"My lord," Clark approached Theo's side as soon as the prince retreated behind the banners. "It's done."
Theo took just one moment to stop and let the reality sink in.
"Tsk…" he shook his head as he clicked his tongue. He then raised his hands to his face, covering his eyes as he took a deep breath.
"Good," allowing himself no more than a moment of respite, Theo lowered his hands and looked ahead with renewed determination.
"Go and tell everyone to start," Theo then ordered as he picked up the pace and sank down into the palace's back corridors and forgotten paths.
'Now, everything rides on speed!'
The moment Theo left the limits of the palace, he dropped all the dignity and just… ran.
Through the courtyard, through the gate, caring not for any of the passersby's stares.
Now that his exile to Garda Fold was confirmed, Stephen was likely to grow some nerve and try to stop whatever it was that Theo was doing.
But at this point, everything was pretty much over. All that was left was to… leave.
"Master!"
Two alleys behind the border of the palace's grounds, a carriage already sat waiting with two agile magic beasts at the ready.
"You are here," Theo raised his arm to greet his old friend. "I take it, your old man decided to throw his lot with the old blood?"
Zark, sitting at the carriage's driver's seat, grinned in response.
"You know I wouldn't miss it."
Wasting no more time, Theo jumped into the carriage, quickly followed by the only one out of his three shadows who was allowed… no, obliged to always remain by his side.
"We've moved all the supplies, the gold should be going through the gates as we speak," Jorgen, one of the only three men in existence whom Theo shared his ability with, reported. "For now, there are no reports of movement within the guardian's corps."
Jorgen raised his eyes and matched Theo's stare.
"As for the guild officers, we will be joining them as we pass the gate,"
"That's good to hear," Theo sighed.
'All this secrecy, schemes and planning…' he shook his head, as he allowed himself just another moment of respite.
The carriage shook, and then started to slowly roll ahead as the magical beasts dug their hooves into the ground and started to pull.
"Everyone's gathered up," a voice came from the outside, belonging likely to one of the several field sergeants assigned to this escape route, "Let's go."
The carriage shook again as the twin magical beasts quickly gained speed.
Everyone turned silent. Trying to raise anyone's attention was just the last thing they wanted right now.
And at first, everything went as expected. For nearly an hour, things continued to be perfectly boring, perfectly in line with what one could expect from travel through the capital's busy roads. Yet, as the carriage came to a stop, signifying they finally reached the city's gate, the wait quickly started to stretch.
'Must be the high profile of all those skipping town…' Theo thought, trying not to let his excitement get the better of him.
According to the plan, their carriage was to merge into a group of several others, making up the numbers of all those who would skip town along with the prince.
'If one were to count the net worth of all those gathered around the gate right now, it could make up a solid chunk of the country's total wealth,' Theo thought as he tried to relax in his seat.
Yet, while it wasn't Theo's first rodeo, the stakes of this moment quickly made him impatient.
"I understand that the high rank of all those leaving could alert the guards, but isn't it taking too long?" he muttered, dissatisfied.
"Let me take a look," Yurgen muttered while pressing his back into the side of the carriage and then almost hitting his head against its front wall, all so he could peek outside through a narrow gap in the carriage's wooden wall.
"I can see Zark talking with one of the soldiers…" Yurgen soon reported in a low voice filled with uncertainty.
"What's taking him so long?" Theo squinted his eyes. "Is he trying to save on the bribe?"
"I think it's not a sergeant," Yurgen spoke, only to then turn silent for a few moments. "Yeah, just our rotten luck. He's talking with an officer."
"He should have enough money even for a damn general!" Theo gritted his teeth.
'Is this the curse of an organization created to maximize profits?' he thought, annoyed. 'Are they trying to save money even in a moment like that?'
"Ah, I see," soon, Yurgen muttered in a voice filled with relief. "He's trying to drag him between the carriages, out of everyone else's view."
For just two more moments, things continued to stall. Then, with a loud thump, something heavy dropped upon the front of the carriage before things started to move along again.
"I'm sorry it took so long," Zark apologized from the driver's seat ahead of the carriage's front wall. "We just had to stumble upon quite the overzealous one."
"And what did you do?" Theo asked, genuinely curious after spending nearly two hours in the carriage.
