Glen had an exhausting past few days, but his goal was finally in sight.

There it was, before his eyes; the enormous walls of Tabre, the border fortress. It was something to behold, especially in the middle of nowhere like this.

He figured the weird long-eared people he saw marching probably started their march further away from the middle of Sangrea and Gevilia, so perhaps Tabre had the fortune to be spared an encounter.

While he was certainly excited to have reached his main destination, his mind was still rather occupied by other things.

He was still trying to understand exactly how he managed to kill the creature that attacked him in the village. Either he was an unheard-of prodigy of the blade, or it was something magic related; he was more than willing to bet on the latter option.

He knew a bit about how magic worked, given that he was once raised in a noble household, but he obviously wasn’t a practitioner or especially knowledgeable. He did know, though, that the intricate carvings in the gauntlets he had ‘borrowed’ were almost certainly some form of magic.

He’d been told that usually the carvings in enchanted equipment were generally relatively large and discernible, leading him to assume that whatever he was wearing contained a ridiculously complex enchantment. He couldn’t imagine how long it would have taken to carve something so detailed; not to imply that he knew what any of it meant, but it was clearly deliberate wither way.

His guess was certainly plausible, but he knew well that he did not personally have any means to confirm or deny it, so he originally intended to stop thinking about it a while ago. Evidently, his efforts weren’t turning out very effective.

Suddenly, he snapped back to reality. He spotted a few human figures a fair ways ahead, standing in front of the gate. He rationalized they were most likely members of the city guard. They seemed rather enveloped in a conversation, paying hardly any attention to Glen’s steady approach.

By the time he was around ten meters away, he shouted a greeting. “Hey, this is Tabre, right?”

The guards both jumped in surprise and looked in his direction, simultaneously drawing their weapons.

“Holy shit, where did you come fr-” The guard who let out the sudden exclamation was interrupted by another beside him who began fake-coughing loudly over the man's words. The two glared at each other for a moment before the initial speaker continued.

“I-I mean, state your business!”

Glen silently scoffed at the unprofessionalism.

“Hey. I’m a refugee from Jarea. I heard this place is pretty heavily fortified and thought I might be safe here. May I pass through?” He shouted back a pretty clear-cut answer.

“If you’re only a refugee, then why do you approach us bearing arms?”

Glen stared wide-eyed at the ludicrous question.

“Uh… because I need to protect myself? Don’t you see the lack of a massive shimmering barrier to my right?”

Glen tried to take a step forward, only for the guard to yell a command at him.

“Halt! Take not a step forward. Toss your sword and cloak into the grass to your right. Toss it underhanded, slowly, so we can watch. Then, you–”

The guard had an extremely stern expression on his face. Glen smelled something foul in the air. This was extremely odd behavior for a city guard, even, or possibly especially in such a dangerous situation.

He narrowed his eyes before interrupting the guard and spitting out a response.

“Uh… No. I’m not disarming myself at your request. I need this to protect myself. I have just as little reason to trust you as you do to trust me.”

Glen was starting to get irritated very quickly.

“Wh–... Huh? I said, toss your sword and cloak into the–”

“I said no, jackass, I’m not doing it. Why don’t you disarm yourself first, so I feel safe approaching?”

The guard had an extremely bewildered expression on his face, as if he were an actor and his partner had suddenly gone off script.

“S-Sir, I’m afraid if you refuse, then we are going to have to deny you access to the–”

The guard paused as he saw Glen start walking towards them, slowly drawing his sword.

“Halt! I… Stop moving, you prick!” The guard started shrieking at Glen, but Glen continued his advance.

All guards present drew their blades. Glen suddenly stopped, now around five meters away.

“Here, I stopped. Now that you all have them out, I’ll toss my sword away if you toss yours first. Let’s be civil about this, alright?”

Glen had absolutely no idea where this sudden burst of confidence came from. He definitely didn’t think he was at all prepared to take on three trained guards at once, yet for some reason, something in the back of his mind told him he could do it.

Either way, there was something very fishy about this interaction.

