirk flashing over his face as he leaned back again, “I could use some help with something else.”

“With what?” she replied.

“I can tell you that once I’ve upheld my end of the bargain,” he replied, looking her straight in the eyes. They almost had the same shade of brown as hers, just veering more towards green. “But I need to go towards the capital and it seems like you are going in that direction as well, so why not team up.”

He flashed her a coy smile as if that was meant to appease her.

“How would you know if we can help you?” she asked him.

“This is already plenty of help,” he replied, pointing around at the caravan while looking up. “Much faster than trying to sneak through the woods to avoid guards. Although it’s a bit loud.”

“What if we won’t agree to help you?”

Logan shrugged and sucked his teeth, his eyes wandering through the waggon before landing back on Rena.

“Tough luck for me, I guess,” he answered, flashing her yet another smile. “Can’t force you to do something you don’t want to do.”

Rena frowned in response.

Logan chuckled and leaned forward, linking his hands in his lap.

“You don’t look like people who would stab me in the back,” he replied to a question she hadn’t asked. “Even if you can’t always tell whether someone’s a sneaky son-of-a-bitch or not and I’ve definitely been betrayed and pushed around by people who looked plenty innocent, especially if they’ve got pretty faces, and there has been the occasional shifty fella who would have ripped their own arm out to uphold a promise, so really, ya never know, but you guys were sitting there looking all sad trying to get some information of what seems like really tragic events and saying that the government isn’t cooperating or being helpful in any way, as if they’ve ever been helpful, you know, so yeah, I thought, might as well help you and maybe if I’m lucky you guys will help me back and then we’ve both won something out of this situation.”

“Ok,” Rena replied after the wave of his monologue had washed over her.

“It’s not like I’ll lose much if you don’t help me,” he added with another shrug.

Suddenly the waggon jolted and shuddered to a stop and Rena had to brace herself on the ground to not fall over, her free hand gripping the dog to keep him secure.

“Finally,” Logan said after the waggon had stopped shaking, although some of the pots and flasks hanging from the ceiling were still swinging around aimlessly.

He got up and opened the door behind him before jumping out onto the road. A second later Vincent got up, wriggling his way out of her grip and followed Logan outside. Rena took a deep breath before pushing herself up. She brushed her dress down before finally joining the rest of her group outside. Rodrick had driven the caravan off of the road and into the forest between some trees, but only a little bit so that Rena could still see the road a few feet away from them. She looked suspiciously down at the damp earth underneath them, unsure if it had been a good idea to drive the caravan off the road like this but Rodrick looked unperturbed as he came up to the rest of them, smiling and nodding at her as their eyes met.

“Alright, so,” Logan said, clapping his hands together to get everyone’s attention. “You guys don’t look like you’ve ever been to the camp before so let me set out some ground rules. Don’t fuck anyone over while inside the camp, you will get thrown out and barred from ever coming back, if not worse. If you want to fuck someone over, wait until you’re outside again. If you tell authorities about the camp and where to find it or what you saw while here, they will hunt you down and find you and you don’t want to imagine what they’ll do to you once they’ve got you. And don’t stare at people when you’re inside the camp, that’s just rude, and they’ll clock you as outsiders right away.”

“I thought you were bringing us to a city?” Rena asked, eyes wide in confusion.

Logan gestured around with his hand vaguely before saying, “it’s kind of a city. You just can’t really find it on a map and sometimes it’s not where you saw it last time but people live there and there are shops and even a school so it’s basically a city.”

“Ooooooh, interesting,” Rodrick replied with a wide smile. “I’ve never been to one of the city of outlaws before.”

“One of the what?” Rena asked, her head snapping to look over at Rodrick with concern.

“Ok so technically, the entrance is a bit down the road,” Logan told them, pointing to his left, completely ignoring Rena’s distress. “But I know a way that’s faster through the forest and then we don’t have to go through the whole hassle of officially entering the camp since we’re only here to ask someone for a favour.”

“We’re sneaking into a camp full of criminals?” Rena asked with growing unease.

“I wouldn’t call it sneaking,” Logan replied, waving her worries away. “There’s so much surveillance in the trees around the camp they probably already know that we’re here. But I know them, they know me, so it’s all fine. And the camp isn’t full of criminals. The criminals’ families also live there.”

He grinned at her which didn’t actually help quell her fears.

“You sure you want to leave your caravan out here in the open without supervision?” Logan asked as he turned to look at Rodrick, frowning and nodding towards the machine.

“Vincent’s perfectly capable of looking after it,” Rodrick answered, petting the dog on the head. “And it’s not that easy to break into it. It wouldn’t be the first time I leave it standing around somewhere. I can’t be next to it at all times after all.”

“It’s up to you, friend,” Logan said, raising his eyebrows as if he wasn’t convinced of the situation. “Just saying, people out here are pretty good at stealing.”

