[Small villages, in both the Human and Demon Realms

Commonly do not have officially recognized names.

This can be for a variety of reasons, but it

Prevents the village from becoming officially recognized.]

Fyrun Inn’s proprietress walked with us out to the edge of the city. As we walked Raen confirmed with her their plans, and that we’ll be able to come back and stay the night if needed. I really dreaded the idea of walking all the way back here after already walking all the way to the bridge village.

From the edge of the city, I could see the top of a pair of columns, which Oroske explained are part of the bridge, and are part of the structure that holds it up. The path continued downhill for a bit, going back up and over a steep hill.

The trek there was long and not very interesting. Thankfully I had people to talk with to pass the time.

“So what’s the name of this village we’re going to?” I asked Kared and the Dyn’ya siblings, seeing Oroske and Raen were deep in their own conversation.

“It doesn’t have one,” Vai’ra responded very matter-of-factly.

“Only because it has several,” Kared interjected, “No proposed name has stuck, and even the people who live there can’t agree on one. Because of that, the Parliament has yet to recognize it as an official settlement, among other reasons.”

“Really? Sounds weird to not have a name for your home town,” I said, trying to wrap my head around the idea.

“It’s pretty common on both sides of the rift,” Elrik chimed in, “I’ve taken jobs in a lot of small villages with no name. Most of them are just because the people can’t decide on a name, but a few are because the villagers don’t want to name it, to help keep their location discreet.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, when you’re doing something illegal, or something you otherwise don’t want to be caught doing, it’s only natural that you’d want the location you are doing those things to be a secret.” He explained as though it were obvious, “For example, while it isn’t illegal, trenui merchants will move their ‘stock’ around, switching between a number of no-name villages. Groups that are well-known for treating trenui poorly will even build these villages after running from their enemies.”

“It’s true,” Vai’ra commented, annoyance apparent in her voice, “Some of them are frustratingly good at throwing up a village in one day, then disappearing within an hour of us finding them.”

“You and your squad, or rather the whole military, spend way more effort on those guys than their worth. If you ask me, anyway.” Elrik said in a snarky tone with a shrug.

“Well it’s a good thing I wasn’t asking you,” she said, pushing him roughly.

Kared chuckled a little as she watched the two get into an argument. Which probably would have become a full blown fight if we weren’t trying to get to our destination as fast as possible. I asked what she was laughing at, to which she replied, “Oh, nothing really. They just remind me of my siblings back home.”

“Wait, you have siblings?”

“Of course!” She exclaimed, then thought for a moment, “Well, more or less anyway. I’ve got a handful of half-brothers and half-sisters. On both my mother and father’s side. My father had kids with at least four different women, two of them he courted at the same time. My mother… She’s… A special case, let’s say. I’m the only kid she had with my father, but she’s had children with several other men. From my knowledge, she only ever has one kid with a guy before she runs off, leaving the kid in the father’s care.”

“That sounds awful.”

“Awful, that’s a good word for it,” she laughed, “In any case, from what few of her other children I’ve met have said, all of her children hold heavy grudges against her.” She fell silent for a moment. “Let’s change subjects. I don’t really like talking about my family affairs.”

I could tell she was worried about saying too much, so I agreed. “Well, what about my family? Did you know my parents at all?”

“Naturally, your mom was Oroske’s sister, so I met her a few times. I’d seen her husband once or twice, but never really got to meet him. I can’t say I was very close to your mother either.” Kared was silent as she reminisced. “She wasn’t the greatest fighter, probably a little below Nadred’s level, if not equal to him. But she was smart, incredibly so. She’d definitely give Nadred a run for his money, even now. She was Danfis’s go to for diplomatic missions for a good long while too. Of course-” She cut herself off, then cleared her throat, “Nevermind, that’s not important.”

She examined me closely in silence. “You definitely look like your dad, from the couple times I’d seen him. Though, you get your hair from your mom I’d say.” That made me smile for some reason. I suppose it was nice to hear about how I take after my parents.

We walked in silence for a solid few minutes, while the other members of our group kept chatting.

Eventually I broke the silence with another question, “What are things like in the Crimson Twilight? Like, what do you do there?” I say the question broke the silence, but it seemed to create silence for the rest of our group. Their conversation almost immediately halted, and they even seemed to slow their pace so they could listen in on Kared’s response.

She was hesitant to say anything, letting out a nervous chuckle. “Well, I can’t really say a whole lot right now about that… But it’s not too different from the Tsumi Clan, at least in concept. The Twilight takes on the same sort of jobs the clan does, the primary difference is the source of the jobs. The clan takes on official, ‘public’ contracts, sent to us by the relevant governments for whatever the job is. For example, our job in the City of Towers was sent in by the ‘local’ government, or the city’s government. However, the Twilight rarely receives offers and requests from official sources. Instead, the vast majority of jobs they take on are called ‘private’ contracts. Generally speaking, these are jobs submitted by citizens that official sources decline to send to the clans. It can be pretty much any type of job, from escorting people to Restless and Necromancer Hunts, to the more discreet and secretive jobs the Tsumi do. Officials can decline for any reason, and it’s not uncommon for certain job types to be deemed hoaxes or unimportant by the relevant authorities.

