The first light of true dawn barely warmed the air in the room when this practical dilemma appeared. Lucia stood over her scabbard, her shinobigatana unsheathed; her face twisted into a concentrated scowl. This is part of her, a manifestation of her will. The thought of leaving this sword, this part of her, behind to enter a den of vipers such as could be found at the granary is inconceivable. However, to parade about, sword in hand, into this city called Sharp in broad daylight, is to seek out precisely this kind of trouble they sought to avoid.
"This is a problem," she said, her tone expressionless. She reached out to take up her sword, moving skillfully, and held it like an extension of her own body. "I could not go on without it. However, to wear it is—counter-productive."
Joshey, who had been mentally checking off items on her own list to complete her dockworker mission, looked up. Now he saw what they faced. A weapon might have been hidden in the darkness during their night mission. Certainly its presence could have been rationalized. Not in the bright sunlight and on a simple mission.
They both just stared at the sword, the silence broken only by the commander's rhythmic, drugged breathing. The obvious, clumsy course of action hung there, metres away—but to put it into a blanket, a sack—anything—was to make something long and sword-shaped, which wouldn't be much better than having the sword out. A person with half a brain wouldn't ignore it.
Then, Joshey's eyes, which were those of a corporate recruiter with years of experience studying people and designing presentations, lit up. It wasn't about concealing the object but finding a new context for it.
"Wait," he said, a slow grin spreading across his face. Then he walked over to his pack and produced the new, hoodless dark blue cloak that Lucia had purchased only yesterday. It was strong, well-constructed, and above all, it was big enough. "Give it here," he said.
Lucia passed it to him, her blue-eyed observing him with a mixture of interest and caution. Joshey didn't merely envelop the sword within the cloak. He unrolled on a flat surface on the bed by spreading out the cloak. Then, he placed the sword across this surface, diagonally, from corner to corner. Finally, he started rolling it. The cloak rolled around the sword with a deliberate attention to detail, folding and tucking it into place to form a distinct shape that is recognized within their culture.
It took him less than a minute to complete this task. The sword vanished completely, but it didn't end up being a hidden weapon. It turned out to be a long, rounded package, tightly wrapped with an extra piece of leather cord. The ends of this cloak were neatly folded to keep them tucked inside. "There," he said, handing it back to her.
Lucia took it. The weight and feel were what she knew, but the look was completely different. She compared the box in her hands to Joshey's face. "It doesn't resemble a hidden sword," Joshey said, "it resembles a present. A thing of value being delivered to someone. A merchant bringing a commissioned work to a noble, or an artisan bringing a piece he created to a merchant. They see this, they don't see danger. They see trade. They see a story they can relate to. They may even envy them."
The reasoning was impeccable. Lucia lifted the package containing the sword. He was absolutely correct. The exactness involved in packaging couldn't raise any suspicions. A burglar would keep a sword inside a bag. A man concealing a sword on him wouldn't do it skillfully. A faint, almost imperceptible nod of approval was her only answer, but this said more to him than any words could have. Without a word, she scooped up the wrapped sword and slung it over her shoulder, where it rested neatly against her back. The problem wasn't solved, it was transmuted into strength. They were no longer two weaponed men lurking about the city. They were a young couple on an errand, one of whom carried some sort of expensive-looking package. It's a small thing, no more than the simple gesture of folding fabric. Yet here, everything about their tentative partnership is contained within it. For Lucia is like steel—hard and unyielding. But it is Joshey who knows how to cloak it within a story that can be legible to the world. The silence in Joshey's mind wasn't just an absence anymore—it was a presence. A chill, empty space where a perpetually grumbling, constantly brilliant sounding board used to reside. As they finished up their last minute preparations, he could feel the weight of that pressing down on him. He'd grown accustomed to having Elias around. The conversation, the knowledge, the unseen work being done on the mana field. Without it, he… didn't feel whole. Like he could only run at half-speed because half of his mindspace had just been erased.
Yet his mind, suddenly having to function on its own, began to make connections to the terrifying information he previously didn't have time to notice.
