“He spared no effort. He thought not of what was, but what could be. He spent his life creating the artifact that should remove pain and end suffering. He was ancient when his creation came to be. He’d travelled far and wide. He’d met fools, as well as Wisemen. They taught him, as he taught them.”

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“There it is, the Warlord’s fortress. Hold on, Sandra, I’m almost there.” David said, as they reached the top of the mountain.

Edward whistled, “I must admit, it’s one thing to hear a description of it, and another to see it in person.”

In the distance, the imposing structure was at the base of the mountain, leaning against it for support, making it seem a lot larger than it was.

Edward could see the age on the structure, looking like a ruined fort from a classical fantasy.

That didn’t mean that it was barren. He could see the bustling activity from a mountain away. Trucks coming and going through the gate.

They were far enough away that they were in no danger of being spotted, partly because the mountainside was covered in trees, and yet close enough that they could realistically make the journey from their current location in only a few hours.

Unfortunately, neither of them thought to grab binoculars, so there wasn’t much they could gleam from their current location except possible spots to investigate further.

“Hmm, should we set up a shelter before we go, so we have a place to hide after we’ve freed them?” Edward suggested, being intimately aware he had no experience in this field outside of strategy games, and he wasn’t sure how much that knowledge could be applied to the "real world".

“That’s not the worst idea you’ve had so far.” He thought for a moment before agreeing.

“How was I supposed to know that they were laxatives?” He grumbled at the answer.

“You forgot to tell me you were an idiot when you asked me to desert the army with you.” He said, deadpanned, before breaking out into laughter.

They’d warmed up considerably from the first night, the atmosphere becoming much more relaxed, as neither of them could maintain a serious demeanour for long.

They’d become good friends along the way, united by their purpose, although Edward admitted to himself that he felt slightly shallow having left the first night without really discovering anything significant besides his brother being a slave to a warlord, he’d practically jumped into it.

That didn’t mean they hadn’t made good progress. They’d practically tarzaned their way through the forest on the first night. Edward estimated them to have travelled around 100 kilometres the first night alone, an amazing feat of physical endurance.

They discussed what kind of shelter they should build before realizing and shelter the four of them could fit into would need to be too large and take too much time to build, so they eventually just dropped the idea.

“See, I told you it was a stupid idea. I don’t know how you managed to convince me to even attempt it.” David said offhandedly.

“What! Liar, I most definitely heard you say it wasn’t a bad idea, you just can’t admit you didn’t think far ahead either.” Edward countered back.

“Oh my, I have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about. Are you sure those berries didn’t do anything to your mind? Maybe their hallucinogens, who knows…” Refusing to take responsibility.

“Never mind that. Do you have any good suggestions of where we can infiltrate the fortress?”

“Hmm, if it’s leaning against the mountain, can’t we try to climb the shorter walls in the middle of the night? I mean, you keep assuring me the warlord’s men are absolute dogshit at their job, so I assume they’d be inattentive and distracted right before their shift is over…” Edward said, trying to remember if he’d read any stories that had a castle infiltration.

“Absolutely, don’t you remember the battle of Ramuda? Those idiots charged out of their fortified defensive position because commander Johnson gave them the tiniest bait possible.”

“Wait, that’s why they charged. I was sure it was because they had no provisions left. I was a part of the reinforcements. So, I wasn’t there at the start of the attack.” Edward played along. It was something he usually did with Caleb when he taught him about a new game…He paused, feeling slightly weird thinking about him, now that he would never see him again.

“Yeah, their leadership is the worst, everyone besides the warlord, it’s because he really hasn’t had time to give his troops any formal training, they’re basically just thugs with guns.”

“Let’s hope it’s that easy.”

It was that easy. Right before morning broke, they’d hiked to the shorter walls on the mountain, and were quite easily able to climb up onto the fortress walls.

Because the warlord had just started his conquest, he’d been unable to properly restore his residence to 100% functionality, leaving holes in its defences.