He recognized the expressions on those guards’ faces, the tones of their voices. Either they were impersonating the actual city guards or there was something very wrong going on with this town.

Glen recalled one of numerous times his elder brother sent thugs to try to assassinate him. They had nearly caught him on several occasions, whether posing as guards or various servicemen. Having to live his life being that paranoid certainly made a person develop a rather keen sense of what a suspicious person looks like.

“Fool me once…” He mumbled under his breath.

He kept up his obnoxious smile and bravado, waiting to see how they responded.

“Fine. Here, we’ll toss our weapons into the grass over there on the count of three. You follow suit. That good enough for you?”

The guards were clearly irritated, but for some reason, they complied anyway.

Glen raised a curious eyebrow.

If anything, this was more suspicious; he was just about ready to give up on Tabre before they spoke up. Why would these guards relent against such a brazen traveler? They could’ve denied him access simply for being rude, had they truly wanted to. He absolutely couldn’t let his guard down.

“Three. Two. One. Toss!”

Everyone threw their weapons into the grass. They were all unarmed now.

Glen was extremely confused by this turn of events. He looked towards the guards, silently asking if he could step forward. The speaker glanced back at him before responding.

“What about that hood?”

The guard smirked slightly. Glen furrowed his brow in irritation.

“Come on, guy. It’s just a hood.”

“You could be hiding something under the cloak.”

“Fuck, fine.”

Glen removed the hood and tossed it where he placed his sword.

Fortunately, the gauntlets could mostly be seen through, so they didn’t push it any further. “That enough? Who are you, the TSA?”

“Yes. You can move forward now. We will retrieve your things for you shortly. Step forward slowly.”

The guard answered the question pretty clearly, but something was off again.

That uncanny feeling was back, like the guard was reading off of a script. Glen was comforted a bit as he felt the weight in his back pocket, remembering the dagger he ‘borrowed’ from one of the houses in the destroyed village. There was still something fishy going on, and he needed to make absolutely certain he didn’t drop his attention for even a second.

After a few seconds, he arrived under the arch of the gate. Everyone simultaneously sighed.

“Geez, kid, why’d you hafta' be so difficult?”

Glen scoffed.

“And why’ve you gotta' be so uptight?”

Two two stared at each other with irritated expressions. The guard interrupted their ‘intimate’ moment with yet another loud, obviously fake cough.

“Anyway, we have a bit of an inspection process here, and we can’t afford to be lax about it given the circumstances. If you could just step into-”

“What if I don’t want to?”

Glen narrowed his eyes even more. Something was wrong; he could feel it.

“Then we can’t let you in. It won’t be difficult, we just need to ask you a few questions like where you came from, who you are, what you’re here for, et cetera. Just come into this room over here, okay? I’ll send someone to pick up your stuff while we go inside.”

The guard seemed suspiciously eager. Why did he seem so willing to let such a rude visitor into the city? Glen couldn’t rationalize it.

“Alright, alright. I’ll stop being a pest. Where’d you say to go?”

The guard seemed relieved at Glen’s acceptance.

“Right over here, sir. Hey, can you go fetch his stuff?”

“Sure thing, cap.”

There was something off about the way the captain– as it appeared he was– said that last sentence, but Glen wasn’t exactly sure what. The captain walked towards a side door and began opening it.

Time slowed to a halt. Something was wrong.

Glen was certain he was in danger. He felt something like static electricity behind his head; the hair on the back of his neck was standing on end.

It almost felt like…

As if he lost control of his body, Glen ducked faster than he’d ever moved in his life, dodging back out the gate the way he’d entered.

Standing directly behind where he had just been was a guard, holding up his hands toward where Glen’s neck would have been.

He was right. It was magic. They were trying to interfere with his mind, somehow.

“Shit! Al, did the spell miss? And to think that knight yesterday was so easy–...”

“Yes, I missed. We’ll have to fight this one out.”

Glen glared in utter bewilderment at the shameless conversation taking place before him. He dashed back and grabbed his sword and cloak.