“It’ll be fine,” Rodrick said with a small smile and turned around. He snapped his fingers and pointed at the ground and the dog jumped to attention and followed him. Rodrick patted the seat of the in the driver’s cabin twice and Vincent jumped up onto the footrest.

“Stay,” Rodrick told him before petting his head. “Good boy.”

As he came back he rummaged around in one of the pockets of his coat and pulled out a weird key, one with a long shaft with different sized half-circles wrapping around the end of it. He stepped into the caravan but before Rena could wonder what he was doing he was already outside again and slid the key into the keyhole, turning it halfway to one side, pushing it further in and then turning it the other way. A loud clonk resounded, as if multiple bolts had just snapped shut. 

He turned around to Rena and Logan and clasped his hands behind his back. 

“Now, if you wouldn’t mind,” he said, nodding deeply towards Logan. “Please lead the way.”

“Sure thing,” Logan answered and turned around, waving at them to follow him.

Rena looked back to the front of the caravan, worried about leaving Vincent alone but when she turned back around the two men had already disappeared into the forest and she had to jog to catch up to them. She couldn’t claim to be comfortable with Logan’s plan but Rodrick didn’t seem to mind it and he probably knew best who they could and couldn’t trust. She looked up into the trees to find the so-called surveillance Logan had talked about earlier but all she could see was the blue sky beyond the treetops. Logan didn’t seem particularly worried about whoever was supposed to already know about their arrival, considering the speed with which he led them through the forest. It wasn’t long before Rena couldn’t see the road or the caravan anymore and it almost felt like the forest was swallowing them up, which was a weird feeling for Rena, because the forest had always used to be her refuge, like a calm friend she had known all her life. But she had barely known her current companions for over a day and now she was on her way to a wandering city full of people she didn’t know if she could trust and suddenly being in the middle of a forest didn’t seem as peaceful as it used to.

Logan led them through the forest for quite some time, although Rena didn’t know how he knew where to go because as far as she could tell there weren’t any ribbons tied to trees or sticks wedged in the ground or anything else on the way that could tell them where they had to go. 

An idea clawed its way into Rena’s mind that they had just let a stranger walk them deep into an unknown part of forest and he could be lying about everything he had told them and might now be planning to do unimaginable things to them. She had halfway convinced herself that there was no camp at the end of their road and that they were walking into their deaths when faint sounds of human activity slowly arose above the usual forest sounds. Logan raised his right hand without stopping, gesturing about as if he was sending out hand signals to someone but when Rena looked up she still couldn’t tell whether they were being observed or not. A few more steps and Rena was finally able to see something in between the trees, structures somewhere between shacks and tents, sometimes just tarps fastened in between trees. 

“Ok,” Logan whispered, stopping and turning around to face them. “Once we enter you need to stay as quiet as possible until I tell you that it’s ok. I’m not one hundred percent sure where my informant currently is but I know where he might be, so we’ll go look at those places first and hope we find him quickly.”

Rodrick nodded, a serious expression on his face, but Rena couldn’t shake the feeling that she really shouldn’t be here.

“Is this safe?” she whispered in response.

“Yeah, sure,” Logan waved her off. “Like I said, I know the people around here, so just don’t be an ass to anyone and everything’s gonna be fine. Ok, let’s go.”

He turned around before Rena could voice any more of her concerns and she was left with the choice of following him or trying to find her way back to the caravan on her own.

Logan walked up to one of the structures while crouching, a light brown, rectangular tent that had been attached to some trees. It was bigger than the two tents surrounding it, high enough that a person could comfortably stand around in it, but the fabric had been stitched up in various places, revealing the age of the tent. He pulled the bottom edge of the fabric up a few inches and lay flat on the ground, peering into the tent. After a moment he sprung back up and pulled the edge higher, waving for Rodrick and Rena to get in although the gap was barely high enough for anyone to fit through. Groaning, Rodrick laid down on the ground and rolled himself through the gap. Rena shot Logan an annoyed look before laying down on her belly and crawling through the opening. She stood back up inside the tent and dusted off her dress although it didn’t help much with the streaks of dirt across her front. She sighed, thinking how the dress had been clean for less than a day before being covered in mud again. Logan rolled in after her and the gap closed behind him. 

“Welcome to my humble abode,” he told them as he passed Rena. 

She looked up, taking in the sparse furnishing around her. There was a bed on her left side, a wooden chest next to it, another wicker chest at the foot of the bed, a simple table with two chairs to her right and an assortment of clay and metal pots against the right-most wall. On the table there was a single, half-burnt candle, which looked like the only lamp or decoration in the entire tent. The furniture looked simple but sturdy, and with enough nicks and dents that she could imagine them having been moved and thrown around a bunch of times. The only thing that looked like it had been taken care of over the years was the wooden chest. It was made of dark wood with intricate carvings and faint remains of paint on its top.

