In his minds eye, Corvayne had seen himself some day riding out on a Hoverbike alone. Maybe Hari hanging on his back. Possibly Spears, or Lady Blood Claw coming with him when things fell apart. There was part of him that worried about it and sometimes fixated on a second exile, worrying about it the same way one would lick a tooth that didn't quite feel right, as if doing so would fix it or clean it or prevent whatever was wrong from being wrong.

In some ways, him leaving the camp today was like that lone wolf fantasy. Something was wrong with his place in the expedition, and rather than try to bash his head against it, he needed something else. A problem timed like a spear sneaking under a shield would do just fine.

His goal was to scout, determine what the other side of the conflict was like, then decide if he'd insert himself into it, or if he'd side step it and let The Empire reap whatever it had sowed with it's northern neighbors, one's whom they had apparently nuked with a 'light wall' not a decade earlier.

So, returning to the fantasy of riding off alone, his mistake was to assume that Princess Bell had been successful at driving everyone away aside from Spears, who if push came to shove would no doubt apply some of the classic Watcher discipline. He assumed that it would take weeks to find some lever to get Bell to act like a somewhat normal person. He assumed she would not be doing dishes in the kitchen and he for sure assumed that she would not be on speaking terms with June.

He learned that he was all wrong about five minutes after the last rider left and Princess Bell, arms covered in lemon scented soap bubbles up to her elbows, came charging out, upset beyond even Corvayne's newly expanded capacity to understand.

“Sir Corvayne!” She snapped, with a newfound level of controlled anger that made him actually straighten, for a moment sure that Coming-In-Hot or Chases-Up-Trees had snuck into camp.

Warning bells triggered, both in how raw her voice sounded, that she was doing work inside the truck for some reason, and especially that she had elevated him from scum to a knight while he was gone.

“Princess Bell.” He gave her a little bow then folded his arms.

“Stop bowing! Time is of the essence, you had heard, correct? My brother was slain!”

“I heard from the messengers just a minute ago... I'm sorry for your loss.”

Corvayne watched her wipe tears from her eyes while still looking angry. “I mourn not he who dies for our great country, but rather that my... our empire is fading.”

Corvayne had to back up and reassess what emotions she was displaying. “... Did you not like your brother?”

“If he didn't have the light in his blood I'd spit on his grave.” Bell's voice quivered as she spoke, then she did spit.

Corvayne felt an urge to put a hand on her shoulder and decided to take the risk. He patted her surprisingly clean white tunic, and to his surprise she looked less angry when he met her eyes.

“What do you need Bell?”

She looked away, then back at him. “I... we need to stop them. The lands past the walls are terrible places ruled by outlaws who prey on the weak. If it comes to them flooding the Empire, I would rather you slit my throat than let me be captured.”

Corvayne nodded, not bothering to tell the princess that the chance of her falling into any armies hands if she was inside the truck was nearly zero. “I promise it won't come to that. I want to see what's coming, so I'm going to scout them out, and decide if we can do something or we need to rally somewhere we can defend ourselves.”

Bell thought about what he said a moment, and then with a hint of her normal incredulous tone asked, “You think you can avoid fighting?”

Corvayne frowned a little, thinking back to the advice about making friends of his enemies. “In most wars, both groups consider the other side the bad guys. We thought you were a bandit too, and you thought I was one.... last time we saw each other... a few days for you?”

She turned beet red, though Corvayne didn't feel certain it was anger. For once, he was right as there was clear regret in her voice as she said, “Spears spurred our leader to rash action.”

He was suddenly hyper-aware of his hand on her shoulder still and took it off. “So before I act, I want to see what's going on... because we didn't sign up for this, and I'm not dragging 20 other people into a war.”

“You were kind to my troops anyway, so I hope you will see what I have told you is true. But, I will also say what I know to be true was... reforged this week. Very well! We shall decide together, then, what kind of enemy we are facing. My question then is how you plan to move behind their lines without ending up facing a thousand men anyway.”