Edward wasn’t stupid enough to think that they’d just been lucky or that the military hadn’t thought to infiltrate the warlord themselves.

‘In for a penny, in for a pound.’ He thought to himself as he made it to the top. Beside him in the tower, a lone sleeping guard sat on a chair snoring softly, and an empty bottle beside him.

He helped David up, and they made sure to walk as far away from the guard as possible without being spotted.

“So, what now, do we infiltrate as guards or slaves?” Edward asked. He’d made the mistake of not thinking very far ahead, some part of him still being the kid in a fantasy world.

David hesitated, “you said the guards change shifts in the morning, right? We can change clothes with the guards and toss them off the walls, far enough that the trees will cover them, and just act like them, sleeping, before the shifts change. I also reckon the fortress is large enough that’ll work because there are so many people.”

“That has got to be the riskiest plan I’ve ever heard of, let’s do it.” Edward acknowledged.

Edward really didn’t know how to kill someone that wouldn’t cause them to bleed everywhere, so he stabbed them through the eye hoping it wouldn’t dirty the clothes too much, feeling more than a little squeamish at the eye splattering like a grapefruit with his quick stab. David went to another tower and did the same, although he didn’t know if he killed his guard differently.

David’s height was somewhere close to the median, so he easily fit into whatever dirty clothes the guard had.

Edward, however, was around 2 meters tall, and although his muscular physique had practically disappeared in the past few days they’d travelled, could only hope the more-than-slightly too small clothes wouldn’t be noticed.

Since they were so strong, it wasn’t difficult to toss the bodies far enough that it couldn’t be seen from the walls.

As planned, they laid down to sleep.

Fortunately, Edward had practiced sleeping often enough when he was a child that snoring came naturally to him, and you’d think he was one of the guards, dirty and skinny as he was.

He must’ve faked a bit too well because he didn’t have to act surprised when he was kicked out of his chair. He rubbed his eyes as he looked at the two who'd come to take his and David's place.

“Alright, as usual the night watch fell asleep, you owe me a crate of beer, Hammond.”

Hammond glared at Edward, “Why can’t you jackasses learn that you’ll get out of the night shift whenever you stop drinking on the job, it can’t be that hard can it?! And fuck you Eric, that bet was entirely one-sided, I never agreed to that bet.”

Edward thought quickly and acted impeccably drunk, “Wha- Whad you say?” his Oscar award being Eric smacking him in the face.

“Sober up, or I’ll throw you off the wall to sober you up.” Hammond got uncomfortably close to his face, blocking his view of everything else, so he could only lock eyes with him, and it didn’t take an expert in reading faces to see that he was very annoyed, it seemed to Edward that he was, indeed, going to pay up that crate of beer.

“Y-yes sir!” He eked out, and almost didn’t stumble when he stood up.

A groan and a facepalm told him his self-taught acting skills weren’t failing him.

“Jus-just go and tell the other guy that his shift is over, oh god this is so embarrassing, they’re absolutely hopeless.”

Edward didn’t answer but walked mostly in a straight line towards the next tower to wake up David, who either had incredible acting skills or fell asleep like Edward, not that Edward would tell him that.

“It’s me, our shifts are over, so let’s go. Also don’t forget to act drunk. I think the night shift we are, ahem, substituting is quite hopeless. Also, I’m not forgetting that you actually fell asleep.” The smile he received at the last comment told him that he hadn’t quite fallen asleep, which reassured him his partner-in-crime wasn’t entirely incompetent.

Stumbling down the wall under the disappointed gaze of their peers and eventually disappearing out of sight, they found a secluded place and dropped their act.

“Okay, now let’s just find out where the slaves are, get out siblings, then we bolt.” David said, slightly adjusting his clothes to look less miserable, Edward copying him.