“This is your home?” Rodrick asked, his gaze drifting across the dim room.

Logan waved his hand around vaguely as he walked up to the wooden chest.

“Sometimes,” he replied, crouching down in front of it. “When I feel like it.”

Rena couldn’t tell from where she was standing what he was doing, but something clicked and then the chest sprung open and a heartbeat later Logan had closed the lid again and was standing back up.

“Alright, we can go!” he told them, waving for them to follow him. He went to the front of the tent and knelt down to slide his hands underneath the tent fabric, working on something on the other side of the flap, before getting back up and holding the flap open, waving the other two through with a little bow.

Rena went out first, cautiously, looking from side to side before stepping out. Tents were lined up next to each other like houses, although each of them looked different, some sturdier and some just a blanket that had been carelessly thrown over a pole. The ground in front of the tents was well-travelled, forming a natural road. She saw a group of people a bit down the road to her left standing in front of one of the tents talking to each other, one man laughing at what the other had seemingly just said, clapping him on the shoulder as the other broke into a wide smile. She turned her back to them, hoping they hadn’t seen her face and looked at the other side of the road that was empty of people, although that didn’t mean much since Logan’s tent was only a handful of feet away from a sharp bend in the road.

Rodrick came to stand next to her before Logan peered out and looked down both sides of the road before hurrying outside and kneeling back down to re-tie the knot that was meant to keep people out of his tent. In one motion he stood back up and came to stand between Rodrick and Rena, looping his arms around their shoulders, and pressing them forward.

“Alright,” he whispered, “first we g-.”

“Hello, Logan,” a voice arose from behind them and made Logan flinch.

“Ah f…. Hi!” Logan turned around, a big smile on his face, letting go of Rena’s and Rodrick’s shoulders. “What a coincidence!”

“What a coincidence to find me in my neighbourhood?” the woman who was standing behind them said, one eyebrow raised, her arms crossed in front of her chest as she leaned against a pole upholding another tent. Rena could have sworn that she hadn’t been there a second ago. She looked like she was somewhere in her thirties, with dark skin and long black braids that hugged her skull tightly. Two patches of lighter skin, almost white, covered her face, both going from the eyes towards the temple. She was thin but muscular, with tight fitting leather clothes that had seen better days. 

“Well, yeah, you know,” Logan trailed off, looking everywhere but at her. 

“Were you trying to sneak in?” the woman asked with a playful smile on her lips. 

“Pff, no,” Logan replied, although anyone could have heard the lie from a mile away. 

The woman sighed and her eyes finally drifted towards Rena and Rodrick, looking them up and down before stepping closer.

“I suppose no one has welcomed you to the camp yet if you’re sneaking around with this idiot,” she said and nodded towards Logan, who raised his arms in mock offence. 

She stepped up to Rena, took her head in both her hands and touched their foreheads together.

“The stars welcome you to the city of rancor. Every human is welcome here, no matter their past or future deeds. May the dark obscure you from your enemies and grant you rest.”

The woman lifted her head away.

“Thank you,” Rena replied, unsure of how she was supposed to respond..

“You’re supposed to say May the light brighten your resolve and lead your way to justice,” Logan muttered, leaning closer to her.

Rena repeated the words, although they felt foreign in her mouth and came out more as a question than as a statement.

“Don’t let our name frighten you,” the woman told her and winked at her, before stepping away from her and closer to Rodrick and repeated the process.

She stepped back and looked at the both of them as if she was trying to decipher who they were.

“I don’t get a welcome?” Logan asked, stretching out his arms to the side as if for a hug.

“No darkness could obscure your problems,” the woman replied, side-eyeing him for a second before looking back at Rena and Rodrick.

“My name is Kalani. Would you be so kind as to tell me yours?”

“My name is Rodrick Hal’Varika. I am a tinkerer and recent scribe of the land. We meant no disrespect when we entered your city through an unorthodox entrance. Our common friend here told us he was accustomed to the land and that our unannounced arrival would not be a problem.”

Kalani regarded him for an instant before nodding and turning her head to Rena.

“I’m Rena of Oceansthrow,” she replied and bowed her head slightly.

“You are awfully young to be a scribe of the land,” Aïsha remarked.

“Oh, I’m not,” Rena responded and shook her head. “I, ehm, have personal reasons why I’m accompanying Rodrick at this moment,” she replied, unsure of how much she was allowed to tell this woman about what happened, although it felt silly to her to hide the fact that an entire village burned down but she was new to this kind of adventurous lifestyle and she didn’t know the rules of it yet.

Kalani’s eyes narrowed slightly but she didn’t ask any further questions.

“And why are you here?” she asked and turned her head towards Logan, her face already bracing itself for whatever Logan was about to tell her.

“They need help with something and I gain my self-worth through helping other people?” Logan tried and Kalani’s eyebrow simply went up in disbelief. 

