Hoplite scrambled up the tree easily as Lance screamed after him to take the would-be assassin alive. He knew that very well, he would take him alive to interrogate him first. After Hoplite was done, the watchers could have whatever was left of the poor fool. Surely they would like to question this elf as well, for certain the mysterious attacker had to be one of them, otherwise, where would he have gotten the color-shifting cloak?

Who was to say that it wasn’t them who sent this killer? He wore watcher’s garb after all… the assassin had to have gotten it from somewhere.

He knew that the watchers couldn’t be trusted, but to attack him in this way? Why not send their entire force to kill him as soon as he was out of armor? The fiends were a problem, yes, but only one assassin wouldn’t be enough to get the job done… but then again, the watchers didn’t know that. They had not filled in Lance on this assassination plan apparently, based on her reaction…

Perhaps he should hold his judgments before shifting guilt on all the watchers, this could be a rogue trying to take matters into their own hands.

He scaled the tree quickly, driving his fingers deep into the bark with his gray rock-hard fingernails as the assailant fled. Pistol clenched between his teeth as he ascended, he felt the bark press into the pads of his feet as he used them to quicken his ascent, his hands providing the grip with his abnormally strong nails.

An accidental mutation during his infusion, one he never thought he’d ever find a use for on the battlefield aside for ripping through flesh… till now. When he finally crested the high branch he had been shot at from, he saw that other watchers were speeding towards the attacker, hopping through branches with practiced grace.

The assassin though, was far faster. The speed by which he leaped across the branches made Hoplite think of a Paladin, the previous generation of super-soldier. He knew though that this could not be one of them, the frame and height were too small. Paladins, while not quite as tall as Hoplites, were still head and shoulders taller than ordinary humans.

This was a man of middling height and width, no augments from Terna certainly. Hoplite strained his legs, and jumped forward, moving across the branches with long leaping strides, passing the four wide-eyed watchers and quickly gaining on his quarry. He would never be able to jump across these treetops in the phalanx suit, the weight would snap them off and send him plummeting to the earth for certain. He kept the Fortis in his teeth, wanting to have his hands free to grab the assassin or climb higher if needed.

The assassin turned back, revealing a set of brilliant blue eyes. Hoplite was only three branches behind the man now, having closed the gap in merely a few seconds since the second bolt was fired. The killer’s eyes widened in horror and he turned his head back forward, trying to increase his pace from his already super-human stride.

Hoplite then promptly increased his own pace, quickly gaining on the elf until he was practically breathing down the killer’s neck. Now being right behind the elf, it would simple thing to reach out and grab the man. Hoplite lashed out, fingers furled like claws as he swiped at the assassin, only to be left gripping the hem of the color-shifting cloth as the man suddenly dropped from the branch, having undone his cloak to escape Hoplite's grasp. The elf landed on the forest floor in a roll, quickly rising to continue his stride as if he hadn’t just dropped from a height that would break a normal man's legs. Hoplite immediately followed, leaping down from the twenty-foot-high branch and using the cloak to obfuscate himself. Another metal broadhead bolt sliced through the shifting cloth, missing Hoplite's rib cage by only inches and becoming tangled in the thick fibers. Hoplite tossed the cloak forward as soon as his feet hit the ground, the shock absorbers in his knees and ankles taking the brunt of the fall while he took the Fortis from his mouth.

Long black hair tied back in a tail waved in the wind as the now bare-armed man ran, his face still concealed by a black face mask. A simple sleeveless dark shirt and dark trousers made up his outfit, revealing a lean runner's frame. Pointed ears revealed him to indeed be an elf, surviving the fall earlier had proven that… was he an actual watcher?

Hoplite knit his brow as he focused. Discerning the allegiances of the assassin would come after capturing him.

Hoplite would fire at the man's foot if he somehow managed to outpace him, but he knew that the chase would be over soon. No one, no matter how fast they were, could outrun Hoplite on flat terrain. As the distance closed, Hoplite swiped for that trailing ponytail with his right hand only to meet air as the man suddenly rolled to the side, coming up to a kneeling crouch before firing yet another bolt at Hoplite.