First, there were bandits. They knew him. Or rather, they knew Elias. They had been waiting. They were equipped with a sensory-suppressing shield and a well-organized team. This wasn't a case of a random ambush. They knew he was there. Who was this supposed boss? The commander didn't want to say anything. Who sent them? Elias, a bad farmer, didn't deserve such attention.
Second, Kaelen's signature. The presence of Kaelen's brother within that particular, pure cell. It was a decoy. A carefully set trap. Kaelen, however, had assured him he'd had nothing to do with this. This wasn't how Viggo worked, on this kind of subtle, mystical level. There had to be someone else… and they were interfering with him on purpose. Leading him directly to Kaelen… but to what end?
Third, the timing. Elias' life had been one of silent, shameful failure for years. No trouble at all. Joshey had been in this body no more than a couple of weeks. Had his nose to the grindstone, running a business, causing… almost no trouble. A roof and some dead slavers being blown up, but that's about it. Nothing out of the ordinary to draw a pro hit team and a puppeteer.
The pieces fell into place with a final, chilling definitiveness. The problem hadn't begun with Elias. The problem began with him. With Joshey's presence. The merging of their minds, this impossible synchronization of mana… it had created a ripple effect. A ripple that someone, something, had noticed. They were seeking out this anomaly. This unknown to their equation. Him.
A cold dread, colder than any he'd experienced in a Lagos alley, slid into his belly. This wasn't about repayment or a market. This was something much larger, and he was stumbling into it blind. For the first time since he'd squeezed that trigger in another life, he felt a true, primal fear. Not just for himself, but for the silent partner he could already have lost. Please, he prayed to the void. Come back.
"Ready?" The voice pierced his racing mind. The girl stood beside the door, sword wrapped on her back, face expressionless.
He nodded, forcing his own mask of calm into place. "Yeah. Let's go."
He eyed the commander, lying senseless on the ground. "What about him?" Lucia asked, her tone indicating that decapitation remained her preference.
"No worries," said Joshey, putting his own concerns out of mind to deal with this new issue. A waterskin and enough dried meat and bread to last three days were placed just within reach of this man. The question of how this chained prisoner could possibly consume this meal is one that Joshey managed to dodge with considerable finesse.
"He's an expert on Aero mana," said Joshey with a hollow smile. "Or at least, that's what his men thought. I'm sure he'll come up with something." This is a cruel, flippant response, born out of his own nervousness and the harsh realities they faced. They simply could not carry a prisoner with them on their travels. This is the unsophisticated, rough-around-the-edges answer. Without another word, they left the Drunken Gull and moved into the night crowds. The trip to the granary district didn't feel the same this time around. The air wasn't just filled with the smells of salt and sweat, but with unseen eyes. Every look could be a deadly danger, every shadow a place to ambush. Joshey wasn't just a man on a mission this time. He was prey who had just discovered the true extent of the predator and was marching back into its territory without what might prove to be his most important accomplice. The walk back to the salt cellar felt longer this time, the weight of Joshey's realizations making every step heavier. He kept his face a mask of serious concentration, hoping the grim set of his jaw would be mistaken for focus on the mission, not the churning fear in his gut. Kaelen was waiting for them at the pre-arranged side door, his sharp eyes missing nothing.
"You're here. Good. Are you ready?" Kaelen asked, his voice low and businesslike.
Joshey just gave a sharp nod. Lucia did the same, her hand resting on the wrapped parcel on her back.
"Then get to your positions. Remember the plan. Be ghosts." Kaelen's gaze lingered on Joshey for a fraction of a second longer, a silent acknowledgment of the unspoken tension, before he melted back into the shadows of the cellar.
They didn't go inside. Instead, Kaelen had arranged their transport. A covered wagon, far less reputable than the one they'd taken to Sharp, its driver a grizzled, silent man who asked no questions. This was the ride that would take them to the heart of the operation—the remote processing camp deep in the foothills, the true "den of evil" where the "new batch" was broken before being shipped out.