“Curiosity?” He tried again, but Kalani’s expression didn’t change.

“I may need help with something,” he finally said, pursing his lips and looking away from her.

“Which is?” Kalani replied.

“Now see, I only tell that information to the people who agree to help me.”

Kalani sighed and closed her eyes before turning back to Rena and Rodrick.

“I hope you didn’t promise him too much,” she told them, annoyance written all over her.

“Be that as it may,” she continued without letting anyone have a chance to reply to her. “I will need you to follow me. The Sovereign Outcast is awaiting you.”

“Oh come on, do we have to?” Logan sighed.

“They are especially happy to see you again,” Kalani replied, smiling faintly at Logan.

---

With 50% of the votes, the story continues on the third path. With the help of Rodrick, Rena goes to the neighboring village to inform them of what happened. She cannot shake the feeling that the fire that destroyed her home town wasn’t an accident and is determined to find out more about the tragedy.

By the end of the episode, three choices will be presented to you. Vote on twitter or below for whichever path you want the story to continue on.

Intro music: Lonely Dusty Trail by Jon Presstone

Logo Design: Mars Lauderbaugh

It took Rodrick a while to turn his caravan around on the narrow road and face the way he had come from, going back and forth, always just turning a little bit, and Rena couldn’t stop herself from thinking that it would have been so much easier with horses. She also couldn’t help herself from thinking that the ride in itself was much smoother in a horse-drawn carriage. She sat on the bench in the front next to Rodrick, Vincent lying on the ground between their feet, and her butt started hurting after only ten minutes as the entire wagon trembled and shook her around. And then there was the noise. Not just the noise of whatever machinery Rodrick had added to his caravan to get it to move on its own, but the clanking and banging of whatever he was keeping inside of the wagon, which she could still hear even through the walls separating them. She really didn’t know why Rodrick had created this monstrosity. He had somehow made it more uncomfortable, slower and louder than a regular horse-drawn carriage. She supposed it was smaller than a regular carriage if you didn’t have to account for the horses but she was also certain that it was much more expensive if he had to pay for coal to keep it going, or whatever else he was using. He might very well be using something that she had never heard about, you never knew with these city folks. They liked creating stuff just for the sake of it, no matter how useful or helpful it really was, and she was kind of sure this caravan was just one of those things.

They arrived in Halvint when the sun had set and the moon was lighting their way. Halvint was slightly bigger than her hometown, which just meant that it had an actual inn and visitors had somewhere comfortable to stay and didn’t freeze their asses off in a refurbished church tower. Rodrick drove the wagon through the streets as if he knew exactly where they had to go, as if he had been here before, but Rena supposed he had to have come from somewhere before she met him. The town was quiet, the streets empty, which probably meant that no one had noticed what had happened to her hometown, that there really wasn’t anyone coming to help them, that she could have stood there on the road before her village, waiting, for hours, with no hope for rescue.

“What are we going to do?” Rena whispered, unsure if Rodrick could hear her above the sound of his machine. Her blood was running cold again, the effect of the warm soup having suddenly disappeared when they crossed the threshold of the village. She clutched the ends of the blanket that was still draped around her shoulder tightly in her hands, her knuckles turning white. 

“First of all, we are getting you a place to rest and a warm bed,” Rodrick told her, one hand leaving the wheel in front of him and coming to pat her on the knee. “Don’t worry about anything else, I will take care of it.”

He drove them right to the inn, parking his caravan next to the other two that were standing next to the building. It looked so out of place next to the ordinary wagon’s folks used around here, as if it came from a far off country that you only heard about in legends and not just a province that was a handful of day-ride’s away from here. Rodrick climbed down and came to the other side of the wagon, holding a hand up to help Rena down, which she gladly accepted.

The inn was warm and lively when they pushed through the door, confirming Rena’s suspicion that no one had noticed or heard about the fire. Rodrick strode right up to the counter at the opposite side to the entrance where the innkeeper stood. Rena looked over the jovial faces sitting at tables around her and a weird feeling came over her, as if she wasn’t really there at the moment, as if she could see them, but they couldn’t see her. Slowly, she advanced to where Rodrick stood, looking from one face to the next.

“Good evening, sir,” Rodrick bellowed with a wide smile at the innkeeper over the noise of the crowd. “I would like to request your finest room for my companion here.” With this, he gestured at Rena who finally looked up at the innkeeper, their eyes meeting.

He frowned at her, putting the mug he had been cleaning down on the counter.

“You alright?” he asked her, keeping his eyes fixed on her.

She didn’t react at first, the words not wanting to register correctly in her mind. When she had finally processed what he had asked she nodded once, weakly, and the innkeeper’s eyes darted back and forth between Rodrick and her, his eyebrows knitting together tighter. 

