For the entire following day, Hadwyn and his friends searched for Baluk in the forest. Hadwyn swore it was more disturbing than when he last trekked through.

  The plan was to spit up, with the initial plan at first, being that they would split up in several directions. Peter had yet to arrive, and Martin knew he wouldn’t be able to stop them, so he watched them leave the compound sipping a caffeinated drink of sorts. Hadwyn stole glances over his shoulder every now and then as they matched side by side across the muddy, graveley, artificially flattened landscape with only the forest ahead. Hadwyn hoped Martin would follow them and maybe even help. But he skipped his drink and stood his ground.

  “That asshole has done Marco seethed. This is some bullshit, he should be sending troops or… I don’t know man.”

  Hadwyn sighed. “It is only in his nature.”

  ‘Bullshit.”

  “Where do you think Baluk went?” Ruby asked Teresa. She bit her lip. “I don’t know.”

  “Was he mentally Ill?” Hadwyn asked.

  Teresa shook her head. “He seemed alright. The only thing that seemed off was his resentment towards Akoto.”

  Hadwyn looked over his shoulder. Akoto was trudging far behind them.

  {What exactly was that about?}

  Teresa immediately switched to throwing.

  {I don't know, he never talks about it or anything. If he had mental problems, it wouldn't have been visible, I suppose.}

  Hadwyn gritted his teeth {This is getting tiring, and Akoto is drawing near… let's change the subject for now.}

  Throwing your voice was a clear way to transmit your voice. But it took intense training and concentration to use. Hadwyn had luckily spent hours upon hours honing his skills, but he could not maintain a conversation for more than a few minutes without starting to feel lightheaded. Even Teresa, who for all he knew, practiced even more than him, exhausted herself in a few sentences.

  Hadwyn had never learned sign language, as he had been led to believe it was a communication solely for the hard of hearing.

  Sure enough, Akoto pulled up beside them.

  “By the way, I’m sorry for throwing that pile at you.” Teresa replied. “I could have killed you.”

  “Marco told me about your fall.” Akoto said. “How'd you survive?”

  Hadwyn stiffened. He didn't know why, but Akoto’s tone rubbed him the wrong way. Akoto’s question was under the tone of seriousness, almost like interrogation. Not that of a peer.

  Akoto relaxed his voice. “You never told him. You fell from the highest of trees.” He slapped his hands together. “He showed me the tree earlier, you should have gone .”

  Hadwyn took a deep breath, he could tell Teresa’s eyes were burning into his cheek.

  “You wouldn't believe me if I told you.” He repeated.

  Akoto shrugged. “I've seen some crazy things.”

  Hadwyn sighed again. “Some sort of god… or deity… or something saved me from my fall.”

  Teresa looked puzzled. “Impossible.”

  Akoto smiled. “Not impossible.” He argued. “Unlikely, to say the least.”

  Gods didn't help Aldarians. Hadwyn never fully understood why. Gods and humans never got along. The Halonar walked so Adonys could run.

  Hadwyn couldn't imagine a celestial god being afraid of one small otherworlder. But then again, it was unclear whether Adonys's feats had been exaggerated, or if he had really achieved the impossible

  And this came to the most common belief of how Adonys disappeared: The Gods killed him.

  Hadwyn was no historian. So he would only leave his opinion. The gods probably did kill Adonys, but no one would ever really know if that were true or not.

  Hadwyn grunted. Now that he has gotten it off his chest, they could focus on the goal of finding Baluk.

  Eventually, after a long walk, they made it to the end of the forest. Ahead laid a suburban part of town. So they turned around to scout a different part of the forest.

  “Gods… How could I let this happen? Baluk…”

  “It’s not your fault,” Akoto reassured, “You had no way of knowing whether Baluk was going run away or not.

  Suddenly, Hadwyn felt ill.

  “Baluk was cross teaming.” Hadwyn blurted.

  Both Teresa and Akoto stopped to stare at him.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “You couldn’t have told us Akoto said.

  “I’m sorry.” Hadwyn repeated.