The movement into the mountains was a slow, relentless climb into a different silence. The loud clamor of Sharp's docks receded into the background, to be replaced by the woeful hiss of pine needles rubbing against each other and the groanful complaints of the wagon wheels. Joshey sat toward the rear, the canvas flap lifted high enough to provide a tiny peephole into the outside world. He observed, but he also remembered, his mind a cold and precise camera.
Switchback. A big outcropping of granite on the left, resembling a sleeping bear. A fork in the road. Go left, because the other trail is overgrown. A creek crosses this point on flat shale rocks. The distinct sound will register.
It was almost instinct, this list-keeping. A survival mechanism developed within a contractual business environment and a world where justice could go down like a street fight. Yet while it once passed for a superpower, it suddenly felt like a chore. A solitary one. A function. He could sense, almost, the presence of Elias within his mind, this scholar with such a passion to write footnotes upon this very landscape. 'That is pre-Cataclysm stone, Joshey. See those markings? The mineral level within that stream will be high; that is why there is stunted vegetation on the correct trail.' There would have been a purpose to this, a symbiotic effort to make this journey into an expedition rather than an adventure.
Now there was just the empty echo of his own mind. The silence within his mind was more than just quiet—it was empty. This is what it is to have silence, to have emptiness: like the difference between a library at night, full of possibility and knowledge, and a bombed-out building.
And this is when it settled on him, a weight much more potent than the air he breathed among the mountains. This is no frustration, no anger. This is a profound sadness.
It wasn't that he didn't miss having the commentary available. There was something to be said about having no one to second-guess him on how he did things. The peace, though? This wasn't peaceful. This kind of peace? Terminal. It was like he was a tree split down the center, one half just plain missing. The special, impossible bond that he shared with this second life, this merging of two kinds of being into something much more exceptional—gone.
He thought about when it had meant the most. The forest, the barrier, their minds moving in harmony—it had been what saved them. The lessons in mana, theory dripping from Elias while he lived it. Even the dumb, everyday things, like Elias' grumblings about how much he detested the price to stay at the inn, were a marker, a call to remember he wasn't on this journey by himself.
Now he was. Entirely, completely alone. A ghost from a dead world, possessing a dead man's skin, and there was no one left to know this exact, terrifying fact. The loneliness was a physical pain, a stone lodged where there had been warmth to share this life with another soul. He gazed out upon the magnificent but brutally uncaring mountains, and suddenly, feeling tears sting at the corner of his eyes, he realized this is the first time he has actually cried since arriving in Caligurn. Amongst strangers, strangers to each other and to this land, he found no comfort but held back no tears, simply leaving this sorrow to sit beside him on this wooden bench.
Facing him, there is a statue of readiness. Lucia recognized the concentration on his features, the trace tightening of his jaw muscle as he noted each landmark. This is a strategist completely in his element, planning their route out. This is strength, competence. Never could she have realized what kind of man she was looking at—what kind of man is, on the inside, falling apart. That profile chiseled against the mountain light is a landscape of a soul mourning a loss that no one can see, much less understand. This is a partner. He feels like he is the last person left alive.
The wagon climbed for six endless hours, each revolution of the wheel carrying them farther and farther out of civilization, into the very center of nowhere. The air thickened, blades of bitterness lashing at their lungs. The sky, an endless, pitiless bowl of grey, seemed to weigh upon them. Then, with one final, groaning jolt, the wagon creaked to a stop. The seasoned wagon master didn't bother to turn, but merely grunted one brutal syllable into the chill air. "Here They were there. The den of evil wasn't a mighty fortress, but a grouping of low, dark wooden barracks surrounded by a palisade of sharpened logs, nestled into the elbow of the merciless mountains. The air there was clean of city smells but thick with something much worse: the stench of cold pine, damp stone, and collective despair. Joshey sucked in a glob of air, feeling it bite his lungs. The sorrow remained, but he covered it, layer by layer, with cold, hard steel resolve. There could only be one thing left to live for: this mission. He climbed out of the wagon, his expression serene, and hid the grieving stranger with a very fierce intensity.