The crossbow fired from the man's steady grip, and the bolt would have struck Hoplite right in the eye, had he not shifted his head to avoid it. The bolt whizzed through the air until it thunked into a tree behind him, the sound of something crunching immediately following after. A quick glance revealed that the tree seemed to be rotting away. The spot where the bolt had entombed itself was turning a sickly shade of gray, the bark quickly peeling away as a woman’s shriek echoed loud in his ears.

Not Lance’s voice… no, it was coming from somewhere on or behind the tree. Had another watcher gotten injured somehow by the bolt? It didn’t seem possible… Suddenly, several of the surrounding trees began to glow, long ribbons of multi-colored light flowing out from the tops of the branches as the unknown woman continued to shriek. That rotting tree did not have the glowing ribbons leaving its branches…

Was that… could it really have been a fae? These strange colorful ribbons, were they fae? Was he witnessing a fae being killed? A tree spirit was real? How could-

Focus.

Hoplite frowned before turning his attention back to the assassin and firing his magnum, the blast tearing through the crossbow with an explosion of wooden shrapnel that rained across the forest floor. The bullet then slammed into the dirt, kicking up a small cloud of dust that spattered the killer and Hoplite’s body with a fresh layer of dark grime. Blood seeped down the elf’s arm, it seemed the bullet had grazed his bicep after the round had destroyed the crossbow. Had it fully connected, the arm would have been reduced to pulp. The assassin then snarled before darting forward, slashing for Hoplite's face with an almost supernatural speed as blood streaked from the fresh bullet wound.

The elf had drawn a sharp black blade, the metal forged to look like what appeared to be a raven's beak.

Hoplite grabbed the elf’s blade-holding wrist, side-stepping the blow in a blink. In that same motion, Hoplite began applying pressure to the assassin’s wrist. Hoplite felt the bones of the assassin's wrist turn to powder beneath the crushing force of his hand, and the elf let out a horrid shriek as he dropped his black blade to the grass, falling to his knees before Hoplite in a slavering rictus of agony. The questioning would begin now.

“Who sent you to kill-” Hoplite began before he heard something begin to whizz through the air toward him.

Hoplite dropped the man's wrist and backpedaled, another crossbow bolt thudding into the soil at his feet. He turned in the direction he had heard it coming from, spying the four watchers that had followed Hoplite after this assassin. All were slightly blurry from the color-shifting cloaks they wore, but Hoplite could roughly make out their outlines. They were all hidden behind the thick trees surrounding Hoplite and the assassin, with only their heads seemingly visible. Perhaps they believed that Hoplite might not be able to see them? They wore the day-watchers' cloaks, he realized… not the dark garb Lance herself sported.

Sloppy… if he hadn’t been so narrow-minded in his pursuit of his would-be killer, Hoplite would have- no, there was no excuse, he should have noticed this difference immediately.

“Ferow, get away now!” One of the killers shouted “Scramble! We’ll kill this oaf-”

Hoplite quickly aimed the Fortis and fired, the shot punching through the outline's skull and painting the forest behind it red with thick gore. The man fell to the dirt with a heavy thud, blood twitching from the suddenly still corpse, its limbs rigid with the killer's sudden death.

“Briggs!” Another man shouted from behind one of the trees, his head ducking back behind cover

The remaining three outlines all did the same, ducking behind cover as Hoplite took aim again. Yet he found that he could not quite pull the trigger…Why did he hesitate? These rounds were powerful enough to punch straight through these trees... Hoplite grit his teeth in frustration, they were just pieces of wood! A piece of cover on a battlefield and nothing more!

Hoplite then heard scrambling feet and cursing, and he turned to see that this elf, this… Ferow was trying to make an escape. He only needed one of them to be alive, but he’d rather keep Ferow from running since he was already out of his cloak. There was less of a chance of losing him in the night. Hoplite then lifted the Fortis and fired again, the round punching into the elf’s ankle and reducing it to an unrecognizable mass of bone-strewn flesh.