  Teresa frowned, “Let me get this straight, your team and agreed to cross team?”

  Hadwyn nodded.

  “Isn’t that against the rules?”

  “It was Peter’s idea.”

  “I miss Peter. I wonder what he would do.” Teresa said solemnly.

  Akoto sighed, “Me too.”

  Hadwyn turned to him. “Akoto, this is completely unrelated, but how did you get ”

  He seemed to stiffen at the question for a brief moment before replying. “I won it in a raffle in Kashka.”

  “Zyenur?” Hadwyn asked, surprised, “How’s it like there? I mean, with all of the wars…”

  Out of the corner of his eyes, he saw Teresa move her hands in a rapid, untraceable motion.

  Truthseeker.

  Hadwyn thought.

  “I had…” He looked at Hadwyn to make sure he was still paying attention. Hadwyn snapped his head back to face Akoto.

  “I had actually been to the area, and there wasn’t much left… People told me Onyxians came by to support the plan of a unified government.”

  {He’s speaking the truth.}

  Hadwyn cringed. {Cut that out now.}

  {You don’t think I’ve asked Marco?}

  Hadwyn curled his fists and slowed his pace a bit to pace by Teresa.

  {Are you going to ask me next?}

  {No.}

  {Did Martin put you up to this?}

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  {How can you even say that?! That bastard…}

  Hadwyn eyed her sternly.

  She grimaced. {Is that really what you think…?}

  {Akoto is fine. I am fine. You are fine. We are fine. We need to stop pointing fingers, and him.}

  “Guys…”

  “What?”

  Hadwyn stopped when he saw it. A small ditch, and in that small ditch laid a flickering carcass.

  “…Fuck.”

  Hadwyn had to admit he enjoyed the look of horror that befell upon Martin when he was the wolf, but only for a brief moment, as he realized that he too, was horrified.

  “And where did you find it?” Martin demanded.

  “In a ditch.” Marco replied.

  Martha curled his lips inward. “Where in the ?”

  “East,” Akoto added.

  “Is there anything we can do?” Hadwyn hissed through his teeth.

  Martin twisted his nose up in disgust. “No,” He surveyed them, “I think you’ve all done quite enough.”

  “But”

  “He’s right.” A familiar voice called out.

  Everyone twisted around to see Peter standing in the doorway, wearing a brown coat with a leatherback tucked under his arm and an unpleasant look on his face.

  {Spy situation got worse, eh?}

  {Another dead wolf… You know what this means as well as I do.}

  {Let's shut up now. They're quite smart. They can probably smell us talking.}

  {You really think it’s a good idea to tell them? They have no idea what even happens around them. It’s your call.}

  “Let me give you a breakdown,” Peter spat, “Somewhere in this headquarters,” He waved his hand around, “There's a spy. A spy for gods-know-who. That’s why there aren’t any soldiers scouting for Baluk. I vetoed the order to mobilize them.”

  Tension filled the air between them. Teresa curled her fists.

  Hadwyn thought, casually setting aside the question of how Peter even knew about the situation with Baluk before he even arrived.

  Peter further degenerated his face until it was one that you couldn’t look at without secondhand depression. For a man good at hiding his emotions, he was sure to be good at allowing it when the moment demanded it.

  “I know… I should have stuck with you until the training was over… But there were more important matters. And I should also let you know just how painful it is to cancel an order knowing full well we could easily track down Baluk. Hell, we have elite troops in the area. They would have probably found him by now.” He stared directly at Hadwyn as if to apologize with only his eyes.

  “But I had to cancel the order. If we sent even one soldier out, the leak could potentially put hundreds, if not thousands of lives in danger.”

  “And I obliged.” Martin added, “It would have been an idiotic waste of time and resources.”

  Hadwyn wanted to smash his face in with his baton.

  

  Hadwyn got chills from his inner thoughts.

  Peter seemed to see the intrusive thoughts in Hadwyn's mind. So he coaxed the team into a meeting room across the hallway, excluding Martin, who grumbled and walked away, presumably to get another bag of the nasty tea he liked.