What was going on in this city?

“Care to tell me what the fuck you were just planning to do to me? I knew something was up.” Glen spat at the guards.

There were only three, but knowing that one was a magic caster made him a bit more concerned. He was lucky he managed to dodge out of the way and didn’t end up having to take all three with his dagger alone.

“We owe you nothing.”

Without so much as a word between them, all three knights began approaching.

Glen wasn’t going to let them take the initiative. He drew his blade and dashed forward. Time seemed to slow down a bit as he took in the stance of each of his opponents. None of it registered in Glen’s present mind, but something deep inside his subconscious was able to discern these things.

The one on his left had a slightly injured ankle. If he struck there first, he could trip the guard and use it as a distraction.

The captain was in the middle, and from the wear on it, the ‘something’ in Glen’s subconscious could tell he was using a practice sword. It seemed he’d been summoned on short notice and forgot to grab his combat blade.

The one on his right, who seemed to be called Al, was a magic caster. Given the rarity of magic casters in the region, it was fair to assume that the others were fully non-magical. Nervous interference through magic required a type of highly specialized close-range spell, so it was unlikely that Al was capable of any long-distance spells. Al was probably substantially less of a threat than he seemed.

All in his subconscious, the perfect route was devised and sent to his present mind.

Suddenly, Glen knew what to do. He veered to his left, sliding along the ground to avoid an overhead strike he somehow predicted, slicing the ankle of the already-injured guard. The guard predictably tripped and blocked the path of the captain, confusing him for just long enough that Glen was able to vault off of the ground and stab him from behind.

The captain managed to lean forward just enough that he wasn’t totally impaled, but he still had a sizable chunk carved out of his back.

He shrieked in pain as he fell to the ground.

As Glen was occupied with the captain, the nearby Al attempted to sever Glen’s head; he was too slow.

Glen had already pulled back his blade after the strike on the Captain and cleanly parried Al’s blow, proceeding to forcefully kick the remaining guard in the crotch.

Al wailed as he crumbled to the ground.

The first guard he attacked should have recovered by now. Without even turning around beforehand, Glen used the rebound from the parry to swing his sword around behind him, feeling it impact with metal yet again.

Clang!

The already-injured guard had attempted to catch him from behind while he was dealing with Al. The sheer force of the strike on his blade nearly knocked the guard over; he managed to maintain his footing, but unfortunately…

He was too slow.

Glen fully turned to face his opponent, then severed the poor fool’s arm in an instant, striking at the gap in the lightweight armor. He screamed in agony, gripping at the wound, pouring blood like a busted reservoir.

Glen calmly walked over to the captain, stepping on his chest and placing the tip of his blade on the captain’s throat.

“Now.”

“What were you planning to do to this b- I mean, me?” Glen appeared flustered for a moment as he interrupted himself.

The guard quickly shouted back in response.

“You fucking bastard! We were just going to knock you out and take you to the jail!”

The Captain looked like he was going to cry from rage. Glen smirked before replying.

“And, why were you going to do that?”

“We were ordered to take in any travelers… we can’t trust anyone now that The Palisade has fallen. We still remember some of the things out there… we can never be too weary of shapeshifters! I guess we should have been looking out for lunatics like you, too!”

The Captain spat on Glen’s boot.

“Ah… it truly has been so long. Regardless, thank you for the information. And…”

Glen turned around suddenly, swinging his sword behind him like clockwork.

Ding!

He deflected yet another potentially lethal blow. Al had gotten up already and attempted to strike him from behind.

“Don’t try that again.”

Glen stepped off the injured captain and used his free hand to punch Al square in the face so hard that the magic caster fell over on his back unconscious.

Glen was facing the gate now, only a few feet away from the arch. He blinked several times.

“What just…”

He turned and looked at what he had just done.

“Shit.”

He dashed through the still-open gate, not eager to let the two still conscious guards catch up with him.

“I remember starting the fight but… What did I just…”

Glen seemed to have a strange gap in his memory.