“Yeah, don’t worry about getting recognized. If the guards on the tower are anything to go by, we’ll be fine as long as we look like we’re going somewhere. I remember someone once telling me: ‘Confidence is key’.”

“Sounds good. We’ll meet up here after we find out where the slaves are kept. Then we cause as much trouble as possible and grab them in the chaos.” David concluded.

They split up, David leaving first, with Edward following a few minutes later.

He realized he didn’t have any idea where the slaves would be. ‘Where would you need slaves in a semi-modern environment?’ He concluded they’d be either used as servants or the girls as sex slaves, so he promptly and purposefully changed his direction to the centre of the fortress, the belly of the beast.

The centre keep was more heavily guarded if you only counted the number of guards or that the guards carried guns instead of being nearly unarmed like the ones on the outer walls, who only carried knives.

But it was obvious to pretty much everyone who looked at them with more than a glance that they were pretty much on a vacation. Only a minority was even standing up, and they were chatting with the other guards rather than keeping watch.

‘No matter how you look at it, this infiltration was bound to succeed. If this is all their security amounts to, a child could do this. Then…A front? Is the warlord even here?’ He mused whilst strolling through the keep. The guards had completely ignored him when he walked past them, too engrossed in their card game. He freely explored the entire keep and found nothing except a relatively important looking person passed out on the floor smelling strongly of alcohol.

‘This has to be a front; I have a feeling that I could practically enter through the front door without being caught. I should figure out what all the activity we saw yesterday is about, if they were just driving trucks in and out of the fortress or if something is actually going on.’ He concluded and headed to investigate, stopping briefly to check if David had returned to their meeting spot, he hadn’t, before continuing.

The fortress, large as it was, wasn’t very difficult to navigate, all the same, he walked through the inner walls, as their gates weren’t closed either, as such strolled from the centre of the keep to the main gate in less than 10 minutes.

He immediately realized that whatever the trucks were doing wasn’t a front. They used them for something.

First, the soldiers that were standing on and around the main gate and on the surrounding walls were the real deal. They attentively scanned the area on the outside searching, stoically keeping watch.

Second, the soldiers coming with the trucks were heavily armed and had some form of body armour, though if it was just metal covered plates or actual Kevlar remained to be. There was also the issue of the weird mishmash of technology. He hadn’t been able to confirm the existence of magic yet, only gleam its existence from conversing with David, and yet, there was a bigger problem.

The society needed to create such technology was non-existent. He’d travelled for a dozen days to get to the warlord’s fortress, and it was the only proof he had of large structures even existing.

It didn’t fit. Where did they innovate and produce that many weapons? He’d seen several hundred automatic rifles since he entered the fortress and none of the infrastructure to support the production.

‘How and why would there be a wide, maintained road to a broken-down fortress in the middle of nowhere? It doesn’t make sense! Why would the warlord have a possibly fake base with no slaves? Why not just stay hidden?’

His thoughts were interrupted when a truck arrived, empty.

Several grunts, those that looked and acted less professional than their gate and truck counterparts, started moving, they all went into a large building that looked like a warehouse and started pushing several cages on wagons over to the trucks.

He felt more than a little horrified when he realized what was inside the cages.

Rasts, all of them, large or dangerous looking beasts, were inside every single cage.

They looked mistreated, starved, and wounded, several of them weakly covering their eyes, as if they’d been kept in the dark, and were blinded by the light.

Then it clicked.

‘It’s because it’s in the middle of nowhere. That’s why they’re here, to gather Rasts! There is nothing but forest and mountains in a thousand-kilometre radius.’

‘That brings the question, what the fuck do they need mistreated, possibly magical creatures for? Why would you specifically need them alive? And where are they taking them?’

‘This is not good; this is very obviously not good.’

He felt like the thing that had kept him stable since his arrival almost 2 weeks ago, rescuing his brother was slowly destabilizing.

He’d mostly ignored the world around and dealing with the obvious bottled-up emotions and reality of another world. He wanted his brother to be there, to figure out how they were going to deal with it. The pressure was getting to him.