“As for life in the Twilight, it’s not too different from the clan. A whole lot of people running around, hoping to get the jobs they want before they get scooped up by someone else. The main differences are in the culture. Especially with how the young are raised. In the clan, not everyone is a fighter, not everyone becomes a Hunter. But if someone is born in the Twilight, even if they don’t become an active contractor, they still are taught to fight. And unless you get lucky, growing up there is tough. Many people can only just barely afford to cover their own living costs, no less a child who can’t support the family.” I could tell Kared wanted to say something more, but was holding her tongue for some reason. She waved her hand as though to dismiss the topic, and said that if she were to keep talking she’d end up saying too much.

Vai’ra and Raen seemed disappointed that she refused to keep talking, and Elrik just kept facing forward with a straight face during her talk. Oroske simply nodded in understanding of her situation.

We continued walking in relative silence, and I was too distracted taking in the sights to pay attention to the conversations that were happening. Shortly after Kared ended the conversation, we crested the steep hill, which quickly began descending once more. From the top of the hill we could see a very small village, with no more than five buildings. Beyond the village, the two large pillars were matched on the other side of a large, deep canyon that I could not see the bottom of. Between the pairs of pillars was the beginnings of a bridge that seemed like it was destroyed from the center point.

“Odd, I would have thought repairs would have been further than that by now,” Oroske worried.

“It’s possible something has been keeping them from performing the repairs,” Raen reasoned, “We should probably figure out what’s going on.”

After the rest of the group agreed, we began moving again. The last leg of the journey was nice because it was downhill, but it was rather steep so we had to make sure we didn’t go too quickly.

Upon arriving in the village, we were greeted by sights of despondent villagers. Some sitting down on the ground, staring at the ground, some roaming aimlessly. The air was heavy with grief and despair. We made our way to the second largest building, which I thought was just a large store. Turns out I wasn’t too far off, but it was actually a sheltered marketplace. Empty stalls formed a handful of aisles going down the length of the structure. The forefront stall was the only one inhabited, and even then it had a paltry selection of items. Come to think of it, I didn’t see any farms or anything like that nearby, I realized.

“Ah, welcome,” a young, frightfully skinny man greeted us as he rose from behind the stall, a small crate in hand, “You must be the Peace Party, yes? Did our message not make it to Fyrun?”

“No, it did,” Raen stated, “We simply decided we should come see how things are for ourselves.”

“Well, I’m sorry you had to see us in this sorry state,” The man said as he set his crate down on the counter. “Things have been going rather poorly for us since the bridge was destroyed. It is the cornerstone of our village’s economy after all. With the bridge being out, we haven’t been getting anyone passing through the village, and therefore nobody to make trades with, and no customers to sell to.”

“I see, that is troublesome. I take it that trading is how this village survives, typically?” Raen asked, to which the young man simply nodded.

“We saw on our way that the bridge’s repairs looked like they hadn’t really even started,” Oroske began as Raen thought to himself, “What’s been going on here?”

“Bandits and terrorists, that’s what,” The man said, frustration more than apparent in his voice. “At first, they’d simply destroy whatever progress had been made, forcing us to wait for the next set of construction supplies before we could continue working. Even then we’d have to wait for them to go back and bring the stuff we already should have had. But now I think they’ve gotten even more aggressive. We haven’t seen a shipment from Ish’din in nearly two weeks. I worry that these bandits are attacking our suppliers on their way here.”

“That would do it,” Oroske said grimly, “We’ll get to the bottom of this, I promise.”

“Thank you, but we can’t afford the Tsumi Clan’s help,” the young man argued.

“You don’t need to. The matter of this bridge concerns more than just your village. It’s an important part of Ishen’s infrastructure. We’ll bring up the issue at the conference, and I’m certain we’ll be able to work together with the Parliament to get this situation resolved soon.”

The young man was brought to tears, and thanked us fervently. We asked if there were any other issues he knew of that needed to be brought up and he shook his head.

We exited the building and decided to split up into our three groups again. My group decided we would go look at the bridge more closely, while the other two groups split up to speak to the villagers.

When we got to the bridge it was easy to see exactly how much damage had been done. Roughly a third of the bridge was completely destroyed. Or so I thought, when Oroske stepped near the edge and looked straight down, into what was in my mind an abyss. “Yep, that’d be the best way to do it,” he said. Curious, I walked over and cautiously peered over. The height was dizzying and made me feel sick. But all the way down at the bottom was a river, with large pieces of stone jutting out of the water, which matched the appearance of the bridge’s stone. Oroske had to pull me back, as I was swaying from dizziness.

“Looks like they detonated both sides at the same time. The central part of the bridge looks like it fell down pretty evenly. With how little construction equipment there is here, we definitely won’t be able to cross it now, nor use it on our way back.” Oroske explained to Raen.

“Couldn’t we use magic or something to get across?” I asked.

“In theory, sure. But to securely bridge that distance for a single person would require a tremendous amount of focus and power output. You’d probably need two people, one for power, one for endurance to make it happen. And that’s just for a single person, a group our size would be near impossible.” Kared explained.

The bridge situation more clearly understood, we determined we would, in fact, need to take the long way around. We collected the rest of our party, and began the return trip to Fyrun. Our other groups briefed us on what they learned, which was unsurprisingly not a whole lot. Most of the people said all or most of their issues stem from the issue with the bridge.