Corvayne said, without thinking, “Because I can fly over them?” then looked at her and saw the gears turning in her head. “Princess, No. Absolutely not. The only person I'm willing to risk here is myself.”

He didn't add he was willing to do this at all because he needed a distraction, badly. Thinking about Wick's gaze on him, angry, made him feel empty and stupid. They needed to talk, but that talk needed to happen when he had time to distance himself from her glare, and the certainty he had felt that she hated him, even if her face was twisted into that of a stranger. That and maybe she'd forget exactly what she had said about him never coming near her again.

Looking back to Bell, he expected a tantrum in response to shooting her down. He did not expect her to bow. “Then please, help our empire!”

“You're not going to force yourself to come along?”

“The only thing I could offer you was directions, as I'm familiar with the tactical geography of the entire empire.”

Corvayne paused. “Fine. Get some warm clothes, I'll get you ear plugs. No screaming while we are flying.”

“EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE”

Corvayne winced as Bell started screaming about five seconds into the hover-bike taking off.

“Don't they have potions that let you fly?!” He cried out as he felt her nails somehow digging into his ribs. Mosh had figured out how to make an aircraft grade shield for the vehicle, so that was a lot less worries about howling winds, grit, bugs, and birds ending up in his face. But shields did nothing against backseat attacks.

“There's nothing under me! What foolishness did you talk me into?!”

“Princess you don't need to hold me that hard, you have a belt on! Ow, ease up! I am slowing down.”

Like that he stopped them in midair, floating about a hundred feet up and drifting slightly upwards due to buoyancy.

He looked back and saw that she was about to start hyperventilating, and he used his instructor in charge voice. “Look at me. Breath when I say. In... Hold... Out... Slower. In... Hold... Out...”

In a few moments he felt her iron grip lessen. Did they drag her into a Tower run while he was gone? No, it was probably something from her chosen training. Maybe she was younger then he thought and just had spent time working hard out in the sun. Non-Watchers apparently had problems with UV rays warping their bodies. As did smoking and drinking... he had been shocked that Reaper wasn't past thirty yet.

He saw her about to look down and he cleared his throat. “While we are here, can you tell me what happened while I was gone? I'm going to drive us slowly, so take your time.”

“You're trying to distract me from something.” She growled.

Corvayne caught himself before he said 'from looking down' and instead said, “That and I want to know. You seem like you're doing better.”

“I stepped over a line, and Spears-Like-Water stepped over a line, and we agreed to be sovereigns over ourselves.”

Corvayne didn't need a vivid imagination to imagine Spears mad. His memory did just fine. “I like the wording Bell.”

She was quiet a moment, so Corvayne lowered the Anti-gravity a notch and eased the bike forward slowly, shield still holding as a sphere rather than the oval shape it took when flying full bore. Just enough thrust to be a sort of gentle nudge in the back. He didn't dare drive at a fraction of baseline gravity lest he accelerate her to death. If he hadn't trained for so long on bikes like it, well, to most people they were death traps to be honest.

“You seem to only remember I am royalty when you are angry with something I've done, I've noticed.”

“Because when I'm formal, your title puts a wedge between us.”

He felt her grip slacken a little. “I formally say I am sorry for the conflict that set us off on the wrong foot.”

“Because you are not that sorry?”

“Because when I am formal, it is so there is weight behind it.” She said. From the tone, he knew her chin was probably up, which was fine because she wasn't looking down.

“I'm sorry for not figuring out what to do with prisoners before we took them. You could have had tents if we had thought about it.”

“And for nothing else?” She asked in a flat tone.

“I felt the best solution to our mutual problem of you being our captive was delivering you home. You didn't, so I made do with the next best thing, which was trying to get you to tell me your goal and help you with it while you were stuck with us.”

She was quiet as he ramped up the speed a little more, until he heard and felt her crying moments before a hot tear landed on his neck. He took a deep breath and slowed the hover-cycle again in mid-air. He gave her a few moments before he asked the question. He decided to try to phrase it like Mister-I, as he didn't know how to really cheer someone up.

