When Carnivac arrived back at AutomaTown, he handed Ram’s body over to Ratchet, who got straight to work on replacing the damaged arms as well as all of the fried internal components. I didn’t have any fire based crystals on hand so restoring her forge abilities would have to wait but hopefully I’d be able to get her back online. I put Rom to work with the CloudBurst repair work while I worked to get the LandMine armor built. I only had a couple of hours until dawn and no idea where the Royal kill squad was actually at.

The only proxy I had with flight abilities was Shrapnel and he didn’t have near the range to scout out their location. Shiro had extended gliding abilities but I wouldn’t send him on such a mission. That left Elita, but I had no idea where she was or how to find her. Okay Carnivac, old buddy, looks like it’s up to you. Safe and Swift.

Before heading out, Canivac went over to an odds and ends locker and opened it up. I didn’t have a lot of conventional weapons but what had been salvaged from Jada’s Junk that I didn’t have an immediate need for was kept in there. He rummaged around until he was able to find a handful of smoke bombs, some explosives, and a couple of extra kunai. His thigh holster was full so the extras would have to go into a satchel. Elita had the [Inventory] bag with her but it was just as well since Carnivac wouldn’t be able to retrieve anything that went in on his own anyway.

A normal, and empty, bag was laying on a bench near Ratchet; who picked it up and threw it at Carnivac with an unoccupied arm. Carnivac caught the bag and loaded it up with the bombs and kunai. He probably wouldn’t need them, but it didn’t hurt to have them, since I wouldn’t be inside to power his shadow magic. He rummaged around in the locker some more and found a small spy glass and tossed it into the bag.

He slung the bag over his shoulder and reset his belt so that it would hold the bag tight to his body. As he passed through the village to the main entrance, he spotted a light on in the Inn. Shiro was inside working in a cloud of flour. I couldn’t begin to imagine what the dust would do to his joints but I knew that wouldn’t stop Shiro. Maybe that was just a “Prime Problem for Later”.

Kull approached Carnivac near the exit, and held up a hand to get his attention.

“We’re going to be okay, right? Everyone is pretty nervous. What’s going to happen to us?” he asked.

“No worries,” Carnivac replied, “I’m going to check on their position and numbers now. No conflict will make its way here. I’m sure that unless they have an elder dragon, IronHide can handle anything they have.”

“I guess what happens with this group coming isn’t the important part. It’s what happens afterwards,” Kull said somberly.

“Right. We’ll try the peaceful approach first. We want to work with them and establish ourselves. But if they attack... we’ll defend ourselves.”

Kull nodded and then pulled a trinket from his belt and looked at it. On a leather string, hung an ornately carved totem of a wolf’s head. He held the totem out to Carnivac, who carefully took it in hand.

“I know you’re not a real wolf... but I’ve always felt a closeness to them as a hunter. May this bring you luck.”

Carnivac looked again at the wolf’s head. It looked like him. “Did you carve this?”

Kull looked embarrassed, or at least as much as a robot can. “Yeah, I know it’s not very good. Not like the stuff that Master Prime does.”

“Not true. This is good work. I can sense the feelings and emotion that you put into this. Thank you.” Carnivac tucked the totem into his belt and looped the lanyard around so that it wouldn’t come loose. When he looked up, Kull was holding a fist out to him. Carnivac nodded and bumped it with his own fist. Kull nodded in return and turned to walk off.

Once through the main gates, Carnivac tore off at full sprint on all fours down the road to Urd. Since Alfred and the Watch Squad hadn’t run into them, the Royal kill squad must have taken the main road by way of Urd. It was normally a three to four day trip by carriage and they probably weren’t going to be traveling any faster than that unless the Royal wanted to exhaust his troops.

At full sprint, Carnivac was about the same speed as a galloping horse even without me inside and there was enough atmospheric mana in the forest that he wouldn’t get run down for power. All he had to focus on was speed and avoiding any of the local predators. At this speed, it would take Carnivac a little under four hours to get to Urd. If the Royal had pushed his troops a little harder than expected, they might be right outside the edge of the forest waiting for dawn to make their move.