He shook himself out of his stupor ‘Not now, I can’t give up yet.’ he was quite obviously staring in shock, and quickly walked away to their meeting spot making sure he wasn’t followed, although that mostly involved just quickly looking behind him several times to see if he recognized anyone.

What? He was new to this. He wasn’t some secret service university spy. That’d be ridiculous. He was mostly just winging whatever obstacle was coming at him, relying solely on his wits, and so far, it had worked brilliantly, well mostly brilliantly.

He wasn’t followed, he hoped, and speedily, but not too obviously, made his way to their secluded meeting spot.

He was quite relieved when David was there, looking visibly anxious.

“I searched the entirety of the inner walls and living areas, I didn’t find a single trace of slaves, not a whiff, I really hope you had any luck, because otherwise I don’t think they’re here, we made this journey for nothing.” He was almost deflating as he said it, seemingly quite sure that Edward hadn’t found anything either. Like a popped balloon. Edward could see the hope drain out of him and dissipate into the air.

He took a deep breath, locking eyes with David, and confidently started: “No, I didn’t find anything either, but I’m very sure this base is mostly just a front, there is nothing here other than wasteland in the shape of forest and mountains. I went to the outer gate. You noticed how all the guards and grunts here are basically just relaxing and drinking, right?” David nodded cautiously. He had of course noticed it, but assumed it was just that the guards weren’t trained at all.

“Yeah, well, the guys at their front door are the real deal. There wasn’t a bottle of alcohol in sight, and all of them were heavily armed with armour, although I don’t know what kind of armour as it was covered with cloth. They were definitely well trained, there’s no doubt about it, some looked even more dangerous than our guys back at camp.”

David’s eyes widened when he heard that. “anyway, you remember the hive of activity we saw yesterday? I know what they were doing, they’re capturing Rasts out here and sending them somewhere, they are putting them into cages, all of them looked starved and worn-ragged, they’d for sure been kept there for a couple of days at least.”

“The warlord must be using them for something, so I want to follow them. We’ve basically confirmed that the slaves aren’t here, so our only option besides giving up is following them to see where that leads us. And giving up isn’t an option.” Edward finished, having already made up his mind on the way to their meeting spot if David didn’t find anything, and gave his best motivational speech.

“Let’s get out of here before they realize that we’ve been here.” David nodded resolutely.

They quickly made their way to one of the outer walls and searched for a tower where the guard was passed out drunk, there was a jarring contrast between the professionals at the main gate, who Edward didn’t doubt would shoot them they moment they suspected them to be spies, and these grunts that came out of a b-rated movie.

They jumped down and made their way to the mountains, seeing if they could see where the road lead from a higher vantage point.

Edward confirmed that this was almost as far north as you could get before you hit the “edge of the continent” and saw the road heading southeast before it disappeared around the curve of a mountain.

They started their stroll, opting to travel during the day rather than night, as they wouldn’t be able to see the road very well in the moonlight and could possibly veer off course.

Edward confided in David something that had been troubling him for a while, “I don’t think the army isn’t attacking because the slaves are being used as human shields, there has got to be another reason, even if there are a few trained soldiers amongst the enemy, we should have enough resources to simply outnumber them, right? I will reluctantly admit this. I don’t really know anything of the army. We’re a part off, so I need to ask you, how big was it really?”

At this point, David had really committed to following through with what they were doing. Because of that, Edward admitted to a gap in his knowledge. Something he’d been deftly avoiding their entire time together.

Perhaps in part because of that, he really didn’t know very much about his companion, despite being the only being he could interact with for over a week.

David stared at him intently, having composed himself from the earlier doubt and regret.

He opened his mouth and pronounced every word slowly and deliberately:

“Before I answer your question, I want you to answer a question of mine before we go any further.” Pausing briefly to make sure he had Edwards’ full attention, “who are you really?”