“There has been an incident,” Rodrick murmured, leaning closer so the innkeeper could hear him.

The man stared at him with apprehension and only leaned forward when Rodrick waved him closer.

“I don’t want to alarm everyone and cause panic,” Rodrick continued, Rena having to step closer to understand what he was saying. “My young friend here is from Oceansthrow and she has informed me that there was a fire which destroyed everything. I want to discuss how to proceed with the correct authorities here but I thought the first priority was to get my friend to a place where she could rest.”

The innkeeper’s eyes darted back to Rena, wide in shock now, and he looked her up and down quickly.

“Everything?” he asked in disbelief.

Rena pressed her lips together and nodded, not trusting herself to be able to get any words out.

“What happened?” the innkeeper asked, looking at them both.

“I don’t know,” Rena croaked out.

“As far as I understand the situation,” Rodrick said. “My friend came home from gathering herbs to find the village in flames. This is why I wanted to discuss with your guard what should be done, because I myself have not seen the damage yet and I think my friend is too shocked to deliver us a full report on the situation.”

The innkeeper leaned back before shouting, “Devon!”

Half the heads in the room turned around to look at them and Rena immediately tensed up, a cold shudder running down her spine. The other half of the room seemed to be used to this kind of behaviour and didn’t deem it compelling enough to give it any of their attention.

“What?” a man shouted back from a round table to their left where a game of cards was being played.

“Come here,” the innkeeper shouted, waving the man over.

The man looked down at his cards then back up again.

“Why?” he shouted again.

“Just come over here you lazy bastard.”

The man huffed and pushed his chair back with force before carefully putting his cards down face-down on the table.

“Nobody touch these!” he told his companions while pointing at the cards, before walking over to where Rodrick and Rena were standing.

He nodded to the both of them as a greeting before addressing the innkeeper.

“What do you want?” 

The innkeeper leaned forward.

“Oceansthrow burned down,” he whispered.

“What?” Devon replied, apparently not having understood that this situation required hushed voices.

“Shut it,” the innkeeper hissed at him and leaned even closer. “You need to send someone over to check it out before the whole village falls into panic.”

Devon frowned at him before shifting his gaze over to Rodrick and Rena and looking them over, stopping to inspect Rena’s muddy clothes.

“Did you come from there?” he asked with a nod in Rena’s direction.

Rena nodded in response, wrapping her arms tighter around herself. She suddenly felt very exposed, as if the world had shifted to stare her down, and she disliked this feeling even more than the one she had felt before.

“What happened?” Devon asked the both of them.

“They don’t know,” the innkeeper replied for them. “Go fetch your nephew and ride out to the town, I’ll gather up some people here and then we can see what can be done.”

Devon nodded reluctantly before answering.

“Fine.”

He knocked on the wood of the counter twice before turning away from them and striding out of the inn.

The innkeeper leaned down to grab something from under the counter before placing a long key with a wooden pendant attached to it in front of Rena. 

“I’m putting the both of you in room 4,” he said and slid the key over to Rena. “It’s the best room we have. You’ll have your own washing room to clean yourself up. I’ll tell my wife to draw you a bath and bring you some new clothes. Just go down that corridor and you’ll find it, the number’s written on the door.” 

He pointed to a swinging door to their left which led to a corridor behind the counter. Rena picked up the key with ice cold fingers and mouthed a quick thank you. 

“Luck be kind to you, my friend,” Rodrick told him with a wide smile and bowed his head. “I will accompany my companion to our room and then come back to discuss what can be done about these tragic events, if you would have me.”

“We could probably use the help,” the innkeeper replied, his hands propped up on the counter.

Rodrick turned around to walk towards the corridor but quickly turned back to the innkeeper.

“Oh, also, would you allow me to bring my dog into our room?”

“Sure,” the innkeeper replied, frowning slightly at his request. “Just don’t let it on the beds.”

“Wonderful,” Rodrick replied and turned around again, placing a hand lightly on Rena’s lower back to lead her towards the room.

A few minutes later Rena had been set up in the room, a bath had been drawn for her and the innkeeper’s wife had brought her some new clothes to wear, a dress that resembled hers but which had a crimson vest instead of her green. Rodrick had brought Vincent in from the caravan and then left again to go join the discussion about how to proceed. The dog was now lying curled up in front of the lit fireplace, because when the innkeeper had said they were getting the best room, he had really meant it. Two large beds occupied the room, with enough empty space around them to fit at least two other beds, three if they really tried. And the beds were big enough for two people, so they could have easily fit up to ten people into this room, but somehow the innkeeper had elected to only have the two of them in here. Rena wasn’t used to this much empty space. She sat on the right-most bed and looked around at the sparse decor, the silence of the room hanging heavy above her. She could only hear the noise of the inn if she really concentrated on it, like she was lying underneath a pile of blankets. Suddenly she regretted having resented her siblings for being loud and raucous all the time, for having been playful and happy and alive. Tears welled up in her eyes again, wishing that she could hear their screams just once more. That she could hear them laughing and arguing and prattle on about the most meaningless things. She would give her own life if only she could hear their light snores once more next to her. 

