The friendly argument got interrupted by panicked screams as someone from the group Quentin was currently questioning fell on the ground, writhing in pain before exploding into a blood mist.

“Quentin!” They yelled, earning a half-hearted answer.

“I’m alright,” the paladin responded. “He’s… not so much. Are you lot alright?”

“Y… yes, sir.” The soldiers who stood nearby replied with a newfound fear as they looked at the mangled pulp of bones and flesh that was once their comrade.

“Then let us continue. The sooner we end this, the sooner you can return to your families. And… tell that poor fellow’s family that he died with honour. They shouldn’t suffer more than necessary.”

The soldiers nodded in agreement, and then the interrogation continued. During the following hour of strained interrogation, three more such accidents happened, all ending in blood and gore with a few injured whom the others immediately treated. When it was over, Regis looked at the disheartened and defeated army while his soldiers arrived with a cart of food supplies.

“Listen up,” he spoke loudly, earning the attention of the still-frightened warriors. “We have rooted out all the demonic collaborators in your midst, so the rest of you are free to leave. As promised. These supplies should aid you in your safe return.”

While he said those words, he turned toward the highest-ranking soldier who was to lead the army back home.

“As soon as you return home, tell the head of the local church what happened here. Make sure they’ll use their power to eradicate any demonic collaborator that could be hiding in the Avellanet territories while sending word to the nearby settlements as well. If they managed to worm their way into your ranks then who knows where else they could be hiding?”

“Understood, your Lordship!” The soldier saluted before joining his fellows.

Regis and his fellow outlanders watched as the demoralised enemy forces left from atop the gate of the mountain pass which was quickly closed and barred shut.

“Well,” Amanda sighed. “This was a colossal cluster-fuck if I’ve ever seen one. So what now?”

“Now we tell everyone we know about Natalie.” Quentin growled as he wiped off the sweat from his brow.

“Don’t tell me that...”

“Yes,” the paladin sighed. “One of the soldiers managed to answer a question I asked before dying.”

“What question?”

“I asked if he remembers meeting or seeing any dark elves in the past months.”

“And I imagine he said yes.” Regis remarked with an already growing headache.

“According to him, he saw a beautiful dark elf woman with ruby-like eyes and a fancy armour wearing dark elf man staying in their local brothel a few weeks ago.”

“Etienne and Natalie,” the loremaster recognised them from the description. “At this point, I’m not even surprised any more.”

“The soldier told me that the woman approached him to invite him for a drink. The last thing he remembered was listening to her chatter before everything faded away. The next morning he woke up with a roaring headache, which he thought to have been caused by drinking too much.”

“So that bitch finally stooped low enough to prey on soldiers in a whorehouse to bolster the number of her sleeping agents.” Valerie said with enough venom to kill the rest of the soldiers who just left.

“You can’t blame her for hunting on home grounds.” Cruz noted, earning a slight chuckle from the group.

“Jokes aside,” the loremaster spoke up. “We’re in deep shit. Natalie preached neutrality at the lord’s assembly, but she actually tried to covertly help a disowned prince.”

“Unless she’s playing the long game,” Osmond hummed. “It’s meant to sound like she did it to support the third prince, but she could be using him as a scapegoat.”

“I hate all these scheming and political games. Why can’t people just say what they want and come at us directly? Why do they need all this subterfuge?” Sophie lost her calm, surprising everyone in the group.

“Because then you would know who wants you dead and could prepare accordingly.” Amanda answered, earning a nod from both Osmond and Valerie.

“The Argents were always notoriously good schemers.” The bone puppeteer stated.

“There’s a reason why they managed to stay in the highest circles of influential mage families all this time.” Valerie added.

“It also doesn’t help that we don’t know what they want from us in the first place.”

“Alright,” Fabien cut into the group’s conspiracy theories. “That’s enough doom and gloom for one day. Let’s get home before the sun disappears and get some dinner.”