Ferow howled with agony and fell face-first to the dirt, his ankle made completely useless as it hung half-removed from the elf’s leg. Hoplite needed to finish this fight before Ferow bled out, or he’d need to capture a second killer, he still wanted his answers. Hoplite turned again as he heard footsteps thudding on the branches overhead, spying Lance staring down at him goggle-eyed.

“Three hostiles behind the trees to your left! Color-shifting cloaks!” Hoplite shouted as he darted toward those very trees.

He didn’t look to see what Lance did, instead opting to round the trees to see that the hostiles had seemingly vanished. The outlines of the cloaks were gone… meaning that they were hiding behind something currently in his view, for they couldn’t have gone that far. Alternatively… they could be in the branches above. Hoplite looked up to see that, yes, there was a form in the trees, freezing as Hoplite spotted it.

He raised his magnum and fired, the shot thudding into nothing but tree bark as the figure dissolved into mist. A crater had formed in the surface of the bark and Hoplite clenched his teeth in irritation. He had not hallucinated, there was someone climbing the tree just an instant ago… and now the tree had a giant hole in it from the bullet he fired. An uncomfortable weight settled in his chest, seeming to pull him down the more he dwelled on it.

Hoplite shook his head and huffed, scanning the surrounding foliage for any more signs of the killers with Fortis raised. Oh how he yearned for his motion tracker… still, his senses should prove more than adequate for dealing with these cutthroats. He then looked to the rigid corpse at his feet, and promptly ripped the cloak free, wrapping it haphazardly around himself. Hoplite looked down to see that same blur completely encased his body, made nearly invisible in the night… save for the parts it could not cover.

This cloak was not tailored for his size, and as a result, most of his legs and arms were still visible. That was fine, as Hoplite wanted to obfuscate his center mass from any more of those bolts. Not that such a primitive weapon would have been enough to kill him… probably not, best not to take risks. He did not know just how dangerous those bolts would be to his biology. A single one had peeled the bark right off that tree in an instant…

It was almost like something Darkwatch would use, yet Hoplite knew that there was no Third Arm outpost on Ahkoolis. Hoplite narrowed his eyes as he finally spied a shape moving slowly through some shrubbery, but right as he raised his magnum, another shape fell down upon the assassin. Lance collided with the blur, knocking it to the ground in a rolling tangle of limbs.

“Off!” A man’s voice shouted, a blurry limb kicking into Lance’s gut and sending her stumbling backward.

Hoplite took aim again, but Lance darted forward into the line of sight with a cough, otherwise unfazed by the powerful blow she had just been dealt. Her face was a rictus of rage as she came upon the killer, whirling with twin daggers upon his blurry frame.

Suddenly, he spied another blurry shape rushing through the forest toward him, a long blade of silver raised to deliver a killing blow. Hoplite casually shot the killer in the face, the corpse falling to the ground in a poof of mist… as if he had never been there. One of his assassins seemed to be in possession of a holographic projector… except if it had really been a hologram, why did it react to the shot? Why did it poof into mist when he shot it?

No, it couldn’t be a hologram, but the intended use was the same. Whatever this mist hologram was, it was clearly being used to get Hoplite to waste his ammo. Perhaps the killer utilizing this strange tech was counting on Hoplite wasting every round before moving in for the kill. Indeed, another mist-thing was already fast approaching…

There had to be a difference between the blur making up this hologram, and the blur of a real color-shifting cloak… the question was, what was that difference? He followed the outline of the thing all the way down to its…

Where were its feet?

Hoplite then eyed a cluster of stray rocks near the base of a tree, all about the size of his palm and pocked with porous holes. He quickly moved over and snagged one up, immediately throwing it as hard as he could toward the being’s head. The heavy rock phased through the mist creature, and it dissipated, the rock smashing into a tree and sending its fruits falling to the forest floor.

No feet meant it was fake.

He then eyed two more fast-approaching figures in the night… and he traced their outlines to see that one indeed did have feet. Hoplite then scooped up another rock, a bit of frugal inspiration taking hold of him as he reared back his arm to fling the stone toward the figure. The shape cursed as it saw Hoplite take aim, barely side-stepping the projectile as it whizzed right past his head.