Her hands clutched onto her dress in her lap, and she shut her eyes and lips tight, desperately trying not to cry again, but it didn’t work. Tears started rolling down her face and she gasped before she succumbed to her sobs again. She wanted to go home and sleep in her own bed and wake up in the morning to the smell of freshly baked bread and go to the kitchen to make breakfast for everyone and she wanted to meet her friend Talla again and listen to her ramble on about all the rumours she’d heard about the royal court and then fantasize about what the citadel in Mak-Hemma looked like and she wanted to sit down with her youngest siblings and teach them how to read and she wanted to go over to her uncle’s house to taste her aunt’s honey cake again and she wanted to stay up late at night with her family to sing the old songs her grandparents had taught her and none of it would ever happen again.

She struggled to breath, heavy tears falling down to her lap and staining her dress. She tried to force herself to take deep breaths so she wouldn’t succumb to her hiccups but it barely worked. She leaned down and pressed her forehead against her knees, bunching the fabric of her dress around her face and screamed into it, releasing all of her frustration.

As she sat back up her hand bumped into something in her lap and the confusion momentarily dragged her out of her grief. She patted around on the folds to see what it could be and then instantly remembered the figurine she had found near the church and stowed away in her front pocket. She fished it out and held it in both hands, running her thumbs over its surface. It didn’t look like much, it vaguely resembled the shape of a bird with outstretched wings, and it had strange carvings across its chest, but Rena really didn’t remember ever having seen something like it before.

She shot up, stunned, when the door to the room opened and Rodrick came in with two small rolls of dark bread in one hand and a bone in the other.

“You didn’t change yet,” he remarked when his eyes landed on Rena. His eyebrows knit together a second later. “Is everything alright?”

Rena nodded, pressing her lips together tightly and wiping the tears away from her cheeks.

“I’m just not used to being alone like this,” she replied, looking back down at the figurine in her lap where her dress was now covered in wet spots.

“Oh, child,” Rodrick muttered, closing the door with his elbow before coming over to her. 

He sat the bread rolls down on the nightstand next to the bed before sitting down next to Rena. He carefully put a hand down on her knee and patted it. Vincent stirred from his sleeping place and looked over at them, or more precisely, looked over at the bone Rodrick was still holding in his other hand.

“You know,” Rena started again, turning the figurine around in her hands. “Before I went home, when I was gathering the herbs and the woods were so quiet and calm around me, I was happy to be alone for once, because the house was always so loud, and now I’ll never get to hear any of them again and it almost feels like it’s my fault for wishing the noise away.”

Rena’s hand shot up to cover her mouth, as if it was trying to keep the words from stumbling out, from becoming reality. 

Rodrick wrapped his arm around her and pulled her closer, his chin leaning on the top of her head.

“I wish I could tell you that everything’s going to be alright but I can’t. This will hurt for a very long time, but it is not your fault. You cannot beat yourself up for what you thought before the fact or for being a survivor, because none of this is your fault. It is just how life is, and we can’t change anything about its course.”

Vincent appeared in front of her, ignoring the alluring smell of the bone and instead placing his head in her lap. Rena took a few shaky breaths, calming herself back down, her trembling hand coming down to gently pet the dog behind the stubble of his right ear.

“I wish it wasn’t this way,” Rena whispered.

“I know,” Rodrick mumbled into her hair and they stayed like this in companionable silence for a while.

“What’s that?” Rodrick finally asked, lifting his head.

“Hmm?” Rena looked up at him and he nodded down to the figurine in her lap. “Oh, I found it on the ground in the village. I’m not sure what it is, don’t think I’ve ever seen something like this before. There were more of them where I found it.”

“May I see it?” Rodrick asked, pulling his arm away from her shoulder.

Rena handed it to him and he picked it up with his free hand, holding it up close to his face. 

Vincent, who concluded that his job was now done, snuck over to Rodrick’s other hand and sniffed at the bone before gently prying it out of the hand and walking back to his previous resting place.

“Fascinating,” Rodrick muttered, holding the figurine up to the light, his other hand still in the same position as when it had held the bone.

“What is it?” Rena asked, trying to make out familiar patterns in the inscriptions on the figurine’s front.

“Did you perchance grow up religious?” Rodrick asked her.

“Not particularly. We didn’t dismantle our church like other places did but we didn’t exactly use it for its intended purposes anymore,” she replied, looking over at him. “Why? Does it have something to do with the old faiths?”

“It looks like artifacts that have been found in old monasteries and such. Well, at least like a crude imitation of one. Like someone could only remember the basic shape of it or was really bad at carving,” he chuckled and handed the figurine back to her.