  “Tell us about the spy.” Teresa demanded, on the edge of her seat.

  Peter fidgeted nervously with his hands. “He looked up to Teresa. “Yes, we have been made aware of a breach in security… We found some documents missing. Nothing serious, thankfully.”

  Hadwyn couldn’t help but frown. He had to wonder what sort of information would be serious.

  Lars leaned forward with a dark expression. “You’re going at it with Paknov, aren’t you?”

  Peter snapped his finger at Lars. “Right on. Paknov was ahead of us in the game of Intel ops, at least, before I founded …” He spread his arms out. “This of data of the most prominent guilds .”

  Lars' face gaped wide open. He spazzed for a brief moment before crossing his arms, and proceeded to make the longest eye contact of any of them with Peter, of whom, even seemed to be a bit unsettled that someone actually managed to stare him down without feeling uncomfortable.

  “I fuckin’ knew it.”

  Peter chided sarcastically.

  Hadwyn was dumbfounded. “You created… ?” He too spread his arms out in the same way as Peter had.

  Peter wrinkled his nose. “The I did! I was lucky enough to have people who actually sided with me to create this… I spent time in the office after proofreading, signing, destroying, stacking and of papers.” He continued, “I held a pen while countless men and women rallied up behind me.”

  “Why go to all that trouble?” Hadwyn asked. “Why go through all just to make a special division?”

  Peter sighed. “Swords sharpen each other.” He chuckled to himself.

  “Hadwyn… Guilds have proven to be…” He moved his hands around in a confused manner, “...not accountable for everything they do.”

  Marco coughed. “Are you saying that the guilds aren’t doing their jobs?”

  Peter spread his hands across the tables.

  “Oh they do their jobs all right.” Peter insisted. “But they don’t have our best interests in mind.”

  “Guilds are companies.” Peter said. “Most of which are funded by a government, or watched by one at least, Including GOAG.”

  “So GOAG is run by the government?” Sophia asked.

  “No.” But they are funded by the government. “In exchange they stay out of things unrelated to heroic work, and if they fill a quota-”

  Hadwyn frowned. “Quota?”

  Peter grimaced. “I know, It's a load of bs. But it at least reassures the public that they're doing the right thing. Anyways, GOAG gets its money from taxes rather than big corporations. So we can influence other governments to adjust their funding.”

  “But like I said, they’re . And when something is a company, regardless of what they provide. Mail, weapons, spellbooks, goddamned prostitutes, whatever. Their first motivation is always money.”

  “So…”

  “So, although we have a lot of nations who are working in our best interests, we have governments who want to cut us off from supplies and give us more problems.

  Peter clasped his hands. “A few weeks ago, Paknov began to slow their funding of GOAG and various other smaller guilds. We didn’t think much of it. Paknov was having a recession, and it only made sense for them to pull out of the thing they barely gave shit about.”

  Hadwyn thought.

  “But then, we started noticing that Paknov was implementing lenient tax rates for growing businesses.”

  “GOAG.” Hadwyn muttered.

  “Right. GOAG is the largest liability to us down here in the colonies. the ones who block off areas when they kill monsters and have their stupid sparparties. Paknov doesn’t do that because they point to us and say to GOAG and the other guilds; ‘You got a problem? Those guys over there can fix it.’ So naturally, they come to us to complain. And we have to increasingly compensate for Paknov’s increase of lenient tax rates towards financial interests, combined with GOAG slowly adapting to privately funded-”

  He paused.

  “Are you guys getting all that?”

  Lars looked focused. Hadwyn understood so far. But everyone else seemed to be thoroughly confused.

  Peter sighed. “You guys are going to need to get used to discussions like this, they’re practically staples of our missions.

  Hadwyn never recalled having a sit-down meeting with his party like this. He felt good that he could actually be heard, and even treated as an equal. For the first time in his life, he realized this was where he felt he

  He sat upright, filled with purpose. “We need to act.”