This assassin was fast to avoid that… but not fast enough to dodge the second baseball-sized pebble that Hoplite had scooped up following the first. This one collided with the blur’s chest, a sickening crunch reaching Hoplite’s ears over the sound of clashing steel. The assassin fell to the ground in a coughing fit that only lasted seconds before he expired. That was two of four hostiles neutralized, one disabled. That meant that two were still left to deal with… one of which was preoccupied with fighting Lance.

Her daggers glinted green in the bright moonlight, sparks flashing between every collision between her blades and the assassin’s sword. The man was clearly proficient in the art of using a blade, deftly parrying and dodging blows that would have instantly killed him… yet, he was completely on the defensive, unable to attack due to Lance’s furious assault. It was all he could do to avoid having his neck sliced open it seemed.

Hoplite then lifted another rock, and took aim for the thief’s head before something thudded into him. He looked down to his shoulder, seeing that a crossbow bolt had sunk half an inch into his bare flesh. Blood the color of hot magma seeped from the fresh injury, and Hoplite scowled, his eyes tracing the impact zone to the top of a tree.

How had he not heard that bolt coming? He’d been able to hear every single one prior to this one… it was not that he was distracted, he had been preparing for a shot to be taken at him and had been ready to react once he heard it coming. This time however… it had gotten past him. Was something faulty with his sound enhancers?

No, nothing was faulty, he could pick out the sounds of crickets and terrified toads over the sound of Lance’s furious assault… how had the bolt been silenced then? He threw the rock at the outline, the head-sized pebble colliding with a crunch. The assassin immediately let out a pained shriek, a crossbow falling to the ground from a thick tree branch high above.

Hoplite must have struck an arm then, he had been aiming for the head… but…

A sudden dizziness came over Hoplite then, and he found that the world had begun spinning violently. He braced himself against a nearby tree, ripping out the bolt in his arm and retching bile onto the dirt. It had to be the poison that had killed that tree earlier… Boiling hot water now flowed around the wound, the veins across his arm all popping as the limb flexed without Hoplite’s control.

Whatever this stuff was, it had to be strong to be affecting Hoplite in this way, not even cyanide was capable of rendering him to this hot misery… He fell to his knees, coming to rest in the puddle of vomit he had just produced. It likely could not kill him… Hoplite knew that, but his body would be in a rictus of agony if he let his body process this on his own, he would be made useless for potentially minutes.

And this was all assuming that the poison wasn’t capable of just outright killing him. Hoplite could not allow himself to risk death, no matter his confidence in his body's own great ability to process poison. Hoplite did not like it, but there was only one choice available to him now…

He activated his blood filtration system.

With just a thought, Hoplite felt his blood vessels begin constricting; painfully at first, his veins visibly sinking within his flesh to produce deep furrows. He felt faint, his vision darkening for a brief moment as all blood flow ceased. A few seconds of horrid vulnerability passed before the light finally returned to his eyes, the boiling pain in his veins having completely dissipated as the filter finished its work.

Hoplite then spat a thick glob of vile-tasting spit onto the grass at his feet, the blades immediately turning gray on contact with the filtered poison. He looked up to the tree to see that the hostile had retreated in the few seconds Hoplite had been disabled… but he hadn’t gone far.

“Hold still Ferow! The house of Fikchon is not easily built and if you keep fidgeting-”

“There is a hole in my ankle!” Hoplite heard Ferow practically hiss.

Hoplite then rounded the tree, grabbing up a rock and taking aim at the head of the escaped Hostile. Oddly enough, his arm seemed to be just fine, based on how the blur standing over Ferow handled the mangled ankle with two open hands. Did this killer have the same capabilities Twindil did for healing? Had he healed his own wound as well?