“Can you tell me what's wrong?”

“The Empire is really dying. I couldn't save it. I'm a failure.” She didn't cry loudly, instead only giving it away from how she was breathing. That and that she was soaking the shirt he had on under his armor.

“It's not dead yet. Things don't look good, but you are premature calling it a loss before it's certain.”

He realized a moment later that he was on a hover-cycle running away from Wick and Hari because he was certain that he was a failure. That he couldn't fix what was happening, and that he was certain Wick had been testing him and found him wanting when he engaged in the type of romance she had warned him about.

He bit his lip. No, he was not going to go back. He still felt something was off, and the potential for a huge army to come rolling up on them was something he needed to fudge until he made a shrine for Lythandies in that spot. That and the elf shrine, and consecrating them with a fruit-flavored dragon heart. He should have asked the Barkeep a bunch of questions about the quest.

Princess Bell was wrapping her arms around him now, just sniffling. He took a deep breath and patted one of her hands.

“It's going to be okay. As long as one citizen lives, the empire lives on. Every person who fights for their homeland knows this.”

This wasn't one hundred percent true based on what Corvayne thought of how one might split up city-states, kingdoms, and empires in terms of size and complexity, but the formly spoiled and now depressed princess behind him once more gave him a play worthy delivery of a response, this time “Really?”

“Yes... now I'm going north, tell me about the bridge they are going to blow up, and the other town...”

“The walls used to be along a ravine. After a previous emperor moved them...”

“He built a new one?” Corvayne corrected.

“No, he commanded the wall to move.”

He waited for a hint it was a joke.

“That does not fit with what I know of large scale territorial defenses, Bell.”

She huffed then sniffed. “Do not compare meager stone walls to the works of art our ancestors made to defend the realm! Our walls can move and crawl and shift... should one of our bloodline be there to direct them.”

“Okay. Let's go look and see what's going on. Before we assume that the empire is doomed.”

Corvayne pushed the throttle and turned down the gravity, using the imperial riders as a suggestion on which way to go. Below him, the dry high plains were occasionally broken up by one of the streams that snaked out from the source, and lines of spire-like rocks, set up in clear intentional curves spaced evenly a few miles apart, perhaps markers of old Pilgrim roads.

He saw the ravine, first as a lip of rock near the horizon, then as the massive chasm it truly was, colored in both geographic bands with the normal colors of exposed rock: Reds, oranges, yellow, white, darker colors where volcanic rock might have found it's place. But there was also signs that some other force had done tremendous violence to the ravine, including a gash that had green crystals swelling out of whatever had made it, the rent in the ravine moving along to the other side as if someone had seen a river carve the land and wished to challenge it.

The princess gasped a little, perhaps caught in the sight, before she dared free a hand to point westwards. “The bridge should be there, near where the stone line is.”

Trusting that she would know, he guided them to a spot where a natural spire in the middle of the huge canyon was connected by an impressive wood bridge, clearly shaped by some sort of magic to form an arc across the gap. A smaller more human bridge finished the path across.

Corvayne flew past it, marking the location, then followed the line of stones in his flight path. The land was starting to get less desolate, though it looked like it was still winter as the few trees appearing were bare of leaves. He saw what looked like farmland tilled into geometric patterns, and veered to follow a river nearby, eventually finding a small town nestled at the center of a web of tan winter wheat fields.

He felt something was wrong before he really saw saw the soldiers in black and the distant white form of bodies, pale when stripped of clothes and lying near buildings, with just the hints of bright red gore from the distance they were at. Corvayne could look against the clear blue sky now and see first whispers of smoke rising from homes being torched.

Corvayne let his shadow hands draw his spear, his cleaver, and his fire breathing dagger as he guided the hovercycle gently down.

The princess must not have had as clear sight as he had, or had been distracted by the view. “What's happening? What's going on down there?”

Corvayne landed, then got off as he gripped his spear. “Scouting's over.”