Getting from the plains to the forest should've been a simple task under normal circumstances.
But nothing about their night had been normal.
The sky was moonless, the stars smothered by thick clouds. Lighting a torch would've been suicidal—an open invitation to every set of eyes hunting in the dark. So they stumbled through the black, guided by luck and instinct alone. With a hostage slung between them and no clear footing, what should've been an easy walk turned into a dangerous, miserable trudge.
They cursed with every stone kicked, every root tripped over. When the dwarf stirred mid-step—groggy and thrashing—they had to knock her out again.
"That's why people don't travel at night," someone muttered bitterly.
Some god must've been watching over them—or maybe just too distracted to finish them off. Either way, by the time the first gray smears of dawn touched the horizon, the forest loomed ahead like salvation. No signs of pursuit. No angry shouts behind them. Just cold, aching silence.
"Maybe they haven't noticed she's missing yet," Farren offered, voice thick with exhausted hope.
"Or she's just not important enough to miss," Syrien replied, grim and gravel-voiced.
They pushed into the trees and kept moving for another hour before they found a clearing—a patch of open ground where they could finally breathe. Syrien made straight for a tree, rope in hand, clearly ready to tie the captive there and be done with it.
Charles stepped in front of him.
"You want to kill her afterward?" he asked, flat.
Syrien blinked. "What?"
"Because if not, we take her farther in and interrogate her properly. And we don't all go. We split up."
"I don't enjoy killing, so I vote for Charles's plan," Farren said, raising a hand. Lira nodded quietly in agreement.
"Would be easier to just kill her," Syrien muttered.
"No," Gerart said firmly. "Let's do it the right way. Don't kill if you don't have to."
For once, he almost sounded like a leader.
"So who's going?" he asked.
Everyone looked at him, waiting for the call.
Gerart shrugged lightly. "I'm eating and sleeping. You've got this, Charles. It was your idea, and I trust you to handle it."
"Fine. Me and Farren," Charles said, not missing a beat. "The rest of you can do what you like."
"Why can't I go?" Syrien asked, giving Charles a sharp look.
"Because I don't trust you not to kill me when we're alone in the woods," Charles said—half-joking. But only half.
---
They dragged the unconscious dwarf deeper into the trees and tied her to a thick trunk, firm and secure. Then came the blindfold.
No names. No faces.
She had curly brown hair, messy from the struggle, and smooth brown skin smudged with dirt. Even unconscious, she looked stubborn. Once everything was set, Charles unstoppered his flask and splashed cold water over her face.
She woke coughing, jerking against the rope. Big brown eyes blinked rapidly under the blindfold, wild with panic. Farren grinned.
"Well, look who's awake."
"Hello, sleeping beauty," Charles added, voice sharp.
She twisted, disoriented. "Where am I? Who the fuck are you? You know you're in deep shit, right?"
"Oh?" Charles asked, mock-curious. "Why's that?"
"Because I'm with the Hollow Coin Syndicate. You lay hands on one of ours, there's no running from the consequences."
Farren laughed loud and hard, mocking. "Hollow Coin? That nest of pickpockets? Yeah, we're shaking in our boots."
"That's not what we are anymore," she snapped. "We've got countless men. More than you rats could ever handle."
Farren bent double with laughter. "Countless? What's that, ten? Maybe fifteen? You sound like a drunk farmer's kid bragging about his dad's goat herd."
Her teeth clenched. "More than three hundred," she spat. "And we already control half the farms around the plains. By the end of the year, we'll have them all—and then we'll join the Great Ten."
Charles crouched down in front of her, elbows on his knees.
"You've got a big mouth for someone tied to a tree. What's your name?"
She hesitated, breathing heavy through her nose.
"…Freya," she muttered at last.
"Well, Freya," Charles said, voice cooling, "you're lucky. We're not here to torture you or carve out your secrets. We just wanted confirmation."
"You won't get away with this," she growled.
Charles snorted. "We already have."
He stood up. "Look, we got what we needed. I'm untying you now. Don't take the blindfold off for five minutes. If you do—you die. Understand?"
He tossed her gear to the ground a few meters away and turned to leave.
Freya shouted after them. "I'll kill you for this! You hear me? At least tell me where the fuck you took me!"
But they were already gone.
---
Back at camp, they lit a small fire and finally let themselves breathe.
"Hollow Coin, huh?" Gerart muttered. "Old bastard Marlo must've grown a pair. Or lost his mind. That's serious taboo. The food trade's supposed to be off-limits. No syndicate interference."
"Strange none of the guilds or bigger syndicates slit his throat yet," Charles said.
"Probably someone big backing them," Farren added. "Marlo's just the front. Someone else is pulling the strings."
"And what about her boasting?" Lira asked quietly. "Three hundred men? Do you think that was real?"
Farren snorted. "She said 'countless' first. I mocked her, and she spat out a number. Classic bluff. Probably got fifty half-starved thugs and a mule between them."
Charles shook his head slowly. "Maybe. But even fifty can strangle farms if no one steps in. And if it is three hundred…" He let the thought hang, grim and heavy.
"Then we've got a bigger problem," Gerart finished. He stood and cracked his neck, eyes on the trees.
"We head back to the settlements. Warn the people. Bring the beast parts into the city. That's our next step."
"There's not much else we can do," Farren agreed.
But Gerart shook his head.
"We stay put a while. They'll be looking for the girl. Maybe watching the roads. Better to let the water cool first."
Charles exhaled and sank to the ground.
Another waiting game.
His favorite.
"Okay," he muttered. "So who's taking first watch?"
---
The waiting was killing them.
By day four, boredom had rotted away whatever patience they had left. Charles was fighting for night watch duty just for something to do. Right now, he sat on a sun-warmed rock, ass sore, sharpening his sword for what had to be the fifth time that day.
But even the scrape of steel on stone couldn't drown out the memory of Freya's voice. Three hundred. She'd spat it like a challenge, like she wanted them to choke on the number.
Was it a bluff? Farren thought so. Gerart hadn't said. Lira had looked uneasy.
Charles couldn't shake the image: three hundred blades swarming over farms, choking out the city's food before anyone moved to stop it. Fifty would be bad enough. But three hundred? That was an army, not a gang. And if she hadn't been lying… then someone out there was feeding Hollow Coin's rise.
The thought sat in his skull like a splinter.
Farren lounged near the fire, playing the same damned melody on a blade of grass. Over and over and over.
Syrien, as usual, kept his distance—perched like a hawk, eyes tracking everyone, brooding and silent.
Lira had wandered off to gather herbs or berries or whatever. Charles hadn't asked.
Gerart had taken the first excuse to go hunting—anything to be alone.
The ones left in camp didn't speak. They just sat. Stared into nothing. The same awful tune repeated again.
And again.
And again.
Finally, Syrien had enough. He hurled a chunk of wood the size of a battle club straight at Farren's head.
"Are you fucking mental?" Farren shouted, springing to his feet. "I'll bash your skull in, you pointy-eared bastard!"
He lunged without hesitation, and soon they were both wrestling in the dirt, snarling and cursing like dogs.
Charles stared for a moment, tempted to let them fight it out. But the last working part of his brain reminded him that was a terrible idea.
With a groan, he stomped over and yanked Farren off Syrien by the collar.
"This isn't working," he snapped. "We need to move. Sooner or later, we're going to kill each other—and no one's even attacked us yet."
Just then, a crunch echoed from the trees.
Everyone froze.
Charles straightened, hand drifting toward his weapon.
A second crunch. Closer.
Lira burst into view between the trunks, panting, wide-eyed.
"We've got company," she gasped.
And this time, it wasn't boredom coming for them.