  Peter made a shoving motion with his hands. “Calm down. We don’t need to do anything for now.”

  “But Baluk-” Teresa protested.

  “-Is the spy!” Akoto cut off, through gritted teeth, “That’s why he left! He must have taken what he needed and ran off!”

  “That’s exactly what I was thinking,” Peter reassured, “But we can’t risk even a person leaving the base, in case Baluk isn’t the leak, or worse, in case he isn’t the leak.”

  “Great.” Ruby muttered. “Just like we’ve been for the past two months.”

  “So what’s the plan here?”

  “For now, we keep everyone at the base. Obviously tell their families that. They have to stay for a while longer. No problem for the soldiers outside, they don’t really expect to be allowed home often.”

  “Soldiers?”

  He smirked. “The guards don't really go in all that often. It’d be pretty obvious if they were loitering around. I suspect it would be a technician. If not Baluk, but…”

  “The phantom wolf?” Akoto asked, raising an eyebrow.

  “Yes,” Peter sighed, “That… that complicates things. Why would Baluk kill a phantom wolf if he were trying to get away? There’s no point…

  “You said something about demons…” Hadwyn recalled. “Is that true?”

  “It depends…” Peter answered. “There are other ways of keeping away demons… of course, none as effective as the phantom wolf, but there are .”

  “Like what?”

  “Pierson’s on mage duty,” Peter replied. “He’s been for the past week. If he senses anything unusual, which I doubt would be the way he becomes aware, someone gives him the order, he’ll put the base full lockdown.

  “How will he maintain it?” Hadwyn asked.

  Peter eyed him questionably, “What do you mean by that?”

  “I mean- uhh…” Hadwyn stuttered, “He’s just an isn’t he?”

  Peter blinked, “But of he is. What does that have to do with maintaining the shield?”

  “He’s not as strong as an aldarian then.” Hadwyn blurted.

  Peter scoffed, “Yes, but he will use a magic item or artifact to aid him in either power or expanding his capacity.”

  Hadwyn slumped back in his chair, feeling stupid.

  “How will we track down Baluk then?” Lars asked.

  Peter tried to balance a pencil on his finger. “Simple: We don’t. We already have troops from other bases in Brelkon, and even some from the coast to find him.”

  “How would they know?”

  “I sent Natasha,” He put up his hands. “Before you say she could be the spy, I’d like to point out to you that she spends any time at the base, let alone . And besides, she has not betrayed our trust.”

  “Not yet,” Marco pointed out.

  Peter echoed. “You remind me of Berkeley when I chatted with that guild representative.”

  “Thanks… I guess.”

  “So what do we do?”

  “You guys?” Peter twisted his back with a soft “You’re about to be deployed.”

  “To where?”

  “Hippod.” Peter said. “Only you guys can leave. Everyone else will be on lockdown until Berkeley, or more likely, Beckett arrives.”

  Peter then ordered them to get their supplies and weapons. They were also given their uniforms.

  Hadwyn put on a somewhat ugly brown uniform and capelet. They were the same model of the current uniforms worn by Brelkonian soldiers and guards, but it was stripped of all its identification, or anything linking it to Brelkon.

  Still, putting it on filled him with nerve.

  They met Peter outside. A smile fell on his face upon seeing them in neat ordered rows.

  He thought with admiration. Peter had made many accomplishments in his life. All of which he was proud of. From writings, to art and even music, he had excelled at all. But he had been driven with the urge to spread knowledge, not hog it to himself. To teach people.

  So seeing his trainees lined up in such perfect rows in order… A man could only dream of having this sight to behold with his own eyes.

  Peter quickly exchanged his facial features to resemble one of a more humble look. But Hadwyn could already tell he was impressed.

  “Now…” He said, pacing alongside them, “We have an urgent request to S&I, meaning secure and investigate.”

  “Near Zyenur.” He said, raising an eyebrow. “None of you would happen to be from there, would you?”

  Not a single person raised their hand.

  “Well… That’s disappointing.” Peter sighed. “Get in the wagons now, we’re headed to Zyenur.”