“And the writing?” Rena asked, letting her thumb run over the carvings.

“I’m not sure. I think it resembles some old script used in this part of the world ages ago, but I’m really not an expert in languages. I do know someone who is though, but they live up in the very north. It would take us a few days to reach them.”

Rena was silent for a while, turning the crude figurine around in her hands, feeling the coarse smoothness of the burned wood under her fingers.

“Why was it there?” she asked, frowning down at it.

“Who knows,” Rodrick said and got up, picking the bread rolls up again and handing one to Rena. “It could be as easy as someone having an interest in ancient history or someone trying to carve something from memory they saw a long time ago. We can talk about it more in the morning. For now, It would do you good to eat something and take a bath before going to sleep.”

“I just don’t get why this happened,” Rena muttered, turning the figurine around in her hand before breaking the spell and looking up at Rodrick, finally taking the bread roll he was handing her.

                        ~~~~

Rena woke up to silence and an empty room. She slowly opened her eyes and then jerked up, not recognising the unfamiliar room until the events of the previous day slowly crept back to her. She pulled her knees closer and crumpled in on herself, burying her face in the bunched up blanket in her lap. It felt like the room was caving in on her, as if the silence was pressing down on her to the point where she couldn’t breathe anymore and she knew she had to get out of this room as quickly as possible. 

She threw the blanket off herself and slung her legs off the bed in the same motion. She put on the new dress she had been given because hers was still drying and in a few quick steps she was out of the room and down the hallway. She slowed down before entering the main room of the inn but there were no sounds coming from it so she picked up her pace again, scared that she had been abandoned, that she was all alone again. As she entered the room her heart tightened at the sight of empty tables until her eyes landed on Rodrick who was sitting at a table near the fireplace on the opposite side of the room, hunched over a book or a journal, too concentrated to have noticed her come in. At his feet, underneath the table, Vincent had curled up and was seemingly asleep. As she walked in, she noticed another two people sitting at the counter, one younger guy with a bowl of food in front of him and an older woman who was writing a letter. 

“Hi,” she breathed out as she walked up to Rodrick, stopping to stand in front of the table.

Rodrick jerked up, looking at her with wide eyes, before relaxing and smiling at her.

“Good morning. Sit down.”

He gestured towards the chair opposite him, the one Rena was standing next to.

“How are you feeling?” he asked her.

Rena didn’t answer right away, letting herself float down into the chair and brushing her dress down before looking back up at him, forcing at least a small smile onto her lips.

“I’m alright,” she finally said, her voice thin.

“It is perfectly normal to not feel alright right away,” he told her, his smile turning softer and more apologetic. She nodded and looked down, trying desperately not to break this early in the day.

“Do you want anything to eat? Something to drink?” Rodrick asked, not waiting for her answer before getting up. “I’ll go ask Darian what he could make us, he’s in the kitchen, I’ll be back in a second.”

Before Rena even had time to process everything he had said he had already gone. She watched him go around the counter and disappear behind a door, thinking to herself that she wasn’t actually all that hungry.

Her gaze drifted back to the table and landed on Rodrick’s journal. It was still lying open to the pages he had been hunched over earlier. They were filled with tight handwriting and even smaller handwriting in the margins around the initial block of text. The inks that had been used to write didn’t all have the same shade, giving her the impression that the text hadn’t all been written at the same time. She couldn’t make out any words, not with how small the text was and the fact that it was upside down for her, but in the margins of the left page were symbols drawn in green ink that looked different from the rest of the page. She quickly glanced over to the door, making sure Rodrick wasn’t on his way back, and leaned closer to the journal, craning her neck to see the symbols better. On the side of the page there were five circles with simple flower patterns in the middle, like the ones she had already seen carved into the stone of buildings before. Her eyes drifted over the rest of the page, and only now did she notice that the text wasn’t written in a language she knew, although it still used the same script. At the bottom of the page her eyes however fell on a different script, something that looked similar to the carvings on her figurine, but before she could lean closer to have a proper look at it the door opened and she jerked back in her chair, turning her head to look at the inn’s front door as if she had just been admiring the room’s decor and nothing else. 

“Here we go,” Rodrick muttered as he put two wooden bowls down on the table between them. The bowls were filled with what people usually had for breakfast around here, a mix made of eggs, flour and milk and whichever herbs grew around the town. Rena pulled the bowl closer to her and took the spoon Rodrick was handing her.

The heat and the smell and the taste of the dish pulled at her heart, reminding her of all the time she had eaten it at home.

“You mentioned yesterday that this wasn’t the first time you heard of a village burning down like this,” Rena asked, her mind filled with a million thoughts at once.

Rodrick sighed as he sat down.