Before Hoplite hurled the rock, he saw a glow begin emanating from the killer’s hands. Unlike Twindil’s healing glow, this one was a light shade of leaf green… Curious, Hoplite held back his rock, wanting to see if there was something he’d be able to discern from the healing. If they really were nanobots, there would be a sort of ‘grain’ to the air surrounding it. Clouds of nanobots tended to fly outside of wounds, making the air appear incredibly dusty. When Twindil had utilized her healing, Hoplite had been too focused on the healing itself to make note of the air surrounding her hands…

To his utter shock, there wasn’t any grain in the air surrounding the glow… it was just clear. The green light seemed to travel from Ferow’s ankle, all the way up to his shattered wrist. In a matter of seconds, the spattered ankle had re-knit itself, and the squished wrist had ballooned out to its original shape.

Ferow, had been completely healed. Was there… was there truly something to all this talk of magic-

He grit his teeth in frustration before hurling the rock full-force at the killer's head. Ferow screamed in horror as the rock impacted with the skull, the head caving in the temple of his fellow assassin and sending the body crashing to the earth as a twitching mass of dead flesh.

“Moony!” Ferow screamed as he shakily swiped away stray bits of flesh from his brow

Blood and brain matter spattered the dark-haired elf from head to toe, lower lip quivering as he hovered over the body. Hoplite shot forward, ready to crush Ferow’s legs before he could attempt an escape.

“Come back here and face me fae-killer!” He heard Lance call out “You will not escape the watchers! The wrath of the Ilum upon you coward!”

It sounded as if Lance had sent her quarry fleeing, whether she would give pursuit or not was unknown, but right now Ferow needed to be disabled.

Hoplite leaped, intent on landing on Ferow’s legs to shatter them, but unfortunately, the elf was already rolling back and away from him. Hoplite landed heavily, immediately lunging forward to grab and crush Ferow’s kneecap. Hoplite was instead forced to dodge back, as Ferow lashed out with his black blade, barely missing Hoplite’s throat by inches.

No one but a Hoplite would have been able to avoid that blow… Ferow had to be augmented in some way for him to move that quickly. Either a synaptic stimulator or a precog implant, though the latter was incredibly unlikely. Precogs weren’t even out testing yet, there was no way there would be one on this planet, much less be installed on a local.

Ferow launched forward again, his eyes ablaze with hot rage as he moved to deliver another slash, this one aimed at Hoplite’s chest. He moved back again, barely dodging the blow as the blade sliced through the collar of the color-shifting cloak Hoplite had commandeered. A sharp thing indeed for it to have cut through the thick cloak as if it were only air.

The cloak fell to the forest floor as Hoplite jumped back from one final blow, his cool golden eyes locking onto Ferow’s enraged blues as the assassin lashed out, intent on cleaving through Hoplite’s ribs. Hoplite batted away the blow, smacking the flat of the blade with the Fortis and flinging the elf’s arm upward. Ferow stumbled for the briefest of instants before he rolled with the momentum, coming to a kneel a few feet away from Hoplite.

The assassin never got a chance to stand from the roll.

Hoplite clicked on the Fortis’s safety, gripping it between his teeth firmly as he charged at the wide-eyed Ferow with reaching hands, fingers wrapping around the elf’s lean shoulders and squeezing hard. Hoplite’s stone-like fingernails bit into the flesh of the assassin's shoulders, drawing blood and eliciting a cry of agony from the elf. He then lifted Ferow up bodily, the killer letting out a pained howl as Hoplite stared murder into those blue eyes, the black beak-blade falling to the dirt from Ferow’s pained fingers.

Ferow began hyperventilating, his eyes darting rapidly from place to place before finally settling on Hoplite’s golden gaze. The interrogation would begin now. This time with no interruptions.

“Identify.” Hoplite ordered through the gun between his teeth.

“Ferow Mahera!” The elf screamed in agony, straining his neck back and forth as Hoplite applied pressure.

If he wanted to, Hoplite could squeeze the elf’s shoulders hard enough to shatter the bone. His current grip strength would leave deep bruises, but he didn’t want to risk sending the assassin into unconsciousness.

“Why did you try to kill me?” Hoplite asked, his tone unchanging.

"I was-" He gasped "We were paid to do it!"

The elf winced as blood dribbled down his bare arms and over Hoplite's squeezing fingers.

“Tch! Ah!” Ferow groaned through clenched teeth “A-a day watcher!”

“Name.” Hoplite commanded.

