A few heads were pouring over a map, while slightly less than five hundred soldiers formed a square around the band of diplomats. The exit point of the rift that Familiar Spirit Rene had created had led them to some point outside the Worldshaper’s Divine Kingdom, which meant that the officers of Thunderbolt Battalion had to figure out their current bearing before they could move.

To prevent the diplomats from getting lost, Marie had ordered the soldiers to herd them in under the guise of pre-emptive preparations for unexpected conflicts, while the officers continued to look at the map.

“If I’m right,” said Captain Aziz, “we should be a hundred and twenty kilometres away from the World’s End chasm. With the God of Fire’s Divine Kingdom as bearing one-eight-oh, we just need to walk at a relative bearing of three-seven, and we should make good time.”

The other officers did some calculations on their notebooks, and then nodded. Hans, one of his company commanders, looked at the fatigued diplomats and said, “We should slow down our place by at least a third, captain.”

“Depends on whether you lot finished up your rations earlier on. Ask your men and then report back to me,” said Captain Aziz. “The same goes for the rest of you. Disperse, and get back to me within ten minutes.”

The captain was very aware of the rations issue, and had made preparations long before Thunderbolt set out to escort the diplomats. After a round of discussions back then, Aziz and Marie had left behind a company to watch over World’s End — but their rations had been appropriated for this journey. It was far easier to get them to use the communal canteen at World’s End’s defence line than to get more rations, after all.

After praising himself for his foresight, Aziz walked over to Colonel Marie, who was busy staring at the horizon. “Something interesting, ma’am?”

“Marie will do in private. I think I said that enough…” She shook her head. “Yes, there’s some anomaly over there. I can sense a great number of presences.”

“Troops of the Worldshaper?”

“No,” replied Marie.

Aziz looked at the direction she was pointing at. Even from afar, he could see a relatively thick column of smoke rise into the air. No matter how he looked at it, the denseness and sheer uniformity of the smoke hinted at the presence of a unified army, something he would associate with disciplined, forced march of a nation’s crack troops.

“Might be trouble,” said Captain Aziz. “And yet, the absence of scouts are sending some odd signals. You’d expect at least twoscore scouts to be evenly distributed all around such a force, but there’s no sign of such a thing. I suggest we increase our speed and return to friendly territory before anything else happens.”

“Good advice.” She took out her Radio artefact, issuing orders through the nifty little device. Within seconds, the entire contingent was on the move. “Do you want to do the scouting? Or should we let a platoon do it instead?”

“Let one of Alpha’s platoons scout our localities. I’ll go check on the body of troops over there. Both of us are heading the same way — if I can ascertain their identity, we’ll be better equipped to know if we should slow down or speed up,” said Captain Aziz.

“Do it.”

Aziz saluted, and ascended swiftly. After the figures of Thunderbolt shrank to dots, he headed straight towards the long, steady column of dust. The unidentified mass of people grew larger and larger as he approached them from afar, and it didn’t take him long before he could somewhat identify them.

He didn’t know who these people were, or why they were in the Worldshaper’s de facto territory. But from what he could see, Aziz was sure of one thing. Most of the people in this giant troop formation weren’t soldiers.

They were refugees. The children and wagons moving had given it away the moment he saw them…but this was the first time he’d seen that many people in World’s End itself, dwarfing even the populace of Ark City, which had occupied the outer areas of World’s End.

Hell, he didn’t know that there were actually this many people living in World’s End to begin with.

No one had noticed his arrival as he looked down on the refugee convoy from high above. Aerial security, at the very least, weren’t something this huge mass of lives were concerned about. To their flanks and their rear were soldiers, evident from their neat and disciplined positions…but there weren’t many.

It was as though as this lot had fought a war and then fled as their nation collapsed. Committing the entire scene into his memory, Aziz left as quickly as he came. Something had probably happened, deep within World’s End, and it was best if Marie knew about it.

The scenery turned into a blur as the captain continued to accelerate, and within minutes, he had touched down in front of Colonel Marie. Before she could speak, however, Captain Aziz had relayed all he had seen, and the conjectures that he’d created from watching the convoy. The colonel’s face grew darker with every passing sentence, and as he concluded his statements, Captain Aziz saw her cast a fearful gaze at the red star behind them.

“Orders?”

“If it’s a refugee band…” She shook her head. “We’re soldiers. We just can’t leave them to fend for ourselves, even if we don’t have knowledge of these refugees and their circumstances. And…we’re heading in the same direction anyway.”

The captain thought over her words for a moment. “We catch up to them, see if they need our assistance, and act accordingly from there onwards?”

“Correct.”

Aziz passed down some orders, and the convoy picked up speed. They were proceeding ahead at full speed — if the refugees were fleeing from something, there was a good chance that there were pursuers after them. The captain wasn’t keen on hoping that the God of Fire would intercept any would-be pursuers, and if these hunters really came, there would be safety in numbers.

Everyone continued to make their way towards the refugee convoy, stirring up clouds of dust where they went. Within an hour, the two parties were within eyeshot of each other. Tension began to seep into the bones of the diplomats as the diplomatic party and its escorts continued to draw close, but Captain Aziz was unfazed. At such a range, it was evident that the other party was in no fit shape for combat. In return, their numbers — around five hundred or so — was too small to actually be of combat significance.

Of course, if Thunderbolt were to act normally, they could probably wipe out everyone in the refugee convoy given enough—

“Straight Shots?” Colonel Marie interrupted his train of thoughts. “Look closely. The combat doctrines of their guards are similar to us — they’re carrying Straight Shots, at least one per person. This refugee band isn’t as simple as they seem on the surface.”

“We should proceed onwards with all caution,” said Aziz. “Don’t show any signs of aggression, and we should be fine.”