"What else?" Even with the wall separating them, Theo could swear Zark just shrugged his shoulders. "I smacked him with enough gold for that moron to see reason. It's not like gold holds any real value at this stage."
Theo smirked.
"You are right," he nodded, pleased by how the carriage finally started picking up speed, indicating that they were now leaving the capital's gates behind. "And the time we save here is worth much, much more than those few coins we lose here."
"Oh, and on another note, I saw some group rushing to the gates as we were leaving," Zark continued to report, "I think they were flying Carlston colors, but they got bogged down a bit too far for me to see clearly."
"Why would they…" Theo squinted his eyes, confused by the sudden change. 'Did she see through the act?'
Against all logic and reason, Theo couldn't help but imagine a scenario where Emily, alerted by his unfortunate slip at the palace, would try to uncover the truth. A scenario where she was somehow lucky enough to actually find the truth obscured by years-long schemes and cover-ups, and realize the truth of Theo's plans and decisions…
"Well, we are certain to be well past the gate now," Jorgen spoke up, looking with a rare glint of agitation towards the doors. "Which means, we are about to…"
His eyes lit up.
As one of Theo's shadows, he was privy to most of the secrets of Theo's organizations, which included the truth of how they were going to escape from the central province which, contrary to the royal capital, has long since turned loyal to the king.
"That's right," Theo shook his head before standing up and then moving towards the doors right as the carriage came to a stop. "We've arrived."
Theo pushed the doors open and jumped down upon a plot of seemingly innocent grass.
Behind him, a massive road stretched deep into the countryside, connecting all the nearby farms through a web of smaller roads and paths.
An agricultural marvel of the kingdom's capital and the clear reason behind its massive population.
And now, Theo stood upon an ordinary patch of grass separating two fields of some sort of wheat and vegetables respectively. He merely took a glance before decisively stepping upon the vegetables with absolutely no mercy for the salad heads he crushed under his foot.
Soon, everyone else followed, leaving from a group of over twenty carriages that joined Theo's at the gates.
"Everyone ready?" The assigned guide of the journey stepped out, a young lad named Kenneth, before first raising his magical staff, holding it steady as the crystal at its top started to shine with more and more intense light…
Only to then slam the butt of the staff against the field, sending the power gathered within the staff directly into a complex rune arrayed on the stones buried deep underneath the top layer of the soil.
As the magical power surged through the runic circuits, their shape flashed from deep underneath the ground, allowing everyone gathered in the field to marvel at the rune's inhuman complexity.
Then, the magical power surged upwards…
And the fields of the capital disappeared, along with the roads, farms, and the walls of the city far behind them.
Only the people and the carriages remained, now stuck in the middle of a huge, overgrown wilderness.
Thankfully, they merely appeared at the foot of the dense forest, allowing the party of mostly middle-aged and older men to step out into a somewhat cleared-out plain.
"Welcome to the Garda Fold Colony, boss," Zestra flashed a wide grin of her sharp teeth. She then raised the oversized sleeve of her coat before throwing it out, as if to present the scenery behind her back.
An entire face of the gentle slope was stripped of all its soil, had its bare rock exposed, and then methodically cut away.
Down at the bottom of the massive mine, there were two distinctive areas where the stones were either processed or turned into crushed dust that would then be fired up into a clinker.
The mine, the rudimentary cement factory, and the stone-cutting workshop.
Each of those could only operate within extremely limited capacity due to the lack of manpower. And now that people were actually coming…
"You've prepared well, I see," Theo nodded his head with satisfaction before reaching out and resting his hand on Zestra's head, then rustling her golden hair and even scratching behind her fluffy ears. "You did well."
Zestra purred for a moment before shaking her head and taking a step back.
"Right, we've gathered between ten to twenty people from all the designated areas!" she dutifully reported.
Yet, while important news, those words instantly soured Theo's mood.
'Right, not even a moment to rest?'
He shook his head before raising his eyes.
"I will meet them as soon as possible. But for now," he then turned his eyes towards the absolute foundations for what soon had to turn into a marvel of technological development and rapid progress. Then, he turned his gaze back to where the gathering of the old geezers stood pointlessly around the carriages filled with the gold smuggled out of the capital.
"For now," Theo's somber look changed into a sadistic smirk, "it's time to get those old geezers to work."