“You caught him already?” He heard Lance say from behind him.

He turned his head to see her and other watchers gathering around him and Ferow, some looking with… awe? Yes, looking at the assassin with awe and sparing some strange looks for Hoplite. Was that fear or was it confusion? Both? It didn’t matter. Why did Lance not go after the other assassin? Why were these watchers not doing so?

Ferow gasped out before Hoplite could ask Lance just those questions “Didn’t- give names…Came to me in mist form! I couldn’t see his face but he gave us those cloaks!” He continued through clenched jaws

“Are you a watcher?” Hoplite asked flatly.

“I ain’t a watcher, fella just hired me cause he heard me and my crew was the best! Didn’t tell me why he wanted ya dead but I-I didn’t ask.” Ferow groaned, shaking his head.

“How long have you been after me?” Hoplite asked, applying a bit more pressure and feeling the bones creaking through Ferow’s flesh.

“Three… Days…” He said through heaving pained breaths “Been… waiting for you to get out of that armor…”

Hoplite's eyes narrowed. Not one watcher had seen Ferow? Perhaps they had, but none had apparently thought to question him. Ferow was an elf wearing a watcher’s cloak after all… For that matter, Hoplite himself could have seen Ferow a dozen times in the last couple of days and not thought anything was amiss. He would be keeping an even keener eye on the watchers from now on.

Hoplite set him down on the ground without loosening his grip… and promptly stomped on Ferow’s right foot. The arc of Ferow’s foot was then flattened beneath the force of Hoplite’s stomp, and the elf cried out in agony, falling to the ground when Hoplite released him. Hoplite then kicked away the black dagger before he began kneeling on Ferow’s neck, looking to the watchers who all stared with concerned eyes, even Lance.

“Rope.” Hoplite ordered as he easily forced Ferow’s hands across his back.

A nearby watcher nodded after a moment of silence, wrapping the cursing Ferow’s wrists together with an almost… reverent touch. He wouldn’t be making any escape bound like that, and even if he found a way to escape those bindings, his crushed foot would ensure that he couldn’t outrun a turtle.

Hoplite stood, looking down at the glaring Ferow, that mask doing little to conceal the hate plastered across his face. Not from around here and hired by someone who wanted Hoplite dead… it could only be assumed that this employer had taken a slight at his presence in the Faewood and hired this elf to kill him.

The question was, what prompted this elf to hire an outsider to kill another outsider? Ferow had claimed to not be a watcher, and based on that accent he indeed wasn’t a native to the Faewood. He met Ferow’s glare, golden eyes meeting blue.

“Has anyone else been hired to kill me?” Hoplite asked in a cold tone.

Fear momentarily overtook the look in Ferow’s eyes before immediately going back to that hot anger “No one that’d be as good as me and my crew, so no.”

A couple of watchers dragged Ferow to his feet, the assassin putting all his weight on his unbroken foot as Hoplite stood. He then turned away from Ferow to approach Lance, who seemed to be focusing on just his face with a concerted effort. It seemed that elves were as uncomfortable with nudity as normal humans. Hoplite himself didn’t care about his nudity outside of the vulnerability that accompanied it, it was merely the natural state of one’s being, he didn’t know why people put so much stock in it.

He kept himself at the ready to deflect or catch any more bolts, Hoplite could not believe that only one set of killers had been hired to end his life, no matter how allegedly competent this one had been. Lance looked away from his face a moment to stare after Ferow as he was guided away by the watchers, likely they had their own questions to ask but Hoplite doubted that those questions would stray far from his own.

“Ferow the Raven… unbelievable.” She said almost to herself.

“The Raven?” Hoplite asked, turning to look at the limping man.

His handprints had made deep bruises on Ferows shoulders, a pain he’d be feeling for a long while yet. Lance blinked at his voice and turned her head back up to look at him.

“Yeah, I’m ashamed to say that he’s a bit of a celebrity around here.” She said with a frown “He’s a bit older than me I think, in his late two-hundreds. He’s famous on this continent as a… well, an assassin. He’s storied in Akan-Dar, I don’t think he’s ever failed before… He’s never been out here before.” She explained as Hoplite moved to walk back toward the river.