“And a few drinks,” Cruz added. “I could use a few shots of that peach spirit you’ve been secretly experimenting with.”

“No way I’ll let you anywhere near it.”

The outlanders decided to take the cart back home instead of using the hidden gateway to teleport back. This gave them enough time to share their thoughts, much of which revolved around further reinforcing their defences and planting even more landmines. Even though they didn’t get to use them this time, who knew what the future would have in store for them? Once back in Thornfell, everyone went their separate ways.

“Rise and shine lazy bones,” Letty’s singsong voice stirred the dark elf from his sleep the next morning. “It’s already seven in the morning.”

“Wha... I overslept?” He asked groggily, earning a slight chuckle from the young woman.

“It surprised me as well. I didn’t expect to find you still snoozing away when I woke up.”

“I guess yesterday took more out of me than I imagined.”

“Anyway, we should get dressed. Dana is waiting for us downstairs with our breakfast.”

If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

“Sounds good to me,” the loremaster agreed before suddenly hugging Letty. “Do you have any plans after that?”

“I do,” she sighed. “The plants in the greenhouse must be harvested and the planting pots have to be prepared for the new seedlings.”

“I… I see,” Regis noted as he visibly deflated a bit. “I hoped you’d stick around a bit today, but I guess duty calls.”

“See you at dinner?” She asked back while pulling on her clothes, the spell weaver nodding as he got dressed as well.

“I have some stuff to craft and I’m sure Tristan will hunt me down eventually as well, but yeah. Sure thing.”

The two said their temporary goodbyes before going their separate ways. Regis headed downstairs to his workshop where he re-read the books with the common and rare enchantments of the journeyman rank, trying to figure out how he could best adapt them to their current needs. The threat of the Argents hung heavy above his head, his thoughts continuously returning to the events of the previous day.

‘Why would Natalie want to help the third prince take over Thorn Vale?’ He kept asking himself again and again. It made little to no sense at all. Sure, their domain was out of sight and out of mind unless someone specifically wanted to come for it and it was outside of the boundaries of the kingdom as well. That however wouldn’t stop either of the prince’s siblings if they wanted him dead. No. There had to be something else behind it but he couldn’t figure it out for the life of him.

The Argents could not have known about the Prismatic Landwaker or they would have done everything to conquer Thorn Vale for themselves. It had to be about something else. What truly bothered the loremaster was the woman’s decision to align herself with the disowned prince of all people. The man wielded no true power and no one wanted him to rule either. Even if the princess wasn’t fond of the Exiled Court, Natalie and her gang would have been better off trying to play at the ego and greed of the second prince.

Still, it mattered little in the current situation as he had too little information to go on. In the end, the dark elf decided to turn his attention to the more pressing matters instead of worrying about something that was out of his control. The journeyman-ranked enchantments were indeed of great use to him but more importantly, he finally managed to re-create one of them after hours of trial and error. Kelahre’s Greed was a fascinating yet also borderline sacrilegious enchantment that came in two variants.

The first one was known as ‘Fleeting Life’ and it was meant to siphon away raw life force from their enemies upon every successful hit the same way as a ‘life-steal’ enchantment would. The greatest difference however was that the enchantment was meant to be placed on a vial or a flask. In doing so, it would distil the stolen life force into something akin to a healing potion. Restless Soul was the arcane counterpart that tore away at the enemy’s spirit and distilled it into a quasi-arcana portion. Charlatan’s wisdom proved quite enlightening as he cast it on the pair of hip flasks, their descriptions floating above them with ghostly letters.