“I’m afraid not. I wasn’t certain yesterday because I didn’t know much about what had happened, but I talked to Devon and the other people who went to Oceansthrow yesterday evening and I think my fear that this might not have been a naturally occurring fire has been confirmed. Another group went to the village early this morning to bury the bodies and gather more information. We might learn more from them. I didn’t want to wake you this morning when they left because I thought you desperately needed sleep, but if your wish is to join them after breakfast I would be happy to accompany you.”

Rena thought about that proposition, about going back to the ruins of her village, about seeing the dead bodies of all her loved ones and her whole body froze, every muscle tensing, as if her body refused to even consider moving closer to that tragedy.

She stiffly managed to shake her head no before quickly spooning another bit of egg into her mouth, distracting her mind with the taste of the food.

Rodrick nodded slowly and started eating his own food.

“I also think that it probably wouldn’t be a good idea for you to return this quickly,” Rodrick said.

They remained in silence after that until they had finished their food. Halfway through Darian, who she recognised as the innkeeper from last night, brought them mugs of elderflower tea and Rena welcomed the smell and taste of something that didn’t remind her of home.

“Can you tell me more about the other villages?” Rena asked, finally breaking the silence.

Rodrick placed his spoon down on the table, fiddling with it until it was perfectly straight.

“I sadly don’t know much about it,” he replied after a while. “I heard that a village in Mashod burned down about nine months ago and that another village to the north-west of here burned down about three years ago.”

“Why have I never heard about that?” Rena frowned.

“I suppose because people don’t like to talk about such tragedies and since it was so far away news might have just not traveled all the way down here. And there’s always the possibility that your parents didn’t want to burden you with the knowledge of such events.”

Rena’s frown deepened, unable to believe that the news of entire towns burning down would not have reached them, especially if it happened in their own province. And even if her parents hadn’t wanted to tell their children about it directly, it was impossible to keep such significant events secret throughout an entire town.

“There’s also the fact that local authorities seem to want to keep a tight grip on any information they have gathered about these events. I’m not quite sure why though, maybe they fear mass panic. But they tend to keep a lot of bigger events like this secretive, so this might just be the way they like to operate. It is, after all, easier to govern a kingdom if only a select group of people know about everything that’s happening.”

He said this last part with a light chuckle, as if it was just an oddity of life and not something to be concerned about.

Rena nodded, taking in all the information. It didn’t feel right that she had never heard about the other fires before. The thought of no one outside of their own little part of the kingdom ever hearing about Oceansthrow burning down made her stomach twist in a weird way.

“So how do we find out more?” she asked, looking up at Rodrick.

He glanced down at the table, his eyebrows twitching together as if he was thinking.

“We will either have to interview someone about the events or get access to the official reports,” he replied, still half in thought. “Although I don’t think either of those options will be easy.”

“Can’t we just ask to see the reports?”

“Sadly, no. These kinds of reports are kept in the archives of the provincial guard in the respective province’s capital and you need a special decree to access them, and you can only get such a decree under specific circumstances. I don’t think they count curiosity as a good enough reason.”

“We aren’t just curious about it though,” she answered, feeling anger rise up in her. “My entire family died and I have no idea why and they can’t just keep me from finding out who did this.”

“I know,” Rodrick said calmly, pushing his hands towards her on the table, palms up so she could place her own hands in his. “I know. We could try to plead your case to the guard, I just want you to know that they are very strict and secretive with this kind of information and we might not be able to get access to the records and I don’t want you to get your hopes up for nothing.”

Rena nodded and breathed in deeply, trying to calm down again, feeling the warmth of Rodrick`s skin against hers.

“Ok, so what about asking someone for more information?” Rena asked.

“Well, I suppose that we could drive up to the north of Vellashta and ask around, although I am not sure a lot of people would want to speak to us.”

“Hi,” a voice suddenly emerged from next to them. Rena looked up in shock, having not heard the man walk up to their table. It was the guy who had been sitting at the counter eating breakfast and Rena just realised she had completely forgotten that they were not alone in the room.  “I didn’t mean to pry, but I couldn’t help myself from overhearing your conversation, seeing as I was just sitting there and the room isn’t very big.”

He wasn’t much older than Rena, maybe five years, and he was wearing dark pants and a blue, long-sleeved shirt, both covered in patches where someone had hastily tried to cover up some holes. His curly, dark brown hair had been tied up into a bun, although a lot of strands had already abandoned ship. His eyes were of a slightly lighter brown than her own, with a tinge of green mixed into them, and his face was covered in a light stubble.

“Hi, I’m Logan,” he said as he dragged a chair over from another table and sat in it backwards, its back facing the table. He held out a hand towards Rena and she shook it automatically, too stunned to go against her manners. “As I said, I didn’t mean to pry, but if you are looking for information, I’m pretty good at finding the right people for that.” he continued and shook Rodrick’s hand. “Or finding someone who can get you one of those special decrees,” he added and winked at them.

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