She quickly followed, this time seeming to go out of her way to stay just ahead of him “He does his work almost exclusively in Akan-Dar, used as a tool between the Block-Lords there. Not many elves make a home in Akan-Dar see, so hearing about a well-known elf in the largest human city on Ahkoolis has made him something of a folk ‘hero’ around here.”

She cleared her throat as dozens of watchers passed them by, none stopping to talk with either her or Hoplite as they presumably moved to see this ‘Raven’ for themselves. Others stopped by the still graying tree, tearing out the bolt still embedded in the rotting bark. Many of the watchers that surrounded the tree were openly weeping…

Weeping for the fae that had been killed.

“I guess ‘hero’ is kind of… wrong, but I suppose the respect he receives is similar to of a hero round’ here. Though with his involvement in killing a fae…“ She continued, tone becoming sorrowful “He’ll be flayed, legend or not. I can’t believe you actually managed to catch him… you’re going to be somewhat of a celebrity yourself when word spreads.”

“What happened to the one you fought?” Hoplite asked “It didn’t sound like he was neutralized.”

Lance audibly huffed as she fingered the hilt of one of her blades “He ran from me… I could have caught him, but it's my job to keep you in my watch. Fear not, he’ll be hunted to the edges of Ahkoolis now… In one way or another, he was involved with the murder of a fae.” She told him, her features hardening “He’ll be put down like a dog once the Tree-Hunters catch him.”

Silence passed between the two of them as they reached the river, Lance turning her back to him as Hoplite descended back into the water, scrubbing away the dirt caking his feet and finishing up the cleanse. The orange blood on his shoulder had already dried by the time he stepped into the river, and the wound that had been inflicted was already completely healed. It disappeared the instant the bolt had been removed.

When he was finished, he crawled up out of the river and moved past Lance toward the direction of the pod. He didn’t want to stay out of the armor longer than what was necessary.

“So…” Lance said “You feeling okay?” She asked, tone concerned.

“I don’t like to speak unless necessary.” Hoplite replied.

She let out a relieved breath “Oh thank Draoi, I thought you were angry with me.”

Hoplite frowned and actually turned back to her, looking her in the eyes. She seemed bemused as she looked into his eyes, though why he could not say.

“Why would I be angry with you?” Hoplite asked.

“I was assigned to watch you Hoplite, that does mean keeping you from causing trouble… but it also means keeping you from harm. I failed.” She said with a deep frown.

Hoplite furrowed his brow. The last few days had been spent constantly fighting fiends, she certainly hadn’t been too concerned with ‘protecting’ him then. Then again, perhaps when he was in his armor, she was confident that he could not be harmed. When Hoplite had emerged from his pod naked, she did seem to pay more attention to her surroundings, but he had simply chalked that up to nighttime caution.

“I am unharmed. You didn’t fail.” He said turning back ahead.

“Well… I suppose that’s true.” She said after a moment.

Hoplite didn’t reply.

“Those adventurers we met earlier are going to the Fiendwall to help shore up the defenses.” Lance said “Do you want to head that way? We can probably catch up to them with how we’ve been going the last few days.”

Hoplite considered. They were out of fiends to kill out here and unless the gap in this ‘Fiendwall’ was fixed they would continue to pour in. With all pests, the best thing to do was to eliminate them at the source, in this case, the Fiendwall.

“We’ll need to take supplies with us. You said before that the journey was three days, so we will need to pack for that.” He told her “When we reach the Fiendwall, I’ll eliminate enough to where the breach can be safely rebuilt.” He continued “And after that, we’ll see who sent Ferow to kill me.”

He turned to look at her and she grinned, nodding her response.

Another three days of travel… Or perhaps just one, Hoplite supposed that he could just sprint all the way there. That would still be yet another day spent out of contact with any sort of Eighth Arm personnel… Unless… Unless the breach was caused by a falling pod? The thought quickened his pace as he rushed for his shuttle. What if they were buried beneath the rubble? The supplies within couldn’t last them forever… He had to hurry!