{Kelahre’s Fleeting Life}

{Item rarity: rare}

{Item quality: ordinary}

{Charges: 0/5}

{This enchanted flask siphons away and distils the very life force of your enemies. Every fifty points of physical or arcane damage dealt to your enemies will be converted into one charge. Each charge will heal twenty-five points' worth of health over ten seconds.}

{Kelahre’s Restless Soul}

{Item rarity: rare}

{Item quality: ordinary}

{Charges: 0/5}

{This enchanted flask siphons away and distils the very soul energy of your enemies. Every fifty points of physical or arcane damage dealt to your enemies will be converted into one charge. Each charge will replenish twenty-five points' worth of arcana over ten seconds.}

‘Not bad,’ The dark elf hummed to himself. ‘Not bad at all. Now I just have to push it to a ‘well-made’ grade and hopefully, it will become a bit stronger.’ And it did. That single step-up in the enchantment’s quality earned him an extra ten points of arcana and health for every charge. Thirty-five points of healing could be a lifesaver in a battle and he made sure that everyone in his team would have a pair of flasks like these. By the time he was done with those, it was already three in the afternoon. What surprised him was that Tristan didn’t show up to nag him about the different matters needing his attention around the town. His thoughts however soon turned into reality as a quarter of an hour later he heard someone knocking on the door.

“Milord.” Dana the maid called out to him from the other side of the workshop’s door. “Sir Quentin and Tristan are here to see you. Should I lead them to your study?”

‘Speak of the devil and he shall come.’ The loremaster thought to himself with a chuckle. ‘And this time he’s not alone.’

“Yes,” he answered aloud. “Please tell them that I’ll be there in a minute or two.”

After clearing up the workshop, he left and locked it before entering the study, only to find a very distressed steward and a morose-looking paladin there.

“Dare I ask what happened to make you two look like you just ate a lemon without even peeling it first?”

“There was some trouble with the guards that came with Cornelia.” The paladin explained.

“What trouble?”

“Long story short, Grego and the others were doing their usual afternoon training when Cornelia’s guards decided to join. Not even two minutes later the situation went nuclear and now they are at the hospital.”

“Two minutes,” Regis repeated the words with visible confusion on his face. “What the hell happened?”

“Apparently, the new team’s leader thought it was a good idea to call Grego and the others cowards and traitors for leaving House Verhen when they did. As you can imagine, Grego and the others took that rather personally. The new bloods had no idea who they were messing with and ended up paying the price.”

“Shit,” he sighed with annoyance. “How bad is it?”

“No one died if that counts,” Tristan tried to calm down his liege. “But there were several serious injuries involved. None from our side.”

“Figures.” Regis noted with a smirk, imagining how surprised the soldiers must have been when they realized that they weren’t dealing with frightened and defenceless people like before, but heavily trained and experienced killing machines. It made all those hours of training and undead hunting worth it.

“So... how the hell did it come to this? I thought you screened everyone before letting them inside.”

“I did,” Quentin stated with a serious face. “I asked the same questions we always do. None of them were under any kind of influence and none of them meant harm to our people.”

“At least not at that moment,” the dark elf sighed as he sat down. “We have to make sure that such things won’t happen again. We already have enough trouble without some trigger-happy idiot starting a fight over something as stupid as this.”

“Maybe you should talk to Lady Cornelia about it.” Tristan suggested, earning a less-than-stellar look from the dark elf.

“It was ought to happen sooner or later,” he agreed. “Although I hoped it would happen later.”

“You seem woefully against having her here,” Quentin remarked. “And I’m not talking about the whole ‘she’s going to bring trouble’ thing.”

“She reminds me of my mother,” Regis admitted with a distant look in his eyes. “The same attitude, mannerism and low-key superiority she shows towards others while staying humble and nice at the same time. I fucking hate that.”

“Sounds like you two had your issues.”

“Not really. I loved her more than anyone in my family, despite her obvious faults. She was the glue that kept the family together and managed to keep us from tearing each other to pieces. When she passed away we... drifted apart.”

“I’m sorry.” Quentin said with a strange understanding in his voice.

“Anyway, we should get going. It’s best if we deal with this before so someone decides to do something stupid again.”

“Agreed.” The paladin and the steward said as one and they left the manor. On their way to Landwaker Square, the sight of nervous townsfolk hurrying about on their way made it obvious how the strained situation was starting to take its toll on the people.