The main road, which passed Thompson’s Fork, skirted to the north of the great forest. It was a longer distance but it was safer than going directly through the forest. Being safer, it was more well traveled and better suited for a caravan than the shorter cut through the forest that Alfred and the Knight Watch squad had taken.

Carnivac ran for about forty-five minutes until he spotted dim fire light ahead. Given the distance that Carnivac had run, the caravan would probably arrive outside of town in the afternoon if they left around dawn. Carefully he crept closer, being mindful to stay near the edge of the road where the flora was thicker. Around the fire, he could see a ring of small tents, as well as two larger tents. The largest, of which, had a fancy banner hanging near the opening. The banner had gold and purple stripes with an ornate crest embroidered onto it of a large tree with an eagle in its branches. Surrounding the tents, he could make out figures that appeared to be on guard, though they didn’t move or patrol.

From his infrared overlay, Carnivac could see that none of these figures were giving off any heat. Chances were good that they were Automata soldiers. He pulled the spyglass from his bag and extended it for a closer look. He could see five of the Automata soldiers positioned around the camp and looking out into the woods. Each of them appeared to also be attached to a chain that led into the camp.

Unlike at the Guild office, this time, Carnivac was glad that he wasn’t giving off any body heat. The nearest sentry looked right past him. They would likely have their infrared and ultraviolet overlays on so they could see in the dark to watch for threats and intruders. While body heat would be picked up by the infrared, mana could be picked up by the ultraviolet. Still in this forest, there was plenty of ambient mana to mask his position. If I had been inside of Carnivac, that might not have been the case though.

The smaller tents looked to be two-person models. By count that meant there might be twenty or so organic soldiers. There was no way of knowing just how many people were in the larger, royal tents though. There was one more tent that looked like those cheap, portable garages you see that people get for babying their cars. Inside, Carnivac could see two centaurs sleeping standing up and leaning against each other. Hitched nearby, were eight horses and three carriages. Clearly, not enough for all of the soldiers, so the caravan could only move at a walking pace.

He slipped in between the trees and off the road, leaping up into the canopy. Taking a wide berth around the camp to avoid the sentry Automata, he was able to spot a second fire group nearly two hundred meters further down the road. This group had several large, bulky masses in vaguely humanoid shape that stood in a ring, facing away from the fire. There were four of the things facing in cardinal directions around the fire. They stood around twelve feet tall and had glowing orange eyes, with steel spikes embedded into their bodies. They looked like poorly carved statues made from cheap sandstone. I think they may have been golems.

Inside of their ring, there were two huge humanoid-ish creatures sleeping. Carnivac couldn’t make out what they were, but they were loud sleepers, it was no wonder they were kept so far from the rest of the camp. Around the golems, five more of the sentry Automata could be spotted keeping watch and chained to something.

I couldn’t help but to wonder if I should have come myself and just crushed them in their sleep with IronHide. Diplomacy! Right. I had to try diplomacy first, and crushing people in their sleep isn’t very diplomatic.

Movement caught his eye and he saw a figure pacing around the first fire before sitting down near one of the sentries. He brought the spyglass back to his eye for a closer look. It was Ryuski, the robot ninja, having a little chat with the sentry bot. That had to mean that Vicky had come along. Now with a second look, Carnivac could see a medium sized tent in the Guild’s blue colors that had been hidden behind the royal tents.

Maybe his Guildship, Ryoma Nagare, had come along to take my head after all. If Vicky and Ryoma were here, then we might also see Pythona and those other— wait... Pythona... I didn’t think about it at the time, but sheesh! How generic can you get for naming a snake lady?

Carnivac shook his head to dispel the thought. The soldiers probably wouldn’t be waking up for another couple of hours to start packing up camp and preparing breakfast for another day of marching. I thought about bringing Carnivac back home, but shadowing the caravan from the trees would be the best way to keep tabs on their location. Time to get comfortable in the tree and wait for something interesting to happen.